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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List of the most influential people in Physics,

#6851

Francisca Nneka Okeke

#72645

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Francisca Nneka Okeke is a Nigerian physicist. She is a Professor of Physics at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and first female head of a department in the University. Biography She hails from Idemili North in Anambra State. She earned a Bachelors of Science in Physics , a Masters of Science in science education , a Masters of Science in Applied Earth Geophysics , and a Ph.D. in Ionospheric Geophysics , from the University of Nigeria. She carried out her postdoctoral work at the University of Tokyo, Japan.

#6852

Hélène Bouchiat

#106995

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Hélène Bouchiat is a French condensed matter physicist specializing in mesoscopic physics and nanoscience. She is a director of research in the French National Centre for Scientific Research , associated with the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides at Paris-Sud University. Topics in her research include supercurrents, persistent currents, graphene, carbon nanotubes, and bismuth-based topological insulators.

#6853

Almudena Arcones

#148975

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Almudena Arcones Segovia is a Spanish-German nuclear astrophysicist whose research topics have included the creation and decay of heavy elements through the r-process, and neutrino-driven outflows, in energetic stellar events including supernovae and neutron star mergers. She is a professor of theoretical astrophysics at Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany, and a researcher in the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt.

#6854

Rachel Oliver

#105160

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Rachel Angharad Oliver is a Professor of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge. She works on characterisation techniques for gallium nitride materials for dark-emitting diodes and laser diodes.

#6855

Granville Beynon

#90262

Overall Influence

1914 - 1996 (82 years)

Sir William John Granville Beynon, CBE, FRS was a Welsh physicist. He co-operated with Sir Edward Victor Appleton, who had detected the terrestrial Ionosphere. Life history William John Granville Beynon was born in Dunvant, near Swansea, Wales on 24 May 1914, the youngest of four children. His father, a miner, held the responsible jobs of checkweightman and chief of the local mines rescue service. Beynon was educated at Gowerton Grammar School, before matriculating to the University of Swansea, where he studied physics.

#6856

Yukikazu Itikawa

#153415

Overall Influence

#6857

Paul Wiegert

#153416

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Paul Arnold Wiegert is a Canadian astronomer, discoverer of minor planets and professor at the University of Western Ontario. Wiegert studies unusual orbits of both observed objects and theorised classes of objects, for example, one early paper considers not-known-to-exist planets orbiting the nearby Alpha Centauri star system, while later papers extend that case to more general planetary stability in general binary systems . This work in particular should be of interest to science fiction authors inventing universes.

#6858

Suzanne C. Cannegieter

#153417

Overall Influence

#6859

Mirjana Pović

#123197

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Mirjana Pović is a Serbian astrophysicist who works on galaxy formation and evolution at the Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute. She was the inaugural laureate of the Nature - Estée Lauder Inspiring Science Award.

#6860

Gino Tosti

#153428

Overall Influence

#6861

Jan Swevers

#153434

Overall Influence

#6862

Reiner L. Stenzel

#153455

Overall Influence

#6863

Paolo Girardi

#153458

Overall Influence

#6864

Hamish Wallace

#108792

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

William Hamish Beith Wallace is a consultant Paediatric Oncologist at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh. Since 2015, Wallace has been National Clinical Director of the Managed Service Network for Children and Young People with Cancer in Scotland.

#6865

Martin Reuter

#153463

Overall Influence

#6866

John Steeds

#132815

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

John Wickham Steeds is a British physicist and materials scientist. He is an Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Bristol. Research Steeds is best known for his investigations of the microstructure of materials using electron microscopy and convergent-beam electron diffraction. Early in his career, he produced seminal work on dislocation arrangements in deformed copper crystals, which is a basis for the more recent theories of work hardening. His monograph on anisotropic elasticity theory of dislocations is a standard reference. He has led a sophisticated research effort to mak...

#6867

Gilbert George Lonzarich

#153489

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Gilbert "Gil" George Lonzarich is a solid-state physicist who works at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. He is particularly noted for his work on superconducting and magnetic materials.

#6868

Arthur Lee Loeb

#102374

Overall Influence

1923 - 2002 (79 years)

Arthur Lee Loeb was a Dutch scientist and crystallographer. He arrived to the U.S. during World War II, completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 1944, and his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics at Harvard University in 1949.

#6869

Joseph Laws McKibben

#77996

Overall Influence

1912 - 2001 (89 years)

Joseph Laws McKibben was an American physicist and engineer who worked with J. Robert Oppenheimer as a group leader on the Manhattan Project. He personally witnessed the Trinity test and flipped the switch that set off the atomic bomb at Trinity. McKibben, motivated by his daughter Karan's paralysed hands due to polio, also invented the Air Muscle in 1957.

#6870

Faïrouz Malek

#128114

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Faïrouz Malek also known as Faïrouz Ohlsson-Malek is a French and Algerian physicist specializing in nuclear physics, particle physics and cosmology. A research scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, she is involved in international research at the CERN LHC. She has contributed to the discovery of the Higgs boson. She is also known for her commitment to gender parity in science, as well as to the development of science in Africa. She is fellow of the African Academy of Sciences. She is the niece of Algerian composer Ahmed Malek.

#6871

Roman Sławomir Dąbrowski

#153555

Overall Influence

#6872

Francesco Priolo

#153577

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

#6873

Yasuo Endoh

#153582

Overall Influence

#6874

Claus Kiefer

#153609

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

#6875

Jorge López

#58433

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Jorge Alberto López is a physicist and educator and the Schumaker Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at El Paso. He is known for his work in heavy ion collision dynamics and for his outreach to the Hispanic community in the United States to increase diversity in physics, effective teaching and mentoring of undergraduate students , development of bilingual physics education programs, and building collaborations between American and Latin American universities. He is one of the founders of the National Society of Hispanic Physicists and author of books on nuclear physics, surface s...

#6876

Herbert L. Berk

#153631

Overall Influence

#6877

Warwick Bowen

#121806

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Warwick Bowen is an Australian quantum physicist and nanotechnologist at The University of Queensland. He leads the Quantum Optics Laboratory, is Director of the UQ Precision Sensing Initiative and is one of three Theme Leaders of the Australian Centre for Engineered Quantum Systems.

#6878

Li-min Tong

#153632

Overall Influence

#6879

Bernhard Otto Boehm

#153647

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

#6880

Bikas K. Chakrabarti

#153674

Overall Influence

#6881

John Warren Harvey

#153679

Overall Influence

#6882

Rajaram J. Bhat

#153693

Overall Influence

#6883

Wolfram Doehner

#153702

Overall Influence

#6884

Louis Lyons

#153706

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

#6885

Atsuo Fukuda

#153742

Overall Influence

#6886

Francis W. Perkins

#153754

Overall Influence

#6887

Robert Michael White

#153756

Overall Influence

#6888

Jens Aage Als-Nielsen

#153783

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Jens Aage Als-Nielsen is a Danish physicist. He took the dr.philos. degree in 1965, was employed at Risø National Laboratory from 1961 to 1995 and was a professor at the University of Copenhagen from 1995 to 2007. He was a co-creator of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility.

#6889

Catherine Stampfl

#135418

Overall Influence

Catherine Stampfl is a Professor of Physics at the University of Sydney and was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2019. Career Stampfl received a PhD in physics from La Trobe University in 1990. She then moved to the United States where she worked at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Germany. Before her return to Australia in 2003 she worked at Northwestern University. she then settled down in Sydney and had two children named Eva and Elke.

#6890

Charles Hellaby

#123023

Overall Influence

Charles William Hellaby is a South African mathematician who is an associate professor of applied mathematics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, working in the field of cosmology. He is a member of the International Astronomical Union and a member of the Baháʼí Faith.

#6891

Bulbul Chakraborty

#122742

Overall Influence

Bulbul Chakraborty is the Enid and Nate Ancell Professor of Physics at Brandeis University. She is recognized for her contributions to soft condensed matter theory studying systems far from equilibrium, such as granular materials, amorphous systems, and statistical physics. She is an elected American Physical Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow.

#6892

Walter Stummer

#153820

Overall Influence

#6893

Florent Krzakala

#120706

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Florent Krzakala is a French physicist and applied mathematician, currently a professor at EPFL . His research focuses on the resolution of theoretical problems in physics, computer science, machine learning, statistics and signal processing using mathematical tools inspired by the field of statistical physics.

#6894

Peter A. Wolff

#148899

Overall Influence

1923 - 2013 (90 years)

Peter Adalbert Wolff was an American physicist who is considered a pioneer in semiconductor research. He earned his PhD in physics at UC Berkeley with Robert Serber as thesis advisor in 1951 and began his career at the Bell Telephone Laboratories the following year. Thereafter Wolff joined the physics department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970, becoming head of the condensed matter and atomic physics division. Together with P. M. Platzman, he coauthored the textbook Waves and Interactions in Solid State Plasmas . In 1976 he moved on to the directorship of the Research Laboratory of Electronics and then of the Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory in 1981.

#6895

Michael Blanton

#139117

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Michael R. Blanton is an American physicist whose expertise is in the fields of galaxy evolution and cosmology. A professor in New York University's department of physics, Blanton has primarily focused on mapping the Universe.

#6896

Judith Klein-Seetharaman

#116442

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Judith Klein-Seetharaman is an American-German biochemist who is a professor at the Arizona State University. Her research considers the structure-function properties of proteins using computational bio-linguistics. She was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to identify novel therapies to tackle HIV.

#6897

Joseph W. Haus

#153869

Overall Influence

#6898

Ed Hawkins

#67839

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Edward Hawkins is a British climate scientist who is Professor of climate science at the University of Reading, principal research scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science , editor of Climate Lab Book blog and lead scientist for the Weather Rescue citizen science project. He is known for his data visualizations of climate change for the general public such as warming stripes and climate spirals.

#6899

Bahram Djafari‐rouhani

#153888

Overall Influence

#6900

Martin Connors

#77350

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Martin Gerard Connors is a Canadian astronomer and professor. Career Connors received a PhD in Physics from the University of Alberta in 1998. He is the Assistant Professor at Athabasca University. He tutors and develops courses in Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy. He was part of the team credited with the discovery of the first Earth trojan asteroid, an asteroid that orbits the Sun on a similar orbital path as that of Earth. The 300-meter-diameter asteroid was designated . The asteroid was discovered in October 2010 by the NEOWISE team of astronomers using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer .

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