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,
#6601
Daniel N. Kasen
#149717
Overall Influence
#6602
David Chapman Langreth
#149720
Overall Influence
#6603
Ann McDermott
#91918
Overall Influence
Ann E. McDermott is an American biophysicist who uses nuclear magnetic resonance to study the structure, function, and dynamics of proteins in native-like environments. She is currently the Esther Breslow Professor of Biological Chemistry and Chair of the Educational Policy and Planning Committee of the Arts and Sciences at Columbia University. She has also previously served as Columbia's Associate Vice President for Academic Advising and Science Initiatives in the Arts and Sciences. She is an elected member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences...
Go to Profile#6604
Kurt Magnus
#24325
Overall Influence
1912 - 2003 (91 years)
Kurt Magnus was a German scientist, expert in the field of applied mechanics, a pioneer of mechatronics, modern navigation technology and inertial sensors. Kurt Magnus earned his doctorate in 1937 from the Georg-August University in Göttingen in the field of "force-coupled gyroscopes". In 1942 Magnus habilitated on the subject of "General movements of rigid bodies in moving reference systems".
Go to Profile#6605
Hans Volker Klapdor-Kleingrothaus
#147302
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Hans Volker Klapdor-Kleingrothaus is a German physicist who works in nuclear physics, particle physics and astrophysics. Biography Klapdor-Kleingrothaus studied physics at the University of Hamburg and received his PhD in 1969 with a thesis on gamma-ray spectroscopy at a particle accelerator. From 1969 until 2007 he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, originally studying heavy ion reactions. He received his habilitation in Hamburg in 1971 and in Heidelberg two years later. He has been a professor at the University of Heidelberg since 1980.
Go to Profile#6606
Christian Frankenberg
#149786
Overall Influence
#6607
Marco Tedesco
#62270
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Marco Tedesco is an Italian climate scientist at the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. Education and career He received his Laurea degree and PhD in Italy, from the University of Naples and the Italian National Research Council. He then spent five years as a postdoc and research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2012. During his time at CCNY, he founded and directed the Cryosphere Processes Laboratory. In January 2016, he joined Columbia University.
Go to Profile#6608
Kazuaki Takabe
#149803
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#6609
Ignacio Ramón Ferrín Vázquez
#129443
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
#6610
Adrian K. Dixon
#149808
Overall Influence
#6611
Apostolos Pilaftsis
#149824
Overall Influence
#6612
Neta A. Bahcall
#149830
Overall Influence
#6613
Taketani Mitsuo
#41257
Overall Influence
1911 - 2000 (89 years)
Taketani Mitsuo was a prominent Japanese physicist and Marxist. He published his Doctrine of the Three Stages of Scientific Development in 1936. This was the first Japanese contribution to the philosophy of science.
Go to Profile#6614
Bert Schroer
#149854
Overall Influence
#6615
Giancarlo Ruocco
#149860
Overall Influence
#6616
George David Gatewood
#135315
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
George David Gatewood also known as George G. Gatewood, is an American astronomer and presently is professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh and at the Allegheny Observatory. He specializes in astronomy, astronomical instrumentation, statistical methods, stellar astrophysics, astrometric properties of nearby stars and the observational discovery and the study of planetary systems. He came to popular attention with his 1996 announcement of the discovery of a nearby multi-planet star system. This discovery has yet to be confirmed and is regarded with skepticism today.
Go to Profile#6617
Paul John Ellis
#103642
Overall Influence
1941 - 2005 (64 years)
Paul John Ellis was a professor of physics at University of Minnesota for over 30 years. He is noted for his earlier work examining effective interactions inside nuclei, coupled channel approaches to nuclear reactions, and later work looking at dense nuclear matter inside neutron stars and developing a set of effective lagrangianss that take into account scale and chiral symmetry.
Go to Profile#6618
Mark W. Mahowald
#149878
Overall Influence
#6619
Karl Kunzelmann
#149960
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#6620
Kim Sung-Hou
#22992
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Kim Sung-Hou is a Korean-born American structural biologist and biophysicist. Kim reported the first 3D structure of tRNA with A. Rich in 1973. He also published many papers on the structures of protein molecules including human Ras, human cyclin dependent kinase 2 and small heat shock protein. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1994. He is currently a professor in the department of chemistry at the U.C. Berkeley and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory .
Go to Profile#6621
Peter Dipl Phys Pfeifer
#150005
Overall Influence
#6622
Robert Quimby
#137108
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Robert M. Quimby is an American astronomer who received his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to pursuing a career in astronomy, Robert Quimby was a member of the ska band 'Reel Big Fish', serving as a second trombonist. As a lead member of the Texas Supernova Search , Quimby and his team used the relatively small 18-inch ROTSE-IIIb robotic telescope on McDonald Observatory's Mount Fowlkes, along with a program he designed to track supernovae. In 2005, Quimby discovered SN 2005ap, at this writing the brightest explosion ever recorded. Quimby measured the burst at 100 billion times the luminosity of the Sun, at a distance of 4.7 billion light-years.
Go to Profile#6623
Leslie Kolodziejski
#93657
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Leslie Ann Kolodziejski is an American professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She works on fabricating novel photonic devices after synthesizing the constituent material via molecular-beam epitaxy. She is a recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation and is a fellow of The Optical Society.
Go to Profile#6624
Reinhard Prof Dipl Phys Ulrich
#150039
Overall Influence
#6625
C. E. Chrisitan Eggeling
#150051
Overall Influence
#6626
Alvin H. Schmaier
#150060
Overall Influence
#6627
Marin Alexe
#150142
Overall Influence
#6628
Dong Lai
#150145
Overall Influence
#6629
Russell T. Pack
#150156
Overall Influence
#6630
Todor S. Stanev
#150160
Overall Influence
#6631
Thomas R. Ayres
#150187
Overall Influence
#6632
Mishik Kazaryan
#67781
Overall Influence
1948 - 2020 (72 years)
Mishik Airazatovich Kazaryan was a Russian-Armenian physicist specialising in laser physics and optics, the winner of the State Prize of the USSR in the field of science and technology, foreign member of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences, member of the AM Prokhorov Academy of Engineering Sciences. Kazaryan was a creator of the brightest repetitively pulsed laser in the visible region of the spectrum.
Go to Profile#6633
Yoshio Masuda
#150247
Overall Influence
#6634
Leonid I. Glazman
#150250
Overall Influence
#6635
Marek Gazdzicki
#49421
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Marek Gaździcki is a Polish high-energy nuclear physicist, and the initiator and spokesperson of the NA61/SHINE experiment at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron . He, along with Mark I. Gorenstein, predicted the threshold energy of the quark–gluon plasma production in high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. These predictions have been confirmed by the NA49 experiment at the CERN SPS within the energy scan programme which was started by him and Peter Seyboth.
Go to Profile#6636
Gert R. Strobl
#150255
Overall Influence
#6637
Lester Hogan
#17427
Overall Influence
1920 - 2008 (88 years)
Clarence Lester Hogan was an American physicist and a pioneer in microwave and semiconductor technology. He grew up as a brother to three sisters in Great Falls, Montana, where his father worked for the Great Northern Railway. After graduating from Montana State University with a degree in chemical engineering he joined the United States Navy in 1942. He did some work on acoustic torpedoes in Chesapeake Bay, and when being approached by Bell Laboratories, subsequently went to the Pacific theatre to train submarine crews in the use of that technology.
Go to Profile#6638
Helmut A. Mayer
#150270
Overall Influence
#6639
Tobias. C. Owen
#150273
Overall Influence
#6640
Ronald Burge
#104559
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Ronald Edgar Burge is a former Professor of Physics at King's College London, where he was Wheatstone Professor of Physics from 1989 to 2000. Early life He attended Canton High School, a boys' grammar school, in Cardiff and King's College London .
Go to Profile#6641
Victor Lawrence Granatstein
#150287
Overall Influence
#6642
A. James Hudspeth
#51813
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
A. James Hudspeth is the F.M. Kirby Professor at Rockefeller University in New York City, where he is director of the F.M. Kirby Center for Sensory Neuroscience. His laboratory studies the physiological basis of hearing.
Go to Profile#6643
Arno Allan Penzias
#150340
Overall Influence
#6644
Zhou Peiyuan
#90073
Overall Influence
1902 - 1993 (91 years)
Zhou Peiyuan was a Chinese theoretical physicist and politician. He served as president of Peking University, and was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences . Born in Yixing, Jiangsu, China, Zhou graduated from Tsinghua University in 1924. Then he went to the United States and obtained a bachelor's degree from University of Chicago in spring of 1926, and a master's degree at the end of the same year. In 1928, he obtained his doctorate degree from California Institute of Technology under Eric Temple Bell with thesis The Gravitational Field of a Body with Rotational Symmetry in Einstein's Theory of Gravitation.
Go to Profile#6645
Vinay Ambegaokar
#150397
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
#6646
Emilia Kilpua
#74715
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Emilia Kilpua is a Finnish space scientist. She is currently Professor of Space Physics at the University of Helsinki. Background and career Kilpua was born and raised in Oulu, northern Finland, where auroras are commonplace in winter. She studied theoretical physics and mathematics at the University of Helsinki, followed by a Master's degree and PhD, with a thesis titled Interplanetary shocks, magnetic clouds and magnetospheric storms, which she completed in 2005. She undertook a postdoctoral research associate post in the Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley. She moved back to Finland i...
Go to Profile#6647
Steven Paul Hirshman
#150421
Overall Influence
#6648
Naoshi Sugiyama
#150424
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
#6649
Alan Ernest Exel. Rogers
#150457
Overall Influence
#6650
Qimiao Si
#150476
Overall Influence
