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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.

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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.

#9552

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.

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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:

#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.

#9558

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.

#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.

#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.

#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 .

#9562

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.

#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

#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.

#9565

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

#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.

#9567

David Rank

1907 - 1981 (74 years)

David Herr Rank was an American spectroscopist. Rank was born in Annville, Pennsylvania and attended Lebanon Valley College in his hometown. He pursued graduate study at Pennsylvania State University beginning in 1930 and joined the faculty in 1935. Rank was appointed the Evan Pugh Professor in Physics in 1961. He retired in 1972 and died at Centre County Community Hospital in State College, Pennsylvania, on January 17, 1981, aged 74.

#9568

Michael Moravcsik

1928 - 1989 (61 years)

Michael Julius Alexander Moravcsik was a Hungarian-born American theoretical high energy physicist whose areas of research included the two nucleon system, particle spin symmetries. He also made important contributions to the practice and study of science policy in developing nations, scientific methodology, and scientometrics , especially the study of citation and citation indices.

#9569

Jon Mathews

1932 - 1979 (47 years)

Jon Mathews was a physicist, yachtsman, scholar, and adventurer. After a 23-year career as a physics professor, he was lost at sea and presumed drowned during a circumnavigation attempt with his wife Jean in 1979.

#9570

Eugene Rabe

1911 - 1974 (63 years)

Eugene Karl Rabe was a German-American astronomer. He was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Hermann and Luise. From 1937–1948 he was a member of the staff at the Heidelberg, Germany branch of the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut. After World War II it was arranged for him to come to the United States. He then became professor of astronomy at the University of Cincinnati, while working at the Cincinnati Observatory. His work included orbital motions of the Trojan asteroids, and particularly the orbit of 433 Eros. In 1951, he used twenty years worth of observations of Eros to determine the gravitational perturbations of the planets.

#9571

C. E. Wynn-Williams

C. E. Wynn-Williams

1903 - 1979 (76 years)

Charles Eryl Wynn-Williams , was a Welsh physicist, noted for his research on electronic instrumentation for use in nuclear physics. His work on the scale-of-two counter contributed to the development of the modern computer.

#9572

Otto Hahn

1879 - 1968 (89 years)

Otto Hahn was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and father of nuclear fission. Hahn and Lise Meitner discovered radioactive isotopes of radium, thorium, protactinium and uranium. He also discovered the phenomena of atomic recoil and nuclear isomerism, and pioneered rubidium–strontium dating. In 1938, Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann discovered nuclear fission, for which Hahn received the 1944 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Nuclear fission was the basis for nuclear reactors and nuclear w...

#9573

Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin

1920 - 1958 (38 years)

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA , RNA , viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, Franklin's contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely unrecognized during her life, for which Franklin has been variously referred to as the "wronged heroine", the "dark lady of DNA", the "forgotten heroine", a "feminist icon", and the "Sylvia Plath of molecular biology".

#9574

Iosif Shklovsky

Iosif Shklovsky

1916 - 1985 (69 years)

Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky was a Soviet astronomer and astrophysicist. He is remembered for work in theoretical astrophysics and other topics, as well as for his 1962 book on extraterrestrial life, the revised and expanded version of which was co-authored by American astronomer Carl Sagan in 1966 as Intelligent Life in the Universe.

#9575

Hitoshi Kihara

1893 - 1986 (93 years)

was a Japanese geneticist known for his work on the genetics of wheat. Biography Hitoshi Kihara was born on 21 October 1893 in Tokyo, Japan. He graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture, Hokkaido Imperial University and served as a professor at the Faculty of Agriculture, Kyoto University from 1927 to 1956 and the National Institute of Genetics from 1955 to 1969, and also served at Kihara Institute for Biological Research from 1942 to 1984. He was elected a member of the Japan Academy, the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American P...

#9576

Francis Bitter

1902 - 1967 (65 years)

Francis Bitter was an American physicist. Bitter invented the Bitter plate used in resistive magnets . He also developed the water cooling method inherent to the design of Bitter magnets. Prior to this development, there was no way to cool electromagnets, limiting their maximum flux density.

#9577

Sergei Tyablikov

1921 - 1968 (47 years)

Sergei Vladimirovich Tyablikov was a Soviet theoretical physicist known for his significant contributions to statistical mechanics, solid-state physics, and for the development of the double-time Green function's formalism.

#9578

Charlotte Moore Sitterly

1898 - 1990 (92 years)

Charlotte Emma Moore Sitterly was an American astronomer. She is known for her extensive spectroscopic studies of the Sun and chemical elements. Her tables of data are known for their reliability and are still used regularly.

#9579

Alexander Nikuradse

1900 - 1981 (81 years)

Alexander Nikuradse , also known by his pseudonym Al. Sanders, was a Georgian-German physicist and Nazi political scientist. Born in Samtredia, Georgia, Russian Empire, he was sent by the Georgian government to complete his studies in Berlin. Nikuradse remained in Berlin and became a German citizen after the 1921 Red Army invasion of Georgia. Being in staunch opposition to Soviet rule in Georgia, he was actively involved in Georgian émigré activities, and had close Nazi connections. Since their common days as Soviet exiles in Munich in the early 1920s, he had been on friendly terms with Alfred Rosenberg whose views on the Caucasus were largely shaped under Nikuradse's influence.

#9580

Samuel Goudsmit

Samuel Goudsmit

1902 - 1978 (76 years)

Samuel Abraham Goudsmit was a Dutch-American physicist famous for jointly proposing the concept of electron spin with George Eugene Uhlenbeck in 1925. Life and career Goudsmit was born in The Hague, Netherlands, of Dutch Jewish descent. He was the son of Isaac Goudsmit, a manufacturer of water-closets, and Marianne Goudsmit-Gompers, who ran a millinery shop. In 1943, his parents were deported to a concentration camp by the German occupiers of the Netherlands and were murdered there. Goudsmit studied physics at the University of Leiden under Paul Ehrenfest, where he obtained his PhD in 1927. ...

#9581

Paul I. Richards

1923 - 1978 (55 years)

Paul Irving Richards was a physicist and applied mathematician. Richard's is best known to electrical engineers for the eponymous Richards' transformation. However, much of his career was concerned with radiation transport and fluid flow. Notably, he produced one of the earliest models of traffic waves on busy highways.

#9582

Frederick Albert Saunders

1875 - 1963 (88 years)

Frederick Albert Saunders was a Canadian-born American physicist and academic remembered for his work in sub-infrared spectroscopy and acoustics. Early life Frederick Albert Saunders was born on August 18, 1875, in London, Ontario, a son of William Saunders and Sarah Agnes Saunders, née Robinson, both of whom were born in England and emigrated to Canada at an early age. His father was renowned in the fields of orchard pests and fruit hybridization, was a founding member of the Entomological Society of Ontario and published books including Insects Injurious to Fruits and numerous scientific papers.

#9583

Allan C. G. Mitchell

1902 - 1963 (61 years)

Allan Charles Gray Mitchell was an American physicist. He was a professor and head of the Indiana University Bloomington department of physics. Early life and education Mitchell was born in 1902, the son of Milly Gray and astronomer Samuel Alfred Mitchell. He earned a master of arts in physics from University of Virginia in 1924. He completed his doctorate in physical chemistry at California Institute of Technology from 1924 to 1927. His advisor was Richard C. Tolman. He completed postdoctorate work in physics with James Franck and Arnold Sommerfeld.

#9584

Rolf Maximilian Sievert

Rolf Maximilian Sievert

1896 - 1966 (70 years)

Rolf Maximilian Sievert was a Swedish medical physicist whose major contribution was in the study of the biological effects of ionizing radiation. The sievert , the SI unit representing the stochastic health risk of ionizing radiation, is named for him. He has been called the "Father of Radiation Protection".

#9585

Frances Woodworth Wright

Frances Woodworth Wright

1897 - 1989 (92 years)

Frances Woodworth Wright was an American astronomer based at Harvard University. During World War II, she taught celestial navigation to military officers and engineers. Early life Frances Woodworth Wright was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the daughter of George William Wright and Nellie Woodworth Wright. As a child in 1907, Wright wrote a short essay titled "My Favorite Poem", for the popular national children's magazine St. Nicholas. She earned a bachelor's degree at Brown University in 1920. She was granted a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College in 1958, as a student of Fred Whipp...

#9586

Valentine Bargmann

1908 - 1989 (81 years)

Valentine "Valya" Bargmann was a German-American mathematician and theoretical physicist. Biography Born in Berlin, Germany, to a German Jewish family, Bargmann studied there from 1925 to 1933. After the National Socialist Machtergreifung, he moved to Switzerland to the University of Zürich where he received his Ph.D. under Gregor Wentzel.

#9587

Ernest Lawrence

Ernest Lawrence

1901 - 1958 (57 years)

Ernest Orlando Lawrence was an American nuclear physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. He is known for his work on uranium-isotope separation for the Manhattan Project, as well as for founding the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

#9588

J. A. Ratcliffe

1902 - 1987 (85 years)

John Ashworth Ratcliffe CB CBE FRS was an influential British radio physicist. Biography Ratcliffe was born in Bacup, the elder son of Harry Heys Ratcliffe, a partner in the stone quarrying firm of Henry Heys and Co., and Beatrice Alice. daughter of Richard Ashworth, founder of the firm of Mitchells, Ashworth, Stansfield and Co.

#9589

Suri Bhagavantam

1909 - 1989 (80 years)

Suri Bhagavantam was an Indian scientist and administrator. He was Vice chancellor of Osmania University and Director of Indian Institute of Science and Defence Research and Development Organisation.

#9590

Karl K. Darrow

1891 - 1982 (91 years)

Karl Kelchner Darrow was an American physicist and secretary of the American Physical Society from 1941 to 1967. Biography Darrow was born on November 26, 1891, in Chicago, Illinois. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago under Robert A. Millikan in 1917. Darrow spent his working career at Western Electric from 1917 and then Bell Laboratories from its founding in 1925 until his retirement in 1956. He wrote four books and over 200 technical articles, histories, and critical reviews for professional journals, many of them in the Bell System Technical Journal. Darrow was a nephew of ...

#9591

Robert Methven Petrie

1906 - 1966 (60 years)

Robert Methven Petrie was a Canadian astronomer. He was born in Scotland but emigrated to Canada at the age of five. He grew up in Victoria, British Columbia and studied physics and mathematics at the University of British Columbia. He began working summer jobs at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory and became fascinated with astronomy.

#9592

Vesto M. Slipher

Vesto M. Slipher

1875 - 1969 (94 years)

Vesto Melvin Slipher was an American astronomer who performed the first measurements of radial velocities for galaxies. He was the first to discover that distant galaxies are redshifted, thus providing the first empirical basis for the expansion of the universe. He was also the first to relate these redshifts to velocity.

#9593

Niels Erik Nørlund

Niels Erik Nørlund

1885 - 1981 (96 years)

Niels Erik Nørlund was a Danish mathematician. His book Vorlesungen über Differenzenrechnung was the first book on complex function solutions of difference equations. His doctoral students include Georg Rasch.

#9594

François Frenkiel

1910 - 1986 (76 years)

François Naftali Frenkiel was a physicist and one of the founders of the American Institute of Physics journal Physics of Fluids in 1958. He was the editor of Physics of Fluids from its establishment until 1981.

#9595

Gaja Alaga

1924 - 1988 (64 years)

Gaja Alaga was a Croatian theoretical physicist who specialised in nuclear physics. He was born in noble family of Bunjevac origin in the village of Lemeš in northwestern Bačka in Kingdom of SHS .

#9596

Bergen Davis

1869 - 1958 (89 years)

Bergen Davis was an American physicist and a professor at Columbia University. Davis was born March 31, 1869, near Whitehouse, New Jersey, son of John Davis, a farmer, and Katherine Dilts Davis. He graduated from Rutgers University in 1896 and was awarded a master's degree by Columbia University in 1900 and a Ph.D. in 1901, after which he studied in Europe for two years on a John Tyndall Fellowship under J. J. Thomson and others.

#9597

Walter Bartky

1901 - 1958 (57 years)

Walter Bartky was an American astronomer, applied mathematician, and educator, noteworthy for his role in the Manhattan Project. Education and career Walter Bartky received his B.S. from the University of Chicago in 1923 and his Ph.D. in 1926. At the University of Chicago he was an instructor in 1926, an assistant professor of astronomy from 1927 to 1932, and an associate professor of astronomy from 1932 to 1942. At the University of Chicago he became in 1943 a professor of applied mathematics and associate dean in the Division of Physical Sciences, served from 1945 to 1955 as the dean of the...

#9598

Franz N. D. Kurie

1907 - 1972 (65 years)

Franz Newell Devereux Kurie was an American physicist who, while working at Yale in 1933, showed that the neutron was neither a dumbbell-shaped combination of proton and electron, nor an onion-shaped combination of an electron embracing the proton. Consequently, and until the discovery of the quark structure of hadrons, the neutron was assumed to be an elementary particle.

#9599

Elephter Andronikashvili

1910 - 1989 (79 years)

Elephter Luarsabovich Andronikashvili was a Georgian physicist. He was a brother of Russian historian Irakly Andronikov. Biography Elephter Andronikashvili came from the noble Georgian Andronikashvili family. He graduated from Leningrad Polytechnical Institute in 1932. From 1934 to 1945 he lectured at Tbilisi State University. Starting in 1942 he worked for the Georgian Academy of Sciences Institute of Physics, and in 1951 he became the director of the Institute. In 1940-1941 and 1945-1948 he also did his Doktor Nauk degree at the Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow. From 1951 he also w...

#9600

Walter Phelps Hall

1884 - 1962 (78 years)

Walter Phelps Hall was the Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University. He was a very popular professor among Princeton undergraduates during the first half of the 20th century. Hall received his bachelor's degree from Yale University and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He was known for occasionally standing on his desk while giving lectures.

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