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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Physics,
#4951
Amand Lucas
#93436
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Amand Lucas is a Belgian scientist and professor at the Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix, at the Institute for Studies in Interface Sciences. In 1985, he was awarded the Francqui Prize on Exact Sciences for his work on theoretical physics.
Go to Profile#4952
Thomas A. Darden
#125059
Overall Influence
#4953
Reuven Chen
#125078
Overall Influence
#4954
Gregor Schöner
#95577
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Gregor Schöner is a German computational neuroscientist. He is professor for the theory of cognitive systems at the Ruhr University Bochum, as well as the director of the Institute for Neuroinformatics located there.
Go to Profile#4955
Pieter Meiert Grootes
#125137
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
#4956
Michael Julian Drake
#109102
Overall Influence
1946 - 2011 (65 years)
Michael Julian Drake , regent's professor, was the director of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and head of the Department of Planetary Sciences. He was the principal investigator of the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer mission of NASA's New Frontiers Program. The OSIRIS-REx mission, launched on September 8, 2016, and scheduled to arrive at Asteroid Bennu in December 2018, is the most ambitious University of Arizona planetary science project to date and will retrieve a sample of the asteroid and return it to Earth. He...
Go to Profile#4957
Alexandre Quintanilha
#15742
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Alexandre Tiedtke Quintanilha, GOSE is a Portuguese scientist, former director of the Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular of the University of Porto and Professor at ICBAS - Abel Salazar Institute of Biomedical Sciences.
Go to Profile#4958
Eric D'Hoker
#87455
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Eric D’Hoker is a Belgian-American theoretical physicist. Biography D’Hoker studied from 1974 to 1975 at Paris 13 University in Orsay, from 1975 to 1976 at the Lycée Condorcet, and from 1976 to 1978 at the École Polytechnique. In 1978 he became a graduate student in physics at Princeton University, where in 1981 he received his Ph.D. with future Nobel Laureate David Gross as his advisor. As a postdoc, D'Hoker worked from 1981 to 1984 at the Center for Theoretical Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then worked an assistant professor from 1984 to 1986 at Columbia University and from 1986 to 1988 at Princeton University.
Go to Profile#4959
Hideo Takezoe
#125206
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
#4960
Lars Per-eric Ericsson
#125207
Overall Influence
#4961
Warren S. Warren
#93830
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Warren Sloan Warren is the James B. Duke Professor of Chemistry and director of the Center for Molecular and Biomolecular Imaging at Duke University. He is also a professor of physics, Radiology, and Biomedical Engineering at the same institution. Warren is a deputy editor of the open-access journal Science Advances. He has contributed to the theory of Quantum Coherence as well as nonlinear optical spectroscopy.
Go to Profile#4962
Giorgio Margaritondo
#121306
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Giorgio Margaritondo is a Swiss and American physicist and an emeritus professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne . He is known for his pioneering work in the use and dissemination of synchrotron radiation and free electron lasers.
Go to Profile#4963
Cedric Prys-Roberts
#96491
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Cedric Prys-Roberts is emeritus professor of anaesthesia at the University of Bristol. He was president of the Royal College of Anaesthetists from 1994 to 1997.
Go to Profile#4964
Krityunjai Prasad Sinha
#47439
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Krityunjai Prasad Sinha was an Indian theoretical physicist and an emeritus professor at the Indian Institute of Science. Known for his research in solid-state physics and cosmology, Sinha was elected a fellow of all the three major Indian science academies – the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences, India. In 1974, 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 hono...
Go to Profile#4965
Nadya Mason
#70800
Overall Influence
Nadya Mason is the Rosalyn Sussman Yalow Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As a condensed matter experimentalist, she works on the quantum limits of low-dimensional systems. Mason is the Director of the Illinois Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and, since September 2022, the Director of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. She is the first woman and woman of color to work as the director at the institute. In 2021, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#4966
Mattias Lorentzon
#125268
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
#4967
Girsh Blumberg
#98592
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Girsh Blumberg is an Estonian-American physicist working in the experimental physics fields of condensed matter physics, spectroscopy, nano-optics, and plasmonics. Blumberg is an elected fellow of the American Physical Society , an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , and a Distinguished Professor of Physics at Rutgers University.
Go to Profile#4968
Leon Katz
#66369
Overall Influence
1909 - 2004 (95 years)
Leon Katz, was a Canadian physicist. Biography Born in Lutsk , Katz emigrated to Canada in 1920 and was reunited with his father who emigrated in 1914. During these early years he studied at Toronto Central Technical School to become an electrician, however through an exchange program with Queens University he was able to transfer into a science program working part-time to afford tuition.
Go to Profile#4969
Abdelhak Djouadi
#125287
Overall Influence
#4970
Stefano Sanvito
#125378
Overall Influence
#4971
Boris Chichkov
#118986
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Boris Nikolaevich Chichkov , born 1955 in Novokuznetsk is a German-Russian Physicist whose research focus is on the development of novel laser technologies and their applications in material processing, photonics, and biomedicine.
Go to Profile#4972
Guifre' Vidal
#125450
Overall Influence
#4973
Johannes Oldenburg
#125465
Overall Influence
#4974
Frédéric Pham
#51752
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Frédéric Pham is a Vietnamese-French mathematician and mathematical physicist. He is known for the Brieskorn-Pham manifoldss . Education and career Pham studied from 1957 to 1959 at the École polytechnique. From 1961 to 1969 he worked at Saclay Nuclear Research Centre, where he developed his doctoral thesis. In addition, during those years, he attended the seminar conducted by René Thom at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques . In 1969 Pham received his Ph.D. with supervisor Raymond Stora from Saclay with thesis Singularités des processus de diffusion multiple. He became in 1970 a professor at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis and retired there in 2001 as professor emeritus.
Go to Profile#4975
Vincent Meunier
#104525
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Vincent Meunier is a Belgian/American condensed matter and materials physicist known for his theoretical and computational research on electronic, optoelectronic, and structural properties of low-dimensional materials. He is the Department Head and P. B. Breneman Chair and Professor in the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Pennsylvania State University. Among his contributions are the quantum mechanical description of processes responsible for scanning tunneling image formation in low-dimensional materials, the development of a microscopic theory of nanocapacitors, and contri...
Go to Profile#4976
David Roundy
#91429
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
David Roundy is a physicist known primarily as the author of the Darcs version control system. His parents are Virginia Miller Roundy & Willard Roundy. He obtained a B.A. in Physics and Chemistry in 1995 and a Ph.D. in physics from Berkeley in 2001. Between 2001 and 2006 he did postdoctoral work at MIT and Cornell. He was an assistant professor in Physics at Oregon State University from 2006 to 2014, and an associate professor since 2014. His current research focus is on Condensed Matter Theory.
Go to Profile#4977
Alden Hood Harken
#125533
Overall Influence
#4978
Gerrit Van Der Laan
#125546
Overall Influence
#4979
Quirin Schiermeier
#125557
Overall Influence
#4980
Alexander Makarov
#107830
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Alexander Alexeyevich Makarov, is a Russian physicist who led the team that developed the Orbitrap, a type of mass spectrometer, and received the 2008 American Society for Mass Spectrometry Distinguished Contribution in Mass Spectrometry Award for this development. In November 2013 he was appointed to Professor by Special Appointment of High Resolution Mass Spectrometry at the Department of Chemistry and the Bijvoet Center for Biomolecular Research of Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
Go to Profile#4981
Roy W. Gould
#79132
Overall Influence
1927 - 2022 (95 years)
Roy Walter Gould was an American electrical engineer and physicist who specialized in plasma physics. In 1959, he was the first to describe electrostatic waves that were propagating at the boundary of a magnetized plasma column, now commonly known as Trivelpiece–Gould modes.
Go to Profile#4982
Sandip Kumar Chakrabarti
#125614
Overall Influence
#4983
Tim Sumner
#83351
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Timothy J. Sumner is Professor of Experimental Physics at Imperial College London. He is a member of the UK Dark Matter Collaboration, and Sumner's interests cover a wide range of astronomy-related fields, focusing particularly on particle physics.
Go to Profile#4984
Peter Hannaford
#93970
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Peter Hannaford is an Australian academic and university professor. He is the Director of the Centre for Atom Optics and Ultrafast Spectroscopy at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, and winner of the Walter Boas Medal in 1985.
Go to Profile#4985
William Napier
#83924
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
William M. Napier is the author of five high tech thriller novels and a number of nonfiction science books. Career He received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1963 and his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1966, both from the University of Glasgow.
Go to Profile#4986
Emanuel Kamber
#72461
Overall Influence
Emanuel Yousif Kamber is an Assyrian physics professor at Western Michigan University and was the Secretary General of the Assyrian Universal Alliance. He was born in the small Assyrian village of Darbandokeh in Iraq.
Go to Profile#4987
A. M. Harun-ar-Rashid
#51792
Overall Influence
1933 - 2021 (88 years)
A. M. Harun-ar-Rashid was a Bangladeshi physicist and Professor of Physics at the University of Dhaka. He was the nephew of actor-writer Shamsuddin Abul Kalam. Early life and education Rashid was born in a village of Barisal district. His father Moksud Ali was the first person to have received postgraduate education in science. Rashid earned his BSc and MSc in physics from University of Dhaka in 1953 and 1954 respectively. He then completed his PhD from University of Glasgow in theoretical physics in 1960.
Go to Profile#4988
Ingrid Stairs
#116494
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Ingrid Stairs is a Canadian astronomer currently based at the University of British Columbia. She studies pulsars and their companions as a way to study binary pulsar evolution, pulsar instrumentation and polarimetry, and Fast Radio Bursts . She was awarded the 2017 Rutherford Memorial Medal for physics of the Royal Society of Canada, and was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2018.
Go to Profile#4989
Johannes Orphal
#50005
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Johannes Orphal is a German physicist. He is Head of Division 4 "Natural and Built Environment" and Full Professor of Physics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology . From 2009 to 2020 he was Director of the Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research at KIT. Until 2009, he was Professor at the University of Paris-Est in Créteil and research scientist at the CNRS.
Go to Profile#4990
Alfred Msezane
#89623
Overall Influence
Alfred Zakhele Msezane is a South African physicist. He is a professor in the Department of Physics at Clark Atlanta University, and the Founding Director of the Center for Theoretical Studies of Physical Systems. His research is primarily in theoretical atomic physics and condensed matter theory. He also carries out research in mathematical physics, and image processing.
Go to Profile#4991
Roger Duwayne Willett
#125721
Overall Influence
#4992
Peter P. Silvester
#38930
Overall Influence
1935 - 1996 (61 years)
Peter Peet Silvester was an electrical engineer who contributed to understanding of numerical analysis of electromagnetic fields and authored a standard textbook on the subject. Silvester was born in Tallinn, Estonia. He graduated from the Camegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1956. After a period of industrial practice, he continued his studies at the University of Toronto, obtaining the MASc in 1958, and then at McGill University , where he was awarded the PhD in electrical engineering, in 1964. He initially joined the department of electrical engineering at McGill as lecturer, then as assistant professor, associate professor, and full professor.
Go to Profile#4993
Meinhard E. Mayer
#45467
Overall Influence
1929 - 2011 (82 years)
Meinhard Edwin Mayer was a Romanian–born American Professor Emeritus of Physics and Mathematics at the University of California, Irvine, which he joined in 1966. Biography He was born on March 18, 1929, in Cernăuți. He experienced both the Soviet occupation of Northern Bukovina and, as a Jew, deportation to the Transnistria Governorate. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Bucharest in 1957, where he taught until 1961.
Go to Profile#4994
Gareth V. Williams
#72269
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Gareth Vaughan Williams is an English-American astronomer, who served as the associate director of the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center until his retirement in February 2020. Career From January 1990 to February 2020, Williams has been one of the longest-serving staff members of the Minor Planet Center. He is an IAU member and was the MPC representative on various IAU committees and working groups, including the Working Group on Planetary System Nomenclature and is secretary of the Working Group on Small Body Nomenclature. Gareth got his undergraduate degree in astronomy at University College London, and his PhD in 2013 from the Open University.
Go to Profile#4995
Viktor Sobolev
#101731
Overall Influence
1915 - 1999 (84 years)
Viktor Viktorovich Sobolev was a Soviet and Russian astrophysicist, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR , Hero of Socialist Labour . Biography He was born in Petrograd, and studied at the Leningrad State University from 1933 to 1938, and in 1948, he received the title of Professor. He was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1958.
Go to Profile#4996
Rangi Mātāmua
#95699
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Rangiānehu Mātāmua is a New Zealand indigenous studies and Māori cultural astronomy academic and is Professor of Mātauranga Māori at Massey University. He is the first Māori person to win a Prime Minister's Science Prize, is a fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi, and is the chief advisor to the New Zealand Government on the public holiday Matariki. He was named New Zealander of the Year in 2023.
Go to Profile#4997
Richard Alan Wolf
#125767
Overall Influence
#4998
Sakura Schafer-Nameki
#41752
Overall Influence
Sakura Schafer-Nameki is a German mathematical physicist working in string theory and supersymmetric gauge theory. She works at the University of Oxford as a Professor of Mathematical Physics in the Mathematical Institute and as a senior research fellow of Wadham College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#4999
Sebastian Seung
#20223
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Hyunjune Sebastian Seung is President at Samsung Electronics & Head of Samsung Research and Anthony B. Evnin Professor in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Department of Computer Science. Seung has done influential research in both computer science and neuroscience. He has helped pioneer the new field of connectomics, "developing new computational technologies for mapping the connections between neurons," and has been described as the cartographer of the brain.
Go to Profile#5000
Lionel F. Jaffe
#125838
Overall Influence
