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
#13451
João Magueijo
#13462
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
João Magueijo is a Portuguese cosmologist and professor in theoretical physics at Imperial College London. He is a pioneer of the varying speed of light theory. Education and career João Magueijo studied physics at the University of Lisbon. He undertook graduate work and Ph.D. at Cambridge University. He was awarded a research fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge. He has been a faculty member at Princeton and Cambridge and is currently a professor at Imperial College London where he teaches undergraduates General Relativity and postgraduates Advanced General Relativity.
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Norman Cohn
#13463
Overall Influence
1915 - 2007 (92 years)
Norman Rufus Colin Cohn FBA was a British academic, historian and writer who spent 14 years as a professorial fellow and as Astor-Wolfson Professor at the University of Sussex. Life Cohn was born in London, to a German Jewish father and a Catholic mother. He was educated at Gresham's School and Christ Church, Oxford. According to the Italian scholar Lorenzo Ferrari, "Cohn grew up feeling 'a man between all worlds' with his German-Jewish surname, his mother's Catholic faith , and his numerous German relatives". He was a scholar and research student at Christ Church between 1933 and 1939, taking a first-class degree in Modern Languages in 1936 and in 1939 .
Go to Profile#13453
Nick Clegg
#13464
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Sir Nicholas William Peter Clegg is a British media executive and former politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2015 and as Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2007 to 2015. He was Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam from 2005 to 2017. An "Orange Book" liberal, he has been associated with both socially liberal and economically liberal policies. In 2018, Clegg became vicepresident of global affairs and communications at Facebook Inc , before being promoted in 2022 to president for global affairs.
Go to Profile#13454
Carrot Top
#13465
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Scott Thompson , known professionally as Carrot Top, is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He is widely known for his use of prop comedy. Early life Thompson was born in Rockledge, Florida, and grew up in Cocoa. He is the youngest son of a NASA engineer. He went to Cocoa High School where he played drums in the marching and concert band. He graduated in 1983. He got the nickname "Carrot Top" from a local swimming coach, a reference to his red hair, which would become one of his trademarks in later life. In the late '80s, Thompson worked as a courier for a mortgage company. After high school he enrolled at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
Go to Profile#13455
Whitey Ford
#13466
Overall Influence
1928 - 2020 (92 years)
Edward Charles "Whitey" Ford , nicknamed "the Chairman of the Board", was an American professional baseball pitcher who played his entire 16-year Major League Baseball career with the New York Yankees. He was a 10-time All-Star and six-time World Series champion. In 1961, he won both the Cy Young Award and World Series Most Valuable Player Award. Ford led the American League in wins three times and in earned run average twice. He is the Yankees franchise leader in career wins , shutouts , innings pitched , and games started by a pitcher . Ford was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1...
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Steve Ditko
#13467
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Stephen John Ditko was an American comics artist and writer best known for being co-creator of Marvel superhero Spider-Man and creator of Doctor Strange. He also made notable contributions to the character of Iron Man with the character's red and yellow design being revolutionized by Ditko.
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Terence Kealey
#13468
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
George Terence Evelyn Kealey is a British biochemist who was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, a private university in Britain. He was appointed Professor of Clinical Biochemistry in 2011. Prior to his tenure at Buckingham, Kealey lectured in clinical biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. He is well known for his outspoken opposition to public funding of science.
Go to Profile#13458
Nie Yuanzi
#13469
Overall Influence
1921 - 2019 (98 years)
Nie Yuanzi was a Chinese academic administrator at Peking University, known for writing a big-character poster criticising the university for being controlled by the bourgeoisie, which is considered to have been the opening shot of the Cultural Revolution. She became a top leader of the Red Guards in Beijing, and was sentenced to 17 years in prison after the end of the Cultural Revolution.
Go to Profile#13459
Hossam Haick
#13470
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Hossam Haick is an Arab-Israeli scientist and engineer, and the current dean of undergraduate studies at the Israel Institute of Technology. He is a pioneer known for inventing the Nano Artificial Nose for detection of disease from exhaled breath, by which he was highlighted as MIT's Innovators under 35; and which is widely used for sniffing out diseases' biomarkers in labs and industries. He has many contributions in multidisciplinary fields such as Nanotechnology, Nanosensors, , Volatile Biomarkers, and Molecular Electronics.
Go to Profile#13460
Jinde Cao
#13471
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jinde Cao is an Endowed Chair Professor at Southeast University, Nanjing, China. He is a Distinguished Professor, the Dean of School of Mathematics and the Director of the Research Center for Complex Systems and Network Sciences at Southeast University.
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Arjen Robben
#13472
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Arjen Robben is a Dutch former professional footballer who played as a winger. Robben was known for his dribbling skills, speed, ball control and long-range shots. Robben first came to prominence with Groningen, for whom he was player of the year for the 2000–01 Eredivisie season. Two years later he signed for PSV, where he became the Netherlands' Young Player of the Year and won an Eredivisie title. The following season Robben's signature was pursued by leading clubs, and after protracted transfer negotiations, he joined Chelsea in 2004. Robben's Chelsea debut was delayed through injury, but...
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Tulio Halperín Donghi
#13473
Overall Influence
1926 - 2014 (88 years)
Tulio Halperin Donghi was an Argentine historian. After earning a Ph.D in history and a law degree at the University of Buenos Aires, he taught at the institution's Faculty of Arts from 1955 to 1966. Halperin Donghi then moved to the National University of the Litoral, where he was named dean. He later taught at Oxford University, and became a faculty member of the University of California, Berkeley in 1972.
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Warwick McKibbin
#13474
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Warwick James McKibbin is an Australian Professor of Economics at the Australian National University who works across a wide range of areas in applied policy. He has published more than 200 scholarly articles and several books and is internationally known for his contribution to global economic modelling.
Go to Profile#13464
Jean-Pol Martin
#13475
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Jean-Pol Martin studied teacher education for foreign language teachers in Germany, and developed a teaching method called learning by teaching. He spent most of his career at Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and was a Professor there when he retired in 2008.
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Rastko Močnik
#13476
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Rastko Močnik is a Slovenian sociologist, psychoanalyst, literary theorist, translator and political activist. Together with Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar, he is considered one of the co-founders of the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis.
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Mikhail Tal
#13477
Overall Influence
1936 - 1992 (56 years)
Mikhail Nekhemyevich Tal was a Soviet-Latvian chess player and the eighth World Chess Champion. He is considered a creative genius and is widely regarded as one of the most influential chess players. Tal played in an attacking and daring combinatorial style. His play was known above all for improvisation and unpredictability. Vladislav Zubok said of him, "Every game for him was as inimitable and invaluable as a poem".
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Hal Foster
#13478
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Harold Foss "Hal" Foster is an American art critic and historian. He was educated at Princeton University, Columbia University, and the City University of New York. He taught at Cornell University from 1991 to 1997 and has been on the faculty at Princeton since 1997. In 1998 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.
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John Gardner
#13479
Overall Influence
1965 - 2019 (54 years)
John Gardner was a Scottish legal philosopher. He was senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and prior to that the Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford and a fellow of University College, Oxford.
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Gesche Joost
#13480
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Gesche Joost is a German design researcher. Early life and education Gesche Joost studied design at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences and completed her PhD in Rhetoric at the University of Tübingen.
Go to Profile#13470
Bertram Raven
#13481
Overall Influence
1926 - 2020 (94 years)
Bertram Herbert Raven was an American academic. He was a member of the faculty of the psychology department at UCLA from 1956 until his death. He is perhaps best known for his early work in collaboration with John R. P. French, with whom he developed an analysis of the five bases of social power.
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Flo Rida
#13482
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Tramar Lacel Dillard , better known by his stage name Flo Rida , is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. His 2007 breakout single "Low" was number one for 10 weeks in the United States and broke the record for digital download sales at the time of its release.
Go to Profile#13472
Pavel A. Pevzner
#13483
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Pavel Arkadevich Pevzner is the Ronald R. Taylor Professor of Computer Science and director of the NIH Center for Computational Mass Spectrometry at University of California, San Diego. He serves on the editorial board of PLoS Computational Biology and he is a member of the Genome Institute of Singapore scientific advisory board.
Go to Profile#13473
Max Roser
#13484
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Max Roser is an economist and philosopher who focuses on large global problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality. At the University of Oxford he is the director of the program on global development, based at the Oxford Martin School.
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Carolyn Eisele
#13485
Overall Influence
1902 - 2000 (98 years)
Carolyn Eisele was an American mathematician and historian of mathematics known as an expert on the works of Charles Sanders Peirce. Education and career Eisele was born on June 13, 1902, in The Bronx, New York City. She studied at Hunter College High School and then Hunter College, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1923. She earned a master's degree in mathematics and education from Columbia University in 1925. At that time, Columbia did not offer Ph.D.s in mathematics to women, but Eisele continued her graduate studies at the University of Chicago and the University of Southern California before returning home to New York, without a doctorate, to care for her injured father.
Go to Profile#13475
David Gruber
#13486
Overall Influence
David Gruber is an American marine biologist, a Presidential Professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences at Baruch College, City University of New York, and a National Geographic Explorer. Early life Gruber was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and received his B.S. at the University of Rhode Island, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University, a Master of Environmental Management from Duke University and a Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography at Rutgers University Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences. He completed a post-doctoral position in Molecular Psychiatry at Brown University. David...
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Yuet Wai Kan
#13487
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Yuet Wai Kan , is a Chinese-American geneticist and hematologist. He is the current Louis K. Diamond Chair in Hematology and a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco. He is a former president of the American Society of Hematology.
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Fran Hosken
#13488
Overall Influence
1919 - 2006 (87 years)
Fran P. Hosken was an American designer, writer, feminist, and social activist. She founded the Women's International Network in 1975, and published a quarterly journal on women's health issues that became known, in particular, for its research into female genital mutilation .
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Roberto Peccei
#13489
Overall Influence
1942 - 2020 (78 years)
Roberto Daniele Peccei was a theoretical particle physicist whose principal interests lay in the area of electroweak interactions and in the interface between particle physics and physical cosmology. He was most known for formulating the Peccei–Quinn theory , which attempts to resolve the strong CP problem in particle physics.
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László Garai
#13490
Overall Influence
1935 - 2019 (84 years)
László Garai was a scholar of psychology: studies theoretical psychology, social psychology and economic psychology. Early life Garai was born in Budapest. He graduated in philosophy and psychology from the Faculty of Arts of Budapest University .
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Sharon A. Hill
#13491
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Sharon A. Hill is an American science writer and speaker known for her research into the interaction between science and the public, focusing on education and media topics. Hill's research has dealt mainly with paranormal, pseudoscience, and strange natural phenomena and began at the University at Buffalo, where she performed her graduate work in this area. Hill attended Pennsylvania State University, earning her Bachelor of Science degree in geosciences and working as a Pennsylvania geologist.
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Raphaël Enthoven
#13492
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Raphaël Enthoven is a French philosophy teacher, radio host and television host. An agrégé who taught at Jean Moulin University Lyon 3 and Paris Diderot University, Enthoven is known to the French public for hosting various philosophy-related shows on radio and television. Although he has been described as a philosopher, Enthoven himself rejects being labeled as such.
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John Eatwell, Baron Eatwell
#13493
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
John Leonard Eatwell, Baron Eatwell, is a British economist who was President of Queens' College, Cambridge, from 1996 to 2020. A former senior advisor to the Labour Party, Lord Eatwell sat in the House of Lords as a non-affiliated peer from 2014 to 2020, before returning to the Labour bench.
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Robert Adler
#13494
Overall Influence
1913 - 2007 (94 years)
Robert Adler was an Austrian-American inventor who held numerous patents. He worked for Zenith Electronics, retiring as the company's Vice President and Director of Research. His work included developing early sound-based remote controls for televisions, which were the standard for 25 years until replaced by infrared remotes that could transmit more complex commands.
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Charles Bronson
#13495
Overall Influence
1921 - 2003 (82 years)
Charles Bronson was an American actor. Known for his "granite features and brawny physique," and action films, Bronson was born into extreme poverty, in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania. His father, a miner, died when Bronson was young. Bronson himself worked in the mines as well until joining the United States Army Air Forces in 1943 to fight in World War II. After his service, he joined a theatrical troupe and studied acting. During the 1950s, he played various supporting roles in motion pictures and television, including anthology drama TV series in which he would appear as the main character. Near...
Go to Profile#13485
Norio Niikawa
#13496
Overall Influence
1942 - 2022 (80 years)
was a Japanese physician and medical geneticist who discovered an autosomal dominant disorder, Kabuki syndrome, also known as Niikawa-Kuroki syndrome. Contribution Niikawa made an important contribution in the field of medical genetics. In 1981, he discovered a novel syndrome, Kabuki syndrome, and later he and his colleagues also identified a gene for the syndrome. In 2006, his research group identified a single nucleotide polymorphism in the ABCC11 gene is the determinant of human earwax type.
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Anatoly Vershik
#13497
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Anatoly Moiseevich Vershik is a Soviet and Russian mathematician. He is most famous for his joint work with Sergei V. Kerov on representations of infinite symmetric groups and applications to the longest increasing subsequences.
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Pauline Maier
#13498
Overall Influence
1938 - 2013 (75 years)
Pauline Alice Maier was a revisionist historian of the American Revolution, whose work also addressed the late colonial period and the history of the United States after the end of the Revolutionary War. She was the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .
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Michael J. Shapiro
#13499
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Michael Joseph Shapiro is an American educator, theorist, and writer. He is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. His work is often described as "postdisciplinary," drawing from such diverse fields as political philosophy, critical theory, cultural studies, film theory, international relations theory, literary theory, African American studies, comparative politics, geography, sociology, urban planning, economics, psychoanalysis, crime fiction, genre studies, new musicology, aesthetics and indigenous politics.
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Jay Pasachoff
#13500
Overall Influence
1943 - 2022 (79 years)
Jay Myron Pasachoff was an American astronomer. Pasachoff was Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College and the author of textbooks and tradebooks in astronomy, physics, mathematics, and other sciences.
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Sally Kornbluth
#13501
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Sally Ann Kornbluth is a cell biologist and academic administrator, currently serving as the 18th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since January 2023. Kornbluth previously served as provost of Duke University from 2014 to 2022 and vice dean for basic sciences of Duke University School of Medicine from 2006 to 2014.
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Aleksandar Hemon
#13502
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Aleksandar Hemon is a Bosnian-American author, essayist, critic, television writer, and screenwriter. He is best known for the novels Nowhere Man and The Lazarus Project , and his scriptwriting as a co-writer of The Matrix Resurrections .
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Rick Pitino
#13503
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Richard Andrew Pitino is an American basketball coach who is the men's head coach for St. John's Red Storm. He was also the head coach of Greece's senior national team. He has been the head coach of several teams in NCAA Division I and in the NBA, including Boston University , Providence College , the New York Knicks , the University of Kentucky , the Boston Celtics , the University of Louisville , Panathinaikos of the Greek Basket League and EuroLeague , and Iona University .
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Jeff Gordon
#13504
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Jeffery Michael Gordon is an American stock car racing executive and former professional stock car racing driver, who currently serves as the vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports. He raced full-time from 1993 to 2015, driving the No. 24 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports in the former NASCAR Winston Cup Series and Sprint Cup Series , and also served as a substitute driver for Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the No. 88 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports in select races during the 2016 season. He is regarded as one of the best and most influential drivers in NASCAR history, helping the sport reach mains...
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Sheila Greibach
#13505
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Sheila Adele Greibach is an American researcher in formal languages in computing, automata, compiler theory and computer science. She is an Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and notable work include working with Seymour Ginsburg and Michael A. Harrison in context-sensitive parsing using the stack automaton model.
Go to Profile#13495
Dennis Tedlock
#13506
Overall Influence
1939 - 2016 (77 years)
Dennis Ernest Tedlock was an ethnopoeticist, linguist, translator, and poet. He was a leading expert of Mayan language, culture, and arts, best known for his definitive translation of the Mayan text, Popul Vuh, for which he was awarded the PEN translation prize. He co-founded the method of ethnopoetics with Jerome Rothenburg in the late 1960s.
Go to Profile#13496
Peter Flach
#13507
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Pieter Adriaan Flach is a Dutch computer scientist and a Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bristol. He is author of the acclaimed Simply Logical: Intelligent Reasoning by Example and Machine Learning: the Art and Science of Algorithms that Make Sense of Data .
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Jon Corzine
#13508
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Jonathan Stevens "Jon" Corzine is an American financial executive and retired politician who served as a United States Senator from New Jersey from 2001 to 2006, and the 54th governor of New Jersey from 2006 to 2010. Corzine ran for a second term as governor but lost to Republican Chris Christie. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously worked at Goldman Sachs; after leaving politics, he was CEO of MF Global from 2010 until its collapse in 2011.
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Mary Louise Kelly
#13509
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Mary Louise Kelly is an American broadcaster and author. She anchors the daily news show All Things Considered on National Public Radio , and previously covered national security at the network. Prior to NPR she reported for CNN and the BBC in London. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Atlantic, and other publications. Her first novel, Anonymous Sources, was published in 2013; her second, The Bullet, in 2015; and her memoir, It. Goes. So. Fast.: The Year of No Do-Overs, in 2023.
Go to Profile#13499
John A. Saliba
#13510
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
John A. Saliba is a Maltese-born Jesuit priest, a professor of religious studies at the University of Detroit Mercy and a noted writer and researcher in the field of new religious movements. Saliba has advocated a conciliatory approach towards new religions. He has argued that membership in such movements can serve as a temporary haven for young adults in a formative stage of their lives, and is not necessarily detrimental. He has been critical of the brainwashing concept espoused by the anti-cult movement.
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Felix Villars
#13511
Overall Influence
1921 - 2002 (81 years)
Felix Villars was a Swiss-born American emeritus professor of physics at MIT. He is best known for the Pauli–Villars regularization, an important principle in quantum field theory. Early life Villars was born in Biel, Switzerland and served in the Swiss Army during the Second World War, working as a meteorologist. In 1945, he graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology with degrees in physics and mathematics. His undergraduate thesis earned him the Institute's Kern Medal for Excellence. The following year, Villars earned his doctorate in physics from the same institution.
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