List of British Jews

The first Jews arrived in Britain with the Romans but it wasn't until the arrival of William the Conqueror in 1066 that organized Jewish communities first appeared. These existed until 1290 when the Jewish population was expelled by Edward I. (Hence plays such as The Jew of Malta and The Merchant of Venice were written when England was essentially devoid of Jews.) Jews were readmitted in 1656 by Oliver Cromwell, and emancipation took place in 1858. In the late 19th century there was mass Jewish immigration from anti-semitic Russia, and the 1930s saw an influx of refugees from Nazism. The Jewish population peaked at 450,000, but has since declined due to low birth rate, intermarriage and emigration. The current population according to the 2001 Census is around 240,000 (though many experts consider this an underestimate), most of whom live in London. The following is a list of some prominent British Jews.

Scientists

See also: List of Jewish Fellows of the Royal Society

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Physicists

• Sir Michael Berry, mathematical physicist
• Sir Hermann Bondi, cosmologist
• Max Born, physicist, Nobel Prize (1954)
• Paul Eisler, inventor of printed circuit board
• Dennis Gabor, inventor of holography, Nobel Prize (1971)
• Michael Green, string theorist
• William & Caroline Herschel, astronomers (Jewish paternal grandfather)
• Sir Peter Hirsch, materials scientist
• Brian David Josephson, physicist, Nobel Prize (1973)
• Nicholas Kurti, low-temperature physicist
• Leon Mestel, astronomer
• Sir Joseph Rotblat, physicist, Nobel Peace Prize (1995)

Chemists

• Gustav Victor Rudolf Born, Professor of Pharmacy
• Herbert Brown, chemist, Nobel Prize (1979) (UK-born)
• Sir Aaron Klug, physicist & chemist, Nobel Prize (1982)
• Harold Kroto, discoverer of buckminsterfullerene, Nobel Prize (1996) (Jewish father)
• Ludwig Mond, chemist & industrialist
• Sir Max Perutz, molecular biologist, Nobel Prize (1962)
• Michael Polanyi, polymath

Biologists

• Ephraim Anderson, microbiologist
• Walter Bodmer, geneticist
• Sydney Brenner, molecular biologist, Nobel Prize (2002)
• Sir Ernst Chain, co-developer of penicillin, Nobel Prize (1945)
• Sir Michael Epstein, co-discoverer of the Epstein-Barr virus
• Rosalind Franklin, molecular biologist, helped to discover structure of DNA
• Alan Fersht, protein folding
• Lady Susan Greenfield, neuroscientist and writer
• Waldemar Haffkine, pioneer of cholera vaccine
• Sir Bernard Katz, biophysicist, Nobel Prize (1970)
• Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, biochemist, Nobel Prize (1953)
• César Milstein, immunologist, Nobel Prize (1984)
• Leslie Orgel, evolutionary biologist
• Steven Rose, biologist
• Miriam Rothschild, entomologist
• Oliver Sacks, neurologist and author
• John Vane, biochemist, Nobel Prize (1982) (Jewish father)
• Lord Robert Winston, fertility expert and broadcaster
• Lewis Wolpert, developmental biologist and broadcaster

Mathematicians and Statisticians

• Abraham Manie Adelstein, statistician
• Jacob Bronowski, mathematician & broadcaster
• Philip Dawid, statistician
• John Fox, statistician
• Benjamin Gompertz, mathematician
• Steven Haberman, professor of actuarial science
• Hyman Kestelman, mathematician
• Ruth Lawrence, mathematician & child prodigy
• Claus Moser, statistician
• Louis Mordell, number theorist
• Richard Rado, mathematician
• Klaus Roth, mathematician, Fields Medal (1958)
• David Spiegelhalter, statistician
• James Joseph Sylvester, mathematician

Computer scientists

• Samson Abramsky, computer scientist
• David Deutsch, quantum computing pioneer
• I.J. Good, cryptographer, philosopher of statistics & computing pioneer
• David Levy, computer chess expert
• Leo Marks, cryptographer & screenwriter
• Max Newman, mathematician & computing pioneer (Jewish father)
• Gordon Plotkin, computer scientist
• Alan Turing, co-founder of modern computer science
• Leslie Valiant, computer scientist parallel computation