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.

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,

#8401

Alessandra Corsi

#173324

Overall Influence

Alessandra Corsi is an Italian astronomer known for her work as part of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration on gravitational-wave astronomy, and on multi-messenger astronomy combining gravitational and electromagnetic signals. She is an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Texas Tech University.

#8402

Jean-Pierre Gazeau

#132775

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Jean-Pierre Gazeau is a French physicist and mathematician who works in the field of symmetry in quantum physics. His research has focused on coherent states; beta numeration for quasicrystals, and more generally for aperiodic order; and de Sitter space and anti-de Sitter space times. He is a professor emeritus at Paris Diderot University, Sorbonne Paris Cité University .Through a career spanning 50 years, he has held research and teaching positions on five continents, with a particular concentration on developing and emerging countries.

#8403

Johndale Solem

#122755

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Johndale C. Solem is an American theoretical physicist and Fellow of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Solem has authored or co-authored over 185 technical papers in many different scientific fields. He is known for his work on avoiding comet or asteroid collisions with Earth and on interstellar spacecraft propulsion.

#8404

Cary Forest

#175218

Overall Influence

Cary B. Forest is professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research relates to experimental plasma physics on the border between nuclear fusion research and laboratory plasma astrophysics. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society.

#8405

Marcel van Herk

#175238

Overall Influence

#8406

Alfred Bohrmann

#137584

Overall Influence

1904 - 2000 (96 years)

Alfred Bohrmann was a German astronomer and discoverer of minor planets. He did his Ph.D. dissertation in 1927 at the Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory, at the University of Heidelberg. At the time, the observatory at Heidelberg was a center for asteroid discovery by Max Wolf and Karl Reinmuth and others, and during his time there Bohrmann discovered 9 asteroids. Bohrmann worked there from 1924 to 1969, publishing more than 700 minor planet observations. He left the observatory after a dispute with the higher authority.

#8407

Stephan Ulamec

#127885

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Stephan Ulamec is an Austrian geophysicist, born in Salzburg on January 27, 1966, with more than 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals and several participations in space missions and payloads operated by diverse space agencies. He is working at the German Aerospace Center in Cologne. He is regularly giving lectures about his publications in aerospace engineering at the University of Applied Sciences: Fachhochschule FH-Aachen. Main aspects of his work are related to the exploration of small bodies in the solar system .

#8408

Charles Edward Stevens

#72204

Overall Influence

1927 - 2008 (81 years)

Dr. Charles Edward "Ed" Stevens was an American scientist, professor, and veterinarian. An internationally recognized expert in the field of comparative physiology and digestive systems, Dr. Stevens was responsible for over 70 publications including text books used in Veterinary Schools worldwide, including Comparative Physiology of the Vertebrate Digestive System.

#8409

Pavel Kaskarov

#161488

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Pavel Kaskarov — was a Soviet and Russian physicist. Doctor of physical and mathematical Sciences, honored Professor of Moscow state University. Head of the Department of General physics for the faculty of chemistry/General physics and molecular electronics

#8410

Marek Grad

#141936

Overall Influence

1951 - 2020 (69 years)

Marek Andrzej Grad was a Polish geophysicist and seismologist, and a professor of Earth sciences. He worked in the Department of Physics of Litosphere of the Institute of Geophysics at the University of Warsaw.

#8411

Akira Hirose

#175307

Overall Influence

#8412

Andrey Gagarin

#106621

Overall Influence

1934 - 2011 (77 years)

Prince Andrey Petrovich Gagarin was a professor of physics at Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University. Ancestry and background As the son of Prince Peter Andreevich Gagarin and grandson of Prince Andrey Grigorievich Gagarin , Andrey Petrovich Gagarin walked in the footsteps of his closest ancestors. His father was a graduate of the same Polytechnical University for which his grandfather was the first rector, and at which Andrey Petrovich Gagarin held a professorship. His Great-grandfather was the diplomat, artist, officer and the vice-chancellor of the Imperial Academy of Arts Prince Grigo...

#8413

Jason Crain

#152329

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Jason Crain is an American physicist based in the United Kingdom. He was appointed to IBM Research in 2016. He previously held the chair of applied physics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and was appointed director of research at the UK's National Physical Laboratory in London where he also held the role of head of physical sciences . He is also visiting professor at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center in New York. His background is in the structure and physics of disordered matter at the molecular scale with a view to applications.

#8414

Merryn Tawhai

#128298

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Merryn Tawhai is a New Zealand engineering scientist. She is a professor at the University of Auckland, director of the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, where she was a fellow from 2002, and a former director of MedTech CoRE. She is known for the development of mathematical models of the lungs that will help scientists understand differences between physiologically normal lungs and the pathological changes that might occur in a disease. She was inducted into the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering in June 2018. In November 2018, Tawhai was elected a Fellow of the Roy...

#8415

David J. Smith

#87504

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

David J. Smith is a Regents' Professor of physics at Arizona State University. He is an Australian experimental physicist and his research is focussed on using the electron microscope to study the microstructure of different materials. He is a pioneer in high-resolution relectron microscopy technique and is very well known in his field. His interests are focused on thin films, nanostructures, novel materials and magnetism.

#8416

Abigail Vieregg

#163097

Overall Influence

Abigail Goodhue Vieregg is a professor of physics at the Enrico Fermi Institute and Kavli Institute of Cosmology, University of Chicago, specializing in neutrino astrophysics and cosmology. Her work focuses on cosmic high-energy neutrinos and mapping the cosmic microwave background.

#8417

Viktor Panin

#143356

Overall Influence

1930 - 2020 (90 years)

Viktor Yevgenievich Panin was a Soviet and Russian physicist, professor, and advisor of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was an expert in the fields of solid mechanics, plastic deformation and physical materials.

#8418

Sindee Simon

#74340

Overall Influence

Sindee Lou Simon is an American chemical engineer and polymer physicist who studies the glass transition, thermosetting polymers, and nanoconfinement. Her research has included studies of ancient amber, showing that unlike liquids glass does not flow. She is the head of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University.

#8419

James B. Aguayo-Martel

#35484

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

James Benjamin Martel is a physician, surgeon and scientist. He is former chair of surgery, Mercy San Juan Medical Center, former chief of ophthalmology, otolaryngology , and plastic surgery, Sutter Roseville Medical Center. He is the former director of ophthalmology, Sutter General and Memorial Hospitals and assistant professor of ophthalmology and radiology, Johns Hopkins Medical School and Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute. He is currently clinical professor of ophthalmology and associate dean of graduate medical education in California Northstate University College of Medicine.

#8420

John V. Evans

#106691

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

John V. Evans is a British-American radio astronomer born in Manchester, England. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Manchester, and has been a professor at the Lincoln Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1960.

#8421

Wu Zhonghua

#65723

Overall Influence

1917 - 1992 (75 years)

Wu Zhonghua , also known as Chung-Hua Wu, was a Chinese physicist. He was a National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics researcher, Tsinghua University professor, and Founding Director of the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences . He pioneered the general theory of three-dimensional flow for turbomachinery, which has been widely used in aircraft engine designs. Wu and his wife Li Minhua were both academicians of the CAS.

#8422

Charles W. Juels

Charles W. Juels

#147521

Overall Influence

1944 - 2009 (65 years)

Charles W. Juels was an American amateur astronomer and psychiatrist by profession, who became a prolific discoverer of minor planets after his retirement. Juels was born in New York City in 1944, and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1969 he graduated from Cincinnati College of Medicine. After his retirement as a psychiatrist in Phoenix, Arizona, he began hunting for minor planets at his private Fountain Hills Observatory, in Fountain Hills, Arizona. He quickly became noted when he was credited with the discovery of 65 numbered minor planets during the first 18 months of his short career as a...

#8423

Luisa María Lara

#95808

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Luisa María Lara López is a Spanish astrophysicist. Since 2010, she has been a Spanish National Research Council Researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in the Solar System Department.

#8424

Ranganathan Shashidhar

#171304

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Ranganathan Shashidhar is a US-based Indian condensed matter physicist and a former head of the Laboratory for Molecularly Engineered Materials and Surface of the Center for Biomolecular Science & Engineering, a division of the United States Naval Research Laboratory. Known for his research on liquid crystals, Shashidhar is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the senior vice president of Polestar Technologies, a US-based company involved in the development of sensing technologies. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India...

#8425

Gloria Suzanne Koenigsberger Horowitz

Gloria Suzanne Koenigsberger Horowitz

#175545

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Gloria Suzanne Koenigsberger Horowitz is a Mexican astrophysicist and professor working at the National Autonomous University of Mexico . Her areas of expertise are in stellar spectroscopy, massive stars and binary interaction effects. She was director of UNAM's Instituto de Astronomía and a leading member of the team that succeeded in establishing the first connection to the Internet in Mexico in 1989.

#8426

Hou Xun

#160075

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Hou Xun is a Chinese optical physicist, specializing in optoelectronics. He is a research professor and former director of the Xi'an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics. He won the State Science and Technology Progress Award three times and was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1991.

#8427

Karen E. Daniels

#171933

Overall Influence

Karen E. Daniels is an American physicist who is a professor of physics at North Carolina State University. Her research considers the deformation and failure of materials. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and serves on their Committee on the Status of Women in Physics. She is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#8428

Krzysztof Sacha

#169856

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Krzysztof Sacha is a Polish theoretical physicist. He is currently Professor of Physics at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. Personal life Krzysztof Sacha was born on September 2, 1970, in Kłodzko together with his twin brother Jerzy Sacha. In 1996 he married Ewa, with whom he has two children Aleksandra and Wojciech.

#8429

James McAteer

#132567

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

R.T. James McAteer is an American solar physicist. He the senior associate provost and professor of astronomy at New Mexico State University, where he studies the coronal heating problem and space weather. McAteer is the author of the book "The Planets", and has published over 100 research articles.

#8430

Janina Maultzsch

#172502

Overall Influence

Janina Maultzsch is a German physicist who is the Chair of Experimental Physics at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Her research considers the electronic and optical properties of carbon nanomaterials.

#8431

Wolf-Dieter Schneider

#120615

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Wolf-Dieter Schneider is a German metallurgist, manager of the foundry industry and university professor. Life Wolf-Dieter Schneider was born on October 2, 1942, in Berlin, Germany. He studied foundry science at RWTH Aachen University and the Technical University of Berlin. In 1965, he obtained his diploma in Berlin. In 1969 he became a Doktoringenieur at the Foundry Institute of the Technical University of Berlin. PhD. He then took on tasks in the German foundry industry. Initially in managerial positions at Rheinstahl Hüttenwerke, he was appointed Technical Director of August Engels GmbH in Velbert in 1982 and two years later he was appointed to the executive board of Thyssen Guss AG.

#8432

Kevin France

#174743

Overall Influence

Kevin France is an astrophysicist and assistant professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado. His research focuses on exoplanets and their host stars, protoplanetary disks, and the development of instrumentation for space-borne astronomy missions.

#8433

Gennadiy Dulnev

#153912

Overall Influence

1927 - 2012 (85 years)

Gennadiy Nikolaevich Dulnev Professor, PHd. Was LITMO University elected chancellor. Professor of Computational Thermal Physics and Electrophysical Monitoring Department of ITMO. A member of Russian Academy of Natural Sciences

#8434

Antonio Luque

#43752

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Antonio Luque López is a Spanish scientist and entrepreneur in the field of photovoltaic solar energy. In 1979 he founded the Institute of Solar Energy of the Technical University of Madrid and was its director till his retirement in 2017; he is currently its honorary president as well as professor emeritus in this university. He invented the bifacial solar cell in the late 1970s, today one of the mainstream solar cell technologies, and founded Isofoton in 1981 for its industrial production. He is, arguably, one of the fathers of the science and technology of concentrator photovoltaics and h...

#8435

William F. Hoffmann

#175654

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

William F. Hoffmann is a physicist in the University of Arizona who was awarded the status of Fellow from the American Physical Society after they were nominated by their Division of Astrophysics in 1997, for his pioneering work in the field of balloon-borne far-infrared astronomy and discovery of far-infrared radiation from Galactic Center; successful construction of the Multi Mirror Telescope and application of infrared array technology to astronomy.

#8436

Richard K. Yamamoto

Richard K. Yamamoto

#168786

Overall Influence

1935 - 2009 (74 years)

Richard K. Yamamoto was an elementary particle physicist and professor of physics at MIT focusing primarily on the study of leptons and quarks and their interactions. To this end he was involved with experiments at Brookhaven, Fermilab, and SLAC, including the BaBar Experiment. He was also known for his expertise in building experimental hardware, which he shared with students.

#8437

Suzanne Amador Kane

#95262

Overall Influence

Suzanne Amador Kane is a physicist and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Haverford College. She is well known for her work utilizing video to understand the behavior of various species of birds. Education and early career Kane received her Bachelor of Science degree in physics in 1982 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She then attended Harvard University for her Master of Science degree and her PhD. There she worked in the laboratory of applied physicist Peter Pershan. Her thesis, entitled Optical and X-Ray Studies of Critical Phenomena in Thin Liquid Crystal Films and published ...

#8438

Carla Faria

#173249

Overall Influence

Carla Figueira De Morisson Faria is a Brazilian physicist and professor at University College London. She works on theoretical strong-field laser-matter interactions. Early life and education Faria is from Belém. She studied physics at the University of São Paulo. She worked with Vanderlei Bagnato on cold matter and atom trapping. Her masters dissertation considered magneto-optical traps. She joined the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy in Berlin, where she was supervised by Wolfgang Sandner. Faria joined the Max Planck Institute for Physics in 1999. She held postdoctoral positions at TU Wien, Leibniz University Hannover and Max Born Institute.

#8439

Fred Gillett

#133278

Overall Influence

1937 - 2001 (64 years)

Frederick Carl Gillett was an American astronomer who was a pioneer of infrared astronomy. He was based successively at the University of California, San Diego, Kitt Peak National Observatory, and the International Gemini Observatory. His discoveries include the Vega phenomenon and the first unidentified infrared emission bands.

#8440

Stefan Funk

#175767

Overall Influence

#8441

Antonio Castellanos Mata

Antonio Castellanos Mata

#131367

Overall Influence

1947 - 2016 (69 years)

Antonio Castellanos Mata was a Spanish physicist. Personal life Antonio Castellanos Mata was born on 7 March 1947, in Antoñanes del Páramo near León, Spain. A few years later, the family moved to León. He was the third and youngest child of Manuel Castellanos Berjón , a school teacher, and Fidela Mata Sarmiento .

#8442

Jana Zaumseil

#115057

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Jana Zaumseil is a German chemist who is a professor of physical chemistry at Heidelberg University. She serves as dean of the faculty of chemistry and earth sciences. Her research considers organic electronic materials for optoelectronics.

#8443

Jack Oliver

#59008

Overall Influence

1923 - 2011 (88 years)

John "Jack" Ertle Oliver was an American scientist. Oliver, who earned his PhD at Columbia University in 1953, studied earthquakes and ultimately provided seismic evidence supporting plate tectonics. In the 1960s, Oliver and his former graduate student, Bryan Isacks, set up seismographic stations in the South Pacific to record earthquake activity, and the data collected led to the insight that part of the ocean floor was being pushed downward.

#8444

David C. Watts

#114259

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

David Christopher Watts is a British biophysicist, material scientist, and academic. He is a professor of Biomaterials Science at the University of Manchester, and a Biomaterials Consultant at BIOMAN Materials Consultants.

#8445

Henry A. Kelly

#60871

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Henry Ansgar Kelly is distinguished research professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Kelly received his A.B. in classics from St. Louis University in 1959 and two years later his A.M in English literature and Ph.L. in philosophy from the same university. He entered Harvard University in 1961, receiving his Ph.D. in 1965. During his time at Harvard Kelly was selected as a junior fellow by the Harvard Society of Fellows. From 1964 to 1966, Kelly took courses at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry as a Jesuit scholastic.

#8446

Lindsay Glesener

Lindsay Glesener

#174501

Overall Influence

Lindsay Erin Glesener is a professor in the Institute for Astrophysics at the University of Minnesota . She is a National Science Foundation CAREER Award researcher and lead investigator on the FOXSI Sounding Rocket.

#8447

Tad Murty

#41154

Overall Influence

1938 - 2018 (80 years)

Tad S. Murty is an Indian-Canadian oceanographer and expert on tsunamis. He is the former president of the Tsunami Society. He is an adjunct professor in the departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Ottawa. Murty has a PhD degree in oceanography and meteorology from the University of Chicago. He is co-editor of the journal Natural Hazards with Tom Beer of CSIRO and Vladimir Schenk of the Czech Republic.

#8448

Mario Rocca

#159668

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Mario Agostino Rocca is an Italian experimental physicist. His main contributions are on the experimental measurement of surface phonon spectra, conventional and acoustic surface plasmon dispersion, and gas surface interaction.

#8449

Polina Anikeeva

#102373

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Polina Olegovna Anikeeva is a Russian-born American materials scientist who is a Professor of Material Science & Engineering as well as Brain & Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . She also holds faculty appointments in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. Her research is centered on developing tools for studying the underlying molecular and cellular bases of behavior and neurological diseases. She was awarded the 2018 Vilcek Foundation Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science, the 2020 MacVicar Faculty F...

#8450

Andrew Ng

#169879

Overall Influence

Andrew Kam-hung Ng is a Canadian physicist who is a professor emeritus in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. Education Ng studied mathematics and physics at the University of Hong Kong and pursued graduate study in plasma physics at the University of Western Ontario, completing his doctoral thesis, An Investigation Of Anomalous Scattering Of Laser Radiation By A Theta-pinch Plasma, in 1977.

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