In intellectual rankings, greatest physicist ever is an epitaph given to a person, depending on ranking methodology, some rankings of which are listed below, that classify, list, or describe someone as being the greatest thinker in the field of physics of all time.

One of the more dominant surveys was the recent millennium poll on the greatest physicist of all time, conducted by the British journal Physics World who surveyed 130 leading physicists worldwide. [1] Two followup PhysicsForum.com polls (2005, N=80; 2007, N=65), seemingly using the top ten millennium physicists as starting candidates, are also shown below. [2]

An alternative study, “Estimating Achievement from Fame” (2009), which excludes pre-Nobel Prize era physicists, attempting to rank what might be called modern era physicists, was done by Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury at the University of California, Los Angeles, who ranked Nobel Prize winners in physics, by equating their achievements with their fame as measured by hits on Google. [3]

Another note to discern in these rankings is that of "retrospect time" in the sense that only time can tell if a person, in the long run, will be still ranking as one of the greatest physicists. Thus, for example, in 1923 Time magazine ranked J.J. Thomson as the "greatest living physicist", likely owing to the hoopla over his recent 1897 discovery of the electron, but he was soon thereafter surpassed by Einstein and other soon to come discoveries in sub-atomic physics. [5]

Millennium Poll (1999)	Physics Forum Poll (2005)	Physics Forum Poll (2007)	Google Hits Study (2009)
1. Albert Einstein	1. Isaac Newton	1. Isaac Newton	1. Albert Einstein
2. Isaac Newton	2. Albert Einstein	2. Albert Einstein	2. Max Planck
3. James Maxwell	3. Galileo Galilei	3. James Maxwell	3. Marie Curie
4. Niels Bohr	4. Richard Feynman	4. Richard Feynman	4. Niels Bohr
5. Werner Heisenberg	5. Niels Bohr	5. Galileo Galilei	5. Enrico Fermi
6. Galileo Galilei	6. James Maxwell	6. Erwin Schrodinger	6. Guglielmo Marconi
7. Richard Feynman	7. Paul Dirac	7. Niels Bohr	7. Werner Heisenberg
8. Paul Dirac	8. Michael Faraday	8. Paul Dirac	8. Erwin Schrodinger
9. Erwin Schrodinger	9. Max Planck	9. Werner Heisenberg	9. Pierre Curie
10. Ernest Rutherford	10. Ernest Rutherford	10. Ernest Rutherford	10. Wilhelm Rontgen

Other rankings
The following table, first column, shows the 2008 listing of the “50 Most Influential Physicists/Astronomers of All Time” according to world history blogger Gavin Kanowitz. [4] The second column shows William Cropper's listing from his 2001 book Great Physicists: the Life and Times of Leading Physicists from Galileo to Hawking, listed chronologically and grouped by division. [6] Rankopedia's top 28 greatest physicist ever listing is shown as well: [8]

Kanowitz top 50	Cropper top 30 (chronological & grouped)	Rankopedia top 28 (based on 25 votes: 2010-2012)
1. Isaac Newton	Mechanics	1. Albert Einstein 80.90
2. Albert Einstein	1. Galileo Galilei	2. Isaac Newton 77.42
3. Galileo Galilei	2. Isaac Newton	3. Galileo Galilei 59.62
4. Michael Faraday		4. Marie Curie 33.34
5. Johannes Kepler	Thermodynamics	5. Stephen Hawking 28.03
6. Archimedes	1. Sadi Carnot	6. Michael Faraday 27.15
7. Nikola Tesla	2. Robert Mayer	7. Niels Bohr 25.73
8. Max Planck	3. James Joule	8. Werner Heisenberg 16.78
9. James Maxwell	4. Hermann Helmholtz	9. John Napier 10.53
10. Marie Curie	5. William Thomson	10. Enrico Fermi 9.20
11. Niels Bohr	6. Rudolf Clausius	11. Robert Oppenheimer 8.80
12. Erwin Schrodinger	7. Willard Gibbs	12. Chushiro Hayashi 8.68
13. Werner Heisenberg	8. Walther Nernst	13. Henri Poincaré 7.60
14. Ernest Rutherford		14. Robert Hooke 6.02
15. Nicolaus Copernicus	Electromagnitism	15. Carl Gauss 6.00
16. Christiaan Huygens	1. Michael Faraday	16. James Maxwell 5.86
17. James Joule	2. James Maxwell	17. Murray Gell-Mann 4.90
18. Henry Cavendish		18. Ludwig Boltzmann 4.40
19. William Thomson	Statistical mechanics	19. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes 3.80
20. Thomas Young	1. Ludwig Boltzmann	20. André Marie Ampère 3.20
21. Enrico Fermi		21. Evangelista Torricelli 2.80
22. Richard Feynman	Relativity	22. Max Planck 2.40
23. Alessandro Volta	1. Albert Einstein	23. Amit Goswami 1.94
24. Heinrich Hertz		24. Edouard Branly 1.60
25. Benjamin Franklin	Quantum mechanics	25. Andrei Sakharov 1.46
26. John Bardeen	1. Max Planck	26. Wilhelm Bjerknes 0.80
27. Georg Ohm	2. Niels Bohr	27. Georges Charpak 0.57
28. Paul Dirac	3. Wolfgang Pauli	28. David Ruelle 0.40
29. Robert Millikan	4. Werner Heisenberg
30. Edwin Hubble	5. Louis de Broglie
31. Pieter Zeeman	6. Erwin Schrodinger
32. Andre-Marie Ampere
33. J.J. Thomson	Nuclear physics
34. Henri Becquerel	1. Marie Curie
35. Louis de Broglie	2. Ernest Rutherford
36. Charles Coulomb	3. Lise Meitner
37. Georges Lemaitre	4. Enrico Fermi
38. Christian Doppler
39. Lise Meitner	Particle physics
40. Hans Oersted	1. Paul Dirac
41. Robert Boyle	2. Richard Feynman
42. Hendrik Lorentz	3. Murray Gell-Mann
43. Joseph Fraunhofer
44. Ludwig Boltzmann	Astrophysics
45. Robert Hooke	1. Edwin Hubble
46. Evangelista Torrecelli	2. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
47. Wilhelm Weber	3. Stephen Hawking
48. Ernst Mach
49. John Wheeler
50. Wilhelm Roentgen

See also

● Greatest chemist ever ● Greatest philosopher ever ● Greatest mathematician ever ● Greatest thermodynamicist ever ● Greatest engineer ever

● Polymath ● Last person to know everything ● Universal genius ● Last universal genius

● Genius IQs (top 1000 geniuses) ● IQ: 200+ | Smartest person ever ● IQ: 150+ | Smartest woman ever

References
1. (a) Tindol, Robert. (1999). “Physics World poll names Richard Feynman one of the 10 Greatest Physicists of all Time” (link), Caltech Media Relations, Dec 02.
(b) Anon. (1999). “Einstein the Greatest”, BBC News, Nov 29.
2. (a) Greatest physicist of all time? (2005) – PhysicsForum.com.
(b) Greatest Physicist Ever (2007) – PhysicsForums.com.
3. (a) Anon. (2009). “The World’s Greatest Physicists (as Determined by the Wisdom of Crowds), The Physics arXiv Blog, Jun 6.
(b) Simkin, M.V. and Roychowdury, V.P. (2009). “Estimating Achievement from Fame”, ArXiv.org, Jun 19.
4. Knowitz, Gavin. (2008). “50 Most Influential Physicists/Astronomers of All Time”, WorldOfHistory.blogspot.com, Aug 08.
5. Anon. (1923). “Science: the Greatest Physicist”, Time, Apr. 07.
7. Cropper, William H. (2001). Great Physicists: the Life and Times of Leading Physicists from Galileo to Hawking. Oxford University Press.
8. Greatest physicist ever (2010-2012) - Rankopedia.