Physicists and astronomers honored on US postage stamps

Today I received an order of US postage stamps, including a sheet of the new Forever stamp honoring Chinese-American nuclear physicist Chien-Shiung Wu.  Adrian Cho wrote about this stamp last month in Science.  The stamp was issued on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.  As far as I know, Dr. Wu is the third woman physicist honored on a US postage stamp, and the first Chinese-American one.  The end of Cho's article talks about other physicists honored on US postage stamps -- there are many fewer of these than American Nobel Physics Laureates!  Cho mentions several, including some aerospace scientists, though he says the US Postal Service doesn't actually track how many there are.

This got me thinking about that very question.  How many physicists and astronomers are honored on US postage stamps?  There are just over a dozen, by my count. The overlap with mathematicians is considerable (since there are far fewer of those), so I'll include them too in this post.

The most honored American physicist on our nation's postage stamps is, of course, Benjamin Franklin.  It may be no coincidence that Franklin was also the nation's first Postmaster General.  I haven't even tried to count how many US stamps have honored Franklin.

At a distant second place is Albert Einstein, honored on two stamps:  an 8 cent stamp in the Prominent Americans series in 1966, and a 15 cent stamp in 1979 issued on the centenary of his birth. All other physicists on US stamps have a single stamp in their honor.  These include Robert Millikan, on a 37 cent stamp issued in 1982 as part of the Great Americans series, and Enrico Fermi on a 34 cent stamp issued in 2001.

The American Scientists series, which began in 2005, was a boon for physicists.  Josiah Willard Gibbs (a polymath claimed equally by mathematicians and chemists) and Richard P. Feynman were included in the first round (37 cents), while John Bardeen and astronomer Edwin Hubble appear in the 2008 second round (41 cents).  Maria Goeppert Mayer was honored in the third round (2011) with a Forever stamp.  Unfortunately, the series appears to have been discontinued after the third set.  (Did they just not sell well?)  The first round in 2005 also included mathematician John von Neumann, who made colossal contributions to physics, computer science, and meteorology, among other fields.  

The new stamp honoring C.-S. Wu is the second to honor a physicist in the decade since the last set of American Scientists was issued.  It follows the 2018 issue of a Forever stamp honoring Sally K. Ride, astronaut, physicist, and stamp collector.  Of the honored physicists mentioned, Einstein, Millikan, Feynman, and Mayer were Nobel laureates, with Bardeen being a double Nobel laureate in physics.  (Cho's article disucsses that many feel that Wu should have received a Nobel as well.)

Also worthy of note is Benjamin Bannker, honored in 1980 with a 15 cent stamp in the Black Heritage series.  Banneker was a surveyor, mathematician, and astronomer, who like Franklin, published his own almanacs.  A math teacher, Jaime Escalante, was honored with a Forever stamp in 2016.  Along with Wu, Banneker and Escalante are the only non-whites honored by stamps among those discussed in this post.

Since Cho's article mentions aerospace scientists and inventors, let's look at them too.  The Wright Brothers and their achievements were honored on the 25th, 46th, 75th, and 100th anniversaries of their first powered flight.  The first stamp (2 cents) was issued as one of a pair honoring of the 1928 International Civil Aeronautics Conference, in that year.  It featured the Wright Flyer.  Three airmail stamps honored both the Wrights and their aircraft, in 1949 (6 cents) and two in 1978 (31 cents).  Finally on the centenary of their first flight, another stamp featuring the Wright Flyer was issued in 2003 (37 cents).  Other aerospace pioneers include Robert Goddard (1964, 8 cents), Igor Sikorsky (1988, 36 cents airmail), and Theodore von Karman (1992, 29 cents).  As far as I know, von Karman is the only fluid dynamicist honored on a US postage stamp! 

Unfortunately, I cannot think of another American fluid dynamicist who should next be honored with a US postage stamp, for reasons similar to those I wrote about in an earlier post. But what about other American physicists, astronomers, and mathematicians?  Who would you nominate next?

I surmise that those known among the general public would have the best chance of being honored on a stamp, compared to those best known just within the physics community.  So, Nikola Tesla seems an obvious choice.  You can guarantee that such a stamp would sell well.  Perhaps W. Edwards Deming, though he is best known for his work in statistics and management consulting, or J. Robert Oppenheimer.  However, I am delighted that less publicly celebrated figures like Gibbs, Millikan, Fermi, Mayer, Bardeen, and Wu have been honored.  There are thus many worthy choices for the next postage stamp.  If only the American Scientists series could be revived!

Among astronomers, I'm surprised that Carl Sagan hasn't already been so honored.  Among mathematicians, perhaps Benoit Mandelbrot (the maestro of fractals), John Nash (Nobel in economics, subject of A Beautiful Mind), and Katherine Johnson (of Hidden Figures fame) might be considered.

I am grateful to the website of the Mystic Stamp Company, and Wikipedia, sources of the information I have provided above.