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

#3251

Kang-Yell Choi

#170839
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Kang-Yell Choi is a professor of biotechnology at Yonsei University, and has a joint appointment position as a CEO of CK Regeon Inc. in Seoul, Korea. He has been performing researches related to cellular signaling, especially for the Wnt/β-catenin pathway involving various pathophysiologies. Choi has been leading the Translational Research Center for Protein Function Control , a Korean government supported drug development institute, as a director for 10 years. Choi has been carrying out R&D to develop agents controlling the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. Choi's main interest is development ...
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#3252

John Gustafson

John Gustafson
#171073
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
John Leroy Gustafson is an American computer scientist and businessman, chiefly known for his work in high-performance computing such as the invention of Gustafson's law, introducing the first commercial computer cluster, measuring with QUIPS, leading the reconstruction of the Atanasoff–Berry computer, inventing the unum number format and computation system, and several awards for computer speedup. Currently he is the Chief Technology Officer at Ceranovo, Inc. He was the Chief Graphics Product Architect and Senior Fellow at AMD from September 2012 until June 2013, and he previously held the positions of Architect of Intel Labs-SC, CEO of Massively Parallel Technologies, Inc.
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#3253

Kathlyn A. Parker

#171142
Overall Influence
Kathlyn Ann Parker is a chemist known for her work on synthesis of compounds, especially organic compounds with biological roles. She is an elected fellow of the American Chemical Society and a recipient of the Garvan–Olin Medal in chemistry.
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#3254

Kazuhiro Yamamoto

#171201
Overall Influence
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#3255

Hong Yong Sohn

#171218
Overall Influence
Hong Yong Sohn is an American engineer, currently a Distinguished Professor in Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Utah. Sohn received his B.S. degree from Seoul National University, South Korea, and his Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering in 1970 from the University of California at Berkeley. After working as a research engineer at Du Pont’s Engineering Technology Laboratory, he joined the Department of Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Utah in 1974.
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#3256

Nancy D. Griffeth

Nancy D. Griffeth
#171227
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Nancy Davis Griffeth is an American computer scientist notable for approaches to the feature interaction problem. In 2014, she is a professor at Lehman College of The City University of New York and is modelling biological systems in computational biology.
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#3257

R. K. Chetty Pandipati

#171241
Overall Influence
Radha Krishnaiah Chetty Pandipati is an Electronics and Communications Engineer and author. Pandipati works at NASA as a contractor. Biography Pandipati was born in India. After receiving his undergraduate education at Andhra University, Kakinad, India, where he earned his B.E. degree, he joined Indian Space Research Organization, in 1972. While working there, he pursued his graduate studies and earned Ph.D. degree from Indian Institute Science, Bangalore, India, in 1978. He then joined the staff of Caltech, Pasadena, USA as a research fellow in 1979.
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#3258

Donald A. Danielson

#171253
Overall Influence
Donald A. Danielson is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Applied Mathematics and the Space Systems Academic Group at the Naval Postgraduate School. Early life and education Danielson received a B.S. degree in mathematics from MIT in 1964 and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1968.
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#3259

Marilyn Smith

#171260
Overall Influence
Marilyn J. Smith is an American aerospace engineer. Smith earned her bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech. Her studies were funded by Lockheed Martin. She also worked for McDonnell Douglas. Smith later joined the Georgia Tech faculty as professor and director of the Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence. In 2016, she was elected a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Smith was the 2022 recipient of the AIAA Aerodynamics Award.
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#3260

Ranganathan Shashidhar

#171304
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Ranganathan Shashidhar is a US-based Indian condensed matter physicist and a former head of the Laboratory for Molecularly Engineered Materials and Surface of the Center for Biomolecular Science & Engineering, a division of the United States Naval Research Laboratory. Known for his research on liquid crystals, Shashidhar is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the senior vice president of Polestar Technologies, a US-based company involved in the development of sensing technologies. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India...
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#3261

Moshe M. Barash

#171396
Overall Influence
Moshe M. Barash was the Ransburg Professor of Manufacturing and Professor of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University. He received his B.Sc. and Dipl.Ing. degrees in electrical engineering at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, and his Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Manchester, England. He published numerous research and technical papers in design, manufacturing systems, automatic planning and many other areas.
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#3262

Jianping Yao

#171506
Overall Influence
Jianping Yao is currently a Distinguished University Professor and University Research Chair, and previously Director of the Ottawa-Carleton Institute for Electrical and Computer Engineering, at the University of Ottawa, and also an author of over 600 scientific papers. He is Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Photonics Technology Letters. Dr. Yao is known for his original contributions to microwave photonics. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Optical Society, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and the Royal Society of Canada.
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#3263

Joseph B. Reimer

#171509
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Joseph "Joe" Reimer is an American author on Jewish education and an associate professor at Brandeis University. He is part of Brandeis' Hornstein Program for Jewish Professional Leadership. Reimer received a National Jewish Book Award in the Jewish Education category for his book Succeeding at Jewish Education: How One Synagogue Made It Work in 1997. Reimer received a Human Development Research Award from the American Educational Research Association for research on moral development of kibbutz adolescents and young adults in Israel in 1988.
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#3264

Elizabeth Opila

#171578
Overall Influence
Elizabeth Jane Opila is an American materials scientist who is the Rolls-Royce Commonwealth Professor of Engineering at the University of Virginia. Her research considers the development of materials for extreme environments. She was elected Fellow of the Electrochemical Society in 2013 and the American Ceramic Society in 2014.
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#3265

Marian Willinger

Marian Willinger
#171619
Overall Influence
Marian Doberman Willinger is an American scientist. She was a program officer at the National Institutes of Health where she expanded maternal and child health initiatives. Education Willinger completed a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences in 1976. Her dissertation was titled Studies of the fate of surface proteins during phagocytosis by rabbit polymorphonuclear neutrophils.
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#3266

R. John Hansman

#171626
Overall Influence
R. John Hansman is an American physicist currently the T. Wilson Professor of Aeronautics & Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an Elected Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
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#3267

Titus Pankey

#171722
Overall Influence
1925 - 2003 (78 years)
Titus Pankey was an American physicist and professor whose research specialties were magnetic susceptibility and cosmology, especially supernovas. He was the first recipient of a PhD in physics from Howard University, and was one of the first 10 black recipients of a PhD in physics in the United States. He has been cited as the first to suggest that type 1a supernovae are powered by nickel-56 decay.
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#3268

Jan B. Talbot

#171830
Overall Influence
Jan B. Talbot is an American chemical engineer. She is a professor emerita at the Jacobs School of Engineering. She completed a bachelor and master of science in chemical engineering at Pennsylvania State University. From 1975 to 1981, Talbot was as a development engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She completed a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and materials science in 1986 from University of Minnesota. She joined the faculty at University of California, San Diego in 1986. She was the president of the Electrochemical Society from 2001 to 2002. In 2004, she became a fellow of the Electroc...
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#3269

Mary Frecker

#171909
Overall Influence
Mary Irene Frecker is an American mechanical engineer whose research focuses on topology optimization of adaptive structures, compliant mechanisms, and self-folding origami mechanisms, with applications including the design of medical devices. She is a professor of mechanical and biomechanical engineering in the Penn State College of Engineering, Riess Chair of Engineering, head of the mechanical engineering department, and director of the Penn State Center for Biodevices.
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#3270

David Robert Sime Cumming

#171948
Overall Influence
David Robert Sime Cumming from the University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK, was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2013 for contributions to integrated sensors and microsystem technology.
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#3271

Victoria Morgan

#171986
Overall Influence
Victoria L. Morgan is an American biomedical engineer who is a professor of neurology and radiology at Vanderbilt University. She makes use of functional magnetic resonance imaging to understand neural activation and function. Her research looks to quantify and understand the impact of epilepsy in the brain.
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#3272

Stephen Curry

#172123
Overall Influence
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#3273

Adam Leibovich

#172176
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Adam Leibovich is an American theoretical physicist. He is a full professor and the Betty J. and Ralph E. Bailey Dean of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and the College of General Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. His research is primarily in quantum chromodynamics and the application of effective field theory to problems of hadronic physics, particularly particles containing one or more heavy quarks. Leibovich also has worked on gravitational wave physics. He was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2017 and a fellow of the American Association for...
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#3274

R. Michael Barnett

#172205
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
R. Michael Barnett, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was awarded the status of Fellow in the American Physical Society, after being nominated by the laboratory's Division of Particles and Fields in 1993. His award was for contributions to phenomenological analyses of the Standard Model and its extensions, including studies of the nature and validity of Quantum Chromodynamics, analyses of neutral current couplings, calculations of the production of heavy quarks, and predictions of the properties and decays of supersymmetric particles.
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#3275

Gillian Wilson

#172364
Overall Influence
Gillian Wilson is a British-American astronomer and cosmologist. Wilson joined University of California, Merced in October 2022 as Vice Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Economic Development and is also a Professor in the UC Merced Physics Department. She was formerly Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Riverside, where she was also Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Research & Economic Development.
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#3276

Krishnaswamy Nandakumar

#172413
Overall Influence
Krishnaswamy Nandakumar is the Cain Endowed Chair and Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Louisiana State University, USA. Early life He received his Bachelor of Engineering degree from National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli in 1973, Master of Science from the University of Saskatchewan in 1975 and PhD from Princeton University in 1979 all in Chemical Engineering.
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#3277

Martin F. Jarrold

#172459
Overall Influence
Martin F. Jarrold is a physical and analytical chemist known for contributions to ion-mobility spectrometry, heat capacity measurements of metal clusters, and charge detection mass spectrometry. Martin is the Robert & Marjorie Mann Chair in the Department of Chemistry at Indiana University.
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#3278

James Bliska

#172650
Overall Influence
James Bliska is an American molecular biologist, focusing on molecular mechanisms that underlie pathogenesis or host protection during host-microbe cell interactions, currently at Geisel School of Medicine and was Elected as Fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2013.
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#3279

Sarah E. Reisman

#172697
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Sarah Elizabeth Reisman is a Chemistry Professor at the California Institute of Technology. She received the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award and the Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award for Organic Synthesis. Her research focuses on the total synthesis of complex natural products.
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#3280

Sam Naffziger

#172741
Overall Influence
Samuel Naffziger is an American electrical engineer who has been employed at Advanced Micro Devices in Fort Collins, Colorado since 2006. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2014 for his leadership in the development of power management and low-power processor technologies. He is also the Senior Vice President and Product Technology Architect at AMD.
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#3281

Kristen Sellgren

#172747
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Kristen Sellgren is an American retired astronomer and Professor Emerita at the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, Ohio State University. She won the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy in 1990. She is the founder of American Astronomical Society's Committee for Sexual-Orientation & Gender Minorities in Astronomy .
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#3282

Michael E. O'Donnell

Michael E. O'Donnell
#172918
Overall Influence
Michael E. O’ Donnell is an American biochemist and a professor at the Rockefeller University specializing in the field of DNA replication. Education O’ Donnell attended the University of Portland, receiving his B.S in 1975. During his subsequent graduate studies at the University of Michigan, he became trained as an enzymologist; he earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1982. O'Donnell continued with his postdoctoral training at Stanford University under the supervision of nobel laureate Arthur Kornberg and I. Robert Lehman in the field of nucleic acid enzymology.
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#3283

Theresa Utlaut

#172949
Overall Influence
Theresa Lynn Utlaut is an American statistician, and a principal engineer at the Intel Corporation, where she develops statistical methods for Intel's microprocessor and integrated circuit manufacturing processes, as well as providing statistical consultation and training. She is also a user of the JMP statistical software package and its scripting language, and a coauthor of the book JSL Companion: Applications of the JMP® Scripting Language.
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#3284

Patricia L. Clark

#172957
Overall Influence
Patricia Louise Clark is an American biophysicist. She is the Rev. John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C., Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, associate vice president for research, and director of the Biophysics Instrumentation Core Facility at the University of Notre Dame.
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#3285

Robert Weber

#173002
Overall Influence
1926 - 2008 (82 years)
Robert Weber was an American astronomer and discoverer of minor planets who ran the precursor to the LINEAR project shortly before his retirement in 1996. Data were collected by manually entering telescope pointing positions and requesting an image save. Searching twenty fields was a taxing experience. They did have automatic object detection working, but no starfield matching at that time.
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#3286

Ed V. Hungerford III

#173016
Overall Influence
Ed Vernon Hungerford III is an American physicist and one of the prominent international particle physicists. He is one of the world leaders in the field of Hypernuclear Physics with significant original research carried out in the field. Since 2011, he is MD Anderson Professor of Physics at the Department of Physics, University of Houston, where he has been leading his research group . He is known for his significant contributions to the field of hypernuclear physics and hypernuclear spectroscopy, with more than hundred important research papers, multiple grants and more than twenty successf...
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#3287

Christopher H. Bajorek

Christopher H. Bajorek
#173134
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (82 years)
Christopher Henry Bajorek is a data storage engineer noted for his leadership in developing and implementing magnetoresistive sensors into magnetic stripe readers, tape drives and hard disk drives. Early life and education Christopher Henry Bajorek was born in Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine, on November 26, 1943. His parents were George L. H. and Rosalia B. ; He married Janet Fullmer in 1965. They have two children: Peter C. and Jennifer L. Bajorek attended Pasadena City College before transferring to the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1967, a Master of Science , in electrical engineering in 1968; and a Ph.D.
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#3288

Rizia Bardhan

#173144
Overall Influence
Rizia Bardhan is an Indian origin American biomolecular engineer who is an Associate Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering at Iowa State University. She is Associate Editor of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
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#3289

Joel C. Sercel

#173312
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Joel C. Sercel is an American aerospace engineer. He is the inventor of Omnivore Thruster, a new concept of propulsion technology for in-space transportation, of Optical Mining, a technology for extracting raw materials from asteroids, of the Radiant Gas Dynamic method of lunar water harvesting, and of the Sun Flower Power Tower architecture for capturing and converting solar power into electricity to be used in polar lunar regions. , his work and studies have led to eight US patents and seventeen published applications. An asteroid, Joelsercel, was named after him.
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#3290

Rene Ong

#173316
Overall Influence
Rene Ashwin Ong is an American astrophysicist known for his work in experimental high-energy astrophysics, astroparticle physics, and particle physics. He is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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#3291

Moriel Zelikowsky

#173387
Overall Influence
Moriel Zelikowsky is a neuroscientist at University of Utah School of Medicine. Her laboratory studies the brain circuits and neural mechanisms underlying stress, fear, and social behavior. Her previous work includes fear and the hippocampus, and the role of neuropeptide Tac2 in social isolation.
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#3292

Daniel S. Koltun

#173584
Overall Influence
1933 - 2014 (81 years)
Daniel Scherwin Koltun was an American theoretical physicist, specializing in nuclear physics. Koltun graduated in 1955 from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree and in 1961 from Princeton University with a Ph.D. in physics with thesis New methods of spectroscopy applied to the nuclear 1-p shell. He became in 1962 a member of the University of Rochester's physics faculty and retired there in 2004 as professor emeritus.
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#3293

Gordana Dukovic

#173592
Overall Influence
Gordana Dukovic is a physical chemist. She is currently a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder. Life and education Gordana Dukovic earned her B.A. at Rutgers University in 2001, majoring in chemistry and minoring in Italian. In her PhD studies, she did research at Columbia University on the spectroscopy of carbon nanotubes with Louis Brus as her advisor. She was awarded a PhD in chemistry with distinction in 2006 for her thesis entitled "Electronic spectra of carbon nanotubes: excitonic states, chemical doping, and chiral interactions." After her PhD, ...
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#3294

David Mohrig

#173633
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
David Mohrig is an American professor of geology and geomorphology whose works have been published in such journals as the Geological Society of America Bulletin, Journal of Hydraulic Engineering and many others. Currently he works at Jackson School of Geosciences of Austin, Texas.
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#3295

David Breed Beard

#173649
Overall Influence
1922 - 1998 (76 years)
David Breed Beard was a space physicist, known for "pioneering work on the shapes and structures of planetary magnetospheres, Jovian radio emissions, and comets." After serving in the U.S. Navy during WWII, Beard graduated with a bachelor's degree from Hamilton College. He spent a year as a graduate student at Caltech, but then worked at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He became a graduate student in physics at Cornell University and graduated there in 1951 with a PhD under the supervision of Hans Bethe. Beard was from 1951 to 1953 a member of the faculty of the University of ...
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#3296

Eric Edward Fullerton

#173705
Overall Influence
Eric Edward Fullerton from the University of California, San Diego, was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2012 "for contributions to the synthesis and characterization of magnetic exchange coupled films, superlattices and recording media".
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#3297

Shane Davis

#173814
Overall Influence
Shane W. Davis is an American astrophysicist. He is an assistant professor in the department of astronomy at the University of Virginia. Davis was a senior research associate at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. He was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2015.
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#3298

Michael Bicay

#173899
Overall Influence
Michael D. Bicay is an astronomer and the Director of Science at the NASA Ames Research Center. Bicay's research interests include large-scale structure in the universe, the atomic gas content of spiral galaxies, and the infrared properties of galaxies and clusters of galaxies.
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#3299

Mark Novotny

#173931
Overall Influence
Mark A. Novotny is an American physicist currently a W. L. Giles Distinguished Professor at Mississippi State University, and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and also American Physical Society for "original algorithm development and applications of computational statistical mechanics to equilibrium and non-equilibrium problems in condensed-matter physics and materials science".
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#3300

Dylan Jones

#174014
Overall Influence
Dylan Jones is a professor of physics and atmospheric scientist at the University of Toronto. Education and Research Jones received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1990, a Masters in Applied Physics from Harvard in 1994, and a PhD in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Harvard in 1998. Jones' research is focused on integrating measurements of atmospheric composition with global three-dimensional models of chemistry and transport to develop a better understanding of how pollution influences the chemical and dynamical state of the atmosphere.
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