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,

#8851

Geraldine A. Kenney-Wallace

#160907
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Geraldine Anne Kenney-Wallace is a British-Canadian academic. She served as the president and vice-chancellor of McMaster University from 1990 to 1995. She was educated in England and later earned her Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. Kenney-Wallace was responsible for organizing the first ultrafast laser lab in Canada, in 1974, at the University of Toronto. She was a professor of chemistry and physics at the University of Toronto and had served as Chairman of the Science Council of Canada. She is a recipient of a E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship , Guggenheim Fellowship , and ...
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#8852

Sarah K. England

#27284
Overall Influence
Sarah K. England is a physiologist and biophysicist and the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Washington University School of Medicine. England conducts research on cation channels in uterine smooth muscle to understand the biological correlates of preterm birth and is the Associate Program Director of the Prematurity Research Center at Washington University as well as the Vice Chair of Research for the Center for Reproductive Health Sciences. In 2005, England was selected as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow in the Office of Senator Hill...
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#8853

Nora Bretón

#94933
Overall Influence
Nora Eva Bretón Báez is a Mexican physicist whose research involves charged black holes. She is a researcher at CINVESTAV, the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute.
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#8854

Debora Šijački

#181688
Overall Influence
Debora Šijački is a computational cosmologist whose research involves computational methods for simulating the formation and development of the structures in the universe including galaxies, galaxy clusters, and dark matter, including collaborations in the Illustris project. Originally from Serbia, she was educated in Italy and Germany, and works in the UK as a professor at the University of Cambridge and deputy director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology.
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#8855

Alison Walker

#133394
Overall Influence
Alison Bridget Walker is a physicist who is a professor at the University of Bath. Her research considers computational modelling of printed electronic devices and the development of perovskite solar cells. She is best known for her work on the Kinetic Monte Carlo method.
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#8856

Joanne Etheridge

#94371
Overall Influence
Joanne Etheridge is an Australian physicist. She is Director of the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy and Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Monash University. Academic career Etheridge graduated with a BSc from the University of Melbourne and a PhD in physics from RMIT University in 1993. In 1994 she moved to the University of Cambridge as Rosalind Franklin Research Fellow, Newnham College and in 1997 became a senior research associate in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy there. From 1999 to 2003 she was Royal Society University Research Fellow in the same department.
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#8857

Antonio Fernández Rañada

#175921
Overall Influence
1939 - 2022 (83 years)
Antonio Fernández-Rañada Menéndez de Luarca was a Spanish theoretical physicist. Biography Antonio Fernández-Ramada was born in Bilbao. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Oviedo, where he spent his childhood and youth until he began his university studies in Madrid. He graduated in physics with a licentiate from the Complutense University of Madrid. In 1965 he graduated with a PhD from the University of Paris with a thesis on causality and the S-matrix. In 1967 he defended his habilitation thesis Propiedades analítica en la difusión pión-nucleón at the Complutense University of Madrid...
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#8858

Tara A. Schwetz

#94217
Overall Influence
Tara A. Schwetz is an American biophysicist and government administrator who serves as a deputy director of the National Institutes of Health. She previously served as Acting Principal Deputy Director.
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#8859

Andrea Crisanti

#182026
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
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#8860

József Pálinkás

#142783
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
József Pálinkás is a Hungarian atomic physicist and politician who served as Minister of Education between 2001 and 2002. He was President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences from 2008 to 2014. Thereafter Pálinkás functioned as Government Commissioner responsible for the creation of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office from 12 June to 31 December 2014. Following that he was President of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office between 1 January 2015 and 30 June 2018.
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#8861

Guy Laval

#164630
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Guy Laval is a French physicist, professor at the École polytechnique and member of the French Academy of Sciences. He is a former student of the École polytechnique , a member of the Corps des Ponts and a doctor of physical sciences.
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#8862

Joceline Lega

#72364
Overall Influence
Joceline Claude Lega is a French physicist and applied mathematician, interested in nonlinear dynamics. She is a professor in the departments of mathematics, applied mathematics, and epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Arizona, and editor-in-chief of Physica D.
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#8863

Dan Lubin

#160366
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Dan Lubin is a research physicist and senior lecturer at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography since 1990. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union, as well as Sigma Pi Sigma. He was a member of the National Ozone Expedition, and also participated in SHEBA. The general area of his research focuses on polar remote sensing and using global climate models to simulate climate change in the Arctic. In addition to a large number of scientific papers, he has written a textbook about the interactions between polar ice packs and the atmosphere. On October 17, 2012, Lubin gave a talk about solar...
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#8864

Gu Leguan

#153670
Overall Influence
1935 - 2001 (66 years)
Gu Leguan was a Chinese physicist and educator. He served as President of Chongqing University from December 1986 to August 1992, and Communist Party Secretary of Chongqing University, from August 1989 to April 1997.
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#8865

Cather Simpson

Cather Simpson
#101966
Overall Influence
Miriam Cather Simpson is a New Zealand-American physics/chemistry academic and entrepreneur. She is currently a professor at the University of Auckland, a joint appointment between the physics and chemistry departments. She is the founder of the Photon Factory laser lab at the University of Auckland and the chief science officer for two spin-off companies, Engender Technologies and Orbis Diagnostics. She is an Associate Investigator for the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies and an Emeritus Investigator for the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology.
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#8866

Lucien Hardy

#182150
Overall Influence
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#8867

Samar Safi-Harb

#181180
Overall Influence
Samar Safi-Harb is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manitoba and a Canada Research Chair in Supernova Remnant Astrophysics and Extreme Astrophysics. She was the Vice President of the Canadian Astronomical Society from 2020 to 2021.
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#8868

Philip Argyres

#182227
Overall Influence
Philip Argyres is an American physicist and professor at the University of Cincinnati. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of Simons Foundation. External links
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#8869

Martin Brecht

#35700
Overall Influence
1932 - 2021 (89 years)
Martin Brecht is a Church historian, professor emeritus of the University of Münster, Westphalia, Germany. Until his retirement in 1997 at age 65, he served as head of the Department of Medieval and Modern Church History of the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the university.
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#8870

Hiroshi Furukawa

#182248
Overall Influence
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#8871

Roberta M. Humphreys

#84130
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Roberta M. Humphreys is an American observational stellar astrophysicist. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Minnesota. Her work has included Galactic structure, observational stellar evolution, stellar populations, and large databases. She is best known for her research on massive stars in the Milky Way and in nearby resolved galaxies.
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#8872

Jerry Goldstein

#106988
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Jerry Goldstein is a space physicist whose research has focused on the Earth's plasmasphere, a high-altitude extension of the ionized portion of the planet's upper atmosphere. During the years 2002–2005 he published a series of papers on the density structure and global dynamics of the plasmasphere.
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#8873

Adrian Thomas

#54865
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Adrian Leland Rees Thomas is a professor of biomechanics at the University of Oxford and Director of Studies in Biological Sciences at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford running the Animal Flight Research Group. He is co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Animal Dynamics and is also chairman of the flight section of the Bionis International Biomimetics Network.
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#8874

Sergey Macheret

#157360
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Sergey O. Macheret is an American physicist and aerospace engineer known for his contributions to plasma science and engineering. Macheret formulas for endothermic exchange reactions and Macheret-Fridman model of vibration-dissociation coupling are widely used for analysis of hypersonic and other chemically reacting flows.
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#8875

Tanusri Saha-Dasgupta

#125477
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Tanusri Saha-Dasgupta is an Indian physicist. She is a Senior Professor and Director at S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences. Life She graduated from the renowned Rajabazar Science College, University of Calcutta. She is a Swarnajayanti Fellow. She is an elected fellow of The World Academy of Science , American Physical Society , Indian National Academy of Sciences , Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore , National Academy of Sciences, India, West Bengal Academy of Science & Technology,. She is recipient of J. C. Bose National Fellowship , APJ Kalam HPC award , "MRSI-ICSC Superconductivity & Materials Science Annual Prize" for the year 2016, Dr.
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#8876

Christian Langton

#176978
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Christian Langton is a British researcher in medical physics. He is Adjunct Professor of Medical Physics, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Professional life Langton is notable for his development of an early detection system for osteoporosis using ultrasonic waves.
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#8877

Patricio Letelier

#151433
Overall Influence
1943 - 2011 (68 years)
Patricio Anibal Letelier Sotomayor was a Chilean mathematical physicist and professor at University of Campinas . Work Letelier was born in Santiago. Early in his career Letelier worked with Dmitrii Vladimirovich Gal'tsov to define what has become known as the Letelier-Gal'tsov spacetime. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the Boston University in 1977 under John Stachel. He joined the faculty of the University of Brasília until 1988 when became a Professor of Mathematical Physics in the Department of Applied Mathematics of UNICAMP.
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#8878

Boubacar Kanté

#168375
Overall Influence
Boubacar Kanté is a Malian American physicist and engineer working in the field of wave-matter interaction at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is the inaugural Chenming Hu Endowed Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences .. He is also faculty scientist at the Materials Sciences Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His research focuses on optical phenomena at a very small scale, developing nanostructures to harness the interaction of light and matter, such as metamaterials, scalable lasers, topological lasers, compact lenses, or energy harvesting nanostructures.
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#8879

Alak Ray

#178041
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Alak Ray is an Indian astronomer and high energy astrophysicist, who works on neutron stars, supernovae and GRBs. Education Alak Ray received his B.Sc. degree from Calcutta University in 1970. He earned his Ph.D. at the Columbia University, under the supervision of Malvin Ruderman.
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#8880

Amalia Patanè

#181717
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Amalia Patanè is an Italian physicist who is a professor and Director of Research for the Faculty of Science at the University of Nottingham. She serves as UK Director of the European Magnetic Field Laboratory. Her research considers the quantum behaviour of electrons in semiconductor nanostructures. She was awarded the Institute of Physics Boys medal in 2007.
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#8881

Katherine Aidala

#109019
Overall Influence
Katherine E. Aidala is an American physicist. She is a professor of physics at Mount Holyoke College and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Early life and education Aidala obtained a B.S. in applied physics and psychology from Yale University in 2001. At Yale, she was involved in the Rob Schoelkopf Lab, a quantum computing research lab with a focus on superconductors. She then received her M.A. in applied physics from Harvard University, followed by her Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard in 2006. At Harvard, she was involved in building the He-3 cooled scanning probe microscope at t...
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#8882

Harry Kroger

#122005
Overall Influence
Harry Kroger was an American physicist and electrical engineer. He used to be a Bartle professor of electrical engineering at Binghamton University, a part of the State University of New York system. He had been a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers since 1964 and became a Life Fellow of the IEEE in 2001. He initially retired to Florida, then moved back to Austin, Texas.
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#8883

Pupa Gilbert

#172999
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Pupa Gilbert is an American biophysicist and geobiologist. She has been pioneering synchrotron spectromicroscopy methods since 1989, and she continues to use and develop them today. Since 2004 she has focused on biomineralization in sea urchins, mollusk shells, and tunicates. She and her group are frequent users of the Berkeley-Advanced Light Source.
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#8884

Marek Siemek

Marek Siemek
#29930
Overall Influence
1942 - 2011 (69 years)
Marek Jan Siemek was a Polish philosopher and historian of German transcendental philosophy . He was a professor at the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Warsaw and the director of its Department of Social Philosophy.
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#8885

Harold Slusher

#124064
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Harold Schultz Slusher is an American physicist and young earth creationist. Biography Slusher says he has an honorary D.Sc. from Indiana Christian University and a Ph.D. in geophysics from Columbia Pacific University. However, according to Robert Schadewald, ICU is a Bible college with no more than two people in its graduate science department, and that CPU "exhibits several qualities of a degree mill".
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#8886

Gennady Simeonovich Osipov

#64401
Overall Influence
1948 - 2020 (72 years)
Gennady Simeonovich Osipov was a Russian scientist, holding a Ph.D. and a Dr. Sci. in theoretical computer science, information technologies and artificial intelligence. He was the vice-president of the Institute for Systems Analysis of the Russian Academy of Sciences, professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology , and at Bauman Moscow State Technical University. Osipov has contributed to the Theory of Dynamic Intelligent Systems and heterogeneous semantic networks used in applied intelligent systems.
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#8887

Merton E. Davies

Merton E. Davies
#62999
Overall Influence
1917 - 2001 (84 years)
Merton E. Davies was a pioneer of America's space program, first in earth reconnaissance and later in planetary exploration and mapping. He graduated from Stanford University in 1938 and worked for the Douglas Aircraft corporation in the 1940s. He worked as a member of RAND Corporation after it split off from Douglas in 1948 and for the remainder of his career.
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#8888

T.E. Schlesinger

#90466
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
T.E. Schlesinger is an American engineer and physicist and since January 2014 has served as the Benjamin T. Rome Dean of the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Previously he was the David Edward Schramm Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University's college of engineering, where he was also department head of electrical and computer engineering . At Carnegie Mellon he served as the director of the DARPA Center for MEMS Instrumented Self-Configuring Integrated Circuits , was the founding director of the General Motors Collaborative Rese...
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#8889

Karol Lang

#181631
Overall Influence
Karol Sylwester Lang is an experimental particle physicist and the Jane and Roland Blumberg Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin. Education Karol Sylwester Lang is an experimental particle physicist and the Jane and Roland Blumberg Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin. Lang received his Master of Science in physics in 1979 from the University of Warsaw, and his Ph.D. in physics in 1985 from the University of Rochester.
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#8890

George C. Hadjipanayis

#182471
Overall Influence
George C. Hadjipanayis is a Greek physicist. Hadjipanayis completed his Bachelor of Science degree in physics at the University of Athens in 1969. He then moved to Canada to pursue further study in the subject, and obtained a Master of Science in 1974, followed by a doctorate in 1979, both from the University of Manitoba. Hadjipanayis teaches at the University of Delaware. In 2001, he was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society, "f[or]" his innovative and applicable investigations and development of novel permanent magnets and magnetic nanoparticles.
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#8891

Pauls Stradiņš Jr

#150980
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Pauls Stradiņš Jr. is a physicist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, and a foreign member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. Currently he is the principal scientist and a project leader of the silicon photovoltaics group at NREL. He leads a team that recently theorized that defects in photovoltaic cells could actually improve the performance of those cells.
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#8892

Patricia L. Clark

#172957
Overall Influence
Patricia Louise Clark is an American biophysicist. She is the Rev. John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C., Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, associate vice president for research, and director of the Biophysics Instrumentation Core Facility at the University of Notre Dame.
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#8893

Ikue Mori

#168937
Overall Influence
Ikue Mori is a Japanese scientist. She is known for her work on molecular, cellular and neural circuit analyses of thermotaxis behavior in C. elegans. She is Director of Neuroscience Institute and Professor of Molecular Neurobiology of the Graduate School of Science in Nagoya University, Japan. In 2013, she became the first woman to receive Tokizane Award, the most prestigious neuroscience award in Japan, and in 2017, was awarded Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon.
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#8894

Sakura Pascarelli

#46109
Overall Influence
Sakura Pascarelli is an Italian physicist and the scientific director at the European XFEL. Her research focuses on the study on matter at extreme conditions of pressure, temperature and magnetic fields, in particular using X-ray absorption spectroscopy and X-ray Magnetic Linear and Circular Dichroism .
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#8895

Anatoly Sukhorukov

Anatoly Sukhorukov
#170715
Overall Influence
1935 - 2014 (79 years)
Anatoly Petrovich Sukhorukov was a Soviet and Russian physicist who made fundamental contributions to the development of the theory of waves and nonlinear interactions in optics, radiophysics, and acoustics.
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#8896

Alexander Abanov

#182526
Overall Influence
Alexander G. Abanov is an American physicist working in the field of theoretical Condensed matter physics. He received his Ph.D. from The University of Chicago in 1997. He is currently a professor of physics at Stony Brook University. He was elected as Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2016.
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#8897

Barbara Cohen

#176544
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Barbara Cohen is a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The asteroid 6816 Barbcohen is named after her. Education Cohen is from upstate New York. She earned a bachelor's degree in geology from State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1993. She joined Phi Beta Kappa during her studies. She moved to the University of Arizona for her doctoral studies, where she received a University of Arizona Graduate College Fellowship and NASA Graduate Student Research Program Fellowship, and graduated in 2000. Here Cohen looked to understand impact rates on the moon using microbeam analysis and Argon–argon dating of lunar meteorites.
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#8898

Henry Lin

#168587
Overall Influence
1995 - Present (31 years)
Henry Wanjune Lin is an American student who won the $50,000 Intel Young Scientist award, the second-highest award at the 2013 Intel Science and Engineering Fair for his work with MIT professor Michael McDonald on simulations of galaxy clusters. In 2015, he was named one of Forbes' 30 under 30 scientists.
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#8899

Paulo R. Holvorcem

#172358
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Paulo Renato Centeno Holvorcem is a Brazilian amateur astronomer and mathematician who lives in Brasilia, Brazil. He is a prolific discoverer of asteroids. He is credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery or co-discovery of about 197 minor planets between 1998 and 2010.
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#8900

Mario Jurić

#82231
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Mario Jurić is a Croatian astronomer. Jurić was born in Zagreb. He graduated from the University of Zagreb Faculty of Science, and received a doctorate at Princeton University in 2007. He is the Data Management Project Scientist for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.
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