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,

#10601

Otto Ernst Heinrich Klemperer

1899 - 1987 (88 years)

Otto Ernst Heinrich Klemperer was a physicist expert in electron optics. He was granted his doctorate by the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 1923. His thesis advisor was Hans Geiger. He continued to work with Geiger in the 1930s.

#10602

Alexander Geddes

1885 - 1970 (85 years)

Alexander Ebenezer McLean Geddes OBE FRSE was a Scottish meteorologist and physicist. He was generally known as Sandy Geddes and nicknamed Siccer Sandy . Life He was born in Fordyce, Aberdeenshire on 8 February 1885 and educated at Fordyce Academy. He then attended the University of Aberdeen graduating with a MA in 1906. In 1908 he became an assistant lecturer at the university teaching natural philosophy . He received a doctorate in 1913.

#10603

Qian Ji

1917 - 1983 (66 years)

Qian Ji was a Chinese physicist and aerospace engineer who was instrumental in the development of China's first satellite, the Dong Fang Hong I, and its first successful 3-in-1 satellite launch, the Shijian 2. In 1999, he was posthumously awarded the Two Bombs, One Satellite Meritorious Medal.

#10604

Mark Walrod Harrington

1848 - 1926 (78 years)

Mark Walrod Harrington was an American scientist, the first civilian head of the United States Weather Bureau, and former president of the University of Washington. Considered a prominent scientist in the late 19th century, Harrington studied and published works in multiple disciplines, including botany, astronomy, meteorology, and geology, and knew a half-dozen languages. His academic achievements were overshadowed by his disappearance in 1899, when he left home one day and disappeared for many years. His wife and son located him in 1908 at a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey where he had been admitted as patient John Doe No.

#10605

André Blondel

1863 - 1938 (75 years)

André-Eugène Blondel was a French engineer and physicist. He is the inventor of the electromechanical oscillograph and a system of photometric units of measurement. Life Blondel was born in Chaumont, Haute-Marne, France. His father was a magistrate from an old family in the town of Dijon. He was the best student from the town in his year. He went on to attend the École nationale des ponts et chaussées and graduated first in his class in 1888. He was employed as an engineer by the Lighthouses and Beacons Service until he retired in 1927 as its general first class inspector. He became a profes...

#10606

Alexander Wilson

Alexander Wilson

1714 - 1786 (72 years)

Alexander Wilson was a Scottish surgeon, type-founder, astronomer, mathematician and meteorologist. He was the first scientist to use kites in meteorological investigations. He was the first Regius Professor of Practical Astronomy at the University of Glasgow.

#10607

John Alan Chalmers

1904 - 1967 (63 years)

Professor John Alan Chalmers was a British atmospheric physicist based at Durham University. He is well known for his contributions to atmospheric electricity, particularly an internationally respected textbook, and, outside his scientific work, for his involvement with Scouting. This led to him being widely known to his colleagues by the nickname, "Skip", a commonly used term for the leader of a Scout troop.

#10608

Carl Theodor Albrecht

Carl Theodor Albrecht

1843 - 1915 (72 years)

Carl Theodor Albrecht was a German astronomer. He studied mathematics and natural sciences at the TU Dresden and the Universität Berlin. During his time in Dresden, he helped founding Polyhymnia, the fraternity that later became the German Student Corps Altsachsen. He specialized in geodesy, to which he devoted much of his career. He also worked on the problem of variation of latitude, building upon the work of Seth Carlo Chandler who discovered the variation, known as the Chandler wobble. In 1882, Carl Theodor Albrecht was elected as member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

#10609

Harry Devonald Griffith

1898 - 1964 (66 years)

Harry Devonald Griffith FRSE was a British physicist and author. Life He was born in Clifton, Bristol, to John Devonald Griffith and his wife Alice. He was christened on 3 April 1898. He was educated at Bristol Grammar School. He then studied at Cambridge University graduating MA.

#10610

Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider

1891 - 1990 (99 years)

Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider was a German-Australian physicist and philosopher. She is best known for her collaboration and correspondence with physicists Albert Einstein, Max von Laue, and Max Planck. Rosenthal-Schneider earned a PhD in philosophy in 1920 at the University of Berlin, where she first met Albert Einstein. After leaving Nazi Germany and emigrating to Australia in 1938, she became a tutor in the German department at the University of Sydney in 1945 and taught history and philosophy of science. In the 1940s and 1950s, she exchanged a series of letters with Albert Einstein about philo...

#10611

Vladimir Wiese

1886 - 1954 (68 years)

Vladimir Yulyevich Wiese was a Russian scientist of German descent who devoted his life to the study of the Arctic ice pack. His name is associated with the Scientific Prediction of Ice Conditions theory. Wiese was a member of the Soviet Arctic Institute and an authority on polar oceanography. He was also the founder of the Geographico-hydrological School of Oceanography.

#10612

Jan Gadomski

1889 - 1966 (77 years)

Jan Gadomski was a Polish astronomer. At the Jagiellonian University Observatory he made systematic observations of eclipsing binary stars. The crater Gadomski on the Moon is named after him. External links Gadomski, Jan .

#10613

Alfred Gibbs Bourne

1859 - 1940 (81 years)

Sir Alfred Gibbs Bourne DSc was an English zoologist, botanist and educator who worked in India. Life and work Bourne was the son of Rev. Alfred Bourne, secretary of the British Foreign School Society, and he joined the University College School after a liberal home education. Along with his contemporary Sydney J. Hickson, he was fascinated by the lectures of Ray Lankester. He later joined the University College in 1876 and attended the Royal School of Mines. In 1886, he went to Madras to join the Presidency College as Professor of Biology. He held this position until 1898 although he also ...

#10614

Julius Erasmus Hilgard

Julius Erasmus Hilgard

1825 - 1891 (66 years)

Julius Erasmus Hilgard was a Bavarian-American engineer. Biography Julius Erasmus Hilgard was born at Zweibrücken, Rhineland-Palatinate, Kingdom of Bavaria on January 7, 1825. His father, Theodore Erasmus Hilgard, was for many years Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals, but on account of his liberal opinions was so dissatisfied with conditions in his native country that in 1835 he emigrated to America. The journey from his native place to Havre was made in wagons. After a voyage of 62 days, the family landed at New Orleans at Christmas, and journeyed up the Mississippi to St. Louis, and thence to a farm at Belleville, Illinois.

#10615

Siegfried Czapski

Siegfried Czapski

1861 - 1907 (46 years)

Siegfried Czapski was a German physicist and optician. Childhood, school and university in Breslau Czapski was the son of Simon Czapski and his wife Rosalie Goldenring on the Obra estate near Koschmin in the Province of Posen. His family was Jewish, and he was related to the physician Albert Neisser. In 1870 Czapski's father suffered a serious accident which left him unable to work. The family sold their estate and moved to Breslau where, in 1872, eleven-year-old Czapski began attending school at the Maria Magdalenen Gymnasium. In 1879 he completed his university entrance examination and...

#10616

Nicholas Kratzer

Nicholas Kratzer

1487 - 1550 (63 years)

Nicholas Kratzer , also known as Nicolaus Kratzer and Nicholas Crutcher, was a German mathematician, astronomer, and horologist. Much of Kratzer's professional life was spent in England, where he was appointed as astronomer to King Henry VIII.

#10617

Jacopo Dondi dell'Orologio

1293 - 1359 (66 years)

Jacopo Dondi dell'Orologio , also known as Jacopo de' Dondi, was a doctor, astronomer and clock-maker active in Padua, Italy. He is remembered today as a pioneer in the art of clock design and construction. He was the father of Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio. Jacopo Dondi wrote on a number of subjects, including surgery, pharmacology, astrology and natural science.

#10618

Herbert Rollo Morgan

1875 - 1957 (82 years)

Herbert Rollo Morgan was an American astronomer. His major lifetime work was on the production of the Catalog of 5,268 Standard Stars Based on the Normal System N30 published in 1952. Morgan was born near Medford, Minnesota to Henry and Olive Sabre Smith Morgan. He became asthmatic an early age and the family moved to Tennessee where he studied. He obtained an AB from the University of Virginia, followed by a PhD in 1901. He received a Vanderbilt Fellowship at the Leander McCormick Observatory. He then worked at the US Naval Observatory as a computer and moved to Pritchett College in 1905 as a professor of mathematics.

#10619

Richard Henderson

Richard Henderson

1734 - 1785 (51 years)

Richard Henderson was an American jurist, land speculator and politician who was best known for attempting to create the Transylvania Colony in frontier Kentucky. Henderson County and its seat Henderson, Kentucky are named for him. He also sold land to an early settlement that went on to become Nashville, Tennessee.

#10620

Thomas Jackson

1773 - Present (253 years)

Thomas Jackson FRSE LLD was a Scottish physicist operating in the early 19th century. Life He was born on 16 December 1773 the eldest son of Thomas Jackson a farmer at Waterhead Farm, Carsphairn in Dumfries and Galloway in south-west Scotland.

#10621

D. K. C. MacDonald

1920 - 1963 (43 years)

Dr David Keith Chalmers MacDonald FRS FRSE FRSC was a 20th-century Scottish-born metal physicist, cryogenecist and scientific author. He is considered as one of the founding fathers of modern cryogenics.

#10622

James Renwick

1790 - 1863 (73 years)

James Renwick , was an English-American scientist and engineer. Early life Renwick was born in Liverpool, England, on 30 May 1790. He was the son of Jane Jeffrey Renwick and William Renwick . His paternal grandfather was James Renwick .

#10623

Georg Bredig

1868 - 1944 (76 years)

Georg Bredig was a German physical chemist. Bredig was a faculty member at the University of Leipzig and professor of chemistry at Heidelberg ; Technische Hochschule, Zurich ; and Technische Hochschule, Karlsruhe .

#10624

Kaliprasanna Vidyaratna

1849 - 1924 (75 years)

Kaliprasanna Vidyaratna was an Indian scholar of Sanskrit, academician and author. He was the principal of the Sanskrit College between 1908 and 1910. Vidyarayna played an important role in the revival of Sanskrit language.

#10625

Bertrand Meigh Peek

Bertrand Meigh Peek

1891 - 1965 (74 years)

Bertrand Meigh Peek M.A. FRAS was a British astronomer. Peek used an observatory at Solihull, Birmingham, England, from 1923 until 1947 to make a series of observations The observatory was dismantled in 1947. Among the targets of his observations was the planet Jupiter, and he served as British Astronomical Association Mars Section director Saturn Section director , and Jupiter Section director . He served as president of the BAA from 1938 until 1940.

#10626

Gong Zutong

1904 - 1986 (82 years)

Gong Zutong was a Chinese optical physicist. He was a founder of China's optical glass industry and served as Founding Director of the Xi'an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences . He was elected an academician of the CAS in 1980.

#10627

Mordechai Finzi

1440 - 1475 (35 years)

Mordechai ben Abraham Finzi was a Jewish mathematician, astronomer, grammarian and physician in Mantua. Work Finzi's astronomical tables were published under the title Luḥot, probably before 1480. He wrote glosses to Efodi's Hebrew grammar, Ḥesheb ha-Efod.

#10628

Marcus Hartog

1851 - 1924 (73 years)

Marcus Manuel Hartog was an English educator, natural historian, philosopher of biology and zoologist in Cork, Ireland. He contributed to multiple volumes of the Cambridge Natural History. Life Hartog was born in London 1851, the second son of the Professor Alphonse Hartog and Marion , younger brother of Numa Edward Hartog and elder brother of Sir Philip Joseph Hartog, Academic Registrar of London University and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dacca. His two younger sisters were the pianist and composer Cécile Hartog and the portrait painter Héléna Arsène Darmesteter,

#10629

Arturo Salazar Valencia

1855 - 1943 (88 years)

Arturo Edmundo Salazar Valencia was a scientist, researcher, innovator and professor of electrical engineering in Chile, who in his role as a self-taught individual, explored a wide variety of fields of interest and is considered a true pioneer in the technological development of his country.

#10630

Franz Heinrich Reusch

Franz Heinrich Reusch

1823 - 1900 (77 years)

Franz Heinrich Reusch was an Old Catholic theologian. He was born at Brilon, in Westphalia, studied general literature at Paderborn, and theology at Bonn, Tübingen and Munich. The friend and pupil of Döllinger, he took his degree of Doctor in Theology at Munich. He was ordained a priest in 1849, and was immediately made chaplain at Cologne. In 1854 he became Privatdozent in the exegesis of the Old Testament in the Catholic Theological Faculty at Bonn; in 1858 he was made extraordinary, and in 1861 ordinary, professor of theology in the same university. From 1866 to 1877 he was editor of the B...

#10631

Richard Prager

1883 - 1945 (62 years)

Richard A. Prager was a German-American astronomer. Career Prager was born in Hannover, Germany. He became an assistant in the German Academy of Sciences in 1908. The following year he became division head of the Observatorio Nacional in Santiago, Chile, where he remained until 1913. He then returned to Berlin, becoming an observer at the Berlin-Babelsberg Observatory. In 1916 he became a professor.

#10632

Joseph M. Baldwin

Joseph M. Baldwin

1878 - 1945 (67 years)

Joseph Mason Baldwin was Victorian government astronomer 1920–1943. Baldwin was born in Carlton, Melbourne, Australia, the third son of Joseph Baldwin and his wife Emma Maria, née Graham. J.M. Baldwin's maternal grandfather was astronomer Andrew Graham who was involved in his grandson's training.

#10633

Vincentio Reinieri

1606 - 1647 (41 years)

Vincentio Reinieri was an Italian mathematician and astronomer. He was a friend and disciple of Galileo Galilei. Biography Born at Genoa, he was a member of the Olivetan order. His order sent him to Rome in 1623. He met Galileo at Siena in 1633. Galileo had Reinieri update and attempt to improve his astronomical tables of the motions of Jupiter's moons, revising these tables for prediction of the positions of these satellites.

#10634

John Rowning

1701 - 1771 (70 years)

John Rowning was an English mathematician, clergyman, and philosopher. He wrote on natural philosophy, designed measuring and calculating instruments. In his book he rejected the idea of Newtonian ether and explained gravitational forces as being the action of God.

#10635

Hubert H. Crawford

1910 - 1985 (75 years)

Hubert Horace Crawford was an American painter originally from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He had many artistic talents. He played the violin. He also was a woodworker and designed furniture. He also designed and built his own powerboat, and it is believed that he was the first African American yachtsman in Buffalo. He was also a member of Michigan Avenue Baptist Church and Michigan Avenue YMCA.

#10636

William Thomson

1856 - 1947 (91 years)

Sir William Thomson FRSE LLD was a 19th/20th century Scottish mathematician and physicist primarily working as a university administrator in South Africa. Life He was born on New Year's Eve, 31 December 1856, in the village of Kirkton of Mailler in Perthshire. He was educated at Perth Academy then studied mathematics and physics at the University of Edinburgh. He graduated with a BSc and MA in 1878 and began assisting in lectures at the University.

#10637

Tor Andræ

1885 - 1947 (62 years)

Tor Julius Efraim Andræ was a Swedish clergyman, professor and scholar of comparative religion who served as Bishop of the Diocese of Linköping. Biography Andræ was born at Vena parish in Hultsfred Municipality in Kalmar County, Sweden. He came from a clerical family. He was the son of pastor Anders Johan Andræ and Ida Nilsson. He studied theology at Uppsala University, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1917. As a historian of religion, his particular interest lay in the early history of Islam, particularly its Jewish and Christian origins, and in the psychology of religion, but he also combi...

#10638

Alvan Graham Clark

Alvan Graham Clark

1832 - 1897 (65 years)

Alvan Graham Clark was an American astronomer and telescope-maker. Biography Alvan Graham Clark was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, the son of Alvan Clark, founder of Alvan Clark & Sons. On January 31, 1862, while testing a new aperture great refractor telescope in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, Clark made the first ever observation of a white dwarf star. This discovery of Sirius B, or affectionately "the Pup", proved an earlier hypotheses that Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky with an apparent magnitude of −1.46, had an unseen companion disturbing its motion. Clark used the l...

#10639

F. I. G. Rawlins

1895 - 1969 (74 years)

Francis Ian Gregory Rawlins CBE FRSE FSA FIP was a British physicist and crystallographer. Professionally he was known as Ian Rawlins however most friends called him Fig Rawlins. He was an expert on x-ray photography and shadowgraphs.

#10640

Hubert A. Newton

Hubert A. Newton

1830 - 1896 (66 years)

Prof Hubert Anson Newton FRS HFRSE , usually cited as H. A. Newton, was an American astronomer and mathematician, noted for his research on meteors. Biography Newton was born at Sherburne, New York, and graduated from Yale in 1850 with a B.A. He continued his studies independently in New Haven and at home, due to the absence of Anthony Stanley, the primary professor of mathematics at Yale who was at the time dying of tuberculosis. Newton took up the position of tutor in January, 1853, a few months before Stanley's death, and served as the principal instructor of mathematics until 1855 when he was appointed professor of mathematics.

#10641

Christian Moser

1861 - 1935 (74 years)

Christian Moser was a Swiss actuary and professor of actuarial mathematics. He is known as one of the actuarial pioneers of the welfare state policies adopted by several European countries in the 20th century.

#10642

Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Rümker

Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Rümker

1832 - 1900 (68 years)

Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Rümker was a German astronomer. Biography Born at Hamburg, Georg Rümker was the son of Carl Ludwig Christian Rümker. He was astronomer at the observatory at Durham, England, from 1853 to 1856. He then became assistant at the Hamburger Sternwarte , then located at Stadtwall, and in 1862 was appointed director. He served as director until his death in 1900. He was succeeded by Richard Schorr.

#10643

Nadiashda Galli-Shohat

1879 - 1948 (69 years)

Nadiashda or Nadejda Galli-Shohat was a Russian physicist. Born Nadiashda Kokaoulina in Siberia, she graduated from the Women's University of Petrograd in 1903, joined the Bolshevik Party after the 1905 Russian Revolution, and took the name Galli upon marrying her first husband. She received her doctorate from Göttingen in 1914, worked at the Yekaterinburg Meteorological Observatory from 1915 to 1917, and from 1917 to 1922 was professor and chair of the physics department at Ural Federal University, after which she worked at the University of Petrograd's State Optical Institute. Together with...

#10644

William L. Bray

1865 - 1953 (88 years)

William L. Bray was a botanist, plant ecologist, biogeographer and Professor of Botany at Syracuse University. He was the first dean of the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University, from 1911 to 1912.

#10645

Walter Wislicenus

Walter Wislicenus

1859 - 1905 (46 years)

Walter Friedrich Wislicenus was a German astronomer. He taught at the University of Strasbourg starting in 1888, and was a professor from 1897 until his death. He was known for his lectures given outside of academia that attracted many non-scientists, and for his publications for the interested public.

#10646

Louis Bell

1864 - 1923 (59 years)

Louis Bell was an American engineer, physicist, inventor, and academic. He was an early pioneer in illumination engineering and the transmission of electricity, being awarded 25 patents in power transmission.

#10647

Daniel Joseph Kelly O'Connell

1896 - 1982 (86 years)

Daniel Joseph Kelly O'Connell was a seismologist, astronomer and Jesuit priest who is particularly known for his work in observational astronomy. He worked primarily observing binary star systems, and was involved in photographing the Green Flash. He was also the third president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

#10648

Sinclair Smith

1899 - 1938 (39 years)

Sinclair Smith was an American astronomer. His observations of the Virgo Cluster were among the first to suggest the existence of dark matter. Biography In 1906, his parents took him to Italy for two years, then to Indiana, where they lived until 1913, when they moved to California.

#10649

Bruce B. Benson

1922 - 1990 (68 years)

Bruce Buzzell Benson was a professor of physics at the Amherst College. Benson was born in Choteau, Montana. He was a graduate of Amherst College and then got his master's and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University where he later served as an instructor from 1944 to 1946. In 1947, Benson returned to his alma mater to join its faculty. From 1957 to 1967 he was an associate professor of physics at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and from 1977 to 1990 served as an associate editor of the journal Marine Chemistry. During his time as professor of physics at Amherst, he worked closely with Daniel Krause, studying thermodynamics of the solubilities of gases.

#10650

Henry Cabourn Pocklington

1870 - 1952 (82 years)

Henry Cabourn Pocklington FRS was an English physicist and mathematician. His primary profession was as a schoolmaster, but he made important contributions to number theory with the discovery of Pocklington's primality test in 1914 and the invention of Pocklington's algorithm. He also derived the first equation for the current in a wire antenna, Pocklington's integral equation.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions