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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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,

#8451

Nalin Samarasinha

#91913

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Nalin H. Samarasinha is a Sri Lankan born planetary scientist and a discoverer of minor planets, who studies the dynamical evolution and processes of cometary nuclei and comae. Currently, he works as a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute in the United States.

#8452

Arthur Bienenstock

#134835

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Arthur Bienenstock is professor emeritus of Photon Science at Stanford University. He is also a member of the National Science Board. He received his B.S. in 1955 and M.S. in 1957 from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, and a Ph.D. in 1962 from Harvard University. He was the former director of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource from 1978 to 1998.

#8453

Beatriz Noheda

#147643

Overall Influence

Beatriz Noheda is a professor at the University of Groningen and the director of the Groningen Cognitive Systems and Materials Center . She is particularly well known for discovering the monoclinic phase at the morphotropic phase boundary in lead zirconate titanate and other piezoelectrics, for her pioneering work in ferroelectric hafnia and for the development of memristors.

#8454

Fang Shouxian

#151582

Overall Influence

1932 - 2020 (88 years)

Fang Shouxian was a Chinese physicist who served as President of the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences . Biography Fang was born in Shanghai, Republic of China, on October 28, 1932. After graduating from Fudan University in October 1955, he was assigned to the Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences . He worked in the Soviet Union between 1957 and 1960. After returning to China, he was again assigned to the Institute of Modern Physics. He joined the Communist Party of China on June 22, 1979. He served as vice-president of the Institute of High Energy Physics in 1986, and two years later was promoted to President.

#8455

Andrew N. Jordan

#176002

Overall Influence

#8456

Olivier Doré

#176008

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Olivier Doré is a cosmologist, who is currently working as research scientist in Jet Propulsion Laboratory and visiting associate faculty at the California Institute of Technology. Awards Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, December 2017UC Irvine, Distinguished Visiting Professor, 2017, dateLaboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille , Aix-Marseille Universit´e, France, Visiting Professor, 2017, 1 monthJPL Voyager award, May 2016JPL Team award for outstanding contribution to the SPHEREx Proposal Team, February 2015JPL Mariner award, May 2013Gruber 2012 Cosmology Prize awarded to Charles Be...

#8457

Anne Borg

#156334

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Anne Borg is a Norwegian professor of physics and rector at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. She was prorector of education at NTNU from August 1, 2017 to August 20, 2019. She was appointed acting rector of NTNU on August 21, 2019, later being officially employed as rector on December 13 the same year.

#8458

Michael William Feast

#146113

Overall Influence

1926 - 2019 (93 years)

Michael William Feast was a British-South African astronomer. He served as Director of the South African Astronomical Observatory from 1976–1992, then became a professor at the University of Cape Town.

#8459

Adriana Marais

#96984

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Adriana Marais is a South African theoretical physicist, technologist and advocate for off-world exploration. She is a director of the Foundation for Space Development Africa, an organisation aiming to send Africa's first mission to the Moon, the Africa2Moon Project. She is the founder of Proudly Human, an initiative of which is the Off-World Project, a series of habitation experiments in Earth's most extreme environments.

#8460

Sergio Doplicher

#176011

Overall Influence

#8461

Thomas Carlos Mehen

#137472

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Thomas Carlos Mehen is an American physicist. His research has consisted of primarily Quantum chromodynamics and the application of effective field theory to problems in hadronic physics. He has also worked on effective field theory for non-relativistic particles whose short range interactions are characterized by a large scattering length, as well as novel field theories which arise from unusual limits of string theory.

#8462

Barbara Kegerreis Lunde

#126286

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Barbara Kegerreis Lunde is an American physicist and electrical engineer. She worked for NASA in the 1960s, where she developed several instruments for various projects. Lunde became the second woman to graduate from Iowa State University with a doctorate in physics and the first woman in Iowa to become a professional electrical engineer.

#8463

Margaret Benston

#53888

Overall Influence

1937 - 1991 (54 years)

Margaret "Maggie" Lowe Benston was a professor of chemistry, computing science, and women's studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She was a respected feminist and labour activist, as well as a founding member of the Vancouver Women's Caucus, in 1988, the Euphoniously Feminist and Non-Performing Quintet in 1970, Simon Fraser University's Women's Studies Program in 1975, and Mayworks in 1988. For thirty years, Benston worked locally, nationally, and internationally writing articles, giving speeches, and lobbying politicians on behalf of the women's and labour movement.

#8464

Oleg Minin

#175507

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Oleg V. Minin was born on March 22, 1960, in Novosibirsk, Academytown, Russia. He is a Russian physicist, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Metrology, and a full professor of Physics at the Tomsk Polytechnic University. He is renowned for his contributions to creating new scientific directions, including THz 3D Zone plate, Mechatronics , hyper cumulative shaped charge, subwavelength structured light, encompassing acoustics and surface plasmon.

#8465

Han Zhanwen

#115811

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Han Zhanwen is a Chinese astrophysicist. Biography Han was born in 1965 in Shunping County, Hebei. He completed his bachelor's degree from Hebei University in 1984 and earned a master's degree from Yunnan Astronomical Observatory in 1987. After that, he continued his study at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and got his doctor's degree in 1995. He did post-doctoral research at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei.

#8466

John Markert

#176075

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

John T. Markert is a professor in The University of Texas at Austin physics department and was department chair from 2005 to 2009. His group has done extensive research on high temperature superconducting materials, high-q oscillator experiments, dynamics of ferromagnets, nuclear magnetic resonance microscopy and spectroscopy, and optically switchable metal hydride films. A textbook written by Dr. Markert and Hans Ohanian, Physics for Engineers and Scientists, was released in 2008 by Norton Publishers. The book is for a calculus-based introductory course. As of 2008 his H index is 30..

#8467

McAllister Hull

#114749

Overall Influence

1923 - 2011 (88 years)

McAllister Hull was a North American theoretical physicist who took part in the creation of the atomic bomb that was dropped over Nagasaki in 1945, ending World War II. Early years Hull was born on September 1, 1923, in Birmingham, Alabama. In his memoir, he describes how, in his boyhood, he read Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and other science-fiction writers, and discovered physics and Albert Einstein while doing school projects.

#8468

Andrew Steele

#165754

Overall Influence

Andrew Steele is an astrobiologist at the Geophysical Laboratory at Carnegie Institution for Science. He uses traditional and biotechnological approaches for the detection of microbial life in the field of astrobiology and Solar System exploration. His research has led to discoveries of new forms of carbon in meteorites, new mechanisms of organic synthesis on Earth and Mars, and the presence of water in lunar and Martian rocks. Steele has developed several instrument and mission concepts for future Mars missions and was involved in NASA’s 2011 Mars Science Laboratory mission, as a member of the Sample Analysis at Mars team.

#8469

Gerry McCormac

#40826

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Sir Francis Gerard McCormac, FRSE, FSA, FRSA, FHEA is the Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Stirling. He is a physicist whose specialist fields are Space physics and Carbon Dating. He is a member of the advisory board of the International College for Liberal Arts at Yamanashi Gakuin University in Japan. Previous roles include Professor and Pro Vice-Chancellor at Queen's University Belfast and Vice-Chairman of Invest Northern Ireland. He chaired a review of teacher employment for the Scottish Government in 2011.

#8470

Kirill Kavokin

#143628

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Kirill Kavokin is a Russian physicist working on solid state physics, semiconductor optics and spin physics. He also works on animal vision and magnetoreception. He is currently leading scientist at the Spin Optics Laboratory at Saint-Petersburg State University and at the I. M. Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He is the brother of Physicist Alexey Kavokin.

#8471

Halina Abramczyk

Halina Abramczyk

#139031

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Halina Abramczyk is a Polish physicist and chemist, a specialist in molecular spectroscopy and laser spectroscopy professor employed at the Lodz University of Technology. She is the daughter of Edward Chachuła and Salomea Kryszak . She studied in 1969–1974 at the University of Łódź, where she earned a master's degree in physics and received a doctorate in 1982 at the Lodz University of Technology for work "Molecular Dynamics in two-component solutions containing benzene ". After obtaining her doctorate in chemistry she continued scientific research in the Institute of Applied Radiation Chemistry of Technical University of Lodz, headed by prof.

#8472

Peter Shawhan

#169611

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Peter Shawhan is an American physicist. He is currently professor of physics at the University of Maryland and was a co-recipient of the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, the Gruber Prize in Cosmology, and the Bruno Rossi Prize for his work on LIGO.

#8473

Jr.

#176137

Overall Influence

#8474

Rhonda Stroud

#167900

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Rhonda M. Stroud is a materials physicist and planetary scientist at Arizona State University, where she serves as Director of the Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies. From 1998- 2022, she was a Research Physicist at the United States Naval Research Laboratory, where she led the Nanoscale Materials Section. She is known for her research on nanostructures, including quasicrystals and aerogel, and on the materials that make up comets and cosmic dust. She pioneered the use of focused ion beam technology in the study of meteorites.

#8475

Akira Endo

#176148

Overall Influence

#8476

Adriaan Wesselink

#129750

Overall Influence

1909 - 1995 (86 years)

Adriaan Jan Wesselink was a Dutch astronomer who worked successively in the Netherlands, South Africa and the United States. He specialised in observing and understanding the characteristics of stars, particularly variable stars.

#8477

Pierre Antonini

#56249

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Pierre Antonini is a retired French mathematics professor and amateur astronomer who has discovered several minor planets and two supernovae at his private Observatoire de Bédoin located at Bédoin, southeastern France. For many of his discoveries he used a 16-cm telescope or a 30-cm telescope.

#8478

Kirsten Kraiberg Knudsen

Kirsten Kraiberg Knudsen

#163275

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Kirsten Kraiberg Knudsen is a professor of astrophysics in the department of Space, Earth and Environment at Chalmers University of Technology. Her research concerns galaxy formation and evolution. She is a member of the Swedish Young Academy and the International Astronomical Union

#8479

Andrés Fabián Lasagni

#169883

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Andrés Fabián Lasagni is an Argentinean, Italian and German materials scientist and laser expert. He is professor at the Technische Universität Dresden and leads the Chair for Laser-based Manufacturing.

#8480

Peter Hirschfeld

#139656

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Peter J. Hirschfeld is an American physicist, currently a distinguished professor at the University of Florida and an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society. His lab is studying the problems of modern many-body theory associated with superconductivity and quantum materials.

#8481

Elizabeth Donley

#176225

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Elizabeth Ann Donley is an American physicist. She is a researcher in the time and frequency division at the Physical Measurement Laboratory. Donley's research areas include the operation and development of atomic fountain clocks and chip scale atomic devices and instruments.

#8482

Heather Lewandowski

Heather Lewandowski

#173839

Overall Influence

Heather Lewandowski is a professor of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. She looks to understand the quantum mechanical processes in making chemical bonds. She uses time-varying inhomogeneous electric fields to achieve supersonic cooling. She also studies how students learn experimental skills in instructional physics labs and help to improve student learning in these environments. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

#8483

Paul F. McManamon

#116973

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Paul F. McManamon is an American scientist who is best known for his work in optics and photonics, as well as sensors, countermeasures, and directed energy. Early life and education McManamon was born in East Cleveland, Ohio. He attended St Ignatius high school, where he has been recognized as a distinguished graduate. He received his BS in physics from John Carroll University. He received his MS and PhD in physics from the Ohio State University.

#8484

Junko Shigemitsu

#58157

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Junko Shigemitsu is a Japanese-American physicist known for her use of lattice gauge theory and lattice QCD to calculate predicted values for decay constants and other physical quantities. She is a professor emerita of physics at Ohio State University.

#8485

Valeria Ferrari

#175255

Overall Influence

Valeria Ferrari is an Italian physicist whose research concerns the theoretical modeling of gravitational waves, and the oscillations in black holes and neutron stars that could cause them. She is a professor of theoretical physics at Sapienza University of Rome.

#8486

Carmelle Robert

#168571

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Carmelle Robert is a Quebec astrophysicist, starburst researcher and professor at the Department of Physics, Physical Engineering and Optics at Université Laval, in Quebec City, Quebec. Biography Robert earned her undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Sherbrooke , and her master's and a doctorate in astrophysics from, University of Montreal . She also completed her postdoctoral fellowships including one with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland . As a graduate student, Robert investigated the wind clumps observed in the spectrum of the Cygnus Wolf-Rayet stars, using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope with her advisor Anthony Moffat.

#8487

Scott Crooker

#176320

Overall Influence

Scott Crooker is a research scientist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory pulsed field facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara and his B.A. in physics from Cornell University. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, a fellow of Los Alamos National Laboratory, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a fellow of the American Physical Society. He received a Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellow's Prize in 2007 for his outstanding research in the development of...

#8488

Silvana Botti

#175279

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Silvana Botti is a full professor for Physics at the University of Jena. She is an expert in the development of first-principles methods for electronic excitations and methods for theoretical spectroscopy.

#8489

Rosalind J. Allen

#125871

Overall Influence

Rosalind Jane Allen is a soft matter physicist and Professor of Theoretical Microbial Ecology at the Biological Physics at the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena, Germany, and Professor of Biological Physics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland She is a member of the centre for synthetic biology and systems biology where her research investigates the organisation of microbe populations.

#8490

Liliane Léger

#172320

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Liliane Léger née Quercy is a French physicist. Her research considers polymers and the molecular mechanisms of adhesion. She was awarded the Groupe Français d’Études et d’Applications des Polymères Prix d’Honneur in 2021.

#8491

Sylvie Vauclair

Sylvie Vauclair

#150521

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Sylvie Vauclair is a French astrophysicist , and professor emeritus , where she taught for more than 30 years. She also taught for a decade at the Paris Diderot University. She has served as president of the Société Française d'Astronomie et d'Astrophysique.

#8492

Renée C. Kraan-Korteweg

#173835

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Renée C. Kraan-Korteweg is a Dutch-South African scientist. She is head of the University of Cape Town department of astronomy and founder and co-director of the Astrophysics, Cosmology and Gravity Centre. She serves as vice president of the executive committee of the International Astronomical Union and is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa.

#8493

Tomasz Hueckel

#173282

Overall Influence

Tomasz Hueckel is an American scientist and engineer, born and educated in Poland. He is a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University, Durham, NC, USA. He is also a co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Elsevier Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment journal. Tomasz Hueckel is the son of Stanisław Hückel, a professor of maritime, harbor and foundation engineering at Gdańsk University of Technology in Poland. Hueckel is active in the field of multi-physics geomechanics, with applications to underground energy, resource and environmental geomechanics.

#8494

Katsunori Wakabayashi

#106593

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

is a physicist at the International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics , National Institute for Materials Science , Japan. He is an authority and leading researcher in nanotechnology in the area of energy states of single wall carbon nanotubes . His research is notable for the edge effects of the nanographene materials, which is a part of the single layer graphene. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2000 from University of Tsukuba in Japan. From 2000 to 2009 he was an assistant professor at Department of Quantum Matter in Hiroshima University, Japan. From 2009, he is an Independent Scientist at Int...

#8495

Richard L. Meier

#56496

Overall Influence

1920 - 2007 (87 years)

Richard Louis Meier was a US regional planner, systems theorist, scientist, urban scholar, and futurist, as well as a Professor in the College of Environmental Design at the University of California at Berkeley. He was an early thinker on sustainability in planning, and recognized as a leading figure in city planning and development. He is not related to the New York-based architect Richard Meier, whom he was often confused with.

#8496

Ceri Brenner

#159950

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (39 years)

Ceri Brenner is a plasma physicist at the Science and Technology Facilities Council. Education She studied physics at the University of Oxford. Following a summer placement at the Central Laser Facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Brenner developed an interest in high power laser-plasma physics. Brenner earned a PhD in physics from the University of Strathclyde under the supervision of David Neely and Paul McKenna. She completed her doctoral experiments at Central Laser Facility, UK and the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany. Her doctoral thesis was titled 'Lase...

#8497

Jon J. Thaler

#176451

Overall Influence

Jon J. Thaler is an American physicist. Thaler obtained his doctorate from Columbia University in 1972 and began his teaching career at Princeton University. In 1977, he joined the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. During the early part of his career, Thaler researched particle physics. From 2002, he focused on astrophysics. Since 1998, Thaler has been a fellow of the American Physical Society, which recognized hime "[f]or contributions to the development of hardware and software systems for large collider detectors."

#8498

Robin Medforth-Mills

#48986

Overall Influence

1942 - 2002 (60 years)

Leslie Robin Medforth-Mills was a British professor of Geography at the University of Durham and a United Nations official. Family Medforth-Mills was the son of Cyril Mills and Nora Medforth . He married Princess Elena of Romania at a civil ceremony on 20 July 1983 in Durham, England, which was followed by a religious ceremony on 24 September 1983 at the Greek Orthodox Church in Lausanne, Switzerland.

#8499

Caroline Morley

#174894

Overall Influence

Caroline Morley is an American scientist, teacher and astronomer researching exoplanet atmosphere science. Education and career Morley is an assistant professor at The University of Texas, in the department of astronomy. Morley’s knowledge is displayed in multiple informational articles, including scientific information about climate, planetary mass, and use of astrological equipment. Morley earned a bachelor's degree in physics, earth, atmosphere, and planetary sciences from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2010. She also earned her PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz i...

#8500

Zehra Sayers

#93444

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Zehra Sayers is a Turkish-British structural biologist. She has previously served as Interim President of the Sabancı University and co-chaired the scientific advisory committee for Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East . She was part of a five-scientist group that received the AAAS Award for Science Diplomacy in 2019. She holds Turkish and British citizenship.

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