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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Physics,

#4201

Arndt Hartmann

#113399

Overall Influence

#4202

Kazimieras Černis

#84505

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Kazimieras Černis is a Lithuanian astronomer and astrophysicist, active member of the IAU, and a prolific discoverer of minor planets and comets. In 2012, he discovered 420356 Praamzius, a trans-Neptunian object and dwarf planet candidate.

#4203

Lynnae Quick

#60562

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Lynnae C. Quick is an American planetary geophysicist and Ocean Worlds Planetary Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Her research centers on theoretical modeling of cryovolcanic processes on the icy moons and dwarf planets in the Solar System as well as modeling volcanic activity on Venus and the Moon. Quick is a member of the Dawn, Europa Clipper, and Dragonfly Mission science teams. She is also a member of the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute Toolbox for Research and Exploration team, and serves as co-chair of the Earth and Planetary Systems Sciences se...

#4204

Mark Inghram

#96443

Overall Influence

1919 - 2003 (84 years)

Mark Gordon Inghram was an American physicist. Inghram was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Life Inghram was born in Livingston, Montana. He did undergraduate work at Olivet College, receiving a B.A. in 1939. He worked in the Manhattan Project during World War II and at Argonne National Laboratories from 1945 to 1947. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1947. He began teaching at the University of Chicago as an instructor in 1947 and remained there until his retirement in 1985. He died at his home in Holland, Michigan in 2003.

#4205

Paul Spudis

#55850

Overall Influence

1952 - 2018 (66 years)

Paul D. Spudis was an American geologist and lunar scientist. His specialty was the study of volcanism and impact processes on the planets, including Mercury and Mars. Spudis was well known as a leading advocate of a return to the Moon to use its resources to establish and supply a cislunar space transportation system.

#4206

Uwe Rau

#63206

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Uwe Rau is a German physicist who made important contributions to the physics of the photovoltaic device, notably on explaining energy losses in thin-film solar cells and on the use of the reciprocity principle to characterize solar cells by electroluminescence techniques. This led to the development of this technique as a standard in research and industry.

#4207

Karsten Reuter

#76496

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Karsten Reuter is a German physicist and chemist. Life and Work Reuter studied Physics at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and the University of York. He conducted his doctoral studies at the CSIC Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid and in Erlangen, where he received his doctorate in 1995 under Prof. Dr. Klaus Heinz for his work on electronic transport across metal-semiconductor interfaces. After postdoctoral studies at the Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin and at the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in Amsterdam, he led...

#4208

Mary Helen Wright Greuter

Mary Helen Wright Greuter

#63298

Overall Influence

1914 - 1997 (83 years)

Mary Helen Wright Greuter was an American astronomer and historian, who wrote and edited on the history and methodology of sciences, including anthropology, archeology, mathematics, and physics. Early years Born in Washington, D.C., she was the daughter of the geophysicist Frederick Eugene Wright and Kathleen Ethel Finley. She was known professionally by her family name of Wright. Her siblings included, William F. Wright and Kenneth A. Wright. Wright was educated at Madeira School. She was a Bennett Junior College graduate , and Vassar College graduate .

#4209

Arne Kjekshus

#113474

Overall Influence

#4210

Rod Boswell

#33495

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Roderick William Boswell AM FAA FTSE is an Australian physicist. He is a professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, in the Space Plasma, Power and Propulsion group of the Plasma Research Laboratory. He invented a technology which become the basis for the development of a new type of rocket thruster, the Helicon Double Layer Thruster: the ongoing development of the Australian Plasma Thruster is supported by the European Space Agency.

#4211

Helmuth Tributsch

#113507

Overall Influence

#4212

Keivan Stassun

#103067

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Keivan Guadalupe Stassun is an American physicist and astronomer in the field of exoplanets. He is a physics professor at Vanderbilt University and an adjunct professor at Fisk University, institutions at which he oversees and co-directs the Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-Ph.D Bridge Program. Stassun has been an activist promoting the integration of underrepresented groups in the fields of STEM, especially math and science through research, outreach and teaching.

#4213

John Peter Huchra

#113520

Overall Influence

#4214

Jason Gaverick Matheny

#9863

Overall Influence

Jason Gaverick Matheny is an American national security expert serving as president and CEO of the RAND Corporation since July 2022. He was previously a senior civil servant in the Biden Administration from March 2021 to June 2022. He served as deputy assistant to the president for technology and national security, deputy director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and coordinator for technology and national security at the White House National Security Council.

#4215

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh

#12882

Overall Influence

1958 - 2020 (62 years)

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi was an Iranian nuclear physicist and scientist. He was regarded as the chief of Iran's nuclear program. Born in Qom in 1958, Fakhrizadeh joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after the Iranian revolution of 1979. He attended Shahid Beheshti University and later received a PhD from the University of Isfahan. Beginning in 1991, he was a physics professor at Imam Hossein University.

#4216

Mark Hochstrasser

#113598

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Mark Hochstrasser is an American biologist, currently the Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University. Hochstrasser's research group has made many important contributions to our understanding of eukaryotic cell biology, particularly discoveries on the ubiquitin-proteasome system and the small ubiquitin-like modifier protein.

#4217

Steven Cundiff

#102611

Overall Influence

Steven Cundiff is an American experimental physicist and the Harrison M. Randall collegiate professor of physics at the University of Michigan. His research interests include the production and manipulation of ultrafast pulses, in particular for applications in studying light-matter interactions. Cundiff is a Fellow of American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He is the co-author of the standard reference for frequency combs titled Femtosecond Optical Frequency Comb: Principle, Operation and Applications.

#4218

Juansher Chkareuli

Juansher Chkareuli

#42702

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Juansher Levan Chkareuli is a Georgian theoretical physicist working in particle physics, Head of Particle Physics Department at Andronikashvili Institute of Physics of Tbilisi State University and Professor at Institute of Theoretical Physics of Ilia State University in Tbilisi.

#4219

Jonathon Howard

#88025

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Jonathon Howard is a biophysicist and cell biologist. He is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry and a Professor of Physics at Yale University. His research is focused on microtubules, motor proteins and cell shape and motion.

#4220

Nai Phuan Ong

#87300

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Nai Phuan Ong is an American experimental physicist, specializing in "condensed matter physics focusing on topological insulators, Dirac/Weyl semimetals, superconductors and quantum spin liquids." Biography Nai Phuan Ong was born in Penang, Malaysia to parents of Chinese origin on 10 September 1948. He grew up speaking a Chinese dialect with his parents and English with his seven siblings. As a youth, he attended Saint Xaviers Institution, run by the Christian Brothers, where classes were taught in English. His interest in science was spurred by his sister's library books; he started going to...

#4221

Robert W. Bower

#48516

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Robert W. Bower is an American applied physicist. Immediately after receiving his Ph.D. from The California Institute of Technology in 1973, he worked for over 25 years in many different professions: engineer, scientist, professor at University of California, Davis, and as president and CEO of Device Concept Inc. He also served as the president of Integrated Vertical Modules, which focused on three-dimensional, high-density structures. His most notable contribution, however, is his field-effect device with insulated gates—also known as a self-aligned-gate MOSFET , or SAGFET. Bower patented th...

#4222

Lev Borisovich Okun

#113686

Overall Influence

#4223

Tsutomu Shimomura

#10603

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Tsutomu Shimomura is a Japanese-born physicist and computer security expert. He is known for helping the FBI track and arrest hacker Kevin Mitnick. Takedown, his 1996 book on the subject with journalist John Markoff, was later adapted for the screen in Track Down in 2000.

#4224

Paul‐gerhard Reinhard

#113731

Overall Influence

#4225

Daniel F. Styer

#71779

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Daniel F. Styer is an American theoretical physicist and distinguished professor of physics at Oberlin College. He is author of several books on theoretical physics. Education and career Styer obtained his B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1977, majoring in physics. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1983 from Cornell University on Partial Differential Approximants and Applications to Statistical Mechanics. Subsequently, he worked at Rutgers University until 1985 as postdoctoral fellow. He started working at Oberlin College in the physics department in 1985, became full professor in 1998, and was awarded...

#4226

William A. Chupka

#113748

Overall Influence

#4227

Joey Walter Huston

#113756

Overall Influence

#4228

Kristin Persson

#78738

Overall Influence

Kristin Aslaug Persson is a Swedish/Icelandic American physicist and chemist. She was born in Lund, Sweden, in 1971, to Eva Haettner-Aurelius and Einar Benedikt Olafsson. She is a faculty senior staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Daniel M. Tellep Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at University of California, Berkeley. Currently, she is also the director of the Molecular Foundry, a national user facility managed by the US Department of Energy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Persson is the director and founder of the Materials Project, a multi-national effort to compute the properties of all inorganic materials.

#4229

Robert Grayson Littlejohn

#89812

Overall Influence

Robert Grayson Littlejohn is an American physicist, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. Littlejohn completed a bachelor's degree and doctorate in physics at Berkeley, in 1975 and 1980, respectively. He then served as a post-doctoral researcher at the La Jolla Institute and the University of California, Los Angeles before returning to teach at Berkeley in 1983. He retired in 2018.

#4230

Jeffrey Shapiro

Jeffrey Shapiro

#64923

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Jeffrey H. Shapiro is the Julius A. Stratton Professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the former director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics. He made seminal contributions to understanding the fundamental quantum limits on communications, generation, detection, and application of quantum squeezed state, ghost imaging, and quantum information science. He invented the microchannel-plate spatial light modulator with Cardinal Warde.

#4231

Taft E. Armandroff

#89574

Overall Influence

Taft E. Armandroff is an American astronomer, currently the Frank and Susan Bash Endowed Chair for the Director of the McDonald Observatory, at University of Texas at Austin.

#4232

Milan Damnjanović

#84800

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Milan Damnjanović is a full professor specialising in Quantum mechanics and Mathematical physics at the Faculty of Physics at the University of Belgrade and Member of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

#4233

David M. Alexander

#113913

Overall Influence

#4234

Hongkun Park

#79462

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Hongkun Park is Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics at Harvard University. He received his BS in chemistry at Seoul National University in 1990, and his PhD in physical chemistry at Stanford University in 1996 under Richard Zare. From 1996 to 1999 he was a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under A. Paul Alivisatos and Paul McEuen.

#4235

Kenneth Case

#100528

Overall Influence

1923 - 2006 (83 years)

Kenneth Myron Case was an American physicist and applied mathematician, best known for his use of the mathematical methods of quantum field theory and transport theory to a wide range of applied problems, especially many relevant to U.S. national security. He was an early member of the JASON advisory group.

#4236

Ray Norris

#107621

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Ray Norris is an astrophysicist and science communicator, based at the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility, and Western Sydney University, and conducts research in astrophysics and Aboriginal Astronomy.

#4237

Dieter Pohl

#96422

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Dieter Pohl is a German–Swiss physicist. He became known especially for his pioneering works in nano-optics, near field optics , and plasmonics. Pohl studied at the University of Stuttgart and the Technische Universität München where he did his doctorate with Wolfgang Kaiser. In 1968, he moved to IBM Zurich Research Laboratory in Rüschlikon and 1998 to University of Basel. He was appointed titular professor in 2002.

#4238

Kōichirō Nishikawa

#112324

Overall Influence

1949 - 2018 (69 years)

Kōichirō Nishikawa was a Japanese elementary particle physicist, known for contributions to neutrino physics. He was professor emeritus of the KEK high-energy physics laboratory and Kyōto University.

#4239

Peter Weish

#52842

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Peter Weish is an Austrian scientist , author and environmental activist. Peter Weish studied biology, chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna. After receiving his doctorate of philosophy in 1966 he worked at the Institute for Nuclear Radiation Protection Centre Seibersdorf until 1970.

#4240

Mark Smith

#30689

Overall Influence

Mark Edmund Smith, is a British physicist, academic, and academic administrator. He specialises in nuclear magnetic resonance and materials physics. Since October 2019, he has been the President and Vice-Chancellor of University of Southampton, having previously held the office of Vice-Chancellor of Lancaster University, and Professor of Solid State NMR in its Department of Chemistry since 2012. He has previously lectured at the University of Kent and the University of Warwick.

#4241

David C. Joy

#114039

Overall Influence

#4242

Dale Cruikshank

#112751

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Dale P. Cruikshank is an astronomer and planetary scientist in the Astrophysics Branch at NASA Ames Research Center. His research specialties are spectroscopy and radiometry of planets and small bodies in the Solar System. These small bodies include comets, asteroids, planetary satellites, dwarf planets , and objects in the region beyond Neptune . He uses spectroscopic observations made with ground-based and space-based telescopes, as well as interplanetary spacecraft, to identify and study the ices, minerals, and organic materials that compose the surfaces of planets and small bodies.

#4243

Mirjam Cvetič

#106131

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Mirjam Cvetič is a Slovenian-American theoretical physicist at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics and of Mathematics. Her research includes the applications of string theory and M-theory to black hole behavior and particle phenomenology, and she has published highly cited works on supersymmetry.

#4244

Robert G. Greenler

#83107

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (97 years)

Robert G. Greenler is an American physicist. His research centered on the optical properties of surfaces. Greenler received his B.S. from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He taught physics at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee from 1962-1992. He became professor emeritus of the same university after his retirement.

#4245

S. C. Jain

#91599

Overall Influence

1926 - 2009 (83 years)

Suresh Chand Jain was an Indian physicist and director of the Defence Research and Development Organization. Known for his research in solid state physics, Jain was an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy and National Academy of Sciences, India. In 1966, 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.

#4246

Zeev Zalevsky

#32525

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Zeev Zalevsky is an Israeli physicist specializing in Optoelectronics. He is a Professor of Electrical engineering and Nanophotonics at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. He is also a visiting professor in University of Erlangen-Nuremberg at Germany. He is in the management community of the OASIS, The Optical Association of Israel.

#4247

Robert P. Fender

#114105

Overall Influence

#4248

Jean Louis Chaboche

#114121

Overall Influence

#4249

Christophe Salomon

#101183

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Christophe Salomon is a French physicist. Specialist in quantum optics and cold atoms, Christophe Salomon is interested in the superfluidity of quantum gases and in the measurement of time using atomic clocks. A pioneer in this disciplinary field, he has helped to give France a world leadership position in the field.

#4250

Piero Madau

#114131

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

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