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,
#8701
Zheng Zhemin
#60079
Overall Influence
1924 - 2021 (97 years)
Zheng Zhemin , also romanized as Cheng Che-Min, was a Chinese explosives engineer and physicist specializing in explosive mechanics. Biography Zheng is a native of Yin County of Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, and was born in Jinan of Shandong Province. He obtained a BS from Tsinghua University in 1947, and a MS and a PhD in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1952. His doctoral advisor was Qian Xuesen.
Go to Profile#8702
Laurie McNeil
#148628
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Laurie Elizabeth McNeil is an American condensed matter physicist and materials scientist whose research topics have included optical spectroscopy, the properties of crystals and semiconductors, and the synthesis of carbon nanotubes. She is Bernard Gray Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Go to Profile#8703
Wolf Bickel
#151246
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Wolf Bickel is a German amateur astronomer and a prolific discoverer of asteroids, observing at his private Bergisch Gladbach Observatory, Germany. He is the most successful German discoverer of minor planets.
Go to Profile#8704
Gordon Hamilton
#94134
Overall Influence
1966 - 2016 (50 years)
Gordon Hamilton was a Scottish climate scientist who studied glaciers. He died on a trip to Antarctica in 2016 when his snowmobile fell into a crevasse. He was 50 at the time of his death. Career Native to Scotland, Hamilton received a doctorate from the University of Cambridge in geophysics. He was a professor of the University of Maine. He studied ice sheet mass balance as well as the role of ice sheets in modulating global sea levels.
Go to Profile#8705
Robin Williams
#54088
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Sir Robert Hughes Williams, , commonly known as Robin Williams, is a Welsh physicist and academic, specialising in solid state physics and semiconductors. He was Vice-Chancellor of University of Wales, Swansea from 1994 to 2003. He had taught at the New University of Ulster and University of Wales, College of Cardiff, before joining Swansea.
Go to Profile#8706
Paola Picotti
#129660
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Paola Picotti is an Italian biologist who is Professor for Molecular Systems Biology at ETH Zürich. She is Deputy Head of the Institute for Molecular Systems Biology. Her research investigates how the conformational changes of proteins impact cellular networks. She was awarded the 2020 ETH Zürich Rössler Prize and the 2019 EMBO Gold Medal.
Go to Profile#8707
Andrew D. Taylor
#123882
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Andrew Dawson Taylor was director of the Science and Technology Facilities Council National Laboratories – Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Daresbury Laboratory, and the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh until his retirement in 2019.
Go to Profile#8708
Gianluca Gregori
#151378
Overall Influence
Gianluca Gregori is professor of physics within the Department of Physics, University of Oxford, and fellow and tutor in physics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. His awards include the Daiwa Adrian Prize in 2007, the Edouard Fabre prize in 2014, and the John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research of the American Physical Society in both 2019 and 2020.
Go to Profile#8709
Barbara M. Middlehurst
#170661
Overall Influence
1915 - 1995 (80 years)
Barbara Mary Middlehurst was a Welsh astronomer. Early life Barbara Mary Middlehurst was born in Penarth, Glamorgan, Wales. She attended Penarth County School for Girls and Girton College, Cambridge, where she studied mathematics. She earned a bachelor's degree in 1936 and a master's degree in 1947. She built her astronomy credentials over several years of independent reading and practice.
Go to Profile#8711
Adriana Cristina Serquis
#125866
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Adriana Cristina Serquis is an Argentine physicist, the president of the National Atomic Energy Commission , and principal researcher of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council . In 2014, she received the L'Oréal-UNESCO National Award For Women in Science for her contribution to the rational use of electrical energy.
Go to Profile#8712
Muriel Thomasset
#120235
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Muriel Thomasset , is a French physicist who specializes in optics. In 2003, she received an Irène Joliot-Curie Prize. Life and work Thomasset earned her Master's degree in Optics and Photonics and in 1998 she defended her doctoral thesis in physics with her thesis titled High spatial resolution imaging in the X-UV domain using Fresnel zone lenses" under the supervision of Pierre Dhez at the Pierre and Marie Curie University.
Go to Profile#8713
Serguei Palto
#124923
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Serguei Petrovich Palto is a Russian Belarusian physicist and mathematician. Biography Serguei was born and raised in Motol , he graduated from high school with a gold medal . Palto graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, specialty engineer-physicist. Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences , the theme of the thesis "Stark spectroscopy of ultrathin Langmuir-Blozhett". Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences , the theme of the thesis "molecular field effects in Langmuir-Blozhett: Stark optics and spectroscopy." Experts in the field of condensed matter physic...
Go to Profile#8714
Yoshitaka Tanimura
#35161
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
is a Japanese mathematical physicist, best known for his invention with Ryogo Kubo of the Hierarchical equations of motion. In 1993, while working at University of Rochester with Shaul Mukamel, he published a theoretical paper laying the foundation for two-dimensional femtosecond spectroscopies.
Go to Profile#8715
Xu Hongxing
#168485
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Xu Hongxing is a Chinese physicist and vice president of the Institute for Advanced Studies of Wuhan University. He is also a professor at the School of Physics and Technology, Wuhan University. Biography Xu was born in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province in 1969. After graduating from Banpu High School in 1988, he was accepted to Peking University. In 1996, he pursued advanced studies in Sweden, earning his master's degree and doctor's degree from Chalmers University of Technology in 1998 and 2002, respectively.
Go to Profile#8716
Paul A. Heiney
#135557
Overall Influence
Paul A. Heiney is an American physicist. Heiney completed his bachelor's degree at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1977, and became a research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he remained until earning his doctorate in 1982. He subsequently held an assistant professorship at the University of Pennsylvania. Heiney became an associate professor in 1987, and was elevated to full professor in 1993. Upon retirement in 2021, he was granted emeritus status. Heiney was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2001, "[f]or his contributions to our...
Go to Profile#8717
Joseph P. Heremans
#119455
Overall Influence
Joseph P. Heremans is a condensed matter experimental physicist at The Ohio State University where he holds titles as Ohio Eminent Scholar and Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, with courtesy appointments in the Department of Physics and Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research focuses on magneto-transport, thermal, and thermoelectric properties of electrons, phonons, and spin in narrow-gap semiconductors, semimetals, and nanostructures.
Go to Profile#8718
Ian Chapman
#88224
Overall Influence
Sir Ian Trevelyan Chapman FRS is a British physicist who is the chief executive of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority . Education Chapman went to school at Elizabeth College, Guernsey. He graduated from Durham University with an M.Sci. in Mathematics and Physics in 2004.
Go to Profile#8719
Johann Carl Vogel
#109144
Overall Influence
1932 - 2012 (80 years)
Johann Carl "John" Vogel was a South African isotope physicist with a specific interest in archeology for which he used radiocarbon dating to establish timeframes. Career Vogel was born on 7 September 1932 in Pretoria. He obtained a BSc in chemistry in 1951, and a MSc in 1955, both from the University of Pretoria. He moved to Germany to study at Heidelberg University where he obtained a doctorate under Otto Haxel in 1959. The subject of his thesis was determination of carbon isotope fractionation factors.
Go to Profile#8720
Jonathan Mboyo Esole
#122027
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Jonathan Mboyo Esole is an associate professor of mathematics at Northeastern University. He works on the geometry of string theory. Early life and career Esole was born in Kinshasa and attended Collège Boboto. He moved to Belgium at the age of three and did not return to the Congo for six years. He studied at the Free University of Brussels, the same university his father had attended. In his thesis, Unicité de la supergravité D=4 N=1 par les méthodes BRST, he demonstrated the uniqueness of N=1 supergravity in four spacetime dimensions with minimal assumptions using homological methods. This...
Go to Profile#8721
Sergey Bezrukov
#175485
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Sergey M. Bezrukov is a Russian born biophysicist notable for his work on ion channels and stochastic resonance. Education He received his MS in Electronics and Theoretical Physics from Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University, 1973; and he obtained his PhD under Giliary Moiseevich Drabkin in Physics and Mathematics from Moscow State University, Russia, 1981.
Go to Profile#8722
Xiaobo Zhang
#180025
Overall Influence
#8723
Liv Hornekær
#170104
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Liv Hornekær is a Danish experimental physicist who works in nanotechnology and astrochemical research. She is a professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Aarhus University and head of the surface dynamics group at the department. Her research mainly covers the interaction between hydrogen atoms and carbon-based surfaces
Go to Profile#8724
Linda Walsh
#151988
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Linda Walsh is a British scientist who specializes in radiation epidemiology. She is an honorary visiting research fellow in the Medical Physics Department of the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
Go to Profile#8725
Jin Guozhang
#125092
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Jin Guozhang was a Chinese pharmacologist and psychopathologist. He is considered as a pioneer of modernizing traditional Chinese medicine. Biography Jin was born on June 6 1927 in Yongkang, Zhejiang, China. He studied at the Department of Pharmacy, School of Sciences, Zhejiang University. He later became a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences . He also served as a professor at the School of Pharmacy, Fudan University in Shanghai. Jin was elected an academician of the CAS in 2001.
Go to Profile#8726
Ulrik Lund Andersen
#180096
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Ulrik Lund Andersen is a Danish physicist and professor of physics at the Department of Physics at the Technical University of Denmark , who researches quantum optics and quantum networks. He went to Ikast-Brande Gymnasium high school. He received a Master of Science in physics from DTU in 1999 and a Ph.D. from DTU in 2003. He worked at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg in Germany from 2003-2006, and was then employed as an associate professor at DTU. In 2012, he was appointed professor and section leader at DTU Physics.
Go to Profile#8727
Włodzimierz Klonowski
#156999
Overall Influence
1945 - 2020 (75 years)
Włodzimierz Klonowski was a Polish biomedical physicist who worked in the field of biological engineering. Life and career Klonowski was born in Moscow, where his parents briefly lived at the end of World War II, on their way back from a Bashkir village in the Ural Mountains, where they had been displaced after the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939. He was born on the Stary Arbat Street, where the name stone in his honour has been put close to the fountain . His father, Stefan Klonowski, was a specialist in Polish studies. His mother, Gabriela Pauszer-Klonowska, was a novelist.
Go to Profile#8728
Peter Bosted
#180104
Overall Influence
Peter Bosted is an American physicist. He completed his Ph.D. in physics in January 1980 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His Ph.D. thesis title was "Pion Photoproduction in the Resonance Region". His Ph.D. supervisor was Aron Bernstein. He did his B.S. degree in physics in June 1975 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He did his post-doctoral training at MIT before he joined American University and served as a postdoctoral associate , associate research scientist , research associate professor , and research professor . Later, He joined the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as a research professor.
Go to Profile#8729
Otto Pollak
#27815
Overall Influence
1908 - 1998 (90 years)
Otto Pollak was a writer and a professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His most controversial and famous book was The Criminality of Women , in which he suggested that women commit just as much crime as men, but that their crime is more easily hidden. Pollak further argued that the criminal justice system was biased by preconceptions about women and did not convict or sentence women as harshly as men. His empirical work has provided a starting point for criminology on women. His work has also been used in political debates, as some antifeminist or masculist groups have appro...
Go to Profile#8730
Josep Maria Trigo Rodríguez
#153808
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Josep Maria Trigo Rodríguez is a Spanish astronomer, astrophysicist and science writer. His work focuses on the early development of the solar system. He is the cofounder of the Spanish Meteor Network.
Go to Profile#8731
Anke Lindner
#176650
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Anke Lindner is a German physicist known for her work on Non-Newtonian fluids and viscous fingering, especially in complex suspensions. She is a professor at Paris Diderot University. Education and career Lindner began her studies at the University of Bayreuth. She came to Pierre and Marie Curie University through the Erasmus Programme, and discovering her interest in complex fluids there, completed a doctorate through the École normale supérieure . After a year working as a consultant in Zurich, she took a postdoctoral research position at ESPCI Paris, following which she became a lecturer at Pierre and Marie Curie University and a researcher for ESPCI.
Go to Profile#8732
Duncan Steel
#64511
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Duncan I. Steel is a British space scientist. He has discovered several minor planets and has written four popular science books. He is a member of the International Astronomical Union, which lists him as working at the Xerra Earth Observation Institute in Nelson, in the South Island of New Zealand. He was formerly on the staff of the University of Salford in the United Kingdom. Steel completed a PhD at the University of Canterbury in 1984 with a thesis on the orbital characteristics of meteoroids.
Go to Profile#8733
Heidy Mader
#152047
Overall Influence
Heidy M. Mader was a British physicist and Professor at the University of Bristol who specialised in the study of the flow of complex multiphase fluids, including magma in volcanic systems and ice. She was the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research from 2016-2021.
Go to Profile#8734
Beate Schmittmann
#161202
Overall Influence
Beate Schmittmann is a German-American condensed matter physicist and academic administrator who is dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University. Her research includes work on driven diffusive systems, biomolecular transport, and epidemiology.
Go to Profile#8735
Svetlana Kotochigova
#179320
Overall Influence
Svetlana Alexandrovna Kotochigova is a Soviet and American physicist whose research involves the theory and simulation of ultracold atoms and ultracold molecules. She is a research professor of physics at Temple University and a researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
Go to Profile#8736
Stéphane Mangin
#174284
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Stéphane Mangin is a physicist and professor at the University of Lorraine in Nancy, France. He is head of the Nanomagnetism and Spintronics group at the Institut Jean Lamour, a laboratory jointly run by the CNRS and the University of Lorraine.
Go to Profile#8737
Kai-Mei Fu
#147777
Overall Influence
Kai-Mei Fu is an American electrical engineer and physicist. They are an Associate Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington where they are the director of the Optical Spintronics and Sensing Lab.
Go to Profile#8738
Stephen Bernard Libby
#152499
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Stephen Bernard Libby is an American theoretical physicist and the Theory and Modeling Group Leader in the Physics Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He is known for the application of quantum field theory to diverse systems including perturbative quantum chromodynamics and transport in the quantum Hall effect, as well as inventing computational algorithms for radiation driven kinetics in plasmas, and the invention of novel short wavelength laser applications.
Go to Profile#8739
Levon Pogosian
#110876
Overall Influence
Levon Pogosian is a cosmologist and a Professor of Physics at Simon Fraser University. Pogosian works on a range topics that include cosmic microwave background, large scale structure, dark energy and modified gravity, observational probes of physics beyond Standard Model, cosmic strings and other topological defects, and cosmological magnetic fields.
Go to Profile#8740
Joshua Olalekan Ogunwole
#127588
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Joshua Ogunwole was born in Ibadan on 23 July 1967. He is a Nigerian soil scientist who currently serves as the 4th substantive vice-chancellor of Bowen University. Education and career Ogunwole has his first, second and third degree from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Between the year 1990 - 1992, he served as manager of Yula farm, Kaduna.
Go to Profile#8741
Arindam Ghosh
#180273
Overall Influence
#8742
Stuart Palmer
#83810
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Stuart Palmer FREng, also known as S. B. Palmer, is the honorary secretary of the Institute of Physics, and was the deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Warwick between 1999 and 2009. He is an emeritus professor of physics at Warwick who has worked in condensed matter physics and engineering physics and has extensively exploited the technique of ultrasound.
Go to Profile#8743
Tomimaru Okuni
#180340
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Tomimaru Okuni is a Japanese amateur astronomer and a discoverer of minor planets at the Nanyo Observatory , Yamagata prefecture, Japan. He is a prolific discoverer of asteroids, credited by the Minor Planet Center with a total of 130 discoveries between 1995 and 2000.
Go to Profile#8744
Mohamed Sanad
#108519
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Mohamed Sanad is an Egyptian antenna scientist and professor in the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University. He made contributions to antennas, and holds sixteen patents in the area. The most recent of which is "Design of single and multi-band PIFA" . He has also published thirty peer-reviewed papers or conference proceedings; the most recent are three papers at the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium , 2010, IEEE, He also worked with Nokia and Motorola on mobile phones.
Go to Profile#8745
Anna Ceresole
#148083
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Anna Ceresole is an Italian high energy physicist and Director of Research in Theoretical Physics at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare . She is interested in quantum field theory, supergravity and string theory.
Go to Profile#8746
Shankar Ghosh
#176249
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Shankar Ghosh is an Indian physicist, currently associated at the Department of Condensed Matter Physics and Material Science, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He is known for his research on experimental condensed matter physics. 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 for his contributions to physical sciences in 2019.
Go to Profile#8747
Sara Majetich
#174745
Overall Influence
Sara A. Majetich is an American physicist and Professor of Physics at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work considers magnetic nanoparticles and nanostructures for application in spintronic devices. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Go to Profile#8748
Simeon Adlow Friedberg
#172647
Overall Influence
1925 - 2005 (80 years)
Simeon Adlow Friedberg was an American physicist. Biography Friedberg grew up in Squirrel Hill and attended Allderdice High School, from which he graduated in 1942. He was enrolled into Harvard College by the age of 16 but was drafted into the Army at the same time to fight in World War II. During those three years he finished the Officer Candidate School in Fort Benning and became a second lieutenant. When he returned to Harvard in 1945, he obtained degree in chemistry by 1947 and received master's degree from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in both chemistry and physics a year later fo...
Go to Profile#8749
Kevin Insik Hahn
#178874
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Kevin Insik Hahn is a South Korean physicist who is an expert in the fields of nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics. Since December 2019, he has been the director of the Center for Exotic Nuclear Studies at the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea. He also holds an endowed professorship in the Department of Science Education at Ewha Womans University, where he has worked since 1999. In his research, he has worked on accelerator-based as well as non-accelerator-based experiments. His current research activities involve a number of accelerators around the world, including the RI Bea...
Go to Profile#8750
William Skocpol
#75455
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
William Skocpol is a physicist at Boston University and an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society. External links Boston University bio
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