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.

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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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School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Physics,

#4701

John Wainwright Evans

#90838

Overall Influence

1909 - 1999 (90 years)

John Wainwright Evans was an American solar astronomer born in New York City. He spent much of his career studying the sun and working with optics both of which earned him awards. The Evans Solar Facility at Sacramento Peak was named after him. Evans died in a murder–suicide with his wife in 1999.

#4702

Hans‐joachim Freund

#121301

Overall Influence

#4703

Shikma Bressler

#68484

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Shikma Schwartzman-Bressler is an Israeli physicist. A researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science, she is among those taking part in research at the CERN particle accelerator in Switzerland as a member of the ATLAS collaboration. She is also a social activist and leading figure in the "Black Flags" protests against Benjamin Netanyahu.

#4704

Andrea Cavalleri

#84188

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Andrea Cavalleri is an Italian physicist who specializes in optical science and in condensed matter physics. He is the founding director of the in Hamburg, Germany and a professor of Physics at the University of Oxford. He was awarded the 2018 Frank Isakson Prize for his pioneering work on ultrafast optical spectroscopy applied to condensed matter systems.

#4705

Ariel Caticha

#97671

Overall Influence

Ariel Caticha is a professor of theoretical physics at State University of New York at Albany and chair of its department of physics. His research interests include Information Physics , Entropic and Bayesian Inference, and Information Geometry.

#4706

Yogendra Gupta

#78707

Overall Influence

Yogendra M. Gupta is an Indian-American physicist. He is a Regents Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Washington State University . Education Gupta attended the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani in India before emigrating to the United States to attend Washington State University in 1968. His teacher at WSU was George E. Duvall, an early researcher of shock physics. After completing his PhD, Gupta conducted two years of postdoctoral research before joining the Stanford Research Institute as a Physicist, Senior Physicist, and Assistant Director in the Poult...

#4707

James P. Sethna

#121373

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

#4708

Necia H. Apfel

#101235

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Necia H. Apfel is an American astronomer, author and educator. Personal life She graduated magna cum laude from Tufts University and did graduate work at Radcliffe College and Northwestern University. Apfel has lectured about astronomy to children in the Chicago area and taught courses on the teaching of astronomy at National-Louis University in Evanston, Illinois. She is author of two college textbooks on astronomy and ten books for children. Apfel lives in Highland Park, Illinois. She is currently retired and is a volunteer and past President of the Friends of the Highland Park Public Libra...

#4709

Janet Brown Guernsey

#80639

Overall Influence

1913 - 2001 (88 years)

Janet Brown Guernsey, born Janet Brown , was a professor of physics at Wellesley College. She was active in the American Association of Physics Teachers and served as President from 1975 to 1976. Early life and education Janet Brown Guernsey was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1913. She attended the coeducational Germantown Friends School from kindergarten through high school. She fell in love with physics after reading a science article in 8th grade about how the telephone worked. Guernsey decided to go to Wellesley College, inspired by her sister who had attended the same school.

#4710

Arne Henden

#109253

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Arne Henden is a retired American observational astronomer, instrument and software specialist, and co-discoverer of a minor planet. He formerly served as director of the American Association of Variable Star Observers . The asteroid 33529 Henden is named after him.

#4711

Jerome Valentine Moloney

#121503

Overall Influence

#4712

Natalia Toro

#111282

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (41 years)

Natalia Toro is an American particle physicist known for her pioneering work in the study of dark matter. Based at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Toro was the youngest winner of the Intel Science Talent Search and was awarded the 2015 New Horizons in Physics Prize.

#4713

Michael J. Belton

#105649

Overall Influence

1934 - 2018 (84 years)

Michael J. S. Belton was President of Belton Space Exploration Initiatives and Emeritus Astronomer at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Belton served as the Chair of the 2002 Planetary Science Decadal Survey guiding NASA and other US Government Agencies plans for solar system exploration. Belton studied first at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and earned his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley for his doctoral thesis on "The Interaction of Type II Comet Tails with the Interplanetary Medium".

#4714

Brasil.

#121550

Overall Influence

#4715

Norbert Langer

#121558

Overall Influence

#4716

Klaus Wittmaack

#121565

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

#4717

Chen Yu'ao

#96947

Overall Influence

Chen Yu'ao is a Chinese physicist and a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China , working on quantum information, quantum communication and quantum simulation. Chen was born in Qidong, Nantong, Jiangsu province in 1981. He was the winner of the Gold Medal and First prize in the experimental competition at the 29th International Physics Olympiad in 1998. He graduated from USTC with his bachelor's and master's degrees, and earned his PhD at Heidelberg University in 2008. He won the Fresnel Prize for Fundamental Aspects in 2013. As a member of Pan Jianwei's team, he won th...

#4718

Claes-Ingvar Lagerkvist

#73046

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Claes-Ingvar Lagerkvist is a Swedish astronomer at the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory. He is known for his work on the shapes and spin properties of minor planets. He has discovered three comets, P/1996 R2, C/1996 R3 and 308P/Lagerkvist-Carsenty.

#4719

Antonio Bianconi

#121656

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

#4720

Victor V. Moshchalkov

#121225

Overall Influence

Victor V. Moshchalkov, is a Belgian-Russian physicist. He is a professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics at the KU Leuven. He is noted for contributions to Type-1.5 superconductors, S-Fi-S Pi Josephson junction and scanning Hall probe microscopy. He has made notable contributions to the fields of nanostructured superconductors, nanophotonics and heavy fermions in solids.

#4721

Alex Kamenev

#100431

Overall Influence

Alex Kamenev is a theoretical physicist, at the William I Fine Theoretical Physics Institute, University of Minnesota, specializing in condensed matter. Kamenev's current research focuses on theoretical condensed matter physics, disordered systems and glasses, field-theoretical treatment of many-body systems, mesoscopic systems, out of equilibrium systems. Kamenev earned his M.Sci. degree theoretical physics, in 1987 from Moscow State University and a Ph.D. in solid-state physics, in 1996 from Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

#4722

Jean Jeener

#56435

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Jean Louis Charles Jeener was a Belgian physical chemist and physicist, well known for his experimental and theoretical contributions to spin thermodynamics in solids and for his invention of Two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. He was born in Brussels in 1931, son of Raymond Jeener and Hélène Massar. He was married to Françoise Henin.

#4723

Thomas Schmugge

#110658

Overall Influence

Thomas J. Schmugge is an American physicist and hydrologist. Schmugge graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1965 with a doctorate in physics, and joined the faculty of Trinity College in Connecticut as an assistant professor of physics. From 1970 to 1986, he worked for Goddard Space Flight Center's Hydrological Sciences Branch. Schmugge was subsequently employed by the Agricultural Research Service until 2004. After leaving the federal government, Schmugge was the Gerald Thomas Chair for Sustainable Agriculture at New Mexico State University from 2005 to 2008. He was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and received the AGU's Robert E.

#4724

Władysław Świątecki

#84285

Overall Influence

1926 - 2009 (83 years)

Władysław J. Świątecki was a Polish theoretical and nuclear physicist. He was one of the first proponents of the island of stability for superheavy elements, showing that it appears in a mass formula influenced by the presence of closed nuclear shells; he is also known for several other contributions in nuclear structure research.

#4725

Qian Niu

#121709

Overall Influence

#4726

Stefano Manzoni

#121714

Overall Influence

#4727

Anvar Zakhidov

#121724

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Anvar Abdulakhadovich Zakhidov is an Uzbek-American physicist from the University of Texas at Dallas. Career Born in Tashkent, he worked on superconductors in Japan for five years before immigrating to the United States in 1997, where he joined Honeywell in the private sector. He was installed for his pioneering contributions to the design, fabrication, characterization, and understanding of advanced functional nanomaterials and associated devices, including carbon nanotubes; superconducting and magnetic fullerenes; photonic crystals; solar cells; OLEDs; and cold field emission cathodes.

#4728

Joe Wolfe

#103035

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Joe Wolfe is an Australian physicist, composer and professor at University of New South Wales Sydney. Life Wolfe grew up in Queensland . He graduated in physics from the University of Queensland in 1974 and with a PhD from the Australian National University in 1979. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Australian National University. In 1982 he was appointed lecturer at UNSW Sydney, where he is now a professor. He collaborates regularly with researchers in France and was an invited professor at th...

#4729

David C. Johnston

#121772

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

#4730

Pablo Artal

#104426

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Pablo Artal is a Spanish physicist and full professor specialized in optics at the University of Murcia, as well as in the development and application of new techniques in human vision research. He received the Rey Jaime I Award for New Technologies in 2015. His main research topics are the optics of the eye and the retina and the development of optical and electronic imaging techniques in the field of biomedicine, ophtalmology and vision. He has contributed to the advance of methods for the study of the optics of the eye and contributed to the understanding of the factors that limit the resolution of the human vision.

#4731

Vanderlei Salvador Bagnato

#121856

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

#4732

Nashwa Eassa

#65897

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Nashwa Abo Alhassan Eassa is a nano-particle physicist from Sudan. She is an assistant professor of physics at Al-Neelain University in Khartoum. Education Eassa received her BSc in physics from the University of Khartoum in 2004. She earned her Master of Science in nanotechnology and materials physics from Sweden's Linköping University in 2007.

#4733

J. Micheal Shull

#121930

Overall Influence

#4734

Roland Glaser

#82209

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Roland Glaser is a German biophysicist and writer. Between 1981 and 1990 he served as President of the Association for Physical and Mathematical Biology. . Glaser has been described as a pioneer of modern biophysical research in the former German Democratic Republic, where he helped to bring his subject into the scientific mainstream. His profile was raised beyond the confines of academe through his contributions on the possible health impact of mobile telephone use.

#4735

Héctor Manuel Moya Cessa

#72236

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Héctor Manuel Moya Cessa is a physicist specialising in quantum optics. He is currently a researcher/lecturer at Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Optica y Electrónica, in Tonantzintla, Puebla, Mexico.

#4736

Norman Keith Glendenning

#121973

Overall Influence

#4737

Mitio Inokuti

#122004

Overall Influence

#4738

Gérald Bastard

#122007

Overall Influence

#4739

Kazuyuki Hirao

#122030

Overall Influence

#4740

Ernesto Estrada

#89638

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Ernesto Estrada is a Cuban-Spanish scientist. He has been Senior ARAID Researcher at the Institute of Mathematics and Applications at the University of Zaragoza, Spain since 2019. Before that he was the chair in Complexity Science, and full professor at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom. He is known by his contributions in different disciplines, including mathematical chemistry and complex network theory.

#4741

Thomas Edward Cravens

#122039

Overall Influence

#4742

Roland Dobbs

#81527

Overall Influence

1924 - 2016 (92 years)

Roland Dobbs was a British physicist, best known for his work in physical acoustics. Education He was educated at Ilford County High School, Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet and University College London. After gaining First Class Honours in Physics, he was called up for radar research for the Admiralty working there from 1943 to 1946. He returned to University College in 1946, completing a PhD: 'The Viscosity of Liquid Alkali Metals' in 1949. In 1977 he was awarded a D.Sc.

#4743

Rodger Doxsey

#106735

Overall Influence

1947 - 2009 (62 years)

Rodger Evans Doxsey was an American physicist and astronomer who made major contributions to the scientific and operational success of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope . He joined the HST Project at the Space Telescope Science Institute , in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1981, and was head of the Hubble Missions Office at his death.

#4744

Wesley Le Mars Nyborg

#122117

Overall Influence

#4745

Vasily E. Tarasov

#122128

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

#4746

Peter Morgan Banks

#122138

Overall Influence

#4747

Guenakh Mitselmakher

#68707

Overall Influence

Guenakh Mitselmakher is a Russian-American physicist, since 2004 the Distinguished Professor in the Institute for High Energy Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Florida . His main interests are in gravitational waves and experimental particle physics.

#4748

Pief Panofsky

#111065

Overall Influence

1919 - 2007 (88 years)

Wolfgang Kurt Hermann "Pief" Panofsky , was a German-American physicist who won many awards including the National Medal of Science. Early life Panofsky was born in Berlin, Germany to a family of art historians Dorothea and Erwin Panofsky. His ancestors were of Jewish descent. He spent much of his early life in Hamburg, where his father was a professor of art history. From the age of 10, he attended the Johanneum, where he received a classical education involving Latin and Ancient Greek, but little science. At the age of 15, he moved with his family to the United States and entered Princeton University.

#4749

C. n. Pope

#122149

Overall Influence

#4750

David Carroll

#55052

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

David Carroll is a U.S. physicist, materials scientist and nanotechnologist, Fellow of the American Physical Society, and director of the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials at Wake Forest University. He has contributed to the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology through his work in nanoengineered cancer therapeutics, nanocomposite-based display and lighting technologies, high efficiency nanocomposite photovoltaics and thermo/piezo-electric generators.

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