Andre Marie Ampere (1775-1836) was a French mathematician, chemist, and physicist who experimentally quantified the relationship between the electrical current and the magnetic field. His works were summarized in a treatise published in 1927, The units of electrical current are named after him. ([1] pg.5)

The Bernoulli Family consisted of nine Swiss mathematicians in three generations. The father, Johan, lived from 1667 to 1748. Daniel has been called the "Father of Mathematical Physics." All were followers of Leibniz. ([4])

Charles A. Coulomb (1726-1806) was a French engineer and physicist who published the laws of electrostatics in seven memoirs to the French Academy of Science between 1785 and 1791. His name is associated with the units of electrical charge. ([1] pg.5)

René Déscartes (1596-1650) was a French mathematician who "fathered" modern mathematics." ([4])

Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665) was a French lawyer, linguist and amateur mathematician who extended Déscartes' ideas about algebra and contributed to optics with his "Principle of Least Time." ([4])

Leonard Euler (1707-1783) (rhymes with boiler not ruler) was probably the most prolific mathematician (student of Johan Bernoulli, friend of Daniel Bernoulli) of all time, known for the quality of his vast works. ([4])

Michael Faraday (1791-1867) was an English experimenter who demonstrated electromagnetic induction in 1831. His electrical transformer and electromagnetic generator marked the beginning of the age of electrical power. He championed the concept of magnetic "lines of force" to understand this body of work. With a dislike for the Germans work (Gauss and Reimann) he explained his ideas to a young Scottish mathematician named James Clerk Maxwell. His name is associated with the units of capacitance. ([1] pg.5, [4])

John-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) was a French mathematician who developed Fourier Analysis which uses a linear combination of a complete set of functions to describe any given function. ([4])

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) was a German mathematician who, with Weber, published a treatise in 1833 describing the measurement of the earth's magnetic field. The gauss is a unit of magnetic field strength. ([1] pg.5)

Josiah Willad Gibbs (1839-1903) was a major developer of vector analysis circa 1880-1882. ([2] pg.1)

Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865) was a Scottish mathematician and astronomer who contributed to classical mechanics by showing that Newton's method and Lagrange's lagrangian method were different formulations of the same mathematics. He also added a third equivolent method, using the hamiltonian, which is used in the calculation of orbital trajectories today. He later became an Irish Astronomer Royal. ([2] pg.234, [4])

Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) was an English electrical engineer who originated much of the present day vector notation circa 1893. ([2] pg.1)

Joseph Henry (1797-1878) was an American physicist who discovered self-induction around 1831. His name has been designated to represent the units of inductance. He had also recognized the essential structure of the telegraph, which was later perfected by Samuel F.B. Morse. ([1] pg.5)

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894) was a German scientist and experimenter who was the first to demonstrate experimentally the production and detection of Maxwell'selectromagnetic waves (see light) and published his findings in 1888. His name is associated with the units of frequency. ([1] pg.5, [4])

Christian Huygens (1625-1695) was a mathematician who contributed to optics with his "wavelets" by developing the wave theory of light. ([4])

Joseph-Louis Lagrange was a mathematician who developed a more convenient method of using Newton's equations of motion. He introduced the idea of the lagrangian, the integral of which is called the action. ([4])

Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz (1646- either 1714 [4] or 1716 [7]) was a German mathematician (a student of Huygens and rival of Newton) who developed calculus independently of Newton beginning in 1673 (eight years after Newton), introducing the modern notation form differentiation and integration in 1675. He published his works in 1684 and 1686. ([4], [7] pg.4)

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928) was a Dutch physicist who came up with the idea that the laws of nature must be invariant to a change of coordinate systems. The consequences of this were that time and space variables needed to enter into equations on an equal footing (same order of differentiation, etc.). These ideas laid the basis for the theory of special relativity a few years later. This is inherent in Maxwell's equations, but caused Schrödinger some pains. ([4])

James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) was a Scottish mathematician and physicist who discovered the electromagnetic theory of light (after realizing the possibility of an electromagnetic waves and considering the velocity of such a wave) and the laws of electrodynamics (by showing the equivolence of Gauss' and Reimann's work to that of Faraday). The modern theory of electromagnetics is entirely founded upon Maxwell's equations. ([1] pg.5, [4])

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was an English mathematician who developed calculus (one of several related treatises was written in 1672, although published postmortem in 1736; the announcement of the "new method" which was to become "the calculus" was made in 1687), contributed to optics (with his "corpuscles" by developing the particle theory of light), and developed the Newtonian theory of gravitation. ([4], [7] pg.4)

Amalie (Emmy) Noether (1882-1935) was a German mathematician who worked mostly in abstract algebra. After a long struggle she won the right as a woman to lecture, without pay, at Göttingen University in Germany. It was then, in 1918, that she presented the results of an analysis dealing with symmetry that became a guiding principle for contemporary physics. Noether taught at Göttingen until 1933 when she came to tthe United States after the Nazis learned that she was Jewish and expelled her from Germany. ([3] pg.6)

Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851) was a Danish physicist who discovered the connection between electricity and magnetism in 1820. The units of magnetic field strenght are after his name. ([1] pg.5)

Georg Simon Ohm (1789-1854) was a German mathematician who investigated the relationship between voltage and current and quantified the phenomenon of resistance. His first results were published in 1827. His name is used to represent the units of resistance. ([1] pg.5)

Simeon Poisson (1781-1840) was a prolific mathematician who contributed to classical mechanics by formulating Hamilton's hamiltonian in such a way (the Poisson bracket) as to inspire Hiesenberg's formulation of quantum mechanics. ([4])

Lord Rayleigh (See John William Strutt)

Bernard Reimann was a German mathematician who is credited with laying the groundwork for the study of non-Euclidean, curved spaces. It turns out that the Euler-Lagrange equations of motion (those which come out of Lagrange's lagrangian method) correctly predict the motion of a particle even in these curved spaces and it also turns out to be the path of least action (see Lagrange). The development of these tools into physically important concepts for mechanics had to wait for the likes of Einstein, Minkowski, Schrödinger and others. In the meantime, Gauss and Reimann turned their attention to the (at the time) emerging field of electrodynamics. ([4])

Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) was an experimentalist (student of J.J. Thompson in England but he was from New Zealand) who developed the idea of a nuclear atom based on experimental evidence which could not be explained by the plum pudding model of the atom. In 1908, he (with Royds) also figured out that alpha rays were helium atoms which were missing two electrons. ([3] pg.1000, [5])

Ernst Werner Siemens (1816-1892) was a German inventor and engineer who, with W. Siemens, contributed to the invention and development of electric machines, as well as to perfecting electrical science. The modern unit of conductance is named after these two. ([1] pg.5)

Wilhelm Siemens (1821- ? 1833 ? 1933 ? ) was a German inventor and engineer who, with E. Siemens, contributed to the invention and development of electric machines, as well as to perfecting electrical science. The modern unit of conductance is named after these two. ([1] pg.5)

John William Strutt (Lord Rayleigh) (18??-19??) was most commonly known for his 1900 attempt to describe blackbody radiation using the classical law of energy equipartition with the number of degrees of freedom of electromagnetic radiation.  This was modified slightly by Jeans into the "Rayleigh-Jeans formula."  This classical description only worked for low frequency light complementing Wilhelm Wien's 1894 description which worked for high frequency light.  These were later (1900) superceded by Planck's theory which interpolated between the two.  Lord Rayleigh also work in acoustical physics, describing in 1877 the interaural level difference which in part allows people to locate a sound source and concluding in 1907 that the primary factor was in detecting the waveform phase difference.

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was a Croatian inventor who, after emigrating to the United States in 1884, invented poliphase electric power systems and the induction motor. He pioneered modern AC (alternating current) electric power systems. His name is used to represent the units of magnetic flux density. ([1] pg.5)

Sir Joseph John Thompson (1856-1940) investigated the phenomenon of cathode rays and realized that these cathode rays were actually particles, which he called electrons. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1906 for this discovery. (Thirty one years later, his son, Sir George Paget Thompson, along with Clinton Joseph Davisson won the Nobel Prize for proving that electrons, and thus all particles, acted like waves under certain conditions.) ([5])

Alessandro Volta (17xx-18xx) was an Italian physicist who discovered the electric pile. The units of electric potential and the alternate name of the quantity (voltage) are named after him. ([1] pg.5)

James Watt (1736-1819) was an English inventor who developed the steam engine. His name is used to represent the units of power. ([1] pg.5)

Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1804-1891) was a German physicist who, with Gauss, published a treatise in 1833 describing the measurement of the earth's magnetic field. The weber is a unit of magnetic flux. ([1] pg.5)
 
 

[2] - Biographies were taken without permission from:
J.B. Marion & S.T. Thornton, Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems 4e (SAUNDERS COLLEGE PUBLISHING [Harcourt Brace], New York, NY, 1995)

[3] - Biographies were taken without permission from:
E. Hecht, Physics: Algebra/Trig, 2e (BROOKS/COLE PUBLISHING [ITP], Pacific Grove, CA, 1998)

[4] - Biographies were taken without permission from:
Prof. Dan Thomas, Quantum Chemistry Course: Classical Mechanics Tour (http://www.chembio.uoguelph.ca/educmat/chm386/CHM386.htm)

[5] - Biographies were taken without permission from:
Prof. Dan Thomas, Quantum Chemistry Course: Experimental Problems Confronting Classical Physics (http://www.chembio.uoguelph.ca/educmat/chm386/CHM386.htm)

[6] - Biographies were taken without permission from:
Prof. Dan Thomas, Quantum Chemistry Course: Quantum Mechanics Tour (http://www.chembio.uoguelph.ca/educmat/chm386/CHM386.htm)

[7] - Biographies were taken without permission from:
S.L. Salas, E. Hille, J.T. Anderson, Calculus, One and Several Variables, 5e (John Wiley and Sons, New York, NY, 1986)