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,
#6601
Johann Joseph Scherer
1814 - 1869 (55 years)
Johann Joseph Scherer was a German physician and chemist born in Aschaffenburg. In 1836 he graduated from the University of Würzburg, where he studied medicine, chemistry, geology and mineralogy. From 1836 to 1838 he practiced medicine in Wipfeld, afterwards relocating to the University of Munich, where he resumed his studies in chemistry.
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Józef Zawadzki
1886 - 1951 (65 years)
Józef Zawadzki was a Polish physical chemist and technologist. Father of Tadeusz and Anna Zawadzka. Zawadzki was a co-founder, President and Vice-President of the Polskie Towarzystwo Chemiczne. He was a professor and rector of Warsaw University of Technology, and a member of the Polish Academy of Learning .
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Akira Ogata
1887 - 1978 (91 years)
was a Japanese chemist and the first to synthesize methamphetamine in crystalline form in 1919. Career In 1912, Ogata graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Tokyo. In 1919 he received a degree from the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he had performed pharmacological experiments.
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Johann Gottlieb
1815 - 1875 (60 years)
Johann Gottlieb was an Austrian chemist who first synthesized Propionic acid. He is also known for describing and naming Paramylon. Biography Gottlieb was born in Brno as son to a pharmacist. He completed his Matura at the local Gymnasium and was supposed to take over his father’s business. He studied thus first pharmacy then chemistry under professor Adolf Martin Pleischl in Vienna. He later continued his studies also in Prague. His plans to pursue a scientific career led to disapproval and a lack of support by his father. He thus soon became assistant to Josef Redtenbacher, obtained his do...
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William Michael Haynes
#6606
Julius Wilbrand
1839 - 1906 (67 years)
Julius Bernhard Friedrich Adolph Wilbrand was a German chemist. Born in Gießen to Franz Joseph Julius Wilbrand and Albertine Knapp, he discovered trinitrotoluene in 1863, but the compound's use as an explosive was not developed until later. Wilbrand obtained trinitrotoluene or TNT by the nitration of toluene.
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Dejan Popović Jekić
1881 - 1913 (32 years)
Dragomir "Dejan" Popović Jekić , known as "Voivode Dejan" during the struggle for Old Serbia and Macedonia, was a chemist and Serbian Chetnik commander . He was one of the earliest volunteers to join the Serbian Chetnik Organization and in the struggle for the liberation of Old Serbia and Macedonia from Ottoman oppression.
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Johann Nepomuk von Fuchs
1774 - 1856 (82 years)
Johann Nepomuk von Fuchs was a German chemist and mineralogist, and royal Bavarian privy councillor. Biography He was born at Mattenzell, near Falkenstein in the Bavarian Forest. In 1807 he became professor of chemistry and mineralogy at the Ludwig Maximilian University, which was located in Landshut at the time, and in 1823 conservator of the mineralogical collections at Munich, where he was appointed professor of mineralogy three years later, when the university was relocated. He retired in 1852, was ennobled by the Maximilian II of Bavaria in 1854, and died at Munich on 5 March 1856.
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Georg Friedrich Hildebrandt
1764 - 1816 (52 years)
Georg Friedrich Hildebrandt was a pharmacist, chemist, and anatomist. He was an early supporter of Lavoisier's theories in Germany. He investigated mercury compounds, and the chemical nature of quicklime, ammonium nitrate, and ammonia. He studied light emitted by electric discharges through air and investigated the use of nitric oxide to determine the oxygen content of air. He developed a method to separate silver from copper. He wrote textbooks on pharmacology and human anatomy, and treatises on smallpox, sleep, and the digestive system.
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William Moffitt
1925 - 1958 (33 years)
William E. Moffitt was a British quantum chemist. He died after a heart attack following a squash match. He had been thought to be one of Britain's most gifted academics. Early life Moffitt was born in Berlin, Germany to British parents; his father was working in Berlin on behalf of the British government. He was educated by private tuition up to the age of 11. He attended Harrow School from 1936–43. His chemistry master later said of him that "he was undoubtably the most able of a decade of gifted boys ... [and] has a profound effect on all who met him. He did more than anyone to create in t...
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Arthur Heffter
1859 - 1925 (66 years)
Arthur Carl Wilhelm Heffter was a German pharmacologist and chemist. He was the first chairman of the German Society of Pharmacologists, and was largely responsible for the first Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology. He isolated mescaline from the peyote cactus in 1897, the first such isolation of a naturally occurring psychedelic substance in pure form. In addition, he conducted experiments on its effects by comparing the effects of peyote and mescaline on himself.
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Karl Spiro
1867 - 1932 (65 years)
Karl Spiro was a German biologist, and physical chemist. Spiro was born in Berlin. In 1889 he received his PhD from the University of Würzburg as a student of Emil Fischer, then in 1893 obtained his medical doctorate from the University of Leipzig. He later served as an assistant to Oswald Schmiedeberg and Franz Hofmeister at the University of Strasbourg, where in 1912 he became an honorary professor. From 1919 to 1921 he worked as a pharmacologist in the research laboratories of Sandoz AG . In 1921 he succeeded Gustav von Bunge as professor of physical chemistry at the University of Basel, where he also served as director of the institute for physiological chemistry.
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Paul Traugott Meissner
1778 - 1864 (86 years)
Paul Traugott Meissner was an Austrian chemist. In 1797 he moved to Vienna, where he attended lectures given by Joseph Franz von Jacquin . Later, he continued his studies on a tour through Germany. He earned a degree as magister of pharmacy from the University of Pest, subsequently returning to Transylvania, where he took over management of a pharmacy in Kronstadt.
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Andrew Plummer
1697 - 1756 (59 years)
Andrew Plummer FRCP was a Scottish physician and chemist. He was professor of chemistry at the University of Edinburgh from 1726 to 1755. He developed ideas on the attractive and repulsive forces involved in chemical affinity, which later had influence on his successors William Cullen and Joseph Black. He compounded "Plummer's pills", a mixture of calomel and antimony sulfide with guaiacum; the pills were originally compounded to treat psoriasis but were used for more than a century as an antisyphilitic.
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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
#6621
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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Paul Pfeiffer
1875 - 1951 (76 years)
Paul Pfeiffer was an influential German chemist. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Zurich, studying under Alfred Werner, the "father of coordination chemistry". His thesis, submitted in 1898, dealt with adducts of tin halides. Pfeiffer was considered Werner's most successful student and became Werner's assistant until, due to a dispute with his mentor, he left first for Rostock, then Karlsruhe, and finally Bonn. At Bonn, where he had studied as an undergraduate, he occupied Kekulé's chair.
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