Search People Result | Academic Influence

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 …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Chemistry,

#1101

Christopher C. Cummins

#58133

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (59 years)

Christopher "Kit" Colin Cummins is an American chemist, currently the Henry Dreyfus Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has made contributions to the coordination chemistry of transition metal nitrides, phosphides, and carbides.

#1102

Zdeněk Herman

#67009

Overall Influence

1934 - 2021 (87 years)

Zdeněk Herman was a Czech physical chemist. Life and work Herman was born on 24 March 1934 in Libušín. He studied physical chemistry and radiochemistry at the School of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University, Prague . He then joined the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences, to which he remained affiliated.

#1103

Eville Gorham

#67510

Overall Influence

1925 - 2020 (95 years)

Eville Gorham was a Canadian-American scientist whose focus has been understanding the chemistry of fresh waters and the ecology and biogeochemistry of peatlands. In the process, Gorham made a number of practical contributions that included discovering the influence of acid rain in lake acidification, plus the importance of the biological magnification of radioactive fallout isotopes in northern food chains. The former led to legislation and redesign of the power plants of the world to scrub sulfur, and the latter was an early step toward the establishment of an atmospheric nuclear test ban ...

#1104

John L. Anderson

John L. Anderson

#25034

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

John Leonard Anderson is the current president of the National Academy of Engineering. He was a professor of chemical engineering, who served as the eighth president of Illinois Institute of Technology. Prior to his appointment at IIT, Anderson held positions in academia at various institutions, serving both as the provost of Case Western Reserve University and the dean of the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

#1105

Scott A. McLuckey

#71171

Overall Influence

Scott A. McLuckey is an American chemist, the John A. Leighty Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University. His research concerns the formation of ionized versions of large biomolecules, mass spectrometry of these ions, and ion-ion reactions.

#1106

William R. Newman

William R. Newman

#23645

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

William R. Newman is Distinguished Professor and Ruth N. Halls Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University. Most of Newman’s work in the History of Science has been devoted to alchemy and "chymistry," the art-nature debate, and matter theories, particularly atomism. Newman is also General Editor of the Chymistry of Isaac Newton, an online resource combining born-digital editions of Newton’s alchemical writings with multimedia replications of Newton’s alchemical experiments. In addition, he was Director of the Catapult Center for Digital Humanities and Computational Analysis of Texts at Indiana University.

#1107

Stefan Seeger

#50036

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Stefan Seeger is a German chemist and professor at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Biography Seeger studied chemistry at University of Heidelberg under Technical University Berlin. In 1992, he earned his PhD degree. He later studied Business administration at FernUniversität Hagen. In 1992 he established a research group for biophysical chemistry at the University of Heidelberg. After working as a postdoctoral student at the University of Lund in Sweden, he returned in 1994 to University of Heidelberg to finish his habilitation in 1997. Later that year, he was appointed as a professor for Biosensors at the University of Regensburg.

#1108

Cynthia Larive

#35995

Overall Influence

Cynthia Larive is an American scientist and academic administrator serving as the chancellor of University of California, Santa Cruz. Larive's research focuses on nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. She was previously a professor of chemistry and provost and executive vice chancellor at the University of California, Riverside. She is a fellow of AAAS, IUPAC and ACS, associate editor for the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry and editor of the Analytical Sciences Digital Library.

#1109

Jean-Charles Schwartz

#69065

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (89 years)

Jean-Charles Schwartz, born on May 28, 1936, in Paris, is a French neurobiologist, pharmacist and researcher. Husband of Ketty Schwartz, née Gersen and father of Olivier, Marc and Emmanuelle. He is a member of the Academy of Sciences. He developed pitolisant, the first clinically approved antagonist for H3 receptors.

#1110

Timothy F. Jamison

#71051

Overall Influence

Timothy F. Jamison is a professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Early life and education Tim Jamison was born in San Jose, CA and grew up in neighboring Los Gatos, CA. He received his undergraduate education at the University of California, Berkeley. A six-month research assistantship at ICI Americas in Richmond, CA under the mentorship of Dr. William G. Haag was his first experience in chemistry research. Upon returning to Berkeley, he joined the laboratory of Prof. Henry Rapoport and conducted undergraduate research in his group for nearly three years, the majority of which was under the tutelage of William D.

#1111

Klaus Bechgaard

#67181

Overall Influence

1945 - 2017 (72 years)

Klaus Bechgaard was a Danish scientist and chemist, noted for being one of the first scientists in the world to synthesize a number of organic charge transfer complexes and demonstrate their superconductivity, therefore the name Bechgaard salt. These salts all exhibit superconductivity at low temperatures.

#1112

Yvonne Libona Bonzi Coulibaly

#15228

Overall Influence

Yvonne Libona Bonzi Coulibaly is the first female doctor in chemistry in Burkina Faso, a full professor at the University of Ouagadougou, a member of the Academy of Sciences of Burkina Faso, the Director-General of the Institute of Sciences of Burkina Faso, and a laureate of the African Union Kwame Nkrumah Prize.

#1113

Enrico Drioli

#81302

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

#1114

Lew Mander

#71254

Overall Influence

1939 - 2020 (81 years)

Lewis Norman Mander, , FAA, FRS was a New Zealand-born Australian organic chemist. He has widely explored the synthesis and chemistry of the gibberellin class of diterpenes over a 20-year period at the Australian National University . In particular, he studied the effect of these hormones on stem growth and on the reasons why plant undergo bolting during plant development. The July 2004 edition of the Australian Journal of Chemistry was dedicated to Mander on the occasion of his 65th birthday. He retired in 2002 but remained active at the ANU until 2014. In 2018 Mander was made a Companion in...

#1115

Nick D. Kim

#62770

Overall Influence

Nicholas D. Kim is an analytical environmental chemist and cartoonist who currently works as a senior lecturer in applied environmental chemistry, School of Public health, College of Health for Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand. As a cartoonist he is known under his pseudonym Nick. He specializes in environmental chemistry and contamination issues and is certified to practice as an independent hearings commissioner under New Zealand's Resource Management Act. Previously he has acted as a science advisor for the Waikato Regional Council and as a senior lecturer in chemistry at the Un...

#1116

Marsha I. Lester

Marsha I. Lester

#56195

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Marsha Isack Lester is an American physical chemist. She is currently the Edmund J. Kahn Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. Lester uses both theoretical and experimental methods to study the physical chemistry of volatile organic compounds present in the Earth's atmosphere. Her current work focuses on the hydroxyl radical and Criegee intermediates.

#1117

Ken Seddon

#70231

Overall Influence

1950 - 2018 (68 years)

Kenneth Richard Seddon was a chemist specialising in ionic liquids. Biography Seddon was born in Liverpool in 1950. He studied chemistry at Liverpool University, completing his PhD in 1973, then took up a research fellowship at the University of Oxford. In 1982 he moved to the School of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences at the University of Sussex. He left Sussex in 1993 to become chair and Director of the Queen's University Belfast, where he founded the Queen's University Ionic Liquid Laboratories Research Centre. He was also Professor Catedrático Visitante at the Instituto de Tecnologia Q...

#1118

Gabriele Sadowski

#37812

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Gabriele Sadowski is a German chemist. Early life and education Sadowski studied Chemistry at the Technical University Leuna-Merseburg from 1982 to 1987. She finished her doctorate in 1991 at the Technical University Leuna-Merseburg. She completed her dissertation at the Technical University of Berlin in 2000.

#1119

Marie Edmonds

#20352

Overall Influence

Marie Edmonds is a professor of volcanology and geology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge whose research focuses on the physics and chemistry of volcanic eruptions and magmatism and understanding volatile cycling in the solid Earth as mediated by plate tectonics. She is interested in the social and economic impacts of natural hazards; and the sustainable use of Earth's mineral and energy resources. Professor Edmonds is the Vice President and Ron Oxburgh Fellow in Earth Sciences at Queens' College, Cambridge; and the Deputy Head of Department and Director of R...

#1120

Adi Eisenberg

#81437

Overall Influence

#1121

Michael T. Bowers

#64854

Overall Influence

Michael T. Bowers is an American mass spectroscopist, a professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara faculty. Career He studied at Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington, earning his 1962 B.S. in 1962 and then earning a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1966.

#1122

Patrick F. Fox

#81440

Overall Influence

#1123

Gabriela Schlau-Cohen

#72141

Overall Influence

Gabriela S. Schlau-Cohen is a Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Career Development Associate Professor at MIT in the Department of Chemistry. Education and career Schlau-Cohen received a BS with honors in chemical physics from Brown University in 2003. She completed her PhD in chemistry in 2011 at the University of California, Berkeley, where she worked with Professor Graham R. Fleming as an American Association of University Women fellow. From 2011 to 2014, Schlau-Cohen was a Center for Molecular Analysis and Design postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. She worked with Professor W.E. Mo...

#1124

Herman Pines

#76139

Overall Influence

1902 - 1996 (94 years)

Herman Pines was a Russian Empire-born American chemist. Born in Łódź—then part of the Russian Empire—he left his hometown as a young man as Jewish quotas and other anti-Jewish practices prevented Jewish students from attending university. After earning a degree in chemical engineering at the École Supérieure de Chimie Industrielle de Lyon in France, he worked at Universal Oil Products from 1930 to 1952. Pines also worked at Northwestern University beginning in 1941, and served from 1953–1970 as the Ipatieff Research Professor of Chemistry and director of the Ipatieff High Pressure and Catal...

#1125

Jacob Klein

#56010

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Jacob Klein , is the Herman Mark Professor of Soft Matter Physics at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel. He is well known for his work in soft condensed matter, polymer science and surface science.

#1126

Aïssata Issoufou Mahamadou

Aïssata Issoufou Mahamadou

#15884

Overall Influence

Aissata Issoufou Mahamadou is a Nigerien chemist, chemical engineer, mining specialist, and healthcare advocate who served as First Lady of the Republic of Niger from 7 April 2011 to 2 April 2021. She is the first wife of former President Mahamadou Issoufou and shared the title of First Lady with Issoufou's second wife, Lalla Malika Issoufou. Issoufou Mahamadou is president of the Guri-Vie Meilleure Foundation.

#1127

George Smith

#16739

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

George Pearson Smith is an American biologist and Nobel laureate. He is a Curators' Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, US. Career Born in Norwalk, Connecticut, he earned his A.B. degree from Haverford College in biology, was a high school teacher and lab technician for a year, and earned his PhD degree in bacteriology and immunology from Harvard University. He was a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin before moving to Columbia, Missouri and joining the University of Missouri faculty in 1975. He spent the 1983–1984 a...

#1128

Howard Alper

#69341

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

Howard Alper, is a Canadian chemist. He is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Ottawa. He is best known for his research of catalysis in chemistry. Career and research Born in Montreal, Quebec, he received a Bachelor of Science from Sir George Williams University in 1963 and a Ph.D. from McGill University in 1967. In 1968, he started teaching at the State University of New York and became an associate professor in 1971. He joined the University of Ottawa in 1975 as an associate professor and was appointed a Professor in 1978, later being made a Distinguished University Professor in 2006.

#1129

Michael Albeck

#18424

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (91 years)

Michael Albeck is an Israeli organic and bioorganic chemist of tellurium compounds. He was President of Bar-Ilan University from 1986 to 1989. Biography Michael Albeck was born in Berlin, Germany to Hanoch and Henya Albeck in October 1934. His family immigrated to Israel in 1935 and settled in Jerusalem. He earned both MSc in Chemistry and PhD from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

#1130

Tullio Ilomets

#63613

Overall Influence

1921 - 2018 (97 years)

Tullio Ilomets was an Estonian chemist, science historian and a volunteer in heritage protection. Education Born in Paide, Ilomets graduated from Paide Secondary School in 1941. He continued to study chemistry at the Tallinn Polytechnic Institute and Tartu State University from 1948-1952. He has served as faculty member and research fellow with the University of Tartu Department of Chemistry's institute of organic chemistry since 1952. He earned a candidate's degree in chemistry and became associate professor in 1965 and associate professor emeritus in 2007.

#1131

Gregory D. Scholes

Gregory D. Scholes

#40044

Overall Influence

Gregory D. Scholes is William S. Tod Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University. Career and research Scholes research interests are in photosynthesis and quantum biology. Awards and honours He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2019 for "substantial contributions to the improvement of natural knowledge".

#1132

John R. Falck

#81355

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

John Russell “Camille” Falck is an American chemist, Professor of Biochemistry, and holder of the Robert A. Welch Distinguish Chair in Chemistry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center . In 1996 he was awarded the Wilfred T. Doherty Recognition Award from the Dallas-Forth Worth Section of the American Chemical Society and a Recognition Award at the March 10, 2002, Winter Eicosanoid Conference in appreciation of his significant contributions to the chemistry of natural products, and to the identification and functional characterization of the cytochrome P450 arachidonic aci...

#1133

Leticia González

Leticia González

#80132

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Leticia González Herrero is a theoretical chemist, known for her work on molecular excited states, especially ultrafast dynamics of DNA nucleobases and highly accurate simulations of transition metal complexes.

#1134

Marilyn E. Jacox

Marilyn E. Jacox

#39468

Overall Influence

1929 - 2013 (84 years)

Marilyn Esther Jacox was an American physical chemist. She was a National Institute of Standards and Technology Fellow and Scientist Emeritus in the Sensor Science Division. Education Jacox was born in Utica, New York, the daughter of Grant and Mary Jacox.

#1135

Benjamin Hsiao

#48462

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Benjamin S. Hsiao is an American materials scientist and educator. He served as the vice-president for research and chief research officer at Stony Brook University from May 2012 to December 2013. Education and career Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Hsiao attended the exclusive all-boys Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School . He graduated from JGHS to enroll in the National Taiwan University and pursue a B.Sc. in chemical engineering. After graduating in 1980, Hsiao entered the graduate program in Polymer Science at the Institute of Materials Science in the University of Connecticut in 1982. In 1985,...

#1136

Rosemary Murray

Rosemary Murray

#22060

Overall Influence

1913 - 2004 (91 years)

Dame Alice Rosemary Murray, was an English chemist and educator. She was instrumental in establishing New Hall, Cambridge, now Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, and was the first woman to hold the office of Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.

#1137

Chi‐huey Wong

#81989

Overall Influence

#1138

Isaiah Shavitt

#57005

Overall Influence

1925 - 2012 (87 years)

Isaiah Shavitt was a Polish-born Israeli and American theoretical chemist. He was born Isaiah Kruk on July 29, 1925, in Kutno, Poland but his family moved to what would become Israel in 1929. After undergraduate degrees in chemistry and chemical engineering from the Technion in Haifa, he started a Ph.D. in experimental physical chemistry, but shortly after traveled to Cambridge University on a British Council Scholarship and completed his Ph.D. under the aegis of pioneering computational chemist S. Francis Boys.

#1139

Joseph Chatt

#82002

Overall Influence

#1140

Raychelle Burks

#60249

Overall Influence

Raychelle Burks is an associate professor of analytical chemistry at American University in Washington, D.C., and science communicator, who has regularly appeared on the Science Channel. In 2020, the American Chemical Society awarded her the Grady-Stack award for her public engagement excellence.

#1141

Sukh Dev

#28830

Overall Influence

1923 - Present (102 years)

Sukh Dev FNA, FASc is an Indian organic chemist, academic, researcher and writer, known for his contributions in the development of Guggulsterone, a plant-derived steroid used as a therapeutic and nutritional agent. He has conducted advanced research in biomedical science and natural products chemistry and holds 55 patents for his findings.

#1142

Toshiko Mayeda

#79601

Overall Influence

1923 - 2004 (81 years)

Toshiko K. Mayeda was a Japanese American chemist who worked at the Enrico Fermi Institute in the University of Chicago. She worked on climate science and meteorites from 1958 to 2004. Early life and education Toshiko Mayeda was born in Tacoma, Washington. She grew up in Yokkaichi, Mie, and Osaka. When the United States entered World War II after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, she and her father Matsusaburo Kuki were sent to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center. Whilst there she met her future husband, Harry Mayeda. After the war, she graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemistry from...

#1143

John Froines

#14351

Overall Influence

1939 - 2022 (83 years)

John Radford Froines was an American chemist and anti-war activist, noted as a member of the Chicago Seven, a group charged with involvement with the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Froines, who held a Ph.D. in chemistry from Yale, was charged with interstate travel for purposes of inciting a riot and with making incendiary devices, but was acquitted. He later served as the Director of Toxic Substances at the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration and then director of UCLA’s Occupational Health Center. He also served as chair of the California Scie...

#1144

Wilma Olson

#25782

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

Wilma K. Olson is the Mary I. Bunting professor at the Rutgers Center for Quantitative Biology at Rutgers University. Olson has her own research group on the New Brunswick campus. Although she is a polymer chemist by training, her research aims to understand the influence of chemical architecture on the conformation, properties, and interactions of nucleic acids.

#1145

David N. Reinhoudt

#82180

Overall Influence

#1146

Alan Carrington

#55993

Overall Influence

1934 - 2013 (79 years)

Alan Carrington CBE, FRS was a British chemist and one of the leading spectroscopists in Britain in the late twentieth century. Education Carrington was educated at Colfe's School and the University of Southampton where he was awarded the degrees of B.Sc. and Ph.D. While still a PhD student, Carrington spent a year as a research fellow at the University of Minnesota,

#1147

Willis Adcock

#10152

Overall Influence

1922 - 2003 (81 years)

Dr. Willis Alfred Adcock was a Canadian-American physical chemist, electrical engineer, and university professor who worked on the first atomic bomb and assisted with the invention of the silicon transistor, as well as the integrated circuit. He held several US patents.

#1148

Otto Gottlieb

#50694

Overall Influence

1920 - 2011 (91 years)

Otto Richard Gottlieb was a Czechoslovak-born naturalized Brazilian chemist and scientist of Jewish origin. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999 for studies on the chemical structure of plants, which allow us to analyze the state of preservation of several ecosystems. His work revealed the biodiversity of Brazilian flora and promoted phytochemical development in the country. In 1977 Otto Gottlieb was the first chemical professional to receive the Fritz Feigl Award, created by Regional Council of Chemistry - Region IV in the same year. In 1986, he was awarded with the Anís...

#1149

Min Enze

#17534

Overall Influence

1924 - 2016 (92 years)

Min Enze was a Chinese chemical engineer and chemist. He was an expert in petrochemical catalysis, and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering . Biography Min was born in Chengdu, Sichuan, China. He graduated from National Central University in 1946, majoring in chemical engineering.

#1150

L. E. Scriven

#62947

Overall Influence

1931 - 2007 (76 years)

Laurence Edward "Skip" Scriven was an American chemical engineer, educator, and a regents professor in the department of chemical engineering and materials science at University of Minnesota. He achieved numerous breakthroughs in the fields of fluid mechanics, capillary hydrodynamics, coating flows, and microscopy. His contributions to chemical engineering have been internationally recognized, and he was elected fellow of the National Academy of Engineering , American Academy of Arts and Sciences , and American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Scriven was awarded the Josiah Willard Gibbs Lectureship organized by the American Mathematical Society in 1986.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions