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,
#5351
Yuri Andreevich Simonov
#131388
Overall Influence
#5352
Peter Lu
#64843
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Peter James Lu, PhD is a post-doctoral research fellow in the Department of Physics and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has been recognized for his discoveries of quasicrystal patterns in medieval Islamic architecture, early precision compound machines in ancient China, and man's first use of diamond in neolithic China.
Go to Profile#5353
Dieter Richter
#131402
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
#5354
Mariangela Lisanti
#86692
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Mariangela Lisanti is an American theoretical physicist and an associate professor of physics at Princeton University. Her work focuses on understanding dark matter and dark energy using tools developed through artificial intelligence.
Go to Profile#5355
Iain William Stewart
#131423
Overall Influence
#5356
Marion Asche
#90804
Overall Influence
1935 - 2013 (78 years)
Marion Asche was a German physicist and professor of solid state physics. She is known for her pioneering work in semiconductor physics. Life Marion Asche was born in Berlin to Lisa Asche and Werner Asche. In 1941 she started school in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, but a year later, because of the bombing raids on Berlin, her mother took her daughter and son to Lauterbach near Putbus on the island of Rügen, where Asche went to school. In 1945, the family returned to their apartment in East Berlin.
Go to Profile#5357
Thomas A. Carlson
#131460
Overall Influence
#5358
Federico Rosei
#131492
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
#5359
David Alfred Jackson
#131494
Overall Influence
#5360
Knut Borchardt
#16153
Overall Influence
1929 - 2023 (94 years)
Knut Borchardt was a German researcher, historian and former professor for history and economics at both the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the University of Mannheim from 1962 to 1991. Moreover, he served as rector at the University of Mannheim between 1967 and 1969.
Go to Profile#5361
James Atkinson
#97169
Overall Influence
1916 - 2008 (92 years)
James Robert Atkinson, MA, FInstP, FRSE, FRMetS was a British physicist. Career On graduating from St John's College, Cambridge in 1938 he took a research post at the Air Ministry Research Establishment in Bawdsey Manor where he carried out research into ‘afterglow’ Cathode Ray Tubes, later taking on a special assignment to upgrade the Chain Home radar stations.
Go to Profile#5362
Alexander E. Bondar
#131586
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
#5363
Thomas Speck
#131589
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#5364
Franco Dammacco
#131590
Overall Influence
#5365
Richard B. Mazess
#131606
Overall Influence
#5366
Roland E. Olson
#131624
Overall Influence
#5367
Wolfgang Peukert
#131707
Overall Influence
#5368
Daniel Winske
#131713
Overall Influence
#5369
Philip H. Gaskell
#131728
Overall Influence
#5370
Dirk Kreimer
#41526
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Dirk Kreimer is a German physicist who pioneered the Hopf-algebraic approach to perturbative quantum field theory with Alain Connes and other co-authors. He is currently Humboldt professor at the department of mathematics of Humboldt University in Berlin, where he teaches the courses of Quantum Field Theory and Hopf Algebras and the Renormalization Group.
Go to Profile#5371
Rick P. Trebino
#131749
Overall Influence
#5372
Andrea Morello
#64406
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Andrea Morello is the Scientia Professor of quantum engineering in the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications at the University of New South Wales, and a Program Manager at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology . Morello is the head of the Fundamental Quantum Technologies Laboratory at UNSW.
Go to Profile#5373
Allan Boardman
#59141
Overall Influence
Allan Dawson Boardman was a British physicist, known for his work on surface plasmons and guided wave optics, especially nonlinear waves, solitons, magneto-optics and negative refracting metamaterials. He was a theorist and numerical analyst in these areas, especially magneto-optics and metamaterials. In 2006 he was made a fellow of the Optical Society of America for his contributions in these fields and for "exemplary leadership and service to the optics community".
Go to Profile#5374
Jim T. Enright
#44730
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
James T. Enright was a professor of behavioral physiology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. He has conducted research on circadian rhythms and sensory physiology in both crustaceans and humans, publishing 29 papers between 1980 and 1998. He was named as an AAAS Fellow in 1981 for his work in biological timing mechanisms and marine ecology. He was awarded, also in 1981, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's Senior U.S. Scientist Award for his work in visual physiology and optical illusions.
Go to Profile#5375
David Tománek
#127456
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
David Tománek is a U.S.-Swiss physicist of Czech origin and researcher in nanoscience and nanotechnology. He is Emeritus Professor of Physics at Michigan State University. He is known for predicting the structure and calculating properties of surfaces, atomic clusters including the C60 buckminsterfullerene, nanotubes, nanowires and nanohelices, graphene, and two-dimensional materials including phosphorene.
Go to Profile#5376
Leonid Yatsenko
#119932
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Yatenko Leonid is a Ukrainian physicist, professor, Doctor of Science, Director of The Institute of Physics of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Head of the National Research Foundation of Ukraine .
Go to Profile#5377
Rahul Pandit
#64341
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Rahul Pandit is an Indian condensed matter physicist, a professor of physics and a divisional chair at the Indian Institute of Science. Known for his research on phase transitions and spatiotemporal chaos and turbulence, Pandit is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and The World Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contr...
Go to Profile#5378
Dmitry Budker
#131877
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
#5379
Bascom S. Deaver
#90484
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Bascom Sine Deaver Jr. is a retired American physicist known for his research into superconductor applications, and a professor and assistant chairman for undergraduate studies of the physics department at the University of Virginia.
Go to Profile#5380
Leonard M. Sander
#131922
Overall Influence
#5381
Igor Zutic
#93520
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Igor Zutic is a Croatian-American physicist, focusing in spintronics and spin-polarized transport, high temperature and unconventional superconductivity, ferromagnetic semiconductors, theoretical nanoscience and computational physics at University of Buffalo and an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Go to Profile#5382
Alan E. Hedin
#131943
Overall Influence
#5383
Gašper Tkačik
#85013
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Gašper Tkačik is a Slovenian theoretical physicist and computational neuroscientist. Life and work After completing his International Baccalaureate from Bežigrad high school in Ljubljana, he enrolled in the department of mathematics and physics at the University of Ljubljana, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics in 2001. He continued his studies at Princeton University with William Bialek and Curtis Callan where he received a PhD in physics. Later he was a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania until he was employed at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria.
Go to Profile#5384
Lars Hultman
#38820
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Lars Hultman is a professor of materials science and head of the Division of Thin Film Physics at Linköping University. Since June 2013 Hultman is the CEO of The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research . He received his Ph.D. degree in Materials Science from Linköping University in 1988. He also did postdoctoral work at Northwestern University in 1989-1990 and was a visiting professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004-2006. In 1994 he became the editor for the journal Vacuum.
Go to Profile#5385
Tony Jun Huang
#32212
Overall Influence
Tony Jun Huang is the William Bevan Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University. Huang is an expert in the fields of acoustofluidics, optofluidics, and micro/nano systems for biomedical diagnostics and therapeutics. He is widely recognized for his breakthroughs in developing acoustic tweezer technologies to manipulate nanoparticles , cells and microorganisms in complex biofluids and applying acoustic tweezer technologies to various fields in biology and medicine.
Go to Profile#5386
Lyndon Jones
#129920
Overall Influence
Lyndon William James Jones is a British optometrist. Early life and education Jones completed his Bachelor of Optometry from the University of Wales in 1985 and earned his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Aston University in 1998. During his time in England, Jones and his wife Debbie ran their own private practice.
Go to Profile#5387
Ulla Mitzdorf
#60082
Overall Influence
1944 - 2013 (69 years)
Ulla Mitzdorf was a German scientist. She contributed to diverse areas including physics, chemistry, psychology, physiology, medicine and gender studies. Life and Scientific Work Mitzdorf gained her doctorate in 1974 at the Technical University Munich in theoretical chemistry. Subsequently she worked as scholar at the Max-Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich. In 1983 she habilitated in physiology, and in 1984 in medical psychology and neurobiology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Go to Profile#5388
Ernst Schmutzer
#105541
Overall Influence
1930 - 2022 (92 years)
Ernst Schmutzer was a German theoretical physicist. Life Early years Ernst Schmutzer was born in 1930 in a small village in western Bohemia, which at that time had been part of Czechoslovakia for slightly more than a decade. By May 1945, when the war ended, he had attended schools in three different local villages. The area was occupied by the Americans on 1 May 1945, and less than a year later the entire German speaking population had been expelled. Schmutzer's schooling continued across the border in Weiden. By the time he passed his school final exams in 1949 he had been relocated again, ...
Go to Profile#5389
Peter Pusey
#90710
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Peter Nicholas Pusey is a British physicist. He is an Emeritus Professor of Physics at the School of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Edinburgh. Research Pusey is a pioneer of dynamic light scattering and is known for elucidating the structure and dynamics of concentrated colloidal suspensions. He contributed to the development, underlying theory and applications of DLS. He was among the first to apply photon correlation techniques and, with colleagues, developed the now standard method of cumulant analysis for particle sizing. His theory, with William van Megen, of DLS by non-erg...
Go to Profile#5390
A. David Andrews
#103488
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
A. David Andrews is an Irish astronomer. He studied at Oriel College Oxford and University of Dublin. He spent the early 1960s in Denmark working with astrophysicist M. Rudkjobing at the Aarhus Observatory. He moved on in 1963 to Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland where he spent the next 35 years. Andrews discovered the minor planet 1727 Mette whilst at the Boyden Observatory located in Bloemfontein, South Africa, where he was acting director. It was while at Boyden Observatory that he commenced his lifelong work on flare stars. He was the first to make full use of computers, in 1968, at Armagh Observatory.
Go to Profile#5391
Barak Kol
#109682
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Barak Kol is an Israeli theoretical physicist who studies fundamental laws, high-energy physics, and general relativity. He holds the Michael Polak chair in theoretical physics at the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Go to Profile#5392
Barbara Terhal
#65694
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Barbara M. Terhal is a theoretical physicist working in quantum information and quantum computing. She is a professor in the Delft Institute of Applied Mathematics at TU Delft, as well as leading the Terhal Group at QuTech, the Dutch institute for quantum computing and quantum internet, founded by TU Delft and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research . Her research concerns many areas in quantum information theory, including entanglement detection, quantum error correction, fault-tolerant quantum computing and quantum memories.
Go to Profile#5393
Timothy A. McKay
#107729
Overall Influence
Timothy A. McKay is an astrophysicist and the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan. He is actively involved in physics education, including courses on “Physics for the Life Sciences” and Saturday Morning Physics. As of 2013, McKay's papers have over 30,000 citations and an h-index of 66. He considers publication and education vital to the scientific enterprise: “science isn’t science until you’ve shared it with someone else.”
Go to Profile#5394
Alexander Dolgov
#132152
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Alexander Dmitriyevich Dolgov is a Russian physicist and a professor at Novosibirsk State University and the University of Ferrara who is known for his contribution in cosmology and astroparticle physics.
Go to Profile#5395
Gordon Rostoker
#132157
Overall Influence
#5396
Joseph Mendels
#132161
Overall Influence
#5397
Nicolae Filip
#57502
Overall Influence
1926 - 2009 (83 years)
Nicolae Filip was a Moldovan physicist born in the village of Sofia, Bălți County to a family of farmers. He contributed significantly to the study of "The spread of ultrashort radio waves" and was elected as an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova.
Go to Profile#5398
Joseph J. Loferski
#116070
Overall Influence
1925 - 1997 (72 years)
Joseph John Loferski was an American physicist and a professor of engineering at Brown University. The New York Times called him "a pioneer in the development of solar cells". During his long and successful career he focused primarily on photovoltaic cells and their ability to convert the energy in light to electricity. Loferski also wrote and spoke extensively on the physics of semiconductor materials such as silicon, and methods of improving the efficiency of photovoltaic cells. Loferski's work and that of other early researchers proved that semiconductor devices could produce commercially...
Go to Profile#5399
Albert Whitford
#90846
Overall Influence
1905 - 2002 (97 years)
Albert Edward Whitford was an American physicist and astronomer. He served as director of the Washburn Observatory of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Lick Observatory. Early life Albert Whitford was born in Milton, Wisconsin, the son of Alfred and Mary Whitford. He earned his B.A. from Milton College and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin .
Go to Profile#5400
Kornelius Nielsch
#132202
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
