Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Physics,

#11001

Christian Moser

1861 - 1935 (74 years)

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

#11002

Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Rümker

Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Rümker

1832 - 1900 (68 years)

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

#11003

Nadiashda Galli-Shohat

1879 - 1948 (69 years)

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

#11004

William L. Bray

1865 - 1953 (88 years)

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

#11005

Walter Wislicenus

Walter Wislicenus

1859 - 1905 (46 years)

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

#11006

Louis Bell

1864 - 1923 (59 years)

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

#11007

Daniel Joseph Kelly O'Connell

1896 - 1982 (86 years)

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

#11008

Sinclair Smith

1899 - 1938 (39 years)

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

#11009

Bruce B. Benson

1922 - 1990 (68 years)

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

#11010

Henry Cabourn Pocklington

1870 - 1952 (82 years)

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

#11011

Julius August Christoph Zech

1821 - 1864 (43 years)

Julius August Christoph Zech was a German astronomer and mathematician. In 1849, Zech published a table of logarithms; as a result, Zech logarithmss for finite fields are named after him. In 1863, Zech attended the founding meeting of the Astronomische Gesellschaft and became its Vorstand . Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander assumed this role upon Zech's death..

#11012

Albert Wigand

1882 - 1932 (50 years)

Ernst Heinrich Paul Albert Wigand , known as Albert Wigand, was a German professor who lectured in the fields of physics, geodesy, meteorology and climatology. His is most well-known as one of the earliest physicists to successfully devise a method of studying fog and cloud matter in mid-air. In his later years, he became a fierce supporter of the xenophobic and nationalist thinking that would underpin Nazi ideology, and that association has clouded his legacy.

#11013

Arthur Charles Lewis Brown

1869 - 1946 (77 years)

Arthur Charles Lewis Brown was an American scholar who wrote on the origin of Arthurian Romances. Biography Brown was born in Avon, New York, son of Rev. Charles Fortune and Sarah C. Brown. His father was a popular Episcopal missionary and priest who authored Christ on the Throne of Power and Antichrist: A Treatise on the Book of Revelation, to St. John the Divine in 1885. Given his Episcopal upbringing, in 1883, Arthur attended and graduated Hobart College, the oldest Episcopal college in America. In 1896, he assumed a teaching post with Haverford College in Pennsylvania, where he began his studies of the legends of King Arthur.

#11014

Herman Schultz

1823 - 1890 (67 years)

Per Magnus Herman Schultz was a Swedish astronomer. Biography and career In 1878 Schultz became professor at Uppsala University and director of the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory. In 1873 he became a member of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala and joined the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1875.

#11015

Harold Lawton

1899 - 2005 (106 years)

Harold Walter Lawton was an English scholar of French literature and, prior to his death, one of the last surviving veterans and the last prisoner of war of World War I in Britain. Born in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, he volunteered for military service in 1916, enlisting with the Royal Welch Fusiliers before being transferred to the Cheshire Regiment. Upon completing training, in 1917 he was posted to the Western Front where he was transferred again, to The East Yorkshire Regiment. During the German spring offensive of 1918 his unit, the 1/4th Battalion the East Yorkshires, was sent to reinforce...

#11016

Owen F. T. Roberts

1896 - 1968 (72 years)

Captain Owen Fiennes Temple Roberts FRSE MC was a British astronomer and meteorologist. Life Owen Roberts was born in Mauritius in 1896, and was the son of Alfred Temple Roberts and his wife Susan Charlotte Catherine Fiennes-Clinton .

#11017

Vladimir Mitkevich

1872 - 1951 (79 years)

Vladimir Fyodorovich Mitkevich was a Soviet scientist and electrical engineer. In 1929, Mitkevich participated in the Second International Congress of the History of Science held in London in June–July 1931.

#11018

Andreas Stöberl

1470 - 1515 (45 years)

Andreas Stöberl , better known by his latinised name Andreas Stiborius , was a German humanist astronomer, mathematician, and theologian working mainly at the University of Vienna. Life Stöberl studied from 1479 on at the University of Ingolstadt, where he became a magister in 1484, and subsequently a member of the Faculty of Arts. At Ingolstadt, he met and became a friend of Conrad Celtis, an eminent advocate of humanism who lectured there between 1492 and 1497. When Celtis moved to Vienna in 1497, Stöberl followed his mentor. Stiborius was a member of the Sodalitas Litterarum Danubiana, a circle of humanists founded by Celtis.

#11019

Abdul Muktadir

1940 - 1971 (31 years)

Mohammad Abdul Muktadir was a Bengali geologist and academic who was killed in the 1971 Dhaka University massacre. He is considered a martyr in Bangladesh. Early life Abdul Muktadir was the third child born into a Bengali Muslim family in Pashchimpara, Silam, Sylhet District on 19 February 1940. His mother was Begum Moshaheda Khanom. His father Abdul Jabbar was a renowned Moulvi and social activist, as well as the founder and headmaster of Silam PL Junior High School. Abdul Jabbar also used to voluntarily teach at the Jalalpur Alia Madrasa in Sylhet Sadar. Abdul Muktadir had two brothers and four sisters.

#11020

Andrew B. Davidson

1831 - 1902 (71 years)

Andrew Bruce Davidson DD LLD DLit was an ordained minister in the Free Church of Scotland and Professor of Hebrew and Oriental languages in New College, University of Edinburgh. Life and career Davidson was born at Kirkhill, in the parish of Ellon, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, on 25 April 1831. He was educated initially at the Aberdeen Grammar school under Dr Melvin and afterwards at the University of Aberdeen, graduating in 1849. Following graduation he took the position of teacher in the Free Church school in Ellon and while in that position taught himself French, German, Dutch and Spanish in addition to the classical languages he already knew.

#11021

George W. Brindley

1905 - 1983 (78 years)

George William Brindley was a British-American crystallographer and mineralogist. He was known for his study of clay minerals including the structure of kaolinites. Education and career Brindley studied at University of Manchester in the laboratory of Sir Lawrence Bragg and Reginald W. James, where he obtained an BSc and an MSc in crystallography in 1928. He then moved to University of Leeds, obtaining a PhD in physics in 1933. He subsequently became a Lecturer and a Reader in X-ray physics at Leeds. Until 1945, his research focused on X-ray scattering in metals and its use in studying their ...

#11022

Filippo Ferrari

1551 - 1626 (75 years)

Filippo Ferrari was an Italian Servite friar and scholar, known as a geographer, and also noted as a hagiographer. Life He was born at Oviglio in Piedmont. It is near Alessandria, and he was nicknamed Alessandrino . He taught mathematics for 48 years at the University of Pavia.

#11023

Gerrit Grijns

1865 - 1944 (79 years)

Gerrit Grijns , was a Dutch researcher and co-discoverer of vitamin B1 as the successor to the later Nobel Prize winner Christiaan Eijkman. It was Eijkman who in the former Dutch East Indies was the first to associate the deficiency disease beriberi with the lack of the outer membrane in machine-peeled rice. Eijkman fell ill and returned to Europe. His successor Grijns believed that the membrane contains a substance that is indispensable for a healthy metabolism. By writing of "partial hunger" and "protective substance" in 1901, Grijns anticipated the concept of vitamins.

#11024

Clayton Oscar Person

1922 - 1990 (68 years)

Clayton Oscar Person, was recognized internationally as an authority on the genetics of host-parasite relations. He was born and raised in Aylesbury, Saskatchewan, Canada and died in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. His writings have made a major contribution to the development of a rigorous theoretical basis for our understanding of how the genetic structure of parasitic populations interacts with that of their host populations. This was known as the gene-for-gene relationship. His theoretical methods have been applied widely in the practical management of parasitic diseases in agricult...

#11025

Mieczysław Małecki

1903 - 1946 (43 years)

Mieczysław Małecki was a Polish linguist. Professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, during World War II under a cover of collaboration with the Nazi-run he in fact, with support of the Polish Underground State, used his position to organize much of the Polish underground education in occupied Kraków. He resumed his post at the Jagiellonian University after the war, although he died shortly afterwards .

#11026

Herbert Stansfield

1872 - 1960 (88 years)

Herbert Stansfield was a British physicist and Professor at University College, Southampton whose research focussed on soap films, the Michelson Interferometer and the Echelon Spectroscope. Early life Stansfield was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1872, the second son of Frederic and Mary Ellen Stansfield. His elder brother was the British-Canadian metallurgist Alfred Stansfield . He was educated at Ackworth School, Bradford Technical College and the Royal College of Science, London.

#11027

William Watson

1884 - 1952 (68 years)

William Watson FRSE was a 20th-century Scottish physicist and mathematician. Life He was born on 15 June 1884 in Musselburgh just east of Edinburgh, the son of Janet Watson of Tranent and her husband, William Watson of Fossoway, then headmaster of Musselburgh Grammar School. He attended his father's school from 1891 to 1898 then completed his education at the Royal High School, Edinburgh. He was school dux in 1902.

#11028

Frederick Hertz

1878 - 1964 (86 years)

Frederick Hertz was a British sociologist, economist and historian of Austrian origin. Life and work Hertz attended the Franz-Joseph-Gymnasium in Vienna and studied after the Matura law and economics at the University of Vienna. 1901-1902 he continued his studies at the University of Munich, 1903, he was in Vienna with a thesis on the discount and foreign exchange policy of the Austro-Hungarian Bank PhD. During his studies, Hertz joined the Austrian Social Democracy.

#11029

Emanuel Kayser

1845 - 1927 (82 years)

Friedrich Heinrich Emanuel Kayser was a German geologist and palaeontologist, born in Königsberg. He was educated at the universities of Halle, Heidelberg and Berlin, where in 1871 he qualified as a lecturer in geology. From 1873 he worked as a state geologist for the Preußischen Geologischen Landesanstalt , and in 1881 became a professor at the Berlin Mining Academy. In 1885 he succeeded Wilhelm Dunker as professor of geology and paleontology at the University of Marburg.

#11030

Antonio Ferri

1912 - 1975 (63 years)

Antonio Ferri was an Italian scientist, prominent in the field of aerodynamics, with a specialization in hypersonic and supersonic flight. Born in 1912 in Norcia, Italy, from 1937 he conducted research in Guidonia Montecelio, where the most prominent and advanced research on high-speed aerodynamics was taking place. In 1938, at the age of 26, he received Italy's highest prize for science, the Premio dell'Accademia d'Italia for science. Among the work he conducted there were spectacular experiments in 1939–1940 with supersonic wind tunnels.

#11031

Józef Zawadzki

1886 - 1951 (65 years)

Józef Zawadzki was a Polish physical chemist and technologist. Father of Tadeusz and Anna Zawadzka. Zawadzki was a co-founder, President and Vice-President of the Polskie Towarzystwo Chemiczne. He was a professor and rector of Warsaw University of Technology, and a member of the Polish Academy of Learning .

#11032

Rudolf Much

1862 - 1936 (74 years)

Rudolf Much was an Austrian philologist and historian who specialized in Germanic studies. Much was Professor and Chair of Germanic Linguistic History and Germanic Antiquity at the University of Vienna, during which he tutored generations of students and published a number of influential works, some of which have remained standard works up to the present day.

#11033

Paul Rudolph

1858 - 1935 (77 years)

Paul Rudolph was a German physicist who designed the first anastigmatic lens while working for Carl Zeiss. After World War I, he joined the Hugo Meyer optical company, where he designed most of their cine lenses.

#11034

James Brown Fisk

1910 - 1981 (71 years)

James Brown Fisk was president of Bell Labs from 1959 to 1973. Biography He was born on August 30, 1910, in West Warwick, Rhode Island. He received his degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his Ph.D. dissertation was entitled “The Scattering of Electrons from Molecules.” He joined Bell Laboratories in 1939. He was named vice-president of research in 1954. He headed Bell Labs from 1959 to 1973. He was named chairman of the board of Bell Laboratories in 1973 and retired in 1974.

#11035

Jules Antoine Lissajous

Jules Antoine Lissajous

1822 - 1880 (58 years)

Jules Antoine Lissajous was a French physicist, after whom Lissajous figuress are named. Among other innovations, Lissajous invented the Lissajous apparatus, a device that creates the figures that bear his name. In it, a beam of light is bounced off a mirror attached to a vibrating tuning fork, and then reflected off a second mirror attached to a perpendicularly oriented vibrating tuning fork , onto a wall, resulting in a Lissajous figure. This led to the invention of other apparatus such as the harmonograph.

#11036

Sethus Calvisius

Sethus Calvisius

1556 - 1615 (59 years)

Sethus Calvisius or Setho Calvisio, originally Seth Kalwitz , was a German music theorist, composer, chronologer, astronomer, and teacher of the late Renaissance. Biography He was born into a peasant family at Gorsleben in present-day Thuringia. By the exercise of his musical talents he earned money enough for the start, at Helmstedt, of a university career, which the aid of a wealthy patron enabled him to continue at Leipzig. He became director of the music-school at Pforta in 1572. In 1594 he was transferred to Leipzig in the same post, including directing the Thomanerchor at the Thomaskirche.

#11037

Lloyd Hulbert

1918 - 1987 (69 years)

Lloyd Clair Hulbert was a professor of biology at Kansas State University from 1955 until 1986. He was recognized for his work to establish Konza Prairie and served as its first director from 1971-1986. Hulbert was internationally known for his "research of bluestem prairie and prairie-forest interactions."

#11038

Forrest Shepherd

1800 - 1888 (88 years)

Forrest Shepherd was an American scientist. Shepherd, son of Daniel and Anna Shepherd, was born in Boscawen, N. H., October 31, 1800. He entered Dartmouth College in 1823, but spent the Senior year at Yale College. He was admitted to the bachelor's degree at both Colleges in 1827. He remained in New Haven as a graduate student for two or three years, and on April 29, 1832, married Sophia W. Storer, of Rutland, Vt. In 1841 and 1842 he took a partial course in the Yale Divinity School.

#11039

Louis Ridenour

1911 - 1959 (48 years)

Louis N. Ridenour was a physicist instrumental in U.S. development of radar, Vice President of Lockheed, and an advisor to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Biography and positions held During World War II, Ridenour worked at the MIT Radiation Laboratory. He was co-leader with Ivan A. Getting of the group that developed the SCR-584 radar. He directed a committee in 1949 that recommended the establishment of a separate Research and Development Command and a new Air Staff Deputy Chief of Staff for Research and Development. In 1950, Ridenour was named the first Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Forc...

#11040

Ukichiro Nakaya

Ukichiro Nakaya

1900 - 1962 (62 years)

Ukichiro Nakaya was a Japanese physicist and science essayist known for his work in glaciology and low-temperature sciences. He is credited with making the first artificial snowflakes. Life and research Nakaya was born near the Katayamazu hot springs in Kaga, Ishikawa Prefecture, near the area depicted in Hokuetsu Seppu, an encyclopedic work published in 1837 that contains 183 sketches of natural snowflake crystals – the subject that became Nakaya's life work. Nakaya later wrote that his father wanted him to be a potter and sent him to live with a potter while he was in primary school. His f...

#11041

Andrei Severny

1913 - 1987 (74 years)

Andrei B. Severny was a Soviet astronomer, particularly known for his work on solar flares and astronomical observations from artificial satellites. He was director of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory from 1952–1987 and vice-president of the International Astronomical Union from 1964 to 1970.

#11042

Revaz Dogonadze

1931 - 1985 (54 years)

Revaz Dogonadze was a notable Georgian scientist, Corresponding Member of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences , Doctor of Physical & Mathematical Sciences , Professor , one of the founders of Quantum electrochemistry,

#11043

Emory Leon Chaffee

Emory Leon Chaffee

1885 - 1975 (90 years)

Emory Leon Chaffee was an American physicist. He was a professor at Harvard University from 1911 to 1953. Chaffee was born in Somerville, Massachusetts. He studied electrical engineering and received his bachelor's degree from MIT in 1907. Afterward he made further studies at the Harvard University and took his master's degree and his Ph.D.

#11044

Charles Pollard Olivier

Charles Pollard Olivier

1884 - 1975 (91 years)

Charles Pollard Olivier was an American astronomer, notable for his contributions to the study of meteors, double stars and variable stars. Biography Charles grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, and he lived close to the University of Virginia. In 1901 he became an assistant at the nearby Leander McCormick Observatory, and in 1905 he was Vanderbilt fellow at the observatory. He completed his Ph.D. in astronomy by 1911, with a dissertation disproving the existence of stationary meteor radiants.

#11045

Zdeněk Sekera

1905 - 1973 (68 years)

Zdeněk Sekera was a Czech scientist who in 1966 won the American Meteorological Society's Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal for atmospheric science for his research into the dynamics of the atmosphere. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1956 and 1960 in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics. He was professor of meteorology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

#11046

Seishi Kikuchi

1902 - 1974 (72 years)

was a Japanese physicist, known for his explanation of the Kikuchi lines that show up in diffraction patterns of diffusely scattered electrons. Kikuchi's research was recorded in the official Nobel Prize selection meeting minutes of the 1930s.

#11047

Thomas Thundat

Thomas George Thundat is an American scientist. He is currently the Empire Innovation Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering at the University at Buffalo. Thundat is one of the pioneers in the field of nanosensors and a leading expert on microcantilevers.

#11048

William Michael Herbert Greaves

1897 - 1955 (58 years)

William Michael Herbert Greaves FRS FREng FRSE was a British astronomer. He is most noted for his work on stellar spectrophotometry. Life He was born in Barbados in the West Indies the son of Dr E. C. Greaves, a physician trained at the University of Edinburgh. William Greaves was educated first at Lodge School and Codrington College, both in Barbados then travelled to England to study at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated MA in 1919 and became a Fellow in 1922.

#11049

Seth Neddermeyer

Seth Neddermeyer

1907 - 1988 (81 years)

Seth Henry Neddermeyer was an American physicist who co-discovered the muon, and later championed the implosion-type nuclear weapon while working on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II.

#11050

Otto Robert Frisch

Otto Robert Frisch

1904 - 1979 (75 years)

Otto Robert Frisch was an Austrian-born British physicist who worked on nuclear physics. With Otto Stern and Immanuel Estermann he first measured the magnetic moment of the proton. With Lise Meitner he advanced the first theoretical explanation of nuclear fission and first experimentally detected the fission by-products. Later, with his collaborator Rudolf Peierls he designed the first theoretical mechanism for the detonation of an atomic bomb in 1940.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions