Search People Result | Academic Influence

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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School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Engineering,

#8251

Martin Lowson

#177484

Overall Influence

1938 - 2013 (75 years)

Professor Martin Lowson was an aeronautical engineer. He held a number of senior academic appointments in UK and US universities, was a co-patentee of the BERP helicopter rotor system, and also made a significant contribution to the development of personal rapid transport systems.

#8252

Sam Naffziger

#172741

Overall Influence

Samuel Naffziger is an American electrical engineer who has been employed at Advanced Micro Devices in Fort Collins, Colorado since 2006. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2014 for his leadership in the development of power management and low-power processor technologies. He is also the Senior Vice President and Product Technology Architect at AMD.

#8253

Michael Burdekin

#142801

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Frederick Michael Burdekin is a British civil engineer, and emeritus professor at University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and the University of Manchester. Early life and education Michael Burdekin was born in Hawarden, Flintshire in 1938. From 1945 to 1949 he attended the Choir School in Chester, singing in the cathedral choir. He then attended The King's School, Chester from 1949 to 1956. He was captain of cricket for 3 years and played cricket for Flintshire County Cricket Club at the age of 16. He was Head Boy in his final year and was awarded a State Scholarship to study Mechanical Sciences at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

#8254

J. David Embury

#177921

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

J. David Embury is a Canadian material scientist and engineer, having been a Distinguished University Professor at McMaster University. In 2002, Embury was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for outstanding contributions to fundamental structure/mechanical property relations of materials and their applications.

#8255

D.G.H. Latzko

#174005

Overall Influence

1924 - 2017 (93 years)

Desiderius Gustav Hermann "Dirk" Latzko was a Dutch mechanical engineer. He was a professor of mechanical engineering at Delft University of Technology from 1961 to 1988. Latzko focused on the construction of nuclear reactors.

#8256

Peter Excell

#168962

Overall Influence

1948 - 2020 (72 years)

Peter Stuart Excell was a British engineer, scientist, researcher and former Deputy Vice-chancellor at Wrexham Glyndŵr University. Early life, education, and career Excell was born in June 1948. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Science in 1970 from the University of Reading. From 1970 to 1971, he was a research student in electronics at the Department of Physics, University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ifẹ, Nigeria, on a Government of the United Kingdom funded scheme called 'Study and Serve'. He later returned to the United Kingdom and he earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Bradford in 1980.

#8257

Peter Dunn

#146698

Overall Influence

1927 - 2014 (87 years)

Peter Douglas Dunn OBE was a British engineer. After working at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell and jointly holding numerous patents on heat pipes and associated technology with power stations, Prof Peter Dunn joined the Department of Applied Physics in 1964 and started the Department of Engineering at the University of Reading in 1968. As head of department, alongside his friend Dr E. F. Schumacher and through the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, Peter Dunn was on the first committees working with Intermediate Technology or Appropriate Technology. These committees led to the formation of the Intermediate Technology Development Group .

#8258

Benjamin Kroposki

#178280

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Benjamin Kroposki is an electrical engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2014 for his work with renewable and distributed energy systems integration in the electric power system.

#8259

Qiang Gao

#178301

Overall Influence

#8260

Sandra Kaji-O'Grady

#172370

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Sandra Kaji-O'Grady is an architectural academic and educator based in Brisbane, Australia. She was Professor of Architecture, Dean and Head of the School of Architecture at the University of Queensland until 2018.

#8261

Adel F. Halasa

#59600

Overall Influence

Adel F. Halasa is an American scientist noted for his contributions to the development of rubber, particularly in the area of tire tread polymers for the Goodyear AquaTred tire. In 1997, he won the Charles Goodyear Medal, bestowed by the American Chemical Society, Rubber Division to individuals who "have been the principal inventor, innovator, or developer of a significant change or contribution to the rubber industry".

#8262

Nerea Calvillo

#172188

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Nerea Calvillo is a Spanish architect and researcher who investigates the intersection between architecture, science and technology, as well as feminist studies, new materials and urban political ecology. Specialized in the research of the visual representation of air in the atmosphere, she constructs graphic diagrams for the visualization of invisible microscopic agents in the air and thus influences the improvement of air quality. This project is called "In the Air". In 2023, Columbia university published the essay Aeropolis, Queering Air in Toxixpolluted Worlds.

#8263

Gene Saks

#67276

Overall Influence

1921 - 2015 (94 years)

Gene Saks was an American director and actor. An inductee of the American Theater Hall of Fame, his acting career began with a Broadway debut in 1949. As a director, he was nominated for seven Tony Awards, winning three for his direction of I Love My Wife, Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues. He also directed a number of films during his career. He was married to Bea Arthur from 1950 until 1978, and subsequently to Keren Saks from 1980 to his death in 2015.

#8264

Colm O'Donnell

#176825

Overall Influence

Colm P. O'Donnell is an Irish chemist and engineer; he is a professor of biosystems and food engineering at the University College Dublin who is active in the field of process analytical technology ; he is also a head of university School of biosystems and food engineering — as well as a chairperson of the Dairy processing technical committee of International Federation for Process Analysis and Control .

#8265

Richard J. Martin

#178405

Overall Influence

#8266

Sun Wei

#173021

Overall Influence

1935 - 2019 (84 years)

Sun Wei was a Chinese civil engineer and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering . Biography Sun was born in Jiaozhou, Shandong, on 20 November 1935. She graduated from the Nanjing Institute of Technology in July 1958 and became a faculty member. She joined the Communist Party of China in 1956. She was promoted to associate professor in 1986 and to full professor in 1991.

#8267

D. Lewis Mingori

#170244

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Diamond Lewis Mingori is an American who was a longtime professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at the University of California at Los Angeles . He currently serves as a Professor Emeritus. His research and teaching focused on attitude dynamics and control, stability theory, nonlinear methods, applications to space and ground vehicles.

#8268

John Tulloch

#176569

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

John Tulloch is a British-Australian educator and university lecturer who is best known as a survivor of the 7 July 2005 London bombings. He became a symbol of the attacks when a photograph with his injuries was published. Tulloch faced deportation from the United Kingdom due to a dispute over his citizenship which was resolved in November 2012.

#8269

Marissa Mayer

#88763

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Marissa Ann Mayer is an American business executive and investor who served as president and chief executive officer of Yahoo! from 2012 to 2017. She was a long-time executive, usability leader and key spokesperson for Google . Mayer later co-founded Sunshine, a startup technology company.

#8270

Hans Gregersen

#127271

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Hans Gregersen is a Danish bioengineer and scientist. He is regarded as a key figure in the field of gastrointestinal biomechanics and function. Biography Gregersen obtained the MD degree from Aarhus University in Denmark in 1988, the PhD degree in physiology in 1994 from Aarhus University and the Master of Public Management degree in strategic leadership from University of Southern Denmark in 1999. He was Director of Research and Innovation at Aalborg Hospital in Denmark from 2001 to 2010 and Executive Director of the Sino-Danish Center for Education and Research from 2010 to 2013. Gregers...

#8271

Bill Owens

#52901

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Bill Owens is an American photographer, photojournalist, brewer and editor living in Hayward, California. He is best known for his photographs of suburban domestic scenes taken in the East Bay and published in the book Suburbia . Owens is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts Grants.

#8272

Alvin Shrier

#113379

Overall Influence

Alvin Shrier is Professor in the Department of Physiology and holds the Hosmer Chair in Physiology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Biography He obtained a Bachelor of Science from Concordia University, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy from Dalhousie University.

#8273

Hank Haney

#9982

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Hank Haney is an American professional golf instructor best known for coaching Tiger Woods and two-time major championship winner Mark O'Meara. Graduate of the University of Tulsa. Biography Haney says, "My philosophy as a teacher is to teach my students to become their own best teacher by getting them to understand the flight of the golf ball and how it relates to the swing, with emphasis on swinging the golf club on their own correct swing plane".

#8274

Michael I. Miller

#178553

Overall Influence

#8275

Sibi Malayil

#59185

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Sibi Malayil is an Indian film director who works in Malayalam cinema. Career Since the mid-1980s he has directed around forty films. He did his studies at the St. Berchmans College. Before becoming an independent director, he assisted eminent directors such as Priyadarshan and Fazil. Films such as Chekkeranoru Chilla , Thaniyavarthanam , Vicharana , Kireedam , Dasharatham , His Highness Abdullah , Malayogom , Bharatham , Sadayam , Kamaladalam , Akashadoothu , Chenkol and Sagaram Sakshi are defined the way Malayalam films were made, especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Many of his films have screenplays by A.

#8276

Aindrila Mukhopadhyay

#74148

Overall Influence

Aindrila Mukhopadhyay is an American scientist who is the Division Deputy of the Biological Systems and Engineering Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her research involves microbial engineering for the production of biofuels. She was nominated a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2022.

#8277

Hiroshi Kawaguchi

#178599

Overall Influence

#8278

John G. Anderson

#178628

Overall Influence

#8279

Jay H. Lee

#79091

Overall Influence

Jay Hyung Lee is a professor at Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in KAIST . His h-index is 55 according to Google Scholar. Lee was a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States from 2000 to 2010. Lee is a fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers . He is an editor of Computers & Chemical Engineering journal.

#8280

Clarence de Silva

#148112

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Clarence de Silva is a Canadian engineer, currently the Senior Canada Research Chair in Mechatronics and Industrial Automation, University of British Columbia and also a published author. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Royal Society of Canada, Canadian Academy of Engineering, and Distinguished Visiting Fellow of Royal Academy of Engineering UK.

#8281

Paulina Jaramillo

#175272

Overall Influence

Paulina Jaramillo is a Colombian-American engineer who is Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University . She serves as Director of the Green Design Institute. Her research focuses on energy system sustainability and climate change. She was selected as an Andrew Carnegie Fellow in 2020.

#8282

James L. King

#145267

Overall Influence

1922 - Present (104 years)

James Lawrence King FIMA was a distinguished British engineer, and a former Regius Professor of Engineering in the University of Edinburgh. Life King was born on 14 February 1922, and attended Latymer Upper School before going up to Jesus College, Cambridge University, graduating in about 1942 with a first class honours degree in mathematics. He then joined the Scientific Civil Service as part of the Ministry of Defence . After obtaining a PhD from Imperial College, he became Chief Scientist at the Naval Construction Research Establishment, Rosyth. Set up during World War II to carry out rese...

#8283

Brij Moudgil

#114123

Overall Influence

Brij M. Moudgil is an American materials scientist and engineer, focusing in developing structure-property-performance correlations in particulate materials based nanoengineered systems for enhanced performance in bioimaging, diagnosis and therapies, micro-electronics, advanced materials, energy, and water purification applications. He is currently a Distinguished Professor at University of Florida.

#8284

Joachim Milberg

Joachim Milberg

#154602

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Joachim Milberg is a German engineer and manager who served as CEO of Bayerischen Motorenwerke AG . He was Chairman of the Supervisory Board of BMW until July 2015. Milberg was Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technische Universität München. He was Member of the Board of Management for Production of BMW and became CEO when Bernd Pischetsrieder had to leave because of the Rover problems. Milberg stopped the Rover venture and reestablished the BMW success story.

#8285

Philip French

#27108

Overall Influence

1933 - 2015 (82 years)

Philip Neville French OBE was an English film critic and radio producer. French began his career in journalism in the late 1950s, before eventually becoming a BBC Radio producer, and later a film critic. He began writing for The Observer in 1963, and continued to write criticism regularly there until his retirement in 2013.

#8286

Chen Jiayong

#151705

Overall Influence

1922 - 2019 (97 years)

Chen Jiayong was a Chinese metallurgist and chemical engineer. He was a research professor and Vice President of the Institute of Process Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences . A pioneer in the development of hydrometallurgy in China, he was elected an academician of the CAS in 1980. He was awarded the State Science and Technology Prizes five times and the Ho Leung Ho Lee Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress in 1996.

#8287

Linda Bushnell

#97838

Overall Influence

Linda Grace Bushnell is an American expert on networked control systems who works as a research professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Washington and as a program director for the Civic Innovation Challenge and Cyber-Physical Systems programs at the National Science Foundation.

#8288

Rachel Harrison

#68342

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Rachel Harrison is an American visual artist known for her sculpture, photography, and drawing. Her work often combines handmade forms with found objects or photographs, bringing art history, politics, and pop culture into dialogue with one another. She has been included in numerous exhibitions in Europe and the US, including the Venice Biennale , the Whitney Biennial and the Tate Triennial . Her work is in the collections of major museums such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and Tate Modern, London; among others.

#8289

Kiisa Nishikawa

#173750

Overall Influence

Kiisa Nishikawa is a biomechanist, and holds the rank of Regents' Professor of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University. Research career Nishikawa is the principal investigator leading the Muscle and Motor Control Laboratory at Northern Arizona University , where her laboratory investigates muscle contraction, including the role of titin and developing bio-inspired control algorithms for motorized prostheses for lower limbs. Previously, Nishikawa's lab acquired an atomic force microscope in order to test how changes in the giant titin protein impact muscle mechanical properties . Nis...

#8290

Eleni Diamanti

#106192

Overall Influence

Eleni Diamanti is a Greek engineer who is a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research . Diamanti serves as Vice Director of the Paris Centre for Quantum Computing. She was awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant in 2018.

#8291

Kai Wartiainen

#80333

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Kai Henrik Väinö Wartiainen is a Finnish architect and former academic. He is the son of architect Henrik Wartiainen. Wartiainen was professor of urban planning at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden in 1997–2006. Wartiainen was previously married to the Finnish architect Sari Nieminen, but is now married to the Swedish Architect Ingrid Reppen.

#8292

Jean-Pierre Chupin

#167915

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Jean-Pierre Chupin is a French and Canadian architect, researcher, and architectural theorist who specializes in reasoning by analogy, qualitative practices, architectural competitions and awards of excellence. He is a professor at the School of Architecture, Faculty of Environmental Design, Université de Montréal. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Architecture, Competitions and Mediations of Excellence . He coordinates the Laboratory for the Study of Potential Architecture since 2012.

#8293

Umberto Riva

#172258

Overall Influence

1928 - 2021 (93 years)

Umberto Riva was an Italian architect, designer and painter. Further reading

#8294

Ken Light

#134430

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Kenneth Randall Light is an American social documentary photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the author of twelve monographs, including Midnight La Frontera, What's Going On? 1969-1974, Delta Time, Texas Death Row and, most recently, Course of the Empire, published by Steidl. He wrote Witness in our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers, a collection of recollections and interviews with 29 of the world's most well-known photographers, editors and curators of the genre. He has had his photographs included as part of photo essays and portfolios in newspapers, m...

#8295

Andrew J Saxon

#178934

Overall Influence

#8296

Long Yuqiu

#174143

Overall Influence

1926 - 2022 (96 years)

Long Yuqiu was a Chinese engineer who was a professor at Tsinghua University, and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Biography Long was born in Anhua County, Hunan, on 15 January 1926. In 1944, he was admitted to Tangshan Jiaotong University , and transferred to National Southwestern Associated University a year later. In 1946, he entered Tsinghua University, where he majored in the Department of Civil Engineering.

#8297

Elizabeth Grant

#117705

Overall Influence

1963 - 2022 (59 years)

Elizabeth Grant CF was an Australian architectural anthropologist, criminologist and academic working in the field of Indigenous Architecture. She was a Churchill Fellow and held academic positions at The University of Adelaide, as Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University's RMIT School of Architecture and Design, Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra and the University of Queensland. She researched, wrote, and was an activist focused on architecture and design with Indigenous peoples as architectural practice and a social movement, and the observance of human rights in institutional architecture .

#8298

Franco de Flaviis

#178989

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Franco de Flaviis from the University of California, Irvine, was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2014 for contributions to reconfigurable antennas and tunable dielectrics for wireless communication systems. In March 2017, he was appointed to the Board of Advisors for Energous Corporation.

#8299

Carla Pugh

#139125

Overall Influence

Carla Marie Pugh is an American surgeon. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2021 for "pioneering sensor technology research that helped to define, characterize and inspire new and innovative performance metrics and data analysis strategies for the emerging field of digital health care."

#8300

Krista Donaldson

Krista Donaldson

#164930

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Krista M. Donaldson is a Canadian–American engineer. She is the CEO of D-Rev, a product design and engineering company that specialises in products for less industrialised countries. Early life and education Born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Donaldson attended Queen Elizabeth High School before earning her engineering degrees from Vanderbilt University and Stanford University.

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