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.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,
#651
Robert Haszeldine
#58551
Overall Influence
1925 - 2016 (91 years)
Robert Neville Haszeldine FRS, FRSC was a British chemist. He is best known for his contributions to organofluorine chemistry, such as the discovery/invention of triflic acid. Life He was educated at Stockport Grammar School and the University of Birmingham. Moving to the University of Cambridge he rose to Assistant Director of Research, before becoming Professor of Chemistry and Principal of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.
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Lorenz S. Cederbaum
#56380
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Lorenz Cederbaum is a German physical chemist. He studied physics at the University of Munich and obtained his diplome in 1970, his Ph.D. in 1972 under Georg Hohlneicher, and habilitation in 1976. He was professor at the University of Freiburg before becoming professor for theoretical chemistry at the University of Heidelberg in 1979.
Go to Profile#653
Anatoly V. Oleynik
#27679
Overall Influence
Anatoly Vasilievich Oleynik, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Nizhni Novgorod. Currently serving as the scientific supervisor for the photochemistry lab as well as the v-rector for the University for scientific research at University of Nizhni Novgorod, Russia.
Go to Profile#654
Gary H. Posner
#56057
Overall Influence
1943 - 2018 (75 years)
Gary H. Posner was Scowe Professor of Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Posner is known for his pioneering research in organocopper chemistry, including his involvement in the development of the Corey–House–Posner–Whitesides reaction.
Go to Profile#655
Florian Holsboer
#60152
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
#656
Lester Andrews
#55610
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
William Lester Self Andrews is an American chemist who makes contributions to the ongoing development of quantum chemistry of metallic complexes. He is the Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Virginia. He won the Earle K. Plyler Prize for Molecular Spectroscopy in 2010 for "vibrational spectroscopy in cryogenic matrices that combined with quantum calculations, has led to the identification and characterization of many molecules, ions, and complexes across the periodic table".
Go to Profile#657
Makoto Fujita
#59860
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
is a Japanese chemist who specializes in supramolecular coordination chemistry. Overviews He is a professor in the Department of Applied Chemistry at the University of Tokyo. He has published extensively on the multicomponent assembly of large coordination cages. Compounds designed and prepared in his research group are variously described as three-dimensional synthetic receptors, coordination assemblies, molecular paneling, molecular flasks, crystalline sponges, and coordination capsules.
Go to Profile#658
Frank Stillinger
#57058
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (91 years)
Frank H. Stillinger is an American theoretical chemist and a namesake of the Lubachevsky–Stillinger algorithm. He has recently collaborated with research groups as a senior scientist at Princeton University.
Go to Profile#659
Peter Murray-Rust
#23993
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Peter Murray-Rust is a chemist currently working at the University of Cambridge. As well as his work in chemistry, Murray-Rust is also known for his support of open access and open data. Education He was educated at Bootham School, a private school in York, and at Balliol College, Oxford. After obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy with a thesis entitled A structural investigation of some compounds showing charge-transfer properties, he became lecturer in chemistry at the University of Stirling and was first warden of Andrew Stewart Hall of Residence. In 1982, he moved to Glaxo Group Research at G...
Go to Profile#660
Joachim Maier
#60347
Overall Influence
#661
Alois Fürstner
#33993
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Alois Fürstner is an Austrian chemist. He is director of Organometallic Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim, Germany. He has been awarded the Leibniz Prize , the Royal Society of Chemistry's Centenary Prize , the Heinrich Wieland Prize , the , the Janssen Prize for Creativity in Organic Synthesis , the , and the Gay-Lussac Humboldt Prize . He was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2002.
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Jan Boldingh
#42077
Overall Influence
1915 - 2003 (88 years)
Jan Boldingh was a noted Dutch chemist. Boldingh studied chemistry at Utrecht University. He received a PhD in 1942 for his thesis 'Synthetische onderzoekingen over het chromofore systeem van lumi-auxonstudies' on auxines in the group of Fritz Kögl. He worked for a short period at the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium in Eindhoven, but moved to Unilever in 1944 . Between 1952 and 1967, Boldingh and H.A. Boekenoogen lead the laboratory together, but after 1967 Boldingh lead the laboratory by himself until his retirement in 1980. From 1964 on, Boldingh served simultaneously as a professor Organ...
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John Shipley Rowlinson
#60510
Overall Influence
#664
Gerd Wedler
#60520
Overall Influence
1929 - 2008 (79 years)
Gerd Wedler was a German chemist. Life After graduating from high school in 1949 in his native city of Brunswick, Wedler began his studies in chemistry at the Braunschweig University of Technology. With his thesis "On the mechanism of decay formic acid on nickel contact", he laid the foundations for the exploration of the primary steps of the heterogeneous catalysis. In 1966, he took a chair at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and was appointed full professor at the Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry.
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Juan de Dios Guevara
#55369
Overall Influence
1910 - 2000 (90 years)
Juan de Dios Guevara Romero was a Peruvian chemist. He received numerous awards, including the Cross of the Order of King Alfonso X from the Spanish government. Biography In 1931, Guevara joined the Faculty of Sciences of the National University of San Marcos, but in 1932 studied at the School of Chemistry and Pharmacy of Peru.
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Bert Weckhuysen
#54079
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Bert Marc Weckhuysen FRSC is a professor of inorganic chemistry and catalysis at Utrecht University, originally from Belgian descent. Weckhuysen is best known for his developments in operando spectroscopy; imaging catalysis at macro, meso and micro scales, from the reactor down to interactions between single atoms and molecules. He was a winner of the 2013 Spinoza Prize, and was knighted in the Order of the Netherlands Lion in 2015.
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Martin Suhm
#56700
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Martin A. Suhm , is a German chemist and spectroscopist; he completed a Ph.D. thesis on the far infrared spectroscopy at ETH Zürich in 1990; he is a professor at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the University of Göttingen since 1997 who is active in the field of intermolecular interactions studies; he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2012.
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Michael E. Jung
#45496
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Michael E. Jung is a Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California at Los Angeles. Michael Jung was born May 14, 1947, in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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Armin Stromberg
#51442
Overall Influence
1910 - 2004 (94 years)
Armin Stromberg was a Russian electrochemist, who is most famous of his works in classic polarography and stripping voltammetry. Stromberg published around 470 papers, around half of them in academic journals, mainly in Russian; and a popular textbook for students called 'Physical Chemistry', also in Russian.
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Alan West Brewer
#51066
Overall Influence
1915 - 2007 (92 years)
Alan West Brewer was a Britanno-Canadian physicist and climatologist. Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and raised in Derby, England, he earned a scholarship to study physics at the University College London. He received his M.Sc. there, and began to work for the Met Office in 1937. During World War II, he researched contrails for the Royal Air Force, making the discovery that the stratosphere is much drier than had been presumed. Later this observation led to the development of Brewer-Dobson circulation. Brewer worked at the Subdepartment of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, University of Oxford from 1948 until 1962, when he became a professor at University of Toronto.
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Jack Halpern
#50997
Overall Influence
1925 - 2018 (93 years)
Jack Halpern was an inorganic chemist, the Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. Born in Poland, he moved to Canada in 1929 and the United States in 1962.
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Benjamin Cravatt III
#27936
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Benjamin Franklin Cravatt III is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Considered a co-inventor of activity-based proteomics and a substantial contributor to research on the endocannabinoid system, he is a prominent figure in the nascent field of chemical biology. Cravatt was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016. He is Gilula Chair of Chemical Biology, a Cope Scholar, and a Searle Scholar.
Go to Profile#673
A. E. J. Wilson
#61182
Overall Influence
#674
Philip Power
#44085
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Philip Patrick Power is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Davis. He has contributed to the synthesis, structure, and physical and chemical characterization of inorganic and organometallic compounds. His research focuses on low-coordinate main group and transition metal compounds. Much of this work hinges on the use of sterically crowded ligands to stabilize unusual geometries.
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Christoph Steinbeck
#45767
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Christoph Steinbeck is a German chemist and has a professorship for analytical chemistry, cheminformatics and chemometrics at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena in Thuringia. Education Steinbeck received his PhD from the University of Bonn in 1995 for work on LUCY, a software program for structural elucidation from nuclear magnetic resonance correlation experiments. In 2003 he received his habilitation.
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Arndt Simon
#32560
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Arndt Simon is a German inorganic chemist. He was a director at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart. Life Simon studied Chemistry at the University of Münster from 1960-1964. He worked on his doctoral thesis in the group of Harald Schäfer from 1964-1966 and finished his habilitation in 1971. In 1972, he was appointed as an associate professor at the University of Münster. Starting in 1974, he was a member of the Max-Planck Society and one of the directors at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart. Since 1975, he was a honorary professor at the University of Stuttgart.
Go to Profile#677
Bruce Roth
#34316
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Bruce D. Roth is an American organic and medicinal chemist who trained at Iowa State University and the University of Rochester, and, at the age of 32, discovered atorvastatin, the statin-class drug sold as Lipitor that would become the largest-selling drug in pharmaceutical history . His honours include being named a 2008 Hero of Chemistry by the American Chemical Society, and being chosen as the Perkin Medal awardee, the highest honour given in the U.S. chemical industry, by the Society of Chemical Industry, American section in 2013.
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Philip Coppens
#45084
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Philip Coppens was a Dutch-born American chemist and crystallographer known for his work on charge density analysis using X-rays crystallography and the pioneering work in the field of photocrystallography.
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Peter Stilbs
#57939
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Peter Stilbs is an emeritus professor in physical chemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Stilbs earned a master's degree in chemical engineering from the Lund Institute of Technology at Lund University in 1969, and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 1974. He served as a research assistant in physical chemistry at Uppsala University from 1976 to 1982, and as an assistant professor from 1982 to 1986. In 1986 he became full professor in physical chemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. His main fields of research are the techniques and application...
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Aron Kuppermann
#49349
Overall Influence
1926 - 2011 (85 years)
Aron Kuppermann was a professor of chemical physics at California Institute of Technology. The author of more than 200 publications, he is perhaps best known for his work in the application of quantum mechanics to the solution of problems in chemical reaction dynamics and kinetics. Kuppermann and George Schatz completed the first calculation of the dynamics of a chemical reaction in a full 3-dimensional quantum model.
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Jeffrey S. Moore
#50222
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Jeffrey Scott Moore is the Murchison-Mallory Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He has received awards for both teaching and research, and as of 2014, was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. In 2017, he was named director of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois, after serving as Interim Director for one year.
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Masakatsu Shibasaki
#45224
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
is a Japanese chemist. In 1974 he earned his doctorate in chemistry, in the group of Shun’ichi Yamada. He did a post doc with Elias J. Corey at Harvard. He returned to Japan and became a professor in 1977 at Teikyō University and moved to Hokkaidō University 1986. 1983–1986 Shibasaki was a research group leader at the Sagami chemical research center. From 1991 until 2010 he served as professor at Tokyo University. Since 2010 he is representative director of Microbial Chemistry Research Foundation , Tokyo. He is perhaps best known for developing a range of binol based heterobimetallic catalyst...
Go to Profile#683
Georg Brauer
#56425
Overall Influence
1908 - 2001 (93 years)
Georg Karl Brauer was a German chemist. Life Brauer was the son of the chemist Eberhard Brauer and Elisabeth Brauer, a daughter of Wilhelm Ostwald. From 1926 to 1932, Brauer studied in Leipzig and Freiburg. He received his doctorate under supervision of Eduard Zintl in Freiburg in 1933. In 1941, he received is habilitation at the TH Darmstadt. In 1946, he became an extraordinary professor in Freiburg. From 1959 to 1976, he was a full professor. Starting in 1976, he was a emeritus professor.
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Nariman Mehta
#19493
Overall Influence
1920 - 2014 (94 years)
Nariman Bomanshaw Mehta was an Indian-born American organic chemist and pharmacologist who designed, synthesized, and patented the organic compound bupropion, marketed under the name Wellbutrin as an antidepressant and smoking cessation aid.
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Yuan-Pern Lee
#36168
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Yuan-Pern Lee is a Taiwanese chemist. Lee was born on 25 January 1952 in Hsinchu, Taiwan, the youngest of painter Lee Tze-fan's three sons. Lee studied chemistry at National Taiwan University and pursued a doctorate in the subject from the University of California, Berkeley. He began a research career in 1979 at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration before accepting a teaching position at National Tsing Hua University in 1981. Lee was named a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1999, and subsequently considered multiple times for membership in the Academia Sinica. Eventua...
Go to Profile#686
Abraham Nitzan
#12802
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Abraham Nitzan is a professor of chemistry at the Tel Aviv University department of chemical physics and the University of Pennsylvania department of chemistry. Education Abraham Nitzan was born in Tel Aviv. He received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1964, and his master's degree in physical chemistry from the same institute in 1966. His research towards the master's degree, on the radiation chemistry of aqueous solutions, was supervised by Gideon Czapski. During the period of 1966 to 1969, he served in the Israel Defense Forces and in 1972 completed his Ph.D.
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G. Marius Clore
#30287
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
G. Marius Clore MAE, FRSC, FRS is a British-born, Anglo-American molecular biophysicist and structural biologist. He was born in London, U.K. and is a dual U.S./U.K. Citizen. He is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a NIH Distinguished Investigator, and the Chief of the Molecular and Structural Biophysics Section in the Laboratory of Chemical Physics of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He is known for his foundational work in three-dimensional protein and nucleic acid stru...
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Mats Hillert
#29136
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (101 years)
Mats Hillert was a Swedish metallurgist who was an emeritus professor in metallography at the Royal Institute of Technology . Hillert was born in Gothenburg on 28 November 1924. He graduated from Chalmers University of Technology in 1947 with a major in chemical engineering. After finishing his military service, he joined the Swedish Institute for Metals Research in 1948. He investigated his options for postgraduate studies related to his new area, and took additional physics courses at KTH. In 1953, he moved to the United States for postgraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned an Sc.D.
Go to Profile#689
Royce W. Murray
#57213
Overall Influence
1937 - 2022 (85 years)
Royce W. Murray was an American chemist and chemistry professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests were focused on electrochemistry, molecular designs, and sensors. He published over 440 peer-reviewed articles in analytical, physical, inorganic, and materials chemistry, and trained 72 Ph.D students, 16 master’s students, and 58 postdoctoral fellows, 45 of whom have gone on to university faculty positions. He was named a fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2012, and was the inventor on three patents related to surface-modified electrodes.
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Paul Grieco
#61733
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Paul Grieco is an organic chemist at Montana State University. His research focuses on the total synthesis of natural products and the study of solvent effects in various organic reactions. He has received several awards for his work, including the American Chemical Society Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award in 1990 and the ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry in 1991. Among his contributions are two name reactions: the Grieco elimination and the Grieco three-component condensation.
Go to Profile#691
Dieter Fenske
#24318
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Dieter Fenske is a German inorganic chemist. Life Fenske studied chemistry at the University of Münster, received his PhD in 1973 and his Habilitation in 1978. He is Professor for Inorganic chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe and Director at the Institute for Nanotechnology of Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe.
Go to Profile#692
Donald F. Hunt
#36328
Overall Influence
Donald F. Hunt is the University Professor of Chemistry and Pathology at the University of Virginia. He is known for his research in the field of mass spectrometry, he developed electron capture negative ion mass spectrometry. He has received multiple awards for his work including the Distinguished Contribution Award from the American Society for Mass Spectrometry and the Thomson Medal from the International Mass Spectrometry Society.
Go to Profile#693
Maurice Stacey
#35181
Overall Influence
1907 - 1994 (87 years)
Maurice Stacey CBE FRS FRIC was a British chemist who worked alongside Sir Norman Haworth to artificially synthesize Vitamin C. Maurice Stacey was born on 8 April 1907 in Moreton, Shropshire. Stacey was educated at Adams Grammar School, Newport and graduated from Birmingham University with the degrees of BSc, PhD and DSc. Stacey began his career at Birmingham University as a demonstrator in chemistry in 1929. He was leader under Sir Norman Haworth of the Birmingham University team which synthesised Vitamin C in 1932. It was Stacey who personally isolated synthetic vitamin C. Stacey was Beit M...
Go to Profile#694
Johann Mulzer
#28790
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Johann Hermann Wolfgang Mulzer is a German organic chemist, best known for his work in total synthesis. Since 1996, he has been a professor of chemistry at the University of Vienna . Awards 1994 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize1997 Ernst Schering Prize2010 Emil Fischer Medal.
Go to Profile#695
Anna Krylov
#43357
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Anna I. Krylov is the USC Associates Chair in Natural Sciences and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Southern California , working in the field of theoretical and computational quantum chemistry. She is the inventor of the spin-flip method. Krylov is the president of Q-Chem, Inc. and an elected member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, the Academia Europaea, and the American Academy of Sciences and Letters.
Go to Profile#696
A. Hilal Demirbaş
#62405
Overall Influence
#697
Walter Thiel
#60287
Overall Influence
1949 - 2019 (70 years)
Walter Thiel was a German theoretical chemist. He was the president of the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists from 2011. Academic career Thiel studied chemistry at the University of Marburg from 1966 to 1971, where he subsequently obtained his doctorate with Armin Schweig in 1973. After a post-doctoral stint at the University of Texas at Austin with M. J. S. Dewar , he obtained his habilitation from the University of Marburg in 1981. He was appointed Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Wuppertal in 1983 and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Zurich in 1992.
Go to Profile#698
Kensō Soai
#35450
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
is a Japanese organic chemist. He is a university lecturer in the Applied Chemistry Department of Tokyo University of Science. Soai studied at the University of Tokyo, where he received his Ph.D. in 1979 in organic synthesis under Teruaki Mukaiyama and was a fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He conducted his postdoctoral studies with Ernest L. Eliel at the University of North Carolina. In 1981, he became a lecturer at Tokyo University of Science, and was promoted to associate professor and full professor .
Go to Profile#699
Didier Astruc
#59253
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Didier Astruc carried out his studies in chemistry in Rennes. After a Ph. D. with professor R. Dabard in organometallic chemistry, he did post-doctoral studies with professor R. R. Schrock at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the U.S. and later a sabbatical year with professor K. P. C. Vollhardt at the University of California at Berkeley. He became a CNRS Director of research in Rennes, then in 1983 full Professor of Chemistry at the University Bordeaux 1. He is known for his work on electron-reservoir complexes and dendritic molecular batteries, catalyt...
Go to Profile#700
Kōsuke Morita
#24141
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Kōsuke Morita is a Japanese experimental nuclear physicist, known as the leader of the Japanese team that discovered nihonium . He currently holds a joint appointment as a professor at Kyushu University’s Graduate School of Science and as director of the Super Heavy Element Research Group at Riken's Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science.
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