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 Engineering,
#701
Owen Garriott
#9945
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
Owen Kay Garriott was an American electrical engineer and NASA astronaut, who spent 60 days aboard the Skylab space station in 1973 during the Skylab 3 mission, and 10 days aboard Spacelab-1 on a Space Shuttle mission in 1983.
Go to Profile#702
Daniel Weihs
#16021
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Daniel Weihs is the Israeli Louis and Lyra Richmond Chair of Life Sciences and Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Aeronautical Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and the Head of its Autonomous Systems Program.
Go to Profile#703
Shu Chien
#15802
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Shu Chien is a Chinese–American physiologist and bioengineer. His work on the fluid dynamics of blood flow has had a major impact on the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis. More recently, Chien's research has focused on the mechanical forces, such as pressure and flow, that regulate the behaviors of the cells in blood vessels. Chien is currently President of the Biomedical Engineering Society.
Go to Profile#704
Mac Van Valkenburg
#30561
Overall Influence
1921 - 1997 (76 years)
Mac Elwyn Van Valkenburg was an American electrical engineer and university professor. He wrote seven textbooks and numerous scientific publications. Early life and education Van Valkenburg was born in Union, Utah. He graduated from the University of Utah in 1943 with a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, received a master's degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1946, and a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1952, under advisor Oswald Garrison Villard, Jr.
Go to Profile#705
Jim Keller
#23322
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
James B. Keller is an American microprocessor engineer best known for his work at AMD and Apple. He was the lead architect of the AMD K8 microarchitecture and was involved in designing the Athlon and Apple A4/A5 processors. He was also the coauthor of the specifications for the x86-64 instruction set and HyperTransport interconnect. From 2012 to 2015 he returned to AMD to work on the AMD K12 and Zen microarchitectures.
Go to Profile#706
Gunnar Fant
#13430
Overall Influence
1919 - 2009 (90 years)
Carl Gunnar Michael Fant was a leading researcher in speech science in general and speech synthesis in particular who spent most of his career as a professor at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He was a first cousin of the actors and directors George Fant and Kenne Fant.
Go to Profile#707
Nayyar Ali Dada
#11081
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Nayyar Ali Dada is a Pakistani architect. Early life and education Nayyar Ali Dada was born on 11 November 1943 in Delhi, British India, to a Sayyid family. His family migrated to Lahore, Pakistan in the 1950s. After finishing his basic education at the University of Punjab, Lahore in 1957, he enrolled in the National College of Arts , Lahore as a student. In 1964, he graduated from NCA but chose to remain attached with it by working there as a teacher. The principal of NCA Shakir Ali and Dada became friends. According to Overseas Pakistanis Foundation website, "The relationship with Shakir Ali grew, and the two became close friends.
Go to Profile#708
Joseph Katz
#26502
Overall Influence
Joseph Katz is an Israel-born American fluid dynamicist, known for his work on experimental fluid mechanics, cavitation phenomena and multiphase flow, turbulence, turbomachinery flows and oceanography flows, flow-induced vibrations and noise, and development of optical flow diagnostics techniques, including Particle Image Velocimetry and Holographic Particle Image Velocimetry . As of 2005, he is the William F. Ward Sr. Distinguished Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Whiting School of Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University.
Go to Profile#709
Bart Kosko
#6081
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Bart Andrew Kosko is a writer and professor of electrical engineering and law at the University of Southern California . He is a researcher and popularizer of fuzzy logic, neural networks, and noise, and the author of several trade books and textbooks on these and related subjects of machine intelligence. He was awarded the 2022 Donald O. Hebb Award for neural learning by the International Neural Network Society.
Go to Profile#710
Stan Allen
#27595
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Stan Allen is an American architect, theorist and former dean of Princeton University School of Architecture. Biography He received a B.A. from Brown University, a B.Arch. from Cooper Union and an M.Arch. from Princeton University. He has worked in the offices of Richard Meier and Rafael Moneo, and was formerly the director, with landscape architect James Corner at Field Operations. The work of this interdisciplinary collaboration was recognized with first prizes in invited competitions for the re-use of Fresh Kills in Staten Island , and the Arroyo Parkway in Pasadena, California . His pra...
Go to Profile#711
Anatol Roshko
#27573
Overall Influence
1923 - 2017 (94 years)
Anatol Roshko was a Canadian-born physicist and engineer. He was the Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. Roshko is known for his contributions to gas dynamics. He along with H. W. Liepmann is the co-author of the widely used textbook Elements of Gasdynamics. He has made research contributions to problems of separated flow; bluff-body aerodynamics; structure of turbulent shear flow.
Go to Profile#712
Ivan Antić
#41310
Overall Influence
1923 - 2005 (82 years)
Ivan Antic was a Serbian architect and academic, considered one of Yugoslavia's best post-World War II architects. He worked on several projects with architect Ivanka Raspopović. Biography He studied in Belgrade from 1945 until graduating in 1950. While studying, he worked for the Ministry of Transportation and from 1950 until 1953 he worked for the "Jugoprojekt Office" where he met people like Stanko Kliska and Vojin Simeonović where he learned the practical skills of his profession. After 1957 he started to design his own projects and after that he joined the University of Belgrade Faculty of Architecture, in first as an assistant and later as a professor.
Go to Profile#713
Hideo Sasaki
#20342
Overall Influence
1919 - 2000 (81 years)
Hideo Sasaki was a Japanese American landscape architect. Biography Hideo Sasaki was born in Reedley, California, on 25 November 1919. He grew up working on his family's California truck farm, and harvesting crops on Arizona farms. He began his college studies at the University of California, Berkeley during the time of World War II. Owing to his Japanese descent, he was forced into the Poston internment camp in Arizona after the signing of Executive Order 9066. He was able to leave the camp upon volunteering to work as a farm hand in Sterling, Colorado.
Go to Profile#714
Jeff Kipnis
#25201
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Jeffrey Kipnis is an American architectural critic, theorist, designer, film-maker, curator, and educator. Education, honors, and career Not a registered architect, Kipnis first came to prominence through his association with Bahram Shirdel, and Peter Eisenman . Kipnis holds a master's degree in physics from Georgia State University, USA , and in 2006, he was awarded an honorary diploma by the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, in recognition of his contributions to the discipline of architecture as a teacher, critic, and theorist. Other honors include the AIA Bronze M...
Go to Profile#715
Bogdan Bogdanović
#18097
Overall Influence
1922 - 2010 (88 years)
Bogdan Bogdanović was a Serbian and Yugoslav architect, urbanist and essayist. He taught architecture at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Architecture, where he also served as dean. Bogdanović wrote numerous articles about urbanism, especially about its mythic and symbolic aspects, some of which appeared in international journals such as El País, Die Zeit, and others. He was also involved in politics, as a Yugoslav Partisan in World War II, later as mayor of Belgrade. When Slobodan Milošević rose to power and nationalism gained ground in Yugoslavia, Bogdanović became a dissident.
Go to Profile#716
Sergio Asti
#26167
Overall Influence
1926 - 2021 (95 years)
Sergio Asti was an Italian designer and architect, primarily known for his industrial designs for firms such as Artemide, Brionvega, , Gabbianelli, Heller, Knoll, Salviati, and Zanotta. Life and career Asti was born in Milan. After receiving his degree in architecture at the Polytechnic University of Milan, he opened his own design studio in 1956. That same year he became one of the founders of the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale.
Go to Profile#717
David Liddle
#3465
Overall Influence
David Liddle is co-founder of Interval Research Corporation, consulting professor of computer science at Stanford University. While at Xerox PARC he was credited with heading development of the Xerox Star computer system. In 1982 he co-founded Metaphor Computer Systems. He has served on the board of many corporations. He was chair of the board of trustees of the Santa Fe Institute from 1994 to 1999. Liddle holds a B.S. in computer science from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in EECS from the University of Toledo, in Ohio.
Go to Profile#718
Bernard Amadei
#25348
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Bernard Amadei is a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, founding president of Engineers Without Borders , co-founder of the Engineers Without Borders-International Network, and founding director of the Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities. He is also a recipient of multiple awards and distinctions and holds seven honorary doctoral degrees.
Go to Profile#719
Ishwar Puri
#25656
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Ishwar Kanwar Puri is an Indian-American and Canadian scientist, engineer, and academic. Early life and education Puri was born in New Delhi, India, in 1959. He studied at St. Xavier’s School, Delhi from 1964 to 1976. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering of Delhi University, Delhi in 1982, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering Science from the University of California, San Diego.
Go to Profile#720
Fredric J. Harris
#19152
Overall Influence
Fredric Joel Harris was a professor of Electrical engineering and was CUBIC signal processing chair at San Diego State University. He is now Adjunct professor at University of California San Diego. He is an internationally renowned expert on DSP and Communication Systems. He is also the co-inventor of the Blackman-Harris window. He also has extensively published many technical papers, the most famous being the seminal 1978 paper "On the use of Windows for Harmonic Analysis with the Discrete Fourier Transform." He is also the author of the textbook Multi-rate Signal Processing for Communicatio...
Go to Profile#721
Kurt Magnus
#24325
Overall Influence
1912 - 2003 (91 years)
Kurt Magnus was a German scientist, expert in the field of applied mechanics, a pioneer of mechatronics, modern navigation technology and inertial sensors. Kurt Magnus earned his doctorate in 1937 from the Georg-August University in Göttingen in the field of "force-coupled gyroscopes". In 1942 Magnus habilitated on the subject of "General movements of rigid bodies in moving reference systems".
Go to Profile#722
Mark W. Spong
#31965
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Mark W. Spong is an American roboticist. He is a professor of systems engineering and electrical and computer engineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering & Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas . He served as dean of the Jonsson School and the Lars Magnus Ericsson Chair in Electrical Engineering from 2008 to 2017. Before he joined UTD, he was the Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering, professor of electrical engineering, research professor of Coordinated Science Laboratory and Information Trust Institute, and director of Center for Autonomous Engineering Sy...
Go to Profile#723
Adel Sedra
#18517
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Adel S. Sedra is an Egyptian Canadian electrical engineer and professor. Career Born in Egypt in 1943, Sedra received his B.Sc. from Cairo University in 1964 and his M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, in 1968 and 1969, respectively. All three of his degrees are in electrical engineering.
Go to Profile#724
Dennis Sharp
#29588
Overall Influence
1933 - 2010 (77 years)
Dennis Sharp was a British architect, professor, curator, historian, author and editor. His obituary in The Guardian stated that he 'was well-known as an architectural historian, teacher and active defender of the environment. However, his reputation in those fields rather overshadowed his considerable success as a working architect and his long-term commitment to environmentally friendly building'.
Go to Profile#725
Thelma Estrin
#14886
Overall Influence
1924 - 2014 (90 years)
Thelma Estrin was an American computer scientist and engineer who did pioneering work in the fields of expert systems and biomedical engineering. Estrin was one of the first to apply computer technology to healthcare and medical research. In 1954, Estrin helped to design the Weizmann Automatic Computer, or WEIZAC, the first computer in Israel and the Middle East, a moment marked as an IEEE Milestone in Electrical and Computer Engineering. She was professor emerita in the Department of Computer Science, University of California at Los Angeles .
Go to Profile#726
Reynold B. Johnson
#7327
Overall Influence
1906 - 1998 (92 years)
Reynold B. Johnson was an American inventor and computer pioneer. A long-time employee of IBM, Johnson is said to be the "father" of the hard disk drive. Other inventions include automatic test scoring equipment and the videocassette tape.
Go to Profile#727
Katya Echazarreta
#28205
Overall Influence
1995 - Present (29 years)
Katya Celeste Echazarreta González is a Mexican electrical engineer, science communicator, and Citizen Astronaut. She worked at NASA, first as an intern during her university undergraduate career, then later as a test lead for the Europa Clipper Ground Support Equipment group. She has contributed to a total of five NASA missions. Around 2019, Echazarreta began uploading engineering-related content to Instagram, later expanding her platforms to YouTube and TikTok.
Go to Profile#728
Norma Merrick Sklarek
#14650
Overall Influence
1926 - 2012 (86 years)
Norma Merrick Sklarek was an American architect. Sklarek was the first African American woman to become a licensed architect in the states of New York and California . Her notable works include the United States Embassy in Tokyo, Japan and the Terminal One station at the Los Angeles International Airport .
Go to Profile#729
Riitta Nikula
#34918
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Riitta Nikula , is a Finnish art historian, author and professor emeritus in art and architecture history at the University of Helsinki. She obtained her PhD from the University of Helsinki in 1981 with a study of the architecture of the Töölö region of Helsinki. She was Professor of Art History at the University of Helsinki from 1994 to 2007. Nikula also acted as Head of Research at the Museum of Finnish Architecture from 1988 to 1994. Nikula is regarded as a generalist historian of Finnish architecture, with her writings covering a time-span from prehistoric times to the present day. But she...
Go to Profile#730
Zvi Hashin
#44495
Overall Influence
1929 - 2017 (88 years)
Zvi Hashin was an Israeli mechanical engineer. He was a professor for engineering sciences at Tel Aviv University. In 2012, he won the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Mechanical Engineering, for his research on micro-mechanics of failure of fibre-reinforced plastic.
Go to Profile#731
Carlos Guedes Soares
#46956
Overall Influence
#732
Gerbrand Ceder
#32342
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Gerbrand Ceder is a Belgian–American scientist who is the Daniel M. Tellep Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at University of California, Berkeley. He is notable for his pioneering research in high-throughput computational materials design, and in the development of novel lithium-ion battery technologies. He is co-founder of the Materials Project, an open-source online database of ab initio calculated material properties, which inspired the Materials Genome Initiative by the Obama administration in 2011. He is also the Founder and CTO of Pellion Technologies , which aims to commercialize magnesium-ion batteries.
Go to Profile#733
Allen Taflove
#27472
Overall Influence
1949 - 2021 (72 years)
Allen Taflove was a full professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering, since 1988. Since 1972, he pioneered basic theoretical approaches, numerical algorithms, and applications of finite-difference time-domain computational solutions of Maxwell's equations. He coined the descriptors "finite difference time domain" and "FDTD" in the 1980 paper, "Application of the finite-difference time-domain method to sinusoidal steady-state electromagnetic penetration problems." In 1990, he was the first person to be named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in the FDTD area.
Go to Profile#734
Brian Anderson
#46897
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Brian David Outram Anderson is Professor in the Research School of Information Sciences and Engineering at the Australian National University. His research interests include circuits, signal processing and control, and his current work focuses on distributed control of multi-agent systems, sensor network localization, adaptive and non-linear control. Professor Anderson served as President of the Australian Academy of Science from 1998 to 2002.
Go to Profile#735
Matthew T. Mason
#23668
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Matthew Thomas Mason is an American roboticist and the former Director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Mason is a researcher in the area of robotic manipulation, and is the author of two highly cited textbooks in the field.
Go to Profile#736
Paul K. Chu
#44117
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Paul K. Chu is a specialist in plasma surface modification and materials science. He is Chair Professor of Materials Engineering in the Department of Physics, Department of Materials Science & Engineering, and Department of Biomedical Engineering at the City University of Hong Kong.
Go to Profile#737
Mengchu Zhou
#35548
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Mengchu Zhou is a Chinese Distinguished Professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Helen and John C. Hartmann Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology and at Macau University of Science and Technology. He is the Chairman of IKAS Industries of Shenzhen in China and a Board Member of OneSmart Education Group headquartered in China.
Go to Profile#738
Pierre de Meuron
#24183
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
#739
Amir Faghri
#18807
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Amir Faghri is an American professor and leader in the engineering profession as an educator, scientist, and administrator. He is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Distinguished Dean Emeritus at the University of Connecticut. He is also currently Distinguished Adjunct Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Faghri served as Head of the Mechanical Engineering Department from 1994 to 1998, and Dean of the School of Engineering at the University of Connecticut from 1998 to 2006. Faghri is well known for his contributions to the field of heat transfer. ...
Go to Profile#740
Mike Jackson
#14468
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Michael Christopher Jackson OBE is a British systems scientist, consultant and Emeritus Professor of Management Systems and former Dean of Hull University Business School, known for his work in the field of systems thinking and management.
Go to Profile#741
Guruswami Ravichandran
#34396
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Guruswami Ravichandran is a professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at California Institute of Technology. He is also serving as the Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech. He served as the director of Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at California Institute of Technology from 2009 to 2015. He was named Fellow of the Society for Experimental Mechanics in 2010 and served as the President of the Society for Experimental Mechanics from 2015 to 2016.
Go to Profile#742
Vico Magistretti
#24036
Overall Influence
1920 - 2006 (86 years)
Vico Magistretti was an Italian architect who was also active as an industrial designer, furniture designer, and academic. As a collaborator of humanist architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers, one of Magistretti's first projects was the "poetic" round church in the experimental Milan neighbourhood of QT8. He later designed mass-produced appliances, lighting, and furniture for companies such as Cassina S.p.A., Artemide, and Oluce. These designs won several awards, including the Compasso d'Oro and the Gold Medal of the Chartered Society of Industrial Artists & Designers in 1986.
Go to Profile#743
Leslie A. Geddes
#29671
Overall Influence
1921 - 2009 (88 years)
Leslie Alexander Geddes was an electrical engineer and physiologist. He conducted research in electromyography, cardiac output, cardiac pacing, ventricular defibrillation, and blood pressure. He discovered and demonstrated precisely the optimal sites on the chest for defibrillation or pacing.
Go to Profile#744
Vadim Utkin
#15206
Overall Influence
1937 - 2022 (85 years)
Vadim Ivanovich Utkin was a Russian-American control theorist, electrical engineer and a professor of Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at the Ohio State University. He is best known for being one of the originators of Sliding Mode Control and Variable Structure Systems, which have become fundamental concepts in the field of nonlinear control .
Go to Profile#745
Yung Ho Chang
#31969
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Yung Ho Chang is a Chinese-American architect and Professor of MIT Architecture. He was formerly the head of the Department of Architecture at MIT. He studied at the Nanjing Institute of Technology before moving to the US. Then he received his M.Arch. from the University of California, Berkeley, and taught in the US for 15 years before returning to Beijing to establish China's first private architecture firm, Atelier FCJZ. He has exhibited internationally as an artist as well as architect and is widely published, including the monograph Yung Ho Chang/Atelier Feichang Jianzhu: A Chinese Practice.
Go to Profile#746
Manfredi Nicoletti
#10624
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Manfredi Nicoletti was an Italian architect. Biography Nicoletti is considered a pioneer in Bioclimatic urban and architectural design. In the 1970s his book L'ecosistema urbano - a term which he coined - creates a connection between environmental matters and psychological and cultural values. In this volume experts in various disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, biology, engineering, botanics, urban history, economy and acoustics contribute to open a rich discussion on the theme of urban ecosystems.
Go to Profile#747
Sarah Springman
#26307
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Dame Sarah Marcella Springman is a British-Swiss triathlete, civil engineer, and academic. She was educated in England and spent much of her career in Switzerland. She is a former rector of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and currently Principal of St Hilda's College at the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#748
Albert P. Pisano
#31108
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
#749
Hsue-Chu Tsien
#16785
Overall Influence
1914 - 1997 (83 years)
Hsue-Chu Tsien, COL , was a Chinese-born American aeronautical and mechanical engineer who played important roles in aircraft building in both China and afterward the United States. Biography Tsien was born in 1915 in Hangzhou, Republic of China. Tsien was a 33rd-generation descendant of Qian Liu, King of Wuyue. Specifically, his line was descended from King Qian Hongzong. Tsien studied at Zhejiang Anding School and Hangzhou High School.
Go to Profile#750
Kyriacos A. Athanasiou
#25731
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
