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,
#9551
Jasur Rizayev
#175455
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Jasur Alimjanovich Rizayev is an Uzbek scientist, a doctor of medical sciences, professor. The rector of Samarkand State Medical Institute is one of the oldest institutions of higher education in Uzbekistan. He is the author of numerous textbooks and manuals for medical students.
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Rusty Roberts
#85858
Overall Influence
Rusty Roberts is the director of the Aerospace, Transportation and Advanced Systems Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, a position he has held since April 2009. Education Roberts received a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from West Point in 1978, a Master of Science in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1985, and a master of business administration in finance from Long Island University in 1987.
Go to Profile#9553
Gilles Cloutier
#143115
Overall Influence
1928 - 2014 (86 years)
Gilles George Cloutier, was a Canadian physicist and former director of the Alberta Research Council. Early life and education Born in Quebec City, he was educated at Université Laval and McGill University.
Go to Profile#9554
Brian G. W. Manning
#133291
Overall Influence
1926 - 2011 (85 years)
Brian George William Manning was an English astronomer who discovered 19 minor planets. He was born in 1926 in Birmingham. He constructed his first mirror from a piece of glass that a World War II bomb blew out of the roof of the factory where his father worked. He began as an engineering draughtsman but later became a metrologist at the University of Birmingham. In the late 1950s, he constructed an interference-controlled ruling machine in a home workshop, which was able to rule high-quality 3 by 2 inch gratings. In 1990, he received the H. E. Dall prize of the BAA.
Go to Profile#9555
Howard Y. Chang
#59568
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Howard Yuan-Hao Chang is a Taiwan-born American physician-scientist. He is the Virginia and D. K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Genomics and of Genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.
Go to Profile#9556
Allen Adler
#192424
Overall Influence
Edward Allen Adler is an American businessman and physicist, who as of 2017 was the vice president of Enterprise Technology Strategy for The Boeing Company. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, with the citation:
Go to Profile#9557
Wolfgang Ries
#192452
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Wolfgang Ries is an Austrian amateur astronomer, astrophotographer and discoverer of minor planets. Ries has his own private observatory at Altschwendt in the Austrian state of Upper Austria. The Minor Planet Center credits him with discovering numerous asteroids since 2004 and 2009.
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François Mignard
#129025
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
François Mignard is a French astronomer and the director of the CERGA Observatory of the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur in southern France. He is an expert in space astrometry and Solar System dynamics, and played major roles in the European Space Agency's Hipparcos and Gaia missions. Mignard is an active member in several commissions of the International Astronomical Union and chairman of its working group that amends the standards for the International Celestial Reference System.
Go to Profile#9559
Frank B. Zoltowski
#187226
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Frank B. Zoltowski is an Australian amateur astronomer and prolific discoverer of minor planets who lives in Woomera, South Australia. In 1998, he was awarded a "Gene Shoemaker NEO Grant" for improved near-Earth object searches.
Go to Profile#9560
Jacqueline Zadoc-Kahn Eisenmann
#159080
Overall Influence
1904 - 1998 (94 years)
Jacqueline Zadoc-Kahn Eisenmann was a French physicist. She was born in Paris to Suzanne Lang and Dr. Léon Zadoc-Kahn, former Chief Medical Officer of the Rothschild Hospital in Paris and president of the central committee of Keren haYesod France. Her grandfather was Zadoc Kahn, the chief rabbi of France.
Go to Profile#9561
William Kwong Yu Yeung
#88569
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
William Kwong Yu Yeung is a Hong Kong-born, Canadian amateur astronomer with telescopes based in the United States. He is a prolific discoverer of asteroids and also discovered the comet 172P/Yeung. He also discovered the object J002E3, which was first thought to be an asteroid, but is now known to be part of a Saturn V Rocket that propelled Apollo 12 into space. He worked first from "Rock Finder Observatory" in Calgary, Alberta, and now works from Arizona's Desert Beaver Observatory and Desert Eagle Observatory .
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Loren C. Ball
#99652
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Loren C. Ball is an American amateur astronomer, who has discovered more than 100 asteroids while working at his Emerald Lane Observatory , built on the roof of his house on Emerald Lane, Decatur, Alabama. As of 2021, he has credit for 108 numbered designations with the Minor Planet Center at Harvard for the period between 2000 and 2004. None of them were co-discoveries. He is under contract with NASA through the University of Alabama in Huntsville to do outreach to school groups and organisations. , he promotes asteroid education in schools and on social media.
Go to Profile#9563
Xavier Barcons
#192446
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Xavier Barcons Jáuregui is a Spanish physicist and astronomer appointed as ESO director general from 1 September 2017. On 29 May 2018, the asteroid 327943 Xavierbarcons was named in his honor. See also European Southern Observatory
Go to Profile#9564
John Broughton
#169235
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
John Broughton is an Australian amateur astronomer and artist. He is among the most prolific discoverers of minor planets worldwide, credited by the Minor Planet Center with more than a thousand discoveries made between 1997 and 2008. His observations are done at Reedy Creek Observatory , in Queensland, Australia.
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John V. McClusky
#131090
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
John V. McClusky is an American astronomer. He is a prolific discoverer of asteroids. List of discovered minor planets See also List of minor planet discoverers
Go to Profile#9566
Jaume Nomen
#173417
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Jaume Nomen Torres is a Spanish oral and maxillofacial surgeon, amateur astronomer, and discoverer of numerous minor planets. He is of Catalan origin and became publicly known for the discovery of the near-Earth asteroid by the OAM team during the La Sagra Sky Survey. The asteroid 56561 Jaimenomen is named after him.
Go to Profile#9567
Charles Greeley Abbot
1872 - 1973 (101 years)
Charles Greeley Abbot was an American astrophysicist and the fifth secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, serving from 1928 until 1944. Abbot went from being director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, to becoming Assistant Secretary, and then Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution over the course of his career. As an astrophysicist, he researched the solar constant, research that led him to invent the solar cooker, solar boiler, solar still, and other patented solar energy inventions.
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Kurt Symanzik
1923 - 1983 (60 years)
Kurt Symanzik was a German physicist working in quantum field theory. Life Symanzik was born in Lyck , East Prussia, and spent his childhood in Königsberg. He started studying physics in 1946 at Universität München but after a short time moved to Werner Heisenberg at Göttingen. There also the fruitful collaboration with Wolfhart Zimmermann and Harry Lehmann started. In 1954 he earned his PhD for his thesis The Schwinger functional in quantum field theory.
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Ernst Öpik
1893 - 1985 (92 years)
Ernst Julius Öpik was an Estonian astronomer and astrophysicist who spent the second half of his career at the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland. Education Öpik was born in Kunda, Kreis Wierland, Governorate of Estonia then a part of the Russian Empire. He went to the University of Moscow to specialize in the study of minor bodies, such as asteroids, comets, and meteors. He completed his doctorate at the University of Tartu.
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Cornelius Lanczos
1893 - 1974 (81 years)
Cornelius Lanczos was a Hungarian-Jewish, Hungarian-American and later Hungarian-Irish mathematician and physicist. According to György Marx he was one of The Martians. Biography He was born in Fehérvár , Fejér County, Kingdom of Hungary to Jewish parents, Károly Lőwy and Adél Hahn. Lanczos' Ph.D. thesis was on relativity theory. He sent his thesis copy to Albert Einstein, and Einstein wrote back, saying: "I studied your paper as far as my present overload allowed. I believe I may say this much: this does involve competent and original brainwork, on the basis of which a doctorate should be obtainable ...
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Julius Edgar Lilienfeld
1882 - 1963 (81 years)
Julius Edgar Lilienfeld was an Austro-Hungarian-American physicist and electrical engineer, who has been credited with the first patent on the field-effect transistor . He was never able to build a working practical semiconducting device based on this concept, additionally, because of his failure to publish articles in learned journals and since high-purity semiconductor materials were not available to him, his FET patent never achieved fame, causing confusion for later inventors.
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Gleb Wataghin
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
Gleb Vassielievich Wataghin was a Ukrainian-Italian theoretical and experimental physicist and a great scientific leader who gave a great impulse to the teaching and research on physics in two continents: in the University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; and in the University of Turin, Turin, Italy.
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Friedrich August Theodor Winnecke
1835 - 1897 (62 years)
Friedrich August Theodor Winnecke was a German astronomer. Winnecke worked at Pulkovo Observatory near Saint Petersburg from 1858 to 1865, but returned to Germany and served as professor of astronomy in Strasbourg from 1872 to 1881.
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Michael Maestlin
1550 - 1631 (81 years)
Michael Maestlin was a German astronomer and mathematician, known for being the mentor of Johannes Kepler. He was a student of Philipp Apian and was known as the teacher who most influenced Kepler. Maestlin was considered to be one of the most significant astronomers between the time of Copernicus and Kepler.
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Heinrich Friedrich Weber
1843 - 1912 (69 years)
Heinrich Friedrich Weber was a physicist born in the town of Magdala, near Weimar. Biography Around 1861 he entered the University of Jena, where Ernst Abbe became the first of two physicists who decisively influenced his career . Weber soon discovered, however, that he lacked sufficient mathematical talent, and so he abandoned mathematics entirely .
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Charles Wheatstone
1802 - 1875 (73 years)
Sir Charles Wheatstone FRS FRSE , was an English scientist and inventor of many scientific breakthroughs of the Victorian era, including the English concertina, the stereoscope , and the Playfair cipher . However, Wheatstone is best known for his contributions in the development of the Wheatstone bridge, originally invented by Samuel Hunter Christie, which is used to measure an unknown electrical resistance, and as a major figure in the development of telegraphy.
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Alexandru Proca
1897 - 1955 (58 years)
Alexandru Proca was a Romanian physicist who studied and worked in France. He developed the vector meson theory of nuclear forces and the relativistic quantum field equations that bear his name for the massive, vector spin-1 mesons.
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Emil Warburg
1846 - 1931 (85 years)
Emil Gabriel Warburg was a German physicist who during his career was professor of physics at the Universities of Strassburg, Freiburg and Berlin. He was president of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft 1899–1905. His name is notably associated with the Warburg element of electrochemistry.
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Tullio Levi-Civita
1873 - 1941 (68 years)
Tullio Levi-Civita, was an Italian mathematician, most famous for his work on absolute differential calculus and its applications to the theory of relativity, but who also made significant contributions in other areas. He was a pupil of Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro, the inventor of tensor calculus. His work included foundational papers in both pure and applied mathematics, celestial mechanics , analytic mechanics and hydrodynamics.
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Max Valier
1895 - 1930 (35 years)
Max Valier was an Austrian rocketry pioneer. He was a leading figure in the world's first large-scale rocket program, Opel-RAK, and helped found the German Verein für Raumschiffahrt that would bring together many of the minds that would later make spaceflight a reality in the 20th century.
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Egon Bretscher
1901 - 1973 (72 years)
Egon Bretscher was a Swiss-born British chemist and nuclear physicist and Head of the Nuclear Physics Division from 1948 to 1966 at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, also known as Harwell Laboratory, in Harwell, United Kingdom. He was one of the pioneers in nuclear fission research and one of the first to foresee that plutonium could be used as an energy source. His work on nuclear physics led to his involvement in the British atomic bomb research project Tube Alloys and his membership of the British Mission to the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, where he worked in Enrico Fermi's Advanced Development Division in the F-3 Super Experimentation group.
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Alexander Kompaneyets
1914 - 1974 (60 years)
Alexander Solomonovich Kompaneyets was born on January 4, 1914, in Ekaterinoslav, Russian Empire and died on August 19, 1974, in Palanga, Lithuania. He was a prominent physicist, author of a number of textbooks, and collaborator on the Soviet atomic bomb project who lived mainly in Moscow.
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Aimé Cotton
1869 - 1951 (82 years)
Aimé Auguste Cotton was a French physicist known for his studies of the interaction of light with chiral molecules. In the absorption bands of these molecules, he discovered large values of optical rotatory dispersion , or variation of optical rotation as a function of wavelength , as well as circular dichroism or differences of absorption between left and right circularly polarized light.
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Evangelista Torricelli
1608 - 1647 (39 years)
Evangelista Torricelli was an Italian physicist and mathematician, and a student of Galileo. He is best known for his invention of the barometer, but is also known for his advances in optics and work on the method of indivisibles. The torr is named after him.
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Wojciech Rubinowicz
1889 - 1974 (85 years)
Wojciech Sylwester Piotr Rubinowicz was a Polish theoretical physicist who made contributions in quantum mechanics, mathematical physics, and the theory of radiation. He is known for the Maggie-Rubinowicz representation of Gustav Kirchhoff’s diffraction formula.
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David Brewster
1781 - 1868 (87 years)
Sir David Brewster KH PRSE FRS FSA Scot FSSA MICE was a Scottish scientist, inventor, author, and academic administrator. In science he is principally remembered for his experimental work in physical optics, mostly concerned with the study of the polarization of light and including the discovery of Brewster's angle. He studied the birefringence of crystals under compression and discovered photoelasticity, thereby creating the field of optical mineralogy. For this work, William Whewell dubbed him the "father of modern experimental optics" and "the Johannes Kepler of optics."
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Josef Stefan
1835 - 1893 (58 years)
Josef Stefan was a Carinthian Slovene physicist, mathematician, and poet of the Austrian Empire. Life and work Stefan was born in the village of St. Peter on the outskirts of KlagenfurtAleksander1805-18721815-1863.
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Nilakantha Somayaji
1444 - 1544 (100 years)
Keļallur Nilakantha Somayaji , also referred to as Keļallur Comatiri, was a major mathematician and astronomer of the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics. One of his most influential works was the comprehensive astronomical treatise Tantrasamgraha completed in 1501. He had also composed an elaborate commentary on Aryabhatiya called the Aryabhatiya Bhasya. In this Bhasya, Nilakantha had discussed infinite series expansions of trigonometric functions and problems of algebra and spherical geometry. Grahapariksakrama is a manual on making observations in astronomy based on instruments of the time.
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Richard Becker
1887 - 1955 (68 years)
Richard Becker was a German theoretical physicist who made contributions in thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, superconductivity, and quantum electrodynamics. Early life Becker was born in Hamburg. His studies in zoology started in 1906 at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, where he earned his doctorate in 1909 under August Weismann. After hearing lectures by Arnold Sommerfeld at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Becker turned his professional interest to physics. He also studied physics under Max Born at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, and Max Planck and Albert Einstein at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
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Walter Rogowski
1881 - 1947 (66 years)
Walter Rogowski was a German physicist who bridged the gap between theoretical physics and applied technology in numerous areas of electronics. The Rogowski coil was named after him. Biography In 1900, Rogowski began his studies at the RWTH Aachen, under Arnold Sommerfeld, who occupied the Chair for Applied Mechanics. He acquired his Vordiplom in 1902 and went on to study at the Danzig Technische Hochschule , where he was also a scientific assistant. He completed his studies at Danzig in 1904, but stayed on until 1908, when he went to be a scientific assistant at the Physikalisch Technische...
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Francis Wheeler Loomis
1889 - 1976 (87 years)
Francis Wheeler Loomis , born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, was an American scientist most widely known for his contributions in the field of physics. Loomis received his undergraduate degree and, in 1917, his PhD from Harvard University. His thesis was on thermodynamic measurements of mercury.
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Martin Knudsen
1871 - 1949 (78 years)
Martin Hans Christian Knudsen was a Danish physicist who taught and conducted research at the Technical University of Denmark. He is primarily known for his study of molecular gas flow and the development of the Knudsen cell, which is a primary component of molecular beam epitaxy systems.
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Alexis Clairaut
1713 - 1765 (52 years)
Alexis Claude Clairaut was a French mathematician, astronomer, and geophysicist. He was a prominent Newtonian whose work helped to establish the validity of the principles and results that Sir Isaac Newton had outlined in the Principia of 1687. Clairaut was one of the key figures in the expedition to Lapland that helped to confirm Newton's theory for the figure of the Earth. In that context, Clairaut worked out a mathematical result now known as "Clairaut's theorem". He also tackled the gravitational three-body problem, being the first to obtain a satisfactory result for the apsidal precession of the Moon's orbit.
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Johannes Franz Hartmann
1865 - 1936 (71 years)
Johannes Franz Hartmann was a German physicist and astronomer. In 1904, while studying the spectroscopy of Delta Orionis he noticed that most of the spectrum had a shift, except the calcium lines, which he interpreted as indicating the presence of interstellar medium.
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Pyotr Lebedev
1866 - 1912 (46 years)
Pyotr Nikolaevich Lebedev was a Russian physicist. His name was also transliterated as Peter Lebedew and Peter Lebedev. Lebedev was the creator of first scientific school in Russia. Career Lebedev made his doctoral degree in Strasbourg under the supervision of August Kundt in 1887–1891. In 1891, he started working in Moscow State University in the group of Alexander Stoletov. There he made his famous experimental studies of electromagnetic waves.
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John Louis Emil Dreyer
1852 - 1926 (74 years)
John Louis Emil Dreyer was a Danish astronomer who spent most of his career working in Ireland. He spent the last decade of his life in Oxford, England. Life Dreyer was born in Copenhagen. His father, Lieutenant General John Christopher Dreyer, was the Danish Minister for War and the Navy. When he was 14 he became interested in astronomy and regularly visited Hans Schjellerup at the Copenhagen observatory. He was educated in Copenhagen, taking an MA in 1872. While the same university later awarded him a PhD, in 1874. But in 1874, at the age of 22, he went to Parsonstown, Ireland. There he wo...
Go to Profile#9597
Henry Draper
1837 - 1882 (45 years)
Henry Draper was an American doctor and amateur astronomer. He is best known today as a pioneer of astrophotography. Life and work Henry Draper's father, John William Draper, was an accomplished doctor, chemist, botanist, and professor at New York University; he was also the first to photograph the moon through a telescope . Draper's mother was Antonia Caetana de Paiva Pereira Gardner, daughter of the personal physician to the Emperor of Brazil. His niece, Antonia Maury was also an astronomer.
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Emil Lenz
1804 - 1865 (61 years)
Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lenz , usually cited as Emil Lenz or Heinrich Lenz in some countries, was a Russian physicist of Baltic German descent who is most noted for formulating Lenz's law in electrodynamics in 1834.
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Nasir al-Din al-Tusi
1201 - 1274 (73 years)
Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Tusi , also known as Nasir al-Din al-Tusi or simply as Tusi, was a Persian polymath, architect, philosopher, physician, scientist, and theologian. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was a well published author, writing on subjects of math, engineering, prose, and mysticism. Additionally, al-Tusi made several scientific advancements. In astronomy, al-Tusi created very accurate tables of planetary motion, an updated planetary model, and critiques of Ptolemaic astronomy. He also made strides in logic, mathematics but especially trigonometry, biology, and chemistry. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi left behind a great legacy as well.
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Herbert Dingle
1890 - 1978 (88 years)
Herbert Dingle was an English physicist and philosopher of science, who served as president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1951 to 1953. He is best known for his opposition to Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity and the protracted controversy that this provoked.
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