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,
#9901
Torichan Kravets
1876 - 1955 (79 years)
Torichan Pavlovich Kravets was a Russian and Soviet physicist who work on optical physics, geophysics and examined the history of physics. He was briefly exiled to Siberia on charges of being anti-Soviet from 1923 to 1926. He served as a professor at Leningrad.
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Emma Vyssotsky
1894 - 1975 (81 years)
Emma Vyssotsky was an American astronomer who was honored with the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy in 1946. Biography Emma earned her bachelor's degree in mathematics at Swarthmore College in 1916 and worked at Smith College as an astronomy/mathematics demonstrator for a year before finding work at an insurance company as an actuary. In 1927, after receiving a Whitney Fellowship and a Bartol Scholarship, she enrolled in astronomy at Radcliffe College . There, she worked with Cecilia Payne on the "spectral line contours of hydrogen and ionized calcium throughout the spectral sequence."
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Lucy Wilson
1888 - 1980 (92 years)
Lucy Wilson was an American physicist, known for her research on theories of vision, optics and X-ray spectroscopy. She was also the first dean of students at Wellesley College. Biography She was born October 19, 1888, in Bloomington, Illinois, the daughter of Lucy Barron White and John James Speed Wilson Jr. Her father worked for American Telephone and Telegraph in Chicago as did his father and her younger brother. Her younger brother had begun to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology two years after Lucy Wilson had entered Wellesley. Wilson not only studied the sciences but also had an interest in languages, especially German, which she studied in high school.
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Joyce C. Stearns
1893 - 1948 (55 years)
Joyce Clennam Stearns was an American physicist and an administrator on the Manhattan Project. Stearns resigned from the Manhattan Project in July 1945 to become dean of faculty at Washington University in St. Louis. Joyce also served as the director of the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago from November 1944 through July 1945.
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John Westwyk
1350 - 1400 (50 years)
John Westwyk was an English astronomer, adventurer, Benedictine monk, and author of the Equatorie of the Planetis. Biography Little is known of John Westwyk's early life. The name Westwyk is almost certainly a toponym; he presumably came from the hamlet of Gorham-Westwick, two miles west of St Albans. He was a monk of St Albans Abbey by 1380, and was most likely ordained between 1368 and 1379. Like many monks, he was probably the son of a mid-ranking peasant or yeoman.
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Jean Abraham Chrétien Oudemans
1827 - 1906 (79 years)
Jean Abraham Chrétien Oudemans was a Dutch astronomer. He was the director of the Utrecht Observatory from 1875 until 1898, when he retired. Oudemans was born in Amsterdam, son of the poet, teacher and philologist Anthonie Oudemans Sr. and Jacoba Adriana Hammecker. He entered Leiden University when he was just 16 as a student of the noted astronomer Frederik Kaiser. He became a high school teacher in Leiden when he was just 19 . The next six years he worked on his dissertation on the determination of the latitude of Leiden. Next he studied asteroids and variable stars, meanwhile hoping for an academic appointment.
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James Ferguson
1797 - 1867 (70 years)
James Ferguson was a Scottish-born American astronomer and engineer, who made the first discovery of an asteroid from North America . Biography James Ferguson was born in Scotland on August 31, 1797, and his family moved to the United states in 1800.
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Francesco Landi
#9909
Edvard Hugo von Zeipel
1873 - 1959 (86 years)
Edvard Hugo von Zeipel was a Swedish astronomer, with the specialist fields of study of celestial mechanics, astrophotography, and theoretical astrophysics. He worked at the Stockholm Observatory from 1897 to 1900, participated in scientific expeditions to Spitzbergen in 1898, 1901, and 1902, then worked at the Pulkovo Observatory from 1901 to 1902, the Paris observatory from 1904 to 1906, and the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory from 1911. He proved a key theorem about the Painlevé conjecture.
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Valeriya Golubtsova
1901 - 1987 (86 years)
Valeriya Alexeyevna Golubtsova was a scientist who was the director of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute from 1943 to 1952. She was the wife of Georgy Malenkov. Biography Golubtsova was born in Nizhny Novgorod in the family of a teacher in the cadet corps, State Councilor Alexei Golubtsov , and Olga Nevzorova, who was a member of an old noble family. Nevzorova's older sisters were the famous "Nevzorov sisters" — Vladimir Lenin's comrades-in-arms in Marxist circles back in the 1890s. Zinaida married Gleb Кrzhizhanovky in 1899, who in the 1920s headed the GOELRO Commission.
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Thomas Bugge
1740 - 1815 (75 years)
Thomas Bugge was a Danish astronomer, mathematician and surveyor. He succeeded Christian Horrebow as professor of astronomy at the University of Copenhagen in 1777. His triangulation surveys of Denmark carried out under the auspices of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences were instrumental in creating the first precise maps of Denmark. He served as president of the Royal Danish Society for Agriculture , director of the General Widows' Pension Fund , secretary of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and three one-year terms as rector of the University of Copenhagen.
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Antoinette de Vaucouleurs
1921 - 1987 (66 years)
Antoinette de Vaucouleurs was an astronomer who worked in the Astronomy Department of the University of Texas at Austin for 25 years when few women worked in the field. In addition to ongoing collaborations with her husband, Gérard de Vaucouleurs, she carried out her own research in spectroscopy. Her contributions were recognized in a festschrift in 1988, entitled The World of Galaxies.
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Athir al-Din al-Abhari
1200 - 1264 (64 years)
Athīr al‐Dīn al‐Mufaḍḍal ibn ʿUmar ibn al‐Mufaḍḍal al‐Samarqandī al‐Abharī, also known as Athīr al‐Dīn al‐Munajjim was an Iranian muslim polymath, philosopher, astronomer, astrologer and mathematician. Other than his influential writings, he had many famous disciples.
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Franz Ignatz Cassian Hallaschka
1780 - 1847 (67 years)
Franz Ignatz Cassian Hallaschka; Czech: František Ignác Kassián Halaška was a Moravian physicist. In 1799 he became a member of the Piarists. He studied mathematics, physics, philosophy and theology at schools in Strassnitz, Nikolsburg and Kremsier, receiving his ordination in April 1804. In 1806 he taught classes in mathematics and physics at the Ordenscollegium in Nikolsburg, and during the following year, obtained his PhD at the University of Vienna. In 1808 he became a professor of physics in Brünn, where he established an observatory. From 1814 to 1833 he was a professor of physics at the University of Prague.
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Giuseppe Toaldo
1719 - 1797 (78 years)
Giuseppe Toaldo was an Italian Catholic priest and physicist. Biography Giuseppe Toaldo was born in 1719 in Pianezza near Vicenza. In his fourteenth year he entered the seminary of Padua, in which he subsequently taught mathematics and Italian literature. While connected with the seminary he edited the works of Galileo , for which he wrote an appreciative preface and critical notes. In this edition, for the first time since Galileo Galilei's condemnation, it was published with ecclesiastical approval the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.
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Jean Henri van Swinden
1746 - 1823 (77 years)
Jean Henri van Swinden was a Dutch mathematician and physicist who taught in Franeker and Amsterdam. Biography His parents were the lawyer Phillippe van Swinden and Marie Anne Tollosan. He was trained 1763-1766 at the University of Leiden, where he became doctor of philosophy on 12 June 1766 with the thesis "Natural power of attraction". He became professor at the University of Franeker the same year, where he continued to study and conduct research as well as teach. In 1776 he won a prize from the Académie Royale des Sciences along with Charles-Augustin de Coulomb for his work on Earth's magnetic field, and the relationship between magnetism and electricity.
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Ulrich Wahn
#9918
Nicephorus Gregoras
1295 - 1360 (65 years)
Nicephorus Gregoras was a Byzantine Greek astronomer, historian, and theologian. His 37-volume Byzantine History, a work of erudition, constitutes a primary documentary source for the 14th century. Life Gregoras was born at Heraclea Pontica, where he was raised and educated by his uncle, John, who was the Bishop of Heraclea. At an early age he settled at Constantinople, where his uncle introduced him to Andronicus II Palaeologus, by whom he was appointed chartophylax . In 1326 Gregoras proposed certain reforms in the calendar, which the emperor refused to carry out for fear of disturbances; ...
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George C. McVittie
1904 - 1988 (84 years)
George Cunliffe McVittie was a British mathematician and cosmologist. He is best known for his contributions towards radio astronomy. Life McVittie was born on 5 June 1904 in Smyrna in Turkey, where his father, Frank S. McVittie, was a merchant. His mother, Emily Caroline Weber, lived in Greece but was of British descent. George was raised bilingual in French and English.
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Johann Jakob Huber
1733 - 1798 (65 years)
Johann Jakob Huber was a Swiss astronomer. Life and work Huber was the eldest of two sons born to the Basle trader Johann Jakob Huber and his first wife Anna Maria Winkelblech . He studied at the usual Basle schools. His father had originally envisioned a career for his eldest son similar to his own, but as he showed early on his inclination towards mathematics and astronomy, he allowed him to receive a correspondingly suitable education. Among his university lecturers in his home town of Basle were the mathematicians Daniel Bernoulli and Johann II. Bernoulli.
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Guido Bonatti
1210 - 1296 (86 years)
Guido Bonatti was an Italian mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, who was the most celebrated astrologer of the 13th century. Bonatti was advisor of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, Ezzelino da Romano III, Guido Novello da Polenta and Guido I da Montefeltro. He also served the communal governments of Florence, Siena and Forlì. His employers were all Ghibellines , who were in conflict with the Guelphs , and all were excommunicated at some time or another. Bonatti's astrological reputation was also criticised in Dante's Divine Comedy, where he is depicted as residing in hell as punishmen...
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Carolyn Parker
1917 - 1966 (49 years)
Carolyn Beatrice Parker was a physicist who worked from 1943 to 1947 on the Dayton Project, the polonium research and development arm of the Manhattan Project. She was one of a small number of African American scientists and technicians on the Manhattan Project. She then became an assistant professor in physics at Fisk University.
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Samuel Herrick
1911 - 1975 (64 years)
Samuel Herrick was an American astronomer who specialized in celestial mechanics and made important studies preceding the development of manned space flight. Life Herrick was born in Madison County, Virginia, in 1911.
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Bernhard Haurwitz
1905 - 1986 (81 years)
Bernhard Haurwitz was a German-born American meteorologist and physicist. Haurwitz was Chair of Department of Meteorology at New York University , a member of the National Academy of Sciences , and a recipient of the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal. He was awarded the William Bowie Medal in 1970.
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John Stanley Griffith
1928 - 1972 (44 years)
John Stanley Griffith was a British chemist, mathematician and biophysicist. He was the nephew of the distinguished British bacteriologist Frederick Griffith. Career Beginning as an undergraduate in mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1946–1949, he went on to read Part II biochemistry in 1949–1951. His research career continued in theoretical chemistry at Oxford and Cambridge, where he held a Berry-Ramsey research fellowship at King's College. He had several appointments in Britain and the US in his different disciplines. These included professorships in chemistry at Indiana Universi...
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Leland John Haworth
1904 - 1979 (75 years)
Leland John Haworth was an American particle physicist. In his long career he was head of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Atomic Energy Commission, the National Science Foundation, and was assistant to the president of Associated Universities, Inc.
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Frank Elmore Ross
1874 - 1960 (86 years)
Frank Elmore Ross was an American astronomer and physicist. He was born in San Francisco, California and died in Altadena, California. In 1901 he received his doctorate from the University of California. In 1905 he became director of the International Latitude Observatory station at Gaithersburg, Maryland. In 1915 he became a physicist for Eastman Kodak Company at Rochester, New York. He accepted a position at Yerkes Observatory in 1924 and worked there until his retirement in 1939.
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Jonathan M. Spergel
#9929
Zhang Zongsui
1915 - 1969 (54 years)
Zhang Zongsui was a Chinese physicist and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences . Biography Zhang was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, on 1 June 1915, to Zhang Dongsun, a philosopher and social activist, and Wu Shaohong . His elder brother Zhang Zongbing was an entomologist. His younger brother Zhang Zongying and younger sister Zhang Zongye are physicists. In 1930, he was accepted to the Yenching University, at the next year, he was transferred to Tsinghua University, where he studied physics under Wu Youxun and Chung-Yao Chao. After university, he worked in the Purple Mountain Observatory.
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Alfred M. Mayer
1836 - 1897 (61 years)
Alfred Marshall Mayer was a United States physicist. Biography He was born to Charles F. Mayer, a lawyer and state senator, and Eliza C. Mayer. He attended St. Mary's College, but left for the workshop and drafting room of a mechanical engineer, where he remained two years, acquiring a knowledge of the use of tools, mechanical drawing, and methods of constructing machines. He then spent two years in obtaining a thorough knowledge of analytical chemistry by laboratory practice. In 1856 he was called to the chair of physics and chemistry in the University of Maryland, and from 1859 to 1861 he h...
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James Whitbread Lee Glaisher
1848 - 1928 (80 years)
James Whitbread Lee Glaisher FRS FRSE FRAS , son of James Glaisher and Cecilia Glaisher, was a prolific English mathematician and astronomer. His large collection of English ceramics was mostly left to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
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Giovanni Bianchini
1410 - 1469 (59 years)
Giovanni Bianchini was a professor of mathematics and astronomy at the University of Ferrara and court astrologer of Leonello d'Este. He was an associate of Georg Purbach and Regiomontanus. The letters exchanged with Regiomontanus in 1463–1464 mention works by Bianchini entitled: Primum mobile , Flores almagesti, Compositio instrumenti.
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Karl Eugen Guthe
1866 - 1915 (49 years)
Karl Eugen Guthe was a German-born American academic and physicist, notable for being the first Dean of the Graduate Department at the University of Michigan. Education Guthe was born in Hanover, Germany, and educated at the Hanover Technical School and at the universities of Strassburg, Berlin, and Marburg. He received his PhD from the University of Marburg in 1892 for a thesis entitled: Über das mechanische Telephon . Guthe was the nephew of Hermann Guthe , a noted German geographer and professor in Hanover and Munich.
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Eilhard von Domarus
1893 - 1958 (65 years)
Eilhard von Domarus was a German-born American psychiatrist. He played an important role in the development of the interdisciplinary study of philosophy and neurology. Warren McCulloch regarded him as the “great philosophic student of psychiatry.”
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John Viriamu Jones
1856 - 1901 (45 years)
John Viriamu Jones, FRS , was a Welsh scientist, who worked on measuring the ohm, and an educationalist who was instrumental in establishing the University of Sheffield and Cardiff University. Early life and studies John Viriamu Jones was born on 2 January 1856 in Pentrepoeth in Swansea, the third of the six children of Thomas Jones, a celebrated Independent clergyman, and Jane Jones. He was named after the missionary and martyr John Williams – 'Viriamu' being the Erromanga for "Williams". His older siblings were David Brynmor and Annie; his younger brothers were Irvonwy, Leifchild Stratten and Morlais Glasfryn.
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Louis Fabry
1862 - 1939 (77 years)
Louis Fabry was a French astronomer who was born in Marseille, April 20, 1862, and died in Les Lecques, January 26, 1939. Biography Louis Fabry was born in 1862 to a Provençal family with five boys. His brothers Charles, Eugène and Auguste were, respectively, a physicist, a mathematician and a magistrate.
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Jacques Errera
1896 - 1977 (81 years)
Jacques Errera was a Belgian physicochemist, specialized in the molecular constitution of matter. During the 1930s he worked at the Free University of Brussels , and participated in the Solvay Conference of 1933. In 1938 he was awarded the Francqui Prize in Exact Sciences. Shortly after the first atomic bombs were used in 1945, he authored an optimistic article about the peaceful future potential of atomic energy. After WW2, Errera represented Belgium at both the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency. He was the son of Isabelle Errera.
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Östen Bergstrand
1873 - 1948 (75 years)
Carl Östen Emanuel Bergstrand was a Swedish astronomer. He was Professor of Astronomy at Uppsala University from 1909 until 1938 and from where he received his Ph.D. in astronomy in 1899 under Nils Christoffer Dunér. His early work was focused on astrometrics, particularly in the examination of photographic plates to measure stellar parallax. He used the orbital motions of the moons of Uranus to measure the rotation period and equatorial flattening of the planet. He also made studies of the solar corona, using photographs from the 1914 solar eclipse expedition.
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Axel Möller
1830 - 1896 (66 years)
Didrik Magnus Axel Möller was a Swedish astronomer. He matriculated as a student at Lund University in 1846, received his Ph.D. in 1853 and was Professor of Astronomy there from 1863 until 1895. He calculated the orbits of comets and asteroids. He notably calculated the orbit of the periodic comet 4P/Faye, as well as the perturbations of the asteroid 55 Pandora.
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Vladimir Arkadiev
1884 - 1953 (69 years)
Vladimir Konstantinovich Arkadiev was a Russian and Soviet physicist who studied magnetism and related phenomena. He was among the first to make use of the Meissner effect to levitate magnets as a test of superconductivity.
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Anders Spole
1630 - 1699 (69 years)
Anders Spole was a Swedish mathematician and astronomer. He was born at a farm in , the son of blacksmith Per Andersson and his wife Gunilla Persdotter. At the age of twelve he started studying at Jönköpings skola and was sent to the University of Greifswald in 1652. After three years of studies he continued at other universities in Prussia and Saxony, until his return to Barnarp in 1655, where he started preaching in the local church. He continued to study mathematics at Uppsala University, while at the same time being a tutor baron Sjöblad's sons. In 1663, he became a master craftsman of fireworks and the arts of navigation.
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Johannes Stöffler
1452 - 1531 (79 years)
Johannes Stöffler was a German mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, priest, maker of astronomical instruments and professor at the University of Tübingen. Life Johannes Stöffler was born on 10 December 1452, in Justingen on the Swabian Alb. Having received his basic education at the Blaubeuren monastery school, he registered at the newly founded University of Ingolstadt on 21 April 1472, where he was consequently promoted Baccalaureus in September 1473 and Magister in January 1476. After finishing his studies he obtained the parish of Justingen where he, besides his clerical obligations, c...
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Melville S. Green
1922 - 1979 (57 years)
Melville Saul Green was an American statistical physicist. He is known for the Green–Kubo relations. He was born in Jamaica, New York, and studied at Columbia University, where he was awarded M.A. in 1947, and Princeton University where he was awarded a Ph.D. in 1952. He became a faculty member at the University of Chicago from 1947 to 1951 and a research associate at the Institute of Fluid Dynamics and Applied Mathematics of the University of Maryland from 1951 to 1954. He was appointed head of the statistical physics section of the then National Bureau of Standards from 1954 to 1968. He wor...
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Robert Thalén
1827 - 1905 (78 years)
Tobias Robert Thalén Hon. FRSE was a Swedish physicist. He was awarded the Rumford Medal in 1884 for his spectroscopic researches. He was an expert on terrestrial magnetism and spectrum analysis. He gives his name to the crystalline mineral Thalenite.
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Adolf Wüllner
1835 - 1908 (73 years)
Adolf Wüllner was a German physicist. He studied physics at the universities of Bonn, Munich and Berlin, qualifying as a lecturer at the University of Marburg in 1858. In 1862 he became director of the vocational school in Aachen, and three years later taught classes in physics at the Poppelsdorf agricultural academy. In 1867 he was named an associate professor at the University of Bonn, and from 1869 onward, was a professor of physics at the Technical University of Aachen. In 1883–86 he served as academic rector.
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Joseph Howey
1901 - 1973 (72 years)
Joseph H. Howey was a physicist and academic administrator at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was the director of Georgia Tech's School of Physics for 28 years, from 1935 to 1963. Early life Howey received a Bachelor of Arts from the College of Wooster in 1923, and a PhD from Yale University in 1930. Howey was also a physicist in Firestone Tire and Rubber Corp's research laboratory from 1929 to 1931, after which he returned to Yale as an instructor.
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Dai Chuanzeng
1921 - 1990 (69 years)
Dai Chuanzeng was a Chinese nuclear physicist who made fundamental contributions to China's nuclear research and industry. Life Dai was born on 21 December 1921 in Dayan Village, Yin County of Ningbo, Zhejiang province. Dai graduated from the famous Xiaoshi High School in Ningbo. Dai studied physics and graduated in 1942 from the National Southwestern Associated University . Dai taught as an assistant at NSAU, Sun Yat-sen University and Tsinghua University. Dai topped the Sino-British Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program.
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Marino Ghetaldi
1568 - 1626 (58 years)
Marino Ghetaldi was a Ragusan scientist. A mathematician and physicist who studied in Italy, England and Belgium, his best results are mainly in physics, especially optics, and mathematics. He was one of the few students of François Viète and friend of Giovanni Camillo Glorioso.
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Mikhail Subbotin
1893 - 1966 (73 years)
Mikhail Fedorovich Subbotin was a Soviet mathematician and astronomer who calculated orbits of planets and comets. He worked on general properties of motion in the n-body problem. Biography and education Subbotin was born on 29 June 1893 in Ostrolenka, Russian Empire .
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Francesco Maurolico
1494 - 1575 (81 years)
Francesco Maurolico was a mathematician and astronomer from Sicily. He made contributions to the fields of geometry, optics, conics, mechanics, music, and astronomy. He edited the works of classical authors including Archimedes, Apollonius, Autolycus, Theodosius and Serenus. He also composed his own unique treatises on mathematics and mathematical science.
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