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.
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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,
#6201
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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Daniel Vorländer
1867 - 1941 (74 years)
Daniel Vorländer was a German chemist who synthesized most of the liquid crystals known until his retirement in 1935. Vorländer was born in Eupen in Rhenish Prussia. He studied chemistry at Kiel, Munich, and Berlin, after which he became a professor at University of Halle-Wittenberg.
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Adolf Karl Ludwig Claus
1838 - 1900 (62 years)
Adolf Karl Ludwig Claus was a German chemist. He is known for his structure of benzene proposed in 1867. Life Claus was born in 1838 in Kassel, Germany. Starting from 1850, he studied medicine in Marburg and later chemistry at the University of Marburg, with Hermann Kolbe. After spending a short time at the University of Berlin, he worked with Friedrich Wöhler at the University of Göttingen. He received his PhD in 1862, and in the same year changed his position and started working at the University of Freiburg. He completed his habilitation in 1866 and became assistant professor in the following year.
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Adolf Sieverts
1874 - 1947 (73 years)
Adolf Ferdinand Sieverts was a German chemist, best known for his work on solubility of gases in metals. He originated Sieverts's law. He was a doctoral student of Otto Wallach.
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Charles Edward Munroe
1849 - 1938 (89 years)
Charles Edward Munroe was an American chemist, discoverer of the Munroe effect, and chair of the department of chemistry at the George Washington University. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and studied at the Lawrence scientific school of Harvard, graduating in 1871. He then took a job as an assistant professor of chemistry at the college until 1874, when he moved to Annapolis to become a professor of chemistry at the United States Naval Academy.
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Francesco Giordani
1896 - 1961 (65 years)
Francesco Giordani was an Italian research chemist and scientist. Biography Born in Naples, the son of a municipal engineer, in 1914 Giordani showed his early interest for the sciences releasing a study of aerodynamic in a local scientific journal. In 1918 he graduated in chemistry at the University of Naples and began to devote himself to electrochemistry, particularly focusing his researches on chlor-alkali electrolysis. He is best known as the inventor of the theory of electrolytic diaphragm and the circulation of alkaline chloride, which eventually led to the invention of the Giordani-Pom...
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Charles Lee Reese
1862 - 1940 (78 years)
Charles Lee Reese was an American chemist and chemical director of DuPont serving from 1911 to 1924. Early life Reese was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1862. He attended the University of Virginia for his undergraduate career. Upon graduation he was admitted to the University of Heidelberg in Heidelberg, Germany in 1884. While attending Heidelberg he was a student of Robert Bunsen. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1886.
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Heinrich Dreser
1860 - 1924 (64 years)
Heinrich Dreser was a German chemist responsible for the aspirin and heroin projects at Bayer AG. He was also a key figure in creating the widely used modern drug codeine. Dreser was born in Darmstadt, Grand Duchy of Hesse.
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Heinrich Hlasiwetz
1825 - 1875 (50 years)
Heinrich Hlasiwetz was an Austrian chemist born in Reichenberg, Bohemia. Son of a pharmacist, he studied at the University of Jena, where his instructors included Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner , Heinrich Wilhelm Ferdinand Wackenroder and Matthias Jakob Schleiden . Later he studied under Josef Redtenbacher in Prague. In 1848 he earned the diploma of Magister Pharmacia, and during the following year received his doctorate in chemistry.
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Albert Fredrick Ottomar Germann
1886 - 1976 (90 years)
Albert Fredrick Ottomar Germann was an American physical chemist, university professor, and chemical entrepreneur. Early life and education Germann was born in Peru, Miami County, Indiana, eldest child of Mary Fredericke Mueller and Gustave Adolph Germann . His only sibling was Frank Erhart Emmanuel Germann , who also became a physical chemist. Albert Germann graduated from Peru High School in 1904. Germann taught in Miami County rural schools while working his way through a chemistry major at Indiana University in Bloomington. He received the A.B. in chemistry in 1909 and the A.M. in chemistry in 1910, both from Indiana University, and the M.Sc.
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Hermann Leuchs
1879 - 1945 (66 years)
Friedrich Hermann Leuchs was a German chemist. Life Leuchs studied chemistry at the University of Munich from 1898. He transferred to the University of Berlin and received his PhD there in 1902 under Emil Fischer. He steadily advanced in the hierarchy of the university, becoming a lecturer in 1910, assistant professor in 1914, and full professor in 1916. The ministry of education assured him that he would succeed Wilhelm Schlenk as head of the chemistry institute of the University of Berlin, but this never happened. His personality became strongly misanthropic. The Nazi regime, World War II a...
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Julius Bredt
1855 - 1937 (82 years)
Julius Bredt was a German organic chemist. He was the first to determine, in 1893, the correct structure of camphor. Bredt also discovered that a double bond cannot be placed at the bridgehead of a bridged ring system, a statement now known as Bredt's rule.
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Jnan Chandra Ghosh
1894 - 1959 (65 years)
Sir Jnan Chandra Ghosh or Jnanendra Chandra Ghosh was an Indian chemist best known for his contribution to the development of scientific research, industrial development and technology education in India. He served as the director of the newly formed Eastern Higher Technical Institute in 1950, which was renamed as IIT Kharagpur in 1951. He was also the director of the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore and Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta.
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Albert Atterberg
1846 - 1916 (70 years)
Albert Mauritz Atterberg was a Swedish chemist and agricultural scientist who created the Atterberg limits, which are commonly referred to by geotechnical engineers and engineering geologists today. In Sweden he is equally known for creating the Atterberg grainsize scale, which remains the one in use.
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James Finlay Weir Johnston
1796 - 1855 (59 years)
James Finlay Weir Johnston, FRS FRSE was a Scottish agricultural chemist and mineralogist. Life Born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Johnston was educated at University of Glasgow, where he studied Theology and graduated MA.
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Mathieu Orfila
1787 - 1853 (66 years)
Mathieu Joseph Bonaventure Orfila was a Spanish toxicologist and chemist, the founder of the science of toxicology. Role in forensic toxicology If there is reason to believe that a murder or attempted murder may have been committed using poison, a forensic toxicologist is often engaged to examine pieces of evidence such as corpses and food items for poison content. In Orfila's time the primary type of poison in use was arsenic, but there were not any reliable ways of testing for its presence. Orfila created new techniques, refined existing techniques and described them in his first treatise,...
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Richard Barry Bernstein
1923 - 1990 (67 years)
Richard Barry Bernstein was an American physical chemist. He is primarily known for his research in chemical kinetics and reaction dynamics by molecular beam scattering and laser techniques. He is credited with having founded femtochemistry, which laid the groundwork for developments in femtobiology. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1970. Among his awards were the National Medal of Science and the Willard Gibbs Award, both in 1989.
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John Newlands
1837 - 1898 (61 years)
John Alexander Reina Newlands was a British chemist who worked concerning the periodicity of elements. Biography Newlands was born in London in England, at West Square in Southwark, the son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister and his Italian wife.
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Otto Dimroth
1872 - 1940 (68 years)
Otto Dimroth was a German chemist. He is known for the Dimroth rearrangement, as well as a type of condenser with an internal double spiral, the Dimroth condenser. His son Karl Dimroth was also a renowned chemist, who described the first synthesis of 3-benzoxepin.
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Edgar Fahs Smith
1854 - 1928 (74 years)
Edgar Fahs Smith was an American scientist who is best known today for his interests in the history of chemistry. He served as provost of the University of Pennsylvania from 1911 to 1920, was deeply involved in the American Chemical Society and other organizations, and was awarded the Priestley Medal in 1926.
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William Justin Kroll
1889 - 1973 (84 years)
See also German classic philologist, Wilhelm Kroll . William Justin Kroll was a Luxembourgish metallurgist. He is best known for inventing the Kroll process in 1940, which is used commercially to extract metallic titanium from ore.
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Friedrich Ludwig Knapp
1814 - 1904 (90 years)
Friedrich Ludwig Knapp was a German chemist. He was the father of economist Georg Friedrich Knapp and the grandfather of social reformer Elly Heuss-Knapp. Biography He trained as a pharmacist in Darmstadt, then studied chemistry under Justus von Liebig at the University of Giessen . He worked at the mint in Paris as an assayer, and in 1841 became an associate professor of technology at Giessen. From 1847 to 1853 he was a full professor at the university, then relocated to Munich, where he became a technical director at the Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory. In 1863 he went to Brunswick to te...
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Pierre Macquer
1718 - 1784 (66 years)
Pierre-Joseph Macquer was an influential French chemist. He is known for his Dictionnaire de chymie . He was also involved in practical applications, to medicine and industry, such as the French development of porcelain. He worked as a chemist in industries, such as the Manufacture de Sèvres or the Gobelins Manufactory. He was an opponent of Lavoisier's theories. The scholar Phillipe Macquer was his brother.
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Johannes Martin Bijvoet
1892 - 1980 (88 years)
Johannes Martin Bijvoet was a Dutch chemist and crystallographer at the van 't Hoff Laboratory at Utrecht University. He is famous for devising a method of establishing the absolute configuration of molecules. In 1946, he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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James Walker
1863 - 1935 (72 years)
Sir James Walker FRS FRSE FCS LLD was a Scottish chemist. Life He was born at Logie House, in north-west Dundee the son of James Walker of J & H Walker, jute and flax spinners and weavers, and owners of the Dura Works. His mother was Susan Hutchison Cairns.
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Bohdan Szyszkowski
1873 - 1931 (58 years)
Bohdan Szyszkowski was a Polish chemist and member of PAU. Szyszkowski published important papers on electrochemistry and surface chemistry. See also Szyszkowski equation
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Oskar Piloty
1866 - 1915 (49 years)
Oskar Piloty was a German chemist. Life Oskar Piloty was born the son of the painter Karl von Piloty in Munich. Due to the closeness of the Piloty family to the chemist Ludwig Knorr, who later married the sister of Oskar Piloty, he started studying chemistry at Adolf von Baeyer's laboratory at the University of Munich in 1888. After failing an exam by Bayer in 1889 he transferred to the University of Würzburg. He and his colleagues speculated that he failed because he fell in love with the daughter of Baeyer; Piloty married her in 1892.
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Maria Bakunin
1873 - 1960 (87 years)
Maria Mikhailovna Bakunina was a Russian-Italian chemist and geologist. Born in Siberia, she moved to southern Italy at a young age, taking up chemistry during her education. By the time of her graduation from the University of Naples, she was already a pioneering figure in stereochemistry and made a number of advancements in applied chemistry. During the early 20th century, she carried out a series of geological surveys in the region of Campania, identifying a number of ichthyol deposits for exploitation. With the outbreak of World War II, she continued her work at the University of Naples a...
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Carl Magnus von Hell
1849 - 1926 (77 years)
Carl Magnus von Hell was the German chemist who discovered, together with Jacob Volhard and the Russian chemist Nikolay Zelinsky, the Hell–Volhard–Zelinsky halogenation reaction. Life He studied chemistry at the Technical University of Stuttgart with Hermann von Fehling and at the University of Munich with Emil Erlenmeyer. After serving in the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 he became assistant professor, and after the death of Fehling in 1883, professor for chemistry at the Technical University of Stuttgart. He supervised the building of the new laboratory which was finished in 1895/96. His research interests have been dicarboxylic acids, aliphatic hydrocarbons and their synthesis.
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Wilhelm Heinrich Heintz
1817 - 1880 (63 years)
Wilhelm Heinrich Heintz was a German structural chemist from Berlin. He initially trained and worked as a pharmacist, from 1841 he studied sciences at the University of Berlin. He earned his PhD at Berlin in 1844 under Heinrich Rose, and two years later, obtained his habilitation in chemistry. In 1850 he became an associate professor at the University of Halle, where in 1855 he attained a full professorship. He was one of six founding members of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft and the only chemist.
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Alexander Borodin
1833 - 1887 (54 years)
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin was a Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian-Russian extraction. He was one of the prominent 19th-century composers known as "The Five", a group dedicated to producing a "uniquely Russian" kind of classical music. Borodin is known best for his symphonies, his two string quartets, the symphonic poem In the Steppes of Central Asia and his opera Prince Igor.
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Peter Klason
1848 - 1937 (89 years)
Johan Peter Clason was a Swedish chemist. Johan Peter Clason was the son of domain curator, Christopher Adam Claesson and Elna Helena Billing, and was descended from a family originally been called Claus. Johan Peter Clason was the son in law of Carl Johan Hill. Clason became a student in Lund in 1868, PhD and associate professor of the organic chemistry laboratory in 1874 and 1887, all at Lund University. In 1890 he was appointed professor of chemistry and chemical technology at the Technical University in Stockholm.
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Rudolf Wegscheider
1859 - 1935 (76 years)
Rudolf Wegscheider was an Austrian chemist of Banat Swabian origin. Wegscheider studied chemistry and was the founder of the Austrian School of Chemistry. He taught at the University of Vienna, and from 1902 to 1931 he was departmental Chair. He was the chairman of the association of Austrian chemists from 1904 to 1929. R. Wegscheider introduced the principle of detailed balance for chemical kinetics.
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Gottfried Osann
1797 - 1866 (69 years)
Gottfried Wilhelm Osann was a German chemist and physicist. He is known for his work on the chemistry of platinum metals. He studied natural sciences and became a privatdozent in physics and chemistry at the University of Erlangen in 1819. Between 1821 and 1823, he occupied the same position at the University of Jena. He taught chemistry and medicine at the University of Dorpat from 1823 to 1828, from 1828 at the University of Würzburg.
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Constantin Cândea
1887 - 1971 (84 years)
Constantin Cândea was a Romanian chemist, Professor of Chemistry, Ph.D. Engineer and later Rector at the Polytechnic University of Timișoara – formerly the Polytechnic School of Timișoara between 1946 and 1947.
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César-Mansuète Despretz
1791 - 1863 (72 years)
César-Mansuète Despretz was a chemist and physicist. He became a French citizen in 1838. A street got its name after him in Lessines . Biography In 1818, Despretz started working as répétiteur in chemistry at Polytechnique, in Paris, under Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac who mentored his early research.
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