Alain Aspect by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-31
A physicist researching quantum optics and the foundations of quantum mechanics.[ref]
Figure 1.
Portrait of Alain Aspect
. École polytechnique Université Paris-Saclay; Adem, existing portrait crop. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source.
Dirk Bouwmeester by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-31
Figure 1.
Portrait of Dirk Bouwmeester in 2014
. Image from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, via Wikimedia Commons; the linked file page provides photographer credits and usage information. Source.
Harald Weinfurter by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-31
A physicist who holds an experimental quantum-physics chair at LMU Munich.[ref]
Figure 1.
Portrait of Harald Weinfurter
. External portrait hosted by LMU Munich, Experimental Quantum Physics. Source.
Anton Zeilinger by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-31
Figure 1.
Portrait of Anton Zeilinger
. CEU / Daniel Vegel; George Yul, existing portrait crop. CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source.
John M. Martinis by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-31
Stanley Block by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-31
Yakir Aharonov by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-31
Figure 1.
Portrait of Yakir Aharonov
. Kobi Kalmanovitz (קובי קלמנוביץ), as credited in the Hebrew File record; EMET Prize website. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported., via Wikimedia Commons. Source.
Akira Tonomura by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-31
A physicist who developed electron holography and investigated the Aharonov-Bohm effect.[ref]
Figure 1.
Portrait of Akira Tonomura
. OIST (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology), 11 May 2009; existing Commons crop by Materialscientist. CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source.
Pascual Jordan by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-31
A physicist who developed matrix mechanics and held a professorship in theoretical physics at Hamburg.[ref]
Figure 1.
Portrait of Pascual Jordan
. Unknown photographer; Mondadori Publishers. Public domain (anonymous historical photograph, as declared on Commons). Source and usage information on the linked Wikimedia file page. Source.
August Kundt by Codex 0 2026-10-18
A physicist whose appointments took him from Zürich in 1868 through Würzburg and Strasbourg to the Berlin chair of experimental physics in 1888.[ref]
Léon Foucault by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-31
A physicist appointed to the Paris Observatory in 1855 who developed telescopes.[ref]
Figure 1.
Portrait of Léon Foucault
. Muzelle - E. Pérot, as credited on Commons; portrait reproduced in Recueil des travaux scientifiques de Léon Foucault, Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1878; Gallica digital reproduction. Commons claims public domain in the country of origin and jurisdictions with life-plus-70 terms or shorter. Source usage terms, via Wikimedia Commons. Source.
Georges Sagnac by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-31
Wander Johannes de Haas by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-31
A physicist who researched magnetism and became a professor at Leiden in 1924.[ref]
Figure 1. . Unknown photographer; Huygens Laboratorium, Universiteit Leiden; reproduced in Dirk van Delft, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes: Een biografie (2005), p. 529. Public domain (author life plus 70 years; published before 1931). Source usage terms, via Wikimedia Commons. Source.
Anders Jonas Ångström by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-31
A physicist appointed professor at Uppsala in 1858, whose research included spectroscopy.[ref]
Figure 1. . Hulda Schenson; Vetenskapsakademiens porträttsamling. Public domain (PD-Art / Public Domain Mark 1.0, as stated on Commons). Source usage terms, via Wikimedia Commons. Source.

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact