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,

#6551

Sougato Bose

#148882
Overall Influence
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#6552

James Raymond Lawson

#85642
Overall Influence
1915 - 1996 (81 years)
James Raymond Lawson was an American physicist and university administrator. He was the president of Fisk University, a historically black university in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1967 to 1975. Early life James Raymond Lawson was born on January 15, 1915, in Louisville, Kentucky. His father, Daniel LaMont Lawson, was a Fisk alumnus, Fisk Jubilee Singer and an academic dean at Simmons College.
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#6553

Clifford Surko

#131536
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Clifford Michael Surko is an American physicist, whose works involve plasma physics, atomic physics, nonlinear dynamics and solid state physics. Together with his colleagues, he developed techniques for laser scattering at small angles to study waves and turbulence in tokamak plasmas and invented a positron trap that was used in experiments worldwide to study antimatter. Surko also developed other techniques for studying positron plasmas and examined atomic and plasma physics with positrons.
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#6554

Fiorenza Donato

#145092
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Fiorenza Donato is an Italian theoretical astroparticle physicist whose research involves the study of cosmic rays and their use in understanding the nature of dark matter, the possible products of particle collisions involving dark matter, the creation and behavior of antimatter among high-energy cosmic particles, and gamma-ray astronomy. She is a full professor of theoretical physics at the University of Turin.
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#6555

Jonathan Finley

#135862
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Jonathan James Finley is a Professor of Physics at the Technical University of Munich in Garching, Germany, where he holds the Chair of Semiconductor Nanostructures and Quantum Systems. His focus is on quantum phenomena in semiconductor nanostructures, photonic materials, dielectric and metallic films, among others, for applications in quantum technology. At such, he made major contributions to the characterization and understanding of the optical, electronic and spintronic properties of quantum dots and wires both from group-IV and II-VI materials and oxides .
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#6556

David George Hitlin

#142349
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
David George Hitlin is a professor at the California Institute of Technology, specializing in experimental particle physics. He was educated at Columbia University, where he received his B.A. in 1963, and Ph.D. in 1968.
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#6557

Diego F. Torres

#148993
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
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#6558

Moira Jardine

#140972
Overall Influence
Moira Mary Jardine is a British astrophysicist with an interest in young stars, particularly the structure of their magnetic fields and coronae, and the mechanisms by which they interact with their disks and planets. She was promoted to a Personal Chair in 2012, making her the first female professor of Physics at the University of St Andrews.
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#6559

Philippe Blanchard

#89835
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Philippe Blanchard has been a Professor of Mathematical Physics at Faculty of Physics, Bielefeld University since 1980. He is both director of the Research Center BiBoS and deputy managing director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at Bielefeld University.
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#6560

Raju Venugopalan

#149070
Overall Influence
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#6561

Jonathan Phillip Marangos

#149076
Overall Influence
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#6562

Stephen Jesse

#149102
Overall Influence
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#6563

Brett Denevi

Brett Denevi
#77111
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Brett W. Denevi is a Planetary Geologist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. She is currently serving as the Deputy Principal Investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. In 2014, Asteroid 9026 was named Denevi in her honor. She is the recipient of seven NASA group achievement awards and in 2014 she was awarded a NASA Early Career Fellowship. In 2015, she received a Maryland Academy of Sciences Outstanding Young Scientist Award.
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#6564

Toshimitsu Yamazaki

#149147
Overall Influence
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#6565

Michael Fleischhauer

#149161
Overall Influence
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#6566

Jørgen Beck Hansen

#149186
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
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#6567

Carlo Giunti

#149196
Overall Influence
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#6568

Melvin Barnett Comisarow

#100808
Overall Influence
Melvin Barnett Comisarow is a Canadian physicist and analytical chemist who co-invented the Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance technique of Mass spectroscopy, together with Alan G. Marshall, at the University of British Columbia. Comisarow was born in Alberta to a Ukrainian-Canadian family, and earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Alberta, 1963, before obtaining his PhD at Case Western Reserve University, under the supervision of George Andrew Olah in 1969, and subsequently a postdoc with John D. Baldeschwieler at Stanford University. His first academic appointment was at ...
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#6569

Zvi Y. Fuks

#149222
Overall Influence
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#6570

Laura Na Liu

#95949
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Laura Na Liu is a Chinese physicist focused on researching nano-optics of three-dimensional meta materials as it applies to biology and chemistry. After receiving her undergraduate and master's degree in China, she has had many global opportunities for education and research including Germany and the United States of America. Today, she is a professor at University of Stuttgart in Germany. She has received several awards for her contributions in the field of optics.
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#6571

Attila Szolnoki

#149286
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
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#6572

Jean -loup Gervais

#149289
Overall Influence
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#6573

Andrei Derevianko

#123650
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Andrei Derevianko is a Russian-American theoretical physicist. He is Sara Louise Hartman Professor of Physics at the University of Nevada. He was awarded the status of Fellow in the American Physical Society, after he was nominated by their Division of Atomic, Molecular & Optical Physics in 2008, for elucidating the role of the Breit interaction in atomic parity non-conservation, demonstrating the importance of higher-order non-dipole corrections in low-energy photoionization, and for pioneering calculations of higher-order many-body corrections to atomic energies and matrix elements.
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#6574

Joseph I. Kapusta

#149364
Overall Influence
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#6575

Gerhard Schroth

#149381
Overall Influence
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#6576

Oleg Nagornov

Oleg Nagornov
#111770
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Oleg Viktorovich Nagornov is a Russian physicist and mathematician. Since 2010 he has been the first Vice-rector of National Research Nuclear University MEPhI . Early life and career Oleg Nagornov was born on August 15, 1956, in Moscow, Russia. In 1979 he graduated from MEPhI, where he studied theoretical nuclear physics. In 1979–1982 he was a post-graduate student in MEPhI. In 1983 Oleg Nagornov started his career in MEPhI as a junior research fellow, became research assistant in 1985.
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#6577

Dragan Huterer

#149383
Overall Influence
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#6578

Mihir Chowdhury

#71125
Overall Influence
1937 - 2017 (80 years)
Mihir Chowdhury FNA, FASc was an Indian physical chemist and Professor and Head of Department of Chemistry at Presidency College, Kolkata and at the Department of Physical Chemistry of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science . He is known for his studies on the electronic structure of molecules using optical, magneto-optical and quantum-mechanical methods. He was an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy and the Indian Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded...
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#6579

Bhuvnesh Jain

#149415
Overall Influence
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#6580

Michael Spira

#149424
Overall Influence
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#6581

Yia-Chung Chang

#149413
Overall Influence
Yia-Chung Chang is a Taiwanese physicist. Chang studied physics at National Cheng Kung University and completed a doctorate in the same field at the California Institute of Technology. Upon graduating, he joined the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign faculty. Chen was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2001. He returned to Taiwan in 2005, as a research fellow at Academia Sinica.
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#6582

Giuseppe Dattoli

#149458
Overall Influence
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#6583

Alexander Van Oudenaarden

#149479
Overall Influence
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#6584

Howard A. A. Bird

#149491
Overall Influence
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#6585

Kandice Tanner

#79379
Overall Influence
Kandice Tanner is a Trinidad and Tobago biophysicist researching the metastatic traits that allow tumor cells to colonize secondary organs. She is a Senior Investigator at the National Cancer Institute, where she is head of the Tissue morphodynamics section.
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#6586

Ron Elber

#149500
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
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#6587

Peter Capak

Peter Capak
#91065
Overall Influence
Peter Lawrence Capak is currently the Architect of Perception Systems at the Oculus division of Facebook. His current focus is developing machine perception technologies, sensors, displays, and compute architectures for the next generation of augmented , mixed and virtual reality systems. His research has focused on using physical modeling and advanced statistical methods including artificial intelligence and machine learning to extract information from very large multi-wavelength data sets. He has primarily used this to study structure formation in the universe, cosmology, and the nature...
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#6588

Di Xiao

#149517
Overall Influence
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#6589

Subir Kumar Ghosh

#49341
Overall Influence
1932 - 2008 (76 years)
Subir Kumar Ghosh was an Indian structural geologist and an emeritus professor at Jadavpur University. He was known for his studies on theoretical and experimental structural geology and was an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, and the Indian Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean, and Planetary Sciences in 197...
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#6590

Feliciano Giustino

#149542
Overall Influence
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#6591

Benjamin. Tell

#149546
Overall Influence
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#6592

Stefan Pilz

#149554
Overall Influence
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#6593

Bhaskar J. Choudhury

#149555
Overall Influence
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#6594

Antje Strauß

#149562
Overall Influence
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#6595

Marek Sikora

#91977
Overall Influence
Marek Sikora is a Polish astronomer. He achieved his Habilitation of astrophysics in 1990 from University of Warsaw. He received the title of professor in 1999. Currently he works as a professor in the Centrum Astronomiczne im. Mikołaja Kopernika PAN, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. He is interested mainly high energy astrophysics, astrophysical jets, the nuclei of active galaxies, and sources of cosmic radiation.
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#6596

John M. Squire

#134099
Overall Influence
1945 - 2021 (76 years)
John Michael Squire was a British professor of structural biophysics in the University of London, a visiting professor at Imperial College London and a research fellow at the University of Bristol, where he researched muscle contraction and blood vessel glycocalyx structure. He was a Fellow of both the Institute of Physics and the Society of Biology. He was an emeritus member of the US Biophysical Society and an honorary member of the British Biophysical Society.
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#6597

Massimo Aglietta

#149627
Overall Influence
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#6598

Ilya Mandel

#149652
Overall Influence
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#6599

Elies Molins

#149666
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
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#6600

Dietrich Prof Dr Dipl Ch Demus

#149709
Overall Influence
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