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.
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List of the most influential female people in Chemistry,
#951
Erika Cremer
1900 - 1996 (96 years)
Erika Cremer was a German physical chemist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Innsbruck who is regarded as one of the most important pioneers in gas chromatography, as she second conceived the technique in 1944, after Richard Synge and Archer J.P. Martin in 1941.
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Maria Lipp
1892 - 1966 (74 years)
Maria Lipp was a German organic chemist. She was the first female doctoral student, professor, and ordinary professor at the RWTH Aachen University. Life Lipp was born in Stolberg as the daughter of Karl Savelsberg and Friederike de Nys. She was later adopted by the chemist Julius Bredt. In 1913, she started studying chemistry at the TH Aachen. She completed her diploma with distinction in 1917 and was the first female doctoral student at the TH Aachen. She completed her doctorate with distinction in 1918 and her habilitation in organic chemistry again at the TH Aachen in 1923. In 1925, she married Peter Lipp, a professor for organic chemistry at the TH Aachen.
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Agnes Pockels
1862 - 1935 (73 years)
Agnes Luise Wilhelmine Pockels was a German chemist whose research was fundamental in establishing the modern discipline known as surface science, which describes the properties of liquid and solid surfaces and interfaces.
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Maud Menten
1879 - 1960 (81 years)
Maud Leonora Menten was a Canadian physician and chemist. As a bio-medical and medical researcher, she made significant contributions to enzyme kinetics and histochemistry, and invented a procedure that remains in use. She is primarily known for her work with Leonor Michaelis on enzyme kinetics in 1913. The paper has been translated from its written language of German into English.
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Alicja Dorabialska
1897 - 1975 (78 years)
Alicja Dorabialska , was a Polish chemist. Life Alicja Dorabialska was born in Sosnowiec, Vistula Land, Russian Empire on 14 October 1897. She graduated from a high school in Warsaw in 1914 and then enrolled in the Physical-Mathematical Department of the Moscow Higher Women's Courses the following year, graduating in 1918. Dorabialska received her Ph.D. from the University of Warsaw in 1922 and studied under Marie Curie at the Radium Institute, Paris in 1925. Dorabialska was an assistant in the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Warsaw University of Technology from 1918 to 1932. Two years lat...
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Ellen Swallow Richards
1842 - 1911 (69 years)
Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards was an American industrial and safety engineer, environmental chemist, and university faculty member in the United States during the 19th century. Her pioneering work in sanitary engineering, and experimental research in domestic science, laid a foundation for the new science of home economics. She was the founder of the home economics movement characterized by the application of science to the home, and the first to apply chemistry to the study of nutrition.
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Sophia Getzowa
1872 - 1946 (74 years)
Sophia Getzowa was a Belarusian-born pathologist and scientist in Mandatory Palestine. She grew up in a Jewish shtetl in Belarus and during her medical studies at the University of Bern, she became engaged to Chaim Weizmann, who would become the first president of Israel. Together they worked in the Zionist movement. After a four-year romance, Weizmann broke off their engagement and Getzowa returned to her medical studies, graduating in 1904. She carried out widely cited research on the thyroid, identifying solid cell nests in 1907.
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Astrid Cleve
1875 - 1968 (93 years)
Astrid Maria Cleve von Euler was a Swedish botanist, geologist, chemist and researcher at Uppsala University. She was the first woman in Sweden to obtain a doctoral degree of science. Life Astrid Maria Cleve was born into academic life on 22 January 1875, in Uppsala, Sweden. She was the eldest daughter of the chemist, oceanographer, geologist and professor Per Teodor Cleve and author Carolina Alma "Caralma" Öhbom . Her younger sisters were Agnes Cleve-Jonand , a visual artist and pioneer of Modernism in Sweden and Célie Brunius , a journalist. They received their early education at home from ...
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Dorothy Hahn
1876 - 1950 (74 years)
Dorothy Anna Hahn was a lifelong educator and American professor of organic chemistry at Mount Holyoke College. She was most known for her research which utilized the then newly developed technique of ultraviolet spectroscopy to study hydantoins.
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Martha Doan
1872 - 1960 (88 years)
Martha Doan was an American chemist whose contributions include research in compounds of thallium, three published work, and tenure as a professor and dean at various institutions in the US. Throughout her lifetime she received four degrees, a B.S. and master's from Purdue, a B.L. from Earlham College, and a Sc.D. from Cornell. She was a dean of women for two colleges, Earlham College and Iowa Wesleyan College. In addition to her involvement in higher education, she was involved with several national organizations that involved chemistry and science. She was awarded a certificate for Outstanding Service to Science in 1951.
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Lotte Pusch
1890 - 1983 (93 years)
Lotte Pusch was born on 7 August 1890 in Reichenbach/O.L. and was a German physical chemist. She was of the Protestant denomination. Her father was a District Court Director. Education Pusch visited secondary schools in Pleß, Glogau , and Görlitz before deciding to attend the Mädchen-Realgymnasium Chamissoschule school in Schönberg. She later attended the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität . During her first two semesters, she focused on mathematics, physics, and chemistry. In 1913, Pusch passed her university exams and began to study for her Ph.D. in physical chemistry. She earned her doctorate i...
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Sonia Cotelle
1896 - 1945 (49 years)
Sonia Cotelle, née Slobodkine , was a Polish radiochemist. Life and work Sonia Cotelle was born in Warsaw, capital of the Vistula Land, in the Russian Empire on 19 June 1896. She was married, but later divorced. She graduated from the University of Paris in 1922, where she majored in chemistry. While still a student she began working in 1919 as an assistant in the Institute of Radium founded by the Nobel Laureates, Marie Curie and her husband Pierre, in the university's Faculty of Science . Cotelle was in charge of the measurement service between 1924 and 1926, after which she was appointed as a chemist in the Faculté des sciences.
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Martha Annie Whiteley
1866 - 1956 (90 years)
Martha Annie Whiteley, was an English chemist and mathematician. She was instrumental in advocating for women's entry into the Chemical Society, and was best known for her dedication to advancing women's equality in the field of chemistry. She is identified as one of the Royal Society of Chemistry's 175 Faces of Chemistry.
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Charlotte Fitch Roberts
1859 - 1917 (58 years)
Charlotte Fitch Roberts was an American chemist best known for her work on stereochemistry. Life Roberts was born on February 13, 1859, in New York City to Horace Roberts and Mary Roberts . Education and career Roberts attended Wellesley College in 1880. Wellesley made her a graduate assistant in 1881, an instructor in 1882, and an associate professor in 1886. In 1885 she spent a year at Cambridge University working with Sir James Dewar, a chemist and physicist. In 1896 she published The Development and Present Aspects of Stereochemistry. She obtained a PhD from Yale in 1894 and a post at the University of Berlin from 1899 to 1900.
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Rachel Lloyd
1839 - 1900 (61 years)
Rachel Lloyd was an American chemist who studied the chemistry and agriculture of sugar beets . She studied at the Harvard Summer School and earned her doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1886. She was the first American woman to earn a doctorate of chemistry and the first woman to publish work in a major chemistry journal.
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Isabel Bevier
1860 - 1942 (82 years)
Isabel Bevier was one of the pioneers in the development of the scientific study of women’s labor in the home, today known as "home economics". In 1900 she began developing the “household science” program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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Susan Hayhurst
1820 - 1909 (89 years)
Susan Hayhurst was an American physician, pharmacist, and educator, and the first woman to earn a pharmaceutical degree in the United States. Early life and education Susan Hayhurst was born in Middletown Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Quakers Thomas and Martha Hayhurst. She attended school in Wilmington, Delaware and excelled in mathematics. While a young girl, she worked as a teacher at country schools in Bucks County. Taking an interest in chemistry and physiology, she enrolled at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, and graduated with a degree in medicine in...
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Ayşe Saffet Rıza Alpar
1903 - 1981 (78 years)
Ayşe Saffet Rıza Alpar was the first female university rector in Turkey. She is also the second female chemist of the country after Remziye Hisar. Ayşe Saffet Rıza was born to Hasan Rıza Pasha on 17 April 1903. Her father was a general of the Ottoman Empire, the commander during the Siege of Scutari in the First Balkan War. Following the killing of her father in 1913, she was raised in the German Empire. She came to Turkey for studying in Kandilli High School for Girls. For university, she traveled once more to Germany to study chemistry in University of Hamburg. In 1932, she obtained her PhD.
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Laura Alberta Linton
1853 - 1915 (62 years)
Laura Alberta Linton was an American chemist and physician. Early life and education Linton was born in Mahoning County, Ohio, on April 8, 1853, the oldest child of Joseph and Christina Linton. The family were Quakers. The family farmed in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey before settling in Wabasha County, Minnesota. Linton graduated from the Winona Normal School in 1872, and went on to the University of Minnesota, from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry.
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Kathryn Grove Shipp
1904 - 1977 (73 years)
Kathryn Grove Shipp was an American organic chemist, a specialist in explosives, affiliated with the Naval Ordnance Laboratory from 1957 to 1970. In 1967, she was one of the six recipients of the Federal Woman's Award.
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Jenara Vicenta Arnal Yarza
1902 - 1960 (58 years)
Jenara Vicenta Arnal Yarza , was the first woman to hold a Ph.D. in chemistry in Spain. She was noted for her work in electrochemistry and her research into the formation of fluorine from potassium biflouride. In later years, she was recognized for her contribution to the pedagogy of teaching science on the elementary and secondary levels, with a focus on the practical uses of chemistry in daily life. She was awarded a national honor, the Orden Civil de Alfonso X el Sabio.
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Katharine Blunt
1876 - 1954 (78 years)
Katharine Blunt was an American chemist, professor, and nutritionist who specialized in the fields of home economics, food chemistry and nutrition. Most of her research was on nutrition, but she also made great improvements to research on calcium and phosphorus metabolism and on the basal metabolism of women and children. She served as the third president of Connecticut College.
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Mary Frances Leach
1858 - 1939 (81 years)
Mary Frances Leach was an American chemist and professor of chemistry and hygiene. Early life and education Leach was born in Payson, Illinois, the daughter of the Reverend Cephas A., and Mary Ann Scarborough Leach. She studied at Mount Holyoke College after a stint as an elementary school teacher in Massachusetts and received her associate degree in 1880. She then moved to Michigan and taught high school in various districts until 1891. In 1893, she received her bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan.
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Emma P. Carr
1880 - 1972 (92 years)
Emma Perry Carr was an American spectroscopist and chemical educator. Her work on unsaturated hydrocarbons and absorption spectra earned her the inaugural Francis P. Garvan Medal from the American Chemical Society in 1937.
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Lotte Loewe
1900 - Present (126 years)
Lotte Luise Friederike Loewe was a German chemist known for her published research in organic chemistry. Loewe was born in Breslau to Helene Loewe. She received her doctorate in chemistry from the University of Breslau in 1927 and began her career there shortly thereafter, spending six years as a chemistry assistant from 1927 to 1933. She then moved to the University of Zurich in Switzerland for one year and then the University of Istanbul in Turkey for 21 years, from 1934 to 1955. Her last academic appointment was at the University of Basel, Switzerland, where she spent six years from 19...
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Chika Kuroda
1884 - 1968 (84 years)
Chika Kuroda was a Japanese chemist whose research focused on natural pigments. She was the first woman in Japan to receive a Bachelor of Science. Biography Chika Kuroda was born in Saga, Kyushu on 24 March 1884, the third daughter of her father Kuroda Heihachi and her mother Toku.
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Pauline Gracia Beery Mack
1891 - 1974 (83 years)
Pauline Gracia Beery Mack was an American chemist, home economist, and college administrator. Her research in calcium, nutrition, radiation, and bone density began during the 1930s, and culminated in work for NASA when she was in her seventies.
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Kathleen Lonsdale
1903 - 1971 (68 years)
Dame Kathleen Lonsdale was an Irish crystallographer, pacifist, and prison reform activist. She proved, in 1929, that the benzene ring is flat by using X-ray diffraction methods to elucidate the structure of hexamethylbenzene. She was the first to use Fourier spectral methods while solving the structure of hexachlorobenzene in 1931. During her career she attained several firsts for female scientists, including being one of the first two women elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1945 , first female professor at University College London, first woman president of the International Union ...
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Elizabeth Rona
1890 - 1981 (91 years)
Elizabeth Rona was a Hungarian nuclear chemist, known for her work with radioactive isotopes. After developing an enhanced method of preparing polonium samples, she was recognized internationally as the leading expert in isotope separation and polonium preparation. Between 1914 and 1918, during her postdoctoral study with George de Hevesy, she developed a theory that the velocity of diffusion depended on the mass of the nuclides. As only a few atomic elements had been identified, her confirmation of the existence of "Uranium-Y" was a major contribution to nuclear chemistry. She was awarded ...
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María Orosa
1893 - 1945 (52 years)
María Orosa e Ylagan was a Filipina food technologist, pharmaceutical chemist, humanitarian, and war heroine. She experimented with foods native to the Philippines, and during World War II developed Soyalac and Darak , which she also helped smuggle into Japanese-run internment camps that helped save the lives of thousands of Filipinos, Americans, and other nationals. She introduced to the public the well-known banana ketchup.
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Alice Emily Smith
1871 - Present (155 years)
Alice Emily Smith was a British chemist and one of the nineteen signatories of the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society. Early life and education Smith was born 18 June 1871, the daughter of Thomas Smith, Commission Agent from County Down, Northern Ireland.
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Milda Dorothea Prytz
1891 - 1977 (86 years)
Milda Dorethea Prytz was a Norwegian chemist. Early life and education Prytz was born in Leith, daughter of priest Anton Jakhelln Prytz and Milda Dorothea Olsen, and sister of goldsmith Eiler Hagerup Krog Prytz Jr. and Fascist politician Frederik Prytz. She grew up in Bergen, until she moved with her parents to Gloppen in 1904. She attended Bergen Cathedral School from 1908 to 1910.
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Mildred May Gostling
1873 - 1962 (89 years)
Mildred May Gostling , also published under her married name Mildred Mills, was an English chemist who completed research in carbohydrate chemistry. She was one of the nineteen signatories on a letter from professional female chemists to the Chemical Society requesting that women be accepted as Fellows to the Society.
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Sibyl M. Rock
1909 - 1981 (72 years)
Sibyl Martha Rock was an American inventor who was a pioneer in mass spectrometry and computing. Rock was a key person in Consolidated Engineering Corporation's mass spectrometry team at a time when mass spectrometers were first being commercialized for use by researchers and scientists. Rock was instrumental in developing mathematical techniques for analyzing the results from mass spectrometers, in developing an analog computer with Clifford Berry for analysis of equations, and in sustaining an ongoing dialog between engineers and customers involved in development of both the mass spectrome...
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Ruth Wheeler
1877 - 1948 (71 years)
Ruth Wheeler was an American chemist specialising in the field of nutrition and public education. Early life and education Ruth Wheeler was born on 5 August 1877 in Plains, Pennsylvania, to Jared Ward Wheeler and Martha Jane Wheeler . She was taught to read by her mother, and graduated from West Pittston High School in West Pittston, Pennsylvania. Her thinking was influenced by her Welsh grandfather, Rev. Dr. Evan Benjamin Evans, a minister concerned with feeding the poor.
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Annie Hutton Numbers
1897 - 1988 (91 years)
Annie Hutton Numbers was a Scottish chemist and academic. Early life Numbers was born on 6 March 1897 in Edinburgh to Maggie and Alexander Numbers. Her father was a joiner and cabinetmaker. She had one sister, Isabella, who was born about 1899. She attended Mrs Steele's Private School in Upper Gray Street in Edinburgh, then joined James Gillespie's High School in 1904, spending three years there. In 1907 she began her secondary education at Mary Erskine's Edinburgh Ladies' College until 1914.
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Elizabeth Herriott
1882 - 1936 (54 years)
Elizabeth Maude Herriott was a New Zealand scientist and academic. She was the first woman appointed to the permanent teaching staff at Canterbury College, now the University of Canterbury. Education Herriott was born in Canterbury in 1882. Her parents were David and Elizabeth Susannah Herriott. Herriott attended Christchurch East School and Christchurch Girls' High School, where she was head prefect in 1899. She won a scholarship to attend Canterbury College, and studied botany and chemistry there from 1900 to 1905. She graduated with a B.A. in 1904 and a M.A. in 1905. Her Master's research ...
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Olive Wheeler
1886 - 1963 (77 years)
Dame Olive Annie Wheeler, DBE was a Welsh educationist and psychologist, and Professor of Education at University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, now Cardiff University. Early life Born at the High Street in Brecon, Olive Wheeler was the younger daughter of Annie Wheeler, Poole, and her husband, Henry Burford Wheeler. Henry Wheeler was a master printer and publisher. She attended Brecon County School for Girls. She received an Honours Central Welsh Board Certificate in 1904. She attended University College of Wales, Aberystwyth and graduated with a BSc in Chemistry in 1907, and a MSc in 1911.
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Zada Mary Cooper
1875 - 1961 (86 years)
Zada Mary Cooper was an American pharmacist and educator. Biography Born in Quasqueton, Iowa in 1875, Zada Mary Cooper graduated from the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy in 1897 and became a registered pharmacist on March 9 of that year. Beginning as an assistant, she worked at the College of Pharmacy for 45 years, becoming an instructor in 1905, an assistant professor in 1912, and an associate professor in 1942.
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Rosa Bouton
1860 - 1951 (91 years)
Rosa Bouton was an American chemist and professor who organized and directed the School of Domestic Science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1898. Despite the lack of funding, Rosa Bouton worked to provide a course to teach young women about the realms of domestic science. As years passed and the demand for more courses and areas of study emerged, Bouton, as the sole instructor, continued to strengthen and build the department to provide such an education to these women.
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Nellie M. Payne
1900 - 1990 (90 years)
Nellie M. Payne was an American entomologist and agricultural chemist. Her research on insect responses to low temperature had practical agricultural and environmental applications. Early life and education Emily Maria de Cottrell Payne was born in 1900, in Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, daughter of James E. Payne Sr. and Mary Emmeline Cottrell Payne. Her father was superintendent of an agricultural station. She had two brothers, Amos and James. She earned a bachelor's and master's degrees in agricultural chemistry and entomology from the Kansas State Agricultural College, and a Ph.D. in 1925 from the University of Minnesota.
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Mary Elvira Weeks
1892 - 1975 (83 years)
Mary Elvira Weeks was an American chemist and historian of science. Weeks was the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Kansas and the first woman to be a faculty member there.
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Hope Winch
1894 - 1944 (50 years)
Hope Constance Monica Winch was an English pharmacist and academic. Biography Winch was born in the vicarage in the village of Brompton, just outside Northallerton in North Yorkshire, where her father Reverend George Winch was vicar of the village's St Thomas' Church. Her mother, Elizabeth Maude Winch was the daughter of Thomas Buston Crofton, also from the village.
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Hertha Sponer
1895 - 1968 (73 years)
Hertha Sponer was a German physicist and chemist who contributed to modern quantum mechanics and molecular physics and was the first woman on the physics faculty of Duke University. She was the older sister of philologist and resistance fighter Margot Sponer.
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Rosalind Franklin
1920 - 1958 (38 years)
Rosalind Elsie Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA , RNA , viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, Franklin's contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely unrecognized during her life, for which Franklin has been variously referred to as the "wronged heroine", the "dark lady of DNA", the "forgotten heroine", a "feminist icon", and the "Sylvia Plath of molecular biology".
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Rose May Davis
1894 - Present (132 years)
Rose May Davis was an American chemist. In 1929 she became the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. from Duke University. Early life and education Rose May Davis was born on 17 November 1894 in Cumberland, Maryland, to Baptist Minister Quinton C. Davis and Sarah E. Davis. She studied a variety of subjects, such as music, law, and chemistry, and attended several institutions in pursuit of her education, including Chowan College , the Southern Conservatory of Music , Trinity College , the University of Virginia , Duke University . During her time at Trinity College, Davis was a member of the Panhellenic Council, the Chanticleer Board, Athena Literary Society, Eko-L, and Zeta Tau Alpha.
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Marie Curie
1867 - 1934 (67 years)
Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie , known simply as Marie Curie , was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner of her first Nobel Prize, making them the first-ever married couple to win the Nobel Prize and launching the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was, in 1906, the first woman to become a professor at the University o...
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Nellie May Naylor
1885 - 1992 (107 years)
Nellie May Naylor was an American chemist. She was a chemistry professor at Iowa State University , teaching between 1908 until 1955. She was only the second woman to hold this job in the chemistry department.
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Mary Louise Fossler
1868 - 1952 (84 years)
Mary Louise Fossler was an American chemist and chemistry professor. Fossler is best known for her contributions to chemistry research and for her career as a professor at the University of Nebraska. Fossler graduated from the University of Nebraska with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry in 1894, and then returned to complete a Master of Arts in chemistry.
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Julia Southard Lee
1897 - Present (129 years)
Julia Southard Lee was an American textile chemist known for her teaching positions and research on protein fibers and textile quality. Early life and education Lee was born in Southard, Missouri on September 29, 1897. She attended the University of Missouri for her undergraduate education and earned her Bachelor of Science degree in 1926. She then attended Kansas State University and earned her master's degree in 1929. For her doctorate, she attended the University of Chicago and graduated in 1936. While at the University of Chicago, she received a fellowship in home economics named after Ellen Swallow Richards.
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