Experimental physicist in the context of Albert Abraham Michelson

Victor Franz Hess (German: [ˈvɪktɔʁ ˈfʁants ˈhɛs]; 24 June 1883 – 17 December 1964) was an Austrian–American experimental physicist who shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics with Carl David Anderson for his discovery of cosmic rays.

Sir James Chadwick (20 October 1891 – 24 July 1974) was a British experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1935 for his discovery of the neutron. In 1941, he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which inspired the U.S. government to begin serious atomic bomb research efforts. He was the head of the British team that worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He was knighted in Britain in 1945 for his achievements in nuclear physics.

Chadwick graduated from the Victoria University of Manchester in 1911, where he studied under Ernest Rutherford (known as the "father of nuclear physics"). At Manchester, he continued to study under Rutherford until he was awarded his MSc in 1913. The same year, Chadwick was awarded an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. He elected to study beta radiation under Hans Geiger in Berlin. Using Geiger's recently developed Geiger counter, Chadwick was able to demonstrate that beta radiation produced a continuous spectrum, and not discrete lines as had been thought. Still in Germany when World War I broke out in Europe, he spent the next four years in the Ruhleben internment camp.

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (/ˈrɛntɡən, ˈrʌnt-/ RENT-guhn, RUHNT-; German: [ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈʁœntɡən] ; 27 March 1845 – 10 February 1923), sometimes transliterated as Roentgen, was a German experimental physicist who produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range known as X-rays. For this discovery, he became the first recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.

Antoine Henri Becquerel (/ˌbɛkəˈrɛl/ bek-uh-REL; French: [ɑ̃twan ɑ̃ʁi bɛkʁɛl]; 15 December 1852 – 25 August 1908) was a French experimental physicist who shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Marie and Pierre Curie for his discovery of radioactivity.

Luis Walter Alvarez (June 13, 1911 – September 1, 1988) was an American experimental physicist, inventor, and professor of Spanish descent who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968 for his discovery of resonance states in particle physics using the hydrogen bubble chamber. In 2007 the American Journal of Physics commented, "Luis Alvarez was one of the most brilliant and productive experimental physicists of the twentieth century."

After receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1936, Alvarez went to work for Ernest Lawrence at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Alvarez devised a set of experiments to observe K-electron capture in radioactive nuclei, predicted by the beta decay theory but never before observed. He produced tritium using the cyclotron and measured its lifetime. In collaboration with Felix Bloch, he measured the magnetic moment of the neutron.

John Clarke (born 10 February 1942) is a British experimental physicist and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his various works on measurement devices based on superconductivity. Steven Girvin has called Clarke "the godfather of superconducting electronics".

In the 1980s, Clarke led a research team, that included John M. Martinis and Michel Devoret. Their discoveries in macroscopic quantum phenomena using the Josephson effect earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2025.

Robert Andrews Millikan (March 22, 1868 – December 19, 1953) was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923 "for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect."

As Chairman of the Executive Council of Caltech (the school's governing body at the time) from 1921 to 1945, Millikan helped to turn the school into one of the leading research institutions in the United States. He also served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as Society for Science & the Public, from 1921 to 1953.

Johannes Wilhelm "Hans" Geiger (/ˈɡaɪɡər, ˈɡaɪɡə/ GYE-ger, GYE-guh; German: [ˈɡaɪɡɐ] ; 30 September 1882 – 24 September 1945) was a German experimental physicist. He is known as the inventor of the Geiger counter, a device used to detect ionizing radiation, and for carrying out the Rutherford scattering experiments, which led to the discovery of the atomic nucleus. He also performed the Bothe–Geiger coincidence experiment, which confirmed the conservation of energy in light-particle interactions.

He was the brother of meteorologist and climatologist Rudolf Geiger.

Carl David Anderson (September 3, 1905 – January 11, 1991) was an American experimental physicist who shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics with Victor Hess for his discovery of the positron, which confirmed the existence of antimatter.

Albert Abraham Michelson (December 19, 1852 – May 9, 1931) was an American experimental physicist known for his work on measuring the speed of light and especially for the Michelson–Morley experiment. In 1907, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics, becoming the first American to win the Nobel Prize in a science. He was the founder and the first head of the physics departments of the Case School of Applied Science and the University of Chicago.

Walther Wilhelm Georg Bothe (German: [ˈvaltɐ ˈboːtə] ; 8 January 1891 – 8 February 1957) was a German experimental physicist who shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics with Max Born "for the coincidence method and his discoveries made therewith."

Bothe served in the military during World War I from 1914, and he was a prisoner of war of the Russians, returning to Germany in 1920. Upon his return to the laboratory, he developed and applied coincidence circuits to the study of nuclear reactions, such as the Compton effect, cosmic rays, and the wave–particle duality of radiation.

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (Dutch: [ˈɦɛikə ˈkaːmərlɪŋ ˈɔnəs]; 21 September 1853 – 21 February 1926) was a Dutch experimental physicist who became the first to liquefy helium, cooling it to near 1.5 kelvin (K). For this work, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1913.

In 1911, using liquid helium to investigate the electrical conductivity of solid mercury, Kamerlingh Onnes found that its electrical resistance vanishes at 4.2 K, i.e. superconductivity.

Arthur Holly Compton (September 10, 1892 – March 15, 1962) was an American experimental physicist who shared the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics with C. T. R. Wilson for his discovery of the Compton effect, which demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation. It was a sensational discovery at the time: the wave nature of light had been well-demonstrated, but the idea that light had both wave and particle properties was not easily accepted.

Compton is also known for his leadership over the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago during the Manhattan Project, and served as chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis from 1945 to 1953.

Pieter Zeeman (/ˈzeɪmɑːn/ ZAY-mahn; Dutch: [ˈzeːmɑn] ; 25 May 1865 – 9 October 1943) was a Dutch experimental physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Hendrik Lorentz for their discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect.