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.
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List of the most influential people in Physics,
#9701
François Gonnessiat
1856 - 1934 (78 years)
François Gonnessiat was a French astronomer, observer of comets and discoverer of two minor planets. He worked at the Observatory of Lyon. In 1889 he won the Lalande Prize for astronomy from the French Academy of Sciences; 1901 became director of the Quito Observatory for the purpose of making geodetic measurements. He became a well known and respected member of the academic scene of the city, where a street is named after him. From 1908 to 1931, he was director of the Algiers Observatory where one of his colleagues was Benjamin Jekhovsky. He was also director of the Quito Astronomical Obser...
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Peter Andreas Hansen
1795 - 1874 (79 years)
Peter Andreas Hansen was a Danish-born German astronomer. Biography The son of a goldsmith, Hansen learned the trade of a watchmaker at Flensburg, and exercised it at Berlin and Tønder, 1818–1820. He had, however, long been a student of science; and Dr Dircks, a physician practising at Tønder, prevailed with his father to send him in 1820 to Copenhagen, where he won the patronage of H.C. Schumacher and attracted the personal notice of King Frederick VI. The Danish survey was then in progress, and he acted as Schumacher's assistant in work connected with it, chiefly at the new observatory of A...
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Giovanni Battista Venturi
1746 - 1822 (76 years)
Giovanni Battista Venturi was an Italian physicist, savant, man of letters, diplomat and historian of science. He was the discoverer of the Venturi effect, which was described in 1797 in his Recherches Experimentales sur le Principe de la Communication Laterale du Mouvement dans les Fluides appliqué a l'Explication de Differens Phenomènes Hydrauliques, translated into English by William Nicholson as "Experimental Inquiries Concerning the Principle of the Lateral Communication of a Motion in Fluids," and published in 1836 in Thomas Tredgold's Tracts on Hydraulics. Because of this discovery, he...
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James Craig Watson
1838 - 1880 (42 years)
James Craig Watson was a Canadian-American astronomer, discoverer of comets and minor planets, director of the University of Michigan's Detroit Observatory in Ann Arbor, and awarded with the Lalande Prize in 1869.
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Semen Altshuler
1911 - 1983 (72 years)
Semyon Alexandrovich Altshuler was a Soviet physicist known for his work in resonance spectroscopy and in particular for theoretical prediction of acoustic paramagnetic resonance in 1952. Early years Altshuler was born in 1911 in Vitebsk, in the Russian Empire. He finished school in Nizhny Novgorod and later moved to Kazan, where he spent most of his life. In 1928, he entered the physics faculty of the Kazan University aiming to study theoretical physics. He graduated in 1932 and obtained a post-graduate scholarship, but had to change university due to the scholarship rules. He moved to Moscow to study with Igor Tamm whom he admired for his books on electricity and magnetism.
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Alfred Bucherer
1863 - 1927 (64 years)
Alfred Heinrich Bucherer was a German physicist, who is known for his experiments on relativistic mass. He also was the first who used the phrase "theory of relativity" for Einstein's theory of special relativity.
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Marguerite Perey
1909 - 1975 (66 years)
Marguerite Catherine Perey was a French physicist and a student of Marie Curie. In 1939, Perey discovered the element francium by purifying samples of lanthanum that contained actinium. In 1962, she was the first woman to be elected to the French Académie des Sciences, an honor denied to her mentor Curie. Perey died of cancer in 1975.
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Ivar Waller
1898 - 1991 (93 years)
Ivar Waller was a Swedish professor of theoretical physics at Uppsala University. He developed the theory of X-ray scattering by lattice vibrations of a crystal, building upon the prior work of Peter Debye. The Debye–Waller factor, which he introduced in his doctoral thesis in 1925, is the definitive treatment of the effect of thermal vibrations in X-ray crystallography. He was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences from 1945, and the Nobel Committee for Physics 1945-1972.
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Jun Ishiwara
1881 - 1947 (66 years)
Jun Ishiwara or Atsushi Ishihara was a Japanese theoretical physicist, known for his works on the electronic theory of metals, the theory of relativity and quantum theory. Being the only Japanese scientist who made an original contribution to the old quantum theory, in 1915, independently of other scientists, he formulated quantization rules for systems with several degrees of freedom.
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Frederic de Hoffmann
1924 - 1989 (65 years)
Frederic de Hoffmann was a nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project. He came to the United States of America in 1941 and graduated from Harvard University in 1945 . Before graduating, de Hoffmann was sent to Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1944 where he assisted Edward Teller in the development of the Hydrogen bomb. Frederic de Hoffmann was an advocate of peaceful atomic energy.
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Pierre Charles Le Monnier
1715 - 1799 (84 years)
Pierre Charles Le Monnier was a French astronomer. His name is sometimes given as Lemonnier. Biography Le Monnier was born in Paris, where his father Pierre , also an astronomer, was professor of philosophy at the college d'Harcourt.
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Knut Ångström
1857 - 1910 (53 years)
Knut Johan Ångström was a Swedish physicist. He was the son of physicist Anders Jonas Ångström and studied in Uppsala from 1877 to 1884, when he received his licentiat-degree, before going for a short time to the University of Strassburg to study with August Kundt. Coming back to Uppsala, he completed his doctoral degree and was appointed lecturer in physics at the new university college in Stockholm in 1885. After a few years working there, he returned to Uppsala in 1891 and received the professorship of Physics in 1896.
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Frank Watson Dyson
1868 - 1939 (71 years)
Sir Frank Watson Dyson, KBE, FRS, FRSE was an English astronomer and the ninth Astronomer Royal who is remembered today largely for introducing time signals from Greenwich, England, and for the role he played in proving Einstein's theory of general relativity.
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Carl Auer von Welsbach
1858 - 1929 (71 years)
Carl Auer von Welsbach , who received the Austrian noble title of Freiherr Auer von Welsbach in 1901, was an Austrian scientist and inventor, who separated didymium into the elements neodymium and praseodymium in 1885. He was also one of three scientists to independently discover the element lutetium , separating it from ytterbium in 1907, setting off the longest priority dispute in the history of chemistry.
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Richard van der Riet Woolley
1906 - 1986 (80 years)
Sir Richard van der Riet Woolley OBE FRS was an English astronomer who became the eleventh Astronomer Royal. His mother's maiden name was Van der Riet. Biography Woolley was born in Weymouth, Dorset and attended Allhallows College, then in Honiton, for about 18 months, but then moved with his parents to the Union of South Africa upon their retirement. There he attended and received his degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Cape Town. Woolley returned to the United Kingdom and studied for a further MA degree in Mathematics and, later, a PhD at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
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Adolf Kratzer
1893 - 1983 (90 years)
B. Adolf Kratzer was a German theoretical physicist who made contributions to atomic physics and molecular physics, and was an authority on molecular band spectroscopy. He was born in Günzburg and died in Münster.
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Wendell H. Furry
1907 - 1984 (77 years)
Wendell Hinkle Furry was a professor of physics at Harvard University who made contributions to theoretical and particle physics. The Furry theorem is named after him. Early life Furry was born in Prairieton, Indiana on February 18. 1907. He earned an A.B. degree from DePauw University in 1928 and an A.M. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1930 and 1932, respectively.
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Tatyana Afanasyeva
1876 - 1964 (88 years)
Tatyana Alexeyevna Afanasyeva was a Russian-Dutch mathematician and physicist who made contributions to the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics. On 21 December 1904, she married Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest . They had two daughters and two sons; one daughter, Tatyana Ehrenfest, also became a mathematician.
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Robert Luther
1822 - 1900 (78 years)
Karl Theodor Robert Luther , normally published as Robert Luther, was a German astronomer. While working at the Bilk Observatory in Düsseldorf, Germany, he searched for asteroids and discovered 24 of them between 1852 and 1890. Seven times Lalande Prize winner.
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Sherburne Wesley Burnham
1838 - 1921 (83 years)
Sherburne Wesley Burnham was an American astronomer. For more than 50 years Burnham spent all his free time observing the heavens, mainly concerning himself with binary stars. Biography Sherburne Wesley Burnham was born in Thetford, Vermont. His parents were Roswell O. Burnham and Marinda Burnham.
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Clifford Berry
1918 - 1963 (45 years)
Clifford Edward Berry helped John Vincent Atanasoff create the first digital electronic computer in 1939, the Atanasoff–Berry computer . Biography Clifford Berry was born April 19, 1918, in Gladbrook, Iowa, to Fred and Grace Berry. His father owned an appliance repair shop, where he was able to learn about radios. He graduated from Marengo High School in Marengo, Iowa, in 1934 as the class valedictorian at age 16. He went on to study at Iowa State College , eventually earning a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1939 and followed by his master's degree in physics in 1941.
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Menelaus of Alexandria
70 - 140 (70 years)
Menelaus of Alexandria was a Greek mathematician and astronomer, the first to recognize geodesics on a curved surface as natural analogs of straight lines. Life and works Although very little is known about Menelaus's life, it is supposed that he lived in Rome, where he probably moved after having spent his youth in Alexandria. He was called Menelaus of Alexandria by both Pappus of Alexandria and Proclus, and a conversation of his with Lucius, held in Rome, is recorded by Plutarch.
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Christopher Hansteen
1784 - 1873 (89 years)
Christopher Hansteen was a Norwegian geophysicist, astronomer and physicist, best known for his mapping of Earth's magnetic field. Early life and career Hansteen was born in Christiania as the son of Johannes Mathias Hansteen and his wife Anne Cathrine Treschow . He was the younger brother of writer Conradine Birgitte Dunker, and through her the uncle of Bernhard Dunker and Vilhelmine Ullmann, and granduncle of Mathilde Schjøtt, Ragna Nielsen and Viggo Ullmann. His mother was a first cousin of Niels Treschow.
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Arseny Sokolov
1910 - 1986 (76 years)
Arseny Alexandrovich Sokolov was a Russian theoretical physicist known for the development of synchrotron radiation theory. Biography Arseny Sokolov graduated from Tomsk State University in 1931. He obtained the degree of Kandidat nauk from TSU under supervision of Piotr Tartakovsky . The degree of Doktor nauk was obtained by him from Leningrad Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute .
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Wang Zhuxi
1911 - 1983 (72 years)
Wang Zhuxi , who had the given name Zhiqi and the sobriquet Zhuxi, was a Chinese physicist, philologist, and writer. Biography Wang was born in Gong'an County, Hubei Province. He graduated from the Department of Physics of Tsinghua University in 1933, and continued his postgraduate study in the university's graduate school. With government support, he went to study in the United Kingdom, where he obtained his doctorate degree from Cambridge University under the supervision of Ralph Fowler in 1938.
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William Wallace Campbell
1862 - 1938 (76 years)
William Wallace Campbell was an American astronomer, and director of Lick Observatory from 1901 to 1930. He specialized in spectroscopy. He was the tenth president of the University of California from 1923 to 1930.
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Donald Cooksey
1892 - 1977 (85 years)
Donald Cooksey , was an American physicist who was associate director of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory of the University of California at Berkeley. Biography Cooksey was the son of George Cooksey from Birmingham, England and Linda Dows from New York. After High School at the Thacher School in California, Donald Cooksey followed his brother Charlton Cooksey and attended Yale and where he too became a physicist specializing in designing and building scientific instruments, especially detectors for measuring sub-atomic particles such as neutrons. When Ernest O. Lawrence was at Yale during the 1920s, Cooksey and Lawrence became friends.
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Christoph Scheiner
1575 - 1650 (75 years)
Christoph Scheiner SJ was a Jesuit priest, physicist and astronomer in Ingolstadt. Biography Augsburg/Dillingen: 1591–1605 Scheiner was born in Markt Wald near Mindelheim in Swabia, earlier margravate Burgau, possession of the House of Habsburg. He attended the Jesuit St. Salvator Grammar School in Augsburg from May 1591 until 24 October 1595. He graduated as a "rhetor" and entered the Jesuit Order in Landsberg am Lech on 26 October 1595. At the local seminary, he served his biennial novitiate under the tutelage of Novice Master Father Rupert Reindl SJ. From 1597 to 1598, he finished his lower studies of rhetoric in Augsburg.
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William Duane
1872 - 1935 (63 years)
William Duane was an American physicist who conducted research on radioactivity and X-rays and their usage in the treatment of cancer. He developed the Duane-Hunt Law and Duane's hypothesis. He worked with Pierre and Marie Curie in their University of Paris laboratory for six years and developed a method for generating quantities of radon-222 "seeds" from radium for usage in early forms of brachytherapy.
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Rudolf Kohlrausch
1809 - 1858 (49 years)
Rudolf Hermann Arndt Kohlrausch was a German physicist. Biography He was a native of Göttingen, the son of the Royal Hanovarian director general of schools Friedrich Kohlrausch. He was a high-school teacher of mathematics and physics successively at Lüneburg, Rinteln, Kassel and Marburg. In 1853 he became an associate professor at the University of Marburg, and four years later, a full professor of physics at the University of Erlangen.
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Shen Kuo
1031 - 1095 (64 years)
Shen Kuo or Shen Gua, courtesy name Cunzhong and pseudonym Mengqi Weng , was a Chinese polymath, scientist, and statesman of the Song dynasty . Shen was a master in many fields of study including mathematics, optics, and horology. In his career as a civil servant, he became a finance minister, governmental state inspector, head official for the Bureau of Astronomy in the Song court, Assistant Minister of Imperial Hospitality, and also served as an academic chancellor. At court his political allegiance was to the Reformist faction known as the New Policies Group, headed by Chancellor Wang An...
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Émile Clapeyron
1799 - 1864 (65 years)
Benoît Paul Émile Clapeyron was a French engineer and physicist, one of the founders of thermodynamics. Life Born in Paris, Clapeyron studied at the École polytechnique, graduating in 1818. He also studied at École des mines. In 1820 he and Gabriel Lamé went to Saint Petersburg to teach and work at the school of public works there. He returned to Paris only after the Revolution of July 1830, supervising the construction of the first railway line connecting Paris to Versailles and Saint-Germain. The half brothers Stéphane Mony and Eugène Flachat collaborated in this project, which was financed by Adolphe d'Eichthal, Rothschild, Auguste Thurneyssen, Sanson Davillier and the Péreire brothers.
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Giovanni Alfonso Borelli
1608 - 1679 (71 years)
Giovanni Alfonso Borelli was a Renaissance Italian physiologist, physicist, and mathematician who is often described as the father of biomechanics. He contributed to the modern principle of scientific investigation by continuing Galileo's practice of testing hypotheses against observation. Trained in mathematics, Borelli also made extensive studies of Jupiter's moons, the mechanics of animal locomotion and, in microscopy, of the constituents of blood. He also used microscopy to investigate the stomatal movement of plants, and undertook studies in medicine and geology. During his career, he enjoyed the patronage of Queen Christina of Sweden.
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Kiyotsugu Hirayama
1874 - 1943 (69 years)
Kiyotsugu Hirayama was a Japanese astronomer, best known for his discovery that many asteroid orbits were more similar to one another than chance would allow, leading to the concept of asteroid families, now called "Hirayama families" in his honour.
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Erasmus Reinhold
1511 - 1553 (42 years)
Erasmus Reinhold was a German astronomer and mathematician, considered to be the most influential astronomical pedagogue of his generation. He was born and died in Saalfeld, Saxony. He was educated, under Jacob Milich, at the University of Wittenberg, where he was first elected dean and later became rector. In 1536 he was appointed professor of higher mathematics by Philipp Melanchthon. In contrast to the limited modern definition, "mathematics" at the time also included applied mathematics, especially astronomy. His colleague, Georg Joachim Rheticus, also studied at Wittenberg and was appoin...
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August Toepler
1836 - 1912 (76 years)
August Joseph Ignaz Toepler was a German chemist and physicist known for his experiments in electrostatics. Biography August Toepler was born on 7 September 1836. He studied chemistry at the Gewerbe-Institut Berlin and graduated from the University of Jena in 1860. Later Toepler turned to experimental physics. August Toepler was a lecturer of chemistry and physics at the Academy Poppelsdorf . He received a chair of chemistry and chemical technology at the Polytechnic Institute of Riga and he hold this position between 1864 and 1868.
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Tadeusz Banachiewicz
1882 - 1954 (72 years)
Tadeusz Julian Banachiewicz was a Polish astronomer, mathematician and geodesist. Scientific career Banachiewicz was educated at University of Warsaw and his thesis was on "reduction constants of the Repsold heliometer". In 1905, after the closure of the University by the Russians, he moved to Göttingen and in 1906 to the Pulkovo Observatory. He also worked at the Engelhardt Observatory at Kazan University from 1910 to 1915.
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Timocharis
320 BC - 260 BC (60 years)
Timocharis of Alexandria was a Greek astronomer and philosopher. Likely born in Alexandria, he was a contemporary of Euclid. Work What little is known about Timocharis comes from citations by Ptolemy in the Almagest. These indicate that Timocharis worked in Alexandria during the 290s and 280s BC. Ptolemy lists the declination of 18 stars as recorded by Timocharis or Aristillus in roughly the year 290 BC. Between 295 and 272 BC, Timocharis recorded four lunar occultations and the passage of the planet Venus across a star. These were recorded using both the Egyptian and Athenian calendars. The ...
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Marian Danysz
1909 - 1983 (74 years)
Marian Danysz was a Polish physicist, Professor of Physics at Warsaw University. Son of Jan Kazimierz Danysz. In 1952, he co-discovered with Jerzy Pniewski a new kind of matter, an atomic nucleus, which alongside a proton and neutron contains a third particle: the lambda hyperon .
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Harold A. Wilson
1874 - 1964 (90 years)
Harold Albert Wilson FRS was an English physicist. Early life Wilson was born in York, the son of Albert William Wilson, a goods manager with the North British Railway. His mother, Anne Gill, was the daughter of a farmer and innkeeper from Topcliffe.
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Johann Christian Poggendorff
1796 - 1877 (81 years)
Johann Christian Poggendorff , was a German physicist born in Hamburg. By far the greater and more important part of his work related to electricity and magnetism. Poggendorff is known for his electrostatic motor which is analogous to Wilhelm Holtz's electrostatic machine. In 1841 he described the use of the potentiometer for measurement of electrical potentials without current draw.
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Shu Xingbei
1905 - 1983 (78 years)
Shu Xingbei , also known as Hsin Pei Soh, was a Chinese physicist and educator. Life Early years Shu was born on 1 October 1905, in Hanjiang, Jiangsu Province. In 1924, he entered Hangchow University in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province and a year later transferred to the Department of Physics at Cheeloo University in Shandong Province.
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Jacques Cassini
1677 - 1756 (79 years)
Jacques Cassini was a French astronomer, son of the famous Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini. He was known as Cassini II. Cassini was born at the Paris Observatory. He was first admitted to Collège Mazarin after brief studies at his home observatory under his father. Later, he was admitted at the age of seventeen to membership of the French Academy of Sciences, he was elected in 1696 a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and became maître des comptes in 1706. While in England, he was acquainted with other famous astronomers such as Newton and Halley. Having succeeded to his fath...
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Silvanus P. Thompson
1851 - 1916 (65 years)
Silvanus Phillips Thompson was an English professor of physics at the City and Guilds Technical College in Finsbury, England. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1891 and was known for his work as an electrical engineer and as an author. Thompson's most enduring publication is his 1910 text Calculus Made Easy, which teaches the fundamentals of infinitesimal calculus, and is still in print. Thompson also wrote a popular physics text, Elementary Lessons in Electricity and Magnetism, as well as biographies of Lord Kelvin and Michael Faraday.
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Richard Gans
1880 - 1954 (74 years)
Richard Martin Gans , German of Jewish origin, born in Hamburg, was the physicist who founded the Physics Institute of the National University of La Plata, Argentina. He was its Director in two different periods.
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Ye Qisun
1898 - 1977 (79 years)
Ye Qisun , also named Ye Hongjuan , was a Chinese physicist and one of the founders of modern physics in China. Education Ye's family had a very strong educational background. His great-grandfather served in a government office during the Qing Dynasty and contributed official records for an edition of Shanghai History. His grandfather Ye Jiazhen worked in The Imperial College. His father Ye Jingyun was a successful candidate in the imperial examinations at the provincial level, and was designated as the headmaster of Jingye School , as well as a Chinese professor at Tsinghua University and t...
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William Henry Pickering
1858 - 1938 (80 years)
William Henry Pickering was an American astronomer. Pickering constructed and established several observatories or astronomical observation stations, notably including Percival Lowell's Flagstaff Observatory. He led solar eclipse expeditions and studied craterss on the Moon, and hypothesized that changes in the appearance of the crater Eratosthenes were due to "lunar insects". He spent much of the later part of his life at his private observatory in Jamaica.
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Lewis Morris Rutherfurd
1816 - 1892 (76 years)
Lewis Morris Rutherfurd was an American lawyer and astronomer, and a pioneering astrophotographer. Early life and work Rutherfurd was born in Morrisania, New York, to Robert Walter Rutherfurd and Sabina Morris of Morrisania. He was the grandson of U.S. Senator John Rutherfurd from 1791 to 1798, and great-grandson of Lewis Morris, the Signer of the Declaration of Independence. Major General William Alexander, the Earl of Stirling, was the uncle of his grandfather.
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George Green
1793 - 1841 (48 years)
George Green was a British mathematical physicist who wrote An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism in 1828. The essay introduced several important concepts, among them a theorem similar to the modern Green's theorem, the idea of potential functions as currently used in physics, and the concept of what are now called Green's functions. Green was the first person to create a mathematical theory of electricity and magnetism and his theory formed the foundation for the work of other scientists such as James Clerk Maxwell, William Thomson, and others.
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Frederick Thomas Trouton
1863 - 1922 (59 years)
Frederick Thomas Trouton FRS was an Irish physicist known for Trouton's rule and experiments to detect the Earth's motion through the luminiferous aether. Life and work Trouton was born in Dublin on 24 November 1863, the youngest son of the wealthy and prominent Thomas Trouton. He attended Royal School Dungannon and went on to Trinity College, Dublin in 1884, where he studied engineering and physical science. While still an undergraduate student, Trouton observed a relationship between boiling points and energies of vaporisationss, which he presented in two short papers. He found the change o...
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