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,
#351
Theodore L. Brown
#19979
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
Theodore Lawrence Brown is an American scientist known for research, teaching, and writing in the field of physical inorganic chemistry, a university administrator, and a philosopher of science. In addition to his research publications, Brown has written textbooks on general chemistry and science communication which have been published in multiple languages and used in multiple countries. He is a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he has also held the administrative positions of vice chancellor for research and dean of the graduate college . He is the ...
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William G. Schneider
#28953
Overall Influence
1915 - 2013 (98 years)
William George Schneider, was a Canadian chemist and research administrator, who was president of the National Research Council of Canada from 1967 to 1980. He was president of IUPAC in 1983–1985.
Go to Profile#353
Herbert S. Gutowsky
#27819
Overall Influence
1919 - 2000 (81 years)
Herbert Sander Gutowsky was an American chemist who was a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Gutowsky was the first to apply nuclear magnetic resonance methods to the field of chemistry. He used nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to determine the structure of molecules. His pioneering work developed experimental control of NMR as a scientific instrument, connected experimental observations with theoretical models, and made NMR one of the most effective analytical tools for analysis of molecular structure and dynamics in liquids, solids, and gases, us...
Go to Profile#354
Jay Kochi
#35183
Overall Influence
1927 - 2008 (81 years)
Jay Kazuo Kochi was an American physical organometallic chemist who held lectureship at Harvard University, and faculty positions at Case Institute of Technology, 1962-1969, , Indiana University, 1969 to 1984, and the University of Houston, 1984 to 2008.
Go to Profile#355
B. Montgomery Pettitt
#20051
Overall Influence
B. Montgomery "Monte" Pettitt is the Director of the Sealy Center for Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, holder of the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Chemistry, and tenured Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, as well as the department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. He is also affiliated with and former director of The W. M. Keck Center at Rice University, and a faculty member of the Structural and Computational Biology and Molecular Biophysics program at Baylor College of Medicine. At ...
Go to Profile#356
Eric Jacobsen
#35033
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Eric N. Jacobsen is the Sheldon Emery Professor of Chemistry and former chair of the department of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University. He is a prominent figure in the field of organic chemistry and is best known for the development of the Jacobsen epoxidation and other work in selective catalysis.
Go to Profile#357
Reinhart Ahlrichs
#31317
Overall Influence
1940 - 2016 (76 years)
Reinhart Ahlrichs was a German theoretical chemist. Biography Ahlrichs was born on the 16 January 1940 in Göttingen. He studied Physics at the University of Göttingen and received his PhD in 1968 with W. A. Bingel. From 1968-69 he was assistant at Göttingen with Werner Kutzelnigg and from 1969-70 Postdoctoral Fellow with C. C. J. Roothaan at the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#358
Michael L. Klein
#30344
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Michael Lawrence Klein is Laura H. Carnell Professor of Science and director of the Institute for Computational Molecular Science in the college of science and technology at Temple University in Philadelphia, US. He was previously the Hepburn Professor of Physical Science in the Center for Molecular Modeling at the University of Pennsylvania. Currently, he serves as the dean of the college of science and technology and has since 2013.
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William Klemperer
#28280
Overall Influence
1927 - 2017 (90 years)
William A. Klemperer was an American chemist, chemical physicists and molecular spectroscopists. Klemperer is most widely known for introducing molecular beam methods into chemical physics research, greatly increasing the understanding of nonbonding interactions between atoms and molecules through development of the microwave spectroscopy of van der Waals molecules formed in supersonic expansions, pioneering astrochemistry, including developing the first gas phase chemical models of cold molecular clouds that predicted an abundance of the molecular HCO+ ion that was later confirmed by radio...
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Seiji Shinkai
#16010
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
is a Japanese chemist and professor of Kyushu University, and emeritus professor. Early life Shinkai was born in Fukuoka prefecture, Japan, in 1944. He completed his B.S. in 1967 and Ph.D. in 1972 from Kyushu University.
Go to Profile#361
Bernd Giese
#20592
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Bernd Giese is a German chemist and guest professor in chemistry at the University of Fribourg in Fribourg, Switzerland since 2010. Biography Born in Hamburg, Germany, Giese received his PhD from the University of Munich under Rolf Huisgen in 1969. From 1969 to 1971 he worked in pharmaceutical research at BASF in Ludwigshafen. He obtained his Habilitation from the University of Freiburg in 1976. From 1977 to 1988 he was full professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt and from 1989 to 2010 at the University of Basel.
Go to Profile#362
Tracy Caldwell Dyson
#9731
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Tracy Caldwell Dyson is an American chemist and NASA astronaut. Caldwell Dyson was a mission specialist on Space Shuttle Endeavour flight STS-118 in August 2007 and part of the Expedition 23 and Expedition 24 crew on the International Space Station from April 2010 to September 2010. She has completed three spacewalks, logging more than 22 hours of extravehicular activity. She is scheduled to return to space on March 13th, 2024 for a third time on board Soyuz MS-25 for a 6 months mission onboard the ISS.
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Heinz Gerischer
#26422
Overall Influence
1919 - 1994 (75 years)
Heinz Gerischer was a German chemist who specialized in electrochemistry. He was the thesis advisor of future Nobel laureate Gerhard Ertl. The Heinz Gerischer Award of the European section of The Electrochemical Society is named in his honour.
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Daniel G. Nocera
#25709
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Daniel George Nocera is an American chemist, currently the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2006 he was described as a "major force in the field of inorganic photochemistry and photophysics". Time magazine included him in its 2009 list of the 100 most influential people.
Go to Profile#365
Michael Mingos
#26251
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
David Michael Patrick Mingos, FRS is a British chemist and academic. He was Principal of St Edmund Hall, Oxford from 1999 to 2009, and Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford. Education Mingos attended the Harvey Grammar School, King Edward VII School Lytham St Anne's, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology , and the University of Sussex .
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Valentin Koptyug
#32476
Overall Influence
1931 - 1997 (66 years)
Valentin Afanasyevich Koptyug was a Soviet Belarusian scientist, specializing in physical and organic chemistry. Biography Valentin Koptyug was born in 1931 in Yukhnov in the family of Afanasy Koptyug, who was director of the local communication department, and Nadezhda Koptyug, who was a telegrapher. When young Koptyug was studying in school, his family had to evacuate because of Great Patriotic War. In 1949 he finished school in Samarkand and graduated from D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia in 1954 in Moscow. In 1957, Koptyg completed postgraduate studies at this institution.
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Johann Gasteiger
#24827
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Johann Gasteiger is a German Chemist and a Chemoinformatician on which he wrote and edited various books. Life Johann Gasteiger studied Chemistry at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, ETH Zurich and University of Zurich. He obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1971 with Professor Rolf Huisgen. After Postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley until 1972, he was an assistant professor at Technical University of Munich and received his Habilitation in 1979 under the mentorship of Professor Ivar Ugi. From 1994 until 2007 he was a professor at University of Erlangen–Nuremberg in the "Computer-Chemie-Centrum", which he cofounded.
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E. E. Et Al. Snell
#42375
Overall Influence
#369
W. Clark Still
#39337
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
William Clark Still is an American organic chemist. As a distinguished professor at Columbia University, Clark Still made significant contributions to the field of organic chemistry, particularly in the areas of natural product synthesis, reaction development, conformational analysis, macrocyclic stereocontrol, and computational chemistry. Still and coworkers also developed the purification technique known as flash column chromatography which is widely used for the purification of organic compounds.
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A. L. J. Van Der Spek
#42446
Overall Influence
#371
John Meurig Thomas
#14397
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
Sir John Meurig Thomas , also known as JMT, was a Welsh scientist, educator, university administrator, and historian of science primarily known for his work on heterogeneous catalysis, solid-state chemistry, and surface and materials science.
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Keith Usherwood Ingold
#38984
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Keith Usherwood Ingold was a British-Canadian chemist. Life and career Keith Usherwood Ingold was born to Sir Christopher Ingold and Dr. Hilda Usherwood, and studied for a BSc in Chemistry at the University of London, completing his degree in 1949. He continued his higher education with a PhD in chemistry at Oxford University, which he completed in 1951. Soon after graduation he moved to Canada to begin work with the National Research Council, followed by two years of post-doctoral research at the University of British Columbia. He returned to work for the NRC in 1955 as a research officer, followed by a promotion to head of the Free Radical Chemistry Section.
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George K. Schweitzer
#20147
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (100 years)
George Keene Schweitzer is an academic in chemistry and family history and local history. He has also studied history of science and philosophy of science, for which he was awarded the Sc.D. Schweitzer was born in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. He received his B.A. in chemistry from Central College in 1945 and an M.S. and Ph.D. in chemistry in 1946 and 1948 from the University of Illinois . He received his M. A. in history of religion from Columbia University in 1961 and his Ph.D. in history from New York University in 1964. His Sc.D. was awarded in 1966.
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Russell Earl Marker
#15646
Overall Influence
1902 - 1995 (93 years)
Russell Earl Marker was an American chemist who invented the octane rating system when he was working at the Ethyl Corporation. Later in his career, he went on to found a steroid industry in Mexico when he successfully made semisynthetic progesterone from chemical constituents found in Mexican yams in a process known as Marker degradation. This eventually led to the development at Syntex of the combined oral contraceptive pill and synthetic cortisone – and to the development of the Mexican barbasco trade.
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Jacqui Cole
#11006
Overall Influence
Jacqueline Manina Cole is the Head of the Molecular Engineering group in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Her research considers the design of functional materials for optoelectronic applications.
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Darleane C. Hoffman
#15766
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (98 years)
Darleane Christian Hoffman is an American nuclear chemist who was among the researchers who confirmed the existence of Seaborgium, element 106. She is a faculty senior scientist in the Nuclear Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor in the graduate school at UC Berkeley. In acknowledgment of her many achievements, Discover magazine recognized her in 2002 as one of the 50 most important women in science.
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William T. Miller
#26452
Overall Influence
1911 - 1998 (87 years)
William Taylor Miller was an American professor of organic chemistry at Cornell University. His experimental research included investigations into the mechanism of addition of halogens, especially fluorine, to hydrocarbons. His work focused primarily on the physical and chemical properties of fluorocarbons and chlorofluorocarbons, and the synthesis of novel electrophilic reagents.
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Ulrich S. Schubert
#40955
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Ulrich Sigmar Schubert is a German chemist and full professor for Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry at the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena. Academic and professional background Ulrich S. Schubert studied chemistry at the Universities of Frankfurt am Main and Bayreuth, with a stay abroad in Richmond, Virginia, US. He received his doctorate in Bayreuth including a research stay in Tampa, Florida , and had a post-doc stay in Strasbourg with Jean-Marie Lehn . He did his habilitation at the Technical University of Munich . His research focuses on macro- and supramolecular chemistry, which pr...
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Jirō Tsuji
#39953
Overall Influence
1927 - 2022 (95 years)
Jiro Tsuji was a Japanese chemist, notable for his discovery of organometallic reactions, including the Tsuji-Trost reaction, the Tsuji-Wilkinson decarbonylation, and the Tsuji-Wacker reaction. Early life and education Tsuji was born in Japan in 1927.
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Frank Glorius
#30018
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Frank Glorius is a German chemist and W3-Professor of organic chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster. Life and work Glorius studied chemistry at the Leibniz University Hannover, completing his Diploma thesis in 1997. During his Diploma he also undertook a nine-month research stay at Stanford University with Paul A. Wender in 1995/1996. Glorius completed his Doctorate in 2000 investigating "New chiral bis-oxazoline ligands for enantioselective catalysis" at the University of Basel with Andreas Pfaltz. His PhD was divided between the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung and the University of Basel .
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Rudolf Hoppe
#31908
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Rudolf Hoppe , a German chemist, discovered the first covalent noble gas compounds. Academic career Hoppe studied chemistry at the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel and was awarded his doctorate at the Westfälische Wilhelms-University of Münster in 1954. He also got his habilitation degree in Münster and gained a professorship for inorganic chemistry in 1958. In 1965, Hoppe accepted an offer for the chair of inorganic and analytic chemistry at the Justus-Liebig-University of Gießen, which he kept until his retirement in 1991.
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Alain Fuchs
#13035
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Alain Fuchs is a Swiss-born French Doctor of Science and chemistry Professor, specialized in molecular simulation. He served as the president of Chimie ParisTech - PSL from 2006 to 2010. He has served as the president of the French National Centre for Scientific Research from 2010 to 2017. He became an Officer of the Legion of Honour in 2014.
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Martyn Poliakoff
#10882
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
#384
Rodney J. Bartlett
#28425
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Rodney Joseph Bartlett is Graduate Research Professor of Chemistry and Physics, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA. Career He received his B.Sc. degree from Millsaps College in 1966 and Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 1971. Bartlett was an NDEA and IBM predoctoral fellow at the University of Florida under the joint supervision of N. Yngve Öhrn and Per-Olov Löwdin. Bartlett was subsequently an NSF postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University, Denmark with Jan Linderberg and a postdoctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins University with Robert G. Parr. Bartlett became a staff scientist at Battelle's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and then at Battelle Memorial Institute, Ohio.
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Liu Yuanfang
#21324
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Liu Yuanfang is a Chinese nuclear chemist. He is a chemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences , who is now Professor of Chemistry at Shanghai University. He has studied nuclear chemistry and radiochemistry for forty years and pioneered education in that field in China.
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Franz Hillenkamp
#16836
Overall Influence
1936 - 2014 (78 years)
Franz Hillenkamp was a German scientist known for his development of the laser microprobe mass analyzer and, with Michael Karas, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization . Early life and education Franz Hillenkamp was born in 1936 in Essen, Germany. He attended high school in Lünen, graduating in 1955. He received a M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University in 1961. He received a Ph.D. from the Technische Universität München in 1966 with a thesis entitled “An Absolutely Calibrated Calorimeter for the Measurement of Pulsed Laser Radiation.”
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Alexander Klibanov
#23880
Overall Influence
Alexander Klibanov is the Novartis Professor of Biological Engineering and Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was also elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for research in enzyme and protein technology and contributions to the field of biocatalysis in nonaqueous solvents.
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Morten P. Meldal
#18992
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Morten Peter Meldal is a Danish chemist and Nobel laureate. He is a professor of chemistry at the University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is best known for developing the CuAAC-click reaction, concurrently with but independent of Valery V. Fokin and K. Barry Sharpless.
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Sabri Ergun
#30172
Overall Influence
1918 - 2006 (88 years)
Sabri Ergun was a Turkish chemical engineer. He is known for the Ergun equation, which expresses the pressure drop across a packed bed. Biography Sabri Ergun was born on 1 March 1918 in Gerede in the Ottoman Empire . He moved to the United States in 1943. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemical engineering from Columbia University and a D.Sc. degree from the Vienna University of Technology in 1956. He was married to Dorothy Karns in 1948, and they had three children: David, Robert and James. Ergun served as a staff member of the Coal Research Laboratory at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and was employed by the U.S.
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Robert Berner
#24668
Overall Influence
1935 - 2015 (80 years)
Robert Arbuckle Berner was an American scientist known for his contributions to the modeling of the carbon cycle. He taught Geology and Geophysics from 1965 to 2007 at Yale University, where he latterly served as Professor Emeritus until his death. His work on sedimentary rocks led to the co-founding of the BLAG model of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which takes into account both geochemical and biological contributions to the carbon cycle.
Go to Profile#391
Leopold Horner
#42472
Overall Influence
1911 - 2005 (94 years)
Leopold Horner was a German chemist who published a modified Wittig reaction using phosphonate-stabilized carbanions now called the Horner–Wadsworth–Emmons reaction or Horner-Wittig reaction.
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Robin M. Hochstrasser
#33531
Overall Influence
1931 - 2013 (82 years)
Robin M. Hochstrasser was a Scottish-born American chemist. Biography Hochstrasser was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1952 he received his B.S. from Heriot-Watt University and 3 years later got his Ph.D. from University of Edinburgh. In 1957 he joined the faculty at the University of British Columbia. From 1962 to 1967 he was Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellow and in 1963 he taught chemistry at University of Pennsylvania. During his 50 years of teaching, he trained 75 Ph.D. students and more than 90 postdoctoral fellows. Between 1955 and 1957 he served in the Royal Air Force. He also publishe...
Go to Profile#393
Trygve Helgaker
#40024
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Trygve Helgaker is professor of chemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo, Norway. He is a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, 2005. He has written more than 200 scientific papers, and the book, Molecular Electronic-Structure Theory . He is one of the main authors of the DALTON program.
Go to Profile#394
Gillian Reid
#26946
Overall Influence
Gillian Reid is a British chemist who is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and former Head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Southampton. Her research considers coordination chemistry, inorganic semiconductors and metal fluoride scaffolds. In 2020, she was appointed the President-elect of the Royal Society of Chemistry, becoming President in 2022.
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Jonathan Sessler
#27277
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Jonathan Sessler is a professor of chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin. He is notable for his pioneering work on expanded porphyrins and their applications to biology and medicine. He is a co-founder of Pharmacyclics, Inc., a company that works with expanded porphyrins, and Anionics, Inc., which develops anion recognition chemistry. Pharmacyclics was sold to AbbVie for $21 billion in 2015.
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Robert A. Alberty
#28434
Overall Influence
1921 - 2014 (93 years)
Robert Arnold Alberty was an American biophysical chemist, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Alberty earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Nebraska in 1943 and 1944, respectively, then a doctoral degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1947. For his work in the area of biochemical thermodynamics, Alberty was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1965. In 1968 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was dean of the MIT School of Science b...
Go to Profile#397
Lauri Vaska
#26832
Overall Influence
1925 - 2015 (90 years)
Lauri Vaska was an Estonian-American chemist who has made noteworthy contributions to organometallic chemistry. Vaska was born in Rakvere, Estonia. He was educated at the Baltic University in Hamburg, Germany and subsequently at the University of Göttingen , where he received his Vordiplom . He emigrated to the United States in 1952 and pursued his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry at the University of Texas . He was a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University where he conducted research on magnetochemistry. In 1957 he took a position as Fellow at the Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh, where he remained until 1964.
Go to Profile#398
John S. Waugh
#24108
Overall Influence
1929 - 2014 (85 years)
John Stewart Waugh was an American chemist and Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is known for developing average hamiltonian theory and using it to extend NMR spectroscopy, previously limited to liquids, to the solid state. He is the author of ANTIOPE, a freeware general purpose Windows-based simulator of the spectra and dynamics of nuclear magnetic resonance . He has also used systems of a few coupled spinss to illustrate the general requirements for equilibrium and ergodicity in isolated systems.
Go to Profile#399
Markus Antonietti
#45127
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
#400
Yamuna Krishnan
#33231
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Yamuna Krishnan is a professor at the Department of Chemistry, University of Chicago, where she has worked since August 2014. She was born to P.T. Krishnan and Mini in Parappanangadi, in the Malappuram district of Kerala, India. She was earlier a Reader in National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India. Krishnan won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for science and technology, the highest science award in India in the year 2013 in the Chemical Science category.
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