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,
#6751
Francesco Selmi
1817 - 1881 (64 years)
Francesco Selmi was an Italian chemist and patriot, one of the founders of colloid chemistry. Selmi was born in Vignola, then part of the Duchy of Modena and Reggio. He became head of a chemistry laboratory in Modena in 1840, and a professor of chemical pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Bologna in 1867. He published the first systematic study of inorganic colloids, in particular silver chloride, Prussian blue, and sulfur, in the period 1845–50.
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Benjamin Silliman
1779 - 1864 (85 years)
Benjamin Silliman was an early American chemist and science educator. He was one of the first American professors of science, at Yale College, the first person to use the process of fractional distillation in America, and a founder of the American Journal of Science, the oldest continuously published scientific journal in the United States.
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Gustav Embden
1874 - 1933 (59 years)
Gustav Georg Embden was a German physiological chemist. Background Gustav Embden was a son of the Hamburg lawyer and politician George Heinrich Embden. His grandmother Charlotte Heine was a well-known salonnière and a sister of the poet Heinrich Heine.
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William A. Tilden
1842 - 1926 (84 years)
Sir William Augustus Tilden was a British chemist. He discovered that isoprene could be made from turpentine. He was unable to turn this discovery into a way to make commercially viable synthetic rubber.
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Petru Poni
1841 - 1925 (84 years)
Petru Poni was a Moldavian chemist and mineralogist. Born into a family of răzeși in Săcărești, Iași County, he attended primary school in Târgu Frumos. In 1852, he enrolled in Academia Mihăileană; among his teachers were August Treboniu Laurian and Simion Bărnuțiu. He entered the University of Paris in 1865, studying chemistry there. He returned home following graduation, teaching physics and chemistry at Iași's National College and at the military high school. In 1878, he became a professor at the University of Iași, at first teaching at the medicine and science faculties, later only in the mineral chemistry department of the latter.
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Valentin Kargin
1907 - 1969 (62 years)
Valentin Alekseyevich Kargin was a Soviet and Russian chemist who specialized in physical chemistry and established research in polymer chemistry in the Soviet Union. He considered polymerization as a phase transition.
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Gustav Heinrich Johann Apollon Tammann
1861 - 1938 (77 years)
Gustav Heinrich Johann Apollon Tammann was a prominent Baltic German chemist-physicist who made important contributions in the fields of glassy and solid solutions, heterogeneous equilibria, crystallization, and metallurgy.
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Frederic Kipping
1863 - 1949 (86 years)
Frederic Stanley Kipping FRS was an English chemist. He undertook much of the pioneering work on silicon polymers and coined the term silicone. Life He was born in Salford, Lancashire, England, the son of James Kipping, a Bank of England official, and Julia Du Val, a daughter of painter Charles Allen Du Val. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School before enrolling in 1879 at Owens College for an external degree from the University of London. After working for the local gas company for a short time he went in 1886 to Germany to work under William Henry Perkin, Jr. in the laboratories of ...
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Friedrich Reinitzer
1857 - 1927 (70 years)
Friedrich Richard Reinitzer was an Austrian botanist and chemist. In late 1880s, experimenting with cholesteryl benzoate, he discovered properties of liquid crystals . Reinitzer was born into a German Bohemian family in Prague. He studied chemistry at the German technical university in Prague; in 1883 he was habilitated there as a private docent. From 1888-1901 he was a professor at Karl-Ferdinands-Universität, then professor at technical university in Graz. During 1909 - 1910 he served as the rector of the university.
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Enrique Moles Ormella
1883 - 1953 (70 years)
Enrique Moles Ormella was a Spanish pharmacist, physicist, and chemist, most notable for his work on atomic weights of the elements. Enrique Moles is considered one of the foremost Spanish chemists of his time.
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Lajos Winkler
1863 - 1939 (76 years)
Lajos Winkler was a Hungarian analytical chemist. He is best known today for his discovery of the Winkler method for the measurement of oxygen dissolved in water. Life Relatively little is in print in English concerning the life of Lajos Winkler. Winkler studied science at the Budapest University of Science, receiving his doctorate there in 1890, while working with Carl von Than. He stayed on to work as a lecturer, among other positions, and directed the Institute of Chemistry, starting in 1909, for more than 25 years. He is said to have published several hundred papers, to have helped fo...
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Bernhard Rathke
1840 - 1923 (83 years)
Heinrich Bernhard Rathke was a German chemist. He was the son of embryologist Martin Rathke. He studied natural sciences at the University of Königsberg, and afterwards worked in Robert Bunsen's laboratory at Heidelberg. In 1867 he started work as an assistant at the chemical institute of the University of Halle, and two years later obtained his habilitation with a thesis on the history of selenium. From 1873 to 1876 he taught classes in chemistry and chemical engineering at the higher vocational school in Kassel. In 1876 he became an associate professor at Halle, during this time he published what became known as the Rathke synthesis for making guanidinium groups.
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Émile Meyerson
1859 - 1933 (74 years)
Émile Meyerson was a Polish-born French epistemologist, chemist, and philosopher of science. Meyerson was born in Lublin, Poland. He died in his sleep of a heart attack at the age of 74. Biography Meyerson was educated at the University of Heidelberg and studied chemistry under Robert Wilhelm Bunsen. In 1882 Meyerson settled in Paris. He served as foreign editor of the Havas news agency, and later as the director of the Jewish Colonization Association for Europe and Asia Minor. He became a naturalized French citizen after World War I.
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Johan Gottschalk Wallerius
1709 - 1785 (76 years)
Johan Gottschalk Wallerius was a Swedish chemist and mineralogist. Biography Wallerius was born at Stora Mellösa in Närke , Sweden. He was a son of provost Erik Nilsson Wallerius and his spouse Elisabeth Tranæa . He was a younger brother to the physicist, philosopher and theologian Nils Wallerius .
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Carl von Than
1834 - 1908 (74 years)
Károly Antal Than de Apát – also called as Carl von Than – was a Hungarian chemist who discovered carbonyl sulfide in 1867. Life AKároly Than was born in Óbecse, Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire . His mother was Otillia Setényi. He interrupted his education and joined the Hungarian army in the war of independence 1848 at the age of 14. On his return, he found his mother dead and his father ruined. Than worked in several pharmacies to earn money form completing his education. After attending a school in Szeged, Than started to study medicine and later chemistry at the University of Vienna. He received his PhD for work with Josef Redtenbacher in 1858.
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Charles A. Kraus
1875 - 1967 (92 years)
Charles August Kraus was an American chemist. He was professor of chemistry and director of the chemical laboratories at Clark University, where he directed the Chemical Warfare Service during World War I.
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Karl Weltzien
1813 - 1870 (57 years)
Karl Weltzien was a German scientist who was Professor of Chemistry at the Technische Hochschule of Karlsruhe from 1848 to 1869. Starting about 1840, Weltzien constructed new laboratories for chemistry research and teaching at Karlsruhe. Weltzien's successor as Professor of Chemistry was Lothar Meyer.
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Arthur George Perkin
1861 - 1937 (76 years)
Arthur George Perkin DSc FRS FRSE was an English chemist and Professor of Colour Chemistry and Dyeing at the University of Leeds. Life Perkin was the second son of Sir William Henry Perkin FRS, who founded the aniline dye industry, and was born on 13 December 1861 at Sudbury, close to his father's dyeworks at Greenford. His mother was Jemima Harriet Lissett . His brother was William Henry Perkin, Jr., FRS, Professor of Chemistry at Manchester and Oxford universities. He was educated at the City of London School . He then studied Chemistry variously at the Royal College of Chemistry in London,...
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Rudolf Mentzel
1900 - 1987 (87 years)
Rudolf Mentzel PhD was a German chemist and a Nazi policy-maker. An influential figure and one of the leading science administrators in Germany's nuclear energy project, Mentzel served as the scientific and technical adviser on the development of atomic bombs to the German government, and on some part, as the director of this program. Originally a Nazi by political orientation, Mentzel served as one of the top leading science policy-makers to Adolf Hitler and his cabinet in his role as an undersecretary of the Reich Ministry of Education in the Office for Science. In the Kaiser Wilhelm Socie...
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Russell Henry Chittenden
1856 - 1943 (87 years)
Russell Henry Chittenden was an American physiological chemist. He conducted pioneering research in the biochemistry of digestion and nutrition. Early life and education He was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1856, graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale in 1875, studied in Heidelberg in 1878-79, and received his doctorate at Yale in physiological chemistry in 1880. He was of English ancestry, his first ancestor in America being Major William Chittenden, an officer in the English army, who, having resigned, came to America from Cranbrook, Kent, with his wife, Joanne Sheaffe, in 1639, and settled in Guilford Connecticut.
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Gerold Schwarzenbach
1904 - 1978 (74 years)
Gerold Karl Schwarzenbach was a Swiss chemist. Schwarzenbach was born and grew up in Horgen, Switzerland. He studied chemistry at the ETH Zurich and graduated in 1928 with his dissertation Studien über die Salzbildung von Beizenfarbstoffen . From 1930 to 1955 he was a lecturer and later professor of special inorganic and analytical chemistry at the University of Zurich. He retired in 1973.
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Alexander Pedler
1849 - 1918 (69 years)
Sir Alexander Pedler was a British civil servant and chemist who worked in the Presidency College, Calcutta where he influenced early studies in chemistry in India by working with pioneer scientists like Prafulla Chandra Ray. He helped found the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science in Calcutta which in its early days was involved in reaching out to lay citizens interested in science.
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Richard Anschütz
1852 - 1937 (85 years)
Carl Johann Philipp Noé Richard Anschütz was a German organic chemist. Anschütz received his PhD at the University of Bonn for his work with August Kekulé. He became Kekulé's assistant and in 1898, his successor as Professor of Chemistry at the University of Bonn. His biography of Kekulé opened a view on the claims of Archibald Scott Couper as an independent co-discoverer of the ability of carbon atoms to link to each other to form chains .
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Franz Hofmeister
1850 - 1922 (72 years)
Franz Hofmeister was an early protein scientist, and is famous for his studies of salts that influence the solubility and conformational stability of proteins. In 1902, Hofmeister became the first to propose that polypeptides were amino acids linked by peptide bonds, although this model of protein primary structure was independently and simultaneously conceived by Emil Fischer.
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Stanisław Kostanecki
1860 - 1910 (50 years)
Stanisław Kostanecki was a Polish organic chemist, professor who pioneered in vegetable dye chemistry e.g. curcumin. Known for Kostanecki acylation name reactions. In 1896, he developed the theory of dyes and studied the natural vegetable dyes. Among his many students were scientists Kazimierz Funk and Wiktor Lampe.
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Maria Lipp
1892 - 1966 (74 years)
Maria Lipp was a German organic chemist. She was the first female doctoral student, professor, and ordinary professor at the RWTH Aachen University. Life Lipp was born in Stolberg as the daughter of Karl Savelsberg and Friederike de Nys. She was later adopted by the chemist Julius Bredt. In 1913, she started studying chemistry at the TH Aachen. She completed her diploma with distinction in 1917 and was the first female doctoral student at the TH Aachen. She completed her doctorate with distinction in 1918 and her habilitation in organic chemistry again at the TH Aachen in 1923. In 1925, she married Peter Lipp, a professor for organic chemistry at the TH Aachen.
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Jüri Kukk
1940 - 1981 (41 years)
Jüri Kukk was an Estonian professor of chemistry, a political prisoner, who died in the Soviet labor camp at Vologda after several months of being on hunger strike and psychiatric treatments. Kukk was born in Pärnu. He resigned from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1978 and was subsequently fired from the post of associate professor of chemistry at Tartu University. He was also refused permission to emigrate.
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Paul Lebeau
1868 - 1959 (91 years)
Paul Marie Alfred Lebeau was a French chemist. He studied at the elite École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris . Together with his doctoral advisor Henri Moissan he was working on fluorine chemistry discovering several new compounds, like bromine trifluoride, oxygen difluoride, selenium tetrafluoride and sulfur hexafluoride.
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Gustav Bischof
1792 - 1870 (78 years)
Karl Gustav Bischof was a German chemist, born in Nuremberg. He studied at Erlangen where he became a university lecturer in 1815. In 1819 he was appointed to the position of an extra-Ordinary Professor of Chemistry at Bonn, and in 1822 to that of a full professor. The University of Bonn was a leading center for geologists including Ferdinand von Roemer, Georg August Goldfuss, and Gerhard vom Rath as well as Bischof.
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Samuel Philip Sadtler
1847 - 1923 (76 years)
Samuel Philip Sadtler, Ph.D., LL.D. was an American chemist, and the first president of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in 1908. Life Sadtler was born at Pine Grove, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, the son of a Lutheran minister, and educated at Pennsylvania College , at Lehigh University , at Lawrence Scientific School , and in Europe at the University of Göttingen . As well as his professional activities, he was active in the Lutheran church.
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Agnes Pockels
1862 - 1935 (73 years)
Agnes Luise Wilhelmine Pockels was a German chemist whose research was fundamental in establishing the modern discipline known as surface science, which describes the properties of liquid and solid surfaces and interfaces.
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Arnold Eucken
1884 - 1950 (66 years)
Arnold Thomas Eucken was a German chemist and physicist. He examined the energy states of the Hydrogen atom and contributed to knowledge of the atomic structure. He also contributed to chemical engineering and process control through physical chemistry measurements for applications in industry.
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Amé Pictet
1857 - 1937 (80 years)
Amé Pictet was a Swiss chemist. He discovered the Pictet–Spengler reaction, and the related Pictet–Hubert reaction and Pictet–Gams reaction. Pictet was born in Geneva, studied with August Kekulé at the University of Bonn where he received his Ph.D. in 1879. From 1894 until 1932 he was professor at the University of Geneva. He is credited with publishing the first synthesis of nicotine.
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Wilder Dwight Bancroft
1867 - 1953 (86 years)
Wilder Dwight Bancroft was an American physical chemist. Biography Born in Middletown, Rhode Island, he was the grandson of historian and statesman George Bancroft and great-grandson of Aaron Bancroft. He received a B.A. from Harvard University in 1888, and a Ph.D. from University of Leipzig in 1892, as well as honorary SCDss from Lafayette College and Cambridge University .
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Francis Robert Japp
1848 - 1925 (77 years)
Francis Robert Japp FRS was a British chemist who discovered the Japp-Klingemann reaction in 1887. He was born in Dundee, Scotland, the son of James Japp, a minister of the Catholic Apostolic Church. He graduated from St Andrews with an M.A. in 1868 and entered the University of Edinburgh as a student of law. He left the university because of health problems and stayed in Germany for two years from 1871 until 1873. After returning to England he decided to study chemistry. He started his studies at the University of Heidelberg with Robert Bunsen, where he received his PhD in 1875.
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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
#6791
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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