The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Physics,
#2401
Krishnan Raghavachari
#48263
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Krishnan Raghavachari is a Professor of Chemistry at Indiana University Bloomington. Raghavachari began his education in his native India, completing his undergraduate degree in 1973 at Madras University and his masters from the Indian Institute of Technology in 1975. Following this, he moved to the United States to attend Carnegie-Mellon University for his doctorate under the tutelage of John Pople, completing it in 1981. Upon completing his degree, Raghavachari entered the private sector as a research scientist at Bell Labs. He served as a member of the technical staff until 1987 when he was named a distinguished member.
Go to Profile#2402
Bernard Derrida
#32348
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Bernard Derrida is a French theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work in statistical mechanics, and is the eponym of Derrida plots, an analytical technique for characterising differences between Boolean networks.
Go to Profile#2403
Ernest Ambler
#69475
Overall Influence
1923 - 2017 (94 years)
Ernest Ambler was a British-American physicist who served as the Acting Under Secretary for Technology in the Department of Commerce , as director of the United States' National Bureau of Standards , and as the first director of the United States' National Institute of Standards and Technology 1988–89.
Go to Profile#2404
Sonia Guimarães
#37729
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Sonia Guimarães is a Brazilian Professor of Physics at the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica. She was the first black Brazilian woman to earn a doctorate in physics and has dedicated her career to improving the representation of black Brazilians in academia.
Go to Profile#2405
Rosaly Lopes
#37411
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Rosaly M. C. Lopes is a planetary geologist, volcanologist, an author of numerous scientific papers and several books, as well as a proponent of education. Her major research interests are in planetary and terrestrial surface processes with an emphasis on volcanology.
Go to Profile#2406
Matt O'Dowd
#56303
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Matthew John O'Dowd is an Australian astrophysicist. He is an associate professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the Lehman College of the City University of New York and writer and host of PBS Space Time on YouTube. He is a frequent guest on Science Goes to the Movies on CUNY TV and on StarTalk radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Go to Profile#2407
Willi A. Kalender
#29687
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Willi A. Kalender is a German medical physicist and professor and former chairman of the Institute of Medical Physics of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Kalender has produced several new technologies in the field of diagnostic radiology imaging.
Go to Profile#2408
Arie Bodek
#61358
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Arie Bodek is an American experimental particle physicist and the George E. Pake Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester. Bodek was awarded the 2004 American Physical Society W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics for his "broad, sustained, and insightful contributions to elucidating the structure of the nucleon, using a wide variety of probes, tools, and methods at many laboratories."
Go to Profile#2409
Mario Cazzola
#81084
Overall Influence
#2410
Robert Adair
#58112
Overall Influence
1924 - 2020 (96 years)
Robert Kemp Adair was an American physicist. He latterly held the position of Sterling Professor Emeritus of physics at Yale University. Biography Adair served in the European theatre after volunteering for World War II and was awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze star. After achieving a doctorate in experimental nuclear physics at the University of Wisconsin he worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island. In 1959 he joined the faculty at Yale, serving as chair of the Department of Physics and director of the Division of Physical Sciences. He was elected to the National Academy of S...
Go to Profile#2411
James C. Keck
#68380
Overall Influence
1924 - 2010 (86 years)
James Collyer Keck was an American physicist and engineer recognized for his work on the Manhattan Project and for developing new methods for combustion engine modeling and high temperature flows. Keck was the Ford Professor of Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the National Academy of Engineering .
Go to Profile#2412
Erich Vogt
#59731
Overall Influence
1929 - 2014 (85 years)
Erich Wolfgang Vogt, was a Canadian physicist. Born into a pacifist Mennonite family in Steinbach, Manitoba Vogt received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1951 and a Master of Science degree in 1952 from the University of Manitoba. He received a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1955 under the direction of Eugene Wigner.
Go to Profile#2413
Melanie Becker
#58376
Overall Influence
1966 - 2020 (54 years)
Melanie Becker was a physicist known for her research into string theory. She was a tenured professor of physics at Texas A&M University upon her death in 2020. Early life and Education Melanie Becker was originally from Germany but grew up in Malaga, Spain where She graduated from Instituto Nacional de Enseñanza Mixto de Torremolinos in 1987. She received her Diplom in physics focusing on String Theory from the University of Bonn in 1991 while working with Werner Nahm. She simultaneously worked with Luis Álvarez-Gaumé at the particle accelerator at CERN when earning her Diplom. Following her ...
Go to Profile#2414
Yolanda Shea
#9865
Overall Influence
Yolanda Shea is a Research Physical Scientist at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. In 2019, Shea earned a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for her work in pioneering shortwave spectral measurements.
Go to Profile#2415
Gunnar Ingelman
#77515
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Björn Gunnar Ingelman , is a Swedish physicist working as a professor of theoretical particle physics at Uppsala University, who is also the secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physics. Life Ingelman received his PhD in theoretical physics in 1982 at Lund University. His supervisors were Bo Andersson and Gösta Gustafson. His opponent was Frank Close. Ingelman created and leads the Theoretical High Energy Physics group at Uppsala University. Gunnar Ingelman is also a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences at physics class.
Go to Profile#2416
Richard Crandall
#20684
Overall Influence
1947 - 2012 (65 years)
Richard E. Crandall was an American physicist and computer scientist who made contributions to computational number theory. Background Crandall was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and spent two years at Caltech before transferring to Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where he graduated in physics and wrote his undergraduate thesis on randomness. He earned his Ph.D in theoretical physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#2417
Peter Zimmerman
#56438
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Peter D. Zimmerman was an American nuclear physicist, arms control expert, and former chief scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. At his death, he was emeritus professor of science and security at King's College London. He retired from the college in August 2008 and was named professor emeritus on 1 September of the same year.
Go to Profile#2418
John Reppy
#66307
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
John David Reppy is a physicist and the John L. Wetherill Professor of Physics Emeritus at Cornell University. He studies the quantum properties of superfluids such as helium. Reppy is also a notable rock climber of long standing. He established a number of widely known climbing routes particularly in the northeastern United States.
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Carlo Cercignani
#42744
Overall Influence
1939 - 2010 (71 years)
Carlo Cercignani was an Italian mathematician known for his work on the kinetic theory of gases. His contributions to the study of Boltzmann's equation include the proof of the H-theorem for polyatomic gases. The Cercignani conjecture is named after him.
Go to Profile#2420
Amikam Aharoni
#27168
Overall Influence
1929 - 2002 (73 years)
Amikam Aharoni was an Israeli physicist who has made numerous contributions to the fields of magnetism. Education Born in Safed, Aharoni received a M.A. in physics from Hebrew University in 1953 and a Ph.D. in physics from the Weizmann Institute in 1957. His thesis was on magnetoresistive memory elements. His postdoc work with John Bardeen took him to the University of Illinois during 1958-1959. In 1971-1972, 1977–1978, and 1992 he was a senior research fellow in the Department of Metallurgy at the University of Oxford. In 1972 he was promoted to professor in the Department of Electronics at ...
Go to Profile#2421
Erich P. Ippen
#66124
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Erich P. Ippen is a principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He holds appointments as the Elihu Thomson Professor of Electrical Engineering Emeritus and Professor of Physics Emeritus. He is one of the leaders of RLE’s Optics and Quantum Electronics Group.
Go to Profile#2422
Robert Fischell
#18655
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Robert Fischell is a physicist, prolific inventor, and holder of more than 200 U.S. and foreign medical patents. His inventions have led to the creation of several biotechnology companies. He worked at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory full-time for 25 years and part-time for an additional 13 years. He contributed to APL's satellite navigation work; he later developed a rechargeable implantable pacemaker that could be programmed with radiowaves, . He and his team at Hopkins also helped miniaturize the implantable cardiac defibrillator. Mr. Fischell went on to invent the ...
Go to Profile#2423
Kurt Lehovec
#13013
Overall Influence
1918 - 2012 (94 years)
Kurt Lehovec was one of the pioneers of the integrated circuit. While also pioneering the photo-voltaic effect, light-emitting diodes and lithium batteries, he innovated the concept of p-n junction isolation used in every circuit element with a guard ring: a reverse-biased p-n junction surrounding the planar periphery of that element. This patent was assigned to Sprague Electric.
Go to Profile#2424
Tim Hunter
#58561
Overall Influence
Timothy B. Hunter, better known as Tim Hunter, is an American radiologist and amateur astronomer, who was the president of the International Dark-Sky Association. Education and profession Hunter received his M.D. degree from Northwestern University in 1968. He teaches as a professor of radiology and orthopaedic surgery at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. He also earned a B.S. degree in mathematics from the University of Arizona in 1980 and M.S. in astronomy from Swinburne University of Technology in 2006.
Go to Profile#2425
Paul Callaghan
#38893
Overall Influence
1947 - 2012 (65 years)
Sir Paul Terence Callaghan was a New Zealand physicist who, as the founding director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology at Victoria University of Wellington, held the position of Alan MacDiarmid Professor of Physical Sciences and was President of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance.
Go to Profile#2426
Ruggero Santilli
#35485
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Ruggero Maria Santilli is an Italo-American nuclear physicist. Mainstream scientists dismiss his theories as fringe science. Biography Ruggero Maria Santilli was born September 8, 1935 In September 1981, Santilli established a one-man organization, the Institute for Basic Research in Boston; he told a reporter from St. Petersburg Times in 2007 that he left Harvard because scientists there viewed his work as "heresy".
Go to Profile#2427
Xiaoliang Qi
#74372
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (41 years)
Xiaoliang Qi is a Chinese physicist and professor at Stanford University who studies quantum entanglement, quantum gravity, quantum chaos, and topological phenomena in condensed matter. He earned his B.S. in 2003 and Ph.D. in 2007 from Tsinghua University.
Go to Profile#2428
George B. Arfken
#39463
Overall Influence
1922 - 2020 (98 years)
George Brown Arfken was an American theoretical physicist and the author of several mathematical physics texts. He was a physics professor at Miami University from 1952 to 1983 and the chair of the Miami University physics department 1956–1972. He was an emeritus professor at Miami University. Arfken was also an authority on Canadian philately.
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Tsutomu Seki
#46651
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Tsutomu Seki is a Japanese amateur astronomer and discoverer of minor planets and comets, born in Kōchi, Japan. Career Tsutomu Seki is the Director of the Geisei Observatory in Kōchi, and in charge of the Comet Section of the Oriental Astronomical Association. Between 1961 and 1970, he had visually discovered six comets, including C/1965 S1 , the well known great comet of 1965.
Go to Profile#2430
Michael R. Wasielewski
#60900
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Michael Roman Wasielewski is an American physical chemist. He is currently the Clare Hamilton Hall Professor of Chemistry, director of the Center for Molecular Quantum Transduction , and Executive Director of the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern University.
Go to Profile#2431
Martin Bodo Plenio
#45526
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Martin Bodo Plenio is a German physicist, Alexander von Humboldt Professor, and Director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Ulm University. He is notable for his work on entanglement theory, quantum technology, hyperpolarisation methods and quantum biology.
Go to Profile#2432
Chris J. L. Doran
#19955
Overall Influence
Chris J. L. Doran is a physicist, Director of Studies in Natural Sciences for Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He founded Geomerics, and is its Chief Operating Officer. Doran obtained his Ph.D. in 1994 on the topic of Geometric Algebra and its Application to Mathematical Physics. He was an EPSRC Advanced Fellow from 1999 to 2004. In 2004, he became Enterprise Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#2433
Lucio Russo
#20727
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Lucio Russo is an Italian physicist, mathematician and historian of science. Born in Venice, he teaches at the Mathematics Department of the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Among his main areas of interest are Gibbs measure of the Ising model, percolation theory, and finite Bernoulli schemes, within which he proved an approximate version of the classical Kolmogorov's zero–one law.
Go to Profile#2434
William R. Stoeger
#56093
Overall Influence
1943 - 2014 (71 years)
William R. Stoeger SJ was an American astronomer and theologian. Biography William Stoeger was born on October 5, 1943, at Torrance Memorial Hospital in Torrance, California. His father was named Richard Q. Stoeger. Stoeger and his brother, John D. were ordained together. William went to high school at Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance, California and received a bachelor's degree in philosophy at Spring Hill College in Mobile Alabama and a master's in physics at UCLA.
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Marco Bersanelli
#81680
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Marco Rinaldo Fedele Bersanelli is an Italian astrophysicist and academic, professor of astronomy at the University of Milan. Biography In 1986 he graduated in physics at the University of Milan with professor Giorgio Sironi as supervisor. Later he was Visiting Scholar at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley until 1990 and then Visiting Researcher until 1995. During this period he collaborated with future Nobel laureate George Smoot. Here Marco has been one of the members of the COBRAS/SAMBA Phase A study team, which has been renamed Max Planck Surve...
Go to Profile#2436
Tom Dame
#64783
Overall Influence
Thomas M. Dame is Director of the Radio Telescope Data Center at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian, a Senior Radio Astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and a Lecturer on Astronomy at Harvard University. He is best known for mapping the Milky Way galaxy in Carbon Monoxide and for the discovery of both the Far 3 kpc Arm and the Outer Scutum–Centaurus Arm of the Milky Way.
Go to Profile#2437
Detlev Buchholz
#54492
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Detlev Buchholz is a German theoretical physicist. He investigates quantum field theory, especially in the axiomatic framework of algebraic quantum field theory. Biography Buchholz studied physics in Hannover and Hamburg where he acquired his Diplom in 1968. After graduation, he continued his studies in Physics in Hamburg. In 1970–1971 he was at the University of Pennsylvania. After receiving his PhD in 1973 under Rudolf Haag he worked at the University of Hamburg and was in 1974–1975 at CERN. From 1975 to 1978 he worked as a research assistant in Hamburg, where he got his habilitation in 1977.
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Harold L. Grubin
#81763
Overall Influence
#2439
William W. Havens Jr.
#58667
Overall Influence
1920 - 2004 (84 years)
William Westerfield Havens Jr. was an American physicist. A graduate of City College of New York and Columbia University, Havens worked with James Rainwater on the construction of a neutron spectrometer, which became the subject of his doctoral thesis. During World War II he worked on the Manhattan Project, the effort to create the first atomic bombs, in its Substitute Alloy Materials Laboratories.
Go to Profile#2440
Wolfgang P. Schleich
#31528
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Wolfgang P. Schleich is professor of theoretical physics and director of the quantum physics department at the University of Ulm. Education, work and career From 1980 to 1984, Wolfgang Schleich performed work on his diploma thesis and his Ph.D. with Marlan O. Scully at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, with an intermediate research visit at the Institute of Modern Optics, Albuquerque, from 1982 to 1983. After completion of his Ph.D., he performed post-doctorate research with John Archibald Wheeler at the Center for Theoretical Physics in Austin, Texas, USA.
Go to Profile#2441
Lucien LaCoste
#48312
Overall Influence
1908 - 1995 (87 years)
Lucien LaCoste was a physicist and metrologist. He coinvented the modern gravimeter and invented the zero-length spring and vehicle-mounted gravimeters. He was also co-founder of LaCoste Romberg, a prominent company selling gravimetric instruments.
Go to Profile#2442
Anton Peterlin
#67707
Overall Influence
1908 - 1993 (85 years)
Anton Peterlin was a Slovenian physicist. Life and career Peterlin was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia. After receiving his D. Sc. in physics from Humboldt University of Berlin in Berlin, Germany in 1938, Peterlin accepted in 1939 the chair as a professor of physics at the University of Ljubljana, where he remained for 22 years. Besides his pedagogical duties, he accepted in 1947 the position of the founding director of the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana. In 1960, Peterlin left his home country. In order to be able to continue his theoretical research on macromolecules he accepted the posit...
Go to Profile#2443
Stephen Quake
#75731
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Stephen Ronald Quake is an American physicist, inventor, and entrepreneur. Education and Career Quake earned his B.S. in physics and M.S. in mathematics from Stanford in 1991 and his D.Phil. in theoretical physics from Oxford University in 1994 as a Marshall Scholar. His thesis research was in statistical mechanics and the effects of knots on polymers. He did his postdoctoral work at Stanford in single-molecule biophysics with Steven Chu. Quake joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology at the age of 26, where he rose through the ranks and was ultimately appointed the Thomas and Doris Everhart Professor of Applied Physics and Physics.
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Peter Nordlander
#78968
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Peter J. Nordlander is a Swedish physicist. Career Nordlander completed a doctorate in theoretical physics at Chalmers University of Technology. Following postdoctoral research at Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Bell Labs, and Rutgers University, Nordlander began teaching at Rice University in 1989. He works within the Laboratory for Nanophotonics at Rice, and serves as the Wiess Chair and Professor of Physics and Astronomy.
Go to Profile#2445
Sergei Kurdyumov
#24273
Overall Influence
1928 - 2004 (76 years)
Sergey Pavlovich Kurdyumov was a specialist in mathematical physics, mathematical modeling, plasma physics, complexity studies and synergetics from Moscow, Russia. Kurdyumov graduated from the Moscow State University in 1957. Since 1953 he worked in the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics. He was also the Head of the Applied Mathematics Department in the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Since 1984 he was a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#2446
Evelyn Hu
#18152
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Evelyn L. Hu is the Tarr-Coyne Professor of Applied Physics and of Electrical Engineering at Harvard University. Hu has made major contributions to nanotechnology by designing and creating complex nanostructures. Her work has focused on nanoscale devices made from compound semiconductors and on novel devices made by integrating various materials, both organic and inorganic. She has also created nanophotonic structures that might someday facilitate quantum computing.
Go to Profile#2447
Axel Scherer
#27129
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Axel Scherer is the Bernard Neches Professor of Electrical Engineering, Physics, and Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He is also a distinguished visiting professor at Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. He is known for fabricating the world's first semiconducting vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser at Bell Labs. In 2006, Scherer was named the director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute. He graduated from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in 1985. At Caltech he teaches a very popular freshman lab course on semiconductor device fabrica...
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David Delpy
#43351
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
David Thomas Delpy, , is a British bioengineer, and Hamamatsu Professor of Medical Photonics, at University College London. Education Delpy was educated at Heaton Grammar School in Newcastle. He went on to study at Brunel University, graduating with a first class Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Physics. He was awarded a Doctor of Science degree by University College London in Medical physics.
Go to Profile#2449
Ronald E. Mickens
#59278
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Ronald Elbert Mickens is an American physicist and mathematician who is the Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Physics at Clark Atlanta University. His research focuses on nonlinear dynamics and mathematical modeling, including modeling epidemiology. He also has an interest in the history of science and has written on the history of black scientists. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and served as the historian of the National Society of Black Physicists. He has made significant contributions to the theory of nonlinear oscillations and numerical analysis.
Go to Profile#2450
Louis Rosen
#56237
Overall Influence
1918 - 2009 (91 years)
Louis Rosen was a nuclear physicist, the "father" of the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center accelerator . Dr. Rosen held a bachelor's degree and a master's degree from the University of Alabama and a Doctorate in Physics from Pennsylvania State University. He had never taken a course in Nuclear Physics before arriving in Los Alamos.
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