Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

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

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List of the most influential people in Physics,

#3701

Edwin Lyman

#49162

Overall Influence

Edwin S. Lyman is a physicist and the Director of Nuclear Power Safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists . He specializes in nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism, and nuclear power safety. Lyman has published extensively in journals and magazines, testified before Congress and advised other government groups, and been cited in many news stories. He acted as an expert analyst for damage to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and co-authored Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster .

#3702

Florence Bell

#59422

Overall Influence

1913 - 2000 (87 years)

Florence Ogilvy Bell , later Florence Sawyer, was a British scientist who contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA. She was an X-ray crystallographer in the lab of William Astbury. In 1938 they published a paper in Nature that described the structure of DNA as a "Pile of Pennies".

#3703

Hugh E. Montgomery

#103906

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Hugh Elliot Montgomery is a British-born US physicist. He had been appointed director of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in 2008. From 2002 until 2008, he was associate director for research at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

#3704

Nancy Chabot

#60546

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Nancy Chabot is a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Career Nancy Chabot earned her B.A. in physics from Rice University in 1994. After earning her Ph.D. in planetary science from the University of Arizona in 1999, Chabot worked at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, then at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. She joined the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in 2005.

#3705

Bilge Demirköz

#82102

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Bilge Demirköz is a Turkish professor of high energy physics at Middle East Technical University. She coordinates the Particle Radiation Tests Creation Laboratory, the first collaboration between Turkey and CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

#3706

Stuart Jon Spechler

#104929

Overall Influence

#3707

Klaus Lackner

#16854

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

#3708

Richard Dronskowski

#98607

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Richard Dronskowski is a German chemist and physicist. He is a full professor at the RWTH Aachen University. Life Dronskowski studied chemistry and physics at the University of Münster from 1981 to 1986. He completed his chemistry diploma with Bernt Krebs and Arndt Simon in 1987. He finished his physics diploma with Ole Krogh Andersen and Johannes Pollmann in 1989. He received his doctorate under supervision of Arndt Simon at the University of Stuttgart. From 1991 to 1992, he was a visiting scientist in the group of Roald Hoffmann at Cornell University. In 1995, he finished his habilitation at the University of Dortmund.

#3709

Gerhard Kraft

#74418

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Gerhard Kraft was a German physicist, best known for introducing heavy ion cancer therapy in Europe. He was the founder and director of the Biophysics Department at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt . Particle therapy had already been performed in US and Japan using protons, carbon, and other light ions. Gerhard Kraft introduced it in Europe, with two significant innovations: raster scanning and biological treatment planning. Under his direction, 440 patients were treated from 1997 to 2008 at GSI. Therapy now continues at the using the system introduced at GSI.

#3710

Wolfgang Sandner

#90098

Overall Influence

1949 - 2015 (66 years)

Wolfgang Sandner was a German physicist who was employed in atomic and laser physics. From 2010 to 2012 he was president of the German Physical Society. Until his death, he was director general of the ELI Delivery Consortium International Association located in Brussels.

#3711

Pinaki Majumdar

#31124

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Pinaki Majumdar is an Indian condensed matter physicist and the director of the Harish-Chandra Research Institute. Known for his research on correlated quantum systems, Majumdar is a recipient of the Global Indus Technovator Award of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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 2007.

#3712

Robert Arns

#89010

Overall Influence

Robert George Arns , was an American experimental physicist working in nuclear and particle physics, and also an historian of physics, technology, and electrical history. Arns was a professor and for eight years vice president of academic affairs at the University of Vermont. He was a principal in the management consulting firm Arns & Green, Inc. He was also an accomplished painter, specializing most recently in works inspired by images from the Hubble Space Telescope. He had a Ph.D. in nuclear and particle physics from the University of Michigan.

#3713

Joseph Nordgren

Joseph Nordgren

#92290

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Ernst Joseph Nordgren, born 16 November 1947 in Örebro, is a Swedish physicist. Nordgren graduated as a B.Sc. from Uppsala University in 1971 and received his Ph.D. in physics in 1977. In 1979 he was made docent and since 1988, he is a professor of soft X-ray physics at Uppsala. Since 1 July 2008 Nordgren is vice rector for the area of science and engineering at Uppsala university.

#3714

Radhe Mohan

#48490

Overall Influence

Radhe Mohan is a medical physicist who significantly advanced radiation treatment safety for oncology patients. He is a recipient of the ASTRO Gold Medal for outstanding contributions in the field of radiation oncology.

#3715

Hyatt M. Gibbs

#97744

Overall Influence

1938 - 2012 (74 years)

Hyatt M. Gibbs was a notable physicist and professor at the University of Arizona College of Optical Sciences. Well known for research in nonlinear optics and quantum optics, he authored a book on optical bistability, and was a recipient of the Humboldt Research Award and Michelson Medal.

#3716

David Willey

#45061

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

David G. Willey , known as the Mad Scientist, is a former physics instructor at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Physics has been a major interest in his life since he attended The Coleshill School and the John Port School in Etwall, Derbyshire. He has been presenting physics shows since the early 1980s. Willey is a scientific consultant for the skeptics group, C.S.I. . He also designs physics apparatus/equipment for the Science Kit Boreal Labs. In his spare time he enjoys hunting, woodworking, working with stained glass, and playing golf.

#3717

Philippe Gros

#105127

Overall Influence

#3718

Warren E. Pickett

#105130

Overall Influence

#3719

Sven Oluf Sørensen

Sven Oluf Sørensen

#89872

Overall Influence

1920 - 2017 (97 years)

Sven Oluf Sørensen was a Norwegian physicist. He was born in Paris, as a son of painter Henrik Sørensen and Gudrun Cleve. Sørensen was appointed professor in nuclear physics at the University of Oslo. He has participated in several international research groups, in particular associated to CERN in Genéve. Also he established and in honour of his father, Henrik Sørensen.

#3720

Gustaaf Van Tendeloo

#105145

Overall Influence

#3721

Adam Becker

#80260

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Adam Michael Becker is an American astrophysicist, author, and scientific philosopher. His works include the book What Is Real?, published by Basic Books, which explores the history and personalities surrounding the development and evolution of quantum physics, and includes a modern assessment of the Copenhagen Interpretation.

#3722

Charles R. Doering

#42336

Overall Influence

1956 - 2021 (65 years)

Charles Rogers Doering was a professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is notable for his research that is generally focused on the analysis of stochastic dynamical systems arising in biology, chemistry and physics, to systems of nonlinear partial differential equations. Recently he had been focusing on fundamental questions in fluid dynamics as part of the $1M Clay Institute millennium challenge concerning the regularity of solutions to the equations of fluid dynamics. With J. D. Gibbon, he notably co-authored the book Applied Analysis of the Navier-Stokes Equations, published by Cambridge University Press.

#3723

Stuart J. Edelstein

Stuart J. Edelstein

#63637

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Stuart J. Edelstein is a biophysicist, emeritus professor from the University of Geneva, professeur extraordinaire at the École Normale Supérieure and visiting scientist at the Babraham Institute.

#3724

Boris V. Derjaguin

#105156

Overall Influence

#3725

David E. Kuhl

#105164

Overall Influence

#3726

Ole Krogh Andersen

#105171

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

#3727

Aditi Sen De

#63481

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Aditi Sen De is an Indian scientist, a professor in quantum information and computation group at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad. She was born on 1st October 1974 in Kolkata, India. She is known for her research on quantum information and computation, quantum communication including quantum cryptography, quantum optics and many-body physics. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded her the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology for her contributions to physical sciences in 2018.

#3728

Josef Lutz

#67585

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Josef Lutz is a German physicist and electrical engineer. Career Lutz grew up in a small village called Baldern in the southern part of Germany, his father was smith and farmer. In 1973, Lutz received his high-school diploma from the Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium, Aalen. He studied Physics at the University of Stuttgart and received his Diploma in Physics in 1982. After his military service he joined Semikron Electronics in Nuremberg. The main focus of his work was on Gate turn-off thyristor and fast diodes. In 1999, he graduated as PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany.

#3729

James W. Corbett

#74807

Overall Influence

1928 - 1994 (66 years)

James William Corbett was a solid-state physicist. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Missouri and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1955. Beginning in 1955 he was a research associate at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York. During the 1960s as an adjunct professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he was a co-founder and director of Rensselaer's Joint Laboratories for Advanced Materials. His 1966 book Electron Radiation Damage in Semiconductors and Metals was highly esteemed. In 1968 he joined the faculty of the University at Albany, SUNY.

#3730

Robert Tycko

#41975

Overall Influence

Robert Tycko is an American biophysicist whose research primarily involves solid state NMR, including the development of new methods and applications to various areas of physics, chemistry, and biology. He is a member of the Laboratory of Chemical Physics in the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. He was formerly a member of the Physical Chemistry Research and Materials Chemistry Research departments of AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey. His work has contributed to our understanding of geome...

#3731

Fereydoon Family

#24086

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Fereydoon Family is a leading Persian physicist in the field of nanotechnology and solid-state physics. He is currently Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Physics and a member of the Emerson Center for Scientific Computation at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is an elected fellow of the American Physical Society, and a recipient of the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society's highest honor, the J.W. Beams Award.

#3732

Tod R. Lauer

#88147

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Tod R. Lauer is an American astronomer on the research staff of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. He was a member of the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field and Planetary Camera team, and is a founding member of the Nuker Team. His research interests includes observational searches for massive black holes in the centers of galaxies, the structure of elliptical galaxies, stellar populations, large-scale structure of the universe, and astronomical image processing. He was the Principal Investigator of the Destiny JDEM concept study, one of the precursors to the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission.

#3733

Andrea Liu

#92893

Overall Influence

Andrea Jo-Wei Liu is the Hepburn Professor of Physics at the University of Pennsylvania, where she holds a joint appointment in the Department of Chemistry. She is a theoretical physicist studying condensed matter physics and biophysics. She is particularly known for her study of jamming, a phenomenon in which disordered materials become rigid with increasing density and stress. She is a Simons Investigator and Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics, fellow of the American Physical Society , the American Association for the Advancement of Science , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and ...

#3734

Samuel Williamson

#72052

Overall Influence

1939 - 2005 (66 years)

Samuel J. Williamson was an American physicist and neuroscientist. Williamson was a co-developer of magnetic source imaging , and used this technique throughout his life to visualize and study brain activity especially as it relates to vision and hearing. He published over 100 articles in the fields of biomagnetism and neuroscience. He received both his bachelor's degree in physics and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , in 1961 and 1965 respectively. Dr. Williamson started his professional career at MIT's Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory as a staff scientist, and remained there until 1971 when he joined the physics department at New York University .

#3735

Daniel Attinger

#50593

Overall Influence

Daniel Attinger is a mechanical engineer, researcher and an academic. He owns a US-based scientific consulting company. Attinger has published over 80 research articles and has several patents registered in his name. His research focuses on forensics, bubble dynamics, multiscale transport phenomena in energy and forensic applications.

#3736

Mariana Weissmann

#39362

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Mariana Weissmann is an Argentinian physicist, specializing in the computational physics of condensed matter. In 2003, Weissmann became the first Argentinian scientist to receive the L'Oréal-UNESCO Award to Women in Science. The same year she received the Prize Konex in Physics.

#3737

Yvonne Elsworth

#70209

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Yvonne Elsworth FRS FInstP FRAS is an Irish physicist, Professor of Helioseismology and Poynting Professor of Physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Birmingham. Elsworth was until 2015 also the Head of the Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network , the longest running helioseismology network with data covering well over three solar cycles.

#3738

Philip Russell

#45054

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Philip St. John Russell, FRS, is Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany. His area of research covers "photonics and new materials", in particular the examination of new optical materials, especially of photonic crystal fibres, and more generally the field of nano- and micro-structured photonic materials.

#3739

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

#46011

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an American theoretical cosmologist and particle physicist at the University of New Hampshire. She is also an advocate of increasing diversity in science. Early life and education Prescod-Weinstein was born in El Sereno in East Los Angeles, California, and went to school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She is of Barbadian descent on her mother's side and Russian-Jewish and Ukrainian-Jewish descent on her father's side. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and astronomy at Harvard College in 2003. Her thesis, "A study of winds in active galactic nuclei", was completed under the supervision of Martin Elvis.

#3740

Edward W. Piotrowski

#44894

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Edward W. Piotrowski is head of the Applied Mathematics Group at the University of Białystok, Poland. He is notable for the analysis of quantum strategies, showing connections between the Kelly criterion, thermodynamics, and special theory of relativity. In the area of econophysics, he discovered extremal properties of fixed point profits of elementary merchant tactics. He has published in the areas of statistical physics, quantum game theory, and econophysics.

#3741

Teresa Rodrigo

#96807

Overall Influence

1956 - 2020 (64 years)

Teresa Rodrigo Anoro was a Spanish scientist who worked in particle physics. She worked at CERN, Fermilab and the and was professor at the University of Cantabria. Whilst at CERN, Rodrigo worked on the Compact Muon Solenoid and research for the Higgs boson.

#3742

Amanda Barnard

#42331

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Amanda Susan Barnard is an Australian theoretical physicist working in predicting the real world behavior of nanoparticles using analytical models and supercomputer simulations and applied machine learning. Barnard is a pioneer in the thermodynamic cartography of nanomaterials, creating nanoscale phase diagrams relevant to different environmental conditions, and relating these to structure/property maps. Her current research involves developing and applying statistical methods and machine/deep learning in nanoscience and nanotechnology, and materials and molecular informatics. In 2014 she ...

#3743

Stephan W. Koch

#40141

Overall Influence

1953 - 2022 (69 years)

Stephan W. Koch was a German theoretical physicist. He was a professor at the University of Marburg and works on condensed-matter theory, many-body effects, and laser theory. He is best known for his seminal contributions to the optical and electronic properties of semiconductors, semiconductor quantum optics, and semiconductor laser designs. Major portion of his research work has focused on the quantum physics and application potential of semiconductor nanostructures. Besides gaining fundamental insights to the many-body quantum theory, his work has provided new possibilities to develop, e.g., laser technology, based on accurate computer simulations.

#3744

Jyeshtharaj Joshi

Jyeshtharaj Joshi

#39318

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Jyeshtharaj Bhalchandra Joshi is an Indian chemical engineer, nuclear scientist, consultant and professor, widely known for his innovations in nuclear reactor designs and generally regarded as a respected teacher. He is the DAE-Homi Bhabha Chair Professor, Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai, and is the recipient of Shantiswarup Bhatnagar Prize for Engineering Sciences and many other awards and recognitions. He received the third highest civilian honour, the Padma Bhushan, in 2014 for his services to the field of chemical engineering and nuclear science.

#3745

Timothy Leighton

Timothy Leighton

#62518

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Timothy Grant Leighton is the Professor of Ultrasonics and Underwater Acoustics at the University of Southampton. He is the inventor-in-chief of Sloan Water Technology Ltd., a company founded around his inventions. He is an academician of three national academies. Trained in physics and theoretical physics, he works across physical, medical, biological, social and ocean sciences, fluid dynamics and engineering. He joined the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton in 1992 as a lecturer in underwater acoustics, and completed the monograph The Acoustic Bubble in the same year.

#3746

Iain Stewart

#67938

Overall Influence

Iain William Stewart is a Canadian-American theoretical nuclear and particle physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is the Otto and Jane Morningstar Professor of Science and the current Director of the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics . He is best known for his work on effective field theories and for developing the Soft Collinear Effective Theory .

#3747

Yukio Ando

#105580

Overall Influence

#3748

Faith Vilas

#95198

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Faith Vilas is an American planetary scientist and Director of the MMT Observatory in Arizona. Career Vilas earned her BA in Astronomy in 1973 at Wellesley College and her SM in Earth and Planetary Sciences in 1975 at MIT. She completed her Doctoral degree in Planetary Sciences in 1984 at the University of Arizona.

#3749

Mayly Sánchez

#74505

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Mayly Sánchez is a Venezuelan-born particle physicist who researches at Iowa State University. In 2011, she was awarded the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers , the highest honor given by the United States to scientists who are in the early stages of their research careers, for her contributions to the study of neutrinos and her work in promoting STEM fields to women. In 2013, she was named by the BBC as one of the top ten women scientists in Latin America.

#3750

Peter Mittelstaedt

Peter Mittelstaedt

#56379

Overall Influence

1929 - 2014 (85 years)

Peter Mittelstaedt pseudonym Karl Rottmann , was a German physicist, philosopher, and scientific theorist. Biography After studying physics at the universities of Jena, Bonn, and Göttingen, with a doctorate in theoretical physics in Göttingen in 1956 with Werner Heisenberg, Mittelstaedt had research stays at CERN in Geneva and at MIT in Cambridge, US, and at the then Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Munich, where he also completed his habilitation in 1961. In 1965, Mittelstaedt became a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Cologne, his main areas of work we...

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