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,
#251
Alice Harding
#82235
Overall Influence
Alice Kust Harding is an American astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. Early life and education Harding earned a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, in 1973, and a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, in 1979.
Go to Profile#252
Vicky Kalogera
#68287
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Vassiliki Kalogera is a Greek astrophysicist. She is a professor at Northwestern University and the Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics . She is a leading member of the LIGO Collaboration that observed gravitational waves in 2015.
Go to Profile#253
Barbara J. Thompson
#59811
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Barbara June Thompson is an American solar physicist. She is a scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center where she researches coronal mass ejections and the dynamics of coronal structures. Thompson was the project scientist for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory mission through development and early flight.
Go to Profile#254
Gillian Gehring
#63061
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Gillian Anne Gehring is a British academic physicist, and emeritus Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield. She was the second woman in the UK to become a Professor of Physics and in 2009 won the Nevill Mott Medal and Prize.
Go to Profile#255
Tanya Monro
#38096
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Tanya Mary Monro is an Australian physicist known for her work in photonics. She has been Australia's Chief Defence Scientist since 8 March 2019. Prior to that she was the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research and Innovation at the University of South Australia. She was awarded the ARC Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship in 2013. She was the inaugural chair of photonics, the inaugural director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale Biophotonics and the inaugural director of the Institute for Photonics & Advanced Sensing , and the inaugural director of the Centre of Expertise in Photonics within the School of Chemistry and Physics at the University of Adelaide .
Go to Profile#256
Sarah Bridle
#58163
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Sarah Louise Bridle is a Professor of Food, Climate and Society at the University of York. She previously served as Professor of extragalactic astronomy and cosmology in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester where she applied statistical techniques to the cosmic microwave background and on the use of weak gravitational lensing in cosmology. From 2006 - 2015 she co-led weak lensing efforts with the Dark Energy Survey , was co-lead of the Euclid weak lensing working group and was Large Synoptic Survey Telescope UK Project Scientist from 2013 to 2017.
Go to Profile#257
Anamaría Font
#39530
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Anamaría Font Villarroel is a Venezuelan theoretical physicist and professor of the Central University of Venezuela . Her research has been focused on models about the primordial components of matter in the context of string theory.
Go to Profile#258
Barbara Romanowicz
#59432
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Barbara A. Romanowicz is a French geophysicist and an expert on imaging the Earth's interior. Early life Romanowicz was born in Suresnes, France. Barbara Romanowicz is the daughter of Kazimierz Romanowicz and Zofia Romanowiczowa. The first years of Barbara's life were an inspiration for Zofia Romanowiczowa's debut novel entitled Baśka and Barbara.
Go to Profile#259
Alicia M. Soderberg
#68425
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Alicia Margarita Soderberg is an American astrophysicist whose research focused on supernovae. She was an assistant professor of Astronomy at Harvard University and a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
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Petra Rudolf
#37432
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Petra Rudolf is a German and Italian solid state physicist. As of 2003, Rudolf has been a professor at the Materials Science Centre , University of Groningen, Netherlands. Biography Born in Munich, Rudolf moved to Italy to complete high school and to receive her MSc degree in physics at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Following, she worked at the National Surface Science Laboratory in Trieste for five years, interrupted two times to work on the newly discovered fullerenes at Bell Labs, USA. In 1995, she received her PhD in physics under the supervision of Roland Caudano at Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix, Namur, Belgium.
Go to Profile#261
Aya Ishihara
#69735
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Aya Ishihara is a Japanese physicist who works as a professor of physics at Chiba University. Her research involves the search for high-energy cosmic neutrinos, including collaboration on the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.
Go to Profile#262
Megan Schwamb
#77248
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (40 years)
Megan E. Schwamb is an American astronomer and planetary scientist, and lecturer at Queen's University, Belfast. Schwamb has discovered and co-discovered several trans-Neptunian objects, and is involved with Citizen science projects such as Planet Four and Planet Hunters.
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Elizabeth Turtle
#43779
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Elizabeth "Zibi" Turtle is a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Education Turtle earned her B.S. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989. She earned her Ph.D. in planetary science from the University of Arizona in 1998.
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Kára McCullough Temple
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#27424
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (33 years)
Kára McCullough Temple came to fame as Miss USA 2017. As Miss USA, Temple represented the United States at Miss Universe 2017, where she placed in the top ten. Prior to becoming Miss USA, Temple attended the HBCU South Carolina State University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry with a concentration in radiochemistry. After graduation Temple then worked as an emergency preparedness specialist in the United State’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response. The Miss USA title allowed Temple to found Science Exploration for Kids (SE4K).
Go to Profile#265
Hadiyah-Nicole Green
#33720
Overall Influence
Hadiyah-Nicole Green is an American medical physicist, known for the development of a method using laser-activated nanoparticles as a potential cancer treatment. She is one of 66 black women to earn a Ph.D. in physics in the United States between 1973 and 2012, and is the second black woman and the fourth black person ever to earn a doctoral degree in physics from The University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Go to Profile#266
Jane Dyson
#50642
Overall Influence
Helen Jane Dyson is a British-born biophysicist and a professor of integrative structural and computational biology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. She also serves as editor-in-chief of the Biophysical Journal. She was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
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Karin Öberg
#64040
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Karin Ingegerd Öberg is a Swedish astrochemist. She is a Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University and leader of the Öberg Astrochemistry Group at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. Her research concerns star formation, planet formation, and stellar evolution in relation to organic molecules, which are necessary to determine the origins of life on Earth and elsewhere. In April 2015, her group discovered the first complex organic molecule in a protoplanetary disk.
Go to Profile#268
Barbara Jacak
#87992
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Barbara Jacak is a nuclear physicist who uses heavy ion collisions for fundamental studies of hot, dense nuclear matter. She is director of the Nuclear Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a professor of physics at UC Berkeley. Before going to Berkeley, she was a member of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University, where she held the rank of distinguished professor. She is a leading member of the collaboration that built and operates the PHENIX detector, one of the large detectors that operated at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhave...
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Adelina Gutiérrez
#73241
Overall Influence
1925 - 2015 (90 years)
Carmen Adelina Gutiérrez Alonso was a Chilean scientist, academic and professor of astrophysics. She was the first Chilean to obtain a doctoral degree in astrophysics and the first woman to become a member of the Chilean Academy of Sciences.
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Licia Verde
#77925
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Licia Verde is an Italian cosmologist and theoretical physicist and currently ICREA Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Barcelona. Her research interests include large-scale structure, dark matter, dark energy, inflation and the cosmic microwave background.
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Michele Dougherty
#50406
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Michele Karen Dougherty is a Professor of Space Physics at Imperial College London. She is leading unmanned exploratory missions to Saturn and Jupiter and is Principal Investigator for J-MAG – a magnetometer for the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, due for launch in April 2023.
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Laura Kreidberg
#81775
Overall Influence
Laura Kreidberg is an American astronomer who primarily studies exoplanets. Since 2020, she has been director at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, where she is leading the Atmospheric Physics of Exoplanets department.
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Selma de Mink
#82415
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (41 years)
Selma de Mink is a Dutch astrophysicist specializing in evolution of stars, stellar binary systems and compact objects, including black holes. She is a scientific director at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching near Munich, Germany.
Go to Profile#274
María Yzuel
#39358
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
María Josefa Yzuel Giménez is a professor of physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She has worked in medical optics, diffraction image theory, image quality evaluation and liquid crystals. She served as president of SPIE in 2009.
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Athena Coustenis
#55641
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Athena Coustenis is an astrophysicist specializing in planetology. Dr. Coustenis, a French national, is director of research, Centre national de la recherche scientifique , at LESIA , at the Paris Observatory, Meudon. She is involved in several space mission projects for the European Space Agency and for NASA. Her focus is on gas giant planets Saturn, Jupiter and their moons, and she is considered a foremost expert on Saturn's moon Titan.
Go to Profile#276
Lidia Morawska
#69250
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Lidia Morawska is a Polish–Australian physicist and distinguished professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, at the Queensland University of Technology and director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at QUT. She is also co-director of the Australia-China Centre for Air Quality Science and Management, an adjunct professor at the Jinan University in China, and a Vice-Chancellor fellow at the Global Centre for Clean Air Research , University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. Her work focuses on fundamental and applied research in the interdisciplinary fiel...
Go to Profile#277
Janice Bishop
#59802
Overall Influence
Janice Bishop is a planetary scientist known for her research into the minerals found on Mars. Education and career In 1988, Bishop earned a B.S. in chemistry and an M.S. in Applied Earth Science from Stanford University. She earned her Ph.D. from Brown University in 1994 and then was a postdoctoral associate at the German Aerospace Center in Berlin until 1997. From 1997 to 1999 she was a fellow at the National Aeronautics Space Agency Ames Research Center before becoming a research scientist at the SETI Institute. Starting in 2015 she joined the Science Council at the SETI Institute and is a...
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Anne-Marie Lagrange
#67688
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Anne-Marie Lagrange, born in the Rhône-Alpes region of France, is a French astrophysicist. Lagrange's work focuses on the research and study of extrasolar planetary systems. Lagrange is the holder of numerous scientific awards and honorary decorations, including Knight of the Legion of Honour and is a member of the French Academy of Sciences since 2013.
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Elspeth Garman
#46541
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Elspeth Frances Garman is professor of molecular biophysics at the University of Oxford and a former President of the British Crystallographic Association. She was also Senior Kurti Research Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford, retiring in 2021. The "Garman limit", which is the radiation dose limit of a cryocooled protein crystal, is named after her.
Go to Profile#280
Kathryn Moler
#21127
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Kathryn Ann Moler is an American physicist, and current dean of research at Stanford University. She received her BSc and Ph.D. from Stanford University. After working as a visiting scientist at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in 1995, she held a postdoctoral position at Princeton University from 1995 to 1998. She joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1998, and became an Associate in CIFAR's Superconductivity Program in 2000. She became an associate professor at Stanford in 2002 and is currently a professor of applied physics and of Physics at Stanford. She currently works in the ...
Go to Profile#281
Sudeshna Sinha
#50448
Overall Influence
Sudeshna Sinha is a professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali. She was at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, for over a decade. She works in the field of nonlinear physics. Her work on 'chaos-based' hardware is being developed commercially by the US-based company Chaologix. Chaologix has now been acquired by ARM .
Go to Profile#282
Robin Canup
#76607
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Robin M. Canup is an American astrophysicist. Her main area of research concerns the origins of planets and satellites. In 2003, Canup was awarded the Harold C. Urey Prize. In April, 2022, Canup presented the findings of the Planetary Science Decadal Survey as co-chair of the Survey Steering Committee with Philip R. Christensen.
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Katherine Blundell
#55572
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Katherine Mary Blundell is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a supernumerary research fellow at St John's College, Oxford. Previously, she held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, and fellowships from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and Balliol College, Oxford.
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Ulrike Diebold
#42756
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Ulrike Diebold is an Austrian physicist and materials scientist who is a professor of surface science at TU Vienna. She is known for her groundbreaking research on the atomic scale geometry and electronic structure of metal-oxide surfaces.
Go to Profile#285
Karin M. Rabe
#62408
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Karin M. Rabe is an American condensed matter and computational materials physicist known for her studies of materials near phase transitions, including ferroelectrics, multiferroics, and martensites. She also works on the theoretical design of new materials. She is a distinguished professor and Board of Governors Professor of Physics at Rutgers University.
Go to Profile#286
Aditi Mitra
#53614
Overall Influence
Aditi Mitra is an Indian-American theoretical condensed matter physicist known for her research on molecular scale electronics and non-equilibrium quantum systems. Other topics in her research include floquet theory and topological insulators. She is a professor of physics at New York University.
Go to Profile#287
Monika Mościbrodzka
#76457
Overall Influence
Monika Mościbrodzka is a Polish astrophysicist who is a professor at Radboud University Nijmegen. She is an expert in general relativistic plasma dynamics and numerical astrophysics. She was part of the Event Horizon Telescope team who contributed to the first direct image of a black hole, supermassive black hole M87*. She was awarded the 2022 Dutch Research Council Athena Prize and the 2023 Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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Kathy Sykes
#31845
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Katharine Ellen Sykes is a British physicist, broadcaster and Professor of Sciences and Society at the University of Bristol. She was previously Collier Professor of Public Engagement in Science and Engineering, from 2002 to 2006. She has presented various BBC2 and Open University TV series, including Rough Science, Ever Wondered about Food, Alternative Therapies. Alternative Medicine and presented for the documentary television miniseries Brave New World with Stephen Hawking in 2011.
Go to Profile#289
Lyudmila Chernykh
#16803
Overall Influence
1935 - 2017 (82 years)
Lyudmila Ivanovna Chernykh was a Ukrainian-Russian-Soviet astronomer, wife and colleague of Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh, and a prolific discoverer of minor planets. Professional career In 1959 she graduated from Irkutsk State Pedagogical Institute . Between 1959 and 1963 she worked in the Time and Frequency Laboratory of the All-Union Research Institute of Physico-Technical and Radiotechnical Measurements in Irkutsk, where she did astrometrical observations for the Time Service.
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Amanda Weltman
#77299
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Amanda Weltman is a South African theoretical physicist. She is best known for co-authoring a series of papers proposing "chameleon gravity" to explain the existence of dark energy. She is currently a Professor and South African Research Chair at the University of Cape Town.
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Aomawa Shields
#73601
Overall Influence
Aomawa L. Shields is an associate professor of physics and astronomy at UC Irvine. Her research is focused on exploring the climate and habitability of small exoplanets, using data from observatories including NASA's Kepler spacecraft. Shields was a 2015 TED Fellow, and is active in science communication and outreach. She develops interactive workshops to encourage self-esteem and teach about astronomy, combines her training in theater and her career in astronomy.
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Stefi Baum
#79827
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Stefi Baum is an American astronomer. The American Astronomical Society honored her work by awarding her the Annie J. Cannon Prize in 1993. Baum helped to develop the Hubble Space Telescope and, starting in 2004, was the director of Rochester Institute of Technology’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science.
Go to Profile#293
Lisa Kaltenegger
#69278
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Lisa Kaltenegger is an Austrian world-leading astronomer with expertise in the modeling and characterization of exoplanets and the search for life. On July 1, 2014, she was appointed Associate Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University. Previously, she held a joint position at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg where she was the Emmy Noether Research Group Leader for the "Super-Earths and Life" group, and at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, MA. She was appointed Lecturer in 2008 at Harvard University and 2011 at University of Heidelberg.
Go to Profile#294
Gail Hanson
#48887
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Gail G. Hanson, born 22 February 1947 in Dayton, Ohio is an American experimental particle physicist. Career Hanson received her PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973. She spent sixteen years at SLAC, first as a research assistant and then as a permanent staff member. Whilst there, Hanson participated in the discovery of the J/psi meson and tau lepton. Her work led to the first evidence for quark jet production in electron-positron annihilation, for which she was awarded the 1996 Panofsky Prize with Roy Schwitters.
Go to Profile#295
Ursula Keller
#90923
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Ursula Keller is a Swiss physicist. She has been a physics professor at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland since 2003 with a speciality in ultra-fast laser technology, an inventor and the winner of the 2018 European Inventor Award by the European Patent Office.
Go to Profile#296
Phyllis S. Freier
#58605
Overall Influence
1921 - 1992 (71 years)
Phyllis S. Freier was an American astrophysicist and a Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow, American Physical Society. Freier also served on NASA committees. As a graduate student she presented evidence for the existence of elements heavier than helium in cosmic radiation. Her work was published in Physical Review in 1948 with co-authors Edward J. Lofgren, Edward P. Ney, and Frank Oppenheimer.
Go to Profile#297
Karlina Leksono Supelli
#30242
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Karlina Leksono Supelli is an Indonesian philosopher and astronomer. One of Indonesia's first female astronomers, she received her bachelor's degree in Astronomy at ITB and MSc in Space Science from the University College London, and completed her doctorate in Philosophy at Universitas Indonesia in 1997.
Go to Profile#298
Duília de Mello
#58275
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Duília de Mello is a Brazilian-born American astronomer. She is currently full professor in physics at the Catholic University of America and collaborates with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She has been serving as Vice Provost for Global Strategies of the Catholic University of America since September 2019. De Mello previously served as Vice Provost and Dean of Assessment and Vice Provost for Research Support of the Catholic University of America from 2016 to 2018 and 2018–2019.
Go to Profile#299
Bethany Ehlmann
#69317
Overall Influence
Bethany List Ehlmann is a professor of Planetary Science at California Institute of Technology and a Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Education and early career Ehlmann was born in Southern California and raised in Tallahassee, Florida. She received her Bachelor of Arts in 2004 from Washington University in St. Louis, where she was a Compton Fellow. During her Sophomore year, she was awarded the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and the Morris K. Udall Fellowship. She worked with Professor Raymond Arvidson on operations of the Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration rovers at ...
Go to Profile#300
Helen Dodson Prince
#52060
Overall Influence
1905 - 2002 (97 years)
Helen Dodson Prince was an American astronomer who pioneered work in solar flares at the University of Michigan. Early life and education Helen Prince was born in Baltimore, Maryland on December 31, 1905, to Helen Walter and Henry Clay Dodson. Being skilled in both physics and mathematics, Prince received a full scholarship to study mathematics at Goucher College, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1927. During her undergraduate studies, she was influenced by professor Florence P. Lewis to study astronomy. Prince continued onto graduate school at the University of Michigan, where she received her master's degree in 1932 and her Ph.D.
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