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,
#11151
Herbert H. Chen
1942 - 1987 (45 years)
Herbert Hwa-sen Chen was a theoretical and experimental physicist at the University of California at Irvine known for his contributions in the field of neutrino detection. Chen's work on observations of elastic neutrino-electron scattering provided important experimental support for the electroweak theory of the standard model of particle physics. In 1984 Chen realized that the deuterium of heavy water could be used as a detector that would distinguish the flavors of solar neutrinos. This idea led Chen to develop plans for the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory that would eventually make fundam...
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Benedict Sestini
1816 - 1890 (74 years)
Benedict Sestini, SJ was a Jesuit astronomer, mathematician and architect, who worked in Italy and the U.S. Career Sestini was born in Florence, Italy, on March 20, 1816. He entered the Society of Jesus in Rome on October 30, 1836, and studied at the Roman College where he followed the courses of Rev. Vincent Caraffa, the professor of mathematics. He was appointed assistant to Rev. Francesco de Vico, director of the Vatican Observatory. Sestini was ordained in 1844, and then held the chair of higher mathematics at the Roman College.
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John LeConte
1818 - 1891 (73 years)
John LeConte was an American scientist and academic. He served as president of the University of California from 1869 to 1870 and from 1875 to 1881. Biography LeConte was born in Liberty County, Georgia, to Louis Le Conte, patriarch of the noted LeConte family. He attended Franklin College at the University of Georgia where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society and graduated in 1838. His younger brother Joseph LeConte also attended the university.
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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
#11164
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
#11180
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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Abu Ja'far al-Khazin
900 - 960 (60 years)
Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Husayn Khazin , also called Al-Khazin, was an Iranian Muslim astronomer and mathematician from Khorasan. He worked on both astronomy and number theory. Al-Khazin was one of the scientists brought to the court in Ray, Iran by the ruler of the Buyid dynasty, Adhad ad-Dowleh, who ruled from 949 to 983. In 959/960, Khazin was required by the vizier of Ray, who was appointed by ad-Dowleh, to measure the obliquity of the ecliptic.
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Alexander William Roberts
1857 - 1938 (81 years)
The Hon. Alexander William Roberts FRSE FRAS FRSSA was Scottish-born, South African teacher and an amateur astronomer. He was an expert on the stars of the southern hemisphere and did much mapping of these stars. He was affectionately known as Roberts of Lovedale.
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Hans Mueller
1900 - 1965 (65 years)
Hans Mueller was a Swiss physicist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He created Mueller calculus. Mueller was born October 27, 1900, in Amriswil, canton Thurgau, Switzerland. His father was Ernst Müller and mother Mathilde Meier. Hans attended school in Frauenfeld and proceeded in 1919 to Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule. He graduated with a teacher's diploma for science and mathematics in 1923. In graduate work his advisors were Peter Debye and Paul Scherrer.
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Radó von Kövesligethy
1862 - 1934 (72 years)
Radó von Kövesligethy , was a Hungarian physicist, astronomer and geophysicist. Kövesligethy developed a spectral equation for black body radiation for the continuous spectra of celestial bodies which had the following properties: the spectral distribution of radiation depends only on the temperature, the total irradiated energy is finite, the wavelength of the intensity maximum is inversely proportional to the temperature.
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Giuseppe Biancani
1566 - 1624 (58 years)
Giuseppe Biancani, SJ was an Italian Jesuit astronomer, mathematician, and selenographer, after whom the crater Blancanus on the Moon is named. Biography Giuseppe Biancani was born in Bologna in 1566, entered the Jesuit Order in 1592, and studied at the College of Brescia with Marco Antonio De Dominis, and at the Academy of Mathematics in the Roman College with Clavius. Between 1596 and 1599 he lived in Padua, where he completed his studies and befriended Galileo, who had been appointed professor of mathematics at the local university in 1592. When the Jesuits were expelled from the Republic...
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Zygmunt Klemensiewicz
1886 - 1963 (77 years)
Zygmunt Aleksander Klemensiewicz was a Polish physicist and physical chemist. Early in his career , he made a pioneering contribution to the development of the glass electrode. Life and career Klemensiewicz was born in Kraków. His father, Robert, was a teacher of history and geography and a headmaster of a secondary school; his mother was a translator from Scandinavian languages into Polish. From 1892 the family lived in Lwów, where he finished Polish gymnasium. In the years 1904–1908, he studied chemistry, physics, and mathematics at the Lwów University, where his professors included Wac...
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Arthur Auwers
1838 - 1915 (77 years)
Georg Friedrich Julius Arthur von Auwers was a German astronomer. Auwers was born in Göttingen to Gottfried Daniel Auwers and Emma Christiane Sophie . He attended the University of Göttingen and worked at the University of Königsberg. He specialized in astrometry, making very precise measurements of stellar positions and motions. He detected the companion stars of Sirius and Procyon from their effects on the main star's motion, before telescopes were powerful enough to visually observe them. He was from 1866 Secretary to the Berlin Academy, and directed expeditions to measure the transits of ...
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Arthur Prince Chattock
1860 - 1934 (74 years)
Arthur Prince Chattock, FRS was a British physicist. Career Chattock was educated at University College School and University College London. After a short time as an electrical engineer for Siemens he returned to University College, London to study under George Carey Foster. In 1885 he succeeded Silvanus P. Thompson at University College, Bristol as demonstrator in Physics. Chattock spent two years in Liverpool with Oliver Lodge where in February 1888 he worked on key experiments towards the understanding of radio waves.
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Henry M. Foley
1917 - 1982 (65 years)
Henry Michael Foley was an American experimental physicist. He was a professor and a leading physicist at Columbia University, later serving as chairman of the physics department. In 1948, Polykarp Kusch, working with Henry Foley, discovered the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the electron. He served on the JASON Defense Advisory Group, an independent group of scientists which advises the United States Government on matters of science and technology. He also served on the MX Missile Basing advisory panel.
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Nicolas Stoyko
1894 - 1976 (82 years)
Nicolas Stoyko or Nikolaï Mikhaïlovitch Stoyko was a Ukrainian-French astronomer, known for his research on the precise measurement of time and the rate of rotation of planet Earth. Biography Stoyko studied at the Imperial Novorossiya University before working from 1914 to 1916 as a volunteer at the Odesa Astronomical Observatory, directed at the time by Aleksandr Yakovlevich Orlov. After graduating with a degree in mathematical sciences in 1916, Stoyko served in the Russian army from 1916 to 1918. He was certified as agrégé de mathématiques in 1920. Because of the chaos caused by the Russian Civil War, Stoyko was unemployed and immigrated to Bulgaria to find work.
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Yelpidifor Kirillov
1883 - 1964 (81 years)
Yelpidifor Anempodistovich Kirillov was a Soviet physicist, doctor of physical-mathematical sciences, the founder of the Odessa scientific school in the field of photography. Biography Yelpidifor Kirillov was born in Shipka. He graduated from the Mathematics Department of Physics and Mathematics of the Novorossiysk University in 1907 with a first degree and was kept at the department of physics in preparation for an academic career. From 1908 to 1915, he worked as an assistant at the University for Women, also worked part-time observer of the magnetic-meteorological observatory, and then in ...
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Charles Chree
1860 - 1928 (68 years)
Charles Chree, FRS was a British physicist, an authority on terrestrial magnetism and atmospheric electricity, and for 32 years Superintendent of Kew Observatory. Chree was born in Lintrathen, Forfarshire, Scotland on 5 May 1860, second son to Rev Charles Chree. He was educated at the Grammar School, Old Aberdeen, the University of Aberdeen where he graduated MA in 1879 and the University of Cambridge where he graduated as Sixth Wrangler .
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Eva Ahnert-Rohlfs
1912 - 1954 (42 years)
Eva Ahnert-Rohlfs was a German astronomer. She made key observations of variable stars. Eva Ahnert-Rohlfs was born in Coburg . She studied in Würzburg, Munich and Kiel from 1931 to 1933. After nine years of withdrawal into family life, she studied from 1942 until the end of the Second World War at the University of Göttingen. From 1945, she worked closely with professor Cuno Hoffmeister as an assistant astronomer at the Sonneberg Observatory. In 1951, she received a doctorate in astrophysics from the University of Jena. At Sonneberg Observatory Eva Rohlfs met the astronomer Paul Oswald Ahnert...
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James Pound
1669 - 1724 (55 years)
James Pound was an English clergyman and astronomer. Life He was the son of John Pound, of Bishops Cannings, Wiltshire, where he was born. He matriculated at St. Mary Hall, Oxford, on 16 March 1687; graduated B.A. from Hart Hall on 27 February 1694, and M.A. from Gloucester Hall in the same year; and obtained a medical diploma, with a degree of M.B., on 21 October 1697.
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Christen Sørensen Longomontanus
1562 - 1647 (85 years)
Christen Sørensen Longomontanus was a Danish astronomer. The name Longomontanus was a Latinized form of the name of the village of Lomborg, Jutland, Denmark, where he was born. His father, a laborer called Søren, or Severin, died when Christen was eight years old. An uncle took charge of the child, and had him educated at Lemvig; but after three years sent him back to his mother, who needed his help to work the fields. She agreed that he could study during the winter months with the clergyman of the parish; this arrangement continued until 1577, when the ill-will of some of his relatives and...
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Leslie Fleetwood Bates
1897 - 1978 (81 years)
Leslie Fleetwood Bates, CBE, FRS was an English physicist known for his contributions to ferromagnetism. He was Lancashire-Spencer Professor of Physics at the University of Nottingham from 1936 until his retirement in 1964.
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Demetrios Kokkidis
1840 - 1896 (56 years)
Demetrios Kokkidis was an astronomer, mathematician, physicist, professor, and dean. Kokkidis was the fourth president of the Athens Observatory after the death of Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt. He was one of the few Greek astronomers of the 20th century following Georgios Konstantinos Vouris and Ioannis Papadakis. He did extensive research and wrote articles about Mercury, the Sun, the Moon, and various meteorological phenomena.
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Tadeáš Hájek
1525 - 1600 (75 years)
Tadeáš Hájek z Hájku , also known as Tadeáš Hájek of Hájek, Thaddaeus Hagecius ab Hayek or Thaddeus Nemicus, was a Czech naturalist, personal physician of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II and an astronomer in the Kingdom of Bohemia.
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