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,

#5251

Mark H. Schoenfisch

#135464
Overall Influence
Mark H. Schoenfisch is an American analytical chemist. He is the Peter A. Ornstein Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is jointly appointed with the institution's Schools of Medicine and Pharmacy. His research interests include analytical sensors, biomaterials, and the development of macromolecular nitric oxide release scaffolds as novel therapeutics. Intellectual property originating from his research group is the basis of technology being commercialized by Novan, Diabetic Health, and Vast Therapeutics located in the Research Triangle P...
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#5252

Kingsley Cavell

Kingsley Cavell
#171376
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Kingsley Cavell is a retired Australian chemist who was professor of inorganic chemistry and head of the School of Chemistry at Cardiff University. His research interests include the design and synthesis of novel heterocyclic carbenes, and functionalised derivatives as ligands in transition metal complexes.
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#5253

Jane Thomas-Oates

#173201
Overall Influence
Jane E. Thomas-Oates is a British chemist who is an emeritus professor at the University of York. Her research has considered the development of mass spectrometry for biological applications including proteomics, metabolomics, and glycomics.
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#5254

Sihai Yang

#171003
Overall Influence
Sihai Yang is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at The University of Manchester. His research in general is based on Inorganic and Materials Chemistry where he and his group investigate on the design and synthesis of novel Metal Organic Frameworks and zeolites for potential applications in gas adsorption, catalysis and industrial separations.
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#5255

Kelly Falkner

#87274
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Kelly Kenison Falkner is an American chemical oceanographer and educator. She is the Director of the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs . Her work in the position led her NSF colleagues to name the Falkner Glacier, in Victoria Land, Antarctica, after her.
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#5256

Simon Hall

#118300
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Simon Robert Hall FRSC FHEA is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Bristol. Education Born in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Hall grew up in Tiverton, Devon. He attended Tiverton Comprehensive School , where he played rhythm guitar in the band of future 3 Colours Red frontman Pete Vuckovic. On leaving school, he worked for Reuters Ltd. as a stocks and bonds pricing analyst, simultaneously studying for a BSc degree with the Open University. On graduating with a 2:1 degree in Chemistry with Geology in 1997, he joined the laboratories of Professor Stephen Mann at the University of Bristol to read for a PhD in Materials Chemistry.
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#5257

Nicholas Mills

#131625
Overall Influence
Nicholas J. Mills is a Professor of Insect Population Ecology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was educated at the University of East Anglia where he received a BSc in Biological Sciences and a PhD in Population Ecology. He then undertook postdoctoral research at Lincoln College, Oxford. He was awarded a DANR Distinguished Service Award, Outstanding Faculty, in 1997, and a CNR Distinguished Teaching Award in 2002. He is also a Curator at the Essig Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Berkeley.
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#5258

Krista S. Walton

Krista S. Walton
#122858
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (50 years)
Krista Shereé Walton is an American chemical engineer. She is the Robert "Bud" Moeller Faculty Fellow and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and the Associate Vice President for research operations and infrastructure at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
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#5259

Joanna Sułkowska

#117744
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Joanna Ida Sułkowska is a Polish physicist and chemist who specializes in biophysics and protein molecular biophysics and theory. She is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Chemistry and the Center of New Technologies at the University of Warsaw.
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#5260

Pancheti Koteswaram

#60207
Overall Influence
1915 - 1997 (82 years)
Pancheti Koteswaram was an Indian meteorologist, hydrologist, atmospheric physicist and the Director-General of Observatories of Government of India. He was a professor at University of Chicago, University of Hawaii, University of Miami and Tehran University and served as a research associate at National Hurricane Research Laboratory, Miami, and the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, Colorado. A former vice-president of World Meteorological Organization , Geneva, he was an elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and the Andhra Pradesh Academy of Sciences.
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#5261

Tatyana Polenova

#151391
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Tatyana Polenova is a professor in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Delaware. She is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Magnetic Resonance since 2021. Her research interest involves using solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance, combined with computational and other biophysical methods, to understand the structure, dynamics, and function of complex macromolecular assemblies, both biological and inorganic.
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#5262

Robert Guillaumont

#158580
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (92 years)
Robert Guillaumont is a French chemist and honorary professor at the University of Paris-Saclay in Orsay , Member of the French Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Technologies Career Robert Guillaumont is a specialist in radiochemistry and actinide chemistry. He prepared his doctorate at the Institut radium de Paris, Curie Laboratory, University of Paris VI . He continued his research in this Institute and then at the Radiochemistry Laboratory of the Orsay , which he directed for twelve years . He taught chemistry/radiochemistry at the University of Paris XI-Orsay . His expertise covers the chemistry of the nuclear fuel cycle and nuclear energy issues.
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#5263

David C. Muddiman

#168823
Overall Influence
David C. Muddiman is an American chemist and distinguished professor of chemistry at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. His research is focused on developing innovative tools for mass spectrometry based proteomics, metabolomics, and glycomics as well as novel imaging mass spectrometry ionization methods.
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#5264

Jean-Paul Behr

#112426
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Jean-Paul Behr is a French chemist, elected member of the French Academy of Sciences . Research director at the CNRS, he is known for his work in the field of nucleic acid vectorization. Training and career 1969 Engineer ENS Chimie de Strasbourg1973 Doctor of Science1974- Research fellow, then research director at the CNRS1989- Director of the Genetic Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Strasbourg
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#5265

David Fowler

#148240
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
David Fowler, , is a British environmental physicist, recognized as an authority on atmospheric pollution. He specializes in micrometeorology, the land-atmosphere exchange of trace gases and particles, and the effects of pollutants on vegetation.
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#5266

Pablo Etchegoin

#173423
Overall Influence
1964 - 2013 (49 years)
Pablo Gabriel Etchegoin was an Argentine-New Zealand physicist. Academic career Born in 1964 in La Plata, Argentina, he obtained a BSc in electrical engineering from the National University of La Plata and then The Institute of Physics José A Balseiro where he obtained a BSc in Physics in 1989. He completed his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics in Stuttgart with Manuel Cardona in 1994 and spent time at the University of Cambridge before moving to Victoria University of Wellington in 2003, where he built a Raman spectroscopy lab. In 2004, he was awarded the T. K. Sidey Medal, an award set up by the Royal Society of New Zealand for outstanding scientific research.
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#5267

Deborah Zamble

#156293
Overall Influence
1971 - 2020 (49 years)
Deborah Beth Zamble was a Canadian chemist and Canada Research Chair in Biological Chemistry at the University of Toronto. Her research considered how bacteria processed metal nutrients. Early life and education Zamble was born in Kingston, Ontario. She attended the University of Toronto for her undergraduate studies, where she worked in the lab of the Bibudhendra Sarkar. Zamble was a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she worked with Stephen J. Lippard on cisplatin, an anti-cancer drug. Her research considered the role of p53 in the cellular response to the drug.
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#5268

S. Venkata Mohan

#173794
Overall Influence
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#5269

Hilkka I. Kenttämaa

#173190
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Hilkka Inkeri Kenttämaa is a researcher in organic and bioorganic mass spectrometry, and the Frank Brown Endowed Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University. She is a pioneer in distonic radical cation research and laser-induced acoustic desorption.
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#5270

Péter Surján

#169012
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Péter R. Surján is a Hungarian theoretical chemist who is known for his research on application of the theory of second quantization in quantum chemistry. In 2016 a festschrift from Theoretical Chemistry Accounts journal was published in his name which is also published as a book in Highlights in Theoretical Chemistry series by the Springer Nature. He is currently a professor and a former dean of the Faculty of Science of the Eötvös Loránd University.
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#5271

Arthi Jayaraman

#133467
Overall Influence
Arthi Jayaraman is an Indian-American scientist who is the Centennial Term Professor for Excellence in Research and Education at the University of Delaware. Her research considers the development of computational models to better understand polymer nanocomposites and biomaterials. Jayaraman was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2020.
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#5272

Jill Venton

#173294
Overall Influence
B. Jill Venton is a professor of chemistry at University of Virginia, where she serves as the department chair since 2019. Venton's research focuses on developing analytical chemistry methods to enable detection of molecules in the brain.
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#5273

Eloisa Biasotto Mano

#90937
Overall Influence
1924 - 2019 (95 years)
Eloisa Biasotto Mano was a Brazilian chemist and full university professor. She was a specialist in polymers, and enjoyed worldwide recognition for her work. She was a recipient of the National Order of Scientific Merit.
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#5274

Michael Trenary

#129560
Overall Influence
Michael Trenary is an American chemist currently Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago. His interests are chemical and surface reaction mechanisms. He was Elected as Fellow at the American Vacuum Society in 2002, American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009 and American Chemical Society in 2011.
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#5275

Giuseppe Di Giovanni

#134584
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Giuseppe Di Giovanni, Cavaliere is a Professor of Human Physiology and Neuroscience at the University of Malta. Early life Di Giovanni Giuseppe received his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Chieti, Italy and was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, CT, USA.
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#5276

Eva Zurek

#172481
Overall Influence
Eva Dagmara Zurek is a theoretical chemist, solid-state physicist and materials scientist. As a Professor of Chemistry at the University at Buffalo, Zurek studies the electronic structure, properties, and reactivity of a wide variety of materials using quantum mechanical calculations. She is interested in high pressure science, superhard, superconducting, quantum and planetary materials, catalysis, as well as solvated electrons and electrides. She develops algorithms to predict the structures of crystals, interfaces them with machine learning models, and applies them in materials discovery.
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#5277

Miray Bekbölet

#169418
Overall Influence
Miray Bekbölet is a Turkish environmental chemist researching oxidation techniques, photocatalytic and photolytic reactions, adsorption/bio-oxidation processes in aquatic systems, and drinking water quality. She is a professor of environmental chemistry at the Boğaziçi University Institute of Environmental Sciences.
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#5278

Aaron Sadow

#170413
Overall Influence
Aaron David Sadow is an American chemist. Sadow earned a bachelor's of science degree in chemistry from Pennsylvania State University in 1997, and authored the honors thesis New Process for Synthesis of Polymers via Oxidative Carbonylation using Palladium Catalysts under the direction of Ayusman Sen. Sadow completed his doctoral dissertation, Early Transition Metal Complexes in σ-Bond Metathesis: The Activation of Si–H, Si–C, and C–H Bonds, in 2003, advised by T. Don Tilley of the University of California, Berkeley, then pursued postdoctoral research at ETH Zurich. Sadow joined the Iowa State University faculty in August 2005.
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#5279

Andrew Rohl

#171653
Overall Influence
Andrew Rohl is a computational chemist, computer scientist and data scientist. He is an expert in the application of supercomputing and computer simulation technologies in materials chemistry, particularly the computer simulation of surfaces.
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#5280

Ann Marie Carlton

#106591
Overall Influence
Ann Marie Grover Carlton is an American academic working as a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine, with expertise in atmospheric chemistry. She is a reviewing editor for the journal Science, and the winner of multiple awards and fellowships, notably the quadrennial Roger Revelle Fellowship for Global Stewardship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In this fellowship, she advised the Biden administration on climate and the environment in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, beginning in September 2021. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, ...
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#5281

Maria-Elisabeth Michel-Beyerle

#114604
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (90 years)
Maria-Elisabeth Michel-Beyerle is a German chemist. From 1974 to 2000, she was a professor of Physical Chemistry at the Technical University of Munich. Among other awards, she has received the 2000 Bavarian Order of Merit , the highest service order bestowed by the Free State of Bavaria, for her work on photosynthesis.
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#5282

Hui Wu

#128950
Overall Influence
Hui Wu is a Chinese materials chemist and engineer. She is a senior scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Center for Neutron Research. Wu researches the synthesis, structure, solid state chemistry, and properties of complex oxides and hydrides. She received the Department of Commerce Bronze Medal for producing an entirely new route to synthesizing hydrogen-storage materials for fuel cells based on the complex chemistry of amines and boranes.
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#5283

Marcy Towns

#114620
Overall Influence
Marcy Hamby Towns is an American chemist who is Professor of Chemistry Education at Purdue University. Her research considers the development of innovative ways to teach undergraduate chemistry. She was awarded the IUPAC Distinguished Women in Chemistry Award in 2021.
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#5284

Alison Hulme

#153684
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Alison Hulme is a Scottish chemist and Professor of Synthesis and Chemical Biology. Her research considers natural products and synthesis. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry Bader Award in 2021.
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#5285

Manapurathu Verghese George

#78088
Overall Influence
1928 - 2019 (91 years)
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#5286

Daniel Mindiola

#125869
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (51 years)
Dr. Daniel Mindiola , a Venezuelan chemist, is the Brush Family Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in inorganic and organometallic synthesis, catalysis, and mechanistic chemistry. He has over 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications.
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#5287

Wolfgang Kautek

#164192
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Wolfgang Kautek is an Austrian Physical chemist and the head of the Physical chemistry department at the University of Vienna. He is the President of the Erwin Schrödinger Society for Nanosciences and the Chairman of the Research Group "Physical Chemistry" at the Austrian Chemical Society .
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#5288

Camille Petit

#110086
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Camille Petit is a Reader in Materials Engineering at Imperial College London. She designs and characterises functional materials for environmental sustainability. Early life and education Petit completed her MSc in chemistry at the École nationale supérieure de chimie de Montpellier in 2007. She earned her PhD at Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2011, working with Teresa Bandosz. She was awarded the Springer Nature thesis award in 2012, for her dissertation Factors Affecting the Removal of Ammonia from Air on Carbonaceous Materials.
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#5289

Halina Abramczyk

Halina Abramczyk
#139031
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Halina Abramczyk is a Polish physicist and chemist, a specialist in molecular spectroscopy and laser spectroscopy professor employed at the Lodz University of Technology. She is the daughter of Edward Chachuła and Salomea Kryszak . She studied in 1969–1974 at the University of Łódź, where she earned a master's degree in physics and received a doctorate in 1982 at the Lodz University of Technology for work "Molecular Dynamics in two-component solutions containing benzene ". After obtaining her doctorate in chemistry she continued scientific research in the Institute of Applied Radiation Chemistry of Technical University of Lodz, headed by prof.
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#5290

Siv G. E. Andersson

#91958
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Siv Gun Elisabeth Andersson is a Swedish evolutionary biologist, professor of molecular evolution at Uppsala University. She is member of both the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and of Engineering. She is also Head of basic research at the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and has been co-director of the Swedish national center for large-scale research Science for Life Laboratory between 2017 and 2021. Her research focuses on the evolution of bacteria, mainly on intracellular parasites.
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#5291

Katalin Hangos

#137237
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Katalin M. Hangos is a Hungarian chemical engineer whose research concerns control theory and chemical process modeling. She is a research professor in the Systems and Control Laboratory of the Institute for Computer Science and Control of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and a professor of electrical engineering and information systems at the University of Pannonia.
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#5292

Geoff Malcolm

#139232
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Geoffrey Norman Malcolm was a New Zealand physical chemist. Appointed in 1969, he was the first chemistry professor at Massey University. Biography Born in Feilding on 23 April 1931, Malcolm was educated at Feilding Agricultural High School. He then studied at Canterbury University College, graduating Master of Science with first-class honours in 1954. He was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Memorial Scholarship, and completed doctoral studies at the University of Manchester in 1956.
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#5293

R. Tom Baker

#90674
Overall Influence
R. Tom Baker is an inorganic chemist known for the development and application of inorganic transition metal-based catalysis. Education R. Tom Baker was born in Tsawwassen, British Columbia, Canada. He attended University of British Columbia as an undergraduate student and earned his B.Sc in Chemistry in 1975. He then conducted his graduate research work under M. Frederick Hawthorne at University of California, Los Angeles . After he earned his Ph.D in Inorganic Chemistry in 1980, he spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow with Philip S. Skell at Pennsylvania State University.
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#5294

Richard S. H. Mah

#155998
Overall Influence
1934 - 2004 (70 years)
Richard S. H. Mah was a Chinese-born chemical engineer and professor at Northwestern University in the United States. Early life and education Mah was born in Shanghai on 16 December 1934, to parents S. Fabian Soh Pai and E. Shang . Mah's parents sent him to England in 1950. Mah completed a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from the University of Birmingham, and received his Ph.D. in 1961 from the Imperial College London under the guidance of Roger W. H. Sargent on process systems engineering. Mah became the first Ph.D. graduate from the Sargent research group. Mah moved to the University of Minnesota in 1961 for his postdoctoral work.
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#5295

Karoliina Honkala

#133820
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (52 years)
Karoliina Honkala is a Finnish chemist who is a professor at the University of Jyväskylä. Her research considers heterogeneous and electro-catalysis. She was awarded the 2015 Berzelius Award of the Nordic Catalysis Society and elected to the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in 2022.
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#5296

Thomas Mason

#62846
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Thomas Mason is a Canadian-American condensed-matter physicist who serves as the director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Prior to this appointment, he had been an executive at Battelle Memorial Institute from 2017 to 2018, and the director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 2007 to 2017. Mason moved to Oak Ridge in 1998 at the start of construction of the Spallation Neutron Source which he led from 2001 until project completion in 2006.
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#5297

Julia Goodfellow

Julia Goodfellow
#44223
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Dame Julia Mary Goodfellow is a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Kent, and Chair of the British Science Association. She was the president of Universities UK from 1 August 2015 until July 2017.
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#5298

Douglas Patrick Harrison

#148778
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Douglas Patrick Harrison is a professor emeritus of chemical engineering from Louisiana State University's Gordon A. and Mary Cain Department of Chemical Engineering, where he taught undergraduate and graduate classes and served as a dissertations advisor to Ph.D. and M.S. students.
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#5299

Efrat Lifshitz

#120029
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Efrat Lifshitz is an Israeli chemist at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry and the Solid-State Institute, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology . Lifshitz's research is known for pioneering advances in developing and studying low-dimensional semiconductors by exploring the relationship between their optical properties and magnetism.
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#5300

Emily Cranston

#116021
Overall Influence
Emily D. Cranston is a Canadian chemist who is a professor at the University of British Columbia and President’s Excellence Chair in Forest Bioproducts. She investigates nanocellulose and hybrid bio-based materials. Cranston is an NSERC E.W.R. Steacie fellow and was awarded the Kavli Emerging Leader in Chemistry lectureship in 2018 and the Tappi NanoDivision Technical Award in 2021.
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