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,
#6801
Irving Langmuir
1881 - 1957 (76 years)
Irving Langmuir was an American chemist, physicist, and engineer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932 for his work in surface chemistry. Langmuir's most famous publication is the 1919 article "The Arrangement of Electrons in Atoms and Molecules" in which, building on Gilbert N. Lewis's cubical atom theory and Walther Kossel's chemical bonding theory, he outlined his "concentric theory of atomic structure". Langmuir became embroiled in a priority dispute with Lewis over this work; Langmuir's presentation skills were largely responsible for the popularization of the theory, although the credit for the theory itself belongs mostly to Lewis.
Go to Profile#6802
Henry Eyring
1901 - 1981 (80 years)
Henry Eyring was a Mexico-born United States theoretical chemist whose primary contribution was in the study of chemical reaction rates and intermediates. Eyring developed the Absolute Rate Theory or Transition state theory of chemical reactions, connecting the fields of chemistry and physics through atomic theory, quantum theory, and statistical mechanics.
Go to Profile#6803
Harold Ellingham
1897 - 1975 (78 years)
Harold Johann Thomas Ellingham, OBE, was a British physical chemist, best known for his Ellingham diagrams, which summarize a large amount of information concerning extractive metallurgy. Ellingham was born in Tottenham on 21 November 1897, the son of Thomas Robert Ellingham and Katherine Caroline Bauer.
Go to Profile#6804
Paul Flory
1910 - 1985 (75 years)
Paul John Flory was an American chemist and Nobel laureate who was known for his work in the field of polymers, or macromolecules. He was a leading pioneer in understanding the behavior of polymers in solution, and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1974 "for his fundamental achievements, both theoretical and experimental, in the physical chemistry of macromolecules".
Go to Profile#6805
William Gidley Emmett
1887 - 1985 (98 years)
William Gidley Emmett FRSE was a British industrial chemist, educationalist and academic author. In education he spoke out against traditional examination methods and developed a series of non-standard tests to assess IQ, now commonly appearing in standard IQ tests, and generally known as the Moray House Tests.
Go to Profile#6806
William P. Murphy
1892 - 1987 (95 years)
William Parry Murphy was an American physician who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1934 with George Richards Minot and George Hoyt Whipple for their combined work in devising and treating macrocytic anemia .
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Frederick Kaufman
1919 - 1985 (66 years)
Frederick Kaufman was an Austrian-born American chemist. Kaufman was most notable for his research work which led to a ban on the use of chloro-fluorocarbon aerosol propellants in the United States. Kaufman was director of the University of Pittsburgh's Space Research Coordination Center, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, president of the Combustion Institute. He served on various committees of the National Academy of Sciences, NASA, AFOSR, National Science Foundation, and National Research Council. He was also president of Space Research Coordination Center. The National A...
Go to Profile#6808
Francisco Zaera
Francisco Zaera is a Venezuelan-American chemist, currently a distinguished professor at University of California, Riverside and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society and the American Vacuum Society.
Go to Profile#6809
Erich Clar
1902 - 1987 (85 years)
Erich Clar was an Austrian organic chemist who studied polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon chemistry. He is considered as the father of that field. In 1941, he authored "Aromatische Kohlenwasserstoffe" and in 1964 the greatly expanded two-volume Polycyclic Hydrocarbons, which described the syntheses, properties, and UV-visible absorption spectra of hundreds of PAHs. He discovered the Clar reaction of the cyclic ketone perinaphthenone to form dibenzo[cd,lm]perylene in a 400 C melt of zinc dust, zinc chloride, and sodium chloride. He created the Sextet Theory, now eponymously called Clar's rule, to describe the behavior of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon isomers.
Go to Profile#6810
Arne Ölander
1902 - 1984 (82 years)
Gustav Arne Ölander was a Swedish chemist, known for his discovery of the shape-memory effect in metal alloys. He was the son of Gustaf Ölander and Hilda Ölander née Norrman. Ölander became an associate professor of physical chemistry at Stockholm University in 1929. He was a professor of theoretical chemistry and electrochemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology 1936–1943, in inorganic and physical chemistry at Stockholm University 1943–1960, and in physical chemistry at Stockholm University 1960–1968.
Go to Profile#6811
Paul Karrer
1889 - 1971 (82 years)
Professor Paul Karrer FRS FRSE FCS was a Swiss organic chemist best known for his research on vitamins. He and Norman Haworth won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1937. Biography Early years Karrer was born in Moscow, Russia to Paul Karrer and Julie Lerch, both Swiss nationals. In 1892 Karrer's family returned to Switzerland where he was educated at Wildegg and at the grammar school in Lenzburg, Aarau, where he matriculated in 1908. He studied chemistry at the University of Zurich under Alfred Werner and after gaining his Ph.D. in 1911, he spent a further year as assistant in the Chemical Institute.
Go to Profile#6812
Gordon Aylward
1900 - Present (126 years)
Gordon Hillis Aylward is an Australian chemical author. He is known for writing the SI Chemical Data book. Biography Aylward graduated on 20 May 1952 with a BSc in Applied Chemistry from the then-new University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Later he received a MSc from the same university, and continued to teach Analytical Chemistry for 13 years there. During that period he organized the Approach to Chemistry summer schools, together with his co-teacher dr Tristan Findlay. To support the course, they wrote the book SI Chemical Data as the textbook.
Go to Profile#6813
Franz Hein
1892 - 1976 (84 years)
Franz Hein was a German scientist and artist. History Franz Hein was born in Grötzingen , Germany. His high school years were spent in Leipzig, as well as, his college years at the University of Leipzig. Hein completed his Ph.D. in 1917 on optical studies of bismuth and triphenylmethane derivatives. Hein made Assistant at the University and in 1920 Oberassistent. He continued working on his Habilitation becoming a professor in 1923. With the completion of his Habilitation, Hein went to work on organometallic system electrochemistry.
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George Wallace Kenner
1922 - 1978 (56 years)
George Wallace Kenner FRS was a British organic chemist. He was born in Sheffield in 1922, the son of Prof. James Kenner. During his childhood, he went to Didsbury Preparatory School in 1928 and moved to Manchester Grammar School in 1934. He was appointed to the first Heath Harrison Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Liverpool 1957–1976. He did his MSc and PhD degrees under Lord Todd at Manchester and Cambridge Universities in UK. He married Jillian Bird in 1951 and they had two daughters both born in Cambridge. He was faculty member at the Cambridge University for 15 years befor...
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Hertha Sponer
1895 - 1968 (73 years)
Hertha Sponer was a German physicist and chemist who contributed to modern quantum mechanics and molecular physics and was the first woman on the physics faculty of Duke University. She was the older sister of philologist and resistance fighter Margot Sponer.
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Wilhelm Steinkopf
1879 - 1949 (70 years)
Georg Wilhelm Steinkopf was a German chemist. Today he is mostly remembered for his work on the production of mustard gas during World War I. Life Georg Wilhelm Steinkopf was born on 28 June 1879 in Staßfurt, in the Prussian Province of Saxony in the German Empire, the son of Gustav Friedrich Steinkopf, a merchant, and his wife Elise Steinkopf .
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Frederick Mason Brewer
1903 - 1963 (60 years)
Frederick Mason Brewer CBE FRIC was an English chemist. He was Head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Oxford and Mayor of Oxford during 1959–60. Frederick Brewer was born in Kensal Rise , Middlesex, England. He was the son of Frederick Charles Brewer and Ellen Maria Owen, both school teachers. Brewer studied chemistry at Lincoln College, Oxford, from 1920, having received an open scholarship, and subsequently gained a first class degree. After his undergraduate studies, Brewer undertook research with Prof. Frederick Soddy.
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Floyd Bartell
1883 - 1961 (78 years)
Floyd Earl Bartell was a chemist who spent his entire academic career at the University of Michigan. He specialized in the study of colloids. Early life and education Bartell was born on June 16, 1883, in Concord, Michigan. He was an undergraduate at Albion College and graduated in 1905. After a short period as an instructor of chemistry at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, Bartell returned to Michigan and began graduate studies in chemistry at the University of Michigan. He received his Ph.D. in 1910.
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Francis William Bergstrom
1897 - 1946 (49 years)
Francis William Bergstrom, Ph.D. was an American professor of chemistry at Stanford University. Bergstrom was born in Bloomington, Indiana on January 10, 1897, then moved to Stanford when he was 11 years old. He enrolled at Stanford and received a B.S. in 1918 and a Ph.D. in 1922, working with Edward Curtis Franklin. His postdoctoral work was undertaken at Clark University and Brown University, working with Charles A. Kraus. His independent career lasted 29 years at Stanford, during which time he wrote 70 peer-reviewed papers on nitrogen chemistry and served as an Associate Editor for The Jou...
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Hans Stammreich
1902 - 1969 (67 years)
Hans Stammreich , was a Brazilian chemist of German origin and an important pioneer of Raman spectroscopy and molecular spectroscopy. Life After obtaining his PhD in physical chemistry after studying under Adolf Miethe at the Berlin Technical University, Stammreich became soon, partly influenced by his personal friendship with Albert Einstein, interested in molecular spectroscopy, especially Raman spectroscopy. After he was fired from TU Berlin in April 1933 because of his Jewish background, Stammreich emigrated to Paris, where he stayed until 1940, working in the labs of Paul Langevin and Ch...
Go to Profile#6821
Emil Votoček
1872 - 1950 (78 years)
Emil Votoček was a Czech chemist, composer and music theorist. He is noted for his chemistry textbooks and multilingual dictionaries in both chemistry and music. Chemistry career Votoček studied at the Czech Institute of Technology later in Mulhouse and received his PhD with Bernhard Tollens at the University of Göttingen for his chemistry of sugar.
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William Hultz Walker
1869 - 1934 (65 years)
William Hultz Walker was an American chemist and professor. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated in 1890 at Penn State College and took his Ph.D. at Göttingen . In 1894 he accepted the chair of industrial chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where from 1908 he was also director of the research laboratory of applied chemistry. Walker was vice president of the International Congress of Applied Chemistry in 1893 and president of the American Electrochemical Society in 1910. The New York Section of the American Chemical Society conferred on him its Nichols me...
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Yelavarthy Nayudamma
1922 - 1985 (63 years)
Yelavarthy Nayudamma was a chemical engineer and a scientist killed on Air India Flight 182 . Early life and education Nayudamma was born on 10 September 1922 into an agricultural family at Yelavarru village near Tenali in Guntur district of present day Andhra Pradesh state in India. He was the eldest of three brothers and a sister. His parents Raghavamma and Anjaih named him Nayudammma . Nayudamma who was over 6 feet tall lived up to his name.
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Jan Kok
1899 - 1982 (83 years)
Jan Kok was a Dutch pharmacist. In 1945, he was appointed as professor at the University of Amsterdam, and between 1960 and 1964 he was rector magnificus of this university. External links Biography Prof. dr. J. Kok, 1899 - 1982 at the University of Amsterdam Album Academicum website
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Roger Adams
1889 - 1971 (82 years)
Roger Adams was an American organic chemist who developed the eponymous Adams' catalyst, and helped determine the composition of natural substances such as complex vegetable oils and plant alkaloids. He isolated and identified CBD in 1940. As head of the Chemistry department at the University of Illinois from 1926 to 1954, he influenced graduate education in America, taught over 250 Ph.D. students and postgraduate students, and served in military science during World War I and World War II.
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Nikolay Zelinsky
1861 - 1953 (92 years)
Nikolay Dmitriyevich Zelinsky was a Russian and Soviet chemist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union . Zelinsky studied at the University of Odessa and at the universities of Leipzig and Göttingen in Germany. Zelinsky was one of the founders of theory on organic catalysis. He was the inventor of the first effective filtering activated charcoal gas mask in the world .
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Oliver Patterson Watts
1865 - 1953 (88 years)
Oliver Patterson Watts was a professor of chemical engineering and applied electrochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Born in Thomaston, Maine, Watts received his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College in 1889. He received his doctoral degree in 1905; he was the first person to be awarded a Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, where he served as a professor until 1935, after which he was an emeritus professor in the university's college of engineering. Watts is known for his development of the hot nickel plating bath known as the "Watts Bath", which he f...
Go to Profile#6828
James Wilfred Cook
1900 - 1975 (75 years)
Sir James Wilfred Cook FRS FRSE DSc LLD was an English chemist, best known for his research of organic chemistry of carcinogenic compounds. Friends knew him simply as Jim Cook. Life He was born in South Kensington in London on 10 December 1900, the son of Charles William Cook, a coachman, and his wife, Frances Wall. Using a London County Council scholarship he attended Sloane School in Chelsea, London.
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Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer
1899 - 1957 (58 years)
Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer was a German chemist. Education and career Born in Breslau, he was an older brother of martyred theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His father was neurologist Karl Bonhoeffer and his mother was Paula von Hase.
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Rose May Davis
1894 - Present (132 years)
Rose May Davis was an American chemist. In 1929 she became the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. from Duke University. Early life and education Rose May Davis was born on 17 November 1894 in Cumberland, Maryland, to Baptist Minister Quinton C. Davis and Sarah E. Davis. She studied a variety of subjects, such as music, law, and chemistry, and attended several institutions in pursuit of her education, including Chowan College , the Southern Conservatory of Music , Trinity College , the University of Virginia , Duke University . During her time at Trinity College, Davis was a member of the Panhellenic Council, the Chanticleer Board, Athena Literary Society, Eko-L, and Zeta Tau Alpha.
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Ray Wendland
1911 - 1986 (75 years)
Ray Theodore Wendland was an American experimental chemist and academician. Education Wendland was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July, 1911, and educated at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, receiving a B.A. degree in chemistry in 1933. From there, he matriculated to Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, to pursue graduate studies. He was awarded a Ph.D. from that institution in 1937. Postdoctoral appointments followed at Carnegie Technical Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, centering on the refinement of rubber production under the auspices of the U.S.
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Theodor Svedberg
1884 - 1971 (87 years)
Theodor Svedberg was a Swedish chemist and Nobel laureate for his research on colloids and proteins using the ultracentrifuge. Svedberg was active at Uppsala University from the mid-1900s to late 1940s. While at Uppsala, Svedberg started as a docent before becoming the university's physical chemistry head in 1912. After leaving Uppsala in 1949, Svedberg was in charge of the Gustaf Werner Institute until 1967. Apart from his 1926 Nobel Prize, Svedberg was named a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1944 and became part of the National Academy of Sciences in 1945.
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Vladimir Engelgardt
1894 - 1984 (90 years)
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Engelgardt was a Soviet biochemist, academician of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences , academician of the Soviet Academy of Sciences , and Hero of Socialist Labor . He was the founder and the first director of the Institute of Molecular Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences .
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Jean Piccard
1884 - 1963 (79 years)
Jean Felix Piccard , also known as Jean Piccard, was a Swiss-born American chemist, engineer, professor and high-altitude balloonist. He invented clustered high-altitude balloons, and with his wife Jeannette, the plastic balloon. Piccard's inventions and co-inventions are used in balloon flight, aircraft and spacecraft.
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Anton Vilsmeier
1894 - 1962 (68 years)
Dr. Anton Vilsmeier was a German chemist who together with Albrecht Haack discovered the Vilsmeier-Haack reaction. Early life Anton Vilsmeier was born to the mill owner, Wolfgang Vilsmeier, and his wife, Philomena, in Burgweinting, Oberpfalz. He attended the Volksschule and the Altes Gymnasium in Regensburg. During World War I, he served in the 11th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, and became a British prisoner following the Battle of the Somme, returning to Germany in November 1919. From 1920, he studied chemistry at the University of Munich, and from 1922 at the University of Erlangen, where he ...
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S. P. L. Sørensen
1868 - 1939 (71 years)
Søren Peter Lauritz Sørensen was a Danish chemist, known for the introduction of the concept of pH, a scale for measuring acidity and alkalinity. Personal life Sørensen was born in Havrebjerg Denmark in 1868 as the son of a farmer. He began his studies at the University of Copenhagen at the age of 18. He wanted to make a career in medicine, but under the influence of chemist Sophus Mads Jørgensen decided to change to chemistry.
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Hans Fischer
1881 - 1945 (64 years)
Hans Fischer was a German organic chemist and the recipient of the 1930 Nobel Prize for Chemistry "for his researches into the constitution of haemin and chlorophyll and especially for his synthesis of haemin."
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Alexander Smith
1865 - 1922 (57 years)
Prof Alexander Smith FRSE LLD was a Scottish chemist, who spent his working life teaching in the universities of America. Biography He was born at 4 Nelson Street in Edinburgh's New Town, the son of Isabella and Alexander W. Smith, a music teacher. His paternal grandfather was the sculptor Alexander Smith. The family moved to 4 West Castle Road in the Merchiston district while he was young.
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Ernst Føyn
1904 - 1984 (80 years)
Johan Ernst Fredrik Føyn was a Norwegian chemist and oceanographer. He was born in Kristiania. He was assigned professor of oceanography at the University of Oslo from 1964. His research centered on radioactivity of ocean waters, and on pollution of the oceans. He designed a method for electrolytic cleaning of sewage.
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Eugen Chirnoagă
1891 - 1965 (74 years)
Eugen Chirnoagă was a Romanian chemist. Chirnoagă was born in 1891 in Poduri, Bacău County, one of eight children of Gheorghe Chirnoagă, a teacher, and his wife, Olimpia; one of his brothers, Platon Chirnoagă, became a general in World War II.
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Marie Curie
1867 - 1934 (67 years)
Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie , known simply as Marie Curie , was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner of her first Nobel Prize, making them the first-ever married couple to win the Nobel Prize and launching the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was, in 1906, the first woman to become a professor at the University o...
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Herman Schlundt
1869 - 1937 (68 years)
Herman Schlundt was a physical chemist from the United States. He is most well known for extracting and refining radioactive metals from low-grade ore and industrial waste during his time as a researcher, which have had modern implications. Two buildings were named in his honor on the University of Missouri campus in Columbia, Missouri.
Go to Profile#6843
Nellie May Naylor
1885 - 1992 (107 years)
Nellie May Naylor was an American chemist. She was a chemistry professor at Iowa State University , teaching between 1908 until 1955. She was only the second woman to hold this job in the chemistry department.
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Eric Rideal
1890 - 1974 (84 years)
Sir Eric Keightley Rideal, was a British physical chemist. He worked on a wide range of subjects, including electrochemistry, chemical kinetics, catalysis, electrophoresis, colloids and surface chemistry. He is best known for the Eley–Rideal mechanism, which he proposed in 1938 with Daniel D. Eley. He is also known for the textbook that he authored, An Introduction to Surface Chemistry , and was awarded honours for the research he carried out during both World Wars and for his services to chemistry.
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Frank Gibbs Torto
1921 - 1984 (63 years)
Frank Gibbs Tetteh O'Baka Torto, FGA, MV was a Ghanaian chemist and a professor at the University of Ghana. He was a founding member, vice president and later president of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Masuzo Shikata
1895 - 1964 (69 years)
was a Japanese chemist and one of the pioneers in electrochemistry. Together with his mentor and colleague, Czech chemist and inventor Jaroslav Heyrovský, he developed the first polarograph, a type of electrochemical analyzing machine, and co-authored the paper which introduced the machine and the name "polarograph". This machine was important because it automated the measurement of I-V curves of solutions, which when done by hand could take over an hour for each test.
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Ahmed Mumin Warfa
Ahmed Mumin Warfa was a Somali scientist specializing in botany, who with his colleague Mats Thulin discovered Cyclamen somalense. He served as president of the Zamzam University of Science and Technology from 2020 until his death.
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Werner Zerweck
1899 - 1965 (66 years)
Werner Zerweck was a German chemist, inventor and industrial leader, who served as CEO of the chemical and pharmaceutical company Cassella from 1953 to 1963. Under his leadership the company focused increasingly on pharmaceuticals and cosmetics rather than its former primary focus, dyes. He was also a member of the advisory board of Deutsche Bank from 1953. Zerweck was a pioneer in the development of synthetic fibers.
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Jack Linnett
1913 - 1975 (62 years)
John Wilfrid Linnett FRS was Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cambridge from 1973 to 1975. He was for many years a Fellow of the Queen's College, Oxford, and a demonstrator in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford.
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André-Louis Debierne
1874 - 1949 (75 years)
André-Louis Debierne was a French chemist. He is often considered the discoverer of the element actinium, though H. W. Kirby disputed this in 1971 and gave credit instead to German chemist Friedrich Oskar Giesel.
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