Dylan McClain

Together with Willard S. Boyle, he invented an imaging device that is an essential part of nearly every telescope, photocopier and digital camera used today.

A former “D” student from Norway, he made his mark at G.E.’s Research Lab in the U.S., in part by confirming a pivotal theory about superconductivity.

He worked to develop an atomic clock that is essential to global positioning systems and helped confirm a rare state of matter predicted by Albert Einstein.

A series dramatizes the 1997 chess match between a world champion and an IBM computer, a precursor of modern anxieties about artificial intelligence.

He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on gravitational waves, which helped confirm Einstein’s general theory of relativity and how the universe began.

Daniel Naroditsky, a top American player with an online following, was found dead in Charlotte, N.C., after talking about being accused of cheating by a former world champion.

She pointed to evidence that the Earth’s inner core was solid — not liquid, as scientists had believed — a discovery that was ahead of its time.

When scientists unwittingly turned helium into a superfluid — a feat many thought was impossible — Dr. Leggett not only recognized what had happened but also explained how.

A Dutchman, he was considered the best player outside the Soviet Union for two decades, although he described himself as “lazy” and was open about using alcohol and drugs early on.

“Untold,” a sports documentary series, recounts a notorious match between two grandmasters and the cheating accusations that rocked the chess world and beyond.