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,
#7751
Andreas Baumbach
#165913
Overall Influence
#7752
Jim Woodhouse
#165915
Overall Influence
#7753
Viet–thanh Pham
#165960
Overall Influence
#7754
Yuri Levin
#165966
Overall Influence
#7755
David S. Abend
#165968
Overall Influence
#7756
Philip Neil Best
#166009
Overall Influence
#7757
David McClelland
#142245
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
David Ernest McClelland is an Australian physicist, with his research focused on the development of the manipulation and control of optical quantum states, and its implementation into gravitational wave observatories. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America. Since 2001, he has been a professor at the Australian National University in the Research School of Physics and Engineering, in Canberra . He is Director of the ANU's Centre for Gravitational Astrophysics and Deputy Director of OzGrav - the Australian Research ...
Go to Profile#7758
Marilyn Gunner
#116987
Overall Influence
Marilyn Gunner is a physics professor at the City College of New York and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. She is known for her work on molecular biophysics and structural biology. Education Gunner received her B.A. from the State University of New York . She completed her Ph.D. in 1988 at the University of Pennsylvania, where she worked on topics such as electron transfer in proteins with Leslie Dutton.
Go to Profile#7759
F. A. Rodríguez Prada
#166041
Overall Influence
#7760
Davide Marenduzzo
#166070
Overall Influence
#7761
Etienne Berthier
#166081
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
#7762
Richard I. Joseph
#166102
Overall Influence
#7763
Maxim L. Markevitch
#166107
Overall Influence
#7764
Alvin Warren Czanderna
#166130
Overall Influence
#7765
Thomas J. Maccarone
#166148
Overall Influence
#7766
Daniel Errandonea
#166152
Overall Influence
#7767
John Edward Norris
#166224
Overall Influence
#7768
Maria Grazia Valsecchi
#166229
Overall Influence
#7769
Charles Bruce Stephenson
#116291
Overall Influence
1929 - 2001 (72 years)
Charles Bruce Stephenson was an American astronomer. He was born on a ranch in Little Rock, Arkansas, the only son of Chauncey Elvira Stephenson and Ona Richards. During his youth he made a telescope and was a winner of the Bausch & Lomb Science Award while in High School. He attended Little Rock Junior College, then transferred to the University of Chicago. After being awarded a B.S. in mathematics in 1949, he went on to study astronomy in graduate school, attaining a M.S. in 1951.
Go to Profile#7770
Jian Xin Zhong
#166245
Overall Influence
#7771
Hugh Osborn
#166251
Overall Influence
#7772
Rampal S. Etienne
#166261
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
#7773
Alex Ignatiev
#162348
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Alex Ignatiev is an American physicist, currently distinguished professor at University of Houston.
Go to Profile#7774
Ronald E. Waltz
#166266
Overall Influence
#7775
Vadim S. Kamenetsky
#166280
Overall Influence
#7776
Hans Schamel
#166327
Overall Influence
#7777
Anthony A. Kossiakoff
#166332
Overall Influence
#7778
Clare Parnell
#93149
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Clare Elizabeth Parnell is a British astrophysicist and applied mathematician who studies the mathematics of the Sun and of magnetic fields, including the Solar corona and the Sun's magnetic carpet, magnetic reconnection in plasma, and the null points of magnetic fields. She is a professor of mathematics at the University of St Andrews, and the former head of the Division of Applied Mathematics at St Andrews.
Go to Profile#7779
Stefano Bonini
#166356
Overall Influence
#7780
Zafar Iqbal.
#166365
Overall Influence
#7781
Gerhard Materlik
#148147
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Gerhard Theodor Materlik is a German physicist and science manager. He has made significant contributions to X-ray physics, notably improvements in the real-world application of synchrotron radiation. He is a Professor of Facilities Science at the University College London since 2013.
Go to Profile#7782
Hans Zinnecker
#166369
Overall Influence
#7783
Tom Baehr-Jones
#78898
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Tom Baehr-Jones is an American physicist who has made contributions in the field of Nanophotonics. His findings have been published in Nature, Science, Nature Photonics, Nature Materials, the IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology, and Optics Express, among many others. Baehr-Jones is a co-founder of Luxtera, Inc. He later joined Prof. Michael Hochberg's group at the University of Washington, and was also a co-founder of Elenion. He later joined Luminous Computing as a senior fellow, and is presently VP of Photonics at Luminous Computing.
Go to Profile#7784
Geoffrey L. Greene
#163563
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Geoffrey L. Greene is an American neutron physicist. Greene received his bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College in 1971 and his doctorate from Harvard University in 1974 with Norman Ramsey, a Nobel laureate in physics. There he worked on low-energy neutrons, which were then first available in intense beams. As a post-doctoral fellow he was at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the Institut Laue-Langevin. He was an assistant professor at Yale University and then at the National Institute of Standards and Technology . He has held various management positions at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Go to Profile#7785
Richard Anthony Steinhardt
#166470
Overall Influence
#7786
Satish K. Malik
#166476
Overall Influence
#7787
Don Kirkham
#109393
Overall Influence
1908 - 1998 (90 years)
Don Kirkham was an American soil scientist regarded as the founder of mathematical soil physics. His special interest was the flow of water through soils and drainage of agricultural land. He was awarded the 1983/4 Wolf Prize in Agriculture and the Robert E. Horton Medal in 1995.
Go to Profile#7788
David M. Kramer
#109649
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
David Mark Kramer is an American biophysicist. Kramer earned a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Dayton in biology, then completed a master's of science in cell biology at the same institution. In 1990, Kramer completed a doctorate in biophysics at the University of Illinois. He is the Hannah Distinguished Professor in Photosynthesis and Bioenergetics at Michigan State University.
Go to Profile#7789
Jaan Noolandi
#166518
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
#7790
Suryasarathi Bose
#166529
Overall Influence
#7791
Knut W. Urban
#166557
Overall Influence
#7792
Brian Gordon Swingle
#166561
Overall Influence
#7793
Sarah Milkovich
#129933
Overall Influence
Sarah Milkovich is lead of Science Operations for the Mars 2020 rover at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She was investigation scientist for the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Education Milkovich grew up in Ithaca, New York. Here she became interested in astronomy watching TV specials about spacecraft of Nova and PBS, and during vacations in northern Minnesota. She used to watch the Perseid Meteor Shower with her parents. Milkovich attended Phillips Exeter Academy, which she graduated in 1996. Whilst a high school student, she worked as an intern for the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft.
Go to Profile#7794
Ji Ping Zhou
#166562
Overall Influence
#7795
Yuegang Zhang
#166567
Overall Influence
#7796
Bernard Barbara
#166585
Overall Influence
#7797
Sven Torbjoern Lagerwall
#166587
Overall Influence
#7798
Maarten Frank Bobbert
#166594
Overall Influence
#7799
Alexis Plato Malozemoff
#166605
Overall Influence
#7800
Yvonne Choquet–bruhat
#166614
Overall Influence
