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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Physics,
#9701
Jean Lecomte
1898 - 1979 (81 years)
Jean Lecomte was a French physicist, researcher and professor of physics at CNRS. Career In 1919, Lecomte started working in the laboratory of physical research at the Sorbonne in Paris. Lecomte presented his Doctoral Thesis in 1924 on localized vibrations in molecules. He was one of the founding members of the European Congress on Molecular Spectroscopy , together with French Nobel prize winning physicist Alfred Kastler and German physicist Reinhard Mecke . Lecomte was elected as a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1959 and as president of the French Association for the Advancement of Science in 1968.
Go to Profile#9702
Robert Jack
1877 - 1957 (80 years)
Robert Jack was a Scottish-born physicist, professor and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, University of Otago, and pioneer of radio broadcasting, New Zealand. Early life and education Robert Jack was born in the village of Quarter, near Hamilton, Lanarkshire, Scotland, on 4 November 1877 and was educated at Hamilton Academy and the University of Glasgow, graduating MA with Honours in mathematics and natural philosophy. Thereafter he attended the University of Paris and the University of Göttingen for postgraduate study and as a result of this research, including that into the effect o...
Go to Profile#9703
Walter Drowley Filmer
1865 - 1944 (79 years)
Walter Drowley Filmer was an early pioneer of X-rays in Australia, a wireless engineer, for a time ran the British Royal Train, and a world class entomologist that discovered several new species in his homeland. Filmer was a naturalist and established a private collection at his residence that thousands of people visited.
Go to Profile#9704
Christian Olufsen
1802 - 1855 (53 years)
Christian Friis Rottbøll Olufsen was a Danish astronomer and professor of astronomy at the University of Copenhagen. Olufsen was born in Copenhagen where his father Oluf Christian Olufsen was an economist and teacher . He grew up in Classens Have where his father taught at the agricultural institute. After some home schooling he joined Borgerdydskolen in 1812 where he excelled so much that the school thought he should already be sent to university, a proposal prevented by his father. He then went to university where he studied under C.F. Degenand and Erasmus Georg Fog Thune. He received the gold medal in 1824 for his study on eclipse calculations and became an assistant at the observatory.
Go to Profile#9705
Eustachio Zanotti
1709 - 1782 (73 years)
Eustachio Zanotti was an Italian astronomer and engineer. He worked at the astronomical observatory in Bologna. Biography Zanotti was born in Bologna where his father Giampietro was a poet, painter and art historian. His mother was Constanza M. Teresa Gambari. An uncle was the philosopher Francesco Maria Zanotti. Zanotti studied at Jesuit schools and became interest in science and mathematics, trained under Eustachio Manfredi at the Bologna observatory where he began to work from 1729. He received a degree from the University of Bologna in 1730. In 1738 he examined Newton's theory of light. He became a director of the observatory in 1739 following Manfredi's death.
Go to Profile#9706
Mordecai Comtino
1500 - 1487 (-13 years)
Mordecai ben Eliezer Comtino was a Talmudist and scientist. The earliest date attached to any of his writings is 1425. The form of his family name is doubtful, and has been transcribed by modern scholars as "Comtino." Mordecai's biographer, Jonah Hayyim Gurland, uses the form "Kumatyano," a name which he found still in use in Turkey . He was the pupil of Enoch Saporta, a distinguished Talmudist, known for his cultivation of the sciences and his tolerance toward the Karaites.
Go to Profile#9707
Kurd von Mosengeil
1884 - 1906 (22 years)
Kurd Friedrich Rudolf von Mosengeil, also Curd Friedrich Rudolf von Mosengeil , was a German physicist. Kurd von Mosengeil was a student of Max Planck. In 1905, the latter became the most prominent early advocate of the theory of special relativity of Albert Einstein. In the subsequent years, Planck published several works, in which he explained further consequences of Einstein's theory. He conveyed his enthusiasm to his assistant Max von Laue and his student Kurd of Mosengeil, who became the first physicists to habilitate and graduate, respectively, in relativity-related subjects.
Go to Profile#9708
Johan Aschehoug Kiær
1869 - 1931 (62 years)
Johan Aschehoug Kiær was a Norwegian paleontologist and geologist. Biography Johan Kiær was born in Drammen, Norway. He was the son of parish priest Hagbarth Kiær and grandson of shipowner and Member of Parliament Hans Andersen Kiær . He was a nephew of Elias C. Kiær operator of the family company And. H. Kiær & Co. which had been founded by his great-grandfather, Anders Hansen Kiær .
Go to Profile#9709
Witold Wilkosz
1891 - 1941 (50 years)
Witold Wilkosz was a Polish mathematician, physicist, philosopher and popularizer of science. Life and career Witold Wilkosz was born on 14 August 1891 in Kraków to parents Jan, a Polish teacher, and Józefa née Vopalko. He showed a considerable talent for mathematics and languages since early childhood. He passed his final school-leaving Matura exam at the John III Sobieski High School . He was a friend of fellow mathematician Stefan Banach. Before graduating from high school, he had written an article on semitology for which he was offered a scholarship and membership from Morgenländische Gesselchaft Scienctific Society, which enabled him to study at the University of Beirut.
Go to Profile#9710
Henrik Petrini
1863 - 1957 (94 years)
Henrik Petrini was a Swedish mathematician. His mathematical contributions are mainly connected with the theory of partial differential equations, in particular potential theory. He was born in Falun and received his PhD in 1890 from Uppsala University in mechanics, where he subsequently held a position as professor. In 1901 he moved to Växjö, where he worked as a lektor for mathematics and physics at the gymnasium. In 1914 he finally moved to Stockholm. He is best known for his counterexample of a continuous function for which the Newton potential is not twice differentiable. He was also int...
Go to Profile#9711
Paul Santorini
1893 - 1986 (93 years)
Paul Santorini was a Greek civil engineer, experimental and theoretical physicist, mathematician, electrical engineer, astronomer, author, and professor. He published over 350 articles and conducted research in the fields of solar energy, wind energy, electromagnetic microwaves as weapons of war, high-frequency electromagnetic waves, high-frequency currents, structural engineering, and hydraulics. Later in life, he wrote papers in the field of the birth of the universe and proposed the multiple successive small bangs theory of the universe. Some of his papers also dealt with mankind and the universe.
Go to Profile#9712
Kazimierz Kordylewski
1903 - 1981 (78 years)
Kazimierz Kordylewski was a Polish astronomer. In 1956, he claimed the discovery of the Kordylewski clouds, large transient concentrations of dust at the Trojan points of the Earth–Moon system, which were reported to have been confirmed to exist in October 2018.
Go to Profile#9713
William Stephen Finsen
1905 - 1979 (74 years)
William Stephen Finsen FRAS was a South African astronomer. He discovered a number of double stars and took many photographs of Mars. He developed the Finsen eyepiece interferometer to measure very close double stars. He was the final director of Union Observatory in South Africa from 1957 to 1965 .
Go to Profile#9714
Johannes Phocylides Holwarda
1618 - 1651 (33 years)
Johannes Phocylides Holwarda was a Frisian astronomer, physician, and philosopher. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Franeker from 1639 to 1651. Born in Holwerd, he is best remembered for his discovery of the length of Mira's varying appearance cycle. In a systematic study in 1638, he found that Mira disappeared and reappeared in a varying cycle of about 330 days.
Go to Profile#9715
Hermann von Struve
1854 - 1920 (66 years)
Karl Hermann von Struve was a Baltic German astronomer. In Russian, his name is sometimes given as German Ottovich Struve or German Ottonovich Struve . Hermann von Struve was a part of the famous group of astronomers from the Struve family, which also included his grandfather Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, father Otto Wilhelm von Struve, brother Ludwig Struve and nephew Otto Struve. Unlike other astronomers of the Struve family, Herman spent most of his career in Germany. Continuing the family tradition, Struve's research was focused on determining the positions of stellar objects. He w...
Go to Profile#9716
Carl H. Hermann
1898 - 1961 (63 years)
Carl Heinrich Hermann , or Carl Hermann , was a German physicist and crystallographer known for his research in crystallographic symmetry, nomenclature, and mathematical crystallography in N-dimensional spaces. Hermann was a pioneer in crystallographic databases and, along with Paul Peter Ewald, published the first volume of the influential Strukturbericht in 1931.
Go to Profile#9717
Carroll L. Wilson
1910 - 1983 (73 years)
Carroll L. Wilson was a Professor of Management at the Sloan School and the first Mitsui Professor in Problems of Contemporary Technology at MIT. His career encompassed a number of academic, government, and industrial positions ranging from Assistant to the President of MIT to first General Manager of the Atomic Energy Commission.
Go to Profile#9718
John Henry Pepper
1821 - 1900 (79 years)
John Henry "Professor" Pepper was a British scientist and inventor who toured the English-speaking world with his scientific demonstrations. He entertained the public, royalty, and fellow scientists with a wide range of technological innovations. He is primarily remembered for developing the projection technique known as Pepper's ghost, building a large-scale version of the concept by Henry Dircks. He also oversaw the introduction of evening lectures at the Royal Polytechnic Institution and wrote several important science education books, one of which is regarded as a significant step towards the understanding of continental drift.
Go to Profile#9719
Percival Lowell
1855 - 1916 (61 years)
Percival Lowell was an American businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars, and furthered theories of a ninth planet within the Solar System. He founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death.
Go to Profile#9720
David Mowbray Balme
1912 - 1989 (77 years)
David Mowbray Balme was a British expatriate professor and scholar who became the first principal of the University College of the Gold Coast which is now University of Ghana. The Balme Library was named after him.
Go to Profile#9721
William Hale
1797 - 1870 (73 years)
William Hale , was a British inventor and rocket pioneer. Biography Hale was born in Colchester, England in 1797. He was self-taught although his grandfather, the educator William Cole, is believed to have tutored him. By 1827 he had obtained his first patent; he also won a first class Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Arts in Paris for his paper on ship propulsion using an early form of jet propulsion.
Go to Profile#9722
Franz Melde
1832 - 1901 (69 years)
Franz Emil Melde was a German physicist and professor. A graduate of the University of Marburg under Christian Ludwig Gerling, he later taught there, focusing primarily on acoustics, also making contributions to fields including fluid mechanics and meteorology. He began in 1860 as Gerling's assistant at the University's Mathematical and Physical Institute, succeeding him in 1864.
Go to Profile#9723
Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster
1789 - 1860 (71 years)
Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster was an English astronomer, physician, naturalist and philosopher. An early animal rights activist, he promoted vegetarianism and founded the Animals' Friend Society with Lewis Gompertz. He published pamphlets on a wide variety of subjects, including morality, Pythagorean philosophy, bird migration, Sati, and "phrenology", a term that he coined in 1815.
Go to Profile#9724
John Winthrop
1714 - 1779 (65 years)
John Winthrop was an American mathematician, physicist and astronomer. He was the 2nd Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Harvard College. Early life John Winthrop was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His great-great-grandfather, also named John Winthrop, was founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He graduated in 1732 from Harvard, where, from 1738 until his death, he served as professor of mathematics and natural philosophy.
Go to Profile#9725
Helen Schaeffer Huff
1883 - 1913 (30 years)
Helen Schaeffer Huff was an American physicist. She received her PhD in physics from Bryn Mawr College in 1908, with a minor in pure and applied mathematics. Her dissertation was entitled A Study of the Electric Spark in a Magnetic Field.
Go to Profile#9726
Jacques-André Mallet
1740 - 1790 (50 years)
Jacques-André Mallet ; also Mallet-Favre; 23 September 1740 – 31 January 1790 In 1772, Mallet established and co-financed the first Geneva Observatory, and served as its director until his death in 1790. His research primarily concerned occultations, especially lunar and solar eclipses, sunspots, planetary orbits, and the orbits of the moons of Jupiter.
Go to Profile#9727
Erich Peter Wohlfarth
1924 - 1988 (64 years)
Erich Peter Wohlfarth was a theoretical physicist. He is known for his work in magnetism, in particular the Stoner–Wohlfarth model he developed together with his teacher E.C. Stoner. See also Metamagnetism
Go to Profile#9728
James Robert Milne
1880 - 1961 (81 years)
James Robert Milne PRSSA FRSE was a 20th-century Scottish physicist. He served as president of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts from 1923 to 1925. Life He graduated with a BSc from the University of Edinburgh in 1899.
Go to Profile#9729
Carleton C. Murdock
1884 - 1971 (87 years)
Carleton Chase Murdock was an American physicist, teaching and researching primarily at Cornell University. He served as Dean of University Faculty from 1945 to 1951. Within the field of physics, he was known for research in the field of crystal structures and X-ray diffractions. During academic year 1926-27, Murdock also conducted research at the Royal Institute’s Davy-Faraday Laboratory in London, England.
Go to Profile#9730
František Záviška
1879 - 1945 (66 years)
František Záviška was a Czechslovak physicist. The major asset of his scientific work is integrated in nine studies on waveguides published between the years 1912 and 1939. They evaluated, on the basis of the Maxwell equations, the effect of radiation by electromagnetic waves in space using conductible and non-conductible cylinders, tubes and their combinations, organized in different ways. The results of Záviška's experiments were groundbreaking, but they were published in Czech journals only and never became known abroad.
Go to Profile#9731
George W. Lilley
1850 - 1904 (54 years)
George W. Lilley was an American academic, professor of mathematics, and the first president of two American universities, today known as South Dakota State University and Washington State University.
Go to Profile#9732
William Weldon Watson
1899 - 1992 (93 years)
William Weldon Watson IV was a physicist specializing in isotope separation and a contributor to the development of the atomic bomb. Biography Watson grew up in La Grange, Illinois. He received his B.S. in 1920, his M.S. in 1922, and his Ph.D. in 1924 from the University of Chicago, where he became a member of the faculty in 1924. He was a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1928–1929. In 1929 he became an assistant professor at Yale University. Prior to 1940 Watson did research on molecular structures and spectra. Beginning in 1940 and for the remainder of his career, he studied isotope separation.
Go to Profile#9733
Qāḍī Zāda al-Rūmī
1364 - 1437 (73 years)
, whose actual name was Salah al-Din Musa Pasha , was a Turkish astronomer and mathematician who worked at the observatory in Samarkand. He computed sin 1° to an accuracy of 10−12. Together with Ulugh Beg, al-Kāshī and a few other astronomers, Qāḍī Zāda produced the Zij-i-Sultani, the first comprehensive stellar catalogue since the Maragheh observatory's Zij-i Ilkhani two centuries earlier. The Zij-i Sultani contained the positions of 992 stars.
Go to Profile#9734
Ibn al-Banna' al-Marrakushi
1256 - 1321 (65 years)
Ibn al‐Bannāʾ al‐Marrākushī , full name: Abu'l-Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Uthman al-Azdi al-Marrakushi , was a Maghrebi Muslim polymath who was active as a mathematician, astronomer, Islamic scholar, Sufi and astrologer.
Go to Profile#9735
Anna Maria Ciccone
1891 - 1965 (74 years)
Anna Maria Ciccone, or Mariannina Corradina Ciccone, was an Italian physicist. From Sicily to Pisa Maria Anna or Mariannina Corradina Ciccone was born on 29 August 1892 in Noto, Sicily, of Corrado, a rich trader, and Caterina Mirmina. She got her diploma from Regia Scuola Normale in 1910. Since her diploma did not allow her to attend specific faculties, Mariannina signed up at the Istituto Tecnico Archimede in the third year, in Modica, in a Physics-Mathematics class where she was the only female student in the class. After the first year in the Maths faculty at Rome university, she moved to Pisa, where she graduated with high marks, and where she got a second degree in physics in 1924.
Go to Profile#9736
Kshitimohan Sen
1880 - 1960 (80 years)
Kshitimohan Sen was Indian scholar, writer, a Sanskrit professor and an M.A. in Sanskrit from Queen's College, Benares. He was born in a family hailing from Sonarang in Bengal Presidency . He started his working life at the Department of Education, Chamba State. In 1908, at the call of Rabindranath Tagore, he joined Brahmacharyashram. Later he performed responsibility of Adhyaksha of Vidyabhaban. He was the first Deshikottam of Vishwa Bharati. He was an acting Upacharyas of Visva-Bharati University . He is the maternal grandfather of Amartya Sen.
Go to Profile#9737
Jacob Milich
1501 - 1559 (58 years)
Jacob Milich was a German mathematician, physician and astronomer. He was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, where he received his education starting in 1513. He studied at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg im Breisgau under Desiderius Erasmus. He taught at Wittenberg, where he received an M.D. degree and became a professor of mathematics. His most important student there was Erasmus Reinhold. Among his works was a 1535 commentary on the second book of Pliny the Elder. He became Dean of the Wittenberg university's philosophical and medical branches, then served as Rector of the school on several occasions.
Go to Profile#9738
Imre Izsák
1929 - 1965 (36 years)
Imre Gyula Izsák was a Hungarian mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and celestial mechanician. His father, Gyula Izsák, taught geography and biology in Zalaegerszeg. His mother, Aranka Pálfi, was a mathematics and physics teacher.
Go to Profile#9739
Edmund Dymond
1901 - 1953 (52 years)
Edmund Gilbert Dymond FRSE RMS was a Scottish physicist and meteorologist who served with James Mann Wordie on his Arctic explorations of 1937. He is also remembered for his refinement of the Radiosonde during the Second World War.
Go to Profile#9740
John Hazzidakis
1844 - 1921 (77 years)
Ioannis "John" N. Hazzidakis was a Greek mathematician, physicist, author, and professor. He is one of the most important mathematicians of the modern Greek scientific era. His professor was world renowned Greek mathematician Vassilios Lakon. He also studied with famous German mathematicians Ernst Kummer, Leopold Kronecker, Karl Weierstrass. He systematically worked in the field of research and education. He wrote textbooks in the field of algebra, geometry, and calculus. Hazzidakis essentially adopted some elements of Lacon's Geometry. He introduced the Hazzidakis transform in differential geometry.
Go to Profile#9741
Narendra Nath Sen Gupta
1889 - 1944 (55 years)
Narendra Nath Sen Gupta was a Harvard-educated Indian psychologist, philosopher, and professor, who is generally recognized as the founder of modern psychology in India along with Indian Scientist Gunamudian David Boaz. In 1916 he established the First independent department of psychology in India–the Department of Experimental Psychology, at the University of Calcutta, the second being in University of Madras by Dr.Gunamudian David Boaz.
Go to Profile#9742
Thomas Ralph Merton
1888 - 1969 (81 years)
Sir Thomas Ralph Merton KBE, DSc, FRS was an English physicist, inventor and art collector. He is particularly noted for his work on spectroscopy and diffraction gratings. Early life and education Born in Wimbledon, Surrey, Thomas Ralph Merton was the only son of Emile Ralph Merton and Helen, daughter of Thomas Meates, a descendant of Sir Thomas Meutas, Secretary to Sir Francis Bacon. Emile Merton was for a time in the family metal trading business as a partner in Henry R. Merton & Co. which was started in London by his eldest brother in 1860. Another brother William Ralph Merton founded the...
Go to Profile#9743
Karl Stumpff
1895 - 1970 (75 years)
Karl Johann Nikolaus Stumpff was a German astronomer. The Stumpff functions, used in the universal variable formulation of the two-body problem, are named after him. Works Analyse periodischer Vorgänge. Gebrüder Borntraeger: Berlin 1927Grundlagen und Methoden der Periodenforschung. Berlin 1937Ermittlung und Realität von Periodizitäten. Korrelationsrechnung. In: Handbuch der Geophysik. 1940Tafeln und Aufgaben zur Harmonischen Analyse und Periodogrammrechnung. Berlin 1939Neue Theorie und Methoden der Ephemeridenrechnung. Abhandlungen der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1947Neue Wege zur Bahnberechnung der Himmelskörper.
Go to Profile#9744
Arie Bijl
1908 - 1945 (37 years)
Arie Bijl was a Dutch theoretical physicist and resistance man. Arie Bijl was the youngest child of Simon Bijl , owner of a milk factory, and Willemijntje van der Lelij . Because in the Bijl family there was an eye for the extraordinary gift of Arie and his older brother Jaap , not only the parents, but also the other children in the family contributed financially to the study of the two brothers. Arie Bijl studied mathematics and physics at Leiden University and obtained his PhD there on 28 April 1938 from Hendrik Kramers on the thesis Discontinuities in the energy and specific heat .
Go to Profile#9745
Charles Sykes
1905 - 1982 (77 years)
Sir Charles Sykes CBE, FRS was a British physicist and metallurgist. He was born in Clowne, Derbyshire, the only son of Samuel Sykes, the local greengrocer and was educated at the Netherthorpe Grammar School and Sheffield University, where he gained a BSc in physics in 1925. He stayed on there to do a PhD course in physics but after one year accepted an invitation by Metropolitan-Vickers of Manchester to complete an unfinished project on the alloys of zirconium. The results of that study earned him a PhD in metallurgy and a position in the research department of Metropolitan-Vickers.
Go to Profile#9746
Giovanni Boccardi
1859 - 1936 (77 years)
Giovanni Boccardi was an Italian astronomer, mathematician, and priest. As a priest of the Congregazione della Missione, Boccardi was an astronomer in the observatories of Collurania , Catania and Turin . At Turin he served as the director of the observatory and as a docent of astronomy in the local university. He also supervised the creation of the new site Pino Torinese of the Turin observatory . In 1907 he founded the Rivista di astronomia e di scienze affini .
Go to Profile#9747
Ernest Wilmot Guptill
1919 - 1976 (57 years)
Ernest Wilmot Guptill was a Canadian physicist. He spent his academic career at Dalhousie University, where he was department head for ten years. He was co-inventor of the slotted waveguide antenna.
Go to Profile#9748
Richard Krzymowski
1875 - 1960 (85 years)
Richard Krzymowski was a German agricultural scientist. His main research interests were agricultural geography and agricultural history. Krzymowski's main work is "History of German Agriculture" an exemplary textbook for an integrated presentation of agricultural history, agricultural geography, and the history of agricultural production techniques.
Go to Profile#9749
William Morgan
1750 - 1833 (83 years)
William Morgan, FRS was a British physician, physicist and statistician, who is considered the father of modern actuarial science. He is also credited with being the first to record the "invisible light" produced when a current is passed through a partly evacuated glass tube: "the first x-ray tube".
Go to Profile#9750
Morris B. Crawford
1852 - 1940 (88 years)
Morris Barker Crawford was an American academic, and the first professor of physics at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Early life and education He was born in 1852 in Sing Sing, now Ossining, New York to the Rev. Morris DeCamp Crawford and Charlotte Crawford. Both his father and his grandfather were ministers. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1874, and he was a member of the Eclectic Society and of Phi Beta Kappa. He earned a Master of Arts degree from Wesleyan in 1877.
Go to Profile