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,
#951
So-Young Pi
#30230
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
So-Young Pi is a South Korean physicist. So-Young Pi's father was the Korean writer Pi Chun-deuk. She attended Seoul National University, graduating with a degree in physics, before moving to the United States to pursue a doctorate in the subject at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Pi then completed postdoctoral research at Rockefeller University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During her postdoctoral research, Pi met and later married fellow physicist Roman Jackiw. The two had a son, violinist Stefan Jackiw.
Go to Profile#952
J. B. Gunn
#11659
Overall Influence
1928 - 2008 (80 years)
John Battiscombe "J. B." Gunn , known as Ian or Iain, was a British physicist, who spent most of his career in the United States. He discovered the Gunn effect, which led to the invention of the Gunn diode, the first inexpensive source of microwave power that did not require vacuum tubes. He was born John Battiscombe Gunn, but only used that name in legal documents.
Go to Profile#953
Cosma Shalizi
#7560
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Cosma Rohilla Shalizi is an associate professor in the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Life Cosma Rohilla Shalizi is of Indian Tamil, Afghan and Italian heritage and was born in Boston, where he lived for the first two years of his life. He grew up in Bethesda, Maryland.
Go to Profile#954
Kamaloddin Jenab
#20466
Overall Influence
1908 - 2006 (98 years)
Kamaloddin Jenab was an Iranian pioneer physicist. He is often credited for founding academic experimental science in Iranian universities. He was the first Iranian to obtain a PhD in nuclear physics, and is often credited for laying the foundations of that science in Iran.
Go to Profile#955
William Markowitz
#18671
Overall Influence
1907 - 1998 (91 years)
William Markowitz was an American astronomer, principally known for his work on the standardization of time. His mother was visiting Melč near Vítkov in Austrian Silesia when William was born. The Polish family emigrated to the U.S. in 1910 and settled in Chicago.
Go to Profile#956
Stanley Jaki
#8549
Overall Influence
1924 - 2009 (85 years)
Stanley L. Jaki was a Hungarian-born priest of the Benedictine order. From 1975 to his death, he was Distinguished University Professor at Seton Hall University, in South Orange, New Jersey. He held doctorates in theology and in physics and was a leading contributor to the philosophy of science and the history of science, particularly to their relationship to Christianity. In 2018, Jaki was named one of five Catholic scientists "that shaped our understanding of the world" by Aleteia; the other four are: Copernicus, Gregor Mendel, Giuseppe Mercalli and Georges Lemaitre.
Go to Profile#957
Mikhail Shaposhnikov
#38716
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Mikhail Yevgenyevich Shaposhnikov is a Soviet-born Swiss theoretical physicist and a professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne . He is active in the fields of cosmology and particle physics.
Go to Profile#958
Joseph H. Eberly
#24606
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Joseph Henry Eberly is a physicist who holds the positions of Andrew Carnegie Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Professor of Optics at the University of Rochester. Early life and education Joseph Henry Eberly was born in 1935. Eberly completed his undergraduate studies at the Pennsylvania State University in 1957 and obtained his Ph.D in physics from Stanford University in 1962.
Go to Profile#959
Rafael Sorkin
#15626
Overall Influence
Rafael Dolnick Sorkin is an American physicist. He is professor emeritus of physics at Syracuse University and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He is best known as initiator and main proponent of the causal sets approach to quantum gravity.
Go to Profile#960
Paul Corkum
#13228
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Paul Bruce Corkum is a Canadian physicist specializing in attosecond physics and laser science. He holds a joint University of Ottawa–NRC chair in attosecond photonics. He also holds academic positions at Texas A&M University and the University of New Mexico. Corkum is both a theorist and an experimentalist.
Go to Profile#961
Elena Aprile
#34502
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Elena Aprile is an Italian-American experimental particle physicist. She has been a professor of physics at Columbia University since 1986. She is the founder and spokesperson of the XENON Dark Matter Experiment. Aprile is well known for her work with noble liquid detectors and for her contributions to particle astrophysics in the search for dark matter.
Go to Profile#962
Bernard de Wit
#19965
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Bernard Quirinus Petrus Joseph de Wit is a Dutch theoretical physicist specializing in supergravity and particle physics. Bernard de Wit studied theoretical physics at Utrecht University, where he got his PhD under supervision of Nobel Prize laureate Martinus Veltman in 1973. After postdoc stints in Stony Brook, Utrecht and Leiden, he became a staff member at National Institute for Nuclear and High Energy Physics in 1978, where became head of the theory group in 1981. In 1984 he became professor of theoretical physics at Utrecht University where he has stayed for the rest of his career. During the years, de Wit spent several periods at CERN as a visiting scientist in the Theory Division.
Go to Profile#963
Oliver Penrose
#9573
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Oliver Penrose is a British theoretical physicist. He is the son of the scientist Lionel Penrose and brother of the mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, chess Grandmaster Jonathan Penrose, and geneticist Shirley Hodgson. He was associated with the Open University for seventeen years and was a Professor of Mathematics at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh from 1986 until his retirement in 1994. He has the title of Professor Emeritus at Heriot-Watt, and remains active in research there. His topics of interest include statistical mechanics, phase transitions in metals and the physical chemistry of surfactants.
Go to Profile#964
Arun Kumar Basak
#19100
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Arun Kumar Basak is a Bangladeshi physicist. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics, University of Rajshahi. Early life and education Basak was born in Radhanagor of Pabna town, Bengal Presidency, British India to parents Haripada Basak and Usha Rani Basak. Basak matriculated in 1957 securing First Division from R.M. Academy. He secured the second position in the merit list in the Intermediate Science Examination in 1959 from Govt. Edward College. He was placed in First Class with the first position in the B.Sc. examination from Rajshahi College in 1961. In M.Sc. Examination ...
Go to Profile#965
Barton Zwiebach
#10254
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Barton Zwiebach is a Peruvian string theorist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Work Zwiebach's undergraduate work was in Electrical Engineering at the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería in Peru, from which he graduated in 1977.
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Maurice Pryce
#18001
Overall Influence
1913 - 2003 (90 years)
Maurice Henry Lecorney Pryce was a British physicist. Life Pryce was born in Croydon to an Anglo-Welsh father and French mother, and in his teens attended the Royal Grammar School, Guildford. After a few months in Heidelberg to add German to the French that had been his first language at home, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#967
K. Eric Drexler
#595
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Kim Eric Drexler is an American engineer best known for introducing molecular nanotechnology , and his studies of its potential from the 1970s and 1980s. His 1991 doctoral thesis at Massachusetts Institute of Technology was revised and published as the book Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery Manufacturing and Computation , which received the Association of American Publishers award for Best Computer Science Book of 1992. He has been called the "godfather of nanotechnology".
Go to Profile#968
George Herbig
#18768
Overall Influence
1920 - 2013 (93 years)
George Howard Herbig was an American astronomer at the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy. He is perhaps best known for his contribution to the discovery of Herbig–Haro objects. Background Born in 1920 in Wheeling, West Virginia, Herbig received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1948 at the University of California, Berkeley; his dissertation is titled A Study of Variable Stars in Nebulosity.
Go to Profile#969
Henry Tye
#28774
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Sze-Hoi Henry Tye is a Chinese-American cosmologist and theoretical physicist most notable for proposing that relative brane motion could cause cosmic inflation as well as his work on superstring theory, brane cosmology and elementary particle physics. He had his primary and secondary school education in Hong Kong. Graduated from La Salle College. He received his B.S. from the California Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under Francis Low. He is the Horace White Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Cornell University and a fellow of the American Physical Society.
Go to Profile#970
David Helfand
#12916
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
David J. Helfand is a U.S. astronomer who served as president of Quest University Canada from 2008 to 2015. Prior to his presidency at Quest, he was a Visiting Tutor at Quest. He has also served as chair of the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University and co-director of the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory. He was also part of the university's Physics Department. His stated research interests include radio surveys, the origin and evolution of neutron stars and supernova remnants, and active galactic nuclei. Helfand has been instrumental in the creation of general education classes orie...
Go to Profile#971
Claudio Bunster
#11581
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Claudio Bunster Weitzman is a Chilean theoretical physicist. Until 2005 his name was Claudio Teitelboim Weitzman. Biography Claudio Bunster attended at Instituto Nacional General José Miguel Carrera, a prestigious public high school of Santiago. Bunster was educated at the University of Chile and Princeton University, where he earned his doctorate in physics in 1973. Bunster has conducted frontier research and taught at Princeton University and at the University of Texas at Austin. He has also been "Long Term Member" of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.
Go to Profile#972
Valentine Telegdi
#30955
Overall Influence
1922 - 2006 (84 years)
Valentine Louis Telegdi was a Hungarian-born American physicist. He was the Enrico Fermi Distinguished Service Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago before he moved to ETH Zürich. After retiring from ETH he divided his time between CERN and the California Institute of Technology. Telegdi chaired CERN's scientific policy committee from 1981 to 1983.
Go to Profile#973
Spencer R. Weart
#13879
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Spencer R. Weart is the former director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics from 1971 until his retirement in 2009. Life Originally trained as a physicist, he is now a historian of science. He earned his B.A. in Physics at Cornell University in 1963 and a Ph.D. in Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1968. He then did postdoctoral studies at the Hale Observatories and California Institute of Technology, publishing papers on solar physics; from 1971 to 1974 he studied history of science in the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#974
Kurt Gottfried
#23526
Overall Influence
1929 - 2022 (93 years)
Kurt Gottfried was an Austrian-born American physicist who was professor emeritus of physics at Cornell University. He was known for his work in the areas of quantum mechanics and particle physics and was also a co-founder with Henry Way Kendall of the Union of Concerned Scientists. He wrote extensively in the areas of physics and arms control.
Go to Profile#975
Peter Minkowski
#30794
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Peter Minkowski is a Swiss theoretical physicist. He is primarily known for his proposal, with Harald Fritzsch, of SO as the group of a grand unified theory and for his independent proposal, more-or-less simultaneously with a number of other theorists, of the seesaw mechanism for the generation of neutrino masses.
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Lars Hernquist
#38045
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Lars Hernquist is a theoretical astrophysicist and Mallinckrodt Professor of Astrophysics at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. He is best known for his research on dynamical processes in cosmology and galaxy formation/galaxy evolution.
Go to Profile#977
Carlo Becchi
#16052
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Carlo Maria Becchi is an Italian theoretical physicist. Becchi studied at the University of Genoa, where he received his university degree in physics in 1962. In 1976, he became full professor for theoretical physics at the University of Genoa. Twice , he was chairman of the physics faculty there. From 1997 to 2003 he was the chairman of the theory committee of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare .
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Konrad Rudnicki
#25520
Overall Influence
1926 - 2013 (87 years)
Konrad Rudnicki was a Polish astronomer, professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and a priest of the Old Catholic Mariavite Church. He was a member of the Free European Academy of Science, of Commission 28 of the International Astronomical Union, and of the Mathematical-Astronomical Section at the Goetheanum in Switzerland.
Go to Profile#979
James S. Langer
#23027
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
James S. Langer is an American professor of physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1934, Langer graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in 1951. He attended Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Birmingham, earning a B.A. in physics from the former in 1955 and a Ph.D. in mathematical physics from the latter in 1958. A Marshall Scholar at Birmingham, his thesis advisor was Rudolf Peierls. After receiving his doctorate, he began his career in the physics department at the Carnegie Institute of Technology , where he would stay until 1982.
Go to Profile#980
Tsvi Piran
#20691
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Tsvi Piran is an Israeli theoretical physicist and astrophysicist, best known for his work on Gamma-ray Bursts and on numerical relativity. The recipient of the 2019 EMET prize award in Physics and Space Research.
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Bahram Mashhoon
#22828
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Bahram Mashhoon is an Iranian-American physicist known for his research in General Relativity. Mashhoon is a professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, where he deals with some foundational aspects of gravitational physics. Within his field of research, Mashhoon has given important contributions to general relativity, with particular emphasis on the gravitomagnetic clock effect, but also as far as cosmology is concerned. He is also active in the field of non-local gravity.
Go to Profile#982
David Schramm
#19863
Overall Influence
1945 - 1997 (52 years)
David Norman Schramm was an American astrophysicist and educator, and one of the world's foremost experts on the Big Bang theory. Schramm was a pioneer in establishing particle astrophysics as a vibrant research field. He was particularly well known for the study of Big Bang nucleosynthesis and its use as a probe of dark matter and of neutrinos. He also made important contributions to the study of cosmic rays, supernova explosions, heavy-element nucleosynthesis, and nuclear astrophysics generally.
Go to Profile#983
John W. Miles
#17527
Overall Influence
1920 - 2008 (88 years)
John Wilder Miles was a research professor emeritus of applied mechanics and geophysics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. He was well regarded for his pioneering work in theoretical fluid mechanics, and made fundamental contributions to understanding how wind energy transfers to waves.
Go to Profile#984
Robert Hanbury Brown
#19862
Overall Influence
1916 - 2002 (86 years)
Robert Hanbury Brown, AC FRS was a British astronomer and physicist born in Aruvankadu, India. He made notable contributions to the development of radar and later conducted pioneering work in the field of radio astronomy.
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Horace W. Babcock
#27074
Overall Influence
1912 - 2003 (91 years)
Horace Welcome Babcock was an American astronomer. He was the son of Harold D. Babcock. Career Babcock invented and built a number of astronomical instruments, and in 1953 was the first to propose the idea of adaptive optics. He specialized in spectroscopy and the study of magnetic fields of stars. He proposed the Babcock Model, a theory for the magnetism of sunspots.
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Yuri Orlov
#6995
Overall Influence
1924 - 2020 (96 years)
Yuri Fyodorovich Orlov was a particle accelerator physicist, human rights activist, Soviet dissident, founder of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a founding member of the Soviet Amnesty International group, and professor of physics at Cornell University. He was declared a prisoner of conscience while serving nine years in prison and internal exile for monitoring the Helsinki human rights accords as a founder of the human rights movement in the Soviet Union.
Go to Profile#987
Pamela L. Gay
#27140
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Pamela L. Gay is an American astronomer, educator, podcaster, and writer, best known for her work in astronomical podcasting and citizen science astronomy projects. She is a senior education and communication specialist and senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute. Her research interests include analysis of astronomy data, as well as examination of the impact of citizen science initiatives. Gay has also appeared as herself in various television documentary series.
Go to Profile#988
Derek Abbott
#6427
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Derek Abbott is a British-Australian physicist and electronic engineer. He was born in South Kensington, London, UK. From 1969 to 1971, he was a boarder at Copthorne Preparatory School, Sussex. From 1971 to 1978, he attended the Holland Park School London.
Go to Profile#989
Stanley Wojcicki
#12443
Overall Influence
1937 - 2023 (86 years)
Stanley George Wojcicki was a Polish American professor emeritus and former chair of the physics department at Stanford University in California. Early life and education Wojcicki was born in Warsaw, Poland, the son of Janina Wanda Wójcicka , a bibliographer, and Franciszek Wójcicki, a lawyer. He and his brother fled from Poland to Sweden with his mother at the age of 12, when communists came to power. They eventually arrived in the United States. His father remained in Poland, and was soon imprisoned for five years for being a member of the government's main opposition party. He was never ab...
Go to Profile#990
Dorrit Hoffleit
#18507
Overall Influence
1907 - 2007 (100 years)
Ellen Dorrit Hoffleit was an American senior research astronomer at Yale University. She is best known for her work in variable stars, astrometry, spectroscopy, meteors, and the Bright Star Catalog. She is also known for her mentorship of many young women and generations of astronomers.
Go to Profile#991
Harry J. Lipkin
#17733
Overall Influence
1921 - 2015 (94 years)
Harry Jeannot Lipkin , also known as Zvi Lipkin, was an Israeli theoretical physicist specializing in nuclear physics and elementary particle physics. He is a recipient of the prestigious Wigner Medal.
Go to Profile#992
Chad Trujillo
#16946
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Chadwick A. Trujillo is an American astronomer, discoverer of minor planets and the co-discoverer of Eris, the most massive dwarf planet known in the Solar System. Trujillo works with computer software and has examined the orbits of the numerous trans-Neptunian objects , which is the outer area of the Solar System that he specialized in. In late August 2005, it was announced that Trujillo, along with Michael Brown and David Rabinowitz, had discovered Eris in 2003. As a result of the discovery of the satellite Dysnomia, Eris was the first TNO known to be more massive than Pluto.
Go to Profile#993
Xiao-Gang Wen
#18177
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Xiao-Gang Wen is a Chinese-American physicist. He is a Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. His expertise is in condensed matter theory in strongly correlated electronic systems. In Oct. 2016, he was awarded the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize.
Go to Profile#994
Eric Isaacs
#10489
Overall Influence
Eric Isaacs is an American physicist who is the 11th President of the Carnegie Institution for Science where he oversees the research and business functions across six research departments on the East and West coasts and observatories in Chile.
Go to Profile#995
Klaus Blaum
#33904
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Klaus Blaum is a German physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. Life and scientific work Blaum studied physics at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany. After his physics diploma in 1997 and several research visits at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington, US, he graduated in 2000 as Doctor rerum naturalium in physics. From 2000 to 2002 he was postdoctoral research associate of GSI Darmstadt and until 2004 Research Associate at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN, Geneva, Switzerland and Project Leader for "Mass spectrometry of exotic nuclides with ISOLTRAP" at ISOLDE.
Go to Profile#996
Edward George Bowen
#6863
Overall Influence
1911 - 1991 (80 years)
Edward George "Taffy" Bowen, CBE, FRS was a Welsh physicist who made a major contribution to the development of radar. He was also an early radio astronomer, playing a key role in the establishment of radioastronomy in Australia and the United States.
Go to Profile#997
David Lee
#13670
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
David Morris Lee is an American physicist who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics with Robert C. Richardson and Douglas Osheroff "for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3." Lee is professor emeritus of physics at Cornell University and distinguished professor of physics at Texas A&M University.
Go to Profile#998
Valentin Ceaușescu
#10913
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Valentin Ceaușescu is a Romanian physicist. He is the eldest and only surviving child of former communist President Nicolae Ceaușescu and Elena Ceaușescu. Biography Early life and education Valentin Ceaușescu was born in Bucharest on 17 February 1948. His father, future President Nicolae Ceaușescu, was an active member of the Romanian Workers' Party, earning himself various political and military positions; he was the country's Minister of Agriculture at the time Valentin was born. His mother was Elena Ceaușescu . He had two siblings: Zoia, born in 1949 and Nicu, born in 1951.
Go to Profile#999
Sverker Johansson
#12883
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Sverker Johansson is a Swedish physicist, linguist, textbook author and university professor. He created Lsjbot, a Wikipedia bot. Biography Sverker Johansson studied technical physics at the University of Lund from 1979 to 1982. He moved to the University of Gothenburg in 1982 where he graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1984.
Go to Profile#1000
Neil Gershenfeld
#8456
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Neil Adam Gershenfeld is an American professor at MIT and the director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, a sister lab to the MIT Media Lab. His research studies are predominantly focused in interdisciplinary studies involving physics and computer science, in such fields as quantum computing, nanotechnology, and personal fabrication. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Scientific American has named Gershenfeld one of their "Scientific American 50" for 2004 and has also named him Communications Research Leader of the Year. Gershenfeld is also known for releasing the Great Inventi...
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