20 physicists who revolutionized our understanding of the world

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You probably know what physics is. It's the study of the physical world, from falling apples to the motion of planets and stars to the behavior of the tiny subatomic particles that make up the world around us.

Physics is everywhere. It's in the most distant reaches of the cosmos. It's in the supermassive black holes raging in the center of galaxies and in the tiny fundamental building blocks that make up life on Earth. It's even in the seemingly empty space around us.

And every now and then a physicist comes along who forever changes our perception of the universe and everything in it.

Here are 20 physicists whose theories, ideas, and discoveries revolutionized the way we see the world.

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One of Galileo Galilei's (1564-1642) most well known accomplishments in physics is his work in the field of bodies in motion. In the 1630s, he showed that all freely falling bodies have the same constant acceleration.

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Building on Galileo's work on objects in motion, Isaac Newton (1643-1727) established the three Laws of Motion as well as the Law of Universal Gravitation in 1687. One of his most revolutionary ideas was that the motion of objects in the heavens are subject to the same set of physical laws as the motion of objects on Earth.

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Michael Faraday (1791-1867) is known for his work in magnetism and electricity. In 1831, he discovered electromagnetic induction and in 1839, he proposed that there is an underlying relationship between electricity and magnetism.

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