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,
#6501
William Ward Pigman
1910 - 1977 (67 years)
William Ward Pigman was a chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at New York Medical College, and a suspected Soviet Union spy as part of the "Karl group" for Soviet Military Intelligence . Biography He was born on March 5, 1910.
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W. Albert Noyes Jr.
1898 - 1980 (82 years)
William Albert Noyes Jr. , commonly known as W. Albert Noyes Jr., was an American chemist known for his contributions to photochemistry. During World War II, he was a leader in U.S. defense research efforts. He chaired the chemistry department at the University of Rochester, edited several important chemistry journals, and throughout his career was a prominent voice for international scientific cooperation. He was the son of the renowned chemist William A. Noyes; they became the first father-son pair to win the Priestley Medal, the highest honor given by the American Chemical Society.
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George Chapman Caldwell
1834 - 1907 (73 years)
George Chapman Caldwell was an American chemist, horticulturalist, and instructor. Early years Born August 14, 1834, in Framingham, Massachusetts, the son of the Rev. Jacob Caldwell and Mary Ann Patch, in 1851 he matriculated to Harvard University where he studied at the Lawrence Scientific School. After graduating in 1855, he spent two years studying at the laboratory of Friedrich Wöhler in the University of Göttingen, followed by a year at Robert Bunsen's laboratory at Heidelberg. He was awarded a Ph.D. from Göttingen University in 1856.
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Lassar Cohn
1858 - 1922 (64 years)
Lassar Cohn, Lassar-Cohn or Ernst Lassar Cohn was a Prussian chemist and professor at the University of Königsberg who wrote several influential textbooks on organic analysis including methods for the analysis of urine.
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Yuri Ovchinnikov
1934 - 1988 (54 years)
Yuri Anatolievich Ovchinnikov was a Soviet bioorganic chemist. He was elected in 1970 as a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and subsequently became the youngest vice president of the academy in its history . He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1977. He was also president of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies , Director of the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry in Moscow and professor at Moscow State University. From 1972 through to 1984 he served concomitantly as head of the Laboratory of Protein Chemistry at the USSR Academy of Sciences' Institute...
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Conrad Laar
1853 - 1929 (76 years)
Conrad Peter Laar was a German chemist. He coined the expression tautomerism in 1885. He also observed the double bond rule in 1885, stating elements with a principal quantum number greater than 2 for their valence electrons tend not to form multiple bonds.
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Gunnar Blix
1894 - 1981 (87 years)
Fritiof Gunnar Blix was a Swedish chemist and Professor of Medical and Physiological chemistry at the University of Uppsala. He was the son of professor Magnus Blix, father of politician Hans Blix, and grandfather of journalist .
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Andrew Norman Meldrum
1876 - 1934 (58 years)
Andrew Norman Meldrum was a Scottish scientist known for his work in organic chemistry and for his studies of the history of chemistry. It has been claimed that Meldrum's acid "is the only chemical to be named after a Scotsman."
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W. George Parks
1904 - 1975 (71 years)
W. George Parks was a chemist and the second director of the Gordon Research Conferences. Biography Parks was born in Rockwood, Pennsylvania on December 20, 1904. After attending the University of Pennsylvania for his undergraduate degree, he went to Columbia University in New York, where he earned both Master's and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry. His 1931 doctoral thesis was titled "The Activity Coefficients and Heats of Transfer of Cadmium-Sulfate from Electromotive Force Measurements at 25 and 0 Degrees". Upon graduation, Parks accepted a position on the faculty at Rhode Island State College, ...
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Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar
1894 - 1955 (61 years)
#6511
Ralph Sherman Becker
#6512
Charles Anthony Goessmann
1827 - 1910 (83 years)
Charles Anthony Goessmann , known in his native German as Karl Anton Gößmann, was a Massachusetts agricultural and food chemist. Biography Education Goessmann was born in Naumburg, Germany. He was educated at the gymnasium in Fritzlar. After leaving the gymnasium, he became an apprentice pharmacist, and worked as an assistant pharmacist in several towns. He studied under Friedrich Wöhler in the University of Göttingen, where he received the degree of Ph.D. in 1853. From 1852 until 1857, he was assistant in the chemical laboratory, and privatdocent in the university. During this time, he stud...
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Sir John Conroy, 3rd Baronet
1845 - 1900 (55 years)
Sir John Conroy, 3rd Baronet, FRS was an English analytical chemist. Conroy was born in Kensington, west London, the son of Sir Edward Conroy, 2nd Baronet and Lady Alicia Conroy. He was descended from the Ó Maolconaire family of Elphin, County Roscommon. The family had been the hereditary Ollamhs to the O'Connor Kings of Connacht. He was descended from Maoilin Ó Maolchonaire who was the last recognised Chief of the Sept. He was educated at Eton College and then Christ Church, Oxford, also the college of his father, where he read Natural Science, gaining a first class degree in 1868. His tuto...
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Dionýz Ilkovič
1907 - 1980 (73 years)
Dionýz Ilkovič was a Czechoslovak physicist and physical chemist of Rusyn ethnicity. Along with Nobel laureate Jaroslav Heyrovský, he helped to establish theoretical basis of polarography. In this field, he is the author of an important result, the Ilkovic's equation. He was also one of the leading figures in modern university-level physics education in Slovakia.
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John M. Darby
1804 - 1877 (73 years)
John M. Darby was an American botanist, chemist, and academic. He created the first systematic catalogue of flora in the southeastern United States. Biography Darby was born in North Adams, Massachusetts in 1804. At the age of ten, his father died, and he was apprenticed to a fuller. At the age of 23, he entered Williams College, and graduating with an Artium Magister degree from that institution in 1831. After graduation, he was an instructor at Williamstown Academy, and later at Barhamville Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina. In 1841, he published the first compilation of the botany o...
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Charles Upham Shepard
1804 - 1886 (82 years)
Charles Upham Shepard was an American mineralogist. Biography He graduated from Amherst College in 1824, and spent a year in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studying botany and mineralogy with Thomas Nuttall, and at the same time gave instructed on these topics in Boston. The study of mineralogy led to his preparation of papers on that subject which he sent to the American Journal of Science, and in this manner he became acquainted with Benjamin Silliman, the elder. He was invited in 1827 to become Silliman's assistant, and continued so until 1831. Meanwhile, for a year he was curator of Franklin H...
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Christian Friedrich Bucholz
1770 - 1818 (48 years)
Christian Friedrich Bucholz was a German pharmaceutical chemist who is credited with the isolation of the oleoresin capsaicin in a crude form from chilli peppers using solvent extraction in 1816. Life and work Bucholz was born in Eisleben and his father worked as an apothecary. When his father died when he was still five years old, his mother married a pharmacist in Erfurt named Voigt who along with an uncle W.H.S. Bucholz trained the young boy in laboratory techniques. In 1784 he went to apprentice under the Kassel pharmacist Karl Wilhelm Fiedler and in 1794 published his first paper on the crystallization of barium acetate.
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Mary Lura Sherrill
1888 - 1968 (80 years)
Mary Lura Sherrill was recognized for her achievements in chemical research, particularly the synthesis of antimalarial compounds, and for her teaching at Mount Holyoke College. In 1947, she received the Garvan Medal, an award for women in chemistry.
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Robert Hallowell Richards
1844 - 1945 (101 years)
Robert Hallowell Richards was an American mining engineer, metallurgist, and educator, born at Gardiner, Maine. In 1868, with the first class to leave the institution, he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and there he taught for 46 years, becoming professor of mineralogy and assaying in 1871, head of the department of mining engineering in 1873, and in 1884 professor also of metallurgy. The laboratories which he established at the Institute were the first of their kind in the world. He retired in 1914.
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J. Lawrence Smith
1818 - 1883 (65 years)
John Lawrence Smith was an American chemist and mineralogist. He published extensively on analytical chemistry and mineralogy, including Mineralogy and Chemistry, Original Researches . His collection of meteorites was the finest in the United States, and upon his death, he passed it to Harvard. The J. Lawrence Smith Medal is named in his honor.
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William Lofland Dudley
1859 - 1914 (55 years)
William Lofland Dudley was an American chemistry professor at both the University of Cincinnati and Vanderbilt University and an athletics pioneer during the Progressive Era. At Vanderbilt, he was appointed dean of its medical department. He was also once vice-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was notably director of affairs on the Tennessee Centennial Exposition executive committee.
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Johann Trommsdorff
1770 - 1837 (67 years)
Johann Bartholomew Trommsdorff , was a German chemist and pharmacist noted for his 1805 Systematisches Handbuch der Gesammten Chemie ; a work that was published in eight volumes. He was the son of Wilhelm Bernhard Trommsdorff , a pharmacist and a chemistry teacher at the University of Erfurt. His father died when he was twelve, causing the family financial difficulties. In 1784, Johann began work as an apprentice-pharmacist at the Hofapotheke in Weimar under his father's friend Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian Bucholz and Johann Friedrich August Göttling. From 1788, he furthered his education in S...
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Wilhelm Traube
1866 - 1942 (76 years)
Wilhelm Traube was a German chemist. Biography Traube was born at Ratibor in Prussian Silesia, a son of the famous private scholar Moritz Traube. After studying law for a short time, he studied chemistry in Heidelberg, Breslau , Munich and Berlin. Among his tutors were August Wilhelm von Hofmann, Adolf von Baeyer and Karl Friedrich Rammelsberg. In 1888 he received his doctorate "Über die Additionsprodukte der Cyansäure". Since 1897 Traube was assistant at the Pharmakological Institute in Berlin, since 1902 assistant at the Pharmaceutical Institute and "Titularprofessor". In 1911 he became an associate professor and 1929 a full professor.
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Alfred Wahlforss
1839 - 1899 (60 years)
Henrik Alfred Wahlforss was a Finnish chemist and professor. Wahlforss lectured in Polytechnical institute in Helsinki. His scientific achievements were related to his publishings about retene, para-bromobenzyl chloride and the oxidation of castor oil. As Wahlforss's publications were written in Swedish language, they remained internationally without attention.
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Hans Peter Jørgen Julius Thomsen
1826 - 1909 (83 years)
Hans Peter Jørgen Julius Thomsen was a Danish chemist noted in thermochemistry for the Thomsen–Berthelot principle. Life and work Thomsen was born in Copenhagen, and spent his life in that city. From 1847 to 1856 he taught chemistry at the Polytechnic, where from 1883 to 1892 he was the director. From 1856 to 1866 he was on the staff of the military high school. In 1866 he was appointed professor of chemistry at the university, and retained that chair until his retirement from active work in 1891.
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David Murray Cowie
1872 - 1940 (68 years)
David Murray Cowie pioneered the salt iodization process in the U.S. He founded the pediatrics department at the University of Michigan and ran a private hospital in Ann Arbor which attracted wealthy patients. Cowie was concerned about the widespread problem of goiter in Michigan .
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William Ivison Macadam
1856 - 1902 (46 years)
Colonel William Ivison Macadam Colonel Professor W. Ivison Macadam was a Scottish scientist, academic author and antiquarian. He was also Colonel of the 1st Lothian Volunteer Infantry Brigade and a leading Freemason. He was generally known by his middle name Ivison.
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Hugo Paul Friedrich Schulz
1853 - 1932 (79 years)
Hugo Paul Friedrich Schulz was a German pharmacologist from Wesel, Rhenish Prussia. He studied medicine in the universities of Heidelberg and Bonn, where he did scientific work in the physiological institute of Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger . In 1877 he earned his doctorate, and afterwards worked in the pharmacological institute of Karl Binz at Bonn. In 1883 he was appointed professor of pharmacology at the University of Greifswald.
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Hugh Robson
1917 - 1977 (60 years)
Sir Hugh Norwood Robson was a Scottish physician noted as a university administrator in several countries, including Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield from 1966 to 1974 and Principal of the University of Edinburgh from 1974 to 1977. The Hugh Robson Building in George Square is named after him, as is the Hugh Robson Computer Laboratory.
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Franz Ferdinand Schulze
1815 - 1873 (58 years)
Franz Ferdinand Schulze was a German professor of chemistry and microbiology who taught at the Royal Prussian State Agricultural Academy in Eldena and later at Rostock. He innovated analytical techniques, particularly making use of specially blown glass tubes. He examined questions such as spontaneous generation in his experiments. He was able to demonstrate that when air was bubbled through sulphuric acid, the resulting air did not produce any growth in carefully sterilized culture media. He translated J. F. W. Johnston's Elements of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology into German. He coined...
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Andreas Smits
1870 - 1948 (78 years)
Andreas Smits was Dutch chemist who specialized in physical and inorganic chemistry and examined aspects of phase change and conversions between allotropic forms. He was a professor at the Delft University of Technology.
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Gustave Eiffel
1832 - 1923 (91 years)
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was a French civil engineer. A graduate of École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, he made his name with various bridges for the French railway network, most famously the Garabit Viaduct. He is best known for the world-famous Eiffel Tower, designed by his company and built for the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, and his contribution to building the Statue of Liberty in New York. After his retirement from engineering, Eiffel focused on research into meteorology and aerodynamics, making significant contributions in both fields.
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Walter Rüdorff
1909 - 1989 (80 years)
Walter Rüdorff was a German chemist known for his research on clathrates of graphite and ternary oxides. Education and career Rüdorff was born in Berlin in 1909. He studied chemistry as an undergraduate at Technical University of Berlin and graduated in 1925. His graduate study was carried out under the supervision of Ulrich Hofmann at the same university, where he graduated with a PhD thesis titled Über die Kristallstruktur der Hexacarbonyle von Chrom, Molybdän und Wolfram. He then moved to the University of Rostock along with Ulrich Hofmann and achieved his habilitation status with the thesis titled Neuartige Verbindungen mit Graphit in 1941.
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Julius Arnold Koch
1864 - 1956 (92 years)
Julius Arnold Koch was an American chemist who was born in the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. Koch graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1884. He was the first dean of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Pittsburgh and held this position until his retirement in 1932. In 1897, he discovered, together with Ludwig Gattermann, the Gattermann-Koch reaction . He agreed on receiving the status of dean only after his following concern was taken into consideration "I will accept the deanship if the sessions are changed from evening to the daytime."
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Bob Briggs
1905 - 1975 (70 years)
Lindsay Heathcote "Bob" Briggs was a New Zealand organic chemist. Early life Born in Hastings in 1905, Briggs was educated at Auckland Grammar School. Academic career After graduating from Auckland University College with a Master of Science with second-class honours in 1928, he received funding to research manuka oil the following year, and undertook independent research at Massey Agricultural College from 1929 to 1930.
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Salvador del Mundo
1902 - 1945 (43 years)
Salvador del Mundo was a Filipino chemist specializing in ceramics. Born in Boac, Marinduque, del Mundo graduated, summa cum laude, with a degree in chemistry from the University of the Philippines in 1925, and obtained a doctorate degree from the University of Santo Tomas in 1934. His scientific career led him to become the lead chemist of the ceramics laboratory of the government Bureau of Science, which is now the Department of Science and Technology, production manager of the Ceramics Industries of the Philippines, and professorships at the University of the Philippines and the University of Santo Tomas.
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Nikolay Emanuel
1915 - 1984 (69 years)
Nikolay Markovich Emanuel was a Soviet chemist. He was a key specialist in chemical kinetics and mechanics of chemical reactions. He lectured at Moscow State University since 1944 . In 1958 he became a corresponding member and in 1966 he became a full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In 1974, he was elected as a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Buried in Moscow.
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Friedrich Gustav Carl Emil Erlenmeyer
1864 - 1921 (57 years)
Friedrich Gustav Carl Emil Erlenmeyer , also known as Emil Erlenmeyer, Jr., was a German chemist and the discoverer of the Erlenmeyer-Plöchl azlactone and amino acid synthesis. He was the son of Richard August Carl Emil Erlenmeyer and father of Hans Erlenmeyer.
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Herbert Henry Dow
1866 - 1930 (64 years)
Herbert Henry Dow was an American chemical industrialist who founded the American multinational conglomerate Dow Chemical. A graduate of the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, Ohio, he was a prolific inventor of chemical processes, compounds, and products, notably bromine extraction from sea water, and was a successful businessman.
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Hollis Dow Hedberg
1903 - 1988 (85 years)
Hollis Dow Hedberg was an American geologist specializing in petroleum exploration. His contribution to stratigraphic classification of rocks and procedures is a monumental work which received universal acceptance. The firm he worked for, the Gulf Oil Corporation in Venezuela, trusted his findings and explored what had until then been uncharted territory. As a result, they reaped huge benefits from their petroleum findings. Hedberg taught at Princeton University from 1959 until his retirement in 1971. He was awarded the Mary Clark Thompson Medal by the National Academy of Sciences in 1973. In 1975 he was awarded the Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London.
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Léo Marion
1899 - 1979 (80 years)
Léo Edmond Marion, was a Canadian organic chemist and academic administrator. He was Vice-President of the National Research Council of Canada. From 1964 until 1965 he was President of the Royal Society of Canada. From 1965 until 1969, he was Dean of Faculty of Pure and Applied Science at the University of Ottawa.
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John M. MacEachran
1877 - 1971 (94 years)
John Malcolm MacEachran was a Canadian philosopher and psychologist, whose most notable credentials involved the development of the Psychology and Philosophy Department at the University of Alberta. He was a co-founder of the Canadian Psychological Association and the appointed Chairman of the Alberta Eugenics Board which was responsible for approving the sterilization of thousands of Albertans, hundreds of which were without consent.
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Conrad Willgerodt
1841 - 1930 (89 years)
Conrad Heinrich Christoph Willgerodt was a German chemist who first described the Willgerodt reaction. Alongside the Willgerodt reaction, he had also discovered Iodosobenzene and chlorobutanol. As for his career, Conrad Willgerodt was a professor at the University of Freiburg.
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William Hodgson Ellis
1845 - 1920 (75 years)
William Hodgson Ellis was a Professor of Applied Chemistry from 1878, and Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering in the University of Toronto from 1914, until his retirement in 1919.
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Enos Luther Brookes
1891 - 1944 (53 years)
Enos Luther Brookes was a chemist, academic, and activist for civil rights in the United States. He was born in Jamaica, then a British colony. Early life and education Born in Jamaica, his father was school teacher James M. Brookes and his mother Martha Brookes. He came to the United States in 1914.
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Helen Lewis
1896 - Present (130 years)
Helen Geneva Lewis was an American chemist. Early life and education Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Lewis attended Mount Holyoke College for her undergraduate education and earned her degree in 1921. She then moved to Yale University as an honorary scholar, and earned her Ph.D. in 1923. She pursued postgraduate education at the University of Paris from 1926 to 1927 and at Claremont College in 1928.
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Ji Yufeng
1899 - 1982 (83 years)
Ji Yufeng was a Chinese chemist. He was a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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Mary Foster
1865 - 1960 (95 years)
Mary Louise Foster was an American biochemist, research chemist and educator. Education Mary Louise Foster was born on April 20, 1865, in Melrose, Massachusetts. Between the years of 1878–1883, she attended the Girls' Latin School in Boston, Massachusetts, and later went on to study Classics at Smith College from 1888 to 1891. After her graduation, Foster taught Chemistry and Physics at West Roxbury High School while enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston . In 1912, she received her master's degree from Smith, and two years later earned her PhD from the University of Chicago.
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Hans Goldschmidt
1861 - 1923 (62 years)
Johannes Wilhelm "Hans" Goldschmidt was a German chemist notable as the discoverer of the Thermite reaction. He was also co-owner of the Chemische Fabrik Th. Goldschmidt, as of 1911 Th. Goldschmidt AG and its most important chemist. The reaction, also called the Goldschmidt process, is used for thermite welding, often used to join railway tracks. Thermites have also been used in metal refining, disabling munitions, and in incendiary weapons. Some thermite-like mixtures are used as pyrotechnic initiators in fireworks.
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Jean-Louis-Alexandre Herrenschneider
1760 - 1843 (83 years)
Jean-Louis-Alexandre Herrenschneider was a philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, physicist, meteorologist and lawyer. Early life and family He was born in Gaugrehweiler in the Rhineland Palatinate to Marguerite Salomé Walter and Jean Herrenschneider. His father was a grammar-school principal, then a protestant court pastor and ecclesiastical inspector for Carl Magnus von Rheingrafenstein, the last count of the Gaugrehweiler line. In 1773, in a murder attempt on his father, his ten-year-old sister was shot to death as the family sat to dinner; his father was badly injured; his beloved siste...
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