The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Physics,
#11901
Eugene Rabe
1911 - 1974 (63 years)
Eugene Karl Rabe was a German-American astronomer. He was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Hermann and Luise. From 1937–1948 he was a member of the staff at the Heidelberg, Germany branch of the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut. After World War II it was arranged for him to come to the United States. He then became professor of astronomy at the University of Cincinnati, while working at the Cincinnati Observatory. His work included orbital motions of the Trojan asteroids, and particularly the orbit of 433 Eros. In 1951, he used twenty years worth of observations of Eros to determine the gravitational perturbations of the planets.
Go to Profile#11902
C. E. Wynn-Williams
1903 - 1979 (76 years)
Charles Eryl Wynn-Williams , was a Welsh physicist, noted for his research on electronic instrumentation for use in nuclear physics. His work on the scale-of-two counter contributed to the development of the modern computer.
Go to Profile#11903
Iosif Shklovsky
1916 - 1985 (69 years)
Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky was a Soviet astronomer and astrophysicist. He is remembered for work in theoretical astrophysics and other topics, as well as for his 1962 book on extraterrestrial life, the revised and expanded version of which was co-authored by American astronomer Carl Sagan in 1966 as Intelligent Life in the Universe.
Go to Profile#11904
Sergei Tyablikov
1921 - 1968 (47 years)
Sergei Vladimirovich Tyablikov was a Soviet theoretical physicist known for his significant contributions to statistical mechanics, solid-state physics, and for the development of the double-time Green function's formalism.
Go to Profile#11905
Alexander Nikuradse
1900 - 1981 (81 years)
Alexander Nikuradse , also known by his pseudonym Al. Sanders, was a Georgian-German physicist and Nazi political scientist. Born in Samtredia, Georgia, Russian Empire, he was sent by the Georgian government to complete his studies in Berlin. Nikuradse remained in Berlin and became a German citizen after the 1921 Red Army invasion of Georgia. Being in staunch opposition to Soviet rule in Georgia, he was actively involved in Georgian émigré activities, and had close Nazi connections. Since their common days as Soviet exiles in Munich in the early 1920s, he had been on friendly terms with Alfred Rosenberg whose views on the Caucasus were largely shaped under Nikuradse's influence.
Go to Profile#11906
Frederick Albert Saunders
1875 - 1963 (88 years)
Frederick Albert Saunders was a Canadian-born American physicist and academic remembered for his work in sub-infrared spectroscopy and acoustics. Early life Frederick Albert Saunders was born on August 18, 1875, in London, Ontario, a son of William Saunders and Sarah Agnes Saunders, née Robinson, both of whom were born in England and emigrated to Canada at an early age. His father was renowned in the fields of orchard pests and fruit hybridization, was a founding member of the Entomological Society of Ontario and published books including Insects Injurious to Fruits and numerous scientific papers.
Go to Profile#11907
Frances Woodworth Wright
1897 - 1989 (92 years)
Frances Woodworth Wright was an American astronomer based at Harvard University. During World War II, she taught celestial navigation to military officers and engineers. Early life Frances Woodworth Wright was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the daughter of George William Wright and Nellie Woodworth Wright. As a child in 1907, Wright wrote a short essay titled "My Favorite Poem", for the popular national children's magazine St. Nicholas. She earned a bachelor's degree at Brown University in 1920. She was granted a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College in 1958, as a student of Fred Whipp...
Go to Profile#11908
Robert Methven Petrie
1906 - 1966 (60 years)
Robert Methven Petrie was a Canadian astronomer. He was born in Scotland but emigrated to Canada at the age of five. He grew up in Victoria, British Columbia and studied physics and mathematics at the University of British Columbia. He began working summer jobs at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory and became fascinated with astronomy.
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Vesto M. Slipher
1875 - 1969 (94 years)
Vesto Melvin Slipher was an American astronomer who performed the first measurements of radial velocities for galaxies. He was the first to discover that distant galaxies are redshifted, thus providing the first empirical basis for the expansion of the universe. He was also the first to relate these redshifts to velocity.
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Niels Erik Nørlund
1885 - 1981 (96 years)
Niels Erik Nørlund was a Danish mathematician. His book Vorlesungen über Differenzenrechnung was the first book on complex function solutions of difference equations. His doctoral students include Georg Rasch.
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François Frenkiel
1910 - 1986 (76 years)
François Naftali Frenkiel was a physicist and one of the founders of the American Institute of Physics journal Physics of Fluids in 1958. He was the editor of Physics of Fluids from its establishment until 1981.
Go to Profile#11912
Gaja Alaga
1924 - 1988 (64 years)
Gaja Alaga was a Croatian theoretical physicist who specialised in nuclear physics. He was born in noble family of Bunjevac origin in the village of Lemeš in northwestern Bačka in Kingdom of SHS .
Go to Profile#11913
Bergen Davis
1869 - 1958 (89 years)
Bergen Davis was an American physicist and a professor at Columbia University. Davis was born March 31, 1869, near Whitehouse, New Jersey, son of John Davis, a farmer, and Katherine Dilts Davis. He graduated from Rutgers University in 1896 and was awarded a master's degree by Columbia University in 1900 and a Ph.D. in 1901, after which he studied in Europe for two years on a John Tyndall Fellowship under J. J. Thomson and others.
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Walter Bartky
1901 - 1958 (57 years)
Walter Bartky was an American astronomer, applied mathematician, and educator, noteworthy for his role in the Manhattan Project. Education and career Walter Bartky received his B.S. from the University of Chicago in 1923 and his Ph.D. in 1926. At the University of Chicago he was an instructor in 1926, an assistant professor of astronomy from 1927 to 1932, and an associate professor of astronomy from 1932 to 1942. At the University of Chicago he became in 1943 a professor of applied mathematics and associate dean in the Division of Physical Sciences, served from 1945 to 1955 as the dean of the...
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Franz N. D. Kurie
1907 - 1972 (65 years)
Franz Newell Devereux Kurie was an American physicist who, while working at Yale in 1933, showed that the neutron was neither a dumbbell-shaped combination of proton and electron, nor an onion-shaped combination of an electron embracing the proton. Consequently, and until the discovery of the quark structure of hadrons, the neutron was assumed to be an elementary particle.
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Elephter Andronikashvili
1910 - 1989 (79 years)
Elephter Luarsabovich Andronikashvili was a Georgian physicist. He was a brother of Russian historian Irakly Andronikov. Biography Elephter Andronikashvili came from the noble Georgian Andronikashvili family. He graduated from Leningrad Polytechnical Institute in 1932. From 1934 to 1945 he lectured at Tbilisi State University. Starting in 1942 he worked for the Georgian Academy of Sciences Institute of Physics, and in 1951 he became the director of the Institute. In 1940-1941 and 1945-1948 he also did his Doktor Nauk degree at the Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow. From 1951 he also w...
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Walter Phelps Hall
1884 - 1962 (78 years)
Walter Phelps Hall was the Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University. He was a very popular professor among Princeton undergraduates during the first half of the 20th century. Hall received his bachelor's degree from Yale University and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He was known for occasionally standing on his desk while giving lectures.
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Eric Mervyn Lindsay
1907 - 1974 (67 years)
Eric Mervyn Lindsay FRAS was an Irish astronomer. He was born at The Grange near Portadown, County Armagh to Richard and Susan Lindsay. He was educated in Dublin at the King's Hospital School, then attended Queen's University, Belfast where he earned his BSc in 1928 and a MSc in 1929. He later went to Harvard University and was awarded a PhD in 1934.
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John Ambrose Fleming
1849 - 1945 (96 years)
Sir John Ambrose Fleming FRS was an English electrical engineer and physicist who invented the first thermionic valve or vacuum tube, designed the radio transmitter with which the first transatlantic radio transmission was made, and also established the right-hand rule used in physics.
Go to Profile#11920
Fritz Houtermans
1903 - 1966 (63 years)
Friedrich Georg "Fritz" Houtermans was a Dutch-Austrian-German atomic and nuclear physicist and Communist born in Zoppot near Danzig , West Prussia to a Dutch father, who was a wealthy banker. He was brought up in Vienna, where he was educated, and moved to Göttingen when he was 18 to study. It was in Göttingen where he obtained his Ph.D. under James Franck.
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Ilya Lifshitz
1916 - 1982 (66 years)
Ilya Mikhailovich Lifshitz was a leading Soviet theoretical physicist, brother of Evgeny Lifshitz. He is known for his works in solid-state physics, electron theory of metals, disordered systems, and the theory of polymers.
Go to Profile#11922
Lincoln LaPaz
1897 - 1985 (88 years)
Lincoln LaPaz was an American astronomer from the University of New Mexico and a pioneer in the study of meteors. Early life and education He was born in Wichita, Kansas on February 12, 1897 to Charles Melchior LaPaz and Emma Josephine . He earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1920 in mathematics at Fairmont College and also taught there between 1917 and 1920. He earned his master's degree via a scholarship at Harvard University, completed in 1922. On June 18, 1922, he married Leota Ray Butler and later had two children, Leota Jean and Mary Strode. Between 1922 and 1925 he taught at Dartmouth C...
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Harold K. Schilling
1899 - 1979 (80 years)
Harold K. Schilling was a professor of physics at Pennsylvania State University. He had served as chairman of the physics department and then as dean of the graduate school. He also wrote extensively about science and religion.
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C. Donald Shane
1895 - 1983 (88 years)
Charles Donald Shane was an American astronomer and director of the Lick Observatory of the University of California from 1945 to 1958, during which time he carried out his monumental program of counting external galaxies and investigating their distribution.
Go to Profile#11925
Samuel Collins
1898 - 1984 (86 years)
Samuel Cornette Collins was an American chemist, physicist, and engineer. Collins graduated from Sumner County High School in 1916. He obtained his PhD in chemistry from the University of North Carolina in 1927. He taught at Carson-Newman College, the University of Tennessee, Tennessee State Teachers College, and the University of North Carolina, and joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a research associate in the chemistry department in 1930. After World War II, he returned to MIT, joining the department of mechanical engineering. He was appointed professor in 1949 and retired in 1964.
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Erich Schmid
1896 - 1983 (87 years)
Erich Schmid was a physicist from Austria. He made important discoveries in the field of crystal plasticity. Schmid studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate in 1920 under the supervision of Felix Ehrenhaft. He then became the assistant of Ludwig Flamm. In 1951 he accepted a position at the University of Vienna and stayed there until retiring in 1967.
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Alec Merrison
1924 - 1989 (65 years)
Sir Alexander Walter Merrison FRS was a British physicist. He was a professor in experimental physics at Liverpool University and the first director of the new Daresbury Nuclear Physics Laboratory. He later became vice-chancellor of University of Bristol.
Go to Profile#11928
Włodzimierz Trzebiatowski
1906 - 1982 (76 years)
Włodzimierz Trzebiatowski was a Polish chemist, physicist and mathematician. An institute in Wrocław, Poland called the Włodzimierz Trzebiatowski Institute of Low Temperature and Structure Research is named after him.
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Frank Horton
1878 - 1957 (79 years)
Frank Horton FRS was professor of physics at Royal Holloway College, London University from 1914 to 1946 and later Vice-Chancellor of London University during the years of World War II from 1939 to 1945.
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Abdul Jabbar Abdullah
1911 - 1969 (58 years)
Abdul Jabbar Abdullah Sam was an Iraqi wave theory physicist, dynamical meteorologist, and President Emeritus of the University of Baghdad. Abdullah obtained a doctorate in meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1946 before returning to Iraq to become an educator and researcher. After several years as the President of the University of Baghdad, Abdullah left Iraq amid a period of social unrest, and lived in the United States for the remainder of his life.
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Imre Fényes
1917 - 1977 (60 years)
Imre Fényes was a Hungarian physicist who was the first to propose a stochastic interpretation of quantum mechanics. Selected publications External links Imre Fényes biography
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John Pasta
1918 - 1981 (63 years)
John Robert Pasta was an American computational physicist and computer scientist who is remembered today for the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou experiment, the result of which was much discussed among physicists and researchers in the fields of dynamical systems and chaos theory, and as the head of the department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1964 to 1970.
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Maud Worcester Makemson
1891 - 1977 (86 years)
Maud Worcester Makemson was an American astronomer, a specialist on archaeoastronomy, and director of Vassar Observatory. Early life and education Maud Lavon Worcester was born in 1891 in Center Harbor, New Hampshire. She attended Girls' Latin School in Boston. She briefly attended Radcliffe College, but left to teach school. In 1911, her family moved to Pasadena, California. She was working as a journalist in Bisbee, Arizona when she took an interest in astronomy. She returned to California and taught school while taking correspondence courses and summer classes to qualify for admission to the University of California.
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Johann Nikuradse
1894 - 1979 (85 years)
Johann Nikuradse was a Georgia-born German engineer and physicist. His brother, Alexander Nikuradse, was also a Germany-based physicist and geopolitician known for his ties with Alfred Rosenberg and for his role in saving many Georgians during World War II.
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Takahiko Yamanouchi
1902 - 1986 (84 years)
was a Japanese theoretical physicist, known for group theory in quantum mechanics first proposed by Yamanouchi in Japan. Yamanouchi was born in Kanagawa, graduated in physics from the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1926. From 1926 to 1927 he was a research associate at the Imperial University of Tokyo. From 1927 to 1931 he was a professor at the Tokyo Higher School. He joined the faculty of the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1929 as a lecturer of engineering and became a full professor in 1942. He was a professor of physics at the University of Tokyo from 1949 to his retirement in 1963. During 1959–1961 he was the dean of the faculty of science.
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Leslie H. Martin
1900 - 1983 (83 years)
Sir Leslie Harold Martin, was an Australian physicist. He was one of the 24 Founding Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science and had a significant influence on the structure of higher education in Australia as chairman of the Australian Universities Commission from 1959 until 1966. He was Professor of Physics at the University of Melbourne from 1945 to 1959, and Dean of the Faculty of Military Studies and Professor of Physics at the University of New South Wales at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in Canberra from 1967 to 1970. He was the Defence Scientific Adviser and chairman of ...
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Christian Gerthsen
1894 - 1956 (62 years)
Christian Gerthsen was a German physicist who made contributions to atomic and nuclear physics, as well as writing numerous textbooks. Education Gerthsen studied at the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich from 1913 to 1914. Circa 1914 to 1918, he served in the military. Circa 1919 to 1920 he attended the Georg-August University of Göttingen. In 1920, he went to the University of Kiel. With Walther Kreisel as his advisor, he was awarded his doctorate in 1929. He stayed on as Kossel’s assistant until 1930 and then went to the University of Tü...
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Immanuel Estermann
1900 - 1973 (73 years)
Immanuel Estermann was a Jewish German-born nuclear physicist and was professor at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Hamburg and Technion. Estermann is known for his lifelong collaboration with Otto Stern which pioneered the research on molecular beams in the 1920s. With Stern and Otto Robert Frisch, he also first measured the magnetic moment of the proton.
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G. N. Glasoe
1902 - 1987 (85 years)
G. Norris Glasoe was an American nuclear physicist. He was a member of the Columbia University team which was the first in the United States to verify the European discovery of the nuclear fission of uranium via neutron bombardment. During World War II, he worked at the MIT Radiation Laboratory. He was a physicist and administrator at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
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Alexei Vasilievich Shubnikov
1887 - 1970 (83 years)
Alexei Vasilievich Shubnikov was a Soviet crystallographer and mathematician. Shubnikov was the founding director of the Institute of Crystallography of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in Moscow. Shubnikov pioneered Russian crystallography and its application.
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Edoardo Amaldi
1908 - 1989 (81 years)
Edoardo Amaldi was an Italian physicist. He coined the term "neutrino" in conversations with Enrico Fermi distinguishing it from the heavier "neutron". He has been described as "one of the leading nuclear physicists of the twentieth century." He was involved in the anti-nuclear peace movement.
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Gustaf Strömberg
1882 - 1962 (80 years)
Gustaf Benjamin Strömberg was a Swedish-born American astronomer who worked at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California. He went on to examine ideas on the non-physical world, the soul, psychic and other phenomena that would now be termed the paranormal, making him a pioneer of the study of the paranormal. Interpreting ideas from mathematical physics on waves and fields, he suggested that living cells were influenced by such invisible entities and that human memories could be immortal, as also claiming a mathematical support for the existence of a soul.
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Carl F. Eyring
1889 - 1951 (62 years)
Carl Ferdinand Eyring was an American acoustical physicist. He was the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Brigham Young University for 26 years and was also the vice president of the Acoustical Society of America from 1950 until his death in 1951.
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Claude Bloch
1923 - 1971 (48 years)
Claude Bloch was a French theoretical nuclear physicist. He authored over 60 published articles and made significant impact on the fields of quantum field theory, nuclear physics, and the many-body problem.
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Arthur Bleksley
1908 - 1984 (76 years)
Arthur Edward Herbert Bleksley was a South African Professor of Applied Mathematics and an astronomer. Bleksley's early research involved the astrophysics and astronomy of variable stars. He encouraged science awareness in South Africa by publishing articles about science, by being on a popular radio show, and through his presentations at the Johannesburg Planetarium.
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Elizabeth Laird
1874 - 1969 (95 years)
Elizabeth Rebecca Laird was a Canadian physicist who chaired the physics department at Mount Holyoke College for nearly four decades. She was the first woman accepted by Sir J. J. Thomson to conduct research at Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory. In her later life she studied electromagnetic radiation for military and medical applications.
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Beryl May Dent
1900 - 1977 (77 years)
Beryl May Dent was an English mathematical physicist, technical librarian, and a programmer of early analogue and digital computers to solve electrical engineering problems. She was born in Chippenham, Wiltshire, the eldest daughter of schoolteachers. The family left Chippenham in 1901, after her father became head teacher of the then recently established Warminster County School. In 1923, she graduated from the University of Bristol with First Class Honours in applied mathematics. She was awarded the Ashworth Hallett scholarship by the university and was accepted as a postgraduate student a...
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Homer L. Dodge
1887 - 1983 (96 years)
Homer Levi Dodge was the Chair of the Department of Physics, Dean of the Graduate school, and founder of the Oklahoma Research Institute, at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma and President of Norwich University.
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Nikolay Krylov
1917 - 1947 (30 years)
Nikolay Sergeevich Krylov was a Soviet theoretical physicist known for his work on the problems of classical mechanics, statistical physics, and quantum mechanics. He showed that a sufficient condition for a dynamical system to relax to equilibrium is for it to be mixing.
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Ernst Rexer
1902 - 1983 (81 years)
Ernst Rexer was a German nuclear physicist. He worked on the German nuclear energy program during World War II. After the war, he was sent to Laboratory V, in Obninsk, to work on the Soviet atomic bomb project. In 1956, he was sent to East Germany, where he was a professor and director of the Institute for the Application of Radioactive Isotopes at the Technische Hochschule Dresden.
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