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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Chemistry,
#3701
Peter Biely
#143132
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
#3702
Y. -s. Lin
#143147
Overall Influence
#3703
Pauline Harrison
#111087
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (99 years)
Pauline May Harrison is a British protein crystallographer and professor emeritus at the University of Sheffield. She gained her chemistry degree from Somerville College, Oxford in 1948, followed by a DPhil in X-ray crystallography in 1952 supervised by Dorothy Hodgkin. After 3 years at King's College London she moved to the University of Sheffield in 1955 as a demonstrator in the Biochemistry department , obtaining an MRC grant to study the iron storage protein Ferritin, publishing preliminary X-ray diffraction data in the 1st volume of the Journal of Molecular Biology in 1959. The molecule which became her life's work.
Go to Profile#3704
Robert P. King
#143151
Overall Influence
#3705
Yoshimichi Ohki
#143184
Overall Influence
#3706
Manfred H. Rees
#143217
Overall Influence
#3707
Alan Sargeson
#120160
Overall Influence
1930 - 2008 (78 years)
Alan McLeod Sargeson FAA FRS was an Australian inorganic chemist. Education and early life Sargeson was born at Armidale, New South Wales, Australia. He was educated at the University of Sydney and received his Ph.D. supervised by Francis Patrick Dwyer also at Sydney in 1956.
Go to Profile#3708
George C. Levy
#143239
Overall Influence
#3709
Malcolm B. Perry
#143247
Overall Influence
#3710
Liane G. Benning
#123202
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Liane G. Benning is a biogeochemist studying mineral-fluid-microbe interface processes. She is a Professor of Interface Geochemistry at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany. Her team studies various processes that shape the Earth Surface with a special focus on two aspects: the nucleation, growth and crystallisation of mineral phases from solution and the role, effects and interplay between microbes and minerals in extreme environments. She is also interested in the characterisation of these systems, developing in situ and time resolved high resolution imaging and...
Go to Profile#3711
Yukio Imanishi
#143349
Overall Influence
#3712
Vicente Gotor
#143384
Overall Influence
#3713
Mi Sook Kang
#143402
Overall Influence
#3714
Laurent Maron
#143414
Overall Influence
#3715
Roland Billard
#143434
Overall Influence
#3716
Maria Daglia
#143450
Overall Influence
#3717
Jeffrey Aubé
#143453
Overall Influence
#3718
James Makoto Toguri
#143487
Overall Influence
#3719
Max Herberhold
#143496
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (89 years)
#3720
Jaume Veciana
#143508
Overall Influence
#3721
Elburt F. Osborn
#106490
Overall Influence
1911 - 1998 (87 years)
Elburt Franklin Osborn was an American geochemist and educator. He served as the 13th director of the U.S. Bureau of Mines. Early life Elburt Franklin Osborn was born on August 13, 1911, in Kishwaukee, Illinois to Anna and William Franklin Osborn. Osborn graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in geology from DePauw University in 1932. He received a Master of Science in petrology from Northwestern University in 1934 and a PhD in petrology from the California Institute of Technology in 1938.
Go to Profile#3722
Martino Di Serio
#119875
Overall Influence
Martino Di Serio is an Italian chemist. Academic background In 1988, Di Serio graduated cum laude from the University of Naples Federico II in industrial chemistry. From then on until 1990, he worked in the research field with industrial grants at the Department of Chemistry of University of Naples Federico II. From 1990 to 1992, he was a temporary lecturer in industrial chemistry with the University of Salerno, where in 1993 he became a Researcher in industrial chemistry. In 1995, he moved on to joining the Chemistry Department of the University of Naples Federico II, where from 2001 to June 2017 he was an associate professor of industrial chemistry.
Go to Profile#3723
Fumio Hirata
#143523
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
#3724
Osamu Tanaka
#143540
Overall Influence
#3725
Charles W. Jr. Bauschlicher
#143564
Overall Influence
#3726
Robert C. Brasch
#143617
Overall Influence
#3727
Masato Tsukuba-shi Tanaka
#143624
Overall Influence
#3728
Roberto Todeschini
#143691
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
#3729
William B. Tolman
#133146
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
William B. Tolman an American inorganic chemist focusing on the synthesis and characterization of model bioinorganic systems, and organometallic approaches towards polymer chemistry. He has served as Editor in Chief of the ACS journal Inorganic Chemistry, and as a Senior Investigator at the NSF Center for Sustainable Polymers. Tolman is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society.
Go to Profile#3730
Sheldon G. Shore
#143744
Overall Influence
#3731
Tetsurou Seiyama
#143758
Overall Influence
#3732
Avesh Kumar Tyagi
#143766
Overall Influence
#3733
Abdelhamid Elaissari
#143799
Overall Influence
#3734
Robert Mokaya
#129679
Overall Influence
Robert Minge Mokaya FRS is a Kenyan-British chemist who is Professor of Materials Chemistry and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement at the University of Nottingham. Mokaya holds a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award.
Go to Profile#3735
Paul Gatenholm
#143827
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
#3736
Foil A. Miller
#109589
Overall Influence
1916 - 2016 (100 years)
Foil Allan Miller was an American chemist and philatelist best known for his work in infrared and Raman spectroscopy. He was head of the spectroscopy division of the Mellon Institute and later professor and head of the spectroscopy laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. Among other publications, he co-authored the books Course Notes on the Interpretation of Infrared and Raman Spectra and A Philatelic Ramble Through Chemistry .
Go to Profile#3737
Jaroslav Koutecký
#143863
Overall Influence
#3738
Hiroshi M. Yamamoto
#143887
Overall Influence
#3739
So-Jung Park
#52522
Overall Influence
So-Jung Park 박소정 is a professor of chemistry at Ewha Womans University, Republic of Korea. Her research considers the self-assembly of nanoparticles and functional molecules for biomedical and optoelectronic devices. She serves as Associate Editor of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces and Nanoscale.
Go to Profile#3740
C. H. Wang
#143901
Overall Influence
#3741
Claire Adjiman
#108395
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (53 years)
Claire Sandrine Jacqueline Adjiman is a professor of Chemical Engineering at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Early life and education Claire Sandrine Jacqueline Adjiman was raised in France and relocated to London in 1988. Adjiman received a master's degree in chemical engineering from Imperial College London in 1993. She completed a PhD under Christodoulos A. Floudas at Princeton University in 1998 and her thesis was titled 'Global optimization Techniques for Process Systems Engineering' .
Go to Profile#3742
Miia Rannikmäe
#106887
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Miia Rannikmäe is an Estonian chemist specializing in cognitive learning and scientific literacy. Biography Born in Tartu, Rannikmäe graduated in chemistry and as a chemistry teacher from the University of Tartu in 1975. She went on to gain a master's degree in education there in 1996 with a thesis on Phenomenographic analyses of students concept of chemical reaction. In 2001, she earned a PhD in Life and Earth Sciences Education from the same university. As of November 2015, she is Professor of Science Education, heading the Science Education Centre at the University of Tartu.
Go to Profile#3743
Mohamed S. El‐aasser
#143929
Overall Influence
#3744
Richard Lee. Martin
#143971
Overall Influence
#3745
Majed Chergui
#139984
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Majed Chergui is a Swiss and French physicist specialized in ultrafast dynamics of light-induced processes. He is a professor at EPFL , head of the Laboratory of Ultrafast Spectroscopy at EPFL's School of Basic Sciences, and founding director of the Lausanne Centre for Ultrafast Science .
Go to Profile#3746
Masami Kamigaito
#143997
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
#3747
Olof Heimbürger
#143999
Overall Influence
#3748
Emil B. Lobkovsky
#144002
Overall Influence
#3749
Jaap G. Snijders†
#144062
Overall Influence
#3750
Swiatoslaw I. Trofimenko
#144067
Overall Influence
