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).
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List of the most influential people in Physics,
#401
Sidney Drell
#6174
Overall Influence
1926 - 2016 (90 years)
Sidney David Drell was an American theoretical physicist and arms control expert. At the time of his death, he was professor emeritus at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Drell was a noted contributor in the fields of quantum electrodynamics and high-energy particle physics. The Drell–Yan process, which was used to discover the Higgs boson, is partially named for him.
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Walter Zinn
#4766
Overall Influence
1906 - 2000 (94 years)
Walter Henry Zinn was a Canadian-born American nuclear physicist who was the first director of the Argonne National Laboratory from 1946 to 1956. He worked at the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory during World War II, and supervised the construction of Chicago Pile-1, the world's first nuclear reactor, which went critical on December 2, 1942, at the University of Chicago. At Argonne he designed and built several new reactors, including Experimental Breeder Reactor I, the first nuclear reactor to produce electric power, which went live on December 20, 1951.
Go to Profile#403
David J. Thouless
#5146
Overall Influence
1934 - 2019 (85 years)
David James Thouless was a British condensed-matter physicist. He was the winner of the 1990 Wolf Prize and a laureate of the 2016 Nobel Prize for physics along with F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.
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Stephen L. Adler
#9109
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Stephen Louis Adler is an American physicist specializing in elementary particles and field theory. He is currently professor emeritus in the school of natural sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Go to Profile#405
Ronald Drever
#12765
Overall Influence
1931 - 2017 (86 years)
Ronald William Prest Drever was a Scottish experimental physicist. He was a professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, co-founded the LIGO project, and was a co-inventor of the Pound–Drever–Hall technique for laser stabilisation, as well as the Hughes–Drever experiment. This work was instrumental in the first detection of gravitational waves in September 2015.
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Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
#245
Overall Influence
1917 - 2008 (91 years)
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was the creator of Transcendental Meditation and leader of the worldwide organization that has been characterized in multiple ways, including as a new religious movement and as non-religious. He became known as Maharishi and Yogi as an adult.
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Werner Nahm
#8128
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Werner Nahm is a German theoretical physicist. He has made contributions to mathematical physics and fundamental theoretical physics. Life and work Werner Nahm attended Gymnasium Philippinum Weilburg. After high school he studied from 1966 at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, where he earned his diploma in physics in 1970. He received his doctorate in 1972 at the University of Bonn, his dissertation was titled Analytical solution of the statistical bootstrap model, where he was then to 1975 as a post-doctoral student. From...
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Roberto Peccei
#13489
Overall Influence
1942 - 2020 (78 years)
Roberto Daniele Peccei was a theoretical particle physicist whose principal interests lay in the area of electroweak interactions and in the interface between particle physics and physical cosmology. He was most known for formulating the Peccei–Quinn theory , which attempts to resolve the strong CP problem in particle physics.
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Christopher Isham
#6823
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Christopher Isham , usually cited as Chris J. Isham, is a theoretical physicist at Imperial College London. Research Isham's main research interests are quantum gravity and foundational studies in quantum theory. He was the inventor of an approach to temporal quantum logic called the HPO formalism, and has worked on loop quantum gravity and quantum geometrodynamics. Together with other physicists, such as John C. Baez, Isham is known as a proponent of the utility of category theory in theoretical physics. In recent years, since at least 1997, he has been working on a new approach to quantum t...
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Marlan Scully
#10701
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Marlan Orvil Scully is an American physicist best known for his work in theoretical quantum optics. He is a professor at Texas A&M University and Princeton University. Additionally, in 2012 he developed a lab at the Baylor Research and Innovation Collaborative in Waco, Texas.
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Yash Pal
#4111
Overall Influence
1926 - 2017 (91 years)
Yash Pal was an Indian scientist, educator and educationist. He was known for his contributions to the study of cosmic rays, as well as for being an institution-builder. In his later years, he became one of the leading science communicators of the country.
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Tai Tsun Wu
#5537
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Tai Tsun Wu is a Chinese-born American physicist and writer well known for his contributions to high-energy nuclear physics and statistical mechanics. Life Born in Shanghai, he studied electrical engineering at University of Minnesota and became a William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition fellow . He obtained an S.M. and Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard University. His thesis concerned I. The Concept of Impedance II. High Frequency Scattering and was advised by Ronold W. P. King. At Harvard, he continued as Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows , joined the faculty of applied physics and is currently the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics & Professor of Physics.
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Robert B. Laughlin
#4645
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Robert Betts Laughlin is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University. Along with Horst L. Störmer of Columbia University and Daniel C. Tsui of Princeton University, he was awarded a share of the 1998 Nobel Prize in physics for their explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect.
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Rolf Widerøe
#7841
Overall Influence
1902 - 1996 (94 years)
Rolf Widerøe was a Norwegian accelerator physicist who was the originator of many particle acceleration concepts, including the resonance accelerator and the betatron accelerator. Early life Widerøe was born in Kristiania in 1902 as a son of the mercantile agent Theodor Widerøe and Carla Johanne Launer . He was a brother of the aviator and entrepreneur Viggo Widerøe who became the founder of the Norwegian airline Widerøe. After his A-level exams in the summer of 1920 at the Halling School in Oslo, Widerøe left for the university of Karlsruhe, Germany, to study electrical engineering.
Go to Profile#415
Robert Pound
#12640
Overall Influence
1919 - 2010 (91 years)
Robert Vivian Pound was a Canadian-American physicist who helped discover nuclear magnetic resonance and who devised the famous Pound–Rebka experiment supporting general relativity. He became a tenured professor of physics at Harvard without ever having received a graduate degree.
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Robert Coleman Richardson
#5533
Overall Influence
1937 - 2013 (76 years)
Robert Coleman Richardson was an American experimental physicist whose area of research included sub-millikelvin temperature studies of helium-3. Richardson, along with David Lee, as senior researchers, and then graduate student Douglas Osheroff, shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics for their 1972 discovery of the property of superfluidity in helium-3 atoms in the Cornell University Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics.
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James M. Bardeen
#7958
Overall Influence
1939 - 2022 (83 years)
James Maxwell Bardeen was an American physicist, well known for his work in general relativity, particularly his role in formulating the laws of black hole mechanics. He also discovered the Bardeen vacuum, an exact solution of the Einstein field equation.
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Isamu Akasaki
#2326
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
was a Japanese engineer and physicist, specializing in the field of semiconductor technology and Nobel Prize laureate, best known for inventing the bright gallium nitride p-n junction blue LED in 1989 and subsequently the high-brightness GaN blue LED as well.
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Hans Georg Dehmelt
#9760
Overall Influence
1922 - 2017 (95 years)
Hans Georg Dehmelt was a German and American physicist, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989, for co-developing the ion trap technique with Wolfgang Paul, for which they shared one-half of the prize . Their technique was used for high precision measurement of the electron magnetic moment.
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Renata Kallosh
#12145
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Renata Elizaveta Kallosh is a Russian-American theoretical physicist. She is a professor of physics at Stanford University, working there on supergravity, string theory and inflationary cosmology. Biography She completed her Bachelor's from Moscow State University in 1966 and obtained her Ph.D. from Lebedev Physical Institute, Moscow in 1968. She was then a professor at the same institute, before moving to CERN for a year in 1989. Kallosh joined Stanford in 1990 and continues to work there. In 2009 she received the Lise Meitner Award of the Gothenburg University. In 2014 awarded Doctorate Honoris Causa of the University of Groningen.
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Rainer K. Sachs
#6556
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Rainer Kurt "Ray" Sachs is a German-American mathematical physicist, with interests in general relativistic cosmology and astrophysics, as well as a computational radiation biologist. He is professor emeritus of Mathematics and Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and adjunct professor at Tufts Medical School.
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Christer Fuglesang
#4663
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Arne Christer Fuglesang is a Swedish physicist and an ESA astronaut. He was first launched aboard the STS-116 Space Shuttle mission on 10 December 2006, making him the first Swedish citizen in space.
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Joel Lebowitz
#5777
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Joel Louis Lebowitz is a mathematical physicist widely acknowledged for his outstanding contributions to statistical physics, statistical mechanics and many other fields of Mathematics and Physics. Lebowitz has published more than five hundred papers concerning statistical physics and science in general, and he is one of the founders and editors of the Journal of Statistical Physics, one of the most important peer-reviewed journals concerning scientific research in this area. He has been president of the New York Academy of Sciences.
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Joachim Frank
#2472
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Joachim Frank ; born September 12, 1940cryo-EM Life and career Frank was born in Siegen in the borough of Weidenau. After completing his Vordiplom degree in physics at the University of Freiburg and his Diplom under Walter Rollwagen's mentorship at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich with the thesis "Untersuchung der Sekundärelektronen-Emission von Gold am Schmelzpunkt" , Frank obtained his Ph.D. from the Technical University of Munich for graduate studies in Walter Hoppe's lab at the Max Planck Institut für Eiweiss- und Lederforschung with the dissertation Untersuchungen von elektronenmikroskopischen Aufnahmen hoher Auflösung mit Bilddifferenz- und Rekonstruktionsverfahren .
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Margaret Geller
#13113
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Margaret J. Geller is an American astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. Her work has included pioneering maps of the nearby universe, studies of the relationship between galaxies and their environment, and the development and application of methods for measuring the distribution of matter in the universe.
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Kari Enqvist
#17526
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Kari-Pekka Enqvist is a professor of cosmology in the Department of Physical Sciences at the University of Helsinki. Enqvist was awarded his PhD in theoretical physics in 1983. Enqvist is the chairman of the scientific advisory board of Skepsis ry and has written many books that popularize physics.
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Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri
#10363
Overall Influence
1923 - 2005 (82 years)
Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri was an Indian physicist, known for his research in general relativity and cosmology. His most significant contribution is the eponymous Raychaudhuri equation, which demonstrates that singularities arise inevitably in general relativity and is a key ingredient in the proofs of the Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems. Raychaudhuri was also revered as a teacher during his tenure at Presidency College, Kolkata.
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David J. Griffiths
#8328
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
David Jeffrey Griffiths is an American physicist and educator. He was on the faculty of Reed College from 1978 through 2009, becoming the Howard Vollum Professor of Science before his retirement. He wrote three highly regarded textbooks for undergraduate physics students.
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Emanuel Derman
#1215
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Emanuel Derman is a South African-born academic, businessman and writer. He is best known as a quantitative analyst, and author of the book My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance. He is a co-author of Black–Derman–Toy model, one of the first interest-rate models, and the Derman–Kani local volatility or implied tree model, a model consistent with the volatility smile.
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Peter Zoller
#6772
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Peter Zoller is a theoretical physicist from Austria. He is professor at the University of Innsbruck and works on quantum optics and quantum information and is best known for his pioneering research on quantum computing and quantum communication and for bridging quantum optics and solid state physics.
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Wojciech H. Zurek
#9419
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Wojciech Hubert Zurek is a theoretical physicist and a leading authority on quantum theory, especially decoherence and non-equilibrium dynamics of symmetry breaking and resulting defect generation .
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Arthur Wightman
#2728
Overall Influence
1922 - 2013 (91 years)
Arthur Strong Wightman was an American mathematical physicist. He was one of the founders of the axiomatic approach to quantum field theory, and originated the set of Wightman axioms. With his rigorous treatment of quantum field theories, he promoted research on various aspects of modern mathematical physics.
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Julian Barbour
#7795
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Julian Barbour is a British physicist with research interests in quantum gravity and the history of science. Since receiving his PhD degree on the foundations of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity at the University of Cologne in 1968, Barbour has supported himself and his family without an academic position, working part-time as a translator . He resides near Banbury, England.
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Nikolai Kardashev
#5978
Overall Influence
1932 - 2019 (87 years)
Nikolai Semyonovich Kardashev was a Soviet and Russian astrophysicist, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, and the deputy director of the Astro Space Center of PN Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
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Theodore Maiman
#3103
Overall Influence
1927 - 2007 (80 years)
Theodore Harold Maiman was an American engineer and physicist who is widely credited with the invention of the laser. Maiman's laser led to the subsequent development of many other types of lasers. The laser was successfully fired on May 16, 1960. In a July 7, 1960, press conference in Manhattan, Maiman and his employer, Hughes Aircraft Company, announced the laser to the world. Maiman was granted a patent for his invention, and he received many awards and honors for his work. His experiences in developing the first laser and subsequent related events are recounted in his book, The Laser Odyssey, later being republished in 2018 under a new title, The Laser Inventor: Memoirs of Theodore H.
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William Wilson Morgan
#11393
Overall Influence
1906 - 1994 (88 years)
William Wilson Morgan was an American astronomer and astrophysicist. The principal theme in Morgan's work was stellar and galaxy classification. He is also known for helping prove the existence of spiral arms in our galaxy. In addition to his scientific achievements he served as professor and astronomy director for the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin and was the managing editor for George Hale's Astrophysical Journal.
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Edward Fredkin
#1618
Overall Influence
1934 - 2023 (89 years)
Edward Fredkin was an American computer scientist, physicist and businessman who was an early pioneer of digital physics. Fredkin's primary contributions included work on reversible computing and cellular automata. While Konrad Zuse's book, Calculating Space , mentioned the importance of reversible computation, the Fredkin gate represented the essential breakthrough. In more recent work, he used the term digital philosophy .
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Andrei Slavnov
#14550
Overall Influence
1939 - 2022 (83 years)
Andrei Alekseevich Slavnov was a Russian theoretical physicist, known for Slavnov–Taylor identities. Life and career Slavnov was born in Moscow on 22 December 1939. He graduated in physics in 1962 from Moscow State University and received in 1965 his Russian candidate degree from the Steklov Institute. He then worked at the Steklov Institute in the department of theoretical physics, most recently as a principal researcher. In 1972 he received his Russian doctorate , becoming a professor in 1981. In 1992 he became the head of the department of quantum field theory and later became the head of the department of theoretical physics at the Steklov Institute.
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Gérard Mourou
#3952
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Gérard Albert Mourou is a French scientist and pioneer in the field of electrical engineering and lasers. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, along with Donna Strickland, for the invention of chirped pulse amplification, a technique later used to create ultrashort-pulse, very high-intensity laser pulses.
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Hans-Peter Dürr
#6857
Overall Influence
1929 - 2014 (85 years)
Hans-Peter Dürr was a German physicist. He worked on nuclear and quantum physics, elementary particles and gravitation, epistemology, and philosophy, and he advocated responsible scientific and energy policies. In 1987, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "his profound critique of the Strategic Defense Initiative and his work to convert high technology to peaceful uses."
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Francis E. Low
#8986
Overall Influence
1921 - 2007 (86 years)
Francis Eugene Low was an American theoretical physicist. He was an Institute Professor at MIT, and served as provost there from 1980 to 1985. He was a member of the influential JASON Defense Advisory Group.
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Fred Lawrence Whipple
#10713
Overall Influence
1906 - 2004 (98 years)
Fred Lawrence Whipple was an American astronomer, who worked at the Harvard College Observatory for more than 70 years. Amongst his achievements were asteroid and comet discoveries, the "dirty snowball" hypothesis of comets, and the invention of the Whipple shield.
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Hans Frauenfelder
#11857
Overall Influence
1922 - 2022 (100 years)
Hans Frauenfelder was an American physicist and biophysicist notable for his discovery of perturbed angular correlation in 1951. In the modern day, PAC spectroscopy is widely used in the study of condensed matter physics. Within biophysics, he is known for his experimental and theoretical research on the dynamical behavior of protein tertiary structure.
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Michael R. Douglas
#6228
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Michael R. Douglas is an American theoretical physicist, best known for his work in string theory and mathematical physics. Biography Douglas was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the son of Nancy and Ronald G. Douglas, a mathematician specializing in operator algebras. He received his bachelor's degree in physics from Harvard University. He then went to Caltech and received a PhD in physics in 1988 under John Schwarz, one of the developers and leading researchers in superstring theory.
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William H. Press
#6231
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
William Henry Press is an astrophysicist, theoretical physicist, computer scientist, and computational biologist. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1989 he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society "in recognition of important theoretical contributions to relativistic astrophysics and to cosmology" Other honors include the 1981 Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy. Press has been a member of the JASON defense advisory group since 1977 and is a past chair.
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Rosalyn Sussman Yalow
#2449
Overall Influence
1921 - 2011 (90 years)
Rosalyn Sussman Yalow was an American medical physicist, and a co-winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for development of the radioimmunoassay technique. She was the second woman , and the first American-born woman, to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
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Margherita Hack
#6194
Overall Influence
1922 - 2013 (91 years)
Margherita Hack was an Italian astrophysicist and scientific disseminator. The asteroid 8558 Hack, discovered in 1995, was named in her honour. Biography Hack was born in Florence. Her father Roberto Hack was a Florentine bookkeeper of Protestant Swiss origin. Her mother, Maria Luisa Poggesi, a Catholic from Tuscany, was a graduate of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze and a miniaturist at the Uffizi Gallery. Both parents left their religion to join the Italian Theosophical Society, for which Roberto Hack was secretary for a time under the chairmanship of the countess Gamberini-Cavallini...
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Shirley Ann Jackson
#4363
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
The Honorable Shirley Ann Jackson, PHD, is an American physicist, and was the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is the first African-American woman to have earned a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics, and the first African-American woman to have earned a doctorate at MIT in any field. She is also the second African-American woman in the United States to earn a doctorate in physics.
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B. Alan Wallace
#1633
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Bruce Alan Wallace is an American author and expert on Tibetan Buddhism. His books discuss Eastern and Western scientific, philosophical, and contemplative modes of inquiry, often focusing on the relationships between science and Buddhism. He is founder of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies.
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Nick Holonyak
#2689
Overall Influence
1928 - 2022 (94 years)
Nick Holonyak Jr. was an American engineer and educator. He is noted particularly for his 1962 invention and first demonstration of a semiconductor laser diode that emitted visible light. This device was the forerunner of the first generation of commercial light-emitting diodes . He was then working at a General Electric Company research laboratory near Syracuse, New York. He left General Electric in 1963 and returned to his alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he later became John Bardeen Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics.
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