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,
#6751
Johann Florian Heller
1813 - 1871 (58 years)
Johann Florian Heller was an Austrian chemist who was one of the founders of clinical chemistry. Heller was born in Vienna, Austria. He studied chemistry in Prague and later with Liebig and Wöhler at Giessen. During those studies he characterized rhodizonic acid and its potassium salt .
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Karl Wilhelm Rosenmund
1884 - 1965 (81 years)
Karl Wilhelm Louis Rosenmund was a German chemist. He was born in Berlin and died in Kiel. Rosenmund studied chemistry and received his Ph.D. 1906 from University of Berlin for his work with Otto Diels. He discovered the Rosenmund reduction, which is the reduction of acid chlorides to aldehydes over palladium on barium sulfate as catalyst . The Rosenmund–von Braun reaction, the conversion of an aryl bromide to an aryl nitrile is also named after him. Rosenmund-Kuhnhenn method is suitable for the determination of iodine value in conjugated systems .
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Friedrich Walchner
1799 - 1865 (66 years)
Friedrich August Walchner was a German geologist, chemist and mineralogist. Life Walchner was born in Meersburg. He studied in Göttingen and at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. In 1817 he joined the Corps Rhenania Freiburg. In Freiburg he was member of the Burschenschaft Genossenschaft/Verein zur Bearbeitung wissenschaftlicher Gegenstände and by the year 1818 he was member of the Alten Freiburger Burschenschaft . In Freiburg he habilitated in 1823 and became a private lecturer and associate professor. In 1825 he was appointed to professor in mineralogy, geology and chemistry at the...
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Anatoli Kapustinskii
1906 - 1960 (54 years)
Anatoli Fyodorovich Kapustinskii was a Soviet chemist. He derived the Kapustinskii equation that allows an estimation of the lattice energy of an ionic crystal. Biography Kapustinskii was born in Zhytomyr, Russian Empire . In 1914 he entered the Warsaw Primary Gymnasium, in 1922 he finished a Secondary School in Moscow. In 1923 he began his studies of chemistry at Moscow State University. He graduated there in 1929. From 1929 to 1941 he worked at the Institute of Applied Mineralogy in Moscow. During this time he worked in Western Europe and in the United States where he spent about six months working with Gilbert N.
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Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 2nd Baronet
1817 - 1880 (63 years)
Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 2nd Baronet FRS was an English chemist. Biography Brodie was the son of Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet, and his wife Anne , and was educated at Harrow School and Balliol College, Oxford. He obtained a second-class honours degree in mathematics in 1838. Because he was an agnostic and would not assent to the Thirty-nine articles, he was refused a MA until 1860. He studied chemistry with Justus von Liebig in Giessen along with Alexander Williamson. At Giessen, he did an original analysis of beeswax for which he was given the Fellowship of the Royal Society ...
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Lotte Pusch
1890 - 1983 (93 years)
Lotte Pusch was born on 7 August 1890 in Reichenbach/O.L. and was a German physical chemist. She was of the Protestant denomination. Her father was a District Court Director. Education Pusch visited secondary schools in Pleß, Glogau , and Görlitz before deciding to attend the Mädchen-Realgymnasium Chamissoschule school in Schönberg. She later attended the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität . During her first two semesters, she focused on mathematics, physics, and chemistry. In 1913, Pusch passed her university exams and began to study for her Ph.D. in physical chemistry. She earned her doctorate i...
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Aldo Mieli
1879 - 1950 (71 years)
Aldo Mieli was an influential historian of science, and a pioneer of gay rights. Early life and education Born in 1879 in Livorno, Italy to a wealthy Jewish family, Mieli was raised in Chianciano, a small spa town in Tuscany, to which his family moved in 1880.
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Osman Achmatowicz
1899 - 1988 (89 years)
Osman Achmatowicz was a Polish chemist of Lipka Tatar descent, who studied alkaloid natural products. His son, Osman Achmatowicz Jr., is credited with the Achmatowicz reaction in 1971. Biography Professor Osman Achmatowicz was a Polish Tatar of Islamic confession. The sixth of eight children in the noble family of jurist Alexander Achmatowicz, he was born at the ancestral estate Bergaliszki, near Oszmania, on 16 March 1899.
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Wilhelm Lossen
1838 - 1906 (68 years)
Wilhelm Clemens Lossen was a German chemist. He was the brother of geologist Karl August Lossen. From 1857 he studied chemistry at the University of Giessen, then continued his education at Göttingen as a pupil of Friedrich Wöhler. After graduation, he worked as an assistant to Karl Weltzien at the polytechnic in Karlsruhe and as an assistant under Wilhelm Heinrich Heintz at the University of Halle. In 1870 he became an associate professor at Heidelberg, then in 1877 accepted a position as professor of chemistry at the University of Königsberg.
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Vyacheslav Lebedinsky
1888 - 1956 (68 years)
Vyacheslav Vasilyevich Lebedinsky was a Russian and Soviet chemist who worked on platinum, rhodium and iridium, their extraction and use in catalysis. He also worked on complex compounds of rhodium and iridium. He was also a noted teacher and guided 20 doctoral students in inorganic chemistry.
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Sonia Cotelle
1896 - 1945 (49 years)
Sonia Cotelle, née Slobodkine , was a Polish radiochemist. Life and work Sonia Cotelle was born in Warsaw, capital of the Vistula Land, in the Russian Empire on 19 June 1896. She was married, but later divorced. She graduated from the University of Paris in 1922, where she majored in chemistry. While still a student she began working in 1919 as an assistant in the Institute of Radium founded by the Nobel Laureates, Marie Curie and her husband Pierre, in the university's Faculty of Science . Cotelle was in charge of the measurement service between 1924 and 1926, after which she was appointed as a chemist in the Faculté des sciences.
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Friedrich Rochleder
1819 - 1874 (55 years)
Friedrich Rochleder was an Austrian chemist born in Vienna. Son of pharmacist Anton Rochleder, he studied medicine at the University of Vienna, earning his doctorate in 1842. Afterwards he studied chemistry in Giessen with Justus von Liebig , followed by several months spent in Paris and London. In 1845 he was appointed professor of technical chemistry at the newly founded technical academy in Lviv. Later he served as professor of chemistry at Charles University in Prague , and professor of general and pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of Vienna . In 1848 he became a full member of t...
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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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Karl Gottfried Hagen
1749 - 1829 (80 years)
Karl Gottfried Hagen was a German chemist. Hagen was born and died in Königsberg, Prussia. He founded the first German chemical laboratory at the University of Königsberg, thus establishing the scientific discipline of pharmaceutical chemistry in Germany. He worked as a professor in the field of physics, chemistry and mineralogy.
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Zygmunt Klemensiewicz
1886 - 1963 (77 years)
Zygmunt Aleksander Klemensiewicz was a Polish physicist and physical chemist. Early in his career , he made a pioneering contribution to the development of the glass electrode. Life and career Klemensiewicz was born in Kraków. His father, Robert, was a teacher of history and geography and a headmaster of a secondary school; his mother was a translator from Scandinavian languages into Polish. From 1892 the family lived in Lwów, where he finished Polish gymnasium. In the years 1904–1908, he studied chemistry, physics, and mathematics at the Lwów University, where his professors included Wac...
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Dimitar Ivanov Popov
1894 - 1975 (81 years)
Dimitar Ivanov Popov was a Bulgarian organic chemist and an academician of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Prof. D. Ivanov is known by his father's name Ivanov rather than his family's name Popov.
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Philip Baxter
1905 - 1989 (84 years)
Sir John Philip Baxter was a British chemical engineer. He was the second director of the University of New South Wales from 1953, continuing as vice-chancellor when the position's title was changed in 1955. Under his administration, the university grew from its technical college roots into the "fastest growing and most rapidly diversifying tertiary institution in Australia". Philip Baxter College is named in his honour.
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Thomas Sterry Hunt
1826 - 1892 (66 years)
Thomas Sterry Hunt was an American geologist and chemist. Biography Hunt was born at Norwich, Connecticut. He lost his father when twelve years old, and had to earn his own livelihood. In the course of two years he found employment in a printing office, in an apothecary shop, in a book store and as a clerk. He became interested in natural science, and especially in chemical and medical studies, and in 1845 he was elected a member of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists at Yale—a body which four years later became the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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James Blythe Rogers
1802 - 1852 (50 years)
James Blythe Rogers was a United States chemist. Biography He was the eldest son of Patrick Kerr Rogers, who had graduated from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1802, and in 1819 was elected professor of natural philosophy and mathematics at the College of William & Mary, where he remained until his death. James Rogers was educated at William and Mary, and, after preliminary studies with Dr. Thomas E. Bond, received the degree of M.D. from the University of Maryland in 1822. Subsequently he taught in Baltimore, but soon afterward settled in Little Britain, Lancaster...
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Masataka Ogawa
1865 - 1930 (65 years)
Masataka Ogawa was a Japanese chemist mainly known for the claimed discovery of element 43 , which he named nipponium. In fact, he had discovered, but misidentified, element 75 . After graduating from the University of Tokyo, he studied under William Ramsay in London, where he worked on the analysis of the rare mineral thorianite. He extracted and isolated a small amount of an apparently unknown substance from the mineral, which he announced as the discovery of element 43, naming the newly discovered element nipponium. He published his results in 1909 and a notice was also published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
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Gunnar Hägg
1903 - 1986 (83 years)
Gunnar Hägg was a Swedish chemist and crystallographer. Education and career Hägg studied chemistry at Stockholm University from 1922, was a Ramsay Fellow at the University of London in 1926, studying under Frederick G. Donnan. He obtained his PhD in Stockholm in 1929 under Arne Westgren for the work X-ray studies on the binary systems of iron with nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic, antimony and bismuth. After that he became a lecturer at the Stockholm University and in 1930 at the University of Jena, Germany. In 1937 he became professor of inorganic and general chemistry at Uppsala University. H...
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James Cutbush
1788 - 1823 (35 years)
James Cutbush was an American chemist. Biography Concerning his early history, very little is known, except that he taught chemistry. He was appointed to the United States Army with the rank of assistant apothecary-general in 1814, served first in Philadelphia, was afterward attached to the northern division of the Army, and was chief medical officer of the U. S. Military Academy and the Army post at West Point from June 1820 until November 1821. On the reorganization of the Army, he became assistant surgeon and acting professor of chemistry and mineralogy at West Point, in which capacity he continued until his death.
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Harold Bunger
1896 - 1941 (45 years)
Harold Alan Bunger was the head of Georgia Tech's chemistry department and the director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute from 1940 until his death in 1941. Bunger was a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Georgia Academy of Science, was a member of professional fraternity Alpha Chi Sigma and honor societies Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, and Pi Lambda Epsilon.
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David Orme Masson
1858 - 1937 (79 years)
Sir David Orme Masson KBE FRS FRSE was a scientist born in England who emigrated to Australia to become Professor of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne. He is known for his work on the explosive compound nitroglycerin.
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Karl Karmarsch
1803 - 1879 (76 years)
Karl Karmarsch was an Austrian-born German educator, founding director of the Polytechnic School in Hanover, later to become the University of Hannover. From 1817 to 1823, he was associated with the Polytechnic Institute of Vienna, where he was a student of Georg Altmütter .
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Carl Lautenschläger
1888 - 1962 (74 years)
Carl Ludwig Lautenschläger was a German chemist and physician. He was tried during the IG Farben Trial but was acquitted. Early life Lautenschläger was the son of Ludwig Lautenschläger, an architect and his wife Paula Schober. He was trained in pharmacy before studying chemistry, medicine and pharmacy at a number of universities, receiving his doctorate in engineering from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in 1913. Lautenschläger served for a year in the German Imperial Army before returning to medical study, eventually receiving his MD from the University of Freiburg in 1919. He followed...
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G. G. Henderson
1862 - 1942 (80 years)
George Gerald Henderson was a chemist and professor at the University of Glasgow. He was known for his work on terpenes. Life Henderson was born to a Glasgow merchant in 1862. He entered the University of Glasgow, aged 15 to study natural sciences. He graduated wit a BSc with distinction in 1881. Next he studied the arts and obtained a second degree. In 1884, he studied organic chemistry as a research assistant with Johannes Wislicenus in Leipzig. In 1885, he was a research assistant with James Johnston Dobbie.
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Hermann Wichelhaus
1842 - 1927 (85 years)
Karl Hermann Wichelhaus was a German chemist. He studied chemistry at the universities of Bonn, Göttingen, where he became member of Burschenschaft Hannovera and Ghent, and also trained in London. In 1863 he received his doctorate from the University of Heidelberg, and four years later, obtained his habilitation at Berlin. From 1871 to 1916 he was a professor of chemical technology at the University of Berlin.
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Ion Tănăsescu
1892 - 1959 (67 years)
Ion Tănăsescu was a Romanian chemist. He discovered the Lehmstedt-Tanasescu reaction, which was improved by Kurt Lehmstedt. He studied at the University of Bucharest and the University of Cluj. He was elected a titular member of the Romanian Academy in 1955.
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Friedrich August Flückiger
1828 - 1894 (66 years)
Friedrich August Flückiger was a Swiss pharmacist, chemist and botanist. He was born in Langenthal, canton of Bern, on 15 May 1828 and died on 11 December 1894. Flückiger studied chemistry at the University of Berlin , afterwards teaching pharmacy classes in Solothurn. In 1850 he studied botany at the University of Geneva, followed by studies at the University of Heidelberg. He was the author of the botanical name Boswellia sacra, a tree native to Somalia, Oman, and Yemen that is a major source of frankincense.
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William Henry Emerson
1860 - 1924 (64 years)
William Henry "Big Doc" Emerson was an American chemist. Life William Henry Emerson was born in Tunnel Hill, Georgia in 1860 to Matilda Caroline Austin, daughter of Clisbe Austin, and Caleb J. Emerson. He joined the United States Naval Academy at age 16, graduating in 1880. Emerson spent the next several years as an officer in the U.S. Navy before enrolling in graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University in October 1883. At Johns Hopkins, Emerson studied chemistry under Ira Remsen. He graduated with his Ph.D. in 1886 and accepted a faculty position at the South Carolina Military Academy . In ...
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Edward Sucharda
1891 - 1947 (56 years)
Edward Sucharda was a renowned Polish chemist and engineer. He was rector of Lwów University of Technology from 1938 to 1939 and vice-rector of Wrocław University of Technology from 1945 to 1947. Scientific activity Edward Sucharda's work was distinguished by four main areas of interest:
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John Hamilton Bowie
#6792
John Brown Francis Herreshoff
1850 - 1932 (82 years)
John Brown Francis Herreshoff was second winner of the Perkin Medal. He was also the president of The General Chemical Company. Biography Herreshoff was born February 7, 1850, Bristol, Rhode Island, to the marriage of Charles Frederick Herreshoff III and Julia Ann Lewis . Herreshoff was a metallurgical chemist affiliated with the firm of Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, builders of yachts and torpedo boats. Herreshoff was also the president of The General Chemical Company, which was founded in 1899 and merged in 1920 with Allied Corporation.
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Samuel Sugden
1892 - 1950 (58 years)
Samuel Sugden, FRS was an eminent chemist in the first half of the 20th century. Early life He was born in Leeds on 21 February 1892 and educated at Batley Grammar School and the Royal College of Science.
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Kurt Peters
1897 - 1978 (81 years)
Kurt Gustav Karl Peters was an Austrian chemist. His work focused on the area of fuel technology, physical chemistry and catalytic reactions as well as the separation of rare gases and hydrocarbons.
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Johann Frederik Eijkman
1851 - 1915 (64 years)
Johan Fredrik Eykman or Johann Frederik Eijkman was a Dutch chemist. Family background He is one of the eight children of Christiaan Eijkman, the headmaster of a local school, and Johanna Alida Pool. His brother Christiaan Eijkman was a physician and professor of physiology whose demonstration that beriberi is caused by poor diet led to the discovery of vitamins. Together with Sir Frederick Hopkins, his brother received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
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Richard Threlfall
1861 - 1932 (71 years)
Sir Richard Threlfall was an English chemist and engineer, he established the School of Physics at the University of Sydney and made important contributions to military science during World War I. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1899, and was created KBE in 1917 and GBE in 1927.
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Laurent-Guillaume de Koninck
1809 - 1887 (78 years)
Laurent-Guillaume de Koninck was a Belgian palaeontologist and chemist, born at Leuven. He studied medicine in the university of his native town, and in 1831 he became assistant in the chemical schools. He pursued the study of chemistry in Paris, Berlin and Gießen, and was subsequently engaged in teaching the science at Ghent and Liège. In 1856 he was appointed professor of chemistry in the Liège University, and he retained this post until the close of his life.
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Robert Warington
1838 - 1907 (69 years)
Robert Warington, Jr. was an English agricultural chemist, known for his research and publications on the chemistry of phosphates and nitrates in agricultural soils. Biography Robert Warington Jr. was the eldest son and second child of the chemist Robert Warington, FRS. After studying chemistry in his father's laboratory and attending lectures by Faraday, Brande, and Hofmann, Robert Warington Jr. became in 1859 an unpaid assistant to Sir John Bennet Lawes at Rothamsted Experimental Station at Harpenden. Warington was from 1862 to 1867 an assistant to the Professor of Chemistry at the Royal A...
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Rudolf Marloth
1855 - 1931 (76 years)
Hermann Wilhelm Rudolf Marloth was a German-born South African botanist, pharmacist and analytical chemist, best known for his Flora of South Africa which appeared in six superbly illustrated volumes between 1913 and 1932. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Marloth when citing a botanical name.
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Wilhelm August Lampadius
1772 - 1842 (70 years)
Wilhelm August Lampadius was born in Hehlen, Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, on 8 August 1772 and died on 13 April 1842 in Freiberg, Kingdom of Saxony. He was a German pharmacist in Göttingen from 1785 until 1791. Also he was an "extraordinary professor" of chemistry and mineralogy in 1794 and an "ordinary professor" in 1795. He taught at the Mining Academy in Freiberg. Lampadius is best known for inflaming the first coal gas lantern on European ground.
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