Based on Jewish law's emphasis on matrilineal descent, even religiously conservative Orthodox Jewish authorities would accept an atheist born to a Jewish mother as fully Jewish. A 2011 study found that half of all American Jews have doubts about the existence of God, compared to 10–15% of other American religious groups.
Astronomy and Cosmology
Ralph Alpher (agnostic/humanist) – American cosmologist; known for the seminal paper on Big Bang nucleosynthesis, the Alpher–Bethe–Gamow paper
Hermann Bondi – Anglo-Austrian mathematician and cosmologist, developed steady-state theory, contributed to general theory of relativity
Carl Sagan (agnostic nontheist) – American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences, Cornell University
Dennis W. Sciama (1926-1999): British physicist who played a major role in developing British physics after the Second World War. His most significant work was in general relativity, with and without quantum theory, and black holes. He helped revitalize the classical relativistic alternative to general relativity known as Einstein-Cartan gravity. He is considered one of the fathers of modern cosmology.
Biology and medicine
Julius Axelrod* – American biochemist, reuptake of catecholamine neurotransmitters, pineal gland, share of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Hans Baruch – American physiologist/inventor who is noted mainly for his contributions to scientific apparatus and instruments in the field of automated clinical chemistry
Bernard Davis – American biologist who made major contributions in microbial physiology and metabolism, Harvard Medical School
Rosalind Franklin (agnostic) – British biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer who made critical contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal and graphite
Stephen Jay Gould (agnostic) – American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, science historian and popularizer. Gould called himself a "Jewish agnostic".
Dan Graur – Romania-born American Jewish evolutionary biologist, firm atheist, and scientific critic
François Jacob* – French biologist; with Jacques Monod, originated the idea that control of enzyme levels in all cells occurs through feedback on transcription; Nobel Prize in Medicine
Rita Levi-Montalcini* (1909–2012) – Italian neurologist; with colleague Stanley Cohen, received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of nerve growth factor
Élie Metchnikoff* – Russian biologist, zoologist and protozoologist; known for his research into the immune system; received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1908, shared with Paul Ehrlich
Max Perutz* – Austrian-born British molecular biologist; shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of hemoglobin and globular proteins
Samuel Mitja Rapoport – physician, biochemist, European Jewish émigré, and Communist
Robert Sapolsky – American neuroscientist, author, Stanford University
George Wald* – American scientist; known for his work with pigments in the retina; won a share of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Haldan Keffer Hartline and Ragnar Granit
Lewis Wolpert – developmental biologist, author, and broadcaster
Roald Hoffmann* – American theoretical chemist; recipient of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Jerome Karle* (agnostic) – American physical chemist; with Herbert A. Hauptman, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1985, for the direct analysis of crystal structures using X-ray scattering techniques
Harry Kroto* ("devout atheist") – British chemist, share of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
George Olah* (agnostic) – 1994 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, discoverer of superacids
Dan Shechtman* – 2011 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Computer science and artificial intelligence
Scott Aaronson (self-described "disbelieving atheist infidel heretic") – American theoretical computer scientist and faculty member in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at MIT
Jacob Appelbaum – American computer security researcher and hacker; a core member of the Tor project
John McCarthy – American computer scientist and cognitive scientist; coined the term "artificial intelligence" (AI) and was influential in its early development; developed the Lisp programming language family; significantly influenced the design of the ALGOL programming language; popularized timesharing; won the Turing Award in 1971
Marvin Minsky – American cognitive scientist and computer scientist in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) at MIT; won the Turing Award in 1969
Judea Pearl – Israeli American computer scientist and philosopher; known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks; won the Turing Award in 2011
Richard Stallman – American software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer
Aaron Swartz (1986–2012) – American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist; was involved in the development of the web feed format RSS, the organization Creative Commons, the website framework web.py, and the social news site Reddit, in which he was an equal partner after its merger with his company Infogami
Eliezer Yudkowsky – American artificial intelligence researcher concerned with the singularity and an advocate of friendly artificial intelligence
Hertha Marks Ayrton (agnostic) – English engineer, mathematician and inventor
Emile Berliner (agnostic) – German-born American inventor; known for developing the disc record gramophone (phonograph)
Dennis Gabor* – Hungarian-British electrical engineer and inventor; known for his invention of holography; received the 1971 Nobel Prize in Physics
Ray Kurzweil (1948–) – American author, scientist, inventor and futurist; author of several books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism
Richard E. Bellman (agnostic) – American applied mathematician, known for his invention of dynamic programming in 1953, and important contributions in other fields of mathematics
Jacob Bronowski (agnostic) – Polish-Jewish British mathematician, biologist, historian of science, theatre author, poet and inventor; presenter and writer of the 1973 BBC television documentary series The Ascent of Man, and the accompanying book
Paul Erdős – (agnostic atheist) Hungarian mathematician, published more papers than any other mathematician in history
Jacques Hadamard – French mathematician; made major contributions in number theory, complex function theory, differential geometry and partial differential equations
Herbert A. Hauptman* – American mathematician; with Jerome Karle, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1985
Samuel Karlin – American mathematician, Stanford University
John von Neumann (agnostic) – Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath who made major contributions to a vast number of fields, including mathematics, physics, economics, and statistics
George Pólya (agnostic) – Hungarian Jewish mathematician; professor of mathematics from 1914 to 1940 at ETH Zürich and from 1940 to 1953 at Stanford University; made fundamental contributions to combinatorics, number theory, numerical analysis and probability theory; noted for his work in heuristics and mathematics education
Laurent Schwartz (1915–2002) – French mathematician; awarded the Fields medal for his work on distributions
William James Sidis – American mathematician, cosmologist, inventor, linguist, historian and child prodigy
Alan Sokal (1955–) – American professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University; known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in 1996
Hugo Steinhaus – Polish mathematician and educator
Alfred Tarski – Polish logician and mathematician; prolific author known for his work on model theory, metamathematics, and algebraic logic
Stanislaw Ulam (agnostic) – Polish-Jewish mathematician; participated in America's Manhattan Project, originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons, invented the Monte Carlo method of computation, and suggested nuclear pulse propulsion
André Weil (agnostic) – French mathematician; known for his foundational work in number theory and algebraic geometry
Norbert Wiener (agnostic) – American mathematician and child prodigy; regarded as the originator of cybernetics
Oscar Zariski (1899–1986) – American mathematician and one of the most influential algebraic geometers of the 20th century
Zhores Alferov* – Soviet and Russian physicist and academic who contributed significantly to the creation of modern heterostructure physics and electronics; inventor of the heterotransistor; winner of 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics
Hans Bethe* – German-American nuclear physicist; Nobel laureate in physics for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis; versatile theoretical physicist; made important contributions to quantum electrodynamics, nuclear physics, solid-state physics and astrophysics; during World War II, he was head of the Theoretical Division at the secret Los Alamos laboratory which developed the first atomic bombs; there he played a key role in calculating the critical mass of the weapons, and did theoretical work on the implosion method used in both the Trinity test and the "Fat Man" weapon dropped on Nagasaki, Japan
David Bohm (agnostic) – American-born British quantum physicist who contributed to theoretical physics, philosophy of mind, and neuropsychology
Niels Bohr* (1885–1962) – Danish physicist; known for his foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922
David Deutsch – Israeli-British physicist at the University of Oxford; pioneered the field of quantum computation by being the first person to formulate a description for a quantum Turing machine, as well as specifying an algorithm designed to run on a quantum computer
Paul Ehrenfest (1880–1933) – Austrian-Dutch physicist; made major contributions to the field of statistical mechanics and its relations with quantum mechanics
Albert Einstein* (agnostic nontheist, self-described Spinozist) – influential German-born physicist, developed general theory of relativity, father of modern physics, Nobel Prize in Physics (see also Religious views of Albert Einstein)
Richard Feynman* (positive atheist) – American theoretical physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics, Nobel Prize in Physics
James Franck* – German physicist; won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1925
Jerome I. Friedman* (agnostic) – American physicist; in 1968–1969, commuting between MIT and California, he conducted experiments with Henry W. Kendall and Richard E. Taylor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center which gave the first experimental evidence that protons had an internal structure, later known to be quarks; for this, they shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics; Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Murray Gell-Mann* (agnostic) – American physicist and linguist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles
Vitaly Ginzburg* – Soviet theoretical physicist; astrophysicist; member of the Russian Academy of Science; a father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb; Nobel Prize in Physics
Roy J. Glauber* (agnostic) – American theoretical physicist; awarded half of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence", with the other half shared by John L. Hall and Theodor W. Hänsch
David Gross* (agnostic) – American particle physicist and string theorist; with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of asymptotic freedom
Alan Guth – American theoretical physicist and cosmologist
Lawrence Krauss (1954–) – professor of physics at Arizona State University; popularizer of science; speaks regularly at atheist conferences like Beyond Belief and Atheist Alliance International
Lev Landau* – Soviet physicist; received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physics for his development of a mathematical theory of superfluidity
Leon M. Lederman* – American physicist; with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1988 for their joint research on neutrinos
Albert Abraham Michelson* (agnostic) – American physicist known for his work on the measurement of the speed of light and especially for the Michelson-Morley experiment; in 1907 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics
Yuval Ne'eman (1925–2006) – Israeli theoretical physicist, military scientist, and politician; one of his greatest achievements in physics was his 1961 discovery of the classification of hadrons through the SU(3) flavour symmetry, now named the Eightfold Way, which was also proposed independently by Murray Gell-Mann
Frank Oppenheimer (1912–1985) – American particle physicist; professor of physics at the University of Colorado; founder of the Exploratorium in San Francisco; a younger brother of renowned physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Frank conducted research on aspects of nuclear physics during the time of the Manhattan Project, and made contributions to uranium enrichment
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) – American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley; along with Enrico Fermi, he is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project
Saul Perlmutter* (agnostic) – American astrophysicist; shared both the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with Brian P. Schmidt and Adam Riess for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating
Marshall Rosenbluth – American physicist, nicknamed "the Pope of Plasma Physics"; created the Metropolis algorithm in statistical mechanics, derived the Rosenbluth formula in high-energy physics, and laid the foundations for instability theory in plasma physics
Józef Rotblat* (agnostic) – Polish-British physicist; along with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995
Dennis W. Sciama British physicist who played a major role in developing British physics after the Second World War. His most significant work was in general relativity, with and without quantum theory, and black holes. He helped revitalize the classical relativistic alternative to general relativity known as Einstein-Cartan gravity. He is considered one of the fathers of modern cosmology.
Lee Smolin – American theoretical physicist; researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics; adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo
Jack Steinberger* (atheist/humanist) – German-American-Swiss physicist; co-discovered the muon neutrino, along with Leon Lederman and Melvin Schwartz, for which they were given the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics
Leonard Susskind – American theoretical physicist; a founding father of superstring theory; professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University
Leo Szilard (agnostic) – Austro-Hungarian physicist and inventor
Edward Teller (agnostic) – Hungarian-American theoretical physicist, known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb"; made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy (the Jahn–Teller and Renner–Teller effects), and surface physics
Joseph Weber – American physicist; gave the earliest public lecture on the principles behind the laser and the maser; developed the first gravitational wave detectors (Weber bars)
Steven Weinberg* – American theoretical physicist, unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, share of the Nobel Prize in Physics
Victor Frederick Weisskopf – Austrian-born American theoretical physicist
Eugene Wigner* – Hungarian American theoretical physicist and mathematician; with Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen, received a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles"; laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics; researched the structure of the atomic nucleus; first identified Xe-135 "poisoning" in nuclear reactors (sometimes referred to as "Wigner poisoning"); important for his work in pure mathematics, having authored a number of theorems
Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich – Soviet physicist born in Belarus; played an important role in the development of Soviet nuclear and thermonuclear weapons; made important contributions to the fields of adsorption and catalysis, shock waves, nuclear physics, particle physics, astrophysics, physical cosmology, and general relativity
Saul Alinsky (agnostic) – American community organizer and writer; noted for the book Rules for Radicals
Hannah Arendt (agnostic) – German-American writer and political theorist
Alexander Berkman – anarchist known for his political activism and writing; a leading member of the anarchist movement in the early 20th century; while living in France, he continued his work in support of the anarchist movement, producing the classic exposition of anarchist principles, Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism
Yaron Brook – political activist, current president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute
Tony Cliff – Trotskyist, was a founding member of the Socialist Review Group, which went on to become the Socialist Workers Party
Ariel Dorfman (agnostic) – Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist
Marek Edelman – Polish political and social activist and cardiologist
Norman Finkelstein – American political scientist, activist and author whose primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust
Clara Fraser – feminist and socialist political organizer who co-founded and led the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women
Betty Friedan (agnostic) – American writer, activist and feminist; a leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States; her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the 20th century
Emma Goldman – anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches
Nadine Gordimer* – South African political activist, writer; active in the anti-apartheid movement; Nobel Prize in Literature
Abbie Hoffman (1936–1989) – American political and social activist
Ze'ev Jabotinsky – Revisionist Zionist (nationalist) leader, author, orator, activist, soldier, and founder of the Jewish Self-Defense Organization in Odessa
Naomi Klein – Canadian author and activist
Adam Kokesh – American libertarian anti-war activist and self-professed anarcho-capitalist
Rosa Luxemburg – Polish-German Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and revolutionary socialist
Henry Morgentaler – Canadian physician and prominent pro-choice advocate who has fought numerous legal battles for that cause
Leonte Răutu – Bessarabiann-born Romanian communist activist and propagandist, chief ideologist of the Romanian Communist Party
Rosika Schwimmer – Hungarian-born pacifist, feminist, female suffragist
Elie Wiesel* (agnostic) – Romanian-born Jewish-American writer, professor, political activist and Holocaust survivor; author of 57 books, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna and Buchenwald concentration camps; awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986
Louis Fles (1872–1940) – Dutch businessman and freethought activist who opposed organised religion, Zionism and Nazism, and favoured complete Jewish assimilation, secular humanism and democratic socialism.
George Soros – billionaire investor
Michael Steinhardt – American hedge fund manager, investor, and philanthropist active in Jewish causes
Alan Sugar – English business magnate, media personality, and political advisor.
Mark Zuckerberg (self-described atheist) – American Internet entrepreneur, computer programmer, founder and CEO of Facebook
Ármin Vámbéry – Hungarian Turkolog and traveler
Moshe Dayan – Israeli military leader and politician; fourth Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (1953–58); became Defense Minister and later Foreign Minister of Israel
Yakov Kreizer – Soviet field commander
Leon Trotsky – Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, founder and first leader of the Red Army
Shulamit Aloni – Israeli politician and left-wing activist
Uri Avnery – German-born Israeli journalist, left-wing peace activist, and former Knesset member
David Ben-Gurion – Polish-Israeli politician; a founder and the first Prime Minister of modern Israel
Jon Benjamin – Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Chile
Job Cohen – Dutch social democratic politician and former legal scholar
Theodor Herzl – Austro-Hungarian journalist who founded the modern political Zionism
Janet Jagan – American-born socialist politician who was President of Guyana
Béla Kun – Hungarian revolutionary who led the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919
Vladimir Lenin – Russian communist revolutionary, politician and political theorist who served as the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924
Golda Meir – Israeli teacher, kibbutznik, fourth Prime Minister of Israel, Yom Kippur War
David Miliband – former British Labour Party politician; Member of Parliament from 2001 to 2013; Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2007 to 2010; older brother of Ed and son of Ralph Miliband (see Sociology section )
Ed Miliband – British politician and former leader of the Labour Party; younger brother of David and son of Ralph Miliband
Yitzhak Rabin* – Israeli politician, statesman and general; fifth Prime Minister of Israel; won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat
Dove-Myer Robinson – mayor of Auckland City, New Zealand 1959—1965, 1968—1980
Sam Seder – American talkshow host, host of the The Majority Report and co-host of Ring of Fire
Chapman Cohen – leading English atheist, secularist writer and lecturer
Sam Harris – American author, philosopher, public intellectual, neuroscientist, co-founder and CEO of Project Reason
Christopher Hitchens – antitheist, author, journalist and orator
Michael Newdow – American attorney, best known for his efforts to have recitations of the current-version Pledge of Allegiance in public schools declared unconstitutional for the phrase "under God"
David Silverman – current president of American Atheists, a nonprofit atheist rights advocacy organization
Greg Epstein – current secular humanist chaplain at Harvard University, published author on the subject of secular humanism, author of Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe
Sherwin Wine – rabbi, founding figure in Humanistic Judaism
David D. Friedman – Chicago School economist, physicist, legal scholar, and libertarian theorist
Milton Friedman* (negative atheist, agnostic) – American economist, statistician, author, economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan, founding member of Mont Pelerin Society, free market capitalist, Free to Choose, University of Chicago, Chicago School of Economics, Nobel Prize in Economics
John Harsanyi* – Hungarian-Australian-American economist and Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner
Karl Marx (self-described atheist) – inventor of Marxist economics
Ludwig von Mises (agnostic) – Austrian economist, philosopher, free market capitalist, classical liberal, Austrian School of Economics, founding member of Mont Pelerin Society
David Ricardo (1772–1823) – English political economist, scientist and stock trader; often credited with systematising economics; one of the most influential of the classical economists
Murray Rothbard (self-described atheist) – American economist, historian, political theorist, founder of anarcho-capitalism
Herbert A. Simon* (1916–2001) – American political scientist, economist, and computer scientist; one of the most influential social scientists of the 20th century; won the Turing Award in 1975 and the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978
Piero Sraffa (agnostic) – influential Italian economist whose book Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities is taken as founding the Neo-Ricardian school of Economics
Joseph Stiglitz* – American economist and Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner
Robert Ettinger – American academic, known as "the father of cryonics" because of the impact of his 1962 book The Prospect of Immortality
Herman Kahn – American futurist, military strategist and systems theorist; known for analyzing the likely consequences of nuclear war and recommending ways to improve survivability, a notoriety that made him an inspiration for the title character of Stanley Kubrick's classic black comedy film satire Dr. Strangelove
Ray Kurzweil (agnostic) – American author, inventor, futurist, and director of engineering at Google
Isaac Babel – Russian language journalist, playwright, literary translator, and short story writer, Red Cavalry
Henryk Broder – Polish-born German journalist, author and TV personality
Theodore Dalrymple – English journalist and psychiatrist who documented underclass life in Birmingham, West Midlands
Isaac Deutscher – Polish-born Jewish Marxist writer, journalist and political activist best known as a biographer of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin and as a commentator on Soviet affairs
Amy Goodman – American journalist and host of Democracy Now!
Glenn Greenwald – American journalist and author
Nigella Lawson – English food writer, journalist and broadcaster
Yaron London – Israeli media personality, journalist, actor and songwriter
Amos Oz – Israeli writer, novelist, journalist, professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba
Columnists
David Aaronovitch – British author, broadcaster, journalist, regular columnist for The Times
Amy Alkon (negative atheist) – writer of a weekly advice column, Ask the Advice Goddess, which is published in over 100 newspapers within North America
Nat Hentoff – American syndicated columnist and music critic
Marty Nemko – American career coach, author, columnist, and radio host specializing in career/workplace issues and higher education reform
Daniel Seligman – editor and columnist at Fortune magazine from 1950 to 1997, also writing for Forbes, Commentary, The American Mercury, Commonweal, and The New Leader
Albert Ellis ("probabilistic atheist") – American psychologist who in 1955 developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Jerry Fodor – American philosopher and cognitive scientist, Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, the modularity of mind and the language of thought hypotheses
Sigmund Freud (antitheist) – Austrian neurologist, founding father of psychoanalysis (see also Freud and religion)
Erich Fromm (1900–1980) – Jewish-German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, and humanistic philosopher, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory
Steven Pinker – Canadian-born experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author
Wilhelm Reich – Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry
Edwin Shneidman (1918–2009) – American suicidologist and thanatologist
Boris Sidis – American psychologist, physician, psychiatrist, and philosopher of education
Carlo Strenger – Swiss-Israeli psychologist, philosopher, existential psychoanalyst, public intellectual, Tel Aviv University
Émile Durkheim (agnostic) – French sociologist
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) – French anthropologist and ethnologist; has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology"
Ralph Miliband – Belgian-born British sociologist known as a prominent Marxist thinker, father of David Miliband (see above)
List of Jewish atheists and agnostics Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA
