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).
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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,
#501
Roger A. Sheldon
#50586
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Roger Arthur Sheldon is emeritus professor of Biocatalysis and Organic Chemistry at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Education Sheldon was educated at the University of Leicester where he was awarded a PhD in 1967 for research on the chemical reactions of the tetraphenyldiphosphine. supervised by Stuart Trippett and Stephen Davidson.
Go to Profile#502
Phaedon Avouris
#28211
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Phaedon Avouris is a Greek chemical physicist and materials scientist. He is an IBM Fellow and was formerly the group leader for Nanometer Scale Science and Technology at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.
Go to Profile#503
Paul Kuroda
#30937
Overall Influence
1917 - 2001 (84 years)
Paul Kazuo Kuroda was a Japanese-American chemist and nuclear scientist. He held the esteemed title of honorary professor at the University of Arkansas and is widely recognized as the pioneering scientist who achieved the distinction of becoming the first individual from Japan to naturalize in the United States.
Go to Profile#504
Kenneth S. Suslick
#29088
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Kenneth S. Suslick is the Marvin T. Schmidt Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. His area of focus is on the chemical and physical effects of ultrasound, sonochemistry, and sonoluminescence. In addition, he has worked in the fields of artificial and machine olfaction, electronic nose technology, chemical sensor arrays, and the use of colorimetric sensor arrays as an optoelectronic nose.
Go to Profile#505
Kenneth Holmes
#12872
Overall Influence
1934 - 2021 (87 years)
Kenneth Charles Holmes FRS was a British molecular biologist. He was born in Hammersmith, London. He was a former colleague of Rosalind Franklin at Birkbeck College with Aaron Klug and John Finch and moved to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge in 1962. From 1975 and 1976 he was acting Head of Outstation, EMBL Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory at DESY, Hamburg. He worked at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research as an "Emeritus Scientific Member".
Go to Profile#506
Helen Murray Free
#16865
Overall Influence
1923 - 2021 (98 years)
Helen Murray Free was an American chemist and educator. She is most known for revolutionizing many in vitro self-testing systems for diabetes and other diseases while working at Miles Laboratories. The tests are still marketed today with blood tests as Ascensia Diabetes Care, and urine tests under Siemens Healthineers. The pioneering dip-and-read strips, allowed for testing to be more convenient and efficient, enabling doctors and patients to be less reliable to laboratories for results.
Go to Profile#507
Leo Radom
#44166
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Leo Radom is a computational chemist and Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the University of Sydney. He attended North Sydney Boys High School. He has a PhD and a DSc from the University of Sydney and carried out postdoctoral research under the late Sir John Pople. Previously, he was Professor at the Research School of Chemistry at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. He has published over 460 papers.
Go to Profile#508
Donald J. DePaolo
#44105
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Donald James DePaolo is an American professor of geochemistry in the department of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley and associate laboratory director for energy and environmental sciences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Go to Profile#509
Walter Lincoln Hawkins
#29471
Overall Influence
1911 - 1992 (81 years)
Walter Lincoln Hawkins was an American chemist and engineer widely regarded as a pioneer of polymer chemistry. For thirty-four years he worked at Bell Laboratories, where he was instrumental in designing a long-lasting plastic to sheath telephone cables, enabling the introduction of telephone services to thousands of Americans, especially those in rural communities. In addition to his pioneering research, Hawkins is also known for his advocacy efforts for minority students. He also served as the chairman of Montclair State University in 1973. Amongst his many awards, Hawkins was the first Afr...
Go to Profile#510
Amando Kapauan
#48110
Overall Influence
1931 - 1996 (65 years)
Amando F. Kapauan was a chemist and researcher. He graduated magna cum laude from University of the Philippines, Diliman in 1952, with a bachelor's degree in chemistry. He obtained his doctorate from the University of Southern California in 1959.
Go to Profile#511
Marcia Huber
#20207
Overall Influence
Marcia Lynn Huber is an American chemical engineer. She is a researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Huber's research interests include developing models for the thermophysical properties of fluids. She was awarded the Department of Commerce Bronze Medal in 2005.
Go to Profile#512
Helmut Ringsdorf
#22769
Overall Influence
1929 - 2023 (94 years)
Helmut Ringsdorf was a German polymer chemist. His work promoted cross-disciplinary discussions and collaborations in the field of polymer chemistry, biology, physics and medicine. Ringsdorf's major research works deal with the self-assembly of polymers into functional aggregates, where 'the whole is more than the sum of its parts'. He is known for being the first to propose covalently bonding drugs to water-soluble polymers.
Go to Profile#513
William Hughes Miller
#47064
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
William Hughes Miller is an American professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a leading researcher in the field of theoretical chemistry. Research and career Miller is known for his development of semiclassical methods for treating chemical dynamics. From 1989 to 1993, he served as chair of the chemistry department at the University of California, Berkeley, and since 1999 he has been the Kenneth S. Pitzer Distinguished Professor at UC Berkeley.
Go to Profile#514
Ewine van Dishoeck
#19329
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Ewine Fleur van Dishoeck is a Dutch astronomer and chemist. She is Professor of Molecular Astrophysics at Leiden Observatory, and served as the President of the International Astronomical Union and a co-editor of the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics . She is one of the pioneers of astrochemistry, and her research is aimed at determination of the structure of cosmic objects using their molecular spectra.
Go to Profile#515
Weitao Yang
#42002
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Weitao Yang is a Chinese-born American chemist who is the Philip Handler Professor of Chemistry at Duke University. His main contributions to chemistry include density functional theory development, and its applications to chemistry.
Go to Profile#516
Jerome Horwitz
#17251
Overall Influence
1919 - 2012 (93 years)
Jerome Phillip Horwitz was an American scientist; his affiliations included the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, the Wayne State University School of Medicine and the Michigan Cancer Foundation.
Go to Profile#517
Edith M. Flanigen
#19766
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (96 years)
Edith Marie Flanigen is a noted American chemist, known for her work on synthesis of emeralds, and later zeolites for molecular sieves at Union Carbide. Early life and education Edith Marie Flanigen was born January 28, 1929, in Buffalo, New York. She and her two sisters, Joan and Jane, were introduced to chemistry by their high school teacher. The three sisters all went on to study chemistry at D'Youville College. Edith Flanigen graduated class president and valedictorian. Joan and Edith both went on to receive master's degrees in chemistry in inorganic physical chemistry at Syracuse University in 1952.
Go to Profile#518
Marye Anne Fox
#15448
Overall Influence
1947 - 2021 (74 years)
Marye Anne Payne Fox was an American physical organic chemist and university administrator. She was the first female chief executive of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. In April 2004, Fox was named chancellor of the University of California, San Diego. In 2010 Fox received the National Medal of Science.
Go to Profile#519
Edward C. Taylor
#43662
Overall Influence
1923 - 2017 (94 years)
Edward Curtis Taylor, Jr. was an American chemist who designed and synthesized the chemotherapy drug pemetrexed , an inhibitor of purine biosynthesis, with grant support from the U.S. National Cancer Institute, NIH. As of 2009, royalties for this drug from Eli Lilly & Co. paid to Princeton University were sufficient to completely finance a state-of-the-art chemistry laboratory building. Taylor studied for his PhD from 1946 to 1949 at Cornell University with Professor Cornelius Cain. Taylor trained 187 PhD students.
Go to Profile#520
Gregory Fu
#48704
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Gregory C. Fu is a Professor of organic chemistry at the California Institute of Technology and the Norman Chandler Professor of Chemistry. The current research interests of the Fu laboratory include metal-catalyzed coupling reactions and the design of chiral catalysts. In particular, the group is focused on the development of nickel-catalyzed enantioselective cross-couplings of alkyl electrophiles and on photoinduced, copper-catalyzed carbon–heteroatom bond-forming reactions. The group works in collaboration with the laboratory of Professor Jonas C. Peters.
Go to Profile#521
John Sherwood
#27737
Overall Influence
John Neil Sherwood was a British physical chemist, who researched organic crystals. He spent his career at the University of Strathclyde, where he was professor of chemistry , as well as serving as vice-principal .
Go to Profile#522
Philiswa Nomngongo
#26870
Overall Influence
Philiswa Nomngongo is a South African professor of Analytical Chemistry and the South African Research Chair in nanotechnology for water. Her research focuses on environmental analytical chemistry and the use of nanomaterials for water treatment, water remediation, and water quality analysis and monitoring.
Go to Profile#523
Christopher A. Lipinski
#36875
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Christopher A. Lipinski is a medicinal chemist who is working at Pfizer, Inc. He is known for his "rule of five", an algorithm that predicts drug compounds that are likely to have oral activity. By the number of citations, he is the most cited author of some pharmacology journals: Journal of Pharmacological and Toxicological Methods, Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews, Drug Discovery Today: Technologies.
Go to Profile#524
Ignacio Grossmann
#47282
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Ignacio E. Grossmann is an American chemical engineer. He is the R. R. Dean University Professor in the department of chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Grossmann received his B.S. degree from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City in 1974. He did his M.S. and Ph.D. at Imperial College London with Roger W. H. Sargent in 1975 and 1977 respectively. In 2015 he was the first recipient of the Sargent Medal of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, named in honor of his doctoral advisor.
Go to Profile#525
Raymond Chang
#40170
Overall Influence
1939 - 2017 (78 years)
Raymond Chang was an emeritus professor at Williams College in the Department of Chemistry and a textbook author. His most popular textbook was titled Chemistry, which was published up to the thirteenth edition. He also published a few children's books.
Go to Profile#526
Reshef Tenne
#32541
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Reshef Tenne is an Israeli scientist. Biography Born in Kibbutz Usha, Tenne received his BSc in Chemistry and Physics from Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1969, where he also received his MSc and PhD .
Go to Profile#527
Tebello Nyokong
#37976
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Tebello Nyokong is a South African chemist and distinguished professor at Rhodes University, and a recipient of South Africa's Order of Mapungubwe. Nyokong's work has been published around 450 times including a patent. She was awarded the South African Chemical Institute Gold Medal in 2012, and named one of the Top 10 Most Influential Women in Science and Technology in Africa by IT News Africa. She is currently researching photo-dynamic therapy, an alternative cancer treatment method to chemotherapy. In 2007, she was one of the top three publishing scientists in South Africa, and in 2013 she...
Go to Profile#528
Emily A. Carter
#33935
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Emily Ann Carter is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University. She has been on the faculty at Princeton since 2004, including as serving as Princeton's Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science from 2016 to 2019. She moved to UCLA to serve as executive vice chancellor and provost and a distinguished professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, before returning to Princeton in December 2021.
Go to Profile#529
Paula T. Hammond
#31319
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Paula Therese Hammond is a David H. Koch Professor in Engineering and the Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . She was the first woman and person of color appointed as head of the Chemical Engineering department. Her laboratory designs polymers and nanoparticles for drug delivery and energy-related applications including batteries and fuel cells.
Go to Profile#530
John Yates
#51370
Overall Influence
1935 - 2015 (80 years)
John T. Yates Jr. was an American chemist. He was an investigator in the field of surface chemistry and physics, including both the structure and spectroscopy of atoms and molecules on surfaces, the dynamics of surface processes and the development of new methods for research in surface chemistry.
Go to Profile#531
Don Showalter
#35454
Overall Influence
Donald L. Showalter is a professor emeritus and former chairman of the department of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, he attended Saint Xavier High School. Afterwards, he received his bachelor's degree from Eastern Kentucky University in 1964 and his Ph.D. in 1970 from the University of Kentucky. He spent one year as a research fellow at Oregon State University's Radiation Center before moving to UWSP in 1971. For a brief time he taught at Iowa Western Community College before returning to UWSP, where he would receive many teaching awards, such as the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents Excellence in Teaching Award in 1994.
Go to Profile#532
George Church
#14589
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
George M. Church is the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and a Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Board of Sponsors. He earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology and chemistry from Duke University. He went on to a graduate biochemistry program at Duke, but became so immersed in his lab work that he abandoned his other coursework and ended up getting withdrawn from the program. Undeterred, he went on to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry and molecular biology from Harvard University.
Go to Profile#533
Alexandra Navrotsky
#31343
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (82 years)
Alexandra Navrotsky is a physical chemist in the field of nanogeoscience. She is an elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society . She was a board member of the Earth Sciences and Resources division of the NAS from 1995 until 2000. In 2005, she was awarded the Urey Medal, by the European Association of Geochemistry. In 2006, she was awarded the Harry H. Hess Medal, by the American Geophysical Union. She is currently the director of NEAT ORU , a primary program in nanogeoscience. She is distinguished professor at University of Calif...
Go to Profile#534
Raoul Kopelman
#41324
Overall Influence
1933 - 2023 (90 years)
Raoul Kopelman was a scientist, inventor, and the Richard Smalley Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry, Physics, Applied Physics, Biophysics, Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Biology at the University of Michigan. Amongst other accomplishments, he was well known for developing the Hoshen-Kopelman algorithm. He was also amongst the first scientists pushing to establish the field of nanotechnology.
Go to Profile#535
Naomi Halas
#23303
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Naomi J. Halas is the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and professor of biomedical engineering, chemistry and physics at Rice University. She is also the founding director of Rice University Laboratory for Nanophotonics, and the Smalley-Curl Institute. She invented the first nanoparticle with tunable plasmonic resonances, which are controlled by their shape and structure, and has won numerous awards for her pioneering work in the field of nanophotonics and plasmonics. She was also part of a team that developed the first dark pulse soliton in 1987 while working...
Go to Profile#536
Sourav Pal
#27986
Overall Influence
Sourav Pal is an Indian theoretical chemist and former professor of chemistry at IIT Bombay, and former director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata. He was a director of the CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory in Pune and an adjunct professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune.
Go to Profile#537
Lynn Gladden
#24621
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
#538
Sandra Eaton
#31353
Overall Influence
Sandra Eaton is an American chemist and professor at the University of Denver, known for her work on electron paramagnetic resonance. Education Eaton completed her bachelor's degree in chemistry at Wellesley College in 1968. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa at Wellesley and published her undergraduate research. She earned a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972.
Go to Profile#539
Herbert W. Roesky
#32070
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (90 years)
Herbert Roesky is an internationally renowned German inorganic chemist. Biography Professor Herbert W. Roesky was born in 1935 in Laukischken. He obtained his doctorate from Göttingen and worked at Du Pont in the United States before returning to his alma mater where he retired in 2004. He is primarily known for his pioneering work on fluorides of both transitional and normal metals. He has been a Visiting Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and Kyoto University, and he has also been a Frontier Lecturer at Texas A&M University at College Station, University of Texas at Austin, and University of Iowa at Iowa City.
Go to Profile#540
Pekka Pyykkö
#43679
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Veli Pekka Pyykkö is a Finnish academic. He was professor of Chemistry at the University of Helsinki. From 2009–2012, he was the chairman of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science. He is known for his extension to the periodic table of elements, known as the Pyykkö model.
Go to Profile#541
Howard Brenner
#46790
Overall Influence
1929 - 2014 (85 years)
Howard Brenner was a professor emeritus of chemical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research profoundly influenced the field of fluid dynamics, and his research contribution to fundamental principles of fluid dynamics has been deeply honored. His first textbook, Low Reynolds Number Hydrodynamics , earned him a reputation lasting several decades. His profession though fundamental research is on microfluidics, complex liquids, interfacial transport process, emulsion rheology, and multiphase flows.
Go to Profile#542
Hui–ming Cheng
#54482
Overall Influence
#543
Kyoko Nozaki
#50280
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Kyoko Nozaki is a Japanese chemist and Professor of Chemistry at University of Tokyo in Japan. Education B.S. 1986 Department of Industrial Chemistry, Faculty of Engineering Kyoto University Ph. D. 1991 from Kyoto University Thesis title "Studies on Triethylborane Induced Radical Reactions with Hydrides of Group14 Elements"During the PhD study, 1988-1989 exchange student at UC Berkeley "Studies on the Stereo-control in the Synthesis of Acyclic Compounds"
Go to Profile#544
Eli Ruckenstein
#36497
Overall Influence
1925 - 2020 (95 years)
Eli Ruckenstein was an American distinguished professor at the department of chemical and biological engineering, The State University of New York at Buffalo. His main research areas were catalysis, surface science, colloids and emulsions, and bio-compatible surfaces and materials.
Go to Profile#545
Jerrold Meinwald
#24527
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Jerrold Meinwald was an American chemist known for his work on chemical ecology, a field he co-founded with his colleague and friend Thomas Eisner. He was a Goldwin Smith Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Cornell University. He was author or co-author of well over 400 scientific articles. His interest in chemistry was sparked by fireworks done with his friend Michael Cava when they were still in junior high school. Meinwald was also a music aficionado and studied flute with Marcel Moyse – the world's greatest flutist of his time.
Go to Profile#546
Trevor Walworth Goodwin
#54633
Overall Influence
#547
Shankar Balasubramanian
#17272
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Sir Shankar Balasubramanian is an Indian-born British chemist and Herchel Smith Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, Senior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is recognised for his contributions in the field of nucleic acids. He is scientific founder of Solexa and Cambridge Epigenetix.
Go to Profile#548
Anna J. Harrison
#32751
Overall Influence
1912 - 1998 (86 years)
Anna Jane Harrison was an American organic chemist and a professor of chemistry at Mount Holyoke College for nearly forty years. She was the first female president of the American Chemical Society, and the recipient of twenty honorary degrees. She was nationally known for her teaching and was active nationally and internationally as a supporter of women in science.
Go to Profile#549
Kenneth Ruud
#54404
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Kenneth Ruud is a Norwegian chemist. He is a professor of chemistry at the University of Tromsø. He is author or coauthor of more than 150 scientific articles and director of the Centre for Theoretical and Computational Chemistry in Tromsø. In 2008, he was the recipient of the Dirac medal from the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists. He is one of the main contributors to the DALTON program package.
Go to Profile#550
Mieczysław Mąkosza
#36044
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (91 years)
Mieczysław Józef Mąkosza is a Polish chemist specializing in organic synthesis and investigation of organic mechanisms. Along with Jerzy Winiarski he is credited for the discovery of the aromatic vicarious nucleophilic substitution, VNS. He also contributed to the discovery of phase transfer catalysis reactions. From 1979 to 2005 he was director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
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