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,
#5701
Georges Meynet
#136454
Overall Influence
#5702
Götz Paschmann
#136458
Overall Influence
#5703
Henry Charnock
#87453
Overall Influence
1920 - 1997 (77 years)
Henry Charnock was a British meteorologist., over a water surface by: is the friction velocity is the acceleration due to gravity Charnock was President of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics from 1971 to 1975.
Go to Profile#5704
Mario Amzel
#135337
Overall Influence
1942 - 2021 (79 years)
León Mario Amzel was an Argentine chemist, biophysicist, professor and former director of the Department of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He was known for his work in biophysics; structural biology; and assisting with the development of the first high-resolution images of how antibody-antigen recognition occurs.
Go to Profile#5705
Andries Rinse Miedema
#136533
Overall Influence
#5706
Shigenobu Nagataki
#136541
Overall Influence
#5707
Jonathan Bamber
#86745
Overall Influence
Jonathan Louis Bamber is a British physicist known for his work on satellite remote sensing of the polar regions and especially the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. He has authored more than 200 refereed scientific publications about the cryosphere and its interaction with the rest of the Earth System, and is recognised by the Institute for Scientific Information as a "highly cited researcher”. In 2019 he was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union "For pioneering satellite remote sensing in glaciology and building bridges to other disciplines of the geoscience community." He is ...
Go to Profile#5708
Anatoly V. Radyushkin
#136567
Overall Influence
#5709
Ray Kidder
#45007
Overall Influence
1923 - 2019 (96 years)
Ray E. Kidder was an American physicist and nuclear weapons designer. He is best known for his outspoken views on nuclear weapons policy issues, including nuclear testing, stockpile management, and arms control.
Go to Profile#5710
Klaus Werner
#136583
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#5711
J. Virginia Lincoln
#81618
Overall Influence
1915 - 2003 (88 years)
Jeannette Virginia Lincoln was an American physicist. Early life Lincoln was born on September 7, 1915, in Ames, Iowa. He parents were Rush B. Lincoln and Jeannette Bartholomew Lincoln. Her father was a major general in the US Army Air Forces. Lincoln's mother taught chemistry at Iowa State University. Her brother, Rush B. Lincoln Jr. became a Major General in the US Army. Their grandfather Lincoln fought in the Civil War as a Confederate captain. Lincoln was unsurprisingly deep into her family's military life and continued with this throughout her life.
Go to Profile#5712
Alexander N. Krot
#136612
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#5713
Masanao Abe
#136617
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
#5714
Joachim Birn
#136623
Overall Influence
#5715
Bengt Edlén
#136637
Overall Influence
#5716
Hoi Kwong Lo
#136638
Overall Influence
#5717
Annick Pouquet
#128171
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Annick Gabrielle Pouquet is a computational plasma physicist specializing in plasma turbulence. She was awarded the 2020 Hannes Alfvén Prize for "fundamental contributions to quantifying energy transfer in magneto-fluid turbulence". She currently holds positions in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and National Center for Atmospheric Research at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Go to Profile#5718
Carlo. G. Pantano
#136688
Overall Influence
#5719
Ralph Skomski
#136708
Overall Influence
#5720
Jenny Rosenthal Bramley
#64437
Overall Influence
1909 - 1997 (88 years)
Jenny Rosenthal Bramley was a Russian-born American physicist. She holds numerous patents on Electroluminescence and Electro-optics and is cited by the IEEE as being "well known for her innovative work in lasers." She was the second woman elected as a fellow of the IEEE.
Go to Profile#5721
Pascal Démoulin
#136715
Overall Influence
#5722
Krzysztof Redlich
#136731
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
#5723
Aviva Gileadi
#89448
Overall Influence
1917 - 2001 (84 years)
Aviva E. Gileadi was an Israeli nuclear scientist, a professor at the Israel Institute of Technology in the department of Nuclear Engineering. She was a specialist in the use of Nuclear reactors for energy production and Desalination. She was the first woman in the Western Bloc to receive a license for the operation of a nuclear reactor and the only one with such a license in 1963.
Go to Profile#5724
Tang Chao
#103344
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Tang Chao is a Chair Professor of Physics and Systems Biology at Peking University. Education He had his undergraduate training at the University of Science and Technology of China, then went to the United States through the CUSPEA program organized by Professor T. D. Lee. He received a Ph.D. degree in Physics from the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#5725
Lenka Zdeborová
#94195
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Lenka Zdeborová is a Czech physicist and computer scientist who applies methods from statistical physics to machine learning and constraint satisfaction problems. She is a professor of physics and computer science and communication systems at EPFL .
Go to Profile#5726
Ari Tapio Friberg
#136799
Overall Influence
#5727
Emilio Herrera
#136815
Overall Influence
#5728
Hirota Fujiki
#136817
Overall Influence
#5729
Kuk Young
#59971
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Kuk Young is a South Korean physicist, former physics professor and vice-provost of research of Seoul National University, distinguished professor of Ewha Womans University, and chairman of the Samsung Science and Technology Foundation. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, Korean Academy of Science and Technology, Institute of Physics, Korean Physical Society, and Korean Vacuum Society. He has performed editor roles for the journals Nanotechnology, ACS Nano, and Solid State Electronics and is the fourth president of Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology .
Go to Profile#5730
Charles Edward Siewert
#136823
Overall Influence
#5731
Fabrizio Gasparini
#136827
Overall Influence
#5732
Dietrich Von Der Linde
#136884
Overall Influence
#5733
Daniel Jobst Müller
#90005
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Daniel Jobst Müller is a German scientist and Professor of Biophysics at ETH Zürich. He is known for work on single molecule and cell biophysics, bionanotechnology, and membrane proteins. Education Müller was educated in physics at the University of Technology Berlin and the Hahn-Meitner-Institute in Berlin, Germany. He did his PhD research at University of Basel with Andreas Engel and Forschungszentrum Jülich with Goerg Büldt. He was awarded his PhD in 1997 in Life Sciences at the University of Basel.
Go to Profile#5734
Knut H. Stamnes
#136914
Overall Influence
#5735
Jeffrey Kiehl
#136710
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jeffrey Theodore Kiehl is an American climate scientist. He is head of the Climate Change Research Section in the National Center for Atmospheric Research located in Boulder, Colorado. He completed his atmospheric science doctoral studies at the University at Albany, SUNY.
Go to Profile#5736
Friedrich Kremer
#136987
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
#5737
Boris Martinac
#137000
Overall Influence
#5738
Avraham Halperin
#137035
Overall Influence
#5739
Markus Kissler-Patig
#121559
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Markus Kissler-Patig is a German astronomer, previously based at the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany. In August 2012, he was appointed director of the Gemini Observatory. From 2017 to 2019 he was deputy director for science at ESO and since 2019 he has been the head of science operations at ESA.
Go to Profile#5740
Charles J. Joachain
#102613
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Charles J. Joachain is a Belgian physicist. Biography Born in Brussels on 9 May 1937, Charles J. Joachain obtained his Ph.D. in Physics in 1963 at the Université Libre de Bruxelles . From 1964 to 1965 he was a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Belgian American Educational Foundation at the University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and from 1965 to 1966 a Research Physicist at these institutions. At the Université Libre de Bruxelles he was appointed chargé de cours associé in 1965, chargé de cours in 1968, professeur extraordinaire in 1971 and professeur ordinaire in 1978.
Go to Profile#5741
Thomas Tzu Szu Kuo
#137088
Overall Influence
#5742
Noah Finkelstein
#83293
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Noah David Finkelstein is a professor of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is a founding co-director of the Colorado Center for STEM Learning, a President’s Teaching Scholar, and the inaugural Timmerhaus Teaching Ambassador. His research focuses on physics education and on developing models of context, the scope of which involves students, departments, and institutional scales of transformation. In 2010, Finkelstein testified to the United States House Committee on Science, Space and Technology on how to strengthen undergraduate and postgraduate STEM education.
Go to Profile#5743
Josef A. Käs
#130270
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Josef A. Käs is a German biophysicist, currently occupied as a full professor at Leipzig University . Josef A. Käs's research mainly focuses on soft matter physics of cancer. More recently , he has significantly contributed to cancer cell unjamming.
Go to Profile#5744
Askar Dzhumadildayev
#38937
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Askar Dzhumadildayev is a Kazakh mathematician, doctor of physics and mathematics, professor, Full Member of the Kazakhstan National Academy of Science. He was also member Supreme Council of Kazakh SSR and Republic of Kazakhstan.
Go to Profile#5745
Denis Hall
#71930
Overall Influence
Denis R Hall FRSE FIEEE FIEE FInstP is a professor of photonics at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. In 2004 he was awarded the Association of Laser Users award for his contributions to the development of industrial lasers and their applications.
Go to Profile#5746
Alan Kostelecky
#82612
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
V. Alan Kostelecký is a theoretical physicist who is a distinguished professor of physics at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is noted for his work on Lorentz symmetry breaking in particle physics. He has been described as the world's leading authority on violations of space-time symmetry.
Go to Profile#5747
Tony McDonnell
#129177
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Tony McDonnell is a Professor of Planetary and Space Sciences. Specialising in space science and a recognised authority in cosmic dust, he was Professor of Space Sciences at the University of Kent and Professor of Planetary and Space Sciences at the Open University.
Go to Profile#5748
James Rayford. Nix
#137206
Overall Influence
#5749
Torleif Ericson
#127381
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Torleif Erik Oskar Ericson, born November 2, 1930 in Lund, is a Swedish nuclear theoretical physicist. He is known for 'Ericson fluctuations' and the 'Ericson-Ericson Lorentz-Lorenz effect'. His research has nurtured the link between nuclear and particle physics.
Go to Profile#5750
Norbert Marwan
#137227
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
