Robert Bunsen (1811–1899) - He developed the Bunsen burner, an improvement on the laboratory burners then in use.

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) - He made significant contributions in several areas including thermodynamics, physiology, and the theory of color vision.

Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (1824–1887) - He was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects.

Josef Stefan (1835–1893) - An Austrian physicist who is known mainly for the Stefan–Boltzmann law, which describes the power radiated from a black body in terms of its temperature.

Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach (1838–1916) - He was an Austrian physicist and philosopher, noted for his contributions to physics such as the Mach number and the study of shock waves.

Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906) - He was a key figure in the development of statistical mechanics, which explains and predicts how the properties of atoms affect the physical properties of matter.

Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1845–1923) - A German mechanical engineer and physicist, who produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range known as X-rays or Roentgen rays.

Felix Klein (1849–1925) - A German mathematician and mathematics educator, known for his work in group theory, complex analysis, non-Euclidean geometry, and on the connections between geometry and group theory.

Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850–1891) - She was the first woman in modern Europe to gain a doctorate in mathematics, the first to join a scientific academia, and the first to be appointed as a professor of mathematics.

Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928) - He shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect.

Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932) - A Baltic German chemist who is considered one of the founders of the field of physical chemistry.

Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894) - Demonstrated that electricity can be transmitted in electromagnetic waves, which travel at the speed of light.

Max Planck (1858–1947) - He made many contributions to theoretical physics, but his fame rests primarily on his role as originator of the quantum theory.

Arnold Sommerfeld (1868–1951) - A German theoretical physicist who pioneered developments in atomic and quantum physics, and also educated and mentored a large number of students for the new era of theoretical physics.

Mileva Maric (1875–1948) & Albert Einstein (1879–1955) - Einstein is best known for his theory of relativity and the equation E=mc^2, which foreshadowed the development of atomic power and the atomic bomb. Mileva Maric was a Serbian physicist and mathematician and the first wife of Albert Einstein.

Lise Meitner (1878–1968) - She was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who worked on radioactivity and nuclear physics. Meitner was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission, an achievement for which her colleague Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Paul Ehrenfest (1880–1933) - Known for his contributions to the field of statistical mechanics and his work on phase transitions.

Niels Bohr (1885–1962) - His model of the atom, with electrons in discrete orbits, was a central concept in the early development of quantum mechanics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) - Schrödinger developed the wave equation of quantum mechanics (Schrödinger equation), for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933.

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) - He developed matrix mechanics, the first formalization of quantum mechanics in 1925. He's also known for the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932.

Linus Pauling (1901–1994) - A chemist and peace activist, Pauling applied quantum mechanics to chemistry, and his work on the nature of the chemical bond earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. He is the only person to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes, having received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962 for his activism against nuclear weapons testing.

Paul Dirac (1902–1984) - He formulated the Dirac equation, which describes the behavior of fermions, particles with half-integer spin. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Schrödinger in 1933.

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) - Known for his contributions to quantum electrodynamics (QED), Feynman shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. He is also well-known for the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics and his "Feynman diagrams".