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,
#10051
Olof Hiorter
1696 - 1750 (54 years)
Olof Petrus Hiorter was a Swedish astronomer. After studying in the Netherlands, he was appointed lecturer at the University of Uppsala in 1732 to fill the vacant position of Anders Celsius then on his grand tour of European observatories. From 1737 onwards, he studied together with Celsius the aurora phenomenon and a number of astronomy subjects . Hiorter was the first to connect the aurora to magnetic disturbances. Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin was his pupil.
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Henry Crew
1859 - 1953 (94 years)
Henry Crew was an American physicist and astronomer. Born in Richmond, Ohio, the son of William H. Crew and Deborah Ann, he attended high school in Wilmington, Ohio then matriculated to Princeton University in 1878. He graduated with an A.B. in physics 1882 and was awarded a graduate fellowship at the university for a year, which he spent at the Princeton laboratory. In 1883 he traveled for a semester overseas to study physics in Berlin, returning in 1884 to attend graduate school at the Johns Hopkins University. Three years later he was awarded a Ph.D. in physics with a thesis on "Doppler De...
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Gunther K. Wertheim
#10054
Nicolaas Hartsoeker
1656 - 1725 (69 years)
Nicolaas Hartsoeker was a Dutch mathematician and physicist who invented the screw-barrel simple microscope . Biography He was the son of Anna van der Meij and Christiaan Hartsoeker , a Remonstrant minister in Moordrecht near Gouda. His father took the family to Alkmaar in 1661 and finally to Rotterdam in 1669. Nicolaas started to make a living as a lens maker in Rotterdam, and was instructed in optics by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. In 1674, he and a fellow student, assisted by Van Leeuwenhoek, were the first to observe semen, a situation that would later lead to a priority dispute between Hart...
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Pierre Puiseux
1855 - 1928 (73 years)
Pierre Henri Puiseux was a French astronomer. Born in Paris, son of Victor Puiseux, he was educated at the École Normale Supérieure before starting work as an astronomer at the Paris Observatory in 1885.
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Julius Wilhelm Gintl
1804 - 1883 (79 years)
Julius Wilhelm Gintl was an Austrian physicist. Biography Gintl was born in 1804 in Prague and attended university in his hometown. He was chair of physics at Vienna University and later at Gratz. In 1847, the Austrian government commissioned him to manage the introduction of the electrical telegraph.
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Mahesh Chandra Nyayratna Bhattacharyya
1836 - 1906 (70 years)
Mahamahopadhyay Pandit Mahesh Chandra Nyayratna Bhattacharyya was an Indian scholar of Sanskrit, and the principal of the Sanskrit College between 1876 and 1895. A friend and colleague of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, he played an important role in the Bengal Renaissance. He was one of the most eminent Bengalis in Kolkata of the nineteenth century.
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Friedrich Kottler
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
Friedrich Kottler was an Austrian theoretical physicist. He was a Privatdozent before he got a professorship in 1923 at the University of Vienna. Life In 1938, after the Anschluss, he lost his professorship due to his Jewish ancestry. With the help of Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli, he immigrated to America from his hometown of Vienna, Austria, settling in Rochester, New York, where he worked at the Eastman Kodak Research Laboratory. He died in Rochester, New York in 1965. Besides optics, Kottler's professional pursuits focused on the theory of relativity.
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Johann Samuel Traugott Gehler
1751 - 1795 (44 years)
Johann Samuel Traugott Gehler was a German lawyer and physicist. He studied mathematics, natural sciences and law at the University of Leipzig, obtaining his habilitation for mathematics in 1776 and his law degree the following year. While a student, his influences included physicist Johann Heinrich Winckler. In 1783 he became a city councilman in Leipzig, and from 1786 served as an associate at the Oberhofgericht Leipzig. He is best remembered as the author of a popular dictionary of physical sciences, Physikalisches Wörterbuch, published from 1787 in six volumes. Decades later, the diction...
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Katherine Clerk Maxwell
1824 - 1886 (62 years)
Katherine Mary Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish physical scientist best known for her observations which supported and contributed to the discoveries of her husband, James Clerk Maxwell. Most notable of these are her involvement with his colour vision and viscosity of gases experiments. She was born Katherine Dewar in 1824 in Glasgow and married Clerk Maxwell in 1858.
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Alexander McAulay
1863 - 1931 (68 years)
Alexander McAulay was the first professor of mathematics and physics at the University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania. He was also a proponent of dual quaternions, which he termed "octonions" or "Clifford biquaternions".
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Asen Zlatarov
1885 - 1936 (51 years)
Asen Zlatarov was a Bulgarian biochemist, writer and social activist. Life He was born in Haskovo on 4 February 1885. He studied chemistry at the University of Geneva . In 1908 he became a Ph.D. in Chemistry and Physics at Grenoble University. He taught in Plovdiv, and in Munich . He edited the magazines "Chemistry and Industry" and "Nature and Science" and the libraries "Naturfilosophical Reading" and "Science and Life".
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Theodor von Oppolzer
1841 - 1886 (45 years)
Theodor von Oppolzer was an Austrian astronomer and mathematician of Bohemian origin. The son of the physician Johann Ritter von Oppolzer, Theodor was born in Prague. He completed his graduate studies in medicine at the University of Vienna, gaining a Ph.D. in 1865. He also owned a private observatory. He began teaching theoretical astronomy and geodesics at the University of Vienna in 1866. By 1875 he was appointed a professor. In 1873 he became the director of the Austrian Geodetic Survey, and in 1886 he was elected president of the International Geodetic Association.
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Carl Pulfrich
1858 - 1927 (69 years)
Carl P. Pulfrich was a German physicist, noted for advancements in optics made as a researcher for the Carl Zeiss company in Jena around 1880, and for documenting the Pulfrich effect, a psycho-optical phenomenon that can be used to create a type of 3-D visual effect. Carl Pulfrich was the brother-in-law of Heinrich Hertz.
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Robert Strutt, 4th Baron Rayleigh
1875 - 1947 (72 years)
Robert John Strutt, 4th Baron Rayleigh was a British peer and physicist. He discovered "active nitrogen" and was the first to distinguish the glow of the night sky. Early life and education Strutt was born at Terling Place, the family home near Witham, Essex, the eldest son of John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh and his wife Evelyn Georgiana Mary . He was thus a nephew of Arthur Balfour and of Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick. He was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he initially read mathematics, but changed after two terms to Natural Sciences. He became a research student in physics at the Cavendish Laboratory under J.
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Johann Georg Tralles
1763 - 1822 (59 years)
Johann Georg Tralles was a German mathematician and physicist. Image Bordeaux-Paris 1911 - Jules Masselis.jpg N He was born in Hamburg, Germany and was educated at the University of Göttingen beginning in 1783. He became a professor at the University of Bern in 1785. In 1810, he became a professor of mathematics at the University of Berlin.
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Christian Horrebow
1718 - 1776 (58 years)
Christian Pedersen Horrebow was a Danish astronomer of the 18th century. He was a son of Peder Horrebow, whom he succeeded as director of the observatory associated with the University of Copenhagen. He was himself succeeded by Thomas Bugge.
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Jean-Daniel Colladon
1802 - 1893 (91 years)
Jean-Daniel Colladon was a Swiss physicist. Colladon studied law but then worked in the laboratories of Ampère and Fourier. He received an Académie des Sciences award with his friend Charles Sturm for their measurement of the speed of sound and the breaking up of water jetss. Stymied by the lack of a sight of the water jet provided to the audience, he used a tube to collect and pipe sunlight to the lecture table. The light was trapped by the total internal reflection of the tube until the water jet, upon which edge the light incidented at a glancing angle, broke up and carried the light in a curved flow.
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Albertus Antonie Nijland
1868 - 1936 (68 years)
Albertus Antonie Nijland was a Dutch astronomer. He was professor of astronomy at the Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, and served as director of the Sterrewacht Sonnenborgh of the university. Nijland was born in Utrecht. In 1901 he participated in a Dutch solar eclipse expedition to Karang Sago, Sumatra.
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Johann Schweigger
1779 - 1857 (78 years)
Johann Salomo Christoph Schweigger was a German chemist, physicist, and professor of mathematics born in Erlangen. J.S.C.Schweigger was the son of Friedrich Christian Lorenz Schweigger, professor of theologie in Erlangen . He studied philosophy in Erlangen. His PhD involved the Homeric Question revived at that time by Friedrich August Wolf. Johann Tobias Mayer, Georg Friedrich Hildebrandt and Karl Christian von Langsdorf convinced him to switch to physics and chemistry and he lectured on this subjects in Erlangen until 1803 before taking a position as schoolteacher in Bayreuth and in 1811 in Nuremberg.
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G. W. Pierce
1872 - 1956 (84 years)
George Washington Pierce was an American physicist. He was a professor of physics at Harvard University and inventor in the development of electronic telecommunications. The son of a Texas cattle rancher, he distinguished himself in school at Taylor and at the University of Texas before beginning his enduring relationship with Harvard in 1898. He wrote three innovative texts, many learned papers, and was assigned 53 patents. The most notable is the single-stage crystal oscillator circuit, which became the touchstone of the electronics communication art. Süsskind says that he was "an exceeding...
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John S. Paraskevopoulos
1889 - 1951 (62 years)
John Stefanos Paraskevopoulos also known as John Paras, was a Greek and South African astronomer. He was born in Piraeus, Greece and graduated from the University of Athens, where he obtained his PhD in physics in 1910, under the supervision of Timoleon A. Argyropoulos. His thesis was entitled "Variability in absorption spectra". He served in the Greek army during the Balkan Wars and World War I.
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Oskar Emil Meyer
1834 - 1909 (75 years)
Oskar Emil Meyer was a German physicist best known for his studies on the viscosity of gases. He was a younger brother to chemist Lothar von Meyer. Biography From 1854 he studied sciences at the universities of Heidelberg, Zurich and Königsberg, where he was a student of Franz Ernst Neumann. In 1860 he received his doctorate with a dissertation on the friction between two liquids, titled De mutua duorum fluidorum frictione. In 1864 he succeeded Rudolf Lipschitz as an associate professor at the University of Breslau — teaching classes in mathematics and mathematical physics. During the followi...
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Vojtěch Šafařík
1829 - 1902 (73 years)
Vojtěch Šafařík was a Czech chemist, specialising in inorganic chemistry. Šafařík was the son of Pavel Jozef Šafárik, a Slovak philologist and historian. The crater Šafařík on the Moon is named after him, and so is the minor planet 8336 Šafařík .
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Francesco Rossetti
1833 - 1885 (52 years)
Francesco Rossetti was a notable Italian experimental physicist. Biography Son of Giovanni Battista, Rossetti started his education in his natal town Trento. He then attended the University of Padova and, from 1854 to 1857, the University of Vienna, where he heard classes in mathematics, chemistry and physics, and graduated in physics and mathematics. His advisor was Andreas von Ettingshausen. Among his fellow students there were Josef Stefan and Ernst Mach.
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Adolphe Hirsch
1830 - 1901 (71 years)
Adolphe Hirsch was a German born, Swiss astronomer and geodesist. Life and career Adolph Hirsch was born in Halberstadt. He studied astronomy at the universities of Heidelberg and Vienna. In the spring of 1848 , Hirsch, as president of the "Democratic Student Association" in Heidelberg, was committed to the radical ideas of introducing a republic in the Grand Duchy of Baden. The association was subsequently banned. Now the entire student body reacted under the chairmanship of Alexander Spengler. As a result of the dispute between the students, the University of Heidelberg and the Grand Ducal Government, ⅔ of the Heidelberg students moved to Neustadt under the leadership of Adolph Hirsch .
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Jules Baillaud
1876 - 1960 (84 years)
Jules Baillaud was a French astronomer. Initially assistant astronomer in Lyon and at the Paris observatory: assistant astronomer until 1925, he went on as astronomer from 1925 to 1947. From 1937 to 1947 he was also the director of the Pic du Midi observatory and directed the Carte du Ciel from 1922 to 1947.
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Johannes Wilsing
1856 - 1943 (87 years)
Johannes Wilsing was a German astronomer. He was born in Berlin, where he was educated in addition to Göttingen. In 1880 he was awarded his Ph.D. from Humboldt-Universität of Berlin with a dissertation titled, Über den Einfluss von Luftdruck und Wärme auf die Pendelbewegung .
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Magnus Celsius
1621 - 1679 (58 years)
Magnus Celsius was a Swedish astronomer and mathematician, decipherer of the staveless runes. His grandson was Anders Celsius. He was the father of Olof Celsius, Nils Celsius and Johan Celsius.
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Werner Jacobi
1904 - 1985 (81 years)
Werner Jacobi was a German physicist and inventor. Life and work Jacobi studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Munich and then physics at the University of Munich. In his dissertation, initially supervised by Wilhelm Wien and after Wein's death by Eduard Rüchardt, he dealt with the charges of the mercury atoms in the canal jet . With this work he was awarded a Doctorate of Philosophy.
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Henri Buisson
1873 - 1944 (71 years)
Henri Buisson was a French physicist. Buisson and Charles Fabry discovered the ozone layer in 1913. Buisson was born on 15 July 1873 in Paris and died on 6 January 1944 in Marseille, at age 70.
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Robert Simpson Woodward
1849 - 1924 (75 years)
Robert Simpson Woodward was an American civil engineer, physicist and mathematician. Biography He was born at Rochester, Michigan, on July 21, 1849, to Lysander Woodward and Peninah A. Simpson. He graduated with a degree in civil engineering at the University of Michigan in 1872. He was appointed assistant engineer on the United States Lake Survey. In 1882 he became assistant astronomer for the United States Transit of Venus Commission. In 1884 he became astronomer to the United States Geological Survey, serving until 1890, when he was hired by Thomas Corwin Mendenhall as assistant in the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey.
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Abraham ibn Daud
1110 - 1180 (70 years)
Abraham ibn Daud was a Spanish-Jewish astronomer, historian and philosopher; born in Córdoba, Spain about 1110; who was said to have died in Toledo, Spain, a martyr about 1180. He is sometimes known by the abbreviation Rabad I or Ravad I. His maternal grandfather was Isaac Albalia . Some scholars believe he was the Arabic-into-Latin translator known as Avendauth.
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Philip Herbert Cowell
1870 - 1949 (79 years)
Philip Herbert Cowell FRS was a British astronomer. Philip Herbert Cowell was born in Calcutta, India on the 7 August 1870, and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. He became second chief assistant at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in 1896 and later became the Superintendent of HM Nautical Almanac Office between 1910 and 1930. He worked on celestial mechanics, and orbits of comets and minor planets in particular. He also carefully studied the discrepancy that then existed between the theory and observation of the position of the Moon.
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Pierre Prévost
1751 - 1839 (88 years)
#10086
Heinrich Mache
1876 - 1954 (78 years)
Heinrich Mache was an Austrian physicist. He won the Haitinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1915. Life Born in Prague, after his secondary school studies, Mache completed the first year of physics in Prague, among other things, heard lectures by Ernst Mach and in 1894 moved with his family to Vienna, where he continued his studies with Franz Serafin Exner and continued with Ludwig Boltzmann. He received his doctorate in 1898 working under Exner on the "experimental proof of electrostriction in gases" and worked as a photographic expert during 1900/1901 and participated in the astronomical expedition for the Vienna Academy to India.
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František Koláček
1851 - 1913 (62 years)
František Koláček was a Czech physicist. Koláček studied at the German gymnasium in Brno , then at the technical universities in Prague and Vienna. At the Charles University in Prague, under guidance of Ernst Mach, he obtained the doctoral decree in 1877. He worked as a teacher at the gymnasium in Brno and then in Prague . Only in 1891 was he named professor of mathematical physics at Charles university. During 1900 - 1902 he worked as a professor at the university in Brno but then returned to Prague.
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Henry Smith Pritchett
1857 - 1939 (82 years)
Henry Smith Pritchett was an American astronomer, university president and philanthropist. Biography Pritchett was born on April 16, 1857, in Fayette, Missouri, the son of Carr Waller Pritchett, Sr., and attended Pritchett College in Glasgow, Missouri, receiving an A.B. in 1875.
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Jakob Pöschl
1828 - 1907 (79 years)
Jakob Pöschl was an Austrian physicist and university teacher. Biography After graduating from Gymnasium Pöschl studied philosophy for two years at the University of Vienna. From 1846 to 1851 he studied at the Vienna Polytechnic Institute. He obtained permission to teach in Realschulen in mathematics and physics. From 1851 onwards he worked as a teacher, first in Vienna and later in Brno. In 1855 Pöschl was appointed first professor for experimental and technical physics at the Joanneum in Graz. In 1871–72 he was rector of the university. Pöschl retired in 1887 and was succeeded by Albert von Ettingshausen.
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Bjørn Trumpy
1900 - 1974 (74 years)
Bjørn Trumpy was a Norwegian physicist. He was born in Bergen. His research areas covered spectral physics, earth magnetism, cosmic radiation and nuclear physics. Trumpy was the first rector at the University of Bergen, from its establishment in 1948. He was decorated Commander of the Order of St. Olav in 1951.
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Johann Georg Hagen
1847 - 1930 (83 years)
Johann Georg Hagen was an Austrian Jesuit priest and astronomer. After serving as Director of the Georgetown University Observatory he was called to Rome by Pope Pius X in 1906 to be the first Jesuit director of the new Vatican Observatory. Father Hagen was also the spiritual director of Maria Elizabeth Hesselblad , who was baptized by him on August 15, 1902 and eventually was canonized on June 5, 2016 by Pope Francis.
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Hans Falkenhagen
1895 - 1971 (76 years)
Hans Falkenhagen was a German physicist and electrochemist best known for eponymous Debye–Falkenhagen effect. 1955 he became a regular member of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin and in 1962 a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
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John A. McClelland
1870 - 1920 (50 years)
John Alexander McClelland FRS was an Irish physicist known for pioneering work on the scattering of β rays, the conductivity of gases, and the mobility of ions. Biography McClelland was the son of William McClelland of Dunallis, Coleraine and received his education at Queen's College, Galway. In 1895 he received a fellowship from the Royal University of Ireland and spent 1896-1900 at Cavendish Laboratory, while pursuing a research degree at Cambridge.
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Sydney Samuel Hough
1870 - 1923 (53 years)
Sydney Samuel Hough FRS was a British applied mathematician and astronomer. Hough studied at Christ's Hospital and then obtained a scholarship to Cambridge. He graduated in 1892 B.A. and in 1896 M.A. from St John's College, Cambridge and was a Fellow there from 1895 to 1901. He was an assistant master at Winchester College in 1894.
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Johann Georg Liebknecht
1679 - 1749 (70 years)
Johann Georg Liebknecht was a German theologian and scientist. He was professor of mathematics and theology at the Ludoviciana in Giessen, Germany. Biography He was born the son of Michael Liebknecht, schoolmaster, of Wasungen, and his wife, Margarethe Turckin and was educated in the Gymnasium at Schleusingen and at Jena. He was awarded MA , BD and DD
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Arthur von Oettingen
1836 - 1920 (84 years)
Arthur Joachim von Oettingen was a Baltic German physicist and music theorist. He was the brother of theologian Alexander von Oettingen and ophthalmologist Georg von Oettingen . Biography He studied astronomy and physics at the University of Dorpat, and furthered his education of physics in Paris in the laboratories of Antoine César Becquerel and Henri Victor Régnault , and afterwards at Berlin in the laboratories of Heinrich Gustav Magnus , Johann Christian Poggendorff and Heinrich Wilhelm Dove .
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Konstantin Pokrovsky
1868 - 1944 (76 years)
Konstantin Dorimedontovich Pokrovsky was a Soviet astronomer, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, and Professor. He was a rector of the Perm Branch of the Imperial Petrograd University , and the first rector of Perm State University .
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Ludwig Lange
1863 - 1936 (73 years)
Ludwig Lange was a German physicist. Biography He was the son of the philologist and archaeologist Ludwig Lange and his wife Adelheide Blume. He studied mathematics, physics, and also psychology, epistemology, ethics at the University of Leipzig and the University of Gießen from 1882-1885. He was an assistant of Wilhelm Wundt from 1885-1887 and attained his Ph.D. in 1886. He worked for many years as a Privatdozent, and in the field of photography. From 1887 he exhibited growing symptoms of a nervous disease. In 1936 he died in a psychiatric hospital in Weinsberg.
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Gregory Chioniades
1240 - 1320 (80 years)
Gregory Chioniades was a Byzantine Greek astronomer. He traveled to Persia, where he learned Persian mathematical and astronomical science, which he introduced into Byzantium upon his return from Persia and founded an astronomical academy at Trebizond. Choniades also served as Orthodox bishop in Tabriz.
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Priscilla Fairfield Bok
1896 - 1975 (79 years)
Priscilla Fairfield Bok was an American astronomer and the wife of Dutch-born astronomer Bart Bok, Director of Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia and later of Steward Observatory in Arizona, US. Their harmonious marriage accompanied the four decades of their close scientific collaboration, in which "it is difficult and pointless to separate his achievements from hers". They co-authored a number of academic papers on star clusters, stellar magnitudess, and the structure of the Milky Way galaxy. The Boks displayed great mutual enthusiasm for explaining astronomy to the public: described as ...
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