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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School

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Ranking

List of the most influential people in Physics,

#9301

Marta Bunster

#175494

Overall Influence

Marta Cecilia del Carmen Bunster Balocchi is a Chilean scientist, most noted for her work in the fields of biochemistry, biophysics and crystallography. She is also known as one of the main promoters of bioinformatics in her country.

#9302

John Clifton

#136643

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

John Stephen Clifton FInstP, FIPEM was a British medical physicist. Early life and education Clifton studied at the University of Southampton, graduating in 1955 and then worked at the Royal South Hants Hospital.

#9303

Tatjana Piotrowski

#123449

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Tatjana Piotrowski is a German molecular geneticist who researches zebrafish as models of vertebrate development. She has worked at Stowers Institute for Medical Research since 2011 and is editor of the Annual Review of Genetics.

#9304

George C. Royal

George C. Royal

#101775

Overall Influence

1921 - 2016 (95 years)

George Calvin Royal Jr was an American microbiologist. George C. Royal was also part of one of the few African-American husband-and-wife teams in science, working with Gladys W. Royal, Ph.D. on research supported by the United States Atomic Energy Commission. George C. Royal is a professor emeritus at Howard University.

#9305

Kenneth Connor

#173939

Overall Influence

Kenneth Connor is an Emeritus Professor in the Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he originally joined the faculty in 1974. He became an IEEE Life Fellow in 1998. He earned his BS, MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, and PhD in Electrophysics from New York University Tandon School of Engineering. He continues to work as an engineering education consultant since his retirement in June 2018.

#9306

Suzanne Gray

#63254

Overall Influence

Suzanne Gray is a British expert in dynamical meteorology and professor of meteorology at the University of Reading, where she is currently academic head of the Department of Meteorology. She has made significant contributions to the understanding and prediction of extreme windstorms and tropical cyclones.

#9307

Biswajit Ghosh

#98968

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Biswajit Ghosh is a Bangladeshi professor, essayist and researcher. He is a professor of the Bangla Department at Dhaka University and Incumbent Vice-Chancellor of the Rabindra University. He was awarded Bangla Academy Literary Award in 2011 and Ekushey Padak in 2019 for his contributions in research.

#9308

Brett Abrahams

#171056

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Brett Abrahams is an American geneticist and neuroscientist involved in the identification and subsequent functional characterization of the autism-related gene CNTNAP2 at UCLA. Abrahams is an assistant professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City.

#9309

Mike Lockwood

#139054

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Michael Lockwood FRS is a Professor of Space Environment Physics at the University of Reading. Life and works Schooled at The Skinners' School, Tunbridge Wells, he earned his BSc and then PhD degrees at the University of Exeter. Much of his career has been with Rutherford Appleton Laboratory but he has also worked at University of Southampton, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and University of Auckland. His research interests comprise, among others, variations in the magnetic fields of the Sun, interplanetary space, and the Earth and in general solar influence on global and regional climate.

#9310

Gottfried Curio

#188880

Overall Influence

#9311

Rebecca Lingwood

#169033

Overall Influence

Rebecca Julie Lingwood is the Provost and Professor of Fluid Dynamics at Brunel University London. She holds an affiliate position at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Lingwood was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2019.

#9312

Mike Blake

#188922

Overall Influence

#9313

Heidi N. Becker

#188924

Overall Influence

Heidi N. Becker is an American planetary scientist who studies Jupiter as radiation monitoring investigation lead for NASA Juno space mission. She works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Becker came to science late; she was a dance and theater student at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, and graduated from NYU with a bachelor of fine arts in 1990. After working in theater in New York, she became interested in science through hospital volunteer work, and returned to college in her mid-20s, initially in New York and then transferring to California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

#9314

Robert Weryk

#174981

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Robert J. Weryk is a Canadian physicist and astronomer. He currently works at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa where he discovered the first known interstellar object, ʻOumuamua. He has also published numerous articles on meteors and other astronomical topics.

#9315

Deborah Jackson

#180870

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Deborah J. Jackson is an American physicist and Program Manager at the National Science Foundation, and a Fellow of the National Society of Black Physicists. She was the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. She is an expert on "electromagnetic phenomena" with a research and development career that spans the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum from materials studies using hard x-ray wavelengths, to nonlinear optics and spectroscopy in the near-infrared, to the fielding of radio frequency instrumentation on deep space missions such as Cass...

#9316

Wolfgang A. Tomé

#122053

Overall Influence

Wolfgang Axel Tomé is a physicist working in medicine as a researcher, inventor, and educator. He is noted for his contributions to the use of photogrammetry in high precision radiation therapy; his work on risk adaptive radiation therapy which is based on the risk level for recurrence in tumor sub-volumes using biological objective functions; and the development of hippocampal avoidant cranial radiation therapy techniques to alleviate hippocampal-dependent neurocognitive impairment following cranial irradiation.

#9317

David Hutchinson

David Hutchinson

#96729

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

David A. W. Hutchinson is a quantum physicist and professor at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. He is the inaugural and current Director of the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies, a New Zealand government-funded national Centre of Research Excellence. Hutchinson's research interests are in the areas of quantum biology, Bose-Einstein condensates, and the underlying mathematics of quantum physics.

#9318

Menachem Banitt

Menachem Banitt

#99028

Overall Influence

1914 - 2007 (93 years)

Menachem Banitt , was a Belgian–Israeli scholar of medieval French culture and language and an internationally acclaimed expert on Rashi. Banitt was particularly known for his analysis of Rashi's occasional translation of words and phrases from Hebrew or Aramaic into Old French, written phonetically in Hebrew letters.

#9319

Jennifer Glass

#146467

Overall Influence

Jennifer L. Glass is Centennial Commission Professor of Liberal Arts in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. She was previously Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California, University of Iowa and the University of Notre Dame.

#9320

Michael J. O’connell

#189051

Overall Influence

#9321

Wolfgang Lechner

#186126

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Wolfgang Lechner is a theoretical physicist from Austria. He is the co-founder and co-CEO of the company ParityQC and professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Innsbruck.

#9322

Moira Steyn-Ross

#189093

Overall Influence

Moira L. Steyn-Ross is a New Zealand physics academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Waikato. Academic career After a 1981 PhD titled 'The quantum theory of optical bistability in nonlinear systems' at the University of Waikato, she joined staff, rising to full professor. Much of Steyn-Ross's research has been into the effect of anaesthesia.

#9323

Andries Hoogerwerf

#132627

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Andries Hoogerwerf is a Dutch political scientist and public administration scholar. He was a professor of political science at the Radboud University Nijmegen and public administration theory at the University of Twente.

#9324

Kerreen Reiger

#171390

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Kerreen M. Reiger is an Australian academic, sociologist and author. She lives in Melbourne and teaches sociology at La Trobe University. She has a special interest in family, motherhood and childbirth and was one of the founders of the activist group Maternity Coalition.

#9325

Russell Johnson

#102456

Overall Influence

1923 - 2007 (84 years)

Frederick Russell Johnson was an architect and acoustical expert. Johnson was the founder of Artec Consultants Incorporated in 1970. Nicknamed the "guardian of the ear" by Jean Nouvel in 1998 and an "acoustic guru" by others, Johnson was best known for works that included technical designs for the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, Texas, Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Centre in the Square in Canada, Pikes Peak Center in Colorado, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in Canada and the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in Florida.

#9326

Peter West

#149863

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Peter Christopher West , born on 4 December 1951, is a British theoretical physicist at King's College, London and a fellow of the Royal Society. West was elected to the Royal Society in 2006; his citation read

#9327

David A Minton

#189198

Overall Influence

#9328

Max C. Brewer

#169949

Overall Influence

1924 - 2012 (88 years)

Max Clifton Brewer was an Arctic scientist, geophysicist, geological engineer, environmentalist, educator, and philosopher, and is best known for his expertise in the scientific field of permafrost. He was the longest-serving director of the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory in Utqiaġvik, Alaska where he established and managed the NARL ice stations in the Arctic Ocean. From 1971-1974 he served in the gubernatorial cabinet of William A. Egan as the first commissioner of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

#9329

Nikolay Artemov

#68648

Overall Influence

1908 - 2005 (97 years)

Nikolai Mikhaylovich Artemov was a Soviet Russian physiologist, Doktor Nauk in Biological Sciences , Honorary Professor at the N. I. Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod. He is known as the founder of scientific apitherapy. In 1957, the USSR Ministry of Health sanctioned the use of bee venom in the treatment of certain ailments. It was the "Instruction for Bee Sting Venom Apitherapy" by N.M. Artemov , who authored the document.

#9330

Stanley S. Hanna

#110588

Overall Influence

1920 - 2012 (92 years)

Stanley Sweet Hanna was an American physicist. Stanley Hanna was born in Burma to missionary parents. At age fourteen he was sent to the Fannie Doane Home for missionary children in Granville, Ohio, where he attended high school and then graduated with A.B. from Denison University in 1941. From 1941 to 1944 he was a graduate student in physics at Johns Hopkins University. From 1945 to 1946 he was in the U.S. Army and worked at Los Alamos. In 1947 he received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. There he was an instructor from 1946 to 1949 and an assistant professor from 1949 to 1955. He ...

#9331

Sandrine Lévêque-Fort

#182222

Overall Influence

1990 - Present (36 years)

Sandrine Lévêque-Fort is a French optical physicist working in the field of Super-resolution imaging at Paris-Saclay University. She was the recipient of the French Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation Irène Joliot-Curie Prize in 2020.

#9332

Caroline Chick Jarrold

#153414

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Caroline Chick Jarrold is a physical chemist who was named the Class of 1948 Herman B Wells Endowed Professor ats at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, in 2018. The research done by her group aims to alleviate issues with energy and the environment.

#9333

Paul Collier

#89029

Overall Influence

Paul Collier is a British physicist and the Head of Beams Department at CERN. He has worked on the Large Electron-Positron Collider , the Super Proton Synchrotron and the Large Hadron Collider , either through engineering contributions or leadership over 25 years.

#9334

Patience Mthunzi-Kufa

#174343

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Patience Mthunzi-Kufa is a South African physicist and head of biophotonics research at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. She received the Order of Mapungubwe in Bronze. Early life and education Patience Mthunzi-Kufa was born on May 2, 1976, in Orlando, Soweto. She attended Reasöma Secondary School and enrolled for bachelor's degree in Psychology. She became interested in biological science, and switched majors, graduating from Rand Afrikaans University in 1999. At the same institution, she completed postgraduate degrees in Biochemistry. She cites her aunt as inspiration: a...

#9335

Francisco Balzarotti

#106372

Overall Influence

Francisco Balzarotti is an Argentinian scientist known for his work in super-resolution microscopy, particularly MINFLUX. He is a Group Leader at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, Austria.

#9336

Harvey Rosten

#124785

Overall Influence

1948 - 1997 (49 years)

Harvey Ivor Rosten was an English physicist of London University and Cambridge University . Career He spent 14 years working for CHAM Ltd as a Project Engineer, in this time he was the manager responsible for the development of the world's first commercial general–purpose Computational Fluid Dynamics software, PHOENICS.

#9337

Prashant Pillai

#55903

Overall Influence

Prashant Pillai is an Indian-born British computer scientist. He is the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. He was previously the Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Exchange and Professor of Cyber Security at the University of Wolverhampton. He is also the Director of Cyber Quarter - Midlands Centre for Cyber Security. He specialises in security and privacy for communication networks. Pillai has led several national/international research projects in the areas of networking protocols and cyber security. He has been invited f...

#9338

Daniel Makinde

#143456

Overall Influence

Oluwole Daniel Makinde is a Nigerian professor of Theoretical and Applied Physics, the Secretary General of African Mathematical Union , General Secretary and Vice President of Southern Africa Mathematical Science Association and the Director of the Institute for Advanced Research in Mathematical Modeling and Computations at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa.

#9339

Lisa L. Cunningham

Lisa L. Cunningham

#136377

Overall Influence

Lisa Lynn Cunningham is an American scientist. She is Scientific Director and a senior investigator of sensory cell biology at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders . Education Cunningham received a B.A. and M.A. in Audiology from the University of Tennessee. She was first introduced to the field of audiology by Samuel B. Burchfield. Her 1991 thesis was titled: Effects of click polarity on auditory brainstem responses in man using high-pass noise masking. She completed her thesis under the guidance of her major advisor, James W. Thelin and she credits Ravi Krishnan for his part in its conception.

#9340

Tiziana Di Matteo

#189400

Overall Influence

#9341

Céline d'Orgeville

#188090

Overall Influence

Céline d'Orgeville is a Professor and instrument scientist at the Australian National University Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. She leads teams designing laser and optical systems for ground based astronomical telescopes. She is a Fellow of SPIE and the Astronomical Society of Australia.

#9342

Maebh Long

#131203

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Maebh Long is an Irish academic with expertise on the modernist novelist and playwright Flann O'Brien. She is currently Senior Lecturer in the English Programme in the School of Arts at The University of Waikato in New Zealand, having been a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head of School at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji.

#9343

Henrik Ager-Hanssen

#106212

Overall Influence

1930 - 2004 (74 years)

Henrik Julius Ager-Hanssen was a Norwegian nuclear physicist and businessperson. He spent his career in the nuclear energy sector from 1956 to 1975, then in the petroleum company Statoil from 1976 to 1998.

#9344

Vadym Slyusar

#75417

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Vadym Slyusar – Soviet and Ukrainian scientist, Professor, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Honored Scientist and Technician of Ukraine, founder of tensor-matrix theory of digital antenna arrays , N-OFDM and other theories in fields of radar systems, smart antennas for wireless communications and digital beamforming.

#9345

Maria Calbi

#188738

Overall Influence

María de las Mercedes Calbi is an Argentine American physicist whose research concerns surface science, and particularly adsorption of gases by carbon nanotubes and other nanostructures. She is a professor of physics at the University of Denver.

#9346

Dmitri Yafaev

#181598

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Dmitri R. Yafaev is a Russian-French mathematical physicist. At the University of Leningrad Yafaev received his Russian Candidate degree in 1973 with thesis advisor Mikhail Birman and was a lecturer from 1973 to 1977. From 1977 to 1990 Yafaev was a researcher and senior researcher at the St. Petersburg Branch of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics. At the University of Nantes he was an associate professor from 1990 to 1992. Since 1992 he is a full professor at the University of Rennes 1.

#9347

Mustafa Nur-Ul Islam

Mustafa Nur-Ul Islam

#140047

Overall Influence

1927 - 2018 (91 years)

Mustafa Nur-Ul Islam was a Bangladeshi academic. In 2011, he was appointed a National Professor of Bangladesh. He was awarded Ekushey Padak in 1981 and Independence Day Award in 2010 by the Government of Bangladesh. He was the founder director of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, the Director General of Bangla Academy and the Chairman of Bangladesh National Museum. In 2011, he was appointed a National Professor. He edited a literary magazine named Sundaram.

#9348

Hugo Christiaan Hamaker

#113638

Overall Influence

1905 - 1993 (88 years)

Hugo Christiaan Hamaker was a Dutch scientist who was responsible for the Hamaker theory which explains the van der Waals forces between objects larger than molecules. His 1937 paper was heavily cited.

#9349

Patricia Ann Straat

#105903

Overall Influence

1936 - 2020 (84 years)

Patricia Ann Straat was an American space scientist. She was part of the labeled release experiment of Viking program and part of the infrared interferometer spectrometer and radiometer on the Mariner 9 mission. In 2019 Straat wrote the book To Mars With Love, which documented the 1976 Viking Mission to Mars.

#9350

Ekrem Buğra Ekinci

#48320

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Ekrem Buğra Ekinci is a Turkish academic. He is a professor of history of Turkish Law and Islamic Law. He is currently a member of the Faculty of Law of Marmara University. Ekinci graduated from the Faculty of Law of Ankara University in 1987. He completed his lawyer apprenticeship in 1988 and gained his Master of Law degree in 1991. In 1996, he gained a degree of Doctor of Law from the Faculty of Law of Istanbul University. In 1999, Ekinci became an associate professor of history of law by his dissertation on Ottoman courts. In 2005, he was appointed as a full professor.

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