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.

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To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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List of the most influential people in Physics,

#3251

Theodore E. Madey

#94150

Overall Influence

1937 - 2008 (71 years)

Theodore E. Madey was an American condensed matter physicist who specialized in the chemistry and physics of surfaces. He was a professor in the physics and chemistry departments at Rutgers University at the time of his death.

#3252

Amina Helmi

#43241

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Amina Helmi is an Argentine astronomer and professor at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Education Helmi was educated at Leiden University where she was awarded a PhD in 2000 with a thesis on the formation of the galactic halo, supervised by Tim de Zeeuw and Simon White.

#3253

Werner R. Loewenstein

#97353

Overall Influence

#3254

Ad Lagendijk

#60523

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Ad Lagendijk is a Dutch physicist working at the FOM-institute AMOLF in Amsterdam and at the University of Amsterdam. He is also a part-time professor at the University of Twente in Enschede, Netherlands.

#3255

Harald Keres

#56704

Overall Influence

1912 - 2010 (98 years)

Harald Keres was an Estonian physicist considered to be the father of the Estonian school of relativistic gravitation theory. In 1961 Keres became a member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences in the field of theoretical physics. In 1996 Keres was awarded the Order of the National Coat of Arms, Class III.

#3256

Gisela Anton

#37199

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Gisela Anton is a German experimental particle and astroparticle physicist. She was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 1994. Since 1995, she is a professor and Chair of Experimental Physics at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg.

#3257

Chandralekha Singh

Chandralekha Singh

#76789

Overall Influence

Chandralekha Singh is an Indian-American physicist who is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh and the Founding Director of the Discipline-Based Science Education Research Center.

#3258

Luca Turin

#30362

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Luca Turin is a biophysicist and writer with a long-standing interest in bioelectronics, the sense of smell, perfumery, and the fragrance industry. Early life and education Turin was born in Beirut, Lebanon on 20 November 1953 into an Italian-Argentinian family, and raised in France, Italy and Switzerland. His father, Duccio Turin, was a UN diplomat and chief architect of the Palestinian refugee camps, and his mother, Adela Turin , is an art historian, designer, and award-winning children's author. Turin studied Physiology and Biophysics at University College London and earned his PhD in 1978.

#3259

Lauro Moscardini

#89318

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Lauro Moscardini is an Italian astrophysicist and cosmologist. Moscardini has studied N-body cosmological simulations with non-Gaussian initial conditions. The research activity is mainly focussed in the field of theoretical and observational cosmology, in particular with the application of numerical techniques in astrophysics and the study of the formation of large cosmic structures. Moscardini's research is a mixture of observations and building models of large scale structures in the universe.

#3260

Guido Caldarelli

Guido Caldarelli

#40038

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Guido Caldarelli is an Italian physicist and full professor in Theoretical Physics at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. Biography Caldarelli received his Ph.D. from SISSA, after which he was a postdoc in the Department of Physics and School of Biology, University of Manchester. He then worked at the Theory of Condensed Matter Group, University of Cambridge, where he worked with Robin Ball. He returned to Italy as a lecturer at National Institute for Condensed Matter and later as Primo Ricercatore in the Institute of Complex Systems of the National Research Council of Italy. In this period...

#3261

Anthony Moffat

#81671

Overall Influence

Anthony Lee Moffat is an emeritus professor of astronomy at the Université de Montréal in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He was appointed as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2001. Moffat's research focuses on massive stars , stellar winds, binary stars, as well as the structure and dynamics of star formation regions and galaxies.

#3262

Keith O'Nions

#17091

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Sir Robert Keith O'Nions FRS HonFREng , is a British scientist and ex-President & Rector of Imperial College London. He is the former Director General of the Research Councils UK as well as Professor of the Physics and Chemistry of Minerals and Head of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford.

#3263

Omer Blaes

#94655

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Omer Michael Blaes is an American astrophysicist. He is a professor of physics at University of California, Santa Barbara. Early life and education Blaes was born April 30, 1961. He completed a BSc with first class honors in astrophysics at Queen Mary University of London in August 1983. He earned a MPhil in physics, cum laude, from the International School for Advanced Studies in October 1985. He completed a PhD in physics at SISSA in September 1986. His doctoral advisor was . Blaes' dissertation was titled The Stability of Thick Accretion Disks. Blaes was the Chaim Weizmann Research Fellow...

#3264

Jacqueline Mitton

#88660

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Jacqueline Mitton is a British astronomer, writer, and media consultant who lives and works in Cambridge, UK. She studied at Somerville College, Oxford and Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. She has served as Public Relations Officer for the Royal Astronomical Society. From 1987 to 1993, she was the editor of the Journal of the British Astronomical Association. She has authored, co-authored, or contributed to many books.

#3265

Andreas Mandelis

#46404

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Andreas Mandelis is a professor and researcher at the department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto and director of the Center for Advanced Diffusion-Wave and Photoacoustic Technologies . He is an internationally recognized expert in thermophotonics. His research encompasses the non-destructive evaluation of materials with industrial and biomedical applications. He is considered a pioneer in the fields of diffusion-wave, photothermal and photoacoustic sciences and related technologies. He is the inventor of a photothermal imaging radar which can detect tooth...

#3266

Nathaniel J. Fisch

#89378

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Nathaniel Joseph Fisch is an American plasma physicist known for pioneering the excitation of electric currents in plasmas using electromagnetic waves, which was then used in tokamak experiments. This contributed to an increased understanding of plasma wave–particle interactions in the field for which he was awarded the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics in 2005 and the Hannes Alfvén Prize in 2015.

#3267

Janez Strnad

#51087

Overall Influence

1934 - 2015 (81 years)

Janez Strnad was a Slovene physicist and popularizer of natural science. Life and work Strnad was born in Ljubljana, Kingdom of Yugoslavia . He received a degree at the University of Ljubljana in technical physics in 1957, and got his Ph.D. in 1963. His main research work was carried out at the Jožef Stefan Institute. He taught for many years beginning in 1961 at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty for natural science and technology on the Department of physics introductory courses and topics from physics. In 1974 he became a full professor. In 1990 he wrote a book about fundamental particles physics entitled Iz take so snovi kot sanje .

#3268

Harrison Schmitt

Harrison Schmitt

#15247

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Harrison Hagan Schmitt is an American geologist, retired NASA astronaut, university professor, former U.S. senator from New Mexico, and the most recent living person—and only person without a background in military aviation—to have walked on the Moon.

#3269

Norman Tolk

#84304

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Norman Henry Tolk is an American physicist and musician. Life Tolk was born in Idaho Falls, Idaho. He grew up in a Mormon and Protestant family. He majored in physics at Harvard College, graduating in 1960, and earned his Ph.D. in atomic physics from Columbia University in 1966. Currently he is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Vanderbilt University. For all his life Tolk has been a Mormon.

#3270

Zhao Tianshou

#79155

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Zhao Tianshou is a Chinese scientist and educator currently serving as Cheong Ying Chan Professor of Engineering and Environment, the Chair Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

#3271

Sigfried Bethke

#82471

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Sigfried Bethke is a German physicist and science manager. Life Scientific career Siegfried Bethke studied at Heidelberg University in Heidelberg, where he received his doctorate in 1983 and his habilitation in 1987. In 1987/88 he spent a research stay at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a Feodor Lynen fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Subsequently, he did research at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, as a Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Foundation. In 1993 he was appointed professor of experimental physics at the RWTH Aachen University, where he held a chair at the III Physics Institute until 1999.

#3272

Nüzhet Gökdoğan

#16615

Overall Influence

1910 - 2003 (93 years)

Hatice Nüzhet Gökdoğan was a Turkish astronomer, mathematician and academic. After studying mathematics and astronomy in France as a young adult, Gökdoğan joined the faculty of Istanbul University in 1934 and completed her PhD. She was elected Dean of the university's Faculty of Science in 1954, becoming the first Turkish woman to serve as a university dean, and she was later made Chair of the astronomy department, significantly expanding her department's capacity and working to improve national and international collaboration between astronomers.

#3273

Irshad Hussain

#13781

Overall Influence

Irshad Hussain is a Pakistani Scientist in the field of chemistry and among the few pioneers to initiate nanomaterials research in Pakistan. He is among the founding faculty members of SBA School of Science & Engineering and played a key role to lead the development of Chemistry Department at Lahore University of Management Sciences . He is a Tenured Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, SBA School of Science & Engineering, Lahore University of Management Sciences, and has previously also served as a Professor of Renewable Energy Engineering at the US–Pakistan Cen...

#3274

Ian Hamley

#80750

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Ian Hamley is a British academic who is the Diamond Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Reading. He is a soft matter scientist and physical chemist with research expertise in self-assembling molecules including polymers, peptides and other biomolecules. He has more than 400 published scientific papers. He is the author of 'The Physics of Block Copolymers', 'Introduction to Soft Matter', 'Block Copolymers in Solution', 'Introduction to Peptide Science', and 'Small-Angle Scattering: Theory, Instrumentation, Data and Applications', as well as several edited texts.

#3275

Vera Kistiakowsky

Vera Kistiakowsky

#72002

Overall Influence

1928 - 2021 (93 years)

Vera Kistiakowsky was an American research physicist, teacher, and arms control activist. She was professor emerita at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the physics department and Laboratory for Nuclear Science, and was an activist for women's participation in the sciences. Kistiakowsky was an expert in experimental particle physics and observational astrophysics. She was the first woman appointed MIT professor of physics.

#3276

Mike Pentz

#52214

Overall Influence

1924 - 1995 (71 years)

Michael John Pentz was a physicist, activist in the peace movement, and an influential pioneer of teaching science to university students by distance education. Pentz was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and died in France.

#3277

Donald Levy

#47864

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Donald Harris Levy is an American chemical physicist on the faculty of the University of Chicago, Chicago, US. He is recognized as a leader in the development of supersonic jet cooling. Biography Donald Levy has been a member of the University of Chicago Chemistry faculty since 1967. He is presently the Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus. His research interests have included laser spectroscopy in supersonic molecular beams and jets, the structure of van der Waals molecules, energy transfer in weakly bound molecular systems, bichromophoric organic molecules, and multi-photonionization spectroscopy.

#3278

George Kalmus

#87081

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

George Ernest Kalmus, CBE, FRS is a noted British particle physicist. Kalmus was born in Beočin, Yugoslavia, and moved to Britain with his parents and his elder brother Peter Kalmus in 1939. His sister Elsa Joan Kalmus was born in 1945. The family became British Citizens in 1946.

#3279

David Criswell

#73335

Overall Influence

1941 - 2019 (78 years)

David R. Criswell was the Director of the Institute for Space Systems Operations at the University of Houston. ISSO is the operational agent for the Houston Partnership for Space Exploration. Criswell received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1963 and a Master of Science degree in Physics in 1964 from the University of North Texas, in Denton, Texas. In 1968, he received a Doctorate degree in space physics and Astronomy from Rice University in Houston, Texas.

#3280

Catherine Pilachowski

#89888

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Catherine Anderson Pilachowski is an American astronomer, professor and Kirkwood Chair in astronomy at Indiana University Bloomington. She is a fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and former president of the American Astronomical Society.

#3281

Cyril Isenberg

#64589

Overall Influence

Cyril Isenberg MBE is an English physicist at the University of Kent, where he is an Honorary Lecturer. Isenberg is known for pioneering the analog computing possibilities of soap bubbles; in 2012, his 1976 article on the subject was one of a set of "classic articles" selected by American Scientist to celebrate their centennial. He has also frequently given physics lectures to schoolchildren and appeared in television shows, and is the organizer of the British Physics Olympiad. He is the author of books The Science of Soap Films and Soap Bubbles and Physics Experiments and Projects for Studen...

#3282

Max Waldmeier

#81804

Overall Influence

1912 - 2000 (88 years)

Max Waldmeier was a Swiss astronomer, known for his research on sunspots. As director of the Zurich Observatory until 1980, Waldmeier insisted on counting sunspots by eye over automated methods, using a Fraunhofer refracting telescope installed by Zurich Observatory director Rudolf Wolf in 1849.

#3283

Sally Oey

#73185

Overall Influence

Dr. Sally Oey is an American astronomer at the University of Michigan and an expert in massive, hot stars which are often precursors to supernovae. In 1999, she was awarded the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy by the American Astronomical Society and, in 2006, was invited to give an address to the 206th meeting of the AAS. Oey is currently a professor and is a member of the board of the Gemini Observatory.

#3284

Zhi-Xun Shen

#81674

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Zhi-Xun Shen is a Chinese-American experimental and solid state physicist who is a professor at Stanford University. He is particularly noted for his ARPES studies on high-temperature superconductors.

#3285

Tiziano Barbui

#97922

Overall Influence

#3286

Yigal Meir

#69323

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Yigal Meir is the Graham Beck professor of Quantum Science and Technology at Ben Gurion University, specializing in condensed matter; in particular mesoscopic physics, disordered systems and strongly correlated materials. Among his achievements is the derivation of the Meir-Wingreen Formula, and solving the 0.7 anomaly puzzle in quantum point contacts.

#3287

Andrey V. Chubukov

#96516

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Andrey V. Chubukov is a theoretical physicist, at the William I Fine Theoretical Physics Institute, University of Minnesota, specializing in condensed matter. His speciality is physics of strongly correlated electron systems. Chubukov earned his M.Sci. degree in theoretical physics in 1982 and a Ph.D. in 1985 from Moscow State University.

#3288

Aram Harrow

#41015

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Aram Wettroth Harrow is a professor of physics in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Theoretical Physics. Harrow works in quantum information science and quantum computing. Together with Avinatan Hassidim and Seth Lloyd, he designed a quantum algorithm for linear systems of equations, which in some cases exhibits an exponential advantage over the best classical algorithms. The algorithm has wide application in quantum machine learning.

#3289

Marvin Chodorow

#47856

Overall Influence

1913 - 2005 (92 years)

Marvin Chodorow was an American physicist who pioneered in uses of Klystron microwave tubes. Chodorow was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering . Chodorow was the founding chairman of the department of applied physics of the Stanford University.

#3290

Michel Ter-Pogossian

Michel Ter-Pogossian

#38626

Overall Influence

1925 - 1996 (71 years)

Michel Matthew Ter-Pogossian was an American medical physicist. He was professor of radiology at the Washington University School of Medicine for over 30 years. A pioneer in nuclear medicine, he is best known for his research on the positron emission tomography . He is considered one of its creators and often referred to as the "father of PET."

#3291

Robert Duncan

#62778

Overall Influence

Robert V. Duncan is a physicist at Texas Tech University, Texas and previously served as vice chancellor for research at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. Prior to his current posting he held various assignments while serving as a professor of physics at UNM, including associate dean for research in the college of arts and sciences there, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of New Mexico, was named as the Gordon and Betty Moore Distinguished Scholar in the division of physics, mathematics and astronomy at the California Institute of Technology , and is a fellow...

#3292

Susana Lizano

#55910

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Estela Susana Lizano Soberón is a Mexican astrophysicist and researcher. She has specialized in the theoretical study of star formation. Studies and teaching Lizano earned a degree in physics at the School of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico . In 1984 she obtained a master's degree, and in 1988 a doctorate in astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1990 to 1991 she did postdoctoral work at the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory.

#3293

Miriani Griselda Pastoriza

#42448

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Miriani Griselda Pastoriza is an Argentine-born Brazilian astronomer, tenured professor in the Department of Astronomy of the Institute of Physics, at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, and is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.

#3294

Janet Luhmann

#76584

Overall Influence

Janet G. Luhmann is an American physicist and senior fellow of the Space Sciences Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley. She has made major contributions to a wide range of topics in planetary, solar, magnetospheric, and heliospheric physics. She is the principal investigator of the IMPACT instrument suite on the twin-spacecraft STEREO mission. IMPACT stands for In-situ Measurements of Particles and Coronal mass ejection Transients. It consists of a, "suite of seven instruments that samples the 3-D distribution of solar wind plasma electrons, the characteristics of the solar e...

#3295

Theo Rasing

#45457

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Theodorus "Theo" Henricus Maria Rasing is a Dutch professor of experimental physics at Radboud University Nijmegen. His expertise lies in the field of magneto-optics. He was a winner of the 2008 Spinoza Prize.

#3296

Mohit Randeria

#59476

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Mohit Randeria is a US-based Indian condensed matter physicist and a professor of physics at Ohio State University. Known for his research on condensed matter theory and superconductivity, Randeria is an elected fellow of the American Physics Society. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to physical sciences in 2002. He was awarded the 2002 ICTP Prize of the International Cent...

#3297

David J. Schlegel

#87033

Overall Influence

David James Schlegel is a Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He earned his Ph.D. in 1995 from the University of California, Berkeley. His earliest research was with Prof. Marc Davis and Douglas Finkbeiner working on dust maps of the universe. This research resulted in one of the most highly cited articles in astronomy. These maps proved to be essential for removing foregrounds in subsequent imaging or cosmic microwave background surveys.

#3298

Giovanni Vignale

#68357

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Giovanni Vignale is an Italian American physicist and Professor of Physics at the University of Missouri. Vignale is known for his work on density functional theory - a theoretical approach to the quantum many-body problem - and for several contributions to many-particle physics and spintronics. He is also the author of a monograph on the "Quantum Theory of the Electron Liquid" and a book entitled "The Beautiful Invisible - Creativity, imagination, and theoretical physics".

#3299

Francesco Guerra

Francesco Guerra

#38672

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Francesco Guerra is an Italian mathematical physicist, whose main research contributions are in quantum field theory and spin glasses. Career highlights Francesco Guerra received his degree from the University of Naples in 1964. He was Professor of Theoretical Physics in Sapienza Università di Roma since 1979. In 1983 and 1984, he was Director of the Department of Mathematics and, from 1995 to 2001, Director of the Department of Physics.

#3300

Donald R. Hamann

#98149

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

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