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,
#11301
Martin Brendel
1862 - 1939 (77 years)
Otto Rudolf Martin Brendel was a German astronomer. Born in Berlin-Niederschönhausen, he obtained the first successful photograph of the aurora borealis at Bossekop in northern Norway in 1892. He died in Freiburg.
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John of Saxony
1323 - 1355 (32 years)
John of Saxony was a medieval astronomer. Although his exact birthplace is unknown it is believed he was born in Germany, most likely Magdeburg. His scholarly work is believed to date from the end of the 13th century into the mid 14th century. He spent most of his active career, from about 1327 to 1355, at the University of Paris.
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Grace Langford
1871 - Present (155 years)
Grace Langford was an American physicist known for her work in physics education and research on the infrared reflection of phosphates. She taught at Wellesley College and at Barnard College. Early life and education Langford was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the seventh and youngest child of John Langford and Celestina Eldridge Langford. She graduated from Plymouth High School in 1889. She attended Wellesley College, where she was an instructor and undergraduate student simultaneously, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she earned her B.S. in physics in 1900, as the only woman in her graduating class.
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Guido Horn d'Arturo
1879 - 1967 (88 years)
Guido Horn d'Arturo was an Italian astronomer born in Trieste, then part of the Austrian Empire. He obtained Italian citizenship after serving as a volunteer in the Italian army during the First World War. To avoid being persecuted as an irredentist by the Austrian authorities, he officially added to his surname Horn that of "d'Arturo" which he used in the war.
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Arthur Rucker
1845 - 1915 (70 years)
Sir Arthur William Rucker was a British physicist. Education and career Rucker gained his BA at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1871, and was a Fellow there from 1871 to 1876. He was Professor of Physics, and the first Cavendish Professor at Yorkshire College, Leeds from 1874 to 1885. Rucker was then a Professor of Physics at the Royal College of Science from 1886 to 1901, when he left to become Principal of the University of London.
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Christian of Prachatice
1368 - 1439 (71 years)
Christian of Prachatice was a medieval Bohemian astronomer, mathematician and former Catholic priest who converted to the Hussite movement. He was the author of several books about medicine and herbs, and contributed to the field of astronomy with many papers and data recordings.
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William Christie
1845 - 1922 (77 years)
Sir William Henry Mahoney Christie was a British astronomer. He was born in Woolwich, London, the son of Samuel Hunter Christie and educated at King's College School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was fourth wrangler in 1868 and was elected a fellow of Trinity in 1869.
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Ramtanu Lahiri
1813 - 1898 (85 years)
Ramtanu Lahiri was a Young Bengal leader, a teacher and a social reformer. Peary Chand Mitra wrote about him, "There are few persons in whom the milk of kindness flows so abundantly. He was never wanting in appreciation of what was right, and in his sympathy with the advanced principles." Sivanath Sastri's Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangasamaj, published in 1903, was not only his biography but also an overview of Bengali society of the era, "a remarkable social document on the period of the Bengal Renaissance."
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Maximilien Toepler
1870 - 1960 (90 years)
Maximilien August Topler was a German physicist known for his work on electrostatics, sparks and Schlieren photography. His father was the physicist August Toepler. Toepler's law states that the resistance of an electric arc at any time is inversely proportional to the charge which has flowed through the arc:where I is the current in the arc discharge at time t, and D.
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Frank T. M. White
1909 - 1971 (62 years)
Frank Thomas Matthews White was an Australian mining and metallurgical engineer and mineral science educator. His career included appointments in Australia, Fiji, Malaya, and Canada. An examination of White's career reveals steady progression from an initial technical focus on the goldfields of Western Australia, to the challenge of new mining enterprises in Fiji, to post-war rehabilitation of tin mining in Malaya, ultimately to encompass a broad appreciation of the complexities of the minerals industry as a whole, its human factors, and societal context. He applied these insights in developi...
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Auguste Charlois
1864 - 1910 (46 years)
Auguste Honoré Charlois was a French astronomer who discovered 99 asteroids while working at the Nice Observatory in southeastern France. Asteroid Discovery His first discovery was the asteroid 267 Tirza in 1887. He photographed 433 Eros on the very night of its discovery by Gustav Witt, but was not able to act quickly enough before Witt announced his find.
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Johannes von Gmunden
1380 - 1442 (62 years)
Johannes von Gmünd is also the name of a 14th-century architect, see Basel Münster. Johannes von Gmunden was a German/Austrian astronomer, mathematician, humanist and early instrument maker. Biography Johannes von Gmunden received the degree of a Master of Arts at the University of Vienna in 1406. From 1408, he was a lecturer at Vienna, lecturing on Aristotle's Physics and Meteora , Peter of Spain and Algorismus de minutiis . He fell seriously ill in 1412.
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Albert Lancaster
1849 - 1909 (60 years)
Albert Benoît Marie Lancaster was a Belgian astronomer and meteorologist. He was a contemporary of and assistant to Jean-Charles Houzeau. Life He was born on 24 May 1849 in Mons and died on 4 February 1908 in Uccle.
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Alan Tower Waterman
1892 - 1967 (75 years)
Alan Tower Waterman was an American physicist. Biography Born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, he grew up in Northampton, Massachusetts. His father was a professor of physics at Smith College. Alan also became a physicist, doing his undergraduate and doctoral work at Princeton University from which he obtained his Ph.D. in 1916.
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Sophus Henrichsen
1845 - 1928 (83 years)
Sophus Septimus Henrichsen was a Norwegian physicist and scientist. He worked at the University of Kristiania . He wrote several textbooks of high school physics and organized the journal Nyt Tidsskrift for Fysik og Kemi in 1896.
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Harriet Williams Bigelow
1870 - 1934 (64 years)
Harriet Williams Bigelow was an American instructor and astronomer. Born in Fayetteville, New York, Harriet was the daughter of pastor Dana Williams Bigelow and Katherine Huntington. Her family moved to Pitcher, New York, then in 1878 to Utica, New York where her father became pastor at the Memorial Presbyterian Church. Harriet attended the local public schools, graduating from Utica Free Academy in 1889. She matriculated to Smith College, a women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts, where she studied astronomy.
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Friedrich Tietjen
1832 - 1895 (63 years)
Friedrich Tietjen was a German astronomer. He was director of the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut from 1874 until his death in 1895. The Minor Planet Center credits him with the discovery of one minor planet, the 120-kilometer sized asteroid 86 Semele.
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Oskar Lenz
1848 - 1925 (77 years)
Oskar Lenz was a German-Austrian geologist and mineralogist born in Leipzig. Life In 1870, he earned his doctorate in mineralogy and geology at the University of Leipzig. In 1872, he joined as a volunteer at the Imperial Geological Reichsanstalt in Vienna. Later that same year he obtained Austrian citizenship.
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Jean Jacques Raimond Jr.
1903 - 1961 (58 years)
Jean Jacques Raimond Jr. was a Dutch astronomer. Raimond was the son of Jean Jacques Raimond Sr., furniture maker in The Hague, and Tetje van der Werf. He studied astronomy at the universities of Leiden and Groningen. He obtained his PhD at the latter as a student of Jacobus Kapteyn, defending the dissertation The Coefficient of Differential Galactic Absorption.
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Abu al-Wafa' al-Buzjani
940 - 998 (58 years)
Abū al-Wafāʾ Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Ismāʿīl ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Būzjānī or Abū al-Wafā Būzhjānī was a Persian mathematician and astronomer who worked in Baghdad. He made important innovations in spherical trigonometry, and his work on arithmetic for businessmen contains the first instance of using negative numbers in a medieval Islamic text.
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Scipione Chiaramonti
1565 - 1652 (87 years)
Scipione Chiaramonti was an Italian philosopher and noted opponent of Galileo. Early life The Chiaramonti family was noble and wealthy, claiming to have originated in Clermont and moved to Italy in the fourteenth century. Pope Pius VII was from the same family. The son of a doctor, Scipione studied at the University of Ferrara, lodging first at the house of Cardinal Alessandro d’Este and later associating with the circle of Cardinal Curzio Sangiorgi. In 1588 he married Virginia Abbati, with whom he was to father twelve children . In 1592 he met Galileo, passing through Cesena on his way to P...
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Joseph Liesganig
1719 - 1799 (80 years)
Joseph Xaver Liesganig was a Jesuit priest and geodesist who was a professor of mathematics at the University of Vienna. He taught mathematics from 1742 at the University of Graz. He was involved in measuring the extent of Austria, establishing the longitude of Vienna and in early trigonometrical mapping of the region. He was the last of the Jesuit astronomers at the Vienna observatory.
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Wilson Marcy Powell
1903 - 1974 (71 years)
Wilson Marcy Powell was an American physicist and a member of the physics department at the University of California, Berkeley. Biography The son of Harvard lawyer Wilson Marcy Powell Sr. and Elsie Knapp, Wilson was born in Litchfield, Connecticut. He matriculated into Harvard College in 1922 and graduated in 1926. During his undergraduate years, Powell went on two solar eclipse expeditions sponsored by Swarthmore College. He participated in his final eclipse expedition to the Arctic Circle nearly 50 years later.
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Andreas Aurifaber
1514 - 1559 (45 years)
Andreas Aurifaber was a German physician of some repute, but through his influence with Albert of Brandenburg, last grand-master of the Teutonic Knights, and first Protestant duke of Prussia, became an outstanding figure in the controversy associated with Andreas Osiander whose daughter he had married.
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Helmuth Kulenkampff
1895 - 1971 (76 years)
Helmuth Kulenkampff was a physicist notable for his studies of X-rays. He obtained his PhD in 1922 under Ernst Wagner at the University of Munich with a thesis entitled: Über das Kontinuierliche Röntgenspektrum .
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Émile Merlin
1875 - 1938 (63 years)
Émile Alphonse Louis Merlin was a Belgian mathematician and astronomer. Merlin attended the secondary school Athénée royal de Bruxelles. He then studied at the University of Liège and the University of Ghent, where in 1900 he received his doctorate in mathematics. This was followed by a stay abroad between 1901 and 1903 in Paris at the Sorbonne, at the Collège de France and in Göttingen. In 1904 he became an assistant at the observatory in Uccle. In 1909 he was promoted to astronomer adjoint. From 1912 he was a lecturer on astronomy and geodesy at the University of Ghent and in 1919 he became...
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François Peeters
François M. Peeters is a Belgian physicist. Peeters obtained his doctorate at the University of Antwerp and completed postdoctoral research at Bell Laboratories and Bellcore. He subsequently returned to Belgium and joined the Antwerp faculty. In 2005, Peeters was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society, which recognized him "[f]or his sustained, important contributions to theoretical solid state physics, in particular to the areas of mesoscopic superconductivity and nanostructured semiconductors." Peeters' election as a member of Academia Europaea took place in 2010. In 2020, Peeters...
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Robert Blair
1748 - 1828 (80 years)
Robert Blair FRSE was a Scottish astronomer. Life He was born in Garvald, East Lothian, the son of Rev Archibald Blair, the local minister. In 1773 he was apprenticed to Dr Francis Balfour, a naval surgeon, and served in the Royal Navy in the West Indies. On return to Scotland he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and qualified as a doctor in 1785.
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Václav Láska
1862 - 1943 (81 years)
Václav Láska was a Czech astronomer, geophysicist, and mathematician. He was based mainly at Charles University, and was the founding director of the State Institute of Geophysics, which later became the Institute of Geophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
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Horace M. Trent
1907 - 1964 (57 years)
Horace Maynard Trent was an American physicist best known for being part of the team that found that the crack of a bullwhip was actually a sonic boom. He is also the author of the currently accepted force-current analogy in physics known as the Trent analogy.
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Michael Neander
1529 - 1581 (52 years)
Michael Neander was a German teacher, mathematician, medical academic, and astronomer. He was born in Joachimsthal, Bohemia, and was educated at the University of Wittenberg, receiving his B.A. in 1549 and M.A. in 1550.
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Peter Kristian Prytz
1851 - 1929 (78 years)
Peter Kristian Prytz was a Danish physicist. He was a professor at the Technical University of Denmark from 1894 to 1921. Early life and education Prytz was born on 26 February 1851 in Årup at Torslev, the son of parish priest Peter Christian Prytz and Anna Eline Garben . He earned a degree in physics from the University of Copenhagen in 1875 and spent the next ten years teaching at schools in Copenhagen.
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Konstanty Zakrzewski
1876 - 1948 (72 years)
Konstanty Zakrzewski was a Polish physicist. He was a professor of the Jagiellonian University and professor of the Lviv University , member of the Polish Academy of Learning . Zakrzewski was a researcher of electron theory of metals, optics, and dielectric properties of substances. He was an initiator of cosmic ray research in Poland .
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Nikolay Buchholtz
1881 - 1943 (62 years)
Nikolay Nikolayevich Buchholtz was a Soviet and Russian scientist and a specialist in the field of analytical mechanics. Major-General of the Engineering and Aviation Service, Professor, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. Laureate of Stalin Prize.
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William of Saint-Cloud
1300 - 1301 (1 years)
William of Saint-Cloud is a French astronomer in the late thirteenth century. He is known for his Almanac prepared around 1292, dedicated to Marie of Brabant, and translated for Joan of Navarre. This almanac, one of the rare witness of astronomical observations at the end of the High Middle Ages, contains ephemeris of the sun, moon and planets and advocates also the use of the camera obscura to observe solar eclipses.
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Franz Richarz
1860 - 1920 (60 years)
Franz Richarz was a German physicist. His father, also named Franz Richarz , was a noted psychiatrist. He studied mathematics and physics at the universities of Berlin and Bonn, receiving his doctorate in 1884 with the dissertation Bildung von Ozon, Wasserstoffsuperoxyd und Ueberschwefelsäure bei der Electrolyse verdünnter Schwefelsäure . In 1888 he obtained his habilitation and worked as a lecturer of physics at the University of Bonn. In 1895 he succeeded Anton Oberbeck as professor of physics at the University of Greifswald, where he also served as director of the Physics Institute. In 1901 he relocated as a professor to the University of Marburg.
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Paolo Straneo
1874 - 1968 (94 years)
Paolo Pietro Straneo was an Italian mathematical physicist. Biography Straneo studied at ETH Zurich, where he met and was a friend of Einstein. In 1897 he received his Ph.D. in natural philosophy of the University of Zurich. From 1899 he was a libero docente in mathematical physics and for some years he was a docente incaricato in mathematical physics at the University of Turin. After a period of working as a libero professionista , in 1924 he again became a libero docente and was put in charge of mathematical physics at the University of Genoa. There, from 1925 he was a professor ordinari...
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Louis Winslow Austin
1867 - 1932 (65 years)
Louis Winslow Austin was an American physicist known for his research on long-range radio transmissions. Austin was born in Orwell, Vermont, and educated at Middlebury College and the University of Strasbourg , from which he received a Ph.D. in 1893. From 1893-1901, he taught physics as an instructor and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, then returned to Germany for two years at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin where he performed research on hot gases.
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Śrīpati
1019 - 1066 (47 years)
Śrīpati , also transliterated as Shri-pati, was an Indian astronomer, astrologer and mathematician. His major works include Dhīkotida-karana , a work of twenty verses on solar and lunar eclipses; Dhruva-mānasa , a work of 105 verses on calculating planetary longitudes, eclipses and planetary transits; Siddhānta-śekhara a major work on astronomy in 19 chapters; and Gaṇita-tilaka, an incomplete arithmetical treatise in 125 verses based on a work by Shridhara.
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Johannes Stadius
1527 - 1579 (52 years)
Johannes Stadius or Estadius , was a Flemish astronomer, astrologer, and mathematician. He was one of the important late 16th-century makers of ephemerides, which gave the positions of astronomical objects in the sky at a given time or times.
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Njål Hole
1914 - 1988 (74 years)
Njål Hole MBE was a Norwegian chemical engineer and nuclear physicist. His is research was primarily in the field of nuclear physics. Biography He was born in Hjørundfjord. He graduated from the Norwegian Institute of Technology in 1938. From 1938 he was an assistant at Norwegian Institute of Technology.
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Joseph Lepaute Dagelet
1751 - 1788 (37 years)
Joseph Lepaute Dagelet was a French astronomer, clockmaker and mathematician who accompanied Lapérouse on his scientific circumnavigation, in the course of which he perished in the final shipwreck of the expedition. Dagelet's astronomical sightings gave precision to the maps posthumously published in the official Atlas du Voyage de la Perouse .
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Abraham bar Hiyya
1070 - 1136 (66 years)
Abraham bar Ḥiyya ha-Nasi , also known as Abraham Savasorda, Abraham Albargeloni, and Abraham Judaeus, was a Catalan Jewishish mathematician, astronomer and philosopher who resided in Barcelona. Bar Ḥiyya was active in translating the works of Islamic science into Latin, and was likely the earliest to introduce Arabic algebra into Christian Europe. He also wrote several original works on mathematics, astronomy, Jewish philosophy, chronology, and land surveying. His most influential work is his Ḥibbur ha-Meshiḥah ve-ha-Tishboret, translated in 1145 into Latin as Liber embadorum. A Hebrew treati...
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Rodolphe Radau
1835 - 1911 (76 years)
Jean Charles Rodolphe Radau was an astronomer and mathematician who worked in Paris at the Revue des deux Mondes for most of his life. He was the co-founder of the Bulletin Astronomique. Radau was born in Angerburg, Province of Prussia , and after studying in Königsberg and working on the Three-body problem, he moved to Paris to collaborate with other scientists. In 1871 he was given the Ph.D. in honor of his work in mathematics.
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David Origanus
1558 - 1629 (71 years)
David Origanus or David Tost was a German astronomer and professor for Greek language and Mathematics at the Viadrina University in Frankfurt , where he had also studied. Tost was born in Glatz , Bohemia . During his scientific career he observed numerous comets and published about Ephemeris in 1599 and 1609. In contrast to Tycho Brahe, he was convinced that the Earth rotates. He died in Frankfurt , aged 71.
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Frank Allen
1874 - 1965 (91 years)
Frank Allen, was a Canadian academic and physicist, specializing in physiological optics. Biography Born in New Brunswick, Frank Allen received his bachelor's degree in 1895 from the University of New Brunswick with highest honours in physics and chemistry and then his M.A. there in 1897. In 1902 he received his PhD in physics from Cornell University with a thesis on physiological optics. In 1904 Allen accepted the founding chair of the physics department at the University of Manitoba, serving as the head of the physics department until his retirement in 1944. In his career he published abou...
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Francis Eugene Nipher
1847 - 1926 (79 years)
Francis Eugene Nipher was a United States physicist. Biography Francis Eugene Nipher was born in Port Byron, New York on December 10, 1847. He graduated in 1870 from Iowa State University, where he became assistant in physical science. In 1874, he was appointed professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis. He organized the second state weather service, that of Missouri, in 1877, and for ten years it was maintained without official support. From 1878 until 1883, he conducted a magnetic survey of Missouri, doing the work under private auspices, and publishing the annual reports in the Transactions of the St.
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Stephen Alexander
1806 - 1883 (77 years)
Stephen Alexander was a noted American astronomer and educator. Early years He was born in Schenectady, New York on September 1, 1806. He was the brother-in-law of Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian, and worked closely with him. His education was obtained at Union College, were graduated in 1824, and at Princeton Theological Seminary, were graduated in 1832.
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Jens Rud Nielsen
1894 - 1979 (85 years)
Jens Rud Nielsen was born in Copenhagen and was an esteemed physicist at the University of Oklahoma. He immigrated to the United States in 1922. He was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1931.
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Lev Gassovsky
1894 - 1989 (95 years)
Lev Nikolaevich Gassovsky was a Soviet professor , Candidate of Science , and Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences . He wrote The Eye and Effectiveness of Its Work and also worked on chapters in reference books for opto-mechanical engineers, several manuals on military optics and more than 90 scientific works.
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