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,
#10551
Donald J. Hughes
1915 - 1960 (45 years)
Donald J. Hughes was an American nuclear physicist, chiefly notable as one of the signers off the Franck Report in June, 1945, recommending that the United States not use the atomic bomb as a weapon to prompt the surrender of Japan in World War II.
Go to Profile#10552
Sergei Vernov
1910 - 1982 (72 years)
Sergei Nikolaevich Vernov was a Russian-Soviet physicist who pioneered the study of primary cosmic rays. He examined cosmic rays initially with high altitude balloons, then with ground observatories and then in space and found patterns in the distribution of ions in latitudinal belts and radiation belts at varying altitudes. Although he was the first to identify these radiation belts, they are better known in the Anglophone scientific world through the work of James van Allen and termed as Van Allen Radiation Belts.
Go to Profile#10553
Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli
1397 - 1482 (85 years)
Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli was an Italian mathematician, astronomer, and cosmographer. Life Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli was born in Florence, the son of the physician Domenico Toscanelli and Biagia Mei. There is no precise information on his education and background. Gustavo Uzielli claimed in 1894 that Toscanelli studied at the University of Padua, but modern authors consider this pure conjecture. Toscanelli lived most of his life in Florence, with occasional excursions to Todi and Rome. He is said to have entered into correspondence with scholars around Europe, but his writings have yet to b...
Go to Profile#10554
José García Santesmases
1907 - 1989 (82 years)
José García Santesmases was a physicist and pioneer of computer science in Spain. He built the first analog computer and the first microprocessor made in Spain. Biography José García Santesmases was born on May 2, 1907, in Barcelona. In 1930 he obtained the title of engineer for the École supérieure d'électricité in Paris. He continued his training and in 1935 he obtained the Extraordinary Prize of the University of Barcelona, graduating as a physicist. He obtained his doctorate at the University of Madrid in 1943 and later moved to the University of Granada, where he taught for two years, after which he returned to Madrid as a professor.
Go to Profile#10555
Victor Vâlcovici
1885 - 1970 (85 years)
Victor Vâlcovici was a Romanian mechanician and mathematician. Biography Born into a modest family in Galați, he graduated first in his class in 1904 from Nicolae Bălcescu High School in Brăila. Entering the University of Bucharest on a scholarship, he attended its faculty of sciences, where he had as teachers Spiru Haret and Gheorghe Țițeica. After graduating in 1907 with a degree in mathematics, he taught high school for two years before leaving for University of Göttingen on another scholarship to pursue a doctorate in mathematics. He wrote his thesis under the direction of Ludwig Prandtl...
Go to Profile#10556
Hans Geelmuyden
1844 - 1920 (76 years)
Hans Geelmuyden was a Norwegian astronomer. He was born in Stavern. He was a relative of Ivar Christian Sommerschild Geelmuyden and Carl Victor Emanuel Geelmuyden, and the family had migrated from the Dutch Republic during the seventeenth century. Hans Geelmuyden was a grandfather of the writer of the same name.
Go to Profile#10557
George Forbes
1849 - 1936 (87 years)
George Forbes was a Scottish electrical engineer, astronomer, explorer, author and inventor, some of whose inventions are still in use. Early life Born at 3 Park Place in Edinburgh on 5 April 1849, Forbes was the second son of James David Forbes and Alicia Wauchope. His father was later Principal of St Andrews University. Forbes was educated at Edinburgh Academy, the University of St Andrews, Christ's College and St Catharine's College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#10558
Jacques Babinet
1794 - 1872 (78 years)
Jacques Babinet was a French physicist, mathematician, and astronomer who is best known for his contributions to optics. Biography His father was Jean Babinet and mother, Marie‐Anne Félicité Bonneau du Chesn. Babinet started his studies at the Lycée Napoléon, but was persuaded to abandon a legal education for the pursuit of science. A graduate of the École Polytechnique, which he left in 1812 for the Military School at Metz, he was later a professor at the Sorbonne and at the Collège de France. In 1840, he was elected as a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences. He was also an astronome...
Go to Profile#10559
Albert Victor Bäcklund
1845 - 1922 (77 years)
Albert Victor Bäcklund was a Swedish mathematician and physicist. He was a professor at Lund University and its rector from 1907 to 1909. He was born in Malmöhus County, now Skåne County, in southern Sweden and became a student at the nearby University of Lund in 1861. In 1864 he started to work for the observatory, and received his Ph.D. in 1868 working on methods to obtain the latitude of a place by astronomical observations. He was awarded the title of associate professor in Mechanics and Mathematical Physics in 1878, and elected Fellow of the Swedish Academy of Science in 1888. In 1897 he...
Go to Profile#10560
Wang Pu
1902 - 1969 (67 years)
Wang Pu was a Chinese nuclear physicist. He was one of two Chinese PhD students working with Lise Meitner at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. He founded the School of Physics at Shandong University.
Go to Profile#10561
Christine Kirch
1697 - 1782 (85 years)
Christine Kirch , was a German astronomer. Life She was the daughter of the astronomers Gottfried Kirch and Maria Margarethe Kirch and the sister of Christfried Kirch. She and her sister Margaretha Kirch were educated in astronomy from the age of ten. As a child Kirch assisted her parents in their astronomical observations. Reportedly the young Kirch was responsible for taking time of observations by using a pendulum. As she became older Kirch was instructed in calculating calendars. She assisted first her mother and later her brother in calculating various calendars.
Go to Profile#10562
Bodo von Borries
1905 - 1956 (51 years)
Bodo von Borries was a German physicist. He was the co-inventor of the electron microscope. Von Borries studied electrical engineering at the Technical University of Danzig, and at Berlin Institute of Technology, where he was awarded a PhD in 1932. Von Borries worked at RWE from 1934 to 1937. In 1937 he commenced work on electron microscopy with Ernst Ruska at Siemens & Halske AG in Berlin. In 1937 von Borries 1937 married Hedwig Ruska, Ernst Ruska's sister.
Go to Profile#10563
Jean-Marie Duhamel
1797 - 1872 (75 years)
Jean-Marie Constant Duhamel was a French mathematician and physicist. His studies were affected by the troubles of the Napoleonic era. He went on to form his own school École Sainte-Barbe. Duhamel's principle, a method of obtaining solutions to inhomogeneous linear evolution equations, is named after him. He was primarily a mathematician but did studies on the mathematics of heat, mechanics, and acoustics. He also did work in calculus using infinitesimals. Duhamel's theorem for infinitesimals says that the sum of a series of infinitesimals is unchanged by replacing the infinitesimal with its...
Go to Profile#10564
Arthur Stewart Eve
1862 - 1948 (86 years)
Arthur Stewart Eve was an English physicist who worked in Canada. Biography Eve was born at Silsoe, Bedfordshire, on 22 November 1862, son of John Richard Eve, surveyor and land agent, and Frederica . He was educated at Berkhamsted School and entered Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1881. He was fifteenth wrangler and graduated in 1884.
Go to Profile#10565
Johann III Bernoulli
1744 - 1807 (63 years)
Johann III Bernoulli , grandson of Johann Bernoulli and son of Johann II Bernoulli, was a Swiss mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and geographer, known around the world as a child prodigy. Biography He studied at Basel and at Neuchâtel, and when thirteen years of age took the degree of doctor in philosophy. When he was fourteen, he got the degree of master of jurisprudence. At nineteen he was appointed astronomer royal of Berlin. A year later, he reorganized the astronomical observatory at the Berlin Academy. Some years after, he visited Germany, France and England, and subsequently Italy, Courland, Russia and Poland.
Go to Profile#10566
Karel Niessen
1895 - 1967 (72 years)
Karel Frederik Niessen was a Dutch theoretical physicist who made contributions to quantum mechanics and is known for the Pauli–Niessen model. Education Niessen began his studies in physics at the University of Utrecht in 1914. In 1922, he received his doctorate under L. S. Ornstein. He was an assistant at the University from 1921 to 1928, except for his postdoctoral study and research at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich under Arnold Sommerfeld, 1925 to 1926 on a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. He also spent 1928 to 1929 on a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at the University...
Go to Profile#10567
Evgeni Gross
1897 - 1972 (75 years)
Evgenii Fedorovich Gross was a Soviet physicist working in optics and spectroscopy of condensed matter. He graduated from Leningrad University in 1924. He became a correspondent member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1946.
Go to Profile#10568
John Cantius
1390 - 1473 (83 years)
John Cantius was a Polish priest, scholastic philosopher, physicist and theologian. Biography John Cantius was born in Kęty, a small town near Oświęcim, Poland, to Anna and Stanisław Kanty. He attended the Kraków Academy at which he attained bachelor, and licentiate. In 1418 he became a Doctor of Philosophy. Upon graduation he spent the next three years conducting philosophy classes at the university, while preparing for the priesthood.
Go to Profile#10569
Alexis Caswell
1799 - 1877 (78 years)
Alexis Caswell was an American educator, born in Taunton, Massachusetts. He graduated Brown University in 1822, and entered the Baptist ministry. Career Caswell was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Brown University from 1828 to 1850, and of mathematics and astronomy from 1850 to 1864. Professor Caswell was president of Brown University from 1868 to 1872. He was one of the founders of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and served as its President in 1857.
Go to Profile#10570
Frank Edward Smith
1876 - 1970 (94 years)
Sir Frank Edward Smith was a British physicist and acting director of the National Physical Laboratory between 1936 and 1937. Biography Smith was born in Aston Manor, Birmingham on 14 October 1876, the fourth of seven children of Joseph Smith, an office clerk, and Fanny Jane .
Go to Profile#10571
Grigory Neujmin
1885 - 1946 (61 years)
Grigory Nikolayevich Neujmin was a Georgian–Russian astronomer, native of Tbilisi in Georgia, and a discoverer of numerous minor planets as well as 6 periodic and a hyperbolic comet at the Pulkovo and Simeiz Observatories during the first half of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#10572
John Hubbard
1931 - 1980 (49 years)
John Hubbard was a British physicist, best known for the Hubbard model for interacting electrons, the Hubbard–Stratonovich transformation, and the Hubbard approximations. He graduated from Imperial College London, receiving a B.Sc. and a Ph.D. degree .
Go to Profile#10573
Jöns Svanberg
1771 - 1851 (80 years)
Jöns Svanberg was a Swedish clergyman and natural scientist. Life He was born on 6 July 1771 in Ytterbyn, Sweden and died on 15 January 1851 in Uppsala, Sweden. Career He entered Uppsala University at the age of 16. He received his Ph.D. in 1794. In 1806, he became the professor of surveying and in 1811 he became the professor of mathematics at Uppsala University.
Go to Profile#10574
William Michael Haynes
#10575
Mary Watson Whitney
1847 - 1921 (74 years)
Mary Watson Whitney was an American astronomer and was the head of the Vassar College Observatory for 22 years, where 102 scientific papers were published under her guidance. Early life and education Whitney was born on September 11, 1847 in Waltham, Massachusetts. Her mother was Mary Watson Crehore and her father was Samuel Buttrick Whitney. Her father was successful in real estate and wealthy enough to provide her with a good education for a woman at the time. She attended school in Waltham, where she reportedly excelled in mathematics. Whitney graduated from the public high school in 1863....
Go to Profile#10576
Gerardus J. Sizoo
1900 - 1994 (94 years)
Gerardus Johannes Sizoo was the first professor of physics at the Vrije Universiteit. He is notable for the establishment and development of the applied physics laboratory in 1930 and the establishment of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the Vrije Universiteit.
Go to Profile#10577
Jan Hendrik de Boer
1899 - 1971 (72 years)
Jan Hendrik de Boer was a Dutch physicist and chemist. De Boer was born in Ruinen, De Wolden, and died in The Hague. He studied at the University of Groningen and was later employed in industry. Together with Anton Eduard van Arkel, de Boer developed a chemical transport reaction for titanium, zirconium, and hafnium known as the crystal bar process. In a closed vessel the metal reacts with iodine at elevated temperature forming the iodide. At a tungsten filament of 1700 °C the reverse reaction occurs, and the iodine and the metal are set free. The metal forms a solid coating at the tungsten f...
Go to Profile#10578
Nikolay Florea
1912 - 1941 (29 years)
Nikolay Florea was a Soviet astronomer of mixed Romanian and Russian origin. Biography Florea was born in Odessa in the village of Moldovanca, where many people of Romanian origin have lived since the Middle Ages. His father was a teacher of Latin language. The young Nikolay was interested in astronomy and begun amateur observations of variable stars at the popular astronomical observatory in that city. After the finish of the school and astronomical department of the University He was employed as astronomer in Tashkent , while subsequently He was transferred to the Shternberg Astronomical Institute of the Moscow State University.
Go to Profile#10579
William Lewis Elkin
1855 - 1933 (78 years)
William Lewis Elkin was an American astronomer known for his detailed work measuring parallaxes and for pioneering work in meteor photography. He served as director of the Yale University Observatory from 1896 to 1910.
Go to Profile#10580
Grigory Shajn
1892 - 1956 (64 years)
Grigory Abramovich Shajn was a Soviet/Russian astronomer. In modern English transliteration, his surname would be given as Shayn, but his astronomical discoveries are credited under the name G. Shajn. Nonetheless, his last name is sometimes given as Schayn.
Go to Profile#10581
Felicjan Kępiński
1885 - 1966 (81 years)
Felicjan Kępiński was a Polish astronomer. Work In 1903 he graduated from the government secondary school in Piotrków Trybunalski, later the 1st Bolesław Chrobry General Secondary School. In 1905 he took part in a students’ strike. As part of this boycott of Russian universities, he chose to study abroad. He first studied philosophy at the University of Leipzig , then mathematics and astronomy at the University of Göttingen and the University of Berlin . In March 1913 he received his doctorate in philosophy.
Go to Profile#10582
Herbert H. Chen
1942 - 1987 (45 years)
Herbert Hwa-sen Chen was a theoretical and experimental physicist at the University of California at Irvine known for his contributions in the field of neutrino detection. Chen's work on observations of elastic neutrino-electron scattering provided important experimental support for the electroweak theory of the standard model of particle physics. In 1984 Chen realized that the deuterium of heavy water could be used as a detector that would distinguish the flavors of solar neutrinos. This idea led Chen to develop plans for the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory that would eventually make fundam...
Go to Profile#10583
Benedict Sestini
1816 - 1890 (74 years)
Benedict Sestini, SJ was a Jesuit astronomer, mathematician and architect, who worked in Italy and the U.S. Career Sestini was born in Florence, Italy, on March 20, 1816. He entered the Society of Jesus in Rome on October 30, 1836, and studied at the Roman College where he followed the courses of Rev. Vincent Caraffa, the professor of mathematics. He was appointed assistant to Rev. Francesco de Vico, director of the Vatican Observatory. Sestini was ordained in 1844, and then held the chair of higher mathematics at the Roman College.
Go to Profile#10584
John LeConte
1818 - 1891 (73 years)
John LeConte was an American scientist and academic. He served as president of the University of California from 1869 to 1870 and from 1875 to 1881. Biography LeConte was born in Liberty County, Georgia, to Louis Le Conte, patriarch of the noted LeConte family. He attended Franklin College at the University of Georgia where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society and graduated in 1838. His younger brother Joseph LeConte also attended the university.
Go to Profile#10585
Arthur Beer
1900 - 1980 (80 years)
Arthur Beer was a German astronomer who worked at Cambridge University Biography He was born in Reichenberg, Bohemia, the only son of Professor Johan Beer, a secondary teacher of arts and crafts, and Olga née Pollak. Arthur completed his secondary education in 1918 in Reichenberg after returning from military service in World War I. His university studies were postponed after he contracted polio in 1924; he later received a necessary operation to enable him to walk.
Go to Profile#10586
Paul ten Bruggencate
1901 - 1961 (60 years)
Paul ten Bruggencate was a German astronomer and astrophysicist. Youth and education Ten Bruggencate was born in Arosa, Switzerland, and went to several schools in Switzerland, in the Netherlands and in Germany. He further studied at the University of Munich and started his PhD work with Hugo von Seeliger. However, due to health problems, Seeliger had to hand over the supervision of his PhD students to Hans Kienle.
Go to Profile#10587
Henrik Mohn
1835 - 1916 (81 years)
Henrik Mohn was a Norwegian astronomer and meteorologist. Although he enrolled in theology studies after finishing school, he is credited with founding meteorological research in Norway, being a professor at the Royal Frederick University and director of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute from 1866 to 1913.
Go to Profile#10588
Arthur Stanley Mackenzie
1865 - 1938 (73 years)
Arthur Stanley Mackenzie was a Canadian physicist and university president. He was born in Pictou, Nova Scotia and educated at Dalhousie University, Halifax, and Johns Hopkins University. He was instructor in mathematics at Dalhousie from 1887 to 1889. At Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, he was a lecturer and associate in physics , associate professor , and professor . Mackenzie then returned to Dalhousie to become a Munro professor of physics . In 1911, he became president of the university, succeeding John Forrest.
Go to Profile#10589
Antonio Vallisneri
1661 - 1730 (69 years)
Antonio Vallisneri , also rendered as Antonio Vallisnieri, was an Italian medical scientist, physician and naturalist. Life Vallisneri was born in Trassilico, a small village in Garfagnana, and graduated in medicine in 1684, in Reggio Emilia, under the guidance of Marcello Malpighi. A grand-uncle was the physician Cesare Magati.
Go to Profile#10590
Ignaz Schütz
1867 - 1927 (60 years)
Ignaz Robert Schütz was a Czech–German mathematician and a physicist. He studied at the University of Munich where in 1894 he obtained a Ph.D in physics. Schütz was assistant to Ludwig Boltzmann in Munich from 1891 to 1894, the year of Boltzmann's departure from Munich. In 1897, Ignaz R. Schütz, then a member of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Göttingen, showed how time translational symmetry induces conservation of energy.
Go to Profile#10591
Louise du Pierry
1746 - 1807 (61 years)
Louise du Pierry or Dupiery, née Elisabeth Louise Felicité Pourra de la Madeleine , was a French astronomer and professor. Life She was born in La Ferté-Bernard, in the French province of Maine, on 1 August 1746.
Go to Profile#10592
Joseph Epping
1835 - 1894 (59 years)
Joseph Epping was a German Jesuit astronomer and Assyriologist. Life Joseph Epping was born at Neuenkirchen near the Rhine in Westphalia on 1 December 1835. His parents died while he was very young, and he owed his early education to relations. After completing the usual Gymnasium at Rheine and at Münster, he matriculated at the academy in Münster, where he devoted himself particularly to mathematics.
Go to Profile#10593
Denison Olmsted
1791 - 1859 (68 years)
Denison Olmsted was an American physicist and astronomer. Professor Olmsted is credited with giving birth to meteor science after the 1833 Leonid meteor shower over North America spurred him to study this phenomenon.
Go to Profile#10594
Paul Geoffrey Murdin
#10595
Jean Dufay
1896 - 1967 (71 years)
Jean Claude Barthélemy Dufay was a French astronomer. During his career he studied nebulae, interstellar matter, the night sky and cometary physics. In 1925, while working in collaboration with Jean Cabannes, he computed the altitude of the Earth's ozone layer. He was named the honorary director of the Lyon Observatory. Some of his proteges who worked with him in the observatory included Marie Bloch and Charles Fehrenbach. He became a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1963.
Go to Profile#10596
Henry Smith Carhart
1844 - 1920 (76 years)
Henry Smith Carhart, Ph.B. was an American physicist and university professor. He was born in Coeymans, New York on March 27, 1844, and graduated from Wesleyan University in 1869 and completed an M.A. degree from the same institution in 1873. He pursued additional graduate studies at Yale, Harvard, and the Humboldt University of Berlin. After serving as professor at Northwestern University, Carhart was appointed to the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1886, where he remained until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1909.
Go to Profile#10597
Manuel John Johnson
1805 - 1859 (54 years)
Manuel John Johnson, FRS was a British astronomer. He was born in Macao, China, the son of John William Roberts of the East India Company and was educated at Mr Styles' Classical Academy in Thames Ditton and at the Addiscombe Military Seminary for service in the East India Company .
Go to Profile#10598
Jan Marek Marci
1595 - 1667 (72 years)
Jan Marek Marci , or Johannes Marcus Marci, was a Bohemian doctor and scientist, rector of the University of Prague, and official physician to the Holy Roman Emperors. The crater Marci on the far side of the Moon is named after him.
Go to Profile#10599
Martin D. Whitaker
1902 - 1960 (58 years)
Martin Dewey Whitaker was an American physicist who was the first director of the Clinton Laboratories during World War II. He served as president of Lehigh University from 1946 until his death in 1960.
Go to Profile#10600
August Ritter
1826 - 1908 (82 years)
August Ritter was a German civil engineer. Biography He was educated at the Polytechnic Institute at Hanover, and at Göttingen. He was a practicing engineer for some time, in 1856 became teacher of mechanics and construction of machinery at Hanover, in the Polytechnic Institute, and in 1870 became professor in the School of Technology at Aix-la-Chapelle. He is best known as the author of Ritter's method of doing calculations for arches for bridges and roofs.
Go to Profile