Editing Physicist (section)

==History==
{{Broader|History of physics}}
[[File:Hawksbees Electrical Machine by Jean-Antoine Nollet.jpg|thumb|right|In an 18th-century experiment in "natural philosophy" (later to be called "physics") English scientist [[Francis Hauksbee]] works with an early electrostatic generator.]]
The study and practice of physics is based on an intellectual ladder of discoveries and insights from ancient times to the present. Many mathematical and physical ideas used today found their earliest expression in the work of ancient civilizations, such as the [[Babylonian astronomy|Babylonian astronomers]] and [[Ancient Egyptian technology|Egyptian engineers]], the Greek philosophers of science and mathematicians such as [[Thales of Miletus]], [[Euclid]] in [[Ptolemaic Egypt]], [[Archimedes of Syracuse]] and [[Aristarchus of Samos]]. Roots also emerged in ancient Asian cultures such as India and China, and particularly the [[Physics in the medieval Islamic world|Islamic medieval period]], which saw the development of [[scientific methodology]] emphasising [[experimentation]], such as the work of [[Ibn al-Haytham]] (Alhazen) in the 11th century. The modern scientific worldview and the bulk of physics education can be said to flow from the [[scientific revolution]] in Europe, starting with the work of astronomer [[Nicolaus Copernicus]] leading to the physics of [[Galileo Galilei]] and [[Johannes Kepler]] in the early 1600s. The work on [[mechanics]], along with a [[mathematical physics|mathematical treatment]] of physical systems, was further developed by [[Christiaan Huygens]] and culminated in [[Newton's laws of motion]] and [[Newton's law of universal gravitation]] by the end of the 17th century.  The experimental discoveries of [[Faraday]] and the theory of [[Maxwell's equations]] of electromagnetism were developmental high points during the 19th century. Many physicists contributed to the development of [[quantum mechanics]] in the early-to-mid 20th century. New knowledge in the early 21st century includes a large increase in understanding [[physical cosmology]].

The broad and general study of nature, [[natural philosophy]], was divided into several fields in the 19th century, when the concept of "science" received its modern shape. Specific categories emerged, such as "biology" and "biologist", "physics" and "physicist", "chemistry" and "chemist", among other technical fields and titles.<ref name="Cahan Natural Philosophy">{{cite book|editor1-last=Cahan |editor1-first=David|title=From Natural Philosophy to the Sciences: Writing the History of Nineteenth-Century Science|date=2003|publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=Chicago |isbn=0-226-08928-2}}</ref> The term ''physicist'' was coined by [[William Whewell]] (also the originator of the term "scientist") in his 1840 book ''The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences''.<ref>Donald S. L. Cardwell, James Joule: A Biography, Manchester University Press - 1989, page 18</ref>