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,
#11751
Georgii Frederiks
1889 - 1938 (49 years)
Georgii Nikolaevich Frederiks was a Russian and Soviet geologist who specialized in paleontology, tectonics and stratigraphy. He described many fossil taxa before becoming a victim of the Great Terror.
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Felix Frankl
1905 - 1961 (56 years)
Felix Issidorowitsch Frankl was an Austrian mathematician, who went to live in the Soviet Union where he had an academic career as a university professor. He studied topology at the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Vienna under Hans Hahn, gaining his doctorate in 1927.
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Zhao Jiuzhang
1907 - 1968 (61 years)
Zhao Jiuzhang , also known as Jeou Jang Jaw, was a Chinese meteorologist and physicist. He was a pioneer of Chinese space technology and is considered as a founding father of China's satellite program.
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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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Jean-Louis-Alexandre Herrenschneider
1760 - 1843 (83 years)
Jean-Louis-Alexandre Herrenschneider was a philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, physicist, meteorologist and lawyer. Early life and family He was born in Gaugrehweiler in the Rhineland Palatinate to Marguerite Salomé Walter and Jean Herrenschneider. His father was a grammar-school principal, then a protestant court pastor and ecclesiastical inspector for Carl Magnus von Rheingrafenstein, the last count of the Gaugrehweiler line. In 1773, in a murder attempt on his father, his ten-year-old sister was shot to death as the family sat to dinner; his father was badly injured; his beloved siste...
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Gabriel Gabrielsen Holtsmark
1867 - 1954 (87 years)
Gabriel Gabrielsen Holtsmark was a Norwegian educator, physicist and actuary. Personal life He was born in Asker as a son of farmer and mayor Bent Holtsmark and his wife Anne Elisabeth Gabrielsen. He was a brother of Bernt, Torger and Wilhelm Holtsmark. Both Bernt and Torger were members of the Parliament of Norway.
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George Francis Hardy
1855 - 1914 (59 years)
Sir George Francis Hardy was a British actuary, Egyptologist and amateur astronomer. He became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1877 and was President of the Institute of Actuaries from 1908 to 1910.
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Yvon Villarceau
1813 - 1883 (70 years)
Antoine-Joseph Yvon Villarceau was a French astronomer, mathematician, and engineer. He constructed an equatorial meridian-instrument and an isochronometric regulator for the Paris Observatory. He wrote Mécanique Céleste. Expose des Méthodes de Wronski et Composantes des Forces Perturbatrices suivant les Axes Mobiles and Sur l'établissement des arches de pont, envisagé au point de vue de la plus grande stabilité .
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Johannes de Muris
1300 - 1350 (50 years)
Johannes de Muris , or John of Murs, was a French mathematician, astronomer, and music theorist best known for treatises on the ars nova musical style, titled Ars nove musice. Life and career For a medieval person primarily known through his scholarly writing, it is highly unusual that Johannes de Muris’ life can be traced enough to form a decently consistent biography. Born in Normandy, he is believed to have been related to Julian des Murs who was secretary to Charles V of France. The suggested birth year for Muris is based on a murder of a cleric on September 7, 1310, which Muris was allegedly a part of.
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Johann Heinrich von Heucher
1677 - 1746 (69 years)
Johann Heinrich von Heucher was a German physician and botanist. Biography Born in Vienna, his family moved to Wittenberg when he was twelve. He studied philosophy first, then medicine at the Universities of Wittenberg, Leipzig and Jena. Doctor of Medicine in 1700, he began to practice the medical profession; for a time he also taught philosophy at the University of Wittenberg. From 1709 he was professor of medicine in the same university .
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Michiel Coignet
1549 - 1623 (74 years)
Michiel Coignet was a Flemish polymath who made significant contributions to various disciplines including cosmography, mathematics, navigation and cartography. He also built new and improved scientific instruments and made military engineering designs.
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Iacopo da San Cassiano
1395 - 1453 (58 years)
Iacopo da San Cassiano , also known as Iacobus Cremonensis, was an Italian humanist and mathematician. He translated from Greek to Latin the writings of Archimedes and parts of Diodorus' Bibliotheca historica.
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John Robinson Airey
1868 - 1937 (69 years)
John Robinson Airey was a British schoolteacher, mathematician and astrophysicist. Early life Airey was the eldest child of William Airey, a stone mason, and Elizabeth Airey, who were both born in Preston under Scar, North Yorkshire. He was the oldest from four siblings, the other three being Elizabeth Ann , Edwin , and Maud . The 1871 census showed the family was living at Hunslet, Leeds; by 1881 they had moved to 28 Grosvenor Street, West Leeds.
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Christian August Hausen
1693 - 1743 (50 years)
Christian August Hausen was a German mathematician who is known for his research on electricity. Biography Hausen studied mathematics at the University of Wittenberg and received his master's degree in 1712. He became an extraordinary professor of mathematics at the University of Leipzig at the age of 21 and later became an ordinary professor.
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Adelbert Ames Jr.
1880 - 1955 (75 years)
Adelbert Ames Jr. was an American scientist who made contributions to physics, physiology, ophthalmology, psychology, and philosophy. He pioneered the study of physiological optics at Dartmouth College, serving as a research professor, then as director of research at the Dartmouth Eye Institute. He conducted important research into aspects of binocular vision, including cyclophoria and aniseikonia. Ames is perhaps best known for constructing illusions of visual perception, most notably the Ames room and the Ames window. He was a leading light in the Transactionalist School of psychology and ...
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Asaph Hall Jr.
1859 - 1930 (71 years)
Asaph Hall IV , known as Asaph Hall Jr., was an American astronomer. He was the son of Asaph Hall, who discovered the moons of the planet Mars. One of his brothers was Percival Hall. Early life Hall was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1859. He was the son of the astronomer Asaph Hall and the mathematician Angeline Stickney Hall. He grew up in Washington, D.C., where his father worked at the United States Naval Observatory. He attended the Columbian College in the District of Columbia and then Harvard University, where he received his undergraduate degree in 1882.
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Leander Ditscheiner
1839 - 1886 (47 years)
Leander Ditscheiner was an Austrian physicist and mathematician, best known for his research on birefringence. Life and work Leander Ditscheiner was born 1839 in Vienna. He studied at the University of Vienna and later at the University of Heidelberg. He received his Ph.D. in 1857 and became lecturer at the Vienna University of Technology in 1866. In the later years he became assistant professor and full professor in 1883.
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B. S. Madhava Rao
1900 - 1987 (87 years)
Bangalore Srinivasarao Madhava Rao was an Indian mathematician and physicist who served as a professor of mathematics at Central College, Bangalore. He worked on mathematical physics and collaborated with Max Born.
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William Watson
1868 - 1919 (51 years)
William Watson CMG, FRS was a British physicist and Lieutenant-Colonel in World War I. After education at King's College School, Watson studied under Arthur William Rucker and C. V. Boys at the Royal College of Science and received his bachelor's degree in 1890. At the Royal College of Science, Watson was appointed demonstrator in physics in 1890, assistant professor in 1897, and professor in 1915. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1901.
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Karl von der Mühll
1841 - 1912 (71 years)
Karl von der Mühll was a Swiss mathematician and physicist. He was born into the Von der Mühll family, of the Basel patriciate , to Karl Georg and Emilie Merian, of the Merian family, a granddaughter of Peter Merian.
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Facundo Bueso Sanllehí
1905 - 1960 (55 years)
Facundo Bueso Sanllehí was a physicist, educator, science communicator and athlete. He was born on February 5, 1905, in Mexico City, Mexico. His family was forced to flee to Spain in 1915 because of the Mexican Revolution. Later in 1917 the family moved from Spain to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
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Francisco Antônio de Almeida Júnior
1851 - 1928 (77 years)
Francisco Antônio de Almeida Júnior was a Brazilian astronomer, engineer and university professor during the latter half of the 19th century. Almeida was part of a commission tasked with calculating the stellar parallax of the Sun during the 1874 transit of Venus. Almeida was an important figure in the development of cinematography and he was the first known Brazilian to visit Japan and publish a book about his sojourn in China and Japan.
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Johannes Engel
1463 - 1512 (49 years)
Johannes Engel , also known as Johannes Angelus, was a doctor, astronomer and astrologer from Aichach, near Augsburg, which at that time was a Free Imperial City within the Holy Roman Empire. He practiced medicine in Vienna, and published numerous almanachs, planetary tables and calendars. His Astrolabium planum was published by Erhard Ratdolt of Augsburg in 1488; a second edition was printed by Johann Emerich for Lucantonio Giunti in Venice in 1494.
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Gennady Potapenko
1894 - 1979 (85 years)
Gennady Vasilyevich Potapenko was an American radio astronomer of Russian origin. After the signal discoveries made by Karl Jansky in the mid-1930s, Potapenko , along with Caltech physicist Donald Folland and Palomar telescope designer Russell Porter, attempted further researches in 'star static' in 1936. They were able to confirm Jansky's results with a loop antenna, then a single wire, but were unable to secure adequate funding to continue.
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Alexander Moffat
Rev Prof Alexander Moffat FRSE LLD was a 20th-century Scottish minister and physicist. He was Professor of physics at the Christian College in Madras, India. Life He was born in Scotland around 1870. He studied both Divinity and Physics and graduated MA BSc.
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