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,
#2551
Anneila Sargent
#57759
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Professor Anneila Isabel Sargent FRSE DSc is a Scottish–American astronomer who specializes in star formation. Biography Sargent was brought up in Burntisland, Fife, and schooled at Burntisland Primary School and Kirkcaldy High School. She completed a BSc Honours degree in Physics at the University of Edinburgh in 1963, and then immigrated to the United States, first studying at the University of California, Berkeley, and then from 1967 the California Institute of Technology, where she was awarded her Ph.D in 1977. She is currently the Ira S. Bowen Professor of Astronomy, Emeritus at Caltech ...
Go to Profile#2552
John Clarke
#72230
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
John Clarke is a British physicist and a Professor of Experimental Physics at University of California at Berkeley. Clarke received BA, MA, and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Cambridge namely Christ's College, Cambridge and Darwin College, Cambridge in 1964, 1968, and 1968, respectively.
Go to Profile#2553
Klaus H. Ploog
#84299
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
#2554
Marcel Nicolet
#37442
Overall Influence
1912 - 1996 (84 years)
Marcel Nicolet was a Belgian physicist and meteorologist. Nicolet was born in , Belgium on February 26, 1912. He received a degree in physics in 1934 after writing a dissertation on the spectrum of O and B stars and his Ph.D. in astrophysics from University of Liège in 1937.
Go to Profile#2555
Jean-Bernard Zuber
#40739
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Jean-Bernard Zuber is a French theoretical physicist. Education Zuber studied at the École polytechnique from 1966 to 1968 and then as a CNRS researcher at the theoretical physics department of the Nuclear Research Center in Saclay. In 1974, he received his doctorate from Jean Zinn-Justin at the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay.
Go to Profile#2556
James T. Cushing
#56129
Overall Influence
1937 - 2002 (65 years)
James Thomas Cushing was an American theoretical physicist and philosopher of science. He was professor of physics as well as professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Life and career He studied physics in several universities in the US, obtaining his BSc from Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois in 1959, his MSc from Northwestern University in 1960 and his PhD, also in physics, from the University of Iowa in 1963. He then performed research at the University of Iowa, the Imperial College in London and the Argonne National Laboratory, after which he joined the University of Not...
Go to Profile#2557
Alfred K. Mann
#74405
Overall Influence
1920 - 2013 (93 years)
Alfred K. Mann was a particle physicist, known for his role in the discovery of fundamental properties of neutrinos. Education and career Born in New York, Mann earned all three of his degrees from the University of Virginia: BA in philosophy in 1942, MS in physics in 1946, and PhD in physics in 1947. During WW II, he participated in the Manhattan Project.
Go to Profile#2558
Peter Wriggers
#84362
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
#2559
John Rarity
#26982
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
John G. Rarity is professor of optical communication systems in the department of electrical and electronic engineering at the University of Bristol, a post he has held since 1 January 2003. He is an international expert on quantum optics, quantum cryptography and quantum communication using single photons and entanglement. Rarity is a member of the Quantum Computation and Information group and quantum photonics at the University of Bristol.
Go to Profile#2560
Helmut Rauch
#53972
Overall Influence
1939 - 2019 (80 years)
Helmut Rauch was an Austrian physicist. He was especially known for his pioneering experiments on neutron interference. Rauch studied Physics at Vienna University of Technology and worked at the there. He was also affiliated with the Forschungszentrum Jülich and the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble.
Go to Profile#2561
Madge Adam
#59403
Overall Influence
1912 - 2001 (89 years)
Madge Gertrude Adam was an English solar astronomer who was the first postgraduate student in solar physics at the University of Oxford observatory. Early life and education Adam was born the youngest of three children near Highbury, North London, where her father was a teacher at Drayton Park School. With the start of World War I, he enlisted and was killed in action at Ypres in 1918 causing her mother and siblings to relocate to Yorkshire to live with her mother's parents. She became ill at the age of nine and spent a year at the Liverpool Open-Air Hospital to treat her skeletal tuberculosi...
Go to Profile#2562
Paul Halpern
#60463
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Paul Halpern is an American author and Professor of Physics at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. Life Halpern received a Ph.D in theoretical physics, an M.A. in physics and a B.A. in physics and mathematics. He was also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright Scholarship, and an Athenaeum Society Literary Award.
Go to Profile#2563
Vytautas Straižys
#20922
Overall Influence
1936 - 2021 (85 years)
Vytautas Straižys was a Lithuanian astronomer. In 1963–65 he and his collaborators created and developed the Vilnius photometric system, a seven-color intermediate band system, optimized for photometric stellar classification. In 1996 he was elected a Corresponding Member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. Straižys was an editor of the journal Baltic Astronomy. He spent a lot of time working at the Molėtai Astronomical Observatory. Asteroid 68730 Straizys in 2002 was named after him.
Go to Profile#2564
David J. McComas
#68091
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
David John McComas is an American space physicist, Vice President for Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and Professor of Astrophysical Sciences and leads the Space Physics at Princeton Group at Princeton University. He had been Assistant Vice President for Space Science and Engineering at the Southwest Research Institute, Adjoint Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at San Antonio , and was the founding director of the Center for Space Science and Exploration at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is noted for his extensive accomplishments in experimental space plasma physics, i...
Go to Profile#2565
Klaus Schulten
#21681
Overall Influence
1947 - 2016 (69 years)
Klaus Schulten was a German-American computational biophysicist and the Swanlund Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Schulten used supercomputing techniques to apply theoretical physics to the fields of biomedicine and bioengineering and dynamically model living systems. His mathematical, theoretical, and technological innovations led to key discoveries about the motion of biological cells, sensory processes in vision, animal navigation, light energy harvesting in photosynthesis, and learning in neural networks.
Go to Profile#2566
Louis Albert Frank
#84498
Overall Influence
#2567
Salvatore Capozziello
#84510
Overall Influence
#2568
Sauro Succi
#49852
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Sauro Succi is an Italian scientist, internationally credited for being one of the founders of the successful Lattice Boltzmann method for fluid dynamics and soft matter. From 1995 to 2018, Succi has been research director at the Istituto Applicazioni Calcolo of the National Research Council in Rome. Since 2018, he has been appointed principal investigator of the research line Mesoscale Simulations at the Italian Institute of Technology .
Go to Profile#2569
Guo Guangcan
#78651
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Guo Guangcan is a Chinese physicist. He is a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China and Peking University . He works on quantum information, quantum communication and quantum optic. He is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and The World Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#2570
Françoise Brochard-Wyart
#55613
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Françoise Brochard-Wyart is a French theoretical physicist. Currently, she is a professor of theoretical soft matter physics at the Curie Institute. Biography Born in Saint-Étienne, Brochard-Wyart studied at École normale supérieure de Cachan from 1964 to 1968 and obtained a degree in physics. Following her degree she studied for a PhD in liquid crystals under the supervision of Pierre-Gilles de Gennes. She obtained her PhD in 1974.
Go to Profile#2571
Matthew Kleban
#73875
Overall Influence
Matthew Benjamin Kleban is an American theoretical physicist who works on string theory and theoretical cosmology. He is the chair of the Department of Physics and a professor at New York University, former director of the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, and a former member of the Institute for Advanced Study. His contributions to physics include:The discovery of the first distinct signature of the black hole singularity in AdS/CFT Pioneering work on the subtleties of very late-time cosmology in the presence of a positive cosmological constant, and the "Boltzmann brain" problem A de...
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Shashikumar Chitre
#53161
Overall Influence
1936 - 2021 (85 years)
Shashikumar Madhusudan Chitre FNA, FASc, FNASc, FRAS was an Indian mathematician and astrophysicist, known for his research in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The Government of India honored him, in 2012, with Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award, for his services to the sciences.
Go to Profile#2573
James West
#20486
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
James Edward Maceo West is an American inventor and acoustician. He holds over 250 foreign and U.S. patents for the production and design of microphones and techniques for creating polymer foil electretss.
Go to Profile#2574
Louise Prockter
#35478
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Louise Prockter is a planetary scientist and former supervisor of the Planetary Exploration Group at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. In 2016 the Universities Space Research Association announced the appointment of Prockter as Director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, effective September 6, 2016. She was the first woman to serve as LPI Director and led the LPI from 2016 to 2020. She is currently Chief Scientist, Space Exploration Sector, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
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Leonard Parker
#50354
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Leonard Emanuel Parker is a distinguished professor emeritus of physics and a former director of the Center for Gravitation and Cosmology at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. During the late 1960s, Parker established a new area of physics—quantum field theory in curved spacetime. Specifically, by applying the technique of Bogoliubov transformations to quantum field theory with a changing gravitational field, he discovered the physical mechanism now known as cosmological particle production. His breakthrough discovery has a surprising consequence: the expansion of the universe can create particles out of the vacuum.
Go to Profile#2576
Frank K. Edmondson
#45786
Overall Influence
1912 - 2008 (96 years)
Frank Kelley Edmondson was an American astronomer. Life and career Edmondson was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and grew up in Seymour, Indiana. He graduated from Indiana University in 1933 and received a fellowship to work at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he stayed until 1935, working as an observing assistant to Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of the dwarf planet Pluto. After earning his Ph.D. under the direction of Bart Bok at Harvard University in 1937, Edmondson returned to Indiana University as a faculty member in the department of astronomy. In 1944, he became the department...
Go to Profile#2577
Nathalie Deruelle
#59763
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Nathalie Deruelle is a French physicist specializing in general relativity and known for her research on the two-body problem in general relativity and on cosmological perturbation theory. Education and career Deruelle began her studies at the École normale supérieure in 1971, earned an agrégation in 1975, then, after visiting positions at the European Space Agency and the University of Cambridge, completed a doctorate in 1982 at Pierre and Marie Curie University.
Go to Profile#2578
JoAnne L. Hewett
#75565
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
JoAnne L. Hewett is a theoretical particle physicist on the faculty of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University, where she is a professor in the Department of Particle Physics and Astrophysics. Since 2017 she has been the associate lab director of the Fundamental Physics Directorate and the chief research officer at SLAC. Her research interests include physics beyond the Standard Model, dark matter, and hidden dimensions. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science .
Go to Profile#2579
Timothy Beers
#80223
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Timothy C. Beers is an American astrophysicist. Beers teaches at the University of Notre Dame in the Department of Physics , where he holds the Notre Dame Chair in Astrophysics. He is a co-founder of the Physics Frontier Center Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics – Center for the Evolution of the Elements. Prior to coming to Notre Dame, Beers was Director of Kitt Peak National Observatory , and for 25 years was a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Michigan State University , retiring from that position as University Distinguished Professor.
Go to Profile#2580
Nikolay Zheludev
#65818
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Nikolay Zheludev is a British scientist specializing in nanophotonics, metamaterials, nanotechnology, electrodynamics, and nonlinear optics. Nikolay Zheludev is one of the founding members of the closely interlinked fields of metamaterials and nanophotonics that emerged at the dawn of the 21st century on the crossroads of optics and nanotechnology. Nikolay’s work focus on developing new concepts in which nanoscale structuring of matter enhance and radically change its optical properties.
Go to Profile#2581
Frank N. von Hippel
#21960
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Frank N. von Hippel is an American physicist. He is Professor and Co-Director of Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
Go to Profile#2582
Herbert Tilg
#84690
Overall Influence
#2583
Michelle Simmons
#29833
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Michelle Yvonne Simmons is an Australian quantum physicist, recognised for her foundational contributions to the field of atomic electronics. She is founding director of the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation & Communication Technology, and is Scientia Professor of Quantum Physics in the Faculty of Science at the University of New South Wales.
Go to Profile#2584
Ronald M. Sega
#21731
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Ronald "Ron" Michael Sega is an American former astronaut who is professor of systems engineering and Vice President for Energy and the Environment at the Colorado State University Research Foundation, a non-profit advocacy organization supporting CSU. He is also the Vice President and Enterprise Executive for Energy and Environment at Ohio State University. From August 2005 to August 2007, he served as Under Secretary of the Air Force. He is a retired major general in the United States Air Force and a former NASA astronaut. Sega was born in Cleveland, Ohio, he is of Slovene origin. He was married to fellow astronaut Bonnie J.
Go to Profile#2585
Michael P. Brenner
#31277
Overall Influence
Michael P. Brenner is an American applied mathematician and physicist. Biography Brenner earned a bachelor's of science degree in physics and mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania and obtained a doctorate in physics under Leo Kadanoff at the University of Chicago. From 1995-2001, he was an assistant and associate professor of applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 2001, he has been a professor at Harvard University. Within the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, Brenner is the Michael F. Cronin Professor of ...
Go to Profile#2586
Roland Winston
#61739
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Roland Winston is a leading figure in the field of nonimaging optics and its applications to solar energy, and is sometimes termed the "father of non-imaging optics". He is the inventor of the compound parabolic concentrator, a breakthrough technology in solar energy. He is also a former Guggenheim Fellow, past head of the University of Chicago Department of Physics, a member of the founding faculty of University of California Merced, and as of 2013, head of the California Advanced Solar Technologies Institute.
Go to Profile#2587
Grenville Turner
#46922
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Grenville Turner is a research professor at the University of Manchester. He is one of the pioneers of cosmochemistry. Education Todmorden Grammar SchoolSt. John's College, Cambridge Balliol College, OxfordIn 1962, he was awarded his D.Phil. in nuclear physics.
Go to Profile#2588
Tom McLeish
#50682
Overall Influence
1962 - 2023 (61 years)
Thomas Charles Buckland McLeish was a British theoretical physicist. His work is renowned for increasing understanding of the properties of soft matter. This is matter that can be easily changed by stress – including liquids, foams and biological materials. He was professor in the Durham University Department of Physics and director of the Durham Centre for Soft Matter, a multidisciplinary team that works across physics, chemistry, mathematics and engineering. He also was the first Chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of York.
Go to Profile#2589
Yoshiyuki Kawazoe
#84819
Overall Influence
#2590
Jean-Émile Charon
#29110
Overall Influence
1920 - 1998 (78 years)
Jean-Émile Charon was a French nuclear physicist, philosopher and writer. He was the author of over 20 books on physics, scientific philosophy, and computer science. He conducted nuclear research at France's Commissariat à l'énergie atomique .
Go to Profile#2591
Mei-Yin Chou
#84831
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Mei-Yin Chou is a Taiwanese physicist. Background Chou earned a bachelor's degree in physics from National Taiwan University, followed by a master's degree and doctorate in the same field, both from the University of California, Berkeley. She completed postdoctoral research with Exxon, and joined the Georgia Institute of Technology faculty in 1989. Chou received a two-year fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation between 1990 and 1992, as well as a five-year fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation .
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Turgay Uzer
#15229
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Ahmet Turgay Uzer is a Turkish-born American theoretical physicist and nature photographer. Regents' Professor Emeritus at Georgia Institute of Technology following Joseph Ford . He has contributed in the field of atomic and molecular physics, nonlinear dynamics and chaos significantly. His research on interplay between quantum dynamics and classical mechanics, in the context of chaos is considered to be novel in molecular and theoretical physics and chemistry.
Go to Profile#2594
Adalberto Giazotto
#80358
Overall Influence
1940 - 2017 (77 years)
Adalberto Giazotto was an Italian physicist. Born in Genoa to musicologist Remo Giazotto, Adalberto Giazotto earned his degree in physics from the Sapienza University of Rome. He helped design the Virgo interferometer, which first detected gravitational waves in 2017. He won the Caterina Tomassoni e Felice Pietro Chisesi Prize, a Matteucci Medal, and shared the Enrico Fermi Prize with Barry Barish in 2016.
Go to Profile#2595
Dan Walls
#63205
Overall Influence
1942 - 1999 (57 years)
Daniel Frank Walls FRS was a New Zealand theoretical physicist specialising in quantum optics. Education Walls gained a BSc in physics and mathematics and a first class honours MSc in physics at the University of Auckland. He then went to Harvard University as a Fulbright Scholar, obtaining his PhD in 1969. He was supervised by Roy J. Glauber who was later awarded a Nobel prize in 2005.
Go to Profile#2596
Louis Lee
#52518
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Louis Lee is a Taiwanese physicist. Academic career Lee earned a bachelor's degree in physics from National Taiwan University in 1969, and obtained a master's and doctorate in the subject from the California Institute of Technology, ending his studies in 1975. Lee then worked at the Goddard Space Flight Center and taught at the University of Maryland before joining the University of Alaska faculty. Lee returned to Taiwan and began teaching at National Cheng Kung University in 1995. He has served as the director of the National Applied Research Laboratories and the National Space Program Office.
Go to Profile#2597
Juan Bisquert
#46751
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Juan Bisquert , is a Spanish physicist known for his contributions to materials and devices for sustainable energy production. He grew up in Dénia, and he is a professor at Jaume I University in Castellón de la Plana. His work on solar cells relates physical principles and modelling of electronic and ionic processes to the interpretation of measurement techniques for the photovoltaic operation.
Go to Profile#2598
Herwig Werner Kogelnik
#84964
Overall Influence
#2599
Jan Rzewuski
#46002
Overall Influence
1916 - 1994 (78 years)
Jan Rzewuski was a Polish theoretical physicist, a member of Polish resistance during World War II and a participant in the Warsaw Uprising. Rzewuski finished a gimnazjum in Łódź in 1934 and between 1934 and 1939 studied chemistry in Lwów and Gdańsk. From the start of the German occupation of Poland until 1942 he worked in the cotton industry in Łódź as an ordinary worker. In the next two years he studied theoretical physics in a secret underground university organized by the University of Warsaw.
Go to Profile#2600
Gary Ferland
#51017
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Gary Joseph Ferland is an American astrophysicist. He is a professor of Physics and Astronomy at The University of Kentucky. He is best known for developing the astrophysical simulation code Cloudy, for his work on physical processes in ionized plasmas, and investigations of the chemical evolution of the cosmos.
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