The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,
#7051
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
#7057
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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Wilhelm Meyerhoffer
1864 - 1906 (42 years)
Wilhelm Meyerhoffer was a German chemist. Meyerhoffer studied chemistry and worked with Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Berlin. The mineral Meyerhofferite is named after him.
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Georg Adolf Suckow
1751 - 1813 (62 years)
Georg Adolf Suckow sometimes Adolph was a German physicist, chemist, mineralogist, mining engineer and naturalist. Suckow was a professor of physics, chemistry, and natural history at the University of Heidelberg. He wrote many books and articles on chemistry, botany, zoology and mineralogy. From 1808 he was a Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. His son Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Suckow was also a naturalist.
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Georg Wolfgang Wedel
1645 - 1721 (76 years)
Georg Wolfgang Wedel was a German professor of surgery, botany, theoretical and practical medicine, and chemistry. Biography Wedel was born in Golßen, Niederlausitz, and received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Jena in 1669.
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Franz Wilhelm Schweigger-Seidel
1795 - 1838 (43 years)
Franz Wilhelm Schweigger-Seidel ; born as Franz Wilhelm Seidel was a German physician and chemist born in Weißenfels. He was the father of physiologist Franz Schweigger-Seidel . Trained as a pharmacist, in 1820 he began his studies of medicine and sciences in Halle, where in two years he was an assistant in the laboratory for chemistry. Here he worked closely with Johann Salomo Christoph Schweigger , who would become Seidel's legally adoptive father. Subsequently, Seidel changed his surname to "Schweigger-Seidel" as a tribute to his adoptive father's brother, naturalist August Friedrich Schwei...
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Beebe Steven Lynk
1872 - 1948 (76 years)
By James Barham, PhD Beebe Steven Lynk continues to be a highly searched and highly influential chemist who paved the way for Black Americans in chemistry, particularly Black women. Lynk (née Beebe Steven) was born in Mason, a small town in western Tennessee lying about halfway between Jackson and Memphis. She is one of the first female, African-American, professional chemists in the US. Her early life and social background are poorly documented. For example, the educational backgrounds and professions of her parents are not known. Beebe Steven, as she was then known, obtained a degree in 1892...
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Jacques Errera
1896 - 1977 (81 years)
Jacques Errera was a Belgian physicochemist, specialized in the molecular constitution of matter. During the 1930s he worked at the Free University of Brussels , and participated in the Solvay Conference of 1933. In 1938 he was awarded the Francqui Prize in Exact Sciences. Shortly after the first atomic bombs were used in 1945, he authored an optimistic article about the peaceful future potential of atomic energy. After WW2, Errera represented Belgium at both the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency. He was the son of Isabelle Errera.
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Alfonso Cossa
1833 - 1902 (69 years)
Alfonso Cossa was an Italian chemist. Biography Cossa was born to Giuseppe, who was a notable paleographer and a librarian at Biblioteca di Brera and to Giustiniana Magnocavallo. He attended High School in Milan and, in 1852, he enrolled at Almo Collegio Borromeo in Pavia, where he graduated in Medicine in 1858 with a dissertation on the history of electrochemistry. Soon after, he became an assistant professor, and later on a professor, in chemistry at the University of Pavia. In 1866, called by the Royal Commissioner in Udine Quintino Sella, he founded the Regio Istituto tecnico of Udine, of which he was a teacher and headmaster up to 1872.
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John White Webster
1793 - 1850 (57 years)
John White Webster was an American professor of chemistry and geology at Harvard Medical College. In 1850, he was convicted of murder in the Parkman–Webster murder case and hanged. Biography Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Webster was well-connected both by family and by profession: his grandfather was a successful merchant; his mother, Hannah Webster, was a Leverett, a member of one of the great Harvard College dynasties, and a descendant of John Leverett, an early governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; his wife's sister married into the Prescotts, descendants of William Prescott, who commanded patriot troops at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and after whom the town of Prescott was named.
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John Hadley
1731 - 1764 (33 years)
John Hadley was an English chemist and physician. Born in London to Henry Hadley, he was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1753. In 1756 he was appointed the fourth Professor of Chemistry at Cambridge University, the oldest continuously occupied chair of Chemistry in the UK. During his time there he co-operated in 1758 with Benjamin Franklin on a series of experiments to investigate latent heat. They found that a mercury thermometer sprayed with ether which was then evaporated by blowing could fall to −7 degrees Celsius in a warm room.
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Johannes Hartmann
1568 - 1631 (63 years)
Johannes Hartmann was a German chemist. In 1609, he became the first Professor of Chemistry at the University of Marburg. His teaching dealt mainly with pharmaceuticals. He was the father-in-law of Heinrich Petraeus.
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Bernhard Proskauer
1851 - 1915 (64 years)
Bernhard Proskauer was a German chemist and hygienist. He studied chemistry at the University of Berlin, and from 1874 worked as a chemist at the Imperial Health Office in Berlin. In 1885 he was named departmental head of the Institute of Hygiene at the university, attaining the title of professor in 1890. From 1891 he was associated with the Institute of Infectious Diseases, wherein 1901 he was named head of the department of chemistry. In 1907 he was appointed director of the Berlin Municipal Testing Office.
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Williams E. Hatfield
#7088
Ernst Anton Nicolai
1722 - 1802 (80 years)
Ernst Anton Nicolai was a German physician and chemist. In 1745, Nicolai earned his medical doctorate from the University of Halle, where he was a disciple of Johann Heinrich Schulze and Friedrich Hoffmann. Soon afterwards, he obtained his habilitation in medicine, becoming an associate professor in 1748. At Halle, he gave lectures on theoretical subjects in the fields of pathology, physiology and pharmacology, later giving clinical lectures on diseases of the eye and childhood maladies.
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Felice Fontana
1730 - 1805 (75 years)
Abbé Gasparo Ferdinando Felice Fontana was an Italian polymath who contributed to experimental studies in physiology, toxicology, and physics. As a physicist he discovered the water gas shift reaction in 1780. He investigated the human eye and has also been credited with discovering the nucleolus of a cell. His work on the venom of vipers was among the earliest experimental toxicological studies. He served as a court physicist for Peter Leopold, Duke of Tuscany and taught at the University of Pisa. He was involved in the establishment of the La Specola museum in Florence.
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Philipp Gross
1899 - 1974 (75 years)
Philipp Gross was a physical chemist born and educated in Vienna. He became Professor of Physical Chemistry at Vienna University but was expelled on racial grounds in 1938 under the Nazi regime. In 1939 he sought refuge in Britain, joining the physics department at Bristol University. On the outbreak of war, after a brief internment as an enemy alien, he returned to Bristol University and then worked in Industry. After the war he became Chief Scientist at the newly founded Fulmer Research Institute, a post which he occupied for more than twenty years. He was one of the first to apply rigorou...
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Christian Gmelin
1792 - 1860 (68 years)
Christian Gottlob Gmelin was a German chemist. He was born in Tübingen, Germany, and was a grandson of Johann Konrad Gmelin and a great-grandson of Johann Georg Gmelin. Scientific career In 1818, Gmelin was one of the first to observe that lithium salts give a bright red color in a flame.
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William Ward Pigman
1910 - 1977 (67 years)
William Ward Pigman was a chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at New York Medical College, and a suspected Soviet Union spy as part of the "Karl group" for Soviet Military Intelligence . Biography He was born on March 5, 1910.
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W. Albert Noyes Jr.
1898 - 1980 (82 years)
William Albert Noyes Jr. , commonly known as W. Albert Noyes Jr., was an American chemist known for his contributions to photochemistry. During World War II, he was a leader in U.S. defense research efforts. He chaired the chemistry department at the University of Rochester, edited several important chemistry journals, and throughout his career was a prominent voice for international scientific cooperation. He was the son of the renowned chemist William A. Noyes; they became the first father-son pair to win the Priestley Medal, the highest honor given by the American Chemical Society.
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George Chapman Caldwell
1834 - 1907 (73 years)
George Chapman Caldwell was an American chemist, horticulturalist, and instructor. Early years Born August 14, 1834, in Framingham, Massachusetts, the son of the Rev. Jacob Caldwell and Mary Ann Patch, in 1851 he matriculated to Harvard University where he studied at the Lawrence Scientific School. After graduating in 1855, he spent two years studying at the laboratory of Friedrich Wöhler in the University of Göttingen, followed by a year at Robert Bunsen's laboratory at Heidelberg. He was awarded a Ph.D. from Göttingen University in 1856.
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Lassar Cohn
1858 - 1922 (64 years)
Lassar Cohn, Lassar-Cohn or Ernst Lassar Cohn was a Prussian chemist and professor at the University of Königsberg who wrote several influential textbooks on organic analysis including methods for the analysis of urine.
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Yuri Ovchinnikov
1934 - 1988 (54 years)
Yuri Anatolievich Ovchinnikov was a Soviet bioorganic chemist. He was elected in 1970 as a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and subsequently became the youngest vice president of the academy in its history . He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1977. He was also president of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies , Director of the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry in Moscow and professor at Moscow State University. From 1972 through to 1984 he served concomitantly as head of the Laboratory of Protein Chemistry at the USSR Academy of Sciences' Institute...
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Conrad Laar
1853 - 1929 (76 years)
Conrad Peter Laar was a German chemist. He coined the expression tautomerism in 1885. He also observed the double bond rule in 1885, stating elements with a principal quantum number greater than 2 for their valence electrons tend not to form multiple bonds.
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Gunnar Blix
1894 - 1981 (87 years)
Fritiof Gunnar Blix was a Swedish chemist and Professor of Medical and Physiological chemistry at the University of Uppsala. He was the son of professor Magnus Blix, father of politician Hans Blix, and grandfather of journalist .
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Andrew Norman Meldrum
1876 - 1934 (58 years)
Andrew Norman Meldrum was a Scottish scientist known for his work in organic chemistry and for his studies of the history of chemistry. It has been claimed that Meldrum's acid "is the only chemical to be named after a Scotsman."
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W. George Parks
1904 - 1975 (71 years)
W. George Parks was a chemist and the second director of the Gordon Research Conferences. Biography Parks was born in Rockwood, Pennsylvania on December 20, 1904. After attending the University of Pennsylvania for his undergraduate degree, he went to Columbia University in New York, where he earned both Master's and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry. His 1931 doctoral thesis was titled "The Activity Coefficients and Heats of Transfer of Cadmium-Sulfate from Electromotive Force Measurements at 25 and 0 Degrees". Upon graduation, Parks accepted a position on the faculty at Rhode Island State College, ...
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