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,
#951
Jin Au Kong
#23188
Overall Influence
1942 - 2008 (66 years)
Jin Au Kong was an American expert in applied electromagnetics. He was a 74th-generation lineal descendant of the famous Chinese philosopher Confucius . Biography Kong was born in Gaochun, Jiangsu Province. He received his BS from the National Taiwan University in 1962, his MS from the National Chiao Tung University in 1965, and his PhD from Syracuse University in 1968. His PhD thesis supervisor was David K. Cheng. Kong did his postdoctoral research at Syracuse University as well from 1968 to 1969. From 1969 to 1971, he was the Vinton Hayes Postdoctoral Fellow of Engineering.
Go to Profile#952
Phil Karn
#18057
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Phil Karn is a retired American engineer from Lutherville, Maryland. He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1978 and a master's degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1979. From 1979 until 1984, Karn worked at Bell Labs in Naperville, Illinois, and Murray Hill, New Jersey. From 1984 until 1991, he was with Bell Communications Research in Morristown, New Jersey. From 1991 through to his retirement, he worked at Qualcomm in San Diego, where he specialized in wireless data networking protocols, security, and cryptography.
Go to Profile#953
Max Dudler
#31404
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Max Dudler is a Swiss architect with international fame. The main characteristic of Max Dudler's architecture is a combination of strict Swiss minimalism and classical rationalism that is found both in the historical and contemporary architecture.
Go to Profile#954
Akira Kuryu
#34469
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
is a Japanese architect known for designing many museums in Japan. Compared with his contemporaries, Kuryu started his career later than other famous Japanese architects. Kuryu graduated from Waseda University and once worked with Maki, a very famous architect, at Maki & Associates and then became an associate lecturer in Maki Research Department at the University of Tokyo. In 1987, he set up Akira Kuryu Architect & Associates. Since then, in such a short period, he has constantly worked out excellent projects, including a series of museum buildings, which are widely noticed by the public such...
Go to Profile#955
Rajit Gadh
#23298
Overall Influence
Rajit Gadh is a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and the founding director of the UCLA Smart Grid Energy Research Center , the UCLA Wireless Internet for Mobile Enterprise Consortium , and the Connected and Autonomous Electric Vehicles Consortium .
Go to Profile#956
William Craig Reynolds
#49659
Overall Influence
1933 - 2004 (71 years)
William Craig Reynolds was a fluid physicist and mechanical engineer who specialized in turbulent flow and computational fluid dynamics. Reynolds completed his undergraduate degrees, as well as his doctorate, all at Stanford University, in 1954, 1955, and 1957, respectively, after which he joined the faculty. He was chairman of the Mechanical Engineering Department from 1972 to 1982 and again from 1989 to 1992.
Go to Profile#957
Xin Zhang
#56130
Overall Influence
Xin Zhang is a Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Boston University . Education Zhang received her Ph.D. from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology . She was a postdoctoral researcher and then a research scientist with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .
Go to Profile#958
Nagi Naganathan
#22981
Overall Influence
Nagi Ganapathy Naganathan is the current president of the Oregon Institute of Technology and the former dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Toledo. Education Naganathan received his bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Regional Engineering College, Tiruchirappalli , master's degree from Clarkson University and his doctorate of philosophy degree from Oklahoma State University.
Go to Profile#959
Leah Jamieson
#18595
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Leah H. Jamieson is an American engineering educator, currently the Ransburg Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. Jamieson was a founder of the Engineering Projects in Community Service program , a multi-university engineering design program that operates in a service-learning context. She is a recipient of the Gordon Prize. From 2006-2017, she served as the John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering at Purdue.
Go to Profile#960
Dennis W. Dickson
#56228
Overall Influence
#961
Karl-Heinz Petzinka
#25128
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Karl-Heinz Petzinka is a German architect, and Rector of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. He is known for office buildings in Düsseldorf and Berlin. He converted historic industrial buildings, and was responsible for the section architecture for the Ruhr.2010 project.
Go to Profile#962
Robert W. Cahn
#41280
Overall Influence
1924 - 2007 (83 years)
Robert Wolfgang Cahn FRS was a British metallurgist whose contributions to physical metallurgy centred on the properties of dislocations. Cahn developed a successful model for the nucleation of recrystallisation, which underpinned research into industrial processes involving high-temperature deformation. He also contributed substantially to the crystallography of uranium. In later life he made a great contribution to scientific editing, editing both scientific textbooks such as the comprehensive Physical Metallurgy, co-edited, with Peter Haasen, a standard reference work in the field.
Go to Profile#963
Toshiko Mori
#17137
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Toshiko Mori is a Japanese architect and the founder and principal of New York–based Toshiko Mori Architect, PLLC and Vision Arc. She is also the Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In 1995, she became the first female faculty member to receive tenure at the GSD.
Go to Profile#964
Yonina Eldar
#42308
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Yonina C. Eldar is an Israeli professor of electrical engineering at the Weizmann Institute of Science, known for her pioneering work on sub-Nyquist sampling. Early life and education Eldar was born in Toronto, Canada. She is the third daughter of Rabbi Meyer and Vicky Berglas. She moved with her family to Israel in 1979. She received her B.Sc. degrees in physics and electrical engineering both from Tel Aviv University , Israel, in 1995 and 1996, respectively.
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Nick Knight
#3454
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Nicholas David Gordon Knight is a British fashion photographer and founder and director of SHOWstudio.com. He is an honorary professor at University of the Arts London and was awarded an honorary Ph.D. by the same university. He has produced books of his work including retrospectives Nicknight and Nick Knight . In 2016, Knight's 1992 campaign photograph for fashion brand Jil Sander was sold by Phillips auction house at the record-breaking price of HKD 2,360,000.
Go to Profile#966
Gang Chen
#25177
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Gang Chen is a Chinese-born American mechanical engineer and nanotechnologist. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , he is currently the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering and he was head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering from July 23, 2013 to June 30, 2018. He directs the Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center formerly funded by the United States Department of Energy. He became an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2010.
Go to Profile#967
Edward Jones
#20862
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Prof. Edward Jones, CBE RIBA is an English architect, born in St Albans 20 October 1939. He is married to Canadian architect Margot Griffin. Career After schooling at Haileybury, Jones trained at the Architectural Association, where he met his future architectural partner Jeremy Dixon. They formed an informal practice in the mid sixties, which Peter Cook referred to as "The Grunt Group" to promote the modernist agenda.
Go to Profile#968
Qian Lingxi
#35038
Overall Influence
1916 - 2009 (93 years)
Qian Lingxi , also known as Tsien Ling-hi, was a Chinese civil engineer and physicist. An authority on engineering structural mechanics and computational mechanics, he served as president of the Dalian University of Technology and was a founding member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences . DUT's Lingxi Library, opened in 2009, is named after him.
Go to Profile#969
Julia Weertman
#51469
Overall Influence
1926 - 2018 (92 years)
Julia Randall Weertman was an American materials scientist who taught at Northwestern University as the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. Education She was the first female student of the College of Science and Engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, where she earned her baccalaureate and graduate degrees.
Go to Profile#970
C. Barry Carter
#37006
Overall Influence
C. Barry Carter is a professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. He is a CINT Distinguished Affiliate Scientist at Sandia National Laboratories and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Materials Science. Carter's research areas of focus include Transmission Electron Microscopy and Atomic-force microscopy.
Go to Profile#971
Charles Oatley
#31028
Overall Influence
1904 - 1996 (92 years)
Sir Charles William Oatley OBE, FRS FREng was Professor of Electrical Engineering, University of Cambridge, 1960–1971, and developer of one of the first commercial scanning electron microscopes. He was also a founder member of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Go to Profile#972
Mike Leigh
#974
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Mike Leigh is an English writer-director with a career spanning film, theatre and television. He has received numerous accolades, including prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, the Venice International Film Festival, three BAFTA Awards, and nominations for seven Academy Awards. He also received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2014, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1993 Birthday Honours for services to the film industry.
Go to Profile#973
Nonda Katsalidis
#39352
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Nonda Katsalidis is a Greek-Australian architect. He is currently a practising director of architecture firm Fender Katsalidis Architects in partnership with Karl Fender. Early life Nonda Katsalidis was born in 1951 in Athens, Greece. He migrated to Melbourne, Australia when he was five years old, with his two-year-old brother and parents. He graduated from the University of Melbourne with a degree in architecture in 1976.
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Gonçalo Byrne
#14011
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Gonçalo Byrne, GCIH is a Portuguese architect. Byrne is responsible for a vast accomplishment of architectural work, and has been awarded with many national and international prizes. In 2005 he was awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the Lisbon Faculty of Architecture, Technical University of Lisbon, and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Santiago da Espada by the President of the Portuguese Republic. Included in his diversified body of work, in terms of scale, theme and programme, the more relevant examples are the recent interventions in the Monastery of Alcobaça and its...
Go to Profile#975
Mark Miodownik
#25667
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Mark Andrew Miodownik is a British materials scientist, engineer, broadcaster and writer at University College London. Previously, he was the head of the Materials Research Group at King's College London, and a co-founder of Materials Library.
Go to Profile#976
Michael P. Collins
#23599
Overall Influence
Michael Patrick Collins is a Canadian structural engineer whose research is focused on the design and evaluation of reinforced and prestressed concrete buildings, bridges, nuclear containment structures and offshore oil platforms.
Go to Profile#977
Johannes Weertman
#51897
Overall Influence
1925 - 2018 (93 years)
Johannes Weertman was an American materials scientist and geophysicist. Biography Born in 1925 in Fairfield, Alabama, Weertman served in the United States Marine Corps for three years. He then received from Carnegie Institute of Technology his bachelor's degree in 1948 and his Ph.D. in physics in 1951 under the supervision of James Koehler. As a postdoc Weertman was a Fulbright Fellow at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Beginning in 1952 he was at the US Naval Research Laboratory. At Northwestern University he became in 1959 an associate professor and then a full professor; in 1963 he became there a professor of geophysics and from 1968 Walter P.
Go to Profile#978
Yogesh Jaluria
#34529
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Professor Yogesh Jaluria is Board of Governors Professor and Distinguished Professor at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He is a specialist in thermal sciences and engineering.
Go to Profile#979
Henri Cartier-Bresson
#1747
Overall Influence
1908 - 2004 (96 years)
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French artist and humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment.
Go to Profile#980
Yaakov Bar-Shalom
#49079
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Yaakov Bar-Shalom is a researcher in tracking and sensor fusion. His work is associated with MS-MTT and IMM estimator. Early life and education Yaakov Bar-Shalom was born in Romania and he emigrated to Israel with his family at the age of nineteen. He earned his Bachelor's and master's degree both in Electrical Engineering from Technion in Haifa, Israel. Following this, he earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University under Stuart Schwartz.
Go to Profile#981
Tayfun Tezduyar
#53479
Overall Influence
Tayfun E. Tezduyar is a mechanical engineer. He is known for his studies on the techniques of stabilizing the finite element methods. Tezduyar obtained his master's degree and doctorate at the California Institute of Technology in 1978 and 1982, respectively. He was then a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University prior to joining the University of Houston faculty in January 1983. Tezduyar assumed an associate professorship at the University of Minnesota in 1987, and was named a full professor in 1991. In 1997, Tezduyar was appointed Distinguished McKnight University Professor. He left Minnesota for the James F.
Go to Profile#982
Eric J. Miller
#44211
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Eric J. Miller is Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto's Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering and Director of the University of Toronto Transportation Research Institute . His main research areas include microsimulation of Urban Transportation - Land-Use Systems, Sustainability of Urban Transportation Systems, and Improvements in Conventional Travel Demand Models.
Go to Profile#983
Theodore Y. Wu
#33185
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (100 years)
Theodore Yaotsu Wu is an American engineer. He is a Professor Emeritus of Engineering Science at the California Institute of Technology. His research contribution includes compressible fluid flow, free-streamline theory of cavities, jets and wakes, water waves and free-surface flows, mechanics of fish swimming and bird/insect flight, wind and ocean-current energy, and internal waves in the ocean.
Go to Profile#984
Shu-Park Chan
#26703
Overall Influence
1929 - 2013 (84 years)
Shu-Park Chan was a Chinese-born electrical engineer who served for many years as a professor at Santa Clara University and went on to found International Technological University and serve as its first president.
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Alistair MacFarlane
#32087
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Sir Alistair George James MacFarlane was a Scottish electrical engineer and leading academic who served as Principal and Vice Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, and Rector, University of the Highlands and Islands.
Go to Profile#986
Philip Enquist
#45643
Overall Influence
Philip Enquist, FAIA is a partner in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in charge of Urban Design & Planning. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Since joining SOM in 1981, Enquist has focused on strengthening the physical, social, and intellectual infrastructure of cities. He strives to create a framework for humane and rational habitats, workplaces, open spaces and agricultural areas on a rapidly urbanizing planet. Enquist's work emphasizes the rebuilding of inner cities, including commercial centers and neighborhoods; the improvement of infrastructure of city streets and transit; as well as the conservation of the natural environment.
Go to Profile#987
Elizabeth Farrelly
#27275
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Elizabeth Margaret Farrelly , is a Sydney-based author, architecture critic, essayist, columnist and speaker who was born in New Zealand but later became an Australian citizen. She has contributed to current debates about aesthetics and ethics; design, public art and architecture; urban and natural environments; society and politics, including criticism of the treatment of Julian Assange. Profiles of her have appeared in the New Zealand Architect, Urbis, The Australian Financial Review, the Australian Architectural Review, and Australian Geographic.
Go to Profile#988
Christine Darden
#14479
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Christine Darden is an American mathematician, data analyst, and aeronautical engineer who devoted much of her 40-year career in aerodynamics at NASA to researching supersonic flight and sonic booms. She had an M.S. in mathematics and had been teaching at Virginia State University before starting to work at the Langley Research Center in 1967. She earned a Ph.D. in engineering at George Washington University in 1983 and has published numerous articles in her field. She was the first African-American woman at NASA's Langley Research Center to be promoted to the Senior Executive Service, the to...
Go to Profile#989
Antoine Picon
#28559
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Antoine Picon is a 20th-/21st-century French professor of the History of Architecture and technology and co-director of Doctoral Programs at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He teaches courses in the history and theory of architecture and technology. He is member of the scientific committee of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Versailles -ENSAV-
Go to Profile#990
Michael Mehaffy
#19957
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Michael West Mehaffy is an urbanist, architectural theorist, urban philosopher, researcher, educator, and executive director of Sustasis Foundation, based in Portland, Oregon, USA. Mehaffy has held teaching and/or research appointments in architecture, urban planning and philosophy at eight graduate institutions in seven countries. He is currently Faculty Associate at Arizona State University. He is the former Director of Education of The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment in London, UK, and advisor to the former Prince of Wales .
Go to Profile#991
C. Mauli Agrawal
#40409
Overall Influence
C. Mauli Agrawal is an Indian-American academic, who has been chancellor of the University of Missouri–Kansas City since June 2018. Early life and education Born in Allahabad, India, Agrawal earned a Bachelor's degree of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Agrawal then moved to the United States, earning a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Clemson University in 1985, and a PhD in mechanical engineering from Duke University in 1989.
Go to Profile#992
Derek Abbott
#6427
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Derek Abbott is a British-Australian physicist and electronic engineer. He was born in South Kensington, London, UK. From 1969 to 1971, he was a boarder at Copthorne Preparatory School, Sussex. From 1971 to 1978, he attended the Holland Park School London.
Go to Profile#993
Ali Argon
#38003
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
Ali Suphi Argon was a Turkish-American engineer, and the Quentin Berg Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Career Argon, son of M.A. Suphi Argon from a high-ranking Ottoman military and civil service family and Margarethe née Grosche from Berlin, attended school in Turkey. In 1948, he began studying mechanical engineering at Purdue University, gaining a B.S. degree in 1952. This was followed by the S.M. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953. At MIT with Egon Orowan, he turned to materials science and engineering and received his D.Sc. doctorate.
Go to Profile#994
Hans-Jörg Bullinger
#26385
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Hans-Jörg Bullinger is a German scientist and former president of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. The mechanical engineer with a doctoral degree was the Director of the Fraunhofer IAO , besides he is also Professor of Industrial Science and Technology Management at the University of Stuttgart. From 2002 to 2012 he was the President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. He is also a member of the Scientific Board of AutoUni Wolfsburg.
Go to Profile#995
Zdeněk P. Bažant
#41790
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Zdeněk Pavel Bažant is McCormick School Professor and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil Engineering and Materials Science in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University's Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Go to Profile#996
Vince Calhoun
#50696
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Vince Daniel Calhoun is an American engineer and neuroscientist. He directs the Tri-institutional Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science , a partnership between Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Emory University, and holds faculty appointments at all three institutions. He was formerly the President of the Mind Research Network and a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New Mexico.
Go to Profile#997
Robert Geddes
#21410
Overall Influence
1923 - 2023 (100 years)
Robert Louis Geddes was an American architect, planner, writer, educator, past principal of the firm Geddes Brecher Qualls Cunningham , and dean emeritus of the Princeton University School of Architecture . As principal of GBQC, select major projects include Pender Labs at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Police Headquarters, the Liberty State Park master plan, the Philadelphia Center City master plan, and his best-known work, the Dining Commons, Birch Garden, and Academic Building at the Institute for Advanced Study. He was a Fellow of ...
Go to Profile#998
August Komendant
#20556
Overall Influence
1906 - 1992 (86 years)
August Eduard Komendant was an Estonian and American structural engineer and a pioneer in the field of prestressed concrete, which can be used to build stronger and more graceful structures than normal concrete. He was born in Estonia and educated in engineering in Germany. After World War II he immigrated to the United States, where he wrote several books on structural engineering and served as a professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#999
Stephen M. Smith
#57860
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
#1000
Isao Takahata
#1509
Overall Influence
1935 - 2018 (83 years)
Isao Takahata was a Japanese director, screenwriter and producer. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, he earned international critical acclaim for his work as a director of Japanese animated feature films. Born in Ujiyamada, Mie Prefecture, Takahata joined Toei Animation after graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1959. He worked as an assistant director, holding various positions over the years and collaborating with colleague Hayao Miyazaki, eventually directing his own film, The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun . He continued his partnership with Miyazaki, and under Nippon Animat...
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