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,
#11851
Rao Yutai
1891 - 1968 (77 years)
Rao Yutai was a Chinese physicist, one of the founders of modern physics in China. He was a founding member of Academia Sinica in 1948 and of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955. Early years Rao was born in Linchuan, Jiangxi, Qing Empire in December 1891. His father was a government officer in Qing Dynasty. He studied Chinese classical literature in childhood. In 1905, he went to study in a high school in Shanghai. Dr. Hu Shih taught his English.
Go to Profile#11852
Margaret Eliza Maltby
1860 - 1944 (84 years)
Margaret Eliza Maltby was an American physicist notable for her measurement of high electrolytic resistances and conductivity of very dilute solutions. Maltby was the first woman to earn a Bachelor of Science degree from MIT, where she had to enroll as a "special" student because the institution did not accept female students. Maltby was also the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Göttingen in 1895.
Go to Profile#11853
August Köhler
1866 - 1948 (82 years)
August Karl Johann Valentin Köhler was a German professor and early staff member of Carl Zeiss AG in Jena, Germany. He is best known for his development of the microscopy technique of Köhler illumination, an important principle in optimizing microscopic resolution power by evenly illuminating the field of view. This invention revolutionized light microscope design and is widely used in traditional as well as modern digital imaging techniques today.
Go to Profile#11854
Karl Scheel
1866 - 1936 (70 years)
Karl Friedrich Franz Christian Scheel was a German physicist. He was a senior executive officer and head of Department IIIb at the Reich Physical and Technical Institute. Additionally, he served as editor of the journal , the semi-monthly bibliographic section of the journal Physikalische Berichte, the Verhandlungen of the German Physical Society, and the society’s journal Zeitschrift für Physik. From 1926 to 1935, he was editor of the Handbuch der Physik. An endowment by Scheel and his wife Melida funds the annual awarding of the Karl Scheel Prize by the Physical Society in Berlin.
Go to Profile#11855
Paul Guldin
1577 - 1643 (66 years)
Paul Guldin was a Swiss Jesuit mathematician and astronomer. He discovered the Guldinus theorem to determine the surface and the volume of a solid of revolution. Guldin was noted for his association with the German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler. Guldin composed a critique of Cavalieri's method of Indivisibles.
Go to Profile#11856
Anders Planman
1724 - 1803 (79 years)
Anders Planman was a Finnish astronomer, professor of physics and mathematician. He was one of the first people to make systematical astronomical observations in Finland. Life Planman came from a Swedish-speaking Finnish family and his father was a lieutenant. He studied at the Royal Academy of Turku from 1744 to 1754 and then continued his studies at Uppsala University. In 1756 he received the grade of docent in astronomy. In 1763 he was appointed professor of physics in Turku and retained the position until 1801, when he quit due to poor health. For three years he was also head of the academy.
Go to Profile#11857
Martin Hoek
1834 - 1873 (39 years)
Martin Hoek was a Dutch astronomer and experimental physicist. Education and career He started studying medicine in 1852, but spent his last two years at the University of Leiden in mathematics and physics studying under Frederik Kaiser. In 1857 he graduated with the Ph.D. dissertation work The comet of the years 1556, 1264 and 975, and its alleged identity.
Go to Profile#11858
August Seydler
1849 - 1891 (42 years)
August Jan Bedřich Seydler , aka August Johann Friedrich Seydler, was a distinguished Czech astronomer, theoretical physicist, and professor at Charles University in Prague. He was the founder of the Astronomical Institute of the Czech University . He was born in Žamberk to a commissioner of customs Jan Nepomuk Seydler and his wife, Antonia Suková. He was a revered pedagogue and contributed significantly to astronomical studies, specifically, he elaborated sophisticated methods for the determination of orbits of minor planets. Appropriately, a minor planet is named after him.
Go to Profile#11859
Arthur König
1856 - 1901 (45 years)
Arthur Peter König devoted his short life to physiological optics. Born with congenital kyphosis he studied in Bonn and Heidelberg, moving to Berlin in the fall of 1879 where he studied under Hermann von Helmholtz, whose assistant he became in 1882. After obtaining a doctoral degree in 1882 he qualified for a professorial position in 1884. In 1890 he became director of the physical department of the Physiological Institute of the University of Berlin. In the same year he married Laura Köttgen with whom he had a son, Arthur, who became an astronomer. Circulatory problems caused by his kyphosis...
Go to Profile#11860
Margrete Heiberg Bose
1865 - 1952 (87 years)
Margrete Elisabeth Heiberg Bose was an Argentine physicist of Danish origin, the first woman to receive a chemistry degree in Denmark, possibly the first female physicist to work in Latin America and one of the first in the Americas.
Go to Profile#11861
J. G. Fox
1916 - 1980 (64 years)
John Gaston Fox was an American nuclear physicist. He earned his PhD from Princeton in 1941 and was soon recruited to work on the Manhattan Project. He later moved to Pittsburgh where he spent the rest of his career as a professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon University. He is best known for his work in the 1960s, applying the results of the extinction theorem to the then-current body of experimental evidence relating to both special relativity and emission theory.
Go to Profile#11862
DeLisle Stewart
1870 - 1941 (71 years)
DeLisle Stewart was an American astronomer. In 1896 he became a staff member of Harvard College Observatory, and from 1898 to 1901 he worked at that observatory's station at Arequipa, Peru, where he took the photographic plates that William Henry Pickering used to discover Saturn's moon Phoebe. He discovered many new nebulas.
Go to Profile#11863
Annie S. D. Maunder
1868 - 1947 (79 years)
Annie Scott Dill Maunder was an Irish-British astronomer, who recorded the first evidence of the movement of sunspot emergence from the poles toward the equator over the Sun's 11-year cycle. She was one of the leading astronomers of her time, but because of her gender, her contribution was often underplayed at the time. In 1916 she was elected to the Royal Astronomical Society, 21 years after being refused membership because of her gender.
Go to Profile#11864
Herman of Carinthia
1100 - 1160 (60 years)
Herman of Carinthia , also called Hermanus Dalmata or Sclavus Dalmata, Secundus, by his own words born in the "heart of Istria", was a philosopher, astronomer, astrologer, mathematician and translator of Arabic works into Latin.
Go to Profile#11865
Oskar Backlund
1846 - 1916 (70 years)
Johan Oskar Backlund was a Swedish-Russian astronomer. His name is sometimes given as Jöns Oskar Backlund, however even contemporary Swedish sources give "Johan". In Russia, where he spent his entire career, he is known as Oskar Andreevich Baklund . Russian sources sometimes give his dates of birth and death as 16 April 1846 and 16 August 1916, since Russia still used the Julian calendar at the time.
Go to Profile#11866
Herbert Arthur Stuart
1899 - 1974 (75 years)
Herbert Arthur Stuart was a German experimental physicist who made contributions in molecular physics research. During World War II, he was director of the experimental physics department at the Technische Hochschule Dresden. From 1955, he was the head of the high polymer physics laboratory at the University of Mainz.
Go to Profile#11867
Ludwig Holborn
1860 - 1926 (66 years)
Ludwig Friedrich Christian Holborn was a German physicist known for his work in the measurement of high temperature using optical pyrometry. Holborn was born in Weende, Göttingen, the son of Louis and Louise née Oelsen. He studied at the Realschule and then went to the University of Göttingen where he studied natural sciences. He then taught mathematics and physics while also serving as an assistant to Ernst Christian Julius Schering at the Göttingen geomagnetic observatory . He received a doctorate in 1887 for studies on the daily variation of magnetic declination. In 1890 he joined the Phys...
Go to Profile#11868
Floyd Firestone
1898 - 1986 (88 years)
Floyd Alburn Firestone was an acoustical physicist, who in 1940 while a professor at the University of Michigan invented the first practical ultrasonic testing method and apparatus. He was granted US Patent 2,280,226 for the invention in 1942. Manufactured by Sperry Corporation, the testing device was known variously as the Firestone-Sperry Reflectoscope, the Sperry Ultrasonic Reflectoscope, the Sperry Reflectoscope and sometimes also just as a Supersonic Reflectoscope, the name Firestone had originally coined for the instrument. The technology is not just used in quality control in factories to reject defective parts before shipment, but also revolutionized transportation safety.
Go to Profile#11869
Eustachio Manfredi
1674 - 1739 (65 years)
Eustachio Manfredi was an Italian mathematician, astronomer and poet. Biography Eustachio Manfredi was born in Bologna on 20 September 1674. He attended Jesuit school, then studied at the University of Bologna, graduating with a degree in law in 1691. At the same time he devoted himself to scientific studies in mathematics and astronomy, and to literature.
Go to Profile#11870
Gerald Rosselot
1908 - 1972 (64 years)
Gerald A. Rosselot was an American physicist and engineering executive at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Georgia Tech Research Institute and Bendix Corporation . He was an IEEE Fellow. Early life Rosselot was born January 11, 1908, in Westerville, Ohio. As a child, Rosselot traveled to France and England and became somewhat proficient in French. He attended and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Otterbein College in 1929, a Master of Arts from Ohio State University in 1930, and a Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 1936. In 1930, he married Gladys Anna Dickey, and would eventua...
Go to Profile#11871
Joseph Winlock
1826 - 1875 (49 years)
Joseph Winlock was an American astronomer and mathematician. Biography He was born in Shelby County, Kentucky, the grandson of General Joseph Winlock . After graduating from Shelby College in Kentucky in 1845, he was appointed professor of mathematics and astronomy at that institution.
Go to Profile#11872
Andrea Naccari
1841 - 1919 (78 years)
Andrea Naccari is notable for his study of the thermoelectric properties of metals, the photoelectric effect of metals immersed in liquids, and the electrical conductivity of gases and liquid dielectrics. He showed that the variation in the electrical resistance of distilled water was due largely to the solubility of the glass of the receptacle in which it was contained.
Go to Profile#11873
Elisabeth Bardwell
1831 - 1899 (68 years)
Elisabeth Miller Bardwell was an American astronomer whose main area of study was meteor showers. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1866, and continued on at the college as an instructor until her death. During those 33 years, she taught a mixture of algebra, trigonometry, physics, and astronomy for the first twenty years, and eventually only astronomy after 1886. She also oversaw the development of the observatory at the college which included invited visits to the Washington, Princeton, Lick, Berlin, and Potsdam observatories. In November, 1891 she was elected a member of the Astr...
Go to Profile#11874
Sergei Kostinsky
1867 - 1936 (69 years)
Sergei Konstantinovich Kostinsky was a Russian and Soviet astronomer who worked on observational and photographic astronomical measurement techniques at the Pulkovo Observatory. The so-called Kostinsky Effect involving the merging of closely occurring stars on a photographic plate is named after him as are an asteroid and a crater on the Moon.
Go to Profile#11875
Marie Henri Andoyer
1862 - 1929 (67 years)
Marie Henri Andoyer was a French astronomer and mathematician. Biography Andoyer was born in Paris, 1 October 1862 to Marie Antionette Doubliez and Louis Jules Andoyer. His father was bureau chief at the Banque de France. Andoyer studied at the Lycée d’Harcourt, before attending the École Normale Supérieure, graduating in 1884 with a degree in mathematical sciences. The same year he began working at Toulouse Observatory and was a lecturer at the Faculty of Sciences in Toulouse.
Go to Profile#11876
Johann Georg von Soldner
1776 - 1833 (57 years)
Johann Georg von Soldner was a German physicist, mathematician and astronomer, first in Berlin and later in 1808 in Munich. Life He was born in Feuchtwangen in Ansbach as the son of the farmer Johann Andreas Soldner. He received two years' teaching at the Feuchtwanger Latin School.
Go to Profile#11877
Herschel Clifford Parker
1867 - 1944 (77 years)
Herschel Clifford Parker was a United States physicist and mountaineer. Biography He graduated from the Columbia School of Mines in 1890, receiving a degree of Ph.B., and was connected with the faculty there in 1891–1911, filling the chair of physics for some time before his resignation. He wrote Systematic Treatise on Electrical Measurements , and made many contributions to scientific periodicals. He was a member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the American Physical Society, the New York Academy of Sciences, The Explorers Club, and the Appalachian Mountain Club. He was a ...
Go to Profile#11878
Phoebe Waterman Haas
1882 - 1967 (85 years)
Phoebe Waterman Haas was one of the earliest American women to be awarded a doctorate in astronomy . While her formal professional career ended upon her marriage, she contributed as a citizen scientist, volunteering for the American Association of Variable Star Observers . The Phoebe Waterman Haas Public Observatory was supported by donations from her family and is named in her honor.
Go to Profile#11879
Hans-joachim Prof. Dr. Güntherodt
#11880
Richard Barry Bernstein
1923 - 1990 (67 years)
Richard Barry Bernstein was an American physical chemist. He is primarily known for his research in chemical kinetics and reaction dynamics by molecular beam scattering and laser techniques. He is credited with having founded femtochemistry, which laid the groundwork for developments in femtobiology. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1970. Among his awards were the National Medal of Science and the Willard Gibbs Award, both in 1989.
Go to Profile#11881
Norman Robert Campbell
1880 - 1949 (69 years)
Norman Robert Campbell was an English physicist and philosopher of science. Early life Norman Robert Campbell was born in 1880. He was the son of William Middleton Campbell, Governor of the Bank of England, and his wife Edith Agneta Bevan. He was educated at Eton College and at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1902.
Go to Profile#11882
Alī ibn Ahmad al-Nasawī
1010 - 1075 (65 years)
#11883
Arnold Kohlschütter
1883 - 1969 (86 years)
Ernst Arnold Kohlschütter was a German astronomer and astrophysicist from Halle. In 1908 he was awarded his Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen under Karl Schwarzschild. In 1911 he began working at the Mount Wilson observatory, studying the spectra of the Sun and stars in collaboration with Walter Sidney Adams. In 1914 they discovered that the absolute luminosity of a star is proportional to the relative intensity of the lines in the spectrum. This allowed astronomers to determine the distance of stars, including main sequence and giants, using the spectroscope.
Go to Profile#11884
Jean-Alfred Gautier
1793 - 1881 (88 years)
Jean-Alfred Gautier or Alfred Gautier was a Swiss astronomer. Biography He was born in Cologny. He was the son of François Gautier, merchant, and of Marie de Tournes. He studied astronomy at the University of Geneva, then at the University of Paris. He was awarded a doctorate in celestial mechanics in Paris in 1817; his thesis was entitled Historical essay on the problem of three bodies. His academic advisors were Laplace, Lagrange and Legendre. In 1818 he worked in England with Herschel.
Go to Profile#11885
Giovanni Sante Gaspero Santini
1787 - 1877 (90 years)
Giovanni Sante Gaspero Santini was an Italian astronomer and mathematician. He received his first instruction from his parental uncle, the Abbot Giovanni Battista Santini. After finishing his philosophical studies in the school year 1801-2, at the seminary of Prato, he entered in 1802 the University of Pisa. He very soon abandoned the study of law in order to devote himself, under the direction of Prof. Paoli and Abbot Pacchiano, exclusively to mathematics and the natural sciences. It appears that at Pisa, Santini still wore the cassock, with the consequence that in bibliographical dictionaries he still figures under the title of abate.
Go to Profile#11886
Heinrich Kreutz
1854 - 1907 (53 years)
Heinrich Carl Friedrich Kreutz was a German astronomer, most notable for his studies of the orbits of several sungrazing comets, which revealed that they were all related objects, produced when a very large Sun-grazing comet fragmented several hundred years previously. The group is now known as the Kreutz Sungrazers, and has produced some of the brightest comets ever seen, including X/1106 C1 and Comet Ikeya–Seki. The source of the group may have been the Great Comet of 371 BC.
Go to Profile#11887
Euctemon
Euctemon was an Athenian astronomer. He was a contemporary of Meton and worked closely with this astronomer. Little is known of his work apart from his partnership with Meton and what is mentioned by Ptolemy. With Meton, he made a series of observations of the solstices in order to determine the length of the tropical year. Geminus and Ptolemy quote him as a source on the rising and setting of the stars. Pausanias's Description of Greece names Damon and Philogenes and Euctemon's children.
Go to Profile#11888
Boris Gerasimovich
1889 - 1937 (48 years)
Boris Petrovich Gerasimovich was a Soviet astronomer and astrophysicist. Biography Gerasimovich was born in Kremenchuk . He graduated from Kharkiv University in 1914 having studied under Aristarkh Belopolsky. From 1917 until 1933 he worked at the Kharkiv University observatory. He became the director of the Pulkovo Observatory in 1933, but was arrested and executed during the Great Purge. He had a daughter, Tatiana Borisovna Gerasimovich.
Go to Profile#11889
Jakob Kunz
1874 - 1938 (64 years)
Jakob Kunz was an American physicist who pioneered the development and application of photoelectric cells. Born in Brittnau, Switzerland, he earned his bachelor's degree in 1897 and his Ph.D in 1902 from the Eidgenossisches Polytechnikum in Zurich, and was active in the Baháʼí Faith from 1921.
Go to Profile#11890
Leon Theremin
1896 - 1993 (97 years)
Lev Sergeyevich Termen , better known as Leon Theremin, was a Russian inventor, most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments and the first to be mass-produced. He also worked on early television research. His secret listening device, "The Thing", hung for seven years in plain view in the United States ambassador's Moscow office and enabled Soviet agents to eavesdrop on secret conversations.
Go to Profile#11891
Gladys Anslow
1892 - 1969 (77 years)
Gladys Amelia Anslow was an American physicist who spent her career at Smith College. She was the first woman to work with the cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley. Early life and education Anslow was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to John Anslow and Ella Iola Leonard. Anslow attended Springfield Central High School and entered Smith College in 1909. While studying at Smith College, Anslow was a member of the Mathematical Society and served as vice president of the Physics Club. In her second year, Anslow elected a focus on physics under Frank Allan Waterman. Following her graduation with an A.B.
Go to Profile#11892
Walter Hoppe
1917 - 1986 (69 years)
Walter Hoppe was a German physicist and electron microscopist. Walter Hoppe was born in Wallsee-Sindelburg and obtained his doctorate in chemistry at the German University in Prague under Professor J. Boehm. Hoppe became professor and departmental head at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany from 1964 until his retirement in 1985.
Go to Profile#11893
Pio Emanuelli
1889 - 1946 (57 years)
Pio Emanuelli was an Italian astronomer, historian and popularizer of astronomy. He worked for many years at the Vatican Observatory and also taught at the University of Rome. Emanuelli was born in Rome, son of a Vatican clerk. He was only ten when his father died and took an interest in astronomy from a very young age, attending lectures by Elia Millosevich, writing articles in magazines and newspapers. Even as young boy he was in correspondence with astronomers like Giovanni Schiaparelli and Camille Flammarion. In 1910 he joined the Vatican Observatory under Father Johann Georg Hagen and wo...
Go to Profile#11894
Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio
1330 - 1388 (58 years)
Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio , also known as Giovanni de' Dondi, was an Italian physician, astronomer and mechanical engineer in Padua, now in Italy. He is remembered today as a pioneer in the art of clock design and construction. The Astrarium, which he designed and built over a period of 16 years, was a highly complex astronomical clock and planetarium, constructed only 60 or so years after the very first all-mechanical clocks had been built in Europe, and demonstrated an ambitious attempt to describe and model the planetary system with mathematical precision and technological sophistication...
Go to Profile#11895
John Charles Duncan
1882 - 1967 (85 years)
John Charles Duncan was an American astronomer. Life John Charles Duncan was the son of Daniel Davidson and Naomi, née Jessup, Duncan. He graduated from Indiana University and received his Bachelor of Arts there in 1905. In 1905/1906, he received the first Lawrence Fellowship donated by Percival Lowell to students of Indiana University at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and participated in the photographic search for Trans-Neptunian planets. In the summer of 1912 he returned to the Lowell Observatory to help with the search. After receiving his Master of Arts in 1906, he began h...
Go to Profile#11896
Herman March
1878 - 1953 (75 years)
Herman William March was a mathematician and physicist. March studied physics and mathematics at the University of Munich under Wilhelm Röntgen and Arnold Sommerfeld. He received his doctorate in 1911. He had a position at the University of Wisconsin–Madison no later than circa 1920. He died in 1953.
Go to Profile#11897
Győző Zemplén
1879 - 1916 (37 years)
Győző Zemplén was a Hungarian physicist who worked in the fields of hydrodynamics and the kinetic theory of gases. Life Győző Zemplén was born in the town of Nagykanizsa, Hungary. He grew up in Fiume. In 1896, he began his studies at the University of Budapest and, at 19 years age, won an award with an essay on the viscosity of gases. After that he began theoretical and experimental studies. In 1900 he published the essay "On the basic assumptions of the kinetic theory of gases" in the Annalen der Physik, but had been previously published mathematical works. In the same year he graduated from the University, but remained as a research assistant.
Go to Profile#11898
Mary Taylor Slow
1898 - 1984 (86 years)
Mary Taylor Slow was a British physicist who worked on the theory of radio waves and the application of differential equations to physics. She was the first woman to take up the study of radio as a profession.
Go to Profile#11899
Stepan Malkhasyants
1857 - 1947 (90 years)
Stepanos Sargsi Malkhasiants was an Armenian academician, philologist, linguist, and lexicographer. An expert in classical Armenian literature, Malkhasiants wrote the critical editions and translated the works of many classical Armenian historians into modern Armenian and contributed seventy years of his life to the advancement of the study of the Armenian language.
Go to Profile#11900
Carl Clarence Kiess
1887 - 1967 (80 years)
Carl Clarence Kiess was an American astronomer. His main contributions was in the study of solar and stellar spectra. Kiess was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He earned a BA in astronomy from Indiana University in 1910 and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1913. After teaching at the University of Missouri, Pomona College, and the University of Michigan, Kiess took a position at the National Bureau of Standards in 1917. He retired from the bureau in 1957.
Go to Profile