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,
#401
Morinobu Endo
#12733
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Morinobu Endo is a Japanese physicist and chemist, often cited as one of the pioneers of carbon nanofibers and carbon nanotubes synthesis at the beginning of the 1970s. He demonstrated carbon fibers can be grown by gas pyrolysis and traveled to Orléans, France in 1974 working with Madame Agnès Oberlin at CNRS in her laboratory. He discovered carbon nanotubes in 1976 as part of his studies at University of Orleans in France. He has been awarded the Charles E. Pettinos Award from the American Carbon Society in 2001, "For his pioneering work and applications of carbon nanotubes", Medal of Achiev...
Go to Profile#402
George Blasse
#45083
Overall Influence
1934 - 2020 (86 years)
George Blasse was a Dutch chemist. He was a professor of solid-state chemistry at Utrecht University for most of his career. Blasse was born on 28 August 1934 in Amsterdam. He studied chemistry at the University of Amsterdam. In 1964 he obtained his PhD under E.W. Gorter at Leiden University with a dissertation titled: Chrystal chemistry and some magnetic properties of mixed metal oxides with spinel structure. From 1960 to 1970 Blasse was employed by the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium. In 1970 he was appointed as professor of solid-state chemistry at Utrecht University. He retired in 1996.
Go to Profile#403
Alexander Pines
#23442
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Alexander Pines is an American chemist. He is the Glenn T. Seaborg Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, Chancellor's Professor Emeritus and Professor of the Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences and the Department of Bioengineering. He was born in 1945, grew up in Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia and studied undergraduate mathematics and chemistry in Israel at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Coming to the United States in 1968, Pines obtained his Ph.D. in chemical physics at M.I.T. in 1972 ...
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Karl Turekian
#24722
Overall Influence
1927 - 2013 (86 years)
Karl Karekin Turekian was a geochemist and Sterling Professor at Yale University. During his career at Yale, he examined an uncommonly broad range of topics in planetary science — including the sediments of the deep seas, the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park, meteorite strikes, and the composition of Moon rocks.
Go to Profile#405
Kenkichi Sonogashira
#36946
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
is a Japanese chemist and was a professor of chemistry at Osaka University in Japan. He discovered the Sonogashira coupling in 1975. Sonogashira was later a professor at Osaka City University and retired in 2004.
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Kurt Starke
#23839
Overall Influence
1911 - 2000 (89 years)
Kurt Starke was a German radiochemist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club. He independently discovered the transuranic element neptunium. From 1947 to 1959, he taught and did research in Canada and the United States. From 1959 until he achieved emeritus status, he was at the German University of Marburg, where he established and became director of the Institute of Nuclear Chemistry. He was also the first dean of the Department of Physical Chemistry of the University of Marburg, which opened in 1971.
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Jean-Michel Savéant
#23261
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Jean-Michel Savéant was a French chemist who specialized in electrochemistry. He was elected member of the French Academy of Sciences in 2000 and foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences in 2001. He published in excess of 400 peer-reviewed articles in chemistry literature.
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F. Gordon A. Stone
#33912
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Francis Gordon Albert Stone CBE, FRS, FRSC , always known as Gordon, was a British chemist who was a prolific and decorated scholar. He specialized in the synthesis of main group and transition metal organometallic compounds. He was the author of more than 900 academic publications resulting in an h-index of 72 in 2011.
Go to Profile#409
Bruno H. Zimm
#26755
Overall Influence
1920 - 2005 (85 years)
Bruno Hasbrouck Zimm was an American chemist. He was a professor of chemistry and biochemistry from University of California, San Diego, and a leading polymer chemist and DNA researcher. Early life Zimm was born an only child in 1920 in Woodstock, New York. His father was the sculptor Bruno Louis Zimm, and his mother a writer. Zimm graduated from Kent School in Kent, Connecticut in 1938. After obtaining his Ph.D. in physical chemistry under the tutelage of Joe Mayer at Columbia University in 1944, he moved across town for postdoctoral work with Herman Mark at the Polytechnic Institute of Bro...
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David R. Liu
#17954
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
David Ruchien Liu is an American molecular biologist and chemist. He is the Richard Merkin Professor, Director of the Merkin Institute of Transformative Technologies in Healthcare, and Vice-Chair of the Faculty at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT; Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences and Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University; and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.
Go to Profile#411
Geoffrey Ozin
#30285
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Geoffrey Alan Stuart Ozin FRSC is a British chemist, currently Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Materials Chemistry and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Toronto. Ozin is the recipient of numerous awards for his research on nanomaterials, including the Meldola Medal and Prize in 1972 and the Rutherford Memorial Medal in 1982. He won the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 2011, the Royal Society of Chemistry's Centenary Prize in 2015, and the Humboldt Prize in 2005 and 2019. He has co-founded three university spin-off companies: Torrovap in 1985, which manufactures m...
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Aubrey Trotman-Dickenson
#13128
Overall Influence
1926 - 2016 (90 years)
Sir Aubrey Fiennes Trotman-Dickenson was a British chemist and academic administrator. Biography Trotman-Dickenson was born in Wilmslow, Cheshire on 12 February 1926. His father, Edward Newton Trotman-Dickenson was a cotton merchant and his mother was Violet Murray, née Nicoll. He attended Winchester College and continued to study Chemistry with a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford in 1948.
Go to Profile#413
Elmira Süleymanova
#17792
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Elmira Süleymanova , is an Azerbaijani chemist and civil servant. In 2002 she became the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Republic. Biography Süleymanova was born in Baku on 17 July 1937 and graduated in Chemistry from the State University of Azerbaijan and graduated with honors. Since then she worked in the Institute of Petrochemical Processes of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences as a laboratory assistant and later became the Head of the laboratory. In 1967 she got a postgraduate from the National Academy of Sciences, in 1980 a doctorate and has been a university professor since 1988.
Go to Profile#414
Richard G. Compton
#39466
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Richard Guy Compton FRSC MAE is Professor of Chemistry and Aldrichian Praelector at Oxford University, United Kingdom. He is a Tutorial Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford and has a large research group based at the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory at Oxford University. Compton has broad interests in both fundamental and applied electrochemistry and electro-analysis including nano-chemical aspects. He has published more than 1600 papers with more than 44,000 citations, excluding self-cites, as of March 2020; Reuters-Thomson ‘Highly Cited Researcher’ 2014, 2015 and 2016see list ...
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Hanns-Peter Boehm
#24060
Overall Influence
1928 - 2022 (94 years)
Hanns-Peter Boehm was a German chemist and professor emeritus at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany. Boehm is considered a pioneer of graphene research. Biography Hanns-Peter Boehm studied chemistry in Regensburg from 1947 to 1951. He received his doctorate in 1953 at Technische Universität Darmstadt, where he also received his habilitation in 1959 with the treatise Oberflächenchemie und Adsorption an Kohlenstoff und SiO2. In 1961, Boehm, together with Ralph Setton and Eberhard Stumpp, isolated and identified single graphene sheets by transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction.
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Thomas Hofmann
#41764
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Thomas Frank Hofmann is a German food chemist and academic administrator. Since 2019, he has been President of the Technical University of Munich. Education Hofmann passed the Abitur in 1987 at the Meranier-Gymnasium Lichtenfels and studied food chemistry at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg from 1988 to 1992. In 1995, he received his PhD from the Technical University of Munich and habilitated in 1998.
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Timothy M. Swager
#34358
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Timothy M. Swager is an American Scientist and the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research is at the interface of chemistry and materials science, with specific interests in carbon nanomaterials, polymers, and liquid crystals. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors.
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Boris Derjaguin
#21992
Overall Influence
1902 - 1994 (92 years)
Boris Vladimirovich Derjaguin was a Soviet and Russian chemist. As a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he laid the foundation of the modern science of colloids and surfaces. An epoch in the development of the physical chemistry of colloids and surfaces is associated with his name.
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Jay Bailey
#16169
Overall Influence
1944 - 2001 (57 years)
James Edward Bailey , generally known as Jay Bailey, was an American pioneer of biochemical engineering, particularly metabolic engineering. He was said to be "the most influential biochemical engineer of modern times". In a special issue of a journal dedicated to his work, the editor said "Jay was one of biochemical engineering's most creative thinkers and spirited advocates, a true innovator who played an enormous role in establishing biochemical engineering as the dynamic discipline it is today". His numerous contributions in biotechnology and metabolic engineering have led to multiple aw...
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Mikhail Shultz
#14974
Overall Influence
1919 - 2006 (87 years)
Mikhail Mikhaylovich Shultz , was a Soviet/Russian physical chemist, and an artist. In Soviet Union, Russia, and outside Shultz is primarily known for his research in the chemical thermodynamics of heterogeneous chemical compounds, electrochemistry of glasses, membrane electrochemistry; for works in the field of ion exchange and phase equilibria of multicomponent compounds, and theory of glass electrode; Shultz also worked on thermal protection system for the Soviet Buran spacecraft and credited with research in optical fibers in 80s.
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Frank Westheimer
#36301
Overall Influence
1912 - 2007 (95 years)
Frank Henry Westheimer was an American chemist. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1936 to 1954, and at Harvard University from 1953 to 1983, becoming the Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry in 1960, and Professor Emeritus in 1983. The Westheimer medal was established in his honor in 2002.
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Austen Angell
#39550
Overall Influence
1933 - 2021 (88 years)
Charles Austen Angell was a renowned Australian and American physical chemist known for his prolific and highly cited research on the chemistry and physics of glasses and glass-forming liquids. He was internationally recognized as a luminary in the fields of glasses, liquids, water and ionic liquids.
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Heinz Staab
#22344
Overall Influence
1926 - 2012 (86 years)
Heinz A. Staab was a German chemist. From 1990 to 1996 he was Präsident der Max Planck Society. Biography Staab was born in 1926 in Darmstadt. He studied chemistry at the Marburg, the Tübingen and medicine in Heidelberg. Hans Meerwein, Rolf Huisgen, Adolf Butenandt and Georg Wittig were among his academic teachers. In 1962 he was appointed professor for organic chemistry at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. Staab worked in the field of heterocyclic chemistry. Staab was the president of the German Chemical Society from 1984 till 1985. He was director of the Max Planck Society from 1984 until 1990.
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David Chandler
#38879
Overall Influence
1944 - 2017 (73 years)
David Chandler was a physical chemist and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and a winner of the Irving Langmuir Award. He published two books and over 300 scientific articles.
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Ralph Weissleder
#20734
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Ralph Weissleder is an American clinician scientist. Biography Ralph Weissleder is a professor at Harvard Medical School, director of the Center for Systems Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital and an attending interventional radiologist at MGH.
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Jeremy R. Knowles
#27674
Overall Influence
1935 - 2008 (73 years)
Jeremy Randall Knowles was a professor of chemistry at Harvard University who served as dean of the Harvard University faculty of arts and sciences from 1991 to 2002. He joined Harvard in 1974, received many awards for his research, and remained at Harvard until his death, leaving the faculty for a decade to serve as Dean. Knowles died on 3 April 2008 at his home.
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Graham Fleming
#38349
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Graham R. Fleming is a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and member of the Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute based at UCB. Fleming's team is known for developing and using techniques in advanced multidimensional, ultrafast spectroscopy to study complex condensed phase dynamics in systems including natural photosynthetic complexes and nanoscale systems including single-walled carbon nanotubes and organic photovoltaic systems.
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Bryce Crawford
#45244
Overall Influence
1914 - 2011 (97 years)
Bryce Low Crawford Jr. was an American scientist. He worked for decades as a professor of physical chemistry in the University of Minnesota. Awards and honors Crawford has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1956. He was elected in 1962 a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1971, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977. Among his awards are the Priestley Medal in 1982.
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Ching Wan Tang
#16649
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Ching Wan Tang is a Hong Kong–American physical chemist. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2018 for inventing OLED , and was awarded the 2011 Wolf Prize in Chemistry. Tang is the IAS Bank of East Asia Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and previously served as the Doris Johns Cherry Professor at the University of Rochester.
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Samuel I. Stupp
#17886
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Samuel I. Stupp , is a Board of Trustees Professor of Materials Science, Chemistry, and Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL. He is best known for his work on self-assembling materials and supramolecular chemistry. One of his most notable discoveries is a broad class of peptide amphiphiles that self-assemble into high aspect ratio nanofibers with extensive applications in regenerative medicine. He has also made significant contributions to the fields of supramolecular chemistry, nanotechnology, and organic electronic materials. He has over 500 peer-reviewed publications and ...
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Craig Hawker
#33725
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Craig Jon Hawker is an Australian-born chemist. His research has focused on the interface between organic and polymer chemistry, with emphasis on the design, synthesis, and application of well-defined macromolecular structures in biotechnology, microelectronics, and surface science. Hawker holds more than 45 U.S. patents, and he has co-authored over 300 papers in the areas of nanotechnology, materials science, and chemistry. He was listed as one of the top 100 most cited chemists worldwide over the decade 1992–2002, and again in 2000–2010.
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Robert Zwanzig
#32562
Overall Influence
1928 - 2014 (86 years)
Robert Walter Zwanzig was an American theoretical physicist and chemist who made important contributions to the statistical mechanics of irreversible processes, protein folding, and the theory of liquids and gases.
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Mietek Jaroniec
#42138
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Mietek Jaroniec is a Polish and American chemist and an author of over 950 scientific papers, which got over 127,964 citations and brings him an h-index of 155. Biography He was born in 1949 in Okrzeja, Poland. He obtained his masters and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry at the Curie-Sklodowska University in 1972 and 1976 respectively. From 1972 to 1991 he worked at the Department of Theoretical Chemistry, Marie Curie-Sklodowska University and since 1991 works at Kent State University as a professor. Prior to it, he also was a research assistant from 1972 to 1977 after which he got promoted to the assistant professor a position that he kept till 1980.
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Joanna Fowler
#29946
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Joanna Sigfred Fowler is a scientist emeritus at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. She served as professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and director of Brookhaven's Radiotracer Chemistry, Instrumentation and Biological Imaging Program. Fowler studied the effect of disease, drugs, and aging on the human brain and radiotracers in brain chemistry. She has received many awards for her pioneering work, including the National Medal of Science.
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Helen H. Fielding
#36062
Overall Influence
Helen H. Fielding is a Professor of physical chemistry at University College London . She focuses on ultrafast transient spectroscopy of protein chromophores and molecules. She was the first woman to win the Royal Society of Chemistry Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize and Marlow Award .
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Fereidoon Shahidi
#47866
Overall Influence
#437
L. Gary Leal
#16387
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Leslie Gary Leal is the Warren & Katharine Schlinger Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is known for his research work in the dynamics of complex fluids.
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Norman Hackerman
#28616
Overall Influence
1912 - 2007 (95 years)
Norman Hackerman was an American chemist, professor, and academic administrator who served as the 18th President of the University of Texas at Austin and later as the 4th President of Rice University . He was an internationally known expert in metal corrosion.
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Colin Eaborn
#31179
Overall Influence
1923 - 2004 (81 years)
Colin Eaborn FRS was a British scientist and academic noted for his work in establishing the Sussex University School of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences. Born to a joiner, he gained first-class honours from Bangor University and, after research during the Second World War, accepted a position as an assistant researcher at University College, Leicester in 1947. In 1951 he won a Rotary Foundation Fellowship, which allowed him to spend a year working at the University of California, Los Angeles with Saul Winstein and his research group, and in 1960 published the seminal Organosilicon Compounds.
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Ken Raymond
#33515
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Kenneth Norman Raymond is a bioinorganic and coordination chemist. He is Chancellor's Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor of the Graduate School, the Director of the Seaborg Center in the Chemical Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the President and Chairman of Lumiphore.
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Julie Macpherson
#37143
Overall Influence
Julie Macpherson is a professor of chemistry at the University of Warwick. In 2017 she was awarded the Royal Society Innovation award for her research into boron doped diamond electrochemical sensors.
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G. N. Ramachandran
#2356
Overall Influence
1922 - 2001 (79 years)
Gopalasamudram Narayanan Ramachandran, or G.N. Ramachandran, FRS was an Indian physicist who was known for his work that led to his creation of the Ramachandran plot for understanding peptide structure. He was the first to propose a triple-helical model for the structure of collagen. He subsequently went on to make other major contributions in biology and physics.
Go to Profile#443
Edgar Bright Wilson
#21624
Overall Influence
1908 - 1992 (84 years)
Edgar Bright Wilson Jr. was an American chemist. Wilson was a prominent and accomplished chemist and teacher, recipient of the National Medal of Science in 1975, Guggenheim Fellowships in 1949 and 1970, the Elliott Cresson Medal in 1982, and a number of honorary doctorates. He was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the United States National Academy of Sciences. He was also the Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus at Harvard University. One of his sons, Kenneth G. Wilson, was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1982.
Go to Profile#444
Harmon Craig
#48336
Overall Influence
#445
Edward I. Solomon
#40195
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Edward I. Solomon is the Monroe E. Spaght Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. He is an elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been profiled in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He has also been a longtime collaborator with many scientists, including Professor Kenneth D. Karlin at Johns Hopkins University.
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Henry Rzepa
#30695
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Henry Stephen Rzepa is a chemist and Emeritus Professor of Computational chemistry at Imperial College London. Education Rzepa was born in London in 1950, was educated at Wandsworth Comprehensive School, and then entered the chemistry department at Imperial College London where he graduated in 1971. He stayed to do a Ph.D. on the physical organic chemistry of indoles supervised by Brian Challis.
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Abul Hussam
#13909
Overall Influence
Abul Hussam is the inventor of the Sono arsenic filter. He is a chemistry professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and a member of advisory board at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology.
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Gregory Robert Choppin
#41583
Overall Influence
1927 - 2015 (88 years)
Gregory Robert Choppin was an American nuclear chemist and co-discoverer of the element mendelevium, atomic number 101. Others in the discovery group were Albert Ghiorso, Bernard G. Harvey, Stanley G. Thompson, and Glenn T. Seaborg. The element was named in honor of Dmitri Mendeleev.
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Josef Michl
#44679
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Josef Michl is a Czechoslovak-American Chemist. Early life and education Michl was born in Prague, which was then the capital of the short-lived Second Czechoslovak Republic , in 12 March 1939. This was a few days before Nazi Germany incorporated Prague and the rest of the Czech part of the country as the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
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François Diederich
#32900
Overall Influence
1952 - 2020 (68 years)
François Diederich was a Luxembourgian chemist specializing in organic chemistry. Education He obtained both his diploma and PhD from the University of Heidelberg in 1977 and 1979, respectively. Career and research After postdoctoral studies with Orville L. Chapman at the University of California, Los Angeles and habilitation at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, he became Full Professor of Organic and Bioorganic Chemistry at UCLA in 1989. In 1992 he was appointed Professor of Organic Chemistry at ETH Zurich. He retired on 31 July 2017, and remained a research-active professor at ETH Zurich.
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