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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Physics,
#6051
Huang Hongjia
#28930
Overall Influence
1924 - 2021 (97 years)
Huang Hongjia was a Chinese scientist. He was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences , and a professor at Shanghai University. Life and career Huang developed coupling wave theory in the field of microwave theory. He led a research team that successfully developed single-mode optical fibers in 1980.
Go to Profile#6052
Stephen Michael Cohen
#141650
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#6053
John Walter Clark
#121804
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
John Walter Clark , is Wayman Crow Professor of Physics emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis, and a recipient of the Eugene Feenberg Medal in 1987 for his contributions to many-body theory.
Go to Profile#6054
Kiichirō Furukawa
#90059
Overall Influence
1929 - 2016 (87 years)
was a Japanese astronomer and discoverer of minor planets at the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory. Furukawa was also associated with Nagoya University Department of Astrophysics. Awards and honors Asteroid 3425 Hurukawa, a member of the Eos family and discovered by Karl Reinmuth at Heidelberg in 1929, was named in his honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 16 December 1986 .
Go to Profile#6055
Anne Green
#107919
Overall Influence
Anne Josephine Green AC is an Australian physicist and astronomer. She is a professor emeritus at the University of Sydney and was previously head of the university's School of Physics. She was also director of the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope for a decade.
Go to Profile#6056
J. Francis Smith
#141693
Overall Influence
#6057
Frank Herbert Attix
#141703
Overall Influence
#6058
Clifford Peter Burgess
#141715
Overall Influence
#6059
Alexandr Shiplyuk
#89936
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Alexandr Nikolayevich Shiplyuk is a Russian scientist, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a specialist in the field of gas dynamics. According to Kommersant, he is an expert of the scientific and technical council of the military-industrial commission, the Section of Hypersonic Weapons under the Government of the Russian Federation.
Go to Profile#6060
Cynthia Wolberger
#115973
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Cynthia Wolberger is an American structural biologist currently at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. On April 19, 2019, she was elected as a member of the National Academy of Science among 100 new members and 25 foreign associates.
Go to Profile#6061
Robert Alan Guyer
#141755
Overall Influence
#6062
Neil Cherry
#90303
Overall Influence
1946 - 2003 (57 years)
Neil James Cherry was a New Zealand environmental scientist. Biography Early life and family Cherry was born in Christchurch on 29 September 1946. His parents were James Conrad Cherry and Mona Hartley, who had married in 1940. Cherry could trace his ancestry back to the Cressy, one of the First Four Ships that started the settlement of Canterbury.
Go to Profile#6063
Michael Schreckenberg
#141772
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
#6064
Daniel E. Holz
#141781
Overall Influence
#6065
Charles M. Sommerfield
#114126
Overall Influence
Charles M. Sommerfield was a theoretical physicist and professor emeritus at Yale University. He is the namesake of the Bogomol'nyi–Prasad–Sommerfield bound. Biography Sommerfield studied for his bachelor's at Brooklyn College and earned his Ph.D. from Julian Schwinger at Harvard University in 1957. He worked at Berkeley and Harvard for two years each before becoming professor at Yale in 1961. He was a fellow of Trumbull College. Additionally, he has held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Study and the University of Florida.
Go to Profile#6066
Henk L. M. Granzier
#141852
Overall Influence
#6067
Michele Maggiore
#141863
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
#6068
Eileen Friel
#125936
Overall Influence
Eileen Dolores Friel is an American astronomer specializing in the metallicity of star clusters. She is a former director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory and Lowell Observatory, and a professor emeritus of astronomy at Indiana University.
Go to Profile#6069
Bonnie Buratti
#111284
Overall Influence
Bonnie J. Buratti is an American planetary scientist in the Division of Earth and Space Sciences at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where she leads the Comets, Asteroids, and Satellites Group. Her research involves the composition and physical properties of planetary surfaces, and volatile transport in the outer solar system.
Go to Profile#6070
Huey-Kang Sytwu
#23789
Overall Influence
Huey-Kang Sytwu is a medical researcher and administrator. Career He is the President of the National Health Research Institutes and a Distinguished Investigator at the NHRI's National Institute of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology.
Go to Profile#6071
Marcela Bilek
#84593
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Marcela Bilek is a Professor of Applied Physics and Surface Engineering at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her research interests focus on the use of plasma related methods to synthesise thin film materials and modify surfaces and interfaces. She was named Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2012 and Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for contributions to the science and application of plasma processes for materials modification and synthesis. Among her many awards are the Malcolm-McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year in 2002 and ...
Go to Profile#6072
Thomas. G. Rizzo
#141900
Overall Influence
#6073
Thomas G. Seyle D. Conor Coolidge Kelsey Weiss
#141903
Overall Influence
#6074
Michael Gregory Stabin
#141908
Overall Influence
#6075
Manoj Kumar Jha
#141911
Overall Influence
#6076
Poul S. Jessen
#107853
Overall Influence
Poul S. Jessen holds the position of Professor of Optical Sciences with a joint appointment in Physics at the University of Arizona. He is a founding member of the Center for Quantum Information and Control. He has done experimental research in the areas of optical lattices, quantum information, quantum chaos, and quantum optics.
Go to Profile#6077
Thomas Walz
#142003
Overall Influence
#6078
Bertram Josef Batlogg
#142017
Overall Influence
#6079
Rainer Schwenn
#142025
Overall Influence
#6080
Tetsuya Terasaki
#142046
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#6081
Earl W. McDaniel
#74937
Overall Influence
1926 - 1997 (71 years)
Earl W. McDaniel was a Regents Professor of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Georgia Tech Research Institute and is most noted for his contributions to the field of ion mobility spectrometry.
Go to Profile#6082
Antal Jákli
#134761
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Antal I. "Tony" Jákli is a Hungarian-American physicist and professor of chemical physics at Kent State University. He is known for his work with bent-core, flexoelectric, and ferroelectric liquid crystals.
Go to Profile#6083
Daniel Khomskii
#142076
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Daniel I. Khomskii graduated from Moscow State University in 1962. Starting in 1965, he worked in the Theoretical Department of the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow. There, he defended his PhD in 1969. In 1980, he obtained a second doctoral degree–the Russian equivalent to the German Habilitation or a professorship in the US. From 1992 to 2003, he was a professor at Groningen University in the Netherlands and since 2003, he has been a guest Professor in Köln in Germany.
Go to Profile#6084
Emanuele Berti
#142128
Overall Influence
#6085
Hong-yi Fanh. Fan
#142130
Overall Influence
#6086
Richard Fork
#134308
Overall Influence
1935 - 2018 (83 years)
Richard L. Fork was an American physicist. Dr. Fork received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from Principia College in 1957, and earned his doctorate in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began working for Bell Laboratories in 1962, and joined the faculty of Rensselaer Institute of Technology in 1990. Four years later, Dr. Fork left Rensselaer for the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Over the course of his career, Fork was granted fellowship of the American Physical Society and Optical Society of America. He retired in 2017 and died on May 16, 2018, of respiratory arrest in Huntsville.
Go to Profile#6087
Harindra Joseph S. Fernando
#106562
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Harindra Joseph S. Fernando is the Wayne and Diana Murdy Family Endowed Professor of Engineering and Geosciences at University of Notre Dame. He holds joint appointments in the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering & Earth Sciences and Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering. He also holds a concurrent appointment with the Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics.
Go to Profile#6088
Ian Aitchison
#114492
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Ian Johnston Rhind Aitchison is a physicist and retired academic who was Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford between 1996 and 2003. Career Born in 1936, Aitchison read mathematics at Peterhouse, Cambridge, graduating with a BA in 1958; he then completed a PhD in theoretical physics there in 1961.
Go to Profile#6089
Claudio Maccone
#97030
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Claudio Maccone is an Italian SETI astronomer, space scientist and mathematician. In 2002 he was awarded the "Giordano Bruno Award" by the SETI League, "for his efforts to establish a radio observatory on the far side of the Moon." In 2010 he was appointed Technical Director for Scientific Space exploration by the International Academy of Astronautics. Since 2012, he has chaired the SETI Permanent Committee of the International Academy of Astronautics, succeeding Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute, who held that position from 2002 to 2012. Maccone's two vice-chairs are his fellow Academicians...
Go to Profile#6090
Andrzej Antoni Zdziarski
#142171
Overall Influence
#6091
Yoon‐koo Kang
#142184
Overall Influence
#6092
Alan J. Bray
#142185
Overall Influence
#6093
Stefan W. Glunz
#142209
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
#6094
Mauro Giavalisco
#142274
Overall Influence
#6095
Giancarlo Castaman
#142292
Overall Influence
#6096
Mahendra Verma
#117249
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Mahendra Kumar Verma is an Indian physicist and professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur who works on fluid dynamics, turbulence, and nonlinear dynamics. Verma earned his bachelor's degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 1988, and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1994. He was awarded the Swarnajayanti Fellowship by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India in 2006, and the Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Cray HPC award, which honors high-performance computing contributions from India, in 2018....
Go to Profile#6097
Bodo W. Reinisch
#142329
Overall Influence
#6098
Wolfgang Bauer
#132992
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Wolfgang W. Bauer is a university distinguished professor in the department of physics and astronomy at Michigan State University. He is also an author, with co-author Gary Westfall, of the introductory calculus-based physics textbook "University Physics", published by McGraw-Hill in 2023 .
Go to Profile#6099
Claire Berger
#88485
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Claire Berger is a French physicist at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Director of Research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. Berger has co-authored about 200 publications in international journals and has a citation index of 10,880. She has won a number of prizes including the CNRS medal for Young Researcher and the of the French Physical Society. She was recently elected fellow of the American Physical Society.
Go to Profile#6100
Søren Paaske Johnsen
#142390
Overall Influence
