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
Cory Arnold
Arvin Ash
John C. Baez
Trefor Bazett
Alexander Bogomolny
Kevin S. Brown
Chris K. Caldwell
Peter J. Cameron
David W. Cantrell
Umberto Cerruti
Daniel Chan
Jim Clark
Angela Collier
Jérôme Cottanceau
Dianna Cowern
Karl Dahlke
David Darling

Glenn Elert
David Eppstein
Hank Green
CGP Grey
James Grime
Toby Hendy
Chris Hillman
Brady Haran
Joe Hanson
Vi Hart
Colin Hughes
K. Houston-Edwards
Sal Khan
Robert L. Kuhn
Ron Kurtus
Cynthia Lanius
Walter Lewin
Don Lincoln

Brian J. McManus
Jeff Miller
Derek Muller
Robert Munafo
Rod Nave
John J. O'Connor
Sten Odenwald
Matt O'Dowd
James J. Orgill
Matt Parker
Ed Pegg Jr.
Anton Petrov
Dan Piponi
Simon Plouffe
Burkard Polster
Henry Reich
Edmund Robertson
Russ Rowlett

Dave Rusin
Grant Sanderson
Destin Sandlin
Christoph Schiller
Frederic Schuller
Alom Shaha
Neil Sloane
Becky Smethurst
Michael Stevens
Leonard Susskind
Jade Tan-Holmes
Terence Tao
Peyam Tabrizian
Mike de Villiers
Alec Watson
Eric Weisstein
Robin Whitty
Ned Wright

Now listed chronologically in (approximate) order of birth.

Walter Lewin, professor of physics (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 were 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 | NY Times | Last lecture | 2015

Neil J.A. Sloane, AMS Fellow (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.

Leonard Susskind, top physicist (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

Ron Kurtus, engineer (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

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

Edmund F. Robertson (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 | CV | stats | MacTutor History of Mathematics | Wikipedia

Russell J. Rowlett, metrologist (1944-)

He was director of the Center for Mathematics and Science Education of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (which was closed due to budget cuts, on 2010-06-30). Rowlett advocates his own system for naming large numbers by combining metric and Greek (chemical) prefixes.

home | genealogy | Lighthouse directory | How Many? A Dictionary of Units of Measurement | Twitter

Jim Clark, chemistry teacher (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

Robert Lawrence Kuhn (1944-)

Robert Kuhn holds a BS in biology (Johns Hopkins, 1964) a doctorate in brain research (UCLA, 1968) and a mid-career MBA (MIT Sloan, 1980). Kuhn is a financial advisor and political commentator with ties to China. He has hosted and produced the PBS series Closer to Truth since 2000.

YouTube | Closer to Truth | Wikipedia

John J. O'Connor (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 | MacTutor History of Mathematics | Wikipedia

Peter J. Cameron, mathematician (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).

Edward L. "Ned" Wright, cosmologist (1947-)

Astronomy Professor at UCLA (Los Angeles).

stats | Cosmology Tutorial | Cosmology Calculator

Alexander Bogomolny (1948-2018)

Professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Iowa. Until May 2004, Bogomolny had a monthly column on the site of the Mathematical Association of America.

Cut The Knot | Other Math Sites | Ph.D. 1981 | Wikipedia

Umberto Cerruti, algebraist (1948-)

Department of Mathematics, University of Torino (Italy).

Math News

David W. Cantrell, mathematician (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

Suzanne Alejandre, math teacher

Suzanne Alejandre was 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 | LinkedIn | Twitter

Jeff Miller, educator (c.1952-)

Mathematics teacher (1994-2017) at Gulf High School in New Port Richey (Florida) where he's been living since 1980. Named teacher of the year in 2005 and 2013. Jeff Miller created an authoritative page about the "Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics".

Sten F. Odenwald, astronomer (1952-)

Born in Karlskoga, Sweden, Sten Odenwald received his Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard in 1982. Author of several books, he is currently affiliated with NASA's GSFC and the Catholic University of America. Diagnosed with cancer in 2008, he is now in remission and optimistic!

David Darling, science writer (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

Mike de Villiers, educator (c.1956-)

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 | Sketchpad | Documents | Constant Width

Chris K. Caldwell, number theorist (1956-)

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

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

Simon Plouffe, numerologist (1956-)

He collaborated to Sloane's Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. Plouffe is best known for his Inverter, which looks for symbolic expressions of decimal numbers (that allowed me to identify the transfinite sum of the harmonic series as Log 2p in a matter of seconds, on 2018-07-12).

home | Plouffe's Inverter

David J. Rusin (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)

Robin Whitty, theorem collector (1960-)

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

Christoph Schiller (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 | Top recommendations (including Numericana) | Motion Mountain (textbook)

Karl Dahlke, blind scientist (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 ) | e-book | mathreference.com

Kathy Joseph

home | YouTube

John Baez, mathematical physicist (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.

David A. Eppstein, computer scientist (1963-)

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

Ed Pegg, Jr., Math recreationist (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

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 | LinkedIn

Robert Munafo, programmer (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.

Glenn A. Elert, physics teacher (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

Don Lincoln, particle physicist (1964-)

Don got his Ph.D. from Rice in 1994. He helped discover the top quark at Fermilab in 1995 and the Higgs Boson at the LHC in 2012. He is a noted popularizer of high-energy physics. Since 2011, Don has been producing and hosting great outreach videos for Fermilab (see some samples).

Arvin Ash (c. 1965-)

He claims to hold a BS in chemical engineering, an MS in mechanical engineering, and an MBA. He also says he attended medical school for 2 years. He doesn't specify where or when. All the videos I have seen from him (since 2018) are top notch and I'm happy to leave it at that.

Burkard Polster, mathematician (1965-)

He started his Mathologer videos in 2015, with the help of Giuseppe Gerachitano. He has authored many books, some with fellow mathematician Marty Ross (author of the blog Bad Mathematics, mathematicalcrap.com). Since 2004, the pair has maintained a joint website, entitled Maths Masters.

Dan Piponi, computer graphics guru (1966-)

Thinker, tinkerer and Academy Award winner... Signing sigfpe, Dan Piponi maintains the blog 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)

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 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.

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

Eric W. Weisstein, encyclopedist (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

Daniel Chan, professor of mathematics (1971-)

Born in Hong-Kong. As he was a late developer, his parents rushed emigration to Australia (1974) so he could start school later (1975). After a junior post at Michigan (2000-2002) Chan joined the faculty of UNSW Sidney where he was named head of pure mathematics in 2016.

Matt O'Dowd, astrophysicist (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, (who moved to the NSF in Washington). Graeme Gossel writes some of the scripts for that channel.

PBS Space Time (YouTube) | CV | Twitter

Terence Tao, mathematician (1975-)

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

Frederic P. Schuller (1975-)

Associate professor of applied mathematic at the University of Twente since 2019. He is known for the clarity of his old-school lectures on mathematical topics related to mathematical physics.

Ph.D. 2004 | CV | YouTube Channel | Facebook Fan Club | LinkedIn

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.

Sal Khan (1976-)

Salman Khan

Khan Academy | Wikipedia

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

Anton Petrov (c.1978-)

Former high-school science teacher who toys with Universe Sandbox and puts out a constant stream of videos about papers in astrophysics and the latest space-related news.

Hank Green (1980-)

Hank started the VlogBrothers channel in 2007 with his brother John (b. 1977). Hank's portfolio grew to includes SciShow, SciShow Kids, SciShow Space, SciShow Psych, CrashCourse... Also hosts PBS Eons (PBS Digital Studios, 2017-06-22) with Kallie Moore and Blake de Pastino.

home | Crash Course (since 2011) | Internet Creators Guild | Wikipedia | Twitter

CGP Grey (1980-)

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

James Grime (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.

Matt Parker, mathematics educator (1980-)

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

Destin Sandlin, engineer (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).

Vitalii Vanovschi, software engineer (c.1982-)

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

Derek Muller, physics educator (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 elsewhere: E.g., Illusion of Truth, Post-Truth.

Joe Hanson, biologist (1983-)

First appeared on TV in The Beauty and the Geek (2005). Hanson got his Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology from the University of Texas at Austin (2006-2013). In 2013, he created the YouTube channel It's Okay To Be Smart (PBS Digital Studios) which he has been hosting ever since.

Writer for Wired (2013) | ComSciCon | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter

Michael Stevens (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.

James J. Orgill, engineer (c.1987-)

Orgill obtained his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Brigham Young University (BYU) in 2014. He started his YouTube channel The Action Lab in May of 2016.

Peyam R. Tabrizian, mathematician (1987-)

Born in Iran, he grew up in Vienna (Lycée Français de Vienne) and graduated from Lycée Français de New-York. He got his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley (May 2016) and spent a postdoc year in Williams College before joining the faculty of UCI. He started his YouTube channel in August 2017.

Vi Hart, mathemusician (1988-)

Victoria Hart is the talented child of MoMath co-founder George W. Hart (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.

Henry Reich, physicist (1988-)

Creator of the 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.

Brian James McManus, Irish engineer (c. 1988-)

He holds a BS in biomedical engineering from NUI Galway (2011) and an MS in aeronautical engineering from Limerick (2013). In 2016, inspired by Destin Sandlin, Brian started producing videos full-time about engineering topics. He founded Junto Media in 2017 (1-4 employees).

Alec Watson (c. 1988)

Based in Chicago.

ElJj, Jérôme Cottenceau

Professeur agrégé de mathématiques (Lycée Léonard de Vinci, Montaigu-Vendée)

Choux romanesco, Vache qui rit et intégrales curvilignes | Le choix du meilleur urinoir

Dianna Cowern, physicist (1989-)

She created the Physics Girl channel in 2011. Dianna Cowern has enrolled a team of half-a-dozen part-time people, including writers Sophia Chen and Jade Tan-Holmes who went on to create her own successful channel in 2016. (Science Magazine, 2017-03-16.) Health update

Alex Meyer

Alex once owned the trademark Tech Ingredients and has used it since 2013 with the stellar host he once called Grandpa Tech and who may be his own father.

Incorporated (NH, 2019)

Cory Arnold, musicologist (1989-)

Autistic musician with a degree in vocal performance. His main occupation is the YouTube channel 12tone, consisting of fast-paced presentations of music theory voiced over the accelerated drawing (right-to-left, on blank music sheets) of a limited number of doodles loosely related to the topics.

Trefor Bazett, mathematician

As a graduate student in Toronto, Bazett was recognized for teaching excellence in 2015. After a first position at the University of Cincinatti, Bazett became an assistant teaching professor at UVic, in June 2019. His father, Desmond W. Bazett (1952-) is an architect in Victoria, BC.

Rebecca J. Smethurst, astrophysicist (c.1990-)

Becky Smethurst competed in the 2014 UK final FameLab, where she took second place but was Audience Winner. She obtained her Ph.D. in astrophysics from Oxford in 2017.

Grant Sanderson (c.1991-)

Graduated from Stanford in 2015. Q&A, 2018 (10:20).

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, hosting it until Nov. 2017 (it closed in May 2018). 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

Angela Collier, Ph.D. (c. 1991-)

A first-generation graduate student who shares her views of American Academia. She also describes some dysfunctions in the research community.

Home | CV | JILA | YouTube | Twitter

Jade Tan-Holmes, Australian physicist (1992-)

She says 3 years of applied physics (BS) taught her she was terrible at experiments. She got interested in making physics and math videos on YouTube and started out as a writer for Physics Girl (2012) where she played herself once (2018). Jade launched her own channel Up and Atom in April 2016.

Toby Hendy, physicist (1995-)

Former Ph.D. student at the Australian National University, On 2019-02-08, she presented her reasons for quitting. Her Tibees channel focuses on the academic experience: From topics and sample exams to school reports and doctoral dissertations of famous scientists.

Trevor Kai Hai Cheung, statistician

Mathemaniac YT | James-Stein estimator (1961) | 2019 Scholar, Magdalene | Twitter

Science YouTubers

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