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).
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.
List of the most influential people in Physics,
#11201
Ludwig Becker
1860 - 1947 (87 years)
Ludwig Wilhelm Emil Ernst Becker FRSE was Regius Professor of Astronomy at the University of Glasgow from 1893 until 1935 when he retired. Life Born in Wesel, Kingdom of Prussia, Becker was educated at the University of Bonn. After two years as an assistant in the Berlin Observatory, the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres appointed him in 1885 to take charge of his large private observatory at Dunecht, near Aberdeen. When that institution was wound up in the autumn of 1888, the instruments were passed on to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury for a new Royal Observatory. A site on Blackford Hill in Edinburgh was selected in 1889 and Becker was included on the staff.
Go to Profile#11202
John Leigh Smeathman Hatton
1865 - 1933 (68 years)
Professor John Leigh Smeathman was a mathematician and Principal of East London College, England, one of the founding colleges of what is now Queen Mary College, part of London University. He was also Vice Chancellor of London University in the 1930s.
Go to Profile#11203
Ahmad Fazlur Rahman
1889 - 1945 (56 years)
Sir Ahmad Fazlur Rahman , also known as A. F. Rahman, was a Bengali academic. He served as the first Bengali Vice-chancellor of the University of Dhaka during 1934–1936. He was knighted by the British Government of India in 1942.
Go to Profile#11204
Viktor Kirpichov
1845 - 1913 (68 years)
Viktor Lvovich Kirpichov was a Russian Empire engineer, physicist, and educational organizer, known especially for his work on applied and structural mechanics as well as for establishing the foundations for technical education in the Russian Empire.
Go to Profile#11205
John Adamson
1809 - 1870 (61 years)
John Adamson was a Scottish physician, pioneer photographer, physicist, lecturer and museum curator. He was a highly respected figure in St Andrews, and was responsible for producing the first calotype portrait in Scotland in 1841. He taught the process to his brother, the famous pioneering photographer Robert Adamson. He was curator of the Literary and Philosophical Society Museum at St Andrews from 1838 until his death.
Go to Profile#11206
Rolla Ramsey
1872 - 1955 (83 years)
Rolla Roy Ramsey was an American physicist, university professor, and radio electronics pioneer. Early life and education Ramsey was born in the unincorporated community of Morning Sun, Preble County, Ohio, son of Sarah Rachel McQuiston and Joseph Steele Ramsey . He grew up on a farm. As a university teacher, Rolla took a special interest in "farm boys" who took physics courses; he observed that "they were not afraid to work." Rolla had a sister, Leila Jane Ramsey Lemon , and a brother, Arthur McQuiston Ramsey .
Go to Profile#11207
Emanuel von der Pahlen
1882 - 1952 (70 years)
Baron Emanuel A. von der Pahlen was a German astronomer. He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, but left for Germany following the revolution of 1917. He was educated at University of Göttingen, where he was awarded a Doctorate of Mathematical Sciences. Prior to World War I he joined solar eclipse expeditions in 1905, 1912 and 1914. Between the world wars, he was employed at the Astrophysikalishen Observatorium Potsdam. He taught at the University of Basel. In 1947 he published Einführung in die Dynamik von Sternsystemen, a 241-page work on Galaxies.
Go to Profile#11208
Paul Götz
1883 - 1962 (79 years)
Paul Götz was a German astronomer and discoverer of 20 minor planets between 1903 and 1905. He did his Ph.D. dissertation in 1907 at the Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl at the University of Heidelberg.
Go to Profile#11209
Stanley Whitehead
1902 - 1956 (54 years)
Stanley Whitehead was a British physicist. Life Whitehead was born in Sutton, Surrey in 1902 and educated at Sir Walter St. John's School. After winning a scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford, Whitehead obtained first-class degrees in mathematics and in physics before carrying out research with Lord Cherwell at the Clarendon Laboratory. He was appointed as a physicist at the Electrical Research Association, becoming Director in 1946 and holding this post until his death in 1956. His particular interest was dielectric research, and he had an international reputation in fields such as telephone and radio interference.
Go to Profile#11210
Johann Jakob Hess
1866 - 1949 (83 years)
Johann Jakob Hess , was a Swiss Egyptologist and Assyriologist and an expert in other Oriental languages. Personal life Hess was born on 11 January 1866, the son of window and door maker Casimir Balthasar Jacques Hess and Josephine-Marie, née Rudolf, in Freiburg im Üechtland, , Switzerland. He graduated at Berlin and Strassburg in Egyptology, Assyriology, Semitic languages and Sinology, working for his Doctoral degree between 1889 and 1891, working as a Privatdozent, teaching Egyptology and Assyriology between 1891 and 1908 at the Swiss University of Freiburg. This teaching position gave him t...
Go to Profile#11211
Jan Latosz
1539 - 1608 (69 years)
Jan Latosz or Jan Latoszyński was a Polish scholar, astronomer, astrologist and physician. A professor at the Cracow Academy, he is best known for his staunch criticism of the papal calendar reform, for which he was deposed of his post. He fled to Ostróg, where he became the personal physician to Prince Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski and a professor at the Ostrog Academy.
Go to Profile#11212
Ernst Bessel Hagen
1851 - 1923 (72 years)
Ernst Bessel Hagen was a German Applied and Experimental Physicist. With Heinrich Rubens, he identified the so-called Hagen-Rubens equation . Life Carl Ernst Bessel Hagen was born in Königsberg , eldest of the three recorded sons of the banker-politician Adolf Hermann Hagen by his first marriage, which was to Johanna Louise Amalie Bessel . Both his grandfathers were distinguished members of the German academic community. Carl Heinrich Hagen was a socio-economist, a professor of jurisprudence and, between 1811 and 1835, a senior Prussian government official . Friedrich Bessel was a ...
Go to Profile#11213
Charles Edward St. John
1857 - 1935 (78 years)
Charles Edward St. John was an American astronomer. He was born in Allen, Michigan to Hiriam A. St. John and his wife Lois Bacon; the youngest of a family of four sons and two daughters. In 1873 he entered Michigan Normal College, then graduated at the age of 19. For the next ten years, he suffered from ill health. After recovering, he became a teacher at the college, and in 1887 he graduated with a B.S. from Michigan State Agricultural College. He performed two years of graduate study in electromagnetism at the University of Michigan, then earned an M.A. from Harvard University in 1893. He w...
Go to Profile#11214
Julio Garavito Armero
1865 - 1920 (55 years)
Julio Garavito Armero was a Colombian astronomer. Life Born in Bogotá, he was a child prodigy in science and mathematics. He obtained his degrees as mathematician and civil engineer in the Universidad Nacional de Colombia . In 1892, he worked as the director of the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional . His investigative works had been published in Los Anales de Ingeniería since 1890, seven years before he took over editing the publication.
Go to Profile#11215
Johann Jakob Rebstein
1840 - 1907 (67 years)
Johann Jakob Rebstein was a Swiss mathematician and surveyor. Early life Rebstein was born on 4 May 1840 in Töss, Switzerland, to his father, a baker and his mother, a doctor. Education and career Rebstein attended post-secondary school in Winterthur, and after graduating in 1860, went on to study for a year at Collège de France. He was professor of mathematics and physics in Zürich from 1877 to 1898. He was awarded his doctorate in 1895 from the Humboldt University of Berlin for his work Bestimmung aller reellen Minimalflächen, die eine Schaar ebener Curven enthalten, denen auf der Gauss'schen Kugel die Meridiane entsprechen.
Go to Profile#11216
Sergei Sedov
1908 - 1937 (29 years)
Sergei Lvovich Sedov was a Soviet engineer and scientist, the son of Leon Trotsky, and was killed in the Great Purge. Personal life The son of Leon Trotsky by his second wife, and younger brother of Lev Sedov, Sergei Lvovich Sedov was born on 21 March 1908 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. A graduate of the Moscow Mechanical Institute, and working at the Moscow Aviation Institute, he was an apolitical engineer and scientist. His daughter, Yulia, was born around October 1935.
Go to Profile#11217
Rudolph Goclenius the Younger
1572 - 1621 (49 years)
Rudolph Goclenius the Younger was a German physician and professor at Philipps University of Marburg. Goclenius was born in Wittenberg, the oldest son of Rudolph Goclenius, who was also professor of physics, logic, mathematics and ethics at Marburg. He enrolled at the University of Marburg at the age of 15. As a student, Goclenius was a respondent to his father in a physical disputation and received his master's degree in 1591. After obtaining his medical degree in 1601, Goclenius became the first rector of the newly founded gymnasium in Büdingen and a personal physician to Wolfgang Ernst I, Count of Isenburg-Büdingen.
Go to Profile#11218
Godfried Wendelen
1580 - 1667 (87 years)
Godfried Wendelen or Govaert Wendelen, Latinized Godefridus Wendelinus, or sometimes Vendelinus and in French-language sources referred to as Godefroy Wendelin was an astronomer and Catholic priest sometimes referred to as the Ptolemy of his time. He was a supporter of Copernican heliocentrism, the astronomical model which positioned the sun at the center of the universe, with earth and the other planets orbiting around it. He made more accurate measurements of the distance to the sun as previously made by the ancient Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos. He is considered by some as a precursor of Kepler and Newton.
Go to Profile#11219
Charles Wylie
1886 - 1976 (90 years)
Charles Clayton Wylie was born in Idana, Kansas on June 18, 1886 and died in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in April 1976. He earned his first degree from Park College in Missouri in 1908 and a master's degree from the University of Missouri in 1912. After working at the US Naval Observatory from 1913-1919, he went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was the first Ph.D. graduate from University of Illinois' astronomy department. He graduated with his doctorate in 1922 for his work "The Eclipsing Binary Sigma Aquilae, the Cepheid Variable Eta Aquilae."
Go to Profile#11220
Colin Campbell
Colin Campbell was a Scottish astronomer. He grew up in Jamaica and died there in Kingston in 1752. He matriculated at Glasgow University, in 1720. He was invested as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1733. He studied Newton's theory of the diminution of gravity away from the equator. He made astronomical observations, in correspondence with Edmund Halley. He held the office of Member of the Council in 1742. After 1742, he sold his astronomical instruments to Alexander Macfarlane. In 1748, he lived at St. George Hanover Square, London.
Go to Profile#11221
Grigori Levitski
1852 - 1917 (65 years)
Grigori Levitski was an astronomer from the Russian Empire. In 1879 he graduated from St. Petersburg University. In 1880s he worked at Pulkovo Observatory. 1894-1908 he was the head of Tartu Observatory. 1901-1905 he was the president of Estonian Naturalists' Society. 1903-1905 he was the rector of Tartu University.
Go to Profile#11222
Joseph Redlhamer
1713 - 1761 (48 years)
Joseph Redlhamer was a professor at the University of Vienna. He joined the Jesuits at age 18 and earned a doctorate in philosophy and theology, after which he taught ethics, philosophy and theology in Linz, Graz and Vienna. He was a contemporary of Johann Baptiste Horvath, Andreas Jaszlinszky and Leopold Biwald.
Go to Profile#11223
G. W. C. Kaye
1880 - 1941 (61 years)
George William Clarkson Kaye was an English physicist. He is best known as one of the authors, together with Thomas Laby, of the authoritative scientific reference work Tables of Physical and Chemical Constants and Some Mathematical Functions, first published in 1911 and better known as Kaye and Laby. He was a driving force behind the formation and early years of the ‘International X-ray and Radium Protection Committee’ , the world's first international radiological protection body, created in 1928.
Go to Profile#11224
Ruth J. Northcott
1913 - 1969 (56 years)
Ruth Josephine Northcott was a Canadian astronomer based at the David Dunlap Observatory, and president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada from 1962 to 1964. Asteroid 3670 Northcott is named for her.
Go to Profile#11225
Edwin Foster Coddington
1870 - 1950 (80 years)
Edwin Foster Coddington was an American astronomer and discoverer of astronomical objects. He co-discovered the comet C/1898 L1 , also known by the older designation Comet 1898 VII. He also discovered 3 asteroids, and the galaxy IC 2574 in Ursa Major, which later became known as "Coddington's Nebula".
Go to Profile#11226
Franz Kaiser
1891 - 1962 (71 years)
Franz Heinrich Kaiser was a German astronomer. He worked at the Heidelberg-Königstuhl Observatory from 1911 to 1914 while working on his Ph.D. there, which he obtained in 1915. During this time, Heidelberg was a center of asteroid discovery, and Kaiser discovered 21 asteroids during his time there.
Go to Profile#11227
Jasper Kirkby
Jasper Kirkby is a British experimental particle physicist working at CERN. He is known for his pioneering idea of Tau-Charm Factory, an accelerator for the BEPC II in Beijing. He has led large particle accelerator experiments at SPEAR and the Paul Scherrer Institute. He completed his degrees at Oxford and London, then spent twelve years at Stanford University before joining CERN in 1984. Since 2013, he's been a professor at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main.
Go to Profile#11228
Frida Palmer
1905 - 1966 (61 years)
Frida Palmér, was the first female Swedish astronomer with a doctorate. She studied variable stars. Early life Palmér was born on February 14, 1905, in Blentarp, Sweden, the only child to builder Hans Persson Palmér and his wife Elsa Jeppsson. Her father died when she was five years old and in 1910 Elsa moved to Järrestad. It is unclear how she finished her early education but she must have been somewhat self-taught as access to high school was not formally established for girls until 1928.
Go to Profile#11229
Gustaf Svanberg
1802 - 1882 (80 years)
Gustaf Svanberg was a Swedish astronomer. He was a professor of astronomy at Uppsala University from 1842 to 1875, and prefect of the university's observatory between 1825 and 1878. During his tenure, Svanberg traveled to Germany to meet prominent astronomers of the time. After returning from the journey, he undertook efforts to improve the astronomical facilities at Uppsala. This included establishing geomagnetic research facilities to cooperate with Carl Friedrich Gauss, and building a new observatory in Uppsala, a project which was subject to political controversy at the time. The minor as...
Go to Profile#11230
Józef Lubański
1915 - 1946 (31 years)
Józef Kazimierz Lubański was a Polish theoretical physicist. Life and works Lubanski obtained the degree of magister philosophies at Wilna in 1937. He then worked for two years as an assistant in theoretical physics at Polish universities, and obtained a grant in order to travel to Holland and to work under Prof. H. A. Kramers at Leyden. His original intention was to go to Copenhagen in the following year, although the Second World War prevented this.
Go to Profile#11231
Erwin Kempton Mapes
1884 - 1961 (77 years)
Erwin Kempton Mapes was an American scholar of Spanish-American literature and Hispanist, renowned for his work on the Hispanic Modernists. Born in Gilman, Illinois, Mapes received his bachelors from Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, in 1909. He then went to Harvard University and studied Hispanic Studies under Jeremiah D. M. Ford, receiving his master's in 1915. He received his doctorate from the University of Paris with a study on Rubén Darío, published in 1925 as L'influence française dans l'oeuvre de Rubén Darío.
Go to Profile#11232
Muhyi al-Din al-Maghribi
1220 - 1283 (63 years)
Muḥyī al‐Milla wa al‐Dīn Yaḥyā Abū ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī al‐Shukr al‐Maghribī al‐Andalusī , referred to in sources as Muhyi l'din, was an astronomer, astrologer and mathematician of the Islamic Golden Age. He belonged to the group of astronomers associated with the Maragheh observatory in the Ilkhanate, most notably Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. In astronomy, Muhyi l'din carried out a large‐scale project of systematic planetary observations, which led to the development of several new astronomical parameters.
Go to Profile#11233
Harutaro Murakami
1872 - 1947 (75 years)
was a Japanese physicist and astronomer. He is the father of the astronomer Tadayoshi Murakami . The crater Murakami on the Moon is named after him. External links 月の命名
Go to Profile#11234
Leon Pape
1925 - 1984 (59 years)
Leon Pape was a medical physicist who received his BSc, MSc and PhD in Physics from the University of Southern California. He became certified in radiological physics by the American Board of Radiology and from 1955 to 1962 he worked as a radiological physicist at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles. He served at the California State University Los Angeles as radiation safety officer and as professor of physics until 1971, and worked on the development of studies in biophysics, radiological health physics, and electron microscopy. He was elevated to departmental head of physics a...
Go to Profile#11235
Christopher Wren
1589 - 1658 (69 years)
Christopher Wren B.D. was an Anglican cleric who was Dean of Windsor from 1635 until his death, and the father of the prominent architect Christopher Wren. Family Christopher Wren Senior was the son of Francis Wren, a citizen and mercer of London, who served steward to Mary Queen of Scots during her captivity in England.
Go to Profile#11236
Fritz Borgnis
1906 - 1982 (76 years)
Fritz E. Borgnis was a German applied physicist and electrical engineer, known for his contributions to microwave physics, guided waves and ultrasonic measurements for medical diagnostics. Background Borgnis was born on December 24, 1906, in Mannheim, Germany. After completing high school in Hamburg, he matriculated at the Technische Hochschule of Munich where he received a diploma in electrical engineering in 1929. He continued at the University of Munich and obtained a Dr. Ing. degree in the field of current flow by convection and diffusion. He continued his academic career at the University of Graz followed by two years at the ETH Zurich from 1948 until 1950.
Go to Profile#11237
Georgy Mihailovich Kondratiev
1887 - 1958 (71 years)
Georgy Mihailovich Kondratiev Russian physicist, specialist in thermal measurements. Biography Graduated from Saint Petersburg State University in 1912 and from Saint Petersburg State Polytechnic University in 1923. In 1917-1918 attended High Course of Pedagogic.
Go to Profile#11238
Hendrik van Gent
1900 - 1947 (47 years)
Hendrik van Gent was a Dutch astronomer. He moved to South Africa in 1928 in order to observe the southern sky at the Leiden Southern Station and the Union Observatory in Johannesburg. He obtained his PhD from Leiden University in 1931. He studied variable stars and also discovered three comets, namely C/1941 K1, C/1944 K2 and C/1943 W1. The Minor Planet Center credits him with the discovery of 39 numbered minor planets during 1929–1935.
Go to Profile#11239
Carl Zeiss
1816 - 1888 (72 years)
Carl Zeiss was a German scientific instrument maker, optician and businessman. In 1846 he founded his workshop, which is still in business as Carl Zeiss AG. Zeiss gathered a group of gifted practical and theoretical opticians and glass makers to reshape most aspects of optical instrument production. His collaboration with Ernst Abbe revolutionized optical theory and practical design of microscopes. Their quest to extend these advances brought Otto Schott into the enterprises to revolutionize optical glass manufacture. The firm of Carl Zeiss grew to one of the largest and most respected optica...
Go to Profile#11240
Eli Whitney Blake Jr.
1836 - 1895 (59 years)
Eli Whitney Blake Jr. was an American scientist. His father and namesake was an inventor and partner of the Blake Brothers manufacturing firm. The origin of the name Eli Whitney comes from Blake senior's uncle Eli Whitney, who changed the face of the cotton industry with the invention of the cotton gin.
Go to Profile#11241
Valentinus Otho
1550 - 1605 (55 years)
Valentinus Otho was a German mathematician and astronomer. Life In 1573 he came to Wittenberg, proposing to Johannes Praetorius an approximation of pi . In 1575 he supported Georg Joachim Rheticus in his trigonometric tables. The next year they went to Kaschau in Hungary where Rheticus died. Thus, Otho inherited the De revolutionibus manuscript of Nicolaus Copernicus that Rheticus had published in 1543 in Nuremberg.
Go to Profile#11242
Anthony Shepherd
1721 - 1796 (75 years)
Anthony Shepherd was a British astronomer. He was the Plumian Professor at the University of Cambridge between 1760 and 1796. He published astronomical tables, and was a friend of Captain Cook, who named the Shepherd Islands after him.
Go to Profile#11243
Alexander David Peacock
1886 - 1976 (90 years)
Alexander David Peacock FRSE was a 20th-century British zoologist. Life He was born on 13 June 1886 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne the son of James Peacock, a grocer, and his wife, Jane Briggs. He was educated at Newcastle Royal Grammar School then studied Natural Science at Armstrong College in Newcastle, graduating BSc in 1904. Continuing as a postgraduate he gained an MSc and DSc at Durham University. As a postgraduate he taught both at Jarrow School and lectured in Zoology at Armstrong College.
Go to Profile#11244
James Gray
1876 - 1934 (58 years)
James Gordon Gray was a Scottish mathematician and physicist. Life Grey was born in Glasgow in 1876, the third of eight children of Annie Gordon and Andrew Gray. He was educated at Friars Grammar School, in Bangor, Caernarvonshire, Wales, where his father was employed by the university. He attended the University College of North Wales until 1899, when his father and family moved back to Glasgow.
Go to Profile#11245
John Farrar
1779 - 1853 (74 years)
John Farrar was an American scholar. He first coined the concept of hurricanes as “a moving vortex and not the rushing forward of a great body of the atmosphere”, after the Great September Gale of 1815. Farrar remained Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard University between 1807 and 1836. During this time, he introduced modern mathematics into the curriculum. He was also a regular contributor to the scientific journals.
Go to Profile#11246
Arthur Prowse
1907 - 1981 (74 years)
Lieutenant Colonel William Arthur Prowse was a British physicist and academic administrator. He was the founding Master of Van Mildert College, Durham. Prowse matriculated at Hatfield College, Durham and graduated with a degree in Physics from Durham University in 1927. He completed his doctorate at the same institution in 1931 – this time, per the conditions of the Pemberton Studentship, as a member of University College. Except for a brief period of secondment under Willis Jackson at Imperial College, London from 1947 to 1948, he spent his entire academic career in Durham. He served as Vic...
Go to Profile#11247
Harinath Dey
1941 - 1971 (30 years)
Harinath Dey was a former lecturer of biochemistry at the University of Dhaka who was shot dead by the Pakistan armed forces on the Loharpool bridge in Sutrapur, Dhaka on the night of 27 March 1971.
Go to Profile#11248
Wanda Leopold
1920 - 1977 (57 years)
Wanda Leopold was a Polish author, medical doctor, and social science activist known for her study of English writings beginning in West Africa, specifically Nigeria. A translator as well as a literary critic, she stressed the artistic qualities of creative writing. She was a scholar of Polish culture, literature, and language. Her book, "O literaturze Czarnej Afryki," was the first Polish introduction to African literature that was written in both English, and French. Some of her first critical essays were on Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, and Wole Soyinka.
Go to Profile#11249
Judson B. Coit
1849 - 1921 (72 years)
Judson Boardman Coit was an American mathematician and astronomer who published in numerous journals, including The Astrophysical Journal and the of the British Astronomical Association. The largest part of his professional career was spent as a professor at Boston University, where he established the Department of Astronomy and developed a teaching and research observatory. The teaching observatory at Boston University is named in his memory.
Go to Profile#11250
Elihu Thomson
1853 - 1937 (84 years)
Elihu Thomson was an English-born American engineer and inventor who was instrumental in the founding of major electrical companies in the United States, the United Kingdom and France. Early life He was born in Manchester, England, on March 29, 1853, but his family moved to Philadelphia in the United States in 1858. Thomson attended Central High School in Philadelphia and graduated in 1870. Thomson took a teaching position at Central, and in 1876, at the age of twenty-three, held the chair of Chemistry. In 1880, he left Central to pursue research in the emerging field of electrical engineerin...
Go to Profile