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,
#6551
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)
#6553
Ralph Sherman Becker
#6554
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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Hugh Alistair Reid
#6572
June Sutor
1929 - 1990 (61 years)
Dorothy June Sutor was a New Zealand-born crystallographer who spent most of her research career in England. She was one of the first scientists to establish that hydrogen bonds could form to hydrogen atoms bonded to carbon atoms. She later worked in the laboratory of Kathleen Lonsdale on the characterisation and prevention of urinary calculi.
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Ernst Anton Wülfing
1860 - 1930 (70 years)
Ernst Anton Wülfing was a German mineralogist and petrographer, known for his research on the optical properties of minerals and meteorites. He studied chemistry at Geneva and at Heidelberg as a student of Robert Bunsen, then focused his attention to mineralogy and geology, of which, he studied at Greifswald and Vienna . Afterwards he served as an assistant to Harry Rosenbusch at the University of Heidelberg.
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Katherine Alice Burke
1875 - 1924 (49 years)
Katherine Alice Burke was a British chemist and one of the nineteen signatories of the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society. Early life and education Burke was born in Surrey in 1875. She obtained her BSc. degree from her studies at Bedford College and later Birkbeck, University of London. She graduated in 1899.
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María Orosa
1893 - 1945 (52 years)
María Orosa e Ylagan was a Filipina food technologist, pharmaceutical chemist, humanitarian, and war heroine. She experimented with foods native to the Philippines, and during World War II developed Soyalac and Darak , which she also helped smuggle into Japanese-run internment camps that helped save the lives of thousands of Filipinos, Americans, and other nationals. She introduced to the public the well-known banana ketchup.
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John Eddowes Bowman the Younger
1819 - 1854 (35 years)
John Eddowes Bowman the Younger was an English chemist. Life Bowman was the son of John Eddowes Bowman the elder, and brother of Sir William Bowman, physiologist and oculist, born at Welchpool on 7 July 1819. He was a pupil of John Frederic Daniell at King's College, London, and in 1845 succeeded William Allen Miller as demonstrator of chemistry there; he became subsequently, in 1851, the first professor of practical chemistry there. He was one of the founders of the Chemical Society of London. He died on 10 February 1854.
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Werner Rolfinck
1599 - 1673 (74 years)
Werner Rolfinck was a German physician, scientist and botanist. He was a medical student in Leiden, Oxford, Paris, and Padua. Biography Rolfinck earned his master's degree at the University of Wittenberg under Daniel Sennert, and his medical doctorate in 1625 at the University of Padua under the guidance of Adriaan van den Spiegel.
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Semyon Volfkovich
1896 - 1980 (84 years)
Semyon Isaakovich Volfkovich was an outstanding Soviet chemist, inorganic chemist, technologist, Doctor of Chemical Sciences , member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union . He was engaged in the technology of production of mineral fertilizers, studied the processes of electrothermal sublimation of phosphorus. He developed an industrial scheme for producing potassium salts from sylvinite and a new technology for producing concentrated phosphate fertilizers. He was the first in the USSR to conduct research on fluoride gases uilization, to study the processes of processing mirabilite into soda and ammonium sulfate.
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Charles Avery Doremus
1851 - 1925 (74 years)
Charles Avery Doremus was an American chemist. Early life and education Charles Avery Doremus was the son of chemist and physician Robert Ogden Doremus. He graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1870, and subsequently studied in the universities of Leipzig and Heidelberg, receiving the degree of Ph.D. from Heidelberg in 1872.
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Kajetan Georg von Kaiser
1803 - 1871 (68 years)
Kajetan Georg von Kaiser was a German chemistry professor, researcher and inventor. Biography He was born at Kelheim on the Danube, in Bavaria, on 5 January 1803. He was appointed professor of technology at the University of Munich in 1851, and in 1868 became professor of applied chemistry at the Technical University Munich.
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Ferdinand Reich
1799 - 1882 (83 years)
Ferdinand Reich was a German chemist who co-discovered indium in 1863 with Hieronymous Theodor Richter. Reich was born in Bernburg, Anhalt-Bernburg and died in Freiberg. He was color blind, or could only see in whites and blacks, and that is why Theodor Richter became his science partner. Richter would examine the colors produced in reactions that they studied.
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William Henry Perkin
1838 - 1907 (69 years)
Sir William Henry Perkin was a British chemist and entrepreneur best known for his serendipitous discovery of the first commercial synthetic organic dye, mauveine, made from aniline. Though he failed in trying to synthesise quinine for the treatment of malaria, he became successful in the field of dyes after his first discovery at the age of 18.
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Alice Emily Smith
1871 - Present (154 years)
Alice Emily Smith was a British chemist and one of the nineteen signatories of the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society. Early life and education Smith was born 18 June 1871, the daughter of Thomas Smith, Commission Agent from County Down, Northern Ireland.
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Philip Robertson
1884 - 1969 (85 years)
Philip Wilfred Robertson was a New Zealand chemist, university professor, and writer. Philip Robertson, son of Donald Robertson was born on 22 September 1884 and educated at Wellington College, where he was dux in 1900. He then graduated with an MA in chemistry from Victoria University of Wellington in 1905, followed by an MSc in 1906. He was awarded a Sir George Grey Scholarship, a Senior Scholarship and the Jacob Joseph Scholarship. He gained first-class honours in natural sciences at Trinity College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, followed by a PhD at Leipzig University.
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John Read
1884 - 1963 (79 years)
John Read FRS FRSE FCS FIC was a British chemist and scientific author. Life He was born on 17 February 1884 at Maiden Newton in Dorset, the son of John Read a farmer, and his wife, Bessie Gatcombe . His father was 70 years old when he was born but his mother was only 30. His father died when John was five years old.
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Nils Peter Hamberg
1815 - 1902 (87 years)
Nils Peter Hamberg was a Swedish pharmacist and physician. He started teaching chemistry in 1861 and later on became a forensic chemist. Hamberg was the older brother to the missionary Knut Theodor Hamberg .
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Robert Emerson
1903 - 1959 (56 years)
Robert Emerson was an American scientist noted for his discovery that plants have two distinct photosynthetic reaction centress. Family Emerson was born in 1903 in New York City, the son of Dr. Haven Emerson, Health Commissioner of New York City, and Grace Parrish Emerson, the sister of Maxfield Parrish. Emerson was the brother of John Haven Emerson the inventor of the iron lung.
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Milda Dorothea Prytz
1891 - 1977 (86 years)
Milda Dorethea Prytz was a Norwegian chemist. Early life and education Prytz was born in Leith, daughter of priest Anton Jakhelln Prytz and Milda Dorothea Olsen, and sister of goldsmith Eiler Hagerup Krog Prytz Jr. and Fascist politician Frederik Prytz. She grew up in Bergen, until she moved with her parents to Gloppen in 1904. She attended Bergen Cathedral School from 1908 to 1910.
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Leonard Woodward
1903 - 1976 (73 years)
Leonard Ary Woodward was a British chemist who was associated with the University of Oxford for more than 30 years, and who was a leading authority in the field of Raman spectroscopy. Biography Woodward was born in Blandford, Dorset, England the son of Henry Martin Woodward, an electrical engineer, and Mary Ellen Woodward, educated at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he was a scholar and was awarded a first-class degree. He then went to the University of Leipzig where he obtained his doctorate. After teaching at the University of Nottingham and the University of Manchester, he worked for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in the Fuel Research Station.
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Xaver Landerer
1809 - 1885 (76 years)
Xaver Landerer was an author, doctor, physicist, chemist, pharmacist, botanist, and professor. He was the pharmacist to the first king of Greece Óthon. He wrote a large number of books about chemistry and pharmacology during the modern scientific revolution. He was the first chemistry professor in Greece along with Alexander Venizelos. He helped organize Greek higher education. He established the first laboratory for pharmaceuticals in Greece. He influenced Anastassios Christomanos, Anastasios Damvergis and Dimitris Orphanides.
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Njål Hole
1914 - 1988 (74 years)
Njål Hole MBE was a Norwegian chemical engineer and nuclear physicist. His is research was primarily in the field of nuclear physics. Biography He was born in Hjørundfjord. He graduated from the Norwegian Institute of Technology in 1938. From 1938 he was an assistant at Norwegian Institute of Technology.
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Johann Adolph Wedel
1675 - 1747 (72 years)
Johann Adolph Wedel was a German professor of medicine. Wedel was the son of Georg Wolfgang Wedel, also a physician. He received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Jena in 1697. He published research works on camphor, fermentation, magnesium carbonate, the combustion of sulfur, and various medical issues.
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Rudolph August Witthaus
1846 - 1915 (69 years)
Rudolph August Witthaus Jr. was an American physician, chemist, and toxicologist. He was the top authority on poisons in the United States and was a forensic toxicologist in many important capital murder cases of the late19th and early 20th centuries. He was also a survivor of the sinking of the SS Ville du Havre.
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Mildred May Gostling
1873 - 1962 (89 years)
Mildred May Gostling , also published under her married name Mildred Mills, was an English chemist who completed research in carbohydrate chemistry. She was one of the nineteen signatories on a letter from professional female chemists to the Chemical Society requesting that women be accepted as Fellows to the Society.
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Werner Kern
1906 - 1985 (79 years)
Werner Kern was a German chemist. Life Kern studied from 1924 to 1928 chemistry and physics in Freiburg and Heidelberg. The promotion took place in 1930 Hermann Staudinger, at which the habilitation on "The Poylacrylsäure, a model of the protein," followed. After a period in industrial research, he became in 1946 professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz called in, where he retired 1974th Core was in 1971 with Victor Günter Schulz of the first winner of the Hermann Staudinger price of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker.
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Alexander William Bickerton
1842 - 1929 (87 years)
Professor Alexander William Bickerton was the first professor of chemistry at Canterbury College in Christchurch, New Zealand. He is best known for teaching and mentoring Ernest Rutherford. He was a natural teacher though an eccentric one, who taught science in an exciting way. His differences were not limited to teaching as he formed a socialist community in Christchurch, which he later set up as a theme park. His partial impact theory explaining the appearance of temporary stars was the major work of his lifetime.
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Dan Giușcă
1904 - 1988 (84 years)
Dan Giușcă was a Romanian geologist and a member of the Romanian Academy. Biography In 1927, Giușcă received his PhD in chemistry from the University of Cluj, having his theses on the morphotropic effect of closing of spiranic cycles. After finishing his degree, he was hired by Ludovic Mrazec at the Geologic Institute and at the University of Bucharest's Department of Mineralogy. In 1929, Giușcă obtained a scholarship at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, after which he worked in Germany at the laboratories of Paul Niggli and Wilhelm Eitel.
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Elmer Peter Kohler
1865 - 1938 (73 years)
Elmer Peter Kohler was an American organic chemist who spent his career on the faculty at Bryn Mawr College and later at Harvard University. At both institutions, he was notable for his effectiveness in teaching.
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John Mallet
1832 - 1912 (80 years)
John William Mallet FRS was an Irish chemist who lived and worked in the United States. Biography John William Mallet was born near Dublin to Robert Mallet and Cordelia Mallet . Robert Mallet was a civil engineer and a fellow of the Royal Society and other societies and had an ample scientific library which his son had explored. Before entering college, John was attending private lessons in chemistry and at the age of 17 was admitted to Trinity College Dublin, where he obtained the degree Bachelor of Arts in 1853. During his college years, Mallet assisted his father in seismological studies, ...
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Sibyl M. Rock
1909 - 1981 (72 years)
Sibyl Martha Rock was an American inventor who was a pioneer in mass spectrometry and computing. Rock was a key person in Consolidated Engineering Corporation's mass spectrometry team at a time when mass spectrometers were first being commercialized for use by researchers and scientists. Rock was instrumental in developing mathematical techniques for analyzing the results from mass spectrometers, in developing an analog computer with Clifford Berry for analysis of equations, and in sustaining an ongoing dialog between engineers and customers involved in development of both the mass spectrome...
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