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A&S honors 13 faculty with endowed professorships
The professorships are made possible because of gifts from alumni, parents and friends.
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The Cornell University Department of Physics, known for the versatility of its program, the breadth of its training, and Nobel Prize-winning work, is unsurpassed in many areas. The presence on campus of a particle accelerator, one of just a few of its magnitude anywhere in the world, contributes to Cornell’s reputation in particle and accelerator physics. The department has more than 40 active professors, approximately 180 graduate students and 65 undergraduate majors, and offers a full range of university-level work in physics, from general education courses for nonscientists to doctoral-level independent research.
Explore the Department
The Bethe Way: Department of Physics Magazine
The Bethe Way is the department's yearly magazine. In it, we share exciting highlights of faculty hires, research breakthroughs, staff changes, teaching reform, faculty awards, and alumni connections.
Physics News
Better basketball through theoretical physics?
A Cornell research team has employed a variation of a theory first used to predict the collective actions of electrons in quantum mechanical systems to a much taller, human system – the National Basketball Association.
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One tiny particle could complicate predictions of physics theorists
The international, interdisciplinary team measured the magnetic anomaly of the muon – a tiny, elusive particle that could have very big implications for understanding the subatomic world.
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Cornell STEM education expert weighs in on NSF funding cuts
"Students across the country are going to miss out on innovative improvements to their science education – innovations that would have critically prepared them for the competitive 21st century technological workforce."
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'I'm proud of my contributions to understanding the stability of insect flight'
Owen Wetherbee is a physics, mathematics & computer science major.
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Klarman Fellow honored for outstanding achievement in physics
Paul Malinowski received the 2025 Martin and Beate Block Winter Award from the Aspen Center for Physics.
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Don Hartill, longtime physics professor, Lansing mayor, dies at 86
Donald Hartill, a professor of physics emeritus in the College of Arts and Sciences and a driving force behind decades of experimental research in particle physics, died on April 16. He was 86.
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"On my first day after joining a research group in graduate school a professor said, I hear you’re interested in instrumentation.’ I didn’t know what that was, but I thought I’d better say yes. When people think about physics, they think about a guy with a pencil and paper, but physics is an experimental science.”
- Peter Wittich, Professor and Director, Laboratory of Elementary Particle Physics