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,
#11051
Jakob Kunz
1874 - 1938 (64 years)
Jakob Kunz was an American physicist who pioneered the development and application of photoelectric cells. Born in Brittnau, Switzerland, he earned his bachelor's degree in 1897 and his Ph.D in 1902 from the Eidgenossisches Polytechnikum in Zurich, and was active in the Baháʼí Faith from 1921.
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Leon Theremin
1896 - 1993 (97 years)
Lev Sergeyevich Termen , better known as Leon Theremin, was a Russian inventor, most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments and the first to be mass-produced. He also worked on early television research. His secret listening device, "The Thing", hung for seven years in plain view in the United States ambassador's Moscow office and enabled Soviet agents to eavesdrop on secret conversations.
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Gladys Anslow
1892 - 1969 (77 years)
Gladys Amelia Anslow was an American physicist who spent her career at Smith College. She was the first woman to work with the cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley. Early life and education Anslow was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to John Anslow and Ella Iola Leonard. Anslow attended Springfield Central High School and entered Smith College in 1909. While studying at Smith College, Anslow was a member of the Mathematical Society and served as vice president of the Physics Club. In her second year, Anslow elected a focus on physics under Frank Allan Waterman. Following her graduation with an A.B.
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Walter Hoppe
1917 - 1986 (69 years)
Walter Hoppe was a German physicist and electron microscopist. Walter Hoppe was born in Wallsee-Sindelburg and obtained his doctorate in chemistry at the German University in Prague under Professor J. Boehm. Hoppe became professor and departmental head at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany from 1964 until his retirement in 1985.
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Pio Emanuelli
1889 - 1946 (57 years)
Pio Emanuelli was an Italian astronomer, historian and popularizer of astronomy. He worked for many years at the Vatican Observatory and also taught at the University of Rome. Emanuelli was born in Rome, son of a Vatican clerk. He was only ten when his father died and took an interest in astronomy from a very young age, attending lectures by Elia Millosevich, writing articles in magazines and newspapers. Even as young boy he was in correspondence with astronomers like Giovanni Schiaparelli and Camille Flammarion. In 1910 he joined the Vatican Observatory under Father Johann Georg Hagen and wo...
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Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio
1330 - 1388 (58 years)
Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio , also known as Giovanni de' Dondi, was an Italian physician, astronomer and mechanical engineer in Padua, now in Italy. He is remembered today as a pioneer in the art of clock design and construction. The Astrarium, which he designed and built over a period of 16 years, was a highly complex astronomical clock and planetarium, constructed only 60 or so years after the very first all-mechanical clocks had been built in Europe, and demonstrated an ambitious attempt to describe and model the planetary system with mathematical precision and technological sophistication...
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John Charles Duncan
1882 - 1967 (85 years)
John Charles Duncan was an American astronomer. Life John Charles Duncan was the son of Daniel Davidson and Naomi, née Jessup, Duncan. He graduated from Indiana University and received his Bachelor of Arts there in 1905. In 1905/1906, he received the first Lawrence Fellowship donated by Percival Lowell to students of Indiana University at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and participated in the photographic search for Trans-Neptunian planets. In the summer of 1912 he returned to the Lowell Observatory to help with the search. After receiving his Master of Arts in 1906, he began h...
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Herman March
1878 - 1953 (75 years)
Herman William March was a mathematician and physicist. March studied physics and mathematics at the University of Munich under Wilhelm Röntgen and Arnold Sommerfeld. He received his doctorate in 1911. He had a position at the University of Wisconsin–Madison no later than circa 1920. He died in 1953.
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Győző Zemplén
1879 - 1916 (37 years)
Győző Zemplén was a Hungarian physicist who worked in the fields of hydrodynamics and the kinetic theory of gases. Life Győző Zemplén was born in the town of Nagykanizsa, Hungary. He grew up in Fiume. In 1896, he began his studies at the University of Budapest and, at 19 years age, won an award with an essay on the viscosity of gases. After that he began theoretical and experimental studies. In 1900 he published the essay "On the basic assumptions of the kinetic theory of gases" in the Annalen der Physik, but had been previously published mathematical works. In the same year he graduated from the University, but remained as a research assistant.
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Mary Taylor Slow
1898 - 1984 (86 years)
Mary Taylor Slow was a British physicist who worked on the theory of radio waves and the application of differential equations to physics. She was the first woman to take up the study of radio as a profession.
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Stepan Malkhasyants
1857 - 1947 (90 years)
Stepanos Sargsi Malkhasiants was an Armenian academician, philologist, linguist, and lexicographer. An expert in classical Armenian literature, Malkhasiants wrote the critical editions and translated the works of many classical Armenian historians into modern Armenian and contributed seventy years of his life to the advancement of the study of the Armenian language.
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Carl Clarence Kiess
1887 - 1967 (80 years)
Carl Clarence Kiess was an American astronomer. His main contributions was in the study of solar and stellar spectra. Kiess was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He earned a BA in astronomy from Indiana University in 1910 and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1913. After teaching at the University of Missouri, Pomona College, and the University of Michigan, Kiess took a position at the National Bureau of Standards in 1917. He retired from the bureau in 1957.
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Colin Cherry
1914 - 1979 (65 years)
Edward Colin Cherry was a British cognitive scientist whose main contributions were in focused auditory attention, specifically the cocktail party problem regarding the capacity to follow one conversation while many other conversations are going on in a noisy room. Cherry used shadowing tasks to study this problem, which involve playing two different auditory messages to a participant's left and right ears and instructing them to attend to only one. The participant must then shadow this attended message.
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Pieter Johannes van Rhijn
1886 - 1960 (74 years)
Pieter Johannes van Rhijn was a Dutch astronomer. Born in Gouda, he studied at Groningen. He served as director at the Sterrenkundig Laboratorium in Groningen. He died in Groningen. The crater van Rhijn on the Moon is named after him, as is asteroid 2203 van Rhijn.
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Ioannis Papadakis
1825 - 1876 (51 years)
Ioannis G. Papadakis was an author, mathematician, physicist, astronomer, meteorologist, and professor. He was the second director of the National Observatory of Athens. He temporarily succeeded Georgios Konstantinos Vouris until Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt replaced him as the third director of the observatory. His most notable work was the observation of the Moons of Jupiter and other meteorological observations in the 1850s. He was also a Scottish rite freemason.
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Louis G. Henyey
1910 - 1970 (60 years)
Louis George Henyey was an American astronomer. His parents, Albert and Mary Henyey, were immigrants from Hungary. Louis George Henyey married Elizabeth Rose Belak, born in Budapest, on April 28, 1934; they had three children: Thomas Louis, Francis Stephen, and Elizabeth Maryrose.
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George W. Hough
1836 - 1909 (73 years)
George Washington Hough was an American astronomer. Biography George Washington Hough was born in Tribes Hill, New York on October 24, 1836. He discovered 627 double stars and made systematic studies of the surface of Jupiter. He designed and constructed several instruments used in astronomy, meteorology, and physics. From 1862 to 1874, Hough was director of Dudley Observatory, Albany, New York. In 1879 he was appointed professor of astronomy at the University of Chicago. He became the director of Dearborn Observatory when the observatory was moved to Evanston, Illinois. He introduced original plans for the dome and electric control for the telescope.
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Giovanni Battista Amici
1786 - 1863 (77 years)
Giovanni Battista Amici was an Italian astronomer, microscopist, and botanist. Amici was born in Modena, in present-day Italy. After studying at Bologna, he became professor of mathematics at Modena, and in 1831 was appointed inspector-general of studies in the Duchy of Modena. A few years later he was chosen director of the observatory at Florence, where he also lectured at the museum of natural history. Amici died in Florence in 1863.
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Shohé Tanaka
1862 - 1945 (83 years)
Tanaka Shōhei was a Japanese physicist, music theorist, and inventor. He graduated from Tokyo University in 1882 as a science student. On an imperial scholarship, he was sent to Germany for doctoral studies in 1884, together with Mori Ōgai. His dissertation concerned just intonation and practical means to its implementation.
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Otto August Rosenberger
1800 - 1890 (90 years)
Otto August Rosenberger was a Baltic German astronomer from Tukums in Courland. He was born in Tukkum, Courland, Russia. Rosenberger graduated from the University of Königsberg, and was noted for his study of comets. He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1837. He died in Halle, Prussian Saxony.
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Guidobaldo del Monte
1545 - 1607 (62 years)
Guidobaldo del Monte , Marquis del Monte, was an Italian mathematician, philosopher and astronomer of the 16th century. Biography Del Monte was born in Pesaro. His father, Ranieri, was from a leading wealthy family in Urbino. Ranieri was noted for his role as a soldier and also as the author of two books on military architecture. The Duke of Urbino, Duke Guidobaldo II, honoured him with the title Marchese del Monte so the family had only become a noble one in the generation before Guidobaldo. On the death of his father Guidobaldo inherited the title of Marchese.
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William Perl
1920 - 1970 (50 years)
William Perl , whose original name was William Mutterperl, was an American physicist and Soviet spy. Background While a student at the City College of New York, Perl joined the Steinmetz Club, the campus branch of the Young Communist League, where he met and befriended future Soviet spies Julius Rosenberg, Morton Sobell and Joel Barr. Perl graduated with a degree in engineering in 1939, and in 1940 began working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics at their Langley Army Air Base research facility in Hampton, Virginia. In 1944 Perl transferred to the NACA Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, Ohio.
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Edward Skinner King
1861 - 1931 (70 years)
Edward Skinner King was an American astronomer. In 1887 he graduated from Hamilton College and joined the staff of the Harvard Observatory, where he supervised the photographic imaging and related work. He became a pioneer and authority on the process of photographic photometry. In 1912 he noticed that some types of films appeared to perform better during the winter months, which led to the use of the so-called "cold camera" where the temperature is lowered to around -40 °C. From 1926 until his death he was the Phillips Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University.
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Pierre-Michel Duffieux
1891 - 1976 (85 years)
Pierre-Michel Duffieux was a French physicist, known as the founder of Fourier optics. Life and career Duffieux became interested in physics by listening to the lectures of Pierre Duhem in high school in Bordeaux. In 1912 he entered the École Normale Supérieure. During the first world war he was involved in military work under the supervision of Henri Bénard, applying Fourier methods to measuring the coefficients of thermal conductivity. This work resulted in his first scientific publication.
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James Curley
1796 - 1889 (93 years)
James Curley was an Irish-American astronomer. He was born at Athleague, County Roscommon, Ireland. His early education was limited, though his talent for mathematics was discovered, and to some extent developed, by a teacher in his native town. He left Ireland in his youth, arriving in Philadelphia on 10 October 1817. Here he worked for two years as a bookkeeper and then taught mathematics at Frederick, Maryland.
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Herbert Alonzo Howe
1858 - 1926 (68 years)
Herbert Alonzo Howe was an American astronomer and educator. Biography Born in Brockport, New York, he was the son of Alonzo J. Howe, a professor at the old University of Chicago, and Julia M. Osgood. During his youth he developed an interest in the stars, witnessing the spectacular Leonid meteor shower of November 1866. He matriculated to the old University of Chicago, where he graduated with an A.B. in 1875 at the age of sixteen. Joining the staff of the Cincinnati Observatory as an assistant, he worked primarily on computing orbital elements and observing double stars. In 1877, he was awarded his A.M.
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Lawrence O. Brockway
1907 - 1979 (72 years)
Lawrence Olin Brockway was a physical chemist who spent most of his career at the University of Michigan, where he developed early methods for electron diffraction. Early life and education Brockway was born on September 23, 1907, in Topeka, Kansas. He attended the University of Nebraska and received his B.S. in 1929 and his M.S. a year later. He then moved to the California Institute of Technology, where he was one of the first graduate students of Linus Pauling. He and Pauling were interested in the physics of interatomic interactions and focused their efforts on the structure of chalcopyri...
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Petrus Astronomus
1450 - Present (576 years)
Petrus Astronomus, O.Ss.S., , a German by birth, was a Bridgettine monk in Vadstena Abbey, Vadstena, Sweden. In 1506, he created an astronomical clock for the Uppsala Cathedral, which, in addition to the hours and minutes of the day, also illustrated the moon phase and the movements of the planets. The clock was repaired by Christopher Polhem in the 17th century but destroyed in a fire in 1702.
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Herbert Jehle
1907 - 1983 (76 years)
Herbert Jehle was a German-American physicist. Jehle graduated in 1930 from the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart with a degree in engineering and in 1933 from the Technische Hochschule Berlin with an engineering doctorate in textile manufacture.He was part of the 'Bonhoeffer circle' of students, talking theology and making hesitant attempts at spiritual exercises, listening to Bonhoeffer's Negro spirituals. For the academic year 1933–1934 he studied theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge. In 1935/36 he worked for the Jahrbuch über die Fortschritte der Mathematik. It was in large part due to Bonhoeffer’s influence that he became a pacifist.
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Jarl Axel Wasastjerna
1896 - 1972 (76 years)
Jarl Axel Wasastjerna was a Finnish physicist. After his academic career, he worked in industry, received an honorary degree in technology in 1949, and the honorary title of Vuorineuvos in 1957. Wasastjerna was Professor of Applied Physics at the University of Helsinki from 1925–1946, where he oversaw the dissertation of Eugenie Lisitzin, the first woman to earn a PhD in Finland in 1938. He later became envoy of Finland in Stockholm from 1940 to 1943, Managing Director of United Wool Company from 1948 to 1954, President of the Nordic Union Bank from 1944 1951, and Chairman of the Tampella Executive Board beginning in 1944.
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Oskar Vierling
1904 - 1986 (82 years)
Oskar Walther Vierling was a German physicist, inventor, entrepreneur and professor in high-frequency technology. Vierling was an important inventor and engineer of electronic and electro-acoustic instruments between the 1930s and 1950s.
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Caroline Furness
1869 - 1936 (67 years)
Caroline Ellen Furness was an American astronomer who taught at Vassar College in the early twentieth century. She studied under Mary Watson Whitney at Vassar and was the first woman to earn a PhD in astronomy from Columbia.
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Wilhelm von Beetz
1822 - 1886 (64 years)
Wilhelm von Beetz was a German physicist, known for his studies of electrical conductivity properties. Von Beetz was born in Berlin. He studied physics, chemistry and physiology in the University of Berlin, and after completion of studies, remained in Berlin as an instructor of physics at the Cadet Corps, followed by duties as a teacher at the artillery and engineering school. Afterwards, he was a professor at the universities of Bern and Erlangen . In 1868 he became a professor at the Technical University of Munich, where in 1874 to 1877 he was director. In 1845, he was co-founder of Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.
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Henry James Anderson
1799 - 1875 (76 years)
Henry James Anderson was an American scientist and educator who worked with the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Dallas Bache. He became Knight Commander, President of the Particular Council of New York, and Head of the Supreme Council.
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Orazio Tedone
1870 - 1922 (52 years)
Orazio Tedone was an Italian mathematical physicist. He is perhaps best known for the Larmor–Tedone formulae for solving Maxwell's equations. Biography Born and raised in Ruvo di Puglia, Tedone completed his undergraduate studies - his Laurea - in mathematics from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and there became an assistant and then a lecturer in rational mechanics. He became a docent at the Istituto Tecnico C. Cattaneo in Milan and then became a professor in the chair of mechanics at the University of Pavia. In 1899 he became a professor of higher analysis and static graphics at the Un...
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Georg Samuel Dörffel
1643 - 1688 (45 years)
Georg Samuel Dörffel was a German theologian and amateur astronomer. Both the lunar crater Doerfel and the minor planet 4076 Dörffel are named in his honour. Biography Georg Samuel Dörffel was born in Plauen in 1643. His father Friedrich Dörffel was a clergyman who worked as the private tutor of the prince-elector of Brandenburg. Georg studied in Plauen, Leipzig and Jena. He obtained a master's degree in philosophy in 1663, and a bachelor in theology in 1667.
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Johannes Praetorius
1537 - 1616 (79 years)
Johannes Praetorius or Johann Richter was a Bohemian German mathematician and astronomer. Life Praetorius was born in Jáchymov, Bohemia. From 1557 he studied at the University of Wittenberg, and from 1562 to 1569 he lived in Nuremberg. His astronomical and mathematical instruments are kept at Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.
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Dimitri Riabouchinsky
1882 - 1962 (80 years)
Dimitri Pavlovitch Riabouchinsky was a Russian fluid dynamicist noted for his discovery of the Riabouchinsky solid technique. With the aid of Nikolay Zhukovsky he founded the Institute of Aerodynamics in 1904, the first in Europe. He also independently discovered equivalent results to the Buckingham Pi Theorem in 1911. Riabouchinsky left Russia following the October Revolution and his short-term arrest, spending the rest of his life in Paris, yet he never accepted the French citizenship and used his Nansen passport up till death. He was a member of the Moscow State University, the University ...
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Franziska Seidl
1892 - 1983 (91 years)
Franziska Seidl was an Austrian physicist. She was professor for experimental physics at the University of Vienna. One of her main research areas was ultrasound. Biography Franziska was born in Vienna to Franz and Maria Vicari, née Anton, who were proprietors of a small business. She attended primary and secondary school and received musical education. In 1911, she married Wenzel Seidl , a physics and mathematics teacher at a gymnasium in Hranice, Moravia. They lived in Hranice until Wenzel was conscripted in World War I, and died in 1916 at the Isonzo Front.
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Jens Fredrik Schroeter
1857 - 1927 (70 years)
Jens Fredrik Wilhelm Schroeter was a Norwegian astronomer. He was born in Drammen as a son of sea captain Fredrik Julius Bech Schroeter and his wife Julie Schroeter. His paternal family had migrated into Norway from Langeland, Denmark in 1787. Through his sister Jenny, he was a brother-in-law of priest Jens Jonas Jansen and an uncle of historian, genealogist and archivist Einar Jansen.
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Paul D. Feldman
#11092
Alois Handl
1837 - 1915 (78 years)
Alois Handl was an Austrian physicist. In 1859 he obtained his doctorate in Vienna, later becoming a professor at the University of Lemberg. Afterwards he taught classes at the military academy in Wiener Neustadt. In 1876 he established the chair of experimental physics at the University of Czernowitz, a position he maintained until his retirement in 1906. Following his retirement, Handl was succeeded at Czernowitz by Josef Geitler von Armingen .
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Chester Lyman
1814 - 1890 (76 years)
Chester Smith Lyman was an American teacher, clergyman and astronomer. Early life and education He was born in Manchester, Connecticut, to Chester and Mary Smith Lyman. Chester is the descendant of Richard Lyman, a settler who arrived in America in 1631. Chester's early education was in a country school, but at an early age he showed a strong interest in astronomy and the sciences. By 1833 he had gained admittance to Yale, and graduated in 1837. In his junior year he became editor of the Yale Literary Magazine and he was a member of Skull and Bones. He served for two years as Superintendent of Ellington School, then studied theology at the Union and Yale seminaries.
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Pearl I. Young
1895 - 1968 (73 years)
Pearl I. Young became the first female technical employee of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics , which evolved to become today's NASA. She became Chief Technical Editor at NACA's Langley Instrument Research Laboratory, and an engineering professor.
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Karl Kraus
1938 - 1988 (50 years)
Karl Kraus was a German theoretical physicist who made major contributions to the foundations of quantum physics. Life and work Kraus was born in 1938 in Hohenelbe/Giant Mountains, today Vrchlabí. After the war, he grew up in Elsterwerda and attended local schools. He studied physics from 1955 to 1960 at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Free University of Berlin . He graduated in 1962 with a thesis about Lorentz's theory of gravity, carried out under the supervision of Kurt Just. Kraus then joined as an assistant to Günther Ludwig at the University of Marburg, where he qualified in 1966.
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Émile Verdet
1824 - 1866 (42 years)
Marcel Émile Verdet was a French physicist. He worked in magnetism and optics, editing the works of Augustin-Jean Fresnel. Verdet did much to champion the early theory of the conservation of energy in France through his editorial supervision of the Annales de chimie et de physique.
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Dean Benjamin McLaughlin
1901 - 1965 (64 years)
Dean Benjamin McLaughlin was an American astronomer. He was a professor of astronomy at the University of Michigan. He was the father of the science fiction author Dean B. McLaughlin, Jr. He received his B.S. , his M.S. and his Ph.D. all from Michigan. McLaughlin married fellow astronomer Laura Elizabeth Hill in 1927.
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Diego Rodríguez
1569 - 1668 (99 years)
Diego Rodríguez was a mathematician, astronomer, educator, and technological innovator in New Spain. He was one of the most important figures in the scientific field in the colony in the second half of the seventeenth century.
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Ron Giovanelli
1915 - 1984 (69 years)
Ronald Gordon Giovanelli, DSc, FAA was an Australian solar researcher, astronomer and physicist, who contributed to the fields of astrophysics, solar physics, radiative transfer, and astronomical optics. His career spanned more than 40 years, commencing prior to World War II. Giovanelli was the recipient of the 1949 Edgeworth David Medal by the Royal Society of New South Wales for the discipline of astrophysics, which recognises distinguished contributions by scientists under the age of 35 years old in their respective fields. He was also elected into the Fellowship of the Australian Academy ...
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Robert of Ketton
1110 - 1160 (50 years)
Robert of Ketton, known in Latin as Rodbertus Ketenensis , was an English astronomer, translator, priest and diplomat active in Spain. He translated several works of Arabic into Latin, including the first translation of the Quran into any Western language. Between 1144 and 1157 he held an archdeaconry in the diocese of Pamplona. In the past he has been confounded with Robert of Chester , another English translator active in Spain in the mid-twelfth century; and at least one modern scholar believes they are the same person.
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