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,
#11001
Arthur Beer
1900 - 1980 (80 years)
Arthur Beer was a German astronomer who worked at Cambridge University Biography He was born in Reichenberg, Bohemia, the only son of Professor Johan Beer, a secondary teacher of arts and crafts, and Olga née Pollak. Arthur completed his secondary education in 1918 in Reichenberg after returning from military service in World War I. His university studies were postponed after he contracted polio in 1924; he later received a necessary operation to enable him to walk.
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Paul ten Bruggencate
1901 - 1961 (60 years)
Paul ten Bruggencate was a German astronomer and astrophysicist. Youth and education Ten Bruggencate was born in Arosa, Switzerland, and went to several schools in Switzerland, in the Netherlands and in Germany. He further studied at the University of Munich and started his PhD work with Hugo von Seeliger. However, due to health problems, Seeliger had to hand over the supervision of his PhD students to Hans Kienle.
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Henrik Mohn
1835 - 1916 (81 years)
Henrik Mohn was a Norwegian astronomer and meteorologist. Although he enrolled in theology studies after finishing school, he is credited with founding meteorological research in Norway, being a professor at the Royal Frederick University and director of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute from 1866 to 1913.
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Arthur Stanley Mackenzie
1865 - 1938 (73 years)
Arthur Stanley Mackenzie was a Canadian physicist and university president. He was born in Pictou, Nova Scotia and educated at Dalhousie University, Halifax, and Johns Hopkins University. He was instructor in mathematics at Dalhousie from 1887 to 1889. At Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, he was a lecturer and associate in physics , associate professor , and professor . Mackenzie then returned to Dalhousie to become a Munro professor of physics . In 1911, he became president of the university, succeeding John Forrest.
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Antonio Vallisneri
1661 - 1730 (69 years)
Antonio Vallisneri , also rendered as Antonio Vallisnieri, was an Italian medical scientist, physician and naturalist. Life Vallisneri was born in Trassilico, a small village in Garfagnana, and graduated in medicine in 1684, in Reggio Emilia, under the guidance of Marcello Malpighi. A grand-uncle was the physician Cesare Magati.
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Ignaz Schütz
1867 - 1927 (60 years)
Ignaz Robert Schütz was a Czech–German mathematician and a physicist. He studied at the University of Munich where in 1894 he obtained a Ph.D in physics. Schütz was assistant to Ludwig Boltzmann in Munich from 1891 to 1894, the year of Boltzmann's departure from Munich. In 1897, Ignaz R. Schütz, then a member of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Göttingen, showed how time translational symmetry induces conservation of energy.
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Louise du Pierry
1746 - 1807 (61 years)
Louise du Pierry or Dupiery, née Elisabeth Louise Felicité Pourra de la Madeleine , was a French astronomer and professor. Life She was born in La Ferté-Bernard, in the French province of Maine, on 1 August 1746.
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Joseph Epping
1835 - 1894 (59 years)
Joseph Epping was a German Jesuit astronomer and Assyriologist. Life Joseph Epping was born at Neuenkirchen near the Rhine in Westphalia on 1 December 1835. His parents died while he was very young, and he owed his early education to relations. After completing the usual Gymnasium at Rheine and at Münster, he matriculated at the academy in Münster, where he devoted himself particularly to mathematics.
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Denison Olmsted
1791 - 1859 (68 years)
Denison Olmsted was an American physicist and astronomer. Professor Olmsted is credited with giving birth to meteor science after the 1833 Leonid meteor shower over North America spurred him to study this phenomenon.
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Paul Geoffrey Murdin
#11011
Jean Dufay
1896 - 1967 (71 years)
Jean Claude Barthélemy Dufay was a French astronomer. During his career he studied nebulae, interstellar matter, the night sky and cometary physics. In 1925, while working in collaboration with Jean Cabannes, he computed the altitude of the Earth's ozone layer. He was named the honorary director of the Lyon Observatory. Some of his proteges who worked with him in the observatory included Marie Bloch and Charles Fehrenbach. He became a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1963.
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Henry Smith Carhart
1844 - 1920 (76 years)
Henry Smith Carhart, Ph.B. was an American physicist and university professor. He was born in Coeymans, New York on March 27, 1844, and graduated from Wesleyan University in 1869 and completed an M.A. degree from the same institution in 1873. He pursued additional graduate studies at Yale, Harvard, and the Humboldt University of Berlin. After serving as professor at Northwestern University, Carhart was appointed to the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1886, where he remained until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1909.
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Manuel John Johnson
1805 - 1859 (54 years)
Manuel John Johnson, FRS was a British astronomer. He was born in Macao, China, the son of John William Roberts of the East India Company and was educated at Mr Styles' Classical Academy in Thames Ditton and at the Addiscombe Military Seminary for service in the East India Company .
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Jan Marek Marci
1595 - 1667 (72 years)
Jan Marek Marci , or Johannes Marcus Marci, was a Bohemian doctor and scientist, rector of the University of Prague, and official physician to the Holy Roman Emperors. The crater Marci on the far side of the Moon is named after him.
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Martin D. Whitaker
1902 - 1960 (58 years)
Martin Dewey Whitaker was an American physicist who was the first director of the Clinton Laboratories during World War II. He served as president of Lehigh University from 1946 until his death in 1960.
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August Ritter
1826 - 1908 (82 years)
August Ritter was a German civil engineer. Biography He was educated at the Polytechnic Institute at Hanover, and at Göttingen. He was a practicing engineer for some time, in 1856 became teacher of mechanics and construction of machinery at Hanover, in the Polytechnic Institute, and in 1870 became professor in the School of Technology at Aix-la-Chapelle. He is best known as the author of Ritter's method of doing calculations for arches for bridges and roofs.
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Walther Ritz
1878 - 1909 (31 years)
Walther Heinrich Wilhelm Ritz was a Swiss theoretical physicist. He is most famous for his work with Johannes Rydberg on the Rydberg–Ritz combination principle. Ritz is also known for the variational method named after him, the Ritz method.
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Karl Friedrich Knorre
1801 - 1883 (82 years)
Karl Khristoforovich Friedrich Knorre; was a Russian astronomer of Baltic German ethnic origin who is best known for founding the Nikolayev Astronomical Observatory in 1827. Knorre's father, Ernst Friedrich Knorre, and his son, Viktor Knorre, were also prominent astronomers. Recently NASA named an asteroid in honor of the three generations of Knorre astronomers.
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Jean Baptiste Aimable Gaillot
1834 - 1921 (87 years)
Jean Baptiste Aimable Gaillot was an astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris from 1861 to 1903. He was born to Jean Baptiste Gaillot and Marie Catherine Gillet on 27 April 1834 in Saint-Jean-sur-Tourbe, Marne, France. He was recruited by Urbain Le Verrier in 1861 and spent his entire career at the Bureau of Computation. He is known for his completion of Le Verrier's analytic theories of the motion of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and for the publication of the Catalogue de l’Observatoire de Paris, an enormous compilation of transit observations from 1837 to 1881. The French Academy of Sciences awarded him the Prix Damoiseau for 1902.
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Lavo Čermelj
1889 - 1980 (91 years)
Lavo Čermelj, Italianized in Lavo Cermeli was a Slovene physicist, political activist, publicist and author. In the 1930s, he was one of the foremost representatives of Slovene anti-Fascist émigrés from the Italian-administered Julian March, together with Josip Vilfan, Ivan Marija Čok, and Engelbert Besednjak.
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Johann Friedrich Weidler
1691 - 1755 (64 years)
Johann Friedrich Weidler was a German jurist and mathematician. Biography At the age of fifteen Weidler moved to the University of Jena, enrolled on June 10, 1712 at the University of Wittenberg, obtained the academic degree of Magister on April 30, 1712 and became an adjunct at the philosophical faculty of the Wittenberg Academy on April 19, 1715. After he had been given the professorship of lower mathematics in 1715, he took over the professorship of higher mathematics in 1719.
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Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc
1580 - 1637 (57 years)
Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc , often known simply as Peiresc, or by the Latin form of his name, Peirescius, was a French astronomer, antiquary and savant, who maintained a wide correspondence with scientists, and was a successful organizer of scientific inquiry. His research included a determination of the difference in longitude of various locations in Europe, around the Mediterranean, and in North Africa.
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Sergey Glazenap
1848 - 1937 (89 years)
Sergey Pavlovich Glazenap was a Russian and Soviet astronomer, honorary member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences , and Hero of Socialist Labor . In some publications, particularly in the 19th century, his last name was given as S. de Glasenapp or von Glasenapp .
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Werner Braunbeck
1901 - 1977 (76 years)
Werner Braunbek was a German physicist. He was born in Bautzen, the son of the Government Commissioner of City Planning Otto August Braunbek . Werner attended the University of Stuttgart, the University of Munich and the University of Berlin. In 1925 he received a doctorate in engineering and completed his habilitation in theoretical physics the following year at the University of Stuttgart, where he continued as a lecturer.
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Moses Blackman
1908 - 1983 (75 years)
Moses Blackman FRS was a South African-born British crystallographer. Biography Moses Blackman was born in Cape Town on 6 December 1908, the son of Esther and Rabbi Joseph Blackman. His early school years were in Upington; he then attended Victoria Boys High School when the family moved to Grahamstown in 1921. When matriculating in 1925 Blackman gained the only scholarship to nearby Rhodes University, where he concentrated on physics, mathematics, applied mathematics and German. He achieved firsts in maths, physics and German. He continued with an MSc in physics, again being awarded a first.
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Jay M. Enoch
#11027
Raoul Pictet
1846 - 1929 (83 years)
Raoul-Pierre Pictet was a Swiss physicist. Pictet is co-credited with French scientist Louis-Paul Cailletet as the first to produce liquid oxygen in 1877. Biography Pictet was born in Geneva. He served as professor in the university of that city. He devoted himself largely to problems involving the production of low temperatures and the liquefaction and solidification of gases.
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Elia Millosevich
1848 - 1919 (71 years)
Elia Filippo Francesco Giuseppe Maria Millosevich was an Italian astronomer. He specialized in calculating the orbits of comets and asteroids, in particular 433 Eros. He first studied at the University of Padua. His first papers, on the then-forthcoming 1874 and 1882 transits of Venus, attracted attention and got him the position of professor of nautical astronomy at the Reale Istituto di Marina Mercantile a Venezia . In 1879, he was offered the position of deputy director of the Osservatorio del Collegio Romano , associated with the Ufficio Centrale di Meteorologia in Rome, and from 1902 u...
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Hans Schjellerup
1827 - 1887 (60 years)
Hans Carl Frederik Christian Schjellerup was a Danish astronomer. He was born at Odense, the son of a jeweller. Initially he was apprenticed as a watch maker, but in 1848 he passed the entrance exam for the Polytechnic School of Copenhagen. He graduated by passing an examination in applied mathematics and mechanics.
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William Hussey
1862 - 1926 (64 years)
William Joseph Hussey was an American astronomer. Early life and education He was born at Mendon, Ohio, August 10, 1862, son of John Milton Hussey and Mary Catherine Stevens. He attended the Valparaiso Normal School in 1880 and completed the scientific curriculum with a specialization in education in one year. Afterward, he attended the University of Michigan to study civil engineering.
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Rudolf Ferdinand Spitaler
1859 - 1946 (87 years)
Rudolf Ferdinand Spitaler was an Austrian astronomer, geophysicist, meteorologist and climatologist. He discovered 64 IC objects whilst working at Vienna Observatory and Comet 113P/Spitaler. He was one of the first to speculate the existence of a 13th zodiacal constellation, which later became known as Ophiuchus.
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Thomas J. Parmley
1897 - 1997 (100 years)
Thomas Jennison Parmley was an American physics professor at the University of Utah. He served as chairman of the UofU's physics department from 1957 to 1963. Parmley was born in Scofield, Utah to William and Mary Veal Parmley. His father was killed in the Scofield Mine disaster in that town in 1900. In 1921, he received his bachelor's degree from the University of Utah where he was a founding member of the Sigma Pi fraternity chapter. While still being an undergraduate, he worked as a chemist for the U.S. Smeltering Company. In 1923 he married LaVern W. Parmley who served as general president of the Primary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints .
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John Bainbridge
1582 - 1643 (61 years)
John Bainbridge was an English astronomer and mathematician. Life Bainbridge was born at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, in Leicestershire to Robert and Anne Bainbridge. He attended the Free Grammar School in Ashby-de-la-Zouch and then became a student at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He returned to Ashby where he practiced as a physician for some years, kept a school and studied astronomy. Having been removed to London, he was admitted a licentiate of the college of physicians, and was noticed due to a publication concerning the comet of 1618.
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Kasimir Graff
1878 - 1950 (72 years)
Kasimir Romuald Graff was a Polish-German astronomer. He worked as an assistant at the Hamburg Observatory and became a professor at Hamburg in 1916. In 1928 he became director of the Vienna Observatory, Austria. When the Nazi government took over in Austria in 1938, he was forced to retire. It is likely that his family background and his rejection of the Nazi-supported philosophy of "Welteislehre" was the reason, although he officially was removed because of unproven charges of embezzlement. He was reinstated in 1945, and he retired in 1949.
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Thomas Clausen
1801 - 1885 (84 years)
Thomas Clausen was a Danish mathematician and astronomer. Clausen learned mathematics at home. In 1820, he became a trainee at the Munich Optical Institute and in 1824, at the Altona Observatory after he showed Heinrich Christian Schumacher his paper on calculating longitude by the occultation of stars by the moon. He eventually returned to Munich, where he conceived and published his best known works on mathematics. In 1842 Clausen was hired by the staff of the Tartu Observatory, becoming its director in 1866-1872.
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Ragnar Holm
1879 - 1970 (91 years)
Ragnar Holm , was a Swedish physicist and researcher in electrical engineering, who was partially active in Germany and the United States. Career In 1904, Holm became licentiate in philosophy at Uppsala University, and earned his PhD in 1908. From 1906 to 1908 he studied at the University of Göttingen in Germany. In 1908 to 1909 he was a lecturer in Stockholm. Between 1909 and 1919 he worked as a physicist for Siemens & Halske in Berlin. In 1919 to 1921 he was a physicist and teacher at the in Stockholm, and between 1921 and 1927 associate professor at the . Between 1927 and 1945 he worked again for Siemens & Halske.
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Shams al-Din al-Samarqandi
1250 - 1310 (60 years)
Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ashraf al-Ḥusaynī al-Samarqandī was a 13th century Persian astronomer and mathematician from Samarkand, now in Uzbekistan. Life Little is known of al-Samarqandi's life, who composed his most important works during the 13th and 14th centuries. He wrote works on theology, logic, philosophy, mathematics and astronomy which are important in their own right, but also provide information about the works of other astronomers.His treatise, , is a discussion of dialectic reasoning as used by the ancient Greeks. He wrote Synopsis of Astronomy, and produced a star catalogue for...
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Nicolaus Mulerius
1564 - 1630 (66 years)
Nicolaus Mulerius was a professor of medicine and mathematics at the University of Groningen. Education and career Mulerius was born Nicolaas Des Muliers, son of Pierre Des Muliers and Claudia Le Vettre. He grew up in Bruges, where he was taught by Jacobus Cruquius, among others. Mulerius first studied Philology, Philosophy and Theology and from 1582 he also studied Medicine and Mathematics at the University of Leiden, where Lipsius, Vulcanius, Snellius and Heurnius were teachers. In 1589 he married Christina Six and set up practice for 13 years in Harlingen. In 1603 he became leading physician in Groningen, in 1608 he took the position as school master of the Leeuwarden gymnasium.
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Peter Beiersdorfer
#11040
Vladimir Jurko Glaser
1924 - 1984 (60 years)
Vladimir Jurko Glaser was a Croatian theoretical physicist working on quantum field theory and the canonization of the analytic S-matrix. Biography Glaser was born in Gorizia, Italy. His father, Vladimir Glaser, was a prominent Slovene lawyer and minority rights activist. His mother, Ana née Besednjak, was the sister of the politician Engelbert Besednjak. His paternal aunt Eleonora was married to the famous neurologist Constantin von Economo.
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Robertus Anglicus
1300 - Present (726 years)
Robertus Anglicus or Robert the Englishman was an English astronomer of the thirteenth century. He taught at the University of Montpellier, and possibly also at Paris. He is known as the author of a 1271 commentary on the De Sphera Mundi of Johannes de Sacrobosco. It includes a significant reference to the state of the art in the technology of clockwork.
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Cyril Jackson
1903 - 1988 (85 years)
Cyril V. Jackson was a South African astronomer, known for discovering 72 asteroids and a number of comets. He was born in Ossett, Yorkshire in England; his father emigrated to South Africa in 1911. He earned his B.Sc. at the University of the Witwatersrand.
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Mihály Lenhossék
1863 - 1937 (74 years)
Mihály Lenhossék, named often given as Michael von Lenhossék was a Hungarian anatomist and histologist born in Budapest. He was the son of anatomist József Lenhossék and an uncle to Albert Szent-Györgyi .
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George Carse
1880 - 1950 (70 years)
George Alexander Carse FRSE RSSA was a leading Scottish physicist and educationalist. In 1925, he was the first Mitchell Lecturer. Life Carse was born in Edinburgh on 20 June,, the first child of George Carse, a decorator from Duns, and his wife, Jane. The family lived at 120 Lauriston Place, located south-west of the city center. In 1891, he attended George Heriot’s School and was the school dux in 1898. Carse was awarded a place at the University of Edinburgh to study mathematics under Professor George Chrystal and physics under Professor Peter Tait.
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Angelina Cabras
1898 - 1993 (95 years)
Angelina Cabras was an Italian mathematician and physicist. She earned degrees in mathematics from the University of Turin in 1924 and in physics from the University of Cagliari in 1927. She obtained a position in mathematical physics at Cagliari, later moving to the institute of theoretical mechanics there. Her research concerned higher dimensional rigid body dynamics, the theory of relativity, and inductance.
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H. Stanley Allen
1873 - 1954 (81 years)
Herbert Stanley Allen FRSE FRS was an English physicist from Cornwall noted as a pioneer in early X-ray research, working under J. J. Thomson at the University of London and alongside Nobel laureate Charles Glover Barkla at the University of Edinburgh. A supporter of the Parson magneton, Allen was also an early contributor to the field of quantum mechanics.
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Heinz Raether
1909 - 1986 (77 years)
Heinz Artur Raether was a German physicist. He is best known for his theoretical and experimental contributions to the study of surface plasmons, as well as for Kretschmann-Raether configuration, a commonly-used experimental setup for the excitation of surface plasmon resonances.
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Mervyn A. Ellison
1909 - 1963 (54 years)
Mervyn Archdall Ellison was an Irish astronomer. He was recognized as a world authority on solar physics and the effect of solar flares on the Earth. Life He was born at Fethard-on-Sea in County Wexford, Ireland, the third son of Reverend William Frederick Archdall Ellison, and was home tutored until the age of nine when his father became the director of Armagh Observatory. Mervyn was entered into the Royal School, Armagh, and during his spare time he developed an interest in astronomy. In 1927 he began his undergraduate work at Trinity College Dublin, where he studied physics and was elected a Scholar.
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Enrique Loedel Palumbo
1901 - 1962 (61 years)
Enrique Loedel Palumbo was an Uruguayan physicist. Loedel Palumbo was born in Montevideo, Uruguay and studied at the University of La Plata in Argentina. His doctoral advisor was the German physicist of Jewish origin Richard Gans. Loedel wrote his Ph.D. thesis in December 1925 on optical and electrical constants of sugar cane. An extract of the thesis was published in German in Annalen der Physik in 1926. He then began his career as professor in La Plata.
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Charles Lambert Manneback
1894 - 1975 (81 years)
Charles Lambert Marie Joseph Manneback was a Belgian physicist, mining engineer, and mathematician. After serving in the Belgian army during World War I, he obtained a civil engineering diploma from the Catholic University of Leuven in 1920.
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