The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,
#6101
Friedrich Wilhelm Hermann Delffs
1812 - 1894 (82 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Hermann Delffs was a German chemist. He studied natural sciences at the University of Kiel, receiving his doctorate in 1834. In 1840 he obtained his habilitation at the University of Heidelberg, where in 1843 he became an associate professor. From 1853 he was a full professor of chemistry at Heidelberg, being given the status of professor emeritus in 1889. At Heidelberg he gave classes in pharmaceutical, organic and physiological chemistry.
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Heinrich Bertsch
1897 - 1981 (84 years)
Heinrich Gottlob Bertsch was a German chemist. He is considered the inventor of the world's first fully synthetic detergent. Life The son of an elementary school teacher, he attended the Oberrealschule in Ludwigsburg, where he graduated from high school in 1916. After his military service in World War I, he studied chemical technology from 1919 at the Technical University of Stuttgart and completed his studies with a diploma examination in 1921 and a doctorate in engineering in 1922. After initial positions in Stuttgart and Dresden, he took up a position as a chemist at H. Th. Böhme AG in Chemnitz on 1 August 1924, where he initially researched in the field of textile auxiliaries.
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Stéphane Leduc
1853 - 1939 (86 years)
Stéphane Leduc was a French biologist who sought to contribute to understanding of the chemical and physical mechanisms of life. He was a scientist in the fledgling field of synthetic biology, particularly in relation to diffusion and osmosis. He was a professor at the École de Médecine de Nantes and worked on osmotic crystallisation and the physiological effects of electric current. He was an Officier de la Légion d'honneur.
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Heinrich Wilhelm Ferdinand Wackenroder
1798 - 1854 (56 years)
Heinrich Wilhelm Ferdinand Wackenroder was a German chemist. Career and work In June, 1826 Wackenroder published his doctoral dissertation, “On Anthelminthics in the Vegetable Kingdom,” presented to Göttingen University, which earned him praise, and the Royal Prize.
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Tomas Batuecas
1893 - 1972 (79 years)
Tomás Batuecas Marugán was a Spanish chemist, most notable for his work on atomic weights of the elements. Batuecas was a professor of chemistry and vice-chancellor of the University of Santiago de Compostela.
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John Kidd
1775 - 1851 (76 years)
John Kidd was an English physician, chemist and geologist who took a leading role in Oxford's "scientific awakening" in the early years of the nineteenth century. Biography Kidd was born in Westminster, the son of a naval officer, and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. He became reader in chemistry at Oxford in 1801, and in 1803 was elected the first Aldrichian Professor of Chemistry. He then voluntarily gave courses of lectures on mineralogy and geology. These were delivered in the dark chambers under the Ashmolean Museum, where William Conybeare, William Buckland, Charles Daubeny and others gained their first lessons in geology.
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Alexander Nicolaus Scherer
1771 - 1824 (53 years)
Alexander Nicolaus Scherer was a Russian-German chemist and pharmacologist. In 1794 he graduated from the University of Jena, later serving as a lecturer at the gymnasium in Weimar. In 1800 he was appointed a professor of physics at the University of Halle, shortly afterwards working as a manager at a stoneware factory in Potsdam. In 1803 he relocated to the University of Dorpat as a professor of chemistry, and during the following year returned to St. Petersburg as a professor of chemistry and pharmacy at the medico-surgical academy. In 1815 he became a full member of the St. Petersburg Acad...
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C. P. Snow
1905 - 1980 (75 years)
Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow, was an English novelist and physical chemist who also served in several important positions in the British Civil Service and briefly in the UK government. He is best known for his series of novels known collectively as Strangers and Brothers, and for The Two Cultures, a 1959 lecture in which he laments the gulf between scientists and "literary intellectuals".
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George Wilson
1818 - 1859 (41 years)
George Wilson PRSSA FRSE was a 19th-century Scottish chemist and author. He was Regius Professor of Technology at the University of Edinburgh, and the first Director of the Industrial Museum of Scotland.
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Henry Paul Talbot
1864 - 1927 (63 years)
Henry Paul Talbot was an American chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He made a significant contribution to the university's reputation in research and teaching. Life Talbot earned a bachelor's degree in analytical chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1885. He then worked as a scientific assistant, then as an analytical chemistry instructor at MIT and then continued is education at the Leipzig University. There he earned his Ph.D. in 1890, studying organic and physical chemistry. He then returned to MIT to continue working as an instructor.
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Johann Schweigger
1779 - 1857 (78 years)
Johann Salomo Christoph Schweigger was a German chemist, physicist, and professor of mathematics born in Erlangen. J.S.C.Schweigger was the son of Friedrich Christian Lorenz Schweigger, professor of theologie in Erlangen . He studied philosophy in Erlangen. His PhD involved the Homeric Question revived at that time by Friedrich August Wolf. Johann Tobias Mayer, Georg Friedrich Hildebrandt and Karl Christian von Langsdorf convinced him to switch to physics and chemistry and he lectured on this subjects in Erlangen until 1803 before taking a position as schoolteacher in Bayreuth and in 1811 in Nuremberg.
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Julius Tröger
1862 - 1942 (80 years)
Julius Tröger was a German chemist. Tröger studied at the University of Leipzig from 1882 till 1888. During his Ph.D. he synthesized in 1887 2,8-dimethyl-6H,12H-5,11-methanodibenzo-[b,f][1,5]diazocine from p-toluidine and formaldehyde. This substance is now known as the Tröger's base. Because he was not able to give a structure of the new compound Johannes Wislicenus, the new director of the department, assigned a mediocre grade for Trögers thesis. It took another 48 years to confirm the structure of Tröger's base. In 1888 he started working at the Braunschweig University of Technology where he stayed until his retirement in 1928.
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Alexander Vinogradov
1895 - 1975 (80 years)
Alexander Pavlovich Vinogradov was a Soviet geochemist, academician , and Hero of Socialist Labour . In 1928, he took up a position as assistant professor in the laboratory for biogeochemical problems of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.
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Marc-Auguste Pictet
1752 - 1825 (73 years)
Marc-Auguste Pictet was a Swiss scientific journalist and experimental natural philosopher. Pictet's main contribution to learning was his editing of the scientific section of the Bibliothèque Britannique , a publication devoted to the diffusion on the Continent of knowledge and arts produced in Great Britain. His own scientific research focused on the fields of physical science, especially calorimetry, but also astronomy, geology, meteorology and technology, especially chronometry and the manufacture of fine earthenware.
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Josephine Silone Yates
1859 - 1912 (53 years)
Josephine Silone Yates was an American professor, writer, public speaker, and activist. She trained in chemistry and became one of the first black professors hired at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. Upon her promotion, she became the first black woman to head a college science department. She may have been the first black woman to hold a full professorship at any U.S. college or university.
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Jean-Baptiste-Michel Bucquet
1746 - 1780 (34 years)
Jean-Baptiste-Michel Bucquet was a French chemist, member of the French Royal Academy of Sciences, physician and public teacher. Life and work Bucquet was born in Paris, in 1746. He was first sent to study law but he then turned to science and attended classes at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris. There he encountered for the first time chemistry applied to medicine. Despite financial trouble, he graduated in 1770 and thus became Docteur-Régent, and married Marie Claude Leredde shortly after. He then started teaching a public course in chemistry in his own laboratory. Between 1771 and 1773, Bu...
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Philipp Lorenz Geiger
1785 - 1836 (51 years)
Philipp Lorenz Geiger was a German pharmacist and chemist known for his work with plant alkaloids. From the age of 14 he worked as an apprentice pharmacist in Adelsheim, followed by pharmacy training as an assistant in Heidelberg, Rastatt and Karlsruhe. Around 1811 he took over management of a pharmacy in Lörrach, then from 1814 to 1821, was associated with the pharmacy at the University of Heidelberg. In the meantime he obtained his PhD and habilitation . In 1824 he was named an associate professor, an appointment that was made against the will of Leopold Gmelin, a professor of chemistry at...
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G. Frederick Smith
1891 - 1976 (85 years)
George Frederick Smith was an early American researcher and advocate of the use of perchloric acid and perchlorate salts in analytical chemistry. He authored and co-authored many scholarly papers and textbooks on the subject.
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Hermann Pauly
1870 - 1950 (80 years)
Hermann Pauly was a German chemist and inventor. He is known for the Pauly reaction, a chemical test used for detecting the presence of tyrosine or histidine in proteins. Early years Hermann Pauly was born in Deutz on 18 July 1870. His father was Friedrich Hermann Pauly, a mine director, and his mother was Henriette Wintgens . He graduated from the Adolfinum Moers Hermann secondary school, then studied natural sciences at the University of Giessen in Hesse, Leipzig University and the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University of Bonn. He became a member of the Corps Teutonia Bonn in 1890. He s...
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William S. Clark
1826 - 1886 (60 years)
William Smith Clark was an American professor of chemistry, botany, and zoology; a colonel during the American Civil War; and a leader in agricultural education. Raised and schooled in Easthampton, Massachusetts, Clark spent most of his adult life in Amherst, Massachusetts. He graduated from Amherst College in 1848 and obtained a doctorate in chemistry from Georgia Augusta University in Göttingen in 1852. He then served as professor of chemistry at Amherst College from 1852 to 1867. During the Civil War, he was granted leave from Amherst to serve with the 21st Regiment Massachusetts Volunt...
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Wallace R. Brode
1900 - 1974 (74 years)
Wallace Reed Brode was an American chemist. He was president of the American Chemical Society in 1969 and of the Optical Society of America in 1961. He received the Priestley Medal in 1960. Biography Brode was born in Walla Walla, Washington, one of male triplets, the others being brothers Malcolm and Robert, each of whom became a distinguished scientist. He also had another older brother, Stanley. His father, Howard, was a biology professor at Whitman College, where Brode would earn his D.Sc. in 1921. While studying for his Ph.D. at University of Illinois under Roger Adams, he developed a li...
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Jules Piccard
1840 - 1933 (93 years)
Jules Piccard, also known as Julius Piccard was a Swiss chemist. He was the father of twins Auguste Piccard and Jean Felix Piccard , both renowned balloonists. He studied chemistry at the University of Heidelberg as a student of Robert Bunsen, receiving his doctorate in 1862. Shortly afterwards, he obtained his habilitation at the polytechnical institute in Zürich. From 1869 to 1903 he was a professor of chemistry at the University of Basel.
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David Paver Mellor
1903 - 1980 (77 years)
David Paver Mellor was an Australian inorganic chemist, and was the Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of New South Wales from 1955 to 1969. Publications Mellor, D. P., 'The Development of Coordination Chemistry in Australia', Records of the Australian Academy of Science, vol. 3, no. 2, 1976. Mellor, D.P., 'Obituary: Richard Thomas Baker', Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, vol. 76, 1942. Mellor, D.P., 'Founders of Australian Chemistry. Archibald Liversidge', The Royal Australian Chemical Institute Proceedings, vol. 24, August 1957, Mellor, D.P., 'H.
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Adolph Ferdinand Duflos
1802 - 1889 (87 years)
Adolph Ferdinand Duflos was a French-born, German pharmacist and chemist. Orphaned at a young age due to the loss of both parents, he was taken in by his uncle, a French military physician. After his uncle's death during the Russian campaign of 1812, he was adopted by the rector of the lyceum in Torgau. From 1830 to 1833 he studied natural sciences and chemistry at the University of Halle, afterwards working as a pharmacist's assistant, then serving as director of a chemical factory in Breslau. In 1842 he obtained his habilitation, and soon afterwards was named director of the pharmacy institute at the University of Breslau.
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Benjamin Silliman Jr.
1816 - 1885 (69 years)
Benjamin Silliman Jr. was a professor of chemistry at Yale University and instrumental in developing the petroleum industry. His father Benjamin Silliman Sr., also a famous Yale chemist, developed the process of fractional distillation that enabled the economical production of kerosene. In 1855, Silliman Jr. wrote a report for $526.08 on Pennsylvania rock oil and its usefulness as an illuminant that convinced investors to back George Bissell's search for oil.
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Armand Gautier
1837 - 1920 (83 years)
Emile Justin Armand Gautier was a French biochemist and dietitian. Chemistry He studied medicine and sciences at the University of Montpellier, where from 1858 he worked as a préparateur of chemistry. In 1862 he received his medical doctorate in Paris, and for several years worked as an assistant under chemist Charles-Adolphe Wurtz. In 1869 he became an associate professor and assistant director in Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville's laboratory at the Sorbonne, then from 1875 to 1884, he served as deputy director at the laboratory of chemical biology. In 1884 he succeeded Wurtz as professor...
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Edward G. Mazurs
1894 - 1983 (89 years)
Edward G. Mazurs was a chemist who wrote a history of the periodic system of the chemical elements which is still considered a "classic book on the history of the periodic table". Originally self-published as Types of graphic representation of the periodic system of chemical elements , it was reviewed by the ACS in 1958 as "the most complete survey of the range of human imagination in representing graphically the Mendeleev periodic law."
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David Boswell Reid
1805 - 1863 (58 years)
Prof David Boswell Reid MD FRSE FRCPE was a British physician, chemist and inventor. Through reports on public hygiene and ventilation projects in public buildings, he made a reputation in the field of sanitation. He has been called the "grandfather of air-conditioning".
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Daniel Sennert
1572 - 1637 (65 years)
Daniel Sennert was a renowned German physician and a prolific academic writer, especially in the field of alchemy or chemistry. He held the position of professor of medicine at the University of Wittenberg for many years.
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Johann Joseph Scherer
1814 - 1869 (55 years)
Johann Joseph Scherer was a German physician and chemist born in Aschaffenburg. In 1836 he graduated from the University of Würzburg, where he studied medicine, chemistry, geology and mineralogy. From 1836 to 1838 he practiced medicine in Wipfeld, afterwards relocating to the University of Munich, where he resumed his studies in chemistry.
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Józef Zawadzki
1886 - 1951 (65 years)
Józef Zawadzki was a Polish physical chemist and technologist. Father of Tadeusz and Anna Zawadzka. Zawadzki was a co-founder, President and Vice-President of the Polskie Towarzystwo Chemiczne. He was a professor and rector of Warsaw University of Technology, and a member of the Polish Academy of Learning .
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Akira Ogata
1887 - 1978 (91 years)
was a Japanese chemist and the first to synthesize methamphetamine in crystalline form in 1919. Career In 1912, Ogata graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Tokyo. In 1919 he received a degree from the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he had performed pharmacological experiments.
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Johann Gottlieb
1815 - 1875 (60 years)
Johann Gottlieb was an Austrian chemist who first synthesized Propionic acid. He is also known for describing and naming Paramylon. Biography Gottlieb was born in Brno as son to a pharmacist. He completed his Matura at the local Gymnasium and was supposed to take over his father’s business. He studied thus first pharmacy then chemistry under professor Adolf Martin Pleischl in Vienna. He later continued his studies also in Prague. His plans to pursue a scientific career led to disapproval and a lack of support by his father. He thus soon became assistant to Josef Redtenbacher, obtained his do...
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William Michael Haynes
#6135
Julius Wilbrand
1839 - 1906 (67 years)
Julius Bernhard Friedrich Adolph Wilbrand was a German chemist. Born in Gießen to Franz Joseph Julius Wilbrand and Albertine Knapp, he discovered trinitrotoluene in 1863, but the compound's use as an explosive was not developed until later. Wilbrand obtained trinitrotoluene or TNT by the nitration of toluene.
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Dejan Popović Jekić
1881 - 1913 (32 years)
Dragomir "Dejan" Popović Jekić , known as "Voivode Dejan" during the struggle for Old Serbia and Macedonia, was a chemist and Serbian Chetnik commander . He was one of the earliest volunteers to join the Serbian Chetnik Organization and in the struggle for the liberation of Old Serbia and Macedonia from Ottoman oppression.
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Johann Nepomuk von Fuchs
1774 - 1856 (82 years)
Johann Nepomuk von Fuchs was a German chemist and mineralogist, and royal Bavarian privy councillor. Biography He was born at Mattenzell, near Falkenstein in the Bavarian Forest. In 1807 he became professor of chemistry and mineralogy at the Ludwig Maximilian University, which was located in Landshut at the time, and in 1823 conservator of the mineralogical collections at Munich, where he was appointed professor of mineralogy three years later, when the university was relocated. He retired in 1852, was ennobled by the Maximilian II of Bavaria in 1854, and died at Munich on 5 March 1856.
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Georg Friedrich Hildebrandt
1764 - 1816 (52 years)
Georg Friedrich Hildebrandt was a pharmacist, chemist, and anatomist. He was an early supporter of Lavoisier's theories in Germany. He investigated mercury compounds, and the chemical nature of quicklime, ammonium nitrate, and ammonia. He studied light emitted by electric discharges through air and investigated the use of nitric oxide to determine the oxygen content of air. He developed a method to separate silver from copper. He wrote textbooks on pharmacology and human anatomy, and treatises on smallpox, sleep, and the digestive system.
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William Moffitt
1925 - 1958 (33 years)
William E. Moffitt was a British quantum chemist. He died after a heart attack following a squash match. He had been thought to be one of Britain's most gifted academics. Early life Moffitt was born in Berlin, Germany to British parents; his father was working in Berlin on behalf of the British government. He was educated by private tuition up to the age of 11. He attended Harrow School from 1936–43. His chemistry master later said of him that "he was undoubtably the most able of a decade of gifted boys ... [and] has a profound effect on all who met him. He did more than anyone to create in t...
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Arthur Heffter
1859 - 1925 (66 years)
Arthur Carl Wilhelm Heffter was a German pharmacologist and chemist. He was the first chairman of the German Society of Pharmacologists, and was largely responsible for the first Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology. He isolated mescaline from the peyote cactus in 1897, the first such isolation of a naturally occurring psychedelic substance in pure form. In addition, he conducted experiments on its effects by comparing the effects of peyote and mescaline on himself.
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Karl Spiro
1867 - 1932 (65 years)
Karl Spiro was a German biologist, and physical chemist. Spiro was born in Berlin. In 1889 he received his PhD from the University of Würzburg as a student of Emil Fischer, then in 1893 obtained his medical doctorate from the University of Leipzig. He later served as an assistant to Oswald Schmiedeberg and Franz Hofmeister at the University of Strasbourg, where in 1912 he became an honorary professor. From 1919 to 1921 he worked as a pharmacologist in the research laboratories of Sandoz AG . In 1921 he succeeded Gustav von Bunge as professor of physical chemistry at the University of Basel, where he also served as director of the institute for physiological chemistry.
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Paul Traugott Meissner
1778 - 1864 (86 years)
Paul Traugott Meissner was an Austrian chemist. In 1797 he moved to Vienna, where he attended lectures given by Joseph Franz von Jacquin . Later, he continued his studies on a tour through Germany. He earned a degree as magister of pharmacy from the University of Pest, subsequently returning to Transylvania, where he took over management of a pharmacy in Kronstadt.
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Andrew Plummer
1697 - 1756 (59 years)
Andrew Plummer FRCP was a Scottish physician and chemist. He was professor of chemistry at the University of Edinburgh from 1726 to 1755. He developed ideas on the attractive and repulsive forces involved in chemical affinity, which later had influence on his successors William Cullen and Joseph Black. He compounded "Plummer's pills", a mixture of calomel and antimony sulfide with guaiacum; the pills were originally compounded to treat psoriasis but were used for more than a century as an antisyphilitic.
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David Masson
1822 - 1907 (85 years)
David Mather Masson , was a Scottish academic, supporter of women's suffrage, literary critic and historian. Biography Masson was born in Aberdeen, the son of Sarah Mather and William Masson, a stone-cutter.
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Gustave Chancel
1822 - 1890 (68 years)
Gustave Charles Bonaventure Chancel was a French chemist who conducted research on organic and analytical chemistry while also examining chemical aspects of wine making. A method for determining the fineness of ground sulphur involves the use of a calibrated tube sometimes called Chancel's Sulphurimeter.
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Jaan Kalviste
1898 - 1936 (38 years)
Jaan Kalviste was an Estonian chemist, mineralogist, educator, and translator. Early life Jaan Kalviste was born Jaan Kranig on Mikko farm in the small village of Läste in present-day Lääne-Viru County to railway worker Ado Kranig and his wife Kadri . He was the second eldest of five siblings. He attended primary school in rural Lehtse Parish before studying at secondary school in Tallinn.
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Sydney Young
1857 - 1937 (80 years)
Sydney Young, FRS was an English chemist. He was born in Farnworth, in Widnes, Lancashire, the son of merchant Edward Young, JP of Liverpool. He was educated at a private school in Southport and the Liverpool Royal Institution school. In 1877, after two years working with his father, he entered Owens College, Manchester, to study chemistry. He was awarded B.Sc. in 1880 and the degree of D.Sc. three years later, while working with William Ramsay at University College, Bristol. There he was involved in the founding of the Chemical Society in 1880.
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Adolf Joszt
1889 - 1957 (68 years)
Adolf Joszt was a Polish chemist, considered to be a significant precursor to the practices of biotechnology and environmental protection.
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Hugh Alistair Reid
#6150
June Sutor
1929 - 1990 (61 years)
Dorothy June Sutor was a New Zealand-born crystallographer who spent most of her research career in England. She was one of the first scientists to establish that hydrogen bonds could form to hydrogen atoms bonded to carbon atoms. She later worked in the laboratory of Kathleen Lonsdale on the characterisation and prevention of urinary calculi.
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