The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,
#6451
Thomas Stewart Traill
1781 - 1862 (81 years)
Thomas Stewart Traill was a British physician, chemist, meteorologist, zoologist and scholar of medical jurisprudence. He was the grandfather of the physicist, meteorologist and geologist Robert Traill Omond FRSE .
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Elizabeth Herriott
1882 - 1936 (54 years)
Elizabeth Maude Herriott was a New Zealand scientist and academic. She was the first woman appointed to the permanent teaching staff at Canterbury College, now the University of Canterbury. Education Herriott was born in Canterbury in 1882. Her parents were David and Elizabeth Susannah Herriott. Herriott attended Christchurch East School and Christchurch Girls' High School, where she was head prefect in 1899. She won a scholarship to attend Canterbury College, and studied botany and chemistry there from 1900 to 1905. She graduated with a B.A. in 1904 and a M.A. in 1905. Her Master's research ...
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Ivan Orlov
1886 - 1936 (50 years)
Ivan Efimovich Orlov was a Russian philosopher, a forerunner of relevant and other substructural logics, and an industrial chemist. The date of his death is unknown, but is most likely between 1936 and 1937.
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Olive Wheeler
1886 - 1963 (77 years)
Dame Olive Annie Wheeler, DBE was a Welsh educationist and psychologist, and Professor of Education at University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, now Cardiff University. Early life Born at the High Street in Brecon, Olive Wheeler was the younger daughter of Annie Wheeler, Poole, and her husband, Henry Burford Wheeler. Henry Wheeler was a master printer and publisher. She attended Brecon County School for Girls. She received an Honours Central Welsh Board Certificate in 1904. She attended University College of Wales, Aberystwyth and graduated with a BSc in Chemistry in 1907, and a MSc in 1911.
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Johann Andreas Scherer
1755 - 1844 (89 years)
Johann Baptist Andreas Ritter von Scherer was an Austrian chemist and botanist. Scherer was born in Prague. He studied chemistry at the universities of Prague and Vienna, receiving his doctorate in 1782. As a student his instructors included botanists Joseph Gottfried Mikan and Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin. In 1797 he became a professor of chemistry at the Theresianum in Vienna, followed by a professorship at the Polytechnic Institute in Prague . From 1807 to 1834 he was a professor of specialized natural history at the University of Vienna.
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John M. Ottaway
1939 - 1986 (47 years)
Prof John Michael Ottaway FRSE FRIC FRSC was a short-lived 20th century British analytical chemist. He was an expert in atomic absorption spectroscopy . Life John Michael Ottaway was born in New Malden on 22 August 1939, the only child of John S. Ottaway and Vera . He studied Chemistry under Professor Bishop at the University of Exeter graduating with honours in 1961. He continued as a postgraduate studying analysis, and gaining his doctorate in 1965. He had begun lecturing in analytical chemistry in 1963 at Exeter and in 1966 began lecturing at the University of Strathclyde. He was promoted...
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Ossian Schauman
1862 - 1922 (60 years)
Julius Ossian Schauman was one of the founders of the Swedish-speaking non-governmental organization Folkhälsan, which provides social welfare and health care services in Finland. He was also the younger brother of Wilhelm Schauman.
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Georg Dedichen
1870 - 1942 (72 years)
Georg Maria Dedichen was a Norwegian chemist. Biography He was born in Modum as a son of physician Hans Gabriel Sundt Dedichen and his wife Caroline Henriette Fredrikke Thaulow . He was a brother of psychiatrist Henrik Dedichen and a maternal grandson of Heinrich Arnold Thaulow. He attended Trondheim Technical School . He continued his studies in Kristiania, Wiesbaden and Kiel.
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Zada Mary Cooper
1875 - 1961 (86 years)
Zada Mary Cooper was an American pharmacist and educator. Biography Born in Quasqueton, Iowa in 1875, Zada Mary Cooper graduated from the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy in 1897 and became a registered pharmacist on March 9 of that year. Beginning as an assistant, she worked at the College of Pharmacy for 45 years, becoming an instructor in 1905, an assistant professor in 1912, and an associate professor in 1942.
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David Templeton Gibson
1899 - 1985 (86 years)
David Templeton Gibson FRSE was a British chemist who spent his entire career at the University of Glasgow. Life He was born in Ireland on 23 November 1899, the son of Thomas Henry Gibson, a barrister, and his wife, Jessie Templeton. He attended Bangor Grammar School then his family moved to Scotland where he attended Ayr Academy from 1910-1917. He then returned to Ireland to study Science at the University of Belfast graduating MSc in 1921. He then went to the University of London for postgraduate studies gaining his first doctorate in 1923.
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Ralph Harper McKee
1874 - 1967 (93 years)
Ralph Harper McKee was a professor at the department of chemical engineering at Columbia University. He was the first person to be awarded a patent for a novel plant. Biography He was born on June 20, 1874, in Missouri to James T. McKee and Mary Frances Ricketts.
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Rosa Bouton
1860 - 1951 (91 years)
Rosa Bouton was an American chemist and professor who organized and directed the School of Domestic Science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1898. Despite the lack of funding, Rosa Bouton worked to provide a course to teach young women about the realms of domestic science. As years passed and the demand for more courses and areas of study emerged, Bouton, as the sole instructor, continued to strengthen and build the department to provide such an education to these women.
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Nellie M. Payne
1900 - 1990 (90 years)
Nellie M. Payne was an American entomologist and agricultural chemist. Her research on insect responses to low temperature had practical agricultural and environmental applications. Early life and education Emily Maria de Cottrell Payne was born in 1900, in Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, daughter of James E. Payne Sr. and Mary Emmeline Cottrell Payne. Her father was superintendent of an agricultural station. She had two brothers, Amos and James. She earned a bachelor's and master's degrees in agricultural chemistry and entomology from the Kansas State Agricultural College, and a Ph.D. in 1925 from the University of Minnesota.
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Karl Arnold
1853 - 1929 (76 years)
Karl Arnold variously Carl Johann Moritz Arnold or Johann Karl Moritz Arnold was a German chemist and mountaineer. He served as Director and briefly as Vice-Chancellor of the Institute of Chemistry at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover. His published works on organic chemistry were of importance to veterinarians, medical students and pharmacists. He was also an accomplished alpinist and chairman of the Hanover section of the German-Austrian Alpine Association.
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Charles Frédéric Kuhlmann
1803 - 1881 (78 years)
Charles Frédéric Kuhlmann was a French chemist who patented the reaction for converting ammonia to nitric acid, which was later used in the Ostwald process. He was both a research scientist and a professor at Université Lille Nord de France. He promoted chemical engineering education for science graduates in Lille and supported the development of École centrale de Lille .
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John Michael Maisch
1831 - 1893 (62 years)
John Michael Maisch was a United States pharmacist, the "father of adequate pharmaceutical legislation." Biography Germany John Michael Maisch was born in Hanau, Germany, the son of Conrad Maisch, a merchant. He received his early education in the free schools of Hanau. When he was 12, his parents apprenticed him to a goldsmith. This only lasted three days since school officials disapproved and demanded his return to academic studies. One of his teachers introduced him to the study of mineralogy and microscopy, and he did practical fieldwork in the Hanau vicinity. He conceived an ambition for a university education.
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Kees Posthumus
1902 - 1972 (70 years)
Kees Posthumus was a Dutch chemist. He was the second rector magnificus of the Eindhoven University of Technology. Biography Kees Posthumus was born in Harlingen, Friesland, as the son of a wholesaler in wood. He attended HBS and then went on to study chemistry at the University of Groningen. He attained his propaedeuse there, whereupon he moved to the University of Leiden to continue his studies. While there he came into contact with Albert Einstein and with Johan Huizinga . Upon gaining his engineering degree he took a teaching position at the Christian HBS in Leiden, while working on his doctorate under prof.dr.
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Henry Stephen
1889 - 1965 (76 years)
Henry Stephen OBE, DSc. was an English chemist known for inventing the Stephen Reaction, a method of deriving aldehydes from nitriles . Career Leonard Henry Nelson Stephen, later known as Henry Stephen, was born at 11 Dalton Terrace, Manchester, son of John Stephen, printer, and Mary Eliza .
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Arthur Vogel
1905 - 1966 (61 years)
Arthur Israel Vogel was a British chemist known for his Chemistry textbooks. He became the head of the chemistry department at Woolwich Polytechnic at the age of 27. Academic career Vogel's first job was at Queen Mary University of London, continuing from his BSc, working with Professor J. R. Partington and achieving an MSc. After a short spell at University College London, he joined Imperial College London and the research school of Sir Jocelyn Field Thorpe. During his time there he received a D.Sc for his research on surface tension, electrochemistry, organic synthesis and sulphur chemist...
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Traill Green
1813 - 1897 (84 years)
Dr. Traill Green M.D., LL.D was a medical doctor, scientist, and educator. Green was actively engaged with the early years of Lafayette College, serving at various times as a professor, trustee, and acting president. He was a civic leader in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he lived most of his life.
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William Garnett
1850 - 1932 (82 years)
Dr. William Garnett was a British professor and educational adviser, specialising in physics and mechanics and taking a special interest in electric street lighting. Early years Garnett was born in Portsea, Portsmouth, England in 1850, the son of William Garnett. In January 1863 he entered the City of London School, where he was a pupil of Thomas Hall. In the May 1866 examination, he obtained the first Royal Exhibition, tenable at the Royal School of Mines and College of Chemistry, and during the winter session, he studied under Dr. Edward Frankland and Professor John Tyndall, but in the following year, resigned the Exhibition and returned to the City of London School.
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David Chapman
1869 - 1958 (89 years)
David Leonard Chapman FRS was an English physical chemist, whose name is associated with the Chapman-Jouguet treatment and the Gouy-Chapman layer . He was a fellow of Jesus College, Oxford for 37 years, and was in charge there of the last college laboratory at the University of Oxford.
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Edward Parrish
1822 - 1872 (50 years)
Edward Parrish was an American pharmacist. He was the first president of Swarthmore College. Biography He was the son of Philadelphia physician Joseph Parrish . He studied at a Friends' school, and graduated from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy in 1842. After a course of training at his brother Dillwyn's shop , in 1843 he purchased a drug store at the northwest corner of Ninth and Chestnut Streets and began his practice. He was elected to membership in the College of Pharmacy in 1843, in 1845 a trustee, and in 1854 secretary of the College. He was appointed professor of materia medica i...
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Hope Winch
1894 - 1944 (50 years)
Hope Constance Monica Winch was an English pharmacist and academic. Biography Winch was born in the vicarage in the village of Brompton, just outside Northallerton in North Yorkshire, where her father Reverend George Winch was vicar of the village's St Thomas' Church. Her mother, Elizabeth Maude Winch was the daughter of Thomas Buston Crofton, also from the village.
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Johann Friedrich Klotzsch
1805 - 1860 (55 years)
Johann Friedrich Klotzsch was a German pharmacist and botanist. His principal work was in the field of mycology, with the study and description of many species of mushroom. Klotzsch was born in Wittenberg. Originally trained as a pharmacist, he later enrolled in pharmaceutical and botanical studies in Berlin. In 1830–32 he was curator of William Jackson Hooker's herbarium at the University of Glasgow. Beginning in 1834 he collected plants in Saxony, Bohemia, Austria, Styria and possibly Hungary. In 1838 he replaced Adelbert von Chamisso as curator and director of the Royal Herbarium in Berli...
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William C. Goggin
1911 - 1988 (77 years)
William C. Goggin was an American chemist, business manager and business theorist, noted for developing the concept of Multidimensional organization at Dow Corning. Biography Born in Alma, Michigan, Goggin obtained his BS in chemistry, Physics and Mathematics at Alma College in 1933, and at the University of Michigan his BS in Electrical Engineering in 1935 and his MS in Electrical Engineering in 1936.
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Kennedy J. P. Orton
1872 - 1930 (58 years)
Kennedy J. P. Orton was a British chemist. Initially he studied medicine at St. Thomas' Hospital, but there he became interested in chemistry and moved to St. John's College, Cambridge. He then obtained a Ph.D. summa cum laude in Heidelberg under Karl von Auwers, before working for a year with Sir William Ramsey at University College, London. He was then lecturer and demonstrator of Chemistry at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, before in 1903 being appointed Professor of Chemistry at University College of North Wales, Bangor, where he headed the department until his death. He was elected a Fellow ...
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Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari
838 - 870 (32 years)
Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari , was a Persian Muslim scholar, physician and psychologist, who produced one of the first Islamic encyclopedia of medicine titled Firdaws al-Hikmah . Ali ibn Sahl spoke Syriac and Greek, the two sources of the medical tradition of Antiquity which had been lost by medieval Europe, and transcribed in meticulous calligraphy. His most famous student was the physician and alchemist Abu Bakr al-Razi . Al-Tabari wrote the first encyclopedic work on medicine. He lived for over 70 years and interacted with important figures of the time, such as Muslim caliphs, governors, and eminent scholars.
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Tom Cottrell
1923 - 1973 (50 years)
Prof Tom Leadbetter Cottrell DSc FRSE was an influential Scottish chemist. He is best remembered as a co-founder and first Principal of the University of Stirling, and founder of the Macrobert Arts Centre in Stirling. He wrote several popular academic textbooks on the subject of chemistry.
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Edmund Załęski
1863 - 1932 (69 years)
Edmund Załęski was a Polish chemist, agrotechnician, and plant breeder. He was a professor at the Agricultural University of Dublany, as well as a professor at Jagiellonian University, where he also served as rector from 1930–1931.
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James Eights
1798 - 1882 (84 years)
James Eights was an American physician, scientist, and artist. He was born in Albany, New York, the son of physician Jonathan Eights and Alida Wynkoop. James also became a physician and was appointed an examiner at a local engineering school which is now known as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
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Warren L. McCabe
1899 - 1982 (83 years)
Warren Lee McCabe was an American Physical Chemist and is considered as one of the founding fathers of the profession of chemical engineering. He is widely known for the eponymous McCabe–Thiele method for analysis of distillation processes and his book, Unit Operations of Chemical Engineering, a major textbook.
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Cyril G. Hopkins
1866 - 1919 (53 years)
Cyril George Hopkins was an American agricultural chemist who initiated the Illinois long-term selection experiment in 1896. He was also noted for his extensive research and writings on the soil of Illinois.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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Dudley Maurice Newitt
1894 - 1980 (86 years)
Dudley Maurice Newitt FRS was a British chemical engineer who was awarded the Rumford Medal in 1962 in recognition of his 'distinguished contributions to chemical engineering'. Newitt was born in London and started working as an assistant chemist for Nobel in Scotland. In the First World War, he served in the East Surrey Regiment and was awarded the Military Cross.
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Denis Jordan
1914 - 1982 (68 years)
Denis Oswald Jordan AO FAA FRACI was an Anglo-Australian chemist with a distinguished career as a researcher and lecturer in Chemistry at both University College Nottingham and the University of Adelaide, where he was Angas Professor of Chemistry from 1958 to 1982. Jordan also served as president of Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering from 1958 to 1962, and Royal Australian Chemical Institute from 1978 to 1979.
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Charles L. Christ
1916 - 1980 (64 years)
Charles Louis Christ was an American scientist, geochemist and mineralogist. Education He received his Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees from the Johns Hopkins University, completing his Ph.D. in 1940.
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George Barger
1878 - 1939 (61 years)
George Barger FRS FRSE FCS LLD was a British chemist. Life He was born to an English mother, Eleanor Higginbotham, and Gerrit Barger, a Dutch engineer in Manchester, England. He was educated at Utrecht and The Hague High School. He subsequently attended King's College, Cambridge for his undergraduate degree and University College London to do a doctorate of science. His main work focused on the study of alkaloids and investigations of simple nitrogenous compounds of biological importance. Barger identified tyramine as one of the compounds responsible for the biological activity of ergot extracts.
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John Masson Gulland
1898 - 1947 (49 years)
John Masson Gulland was a Scottish chemist and biochemist. His main work was on nucleic acids, morphine and aporphine alkaloids. His work at University College Nottingham on electrometric titration was important in leading to the discovery of the DNA double helix by James Watson and Francis Crick, and he was described as "a great nucleic acid chemist." He established the Scottish Seaweed Research Association and the Lace Research Council.
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Hans Meerwein
1879 - 1965 (86 years)
Hans Meerwein was a German chemist. Several reactions and reagents bear his name, most notably the Meerwein–Ponndorf–Verley reduction, the Wagner–Meerwein rearrangement, the Meerwein arylation reaction, and Meerwein's salt.
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Gregory P. Baxter
1876 - 1953 (77 years)
Gregory Paul Baxter was an American chemist notable for his work on atomic weights. Biography Born in Somerville, Massachusetts, Baxter became an instructor in chemistry at Harvard in 1897. Dr Baxter served as chairman of the Harvard Chemistry Department from 1911 to 1932. In 1925 he assumed the Theodore William Richards Professorship, which he held until his retirement in 1944.
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Morris Sugden
1919 - 1984 (65 years)
Sir Theodore Morris Sugden FRS, was a British chemist who specialised in combustion research. Biography Theodore Morris Sugden was born in the village of Triangle, the only child of Florence and Frederick Morris Sugden, a clerk in a mill. After attending Sowerby Bridge and District Secondary School he gained an open scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge in 1938, where he read chemistry and was awarded a First in 1940. That year he began research under physicist W C Price on the measurement of precise ionization potentials of molecules. He later switched to working with R G W Norrish for ...
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David A. Frank-Kamenetskii
1910 - 1970 (60 years)
David Albertovich Frank-Kamenetskii was a Soviet theoretical physicist and chemist, professor and doctor of physical, chemical and mathematical sciences. He developed the thermal explosion theory, worked on plasma physics problems and in astrophysics.
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J. A. F. Rook
1926 - 1987 (61 years)
John Allan Fynes Rook CBE FRSE FIB FRIC was a 20th-century British chemist connected to the British dairy industry. He was President of the British Society of Animal Production 1982/83. Life He was born on 1 May 1926 the son of Edward Fynes Rook, near Scarborough in North Yorkshire. He was educated at Scarborough High School for Boys, then studied Chemistry at the University of Wales graduating BSc in 1947. He then won an Agricultural Research Council scholarship to do further postgraduate studies.
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William Mansfield Clark
1884 - 1964 (80 years)
William Mansfield Clark was an American chemist and professor at the Johns Hopkins University. He studied oxidation-reduction reactions and was a pioneer of medical biochemistry. Clark was born in Tivoli, New York, in a clergy family and studied at Hotchkiss School and Williams College before entering Johns Hopkins University, where he received a PhD in chemistry under H.N. Morse with a dissertation on A contribution to the investigation of the temperature coefficient of osmotic pressure: a redetermination of the osmotic pressures of cane sugar at 20°. He then worked on dairy bacteriology in ...
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Barnet Woolf
1902 - 1983 (81 years)
Barnet Woolf FRSE was a 20th-century British scientist, whose disciplines had a broad scope. He made lasting contributions to biochemistry, genetics, epidemiology, nutrition, public health, statistics, and computer science. His name appears in the Hanes-Woolf plot: a mathematical plotting of chemical reaction times.
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Roscoe G. Dickinson
1894 - 1945 (51 years)
Roscoe Gilkey Dickinson was an American chemist, known primarily for his work on X-ray crystallography. As professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology , he was the doctoral advisor of Nobel laureate Linus Pauling and of Arnold O. Beckman, inventor of the pH meter.
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