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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Physics,
#4351
B. O. Tian
#115813
Overall Influence
#4352
Marie Edmonds
#20352
Overall Influence
Marie Edmonds is a professor of volcanology and geology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge whose research focuses on the physics and chemistry of volcanic eruptions and magmatism and understanding volatile cycling in the solid Earth as mediated by plate tectonics. She is interested in the social and economic impacts of natural hazards; and the sustainable use of Earth's mineral and energy resources. Professor Edmonds is the Vice President and Ron Oxburgh Fellow in Earth Sciences at Queens' College, Cambridge; and the Deputy Head of Department and Director of R...
Go to Profile#4353
Stephen G. Emerson
#20707
Overall Influence
Stephen Gould Emerson is an American academic who was the 13th president of Haverford College from July 1, 2007, to August 10, 2011. In February 2012, he was appointed Director of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, and he will also hold the Clyde ’56 and Helen Wu Professorship in Immunology at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Go to Profile#4354
Leroy Chang
#33019
Overall Influence
1936 - 2008 (72 years)
Leroy L. Chang was an experimental physicist and solid state electronics researcher and engineer. Born in China, he studied in Taiwan and then the United States, obtaining his doctorate from Stanford University in 1963. As a research physicist he studied semiconductors for nearly 30 years at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, New York. This period included pioneering work on superlattice heterostructures with Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leo Esaki.
Go to Profile#4355
Časlav Brukner
#92087
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Časlav Brukner is a Serbian-Austrian quantum physicist and university professor. Biography Brukner had studied physics at the University of Belgrade from 1987 - 1991 and subsequently completed a degree in physics at the University of Vienna in 1995. He then worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck. In 1999 he received his doctorate in quantum physics at the Vienna University of Technology under the supervision of Anton Zeilinger.
Go to Profile#4356
Santo Fortunato
#115902
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
#4357
Roy Maartens
#115909
Overall Influence
#4358
Antoni Rogalski
#115913
Overall Influence
#4359
Valentin Afraimovich
#26872
Overall Influence
1945 - 2018 (73 years)
Valentin Afraimovich was a Soviet, Russian and Mexican mathematician. He made contributions to dynamical systems theory, qualitative theory of ordinary differential equations, bifurcation theory, concept of attractor, strange attractors, space-time chaos, mathematical models of non-equilibrium media and biological systems, travelling waves in lattices, complexity of orbits and dimension-like characteristics in dynamical systems.
Go to Profile#4360
Jürgen Warnatz
#49642
Overall Influence
1944 - 2007 (63 years)
Jürgen Warnatz was a German physicist. Between 1999 and 2004 he served as managing director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing at Ruprecht Karls University of Heidelberg, Germany. From 2003 until his death he chaired the German Section of the Combustion Institute.
Go to Profile#4361
Anders Grubb
#92685
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Anders Grubb is a Swedish chemist, physician, and academic. He is currently a Senior Professor of Clinical Chemistry at Lund University. Education Grubb earned his Ph.D. degree in Clinical Chemistry in 1974 and an M.D. in 1975. Following this, he attended The New York University Medical Center as a Postdoctoral fellow in 1975, and The University Hospital Ramon y Cajal in Madrid in 1980.
Go to Profile#4362
Anatoly V. Zayats
#90337
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Anatoly V. Zayats is a British experimental physicist of Ukrainian origin known for his work in nanophotonics, plasmonics, metamaterials and applied nanotechnology. He is currently a Chair in Experimental Physics and the head of the Photonics & Nanotechnology Group at King's College London. He is a co-director of the London Centre for Nanotechnology and the London Institute for Advanced Light Technologies
Go to Profile#4363
John Arrington
#94627
Overall Influence
John Arrington is a nuclear physicist and group leader of Medium-Energy Physics, Physics Division, at the Argonne National Laboratory. He is known for his leading role in a number of important nuclear physics and medium-energy/high-energy experiments at the Argonne and Jefferson National Laboratory Accelerator Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility facilities. He is perhaps one of the most active and most cited young nuclear physicists in the world, with more than 8000 citations to his work and an H-index of 51.
Go to Profile#4364
Kohzoh Imai
#80572
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Kohzoh Imai is a Japanese physician and oncologist specializing in molecular diagnosis and novel medical treatment of cancer. He is well known for the discovery of a melanoma-related antigen by producing a monoclonal antibody. In addition, he produced monoclonal antibodies against CEA or ICAM-1 and found out they are usable in the diagnosis and the pathological analysis.
Go to Profile#4365
Greg Parker
#89074
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Greg Parker is a British physicist. He served as a Professor of Photonics at the University of Southampton. He spent 23 years in research and lecturing. Career He now runs Parker Technology. His research interests included the design and construction of Ultra High Vacuum compatible semiconductor deposition systems, and the design and fabrication of Photonic Crystal circuits and devices. Most recently, he became interested in deep-sky imaging, macrophotography, microphotography, pin-hole camera photography and high-speed flash photography. He is the designer and developer of ultra-high speed Xenon flash equipment.
Go to Profile#4366
Maha Ashour-Abdalla
#55785
Overall Influence
1943 - 2016 (73 years)
Maha Ashour-Abdalla was an Egyptian-born physics and astronomy professor. She was named a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1986 and of the American Geophysical Union in 1993. She was born Maha Ashour in Alexandria and completed a BSc degree at Alexandria University. She received a PhD from the Imperial College London in 1971. She was subsequently employed at the Centre national d'études des télécommunications in France. Ashour-Abdalla next moved to Los Angeles; from 1976 to 1985, she was a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles .
Go to Profile#4367
Reinhard Hohlfeld
#116030
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
#4369
Øystein Elgarøy
#110049
Overall Influence
1929 - 1998 (69 years)
Øystein Elgarøy was a Norwegian astronomer, with a specialty in solar radio astronomy. Career He was appointed as a lecturer of astrophysics at the University of Oslo, located in Oslo, Norway, in 1968, and was a professor from 1983. Elgarøy published several books, including textbooks.
Go to Profile#4370
Tai-Ping Liu
#53040
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Tai-Ping Liu is a Taiwanese mathematician, specializing in partial differential equations. Liu received his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1968 from National Taiwan University, his master's degree in 1970 from Oregon State University, and his PhD in 1973 from University of Michigan with thesis advisor Joel Smoller and thesis Riemann problem for general 2 × 2 systems of conservation laws. Afterwards Liu was a professor at University of Maryland, from 1988 at New York University and from 1990 at Stanford University, where he is now retired. Since 2000 he has been a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Academia Sinica.
Go to Profile#4371
Gottfried Otting
#116068
Overall Influence
#4372
Andrea Milani
#73346
Overall Influence
1948 - 2018 (70 years)
Andrea Milani Comparetti was an Italian mathematician and astronomer, based at the University of Pisa. Biography Andrea Milani Comparetti was born in Florence, in 1948. His father, Adriano Milani Comparetti, was a pioneer in child neuro-psychiatric rehabilitation and his uncle was Don Lorenzo Milani. In 1970 he graduated in Mathematics at the University of Milan and later he studied at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. He then became a Full Professor of Mathematical Physics at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Pisa.
Go to Profile#4373
Barry F. Madore
#116140
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
#4374
Karl Glazebrook
#97979
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Karl Glazebrook is a British astronomer, known for his work on galaxy formation, for playing a key role in developing the "nod and shuffle" technique for doing redshift surveys with large telescopes, and for originating the Perl Data Language .
Go to Profile#4375
Carol Hirschmugl
#102726
Overall Influence
Carol Hirschmugl, is professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, principal investigator at the Synchrotron Radiation Center, and director of the Laboratory for Dynamics and Structure at Surfaces. She received her B.Sc. in physics from State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1987 and her applied physics PhD from Yale University in 1994. She has received an Alexander von Humboldt grant, a University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellowship, multiple National Science Foundation Grants, a Research Corporation Research Innovation Award, and a UWM Research Growth Initiative.
Go to Profile#4376
Harald Paganetti
#116199
Overall Influence
#4377
Adlène Hicheur
#82375
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Adlène Hicheur is a particle physicist with dual Algerian and French nationality. After his master of theoretical physics in Lyon, he joined LAPP to work on the BaBar experiment, located at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. His thesis, defended in 2003, was about the production of high energy Eta prime mesons in the decays of B mesons. After that he was a Postdoctorate in England at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, where he worked on the ATLAS experiment at LHC. He then joined the high energy physics department of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and works currently on the ...
Go to Profile#4378
Basil John -. Na5818 Mason
#116265
Overall Influence
#4379
Lutz D. Schmadel
#57059
Overall Influence
1942 - 2016 (74 years)
Lutz Dieter Schmadel was a German astronomer and a prolific discoverer of asteroids, who worked at the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut of the University of Heidelberg. His special interest was the astrometry of minor planets. Among his numerous discoveries were the three main-belt asteroids 8661 Ratzinger, 10114 Greifswald and 11508 Stolte.
Go to Profile#4380
Stephanie Reich
#54761
Overall Influence
Stephanie Reich is a German physicist and Professor at the Free University of Berlin. Her research considers the physics of nanostructures, which she studies using experimental characterisation techniques and computational simulations.
Go to Profile#4381
Kenneth Young
#77519
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Kenneth Young is a professor of physics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong . He obtained his BSc in Physics in 1969, and his PhD in Physics and Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology, USA. He took a position at CUHK in 1973, and embarked on a highly regarded career as a theoretical physicist. He has produced extensive research in elementary particles, field theory, high energy phenomenology and dissipative systems. Young has contributed greatly to the development of higher education in Hong Kong, administering grants, educational program development, and worked to develop b...
Go to Profile#4382
Manuela Campanelli
#104709
Overall Influence
Manuela Campanelli is a distinguished professor of astrophysics and mathematical sciences of the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the director of its Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation and Astrophysics and Space Sciences Institute for Research Excellence. Her work focuses on the astrophysics of merging black holes and neutron stars, which are powerful sources of gravitational waves, electromagnetic radiation and relativistic jets. This research is central to the new field of multi-messenger astronomy.
Go to Profile#4383
Dave Green
#78900
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Dave Green is an astrophysicist at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, UK and University Senior Lecturer at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of Churchill College, where he a Director of Studies for Physics. His research focuses on supernova remnants , including studies of G1.9+0.3 the youngest Galactic SNR yet identified, and he has written a book on the historical supernovae along with F. Richard Stephenson. He designed the cubehelix colour scheme for intensity images.
Go to Profile#4384
Thomas Bard Mccord
#116313
Overall Influence
#4385
Sow-Hsin Chen
#57632
Overall Influence
1935 - 2021 (86 years)
Sow-Hsin Chen , was a Hoklo Taiwanese physicist and Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He was a recognized pioneer in the research of the dynamic properties of supercooled and interfacial water with the use of neutron scattering techniques. As an educator, he was recognized for his training of young scientists in the use of those same techniques. Regarding hydrogen storage, his research focused on the use of activated carbon to allow hydrogen to be stored at room temperature.
Go to Profile#4386
Takeshi Nagata
#61672
Overall Influence
1913 - 1991 (78 years)
was a Japanese geophysicist. He studied geomagnetism. He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1987. Mount Nagata is named after him.
Go to Profile#4387
James Michael Moran
#111347
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
James Moran is an American radio astronomer living in Massachusetts, USA. He was a professor of Astronomy at Harvard University from 1989 through 2016, a senior radio astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from 1981 through 2020 and the director of the Submillimeter Array during its construction and early operational phases from 1995 through 2005. In 1998 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, in 2010 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2020 to the American Philosophical Society. He is currently the Donald H. Menzel Professor of Astrophysics, ...
Go to Profile#4388
Cosimo Bambi
#109619
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Cosimo Bambi is an Italian relativist and cosmologist who is currently a professor of physics at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. Bambi's research interests include strong field tests of general relativity, black holes, gravitational collapse, and physics of the early Universe. He has more than 100 publications in all the above topics and is highly cited. He has also written three monographs/books on particle cosmology, black holes, and general relativity. The Quantum Bambi effect is named after him.
Go to Profile#4389
Antonio Sica
#116374
Overall Influence
#4390
Fredrik Paul Glasser
#116379
Overall Influence
#4391
Branko Bošnjaković
#87027
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Branko Bošnjaković is a Dutch-Croatian physicist and professional working in the field of environmental protection and sustainability. Biography Branko Bošnjaković was born in Zagreb. He studied physics at the Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany and obtained his doctorate in nuclear physics at the State University of Utrecht, Netherlands in 1968. His career included basic and applied research, international management and advisory functions.
Go to Profile#4392
Francesco Sciortino
#116352
Overall Influence
Francesco Sciortino is an Italian physicist and full professor at Sapienza University of Rome. He has made seminal contributions to statistical physics, including the thermodynamic and dynamic theory of complex fluids like water, colloids, colloidal-polymer mixtures, patchy particles, and DNA-based materials. He is one of the original proponents of the "second liquid critical point" theory of water.
Go to Profile#4393
Michelle Thomsen
#116279
Overall Influence
Michelle F. Thomsen is space physicist known for her research on the magnetospheres of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn. Education and career Thomsen received an undergraduate degree from Colorado College in 1971. She then earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Iowa. Her doctoral advisor, James Van Allen, recruited her right from her entrance exam to work on the data from Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 on the radiation belts of Jupiter and Saturn. From 1977 until 1980 she remained at the University of Iowa as a postdoctoral scientist, and then left for the Max-Planck-Institut fur Aeronomie in Lindau, West Germany.
Go to Profile#4394
Donald F. Holcomb
#98594
Overall Influence
1925 - 2018 (93 years)
Donald Frank Holcomb was an American physicist. Born in Chesterton, Indiana, on November 8, 1925, Holcomb was raised in primarily in Wood River, Illinois, and graduated from East Alton-Wood River High School in 1943. His university studies were interrupted by military service in the United States Navy. After obtaining a bachelor's degree from DePauw University in 1949, Holcomb pursued graduate study at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, completing a Ph.D. in 1954. He began teaching at Cornell University that same year. In 1964, Holcomb became the third director of the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics.
Go to Profile#4395
Roberto Abraham
#92953
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Roberto Abraham, FRSC is a Canadian astronomer and is Professor of Astronomy at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Education Abraham received a Bachelor of Science from the University of British Columbia in 1987 and a PhD from Oxford University in 1992, working under the supervision of Ian M. McHardy and Roger Davies.
Go to Profile#4396
Ajit Ram Verma
#61027
Overall Influence
1921 - 2009 (88 years)
Ajit Ram Verma was an Indian physicist. For his work in crystallography, he was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in 1964. He was director of the National Physical Laboratory for almost seventeen years . In 1982, the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian award, was conferred on him by the President of India.
Go to Profile#4397
Reinhart Heinrich
#24140
Overall Influence
1946 - 2006 (60 years)
Reinhart Heinrich was a German biophysicist. He was professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin, and best known as one of the founders, with Tom Rapoport, of metabolic control theory in parallel with similar ideas developed at about the same time by Henrik Kacser and Jim Burns. His far-reaching theoretical work on metabolism, signal transduction, and other cellular processes has made him one of the most influential forerunners of present-day systems biology. Reinhart's many talents made him appear as a modern Renaissance man. He played the violin, and published an autobiographic novel and several works of lyric poetry for which he received the Brigitte Reimann Prize.
Go to Profile#4398
François Forget
#75045
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Francois Forget is a French astrophysicist, specializing in the exploration of the solar system and planetary environments. He is a research director at the CNRS and a member of the French Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#4399
Cohl Furey
#48780
Overall Influence
Cohl Furey, also known as Nichol Furey, is a Canadian mathematical physicist. Career Furey has a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from Simon Fraser University , Master's degree from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D in theoretical physics from the University of Waterloo . She was a research fellow at the University of Cambridge from 2016 to 2019 and spent a few months at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town. Since 2020, she has been at the Humboldt University of Berlin on a Freigeist-Fellowship by the Volkswagen Foundation.
Go to Profile#4400
Warren Jackman Wiscombe
#116510
Overall Influence
