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,
#6251
Erich Clar
1902 - 1987 (85 years)
Erich Clar was an Austrian organic chemist who studied polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon chemistry. He is considered as the father of that field. In 1941, he authored "Aromatische Kohlenwasserstoffe" and in 1964 the greatly expanded two-volume Polycyclic Hydrocarbons, which described the syntheses, properties, and UV-visible absorption spectra of hundreds of PAHs. He discovered the Clar reaction of the cyclic ketone perinaphthenone to form dibenzo[cd,lm]perylene in a 400 C melt of zinc dust, zinc chloride, and sodium chloride. He created the Sextet Theory, now eponymously called Clar's rule, to describe the behavior of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon isomers.
Go to Profile#6252
Louis Fieser
1899 - 1977 (78 years)
Louis Frederick Fieser was an American organic chemist, professor, and in 1968, professor emeritus at Harvard University. He invented militarily effective napalm while at Harvard in 1942. His award-winning research included work on blood-clotting agents including the first synthesis of vitamin K, synthesis and screening of quinones as antimalarial drugs, work with steroids leading to the synthesis of cortisone, and study of the nature of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
Go to Profile#6253
J. D. Bernal
1901 - 1971 (70 years)
John Desmond Bernal was an Irish scientist who pioneered the use of X-ray crystallography in molecular biology. He published extensively on the history of science. In addition, Bernal wrote popular books on science and society. He was a communist activist and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain .
Go to Profile#6254
Raymond Fuoss
1905 - 1987 (82 years)
Raymond Matthew Fuoss was an American chemist who researched mainly on electrolytes, polyelectrolytes, and polymers. He held Sterling Professor status at Yale University. Early life and education Fuoss was born to Jacob Z. Fuoss in 1905 and graduated from Altoona High School.
Go to Profile#6255
Joel Henry Hildebrand
1881 - 1983 (102 years)
Joel Henry Hildebrand was an American educator and a pioneer chemist. He was a major figure in physical chemistry research specializing in liquids and nonelectrolyte solutions. Education and professorship He was born in Camden, New Jersey on November 16, 1881.
Go to Profile#6256
Conrad Weygand
1890 - 1945 (55 years)
Conrad Weygand was Professor of Chemistry at the University of Leipzig. In 1938 he put forward a method for the classification of chemical reactions based on bond breakage and formation during the reaction. The preparative part of his book, Organisch-Chemische Experimentierkunst, was translated into English and published as Organic Preparations by Interscience Publishers, Inc. in 1946. His book about German chemistry introduces similar thoughts like there were presented by Philipp Lenard in his Deutsche Physik movement.
Go to Profile#6257
Claude Hudson
1881 - 1952 (71 years)
Claude Silbert Hudson was an American chemist who is best known for his work in the area of carbohydrate chemistry. He is also the namesake of the Claude S. Hudson Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry given by the American Chemical Society.
Go to Profile#6258
Georg Wittig
1897 - 1987 (90 years)
Georg Wittig was a German chemist who reported a method for synthesis of alkenes from aldehydes and ketones using compounds called phosphonium ylides in the Wittig reaction. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Herbert C. Brown in 1979.
Go to Profile#6259
Morris S. Kharasch
1895 - 1957 (62 years)
Morris Selig Kharasch was a pioneering organic chemist best known for his work with free radical additions and polymerizations. He defined the peroxide effect, explaining how an anti-Markovnikov orientation could be achieved via free radical addition. Kharasch was born in the Russian Empire in 1895 and immigrated to the United States at the age of 13. In 1919, he completed his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Chicago and spent most of his professional career there.
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Peter Debye
1884 - 1966 (82 years)
Peter Joseph William Debye was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Biography Early life Born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije in Maastricht, Netherlands, Debye enrolled in the Aachen University of Technology in 1901. In 1905, he completed his first degree in electrical engineering. He published his first paper, a mathematically elegant solution of a problem involving eddy currents, in 1907. At Aachen, he studied under the theoretical physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, who later claimed that his most important discovery was Peter Debye.
Go to Profile#6261
George C. Pimentel
1922 - 1989 (67 years)
George Claude Pimentel was a preeminent chemist and researcher. He was also dedicated to science education and public service. the inventor of the chemical laser. He developed the technique of matrix isolation in low-temperature chemistry. He also developed time-resolved infrared spectroscopy to study radicals and other transient species. In the late 1960s, Pimentel led the University of California team that designed the infrared spectrometer for the Mars Mariner 6 and 7 missions that analyzed the surface and atmosphere of Mars.
Go to Profile#6262
Frederick Rossini
1899 - 1990 (91 years)
Frederick Dominic Rossini was an American thermodynamicist noted for his work in chemical thermodynamics. In 1920, at the age of twenty-one, Rossini entered Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and soon was awarded a full-time teaching scholarship. He graduated with a B.S. in chemical engineering in 1925, followed by an M.S. degree in science in physical chemistry in 1926.
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Robert E. Rundle
1915 - 1963 (48 years)
Robert Eugene Rundle was an American chemist and crystallographer. He was a professor at Iowa State University and fellow of the American Physical Society. Early life and education Rundle was born in Orleans, Nebraska in 1915. He attended University of Nebraska where he completed a bachelor of science in 1937 and a master's degree in 1938. He completed a Ph.D. in 1941 at the California Institute of Technology. His advisors were Linus Pauling and J. Holmes Sturdivant.
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Walther F. Goebel
1899 - 1993 (94 years)
Walther Frederick Goebel was an American immunologist and an organic chemist, a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Goebel was known for his research of polysaccharides. Awards and distinctions member of the National Academy of Scienceshonorary degrees from Rockefeller University in 1978 and Middlebury College in 1959
Go to Profile#6265
Luis Federico Leloir
1906 - 1987 (81 years)
Luis Federico Leloir was an Argentine physician and biochemist who received the 1970 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the metabolic pathways by which carbohydrates are synthesized and converted into energy in the body. Although born in France, Leloir received the majority of his education at the University of Buenos Aires and was director of the private research group Fundación Instituto Campomar until his death in 1987. His research into sugar nucleotides, carbohydrate metabolism, and renal hypertension garnered international attention and led to significant progress in understanding, diagnosing and treating the congenital disease galactosemia.
Go to Profile#6266
J. R. Partington
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
James Riddick Partington was a British chemist and historian of chemistry who published multiple books and articles in scientific magazines. His most famous works were An Advanced Treatise on Physical Chemistry and A History of Chemistry , for which he received the Dexter Award and the George Sarton Medal.
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Paul L. Kirk
1902 - 1970 (68 years)
Paul Leland Kirk was a biochemist, criminalist and participant in the Manhattan Project who was specialized in microscopy. He also investigated the bedroom in which Sam Sheppard supposedly murdered his wife and provided the key blood spatter evidence that led to his acquittal in a retrial over 12 years after the murder. The highest honor one can receive in the criminalistics section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences carries Kirk's name.
Go to Profile#6268
A. D. Walsh
1916 - 1977 (61 years)
Arthur Donald Walsh FRS FRSE FRIC was a British chemist, who served as Professor of Chemistry at the University of Dundee. He is usually referred to as Donald Walsh. He was the creator of the Walsh diagram and Walsh's Rules.
Go to Profile#6269
Frederick George Mann
1897 - 1982 (85 years)
Frederick George Mann was a British organic chemist. Academic career He completed his doctoral studies at Downing College, Cambridge under Sir William Pope, graduating in 1923. He continued at Downing as an assistant lecturer until 1930, when he was appointed to a lectureship at Trinity College. He spent his entire academic career at Cambridge, retiring in 1964.
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Jerry Donohue
1920 - 1985 (65 years)
Jerry Donohue was an American theoretical and physical chemist. He is best remembered for steering James D. Watson and Francis Crick towards the correct structure of DNA with some crucial information.
Go to Profile#6271
Stanley Rossiter Benedict
1884 - 1936 (52 years)
Stanley Rossiter Benedict was an American chemist best known for discovering Benedict's reagent, a solution that detects certain sugars. Personal life Stanley Rossiter Benedict was born on March 17, 1884, to a big family of six children in Cincinnati. His father, Wayland Richardson Benedict was a professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Cincinnati. His mother, Anne Kendrick Benedict, was a writer and a teacher and his maternal grandmother, a Professor of Greek, Latin and Sanskrit at the University of Rochester and was an editor of the King James Version of the Bible.
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Ian Heilbron
1886 - 1959 (73 years)
Sir Ian Heilbron DSO FRS was a Scottish chemist, who pioneered organic chemistry developed for therapeutic and industrial use. Early life and education Isidor Morris Heilbron was born in Glasgow on 6 November 1886 to a wine merchant and his wife . He was Jewish.
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N. Howell Furman
1892 - 1965 (73 years)
Nathaniel Howell Furman was an American professor of analytical chemistry who helped develop the electrochemical uranium separation process as a member of the Manhattan Project. Background and career Furman was born in the Lawrenceville section of Lawrence Township, Mercer County, New Jersey in 1892. He attended Lawrenceville School, where he was a model student, graduating with a Master's Prize from his high school in 1909. He enrolled in Princeton University, where he received Phi Beta Kappa honors and graduated in 1913. He received an M.S. in 1915 and a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1917. Furman served in World War I in the Army Chemical Warfare Service.
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Samuel C. Lind
1879 - 1965 (86 years)
Samuel Colville Lind was a radiation chemist, referred to as "the father of modern radiation chemistry". He gained his B.A in 1899 at Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia. After a short spell at MIT he moved to study chemistry at Leipzig University in Germany, carrying out research into the kinetics of chemical reactions, where he was awarded a Ph.D in 1905. He then returned to work at the University of Michigan until 1913, studying the chemical reactions induced by ionizing radiation. From 1913 to 1925 he worked at the US Bureau of Mines, concerned with extraction of radium from carnotite ore.
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Robert Thomas Sanderson
1912 - 1989 (77 years)
Robert Thomas Sanderson was an American inorganic chemist, more commonly known by the initials "R.T." found in his papers. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago for his research in boron chemistry. After working in Texaco's research lab, he became a professor and spent his career on the faculties of the University of Florida, the University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. He also created a company supplying safety posters and lab-related artwork of his own design, and published several books including Vacuum Manipulation of Volatile Compounds.
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Otto Hahn
1879 - 1968 (89 years)
Otto Hahn was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and father of nuclear fission. Hahn and Lise Meitner discovered radioactive isotopes of radium, thorium, protactinium and uranium. He also discovered the phenomena of atomic recoil and nuclear isomerism, and pioneered rubidium–strontium dating. In 1938, Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann discovered nuclear fission, for which Hahn received the 1944 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Nuclear fission was the basis for nuclear reactors and nuclear w...
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Francisco Zaera
Francisco Zaera is a Venezuelan-American chemist, currently a distinguished professor at University of California, Riverside and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society and the American Vacuum Society.
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Herman Francis Mark
1895 - 1992 (97 years)
Herman Francis Mark was an Austrian-American chemist regarded for his contributions to the development of polymer science. Mark's x-ray diffraction work on the molecular structure of fibers provided important evidence for the macromolecular theory of polymer structure. Together with Houwink he formulated an equation, now called the Mark–Houwink or Mark–Houwink–Sakurada equation, describing the dependence of the intrinsic viscosity of a polymer on its relative molecular mass . He was a long-time faculty at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. In 1946, he established the Journal of Polymer Scie...
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Pehr Victor Edman
1916 - 1977 (61 years)
Pehr Victor Edman was a Swedish biochemist. He developed a method for sequencing proteins; the Edman degradation. Early life Edman was born in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1935 he started studying medicine at Karolinska Institutet, where he became interested in basic research and received a bachelor in medicine in 1938. His research was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II, where he was drafted to serve in the Swedish army. He returned to the Karolinska Institutet where he earned his doctoral degree under advice from Professor Erik Jorpes in 1946.
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Robert J. Linhardt
Robert J. Linhardt is the Ann and John Broadbent, Jr. '59 Senior Constellation Professor Biocatalysis & Metabolic Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His primary appointment at RPI is based in the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, consisting of joint appointments with the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, Department of Biology, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Rensselaer Nanotechnology Center. He is highly cited in his field, with over 100 papers having each over 100 citations.
Go to Profile#6281
Harrison Brown
1917 - 1986 (69 years)
Harrison Scott Brown was an American nuclear chemist and geochemist. He was a political activist, who lectured and wrote on the issues of arms limitation, natural resources and world hunger. During World War II, Brown worked at the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory and Clinton Engineer Works, where he worked on ways to separate plutonium from uranium. The techniques he helped develop were used at the Hanford Site to produce the plutonium used in the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki. After the war he lectured on the dangers of nuclear weapons.
Go to Profile#6282
Kurt Heinrich Meyer
1883 - 1952 (69 years)
Kurt Heinrich Meyer or Kurt Otto Hans Meyer was a German chemist. Life and work Born in Tartu, Estonia, Meyer was the son of the pharmacologist Hans Horst Meyer. He was a student from 1892 until 1901 in the “Gymnasium Philippinum” in Marburg, Germany. This was followed at first by studies in medicine, later in chemistry in Marburg , and in Leipzig, Freiburg, London, and Munich. In Leipzig, Meyer obtained his PhD in 1907 with the dissertation “Untersuchungen über Halochromie” under the direction of Arthur Hantzsch. Afterwards, following the advice of his father, he travelled to England to complement his education and worked for several months in the laboratory of Ernest Rutherford.
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Paul Harteck
1902 - 1985 (83 years)
Paul Karl Maria Harteck was an Austrian physical chemist. In 1945 under Operation Epsilon in "the big sweep" throughout Germany, Harteck was arrested by the allied British and American Armed Forces for suspicion of aiding the Nazis in their nuclear weapons program and he was incarcerated at Farm Hall, an English house fitted with covert electronic listening devices, for six months.
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Jay Switzer
Jay A. Switzer is an American chemist, currently the Curators’ Distinguished Professor and Donald L. Castleman/FCR Missouri Endowed professor of Discovery in Chemistry at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Switzer received his BS degree in chemistry from the University of Cincinnati, and his PhD degree in inorganic chemistry from Wayne State University under Professor John F. Endicott. After receiving his PhD degree, he joined Union Oil Company of California as a senior research chemist. His research at UNOCAL was on photoelectrochemistry and the electrochemical processing of photovoltaic cells.
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Harold Hartley
1878 - 1972 (94 years)
Brigadier-General Sir Harold Brewer Hartley was a British physical chemist. He moved from academia to important positions in business and industry, including serving as Chairman of the British Overseas Airways Corporation.
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Herbert Newby McCoy
1870 - 1945 (75 years)
Herbert Newby McCoy was an American chemist who taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah and was the vice-president of Lindsay Light & Chemical Company. He contributed numerous papers on physical chemistry, radioactivity and rare earths.
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Tadeusz Reichstein
1897 - 1996 (99 years)
Tadeusz Reichstein , also known as Tadeus Reichstein, was a Polish-Swiss chemist and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate , which was awarded for his work on the isolation of cortisone.
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Kazimierz Fajans
1887 - 1975 (88 years)
Kazimierz Fajans was a Polish American physical chemist of Polish-Jewish origin, a pioneer in the science of radioactivity and the co-discoverer of chemical element protactinium. Education and career He was born May 27, 1887, in Warsaw, Congress Poland, to a family of Jewish background. After he had completed secondary school in Warsaw , he started studying chemistry in Germany, at first at the University in Leipzig, and then in Heidelberg and Zürich. In 1909 he was awarded a PhD degree for his research into the stereoselective synthesis of chiral compounds.
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Pauline Gracia Beery Mack
1891 - 1974 (83 years)
Pauline Gracia Beery Mack was an American chemist, home economist, and college administrator. Her research in calcium, nutrition, radiation, and bone density began during the 1930s, and culminated in work for NASA when she was in her seventies.
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Andreas von Antropoff
1878 - 1956 (78 years)
Andreas von Antropoff — Russian and German scientist-chemist, professor at the Bonn University and is known to have coined the term "neutronium" and developed a temporarily and widely used alternative periodic table of elements in 1926.
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Ray Crist
1900 - 2005 (105 years)
Ray Crist was an American chemist who participated in the Manhattan Project. When he retired from teaching at the age of 104 in 2004, Crist is widely believed to have been America's oldest worker at the time.
Go to Profile#6292
Ida Noddack
1896 - 1978 (82 years)
Ida Noddack , née Tacke, was a German chemist and physicist. In 1934 she was the first to mention the idea later named nuclear fission. With her husband Walter Noddack, and Otto Berg, she discovered element 75, rhenium. She was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
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Robert Whytlaw-Gray
1877 - 1958 (81 years)
Robert H. Whytlaw-Gray, OBE, FRS was an English chemist, born in London. He studied at the University of Glasgow and University College London and was Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Leeds. He and William Ramsay isolated radon and studied its physical properties .
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Arnold Beckman
1900 - 2004 (104 years)
Arnold Orville Beckman was an American chemist, inventor, investor, and philanthropist. While a professor at California Institute of Technology, he founded Beckman Instruments based on his 1934 invention of the pH meter, a device for measuring acidity , later considered to have "revolutionized the study of chemistry and biology". He also developed the DU spectrophotometer, "probably the most important instrument ever developed towards the advancement of bioscience". Beckman funded the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, the first silicon transistor company in California, thus giving rise to Silicon Valley.
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Eger V. Murphree
1898 - 1962 (64 years)
Eger Vaughan Murphree was an American chemist, best known for his co-invention of the process of fluid catalytic cracking. Biography Murphree was born on November 3, 1898, in Bayonne, New Jersey, moving as a child to Kentucky. He graduated from Kentucky University with degrees in chemistry and mathematics in 1920, and a master's degree in chemistry in 1921. Murphree played college football as Kentucky as a tackle and was captain of the 1920 Kentucky Wildcats football team.
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Moddie Taylor
1912 - 1976 (64 years)
Moddie Daniel Taylor was an African American chemist who specialized in rare earth minerals. He was one of the African American scientists and technicians on the Manhattan Project from 1943 to 1945, working to develop the atomic bomb. For his work on the Manhattan Project, he was awarded a Certificate of Merit Medal for his contributions by Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson.
Go to Profile#6297
James Holmes Sturdivant
1906 - 1972 (66 years)
James Holmes Sturdivant was a chemist who worked for several years as the main research assistant to Linus Pauling at Caltech, starting in 1927. He co-authored some seminal papers with Pauling, and was co-advisor of Robert Eugene Rundle.
Go to Profile#6298
I. K. Taimni
1898 - 1978 (80 years)
I. K. Taimni was a professor of chemistry at the Allahabad University in India, and an influential scholar in the fields of Yoga and Indian philosophy. He was a leader of the Theosophical Society. Taimni authored a number of books on Eastern Philosophy, including a modern interpretation of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras.
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Willis R. Whitney
1868 - 1958 (90 years)
Willis Rodney Whitney was an American chemist and founder of the research laboratory of the General Electric Company. He is known as the "father of industrial research" in the United States for blending the worlds of research and industry together; which at the time, were two very distinct careers. He is also known for his corrosion theory of iron which he developed after studying at M.I.T. and the University of Leipzig. Whitney was also a professor at M.I.T. for some time before his career transition into research directing. He received many awards, including the Willard Gibbs medal, the Fra...
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Trevor Kincaid
1872 - 1970 (98 years)
Trevor Kincaid was a Canadian-American scientist and professor at the University of Washington who achieved national acclaim for his scientific achievements while an undergraduate student. Kincaid's interests ranged from insect life to marine biology to mollusks, though he once described himself as an "omniologist" . He is best known for introducing the gypsy moth parasite to the United States, for helping establish the Washington state oyster industry, and as the driving force behind the creation of the Friday Harbor Laboratories. Kincaid is responsible for the identification and naming of hundreds of species; at least 47 plant and animal species were, in turn, named after him.
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