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,
#6451
Paul Lebeau
1868 - 1959 (91 years)
Paul Marie Alfred Lebeau was a French chemist. He studied at the elite École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris . Together with his doctoral advisor Henri Moissan he was working on fluorine chemistry discovering several new compounds, like bromine trifluoride, oxygen difluoride, selenium tetrafluoride and sulfur hexafluoride.
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Gustav Bischof
1792 - 1870 (78 years)
Karl Gustav Bischof was a German chemist, born in Nuremberg. He studied at Erlangen where he became a university lecturer in 1815. In 1819 he was appointed to the position of an extra-Ordinary Professor of Chemistry at Bonn, and in 1822 to that of a full professor. The University of Bonn was a leading center for geologists including Ferdinand von Roemer, Georg August Goldfuss, and Gerhard vom Rath as well as Bischof.
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Samuel Philip Sadtler
1847 - 1923 (76 years)
Samuel Philip Sadtler, Ph.D., LL.D. was an American chemist, and the first president of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in 1908. Life Sadtler was born at Pine Grove, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, the son of a Lutheran minister, and educated at Pennsylvania College , at Lehigh University , at Lawrence Scientific School , and in Europe at the University of Göttingen . As well as his professional activities, he was active in the Lutheran church.
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Agnes Pockels
1862 - 1935 (73 years)
Agnes Luise Wilhelmine Pockels was a German chemist whose research was fundamental in establishing the modern discipline known as surface science, which describes the properties of liquid and solid surfaces and interfaces.
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Arnold Eucken
1884 - 1950 (66 years)
Arnold Thomas Eucken was a German chemist and physicist. He examined the energy states of the Hydrogen atom and contributed to knowledge of the atomic structure. He also contributed to chemical engineering and process control through physical chemistry measurements for applications in industry.
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Amé Pictet
1857 - 1937 (80 years)
Amé Pictet was a Swiss chemist. He discovered the Pictet–Spengler reaction, and the related Pictet–Hubert reaction and Pictet–Gams reaction. Pictet was born in Geneva, studied with August Kekulé at the University of Bonn where he received his Ph.D. in 1879. From 1894 until 1932 he was professor at the University of Geneva. He is credited with publishing the first synthesis of nicotine.
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Wilder Dwight Bancroft
1867 - 1953 (86 years)
Wilder Dwight Bancroft was an American physical chemist. Biography Born in Middletown, Rhode Island, he was the grandson of historian and statesman George Bancroft and great-grandson of Aaron Bancroft. He received a B.A. from Harvard University in 1888, and a Ph.D. from University of Leipzig in 1892, as well as honorary SCDss from Lafayette College and Cambridge University .
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Francis Robert Japp
1848 - 1925 (77 years)
Francis Robert Japp FRS was a British chemist who discovered the Japp-Klingemann reaction in 1887. He was born in Dundee, Scotland, the son of James Japp, a minister of the Catholic Apostolic Church. He graduated from St Andrews with an M.A. in 1868 and entered the University of Edinburgh as a student of law. He left the university because of health problems and stayed in Germany for two years from 1871 until 1873. After returning to England he decided to study chemistry. He started his studies at the University of Heidelberg with Robert Bunsen, where he received his PhD in 1875.
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Johann Georg Anton Geuther
1833 - 1889 (56 years)
Johann Georg Anton Geuther was a German chemist. His work in organic and inorganic chemistry influenced the development of coordination chemistry. Geuther spent most of his academic career at the University of Jena where he discovered ethyl acetoacetate, a key compound for chemical synthesis and for the discovery of tautomerism.
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Charles F. Goodeve
1904 - 1980 (76 years)
Sir Charles Frederick Goodeve was a Canadian chemist and pioneer in operations research. During World War II, he was instrumental in developing the "hedgehog" antisubmarine warfare weapon and the degaussing method for protecting ships from naval mines.
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Lorenz Florenz Friedrich von Crell
1744 - 1816 (72 years)
Lorenz Florenz Friedrich von Crell was a German chemist. In 1778 he started publishing the first periodical journal focusing on chemistry. The journal had a longer title but was known simply as Crell's Annalen.
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Georg Bredig
1868 - 1944 (76 years)
Georg Bredig was a German physical chemist. Bredig was a faculty member at the University of Leipzig and professor of chemistry at Heidelberg ; Technische Hochschule, Zurich ; and Technische Hochschule, Karlsruhe .
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Augustus Matthiessen
1831 - 1870 (39 years)
Augustus Matthiessen, FRS , the son of a merchant, was a British chemist and physicist who obtained his PhD in Germany at the University of Gießen in 1852 with Johann Heinrich Buff. He then worked with Robert Bunsen at the University of Heidelberg from 1853 to 1856. His work in this period included the isolation of calcium and strontium in their pure states. He then returned to London and studied with August Wilhelm von Hofmann from 1857 at the Royal College of Chemistry, and set up his own research laboratory at 1 Torrington Place, Russell Square, London. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1861.
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Fritz Plato
1858 - 1938 (80 years)
Fritz Plato was a German chemist. The unit for specific gravity of liquids, degree Plato, is named after him. Plato made a career as a civil servant in professions related to chemistry and was a civil servant.
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Frederick Augustus Genth
1820 - 1893 (73 years)
Frederick Augustus Ludwig Karl Wilhelm Genth was a German-American chemist, specializing in analytical chemistry and mineralogy. Biography Frederick Augustus Genth was born in Wächtersbach, Hesse-Cassel on May 17, 1820. He studied at the Hanau gymnasium and at the University of Heidelberg, under Justus von Liebig at Giessen, and finally under Christian Gerling and Robert Bunsen at Marburg, where he received the degree of Ph.D. in 1846. For three years he acted as assistant to Bunsen.
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Phoebus Levene
1869 - 1940 (71 years)
Phoebus Aaron Theodore Levene was a Russian-born American biochemist who studied the structure and function of nucleic acids. He characterized the different forms of nucleic acid, DNA from RNA, and found that DNA contained adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine, deoxyribose, and a phosphate group.
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Egon Wiberg
1901 - 1976 (75 years)
Egon Gustaf Martin Wiberg was a German chemist and professor for inorganic chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Life Wiberg studied chemistry at the Technical University of Karlsruhe since 1921 and completed his doctorate in 1927. He was an academic student of Stefan Goldschmidt and wrote his doctoral thesis on "Über den Abbau von Aminosäuren und Dipeptiden durch Hypobromit" . In 1931 he completed his habilitation at the TH Karlsruhe. In 1936 he became an unscheduled professor at the TH Karlsruhe and in 1938 provisional head of the Extraordinariat for Inorganic Chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
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Georg Brandt
1694 - 1768 (74 years)
Georg Brandt was a Swedish chemist and mineralogist who discovered cobalt c. 1735. He was the first person to discover a metal unknown in ancient times. He is also known for exposing fraudulent alchemists operating during his lifetime.
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Josef Goubeau
1901 - 1990 (89 years)
Josef Goubeau was a German chemist. Life and work Goubeau studied chemistry at the University of Munich starting from 1921 and attained a doctorate there 1926 on the atomic weight regulation of the potassiumin the group of Otto Hönigschmid under the supervision of Eduard Zintl. Subsequently, he worked at the University of Freiburg, the mountain academy Clausthal-Zellerfeld, where he made his postdoctoral lecture qualification in 1935 on the Raman effect in analytical chemistry. Starting from 1940 he became a university teacher at the University of Göttingen, and since 1951 professor at the technical University of Stuttgart.
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Andreas Libavius
1555 - 1616 (61 years)
Andreas Libavius or Andrew Libavius was born in Halle, Germany and died in July 1616. Libavius was a renaissance man who spent time as a professor at the University of Jena teaching history and poetry. After which he became a physician at the Gymnasium in Rothenburg and later founded the Gymnasium at Coburg. Libavius was most known for practicing alchemy and writing a book called Alchemia, one of the first chemistry textbooks ever written.
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Vyacheslav Tishchenko
1861 - 1941 (80 years)
Vyacheslav Evgenievich Tishchenko was a Russian chemist, best-known for the development of the Tishchenko reaction. Life and work Tishchenko was born in 1861 in St. Petersburg, where he attended school before undertaking studies at Saint Petersburg State University . He worked in the laboratory of Alexander Butlerov, studying the interaction of paraformaldehyde with hydrohalic acids. Tishchenko graduated in 1884 and worked with Dmitri Mendeleev as a laboratory assistant and lecture assistant.
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Aleksandr Voskresensky
1809 - 1880 (71 years)
Aleksandr Abramovich Voskresensky was a Russian chemist who served as rector of Saint Petersburg Imperial University in 1861–1863 and 1865–1867. Dmitri Mendeleev regarded him as a "grandfather of Russian chemistry". One of his major scientific achievements is the discovery of theobromine, the major alkaloid of cacao beans.
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Heinrich Rose
1795 - 1864 (69 years)
Heinrich Rose was a German mineralogist and analytical chemist. He was the brother of the mineralogist Gustav Rose and a son of Valentin Rose. Rose's early works on phosphorescence were noted in the Quarterly Journal of Science in 1821, and on the strength of these works, he was elected privatdozent at the University of Berlin from 1822, then Professor from 1832.
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William Lewis
1885 - 1956 (71 years)
William Cudmore McCullagh Lewis, FRS was a British chemist and academic. He was Brunner Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Liverpool. Biography He was born in Belfast, the son of linen merchant Edward Lewis and his wife Francis Welsh McCullagh. He was educated at Bangor Grammar School. Co. Down and the Royal University of Ireland, Belfast where he studied physics and chemistry. After gaining an MA degree in 1906, he was a demonstrator for a year and then moved to England to do research in physical chemistry at the University of Liverpool. There he was awarded a scholarship t...
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Carl Theodore Liebermann
1842 - 1914 (72 years)
Carl Theodore Liebermann was a German chemist and student of Adolf von Baeyer. Life Liebermann first studied at the University of Heidelberg where Robert Wilhelm Bunsen was teaching. He then joined the group of Adolf von Baeyer at the University of Berlin where he received his PhD in 1865.
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Max Le Blanc
1865 - 1943 (78 years)
Max Julius Louis Le Blanc was a German physical chemist who worked in the field of electrochemistry, writing an influential textbook in 1895 on the subject which went through several editions. He was a professor at the Technical University of Karlsruhe, later at the Wilhelm Ostwald Institute at Leipzig. He is best known for inventing the hydrogen electrode used for pH measurements. In 1933 he was a signatory to the Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State.
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Ludwig Wilhelmy
1812 - 1864 (52 years)
Ludwig Ferdinand Wilhelmy was a German scientist who is usually credited with publishing the first quantitative study in chemical kinetics. Scientific work Wilhelmy studied at Heidelberg, earning a doctorate in 1846. He worked as a Privatdozent from 1849 to 1854 before moving to Berlin.
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Daniel Vorländer
1867 - 1941 (74 years)
Daniel Vorländer was a German chemist who synthesized most of the liquid crystals known until his retirement in 1935. Vorländer was born in Eupen in Rhenish Prussia. He studied chemistry at Kiel, Munich, and Berlin, after which he became a professor at University of Halle-Wittenberg.
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Adolf Karl Ludwig Claus
1838 - 1900 (62 years)
Adolf Karl Ludwig Claus was a German chemist. He is known for his structure of benzene proposed in 1867. Life Claus was born in 1838 in Kassel, Germany. Starting from 1850, he studied medicine in Marburg and later chemistry at the University of Marburg, with Hermann Kolbe. After spending a short time at the University of Berlin, he worked with Friedrich Wöhler at the University of Göttingen. He received his PhD in 1862, and in the same year changed his position and started working at the University of Freiburg. He completed his habilitation in 1866 and became assistant professor in the following year.
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Adolf Sieverts
1874 - 1947 (73 years)
Adolf Ferdinand Sieverts was a German chemist, best known for his work on solubility of gases in metals. He originated Sieverts's law. He was a doctoral student of Otto Wallach.
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Charles Edward Munroe
1849 - 1938 (89 years)
Charles Edward Munroe was an American chemist, discoverer of the Munroe effect, and chair of the department of chemistry at the George Washington University. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and studied at the Lawrence scientific school of Harvard, graduating in 1871. He then took a job as an assistant professor of chemistry at the college until 1874, when he moved to Annapolis to become a professor of chemistry at the United States Naval Academy.
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Francesco Giordani
1896 - 1961 (65 years)
Francesco Giordani was an Italian research chemist and scientist. Biography Born in Naples, the son of a municipal engineer, in 1914 Giordani showed his early interest for the sciences releasing a study of aerodynamic in a local scientific journal. In 1918 he graduated in chemistry at the University of Naples and began to devote himself to electrochemistry, particularly focusing his researches on chlor-alkali electrolysis. He is best known as the inventor of the theory of electrolytic diaphragm and the circulation of alkaline chloride, which eventually led to the invention of the Giordani-Pom...
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Charles Lee Reese
1862 - 1940 (78 years)
Charles Lee Reese was an American chemist and chemical director of DuPont serving from 1911 to 1924. Early life Reese was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1862. He attended the University of Virginia for his undergraduate career. Upon graduation he was admitted to the University of Heidelberg in Heidelberg, Germany in 1884. While attending Heidelberg he was a student of Robert Bunsen. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1886.
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Heinrich Dreser
1860 - 1924 (64 years)
Heinrich Dreser was a German chemist responsible for the aspirin and heroin projects at Bayer AG. He was also a key figure in creating the widely used modern drug codeine. Dreser was born in Darmstadt, Grand Duchy of Hesse.
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Heinrich Hlasiwetz
1825 - 1875 (50 years)
Heinrich Hlasiwetz was an Austrian chemist born in Reichenberg, Bohemia. Son of a pharmacist, he studied at the University of Jena, where his instructors included Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner , Heinrich Wilhelm Ferdinand Wackenroder and Matthias Jakob Schleiden . Later he studied under Josef Redtenbacher in Prague. In 1848 he earned the diploma of Magister Pharmacia, and during the following year received his doctorate in chemistry.
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Albert Fredrick Ottomar Germann
1886 - 1976 (90 years)
Albert Fredrick Ottomar Germann was an American physical chemist, university professor, and chemical entrepreneur. Early life and education Germann was born in Peru, Miami County, Indiana, eldest child of Mary Fredericke Mueller and Gustave Adolph Germann . His only sibling was Frank Erhart Emmanuel Germann , who also became a physical chemist. Albert Germann graduated from Peru High School in 1904. Germann taught in Miami County rural schools while working his way through a chemistry major at Indiana University in Bloomington. He received the A.B. in chemistry in 1909 and the A.M. in chemistry in 1910, both from Indiana University, and the M.Sc.
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Hermann Leuchs
1879 - 1945 (66 years)
Friedrich Hermann Leuchs was a German chemist. Life Leuchs studied chemistry at the University of Munich from 1898. He transferred to the University of Berlin and received his PhD there in 1902 under Emil Fischer. He steadily advanced in the hierarchy of the university, becoming a lecturer in 1910, assistant professor in 1914, and full professor in 1916. The ministry of education assured him that he would succeed Wilhelm Schlenk as head of the chemistry institute of the University of Berlin, but this never happened. His personality became strongly misanthropic. The Nazi regime, World War II a...
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Julius Bredt
1855 - 1937 (82 years)
Julius Bredt was a German organic chemist. He was the first to determine, in 1893, the correct structure of camphor. Bredt also discovered that a double bond cannot be placed at the bridgehead of a bridged ring system, a statement now known as Bredt's rule.
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Jnan Chandra Ghosh
1894 - 1959 (65 years)
Sir Jnan Chandra Ghosh or Jnanendra Chandra Ghosh was an Indian chemist best known for his contribution to the development of scientific research, industrial development and technology education in India. He served as the director of the newly formed Eastern Higher Technical Institute in 1950, which was renamed as IIT Kharagpur in 1951. He was also the director of the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore and Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta.
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Albert Atterberg
1846 - 1916 (70 years)
Albert Mauritz Atterberg was a Swedish chemist and agricultural scientist who created the Atterberg limits, which are commonly referred to by geotechnical engineers and engineering geologists today. In Sweden he is equally known for creating the Atterberg grainsize scale, which remains the one in use.
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James Finlay Weir Johnston
1796 - 1855 (59 years)
James Finlay Weir Johnston, FRS FRSE was a Scottish agricultural chemist and mineralogist. Life Born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Johnston was educated at University of Glasgow, where he studied Theology and graduated MA.
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Mathieu Orfila
1787 - 1853 (66 years)
Mathieu Joseph Bonaventure Orfila was a Spanish toxicologist and chemist, the founder of the science of toxicology. Role in forensic toxicology If there is reason to believe that a murder or attempted murder may have been committed using poison, a forensic toxicologist is often engaged to examine pieces of evidence such as corpses and food items for poison content. In Orfila's time the primary type of poison in use was arsenic, but there were not any reliable ways of testing for its presence. Orfila created new techniques, refined existing techniques and described them in his first treatise,...
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Richard Barry Bernstein
1923 - 1990 (67 years)
Richard Barry Bernstein was an American physical chemist. He is primarily known for his research in chemical kinetics and reaction dynamics by molecular beam scattering and laser techniques. He is credited with having founded femtochemistry, which laid the groundwork for developments in femtobiology. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1970. Among his awards were the National Medal of Science and the Willard Gibbs Award, both in 1989.
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John Newlands
1837 - 1898 (61 years)
John Alexander Reina Newlands was a British chemist who worked concerning the periodicity of elements. Biography Newlands was born in London in England, at West Square in Southwark, the son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister and his Italian wife.
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Otto Dimroth
1872 - 1940 (68 years)
Otto Dimroth was a German chemist. He is known for the Dimroth rearrangement, as well as a type of condenser with an internal double spiral, the Dimroth condenser. His son Karl Dimroth was also a renowned chemist, who described the first synthesis of 3-benzoxepin.
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Edgar Fahs Smith
1854 - 1928 (74 years)
Edgar Fahs Smith was an American scientist who is best known today for his interests in the history of chemistry. He served as provost of the University of Pennsylvania from 1911 to 1920, was deeply involved in the American Chemical Society and other organizations, and was awarded the Priestley Medal in 1926.
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William Justin Kroll
1889 - 1973 (84 years)
See also German classic philologist, Wilhelm Kroll . William Justin Kroll was a Luxembourgish metallurgist. He is best known for inventing the Kroll process in 1940, which is used commercially to extract metallic titanium from ore.
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Friedrich Ludwig Knapp
1814 - 1904 (90 years)
Friedrich Ludwig Knapp was a German chemist. He was the father of economist Georg Friedrich Knapp and the grandfather of social reformer Elly Heuss-Knapp. Biography He trained as a pharmacist in Darmstadt, then studied chemistry under Justus von Liebig at the University of Giessen . He worked at the mint in Paris as an assayer, and in 1841 became an associate professor of technology at Giessen. From 1847 to 1853 he was a full professor at the university, then relocated to Munich, where he became a technical director at the Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory. In 1863 he went to Brunswick to te...
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Pierre Macquer
1718 - 1784 (66 years)
Pierre-Joseph Macquer was an influential French chemist. He is known for his Dictionnaire de chymie . He was also involved in practical applications, to medicine and industry, such as the French development of porcelain. He worked as a chemist in industries, such as the Manufacture de Sèvres or the Gobelins Manufactory. He was an opponent of Lavoisier's theories. The scholar Phillipe Macquer was his brother.
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Johannes Martin Bijvoet
1892 - 1980 (88 years)
Johannes Martin Bijvoet was a Dutch chemist and crystallographer at the van 't Hoff Laboratory at Utrecht University. He is famous for devising a method of establishing the absolute configuration of molecules. In 1946, he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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