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,

#4251

Yanglai Cho

#53633
Overall Influence
1932 - 2015 (83 years)
Yanglai Cho was a Korean physicist. After completing his bachelor's degree in physics at Seoul National University in 1956, he moved to the United States to continue studying the subject, successively earning a master's degree from Brigham Young University in 1958 and a doctorate from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1966. Before obtaining his doctorate, Cho was a physics instructor at Vassar College between 1960 and 1962. Upon attaining a Ph.D., Cho held concurrent posts as a research physicist at Carnegie and a research associate at Argonne National Laboratory. He then became directo...
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#4252

Jules Carbotte

#112223
Overall Influence
1938 - 2019 (81 years)
Jules P. Carbotte was a Canadian physicist, professor at McMaster University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His research interests spanned many areas of theoretical condensed matter physics.
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#4253

Katarzyna Chałasińska-Macukow

Katarzyna Chałasińska-Macukow
#43359
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Katarzyna Chałasińska-Macukow is Polish physicist and professor at the University of Warsaw. In 2005 and again in 2008 elected for the post of the rector of the University of Warsaw. Fellow and from 2008 Chairman of the Science Board in Collegium Invisibile.
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#4254

Cynthia Keppel

Cynthia Keppel
#80171
Overall Influence
Cynthia E. Keppel is the Hall A and C Leader at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Her research focuses on the quark-gluon structure of the nucleon, while also considering applications of nuclear physics in medicine. Previously, she was a founding member of the Hampton University Proton Therapy Institute.
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#4255

Leanne Pitchford

#60163
Overall Influence
Leanne Carolyn Pitchford is a retired physicist known for her work on the numerical modeling of low-temperature plasma, and in the LXCat project for open exchange of low-temperature plasma data. Educated in the US, she worked in France as a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research , affiliated with the Laboratoire Plasma et Conversion d’Energie at the University of Toulouse.
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#4256

Tamas Gombosi

#105358
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Tamas I. Gombosi is a Hungarian space plasma physicist. He is the Konstantin I. Gringauz Distinguished University Professor of Space Science and Rollin M. Gerstacker Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan.
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#4257

Claudia Draxl

#68838
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Claudia Draxl is a physicist. She is a full professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin in theoretical condensed-matter physics. Life From 1978 to 1983, Draxl studied mathematics and physics at the University of Graz. She received her doctorate at the University of Graz in theoretical physics in 1987. She finished her habilitation at University of Graz in 1996. From 1996 to 1997, she was a lecturer at the University of Graz. From 1997 to 1998, she was an associate professor at the University of Graz. She was the director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Graz from 1999 to 2001, and the deputy director of the very same institute from 2001 to 2004.
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#4258

Frederick H. Pollak

#114217
Overall Influence
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#4259

Don Brian Chaffin

#114251
Overall Influence
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#4260

John R. Cunningham

John R. Cunningham
#70239
Overall Influence
1927 - 2020 (93 years)
John Robert Cunningham, was a Canadian medical physicist who was noted for his contributions in the development of computerized radiation treatment planning dose calculations in radiation therapy. Early life and education Cunningham, known as Jack, received his B.Eng. in Engineering Physics and M.Sc. in Radiation Physics from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. In 1955, he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in physics. After working for Canada's Defense Research Board, he became a staff Medical Physicist at Toronto's Ontario Cancer Institute / Princess Margaret Cance...
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#4261

Ian Shelton

#71783
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Ian Keith Shelton is a Canadian astronomer who discovered SN 1987A, the first modern supernova close and bright enough to be visible to the naked eye. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Shelton received his B.Sc. in 1979 from the University of Manitoba and in 1981 began his professional career working as Resident Astronomer at the University of Toronto Southern Observatory at Las Campanas, Chile.
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#4262

Zeev Valy Vardeny

#114268
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
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#4263

Leonard Kleinman

#114287
Overall Influence
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#4264

David B. Tanner

#105623
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
David Burnham Tanner is a Distinguished Professor of Physics and an affiliate professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Florida. He studied at the University of Virginia where he received his B. A. degree. He has a PhD in Physics from Cornell University.
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#4265

Martti Raidal

#114306
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
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#4266

Paul A. Fleury

#67715
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Paul Aimé Fleury is an American physicist and academic administrator. He was the dean of the faculty of engineering at Yale University and is the Frederick W. Beinecke Professor of Engineering and Applied Physics and professor of physics.
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#4267

Samson Shatashvili

Samson Shatashvili
#52062
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Samson Lulievich Shatashvili is a theoretical and mathematical physicist who has been working at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, since 2002. He holds the Trinity College Dublin Chair of Natural Philosophy and is the director of the Hamilton Mathematics Institute. He is also affiliated with the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques , where he held the Louis Michel Chair from 2003 to 2013 and the Israel Gelfand Chair from 2014 to 2019. Prior to moving to Trinity College, he was a professor of physics at Yale University from 1994.
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#4268

Vania Jordanova

#79688
Overall Influence
Vania Koleva Jordanova is a physicist known for her work on space weather and geomagnetic storms. She was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2021. Education and career Jordanova has a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and started at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2006 as a technical staff member. Jordanova was the director for the Space Hazards Induced near Earth by Large Dynamic Storms project which examines hazards from space weather that can cause deleterious impacts on technology on Earth such as radio, television, and cellphones.
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#4269

Margaret MacVicar

#33964
Overall Influence
1943 - 1991 (48 years)
Margaret L.A. MacVicar was an American physicist and educator. In addition to serving as MIT's Dean of Undergraduate Education , MacVicar is credited with founding the now widely emulated Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program in 1969. MacVicar received her undergraduate and graduate degrees at MIT and joined the faculty, giving her the rare distinction of being a "MIT lifer."
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#4270

James F. Drake

#107264
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
For other persons named James Drake, see James Drake James F. Drake is an American theoretical physicist who specializes in plasma physics. He is known for his studies on plasma instabilities and magnetic reconnection for which he was awarded the 2010 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics by the American Physical Society.
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#4271

David G. Mandrus

#114379
Overall Influence
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#4272

David Lindley

#78766
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
David Lindley is a British theoretical physicist and author. He holds a B.A. in theoretical physics from Cambridge University and a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Sussex . Then he was a postdoctoral researcher at Cambridge University. From 1983 to 1986, he was a Research Fellow in the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He then served as Technical Editor and Writer with the Central Design Group for the Superconducting Supercollider at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, California. He was an Associate Editor at Nature , a Senior Editor of Science , and an Associate Editor of Science News .
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#4273

Stanley Cohen

#14762
Overall Influence
1927 - 2017 (90 years)
Stanley Cohen was an American physicist who worked at Argonne National Laboratory. He created Speakeasy, a numerical computational environment, implemented with OOPS, object-oriented system, and was the founder and president of Speakeasy Computing Corporation.
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#4274

Aude Billard

#96575
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Aude G. Billard is a Swiss physicist in the fields of machine learning and human-robot interactions. As a full professor at the School of Engineering at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne , Billard’s research focuses on applying machine learning to support robot learning through human guidance. Billard’s work on human-robot interactions has been recognized numerous times by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and she currently holds a leadership position on the executive committee of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society as the vice president of publicati...
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#4275

Brunangelo Falini

#112115
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Brunangelo Falini is an Italian hematologist, academic and researcher. He is a Full Professor of Hematology, and Head of the Institute of Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplantation at University of Perugia.
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#4276

Michael Zerner

#85243
Overall Influence
1940 - 2000 (60 years)
Michael Charles Zerner was an American theoretical chemist, professor at the University of Guelph from 1970 to 1981 and University of Florida from 1981 to 2000. Zerner earned his Ph.D. under Martin Gouterman at Harvard, working with the spectroscopy of porphyrins. He conceived and wrote a quantum chemistry program, known as BIGSPEC or ZINDO, for calculating electronic spectra of big molecules. In 1996 Zerner was diagnosed with liver cancer, and died on February 2, 2000, survived by his wife and two children.
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#4277

Mikhail Kovalchuk

#58730
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Mikhail Valentinovich Kovalchuk is a Russian physicist and official. He is a brother of Yury Kovalchuk, known as "Putin's personal banker". Political activity Since May 26, 2000 Mikhail Kovalchuk has been a Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in physics.
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#4278

Jacob Biamonte

#73113
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Jacob Daniel Biamonte is an American physicist and theoretical computer scientist active in the fields of quantum information theory and quantum computing. He left a tenured professorship at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Russia after the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
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#4279

Vladimir Bulović

#114528
Overall Influence
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#4280

Raman Prinja

#90384
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Prof. Raman K. Prinja is an astronomer, professor and author. He is professor of astrophysics at University College London and has been awarded the Pol and Christiane Swings research prize by the Royal Academy of Belgium; UCL Faculty Teaching Award ; UCL Education Award 2018; American Institute of Physics Science Education Award ; Royal Society Young People's Book Prize . In Sept. 2021 Prof Raman Prinja was a recipient of the UCL Leadership Award for Outstanding Contribution. The Institute of Physics 2021 Lise Meitner Medal and Prize has been awarded to Prof. Prinja for his distinguished long...
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#4281

Olaf Dreyer

Olaf Dreyer
#90019
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Olaf Dreyer is a German theoretical physicist whose research interests include quantum gravity and the quantum measurement problem. Dreyer received his Ph.D. in quantum gravity in 2001 from the Pennsylvania State University under the direction of Abhay Ashtekar. Subsequently, he has held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, a Marie Curie Fellowship at Imperial College, London, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Theoretical Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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#4282

Noah Hershkowitz

#81445
Overall Influence
1941 - 2020 (79 years)
Noah Hershkowitz was an American experimental plasma physicist. He was known for his pioneering research on the understanding of plasma sheaths, solitons and double layers in plasmas, as well as the development of the emissive probe which measures the plasma potential .
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#4283

Siegfried Bauer

#108410
Overall Influence
1961 - 2018 (57 years)
Siegfried Bauer was a German physicist and professor for soft-matter physics at Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria. In 2016, he was elected Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for contributions to the understanding and application of electroactive polymer dielectrics. In 2018, he was named Fellow of the Society of Photo-Instrumentation Engineers "for achievements in plastic electronic devices and soft-matter physics".
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#4284

Rainer Kress

#114552
Overall Influence
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#4285

Domenico Giardini

#114565
Overall Influence
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#4286

Stephen H. White

#82887
Overall Influence
Stephen H. White is an American Biophysicist, academic, and author. He is a Professor Emeritus of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of California, Irvine. White has published over 350 papers, has been cited over 30,000 times, and has a Google Scholar H-index of 84. He has focused his research on structure and folding of membrane proteins, with particular attention on protein structure prediction, peptide–bilayer interactions, cell membrane biophysics, structure of membranes and lipid bilayers, and antimicrobial peptides. He was awarded the 2014 Carl Brändén Award for his contributions to the field of membrane protein folding.
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#4287

Matey Mateev

#86272
Overall Influence
1940 - 2010 (70 years)
Matey Dragomirov Mateev was a Bulgarian professor in theoretical physics. He was a fellow of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Early life Mateev was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. He studied nuclear physics at Sofia University where he became a research associate in the theoretical department.
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#4288

Daniel E. Friedmann

Daniel E. Friedmann
#33300
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Daniel E. Friedmann serves as Carbon Engineering's CEO and Board Chair. Friedmann assumed the role of CEO in January, 2022, having served on CE's board for the previous five years, four of which as Board Chair.
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#4289

Andreas Dreizler

#45203
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Andreas Dreizler is a German physicist, professor of mechanical engineering at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and heads the division of reactive flows and measurement technology. In 2014, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, the highest award for researchers in Germany, for his achievements in quantitative laser diagnostics of reactive flows. His scientific achievements include, for example the world's first measurements of carbon water concentrations and temperatures in flames using nonlinear optics.
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#4290

Joyanti Chutia

#75722
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Joyanti Chutia is an Indian physicist who specializes in solid-state physics and plasma physics. She was among the first women who have headed scientific institutions in India when she became the Director of the Institute of Advanced Study in Science and Technology in Guwahati, Assam, which is the first major research institution in North East India. She is a fellow of National Academy of Sciences. She is an Emeritus Scientist at the Department of Science & Technology in the Government of India.
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#4291

David Jaffray

#67962
Overall Influence
David A. Jaffray is a Canadian medical physicist and Senior Scientist in the Division of Biophysics and Bioimaging at the Ontario Cancer Institute. He is also a professor and Vice Chair in the University of Toronto's Department of Radiation Oncology. He is the inventor, together with John Wong and Jeffrey Siewerdsen, of on-line volumetric kv-imaging guidance system for radiation therapy.
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#4292

Michael Fuhrer

#101380
Overall Influence
Michael S. Fuhrer is a US/Australian physicist recognised internationally as a pioneer in atomically-thin materials, including graphene and novel topological materials, with expertise in fabrication and characterisation of their electronic and optical properties.
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#4293

Guifré Vidal

#97026
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Guifré Vidal is a Spanish physicist who is working on quantum many-body physics using analytical and numerical techniques. In particular, he is one of the leading experts of tensor network state implementations such as time-evolving block decimation and multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz . He was previously a faculty member of Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada. However as of September 2019, he is now a research scientist at Sandbox @ Alphabet.
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#4294

Judith Gamora Cohen

#83691
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Judith Gamora Cohen , is an American astronomer and the Kate Van Nuys Page Professor of Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. She is a recognized expert regarding the Milky Way Galaxy, particularly with respect to the Galaxy's outer halo. She also played a key role in the design and construction of the Keck Telescope.
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#4295

Steve MacLean

Steve MacLean
#58226
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Steven Glenwood MacLean is a retired Canadian astronaut. He was the president of the Canadian Space Agency, from September 1, 2008, to February 1, 2013. He was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and is married to Nadine Wielgopolski of Hull, Quebec. They have three children. He enjoys hiking, canoeing, flying, parachuting and gymnastics. In 2013 he returned to physics research as an associate member of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo.
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#4296

Walter Oelert

Walter Oelert
#111394
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Walter Oelert is a professor at the Juelich Research Center in Germany. Research In 1995 under the leadership of Professor Walter Oelert, the international group of physicists in the CERN laboratory managed to show that they had obtained experimentally nine atoms of antihydrogen in a particle accelerator. Later research allowed the CERN scientists to collect anti-protons among low-energy positrons until they combine into anti-atoms and store them at very low temperatures.
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#4297

Frank D. Stacey

#114828
Overall Influence
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#4298

Shaun Lovejoy

#114829
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
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#4299

Rod C. Alferness

#60817
Overall Influence
Rod C. Alferness was president of The Optical Society in 2008. Alferness is the dean of the college of engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Before that, Alferness was chief scientist, Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent and the Bell Laboratories research senior vice president. His previous position was the Bell Laboratories optical networking research senior vice president. Alferness also was the chief technical officer and advanced technology and architecture vice-president of the Optical Networking Group, Lucent Technologies. Prior to that role, he was head of the Photon...
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#4300

Russell Merle Genet

#75178
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Russell Merle Genet is an American astronomer, who specializes in photometric observations and probing of very short-period eclipsing binary stars. Between 1964 and 1968 he worked as a rocket scientist for Space and Missile Systems, San Bernardino, California. Between 1969 and 1975 he worked as a mathematical analyst for Aerospace Guidance System Center, Newark, Ohio. Since then until 1990 he worked as a research supervisor for Air Force Human Resources Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, and Mesa, Arizona.
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