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).
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List of the most influential people in Physics,
#10951
Kip Siegel
1923 - 1975 (52 years)
Keeve Milton Siegel was an American physicist. He was a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI, and the founder of Conductron Corporation, a high-tech producer of electronic equipment which was absorbed by McDonnell Douglas Corporation; KMS Industries and KMS Fusion. KMS Fusion was the first private sector company to pursue controlled thermonuclear fusion energy production through use of laser technology.
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Robert C. Fleischer
#10953
Caspar Bartholin the Elder
1585 - 1629 (44 years)
Caspar Bartholin the Elder was a Danish physician, scientist and theologian. Biography Caspar Berthelsen Bartholin was born at Malmø, Denmark . His precocity was extraordinary; at three years of age he was able to read, and in his thirteenth year he composed Greek and Latin orations and delivered them in public. When he was about eighteen he went to the University of Copenhagen and afterwards studied at Rostock and Wittenberg.
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Benjamin West
1730 - 1813 (83 years)
Benjamin West was an American astronomer, mathematician, professor, and author of almanacs. Life and work Born in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, Benjamin West was largely an autodidact. After a school he started in Providence, Rhode Island about 1753 proved unprofitable, he opened a dry-goods store and added what is thought to have been the first bookstore in Providence. He closed his store and made clothes for soldiers during the American Revolutionary War.
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Isaac Sir Newton
#10956
Stanislav Alekseevich Molchanov
#10957
Moritz Allé
1837 - 1913 (76 years)
Moritz Allé was an Austrian astronomer and mathematician, one of the teachers of Nikola Tesla. Scientific career After his university graduation, Allé startet his professional career as an assistant at the Vienna Observatory in 1856. He was appointed Adjunkt at the observatory in Kraków in 1859. In 1860 he completed his PhD at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. In 1862 he was appointed Adjunkt at the observatory in Prague. It was there where he completed his habilitation in mathematics in 1863. In 1867, Allé was appointed professor of mathematics at the Joanneum in Graz and was elected as its rector in 1875/76.
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Jamshid al-Kashi
1380 - 1429 (49 years)
Ghiyāth al-Dīn Jamshīd Masʿūd al-Kāshī was an astronomer and mathematician during the reign of Tamerlane. Much of al-Kāshī's work was not brought to Europe and still, even the extant work, remains unpublished in any form.
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Pieter Bennema
#10960
Hermann Georg Fiedler
1862 - 1945 (83 years)
Hermann Georg Fiedler was a German scholar, who became Taylor Professor of the German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford . He was previously lecturer in German at Mason College . Biography H.G. Fiedler was born in 1862 in Zittau, Kingdom of Saxony. In July 1888, he received a doctorate from the University of Leipzig in German philology and literature under Friedrich Zarncke. In October 1888, Zarncke helped in Fiedler becoming a lecturer in German at Queen Margaret College and the University of Glasgow until 1890.
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Bidhu Bhushan Ray
1894 - 1944 (50 years)
Bidhu Bhushan Ray was an Indian physicist. He was a pioneer in the field of X-ray spectroscopy, and his laboratory was the first of its kind in India. Also notable are his contributions to studies related to scattering of light in the atmosphere. He played a significant role in facilitating contacts between Indian and European scientists. He was elected Fellow, Indian National Science Academy, and held the post of Khaira Professor of Physics at the Rajabazar Science College, University of Calcutta until the time of his death.
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Karl Strehl
1864 - 1940 (76 years)
Karl Wilhelm Andreas Strehl was a German physicist, mathematician, and writer. He is notable for the Strehl ratio, a widely used measurement for the optical quality of an imaging system. See also Strehl ratio
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Pierre Simon Marquis De Laplace
#10964
James Couper
1752 - 1836 (84 years)
James Couper was a Scottish astronomer. He was Professor of Astronomy at the University of Glasgow from 1803 to 1836. Life Couper was a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Glasgow from 1803 to 1836. He also held other positions within the university including:Dean of Faculties 1800–1801Clerk of Senate from 1810 to 1814, 1820 to 1828keeper of the Hunterian Museum He taught very little Astronomy and abandoned observations because of the increasing smoke and new buildings in the surrounding areas of the observatory. He seemed not to have considered building a new observatory outside th...
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Frank Perkins Whitman
1853 - 1919 (66 years)
Frank Perkins Whitman , was an American physicist Biography Whitman was born in Troy, New York on July 29, 1853. He was graduated at Brown University in 1874 and took his A.M. there in 1877, later studying at Johns Hopkins University. He was professor of physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, in 1880–1886, and from 1886 occupied the same position at the Western Reserve University. He was a contributor to scientific periodicals.
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Victor Mercea
1924 - 1987 (63 years)
Victor Mercea was a Romanian nuclear physicist. His most notable scientific contributions were to the production of heavy water. He authored more than 200 scientific publications. He was the head of the Institute of Isotopic and Molecular Technologies from 1970 to 1987; Professor of Solid-State Physics, Magnetism and Electronics at Babeș-Bolyai University; Dean of the Faculty of Physics ; corresponding member of the Romanian Academy .
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Reinhard Mecke
1895 - 1969 (74 years)
Reinhard Mecke was a German physicist, who focused on chemical physics. He was one of the pioneers of infrared spectroscopy. Reinhard Mecke studied from 1913 mathematics and physics at the universities of Freiburg, Bern and Marburg and did his doctorate at Franz Richarz in Marburg in 1920 on halos in homogeneous nebulas. He then worked for Heinrich Konen at the university of Bonn, where he habilitated in 1923 on spectral bands of jod and where he became a privatdozent. 1927 he married one of his PhD students M. Guillery and had with her nine children including Dieter Mecke.
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Albert Curtz
1600 - 1671 (71 years)
Albert Curtz , was a German astronomer and member of the Society of Jesus. He expanded on the works of Tycho Brahe and used the pseudonym of Lucius Barrettus. Background The Latin version of the name Albert Curtz, Albertus Curtius is an anagram of his pseudonym, Lucius Barretus.
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Ernest Howard Griffiths
1851 - 1932 (81 years)
Ernest Howard Griffiths was a British physicist born in Brecon, Wales. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1895 and won its Hughes Medal in 1907. On his maternal side he was a descendant of the 17th-century admiral Robert Blake.
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Franz Anton von Gerstner
1796 - 1840 (44 years)
Franz Anton Ritter von Gerstner was a German-Bohemian civil engineer, professor and railway pioneer. Career The son of physicist and railway pioneer Franz Josef Gerstner, Franz Anton von Gerstner studied engineering, philosophy, technology and mechanical engineering at the Polytechnic in Prague. From 1817 he taught practical geometry and land surveying as a professor at the Vienna Polytechnic Institute.
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Dror Sarid
#10972
Pavel Parenago
1906 - 1960 (54 years)
Pavel Petrovich Parenago was a Soviet scientist, astronomer, and professor. He served as the head of the Department of Stellar Astronomy at M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University and a Corresponding Member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
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Robert Emerson
1903 - 1959 (56 years)
Robert Emerson was an American scientist noted for his discovery that plants have two distinct photosynthetic reaction centress. Family Emerson was born in 1903 in New York City, the son of Dr. Haven Emerson, Health Commissioner of New York City, and Grace Parrish Emerson, the sister of Maxfield Parrish. Emerson was the brother of John Haven Emerson the inventor of the iron lung.
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Charles S. Howe
1858 - 1939 (81 years)
Charles Sumner Howe was the second president of Case School of Applied Science, now Case Western Reserve University. Howe was born on September 29, 1858, in Nashua, New Hampshire. He earned his B.S. at both Massachusetts Agricultural College and Boston University in 1878 and his PhD from the College of Wooster in 1887.
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Christian Ludwig Ideler
1766 - 1846 (80 years)
Christian Ludwig Ideler was a German chronologist and astronomer. Life He was born in Gross-Brese near Perleberg. His earliest work was the editing in 1794 of an astronomical almanac for the Prussian government. He taught mathematics and mechanics in the school of woods and forests, and also in the military school. In 1821, he became professor at the University of Berlin, and in 1829 became a foreign member of the Institute of France. From 1816 to 1822 he was tutor to the young princes William Frederick and Charles. He died in Berlin on 10 August 1846.
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Karl Friedrich Küstner
1856 - 1936 (80 years)
Karl Friedrich Küstner was a German astronomer who also made contributions to Geodesy. In 1888 he reportedly discovered the Polar motion of the Earth. In 1910 he received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for cataloguing stars and detecting latitude variation.
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Salomon Kalischer
1845 - 1924 (79 years)
Salomon Kalischer, or Solomon Kalischer , was a German Jewish composer, pianist, and physicist. Kalischer was born in Thorn in the Province of Prussia, within the Kingdom of Prussia. He studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau and the universities of Breslau and Berlin .
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Bartholomaeus Pitiscus
1561 - 1613 (52 years)
Bartholomaeus Pitiscus was a 16th-century German trigonometrist, astronomer and theologian who first coined the word trigonometry. Biography Pitiscus was born to poor parents in Grünberg , then part of the Duchy of Glogau/Głogów, one of the Habsburg-ruled Duchies of Silesia.
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Richard W. Jones
1904 - 1987 (83 years)
Richard Ward Jones was a biomedical engineer and authority on physiological control systems. Education His BS was from the University of Minnesota, 1926. His MS in physics was from Northwestern University, 1941, under Walter S. Huxford for a thesis entitled: Discharge Across Very Small Gaps.
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Georges Destriau
1903 - 1960 (57 years)
Georges Destriau was a French physicist and early observer of electroluminescence. Education and Research In 1926 Destriau became an engineer at the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris. Thereafter he worked in the x-ray device industry. From 1932 until 1941 Destriau worked at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. A brief stay at the University of Bordeaux was followed in 1943 by a move to Paris. In 1946 Destriau became professor at the University of Poitiers and in 1954 at the Sorbonne in Paris. Later Destriau worked for Westinghouse Electric.
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Arthur C. Hardy
1895 - 1977 (82 years)
Arthur Cobb Hardy was president of the Optical Society of America from 1935-36. He was awarded the Edward Longstreth Medal from the Franklin Institute in 1939 and the Frederic Ives Medal in 1957. See also Optical Society of America#Past Presidents of the OSA
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Peter Mason
1922 - 1987 (65 years)
Peter Mason was an English-born Australian physicist, educator and science communicator. He was born at St Pancras in London to chemist Alfred George Mason and Winnie, née Wheeldon. He attended Eriva Deene School, St Clement's Mixed School and Bournemouth School before attending the University of London , winning first-class honours in mathematics and physics. From 1943 to 1946 he was employed at the Ministry of Supply studying the military applications of quartz crystals, and in 1945 he became an associate member of the Institute of Physics. He married Sheila Mabelle Clegg at Bournemouth on ...
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Emil Bose
1874 - 1911 (37 years)
Emil Hermann Bose , was a German physicist. He was the first director of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of La Plata, Argentina. He studied under Walther Nernst at the University of Göttingen, Germany and was recruited by the newly created university in Argentina, where he taught for two years until his death from typhoid fever in 1911. He was succeeded by Richard Gans. See Bibiloni, A.G.
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Wayne B. Nottingham
1899 - 1964 (65 years)
Wayne B. Nottingham was a US physics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology , specialized on electronics, field electron emission, thermionics, photoelectrics and low pressure equipment.
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Wolfgang Ludwig Krafft
1743 - 1814 (71 years)
Wolfgang Ludwig Krafft was a German astronomer and physicist. He is the namesake of the lunar crater Krafft which has a diameter of 51 km. External links USGS Astrogeology
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Arthur S. Adams
1896 - 1980 (84 years)
Arthur Stanton Adams was an American academic most notable for having served as the President of the University of New Hampshire. He also served as Assistant Dean of Engineering and Director of the Engineering Science Management War Training Program and Provost at Cornell. In 1948 he was appointed the 8th president of the University of New Hampshire. He was chairman of the Reserve Forces Policy Board at the United States Department of Defense from 1953 to 1955. From 1962 to 1965, he served as the second president of the Salzburg Global Seminar, a non-profit organization based in Salzburg, Aus...
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Nikolay Zhukovsky
1847 - 1921 (74 years)
Nikolay Yegorovich Zhukovsky was a Russian scientist, mathematician and engineer, and a founding father of modern aero- and hydrodynamics. Whereas contemporary scientists scoffed at the idea of human flight, Zhukovsky was the first to undertake the study of airflow. He is often called the Father of Russian Aviation.
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Valentin Naboth
1523 - 1593 (70 years)
Valentin Naboth , known by the latinized name Valentinus Nabodus, was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. Life and academic career Valentin Naboth was born in Calau to a formerly Jewish family. He was the younger brother of the Lutheran theologian and author Alexius Naboth. In 1544, Valentin matriculated at the University of Wittenberg. At that time Philipp Melanchthon, Erasmus Reinhold, Johannes Bugenhagen, Paul Eber, and Georg Major taught there. In 1550 he transferred to the University of Erfurt.
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James Wilson
1836 - 1931 (95 years)
James Maurice Wilson was a British priest in the Church of England as well as a theologian, teacher and astronomer. Early life Wilson and his twin brother, Edward Pears Wilson, attended King William's College on the Isle of Man from August 1848 to midsummer 1853 . Their father Edward, vicar of Nocton in Lincolnshire, had earlier been headmaster there. According to his autobiography, Wilson had a rather unhappy time at King William's College. He later studied at Sedbergh School.
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Johann Jakob Ebert
1737 - 1805 (68 years)
Johann Jakob Ebert was an 18th-century German mathematician, astronomer, poet and author. Life He was born in Breslau in what was then part of Prussia on 20 November 1737. He was educated in Wurzen in western Saxony then returned to his home town to study at the Elisabeth Gymnasium.
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Nikolai Andreyev
1880 - 1970 (90 years)
Nikolai Nikolayevich Andreyev was a physicist who specialized in the study of music and acoustics. The Andreyev Acoustics Institute and a research vessel Akademik Nikolai Andreyev are named after him.
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Bice Sechi-Zorn
1928 - 1984 (56 years)
Bice Sechi-Zorn was an Italian/American nuclear physicist, and professor at the University of Maryland. Life She graduated from University of Cagliari. She met her husband, Gus T. Zorn, at the University of Padua. They both worked at the University of Maryland. She was a professor of physics beginning from 1976 to 1984.
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Willem Hendrik van den Bos
1896 - 1974 (78 years)
Willem Hendrik van den Bos was a Dutch astronomer who worked at the Union Observatory in South Africa and became its director in 1941. He discovered nearly new double stars, made more than astronomical measurements and compiled a catalogue of Southern hemisphere double stars. He computed the orbits of more than 100 double stars using a method he invented and which later became the accepted standard.
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Konstantin Kavelin
1818 - 1885 (67 years)
Konstantin Dmitrievich Kavelin was a Russian historian, jurist, and sociologist, sometimes called the chief architect of early Russian liberalism. Born in Saint Petersburg into an old noble family, Kavelin graduated from the legal department of the Moscow University and read law at the University of St Petersburg from 1839. Together with Timofey Granovsky and Alexander Herzen, he was one of the leading Westernizers. In 1855, Herzen published Kavelin's celebrated proposal for the emancipation of serfs, which cost him the lucrative position of tsesarevich's tutor. In 1862, he was forced to resign from his post for becoming politically-involved with the student, constitutional movement.
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Philippe van Lansberge
1561 - 1632 (71 years)
Johan Philip Lansberge was a Flemish Calvinist Minister, astronomer and Mathematician. His name is sometimes written Lansberg, and his first name is sometimes given as Philip or Johannes Philippus. He published under the Latin name Philippus Lansbergius.
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Giuseppe Cassella
1755 - 1808 (53 years)
Giuseppe, Antonio Pietro Cassella was an Italian astronomer, professor of Astronomy at the Naples University and first director of the Astronomical Observatory of Naples. He studied mathematics at the University of Naples with Giuseppe Marzucca, and followed Felice Sabatelli's astronomy lessons, becoming his student. He then went to specialize in astronomy at the Padua observatory directed by Abbot Giuseppe Toaldo.
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Paul Harsin
1902 - 1983 (81 years)
Paul Marie Isidore Harsin was an economic and political historian who held doctorates in the humanities, social sciences, and law. He was a professor at the University of Liège for over 40 years and briefly served as president of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium.
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Irving Wolff
1894 - 1982 (88 years)
Irving Wolff was an American physicist and pioneer of radar. Wolff received in 1916 a bachelor's degree in physics from Dartmouth College and in 1923 a doctorate in physics from Cornell University. He was a physics teacher at Iowa State College in 1919 and Cornell University from 1920-1923, later becoming the Heckscher Research Fellow. He is one of the founders of the Acoustical Society of America . He participated in ASA First Meeting along with thirty-nine other persons, at the Bell headquarters in New York City, on December 27th, 1928. Early in his career, he focused on the acoustics of...
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Earle M. Terry
1869 - 1929 (60 years)
Earle Melvin Terry was an American physicist, known for contributions to wireless transmission systems and radio. Biography He was born in Battle Creek, Michigan, and obtained a B.A. from the University of Michigan, as well as an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison . He joined the faculty at the same place, where he stayed since. His fame comes from developing the WHA radio transmissions , work jointly with Edward Bennett. The station was originally referred to by the callsign 9XM. Being as the necessary vacuum tubes were not yet commercially available, Terry learned gla...
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Alexander David Ross
1883 - 1966 (83 years)
Prof Alexander David Ross FRSE FRAS FRSA FIP FAIP FEIS FEISA LLD was a 20th-century Scots-born physicist, mathematician and astronomer living in Australia. He was an expert on magnetism and rare earths. He was twice President of the Western Australia Astronomical Society: 1915 to 1917 and 1950 to 1952, 33 years apart.
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