Department Homepage
The College of Arts & Sciences
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.
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.
Colleagues remember Hand as a scientist devoted to discovery, both in his field of expertise and beyond.
Read more
On Nov. 15, physicist and engineer John Foster will discuss the challenge of testing high power electric propulsion on the ground.
Read more
Five professors will argue for the importance of their disciplines during the Logos Philosophy Debate Club’s annual debate.
Read more
The resulting materials could prove useful in a variety of applications, from making sustainable pigments to energy storage and filtration.
Read more
Cornell Tech has announced a total of more than $10 million in gifts and grants to support arXiv.
Read more
Cornell Tech has announced more than $10 million in gifts and grants to support arXiv.
Read more
The Kim Group leveraged geometric thinking in a twisted bilayer graphene lattice to predict new effects, a novel approach.
Read more
Cornell employs 790 postdoctoral scholars who are appointed across nearly 90 departments where they actively participate in the university’s research, teaching, and extension missions.
Read more
"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