Search People Result | Academic Influence

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.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Physics,

#2451

Harry Swinney

#32662

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Harry L. Swinney is an American physicist noted for his contributions to the field of nonlinear dynamics. Personal life Harry Leonard Swinney was born in Opelousas, Louisiana, on April 10, 1939. His parents were Leonard R. Swinney and Ethel Bertheaud Swinney. In 1967 Harry Swinney married Gloria T. Luyas, and in 1978 they had a son, Brent Luyas Swinney. Brent died of cancer in 1995 and Gloria died of cancer in 1997. Harry Swinney married Lizabeth Kelley on August 12, 2000.

#2452

Edmund Bertschinger

#74142

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Edmund Bertschinger is an American theoretical astrophysicist and cosmologist and professor of physics at MIT. Career Bertschinger received his bachelor's degree in physics from Caltech in 1979, and his Ph.D. degree in astrophysical science from Princeton University in 1984. He held postdoctoral positions at the University of Virginia and UC Berkeley, then went to MIT as an assistant professor of physics in 1986 becoming a full professor in 1996. He served as head of the physics department from 2007 to 2013 and currently serves as the Institute Community and Equity Officer. He has served on various committees promoting women and minorities in astronomy and physics.

#2453

Richard Wolfson

#64928

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Richard "Rich" Wolfson is the Benjamin F. Wissler professor of Physics at Middlebury College since 1976. He is the author of numerous articles and books. Wolfson has taught several courses at the Teaching Company.

#2454

Ard Louis

#24067

Overall Influence

Ard A. Louis is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford, where he leads an interdisciplinary research group that investigates scientific problems on the border between disciplines such as chemistry, physics, and biology, and is also director of graduate studies in theoretical physics.

#2455

Bjarne Tromborg

#64736

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Bjarne Tromborg is a Danish physicist, best known for his work in particle physics and photonics. Biography Tromborg was born in Give, Denmark. In 1968, he received the M.Sc. degree in physics and mathematics from the Niels Bohr Institute, in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was a university researcher studying high-energy particle physics from 1968 to 1978. In 1979, he joined the research laboratory of the Danish Teleadministrations in Copenhagen. He was Head of Optical Communications Department at Tele Danmark Research, Horsholm, Denmark from 1987 to 1995.

#2456

Joseph Callaway

#82303

Overall Influence

#2457

Alexander Animalu

Alexander Animalu

#16206

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Alexander Obiefoka Enukora Animalu is a Nigerian academic, who is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He holds a BSc , M.A. and PhD , FAS, NNOM, IOM A pioneer of solar energy in Nigeria, Animalu is a physicist of international repute, member of the highest advisory body on Science and Technology to the Nigerian government, Honorary Presidential Advisory Council on Science and Technology and former Director National Mathematical Centre, Abuja.

#2458

David Field

#25025

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

David Field is an astrophysicist and author, living in Århus, Denmark. Education The son of E.J. and Dereen, Field studied Chemistry at Newcastle University, UK, followed by a PhD at the University of Cambridge. He was later awarded the degree of Doctor of Science by the University of Cambridge. Previously Reader in Physical Chemistry at the University of Bristol, he now researches astrophysics and experimental physics as a professor at the University of Aarhus. He has published over 175 papers in this subject. He is on the editorial board of Astrobiology, and played a key role in the discov...

#2459

Geoffrey Marcy

#68446

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Geoffrey William Marcy is an American astronomer. He was an early influence in the field of exoplanet detection, discovery, and characterization. Marcy was a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and an adjunct professor of physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University. Marcy and his research teams discovered many extrasolar planets, including 70 out of the first 100 known exoplanets and also the first planetary system around a Sun-like star, Upsilon Andromedae. Marcy was a co-investigator on the NASA Kepler mission. His collaborators have included R. Paul Butler, Debra Fischer and Steven S.

#2460

Patrick Michel

#40158

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Patrick Michel is a French planetary scientist, Senior Researcher at CNRS , leader of the team TOP of the CNRS and Université Côte d'Azur Lagrange Laboratory at the Côte d'Azur Observatory in Nice , and also a Global Fellow of the University of Tokyo.

#2461

Peter Mazur

#30643

Overall Influence

1922 - 2001 (79 years)

Peter Mazur was an Austrian-born, Dutch physicist and one of the founders of the field of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. He is the father of Harvard University physics professor Eric Mazur. Family Peter Mazur was born on 11 December 1922 in Vienna, Austria. His father, Karl Georg Mazur, a businessman, and mother, Anna Zula Lecker, frequently moved during Mazur's youth. In 1931 the family left for Berlin, where Mazur attended the Französisches Gymnasium. Two years later the family left Germany to escape the growing threat of National Socialism. After spending one year in Switzerland they moved to Paris where Mazur attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly.

#2462

Stig Stenholm

#41301

Overall Influence

1939 - 2017 (78 years)

Stig Torsten Stenholm was a theoretical physicist who formerly held an Academy of Finland professorship. Education and career Stenholm obtained an engineering degree at the Helsinki University of Technology , and a master of science degree in mathematics at the University of Helsinki, both in 1964. He then earned his Dr. phil. at Oxford in 1967 on the topic of quantum liquids under supervision of Dirk ter Haar.

#2463

Jane Rigby

#64851

Overall Influence

Jane Rebecca Rigby is an American astrophysicist who works at the Goddard Space Flight Center and is Senior Project Scientist at the James Webb Space Telescope. She was selected one of Nature's 10 Ones to Watch in 2021 and Shape 2022.

#2464

Eleftherios Economou

Eleftherios Economou

#30530

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Eleftherios Ν. Economou is a Greek theoretical physicist and professor emeritus at the department of physics of the University of Crete. He has contributed to various areas of theoretical condensed matter physics, starting with the study of surface plasmons during his thesis in 1969.

#2465

Martin Lüscher

#57330

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Martin Lüscher is a Swiss theoretical physicist, who works primarily on numerical quantum chromodynamics . Lüscher studied at the University of Bern and the University of Hamburg, where he earned his doctorate. He worked since the 1979s at DESY in Hamburg, was a professor for theoretical physics in Bern from 1980 to 1983 and later in Hamburg. Since 1999 he is at CERN.

#2466

M. Brian Maple

#46889

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Merrill Brian Maple is an American physicist. He is a distinguished professor of physics and holds the Bernd T. Matthias Chair in the physics department at the University of California, San Diego, and conducts research at the university's Center for Advanced Nanoscience. He has also served as the director of UCSD's Institute for Pure and Applied Physical Sciences and its Center for Interface and Materials Science . His primary research interest is condensed matter physics, involving phenomena like magnetism and superconductivity. He has authored or co-authored more than 900 scientific public...

#2467

Margaret G. Kivelson

Margaret G. Kivelson

#45792

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

Margaret Galland Kivelson is an American space physicist, planetary scientist, and distinguished professor emerita of space physics at the University of California, Los Angeles. From 2010 to the present, concurrent with her appointment at UCLA, Kivelson has been a research scientist and scholar at the University of Michigan. Her primary research interests include the magnetospheres of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn.

#2468

Raimond Castaing

Raimond Castaing

#41109

Overall Influence

1921 - 1998 (77 years)

Raimond Bernard René Castaing , also spelt as Raymond Castaing, was a French solid state physicist and inventor of various materials characterization methods. He was the founder of the French school of microanalysis and is referred to as the father of microanalysis.

#2469

Mihai Gavrilă

#45018

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

Mihai Gavrilă is a Romanian quantum physicist and a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy since 1974. He made fundamental contributions to the quantum theories of electromagnetic interactions with atoms.

#2470

Robert R. Caldwell

#62768

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Robert R. Caldwell is an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. His research interests include cosmology and gravitation. He is known primarily for his work on theories of cosmic acceleration, in particular dark energy, quintessence, and the Big Rip scenario.

#2471

Wulfram Gerstner

#40879

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Wulfram Gerstner is a German and Swiss computational neuroscientist. His research focuses on neural spiking patterns in neural networks, and their connection to learning, spatial representation and navigation. Since 2006 Gerstner has been a full professor of Computer Science and Life Sciences at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne , where he also serves as a Director of the Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience.

#2472

Lee Samuel Finn

#70147

Overall Influence

Lee Samuel Finn is an American astrophysicist, former professor of physics, astronomy and astrophysics and former director of the Center for Gravitational Wave Physics at Pennsylvania State University. His research interests are in gravitational wave astronomy.

#2473

Xi Yin

#79791

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (40 years)

Xi Yin is a Chinese-American theoretical physicist. Biography Yin was accepted to University of Science and Technology of China in 1996, at the age of 12, and completed the 5-year bachelor program in 2001. He gained a PhD at Harvard University in 2006, under the supervision of Andrew Strominger. He was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, and a Visiting Member at the Institute for Advanced Study. He joined the Harvard faculty in 2008, and is now a Professor of Physics.

#2474

George Isaak

#75072

Overall Influence

1933 - 2005 (72 years)

George Richard Isaak was a Polish Australian physicist, an important figure in the development of helio- and asteroseismology. Isaak was born in Poland on 7 March 1933. His family moved to Germany after the Second World War and to Australia in 1950. Isaak studied at the University of Melbourne, achieving his Bachelor of Science in 1955 and Master of Science in 1958. A spell in industry followed, in which Isaak worked for ICI in Australia 1959-1960 during which time he patented a spectrophotometer for very high-resolution optical spectroscopy, using the resonant scattering of light by atoms....

#2475

Barry Ninham

#73342

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Barry William Ninham AO DSc FAA is an Australian physicist who has received many awards for his research. Barry Ninham attended Guildford Grammar School in Perth from 1945 to 1952. He then studied at University of Western Australia where he received an M.Sc. in theoretical physics in 1957. In 1962, he received a Ph.D. in mathematical physics from University of Maryland, doing research in statistical mechanics with Elliott W. Montroll as thesis advisor.

#2476

David Stanley Evans

#41139

Overall Influence

1916 - 2004 (88 years)

David Stanley Evans was a British astronomer, noted for his use of lunar occultations to measure stellar angular diameters during the 1950s. Early life and education Evans was born in Cardiff, Wales on 28 January 1916. He was first educated at the Cardiff High School for Boys. He obtained a First Class in the Mathematics Tripos Part II in 1936 and a Distinction in Part III in 1937 from King's College, Cambridge and became a Ph.D. student at Cambridge Observatory in 1937, where he was a student of Sir Arthur Eddington. His Ph.D. degree was awarded in 1941 for a dissertation on “The Formation o...

#2477

Norden E. Huang

#22222

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Norden Eh Huang is a Taiwanese-American Fluid dynamist known for the Hilbert–Huang transform. Huang was born in Hubei, China in 1937. He attended National Hsinchu Senior High School in Taiwan and graduated from National Taiwan University in 1960 before earning a doctorate in fluid mechanics and mathematics from Johns Hopkins University in 1967. He completed postdoctoral research at the University of Washington, then held adjunct professorships at the University of Delaware and University of North Carolina while working for NASA. Huang returned to Taiwan and began teaching at National Central University in 2006, as K.

#2478

Hellmut Fritzsche

#55229

Overall Influence

1927 - 2018 (91 years)

Hellmut Fritzsche was an American physicist. He came to the US on a one-year Smith-Mundt fellowship in 1950/51. After receiving his Diplom in physics from the University of Göttingen in 1952 he returned to the US. He earned his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1954 where in the same year he became Instructor and in 1955 Assistant Professor. In 1957 he moved to the University of Chicago, where in 1963 he became a full professor and in 1996 retired. During his career at the University of Chicago he was director of its Materials Research laboratory 1973–77 and chairman of its Physics department 1977–86.

#2479

Neal Francis Lane

Neal Francis Lane

#33297

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Cornelius Francis "Neal" Lane , is an American physicist and senior fellow in science and technology policy at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and Malcolm Gillis University Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy Emeritus at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

#2480

Indumathi D.

#21635

Overall Influence

Indumathi D. is an Indian particle physicist and a professor at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences , Chennai, India. She has been an active member of the Indian Neutrino Observatory project since its inception.

#2481

David Crighton

#28734

Overall Influence

1942 - 2000 (58 years)

David George Crighton, FRS was a British mathematician and physicist. Life Crighton was born in Llandudno, North Wales, where his mother, Violet Grace Garrison, had been sent because of the bombing of London during the Second World War. He did not become interested in mathematics until his last two years at Watford Grammar School for Boys. He entered St John's College, Cambridge, in 1961 and started lecturing at Woolwich Polytechnic in 1964, having completed only his bachelor's degree.

#2482

Ping Sheng

#82819

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

#2483

A. Douglas Stone

#50235

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

A. Douglas Stone is the Carl Morse Professor of Applied Physics and Physics at Yale University. He was the 2014 recipient of the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science for his book Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian.

#2484

Juan Pablo Paz

#39375

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Juan Pablo Paz is an Argentinian physicist that works in the field of quantum computing. A research scientist currently working at the University of Buenos Aires, he has also worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States.

#2485

Tateos Agekian

#47736

Overall Influence

1913 - 2006 (93 years)

Tateos Artemjevich Agekian was a Soviet astrophysicist of Armenian descent, and one of the pioneers of Russian and world Stellar dynamics. Has found two evolutionary sequences of stellar systems: nearly spherical and strongly flattened. Suggested essentially new method to investigate the structure and kinematics of the Milky Way Galaxy. Found a new estimate for the dissipation rate in stellar clusters. Gave an exhaustive analysis of the photogravitational interaction between stars and gas clouds. A planet was named in honor of Tateos Artemjevich.

#2486

Jenny Greene

#77475

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Jenny Greene is an Astrophysicist and Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University. She is notable for her work on supermassive black holes and the galaxies in which they reside. Her work also involves a partnership with the Princeton Gravity Initiative and as co-founder and academic advisor to the Prison Teaching Initiative at Princeton University.

#2487

Catherine Cesarsky

Catherine Cesarsky

#29751

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Catherine Jeanne Cesarsky is an Argentine and French astronomer, known for her successful research activities in several central areas of modern astrophysics. She was formerly president of the International Astronomical Union and the director general of the European Southern Observatory . In 2017 she became Chairman of the Board of the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope project.

#2488

Roger Balian

#36847

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Roger Balian is a French-Armenian physicist who has worked on quantum field theory, quantum thermodynamics, and theory of measurement. Balian is a member of French Académie des sciences . His important work includes the Balian-Low theorem. He teaches statistical physics at the École Polytechnique.

#2489

Hans-Joachim Queisser

#45339

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Hans-Joachim Queisser is a solid-state physicist. He is best known for co-authoring the 1961 work on solar cells that detailed what is today known as the Shockley–Queisser limit, which is now considered the key contribution in this field.

#2490

Lawrence C. Biedenharn

#83046

Overall Influence

#2491

Daniel Lidar

#27353

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Daniel Amihud Lidar is the holder of the Viterbi Professorship of Engineering at the University of Southern California, where he is a professor of electrical engineering, chemistry, physics and astronomy. He is the director and co-founder of the USC Center for Quantum Information Science & Technology as well as scientific director of the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center, notable for his research on control of quantum systems and quantum information processing.

#2492

Ivan K. Schuller

#71899

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Ivan K. Schuller is an American condensed matter experimental physicist. He is best known for his work on superlattices. His interests are focused on thin films, nanostructures, novel materials, magnetism, and superconductivity.

#2493

Miguel José Yacamán

Miguel José Yacamán

#45042

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Miguel José Yacamán is a Mexican physicist who has made contributions to the fields of materials science, nanotechnology, and physics. His research has focused on the correlation of structure and properties in nanomaterials and he has developed electron microscopy methods to study nanoparticles and 2-D materials. The present focuses of his work are to develop the nanoscale equivalent of high entropy alloys and new catalysts to produce cleaner fuels.

#2494

Wolfgang Demtröder

#61898

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Wolfgang Demtröder is a German physicist and spectroscopist. He is the author of several textbooks on laser spectroscopy and a series of four textbooks on experimental physics. His books entitled Laserspektroskopie and Laser Spectroscopy are considered classics in the field. From 1970 til 1999, he was ordinary professor at Kaiserslautern University of Technology. Awarded the Max Born Prize in 1994.

#2495

Tony Heinz

#73256

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Tony Frederick Heinz is an American physicist. Biography Heinz studied at Stanford University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1978. He received his doctorate in 1982 at the University of California, Berkeley, in physics. From 1983 to 1995 he was at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center of IBM. He was a professor at Columbia University and is now a professor at Stanford University. He served as president of The Optical Society in 2021.

#2496

Ľubor Kresák

#72809

Overall Influence

1927 - 1994 (67 years)

Ľubor Kresák was a Slovak astronomer. He discovered two comets: the periodic comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak and the non-periodic C/1954 M2 . He also suggested in 1978 that the Tunguska event was a fragment of the periodic comet Encke.

#2497

Jaw-Shen Tsai

#23803

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Jaw-Shen Tsai is a Taiwanese physicist. He is a professor at the Tokyo University of Science and a team leader of the Superconducting Quantum Simulation Research Team at the Center for Emergent Matter Science within RIKEN. He has contributed to the area of condensed matter physics in both its fundamental physical aspects and its technological applications. He has recently been working on experiments connected to quantum coherence in Josephson systems. In February 2014, he retired from NEC Corporation, after 31 years of employment. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society as well as ...

#2498

Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond

Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond

#33703

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond is a physicist and essayist. Biography After high school in Cannes, Lévy-Leblond studied mathematics at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly , then entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1958. A member of the Union of Communist Students from 1956, then of the Communist Party, he left in 1968 to become one of the leaders of the movement of radical political criticism of science . After a doctorate , then a doctorate in physical sciences at the University of Orsay in 1965, he was successively research fellow at the CNRS, lecturer at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, profe...

#2499

Jan Korringa

#61478

Overall Influence

1915 - 2015 (100 years)

Jan Korringa was a Dutch American theoretical physicist, specializing in theoretical condensed matter physics. He also contributed to the KKR Method. Education and career Korringa received his undergraduate degree from the Delft University of Technology. In 1937, Korringa went to Leiden University, Netherlands, to pursue graduate studies. After the closure of Leiden University, Korringa returned to Delft University of Technology. In 1942, he gave a Doctor of Philosophy from Delft University of Technology and published his thesis, Onderzoekingen op het gebied algebraïsche optiek . In 1946, Korringa became an associate professor at the University of Leiden.

#2500

J. Craig Wheeler

#77183

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

John Craig Wheeler is an American astronomer. He is the Samuel T. and Fern Yanagisawa Regents Professor of Astronomy Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin. He is known for his theoretical work on supernovae. He is a past president of the American Astronomical Society, a Fellow of that society, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions