The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
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List of the most influential people in Physics,
#12001
Alexander Kompaneyets
1914 - 1974 (60 years)
Alexander Solomonovich Kompaneyets was born on January 4, 1914, in Ekaterinoslav, Russian Empire and died on August 19, 1974, in Palanga, Lithuania. He was a prominent physicist, author of a number of textbooks, and collaborator on the Soviet atomic bomb project who lived mainly in Moscow.
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Aimé Cotton
1869 - 1951 (82 years)
Aimé Auguste Cotton was a French physicist known for his studies of the interaction of light with chiral molecules. In the absorption bands of these molecules, he discovered large values of optical rotatory dispersion , or variation of optical rotation as a function of wavelength , as well as circular dichroism or differences of absorption between left and right circularly polarized light.
Go to Profile#12003
Evangelista Torricelli
1608 - 1647 (39 years)
Evangelista Torricelli was an Italian physicist and mathematician, and a student of Galileo. He is best known for his invention of the barometer, but is also known for his advances in optics and work on the method of indivisibles. The torr is named after him.
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Wojciech Rubinowicz
1889 - 1974 (85 years)
Wojciech Sylwester Piotr Rubinowicz was a Polish theoretical physicist who made contributions in quantum mechanics, mathematical physics, and the theory of radiation. He is known for the Maggie-Rubinowicz representation of Gustav Kirchhoff’s diffraction formula.
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David Brewster
1781 - 1868 (87 years)
Sir David Brewster KH PRSE FRS FSA Scot FSSA MICE was a Scottish scientist, inventor, author, and academic administrator. In science he is principally remembered for his experimental work in physical optics, mostly concerned with the study of the polarization of light and including the discovery of Brewster's angle. He studied the birefringence of crystals under compression and discovered photoelasticity, thereby creating the field of optical mineralogy. For this work, William Whewell dubbed him the "father of modern experimental optics" and "the Johannes Kepler of optics."
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Josef Stefan
1835 - 1893 (58 years)
Josef Stefan was a Carinthian Slovene physicist, mathematician, and poet of the Austrian Empire. Life and work Stefan was born in the village of St. Peter on the outskirts of KlagenfurtAleksander1805-18721815-1863.
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Nilakantha Somayaji
1444 - 1544 (100 years)
Keļallur Nilakantha Somayaji , also referred to as Keļallur Comatiri, was a major mathematician and astronomer of the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics. One of his most influential works was the comprehensive astronomical treatise Tantrasamgraha completed in 1501. He had also composed an elaborate commentary on Aryabhatiya called the Aryabhatiya Bhasya. In this Bhasya, Nilakantha had discussed infinite series expansions of trigonometric functions and problems of algebra and spherical geometry. Grahapariksakrama is a manual on making observations in astronomy based on instruments of the time.
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Richard Becker
1887 - 1955 (68 years)
Richard Becker was a German theoretical physicist who made contributions in thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, superconductivity, and quantum electrodynamics. Early life Becker was born in Hamburg. His studies in zoology started in 1906 at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, where he earned his doctorate in 1909 under August Weismann. After hearing lectures by Arnold Sommerfeld at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Becker turned his professional interest to physics. He also studied physics under Max Born at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, and Max Planck and Albert Einstein at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
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Walter Rogowski
1881 - 1947 (66 years)
Walter Rogowski was a German physicist who bridged the gap between theoretical physics and applied technology in numerous areas of electronics. The Rogowski coil was named after him. Biography In 1900, Rogowski began his studies at the RWTH Aachen, under Arnold Sommerfeld, who occupied the Chair for Applied Mechanics. He acquired his Vordiplom in 1902 and went on to study at the Danzig Technische Hochschule , where he was also a scientific assistant. He completed his studies at Danzig in 1904, but stayed on until 1908, when he went to be a scientific assistant at the Physikalisch Technische...
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Francis Wheeler Loomis
1889 - 1976 (87 years)
Francis Wheeler Loomis , born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, was an American scientist most widely known for his contributions in the field of physics. Loomis received his undergraduate degree and, in 1917, his PhD from Harvard University. His thesis was on thermodynamic measurements of mercury.
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Martin Knudsen
1871 - 1949 (78 years)
Martin Hans Christian Knudsen was a Danish physicist who taught and conducted research at the Technical University of Denmark. He is primarily known for his study of molecular gas flow and the development of the Knudsen cell, which is a primary component of molecular beam epitaxy systems.
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Alexis Clairaut
1713 - 1765 (52 years)
Alexis Claude Clairaut was a French mathematician, astronomer, and geophysicist. He was a prominent Newtonian whose work helped to establish the validity of the principles and results that Sir Isaac Newton had outlined in the Principia of 1687. Clairaut was one of the key figures in the expedition to Lapland that helped to confirm Newton's theory for the figure of the Earth. In that context, Clairaut worked out a mathematical result now known as "Clairaut's theorem". He also tackled the gravitational three-body problem, being the first to obtain a satisfactory result for the apsidal precession of the Moon's orbit.
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Johannes Franz Hartmann
1865 - 1936 (71 years)
Johannes Franz Hartmann was a German physicist and astronomer. In 1904, while studying the spectroscopy of Delta Orionis he noticed that most of the spectrum had a shift, except the calcium lines, which he interpreted as indicating the presence of interstellar medium.
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Pyotr Lebedev
1866 - 1912 (46 years)
Pyotr Nikolaevich Lebedev was a Russian physicist. His name was also transliterated as Peter Lebedew and Peter Lebedev. Lebedev was the creator of first scientific school in Russia. Career Lebedev made his doctoral degree in Strasbourg under the supervision of August Kundt in 1887–1891. In 1891, he started working in Moscow State University in the group of Alexander Stoletov. There he made his famous experimental studies of electromagnetic waves.
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John Louis Emil Dreyer
1852 - 1926 (74 years)
John Louis Emil Dreyer was a Danish astronomer who spent most of his career working in Ireland. He spent the last decade of his life in Oxford, England. Life Dreyer was born in Copenhagen. His father, Lieutenant General John Christopher Dreyer, was the Danish Minister for War and the Navy. When he was 14 he became interested in astronomy and regularly visited Hans Schjellerup at the Copenhagen observatory. He was educated in Copenhagen, taking an MA in 1872. While the same university later awarded him a PhD, in 1874. But in 1874, at the age of 22, he went to Parsonstown, Ireland. There he wo...
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Henry Draper
1837 - 1882 (45 years)
Henry Draper was an American doctor and amateur astronomer. He is best known today as a pioneer of astrophotography. Life and work Henry Draper's father, John William Draper, was an accomplished doctor, chemist, botanist, and professor at New York University; he was also the first to photograph the moon through a telescope . Draper's mother was Antonia Caetana de Paiva Pereira Gardner, daughter of the personal physician to the Emperor of Brazil. His niece, Antonia Maury was also an astronomer.
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Emil Lenz
1804 - 1865 (61 years)
Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lenz , usually cited as Emil Lenz or Heinrich Lenz in some countries, was a Russian physicist of Baltic German descent who is most noted for formulating Lenz's law in electrodynamics in 1834.
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Nasir al-Din al-Tusi
1201 - 1274 (73 years)
Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Tusi , also known as Nasir al-Din al-Tusi or simply as Tusi, was a Persian polymath, architect, philosopher, physician, scientist, and theologian. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was a well published author, writing on subjects of math, engineering, prose, and mysticism. Additionally, al-Tusi made several scientific advancements. In astronomy, al-Tusi created very accurate tables of planetary motion, an updated planetary model, and critiques of Ptolemaic astronomy. He also made strides in logic, mathematics but especially trigonometry, biology, and chemistry. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi left behind a great legacy as well.
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Herbert Dingle
1890 - 1978 (88 years)
Herbert Dingle was an English physicist and philosopher of science, who served as president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1951 to 1953. He is best known for his opposition to Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity and the protracted controversy that this provoked.
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Dominique, comte de Cassini
1748 - 1845 (97 years)
Jean-Dominique, comte de Cassini was a French astronomer, son of César-François Cassini de Thury and great-grandson of Giovanni Domenico Cassini. Cassini was born at the Paris Observatory. He succeeded his father as director of the observatory in 1784; but his plans for its restoration and re-equipment were wrecked in 1793 by the animosity of the National Assembly. His position having become intolerable, he resigned on 6 September and was thrown into prison in 1794, but released after seven months. He then withdrew to Thury, where he died in 1845.
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Heinrich Bruns
1848 - 1919 (71 years)
Ernst Heinrich Bruns was a German mathematician and astronomer, who also contributed to the development of the field of theoretical geodesy. Early life Heinrich Bruns was born on 4 September 1848 in Berlin to Christian Gerhard Bruns, a landscape painter, and his wife, Caroline Henriette Hasse.
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Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin
1717 - 1783 (66 years)
Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin , Swedish astronomer and demographer. Wargentin was the son of the vicar of Sunne Wilhelm Wargentin and his spouse Christina Aroselia, and the great grandson of Joachim Wargentin , a Lübeck-born burgher of Åbo in Finland.
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Eugène Joseph Delporte
1882 - 1955 (73 years)
Eugène Joseph Delporte was a Belgian astronomer born in Genappe. He discovered a total of sixty-six asteroids. Notable discoveries include 1221 Amor and the Apollo asteroid 2101 Adonis. He discovered or co-discovered some comets as well, including periodic comet 57P/du Toit-Neujmin-Delporte. He worked in the Observatoire Royal de Belgique , situated in the town of Uccle . He started there in 1903 after receiving his doctorate that year from the Free University of Brussels.
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Georges-Louis Le Sage
1724 - 1803 (79 years)
Georges-Louis Le Sage was a Genevan physicist and is most known for his theory of gravitation, for his invention of an electric telegraph and his anticipation of the kinetic theory of gases. Furthermore, he was a contributor to the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers.
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Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander
1799 - 1875 (76 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander was a German astronomer. He is known for his determinations of stellar brightnesses, positions, and distances. Life and work Argelander was born in Memel in the Kingdom of Prussia , the son of a father of Finnish descent, Johann Gottlieb Argelander, and German mother, Dorothea Wilhelmina Grünhagen. He studied with Friedrich Bessel, whose assistant he became in 1820, and obtained his Ph.D. in 1822 at University of Königsberg. From 1823 until 1837, Argelander was the head of the Finnish observatory, first in Turku and then in Helsinki. He then moved to Bonn, Germany.
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August Kopff
1882 - 1960 (78 years)
August Kopff was a German astronomer and discoverer of several comets and asteroids. Kopff studied and worked in Heidelberg, getting his PhD there in 1906 and he then joined the Humboldt University of Berlin where he became the Director of the Institute for Astronomical Calculation.
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Louis Harold Gray
1905 - 1965 (60 years)
Louis Harold Gray FRS was an English physicist who worked mainly on the effects of radiation on biological systems. He was one of the earliest contributors of the field of radiobiology A summary of his work is given below. Amongst many other achievements, he defined a unit of radiation dosage which was later named after him as an SI unit, the gray.
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Theodor Meyer
1882 - 1972 (90 years)
Theodor Meyer was a German mathematician, a student of Ludwig Prandtl, and a founder of the scientific discipline now known as compressible flow or gas dynamics. Biography As a youth, Meyer studied mathematics and physics. He was privileged to learn from several of the great minds in these fields, including David Hilbert, Carl Runge, Hermann Minkowski, and Ludwig Prandtl. He and Prandtl made a great team, for Prandtl's intuitive and experimental approach to fluid mechanics has become legendary, and Meyer complemented his advisor's strengths with a formidable mathematical talent.
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Theodore Lyman IV
1874 - 1954 (80 years)
Theodore Lyman IV was an American physicist and spectroscopist, born in Boston. He graduated from Harvard in 1897, from which he also received his Ph.D. in 1900. Career Lyman became an assistant professor in physics at Harvard, where he remained, becoming full professor in 1917, and where he was also director of the Jefferson Physical Laboratory . He made important studies in phenomena connected with diffraction gratings, on the wavelengths of vacuum ultraviolet light discovered by Victor Schumann and also on the properties of light of extremely short wavelength, on all of which he contribute...
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Erwin Fues
1893 - 1970 (77 years)
Erwin Richard Fues , was a German theoretical physicist who made contributions to atomic physics and molecular physics, quantum wave mechanics, and solid-state physics. Education and career During the period 1912 to 1914, Fues studied at the University of Berlin and then the University of Munich. He served in the military in 1914 to circa 1915, and then attended the University of Tübingen from 1916 to 1918. During 1918, he became a student of Arnold Sommerfeld and he received the doctor rerum naturalium from the University of Munich in 1920. From 1922 he did postgraduate work at the Stuttgart ...
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Egon Orowan
1902 - 1989 (87 years)
Egon Orowan FRS was a Hungarian-British physicist and metallurgist. According to György Marx, he was one of The Martians. Life Orowan was born in the Óbuda district of Budapest. His father, Berthold , was a mechanical engineer and factory manager, and his mother, Josze Spitzer Ságvári, was the daughter of an impoverished land owner.
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Walter Herrmann
1910 - 1987 (77 years)
Walter Herrmann was a German nuclear physicist and mechanical engineer who worked on the German nuclear energy project during World War II. After the war, he headed a laboratory for special issues of nuclear disintegration at Laboratory V in the Soviet Union.
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Frederick Sumner Brackett
1896 - 1988 (92 years)
Frederick Sumner Brackett , was an American physicist and spectroscopist. Born in Claremont, California, to Frank and Lucretia Brackett, he graduated from Pomona College and worked as an observer at Mount Wilson Observatory until 1920. He observed the infra-red radiation of the Sun. Brackett received a doctorate in physics from the Johns Hopkins University in 1922. Applying a hydrogen filled discharge tube, he discovered the hydrogen Brackett series, where an electron jumps up from or drops down to the fourth fundamental level, in 1922.
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James Edward Keeler
1857 - 1900 (43 years)
James Edward Keeler was an American astronomer. He was an early observer of galaxies using photography, as well as the first to show observationally that the rings of Saturn do not rotate as a solid body.
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Heinrich Wilhelm Brandes
1777 - 1834 (57 years)
Heinrich Wilhelm Brandes was a German physicist, meteorologist, and astronomer. Brandes was born in 1777 in Groden near Ritzebüttel , the third son of Albert Georg Brandes, a preacher. He studied at the University of Göttingen from 1796 to 1798 under Abraham Gotthelf Kästner and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Carl Friedrich Gauss was a fellow student. He attained his doctorate in 1800, and spent a short time teaching privately. As an astronomer, he was noted for demonstrating that meteors occur in the upper atmosphere and thus not really a meteorological phenomenon.
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Thomas Andrew Broadbent
#12037
Giovanni Caselli
1815 - 1891 (76 years)
Giovanni Caselli was an Italian priest, inventor, and physicist. He studied electricity and magnetism as a child which led to his invention of the pantelegraph , the forerunner of the fax machine. The world's first practical operating facsimile machine system put into use was by Caselli. He had worldwide patents on his system. His technology idea was further developed into today's analog television.
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André-Louis Danjon
1890 - 1967 (77 years)
André-Louis Danjon was a French astronomer born in Caen to Louis Dominique Danjon and Marie Justine Binet. Danjon devised a method to measure "earthshine" on the Moon using a telescope in which a prism split the Moon's image into two identical side-by-side images. By adjusting a diaphragm to dim one of the images until the sunlit portion had the same apparent brightness as the earthlit portion on the unadjusted image, he could quantify the diaphragm adjustment, and thus had a real measurement for the brightness of earthshine. He recorded the measurements using his method from 1925 until the ...
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Johann Daniel Titius
1729 - 1796 (67 years)
Johann Daniel Titius was a German astronomer and a professor at Wittenberg. Titius was born in Konitz , Royal Prussia to Jakob Tietz, a merchant and council member from Konitz, and Maria Dorothea, née Hanow. His original name was Johann Tietz, but as was customary in the 18th century, when he became a university professor, he Latinized his surname to Titius. Tietz attended school in Danzig and studied at the University of Leipzig . He died in Wittenberg, Electorate of Saxony.
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Cornelis Bakker
1904 - 1960 (56 years)
Cornelis Jan Bakker was a Dutch physicist and second Director General of CERN. He was also a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. Biography Bakker studied physics at the University of Amsterdam under Pieter Zeeman.
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Carl Barus
1856 - 1935 (79 years)
Carl Barus was an American physicist and the maternal great-uncle of the American novelist Kurt Vonnegut. Barus was born in Cincinnati, United States. The son of German immigrants , Barus graduated from Woodward High School, together with William Howard Taft, in 1874.
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John Gamble Kirkwood
1907 - 1959 (52 years)
John "Jack" Gamble Kirkwood was a noted chemist and physicist, holding faculty positions at Cornell University, the University of Chicago, California Institute of Technology, and Yale University. Early life and background Kirkwood was born in Gotebo, Oklahoma, the oldest child of John Millard and Lillian Gamble Kirkwood. His father was educated as an attorney and was a distributor for the Goodyear Corporation in the state of Kansas. In addition to Jack Kirkwood, there were two younger sisters: Caroline and Margaret .
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Maurice de Broglie
1875 - 1960 (85 years)
#12044
William Cranch Bond
1789 - 1859 (70 years)
William Cranch Bond was an American astronomer, and the first director of Harvard College Observatory. Upbringing William Cranch Bond was born in Falmouth, Maine on September 9, 1789. When he was young, his father, William Bond, established himself as a clockmaker after a failed business venture; trained by his father and aided by his penchant for engineering, W. C. Bond built his first clock when he was fifteen years old. He eventually took over his father’s business, becoming an expert clockmaker himself. The William Bond clock shop remained in existence at 9 Park Street in Boston until t...
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Otto Wilhelm von Struve
1819 - 1905 (86 years)
Otto Wilhelm von Struve was a Russian astronomer of Baltic German origins. In Russian, his name is normally given as Otto Vasil'evich Struve . Together with his father, Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, Otto Wilhelm von Struve is considered a prominent 19th century astronomer who headed the Pulkovo Observatory between 1862 and 1889 and was a leading member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
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Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski
1845 - 1888 (43 years)
Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski was a Polish physicist and chemist. Together with Karol Olszewski, he was the first scientist in the world to liquify oxygen and nitrogen in 1883. Biography Wróblewski was born in Grodno . He studied at Kiev University. After a six-year exile for participating in the January 1863 Uprising against Imperial Russia, he studied in Berlin and Heidelberg. He defended his doctoral dissertation at Munich University in 1876 and became an assistant professor at Strasburg University. In 1880 he became a member of the Polish Academy of Learning.
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Barnaba Oriani
1752 - 1832 (80 years)
Barnaba Oriani was an Italian priest, geodesist, astronomer and scientist. Life Oriani was born in Garegnano , the son of a mason, and died in Milan. After getting his elementary education in Garegnano, he went on to study at the College of San Alessandro in Milan, under the tutelage and with the support of the Order of Barnabites, which he later joined. After completing his studies in the humanities, physical and mathematical sciences, philosophy, and theology, he was ordained a priest in 1775.
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Robert Watson-Watt
1892 - 1973 (81 years)
Sir Robert Alexander Watson Watt was a Scottish pioneer of radio direction finding and radar technology. Watt began his career in radio physics with a job at the Met Office, where he began looking for accurate ways to track thunderstorms using the radio waves given off by lightning. This led to the 1920s development of a system later known as high-frequency direction finding . Although well publicized at the time, the system's enormous military potential was not developed until the late 1930s. Huff-duff allowed operators to determine the location of an enemy radio transmitter in seconds and ...
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Iris Runge
1888 - 1966 (78 years)
Iris Anna Runge was a German applied mathematician and physicist. Life and work Iris Runge was the eldest of six children of mathematician Carl Runge. She started studying physics, mathematics, and geography at the University of Göttingen in 1907, with the aim of becoming a teacher. At that time, she only attended the lectures, since women were not allowed to formally study at Prussian universities until 1908–1909. She attended lectures given by her father and spent a semester at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich working with Arnold Sommerfeld, which led to her first publication, Anwendungen der Vektorrechnung auf die Grundlagen der Geometrischen Optik in Annalen der Physik .
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Adelaide Ames
1900 - 1932 (32 years)
Adelaide Ames was an American astronomer and research assistant at Harvard University. She contributed to the study of galaxies with her co-authorship of A Survey of the External Galaxies Brighter Than the Thirteenth Magnitude, which was later known as the Shapley-Ames catalog. Ames was a member of the American Astronomical Society. She was a contemporary of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin and her closest friend at the observatory.
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