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,
#8051
Twinkle Khanna
#6692
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Twinkle Khanna , also known as Tina Jatin Khanna, is an Indian author, columnist, interior designer, film producer, and former actress. In 2015, Khanna released her first non-fiction book, Mrs Funnybones which was declared a bestseller, making Khanna India's highest-selling woman writer that year. Khanna's second book The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, a collection of short stories, one of which was based on social entrepreneur Arunachalam Muruganantham, was later made into National Award winning feature film, Pad Man with the focus on dispelling taboos around menstruation. It was produced under Khanna's production house Mrs.
Go to Profile#8052
Simone Hochgreb
#175459
Overall Influence
Simone Hochgreb is a Brazilian mechanical engineer whose research has concerned efficiency and pollution in internal combustion engines, and the structure of premixed flames. She is Professor of Experimental Combustion at the University of Cambridge, head of the reacting flows group at Cambridge, and a Fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge, where she is Director of Studies for Engineering.
Go to Profile#8053
Elizabeth Nance
#103120
Overall Influence
Elizabeth Nance is an American chemical engineer. She has held the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professorship at the University of Washington since September 2015. Her primary research interests are "disease-directed engineering, nanomedicine-based and nanometabolic-based platform development, systems thinking to assess and model therapeutic barriers in treating disease, and biological transport phenomena".
Go to Profile#8054
Hong Yong Sohn
#171218
Overall Influence
Hong Yong Sohn is an American engineer, currently a Distinguished Professor in Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Utah. Sohn received his B.S. degree from Seoul National University, South Korea, and his Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering in 1970 from the University of California at Berkeley. After working as a research engineer at Du Pont’s Engineering Technology Laboratory, he joined the Department of Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Utah in 1974.
Go to Profile#8055
Thomas Novak
#170701
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Thomas Novak, PhD, PE is the Alliance Coal Academic Chair of Mining Engineering at the University of Kentucky, appointed in 2010. Previously, he held appointments at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Virginia Tech, the University of Alabama and Pennsylvania State University. He received his PhD in mining engineering from the Pennsylvania State University in 1984. His research focuses on techniques to assess and improve mine safety and ventilation. His most recognized contributions to the field have been in understanding how electrical hazards such as lightning can trigger explosions in underground mines.
Go to Profile#8056
Peter Franaszek
#109715
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Peter A. Franaszek is an American information theorist, an IEEE Fellow, a research staff member emeritus at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center and a former member of the IBM Academy of Technology. He received his Sc.B. from Brown University in 1962, and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1966.
Go to Profile#8057
Richard Holdaway
#171633
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Richard Holdaway, CBE, FREng is a Professor of Spacecraft Engineering, Chairman of three hi-tech companies, and ex-Head of RAL Space, at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Life and works Educated at The Skinners' School, Tunbridge Wells, he earned his PhD in aeronautics and astrodynamics at the University of Southampton, He is a visiting professor at the University of Southampton, the University of Kent, the Beihang University and Embry-Riddle University in Prescott AZ. He worked on the design of the Harrier jump jet aircraft at Hawker Siddeley before joining the Appleton Laboratory in 1974 and RAL in 1980.
Go to Profile#8058
Thomas Rice
#175744
Overall Influence
#8059
Helmut Kroiss
#168082
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Helmut Kroiss is an Austrian civil engineer and professor emeritus of the TU Wien, Vienna. In 1987 he was appointed to the Institute of Water Quality and Resource Management at the TU Wien, as successor to Wilhelm von der Emde, which he headed until his retirement in 2012.
Go to Profile#8060
Trevor K. Archer
#172867
Overall Influence
Trevor K. Archer is an American public health researcher who is a National Institutes of Health Distinguished Investigator and deputy director at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. He leads the Chromatin and Gene Expression Group, who investigate chromatin, epigenetics and embryonic stem cells pluripotency.
Go to Profile#8061
Signe Nielsen
#71349
Overall Influence
Signe Nielsen is a landscape architect and a founding principal at Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects in New York City, US. She is also a professor of urban design and landscape architecture at Pratt Institute and an active participant in New York City design policy and approvals. Her work focuses on the areas of green design, sustainability, and public space design.
Go to Profile#8062
Robert J. O. Davies
#175793
Overall Influence
#8063
John Flavell Coales
#119083
Overall Influence
1907 - 1999 (92 years)
John Flavell Coales CBE, FRS was a British physicist and engineer. He started the Borehamwood laboratory of the Elliott Brothers company in 1946. Coales graduated in 1929 from Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge and joined the British Admiralty, working in the experimental department of the Signal School, Portsmouth. He later worked on radio direction finding and centimeter-band radar used for naval gunnery. In 1946 he was awarded the OBE for his wartime work on naval radar. That year he left the Admiralty and became director of the Elliot Brothers research laboratory. Coales made significant...
Go to Profile#8064
Forrest N. Iandola
#154878
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Forrest N. Iandola is an American computer scientist specializing in efficient AI. Career Iandola earned a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 2016, advised by Kurt Keutzer. As part of his dissertation he co-authored SqueezeNet, a deep neural network for image classification that is optimized for smartphones and other mobile devices.
Go to Profile#8065
John Barton
#14265
Overall Influence
1928 - 2018 (90 years)
John Bernard Adie Barton, CBE , was a British theatre director and teacher whose close association with the Royal Shakespeare Company spanned more than half a century. Early life John Barton was the son of Sir Harold Montague and Lady Barton . He was educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge and while at Cambridge directed and acted in many productions for the Marlowe Society and the ADC. At the Westminster Theatre in July 1953 he directed his first London production, Henry V for the Elizabethan Theatre Company. He created a 12-part series for BBC Radio on the medieval Mysteries,...
Go to Profile#8066
Ruth Lingford
#87637
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Ruth Lingford is an independent animator. Since 2005, she has taught at the Harvard University. She now holds a position as faculty member in the visual and environmental studies, where she is senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies. She previously taught at the Royal College of Art and the National Film and Television School, UK. Before investing herself in animation, she was an occupational therapist working with the elders and people suffering from mental disorders. Lingford completed a BA in fine arts and art history at the Middlesex Polytechnic from 1987 to 1990 and a MA at the Royal College of Art until 1992.
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Anders Hammer Strømman
#171772
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Anders Hammer Strømman is a professor of industrial ecology in the Industrial Ecology Programme at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology . He has collaborated with Francesco Cherubini in developing a method to analyse the climate impact of emissions from biomass combustion, and his fields of expertise include life cycle studies of producing electric car batteries.
Go to Profile#8068
Philip Plotch
#81896
Overall Influence
Philip Mark Plotch is the principal researcher at the Eno Center for Transportation and a fellow at NYU. He has been an author, professor, and transportation planner. He is best known for leading efforts to rebuild the World Trade Center and his research on the politics and planning behind transportation megaprojects.
Go to Profile#8069
Ludmil Alexandrov
#101825
Overall Influence
Ludmil B. Alexandrov is a Bulgarian-American scientist and an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego. Education Alexandrov received his PhD from University of Cambridge in 2014.
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Eileen McLaughlin
#70124
Overall Influence
Eileen Anne McLaughlin is a Scottish molecular biology academic working in Australia. As of 2021 she is a professor at the University of Wollongong. Academic career After a 1993 PhD titled 'The effect of cryopreservation on human spermatozoa' at the University of Bristol, McLaughlin moved to Australia for a postdoctoral position at the CSIRO working on virally vectored immunocontraceptives in wildlife feral animal control. McLaughlin was recruited to University of Newcastle in 2002, where she remains an honorary professor. In 2017, McLaughlin became Director of the School of Biological Sciences at University of Auckland.
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Gabriel A. Rincon-Mora
#134371
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Gabriel Alfonso Rincón-Mora is a Venezuelan-American/Hispanic-American electrical engineer, scientist, professor, inventor, and author who was elected a fellow of the American National Academy of Inventors in 2017, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2011, and Institution of Engineering and Technology in 2009 for contributions to energy-harvesting and power-supply integrated circuits . Rincón-Mora is the Motorola Solutions Foundation Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he's been Assistant/Associate/Full Professor since 2001.
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Stephanie Pincetl
#141212
Overall Influence
Stephanie Pincetl is an American academic specializing in the intersection of urban policy and the environment, particularly in California. She is the Director of the UCLA Center for Sustainable Urban Systems in Los Angeles.
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Nadine Isaacs
#168755
Overall Influence
1942 - 2004 (62 years)
Nadine Isaacs was a Jamaican architect. She was the first female vice chair of the Architects Registration Board and the first female president of the Jamaican Institute of Architects. She headed the Caribbean School of Architecture, as its first female leader, as well as leading the faculty of the Built Environment at the University of Technology in Kingston.
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Jean Hillier
#104747
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jean Hillier is Professor Emerita in the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Research interests Research interests include poststructural planning theory and methodology for strategic practice in conditions of uncertainty, more-than-human planning theory and practice, and problematisation of cultural heritage practices in spatial planning, particularly in China.
Go to Profile#8075
Jianqiang Wang
#176057
Overall Influence
#8076
Eugene Marion Klaaren
#46500
Overall Influence
1937 - 2015 (78 years)
Eugene Marion Klaaren was a historian and professor of religion. He held a BA from Hope College, an MA from Emory University, a BD from Western Theological Seminary, and a PHD from Harvard University. He then became an Emeritus Professor of Wesleyan University. His book Religious Origins of Modern Science: Belief in Creation in Seventeenth-Century Thought remains "an important one. It is written in a scholarly and fairly dense style but is also accessible to non-specialists." His Religious Origins book is based on his PhD thesis: "Belief in creation and the rise of modern science a study...
Go to Profile#8077
Ernest Braun
#71253
Overall Influence
1925 - 2015 (90 years)
Ernst Braun was a British-Austrian scholar in technology policy and technology assessment. Biography Born in Vienna as Czechoslovak citizen, Braun grew up in Czechoslovakia. He studied physics at Charles University in Prague , PhD in solid state physics . Research in industrial research laboratory, then changed to University career. Appointed professor of physics at Aston University in Birmingham . In 1973 started an interdisciplinary post-graduate research unit, the Technology Policy Unit . The topics of research embraced all social aspects of technology, including questions of policy, technology assessment, and the process and effects of technological innovation.
Go to Profile#8078
Christopher Doyle
#67703
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Christopher Doyle, also known as Dù Kěfēng or Dou Ho-Fung is an Australian-Hong Kong cinematographer. He has worked on over fifty Chinese-language films, being best known for his collaborations with Wong Kar-wai in Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046. Doyle is also known for other films such as Temptress Moon, Hero, Dumplings, and Psycho. He has won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival, as well as the AFI Award for cinematography, the Golden Horse award , and the Hong Kong Film Award .
Go to Profile#8079
Wen Zhong Shen
#176106
Overall Influence
#8080
Joanne Etheridge
#94371
Overall Influence
Joanne Etheridge is an Australian physicist. She is Director of the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy and Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Monash University. Academic career Etheridge graduated with a BSc from the University of Melbourne and a PhD in physics from RMIT University in 1993. In 1994 she moved to the University of Cambridge as Rosalind Franklin Research Fellow, Newnham College and in 1997 became a senior research associate in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy there. From 1999 to 2003 she was Royal Society University Research Fellow in the same department.
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Shian-Jiann Lin
#176128
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Shian-Jiann Lin is a Taiwanese-American atmospheric scientist. He is currently the head of the Weather and Climate Dynamics Division at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, the lead developer of the GFDL Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere Dynamical Core . and a lead developer or key contributor to several weather and climate models developed using FV3.
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Maryam Shanechi
#115055
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Maryam M. Shanechi is an Iran-born American neuroengineer. She studies ways of decoding the brain's activity to control brain-machine interfaces. She was honored as one of MIT Technology Review's Innovators under 35 in 2014 and one of the Science News 10 scientists to watch in 2019. She is Professor and Viterbi Early Career Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering, and a member of the Neuroscience Graduate Program at the University of Southern California.
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Lee Breuer
#17584
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
Esser Leopold "Lee" Breuer was an Obie Award-winning and Pulitzer-, Grammy-, Emmy- and Tony-nominated American playwright, theater director, academic, educator, filmmaker, poet, and lyricist. Breuer taught and directed on six continents.
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Oleg Yefremov
#90744
Overall Influence
1927 - 2000 (73 years)
Oleg Nikolayevich Yefremov was a Soviet and Russian actor and Moscow Art Theatre producer. He was a People's Artist of the USSR and a Hero of Socialist Labour . In 1949, he graduated from Moscow Art Theatre School and became an actor and later a producer of the Central Children Theater, started teaching at School-Studio by himself.
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Jonathan Green
#43003
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Jonathan Green is an American writer, historian of photography, curator, teacher, museum administrator, photographer, filmmaker and the founding Project Director of the Wexner Center for the Arts. A recognized authority on the history of American photography, Green’s books Camera Work: A Critical Anthology and American Photography: A Critical History 1945–1980 are two notable commentaries and frequently referenced and republished accounts in the field of photography. At the same time Green’s acquisitions, exhibitions and publications consistently drew from the edges of established photographic practice rather than from its traditional center.
Go to Profile#8086
Qiang Gao
#176185
Overall Influence
#8087
David Martyn Smith
#62473
Overall Influence
1921 - 2009 (88 years)
David Martyn Smith , a United States forester and educator, was a founder of the field of forest stand dynamics. He was the Morris K. Jesup Professor of Silviculture at Yale University, the manager of the university’s forest holdings, and an author of a widely used forest management text.
Go to Profile#8088
Amy Herr
#149814
Overall Influence
Amy Elizabeth Herr is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is attached to the Department of Bioengineering. At Berkeley she was also the founding executive director of the Bakar Bioenginuity Hub. Herr is a Chan Zuckerberg BioHub Investigator and the Chief Technology Officer of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network, a fellow of both the National Academy of Inventors and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, as well as a co-founder of Zephyrus Biosciences, a biotechnology company that was acquired by Bio-Tech...
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Michael Butler
#176221
Overall Influence
#8090
Alexey Alexandrov
#133619
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Alexey Aleksandrovich Alexandrov is a Soviet and Russian scientist and professor in the field of thermal engineering. Biography He was born in 1933. In 1950 he graduated from the Shipbuilding College in Arkhangelsk. In the same year he entered the Moscow Power Engineering Institute. After graduation, he remained in it to work as a teacher at the Department of Theoretical Foundations of Heat Engineering.
Go to Profile#8091
J. Reece Roth
#176237
Overall Influence
#8092
Suseenthiran
#94624
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Suseenthiran is an Indian film director and screenwriter in Tamil cinema. He rose to fame with his directorial debut Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu . Career Suseenthiran, who originally hails from a small village called Amarapoondi in Palani, Dindigul, was always "crazy about films" like his father and his uncle, who had made a film years ago, that never got released. Though his family did not want him to become a director and "waste" his life on films, he was sure that he would be a filmmaker one day. To achieve his dream, he came to Chennai, when he was 18 years old and needed 12 years to make his first film.
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Helen Tippett
#109138
Overall Influence
1933 - 2004 (71 years)
Helen Margaret Tippett was a professor of architecture in Australasia. Her career in academia began in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, in 1969, where she taught 'Design and Practice and Management'. She moved to New Zealand, where she was Dean of Architecture at Victoria University from 1980 to 1983, and later moved into professional practice, co-founding The Architects Collaborative. She was the first woman professor of architecdure in Australasia.
Go to Profile#8094
Jennifer L Martin
#176250
Overall Influence
#8095
Karen Lozano
#174296
Overall Influence
Karen Lozano is a Mexican American researcher who is the Julia Beecherl Endowed Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Nanotechnology Center at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She studies carbon nanofiber-reinforced thermoplastic composites. She was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2020 and the National Academy of Engineering in 2023.
Go to Profile#8096
Wang Buxuan
#142394
Overall Influence
1922 - 2019 (97 years)
Wang Buxuan , also known as Bu-Xuan Wang and Pu-Hsuan Wang, was a Chinese thermal physicist and engineer, considered a pioneer in the field of engineering thermodynamics in China. He established the engineering thermodynamics program at Tsinghua University in 1957 and the China Solar Power Society in 1979. He was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1980.
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Hope Michelsen
#174967
Overall Influence
Hope A. Michelsen is an American physical chemist and combustion scientist whose research involves the byproducts of combustion including soot, black carbon, greenhouse gases, the contribution of these substances to global warming, and the use of laser-induced incandescence to measure combustion products. She is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Go to Profile#8098
Lise Lyngsnes Randeberg
#176295
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Lise Lyngsnes Randeberg is a Norwegian engineer and trade unionist. She is a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and has been president of both Tekna and the Federation of Norwegian Professional Associations.
Go to Profile#8099
John H. Schuenemeyer
#122383
Overall Influence
John H Schuenemeyer is President of Southwest Statistical Consulting, Cortez, Colorado. He is also Professor Emeritus of Statistics, Geology, and Geography, University of Delaware. Schuenemeyer was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1991. International Association for Mathematical Geosciences has awarded him the IAMG Distinguished Lectureship in 2012. In 2004, he was awarded John Cedric Griffiths Teaching Award by the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences.
Go to Profile#8100
Ricardo Vinuesa
#150889
Overall Influence
Ricardo Vinuesa Motilva is a fluid dynamicist and machine-learning researcher. He is an associate professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm , as well as an Affiliated Researcher at the AI Sustainability Center. He is also vice director of the KTH Digitalization Platform. He is known for his work on turbulence and sustainability. Vinuesa led an influential study on the impact of AI on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations .
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