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,
#2451
Samuel Francis Boys
#118030
Overall Influence
#2452
Valery Petrosyan
#104440
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Valery Samsonovich Petrosyan is a Professor, Doctor of Chemical Sciences, academic and member of Presidium of RAEN. From 2008 to 2010 he was a UN expert of chemical security. Deputy chairman of Supreme ecological council of Russia . Foreign Member of Armenian National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#2453
Edward Raymond Andrew
#118074
Overall Influence
#2454
Clayton J. Radke
#118081
Overall Influence
#2455
Ashish Kishore Lele
#61224
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Ashish Kishore Lele is an Indian chemical engineer, rheologist and the Director of the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. He is known for his researches on micro and mesostructure of polymers and is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, and the Indian National Academy of Engineering. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Engineering Sciences in 2006. He receiv...
Go to Profile#2456
Matthew Sigman
#115897
Overall Influence
Matthew S. Sigman is an American chemist, focusing in Organic Synthesis & Asymmetric Catalysis. He is the Peter J. Christine S. Stang Presidential Endowed Chair and Distinguished Honors Professor at University of Utah and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#2457
John H. Beynon
#88379
Overall Influence
1923 - 2015 (92 years)
John H. Beynon FRS was a Welsh chemist and physicist known for his work in mass spectrometry. Education and military service Beynon was born in the Welsh coal-mining town of Ystalyfera and was the older of two brothers. He went on to attend the University of Wales at Swansea in the early 1940s at the start of World War II. He received a B.S. in physics in 1943. He did not attend graduate school, instead deciding to join the Fighting Vehicles Research Establishment where he served between 1943 and 1947 developing tank fire-control systems.
Go to Profile#2458
Robert-w. Lenz
#118215
Overall Influence
#2459
Jarugu Narasimha Moorthy
#45332
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Jarugu Narasimha Moorthy is an Indian organic photochemist and the director of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Thiruvananthapuram.He was a Dr. Jag Mohan Garg Chair Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He is known for his studies on photoreactivity and organization of organic molecules. and is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Indian Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science ...
Go to Profile#2460
Wilfred van der Donk
#91113
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Wilfred A. van der Donk is a Dutch–American enzymologist and chemical biologist. He is the Richard E. Heckert Chair in Chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Early life and education van der Donk was born on April 21, 1966, and raised in Culemborg, Netherlands, where he remained to earn his bachelor's degree and master's degree in inorganic chemistry at Leiden University. Following this, he moved to the United States for his PhD at Rice University with Kevin Burgess. Upon graduating in 1994, he completed his postdoctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#2461
Pieter C. Dorrestein
#118228
Overall Influence
#2462
Teruhiko Beppu
#118234
Overall Influence
#2463
Wu Yangjie
#114029
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (97 years)
Wu Yangjie is a Chinese organic chemist and a professor at Zhengzhou University. He is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Biography Wu was born 1 January 1928 in Jinan, Shandong, Republic of China. He graduated from the Department of Chemistry of Fudan University in 1951, and was hired as a faculty member by the university. In September 1954, he began his graduate studies in the Department of Chemistry of the Moscow State University, and earned his associate doctor degree in June 1958.
Go to Profile#2464
Peter Jutzi
#118273
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
#2465
Huisheng Peng
#118290
Overall Influence
#2466
A. Douglas Mclean
#118294
Overall Influence
#2467
Valeria Molinero
#108234
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Valeria Paula Molinero is an Argentinian physicist who is the Jack and Peg Simons Endowed Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Utah. Her research investigates the simulation of the behavior of materials. She was awarded the American Physical Society Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics in 2023.
Go to Profile#2468
Cong-jie Gao
#118317
Overall Influence
#2469
John Sutherland
#81953
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
John David Sutherland FRS is a British chemist at Medical Research Council , Laboratory of Molecular Biology , Protein & Nucleic Acid Chemistry Division. His work on the possible chemistry of early life has been widely recognised.
Go to Profile#2470
Janina Altman
#73965
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Janina Altman was a Polish-Israeli chemist, author and a Holocaust survivor. Life Janina Hescheles' father, Henryk Hescheles, was a journalist in Lwów and publisher of the Polish-language Zionist periodical Chwila. Her mother was registrar at a hospital on Józef-Dwernicki Street, and after the outbreak of World War II also served as a nurse.
Go to Profile#2471
David G. Streets
#118326
Overall Influence
#2472
Hiroshi Kitagawa
#118327
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
#2473
Helma Wennemers
#46250
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Helma B. Wennemers is a German organic chemist. She is a professor of organic chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich . Education Helma Wennemers studied chemistry at the Goethe University Frankfurt, completing her diploma thesis with in 1993. She earned her PhD at Columbia University, New York in 1996, under the supervision of W. Clark Still, with a thesis "Encoded combinatorial chemistry: a tool for the study of selective intermolecular interactions." Between 1996 and 1998, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Nagoya University with Hisashi Yamamoto, before being appointed Bachem Assistant Professor at the University of Basel in 1999.
Go to Profile#2474
Mark Child
#105459
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
Mark Sheard Child FRS is a British chemist, and Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. Education Child attended Pocklington School from 1947 to 1955. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Cambridge in 1963 with a thesis on The vibrational spectra of electronically degenerate molecules.
Go to Profile#2475
Edith Kroupa
#114980
Overall Influence
1910 - 1991 (81 years)
Edith Kroupa was a research chemist who utilized microchemical analysis in the laboratory of Professor A. Franke at the University of Vienna. In 1930, Kroupa and Friedrich Hecht analyzed a sample of radioactive rock from the Huron Claim, Manitoba near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The team determined the sample to be over 1,725,000,000 years old.
Go to Profile#2476
Rolan D. Fröhlich
#118365
Overall Influence
#2477
Jerry Pelletier
#118373
Overall Influence
#2478
John E. Folk
#118377
Overall Influence
#2479
Joan Brennecke
#112027
Overall Influence
Joan F. Brennecke is an American chemical engineer who is the Cockrell Family Chair in Engineering in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Brennecke develops supercritical fluids, ionic liquids and novel spectroscopic methods.
Go to Profile#2480
Christian Cambillau
#59428
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Christian Cambillau is a French scientist for the CNRS in Structural Biology. He received the CNRS Silver Medal for his work on structural biology, especially the structures of human lipase/colipase, lectins and the development of moleculargraphics software.
Go to Profile#2481
Karl A. Jr. Gschneidner
#118552
Overall Influence
#2482
Garyd.d. Christian
#118576
Overall Influence
#2483
Howard. D. Flack
#118583
Overall Influence
#2484
Louis Allamandola
#118626
Overall Influence
Louis Allamandola is an American space scientist. He is the founder and director of NASA's Astrophysics & Astrochemistry Laboratory, and an Elected Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#2485
Matthias Driess
#118633
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
#2486
Peter Schieberle
#118650
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
#2487
Art Westerberg
#80850
Overall Influence
Art Westerberg is an emeritus professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has been a major contributor to the field of numerical methods for solving chemical engineering problems, and has been involved since the 1980s with a mathematical modelling package named ASCEND.
Go to Profile#2488
André Dreiding
#91172
Overall Influence
1919 - 2013 (94 years)
André S. Dreiding was a Swiss chemist. He finished his high school studies in Zürich and then studied at Columbia University in New York, where he was awarded BS and MS degrees. After two years as a research assistant at Hoffmann-La Roche, he continued postgraduate studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor under professor Werner Emmanuel Bachmann and was awarded his PhD in 1947. He remained at the university until 1949 as Rackham and Lloyd Postdoctoral Fellow. From 1949 to 1954, Dreiding was an assistant professor at Wayne University, Detroit Institute of Cancer Research. He also tem...
Go to Profile#2489
Yi-jun. Xu
#118749
Overall Influence
#2490
Martin Oestreich
#118780
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (54 years)
#2491
Liang‐nian Ji
#118791
Overall Influence
#2492
Maximilian Fichtner
#104003
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Maximilian Fichtner is professor for Solid State Chemistry at the Ulm University and executive director of the Helmholtz Institute Ulm for Electrochemical Energy Storage . Education Fichtner was educated in Food Chemistry and Chemistry at the University Karlsruhe, now Karlsruhe Institute of Technology where he was awarded by the Diploma in Chemistry. In 1992 he received the Ph.D. in Chemistry/Surface Science with distinction and the Hermann Billing Award for his thesis. In the thesis he developed a novel method for a spatially resolved speciation of beam-sensitive salts by SIMS. With the meth...
Go to Profile#2493
Takayuki Shioiri
#118814
Overall Influence
#2494
Bernard Raveau
#70625
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Bernard Raveau, born in 1940, is a French researcher in materials science, professor emeritus at the University of Caen Normandy, member of the French Academy of sciences. Biography He has directed CRISMAT, a joint laboratory of the National Engineering School of Caen of the University of Caen and the CNRS.
Go to Profile#2495
Silvia Bordiga
#118824
Overall Influence
#2496
Robert E. Steiner
#118831
Overall Influence
#2497
Joseph Chayen
#118857
Overall Influence
#2498
Mark S. Workentin
#94067
Overall Influence
Mark S. Workentin is a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Western Ontario. The primary interests of the Workentin research group are materials chemistry, organic electrochemistry, organic photochemistry, physical organic chemistry and physical materials organic electrophotochemistry.
Go to Profile#2499
Alexander M. Cruickshank
#72136
Overall Influence
1919 - 2017 (98 years)
Alexander M. Cruickshank was an American chemist and long-serving director of the Gordon Research Conferences. Biography Alexander M. Cruickshank was born in Marlborough, New Hampshire . He took his B.S. in chemistry at Rhode Island State College in 1943. While working at Rhode Island State College as an instructor he earned his M.S. in chemistry in 1945. He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts in 1954. Cruickshank served on the chemistry faculty at the University of Rhode Island from 1953 to 1982 and was chair of the chemistry department from 1976 until his 1982 retirement.
Go to Profile#2500
Ian C. P. Smith
#118885
Overall Influence
