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,
#5951
Joke Bouwstra
#192019
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Johanna Aaltje "Joke" Bouwstra is a Dutch researcher and professor of drug administration at Leiden University. Bouwstra has worked at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research, where she has been section leader of Drug Delivery Technology.
Go to Profile#5952
Leonard John Lewis
#38623
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Leonard John Lewis was a British academic. He worked as an educationalist in Nigeria and was a lecturer at the Institute of Education of the University of London. He served as Principal of the University of Zimbabwe for the transition to Zimbabwe's independence, despite his somewhat controversial views on education and politics. He has published a number of books on education policy.
Go to Profile#5953
Kwak Jaesik
#151145
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Kwak Jaesik is a South Korean novelist, science fiction writer and chemist. He is best known for stories of ordinary people with plot twists of science fiction or fantasy elements. Some of his work has been adapted to television drama and comics.
Go to Profile#5954
Alan Turnbull
#179224
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Alan Turnbull is a British corrosion scientist and engineer specialising in the measurement and modelling of environment-assisted cracking and the localised corrosion of metals. He is a Senior NPL Fellow in Electrochemistry at the National Physical Laboratory.
Go to Profile#5955
Mike Pittilo
#64716
Overall Influence
1954 - 2010 (56 years)
Robert Michael Pittilo was a British biologist and Principal and vice-chancellor of the Robert Gordon University, in Aberdeen, Scotland. Pittilo worked in research and education for most of his adult life, holding a number of positions at universities throughout the United Kingdom, notably as Foundation Dean of the Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences at Kingston University and St George's, University of London, and as Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hertfordshire.
Go to Profile#5956
Kirk K. Durston
#192175
Overall Influence
Kirk K. Durston (born 1954) is a Canadian scientist and philosopher, with undergraduate degrees in both physics and mechanical engineering, as well as a graduate degree in philosophy and a doctorate in biophysics from the University of Guelph. He has publications in journals of both science and philosophy. Currently, his primary, scientific focus is on the development of a k-modes computational method for analyzing large arrays of protein sequences to detect the most critical interdependencies within a protein sequence or structure. This is important for developing novel pharmaceuticals and medicines.
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Anders Thor
#93886
Overall Influence
1935 - 2012 (77 years)
Anders Johan Thor was a Swedish scientist and teacher most notable for his leadership in international standardization of quantities and units. He is one of the creators of binary prefixes and the IUPAC Green Book.
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Matthew Francis
#128323
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Matthew Francis is a British poet, editor of W. S. Graham's New Collected Poems, and a professor at the Aberystwyth University. In 2004, Francis was included on the Poetry Book Society's list of the 20 best modern poets as selected by a panel chaired by poet laureate Timmy Mallett.
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Yuen Poovarawan
#35162
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Yuen Poovarawan is a Thai computer scientist. He worked at Kasetsart University in Bangkok, Thailand until his retirement, where his last positions were associate professor in the Department of Computer Engineering and Vice President for Information Technology. Among his noted contributions are the development of natural language processing for the Thai language, and the advancement of information technology services in Thailand, particularly the implementation of networking infrastructure at Kasetsart.
Go to Profile#5960
Chavonda Jacobs-Young
#157812
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Chavonda J. Jacobs-Young is an American government executive who serves as the Under Secretary of Agriculture for Research, Education, and Economics. Jacobs-Young was previously the administrator of the Agriculture Research Service, first appointed in February 2014; she was the first female and person of color to lead the agency. In 1998, Jacobs-Young became the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in paper science.
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Emily M. Dieter
#192234
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
#5962
Yan Zheng
#190198
Overall Influence
Yan Zheng is a marine geochemist known for her research on metals in groundwater and private wells in Bangladesh, China, and the United States. She is an elected fellow of the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union.
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Maziar Ashrafian Bonab
#71418
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Dr Maziar Ashrafian Bonab is an Iranian forensic pathologist and a medical geneticist specialising in forensic and cancer genetics and Forensic Facial Reconstruction. Part of his groundbreaking research uses human DNA markers to identify the ancestral history of humans/human populations in both anthropological and forensic cases. His main area of research is Cancer Genetics. Maziar was born in Tehran, Iran . Before completing his PhD in Cambridge, he first qualified as a Medical Doctor from Tehran University of Medical Sciences and worked as a Medical Practitioner in Iran. After comple...
Go to Profile#5964
William Marshall Jr.
#90476
Overall Influence
1925 - 2013 (88 years)
William Marshall Jr. was an American architect in practice in Norfolk, Virginia from 1955 to 1984 and was president of the American Institute of Architects for 1975. Life and career William Marshall Jr. was born November 24, 1925, in Ashland, Kentucky to William Marshall, a civil engineer, and Lee Marshall. The family moved to Virginia shortly thereafter and in 1939 settled permanently in Norfolk. In 1943 he enrolled in the Virginia Military Institute to study engineering, but left in 1944 to enlist in the United States Army. After the war he enrolled in the University of Virginia to study architecture, and graduated with a BS in architecture in 1949.
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Jonathan Abbatt
#182656
Overall Influence
Jonathan Abbatt is a Canadian chemist currently at the University of Toronto and an Elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. His work mainly focuses on chemical processes in the atmosphere. Research and career
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Marcel Lesieur
#110846
Overall Influence
1945 - 2022 (77 years)
Marcel Lesieur was a French scientist. He was a student of the École polytechnique and held a doctorate in science. A researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, he then became a professor of fluid mechanics at the Institut polytechnique de Grenoble. He led a research team at the Geophysical and Industrial Flow Laboratory.
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Hideki Sakurai
#146936
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
is a Japanese chemist. He discovered the Sakurai reaction in 1976.
Go to Profile#5968
Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim
#177578
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim is a German chemist, science communicator, television presenter and YouTuber. In June 2020 she was elected to the senate of the Max Planck Society. Life and education Nguyen-Kim was born in 1987 in Heppenheim, Hesse; her parents are from South Vietnam, her father is also a chemist. She completed the in 2006 in Hemsbach. She studied at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She worked on her doctorate at RWTH Aachen University, Harvard University, and the University of Potsdam; completing it in 2017. She rejected a job offer from BASF to focus on science communication.
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Guido Bodländer
1855 - 1904 (49 years)
Guido Bodländer was a German chemist. After graduating from the University of Breslau in 1882, he became an assistant to Moritz Traube in his laboratory at Breslau. Afterwards, he served as a pharmacology assistant in Bonn and later worked at the mineralogical institute in Clausthal . From 1897 to 1899 he worked at the institute of physical chemistry in Göttingen, and in 1899 became a professor of chemistry in Braunschweig. He was in line to succeed Walther Nernst as chair of physical chemistry at the University of Göttingen, however Bodländer died at the age of 49 prior to attaining the p...
Go to Profile#5970
Willy Marckwald
1864 - 1942 (78 years)
Willy Marckwald was a German chemist. </ref> Biography Marckwald studied at Berlin's Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität and received there from the First Chemical Institute in 1886 his Promotierung under A. W. Hofmann with a dissertation on organic chemistry entitled Beitrag zur Kenntniss der Thialdehyde und Thialdine.
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Stephen Moulton Babcock
1843 - 1931 (88 years)
Stephen Moulton Babcock was an American agricultural chemist. He is best known for developing the Babcock test, used to determine butterfat content in milk and cheese processing, and for the single-grain experiment that led to the development of nutritional science as a recognized discipline.
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Gerhard Carl Schmidt
1865 - 1949 (84 years)
Gerhard Carl Schmidt was a German chemist. Life Schmidt was born in London to German parents. He studied chemistry and in 1890 received his PhD for work with Georg Wilhelm August Kahlbaum. In 1898, two months before Marie Curie, Schmidt discovered that thorium is radioactive. Schmidt died of a stroke in Münster 16 October 1949.
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Karl Theophil Fries
1875 - 1962 (87 years)
Karl Theophil Fries was a German chemist. Life Karl Theophil Fries was born in Kiedrich, Germany on . After his family moved to Frankfurt he went to school there, but chose to study chemistry at the near University of Marburg in 1894. After one year in Darmstadt University of Technology to improve his skills in electrochemistry he received his Ph.D with Theodor Zincke back at the University of Marburg in 1899. He became a professor in Marburg until the retirement of Theodor Zincke and the start of World War I in 1914. He took part as a soldier in World War I from 1914 till 1918. He became a p...
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Hendrik Willem Bakhuis Roozeboom
1854 - 1907 (53 years)
H. W. Bakhuis Roozeboom was a Dutch chemist who studied phase behaviour in physical chemistry. Education and career Bakhuis Roozeboom was born in Alkmaar in the Netherlands. Financial difficulties did not allow him to directly pursue a university education, and he left school to work in a chemical factory for some time. Due to support from his mentor, J. M. van Bemmelen, he became an assistant at the University of Leiden in 1878, which enabled him to start his academic education there. In 1881 he became a teacher at a girls school, and in 1884 he obtained his PhD with works on the hydrates of acids.
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Alexander Classen
1843 - 1934 (91 years)
Alexander Classen was a German chemist, who is considered one of the founders of electrochemical analysis. From 1861 he studied chemistry at the universities of Giessen and Berlin. In 1870 he became a lecturer of analytical chemistry at the polytechnic school in Aachen, where in 1882 he succeeded Hans Heinrich Landolt as professor of inorganic chemistry. At Aachen, he was appointed director of the Electrochemical Institute,
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Ernest Thiele
1895 - 1993 (98 years)
Ernest W. Thiele was an influential chemical engineering researcher at Standard Oil and professor of chemical engineering at the University of Notre Dame. He is known for his highly impactful work in chemical reaction engineering, complex reacting systems, and separations, including distillation theory.
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Hans-Joachim Born
1909 - 1987 (78 years)
Hans-Joachim Born was a German radiochemist trained and educated at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie. Up to the end of World War II, he worked in Nikolaj Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovskij's Abteilung für Experimentelle Genetik, at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Hirnforschung. He was taken prisoner by the Russians at the close of World War II. After rescue from the Krasnoyarsk PoW camp, he initially worked in Nikolaus Riehl's group at Plant No. 12 in Elektrostal’, Russia, but at the end of 1947 was sent to work in Sungul' at a sharashka known under the cover name Ob’ekt 0211. At the Sun...
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William Nicholson
1753 - 1815 (62 years)
William Nicholson was an English writer, translator, publisher, scientist, inventor, patent agent and civil engineer. He launched the first monthly scientific journal in Britain, Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts, in 1797, and remained its editor until 1814. In 1800, he and Anthony Carlisle were the first to achieve electrolysis, the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen, using a voltaic pile. Nicholson also wrote extensively on natural philosophy and chemistry
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Hans Rupe
1866 - 1951 (85 years)
Johan Hermann Wilhelm Rupe was a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Basel. His main field of interest was terpenes and campher as well as optical activity. Life Rupe was born on October 9, 1866, in Basel to Johannes Rupe and Mathilde Rupe and went to school in Basel. He passed his Maturität in 1885 and then went on to study in Basel under Julius Piccard. He continued his studies at the University of Strasbourg under Rudolf Fittig and then in 1887 in Munich under Adolf von Baeyer. Rupe received his PhD in 1889 at Munich for his dissertation Über die Reduktionsprodukte der Dic...
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Ascanio Sobrero
1812 - 1888 (76 years)
Ascanio Sobrero was an Italian chemist, born in Casale Monferrato. He studied under Théophile-Jules Pelouze at the University of Turin, who had worked with the explosive material guncotton. He studied medicine in Turin and Paris and then chemistry at the University of Gießen with Justus Liebig, and earned his doctorate in 1832. In 1845 he became a professor at the University of Turin
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Percy Lavon Julian
1899 - 1975 (76 years)
Percy Lavon Julian was an American research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants. He was the first to synthesize the natural product physostigmine and was a pioneer in the industrial large-scale chemical synthesis of the human hormones progesterone and testosterone from plant sterols such as stigmasterol and sitosterol. His work laid the foundation for the steroid drug industry's production of cortisone, other corticosteroids, and birth control pillss.
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Johann Georg Anton Geuther
1833 - 1889 (56 years)
Johann Georg Anton Geuther was a German chemist. His work in organic and inorganic chemistry influenced the development of coordination chemistry. Geuther spent most of his academic career at the University of Jena where he discovered ethyl acetoacetate, a key compound for chemical synthesis and for the discovery of tautomerism.
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Charles F. Goodeve
1904 - 1980 (76 years)
Sir Charles Frederick Goodeve was a Canadian chemist and pioneer in operations research. During World War II, he was instrumental in developing the "hedgehog" antisubmarine warfare weapon and the degaussing method for protecting ships from naval mines.
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Lorenz Florenz Friedrich von Crell
1744 - 1816 (72 years)
Lorenz Florenz Friedrich von Crell was a German chemist. In 1778 he started publishing the first periodical journal focusing on chemistry. The journal had a longer title but was known simply as Crell's Annalen.
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Georg Bredig
1868 - 1944 (76 years)
Georg Bredig was a German physical chemist. Bredig was a faculty member at the University of Leipzig and professor of chemistry at Heidelberg ; Technische Hochschule, Zurich ; and Technische Hochschule, Karlsruhe .
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Augustus Matthiessen
1831 - 1870 (39 years)
Augustus Matthiessen, FRS , the son of a merchant, was a British chemist and physicist who obtained his PhD in Germany at the University of Gießen in 1852 with Johann Heinrich Buff. He then worked with Robert Bunsen at the University of Heidelberg from 1853 to 1856. His work in this period included the isolation of calcium and strontium in their pure states. He then returned to London and studied with August Wilhelm von Hofmann from 1857 at the Royal College of Chemistry, and set up his own research laboratory at 1 Torrington Place, Russell Square, London. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1861.
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Fritz Plato
1858 - 1938 (80 years)
Fritz Plato was a German chemist. The unit for specific gravity of liquids, degree Plato, is named after him. Plato made a career as a civil servant in professions related to chemistry and was a civil servant.
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Frederick Augustus Genth
1820 - 1893 (73 years)
Frederick Augustus Ludwig Karl Wilhelm Genth was a German-American chemist, specializing in analytical chemistry and mineralogy. Biography Frederick Augustus Genth was born in Wächtersbach, Hesse-Cassel on May 17, 1820. He studied at the Hanau gymnasium and at the University of Heidelberg, under Justus von Liebig at Giessen, and finally under Christian Gerling and Robert Bunsen at Marburg, where he received the degree of Ph.D. in 1846. For three years he acted as assistant to Bunsen.
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Phoebus Levene
1869 - 1940 (71 years)
Phoebus Aaron Theodore Levene was a Russian-born American biochemist who studied the structure and function of nucleic acids. He characterized the different forms of nucleic acid, DNA from RNA, and found that DNA contained adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine, deoxyribose, and a phosphate group.
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Egon Wiberg
1901 - 1976 (75 years)
Egon Gustaf Martin Wiberg was a German chemist and professor for inorganic chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Life Wiberg studied chemistry at the Technical University of Karlsruhe since 1921 and completed his doctorate in 1927. He was an academic student of Stefan Goldschmidt and wrote his doctoral thesis on "Über den Abbau von Aminosäuren und Dipeptiden durch Hypobromit" . In 1931 he completed his habilitation at the TH Karlsruhe. In 1936 he became an unscheduled professor at the TH Karlsruhe and in 1938 provisional head of the Extraordinariat for Inorganic Chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
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Georg Brandt
1694 - 1768 (74 years)
Georg Brandt was a Swedish chemist and mineralogist who discovered cobalt c. 1735. He was the first person to discover a metal unknown in ancient times. He is also known for exposing fraudulent alchemists operating during his lifetime.
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Josef Goubeau
1901 - 1990 (89 years)
Josef Goubeau was a German chemist. Life and work Goubeau studied chemistry at the University of Munich starting from 1921 and attained a doctorate there 1926 on the atomic weight regulation of the potassiumin the group of Otto Hönigschmid under the supervision of Eduard Zintl. Subsequently, he worked at the University of Freiburg, the mountain academy Clausthal-Zellerfeld, where he made his postdoctoral lecture qualification in 1935 on the Raman effect in analytical chemistry. Starting from 1940 he became a university teacher at the University of Göttingen, and since 1951 professor at the technical University of Stuttgart.
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Andreas Libavius
1555 - 1616 (61 years)
Andreas Libavius or Andrew Libavius was born in Halle, Germany and died in July 1616. Libavius was a renaissance man who spent time as a professor at the University of Jena teaching history and poetry. After which he became a physician at the Gymnasium in Rothenburg and later founded the Gymnasium at Coburg. Libavius was most known for practicing alchemy and writing a book called Alchemia, one of the first chemistry textbooks ever written.
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Vyacheslav Tishchenko
1861 - 1941 (80 years)
Vyacheslav Evgenievich Tishchenko was a Russian chemist, best-known for the development of the Tishchenko reaction. Life and work Tishchenko was born in 1861 in St. Petersburg, where he attended school before undertaking studies at Saint Petersburg State University . He worked in the laboratory of Alexander Butlerov, studying the interaction of paraformaldehyde with hydrohalic acids. Tishchenko graduated in 1884 and worked with Dmitri Mendeleev as a laboratory assistant and lecture assistant.
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Aleksandr Voskresensky
1809 - 1880 (71 years)
Aleksandr Abramovich Voskresensky was a Russian chemist who served as rector of Saint Petersburg Imperial University in 1861–1863 and 1865–1867. Dmitri Mendeleev regarded him as a "grandfather of Russian chemistry". One of his major scientific achievements is the discovery of theobromine, the major alkaloid of cacao beans.
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Heinrich Rose
1795 - 1864 (69 years)
Heinrich Rose was a German mineralogist and analytical chemist. He was the brother of the mineralogist Gustav Rose and a son of Valentin Rose. Rose's early works on phosphorescence were noted in the Quarterly Journal of Science in 1821, and on the strength of these works, he was elected privatdozent at the University of Berlin from 1822, then Professor from 1832.
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William Lewis
1885 - 1956 (71 years)
William Cudmore McCullagh Lewis, FRS was a British chemist and academic. He was Brunner Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Liverpool. Biography He was born in Belfast, the son of linen merchant Edward Lewis and his wife Francis Welsh McCullagh. He was educated at Bangor Grammar School. Co. Down and the Royal University of Ireland, Belfast where he studied physics and chemistry. After gaining an MA degree in 1906, he was a demonstrator for a year and then moved to England to do research in physical chemistry at the University of Liverpool. There he was awarded a scholarship t...
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Carl Theodore Liebermann
1842 - 1914 (72 years)
Carl Theodore Liebermann was a German chemist and student of Adolf von Baeyer. Life Liebermann first studied at the University of Heidelberg where Robert Wilhelm Bunsen was teaching. He then joined the group of Adolf von Baeyer at the University of Berlin where he received his PhD in 1865.
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Max Le Blanc
1865 - 1943 (78 years)
Max Julius Louis Le Blanc was a German physical chemist who worked in the field of electrochemistry, writing an influential textbook in 1895 on the subject which went through several editions. He was a professor at the Technical University of Karlsruhe, later at the Wilhelm Ostwald Institute at Leipzig. He is best known for inventing the hydrogen electrode used for pH measurements. In 1933 he was a signatory to the Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State.
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Ludwig Wilhelmy
1812 - 1864 (52 years)
Ludwig Ferdinand Wilhelmy was a German scientist who is usually credited with publishing the first quantitative study in chemical kinetics. Scientific work Wilhelmy studied at Heidelberg, earning a doctorate in 1846. He worked as a Privatdozent from 1849 to 1854 before moving to Berlin.
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