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,
#5301
And Andrey V. Kravtsov
#130646
Overall Influence
#5302
G. Mpi Garching Haerendel.
#130656
Overall Influence
#5303
Sergio Boixo
#55478
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Sergio Boixo has degrees in computer engineering, philosophy, mathematics, and master and PhD in physics, and is best known for his work on quantum computing. He is currently working as Chief Scientist Quantum Computer Theory for Google's Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, a team he joined in 2013, shortly after its foundation.
Go to Profile#5304
William B. Fowler
#130663
Overall Influence
#5305
Dennis William Sciama
#130684
Overall Influence
#5306
Michelangelo L. Mangano
#130698
Overall Influence
#5307
Daniel Schaerer
#130699
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
#5308
Dries Van Thourhout
#130716
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
#5309
Hans-Jörg Fecht
#47030
Overall Influence
Hans-Jörg Fecht is Chaired Professor at the University of Ulm, Germany in the departments of Engineering and Computer Science. He is also an Office Director of the EUREKA Cluster Metallurgy Europe in the Same university, and a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He has published over 450 scientific publications, directed numerous national, European, and international research initiatives.
Go to Profile#5310
Ulrich Walter
#130792
Overall Influence
#5311
Albert Polman
#88817
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Albert Polman is a Dutch physicist and former director of the AMOLF research laboratory in Amsterdam. Polman received his master's degree in physics and his Ph.D. degree in materials science and engineering from the University of Utrecht. From 1989 to 1991 he was a post-doctoral staff researcher at AT&T Bell Laboratories . Since 1991 he has been associated with AMOLF, first as a group leader, since 1999 also as a department head. In 2005 he initiated the Center for Nanophotonics at AMOLF; in 2006 he was appointed as director of AMOLF. Polman was one of the initiators of the Amsterdam nanoCenter, a regional facility for nanofabrication founded in 2003.
Go to Profile#5312
David Andelman
#123883
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
David Andelman, is an Israeli theoretical physicist best known for his contributions to soft matter and biophysics. Academic background Andelman is the Moyses Nussenzveig Professor of Statistical Physics at the School of Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University. He received his PhD in 1984 in physics from MIT, and then spent one year as a Joliot Curie Fellow at Collège de France in Paris under the direction of Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, and two years as a post-doctoral fellow at Exxon Research Corporate Laboratories in Clinton, New Jersey. In 1987 he joined the f...
Go to Profile#5313
John D. Lawson
#93913
Overall Influence
1923 - 2008 (85 years)
John David Lawson FRS was a British engineer and physicist. Early life He was born in Coventry and educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School before going on to St John's College, Cambridge, to study for the short Mechanical Sciences degree, including a special wartime radio course. He graduated BA in 1943 and then joined the Telecommunications Research Establishment, Malvern, where he was assigned to work on microwave antenna design as part of the ongoing work on development of radar.
Go to Profile#5314
Sergio Fazio
#130822
Overall Influence
#5315
Wendy Flavell
#72742
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Wendy Ruth Flavell is Vice Dean for Research and a Professor of Surface Physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. Her research investigates the electronic structure of complex metal oxides, chalcogenides, photoemission and photovoltaics.
Go to Profile#5316
Patrick Flandrin
#41701
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Patrick Flandrin is a French physicist, research director at CNRS researcher at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, and member of the French Academy of Sciences. Biography After receiving the engineer degree from ICPI Lyon in 1978, Patrick Flandrin obtained the Doctor-Engineer degree in 1982 and “Doctorat d’État ès sciences physiques” in 1987, both from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble.
Go to Profile#5317
Jie Mei Ji
#130867
Overall Influence
#5318
David Gerdes
#107429
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
David Gerdes is an American astrophysicist, professor, and administrator at the University of Michigan. He is known for his research on trans-Neptunian objects, particularly for his discovery of the dwarf planet, .
Go to Profile#5319
James G. Ogg
#130874
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
#5320
Ian Mann
#66995
Overall Influence
Ian R. Mann is a British space weather researcher. He is a Full Professor of physics at the University of Alberta and former Canada Research Chair in Space Physics. In 2020, Mann was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in recognition of how his "research has delivered transformative understanding of extreme space radiation and geospace dynamics."
Go to Profile#5321
Igor Vurgaftman
#130894
Overall Influence
#5322
Nicholas J. Phillips
#44160
Overall Influence
1933 - 2009 (76 years)
Nicholas John Phillips was an English physicist, notable for the development of photochemical processing techniques for the colour hologram. Holograms typically used to have low signal-to-noise ratios, and Phillips is credited as the pioneer of silver halide holographic processing techniques for producing high-quality reflection holograms.
Go to Profile#5323
Michael D. Feit
#130966
Overall Influence
#5324
Floyd William Stecker
#130976
Overall Influence
#5325
Fedor Jelezko
#130981
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
#5326
Stuart Dalziel
#85100
Overall Influence
Stuart Bruce Dalziel is a British and New Zealand fluid dynamicist. He is currently based at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, where he has directed the GKB Laboratory since 1997. He was promoted to the rank of Professor in 2016.
Go to Profile#5327
Samy El-Shall
#39473
Overall Influence
Samy El-Shall is an Egyptian-American physical chemist and a researcher in nanoscience, heterogeneous catalysis, molecular clusters and cluster ions, nucleation and ion mobility. He is the Mary Eugenia Kapp Endowed Chair in Chemistry and Commonwealth Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University .
Go to Profile#5328
Øystein Fischer
#106217
Overall Influence
1942 - 2013 (71 years)
Øystein Fischer was a Norwegian physicist and specialist in the field of superconductivity. He was a professor of the Faculty of Science of the University of Geneva. He was also the founder and director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research MaNEP , dedicated to exploring materials of the future.
Go to Profile#5329
Charles S. Cox
#131041
Overall Influence
#5330
Shi-lin Zhu
#131045
Overall Influence
#5331
Mikhail Rusinov
#57657
Overall Influence
1909 - 2004 (95 years)
Mikhail Mikhaylovich Rusinov was a Russian scientist specialising in optics. He co-founded the USSR Science School of Computational Optics and discovered several optical phenomena, including aberration vignetting , projection centre distortion , and existence of second-order aberration . The phenomenon of projection centre distortion became the basis for engineering photometry.
Go to Profile#5332
Ann Merchant Boesgaard
#120513
Overall Influence
Ann Merchant Boesgaard is an astronomer and professor who received the American Astronomical Society's highest award, the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship in 2019. The minor planet 7804 Boesgaard is named after her, the name having been proposed by Dutch astronomers C.J. van Houten and Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld.
Go to Profile#5333
Barbara Low
#40346
Overall Influence
1920 - 2019 (99 years)
Barbara Wharton Low was a biochemist, biophysicist, and a researcher involved in discovering the structure of penicillin and the characteristics of other antibiotics. Her early work at Oxford University with Dorothy Hodgkin used X-ray crystallography to confirm the molecular structure of penicillin, which at the time was the largest molecule whose structure has been determined using that method. Later graduate work saw her study with Linus Pauling and Edwin Cohn before becoming a professor in her own right. Low's laboratory would accomplish the discovery of the pi helix, investigate the struc...
Go to Profile#5334
Fabio Marchesoni
#131079
Overall Influence
#5335
Véronique Buat
#112205
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Véronique Buat is a French astrophysicist and academic at the University of Provence. Her research interests include galaxy formation and evolution, star formation, infrared astronomy, and ultraviolet astronomy.
Go to Profile#5336
M. B. M. Van Der Klis
#131130
Overall Influence
#5337
Aneesh V. Manohar
#131135
Overall Influence
#5338
Thorsten Dittmar
#131173
Overall Influence
#5339
David Louis Band
#120288
Overall Influence
1957 - 2009 (52 years)
David Louis Band or David L. Band was an astronomer who studied the theory of gamma-ray bursts. Life David Band was born January 9, 1957, in Boston, Massachusetts to a Jewish family. His father was Arnold Band, professor of Jewish and Hebrew literature at University of California, Los Angeles , and his mother was Ora Band, Hebrew teacher.
Go to Profile#5340
Paul Bressloff
#113114
Overall Influence
Paul C. Bressloff is a British applied mathematician, biophysicist and mathematical neuroscientist. As of 2022, Bressloff is currently a full professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Utah.
Go to Profile#5341
Kenneth E. Torrance
#131257
Overall Influence
#5342
Wolfgang Kern
#131264
Overall Influence
#5343
Platon Grigor’evich Kostyuk
#131268
Overall Influence
#5344
David Robert Grimes
#32225
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
David Robert Grimes is an Irish science writer with professional training in physics and cancer biology, who contributes to several media outlets on questions of science and society. He has a diverse range of research interests and is a vocal advocate for increased public understanding of science. He was the 2014 recipient of the Sense about Science/Nature Maddox Prize for "Standing up for Science in the face of Adversity". He is a fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
Go to Profile#5345
Mark A. Mandelkern
#131289
Overall Influence
#5346
Galina Kurlyandskaya
#49407
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Galina Vladimirovna Kurlyandskaya is a Russian physicist, known for her works on giant magnetoimpedance. Biography Galina Kurlyandskaya was born in Kirovgrad, Soviet Union, in 1961 in a Russian family.
Go to Profile#5347
Michael Mendillo
#131310
Overall Influence
Michael Mendillo is a professor of astronomy at Boston University. His primary research interests include space physics, planetary atmospheres, observations and models. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and a longtime member of the American Astronomical Society.
Go to Profile#5348
David W. O. Rogers
#131313
Overall Influence
#5349
Alfredo Arrigo Sadun
#131345
Overall Influence
#5350
Oleg Dubovik
#131356
Overall Influence
