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,
#6651
Jay Switzer
Jay A. Switzer is an American chemist, currently the Curators’ Distinguished Professor and Donald L. Castleman/FCR Missouri Endowed professor of Discovery in Chemistry at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Switzer received his BS degree in chemistry from the University of Cincinnati, and his PhD degree in inorganic chemistry from Wayne State University under Professor John F. Endicott. After receiving his PhD degree, he joined Union Oil Company of California as a senior research chemist. His research at UNOCAL was on photoelectrochemistry and the electrochemical processing of photovoltaic cells.
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Harold Hartley
1878 - 1972 (94 years)
Brigadier-General Sir Harold Brewer Hartley was a British physical chemist. He moved from academia to important positions in business and industry, including serving as Chairman of the British Overseas Airways Corporation.
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Herbert Newby McCoy
1870 - 1945 (75 years)
Herbert Newby McCoy was an American chemist who taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah and was the vice-president of Lindsay Light & Chemical Company. He contributed numerous papers on physical chemistry, radioactivity and rare earths.
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Tadeusz Reichstein
1897 - 1996 (99 years)
Tadeusz Reichstein , also known as Tadeus Reichstein, was a Polish-Swiss chemist and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate , which was awarded for his work on the isolation of cortisone.
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Kazimierz Fajans
1887 - 1975 (88 years)
Kazimierz Fajans was a Polish American physical chemist of Polish-Jewish origin, a pioneer in the science of radioactivity and the co-discoverer of chemical element protactinium. Education and career He was born May 27, 1887, in Warsaw, Congress Poland, to a family of Jewish background. After he had completed secondary school in Warsaw , he started studying chemistry in Germany, at first at the University in Leipzig, and then in Heidelberg and Zürich. In 1909 he was awarded a PhD degree for his research into the stereoselective synthesis of chiral compounds.
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Pauline Gracia Beery Mack
1891 - 1974 (83 years)
Pauline Gracia Beery Mack was an American chemist, home economist, and college administrator. Her research in calcium, nutrition, radiation, and bone density began during the 1930s, and culminated in work for NASA when she was in her seventies.
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Andreas von Antropoff
1878 - 1956 (78 years)
Andreas von Antropoff — Russian and German scientist-chemist, professor at the Bonn University and is known to have coined the term "neutronium" and developed a temporarily and widely used alternative periodic table of elements in 1926.
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Ray Crist
1900 - 2005 (105 years)
Ray Crist was an American chemist who participated in the Manhattan Project. When he retired from teaching at the age of 104 in 2004, Crist is widely believed to have been America's oldest worker at the time.
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Ida Noddack
1896 - 1978 (82 years)
Ida Noddack , née Tacke, was a German chemist and physicist. In 1934 she was the first to mention the idea later named nuclear fission. With her husband Walter Noddack, and Otto Berg, she discovered element 75, rhenium. She was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
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Robert Whytlaw-Gray
1877 - 1958 (81 years)
Robert H. Whytlaw-Gray, OBE, FRS was an English chemist, born in London. He studied at the University of Glasgow and University College London and was Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Leeds. He and William Ramsay isolated radon and studied its physical properties .
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Arnold Beckman
1900 - 2004 (104 years)
Arnold Orville Beckman was an American chemist, inventor, investor, and philanthropist. While a professor at California Institute of Technology, he founded Beckman Instruments based on his 1934 invention of the pH meter, a device for measuring acidity , later considered to have "revolutionized the study of chemistry and biology". He also developed the DU spectrophotometer, "probably the most important instrument ever developed towards the advancement of bioscience". Beckman funded the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, the first silicon transistor company in California, thus giving rise to Silicon Valley.
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Eger V. Murphree
1898 - 1962 (64 years)
Eger Vaughan Murphree was an American chemist, best known for his co-invention of the process of fluid catalytic cracking. Biography Murphree was born on November 3, 1898, in Bayonne, New Jersey, moving as a child to Kentucky. He graduated from Kentucky University with degrees in chemistry and mathematics in 1920, and a master's degree in chemistry in 1921. Murphree played college football as Kentucky as a tackle and was captain of the 1920 Kentucky Wildcats football team.
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Moddie Taylor
1912 - 1976 (64 years)
Moddie Daniel Taylor was an African American chemist who specialized in rare earth minerals. He was one of the African American scientists and technicians on the Manhattan Project from 1943 to 1945, working to develop the atomic bomb. For his work on the Manhattan Project, he was awarded a Certificate of Merit Medal for his contributions by Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson.
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James Holmes Sturdivant
1906 - 1972 (66 years)
James Holmes Sturdivant was a chemist who worked for several years as the main research assistant to Linus Pauling at Caltech, starting in 1927. He co-authored some seminal papers with Pauling, and was co-advisor of Robert Eugene Rundle.
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I. K. Taimni
1898 - 1978 (80 years)
I. K. Taimni was a professor of chemistry at the Allahabad University in India, and an influential scholar in the fields of Yoga and Indian philosophy. He was a leader of the Theosophical Society. Taimni authored a number of books on Eastern Philosophy, including a modern interpretation of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras.
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Gustavs Vanags
1891 - 1965 (74 years)
Gustavs Vanags was a Soviet and Latvian organic chemist, full member of Latvian SSR Academy of Sciences. He was also one of the signers of the Memorandum of Latvian Central Council in 1944. Biography Gustavs Vanags was born in "Rungas" house of the Schnicken manor . He received primary education in the Mitau Classic Gymnasium, and in 1910 enrolled Riga Polytechnic Institute. During the First World War, he, among many, went in evacuation to the inner regions of Russian Empire; after returning from it in 1921, he completed his education in the new-founded University of Latvia and worked at the Faculty of Chemistry, raising to the position of the chair of the Department of organic chemistry.
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Steven Kistler
1900 - 1975 (75 years)
Samuel Stephens Kistler was an American scientist and chemical engineer, best known as the inventor of aerogels, one of the lightest known solid materials. Biography Kistler, the son of a shopkeeper, was born in the small town of Cedarville in the far northeastern corner of California. The family moved to the larger Santa Rosa when Kistler was 12, where he first became interested in chemistry. When he entered the College of the Pacific in 1917, however, his plan was to learn to play the cello, then pursue a degree in agriculture. Instead, he ended up taking every science course available, and after three years he moved to Stanford University and obtained a B.A.
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John Llewellyn
1915 - 1988 (73 years)
Sir Frederick John Llewellyn KCMG was an English chemist and academic administrator who spent some of his career in New Zealand. Biography Llewellyn was born in 1915. His father was Ernest Barrett Llewellyn. He received his education at Dursley Grammar School. He attended the University of Birmingham, from where he graduated with a BSc . At the same university, he received a PhD and a DSc.
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Mowbray Ritchie
1905 - 1966 (61 years)
Mowbray Ritchie FRSE was a 20th-century Scottish chemist and scientific author. He was a friend and colleague of Sir Edmund Hirst. Life Ritchie was born in Peebles on 5 October 1905, and was educated at Peebles High School. He studied chemistry at the University of Edinburgh graduating with a BSc in 1927. He then continued as a postgraduate gaining two doctorates . In 1932 Ritchie began working as a demonstrator at University chemistry lectures, and was promoted to lecturer in 1935.
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Edward Bartow
1870 - 1958 (88 years)
Edward Bartow was an American chemist and an expert in the field of sanitary chemistry. His career extended from 1897 to 1958 and he is best known for his work in drinking water purification and wastewater treatment. He was well known as an educator, and his many students went on to leadership positions in the fields of sanitary chemistry and engineering.
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Chika Kuroda
1884 - 1968 (84 years)
Chika Kuroda was a Japanese chemist whose research focused on natural pigments. She was the first woman in Japan to receive a Bachelor of Science. Biography Chika Kuroda was born in Saga, Kyushu on 24 March 1884, the third daughter of her father Kuroda Heihachi and her mother Toku.
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Lotte Loewe
1900 - Present (126 years)
Lotte Luise Friederike Loewe was a German chemist known for her published research in organic chemistry. Loewe was born in Breslau to Helene Loewe. She received her doctorate in chemistry from the University of Breslau in 1927 and began her career there shortly thereafter, spending six years as a chemistry assistant from 1927 to 1933. She then moved to the University of Zurich in Switzerland for one year and then the University of Istanbul in Turkey for 21 years, from 1934 to 1955. Her last academic appointment was at the University of Basel, Switzerland, where she spent six years from 19...
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Emma P. Carr
1880 - 1972 (92 years)
Emma Perry Carr was an American spectroscopist and chemical educator. Her work on unsaturated hydrocarbons and absorption spectra earned her the inaugural Francis P. Garvan Medal from the American Chemical Society in 1937.
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Heinrich Otto Wieland
1877 - 1957 (80 years)
Heinrich Otto Wieland was a German chemist. He won the 1927 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research into the bile acids. Career In 1901 Wieland received his doctorate at the University of Munich while studying under Johannes Thiele. In 1904 he completed his habilitation, then continued to teach at the university and starting in 1907 was a consultant for Boehringer Ingelheim. In 1914 he became associate professor for special topics in organic chemistry, and director of the Organic Division of the State Laboratory in Munich. From 1917 to 1918 Wieland worked in the service of the Kaiser Wilhe...
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George S. Whitby
1887 - 1972 (85 years)
George Stafford Whitby was the head of the University of Akron rubber laboratory and for many years was the only person in the United States who taught rubber chemistry. Whitby received the Charles Goodyear Medal in 1954 and in 1972, he was inducted into the International Rubber Science Hall of Fame. In 1986 the Rubber Division established the George Stafford Whitby Award in his honor.
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Katharine Blunt
1876 - 1954 (78 years)
Katharine Blunt was an American chemist, professor, and nutritionist who specialized in the fields of home economics, food chemistry and nutrition. Most of her research was on nutrition, but she also made great improvements to research on calcium and phosphorus metabolism and on the basal metabolism of women and children. She served as the third president of Connecticut College.
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Henry Tizard
1885 - 1959 (74 years)
Sir Henry Thomas Tizard was an English chemist, inventor and Rector of Imperial College, who developed the modern "octane rating" used to classify petrol, helped develop radar in World War II, and led the first serious studies of UFOss.
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Bill David
William I. F. David is a professor of Materials Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, an STFC Senior Fellow at the ISIS neutron source at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and a Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford.
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Robert Wintgen
1882 - 1966 (84 years)
Robert Wintgen was a German chemist. Wintgen studied at the University of Bonn and made his Ph.D with E. Rimbach at the University of Berlin. After a post-doc position with Alfred Stock in Berlin between 1917 and 1919 he worked at the University of Göttingen together with Richard Adolf Zsigmondy. Influenced by this cooperation worked on colloids chemistry from that point on. Wintgen became professor at the newly founded University of Cologne in 1924 where he stayed until his retirement in 1950.
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Nikolai Mikhailovich Strakhov
1900 - 1978 (78 years)
Nikolai Mikhailovich Strakhov was a Soviet geologist who specialized in lithology and lithogenesis of ocean sediment. His book Principles of Lithogenesis was a landmark text. He also founded the journal Lithology and Mineral Resources.
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Herman T. Briscoe
1893 - 1960 (67 years)
Herman Thompson Briscoe was an American chemist and professor of chemistry. The Herman T. Briscoe Professorship in Chemistry at Indiana University was established in 1961, and the Herman T. Briscoe Quadrangle Dormitory was dedicated in 1966.
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Costin Nenițescu
1902 - 1970 (68 years)
Costin D. Neniţescu was a prominent Romanian chemist, and a professor at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest. He was a member of the Romanian Academy, a corresponding member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, and a member of the Leopoldina Academy of Natural Scientists in Halle-Saale.
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Walter Seelmann-Eggebert
1915 - 1988 (73 years)
Wilhem Walter Rudolph Max Seelmann-Eggebert was a German radiochemist. He was son of Erich Eggebert and Edwig Schmidt. He was a student of Otto Hahn at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, where, after 1939, he worked with Fritz Strassmann on nuclear fission.
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Elizabeth Rona
1890 - 1981 (91 years)
Elizabeth Rona was a Hungarian nuclear chemist, known for her work with radioactive isotopes. After developing an enhanced method of preparing polonium samples, she was recognized internationally as the leading expert in isotope separation and polonium preparation. Between 1914 and 1918, during her postdoctoral study with George de Hevesy, she developed a theory that the velocity of diffusion depended on the mass of the nuclides. As only a few atomic elements had been identified, her confirmation of the existence of "Uranium-Y" was a major contribution to nuclear chemistry. She was awarded ...
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Martin André Rosanoff
1874 - 1951 (77 years)
Martin André Rosanoff, Sc.D. was a Russian-American chemist. Born at Nikolaev, Russia, he was educated at Nikolaev in the classical Gymnasium of that city, in Berlin, and in Paris. Later, he studied at New York University in the United States. He was occupied in various positions at New York City and in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at Mellon Institute where he was elected the first life incumbent of the newly endowed Willard Gibbs chair of research in pure chemistry.
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Otto Sackur
1880 - 1914 (34 years)
Otto Sackur was a German physical chemist. He is known for the development of the Sackur–Tetrode equation, which he developed independently of Hugo Tetrode. His and Tetrode's names are also combined to name the Sackur–Tetrode constant derived using the equation.
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Anatoly Babko
1905 - 1968 (63 years)
Anatoly Babko was a Soviet chemist, specializing in analytical chemistry and in the chemistry of complex compounds. Babko was a student of Professor N. Tananaev, a Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic , and an Honoured Science Worker of the Ukrainian SSR . In 1939, he organized the research department at the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry of the Ukrainian SSR, and managed it until the end of his life. In 1943 he was appointed to a professorship, and in 1944 became the Head of the Department of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Kyiv.
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Harold Ellingham
1897 - 1975 (78 years)
Harold Johann Thomas Ellingham, OBE, was a British physical chemist, best known for his Ellingham diagrams, which summarize a large amount of information concerning extractive metallurgy. Ellingham was born in Tottenham on 21 November 1897, the son of Thomas Robert Ellingham and Katherine Caroline Bauer.
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William Gidley Emmett
1887 - 1985 (98 years)
William Gidley Emmett FRSE was a British industrial chemist, educationalist and academic author. In education he spoke out against traditional examination methods and developed a series of non-standard tests to assess IQ, now commonly appearing in standard IQ tests, and generally known as the Moray House Tests.
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William P. Murphy
1892 - 1987 (95 years)
William Parry Murphy was an American physician who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1934 with George Richards Minot and George Hoyt Whipple for their combined work in devising and treating macrocytic anemia .
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Arne Ölander
1902 - 1984 (82 years)
Gustav Arne Ölander was a Swedish chemist, known for his discovery of the shape-memory effect in metal alloys. He was the son of Gustaf Ölander and Hilda Ölander née Norrman. Ölander became an associate professor of physical chemistry at Stockholm University in 1929. He was a professor of theoretical chemistry and electrochemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology 1936–1943, in inorganic and physical chemistry at Stockholm University 1943–1960, and in physical chemistry at Stockholm University 1960–1968.
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Paul Karrer
1889 - 1971 (82 years)
Professor Paul Karrer FRS FRSE FCS was a Swiss organic chemist best known for his research on vitamins. He and Norman Haworth won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1937. Biography Early years Karrer was born in Moscow, Russia to Paul Karrer and Julie Lerch, both Swiss nationals. In 1892 Karrer's family returned to Switzerland where he was educated at Wildegg and at the grammar school in Lenzburg, Aarau, where he matriculated in 1908. He studied chemistry at the University of Zurich under Alfred Werner and after gaining his Ph.D. in 1911, he spent a further year as assistant in the Chemical Institute.
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Gordon Aylward
1900 - Present (126 years)
Gordon Hillis Aylward is an Australian chemical author. He is known for writing the SI Chemical Data book. Biography Aylward graduated on 20 May 1952 with a BSc in Applied Chemistry from the then-new University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Later he received a MSc from the same university, and continued to teach Analytical Chemistry for 13 years there. During that period he organized the Approach to Chemistry summer schools, together with his co-teacher dr Tristan Findlay. To support the course, they wrote the book SI Chemical Data as the textbook.
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Frederick Mason Brewer
1903 - 1963 (60 years)
Frederick Mason Brewer CBE FRIC was an English chemist. He was Head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Oxford and Mayor of Oxford during 1959–60. Frederick Brewer was born in Kensal Rise , Middlesex, England. He was the son of Frederick Charles Brewer and Ellen Maria Owen, both school teachers. Brewer studied chemistry at Lincoln College, Oxford, from 1920, having received an open scholarship, and subsequently gained a first class degree. After his undergraduate studies, Brewer undertook research with Prof. Frederick Soddy.
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Hans Stammreich
1902 - 1969 (67 years)
Hans Stammreich , was a Brazilian chemist of German origin and an important pioneer of Raman spectroscopy and molecular spectroscopy. Life After obtaining his PhD in physical chemistry after studying under Adolf Miethe at the Berlin Technical University, Stammreich became soon, partly influenced by his personal friendship with Albert Einstein, interested in molecular spectroscopy, especially Raman spectroscopy. After he was fired from TU Berlin in April 1933 because of his Jewish background, Stammreich emigrated to Paris, where he stayed until 1940, working in the labs of Paul Langevin and Ch...
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Emil Votoček
1872 - 1950 (78 years)
Emil Votoček was a Czech chemist, composer and music theorist. He is noted for his chemistry textbooks and multilingual dictionaries in both chemistry and music. Chemistry career Votoček studied at the Czech Institute of Technology later in Mulhouse and received his PhD with Bernhard Tollens at the University of Göttingen for his chemistry of sugar.
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William Hultz Walker
1869 - 1934 (65 years)
William Hultz Walker was an American chemist and professor. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated in 1890 at Penn State College and took his Ph.D. at Göttingen . In 1894 he accepted the chair of industrial chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where from 1908 he was also director of the research laboratory of applied chemistry. Walker was vice president of the International Congress of Applied Chemistry in 1893 and president of the American Electrochemical Society in 1910. The New York Section of the American Chemical Society conferred on him its Nichols me...
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Yelavarthy Nayudamma
1922 - 1985 (63 years)
Yelavarthy Nayudamma was a chemical engineer and a scientist killed on Air India Flight 182 . Early life and education Nayudamma was born on 10 September 1922 into an agricultural family at Yelavarru village near Tenali in Guntur district of present day Andhra Pradesh state in India. He was the eldest of three brothers and a sister. His parents Raghavamma and Anjaih named him Nayudammma . Nayudamma who was over 6 feet tall lived up to his name.
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Jan Kok
1899 - 1982 (83 years)
Jan Kok was a Dutch pharmacist. In 1945, he was appointed as professor at the University of Amsterdam, and between 1960 and 1964 he was rector magnificus of this university. External links Biography Prof. dr. J. Kok, 1899 - 1982 at the University of Amsterdam Album Academicum website
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Roger Adams
1889 - 1971 (82 years)
Roger Adams was an American organic chemist who developed the eponymous Adams' catalyst, and helped determine the composition of natural substances such as complex vegetable oils and plant alkaloids. He isolated and identified CBD in 1940. As head of the Chemistry department at the University of Illinois from 1926 to 1954, he influenced graduate education in America, taught over 250 Ph.D. students and postgraduate students, and served in military science during World War I and World War II.
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