The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Physics,
#2501
Henri Bacry
#47470
Overall Influence
1928 - 2010 (82 years)
Henri Bacry was Professor Emeritus at the Université de la Méditerranée. Henri Bacry was assistant of physics at the Faculté des Sciences d'Alger and then Professor of mathematics at Lycée Bugeaud, before becoming, in 1969, Professor at the Faculté des Sciences de Luminy. He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1966-6 and a researcher at CERN. He is the founder in 1972 of the International Colloquium of Group Theoretical Methods in Physics. He has numerous publications on theoretical physics, problems of symmetry in various fields ranging from relativity ...
Go to Profile#2502
Miles Padgett
#80533
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Miles John Padgett is a Royal Society Research Professor of Optics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Glasgow. He has held the Kelvin Chair of Natural Philosophy since 2011 and served as Vice Principal for research at Glasgow from 2014 to 2020.
Go to Profile#2503
Gösta Ekspong
#78545
Overall Influence
1922 - 2017 (95 years)
Anders Gösta Ekspong was a Swedish physicist and former professor at Stockholm University. His main area of work was atomic physics. Ekspong defended his thesis for doctorate in 1955 at Uppsala University with a dissertation on Cosmic Radiation under supervision of Axel E. Lindh.
Go to Profile#2504
Hideo Ohno
#29924
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Hideo Ohno is a Japanese physicist. He is the 22nd president of Tohoku University, succeeding Susumu Satomi in April 2018. Biography Ohno received B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Tokyo in 1977, 1979 and 1982. He spent one year as a visiting graduate student at Cornell University in 1979. He was a lecturer at the School of Engineering at Hokkaido University from 1982 to 1983, and an associate professor from 1983 to 1994. He was a visiting scientist at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center from 1988 to 1990.
Go to Profile#2505
Christopher Conselice
#73145
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Christopher J. Conselice is an astrophysicist who is Professor of Extragalactic Astronomy at the University of Manchester. Background Conselice grew up in Neptune Beach, Florida and graduated from Stanton College Preparatory School. Conselice received his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Chicago in 1996 and his PhD in astronomy from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2001 where he was a student of John S. Gallagher. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Space Science Telescope Institute and later a National Science Foundation Fellow at the California Institute of Technology where he led the Palomar Observatory Wide-Field Infrared Survey .
Go to Profile#2506
B. Andrei Bernevig
#62858
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Bogdan Andrei Bernevig is a Romanian Quantum Condensed Matter Professor of Physics at Princeton University and the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017. Biography Andrei Bernevig took part in the Physics Olympiad in Bucharest from 1994 to 1997 as a teenager . He graduated from Stanford University and received his PhD from Stanford University under Shoucheng Zhang. As a postdoctoral fellow he came to the Center for Theoretical Physics at Princeton University, where he was appointed Assistant Professor in 2009 and Associate Professor in 2014.
Go to Profile#2507
Linn F. Mollenauer
#47906
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
Linn Frederick Mollenauer was an American physicist who worked on quantum optics, including the study of solitons in fiber optics. Mollenauer was born on 6 January 1937. He studied at Cornell University, receiving his doctorate in physics from Stanford University in 1965. He taught for seven years at Berkeley, before embarking on a research career at Bell Labs from 1972.
Go to Profile#2508
Hans Jürgen Herrmann
#83561
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
#2509
Paula Szkody
#71689
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Paula Szkody is a professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle. She served as president of the American Astronomical Society from 2020 to 2022. Early life and education Szkody was born on July 17, 1948, in Detroit, Michigan. She earned her B.A. degree in astrophysics at Michigan State University in 1970, and her Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Washington in 1975.
Go to Profile#2510
Larry Smarr
#16882
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Larry Lee Smarr is a physicist and leader in scientific computing, supercomputer applications, and Internet infrastructure from Missouri. He currently works at the University of California, San Diego. Smarr has been among the most important synthesizers and conductors of innovation, discovery, and commercialization of new technologies – including areas as disparate as the Web browser and personalized medicine. In his career, Smarr has made pioneering breakthroughs in research on black holes, spearheaded the use of supercomputers for academic research, and presided over some of the major innovations that created the modern Internet.
Go to Profile#2511
Anne-Christine Davis
#61055
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Anne-Christine Davis is a British theoretical physicist at the University of Cambridge. She was the first woman to be appointed a professor in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University. Her research mainly concerns cosmology, astrophysics and string theory.
Go to Profile#2512
Pierre Aigrain
#32536
Overall Influence
1924 - 2002 (78 years)
Pierre Aigrain was a French physicist and Secretary of Research in the French Academy of Sciences. Education The son of an engineer, Pierre Aigrain completed his secondary education in Metz before studying at naval school between 1942 and 1945. In 1945 he became a naval officer at just 21 years old and was sent to study in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. After which he became a Ship-of-the-line Lieutenant in Memphis. In 1946 he was accepted to the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh to study towards a master's degree. He then joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, where Professor F.M.
Go to Profile#2513
Nai-Chang Yeh
#33652
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Nai-Chang Yeh is a Taiwanese-American physicist specializing in experimental condensed matter physics. Early life and education She was born and grew up in Chiayi, Taiwan and received her B. Sc. from National Taiwan University in the capital Taipei City in 1983. She went to the US for graduate education and obtained her Ph.D. in physics in 1988 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#2514
Tsuneya Ando
#83703
Overall Influence
#2515
Lars Hultman
#83761
Overall Influence
#2516
Marcia J. Rieke
#69468
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Marcia Jean Rieke is an American astronomer. She is a Regents' Professor of Astronomy and associate department head at the University of Arizona. Rieke is the Principal Investigator on the near-infrared camera for the James Webb Space Telescope . She has also served as the deputy-Principal Investigator on the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer for the Hubble Space Telescope , and as the co-investigator for the multiband imaging photometer on the Spitzer Space Telescope, where she also acted as an outreach coordinator and a member of the Science Working Group. Rieke was also involved with several infrared ground-based observatories, including the MMT Observatory in Arizona.
Go to Profile#2517
Alenush Terian
#28740
Overall Influence
1920 - 2011 (91 years)
Ālenush Teriān was an Iranian-Armenian astronomer and physicist and is called 'Mother of Modern Iranian Astronomy'. Early life She was born on November 9, 1921, to an Armenian family in Tehran, Iran. Her father, Arto, was a stage director, poet and translator who had translated Shahnameh, from Persian to Armenian. Her mother, Varto Terian, was a stage actress and director.
Go to Profile#2518
Boyce McDaniel
#58986
Overall Influence
1917 - 2002 (85 years)
Boyce Dawkins McDaniel was an American nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and later directed the Cornell University Laboratory of Nuclear Studies . McDaniel was skilled in constructing "atom smashing" devices to study the fundamental structure of matter and helped to build the most powerful particle accelerators of his time. Together with his graduate student, he invented the pair spectrometer.
Go to Profile#2519
Alfred K. Seeger
#83802
Overall Influence
#2520
Frederick Reif
#51036
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Frederick Reif was an American physicist. He was an emeritus professor in physics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. Biography Reif was born in Vienna, Austria on April 24, 1927, to Gerschon and Klara Reif and grew up near the Prater. His father committed suicide after he was forced to close his practice and was not permitted to work. His family left Austria for Cuba after the Kristallnacht on the MS St. Louis and was forced to return to Europe, where his mother, his sister, and himself disembarked in France, living as refugees under German occupation in Loudun before relocating to Limoges.
Go to Profile#2521
Felix Mitelman
#83823
Overall Influence
#2522
Ruth Gregory
#45284
Overall Influence
Ruth Ann Watson Gregory is a British mathematician and physicist, currently Head of Department of Physics and Professor of Theoretical Physics at King's College London. Her fields of specialisation are general relativity and cosmology.
Go to Profile#2523
Murray S. Daw
#22267
Overall Influence
Murray S. Daw is an American physicist and Clemson University professor. He is best known for his work on the embedded atom model. Early life and education Daw graduated from the University of Florida in 1976 with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics. He undertook doctoral study in the subject at the California Institute of Technology, guided by advisers Darryl Smith and Tom McGill. Upon completing his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1981, Daw worked at the Sandia National Laboratories until 1994, when he began teaching at Clemson.
Go to Profile#2524
James R. Houck
#59483
Overall Influence
1940 - 2015 (75 years)
James Richard Houck was the Kenneth A. Wallace Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University. Houck pioneered infrared observational astronomy, designing detectors and spectrographs that were flown on sounding rockets in the 1960s, on airborne observatories in the 1970s, and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite in 1984 and the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2003. He also led development of Cornell's instrumentation for the Palomar Observatory Hale Telescope.
Go to Profile#2525
Vinod Krishan
#52339
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Vinod Krishan , is an Indian physicist, a Senior Professor and dean of sciences at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore. She is involved in teaching and research in Plasma Physics. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India and the 1991 recipient of the Vikram Sarabhai Award for Space Sciences.
Go to Profile#2526
Ernst Bamberg
#25885
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Ernst Bamberg is a German biophysicist and director emeritus of the Department of Biophysical Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics. Career Bamberg received his PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Basel in 1971, and a habilitation in biophysical chemistry from the University of Konstanz in 1976. He was a Heisenberg fellow from 1979 to 1983, when he became head of an independent working group at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt/Main. In 1988, he became an adjunct professor at Frankfurt University, which named him a full professor of biophysical chemistry in 1993, and professor emeritus in 2009.
Go to Profile#2527
Rachel Rosen
#44949
Overall Influence
Rachel A. Rosen is a physicist and Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research involves quantum field theory, cosmology, astrophysics and massive gravity. In particular, she has investigated the problem of the inconsistencies known as "ghosts," and how to formulate models of massive gravity that avoid them.
Go to Profile#2528
Kazuo Tsubota
#83998
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
#2529
Toyohiro Akiyama
#7683
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Toyohiro Akiyama is a retired Japanese TV journalist and professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design. In December 1990, he spent seven days aboard the Mir space station. He became the first person of Japanese nationality to fly in space, and his space mission was the second spaceflight to be commercially sponsored and funded. Akiyama was also the first civilian to use commercial space flight, and the first journalist to report from outer space.
Go to Profile#2530
Frank Tacke
#84059
Overall Influence
#2531
Thomas Maurice Rice
#77323
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Thomas Maurice Rice , known professionally as Maurice Rice, is an Irish theoretical physicist specializing in condensed matter physics. Life Rice is the younger brother of structural engineer Peter Rice. He grew up in 52 Castle Road, Dundalk in County Louth with his two siblings. Like his brother, he studied at the local Christian Brothers school, Coláiste Rís. Subsequently he studied physics as an undergraduate at University College Dublin and as a graduate student with Volker Heine at the University of Cambridge. In 1964, he moved to the US and spent two years as a post-doc with Walter Kohn at the University of California, San Diego.
Go to Profile#2532
Ernest A. Mcculloch
#84066
Overall Influence
#2533
David Layzer
#44885
Overall Influence
1925 - 2019 (94 years)
David Raymond Layzer was an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, and the Donald H. Menzel Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at Harvard University. He is known for his cosmological theory of the expansion of the universe, which postulates that its order and information are increasing despite the second law of thermodynamics. He is also known for being one of the most notable researchers who advocated for a Cold Big Bang theory. When he proposed this theory in 1966, he suggested it would solve Olbers' paradox, which holds that the night sky on Earth should be much brighter than it actually is. H...
Go to Profile#2534
Paul Wiegmann
#55720
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Paul B. Wiegmann is a Russian physicist. He is the Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Chicago, James Franck Institute and Enrico Fermi Institute. He specializes in theoretical condensed matter physics. He made pioneering contributions to the field of quantum integrable systems. He found exact solutions of O Non-linear Sigma Model, , Wess–Zumino–Witten model , Anderson impurity model and Kondo model.
Go to Profile#2535
Jerzy Plebański
#58828
Overall Influence
1928 - 2005 (77 years)
Jerzy Franciszek Plebański was a Polish theoretical physicist best known for his extensive research into general relativity and supergravity. Biography In 1954, Plebański received his Ph.D. under the direction of Wojciech Rubinowicz at the University of Warsaw. He then went to work at the newly founded Institute of Theoretical Physics of the University of Warsaw. A specialist in the field of general relativity and mathematical physics, his first book with co-author Leopold Infeld was on the problem of motion in general relativity. He was Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at ...
Go to Profile#2536
Ryszard Horodecki
#26394
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Ryszard Horodecki is a Polish physicist and a professor of University of Gdańsk. He contributed largely to the field of quantum informatics. In his most widely cited paper, 'Separability of Mixed States: Necessary and Sufficient Conditions' written together with his sons, Michał and Paweł, he proposed the idea currently known as the Peres-Horodecki criterion. With over 12,000 citations, he is considered to be one of the leading Polish physicists .
Go to Profile#2537
Martin Summerfield
#42421
Overall Influence
1916 - 1996 (80 years)
Martin Summerfield was an American physicist and rocket scientist, a co-founder of Aerojet, head of Princeton University propulsion and combustion laboratory. Life and career Summerfield received B.S. degree in physics from Brooklyn College. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at California Institute of Technology in 1937 and 1941, respectively. He was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1979.
Go to Profile#2538
Peter Barham
#32163
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Peter Barham is emeritus professor of physics at the University of Bristol. He was visiting professor of Molecular Gastronomy at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Early life Peter Barham was born in 1950. He received his BSc from the University of Warwick, and his MSc and PhD from the University of Bristol.
Go to Profile#2539
Xiao Cheng Zeng
#84128
Overall Influence
#2540
Daniele Amati
#65994
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Daniele Amati is an Italian theoretical physicist, specializing in particle physics. Education and career Amati received in 1952 from the University of Buenos Aires his Ph.D. in physics under Richard Gans with a thesis on ferroresonant circuits. In 1953–1954 Amati was a fellow at the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas in Rio de Janeiro, where he took several graduate courses, including one taught by Richard Feynman. From 1954 to 1959 Amati was an assistant at the University of Rome. Afterwards he was in the theory department of CERN and from 1973 to 1975 its director. Since 1986 he has be...
Go to Profile#2541
Yasuhiko Tabata
#84174
Overall Influence
#2542
Raymond Chiao
#72143
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Raymond Y. Chiao is an American physicist best known for his experimental work in quantum optics. He is currently an emeritus faculty member at the University of California, Merced physics department, where he is conducting research on gravitational radiation in collaboration with Prof. Jay Sharping.
Go to Profile#2543
Henry H. Barschall
#52265
Overall Influence
1915 - 1997 (82 years)
Henry Herman Barschall was a German-American physicist. Biography Barschall was born as Heinrich Hermann Barschall in Berlin, Germany; his father was a patent attorney who had received a Ph.D. in chemistry after studying with Nobel Laureates Emil Fischer and Fritz Haber. After beginning study in several universities in Germany, he emigrated to the United States in 1937 during the early Holocaust period; though raised as a Lutheran, he had some Jewish ancestry. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1940 under the direction of Rudolf Ladenburg; he also worked closely with John A. Wheeler.
Go to Profile#2544
Vladimir Lipunov
#84219
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Vladimir Mikhailovich Lipunov is a Soviet and Russian astrophysicist, Professor of the Moscow State University, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences , a member of the International Astronomical Union and the European Astronomical Society . He is also a science fiction writer under the pseudonym Vladimir Khlumov and a member of the Union of Russian Writers.
Go to Profile#2545
Ronald C. Davidson
#75793
Overall Influence
1941 - 2016 (75 years)
Ronald Crosby Davidson was a Canadian physicist, professor, and scientific administrator who worked in the United States. He served as the first director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center from 1978 to 1988, and as director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory from 1991 to 1996. He had been Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University since 1991.
Go to Profile#2546
Simon Lilly
#66390
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Simon John Lilly FRS is a professor in the Department of Physics at ETH Zürich. Education Lilly was educated at the University of Cambridge where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences in 1980. He went on to study at the University of Edinburgh where he was awarded a PhD in 1983 for research on the evolution of radio galaxies supervised by Malcolm Longair.
Go to Profile#2547
William B. Bonnor
#48147
Overall Influence
1920 - 2015 (95 years)
William Bowen Bonnor was a mathematician and gravitation physicist best known for his research into astrophysics, cosmology and general relativity. For most of his academic career he was a professor of mathematics at the University of London.
Go to Profile#2548
Stanisław Mrozowski
#65633
Overall Influence
1902 - 1999 (97 years)
Stanisław Wojciech Mrozowski was a Polish-born American physicist. He was a professor of physics at SUNY Buffalo from 1949 until 1972, after which he worked at Ball State University. He worked briefly on the Manhattan Project at Princeton University. He received the Kosciuszko Medal in 1991 and the Officer's Cross of the Polonia Restituta Cross in 1993.
Go to Profile#2549
Arthur Code
#75193
Overall Influence
1923 - 2009 (86 years)
Arthur Dodd Code was an astronomer who designed orbiting observatories. Code served as an electronics technician in the Navy during World War II. Arthur Code was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and developed an early interest in astronomy when he was young. After military service, Code received a master's degree and doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of Chicago advised by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. He spent the majority of his career at the University of Wisconsin, where he was also director of the Washburn Observatory. He had previously taught at the University of Virginia...
Go to Profile#2550
Costas Varotsos
#80363
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Costas Varotsos is a Greek physicist known from his contribution to the global climate-dynamics research and remote sensing. Work Varotsos pointed out the occurrence of major sudden stratospheric warming over Antarctica in September 2002, an event which resulted in both the smaller-sized ozone hole over Antarctica and its splitting into two holes.
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