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,
#7301
Tadakatsu Ohkubo
#159608
Overall Influence
#7302
Chuan‐feng Li
#159615
Overall Influence
#7303
Sumner Starrfield
#159620
Overall Influence
Sumner Grosby Starrfield is an American astronomer. Starrfield earned a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley and completed his master's and doctoral degrees at the University of California, Los Angeles. He began teaching at Arizona State University in 1972, and was later named a Regents' Professor at the institution. In 1999, Starrfield was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society "[f]or fundamental contributions to our understanding of the cause and evolution of the nova outburst involving forefront observational and theoretical studies of these explosions."...
Go to Profile#7304
Thomas Cahill
#10586
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Thomas Quinn Cahill was an American scholar and writer. He was best known for The Hinges of History series, a prospective seven-volume series in which the author recounts formative moments in Western civilization.
Go to Profile#7305
Hiroyuki Matsuda
#159660
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#7306
Sanae. – I. Itoh
#159675
Overall Influence
#7307
Ulrich Gonser
#159690
Overall Influence
#7308
Patrick Mora
#112717
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Patrick Mora is a French theoretical plasma physicist who specializes in laser-plasma interactions. He was awarded the 2014 Hannes Alfvén Prize and 2019 Edward Teller Award for his contributions to the field of laser-plasma physics.
Go to Profile#7309
Johan Peter Uldall Fynbo
#159695
Overall Influence
#7310
Kazuhiro Sayama
#159707
Overall Influence
#7311
Michele Vallisneri
#156481
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Michele Vallisneri is an Italian physicist, currently at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society. He received his Ph.D. degree from the California Institute of Technology in 2002, with a doctoral thesis on "Modeling and detecting gravitational waves from compact stellar objects," under the supervision of relativist Kip Thorne. In 2017 he was awarded the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for "outstanding contributions to ground- and space-based detection of gravitational waves, critical to the nascent fiel...
Go to Profile#7312
Peter Overath
#159746
Overall Influence
#7313
Ad Van Der Avoird
#159787
Overall Influence
#7314
Radu Roiban
#159816
Overall Influence
#7315
Nikta Fakhri
#99249
Overall Influence
Nikta Fakhri is an Iranian-American physicist who is the Thomas D. & Virginia W. Cabot Career Development Associate Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research considers non-equilibrium physics in living systems. She was awarded the 2022 American Physical Society Early Career Award for Soft Matter Research.
Go to Profile#7316
George Alexander Doschek
#159821
Overall Influence
#7317
Costas Galiotis
#159834
Overall Influence
#7318
Hans Breuer
#117004
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Dr. Hans Adolf Breuer was a German physicist and author of 23 mainly scientific books. Life Hans Adolf Breuer was born in Frankfurt and grew up in Berlin. After finishing school with Abitur, he studied physics in Berlin and later Frankfurt, gaining a Diplom in July 1958 .
Go to Profile#7319
Yi–tian Gao
#159848
Overall Influence
#7320
Ji-liang Jing
#159854
Overall Influence
#7321
Richard H. Pratt
#159872
Overall Influence
#7322
Geneviève Comte-Bellot
#76827
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Geneviève Comte-Bellot is a French physicist specialising in fluid dynamics. She is known for her work on turbulence and aeroacoustics. Biography Comte-Bellot was born on 29 July 1929. After obtaining her diploma from the Université Grenoble Alpes in 1953, she earned her master's degree at the École normale supérieure in Paris the following year. She taught at a high school in Chalon-sur-Saône from 1954 to 1956, before joining the French National Center for Scientific Research as a Senior Research Associate; Comte-Bellot remained in this position until 1967. In 1963, Comte-Bellot completed he...
Go to Profile#7323
N. e. Mavromatos
#159901
Overall Influence
#7324
O. M. Henriksen
#159903
Overall Influence
#7325
Friedrich Altmann
#159921
Overall Influence
#7326
Dževad Belkić
#159955
Overall Influence
#7327
Paul T. Francis
#159973
Overall Influence
#7328
Giuseppe Spoto
#159994
Overall Influence
#7329
Cristiano Ciuti
#160005
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
#7330
L. Jos De Jongh
#160010
Overall Influence
#7331
Yong Baek Kim
#160039
Overall Influence
#7332
Jeremy J. Goodman
#160042
Overall Influence
#7333
Thomas Robert Osborn
#160057
Overall Influence
#7334
Rafael Bruschweiler
#80440
Overall Influence
Rafael Brüschweiler is a scientist who studies nuclear magnetic resonance . He is credited for the development of Covariance NMR, which shortens the NMR measurement time for multidimensional spectra of both solution and solid-state NMR. It also allows for easier analysis and interpretation. For this achievement he was awarded the Laukien Prize in NMR Spectroscopy at the 47th Experimental Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Conference . He is also a leading scientist in NMR-based metabolomics and protein NMR.
Go to Profile#7335
Michael John Adams
#160083
Overall Influence
#7336
Martin Aringer
#160085
Overall Influence
#7337
William D. Myers
#160108
Overall Influence
#7338
Felix Alexandrovich Berezin
#160113
Overall Influence
#7339
Ernst Niebur
#160115
Overall Influence
#7340
A. R. Sheykhi
#160119
Overall Influence
#7341
Judy Hirst
#39561
Overall Influence
Judy Hirst is a British scientist specialising in mitochondrial biology. She is Director of the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit at the University of Cambridge. Early life and education Hirst grew up in Lepton, a village near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, and attended King James's School and Greenhead College, Huddersfield. She studied for an M.A. in chemistry at St John's College, Oxford, and then was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1997, for research supervised by Fraser Armstrong on electron transport in redox enzymes.
Go to Profile#7342
Vadim I. Polezhaev
#160123
Overall Influence
#7343
Geronimo Villanueva
#160137
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Geronimo L. Villanueva is a planetary astronomer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Some of his contributions include the identification of an ancient ocean on Mars, sensitive searches of primordial water in comets, and the search and possible discovery of organics on Mars. His work on high-resolution molecular spectroscopy of planetary and cometary atmospheres led the International Astronomical Union to name minor planet 9724 after Villanueva, while the American Astronomical Society awarded him the Urey Prize in 2015.
Go to Profile#7344
Chen Xianhui
#111303
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Chen Xianhui is a Chinese physicist. He is a Changjiang professor of physics of the University of Science and Technology of China . He was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2015 and is known for his breakthroughs on iron-based superconductors. He won the State Natural Science Award with Zhao Zhongxian and others in 2013 and the Bernd T. Matthias Prize for Superconducting Materials in 2015. His research is mainly on experimental condensed matter physics and materials science.
Go to Profile#7345
Elcio Abdalla
#160152
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
#7346
Dieter Biskamp
#160173
Overall Influence
#7347
Yukishige Ito
#160187
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#7348
Ila Fiete
#70496
Overall Influence
Ila Fiete is an Indian–American physicist and computational neuroscientist as well as a Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences within the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Fiete builds theoretical models and analyses neural data and to uncover how neural circuits perform computations and how the brain represents and manipulates information involved in memory and reasoning.
Go to Profile#7349
Graciela Gelmini
#152615
Overall Influence
Graciela Beatriz Gelmini is a theoretical physicist who specializes in astroparticle physics. She is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles , and became a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2004.
Go to Profile#7350
David Hermanus Adrianus Blank
#160232
Overall Influence
