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,
#10401
Al-Nayrizi
865 - 922 (57 years)
Abū’l-‘Abbās al-Faḍl ibn Ḥātim al-Nairīzī was a Persian mathematician and astronomer from Nayriz, now in Fars Province, Iran. Life Little is known of al-Nairīzī, though his nisba refers to the town of Neyriz. He mentioned al-Mu'tadid, the Abbasid caliph, in his works, and so scholars have assumed that al-Nairīzī flourished in Baghdad during this period. Al-Nairīzī wrote a book for al-Mu'tadid on atmospheric phenomena. He died in .
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Elias Loomis
1811 - 1889 (78 years)
Elias Loomis was an American mathematician. He served as a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Western Reserve College , the University of the City of New York and Yale University. During his tenure at Western Reserve College in 1838, he established the Loomis Observatory, currently the second oldest observatory in the United States.
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Wang Chong
27 - 97 (70 years)
Wang Chong , courtesy name Zhongren , was a Chinese astronomer, meteorologist, naturalist, philosopher, and writer active during the Eastern Han dynasty. He developed a rational, secular, naturalistic and mechanistic account of the world and of human beings and gave a materialistic explanation of the origin of the universe. His main work was the Lunheng . This book contained many theories involving early sciences of astronomy and meteorology, and Wang Chong was even the first in Chinese history to mention the use of the square-pallet chain pump, which became common in irrigation and public works in China thereafter.
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Gunnar Källén
1926 - 1968 (42 years)
Anders Olof Gunnar Källén was a leading Swedish theoretical physicist and a professor at Lund University until his death at the age of 42. Biography Källén earned his doctorate at Lund in 1950 and worked from 1952 to 1957 at CERN's theoretical division in Copenhagen, which then became the Niels Bohr Institute. He also worked at Nordita 1957–1958 and then began a professorship at Lund University.
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Gotthilf Hagen
1797 - 1884 (87 years)
Gotthilf Heinrich Ludwig Hagen was a German civil engineer who made important contributions to fluid dynamics, hydraulic engineering and probability theory. Life and work Hagen was born in Königsberg, East Prussia to Friedrich Ludwig Hagen and Helene Charlotte Albertine Hagen. His father was a government official and his mother was the daughter of Christian Reccard, professor of Theology at University of Königsberg, consistorial councillor and astronomer. He showed promise in mathematics in high school and he went on to study at the University of Königsberg where his uncle, Karl Gottfried H...
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Albert Betz
1885 - 1968 (83 years)
Albert Betz was a German physicist and a pioneer of wind turbine technology. Education and career Betz was born in Schweinfurt. In 1910 he graduated as a naval engineer from Technische Hochschule Berlin . In 1911 Betz became a researcher at the University of Göttingen aerodynamics laboratory, where he was awarded his PhD in 1919 for his work on 'ship propellers with minimum loss of energy'. In his 1920 paper "Das Maximum der theoretisch möglichen Ausnutzung des Windes durch Windmotoren" was published. His work was based on earlier studies by Frederick Lanchester that included the first full description of lift and drag.
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Amos de-Shalit
1926 - 1969 (43 years)
Amos de-Shalit was an Israeli nuclear physicist and Israel Prize laureate. Biography Amos de-Shalit was born in Jerusalem in the British Mandate of Palestine . He grew up in Tel Aviv and graduated from Gymnasia Balfour. In 1949, de-Shalit earned his master's degree in physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the guidance of Giulio Racah. During the 1947–1949 Palestine war, he served in the IDF Science Corps. De-Shalit and his fellow students wrote a letter to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to point out the vital importance of nuclear physics for Israel's future. In 1951, ...
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Wallace Clement Sabine
1868 - 1919 (51 years)
Wallace Clement Sabine was an American physicist who founded the field of architectural acoustics. Sabine was the architectural acoustician of Boston's Symphony Hall, widely considered one of the two or three best concert halls in the world for its acoustics.
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Al-Sijzi
951 - 1024 (73 years)
Abu Sa'id Ahmed ibn Mohammed ibn Abd al-Jalil al-Sijzi was an Iranian Muslim astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer. He is notable for his correspondence with al-Biruni and for proposing that the Earth rotates around its axis in the 10th century.
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Hans Hellmann
1903 - 1938 (35 years)
Hans Gustav Adolf Hellmann was a German theoretical physicist. Biography Hellmann was born in Wilhelmshaven, Prussian Hanover. He began studying electrical engineering in Stuttgart but changed to engineering physics after a semester. Hellmann also studied at the University of Kiel.
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Hippocrates of Chios
470 BC - 410 BC (60 years)
Hippocrates of Chios was an ancient Greek mathematician, geometer, and astronomer. He was born on the isle of Chios, where he was originally a merchant. After some misadventures he went to Athens, possibly for litigation, where he became a leading mathematician.
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George Phillips Bond
1825 - 1865 (40 years)
George Phillips Bond was an American astronomer. He was the son of William Cranch Bond. Some sources give his year of birth as 1826. His early interest was in nature and birds, but after his elder brother William Cranch Bond Jr. died, he felt obliged to follow his father into the field of astronomy. He succeeded his father as director of Harvard College Observatory from 1859 until his death. His cousin was Edward Singleton Holden, first director of Lick Observatory.
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Wilhelm Runge
1895 - 1987 (92 years)
Wilhelm Tolmé Runge was an electrical engineer and physicist who had a major involvement in developing radar systems in Germany. Early life Wilhelm Runge was born and raised in Hanover, where his father, Carl Runge, was a well-known professor of mathematics at the Technische Hochschule Hannover .
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Ernst Zinner
1886 - 1970 (84 years)
Ernst Zinner was a German astronomer and noted historian of astronomy. After studies in Munich and Jena he obtained his PhD in 1907 at the University of Jena, followed by stays at the University of Lund, the University of Paris, and the Königstuhl Observatory in Heidelberg. From 1 February 1910, Zinner worked as an assistant at Remeis Observatory, Bamberg. Here, on 23 October 1913 he rediscovered the Comet Giacobini-Zinner, which had been previously discovered by Michel Giacobini in 1900. His main work during this time was on variable stars. After working as a meteorologist during World War I, Zinner returned to Bamberg, but then moved to Munich to work in geodesy.
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Hugo von Seeliger
1849 - 1924 (75 years)
Hugo von Seeliger , also known as Hugo Hans Ritter von Seeliger, was a German astronomer, often considered the most important astronomer of his day. Biography He was born in Biala, completed high school in Teschen in 1867, and studied at the Universities of Heidelberg and Leipzig. He earned a doctorate in astronomy in 1872 from the latter, studying under Carl Christian Bruhns. He was on the staff of the University of Bonn Observatory until 1877, as an assistant to Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander. In 1874, he directed the German expedition to the Auckland Islands to observe the transit of Venus. I...
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Johann Philipp Neumann
1774 - 1849 (75 years)
Johann Philipp Neumann was an Austrian physicist, librarian and poet. Born in Trebitsch in Moravia, he completed his studies at the University of Vienna. In 1803, he was appointed as a professor of physics at his local lyceum. He was transferred to the University of Graz in 1806, where he became a rector in 1811.
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Henry Kater
1777 - 1835 (58 years)
Henry Kater FRS, FRAS was a British physicist of German descent. Early life He was born at Bristol. At first he intended to study law; but he gave up the idea on his father's death in 1794. He entered the army, obtaining a commission in the 12th Regiment of Foot, then stationed in India, where he assisted William Lambton in the Great Trigonometric Survey. Failing health obliged him to return to England; and in 1808, then a lieutenant, he entered on a student career at the Senior Division of the new Royal Military College at High Wycombe. Shortly afterwards he was promoted to the rank of captain.
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Julius Bauschinger
1860 - 1934 (74 years)
Julius Bauschinger was a German astronomer. Biography Julius Bauschinger was born in Fürth, the son of the physicist Johann Bauschinger. He studied at the Universities of Munich and Berlin, graduating under the direction of Hugo Hans von Seeliger with a thesis titled "Studies on the motion of the planet Mercury" . In 1882, he was part of a German expedition to Hartford, Connecticut, in order to observe the transit of Venus.
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Giovanni Antonio Magini
1555 - 1617 (62 years)
Giovanni Antonio Magini was an Italian astronomer, astrologer, cartographer, and mathematician. His Life He was born in Padua, and completed studies in philosophy in Bologna in 1579. His father was Pasquale Magini, a citizen of Padua. Dedicating himself to astronomy, in 1582 he wrote Ephemerides coelestium motuum, translated into Italian the following year.
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Henri Chrétien
1879 - 1956 (77 years)
Henri Jacques Chrétien was a French astronomer and an inventor. Born in Paris, France, his most famous inventions are: - the anamorphic widescreen process, using an anamorphic lens system called Hypergonar, that resulted in the CinemaScope widescreen technique, and - the co-invention, with George Willis Ritchey, of the Ritchey–Chrétien telescope, an improved type of astronomical telescope, employing a system now used in virtually all large research telescopes.
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Abu'l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī
1080 - 1165 (85 years)
Abu'l-Barakāt Hibat Allah ibn Malkā al-Baghdādī was an Islamic philosopher, physician and physicist of Jewish descent from Baghdad, Iraq. Abu'l-Barakāt, an older contemporary of Maimonides, was originally known by his Hebrew birth name Baruch ben Malka and was given the name of Nathanel by his pupil Isaac ben Ezra before his conversion from Judaism to Islam later in his life.
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Eduard Grüneisen
1877 - 1949 (72 years)
Eduard August Grüneisen was a German physicist. The dimensionless thermodynamic measure known as Grüneisen parameter is named after him. Early life and education Eduard August Grüneisen was born on 26 May 1877 in Giebichenstein near Halle , as the fifth son of Eduard Grüneisen , a pastor, and Elisabeth Grüneisen . After graduating from a humanistic gymnasium in the spring of 1985, he at age 17 was drawn to pursuing natural sciences, which was the only area not represented among his brothers.
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Johann Heinrich von Mädler
1794 - 1874 (80 years)
Johann Heinrich von Mädler was a German astronomer. Life and work His father was a master tailor and when 12 he studied at the Friedrich‐Werdersche Gymnasium in Berlin. He was orphaned at age 19 by an outbreak of typhus, and found himself responsible for raising three younger sisters. He began giving academic lessons as a private tutor and in this way met Wilhelm Beer, a wealthy banker, in 1824.
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Yi Xing
683 - 727 (44 years)
Yi Xing , born Zhang Sui , was a Chinese astronomer, Buddhist monk, inventor, mathematician, mechanical engineer, and philosopher during the Tang dynasty. His astronomical celestial globe featured a liquid-driven escapement, the first in a long tradition of Chinese astronomical clockworks.
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Paul Ledoux
1914 - 1988 (74 years)
Paul Ledoux was a Belgian astrophysicist best known for his work on stellar stability and variability. With Theodore Walraven, he co-authored a seminal work on stellar oscillations. In 1964 Ledoux was awarded the Francqui Prize for Exact Sciences, and was awarded the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1972 for investigations into problems of stellar stability and variable stars. He was awarded the Janssen Medal of the French Academy of Sciences in 1976.
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Benjamin Baillaud
1848 - 1934 (86 years)
Édouard Benjamin Baillaud was a French astronomer. Biography Born in Chalon-sur-Saône, Baillaud studied at the École Normale Supérieure and the University of Paris. He worked as an assistant at the Paris Observatory beginning in 1872. Later he was director of the Toulouse Observatory from 1878 to 1907, during much of this time serving as Dean of the University of Toulouse Faculty of Science.
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Francesco Maria Grimaldi
1618 - 1663 (45 years)
Francesco Maria Grimaldi, SJ was an Italian Jesuit priest, mathematician and physicist who taught at the Jesuit college in Bologna. He was born in Bologna to Paride Grimaldi and Anna Cattani. Work Between 1640 and 1650, working with Riccioli, he investigated the free fall of objects, confirming that the distance of fall was proportional to the square of the time taken. Grimaldi and Riccioli also made a calculation of gravity at the earth's surface by recording the oscillations of an accurate pendulum.
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James Gregory
1638 - 1675 (37 years)
James Gregory FRS was a Scottish mathematician and astronomer. His surname is sometimes spelt as Gregorie, the original Scottish spelling. He described an early practical design for the reflecting telescope – the Gregorian telescope – and made advances in trigonometry, discovering infinite series representations for several trigonometric functions.
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Kerr Grant
1878 - 1967 (89 years)
Professor Sir Kerr Grant was an Australian physicist and a significant figure in higher education administration in South Australia in the first half of the twentieth century. Kerr Grant was born in the then rural town of Bacchus Marsh, near Melbourne in the Australian state of Victoria in 1878. He studied mathematics at the University of Melbourne and was awarded a B.Sc. in 1901 and M.Sc. in 1903, both with first class honours. In 1904, he studied at the University of Göttingen in Germany where he studied with American Nobel Prize winning chemist and physicist Irving Langmuir. In 1911, he was appointed Elder professor of physics at the University of Adelaide.
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John Hopkinson
1849 - 1898 (49 years)
John Hopkinson, FRS, was a British physicist, electrical engineer, Fellow of the Royal Society and President of the IEE twice in 1890 and 1896. He invented the three-wire system for the distribution of electrical power, for which he was granted a patent in 1882. He also worked in many areas of electromagnetism and electrostatics, and in 1890 was appointed professor of electrical engineering at King's College London, where he was also director of the Siemens Laboratory.
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Karl Wilhelm Valentiner
1845 - 1931 (86 years)
Karl Wilhelm Valentiner was a German astronomer. Life In 1874, Wilhelm Valentiner led a successful German expedition to Zhifu to observe a solar eclipse. 1875, He took over the directorship of the Mannheim Observatory in 1875. Since the observing conditions in the Mannheim city centre were deteriorating, Grand Duke Frederick I of Baden approved Valentiner's request to relocate the observatory in Karlsruhe in 1880. The telescope, however, was located in a makeshift hut in Karlsruhe Nymphenburg Park. Much to the annoyance of Valentiner, now appointed Professor of the University of Karlsruhe, no new observatory was built.
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Kirill Shchelkin
1911 - 1968 (57 years)
Kirill Ivanovich Shchelkin was a Soviet physicist of Armenian origin in the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons who made theoretical and experimental contribution in combustion and gas dynamics.
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Cornelis Jacobus Gorter
1907 - 1980 (73 years)
Cornelis Jacobus Gorter was a Dutch experimental and theoretical physicist. Among other work, he discovered paramagnetic relaxation and was a pioneer in low temperature physics. Education and career After his Abitur in The Hague, Gorter studied physics in Leiden, earning his PhD with the thesis Paramagnetische Eigenschaften von Salzen under Wander de Haas. From 1931 to 1936 he worked at Teylers Stichting in Haarlem and from 1936 to 1940 at the University of Groningen, before he became a professor at the University of Amsterdam as successor to Pieter Zeeman. In 1946, succeeding W. H. Keesom, he returned to Leiden as a professor.
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Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille
1797 - 1869 (72 years)
Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille was a French physicist and physiologist. Poiseuille was born in Paris, France, and he died there on 26 December 1869. Fluid flow From 1815 to 1816 he studied at the École Polytechnique in Paris. He was trained in physics and mathematics. In 1828 he earned his D.Sc. degree with a dissertation entitled Recherches sur la force du coeur aortique . He was interested in the flow of human blood in narrow tubes, and invented the U-tube mercury manometer to measure arterial blood pressures in horses and dogs.
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Helmut Hönl
1903 - 1981 (78 years)
Helmut Hönl was a German theoretical physicist who made contributions to quantum mechanics and the understanding of atomic and molecular structure. Biography From 1921 to circa 1923, Hönl studied at the University of Heidelberg and the University of Göttingen, followed by the University of Munich, where he studied under Arnold Sommerfeld. He was granted his doctor of philosophy in 1926. In 1929, he became assistant to Paul Peter Ewald at the Stuttgart Technische Hochschule until 1933, after which he was a Privatdozent. 1940 he became extraordinary professor at the University of Erlangen and...
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Ogden Rood
1831 - 1902 (71 years)
Ogden Nicholas Rood was an American physicist best known for his work in color theory. Career At age 18, Rood became a student at Yale University, but after his sophomore year he transferred to Princeton University , where he received his baccalaureate degree in 1852. For the next two years he was successively a graduate student at Yale University, an assistant at the University of Virginia, and an assistant to Benjamin Silliman. In 1854–1858, he lived in Germany, dividing his time between oil painting and academic studies in Berlin and Munich, working in the laboratory of Justus von Liebig. In 1858, shortly before returning to the U.S.A., he married Mathilde Prunner of Munich.
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Matvey Gusev
1826 - 1866 (40 years)
Matvey Matveyevich Gusev was a Russian astronomer who worked at Pulkovo Observatory near St. Petersburg from 1850 to 1852 and then at Vilnius Observatory. In 1860 he founded the first scientific journal dedicated to math and physics in Russia: Vestnik matematicheskikh nauk . He became the director of the Vilnius Observatory in 1865.
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Harrison M. Randall
1870 - 1969 (99 years)
Harrison McAllister Randall was an American physicist whose leadership from 1915 to 1941 brought the University of Michigan to international prominence in experimental and theoretical physics. Biography Randall was born in Burr Oak, Michigan, on December 17, 1870. His family then moved to Ann Arbor, where he spent his formative years and most of his life. He graduated from the Ann Arbor High School in 1889, and then earned his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Michigan in 1893. A year later he completed a master's degree, then spent a few years teaching in high schools in W...
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Georg Joachim Rheticus
1514 - 1574 (60 years)
Georg Joachim de Porris, also known as Rheticus , was a mathematician, astronomer, cartographer, navigational-instrument maker, medical practitioner, and teacher. He is perhaps best known for his trigonometric tables and as Nicolaus Copernicus's sole pupil. He facilitated the publication of his master's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium .
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Hans Ludendorff
1873 - 1941 (68 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Hans Ludendorff was a German astronomer and astrophysicist. He was the younger brother of General Erich Ludendorff. After studying physics, mathematics and astronomy in Berlin, he started to work as assistant at the Hamburg observatory in 1897. The following year he changed to the Astrophysical Observatory of Potsdam, where became observator and chief observator . From 1921 until his retirement in 1938 he was director of the observatory. Between 1920 and 1930 he belonged to the board of the Astronomical Society.
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Charles Piazzi Smyth
1817 - 1900 (83 years)
Charles Piazzi Smyth was an Italian-born British astronomer who was Astronomer Royal for Scotland from 1846 to 1888; he is known for many innovations in astronomy and, along with his wife Jessica Duncan Piazzi Smyth, his pyramidological and metrological studies of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
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Samuel Oppenheim
1857 - 1928 (71 years)
Samuel Oppenheim was an Austrian astronomer. In 1875 Oppenheim began to study mathematics, physics and astronomy in Vienna. He took his Staatsexamen in 1880. From 1881–1887 he worked at the Observatory of Vienna and from 1888–1896 at the Kuffner observatory in Vienna. He attained the Doctorate in 1884 and the Habilitation in 1910 for theoretical astronomy. After working as a teacher in Prague, he was Professor ordinarius for astronomy at the University of Vienna.
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Joseph Swan
1828 - 1914 (86 years)
Sir Joseph Wilson Swan FRS was an English physicist, chemist, and inventor. He is known as an independent early developer of a successful incandescent light bulb, and is the person responsible for developing and supplying the first incandescent lights used to illuminate homes and public buildings, including the Savoy Theatre, London, in 1881.
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Samuel Langley
1834 - 1906 (72 years)
Samuel Pierpont Langley was an American aviation pioneer, astronomer and physicist who invented the bolometer. He was the third secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and a professor of astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh, where he was the director of the Allegheny Observatory.
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Berta Karlik
1904 - 1990 (86 years)
Berta Karlik was an Austrian physicist. She worked for the University of Vienna, eventually becoming the first female professor at the institution. While working with Ernst Foyn she published a paper on the radioactivity of seawater. She discovered that the chemical element 85 astatine is a product of the natural decay processes. The element was first synthesized in 1940 by Dale R. Corson, K. R. MacKenzie, and Emilio Segrè, after several scientists in vain searched for it in radioactive minerals.
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Franz Ollendorff
1900 - 1981 (81 years)
Franz Heinrich Ollendorff was an Israeli physicist. Biography Franz Heinrich Ollendorf was born in Berlin. In 1924, he joined the Siemens research department in Berlin, working under Reinhold Rüdenberg. From 1928 he taught in the engineering faculty of the Berlin Technische Hochschule. Despite protest from his supervisor and university rector Ernst Orlich, the Nazis forced Ollendorff to resign in 1933. Soon after the dismissal, Ollendorff joined the teaching staff of the Jewish public school in Berlin, moving to Jerusalem when the school and staff transferred there in 1934.
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Antonio Rostagni
1903 - 1988 (85 years)
Antonio Rostagni was an Italian physicist and academician. He was a physicist involved in research in the fields of terrestrial physics, electromagnetic waves, and cosmic rays. He was professor of physics at the University of Messina beginning in 1935 and at the University of Padua beginning in 1938. Among his students was Giuseppe Grioli.
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Józef Wierusz-Kowalski
1866 - 1927 (61 years)
Józef Wierusz-Kowalski was a Polish physicist and diplomat. He discovered the phenomenon of progressive phosphorescence. He served as Rector of the University of Freiburg, and helped to establish the section for physics at the reopened University of Warsaw. After Polish independence was established, he served as the Polish ambassador to the Holy See, the Netherlands, Austria and Turkey.
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John Brashear
1840 - 1920 (80 years)
John Alfred Brashear was an American astronomer and instrument builder. Life and work Brashear was born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, a town 35 miles south of Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River. His father, Basil Brown Brashear, was a saddler, and his mother, Julia Smith Brashear, was a school teacher. He was the oldest of seven children. As a boy, John Brashear was heavily influenced by his maternal grandfather, Nathanial Smith, a clock repairer. When he was nine, his grandfather took him to view through the telescope of 'Squire' Joseph P. Wampler, who set up his traveling telescope in Brownsville.
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Ernest Merritt
1865 - 1948 (83 years)
Ernest George Merritt was Dean of the Graduate School, Cornell University; Chair of the Physics Department. Early life and career Merritt was born at Indianapolis, Indiana. After a year at Purdue University he transferred to Cornell University where he took a degree in mechanical engineering. After graduation, he stayed at the university to complete a master's degree in physics. In 1889, he was offered a position at Cornell as an instructor, promoted to assistant professor in 1892. In 1893, studied with Max Planck at Berlin University. He and Planck remained friends and correspondent through to the latter's death.
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