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,
#9451
Bülent Şık
#173942
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Bülent Şık is a Turkish food engineer, environmental and human rights activist and a whistleblower. He was convicted after disclosing the results from a government study on environmental pollution and carcinogens.
Go to Profile#9452
Christine Webster
#181589
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Christine Webster is a New Zealand visual artist and photographer. Background Webster was born in 1958 in Pukekohe, Auckland. She currently lives in the United Kingdom. Webster has a Diploma in Photography from Massey University and an MFA from Glasgow School of Art.
Go to Profile#9453
Sergei Prokhanov
#184140
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Sergei Borisovich Prokhanov is a Soviet and Russian theater and film actor, theater director, artistic director of . People's Artist of the Russian Federation . The most famous for him was the role Kesha Chetvergov in the Vladimir Grammatikov's comedy Mustached Nanny .
Go to Profile#9454
Ion Bostan
#101222
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Ion Bostan is a professor and researcher from Moldova. He is the rector of the Technical University of Moldova and a member of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova. He is the father of Marcel Ion Bostan, the soloist, keyboards, composer and lyricist.
Go to Profile#9455
Robert Fox
#115861
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Robert Michael John Fox is an English theatre and film producer, whose work includes the 2002 film The Hours. Life and career He was born the third son of theatrical agent Robin Fox and actress Angela Worthington. He is the younger brother of actors Edward Fox and James Fox. The actress Emilia Fox is his niece and the actors Laurence Fox and Freddie Fox are his nephews. His maternal grandfather was playwright Frederick Lonsdale. Fox was educated at Harrow School.
Go to Profile#9456
Sarah Haffner
#79199
Overall Influence
1940 - 2018 (78 years)
Sarah Haffner was a German-British painter, author, and active feminist. In West Berlin she engaged with the protest issues of the 1960s, on occasion alongside her father, the journalist and writer Sebastian Haffner. Through a television documentary and a book she was instrumental in the late 1970s in establishing the city's first women's shelter. The range of her painting included portraits, still lifes, landscapes and cityscapes.
Go to Profile#9457
Antonia Papandreou
#128547
Overall Influence
Antonia Papandreou-Suppappola from the Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2013 for contributions to applications of time-frequency signal processing.
Go to Profile#9458
Babak Farzaneh
#178850
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Babak Farzaneh is a researcher, author and a professor of the Arabic Language and literature born in 1964 in Tehran, Imperial Sate of Iran. Researcher and scholarly, author and professor of Arabic language and literature. After his college graduation, Farzaneh continued his university education and achieved BSc of Arabic Language and Literature at Isfahan University. In the middle of his career, in 2004, he achieved Associate Professor and at the apex of his educational profession in 2009, he achieved Full Professor. Dr. Farzaneh was invited to University of Toronto as a Visiting Research Associate in January 2011.
Go to Profile#9459
Park Chan-dea
#192364
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
#9460
Cyrus Alai
#192368
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Cyrus Alai is a Persian-British engineer, map collector and the author of the book "General Maps of Persia". Alai was born in Tehran and studied at Technical University of Berlin. Before the 1979 revolution he was a lecturer at Tehran University. Shortly after the revolution he moved to London.
Go to Profile#9461
Tong Binggang
#173597
Overall Influence
1927 - 2020 (93 years)
Tong Binggang was a Chinese physicist. He was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences . Biography Tong was born in the town of , Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu, on September 28, 1927. In 1946 he entered National Central University, majoring in mechanics. In 1953 he earned a master's degree in mechanics from Harbin Institute of Technology. After graduation, he taught at the university. In 1956, because of his comments on the then deputy dean of Harbin Institute of Technology, Tong was criticized and punished for five years. During the Cultural Revolution, he was labeled as a "Rightist" and was jailed for one year and reformed through labor for two and a half years.
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Jieh-Haur Chen
#192381
Overall Influence
Jieh-Haur Chen is a professor. Chen is a Distinguished Professor of National Central University , Taiwan, where he teaches and performs research related to construction management, computational intelligence, and engineering finance. He is currently the Chairman of Institute of Construction Engineering and Management and the Director of Center of Alumni Relations in NCU.
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Giulia
#177378
Overall Influence
1994 - Present (32 years)
Giulia is an English-born Italian-Japanese professional wrestler. She is currently signed to World Wonder Ring Stardom, where she is the current Artist of Stardom Champion in her second reign and is the leader of Donna Del Mondo. She also makes appearances for New Japan Pro-Wrestling, where she is the current Strong Women's Champion in her first reign.
Go to Profile#9464
Kazuyuki Nagashima
#192391
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
is a Japanese wrestler. He won the silver medal in the 74 kg class in the men's freestyle wrestling competition, at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, China. External links
Go to Profile#9465
Shawn Blanton
#192398
Overall Influence
Shawn Blanton is a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University. In 1995, he received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research interests include various aspects of integrated system tests, testable design, and test methodology development. He has consulted for various companies, and is the founder of TestWorks, a Carnegie Mellon University spinout focused on information extraction from IC test data. Blanton is a founding member of the Security Assurance of Fabricated Electr...
Go to Profile#9466
Jonathan Shaw
#99603
Overall Influence
Jonathan Shaw is a British photographer and educator. Photography Shaw's work has been shown at Leeds Met Gallery, Goethe Institute in Dresden, Germany and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Shaw is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and is a member of the society's 'Multimedia and Narrative Distinction Panel' alongside Andy Golding and Daniel Meadows among others.
Go to Profile#9467
Jamie Baldridge
#146582
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Jamie Baldridge is an American photographer and arts educator. He creates highly manipulated and surreal tableau vivant photographs. He is currently a professor of Photography in the Visual Arts Department at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Go to Profile#9468
Helen O'Toole
#186994
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Helen O'Toole is an Irish-born painter based in the United States, who is known for abstract paintings suggestive of landscape. She has exhibited throughout Ireland and the United States, in Singapore, and at venues including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Portland Art Museum, Chicago Cultural Center, Tacoma Art Museum, and Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore. Her work has been featured in the journals Artforum, Arts Magazine, New Art Examiner, and Zyzzyva, as well as the Chicago Tribune, The Irish Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and National Public Radio. Art writers frequen...
Go to Profile#9469
Seung Chan Kim
#93849
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
Seung Chan Kim KTM is a South Korean medical scientist and inventor. His main area of research is biomagnetism [nonsensical translation]. He received the 2009 Talent Medal of Korea along with Yuna Kim. Kim serves as World Talent Exchange and Sharing Organization's Chairperson.
Go to Profile#9470
Jack T Landrigan
#192428
Overall Influence
#9471
Igor Vladimirov
#143772
Overall Influence
1919 - 1999 (80 years)
Igor Petrovich Vladimirov was a Soviet film and theater actor, theater and film director, and teacher. People's Artist of the USSR . From 1960 until his death in 1999 he was the Principal Director of the Lensovet Theatre in Leningrad.
Go to Profile#9472
Nigel Gresley
1876 - 1941 (65 years)
Sir Herbert Nigel Gresley was a British railway engineer. He was one of Britain's most famous steam locomotive engineers, who rose to become Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London and North Eastern Railway . He was the designer of some of the most famous steam locomotives in Britain, including the LNER Class A1 and LNER Class A4 4-6-2 Pacific engines. An A1 Pacific, Flying Scotsman, was the first steam locomotive officially recorded over 100 mph in passenger service, and an A4, number 4468 Mallard, still holds the record for being the fastest steam locomotive in the world .
Go to Profile#9473
Ernest George Coker
1869 - 1946 (77 years)
Prof Ernest George Coker FRS FRSE MIME MICE Wh.Ex. was a British mathematician and engineer. He won the Howard N. Potts Medal for Physics in 1922, and the Rumford Medal for work on polarised light in 1936. He was an expert on stress analysis and Photoelasticity. He contributed to Encyclopædia Britannica and other works under the initials E.G.C.
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Joseph Reed
1823 - 1890 (67 years)
Joseph Reed , a Cornishman by birth, was a prolific and influential Victorian era architect in Melbourne, Australia. He established his practice in 1853, which through various partnerships and name changes, continues today as Bates Smart, one of the oldest firms continually operating in Australia.
Go to Profile#9475
Franz Dischinger
1887 - 1953 (66 years)
Franz Dischinger was a pioneering German civil and structural engineer, responsible for the development of the modern cable-stayed bridge. He was also a pioneer of the use of prestressed concrete, patenting the technique of external prestressing in 1934.
Go to Profile#9476
Alfred Friedrich Bluntschli
1842 - 1930 (88 years)
Alfred Friedrich Bluntschli was a Swiss architect and educator. Life and work Son of a distinguished legal scholar, Johann Caspar Bluntschli, A. F. "Fritz" Bluntschli commenced his architectural education in 1860 at the Zürich Polytechnikum under Gottfried Semper, and later attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the atelier of Charles-Auguste Questel. By 1866, Bluntschli was shuttling between Heidelberg and Konstanz, and in 1870 he settled in Frankfurt-am-Main where he met , with whom he established a successful architectural practice. One of their first successful commissions was ...
Go to Profile#9477
William D. Travis
#9478
Volodymyr Sichynskyi
1894 - 1962 (68 years)
Volodymyr Sichynskyi was a Ukrainian émigré architect, graphic artist, and art historian. Volodymyr Sichynskyi was born to the family of Ievtym Sitsinskyi in Kamianets-Podilskyi, Podilia guberniya, Russia, which is in present-day Ukraine.
Go to Profile#9479
Konstantin Khrenov
1894 - 1984 (90 years)
Konstantin Konstantinovich Khrenov was a Soviet engineer and inventor who in 1932 introduced underwater welding and cutting of metals. For this method, extensively used by the Soviet Navy during World War II, Khrenov was awarded the State Stalin Prize in 1946.
Go to Profile#9480
Wilmer L. Barrow
1903 - 1975 (72 years)
Wilmer Lanier Barrow was an American electrical engineer, inventor, teacher, industrial manager, and a counselor to government agencies. He obtained a BSEE degree in 1926 from Louisiana State University, and a doctorate from the Technical University of Munich in 1931. During the pre-World War 2 development of radar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Barrow performed research on microwaves, inventing waveguide in 1936 and the horn antenna in 1938.
Go to Profile#9481
William Henry Jackson
1843 - 1942 (99 years)
William Henry Jackson was an American photographer, Civil War veteran, painter, and an explorer famous for his images of the American West. He was a great-great nephew of Samuel Wilson, the progenitor of America's national symbol Uncle Sam. He was the great-grandfather of cartoonist Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead comics.
Go to Profile#9482
Dietrich Brandis
1824 - 1907 (83 years)
Sir Dietrich Brandis was a German-British botanist and forestry academic and administrator, who worked with the British Imperial Forestry Service in colonial India for nearly 30 years. He joined the British civil service in Burma in 1856, shortly afterwards became head of the British forestry administration in all of Burma, and served as Inspector General of Forests in India from 1864 to 1883. He returned to Europe in 1883, dividing his time between Bonn and Greater London. In retirement he dedicated himself to scholarly work, resulting in the book Indian Trees , his magnum opus. Brandis is ...
Go to Profile#9483
Rolla C. Carpenter
1852 - 1919 (67 years)
Rolla Clinton Carpenter C.E. M.M.E. LL.D. was an American engineer, academic, and writer. Carpenter was born in Orion , Michigan. He earned a B.S. in 1873 from Michigan State Agricultural College and later received additional bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Michigan in 1875. From 1875 to 1890 he was professor of mathematics and civil engineering in the Michigan State Agricultural College; while there, he designed and supervised much of the construction at the young school. In 1887, he and Professor William J. Beal laid out "Collegeville", the first neighborhood in what...
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Erwin Piscator
1893 - 1966 (73 years)
Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator was a German theatre director and producer. Along with Bertolt Brecht, he was the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content of drama, rather than its emotional manipulation of the audience or the production's formal beauty.
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Dénes Györgyi
1886 - 1961 (75 years)
Dénes Györgyi was a Hungarian architect, a member of the Györgyi-Giergl artistic family. Biography Family background Gyorgyi was born in Budapest into a well-known clan of artists which stretched back generations. On his father's side, his great grandfather, Alajos Giergl was a silversmith who originated from the Tyrol and his grandfather, Alajos Györgyi Giergl , was a well-known painter in Pest. His father, Kálmán Györgyi was a craftsman and art theorist, the director of the National Society of Applied Arts and editor of its journal. Two other close relatives, Géza Gyorgyi and Kálmán Giergl were well known architects.
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Hans Bellmer
1902 - 1975 (73 years)
Hans Bellmer was a German artist, best known for the life-sized female dolls he produced in the mid-1930s. Historians of art and photography also consider him a Surrealist photographer. Biography Bellmer was born in the city of Kattowitz, then part of the German Empire . Up until 1926, he worked as a draftsman for his own advertising company.
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Thomas Edison
1847 - 1931 (84 years)
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He established the first industrial research laboratory.
Go to Profile#9488
A. Lawrence Kocher
1885 - 1969 (84 years)
A. Lawrence Kocher was an American architect, editor, and teacher. He was a pioneering advocate of modern architecture and the preservation of historic landmarks Education and career In 1909, he studied Bachelor of Arts in history at Stanford University. Subsequently, in 1916 he studied Master of Arts in Pennsylvania State College . He is graduated also from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and New York University. His extensive education in both history and architecture informed his forward-thinking approach to consolidation between old and new, and led to his appointment as Director of...
Go to Profile#9489
Rouben Mamoulian
1897 - 1987 (90 years)
Rouben Zachary Mamoulian was an American film and theater director. Early life Mamoulian was born in Tiflis, Russian Empire , to a family of Armenian descent. His mother, Virginia , was a director of the Armenian theatre, and his father, Zachary Mamoulian, was a bank president. On New Year's Eve, 1920, Mamoulian arrived, in London, worked with émigré actors and directed a play, at St. James Theatre, based on the Russian Revolution, The Beating on the Door, invited by Austin Page and Vladimir Rosing to co-direct.
Go to Profile#9490
Johann Arzberger
1778 - 1835 (57 years)
Johann Arzberger was an Austrian technologist. He worked as a manager of equipment of the Fürstlich Salm'sche Eisenwerke by in Moravia. From 1816 on, he served as a professor of mechanical technology at the Polytechnic Institute in Vienna. He published scientific articles in the field of mechanics in Gilbert's Annalen der Physik as well as in the Annals of the Polytechnic Institute in Vienna.
Go to Profile#9491
Rudolph Weaver
1880 - 1944 (64 years)
Rudolph Weaver was an American architect, university professor and administrator renowned for various buildings that he designed in Florida, Idaho and Washington, many of which are academic. Early life, work and education Weaver was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the son of Henry Weaver and his wife, Sara Jane Barnhart. Before college he worked as a bookbinder, printer and steelworker. He attended Pennsylvania State College for the year 1902-03 and then went to Drexel Institute where he received a diploma in architecture in 1905. He continued his study of architecture at Columbia Universi...
Go to Profile#9492
Robert Lorimer
1864 - 1929 (65 years)
Sir Robert Stodart Lorimer, KBE was a prolific Scottish architect and furniture designer noted for his sensitive restorations of historic houses and castles, for new work in Scots Baronial and Gothic Revival styles, and for promotion of the Arts and Crafts movement.
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Lingan S. Randolph
1859 - 1922 (63 years)
Lingan Strother Randolph was an American mechanical and consulting engineer, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering from 1893 to 1918 at Virginia Tech. Life and work Born in Martinsburg, Virginia to James Lingan and Emily Strother, he attended the Shenandoah Valley Academy from 1873 to 1876. After a year at the Virginia Military Institute, he moved to the Stevens Institute of Technology, where he graduated in mechanical engineer in 1883.
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William Dunkel
1893 - 1980 (87 years)
William Dunkel was a Swiss architect and painter. He worked in Germany until 1929 when he relocated to Switzerland upon obtaining a teaching job at the ETH in Zürich. Dunkel was born in 1893 in the US. His parents, Jacob Dunkel and Berta Marie Dunkel, née Kruse, were Swiss, and William grew up in Buenos Aires and Lausanne. In 1912 he started to study architecture in Germany at the Dresden University of Technology. He received his doctorate from Dresden in 1917 from Cornelius Gurlitt, for a dissertation entitled "Beiträge zur Entwicklung des Städtebaues in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amer...
Go to Profile#9495
Robert Whitehead
1823 - 1905 (82 years)
Robert Whitehead was an English engineer who was most famous for developing the first effective self-propelled naval torpedo. Early life He was born in Bolton, England, the son of James Whitehead, a cotton-bleacher, and his wife Ellen Whitehead née Swift. He trained as an engineer and draughtsman, and attended the Mechanics' Institute, Manchester.
Go to Profile#9496
Erich Schelling
1904 - 1986 (82 years)
Erich Schelling was a German architect. He was born in Wiesloch near Heidelberg and studied at the State Technical College in Karlsruhe from 1924 to 1928 and the Technical University , until May 1933.
Go to Profile#9497
Karl Mayreder
1856 - 1935 (79 years)
Karl Mayreder was an Austrian architect. Life and work Karl Mayreder was born the son of hotelier Leopold Mayreder and his wife Henriette Mayreder. Leopold Mayreder had taken over the famous hotel “Matschakerhof” at number 5 in the Spiegelgasse/number 7 in the Seilergasse in the first district of Vienna from his father and ran it successfully.
Go to Profile#9498
Remus Răduleț
1904 - 1984 (80 years)
Remus Răduleț was a Romanian electrical engineer, who contributed to the development of the International Electrotechnical Vocabulary and theoretical electrotechnology. He was a titular member of the Romanian Academy and served as president of the International Electrotechnical Commission from 1964 to 1967.
Go to Profile#9499
Emil Victor Langlet
1824 - 1898 (74 years)
Emil Victor Langlet was a Swedish architect. He is most commonly associated with his design for the Norwegian Parliament Building in Oslo, Norway. Background Langlet was born in Borås, Sweden. He was educated at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg and at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm where he trained under Per Axel Nyström . From 1850, he attended the École des Beaux-arts in Paris where he trained under Guillaume-Abel Blouet .
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Jørgen Henrich Rawert
1751 - 1823 (72 years)
Jørgen Henrich Rawert was a was a Danish architect. He created the masterplan for the rebuilding of Copenhagen after the Great Fire of 1795 in his capacity of city architect and was also involved in many building projects, mostly of townhouses, often collaborating with Andreas Hallander.
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