Search People Result | Academic Influence

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.

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List of the most influential people in Physics,

#8051

Milan Kurepa

#70448

Overall Influence

1933 - 2000 (67 years)

Milan V. Kurepa was a renowned Serbian atomic physicist. Biography Kurepa was born on 1 May 1933 in town of Bačka Palanka, Vojvodina, Serbia. In 1956, he began his working at the Vinca Nuclear Institute in Belgrade. Kurepa graduated from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Mathematics under Aleksandar Milojević, and later electrical engineering in the United Kingdom, under J. D. Craggs. His thesis topic was slow electron scattering off atoms and molecules.

#8052

Simon Catterall

#127839

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Simon Marcus Catterall is an American physicist at Syracuse University. His research involves High Energy Theory, particularly Lattice field theory. He was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2016 for "For numerous important contributions to computational physics and Lattice field theory through studies of gravity, technicolor, and especially the lattice formulation of supersymmetric field theories".

#8053

Farhat N. Beg

#170253

Overall Influence

Farhat N. Beg from the University of California, San Diego, was awarded the status of Fellow in the American Physical Society, after he was nominated by his Division of Plasma Physics in 2009, for contributions to the understanding of physics of short pulse high intensity laser matter interactions and pulsed power driven dense Z-pinches. His empirical scaling of hot electron temperature versus laser intensity has contributed significantly to the understanding of relativistic electron generation and transport in matter. He was the recipient of the Department of Energy Early Career Award in 2005 as well as the IEEE Early Achievement Award in 2008.

#8054

Ron Folman

#112388

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Ron Folman Biography Folman, born in Tel Aviv, is the son of Russian born Ahuva Gordon and Polish born Yeshayahu Folman. Folman’s mother, who barely escaped with her family from the burning city of Minsk as the Nazi army advanced, tried to make it to the land of Israel on the famous Exodus refugee ship, only to be returned by the British to Germany.

#8055

Harold E. Rorschach Jr.

#91497

Overall Influence

1926 - 1993 (67 years)

Harold Emil "Bud" Rorschach Jr. , was an American physicist. He joined the faculty of Rice University in 1952, and served there throughout his career. He was three times the chairman of the physics department and was principal investigator of the NASA interdisciplinary laboratory at Rice, which conducted research involving a wide range of studies on solid materials.

#8056

Eva Andrei

#131297

Overall Influence

Eva Yocheved Andrei is an American condensed matter physicist, currently a Distinguished Professor and Board of Governors Professor at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on emergent properties of matter arising from collective behavior of many particles, especially low-dimensional phenomena under low temperatures and high magnetic fields.

#8057

Kenneth Baldwin

#121914

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Ken Baldwin is professor of physics at the Australian National University . He is the deputy director of the Research School of Physics and the director of the [http://energy.anu.edu.au/ ANU Energy Change Institute].

#8058

Jocelyn Monroe

#134684

Overall Influence

Jocelyn Monroe is an American British experimental particle physicist who is a professor at the University of Oxford. Her research considers the development of novel detectors as part of the search for dark matter. In 2016 she was honoured with the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for her work on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.

#8059

János Bergou

#159250

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

János Bergou is a Hungarian physicist and academic who is currently a professor at Hunter College in New York. In 2009, he was awarded the status of Fellow in the American Physical Society, after they were nominated by their Division of Laser Science in 2009, for "outstanding work in quantum optics and quantum information, in particular work on the theory of correlated emission lasers, the effect of pump statistics on the nature of the electromagnetic field produced in lasers and micromasers, and on quantum state discrimination."

#8060

David H. Munro

#98896

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

David Herbert Munro is a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who created the programming language Yorick as well as the scientific graphics library Gist. Munro earned his BS at Caltech and PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He joined LLNL in 1980 and has primarily focused his research on laser fusion.

#8061

Rodney Jory

#81225

Overall Influence

1938 - 2021 (83 years)

Rodney Leonard Jory AM, , was an Australian physicist noted for establishing and running the National Youth Science Forum and for his contributions to Australian teams which have competed at the International Physics Olympiad. He retired from the position of director of the NYSF in January 2005. He died in 2021 in Merimbula, New South Wales, at the age of 82.

#8062

Valentin Smirnov

#170467

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Valentin Panteleimonovich Smirnov , is a Russian scientist, director of the Nuclear Fusion Institute at Kurchatov Institute, and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Graduation and awards 1961: Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology1981: Doctor degree phys.-math science1981: USSR State Prize1997: State Prize of the Russian Federation2002: Jesse W. Beams Research Award2005: Hannes Alfvén Prize of the European Physical Society, together with Malcolm Golby Haines and Thomas Sanford, "for their major contributions to the development of the multi-wire array in Z-pinch pulse-power ph...

#8063

C. Thomas Elliott

#76180

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Charles Thomas Elliott , , is a scientist in the fields of narrow gap semiconductor and infrared detector research. Early life Hailing from County Durham, he attended Washington Grammar Technical School. After gaining his Ph.D. he worked at the University of Manchester

#8064

Per Arne Rikvold

#136142

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Per Arne Rikvold is an academic physicist specializing in materials science, condensed-matter physics and computational science. He took the cand.real. degree at the University of Oslo in 1976 and the PhD at Temple University in 1983. He is James G. Skofronick Professor of Physics at Florida State University, where is affiliated with the Center for Materials Research and Technology , the School of Computational Science, and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory.

#8065

John D. Boice Jr.

#39201

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

John Dunning Boice Jr. is an American radiation epidemiologist and health physicist. Life Boice was born in Brooklyn, New York in December 1945. His father, John Dunning Boice Sr., served in the United States Army Air Corps. His mother, Irene, was the daughter of a Pennsylvania coal miner. His father's career necessitated frequent moves for the family during Boice's childhood including three years in France. The family settled in El Paso, Texas when he was fourteen. After graduating from Bel Air High School in the city, he enrolled at Texas Western College graduating in 1967 with a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics.

#8066

Steven Tingay

#155709

Overall Influence

Steven Tingay is a John Curtin Distinguished Professor at Curtin University and deputy executive director of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research. He is a specialist in radio astronomy and astrophysics.

#8067

Gediminas Juzeliūnas

#170521

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Gediminas Juzeliūnas is a professor of theoretical physics and heads the Quantum optics group at Vilnius University in Lithuania. He has authored and co-authored more than 50 articles on quantum and nonlinear optics, as well as on theoretical condensed matter physics.

#8068

Peter Nellist

#119666

Overall Influence

Peter David Nellist, is a British physicist and materials scientist, currently a professor in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford. He is noted for pioneering new techniques in high-resolution electron microscopy.

#8069

Richard Ernest Kronauer

#95637

Overall Influence

1925 - 2019 (94 years)

Richard Ernest Kronauer was the Gordon McKay Professor of Mechanical Engineering, emeritus, at Harvard University. Though experienced with research in both fluid mechanics and applied mathematics. He is primarily known for his pioneering work in mathematical biology, especially his research on human circadian rhythms. Kronauer's 1982 paper "Mathematical model of the human circadian system with two interacting oscillators" outlined a new method for understanding the biological circuits that underlie daily body cycles in variables such as blood pressure or body temperature. Professor Kronaue...

#8070

João Penedones

#65777

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

João Miguel Augusto Penedones Fernandes is a Portuguese theoretical physicist active in the area of quantum field theory. He is currently a tenure track assistant professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne .

#8071

Robert Rohde

#90290

Overall Influence

Robert Andrew Rohde is an American physicist and former graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied under Richard A. Muller. He received his PhD in 2010 with a thesis entitled "The Development and Use of the Berkeley Fluorescence Spectrometer to Characterize Microbial Content and Detect Volcanic Ash in Glacial Ice." He is also the founder of the website Global Warming Art and a Wikipedia editor under the username "Dragons Flight".

#8072

Howard Alan Smith

#87439

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Howard Alan Smith is a senior astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian, and is the former chair of the astronomy department at Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

#8073

Stephen J. Lukasik

Stephen J. Lukasik

#9466

Overall Influence

1931 - 2019 (88 years)

Stephen Joseph Lukasik was an American physicist who served in multiple high-level defense and scientific related positions for advancing the technologies and techniques for national defense and the detection and control of diverse types of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear devices. He was the second longest serving Director of DARPA - the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – during which numerous new technologies including packet and internet protocols were developed. He was also the first chief scientist of the Federal Communications Commission where he created its Offi...

#8074

Dagmar Sternad

#117853

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Dagmar Sternad is a German-American scientist and engineer. Sternad is University Distinguished Professor of Biology, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Physics at Northeastern University. She is also a core member of the Institute of Experiential Robotics at Northeastern University.

#8075

Saraswathi Vishveshwara

#106378

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Saraswathi Vishveshwara is an Indian biophysicist with specialization in the area of Molecular Biophysics. She is a professor in the Molecular Biophysics Unit at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. She works on computational biology and her research is primarily focused on elucidating structure-function relationships in biological systems. Using computational-mathematical techniques to understand the functioning of macromolecules such as proteins is a key aspect of her research.

#8076

Kim

#170691

Overall Influence

#8077

John H. Malmberg

#168257

Overall Influence

1927 - 1992 (65 years)

John Holmes Malmberg was an American plasma physicist and a professor at the University of California, San Diego. He was known for making the first experimental measurements of Landau damping of plasma waves in 1964, as well as for his research on non-neutral plasmas and the development of the Penning–Malmberg trap.

#8078

Michael Bolte

#169271

Overall Influence

Michael Bolte is a Distinguished Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California Santa Cruz. From 2005 - 2012 he was the Director of the University of California Observatories which operates Lick Observatory near San Jose California, co-manages the W.M. Keck Observatory, and leads the University of California participation in the Thirty-Meter Telescope Project. He was a member of the Board of Directors for the CARA Board that oversees the W.M. Keck Observatory from 2005 - 2013 and has been a Director on the Board of Directors for the Thirty-Meter Telescope International...

#8079

Rohit Pappu

#102669

Overall Influence

Rohit Pappu is an Indian-born computational and theoretical biophysicist. He is the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Engineering and the director of the Center for Science & Engineering of Living Systems at Washington University in St. Louis.

#8080

Peter Brancazio

#136477

Overall Influence

1939 - 2020 (81 years)

Peter John Brancazio was an American professor of physics at Brooklyn College for more than 30 years, whose observatory he temporarily headed. He was best known for his work on physics in sports. Personal life Brancazio was born in Astoria, Queens, New York. His interest in physics was sparked when his girlfriend and future wife Ronnie Kramer gave him a telescope.

#8081

Charles Santori

#113581

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Charles Santori is an American physicist. He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from MIT in 1997 and then got his Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford University six years later after finishing his studies on semiconductors with Professor Yoshihisa Yamamoto. In 2005 Charles joined HP Labs where he researches diamond photonics. A year before his graduation from Stanford he along with other classmates of Yamamoto team have invented quantum cryptography that used photon turnstile device. The same year, he published one of his most cited works on indistinguishable photons called Indistingui...

#8082

Shuji Sato

#170789

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Shuji Sato is a Japanese astronomer and Professor Emeritus of Nagoya University. His specialty is infrared astronomy. Career 1968 graduated from the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Kyoto University. 1973 received a PhD degree from the Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University. 1973 became an assistant professor at the Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University. 1987 became an associate professor at the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory, University of Tokyo . 1988 became an associate professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

#8083

Dmitry V. Bisikalo

#157850

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Dmitry Valerevich Bisikalo is a Russian astrophysicist and an expert in the interaction of binary stars. He is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the IAU, Acting Chief of the Scientific Secretary of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Chief Researcher of the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences .

#8084

Arthur A. Oliner

#57414

Overall Influence

1921 - 2013 (92 years)

Arthur Aaron Oliner was an American physicist and electrical engineer, who was professor emeritus at department of electrical and computer engineering at New York University-Polytechnic. Best known for his contributions to engineering electromagnetics and antenna theory, he is regarded as a pioneer of leaky wave theory and leaky wave antennas.

#8085

Olwyn Byron

#162192

Overall Influence

Olwyn Byron is a British physicist who is Professor of Biophysics at the University of Glasgow and Chair of the British Biophysical Society. She is a member of the Physics of Life UK Network steering group who were awarded the 2020 Institute of Physics Rosalind Franklin Medal and Prize.

#8086

James Moffat

#168256

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

James Moffat is a mathematician. He was a boffin in the 1982 Falklands war. He wrote Complexity Theory and Network Centric Warfare, which has 275 scholarly citations. Moffat is currently Professor of Physics at the University of Aberdeen, where he studies quantum gravity. He has published 135 articles. He is a recipient of the Napier Medal in Mathematics and the President’s Medal of the ORS; the 'nobel medal in analytics'. He is also a Fellow of OR, a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and a Chartered Mathematician. His contributions to the literature cited 560 time...

#8087

Ingrid J. Pickering

#159542

Overall Influence

Ingrid Jane Pickering is a geoscientist. She is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Molecular Environmental Science at the University of Saskatchewan. In 2018, Pickering was the first woman appointed Chair of the Canada Foundation for Innovation Board of Directors.

#8088

Tony Turner

#80348

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Professor Anthony Peter Francis Turner, FRSC, usually known as Tony Turner, is a British academic specialising in the fields of biosensors and bioelectronics. Biography Professor Anthony Turner is an Emeritus Professor of Cranfield University in England, where he was previously the Distinguished Professor of Biotechnology and Principal of Cranfield University at Silsoe. He remained Innovations Director for Cranfield Ventures Ltd , with responsibility for licensing and spin offs from Cranfield University. He joined Linköping University in 2010, to help re-establish the university in the fiel...

#8089

Karen Fleming

#24323

Overall Influence

Karen Renee Gibson Fleming is a Professor of Biophysics at Johns Hopkins University. She investigates the energetics of transmembrane helix-helix interactions. Fleming was awarded the 2020 Protein Society Carl Brändén Award.

#8090

Juliet Lee-Franzini

#128721

Overall Influence

1933 - 2014 (81 years)

Juliet Lee-Franzini was Chinese-born physics who was the founding faculty member of the high energy physics experimental group at Stony Brook University. Early life and education Juliet Lee-Franzini was born of Chinese parents in Paris, France in 1933 and educated in the United States. She earned her BA at Hunter College in 1953, her MA and PhD from Columbia University in 1957 and 1960.

#8091

Kirill Horoshenkov

#122846

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Kirill Horoshenkov is a Russian-born British academic and professor at the University of Sheffield. He is an expert in outdoor sound propagation, acoustic materials and instrumentation. In recognition of his contribution to the field of acoustics, he was awarded the Tyndall Medal by the Institute of Acoustics in 2006. He was elected a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America in 2014 and fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2020.

#8092

Toru H. Okabe

#132118

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Toru H. Okabe is a Japanese scientist specializing in materials science, environmental science, resource circulation engineering, and rare metals process engineering, particularly for electronic waste. His most recent work involves the advancement of new processing technology to recycle rare metals like niobium, titanium, yttrium, rhenium, neodymium, other lanthanides and precious metals. He is also involved in sustainable urban mining.

#8093

Baerbel Lucchitta

#170990

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Baerbel Kösters Lucchitta is a scientist emeritus at the Astrogeology Science Center at the USGS and one of the first women in the field of Astrogeology. She was one of the people responsible of making lunar maps for the Apollo 11 mission. During her career, she was dedicated to mapping the Moon, Mars, Europa and the Galilean Satellites, and Antarctica. The Lucchitta Glacier is named after her work in Antarctica, and the Asteroid 4569 Baerbel is named after her work in planetary geology.

#8094

Aba Andam

#47360

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Professor Aba A. Bentil Andam is a Ghanaian particle physicist who was President of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences from 2017–2019. She is the first Ghanaian female physicist. Early life and education Aba A. Bentil Andam was born in Ghana in 1948 in Ajumako Kokoben. She had her secondary education at Mfantsiman Senior High School. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana ,⁣ where she majored in physics and minored in mathematics. She sought further education in Britain where she earned a master's degree from the University of Birmingham and a Ph.D.

#8095

Abir Igamberdiev

#110671

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Abir Ubayevich Igamberdiev is a Russian-Canadian theoretical biologist and plant scientist. He is professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. He is most known for his research on organization of plant metabolism, for the conceptual development of foundations of theoretical biology, and for his works on history and philosophy of science.

#8096

Eric J. Sharpe

#22424

Overall Influence

1933 - 2000 (67 years)

Eric John Sharpe was the founding Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. He was a major scholar in the phenomenology of religion, the history of modern Christian mission, and inter-religious dialogue.

#8097

Odile Macchi

#61171

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Odile Macchi is a French physicist and mathematician. She has been a member of the French Academy of Sciences since 2004. Life Odile Danjou was born in Aurillac during the German occupation. She is one of the six recorded children of Bernard Danjou and his wife, born Geneviève Féat.

#8098

Markus Aspelmeyer

#171082

Overall Influence

#8099

Deirdre Shoemaker

#168695

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Deirdre Marie Shoemaker is an American astrophysicist whose research studies the mergers of binary black holes through both simulation and observation. She is a professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin, where she directs the Center for Gravitational Physics and is affiliated with the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences.

#8100

Henry Kandrup

#127386

Overall Influence

1955 - 2003 (48 years)

Henry Emil Kandrup was an American astrophysicist and professor at the University of Florida, Gainesville. His major contributions were in the areas of galaxy dynamics and plasma physics. Early life and education Kandrup was born in Manhasset, New York and spent most of his childhood in Great Neck. His parents, Jytte and Fred, were immigrants from Denmark where his father had worked as a silver smith. He graduated from the Brooks Preparatory School in Andover, Massachusetts at the age of 16, then enrolled at Cornell, transferring to Princeton the following year. He received his PhD in 1980 from the University of Chicago where his thesis advisor was James Ipser.

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