The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,
#6501
Stanisław Kostanecki
1860 - 1910 (50 years)
Stanisław Kostanecki was a Polish organic chemist, professor who pioneered in vegetable dye chemistry e.g. curcumin. Known for Kostanecki acylation name reactions. In 1896, he developed the theory of dyes and studied the natural vegetable dyes. Among his many students were scientists Kazimierz Funk and Wiktor Lampe.
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Maria Lipp
1892 - 1966 (74 years)
Maria Lipp was a German organic chemist. She was the first female doctoral student, professor, and ordinary professor at the RWTH Aachen University. Life Lipp was born in Stolberg as the daughter of Karl Savelsberg and Friederike de Nys. She was later adopted by the chemist Julius Bredt. In 1913, she started studying chemistry at the TH Aachen. She completed her diploma with distinction in 1917 and was the first female doctoral student at the TH Aachen. She completed her doctorate with distinction in 1918 and her habilitation in organic chemistry again at the TH Aachen in 1923. In 1925, she married Peter Lipp, a professor for organic chemistry at the TH Aachen.
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Jüri Kukk
1940 - 1981 (41 years)
Jüri Kukk was an Estonian professor of chemistry, a political prisoner, who died in the Soviet labor camp at Vologda after several months of being on hunger strike and psychiatric treatments. Kukk was born in Pärnu. He resigned from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1978 and was subsequently fired from the post of associate professor of chemistry at Tartu University. He was also refused permission to emigrate.
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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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Hans von Pechmann
1850 - 1902 (52 years)
Hans Freiherr von Pechmann was a German chemist, renowned for his discovery of diazomethane in 1894. Pechmann condensation and Pechmann pyrazole synthesis. He also first prepared 1,2-diketones , acetonedicarboxylic acid, methylglyoxal and diphenyltriketone; established the symmetrical structure of anthraquinone.
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Alexander Zarchin
1897 - 1988 (91 years)
Alexander Zarchin was a Ukrainian-Israeli chemist and inventor. He is most noted for inventing a process of sea water desalination. Biography Born in Ukraine to a family of religious Zionists, as a young man, Zarchin studied industrial chemistry and specialized in metallurgy. In 1934, he was arrested by the authorities for the crime of Zionism and was sentenced to five years in prison. Zarchin was then recruited into the Red Army, and by the end of World War II, he managed to reach West Germany, and from there he immigrated to Palestine in the summer of 1947. Since his arrival and settlemen...
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Petru Bogdan
1873 - 1944 (71 years)
Petru Bogdan was a Romanian chemist, educator, and politician. In 1926, he was elected a titular member of the Romanian Academy. He was born in Cozmești, Iași County, the son of Vasile Bogdan and Ana, née Timuș; his father died four years laters, during the Romanian War of Independence of 1877.
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Luigi Valentino Brugnatelli
1761 - 1818 (57 years)
Luigi Valentino Brugnatelli was an Italian chemist and inventor who discovered the process for electroplating in 1805. Early life Born in Pavia, he attended the Pharmacy School created by Count Karl Joseph von Firmian at the University of Pavia where he was a pupil of Giovanni Antonio Scopoli who urged him to practice the medical profession, which he did without neglecting his interests in chemistry. Brugnatelli graduated in medicine in 1784 with a thesis on the chemical analysis of gastric juices. He was also a pupil of Lazzaro Spallanzani.
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Gheorghe Spacu
1883 - 1955 (72 years)
Gheorghe Spacu was a Romanian inorganic chemist. Born in Iași, he attended the city's National College from 1894 to 1901. He subsequently enrolled in the physics and chemistry section of the sciences faculty at the University of Iași. There, his professors included Petru Poni , Vasile Buțureanu , Anastasie Obregia and Dragomir Hurmuzescu . Upon graduating in 1905, he went to deepen his studies at the universities of University of Vienna and then Berlin. He returned in 1907, when he began working as an assistant in the inorganic chemistry laboratory of Neculai Costăchescu, and was promoted to head of operations in 1916.
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Gottfried Christoph Beireis
1730 - 1809 (79 years)
Gottfried Christoph Beireis was a German chemist and doctor. He was also a collector of curiosities who rescued some of Jacques de Vaucanson's automata. Biography Beireis was born in Mühlhausen. He taught anatomy, medicine, surgery, chemistry, botany, natural history, pharmacy, mineralogy, metallurgy, agriculture, forestry, music, painting, and numismatics.
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Felix Ehrlich
1877 - 1942 (65 years)
Felix Ehrlich was a German chemist and biochemist. Life and work Felix Ehrlich studied in Berlin and Munich. After receiving his doctorate in 1900, he worked at the Institute of Sugar Industry in Berlin. In 1906 he obtained his diploma in chemistry. From 1909 he worked as professor in Breslau, and later as director of the Institute on Biotechnology and Agriculture.
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Reynold C. Fuson
1895 - 1979 (84 years)
Reynold Clayton Fuson was an American chemist. Biography Born in Wakefield, Illinois, Fuson attended Central Normal College in Danville, Indiana, where after one year in 1914 he was certified as a teacher. He received a Bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Montana, a Master's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
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Burckhardt Helferich
1887 - 1982 (95 years)
Burckhardt Helferich was a German chemist. Biography He was the son of surgery professor Heinrich Helferich . He studied science, especially Geology, at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and from 1907 chemistry in Munich and Berlin. In Berlin, Helferich was advised by Emil Fischer and later became his assistant.
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Friedrich Albrecht Carl Gren
1760 - 1798 (38 years)
Friedrich Albrecht Carl Gren was a German chemist and a native of Bernburg. He began his career working in a pharmacy in Bernburg, and later worked as a pharmacist in Offenbach am Main and Erfurt. In 1782, he began his studies at the University of Helmstedt, and in 1788 became professor of chemistry and physics at the University of Halle.
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Friedrich Knauer
1897 - 1979 (82 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Knauer was a German physical chemist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club. Education From 1918 to 1924, Knauer studied at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and Leibniz University Hannover. He received his doctorate in engineering in 1923 at Hannover; he was a student of Beckmann and W. Kohlrausch.
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Dorothy Hahn
1876 - 1950 (74 years)
Dorothy Anna Hahn was a lifelong educator and American professor of organic chemistry at Mount Holyoke College. She was most known for her research which utilized the then newly developed technique of ultraviolet spectroscopy to study hydantoins.
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John Ferguson
1838 - 1916 (78 years)
John Ferguson FRSE LLD was a Scottish chemist and bibliographer. He is noted for the early alchemy and chemistry bibliography Bibliotheca chemica. He was generally nicknamed Soda Ferguson. The Ferguson Collection, a collection of 7,500 books and manuscripts from his personal library is held by the University of Glasgow.
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Edward Divers
1837 - 1912 (75 years)
Edward Divers FRS was a British experimental chemist who rose to prominence despite being visually impaired from young age. Between 1873 and 1899, Divers lived and worked in Japan and significantly contributed to the science and education of that country.
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Hans Leopold Meyer
1871 - 1942 (71 years)
Hans Leopold Meyer was an Austrian chemist. He was the brother of Stefan Meyer who also received the Lieben Prize. Hans Leopold Meyer studied at the Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, Vienna University of Technology and University of Heidelberg he received his PhD in 1894. He started as a lecturer at the Vienna University of Technology, and professor at the German University in Prague. He was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and he received the Lieben Prize in 1905, seven years before his younger brother Stefan Meyer received the prize in 1913. He was killed in...
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Wiktor Kemula
1902 - 1985 (83 years)
Wiktor Kemula was a Polish chemist, electrochemist, and polarographist. He greatly contributed to the development of electroanalytical chemistry, particularly polarography. He is known for developing the hanging mercury drop electrode .
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Ejnar Hertzsprung
1873 - 1967 (94 years)
Ejnar Hertzsprung was a Danish chemist and astronomer. Career Hertzsprung was born in Frederiksberg, Denmark, the son of Severin and Henriette. He studied chemical engineering at Copenhagen Polytechnic Institute, graduating in 1898. After spending two years working as a chemist in St. Petersburg, in 1901 he studied photochemistry at Leipzig University for a year. His father was an amateur astronomer, which led to Ejnar's interest in the subject. He began making astronomical observations in Fredericksberg in 1902, and within a few years had noticed that stars with similar spectral type could have widely different absolute magnitudes.
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Guillaume-François Rouelle
1703 - 1770 (67 years)
Guillaume François Rouelle was a French chemist and apothecary. In 1754 he introduced the concept of a base into chemistry as a substance which reacts with an acid to form a salt. He is known as l'Aîné to distinguish him from his younger brother, Hilaire Rouelle, who was also a chemist and known as the discoverer of urea.
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Alfred Berthoud
1874 - 1939 (65 years)
Alfred Berthoud was a Swiss chemist, professor of chemistry at the University of Neuchâtel. In 1908 Berthoud became professor of physical chemistry at the University of Neuchâtel, though he continued teaching in secondary schools until he was appointed Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and Analytical Chemistry at the University in 1925. In 1938 he was made President of the Swiss Chemical Society.
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Oliver Wolcott Gibbs
1822 - 1908 (86 years)
Oliver Wolcott Gibbs was an American chemist. He is known for performing the first electrogravimetric analyses, namely the reductions of copper and nickel ions to their respective metals. Biography Oliver Wolcott Gibbs was born in New York City in 1822 to George and Laura Gibbs. His father, Colonel George Gibbs, was an ardent mineralogist; the mineral gibbsite was named after him, and his collection was finally bought by Yale College. Oliver was the younger brother of George Gibbs and older brother to Alfred Gibbs, who became a Union Army Brigadier General during the American Civil War. Al...
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Edmund Oscar von Lippmann
1857 - 1940 (83 years)
Edmund Oscar von Lippmann was a German chemist and natural science historian. For his writings he was awarded a couple honoris causa doctorates from German universities, as well as the Leibniz Medal and the Sudhoff Medal.
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Victor LaMer
1895 - 1966 (71 years)
Victor Kuhn LaMer or La Mer was an American chemist. He has been described as "the father of colloid chemistry". Early life and education LaMer was born in Leavenworth, Kansas on June 15, 1895. He was the son of Joseph Secondule LaMer and Anna Pauline Kuhn.
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Marston T. Bogert
1868 - 1954 (86 years)
Marston Taylor Bogert was an American chemist. Biography He was born in Flushing, New York on April 18, 1868 and studied at the Flushing Institute, which was a well known private school, where he was a straight-A student.
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Alexander Gutbier
1876 - 1926 (50 years)
Alexander Felix Maximilian Gutbier was a German professor of chemistry at the University of Jena. He made studies both in organic and inorganic chemistry but pioneered studies on the chemistry of colloid and organo-metallic complexes. Specializing mainly in experimental chemistry, he published several texts on organic chemistry.
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Nikolai Prilezhaev
1877 - 1944 (67 years)
Nikolai Alexandrovich Prilezhaev, , was a Russian organic chemist. The Prilezhaev reaction, in which an alkene and a peroxyacid react to form an epoxide, is named after him. Prilezhaev was the son of a clergyman and studied chemistry at the Theological Seminary in Warsaw and then at the University of Warsaw under the supervision of Yegor Yegorovich Vagner . After graduating in 1900 he was assistant professor of organic chemistry at the Polytechnic in Warsaw where he belonged to the school of organic chemistry founded by Wagner. After earning a master's degree in 1912 in St. Petersburg, he became associate professor of organic chemistry at the University of Warsaw.
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Wilbur Olin Atwater
1844 - 1907 (63 years)
Wilbur Olin Atwater was an American chemist known for his studies of human nutrition and metabolism, and is considered the father of modern nutrition research and education. He is credited with developing the Atwater system, which laid the groundwork for nutrition science in the United States and inspired modern Olympic nutrition.
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Melvin Lorrel Nichols
1894 - 1981 (87 years)
Melvin Lorrel "Pete" Nichols was an American chemistry professor and author. Early life Nichols was born in Dayton, Ohio, the son of Joseph Wiseman Nichols, a cabinetmaker, and Sarah Rebecca Heidelbaugh. He was the youngest of six children.
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Albert James Bernays
1823 - 1892 (69 years)
Albert James Bernays was a British chemist. He was the son of Dr. Adolphus Bernays , modern languages Professor at King's College, London. Life Bernays was educated at King's College School, and studied chemistry with C. Remigius Fresenius, and afterwards, with Justus Liebig at Giessen, where he graduated PhD. His doctoral thesis was probably a paper on limonin, a bitter principle which he discovered in the pips of oranges and lemons . In 1845, he began his career as an analyst and lecturer on chemistry in Derby, and became known for his interest in questions concerning food and hygiene. In 1851, he served as a juror at the Great Exhibition.
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Charles Daubeny
1795 - 1867 (72 years)
Charles Giles Bridle Daubeny was an English chemist, botanist and geologist. Education Daubeny was born at Stratton near Cirencester in Gloucestershire, the son of the Rev. James Daubeny. He went to Winchester College in 1808, and in 1810 was elected to a demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford, under Dr. John Kidd. From 1815 to 1818 he studied medicine in London and Edinburgh, in the latter also studying geology under Prof Robert Jameson. He took his M.D. degree at Oxford, and was a fellow of the College of Physicians.
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Anders Gustaf Ekeberg
1767 - 1813 (46 years)
Anders Gustaf Ekeberg was a Swedish analytical chemist who discovered tantalum in 1802. He was notably deaf. Education Anders Gustav Ekeberg was a Swedish scientist, mathematician and expert in Greek literature. His father, Joseph Erik Ekeberg, was a shipbuilder. His uncle was Carl Gustaf Ekeberg.
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Nikolai Trifonov
1891 - 1958 (67 years)
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Trifonov was a Soviet chemist and founder of the Scientific School of Chemistry. His expertise primarily consisted of the physical and chemical analysis of concentrated solutions.
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Anastasios Christomanos
1841 - 1906 (65 years)
Anastasios Christomanos was one of the most important Greek scientists of the later part of the 19th century. His academic collaborators were some of the most important scientists in the world, including Robert Bunsen, Georg Ludwig Carius, Emil Erlenmeyer and Gustav Kirchhoff. He is the father of modern Greek chemical education. He wrote 73 books and dissertations. His fields of study included: Inorganic Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, and Analytical Chemistry. He helped restructure Greek education. Greek education was in the grasp of Korydalism for over 300 years. With the onset of the in...
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Ernst Gottfried Fischer
1756 - 1831 (75 years)
Ernst Gottfried Fischer was a German chemist. He was born in Hoheneiche near Saalfeld. After studying theology and mathematics at the University of Halle, he was a teacher in Berlin before becoming Professor of Physics in 1810. He translated Claude Berthollet's publication Recherches sur les lois de l'affinitié in 1802. He proposed a system of equivalents based on sulfuric acid equal to one hundred.
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Isaac Mustafin
1908 - 1968 (60 years)
Isaac Mustafin was a Soviet chemist and a doctor of chemical sciences. Dr. Mustafin headed the faculty of analytical chemistry at Saratov State University from 1955. All his life was connected to the Saratov State University: his only lengthy absence from his work place took place from June 23, 1941 to August 15, 1945, when he served in the army. The life and activity of Professor Mustafin were reflected in a number of papers [1–7] and even monographs [8–9], including that in the series of scientific biographic literature of the Nauka publishing house [8]. . The unusual biography and diversi...
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Mikhail Usanovich
1894 - 1981 (87 years)
Michail Illyich Usanovich was a Russian/Soviet physical chemist, and an academician of the Academy of Sciences of Kazakh SSR since 1962. He is famous for his generalized acid-base theory. Michail Usanovich was born to a Jewish doctor's family in Zhytomyr.
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Theodor Wertheim
1820 - 1864 (44 years)
Theodor Wertheim was an Austrian chemist born in Vienna. He was the father of gynecologist Ernst Wertheim . He studied organic chemistry in Berlin as a pupil of Eilhard Mitscherlich, and in 1843 travelled to the University of Prague, where he studied under Josef Redtenbacher. He served as privatdozent in Vienna, and from 1853 to 1860, was a professor at the University of Pest. From 1861 onward, he was a professor at the University of Graz. In May 1864, he moved back to Vienna, where he died soon afterwards.
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Ernst Späth
1886 - 1946 (60 years)
Ernst Späth was an Austrian chemist, specializing in natural products. Life Späth was the first to synthesise mescaline and was one of the first to synthesize cuscohygrine on a small scale with Hans Tuppy.
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Theodor Weyl
1851 - 1913 (62 years)
Theodor Weyl was a German chemist and hygienist born in Berlin. He studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Berlin and Strasbourg, earning his doctorate in 1872 with a dissertation on animal and plant proteins. Following graduation he worked as an assistant in the physiology laboratory at Berlin, shortly afterwards becoming an assistant professor at the University of Erlangen. During his tenure at Erlangen he spent the winter of 1880–81 performing research on the electric organs of rays at the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Naples.
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Adolf Ferdinand Weinhold
1841 - 1917 (76 years)
Adolf Ferdinand Weinhold was a German chemist, physician and inventor. Life From 1857 to 1861 Weinhold studied chemistry and physics at universities in Göttingen and in Leipzig. His mentors were Otto Linné Erdmann and Friedrich Wöhler. In Germany, Weinhold worked after university studies as chemist and physician. He was appointed professor at Chemnitz University of Technology in 1870. In 1873 he was granted a D. Phil from the University of Leipzig.
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