See the Top 15 Global Universities for Physics

Discover the top universities for physics research.

A degree in physics can open doors to careers in engineering, computer science, information systems, data analysis, teaching, and more. Many physicists have gone on to become astronauts, Nobel Prize winners, and key contributors to groundbreaking scientific and technological advancements. Below are the top 15 global universities for physics, ranked by U.S. News based on their academic research performance in the field.

15. University of Science & Technology of China, CAS

Location: Hefei, Anhui, China
Best Global Universities overall rank: 82 (tie)
Notable fact: The university operates several major research labs, including the National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, and the State Key Laboratory of Fire Science.

14. Université Paris Saclay

Location: Saint-Aubin, France
Best Global Universities overall rank: 76 (tie)
Notable fact: The physics department here houses two renowned research labs: the Quantum and Molecular Photonics Laboratory and the Aimé Cotton Laboratory.

13. University of Oxford

Location: Oxford, England, United Kingdom
Best Global Universities overall rank: 4
Notable fact: Each year, around 10 faculty members from Oxford’s physics department win national or international awards for their research.

12. University of Cambridge

Location: Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
Best Global Universities overall rank: 6
Notable fact: Cambridge’s physics department runs collaborative research programs in nuclear energy, computational radiotherapy, sustainability physics, semiconductor physics, and quantum information.

11. Peking University

Location: Beijing, China
Best Global Universities overall rank: 31
Notable fact: The university’s research spans theoretical physics, condensed matter physics, material physics, modern optics, heavy ion physics, and astronomy.

10. Columbia University

Location: New York, New York, U.S.
Best Global Universities overall rank: 9
Notable fact: Columbia’s physics department has produced over 10 Nobel Prize winners since 1944, including several whose groundbreaking work was done at the university.

9. Princeton University

Location: Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
Best Global Universities overall rank: 18
Notable fact: Princeton offers a fully funded one-year predoctoral fellowship for aspiring physicists from underrepresented backgrounds, which includes admission to the Ph.D. program.

8. University of Tokyo

Location: Tokyo, Japan
Best Global Universities overall rank: 84
Notable fact: Research focuses include nuclear physics, particle physics, condensed matter physics, and biophysics.

7. Tsinghua University

Location: Beijing, China
Best Global Universities overall rank: 16
Notable fact: The physics faculty includes 10 members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, specializing in high-energy astrophysics, particle physics, quantum field theory, and superconductivity.

6. University of Chicago

Location: Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Best Global Universities overall rank: 25
Notable fact: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe—which traveled to the sun—was named after the late Professor Eugene Parker, a UChicago pioneer in solar research.

5. California Institute of Technology

Location: Pasadena, California, U.S.
Best Global Universities overall rank: 23
Notable fact: Undergraduates can major in physics or applied physics, the latter focusing on technology development.

4. Stanford University

Location: Stanford, California, U.S.
Best Global Universities overall rank: 3
Notable fact: Stanford runs the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, home to a two-mile particle accelerator producing the world’s brightest X-rays.

3. University of California Berkeley

Location: Berkeley, California, U.S.
Best Global Universities overall rank: 5
Notable fact: Professor Reinhard Genzel, a UC Berkeley emeritus physicist, shared the 2020 Nobel Prize for discovering a supermassive black hole in the Milky Way.

2. Harvard University

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Best Global Universities overall rank: 1
Notable fact: Harvard’s physics research centers include the Black Hole Initiative, Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature, Center for Ultracold Atoms, and Center for Nanoscale Systems.

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Best Global Universities overall rank: 2
Notable fact: MIT’s graduate physics program covers 12 research areas, including astrophysics theory, high-energy particle theory, and quantum information science.

The Top 15 Global Universities for Physics:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2. Harvard University
3. University of California Berkeley
4. Stanford University
5. California Institute of Technology
6. University of Chicago
7. Tsinghua University
8. University of Tokyo
9. Princeton University
10. Columbia University
11. Peking University
12. University of Cambridge
13. University of Oxford
14. Université Paris Saclay
15. University of Science & Technology of China, CAS