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,
#6951
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
#6961
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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Gustav von Hüfner
1840 - 1908 (68 years)
Gustav von Hüfner was a German chemist. From 1860 to 1865 he studied medicine at the University of Leipzig, and while a student, attended lectures given by biologists Carl Gegenbaur and Matthias Jakob Schleiden at the University of Jena. After graduation, he trained under physiologist Carl Ludwig and chemist Hermann Kolbe at Leipzig, and studied in the laboratory of Robert Bunsen at the University of Heidelberg. In 1869 he obtained his habilitation, and three years later, succeeded Felix Hoppe-Seyler at the University of Tübingen. In 1875, he was appointed a full professor of organic and phys...
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Alexander Tschirch
1856 - 1939 (83 years)
Alexander Tschirch was a German-Swiss pharmacist born in Guben. He received pharmacy training in Dresden and at the Berner Staatsapotheke . From 1878 to 1880 he studied at the University of Berlin, earning his PhD at Freiburg in 1881, followed by a degree in botany from Berlin in 1884. In 1889–90 he took a study tour of India, Ceylon and Java. From 1890 to 1932 he was a professor of pharmacy and pharmacognosy at the University of Bern, serving as rector in 1908–09.
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William P. Griffith.
#6973
Johannes van Laar
1860 - 1938 (78 years)
Johannes van Laar was a Dutch chemist who is best known for the equations regarding chemical activity . Biography Van Laar's parents died when he was still a minor, his mother in 1862 when he was about 2-years-old and his father in 1873 when he was about 13-years-old. From that point on his uncle N. A. Rost van Tonningen was responsible for him. He finished school in 1876 and joined the Royal Naval Institute at Willemsoord. After several trips on steam ships and reaching the rank of a sub-lieutenant he asked for discharge when he became of age.
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André Laugier
1770 - 1832 (62 years)
André Laugier was a French chemist, pharmacist and mineralogist. He was a cousin to famed chemist Antoine François Fourcroy and the father of astronomer Paul Auguste Ernest Laugier . He received his education in his hometown of Lisieux, and during the French Revolution, was tasked with collecting church bells in Bretagne in order for them to be melted down for the production of cannons. In 1794 he was employed as head of the gunpowder and saltpeter works at the Comite de salut public. In 1797 he received his master's degree in pharmacy, and subsequently taught classes in chemistry and pharmac...
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Winford Lee Lewis
1878 - 1943 (65 years)
Winford Lee Lewis was a US soldier and chemist best known for his rediscovery of the chemical warfare agent lewisite in 1917. He was born in Gridley, California and died in his home in Evanston, Illinois in 1943 following a fall.
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Giovanni Francisco Vigani
1650 - 1712 (62 years)
Giovanni Francisco Vigani , known also as John Francis, was an Italian chemist who became the first professor of chemistry in the University of Cambridge. Life Vigani was born at Verona about the middle of the seventeenth century. He travelled in Spain, France, and Holland, and studied mining, metallurgy, and pharmacy in the countries he visited. He is not known to have received an official university degree. In 1682 he published a small treatise, entitled Medulla Chymiæ. It was dedicated to a Dutchman, Joannes de Waal, and was printed and published at Danzig. During this year he probably arrived in England, first settling in Newark-on-Trent.
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Frederick Pearson Treadwell
1857 - 1918 (61 years)
Frederick Pearson Treadwell was an American analytical chemist working in Switzerland. Life F.P. Treadwell studied chemistry in Heidelberg under Robert Bunsen. He graduated with a doctoral degree in 1878 and was lecture assistant to Bunsen from 1878-1881. Treadwell became Privatdozent in analytical chemistry at ETH Zürich in 1882, Titularprofessor in 1885, and Ordinarius in 1893, a post he held until his sudden death by "heart disease" in 1918. His son William Dupré Treadwell followed him on his position at ETH.
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Fanny Rysan Mulford Hitchcock
1851 - 1936 (85 years)
Fanny Rysan Mulford Hitchcock was one of only 13 American women to receive their doctorates in chemistry during the 19th-century, and was the first woman to receive a doctorate in Philosophy of Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania.
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Peter de la Mare
1920 - 1989 (69 years)
Peter Bernard David de la Mare was a New Zealand physical organic chemist. Born in Hamilton in 1920, he was the son of Sophia Ruth de la Mare , a medical practitioner, and Frederick Archibald de la Mare, a lawyer. He was educated at Hamilton High School, and then attended Victoria University College, from where he graduated in 1942 with an MSc in chemistry, winning the Shirtcliffe Fellowship and the Jacob Joseph Scholarship. His master's research was supervised by Philip Robertson. He worked at the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in the agricultural department at Wellington a...
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Jacopo Bartolomeo Beccari
1682 - 1766 (84 years)
Jacopo Bartolomeo Beccari was an Italian chemist, one of the leading scientists in Bologna in the first half of the eighteenth century. He is mainly known as the discoverer of the gluten in wheat flour.
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M. E. Jr. Conrad
#6982
Samuel Wilson Parr
1857 - 1931 (74 years)
Samuel Wilson Parr was an American chemist and academic from Illinois. A graduate of the Illinois Industrial University , he taught at Illinois College after receiving a master's degree from Cornell University. He was recruited by the University of Illinois in 1891 and remained there for the rest of his career. Parr is noted for his contributions to industrial chemistry, including the identification of the alloy illium, named for the school. In 1928, Parr was the president of the American Chemical Society.
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Peter Jacob Hjelm
1746 - 1813 (67 years)
Peter Jacob Hjelm was a Swedish chemist and the first person to isolate the element molybdenum in 1781, four years after its discovery by Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele. Working with Molybdic acid, Hjelm chemically reduced molybdenum oxide with carbon in an oxygen-free atmosphere, resulting in carbon dioxide and a near-pure dark metal powder to which he gave the name 'molybdenum'. His first publication on molybdenum appeared in 1790.
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Paul-Antoine Giguère
1910 - 1987 (77 years)
Paul-Antoine Giguère, was a Canadian academic and chemist. Born in Quebec City, he received a Bachelor of Science degree from Université Laval in 1934, and a doctorate from McGill University in 1937 under the direction of Otto Maass. He started working in the laboratory of CIL in Beloeil, Quebec and then went to work at the California Institute of Technology with Linus Pauling.
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Johann Theodor Eller
1689 - 1760 (71 years)
Johann Theodor Eller was a German physician, mineralogist and chemist who served in the Prussian court. Eller followed the beliefs of the day that heat was an element. Lavoisier read his works on air and fire. In his medical research he claimed that copper in cooking utensils was harmful.
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August Bernthsen
1855 - 1931 (76 years)
Heinrich August Bernthsen was a German chemist who was among the first to synthesize and study the structures of methylene blue and phenothiazine. Bernthsen was born to Heinrich Friedrich and Anna Sybilla Terheggen in Krefeld, Prussia. He studied the natural sciences before studying chemistry at Bonn and Heidelberg. After studying under Robert Bunsen he became an assistant to August Kekule. He worked from 1883 at the University of Heidelberg and from 1887 he worked at the Badische Aniline and Iodafabrik factory. He developed a number of dyes, many of which were patented. He also pioneered the...
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Zdenko Hans Skraup
1850 - 1910 (60 years)
Zdenko Hans Skraup was a chemist from Austria-Hungary, who discovered the Skraup reaction, the first quinoline synthesis. Life Skraup was born in Prague, where he attended the Oberrealschule from 1860 till 1866 and subsequently studied at the Technical University of Prague. After being assistant of Heinrich Ludwig Buff for less than a year he worked at a china factory but changed to the mint in Vienna in 1873.
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Thomas Antisell
1817 - 1893 (76 years)
Thomas Antisell was a physician, scientist, professor, and Young Irelander. He fought in the American Civil War, and served as an advisor to the Japanese Meiji government. Early life and education Antisell was born in Dublin, 16 January 1817, the youngest son of Thomas Christopher Antisell KC and Margaret Daly. Antisell attended the Dublin School of Medicine, the Apothecaries' Hall of Ireland, and the Royal College of Surgeons in London, graduating from the latter with an MD in November 1839. He studied chemistry in Paris and Berlin in 1844. Upon his return to Dublin in 1845, he secured a lectureship in botany at the Peter St.
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Claude-Auguste Lamy
1820 - 1878 (58 years)
Claude Auguste Lamy was a French chemist who discovered the element thallium independently from William Crookes in 1862. Life Lamy was born in the commune of Ney in the department of Jura, France in 1820. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris. After he graduated from University in 1842 he became a teacher at Lille then at Limoges and again in Lille. In 1851 he received his Ph.D. In 1854 he became a professor at the faculty of sciences of Lille . He taught at École des arts industriels et des mines . In 1866 he changed to the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures . Lamy died in 1...
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Frederick Crace Calvert
1819 - 1873 (54 years)
Frederick Crace Calvert , English chemist, was born near London. He was the son of Alfred Crace and the nephew of the noted interior decorator, Frederick Crace. From about 1836 until 1846 he lived in France, where, after a course of study at Paris, he became manager of some chemical works, later acting as assistant to Michel Eugène Chevreul. On his return to England he settled in Manchester as a consulting chemist, and was appointed honorary professor of chemistry at the Royal Manchester Institution. Devoting himself almost entirely to industrial chemistry, he gave much attention to the manufa...
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Elmer Kraemer
1898 - 1943 (45 years)
Elmer Otto Kraemer was an American chemist whose studies and published results materially aided in the transformation of colloid chemistry from a qualitative to a quantitative science. For eleven years, from 1927 to 1938, he was the leader of research chemists studying fundamental and industrial colloid chemistry problems and a peer of Wallace Hume Carothers at the Experimental Station of the E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company where both men contributed to the invention of nylon that was publicly announced on October 27, 1938. The 1953 Nobel Laureate in chemistry, Hermann Staudinger, had a high...
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Lidija Liepiņa
1891 - 1985 (94 years)
Lidija Liepiņa was a Latvian physical chemist, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR, professor, and one of the first women to receive a doctorate in chemistry in the USSR. Her research interests spanned several areas of physical and colloidal chemistry. Most of the works are devoted to the study of the mechanism of processes occurring at the interface between a solid and the environment. She was engaged in study of adsorption, various surface phenomena, corrosion processes, and formation of hydrides.
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G. W. Scott Blair
1902 - 1987 (85 years)
George William Scott Blair was British chemist noted for his contributions to rheology. In fact he has been called "the first rheologist" Life Scott Blair was born 23 July 1902, in Weybridge and went to Winchester College. He studied chemistry at Trinity College, Oxford receiving a BA in 1923.
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John Edwin MacKenzie
1868 - 1955 (87 years)
John Edwin MacKenzie FRSE OBE was a Scottish chemist. Life He was born in Helensburgh on 31 August 1868. He was educated at Larchfield Academy in Helensburgh, where his father was headmaster. He studied chemistry at the University of Edinburgh to doctorate level. This included a period of research with Professor Fittig in Strasburg. In 1894 he became Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Heriot-Watt College. In 1897 he moved to Birkbeck College in London as Head of Chemistry. MacKenzie received his DSc from the University of Edinburgh in 1901. In 1905 he moved to Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute in Bombay, India.
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Walthère Victor Spring
1848 - 1911 (63 years)
Walthère Victor Spring was a Belgian experimental chemist and a professor at the University of Liège who contributed to ideas on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the Greenhouse Effect. As a physical chemist he demonstrated the formation of certain compounds such as metal sulphides under high pressure conditions. He also took an interest in the study of the Tyndall effect and examined the cause of the colour of the sky and water.
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Roman Mertslin
1903 - 1971 (68 years)
Roman Viktorovich Mertslin was a Soviet chemist, a Doctor of Chemical Sciences, a vice-rector for scientific studies , a rector of Molotov University, a rector of Saratov Chernyshevsky State University. He founded the scientific school of physical and chemical analysis, heterogeneous equilibria and developed the method of isothermal cross sections.
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James Arthur Prescott
1890 - 1987 (97 years)
James Arthur Prescott, CBE, FRS, was an agricultural scientist. Prescott was born in England, educated at the University of Manchester achieving Bachelor of Science with First Class Honours in 1911. The following year he was awarded the first postgraduate scholarship in agricultural science taken at Rothamsted Experimental Station at Harpenden.
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Karl Schaum
1870 - 1947 (77 years)
Ferdinand Karl Franz Schaum was a German chemist who specialized in the field of photochemistry. He studied mathematics and sciences at the Universities of Basel, Berlin, Leipzig and Marburg, earning his doctorate at the latter institution in 1893. Afterwards, he served as an assistant to Theodor Zincke at Marburg and to Wilhelm Ostwald in Leipzig. In 1897 he obtained his habilitation at Marburg with a thesis on types of isometry.
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Lauder William Jones
1869 - 1960 (91 years)
Lauder William Jones was an American chemist, born at New Richmond, Ohio. He was graduated at Williams College in 1892, and received his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago in 1897. In the same year, he became an assistant in chemistry at Chicago, where he remained until 1907. From 1907 to 1918, he was professor of chemistry at the University of Cincinnati, and from 1918 to 1920, he was dean of the school of chemistry at the University of Minnesota, after which he accepted a call to the chair of chemistry at Princeton. He devoted his attention chiefly to organic chemistry and published...
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Jöns Svanberg
1771 - 1851 (80 years)
Jöns Svanberg was a Swedish clergyman and natural scientist. Life He was born on 6 July 1771 in Ytterbyn, Sweden and died on 15 January 1851 in Uppsala, Sweden. Career He entered Uppsala University at the age of 16. He received his Ph.D. in 1794. In 1806, he became the professor of surveying and in 1811 he became the professor of mathematics at Uppsala University.
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