Wolf Prize in Physics
Jewish recipients of the Wolf Prize in Physics documented in the ThankJews directory. Jews are about 40% of all recipients — while making up roughly 0.2% of the world's population.
28 documented recipients
Michael Fisher1931
Chemical physicist known for statistical mechanics of critical phenomena
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Chemistry
Leo Kadanoff1937
Physicist; block-spin scaling and the renormalization group
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Victor Weisskopf1908
Physicist; quantum electrodynamics and nuclear physics, director-general of CERN
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Leon Lederman1922
Physicist; discovered the muon neutrino, Nobel Prize 1988
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Martin Perl1927
Physicist; discovered the tau lepton, Nobel Prize 1995
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Erwin Hahn1921
Physicist who discovered the spin echo in nuclear magnetic resonance
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Chemistry
Peter Hirsch1925
Metallurgist, pioneer of electron microscopy of dislocations in metals
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Theodore Maiman1927
Physicist; built the first working laser
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Mitchell Feigenbaum1944
Physicist; chaos theory and the universal Feigenbaum constants
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Albert Libchaber1934
Physicist; experimental confirmation of the route to chaos
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Herbert Friedman1916
Pioneer of space-based solar and X-ray astronomy using rocket-borne instruments
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Earth & Planetary Science
Bruno Rossi1905
Physicist; cosmic-ray physics and founding of X-ray astronomy
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Maurice Goldhaber1911
Physicist; showed the neutron is a distinct particle, measured neutrino helicity
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Valentine Telegdi1922
Physicist; parity violation and precision particle experiments
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Benoit Mandelbrot1924
Mathematician who founded fractal geometry, widely applied to natural and Earth science patterns
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Earth & Planetary Science
Vitaly Ginzburg1916
Physicist; Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity, Nobel Prize 2003
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Yakir Aharonov1932
Physicist; co-discovered the Aharonov-Bohm effect in quantum mechanics
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Michael Berry1941
Physicist; discovered the geometric (Berry) phase in quantum mechanics
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Dan Shechtman2011
Quasicrystals
Source: Nobel Prize Chemistry 2011
Bertrand Halperin1941
Physicist; condensed matter theory and the quantum Hall effect
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Robert Brout1928
Physicist; co-discovered the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Daniel Kleppner1932
Physicist; atomic clocks and Rydberg atoms
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Jacob Bekenstein1947
Physicist; black hole entropy and thermodynamics
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Physics
Robert Kirshner2015
Astronomer of supernova cosmology; Wolf Prize (2015)
Source: Jinfo.org — Jewish recipients of the Wolf Prize in Physics
Yosef Imry2016
Israeli father of mesoscopic physics; Wolf Prize (2016)
Source: Jinfo.org — Jewish recipients of the Wolf Prize in Physics
Rafi Bistritzer2020
Israeli physicist who predicted magic-angle graphene superconductivity; Wolf Prize (2020)
Source: Jinfo.org — Jewish recipients of the Wolf Prize in Physics
James Eisenstein2025
Physicist of the quantum Hall regime; Wolf Prize (2025)
Source: Jinfo.org — Jewish recipients of the Wolf Prize in Physics
Mordehai Heiblum2025
Israeli quantum-electronics experimentalist (Weizmann Institute); Wolf Prize (2025)
Source: Jinfo.org — Jewish recipients of the Wolf Prize in Physics