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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Physics,
#7601
Antony A. Stark
#163732
Overall Influence
#7602
Andrew E. Dolphin
#163734
Overall Influence
#7603
Klaus D. Sattler
#163756
Overall Influence
#7604
Ronald L. Phillips
#163761
Overall Influence
#7605
Yasser Saad Rammah
#163763
Overall Influence
#7606
E. Keith Bigg
#163769
Overall Influence
#7607
Lidia Salgueiro
#92468
Overall Influence
1917 - 2009 (92 years)
Lidia Salgueiro was a Portuguese atomic and nuclear physicist. She taught at the University of Lisbon for over 30 years, carried out research, and published widely, including journal articles, textbooks, articles on the history of physics in Portugal, and philatelic publications on stamps and physics. She was the first female Associate Fellow of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#7608
Andreas Crivellin
#163789
Overall Influence
#7609
Pierre Bongrand
#163798
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#7610
Jill Trewhella
#116361
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Jill Trewhella FAAAS FLANL Dist FRSN is a biophysicist who has worked in both Australia and the United States. Early life Born in Gosford to parents John and Joy, Trewhella planned a career as a high school mathematics teacher in Newcastle, but after the death of her brother enrolled at his alma mater, the University of New South Wales, where she received a Bachelor of Science degree with a double major in applied mathematics and physics and first class honours in physics in 1974. She also received her MSc in physics from UNSW before moving to the University of Sydney to complete her PhD in in...
Go to Profile#7611
Peter Stilbs
#57939
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Peter Stilbs is an emeritus professor in physical chemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Stilbs earned a master's degree in chemical engineering from the Lund Institute of Technology at Lund University in 1969, and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 1974. He served as a research assistant in physical chemistry at Uppsala University from 1976 to 1982, and as an assistant professor from 1982 to 1986. In 1986 he became full professor in physical chemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. His main fields of research are the techniques and application...
Go to Profile#7612
Irene Sprague Davis
#163832
Overall Influence
#7613
Patrick Gill
#136126
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Patrick Gill is a Senior NPL Fellow in Time & Frequency at the National Physical Laboratory in the UK. Education Gill was educated at the University of Sussex and the University of Oxford where he was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1975 for research on Charge Transfer as a Laser Excitation Mechanism.
Go to Profile#7614
Keith Codling
#163858
Overall Influence
#7615
Vladimir Krainov
#163859
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Vladimir Pavlovich Krainov is a full professor in department of theoretical physics of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in Dolgoprudny. Krainov's research concentrated on physics of atoms and molecules in intense laser fields and on the evolution of clusters in super-intense laser pulses.
Go to Profile#7616
David A. Lipson
#163878
Overall Influence
#7617
Amparo Querol
#163915
Overall Influence
#7618
Paola Chiarugi
#163938
Overall Influence
#7619
Jacco Vink
#163942
Overall Influence
#7620
Hai-Hu Wen
#163951
Overall Influence
Hai-Hu Wen is a Chinese physicist. Wen studied physics at Anhui University, and obtained postgraduate degrees at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. After completing postdoctoral study at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Wen returned to IOPCAS, and accepted a professorship at Nanjing University. In 2013, he was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society, "[f]or investigations of unconventional pairing mechanisms in high temperature superconductors and elucidation of their vortex dynamics."
Go to Profile#7621
Eugene Serabyn
#163960
Overall Influence
#7622
Wayne H. Knox
#163961
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#7623
Clarence R. Crowell
#164027
Overall Influence
#7624
Per Kraus
#164045
Overall Influence
#7625
Eugenio Coccia
#164050
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
#7626
Marjorie Corcoran
#122688
Overall Influence
1950 - 2017 (67 years)
Marjorie Diane Blasius Corcoran was an American particle physicist who worked as a professor at Rice University. Biography Born as Marjorie Blasius, she grew up in Beavercreek, Ohio, and was 1968 co-valedictorian of Beavercreek High School. She earned a bachelor's degree in physics in 1972 from the University of Dayton, graduating summa cum laude, and in the same year married Christopher Corcoran, taking his surname. As a graduate student at Indiana University Bloomington, she began doing high-energy physics research at Fermilab. Her 1977 doctoral dissertation, Measurement of the polarizatio...
Go to Profile#7627
David Kutasov
#164152
Overall Influence
#7628
Joseph F. Lemaire
#164153
Overall Influence
#7629
Luc Berger
#164157
Overall Influence
#7631
Gianfranco de Zotti
#164185
Overall Influence
#7632
Michael Kelly
#72191
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Michael Joseph Kelly FRS FREng is a New Zealand-British physicist. He was Prince Philip Professor of Technology in the Department of Engineering of the University of Cambridge from 2002 to 2016. Education Born in New Plymouth, New Zealand, Kelly went to Francis Douglas Memorial College in his High-school years, graduating he then went on to study at the Victoria University of Wellington for a BSc and MSc. He came to England in 1971 to study for a PhD at Cambridge under Volker Heine.
Go to Profile#7633
Satoshi Sato
#164193
Overall Influence
#7634
Robert Oliver Watts
#164200
Overall Influence
#7635
Giulio Casati
#118264
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Giulio Casati is Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at University of Insubria. Casati is known for his work on chaos, both classical and quantum, being considered one of the pioneers of the latter. Casati is in fact principally known for the discovery of quantum dynamical localization phenomenon, that highlighted the relevance of chaos in quantum mechanics. His landmark paper, with Boris Chirikov, Joseph Ford and Felix Izrailev, is among the most quoted in the field. With Boris Chirikov, Italo Guarneri and Dima Shepelyansky Casati also discovered that quantum localization deeply affects the excitation of hydrogen atom in strong monochromatic fields.
Go to Profile#7636
Jonathan Pilbrow
#164213
Overall Influence
#7637
Paul Gorenstein
#164217
Overall Influence
#7638
Peer Fischer
#125074
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Peer Fischer is a German robotics researcher, specializing in biological nanorobotics. Biography He received a B.Sc. in Physics from Imperial College London. He did his Ph.D. with A. David Buckingham at the University of Cambridge. He was a DAAD postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University and then held a Junior Research Fellowship at the Rowland Institute at Harvard where he directed an independent lab for five years.
Go to Profile#7639
Marshall Blann
#164243
Overall Influence
#7640
Masud Chaichian
#164248
Overall Influence
#7641
Christian David
#164265
Overall Influence
#7642
Yuichi Shimakawa
#164270
Overall Influence
#7643
José Lopéz‑barneo
#164284
Overall Influence
#7644
Pabitra N. Sen
#164285
Overall Influence
#7645
Antoinette Jane Taylor
#164286
Overall Influence
#7646
L. E. Mosekilde
#164323
Overall Influence
#7647
Nady A. El-guebaly
#164330
Overall Influence
#7648
Donald W. Brenner
#164354
Overall Influence
#7649
Vivian O'Brien
#51473
Overall Influence
1924 - 2010 (86 years)
Vivian "Vob" O'Brien was an American applied mathematician and physicist whose research included fluid dynamics and visual perception. She worked for many years as a researcher at Johns Hopkins University, and is the namesake of the Craik–O'Brien–Cornsweet illusion.
Go to Profile#7650
Gerd Karl Binnig
#164375
Overall Influence
