In a 1999 Physics World poll, Richard Feynman was ranked the seventh-greatest physicist of all time.
The poll was conducted by the British magazine Physics World among 130 leading physicists worldwide. It was a judgment of historical influence and scientific achievement, not a formal award or an objective measurement of ability. Feynman’s seventh-place ranking reflected his enormous impact despite his comparatively narrow research career.
Feynman is best known for transforming quantum electrodynamics, the theory describing interactions between light and charged matter. His diagrammatic method made complicated particle-interaction calculations far more intuitive, while his path-integral formulation reshaped quantum mechanics. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Shin’ichirō Tomonaga.
The ranking is sometimes confused with other “greatest physicist” surveys, whose participants, sample sizes, and results differed. Einstein commonly appeared first in such polls, but Feynman’s seventh-place result belongs specifically to the 1999 Physics World survey.