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About the Department

Our Department currently has 46 graduate faculty and 12 faculty at other ranks (instructional and research faculty). Our graduate program generally has about 140 graduate students and 40 full-time Postdoctoral Research Fellows associated with it, along with a varying number of Visiting Scholars and other distinguished guests. In most years, we have about 50 undergraduate majors in our department, many of them working in our research programs.

Our Research

We have very active research programs that span many areas of physics, from thermal effects in mesoscopic systems to the nature of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. (Check individual faculty listings for more details.) In addition to recently renovated space in Dearborn Observatory and Northwestern's Technological Institute, our faculty use dozens of off-campus research facilities, from the CERN particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland, to the Hubble Space Telescope. Last year, our research budget was in excess of $6,500,000.

Undergraduate Program

Do you want to be a physics or astronomy major? Then select one of the links below to find out what Northwestern has to offer. Not sure if you want to be a physics or astronomy major? Not even sure what the major is? Then you might want to read this essay: Why Major In Physics?

Graduate Program

For full details about our graduate program, use these links: