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,
#1201
Geoffrey Hewitt
#54872
Overall Influence
1934 - 2019 (85 years)
Geoffrey Frederick Hewitt was a British chemical engineer, and Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London, where from 1993 to 1999 he was the Courtaulds Professor of chemical engineering. Life Hewitt attended Boteler Grammar School, Warrington and earned a BSc Tech in chemical engineering at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology followed by a PhD in the same in 1957. He worked for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority until 1985 when he joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London, being made Courtaulds Professor of chemical en...
Go to Profile#1202
Alan Neville Gent
#53764
Overall Influence
1927 - 2012 (85 years)
Alan Neville Gent was a professor at the University of Akron. He was recognized during his lifetime as a world-leading authority on the topics of adhesion physics, crystalline and glassy polymers, and the fracturing of rubber.
Go to Profile#1203
Edwin J. Vandenberg
#82884
Overall Influence
1918 - 2005 (87 years)
Edwin J. Vandenberg was a chemist at Hercules Inc. and a researcher at Arizona State University. Vandenberg is best known for his work at Hercules in the 1950s through the 1970s that included the independent discovery of isotactic polypropylene and the development of Ziegler-type catalysts.
Go to Profile#1204
Gregory L. Geoffroy
#68695
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Gregory Lynn Geoffroy was the 14th president of Iowa State University, from 2001 to 2012. He stepped down from the presidency in 2012 and remains on the Iowa State faculty. Geoffroy received his BA from the University of Louisville in 1968. He received his PhD in chemistry from California Institute of Technology in 1974. Between receiving his two degrees Geoffroy served from 1969 to 1970 in the United States Navy.
Go to Profile#1205
John A. Pyle
#57177
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
John Adrian Pyle is a British atmospheric scientist, Director of the Centre for Atmospheric Science in Cambridge, England. He is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and since 2007 has held the 1920 Chair of Physical Chemistry in the Chemistry Department. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society and of St Catharine's College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#1206
Xiao Cheng Zeng
#84128
Overall Influence
#1207
Lorenz Theodor Biegler
#84190
Overall Influence
#1208
Dante Gatteschi
#84208
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
#1209
Malcolm Levitt
#71812
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Malcolm Harris Levitt is a British physical chemist and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopist. He is Professor in Physical Chemistry at the University of Southampton and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2007.
Go to Profile#1210
Eric Block
#76056
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Eric Block is an American chemist whose research has focused on the chemistry of organosulfur and organoselenium compounds, Allium chemistry , and the chemistry of olfaction. As of 2018, he is Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at the University at Albany, SUNY.
Go to Profile#1211
Albert Sjoerdsma
#84305
Overall Influence
#1212
Rick L. Danheiser
#76693
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Rick L. Danheiser is an American organic chemist and is the Arthur C. Cope Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and chair of the MIT faculty. His research involves the invention of new methods for the synthesis of complex organic compounds. Danheiser is known for the Danheiser annulation and Danheiser benzannulation reactions.
Go to Profile#1213
Linda Nazar
#80940
Overall Influence
Linda Faye Nazar is a Senior Canada Research Chair in Solid State Materials and Distinguished Research Professor of Chemistry at the University of Waterloo. She develops materials for electrochemical energy storage and conversion. Nazar demonstrated that interwoven composites could be used to improve the energy density of lithium–sulphur batteries. She was awarded the 2019 Chemical Institute of Canada Medal.
Go to Profile#1214
Bernard H. Lavenda
#35133
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Bernard Howard Lavenda is a retired professor of chemical physics at the University of Camerino and expert on irreversible thermodynamics. He has contributed to many areas of physics, including that of Brownian motion, and in the establishment of the statistical basis of thermodynamics, and non-Euclidean geometrical theories of relativity. He was the scientific coordinator of the "European Thermodynamics Network" in the European Commission Program of Human Capital and Mobility. He was also a proponent for the establishment of, and scientific director of, a National Centre for Thermodynamics,...
Go to Profile#1215
Nam-Gyu Park
#74272
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Nam-Gyu Park is Distinguished Professor and Sungkyunkwan University -Fellow at School of Chemical Engineering, SKKU. His research focuses on high efficiency mesoscopic nanostructured solar cells. Education Park received his B.S. degree in chemical education in 1988, M.S. in 1992 and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry in 1995 from Seoul National University.
Go to Profile#1216
Harry Wiener
#24724
Overall Influence
Harry Wiener was an Austrian-American chemist, physician and psychologist, a pioneer in cheminformatics and chemical graph theory, and a long-time employee at Pfizer. Education and career Wiener was born in Vienna in 1924 to Jewish parents Joseph Wiener and Beile Wiener. His family emigrated to New York City, US, in 1941 by way of France and Portugal. Wiener attended Brooklyn College and received a BS in chemistry in 1945. Wiener attended Long Island College of Medicine and obtained an MD in 1949. Wiener was appointed to the management team at Pfizer in 1958 and remained at the company until ...
Go to Profile#1217
Evan R. Simpson
#84534
Overall Influence
#1218
Ronald A. Hites
#39972
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Ronald A. Hites is an American chemist, currently a distinguished professor at Indiana University, and also a published author. He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and also founded the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry.
Go to Profile#1219
Tessy María López Goerne
#51114
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Tessy María López Goerne is a Mexican solid-state chemist, professor, researcher, academic, and popular science communicator. She has specialized in the fields of nanotechnology and nanomedicine, as well as being a pioneer in catalytic nanomedicine. She directs the Nanotechnology and Nanomedicine Laboratories at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Xochimilco plant and the .
Go to Profile#1220
Gloria Long Anderson
#58342
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Gloria Long Anderson is the Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Chemistry at Morris Brown College, and its vice president for academic affairs. She has served as interim president of Morris Brown, and as vice chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She was a pioneer in the field of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and is known for her studies of fluorine-19 and solid rocket propellants.
Go to Profile#1221
Seymour Geller
#84598
Overall Influence
#1222
Barry Ninham
#73342
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (89 years)
Barry William Ninham AO DSc FAA is an Australian physicist who has received many awards for his research. Barry Ninham attended Guildford Grammar School in Perth from 1945 to 1952. He then studied at University of Western Australia where he received an M.Sc. in theoretical physics in 1957. In 1962, he received a Ph.D. in mathematical physics from University of Maryland, doing research in statistical mechanics with Elliott W. Montroll as thesis advisor.
Go to Profile#1223
Maurizio Prato
#84639
Overall Influence
#1224
Arieh Ben-Naim
#59004
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (91 years)
Arieh Ben-Naim is a professor of physical chemistry who retired in 2003 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has made major contributions over 40 years to the theory of the structure of water, aqueous solutions and hydrophobic-hydrophilic interactions. He is mainly concerned with theoretical and experimental aspects of the general theory of liquids and solutions. In recent years, he has advocated the use of information theory to better understand and advance statistical mechanics and thermodynamics.
Go to Profile#1225
Daniel L. Simmons
#23583
Overall Influence
Daniel L. Simmons is a professor of chemistry and former director of the Cancer Research Center at Brigham Young University . He was the discoverer of the COX-2 enzyme that is the target of celecoxib and other COX-2 inhibitors. He and BYU felt that Pfizer had not properly credited or paid them for Simmons work in this development and brought a suit against Pfizer.
Go to Profile#1226
Franklin A. Long
#66603
Overall Influence
1910 - 1999 (89 years)
Franklin Asbury Long was an American chemist notable for his activities in arms reduction as well as for his research in reaction mechanisms of organic molecules in solutions. Long served on the President's Science Advisory Committee for Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He also was assistant director of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, chairman of the chemistry department at Cornell University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a recipient of Dongbaeg Medal, the Charles Lathrop Parsons Award from the American Chemical Society, H...
Go to Profile#1227
Paul Chirik
#82163
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (52 years)
Paul James Chirik is an American chemist known for his work in sustainable chemistry using Earth-abundant metals like iron, cobalt, and nickel to surpass the performance of more exotic elements traditionally used in catalysis. He is the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Chemistry and chair of the chemistry department at Princeton University.
Go to Profile#1228
David Craik
#84806
Overall Influence
#1229
Sarah O'Connor
#36335
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Sarah E. O'Connor is an American molecular biologist working to understand the molecular machinery involved in assembling important plant natural products – vinblastine, morphine, iridoids, secologanin – and how changing the enzymes involved in this pathway lead to diverse analogs. She was a Project Leader at the John Innes Centre in the UK between 2011 and 2019. O'Connor was appointed by the Max Planck Society in 2018 to head the Department of Natural Product Biosynthesis at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, taking up her role during 2019.
Go to Profile#1230
Gerhard Wagner
#75606
Overall Influence
Gerhard Wagner is a German-American physicist. Currently the Elkan Rogers Blout Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, he is an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences and International Society of Magnetic Resonance.
Go to Profile#1231
Ralf Steudel
#85028
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
Ralf Steudel was a German chemist and university professor who was known for his research in the area of sulfur chemistry as well as for his textbook Chemistry of the Non-Metals, which appeared in several languages and many editions. Complementing his pioneering contributions to polysulfides, he authored many reviews on the subject.
Go to Profile#1232
Xiao Wang
#47210
Overall Influence
Xiao Wang is a Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor at MIT in the Department of Chemistry. She is the first Core Member of the Broad Institute with an academic appointment in the department of chemistry. Her work focuses on designing and producing new tools and methods for analyzing the brain.
Go to Profile#1233
Andrew Goodwin
#67354
Overall Influence
Andrew L. Goodwin FRS is a university research professor and professor of materials chemistry at the University of Oxford. Education Goodwin was educated at Sydney Boys High School and represented Australia at the International Chemistry Olympiad in 1996, winning a gold medal.
Go to Profile#1234
Carsten Bolm
#85110
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
#1235
Gerald Meyer
#69275
Overall Influence
Gerald J. Meyer is an active researcher and professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was previously the Bernard N. Baker Chair In Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include inorganic photochemistry with emphasis on solar energy, using interfacial electron transfer processes and dye-sensitized solar cells.
Go to Profile#1236
Neil Kelleher
#76336
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Neil L. Kelleher is the Walter and Mary Elizabeth Glass Professor of Chemistry, Molecular Biosciences, and Medicine at Northwestern University. His research focuses on mass spectrometry, primarily its application to proteomics. He is known mainly for top-down proteomics and the development of the fragmentation technique of electron-capture dissociation with Roman Zubarev while in Fred McLafferty's lab at Cornell University.
Go to Profile#1237
Joseph Chatt
#61061
Overall Influence
1914 - 1994 (80 years)
Joseph Chatt was a renowned British researcher in the area of inorganic and organometallic chemistry. His name is associated with the description of the pi-bond between transition metals and alkenes, the Dewar–Chatt–Duncanson model.
Go to Profile#1238
Mathias Uhlén
#73181
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Mathias Uhlén is a Swedish scientist and Professor of Microbiology at Royal Institute of Technology , Stockholm. After a post-doc period at the EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany, he became professor in microbiology at KTH in 1988. His research is focused on protein science, antibody engineering and precision medicine and range from basic research in human and microbial biology to more applied research, including clinical applications. He is member of several academies and societies, including Royal Swedish Academy of Science , National Academy of Engineering and the Swedish Academy of Engineering Science .
Go to Profile#1239
George Christou
#80611
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
George Christou is a British-American chemist, currently the Drago and Distinguished Professor at the University of Florida, previously the Earl Blough Professor at the Indiana University. He is also an Honorary Professor at London Centre for Nanotechnology. His current interests are in bioinorganic chemistry, materials and nanoscale magnets, and supramolecular and cluster chemistry. He was a pioneer of the field of single-molecule magnets and has been a significant figure in inorganic chemistry, with multiple papers each cited over 100 times. He has published over 600 peer-reviewed publicatio...
Go to Profile#1240
Gustavo Scuseria
#38916
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Gustavo E. Scuseria is the Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Physics & Astronomy and Professor of Materials Science & NanoEngineering at Rice University, Houston, TX. He is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation. Scuseria earned his PhD from the University of Buenos Aires in 1983 and conducted post-doctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Georgia prior to joining the chemistry faculty at Rice University in 1989.
Go to Profile#1241
Mauro Ferrari
#25627
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Mauro Ferrari is a nanoscientist and leader in the field of nanomedicine. He served as special expert on nanotechnology for the National Cancer Institute and was instrumental in establishing the Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer in 2004. On 1 January 2020, Ferrari was made president of the European Research Council . Following a vote of no confidence, on 27 March 2020, "all 19 active members of the ERC’s Scientific Council individually and unanimously requested that Mauro Ferrari resign from his position as ERC’s President", due to poor conduct in office, exploiting the position to further his own projects, and for consistently failing to represent the interests of the ERC.
Go to Profile#1242
Harry Elderfield
#78275
Overall Influence
1943 - 2016 (73 years)
Professor Henry "Harry" Elderfield , was Professor of Ocean Chemistry and Palaeochemistry at the Godwin Laboratory in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge. He made his name in ocean chemistry and palaeochemistry, using trace metals and isotopes in biogenic carbonate as palaeochemical tracers, and studying the chemistry of modern and ancient oceans - especially those of the glacial epoch and the Cenozoic.
Go to Profile#1243
Friedrich Matthias Bickelhaupt
#85505
Overall Influence
#1244
Richard Norman
#65565
Overall Influence
1932 - 1993 (61 years)
Sir Richard Oswald Chandler Norman, was a British chemist. Biography Norman was born in Norbury, London. His father Oswald managed a bank in the area. Norman received his primary education at St Paul's School, London. He graduated with a first in chemistry from Balliol College, Oxford in 1955, and the following year joined Merton College, Oxford as a Junior Research Fellow, completing his DPhil in 1957. His doctoral thesis investigated using continuous flow mixing techniques to study rapid free radical reactions. He was elected as a Fellow of Merton College in 1958, lecturing, tutoring and ...
Go to Profile#1245
Bruce J. Berne
#85556
Overall Influence
#1246
Virgil Percec
#81322
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Virgil Percec is a Romanian-American chemist and P. Roy Vagelos Chair and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. Expert in organic, macromolecular and supramolecular chemistry including self-assembly, biological membrane mimics, complex chiral systems, and catalysis. Pioneered the fields of liquid crystals with complex architecture, supramolecular dendrimers, Janus dendrimers and glycodendrimers, organic Frank-Kasper phases and quasicrystals, supramolecular polymers, helical chirality, Ni-catalyzed cross-coupling and multiple living and self-interrupted polymerizations. M...
Go to Profile#1247
Peter Maitlis
#49042
Overall Influence
1933 - 2022 (89 years)
Peter Michael Maitlis, FRS was a British organometallic chemist. Early life and education Maitlis was born on 15 January 1933, and educated at Hendon School in north London 1944–50. He was awarded a Bachelor's degree in Science from the University of Birmingham, and a PhD and a DSc from the University of London.
Go to Profile#1248
F. Dean Toste
#84565
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (54 years)
F. Dean Toste is the Gerald E. K. Branch Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and faculty scientist at the chemical sciences division of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. He is a prominent figure in the field of organic chemistry and is best known for his contributions to gold chemistry and asymmetric ion-pairing catalysis. Toste was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.
Go to Profile#1249
Paul Ratnasamy
#53355
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Paul Ratnasamy is an Indian catalyst scientist, INSA Srinivasa Ramanujan Research Professor and a former director of National Chemical Laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research . He was honored by the Government of India, in 2001, with one of the highest Indian civilian awards of Padma Shri.
Go to Profile#1250
Glenn H. Fredrickson
#85869
Overall Influence
