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).

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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,

#1251

Manuel Ballester

#42388

Overall Influence

1919 - 2005 (86 years)

Manuel Ballester Boix was a Spanish chemist. Biography He received his degree at the University of Barcelona in 1944, his doctorate in Madrid, and finished his training at Harvard University in 1951. In 1944 he formed a team at the Spanish National Research Council. His work has largely been in kinetics and organic chemistry.

#1252

Alexander Tropsha

#58759

Overall Influence

Alexander Tropsha is a chemist and professor at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. Tropsha is Associate Dean for Pharmacoinformatics and Data Science at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. His primary fields of research are cheminformatics and quantitative structure-activity relationship modeling in the context of drug discovery. As of 2015, Tropsha has been an associate editor of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling.

#1253

John E. Hodge

#44325

Overall Influence

1914 - 1996 (82 years)

John Edward Hodge was an American chemist, born in Kansas City, Kansas, best known for establishing the mechanisms in the Maillard reaction pathway. Early life Hodge was born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1914 to mother Annabelle Hodge and father John Alfred Hodge. He had one younger sister, Dorothy.

#1254

Raymond Martin

#53027

Overall Influence

1926 - 2020 (94 years)

Raymond Leslie Martin was an Australian chemistry professor and university administrator. He was Vice-Chancellor of Monash University from 1977 to 1987. Early life Martin grew up in Melbourne where he attended Scotch College Melbourne from grade 6 until attaining his Leaving Certificate. His father had to move suddenly to Sydney for work reasons, and whilst in Sydney Martin attended North Sydney Boys' High School for a year before returning to Melbourne for his tertiary education. His tertiary education was at the University of Melbourne and the University of Cambridge. He was an outstanding student, receiving numerous prizes and scholarships.

#1255

Hans Primas

#54002

Overall Influence

1928 - 2014 (86 years)

Hans Primas was a Swiss theoretical chemist. From 1948 to 1951 Primas studied chemistry at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences . In 1961, after his habilitation, he became associate professor and in 1966 full professor of physical and theoretical chemistry at the ETH Zurich. In 1967-68 and from 1976 to 1978 he was the head of the Department of Chemistry at the ETH Zurich.

#1256

Swaminathan Sivaram

#61654

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Swaminathan Sivaram is an Indian polymer chemist, inventor, institution builder and a former director of the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. He is known for his pioneering work on alkylation of tertiary alkyl halides with trialkylaluminum and olefin polymerization and holds the highest number of US patents by an Indian working outside the US. He is a fellow of several significant professional organizations. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri, in 2006, for his contributions to Indian science.

#1257

Jingguang Chen

#38906

Overall Influence

Jingguang Chen is a Chinese-American chemical engineer. He is the Thayer Lindsley Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University, with a joint appointment as Senior Chemist at the U.S. Department of Energy Brookhaven National Laboratory. Over the course of his career Chen has made significant contributions to the fundamental understanding and use of novel materials for catalytic and electrocatalytic applications. Central to his research efforts have been the development of bimetallic and transition metal carbide catalysts that eliminate or significantly reduce the loading of expensi...

#1258

Graham John Hills

Graham John Hills

#42830

Overall Influence

1926 - 2014 (88 years)

Sir Graham Hills was a physical chemist, principal of the University of Strathclyde, and a governor of the BBC. He was born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex and educated at Westcliff High School for Boys and Birkbeck College, London . He was knighted in 1988 for his services to education.

#1259

Fumio Matsumura

#86252

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

#1260

Rose Amal

#51889

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

#1261

Stephen Neidle

#85927

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Stephen Neidle is a British X-ray crystallographer, chemist and drug designer working at the UCL School of Pharmacy. His area of scientific research has been in nucleic acid structure and recognition, and the research topic of quadruplexes.

#1262

William Herman Prusoff

#86304

Overall Influence

#1263

John Corbett

#78919

Overall Influence

1925 - 2013 (88 years)

John Dudley Corbett was an American chemist who specialized in inorganic solid-state chemistry. At Iowa State and Ames Lab, Corbett lead a research group that focused on the synthesis and characterization of two broad classes of materials, notably Zintl phases and condensed transition metal halide clusters. Both classes of materials are important for their uses, for instance thermoelectrics, and for the theoretical advances they made possible by working to understand their complex bonding and electronic properties.

#1264

Alan Davison

#72530

Overall Influence

1936 - 2015 (79 years)

Alan Davison FRS was a British inorganic chemist known for his work on transition metals, and a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Education He earned a B.Sc. from Swansea University in 1959, and Ph.D. from Imperial College London in 1962, supervised by Nobel Laureate Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson.

#1265

Nenad I. Trinajstić

#86420

Overall Influence

#1266

Aharon Gedanken

#86445

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (85 years)

#1267

Charles G. Overberger

#71492

Overall Influence

1920 - 1997 (77 years)

Charles Gilbert Overberger was an American chemist, specialising in polymer research and education. Biography Overberger was born in Barnesboro, Pennsylvania on October 12, 1920. In 1941, he was awarded a B.Sc. at the Pennsylvania State University where he was a member of Sigma Pi fraternity, Phi Eta Sigma honor society, and Phi Lambda Upsilon honor society. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois in 1944, where he continued to work as a research assistant for two years.

#1268

Brian Coppola

#41728

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Brian P. Coppola is a chemistry professor at the University of Michigan. Raised in Methuen, Massachusetts, and Derry, New Hampshire, Coppola is the eldest of four children of Frank and Shirley Coppola. He graduated from Pinkerton Academy in 1974. In 1978, he received a B.S. from the University of New Hampshire, then was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1984, having carried out research under the supervision of Barry M. Trost. In 1982, he joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater. He was hired at the University of Michigan in 1986 as a Visiting Assistant Professor, and then as a Lecturer .

#1269

Alírio Rodrigues

#62746

Overall Influence

Alírio Rodrigues is a Portuguese chemical engineer. He is emeritus Professor of Chemical Engineering at Universidade do Porto and Director of the Laboratory of Separation and Reaction Engineering. His research interests are in the fields of chemical engineering, bioengineering and materials engineering. He is the author of over 600 articles on catalysis and reaction engineering, a number of books, and of six patents. He is among the most cited chemical engineers according to the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities He is on the Editorial Board of Chemical Engineering Journal. Th...

#1270

Kai-Uwe Hinrichs

#41935

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (62 years)

Kai-Uwe Hinrichs is a German biogeochemist and organic geochemist known for his research of microbial life below the ocean bed – the deep biosphere. He earned his PhD in organic geochemistry from University of Oldenburg in Germany in 1997. He teaches and conducts research at University of Bremen as head, Organic Chemistry Group at the MARUM Center for Marine Environmental Sciences. Hinrichs was co-chief scientist of Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology Expedition 337 on board the drilling vessel Chikyū, which set a world record for scientific drilling, reaching 2,111 meters below the seafloor off Shimokita Peninsula of Japan in the northwest Pacific Ocean.

#1271

James R. Gillette

#86687

Overall Influence

#1272

Akira Isogai

#86717

Overall Influence

#1273

Bruce C. Gates

#86726

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (85 years)

#1274

Herman van Bekkum

#82532

Overall Influence

1932 - 2020 (88 years)

Herman van Bekkum was a Dutch organic chemist. He was professor of Catalysis in Organic Chemistry between 1971 and 1998 at Delft University of Technology. He served as rector magnificus of the university between 1975 and 1976. He was an expert in the field of carbohydrate chemistry and zeolites.

#1275

Stefano Passerini

#86792

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

#1276

Margaret Brimble

Margaret Brimble

#45210

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Dame Margaret Anne Brimble is a New Zealand chemist. Her research has included investigations of shellfish toxins and means to treat brain injuries. Early life, family, and education Brimble was born in Auckland on 20 August 1961, the daughter of Mary Anne MacMillan and Herbert MacMillan, and was encouraged by her grandmother to value education. She attended Diocesan School for Girls, Auckland from 1972 to 1978, and was dux in her final year.

#1277

Jacqueline Barton

Jacqueline Barton

#83868

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

Jacqueline K. Barton , is an American chemist. She worked as a professor of chemistry at Hunter College , and at Columbia University before joining the California Institute of Technology. In 1997 she became the Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial Professor of Chemistry and from 2009 to 2019, the Norman Davidson Leadership Chair of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Caltech. She currently is the John G. Kirkwood and Arthur A. Noyes Professor of Chemistry.

#1278

John Bridgwater

#61938

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (87 years)

John Bridgwater FREng was a Shell Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Life Bridgwater was born 10 January 1938 and went to Solihull School. He gained a BA in chemical engineering at St Catharine's College, Cambridge in 1959, an MSE in chemical engineering at Princeton University in 1961. He then worked for Courtaulds before returning to Cambridge, becoming a lecturer in 1964 and obtaining a PhD in 1973.

#1279

Glenn d. Prestwich

#86976

Overall Influence

#1280

George R. Newkome

#73215

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (87 years)

George R. Newkome is an American scientist and chemist, currently the Professor of Polymer Science and Chemistry and James and Vanita Oelschlager Professor of Science and Technology at University of Akron, and has also published both science papers and books, being largely cited and collected in both capacities.

#1281

C. Robin Ganellin

#31598

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (91 years)

Charon Robin Ganellin FRS is a British medicinal chemist, and Emeritus Smith Kline and French Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, at University College London. He has contributed much to the field of drug discovery and development. His most outstanding achievement was the discovery of cimetidine, a drug used to combat stomach ulcers, when he was working at Smith Kline and French. He has received many awards and much recognition for his scientific pursuits over the years. He now lives near London and is a professor at University College London.

#1282

Ram Charan Mehrotra

#77131

Overall Influence

1922 - 2004 (82 years)

Ram Charan Mehrotra was an Indian analytical and organometallic chemist, academic, educationist and the vice chancellor of the Universities of Delhi and Allahabad. He was known for his studies on the chemical theory of indicators, alkoxides and carboxylates of many elements. He was an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, Indian Chemical Society, Chemical Society of London, Royal Institute of Chemistry, National Academy of Sciences, India and Indian Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientifi...

#1283

Juan J. de Pablo

Juan J. de Pablo

#36277

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Juan J. de Pablo is a chemical engineer, Liew Family professor in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. In 2018, he was appointed Vice President for National Laboratories at the University of Chicago, a title which later expanded to include Science Strategy, Innovation and Global Initiatives in 2020. As of 2021, he is Executive Vice President for Science, Innovation, National Laboratories and Global Initiatives at the University of Chicago. He is known for his research on the thermophysical properties of soft materials.

#1284

Andrew Ian Cooper

Andrew Ian Cooper

#57346

Overall Influence

Andrew Ian Cooper FRS is Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Liverpool. Education Cooper was educated at the University of Nottingham where he was awarded a PhD for research supervised by Martyn Poliakoff.

#1285

Hansruedi von Gunten

#73714

Overall Influence

1928 - 2021 (93 years)

Hansruedi von Gunten was a Swiss chemist and mountaineer. Together with Dolf Reist he succeeded on May 24, 1956, the third ascent of Mount Everest. Early years and life Gunten graduated in Bern, the Municipal Gymnasium , studied at the University of Bern chemistry , physics and geology , doctored from 1954 to 1956 at the Physical Institute at FG Houtermans on age determinations of Congolese minerals and radioactive bleach from Mount Vesuvius. He refused a call to the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. From 1970 until his retirement in 1993, he was a full professor of radiochemistry. He ...

#1286

H. J. Bernstein

#87148

Overall Influence

#1287

Anthony Gordon Fane

#87150

Overall Influence

#1288

Daniel T. Gillespie

#87190

Overall Influence

#1289

Peter Mazur

#87206

Overall Influence

#1290

Boyd Haley

#31071

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (85 years)

Boyd Eugene Haley is an American anti-vaccine activist and retired professor of chemistry at the University of Kentucky. Education and career A native of Greensburg, Indiana, Haley graduated from its New Point High School in 1959. Four years later, he received a bachelor's degree from Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana, and then entered a teaching fellowship at Howard University. Thereafter, he served as a U.S. Army medic a few years.

#1291

Faiza Al-Kharafi

#22260

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Faiza Mohammed Al-Kharafi is a Kuwaiti chemist and academic. She was the president of Kuwait University from 1993 to 2002, and the first woman to head a major university in the Middle East. She is the vice president of the World Academy of Sciences.

#1292

James G. Anderson

#43711

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

James Gilbert Anderson is the Philip S. Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry at Harvard University, a position he has held since 1982. From 1998 to 2001, he was the chairman of Harvard's department of chemistry and chemical biology. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. His awards include the 1993 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award, the 1996 Arthur L. Day Prize and Lectureship and the 2021 Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences.

#1293

Robin Perutz

#57528

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Robin Perutz FRS is a professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of York, where he was formerly head of department between 2000 and 2004.He is also the son of the Nobel Prize winner Max Perutz.

#1294

Paul Houston

#64103

Overall Influence

Paul Lyon Houston is Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Cornell University and Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Education and career Houston started his professorial career at Cornell University in 1975 following undergraduate study at Yale University, doctoral work at MIT, and postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley. He became chair of Cornell's department of chemistry and chemical biology , senior associate dean of the college of arts and sciences , and the Peter J. W. Debye Professor of Chemistry. Most recen...

#1295

Daryle H. Busch

#82741

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (97 years)

Daryle Hadley Busch was an American inorganic chemist. A native of Carterville, Illinois, born in 1928, Busch attended Southern Illinois University and earned a master's, and doctorate in chemistry from the University of Illinois. Upon graduation, he began teaching at the Ohio State University. Busch was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1981. He retired from OSU in 1988, a year after he had been appointed to a presidential professorship. Busch then joined the University of Kansas faculty as Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. He was president of the American Chemical Societ...

#1296

Ivano Bertini

#87481

Overall Influence

#1297

Fan Chunhai

#82549

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (51 years)

Fan Chunhai is a Chinese chemist and Chair Professor at the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University. Early life and education Fan was born in Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu province in March 1974. He received his a bachelor's degree and doctor's degree from Nanjing University in 1996 and 2000, respectively. He was a postdoc at the University of California, Santa Barbara under Alan J. Heeger.

#1298

Bernard Meunier

Bernard Meunier

#53284

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Bernard Meunier is a French chemist and academic. He has been a member of the Académie des sciences since 1999. Career After a doctorate at the University of Montpellier in November 1971 under the supervision of Robert Corriu, he obtained a state doctorate at the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay in June 1977 .

#1299

Geoffrey C. Bond

#87653

Overall Influence

#1300

Minze Stuiver

#71578

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (96 years)

Minze Stuiver was a Dutch geochemist who was at the forefront of geoscience research from the 1960s until his retirement in 1998. He helped transform radiocarbon dating from a simple tool for archaeology and geology to a precise technique with applications in solar physics, oceanography, geochemistry, and carbon dynamics. Minze Stuiver's research encompassed the use of radiocarbon to understand solar cycles and radiocarbon production, ocean circulation, lake carbon dynamics and archaeology as well as the use of stable isotopes to document past climate changes.

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