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).

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List of the most influential people in Physics,

#4901

Simon F. Green

#68539

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Simon F. Green is an astronomer. He is a Senior Lecturer in Planetary and Space Science at the Open University. He specializes in the study of asteroids and trans-Neptunian objects, and for a long time worked with the IRAS satellite to detect fast moving objects. In 1983, along with John K. Davies, he discovered the Apollo asteroid 3200 Phaethon.

#4902

Takashi Nagatani

#124253

Overall Influence

#4903

Rama Bansil

#84099

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Rama Bansil serves as Professor of Physics at Boston University, a post she has held since 1997. Although trained as a physicist, her work and professional associations are multi-disciplined, with areas of expertise encompassing biopolymer engineering, polymer engineering, photonics, nanoscience, nanobiotechnology, biophysics and biochemistry.

#4904

Jose Acacio de Barros

#75124

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

José Acacio de Barros is a Brazilian-American physicist and philosopher with contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics, quantum cosmology, and quantum cognition. Dr. de Barros received his PhD in Physics from the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas in 1991 under the supervision of Francisco Antonio Doria and Antonio Fernandes da Fonseca Teixeira . Since 2007 he has been in the Liberal Studies faculty of San Francisco State University. Before going to San Francisco, he was an associate professor of physics at the Federal University at Juiz de Fora, Brazil, and he was a visiting...

#4905

Patrick Minnis

#124297

Overall Influence

#4906

Douglas Ross

#111742

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Douglas Alan Ross is a British physicist. he is Professor Emeritus of physics at the University of Southampton. Education Ross was educated at New College, Oxford where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1969 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1972, supervised by John Clayton Taylor for research on muon decay.

#4907

H. Douglas Keith

H. Douglas Keith

#94725

Overall Influence

1927 - 2003 (76 years)

Harvey Douglas Keith was a physicist and one of the primary polymer researchers over the latter half of the 20th century. Early UK University affiliations In 1948, Keith obtained a BSc degree from Queen's University in Belfast. In 1951, he received a PhD in Physics from the University of Bristol in England, where he taught optics as a lecturer in Physics between 1951 and 1956.

#4908

S. H. Martin Roth

#124339

Overall Influence

#4909

Antonia Ferrín Moreiras

#37692

Overall Influence

1914 - 2009 (95 years)

Antonia Ferrín Moreiras was a mathematician, professor and the first female Galician astronomer. Her main contributions to astronomy were works on stellar occultations by the moon, measures of double stars and astrometric measurements, as well as the determination of the passage of stars through two verticals. She accomplished all of this while she was working at the Observatory of the University of Santiago de Compostela .

#4910

Mounir Laroussi

Mounir Laroussi

#20606

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Mounir Laroussi is a Tunisian-American scientist. He is known for his work in plasma science, especially low temperature plasmas and their biomedical applications. Biography Early life Mounir Laroussi was born and raised in Sfax, Tunisia, the son of Habib Laroussi and Manana Jeloul. He is the middle child of three siblings.

#4911

Peter Quinn

#75969

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Professor Peter Quinn is Executive Director of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Perth, Western Australia and was previously the Head of the Data Management and Operations Division at the European Southern Observatory in Munich.

#4912

Harald A. Enge

#116104

Overall Influence

1920 - 2008 (88 years)

Harald Anton Enge was a Norwegian-American experimental nuclear physicist and inventor of instrumentation used in nuclear physics. He is known for the Enge split-pole spectrograph, which became a standard instrument of nuclear physics research.

#4913

Thomas Francis Gallagher

#124479

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

#4914

Anna Scaife

#94499

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Anna Margaret Mahala Scaife is a Professor of Radio Astronomy at the University of Manchester and Head of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics Interferometry Centre of Excellence. She is the co-director of Policy@Manchester. She was awarded the 2019 Royal Astronomical Society Jackson-Gwilt Medal in recognition of her contributions to astrophysical instrumentation.

#4915

Nobu Tamura

#31986

Overall Influence

Nobumichi Tamura, often shortened to Nobu Tamura, is a French-born Japanese American paleoartist and physicist. He currently lives in California, United States. Biography Tamura became a physicist with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and is an artist specializing in the field of paleoart.

#4916

W. Wilfried Brandt

#124504

Overall Influence

#4917

Lyudmila Zhuravleva

#41370

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Lyudmila Vasilyevna Zhuravleva is a Soviet, Russian and Ukrainian astronomer, who worked at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in Nauchnij, where she discovered 213 minor planets. She also serves as president of the Crimean branch of the "Prince Clarissimus Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov Foundation" .

#4918

Mazhar Mahmood Qurashi

#55323

Overall Influence

1925 - 2011 (86 years)

Mazhar Mahmood Qurashi , best known as M. M. Qureshi was a Pakistani physicist and an Islamic scholar who was educated in Lahore and Manchester. He earned prestige and notability after authoring important publication on Islam and science and abstract theories to explain the religious phenomenon and events, explained in Koran— a Quran of Muslims.

#4919

Wilhelm Gliese

#57311

Overall Influence

1915 - 1993 (78 years)

Wilhelm Gliese was a German astronomer who specialized in the study and cataloging of nearby stars. Life Gliese was born in Goldberg, now in Polish Silesia, the son of judge Wilhelm Gliese. He worked at the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, first in Berlin and then in Heidelberg. While a student he was encouraged by the Dutch astronomer Peter van de Kamp to study nearby stars, which he did for the rest of his life.

#4920

Cecilia Noguez

#68647

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Ana Cecilia Noguez Garrido is a Mexican physicist, professor, and science communicator; she is a researcher and was the first female director of the Institute of Physics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico from 2019 to 2023. Cecilia Noguez specializes in the interaction of light with matter on a nanometric scale. In 2016, she was awarded with the National Prize for Arts and Sciences.

#4921

Archie W. Straiton

#75437

Overall Influence

1907 - 2000 (93 years)

Archie Waugh Straiton was a physicist, who studied radio propagation. Biography He received the degrees of B.S. in E.E., M.A. in Physics, and the Ph.D. in Physics from The University of Texas at Austin in 1929, 1931, and 1939, respectively.

#4922

William Bruce Hanson

#124592

Overall Influence

#4923

Rafal E. Dunin-Borkowski

Rafal E. Dunin-Borkowski

#111734

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Rafal Edward Dunin-Borkowski HonFRMS is a British experimental physicist. He is currently Director of the Institute for Microstructure Research and the Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons in Forschungszentrum Jülich and Professor of Experimental Physics in RWTH Aachen University.

#4924

Kelle Cruz

#36666

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Kelle Cruz is an astrophysicist who specializes in studying brown dwarfs. She currently works as an associate professor at Hunter College in New York City. With her study of brown dwarfs, Cruz hopes to better understand planets outside the Solar System and map out the universe, saying, "I hope that what I’m doing in our little bit of the galaxy is similar to what the explorers did by discovering and mapping the New World and North America."

#4925

Keith Symon

#100580

Overall Influence

1920 - 2013 (93 years)

Keith Randolph Symon was an American physicist working in the fields of accelerator physics and plasma physics. Symon graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Harvard in 1942 with a BA in Philosophy and Mathematics. In 1948 he was awarded a PhD in Physics. He taught physics at Wayne State University in Detroit until 1955. Symon was professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin until his retirement in 1992 when he became emeritus professor. From 1956 to 1967 he was on the staff of the Midwestern Universities Research Association , a collaboration of Big Ten universities, the University of Chicago and Notre Dame.

#4926

Makoto Makoto Kimura

#124629

Overall Influence

#4927

Alexander V. Kildishev

#124630

Overall Influence

#4928

E. E. Mamajek E.d. Feigelson

#124636

Overall Influence

#4929

Michael Keidar

#124666

Overall Influence

#4930

Horst Meyer

#97309

Overall Influence

1926 - 2016 (90 years)

Horst Meyer was a Swiss scientist doing research in condensed matter physics. Meyer was the son of the surgeon Arthur Woldemar Meyer in Berlin and the grandson of the pharmacologist Hans Horst Meyer. After Arthur's sudden death in 1933 he was adopted by the chemist Kurt Heinrich Meyer, the brother of Arthur, and grew up in Switzerland. After graduating from the Collège Jean Calvin in Geneva, he studied physics and physical chemistry at the universities of Geneva and of Zürich, obtaining his PhD in 1953. He was first a postdoctoral associate, later a Nuffield Fellow in the Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford, from 1957 lecturer at Harvard University.

#4931

Michael Roukes

#59147

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Michael Lee Roukes is an American experimental physicist, nanoscientist, and the Frank J. Roshek Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology . Education Roukes earned B.A. degrees in physics and chemistry in 1978 at University of California, Santa Cruz, with highest honors in both majors, he received his Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University in 1985. His graduate advisor at Cornell was Nobel Laureate, Robert Coleman Richardson. Roukes’ thesis research at Cornell elucidated the electron-phonon bottleneck at ultra low temperatures; the hot electron effect that is now recapitulated in texts on solid state transport physics.

#4932

Lynne A. Hillenbrand

#124706

Overall Influence

#4933

David L. Andrews

#113839

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

David Leslie Andrews, , is a British scientist appointed as Professor of Chemical Physics at the University of East Anglia, where he was the Head of Chemical Sciences and Physics, from 1996 to 1999.

#4934

Ellen D. Williams

#57195

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Ellen D. Williams is an American scientist, best known for her research in surface properties and nanotechnology, for her engagement with technical issues in national security, as chief scientist of BP, and for government service as director of ARPA-E.

#4935

James F. Blinn

#124768

Overall Influence

#4936

Laura Herz

#88074

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Laura Maria Herz is a professor of physics at the University of Oxford. She works on femtosecond spectroscopy for the analysis of semiconductor materials. Early life and education Herz studied physics at the University of Bonn and graduated in 1999, first of her class. She worked for two years as an exchange student at University of New South Wales. She joined the University of Cambridge for her doctoral studies, earning a PhD in 2002. Here she worked on exciton and polaron dynamics in organic semiconductors.

#4937

Hans‐peter Nilles

#124786

Overall Influence

#4938

Andrew Philip Gould

#124793

Overall Influence

#4939

Jie Shan

#118941

Overall Influence

Jie Shan is a Chinese-American scientist who is Professor of Physics and Head of Graduate Studies at Cornell University. Her research considers the advanced characterization of two dimensional materials. She was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2013.

#4940

James Newell Stannard

James Newell Stannard

#93542

Overall Influence

1910 - 2005 (95 years)

James Newell Stannard is a radiobiologist, pharmacologist and physiologist at the National Institutes of Health. Atomic Energy Project The Atomic Energy Project at the University of Rochester was a graduate teaching program. The project had three divisions. William Freer Bale headed the Radiology and Biophysics division that worked largely on radioactive materials—for example, radium, radon, plutonium, and polonium. Stannard was responsible for 2 sections, the Radiation Toxicology section and the Radioautography section. Harold Hodge headed the Pharmacology and Toxicology division that focused on Uranium including inhalation studies.

#4941

Seppo Mikkola

#110132

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Seppo Mikkola is a Finnish astronomer. He is a senior lecturer at the University of Turku and staff member at Tuorla Observatory. Mikkola is a leading expert in celestial mechanics. He has made fundamental contributions to the theory of regularization of motion in the gravitational N-body problem. Mikkola was a member of the team that determined the unusual orbit of 3753 Cruithne.

#4942

Mansoor Sheik‐bahae

#124880

Overall Influence

#4943

Hagai Netzer

#124896

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

#4944

Kenan Christopher Garcia

#124932

Overall Influence

#4945

Francesco Mauri

#124933

Overall Influence

#4946

Zdenek Sekanina

Zdenek Sekanina

#102063

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Zdeněk Sekanina is a Czech-American astronomer and scientist. In 1959, Sekanina studied astronomy at Charles University in Prague, where he graduated in 1963. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he emigrated to the United States. Since 1980, he has been working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

#4947

Gaku Konishi

#53215

Overall Influence

1934 - 2018 (84 years)

Gaku Konishi was a Japanese physics professor at Kwansei Gakuin University and an Esperantist. Esperanto movement Konishi was a committed Esperantist who first began learning Esperanto in 1948, at the age of 13. Within the Esperanto movement he was active in the antinationalist SAT association and in the Kansai League of Esperanto Groups, the second-largest Japanese Esperanto federation. He was formerly a member of the Academy of Esperanto and a Japanese Esperanto Institute councillor.

#4948

Sara Imari Walker

#78059

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Sara Imari Walker is an American theoretical physicist and astrobiologist with research interests in the origins of life, astrobiology, physics of life, emergence, complex and dynamical systems, and artificial life. Walker is deputy director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University , associate director of the ASU-SFI Center for Biosocial Complex Systems and an associate professor at ASU. She is a co-founder of the astrobiology social network SAGANet, and on the board of directors for Blue Marble Space, a nonprofit education and science organization. ...

#4949

Joan T. Schmelz

Joan T. Schmelz

#105594

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Joan T. Schmelz is the Associate Director for Science and Public Outreach at the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy for the Universities Space Research Association . Previously, Schmelz was the Deputy Director of Arecibo Observatory and the Director of USRA Operations at Arecibo from 2015 through 2018. Before joining USRA, Schmelz was an NSF Program Director in the Astronomical Sciences Division, where she oversaw the Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship program, and a professor of physics at the University of Memphis from 1996 to 2017. Schmelz's research focus is he...

#4950

Bahaa E. A. Saleh

#125048

Overall Influence

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