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.
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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,
#6201
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...
Go to Profile#6202
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.
Go to Profile#6203
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.
Go to Profile#6206
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.
Go to Profile#6209
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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Julius Adolph Stöckhardt
1809 - 1886 (77 years)
Julius Adolph Stöckhardt was a German agricultural chemist. He is mostly recognized for his work on fertilizers, fume damage of plants and his book Die Schule der Chemie , which was translated into 14 languages. His 500 lectures and over 500 publications helped to establish agricultural chemistry in Germany.
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Georg Lunge
1839 - 1923 (84 years)
Georg Lunge was a German chemist born in Breslau. He studied at Heidelberg and Breslau, graduating at the latter university in 1859, to work with Ferdinand Cohn. Turning his attention to technical chemistry, he became chemist at several works both in Germany and England, and in 1876 he was appointed professor of technical chemistry at ETH Zurich.
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Anders Jahan Retzius
1742 - 1821 (79 years)
Anders Jahan Retzius was a Swedish chemist, botanist and entomologist. Biography Born in Kristianstad, he matriculated at Lund University in 1758, where he graduated as a filosofie magister in 1766. He also trained as an apothecary apprentice. He received the position of docent of chemistry at Lund in 1766, and of natural history in 1767. He became extraordinary professor of natural history in 1777, and thereafter held various chairs of natural history, economy and chemistry until his retirement in 1812. He died in Stockholm on 6 October 1821.
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John Joseph Jolly Kyle
1838 - 1922 (84 years)
John Joseph Jolly Kyle was a pioneering Argentine chemist. Born and educated in Scotland, he emigrated to Argentina in 1862, and on the outbreak of the Paraguayan War served as a pharmacist in the Argentine Army medical corps. He became an Argentine citizen in 1873. At the time Kyle was active specialisation was not an option in Latin American chemistry and it was necessary for a chemist to be a sort of polymath or jack-of-all-trades. Kyle was appointed professor of chemistry at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires in 1871, and chief chemist to the Casa de Moneda de la República Argentina in 1881.
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William Dittmar
1833 - 1892 (59 years)
Professor William Dittmar FRS FRSE LLD was a German-born scientist renowned as a chemical analyst. He was based largely in Scotland. He did much analytical work on the findings from the Challenger expedition.
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Emil Knoevenagel
1865 - 1921 (56 years)
Heinrich Emil Albert Knoevenagel was the German chemist who established the Knoevenagel condensation reaction. The Knoevenagel condensation reaction of benzaldehydes with nitroalkanes is a classic general method for the preparation of nitroalkenes, which are very valuable synthetic intermediates.
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Nicolas Lemery
1645 - 1715 (70 years)
Nicolas Lémery , French chemist, was born at Rouen. He was one of the first to develop theories on acid-base chemistry. Life After learning pharmacy in his native town he became a pupil of Christophe Glaser in Paris, and then went to Montpellier, where he began to lecture on chemistry. He next established a pharmacy in Paris, still continuing his lectures, but following 1683, being a Calvinist, he was obliged to retire to England. In the following year he returned to France, and turning Catholic in 1686 was able to reopen his shop and resume his lectures. He died in Paris on 19 June 1715.
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Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin
1727 - 1817 (90 years)
Nikolaus Joseph Freiherr von Jacquin was a scientist who studied medicine, chemistry and botany. Biography Born in Leiden in the Netherlands, he studied medicine at Leiden University, then moved first to Paris and afterward to Vienna. In 1752, he studied under Gerard van Swieten in Vienna.
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Mary Letitia Caldwell
1890 - 1972 (82 years)
Mary Letitia Caldwell was an American chemist. Growing up she valued education and strived to achieve. She was an instructor at Western College teaching chemistry. She was known for being unique and descriptive along with being family orientated. Maria was in a wheel chair due to muscular disability. Most of her work centered on amylase, a starch enzyme, most notably finding a method for purifying crystalline porcine pancreatic amylase. She spent sixty years doing this.
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Hieronymus David Gaubius
1705 - 1780 (75 years)
Hieronymus David Gaubius was a German physician and chemist. Life He was a native of Heidelberg. He studied medicine and sciences at the Universities of Harderwijk and Leiden, where he was a pupil of Hermann Boerhaave and Bernhard Siegfried Albinus . He earned his degree at Leiden in 1725 with a thesis on psychosomatic medicine called . After graduation he continued his training in Paris, and then practiced medicine in Amsterdam and Deventer.
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William Brownrigg
1712 - 1800 (88 years)
William Brownrigg was a British doctor and scientist, who practised at Whitehaven in Cumberland. While there, Brownrigg carried out experiments that earned him the Copley Medal in 1766 for his work on carbonic acid gas. He was the first person to recognise platinum as a new element.
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Alexey Favorsky
1860 - 1945 (85 years)
Alexey Yevgrafovich Favorsky , was a Russian and Soviet chemist. Hero of Socialist Labour . Life Favorsky studied chemistry at the imperial Saint Petersburg State University from 1878 to 1882. He joined Alexander Butlerov's laboratory for several years, and in 1891 became a lecturer. In 1895, Favorksy received his PhD and became professor for technical chemistry. His discovery of the Favorskii rearrangement in 1894 and the Favorskii reaction between 1900 and 1905 are connected to his name. He worked at the new organics department from 1897, and served as its director from 1934 to 1937. For his...
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Hamilton Cady
1874 - 1943 (69 years)
Hamilton Perkins Cady was an American chemist who in 1907 in collaboration with David McFarland discovered that helium could be extracted from natural gas. Early life On May 2, 1874, Cady was born in Skiddy, Kansas. He is the son of Perkins Elijah Cady and Ella Falkenbury.
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Ellen Gleditsch
1879 - 1968 (89 years)
Ellen Gleditsch was a Norwegian radiochemist and Norway's second female professor. Starting her career as an assistant to Marie Curie, she became a pioneer in radiochemistry, establishing the half-life of radium and helping demonstrate the existence of isotopes. She was Vice President of the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights 1937–1939.
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Friedrich Hecht
1903 - 1980 (77 years)
Friedrich Hecht was an Austrian chemist and writer. Hecht studied chemistry at the University of Vienna, and in 1928 was awarded a PhD. He was an assistant at the Institute of Chemistry. He wrote science fiction under the pseudonym Manfred Langrenus. In 1980, he died in Vienna, Austria.
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Willem Alberda van Ekenstein
1858 - 1937 (79 years)
Willem Alberda van Ekenstein was a Dutch chemist and discovered the Lobry de Bruyn–van Ekenstein transformation together with Adriaan Lobry van Troostenburg de Bruyn. Ekenstein studied chemistry from 1876 till 1879 at the Delft University of Technology later he worked at the University of Amsterdam, University of Groningen, Dutch National Sugar Laboratory in Amsterdam.
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John Addison Porter
1822 - 1866 (44 years)
John Addison Porter was an American professor of chemistry and physician. He is the namesake of the John Addison Porter Prize and was a founder of the Scroll and Key senior society of Yale University.
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George Ernest Gibson
1884 - 1959 (75 years)
George Ernest Gibson was a Scottish-born American nuclear chemist. Early years George Ernest Gibson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and educated partly in Germany where he attended a gymnasium in Darmstadt, finishing his schooling in Edinburgh. He studied chemistry at the University of Edinburgh receiving his B.Sc. in 1906. He worked with Otto Lummer at the former University of Breslau where he received his Ph.D. in 1911, and stayed there as lecturer for two additional years before returning to the University of Edinburgh in 1912.
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Friedrich Stohmann
1832 - 1897 (65 years)
Friedrich Karl Adolf Stohmann was a German agricultural chemist. Biography He was born in Bremen and studied at Göttingen, where he became member of Burschenschaft Hannovera , and London. He was Thomas Graham's assistant at University College from 1853 to 1855, and afterwards assisted Wilhelm Henneberg at Celle and at Göttingen-Weende. In 1862 he started the station for agricultural experiments at Braunschweig. He was called to Halle in 1865 as an associate professor, and to the University of Leipzig in 1871, where he was director of the physiological institute of agriculture . His principal ...
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William Gould Young
1902 - 1980 (78 years)
William Gould Young was an American physical organic chemist and professor at the University of California at Los Angeles . He served as vice chancellor at UCLA for 13 years, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. The chemistry building at UCLA bears his name.
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Bruce H. Mahan
1930 - 1982 (52 years)
Bruce Herbert Mahan was an American physical chemist and professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley known for his work in the fundamentals of chemical reactions and devotion to chemistry education. He was the doctoral advisor of Nobel laureate Yuan T. Lee.
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August Michaelis
1847 - 1916 (69 years)
August Michaelis was a German chemist and discovered the Michaelis–Arbuzov reaction. Michaelis studied at the University of Göttingen and University of Jena and became professor for chemistry at University of Karlsruhe in 1876, at the University of Aachen in 1880, and at the University of Rostock in 1890.
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George Downing Liveing
1827 - 1924 (97 years)
George Downing Liveing FRS was an English chemist and spectroscopist. Early life He was born in Nayland, Suffolk, the eldest son of Dr. Edward Liveing and Catherine Mary Downing . Academic career Liveing was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, completing a BA in the Mathematical Tripos in 1850 and then postgraduate study for the Natural Sciences Tripos, in which he obtained distinction in chemistry and mineralogy; he received a MA in 1853. Later in his life he was awarded an Honorary ScD in 1908. In 1853 St John's College founded for him a College Lectureship in Chemistry and built for his use a Chemical Laboratory behind New Court.
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Julius Stieglitz
1867 - 1937 (70 years)
Julius Oscar Stieglitz was an American chemist of German Jewish origin. He was a teacher and organic chemist with a major interest in pharmaceutical and medicinal chemistry. He is known for the Stieglitz rearrangement, a rearrangement reaction in organic chemistry which commonly involves the formation of imines from hydroxylamines through a carbon to nitrogen shift, comparable to the key step of a Beckmann rearrangement.
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