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,
#7351
Gerald J. Dolan
#126003
Overall Influence
1945 - 2008 (63 years)
Gerald J. Dolan was an American solid state physicist. Education and career Dolan received his bachelor's degree in physics in 1967 from the University of Pennsylvania and# his Ph.D. in 1973 from Cornell University under John Silcox. As a post-doctoral researcher, he was at the State University of New York at Stony Brook under J. E. Lukens, doing research on thin-film superconductors from 1973 to 1976. From 1976 to 1987, he was at Bell Labs where he worked under the supervision of Theodore A. Fulton and then, from 1987 to 1989, at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. From 1989 to 1996, he was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#7352
Ole Hansen
#160260
Overall Influence
#7353
Jan Martin Pawlowski
#160279
Overall Influence
#7354
Erhard L. Haus
#160315
Overall Influence
#7355
Pierre. Demarque
#160316
Overall Influence
#7356
Rudolph C. Hwa
#152917
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Rudolph C. Hwa is an American theoretical physicist and Professor emeritus at the University of Oregon. His areas of interest include the strong interaction, nonlinear dynamics, fluctuations, and quark–gluon plasma. He was elected an American Physical Society Fellow in 1995.
Go to Profile#7357
Taik Soo Hahm
#160320
Overall Influence
#7358
Scott L. Delp
#60359
Overall Influence
Scott L. Delp is an American academic who is the James H. Clark Professor of Bioengineering and Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. He is the Founding Chairman of the Department of Bioengineering at Stanford, the Director of the National Center for Simulation in Rehabilitation Research , Simbios, the NIH Center for Physics-Based Simulations of Biological Structures at Stanford., and the Mobilize Center, a data science research center focused on mobile health.
Go to Profile#7359
Anneke Levelt Sengers
#107661
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Johanna Maria Henrica Levelt Sengers is a Dutch physicist known for her work on critical states of fluids. She retired from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 1994, after a 31 year career there. In 2005 Levelt Sengers was co-chair for the InterAcademy Council of the advisory report 'Women for Science' published June 2006. She currently co-chairs the InterAmerican Network of Academies of Sciences women for science program.
Go to Profile#7360
Masaaki Yamada
#142947
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
is a Japanese plasma physicist known for his studies on magnetic reconnection. Yamada obtained a bachelor's degree in applied physics at the University of Tokyo in 1966 and a master's degree in nuclear engineering in 1968, and received a doctorate in physics from the University of Illinois in 1973. He was then at Princeton University and from 1978 at its Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory , where he and Robert Ellis led the development of the Spheromak S-1, a compact toroidal device for plasma confinement from 1978 to 1988, which was investigated for some time as an alternative to the Tokamak.
Go to Profile#7361
John Dainton
#125761
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
John Bourke Dainton FRS is a British physicist, and Sir James Chadwick Professor of Physics, at University of Liverpool. Dainton was awarded the Max Born Prize in 1999. His father was Frederick Dainton, Baron Dainton. He was founding director of the Cockcroft Institute.
Go to Profile#7362
Dario Alfè
#160501
Overall Influence
#7363
Henrik Topsøe
#160512
Overall Influence
#7364
Adrian Cho
#160515
Overall Influence
#7365
Qingsong Wang
#160521
Overall Influence
#7366
Amit Chakrabarti
#160531
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Amit Chakrabarti is the former William and Joan Porter Chair in Physics at Kansas State University. He currently serves as the dean of the college of arts and sciences at Kansas State University. Chakrabarti is a theoretical physicist with interests in soft matter and statistical physics. He has worked on diverse soft matter systems, including liquid mixtures, polymers, liquid crystals, aerosols, colloids, nanoparticles, and most recently, self-assembly of proteins.
Go to Profile#7367
Enos Regnet Wicher
#116293
Overall Influence
Enos Regnet Wicher was an American professor of physics at Columbia University. He had been married to Rae Kidd, future star of the 1938 nudist movie "The Unashamed," while both were students at the University of Wisconsin 1935-37. During World War II he worked in the Wave Propagation Group at Columbia's Division of War Research and was alleged to have spied for Soviet intelligence with code name "Keen" .
Go to Profile#7368
Kenneth Saul Krane
#160585
Overall Influence
#7369
Giampaolo Piotto
#160596
Overall Influence
#7370
Kristine Petrick Davidson
#160630
Overall Influence
#7371
Kunio Takayanagi
#160644
Overall Influence
#7372
Daniel Guyomar
#160647
Overall Influence
#7373
Bridget Carragher
#94203
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Bridget Olivia Carragher is a South African physicist specialized in electron microscopy. Carragher is an adjunct professor at the Columbia University and the founder and Chief Operations Officer of NanoImaging Services, Inc. She is also the director of the National Resources for Automated Molecular Microscopy , director of the Simons Electron Microscopy Center at New York Structural Biology Center and PI at the National Center for CryoEM Access and Training.
Go to Profile#7374
Alexander E. Hramov
#160666
Overall Influence
#7375
Albert Barry Kunz
#160678
Overall Influence
#7376
Edward Thomas Hall
#61248
Overall Influence
1924 - 2001 (77 years)
Edward Thomas Hall, CBE, Hon. FBA, FSA , also known as Teddy Hall, was a British scientist and balloonist who is best remembered for exposing the Piltdown Man as a fraud. Early life and education Hall was born on 10 May 1924 in London, England, to Walter D'Arcy Hall and Anne Madeleine Hall. He was brought up at Shipton Court, a Jacobean manor house in Shipton-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire. He was educated at Eton College, an all-boys public school in Berkshire. In 1943, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as an ordinary seaman, serving in landing craft transporting commandos to France.
Go to Profile#7377
Edward William Cliver
#160707
Overall Influence
#7378
Tihomir Novakov
#53717
Overall Influence
1929 - 2015 (86 years)
Tihomir Novakov, Ph.D known also as Tica Novakov was a Serbian-born American physicist. As a scientist, Novakov is known for his black carbon, air quality, and climate change research. James Hansen dubbed him "the godfather of black carbon".
Go to Profile#7379
Alfonso Baldereschi
#160727
Overall Influence
#7380
Paolo Lusso
#160759
Overall Influence
#7381
F. J. De Heer
#160766
Overall Influence
#7382
Roberto Osellame
#160777
Overall Influence
#7383
Hugo Reinhardt
#160794
Overall Influence
#7384
Ronald Ekers
#152841
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Ronald David Ekers FRS FAA is an Australian radio astronomer. His fields of specialty include the study of active galactic nuclei, cosmology, and radio astronomy techniques. Ron Ekers was born in Victor Harbor, South Australia. He showed interest in astronomy at a young age.
Go to Profile#7385
Enric Canadell
#160822
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#7386
Hans Zingg
#23248
Overall Influence
Hans H. Zingg is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics and Wyeth-Ayerst Chair in Women's Health at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Biography He earned his Doctor of Medicine from the University of Basel in Switzerland, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Medicine from McGill University. He then completed post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical School.
Go to Profile#7387
Paraskevas Sphicas
#149310
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Paraskevas Andreas Sphicas is a particle physicist who focuses on studies of High energy collisions in the Large Hadron Collider through which he explores supersymmetry and the mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking. He is a senior scientist at CERN and professor of physics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2019.
Go to Profile#7388
Stephen M. Larson
#160856
Overall Influence
#7389
Alain Benoit
#100280
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Alain Benoit is a French physicist specialising in low temperature physics. He was awarded the CNRS silver medal in 1993 and the CNRS innovation medal in 2012. He is a research director at the Grenoble Very Low Temperature Centre, where he contributed to the cooling of the European Space Agency's Planck telescope to 0.1 K. He was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 2002.
Go to Profile#7390
Yakup Yıldırım
#160880
Overall Influence
#7391
Gustavo Stolovitzky
#93524
Overall Influence
Gustavo A. Stolovitzky is an Argentine-American computational systems biologist. He is an IBM Fellow and the Director of the Translational Systems Biology and Nano-Biotechnology Program at IBM Research. He serves as the program director of the Thomas J. Watson Research Center's Translational Systems Biology and Nanobiotechnology Program, as well as an Adjunct professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University. His research has been cited more than 20,000 times
Go to Profile#7392
Birendra Bijoy Biswas
#43247
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Birendra Bijoy Biswas is an Indian molecular biologist, geneticist and a former director of Bose Institute, Calcutta. He is known for his contributions to the metabolism of nucleic acid and the regulation of protein synthesis in plant cells. He is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. 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, in 1972, for his contri...
Go to Profile#7393
Ille Gebeshuber
#88687
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Ille Christine Gebeshuber is an Austrian physicist who is specialized in nanophysics and biomimetics. Biography Ille Gebeshuber studied at the Vienna University of Technology, where she continued to work as a key researcher and lecturer. From 2009 until 2015 she was a professor at the Institute of Microengineering and Nanoelectronics at the National University of Malaysia . Since 2016 she is back at her home institution, the Vienna University of Technology, at the Institute of Applied Physics. Her book "Wo die Maschinen wachsen: Wie Lösungen aus dem Dschungel unser Leben verändern werden" w...
Go to Profile#7394
John Philip Trinkaus
#160926
Overall Influence
#7395
Stefaan De Smet
#160942
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
#7396
Allan Adams
#131769
Overall Influence
Allan Adams is an American physicist and oceanographer. His research in physics has focused on string theory, QFT, and fluid dynamics, while his work in oceanography and ocean engineering have focused on high-precision optical sensing and imaging and on low-cost scalable instrumentation. He currently leads the Future Ocean Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a visiting oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Go to Profile#7397
Hendrik Bluhm
#161025
Overall Influence
#7398
Li-Chyong Chen
#146921
Overall Influence
Li-Chyong Chen is a Taiwanese physicist. Career Chen completed her bachelor's of science degree in physics at National Taiwan University between 1977 and 1981. She then attended Harvard University from 1983 to 1989, where she earned a doctorate in applied physics. Chen returned to Taiwan in 1994, and is a professor of physics at National Taiwan University.
Go to Profile#7399
Sergey N. Dorogovtsev
#161067
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#7400
Stefano Forte
#161080
Overall Influence
