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).

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List of the most influential people in Physics,

#5001

Carsten Peterson

#82524
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Carsten Peterson, born in 1945 and married to journalist Lotten Peterson, is a Swedish theoretical physicist and professor at Lund University. His current field of research is computational biology. After finishing his PhD studies in theoretical physics at Lund University in 1977, Peterson worked as a postdoctoral researcher at NORDITA in Copenhagen in 1978-1979 and at Stanford University in 1980-1982 before returning to Lund. He has since then been active there, except for a sabbatical period in 1986-1988 when he hold a Senior Scientist position at Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation in Austin, Texas.
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#5002

Nicolaas Marinus Hugenholtz

#85760
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (102 years)
Nicolaas Marinus Hugenholtz is a Dutch physicist. He was a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Groningen between 1960 and 1989. Hugenholtz was born in Wormerveer. He studied physics at Leiden University and obtained his degree in 1948. Hugenholtz subsequently studied theoretical physics under Hans Kramers. He obtained his PhD in physics at Utrecht University in 1957 with a thesis titled: "The quantum theory of large systems and its application to the structure of nuclear matter".
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#5003

Yoshihiro Hamakawa

#125860
Overall Influence
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#5004

Mervyn John Miles

#125880
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
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#5005

Minna Palmroth

#72267
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Minna Palmroth is a professor in computational space physics at the University of Helsinki; her particular area of interest is magnetospheric physics and solar wind - magnetosphere interactions. Life Palmroth is from Sahalahti, a small village in the former municipality by the same name near the city of Tampere, Finland. She studied physics at the University of Helsinki, graduating in 1999 with her first degree and in 2003 with a post-graduate degree. From 2013 to 2016 she was a researcher at the Earth Observation Programme of the Finnish Meteorological Institute. In January 2018 she was a...
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#5006

Marko V. Jaric

#87974
Overall Influence
1952 - 1997 (45 years)
Marko V. Jarić was a Serbian-American physicist. He served as visiting professor at Montana State University and Harvard University, and full professor at Texas A&M University Jarić was a leading researcher in the field of Quasi-Crystals authoring and editing four influential books. An annual award was established in his name, known as the "Serbian Nobel Prize," for excellence in physics by a Serbian born physicist.
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#5007

Gerhard Borrmann

#43883
Overall Influence
1908 - 2006 (98 years)
Gerhard Borrmann was a German physicist. He was born in Diedenhofen, then part of Germany, and received his early education there. He continued his secondary school at Gießen, where he apprenticed at a steel mill. After studying at the Technische Universität München and Technische Hochschule Danzig, he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the Kossel effect while working at the laboratory of Walther Kossel in Danzig. Following his doctorate, he continued to work at the laboratory as an assistant to Kossel, where he studied X-ray transmission through thin crystal foils. Due to his refusal to join the Nazi...
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#5008

Raja Ram Yadav

#93416
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Raja Ram Yadav is a professor of Physics worked at University of Allahabad and former vice-chancellor of Veer Bahadur Singh Purvanchal University. Education and career Yadav did his B.Sc., M.Sc. and PhD from University of Allahabad in 1977, 1979 and 1988 respectively. He served as a Geophysicist in Oil and Natural Gas Commission Government of India from 1983 to 1988 then he resigned from ONGC and became RSS Pracharak from 1988 to 1992. Since July 1992, he started his teaching career as a lecturer of Mahatma Gandhi Chitrakoot Gramoday Vishwavidyalaya in 1992. He joined University of Allahabad in 1996 as an associate professor and became a professor in 2004 there.
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#5009

Yoshihiro Iwasa

#125979
Overall Influence
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#5010

Lucy Ziurys

#118973
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Lucy Marie Ziurys is an American astrochemist known for her work on high-resolution molecular spectroscopy. She is Regent's Professor of Chemistry & Biology and of Astronomy at the University of Arizona.
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#5011

Joan Adler

#63504
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Joan Elisabeth Adler is a computational physicist at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Her research involves percolation theory, lattice models, and neural networks. Biography Adler graduated with a B.Sc. in mathematics and physics from the University of Sydney in 1974. She completed her doctorate in physics in 1980, at the University of New South Wales. She worked at the Technion from 1980 to 1984 as a postdoctoral fellow and research associate, returned as a senior research associate in 1988, and became a senior research fellow in 2000. She was president of the Israel Physical ...
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#5012

Radu Balescu

#126053
Overall Influence
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#5013

William Allen Zajc

William Allen Zajc
#126070
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
William Allen Zajc is a U.S. physicist and the I.I. Rabi Professor of Physics at Columbia University in New York, USA, where he has worked since 1987. Early life Born in Barstow, California, on November 14, 1953, and raised in Brookfield, Wisconsin, he received his bachelor's degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1975. He went on to the doctoral program in physics at the University of California, Berkeley, where, as his thesis topic, he became the first person to use Hanbury-Brown Twiss correlations to measure the size of the interacting region between two colliding heavy ions...
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#5014

Joseph C. Calabrese

#126071
Overall Influence
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#5015

Roberto Maiolino

#126082
Overall Influence
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#5016

J. M. R. Parrondo

#32145
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Juan Manuel Rodríguez Parrondo is a Spanish physicist. He is mostly popular for the invention of the Parrondo's paradox and his contributions in the thermodynamical study of information. Biography Juan Parrondo received his bachelors degree in 1987 and defended his Ph.D at Complutense University of Madrid in 1992. He started a permanent position at UCM at 1996. In the same year he invented the well-known Parrondo's Paradox, according to which 2 losing strategies may win while working together. Since then, the paradox has been widely used in biology and finances. He has also completed a lot of...
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#5017

Kris Sigurdson

#126084
Overall Influence
Kris Sigurdson is a Canadian physicist and cosmologist. He is an associate professor in the University of British Columbia's department of physics and astronomy in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was previously a NASA Hubble Fellow and Member of the Institute for Advanced Study. He received a Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology.
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#5018

Paul S. Aspinwall

#86167
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Paul Stephen Aspinwall is a British theoretical physicist and mathematician, who works on string theory and also algebraic geometry. Aspinwall received his early education at Bydales School, Marske-by-the-Sea and Prior Pursglove College, Guisborough. He then studied at the University of Oxford with a focus on theoretical elementary particle physics. He received his bachelor's degree in 1985 and his Ph.D. in 1988. He is now a professor of mathematics and physics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
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#5019

Pablo Laguna

#126103
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
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#5020

Elly Dekker

#81069
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Elisabeth Dekker is a Dutch astronomer and science historian, specialising in the history of astronomy. She studied theoretical physics and astronomy at Utrecht University. In 1975 she obtained a PhD in astronomy at Leiden University with the thesis Spiral structure and the dynamics of flat stellar systems supervised by Hendrik C. van de Hulst. From 1978-1988 she was a curator of Museum Boerhaave in Leiden and afterwards an independent scholar. From 1993-1995 she was a Sackler fellow of the Royal Museums Greenwich. In 1998 she was awarded the Caird Medal for her work on the globe collection ...
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#5021

Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber

Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber
#75044
Overall Influence
1911 - 1998 (87 years)
Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber was a German-born Jewish-American nuclear physicist. She earned her PhD from the University of Munich, and though her family suffered during The Holocaust, Gertrude was able to escape to London and later to the United States. Her research during World War II was classified, and not published until 1946. She and her husband, Maurice Goldhaber, spent most of their post-war careers at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
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#5022

Francis H. Harlow

#46339
Overall Influence
1928 - 2016 (88 years)
Francis Harvey Harlow was an American theoretical physicist known for his work in the field of fluid dynamics. He was a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico. Harlow is credited with establishing the science of computational fluid dynamics as an important discipline.
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#5023

Gwyn Jones

#80011
Overall Influence
1917 - 2006 (89 years)
Gwyn Owain Jones was a Welsh physicist and academic, who moved from being a professor at the University of London to become director of the National Museum of Wales. Life Jones was born in Cardiff on 29 March 1917. He was educated at Port Talbot County School and Monmouth School before winning a Meyricke scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford to study physics. He graduated in 1939 and became a Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield, obtaining his PhD on the physics of glass. He became a member of the secret British nuclear weapons research programme, code-name Tube Alloys, in 1942, ...
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#5024

Thierry Paul

#126142
Overall Influence
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#5025

Wolf‐peter Trautwein

#126154
Overall Influence
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#5026

Mosto Bousmina

#96277
Overall Influence
Mostapha Bousmina is a physical-chemist and rheologist working on nanomaterials and nanotechnology. Prof. Bousmina is the President of the Euro-Mediterranean University of Morocco in Fez, Chancellor of the Hassan II Academy of Science and Technology-Morocco, and President of the Network of African Academies of Sciences .
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#5027

Igor I. Mazin

#126220
Overall Influence
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#5028

Bernard Yurke

#102775
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Bernard Yurke is an American physicist, currently a distinguished research professor at Boise State University and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. See also DNA machineDNA nanotechnologySU InterferometryToehold mediated strand displacement
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#5029

Tetsuo Fukunaga

#126245
Overall Influence
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#5030

Grzegorz Bartosz

#126252
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
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#5031

Jean‐françois Joanny

#126280
Overall Influence
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#5032

Andrius Baltuška

#123826
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Andrius Baltuška is a Lithuanian physicist. Baltuška studied physics at the University of Vilnius later at the University of Amsterdam and received his PhD from the University of Groningen in 2000. After postdoctoral positions at the University of Tokyo, Technical University of Vienna and Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics he became professor at the Technical University of Vienna in 2006.
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#5033

Didier P. Queloz

Didier P. Queloz
#125948
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
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#5034

Roderich Moessner

#126328
Overall Influence
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#5035

E. L. Wolf

#126342
Overall Influence
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#5036

Elaine Sadler

#124265
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Elaine Margaret Sadler is an Australian astrophysicist. She is the Australia Telescope National Facility Chief Scientist and a Professor of Astrophysics in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. She was elected as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2010 and commenced a 4-year term as Foreign Secretary of the AAS in 2018. She was previously director of the CAASTRO centre . Sadler is a member of the International Astronomical Union and served as the President Division VIII Galaxies & the Universe from 2009 to 2012. She has over 400 publications as of May 2020.
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#5037

David Atlas

#126384
Overall Influence
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#5038

Halson V. Eagleson

#110424
Overall Influence
1903 - 1992 (89 years)
Halson Vashon Eagleson Jr. was an American physicist and professor, and the fifth African American person to receive a PhD in physics in the United States. He was also the first African American person to receive a PhD in physics from Indiana University. Eagleson's research focused on acoustics and the behavior of sound.
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#5039

James Sauls

#114108
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
James Avery Sauls is an American physicist. Sauls studied physics at the Colorado School of Mines, graduating in 1975, and pursued a doctorate in the subject at Stony Brook University, which he completed in 1980. Sauls began his academic career at Princeton University, as research associate, instructor, then assistant professor of physics. In 1987, Sauls joined the faculty of Northwestern University as associate professor. He became a full professor in 1991. In 2021, Sauls was appointed the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Physics.
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#5040

Herbert Überall

#126478
Overall Influence
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#5041

Christopher Longcope

#126485
Overall Influence
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#5042

Lyudvig Dmitrievich Faddeev

#126488
Overall Influence
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#5043

Joel S. Levine

#32727
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Joel S. Levine is an American planetary scientist, author, and research professor in applied science at the College of William & Mary, specializing in the atmospheres of the Moon, Earth, and Mars. He has worked as a senior research scientist at NASA, developing scientific models of the evolution of the Earth's early atmosphere, as well as creating models of the Martian atmosphere for use during the Viking 1 and 2 Mars Orbiter and Lander Missions, and was principal investigator and chief scientist of the proposed ARES Mars Airplane Mission. He also formed and led the "Charters of Freedom Resea...
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#5044

Susan Marqusee

#92686
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Susan Marqusee is the Eveland Warren Endowed Chair Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Berkeley campus director of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences. Her research concerns the structure and dynamics of protein molecules. She received her A.B. in Physics and Chemistry from Cornell University in 1982, and her Ph.D. and M.D. degrees from Stanford University in 1990, where she trained with Robert Baldwin on the intrinsic helical properties of amino acids in model peptides.
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#5045

Hisham Ghassib

#125792
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Hisham B. Ghassib is a Jordanian theoretical physicist and Marxist intellectual. He is professor of physics at the Princess Sumaya University for Technology , where he was formerly Dean. Ghassib gained his PhD from the University of Manchester in 1974. In 1975 he became an assistant professor in physics at the University of Jordan in Amman. He served as the first President of PSUT from 1999 to 2010, when he was succeeded by Dr Issa Batarseh. He is President of the Socialist Thought Forum. He is known for his strong anti Zionist views He is author of several books on different fields.
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#5046

Phillip Sprangle

#117320
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Phillip A. Sprangle is an American physicist who specializes in the applications of plasma physics. He is known for his work involving the propagation of high-intensity laser beams in the atmosphere, the interaction of ultra-short laser pulses from high-power lasers with matter, nonlinear optics and nonlinear plasma physics, free electron lasers, and lasers in particle acceleration.
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#5047

Burke

#126648
Overall Influence
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#5048

Osamu Yoshie

#126658
Overall Influence
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#5049

Thomas C. Mcgill

#126668
Overall Influence
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#5050

Johan Bleeker

#96755
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Johannes Alphonsus Marie "Johan" Bleeker is a Dutch space research and technology scientist. He was director of the Netherlands Institute for Space Research from 1983 to 2003. He was involved in the setting up of the Horizon 2000 and Horizon 2000+ long term space science programs of the European Space Agency.
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