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.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,
#7251
Donald L. Katz
1907 - 1989 (82 years)
Donald Laverne Katz was an American chemist and chemical engineer. The 1983 National Medal of Science was presented to Katz by President Ronald Reagan "for solving many practical engineering problems by delving into a wide group of sciences and making their synergistic effects evident." Katz was also noted for developing a hazard rating system for dangerous bulk cargoes. The New York Times called Katz an "oil expert". The National Academy of Engineering called him a "world leader" in reservoir engineering.
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Heinrich Hörlein
1882 - 1954 (72 years)
Philipp Heinrich Hörlein , was a German entrepreneur, scientist, lecturer, and Nazi Wehrwirtschaftsführer. He was tried for war crimes for his involvement in the Holocaust and his knowledge of medical experimentation on concentration camp prisoners, but he was ultimately acquitted and released.
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Alfred Wohl
1863 - 1939 (76 years)
Alfred Wohl was a German chemist. Several chemical reactions are named after him, including the Wohl degradation, Wohl-Aue reaction and the Wohl-Ziegler reaction. Life Wohl studied chemistry at the University of Heidelberg from 1882 until 1886. He received his Ph.D 1886 for work on Hexamethylenetetramine with August Wilhelm von Hofmann. He became an assistant of Hermann Emil Fischer at the University of Berlin from 1886 until 1891, where he also received his habilitation. He became professor at the University of Berlin in 1901, but he left for the Technical University of Danzig in 1904. He retired because of antisemitic pressure in 1933, but worked in his lab until 1937.
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Friedrich Hoffmann
1660 - 1742 (82 years)
Friedrich Hoffmann or Hofmann was a German physician and chemist. He is also sometimes known in English as Frederick Hoffmann. Life His family had been connected with medicine for 200 years before him. Born in Halle, he attended the local gymnasium where he acquired that taste for and skill in mathematics to which he attributed much of his later success. Beginning at age 18, he studied medicine at the University of Jena. From there, in 1680, he went to Erfurt, to attend Kasper Cramer's lectures on chemistry. Next year, returning to Jena, he received his doctor's diploma, and, after publishing a thesis, was permitted to teach.
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Sergey Nametkin
1876 - 1950 (74 years)
Sergey Semyonovich Nametkin was a Soviet and Russian organic chemist, a prominent researcher in terpene chemistry, the cracking of petrochemicals, and rearrangement of camphenes. Biography Nametkin was born in Kazan and orphaned at an early age. He was educated at a gymnasium in Moscow, after which he earned a living as a private tutor. He studied chemistry and became a lecturer in organic chemistry at the Moscow University but quit in 1911 to oppose the policies of L.A. Kasso. He then studied under N.D. Zelinsky, and received a doctorate in 1917. In 1927 he went to the Moscow Mining Academy ...
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Paul Schlack
1897 - 1987 (90 years)
Paul Schlack was a German chemist. He completed his studies at the Technical University of Stuttgart in 1921 and worked as a research chemist in Copenhagen for a year, before returning to Stuttgart. He received his PhD in 1924. Around this time he developed a keen interest in amide chemistry. He synthesized Nylon 6, widely known by its tradename Perlon, on 29 January 1938 whilst working for IG Farben.
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Ivan Ostromislensky
1880 - 1939 (59 years)
Ivan Ivanovich Ostromislensky was a Russian organic chemist. He is credited as the pioneer in studying polymerization of synthetic rubber as well as inventor of various industrial technologies for production of synthetic rubber, polymers and pharmaceuticals.
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Hermann Wilhelm Vogel
1834 - 1898 (64 years)
Hermann Wilhelm Vogel was a German photochemist and photographer who discovered dye sensitization, which is of great importance to photography. Academic career After finishing school in Frankfurt , he studied at the Royal Industrial Institute of Berlin, earning his Ph.D. with Karl Friedrich August Rammelsberg in 1863. Vogel's thesis, which was published in Poggendorffs Annalen , had the title: Über das Verhalten des Chlorsilbers, Bromsilbers und Iodsilbers im Licht und die Theorie der Photographie . This marked the beginning of his research into the photographic process.
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Johann Friedrich August Göttling
1755 - 1809 (54 years)
Johann Friedrich August Göttling was a notable German chemist. Gottling developed and sold chemical assay kits and studied processes for extracting sugar from beets to supplement his meagre university salary. He studied the chemistry of sulphur, arsenic, phosphorus, and mercury. He wrote texts on analytical chemistry and studied oxidation of organic compounds by nitric acid. He was one of the first scientists in Germany to take a stand against the phlogiston hypothesis and be in favor of the new chemistry of Lavoisier.
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