Web Authors (Science) - Hall of Fame

Many people share their knowledge on the Internet, but the outstanding contributions of a few dedicated scientists belong in this "Hall of Fame" (in alphabetical order). [ Nominate ]

Suzanne Alejandre
John C. Baez
Alexander Bogomolny
Kevin S. Brown
Chris K. Caldwell
Peter J. Cameron
David W. Cantrell
Umberto Cerruti
Jim Clark
Dianna Cowern
Karl Dahlke
David Darling
Glenn Elert
David Eppstein

Hank Green
CGP Grey
James Grime
Chris Hillman
Brady Haran
Vi Hart
Colin Hughes
K. Houston-Edwards
Sal Khan
Ron Kurtus
Cynthia Lanius
Walter Lewin
Jeff Miller
Derek Muller

Robert Munafo
Rod Nave
John J. O'Connor
Sten Odenwald
Matt O'Dowd
Matt Parker
Ed Pegg Jr.
Dan Piponi
Simon Plouffe
Burkard Polster
Henry Reich
Edmund Robertson
Russ Rowlett
Dave Rusin

Grant Sanderson
Destin Sandlin
Christoph Schiller
Alom Shaha
Neil Sloane
Michael Stevens
Leonard Susskind
Terence Tao
Vitalii Vanovschi
Mike de Villiers
Eric Weisstein
Robin Whitty
Ned Wright

Suzanne Alejandre, math teacher

Suzanne Alejandre is Educational Resource & Service Developer at The Math Forum @ Drexel. She has been providing online lesson plans conforming to the NCTM Standards (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics).

Suzanne's Mathematics Lessons | Ask Dr. Math | The Math Forum @ Drexel

John Baez, mathematical physicist (b.1961)

Professor at UC Riverside, interested in Category theory. The folk singer Joan Baez (b.1941-01-09) is his cousin. John C. Baez was a one-man army who answered many physics questions on sci.physics.research. The aperiodic column he started in 1993 would inspire the blog format.

Alexander Bogomolny, software developer

Former Associate Prof. of Mathematics, University of Iowa. Until May 2004, Alexander Bogomolny had a monthly column on the site of the Mathematical Association of America.

Cut The Knot | Other Math Sites | PhD (1981)

Dr. Kevin S. Brown (Kent, WA)

Kevin Brown signs his name only once in his MathPages website (which doesn't have any external links). Before 1999, he was discussing Relativity and other mathematical topics on USENET. He's related to Fred Olden, not Anatoly.

MathPages.com | Reflections on Relativity | Kevin Brown's Storefront

Chris K. Caldwell, number theorist (b. 1956)

Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, at UT Martin.

home | The Prime Pages | The Prime Glossary | PhD (1984)

Peter J. Cameron, mathematician (b. 1947)

Born in Australia. Emeritus professor of mathematics at Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL). Currently (2014) Prof. Cameron is also working part-time as professor of mathematics at the University of Saint-Andrews, Scotland (School of Mathematics & Statistics).

David W. Cantrell, mathematician (b. 1949)

Known for his presence on mathematical newsgroups, where he answers popular questions and offers original contributions, David Cantrell also contributes to MathWorld, Numericana, etc.

Ignorance is bliss... | Recent Posts | FaceBook

Umberto Cerruti, algebraist (b. 1948)

Department of Mathematics, University of Torino (Italy).

Math News

Jim Clark, chemistry teacher (b. 1944)

A Cambridge graduate who spent over 30 years teaching A-level chemistry (to 16-18 year old students). In 1997, he retired from Truro School (Cornwall) to concentrate on writing and promoting a true understanding of chemistry.

about | Amazon page | Chemguide online

Dianna Cowern, physicist (b. 1989)

She created the Physics Girl channel in 2011. Dianna Cowern has enrolled a team of half-a-dozen part-time people, including writer Sophia Chen. (Science Magazine, 2017-03-16.)

Karl Dahlke, blind scientist (b. 1960)

Dahlke has been totally blind since age 10. He once managed to write a speech synthesizer on his Apple II using the bell as sole feedback. His text-based mathematical site is so good that it can be extremely useful to sighted people.

home | edbrowse (Editor Browser for the blind ) | mathreference.com

David Darling, science writer (b. 1953)

David Darling earned his Ph.D. in Astronomy from Manchester in 1977 under Zdenek Kopal and worked for Cray Research... A full-time writer since 1982, Darling has lived in both the US and the UK. He has been running his websites since 1999.

The Worlds of David Darling | Encyclopedia of Science | Sustainable Living | Children's Encyclopedia

Glenn A. Elert, physics teacher (b. 1964)

Glenn Elert teaches at Midwood High School at Brooklyn College (NY). He acts as the editor of the Physics Factbook, a large collection of essays written by high-school students as an exercise in library research methods (in a scientific context).

home | Hypertextbook + new | Physics Factbook | Get Bent | Twitter

David A. Eppstein, computer scientist (b. 1963)

Professor in the School of Information and Computer Science, at UC Irvine.

Hank Green (b. 1980)

Hank started the VlogBrothers channel in 2007 with his brother John (b. 1977). His portfolio now includes SciShow, SciShow Kids, SciShow Space, SciShow Psych, ...

home | Internet Creators Guild | Wikipedia | Twitter

CGP Grey (b. 1980)

Colin Gregory Palmer Grey. Podcasts: Hello, Internet (HI) with Brady Haran and Cortex with Myke Hurley.

James Grime (b. 1980)

Born and raised in Nottingham. Msci from Lancaster and Ph.D. from York (2007, under Maxim Nazarov). Now a public speaker based at Cambridge's Institute of Continuing Education, he is best known as a regular on Brady Haran's Numberphile. Grime also runs the SingingBanana channel.

Brady Haran, Australian video journalist

Brady started the Periodic Table of Videos (PTOV) in 2008 as an unscripted series of interviews with Martyn Poliakoff. This grew into several series about Science (more recently, religion and philosophy) featuring an endearing bunch of faculty members at the University of Nottingham.

Vi Hart, mathemusician (b. 1988)

Victoria Hart is the talented child of MoMath co-founder George W. Hart (b. 1955) himself noted for his "Virtual Polyhedra" page (online encyclopedia of polyhedra, 1996). Vi Hart achieved viral fame with stop-motion animations on math themes. She once called herself gender agnostic.

Chris Hillman, general relativist

Chris started RelWWW as a graduate student at UW in 1992. He left his pages in the care of John Baez before returning in March 2007, disappointed by his Wikipedia experience. Sadly, Hillman lost faith again in June 2007 but remains active online.

Relativity on the World Wide Web ("RelWWW" closed down in June 2007) | Ersatz, S. Carroll, etc.

Kelsey Houston-Edwards, mathematician

A native of San Diego, she's currently a Ph.D. Student at Cornell (BA 2013, MS 2016). In September 2016, Kelsey created the YouTube channel PBS Infinite Series, which she hosted till November 2017. She was named AMS-AAAS Mass-Media Fellow at NOVA Next in 2016.

PBS Infinite Series (farewell) | Hum 110 @ Reed College (Portland, OR) | AMS Blogs | AAS | Twitter

Colin Hughes, British Teacher

In October 2001, Colin Hughes started Project Euler (as a section of MathsChallenge.net) where readers are posed mathematical questions which can be answered by designing a computer program that can run in "less than a minute".

Project Euler | MathsChallenge.net | Wikipedia (Project Euler) | Programming

Sal Khan (b. 1976)

Salman Khan

Khan Academy | Wikipedia

Ron Kurtus, engineer (b. 1940)

Ron Kurtus is an engineer who spent a few years in the entertainment industry before returning to electro-optical engineering. He has established a strong online presence focusing on Science education, mostly at the high-school level.

home | School for Champions (SfC) | SfC Publishing

Cynthia Lanius, teacher & activist

Cynthia Lanius is vocal about the underrepresentation of women in mathematics and computing. She is Associate director for The Math Forum @ Drexel, but continues to maintain her own k-12 math site, hosted at Rice University.

Fun Mathematics Lessons (K-12) | Ask Dr. Math | The Math Forum @ Drexel

Walter Lewin, professor of physics (b. 1936)

Walter Lewin is an astrophysicist and a teacher with a flair for showmanship. His legendary undergraduate lectures at MIT were broadcasted by UWTV (Seattle) and are available online in video form, through MIT's OpenCourseWare. In March 2017, Quora blocked / unblocked him. So, he left.

(New) YouTube Channel | home | 8.01 | 8.02 | 8.03 | MIT World | NY Times | Last lecture | 2015

Jeff Miller, educator

A teacher at Gulf High School in New Port Richey (Florida) Jeff Miller maintains an authoritative page about the "Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics".

home | Words of Mathematics | Mathematical Symbols | Stamps | other pages

Derek Muller, physics educator (b. 1982)

Muller created 3 YouTube channels: Veritasium (Jan. 2011), 2veritasium (Jul. 2012), and Sciencium (Feb. 2017). Muller holds a Ph.D. in science education. He is concerned with the way misconceptions arise and are communicated, in physics and elesewhere: E.g., Illusion of Truth, Post-Truth.

Robert Munafo, programmer (b. 1964)

An amateur mathematician whose interests include integer sequences, large numbers and fractals (especially the Mandelbrot set) Munafo maintains an authoritative site on trivia about specific numbers. He has contributed to Sloane's OEIS.

Carl R. "Rod" Nave, professor of physics

Department of Physics & Astronomy, Georgia State University. The quaint style of HyperPhysics comes from the HyperCard^® system (Apple Computer) for which it was originally designed.

HyperPhysics [ without index frame ] | HyperMath

John J. O'Connor (b. 1945)

J.J. O'Connor is one of the two editors (with E.F. Robertson) of the authoritative MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, which is the most popular online part of the Mathematical MacTutor "stack" (running on Apple's HyperCard system).

home | stats | MacTutor History of Mathematics | Wikipedia

Sten F. Odenwald, astronomer (b. 1952)

Born in Karlskoga, Sweden, Sten Odenwald received his Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard in 1982. An award-winning educator and author of several books, he is currently affiliated with NASA's GSFC and the Catholic University of America.

Matt O'Dowd, astrophysicist (b. 1973)

Matt O'Dowd was a Lehman College astrophysics professor when he was recruited as host for the very popular PBS Web Series Space Time in August 2015 to replace Gabe Perez-Giz, an astrophysicist who then moved on to the NSF in Washington.

PBS Space Time (YouTube) | CV | Twitter

Matt Parker, mathematics communicator

Parker is a former teacher of high-school mathematics from Australia. Since 2014, he has been married to science communicator Lucie Green.

Ed Pegg, Jr., Math recreationist (b. 1963)

As a mathematician with a strong interest in recreational mathematics, Ed Pegg Jr. may well be the heir apparent to Martin Gardner (1914-2010) in the Internet era. He helped Stephen Wolfram with NKS and joined MathWorld in 2004.

Ed Pegg Jr.'s Math Games (MAA Column) | MathPuzzle.com | Wikipedia

Dan Piponi, computer graphics guru (b. 1966)

Thinker, tinkerer and Academy Award winner... Signing sigfpe, Dan Piponi maintains a blog entitled A Neighborhood of Infinity (great name!) which features some superb essays about quantum physics and other mathematical topics.

sigfpe | A Neighborhood of Infinity (blog) | Google Science Fair (2012-12-19)

Simon Plouffe, numerologist (b. 1956)

Best known for his "Inverter" which attempts to express in terms of known constants some number given in decimal form. He collaborated to Sloane's Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences.

home | Plouffe's Inverter

Burkard Polster, mathematician (b. 1965)

Mathologer

Ph.D. 1993 | Mathologer (YouTube Channel) | Wiki | Juggling | Monash University

Henry Reich, physicist (b. 1988)

Creator of MinutePhysics videos (June 2011). Reich illustrates with stick figures pithy comments which are scientifically accurate. Holding an MS in Physics (his thesis is on GR) he became a digital artist in residence at the Perimeter Institute.

Edmund F. Robertson (b. 1943)

Edmund Robertson is one of the two editors (with John O'Connor) of the authoritative MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. He is a Professor emeritus of pure mathematics at the University of St Andrews.

home | stats | MacTutor History of Mathematics | Wikipedia

Russell J. Rowlett, metrologist (b. 1944)

Director of the Center for Mathematics and Science Education of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He advocates his own system for naming large numbers by combining metric and Greek (chemical) prefixes.

home | CV | A Dictionary of Units of Measurement

David J. Rusin (b. 1957)

A former associate professor of mathematics at NIU (1986-2010) he's moved to the University of Texas. Dave Rusin launched a website in 1996 to share mathematical tidbits he had collected since 1990, using the Mathematics Subject Classification (MSC).

home | bio | personal | The Mathematical Atlas | Index (MSC)

Grant Sanderson

Graduated from Stanford in 2015.

Destin Sandlin, engineer (b. 1981)

Having posted educational videos since 2007, he launched Smarter Every Day on 2011-04-24 (retroactively including his first million-view video, posted on 2008-06-15).

Christoph Schiller (b. 1960)

Christoph Schiller is a citizen of the world who was raised in Italy, studied physics in Germany and obtained a Belgian Ph.D. in physics. He has made available for free download (pdf) a nicely crafted physics textbook of about 1500 pages.

home | Motion Mountain

Alom Shaha, filmmaker

Born in Bangladesh, raised in London, UK (where he works). Alom Shaha is a physics teacher, film-maker, science writer and TV producer. His approach to science communication was rewarded by a fellowship of the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts.

home | article | Labreporter | The Young Atheist's Handbook | Recipes for Wonder

Neil J.A. Sloane, AMS Fellow (b. 1939)

Neil James Alexander Sloane created a huge encyclopedia (oeis.org) of noteworthy integer sequences. Each sequence is uniquely identified by a 6-digit A-number (e.g., A000055) known far and wide as a Sloane number.

Michael Stevens (b. 1986)

What matters more? Being right or fitting in?

Stevens launched the VSauce YouTube channel on June 24, 2010. It has now more than 12 million subscribers and 1.2 billion views. Four successful spinoffs are hosted by Stevens himself, Kevin Lieber or Jake Roper.

Leonard Susskind, top physicist (b. 1940)

One of the founders of string theory (he coined the term worldsheet). Professor of theoretical physics at Stanford since 1979. His ongoing series of videos on Modern Physics (Stanford Continuing Studies) have been available online since 2008.

blog | stats | LearnOutLoud | Wikipedia

Terence Tao, mathematician (b. 1975)

Terence Chi-Shen Tao is a professor of mathematics at UCLA, born in Australia. He was promoted to full professorship at age 24. Terry Tao received the Fields Medal in 2006 (see PAP) and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2007.

Vitalii Vanovschi, software engineer

Vitalii Vanovschi created The Number Empire in 2006. He is a computer scientist with a strong interest in chemistry. In 2009, he obtained his Ph.D from the University of Southern California and became a software engineer at Google.

home | LinkedIn | The Number Empire | Integral Calculator | Number Factorizer

Mike de Villiers, mathematics education

A former high-school teacher (HDE in 1978, "Best Science Teacher" in 1983, DEd in 1990) who went on to teach mathematics education. Former editor of PYTHAGORAS, author of 7 books and over 150 papers. Vice-chair of the SA Mathematics Olympiad since 1997.

home | bio | Dynamic Geometry Sketches | Constant Width

Eric W. Weisstein, encyclopedist (b. 1969)

Weisstein holds a BA in Physics from Cornell (1990) and degrees in Planetary Astronomy from Caltech (MS in 1993 and Ph.D. in 1996). He created MathWorld, a major online encyclopedia which was threatened, in 2000, by an infamous lawsuit from CRC, publisher of a book based on it.

home | Eric's Favorite Links | Treasure Troves of Science | World of Mathematics | World of Physics

Robin Whitty, theorem collector (b. 1960)

Whitty received his Ph.D. in 1984 from London South Bank University, where he is currently a visiting professor. Inspired by MacTutor's Mathematician of the Day, Robin Whitty started Theorem of the Day in 2005, aiming for 366 theorems.

Edward L. "Ned" Wright, cosmologist

Astronomy Professor at UCLA (Los Angeles).

stats | Cosmology Tutorial | Cosmology Calculator

Science YouTubers

BrainSTEM meeting of 2012, informally covered in Veritassium and Sixty Symbols.