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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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Physics,

#9451

Madeline Held

#114578

Overall Influence

2000 - 2020 (20 years)

Madeline Held MBE was a British academic in the Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences, London South Bank University. She had been the Director of the LLU+ . The unit ran the largest professional development centre in the UK, undertaking capacity building for teacher training in further, higher and community education.

#9452

Gerald H. Wilson

#67994

Overall Influence

1945 - 2005 (60 years)

Gerald Henry Wilson was an American Old Testament scholar. He served as professor of Old Testament and Biblical Hebrew at Azusa Pacific University. Wilson studied at Baylor University, Fuller Theological Seminary, and Yale University. At Yale, he studied under Brevard S. Childs, and was influenced by him to adopt a canonical approach to the biblical text. Wilson taught at the University of Georgia, George Fox University, the University of Portland, and Western Evangelical Seminary before being appointed professor of Old Testament and Biblical Hebrew at Azusa Pacific University.

#9453

Alberto Caballero

#191039

Overall Influence

Alberto Caballero is a Spanish astronomer and science communicator. He is known for having identified a Sun-like star in the sky region where the Wow! signal came from as one of the possible sources of the radio signal. Caballero is also known for founding and coordinating the Habitable Exoplanet Hunting Project, an international effort consisting of more than 30 observatories searching for nearby potentially habitable exoplanets. Data is collected 24/7 from specific stars by observatories located both in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, and an initial list of exoplanet candidates was ma...

#9454

Elizabeth Morris

#77621

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Elizabeth Mary Morris, , also known as Liz Morris, is a glaciologist and Senior Associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Reading since 1995. She was head of the ice and climate division at the British Antarctic Survey, from 1986 to 1999, and president of the International Glaciological Society, from 2002 to 2005.

#9455

Mumtaz Ali Kazi

Mumtaz Ali Kazi

#65568

Overall Influence

1928 - 1999 (71 years)

Mumtaz Ali Kazi , popularly known as M.A. Kazi, was one of Pakistan's leading scientists and educators. He was President of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences from 1978 to 1988 and President of the Chemical Society of Pakistan from 1977 to 1990.

#9456

Li Bin

#191682

Overall Influence

Li Bin is a senior associate working jointly in the Nuclear Policy Program and Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a physicist with an interest in nuclear disarmament, and his research focuses on China’s nuclear and arms control policy and U.S.-China nuclear relations. Previously, Li Bin was a professor of international relations at Tsinghua University, where he was the founding director of the Arms Control Program at the Institute of International Studies. He has also directed the arms control division at the Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics.

#9457

Elchin Babayev

#112062

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Elchin Safarali oglu Babayev is an Azerbaijani scientist, Doctor of Philosophy in physical and mathematical Sciences, associate professor. Rector of Baku State University Biography Babayev was born on April 4, 1965, in the city of Nakhichivan.

#9458

Kurt H. Becker

#191276

Overall Influence

Kurt H. Becker is a physicist and entrepreneur. His research focuses on experimental atomic, chemical, and plasma physics. He is vice dean of research, innovation, and entrepreneurship at New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering. Becker holds seven patents regarding the generation and maintenance of atmospheric-pressure plasmas and their application.

#9459

Arthur Naparstek

Arthur Naparstek

#70224

Overall Influence

1938 - 2004 (66 years)

Dr. Arthur J. Naparstek was a professor of social work and Dean of the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He was an expert on urban redevelopment and neighborhood revitalization whose community-building concepts served as the basis for local and national government programs in both the United States and Israel.

#9460

Wilhelm Heizmann

#56420

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Wilhelm Heizmann is a German philologist who is Professor and Chair of the Institute for Nordic Philology at the University of Munich. Heizmann specializes in Germanic studies, and is a co-editor of the Germanische Altertumskunde Online.

#9461

Richard M. Ramin

#111699

Overall Influence

1929 - 1995 (66 years)

Richard Max Ramin was the Vice President for Public Affairs at Cornell University for twenty-four years and a member of the Cornell staff for forty-one years. Early life Dick Ramin was the son of Richard and Florence Ramin. Dick started for his secondary school football team, the Williamsport High School Millionaires. In 1946, he was named lineman for the Pennsylvania All-State Team. While studying at Cornell, Ramin was a member of Sphinx Head and Delta Kappa Epsilon. After graduating from Cornell in 1951, Dick served in the U.S. Army for two years as a First Lieutenant. He was then employed ...

#9462

Jeff Bary

#191737

Overall Influence

#9463

Russell Zguta

#115961

Overall Influence

Russell Zguta is a US historian, educator, and professor emeritus at the University of Missouri. Zguta is a native of Ukraine. Born as Jaroslav Zguta, he was given the name "Russell" upon his enrollment in first grade; it was deemed more American.

#9464

Masayoshi Yamaguchi

#28191

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Masayoshi Yamaguchi is a Japanese scientist and researcher in the biomedical fields related to biochemistry, endocrinology, metabolism, nutrition, pharmacology and toxicology. Career He graduated with a bachelor's degree from Shizuoka College of Pharmacy in 1971, and obtained his Ph.D in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1976 in Japan. He was engaged as a research associate and assistant professor in Shizuoka College from 1973 to 1987, as assistant professor in the University of Shizuoka School of Pharmaceutical Sciences from 1987 to 1991, as associate professor in the University of Shizuoka's Grad...

#9465

Bob Sang

#146906

Overall Influence

1948 - 2009 (61 years)

Bob Sang was appointed by London South Bank University as the UK's first professor of Patient and Public Involvement in 2006. He had also been a visiting fellow at CENTRIM. He was educated at the University of East Anglia but failed his chemistry degree there. He later returned to studying and completed a public administration degree at the University of Sussex.

#9466

Hampanā

#105357

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Hampa Nagarajaiah , popularly known by his pen name Hampanā, is an Indian scholar in Kannada language and Jainism. He was born at Hampasandra Village located in Gowribidanur taluk, Chikkaballapura District in the Indian state of Karnataka. Hampanā is married to Kamala Hampana who also a veteran littérateur.

#9467

Martin Sweeting

Martin Sweeting

#188351

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Sir Martin Nicholas Sweeting is the founder and executive chairman of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd . SSTL is a corporate spin-off from the University of Surrey, where Sweeting is a Distinguished Professor who founded and chairs the Surrey Space Centre.

#9468

Elie Track

#187341

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Elie Track is a physicist, applied scientist, businessman, and entrepreneur. He currently resides in Stamford, Connecticut. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2014 for his leadership and work in superconducting electronics and its applications.

#9469

John Walter Guerrier Lund

#83210

Overall Influence

1912 - 2015 (103 years)

John Walter Guerrier Lund CBE FRS was an English phycologist. Early life and education Lund was born in 1912 and was educated at Sedbergh School. He studied for his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees at the University of Manchester, before moving to the University of London in 1935. He was awarded his PhD in 1939 and his DSc in 1951. In 1949 he married Hilda Mabel Canter and they had two children together.

#9470

Wen Li

#191485

Overall Influence

Wen Li is a space physicist at Boston University. Her research interests include space plasma waves, Earth's radiation belt physics, solar-wind magnetosphere coupling, energetic particle precipitation, and Jovian magnetosphere and aurora: She is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

#9471

Benjamin A. Borenstein

#149066

Overall Influence

1928 - 2006 (78 years)

Benjamin Borenstein was an American food scientist who was involved in vitamin fortification. Employed with Hoffman-La Roche until his 1987 retirement, Borenstein played a key role in fortifying vitamins. He also served as an adjunct professor, and late honorary professor, at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

#9472

Anna Barnacka

#191757

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Anna Barnacka is a Polish astrophysicist and entrepreneur. She is known for her work on gravitational lensing, and astroparticle physics. Education She received her PhDs in astronomy from Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland, and physics from Paris-Sud University conducting her research at French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission in Paris, France. After earning her doctorates, Barnacka became a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. She received a NASA Einstein Fellowship in 2015, dur...

#9473

Qamar Rahman

#147446

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Qamar Rahman is an Indian scientist who has worked extensively in the last 40 years to understand the physiological effects of nanoparticles. She is known internationally for her work on asbestosis, the effects of slate dust and other household and environmental particulate pollution and means for improving occupational health.

#9474

Michaela Musilová

#131110

Overall Influence

1988 - Present (38 years)

Michaela Musilová is a Slovak astrobiologist. She is currently the HI-SEAS director. She has commanded over 30 simulated missions to the Moon and Mars. Biography Musilová was born on 11 October 1988 in Bratislava. Her father is a diplomat and her mother is an archeologist.

#9475

Joseph Dwyer

#176555

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Joseph R. Dwyer is an American physicist known for his lightning research. He is a professor of physics at the University of New Hampshire. Dwyer received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago in 1994 and worked on cosmic-ray physics and gamma-ray astronomy as a research scientist at Columbia University and the University of Maryland before joining the faculty at the Florida Institute of Technology in 2000. After moving to Melbourne, Florida, Dwyer became interested in lightning physics and his research now focuses on high-energy radiation production from thunderstorms and lightning.

#9476

Manuel Mateus Ventura

#69229

Overall Influence

1921 - 2018 (97 years)

Manuel Mateus Ventura was a Brazilian biophysicist, biochemist, and educator. Ventura graduated with a degree in agronomy from the Federal University of Ceará in 1943, and then took a position as assistant professor of organic chemistry in the same department. At that time, scientific research in Brazilian universities was not well supported, especially in the northeastern part of the country, and there was little scientific infrastructure. Ventura's research career began with a series of theoretical calculations of physicochemical properties of organic compounds based on data in the published literature.

#9477

Jack Dodd

#169053

Overall Influence

1922 - 2005 (83 years)

John Newton Dodd was a New Zealand physicist who worked in the field of atomic spectroscopy. Early life and family Born in Hastings in 1922, Dodd was educated at Otago Boys' High School. In 1950, he married Jean Patricia Oldfield with whom he had four children.

#9478

Mark Royden Winchell

#47912

Overall Influence

1948 - 2008 (60 years)

Mark Royden Winchell was a biographer, essayist, historian and literary critic. At the time of his death he was Professor of Literature and European Civilization at Clemson University in South Carolina, where he had taught since 1985.

#9479

Anirudh Singh

#102956

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Dr Anirudh Singh is a Fiji Indian academic who has undertaken research on muon implantation in solids but is best known for the stand he has taken on national issues, in particular those relating to social inequities in Fiji, resulting from the 1987 military take-over of the Fijian Government.

#9480

Françoise Soussaline

#191817

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Françoise Soussaline is a French biophysicist and businesswoman, a specialist in cell imaging. She studied physics at the Pierre and Marie Curie University and completed a PhD in molecular spectroscopy in 1973. She began her career as a researcher at Inserm, where she was involved in the development of the first digital scanner in nuclear medicine. She then joined the Frédéric-Joliot hospital department of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission where she developed Positron emission tomography locally as part of a second thesis in biophysics completed in 1984 at the University of Paris-Sud under the direction of Nobel Prize winner Georges Charpak.

#9481

Shih-Ying Lee

#188206

Overall Influence

1922 - 2018 (96 years)

Shih-Ying Lee or S. Y. Lee was an American aerodynamicist, businessman, inventor, and mechanical engineer who was noted for his research and innovation in hydrodynamics-related technologies. He was also a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

#9482

June Lindsey

#102424

Overall Influence

1922 - 2021 (99 years)

June Monica Lindsey was a British-Canadian physical chemist. Whilst working on X-ray crystallography at the University of Cambridge, Lindsey was influential in the elucidation of the structure of DNA. She solved the structures of the purines, adenine and guanine. Her depiction of intramolecular hydrogen bonds in adenine crystals was central to Watson and Crick's elucidation of the double helical structure of DNA.

#9483

Burhanuddin Khan Jahangir

#71530

Overall Influence

1936 - 2020 (84 years)

Burhanuddin Khan Jahangir was a Bangladeshi academic and writer. He was awarded the Bangla Academy Literary Award in 1969 and the Ekushey Padak in 2009. Education Jahangir completed his matriculation exam in 1950 from Muslim Government High School, Dhaka and intermediate exam in 1952 from Dhaka College. He obtained his bachelors and masters in political science from the University of Dhaka in 1955 and 1956 respectively. He got his Ph.D. from Durham University in 1974.

#9484

Armen Sarkissian

#187246

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Armen Vardani Sarkissian is an Armenian politician, physicist, investor, businessman, and computer scientist who served as the 4th president of Armenia from 2018 to 2022. He also served as Prime Minister of Armenia from 1996 to 1997. He was the first president of post-Soviet Armenia born in former Armenian SSR.

#9485

Denis Henry Desty

#120388

Overall Influence

1923 - 1994 (71 years)

Denis Henry Desty OBE FRS was a British scientist and inventor, known primarily for his work in the fields of chromatography and combustion science. Desty twice won the Tswett Medal for Chromatography, in 1974 and 1978, and the Royal Society of Chemistry Award for Combustion Chemistry in 1982.

#9486

Mark Yeager

#192009

Overall Influence

Mark Yeager is an American biologist, focusing in cardiac gap junction membrane channels, integrin water channels, rotavirus, reovirus and retrovirus. Yeager is a professor at University of Virginia and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#9487

Gerrit Jan van Ingen Schenau

#157795

Overall Influence

1944 - 1998 (54 years)

Gerrit Jan van Ingen Schenau was a Dutch biomechanist. He made large contributions to the field of biomechanics, particularly muscle coordination, energetics of movement, and the functions of biarticular muscles. He focused on speed skating in particular, and played a significant part in the invention of the clap skate.

#9488

Orna Berry

#185495

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Orna Berry , is an Israeli computer scientist, high-tech entrepreneur, and senior executive in the Israeli science and technology industries. In 1996, Berry became the first woman to serve as chief scientist and head of the industrial R&D operation of the Israeli Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labour. She was awarded the "Yekirat Hanegev" award from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2012.

#9489

Ottavio Forte

#192047

Overall Influence

Ottavio Forte, is a physics professor at Boston College. From the City College of New York, he got a B.S. in electrical engineering; from Northeastern, he got an M.S. in electrical engineering, and in Boston University he got his MBA. He has worked for over 22 years at MIT's laboratories, including Draper Laboratory and Lincoln Laboratory. He is most well known for his guidance and landing systems for the Apollo, Poseidon and Trident missions.

#9490

Roman Katsman

#77765

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Roman Katsman is an Israeli professor and researcher of Hebrew and Russian literature. He is Full Professor of the Department of Literature of the Jewish People in Bar-Ilan University. Biography Katsman was born in Zhitomir on November 26, 1969. He has lived in Israel since 1990. He earned his Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University in 1999. The title of his dissertation was "Mythopoesis: Theory, Method and Application in the Selected Works by Dostoevsky and Agnon." Since 2000, Katsman has taught in the Department of Literature of the Jewish People in Bar-Ilan University. From 2014 to 2017, he served as the Head of the Department.

#9491

Angela von Nowakonski

#112422

Overall Influence

1953 - 2020 (67 years)

Angela von Nowakonski was a Brazilian physician, researcher and professor at the Institute of Clinical Pathology at the University of Campinas . Biography Nowakonski graduated in medicine at Unicamp, specializing in clinical pathology with residency at Hospital das Clínicas, University of São Paulo and residency in clinical microbiology at the University of Toronto, Canada. Back to Unicamp, she earned the title of Master in Clinical Pathology. From 1987 onwards, she served as head of the Clinical Microbiology Sector, Clinical Pathology Division of the Clinics Hospital at Unicamp, being resp...

#9492

Peter Cox

#95366

Overall Influence

Peter M. Cox is professor of Climate System Dynamics within the Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Exeter. He is also the director of the Global Systems Institute. Until 2006 he was the Science Director - Climate Change at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and before that he worked at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research .

#9493

Teresa Morgan

#26925

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Teresa Morgan is an English academic and cleric, best known as the author of Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds and Roman Faith and Christian Faith. Early life and education Teresa Morgan was born on May 30, 1968. She discovered Homer's Iliad and Plato's Republic when she was only nine or ten years of age. Jumping at the chance to learn Latin and Greek at school, she was soon reading the works of Horace, Cicero, Euripides and Plato in their original form. Morgan attended Oxford High School before studying the violin at the Hochschule für Musik, Cologne. She studied as an un...

#9494

Charles Stuart-Harris

#170505

Overall Influence

1909 - 1996 (87 years)

Sir Charles Herbert Stuart-Harris was an English virologist and academic who was the first full-time professor of medicine at University of Sheffield. Early life and education Stuart-Harris was born in 1909 in Kings Norton, the son of a Birmingham general practitioner Charles Herbert Harris and his wife, Helen Parsons.

#9495

Steven W. Yates

#192081

Overall Influence

Steven W. Yates is an American nuclear chemist who is currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of Kentucky and an elected fellow of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry , American Chemical Society, and American Physical Society.

#9496

Katia Bertoldi

#135678

Overall Influence

Katia Bertoldi is the William and Ami Kuan Danoff Professor of Applied Mechanics at Harvard University. Her research has been highlighted by many news sources including the BBC, and as of June 2020 had been cited over 11,000 times.

#9497

Mingming Wu

#169770

Overall Influence

Mingming Wu is a professor at Cornell University within the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, and associate editor of Physical Biology. Academic career She earned a bachelor's of science degree from Nanjing University in 1984, and completed a doctorate from Ohio State University in 1992. Wu split her post doctoral research between École Polytechnique and the University of California, Santa Barbara, before beginning her teaching career at Occidental College. She joined the Cornell University faculty in 2003. Wu was named a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2016.

#9498

Jian-Xin Zhu

#192078

Overall Influence

Jian-Xin Zhu is an American physicist currently at Los Alamos National Laboratory and an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society.

#9499

Marcus Cicerone

#192080

Overall Influence

Marcus T. Cicerone is an American physicist, focusing in noninvasive spectroscopic imaging, currently at Georgia Tech and an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society.

#9500

Kun Yang

#192079

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Kun Yang , is a Chinese physicist. In 1994 he got his Ph.D. in the condensed matter theory from the Indiana University. Three years later he worked as a postdoc at Princeton University and two years later became Sherman Fairchild's senior research fellow at California Institute of Technology. He joined the faculty of Florida State University in 1999 and since then dedicated his life to study unconventional superconductors and quantum magnetism. Currently he is a professor at the Florida State University and is an author of over 80 peer-reviewed articles.

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