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,

#6501

Anders W. Sandvik

#148187

Overall Influence

#6502

Glenn S. Orton

#148192

Overall Influence

#6503

Howard Wesley Johnson

#18126

Overall Influence

1922 - 2009 (87 years)

Howard Wesley Johnson was an American educator. He served as dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management between 1959 and 1966, president of MIT between 1966 and 1971, and chairman of the MIT Corporation from 1971 to 1983. He was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

#6504

Stephané Arnouts

#148263

Overall Influence

#6505

Yoav Shechtman

#74813

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Prof. Yoav Shechtman is an Israeli physicist. He is currently a Harrington Faculty Fellow at the The University of Texas after previously heading the Nano-Bio-Optics lab at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Yoav Shechtman is the son of Nobel Prize laureate Dan Shechtman.

#6506

J. J. Napolitano

#148294

Overall Influence

#6507

Nieng Yan

#111823

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

#6508

Vadim A. Kuzmin

#148309

Overall Influence

#6509

Jiří Patera

#120433

Overall Influence

1936 - 2022 (86 years)

Jiří Patera was a Czech-born Canadian mathematician and academic. He taught at the Université de Montréal and was known for his work in group theory, Lie groups, and cryptography. Life and career Patera attended secondary school in Děčín and subsequently studied theoretical physics at Moscow State University. There he met and married Tatiana Chalnikova. In 1964, he earned a doctorate from Charles University, pursued a postdoc at the University of Montreal and returned to Prague in 1966. In August of 1968, with Soviet tanks rolling into Czechoslovakia, he emigrated with Tatiana and their daughter first to the UK and finally settling in Montreal, Canada, a year later.

#6510

Mahlon Marsh Day

#112363

Overall Influence

1913 - 1992 (79 years)

Mahlon Marsh Day was an American mathematician, who specialized in functional analysis, geometry of linear spaces and amenable semigroups. Career In 1939 he graduated from Brown University. He became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in the years 1939-40 and later in 1948–49. In most of his career, between the years 1940–83, he was a professor of mathematics in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In June 1983, a conference named "the Geometry of Normed Linear Spaces" was held in honor of Day at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A proceedings issue to the conference was published in Contemporary Mathematics.

#6511

Boris Borisovich Kadomtsev

#148332

Overall Influence

#6512

Shlomo Alexander

#148358

Overall Influence

#6513

Jens Richard Rostrup‐nielsen

#148391

Overall Influence

#6514

Friedrich Simmel

#119682

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Friedrich C. Simmel is a German biophysicist and professor at the Technical University Munich. He is a researcher in the field of DNA nanotechnology and is best known for his work on DNA nanomachines and dynamic DNA-based systems.

#6515

Raffaella Morganti

#148422

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Raffaella Morganti is an Italian astrophysicist and radio astronomer. Her primary research interests are radio observations of active galaxies. She was head of the Astronomy group of ASTRON from 2007-2014 , and is currently a Senior Astronomer at ASTRON. She is also Professor of Astronomy at the University of Groningen's Kapteyn Institute.

#6516

Vasilis K. Oikonomou

#148435

Overall Influence

#6517

M. Gamal Moharam

#148468

Overall Influence

#6518

Per Osland

#142846

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Per Osland is a Norwegian physicist specializing in theoretical particle physics. He is a professor emeritus at the University of Bergen. Education and career Osland earned a degree in physics from the Norwegian Institute of Technology in 1968, and completed a Ph.D. at the University of Trondheim in 1975. He became a professor at the University of Bergen in 1987.

#6519

Kasturi Lal Chopra

Kasturi Lal Chopra

#60861

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Kasturi Lal Chopra was an Indian materials physicist and a former director of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He was the founder of the Thin Film Laboratory at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and the Microscience Laboratory at IIT, Kharagpur and held several US and Indian patents for his research findings. Author of a number of books on thin film technology, he was a recipient of 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 200...

#6520

William J. Schaff

#148489

Overall Influence

#6521

Valery Godyak

#140342

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Valery A. Godyak is a Russian-American physicist who specializes in plasma physics. As a scientist, he made fundamental contributions to the understanding of radio frequency induced discharges in plasmas as well as in associated nonlinear phenomena. As an industrial physicist, he developed induction lamps such as the Icetron-Endura RF lamp and received honors from companies such as Osram Sylvania and Siemens.

#6522

Jinhu Lu

#148525

Overall Influence

#6523

Anne Kernan

#66851

Overall Influence

1933 - 2020 (87 years)

Anne Kernan was an Irish particle physicist. Early life and education Kernan was born in 1933 to Annie Connor and Frederick Kernan in Glasnevin. She was the second of four children including Denis, Gerard, and Una. Kernan was educated in the Dominican College on Eccles St, because they had a class in physics. She went on to study physics at University College Dublin graduating with first-class honours in 1952. Kernan was the only woman in the class. After graduation Kernan went on to complete her PhD in physics in her alma mater in 1957. Kernan worked there as a lecturer for four years. She a...

#6524

Krzysztof Zbigniew Stanek

#148531

Overall Influence

#6525

Jerry Paul Draayer

#148521

Overall Influence

Jerry Paul Draayer is the Roy P. Daniels Professor of Physics at Louisiana State University. He was elected as a fellow of the American Physical Society, for "enhancing our understanding of collective phenomena in atomic nuclei through algebraic shell-model analyses, statistical spectroscopy studies of strength distributions, explorations involving pseudo-spin symmetry, and the application of nonlinear methods."

#6526

Shin Sung-chul

#76645

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Shin Sung-chul is a South Korean physicist and the 16th president of KAIST. Shin was the first president of DGIST since it changed its form from a research institute to a university in 2011. His main research areas as a scientist are spintronics and nanomagnetism. As of June 2014, Shin is the founding president of DGIST university, Fellow Professor of University of Ulsan, a member of Presidential Advisory Council on Science & Technology , the chair of Committee for Future Strategy, PACST, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society .

#6527

Marianna S. Safronova

#125983

Overall Influence

Marianna S. Safronova is an American scientist involved in theoretical atomic physics. Career Safronova received her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Notre Dame in 2001 and joined the National Institute for Standards and Technology in 2001 as a guest researcher. In 2003, she accepted a faculty position at the University of Delaware in the Department of Physics and Astronomy where she is currently a Professor. She is also an Adjunct Fellow at the Joint Quantum Institute, NIST and University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include the study of fundamental symmetries, a...

#6528

Jean Dumesnil

#143693

Overall Influence

1944 - 2022 (78 years)

Jean Dumesnil was a Canadian academic and cardiologist. He was distinguished by his work on coronary dilations and echocardiography. Bibliography Bon poids, bon cœur avec la méthode Montignac Bon poids, bon cœur au quotidien : de l'épicerie à la table : conseils et recettes

#6529

Philip Myron Solomon

#148555

Overall Influence

#6530

Willem J. Remme

#148575

Overall Influence

#6531

Wolfgang L. Wiese

#148581

Overall Influence

#6532

Romain Teyssier

#148584

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

#6533

Nicolao Fornengo

#148595

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Nicolao Fornengo is an Italian physicist. He is currently Full Professor at the University of Turin and he works on astroparticle physics, neutrino physics and cosmology. Biography He graduated in Physics at the University of Turin in 1990 with a first-class honour’s degree. In the same university he got a Ph.D, working in the group of Alessandro Bottino, and in 1995 he presented his dissertation: “Dark matter: neutralino relic abundance and its detection signals”.

#6534

James Gegan Miller

#95572

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

James Gegan Miller is an American physicist, engineer, and inventor whose primary interests center around biomedical physics. He is currently a professor of physics, Medicine, and Biomedical Engineering, emeritus, at Washington University in St. Louis, where he holds the Albert Gordon Hill Endowed Chair in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He is notable for his interdisciplinary contributions to biomedical physics, echocardiography, and ultrasonics.

#6535

José Mendes

#110394

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

José F.F. Mendes is a Portuguese physicist and professor of physics, best known for his work and contributions to the field of network theory.Graduated from University of Porto in 1987. He earned a PhD in March 1995 from the same University under the direction of Eduardo Lage, the title of the thesis was "Dynamics of spins systems".

#6536

Kenneth Sassen

#148631

Overall Influence

#6537

Michael S. Zhdanov

#148640

Overall Influence

#6538

Donald D. Bogard

#148655

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

#6539

Graham T. Reed

#148682

Overall Influence

#6540

Thomas M. Baer

#82681

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Thomas Baer is the executive director of the Stanford Photonics Research Center, a consulting professor in the applied physics department and an associate member of the Stem Cell Institute at Stanford University. His current scientific research is focused on developing imaging and biochemical analysis technology for exploring the molecular basis of human developmental biology and neuroscience. He received a B.A. in physics from Lawrence University in 1974, and a Ph.D. in atomic physics from the University of Chicago in 1979, where he studied with Professors Ugo Fano and Isaac Abella. After receiving his Ph.D.

#6541

Jonathan Arons

#148718

Overall Influence

#6542

Susan Coppersmith

#123563

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Susan Nan Coppersmith is an American condensed matter physicist. Formerly the Robert E. Fassnacht Professor of Physics and Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she moved in 2018 to the University of New South Wales.

#6543

John of London

#67197

Overall Influence

John of London , mathematician, was described by Roger Bacon as one of two "perfect" mathematicians, together with Pierre de Maricourt. Bacon probably knew John in Paris in the 1260s. No works are certainly attributed to him, but he may be the author of an influential table of stellar co-ordinates. He may also be the "Master John of London" who designed a form of astrolabe and was described by Roger of Lincoln as "astronomus famosus" .

#6544

Boris Svistunov

#105648

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Boris Vladimirovich Svistunov is a Russian-American physicist specialised in the condensed matter physics. He received his MSc in physics in 1983 from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, Moscow. In 1990, he received his PhD in theoretical physics from Kurchatov Institute , where he worked from 1986 to 2003 . In 2003, he joined the Physics Department of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he is currently full professor. He is currently also an affiliated faculty member of Wilczek Quantum Center in Shanghai at SJTU and is a participant of Simons collaboration on many electron syste...

#6545

Sirshendu De

#148760

Overall Influence

#6546

David Dew-hughes

#148785

Overall Influence

#6547

Felix J. Herrmann

#148788

Overall Influence

#6548

Narender K. Sehgal

#97846

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Narender K. Sehgal was an Indian physicist, scientific administrator, and science populariser. He was born in Lahore . He worked as Scientific Officer in the Theoretical Reactor Physics Division of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. In 1963 he went to US for his MSc and PhD in particle physics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He became professor of physics at the Somali National University in Magadiscio, East Africa. He returned to India in 1978 as visiting scientist at the Space Applications Centre of Indian Space Research Organisation . In 1982 he joined the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India.

#6549

Eric Weeks

#126792

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Eric R. Weeks is an American physicist. He completed his B.Sc. at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1992. He obtained a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997, working under Harry Swinney, and later completed post-doctoral research with David Weitz and Arjun Yodh at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently a full professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia .

#6550

Nelson Yuan-sheng Kiang

#148860

Overall Influence

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