Search People Result | Academic Influence

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.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Physics,

#10151

Torsten Arndt

#10152

Frances Wick

1875 - 1941 (66 years)

Frances Gertrude Wick was an American physicist known for her studies on luminescence. Early life and education Wick was born on October 2, 1875, in Butler, Pennsylvania. Her father, Alfred Wick, was an oil producer, an innkeeper, and a store clerk. Together he and her mother, Sarah, had seven children. Wick earned her Bachelor's from Wilson College in 1897. After graduation Wick began teaching at the high school she had attended as a student. When preparing to teach a physics class, Wick became interested in physics. In 1904, she decided to leave her job teaching to study physics at Co...

#10153

Paul Kempf

1856 - 1920 (64 years)

Paul Friedrich Ferdinand Kempf was a German astronomer. In 1878 was awarded a doctorate in astronomy from the Humboldt University of Berlin with a thesis titled Untersuchungen über die Ptolemäische Theorie der Mondbewegung . On 1 July the same year he became an assistant at the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam.

#10154

David Gibb

1883 - 1946 (63 years)

David Gibb FRSE was a Scottish mathematician and astronomer. He was the first person to use the term numerical integration. Life Gibb was born in Methil near Leven, Fife on 31 October 1883, the eldest son of Robert Gibb, a salt manufacturer, and his wife Joanna. He attended Leven Public School then George Watsons College in Edinburgh . He studied mathematics and sciences at the University of Edinburgh graduating in 1906 with a MA/BSc. While a student he lodged with a Mr Flockhart at 3 West Preston Street, Edinburgh. In 1909 he began lecturing in mathematics at the University.

#10155

Neal H. Williams

1870 - 1956 (86 years)

Neal Hooker Williams was a physicist notable for the very first spectroscopic measurements at microwave frequencies. He carried this out with a magnetron and investigated the spectrum of gaseous ammonia together with his student Claud E. Cleeton. This formed the groundwork for the later inventions of the radar and the gas laser.

#10156

William Meikleham

1771 - 1846 (75 years)

William Meikleham LLD was Regius Professor of Astronomy at the University of Glasgow from 1799 to 1803. He resigned the Chair of Astronomy to become Professor of Natural Philosophy in 1803, a position he held until his death in 1846.

#10157

Erich Przybyllok

1880 - 1954 (74 years)

Erich Przybyllok was a German astronomer and physicist, who was a member of the scientific staff on Wilhelm Filchner's Second German Antarctic Expedition, 1911–13. After studies at Freiburg and receiving his doctorate in 1904, Przybyllock worked as a researcher at various observatories before joining Filchner's expedition. In 1921, after the First World War, he was appointed professor of astronomy at the University of Königsberg, holding the post until the university was destroyed by bombing in 1944. Afterwards he retired to Cologne.

#10158

Frank Hagar Bigelow

1851 - 1924 (73 years)

Frank Hagar Bigelow was an American scientist. Biography Bigelow's mother took an interest in astronomy, and her involvement caught his interest. Bigelow was educated at the primary and high school in Concord, in the Boston Latin School, Harvard College , and at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and entered orders. For some years he was assistant astronomer in the Argentine National Observatory in Cordoba. This service was interrupted for his theological studies, and for the short time after entering orders he was a rector in Natick, Massachusetts. Later he was ...

#10159

John Adelbert Parkhurst

John Adelbert Parkhurst

1861 - 1925 (64 years)

John Adelbert Parkhurst was an American astronomer. He was born in Dixon, Illinois, and attended the public schools in Marengo, IL and Wheaton College. He then attended Rose Polytechnic Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana, earning a B.Sc. in 1886. For the following two years he taught mathematics at the same school. He was the son of Sanford Britton Parkhurst and Jane Clarissa Hubbard. Source: George Parkhurst Increasings by Peter G. Parkhurst, p. 402. In 1888 he married Anna Greenleaf.

#10160

William Maxwell Reed

1871 - 1962 (91 years)

William Maxwell Reed was a pioneering U.S. author of illustrated science books for children. After schooling at Harvard, he taught astronomy at Harvard and Princeton University. Reed later went into the steel industry.

#10161

Frank C. Hoyt

1898 - 1980 (82 years)

Frank Clark Hoyt was an American physicist, regarded as one of the first theoretical physicists to come from the USA in the period that quantum mechanics was being developed. Biography He was born to Carrie Louise Stokes and Louis Phelps Hoyt, an organist. He went to Harvard School for Boys. At school, his primary interest was literature - he wanted to study Greek - but the path to science developed in his final year after taking chemistry and physics courses. He enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, starting in chemical engineering, moving towards pure chemistry before being influenced by his teachers towards physics.

#10162

Carl F. W. Peters

1844 - 1894 (50 years)

Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Peters was a German astronomer. His key work was on studies of chronometers and the effect of temperature and humidity on their accuracy. Peters was born in Pulkowo where his father, the astronomer Christian August Friedrich Peters worked at the observatory. The family moved to Königsberg in 1849 and later to Altona. He studied astronomy and mathematics at the Universities of Berlin, Kiel and Munich before obtaining a doctorate from the University of Göttingen with a thesis on the determination of the orbit of minor planet 87 Sylvia. He joined the Hamburg observatory in...

#10163

Jan Frederik Schouten

1910 - 1980 (70 years)

Jan Frederik Schouten was a Dutch physicist, and Professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology, known for his contributions to biophysics. Biography Born in Rotterdam as son of Jan Arnoldus Schouten, Schouten received his PhD cum laude in 1937 in Physics at the Utrecht University with a thesis entitled "Visuele meting van adaptatie en van de wederzijdse beïnvloeding van netvlieselementen" under supervision of Leonard Ornstein.

#10164

Vasily Shuleikin

Vasily Shuleikin

1895 - 1979 (84 years)

Vasily Vladimirovich Shuleikin was a Soviet scientist, mathematician and engineer. He made significant contributions to understanding of nonlinear wave phenomena, ocean acoustics and marine physics. His work on sea ice flows is considered foundational.

#10165

Cecil Reginald Burch

1901 - 1983 (82 years)

Cecil Reginald Burch, FRS was a British physicist and engineer. He was born in Leeds. He graduated from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1923 and began research at the Metropolitan-Vickers company in Trafford Park, Manchester. There he developed 'apiezon' oils which enabled high vacua to be achieved, making possible the coating of astronomical mirrors. In 1933 he was made Fellow of Optics at Imperial College London and in 1935 moved to University of Bristol as a research Fellow in the Department of Physics. There he concentrated on the development of microscopy and telescopy.

#10166

John Jackson

1887 - 1958 (71 years)

John Jackson was a Scottish astronomer. He was awarded The Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for his work on stellar parallaxes and star positions. Early life and education Born on 11 February 1887 at Mossvale Street, Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, John Jackson was educated at Paisley Grammar School, studying a range of subjects including the sciences and French and German, but not Latin or Greek, which were compulsory if he intended to sit the entrance examinations for university.

#10167

Georg Heinrich Thiessen

Georg Heinrich Thiessen

1914 - 1961 (47 years)

Georg Heinrich Thiessen was a German astronomer. After graduating, Georg Thiessen studied physics and mathematics and received his doctorate in 1940 under Richard Becker at Göttingen Georg August University. He joined the Fraunhofer Institute of the Institute for High Frequency Research in Freiburg in Breisgau in 1943, where he met Karl-Otto Kiepenheuer. In January 1945 he was transferred to the observatory in Hamburg-Bergedorf, where he was employed as assistant and later as 'Observator' from 1946 to 1953. In 1953 he habilitated on the subject of magnetic fields of the sun, he believed in the existence of a global solar magnetic field.

#10168

Gustaf Ising

1883 - 1960 (77 years)

Gustaf Adolf Ising was a Swedish metrologist, geophysicist, and accelerator physicist. Biography Ising earned his first academic degree at Uppsala University in 1903 and continued studying at Stockholm University receiving his Ph.D. in 1919, and receiving an honorary professor title in 1934.

#10169

Louis Beaufort Stewart

1861 - 1937 (76 years)

Louis Beaufort Stewart was a Canadian astronomer, civil engineer and academic. He served as the president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada from 1912 to 1913, and played a key role in preserving the Toronto Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory building at the University of Toronto.

#10170

Albert Rowe

1898 - 1976 (78 years)

Albert Percival Rowe, CBE , often known as Jimmy Rowe or A. P. Rowe, was a radar pioneer and university vice-chancellor. A British physicist and senior research administrator, he played a major role in the development of radar before and during World War II.

#10171

Harry Yandell Benedict

1869 - 1937 (68 years)

Harry Yandell Benedict was an American astronomer and mathematician. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Joseph and Adele Benedict on November 14, 1869. In 1877, Benedict's brother, Carl, mother, and maternal grandfather, H. J. Peters, moved to Texas, onto land acquired by his great-grandfather, S. W. Peters. The family library contained one thousand books. Other than eight months of formal schooling in the cities of Graham and Weatherford, H. Y. Benedict was homeschooled by his mother. Benedict studied civil engineering at the University of Texas at Austin from 1889 to 1892, and completed a master's degree in 1893.

#10172

Alfred Ewing

1855 - 1935 (80 years)

Sir James Alfred Ewing MInstitCE was a Scottish physicist and engineer, best known for his work on the magnetic properties of metals and, in particular, for his discovery of, and coinage of the word, hysteresis.

#10173

Carl Anton Bjerknes

Carl Anton Bjerknes

1825 - 1903 (78 years)

Carl Anton Bjerknes was a Norwegian mathematician and physicist. Bjerknes' earlier work was in pure mathematics, but he is principally known for his studies in hydrodynamics. Biography Carl Anton Bjerknes was born in Oslo, Norway. His father was Abraham Isaksen Bjerknes and his mother Elen Birgitte Holmen. Bjerknes studied mining at the University of Oslo, and after that mathematics at the University of Göttingen and the University of Paris. In 1866 he held a chair for applied mathematics and in 1869 for mathematics. Over a fifty-year time period, Bjerknes taught mathematics at the Universit...

#10174

Adam Anderson

1783 - 1846 (63 years)

Adam Anderson AM LLD was a Scottish physicist and encyclopedist. He was the rector of Perth Academy from 1811 to 1839, and Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy 1839 to 1846 at St Andrews University.

#10175

Stuart C. Gordon

#10176

Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi

1135 - 1213 (78 years)

Sharaf al-Dīn al-Muẓaffar ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Muẓaffar al-Ṭūsī known more often as Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī or Sharaf ad-Dīn aṭ-Ṭūsī, was an Iranian mathematician and astronomer of the Islamic Golden Age .

#10177

Allyne L. Merrill

1863 - 1941 (78 years)

Allyne L. Merrill was an American physicist who served as faculty secretary of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1906 to June 1934. In 1885 Merrill earned his Bachelor of Science in physics. In 1890 he played a key role in Samuel Cate Prescott's enrolment in MIT. At the time, Merrill was an instructor in mechanism at MIT. He was promoted to instructor in 1890, then assistant professor in 1903 and eventually professor during his tenure. Merrill was elected as faculty secretary in 1906 and served until 1934. Merrill and Prescott were part of the induction ceremony of Karl Taylor C...

#10178

William Hallock

1857 - 1913 (56 years)

William Hallock, Ph. D., D.Pharm. was an American physicist, born at Milton, New York. He graduated from Columbia College in 1879, and received the degree of Ph.D. from Würzburg, German Empire in 1881.

#10179

Nina Vedeneyeva

Nina Vedeneyeva

1882 - 1955 (73 years)

Nina Yevgenyevna Vedeneyeva was a physicist involved in the study of mineral crystals and their coloration. Heading numerous departments at such institutions as the All-USSR Institute of Mineral Resources, the Institute of Geological Sciences and the Institute of Crystallography, she conducted research into color variants of clay minerals and classifying clays which occurred in organic dyes. She was noted for development and design of instruments to improve the methods of optical crystallography. She was the last partner-muse of the poet Sophia Parnok and was awarded the Stalin Prize and Orde...

#10180

Albrecht Altma

1897 - 1969 (72 years)

Albrecht Altma was an Estonian physicist. In 1927, he graduated from University of Tartu in physics. In 1938, he defended his doctoral thesis at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. 1944–1948, he was the rector of Tallinn Polytechnical Institute.

#10181

James Gordon MacGregor

1852 - 1913 (61 years)

James Gordon MacGregor, FRS FRSE LLD was a Canadian physicist. He was described as "brilliant, energetic, nervous, impatient", and not suffering fools gladly. Life MacGregor was born in Halifax in Nova Scotia on 31 March 1852, the son of Rev Peter Gordon MacGregor. He was educated there at the Free Church Academy in Halifax going on to study at Dalhousie University, where he graduated with an MA. He left Nova Scotia to pursue postgraduate studies at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Leipzig and the University of London.

#10182

Leo Graetz

1856 - 1941 (85 years)

Leo Graetz was a German physicist. He was born in Breslau, Germany, and was the son of historian Heinrich Graetz. Graetz was one of the first to investigate the propagation of electromagnetic energy. The Graetz number , a dimensionless number describing heat flow, is named after him. Also sometimes known by his name is the diode bridge rectifier circuit that was invented by Polish electrotechnician Karol Pollak in 1896 and that was independently invented and published by Leo Graetz in 1897.

#10183

John McCowan

1863 - 1900 (37 years)

John McCowan was a Scottish physicist born in Bridge of Allan, near Stirling, Scotland, to tailor William McCowan and his wife Mary McKay. He was educated at the University of Glasgow . He taught first at the Royal College of Science for Ireland from 1884 to 1888, and from then on at University College, Dundee. McCowan was a pioneer in the study of the fluid mechanics and physics behind surfing, and his papers on wave theory are still being cited over a century later. His career was cut short due to heart issues, and he died at age 37.

#10184

Antonio Santucci

1550 - Present (476 years)

Antonio Santucci was an Italian astronomer, cosmographer, and scientific instrument maker. He was a reader in Mathematics at the University of Pisa during 1599–1612. Santucci was an astronomer and cosmographer to Grand Duke Ferdinand I and later Cosimo II . An attentive observer of comets, most notably that of 1582, he published in 1611 the first edition of Trattato delle comete, in which he argued that, contrary to the prevailing scientific opinion, comets were not atmospheric phenomena. The following year, he wrote Breve discorso sopra il trattato galileiano sulle galleggianti . He also au...

#10185

Attilio Colacevich

Attilio Colacevich

1906 - 1953 (47 years)

Attilio Colacevich was an Italian astronomer. Biography Colacevich was born in Fiume. He graduated in physics from the University of Florence in 1929, and in 1933 Giorgio Abetti hired him as assistant to the Arcetri Observatory. In 1934 he obtained a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation at the Lick Observatory carrying out research on spectroscopic binaries. In June 1948 he was appointed director of the Collurania astronomical observatory in Teramo and, a few months later, director of the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples. In 1949 he returned to America, first at the War...

#10186

Paul McNally

1890 - 1955 (65 years)

Paul A. McNally was an American astronomer, scientist, and Jesuit priest. He was also a Dean of the Georgetown University School of Medicine. Early life McNally was born on October 14, 1890, in Philadelphia. He entered to the Society of Jesus on August 12, 1908, and graduated from Woodstock College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1915 and a Master of Arts degree in 1917. From 1916 to 1920, McNally was a professor of mathematics at Boston College. In 1916, McNally and BC student Paul Gately revived the Boston College Eagles men's basketball team. McNally served as volunteer coach during the 1916–17 season, winning two of the team's five games.

#10187

Ottokar Tumlirz

1856 - 1928 (72 years)

Ottokar Tumlirz was an Austrian physicist. He received his education at the University of Prague, obtaining his doctorate with a thesis on the expansion of sound and light waves . At Prague he worked as an assistant to Ernst Mach in the institute of experimental physics. After serving as a lecturer for several years in Prague, he relocated to the University of Vienna in 1890 as an assistant to Joseph Stefan . During the following year he was appointed associate professor of theoretical physics at the University of Czernowitz, where in 1894 he attained the title of "full professor". From 1905 to 1925 he served as a professor at the University of Innsbruck.

#10188

Karapet Chobanyan

1927 - 1978 (51 years)

Karapet Chobanyan was an Armenian scientist and engineer who discovered the phenomenon of Low-Stress in mechanics and developed a new method of welding. Biography Karapet Chobanyan was born on February, 1927, as the first child of Armenuhi and Sirakan Chobanyan.

#10189

Walter Houser Brattain

Walter Houser Brattain

1902 - 1987 (85 years)

Walter Houser Brattain was an American physicist at Bell Labs who, along with fellow scientists John Bardeen and William Shockley, invented the point-contact transistor in December 1947. They shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention. Brattain devoted much of his life to research on surface states.

#10190

Robert Blair

1748 - 1828 (80 years)

Robert Blair FRSE was a Scottish astronomer. Life He was born in Garvald, East Lothian, the son of Rev Archibald Blair, the local minister. In 1773 he was apprenticed to Dr Francis Balfour, a naval surgeon, and served in the Royal Navy in the West Indies. On return to Scotland he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and qualified as a doctor in 1785.

#10191

Václav Láska

1862 - 1943 (81 years)

Václav Láska was a Czech astronomer, geophysicist, and mathematician. He was based mainly at Charles University, and was the founding director of the State Institute of Geophysics, which later became the Institute of Geophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

#10192

Horace M. Trent

1907 - 1964 (57 years)

Horace Maynard Trent was an American physicist best known for being part of the team that found that the crack of a bullwhip was actually a sonic boom. He is also the author of the currently accepted force-current analogy in physics known as the Trent analogy.

#10193

Michael Neander

1529 - 1581 (52 years)

Michael Neander was a German teacher, mathematician, medical academic, and astronomer. He was born in Joachimsthal, Bohemia, and was educated at the University of Wittenberg, receiving his B.A. in 1549 and M.A. in 1550.

#10194

Peter Kristian Prytz

1851 - 1929 (78 years)

Peter Kristian Prytz was a Danish physicist. He was a professor at the Technical University of Denmark from 1894 to 1921. Early life and education Prytz was born on 26 February 1851 in Årup at Torslev, the son of parish priest Peter Christian Prytz and Anna Eline Garben . He earned a degree in physics from the University of Copenhagen in 1875 and spent the next ten years teaching at schools in Copenhagen.

#10195

Konstanty Zakrzewski

Konstanty Zakrzewski

1876 - 1948 (72 years)

Konstanty Zakrzewski was a Polish physicist. He was a professor of the Jagiellonian University and professor of the Lviv University , member of the Polish Academy of Learning . Zakrzewski was a researcher of electron theory of metals, optics, and dielectric properties of substances. He was an initiator of cosmic ray research in Poland .

#10196

Nikolay Buchholtz

1881 - 1943 (62 years)

Nikolay Nikolayevich Buchholtz was a Soviet and Russian scientist and a specialist in the field of analytical mechanics. Major-General of the Engineering and Aviation Service, Professor, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. Laureate of Stalin Prize.

#10197

William of Saint-Cloud

1300 - 1301 (1 years)

William of Saint-Cloud is a French astronomer in the late thirteenth century. He is known for his Almanac prepared around 1292, dedicated to Marie of Brabant, and translated for Joan of Navarre. This almanac, one of the rare witness of astronomical observations at the end of the High Middle Ages, contains ephemeris of the sun, moon and planets and advocates also the use of the camera obscura to observe solar eclipses.

#10198

Franz Richarz

1860 - 1920 (60 years)

Franz Richarz was a German physicist. His father, also named Franz Richarz , was a noted psychiatrist. He studied mathematics and physics at the universities of Berlin and Bonn, receiving his doctorate in 1884 with the dissertation Bildung von Ozon, Wasserstoffsuperoxyd und Ueberschwefelsäure bei der Electrolyse verdünnter Schwefelsäure . In 1888 he obtained his habilitation and worked as a lecturer of physics at the University of Bonn. In 1895 he succeeded Anton Oberbeck as professor of physics at the University of Greifswald, where he also served as director of the Physics Institute. In 1901 he relocated as a professor to the University of Marburg.

#10199

Paolo Straneo

1874 - 1968 (94 years)

Paolo Pietro Straneo was an Italian mathematical physicist. Biography Straneo studied at ETH Zurich, where he met and was a friend of Einstein. In 1897 he received his Ph.D. in natural philosophy of the University of Zurich. From 1899 he was a libero docente in mathematical physics and for some years he was a docente incaricato in mathematical physics at the University of Turin. After a period of working as a libero professionista , in 1924 he again became a libero docente and was put in charge of mathematical physics at the University of Genoa. There, from 1925 he was a professor ordinari...

#10200

Louis Winslow Austin

Louis Winslow Austin

1867 - 1932 (65 years)

Louis Winslow Austin was an American physicist known for his research on long-range radio transmissions. Austin was born in Orwell, Vermont, and educated at Middlebury College and the University of Strasbourg , from which he received a Ph.D. in 1893. From 1893-1901, he taught physics as an instructor and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, then returned to Germany for two years at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin where he performed research on hot gases.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions