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,
#6351
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
#6362
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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Alfred Wahlforss
1839 - 1899 (60 years)
Henrik Alfred Wahlforss was a Finnish chemist and professor. Wahlforss lectured in Polytechnical institute in Helsinki. His scientific achievements were related to his publishings about retene, para-bromobenzyl chloride and the oxidation of castor oil. As Wahlforss's publications were written in Swedish language, they remained internationally without attention.
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Hans Peter Jørgen Julius Thomsen
1826 - 1909 (83 years)
Hans Peter Jørgen Julius Thomsen was a Danish chemist noted in thermochemistry for the Thomsen–Berthelot principle. Life and work Thomsen was born in Copenhagen, and spent his life in that city. From 1847 to 1856 he taught chemistry at the Polytechnic, where from 1883 to 1892 he was the director. From 1856 to 1866 he was on the staff of the military high school. In 1866 he was appointed professor of chemistry at the university, and retained that chair until his retirement from active work in 1891.
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David Murray Cowie
1872 - 1940 (68 years)
David Murray Cowie pioneered the salt iodization process in the U.S. He founded the pediatrics department at the University of Michigan and ran a private hospital in Ann Arbor which attracted wealthy patients. Cowie was concerned about the widespread problem of goiter in Michigan .
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William Ivison Macadam
1856 - 1902 (46 years)
Colonel William Ivison Macadam Colonel Professor W. Ivison Macadam was a Scottish scientist, academic author and antiquarian. He was also Colonel of the 1st Lothian Volunteer Infantry Brigade and a leading Freemason. He was generally known by his middle name Ivison.
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Hugo Paul Friedrich Schulz
1853 - 1932 (79 years)
Hugo Paul Friedrich Schulz was a German pharmacologist from Wesel, Rhenish Prussia. He studied medicine in the universities of Heidelberg and Bonn, where he did scientific work in the physiological institute of Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger . In 1877 he earned his doctorate, and afterwards worked in the pharmacological institute of Karl Binz at Bonn. In 1883 he was appointed professor of pharmacology at the University of Greifswald.
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Hugh Robson
1917 - 1977 (60 years)
Sir Hugh Norwood Robson was a Scottish physician noted as a university administrator in several countries, including Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield from 1966 to 1974 and Principal of the University of Edinburgh from 1974 to 1977. The Hugh Robson Building in George Square is named after him, as is the Hugh Robson Computer Laboratory.
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Franz Ferdinand Schulze
1815 - 1873 (58 years)
Franz Ferdinand Schulze was a German professor of chemistry and microbiology who taught at the Royal Prussian State Agricultural Academy in Eldena and later at Rostock. He innovated analytical techniques, particularly making use of specially blown glass tubes. He examined questions such as spontaneous generation in his experiments. He was able to demonstrate that when air was bubbled through sulphuric acid, the resulting air did not produce any growth in carefully sterilized culture media. He translated J. F. W. Johnston's Elements of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology into German. He coined...
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Andreas Smits
1870 - 1948 (78 years)
Andreas Smits was Dutch chemist who specialized in physical and inorganic chemistry and examined aspects of phase change and conversions between allotropic forms. He was a professor at the Delft University of Technology.
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Gustave Eiffel
1832 - 1923 (91 years)
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was a French civil engineer. A graduate of École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, he made his name with various bridges for the French railway network, most famously the Garabit Viaduct. He is best known for the world-famous Eiffel Tower, designed by his company and built for the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, and his contribution to building the Statue of Liberty in New York. After his retirement from engineering, Eiffel focused on research into meteorology and aerodynamics, making significant contributions in both fields.
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Walter Rüdorff
1909 - 1989 (80 years)
Walter Rüdorff was a German chemist known for his research on clathrates of graphite and ternary oxides. Education and career Rüdorff was born in Berlin in 1909. He studied chemistry as an undergraduate at Technical University of Berlin and graduated in 1925. His graduate study was carried out under the supervision of Ulrich Hofmann at the same university, where he graduated with a PhD thesis titled Über die Kristallstruktur der Hexacarbonyle von Chrom, Molybdän und Wolfram. He then moved to the University of Rostock along with Ulrich Hofmann and achieved his habilitation status with the thesis titled Neuartige Verbindungen mit Graphit in 1941.
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Julius Arnold Koch
1864 - 1956 (92 years)
Julius Arnold Koch was an American chemist who was born in the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. Koch graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1884. He was the first dean of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Pittsburgh and held this position until his retirement in 1932. In 1897, he discovered, together with Ludwig Gattermann, the Gattermann-Koch reaction . He agreed on receiving the status of dean only after his following concern was taken into consideration "I will accept the deanship if the sessions are changed from evening to the daytime."
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Bob Briggs
1905 - 1975 (70 years)
Lindsay Heathcote "Bob" Briggs was a New Zealand organic chemist. Early life Born in Hastings in 1905, Briggs was educated at Auckland Grammar School. Academic career After graduating from Auckland University College with a Master of Science with second-class honours in 1928, he received funding to research manuka oil the following year, and undertook independent research at Massey Agricultural College from 1929 to 1930.
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Salvador del Mundo
1902 - 1945 (43 years)
Salvador del Mundo was a Filipino chemist specializing in ceramics. Born in Boac, Marinduque, del Mundo graduated, summa cum laude, with a degree in chemistry from the University of the Philippines in 1925, and obtained a doctorate degree from the University of Santo Tomas in 1934. His scientific career led him to become the lead chemist of the ceramics laboratory of the government Bureau of Science, which is now the Department of Science and Technology, production manager of the Ceramics Industries of the Philippines, and professorships at the University of the Philippines and the University of Santo Tomas.
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Nikolay Emanuel
1915 - 1984 (69 years)
Nikolay Markovich Emanuel was a Soviet chemist. He was a key specialist in chemical kinetics and mechanics of chemical reactions. He lectured at Moscow State University since 1944 . In 1958 he became a corresponding member and in 1966 he became a full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In 1974, he was elected as a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Buried in Moscow.
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Friedrich Gustav Carl Emil Erlenmeyer
1864 - 1921 (57 years)
Friedrich Gustav Carl Emil Erlenmeyer , also known as Emil Erlenmeyer, Jr., was a German chemist and the discoverer of the Erlenmeyer-Plöchl azlactone and amino acid synthesis. He was the son of Richard August Carl Emil Erlenmeyer and father of Hans Erlenmeyer.
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Herbert Henry Dow
1866 - 1930 (64 years)
Herbert Henry Dow was an American chemical industrialist who founded the American multinational conglomerate Dow Chemical. A graduate of the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, Ohio, he was a prolific inventor of chemical processes, compounds, and products, notably bromine extraction from sea water, and was a successful businessman.
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Hollis Dow Hedberg
1903 - 1988 (85 years)
Hollis Dow Hedberg was an American geologist specializing in petroleum exploration. His contribution to stratigraphic classification of rocks and procedures is a monumental work which received universal acceptance. The firm he worked for, the Gulf Oil Corporation in Venezuela, trusted his findings and explored what had until then been uncharted territory. As a result, they reaped huge benefits from their petroleum findings. Hedberg taught at Princeton University from 1959 until his retirement in 1971. He was awarded the Mary Clark Thompson Medal by the National Academy of Sciences in 1973. In 1975 he was awarded the Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London.
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Léo Marion
1899 - 1979 (80 years)
Léo Edmond Marion, was a Canadian organic chemist and academic administrator. He was Vice-President of the National Research Council of Canada. From 1964 until 1965 he was President of the Royal Society of Canada. From 1965 until 1969, he was Dean of Faculty of Pure and Applied Science at the University of Ottawa.
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John M. MacEachran
1877 - 1971 (94 years)
John Malcolm MacEachran was a Canadian philosopher and psychologist, whose most notable credentials involved the development of the Psychology and Philosophy Department at the University of Alberta. He was a co-founder of the Canadian Psychological Association and the appointed Chairman of the Alberta Eugenics Board which was responsible for approving the sterilization of thousands of Albertans, hundreds of which were without consent.
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Conrad Willgerodt
1841 - 1930 (89 years)
Conrad Heinrich Christoph Willgerodt was a German chemist who first described the Willgerodt reaction. Alongside the Willgerodt reaction, he had also discovered Iodosobenzene and chlorobutanol. As for his career, Conrad Willgerodt was a professor at the University of Freiburg.
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William Hodgson Ellis
1845 - 1920 (75 years)
William Hodgson Ellis was a Professor of Applied Chemistry from 1878, and Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering in the University of Toronto from 1914, until his retirement in 1919.
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Enos Luther Brookes
1891 - 1944 (53 years)
Enos Luther Brookes was a chemist, academic, and activist for civil rights in the United States. He was born in Jamaica, then a British colony. Early life and education Born in Jamaica, his father was school teacher James M. Brookes and his mother Martha Brookes. He came to the United States in 1914.
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Helen Lewis
1896 - Present (129 years)
Helen Geneva Lewis was an American chemist. Early life and education Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Lewis attended Mount Holyoke College for her undergraduate education and earned her degree in 1921. She then moved to Yale University as an honorary scholar, and earned her Ph.D. in 1923. She pursued postgraduate education at the University of Paris from 1926 to 1927 and at Claremont College in 1928.
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Ji Yufeng
1899 - 1982 (83 years)
Ji Yufeng was a Chinese chemist. He was a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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Mary Foster
1865 - 1960 (95 years)
Mary Louise Foster was an American biochemist, research chemist and educator. Education Mary Louise Foster was born on April 20, 1865, in Melrose, Massachusetts. Between the years of 1878–1883, she attended the Girls' Latin School in Boston, Massachusetts, and later went on to study Classics at Smith College from 1888 to 1891. After her graduation, Foster taught Chemistry and Physics at West Roxbury High School while enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston . In 1912, she received her master's degree from Smith, and two years later earned her PhD from the University of Chicago.
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Hans Goldschmidt
1861 - 1923 (62 years)
Johannes Wilhelm "Hans" Goldschmidt was a German chemist notable as the discoverer of the Thermite reaction. He was also co-owner of the Chemische Fabrik Th. Goldschmidt, as of 1911 Th. Goldschmidt AG and its most important chemist. The reaction, also called the Goldschmidt process, is used for thermite welding, often used to join railway tracks. Thermites have also been used in metal refining, disabling munitions, and in incendiary weapons. Some thermite-like mixtures are used as pyrotechnic initiators in fireworks.
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Jean-Louis-Alexandre Herrenschneider
1760 - 1843 (83 years)
Jean-Louis-Alexandre Herrenschneider was a philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, physicist, meteorologist and lawyer. Early life and family He was born in Gaugrehweiler in the Rhineland Palatinate to Marguerite Salomé Walter and Jean Herrenschneider. His father was a grammar-school principal, then a protestant court pastor and ecclesiastical inspector for Carl Magnus von Rheingrafenstein, the last count of the Gaugrehweiler line. In 1773, in a murder attempt on his father, his ten-year-old sister was shot to death as the family sat to dinner; his father was badly injured; his beloved siste...
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John R. Park
1833 - 1900 (67 years)
John Rockey Park was a prominent educator in the Territory and State of Utah in the late 19th century, and in many ways was the intellectual father of the University of Utah. Educating "intelligent, industrious and moral" citizens There is a statue of John Rockey Park in an alcove just to the left of the west entrance to the University of Utah main administration building which bears his name. There is a plaque fixed to the base of the statue. The plaque lists biographical dates and statistics from Park's life and career, and then repeats the following quote from an 1885 speech he gave to f...
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Patrick Forbes
1776 - 1847 (71 years)
Patrick Forbes was a Scottish minister who served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for the period 1829 to 1830. He was Professor of Humanities and Chemistry at the University of Aberdeen.
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Derek Leaver
1929 - 1990 (61 years)
Derek Leaver FRSE MRSC ARIC was a 20th-century British chemist. Life He was born on 16 May 1929 in Lancashire. He was educated at Nelson Grammar School then studied science at the University of Leeds graduating with a BSc in 1949. He completed his postgraduate doctorate in 1953. He then served two years National Service, 1953 to 1955.
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