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,
#1551
Erin Johnson
#64693
Overall Influence
Erin Johnson is a Canadian computational chemist. She holds the Herzberg–Becke Chair at Dalhousie University. She works on density functional theory and intermolecular interactions. Education and early career Johnson is from Ottawa, Canada. She completed her B.Sc. Hons. in Integrated Science at Carleton University in 2004. She earned her PhD at Queen's University in 2007, working with Axel D. Becke. In 2006, they demonstrated a simple potential for exchange energies; the Becke–Johnson potential. She developed the exchange-hole dipole moment dispersion model , which describes intermolecular interactions.
Go to Profile#1552
Hans-Ulrich Reissig
#92075
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Hans-Ulrich Reissig is a German chemist and was a full professor of Organic Chemistry at FU Berlin. Education and academic career Reissig was born in Helmbrechts, Bavaria, Germany. He studied chemistry at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München from 1970 to 1975, where he completed his PhD in 1978 under the supervision of Rolf Huisgen, with a thesis "Neue Beiträge zu den Additionen der Diazoalkane und zur Chemie der 3H-Pyrazole" . After a postdoctoral research stay at University of British Columbia, Vancouver, with Edward Piers , he started his independent research at the Julius-Maximilians-...
Go to Profile#1553
Paul Barbara
#56068
Overall Influence
1953 - 2010 (57 years)
Paul Frank Barbara was an American chemist. His research interests focused on the understanding of the molecular structure and dynamics of complex chemical systems, including organic semi-conductors for photovoltaic applications, proton and electron transfer reactions, the hydrated electron and intermediates in the reverse transcription mechanism of HIV-1. His laboratory developed and applied novel ultrafast and single molecule spectroscopies to study the complexity of these chemical system.
Go to Profile#1554
C. E. H. Bawn
#94460
Overall Influence
1908 - 2003 (95 years)
Cecil Edwin Henry Bawn, was a British chemist and academic, specialising in chemical kinetics. He was Grant-Brunner Professor of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry and Brunner Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Liverpool. He had previously taught at the University of Manchester and the University of Bristol, before serving at the Ministry of Supply during the Second World War. He was president of the Faraday Society from 1967 to 1968.
Go to Profile#1555
Valentin Parmon
#41647
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Valentin Nikolayevich Parmon is a Russian scientist who is credited with inventing new and improved catalytic processes in the field of energy technology. Career Parmon graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1972 and received a postgraduate physical and mathematical sciences degree from the same institution in 1975. He went on to work as a researcher, first at the Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics in Moscow, and then from 1977, at the Boreskov Institute of Catalysis in Novosibirsk. From 1995 to 2015, he served as the director of the institute, and he is currently...
Go to Profile#1556
Ernest B. Yeager
#96129
Overall Influence
#1557
T. Alan Hatton
#90350
Overall Influence
T. Alan Hatton is the Ralph Landau Professor and the Director of the David H. Koch School of Chemical Engineering Practice at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As part of the MIT Energy Initiative, he co-directs the Center for Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage. His work focuses on the development of purification technologies of various kinds for use with air, water, and other substances.
Go to Profile#1558
Volkmar Braun
#96142
Overall Influence
#1559
Donald R. Blake
#83476
Overall Influence
Donald R. Blake is an American chemist currently a distinguished professor at University of California, Irvine and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Geophysical Union.
Go to Profile#1560
Tatsuo Miyazawa
#96189
Overall Influence
#1561
Javier Pérez–ramírez
#96272
Overall Influence
#1562
Isamu Shiina
#37278
Overall Influence
is professor of chemistry at Tokyo University of Science , Japan. He completed his BSc and MSc at TUS, and he joined the group of Prof. Teruaki Mukaiyama at TUS as an assistant professor in 1992. After receiving his PhD from the University of Tokyo in 1997, he was promoted to lecturer at the TUS, and then appointed to an associate professor and a full professor . He has received the Chemical Society of Japan Award for Young Chemists , the CSJ Award for Creative Work , and the Commendation for Science and Technology Prizes by the Ministries of Japan . His research interests include the development of useful synthetic methods and the total synthesis of natural products.
Go to Profile#1563
George Richardson Porter
#96294
Overall Influence
#1564
Neil Garg
#78820
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (47 years)
Neil K. Garg is currently a Distinguished professor of chemistry and holds the Kenneth N. Trueblood Endowed Chair at the University of California, Los Angeles. Garg's research is focused on the chemical synthesis of organic compounds, with an emphasis on the development of new strategies for the preparation of complex molecules possessing unique structural, biological, and physical properties. His group has made breakthroughs in catalysis, especially strong bond activation of esters and amides using nickel catalysts, and in the understanding and utilization of strained intermediates, such as arynes, cyclic alkynes, and cyclic allenes.
Go to Profile#1565
Hu Hongwen
#46547
Overall Influence
1925 - 2016 (91 years)
Hu Hongwen was a Chinese organic chemist, educator and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences . He was known as the Chief editor of Chinese higher education textbook Organic Chemistry. Hu died on 19 May 2016 at the age of 91 in Nanjing.
Go to Profile#1566
Roger Stephen Porter
#96321
Overall Influence
#1567
Tuan Vo‐dinh
#96338
Overall Influence
#1568
Christopher W. Jones
#83981
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (52 years)
Christopher W. Jones is an American chemical engineer and researcher on catalysis and carbon dioxide capture. In 2022 he is the John Brock III School Chair and Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and adjunct professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, Georgia. Previously he served as associate vice president for research at Georgia Tech , including a stint as interim executive vice-president for research in 2018.
Go to Profile#1569
Julian Monson Sturtevant
#96384
Overall Influence
#1570
Klaus Praefcke
#86823
Overall Influence
1933 - 2013 (80 years)
Klaus Praefcke was a German chemist. He was born in Wustrow and studied in Berlin under the supervision of Alexander Schönberg. After completing his Ph.D. in 1963 and his habilitation in 1970, he became Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Technical University of Berlin in 1971. He stayed dedicated to the research until 1998 at the same institution.
Go to Profile#1571
Michael Ian Bruce
#96468
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Professor Michael Ian Bruce DSc FAA , born and educated in England, became Professor of Physical and Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Adelaide in 1973, and was the Angas Professor of Chemistry at the University of Adelaide from 1982 until his retirement in 2009.
Go to Profile#1572
John Clifton Huffman
#96517
Overall Influence
#1573
Henryk Witek
#18156
Overall Influence
Henryk A. Witek is a chemist of Polish origin, and is a Professor of Chemistry in the National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. He obtained his scientific degrees from the Jagiellonian University and the University of Tokyo . His research interests encompass quantum and physical chemistry, applied linear algebra, as well as perturbation theory.
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Alexandros Makriyannis
#60358
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (86 years)
Alexandros Makriyannis is an American biochemist and professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the department of medicinal chemistry at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, where he directs the Center for Drug Discovery and holds the George Behrakis Chair of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. His research has focused on the biochemical basis of the endocannabinoid system and on the development of synthetic cannabinoids.
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Keith Hodgson
#68035
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Keith O. Hodgson is a professor of chemistry at Stanford University and formerly director of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource. Education He received his B.S. in 1969 from the University of Virginia and his Ph.D. in 1972 from University of California at Berkeley.
Go to Profile#1576
Wolfgang Lubitz
#86012
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Wolfgang Lubitz is a German chemist and biophysicist. He is currently a director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion. He is well known for his work on bacterial photosynthetic reaction centres, hydrogenase enzymes, and the oxygen-evolving complex using a variety of biophysical techniques. He has been recognized by a Festschrift for his contributions to electron paramagnetic resonance and its applications to chemical and biological systems.
Go to Profile#1577
Ronald T. Borchardt
#96639
Overall Influence
#1578
Johan Åqvist
#76287
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Johan Åqvist is a Swedish biochemist and academic. He is a professor of theoretical chemistry in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Uppsala University and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences . He also served as chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry between 2021 and 2023.
Go to Profile#1579
Mojtaba Shamsipur
#96675
Overall Influence
#1580
Alison Butler
#73879
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Alison Butler is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She works on bioinorganic chemistry and metallobiochemistry. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , the American Chemical Society , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , and the Royal Society of Chemistry . She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Go to Profile#1581
Mohammad Ali Zolfigol
#73964
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Mohammad Ali Zolfigol is an Iranian professor of chemistry and current Minister of Science, Research and Technology, since August 25, 2021. He was the President of Bu-Ali Sina University from August 2, 2008 to June 8, 2014. He is also a permanent member of the Academy of Sciences of Iran.
Go to Profile#1582
Robert W. Schunk
#96781
Overall Influence
#1583
Ray Freeman
#59208
Overall Influence
1932 - 2022 (90 years)
Raymond Freeman FRS was a British chemist and professor at Jesus College, Cambridge who made important contributions to NMR spectroscopy. Education Freeman was educated at Nottingham High School where he won an Open Scholarship to Lincoln College, Oxford in December 1949 and deferred his admission to Oxford to complete his military service in the Royal Air Force as a radar instructor, reaching the rank of acting corporal, un-paid.
Go to Profile#1584
Michael Sternberg
#66022
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Michael Joseph Ezra Sternberg is a professor at Imperial College London, where he is director of the Centre for Integrative Systems Biology and Bioinformatics and Head of the Structural bioinformatics Group.
Go to Profile#1585
Paul O'Brien
#70346
Overall Influence
1954 - 2018 (64 years)
Paul O'Brien was professor of Inorganic Materials at the University of Manchester. where he served as head of the School of Chemistry from 2004 to 2009 and head of the School of Materials from 2011 to 2015. He died on 16 October 2018 at the age of 64.
Go to Profile#1586
Vy Maria Dong
#80847
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (49 years)
Vy Maria Dong is a Vietnamese-American Chancellor's Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine . Dong works on enantioselective catalysis and natural product synthesis. She received the Royal Society of Chemistry's Merck, Sharp & Dohme Award in 2020, the American Chemical Society's Elias James Corey Award in 2019, and the UCI's Distinguished Alumni Award in 2018.
Go to Profile#1587
William L. Luyben
#96900
Overall Influence
#1588
Arne Thomas
#91188
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (50 years)
Arne Thomas is a German chemist who researches porous and nanostructured materials for catalytic applications. Career Thomas studied chemistry at the University of Giessen, the University of Marburg, and at the Heriot-Watt University. He conducted his doctoral research under the direction of Markus Antonietti at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces and defended his PhD thesis in 2004. In 2005, following a postdoc position at Galen D. Stucky's lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he returned to the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces as a group leader....
Go to Profile#1589
David Harpp
#88116
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
David Noble Harpp is a Canadian chemist, science communicator and award-winning university teacher. He holds the Tomlinson Chair in Science Education at McGill University. Harpp published more than 230 chemistry articles in peer-reviewed publications, his main research interest being organosulfur and selenium molecules. In addition, 20 of his articles on teaching innovation were published. He was appointed as Tomlinson Chair in Science Education in 2013, with the mandate to "advance the understanding and practice of science education".
Go to Profile#1590
William Carl Lineberger
#82248
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (86 years)
William Carl Lineberger is an American chemist. A native of Hamlet, North Carolina, William Carl Lineberger was born to parents Caleb Henry and Evelyn Pelot Cooper Lineberger on December 5, 1939. His mother was a former teacher and his father was a railroad worker. Through his mother, Lineberger is of French Huguenot descent. As a child, Lineberger was a Boy Scout and made Eagle rank. After completing his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Lineberger began teaching at his alma mater, leaving for a research position at the U. S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory and later the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics.
Go to Profile#1591
Brigitte Sarry
#97058
Overall Influence
1920 - 2017 (97 years)
Brigitte Sarry was a German chemist and a professor at the Technical University of Berlin. Life Sarry grew up in Allenstein. After moving with her family to Göttingen, she finished her Abitur in Göttingen in 1939. Sarry studied chemistry at the University of Göttingen, interrupted by an interlude at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. She wrote her diploma thesis as well as her dissertation in the working group of Günther Rienäcker on para-hydrogen conversions on solid solutions of copper and platinum. She started her dissertation in Göttingen and finished it later at the University of Rostock.
Go to Profile#1592
Frank Hartley
#85072
Overall Influence
1911 - 1997 (86 years)
Sir Frank Hartley was a pharmacist who became Dean of the School of Pharmacy, University of London and later Vice-Chancellor of the university from 1976 to 1978. Early life and education He was born in Nelson, Lancashire, England, the son of Robinson King Hartley, a plumber, and his wife, Mary, née Holt. His father died when he was five. He attended Nelson Municipal Secondary School until 1926 and then wanted to be a teacher. However, as he was deaf in one ear he was refused a bursary and instead did a three-year apprenticeship at a Nelson pharmacy. After completing his apprenticeship he co...
Go to Profile#1593
Hillar Rootare
#56723
Overall Influence
1928 - 2008 (80 years)
Hillar Muidar Rootare was a physical chemist and materials scientist best known for his work in the development of mercury porosimetry, high pressure liquid chromatography, and formulation of the Rootare-Prenzlow Equation.
Go to Profile#1594
Esther Takeuchi
#53342
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Esther Sans Takeuchi is a materials scientist and chemical engineer, working on energy storage systems and power sources for biomedical devices. She is also a distinguished professor at Stony Brook University and a chief scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. She holds more than 150 U.S. patents. “The battery was invented once and reinvented over 100 times. I don’t own the patent. The company does. It was called Greatbatch. Now it’s called Integer Corp. When you join a company, you sign over your patent rights to the company.”
Go to Profile#1595
Marc Fontecave
#86041
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Marc Fontecave is a French chemist. An international specialist in bioinorganic chemistry, he currently teaches at the Collège de France in Paris, where he heads the Laboratory of Chemistry of Biological Processes.
Go to Profile#1596
Richard Evershed
#63483
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Richard Evershed is a Professor of Biogeochemistry and Fellow of the Royal Society. Education and career Evershed attended St Ivo School, St Ives in the late 1960s and graduated in 1978 from Nottingham Trent University with a BSc in Applied Chemistry. He undertook his PhD in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Keele, investigating pheromones in social insects. Following his PhD he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Organic Geochemistry Unit in the School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, where he worked with Professor Geoffrey Eglinton and Professor James Maxwell to develop GC/MS and HPLC methodologies to investigate porphyrins in crude oils and source rocks.
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Basil Favis
#80147
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Basil D. Favis is a full professor in Department of Chemical Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal and the director of Center for Research on High Performance Polymer and Composite Systems . Favis is the author or co-author of more than 170 scientific papers and is one of the most highly cited authors in the polymer/biopolymer blends field. In 1995 Favis was the recipient of the Syncrude Canada Innovation Award of the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering. He is the past chairman of the Macromolecular Science and Engineering Division of the Chemical Institute of Canada, a Fellow of ...
Go to Profile#1598
Odile Eisenstein
#65183
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Odile Eisenstein ForMemRS is a theoretical chemist who specializes in modelling the structure and reactivity of transition metals and lanthanide complexes. She is currently the equivalent of an Emeritus Professor at the Institut Charles Gerhardt Montpellier, équipe CTMM at Montpellier 2 University and a professor at the Hylleraas Centre for Quantum Molecular Sciences at the University of Oslo. She has been a member of the French Academy of Sciences since 2013, as the first female elect. In 2018 she was awarded the «insignes d'officier dans l’ordre de la Légion d'honneur» at the Institut de Fr...
Go to Profile#1599
Sudipta Seal
#97351
Overall Influence
#1600
Mandë Holford
#15541
Overall Influence
Mandë Holford is an associate professor in chemistry at Hunter College with scientific appointments at the American Museum of Natural History and Weill Cornell Medical College. Her interdisciplinary research covering 'mollusks to medicine' spans chemistry and biology and aims to discover, characterize, and deliver novel peptides from venomous marine snails as tools for manipulating cellular physiology in pain and cancer.
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