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
Walthère Victor Spring
1848 - 1911 (63 years)
Walthère Victor Spring was a Belgian experimental chemist and a professor at the University of Liège who contributed to ideas on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the Greenhouse Effect. As a physical chemist he demonstrated the formation of certain compounds such as metal sulphides under high pressure conditions. He also took an interest in the study of the Tyndall effect and examined the cause of the colour of the sky and water.
Go to Profile#6502
Roman Mertslin
1903 - 1971 (68 years)
Roman Viktorovich Mertslin was a Soviet chemist, a Doctor of Chemical Sciences, a vice-rector for scientific studies , a rector of Molotov University, a rector of Saratov Chernyshevsky State University. He founded the scientific school of physical and chemical analysis, heterogeneous equilibria and developed the method of isothermal cross sections.
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James Arthur Prescott
1890 - 1987 (97 years)
James Arthur Prescott, CBE, FRS, was an agricultural scientist. Prescott was born in England, educated at the University of Manchester achieving Bachelor of Science with First Class Honours in 1911. The following year he was awarded the first postgraduate scholarship in agricultural science taken at Rothamsted Experimental Station at Harpenden.
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Karl Schaum
1870 - 1947 (77 years)
Ferdinand Karl Franz Schaum was a German chemist who specialized in the field of photochemistry. He studied mathematics and sciences at the Universities of Basel, Berlin, Leipzig and Marburg, earning his doctorate at the latter institution in 1893. Afterwards, he served as an assistant to Theodor Zincke at Marburg and to Wilhelm Ostwald in Leipzig. In 1897 he obtained his habilitation at Marburg with a thesis on types of isometry.
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Lauder William Jones
1869 - 1960 (91 years)
Lauder William Jones was an American chemist, born at New Richmond, Ohio. He was graduated at Williams College in 1892, and received his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago in 1897. In the same year, he became an assistant in chemistry at Chicago, where he remained until 1907. From 1907 to 1918, he was professor of chemistry at the University of Cincinnati, and from 1918 to 1920, he was dean of the school of chemistry at the University of Minnesota, after which he accepted a call to the chair of chemistry at Princeton. He devoted his attention chiefly to organic chemistry and published...
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Jöns Svanberg
1771 - 1851 (80 years)
Jöns Svanberg was a Swedish clergyman and natural scientist. Life He was born on 6 July 1771 in Ytterbyn, Sweden and died on 15 January 1851 in Uppsala, Sweden. Career He entered Uppsala University at the age of 16. He received his Ph.D. in 1794. In 1806, he became the professor of surveying and in 1811 he became the professor of mathematics at Uppsala University.
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Wilhelm Meyerhoffer
1864 - 1906 (42 years)
Wilhelm Meyerhoffer was a German chemist. Meyerhoffer studied chemistry and worked with Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Berlin. The mineral Meyerhofferite is named after him.
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Georg Adolf Suckow
1751 - 1813 (62 years)
Georg Adolf Suckow sometimes Adolph was a German physicist, chemist, mineralogist, mining engineer and naturalist. Suckow was a professor of physics, chemistry, and natural history at the University of Heidelberg. He wrote many books and articles on chemistry, botany, zoology and mineralogy. From 1808 he was a Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. His son Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Suckow was also a naturalist.
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Georg Wolfgang Wedel
1645 - 1721 (76 years)
Georg Wolfgang Wedel was a German professor of surgery, botany, theoretical and practical medicine, and chemistry. Biography Wedel was born in Golßen, Niederlausitz, and received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Jena in 1669.
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Franz Wilhelm Schweigger-Seidel
1795 - 1838 (43 years)
Franz Wilhelm Schweigger-Seidel ; born as Franz Wilhelm Seidel was a German physician and chemist born in Weißenfels. He was the father of physiologist Franz Schweigger-Seidel . Trained as a pharmacist, in 1820 he began his studies of medicine and sciences in Halle, where in two years he was an assistant in the laboratory for chemistry. Here he worked closely with Johann Salomo Christoph Schweigger , who would become Seidel's legally adoptive father. Subsequently, Seidel changed his surname to "Schweigger-Seidel" as a tribute to his adoptive father's brother, naturalist August Friedrich Schwei...
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Beebe Steven Lynk
1872 - 1948 (76 years)
By James Barham, PhD Beebe Steven Lynk continues to be a highly searched and highly influential chemist who paved the way for Black Americans in chemistry, particularly Black women. Lynk (née Beebe Steven) was born in Mason, a small town in western Tennessee lying about halfway between Jackson and Memphis. She is one of the first female, African-American, professional chemists in the US. Her early life and social background are poorly documented. For example, the educational backgrounds and professions of her parents are not known. Beebe Steven, as she was then known, obtained a degree in 1892...
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Jacques Errera
1896 - 1977 (81 years)
Jacques Errera was a Belgian physicochemist, specialized in the molecular constitution of matter. During the 1930s he worked at the Free University of Brussels , and participated in the Solvay Conference of 1933. In 1938 he was awarded the Francqui Prize in Exact Sciences. Shortly after the first atomic bombs were used in 1945, he authored an optimistic article about the peaceful future potential of atomic energy. After WW2, Errera represented Belgium at both the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency. He was the son of Isabelle Errera.
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Alfonso Cossa
1833 - 1902 (69 years)
Alfonso Cossa was an Italian chemist. Biography Cossa was born to Giuseppe, who was a notable paleographer and a librarian at Biblioteca di Brera and to Giustiniana Magnocavallo. He attended High School in Milan and, in 1852, he enrolled at Almo Collegio Borromeo in Pavia, where he graduated in Medicine in 1858 with a dissertation on the history of electrochemistry. Soon after, he became an assistant professor, and later on a professor, in chemistry at the University of Pavia. In 1866, called by the Royal Commissioner in Udine Quintino Sella, he founded the Regio Istituto tecnico of Udine, of which he was a teacher and headmaster up to 1872.
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John White Webster
1793 - 1850 (57 years)
John White Webster was an American professor of chemistry and geology at Harvard Medical College. In 1850, he was convicted of murder in the Parkman–Webster murder case and hanged. Biography Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Webster was well-connected both by family and by profession: his grandfather was a successful merchant; his mother, Hannah Webster, was a Leverett, a member of one of the great Harvard College dynasties, and a descendant of John Leverett, an early governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; his wife's sister married into the Prescotts, descendants of William Prescott, who commanded patriot troops at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and after whom the town of Prescott was named.
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John Hadley
1731 - 1764 (33 years)
John Hadley was an English chemist and physician. Born in London to Henry Hadley, he was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1753. In 1756 he was appointed the fourth Professor of Chemistry at Cambridge University, the oldest continuously occupied chair of Chemistry in the UK. During his time there he co-operated in 1758 with Benjamin Franklin on a series of experiments to investigate latent heat. They found that a mercury thermometer sprayed with ether which was then evaporated by blowing could fall to −7 degrees Celsius in a warm room.
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Johannes Hartmann
1568 - 1631 (63 years)
Johannes Hartmann was a German chemist. In 1609, he became the first Professor of Chemistry at the University of Marburg. His teaching dealt mainly with pharmaceuticals. He was the father-in-law of Heinrich Petraeus.
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Bernhard Proskauer
1851 - 1915 (64 years)
Bernhard Proskauer was a German chemist and hygienist. He studied chemistry at the University of Berlin, and from 1874 worked as a chemist at the Imperial Health Office in Berlin. In 1885 he was named departmental head of the Institute of Hygiene at the university, attaining the title of professor in 1890. From 1891 he was associated with the Institute of Infectious Diseases, wherein 1901 he was named head of the department of chemistry. In 1907 he was appointed director of the Berlin Municipal Testing Office.
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Williams E. Hatfield
#6519
Ernst Anton Nicolai
1722 - 1802 (80 years)
Ernst Anton Nicolai was a German physician and chemist. In 1745, Nicolai earned his medical doctorate from the University of Halle, where he was a disciple of Johann Heinrich Schulze and Friedrich Hoffmann. Soon afterwards, he obtained his habilitation in medicine, becoming an associate professor in 1748. At Halle, he gave lectures on theoretical subjects in the fields of pathology, physiology and pharmacology, later giving clinical lectures on diseases of the eye and childhood maladies.
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Felice Fontana
1730 - 1805 (75 years)
Abbé Gasparo Ferdinando Felice Fontana was an Italian polymath who contributed to experimental studies in physiology, toxicology, and physics. As a physicist he discovered the water gas shift reaction in 1780. He investigated the human eye and has also been credited with discovering the nucleolus of a cell. His work on the venom of vipers was among the earliest experimental toxicological studies. He served as a court physicist for Peter Leopold, Duke of Tuscany and taught at the University of Pisa. He was involved in the establishment of the La Specola museum in Florence.
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Philipp Gross
1899 - 1974 (75 years)
Philipp Gross was a physical chemist born and educated in Vienna. He became Professor of Physical Chemistry at Vienna University but was expelled on racial grounds in 1938 under the Nazi regime. In 1939 he sought refuge in Britain, joining the physics department at Bristol University. On the outbreak of war, after a brief internment as an enemy alien, he returned to Bristol University and then worked in Industry. After the war he became Chief Scientist at the newly founded Fulmer Research Institute, a post which he occupied for more than twenty years. He was one of the first to apply rigorou...
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Christian Gmelin
1792 - 1860 (68 years)
Christian Gottlob Gmelin was a German chemist. He was born in Tübingen, Germany, and was a grandson of Johann Konrad Gmelin and a great-grandson of Johann Georg Gmelin. Scientific career In 1818, Gmelin was one of the first to observe that lithium salts give a bright red color in a flame.
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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)
#6533
Ralph Sherman Becker
#6534
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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David Masson
1822 - 1907 (85 years)
David Mather Masson , was a Scottish academic, supporter of women's suffrage, literary critic and historian. Biography Masson was born in Aberdeen, the son of Sarah Mather and William Masson, a stone-cutter.
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Gustave Chancel
1822 - 1890 (68 years)
Gustave Charles Bonaventure Chancel was a French chemist who conducted research on organic and analytical chemistry while also examining chemical aspects of wine making. A method for determining the fineness of ground sulphur involves the use of a calibrated tube sometimes called Chancel's Sulphurimeter.
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Jaan Kalviste
1898 - 1936 (38 years)
Jaan Kalviste was an Estonian chemist, mineralogist, educator, and translator. Early life Jaan Kalviste was born Jaan Kranig on Mikko farm in the small village of Läste in present-day Lääne-Viru County to railway worker Ado Kranig and his wife Kadri . He was the second eldest of five siblings. He attended primary school in rural Lehtse Parish before studying at secondary school in Tallinn.
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Sydney Young
1857 - 1937 (80 years)
Sydney Young, FRS was an English chemist. He was born in Farnworth, in Widnes, Lancashire, the son of merchant Edward Young, JP of Liverpool. He was educated at a private school in Southport and the Liverpool Royal Institution school. In 1877, after two years working with his father, he entered Owens College, Manchester, to study chemistry. He was awarded B.Sc. in 1880 and the degree of D.Sc. three years later, while working with William Ramsay at University College, Bristol. There he was involved in the founding of the Chemical Society in 1880.
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Adolf Joszt
1889 - 1957 (68 years)
Adolf Joszt was a Polish chemist, considered to be a significant precursor to the practices of biotechnology and environmental protection.
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