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.
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List of the most influential people in Physics,
#10801
Lev Gassovsky
1894 - 1989 (95 years)
Lev Nikolaevich Gassovsky was a Soviet professor , Candidate of Science , and Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences . He wrote The Eye and Effectiveness of Its Work and also worked on chapters in reference books for opto-mechanical engineers, several manuals on military optics and more than 90 scientific works.
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Ludwig von Struve
1858 - 1920 (62 years)
Gustav Wilhelm Ludwig von Struve was a Baltic German astronomer, part of the famous Baltic German Struve family. In Russian, his name is sometimes given as Lyudvig Ottovich Struve or Lyudvig Ottonovich Struve .
Go to Profile#10803
Lawrence R. Doolittle
#10804
J. Anthony Lockwood
#10805
Georg Wilhelm Muncke
1772 - 1847 (75 years)
Georg Wilhelm Muncke or Georg Wilhelm Munke was a German physicist. From 1797 to 1810 he worked as an administrator at the Georgianum in Hanover. In 1810 he became a professor at the University of Marburg, where he gave lectures in mathematics and experimental physics. From 1817 up until his death in 1847 he was a professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg. In 1826 he became an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
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Boris Jacobsohn
1918 - 1966 (48 years)
Boris Abbott Jacobsohn was an American physicist, known for his contributions to the study of muonic atoms. Jacobsohn graduated from Columbia University with B.S. in 1938 and M.S in 1939. At the beginning of the Manhattan Project, he worked with Enrico Fermi at Columbia. Jacobsohn, along with his wife Ruth, moved with Fermi's team in early 1942 to the University of Chicago for the team's relocation to the Metallurgical Laboratory, where he worked until the end of WWII. In late 1945, Edward Teller invited Maria Goeppert-Mayer, along with her two students Boris Jacobsohn and Harris Mayer, to Los Alamos to work on the development of the thermonuclear bomb.
Go to Profile#10807
Alessandro Treves
#10808
Frederick Hanley Seares
1873 - 1964 (91 years)
Frederick Hanley Seares was an American astronomer. He worked at Mount Wilson Observatory and won the Bruce Medal in 1940. Seares was born in Michigan in 1873 and grew up in Iowa and southern California. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree at the University of California and later studied in Paris and Berlin. Later Seares taught and researched comets and variable stars for eight years at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri . In 1909, Seares joined the Mount Wilson Observatory, where he remained for 36 years, 15 of them as assistant director.
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Anders Knutsson Ångström
1888 - 1981 (93 years)
Anders Knutsson Ångström was a Swedish physicist and meteorologist who was known primarily for his contributions to the field of atmospheric radiation. However, his scientific interests encompassed many diverse topics.
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Jan Śniadecki
1756 - 1830 (74 years)
Jan Śniadecki was a Polish mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Life Born in Żnin, Śniadecki studied at Kraków Jagellonian University and in Paris. He was rector of the Imperial University of Vilnius, a member of the Commission of National Education, and director of astronomical observatories at Kraków and Vilnius. He died at Jašiūnai Manor near Vilnius.
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Samuel Milner
1875 - 1958 (83 years)
Samuel Roslington Milner FRS was a British physicist, who worked in plasma physics, studying the electrical conductivity of electrolytes. He is best known for the Debye-Milner Plasma Theory. Personal life and education Milner was born in Dodsworth, a village near Barnsley, Yorkshire. His father, Samuel Wilkinson Milner, was an agent, or ‘factor’ for the collieries in the district and his mother was Ann Roslington. The Milners had four daughters followed by their only son. When Milner was still young the family moved to Retford, Nottinghamshire. Milner was educated at King Edward VI School. H...
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Hans Heinrich Euler
1909 - 1941 (32 years)
Hans Heinrich Euler was a German physicist. He received his PhD in 1935 at the University of Leipzig under Werner Heisenberg with a thesis Über die Streuung von Licht an Licht nach der Diracschen Theorie .
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Rose Mooney-Slater
1902 - 1981 (79 years)
Rose Camille LeDieu Mooney-Slater was a professor of physics at the Newcomb College of the Tulane University and the first female X-ray crystallographer in the United States. Life Rose Camille LeDieu was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Mooney-Slater received a B.S. and M.S. in physics from the Newcomb College of the Tulane University in 1926 and 1929, respectively. In 1932, she received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago.
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Johannes Kuenen
1866 - 1922 (56 years)
Johannes Petrus Kuenen was a Dutch physicist. Biography Kuenen was the son of the professor of theology Abraham Kuenen and his wife Wiepkje Muurling. His son Philip Henry Kuenen was professor of geology. From 1884 to 1889 he studied at the University of Leiden, where he graduated in 1892. He became a professor in physics in 1895 at University College, Dundee in Dundee, Scotland, where he worked until 1907. For most of this period the College was part of the University of St Andrews. While at Dundee he performed early experiments with x-rays with the physiologist Edward Waymouth Reid. In 1907 he was appointed professor of physics at Leiden University.
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Howard Turner Barnes
1873 - 1950 (77 years)
Howard Turner Barnes was an American-Canadian physicist who specialized in calorimetry, electrolytes, ice formation and ice engineering. Education and career In 1879, Howard T. Barnes moved with his family from Massachusetts to Montreal. where his father was appointed minister of Montreal's Unitarian church. After attending secondary school in Montreal, he entered in 1889 McGill University, where he received in 1893 his bachelor's degree in physics and, after working there as a demonstrator in chemistry, an M.S. in Applied Science in 1896. He became at McGill a demonstrator in physics and worked under Hugh L.
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Carl Leo Stearns
1892 - 1972 (80 years)
Carl Leo Stearns was an American astronomer. After graduating from Wesleyan University in 1917 with high honors in general scholarship and special honors in mathematics, Stearns received his PhD from Yale University. He became an instructor in mathematics and astronomy at Wesleyan in 1919. He became an assistant professor in 1920, then an associate professor in 1942 and a full professor in 1944. He served as chairman of the astronomy department at Wesleyan, then in 1960 he was named as emeritus Fisk professor of astronomy. From 1960–71, after serving as an assistant, he became director of t...
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Hans Georg Küssner
1900 - 1984 (84 years)
Hans Georg Küssner was a German physicist and aeronautical scientist known for his work in the field of aeroelasticity. Work Hans Georg Küssner was born on September 14, 1900, in Bartenstein, then part of the East Prussian district of in the German Reich. Küssner studied at the Technical University of the Free City of Danzig and received his doctorate in 1928 with his dissertation "Das wirtschaftliche Ozeanflugzeug" under Viktor Rembold. In the same year he moved to the German Research Institute for Aviation in Berlin, where he worked on the aircraft problem of flutter, which was reflected ...
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Samuel Arthur Saunder
1852 - 1912 (60 years)
Samuel Arthur Saunder was a British mathematician and selenographer who taught at Wellington College, Berkshire. In 1894 he became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and in 1908 he was made Gresham Professor of Astronomy giving public lectures on the subject.
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Michael Radaković
1866 - 1934 (68 years)
Michael Radaković was an Austrian physicist. From 1884, he studied physics and mathematics at the University of Graz, where he was influenced by the philosophical teachings of Alexius Meinong . Following his studies at Graz, he continued his education in Berlin, where his instructors included Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Kirchhoff. He received his habilitation at the University of Innsbruck, where in 1902 he became an associate professor.
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John Nelson Stockwell
1832 - 1920 (88 years)
John Nelson Robin Stockwell was an American astronomer and mathematician. Life and Work John Nelson Stockwell grew up with an uncle and aunt on a farm in Brecksville, Ohio. He showed early mathematical talent and became interested in astronomy at the age of 12, when he experienced his first lunar eclipse. Largely self-taught, he acquired outstanding mathematical knowledge and skill. From 1854 he worked as a human computer for the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey under Benjamin Apthorp Gould, with whom he had been friends for decades. In 1861 he was appointed to a similar position at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.
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Donald Sadler
1908 - 1987 (79 years)
Donald Harry Sadler was an English astronomer and mathematician who developed an international reputation for his work in preparing astronomical and navigational almanacs. He worked as the Superintendent of His Majesty's Nautical Almanac Office from 1937 to 1971.
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William Rudolph Kanne
1913 - 1985 (72 years)
William Rudolph Kanne , was a physicist, inventor and pioneer in the field of gas flow through ionization detectors, a member of the group responsible for the first self-sustained nuclear chain fission reaction at Staggs Field in Chicago, and participated in the Manhattan Project at the Chicago, Oak Ridge and Hanford sites.
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Fritz Cohn
1866 - 1921 (55 years)
Fritz Cohn, RAS Associate was a German astronomer and professor of astronomy at the University of Berlin. Throughout his career he worked at numerous observatories and was director of the Astronomical Calculation Institute. His main work was in astrometry and minor planets, although he published star catalogues and oversaw the production of journals in his later life.
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Hiram Perkins
1833 - 1924 (91 years)
Hiram Mills Perkins was Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Ohio Wesleyan University and benefactor of the Perkins Telescope in the Perkins Observatory. He helped build to observatory buildings and also left an endowment for the school, and also his house was later used as a dormitory before it was sold off.
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Heinrich Siedentopf
1906 - 1963 (57 years)
Heinrich Friedrich Siedentopf was a German astronomer and physicist. He was born in Hannover. In 1930, he became an assistant to Heinrich Vogt, then joined the national observatory in Heidelberg. Between 1940–46 he was a professor of astronomy at the University of Jena, and director of the observatory. In 1949, he was a professor at the University of Tübingen, where he later died of a heart attack.
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Julius Heinrich Franz
1847 - 1913 (66 years)
Julius Heinrich Franz was a German astronomer. Franz was born in Rummelsburg, Prussian Pomerania, he studied at the Universities of Greifswald, Halle and Berlin, after which he was the principal astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Königsberg. In 1882 he was a member of a team sent to the town of Aiken, South Carolina, to observe the transit of Venus. Toward the end of the century he replaced Johann Galle as the director of the observatory at the University of Breslau.
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Richard Krzymowski
1875 - 1960 (85 years)
Richard Krzymowski was a German agricultural scientist. His main research interests were agricultural geography and agricultural history. Krzymowski's main work is "History of German Agriculture" an exemplary textbook for an integrated presentation of agricultural history, agricultural geography, and the history of agricultural production techniques.
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William Morgan
1750 - 1833 (83 years)
William Morgan, FRS was a British physician, physicist and statistician, who is considered the father of modern actuarial science. He is also credited with being the first to record the "invisible light" produced when a current is passed through a partly evacuated glass tube: "the first x-ray tube".
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Morris B. Crawford
1852 - 1940 (88 years)
Morris Barker Crawford was an American academic, and the first professor of physics at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Early life and education He was born in 1852 in Sing Sing, now Ossining, New York to the Rev. Morris DeCamp Crawford and Charlotte Crawford. Both his father and his grandfather were ministers. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1874, and he was a member of the Eclectic Society and of Phi Beta Kappa. He earned a Master of Arts degree from Wesleyan in 1877.
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Bohdan Stefanowski
1883 - 1976 (93 years)
Bohdan Stefanowski was a Polish expert in thermodynamics, one of founders of the Warsaw school of thermodynamics, the first rector of Lodz University of Technology. After graduation from the Mechanical Engineering Department of Lviv Polytechnic in 1904, Bohdan Stefanowski pursued a career in industry as a specialist in heat management and then spent several years furthering his education under the supervision of Prof. Mollier in Dresden and Prof. Joss at Königliche Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg.
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Szczepan Szczeniowski
1898 - 1979 (81 years)
Professor Szczepan Eugeniusz Szczeniowski , was a Polish physicist, and author of numerous papers on cosmic rays, electron diffraction and ferromagnetism. In early 1930s, he taught at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lwow, in 1937 moving to the Stefan Batory University in Wilno. After World War II, he settled in Poznań, also cooperating with the Warsaw Polytechnic. Szczeniowski was a member of many prestigious organizations - Technical Science Academy, Polish Academy of Knowledge and Polish Academy of Sciences.
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Georg Joseph Sidler
1831 - 1907 (76 years)
Georg Joseph Sidler was a Swiss mathematician, professor at the university of Bern. Life and work Sidler was born on 31 August 1831 in Zug, Switzerland to Georg Joseph Sidler and Verena Maria Sidler . He was their only son. He also had two half-sisters from his father's first marriage. One of the girls died at the age of seven. Both of Georg's parents came from old-established families in Canton of Zug; Many of his ancestors had been involved in local and cantonal politics. His paternal grandfather, Georg Damian held a number of offices; most notably he served as a Landvogt in the Valle Maggia in Ticino.
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Andrzej Sołtan
1897 - 1959 (62 years)
Andrzej Sołtan was a Polish nuclear physicist. He also worked on spectroscopy in the band between far ultraviolet and X-rays. During his visit to Caltech in 1932–33, together with H. Richard Crane and Charles Christian Lauritsen, he discovered a method for producing neutron beams, by bombarding lithium or beryllium nuclei with accelerated deuterons.
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Konstanty Jodko-Narkiewicz
1901 - 1963 (62 years)
Konstanty Jodko-Narkiewicz, also known as Konstanty Narkiewicz-Jodko , was a Polish geophysicist who specialized in studying cosmic radiation. He was also a mountaineer, Arctic explorer, and balloonist.
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Ludwig Becker
1860 - 1947 (87 years)
Ludwig Wilhelm Emil Ernst Becker FRSE was Regius Professor of Astronomy at the University of Glasgow from 1893 until 1935 when he retired. Life Born in Wesel, Kingdom of Prussia, Becker was educated at the University of Bonn. After two years as an assistant in the Berlin Observatory, the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres appointed him in 1885 to take charge of his large private observatory at Dunecht, near Aberdeen. When that institution was wound up in the autumn of 1888, the instruments were passed on to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury for a new Royal Observatory. A site on Blackford Hill in Edinburgh was selected in 1889 and Becker was included on the staff.
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John Leigh Smeathman Hatton
1865 - 1933 (68 years)
Professor John Leigh Smeathman was a mathematician and Principal of East London College, England, one of the founding colleges of what is now Queen Mary College, part of London University. He was also Vice Chancellor of London University in the 1930s.
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Ahmad Fazlur Rahman
1889 - 1945 (56 years)
Sir Ahmad Fazlur Rahman , also known as A. F. Rahman, was a Bengali academic. He served as the first Bengali Vice-chancellor of the University of Dhaka during 1934–1936. He was knighted by the British Government of India in 1942.
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Viktor Kirpichov
1845 - 1913 (68 years)
Viktor Lvovich Kirpichov was a Russian Empire engineer, physicist, and educational organizer, known especially for his work on applied and structural mechanics as well as for establishing the foundations for technical education in the Russian Empire.
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John Adamson
1809 - 1870 (61 years)
John Adamson was a Scottish physician, pioneer photographer, physicist, lecturer and museum curator. He was a highly respected figure in St Andrews, and was responsible for producing the first calotype portrait in Scotland in 1841. He taught the process to his brother, the famous pioneering photographer Robert Adamson. He was curator of the Literary and Philosophical Society Museum at St Andrews from 1838 until his death.
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Rolla Ramsey
1872 - 1955 (83 years)
Rolla Roy Ramsey was an American physicist, university professor, and radio electronics pioneer. Early life and education Ramsey was born in the unincorporated community of Morning Sun, Preble County, Ohio, son of Sarah Rachel McQuiston and Joseph Steele Ramsey . He grew up on a farm. As a university teacher, Rolla took a special interest in "farm boys" who took physics courses; he observed that "they were not afraid to work." Rolla had a sister, Leila Jane Ramsey Lemon , and a brother, Arthur McQuiston Ramsey .
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Emanuel von der Pahlen
1882 - 1952 (70 years)
Baron Emanuel A. von der Pahlen was a German astronomer. He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, but left for Germany following the revolution of 1917. He was educated at University of Göttingen, where he was awarded a Doctorate of Mathematical Sciences. Prior to World War I he joined solar eclipse expeditions in 1905, 1912 and 1914. Between the world wars, he was employed at the Astrophysikalishen Observatorium Potsdam. He taught at the University of Basel. In 1947 he published Einführung in die Dynamik von Sternsystemen, a 241-page work on Galaxies.
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Paul Götz
1883 - 1962 (79 years)
Paul Götz was a German astronomer and discoverer of 20 minor planets between 1903 and 1905. He did his Ph.D. dissertation in 1907 at the Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl at the University of Heidelberg.
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Stanley Whitehead
1902 - 1956 (54 years)
Stanley Whitehead was a British physicist. Life Whitehead was born in Sutton, Surrey in 1902 and educated at Sir Walter St. John's School. After winning a scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford, Whitehead obtained first-class degrees in mathematics and in physics before carrying out research with Lord Cherwell at the Clarendon Laboratory. He was appointed as a physicist at the Electrical Research Association, becoming Director in 1946 and holding this post until his death in 1956. His particular interest was dielectric research, and he had an international reputation in fields such as telephone and radio interference.
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Johann Jakob Hess
1866 - 1949 (83 years)
Johann Jakob Hess , was a Swiss Egyptologist and Assyriologist and an expert in other Oriental languages. Personal life Hess was born on 11 January 1866, the son of window and door maker Casimir Balthasar Jacques Hess and Josephine-Marie, née Rudolf, in Freiburg im Üechtland, , Switzerland. He graduated at Berlin and Strassburg in Egyptology, Assyriology, Semitic languages and Sinology, working for his Doctoral degree between 1889 and 1891, working as a Privatdozent, teaching Egyptology and Assyriology between 1891 and 1908 at the Swiss University of Freiburg. This teaching position gave him t...
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Jan Latosz
1539 - 1608 (69 years)
Jan Latosz or Jan Latoszyński was a Polish scholar, astronomer, astrologist and physician. A professor at the Cracow Academy, he is best known for his staunch criticism of the papal calendar reform, for which he was deposed of his post. He fled to Ostróg, where he became the personal physician to Prince Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski and a professor at the Ostrog Academy.
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Ernst Bessel Hagen
1851 - 1923 (72 years)
Ernst Bessel Hagen was a German Applied and Experimental Physicist. With Heinrich Rubens, he identified the so-called Hagen-Rubens equation . Life Carl Ernst Bessel Hagen was born in Königsberg , eldest of the three recorded sons of the banker-politician Adolf Hermann Hagen by his first marriage, which was to Johanna Louise Amalie Bessel . Both his grandfathers were distinguished members of the German academic community. Carl Heinrich Hagen was a socio-economist, a professor of jurisprudence and, between 1811 and 1835, a senior Prussian government official . Friedrich Bessel was a ...
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Charles Edward St. John
1857 - 1935 (78 years)
Charles Edward St. John was an American astronomer. He was born in Allen, Michigan to Hiriam A. St. John and his wife Lois Bacon; the youngest of a family of four sons and two daughters. In 1873 he entered Michigan Normal College, then graduated at the age of 19. For the next ten years, he suffered from ill health. After recovering, he became a teacher at the college, and in 1887 he graduated with a B.S. from Michigan State Agricultural College. He performed two years of graduate study in electromagnetism at the University of Michigan, then earned an M.A. from Harvard University in 1893. He w...
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Julio Garavito Armero
1865 - 1920 (55 years)
Julio Garavito Armero was a Colombian astronomer. Life Born in Bogotá, he was a child prodigy in science and mathematics. He obtained his degrees as mathematician and civil engineer in the Universidad Nacional de Colombia . In 1892, he worked as the director of the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional . His investigative works had been published in Los Anales de Ingeniería since 1890, seven years before he took over editing the publication.
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Johann Jakob Rebstein
1840 - 1907 (67 years)
Johann Jakob Rebstein was a Swiss mathematician and surveyor. Early life Rebstein was born on 4 May 1840 in Töss, Switzerland, to his father, a baker and his mother, a doctor. Education and career Rebstein attended post-secondary school in Winterthur, and after graduating in 1860, went on to study for a year at Collège de France. He was professor of mathematics and physics in Zürich from 1877 to 1898. He was awarded his doctorate in 1895 from the Humboldt University of Berlin for his work Bestimmung aller reellen Minimalflächen, die eine Schaar ebener Curven enthalten, denen auf der Gauss'schen Kugel die Meridiane entsprechen.
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Sergei Sedov
1908 - 1937 (29 years)
Sergei Lvovich Sedov was a Soviet engineer and scientist, the son of Leon Trotsky, and was killed in the Great Purge. Personal life The son of Leon Trotsky by his second wife, and younger brother of Lev Sedov, Sergei Lvovich Sedov was born on 21 March 1908 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. A graduate of the Moscow Mechanical Institute, and working at the Moscow Aviation Institute, he was an apolitical engineer and scientist. His daughter, Yulia, was born around October 1935.
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