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,
#6301
Massimo Turatto
#145318
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#6302
Luís Amaral
#86066
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Luís A. N. Amaral is a Portuguese physicist recognized for his research in complex systems and complex networks. His specific research interests include the emergence, evolution, and stability of complex social and biological systems. He is best known for his work in network classification and cartographic methods for uncovering the organization of complex networks. He is currently professor at McCormick School of Engineering and Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University.
Go to Profile#6303
Frank Pieter Israel
#129179
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Frank Pieter Israel is a Dutch astronomer. He received his Ph.D. in astronomy at the Leiden Observatory in 1976, where he now is emeritus professor. Most of his work is dedicated to the Interstellar medium of external galaxies. The asteroid 7507 Israel is named for him.
Go to Profile#6304
Tomasotomaso Belloni
#145366
Overall Influence
#6305
Bruce S. Hudson
#145380
Overall Influence
#6306
Ayyub Guliyev
#127142
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Ayyub Salah oghlu Guliyev is an Azerbaijani astronomer, researcher in the field of comets and small bodiess. He is a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, professor, corresponding member of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences and a former director of the Shamakhy Astrophysical Observatory. He is member of the International Astronomical Union and European Astronomical Society.
Go to Profile#6307
Marina Bosi
#83327
Overall Influence
Marina Bosi is a Consulting Professor at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics . Originally a flutist and flute teacher, she is known for her work on digital audio coding formats.
Go to Profile#6308
Lisa Jardine-Wright
#119112
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Lisa Jayne Jardine-Wright is a physicist and educator at the University of Cambridge. She is Director of Isaac Physics, a Department for Education and The Ogden Trust supported Open Platform for Active Learning that supports school students learning physics.
Go to Profile#6309
Charles A. Burrus
#145420
Overall Influence
#6310
Todd Brun
#105987
Overall Influence
Todd A. Brun is an American engineer and physicist, currently a professor at University of Southern California. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society for "contributions to quantum theory and quantum information science, including decoherence and continuous quantum measurement, quantum computation, and quantum error correction." He is a coinventor of the method of entanglement-assisted quantum error correction, which allows for the use of shared entanglement in quantum error correction and for producing a quantum error correction code from an arbitrary classical error correction code.
Go to Profile#6311
Gene D. Sprouse
#145436
Overall Influence
Gene D. Sprouse is a Distinguished Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Stony Brook University and an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . His work is principally in experimental physics using accelerators, lasers, and nuclear spectroscopy to investigate nuclear structure. In particular he has with Luis Orozco studied the element Francium using laser trapping techniques. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the American Physical Society's series Physical Review from 2007 until 2015.
Go to Profile#6312
Kazuaki Fukamichi
#145441
Overall Influence
#6313
Christopher Sachrajda
#128238
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Christopher Tadeusz Czeslaw Sachrajda is a British physicist. He is a professor of physics at the University of Southampton since 1990. Education Sachrajda earned his doctorate from Imperial College London in 1974. His thesis was entitled Applications of perturbation theory to the high energy scattering of elementary particles.
Go to Profile#6314
Akihisa Matsuda
#145447
Overall Influence
#6315
Igor Vasil’evich Volovich
#145479
Overall Influence
#6316
Ulrich Specks
#145496
Overall Influence
#6317
Henry N. Chapman
#145501
Overall Influence
#6318
J. David Richardson
#145505
Overall Influence
#6319
George Trilling
#113594
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
George H. Trilling was a Polish-born American particle physicist. He was co-discoverer of the J/ψ meson which evinced the existence of the charm quark. Trilling joined the Physics Department faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1960, where he was Department Chair from 1968 through 1972. Trilling was on sabbatical leave to CERN in 1973–74, where he worked on the study of the properties of charm particles, their decay modes and excited states. He was also Director of the Physics Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 1984 until 1987. Trilling was a principa...
Go to Profile#6320
Ilkka Julkunen
#145612
Overall Influence
#6321
Yoshikazu Ishikawa
#145615
Overall Influence
#6322
Mario Luis Mateo
#145617
Overall Influence
#6323
Keitaro. Yoshihara
#145628
Overall Influence
#6324
Nikolaus Weiskopf
#145666
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
#6325
Kaneaki Tsuzaki
#145677
Overall Influence
#6326
Per-Erik Ellström
#33497
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Per-Erik Ellström, is a Swedish professor of education at Linköping University. Per-Erik Ellström was born in Köping, Sweden. In 1975, he obtained a master’s degree in psychology at Uppsala University, Sweden and in 1984 a doctoral degree in education at Linköping University. In 1998, he was appointed as a professor of education at Linköping University with special emphasis on education and learning in the work place.
Go to Profile#6327
Webster C. Cash
#145719
Overall Influence
#6328
Gilles Patriarche
#145764
Overall Influence
#6329
Giuseppe Marmo
#145766
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
#6330
Michael Bouchon
#145771
Overall Influence
#6331
Thomas G. Phillips
#145782
Overall Influence
#6332
Jan de Boer
#98245
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Jan de Boer is a Dutch theoretical physicist specializing in string theory. After a double master's degree in mathematics and physics at the University of Groningen, De Boer obtained his PhD from Utrecht University in 1993 with the dissertation Extended conformal symmetry in non-critical string theory. He continued his studies at Stony Brook University and University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#6333
Douglas Youvan
#67562
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Douglas Charles Youvan is an American scientist. Biography Youvan received an associate degree in electronics and a bachelor's degree in biology from Pittsburg State University. He received his Ph.D. degree in biophysics from UC Berkeley.
Go to Profile#6334
Alwyn Jones
#74882
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Thomas Alwyn Jones is a Welsh biophysicist and a professor at the Uppsala University in Sweden. Early life and education Alwyn Jones attended the primary school at Bedlinog, and went on to the Lewis School, Pengam where he studied his GCE Ordinary Levels and A-levels. He was educated at King's College London, where he received his BSc in physics and a PhD degree in biochemistry.
Go to Profile#6335
Rainer Behrisch
#145847
Overall Influence
#6336
Epaminondas Mastorakos
#145883
Overall Influence
#6337
Elizabeth J. Tasker
#120603
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Elizabeth J. Tasker is a British astrophysicist and science writer. Tasker is currently an Associate Professor at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and is highly active in science communication. Her first book, The Planet Factory, was published by Bloomsbury in 2017.
Go to Profile#6338
Javier Aizpurua
#145939
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
#6339
Rolf Dr. Brendel
#145946
Overall Influence
#6340
Robert Henry Bragg Jr.
#70279
Overall Influence
1919 - 2017 (98 years)
Robert Henry “Pete” Bragg Jr. , was a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the UC Berkeley College of Engineering. Education Bragg attended Tilden Technical High School and Woodrow Wilson Junior College in Chicago. Bragg served in the military during World War II, and then used the money allotted to him from the G.I. Bill to attend Illinois Institute of Technology , and pursue a career in physics. Bragg earned a BS degree in 1949 and an MS degree in 1951 and subsequently worked for the Dover Electroplating Company and at the Portland Cement Association Research Laboratory.
Go to Profile#6341
Mark G. Kuzyk
#59050
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Mark G. Kuzyk is an American physicist. He received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1985, then was a member of technical staff at Bell Labs in Princeton, New Jersey from 1985 to 1990. He has been a professor of physics and astronomy at Washington State University since 1990, where he has served as associate chair of Physics, Chair of the Materials Science Program, and Chair of Graduate Studies in Physics.
Go to Profile#6342
Slavik Tabakov
#64463
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Slavik Tabakov is a British-Bulgarian medical physicist, President of the International Organization for Medical Physics 2015-2018 and Vice-President of the International Union for Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine 2018-2021. He has made significant contributions to the development and global dissemination of medical physics education and training and has pioneered e-learning in the profession.
Go to Profile#6343
Akira Ohtomo
#146006
Overall Influence
#6344
Kresse
#146013
Overall Influence
#6345
R. Alan Johnson
#146018
Overall Influence
#6346
Robert Hugh Sanders
#146019
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
#6347
Édouard Brézin
#146036
Overall Influence
#6348
Isao Morishima
#146056
Overall Influence
#6349
Jiangyong Jia
#146057
Overall Influence
#6350
The Taiji Scientific Collaboration
#146062
Overall Influence
