Search People Result | Academic Influence

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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Chemistry,

#5701

Guangzhao Mao

#111498

Overall Influence

Guangzhao Mao is an American chemical engineer and an academic. She is a professor and head of the school of chemical engineering at the University of New South Wales. She holds positions as chief investigator at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Carbon Science and Innovation, the ARC Research Hub for Resilient Intelligent Infrastructure Systems, and the ARC Research Hub for Connected Sensors for Health.

#5702

Janie Sheridan

#161884

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Jane 'Janie' Lois Sheridan is a New Zealand academic and as of 2018 is a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career After a 1995 PhD titled 'HIV/AIDS and drug misuse : perspectives of pharmacy undergraduates and pharmacists' at the University of London, Sheridan moved to the University of Auckland, rising to full professor.

#5703

Ralph Landau

#176575

Overall Influence

1916 - 2004 (88 years)

Ralph Landau was a chemical engineer and entrepreneur active in the chemical and petrochemical industries. He is considered one of the top fifty foundational chemical engineers of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the 75 most distinguished contributors to chemical enterprise. He has published extensively on chemical engineering and holds a significant number of patents.

#5704

Dora Akunyili

#21252

Overall Influence

1954 - 2014 (60 years)

Dora Nkem Akunyili was the Director-General of National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control of Nigeria from 2001 to 2008. Early life and education Dora Edemobi was born in Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria to Chief Paul Young Edemobi who hailed from Nanka, Anambra State. She received her First School Leaving Certificate from St. Patrick's Primary School, Isuofia, Anambra State, in 1966 and had her West African School Certificate Examination at Queen of the Rosary Secondary School Nsukka, Enugu State in 1973, where she graduated with Grade I Distinction consequently, she won th...

#5705

Sibylle Kemmler-Sack

#89112

Overall Influence

1934 - 1999 (65 years)

Sibylle Kemmler-Sack was a German chemist. She was a professor for Chemistry at the University of Tübingen. Life Kemmler-Sack did her doctorate on "Untersuchungen an ternären Uran oxiden" in 1962. She habilitated in 1968 and the title of her habilitation thesis was "Über spektroskopische und magnetische Untersuchungen an Oxidfluoriden es fünfwertien Urans" . She became a university lecturer in 1968, an extraordinary professor in 1973, a university professor in 1978.

#5706

Vincent J. Catalano

#185490

Overall Influence

#5707

Willem H. Van Riemsdijk

#185512

Overall Influence

#5708

Debashis Ghosh

#185513

Overall Influence

#5709

John Knox

#137546

Overall Influence

1927 - 2018 (91 years)

John Henderson Knox FRS was a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh and is considered a distinguished contributor to the fields of reaction kinetics and chromatography. Contributions to chemistry John Knox was an early leader in the field of gas chromatography. As a PhD student in at Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1953 Knox, together with his fellow student Howard Purnell, constructed a self-designed gas chromatographer in their lab and used this to pioneer early research in the field. In later experiments Knox was the first to use gas chromatography to measure rate of reaction constants for gaseous chemical reactions.

#5710

Harald Specht

#178543

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Harald Specht is a German scientist and author. He published the first German monograph on issues of cold shortening and electrical stimulation, but he became mainly known for his books about Jesus of Nazareth and early Christianity in which he doubts the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. He also argues that the development of Christianity is a result of religious and political disputes on the basis of ancient pagan sources.

#5711

Aizik Volpert

#136695

Overall Influence

1923 - 2006 (83 years)

Aizik Isaakovich Vol'pert was a Soviet and Israeli mathematician and chemical engineer working in partial differential equations, functions of bounded variation and chemical kinetics. Life and academic career Vol'pert graduated from Lviv University in 1951, earning the candidate of science degree and the docent title respectively in 1954 and 1956 from the same university: from 1951 on he worked at the Lviv Industrial Forestry Institute. In 1961 he became senior research fellow while 1962 he earned the "doktor nauk" degree from Moscow State University. In the 1970s–1980s A. I. Volpert became one of the leaders of the Russian Mathematical Chemistry scientific community.

#5712

Peter Blake

#185639

Overall Influence

#5713

Kim Baines

#185641

Overall Influence

Kim Baines PhD FRSC FRSC is a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Western Ontario. In 2022 she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She was the inaugural chair of the DEI working group of the Chemical Institute of Canada. The Lipson-Baines Awards in Chemistry is named in part for her.

#5714

Weiping Liu

#185642

Overall Influence

#5715

Theresa Koehler

#179917

Overall Influence

Theresa Marie Koehler is an American microbiologist who is the Herbert L. and Margaret W. DuPont Distinguished Professor in Biomedical Sciences and Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at McGovern Medical School. She is known for her extensive research on anthrax and was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2021.

#5716

Johnson Nyarko Boampong

#61447

Overall Influence

Johnson Nyarko Boampong is a Ghanaian pharmacist, biomedical Scientist, professor and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast. Education Prof. Boampong has a B.Pharm. degree from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and, B.Sc. degree and Dip. Ed from the University of Cape Coast. He also obtained his M.Phil. degree in zoology from the University of Ghana . He is a product of Tokyo Women's Medical University, Japan, where he obtained his PhD in Tropical Medicine as a Japan International Corporation Agency scholar. He did his post-doctorate research at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research , Chandigarh, India as CV Raman Scholar .

#5717

Peter Gregory

#185710

Overall Influence

#5718

Hiroshi Shimizu

#185761

Overall Influence

#5719

Candice Bridge

#121544

Overall Influence

Candice Mae Bridge is an American chemist and Associate Professor of Chemistry and Forensic Science at the University of Central Florida. Her research considers the development of mass spectroscopy for forensic analysis, including the characterization of lubricant from rape victims and residue from gunshots, as well as the identification of drugs in urine samples.

#5720

Chris Pollock

#129259

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Christopher John Pollock CBE DSc FSB FRAgS FLSW is a British research scientist. Chris Pollock was born in 1947 in Handsworth, Birmingham. He studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Pollock graduated from Birmingham University with a PhD degree in microbiology in 1971, and with a DSc degree in 1993 for a thesis on ‘Temperature, growth and carbohydrate metabolism in plants’.

#5721

Bernard Bigot

#20921

Overall Influence

1950 - 2022 (72 years)

Bernard Bigot was an academic, civil servant. He served as the Director-General of the ITER organization between 2015 and 2022. He was the president of the École normale supérieure de Lyon, and director of the French Commission for Atomic Energy.

#5722

Nico van der Vegt

#185157

Overall Influence

Nico van der Vegt is a Dutch chemist and a professor for computational physical chemistry at Technische Universität Darmstadt. Academic career Van der Vegt studied chemical engineering and received his PhD from the University of Twente in 1998 on a study of methods for calculating thermodynamic and transport properties of small molecules in polymer membranes based on computer simulations. From 1998 to 2002, he was a lecturer at the University of Twente. Following this, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zürich with Wilfred F. van Gunsteren from 2002 to 2003. He then led a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, Germany.

#5723

Francesca Iacopi

#174073

Overall Influence

Francesca Iacopi is an engineer, researcher and an academic. She specializes in materials and nanoelectronics engineering and is a professor at the University of Technology Sydney. She is a chief investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Transformative Meta-Optical Systems, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia, and a senior member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

#5724

Emily Leproust

#182451

Overall Influence

Emily Leproust is an American scientist and entrepreneur. She is the CEO and co-founder of Twist Bioscience, a public company working on DNA synthesis. The company harnesses synthetic biology, providing tools to manufacture insulin from yeast, to tackle malaria, produce spider silk at scale or store information on DNA. She was awarded the BIO Rosalind Franklin Award in 2020.

#5725

Richard Verrall

#147311

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Professor Richard Verrall is Vice-President of City, University of London. He took up this post in 2011 and was previously Head of the Department of Actuarial Science, then Associate Dean of Cass Business School, City, University of London. Professor Verrall joined City, University of London, as a lecturer in 1987.

#5726

Ishbel Campbell

#96712

Overall Influence

1906 - 1997 (91 years)

Isobel 'Ishbel' Grace MacNaughton Campbell was a British chemist researcher and lecturer who held one of the first Commonwealth Fellowships awarded to a woman. Biography Campbell was born at The Manse, Kirkcaldy, Fife in 1905 the ninth, and last, child of Reverend John Campbell and Elizabeth Adelina Renwick. In common with her seven elder sisters, she studied at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. While at St Andrews, Campbell served as the President of the Women's Student's Union. She graduated with a BSc in 1927 and obtained her PhD in 1931.

#5727

Takashi Mukaibo

#93743

Overall Influence

1917 - 2002 (85 years)

was a Japanese chemist and nuclear engineer. Appointed as the first science attaché at the Embassy of Japan in Washington D.C. in 1954, Mukaibo played a significant role in coordinating the atomic energy agreement with the United States.

#5728

Richard Dickinson Chambers

#185950

Overall Influence

1935 - 2019 (84 years)

Richard Dickinson Chambers FRS was a British organofluorine chemist. Dick studied chemistry at Durham University and in 1960 joined the chemistry department's faculty. He retired in 2000 but remained in the department as Emeritus Professor for several years.

#5729

Michael E. Phelps

#185970

Overall Influence

#5730

Scott Sieburth

#184179

Overall Influence

Scott McNeill Sieburth is an American chemist. Sieburth's parents were the librarian Janice Fae Boston and the biologist John McNeill Sieburth. Sieburth completed a Bachelor of Science degree at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1977, and obtained a doctorate from Harvard University in 1983. He is a professor at Temple University. He was elected a fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2010.

#5731

Vida Stout

#110530

Overall Influence

1930 - 2012 (82 years)

Vida Mary Stout was a New Zealand limnographer and academic administrator. She was the first woman to be Dean of Science at a New Zealand university. Biography Stout was the daughter of Thomas Duncan MacGregor Stout and granddaughter of Robert Stout. Born and raised in Wellington, Stout was educated at Woodford House in Hawke's Bay, where she was Dux.

#5732

Marie-Élisa Nordmann-Cohen

#179141

Overall Influence

1910 - 1993 (83 years)

Marie-Élisa Nordmann-Cohen was a French chemist, antifascist, and communist member of the French Resistance during World War II. Biography Marie-Élisa Nordmann was a student of physicist Paul Langevin, who supervised her doctoral studies in chemistry before the war.

#5733

Norio Hayashi

#186064

Overall Influence

#5734

Jonathan Kydd

#129082

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Professor Jonathan Kydd is a leading expert in Agricultural Development Economics, has examined the demand and supply constraints affecting poor farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, and has argued for dramatic policy reform and increased attention to governance issues in the region. Professor Kydd garnered notoriety for his analysis of the 2001/2002 food crisis in Malawi, Malawi's redeployment of labour in the 1970s, and his analysis of Zambia's transition to coffee crops.

#5735

Chen Chien-jen

#89078

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Chen Chien-jen is a Taiwanese epidemiologist and politician who has served as the premier of the Republic of China since 2023. He joined the Chen Shui-bian presidential administration in 2003 as leader of the Department of Health, serving through 2005. He later headed the National Science Council between 2006 and 2008. Chen then served as a vice president of Academia Sinica from 2011 to 2015. Later that year, Chen joined Tsai Ing-wen on the Democratic Progressive Party presidential ticket and served as Vice President of Taiwan from 2016 to 2020. Chen joined the DPP in 2022 and was appointed...

#5736

Rachel Thomson

#167452

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Rachel Clare Thomson is a professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and Pro Vice Chancellor of Teaching at Loughborough University. She is known for her expertise in measuring and predicting the behaviour of materials for high temperature power generation, as well as the development of higher education and research programmes.

#5737

Hao Yan

#173987

Overall Influence

Hao Yan is a Chinese-American chemist, a molecular designer, programmer and engineer. Hao Yan graduated from Shandong University, and completed doctoral study in the subject of DNA nanotechnology at New York University, under the direction of Nadrian Seeman in 2001. Yan began his career as an assistant research professor at Duke University, before assuming an assistant professorship at Arizona State University in 2004. He was directly promoted to full professor with early tenure in 2008. In 2012, Yan was named ASU's first Milton D. Glick Distinguished Chair of Chemistry and Biochemistry. The next year, Yan became director of ASU's Center for Molecular Design and Biomimetics.

#5738

Christian Thomsen

#186118

Overall Influence

#5739

Anushka Rajapaksha

#185869

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Anushka Upamali Rajapaksha is a Sri Lankan scientist, university lecturer and research scholar. She is well known for her contributions in the field of chemistry. Career She obtained a second upper class grade in Bachelor of Sciences in Chemistry Special from the University of Peradeniya in 2008. She obtained a Master of Philosophy from the University of Peradeniya in 2012. She also received Doctor of Philosophy from the Kangwon National University, South Korea in 2015.

#5740

Karen H. Johannesson

#181343

Overall Influence

Karen H. Johannesson is an American geochemist and professor in the School for the Environment at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the Intercampus Marine Sciences Graduate Program of the University of Massachusetts System. She teaches geochemistry and has expertise in environmental geochemistry, biogeochemistry, trace element speciation, geochemical modeling, chemical hydrogeology, reaction path and reactive transport modeling.

#5741

Rubye Prigmore Torrey

#177106

Overall Influence

1926 - 2017 (91 years)

Rubye Mayette Prigmore Torrey was a notable African American female chemist and educator. She earned her bachelor's and master's degree at Tennessee State University and her PhD from Syracuse University. Her main research interests included food chemistry, the electroanalysis of drinking water and human hair, and research ethics. She is known for developing a mechanism to decompose hydrogen sulfide, which earned her a place in Sigma Xi.

#5742

Ameenah Gurib-Fakim

#124877

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Dr. Bibi Ameenah Firdaus Gurib-Fakim GCSK is a Mauritian politician and biodiversity scientist who served as the sixth president of Mauritius from 2015 to 2018. In December 2014, she was selected to be the presidential candidate of the Alliance Lepep. After Kailash Purryag resigned on 29 May 2015, both Prime Minister Sir Anerood Jugnauth and Leader of the Opposition Paul Berenger positively welcomed her nomination, which was unanimously approved in a vote in the National Assembly.

#5743

Bo Qiu

#186193

Overall Influence

#5744

Julia Weinstein

#186103

Overall Influence

Julia A. Weinstein is a British Russian chemist who is a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Sheffield. Her research considers light matter interactions, including the dynamics of photo-excited electron transfer in condensed matter. She was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry Chemical Dynamics Award in 2017.

#5745

Sunil Kumar Singh

#180948

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Sunil Kumar Singh is a leading Indian geochemist, a professor at the Physical Research Laboratory and currently the director of the National Institute of Oceanography, India. He is known for his studies on low temperature elemental and isotope geochemistry and his researches are reported to have assisted in widening the understanding of the evolution of the Himalayas. His studies have been documented in several peer-reviewed articles; Google Scholar, an online repository of scientific articles, has listed 99 of them respectively.

#5746

Hilda Cid

#126148

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (92 years)

Hilda Cid Araneda is a Chilean scientist who excelled in the field of crystallography. She was the first Chilean female to complete a PhD in Exact Sciences. She made remarkable contributions both as a professor of mathematics and physics and as influential researcher on structural biology, specially in protein crystallography.

#5747

Rachael Dunlop

#90512

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (55 years)

Rachael Anne Dunlop , popularly known as Dr. Rachie, is an Australian medical researcher and skeptic. She is a postdoctoral fellow in cell biology at the University of Technology, Sydney. A prominent member of the Australian skeptic movement, she frequently blogs about and speaks out against the anti-vaccine movement in Australia and has a regular segment on The Skeptic Zone podcast. Dunlop won a Shorty Award in 2010 for her Twitter posts about health-related topics.

#5748

Jarle Aarbakke

#29778

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

Jarle Aarbakke was the rector at the University of Tromsø from 2002 until 2013, and the mayor of Tromsø municipality from October 2015 to July 2016 Before being elected rector in 2001, Aarbakke served as a professor of pharmacy at the Department of Medical Microbiology. From 2007 to 2009 he was chair of the Norwegian Association of Higher Education Institutions .

#5749

Zhang Benren

#142690

Overall Influence

1929 - 2016 (87 years)

Zhang Benren was a Chinese geochemist. Born on 28 May 1929 in Huaiyuan County, Anhui, Zhang studied geology at Nanjing University, graduating in 1952. He then earned a degree from the Beijing Institute of Geology in 1956 and later became a faculty member. Zhang was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1999 and received the State Natural Science Award.

#5750

Olga L. Mayol-Bracero

#185457

Overall Influence

Olga L. Mayol-Bracero is a Puerto Rican atmospheric chemist. Mayol-Bracero is an associate professor at the UPRRP College of Natural Sciences. Her primary research focus is atmospheric aerosols. She researches the impact of atmospheric aerosols on the climate, ecosystem, degradation of structures, and human health.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions