Isaac Newton, James Maxwell, Michael Faraday, Ernest Rutherford, John Dalton are only a part of all names of outstanding English physicists. Their contribution to science is invaluable, they opened many fundamental physical laws, explained a set of the phenomena, made remarkable inventions on the basis of the experiments. It is difficult to choose the most significant of them, but the best-known it is possible to call Newton, Rutherford and, of course, the modern physicist Stephen Hawking.
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton is the founder of classical mechanics world-famous thanks to a popular legend of the fallen apple. This English physicist became the author of a number of large physical laws: he opened and described laws of universal gravitation, mechanics, physical optics. Newton worked on the theory of light, studied integrated and differential calculations and dealt with other unresolved problems in science.
It is impossible to call Newton the ancestor of modern physics, but he united results of works of the scientists – Galilei, Kepler, Descartes – preceding it and created the uniform, universal system of the world. For example, it found interrelation of Keplerian laws of the movement of planets and the law of gravitation.
Being a many-sided and inquisitive person, Newton studied also chemistry, philosophy and divinity. Surprisingly, but this English physicist was the believing person, and in his consciousness physical laws and bible statements were perfectly combined.
Ernest Rutherford
It is possible to call Rutherford the founder of nuclear physics: he the first created atom model. In spite of the fact that this English scientist got the Nobel Prize in chemistry, he made an invaluable contribution to modern physical science. By means of an experiment in which it disseminated alpha particles Rutherford managed to prove that atoms have a positively charged kernel. Rutherford opened alpha and beta radiation, investigated the radioactivity of thorium and uranium, found a transmutation of elements and by results of the observations wrote three main works: "Radioactivity", "Radioactive transformations" and "Radiations of radioactive materials".
Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking is the best-known English physicist among modern scientists. This person, despite a serious illness which led almost to full paralysis and loss of the speech conducts very active life including research. The main areas of its interests is a quantum gravitation and cosmology. Hawking is known that he managed to apply laws of thermodynamics to the description of black holes. He opened the so-called radiation of Hawking which leads to "evaporation" of black holes. Stephen Hawking is the famous popular writer of physics. His book "Short History of Time" received big distribution among the people who are not connected with science. Then other its works, including educational films followed.