Search People Result | Academic Influence

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,

#5751

Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky

#137280

Overall Influence

#5752

Jack Goldman

#22561

Overall Influence

1921 - 2011 (90 years)

Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman was an American physicist and former chief scientist of Xerox Corporation. He was also a faculty member at Carnegie Tech and directed the Ford Scientific Laboratory. He is especially notable for hiring physicist Dr. George Pake to create the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, which produced many seminal ideas in modern computing.

#5753

James J. Riley

#110516

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

James Joseph Riley is an American fluid dynamicist. He is PACCAR professor of engineering in the department of mechanical engineering of the University of Washington. Riley graduated from Rockhurst University in 1965. He received a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1972. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2014 for contributions in analysis, modeling, and computations of transitioning and turbulent...

#5754

Olga Kocharovskaya

#92816

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Olga Anatolevna Kocharovskaya is a distinguished professor of physics at Texas A&M University, known for her contributions to laser physics, quantum optics and gamma ray modulation. Education Kocharovskaya earned a doctorate in 1986 from N. I. Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod. Her research at that time was the first to study electromagnetically induced transparency.

#5755

R. A. Stradling

#95462

Overall Influence

1937 - 2002 (65 years)

Richard Anthony "Tony" Stradling , was a notable English semiconductor physicist, latterly professor of physics at Imperial College London. Biography Tony Stradling was born in Solihull, Warwickshire. He received his early education at Solihull School.

#5756

Julien Lesgourgues

#137316

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

#5757

Ineke De Moortel

#66073

Overall Influence

Ineke De Moortel is a Belgian applied mathematician in Scotland, where she is a professor of applied mathematics at the University of St Andrews, director of research in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at St Andrews, and president of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society. Her research concerns the computational and mathematical modelling of solar physics, and particularly of the sun's corona.

#5758

Stefan Weinzierl

#137329

Overall Influence

#5759

Gary Struhl

#126636

Overall Influence

Gary Struhl is an American research scientist whose primary areas of research are developmental biology and genetics and genomics. He works as a professor at Columbia University Medical Center, teaching neuroscience within the Department of Genetics and Development.

#5760

Douglas J. Tobias

#137333

Overall Influence

#5761

Amarjit Soni

#137340

Overall Influence

#5762

Geoffrey Dearnaley

#137348

Overall Influence

#5763

Andrew G. W. Leslie

#137396

Overall Influence

#5764

Huib Bakker

#79474

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Huib Johan Bakker is a Dutch physicist working in the field of ultrafast spectroscopy. He has been president of research institute AMOLF since 1 February 2016. Career Bakker was born on 2 March 1965 in Haarlem. He studied physical chemistry at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and obtained his master's degree in 1987. He subsequently became a PhD student under Ad Lagendijk at the AMOLF research institute. Bakker received his doctorate cum laude in 1991 with a thesis titled:"Time-resolved vibrational spectroscopy with picosecond infrared pulses". Between 1991 and 1994 he was a scientific assi...

#5765

Matthias Guckenberger

#137416

Overall Influence

#5766

Douglas Durian

#132600

Overall Influence

Douglas J. Durian is Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. He is known for his research contributions to the field of experimental soft matter, particularly in the areas of foams and granular flows. He has held multiple visiting professorships and leaderships positions in the soft matter physics community. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

#5767

Onkar Nath Srivastava

#65871

Overall Influence

1942 - 2021 (79 years)

Onkar Nath Srivastava was an Indian material physicist, an Emeritus professor of Banaras Hindu University and the vice president for India and South Asia of the International Association for Hydrogen Energy, who was known for his contributions to the disciplines of nanotechnology and hydrogen energy. He was the author of two books and over 440 scientific papers and a recipient of several honors including Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, the highest Indian award in the science and technology categories. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri, in ...

#5768

Lev I. Dorman

#137469

Overall Influence

#5769

Seiji Ueda

#122525

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Seiji Ueda is a Japanese astronomer. He is a prolific discoverer of minor planets. Between 1987 and 2000, Ueda discovered 705 asteroids. He holds an MD and Ph.D. from Stanford University and is on the staff at the Graduate University for Advanced Study in Japan. The inner main-belt asteroid 4676 Uedaseiji, discovered in 1990, is named for him.

#5770

Birgitta Whaley

#137482

Overall Influence

#5771

Peter J. Mohr

#137513

Overall Influence

#5772

Elisabetta Comini

#137514

Overall Influence

#5773

Keith Schwab

#97171

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Keith Schwab is an American physicist and a professor of applied physics at the California Institute of Technology . His contributions are in the areas of nanoscience, ultra-low temperature physics, and quantum effects.

#5774

Vasilij G. Shevchenko

#112487

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Vasilij G. Shevchenko is a Ukrainian astronomer, specialist in asteroid photometry, professor at the Department of Astronomy and Space Informatics of Kharkiv University. In 2012, he was awarded M. P. Barabashov Prize, the principal prize of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine for Solar System research.

#5775

Colin A. Norman

#137533

Overall Influence

#5776

Fatima Ebrahimi

#93405

Overall Influence

Fatima Ebrahimi is an Iranian-American physicist and inventor. She carries out theoretical and computational plasma physics research for applications including fusion energy and space and astrophysical plasmas.

#5777

Raymond Volkas

#137539

Overall Influence

Raymond Volkas is a theoretical particle physicist from the University of Melbourne. In 2016, Raymond was awarded the Harrie Massey Medal and Prize, jointly by the Institute of Physics and the Australian Institute of Physics, for his contributions to physics. Raymond is a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor in the School of Physics, at the University of Melbourne, where he has been a faculty member since 1993. He is the director of the Melbourne Node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Particle Physics and served as head of the School of Physics from 2014 to 2016. Some of Volkas's past awa...

#5778

Pål Brekke

#121707

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Pål Brekke in Oslo, NorwayUVSOHOESA He is now a senior advisor at the Norwegian Space Agency. He is a Norwegian delegate to the ESA Science Programme Committee , Programme Board of Human Spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration and Situational Awareness . He is also a delegate to the International Living With a Star .

#5779

Alexander A. Kaminskii

#137541

Overall Influence

#5780

Judith Lean

#116893

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Judith L. Lean is an Australian-American solar and climate scientist. She is a senior scientist at the United States Naval Research Laboratory. Lean is a three time recipient of the NASA Group Achievement Award and an elected member and fellow of several academic societies.

#5781

Tomasz Kapitaniak

#137605

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

#5782

Daniel Chonghan Hong

#113518

Overall Influence

1956 - 2002 (46 years)

Daniel Chonghan Hong was a Korean-American theoretical physicist. Hong was born in Seoul. He studied physics at the Seoul National University . In 1979 he received his bachelor's degree there, and in 1981 his master's degree. Afterwards, he started his doctorate studies at Boston University, which he finished in 1985 with a Ph.D. After that, he got a postdoc research position at the University of California in Santa Barbara, and later another position at the Emory University. In the year 1988 he became an assistant professor at the physics department of the Lehigh University. In 1994, he beca...

#5783

Iwo Białynicki-birula

#137618

Overall Influence

#5784

Donald L. Carpenter

#137626

Overall Influence

#5785

Hiroshi Kaneda

#127031

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Hiroshi Kaneda is a Japanese astronomer and discoverer of minor planets from Sapporo, in the northernmost prefecture of Japan. Kaneda ranks among the world's most prolific individual discoverers of minor planets. He is credited by the Minor Planet Center with the co-discovery of 705 numbered minor planets, between 1987 and 2000, all of them in collaboration with astronomer Seiji Ueda. Along with being an astronomer, Kaneda works as a computer programmer and is a developer of astronomical software.

#5786

Henry N. Chapman

#60155

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Henry N. Chapman FRS is a British physicist and the founding director of the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science at the German Electron Synchrotron . He has made numerous contributions to the field of x-ray coherent diffraction imaging and is a pioneer of the diffraction before destruction technique that allows to analyze biological samples with intense, ultrafast x-ray light, such as Photosystem II, a key macromolecule in photosynthesis.

#5787

Udayraj Khanal

#67427

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Udayaraj Khanal is a Nepali physicist specializing in cosmology. Having worked in the Central Department of Physics for 34 years, he is now an emeritus professor at Tribhuvan University. As a working professor, he taught mathematical physics, General relativity and cosmology to graduate students. Moreover, he was also actively engaged in the development of theoretical physics curriculum offered by the department.

#5788

Yang-Hui He

#81150

Overall Influence

Yang-Hui He is a mathematical physicist, who is a Fellow at the London Institute, which is based at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, as well as lecturer and former Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. He holds honorary positions as visiting professor of mathematics at City, University of London, Chang-Jiang Chair professor at Nankai University, and President of STEMM Global scientific society.

#5789

Andrew Childs

#70040

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Andrew MacGregor Childs is an American computer scientist and physicist known for his work on quantum computing. He is currently a professor in the department of computer science and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies at the University of Maryland. He also co-directs the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science, a partnership between the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

#5790

Hamish Lachlan Fraser

#137744

Overall Influence

#5791

Louis F. DiMauro

Louis F. DiMauro

#137734

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Louis Franklin DiMauro is an American atomic physicist, the Edward and Sylvia Hagenlocker Professor In the department of physics at the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA. His interests are atomic, molecular and optical physics. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Physical Society and Optical Society.

#5792

Wladek Walukiewicz

#137763

Overall Influence

#5793

Franz Ferdinand Heymann

#72921

Overall Influence

1924 - 2005 (81 years)

Franz Ferdinand Heyman was a British physicist who served as Quain Professor from 1975–80 at University College London. He was featured in Who's Who in British Scientists, Who's Who in Atoms and Who's Who in Technology.

#5794

Zongfu Yu

#137790

Overall Influence

#5795

Abraham Katzir

#125723

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Abraham Katzir is a Professor of Physics at Tel Aviv University, holding the Carol and Mel Taub Chair in Applied Medical Physics. He is the son of Professor Aharon Katzir, also a scientist, who was killed in 1972 in Ben-Gurion Airport by Japanese terrorists. His uncle, Professor Ephraim Katzir, was the President of Israel.

#5796

Eiji Saitoh

#137829

Overall Influence

#5797

Ali Hussain Reshak

#137839

Overall Influence

#5798

Hafner

#137874

Overall Influence

#5799

Edward Bormashenko

#56835

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Edward Bormashenko is a professor of Materials Science and the Head of the Laboratory of Interface Science of the Ariel University in Israel. He was born in 1962 in Kharkiv, Ukraine and lives in Israel since 1997. He studied in the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. His research is in the polymer science and surface science. He accomplished his PhD in Moscow Institute of Plastics in 1990.

#5800

Sekazi Mtingwa

#113321

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Sekazi Kauze Mtingwa: is an American theoretical high-energy physicist. He is a co-recipient of the 2017 Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators. He is the first African-American to be awarded the prize. Mtingwa was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2008 for "his definitive treatment of Intrabeam scattering, his contributions to the wakefield acceleration, and his early recognition of the fixed target physics potential of the next generation electron-positron collider." He also co-founded the National Society of Black Physicists in 1...

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