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,
#3151
Joan van der Waals
#37887
Overall Influence
1920 - 2022 (102 years)
Joan Henri van der Waals was a Dutch physicist. He was professor of experimental physics at Leiden University between 1967 and 1989. He specialized in molecular physics and clathrate hydrates. One of van der Waals's most significant contributions to the study of hydrates was a series of papers between 1953 and 1958, which eventually culminated in the 1959 publication of his paper on the canonical partition function for clathrates, along with J. C. Platteeuw. To create this partition function, van der Waals made a number of simplifying assumptions, most prominently that neighboring guest gas m...
Go to Profile#3152
Chiara Mingarelli
#67175
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Chiara Mingarelli is an Italian-Canadian astrophysicist who researches gravitational waves. She is an assistant professor of physics at Yale University since 2023, and previously an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut . She is also a science writer and communicator.
Go to Profile#3153
Steven Boggs
#90785
Overall Influence
Steven Edward Boggs is an American astrophysicist. He is the dean of the division of physical sciences at University of California, San Diego. Education Boggs completed a Ph.D. at University of California, Berkeley in 1998.
Go to Profile#3154
Lewis M. Branscomb
#35306
Overall Influence
1926 - 2023 (97 years)
Lewis McAdory Branscomb was an American physicist, government policy advisor, and corporate research manager. He was best known for being head of the National Bureau of Standards and, later, chief scientist of IBM; and as a prolific writer on science policy issues.
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Gavin Schmidt
#13636
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Gavin A. Schmidt is a British climatologist, climate modeler and Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and co-founder of the award-winning climate science blog RealClimate.
Go to Profile#3156
George Wallerstein
#70974
Overall Influence
1930 - 2021 (91 years)
George Wallerstein was an American astronomer who researched the chemical composition of stellar atmospheres. The son of German immigrants, he was raised in New York City during the Great Depression. In school he developed an interest in boxing and won the senior class boxing award. He graduated from Brown University in 1951 before receiving his M.S. and Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. He served in the Navy during the Korean War, then, after teaching at the University of California, joined the astronomy department of the University of Washington in 1965. In March 1998, he retired from the University and was appointed Professor Emeritus.
Go to Profile#3157
Alexander Efros
#57868
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Alexander Lwowitsch Efros is a Russian physicist. Efros is the co-discoverer of semiconducting nanocrystals known as quantum dots. Efros graduated as a physical engineer in 1973 from the Leningrad Technological Institute and received his doctorate there in 1978. He was a scientist at the Ioffe Institute in Leningrad from 1981 to 1990, at which time he moved to the West.
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Ulrich Grigull
#44041
Overall Influence
1912 - 2003 (91 years)
Ulrich Grigull was a German engineer. Between 1972 and 1980, he was rector and later president of the Technical University of Munich. Early life After graduating from the Stadtgymnasium in Königsberg, Grigull studied mechanical engineering at the Technische Hochschule Danzig from 1930. In 1937, he received his doctorate from the Technical University of Braunschweig.
Go to Profile#3159
Paul Wild
#50147
Overall Influence
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
Paul Wild was a Swiss astronomer and director of the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern, who discovered numerous comets, asteroids and supernovae. Biography Wild was born on 5 October 1925 in the village of Wädenswil near Zürich, Switzerland. From 1944 through 1950, he studied mathematics and physics at the ETH Zurich. Thereafter, he worked at the California Institute of Technology where he researched galaxies and supernovas under the leadership of countryman Fritz Zwicky from 1951 through 1955.
Go to Profile#3160
Hakeem Oluseyi
#73880
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Hakeem Muata Oluseyi is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, inventor, educator, science communicator, author, actor, veteran, and humanitarian. Early life and education Oluseyi was born James Edward Plummer, Jr. in New Orleans, Louisiana. After his parents divorced when he was four years old, he and his mother moved to a different state along the southern border of the US every year. He lived in some of the country's toughest neighborhoods including the 9th Ward of New Orleans; Watts, Los Angeles, California; Inglewood, California; South Park, Houston, Texas; and Third Ward, Houston, Texas before settling in rural Mississippi a month before Oluseyi turned 13 years old.
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Giacomo Mauro D'Ariano
#41009
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Giacomo Mauro D'Ariano is an Italian quantum physicist. He is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Pavia, where he is the leader of the QUIT group. He is a member of the Center of Photonic Communication and Computing at Northwestern University; a member of the Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere; and a member of the Foundational Questions Institute .
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Timothy E. Hewett
#95647
Overall Influence
#3163
Uzi Landman
#65314
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Uzi Landman is an Israeli/American computational physicist, the Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Computational Materials Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Career He earned a B.Sc. in chemistry at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem in 1965, an M.Sc. in chemistry from the Weizmann Institute in 1966 and a D.Sc. from the Israel Institute of Technology in 1969. His research interests included surface and materials science, solid state physics and nanoscience.
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Nigel Weiss
#70597
Overall Influence
1936 - 2020 (84 years)
Nigel Oscar Weiss FRS was an astronomer and mathematician, and leader in the field of astrophysical and geophysical fluid dynamics. He was Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge.
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John Dowell
#71287
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
John Derek Dowell FRS is a British physicist, emeritus professor at University of Birmingham. Born in Leicestershire, he was educated at Coalville Grammar School and the University of Birmingham . He worked as a Research fellow at Birmingham University before moving to be a research associate at the European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva
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L. M. Narducci
#90920
Overall Influence
1942 - 2006 (64 years)
Lorenzo M. Narducci was an Italian-American physicist known for his contributions to quantum optics and the study of laser instabilities, in particular. He was the author of more than 200 scientific papers and several books including Laser Physics and Laser Instabilities. In addition to his research on the theory of laser instabilities he also contributed to the physics of emission and absorption in three-level systems, and frequency locking.
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Ekmel Ozbay
#95724
Overall Influence
#3168
Emilios T. Harlaftis
#89938
Overall Influence
1965 - 2005 (40 years)
Emilios T. Harlaftis was an astrophysicist. Harlaftis obtained an undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Athens in 1987, and a PhD degree from the University of Oxford in 1991, under the supervision of Phil A. Charles. His thesis title was "Disc structure and variability in dwarf novae". From 1991 to 1995 he worked as a support astronomer at the Isaac Newton Group of telescopes of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, placed at the Observatory of Roque de los Muchachos
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T. V. Ramakrishnan
#63099
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Tiruppattur Venkatachalamurti Ramakrishnan is an Indian theoretical physicist known for his contributions in condensed matter physics. He is at present DAE Homi Bhabha Professor of Physics at Benaras Hindu University and also the chancellor of Tripura University.
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David A. Agard
#95789
Overall Influence
#3171
Konstantin K. Likharev
#95820
Overall Influence
#3172
Frank Verstraete
#52962
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Frank Verstraete is a Belgian quantum physicist who is working on the interface between quantum information theory and quantum many-body physics. He pioneered the use of tensor networks and entanglement theory in quantum many body systems. He holds the Leigh Trapnell Professorship of Quantum Physics at the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Cambridge, and is professor at the Faculty of Physics at Ghent University.
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Dmitri Kharzeev
#91920
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Dmitri E. Kharzeev is an American theoretical physicist most notable for his work on the chiral magnetic effect. Personal life Dmitri Kharzeev received his PhD in quantum field theory from Moscow State University in Russia. He works in nuclear physics, condensed matter physics, quantum information, and cosmology, with the idea that each of these fields overlap and intertwine. In this way, he is able to summarize all of his research as working toward finding connections between seemingly drastically different phenomena.
Go to Profile#3174
Pieter Dorenbos
#95853
Overall Influence
#3175
Reva Williams
#67592
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Reva Kay Williams is a theoretical astrophysicist. She is the first person to successfully work out the Penrose process using Einstein's Theory of Relativity to extract energy from black holes. Also, she is the first Black American woman to earn a PhD in theoretical astrophysics. Her work focuses on general relativistic astrophysics.
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Henri Debehogne
#83599
Overall Influence
1928 - 2007 (79 years)
Henri Debehogne was a Belgian astronomer and a prolific discoverer of minor planets. Biography He was born at Maillen. Debehogne worked at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Uccle, and specialized in astrometry of comets and minor planets.
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David Axon
#82518
Overall Influence
1951 - 2012 (61 years)
David John Axon was a British astrophysicist specialising in observations of active galactic nuclei. He was a professor at the University of Hertfordshire and the Rochester Institute of Technology , and at the time of his death was Head of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sussex.
Go to Profile#3178
Kate Marvel
#48575
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Kate Marvel is a climate scientist and science writer based in New York City. She is a senior scientist at Project Drawdown and was formerly an associate research scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia Engineering's Department of Applied Physics and Mathematics.
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Milton Dean Slaughter
#28428
Overall Influence
Milton Dean Slaughter is an American theoretical and phenomenological physicist and affiliate professor of physics at Florida International University. Slaughter was a visiting associate professor of physics in the Center for Theoretical Physics, University of Maryland, College Park while on sabbatical from Los Alamos National Laboratory of the University of California from 1984 to 1985. He is also chair emeritus and university research professor of physics emeritus at the University of New Orleans . Prior to joining UNO as chair of the physics department: He was a postdoctoral fellow in the ...
Go to Profile#3180
Kenneth Alan Johnson
#79292
Overall Influence
1931 - 1999 (68 years)
Kenneth Alan Johnson was an American theoretical physicist. He was professor of physics at MIT, a leader in the study of quantum field theories and the quark substructure of matter. Johnson contributed to the understanding of symmetry and anomalies in quantum field theories and to models of quark confinement and dynamics in quantum chromodynamics.
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Dennis Walsh
#61205
Overall Influence
1933 - 2005 (72 years)
Dennis Walsh was an English astronomer. He was an early radio astronomer, as well as an optical astronomer. He was best known for his discovery in 1979 of the first example of a gravitational lens, B0957+561, using an optical telescope.
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Edward John Smith
#96010
Overall Influence
#3183
Paul K. Hansma
#90933
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Paul K. Hansma is an American physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Early life and education Paul K. Hansma was born in Salt Lake City, Utah on April 28, 1946. He received his undergraduate degree from New College of Florida, and his PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley where he studied electron tunneling and Josephson junctions.
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George D. Watkins
#83855
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (100 years)
George Daniels Watkins is an American solid-state physicist. Biography Watkins was born in Evanston, Illinois and received his bachelor's degree in physics from Randolph-Macon College in 1943. He earned his master's degree in 1947 and his Ph.D. in 1952 from Harvard University with the thesis A R. F. Spectrometer with Applications to Studies of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Absorption in Solids. From 1952 to 1975 he did research in solid state physics at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York. During his time at General Electric, he was also an adjunct professor at Rens...
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David Sayre
#11820
Overall Influence
1924 - 2012 (88 years)
David Sayre was an American scientist, credited with the early development of direct methods for protein crystallography and of diffraction microscopy . While working at IBM he was part of the initial team of ten programmers who created FORTRAN, and later suggested the use of electron beam lithography for the fabrication of X-ray Fresnel zone plates.
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Roman Smoluchowski
#88841
Overall Influence
1910 - 1996 (86 years)
Roman Smoluchowski was a notable physicist who worked in Poland, and after World War II settled in Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He was the son of the statistical physics pioneer Marian Smoluchowski. In 1974, Roman Smoluchowski was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1984, the minor planet 4530 Smoluchowski was named after him.
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Steven L. Teitelbaum
#96144
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
#3188
Richard M. Goody
#37214
Overall Influence
1921 - 2023 (102 years)
Richard Mead Goody was a British-American atmospheric physicist and professor of planetary physics at Harvard University. He was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 1970. Early life and education A native of Hertfordshire, Goody attended Cambridge University, from which he received a bachelor's degree in physics in 1942. He then worked at the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment until October 1946, when he returned to Cambridge to receive his PhD, doing so in 1949. While there, he was instructed to build an infrared spectrometer for use in an airplane to measure stratospheric dryness.
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Peter Gumbsch
#38889
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Peter Gumbsch is a German physicist and materials scientist. He is the director of the Fraunhofer-Institut für Werkstoffmechanik IWM, in Freiburg, Germany and professor for mechanics of materials at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology .
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Michael Karas
#16772
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Michael Karas is a German physical chemistry scientist and Professor, known for his researches on matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization , a technique in mass spectrometry. Michael Karas studied Chemistry at the University of Bonn, where he obtained a PhD in the field of physical chemistry in 1982. From 1983 to 1986, he was part of the Hillenkamp research group in the Institut für Biophysik at Goethe University Frankfurt. In 1987, he followed Hillenkamp at Münster and both formed a group in the Faculty of Medicine at University of Münster. He returned to Frankfurt in 1995 as a full profe...
Go to Profile#3191
Leonid Brekhovskikh
#47425
Overall Influence
1917 - 2005 (88 years)
Leonid Maksimovich Brekhovskikh was a Soviet and Russian scientist known for his work in acoustical and physical oceanography. Early life and education Brekhovskikh was born to a peasant family in Strunkino, a small village in Vologda Governorate , Russia. He graduated from Perm State University in 1939, from which he received his university degree, and studied under Igor Tamm at the Lebedev Physical Institute . There, he received his Candidate of Sciences degree in Physics in 1941 for his thesis on X-ray crystallography. After his PhD, he joined FIAN's acoustical laboratories and worked on a naval defence project to develop protection against acoustically triggered mines.
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Rajeev Ahuja
#96201
Overall Influence
#3193
George B. Arfken
#96203
Overall Influence
#3194
Henri Bortoft
#32558
Overall Influence
1938 - 2012 (74 years)
Peter Henri Bortoft was a British independent researcher and teacher, lecturer and writer on physics and the philosophy of science. He is best known for his work The Wholeness of Nature, considered a relevant and original recent interpretation of Goethean science. His book Taking Appearance Seriously: The Dynamic Way of Seeing in Goethe and European Thought was published in 2012.
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Philip George Burke
#95315
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Philip George Burke FRS was a British theoretical and computational physicist who developed the R-matrix method for studying electron collisions with atoms and molecules. Life He was born in London. He graduated from University College of the South West, and University College London. He worked at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington. From 1959 to 1960, he worked at the Lawrence Berkeley Radiation Laboratory.
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Conny Aerts
#79407
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Conny Clara Aerts, born 26 January 1966, is a Belgian professor in astrophysics. She specialises in asteroseismology. She is associated with KU Leuven and Radboud University, where she leads the Chair in the Astroseismology group. In 2012, she became the first woman to be awarded the Francqui Prize in the category of Science & Technology. In 2022, she became the third woman to be awarded the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics for her work in asteroseismology.
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Samuel Devons
#68075
Overall Influence
1914 - 2006 (92 years)
Samuel Devons FRS was a British physicist and science historian. Biography Devons, son of a Lithuanian immigrant, David Isaac Devons 1881-1926 and Edith Edelston from York 1891-1938 Sam was born in Bangor, Wales. When he turned 16, he was awarded a scholarship for physics at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1935, Devons received his bachelor's degree at Trinity College, and his PhD in 1939.
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Emmanuel Desurvire
#47250
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Emmanuel Desurvire is a French researcher and writer. He is the recipient of 2007 John Tyndall Award. Early life Desurvire was born in 1955, in Boulogne, France to Raymond Desurvire, an aircraft engineer and Marcelle Desurvire, a psychologist.
Go to Profile#3199
Peter Saulson
#68332
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Peter Reed Saulson is an American physicist and professor at Syracuse University. He is best known as a former spokesperson for the LIGO collaboration serving from 2003 to 2007 and research on gravitational wave detectors.
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Jonathan How
#73413
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Jonathan P. How is a Canadian-American astrophysicist and aeronautical engineer currently the Richard Cockburn Maclaurin Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and editor-in-chief of the IEEE Control Systems Magazine, also previously a Davis Faculty Scholar at Stanford University. His current concerns are technology systems engineering and space engineering.
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