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,
#351
Heather A. Knutson
#84520
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Heather A. Knutson is an astrophysicist and professor at California Institute of Technology in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences. Her research is focused on the study of exoplanets, their composition and formation. She won the American Astronomical Society's Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy for her work in exoplanetary atmospheres.
Go to Profile#352
Marileen Dogterom
#48569
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Marileen Dogterom is a Dutch biophysicist and professor at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology. She published in Science, Cell, and Nature and is notable for her research of the cell cytoskeleton. For this research, she was awarded the 2018 Spinoza Prize.
Go to Profile#353
Joanna Haigh
#40544
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Joanna Dorothy Haigh is a British physicist and academic. Before her retirement in 2019 she was Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London, and co-director of the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and Environment. She served as head of the department of physics at Imperial College London. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society , and a served as president of the Royal Meteorological Society.
Go to Profile#354
Erica Carlson
#91013
Overall Influence
Erica W. Carlson is an American physicist specializing in superconductors, liquid crystals, and strongly correlated materials. She is 150th Anniversary Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Purdue University. As well as for her research, she is known for her work in physics education for quantum physics, and for her introduction of innovative technologies including podcasts and wikis into her physics teaching.
Go to Profile#355
Marie Machacek
#94211
Overall Influence
Marie E. Machacek is an astrophysicist conducting research in the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. She earned a BA in physics and mathematics from Coe College, in 1969; an MS in physics from the University of Michigan, in 1970; and a PhD in physics from the University of Iowa, in 1973. Her current research explores interacting galaxies and the evolution of galaxies in galaxy groups and clusters. She is also the current coordinator for the SAO Astronomy Intern Program.
Go to Profile#356
Rachel Mandelbaum
#89017
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Rachel Mandelbaum is a professor of astrophysics at Carnegie Mellon University, studying cosmology and galactic evolution with a focus on dark matter and dark energy. Much of her work has used the phenomenon of gravitational lensing of galaxies and she has made significant improvements in the calibration of lensing parameters.
Go to Profile#357
Beatriz Barbuy
#85777
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Beatriz Leonor Silveira Barbuy is a Brazilian astrophysicist. She was described in 2009 by Época magazine as one of the 100 most influential Brazilians. She is a professor at the Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas at the University of São Paulo, vice-president of the International Astronomical Union , and one of five winners of the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2009.
Go to Profile#358
Judith Young
#61804
Overall Influence
1952 - 2014 (62 years)
Judith Sharn Young was an American physicist, astronomer, and educator. The American Physical Society honored Young with the first Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award for being the best young physicist in the world in 1986. Astronomer Nick Scoville of Caltech writes of her research: "Her pioneering galactic structure research included some of the earliest mapping of CO emission in galaxies followed by the most extensive surveys molecular gas and star formation in nearby galaxies."
Go to Profile#359
Tamara Davis
#76689
Overall Influence
Tamara Maree Davis is an Australian astrophysicist. , she is a professor in the School of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Queensland, where she has been employed since 2008. The Australian Academy of Science awarded her their Nancy Millis Medal in 2015, and she was awarded an Australian Laureate Fellowship in 2018,. She received the Astronomical Society of Australia's Louise Webster Prize in 2009, and their Robert Ellery Lectureship in 2021. She became a Member of the Order of Australia in 2020.
Go to Profile#360
Sarbani Basu
#86854
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Sarbani Basu is an Indian astrophysicist and Professor at Yale University. She is on the board of directors of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#361
G. C. Anupama
#100561
Overall Influence
G. C. Anupama was the former Dean and Senior Professor , Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bengaluru. She served as president of the Astronomical Society of India , becoming the first woman to head this association of professional astronomers in India. Anupama is a member of the Indian core team which is part of the international effort to establish the thirty meter telescope in Hawaii, USA. Anupama was also the principal investigator of the project which led to the establishment of the 0.7m wide field telescope at Hanle near Leh in Ladakh, the world's ninth highest site for optical, infr...
Go to Profile#362
Geraldine L. Richmond
#19659
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Geraldine Lee Richmond is an American chemist and physical chemist who is serving as the Under Secretary of Energy for Science in the US Department of Energy. Richmond was confirmed to her DOE role by the United States Senate on November 5, 2021. Richmond is the Presidential Chair in Science and professor of chemistry at the University of Oregon . She conducts fundamental research to understand the chemistry and physics of complex surfaces and interfaces. These understandings are most relevant to energy production, atmospheric chemistry and remediation of the environment. Throughout her career she has worked to increase the number and success of women scientists in the U.S.
Go to Profile#363
Rupamanjari Ghosh
#52226
Overall Influence
Rupamanjari Ghosh was the second Vice-Chancellor of Shiv Nadar University, Uttar Pradesh, India. She is also the former founding Director of School of Natural Sciences and founding Dean of Research & Graduate Studies at Shiv Nadar University, and a former Professor of physics and Dean at the School of Physical Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research areas include Experimental and Theoretical Quantum Optics, Laser Physics, Nonlinear Optics, Quantum Information, Quantum Measurement and Magneto-Optics.
Go to Profile#364
Sultana N. Nahar
#69548
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Sultana Nurun Nahar is a Bangladeshi-American physicist. She is a research scientist in the Department of Astronomy at Ohio State University. Her research is on atomic processes of photoionization, electron-ion recombination, photoexcitation, collision. Her contributions include development of the unified method for total electron-ion recombination, theoretical spectroscopy for Breit-Pauli R-matrix method, resonant nano-plasma theranostics method for cancer treatment.
Go to Profile#365
Meenakshi Wadhwa
#72639
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Meenakshi Wadhwa is a planetary scientist and educator who studies the formation and evolution of the Solar System through the analysis of planetary materials including meteorites, Moon rocks and other extraterrestrial samples returned by spacecraft missions. She is director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University.
Go to Profile#366
Maria Assumpció Català i Poch
#67356
Overall Influence
1925 - 2009 (84 years)
María Assumpció Català i Poch was a Spanish professor, mathematician, and astronomer. She taught from 1952 to 1991. She started as an assistant in the Astronomy Section of the Seminar on Mathematics in Barcelona, related to the Spanish National Research Council . Later, she worked in the Henri Poincaré Institute and she also cooperated in some projects with the special chair of Technology in the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
Go to Profile#367
Giovanna Tinetti
#85775
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Giovanna Tinetti is an Italian physicist based in London. She is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at University College London, who researches galactic planetary science, exoplanets and atmospheric science.
Go to Profile#368
Frederica Darema
#56436
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Frederica Darema is a Greek American physicist. She proposed the SPMD programming model in 1984 and Dynamic Data Driven Application Systems in 2000. She was elected IEEE Fellow in 2004. Biography Darema received her BS degree from the school of physics and mathematics of the University of Athens - Greece, and MS and Ph. D. degrees in theoretical nuclear physics from the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of California at Davis, respectively, where she attended as a Fulbright Scholar and a distinguished scholar. After physics research associate positions at the University of P...
Go to Profile#369
Maura Tombelli
#87251
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Maura Tombelli is an Italian amateur astronomer who began her training in astronomy as an observer of variable stars. She is a prolific discoverer of almost 200 minor planets, including the main-belt asteroid 7794 Sanvito, and a member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers.
Go to Profile#370
Sheena Radford
#39675
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Sheena Elizabeth Radford FRS FMedSci is a British biophysicist, and Astbury Professor of Biophysics in the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology, School of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Leeds. Radford is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Molecular Biology.
Go to Profile#371
Diana Valencia
#57900
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Diana Valencia is a Colombian planetary scientist and astrophysicist. She is an associate professor of Physics and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Scarborough, and of Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto.
Go to Profile#372
Dušanka Đokić
#86373
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Dušanka Đokić-Ristanović is a former professor of theoretical physics at the Faculty of Physics, University of Belgrade. Biography Đokić performed research on theoretical physics, in particular involving canonical transformations in degenerate systems, and received her PhD degree in theoretical physics from the University of Belgrade in January 1976 with a thesis entitled "The Generalization of Dirac's Degenerate Systems Theory in Classic Field Theory". She published more than 20 articles in international journals and participated in many scientific conferences. During nearly four decades Đokić taught Theoretical mechanics and Classical physics to numerous generations of students.
Go to Profile#373
Patricia Burchat
#94705
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Patricia Burchat is the Gabilan Professor of Physics at Stanford University who researches experimental particle physics and cosmology. She is interested in mapping dark matter in the universe, and understanding the nature of dark energy. She was named a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2001, and a Guggenheim Fellow in 2005. In 2013 she became a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#374
Maria A. Barucci
#85458
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Maria Antonella Barucci is an Italian astronomer at the Observatory-Meudon, Paris. She is credited by the Minor Planet Center with a total of 3 minor planet discoveries she made in 1984 and 1985. Most notably is her joint discovery with R. Scott Dunbar of the near-Earth and Aten asteroid 3362 Khufu at Palomar Observatory, as well as her co-discovery of the Apollo asteroid 3752 Camillo.
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Ivet Bahar
#37004
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Ivet Bahar is a Turkish-American computational biologist, currently serving as the Director of the Louis and Beatrice Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology, Louis & Beatrice Laufer Endowed Chair and Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the Stony Brook University, School of Medicine. Before joining Stony Brook University, she served as Distinguished Professor, John K. Vries Chair and Founder of the Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine , and as Assistant , Associate and Full Professor at the Chemical Engineering Department of Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey.
Go to Profile#376
Lynda Soderholm
#42575
Overall Influence
Lynda Soderholm is a physical chemist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory with a specialty in f-block elements. She is a senior scientist and the lead of the Actinide, Geochemistry & Separation Sciences Theme within Argonne's Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division. Her specific role is the Separation Science group leader within Heavy Element Chemistry and Separation Science , directing basic research focused on low-energy methods for isolating lanthanide and actinide elements from complex mixtures. She has made fundamental contributions to understanding f-block ...
Go to Profile#377
Noemie Benczer Koller
#86732
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Noemie Benczer Koller is a nuclear physicist. She was the first tenured female professor of Rutgers College. Early life and education Koller was born Noemie Benczer in Vienna, Austria, on born August 21, 1933. Her father was a Ph.D. chemist and her mother worked as a bookbinder. The family moved frequently in her early childhood due to the turbulence of World War II. Her family moved from Vienna to Paris, and then subsequently moved further south in France several times to escape the German invasion. They subsequently emigrated to Cuba, and then to Mexico where she attended the Lycée Franco-Mexicain beginning in 1943.
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Robyn Millan
#86183
Overall Influence
Robyn M. Millan is an American experimental physicist, best known for her work on radiation belts that surround the Earth. Education Millan received a B.A. in Astronomy and Physics , a M.A. in Physics , and a Ph.D. in Physics , all from the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#379
Suzanne Imber
#81689
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (41 years)
Suzanne Mary Imber is a British planetary scientist specialising in space weather at the University of Leicester. She was the winner of the 2017 BBC Two television programme Astronauts, Do You Have What It Takes?.
Go to Profile#380
Patricia McBride
#88958
Overall Influence
Patricia McBride is an American particle physicist working with the CMS collaboration at the LHC. On February 9, 2022, she was elected Spokesperson for CMS starting Fall 2022. Patricia studied physics in college at Carnegie Mellon. She received her PhD from Yale University and did a postdoc at Harvard University. She started working at Fermilab in 1994 where she participated in many experiments and had various leadership roles. Patricia has been a part of the CMS collaboration since 2005, working as head of the CMS Center at Fermilab from 2012 to 2013 and, later, as U.S. CMS operations program manager.
Go to Profile#381
Kathryn Huff
#58687
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (38 years)
Kathryn D. Huff is an American engineer serving as the assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy. In January 2022, she was nominated to the position. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 5, 2022 by a 80–11 vote and sworn in on May 11, 2022.
Go to Profile#382
Nina Marković
#45119
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Nina Marković is a Croatian-American physicist. Her work focuses on quantum transport in low-dimensional systems, superconductivity, nanostructures, and quantum computing. She received a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2004. Marković worked at Delft University of Technology, Harvard University, and Johns Hopkins University before joining the Goucher College Department of Physics and Astronomy in 2015.
Go to Profile#383
Erika Hamden
#77763
Overall Influence
Erika Tobiason Hamden is an American astrophysicist and assistant professor at the University of Arizona and Steward Observatory. Her research focuses on developing ultraviolet detector technology, ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy instrumentation and spectroscopy, and galaxy evolution. She served as the project scientist and project manager of a UV multi-object spectrograph, FIREBall-2, that is designed to observe the circumgalactic medium . She is a 2019 TED fellow.
Go to Profile#384
Britney Schmidt
#64376
Overall Influence
Britney Schmidt is an American earth scientist and astrobiologist at Cornell University. She has conducted research on the melting of ice shelves in Antarctica and studied Jupiter's moon Europa. In 2023, she was included on the Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world for her research on the Thwaites Glacier. She previously worked at Georgia Tech, and has been involved in projects with NASA. Schmidt was educated at the University of Arizona and University of California, Los Angeles.
Go to Profile#385
Gertrude Neumark
#25994
Overall Influence
1927 - 2010 (83 years)
Gertrude Fanny Neumark, also known as Gertrude Neumark Rothschild, was an American physicist, most noted for her work in material science and physics of semiconductors with emphasis on optical and electrical properties of wide-bandgap semiconductors and their light-emitting devices.
Go to Profile#386
Marcia Barbosa
#44423
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Márcia Cristina Bernardes Barbosa is a Brazilian physicist known for her research on the properties of water, and for her efforts for improving the conditions for women in academia. She is a professor at UFRGS, and a director of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#387
Jen Gupta
#48074
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (123 years)
Jennifer Ann Gupta, known as Jen, is an astrophysicist and science communicator based at the University of Portsmouth. She has presented on Tomorrow's World on the BBC. Education Gupta grew up in Winchester and completed her A-Levels at Peters Symonds Sixth Form College. She completed her master's degree at the University of Manchester, before beginning a PhD at the university's Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. She earned her PhD "Multiwavelength Studies of Radio-loud Active Galactic Nuclei in the Fermi Era" in 2012.
Go to Profile#388
Vedika Khemani
#74957
Overall Influence
Vedika Khemani is an Indian-American physicist and Assistant Professor at Stanford University. Her research considers many-body systems and condensed matter physics. She was awarded the 2021 American Physical Society George E. Valley Jr. Prize.
Go to Profile#389
Suzanne Aigrain
#83601
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Suzanne Aigrain is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. She studies exoplanets and stellar variability. Early life and education Aigrain grew up in Toulouse, France, and was educated at the Lycée Pierre-de-Fermat. She studied physics at Imperial College London and graduated in 2000. During her undergraduate studies she was an intern at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. She spent sixth months at the European Space Agency before joining the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge for her doctoral studies, earning a PhD in 2005 for work o...
Go to Profile#390
Annette Ferguson
#91189
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Annette Mairi Nelson Ferguson FRSE is a Scottish observational astrophysicist who specialises in the area of galaxy evolution. She is a professor at the Institute for Astronomy, Edinburgh, and holds the Personal Chair in Observational Astrophysics at the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#391
Emma Chapman
#31193
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (36 years)
Emma Olivia Chapman is a British physicist and Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow at Imperial College London. Her research investigates the epoch of reionization. She won the 2018 Royal Society Athena Prize. In November 2020 Chapman published her first book, First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time.
Go to Profile#392
Dominique Langevin
#77520
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Dominique Langevin is a French researcher in physical chemistry. She is research director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique and leads the liquid interface group in the Laboratory of Solid State Physics at the University of Paris-Sud. She was the Life and Physical Sciences Panel chair for the European Space Sciences Committee of the European Science Foundation from 2013-2021.
Go to Profile#393
Ani Aprahamian
#75427
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Ani Aprahamian is a Lebanese-born Armenian-American nuclear physicist. She has taught at the University of Notre Dame since 1989. She is currently Freimann Professor of Physics at Notre Dame. She has been director of the Alikhanyan National Science Laboratory in Armenia since April 2018, the first woman to hold the position.
Go to Profile#394
Willie Hobbs Moore
#43361
Overall Influence
1934 - 1994 (60 years)
Willie Hobbs Moore was an American physicist and engineer. She was the first African American woman to earn a PhD in physics. Education Willie Hobbs was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on May 23, 1934, to parents Bessie and William Hobbs.
Go to Profile#395
Marie Farge
#44209
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Marie Farge is a French mathematician and physicist who works as a director of research at CNRS, the French National Centre for Scientific Research. She is known for her research on wavelets and turbulence in fluid mechanics.
Go to Profile#396
Elsa M. Garmire
#83289
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Elsa M. Garmire, Elsa Meints Garmire, was born in Buffalo, New York, on November 9, 1939. She is the Sydney E. Junkins Professor of Engineering at Dartmouth College, where she has served as Dean of Thayer School of Engineering. Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineers, and the National Academy of Inventors, she helped pioneer laser technology and is an expert in nonlinear optics. She has patented devices to enhance optical communications including lasers, waveguides, and detectors.
Go to Profile#397
Florence Bell
#59422
Overall Influence
1913 - 2000 (87 years)
Florence Ogilvy Bell , later Florence Sawyer, was a British scientist who contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA. She was an X-ray crystallographer in the lab of William Astbury. In 1938 they published a paper in Nature that described the structure of DNA as a "Pile of Pennies".
Go to Profile#398
Nancy Chabot
#60546
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Nancy Chabot is a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Career Nancy Chabot earned her B.A. in physics from Rice University in 1994. After earning her Ph.D. in planetary science from the University of Arizona in 1999, Chabot worked at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, then at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. She joined the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in 2005.
Go to Profile#399
Bilge Demirköz
#82102
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Bilge Demirköz is a Turkish professor of high energy physics at Middle East Technical University. She coordinates the Particle Radiation Tests Creation Laboratory, the first collaboration between Turkey and CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Go to Profile#400
Aditi Sen De
#63481
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Aditi Sen De is an Indian scientist, a professor in quantum information and computation group at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad. She was born on 1st October 1974 in Kolkata, India. She is known for her research on quantum information and computation, quantum communication including quantum cryptography, quantum optics and many-body physics. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded her the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology for her contributions to physical sciences in 2018.
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