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,
#6801
Alan James Duncan
#136008
Overall Influence
1938 - 1999 (61 years)
Alan James Duncan FRSE FRSA was a Scottish atomic physicist who created a metastable atomic hydrogen beam apparatus used to first observe the two-photon decay of metastable hydrogen and measure fundamental predictions of quantum theory.
Go to Profile#6802
Toshio Ando
#152604
Overall Influence
1910 - Present (116 years)
#6803
Dale E. Newbury
#152625
Overall Influence
#6804
Yuji Itai
#152641
Overall Influence
#6805
Joachim Peinke
#152675
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
#6806
Yurii A. Ovchinnikov
#152693
Overall Influence
#6807
Yale E. Goldman
#152696
Overall Influence
#6808
Avinash Deshpande
#114219
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Avinash Anant Deshpande is an Indian astrophysicist and a professor of physics at Raman Research Institute. Known for his research on astrophysics, Deshpande is known to have contributed towards the studies of the pulsar magnetospheric emission regions and in the elucidation of unphysically ultradense neutral hydrogen irregularities in the interstellar space.
Go to Profile#6809
Taylor Francis Online
#152711
Overall Influence
#6810
Clement Pryke
#139897
Overall Influence
Clement Laurence Pryke is an English-American physicist, focusing in astrophysics and cosmology, particularly on the cosmic microwave background. Education and career Pryke worked from 1988 to 1989 as a research assistant at Thorn EMI Central Research Labs in the UK. He graduated in physics from the University of Leeds in 1992 with a B.Sc. and in 1996 with a Ph.D. His Ph.D. thesis Instrumentation development and experimental design for a next generation detector of the highest energy cosmic rays was supervised by Alan Andrew Watson. At the Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago, ...
Go to Profile#6811
Nabila Aghanim
#126073
Overall Influence
Nabila Aghanim is an Algerian observational cosmologist whose research concerns the interpretation of the cosmic microwave background and the light it sheds on galaxy formation and evolution, and the structure of galaxy filaments and the warm–hot intergalactic medium. She works in France as a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research , associated with the Institut d'astrophysique spatiale at the University of Paris-Saclay.
Go to Profile#6812
Eline Tolstoy
#134434
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Eline Tolstoy is a Dutch astronomer. Life and education Tolstoy grew up in Scotland and gained a BSc from the University of Edinburgh in 1988. She studied at Leiden University and then in 1995, she received her doctorate from the University of Groningen, under the supervision of A. Saha, Piet van der Kruit and Harvey Butcher. The title of her thesis was `Modeling the resolved stellar populations of nearby dwarf galaxies'.
Go to Profile#6813
Eric Braaten
#152773
Overall Influence
#6814
Fokke Tuinstra
#152775
Overall Influence
#6815
Michael K. Rosen
#152783
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
#6816
Victor Ryzhii
#152787
Overall Influence
#6817
Volker Burkert
#115476
Overall Influence
Volker D. Burkert is a German physicist, academic and researcher. He is a Principal Staff Scientist at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Virginia . He has made major contributions to the design of the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer that made it suitable for high luminosity operation in experiments studying spin-polarized electron scattering.
Go to Profile#6818
Elisa Quintana
#115630
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Elisa Victoria Quintana is a scientist working in the field of astronomy and planetary science at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Her research focuses the detection and characterization of exoplanets in addition to studying how they form. She is best known for the detection of Kepler 186f, the first Earth-sized planet found in the habitable zone of a star other than the Sun.
Go to Profile#6819
R. F. G. Griffin
#152869
Overall Influence
#6820
Gregory A. Houseman
#152870
Overall Influence
#6821
Michael M. Shara
#152896
Overall Influence
#6822
Edward V. Browell
#152909
Overall Influence
#6823
Daniel Malacara
#152951
Overall Influence
#6824
Massoud Ali-Mohammadi
#122956
Overall Influence
1959 - 2010 (51 years)
Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was an Iranian quantum field theorist and elementary-particle physicist and a distinguished professor of elementary particle physics at the University of Tehran's Department of Physics. Alimohammadi was the first PhD graduate student in physics of the Sharif University of Technology. He published some 53 articles and letters in peer-reviewed academic journals and wrote and translated several physics textbooks, including Modern Quantum Mechanics, revised edition, by J. J. Sakurai, which he translated from English into Persian in collaboration with Hamidreza Moshfegh.
Go to Profile#6825
Gaudenz Danuser
#152966
Overall Influence
#6826
Noh Tae-won
#124682
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Noh Tae-won is a South Korean physicist and director of the Center for Correlated Electron Systems in the Institute for Basic Science at Seoul National University . He has published more 400 papers and been cited 15,000 times. He is a member of the Materials Research Society, Korean Optical Society, Korean Crystallographic Society, and Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies and been on several editorial boards for journals. In 2017, he became president of the Korean Dielectrics Society.
Go to Profile#6827
Philippe Zarka
#153018
Overall Influence
#6828
Shaun Quegan
#153032
Overall Influence
#6829
Kenneth S. Edgett
#153048
Overall Influence
#6830
F.h.h. Meijers
#153049
Overall Influence
#6831
Bernd Rech
#153063
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
#6832
Asimina Arvanitaki
#139323
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Asimina Arvanitaki is a Greek theoretical physicist and Stavros Niarchos Foundation Aristarchus Chair in Theoretical Physics at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. In 2017, she was awarded the New Horizons in Physics prize.
Go to Profile#6833
Dimo Kashchiev
#153077
Overall Influence
#6834
Lucy Mensing
#97188
Overall Influence
1901 - 1995 (94 years)
Lucy Mensing , later Mensing-Schütz or Schütz, was a German physicist and a pioneer of quantum mechanics. Scientific career Mensing studied mathematics, physics and chemistry at the University of Hamburg. During her studies she specialized in theoretical physics. In 1923/24 she wrote a thesis in which she applied the older quantum hypothesis based on Bohr-Sommerfeld's theory, which assumes electron trajectories, to diatomic molecules. This work was published in the Zeitschrift für Physik in 1925. In 1925 she received her doctorate under Wilhelm Lenz with a thesis on the influence of electric ...
Go to Profile#6835
Ludger Wöste
#105743
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Ludger Wöste is a German physicist and professor at the Free University of Berlin. He is known for research in laser control of chemistry and laser-based weather control through the creation of plasma channels by laser filamentation in air.
Go to Profile#6836
Dieter A. Wolf‐gladrow
#153131
Overall Influence
#6837
Robert William Eason
#153153
Overall Influence
#6838
Francesco Sardanelli
#153162
Overall Influence
#6839
Hugo Thienpont
#153186
Overall Influence
#6840
Zdeňka Vávrová
#78477
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Zdeňka Vávrová is a Czech astronomer. She co-discovered periodic comet 134P/Kowal-Vávrová. She had observed it as an asteroid, which received the provisional designation 1983 JG, without seeing any cometary coma. However, later images by Charles T. Kowal showed a coma. The Minor Planet Center credits her with the discovery of 115 numbered minor planets.
Go to Profile#6841
N. w. Evans
#153240
Overall Influence
#6842
Ronald Everett Taam
#153241
Overall Influence
#6843
Bene Poelsema
#153254
Overall Influence
#6844
I. M. Dharmadasa
#40875
Overall Influence
I.M. Dharmadasa is Professor of Applied Physics and leads the Electronic Materials and Solar Energy Group at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Dharme has worked in semiconductor research since becoming a PhD student at Durham University as a Commonwealth Scholar in 1977, under the supervision of the late Sir Gareth Roberts. His interest in the electrodeposition of thin film solar cells grew when he joined the Apollo Project at BP Solar in 1988. He continued this area of research on joining Sheffield Hallam University in 1990.
Go to Profile#6845
Hisashi Nakamura
#153272
Overall Influence
#6846
Zoltán Balog
#146981
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Zoltán Balog is an astronomer with the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. In 2006, while at the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona, Balog's team was the first to observe the complete process of photoevaporation of a protoplanetary disk.
Go to Profile#6847
David Douglas Nolte
#153280
Overall Influence
#6848
Bing Zhang
#139593
Overall Influence
Bing Zhang is a Chinese astrophysicist and professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is best known for his research in gamma-ray bursts, fast radio bursts, and other high-energy astrophysical phenomena. He is the author of the book The Physics of Gamma-Ray Bursts.
Go to Profile#6849
Joel E. Keizer
#153320
Overall Influence
#6850
John Cromwell. Mather
#153341
Overall Influence
