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
Stephen Moulton Babcock
1843 - 1931 (88 years)
Stephen Moulton Babcock was an American agricultural chemist. He is best known for developing the Babcock test, used to determine butterfat content in milk and cheese processing, and for the single-grain experiment that led to the development of nutritional science as a recognized discipline.
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Gerhard Carl Schmidt
1865 - 1949 (84 years)
Gerhard Carl Schmidt was a German chemist. Life Schmidt was born in London to German parents. He studied chemistry and in 1890 received his PhD for work with Georg Wilhelm August Kahlbaum. In 1898, two months before Marie Curie, Schmidt discovered that thorium is radioactive. Schmidt died of a stroke in Münster 16 October 1949.
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Karl Theophil Fries
1875 - 1962 (87 years)
Karl Theophil Fries was a German chemist. Life Karl Theophil Fries was born in Kiedrich, Germany on . After his family moved to Frankfurt he went to school there, but chose to study chemistry at the near University of Marburg in 1894. After one year in Darmstadt University of Technology to improve his skills in electrochemistry he received his Ph.D with Theodor Zincke back at the University of Marburg in 1899. He became a professor in Marburg until the retirement of Theodor Zincke and the start of World War I in 1914. He took part as a soldier in World War I from 1914 till 1918. He became a p...
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Hendrik Willem Bakhuis Roozeboom
1854 - 1907 (53 years)
H. W. Bakhuis Roozeboom was a Dutch chemist who studied phase behaviour in physical chemistry. Education and career Bakhuis Roozeboom was born in Alkmaar in the Netherlands. Financial difficulties did not allow him to directly pursue a university education, and he left school to work in a chemical factory for some time. Due to support from his mentor, J. M. van Bemmelen, he became an assistant at the University of Leiden in 1878, which enabled him to start his academic education there. In 1881 he became a teacher at a girls school, and in 1884 he obtained his PhD with works on the hydrates of acids.
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Alexander Classen
1843 - 1934 (91 years)
Alexander Classen was a German chemist, who is considered one of the founders of electrochemical analysis. From 1861 he studied chemistry at the universities of Giessen and Berlin. In 1870 he became a lecturer of analytical chemistry at the polytechnic school in Aachen, where in 1882 he succeeded Hans Heinrich Landolt as professor of inorganic chemistry. At Aachen, he was appointed director of the Electrochemical Institute,
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Ernest Thiele
1895 - 1993 (98 years)
Ernest W. Thiele was an influential chemical engineering researcher at Standard Oil and professor of chemical engineering at the University of Notre Dame. He is known for his highly impactful work in chemical reaction engineering, complex reacting systems, and separations, including distillation theory.
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Hans-Joachim Born
1909 - 1987 (78 years)
Hans-Joachim Born was a German radiochemist trained and educated at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie. Up to the end of World War II, he worked in Nikolaj Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovskij's Abteilung für Experimentelle Genetik, at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Hirnforschung. He was taken prisoner by the Russians at the close of World War II. After rescue from the Krasnoyarsk PoW camp, he initially worked in Nikolaus Riehl's group at Plant No. 12 in Elektrostal’, Russia, but at the end of 1947 was sent to work in Sungul' at a sharashka known under the cover name Ob’ekt 0211. At the Sun...
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William Nicholson
1753 - 1815 (62 years)
William Nicholson was an English writer, translator, publisher, scientist, inventor, patent agent and civil engineer. He launched the first monthly scientific journal in Britain, Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts, in 1797, and remained its editor until 1814. In 1800, he and Anthony Carlisle were the first to achieve electrolysis, the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen, using a voltaic pile. Nicholson also wrote extensively on natural philosophy and chemistry
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Hans Rupe
1866 - 1951 (85 years)
Johan Hermann Wilhelm Rupe was a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Basel. His main field of interest was terpenes and campher as well as optical activity. Life Rupe was born on October 9, 1866, in Basel to Johannes Rupe and Mathilde Rupe and went to school in Basel. He passed his Maturität in 1885 and then went on to study in Basel under Julius Piccard. He continued his studies at the University of Strasbourg under Rudolf Fittig and then in 1887 in Munich under Adolf von Baeyer. Rupe received his PhD in 1889 at Munich for his dissertation Über die Reduktionsprodukte der Dic...
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Ascanio Sobrero
1812 - 1888 (76 years)
Ascanio Sobrero was an Italian chemist, born in Casale Monferrato. He studied under Théophile-Jules Pelouze at the University of Turin, who had worked with the explosive material guncotton. He studied medicine in Turin and Paris and then chemistry at the University of Gießen with Justus Liebig, and earned his doctorate in 1832. In 1845 he became a professor at the University of Turin
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Percy Lavon Julian
1899 - 1975 (76 years)
Percy Lavon Julian was an American research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants. He was the first to synthesize the natural product physostigmine and was a pioneer in the industrial large-scale chemical synthesis of the human hormones progesterone and testosterone from plant sterols such as stigmasterol and sitosterol. His work laid the foundation for the steroid drug industry's production of cortisone, other corticosteroids, and birth control pillss.
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Hans von Pechmann
1850 - 1902 (52 years)
Hans Freiherr von Pechmann was a German chemist, renowned for his discovery of diazomethane in 1894. Pechmann condensation and Pechmann pyrazole synthesis. He also first prepared 1,2-diketones , acetonedicarboxylic acid, methylglyoxal and diphenyltriketone; established the symmetrical structure of anthraquinone.
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Alexander Zarchin
1897 - 1988 (91 years)
Alexander Zarchin was a Ukrainian-Israeli chemist and inventor. He is most noted for inventing a process of sea water desalination. Biography Born in Ukraine to a family of religious Zionists, as a young man, Zarchin studied industrial chemistry and specialized in metallurgy. In 1934, he was arrested by the authorities for the crime of Zionism and was sentenced to five years in prison. Zarchin was then recruited into the Red Army, and by the end of World War II, he managed to reach West Germany, and from there he immigrated to Palestine in the summer of 1947. Since his arrival and settlemen...
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Petru Bogdan
1873 - 1944 (71 years)
Petru Bogdan was a Romanian chemist, educator, and politician. In 1926, he was elected a titular member of the Romanian Academy. He was born in Cozmești, Iași County, the son of Vasile Bogdan and Ana, née Timuș; his father died four years laters, during the Romanian War of Independence of 1877.
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Luigi Valentino Brugnatelli
1761 - 1818 (57 years)
Luigi Valentino Brugnatelli was an Italian chemist and inventor who discovered the process for electroplating in 1805. Early life Born in Pavia, he attended the Pharmacy School created by Count Karl Joseph von Firmian at the University of Pavia where he was a pupil of Giovanni Antonio Scopoli who urged him to practice the medical profession, which he did without neglecting his interests in chemistry. Brugnatelli graduated in medicine in 1784 with a thesis on the chemical analysis of gastric juices. He was also a pupil of Lazzaro Spallanzani.
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Gheorghe Spacu
1883 - 1955 (72 years)
Gheorghe Spacu was a Romanian inorganic chemist. Born in Iași, he attended the city's National College from 1894 to 1901. He subsequently enrolled in the physics and chemistry section of the sciences faculty at the University of Iași. There, his professors included Petru Poni , Vasile Buțureanu , Anastasie Obregia and Dragomir Hurmuzescu . Upon graduating in 1905, he went to deepen his studies at the universities of University of Vienna and then Berlin. He returned in 1907, when he began working as an assistant in the inorganic chemistry laboratory of Neculai Costăchescu, and was promoted to head of operations in 1916.
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Gottfried Christoph Beireis
1730 - 1809 (79 years)
Gottfried Christoph Beireis was a German chemist and doctor. He was also a collector of curiosities who rescued some of Jacques de Vaucanson's automata. Biography Beireis was born in Mühlhausen. He taught anatomy, medicine, surgery, chemistry, botany, natural history, pharmacy, mineralogy, metallurgy, agriculture, forestry, music, painting, and numismatics.
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Felix Ehrlich
1877 - 1942 (65 years)
Felix Ehrlich was a German chemist and biochemist. Life and work Felix Ehrlich studied in Berlin and Munich. After receiving his doctorate in 1900, he worked at the Institute of Sugar Industry in Berlin. In 1906 he obtained his diploma in chemistry. From 1909 he worked as professor in Breslau, and later as director of the Institute on Biotechnology and Agriculture.
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Reynold C. Fuson
1895 - 1979 (84 years)
Reynold Clayton Fuson was an American chemist. Biography Born in Wakefield, Illinois, Fuson attended Central Normal College in Danville, Indiana, where after one year in 1914 he was certified as a teacher. He received a Bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Montana, a Master's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
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Burckhardt Helferich
1887 - 1982 (95 years)
Burckhardt Helferich was a German chemist. Biography He was the son of surgery professor Heinrich Helferich . He studied science, especially Geology, at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and from 1907 chemistry in Munich and Berlin. In Berlin, Helferich was advised by Emil Fischer and later became his assistant.
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Friedrich Albrecht Carl Gren
1760 - 1798 (38 years)
Friedrich Albrecht Carl Gren was a German chemist and a native of Bernburg. He began his career working in a pharmacy in Bernburg, and later worked as a pharmacist in Offenbach am Main and Erfurt. In 1782, he began his studies at the University of Helmstedt, and in 1788 became professor of chemistry and physics at the University of Halle.
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Friedrich Knauer
1897 - 1979 (82 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Knauer was a German physical chemist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club. Education From 1918 to 1924, Knauer studied at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and Leibniz University Hannover. He received his doctorate in engineering in 1923 at Hannover; he was a student of Beckmann and W. Kohlrausch.
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Dorothy Hahn
1876 - 1950 (74 years)
Dorothy Anna Hahn was a lifelong educator and American professor of organic chemistry at Mount Holyoke College. She was most known for her research which utilized the then newly developed technique of ultraviolet spectroscopy to study hydantoins.
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John Ferguson
1838 - 1916 (78 years)
John Ferguson FRSE LLD was a Scottish chemist and bibliographer. He is noted for the early alchemy and chemistry bibliography Bibliotheca chemica. He was generally nicknamed Soda Ferguson. The Ferguson Collection, a collection of 7,500 books and manuscripts from his personal library is held by the University of Glasgow.
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Edward Divers
1837 - 1912 (75 years)
Edward Divers FRS was a British experimental chemist who rose to prominence despite being visually impaired from young age. Between 1873 and 1899, Divers lived and worked in Japan and significantly contributed to the science and education of that country.
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Hans Leopold Meyer
1871 - 1942 (71 years)
Hans Leopold Meyer was an Austrian chemist. He was the brother of Stefan Meyer who also received the Lieben Prize. Hans Leopold Meyer studied at the Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, Vienna University of Technology and University of Heidelberg he received his PhD in 1894. He started as a lecturer at the Vienna University of Technology, and professor at the German University in Prague. He was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and he received the Lieben Prize in 1905, seven years before his younger brother Stefan Meyer received the prize in 1913. He was killed in...
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Wiktor Kemula
1902 - 1985 (83 years)
Wiktor Kemula was a Polish chemist, electrochemist, and polarographist. He greatly contributed to the development of electroanalytical chemistry, particularly polarography. He is known for developing the hanging mercury drop electrode .
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Ejnar Hertzsprung
1873 - 1967 (94 years)
Ejnar Hertzsprung was a Danish chemist and astronomer. Career Hertzsprung was born in Frederiksberg, Denmark, the son of Severin and Henriette. He studied chemical engineering at Copenhagen Polytechnic Institute, graduating in 1898. After spending two years working as a chemist in St. Petersburg, in 1901 he studied photochemistry at Leipzig University for a year. His father was an amateur astronomer, which led to Ejnar's interest in the subject. He began making astronomical observations in Fredericksberg in 1902, and within a few years had noticed that stars with similar spectral type could have widely different absolute magnitudes.
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Guillaume-François Rouelle
1703 - 1770 (67 years)
Guillaume François Rouelle was a French chemist and apothecary. In 1754 he introduced the concept of a base into chemistry as a substance which reacts with an acid to form a salt. He is known as l'Aîné to distinguish him from his younger brother, Hilaire Rouelle, who was also a chemist and known as the discoverer of urea.
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Alfred Berthoud
1874 - 1939 (65 years)
Alfred Berthoud was a Swiss chemist, professor of chemistry at the University of Neuchâtel. In 1908 Berthoud became professor of physical chemistry at the University of Neuchâtel, though he continued teaching in secondary schools until he was appointed Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and Analytical Chemistry at the University in 1925. In 1938 he was made President of the Swiss Chemical Society.
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Oliver Wolcott Gibbs
1822 - 1908 (86 years)
Oliver Wolcott Gibbs was an American chemist. He is known for performing the first electrogravimetric analyses, namely the reductions of copper and nickel ions to their respective metals. Biography Oliver Wolcott Gibbs was born in New York City in 1822 to George and Laura Gibbs. His father, Colonel George Gibbs, was an ardent mineralogist; the mineral gibbsite was named after him, and his collection was finally bought by Yale College. Oliver was the younger brother of George Gibbs and older brother to Alfred Gibbs, who became a Union Army Brigadier General during the American Civil War. Al...
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Edmund Oscar von Lippmann
1857 - 1940 (83 years)
Edmund Oscar von Lippmann was a German chemist and natural science historian. For his writings he was awarded a couple honoris causa doctorates from German universities, as well as the Leibniz Medal and the Sudhoff Medal.
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Victor LaMer
1895 - 1966 (71 years)
Victor Kuhn LaMer or La Mer was an American chemist. He has been described as "the father of colloid chemistry". Early life and education LaMer was born in Leavenworth, Kansas on June 15, 1895. He was the son of Joseph Secondule LaMer and Anna Pauline Kuhn.
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Marston T. Bogert
1868 - 1954 (86 years)
Marston Taylor Bogert was an American chemist. Biography He was born in Flushing, New York on April 18, 1868 and studied at the Flushing Institute, which was a well known private school, where he was a straight-A student.
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Alexander Gutbier
1876 - 1926 (50 years)
Alexander Felix Maximilian Gutbier was a German professor of chemistry at the University of Jena. He made studies both in organic and inorganic chemistry but pioneered studies on the chemistry of colloid and organo-metallic complexes. Specializing mainly in experimental chemistry, he published several texts on organic chemistry.
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Nikolai Prilezhaev
1877 - 1944 (67 years)
Nikolai Alexandrovich Prilezhaev, , was a Russian organic chemist. The Prilezhaev reaction, in which an alkene and a peroxyacid react to form an epoxide, is named after him. Prilezhaev was the son of a clergyman and studied chemistry at the Theological Seminary in Warsaw and then at the University of Warsaw under the supervision of Yegor Yegorovich Vagner . After graduating in 1900 he was assistant professor of organic chemistry at the Polytechnic in Warsaw where he belonged to the school of organic chemistry founded by Wagner. After earning a master's degree in 1912 in St. Petersburg, he became associate professor of organic chemistry at the University of Warsaw.
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Wilbur Olin Atwater
1844 - 1907 (63 years)
Wilbur Olin Atwater was an American chemist known for his studies of human nutrition and metabolism, and is considered the father of modern nutrition research and education. He is credited with developing the Atwater system, which laid the groundwork for nutrition science in the United States and inspired modern Olympic nutrition.
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Melvin Lorrel Nichols
1894 - 1981 (87 years)
Melvin Lorrel "Pete" Nichols was an American chemistry professor and author. Early life Nichols was born in Dayton, Ohio, the son of Joseph Wiseman Nichols, a cabinetmaker, and Sarah Rebecca Heidelbaugh. He was the youngest of six children.
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Albert James Bernays
1823 - 1892 (69 years)
Albert James Bernays was a British chemist. He was the son of Dr. Adolphus Bernays , modern languages Professor at King's College, London. Life Bernays was educated at King's College School, and studied chemistry with C. Remigius Fresenius, and afterwards, with Justus Liebig at Giessen, where he graduated PhD. His doctoral thesis was probably a paper on limonin, a bitter principle which he discovered in the pips of oranges and lemons . In 1845, he began his career as an analyst and lecturer on chemistry in Derby, and became known for his interest in questions concerning food and hygiene. In 1851, he served as a juror at the Great Exhibition.
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Charles Daubeny
1795 - 1867 (72 years)
Charles Giles Bridle Daubeny was an English chemist, botanist and geologist. Education Daubeny was born at Stratton near Cirencester in Gloucestershire, the son of the Rev. James Daubeny. He went to Winchester College in 1808, and in 1810 was elected to a demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford, under Dr. John Kidd. From 1815 to 1818 he studied medicine in London and Edinburgh, in the latter also studying geology under Prof Robert Jameson. He took his M.D. degree at Oxford, and was a fellow of the College of Physicians.
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Anders Gustaf Ekeberg
1767 - 1813 (46 years)
Anders Gustaf Ekeberg was a Swedish analytical chemist who discovered tantalum in 1802. He was notably deaf. Education Anders Gustav Ekeberg was a Swedish scientist, mathematician and expert in Greek literature. His father, Joseph Erik Ekeberg, was a shipbuilder. His uncle was Carl Gustaf Ekeberg.
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Nikolai Trifonov
1891 - 1958 (67 years)
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Trifonov was a Soviet chemist and founder of the Scientific School of Chemistry. His expertise primarily consisted of the physical and chemical analysis of concentrated solutions.
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Anastasios Christomanos
1841 - 1906 (65 years)
Anastasios Christomanos was one of the most important Greek scientists of the later part of the 19th century. His academic collaborators were some of the most important scientists in the world, including Robert Bunsen, Georg Ludwig Carius, Emil Erlenmeyer and Gustav Kirchhoff. He is the father of modern Greek chemical education. He wrote 73 books and dissertations. His fields of study included: Inorganic Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, and Analytical Chemistry. He helped restructure Greek education. Greek education was in the grasp of Korydalism for over 300 years. With the onset of the in...
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Ernst Gottfried Fischer
1756 - 1831 (75 years)
Ernst Gottfried Fischer was a German chemist. He was born in Hoheneiche near Saalfeld. After studying theology and mathematics at the University of Halle, he was a teacher in Berlin before becoming Professor of Physics in 1810. He translated Claude Berthollet's publication Recherches sur les lois de l'affinitié in 1802. He proposed a system of equivalents based on sulfuric acid equal to one hundred.
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Isaac Mustafin
1908 - 1968 (60 years)
Isaac Mustafin was a Soviet chemist and a doctor of chemical sciences. Dr. Mustafin headed the faculty of analytical chemistry at Saratov State University from 1955. All his life was connected to the Saratov State University: his only lengthy absence from his work place took place from June 23, 1941 to August 15, 1945, when he served in the army. The life and activity of Professor Mustafin were reflected in a number of papers [1–7] and even monographs [8–9], including that in the series of scientific biographic literature of the Nauka publishing house [8]. . The unusual biography and diversi...
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Mikhail Usanovich
1894 - 1981 (87 years)
Michail Illyich Usanovich was a Russian/Soviet physical chemist, and an academician of the Academy of Sciences of Kazakh SSR since 1962. He is famous for his generalized acid-base theory. Michail Usanovich was born to a Jewish doctor's family in Zhytomyr.
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Theodor Wertheim
1820 - 1864 (44 years)
Theodor Wertheim was an Austrian chemist born in Vienna. He was the father of gynecologist Ernst Wertheim . He studied organic chemistry in Berlin as a pupil of Eilhard Mitscherlich, and in 1843 travelled to the University of Prague, where he studied under Josef Redtenbacher. He served as privatdozent in Vienna, and from 1853 to 1860, was a professor at the University of Pest. From 1861 onward, he was a professor at the University of Graz. In May 1864, he moved back to Vienna, where he died soon afterwards.
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Ernst Späth
1886 - 1946 (60 years)
Ernst Späth was an Austrian chemist, specializing in natural products. Life Späth was the first to synthesise mescaline and was one of the first to synthesize cuscohygrine on a small scale with Hans Tuppy.
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Theodor Weyl
1851 - 1913 (62 years)
Theodor Weyl was a German chemist and hygienist born in Berlin. He studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Berlin and Strasbourg, earning his doctorate in 1872 with a dissertation on animal and plant proteins. Following graduation he worked as an assistant in the physiology laboratory at Berlin, shortly afterwards becoming an assistant professor at the University of Erlangen. During his tenure at Erlangen he spent the winter of 1880–81 performing research on the electric organs of rays at the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Naples.
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Adolf Ferdinand Weinhold
1841 - 1917 (76 years)
Adolf Ferdinand Weinhold was a German chemist, physician and inventor. Life From 1857 to 1861 Weinhold studied chemistry and physics at universities in Göttingen and in Leipzig. His mentors were Otto Linné Erdmann and Friedrich Wöhler. In Germany, Weinhold worked after university studies as chemist and physician. He was appointed professor at Chemnitz University of Technology in 1870. In 1873 he was granted a D. Phil from the University of Leipzig.
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