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,
#7101
Ahmed Mumin Warfa
Ahmed Mumin Warfa was a Somali scientist specializing in botany, who with his colleague Mats Thulin discovered Cyclamen somalense. He served as president of the Zamzam University of Science and Technology from 2020 until his death.
Go to Profile#7102
Werner Zerweck
1899 - 1965 (66 years)
Werner Zerweck was a German chemist, inventor and industrial leader, who served as CEO of the chemical and pharmaceutical company Cassella from 1953 to 1963. Under his leadership the company focused increasingly on pharmaceuticals and cosmetics rather than its former primary focus, dyes. He was also a member of the advisory board of Deutsche Bank from 1953. Zerweck was a pioneer in the development of synthetic fibers.
Go to Profile#7103
Jack Linnett
1913 - 1975 (62 years)
John Wilfrid Linnett FRS was Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cambridge from 1973 to 1975. He was for many years a Fellow of the Queen's College, Oxford, and a demonstrator in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#7104
André-Louis Debierne
1874 - 1949 (75 years)
André-Louis Debierne was a French chemist. He is often considered the discoverer of the element actinium, though H. W. Kirby disputed this in 1971 and gave credit instead to German chemist Friedrich Oskar Giesel.
Go to Profile#7105
Konstanty Hrynakowski
1878 - 1938 (60 years)
Konstanty Hrynakowski was a Polish chemist. He studied natural sciences at the St. Vladimir University, branching into inorganic chemistry and mineralogy at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, and earning a degree in 1904.
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John Stuart Anderson
1908 - 1990 (82 years)
John Stuart Anderson FRS, FAA, was a British and Australian scientist who was Professor of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne and Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford. He was born in Islington, London, the son of a Scottish cabinet-maker, and attended school in the area but learned most of his chemistry at the Islington Public Library. His tertiary education was at the Northern Polytechnic Institute, Imperial College and the Royal College of Science, all in London.
Go to Profile#7107
Jan Zawidzki
1866 - 1928 (62 years)
Jan Wiktor Tomasz Zawidzki was a Polish physical chemist and historian of chemistry. He researched mainly chemical kinetics, thermochemistry and autocatalysis. Zawidzki was a professor of the Akademia Rolnicza in Dublany , Jagiellonian University , University of Warsaw , rector of the University of Warsaw , member of the Academy of Learning , co-founder of the Polish Chemical Society and magazine Roczniki Chemii.
Go to Profile#7108
Paul Kogerman
1891 - 1951 (60 years)
Paul Nikolai Kogerman was an Estonian chemist and founder of modern research in oil shale. Paul Kogerman was born into a family of gas factory worker . He went to an elementary school in 1901–1904 and a town school in 1904–1908. After town school Kogerman earned a living by teaching in church manors near Tallinn. In 1913, he was graduated from the Alexander Gymnasium in Tallinn as an extern. Starting in 1913, he studied at the University of Tartu, graduating from its Department of Chemistry in 1918. In the Estonian War of Independence he fought in a unit of Tallinn teachers. In 1919–1920 he got a state scholarship to study at the Imperial College London.
Go to Profile#7109
Joseph John Blackie
1894 - 1946 (52 years)
Joseph John Blackie FRSE FRIC was a Scottish research chemist. Life He was born in Duns, Berwickshire. During the First World War he served as a staff sergeant in the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving in Gallipoli, Egypt and France.
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Kuzma Andrianov
1904 - 1978 (74 years)
Kuzma Andrianovich Andrianov was a Soviet and Russian chemist and professor of Moscow Power Engineering Institute. Hero of Socialist Labour . Biography Kuzma Andrianovich Andrianov was born on 28 December 1904 , 1904 in Kondrakovo village . In 1930 he graduated from Chemical Faculty of Moscow State University. From 1929 to 1954 he worked at the All-Russian Electrotechnical Institute. In 1930—1932 he taught at Moscow Tannery Institute, in 1933—1941 — at D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia, in 1941—1959 at MPEI .
Go to Profile#7111
Nils Löfgren
1913 - 1967 (54 years)
Nils Löfgren was a Swedish chemist who developed the anaesthetic Lidocaine in 1943. At this time, he had recently finished his licentiate degree, and was teaching organic chemistry at the University of Stockholm. He and his co-worker Bengt Lundqvist sold the rights to Xylocaine to the Swedish pharmaceutical company Astra AB.
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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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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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Eugen Glueckauf
1906 - 1981 (75 years)
Eugen Glueckauf FRS was a German-born British expert on nuclear power. Biography Eugen Glückauf was born on 9 April 1906 in Eisenach, Germany, the son of Bruno Glückauf, a clothier, and Elsa Pretzfelder.
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Abel Wolman
1892 - 1989 (97 years)
Abel Wolman was an American engineer, educator and pioneer of modern sanitary engineering. His professional career left impacts in academia, sanitary engineering research, environmental and public health services, engineering professional societies, and journal publications. Wolman is best known for his research with Linn Enslow in the chlorination of Baltimore's municipal water supply, which has contributed to the distribution of safe municipal water supplies globally.
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Leon Lapidus
1924 - 1977 (53 years)
Leon Lapidus was an American chemist and chemical engineer, the chairman of the department of chemical engineering at Princeton University, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, an author of over a 100 technical publications.
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Victor Gold
1922 - 1985 (63 years)
Victor Gold FRS FRSC was a chemist who served on the faculty of King's College, London. Gold was born in Vienna, the son of lawyer Oscar Gold and his first wife, the former Emmy Kopperl. He was raised primarily by his mother. Gold arrived in England, at Croydon aerodrome, in the spring of 1938, aged 15. His entry to the UK had been arranged by his uncle Max Gold . He was sent, with a cousin, to Loughborough College to learn English and work in the engineering workshops .
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Jerry Donohue
1920 - 1985 (65 years)
Jerry Donohue was an American theoretical and physical chemist. He is best remembered for steering James D. Watson and Francis Crick towards the correct structure of DNA with some crucial information.
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Philip J. Elving
1913 - 1984 (71 years)
Philip Juliber Elving was a chemist who served on the faculty of Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University, and most notably the University of Michigan, where he was the Hobart Willard Professor of Chemistry. He retired from Michigan, assuming professor emeritus status, in 1983. His research was primarily in analytical chemistry, a subject he also taught for many years at Michigan. Along with I. M. Kolthoff and J. D. Winefordner, he co-edited two popular series of monographs on analytical chemistry.
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Hans Erlenmeyer
1900 - 1967 (67 years)
Hans Friedrich Albrecht Erlenmeyer was a German-Swiss chemist and collector of antiquities. He was a professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Basel. Life and career Hans Erlenmeyer came from a family of chemists; his grandfather Emil Erlenmeyer and his father Emil Erlenmeyer Jr. were both chemistry professors. Erlenmeyer studied chemistry from 1918 to 1922 at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena and the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he received his doctorate in 1922 with a thesis entitled "On Asymmetric Synthesis". He worked as an assistant to Bernhard Lepsius. In 192...
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Otto Redlich
1896 - 1978 (82 years)
Otto Redlich was an Austrian physical chemist who is best known for his development of equations of state like Redlich-Kwong equation. Besides this he had numerous other contributions to science. He won the Haitinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1932.
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J. R. Partington
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
James Riddick Partington was a British chemist and historian of chemistry who published multiple books and articles in scientific magazines. His most famous works were An Advanced Treatise on Physical Chemistry and A History of Chemistry , for which he received the Dexter Award and the George Sarton Medal.
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Luis Federico Leloir
1906 - 1987 (81 years)
Luis Federico Leloir was an Argentine physician and biochemist who received the 1970 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the metabolic pathways by which carbohydrates are synthesized and converted into energy in the body. Although born in France, Leloir received the majority of his education at the University of Buenos Aires and was director of the private research group Fundación Instituto Campomar until his death in 1987. His research into sugar nucleotides, carbohydrate metabolism, and renal hypertension garnered international attention and led to significant progress in understanding, diagnosing and treating the congenital disease galactosemia.
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Walther F. Goebel
1899 - 1993 (94 years)
Walther Frederick Goebel was an American immunologist and an organic chemist, a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Goebel was known for his research of polysaccharides. Awards and distinctions member of the National Academy of Scienceshonorary degrees from Rockefeller University in 1978 and Middlebury College in 1959
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James William McBain
1882 - 1953 (71 years)
James William McBain FRS was a Canadiann chemist. He gained a Master of Arts at Toronto University and a Doctor of Science at Heidelberg University. He carried out pioneering work in the area of micelles at the University of Bristol. As early as 1913 he postulated the existence of "colloidal ions", now known as micelles, to explain the good electrolytic conductivity of sodium palmitate solutions. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 1923 He won their Davy Medal in 1939.
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Hugh Stott Taylor
1890 - 1974 (84 years)
Sir Hugh Stott Taylor was an English chemist primarily interested in catalysis. In 1925, in a landmark contribution to catalytic theory, Taylor suggested that a catalysed chemical reaction is not catalysed over the entire solid surface of the catalyst but only at certain 'active sites' or centres. He also developed important methods for procuring heavy water during World War II and pioneered the use of stable isotopes in studying chemical reactions.
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N. Howell Furman
1892 - 1965 (73 years)
Nathaniel Howell Furman was an American professor of analytical chemistry who helped develop the electrochemical uranium separation process as a member of the Manhattan Project. Background and career Furman was born in the Lawrenceville section of Lawrence Township, Mercer County, New Jersey in 1892. He attended Lawrenceville School, where he was a model student, graduating with a Master's Prize from his high school in 1909. He enrolled in Princeton University, where he received Phi Beta Kappa honors and graduated in 1913. He received an M.S. in 1915 and a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1917. Furman served in World War I in the Army Chemical Warfare Service.
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James B. Sumner
1887 - 1955 (68 years)
James Batcheller Sumner was an American biochemist. He discovered that enzymes can be crystallized, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1946 with John Howard Northrop and Wendell Meredith Stanley. He was also the first to prove that enzymes are proteins.
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Joseph Edward Mayer
1904 - 1983 (79 years)
Joseph Edward Mayer was a chemist who formulated the Mayer expansion in statistical field theory. He was professor of chemistry at the University of California San Diego from 1960 to 1972, and previously at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the University of Chicago. He was married to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer from 1930 until her death in 1972. He went to work with James Franck in Göttingen, Germany in 1929, where he met Maria, a student of Max Born. He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , and the American Philosophical Society .
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William Giauque
1895 - 1982 (87 years)
William Francis Giauque was a Canadian-born American chemist and Nobel laureate recognized in 1949 for his studies in the properties of matter at temperatures close to absolute zero. He spent virtually all of his educational and professional career at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Frederick Rossini
1899 - 1990 (91 years)
Frederick Dominic Rossini was an American thermodynamicist noted for his work in chemical thermodynamics. In 1920, at the age of twenty-one, Rossini entered Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and soon was awarded a full-time teaching scholarship. He graduated with a B.S. in chemical engineering in 1925, followed by an M.S. degree in science in physical chemistry in 1926.
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George C. Pimentel
1922 - 1989 (67 years)
George Claude Pimentel was a preeminent chemist and researcher. He was also dedicated to science education and public service. the inventor of the chemical laser. He developed the technique of matrix isolation in low-temperature chemistry. He also developed time-resolved infrared spectroscopy to study radicals and other transient species. In the late 1960s, Pimentel led the University of California team that designed the infrared spectrometer for the Mars Mariner 6 and 7 missions that analyzed the surface and atmosphere of Mars.
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Samuel C. Lind
1879 - 1965 (86 years)
Samuel Colville Lind was a radiation chemist, referred to as "the father of modern radiation chemistry". He gained his B.A in 1899 at Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia. After a short spell at MIT he moved to study chemistry at Leipzig University in Germany, carrying out research into the kinetics of chemical reactions, where he was awarded a Ph.D in 1905. He then returned to work at the University of Michigan until 1913, studying the chemical reactions induced by ionizing radiation. From 1913 to 1925 he worked at the US Bureau of Mines, concerned with extraction of radium from carnotite ore.
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Peter Debye
1884 - 1966 (82 years)
Peter Joseph William Debye was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Biography Early life Born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije in Maastricht, Netherlands, Debye enrolled in the Aachen University of Technology in 1901. In 1905, he completed his first degree in electrical engineering. He published his first paper, a mathematically elegant solution of a problem involving eddy currents, in 1907. At Aachen, he studied under the theoretical physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, who later claimed that his most important discovery was Peter Debye.
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Willard Libby
1908 - 1980 (72 years)
Willard Frank Libby was an American physical chemist noted for his role in the 1949 development of radiocarbon dating, a process which revolutionized archaeology and palaeontology. For his contributions to the team that developed this process, Libby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960.
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Robert Burns Woodward
1917 - 1979 (62 years)
Robert Burns Woodward was an American organic chemist. He is considered by many to be the preeminent synthetic organic chemist of the twentieth century, having made many key contributions to the subject, especially in the synthesis of complex natural products and the determination of their molecular structure. He also worked closely with Roald Hoffmann on theoretical studies of chemical reactions. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1965.
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Gilbert N. Lewis
1875 - 1946 (71 years)
Gilbert Newton Lewis was an American physical chemist and a dean of the college of chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. Lewis was best known for his discovery of the covalent bond and his concept of electron pairs; his Lewis dot structures and other contributions to valence bond theory have shaped modern theories of chemical bonding. Lewis successfully contributed to chemical thermodynamics, photochemistry, and isotope separation, and is also known for his concept of acids and bases. Lewis also researched on relativity and quantum physics, and in 1926 he coined the term "photon"...
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Charles Phelps Smyth
1895 - 1990 (95 years)
Charles Phelps "Charlie" Smyth was an American chemist. He was educated at Princeton University and Harvard University. From 1920 to 1963 he was a faculty member in the Princeton Department of Chemistry, and from 1963 to 1970 he was a consultant to the Office of Naval Research. He was awarded the Nichols Medal by the New York Section of the American Chemical Society in 1954.
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Walter Gordy
1909 - 1985 (76 years)
Walter Gordy, was an American physicist best known for his experimental work in microwave spectroscopy. His laboratory at Duke University became a center for research in this field, and he authored one of the definitive books on the field.
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Melville Wolfrom
1900 - 1969 (69 years)
Melville Lawrence Wolfrom was an American chemist. Early life, education, and career Melville Wolfrom's grandfather Johann Lorenz Wolfrum immigrated to the United States from Aš in 1854, and was of Sudeten German descent. His son Friedrich Wolfrum married Maria Louisa Sutter. Melville Wolfrom was born on April 2, 1900, the youngest of nine children. His father died when Melville was seven years old. Three of his brothers acquired a patent for a horse harness snap, and as a teen, Melville helped manufacture them out of the family home. He graduated from Ohio's Bellevue High School in 1917 as salutatorian and began working for the National Carbon Company.
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Arthur V. Tobolsky
1919 - 1972 (53 years)
Arthur Victor Tobolsky was a professor in the chemistry department at Princeton University known for teaching and research in polymer science and rheology. Personal Tobolsky was born in New York City in 1919. On September 7, 1972, Tobolsky died unexpectedly at the age of 53 on September 7, 1972, while attending a conference in Utica, N.Y.
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William Draper Harkins
1873 - 1951 (78 years)
William Draper Harkins was an American physical chemist, noted for his contributions to surface chemistry and nuclear chemistry. Harkins researched the structure of the atomic nucleus and was the first to propose the principle of nuclear fusion, four years before Jean Baptiste Perrin published his theory in 1919-20. His findings enabled, among other things, the development of the H-bomb. As a visiting professor with Fritz Haber in 1909, he was introduced to the study of surface tension, and he began work on the theory of solutions and solubility during a visit to MIT in 1909-1910.
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Lars Onsager
1903 - 1976 (73 years)
Lars Onsager was an American physical chemist and theoretical physicist. He held the Gibbs Professorship of Theoretical Chemistry at Yale University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1968.
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Paul Hugh Emmett
1900 - 1985 (85 years)
Paul Hugh Emmett was an American chemist best known for his pioneering work in the field of catalysis and for his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He spearheaded the research to separate isotopes of uranium and to develop a corrosive uranium gas. Emmett also made significant contributions to BET Theory which explains the relationship between surface area and gas adsorption. He served on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University for 23 years throughout his scientific career.
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Harold Urey
1893 - 1981 (88 years)
Harold Clayton Urey was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 for the discovery of deuterium. He played a significant role in the development of the atom bomb, as well as contributing to theories on the development of organic life from non-living matter.
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Robert S. Mulliken
1896 - 1986 (90 years)
Robert Sanderson Mulliken was an American physicist and chemist, primarily responsible for the early development of molecular orbital theory, i.e. the elaboration of the molecular orbital method of computing the structure of molecules. Mulliken received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1966 and the Priestley Medal in 1983.
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Irving Langmuir
1881 - 1957 (76 years)
Irving Langmuir was an American chemist, physicist, and engineer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932 for his work in surface chemistry. Langmuir's most famous publication is the 1919 article "The Arrangement of Electrons in Atoms and Molecules" in which, building on Gilbert N. Lewis's cubical atom theory and Walther Kossel's chemical bonding theory, he outlined his "concentric theory of atomic structure". Langmuir became embroiled in a priority dispute with Lewis over this work; Langmuir's presentation skills were largely responsible for the popularization of the theory, although the credit for the theory itself belongs mostly to Lewis.
Go to Profile#7148
Henry Eyring
1901 - 1981 (80 years)
Henry Eyring was a Mexico-born United States theoretical chemist whose primary contribution was in the study of chemical reaction rates and intermediates. Eyring developed the Absolute Rate Theory or Transition state theory of chemical reactions, connecting the fields of chemistry and physics through atomic theory, quantum theory, and statistical mechanics.
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Paul Flory
1910 - 1985 (75 years)
Paul John Flory was an American chemist and Nobel laureate who was known for his work in the field of polymers, or macromolecules. He was a leading pioneer in understanding the behavior of polymers in solution, and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1974 "for his fundamental achievements, both theoretical and experimental, in the physical chemistry of macromolecules".
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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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