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,
#6701
Kennedy J. P. Orton
1872 - 1930 (58 years)
Kennedy J. P. Orton was a British chemist. Initially he studied medicine at St. Thomas' Hospital, but there he became interested in chemistry and moved to St. John's College, Cambridge. He then obtained a Ph.D. summa cum laude in Heidelberg under Karl von Auwers, before working for a year with Sir William Ramsey at University College, London. He was then lecturer and demonstrator of Chemistry at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, before in 1903 being appointed Professor of Chemistry at University College of North Wales, Bangor, where he headed the department until his death. He was elected a Fellow ...
Go to Profile#6702
Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari
838 - 870 (32 years)
Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari , was a Persian Muslim scholar, physician and psychologist, who produced one of the first Islamic encyclopedia of medicine titled Firdaws al-Hikmah . Ali ibn Sahl spoke Syriac and Greek, the two sources of the medical tradition of Antiquity which had been lost by medieval Europe, and transcribed in meticulous calligraphy. His most famous student was the physician and alchemist Abu Bakr al-Razi . Al-Tabari wrote the first encyclopedic work on medicine. He lived for over 70 years and interacted with important figures of the time, such as Muslim caliphs, governors, and eminent scholars.
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Tom Cottrell
1923 - 1973 (50 years)
Prof Tom Leadbetter Cottrell DSc FRSE was an influential Scottish chemist. He is best remembered as a co-founder and first Principal of the University of Stirling, and founder of the Macrobert Arts Centre in Stirling. He wrote several popular academic textbooks on the subject of chemistry.
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Edmund Załęski
1863 - 1932 (69 years)
Edmund Załęski was a Polish chemist, agrotechnician, and plant breeder. He was a professor at the Agricultural University of Dublany, as well as a professor at Jagiellonian University, where he also served as rector from 1930–1931.
Go to Profile#6705
James Eights
1798 - 1882 (84 years)
James Eights was an American physician, scientist, and artist. He was born in Albany, New York, the son of physician Jonathan Eights and Alida Wynkoop. James also became a physician and was appointed an examiner at a local engineering school which is now known as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
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Denis Jordan
1914 - 1982 (68 years)
Denis Oswald Jordan AO FAA FRACI was an Anglo-Australian chemist with a distinguished career as a researcher and lecturer in Chemistry at both University College Nottingham and the University of Adelaide, where he was Angas Professor of Chemistry from 1958 to 1982. Jordan also served as president of Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering from 1958 to 1962, and Royal Australian Chemical Institute from 1978 to 1979.
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Cyril G. Hopkins
1866 - 1919 (53 years)
Cyril George Hopkins was an American agricultural chemist who initiated the Illinois long-term selection experiment in 1896. He was also noted for his extensive research and writings on the soil of Illinois.
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Charles L. Christ
1916 - 1980 (64 years)
Charles Louis Christ was an American scientist, geochemist and mineralogist. Education He received his Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees from the Johns Hopkins University, completing his Ph.D. in 1940.
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George Barger
1878 - 1939 (61 years)
George Barger FRS FRSE FCS LLD was a British chemist. Life He was born to an English mother, Eleanor Higginbotham, and Gerrit Barger, a Dutch engineer in Manchester, England. He was educated at Utrecht and The Hague High School. He subsequently attended King's College, Cambridge for his undergraduate degree and University College London to do a doctorate of science. His main work focused on the study of alkaloids and investigations of simple nitrogenous compounds of biological importance. Barger identified tyramine as one of the compounds responsible for the biological activity of ergot extracts.
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Gerhard Krohn Rollefson
1900 - 1955 (55 years)
Gerhard Krohn Rollefson was a professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Background and career Rollefson received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His dissertation concerned Ebullioscopic constant measurement of mixed liquid media. He then completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. Rollefson was a specialist in physical chemistry and studied the impact of X-ray radiation on a variety of materials. Rollefson published a book with Milton Burton in 1939: Photochemist...
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Louis Fieser
1899 - 1977 (78 years)
Louis Frederick Fieser was an American organic chemist, professor, and in 1968, professor emeritus at Harvard University. He invented militarily effective napalm while at Harvard in 1942. His award-winning research included work on blood-clotting agents including the first synthesis of vitamin K, synthesis and screening of quinones as antimalarial drugs, work with steroids leading to the synthesis of cortisone, and study of the nature of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
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J. D. Bernal
1901 - 1971 (70 years)
John Desmond Bernal was an Irish scientist who pioneered the use of X-ray crystallography in molecular biology. He published extensively on the history of science. In addition, Bernal wrote popular books on science and society. He was a communist activist and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain .
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Raymond Fuoss
1905 - 1987 (82 years)
Raymond Matthew Fuoss was an American chemist who researched mainly on electrolytes, polyelectrolytes, and polymers. He held Sterling Professor status at Yale University. Early life and education Fuoss was born to Jacob Z. Fuoss in 1905 and graduated from Altoona High School.
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Joel Henry Hildebrand
1881 - 1983 (102 years)
Joel Henry Hildebrand was an American educator and a pioneer chemist. He was a major figure in physical chemistry research specializing in liquids and nonelectrolyte solutions. Education and professorship He was born in Camden, New Jersey on November 16, 1881.
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Morris S. Kharasch
1895 - 1957 (62 years)
Morris Selig Kharasch was a pioneering organic chemist best known for his work with free radical additions and polymerizations. He defined the peroxide effect, explaining how an anti-Markovnikov orientation could be achieved via free radical addition. Kharasch was born in the Russian Empire in 1895 and immigrated to the United States at the age of 13. In 1919, he completed his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Chicago and spent most of his professional career there.
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William Giauque
1895 - 1982 (87 years)
William Francis Giauque was a Canadian-born American chemist and Nobel laureate recognized in 1949 for his studies in the properties of matter at temperatures close to absolute zero. He spent virtually all of his educational and professional career at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Joseph Edward Mayer
1904 - 1983 (79 years)
Joseph Edward Mayer was a chemist who formulated the Mayer expansion in statistical field theory. He was professor of chemistry at the University of California San Diego from 1960 to 1972, and previously at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the University of Chicago. He was married to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer from 1930 until her death in 1972. He went to work with James Franck in Göttingen, Germany in 1929, where he met Maria, a student of Max Born. He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , and the American Philosophical Society .
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James B. Sumner
1887 - 1955 (68 years)
James Batcheller Sumner was an American biochemist. He discovered that enzymes can be crystallized, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1946 with John Howard Northrop and Wendell Meredith Stanley. He was also the first to prove that enzymes are proteins.
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Hugh Stott Taylor
1890 - 1974 (84 years)
Sir Hugh Stott Taylor was an English chemist primarily interested in catalysis. In 1925, in a landmark contribution to catalytic theory, Taylor suggested that a catalysed chemical reaction is not catalysed over the entire solid surface of the catalyst but only at certain 'active sites' or centres. He also developed important methods for procuring heavy water during World War II and pioneered the use of stable isotopes in studying chemical reactions.
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James William McBain
1882 - 1953 (71 years)
James William McBain FRS was a Canadiann chemist. He gained a Master of Arts at Toronto University and a Doctor of Science at Heidelberg University. He carried out pioneering work in the area of micelles at the University of Bristol. As early as 1913 he postulated the existence of "colloidal ions", now known as micelles, to explain the good electrolytic conductivity of sodium palmitate solutions. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 1923 He won their Davy Medal in 1939.
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Walther F. Goebel
1899 - 1993 (94 years)
Walther Frederick Goebel was an American immunologist and an organic chemist, a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Goebel was known for his research of polysaccharides. Awards and distinctions member of the National Academy of Scienceshonorary degrees from Rockefeller University in 1978 and Middlebury College in 1959
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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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Luis Federico Leloir
1906 - 1987 (81 years)
Luis Federico Leloir was an Argentine physician and biochemist who received the 1970 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the metabolic pathways by which carbohydrates are synthesized and converted into energy in the body. Although born in France, Leloir received the majority of his education at the University of Buenos Aires and was director of the private research group Fundación Instituto Campomar until his death in 1987. His research into sugar nucleotides, carbohydrate metabolism, and renal hypertension garnered international attention and led to significant progress in understanding, diagnosing and treating the congenital disease galactosemia.
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J. R. Partington
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
James Riddick Partington was a British chemist and historian of chemistry who published multiple books and articles in scientific magazines. His most famous works were An Advanced Treatise on Physical Chemistry and A History of Chemistry , for which he received the Dexter Award and the George Sarton Medal.
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Hobart Hurd Willard
1881 - 1974 (93 years)
Hobart Hurd Willard was an analytical chemist and inorganic chemist who spent most of his career at the University of Michigan. He was known for his teaching skill and his authorship of widely used textbooks. His research interests were wide-ranging and involved the characterization of perchloric acid and periodic acid salts.
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Edgar Steacie
1900 - 1962 (62 years)
Edgar William Richard Steacie was a Canadian physical chemist and president of the National Research Council of Canada from 1952 to 1962. Education Born in Montreal, Quebec, the only child of Richard Steacie and Alice Kate McWood, he studied a year at the Royal Military College of Canada. In 1923, he received his Bachelor of Science degree and his Ph.D. in 1926 from McGill University.
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Evert Verwey
1905 - 1981 (76 years)
Evert Johannes Willem Verwey, also Verweij, was a Dutch chemist, who also did research in physical chemistry. Verwey studied chemistry at the University of Amsterdam and obtained his MSc in 1929. From 1931 he worked as an assistant at the University of Groningen, where he obtained his PhD under the guidance of Hugo Rudolph Kruyt . In 1934 he moved to the Philips Laboratories in Eindhoven. He continued work on colloids, which was also the topic of his dissertation, and on oxides. The Verwey transition in magnetite is named after him.
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Raymond Thayer Birge
1887 - 1980 (93 years)
Raymond Thayer Birge was an American physicist. Career Born in Brooklyn, New York, into an academic scientific family, Birge obtained his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in 1913. In the same year he married Irene A. Walsh. The Birges had two children, Carolyn Elizabeth and Robert Walsh, Associate Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1973-1981. After five years as an instructor at Syracuse University, he became a member of the physics department at University of California, Berkeley, where he remained until he retired, as chairman, in 1955.
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Géza Zemplén
1883 - 1956 (73 years)
Géza Gusztáv Zemplén, Ph.D. was a notable Hungarian chemist, organic chemist, professor, and chemistry author. He was a recipient of the Kossuth Prize, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and was the brother of Professor Győző Zemplén. His major field of research was structural chemistry and biochemistry including the synthesis of naturally occurring flavonoid-glycosides .
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Vladimir Ipatieff
1867 - 1952 (85 years)
Vladimir Nikolayevich Ipatieff ; was a Russian and American chemist. His most important contributions are in the field of petroleum chemistry and catalysts. Life and career Born in Moscow, Ipatieff first studied artillery in the Mikhailovskaya Artillery Academy in Petersburg, then later studied chemistry in Russia with Alexei Yevgrafovich Favorskii and in Germany. The prominence of his extended family is illustrated by the fact that the July 17, 1918, extermination of Czar Nicholas Romanoff, the Empress and the rest of the royal family took place in the basement of a vacation house owned by the Ipatieff family in Ekaterinburg.
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Frederick Soddy
1877 - 1956 (79 years)
Frederick Soddy FRS was an English radiochemist who explained, with Ernest Rutherford, that radioactivity is due to the transmutation of elements, now known to involve nuclear reactions. He also proved the existence of isotopes of certain radioactive elements. In 1921 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contributions to our knowledge of the chemistry of radioactive substances, and his investigations into the origin and nature of isotopes". Soddy was a polymath who mastered chemistry, nuclear physics, statistical mechanics, finance and economics.
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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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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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