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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,
#951
Peter S. Kim
#11273
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Peter S. Kim is an American scientist. He was president of Merck Research Laboratories 2003–2013 and is currently Virginia & D.K. Ludwig Professor of Biochemistry at Stanford University, Institute Scholar at Stanford ChEM-H, and Lead Investigator of the Infectious Disease Initiative at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub.
Go to Profile#952
Lai Yee Hing
#46733
Overall Influence
Lai Yee Hing is a Singaporean organic chemistry professor based in the National University of Singapore. He was the principal of NUS High School of Mathematics and Science and held this position from July 2004 to 30 August 2007.
Go to Profile#953
Piero Baglioni
#62125
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Piero Baglioni is an Italian chemist and University professor at the University of Florence. Baglioni produced several innovations in the field of both inorganic and organic colloids. Baglioni is the author of more than 250 publications on books and largely diffused international journals. He is also the author of 16 patents for the preparation of aqueous suspensions at high concentration of particulate, for the therapy and photodynamic diagnosis of tumors, for the conservation of the cultural heritage, for the setup of a new process for the treatment of textile industrial waste, for producti...
Go to Profile#954
Theodoor Overbeek
#57041
Overall Influence
1911 - 2007 (96 years)
Jan Theodoor Gerard Overbeek was a Dutch professor of physical chemistry at the Utrecht University. Early life and education Overbeek was born in Groningen. Overbeek's family moved to Rotterdam in 1913 and to Breda in 1925. Overbeek went to study chemistry at the Utrecht University. He spent a year in military service and then worked for two years in Belgium. First year he worked with Jacques Errera at the Université libre de Bruxelles, after that a year with Arend Joan Rutgers at Ghent University.
Go to Profile#955
Arie Zaban
#28897
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Arie Zaban is an Israeli professor of chemistry. He is President of Bar-Ilan University. Biography Arie Zaban was born in Israel. He served in the Israel Air Force as a Phantom pilot. He earned a B.Sc. in Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Electrochemistry from Bar-Ilan University. He spent two years of postdoctoral work at the United States National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.
Go to Profile#956
Christopher Macosko
#66709
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Christopher Ward Macosko is an American chemical engineer and professor emeritus in the department of chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Minnesota. He is internationally known for his work in polymer science and engineering, especially in the areas of rheology and polymer processing. Macosko is an author of more than 500 academic papers, dozens of patents, and two books including the text: "Rheology: Principles, Measurements and Applications" . He served as director of the Industrial Partnership for Research in Interfacial and Materials Engineering , a university-industry consortium at the University of Minnesota, from 1999 to 2018.
Go to Profile#957
Hubert Alyea
#53892
Overall Influence
1903 - 1996 (93 years)
Hubert Newcombe Alyea was an American professor of chemistry at Princeton University. His explosive chemistry demonstrations earned him the nickname "Dr. Boom". He was famous around the world for his "zany, eccentric" public lectures on science, which "were as much performance as professorship". Alyea served as inspiration for the title character in the 1961 film The Absent-Minded Professor.
Go to Profile#958
Jerry L. Atwood
#70088
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Jerry Lee Atwood is an American supramolecular chemist. He is currently a Curators' Distinguished Professor in Chemistry at the University of Missouri. He is an international leader in Supramolecular chemistry. He has developed the field by his research and by writing a text book on Supramolecular Chemistry.
Go to Profile#959
Karl Freed
#62124
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Karl Frederick Freed is an American theoretical chemist recognized for his research in polymer physics. Freed has spent his academic career in the department of chemistry and the James Frank Institute at the University of Chicago, where he is the Henry G. Gale Distinguished Service Professor emeritus. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and was awarded the Polymer Physics Prize of the American Physical Society in 2014 and the Award in Pure Chemistry by the American Chemical Society in 1976.
Go to Profile#960
Julia R. Burdge
#60238
Overall Influence
Julia R. Burdge is an American chemistry professor and author. She became notable for using a pragmatic approach to teaching chemistry in her books, giving emphasis to the applications of chemistry rather than the theory. Burdge has won several awards and recognitions throughout the years in her career as a chemistry professor.
Go to Profile#961
Larry Curtiss
#75361
Overall Influence
#962
Akira Hosomi
#63265
Overall Influence
1943 - 2018 (75 years)
Akira Hosomi was a Japanese chemist. He was professor emeritus at Tsukuba University, a fellow of the Chemical Society of Japan, a visiting professor at Chuo University, and an academic advisor at Kyushu University.
Go to Profile#963
Guy Ourisson
#42095
Overall Influence
1926 - 2006 (80 years)
Guy Henry Ourisson was a French chemist. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences where he was vice president and then became the president. Awarded the Ernest Guenther Award in 1972 and the Heinrich Wieland Prize in 1985.
Go to Profile#964
Walter Leitner
#73897
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Walter Leitner is a German chemist, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion heading the department "Molecular Catalysis" as well as a university lecturer at the RWTH Aachen University, where he holds the position of chair for technical chemistry and petrochemistry.
Go to Profile#965
Clair Cameron Patterson
#15574
Overall Influence
1922 - 1995 (73 years)
Clair Cameron Patterson was an American geochemist. Born in Mitchellville, Iowa, Patterson graduated from Grinnell College. He later received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and spent his entire professional career at the California Institute of Technology .
Go to Profile#966
Frank S. Bates
#66425
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Frank Steven Bates is an American chemical engineer and materials scientist. Bates is a Regent's Professor , a Distinguished McKnight University Professor , and department head in the department of chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Minnesota, where he has been a faculty member since 1989. Prior to his appointment at the University of Minnesota, Bates was a member of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1982-1989.
Go to Profile#967
R. Bruce King
#66488
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
R. Bruce King is emeritus regents professor at the University of Georgia. He has contributed to many areas of organometallic chemistry, including synthesis, spectroscopy, and theory. He is the author and editor of several monographs and book series.
Go to Profile#968
Aharon Oren
#75532
Overall Influence
#969
Katsuhiko Ariga
#62911
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
is a Japanese chemist specializing in nanotechnology and self-assembly. He was educated at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he defended his PhD in 1990 and later worked as assistant professor. Since 2004 he carries out research at the National Institute for Materials Science, and teaches at the University of Tokyo, where he is a full professor. Ariga is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and an editor of the journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials.
Go to Profile#970
David King
#25392
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (86 years)
Sir David Anthony King is a South African-born British chemist, academic, and head of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group. King first taught at Imperial College, London, the University of East Anglia, and was then Brunner Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Liverpool. He held the 1920 Chair of Physical Chemistry at the University of Cambridge from 1988 to 2006, and was Master of Downing College, Cambridge, from 1995 to 2000: he is now emeritus professor. While at Cambridge, he was successively a fellow of St John's College, Downing College, and Queens' College. Moving to the ...
Go to Profile#971
Thomas J. Dougherty
#75649
Overall Influence
#972
Nelson J. Leonard
#75687
Overall Influence
#973
Ulrich Pöschl
#62716
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Ulrich "Uli" Pöschl is an Austrian chemist who was appointed Director of the newly founded Department of Multiphase Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany on 1 October 2012.
Go to Profile#974
Eugenia Kumacheva
#56162
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Eugenia Kumacheva is a University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Toronto. Her research interests span across the fields of fundamental and applied polymers science, nanotechnology, microfluidics, and interface chemistry. She was awarded the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2008 "for the design and development of new materials with many applications including targeted drug delivery for cancer treatments and materials for high density optical data storage". In 2011, she published a book on the Microfluidic Reactors for Polymer Particles co-authored with .
Go to Profile#975
Renata Reisfeld
#28109
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (95 years)
Renata Reisfeld is an Israeli Professor of Chemistry and D.H.C. Enrique Berman Professor of Solar Energy at Institute of Chemistry of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, author of 532 scientific papers cited more than 30,000 times.
Go to Profile#976
Nenad Trinajstić
#50512
Overall Influence
1936 - 2021 (85 years)
Nenad Trinajstić was a Croatian chemist and one of pioneers of the chemical graph theory. Life and work Trinajstić was born in Zagreb. He received M.Sc. and D.Sc. degrees from the University of Zagreb based on work done at the University of Sheffield under John Murrell. His doctoral advisor was Milan Randić. From 1968 to 1970 he was a Postdoctoral fellow under Michael J. S. Dewar at the University of Texas, Austin with whom he has published 16 papers. He worked at Pliva and Ruđer Bošković Institute eventually becoming a full research professor in 1977 and from 2001 professor emeritus at the U...
Go to Profile#977
Jos Beijnen
#70964
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Jacob Hendrik "Jos" Beijnen is a Dutch pharmacist. He is the hospital pharmacist of the Netherlands Cancer Institute/Antoni van Leeuwenhoekziekenhuis and previously held the same position at the Slotervaartziekenhuis. He has been a professor at the pharmaceutical faculty of Utrecht University since 1994.
Go to Profile#978
Isadore Perlman
#58610
Overall Influence
1915 - 1991 (76 years)
Isadore Perlman was an American nuclear chemist noted for his research of Alpha particle decay. The National Academy of Sciences called Perlman "a world leader on the systematics of alpha decay". He was also recognized for his research of nuclear structure of the heavy elements. He was also noted for his isolation of Curium, as well as for fission of tantalum, bismuth, lead, thallium and platinum. Perlman discovered uses of radioactive iodine and phosphorus for medical purposes. He played a key role in Manhattan Project's plutonium production.
Go to Profile#979
Peter Paetzold
#74791
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (90 years)
Peter Paetzold is a German chemist and emeritus professor of inorganic chemistry at RWTH Aachen University. Life He studied at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. In 1961, he received his doctorate in the working group of Egon Wiberg; in his dissertation he dealt with the thermal decomposition of borazides. After his habilitation , he taught for two more years at the LMU. He then moved to a chair of Inorganic Chemistry at RWTH Aachen University. In his research, he mainly dealt with the molecular chemistry of the element boron, especially with iminoboranes and cluster compounds. His list of publications includes about 180 papers.
Go to Profile#980
William J. Evans
#63486
Overall Influence
William J. Evans is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine, who specializes in the inorganic and organometallic chemistry of heavy metals, specifically the rare earth metals , actinides, and bismuth. He has published over 500 peer-reviewed research papers on these topics.
Go to Profile#981
David K. Smith
#25471
Overall Influence
David Kelham Smith is a professor of chemistry at the University of York in England. His research focuses on nanochemistry and self-assembling nanomaterials. Smith is also well known for his education and public outreach activities, such as his channel dedicated to combatting chemistry disparagement. Smith is openly gay and has been described as "one of the most visible out gay scientists."
Go to Profile#982
Charles Kemball
#69333
Overall Influence
1923 - 1998 (75 years)
Charles Kemball CBE PRSE FRS FRSC FRIC was a Scottish chemist who served as president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and as president of the Royal Institute of Chemistry . He pioneered the use of mass spectrometry. and was a leading expert in heterogeneous catalysis.
Go to Profile#983
James Cullen Martin
#46723
Overall Influence
1928 - 1999 (71 years)
James Cullen Martin was an American chemist. Known in the field as "J.C.", he specialized in physical organic chemistry with an emphasis on main group element chemistry. Martin received his undergraduate and master's degree at Vanderbilt University. His PhD work was conducted with Paul Bartlett at Harvard. Most of his professional career was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was a colleague of Roger Adams, Speed Marvel, David Y. Curtin, Nelson J. Leonard, and Reynold C. Fuson. Late in his career, he moved back to Vanderbilt, but soon succumbed to poor health.
Go to Profile#984
Robert E. Wyatt
#46898
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Robert Eugene Wyatt is an emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Work Wyatt's work is focussed on theoretical chemistry, including the quantum theory of chemical reactions and the theory of intramolecular energy transfer. His research has covered, among others, the trajectory method of Bohmian mechanics, based on work by Louis de Broglie, Erwin Madelung and David Bohm. The method, found to be computationally more efficient than methods that are based on a direct solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation, has fou...
Go to Profile#985
Jinlong Gong
#31112
Overall Influence
Jinlong Gong is a Chinese chemist and professor of chemical engineering at Tianjin University. He is best known for his work in the areas of heterogeneous catalysis, surface science, and hydrogen energy.
Go to Profile#986
Vladimir Haensel
#51626
Overall Influence
1914 - 2002 (88 years)
Vladimir Haensel was an American chemical engineer who invented the platforming process - a platinum catalytic process for reforming petroleum hydrocarbons into gasoline. In addition, he was influential in the creation of catalytic converters for automobiles.
Go to Profile#987
Josef Fried
#66791
Overall Influence
1914 - 2001 (87 years)
Dr. Joseph Fried was a Polish-American organic chemist, member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He held 200 patents on chemical compounds, with 43 listing him as the sole holder. He was a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Chicago. Fried discovered fluorohydrocortisone, a chemical used to treat adrenal disorders. He was also director of the organic chemistry at the Squibb Institute. His discoveries were instrumental to the creation of medications to treat inflammatory disorders including as arthritis, psoriasis, and various skin allergies.
Go to Profile#988
Hubert Girault
#63241
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Hubert Girault is a Swiss chemist and is Emeritus Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne . He was the director of the Laboratoire d'Electrochimie Physique et Analytique, with expertise in electrochemistry at soft interfaces, Lab-on-a-Chip techniques, bio-analytical chemistry and mass-spectrometry, artificial water splitting, CO2 reduction, and redox flow batteries.
Go to Profile#989
Hank Foley
#33873
Overall Influence
Henry C. "Hank" Foley is the current president of New York Institute of Technology, serving since June 1, 2017. Education Foley earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry at Providence College, a master's degree in chemistry from Purdue University, and doctorate in physical and inorganic chemistry from Penn State. He did his postdoc in chemical engineering at University of Delaware.
Go to Profile#990
Robert E. Ireland
#70108
Overall Influence
1929 - 2012 (83 years)
Robert E. Ireland was an American chemist and the Thomas Jefferson Chair Professor of chemistry at the University of Virginia. He is best known for his textbook Organic Synthesis and his contributions to the Ireland–Claisen rearrangement chemical reaction.
Go to Profile#991
Zhu Qingshi
#24211
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Zhu Qingshi FRSC is a Chinese physical chemist and writer. He is the former president of the University of Science and Technology of China , and the founding president of Southern University of Science and Technology .
Go to Profile#992
İbrahim Adnan Saraçoğlu
#34479
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
İbrahim Adnan Saraçoğlu is a Turkish chemistry professor, biochemist, microbiologist and researcher. After his chemistry studies, he completed his PhD studies at the Karl-Franzens University and became an assistant at the Institute for Molecular Biosciences. Between 1985 and 1986, he worked at the Çukurova University and made his doctorate in 1987. In 1994, he became a professor.
Go to Profile#993
Marjorie Constance Caserio
#48785
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Marjorie Constance Caserio was an English chemist. In 1975, she was awarded the Garvan Medal by the American Chemical Society. Early life and education Caserio was born Marjorie Constance Beckett in Cricklewood, London, England. She attended the North London Collegiate School and began studying podiatry at Chelsea College, but soon developed a preference for chemistry and graduated with honors in the subject in 1950. She was awarded a Sir John Dill Fellowship by the English-Speaking Union which allowed her to study at Bryn Mawr College in the United States, she earned an M.A. in chemistry in 1951.
Go to Profile#994
Allan Hay
#71662
Overall Influence
1929 - 2017 (88 years)
Allan Stuart Hay FRS was a Canadian chemist, and Tomlinson Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at McGill University. He is best known for his synthesization of Polyphenylene Oxide, leading to the development of Noryl and various other plastics.
Go to Profile#995
James L. Hoard
#30710
Overall Influence
1905 - 1993 (88 years)
James Lynn Hoard was an American chemist, a member of the Manhattan Project. Hoard was internationally recognized for his research of boron. Linus Pauling, a Nobel Prize laureate, said that Hoard "contributed significantly to ... the chemistry of certain elements such as boron, and the structure of regions of hemoglobins where oxygen molecules are bonded to iron."
Go to Profile#996
Thomas Summers West
#48255
Overall Influence
1927 - 2010 (83 years)
Thomas Summers West was a British chemist. Life Early years He was born in 1927 in Peterhead, Scotland and educated at Old Tarbat Public School in Portmahomack and then Tain Royal Academy. He then studied chemistry and obtained a BSc degree at Aberdeen University.
Go to Profile#997
Poul Jørgensen
#37350
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Poul Jørgensen is professor of chemistry at the Department of Chemistry, Aarhus University , Denmark and director of the qLEAP Center for Theoretical Chemistry at AU, which was established in April 2012. Jørgensen has made seminal contributions to the field of electronic structure theory. He is also one of the main authors of the DALTON program and a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.
Go to Profile#998
Rolf Appel
#57589
Overall Influence
1921 - 2012 (91 years)
Rolf Appel was an inorganic chemist who worked in the area of organophosphorus chemistry Education Appel received his PhD at age 30. He was appointed in 1962 to both the University of Bonn along with the inorganic chemical institute in 1962 from the University of Heidelberg. He was a research assistant in Chemistry at Bonn University in Bonn, when he developed the Appel reaction. For his discovery, Appel received the Liebig Medal. In 1986, he retired from the inorganic institute. He was succeeded by Edgar Niecke.
Go to Profile#999
Michael Hanack
#65851
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Georg Michael Hanack was a professor of chemistry at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Life and career Hanack was born in Luckenwalde on 22 October 1931. From 1949 to 1954 he studied chemistry, philosophy and economics at the universities of Freiburg, Bonn and Tübingen, and obtained his Diplomchemiker degree in 1954. In 1957, he completed his thesis under the supervision of Walter Hückel on "Solvolyse der Toluolsulfonate der stereoisomeren cis-alpha-Hydrindanole und Beiträge zur Messmethodik" .
Go to Profile#1000
Thalappil Pradeep
#29715
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Thalappil Pradeep is an institute professor and professor of chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He is also the Deepak Parekh Chair Professor. In 2020 he received the Padma Shri award for his distinguished work in the field of Science and Technology. He has received the Nikkei Asia Prize , The World Academy of Sciences prize , and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in 2008 by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.
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