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,
#901
Alan Garnett Davenport
#30002
Overall Influence
1932 - 2009 (77 years)
Alan Garnett Davenport was a professor at the University of Western Ontario and founder of its Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory. He analyzed the wind's effect on a significant portion of the world's tallest buildings including the building formerly known as the CN Tower, Sears Tower, Citicorp Center, and the World Trade Center. He was a Member of the Order of Canada, Canada's highest civilian honor.
Go to Profile#902
Juan Navarro Baldeweg
#25647
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Juan Navarro Baldeweg is a Spanish architect and professor at the Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid . He is currently retired from architectural practice. Baldeweg studied at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts of Madrid, and the School of Architecture of the Technical University of Madrid, where he graduated in 1965. From 1977 to his retirement in 2014, he was appointed as teacher of the ETSAM, though for more than 20 years he was hardly ever seen in the school.
Go to Profile#903
Bruce Rittmann
#30180
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Bruce E. Rittmann is Regents' Professor of Environmental Engineering and Director of the Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology at the Biodesign Institute of Arizona State University. He was also elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2004 for pioneering the development of biofilm fundamentals and contributing to their widespread use in the cleanup of contaminated waters, soils, and ecosystems.
Go to Profile#904
C. Chapin Cutler
#19806
Overall Influence
1914 - 2002 (88 years)
Cassius Chapin Cutler was an American electrical engineer at Bell Labs. His notable achievements include the invention of the corrugated waveguide and differential pulse-code modulation . Biography He was born on December 16, 1914 in Springfield, Massachusetts to Paul A. Cutler and Myra Chapin. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1937. On September 27, 1941 he married Virginia Tyler in Waterford, Maine.
Go to Profile#905
John H. Lienhard
#24835
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
John Henry Lienhard IV is Professor Emeritus of mechanical engineering and history at The University of Houston. He worked in heat transfer and thermodynamics for many years prior to creating the radio program The Engines of Our Ingenuity. Lienhard is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.
Go to Profile#906
David M. Schwarz
#16808
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
David M. Schwarz is an American architect. He is the President & CEO of Washington, D.C.-based David M. Schwarz Architects, Inc. and serves as the chairman of the Yale School of Architecture's Dean's Council.
Go to Profile#907
Eric Ash
#25549
Overall Influence
1928 - 2021 (93 years)
Sir Eric Albert Ash was a British electrical engineer, past Rector of Imperial College and President of IEE, UK. He was elected an international member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2001 for innovations in optics and acoustics and for leadership in education.
Go to Profile#908
Stelio Frati
#29409
Overall Influence
1919 - 2010 (91 years)
Stelio Frati was an Italian mechanical engineer and aeroplane designer. He graduated from the Politecnico di Milano as a mechanical engineer in 1943, participating in the design of the Aeronautica Lombarda AR radio-controlled wooden cantilever monoplane, powered by a single radial engine - a flying bomb/drone, flown for the first time the same year. After teaching aircraft design he became a freelance aircraft designer, being responsible for many well known aircraft designs. One of his best known designs is the Falco F8L.
Go to Profile#909
Riken Yamamoto
#42215
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Riken Yamamoto, born 1945 Beijing, China is a Japanese architect. Education Yamamoto completed his bachelor's degree from Nihon University in 1967 and his master's degree from the Tokyo University of the Arts in 1971, after which he continued his studies at the University of Tokyo under Hiroshi Hara.
Go to Profile#910
William R. Sears
#29297
Overall Influence
1913 - 2002 (89 years)
William Rees Sears was an aeronautical engineer and educator who worked at Caltech, Northrop Aircraft, Cornell University , and the University of Arizona. He was an editor of the Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences from 1955 to 1963 and the founding Editor of the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics in 1969.
Go to Profile#911
Lorna Gibson
#43728
Overall Influence
Lorna Jane Gibson is an American materials scientist and engineer currently the Matoula S. Salapatas Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Education Lorna Gibson received her Bachelor of Applied Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Toronto in 1978. Gibson then attended the University of Cambridge, where she received her PhD in Materials Engineering in 1981 for research supervised by Michael F. Ashby, and focused on the elastic and plastic behavior of cellular materials.
Go to Profile#912
Geoffrey A. Landis
#11229
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Geoffrey Alan Landis is an American aerospace engineer and author, working for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on planetary exploration, interstellar propulsion, solar power and photovoltaics. He holds nine patents, primarily in the field of improvements to solar cells and photovoltaic devices and has given presentations and commentary on the possibilities for interstellar travel and construction of bases on the Moon, Mars, and Venus.
Go to Profile#913
William J. Mitchell
#15726
Overall Influence
1944 - 2010 (66 years)
William John Mitchell was an Australian-born author, educator, architect and urban designer, best known for leading the integration of architectural and related design arts practice with computing and other technologies.
Go to Profile#914
Hiroshi Komiyama
#29411
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Hiroshi Komiyama is a Japanese scientist. He was the president of University of Tokyo from April 2005 to March 2009. He is also the chairman of Mitsubishi Research Institute. His major research fields are Chemical engineering, Environmental engineering, functional material science and CVD reaction engineering. He is member of the World Knowledge Dialogue Scientific Board. When he was an undergraduate, he belonged to the American football club at University of Tokyo.
Go to Profile#915
Kim Vicente
#35750
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Kim Vicente is an inactive professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. He was previously a researcher, teacher, and author in the field of human factors. He is best known for his two books: The Human Factor and Cognitive Work Analysis.
Go to Profile#916
John Roy Whinnery
#45709
Overall Influence
1916 - 2009 (93 years)
John Roy Whinnery was an American electrical engineer and educator who worked in the fields of microwave theory and laser experimentation. Biography Whinnery received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1937, and the Ph.D. from the same institution in 1948. Throughout World War II, he was active in war training classes, held a part-time lectureship at Union College, and earned his doctoral degree while working 6 days a week in microwaves at General Electric, Schenectady, New York, working on problems in waveguide discontinuities, microwave tubes, and applications to radar.
Go to Profile#917
Hui–ming Cheng
#54482
Overall Influence
#918
Banu Onaral
#34222
Overall Influence
Banu Onaral is the H.H. Sun Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical Engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1997, she founded Drexel University's School of Biomedical Engineering Science and Health Systems.
Go to Profile#919
Jeffrey Karp
#30965
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Jeffrey Karp is a Canadian biomedical engineer working as a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the principal faculty at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Affiliate Faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology through the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. He is also an affiliate faculty at the Broad Institute.
Go to Profile#920
Loet Leydesdorff
#13009
Overall Influence
1948 - 2023 (75 years)
Louis André Leydesdorff Biography Leydesdorff was born in 1948 in Batavia , then the capital of the Dutch East Indies. He received a B.Sc. in chemistry in 1969, a M.Sc. biochemistry in 1973, and an M.A. in philosophy in 1977. In 1984 he obtained his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Amsterdam.
Go to Profile#921
Panos M. Pardalos
#42046
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Panos M. Pardalos is a Greek scientist and engineer, currently a Distinguished Professor and the Paul and Heidi Brown Preeminent Professor in Industrial and Systems Engineering at University of Florida.
Go to Profile#922
Stephen R. Forrest
#54620
Overall Influence
#923
Harry L. Van Trees
#41415
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Harry Leslie Van Trees is a scientist specializing in radar, sonar, communications and signal processing. Academic career Van Trees attended West Point, where he graduated first in his class in 1952.
Go to Profile#924
Linsey Marr
#16592
Overall Influence
Linsey Chen Marr is an American scientist who is the Charles P. Lunsford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. Her research considers the interaction of nanomaterials and viruses with the atmosphere. During the COVID-19 pandemic Marr studied how SARS-CoV-2 and other airborne pathogens could be transported in air. In 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and named a MacArthur Fellow.
Go to Profile#925
Alice Agogino
#29600
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Alice Merner Agogino is an American mechanical engineer known for her work in bringing women and people of color into engineering and her research into artificial intelligence, computer-aided design, intelligent learning systems, and wireless sensor networks.
Go to Profile#926
Nobuyuki Otsu
#44407
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Nobuyuki Otsu graduated from the Department of Mathematical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Tokyo in 1969. He finished the master’s course in mathematics at the Department of Mathematical Engineering and Information Physics of the University of Tokyo in 1971. Obtained Doctor of Engineering from University of Tokyo in 1981.
Go to Profile#927
Robert W. Brodersen
#38393
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Robert W. Brodersen is a professor of electrical engineering, now emeritus, and a founder of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Brodersen received his B.S. in electrical engineering and mathematics from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, in 1966, his M.S. in electrical engineering from MIT in 1968, and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from MIT in 1972. After working with Texas Instruments, he joined the faculty of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at Berkeley in 1976, where his research focused on low-pow...
Go to Profile#928
Gil Masters
#41241
Overall Influence
Gilbert 'Gil' Masters is a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. Though he officially retired in 2002, he continues to teach two classes at the university. He is the author of six books, including the leading environmental science textbook Introduction to Environmental Engineering and Science , now in its third edition. He also recently published Renewable and Efficient Electric Power Systems and Energy for Sustainability: Technology, Planning, Policy .
Go to Profile#929
Jens Nielsen
#38801
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Jens Nielsen is the CEO of BioInnovation Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark, and professor of systems biology at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. He is also an adjunct professor at the Technical University of Denmark. Nielsen is the most cited researcher in the field of metabolic engineering, and he is the founding president of the International Metabolic Engineering Society. He has additionally founded several biotech companies.
Go to Profile#930
Siegfried Selberherr
#40385
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Siegfried Selberherr is an Austrian scientist in the field of microelectronics. He is a professor at the Institute for Microelectronics of the Technische Universität Wien . His primary research interest is in modeling and simulation of physical phenomena in the field of microelectronics.
Go to Profile#931
Sanjoy K. Mitter
#30519
Overall Influence
1933 - 2023 (90 years)
Sanjoy Kumar Mitter was a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT who was a noted control theorist. Life and career Mitter was born in 1933 in Calcutta, India. He received a B.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Calcutta, and a B.Sc. in Engineering at City and Guilds of London Institute. He continued his studies in the United Kingdom and Ph.D. from Imperial College of Science and Technology, London. After graduation, he worked at Brown, Boveri & Cie, the Battelle Memorial Institute, and the Central Electricity Generating Board before joining Case Western Reserve University in 1965 as an assistant professor.
Go to Profile#932
Allan Jacobs
#27329
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
Allan B. Jacobs is an urban designer, renowned for his publications and research on urban design. His well-known paper "Toward an Urban Design Manifesto", written with Donald Appleyard, describes how cities should be laid out.
Go to Profile#933
Angel G. Jordan
#35453
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Angel G. Jordan was a Spanish-born American electronics and computer engineer known as the founder of the Software Engineering Institute and co-founder of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and served on its faculty for 55 years, since 2003 as Emeritus. He was instrumental in the formation of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. He has made contributions to technology transfer and institutional development. He served as Dean of Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering and later as the provost of Carnegie Mellon University.
Go to Profile#934
Walter Murray Wonham
#29084
Overall Influence
1934 - 2023 (89 years)
Walter Murray Wonham was a Canadian control theorist and professor at the University of Toronto. He focused on multi-variable geometric control theory, stochastic control and stochastic filters, and the control of discrete event systems from the standpoint of mathematical logic and formal languages.
Go to Profile#935
Charles Meneveau
#34828
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Charles Meneveau is a French-Chilean born American fluid dynamicist, known for his work on turbulence, including turbulence modeling and computational fluid dynamics. Charles Meneveau, the Louis M. Sardella Professor in Mechanical Engineering and an associate director of the Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science at the Johns Hopkins University, focuses his research on understanding and modeling hydrodynamic turbulence, and on complexity in fluid mechanics in general. He combines computational, theoretical and experimental tools for his research, with an emphasis on the multi...
Go to Profile#936
Ray Kappe
#33424
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Ray Kappe was an American architect and educator. In 1972, he resigned his position as Founding Chair of the Department of Architecture at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and along with a group of faculty, students and his wife, Shelly Kappe, started what eventually came to be known as the Southern California Institute of Architecture . In 2003, Kappe began working with LivingHomes to design modular homes.
Go to Profile#937
Karl Iagnemma
#50168
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Karl Iagnemma is an American writer and research scientist. He is also the CEO of self-driving technology company Motional. Background Iagnemma was born in Shelby Township, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. He studied mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#938
Manuel Herz
#35723
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Manuel Herz is an architect with his own practice in Basel, Switzerland and Cologne, Germany. He was educated at the RWTH Aachen in Germany and at the Architectural Association in London. He has received numerous prizes and awards, published widely on Jewish architecture in Germany and has taught at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London and KTH Stockholm.
Go to Profile#939
Jeff S. Shamma
#42617
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Jeff S. Shamma is an American control theorist. He is the Department Head and Professor of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Formerly, he was a Professor of Electrical engineering at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Before that, he held the Julian T. Hightower Chair in Systems & Control Systems and Controls at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is known for his early work in nonlinear and adaptive control, particularly on gain scheduling, robust control, and more recently, distributed systems.
Go to Profile#940
Alain Glavieux
#24208
Overall Influence
1949 - 2004 (55 years)
Alain Glavieux was a French professor in electrical engineering at École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Bretagne. He was the coinventor with Claude Berrou and Punya Thitimajshima of a groundbreaking coding scheme called turbo codes.
Go to Profile#941
Li Dequn
#22452
Overall Influence
1945 - 2022 (77 years)
Li Dequn was a Chinese material scientist who was a professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Biography Li was born in Tai County , Jiangsu, on 7 August 1945. Both his cousins and are also academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
Go to Profile#942
James Polshek
#10831
Overall Influence
1930 - 2022 (92 years)
James Stewart Polshek was an American architect based in New York City. He was the founder of Polshek Partnership, the firm at which he was the principal design partner for more than four decades. He worked as design counsel to the legacy firm Ennead Architects, as well as being actively engaged as design lead on multiple projects.
Go to Profile#943
Geoff Tootill
#10056
Overall Influence
1922 - 2017 (95 years)
Geoff C. Tootill was an electronic engineer and computer scientist who worked in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Manchester with Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn developing the Manchester Baby, "the world's first wholly electronic stored-program computer".
Go to Profile#944
Arjen Hoekstra
#41967
Overall Influence
1967 - 2019 (52 years)
Arjen Hoekstra was a professor at the University of Twente who pioneered the concept of the water footprint - a way of measuring the extent of water consumption. His work drew attention to the hidden water use associated with a range of activities, and continues to have a profound effect both on scholarship and on environmental policy and activism. He strongly supported open source science, and all his articles were published under a Creative Commons License.
Go to Profile#945
Friedrich St. Florian
#21296
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Friedrich St. Florian is an Austrian-American architect. He moved to the United States in 1961, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1973. Early life and education St. Florian was born Friedrich St. Florian Gartler in the Austrian city of Graz. He has been quoted a saying "When I was 10 or 11, I was a sandcastle-builder, a dam-builder. I wanted to build for the pleasure, the delight of it really was amazing."
Go to Profile#946
Qian Xuesen
#24088
Overall Influence
1911 - 2009 (98 years)
Qian Xuesen, or Hsue-shen Tsien , was a Chinese aerospace engineer and cyberneticist who made significant contributions to the field of aerodynamics and established engineering cybernetics. Qian received his undergraduate education in mechanical engineering at National Chiao Tung University in Shanghai in 1934 and took a pre-departure transitional year in aircraft design at National Tsinghua University in Beijing. He travelled to the United States in 1935 and attained a master's degree in aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1936. Afterward, he joined Theodo...
Go to Profile#947
Erik Reitzel
#27711
Overall Influence
1941 - 2014 (73 years)
Erik Reitzel was a Danish civil engineer who started work in 1964 and was for many years a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and at the Technical University of Denmark, in the disciplines of bearing structures and structural design.
Go to Profile#948
Dennis Hong
#47758
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Dennis Hong is a Korean American mechanical engineer and roboticist. Career Hong is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Hong is also founder of RoMeLa . Awards and nominations 2007 NSF CAREER Award2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, 3rd Place2009 Popular Science Brilliant 102009 Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award2009 Forward Under 40 honoree by the University of Wisconsin–Madison Alumni Association2011 “Louis Vuitton Cup” Best Humanoid Award2015 Gilbreth Lectureship, NAE 2015 Hyupsung Social Contribution Award
Go to Profile#949
Hewitt Crane
#18013
Overall Influence
1927 - 2008 (81 years)
Hewitt D. Crane was an American engineer best known for his pioneering work at SRI International on ERMA , for Bank of America, magnetic digital logic, neuristor logic, the development of an eye-movement tracking device, and a pen-input device for computers.
Go to Profile#950
Kazuya Masu
#49553
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Kazuya Masu is the President of Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. He is an electronic engineer. Early life Masu was educated at Kobe City College of Technology from 1970 to 1975. Then, he join at Tokyo Institute of Technology , receiving his bachelor and master degrees in engineering in 1977 and 1979 respectively. In 1982, he received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the same university.
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