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.
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List of the most influential people in Physics,
#11801
Giovanni Boccardi
1859 - 1936 (77 years)
Giovanni Boccardi was an Italian astronomer, mathematician, and priest. As a priest of the Congregazione della Missione, Boccardi was an astronomer in the observatories of Collurania , Catania and Turin . At Turin he served as the director of the observatory and as a docent of astronomy in the local university. He also supervised the creation of the new site Pino Torinese of the Turin observatory . In 1907 he founded the Rivista di astronomia e di scienze affini .
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Ernest Wilmot Guptill
1919 - 1976 (57 years)
Ernest Wilmot Guptill was a Canadian physicist. He spent his academic career at Dalhousie University, where he was department head for ten years. He was co-inventor of the slotted waveguide antenna.
Go to Profile#11803
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.
Go to Profile#11804
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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Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta
1920 - 1971 (51 years)
Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta was a Bengali educator and humanist of the former East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. He was one of the Bengali intellectuals killed by the Pakistan Army during the 1971 Dhaka University massacre on the night of 25 March 1971.
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Charles Morton
1626 - 1698 (72 years)
Charles Morton was an English nonconformist minister and founder of an early dissenting academy, later in life associated in New England with Harvard College. Morton was raised with strong Puritan influences in England and attended Oxford . As a result of the English Revolution, he was arrested and excommunicated for promoting progressive education , forcing his immigration to relative safety in Massachusetts Bay Colony , although he was soon arrested for sedition in Boston.
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Volkert Simon Maarten van der Willigen
1822 - 1878 (56 years)
Volkert Simon Maarten van der Willigen , sometimes referred to as Volcardus Simon Martinus van der Willigen, was a Dutch mathematician, physicist and professor. Life Volkert was son of the minister Johannes van der Willigen and his wife Gerarde Maria Elsabé Bodde . He was the nephew of the Dutch patriot and writer Adriaan van der Willigen.
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Otto Ernst Heinrich Klemperer
1899 - 1987 (88 years)
Otto Ernst Heinrich Klemperer was a physicist expert in electron optics. He was granted his doctorate by the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 1923. His thesis advisor was Hans Geiger. He continued to work with Geiger in the 1930s.
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Alexander Geddes
1885 - 1970 (85 years)
Alexander Ebenezer McLean Geddes OBE FRSE was a Scottish meteorologist and physicist. He was generally known as Sandy Geddes and nicknamed Siccer Sandy . Life He was born in Fordyce, Aberdeenshire on 8 February 1885 and educated at Fordyce Academy. He then attended the University of Aberdeen graduating with a MA in 1906. In 1908 he became an assistant lecturer at the university teaching natural philosophy . He received a doctorate in 1913.
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Qian Ji
1917 - 1983 (66 years)
Qian Ji was a Chinese physicist and aerospace engineer who was instrumental in the development of China's first satellite, the Dong Fang Hong I, and its first successful 3-in-1 satellite launch, the Shijian 2. In 1999, he was posthumously awarded the Two Bombs, One Satellite Meritorious Medal.
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Mark Walrod Harrington
1848 - 1926 (78 years)
Mark Walrod Harrington was an American scientist, the first civilian head of the United States Weather Bureau, and former president of the University of Washington. Considered a prominent scientist in the late 19th century, Harrington studied and published works in multiple disciplines, including botany, astronomy, meteorology, and geology, and knew a half-dozen languages. His academic achievements were overshadowed by his disappearance in 1899, when he left home one day and disappeared for many years. His wife and son located him in 1908 at a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey where he had been admitted as patient John Doe No.
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André Blondel
1863 - 1938 (75 years)
André-Eugène Blondel was a French engineer and physicist. He is the inventor of the electromechanical oscillograph and a system of photometric units of measurement. Life Blondel was born in Chaumont, Haute-Marne, France. His father was a magistrate from an old family in the town of Dijon. He was the best student from the town in his year. He went on to attend the École nationale des ponts et chaussées and graduated first in his class in 1888. He was employed as an engineer by the Lighthouses and Beacons Service until he retired in 1927 as its general first class inspector. He became a profes...
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Alexander Wilson
1714 - 1786 (72 years)
Alexander Wilson was a Scottish surgeon, type-founder, astronomer, mathematician and meteorologist. He was the first scientist to use kites in meteorological investigations. He was the first Regius Professor of Practical Astronomy at the University of Glasgow.
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John Alan Chalmers
1904 - 1967 (63 years)
Professor John Alan Chalmers was a British atmospheric physicist based at Durham University. He is well known for his contributions to atmospheric electricity, particularly an internationally respected textbook, and, outside his scientific work, for his involvement with Scouting. This led to him being widely known to his colleagues by the nickname, "Skip", a commonly used term for the leader of a Scout troop.
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Carl Theodor Albrecht
1843 - 1915 (72 years)
Carl Theodor Albrecht was a German astronomer. He studied mathematics and natural sciences at the TU Dresden and the Universität Berlin. During his time in Dresden, he helped founding Polyhymnia, the fraternity that later became the German Student Corps Altsachsen. He specialized in geodesy, to which he devoted much of his career. He also worked on the problem of variation of latitude, building upon the work of Seth Carlo Chandler who discovered the variation, known as the Chandler wobble. In 1882, Carl Theodor Albrecht was elected as member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
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Harry Devonald Griffith
1898 - 1964 (66 years)
Harry Devonald Griffith FRSE was a British physicist and author. Life He was born in Clifton, Bristol, to John Devonald Griffith and his wife Alice. He was christened on 3 April 1898. He was educated at Bristol Grammar School. He then studied at Cambridge University graduating MA.
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Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider
1891 - 1990 (99 years)
Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider was a German-Australian physicist and philosopher. She is best known for her collaboration and correspondence with physicists Albert Einstein, Max von Laue, and Max Planck. Rosenthal-Schneider earned a PhD in philosophy in 1920 at the University of Berlin, where she first met Albert Einstein. After leaving Nazi Germany and emigrating to Australia in 1938, she became a tutor in the German department at the University of Sydney in 1945 and taught history and philosophy of science. In the 1940s and 1950s, she exchanged a series of letters with Albert Einstein about philo...
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Vladimir Wiese
1886 - 1954 (68 years)
Vladimir Yulyevich Wiese was a Russian scientist of German descent who devoted his life to the study of the Arctic ice pack. His name is associated with the Scientific Prediction of Ice Conditions theory. Wiese was a member of the Soviet Arctic Institute and an authority on polar oceanography. He was also the founder of the Geographico-hydrological School of Oceanography.
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Jan Gadomski
1889 - 1966 (77 years)
Jan Gadomski was a Polish astronomer. At the Jagiellonian University Observatory he made systematic observations of eclipsing binary stars. The crater Gadomski on the Moon is named after him. External links Gadomski, Jan .
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Alfred Gibbs Bourne
1859 - 1940 (81 years)
Sir Alfred Gibbs Bourne DSc was an English zoologist, botanist and educator who worked in India. Life and work Bourne was the son of Rev. Alfred Bourne, secretary of the British Foreign School Society, and he joined the University College School after a liberal home education. Along with his contemporary Sydney J. Hickson, he was fascinated by the lectures of Ray Lankester. He later joined the University College in 1876 and attended the Royal School of Mines. In 1886, he went to Madras to join the Presidency College as Professor of Biology. He held this position until 1898 although he also ...
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Julius Erasmus Hilgard
1825 - 1891 (66 years)
Julius Erasmus Hilgard was a Bavarian-American engineer. Biography Julius Erasmus Hilgard was born at Zweibrücken, Rhineland-Palatinate, Kingdom of Bavaria on January 7, 1825. His father, Theodore Erasmus Hilgard, was for many years Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals, but on account of his liberal opinions was so dissatisfied with conditions in his native country that in 1835 he emigrated to America. The journey from his native place to Havre was made in wagons. After a voyage of 62 days, the family landed at New Orleans at Christmas, and journeyed up the Mississippi to St. Louis, and thence to a farm at Belleville, Illinois.
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Siegfried Czapski
1861 - 1907 (46 years)
Siegfried Czapski was a German physicist and optician. Childhood, school and university in Breslau Czapski was the son of Simon Czapski and his wife Rosalie Goldenring on the Obra estate near Koschmin in the Province of Posen. His family was Jewish, and he was related to the physician Albert Neisser. In 1870 Czapski's father suffered a serious accident which left him unable to work. The family sold their estate and moved to Breslau where, in 1872, eleven-year-old Czapski began attending school at the Maria Magdalenen Gymnasium. In 1879 he completed his university entrance examination and...
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Nicholas Kratzer
1487 - 1550 (63 years)
Nicholas Kratzer , also known as Nicolaus Kratzer and Nicholas Crutcher, was a German mathematician, astronomer, and horologist. Much of Kratzer's professional life was spent in England, where he was appointed as astronomer to King Henry VIII.
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Jacopo Dondi dell'Orologio
1293 - 1359 (66 years)
Jacopo Dondi dell'Orologio , also known as Jacopo de' Dondi, was a doctor, astronomer and clock-maker active in Padua, Italy. He is remembered today as a pioneer in the art of clock design and construction. He was the father of Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio. Jacopo Dondi wrote on a number of subjects, including surgery, pharmacology, astrology and natural science.
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Herbert Rollo Morgan
1875 - 1957 (82 years)
Herbert Rollo Morgan was an American astronomer. His major lifetime work was on the production of the Catalog of 5,268 Standard Stars Based on the Normal System N30 published in 1952. Morgan was born near Medford, Minnesota to Henry and Olive Sabre Smith Morgan. He became asthmatic an early age and the family moved to Tennessee where he studied. He obtained an AB from the University of Virginia, followed by a PhD in 1901. He received a Vanderbilt Fellowship at the Leander McCormick Observatory. He then worked at the US Naval Observatory as a computer and moved to Pritchett College in 1905 as a professor of mathematics.
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Richard Henderson
1734 - 1785 (51 years)
Richard Henderson was an American jurist, land speculator and politician who was best known for attempting to create the Transylvania Colony in frontier Kentucky. Henderson County and its seat Henderson, Kentucky are named for him. He also sold land to an early settlement that went on to become Nashville, Tennessee.
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Thomas Jackson
1773 - Present (253 years)
Thomas Jackson FRSE LLD was a Scottish physicist operating in the early 19th century. Life He was born on 16 December 1773 the eldest son of Thomas Jackson a farmer at Waterhead Farm, Carsphairn in Dumfries and Galloway in south-west Scotland.
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D. K. C. MacDonald
1920 - 1963 (43 years)
Dr David Keith Chalmers MacDonald FRS FRSE FRSC was a 20th-century Scottish-born metal physicist, cryogenecist and scientific author. He is considered as one of the founding fathers of modern cryogenics.
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James Renwick
1790 - 1863 (73 years)
James Renwick , was an English-American scientist and engineer. Early life Renwick was born in Liverpool, England, on 30 May 1790. He was the son of Jane Jeffrey Renwick and William Renwick . His paternal grandfather was James Renwick .
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Georg Bredig
1868 - 1944 (76 years)
Georg Bredig was a German physical chemist. Bredig was a faculty member at the University of Leipzig and professor of chemistry at Heidelberg ; Technische Hochschule, Zurich ; and Technische Hochschule, Karlsruhe .
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Kaliprasanna Vidyaratna
1849 - 1924 (75 years)
Kaliprasanna Vidyaratna was an Indian scholar of Sanskrit, academician and author. He was the principal of the Sanskrit College between 1908 and 1910. Vidyarayna played an important role in the revival of Sanskrit language.
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Bertrand Meigh Peek
1891 - 1965 (74 years)
Bertrand Meigh Peek M.A. FRAS was a British astronomer. Peek used an observatory at Solihull, Birmingham, England, from 1923 until 1947 to make a series of observations The observatory was dismantled in 1947. Among the targets of his observations was the planet Jupiter, and he served as British Astronomical Association Mars Section director Saturn Section director , and Jupiter Section director . He served as president of the BAA from 1938 until 1940.
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