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 people in Physics,
#5201
Simon Tett
#63649
Overall Influence
Simon Tett is a climatologist at the University of Edinburgh who was formerly with the Hadley Centre. His most-cited paper is Of it he says:All attempts at detecting and attributing climate change signals need a reliable observed data set and simulations with mechanisms that drive climate change included. In a nutshell, this paper is important because it was the first study to investigate the effect of sulphate aerosols in a general circulation model of the climate system. The experiments simulate the climate back to 1860 ... After 1970 our model with greenhouse gases alone begins to depart significantly from the observations.
Go to Profile#5202
Michael F. Shlesinger
#123075
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Michael F. Shlesinger is a physicist notable for his work in the area of nonlinear dynamics. He is the co-founder of the journal Fractals. His pioneering work in statistical predictions and descriptions of random and deterministic processes has influenced the physics of amorphous solids and glasses, classical mechanics, and biophysics. He is known as a proponent of fractal time and is also known for his work on fractal stochastic processes related to areas such as disordered materials and turbulence.
Go to Profile#5203
Steve Edwards
#110291
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Steve Edwards was an American nuclear physicist and professor emeritus at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. Education Edwards earned B.S. and M.Sc. degrees in physics from Florida State University in 1952 and 1954, respectively. In 1960, he completed his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University with the thesis "EXCHANGE EFFECTS IN DIRECT REACTIONS".
Go to Profile#5204
Christian A. Gueymard
#129406
Overall Influence
#5205
Anita Mehta
#110617
Overall Influence
Anita Mehta is an Indian physicist and Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford. Life After her B.Sc. in Physics from Presidency College, Calcutta, Mehta went to Oxford as the second Indian woman Rhodes Scholar to St Catherine's College, Oxford University, graduating with an MA and a DPhil in Theoretical Physics. She then did postdoctoral work at IBM, following this with a Research Associateship under the mentorship of Professor Sir Sam Edwards, when she pioneered the field of granular physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. Mehta was elected India's first Radcliffe Fellow to Harvard in 2006 and in 2007, awarded the Fellowship of the American Physical Society.
Go to Profile#5206
Patrick Bruneval
#129432
Overall Influence
#5207
David L. Huber
#129455
Overall Influence
#5208
Martin Blume
#129457
Overall Influence
#5209
John R. Kirtley
#104468
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
John Robert Kirtley is an American condensed matter physicist and a consulting professor at the Center for Probing the Nanoscale in the department of applied physics at Stanford University. He shared the 1998 Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society, and is a Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences.
Go to Profile#5210
Maximilian Fichtner
#129529
Overall Influence
#5211
Ari Rabl
#129551
Overall Influence
#5212
Samuel A. Safran
#129554
Overall Influence
#5213
Kingman Cheung
#129578
Overall Influence
#5214
Elisabeth Giacobino
#106407
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Elisabeth Giacobino is a French physicist specialized in laser physics, nonlinear optics, quantum optics and super-fluidity. She is one of the pioneers of quantum optics and quantum information. She graduated from Pierre and Marie Curie University and started working at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, where she has spent the majority of her professional career. She has been an invited professor at New York University and University of Auckland. She has over 230 publications and over 110 invited presentations in international conferences. She has been the coordinator of fo...
Go to Profile#5215
Alessandra Lanzara
#111729
Overall Influence
Alessandra Lanzara is an Italian-American physicist and the distinguished Charles Kittel Professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley since 2002, where she leads an experimental materials physics group. She is the founding director of Center for Sustainable Innovation at UCB and the co-founder of Quantum Advanced Detection LLC.
Go to Profile#5216
Claudio Rebbi
#129600
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
#5217
Henny W. Zandbergen
#129608
Overall Influence
#5218
Ana Achúcarro
#93138
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Ana Achúcarro Jiménez is a Spanish researcher, academic, and professor of particle astrophysics and quantum field theory at the University of Leiden in Leiden, Netherlands. Her research considers the early universe, supergravity, black holes and solitons.
Go to Profile#5219
Martyn Chamberlain
#87718
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
J. Martyn Chamberlain, is a British experimental physicist and academic. Having taught at the University of Nottingham and the University of Leeds, he joined Durham University as Professor of Applied Physics in 2003. From 2003 to 2011, he was also the Master of Grey College at the university. He retired in 2011.
Go to Profile#5220
Konstantin G. Chetyrkin
#129643
Overall Influence
#5221
Bruce R. Mcgarvey
#129644
Overall Influence
#5222
Jörn Wilms
#129670
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
#5223
Joseph. D. Huba
#129673
Overall Influence
#5224
Adam Sobel
#79182
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Adam H. Sobel is a Professor of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics and of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. He directs its Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate. His research area is meteorology with a focus on atmospheric and climate dynamics, tropical meteorology, and extreme weather.
Go to Profile#5225
Richard L. White
#129678
Overall Influence
#5226
Donald N. Langenberg
#91143
Overall Influence
1932 - 2019 (87 years)
Donald Newton Langenberg was an American physicist, academic, and university administrator. He served as chancellor of the University System of Maryland from 1990 until 2002 and was the first chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Langenberg taught at the University of Oxford, the École Normale Supérieure, the California Institute of Technology, and the Technische Universität München and served on the board of trustees at the University of the District of Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#5227
Anatoliy Zahorodniy
#76812
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Anatoliy Hlibovych Zahorodniy is a Ukrainian theoretical physicist and an organizer of science; an academician of NANU , Vice President and President of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine . Director of Nikolay Bogolyubov Institute of Theoretical Physics of the NAS of Ukraine . Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences , Professor , Laureate of the State Prize of Ukraine in Science and Technology , Honored Worker of Science and Technology of Ukraine . He has been a Member of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine .
Go to Profile#5228
Clare Burrage
#85224
Overall Influence
Clare Joanna Burrage is a British particle physicist at the University of Nottingham. She has made significant contributions to dark energy research, using astrophysical probes and interferometry. Early life and education Burrage attributes her love of cosmology to driving past the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory as a child. She attended Collingwood College, Surrey, achieving A-Levels in Mathematics, Further Mathematics and German. She studied Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, earning a Masters in 2004 and Part III of the Mathematical Tripos in 2005. Whilst a student, Burrage worked at Legoland Windsor Resort.
Go to Profile#5229
Arnljot Elgsæter
#114647
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Arnljot Elgsæter is a Norwegian physicist. He is now a professor emeritus who held a tenured position at the Department of Physics at the Norwegian Institute of Technology / Norwegian University of Science and Technology from 1974 to 2009. While at NTNU, he served twice as department chair and once as dean. He holds a master of technology in Engineering physics from NTH in 1969, and received a Ph.D. in biophysics from University of California, Berkeley in 1971, under the supervision of Daniel Branton.
Go to Profile#5230
Wolfgang Drexler
#129735
Overall Influence
#5231
Jacques Villain
#129769
Overall Influence
#5232
Eshel Ben-Jacob
#61691
Overall Influence
1952 - 2015 (63 years)
Eshel Ben-Jacob , was a theoretical and experimental physicist at Tel Aviv University, holder of the Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems, and Fellow of the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics at Rice University. During the 1980s he became a leader in the theory of self-organization and pattern formation in open systems, later extending this work to adaptive complex systems and biocomplexity. In the late 1980s, he turned to study of bacterial self-organization, He developed new pattern forming bacteria species, becoming a pioneer in the study of bacterial intelligence and s...
Go to Profile#5233
Sheldon Stone
#104607
Overall Influence
1946 - 2021 (75 years)
Sheldon Leslie Stone was a distinguished professor of physics at Syracuse University. He is best known for his work in experimental elementary particle physics, the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment , and B decays. He made significant contributions in the areas of data analysis, LHCb detector design and construction, and phenomenology.
Go to Profile#5234
Jay H. Lubin,
#129799
Overall Influence
#5235
Kerson Huang
#129808
Overall Influence
#5236
Martin Lüscher
#129826
Overall Influence
#5237
Masayuki Miyasaka
#129830
Overall Influence
#5238
Yohsuke Kamide
#129832
Overall Influence
#5239
Eric Hans Esarey
#129837
Overall Influence
#5240
Shobhana Narasimhan
#63384
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Shobhana Narasimhan is an Indian academic who is Professor of Theoretical Sciences at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, India. Her main area of interest is computational nanoscience. Her research examines how the lowering of dimensionality and reduction of size affect material properties. She is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#5241
Kuo–chih Chou
#129843
Overall Influence
#5242
David Newman
#101589
Overall Influence
David E. Newman is a professor in the physics department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He has a Ph.D. in plasma physics and conducts research on transport dynamics in fusion energy using numerical and complex systems models.
Go to Profile#5243
Katelin Schutz
#85020
Overall Influence
Katelin Schutz is an American particle physicist known for using cosmological observations to study dark sectors, that is new particles and forces that interact weakly with the visible world. She is a NASA Einstein Fellow and Pappalardo Fellow in the MIT Department of Physics.
Go to Profile#5244
Stephen E. Thorsett
#101626
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Stephen Erik Thorsett is an American academic and astronomer serving as the president of Willamette University. His research interests include radio pulsars and gamma-ray bursts. He is known for measurements of the masses of neutron stars and for the use of binary pulsars to test the theory of general relativity. Thorsett was a professor and dean at the University of California, Santa Cruz, before becoming president of Willamette University in July 2011.
Go to Profile#5245
Robert J. Mears
#65324
Overall Influence
Robert J. Mears is an English physicist and engineer. In the 1980s, Dr. Mears invented and demonstrated the Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier with the help of members of the Optoelectronics Research Group led by Alec Gambling and David Payne. In 2001 he founded Atomera, and as CTO led the invention and development of Mears Silicon Technology , a method for improving the mobility and other characteristics of semiconductor devices. Mears has authored and co-authored more than 250 publications and patents, and is co-inventor of 46 granted US patents. He is an Emeritus Fellow of Pembroke College, Camb...
Go to Profile#5246
Michael Lee Roukes
#129888
Overall Influence
#5247
Atsuhiro Nishida
#129898
Overall Influence
#5248
Mohammad Sajjad Alam
#56417
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Mohammad Sajjad "Saj" Alam was a Bengali Pakistani and a naturalized American particle physicist. His work focused on particle physics and computational physics. He played a significant role in several major particle physics experiments that led to new discoveries in the area of high-energy particle physics.
Go to Profile#5249
Jutta Kunz
#111345
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Jutta Kunz is a German physicist, specializing in quantum field theory and general relativity. Her work focuses on the gravity in four and higher dimensions: models of gravity, black holes, wormholes, solitons, neutron stars, boson stars, boson shells, black rings and black branes.
Go to Profile#5250
Christoph K. Goertz
#129943
Overall Influence
