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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School

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Ranking

List of the most influential people in Physics,

#601

Marshall N. Rosenbluth

#27117

Overall Influence

#602

Geoffrey West

#4195

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Geoffrey Brian West is a British theoretical physicist and former president and distinguished professor of the Santa Fe Institute. He is one of the leading scientists working on a scientific model of cities. Among other things, his work states that with the doubling of a city's population, salaries per capita will generally increase by 15%.

#603

Sam Treiman

#14713

Overall Influence

1925 - 1999 (74 years)

Sam Bard Treiman was an American theoretical physicist who produced research in the fields of cosmic rays, quantum physics, plasma physics, and gravity physics. He made contributions to the understanding of the weak interaction and he and his students are credited with developing the so-called standard model of elementary particle physics. He was a Higgins professor of physics at Princeton University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group. He was a student of Enrico Fermi and John Alexander Simpson Jr. Treiman published articles on quant...

#604

Hilde Levi

#8859

Overall Influence

1909 - 2003 (94 years)

Hilde Levi was a German-Danish physicist. She was a pioneer of the use of radioactive isotopes in biology and medicine, notably the techniques of radiocarbon dating and autoradiography. In later life she became a scientific historian, and published a biography of George de Hevesy.

#605

Peter A. Sturrock

#4919

Overall Influence

1924 - Present (100 years)

Peter Andrew Sturrock is a British scientist. An emeritus professor of applied physics at Stanford University, much of Sturrock's career has been devoted to astrophysics, plasma physics, and solar physics, but Sturrock is interested in other fields, including ufology, scientific inference, the history of science, and the philosophy of science. Sturrock has been awarded many prizes and honors, and has written or co-authored many scientific papers and textbooks.

#606

Miguel Ángel Virasoro

#10095

Overall Influence

1940 - 2021 (81 years)

Miguel Ángel Virasoro was an Argentine theoretical physicist. Virasoro worked in Argentina, Israel, the United States, and France, but he spent most of his professional career in Italy at La Sapienza University of Rome. He shared a name with his father, the philosopher Miguel Ángel Virasoro. He was known for his foundational work in string theory, the study of spin glasses, and his research in other areas of mathematical and statistical physics. The Virasoro–Shapiro amplitude, the Virasoro algebra, the super Virasoro algebra, the Virasoro vertex operator algebra, the Virasoro group, the Vira...

#607

Shrinivas Kulkarni

Shrinivas Kulkarni

#9524

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Shrinivas Ramchandra Kulkarni is a US-based astronomer born and raised in India. He is currently a professor of astronomy and planetary science at California Institute of Technology, and he served as director of Caltech Optical Observatory at California Institute of Technology, in which capacity he oversaw the Palomar and Keck among other telescopes. He is the recipient of a number of awards and honours.

#608

Govind Swarup

#13932

Overall Influence

1929 - 2020 (91 years)

Govind Swarup was a pioneer in radio astronomy. In addition to research contributions in multiple areas of astronomy and astrophysics, he was a driving force behind the building of "ingenious, innovative and powerful observational facilities for front-line research in radio astronomy".

#609

Edward Robert Harrison

Edward Robert Harrison

#17196

Overall Influence

1919 - 2007 (88 years)

Edward R. Harrison was a British astronomer and cosmologist, noted for his work about the increase of fluctuations in the expanding universe, for his explanation of Olbers's paradox, and for his books on cosmology for lay readers. He spent much of his career at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and University of Arizona, both in the United States.

#610

Mikhail Voloshin

#18591

Overall Influence

1953 - 2020 (67 years)

Mikhail "Misha" Voloshin was a Russian and American theoretical physicist. Voloshin graduated from physics class of Moscow School 57 in 1970. Voloshin started working at ITEP in 1976 and accordingly earned his Ph.D. in 1977. In 1983 he received a Soviet medal and an award in physics. Beginning in 1990, he taught quantum physics at the William I Fine Theoretical Physics Institute, a division of the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering. In 1997 elected a fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2001 he was awarded J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics and ...

#611

Henry Stapp

#9188

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

Henry Pierce Stapp is an American mathematical physicist, known for his work in quantum mechanics, particularly the development of axiomatic S-matrix theory, the proofs of strong nonlocality properties, and the place of free will in the "orthodox" quantum mechanics of John von Neumann.

#612

Russell Stannard

#9543

Overall Influence

1931 - 2022 (91 years)

Russell Stannard, was a British high-energy particle physicist. Stannard was born in London, England. He was a Professor of Physics at the Open University . In 1986, he was awarded the Templeton UK Project Award for "significant contributions to the field of spiritual values; in particular for contributions to greater understanding of science and religion". He was awarded the OBE for "contributions to physics, the Open University, and the popularisation of science" and the Bragg Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics for "distinguished contributions to the teaching of physics" . He was...

#613

Gerald Feinberg

#15283

Overall Influence

1933 - 1992 (59 years)

Gerald Feinberg was a Columbia University physicist, futurist and popular science author. He spent a year as a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, and two years at the Brookhaven Laboratories. Feinberg went to Bronx High School of Science with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow and obtained his bachelor's and graduate degrees from Columbia University. His father was Yiddish poet and journalist Leon Feinberg. Among his students were Scott Dodelson, physicist at Carnegie Mellon University.

#614

Arnold Flammersfeld

#15809

Overall Influence

1913 - 2001 (88 years)

Arnold Rudolf Karl Flammersfeld was a German nuclear physicist who worked on the German nuclear energy project during World War II. From 1954, he was a professor of physics at the University of Göttingen.

#615

Chris Hull

#13367

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Christopher Michael Hull is a professor of theoretical physics at Imperial College London. Hull is known for his work on string theory, M-theory, and generalized complex structures. Edward Witten drew partially from Hull's work for his development of M-theory.

#616

Tohru Eguchi

#13032

Overall Influence

1948 - 2019 (71 years)

Tohru Eguchi was a Japanese theoretical physicist. Life and career Tohru Eguchi was a professor at the University of Tokyo, and then at the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics at Kyoto University, of which he was acting director in 2009. From 2012, he was a specially-appointed professor at Rikkyo University. He dealt in particular with differential geometric methods in physics, with Superstring theory, Conformal field theory, Topological quantum field theory, Lattice gauge theory, Quantum gravity, and the Theory of Gravitation.

#617

David Finkelstein

David Finkelstein

#7000

Overall Influence

1929 - 2016 (87 years)

David Ritz Finkelstein was an emeritus professor of physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Biography Born in New York City, Finkelstein obtained his Ph.D. in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953 and taught at Stevens Institute of Technology through 1960, while he also held a Ford Foundation Fellowship at the European Organization for Nuclear Research from 1959 to 1960. From 1964 to 1976, he was professor of physics at Yeshiva University. He became a member of the faculty at Georgia Tech in 1980.

#618

Lene Hau

#7494

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Lene Vestergaard Hau is a Danish physicist and educator. She is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics at Harvard University. In 1999, she led a Harvard University team who, by use of a Bose–Einstein condensate, succeeded in slowing a beam of light to about 17 metres per second, and, in 2001, was able to stop a beam completely. Later work based on these experiments led to the transfer of light to matter, then from matter back into light, a process with important implications for quantum encryption and quantum computing. More recent work has involved research into novel interactions between ultracold atoms and nanoscopic-scale systems.

#619

Chung-Yao Chao

#18499

Overall Influence

1902 - 1998 (96 years)

Chung-Yao Chao was a Chinese theoretical physicist. He studied the scattering of gamma rays in lead by pair production in 1930, without knowing that positrons were involved in the anomalously high scattering cross-section. When the positron was discovered by Carl David Anderson in 1932, confirming the existence of Paul Dirac's "antimatter", it became clear that positrons could explain Chung-Yao Chao's earlier experiments, with the gamma rays being emitted from electron-positron annihilation.

#620

Edward L. Wright

#23689

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Edward L. Wright is an American astrophysicist and cosmologist. He has worked on space missions including the Cosmic Background Explorer , Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer , and Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe projects.

#621

Julius Wess

#7455

Overall Influence

1934 - 2007 (73 years)

Julius Erich Wess was an Austrian theoretical physicist noted as the co-inventor of the Wess–Zumino model and Wess–Zumino–Witten model in the field of supersymmetry and conformal field theory. He was also a recipient of the Max Planck medal, the Wigner medal, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, the Heineman Prize, and of several honorary doctorates.

#622

Jacques Distler

#12322

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Jacques Distler is a Canadian-born American physicist working in string theory. He has been a professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin since 1994. Early life and education Distler was born to a Jewish family in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where he attended Herzliah High School . He attended Harvard University for both his bachelors and doctorate in physics. His 1987 thesis Compactified String Theories was supervised by Sidney Coleman.

#623

Konstantin Batygin

Konstantin Batygin

#16504

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (38 years)

Konstantin Batygin is an American astronomer and Professor of Planetary Sciences at Caltech. Early life Konstantin Batygin was born in Moscow, Soviet Union. His father, Yuri Konstantinovich Batygin, worked as an accelerator physicist in the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute until 1994, when he moved along with his wife Galina and their family to Wakō, Japan, and began working at the particle accelerator facility in RIKEN. There, Konstantin graduated from a public Japanese elementary school, later attending a Russian embassy-based school and studying the martial art Gōjū-ryū.

#624

Christof Wetterich

Christof Wetterich

#22918

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Christof Wetterich is a German theoretical physicist. Biography Born in Freiburg, Wetterich studied physics in Paris, Cologne and Freiburg, where he received his PhD in 1979. He worked at CERN in Geneva and DESY in Hamburg. Since 1992 he has a chair for theoretical physics at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. His major research interests are cosmology and particle physics. The development of the theoretical method of functional renormalization by Wetterich has found applications in many areas of physics, e.g. it provides a suitable framework to study quantum gravity , Yang-Mills theories...

#625

Ann Nelson

#18753

Overall Influence

1958 - 2019 (61 years)

Ann Elizabeth Nelson was a particle physicist and professor of physics in the Particle Theory Group at the University of Washington from 1994 until her death. Nelson received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004, and she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2012. She was a recipient of the 2018 J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics, presented annually by the American Physical Society and considered one of the most prestigious prizes in physics.

#626

Peter Goldreich

Peter Goldreich

#14897

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Peter Goldreich is an American astrophysicist whose research focuses on celestial mechanics, planetary rings, helioseismology and neutron stars. He is the Lee DuBridge Professor of Astrophysics and Planetary Physics at California Institute of Technology. Since 2005 he has also been a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Asteroid 3805 Goldreich is named after him.

#627

Sara Seager

#14357

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Sara Seager is a Canadian–American astronomer and planetary scientist. She is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is known for her work on extrasolar planets and their atmospheres. She is the author of two textbooks on these topics, and has been recognized for her research by Popular Science, Discover Magazine, Nature, and TIME Magazine. Seager was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2013 citing her theoretical work on detecting chemical signatures on exoplanet atmospheres and developing low-cost space observatories to observe planetary transits.

#628

Charles R. Alcock

Charles R. Alcock

#20139

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Charles Roger Alcock is a British New Zealander astronomer. He was the director of the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 2004–2022. Career Born in Windsor, Berkshire, England, Alcock attended Westlake Boys High School in the North Shore of Auckland from 1965 to 1968. Alcock earned his PhD in astronomy and physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1977. He began his career as long-term member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey . He was associate professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...

#629

Abraham Klein

#20776

Overall Influence

1927 - 2003 (76 years)

Abraham Klein was an American theoretical physicist. Klein received his B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1947, and his S.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University under Julian Schwinger. In 1955, he became associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, achieving full professorship in 1958 and retiring in 1994.

#630

Fred Singer

#3635

Overall Influence

1924 - 2020 (96 years)

Siegfried Fred Singer was an Austrian-born American physicist and emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, trained as an atmospheric physicist. He was known for rejecting the scientific consensus on several issues, including climate change, the connection between UV-B exposure and melanoma rates, stratospheric ozone loss being caused by chlorofluoro compounds, often used as refrigerants, and the health risks of passive smoking.

#631

Giuliano Preparata

#14472

Overall Influence

1942 - 2000 (58 years)

Giuliano Preparata was an Italian physicist. Biography He attended the High School Umberto I of Rome , and graduated in theoretical physics with honors in 1964. The following year he was in Florence with a CNR grant, later to become appointed as Professor. From 1967 to 1972 he was a research associate at several prestigious universities in the United States, including Princeton, Harvard, and NYU. From 1974 to 1980 he was a staff member in the theory division of CERN, in Geneva.

#632

Steven E. Koonin

Steven E. Koonin

#9551

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Steven Elliot Koonin is an American theoretical physicist and former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. He is also a professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering. From 2004 to 2009, Koonin was employed by BP as the oil and gas company’s Chief Scientist. From 2009 to 2011, he was Under Secretary for Science, Department of Energy, in the Obama administration.

#633

Fred Adams

#24126

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Fred C. Adams is an American astrophysicist who has made contributions to the study of physical cosmology. Fred Adams is the Ta-You Wu Collegiate Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan, where his main field of research is astrophysics theory focusing on star formation, planet formation, and dynamics. His seminal work on the radiative signature of star formation has provided a foundation for further studies in star formation. In more recent years, he has studied the formation and evolution of planetary systems, including the effect of the stellar birth cluster environment.

#634

Avi Loeb

#5607

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Abraham "Avi" Loeb is an Israeli-American theoretical physicist who works on astrophysics and cosmology. Loeb is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, where since 2007 he has been Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Center for Astrophysics. He chaired the Department of Astronomy from 2011–2020, and founded the Black Hole Initiative in 2016.

#635

Susumu Okubo

#22568

Overall Influence

1930 - 2015 (85 years)

Susumu Okubo was a Japanese theoretical physicist at the University of Rochester. Ōkubo worked primarily on elementary particle physics. He is famous for the Gell-Mann–Okubo mass formula for mesons and baryons in the quark model; this formula correctly predicts the relations of masses of the members of SU multiplets in terms of hypercharge and isotopic spin. Ōkubo died in July 2015.

#636

Eugene T. Booth

#8812

Overall Influence

1912 - 2004 (92 years)

Eugene Theodore Booth, Jr. was an American nuclear physicist. He was a member of the historic Columbia University team which made the first demonstration of nuclear fission in the United States. During the Manhattan Project, he worked on gaseous diffusion for isotope separation. He was the director of the design, construction, and operation project for the 385-Mev synchrocyclotron at the Nevis Laboratories, the scientific director of the SCALANT Research Center, and dean of graduate studies at Stevens Institute of Technology. Booth was the scientific director of the SCALANT Research Center, i...

#637

Herbert Fröhlich

Herbert Fröhlich

#9165

Overall Influence

1905 - 1991 (86 years)

Herbert Fröhlich FRS was a German-born British physicist. Career In 1927, Fröhlich entered Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich to study physics, and received his doctorate under Arnold Sommerfeld in 1930. His first position was as Privatdozent at the University of Freiburg. Due to rising anti-Semitism and the Deutsche Physik movement under Adolf Hitler, and at the invitation of Yakov Frenkel, Fröhlich went to the Soviet Union, in 1933, to work at the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in Leningrad. During the Great Purge following the murder of Sergei Kirov, he fled to England in 1935. Exc...

#638

Thomas Felix Rosenbaum

#5889

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Thomas Felix Rosenbaum is an American condensed matter physicist, professor of physics, and the current president of the California Institute of Technology . Previously, Rosenbaum served as a faculty member and Provost of the University of Chicago. He has also served as the vice president for research at Argonne National Laboratory.

#639

Marshall Rosenbluth

Marshall Rosenbluth

#6687

Overall Influence

1927 - 2003 (76 years)

Marshall Nicholas Rosenbluth was an American plasma physicist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, and member of the American Philosophical Society. In 1997 he was awarded the National Medal of Science for discoveries in controlled thermonuclear fusion, contributions to plasma physics, and work in computational statistical mechanics. He was also a recipient of the E.O. Lawrence Prize , the Albert Einstein Award , the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics , the Enrico Fermi Award , and the Hannes Alfvén Prize .

#640

Valery Pokrovsky

#13860

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Valery Leonidovich Pokrovsky is a Soviet and Russian physicist. He is a member of the Landau Institute in Chernogolovka near Moscow in Russia and a Distinguished Professor of Theoretical Physics and holder of the William R. Thurman ’58 Chair in Physics at Texas A&M University. He has twice received the Landau Prize of the Soviet Academy of Science, in 1984 and in 2018.

#641

Gerald Holton

#5094

Overall Influence

1922 - Present (102 years)

Gerald James Holton is an American physicist, historian of science, and educator, whose professional interests also include philosophy of science and the fostering of careers of young men and women. He is Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and professor of the history of science, emeritus, at Harvard University. His contributions range from physical science and its history to their professional and public understanding, from studies on gender problems and ethics in science careers to those on the role of immigrants. These have been acknowledged by an unusually wide spectrum of appointments and...

#642

Masud Ahmad

#12148

Overall Influence

1942 - 2018 (76 years)

Muhammad Masud Ahmad , best known as Masood Ahmad, was a Pakistani theoretical physicist and ICTP laureate known for his work in dual resonance and Veneziano model, a strings sting mathematically described the fundamental forces and forms of matter in quantum state.

#643

Adrian Melott

#19562

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Adrian Lewis Melott is an American physicist. He is one of the pioneers of using large-scale computing to investigate the formation of large-scale structure in a Universe dominated by dark matter. He later turned his attention to an area he calls “astrobiophysics”, examining a variety of ways that external events in our galaxy may have influenced the course of life on Earth, including analysis of gamma-ray burst events.

#644

Irwin I. Shapiro

#15493

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

Irwin Ira Shapiro is an American astrophysicist and Timken University Professor at Harvard University. He has been a professor at Harvard since 1982. He was the director of the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian from 1982 to 2004.

#645

Edward Kolb

#25065

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Edward W. Kolb, known as Rocky Kolb, is a cosmologist and a professor at the University of Chicago as well as the dean of Physical Sciences. He has worked on many aspects of the Big Bang cosmology, including baryogenesis, nucleosynthesis and dark matter. He is author, with Michael Turner, of the popular textbook The Early Universe . Additionally, alongside his co-author Michael Turner, Kolb was awarded the 2010 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics.

#646

Rajesh Gopakumar

Rajesh Gopakumar

#9355

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Rajesh Gopakumar is an Indian theoretical physicist and the director of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences in Bangalore, India. He was previously a professor at Harish-Chandra Research Institute in Prayagraj, India. He is known for his work on topological string theory.

#647

Kurt Binder

#25252

Overall Influence

1944 - 2022 (78 years)

Kurt Binder was an Austrian theoretical physicist. Biography He received his Ph.D. in 1969 at the Technical University of Vienna, and his habilitation degree 1973 at the Technical University of Munich. He decided to accept a professorship post for Theoretical Physics at the Saarland University, having an offer from the Freie University in Berlin as well at the same time. From 1977 to 1983, he headed a group for Theoretical Physics in the Institute for Solid State Research at the Forschungszentrum Jülich, prior to taking his present post as a University Professor for Theoretical Physics at the University of Mainz, Germany.

#648

George Sterman

#17130

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

George Franklin Sterman is an American theoretical physicist and the Director of the C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook University where he holds the rank Distinguished Professor.

#649

David Tabor

#15140

Overall Influence

1913 - 2005 (92 years)

David Tabor , FRS was a British physicist who was an early pioneer of tribology, the study of frictional interaction between surfaces, and well known for his influential undergraduate textbook "Gases, Liquids and Solids".

#650

Rudolf Haag

#4858

Overall Influence

1922 - 2016 (94 years)

Rudolf Haag was a German theoretical physicist, who mainly dealt with fundamental questions of quantum field theory. He was one of the founders of the modern formulation of quantum field theory and he identified the formal structure in terms of the principle of locality and local observables. He also made important advances in the foundations of quantum statistical mechanics.

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