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,
#6851
Robert Thomas Sanderson
1912 - 1989 (77 years)
Robert Thomas Sanderson was an American inorganic chemist, more commonly known by the initials "R.T." found in his papers. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago for his research in boron chemistry. After working in Texaco's research lab, he became a professor and spent his career on the faculties of the University of Florida, the University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. He also created a company supplying safety posters and lab-related artwork of his own design, and published several books including Vacuum Manipulation of Volatile Compounds.
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Otto Hahn
1879 - 1968 (89 years)
Otto Hahn was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and father of nuclear fission. Hahn and Lise Meitner discovered radioactive isotopes of radium, thorium, protactinium and uranium. He also discovered the phenomena of atomic recoil and nuclear isomerism, and pioneered rubidium–strontium dating. In 1938, Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann discovered nuclear fission, for which Hahn received the 1944 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Nuclear fission was the basis for nuclear reactors and nuclear w...
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Pehr Victor Edman
1916 - 1977 (61 years)
Pehr Victor Edman was a Swedish biochemist. He developed a method for sequencing proteins; the Edman degradation. Early life Edman was born in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1935 he started studying medicine at Karolinska Institutet, where he became interested in basic research and received a bachelor in medicine in 1938. His research was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II, where he was drafted to serve in the Swedish army. He returned to the Karolinska Institutet where he earned his doctoral degree under advice from Professor Erik Jorpes in 1946.
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Edward Bartow
1870 - 1958 (88 years)
Edward Bartow was an American chemist and an expert in the field of sanitary chemistry. His career extended from 1897 to 1958 and he is best known for his work in drinking water purification and wastewater treatment. He was well known as an educator, and his many students went on to leadership positions in the fields of sanitary chemistry and engineering.
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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.
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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.
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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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Chika Kuroda
1884 - 1968 (84 years)
Chika Kuroda was a Japanese chemist whose research focused on natural pigments. She was the first woman in Japan to receive a Bachelor of Science. Biography Chika Kuroda was born in Saga, Kyushu on 24 March 1884, the third daughter of her father Kuroda Heihachi and her mother Toku.
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Lotte Loewe
1900 - Present (126 years)
Lotte Luise Friederike Loewe was a German chemist known for her published research in organic chemistry. Loewe was born in Breslau to Helene Loewe. She received her doctorate in chemistry from the University of Breslau in 1927 and began her career there shortly thereafter, spending six years as a chemistry assistant from 1927 to 1933. She then moved to the University of Zurich in Switzerland for one year and then the University of Istanbul in Turkey for 21 years, from 1934 to 1955. Her last academic appointment was at the University of Basel, Switzerland, where she spent six years from 19...
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Arlie W. Schorger
1884 - 1972 (88 years)
Arlie William Schorger was a chemical researcher and businessman who also did work in ornithology. His chemistry work of note largely involved wood and waterproofing. His only chemistry book was The chemistry of cellulose and wood, but he had 34 patents.
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E. J. Bowen
1898 - 1980 (82 years)
Edmund John Bowen FRS was a British physical chemist. Early life and wartime career E. J. Bowen was the eldest of four born to Edmund Riley Bowen and Lilias Bowen in 1898 in Worcester, England. He attended the Royal Grammar School Worcester.
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Emma P. Carr
1880 - 1972 (92 years)
Emma Perry Carr was an American spectroscopist and chemical educator. Her work on unsaturated hydrocarbons and absorption spectra earned her the inaugural Francis P. Garvan Medal from the American Chemical Society in 1937.
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Heinrich Otto Wieland
1877 - 1957 (80 years)
Heinrich Otto Wieland was a German chemist. He won the 1927 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research into the bile acids. Career In 1901 Wieland received his doctorate at the University of Munich while studying under Johannes Thiele. In 1904 he completed his habilitation, then continued to teach at the university and starting in 1907 was a consultant for Boehringer Ingelheim. In 1914 he became associate professor for special topics in organic chemistry, and director of the Organic Division of the State Laboratory in Munich. From 1917 to 1918 Wieland worked in the service of the Kaiser Wilhe...
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George S. Whitby
1887 - 1972 (85 years)
George Stafford Whitby was the head of the University of Akron rubber laboratory and for many years was the only person in the United States who taught rubber chemistry. Whitby received the Charles Goodyear Medal in 1954 and in 1972, he was inducted into the International Rubber Science Hall of Fame. In 1986 the Rubber Division established the George Stafford Whitby Award in his honor.
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Katharine Blunt
1876 - 1954 (78 years)
Katharine Blunt was an American chemist, professor, and nutritionist who specialized in the fields of home economics, food chemistry and nutrition. Most of her research was on nutrition, but she also made great improvements to research on calcium and phosphorus metabolism and on the basal metabolism of women and children. She served as the third president of Connecticut College.
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Henry Tizard
1885 - 1959 (74 years)
Sir Henry Thomas Tizard was an English chemist, inventor and Rector of Imperial College, who developed the modern "octane rating" used to classify petrol, helped develop radar in World War II, and led the first serious studies of UFOss.
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Bill David
William I. F. David is a professor of Materials Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, an STFC Senior Fellow at the ISIS neutron source at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and a Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford.
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Robert Wintgen
1882 - 1966 (84 years)
Robert Wintgen was a German chemist. Wintgen studied at the University of Bonn and made his Ph.D with E. Rimbach at the University of Berlin. After a post-doc position with Alfred Stock in Berlin between 1917 and 1919 he worked at the University of Göttingen together with Richard Adolf Zsigmondy. Influenced by this cooperation worked on colloids chemistry from that point on. Wintgen became professor at the newly founded University of Cologne in 1924 where he stayed until his retirement in 1950.
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Nikolai Mikhailovich Strakhov
1900 - 1978 (78 years)
Nikolai Mikhailovich Strakhov was a Soviet geologist who specialized in lithology and lithogenesis of ocean sediment. His book Principles of Lithogenesis was a landmark text. He also founded the journal Lithology and Mineral Resources.
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Herman T. Briscoe
1893 - 1960 (67 years)
Herman Thompson Briscoe was an American chemist and professor of chemistry. The Herman T. Briscoe Professorship in Chemistry at Indiana University was established in 1961, and the Herman T. Briscoe Quadrangle Dormitory was dedicated in 1966.
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Costin Nenițescu
1902 - 1970 (68 years)
Costin D. Neniţescu was a prominent Romanian chemist, and a professor at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest. He was a member of the Romanian Academy, a corresponding member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, and a member of the Leopoldina Academy of Natural Scientists in Halle-Saale.
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Walter Seelmann-Eggebert
1915 - 1988 (73 years)
Wilhem Walter Rudolph Max Seelmann-Eggebert was a German radiochemist. He was son of Erich Eggebert and Edwig Schmidt. He was a student of Otto Hahn at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, where, after 1939, he worked with Fritz Strassmann on nuclear fission.
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Elizabeth Rona
1890 - 1981 (91 years)
Elizabeth Rona was a Hungarian nuclear chemist, known for her work with radioactive isotopes. After developing an enhanced method of preparing polonium samples, she was recognized internationally as the leading expert in isotope separation and polonium preparation. Between 1914 and 1918, during her postdoctoral study with George de Hevesy, she developed a theory that the velocity of diffusion depended on the mass of the nuclides. As only a few atomic elements had been identified, her confirmation of the existence of "Uranium-Y" was a major contribution to nuclear chemistry. She was awarded ...
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Sima Lozanić
1847 - 1935 (88 years)
Simeon Milivoje Lozanić and Simeon "Sima" Lozanić was a Serbian chemist, president of the Serbian Royal Academy, the first rector of the University of Belgrade, minister of foreign affairs, minister of industry and diplomat. At the Grandes écoles and later when it transformed into the University of Belgrade he taught chemistry and electrosynthesis. He has published over 200 scientific papers and professional publications.
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Johannes Thiele
1865 - 1918 (53 years)
Friedrich Karl Johannes Thiele was a German chemist and a prominent professor at several universities, including those in Munich and Strasbourg. He developed many laboratory techniques related to isolation of organic compounds. In 1907 he described a device for the accurate determination of melting points, since named Thiele tube after him.
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Louis Daguerre
1787 - 1851 (64 years)
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre was a French artist and photographer, recognized for his invention of the eponymous daguerreotype process of photography. He became known as one of the fathers of photography. Though he is most famous for his contributions to photography, he was also an accomplished painter, scenic designer, and a developer of the diorama theatre.
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Friedrich Paneth
1887 - 1958 (71 years)
Friedrich Adolf Paneth was an Austrian-born British chemist. Fleeing the Nazis, he escaped to Britain. He became a naturalized British citizen in 1939. After the war, Paneth returned to Germany to become director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in 1953. He was considered the greatest authority of his time on volatile hydrides and also made important contributions to the study of the stratosphere.
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John Herschel
1792 - 1871 (79 years)
Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet was an English polymath active as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, and experimental photographer who invented the blueprint and did botanical work.
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Carl Wagner
1901 - 1977 (76 years)
Carl Wilhelm Wagner was a German Physical chemist. He is best known for his pioneering work on Solid-state chemistry, where his work on oxidation rate theory, counter diffusion of ions and defect chemistry led to a better understanding of how reactions take place at the atomic level. His life and achievements were honoured in a Solid State Ionics symposium commemorating his 100th birthday in 2001, where he was described as the Father of Solid State Chemistry.
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Samuel Glasstone
1897 - 1986 (89 years)
Samuel Glasstone was a British-born American academic and writer of scientific books. He authored over 40 popular textbooks on physical chemistry and electrochemistry, reaction rates, nuclear weapons effects, nuclear reactor engineering, Mars, space sciences, the environmental effects of nuclear energy and nuclear testing.
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Wilhelm Schlenk
1879 - 1943 (64 years)
Wilhelm Johann Schlenk was a German chemist. He was born in Munich and also studied chemistry there. Schlenk succeeded Emil Fischer at the University of Berlin in 1919. Schlenk was an organic chemist who discovered organolithium compounds around 1917. He also investigated free radicals and carbanions and discovered that organomagnesium halides are capable of participating in a complex chemical equilibrium, now known as a Schlenk equilibrium.
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John Gamble Kirkwood
1907 - 1959 (52 years)
John "Jack" Gamble Kirkwood was a noted chemist and physicist, holding faculty positions at Cornell University, the University of Chicago, California Institute of Technology, and Yale University. Early life and background Kirkwood was born in Gotebo, Oklahoma, the oldest child of John Millard and Lillian Gamble Kirkwood. His father was educated as an attorney and was a distributor for the Goodyear Corporation in the state of Kansas. In addition to Jack Kirkwood, there were two younger sisters: Caroline and Margaret .
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Saul Winstein
1912 - 1969 (57 years)
Saul Winstein was a Jewish Canadian chemist who discovered the Winstein reaction. He argued a non-classical cation was needed to explain the stability of the norbornyl cation. This fueled a debate with Herbert C. Brown over the existence of σ-delocalized carbocations. Winstein also first proposed the concept of an intimate ion pair. He was co-author of the Grunwald–Winstein equation, concerning solvolysis rates.
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Felix Hoppe-Seyler
1825 - 1895 (70 years)
Ernst Felix Immanuel Hoppe-Seyler was a German physiologist and chemist, and the principal founder of the disciplines of biochemistry and molecular biology. He had discovered Yeast nucleic acid which is now called RNA in his attempts to follow up and confirm Miescher's results by repeating parts of Miescher's experiments
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Ivan Kablukov
1857 - 1942 (85 years)
Ivan Alekseyevich Kablukov was a Russian and Soviet physical chemist. He simultaneously and independently of Vladimir Kistiakovsky proposed the idea of ion solvation and initiated the unification of the physical and chemical theory of solutions. He published influential textbooks on organic chemistry and was a professor at Moscow State University and Timiryazev Agricultural Academy.
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Frédéric Swarts
1866 - 1940 (74 years)
Frédéric Jean Edmond Swarts was a Belgian chemist who prepared the first chlorofluorocarbon, CF2Cl2 as well as several other related compounds. He was a professor in the civil engineering at the University of Ghent. In addition to his work on organofluorine chemistry, he authored the textbook "Cours de Chimie Organique." He was a son of Theodore Swarts and a colleague of Leo Baekeland.
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Jacob Volhard
1834 - 1910 (76 years)
Jacob Volhard was the German chemist who discovered, together with his student Hugo Erdmann, the Volhard–Erdmann cyclization reaction. He was also responsible for the improvement of the Hell–Volhard–Zelinsky halogenation.
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Herbert Freundlich
1880 - 1941 (61 years)
Herbert Max Finlay Freundlich was a German chemist. His father was of German Jewish descent, and his mother was from Scotland. His younger brother was Erwin Finlay Freundlich . He was a department head at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry from 1919 until 1933, when the racial policies of the Nazi party demanded the dismissal of non-Aryans from senior posts. In 1934 he became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Otto Hönigschmid
1878 - 1945 (67 years)
Otto Hönigschmid was a Czech/Austrian chemist. He published the first widely accepted experimental proof of isotopes along with Stefanie Horovitz. Throughout his career he worked to precisely define atomic weights for over 40 elements, and served on committees with the purpose of adopting internationally agreed upon values. After his home and laboratory in Munich were destroyed in World War II, he committed suicide in 1945.
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Heinrich Jacob Goldschmidt
1857 - 1937 (80 years)
Heinrich Jacob Goldschmidt, also Heinrich Jakob Goldschmidt , was a Jewish Austrian chemist who spent most of his career working in Norway. He studied chemistry at the Charles University in Prague, where he received his PhD in 1881. In the same year, he became professor at the ETH Zürich, where he worked with Victor Meyer. In 1888, his son Victor Goldschmidt was born; Victor later became a renowned mineralogist and founder of modern geochemistry. After working at the University of Amsterdam with Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff in 1894 and 1895, Heinrich Goldschmidt became full professor at the ETH.
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Max Trautz
1880 - 1960 (80 years)
Max Trautz was a German chemist. He was very productive with over 190 scientific publications especially in the field of chemical kinetics. He was the first to investigate the activation energy of molecules by connecting Max Planck's new results concerning light with observations in chemistry.
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Maud Menten
1879 - 1960 (81 years)
Maud Leonora Menten was a Canadian physician and chemist. As a bio-medical and medical researcher, she made significant contributions to enzyme kinetics and histochemistry, and invented a procedure that remains in use. She is primarily known for her work with Leonor Michaelis on enzyme kinetics in 1913. The paper has been translated from its written language of German into English.
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Bohuslav Brauner
1855 - 1935 (80 years)
Bohuslav Brauner was a Czech chemist from the University of Prague, who investigated the properties of the rare earth elements, especially the determination of their atomic weights. Brauner predicted the existence of the rare earth element promethium ten years before the existence of the gap was confirmed experimentally . In the 1880s, when he already had started lecturing in Prague, he still competed internationally in cycling races.
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Franz Joseph Emil Fischer
1877 - 1947 (70 years)
Franz Joseph Emil Fischer was a German chemist. He was the founder and first director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Coal Research. He is known for the discovery of the Fischer–Tropsch process.
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Fritz Ullmann
1875 - 1939 (64 years)
Fritz Ullmann was a German chemist. Ullmann was born in Fürth and started studying chemistry in Nuremberg, but received his PhD of the University of Geneva for work with Carl Gräbe in 1895. After some time in Geneva he went to Berlin in 1905. Ullmann taught technical chemistry during 1905-1913 and 1922-1925 at the Technischen Hochschule Berlin now Technische Universität Berlin, first as part of the ordinary teaching staff, later on as a professor. In 1900 he introduced dimethyl sulfate as an alkylating agent. Between 1914 and 1922, when he was back in Geneva, he published the first edition o...
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Merle Randall
1888 - 1950 (62 years)
Merle Randall was an American physical chemist famous for his work with Gilbert N. Lewis, over a period of 25 years, in measuring reaction heat of chemical compounds and determining their corresponding free energy. Together, their 1923 textbook "Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances" became a classic work in the field of chemical thermodynamics.
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Frank Wigglesworth Clarke
1847 - 1931 (84 years)
Frank Wigglesworth Clarke of Boston, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C. was an American scientist and chemist. Sometimes known as the "Father of Geochemistry," Clarke is credited with determining the composition of the Earth's crust. He was a founder of The American Chemical Society and served as its President, 1901.
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Jocelyn Field Thorpe
1872 - 1940 (68 years)
Sir Jocelyn Field Thorpe FRS was a British chemist who made major contributions to organic chemistry, including the Thorpe-Ingold effect and three named reactions. Early life and education Thorpe was born in Clapham, London on 1 December 1872, one of nine children and the sixth son, of Mr. and Mrs. W.G. Thorpe of the Middle Temple. He attended Worthing College, and then from 1888 - 1890 studied engineering at King's College, London. He then moved to the Royal College of Science from 1890 - 1892 to study chemistry. He earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry under Karl von Auwers at Heidelberg University in 1895.
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Ira Remsen
1846 - 1927 (81 years)
Ira Remsen was an American chemist who discovered the artificial sweetener saccharin along with Constantin Fahlberg. He was the second president of Johns Hopkins University. He was the founder of the American Chemical Journal, which he edited from 1879 to 1914.
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Nikolai Kischner
1867 - 1935 (68 years)
Nikolai Matveyevich Kischner was a Russian chemist and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Biography After graduating from the Moscow Classical Gymnasium in 1886 Kischner enrolled to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Moscow State University. Since 1889 he focused on organic chemistry, studying under Vladimir Luginin and Vladimir Markovnikov. In 1890, he completed his courses and started working on a PhD on "Amines and hydrazines of polymethylene series, methods of their preparation and transformation", which he defended in 1895. In 1900, he defended a habilitation on "The action of silver oxide and hydroxylamine on bromamines.
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