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).
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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,
#201
Alfred Hershey
#892
Overall Influence
1908 - 1997 (89 years)
Alfred Day Hershey was an American Nobel Prize–winning bacteriologist and geneticist. Early Years Hershey was born in Owosso, Michigan to Robert Day and Alma Wilbur Hershey. He earned a B.S. in chemistry in 1930, and Ph.D. in bacteriology in 1934 from Michigan State University. Shortly after, Hershey accepted a faculty position at Washington University in St. Louis, serving as an instructor of bacteriology and immunology from 1934-1950.
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Andrew Streitwieser
#25133
Overall Influence
1927 - 2022 (95 years)
Andrew Streitwieser was an American chemist known for his contributions to physical organic chemistry. Streitwieser was born in 1927 in Buffalo, New York and he grew up in New York City. He attended Columbia College and then Columbia University where he earned a PhD in the research group of William von Eggers Doering in 1952. He then was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of John D. Roberts at MIT. He has been Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley since 1953.
Go to Profile#203
Mark Ratner
#13745
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Mark A. Ratner is an American chemist and professor emeritus at Northwestern University whose work focuses on the interplay between molecular structure and molecular properties. He is widely credited as the "father of molecular-scale electronics" thanks to his groundbreaking work with Arieh Aviram in 1974 that first envisioned how electronic circuit elements might be constructed from single molecules and how these circuits might behave.
Go to Profile#204
Werner Stumm
#25568
Overall Influence
1924 - 1999 (75 years)
Werner Stumm was a Swiss chemist. After earning his doctorate in inorganic chemistry at the University of Zürich in 1952 he moved to the U.S. where he was active as a professor at Harvard University until 1969. From 1970 until 1992 he was head of the Swiss Federal Water Resources Centre EAWAG.
Go to Profile#205
Isabella Karle
#10834
Overall Influence
1921 - 2017 (96 years)
Isabella Karle was an American chemist who was instrumental in developing techniques to extract plutonium chloride from a mixture containing plutonium oxide. For her scientific work, Karle received the Garvan–Olin Medal, Gregori Aminoff Prize, Bower Award, National Medal of Science, and the Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Award .
Go to Profile#206
David E. Nichols
#4270
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
David Earl Nichols is an American pharmacologist and medicinal chemist. Previously the Robert C. and Charlotte P. Anderson Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology at Purdue University, Nichols has worked in the field of psychoactive drugs since 1969. While still a graduate student, he patented the method that is used to make the optical isomers of hallucinogenic amphetamines. His contributions include the synthesis and reporting of escaline, LSZ, 6-APB, 2C-I-NBOMe and other NBOMe variants , and several others, as well as the coining of the term "entactogen".
Go to Profile#207
Alan Fersht
#9910
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Sir Alan Roy Fersht is a British chemist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, and an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. He was Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge from 2012 to 2018. He works on protein folding, and is sometimes described as a founder of protein engineering.
Go to Profile#208
Avel·lí Corma Canós
#26683
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Prof. Dr. Avel·lí Corma i Canós is a Valencian chemist distinguished for his world-leading work on heterogeneous catalysis. He received a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the University of València and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 1976. In 1979 he started working as a researcher at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, and in 1987 he was a full professor. He has been carrying out research in heterogeneous catalysis in academia and in collaboration with companies. He has worked on fundamental aspects of acid-base and redox catalysis with the aim of understanding the nature of the active sites and reaction mechanisms.
Go to Profile#209
Maurice Loyal Huggins
#29842
Overall Influence
#210
George Rieveschl
#10756
Overall Influence
1916 - 2007 (91 years)
George Rieveschl was an American chemist and professor. He was the inventor of the popular antihistamine diphenhydramine , which he first made during a search for synthetic alternatives to scopolamine.
Go to Profile#211
Steven M. Weinreb
#29380
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Steven M. Weinreb is an American chemist and is a professor of chemistry at Pennsylvania State University in United States. Together with Steven Nahm, he developed the Weinreb ketone synthesis, which allows for mono-addition of an organometallic reagent such as a Grignard reagent or organolithium reagent to an amide.
Go to Profile#212
Nadrian Seeman
#16195
Overall Influence
1945 - 2021 (76 years)
Nadrian C. "Ned" Seeman was an American nanotechnologist and crystallographer known for inventing the field of DNA nanotechnology. Biography Seeman studied biochemistry at the University of Chicago and crystallography at the University of Pittsburgh. He was a postdoctoral researcher with Alexander Rich at MIT. He became a faculty member at the State University of New York at Albany, and in 1988 moved to the Department of Chemistry at New York University.
Go to Profile#213
William Summer Johnson
#19097
Overall Influence
1913 - 1995 (82 years)
William Summer Johnson was an American chemist and teacher. From 1940 to 1958, Johnson was an instructor and then professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 1958, he moved to Stanford University in California where he spent the remainder of his scientific career. He did important research in the artificial production of steroids and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1987.
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Henri B. Kagan
#15971
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Henri Boris Kagan is currently an emeritus professor at the Université Paris-Sud in France. He is widely recognized as a pioneer in the field of asymmetric catalysis. His discoveries have had far-reaching impacts on the pharmaceutical industry.
Go to Profile#215
Zhenan Bao
#14079
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Zhenan Bao is a chemical engineer. She serves as K. K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, with courtesy appointments in Chemistry and Material Science and Engineering. She served as the Department Chair of Chemical Engineering from 2018 to 2022. Bao is known for her work on organic field-effect transistors and organic semiconductors, for applications including flexible electronics and electronic skin.
Go to Profile#216
Howard Zimmerman
#13181
Overall Influence
1926 - 2012 (86 years)
Howard E. Zimmerman was a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1980 and the recipient of the 1986 American Institute of Chemists Chemical Pioneer Award.
Go to Profile#217
John W. Huffman
#7309
Overall Influence
1932 - 2022 (90 years)
John William Huffman was a professor of organic chemistry at Clemson University who first synthesised novel cannabinoids. His research, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, was focused on making a drug to target endocannabinoid receptors in the body.
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Haruo Hosoya
#16468
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Haruo Hosoya is a Japanese chemist and emeritus professor of Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan. He is the namesake of the Hosoya index used in discrete mathematics and computational chemistry. Hosoya was born in Kamakura, Japan to a family of an office worker. During 1955-1959 he studied at the University of Tokyo. In 1964 he wrote his Ph.D. thesis, "Study on the Structure of Reactive Intermediates and Reaction Mechanism". After postdoc work abroad , in 1969 he became associate professor at the Ochanomizu University, where he worked for 33 years until his retirement in 2002. After retirement...
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Animesh Chakravorty
#14576
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Animesh Chakravorty FNA, FASc is a Bengali Indian inorganic chemist. In 1975, he was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in chemistry by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.
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Michael Karas
#16772
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Michael Karas is a German physical chemistry scientist and Professor, known for his researches on matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization , a technique in mass spectrometry. Michael Karas studied Chemistry at the University of Bonn, where he obtained a PhD in the field of physical chemistry in 1982. From 1983 to 1986, he was part of the Hillenkamp research group in the Institut für Biophysik at Goethe University Frankfurt. In 1987, he followed Hillenkamp at Münster and both formed a group in the Faculty of Medicine at University of Münster. He returned to Frankfurt in 1995 as a full profe...
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Friedrich Asinger
#17033
Overall Influence
1907 - 1999 (92 years)
Friedrich Asinger was an Austrian chemist and professor for Technical Chemistry. He is well known for his development of a multi-component reaction, the Asinger reaction for the synthesis of 3-thiazolines.
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R. Graham Cooks
#14487
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Robert Graham Cooks is the Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in the Aston Laboratories for Mass Spectrometry at Purdue University. He is an ISI Highly Cited Chemist, with over 1,000 publications and an H-index of 144.
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Roy McWeeny
#16015
Overall Influence
1924 - 2021 (97 years)
Roy McWeeny was a British academic physicist and chemist. McWeeny was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in May 1924. His first degree was in physics from the University of Leeds. He then obtained a D.Phil. in mathematical physics and quantum theory under the supervision of Charles Coulson at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford.
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Dale L. Boger
#22490
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Dale Lester Boger is an American medicinal and organic chemist and former chair of the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA. Dale Boger was born on August 22, 1953, in Hutchinson, Kansas. He studied chemistry at the University of Kansas , and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1980 under Professor E. J. Corey. Following graduate school, he joined the faculty at the University of Kansas where he became assistant/associate professor of medicinal chemistry .
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Ruth R. Benerito
#11856
Overall Influence
1916 - 2013 (97 years)
Ruth Mary Rogan Benerito was an American chemist and inventor known for her work related to the textile industry, notably including the development of wash-and-wear cotton fabrics. She held 55 patents.
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Rutherford Aris
#17004
Overall Influence
1929 - 2005 (76 years)
Rutherford "Gus" Aris was a chemical engineer, control theorist, applied mathematician, and a regents professor emeritus of chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota . Early life Aris was born in Bournemouth, England, to Algernon Aris and Janet . From a young age, Aris was interested in chemistry. Aris's father owned a photo-finishing works, where he would experiment with chemicals and reactions. He attended St Martin's, a small local kindergarten and moved to St Wulfran's, a local preparatory school, now Queen Elizabeth's School. Here, he studied Latin and was encouraged to continue pursuing his interest in chemistry.
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Jean-Marie Tarascon
#14191
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Jean-Marie Tarascon FRSC is Professor of Chemistry at the Collège de France in Paris and Director of the French Research Network on Electrochemical Energy Storage . Education Tarascon was educated at the University of Bordeaux, where he was awarded a Diplôme d'études universitaires générales in physics and chemistry, a Master of Science degree in chemical engineering, and a PhD in solid-state chemistry in 1981.
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John Emsley
#18235
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
John Emsley is a UK popular science writer, broadcaster and academic specialising in chemistry. He researched and lectured at King's College London for 25 years, authoring or co-authoring about 100 papers, and then became Science Writer in Residence at Imperial College London in 1990. From 1997 to 2002 he was Science Writer in Residence at the Department of Chemistry at Cambridge University, England, during which time he started and wrote the newsletter Chem@Cam. He is the author of more than 12 books and several of them have been translated into other languages.
Go to Profile#229
Edward Abraham
#3903
Overall Influence
1913 - 1999 (86 years)
Sir Edward Penley Abraham, was an English biochemist instrumental in the development of the first antibiotics penicillin and cephalosporin. Early life and education Abraham was born on 10 June 1913 at 47 South View Road, Shirley, Southampton. From 1924 Abraham attended King Edward VI School, Southampton, before achieving a First in Chemistry at The Queen's College, Oxford.
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Asima Chatterjee
#8832
Overall Influence
1917 - 2006 (89 years)
Asima Chatterjee was an Indian organic chemist noted for her work in the fields of organic chemistry and phytomedicine. Her most notable work includes research on vinca alkaloids, the development of anti-epileptic drugs, and development of anti-malarial drugs. She also authored a considerable volume of work on medicinal plants of the Indian subcontinent. She was the first woman to receive a Doctorate of Science from an Indian university.
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John Ross
#15521
Overall Influence
1926 - 2017 (91 years)
John Ross was a scientist in physical chemistry and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. Unraveling the mechanisms of complex chemical reactions, Ross opened new avenues in physical chemistry through the development of groundbreaking methods to study complex reactions within intact systems. His theoretical and experimental studies in statistical mechanics and chemical kinetics proved new means to reveal details of biochemical reactions taking place far from equilibrium and involving many chemical species.
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Jacques Dubochet
#2093
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Jacques Dubochet is a retired Swiss biophysicist. He is a former researcher at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, and an honorary professor of biophysics at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
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Jeff Dahn
#12572
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Jeff Dahn is a Professor in the Department of Physics & Atmospheric Science and the Department of Chemistry at Dalhousie University. He is recognized as one of the pioneering developers of the lithium-ion battery, which is now used worldwide in laptop computers, cell-phones, cars and many other mobile devices. Although Dr. Dahn made numerous contribution to the development of lithium-ion batteries, his most important discovery was intercalation of Li+ ions into graphite from solvents comprising ethylene carbonate, which was the final piece of the puzzle in the invention of commercial Li-ion battery.
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John Bockris
#9027
Overall Influence
1923 - 2013 (90 years)
Bernhardt Patrick John O’Mara Bockris was a South African professor of chemistry, latterly at Texas A&M University. During his long and prolific career he published some 700 papers and two dozen books. His best known work is in electrochemistry but his output also extended to environmental chemistry, photoelectrochemistry and bioelectrochemistry. In the 1990s he experimented with cold fusion and transmutation, topics on which his unorthodox views provoked controversy.
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Wolfgang A. Herrmann
#7373
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Wolfgang Anton Herrmann is a German chemist and academic administrator. From 1995 to 2019, he was President of the Technical University of Munich. Education Herrmann attended the Donau-Gymnasium Kelheim, where he passed the Abitur in 1967. He then studied chemistry at the Technical University of Munich on a scholarship from Cusanuswerk, where he wrote his diploma thesis in 1971 under the supervision of Ernst Otto Fischer, a later Nobel Prize laureate. He received his doctorate in 1973 at the University of Regensburg. After a research fellowship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft with Phil...
Go to Profile#236
Michael Buback
#31473
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Michael Buback is a chemist and professor at Göttingen University. He is the son of Siegfried Buback, the former chief federal prosecutor of Germany who was assassinated by Red Army Fraction militant group in the German Autumn 1977.
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Richard H. Holm
#22875
Overall Influence
1933 - 2021 (88 years)
Richard Hadley Holm was an American inorganic chemist. Biography A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Holm received his B.S. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1955 and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959 under the direction of F. Albert Cotton. As an independent researcher, he joined the chemistry faculty at Harvard University in 1962. He was later on the faculties of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University prior to returning to Harvard in 1980. He was the Higgins Professor of Chemistry at Har...
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Manfred T. Reetz
#18965
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Manfred Theodor Reetz is a German chemist and professor of organic chemistry, who served as director of the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research from 1991 until 2011. His research focuses on directed evolution, enzymes in organic chemistry, and stereoselective biocatalysis.
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Peidong Yang
#11219
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Peidong Yang is a Chinese–American chemist, material scientist, and businessman. He is currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Materials Science. His research group studies the synthesis of nanomaterials and their electronic and optical properties. He is also a Department Head at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, Senior Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Deputy Director of the Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems .
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Richard Lerner
#11561
Overall Influence
1938 - 2021 (83 years)
Richard Alan Lerner was an American research chemist. He was best known for his work on catalytic antibodies and combinatorial antibody libraries. Lerner served as President of The Scripps Research Institute from 1987 until January 1, 2012, and was a member of its Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology, in La Jolla, California.
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Helen Sharman
#6947
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Helen Patricia Sharman, CMG, OBE, HonFRSC is a British chemist and cosmonaut who became the first British person, first Western European woman and first privately funded woman in space, as well as the first woman to visit the Mir space station, in May 1991.
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Younan Xia
#25178
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Younan Xia is a Chinese-American chemist, materials scientist, and bioengineer. He is the Brock Family Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Nanomedicine in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, with joint appointments in the School of Chemistry & Biochemistry, the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, and Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering & Bioscience at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#243
Richard Bruce Silverman
#7101
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Richard Bruce Silverman is the Patrick G. Ryan/Aon Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University. His group's main focus is basic and translational research into central nervous system disorders and cancer. He is known for the discovery of pregabalin, which is marketed by Pfizer under the brand name Lyrica.
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Jan-Olov Liljenzin
#18085
Overall Influence
1936 - 2019 (83 years)
Jan-Olov Liljenzin was a Swedish chemist and professor in nuclear chemistry. Liljenzin was professor at University of Oslo, Nuclear Chemistry, Norway 1986-1989, and at Chalmers University of Technology, Nuclear Chemistry, Gothenburg, Sweden, between 1989 and 2001.
Go to Profile#245
Michelle Francl
#17443
Overall Influence
Michelle M. Francl is an American chemist. Francl is a professor of chemistry, and has taught physical chemistry, general chemistry and mathematical modeling at Bryn Mawr College since 1986. Francl is noted for developing new methodology in computational chemistry, including the 6-31G* basis set for Na to Ar and electrostatic potential charges. She received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine in 1983
Go to Profile#246
Philip Kocienski
#26346
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Philip Joseph Kocienski is a British organic chemist. He is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Leeds. Research Kocienski has made contributions to the design and development of new organometallic reagents in synthesis, and the applications of synthetic methods to complex natural products. Early work with Basil Lythgoe on the scope and stereochemistry of the Julia olefination with alpha-metallated sulphone reagents emphasised the value of this method in organic chemistry. His major contribution has been to research the synthesis and chemistry of novel metallated enol ethers, and to d...
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Jack D. Dunitz
#5579
Overall Influence
1923 - 2021 (98 years)
Jack David Dunitz FRS was a British chemist and widely known chemical crystallographer. He was Professor of Chemical Crystallography at the ETH Zurich from 1957 until his official retirement in 1990. He held Visiting Professorships in the United States, Israel, Japan, Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom.
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Nicholas Turro
#27960
Overall Influence
1938 - 2012 (74 years)
Nicholas J. Turro was an American chemist, Wm. P. Schweitzer Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University. He was a world renowned organic chemist and leading world expert on organic photochemistry. He was the recipient of the 2011 Arthur C. Cope Award in Organic Chemistry, given annually "to recognize outstanding achievement in the field of organic chemistry, the significance of which has become apparent within the five years preceding the year in which the award will be considered." He was also the recipient of the 2000 Willard Gibbs Award, which recognizes "eminent chemists who...have ...
Go to Profile#249
Ferdi Schüth
#20723
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Ferdi Schüth is a German chemist. He was born 8 July 1960 in Allagen/Warstein. He studied chemistry at the University of Münster from 1978 till 1984 and law from 1983 till 1988. After finishing his Ph.D. thesis on inorganic chemistry at the University of Münster in 1988 he did a postdoctoral studies in the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He did his habilitation in 1995 at the University of Mainz. After being professor for inorganic chemistry at the University of Frankfurt am Main from 1995 till 1998 he became director at the Max Planck Institute für Kohlenforschung Mülheim/Ruhr.
Go to Profile#250
Rachid Yazami
#8746
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Rachid Yazami is a Moroccan scientist, engineer, and inventor. He is best known for his critical role in the development of the graphite anode for lithium-ion batteries and his research on fluoride ion batteries.
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