The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential female people in Physics,
#101
Heidi Jo Newberg
#33252
Overall Influence
Heidi Jo Newberg is an American astrophysicist known for her work in understanding the structure of our Milky Way galaxy. Among her team's findings are that the Milky Way is cannibalizing stars from smaller galaxies and that the Milky Way is larger and has more ripples than was previously understood. She is a founding participant in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration , and is a leader of the astrophysical MilkyWay@home volunteer computing project team. She is a professor in the Department of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy...
Go to Profile#102
Evelyn Fox Keller
#3623
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Evelyn Fox Keller was an American physicist, author, and feminist. She was Professor Emerita of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Keller's early work concentrated at the intersection of physics and biology. Her subsequent research focused on the history and philosophy of modern biology and on gender and science.
Go to Profile#103
Amy Mainzer
#48597
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Amy Mainzer is an American astronomer, specializing in astrophysical instrumentation and infrared astronomy. She is the deputy project scientist for the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and the principal investigator for the NEOWISE project to study minor planets and the Near Earth Object Surveyor space telescope mission.
Go to Profile#104
Alessandra Buonanno
#24613
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Alessandra Buonanno is an Italian naturalized-American theoretical physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam. She is the head of the "Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity" department. She holds a research professorship at the University of Maryland, College Park, and honorary professorships at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and the University of Potsdam. She is a leading member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which observed gravitational waves from a binary black-hole merger in 2015.
Go to Profile#105
Julianne Dalcanton
#33491
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Julianne Dalcanton is an American astronomer, professor of astronomy, researcher and comet discoverer. Since September 2021 she is the director of the Simons Foundation Center for Computational Astrophysics.
Go to Profile#106
Mikaela Fudolig
#26008
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (33 years)
Mikaela Irene Dimaano Fudolig is a Filipino physicist and former child prodigy. She is known for earning her undergraduate degree at the age of 16. Life and career Fudolig was a sophomore at Quezon City Science High School before being pulled into the experimental Early College Placement Program . At the age of 11, she began her university education at the University of the Philippines Diliman . She was admitted without a high school diploma and without taking the UP College Admission Test .
Go to Profile#107
Renate Loll
#34459
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Renate Loll Is a German physicist. She is a Professor in Theoretical Physics at the Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics of the Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands. She previously worked at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of Utrecht University. She received her Ph.D. from Imperial College, London, in 1989. In 2001 she joined the permanent staff of the ITP, after spending several years at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Golm, Germany. With Jan Ambjørn and Polish physicist Jerzy Jurkiewicz she helped develop a new approach to nonpe...
Go to Profile#108
Radha Balakrishnan
#16491
Overall Influence
Radha Balakrishnan is an Indian theoretical physicist. She is a retired professor at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India. After her early work in condensed matter physics on quantum crystals, she switched fields to nonlinear dynamics and has published research papers on a variety of topics.
Go to Profile#109
Helen Czerski
#22985
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Helen Czerski is a British physicist and oceanographer and television presenter. She is an associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering at University College London. She was previously at the Institute for Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton.
Go to Profile#110
Nandini Trivedi
#21827
Overall Influence
Nandini Trivedi is an Indian-American physicist and Professor of Physics at Ohio State University. Her research is on the emergence of new states of matter arising from strong interactions between electrons in quantum materials. She was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2020.
Go to Profile#111
Lisa Kewley
#53100
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Lisa Jennifer Kewley is an Australian Astrophysicist and current Director of the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. Previously, Kewley was Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3-D and ARC Laureate Fellow at the Australian National University College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, where she was also a Professor. Specialising in galaxy evolution, she won the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy in 2005 for her studies of oxygen in galaxies, and the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy in 2008. In 2014 she was elected a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
Go to Profile#112
Jacqueline Hewitt
#34851
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Jacqueline Nina Hewitt is an American astrophysicist. She was the first person to discover an Einstein ring. She is a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society. Early life and education Hewitt was born in Washington, D.C., on September 4, 1958, to parents Warren E. Hewitt, a retired international lawyer from the State Department, and Gertrud Hewitt. She attended Bryn Mawr College where she graduated magna cum laude with a degree in economics in 1980. Hewitt took an astronomy class at Haverford College her sophomore year, which sparked her interest in science. She attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for graduate school.
Go to Profile#113
Teresa Lago
#41962
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Maria Teresa Vaz Torrão Lago is a Portuguese astronomer who founded the Centre for Astrophysics of the University of Porto and created the first astronomy degree program in Portugal. Lago is currently the General Secretary of the International Astronomical Union. Her research focuses on the evolution of young stars and she is active in the promotion of astronomy and scientific culture to the public.
Go to Profile#114
Glennys Farrar
#51827
Overall Influence
Glennys Reynolds Farrar is a professor of physics at New York University who specializes in particle physics, cosmology and the study of dark matter. She has made several significant contributions to the fields of hadron and dark matter phenomenology, helping to develop the working "Standard Cosmological Model". Farrar is a figure in developing many modern particle-search techniques, achieving numerous recognitions including as the Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences and Sloan Fellowship. She holds a faculty position at New York University , where she has been since 1998.
Go to Profile#115
Anna N. Żytkow
#29621
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Anna N. Żytkow is a Polish astrophysicist working at the Institute of Astronomy of the University of Cambridge. Żytkow and Kip Thorne proposed a model for what is called the Thorne–Żytkow object, which is a star within another star. Żytkow in 2014 was part of the team led by Emily M. Levesque which discovered the first candidate for such an object.
Go to Profile#116
Sarah Lee Lippincott
#25101
Overall Influence
1920 - 2019 (99 years)
Sarah Lee Lippincott , also known as Sarah Lee Lippincott Zimmerman, was an American astronomer. She was professor emerita of astronomy at Swarthmore College and director emerita of the college's Sproul Observatory. She was a pioneer in the use of astrometry to determine the character of binary stars and search for extrasolar planets.
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Cécile DeWitt-Morette
#26906
Overall Influence
1922 - 2017 (95 years)
Cécile Andrée Paule DeWitt-Morette was a French mathematician and physicist. She founded a summer school at Les Houches in the French Alps. For this and her publications, she was awarded the American Society of the French Legion of Honour 2007 Medal for Distinguished Achievement. Attendees at the summer school included over twenty students who would go on to be Nobel Prize winners, including Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Georges Charpak, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, who identify the school for assisting in their success.
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Margaret Murnane
#22911
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Margaret Mary Murnane NAS AAA&S is an Irish physicist, who served as a distinguished professor of Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, having moved there in 1999, with past positions at the University of Michigan and Washington State University. She is currently Director of the STROBE NSF Science and Technology Center, and is among the foremost active researchers in laser science and technology. Her interests and research contributions span topics including atomic, molecular, and optical physics, nanoscience, laser technology, materials and chemical dynamics, plasma physics, and imaging science.
Go to Profile#119
Johanna Stachel
#33298
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Johanna Barbara Stachel is a German nuclear physicist. She is a professor in experimental physics at the University of Heidelberg . Stachel is a former president of the German Physical Society . Early life and education Johanna Stachel completed secondary education in 1972 at the Spohn Gymnasium in Ravensburg. She studied physics and chemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and received a degree from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 1978. In 1982 she obtained a doctorate in physics from the same university.
Go to Profile#120
Yasaman Farzan
#18286
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Yasaman Farzan is an Iranian researcher. She is a faculty member of Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences. Awards The Kharazmi young scientist Award in 2006Young Scientist Prize of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics in 2008International Centre for Theoretical Physics Prize in 2013
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Joanne Cohn
#37001
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Joanne Cohn is an American astrophysicist known for her work in cosmology and particle physics. She is also known for her role in the creation of the ArXiv.org e-print archive. Cohn is a Senior Space Fellow and Full Researcher in the Space Sciences Lab at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Debra Fischer
#41831
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Debra Ann Fischer is a professor of astronomy at Yale University researching detection and characterization of exoplanets. She was part of the team to discover the first known multiple-planet system.
Go to Profile#123
Dorit Aharonov
#14786
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Dorit Aharonov is an Israeli computer scientist specializing in quantum computing. Aharonov was born in Washington and grew up in Haifa, the daughter of the mathematician Dov Aharonov and the niece of the physicist Yakir Aharonov.
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Liz MacDonald
#45651
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Elizabeth MacDonald is a space weather scientist who works at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She is a co-investigator on the Helium, Oxygen, Proton, and Electron Spectrometer on the NASA Radiation Belts Storm Probe mission.
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Carolyn Porco
#17046
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Carolyn C. Porco is an American planetary scientist who explores the outer Solar System, beginning with her imaging work on the Voyager missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s. She led the imaging science team on the Cassini mission in orbit around Saturn. She is an expert on planetary rings and the Saturnian moon, Enceladus.
Go to Profile#126
Athene Donald
#19325
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Dame Athene Margaret Donald is a British physicist. She is Professor Emerita of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge, and Master of Churchill College, Cambridge. Early life and education Donald was born Athene Margaret Griffith in London, to Walter Griffith and Annette Marian Tylor. She was educated at Camden School for Girls and Girton College, Cambridge. She earned a bachelor's degree in Natural Science , followed by a PhD in 1977 for research on electron microscopy of grain boundary embrittled systems.
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Louise Dolan
#49914
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Louise Ann Dolan is an American mathematical physicist and professor of physics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She does research in theoretical particle physics, gauge theories, gravity, and string theory, and is generally considered to be one of the foremost experts worldwide in this field. Her work is at the forefront of particle physics today.
Go to Profile#128
Miranda Cheng
#29542
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Miranda Chih-Ning Cheng is a Taiwanese-born and Dutch-educated mathematician and theoretical physicist who works as an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam. She is known for formulating the umbral moonshine conjectures and for her work on the connections between K3 surfaces and string theory.
Go to Profile#129
Martha P. Haynes
#51836
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Martha Patricia Haynes is an American astronomer who specializes in radio astronomy and extragalactic astronomy. She is the distinguished professor of arts and sciences in astronomy at Cornell University. She has been on a number of high-level committees within the US and International Astronomical Community, including advisory committee for the Division of Engineering and Physical Sciences of the National Academies and Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Review . She was a vice-president of the executive committee of the International Astronomical Union from 2006–2012, and was on the board o...
Go to Profile#130
Carolyn S. Shoemaker
#17579
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Carolyn Jean Spellmann Shoemaker was an American astronomer and a co-discoverer of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9. She discovered 32 comets and more than 500 asteroids. Having earned degrees in history, political science, and English literature, she had little interest in science until she met and married geologist Eugene Merle Shoemaker. Her career in astronomy began when she demonstrated good stereoscopic vision, a particularly valuable quality for looking for objects in near-Earth space. Despite the fact that her degrees were not in science, having that visual ability motivated the California Institute of Technology to hire her as a research assistant on a team led by her husband.
Go to Profile#131
Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld
#16377
Overall Influence
1921 - 2015 (94 years)
Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld was a Dutch astronomer. Background In a jointly credited trio with Tom Gehrels and her husband Cornelis Johannes van Houten, she was the discoverer of many thousands of asteroids . In the Palomar–Leiden survey, Gehrels took the images using the 48-inch Schmidt telescope at Palomar Observatory and shipped the photographic plates to the van Houtens at Leiden Observatory, who analyzed them for new asteroids. The trio are jointly credited with several thousand asteroid discoveries. Van Houten-Groeneveld died on 30 March 2015, at the age of 93, in Oegstgeest, Netherlan...
Go to Profile#132
Alyssa A. Goodman
#42191
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Alyssa Ann Goodman is the Robert Wheeler Willson Professor of Applied Astronomy at Harvard University, co-director for Science at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Research Associate of the Smithsonian Institution, and the founding director of the Harvard Initiative in Innovative Computing.
Go to Profile#133
Tabetha S. Boyajian
#56051
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Tabetha "Tabby" Suzanne Boyajian is an American astronomer of Armenian descent and astrophysicist on faculty at Louisiana State University. She was a post-doctoral fellow 2012–16 at Yale University, working with Debra Fischer. Boyajian is active in the astronomical fields of stellar interferometry, stellar spectroscopy, exoplanet research, and high angular resolution astronomy, all particularly at optical and infrared wavelengths. She was the lead author of the September 2015 paper "Where's the Flux?", which investigated the highly unusual light curve of KIC 8462852; the star is colloquially k...
Go to Profile#134
Silvia Torres-Peimbert
#57919
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Silvia Torres-Peimbert is a Mexican astronomer. She won the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2011 for Latin America for her work determining the chemical composition of nebulae. Life Torres-Peimbert was born in Mexico City in 1940. She studied Physics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico before going to the University of California in Berkeley. She returned to Mexico to conduct post-doctoral research at her alma mater. She studied star formation and the mass thrown out by mid-size stars. She has studied the distribution of the primordial helium abundance. In 1973 she ...
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Ana Maria Rey
#23890
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Ana Maria Rey is a Colombian theoretical physicist, professor at University of Colorado at Boulder, a JILA fellow, a fellow at National Institute of Standards and Technology and a fellow of the American Physical Society. Rey was the first Hispanic woman to win the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in 2019. In 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She is currently the chair of DAMOP, the American Physical Society's division in Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics .
Go to Profile#136
Ning Li
#34412
Overall Influence
Ning Li was a Chinese American scientist. In 1983 she emigrated with her family from China to the USA. She is known for her physics and anti-gravity research. In the 1990s, Li worked as a research scientist at the Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research, University of Alabama in Huntsville. In 1999, she left the university to form a company, AC Gravity, LLC, to continue anti-gravity research.
Go to Profile#137
Laura Greene
#50470
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Laura H. Greene is the Marie Krafft Professor of Physics at Florida State University and chief scientist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. She was previously a professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In September 2021, she was appointed to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology .
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Irina Grigorieva
#52394
Overall Influence
Irina Grigorieva, Lady Geim is a Professor of Physics at the University of Manchester and Director of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Centre for Doctoral Training in Science and the Applications of Graphene. She was awarded the 2019 David Tabor Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics and was elected as a Fellow of the Institute.
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Risa Wechsler
#56498
Overall Influence
Risa H. Wechsler is an American cosmological physicist, Professor of Physics at Stanford University, and Professor of Particle Physics and Astrophysics at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. She is the director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology.
Go to Profile#140
Matilde Marcolli
#19274
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Matilde Marcolli is an Italian and American mathematical physicist. She has conducted research work in areas of mathematics and theoretical physics; obtained the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Sofia Kovalevskaya Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Marcolli has authored and edited numerous books in the field. She is currently the Robert F. Christy Professor of Mathematics and Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the California Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#141
Ayşe Erzan
#27622
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Ayşe Erzan is a Turkish theoretical physicist. She has received a number of awards including a L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science in 2003 and a Rammal Award in 2009. Biography Ayşe Erzan was born in 1949 in Ankara. Following secondary studies in Istanbul, Erzan attended Bryn Mawr College in the United States, earning her BA in 1970. She received a PhD in physics from Stony Brook University in 1976.
Go to Profile#142
Julieta Norma Fierro Gossman
#48418
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Julieta Norma Fierro Gossman , better known as Julieta Fierro, is a Mexican astrophysicist and science communicator. She is a full researcher at the Institute of Astronomy and professor of the Sciences Faculty at the National Autonomous University of Mexico . She is part of the Researchers National System in Mexico, holding a level III position. Since 2004 she is a member of the Mexican Academy of Language.
Go to Profile#143
Ruth Nussinov
#40744
Overall Influence
Ruth Nussinov is an Israeli-American biologist born in Rehovot who works as a Professor in the Department of Human Genetics, School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University and is the Senior Principal Scientist and Principal Investigator at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health. Nussinov is also the Editor in Chief of the Current Opinion in Structural Biology and formerly of the journal PLOS Computational Biology.
Go to Profile#144
Fotini Markopoulou-Kalamara
#27438
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Fotini G. Markopoulou-Kalamara is a Greek theoretical physicist interested in quantum gravity, foundational mathematics, quantum mechanics and a design engineer working on embodied cognition technologies. Markopoulou is co-founder and CEO of Empathic Technologies. She was a founding faculty member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and was an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo.
Go to Profile#145
Megan Donahue
#51737
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Megan Donahue is an American astronomer who studies galaxies and galaxy clusters. She is a professor of physics and astrophysics at Michigan State University, and the president of the American Astronomical Society for the 2018–2020 term.
Go to Profile#146
Sarafina Nance
#38749
Overall Influence
Sarafina El-Badry Nance is an Egyptian-American science communicator, astrophysicist and Ph.D. student in the Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on supernovae and their applications to cosmology. Nance is known for her use of social media, in particular Twitter, where she discusses astrophysics and activism. She is also an advocate for women's health and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Go to Profile#147
Emily Levesque
#57263
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (40 years)
Emily Levesque is an American astronomer and assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington. She is renowned for her work on massive stars and using these stars to investigate galaxy formation. In 2014, she received the Annie Jump Cannon Award for her innovative work on gamma ray bursts and the Sloan Fellowship in 2017. In 2015, Levesque, Rachel Bezanson, and Grant R. Tremblay published an influential paper, which critiqued the use of the Physics GRE as an admissions cutoff criterion for astronomy postgraduate programs by showing there was no statistical correlation between applicant's score and later success in their academic careers.
Go to Profile#148
Julia Yeomans
#37481
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Julia Mary Yeomans is a British theoretical physicist active in the fields of soft condensed matter and biological physics. She has served as Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford since 2002.
Go to Profile#149
Deborah Berebichez
#24115
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Deborah Berebichez is a Mexican physicist, data scientist, TV host, educator and entrepreneur who dedicates her career to promoting education in science, technology, engineering and math fields. She was the first Mexican woman to graduate with a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. She has developed models for cellular wave transmission which are in the process of being patented. Sometimes known as "The Science Babe", she appears in mainstream television and radio segments where she explains concepts in physics in everyday life.
Go to Profile#150
Young-Kee Kim
#51292
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Young-Kee Kim is a South Korea-born American physicist and Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago. She is chair of the Department of Physics at the university.
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