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,
#2851
Burke
#126648
Overall Influence
#2852
Michinori Ōki
#126669
Overall Influence
#2853
Hiroshi Uyama
#126686
Overall Influence
#2854
Lucia V. Streng
#96882
Overall Influence
1909 - 1995 (86 years)
Lucia V. Streng was a Russian Empire-born American chemist. She spent much of her career studying the noble gases and their properties, successfully synthesizing krypton difluoride. She and her husband, Alex G. Streng, both held positions at Temple University.
Go to Profile#2855
Herman S. Cheung
#126801
Overall Influence
#2856
Alexandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov
#126831
Overall Influence
#2857
Lee Penn
#118674
Overall Influence
R. Lee Penn is an American chemist and the Merck Professor of Chemistry at the University of Minnesota. Their research considers crystal growth, materials and environmental chemistry. Penn is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society. In 2020 Penn was awarded the University of Minnesota George W. Taylor Award for Distinguished Service.
Go to Profile#2858
Heather Kulik
#91100
Overall Influence
Heather J. Kulik is an American computational materials scientist and engineer who is an associate professor of chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research considers the computational design of new materials and the use of artificial intelligence to predict material properties.
Go to Profile#2859
Toraj Mohammadi
#126883
Overall Influence
#2860
Steen Steenken
#126954
Overall Influence
#2861
Robert K. Thomas
#99549
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Robert Kemeys Thomas , also known as Bob Thomas, is a physical chemist working in the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Oxford. Early life and education He was born in Harpenden, the son of the Rev. Herbert Samuel Griffiths Thomas MC and Dr Agnes Paterson Thomas . He was educated at St John's College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#2862
Anne Boutin
#94998
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Anne Boutin is a French physical chemist and theoretical chemist, research director at the CNRS and director of the Department of Chemistry at the École Normale Supérieure. A specialist in molecular thermodynamics, she develops molecular simulation tools as well as theoretical approaches for studying the structure, dynamics, thermodynamics and reactivity of confined molecular fluids.
Go to Profile#2863
Kate Carroll
#99482
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (51 years)
Kate Carroll is an American professor of chemistry, chemical biology, and biochemistry at Scripps Research in Jupiter, FL, since 2010. She was previously a tenure-track assistant professor at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#2864
Klaus Butterbach‐bahl
#127070
Overall Influence
#2865
Manfred Regitz
#127090
Overall Influence
#2866
Mervyn j. Eadie
#127116
Overall Influence
#2867
Douglas Carlyle Neckers
#127135
Overall Influence
#2868
Rolf Prince
#100628
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
Rudolf George Herman Prince , commonly known as Rolf Prince, was a noted chemical engineering academic, specializing in distillation and mass transfer. Life Prince was born in Chemnitz, Germany on 2 August 1928 from a Jewish family. He and his mother moved to Italy in 1936, to Ireland in 1939 and to New Zealand in 1940, and he became a naturalised New Zealand citizen in 1946. He was educated at Christchurch Boys' High School in Christchurch, then studied chemical engineering and chemistry at Canterbury University College of the University of New Zealand graduating in 1949. He then took a PhD at the University of Sydney, Australia, becoming a lecturer there.
Go to Profile#2869
Zhi–kang Xu
#127155
Overall Influence
#2870
Hartmut Herrmann
#127183
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
#2871
Kazuo Shizume
#127200
Overall Influence
#2872
Peter Killworth
#39907
Overall Influence
1946 - 2008 (62 years)
Professor Peter D. Killworth was an English scientist known for his work on oceanography and on the study of social networks. A prolific writer, he published more than 160 scientific papers over the course of his career. He was also known for his work as a pioneering author of text interactive fiction games during the early 1980s.
Go to Profile#2873
J. Stephen Binkley
#127246
Overall Influence
#2874
Nicholas E. Geacintov
#127255
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (90 years)
#2875
Michael J. Padilla
#22149
Overall Influence
Michael J. Padilla is the former Director of the Eugene P. Moore School of Education and Associate Dean of EC at Clemson University, from Spring 2007 until July 2012. Before then he was Aderhold Distinguished Professor of Science Education at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. Dr. Padilla was recognized with The Walter B. Hill Award for Distinguished Achievement in Public Service at the University of Georgia and was presented with the National Science Teachers Association Distinguished Service award in 2003. In 2012 Padilla was awarded the NSTA Robert H. Carleton award for national leadership, the association's most prestigious award.
Go to Profile#2876
Harald Arnljot Øye
#109211
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (90 years)
Harald Arnljot Øye is a Norwegian chemist. He took the degree in 1963. He was a professor of inorganic chemistry at the Norwegian Institute of Technology from 1973 to his retirement. He has also led the International Course on Process Metallurgy of Aluminium since 1981. He is a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences. In November 2016, FLOGEN Star Outreach awarded him with the Fray International Sustainability Award at SIPS 2016 , in Hainan Island, China.
Go to Profile#2877
Rufus W. Lumry
#127306
Overall Influence
#2878
Raymond Eugene Davis
#127326
Overall Influence
#2879
James N. Seiber
#127347
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
#2880
Martin Feelisch
#127354
Overall Influence
#2881
Miklos Bodanszky
#127379
Overall Influence
#2882
Angelo Antonini
#127498
Overall Influence
#2883
V. Haanepen Ponec
#127523
Overall Influence
#2884
Mordechai. Sokolovsky
#127547
Overall Influence
#2885
Gerd Becker
#121387
Overall Influence
1940 - 2017 (77 years)
Gerd Becker was a German chemist. He held a chair of inorganic chemistry at the University of Stuttgart. In 1974 he synthesized the first localized phosphaalkene. Sources Entry on Becker's death External links Homepage at the University of Stuttgart
Go to Profile#2886
Yimon Aye
#111560
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (45 years)
Yimon Aye is an American chemist and molecular biologist. Currently she is an associate professor of chemistry at EPFL. Career Aye spent her early life in Burma. She completed her undergraduate studies in chemistry at the University of Oxford and obtained her master's degree in 2004. She joined Harvard University to study synthetic organic chemistry with David A. Evans, achieving her PhD in 2009. She then moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation fellow to work with JoAnne Stubbe. There she performed research into the regulatory mechanisms of ribonucleotide reductase.
Go to Profile#2887
Michael B. Johnston
#127658
Overall Influence
#2888
Anastassia Alexandrova
#99759
Overall Influence
Anastassia N. Alexandrova is an American chemist who is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research considers the computational design of functional materials. Early life and education Alexandrova was the Winner of the Russian Regional Student Olympiad in Chemistry in 2000. She attended the Saratov State University for her undergraduate studies, where she was awarded a scholarship from the Government of Russia for outstanding performance in science. She moved to the United States for her graduate studies at Utah State University, where she studied aromatic clusters using Ab initio genetic algorithms.
Go to Profile#2889
John Alan Elix
#117601
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
John Alan Elix emeritus professor in chemistry at the Australian National University, is an organic chemist who has contributed in many fields: lichenology, lichen chemotaxonomy, plant physiology and biodiversity and natural product chemistry. He has authored 2282 species names, and 67 genera in the field of mycology.
Go to Profile#2890
Wilhelm T. S. Huck
#127705
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
#2891
Martin Albrecht
#127345
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (54 years)
Martin Albrecht is a Swiss chemist. He is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacy at the University of Bern. He is known for his contribution to carbene chemistry, particularly with his work on 1,2,3-triazolylidene mesoionic carbene.
Go to Profile#2892
George Preti
#86282
Overall Influence
1944 - 2020 (76 years)
George Preti was an analytical organic chemist who worked at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For more than four decades, his research focused on the nature, origin, and functional significance of human odors. Dr. Preti's laboratory has identified characteristic underarm odorants, and his later studies centered upon a bioassay-guided approach to the identification of human pheromones, odors diagnostic of human disease, human malodor identification and suppression and examining the “odor-print” of humans.
Go to Profile#2893
Edward T. Samulski
#127764
Overall Influence
#2894
William Robert Bruce
#127775
Overall Influence
#2895
Katharine K. Merritt
#127778
Overall Influence
#2896
Otto Vogl
#87082
Overall Influence
1927 - 2013 (86 years)
Otto Vogl was an American chemist, polymer scientist, and educator. Life and work Otto Vogl was the Herman F. Mark Professor Emeritus of the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, and Professor Emeritus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is noted for his work on the polymerization of higher aldehydes and the importance of the ceiling temperature of polymerization, His other contributions were in functional polymers, polymeric drugs, polymeric stabilizers, macromolecular asymmetry, the single helix, chirality and chiral crystallization, and the chemistry of oriental lacquers.
Go to Profile#2897
Tadeusz Bartczak
#121052
Overall Influence
1935 - 2022 (87 years)
Tadeusz Bartczak was a Polish chemist and professor at the Lodz University of Technology. In 1957, he obtained a master's degree in chemical engineering at the Faculty of Chemistry, Technical University of Lodz. In 1955, he started working at the Department of Inorganic Chemistry at the Technical University, in co-operation with professor, Edward Józefowicz. In 1965, he was awarded a doctoral degree. In the academic year 1969/1970, he worked at the Oxford University with professor, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin—a Nobel Prize laureate. In the same year, he was nominated as a member of the Oxford University and a member of the Linacre College.
Go to Profile#2898
Jinzaburo Takagi
#82104
Overall Influence
1938 - 2000 (62 years)
was a Japanese assistant professor in nuclear chemistry. He wrote several books on environment protection, and on the threat of nuclear waste. He was given the Yoko Tada Human Rights Award in 1992, and the Ihatobe Award in 1994. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1997, jointly with Mycle Schneider.
Go to Profile#2899
Harold Basch
#114943
Overall Influence
1940 - 2018 (78 years)
Harold Basch was a professor of chemistry who specialized in computational chemistry. Biography Harold Basch was born in 1940 in the Bronx, New York City. He obtained his B.A. from Yeshiva University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University under the supervision of Harry B. Gray. He did a postdoctoral research at Bell Telephone Laboratories and was a principal research scientist at Ford Motor Company . In 1970 he joined the chemistry department at Bar-Ilan University as an associate professor and became a full professor in 1977. He lived in Rehovot was married to Julia and had 5 c...
Go to Profile#2900
Philip N. Jr. Ross
#127892
Overall Influence
