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,
#2101
Linda Hsieh-Wilson
#85135
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Linda Carol Hsieh-Wilson is an American chemist and the Milton and Rosalind Chang Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. She is known for her work in chemical neurobiology on understanding the structure and function of carbohydrates in the nervous system. Her studies have revealed critical roles for carbohydrates and protein glycosylation in fundamental processes ranging from cellular metabolism to memory storage. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Go to Profile#2102
Rabah Boukherroub
#109750
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
#2103
Franziska Emmerling
#107297
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (50 years)
Franziska L. Emmerling is a German chemist. Emmerling is Head of Materials Cheimstry Department and Head of the Structure Analysis Division at the German Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing . She is a privatdozent at Humboldt University.
Go to Profile#2104
Joan O. Grimalt
#109774
Overall Influence
#2105
Luc De Vuyst
#109775
Overall Influence
#2106
Senentxu Lanceros‐méndez
#109776
Overall Influence
#2107
Christopher Ober
#76719
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Christopher Kemper Ober is an American/Canadian materials scientist and engineer. , he is the Francis Norwood Bard Professor of Materials Engineering at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University and Director of the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility. Among other posts at Cornell, he has served as Interim Dean of Engineering and Director of the Department of Materials Science & Engineering in the Cornell University College of Engineering . Prior to joining Cornell University, he was a researcher at the Xerox Research Centre of Canada.
Go to Profile#2108
Nazario Martín
#109834
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
#2109
Padmanabhan Balaram
#109845
Overall Influence
#2110
Alexander Kabanov
#108589
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Alexander Viktorovich Kabanov , is a Russian and American chemist, an educator, an entrepreneur, and a researcher in the fields of drug delivery and nanomedicine. Biography and career Kabanov was born in Moscow, USSR on 27 March 1962, in the family of Soviet chemist Viktor A. Kabanov. He graduated from the Faculty of Chemistry of the Moscow State University in 1984, where he also received PhD – Candidate of Chemical Sciences in 1987 and D.Sc. – Doctor of Chemical Sciences in 1990. In 1994 he reallocated to United States to the University of Nebraska Medical Center where he served on a faculty for nearly 18 years before moving to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012.
Go to Profile#2111
Lars Mathias Blank
#56947
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Lars Mathias Blank, is a German engineer, biologist and professor at the RWTH Aachen University, and head of its Institute of Applied Microbiology. Career Blank studied Chemical Engineering from 1990 to 1997 at the University of Dortmund and Biology from 1992 to 1997 at the Ruhr University of Bochum . For his master's, he worked in the field of Metabolic Engineering in the group of E. T. Papoutsakis at Northwestern University, IL, USA and in yeast cell biology in the group of Prof. W.-H. Kunau at the Ruhr University of Bochum. He worked for his Ph.D. under L. K. Nielsen at the University of...
Go to Profile#2112
Mitsuo Tasumi
#106325
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
Mitsuo Tasumi was a Japanese physical chemist known for his vibrational spectroscopic works on synthetic and biological macromolecules. He was Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo, and a former president of Saitama University, having trained a number of physical chemists active in academia and industry. Moto-o Tasumi, a zoologist at Kyoto University, was his brother.
Go to Profile#2113
Reinhard Nesper
#109983
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
#2114
Samuel P. Massie
#48542
Overall Influence
1919 - 2005 (86 years)
Samuel Proctor Massie, Jr. was a chemist who studied a variety of chemicals that contributed towards the development of therapeutic drugs, including the chemistry of phenothiazine. As one of the African American scientists and technicians on the Manhattan Project to develop atomic bombs in World War II Massie worked with uranium isotopes. Massie was named one of the top 75 distinguished contributors to chemistry in history by Chemical and Engineering News.
Go to Profile#2115
Olivier Kahn
#110017
Overall Influence
#2116
K. Enneth R. Markham
#110155
Overall Influence
#2117
Frederick S. Humphries
#59056
Overall Influence
1935 - 2021 (86 years)
Frederick Stephen Humphries Sr. was an American academic administrator and chemistry professor who served as President of Tennessee State University , and President of Florida A&M University . He was also President and CEO of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education from 2001 to 2003. Florida A&M University conferred the President Emeritus title upon him on December 11, 2009. He was Regent Professor at the Florida A&M University College of Law from 2003 until his retirement in 2014.
Go to Profile#2118
Michael N. Mautner
#85077
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Michael N. Mautner is a researcher in physical chemistry, astrobiology and astroecology. Education He received his B.Sc. from Hebrew University in 1966, his M. Sc. from Georgetown University in 1968, and his Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in 1975.
Go to Profile#2119
Bahram Ramezanzadeh
#110225
Overall Influence
#2120
Helen Blackwell
#79589
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (53 years)
Helen E. Blackwell is an American organic chemist and chemical biologist. She is a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Education Blackwell is a native of Shaker Heights, Ohio and was educated as an undergraduate at Oberlin College, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry in 1994. She received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1999 working with Robert Grubbs.
Go to Profile#2121
David Beratan
#47007
Overall Influence
David Nathan Beratan is an American chemist and physicist, the R.J. Reynolds Professor of Chemistry at Duke University. He has secondary appointments in the departments of Physics and Biochemistry. He is the director of the Center for Synthesizing Quantum Coherence, a NSF Phase I Center for Chemical Innovation.
Go to Profile#2122
René H. Wijffels
#110313
Overall Influence
#2123
Noboru Yanaihara
#110332
Overall Influence
#2124
Gilda Barabino
#62990
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Gilda A. Barabino is the president of the Olin College of Engineering, where she is also a professor of biomedical and chemical engineering. Previously, she served as the dean of The Grove School of Engineering at the City College of New York, and as a professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering and the CUNY School of Medicine. On March 4, 2021, she became the President-Elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#2125
Frances Separovic
#65663
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Frances Separovic is a biophysical chemist, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, Deputy Director of the Bio21 Institute and former Head of the School of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne, where she taught physical chemistry and graduate students in her field. She is credited with developing a technique which utilises nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study peptides in aligned lipid bilayers, and has applications in the study of the structure of membrane proteins and their effects on the membrane. Her current research concerns 'the structure and interactions of amyl...
Go to Profile#2126
Michael Rubner
#97089
Overall Influence
Michael Rubner is an American engineer and currently the TDK Professor of Polymer Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#2127
Michael Frenklach
#110405
Overall Influence
#2128
Willem Norde
#110414
Overall Influence
#2129
Maitland Jones Jr.
#89241
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
Maitland Jones Jr. is an American experimental chemist. Jones worked at Princeton University in his research lab from 1964 until his 2007 retirement. He then taught at New York University from 2007 until his dismissal in 2022. He is known for changing how the subject of organic chemistry is taught to undergraduate students, through writing a popular textbook, Organic Chemistry, and re-shaping the course from simple rote learning to one that focuses on scientific problem solving.
Go to Profile#2130
Elżbieta Frąckowiak
#57155
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Elżbieta Frąckowiak is a Polish electrochemical engineer whose research concentrates on carbon-based supercapacitors and energy storage. She is a professor in the Faculty of Chemical Technology at the Poznań University of Technology, and a former vice-president of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#2131
Wu Lizhu
#105938
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Wu Lizhu is a Chinese chemist specializing in organic chemistry. Early life Wu was born in 1968 in Qinzhou District of Tianshui, Gansu into a Hui family. Her father Wu Jiantao and mother Ma Xian'e were a professors at Northwest University for Nationalities. Her grandfather Wu Hongjian was a member of the China Democratic League and vice chairman of the Tianshui Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Her great-uncle Wu Hongbin was mayor of Tianshui, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of Gansu Provincial People's Congress and executive vice chairman of Gan...
Go to Profile#2132
Vivian Stannett
#103943
Overall Influence
1917 - 2002 (85 years)
Vivian Thomas Stannett , Camille Dreyfus Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering and dean emeritus of the graduate school at North Carolina State University, was an English American chemist known for his contributions to the field of polymer science. In 1981 he received North Carolina's top science honor, the North Carolina Science Award and Gold Medal, and in 1995 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, an organization of the United States National Academies, for advancements in transport processes and radiation chemistry in polymers.
Go to Profile#2133
Theodore L. Brown
#110496
Overall Influence
#2134
Suning Wang
#96215
Overall Influence
1958 - 2020 (62 years)
Suning Wang was a Chinese-born Canadian chemist. She was a Professor of Chemistry, Research Chair and head of the Wang Group at Queen's University, Canada, having joined the Department of Chemistry at Queen's University in 1996. Wang worked on the development of new Organometallic chemistry and luminescent materials chemistry. Her research interests also included the work on organic Photovoltaics and Nanoparticle, stimuli-responsive materials as well as OLEDs. Wang and her group developed a simple method of producing graphene-like lattice through light exposure, which may contribute to a huge field of future use.
Go to Profile#2135
Monica Olvera de la Cruz
#16631
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Monica Olvera de la Cruz is a Mexican born, American and French soft-matter theorist who is the Lawyer Taylor Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Professor of Chemistry, and by courtesy Professor of Physics and Astronomy and of Chemical and Biological Engineering, at Northwestern University.
Go to Profile#2136
Stephen Keith Carter
#110536
Overall Influence
#2137
Christian Serre
#110550
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
#2138
Robert Kaptein
#110557
Overall Influence
#2139
Pieter Walstra
#110589
Overall Influence
#2140
Aleksandar Despić
#67946
Overall Influence
1927 - 2005 (78 years)
Aleksandar Despić was a Serbian physicist and academic. Despić received his PhD degree from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London. He was a professor at the Faculty of Technology, University of Belgrade and his scientific interests include fundamental and applied electrochemistry. He was the President of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts from 1994 to 1998.
Go to Profile#2141
Leslie H. Sperling
#110668
Overall Influence
#2142
Robert A. Floyd
#110689
Overall Influence
#2143
Ronald J. Tallarida
#110699
Overall Influence
#2144
Margot Becke-Goehring
#95881
Overall Influence
1914 - 2009 (95 years)
Margot Becke-Goehring was a Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Heidelberg and she was the first female rector of a university in West Germany - the Heidelberg University. She was also the director of the Gmelin Institute of Inorganic Chemistry of the Max Planck Society that edited the Gmelins Handbuch der anorganischen Chemie. She studied Chemistry in Halle and Munich, and she finished her doctorate and habilitation at the University of Halle. For her research on the chemistry of main-group elements, she was awarded Alfred Stock Memorial Prize. One of her most notable cont...
Go to Profile#2145
Hideki Sakurai
#110760
Overall Influence
#2146
Andrew R. Barron
#57316
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Andrew R. Barron is a British chemist, academic, and entrepreneur. He is the Sêr Cymru Chair of Low Carbon Energy and Environment at Swansea University, and the Charles W. Duncan Jr.-Welch Foundation Chair in Chemistry at Rice University. He is the founder and director of Energy Safety Research Institute at Swansea University, which consolidates the energy research at the University with a focus on environmental impact and future security. At Rice University, he leads a Research Group and has served as Associate Dean for Industry Interactions and Technology Transfer.
Go to Profile#2147
Charles Musgrave
#80787
Overall Influence
Charles Musgrave is an American chemist, engineer and materials scientist. He won the 1993 Foresight Institute Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology. He earned his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology in 1994, his B.S. at the University of California at Berkeley and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He previously taught chemical engineering and materials science and engineering at Stanford University and chemistry at Harvard University. He currently teaches at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he is professor, associate dean for graduate educ...
Go to Profile#2148
Don Catlin
#21678
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Don H. Catlin is an anti-doping scientist and one of the founders of modern drug-testing in sport. Career Catlin has overseen testing for performance-enhancing drugs at the three most recent Olympics held in the United States since the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, as well as testing for the United States Olympic Committee, the National Collegiate Athletic Association , Major League Baseball's minor leagues and the National Football League . He has also developed drug identification techniques currently in use at the Olympic, professional and collegiate levels.
Go to Profile#2149
Bernhard Witkop
#64508
Overall Influence
1917 - 2010 (93 years)
Bernhard Witkop was a German-born American organic chemist who worked for the National Institutes of Health for 37 years. During those years, Witkop – along with his recruit, John Daly, and others – discovered the NIH shift, a term describing the movement of hydrogen, deuterium or tritium to adjacent carbons on aromatic rings during oxidation, a process key in developing many therapies. He also helped to develop selective methods for the non-enzymatic cleavage of proteins, which enabled the sequencing of amino acids in proteins as large as immunoglobulin, a method later used in the productio...
Go to Profile#2150
Anders Nilsson
#105994
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Anders Nilsson is a scientist who works in the field of chemical physics at Stockholm University. He is best known for his studies of the structure and dynamics of water with the goal of understanding the origin of the unusual physical properties that make this liquid entirely unique on Earth. His other research interests include studying chemical reactions as they occur in real time and energy transformations that have implications for future energy use.
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