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,
#7651
Michael Stewart Witherell
#102386
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Michael Stewart Witherell is an American particle physicist and laboratory director. He has been the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 2016. Witherell, a particle physicist, previously served as Director of Fermilab. He previously served as professor and vice chancellor for research at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Go to Profile#7652
Paolo A. Mazzali
#164386
Overall Influence
#7653
Zhang Rong
#99434
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Zhang Rong is a Chinese physicist who has worked in the area of wide band‐gap semiconductor materials and devices. He has been serving as president of Shandong University since October 2013. Zhang Rong joined the Department of Physics, Nanjing University as a student in September 1979 and became a member of the faculty there in July 1986 and was promoted to professor in March 1995. During the period from 1995 to 1999, he was a visiting scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Maryland. He received a named professorship from the Ministry of Education in 2000. He ...
Go to Profile#7654
Marco Tavani
#164421
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#7655
Ching-Liang Lin
#84691
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Ching-Liang Lin was a Taiwanese physicist and professor at National Taiwan University. She was the first woman to be head of the university's department of physics. Life She was born in 1931 in Takao Prefecture . She graduated from Kaohsiung Municipal Kaohsiung Girls' Senior High School. She was a witness to the February 28 incident in 1947 which killed thousands in Taiwan and resulted in decades of martial law known as the White Terror. During this time, she chose to focus on the study of physics. She attended the University of Tokyo and was awarded a doctorate in physics in 1966. She returned to Taiwan in 1970 and was asked to create a physics department at Soowchow University.
Go to Profile#7656
Trần Thanh Vân
#131802
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Trần Thanh Vân, also known as Jean Trần Thanh Vân, is a Vietnamese French physicist born on 4 July 1936 in Đồng Hới, Quảng Bình Province in Vietnam. Biography Vân attended secondary school in Huế. In 1953 he left Vietnam for France. He studied mathematics and physics at University of Paris and earned his undergraduate degrees in 1957. In his PhD work, Vân, still at University of Paris, turned his studies toward particle physics, focusing on the neutron as the natural partner of the proton in the structure of matter. He defended his thesis and obtained his doctoral degree in 1963.
Go to Profile#7657
Marco Polini
#164441
Overall Influence
#7658
Emil Burzo
#164442
Overall Influence
#7659
Robert A. Woodruff
#120210
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Robert A. Woodruff is an American physicist who is known principally for having designed and worked on a wide variety of instruments for space telescopes. These include Skylab , Apollo–Soyuz , Galileo , SIRTF and MIPS , and Hubble Space Telescope instruments [1977–present] ; James Webb Space Telescope , Kepler space telescope , TPF , and Destiny . He has had one or more instruments flying continuously in space since the early 1970s.
Go to Profile#7660
George Ronald Hadley
#164464
Overall Influence
#7661
George Campbell Jr.
#70742
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
George Campbell Jr. was the eleventh president of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art from July 2000 to July 2011. Education Campbell earned a PhD in theoretical physics from Syracuse University in 1977 and a BS in physics from Drexel University in 1968. He is a graduate of the Executive Management Program at Yale University.
Go to Profile#7662
Daniel Gottesman
#164474
Overall Influence
#7663
Per Maltby
#164072
Overall Influence
1933 - 2006 (73 years)
Per Maltby was a Norwegian astronomer. He took his cand.real. degree at the University of Oslo in 1957, and was a research assistant there before becoming lecuter at the University of Bergen in 1960.
Go to Profile#7664
Tae‐yeon Seong
#164492
Overall Influence
#7665
Charles K. Rhodes
#164509
Overall Influence
#7666
Pascale Senellart
#125028
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Pascale Senellart is a French physicist who is a senior researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and professor at the École Polytechnique. She has worked on quantum light sources and semiconductor physics. She was awarded the CNRS Silver Medal in 2014, made Fellow of The Optical Society in 2018, and elected member of the French Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Go to Profile#7667
John Francis Seely
#164519
Overall Influence
#7668
Dayong Jin
#164555
Overall Influence
#7669
Franck Montmessin
#164570
Overall Influence
#7670
Kevin Righter
#164588
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
#7671
Chushiro Hayashi
#164594
Overall Influence
#7672
Robert Adrian Rastall
#164613
Overall Influence
#7673
Barbara A. Baird
#154990
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Barbara Ann Baird is an American cell biologist and biophysicist. Baird's research investigates receptor-mediated cell signaling, including how cellular membranes are involved in targeting/regulating signaling pathways.
Go to Profile#7674
Sze-hoi Henry Tye
#164665
Overall Influence
#7675
Terry G. Forbes
#164683
Overall Influence
#7676
Nils Mårtensson
#164686
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
#7677
Piero Rosati
#164688
Overall Influence
#7678
Hiroyasu Tajima
#164700
Overall Influence
#7679
Steven R. Cranmer
#164725
Overall Influence
#7680
Shaun Hendy
#60776
Overall Influence
Shaun Cameron Hendy is a New Zealand physicist. He is the chief scientist at climate innovation company Toha. He was previously a professor at the University of Auckland and was the first director of Te Pūnaha Matatini, a centre of research excellence in complex systems and data analytics. During the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand, he led a team of scientists developing mathematical models of the spread of the virus across the country that influenced the government's response to the outbreak.
Go to Profile#7681
Jonathan I. Katz
#164731
Overall Influence
#7682
Daniel Estève
#164740
Overall Influence
#7683
James D. Wells
#79635
Overall Influence
James Daniel Wells is an American physicist. Wells earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at Brigham Young University, followed by his doctorate at the University of Michigan. After working at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and CERN, Wells began his teaching career in 1999 at the University of California, Davis. He returned to Michigan as a faculty member in 2002. In 2013, Wells was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society, which acknowledged him "[f]or his many fundamental contributions to theories of new physics beyond the Standard Model, including the role of electroweak ...
Go to Profile#7684
Markus Pollnau
#164774
Overall Influence
#7685
Andreas Quirrenbach
#164777
Overall Influence
#7686
Françisco M. Raymo
#164821
Overall Influence
#7687
Alexander D. Bershadsky
#164828
Overall Influence
#7688
Naoto Satō
#155137
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Naoto Satō is a Japanese amateur astronomer, discoverer of minor planets, and, by profession, a junior high school science teacher. As a planetarian, a member of the professional staff of a planetarium, he has done much for the spread of astronomy in Japan through speaking on planetaria and the results of astronomical observation.
Go to Profile#7689
Bodil Holst
#98292
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Bodil Holst is a Danish-Norwegian physicist known for her work on nanoscale imaging, material characterisation and mask based lithography using molecular beams. Other research areas include smart surfaces and plant fibre identification. She is a professor in the department of physics and technology at the University of Bergen in Norway.
Go to Profile#7690
Jean-paul J.p. Blaizot
#164883
Overall Influence
#7691
J. R. Cooper
#164954
Overall Influence
#7692
Stanko S. Stojilković
#164959
Overall Influence
#7693
Tomas B. Hirschfeld
#164970
Overall Influence
#7694
Friedrich Spener
#165013
Overall Influence
#7695
Richard Stratt
#73632
Overall Influence
Richard Stratt is an American chemist and physicist, currently the Newport Rogers Professor and also formerly the Harrison S. Kravis Professor from 1999 to 2000, at Brown University, focusing with theoretical chemistry, molecular dynamics in liquids and ultrafast spectroscopy.
Go to Profile#7696
Wilfred F. Van Gunsteren
#165026
Overall Influence
#7697
Gopal Kundu
#56096
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Gopal Chandra Kundu is an Indian cell and cancer biologist and a Senior Scientist at National Centre for Cell Science. He is known for his contributions towards the understanding the mechanism of cancer progression in breast, melanoma and other cancers and development of novel therapeutic targets and target-based therapy in cancers.
Go to Profile#7698
Bernhard Schartel
#165041
Overall Influence
#7699
Hans-georg Ritter
#165053
Overall Influence
#7700
Henry R. Strauss
#165101
Overall Influence
