The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,
#6701
Frans Maurits Jaeger
1877 - 1945 (68 years)
Frans Maurits Jaeger was a Dutch chemist and specialist in the history of chemistry. He is known for his studies of the symmetry of crystals. Biography Frans Maurits Jaeger was born on May 11, 1877, in The Hague, The Netherlands. He started studying chemistry in Leiden in 1895, passing his degree in 1898, and his doctorate in 1900. Thereafter he also studied crystallography in Berlin, Germany.
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Alfons Oscar Saligny
1853 - 1903 (50 years)
Alfons Oscar Saligny was a Romanian chemist. The brother of engineer Anghel Saligny, he was the first child born to a family of intellectuals in Focșani in Moldavia; his father Alfred, of French origin, had settled in the region in the late 1840s. Saligny began his education in a school for wealthy families founded by his father, which emphasized mastery of the French language. He went on to study at the Focșani Gymnasium. He then enrolled in Berlin University, studying under August Wilhelm von Hofmann. He obtained a doctorate in 1875, with a dissertation on organic chemistry.
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Eugen Piwowarsky
1891 - 1953 (62 years)
Eugen Piwowarsky was a German metallurgist. Piwowarsky was born in Leschnitz , Prussian Silesia, and educated at the Technische Hochschule Breslau. He taught at RWTH Aachen and died in Aachen. Literary works Hochwertiger Grauguss und die physikalisch-metallurgischen Grundlagen seiner Herstellung, 1929
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Anton Schrötter von Kristelli
1802 - 1875 (73 years)
Anton Schrötter von Kristelli was an Austrian chemist and mineralogist born in Olomouc, Moravia. His son Leopold Schrötter Ritter von Kristelli was a noted laryngologist. Academic background Anton's father was an apothecary. He initially studied medicine in Vienna at the request of his father, but switched to the natural sciences under the influence of Friedrich Mohs . In 1827 he became an assistant to mathematician Andreas von Ettingshausen and to physicist Andreas von Baumgartner at the University of Vienna. Three years later he was appointed professor of physics and chemistry at the Joa...
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Aleksander Burba
1918 - 1984 (66 years)
Aleksander Adolfovich Burba was a Soviet organizer of industry and education, scholar of chemical and metallurgical technologies, and university professor. He served as the Director of the Mednogorsk Copper-Sulfur Plant and the first Rector of the Orenburg Polytechnic Institute . Burba was named an Honorary Citizen of Mednogorsk, Orenburg Oblast, in 1979.
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Johan Afzelius
1753 - 1837 (84 years)
Johan Afzelius was a Swedish chemist and notable as the doctoral advisor of one of the founders of modern chemistry, Jöns Jacob Berzelius. He was the brother of botanist Adam Afzelius and physician Pehr von Afzelius.
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Angelo Sala
1576 - 1637 (61 years)
Angelo Sala was an Italian doctor and early iatrochemist. He promoted chemical remedies and, drawing on the relative merits of the conflicting chemical and Galenical systems of medicine, dismissed alchemical transmutation and 'universal medicine'; objected to tartar which had deliquesced being called an 'oil'; observed that metals reacted differently with acids; that sulphur extracted something from the air in order to burn; that silver nitrate darkened on exposure to light; surmised the existence of elementary particles; and described newly discovered compounds and methods of preparation. ...
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Edward Turner
1798 - 1837 (39 years)
Edward Turner FRS FRSE FRCPE was a Jamaican-born, British physician and chemist, known for his work on atomic weights, and as a populariser of the atomic theory of Dalton. He was the author of a popular chemistry textbook that was the first to incorporate chemical symbols and formulae as well as organic chemistry.
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Jakub Natanson
1832 - 1884 (52 years)
Jakub Natanson was a Polish chemist and banker, one of the discoverers of Fuchsine. He wrote the first textbook on organic chemistry in the Polish language. Life He was born 20 August 1832 in Warsaw as the son of a banker. From 1852 to 1856 he studied chemistry at the Universität Dorpat with a master’s degree in 1856, where he synthesized fuchsine in the master’s thesis . He then trained from 1858 to 1862 in Germany, France and Great Britain with leading chemists and in 1862 became Professor of Chemistry at the Szkoła Główna Warszawska in Warsaw. In 1856 he found two new urea syntheses.
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Tse‐lok Ho
#6711
Gerhard Norbert Schrauzer
#6712
Alexander Mitscherlich
1836 - 1918 (82 years)
Alexander Mitscherlich was a German chemist and son of Eilhard Mitscherlich. He studied at University of Göttingen, where he also became member of Burschenschaft Hannovera . His most important work was in the field of processing wood to create cellulose. He patented an early version of the sulfite process in 1882.
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Martha Annie Whiteley
1866 - 1956 (90 years)
Martha Annie Whiteley, was an English chemist and mathematician. She was instrumental in advocating for women's entry into the Chemical Society, and was best known for her dedication to advancing women's equality in the field of chemistry. She is identified as one of the Royal Society of Chemistry's 175 Faces of Chemistry.
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Herbert McLeod
1841 - 1923 (82 years)
Herbert McLeod, FRS was an English chemist, noted for the invention of the McLeod gauge and for the invention of a sunshine recorder. Biography McLeod was born in Stoke Newington on 9 Feb 1841 and died 3 October 1923, while other biographies state that he was born in Stoke Newington on 19 February 1841 and died 1 October 1923, a further alternative biography states that he was born 19 February 1842 in the adjacent area of Stamford Hill, North London, and died in Richmond, Surrey on 1 October 1923.
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Li Shouheng
1898 - 1995 (97 years)
Li Shouheng , also known as S. H. Li, was a Chinese educator, chemist and chemical engineer. Li founded the first chemical engineering department in China, thus is regarded as the Father of Modern Chinese Chemical Engineering. Li is also regarded as the first President of current Zhejiang University of Technology.
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Rudolf Leuckart
1854 - 1889 (35 years)
Carl Louis Rudolf Alexander Leuckart was a German chemist who discovered the Leuckart reaction and Leuckart thiophenol reaction. He was the son of Karl Georg Friedrich Rudolf Leuckart a renowned German zoologist. He received his PhD at the University of Leipzig in 1879 and his habilitation at University of Göttingen in 1883, where he also became professor.
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Friedrich Krafft
1852 - 1923 (71 years)
Friedrich Krafft was a German chemist. He studied with Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz, Rudolf Clausius and Gerhard vom Rath. In colloidal chemistry, the Krafft temperature is named after him. In organic chemistry, the Krafft degradation reaction is named after him. This reaction is a conversion of a carboxylic acid, typically of high molecular weight, into the next lower homolog. He also established the boiling point of noble metals and synthesised aromatic compounds containing selenium and tellurium.
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Charles James
1880 - 1928 (48 years)
Charles James was a chemist of British origin working in the United States. He became a professor and head of the chemistry department at the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts in Durham, New Hampshire, US.
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William Lewis
1869 - 1963 (94 years)
William Henry Lewis was Professor of Chemistry at the University of Exeter for more than 30 years. Lewis was educated at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth and Jesus College, Oxford. After graduating, he was a science teacher at Exeter School for seven years, before being appointed Professor of Chemistry at University College, Exeter in 1901. From 1925 until his retirement in 1935, he combined his position as Professor with that of Vice-Principal of the College, helping to publicise the institution throughout Devon. In his role as Professor, he was regarded as having built up the Ch...
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Ștefan Minovici
1867 - 1935 (68 years)
Ștefan Minovici was a Romanian chemist. The brother of Mina Minovici and Nicolae Minovici, he became a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy in 1925. Education Minovici was born in Râmnicu Sărat into a family of Aromanian origin. After studying at the gymnasium in Brăila from 1875 to 1882, he moved to Bucharest, where he completed his high school studies at Saint Sava National College in 1887. He then enrolled in the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Bucharest, majoring in physics and chemistry, and received a B.S. in 1893. The year after he went to study at Friedrich Wilhelm U...
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Philipp Friedrich Gmelin
1721 - 1768 (47 years)
Philipp Friedrich Gmelin was a professor of botany and chemistry. He studied the chemistry of antimony and wrote texts on the pancreatic ducts, mineral waters, and botany. He was a brother of the famous traveler Johann Georg Gmelin. He obtained his Master's degree in 1742, at the University of Tübingen under Burchard Mauchart.
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Lars Fredrik Svanberg
1805 - 1878 (73 years)
Lars Fredrik Svanberg was a Swedish chemist and mineralogist. Life He was born on 13 May 1805 in Stockholm, Sweden, as the son of Jöns Svanberg. He was married twice. In 1836, he married Augusta Roth and in 1859, Baroness Frederica Augusta Stiernstedt. He died on 16 July 1878 in Uppsala, Sweden.
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Henrik Gustaf Söderbaum
1862 - 1933 (71 years)
Henrik Gustaf Söderbaum was a Swedish chemist and secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences from 1923 to 1933. Söderbaum enrolled at Uppsala University 1879, and was awarded his Ph.D. in 1888 for the thesis Studier öfver platooxalylföreningar , and was made docent in chemistry the same year. He was made a senior lecturer in chemistry and chemical technology at Chalmers Polytechnic Institute in Gothenburg in 1893. In 1899, he was made professor of agricultural chemistry at Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture's experimental field in 1899. When the experimental field was reorganised as...
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Wilson Baker
1900 - 2002 (102 years)
Wilson Baker FRS was a British organic chemist. He was born in Runcorn, the youngest of the four children of Harry and Mary Baker ; his father was himself a chemist, having studied under Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe and Robert Bunsen, amongst others. Wilson entered Victoria University of Manchester at the age of 16, and graduated top of the honours class in 1921. He then undertook an MSc. with Arthur Lapworth, before working on a PhD with Sir Robert Robinson on the synthesis of isoflavones. The degree was awarded in 1924, when he was also appointed assistant lecturer.
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Albert Leon Henne
1901 - 1967 (66 years)
Albert Leon Henne was an American chemist known for his work on refrigerants. Henne was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1901. He earned his PhD from the University of Brussels in 1925 with a dissertation titled "The Stereoisomers of Chloroiodoethylene". He came to the United States in 1925 as a fellow of the Belgian-American Education foundation at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and became a naturalized citizen in 1933.
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John of St Amand
1230 - 1303 (73 years)
John of St Amand, Canon of Tournay , also known as Jean de Saint-Amand and Johannes de Sancto Amando, was a Medieval author on pharmacology, teaching at the University of Paris. He wrote treatises on a variety of topics including magnetism and experimental method.
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Gabriel François Venel
1723 - 1775 (52 years)
Gabriel François Venel was a French chemist, physician and a contributor to the Encyclopédie, . Biography and Works He is the son of Étienne Venel, physician and Anne Hiché, and was born in Tourbes in 1723. In 1742 he obtained his doctorate in medicine from the University of Montpellier. He also attended the public courses in chemistry given by Rouelle in Paris, which confirmed his main interest in chemistry. Venel later on talked very highly of his professor, including in his famous article Chymie written for the Encyclopédie.
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Julije Domac
1853 - 1928 (75 years)
Julije Domac was a Croatian pharmacist and chemist. In 1874 Domac graduated from the University of Vienna with a degree in pharmacy. In Vienna, some of his professors were Adolf Lieben and August Emil Vogl. On the behalf of professor Lieben he went to work in the laboratory of Leopold von Pebal where he dealt with analysis of gases. In 1880 in Graz he received a doctorate degree in the field of organic chemistry. For his doctorate degree he elucidated the structure of hexene and mannitol obtained from manna. He determined the place of the double bond in hexene obtained from mannitol and proved that it is a derivative of a normal hexene.
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D. Franklin Williams
#6730
Chien Shih-Liang
1908 - 1983 (75 years)
Chien Shih-Liang aka S. L. Chien , was a Chinese chemist who served as the President of the Academia Sinica. A graduate of Tsinghua University and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, he also served as President of National Taiwan University.
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Richard Felix Marchand
1813 - 1850 (37 years)
Richard Felix Marchand was a German chemist. His son was the physician Felix Jacob Marchand . In 1840, Marchand was appointed professor at the University of Berlin. In 1843, he accepted an appointment as associate professor of chemistry at the University of Halle. In 1846, he became full professor there. Together with Otto Linné Erdmann, he was editor of the Journal für praktischen Chemie from 1839. A large number of experimental scientific investigations are given by him in Annalen der Physik.
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Camille Matignon
1867 - 1934 (67 years)
Arthème Camille Matignon was a French chemist noted for his work in thermochemistry. He was a member of the Académie des Sciences, President of the French Chemical Society and an honorary Fellow of the British Chemical Society.
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Martin Freund
1863 - 1920 (57 years)
Martin Freund was a German chemist and professor at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main. Life Freund was born the son of a Jewish merchant. After graduating from the Realgymnasium at the Zwinger in Breslau, he started to study chemistry at the University of Breslau and the Humboldt University of Berlin in 1881. He received his doctorate in 1884. . During his studies he became a member of the Akademischer Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein zu Breslau in 1881. He was assistant to Hermann Wichelhaus and lecture assistant to August Wilhelm von Hofmann. In 1888 he habilitated in Berlin and in 189...
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Otto Maass
1890 - 1961 (71 years)
Otto Maass, was a Canadian academic and scientist. Education Born in New York City, New York, Maass started teaching at McGill University in 1923 retiring in 1955. He was the Macdonald Professor of Chemistry and was chairman of the department of chemistry from 1937 to 1955.
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William Ripley Nichols
1847 - 1886 (39 years)
William Ripley Nichols was a noted American chemist. Early life Nichols was born in Boston, Massachusetts, graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1869, and served there as instructor and assistant professor until 1872, when he was elected professor of general chemistry, which chair he retained until his death in Hamburg, Germany.
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Marceli Struszyński
1880 - 1959 (79 years)
Marceli Struszyński was a Polish chemist and Professor of Warsaw University of Technology from 1938 to 1939 and 1945–1959. His research was in analytical chemistry and he published several textbooks on the topic. Additionally, he developed an original classification of anions.
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Friedrich Auerbach
1870 - 1925 (55 years)
Friedrich Auerbach was a German chemist. He was the son of anatomist Leopold Auerbach and the brother of physicist Felix Auerbach. He was the father of geneticist Charlotte Auerbach. Biography He studied mathematics, physics and chemistry at the universities of Leipzig and Breslau — at Leipzig his instructors were Johannes Wislicenus and Wilhelm Ostwald; at Breslau he was a student of Albert Ladenburg. From 1894 to 1903 he was associated with factories in Edenkoben and Krefeld, and afterwards worked in the chemical laboratory of Richard Abegg at Breslau. From 1904 he worked at the Reich Healt...
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Rudolf Nietzki
1847 - 1917 (70 years)
Rudolf Hugo Nietzki was a German chemist who specialized in industrial dyes derived from coal tar. While a professor at the University of Basel in Switzerland he initiated the university's association with to the local chemical industry.
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John Murray
1841 - 1914 (73 years)
Sir John Murray was a pioneering Canadian-born Scottish oceanographer, marine biologist and limnologist. He is considered to be the father of modern oceanography. Early life and education Murray was born at Cobourg, Canada West on 3 March 1841. He was the second son of Robert Murray, an accountant, and his wife Elizabeth Macfarlane. His parents had emigrated from Scotland to Ontario in about 1834. He went to school in London, Ontario and later to Cobourg College. In 1858, at the age of 17 he returned to Scotland to live with his grandfather, John Macfarlane, and continue his education at Stirling High School.
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Lambert Heinrich von Babo
1818 - 1899 (81 years)
Lambert Heinrich Joseph Anton Konrad Freiherr von Babo was a German chemist. Life Babo was the son of the agronomist Lambert Joseph von Babo and his first wife Karoline Ehrmann. The oenologist August Wilhelm von Babo was his half-brother. After graduating from high school Babo studied medicine at the Universities of Heidelberg and Munich and received a doctorate in 1842 from Heidelberg. In the following year he began studying chemistry under Justus von Liebig at Gießen receiving his habilitation in 1845 from Freiburg im Breisgau.
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Mitchell A. Winnik
#6742
Sigismund Friedrich Hermbstädt
1760 - 1833 (73 years)
Sigismund Friedrich Hermbstädt was a German pharmacist and chemist who wielded great influence on the improvement of science education for pharmacists. He also made numerous contributions in the fields of industrial and agricultural chemistry.
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Yegor Wagner
1849 - 1903 (54 years)
Yegor Yegorovich Wagner was a Russian organic chemist, famous for the discovery of the "Wagner reaction", named after him. Former representative of the Kazan School of Chemistry. Early life Yegor Yegorovich Wagner's grandfather was August Wagner, a pharmacist from East Prussia. In search of happiness, young August went to distant Russia, to the city of Kazan, where he opened his own pharmacy. His affairs were going well, which was largely facilitated by high qualifications and personal charm. After several years of work, August became a wealthy man and married a local girl from a German family.
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Maurice Loyal Huggins
1897 - 1981 (84 years)
Maurice Loyal Huggins was a scientist who independently conceived the idea of hydrogen bonding and who was an early advocate for their role in stabilizing protein secondary structure. An important polymer theory, Flory–Huggins theory, is also named after him.
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Ole Lamm
1902 - 1964 (62 years)
Ole Albert Lamm , was a Swedish physical chemist whose research included diffusion and sedimentation phenomena. Lamm was a graduate student under Nobel Prize laureate The Svedberg at Uppsala University and received his doctorate in 1937 with the thesis Measurements of concentration gradients in sedimentation and diffusion by refraction methods: Solubility properties of potato starch. In 1945, he was appointed professor of theoretical chemistry, from 1953 physical chemistry, at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
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Victor Villiger
1868 - 1934 (66 years)
Victor Villiger was a Swiss-born German chemist and the discoverer of the Baeyer-Villiger oxidation. Life He studied at the University of Geneva. Following his graduation, he began his doctoral studies with Adolf von Baeyer at the University of Munich.
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John Stanley Griffith
1928 - 1972 (44 years)
John Stanley Griffith was a British chemist, mathematician and biophysicist. He was the nephew of the distinguished British bacteriologist Frederick Griffith. Career Beginning as an undergraduate in mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1946–1949, he went on to read Part II biochemistry in 1949–1951. His research career continued in theoretical chemistry at Oxford and Cambridge, where he held a Berry-Ramsey research fellowship at King's College. He had several appointments in Britain and the US in his different disciplines. These included professorships in chemistry at Indiana Universi...
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Augustus George Vernon Harcourt
1834 - 1919 (85 years)
Augustus George Vernon Harcourt FRS was an English chemist who spent his career at Oxford University. He was one of the first scientists to do quantitative work in the field of chemical kinetics. His uncle, William Vernon Harcourt , founded the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Adolf Martin Pleischl
1787 - 1867 (80 years)
Adolf Martin Pleischl was a chemist and medical doctor. In 1815 he obtained his medical doctorate from the University of Prague, where he later served as a professor of general and pharmaceutical chemistry . At Prague he is credited with improvement and redevelopment of the chemical-pharmaceutical institute. In 1838 he relocated to the University of Vienna, where he also redeveloped and modernized its chemical and pharmaceutical facilities. As an instructor, two of his better-known students were Johann Florian Heller and Johann August Natterer .
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Arie Jan Haagen-Smit
1900 - 1977 (77 years)
Arie Jan Haagen-Smit was a Dutch chemist. He is best known for linking the smog in Southern California to automobiles and is therefore known by many as the "father" of air pollution control. After serving as an original board member of the Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Board, formed in 1960 to combat the smog, Dr. Haagen-Smit became the California Air Resources Board's first chairman in 1968. Shortly before his death in Pasadena, California of lung cancer, the Air Resources Board's El Monte Laboratory was named after him.
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