The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Physics,
#10201
Ralph H. Fowler
1889 - 1944 (55 years)
Sir Ralph Howard Fowler was a British physicist and astronomer and physical chemist. Education Fowler was born at Roydon, Essex, on 17 January 1889 to Howard Fowler, from Burnham, Somerset, and Frances Eva, daughter of George Dewhurst, a cotton merchant from Manchester. He was initially educated at home, going on to attend Evans' preparatory school at Horris Hill and Winchester College. He won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge and studied mathematics, becoming a wrangler in Part II of the Mathematical Tripos.
Go to Profile#10202
Norman Feather
1904 - 1978 (74 years)
Norman Feather FRS FRSE PRSE , was an English nuclear physicist. Feather and Egon Bretscher were working at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge in 1940, when they proposed that the 239 isotope of element 94 would be better able to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. This research, a breakthrough, was part of the Tube Alloys project, the secret British project during World War II to develop nuclear weapons.
Go to Profile#10203
Edward Condon
1902 - 1974 (72 years)
Edward Uhler Condon was an American nuclear physicist, a pioneer in quantum mechanics, and a participant during World War II in the development of radar and, very briefly, of nuclear weapons as part of the Manhattan Project. The Franck–Condon principle and the Slater–Condon rules are co-named after him.
Go to Profile#10204
William Houlder Zachariasen
1906 - 1980 (74 years)
William Houlder Zachariasen , more often known as W. H. Zachariasen, was a Norwegian-American physicist, specializing in X-ray crystallography and famous for his work on the structure of glass. Background Zachariasen was born in Langesund at Bamble in Telemark, Norway. He entered the University of Oslo in 1923, where he studied in the Mineralogical Institute. Zachariasen published his first article in 1925 when he was 19 years old, after having presented the contents of the article to the Norwegian Academy of Sciences in the preceding year. Over a span of 55 years he published over 200 scientific papers, many of which he was the sole author.
Go to Profile#10205
Richard C. Tolman
1881 - 1948 (67 years)
Richard Chace Tolman was an American mathematical physicist and physical chemist who made many contributions to statistical mechanics. He also made important contributions to theoretical cosmology in the years soon after Einstein's discovery of general relativity. He was a professor of physical chemistry and mathematical physics at the California Institute of Technology .
Go to Profile#10206
Erwin Schrödinger
1887 - 1961 (74 years)
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger , sometimes written as or , was a Nobel Prize–winning Austrian and naturalized Irish physicist who developed fundamental results in quantum theory. In particular, he is recognized for postulating the Schrödinger equation, an equation that provides a way to calculate the wave function of a system and how it changes dynamically in time. He coined the term "quantum entanglement", and was the earliest to discuss it, doing so in 1932.
Go to Profile#10207
John Hasbrouck Van Vleck
1899 - 1980 (81 years)
John Hasbrouck Van Vleck was an American physicist and mathematician. He was co-awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977, for his contributions to the understanding of the behavior of electronic magnetism in solids.
Go to Profile#10208
Alexey A. Petrov
Alexey A Petrov is an American physicist known for his theoretical research in the area of physics of heavy quarks. Petrov is a USC Endowed Chair in Physics and the chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of South Carolina. Previously he was a professor of physics at Wayne State University. He is the first particle theorist in the State of Michigan to receive National Science Foundation's CAREER award
Go to Profile#10209
Emilio Segrè
1905 - 1989 (84 years)
Emilio Gino Segrè was an Italian-born American physicist and Nobel laureate, who discovered the elements technetium and astatine, and the antiproton, a subatomic antiparticle, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1959 along with Owen Chamberlain.
Go to Profile#10210
Robert Karplus
1927 - 1990 (63 years)
Robert Karplus was a theoretical physicist and leader in the field of science education. Early life Robert Karplus was born in Vienna, where he lived until the German occupation of Austria in 1938. He emigrated with his mother and brother to escape the Anschluss. After a six-month stay in Switzerland, the family moved to the United States and settled in the Boston area. He entered Harvard University in 1943 and completed his Ph.D at the age of twenty-one. His thesis under E. Bright Wilson was on microwave spectroscopy and included both experimental and theoretical work. He was recognized by t...
Go to Profile#10211
Leo Goldberg
1913 - 1987 (74 years)
Leopold Goldberg was an American astronomer who held professorships at Harvard and the University of Michigan and the directorships of several major observatories. He was president of both the International Astronomical Union and the American Astronomical Society. His research focused on solar physics and the application of atomic physics to astronomy, and he led many of the early efforts to study the Sun from space telescopes.
Go to Profile#10212
François Peeters
François M. Peeters is a Belgian physicist. Peeters obtained his doctorate at the University of Antwerp and completed postdoctoral research at Bell Laboratories and Bellcore. He subsequently returned to Belgium and joined the Antwerp faculty. In 2005, Peeters was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society, which recognized him "[f]or his sustained, important contributions to theoretical solid state physics, in particular to the areas of mesoscopic superconductivity and nanostructured semiconductors." Peeters' election as a member of Academia Europaea took place in 2010. In 2020, Peeters...
Go to Profile#10213
Josef Hopmann
1890 - 1975 (85 years)
Josef Hopmann was a German astronomer. He was born in Berlin and received his education at universities in Bonn and Berlin, then became an assistant at Bonn Observatory in 1914. In 1930 he became a full professor and was appointed director of the Leipzig Observatory and Vienna Observatory. Between 1918 and 1974 he published nearly 100 scientific papers. In 1931–32, he and Heribert Schneller discovered that Zeta Aurigae is an eclipsing binary.
Go to Profile#10214
Matvei Bronstein
1906 - 1938 (32 years)
Matvei Petrovich Bronstein was a Soviet theoretical physicist, a pioneer of quantum gravity, author of works in astrophysics, semiconductors, quantum electrodynamics and cosmology, as well as of a number of books in popular science for children.
Go to Profile#10215
André Lagarrigue
1924 - 1975 (51 years)
André Lagarrigue was a French particle physicist. Being the initiator of the Gargamelle experiment at CERN, his work was of paramount importance in the discovery of neutral currents — the first experimental indication of the existence of the Z0 boson. This major discovery was a step towards verification of the electroweak theory, today a pillar of the Standard Model.
Go to Profile#10216
Mark Zemansky
1900 - 1981 (81 years)
Mark Waldo Zemansky was an American physicist. He was a professor of physics at the City College of New York for decades and is best known for co-authoring University Physics, an introductory physics textbook, with Francis Sears. The book, first published in 1949, is often referred to as "Sears and Zemansky", although Hugh Young became a coauthor in 1973.
Go to Profile#10217
Arthur Wehnelt
1871 - 1944 (73 years)
Arthur Rudolph Berthold Wehnelt was a German physicist, noted for important contributions in the fields of X-ray physics, gas discharges and electron emission. Life Wehnelt's parents returned to Germany from Brazil when he was still a boy. He studied physics at the Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg, and from 1893 to 1897 at the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Berlin. He received his PhD in 1898 in Erlangen. He taught as a lecturer from 1901 and associate professor of physics from 1904 at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg. He moved again in 1906 to the University of Berlin, where he taught until his retirement in 1937 as a professor and research.
Go to Profile#10218
Richard Laub
1900 - Present (126 years)
Richard S. Laub is a scientist from the United States. He is curator of geology at the Buffalo Museum of Science, and directs excavations at the Hiscock Site in Byron, New York. His work includes development of the hypothesis that tuberculosis led to the extinction of the mastodon.
Go to Profile#10219
Vladimir Fock
1898 - 1974 (76 years)
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Fock was a Soviet physicist, who did foundational work on quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. Biography He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 1922 he graduated from Petrograd University, then continued postgraduate studies there. He became a professor there in 1932. In 1919–1923 and 1928–1941 he collaborated with the Vavilov State Optical Institute, in 1924–1936 with the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology, in 1934–1941 and 1944–1953 with the Lebedev Physical Institute.
Go to Profile#10220
John Cunningham McLennan
1867 - 1935 (68 years)
Sir John Cunningham McLennan, was a Canadian physicist. Born in Ingersoll, Ontario, the son of David McLennan and Barbara Cunningham, he was the director of the physics laboratory at the University of Toronto from 1906 until 1932.
Go to Profile#10221
George R. Harrison
1898 - 1979 (81 years)
George Russell Harrison was an American physicist. Harrison became professor of experimental physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1930, and was appointed the school's dean of science in 1942; he also headed MIT's spectroscopy laboratory. During World War II, he was chief of the optics division of the National Defense Research Committee, and later head of the Office of Field Service of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Harrison was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1931. He served as president of the Optical Society of America from 1945–46 and was awarded the Frederic Ives Medal in 1949.
Go to Profile#10222
Lois Tripp Slocum
1899 - 1951 (52 years)
Lois Tripp Slocum was an American astronomer. She taught astronomy at Wellesley College, Smith College, and Wilson College during her career. Early life Lois Tripp Slocum was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the daughter of Edward Manchester Slocum and Eleanor Victoria Tripp Slocum. She graduated from Smith College in 1921, adding a master's degree in 1924. She held a Lick Observatory fellowship, and earned a Ph.D. at the University of California in 1930, completing a dissertation titled "A study of color indices of faint stars in five selected areas in the Milky Way" under advisor Robert J.
Go to Profile#10223
Banesh Hoffmann
1906 - 1986 (80 years)
Banesh Hoffmann was a British mathematician and physicist known for his association with Albert Einstein. Life Banesh Hoffmann was born in Richmond, Surrey, on 6 September 1906. He studied mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Oxford, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and went on to earn his doctorate at Princeton University.
Go to Profile#10224
Max Wien
1866 - 1938 (72 years)
Max Karl Werner Wien was a German physicist and the director of the Institute of Physics at the University of Jena. He was born in Königsberg, Prussia , the son of the co-owner of the well-known Castell grain company, Otto Wien. He was a cousin of Nobel laureate Wilhelm Wien.
Go to Profile#10225
Oskar Hagen
1888 - 1957 (69 years)
Oskar Hagen was a German art historian. While lecturing at the University of Göttingen from 1918 to 1925, Hagen helped establish the Göttingen International Handel Festival. He established the revival of Handel operas in Germany, beginning with his heavily-edited version of Rodelinda in 1920. He later moved to the United States to be professor at the University of Wisconsin, where he founded the department of Art History. In addition to his work as an art historian, Hagen also composed original music. Hagen is the father of actress and drama teacher Uta Hagen.
Go to Profile#10226
Richard Glazebrook
1854 - 1935 (81 years)
Sir Richard Tetley Glazebrook was an English physicist. Education and early career Glazebrook was born in West Derby, Liverpool, Lancashire, the son of a surgeon. He was educated at Dulwich College until 1870, Liverpool College from 1870 to 1872, and Trinity College, Cambridge, from which he graduated in Mathematics in 1876 and of which he was elected a fellow in 1877. He studied physics under James Clerk Maxwell and Lord Rayleigh at the new Cavendish Laboratory and, in 1880, was appointed a demonstrator at the laboratory.
Go to Profile#10227
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.
Go to Profile#10228
Max Krook
1913 - 1985 (72 years)
Max Krook was an American mathematician and astrophysicist. Krook was born in Standerton, South Africa, the son of Pesach Israel Krook and Leah Krook. An undergraduate at the University of the Witwatersrand, Krook received a doctorate in mathematics from Cambridge University in England in 1938 under the supervision of Arthur Eddington. He was subsequently recruited to Birmingham University by Rudolf Peierls.
Go to Profile#10229
Arthur Kutscher
1878 - 1960 (82 years)
Arthur Kutscher was a German historian of literature and researcher in drama. Together with Max Herrmann he can be seen as a founding father of theatre studies in Germany. He was a professor at Munich University, where he taught a famous seminar in theatre history. Kutscher was a friend of the iconoclastic dramatist and cabaret-star Frank Wedekind. His work influenced many playwrights, poets, and directors. His students included Bertolt Brecht , Erwin Piscator , Peter Hacks, Hanns Johst, Klabund, and Erich Mühsam. Brecht's first full-length play, Baal , was written in response to an argument in one of Kutscher's drama seminars.
Go to Profile#10230
Pierre Lecomte du Noüy
1883 - 1947 (64 years)
Pierre Lecomte du Noüy was a French biophysicist and philosopher. He is probably best remembered by scientists for his work on the surface tension, and other properties, of liquids. Life and work Du Noüy was a descendant of the French dramatist Pierre Corneille. His mother wrote many novels, one of which, Amitié Amoureuse, was translated into 16 languages and ran for 600 editions in France. Born and educated in France, du Noüy obtained the degrees of LL.B., Ph.B., Sc.B., Ph.D., and Sc.D.
Go to Profile#10231
John F. Mustard
John F. Mustard is a planetary scientist and professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Brown University. He specializes in using remote sensing and spectroscopy technology to examine and analyze planetary bodies. Mustard investigates the formation and evolution of rocky planets such as Mars, Mercury, the Moon and the Earth.
Go to Profile#10232
Debendra Mohan Bose
1885 - 1975 (90 years)
Debendra Mohan Bose was an Indian physicist who made contributions in the field of cosmic rays, artificial radioactivity and neutron physics. He was the longest serving Director of Bose Institute. Bose was the nephew of the famous physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose, who laid the foundations of modern science in India.
Go to Profile#10233
Gregor Wentzel
1898 - 1978 (80 years)
Gregor Wentzel was a German physicist known for development of quantum mechanics. Wentzel, Hendrik Kramers, and Léon Brillouin developed the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin approximation in 1926. In his early years, he contributed to X-ray spectroscopy, but then broadened out to make contributions to quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics, and meson theory.
Go to Profile#10234
Paul Guthnick
1879 - 1947 (68 years)
Paul Guthnick was a German astronomer. Born in Hitdorf am Rhein, he studied at the University of Bonn receiving his doctorate in 1901 under Friedrich Küstner. He worked from 1901 at the Royal Observatory of Berlin and studied variable stars and specifically Mira. As Berlin expanded, it became less possible to conduct astronomical observations there and Guthnick used, from 1906 onwards, the local park known as Babelsberg. An observatory was later built there after approval by the government. He was appointed professor of astrophysics at the University of Berlin in 1916. In 1921, he became...
Go to Profile#10235
Bertram Steele
1870 - 1934 (64 years)
Bertram Dillon Steele FRS was an Australian scientist, foundation professor of chemistry at the University of Queensland . Early life Steele was born in Plymouth, England, the son of Samuel Madden Steele, a surgeon, and his wife Hariette Sarah, née Acock. Steele was educated at the Plymouth Grammar School; he then began an apprenticeship with his father. Steele migrated to Australia in 1889, where he qualified as a pharmaceutical chemist at the Victorian College of Pharmacy where he won a gold medal in 1890. He then practised as a pharmacist.
Go to Profile#10236
George Cecil Jaffe
1880 - 1965 (85 years)
George Cecil Jaffe , received his doctorate in chemistry in 1903 from the University of Leipzig, where he studied under Nobel laureate Wilhelm Ostwald. He worked briefly at Cambridge and then the Curie Laboratory, where he worked with both J.J. Thomson and Pierre Curie. He eventually rose to full professor at the University of Giessen, however, with the rise of Nazism he was dismissed from his position. He eventually immigrated to the US and became a professor at Louisiana State University.
Go to Profile#10237
Hugo Lichte
1891 - 1963 (72 years)
Hugo Lichte was a German physicist. He did pioneering work on the theory of sound propagation in the ocean and was a leading developer of motion picture technology during the transition from silent to sound film.
Go to Profile#10238
Ernst Gehrcke
1878 - 1960 (82 years)
Ernst J. L. Gehrcke was a German experimental physicist. He was director of the optical department at the Reich Physical and Technical Institute. Concurrently, he was a professor at the University of Berlin. He developed the Lummer–Gehrcke method in interferometry and the multiplex interferometric spectroscope for precision resolution of spectral-line structures. As an anti-relativist, he was a speaker at an event organized in 1920 by the Working Society of German Scientists. He sat on the board of trustees of the Potsdam Astrophysical Observatory. After World War II, he worked at Carl Zeiss ...
Go to Profile#10239
Margarete Gussow
1896 - 2000 (104 years)
Margarete Gussow was a German astronomer. Biography Gussow studied mathematics, astronomy and physics in Berlin. In 1924, she was made an assistant at the observatory. In 1933, she joined the Nazi Party. In 1936, she published work on Epsilon Aurigae.
Go to Profile#10240
Shinzo Shinjo
1873 - 1938 (65 years)
Shinzō Shinjō was a Japanese academic, physicist, astronomer and president of Kyoto University. Biography Shinzō Shinjō was born on 26 August 1873 in Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima Prefecture. He graduated from Department of Physics at Imperial College of Science in 1895 and in 1897 started teaching at a military engineering school. In 1900 he assumed a position of associate professor at Kyoto University in the field of mechanics. Between 1905 and 1907 Shinjo studied astronomy at University of Goettingen in Germany with Karl Schwarzschild. He defended his PhD in 1909 and later began teaching at a newly established Department of Astronomy in Kyoto.
Go to Profile#10241
Danilo Blanuša
1903 - 1987 (84 years)
Danilo Blanuša was a Croatian Serb mathematician, physicist, engineer and a professor at the University of Zagreb. Biography Blanuša was born in Osijek, Austria-Hungary , into an ethnic Serb family. He attended elementary school in Vienna and Steyr in Austria and gymnasium in Osijek and Zagreb. He studied engineering in both Zagreb and Vienna and also mathematics and physics. His career started in Zagreb, where he started to work and lecture. His student Mileva Prvanović completed her doctorate in 1955, the first in geometry in Serbia. Blanuša was the dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Zagreb in the 1957–58 school year.
Go to Profile#10242
Eric Burhop
1911 - 1980 (69 years)
Eric Henry Stoneley Burhop, was an Australian physicist and humanitarian. A graduate of the University of Melbourne, Burhop was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship to study at the Cavendish Laboratory under Lord Rutherford. Under the supervision of Mark Oliphant, he investigated nuclear fusion. He produced a non-relativistic theory of the Auger effect in 1935, followed by a relativistic treatment the following year. He later wrote a monograph on the subject. He returned to the University of Melbourne as a lecturer in 1936, and helped Professor Thomas Laby build up the physics department t...
Go to Profile#10243
Sonja Ashauer
1923 - 1948 (25 years)
Sonja Ashauer was a Brazilian physicist. She was the first Brazilian woman to earn a doctorate in physics, and the second to become a physics graduate in Brazil. Biography Born in São Paulo, Ashauer was the daughter of the German-born engineer Walter Ashauer and his wife Herta Graffenbenger. From 1935 to 1939, she pursued her secondary education at Gymnasium of São Paulo state capital. Encouraged by her father, after secondary school, she studied physics under Gleb Wataghin at the University of São Paulo, graduating in 1942. She was the second female physics graduate in Brazil, the first bein...
Go to Profile#10244
John S. Allen
1907 - 1982 (75 years)
John Stuart Allen was an American astronomer, university professor and university president. He was a native of Indiana, and pursued a career as a professor of astronomy after receiving his bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees. In 1953 Allen became the interim president of the University of Florida located in Gainesville, Florida, and subsequently became the founding president of the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida.
Go to Profile#10245
Domenico Pacini
1878 - 1934 (56 years)
Domenico Pacini was an Italian physicist noted for his contributions to the discovery of cosmic rays. Biography He graduated in Physics at the University of Rome in 1902. Assistant at the "Regio Ufficio Centrale di Meteorologia e di Geodinamica" from 1905 to 1927. Teacher of Geophysics from 1915 to 1925 at the University of Rome, then professor of Experimental physics at the University of Bari from 1928.
Go to Profile#10246
Władysław Natanson
1864 - 1937 (73 years)
Władysław Natanson was a Polish physicist. Life Natanson was head of Theoretical Physics at Kraków University from 1899 to 1935. He published a series of papers on thermodynamically irreversible processes, gaining him recognition in the rapidly growing field. He was the first to consider the distinguishability of energy quanta in the statistical analysis of elementary processes, a precursor of the concept of quantum indistinguishability. He discovered a quantum statistics, rediscovered 11 years later by Satyendra Nath Bose and generalized by Albert Einstein though his derivation was not in t...
Go to Profile#10247
Jurij Vega
1754 - 1802 (48 years)
Baron Jurij Bartolomej Vega was a Slovene mathematician, physicist and artillery officer. Early life Born to a farmer's family in the small village of Zagorica east of Ljubljana in Slovenia, Vega was 6 years old when his father Jernej Veha died. Vega was educated first in Moravče and later attended high school for six years in Ljubljana , studying Latin, Greek, religion, German, history, geography, science, and mathematics. At that time there were about 500 students there. He was a schoolfellow of Anton Tomaž Linhart, a Slovenian writer and historian. Vega finished high school when he was 19, in 1773.
Go to Profile#10248
Samuel Vince
1749 - 1821 (72 years)
Samuel Vince FRS was an English clergyman, mathematician and astronomer at the University of Cambridge. Life He was born in Fressingfield. The son of a plasterer, he had laboured with his father up to the age of 12, but came to the attention of a clergyman who saw to it that he entered higher education. Vince was admitted as a sizar to Caius College, Cambridge in 1771. In 1775 he was Senior Wrangler, and Winner of the Smith Prize at Cambridge. Migrating to Sidney Sussex College in 1777, he gained his M.A. in 1778 and was ordained a clergyman in 1779. He was among seven men of that college who...
Go to Profile#10249
Wolfgang Gaede
1878 - 1945 (67 years)
Wolfgang Max Paul Gaede was a German physicist and pioneer of vacuum engineering. Life Gaede was born in Lehe, Bremerhaven, the son of Prussian Colonel Karl Gaede and Amalia, nee Renf. In 1897 he began studying medicine at the University of Freiburg, but he soon switched to the field of physics. In 1901 he wrote his doctoral thesis on changing the specific heat of metals with temperature. Subsequent research on the Volta effect in a vacuum was unsuccessful, as the pump technology could not create a sufficient vacuum for the investigations. This prompted Gaede to deal more closely with vacuum technology.
Go to Profile#10250
Hermann Carl Vogel
1841 - 1907 (66 years)
Hermann Carl Vogel was a German astrophysicist. He was born in Leipzig, Kingdom of Saxony. From 1882 to 1907 he was director of the Astrophysical Observatory, Potsdam. He made extensive discoveries using spectral analysis of the stars.
Go to Profile