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,
#10701
Willebrord Snellius
1580 - 1626 (46 years)
Willebrord Snellius was a Dutch astronomer and mathematician, Snell. His name is usually associated with the law of refraction of light known as Snell's law. The lunar crater Snellius is named after Willebrord Snellius. The Royal Netherlands Navy has named three survey ships after Snellius, including a currently-serving vessel.
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Eli Franklin Burton
1879 - 1948 (69 years)
Eli Franklin Burton OBE, was a Canadian physicist. Burton was born in Green River, township of Pickering, Ontario, Canada. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1901. From 1904 to 1906 he studied colloids with J. J. Thomson at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, writing an important monograph on the subject in 1938. He also wrote a college textbook on physics. He had become the head of the University of Toronto Physics Department in 1932.
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Sigurd Zienau
1921 - 1976 (55 years)
Sigurd Zienau was a physicist notable for the theory of the polaron. Education His undergraduate studies were in mathematics at Birkbeck College. His further studies in physics were very much in the 'old school' European style at the time and he variously studied under Walter Heitler, Wolfgang Pauli, and Herbert Fröhlich.
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Samuel Alfred Mitchell
1874 - 1960 (86 years)
Samuel Alfred Mitchell was a Canadian-American astronomer who studied solar eclipses and set up a program to use photographic techniques to determine the distance to stars at McCormick Observatory, where he served as the director.
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Octave Callandreau
1852 - 1904 (52 years)
Pierre Jean Octave Callandreau was a French astronomer who contributed to celestial mechanics on the calculation of orbits and the use of perturbations. He also served as a professor of astronomy at the École Polytechnique from 1893.
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Alexander Eichenwald
1863 - 1944 (81 years)
Alexander Alexandrovich Eichenwald was a Russian experimental physicist who worked on electrodynamics. He conducted experiments on electromagnetism, electrical fields, and on the construction of instruments to measure magnetic fields. His most famous experiment, following those of Wilhelm Röntgen, examined the predictions of James Clerk Maxwell. Named after them as the Röntgen-Eichenwald experiment, this demonstrated that the movement of static charges was no different from electric currents in that they produced an electromagnetic field.
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Albert von Ettingshausen
1850 - 1932 (82 years)
Albert von Ettingshausen was an Austrian physicist. He was professor of physics at Graz University of Technology, where he also taught electrical engineering. Earlier he was an assistant to Ludwig Boltzmann at the University of Graz.
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Jules-Émile Verschaffelt
1870 - 1955 (85 years)
Jules-Émile Verschaffelt was a Belgian physicist. He worked at Kamerlingh Onnes's laboratory in Leiden from 1894 to 1906 and once again from 1914 to 1923. From 1906 to 1914 he worked at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and from 1923 to 1940 at the Ghent University. He was one of the participants of the fifth Solvay Conference on Physics that took place at the International Solvay Institute for Physics in Belgium.
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Ben Zion Tavger
1930 - 1983 (53 years)
Ben Zion Tavger , August 5, 1930 - July 22, 1983, was a physicist and an activist for the renewed Jewish community of Hebron. Early years Tavger was born in 1930 in the city of Barysaw . His family then moved to Gorky in Russia.
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Henri Mineur
1899 - 1954 (55 years)
Henri Mineur was a French astronomer and mathematician. He was born in Lille. In 1917 he applied for the École Normale Supérieure and placed first in his class, but he decided to serve in the army during World War I. Following the war he received his degree in 1921. In addition to studying for a graduate degree, he taught mathematics in Düsseldorf. He received his Ph.D. in 1924.
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John J. Turin
1913 - 1973 (60 years)
John J. Turin was an American mathematician and physicist, especially active in the field of astronomy. Turin received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Wayne State University and his doctorate in nuclear physics from the University of Michigan.
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Johann Kies
1713 - 1781 (68 years)
Johann Kies was a German astronomer and mathematician. Born in Tübingen, Kies worked in Berlin in 1751 alongside Jérôme Lalande in order to make observations on the lunar parallax in concert with those of Nicolas Louis de Lacaille at the Cape of Good Hope.
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Arthur March
1891 - 1957 (66 years)
Arthur March was an Austrian physicist. From 1909 he studied mathematics and physics at the Universities of Innsbruck, Munich and Vienna, earning his doctorate in 1913. In 1917 he obtained his habilitation, and in 1928 became an associate professor at Innsbruck. From 1934 to 1936 he was a visiting professor at the University of Oxford, afterwards returning to Innsbruck as a full professor of theoretical physics.
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John Zeleny
1872 - 1951 (79 years)
John Zeleny was an American physicist who, in 1911, invented the Zeleny electroscope. He also studied the effect of an electric field on a liquid meniscus. His work is seen by some as a beginning to emergent technologies like liquid metal ion sources and electrospraying and electrospinning.
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Minggatu
1692 - 1763 (71 years)
Minggatu , full name Sharavyn Myangat , also known as Ming Antu was a Mongolian astronomer, mathematician, and topographic scientist at the Qing court. His courtesy name was Jing An . Minggatu was born in Plain White Banner of the Qing Empire. He was of the Sharaid clan. His name first appeared in official Chinese records in 1713, among the Kangxi Emperor's retinue, as a shengyuan of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau. He worked there at a time when Jesuit missionaries were in charge of calendar reforms. He also participated in the work of compiling and editing three very important books in a...
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Vincenc Strouhal
1850 - 1922 (72 years)
Vincenc Strouhal was a Czech physicist specializing in experimental physics. He was one of the founders of the Institute of Physics of the Czech part of Charles University. He was engaged in hydrodynamic phenomena, acoustics and electric and magnetic properties of steel.
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Henry Marshall Tory
1864 - 1947 (83 years)
Henry Marshall Tory was the first president of the University of Alberta , the first president of the Khaki University, the first president of the National Research Council , and the first president of Carleton College . His brother was James Cranswick Tory, Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia .
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Merle Randall
1888 - 1950 (62 years)
Merle Randall was an American physical chemist famous for his work with Gilbert N. Lewis, over a period of 25 years, in measuring reaction heat of chemical compounds and determining their corresponding free energy. Together, their 1923 textbook "Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances" became a classic work in the field of chemical thermodynamics.
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Nicolae Vasilescu-Karpen
1870 - 1964 (94 years)
Nicolae Vasilescu Karpen was a Romanian engineer and physicist, who worked in telegraphy and telephony and had achievements in mechanical engineering, elasticity, thermodynamics, long-distance telephony, electrochemistry, and civil engineering.
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Hermanus Haga
1852 - 1936 (84 years)
Herman Haga was a Dutch physicist. Career Haga studied physics from 1871 to 1876 at the University of Leiden. He received his PhD with thesis Over de absorptie van stralende warmte door waterdamp under the direction of Pieter L. Rijke. From 1886 to 1921 Haga was professor of physics at the University of Groningen, where he designed and oversaw the building of a new physics laboratory, opened in 1892. From 1900 Haga was also the rector of the University of Groningen. He performed experiments on the voltage of the Weston cell; these experiments lead to the modern definition of the volt. With C...
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Robert Wichard Pohl
1884 - 1976 (92 years)
Robert Wichard Pohl was a German physicist at the University of Göttingen. Nevill Francis Mott described him as the "father of solid state physics". Early years and education Robert Wichard Pohl was born in Hamburg as the son of the naval engineer Eugen Robert Pohl and his wife Martha. She was the daughter of , founder of the private 'Dr. Wichard Lange School', and granddaughter of , who founded the first German kindergarten, together with Friedrich Fröbel.
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Armin Otto Leuschner
1868 - 1953 (85 years)
Armin Otto Leuschner was an American astronomer and educator. Biography Leuschner was born on January 16, 1868, in Detroit, Michigan, but raised in Germany. He returned to the United States for university studies, graduating from the University of Michigan in 1888 with a degree in mathematics. Leuschner then became the first graduate student at Lick Observatory, but due to conflicts with his advisor, Lick director Edward S. Holden, he left Lick before finishing his Ph.D. Leuschner subsequently returned to Germany and attended the University of Berlin, where in 1897 he earned his doctorate wit...
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Gordon Ferrie Hull
1870 - 1956 (86 years)
Gordon Ferrie Hull was a Canadian-American mathematician, teacher and physicist, especially known for the experimental detection of the radiation pressure exerted by light which he achieved in 1903.
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Jean Cabannes
1885 - 1959 (74 years)
Jean Cabannes was a French physicist specialising in optics. Education and career Cabannes studied at the Lycée de Nice and entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1906. From 1910 to 1914, Cabannes worked in the laboratory of Charles Fabry at Aix-Marseille University on the topic launched by Lord Rayleigh at the end of the 19th century of how gas molecules diffused light. In 1914 he showed that pure gases could scatter light. This was published in Comptes Rendus in 1915. His career was then interrupted for five years by World War I.
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Sergei Vladimirovich Orlov
1880 - 1958 (78 years)
Sergei Vladimirovich Orlov was an astrophysicist. His main work was on cometary orbits, origins, forms and classifications. He contributed to mathematical approaches to predicting the variation in cometary brightness and intensity along its orbit.
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Benedict Friedlaender
1866 - 1908 (42 years)
Benedict Friedlaender was a German Jewish sexologist, sociologist, economist, volcanologist, and physicist. Life Friedlaender was born in Berlin as the son of Carl Friedlaender , a professor of economics. His grandfather was Nathan Friedlaender , a Berlin physician and university lecturer. Among his siblings was Immanuel Friedlaender , a distinguished volcanologist. He studied mathematics, physics, botany, and physiology in Berlin, earning a Ph.D. in zoology in 1888. As a well-to-do donor, he supported the anarchist journal Kampf and published in the journal Der Sozialist. He gave substantial financial support to Magnus Hirschfeld's Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in Berlin.
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Carlyle Smith Beals
1899 - 1979 (80 years)
Carlyle Smith Beals, FRS was a Canadian astronomer. Early life and education Carl Beals was born in Canso, Nova Scotia to Reverend Francis H. P. Beals and Annie Florence Nightingale Smith, on June 29, 1899. He is the brother of artist and educator Helen D. Beals.
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Dmitry Dmitrievich Maksutov
1896 - 1964 (68 years)
Dmitry Dmitrievich Maksutov was a Soviet optical engineer and amateur astronomer. He is best known as the inventor of the Maksutov telescope. Biography Dmitry Dmitriyevich Maksutov was born in 1896 in either Nikolayev or the port city of Odesa, Russian Empire. His father, was a naval officer serving with the Black Sea Fleet, who came from a family with a long and distinguished naval tradition. His great-grandfather, Peter Ivanovich Maksutov, was given the title of prince, thereby raising the family to hereditary nobility as a reward for bravery in combat. His grandfather, Dmitri Petrovich Mak...
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Vladimir Shtokman
1909 - 1968 (59 years)
Vladimir Borisovich Shtokman was a Soviet oceanographer and geophysicist. Early life Shtokman began his academic career in 1928, joining the faculty of physics and mathematics at the University of Moscow to study the emerging field of geophysics. He suspended his studies in 1932 to start work as a laboratory assistant in the Institute of Oceanography, whilst also working on the problem of undersea cables breaking unexpectedly. Shtokman was promoted for his work and led an expedition to the Barents Sea in 1933, where the Shtokman field, discovered in 1988, is located.
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Boris Numerov
1891 - 1941 (50 years)
Boris Vasilyevich Numerov was a Russian astronomer, land-surveyor and geophysicist. Born in Novgorod and graduated from the St. Petersburg University in 1913, he created various astronomic and mineralogical instruments, as well as for various algorithms and methods that bear his name. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences, observer at Pulkovo from 1913–1915, astronomer at the observatory of the University of Leningrad from 1915 to 1925, and director of the Central Observatory of Geophysics , and Professor at the University of Leningrad . He was also the founder and director of the Instit...
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Nicolaus Reimers
1551 - 1600 (49 years)
Nicolaus Reimers Baer , also Reimarus Ursus, Nicolaus Reimers Bär or Nicolaus Reymers Baer, was an astronomer and imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II. Due to his family's background, he was also known as Bär, Latinized to Ursus .
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John M. Blatt
1921 - 1990 (69 years)
John Markus Blatt was an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist. Life Blatt was the son of a successful physician in Vienna. In 1938 the family immigrated to the US as Jews fleeing the Anschluss. Blatt studied physics at the University of Cincinnati with bachelor's degree in 1942 and received in 1946 two doctorates in physics, one from Cornell University and the other from Princeton University. He then went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he wrote, with Victor Weisskopf, the textbook Theoretical Nuclear Physics, which became a standard introduction to the subject. From 1948 to 1953 Blatt was at the University of Illinois, where the Illiac computer was being built.
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Karl Ramsayer
1911 - 1982 (71 years)
Karl Ramsayer was a German geodesist and is well known as one of the most important scientists in geodetic astronomy and in electronic navigation. In the 1950s Ramsayer became professor at the Geodetic Institute of the University of Stuttgart. In the following years he founded the Institut für Navigation which he developed to a leading research institute in the fields of avionics. Many patents in automatic positioning methods and air guidance systems have their origin in Stuttgart research projects.
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Vernon Ellis Cosslett
1908 - 1990 (82 years)
Vernon Ellis Cosslett, FRS was a British microscopist. The eighth child of Welsh cabinet maker and carpenter, later clerk of works on the estate of the Earl of Eldon at Stowell Park, then builder, Edgar William Cosslett and Anne , he was raised at Cirencester and educated at Cirencester Grammar School, the University of Bristol, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut, Berlin-Dahlem, and University College, London. He was a research fellow at Bristol after completing his PhD in 1932, having been awarded an H. H. Mills Memorial Fellowship, remaining there until 1935. He then lectured at Faraday House En...
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Carl Benedicks
1875 - 1958 (83 years)
Carl Axel Fredrik Benedicks was a Swedish physicist whose work included geology, mineralogy, chemistry, physics, astronomy and mathematics. Biography Carl Benedicks was born 27 May 1875 in Stockholm, Sweden to Edward Otto Benedicks and Sofia Elisabet Tholander. He married Cecilia af Geijerstam on 6 October 1899.
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John Kerr
1824 - 1907 (83 years)
John Kerr FRS was a Scottish physicist and a pioneer in the field of electro-optics. He is best known for the discovery of what is now called the Kerr effect. Life and work John Kerr was born on 17 December 1824 in Ardrossan, Scotland. He was a student in Glasgow from 1841 to 1846, and at the Theological College of the Free Church of Scotland, in Edinburgh, in 1849. Starting in 1857 he was a mathematical lecturer at the Free Church Training College in Glasgow. He died in Glasgow in 1907.
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August Beer
1825 - 1863 (38 years)
August Beer was a German physicist, chemist, and mathematician of Jewish descent. Biography Beer was born in Trier, where he studied mathematics and natural sciences. Beer was educated at the technical school and gymnasium of his native town until 1845, when he went to Bonn to study mathematics and the sciences under the mathematician and physicist Julius Plücker, whose assistant he became later. In 1848 he won the prize for his essay, "De Situ Axium Opticorum in Crystallis Biaxibus," and obtained the degree of Ph.D. Two years later he was appointed lecturer at the University of Bonn.
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Paul W. Merrill
1887 - 1961 (74 years)
Paul Willard Merrill was an American astronomer whose specialty was spectroscopy. He was the first person to define S-type stars, in 1922. Career Merrill received his Ph.D. at the University of California in 1913. He spent the bulk of his career at Mount Wilson Observatory, from which he retired in 1952. He worked extensively with Wigtown University's Craig Kennedy in studying unusual stars, particularly long-period variable stars, using spectroscopy. He also studied the interstellar medium, including diffuse interstellar bands. Shortly before he retired, he succeeded in detecting technetium in the variable star R Andromedae and other red variables.
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Eberhard Zwicker
1924 - 1990 (66 years)
Karl Eberhard Zwicker was a German acoustics scientist and full professor at the Technical University of Munich. Zwicker studied physics and electrical engineering at the University of Stuttgart and was an assistant of . In 1967 he was appointed full professor of the newly founded Institute for Electro-Acoustics of the Technical University of Munich.
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Jan Brożek
1585 - 1652 (67 years)
Jan Brożek was a Polish polymath: a mathematician, astronomer, physician, poet, writer, musician and rector of the Kraków Academy. Life Brożek was born in Kurzelów, Sandomierz Province, and lived in Kraków, Staszów, and Międzyrzec Podlaski.
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Bohumil Kučera
1874 - 1921 (47 years)
Bohumil Kučera was a Czech physicist. Biography Kučera studied physics at the Charles University in Prague and was the first scientist in Czech lands to examine the newly discovered effect of radioactivity. In 1912 he became professor of experimental physics at the university. He was the first to study droplets of mercury used as electrode . His work was the basis for the discovery of polarography by Jaroslav Heyrovský.
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Eilhard Wiedemann
1852 - 1928 (76 years)
Eilhard Ernst Gustav Wiedemann was a German physicist and historian of science. He was the son of physicist Gustav Heinrich Wiedemann , and an older brother to Egyptologist Alfred Wiedemann . He studied physics at the Universities of Heidelberg and Leipzig, obtaining his doctorate in 1872 with the thesis "Über die elliptische Polarisation und ihre Beziehung zu den Oberflächenfarben der Körper . From 1878 to 1886, he was an associate professor of physics at Leipzig, afterwards relocating to the University of Erlangen as a full professor .
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Zhang Yuzhe
1902 - 1986 (84 years)
Zhang Yuzhe , also known as Yu-Che Chang, was a Chinese astronomer and director of the Purple Mountain Observatory who is widely regarded as the father of modern Chinese astronomy. He studied the light curves of asteroids, and thus their rotation periods. He also researched the variable star CZ Cassiopeiae and the evolution of the orbit of Comet Halley. Zhang discovered 3 comets and is credited under the name Y. C. Chang by the Minor Planet Center for the discovery of one minor planet, the outer main-belt asteroid 3789 Zhongguo.
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Robert Lyster Thornton
1908 - 1985 (77 years)
Robert Lyster Thornton was a British-Canadian-American physicist who worked on the cyclotrons at Ernest Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory in the 1930s. During World War II he assisted with the development of the calutron as part of the Manhattan Project. He returned to Berkeley in 1945 to lead the construction of the cyclotron, and spent the rest of his career there.
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Samuel Wesley Stratton
1861 - 1931 (70 years)
Samuel Wesley Stratton was an administrator in the American government, physicist, and educator. Life and work Stratton was born on farm in Litchfield, Illinois on July 18, 1861. In his youth he kept farm machinery in repair and worked as a mechanic and carpenter. He worked his way through Illinois Industrial University at Urbana , receiving his bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering in 1884. He became an instructor in mathematics and physics following his graduation, and in 1889, when Physics department head Theodore B. Comstock, Professor of Mining Engineering and Physics, ine...
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Ernst Hartwig
1851 - 1923 (72 years)
Carl Ernst Albrecht Hartwig was a German astronomer. On 20 August 1885, Hartwig discovered a new star, SN 1885A , in the Andromeda Galaxy, which was the first supernova that was ever seen that was outside the Milky Way. He is also credited for the discovery and co-discovery of three parabolic and hyperbolic cometss, namely C/1879 Q2, C/1880 S1 and C/1886 T1. In 1882, Hartwig observed the transit of Venus in Argentina. During the 1883 observation campaign of comet 6P/d'Arrest he found five NGC objects working at the Strasbourg Observatory. In 1874 he became assistant at the Observatory of Stra...
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Robert T. A. Innes
1861 - 1933 (72 years)
Robert Thorburn Ayton Innes FRSE FRAS was a British-born South African astronomer best known for discovering Proxima Centauri in 1915, and numerous binary stars. He was also the first astronomer to have seen the Great January Comet of 1910, on 12 January. He was the founding director of a meteorological observatory in Johannesburg, which was later converted to an astronomical observatory and renamed to Union Observatory. He was the first Union Astronomer. Innes House, designed by Herbert Baker, built as his residence at the observatory, today houses the South African Institute of Electrical E...
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Francesco Bianchini
1662 - 1729 (67 years)
Francesco Bianchini was an Italian philosopher and scientist. He worked for the curia of three popes, including being camiere d'honore of Clement XI, and secretary of the commission for the reform of the calendar, working on the method to calculate the astronomically correct date for Easter in a given year.
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G. M. B. Dobson
1889 - 1976 (87 years)
Gordon Miller Bourne Dobson was a British physicist and meteorologist who did important work on ozone. Education He was educated at Sedbergh School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, graduating with a first in Natural Sciences in 1909. He was later awarded DSc .
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Ishak Efendi
1774 - 1835 (61 years)
Hoca Ishak Efendi was an Ottoman mathematician and engineer. Life Ishak Efendi was born in Arta , probably in 1774, to a Jewish family. His father had converted to Islam. After his father died, he went to Constantinople, where he studied mathematics and foreign languages, learning French, Latin, Greek and Hebrew alongside Turkish, Arabic and Persian.
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