Detailed clinical reports and projective-test data are presented on 12 theoretical and 10 experimental physicists. These scientists, adjudged to have achieved "eminence" by a qualified panel of their peers, ranged in age from 31 to 56 years with a median age of approximately 45 years. The qualitative findings of this study are varied and provocative with respect to the personality characteristics of physical scientists as a group, and personality differences between experimental and theoretical physicists. As a group the physicists are low in sociality, little interested in the church, and highly independent in social relations. "There is only one thing which seems to characterize the total group and that is absorption in their work, over long years, and frequently to the exclusion of everything else." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)