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
Henry Barker Hill
1849 - 1903 (54 years)
Henry Barker Hill was an American chemist and director of the Chemistry Laboratory at Harvard University. Biography Henry Barker Hill was born in Waltham, Massachusetts on April 27, 1849, the son of the Reverend Thomas Hill, president of Antioch College and Harvard.
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W. Conway Pierce
1895 - 1974 (79 years)
Willis Conway Pierce was an American chemist and professor at Pomona College and in the University of California system. Career Pierce left Georgetown College as a sophomore for New York to serve in the gas defense section of the United States Army Signal Corps. He was in the army from April to December 1918. He subsequently graduated from Georgetown College in 1920. In that same year, he began teaching at the University of Kentucky and later at the University of South Dakota. He stayed on at the University of Chicago after receiving his Ph.D. to teach quantitative analysis. During this time he co-authored seminal chemistry textbook Quantitative Analysis with Edward Lauth Haenisch.
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David Ginsburg
1920 - 1988 (68 years)
David Ginsburg was an Israeli research pioneer in the synthetic organic chemistry industry. He was born in New York City. At the age of 13 he immigrated to mandatory Palestine. Research Ginsburg’s main topic of research – that caused some international hype and controversy was the structure of natural products and the total synthesis of morphine. He was also involved heavily in the biosynthesis of alkaloids and insulation materials. He contributed to the first studies of Bfronflnim and the application of mass spectroscopy as well as the study of soapy structure.
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Irvine Masson
1887 - 1962 (75 years)
Sir James Irvine Orme Masson FRS FRSE MBE LLD , generally known as Irvine Masson, was an Australian-born chemist of Scots descent who was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield from 1938 to 1953. He is usually referred to in documents as J. I. O. Masson.
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Francis Humphreys Storer
1832 - 1914 (82 years)
Francis Humphreys Storer was an American chemist known for his work in agricultural chemistry. He studied under Josiah Parsons Cooke at the Lawrence Scientific School . He later was professor of general and industrial chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1865 to 1870, and dean of the Bussey Institution at Harvard University from 1870 to 1907. At MIT he co-authored with Charles W. Eliot the first Laboratory Manual of Inorganic Chemistry written in the English language. Storer's father was David H. Storer, a prominent physician and naturalist, and his older brother was Horatio R.
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Haruthiun Abeljanz
1849 - 1921 (72 years)
Haruthiun Tigran Abeljanz was a Swiss-Armenian chemist. Biography Abeljanz was born in the village of Vardablur, in what is now Armenia's Lori Province. He first studied in Heidelberg, then enrolled in the Philosophical Faculty II of the University of Zurich for chemistry in the summer semester of 1869. He passed his final examination on 27 November 1871 and was granted his PhD on 27 February 1872, with Johannes Wislicenus as his doctoral adviser, on the basis of his dissertation, Über den Bichloräther. In 1873 he completed his postdoctoral degree at the University of Zurich and subsequently ...
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Sven Gustaf Hedin
1859 - 1933 (74 years)
Sven Gustaf Hedin was a Swedish chemist and physiologist credited with the discovery of histidine. He was born in Alseda parish, Jönköping County. He began his studies in 1878 and received his bachelor's degree in 1881 at Uppsala University. In 1886 he received his doctorate in philosophy and doctorate of medicine in 1893 in Lund and docent in chemistry in 1886 and became a researcher there in 1895. From 1900 to 1907 he was made head of the pathological chemistry division at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine in London, and professor of medicinal and physiological chemistry at Uppsala University in 1908.
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August Friedrich Horstmann
1842 - 1929 (87 years)
August Friedrich Horstmann was a German physical chemist who contributed to a thermodynamic understanding of chemical reactions and equilibria. His mathematical approach published in 1873 was largely overshadowed by the independent and identical findings of Josiah Willard Gibbs made about three years later.
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Kathryn Grove Shipp
1904 - 1977 (73 years)
Kathryn Grove Shipp was an American organic chemist, a specialist in explosives, affiliated with the Naval Ordnance Laboratory from 1957 to 1970. In 1967, she was one of the six recipients of the Federal Woman's Award.
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Alexander Naumann
1837 - 1922 (85 years)
Alexander Nikolaus Franz Naumann was a Prussian and German physical chemist and a professor at the University of Giessen. He was a pioneer of chemical thermodynamics and proposed that molecules reacted when their energy levels exceeded a certain critical level which could be achieved through the provision of heat.
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William Farish
1759 - 1837 (78 years)
William Farish was a British scientist who was a professor of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, known for the development of the method of isometric projection and development of the first written university examination.
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Ernst Hermann Riesenfeld
1877 - 1957 (80 years)
Ernst Hermann Riesenfeld was a German/Swedish chemist. Riesenfeld started his academic career with important contributions in electrochemistry by the side of his mentor Walther Nernst, and continued as a professor with work on the improvement of analytical techniques and the purification of ozone. Dismissed and prosecuted in Nazi Germany due to his Jewish origins, he emigrated to Sweden in 1934 and continued his ozone-related work there until retirement.
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Jenara Vicenta Arnal Yarza
1902 - 1960 (58 years)
Jenara Vicenta Arnal Yarza , was the first woman to hold a Ph.D. in chemistry in Spain. She was noted for her work in electrochemistry and her research into the formation of fluorine from potassium biflouride. In later years, she was recognized for her contribution to the pedagogy of teaching science on the elementary and secondary levels, with a focus on the practical uses of chemistry in daily life. She was awarded a national honor, the Orden Civil de Alfonso X el Sabio.
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Józef Kępiński
1917 - 1981 (64 years)
Józef Kępiński was a Polish engineer, chemist and university professor. A graduate of the Warsaw University of Technology, he specialised in chemical engineering and process engineering. Between 1965 and 1975 he was the rector of the Szczecin University of Technology. Kępiński was also a member of the Polish Chemical Society, the Polish Academy of Sciences and Polish Federation of Engineering Associations.
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Charles A. Joy
1823 - 1891 (68 years)
Charles Arad Joy was a United States chemist. Biography He was born in Ludlowville, New York. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1847. During the same year, he was appointed on the U.S. Geological Survey of the Lake Superior region, under Josiah D. Whitney and Charles T. Jackson. Subsequently, he went to Europe and studied chemistry at Berlin, at Göttingen, where in 1852 he received the degree of doctor of philosophy, and at the Sorbonne in Paris.
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Alexander Lauder
1870 - 1943 (73 years)
Alexander Lauder FRSE FIC was a Scottish agricultural chemist. Life He was born in Greenock in 1870. He studied at the Andersonian College in Glasgow under Professor William Dittmar then at the University of Edinburgh.
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Mary Frances Leach
1858 - 1939 (81 years)
Mary Frances Leach was an American chemist and professor of chemistry and hygiene. Early life and education Leach was born in Payson, Illinois, the daughter of the Reverend Cephas A., and Mary Ann Scarborough Leach. She studied at Mount Holyoke College after a stint as an elementary school teacher in Massachusetts and received her associate degree in 1880. She then moved to Michigan and taught high school in various districts until 1891. In 1893, she received her bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan.
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Henry Clapp Sherman
1875 - 1955 (80 years)
Henry Clapp Sherman was an American food chemist and nutritionist. He was professor of chemistry at Columbia University and a president of the American Society of Biological Chemists. Biography Sherman was born in Ash Grove, Virginia. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from the Maryland Agricultural College in 1893, a Master of Science degree from Columbia University in 1896 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1897. From 1899 until his retirement he was a faculty member in the department of chemistry at Columbia University and professor of food chemistry. He was executive officer of th...
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James Freeman Dana
1793 - 1827 (34 years)
James Freeman Dana was an American chemist. Biography He graduated from Harvard in 1813, and from the medical school in 1817. He studied with Dr. John Gorham, and developed such ability that in 1815 he was selected by the authorities of Harvard to procure for the chemical laboratory a new outfit of apparatus. For this purpose, he visited London, where for six months he worked in the laboratory of Friedrich Christian Accum.
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Ferdinand Tiemann
1848 - 1899 (51 years)
Johann Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Tiemann was a German chemist and together with Karl Reimer discoverer of the Reimer-Tiemann reaction. Beginning in 1866, Tiemann studied pharmacy at the TU Braunschweig where he graduated in 1869. His professor in Brunswick wrote a letter of recommendation to August Wilhelm von Hofmann at the University of Berlin where Tiemann started as assistant of von Hofmann in 1869. In 1874 Wilhelm Haarmann and Tiemann started a company, after they discovered the synthesis of vanillin from coniferyl alcohol. The vanillin plant Holzminden was not very successful before Karl R...
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Eyvind Bødtker
1867 - 1932 (65 years)
Eyvind Bødtker was a Norwegian chemist. He spent most of his career at the University of Kristiania, where he was a professor from 1918. Personal life He was born in Trondhjem as a son of physician Fredrik Waldemar Bødtker and Sophie Jenssen . He was the brother of theatre critic Sigurd Bødtker, a second cousin of military officer Carl Fredrik Johannes Bødtker, log driving manager Ragnvald Bødtker and County Governor Eivind Bødtker, and a second cousin once removed of banker and art collector Johannes Sejersted Bødtker and radio personality Carl Bødtker. His mother was a daughter of landowne...
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Douglas McKie
1896 - 1967 (71 years)
Prof Douglas McKie FRSE FRIC FSA was a British chemist and science historian. He was a member of the International Academy of the History of Science, the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, and the Society of Apothecaries.
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Harald Thaulow
1815 - 1881 (66 years)
Harald Thaulow was a Norwegian pharmacist. Biography Harald Conrad Thaulow was born in the Duchy of Schleswig, at that time a dominion of the Danish crown. He was the son of Johan Frederik Thaulow and Caroline Henriette Tugendreich Looft . His father was both a military officer and physician. He was a brother of Heinrich Arnold Thaulow and Moritz Christian Julius Thaulow, and a cousin of Henrik Wergeland, Camilla Collett and Joseph Frantz Oscar Wergeland.
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Endre Berner
1893 - 1983 (90 years)
Endre Qvie Berner was a Norwegian organic chemist, author and educator. Background He was born in Stavanger as a son of businessperson Endre Qvie Berner, Sr. and his wife Anna Marie Gjemre . He worked at a workshop after finishing middle school, and enrolled in machinery studies at Bergen Technical School in 1911, but switched to chemistry at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in 1913. He graduated in 1918, and was then hired as research assistant of his advisor Claus Nissen Riiber. In 1922 he was promoted to docent. He studied in Munich in 1922–1923 and 1928, and in Birmingham in 1929....
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Eduard Linnemann
1841 - 1886 (45 years)
Eduard Linnemann was a German chemist. He studied chemistry at the University of Heidelberg and at the University of Karlsruhe. After he received his Ph.D. he worked with Kekulé at the University of Ghent and with Leopold von Pebal at the University of Lemberg. He was appointed professor at the University of Lemberg in 1865, changed to the University of Brno from 1872 until 1875 and then became professor at the University of Prague. He held this position until his death in 1886.
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Henry Bradford Nason
1835 - 1895 (60 years)
Henry Bradford Nason was a United States chemist. Biography His father, Elias Nason , was a manufacturer of straw and cotton goods, a merchant, and served his town, Foxborough, as justice of the peace and as representative in the Massachusetts General Court. The family moved to North Bridgewater when Henry Bradford was 10.
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Karel Wiesner
1919 - 1986 (67 years)
Karel František Wiesner was a Canadian chemist of Czech origin known for his contributions to the chemistry of natural products, notably aconitum alkaloids and digitalis glycosides. Early life and career He was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, into a family of some wealth and notability. His undergraduate education began in 1938 when he enrolled to study natural sciences at Charles University. His studies were interrupted the following year when universities were shuttered under the German occupation. Working under the supervision of at Bulovka Hospital, and in a rudimentary laboratory in th...
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Robert Feulgen
1884 - 1955 (71 years)
Joachim Wilhelm Robert Feulgen was a German physician and chemist who, in 1914, developed a method for staining DNA and who also discovered plant and animal nuclear DNA congeniality.
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Lucius Trant O'Shea
1858 - 1920 (62 years)
Lucius Trant O'Shea was a British chemist and mining engineer; between 1908 and 1920 he acted as the general secretary of the Institution of Mining Engineers of Great Britain. Biography O'Shea was the eldest son of Major R. P. O'Shea; he was also a grandson of admiral Lucius Curtis and a descendant from admiral Lord Rodney. He was educated at the Manchester Grammar School, and completed his chemical training at Owens College. Afterwards he acted as private assistant to C. Schorlemmer, and took part in the research on the constitution of aurine. Later he worked as chemist in an explosives fact...
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Alfred Holmes White
1873 - 1953 (80 years)
Alfred Holmes White was a chemical engineer at the University of Michigan. Biography He was born in Peoria, Illinois to Samuel Holmes White and Jennie McLaren. He married Rebecca Mason Downey on July 28, 1903, and had two children.
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Thomas Stewart Patterson
1872 - 1949 (77 years)
Thomas Stewart Patterson FRSE LLD was a Scottish organic chemist. Early life and education He was born in Greenock, in 1872, but his family came to Edinburgh in his youth and he was then educated at Merchiston Castle School. He then studied Chemistry at Andersonian college in Glasgow under Prof William Dittmar.
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Åke Gerhard Ekstrand
1846 - 1933 (87 years)
Åke Gerhard Ekstrand , was a Swedish chemist and public servant. Ekstrand became a student in Uppsala in 1865, Bachelor of Arts in 1872, Docent in chemistry at Uppsala University in 1875 and the same year Doctor of Philosophy . As Byzantine scholar he studied chemistry 1877–1878 at the University of Zurich and the University of Munich. He was 1879-1889 the commercial chemist in Uppsala, was appointed in 1889 as a teacher at Chalmers educational institution in Gothenburg and was with beginning in 1890 the Technical Officer at the Ministry of Finance control and adjustment bureau, chief engine...
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Christoph Mangold
1719 - 1767 (48 years)
Christoph Andreas Mangold was a German professor of anatomy at the University of Jena, who also studied chemistry. Christoph Mangold received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Erfurt in 1751. He was a member of the Academie der Wissenschaften of Erfurt.
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Samuel Morison Brown
1817 - 1856 (39 years)
Samuel Morison Brown , Scottish chemist, poet and essayist. Life Brown was born at Haddington, East Lothian, the fourth son of Samuel Brown, the founder of itinerating libraries, and grandson of John Brown, author of the Self-Interpreting Bible. In 1832, he entered the university of Edinburgh, where, after studying in Berlin and St. Petersburg, he graduated as MD in 1839.
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Karl August Neumann
1771 - 1866 (95 years)
Karl August Neumann was a German-Austrian chemist, known for contributions made towards the development of the sugar and flax industries in Bohemia. Beginning in 1793 he studied cameralistics at the University of Jena. From 1796 he spent several years as a teacher of commercial sciences on the Danish island of Als, then in 1802 relocated to Bohemia as head of a cotton factory in Josefsthal-Kosmanos. He made the acquaintance of Franz Josef von Gerstner, who in 1807 appointed him to the Polytechnic Institute in Prague, where from 1808 to 1817, Neumann worked as a professor of chemistry. In 1817...
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Theodor Poleck
1821 - 1906 (85 years)
Thomas August Theodor Poleck was a German chemist and pharmacist born in Neisse. He studied at Giessen in the laboratory of Justus von Liebig, and in 1846 travelled to Berlin, where he passed the state examination. Afterwards he worked in his father's pharmacy, and for several years , taught classes at a Realschule in Neisse. In 1867 he succeeded Adolph Ferdinand Duflos as director of the pharmaceutical institute at the University of Breslau. In 1887/88 he was dean of his faculty and in 1888/89 served as rector of the university.
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Arthur Pillans Laurie
1861 - 1949 (88 years)
Prof Arthur Pillans Laurie FRSE LLD was a Scottish chemist who pioneered the scientific analysis of paintings, especially by Rembrandt. He also was a fascist sympathiser who opposed the Second World War.
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Martin J. Kushmerick
#6389
William Henry Chandler
1841 - 1906 (65 years)
William Henry Chandler was an American chemist. Biography William Henry Chandler was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on December 13, 1841, to Charles Chandler and Sarah Whitney. Chandler had two siblings, a brother named Charles, and a sister named Catherine. He was educated at Union College, and from 1862 to 1867 he was a chemist for various companies. From 1868 to 1871 Chandler was an instructor in chemistry at the Columbia School of Mines. He received a Ph.D. from Hamilton College in 1872. In 1871, he became a professor of chemistry at Lehigh University. Chandler was a fellow of the Chemical Society of London, and a member of the Chemical Societies of Paris and New York.
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Aleksander Kocwa
1901 - 1959 (58 years)
Aleksander Kocwa was a Polish chemist, professor of the Jagiellonian University, dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Jagiellonian University and of the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Medical College in Kraków. Arrested during Sonderaktion Krakau, he was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps. After the release he organized secret teaching for students of pharmacy and chemistry in Nazi-occupied Kraków.
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Hans-Werner Wanzlick
1917 - 1988 (71 years)
Hans-Werner Wanzlick was a German chemist. A Professor of chemistry at the Berlin Technical University he is notable for work on persistent carbenes and for proposing the Wanzlick equilibrium between saturated imidazolin-2-ylidenes and their dimerss — which he called "das doppelte Lottchen", after a 1949 novel by Erich Kästner about a pair of mischievous twins.
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Ward V. Evans
1880 - 1957 (77 years)
Ward Vinton Evans was a chemist who served as a professor at Northwestern University and Loyola University Chicago. He was known as one of three members of the commission which revoked the security clearance of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Evans was the only member who voted to allow Oppenheimer to retain his security clearance, stating that failure to clear Oppenheimer would be "a black mark on the escutcheon of our country.".
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Robert Jacobus Forbes
1900 - 1973 (73 years)
Robert Jacobus Forbes or Robert James Forbes was a Dutch chemist and historian of science and professor in the history of applied science and technology at the University of Amsterdam. In his days Forbes was internationally one of the best known and respected historian of technology, and recipient of the first Leonardo da Vinci Medal, the highest award by the Society for the History of Technology .
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Leo Baekeland
1863 - 1944 (81 years)
Leo Hendrik Baekeland was a Belgian chemist. He is best known for the inventions of Velox photographic paper in 1893, and Bakelite in 1907. He has been called "The Father of the Plastics Industry" for his invention of Bakelite, an inexpensive, non-flammable and versatile plastic, which marked the beginning of the modern plastics industry.
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David Masson
1822 - 1907 (85 years)
David Mather Masson , was a Scottish academic, supporter of women's suffrage, literary critic and historian. Biography Masson was born in Aberdeen, the son of Sarah Mather and William Masson, a stone-cutter.
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Gustave Chancel
1822 - 1890 (68 years)
Gustave Charles Bonaventure Chancel was a French chemist who conducted research on organic and analytical chemistry while also examining chemical aspects of wine making. A method for determining the fineness of ground sulphur involves the use of a calibrated tube sometimes called Chancel's Sulphurimeter.
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Jaan Kalviste
1898 - 1936 (38 years)
Jaan Kalviste was an Estonian chemist, mineralogist, educator, and translator. Early life Jaan Kalviste was born Jaan Kranig on Mikko farm in the small village of Läste in present-day Lääne-Viru County to railway worker Ado Kranig and his wife Kadri . He was the second eldest of five siblings. He attended primary school in rural Lehtse Parish before studying at secondary school in Tallinn.
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Sydney Young
1857 - 1937 (80 years)
Sydney Young, FRS was an English chemist. He was born in Farnworth, in Widnes, Lancashire, the son of merchant Edward Young, JP of Liverpool. He was educated at a private school in Southport and the Liverpool Royal Institution school. In 1877, after two years working with his father, he entered Owens College, Manchester, to study chemistry. He was awarded B.Sc. in 1880 and the degree of D.Sc. three years later, while working with William Ramsay at University College, Bristol. There he was involved in the founding of the Chemical Society in 1880.
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Adolf Joszt
1889 - 1957 (68 years)
Adolf Joszt was a Polish chemist, considered to be a significant precursor to the practices of biotechnology and environmental protection.
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