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 (69 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 (75 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 (43 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 (76 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 (69 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 (75 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 (58 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 (33 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.
Go to Profile#5963
Maziar Ashrafian Bonab
#71418
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 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 (94 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 (38 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.
Go to Profile#5969
Primo Levi
1918 - 1987 (69 years)
Primo Michele Levi was an Italian chemist, partisan, writer, and Jewish Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works include If This Is a Man , his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland; and The Periodic Table , a collection of mostly autobiographical short stories each named after a chemical element as it played a role in each story, which the Royal Institution named the best science book ever written.
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Abu Bakr al-Razi
866 - 925 (59 years)
Abū Bakr al-Rāzī , , often known as Razi or by his Latin name Rhazes, also rendered Rhasis, was a physician, philosopher and alchemist who lived during the Islamic Golden Age. He is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of medicine, and also wrote on logic, astronomy and grammar. He is also known for his criticism of religion, especially with regard to the concepts of prophethood and revelation. However, the religio-philosophical aspects of his thought, which also included a belief in five "eternal principles", are only recorded by authors who were often hostile t...
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Charles F. Chandler
1836 - 1925 (89 years)
Charles Frederick Chandler was an American chemist, best known for his regulatory work in public health, sanitation, and consumer safety in New York City, as well as his work in chemical education—first at Union College and then, for the majority of his career, at Columbia University, where he taught in the Chemical Department, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and served as the first Dean of Columbia University's School of Mines.
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Otto Linné Erdmann
1804 - 1869 (65 years)
Otto Linné Erdmann was a German chemist. He was the son of Karl Gottfried Erdmann, the physician who introduced vaccination into Saxony. He was born in Dresden on 11 April 1804. In 1820 he began to attend the medico-chirurgical academy of his native place, and in 1822 he entered the University of Leipzig, where in 1827 he became an associate professor, and in 1830 a full professor of chemistry. This office he held until his death, which happened at Leipzig on 9 October 1869.
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Charles Loring Jackson
1845 - 1935 (90 years)
Charles Loring Jackson was the first significant organic chemist in the United States. He brought organic chemistry to the United States from Germany and educated a generation of American organic chemists.
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Theodor Förster
1910 - 1974 (64 years)
Theodor Förster was a German physical chemist known for theoretical work on light-matter interaction in molecular systems such as fluorescence and resonant energy transfer. Education and career Förster studied at the University of Frankfurt and received his Ph.D. at the age of only 23 under Erwin Madelung in 1933. In the same year he joined the Nazi Party and the SA. He then joined Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer as a research assistant at the Leipzig University, where he worked closely with Peter Debye, Werner Heisenberg, and Hans Kautzky. Förster obtained his habilitation in 1940 and became a lecturer at the Leipzig University.
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Cornelis Adriaan Lobry van Troostenburg de Bruyn
1857 - 1904 (47 years)
Cornelis Adriaan Lobry van Troostenburg de Bruyn was a chemist from the Netherlands. Biography De Bruyn was born on in Leeuwarden, where his father, Nicholaas Lobry van Troostenburg de Bruyn, was a physician in practice. The boy was in due time sent to the high school of the town , and subsequently for a year to a gymnasium. In 1875, he entered the University of Leiden, and in 1883, while acting as assistant to Professor Franchimont, he produced his dissertation and obtained his doctorate. The subject of this thesis was the interaction of the three dinitrobenzenes with potassium cyanide in al...
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Ernest Fourneau
1872 - 1949 (77 years)
Ernest Fourneau was a French pharmacist who graduated in 1898 for the Paris university specialist in medicinal chemistry and pharmacology. He played a major role in the discovery of synthetic local anesthetics such as amylocaine, as well as in the synthesis of suramin. He authored more than two hundred scholarly works, and has been described as having "helped to establish the fundamental laws of chemotherapy that have saved so many human lives".
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Raluca Ripan
1894 - 1972 (78 years)
Raluca Ripan was a Romanian chemist, and a titular member of the Romanian Academy. She wrote many treatises, especially in the field of analytical chemistry. Biography She was born in Iași, in the Moldavia region of Romania; her parents were Constantin and Smaranda Ripan, both originally from Huși. She attended the local girl's high school, after which she enrolled in the Faculty of Science of the University of Iași, graduating in 1919. For her graduate studies she went to the University of Cluj in Transylvania, obtaining her PhD in 1922 under the direction of Gheorghe Spacu, with thesis "Double amines corresponding to double sulphates in the magnesium series".
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Jan Czochralski
1885 - 1953 (68 years)
Jan Czochralski was a Polish chemist who invented the Czochralski method, which is used for growing single crystals and in the production of semiconductor wafers. It is still used in over 90 percent of all electronics in the world that use semiconductors. He is the most cited Polish scholar.
Go to Profile#5979
Johann Wilhelm Ritter
1776 - 1810 (34 years)
Johann Wilhelm Ritter was a German chemist, physicist and philosopher. He was born in Samitz near Haynau in Silesia , and died in Munich. Life and work Johann Wilhelm Ritter's first involvement with science began when he was 14 years old. He became an apprentice to an apothecary in Liegnitz , and acquired a deep interest in chemistry. He began medicine studies at the University of Jena in 1796. A self-taught scientist, he made many experimental researches on chemistry, electricity and other fields.
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Johann Friedrich Gmelin
1748 - 1804 (56 years)
Johann Friedrich Gmelin was a German naturalist, chemist, botanist, entomologist, herpetologist, and malacologist. Education Johann Friedrich Gmelin was born as the eldest son of Philipp Friedrich Gmelin in 1748 in Tübingen. He studied medicine under his father at University of Tübingen and graduated with a Master's degree in 1768, with a thesis entitled: , defended under the presidency of Ferdinand Christoph Oetinger, whom he thanks with the words .
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Roland Scholl
1865 - 1945 (80 years)
Roland Heinrich Scholl was a Swiss chemist who taught at various European universities. Among his most notable achievements are the synthesis of coronene, the co-development of the Bally-Scholl synthesis, and various discoveries about polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
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Lawrence O. Brockway
1907 - 1979 (72 years)
Lawrence Olin Brockway was a physical chemist who spent most of his career at the University of Michigan, where he developed early methods for electron diffraction. Early life and education Brockway was born on September 23, 1907, in Topeka, Kansas. He attended the University of Nebraska and received his B.S. in 1929 and his M.S. a year later. He then moved to the California Institute of Technology, where he was one of the first graduate students of Linus Pauling. He and Pauling were interested in the physics of interatomic interactions and focused their efforts on the structure of chalcopyri...
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Wilhelm Biltz
1877 - 1943 (66 years)
Wilhelm Biltz was a German chemist and scientific editor. In addition to his scholarly work, Biltz is noted for commanding the principal German tank involved in the first ever tank-on-tank battle in history at the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux.
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John Ulric Nef
1862 - 1915 (53 years)
John Ulric Nef was a Swiss-born American chemist and the discoverer of the Nef reaction and Nef synthesis. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
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Heinrich Limpricht
1827 - 1909 (82 years)
Heinrich Limpricht was a German chemist. Limpricht was a pupil of Friedrich Wöhler; he worked on the chemistry of furans and pyrroles, discovering furan in 1870. In 1852 he became lecturer and in 1855 extraordinary professor at the University of Göttingen. In 1860, he became ordinary professor at the Institute for Organic Chemistry at the University of Greifswald. His oldest daughter Marie married in 1875 to Protestant theologian Julius Wellhausen.
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Fritz Feigl
1891 - 1971 (80 years)
Fritz Feigl was a Jewish Austrian-born chemist. He taught at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Biography Feigl was born and studied in Vienna, but owing to his military service in the First World War he had to interrupt his studies. He received his Ph.D. for work with Wilhelm Schlenk in 1920. After his habilitation in 1928 he became a professor at the University of Vienna. He was forced to retire after the Nazi occupation of Austria in 1938.
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Samuel William Johnson
1830 - 1909 (79 years)
Samuel William Johnson was an American agricultural chemist. He promoted the movement to bring the sciences to the aid of American farmers through agricultural experiment stations and education in agricultural science.
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Donald L. Katz
1907 - 1989 (82 years)
Donald Laverne Katz was an American chemist and chemical engineer. The 1983 National Medal of Science was presented to Katz by President Ronald Reagan "for solving many practical engineering problems by delving into a wide group of sciences and making their synergistic effects evident." Katz was also noted for developing a hazard rating system for dangerous bulk cargoes. The New York Times called Katz an "oil expert". The National Academy of Engineering called him a "world leader" in reservoir engineering.
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Heinrich Hörlein
1882 - 1954 (72 years)
Philipp Heinrich Hörlein , was a German entrepreneur, scientist, lecturer, and Nazi Wehrwirtschaftsführer. He was tried for war crimes for his involvement in the Holocaust and his knowledge of medical experimentation on concentration camp prisoners, but he was ultimately acquitted and released.
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Alfred Wohl
1863 - 1939 (76 years)
Alfred Wohl was a German chemist. Several chemical reactions are named after him, including the Wohl degradation, Wohl-Aue reaction and the Wohl-Ziegler reaction. Life Wohl studied chemistry at the University of Heidelberg from 1882 until 1886. He received his Ph.D 1886 for work on Hexamethylenetetramine with August Wilhelm von Hofmann. He became an assistant of Hermann Emil Fischer at the University of Berlin from 1886 until 1891, where he also received his habilitation. He became professor at the University of Berlin in 1901, but he left for the Technical University of Danzig in 1904. He retired because of antisemitic pressure in 1933, but worked in his lab until 1937.
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Friedrich Hoffmann
1660 - 1742 (82 years)
Friedrich Hoffmann or Hofmann was a German physician and chemist. He is also sometimes known in English as Frederick Hoffmann. Life His family had been connected with medicine for 200 years before him. Born in Halle, he attended the local gymnasium where he acquired that taste for and skill in mathematics to which he attributed much of his later success. Beginning at age 18, he studied medicine at the University of Jena. From there, in 1680, he went to Erfurt, to attend Kasper Cramer's lectures on chemistry. Next year, returning to Jena, he received his doctor's diploma, and, after publishing a thesis, was permitted to teach.
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Sergey Nametkin
1876 - 1950 (74 years)
Sergey Semyonovich Nametkin was a Soviet and Russian organic chemist, a prominent researcher in terpene chemistry, the cracking of petrochemicals, and rearrangement of camphenes. Biography Nametkin was born in Kazan and orphaned at an early age. He was educated at a gymnasium in Moscow, after which he earned a living as a private tutor. He studied chemistry and became a lecturer in organic chemistry at the Moscow University but quit in 1911 to oppose the policies of L.A. Kasso. He then studied under N.D. Zelinsky, and received a doctorate in 1917. In 1927 he went to the Moscow Mining Academy ...
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Paul Schlack
1897 - 1987 (90 years)
Paul Schlack was a German chemist. He completed his studies at the Technical University of Stuttgart in 1921 and worked as a research chemist in Copenhagen for a year, before returning to Stuttgart. He received his PhD in 1924. Around this time he developed a keen interest in amide chemistry. He synthesized Nylon 6, widely known by its tradename Perlon, on 29 January 1938 whilst working for IG Farben.
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Ivan Ostromislensky
1880 - 1939 (59 years)
Ivan Ivanovich Ostromislensky was a Russian organic chemist. He is credited as the pioneer in studying polymerization of synthetic rubber as well as inventor of various industrial technologies for production of synthetic rubber, polymers and pharmaceuticals.
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Hermann Wilhelm Vogel
1834 - 1898 (64 years)
Hermann Wilhelm Vogel was a German photochemist and photographer who discovered dye sensitization, which is of great importance to photography. Academic career After finishing school in Frankfurt , he studied at the Royal Industrial Institute of Berlin, earning his Ph.D. with Karl Friedrich August Rammelsberg in 1863. Vogel's thesis, which was published in Poggendorffs Annalen , had the title: Über das Verhalten des Chlorsilbers, Bromsilbers und Iodsilbers im Licht und die Theorie der Photographie . This marked the beginning of his research into the photographic process.
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Johann Friedrich August Göttling
1755 - 1809 (54 years)
Johann Friedrich August Göttling was a notable German chemist. Gottling developed and sold chemical assay kits and studied processes for extracting sugar from beets to supplement his meagre university salary. He studied the chemistry of sulphur, arsenic, phosphorus, and mercury. He wrote texts on analytical chemistry and studied oxidation of organic compounds by nitric acid. He was one of the first scientists in Germany to take a stand against the phlogiston hypothesis and be in favor of the new chemistry of Lavoisier.
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Aleksei Chichibabin
1871 - 1945 (74 years)
Alekséy Yevgényevich Chichibábin was a Soviet/Russian organic chemist, born , Kuzemin village, current Sumy Oblast, Ukraine, died in Paris, France, 15 August 1945. His name is also written Alexei Yevgenievich Chichibabin and Alexei Euguenievich Tchitchibabine.
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Adolf Pinner
1842 - 1909 (67 years)
Adolf Pinner was a German chemist. Early life and education He was educated at the Jewish Theological Seminary at Breslau and at the University of Berlin . In 1871, he became privat-docent at the University of Berlin. In 1873, he became assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Berlin, and in 1874 professor of chemistry at the veterinary college of that city. In 1884, he was appointed a member of the German patent office, and in the following year, of the technical division of the Prussian Department of Commerce. He has received the title "Geheimer Regierungsrat".
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Adolf Miethe
1862 - 1927 (65 years)
Adolf Miethe was a German scientist, lens designer, photochemist, photographer, author and educator. He co-invented the first practical photographic flash and made important contributions to the progress of practical color photography.
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Rudolf Brill
1899 - 1989 (90 years)
Rudolf Friedrich Heinrich Erhard Ernst Brill was a German chemist. Education and career Brill was born in Eschwege in 1899 as the son of a businessman. From 1918 to 1922, he studied chemistry at the Technical University of Berlin. On May 13, 1922, he earned the diploma in engineering here. On October 15, 1923, he was promoted to PhD with the dissertation title Röntgenographische Untersuchungen. Ein Beitrag zur chemischen Konstitution des Seidenfibroins. His supervisor was Reginald Oliver Herzog at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.
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