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,

#9101

Winthrop W. Smith

#185628
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Winthrop W. Smith is an American physicist. Smith studied physics at Amherst College, completing his degree in 1958, and subsequently pursued a doctorate in the subject at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which he earned in 1963. Smith began teaching at Columbia University as an instructor, and was appointed to an assistant professorship before he joined the University of Connecticut faculty as an associate professor in 1969. From 1975 to 2009, Smith held a full professorship at UConn. Upon retirement, he was granted emeritus status. In 1973, Smith was elected a fellow of the American P...
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#9102

Peter Blake

#185639
Overall Influence
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#9103

George Pickett

#185671
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
George Richard Pickett FRS is Professor of Low Temperature Physics at Lancaster University. Life Pickett was born in 1939 and educated at Bedford Modern School and Magdalen College, Oxford . Pickett was a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader and then Head of the Department of Physics at Lancaster University. In the 1996 Nobel Prize citation of physicist David Lee, credit was given to Pickett and his research group for their work on 3He.
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#9104

Carl Haber

#185677
Overall Influence
Carl Haber is an American physicist. He is best known for his work in audio preservation. In 2013 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Career Haber attended Columbia University for his B.A., M.Phil, and Ph.D. Since 1986, he has worked for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Haber's work on the IRENE system has involved collaboration with the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress. Methods invented by Haber have been credited with restoring the earliest known recording of a human voice, as well as early recordings of Alexander Graham Bell's voice.
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#9105

Dorte Hammershøi

#39451
Overall Influence
Dorte Hammershøi is a Danish professor at the Department of Electronic Systems at Aalborg University. She works in the field of human sound perception, with special reference to electro-acoustic applications, including audiometric calibration, oto-acoustic emissions, hearing damage, spatial hearing, and measurement of noise sources close to the ear.
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#9106

Michael Cohen

#25644
Overall Influence
2000 - 2018 (18 years)
M. Michael Cohen Jr. was an American pathologist and geneticist who was Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University . He was the first doctor to diagnose Proteus syndrome, in 1979.
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#9107

Edward Thomas

#81892
Overall Influence
Edward E. Thomas Jr. is an American plasma physicist and a Professor of Physics at Auburn University. He currently serves as the university's associate dean for research and graduate studies and is also the university's Charles W. Barkley Endowed Professor for diversity and inclusion. He is a fellow of the National Society of Black Physicists , the Alabama Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society .
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#9108

Nicholas Stergiou

#72596
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Nicholas Stergiou is a Greek-American biomechanic. He is the founding Chair of the Department of Biomechanics at University of Nebraska at Omaha , where he is also the Distinguished Community Research Chair and Professor. He is also the Director of the Center for Research in Human Movement Variability and Dean of the Division of Biomechanics and Research Development at UNO. Stergiou is also a professor at the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
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#9109

Thomas Marbory Antonsen

#172490
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Thomas Marbory Antonsen is an American physicist, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, Potomac, MD
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#9110

Apparao M. Rao

#180596
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Apparao M Rao is the Robert A. Bowen Endowed Professor of Physics in the department of physics and astronomy, the founding director of the Clemson Nanomaterials Institute, and a former associate dean for discovery in the college of science at Clemson University. His research in nanoscience and nanotechnology has been cited over 53,400 times in open literature and his h-index is 98. He was elected as a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011, the National Academy of Inventors in 2018, and the Materials Research Society in 2020.
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#9111

Beth A. Cunningham

#183642
Overall Influence
Beth A. Cunningham is an American physicist. Cunningham earned her undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Kent State University, and subsequently completed postdoctoral training at the Hormel Institute. She began her teaching career at Gettysburg College. After a year in Gettysburg, Cunningham joined the Bucknell University faculty in 1989. At Bucknell, Cunningham became associate dean of the faculty in the college of arts and sciences in 2000, two years before attaining the rank of full professor. Cunningham was appointed provost, dean of the faculty, and physics professor at Illinois Wesleyan University in 2006.
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#9112

Mikhail Kats

#144830
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Mikhail A. Kats is an American optics/photonics researcher and applied physicist. He is Jack St. Clair Kilby associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. During his studies at Harvard University as a graduate student, Kats developed new nanophotonic and plasmonic technologies.
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#9113

William W. Simmons

#103144
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
William W. Simmons is an American physicist at TRW and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , notable for his development of electro-optical devices. Biography Simmons received his BA in Physics in 1953 from Carleton College and his MA in 1955 in Physics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where in 1960 he also received his PhD in Physics.
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#9114

Gianrico Filacchione

#185787
Overall Influence
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#9115

John H. Miller Jr.

#85754
Overall Influence
John Harris Miller Jr. is an American physicist with important contributions to the fields of physics, biophysics, Impedance spectroscopy, and material science, mainly known for his role in Charge density wave , research work on Cuprates and Impedance spectroscopy of living organisms. He is particularly known for an effect "Collective Quantum Tunneling of CDW Electrons" and for a well-known paper on the topic written by him and his colleagues, as published in Physical Review Letters. He was a noteworthy student of the twice Nobel laureate physicist John Bardeen who mentioned him at several pl...
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#9116

Robert Weber

#173002
Overall Influence
1926 - 2008 (82 years)
Robert Weber was an American astronomer and discoverer of minor planets who ran the precursor to the LINEAR project shortly before his retirement in 1996. Data were collected by manually entering telescope pointing positions and requesting an image save. Searching twenty fields was a taxing experience. They did have automatic object detection working, but no starfield matching at that time.
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#9117

Erika Benítez

#137461
Overall Influence
Erika María Benítez Lizaola is a Mexican astronomer whose research involves blazars and active galactic nuclei. She is a professor in the Faculty of Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a researcher in the UNAM Institute of Astronomy.
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#9118

Bob Twiggs

Bob Twiggs
#27691
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Robert J. Twiggs is an American professor of Astronautics and Space Science at Morehead State University. He is responsible, along with Jordi Puig-Suari of California Polytechnic State University, for co-inventing the CubeSat reference design for miniaturized satellites which became an Industry Standard for design and deployment of the satellites.
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#9119

Bernard H. Bressler

Bernard H. Bressler
#150900
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Bernard H. Bressler FCAHS is a Professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences and an Associate Member in the Department of Orthopedics at the University of British Columbia . Bressler has been a provincial and national leader in research, teaching and governance. In 2008, Bressler was inducted as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from LifeSciences BC for his commitment to the commercialization of innovative technologies. He is currently a member of the Board of the Canada-Israel Industrial Research & Development...
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#9120

Leonard Reiffel

#180144
Overall Influence
1927 - 2017 (90 years)
Leonard Reiffel was an American physicist, author and educator. Born in Chicago, Reiffel was an electrical engineering student for a number of years before entering into research fields. He collaborated with Enrico Fermi, Carl Sagan, and members of Operation Paperclip.
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#9121

Caitriona Jackman

#184209
Overall Influence
Caitriona Jackman is an Irish space physicist. In 2021, she became the first female senior professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies Dunsink Observatory. She has made important contributions to understanding the solar wind interactions with planetary magnetospheres.
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#9122

Michael E. Phelps

#185970
Overall Influence
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#9123

Paula Heron

#136809
Overall Influence
Paula R. L. Heron is a Canadian-American physics educator who works as a professor of physics at the University of Washington. Education Heron has bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from the University of Ottawa in 1990 and 1991. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Western Ontario in 1995.
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#9124

Mark Wainwright

#101154
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Mark Sebastian Wainwright is an Australian chemical engineer and emeritus professor of the University of New South Wales, and institutional leader within the Australian academic and technological sectors. He served as seventh vice chancellor and president of the UNSW from 2004 to 2006. In 2004 he was appointed a member of the Order of Australia for services to chemical engineering as a researcher and academic, and to tertiary education. In 2007 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of science by the University of New South Wales. He was born 20 Oct.,1943.
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#9125

Margaret Reid

#170812
Overall Influence
Professor Margaret Daphne Reid from Swinburne University of Technology is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. She is known for her pioneering work in new fundamental tests of quantum theory, including teleportation and cryptography.
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#9126

Claude Wendell Horton Sr.

#181056
Overall Influence
1915 - 2002 (87 years)
Claude Wendell Horton Sr. was one of the principal contributors to the development of the applied research laboratories and the department of physics at The University of Texas at Austin. Between 1972 and 1975, he contributed significantly to the geophysics program in the Department of Geological Sciences.
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#9127

Paul H. Carr

#142804
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Paul Henry Carr is a physicist and researcher. His ten patents have contributed to compact, low-cost filters and signal processing devices for radar, TV, and cell phones. Biography Born in Boston, raised in Cabot and Richford, VT, Carr graduated from Boston Latin School in 1953, earned a B.S. degree in physics in 1957, and a M.S. degree in physics in 1961, both from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned a Ph.D., also in physics, from Brandeis University in 1966.
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#9128

Louise Willingale

#158563
Overall Influence
Louise Willingale is a laser physicist at the University of Michigan and associate director of the National Science Foundation ZEUS facility. Education Willingale completed her undergraduate Physics degree from Imperial College London in 2003 and stayed on to complete her PhD in 2007 with her thesis titled Ion acceleration from high intensity laser plasma interactions: Measurements and applications. She was then a research assistant before moving to the University of Michigan to carry out postdoc studies.
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#9129

Beat Fierz

#180527
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Beat Fierz is a Swiss chemist and molecular biologist, currently an Associate Professor at the EPFL . His research is focused on understanding dynamic processes of large molecular systems, particularly in chromatin regulation.
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#9130

Karen Holford

Karen Holford
#49380
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Karen Margaret Holford is a Welsh engineer, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Cranfield University. She was formerly Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Cardiff University. She is also a former Pro Vice-Chancellor of the College of Physical Sciences and Engineering and Head of the School of Engineering. She is an active researcher of acoustic emission and her work has been applied to damage assessment inspections on industrial components.
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#9131

Hans Dekker

Hans Dekker
#181036
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Hans J. van Ommeren Dekker is a Dutch theoretical physicist in the line of Dirk Polder, Ralph Kronig, and Nico van Kampen. His scientific work inter alia involves laser theory, path integrals in curved spaces, nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, dissipation in quantum mechanics, and hydrodynamic turbulence. He is director of the Private Institute for Advanced Study and professor emeritus at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Amsterdam.
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#9132

Ivan M. Havel

Ivan M. Havel
#59174
Overall Influence
1938 - 2021 (83 years)
Ivan Miloš Havel was a Czech scientist and philosopher. He was the brother of President Václav Havel, with whom he was one of the founders of the Civic Forum. In years 1990–2019, he was the editor-in-chief of Vesmír.
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#9133

Alastair J Sloan

#122072
Overall Influence
Professor Alastair J Sloan is an applied bioscientist and expert in the broad field of mineralised connective tissues, and since January 2020 current head of the Melbourne Dental School, University of Melbourne.
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#9134

Susanne Viefers

#182073
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Susanne Friederike Viefers is a German-Norwegian theoretical physicist interested in low-dimensional quantum systems including the Quantum Hall effect, Bose–Einstein condensates, and anyons. She is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Oslo in Norway.
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#9135

Rodica Ramer

#186248
Overall Influence
Rodica Ramer is a Romanian born Australian professor of microelectronics at the University of New South Wales, where she and her team work on the development of radio-frequency microelectronic technologies, advancing wireless communication technology. She earned a Ph.D from the University of Bucharest in solid-state physics in 1992. Prior to working at UNSW, she was a senior research scientist at the Microwave Laboratory, National Centre for Nuclear Energy of Romania, a research associate at the Superconductivity Laboratory, the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and at the Microwave Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins.
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#9136

Harald Schwefel

#181305
Overall Influence
Harald Schwefel is a German-born physicist currently based in New Zealand. He is an associate professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Otago and a principal investigator in the Dodd-Walls Centre. His research focuses on the interaction of light and matter in dielectric materials, and his speciality is whispering gallery mode resonators , small disks of dielectric which confine and store laser light to facilitate nonlinear interactions. He uses these to generate optical frequency combs and to coherently convert between microwave and optical photons.
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#9137

Vazif Meylanov

Vazif Meylanov
#109445
Overall Influence
1940 - 2015 (75 years)
Vazif Sirazhutdinovich Meylanov was a Soviet mathematician, social philosopher, writer, Soviet dissident and political prisoner . He became renowned for his critical works on theory of socialism as well as for singular endurance and uncompromising attitude towards authorities during his prison terms. After imprisonment and exile Vazif Meylanov dealt with the problem of personal freedom, examined social and political environment, dispelled stereotypes about Russian democracy and analyzed political consciousness of Russian society. Besides, he was an opponent of nationalism and Islamism, while ...
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#9138

Zheng Quanshui

#151541
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Zheng Quanshui is a Chinese scientist currently serving as a professor and doctoral supervisor at Tsinghua University. Education Zheng was born in the town of , Jinxi County, Jiangxi in March 1961. He holds a number of degrees starting with bachelor's degree in Industrial and civil buildings from Jiangxi Institute of Technology , then a master's degree in applied mathematics from Beijing University , a master's degree in solid mechanics from Hunan University , and a doctor's degree from Tsinghua University .
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#9139

David Fenyő

#168055
Overall Influence
David Fenyö is a Swedish-American physicist and mass spectrometrist. He is currently professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at NYU Langone Medical Center. Fenyö's research focuses on the development of methods to identify, characterize and quantify proteins and in the integration of data from multiple modalities including mass spectrometry, sequencing and microscopy.
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#9140

Kerstin Nordstrom

Kerstin Nordstrom
#122960
Overall Influence
Kerstin N. Nordstrom is an American physicist who is the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics at Mount Holyoke College. Her research focuses on soft matter physics; her work has been featured in the LA Times and in the BBC News.
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#9141

Max Wolf

#186316
Overall Influence
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#9142

Krystle McLaughlin

#171558
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Krystle McLaughlin is a Caribbean-American structural biophysicist. She is an assistant professor of chemistry at Vassar College. Early life and education McLaughlin grew up in Tobago, where she met Joan and Jay Mandle, professors at Colgate University, who encouraged her to apply. She studied physics at Colgate University, graduating in 2006. She was the only woman of colour in her graduating physics class. At Colgate University she was a leader of the Society of Physics Students. She has since returned to Colgate University, to speak at their annual SophoMORE Connections event, introducing undergraduate students to alumni.
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#9143

Christine Muschik

#183441
Overall Influence
Christine A. Muschik is an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo as well as a part of the Institute for Quantum Computing.. She completed her PhD in 2011 at the Max-Planck-Institute for Quantum Optics. She completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information in Innsbruck and the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Castelldefels. As of 2020, she has over 2000 citations on over 50 publications. She has also been featured in several articles in Nature magazine, MIT Technology Review, and Physics World.
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#9144

Padi Boyd

Padi Boyd
#181761
Overall Influence
Padi Boyd is an American astrophysicist. She is the head of NASA's Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory and an Associate Director at the Goddard Space Flight Center. She is the project scientist for NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission.
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#9145

Tadatoshi Akiba

#83837
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Tadatoshi Akiba is a Japanese mathematician and politician and served as the mayor of the city of Hiroshima, Japan from 1999 to 2011. Early life He studied mathematics at the University of Tokyo, receiving a B.S. in 1966 and an M.S. in 1968. He continued his studies under John Milnor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning his PhD in mathematics in 1970. He took teaching jobs at a series of universities: State University of New York at Stony Brook , Tufts University , and Hiroshima Shudo University . His research was on topology, with an interest in homotopy groups.
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#9146

Patricia Mooney

Patricia Mooney
#181313
Overall Influence
Patricia May Mooney is a Professor Emerita of Physics at Simon Fraser University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Materials Research Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physical Society.
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#9147

Tetsuo Kagawa

#185225
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Tetsuo Kagawa is a Japanese astronomer, staff member at the Gekko Observatory and discoverer of asteroids. He is credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 115 minor planets between 1997 and 2000.
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#9148

Anurag Sharma

#168792
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Anurag Sharma is an Indian physicist and a professor at the department of physics of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He is known for his pioneering researches on optoelectronics and optical communications and is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies viz. Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and National Academy of Sciences, India as well as Indian National Academy of Engineering. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatna...
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#9149

Oh Uhtaek

Oh Uhtaek
#136361
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Oh Uhtaek or Oh Woo-Taek is a Korean physiologist. He is also a professor at College of Pharmacy, Seoul National University. His research is largely known for Cardiac Pain and other Visceral Pain Mechanism and as well as cloning.
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#9150

Malcolm Grimston

#100016
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Malcolm Charles Grimston is a British advocate of nuclear power, and is also a scientific author, based at the Centre for Energy Policy and Technology at Imperial College London. He has featured extensively on British television and radio in context of the latest new-build power stations for nuclear power in the United Kingdom.
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