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,
#8101
Iain Donald Campbell
#66786
Overall Influence
1941 - 2014 (73 years)
Iain Donald Campbell was a Scottish biophysicist and academic. He was Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Oxford from 1992 to 2009. Early life and education Campbell was born on 24 April 1941 in Blackford, Perth and Kinross, Scotland. He was the son of Daniel Campbell and Catherine Campbell . He was educated at Perth Academy, a state school in Perth. He went on to study physics at the University of St Andrews, graduating in 1963. He remained at St Andrews to undertake post-graduate research and completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree in physics. His doctoral advisor was Dirk Bijl, and he undertook research under John F.
Go to Profile#8102
James S. Hyde
#92646
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
James S. Hyde was an American biophysicist. He held the James S. Hyde chair in Biophysics at the Medical College of Wisconsin where he specialized in magnetic resonance instrumentation and methodology development in two distinct areas: electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy and magnetic resonance imaging . He is senior author of the widely cited 1995 paper by B.B. Biswal et al. reporting the discovery of resting state functional connectivity in the human brain. He also served as Director of the National Biomedical EPR Center, a Research Resource supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Go to Profile#8103
Arup Kumar Raychaudhuri
#129794
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Arup Kumar Raychaudhuri is an Indian condensed matter physicist, materials scientist and a Distinguished Emeritus Professor at the S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences. Known for his pioneering work on the interplay of disorder and interaction, Raychaudhuri is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies viz. Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India and Indian National Science Academy as well as the Asia-Pacific Academy of Materials. He is a recipient of a number of awards such as Millennium Medal of the Indian Science Congress, ICS Gold Medal of the Materials Research Society of India and FICCI Award.
Go to Profile#8104
Kazuhiro Yamamoto
#171201
Overall Influence
#8105
Karl-Ludwig Kratz
#139063
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Karl-Ludwig Kratz is a German nuclear chemist and astrophysicist. He is professor for nuclear chemistry at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and adjunct professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.
Go to Profile#8106
Zhang Jie
#171210
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Zhang Jie is a Chinese physicist. He served as President of Shanghai Jiao Tong University from November 2006 to February 2017. He was elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2003. He was elected to the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina on March 28, 2007. He was elected as foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2012.
Go to Profile#8107
Simone Techert
#77780
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Simone Techert is an X-ray physicist and physicochemist. She develops methods for time-resolved X-ray experiments to illuminate chemical molecular processes for example 'filming' chemical reactions in real time.
Go to Profile#8108
Guo Zengyuan
#138957
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Zeng-Yuan Guo , born 20 February 1936 in Jiangsu Province, is a professor in the Department of Engineering Mechanics in Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He is a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a ASME fellow .
Go to Profile#8109
Ilona Riipinen
#136451
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Ilona Riipinen is a Finnish physicist, working as a professor of atmospheric sciences at Stockholm University. She has received funding for her research from many funds as well as the European Research Council.
Go to Profile#8110
Cynthia Cattell
#165431
Overall Influence
Cynthia Cattell is space plasma physicist known her research on solar flares and radiation belts. Education and career Cattell has a B.A. from Hampshire College and earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1980.
Go to Profile#8111
Marc Garneau
#46582
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Joseph Jean-Pierre Marc Garneau is a Canadian retired politician, retired Royal Canadian Navy officer and former astronaut who served as a Cabinet minister from 2015 to 2021. A member of the Liberal Party, Garneau was the minister of foreign affairs from January to October 2021 and minister of transport from November 2015 to January 2021. He was the Member of Parliament for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount.
Go to Profile#8112
Jessica Werk
#101265
Overall Influence
Jessica K. Werk is an American astronomer and an associate professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington. Her work includes the study of intergalactic and interstellar media. Werk was a Hubble fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 2013 to 2016, and won the $65,000 Sloan Fellowship in 2018. Her research focuses on the role of gas in the formation and evolution of galaxies and the intergalactic medium, primarily through spectroscopic observations in the optical and ultraviolet.
Go to Profile#8113
Sarah E. Gibson
#151414
Overall Influence
Sarah E. Gibson is an American solar physicist. She is a Senior Scientist and past Interim Director of the High Altitude Observatory in Boulder, Colorado. As of 2019, Dr. Gibson is the Project Scientist for the PUNCH Small Explorer mission being built for NASA.
Go to Profile#8114
Susan Avery
#57306
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Susan K. Avery is an American atmospheric physicist and President Emerita of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, where she led the marine science and engineering research organization from 2008–2015. She was the ninth president and director and the first woman to hold the leadership role at WHOI. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Colorado, Boulder , where she served on the faculty from 1982–2008. While at UCB she also served in various administrative positions, including director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences , a 550-...
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Jennie Traschen
#164661
Overall Influence
Jennie Harriet Traschen is an American physicist and cosmologist whose research concerns the structure of the early universe, inflation, black holes and black hole thermodynamics, and quantum gravity. She is a professor of physics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Go to Profile#8116
Erna Frins
#140276
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Erna Martha Frins Pereira is a Uruguayan physicist. She works as a professor and researcher at the University of the Republic. She was president of the Uruguayan Physics Society from 2007 to 2011. In 2012 she won the National L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science for her research in environmental physics.
Go to Profile#8117
Lulu Qian
#47499
Overall Influence
Lulu Qian is a Chinese-American biochemist who is a professor at the California Institute of Technology. Her research uses DNA-like molecules to build artificial machines. Early life and education Qian is from China. She completed her bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering at Southeast University in Nanjing. Qian moved to Shanghai for her doctoral research, where she worked at Shanghai Jiao Tong University on biochemistry. She then moved to the California Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow. At Caltech, she worked alongside Erik Winfree on biochemical circuits. She used a rev...
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Józef Mayer
#43519
Overall Influence
1939 - 2016 (77 years)
Józef Mayer was a Polish chemist, specializing in radiation chemistry, the Rector of Lodz University of Technology in 1996–2002. Józef Mayer graduated from the Faculty of Chemistry of Lodz University of Technology , in 1961. In the same year he started work in the Department of Physical Chemistry. Józef Mayer presented his PhD thesis in 1968. In 1988 he became Associate Professor and in 1994 he received the title of Professor of TUL.
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Henry Hall
#135070
Overall Influence
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Henry Edgar Hall FRS was a professor of low temperature physics at the University of Manchester. He was the 2004 recipient of the Guthrie Medal and Prize. Hall was awarded a Ph.D. in 1957 from Emmanuel College, Cambridge with thesis title The rotation of liquid helium II. He worked at the University of Manchester from 1958 to 1995, when he retired. He died on 4 December 2015.
Go to Profile#8120
Yannis K. Semertzidis
#71142
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Yannis K. Semertzidis is a physicist exploring axions as a dark matter candidate, precision physics in storage rings including muon g-2 and proton electric dipole moment . The axion and the pEDM are intimately connected through the strong CP problem. Furthermore, if the pEDM is found to be non-zero, it can help resolve the matter anti-matter asymmetry mystery of our universe. During his research career, he held a number of positions in the Department of Physics in Brookhaven National Laboratory, including initiator and co-spokesperson of the Storage Ring Electric Dipole Moment Collaboration. H...
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Eberhart Jensen
#110146
Overall Influence
1922 - 2003 (81 years)
Eberhart Jensen was a Norwegian astrophysicist. He was born in Røyken as a son of farmer Edvard Jensen and Berthe Marie Kristiansen . He finished his secondary education in 1942 and graduated from the University of Oslo with the cand.real. degree in 1949. During the occupation of Norway, after the 1943 University of Oslo fire, he was arrested together with a thousand students and sent to Stavern. In December he was shipped on to Sennheim, later Buchenwald. He survived until the camp was liberated. In 1948 he married Liv Linnestad.
Go to Profile#8122
Paolo Radaelli
#131970
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Paolo Giuseppe Radaelli, FInstP is an Italian physicist and academic. He is the Dr Lee's Professor of Experimental Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#8123
Kwang Hwa Chung
#92281
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Kwang Hwa Chung is a South Korean physicist who has served as president of the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science, the Korea Basic Science Institute, and the Korean Vacuum Society. She has received the Moran Medal of the Order of Civil Merit, as well as other honors and awards for her scientific research and work to promote professionalism for women in STEM fields.
Go to Profile#8124
Valeria Simoncini
#82873
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Valeria Simoncini is an Italian researcher in numerical analysis who works as a professor in the mathematics department at the University of Bologna. Her research involves the computational solution of equations involving large matrices, and their applications in scientific computing. She is the chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Linear Algebra.
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Chung-Kang Peng
#48631
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Chung-Kang Peng is the Director of the Center for Dynamical Biomarkers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center / Harvard Medical School . Under his direction the Center for Dynamical Biomarkers researches fundamental theories and novel computational algorithms for characterizing physiological states in terms of their dynamical properties. He is also currently the K.-T. Li Visiting Chair Professor at National Central University , Visiting Chair Professor at National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, and Visiting Professor at China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in China. During 2012–2014,...
Go to Profile#8126
Yervant Terzian
#126254
Overall Influence
1939 - 2019 (80 years)
Yervant Terzian was an American astronomer. He was the Tisch Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Cornell University's Department of Astronomy, which he chaired between 1979 and 1999. Background Yervant Terzian was born on February 9, 1939, in Alexandria, Egypt to a Greek mother, Maria , daughter of a fisherman, and an Armenian father, Bedros Terzian, a merchant who survived the Armenian genocide. He studied at the Kalousdian Armenian School in Cairo and received his B.Sc. in physics and mathematics from the American University in Cairo in 1960. He then emigrated to the United States and enrolled at Indiana University Bloomington.
Go to Profile#8127
Eric Jakeman
#94737
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Eric Jakeman is a British mathematical physicist specialising in the statistics and quantum statistics of waves. He is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Nottingham. Education Jakeman was educated at The Brunts School in Mansfield, England. He received a degree in mathematical physics from Birmingham University in 1960, and a PhD in superconductivity theory in 1963.
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Peter Heszler
#89143
Overall Influence
1958 - 2009 (51 years)
Peter Heszler was a Hungarian physicist. He is well known for, among others, his research on laser-assisted nanoparticle synthesis. His research included nanotechnology, condensed matter physics, materials science, fluctuations and noise, laser science and chemical sensors, including fluctuation-enhanced sensing.
Go to Profile#8129
Lucia Reining
#150203
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Lucia Reining is a German theoretical spectroscopist who works in France as a director of research with the French National Centre for Scientific Research , in the Laboratoire des Solides Irradiés at the École Polytechnique.
Go to Profile#8130
P. V. Manoranjan Rao
#130381
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
P. V. Manoranjan Rao is a veteran space scientist and author from India. In his career spanning over three decades — including over two decades at the Indian Space Research Organisation's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre — he has done extensive research in areas including the physics of lightning discharge, ionospheric physics, magnetospheric physics, VLF and ELF wave propagation, electrostatics of launch vehicles, electrostatic charging of communications satellites, EMI/EMC and lightning protection for launch vehicles. He has edited and authored three books on India's space history.
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Jenni Adams
#163992
Overall Influence
Jennifer Anne Adams is a New Zealand physicist who works on astroparticle physics and cosmology at the University of Canterbury. She was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and was the winner of the 2021 Dan Walls Medal. She is a full professor, and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2023. Adams is the lead New Zealand scientist in the international neutrino observatory at the South Pole, the IceCube collaboration.
Go to Profile#8132
Jie Li
#108355
Overall Influence
Dr. Jie Li is a scientist and Professor at the University of Michigan. Career Jie Li received her MA in Geophysics from Harvard University in 1997. She continued her education at Harvard, completing her Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences in 1998. She is currently a Professor in Geochemistry and Mineral Physics at the University of Michigan. Li is engaged in wide-ranging research that includes carbon at high pressures and the origin and evolution of terrestrial plants, terrestrial-like moons and asteroids in the solar system. Recent research topics that she is engaged in are:Light element ...
Go to Profile#8133
Heike Rauer
#171292
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Heike Rauer is a German astronomer specializing in exoplanets and their detection methods. Rauer has been the Head of the Institute of Planetary Research at the German Aerospace Center since November 2017. She is also the head of the instrument consortium for the European Space Agency's PLATO space telescope, which set to launch in 2026. Previously, she is a member of CoRoT, Rosetta's MIRO spectrometer and the Next Generation Transit Survey collaborations.
Go to Profile#8134
Valentin Ivanov
#121166
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Valentin D. Ivanov is a Bulgarian astronomer working in the European Southern Observatory, mainly at the Paranal site. Among his primary research areas are the dynamics of star clusters, formation of stars, brown dwarfs, and exoplanets around such objects.
Go to Profile#8135
Zdeněk Moravec
#131868
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Zdeněk Moravec is a Czech astronomer and astrophysicist. Zdeněk Moravec is a graduate from Charles University in Prague. He became a prolific discoverer of minor planets, during his stay at the Kleť Observatory in South Bohemia, Czech Republic, from 1992 to 2000. He is credited by the Minor Planet Center with a total of 93 discovered bodies , of which 65 were co-discoveries together with astronomer Miloš Tichý. In March 2008 they discovered the minor planet 17805 Švestka at the Kleť Observatory, which they named it in honor of solar physicist Zdeněk Švestka.
Go to Profile#8136
Antígona Segura
#128051
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Antígona Segura Peralta is a Mexican physicist and astrobiologist. Since 2006, she has been a researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and collaborator at the NASA Astrobiology Institute. As a feminist she actively advocates for the inclusion of women in the exact sciences, mathematics, and engineering. Segura has participated in several activities in and outside UNAM defending women's rights; she was awarded with the 2021 Hermila Galindo medal by the Congress of Mexico City.
Go to Profile#8137
Andrew J. Richards
#145984
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Andrew J. Richards, FRS is a British professor of astronomy at UCL and a scientist at the UK Space Agency. Education Richards was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge , and completed his doctorate at Cambridge.
Go to Profile#8138
Mark Webber
#89689
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Mark Webber is a British political scientist and international relations specialist whose research interests include the international politics of the former Soviet Union, contemporary Russian foreign policy, foreign policy analysis , politics of NATO and European Union enlargement, security studies, and comparative international organisations. He is a professor of International Politics at the University of Birmingham, where between 2011 and July 2019 he was the Head of the School of Government and Society. He was also the Head of the Department of Politics, History and International Relati...
Go to Profile#8139
Kin Endate
#76261
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
is a Japanese amateur astronomer who has discovered hundreds of asteroids, most of them in collaboration with Kazuro Watanabe, placing him among the most prolific discoverers of minor planets. Career in astronomy Kin Endate was born in Iwaizumi in Iwate Prefecture and went to Hokkaido Designers School to study photography. He began taking astrophotos in high school, but did not begin serious asteroid observations until 1986.
Go to Profile#8140
Beverley McKeon
#107021
Overall Influence
Beverley J. McKeon is a physicist and aerospace engineer specializing in fluid dynamics, and in particular in turbulent flows near walls. She was Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology. Currently she is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University.
Go to Profile#8141
Leonard M. Rieser
#150072
Overall Influence
1922 - 1998 (76 years)
Leonard Moos Rieser was an American physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and later for nuclear disarmament. Rieser was a professor of physics and provost at Dartmouth College. Biography Rieser was born May 18, 1922 in Chicago. He studied at Dartmouth College from 1940 to 1942 before transferring to the University of Chicago and graduating with a bachelor's degree in physics in 1943. In 1942 he enlisted in the Army Signal Corps and after graduating from Chicago was assigned to work on the secret Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb. Rieser first worked at the Metallurgical La...
Go to Profile#8142
Nanda Rea
#146343
Overall Influence
Nanda Rea is a scientist in the field of astrophysics, currently based in Barcelona, Spain working as a research professor for the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas and Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya.
Go to Profile#8143
Ahmad Khatami
#18009
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Ahmad Khatami is a professor of Persian language and literature, a lecturer at the Department of Persian Language and Literature, and the head of the Center of Excellence of Persian Literary History at Shahid Beheshti University in Iran.
Go to Profile#8144
Pieter Kok
#100277
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Pieter Kok is a Dutch physicist and one of the co-developers of quantum interferometric optical lithography. Kok was born in Friesland in the Netherlands. In 1997 he graduated from the University of Utrecht with a degree in Foundations of Quantum Theory. In 2001, he received his PhD in physics from the University of Wales, Bangor. His research specializations include linear optical implementations of quantum communication and computation protocols, quantum teleportation and the interpretation of quantum theory. Dr. Kok has worked in the Quantum Computing Technologies Group at the NASA/Jet ...
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Peter R. McCullough
#137569
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Peter R. McCullough is an American astronomer, founder of the XO Project and discoverer of extrasolar transiting planets, such as XO-1b. Soon after the U.S. declassification of the laser beacon adaptive optics technique in 1991, he identified dusty disks around newborn stars, later referred to as proplyds, in observations of the Orion Nebula made with the Starfire Optical Range. Astronomers John Gaustad, McCullough, and David Van Buren with engineer Wayne Rosing mapped the entire southern sky in the hydrogen alpha transition with sufficient sensitivity for decontamination of the Milky Way from the cosmic microwave background.
Go to Profile#8146
Lenka Kotková
#104513
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Lenka Kotková is a Czech astronomer and a discoverer of minor planets. She works at Observatoř Ondřejov , located near Prague. Besides numerous main-belt asteroids she also discovered Mars-crosser asteroid 9671 Hemera and Hilda family asteroid 21804 Václavneumann.
Go to Profile#8147
Rommie Amaro
#96992
Overall Influence
Rommie E. Amaro is a professor and endowed chair of chemistry and biochemistry and the director of the National Biomedical Computation Resource at the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on development of computational methods in biophysics for applications to drug discovery.
Go to Profile#8148
Artem Sarkisyan
#133927
Overall Influence
1926 - 2016 (90 years)
Artem Sarkisovich Sarkisyan was a Russian oceanographer, Doctor of Sciences, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences , Distinguished Professor at the Lomonosov Moscow State University , Head of Laboratory at the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Chief Researcher at the Institute of Numerical Mathematics, RAS. Laureate of the 1970 USSR State Prize and of the 2000 State Prize of the Russian Federation.
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Stefano Bianchi
#165271
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Stefano Bianchi is an Italian astrophysicist who is currently an Associate Professor at the Mathematics and Physics Department of Università degli Studi Roma Tre in Rome, Italy. He is an INAF Associate and an IAU Member.
Go to Profile#8150
Yuan Cao
#119298
Overall Influence
1996 - Present (30 years)
Yuan Cao is a Chinese electrical engineer and physicist. His research is focused on the properties of two-dimensional materials. He discovered that a stack of two sheets of graphene, cooled to 1.7 K, could act as a superconductor or as an insulator when exposed to an electric field. In 2018, Nature chose him as one of 10 people who mattered that year in science, calling him a "graphene wrangler."
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