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).

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List of the most influential people in Physics,

#8351

Jeremy Levy

#171068
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Jeremy Levy is an American physicist who is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Pittsburgh. Education and career Levy received his B.A. degree from Harvard University , and his Ph.D. in physics from University of California Santa Barbara under the supervision of Mark Sherwin. After his Ph.D., he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Santa Barbara with David Awschalom. He started his independent academic career as an assistant professor in physics in 1996 and currently distinguished professor of physics in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh.
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#8352

Brian O'Brien

#88122
Overall Influence
1934 - 2020 (86 years)
Brian John O'Brien was an Australian physicist and space scientist. He is best known for his "research into lunar dust and the challenges it presents for exploration of the Moon." He "highlighted how hazardous it was for astronauts and their equipment." Five experiments designed by him were placed on the Moon by the Apollo 11 Mission. One measured radiation, the others were concerned with Moon dust.
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#8353

Subir Das

#174386
Overall Influence
Subir Das is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, India. His primary area of research is statistical mechanics of systems close to phase transitions.
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#8354

Beate Paulus

#154705
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Beate Paulus is a German chemist and professor of theoretical chemistry at the Free University of Berlin . Career Paulus studied physics at the University of Regensburg from 1987 to 1993, She graduated with a thesis under J. Keller entitled "Electrical conductivity in fullerides" From 1993 to 1995 she was a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Stuttgart and later Dresden. The title of her dissertation was "Electronic correlations in semiconductors". From 1996 she was also a postdoctoral fellow there. In December 2005 she completed her habilitation in Regensburg.
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#8355

Christiane Bonnelle

#94101
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Christiane Bonnelle was a French physicist and pioneering spectroscopist, who served as professor emeritus at Pierre and Marie Curie University. Career and education Bonnelle studied at the Sorbonne, from which she received Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Science degrees. After completing her degree, Bonnelle worked at CNRS in 1955, where she worked as an intern and then researcher. In 1960 she started working as an assistant professor at the Sorbonne, becoming a professor in 1967. She moved to Pierre and Marie Curie University in 1974, where she became director of the Laboratory of Physical Chemistry in 1979.
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#8356

Blayne Heckel

#51161
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Blayne Ryan Heckel is an American experimental physicist, known for his research involving precision measurements in atomic physics and gravitational physics. He is now a professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle.
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#8357

Vladimir Antonovich Kovalevsky

#46426
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Vladimir Antonovich Kovalevsky is a physicist. His research interests include digital geometry, digital topology, computer vision, image processing and pattern recognition. Scientific activity Vladimir A. Kovalevsky received his diploma in physics from Kharkiv University in 1950, his first doctoral degree in technical sciences from the Central Institute of Metrology in 1957 and his second doctoral degree in computer science from the Institute of Cybernetics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukraine in 1968. From 1961 to 1983 he served as Head of Department of Pattern Recognition at that Institute.
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#8358

Li Jiangang

#153938
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Li Jiangang is a Chinese plasma physicist. He is a research fellow at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science and a professor of the University of Science and Technology of China . He formerly served as Vice President of USTC and Director of the Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2015.
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#8359

Anatoly B. Kolomeisky

#166800
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Anatoly Boris Kolomeisky is a professor of Chemistry, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Physics and Astronomy and chairman of the department of Chemistry at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
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#8360

Sinead Farrington

#97841
Overall Influence
Sinéad Farrington is a British particle physicist who works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Farrington is interested in B physics, Higgs physics, tau physics, and long-lived particles. She is a Professor of Physics at the University of Edinburgh. In December 2020 Farrington was named the physical sciences and engineering laureate for the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom 2021.
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#8361

Wendy Adams

#168975
Overall Influence
Wendy K. Adams is an American physics educator. She is known for her work on interactive educational simulations of physics including the PhET Interactive Simulations project, on the effectiveness of peer discussions on conceptual understanding of physics, on measurement of student beliefs about physical concepts, on public beliefs about what it is like to be a physics teacher, and on other aspects of physics education. She is a research professor of physics in the Colorado School of Mines. and the Executive Director of Get the Facts Out a national multi-society effort to repair the reputatio...
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#8362

C. Richard Chapman

#174568
Overall Influence
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#8363

Bernard Picinbono

#105881
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Bernard Picinbono is a French scientist born in 1933 in Algiers. His scientific work focuses on statistics and its applications in optics, electronics, signal processing and automation. Biography He did his secondary and higher education in Algiers and then in Paris where he obtained the agrégation de sciences physiques.
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#8364

Wu Ningkun

#31232
Overall Influence
1920 - 2019 (99 years)
Wu Ningkun was Professor Emeritus of English at the University of International Relations in Beijing, where he had taught since 1956. During the 1980s, he held Visiting Fellowships at Cambridge University, Northwestern University and the University of California. In 1990, he was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters from Manchester University, Indiana. In 1992, he was Mansfield Visiting professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Montana. He has frequently lectured at Cambridge, Columbia, Stanford, Harvard and other universities. His publications include the memoir, Single Tear - A Family'...
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#8365

Marianne Walck

Marianne Walck
#44126
Overall Influence
Marianne C. Walck is the Chief Research Officer at the Idaho National Laboratory. She previously served as Vice President of the Sandia National Laboratories, where she led nuclear weapons stewardship.
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#8366

John Steinhoff

#108828
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
John Steinhoff is a classical physicist, best known for his important contributions to computational fluid dynamics field. He invented a physics based method called vorticity confinement to compute the numerical solution of partial differential equations.
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#8367

Dale J. van Harlingen

#174642
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Dale J. Van Harlingen is an American condensed matter physicist. Education and career Van Harlingen graduated from Ohio State University with a bachelor's degree in 1972, a master's degree in 1974 and a doctorate in 1977. As a postdoc he spent a year at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England and three years with John Clarke at the University of California, Berkeley, where he did research on non-equilibrium superconductors and DC electronics with SQUIDs. Van Harlingen became in 1981 a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is now a professor of physics at the ...
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#8368

Scott Pratt

#174679
Overall Influence
Scott Pratt is an American physicist. After completing a Bachelor of Science degree in physics at the University of Kansas in 1980, Pratt pursued a doctorate in the subject at the University of Minnesota, which he earned in 1985. He began working at Michigan State University's National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory in 1992. Pratt was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2011, "[f]or seminal contributions to the theory of pion interferometry and the phenomenology of heavy ion collisions."
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#8369

Sudhir Ranjan Jain

Sudhir Ranjan Jain
#173206
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Sudhir Ranjan Jain is an Indian theoretical physicist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, known for his contributions in complex quantum systems and Nonlinear dynamics. He was a scientist at the nuclear physics division of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, a professor at Homi Bhabha National Institute and is an adjunct professor and member of the Academic Board at the Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences. He has authored Mechanics, Waves and Thermodynamics: An Example-based Approach and A Primer on Fluid Mechanics with Applications. His doctoral advisor was Prof. Suresh V. Lawande,...
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#8370

Yvan Bruynseraede

#163063
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Yvan J. Bruynseraede is a condensed matter experimental physicist, known for his work on multilayers and superlattices, and his interests are thin films, nanostructures, novel materials, magnetism, and superconductivity. He is currently Professor Emeritus at the Catholic University of Leuven , and a member of the Quantum Solid-State Physics Laboratory.
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#8371

Dietrich Belitz

#142281
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Dietrich Belitz is an American theoretical physicist on the faculty of the University of Oregon. He studies statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics. Early life and education Belitz earned his Diploma in 1980 and his Dr. rer. nat. degree in 1982, both from the Technical University of Munich . His dissertation was titled, Der Einfluß inkohärenter Tunnelprozesse auf die Leitfähigkeit ungeordneter Materialien , advised by Wolfgang Götze. He did postdoctoral work at the University of Maryland, College Park.
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#8372

Alessio Zaccone

#160286
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Alessio Zaccone is an Italian physicist. Career and research After a PhD at ETH Zurich, he held faculty positions at Technical University Munich, University of Cambridge and at the Physics Department of the University of Milan. In 2015 he was elected a Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge.
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#8373

Piotr Jaranowski

#174752
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
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#8374

Denis Burgarella

Denis Burgarella
#143551
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Denis Burgarella is a French astrophysicist at . Education Denis Burgarella studied in Marseille from 1975 to 1978. From 1978 to 1982, he studied at Université Aix-Marseille II . After that, he moved to Nice University where he got a Ph.D. in astrophysics at LAM. From 1987–1989, he did a CNES Post-doc there as well. From 1989–1992 he did a post-doc in Space Telescope Science Institute.
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#8375

Sanjay Puri

#174116
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Sanjay Puri is an Indian statistical physicist and a senior professor at the School of Physical Sciences of Jawaharlal Nehru University. Known for his research on non-linear dynamics, Puri is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to physical sciences in 2006.
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#8376

Ralph Kenna

#95112
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Professor Ralph Kenna was an Irish mathematician and theoretical physicist who was head of the statistical physics research group at Coventry University. He was a specialist in statistical physics, complex systems and Irish mythology.
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#8377

Sarah Bohndiek

#117423
Overall Influence
Sarah Elizabeth Bohndiek is a physicist whose research involves developing novel imaging approaches for early cancer detection. She is a Professor in Biomedical Physics at the University of Cambridge and a Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute.
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#8378

Peter Drummond

#124918
Overall Influence
Peter David Drummond is a physicist and distinguished professor in the Centre for Quantum and Optical Science at Swinburne University of Technology. Drummond was born in New Zealand in 1950, and was educated at Auckland University, where he graduated a B. Sc. , at Harvard where he received an A. M. degree, and at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, where his D.Phil. degree was supervised by Dan Walls and Crispin Gardiner. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Joseph H. Eberly at The University of Rochester, and then as an academic at Auckland University before being appointed to a chair of physics at Queensland University in 1989.
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#8379

Gao Bolong

#128263
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
Gao Bolong was a pioneering Chinese laser physicist. Gao was born in Nanning, Guangxi. Following his father, he lived in several cities in his childhood. When the Japanese invaded Guangxi in 1944, Gao joined the Nationalist Army. He returned to school after the end of the WWII. In 1951, he graduated in physics from Tsinghua University.
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#8380

Aneta Stefanovska

#132476
Overall Influence
Aneta Stefanovska is a Macedonian-born, Slovenian-British biophysicist. She is a professor of physics at Lancaster University. Research Stefanovska's research concerns biological oscillations, particularly in the blood circulatory system, and their analysis using wavelets, nonlinear systems, and the Kuramoto model for systems of coupled oscillators. With Peter V. E. McClintock, she is co-editor of the book Physics of Biological Oscillators: New Insights into Non-Equilibrium and Non-Autonomous Systems .
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#8381

Patrick Wayman

#140920
Overall Influence
1927 - 1998 (71 years)
Patrick Wayman was an English astronomer and director of Dunsink Observatory from 1964 to 1992. Early life and education Patrick Arthur Wayman was born in Bromley, Kent, England on 8 October 1927. His parents were Mary and Lt-col. Lewis John Wayman. He had a twin brother. From 1937 to 1945 he attended City of London School, and then Emmanuel College, Cambridge from 1945 to 1948, graduating in 1948 in mathematics and physics. His 1953 PhD thesis from Cambridge University was entitled "Applications of aspheric optics to astronomy".
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#8382

Peter Rennert

#174852
Overall Influence
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#8383

W. D. Hamilton

#174856
Overall Influence
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#8384

Michael Repacholi

#120565
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Michael Harry Repacholi is an Australian biophysicist and radiation protection expert. He is one of the pioneer scientists and foremost authorities in Radiobiology in the world, including radiation protection standards for ionizing radiation and non-ionizing radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum. He was one of the founders and past presidents of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection and founder and director of several projects in the World Health Organization, including the International Electromagnetic Fields Project. Repacholi was also active in the stu...
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#8385

J. Michael Criley

#23581
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
John Michael Criley, MD, FACC, MACP, is Professor Emeritus at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles . Biography He has made a number of pioneering contributions to the field of cardiology and medical education of the physical examination. He was also instrumental in the development of the Los Angeles County Fire Department's Paramedic program in 1969.
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#8386

Liu Ye

#174989
Overall Influence
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#8387

Atsushi Sugie

#174990
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Atsushi Sugie is a Japanese astronomer and a discoverer of minor planets. He works at the Dynic Astronomical Observatory and has discovered many planets while working there. The Minor Planet Center credits him with the discovery of 122 numbered minor planets during 1988–2000.
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#8388

Nobuhiro Kawasato

#173661
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
is a Japanese astronomer credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 105 asteroids he made partially in collaboration with astronomer Tsutomu Hioki at Okutama Observatory , Japan, between 1988 and 2000.
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#8389

Ramon Torrecillas

Ramon Torrecillas
#127566
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Ramon Torrecillas is a Spanish physicist and materials scientist internationally recognized for his research in the fields of nanomaterials and biomaterials. Since December 2019 he is Head of the Brussels' Office of the Spanish National Research Council , which holds the institutional representation of the CSIC before the institutions of the EU and other relevant organizations and forums.
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#8390

Kimberly Strong

#120969
Overall Influence
Kimberly "Kim" E. Strong is an atmospheric physicist and the first woman to serve as chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Toronto. Her research involves studying stratospheric ozone chemistry, climate, and air quality using ground-based, balloon-borne and satellite instruments.
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#8391

Suliana Manley

#162867
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Suliana Manley is an American biophysicist. Her research focuses on the development of high-resolution optical instruments, and their application in studying the organization and dynamics of proteins. She is a professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and heads the Laboratory of Experimental Biophysics.
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#8392

Mike Gore

#108939
Overall Influence
1934 - 2022 (88 years)
Michael Miles Gore was a British-born Australian engineer, physicist, and science explainer, who worked at the Australian National University in Canberra. He was noted for being the founder of Questacon, the first interactive science centre in Australia.
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#8393

Lock Yue Chew

Lock Yue Chew
#108901
Overall Influence
Lock Yue Chew is an associate professor in the School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University . He works in Complex Systems, General Relativity, Quantum Chaos, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics, and has published several scientific papers. In 2004, he received his PhD in physics from the National University of Singapore. He also holds a Master of Science degree from the University of Southern California. From 1991 to 1992, he worked as a communications engineer in Singapore Airlines. After that, he became the senior member of the technical staff at DSO National Laboratories and later he became and adjunct assistant professor there.
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#8394

Lindsay Helmholz

Lindsay Helmholz
#49797
Overall Influence
1909 - 1993 (84 years)
Lindsay Helmholz was an American physicist who participated in the Manhattan Project during World War II that created the atomic bomb. He earned a PhD in chemistry at Johns Hopkins University before studying under Linus Pauling at California Institute of Technology and becoming a professor at Dartmouth College. After World War II, he joined the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis where he continued his work with X-ray diffraction and retired in 1978.
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#8395

Peter Demos

#127418
Overall Influence
1918 - 2012 (94 years)
Peter T. Demos was a professor in the Department of Physics and the Laboratory for Nuclear Science at MIT. A native of Peterborough, Ontario, Demos attended Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School and Queen's University, and received a Ph.D. in Physics from MIT in 1951. He was a founder and former director of the Bates Linear Accelerator at MIT and served as advisor on nuclear science to John F. Kennedy.
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#8396

Carlo Carraro

#175125
Overall Influence
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#8397

H. Eugene Stanley

#175130
Overall Influence
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#8398

David Sobral

#132592
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
David Ricardo Serrano Gonçalves Sobral is a Portuguese Astrophysicist, best known for the discovery of galaxy CR-7. He was an Astrophysics lecturer and Reader at Lancaster University from January 2016 to August 2022.
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#8399

Eva Cassirer

#136265
Overall Influence
1920 - 2009 (89 years)
Eva Cassirer was a German philosopher, astronomer and art collector. She was an honorary professor at the Technical University of Berlin. She was awarded the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations in 2011.
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#8400

Eugene Loh

#131919
Overall Influence
1934 - 2006 (72 years)
Eugene Chen Loh was a Chinese American physicist, having been Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Utah and was a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Biography Loh spent his childhood in Suzhou, China and emigrated to Virginia with his family at 14. He received his BS from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and his PhD from MIT. He took his first faculty job at Cornell University before moving to the University of Utah in 1975. He led the team to build the High Resolution Fly's Eye Cosmic Ray Detector at the US Army's Dugway Proving Ground, which in 1991 recorded the most energetic cosmic ray ever detected, known as the "Oh-My-God particle".
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