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,

#8951

Alexey Kondrashov

Alexey Kondrashov

#71766

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Alexey Simonovich Kondrashov worked on a variety of subjects in evolutionary genetics. He is best known for the deterministic mutation hypothesis explaining the maintenance of sexual reproduction, his work on sympatric speciation, and his work on evaluating mutation rates.

#8952

Andrew J. Baker

#182480

Overall Influence

Andrew J. Baker is an American astrophysicist. After completing a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and physics at Harvard University, he completed a doctorate in astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. In 2006, Baker joined the faculty of Rutgers University. Baker was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2014.

#8953

Ba Denian

#62167

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Ba Denian is a Chinese immunologist, physician and educator. He retired from his last position as Dean of Zhejiang University School of Medicine and accepted the position as Honorary Director of Zhejiang University Health Science Center.

#8954

Isabelle Cantat

#67752

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Isabelle Cantat is a French physicist specializing in foams and their fluid dynamics. She is a professor in the Institute of Physics of Rennes at the Education and career Cantat was born on 5 January 1974 in Rennes. She earned an agrégation in physics in 1996 through study at the École normale supérieure de Lyon. She completed a doctorate in 1999 and a habilitation in 2006.

#8955

Awele Maduemezia

#131640

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Awele Augustine Maduemezia was a Nigerian professor of Physics, mathematician, researcher and educator. He was former Vice Chancellor of Ambrose Alli University. He also served as president of the Nigerian Association of Mathematical Physics.

#8956

John Hearnshaw

#134646

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

John Bernard Hearnshaw is a New Zealand astronomer who is Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at the University of Canterbury. He served as director of the Mt John University Observatory at the University of Canterbury from 1976 to 2008. He is a member of the International Astronomical Union and was president of its Commission 30 from 1997 to 2000. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand. In 2017, he was honoured with a Queen's Birthday honour for his astronomical work. The minor planet 5207 Hearnshaw is named after him.

#8957

Paul Fuoss

#182146

Overall Influence

Paul Henry Fuoss is an American physicist who specializes in the study of X-ray scattering and their application to materials' physics. Early life and education Fuoss was born to parents Floyd and Sylvia Fuoss and raised in South Dakota, where he attended Spears Rural School, followed by Draper High School in Draper and T. F. Riggs High School in Pierre. Fuoss graduated from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and completed a doctorate at Stanford University.

#8958

Ching-Yao Fong

#142310

Overall Influence

Ching-Yao Fong is a physicist and a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Davis, and also a published author. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Institute of Physics.

#8959

Arthur F. Kip

#176480

Overall Influence

1910 - 1995 (85 years)

Arthur Frederic Kip was an American experimental physicist, specializing in solid-state physics. He was a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1958–1959. Biography After secondary education in San Diego, Kip matriculated at the University of California, Berkeley , where he graduated with A.B. in 1935 and Ph.D. in 1939. His doctoral advisor was Leonard B. Loeb.

#8960

Hong Byung-hee

#137766

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Hong Byung-hee is a professor of the department of chemistry at Seoul National University. Hong has developed the method of synthesizing large-scale graphene by chemical vapor deposition , which triggered chemical researches toward the practical applications of graphene. His papers reporting the large-scale growth of graphene have been intensively cited by many graphene researchers, showing the originality and the significance of his research.

#8961

Heather Patrick

#176928

Overall Influence

Heather Jean Patrick is an American physicist. She is a researcher and project lead at National Institute of Standards and Technology. Patrick's research focuses on applications of scattering and reflectance measurements, advanced light sources, and robotics to the characterization and metrology of optical materials.

#8962

Amy Connolly

#182541

Overall Influence

Amy Lynn Connolly is an American physicist. She is an associate professor in the Department of Physics at Ohio State University and a Fellow of the American Physical Society for "her contributions to experimental and theoretical studies of ultrahigh energy neutrinos, and to searches for these neutrinos using radio techniques."

#8963

M. S. Ramachandra Rao

#183614

Overall Influence

M. S. Ramachandra Rao is an Institute Chair Professor/Prof. R. Srinivasan Chair Professor and professor of physics in the Department of Physics at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He received the Alexander von Humboldt fellowship. He is also an IOP editorial board member from 2009 onwards.

#8964

George W. Hart

#183635

Overall Influence

#8965

Svetlana Zaginaichenko

#152118

Overall Influence

1957 - 2015 (58 years)

Svetlana Yurievna Zaginaichenko was a Ukrainian solid state physicist. She studied the physical properties of carbon materials and their application to hydrogen energy storage. She was a nominee for the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work in studying fullerenes.

#8966

Arlene Maclin

#177671

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Arlene Paige Maclin is an American physicist and academic administrator. Maclin was one of the first African American women to receive a PhD in physics. She is a professor at Howard University. Early life and education Maclin was born in Rawlings, Virginia on June 7, 1945. She earned her B.S. in engineering physics from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 1967. She was an undergraduate research assistant. After graduating, she spent time as a post-baccalaureate fellow at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges.

#8967

Marina Huerta

#170938

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Marina Huerta is an Argentinian theoretical physicist and a physics professor. She is known for her work on quantum entropy in quantum field theory. She has provided a new interpretation of the Bekenstein bound. As of 2020, she has 29 peer-reviewed publications with more than 2000 citations.

#8968

Gereon Niedner-Schatteburg

#174470

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Gereon Niedner-Schatteburg is a German physicist and chemist. He is professor of physical chemistry at the department of chemistry of the University of Kaiserslautern. Since 2011 he acts as director of the DFG-funded transregional collaborative research center SFB/TRR 88 3MET.de.

#8969

Kevin Bassler

#177814

Overall Influence

Kevin E. Bassler is an American physicist, currently the John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Physics and Mathematics at the University of Houston. In 2014, Bassler was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society "for seminal and sustained contributions to the understanding of the dynamics of complex systems, particularly concerning non-equilibrium phase transitions, emergent behavior, and dynamics in adaptive networks."

#8970

J. Michael T. Thompson

#106920

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

John Michael Tutill Thompson , born on 7 June 1937 in Cottingham, England, is an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. He is married with two children.

#8971

Richard Packard

#178718

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Richard Packard is an American physicist, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, known for discovering Josephson oscillations in superfluids and using related effects to build the first quantum gyroscope with his colleagues. He is also recognized for making the first visualization of quantum vortices as well as conceiving the idea that neutron stars suddenly speed up due to metastability of superfluid vortices in the star's interior. He also suggested a model for the nature of dark matter by drawing an analogy between cosmic strings and quantized vortex lines. His research is ...

#8972

Helen Margolis

#120283

Overall Influence

Helen Sarah Margolis is a British physicist who is a Senior Fellow and Head of Science for Time and Frequency at the National Physical Laboratory. Her research considers the use of optical frequency metrology using femtosecond combs.

#8973

Christopher Glein

#175059

Overall Influence

Christopher R. Glein is an American geochemist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, TX. He studies planetary science, astrobiology, and organic geochemistry. Glein was the first to describe how Saturn's moon Enceladus is the only known body, besides Earth, that has all of the requirements necessary for life. Glein has been involved in multiple spacecraft missions, leading to significant findings about Pluto, Enceladus, and Titan. In 2017, he was recognized for Outstanding Contributions to the ESA Rosetta Mission by the European Space Agency.

#8974

Vitaly Khonik

#181324

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Khonik Vitaly Alexandrovich is a Russian physicist, doctor of physics and mathematics, professor, head of a laboratory researching the physics of non-crystalline materials, and head of the Department of General Physics at Voronezh State Pedagogical University . He was born in Kemerovo, USSR.

#8975

David E. Kaplan

#179238

Overall Influence

David Elazzar Kaplan is a theoretical particle physicist at the Johns Hopkins University. Biography Kaplan received his Bachelor of Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991, his master's in physics from the University of Washington in 1996 and PhD from the same institute under supervision of Ann Nelson in 1999. After postdoctoral positions at the University of Chicago, Argonne National Lab and in the SLAC Theory Group, he joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins in 2002.

#8976

T. S. van Albada

#155667

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Tjeerd Sicco van Albada is a Dutch astronomer and emeritus professor of Astronomy at the University of Groningen. Career Van Albada was born on 14 October 1936 in Akkrum. He obtained his PhD in mathematics and natural sciences from the University of Groningen in 1968. He was lecturer of astronomy at the same university between 1971 and 1979. In 1980 he became professor of Astronomy, and worked at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute. He took up emeritus status in 2001.

#8977

Peter Darvall

#72474

Overall Influence

Peter Darvall was the Vice-Chancellor and President of Monash University from 2002 until August 2003. Prior to this, he had a distinguished career in civil engineering and was at Monash for 33 years. He was educated at Scotch College Melbourne.

#8978

Adrian Price-Whelan

#98542

Overall Influence

Adrian Price-Whelan is an American astronomer and researcher who is known for discovering the star cluster Price-Whelan 1. He is the son of Michael Whelan. Education Price-Whelan holds a bachelor's degree in physics from New York University and master's and doctoral degrees in astronomy from Columbia University in the city of New York.

#8979

Nam Chang-hee

#172372

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Nam Chang-hee is a South Korean plasma physicist. Nam is specializing in the exploration of relativistic laser-matter interactions using femtosecond PW lasers. Currently he is professor of physics at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology and director of the Center for Relativistic Laser Science as a part of the Institute for Basic Science .

#8980

Joseph Kouneiher

Joseph Kouneiher

#149084

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Joseph Kouneiher is a French mathematical physicist. He is a professor of mathematical physics and engineering sciences at Nice SA University, France. He works primarily on the foundations of science, and his work in the domains of quantum field theory, quantum gravity, string theory and conformal field theory is widely cited and is well known. He holds three PHDs in mathematical physics and Epistemology and history of sciences.

#8981

Brian Wybourne

#171987

Overall Influence

1935 - 2003 (68 years)

Brian Garner Wybourne was a New Zealand theoretical physicist known for his groundbreaking work on the energy levels of rare-earth ions and applications of Lie groups to the atomic f shell and by mathematicians for his work on group representation theory.

#8982

Emily Warren

#149407

Overall Influence

Emily Warren is an American chemical engineer who is a staff scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Her research considers high efficiency crystalline photovoltaics. Early life and education Warren became interested in science as a child. At elementary school, she campaigned to save the rainforest. Warren was an undergraduate student at Cornell University, where she studied chemical engineering and became aware of the energy industry. She travelled to Nigeria for a course on sustainable development. She was a graduate student at California Institute of Technology. Her research considered the growth of silicon microwire arrays using vapor–liquid–solid methods.

#8983

Julia Velkovska

#182367

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Julia Apostolova Velkovska is a Bulgarian-American high energy particle physicist who is the Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Physics at Vanderbilt University. Her research considers nuclear matter in the extreme conditions generated at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. She hopes that this work will help to explain the mechanisms that underpin the strong force.

#8984

Mary James

#174540

Overall Influence

Mary B. James is an American physicist and educator. She is the Dean for Institutional Diversity and the A. A. Knowlton Professor of Physics at Reed College. James specializes in particle physics and accelerators.

#8985

John Mitchell

#139352

Overall Influence

1913 - 2007 (94 years)

John Wesley Mitchell, FRS was a New Zealand-born physicist. He was born the son of an American surveyor in Christchurch, New Zealand and educated at Christchurch Boys' High School. Between 1931 and 1935 he studied chemistry and physics at Canterbury University College and was awarded a B.Sc. and M.Sc. In 1935 he sailed to England with an Exhibition Scholarship to take up a fellowship at Oxford University, where he worked under Professor Cyril Hinshelwood at Trinity College.

#8986

Adrián Galád

#132718

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Adrián Galád is a Slovak astronomer and a discoverer of minor planets. He is credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery and co-discovery of 81 numbered minor planets between 1995 and 2009, most of them in collaboration with astronomers Dušan Kalmančok, Alexander Pravda, Juraj Tóth, Leonard Kornoš, Peter Kolény and Štefan Gajdoš.

#8987

Stephen A. Webb

#21332

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Stephen A. Webb is a social theorist and researcher in social work, social welfare and policy. He was born in Margate Kent, in 1958, the son of Mary and Philip Webb and has a younger brother Richard and sister Nicola Webb. He attended Heath Junior School, Chesterfield Boys Grammar School and University of Oxford.

#8988

Esko Valtaoja

#78892

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Esko Jorma Johannes Valtaoja is a Finnish professional astronomer and writer. Valtaoja worked as a professor at the University of Turku where he studied quasars. Valtaoja retired in 2015 after holding a popular farewell lecture, that was also televised by Finnish national public broadcaster YLE.

#8989

Vitaly Voloshinov

Vitaly Voloshinov

#175658

Overall Influence

1947 - 2019 (72 years)

Vitaly Borisovich Voloshinov was a Soviet and Russian physicist, one of the world's leading experts in the field of acoustoptics, honored teacher of Moscow State University PhD in physics and mathematics, associate professor Physics Department, Moscow State University.

#8990

Marco Durante

#181978

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Marco Durante is an Italian physicist, recognized as an expert in the fields of radiobiology and medical physics in charged particle therapy. During his career, Durante gained extensive experience in the biophysics of heavy ions and space radiation protection performing experiments in top-level institutes all over the world. He developed a new method for biodosimetry of charged particles in order to estimate the late risks of patient undergoing radiotherapy, as well as to predict the consequences of long-term exposures for the astronauts. Concerning space research, he also developed a technique to evaluate the shielding effectiveness of different materials using high-energy ions.

#8991

Thomas McLernon Greene

#106432

Overall Influence

1926 - 2003 (77 years)

Thomas McLernon Greene was an American scholar of English literature. A native of Haddonfield, New Jersey, Greene was born on May 17, 1926. He completed his undergraduate degree at Yale University in 1949, after serving in the Counterintelligence Corps. from 1945 to 1947. Between 1949 and 1951, Greene attended the University of Paris. He became an instructor at Yale in 1954, a year before completing his doctorate in comparative literature, also at Yale. Green was named a full professor in 1966 and appointed the Frederick Clifford Ford Professor of English and Comparative Literature in 1978, serving until retirement in 1996.

#8992

Chris Phillips

#159116

Overall Influence

Chris Phillips is the former Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and head of the Optoelectronics section at Imperial College London. Career Phillips travelled in the developing world and worked for the BBC before taking up a faculty position in the Physics department of Imperial College London in 1985, at the age of 27. He was a visiting researcher at the Quantum Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara in 1997–98. He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics in 2006, and served as Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Imperial College London from 2008 to 2011.

#8993

Hong Chaosheng

#151966

Overall Influence

1920 - 2018 (98 years)

Hong Chaosheng was a Chinese physicist best known for studying cryogenics. Hong was the teacher of Zhao Zhongxian, a laureate of Highest Science and Technology Award, the highest scientific award issued by the Chinese Academy of Sciences to scientists working in China.

#8994

Alfred U. MacRae

#179326

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Alfred Urquhart MacRae is an American physicist. MacRae was born in New York City on April 14, 1932. MacRae is of Scottish descent, and learned how to play the bagpipes, which he did throughout college. MacRae earned his bachelor's and graduate degrees at Syracuse University, where he studied physics. Upon completing his doctorate in 1960, MacRae began working for Bell Labs. He was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1964. MacRae later led his own company, MacRae Technologies. He was the 1994 recipient of the J. J. Ebers Award, presented by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Electron Devices Society at the International Electron Devices Meeting.

#8995

Anna Fontcuberta i Morral

#180289

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Anna Fontcuberta i Morral is Spanish physicist and materials scientist. Her research focuses on nanotechnology applied in the production of solar cells. She is a full professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the head of the Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials.

#8996

Joseph S. Freedman

#65536

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Joseph S. Freedman is Professor of History at Alabama State University in Montgomery, Alabama. He has been an Assistant , Associate , and Full Professor of Education there. His primary area of research is academic philosophy during the Early Modern Period with an emphasis on Central Europe. He publishes extensively on the history of philosophy and history of education. Freedman received his BA in History 1969, his MA in History in 1972, and his PhD in History in 1982, all from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His PhD dissertation focused on philosophy and philosophical issues in histori...

#8997

Heinz Jagodzinski

#149585

Overall Influence

1916 - 2012 (96 years)

Heinz Ernst Jagodzinski was a German physicist, mineralogist and crystallographer known for his research in disordered materials and diffuse X-ray scattering. He also introduced the Jagodzinski notation for the description of polytypism in silicon carbide.

#8998

Wolfgang Wagner

#184250

Overall Influence

#8999

Jan Rost

#171357

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Jan M. Rost is a German theoretical physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden heading the research department Finite Systems. He was awarded the status of Fellow in the American Physical Society, after nomination by the Division of Atomic, Molecular & Optical Physics in 2007, for seminal investigations of correlated doubly excited states, threshold fragmentation in few-body Coulombic systems and small clusters, pendular states of linear molecules, and for elucidating the role of correlation and relaxation in ultracold plasmas and Rydberg ...

#9000

Kenji Ohmori

#136639

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

is a Japanese physicist and chemist. National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Japan , Institute for Molecular Science Education and career 1987 Graduated from Faculty of Engineering, The University of Tokyo1992 Ph. D, The University of Tokyo1992 Research Associate, Tohoku University2001 Associate Professor, Tohoku University2003 Full Professor, IMS2007–2010 Director, Laser Research Center for Molecular Science, IMS2010–present Chairman, Department of Photo-Molecular Science, IMS2004–2005 Visiting Professor, Tohoku University2007–2008 Visiting Professor, Tokyo Institute of Technology2009–2011...

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