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,

#8751

Paul Hoffman

#148658

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Paul E. Hoffman is an Internet pioneer, based in Santa Cruz, California. Hoffman has been involved with the Internet Engineering Task Force since the early 1990s, and has chaired numerous IETF working groups. He was the founder of the Internet Mail Consortium and the Virtual Private Network Consortium. He is currently a technologist at ICANN.

#8752

Ramona Vogt

#111667

Overall Influence

Ramona Lynn Vogt is a high-energy physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Education Vogt received her Ph.D. in 1989 from the State University of New York at Stony Brook with the thesis topic "Charmonium Interactions with Hadronic Matter".

#8753

Allan H. Frey

#101017

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

#8754

Miriam B. Goodman

#107494

Overall Influence

Miriam B. Goodman is an American neuroscientist and biologist. She is currently the Mrs. George A. Winzer Professor of Cell Biology at Stanford University. At Stanford she is also Chair of Molecular and Cellular Physiology. Goodman's lab is currently working to develop a mechanistic model of sensation in C. elegans.

#8755

Marion Ross

#84815

Overall Influence

1903 - 1994 (91 years)

Marion Amelia Spence Ross FRSE was a Scottish physicist noted for her work in x-ray crystallography and fluid dynamics. Life Ross was born in Edinburgh, one of the five daughters of William Baird Ross, organist, composer and founder of The Edinburgh Society of Organists . The family lived at 22 Royal Crescent in Edinburgh's New Town.

#8756

Mark Kelly

#46839

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Mark Edward Kelly is an American politician, former astronaut, and United States Navy captain who has served as the junior United States senator from Arizona since 2020. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected in the special election held following the death of Senator John McCain, defeating incumbent Republican Martha McSally.

#8757

Kailasa Venkata Ramiah

Kailasa Venkata Ramiah

#76040

Overall Influence

1926 - 1994 (68 years)

Kailasa Venkata Ramiah was an educationist from Andhra Pradesh, India. He was born in Pegallapadu village of Khammam district. He stood first-in-first in both B.Sc and M.Sc from Osmania University and grew to head the Physics Department of Osmania University. He is recipient of the Sir Akbar Hyderi Gold medal and several awards during his career both as student and later as an academician. He finished his PhD in record time and later his research was in quantum mechanics and Raman effect. He published about 100 papers in both national and international journals. He served to become the first Vice-Chancellor of Kakatiya University .

#8758

Sun Weiguo

#59393

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Sun Weiguo is a Chinese physicist. He is Professor and former President of Xihua University in Chengdu, Sichuan. Biography Sun was born in Chengdu on April 16, 1954. He earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1977 from Xihua Normal University in Chengdu, and his master's degree in 1981 from Jilin University. He taught physical chemistry courses as a lecturer at Sichuan University from 1982 to 1986.

#8759

Andrew V. Granato

#150225

Overall Influence

1926 - 2015 (89 years)

Andrew Vincent Granato was an American theoretical physicist, specializing in condensed matter physics. He is known for the Granato-Lücke formula. Granato was, during WW II, in the Naval Reserves while attending the University of Rochester. He received his bachelor's degree in 1948 and his M.S. in 1950 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and his Ph.D. in 1955 under Kurt Lücke in applied mathematics from Brown University. In 1955–1957 he was a research associate at Brown. He became in 1957 an assistant professor, in 1961 an associate professor, and in 1964 a full professor of physics at the University of Illinois.

#8760

Poul Jensen

#121094

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Poul B. Jensen is a Danish astronomer and a discoverer of 98 minor planets while working at Brorfelde Observatory. Between 1967 and 1969 he assisted in positional observations with the observatory's 7" transit circle. He is also a co-discoverer of the Comet Jensen-Shoemaker . , he was still publishing in the Minor Planet Circulars.

#8761

Troy Carter

#178436

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Troy Alan Carter is an American plasma physicist and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was co-awarded the 2002 John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research for his work on driven magnetic reconnection in a laboratory plasma.

#8762

Michael Brown

#84261

Overall Influence

Michael A. Brown, CBE, DL, FInstP, FIET, FRSA, was the 2nd Vice-Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University in Liverpool, England, United Kingdom between 2000 and 2011. Education He attended Bridgend Grammar School for Boys. In 1971, he obtained his PhD at the University of Nottingham with a thesis entitled Investigation of Phonon Scattering and Cross-relaxation by Paramagnetic Ions Using Thermal Conductivity Techniques.

#8763

Kate Isaak

#173205

Overall Influence

Katherine Gudrun Isaak is a British astrophysicist and the Project Scientist for the European Space Agency Characterising Exoplanet Satellite mission . She is based at European Space Research and Technology Centre.

#8764

Nancy C. Maryboy

#103461

Overall Influence

Nancy Cottrell Maryboy is a Cherokee and Navajo Indigenous science expert and educator. Maryboy is the president of the Indigenous Education Institute, an organization she founded in 1995 to apply traditional Indigenous knowledge to contemporary settings. Much of her work has focused on Indigenous astronomy and she has written several books on Navajo astronomy.

#8765

Itzik Ben-Itzhak

#177542

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Itzik Ben-Itzhak is a university distinguished professor of physics at Kansas State University. Ben-Itzhak is the director of Kansas State University's James R. Macdonald Laboratory and studies experimental atomic physics, molecular physics, and optical physics.

#8766

Stephanie C. Werner

#161360

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Stephanie C. Werner is a German geologist and planetologist, known for her work on Mars and the Arctic. She is a professor in the Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics of the University of Oslo in Norway.

#8767

Bernd J. Kröger

#103201

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Bernd J. Kröger is a German phonetician and professor at RWTH Aachen University. He is known for his contributions in the field of neurocomputational speech processing, in particular the ACT model.

#8768

Vincent Bouchiat

#106605

Overall Influence

Vincent Bouchiat is a French condensed matter physicist. Education Vincent Bouchiat followed his studies in Paris partially at the Lycée Henri-IV. In 1993, he received an engineer degree from the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry of Paris ESPCI in 1993 and a master's degree in solid state physics from the University of Paris, Pierre & Marie Curie. After completing his Ph.D. at Quantronics group in CEA-Saclay in 1997 under the supervision of Michel Devoret and Daniel Estève, he received a CNRS position the same year at University of Marseilles.

#8769

Valerie M. Thomas

#151801

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Valerie Margaret Thomas is an American physicist and environmental engineer, with broad research interests in environmental technology including aspects of the subject relating to materials science, energy systems, transportation and transportation energy use, and economics. She is the Anderson Interface Professor of Natural Systems at Georgia Tech, appointed jointly to the schools of industrial and systems engineering and public policy.

#8770

Beatrix Hiesmayr

#175789

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Beatrix C. Hiesmayr is an Austrian physicist who studies quantum mechanics and quantum information theory from a combination of theoretical and experimental points of view. She is a privatdozent at the University of Vienna, where she heads the Quantum Particle Workgroup.

#8771

Li Minhua

#76222

Overall Influence

1917 - 2013 (96 years)

Li Minhua , also known as Minghua Lee Wu, was a Chinese aerospace engineer and physicist who was an expert in solid mechanics. The first woman to earn a PhD in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she was one of the founding scientists at the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences , and was elected as an academician in 1980. Her husband Wu Zhonghua was also an accomplished physicist and CAS academician.

#8772

Maurice Kleman

#112192

Overall Influence

1934 - 2021 (87 years)

Maurice Kleman was a French physicist involved in experimental and theoretical studies of the physics of defects; he has covered various fields of research, from condensed matter to heliophysics. As an author, he has been collected by libraries worldwide.

#8773

Cynthia Olson Reichhardt

#111818

Overall Influence

Cynthia J. Olson Reichhardt is an American condensed matter physicist whose research involves the use of computer simulations to study disordered media and non-equilibrium systems, with applications to the understanding of how aging affects stockpiled nuclear weapons. She is a member of the technical staff at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she is affiliated with the Physics and Chemistry of Materials Group, and with the Center for Nonlinear Studies.

#8774

Jens Lothe

#153644

Overall Influence

1931 - 2016 (85 years)

Jens Lothe was a Norwegian physicist. He was born in Oslo as a son of principal Jakob Lothe and Borghild Holtung. In 1960 he married Solveig Elisabeth Seeberg. They have resided in Blommenholm and Vøyenenga.

#8775

G. W. C. Tait

#177385

Overall Influence

1912 - 1993 (81 years)

George William Campbell Tait , was an inventor and pioneer in the field of health physics in Canada and at the Chalk River Project. Tait lived in Canada and Vienna. His residences included Deep River, Ontario, Canada, and Gibsons, British Columbia, Canada and Vienna, Austria. 1951–1958, Head of Radiation Hazard Control, National Research Council, Chalk River Project, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. 1958–1960, Director, Division of Health Safety and Waste Disposal, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, Austria. Tait was involved in early work at the Chalk River Project and during his pro...

#8776

Robert Silver

#120390

Overall Influence

1913 - 1997 (84 years)

Robert Simpson Silver CBE, MA, Ph.D, D.Sc., D.Tech, F.I.Mech.E, F.Inst.P, FRSE was a Scottish physicist and mechanical engineer, awarded the Unesco Prize for Science in 1968 for his discovery of a process for the demineralisation of sea water. Prior to his work there had been no commercially viable desalination process that involved continuous flow; plants had to be stopped and emptied of accumulated salt from time to time, such as when a passenger liner using desalination was in port. Silver performed a thermodynamic analysis showing that reverse osmosis and "multi-stage flash" were the optimal processes for purification of water.

#8777

Alan D. Martin

#180746

Overall Influence

#8778

Jess McIver

#178935

Overall Influence

Jess McIver is an American astronomer. She is an Associate Professor and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Gravitational Wave Astrophysics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia. McIver is a member of LIGO, one of the recipients of the Science 2017 Breakthrough of the Year.

#8779

Oana Jurchescu

#177600

Overall Influence

Oana Jurchescu is a Romanian physicist who is the Baker Family Physics Professor at Wake Forest University. Her research considers charge transport in organic and organic/inorganic hybrid semiconductors. In 2022, she was awarded a National Science Foundation Special Creativity Award for her work translating organic electronic materials into real-world devices.

#8780

John Challifour

#133556

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

John Challifour was a professor of mathematical physics at Indiana University's Bloomington campus. He was known among the math students of the university for his wry sense of humor and clear teaching style.

#8781

Gene Amdahl

#87501

Overall Influence

1922 - 2015 (93 years)

Gene Myron Amdahl was an American computer architect and high-tech entrepreneur, chiefly known for his work on mainframe computers at IBM and later his own companies, especially Amdahl Corporation. He formulated Amdahl's law, which states a fundamental limitation of parallel computing.

#8782

Henry Rainsford Hulme

#124292

Overall Influence

1908 - 1991 (83 years)

Henry Rainsford Hulme was a British scientist who is considered one of the four major minds behind the successful British hydrogen bomb project. He was the father of author and convicted murderer Anne Perry.

#8783

Yitzhak Maron

#179475

Overall Influence

Yitzhak Maron is a plasma physicist and a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He is known for pioneering spectroscopic techniques to measure and characterize plasmas under extreme conditions which won him the 2007 IEEE Plasma Science and Applications Award and the 2009 John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research.

#8784

Srubabati Goswami

#155935

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Srubabati Goswami is an Indian scientist specialising in High Energy Physics, Astroparticle Physics, and Neutrino Physics . She is the first Indian woman to earn a Ph.D. in neutrino oscillations from the Science College, University of Calcutta. She did her research in the PRL and Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics and later worked in the Harish Chandra Research Institute. She is a Senior Professor in Theoretical High Energy Physics in the Physical Research Laboratory. She is a fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India and Indian National Science Academy.

#8785

Yoon Kyung-byung

#65527

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Yoon Kyung-byung is a South Korean chemist. Education Yoon received his B.S. in chemistry from Seoul National University in 1979 and his M.S. in chemistry from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology , Seoul in 1981. From 1981 to 1984 he was employed by Chon Engineering in Seoul. There he gained experience in catalyst design and the engineering of chemical process plants. In 1989, he earned his Ph.D. degree in inorganic chemistry from the University of Houston, Texas, where his research advisor was Professor Jay K. Kochi.

#8786

Felicitas Pauss

#109987

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Felicitas Pauss is an Austrian physicist. She obtained her PhD, Berechnung von Neutron-Proton Polarisationsobservablen , from University of Graz, Austria, in 1976. Pauss has published almost 1500 scientific papers and has given over 450 talks. From 2009 to 2013 she was in charge of International Relations at CERN. Prior to becoming a professor at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Zurich in 1993, while at Cornell and CERN, she was member of UA1 and L3 collaborations. In 1994, she joined the CMS collaboration and contributed to its design, construction, and management.

#8787

Tessaleno Devezas

#39671

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Tessaleno Campos Devezas is a Brazilian-born Portuguese physicist, systems theorist, and materials scientist. He is best known for his contributions to the long waves theory in socioeconomic development, technological evolution, energy systems as well as world system analysis.

#8788

Fausto Cattaneo

#180930

Overall Influence

Fausto Cattaneo is an Italian physicist, currently at University of Chicago and an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society.

#8789

Viviana Acquaviva

#105226

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Viviana Acquaviva is an Italian astrophysicist who is a professor in the Department of Physics at the New York City College of Technology. Her research interests consider data science and machine learning for physics and astronomy. She was named one of Italy's most inspirational technologists in 2019.

#8790

Lisa Goddard

#60839

Overall Influence

1966 - 2022 (56 years)

Lisa Marie Goddard was an American climate scientist who was director at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society . She joined the institute in 1995 and served as IRI's director from 2012 to 2020. Goddard was also an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University.

#8791

John Oghalai

#180781

Overall Influence

John Oghalai is an American physician and scientist. He is the Leon J. Tiber and David S. Alpert Chair in Medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and chair of the USC Caruso Department of Otolaryngology. Oghalai is an otolaryngologist. His research focuses on anatomical and molecular mechanisms in hearing and in ear and hearing disorders.

#8792

William H. Parker

#87952

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

William H. Parker is an American professor of physics and academic administrator at the University of California, Irvine . Parker's earliest laboratory research involved seminal experiments that refined the precision of the measurements of fundamental constants. His later research focused on superconductors and other aspects of solid-state physics. In an administrative capacity at UCI, Parker has served in a variety of roles including as Dean, Department Chair, and Vice Chancellor.

#8793

Stephen Spiro

#180958

Overall Influence

#8794

Carrie Anderson

Carrie Anderson

#141443

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Carrie Anderson is an American planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Education Anderson is from Arizona. She earned a Bachelors in physics from Arizona State University in 2000. She moved to the New Mexico State University for her doctoral studies and graduated in 2006. Upon graduation she became a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow.

#8795

Kay Kinoshita

#153996

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Kay Kinoshita is an experimental particle physicist. She is a professor at University of Cincinnati. Kinoshita completed her undergrad studies in Physics at Harvard University in 1976 and her PhD at University of California, Berkeley in 1981. She then returned to work at Harvard, before becoming a full professor at Virginia Tech in 1993.

#8796

Georgeanne R. Caughlan

Georgeanne R. Caughlan

#180981

Overall Influence

1916 - 1994 (78 years)

Georgeanne Caughlan was an American astrophysicist known for her work on stellar energy generation. Her compilation of experimental data of the rates of nuclear reactions was instrumental in establishing the theory of nucleosynthesis that led to a Nobel Prize for William A. Fowler.

#8797

David Kimble

#49094

Overall Influence

1921 - 2009 (88 years)

David Bryant Kimble was a British academic whose career was spent mostly in Tanzania, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini and Malawi. He was vice-chancellor of the University of Malawi from 1977 to 1987. Biographical details Kimble was born in Horam, Sussex, into a family of Plymouth Brethren. He attended Eastbourne Grammar School and Reading University where he took a degree in modern studies, graduating in 1942 before taking a postgraduate diploma in education.

#8798

Jennie McCormick

#179344

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Jennie Margaret McCormick , FRASNZ is a New Zealand amateur astronomer and asteroid discoverer who conducts astronomical research from the Farm Cove Observatory in Auckland. She discovered the asteroid officially named New Zealand and has contributed to and been involved in a range of organisations and events to promote astronomy. McCormick has published in several journals and won awards for her contributions to astronomy.

#8799

Barry Zuckerman

#181035

Overall Influence

#8800

Mukhamet Kharrasov

#124157

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Mukhamet Hadisovich Kharrasov is a Russian physicist, member of the Academy of Sciences of Bashkortostan , Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences , Professor , rector of the Bashkir State University , honored worker of Science Russia and Bashkortostan , Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation , Honorary Worker of Higher Professional Education of Russia , Excellence in Ministry of Education .

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