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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Engineering,
#9501
Alan W. Bishop
1920 - 1988 (68 years)
Alan Wilfred Bishop was a British geotechnical engineer and academic, working at Imperial College London. He was known for the Bishop's method of analysing soil slopes. After his graduation from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Bishop worked under Alec Skempton and obtained his PhD in 1952 with his thesis title being: The stability of earth dams. He worked extensively in the field of experimental Soil mechanics and developed apparati for soil testing, such as the triaxial test and the ring shear.
Go to Profile#9502
Santiago Antúnez de Mayolo
1887 - 1967 (80 years)
Santiago Antúnez de Mayolo was born on 10 January 1887 in the country estate of Vista Bella, province of Aija, Peru, department of Áncash. He was an engineer, physicist and mathematician. Early years He studied at Colegio Nacional de la Libertad and later Colegio Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe , where he met Peruvian writer Abraham Valdelomar. In 1905 he was admitted into the Mathematical Sciences faculty of the San Marcos National University in Lima. At the end of the 1906 academic year , he received a distinction from President José Pardo, receiving a gold medal. After this, he traveled to France to get his degree in Electrical Engineering in the University of Grenoble.
Go to Profile#9503
Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner
1877 - 1969 (92 years)
Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner was a Polish engineer and a pioneer of sound-on-film technology. In 1921 he became the first research professor of engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Within a year of his arrival at the University, he conducted the first sound-on-film motion picture recordings at a physics demonstration that showed how pictures and sound could be synchronized to produce a "talkie", a motion picture with sound.
Go to Profile#9504
Charles Prosper Wolff Schoemaker
1882 - 1949 (67 years)
Charles Prosper Wolff Schoemaker was a Dutch architect who designed several distinguished Art Deco buildings in Bandung, Indonesia, including the Villa Isola and Hotel Preanger. He has been described as "the Frank Lloyd Wright of Indonesia," and Wright had a considerable influence on Schoemaker's modernist designs. Although he was primarily known as an architect, he was also a painter and sculptor.
Go to Profile#9505
Johann Albert Eytelwein
1764 - 1848 (84 years)
Johann Albert Eytelwein was a German engineer who was among the first to examine mechanical problems dealing with friction, pulleys, and hydraulics. Eytelwein was born in Frankfurt to Christian Philipp and Anna Elisabeth Katharina née Hung. He joined the Prussian army in 1779 and became a bombardier in the 1st Artillery Regiment later serving under General von Tempelhoff who kindled an interest in engineering. He then trained as a surveyor and in 1790 became an inspector of buildings. His building department published the first German journal of civil engineering, Sammlung nützlicher Aufsätze...
Go to Profile#9506
Charles Metcalf Allen
1871 - 1950 (79 years)
Charles Metcalf Allen was a hydraulic engineer known particularly for his inventions and development of the Allen Salt-Velocity Method for measuring water discharge in situations where other methods or instruments could not be easily used. In 1936, Allen received the ASME Warner Medal, and in 1949, he received the John Fritz Medal. From 1906 to 1945, Charles Metcalf Allen served as professor of hydraulic engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. During that period he also performed research at the Alden Hydraulic Laboratory
Go to Profile#9507
Carl Georg Brunius
1793 - 1869 (76 years)
Carl Georg Brunius was a classical scholar, art historian, archaeologist and architect. He served as a professor and rector at Lund University. During 1833-59, he led the restoration work of Lund Cathedral.
Go to Profile#9508
William F. Durand
1859 - 1958 (99 years)
William Frederick Durand was a United States naval officer and pioneer mechanical engineer. He contributed significantly to the development of aircraft propellers. He was the first civilian chair of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the forerunner of NASA.
Go to Profile#9509
Nevil Shute
1899 - 1960 (61 years)
Nevil Shute Norway was an English novelist and aeronautical engineer who spent his later years in Australia. He used his full name in his engineering career and Nevil Shute as his pen name, in order to protect his engineering career from inferences by his employers or from fellow engineers that he was "not a serious person" or from potentially adverse publicity in connection with his novels, which included On the Beach and A Town Like Alice.
Go to Profile#9510
Marcel Janco
1895 - 1984 (89 years)
Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect and art theorist. He was the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. In the 1910s, he co-edited, with Ion Vinea and Tristan Tzara, the Romanian art magazine Simbolul. Janco was a practitioner of Art Nouveau, Futurism and Expressionism before contributing his painting and stage design to Tzara's literary Dadaism. He parted with Dada in 1919, when he and painter Hans Arp founded a Constructivist circle, Das Neue Leben.
Go to Profile#9511
Josef Maria Eder
1855 - 1944 (89 years)
Josef Maria Eder was an Austrian chemist who specialized in the chemistry of photography, and who wrote a comprehensive early history of the technical development of chemical photography. Life and work Eder was born in Krems an der Donau in 1855. He studied chemistry, physics and mathematics at the Vienna University of Technology and at the University of Vienna. In 1876, he received his PhD and in 1879, after his habilitation, became lecturer at the Vienna University of Technology.
Go to Profile#9512
Charles A. Platt
1861 - 1933 (72 years)
Charles Adams Platt was an American architect, garden designer, and artist of the "American Renaissance" movement. His garden designs complemented his domestic architecture. Early career Painting and etching Platt was born in New York City, the son of Mary Elizabeth and John Henry Platt. Platt trained as a landscape painter, and as an etcher with Stephen Parrish in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1880. He attended the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League in New York, and later, the Académie Julian in Paris, with Gustave Boulanger and Jules Joseph Lefebvre. At the Paris Salon of 1885, he exhibited his paintings and etchings and gained his first audience.
Go to Profile#9513
Henry Holland
1745 - 1806 (61 years)
Henry Holland was an architect to the English nobility. He was born in Fulham, London, where his father, also Henry, ran a building firm constructing several of Capability Brown's designs. His younger brother was Richard Holland, who later changed his surname to Bateman-Robson and became an MP. Although Henry would learn a lot from his father about the practicalities of construction, it was under Capability Brown that he would learn about architectural design.
Go to Profile#9514
George Jackson Churchward
1857 - 1933 (76 years)
George Jackson Churchward was an English railway engineer, and was chief mechanical engineer of the Great Western Railway in the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1922. Early life Churchward was born at Rowes Farm, Stoke Gabriel, Devon, where his ancestors had been squires since 1457. He was the first son in a family of three sons and two daughters, brothers John and James and sisters Mary and Adelina . His father, George Churchward, a farmer, married his cousin, Adelina Mary, daughter of Thomas Churchward, of Paignton, Devon, a corn and cider merchant. He was educated at the King Edward VI Grammar School, contained within the Mansion House on Fore Street, Totnes, Devon.
Go to Profile#9515
Nils Strindberg
1872 - 1897 (25 years)
Nils Strindberg was a Swedish photographer and scientist. He was one of the three members of S. A. Andrée's ill-fated Arctic balloon expedition of 1897. Biography Nils Strindberg was born in Stockholm, Sweden. He was the son of wholesaler Johan Oscar Strindberg and Aurora Helena Rosalie Lundgren. His younger brother, Tore Strindberg , was a noted sculptor. His father's cousin was playwright and novelist August Strindberg .
Go to Profile#9516
Gustav Friedrich Hetsch
1788 - 1864 (76 years)
Gustav Friedrich Hetsch was a Danish architect. Early life and education Hetsch was born in Stuttgart to history painter Philipp Friedrich von Hetsch and Louise Friedericke Wilhelmine Scholl . His father was the director of an art gallery and professor at the academy in Stuttgart.Hetsch studied at the University of Tübingen and in Paris, where his teacher was Charles Percier.
Go to Profile#9517
Jan Paweł Nowacki
1905 - 1979 (74 years)
Jan Paweł Nowacki was an engineer. He worked for the British during World War II on radar installations, and later had a career as a university lecturer. Biography He attended secondary school in Berlin. From 1919 he lived in Poznań, where he received his high school diploma. He graduated in 1929 in Lwów with a degree in electrical engineering. In 1928 he was appointed assistant professor to Kazimierz Idaszewski. He earned his PhD in 1937. At the same time he directed various technical projects, such as the electrification of the Warsaw railway junction.
Go to Profile#9518
William Caxton
1422 - 1491 (69 years)
William Caxton was an English merchant, diplomat and writer. He is thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press into England in 1476, and as a printer to be the first English retailer of printed books.
Go to Profile#9519
Anton Rosen
1859 - 1928 (69 years)
Anton Rosen was a Danish architect, furniture designer, decorative artist and professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In his architecture, he combined a free Historicist style with inspiration from contemporary English architecture and details influenced by Jugendstil.
Go to Profile#9520
Jacob van Campen
1596 - 1657 (61 years)
Jacob van Campen was a Dutch artist and architect of the Golden Age. Life He was born into a wealthy family at Haarlem, and spent his youth in his home town. Being of noble birth and with time on his hands, he took up painting mainly as a pastime. In 1614, he became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke , and studied painting under Frans de Grebber - a number of Van Campen's oils survive. About 1616 to 1624 he is thought to have lived in Italy. On his return to the Netherlands, Van Campen turned to architecture, applying ideas borrowed from Andrea Palladio, Vincenzo Scamozzi and classical influences from Vitruvius.
Go to Profile#9521
Daniel W. Mead
1862 - 1948 (86 years)
Daniel Webster Mead was an American engineering consultant and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is remembered for designing hydroelectric plants and writing early textbooks on hydraulic engineering and engineering ethics.
Go to Profile#9522
Ivar Bentsen
1876 - 1943 (67 years)
Ivar Bentsen was a Danish architect and educator. He was a central figure in the Bedre-Byggeskik movement and succeeded Carl Petersen as a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts's School of Architecture in 1923. He was awarded the C. F. Hansen Medal in 1943.
Go to Profile#9523
John Loughborough Pearson
1817 - 1897 (80 years)
John Loughborough Pearson was a British Gothic Revival architect renowned for his work on churches and cathedrals. Pearson revived and practised largely the art of vaulting, and acquired in it a proficiency unrivalled in his generation. He worked on at least 210 ecclesiastical buildings in England alone in a career spanning 54 years.
Go to Profile#9524
Walter Liberty Vernon
1846 - 1914 (68 years)
Colonel Walter Liberty Vernon was an English architect who migrated to Australia and pursued his career as an architect in Sydney, New South Wales. In his role as the New South Wales Government Architect he is noted for designing multiple government buildings, many of which are extant with listings on national and state heritage registers.
Go to Profile#9525
Louis Dunn
1908 - 1979 (71 years)
Louis Gerhardus Dunn was a South African-born engineer who played a key role in the development of early American missiles and launch vehicles. Caltech Dunn received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in aeronautical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA. During that time the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at Caltech , a prestigious aeronautical engineering research facility, was led by Theodore von Kármán. By 1943 Dunn had joined the Caltech faculty and become a naturalized U.S. citizen.
Go to Profile#9526
Wilson Eyre
1858 - 1944 (86 years)
Wilson Eyre, Jr. was an American architect, teacher and writer who practiced in the Philadelphia area. He is known for his deliberately informal and welcoming country houses, and for being an innovator in the Shingle Style.
Go to Profile#9527
Hermann Schlichting
1907 - 1982 (75 years)
Hermann Schlichting was a German fluid dynamics engineer. Life and work Hermann Schlichting studied from 1926 till 1930 mathematics, physics and applied mechanics at the University of Jena, Vienne and Göttingen. In 1930 he wrote his PhD in Göttingen titled Über das ebene Windschattenproblem and also in the same year passed the state examination as teacher for higher mathematics and physics. His meeting with Ludwig Prandtl had a long-lasting effect on him. He worked from 1931 till 1935 at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Flow Research in Göttingen. His main research area was fluid flows with viscous effects.
Go to Profile#9528
Friedrich von Thiersch
1852 - 1921 (69 years)
Friedrich Maximilian Thiersch, after 1897 Ritter von Thiersch , was a German architect and painter in the late Historicist style. Life and work His father, H. W. J. Thiersch, was a prominent theologian and his uncle, Ludwig, was a painter. His older brother, , and his nephew, Paul, were also architects. From 1868 to 1873, he studied architecture at the Technical College of Stuttgart. He then worked for the firm of and Alfred Friedrich Bluntschli, in Frankfurt-am-Main. Following a series of professional disputes, he became a free-lance architect in 1878.
Go to Profile#9529
Carl Schlechter
1874 - 1918 (44 years)
Carl Schlechter was a leading Austro-Hungarian chess master and theoretician at the turn of the 20th century. He is best known for drawing a World Chess Championship match with Emanuel Lasker. Early life Schlechter was born into a Catholic family in Vienna. He is sometimes deemed to be Jewish, although others dispute this. He began playing chess at the age of 13. His first and only teacher was an Austria-Hungarian chess problemist, Dr. Samuel Gold.
Go to Profile#9530
John Campbell
1857 - 1942 (85 years)
John Campbell was a New Zealand architect, responsible for many government buildings in New Zealand, among them the Dunedin Law Courts, the Public Trust Building in Wellington, and Parliament House. From 1909 until his retirement in 1922 he held the position of government architect.
Go to Profile#9531
E. E. Smith
1890 - 1965 (75 years)
Edward Elmer Smith was an American food engineer and science-fiction author, best known for the Lensman and Skylark series. He is sometimes called the father of space opera. Biography Family and education Edward Elmer Smith was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, on May 2, 1890, to Fred Jay Smith and Caroline Mills Smith, both staunch Presbyterians of British ancestry. His mother was a teacher born in Michigan in February 1855; his father was a sailor, born in Maine in January 1855 to an English father. They moved to Spokane, Washington, the winter after Edward Elmer was born, where Mr. Smith was working as a contractor in 1900.
Go to Profile#9532
Thomas Turner
1861 - 1951 (90 years)
Thomas Turner Sc., A.R.S.M., F.R.I.C. was the first Professor of Metallurgy in Britain, at the University of Birmingham. The University was created in 1900 and the department founded in 1902. He was instrumental in the early development of the sclerometer for testing hardness of metals. He retired in 1926. He was also a leading member of the Christadelphian church.
Go to Profile#9533
Harry B. Greenberg
#9534
Bill Mitchell
1912 - 1988 (76 years)
William L. Mitchell was an American automobile designer. Mitchell worked briefly as an advertising illustrator and as the official illustrator of the Automobile Racing Club of America before being recruited by Harley Earl to join the Art and Color Section of General Motors in 1935.
Go to Profile#9535
Nikolay Dobrokhotov
1889 - 1963 (74 years)
Nikolay Nikolayevich Dobrokhotov was a Soviet scientist and metallurgist, Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the Ukrainian SSR, Academician of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences. Biography Nikolay Dobrokhotov was born on March 27, 1889, in Arzamas in Nizhny Novgorod Guberniya in the Russian Empire. His father Nikolay Nikanorovich Dobrokhotov was a telegraphist. His mother — Maria Fedorovna Vladimirskaya, graduate of Smolny Institute — was from the Vladimirskie family, many of whose members were engaged in social activities , were friends of Maxim Gorky. Nikolay Dobrokhotov was the eldest son in a family of 12 children.
Go to Profile#9536
Bennett Lewis
1908 - 1987 (79 years)
Wilfrid Bennett Lewis, was a Canadian nuclear scientist and administrator, and was centrally involved in the development of the CANDU reactor. Born in Castle Carrock, Cumberland, England, he earned a doctorate in physics at Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge in 1934, and continued his research in nuclear physics there until 1939. From 1939 until 1946, he was with the Air Ministry, becoming Chief Superintendent of the Telecommunications Research Establishment. In 1946, he moved to Canada, to become director of the division of Atomic Energy Research at the National Research Council of Canada in Chalk River, Ontario.
Go to Profile#9537
Gifford Pinchot
1865 - 1946 (81 years)
Gifford Pinchot was an American forester and politician. He served as the fourth chief of the U.S. Division of Forestry, as the first head of the United States Forest Service, and as the 28th governor of Pennsylvania. He was a member of the Republican Party for most of his life, though he joined the Progressive Party for a brief period.
Go to Profile#9538
Grigory Petrovich Peredery
1871 - 1953 (82 years)
Grigory Peredery was a Russian civil engineer whose career spanned both the Imperial and the Soviet eras. He became known, in particular, as the pioneering designer of a series of major railway bridges. Peredery enjoyed a distinguished parallel career as a university teacher, becoming rector at the Petrograd State Transport University in 1921. He was the author of over 80 published pieces of academic work, including a detailed course on bridge design and construction.
Go to Profile#9539
Aldus Manutius
1449 - 1515 (66 years)
Aldus Pius Manutius was an Italian printer and humanist who founded the Aldine Press. Manutius devoted the later part of his life to publishing and disseminating rare texts. His interest in and preservation of Greek manuscripts mark him as an innovative publisher of his age dedicated to the editions he produced. Aldus Manutius introduced the small portable book format with his enchiridia, which revolutionized personal reading and are the predecessor of the modern paperback book. He also helped to standardize use of punctuation including the comma and the semicolon.
Go to Profile#9540
Kim Swoo-geun
1931 - 1986 (55 years)
Kim Swoo Geun was a prominent South Korean architect, educator, publisher and patron of artists. Along with architect Kim Joong Up , he is recognised as a significant contributor in the history of Korean architecture. With his support for diverse art genres of Korean culture, he was referred to as Lorenzo de Medici of Seoul by TIME in 1977.
Go to Profile#9541
Lancelot Law Whyte
1896 - 1972 (76 years)
Lancelot Law Whyte was a Scottish philosopher, theoretical physicist, historian of science and financier. Early life and career Lancelot Law Whyte, the son of Dr. Alexander Whyte, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland into the privileged childhood of a great house; Alexander Whyte was at the time a renowned Presbyterian minister. Lancelot received his education at Bedales School in England. He was a soldier during the First World War, returning to enter Trinity College, Cambridge and studying physics under Ernest Rutherford. Subsequently, he studied at Göttingen University in Germany. Whyte’s inter...
Go to Profile#9542
Arthur Peabody
1858 - 1942 (84 years)
Arthur Peabody was the campus architect for the University of Wisconsin from 1905 to 1915 and the state architect of Wisconsin from 1915 to 1938. Peabody was born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1882. He designed or directed a number of Madison landmarks, including the Wisconsin State Office Building and the University of Wisconsin Memorial Union. He died in Madison, Wisconsin on September 6, 1942.
Go to Profile#9543
Axel Hultgren
1886 - 1974 (88 years)
Axel Gustaf Emanuel Hultgren, was a Swedish metallurgist. Hultgren is perhaps most famous for his work on tungsten steels, and the transformation of Austenite. Hultgren was born near Kalmar, Sweden and studied metallurgy at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Following his MSc and some temporary positions in teaching, industry and a research visit in Berlin under Prof. H. Hanemann, Hultgren joined SKF bearing company in Gothenburg as a manager for the heat treatment and later as a metallurgist. In 1920 he published his monograph on tungsten steels. Later, in 1937 he became...
Go to Profile#9544
John Webb
1611 - 1672 (61 years)
John Webb was an English architect and scholar, who collaborated on some works with Inigo Jones. Life He was born in Little Britain, Smithfield, London, and died in Butleigh in Somerset. He had a close association with fellow architect and theatre designer Inigo Jones, for whom he worked as an assistant from 1628. In the 1640s and 1650s, Jones and Webb jointly designed Wilton House with its distinctive Single and Double Cube rooms.
Go to Profile#9545
Okada Shinichirō
1883 - 1932 (49 years)
Okada Shinichirō was a prominent Japanese architect who practiced in the early twentieth century. Okada taught at Waseda University and Tokyo School of Fine Arts. While he was well-known for tendency for European styles, he also produced work in the Imperial Crown style . One example is the Biwako Otsukan in Yanagasaki Lakeside Park, Shiga Prefecture.
Go to Profile#9546
George S. Wise
1906 - 1987 (81 years)
George Schneiweis Wise was an American sociologist who served as the first president of Tel Aviv University in Ramat Aviv, Israel from 1963 to 1971. Early life George Schneiweis was born in Pinsk, White Russia, Russian Empire in 1906. He emigrated to the United States in 1926. He graduated from Furman University in 1928 and got his advanced studies at Columbia University.
Go to Profile#9547
Robert White McFarland
1825 - 1910 (85 years)
Robert White McFarland was an American engineer who served as a university professor, president and Civil War officer. McFarland was born in Champaign County, Ohio, to Robert and Eunice McFarland. He received his A.B and M.A. degrees from Ohio Wesleyan University. In 1856 he received a teaching appointment at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he remained until the university closed in 1873. On leave from Miami, McFarland became an officer in the 86th Ohio Infantry during the American Civil War and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Go to Profile#9548
Cornelius Gurlitt
1850 - 1938 (88 years)
Cornelius Gustav Gurlitt was a German architect and art historian. Life Gurlitt was born in Nischwitz in Thallwitz, Saxony, the son of the landscape painter Louis Gurlitt and nephew of his namesake, the composer Cornelius Gurlitt. He left the gymnasium of Gotha before graduation and became a carpenter's apprentice. After studying in Stuttgart and Vienna he worked as an architect, then obtained a position at the Arts and Crafts Museum in Dresden.
Go to Profile#9549
August Volberg
1896 - 1982 (86 years)
August Volberg was an Estonian architect and educator. In 1927 he graduated from Tallinn Technical School. 1950-1960 he worked at the architectural bureau Eesti Projekt. From 1946 until 1954, he worked as a lecturer at the Tallinn Polytechnic Institute. From In 1964 until 1981, he was a lecturer at the Estonian SSR State Art Institute; from 1971, he was the institute's head of the department of architecture.
Go to Profile#9550
Kahlil Gibran
1883 - 1931 (48 years)
Gibran Khalil Gibran , usually referred to in English as Kahlil Gibran , was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist; he was also considered a philosopher, although he himself rejected the title. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and has since become one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages.
Go to Profile