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,
#301
Christopher Longuet-Higgins
#7265
Overall Influence
1923 - 2004 (81 years)
Hugh Christopher Longuet-Higgins was a British scholar and teacher. He was the Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Cambridge for 13 years until 1967 when he moved to the University of Edinburgh to work in the developing field of cognitive science. He made many significant contributions to our understanding of molecular science. He was also a gifted amateur musician, both as performer and composer, and was keen to advance the scientific understanding of this art. He was the founding editor of the journal Molecular Physics.
Go to Profile#302
Karen Wetterhahn
#27527
Overall Influence
1948 - 1997 (49 years)
Karen Elizabeth Wetterhahn , also known as Karen Wetterhahn Jennette, was an American professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, who specialized in toxic metal exposure. She died of mercury poisoning at the age of 48 due to accidental exposure to the extremely toxic organic mercury compound dimethylmercury . Protective gloves in use at the time of the incident provided insufficient protection, and exposure to only a few drops of the chemical absorbed through the gloves proved to be fatal after less than a year.
Go to Profile#303
Sally Price
#35017
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Sarah Lois Price is Professor of Physical Chemistry at University College London. Education Price was educated at the University of Cambridge, where she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977 followed by a PhD in 1980. Her doctoral research modelled the intermolecular forces between diatomic molecules and was supervised by Anthony Stone.
Go to Profile#304
Arthur W. Adamson
#37443
Overall Influence
#305
Martin Head-Gordon
#30447
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Martin Philip Head-Gordon is a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory working in the area of computational quantum chemistry. He is a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.
Go to Profile#306
Klaus Müllen
#36890
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Klaus Müllen is a German chemist working in the fields of polymer chemistry, supramolecular chemistry and nanotechnology. He is known for the synthesis and exploration of the properties of graphene-like nanostructures and their potential applications in organic electronics.
Go to Profile#307
Axel D. Becke
#30677
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Axel Dieter Becke is a physical chemist and Professor of Chemistry at Dalhousie University, Canada. He is a leading researcher in the application of density functional theory to molecules. Early life Becke was born in Esslingen, Germany. He graduated with a B.Sc. from Queen's University. He completed his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from McMaster University.
Go to Profile#308
Sen-itiroh Hakomori
#34095
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Sen-itiroh Hakomori was a Japanese-American biochemist. Hakomori was born in Sendai on 13 February 1929, and graduated from Tohoku University Medical College in 1951. He elected for further study in biochemistry under Hajime Masamune. As a Fulbright Scholar, Hakomori also worked with Roger W. Jeanloz. In 1959, Hakomori began teaching at the Tohoku College of Pharmaceutical Science.
Go to Profile#309
Raghunath Anant Mashelkar
#9451
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Raghunath Anant Mashelkar, , also known as Ramesh Mashelkar, is an Indian Chemical Engineer, born in a village named Marcel in Goa and brought up in Maharashtra. He is a former Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research . He was also the President of Indian National Science Academy , President of Institution of Chemical Engineers as also the President of Global Research Alliance . He was also first Chairperson of Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research . He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering , Foreign associate of US ...
Go to Profile#310
Ugo Bardi
#12888
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Ugo Bardi is a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Florence. Career Bardi is a researcher on materials for new energy sources, a contributor to the now-defunct website, "The Oil Drum". He is the co-founder and former president of ASPO Italy, a member of the scientific committee of the , a member of the Club of Rome, and author of several books, including The Limits to Growth Revisited.
Go to Profile#311
John R. Yates
#21968
Overall Influence
John R. Yates III is an American chemist and Ernest W. Hahn Professor in the Departments of Molecular Medicine and Neurobiology at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. His work is focused on developing tools and in proteomics and he specializes in mass spectrometry. He is best known for the development of the SEQUEST algorithm for automated peptide sequencing and Multidimensional Protein Identification Technology and data independent analysis . His laboratory has made important contributions to understanding the biochemical mechanisms behind the failure of DF508 cystic fi...
Go to Profile#312
Robert A. Holton
#9638
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Robert A. Holton is an American academic chemist who is known for his work regarding the chemical synthesis for Taxol , a widely utilized and highly effective anti-cancer drug. He is a Professor of Chemistry at Florida State University.
Go to Profile#313
Hossam Haick
#13470
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Hossam Haick is an Arab-Israeli scientist and engineer, and the current dean of undergraduate studies at the Israel Institute of Technology. He is a pioneer known for inventing the Nano Artificial Nose for detection of disease from exhaled breath, by which he was highlighted as MIT's Innovators under 35; and which is widely used for sniffing out diseases' biomarkers in labs and industries. He has many contributions in multidisciplinary fields such as Nanotechnology, Nanosensors, , Volatile Biomarkers, and Molecular Electronics.
Go to Profile#314
Dietmar Seyferth
#34192
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Dietmar Seyferth was an emeritus professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He published widely on topics in organometallic chemistry and was the founding editor of the journal Organometallics.
Go to Profile#315
John C. Sheehan
#15852
Overall Influence
1915 - 1992 (77 years)
John Clark Sheehan was an American organic chemist whose work on synthetic penicillin led to tailor-made forms of the drug. After nine years of hard work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , he became the first to discover a practical method for synthesizing penicillin V. While achieving total synthesis, Sheehan also produced an intermediate compound, 6-aminopenicillanic acid, which turned out to be the foundation of hundreds of kinds of synthetic penicillin. Dr. Sheehan's research on synthetic penicillin paved the way for the development of customized forms of the lifesaving antibiotic that target specific bacteria.
Go to Profile#316
Tohru Fukuyama
#16397
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Tohru Fukuyama is a Japanese organic chemist and Professor of Chemistry at University of Tokyo in Japan. He discovered the Fukuyama coupling in 1998. Biography Fukuyama studied chemistry at Nagoya University with degrees Bachelor's and Master's degrees. As a graduate student, he then worked at Harvard University, where he received his doctorate in 1977 as an academic student of Yoshito Kishi. Until 1978, he continued his research as a postdoc in the Department of Chemistry of Harvard University and then moved to Rice University as an assistant professor, where in 1988 he obtained the rank of a chair holder.
Go to Profile#317
Malcolm Green
#28557
Overall Influence
1936 - 2020 (84 years)
Malcolm Leslie Hodder Green was Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford. He made many contributions to organometallic chemistry. Education Born in Eastleigh, Hampshire, he was educated at Denstone College and received his Bachelor of Science degree from Acton Technical College in 1956 and his PhD from Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1959 for research carried out under the supervision of Geoffrey Wilkinson.
Go to Profile#318
Walter McCrone
#12555
Overall Influence
1916 - 2002 (86 years)
Walter Cox McCrone Jr. was an American chemist who worked extensively on applications of polarized light microscopy and is sometimes characterized as the "father of modern microscopy". He was also an expert in electron microscopy, crystallography, ultra-microanalysis, and particle identification. In 1960 he founded the McCrone Research Institute, a non-profit educational and research organization for microscopy based in Chicago.
Go to Profile#319
John H. Seinfeld
#25807
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
John Hersh Seinfeld is an American chemical engineer and pioneering expert in atmospheric science. His research on air pollution has influenced public policy, and he developed the first mathematical model of air quality, which has influenced air pollution tracking and research across the United States. He has spent his career at the California Institute of Technology, where he is currently the Louis E. Nohl Professor of Chemical Engineering.
Go to Profile#320
John Cadogan
#23935
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
Sir John Ivan George Cadogan was a British organic chemist. Early life Cadogan was born in Pembrey, Carmarthenshire, Wales, United Kingdom. He was educated at Swansea Grammar School, where he achieved State Scholar in 1948, and at King's College London, where he earned a 1st Class Honours degree as well as a PhD, and was awarded the Millar Thomson Medal, and the Samuel Smiles Prize.
Go to Profile#321
Melvin Spencer Newman
#36215
Overall Influence
1908 - 1993 (85 years)
Melvin Spencer Newman was an American chemist, Ohio State University professor, best known for inventing the Newman projection. Newman was born in New York City in a Jewish family, the youngest of Mae and Jacob K. Newman's four children. His paternal grandfather was the New Orleans German-born investment banker and philanthropist Isidore Newman.
Go to Profile#322
Bernard Vonnegut
#11509
Overall Influence
1914 - 1997 (83 years)
Bernard Vonnegut was an American atmospheric scientist credited with discovering that silver iodide could be used effectively in cloud seeding to produce snow and rain. He was the older brother of American novelist Kurt Vonnegut.
Go to Profile#323
James C. Liao
#6429
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
James C. Liao is the Parsons Foundation Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles and is the co-founder and lead scientific advisor of Easel Biotechnologies, LLC.
Go to Profile#324
Herman Berendsen
#27004
Overall Influence
1934 - 2019 (85 years)
Herman Johan Christiaan Berendsen was a Dutch chemist. He was a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Groningen from 1967 to 1999. Career Berendsen was born on 22 September 1934 in Apeldoorn. In 1962 he obtained his PhD cum laude from the University of Groningen, with a dissertation titled: "An NMR study of collagen hydration". In March 1963 Berendsen was appointed lector of physical chemistry at his alma mater, and four years later became full professor. He retired in 1999. At Groningen Berendsen was group leader of molecular dynamics.
Go to Profile#325
Louis E. Brus
#14393
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Louis Eugene Brus is the Samuel Latham Mitchell Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University. He is the co-discoverer of the colloidal semi-conductor nanocrystals known as quantum dots. In 2023, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Go to Profile#326
G. K. Surya Prakash
#37203
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
G. K. Surya Prakash is a professor of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and holder of the George A. and Judith A. Olah Nobel Laureate Chair in Hydrocarbon Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Southern California. He serves as the Director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, where he maintains his prominent research lab. He also served as the Chairman of the Chemistry Department for four years between 2017 and 2021. He received a B.Sc. from Bangalore University in 1972, a M.Sc. from IIT Madras in 1974 and a Ph.D. from University of Souther...
Go to Profile#327
Raymond Davis Jr.
#4155
Overall Influence
1914 - 2006 (92 years)
Raymond Davis Jr. was an American chemist and physicist. He is best known as the leader of the Homestake experiment in the 1960s-1980s, which was the first experiment to detect neutrinos emitted from the Sun; for this he shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics.
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Ross Taylor
#39048
Overall Influence
1925 - 2021 (96 years)
Stuart Ross Taylor was a New Zealand geochemist and planetary scientist known for his studies of the geology of the Moon through lunar samples, the continental crust, tektites and the evolution of the Solar System. He was an emeritus professor and Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra. He died in Canberra on 23 May 2021 at the age of 95.
Go to Profile#329
Jacob Israelachvili
#17198
Overall Influence
1944 - 2018 (74 years)
Jacob Nissim Israelachvili, was an Israeli physicist who was a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara . Personal life He was born in Tel Aviv, Israel and sent to an English boarding school at the age of 7. After completing his secondary education he returned to Israel to carry out his military service before moving back to England to study the Natural Sciences Tripos at the University of Cambridge. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Christ's College, Cambridge in 1972 under the supervision of Professor David Tabor. He then became a Research Fellow at the Biophysics Insti...
Go to Profile#330
Franz-Ulrich Hartl
#5257
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Franz-Ulrich Hartl is a German biochemist and the current Executive Director of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry. He is known for his pioneering work in chaperone-mediated protein folding. Early life and education Hartl was born in Essen, West Germany in 1957 to an electrical engineer father and a home economics teacher mother. His family moved to a village in northern part of the Black Forest when he was four. He was intrigued with biology since a young age, thanks to his hobby microscopist grandfather and a family friend who was a biology teacher. Hartl specifically became intereste...
Go to Profile#331
Israel Dostrovsky
#11293
Overall Influence
1918 - 2010 (92 years)
Israel Dostrovsky was a Ukrainian-born Israeli physical chemist, fifth president of the Weizmann Institute of Science, laureate of the 1995 Israel Prize in the exact sciences. Early years Israel Dostrovsky was born in Odessa, in 1918 and immigrated to Eretz-Israel as a baby with his parents in 1919, aboard the ship “Ruslan”. His father, world-renowned dermatologist Arieh Dostrovsky, became a founder of Hebrew University's medical school and of the Hadassah hospital. His first cousin, Yaacov Dori became the first IDF Chief of Staff.
Go to Profile#332
Scott E. Denmark
#36892
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Scott Eric Denmark is an American chemist who is the Reynold C. Fuson Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign . Denmark received an S.B. degree from MIT in 1975 and the D.Sc.Tech. degree from ETH Zurich in 1980, under the supervision of Professor Albert Eschenmoser. He joined the faculty at UIUC the same year and became an associate professor in 1986, full professor in 1987, and was named the Fuson Professor of Chemistry in 1991. He served as the president and editor-in-chief of the Organic Reactions book series between 2008 and 2018. In 2017, Denmark was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#333
Robert H. Crabtree
#31573
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Robert Howard Crabtree is a British-American chemist. He is serving as Conkey P. Whitehead Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Yale University in the United States. He is a naturalized citizen of the United States. Crabtree is particularly known for his work on "Crabtree's catalyst" for hydrogenations, and his textbook on organometallic chemistry.
Go to Profile#334
Edwin N. Lightfoot
#12203
Overall Influence
1925 - 2017 (92 years)
Edwin Niblock Lightfoot, Jr. was an American chemical engineer and Hilldale Professor Emeritus in the department of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is known for his research in transport phenomena, including biological mass-transfer processes, mass-transport reaction modeling, and separations processes. He, along with R. Byron Bird and Warren E. Stewart, co-authored the classic textbook Transport Phenomena. In 1974 Lightfoot wrote Transport Phenomena and Living Systems: Biomedical Aspects of Momentum and Mass Transport. He was the recipient of th...
Go to Profile#335
Peter Seeberger
#30063
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Peter H. Seeberger is a German chemist. Biography Seeberger studied chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He completed his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1995 as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Colorado at Boulder. After being a post-doctoral fellow at Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York, he became assistant professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998, where he was promoted to Firmenich Associate Professor of Chemistry in 2002.
Go to Profile#336
Erick M. Carreira
#30163
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Erick M. Carreira is a Cuban-born American organic chemist and professor at ETH Zürich. He is known for his research group's work in total synthesis projects, particularly asymmetric synthesis of complex natural products. He became the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2021.
Go to Profile#337
Debashis Mukherjee
#26157
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Debashis Mukherjee is a theoretical chemist, well known for his research in the fields of molecular many body theory, theoretical spectroscopy, finite temperature non-perturbative many body theories. Mukherjee has been the first to develop and implement a class of many-body methods for electronic structure which are now standard works in the field. These methods, collectively called multireference coupled cluster formalisms, are versatile and powerful methods for predicting with quantitative accuracy the energetics and cross-sections of a vast range of molecular excitations and ionization. A l...
Go to Profile#338
Nicholas C. Handy
#31945
Overall Influence
1941 - 2012 (71 years)
Nicholas Charles Handy was a British theoretical chemist. He retired as Professor of quantum chemistry at the University of Cambridge in September 2004. Education and early life Handy was born in Wiltshire, England and educated at Clayesmore School. He studied the Mathematical Tripos at the University of Cambridge and completed his PhD on theoretical chemistry supervised by Samuel Francis Boys.
Go to Profile#339
J. Calvin Giddings
#36003
Overall Influence
1930 - 1996 (66 years)
John Calvin Giddings was a Distinguished Professor of chemistry at the University of Utah. Giddings received a B.S. degree from Brigham Young University in 1952 and a PhD from the University of Utah in 1954. Following postdoctoral work at the University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin, he joined the faculty of the University of Utah as assistant professor of chemistry in 1957. He became associate professor in 1959, research professor in 1962, and professor in 1966. Giddings authored or co-authored more than 400 publications and edited 32 books in the field of chemistry. He was execu...
Go to Profile#340
Robert Williams
#33071
Overall Influence
1926 - 2015 (89 years)
Robert Joseph Paton Williams was an English chemist, an Emeritus Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford. Education and early life Robert Joseph Paton Williams was born on 25 February 1926 in Wallasey to Ernest Ivor Williams, a customs and excise officer at Liverpool, and Alice Williams , a milliner; he was the second of four children.
Go to Profile#341
Mercouri Kanatzidis
#38082
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Mercouri Kanatzidis is a Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of chemistry and professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University and Senior Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory.
Go to Profile#342
Mark S. Wrighton
#4102
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Mark Stephen Wrighton is an American academic and chemist who has been serving as Chancellor Emeritus of Washington University in St. Louis since May 2019 after serving as the 14th Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis from 1995 to 2019. He was also appointed by Washington University in St. Louis as the inaugural holder of the James and Mary Wertsch Distinguished University Professorship in August 2020. From January 2022 to June 2023, Wrighton took a sabbatical leave from WUSTL to serve as the interim president of The George Washington University while GWU conducted a presidential ...
Go to Profile#343
Carolyn Bertozzi
#10261
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Carolyn Ruth Bertozzi is an American chemist and Nobel laureate, known for her wide-ranging work spanning both chemistry and biology. She coined the term "bioorthogonal chemistry" for chemical reactions compatible with living systems. Her recent efforts include synthesis of chemical tools to study cell surface sugars called glycans and how they affect diseases such as cancer, inflammation, and viral infections like COVID-19. At Stanford University, she holds the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professorship in the School of Humanities and Sciences. Bertozzi is also an Investigator at the Howard H...
Go to Profile#344
Octave Levenspiel
#16941
Overall Influence
1926 - 2017 (91 years)
Octave Levenspiel was a professor of chemical engineering at Oregon State University . His principal interest was chemical reaction engineering, and he was the author of a major textbook Chemical Reaction Engineering as well as numerous research publications.
Go to Profile#345
Peter Schuster
#4823
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Peter K. Schuster is a theoretical chemist known for his work with the German Nobel Laureate Manfred Eigen in developing the quasispecies model. His work has made great strides in the understanding of viruses and their replication, as well as theoretical mechanisms in the origin of life.
Go to Profile#346
Ernest L. Eliel
#32205
Overall Influence
1921 - 2008 (87 years)
Ernest Ludwig Eliel was an organic chemist born in Cologne, Germany. Among his awards were the Priestley Medal in 1996 and the NAS Award for Chemistry in Service to Society in 1997. When the Nazis came to power, he left Germany and moved to Scotland, then Canada, then Cuba. He received his B.S. from the University of Havana in 1946. He moved to the United States in 1946 and taught at the University of Notre Dame from 1948. In 1972 he moved to be the W.R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill until his retirement in 1993. Eliel was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1980.
Go to Profile#347
Helmut Schwarz
#21183
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Helmut Schwarz is a German organic chemist. He has been a professor of chemistry at the Technische Universität Berlin since 1978. In 2018, he was elected a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#348
Richard Felder
#18113
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Richard M. Felder is the Hoechst Celanese Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University. Education and career history Felder received a BChE degree from the City College of New York in 1962 and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton University in 1966 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "Energy distributions of energetic atoms in irradiated media." He spent a year as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment and then two years as a research engineer at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1969 he joined the chemic...
Go to Profile#349
Peter Pulay
#34427
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Peter Pulay is a theoretical chemist. He is the Roger B. Bost Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Arkansas, United States. One of his most important contributions is the introduction of the gradient method in quantum chemistry. This allows the prediction of the geometric structure of a molecule using computational chemical programs to be almost routine. He is the main author of the PQS computational chemistry program.
Go to Profile#350
Peter Kollman
#26101
Overall Influence
1944 - 2001 (57 years)
Peter Andrew Kollman was a professor of chemistry and pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. He is known for his work in computational chemistry, molecular modeling and bioinformatics, especially for his role in the development of the AMBER force field and molecular dynamics software package.
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