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).
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List of the most influential people in Engineering,
#9501
Heinrich Kohl
1877 - 1914 (37 years)
Heinrich Kohl was a German architectural historian and archaeologist. He took classes in architecture at the technical universities in Munich, Dresden and Berlin. In 1902 he passed the first state examination for Regierungsbauführer, then later passed the second state examination for attaining "government architect" status . Within this time frame he attended lectures on archaeology at the University of Freiburg . In May 1914 he obtained his habilitation in architectural history from the Technical University of Hannover. In 1902-1904, under the guidance of Otto Puchstein and Bruno Schulz, he took part in the excavation at Baalbek.
Go to Profile#9502
Harold Tomlinson
1899 - 1951 (52 years)
Harold Tomlinson was a 20th-century British architect. Tomlinson was based at the University of Cambridge School of Architecture. There he supervised the Scottish architect Frank James Connell. The current ADC Theatre used by the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club in Park Street, central Cambridge, was designed by Harold Tomlinson and W.P. Dyson. It reopened in 1935 after a fire that destroyed the original building in 1933.
Go to Profile#9503
William J. A. Bailey
#9504
Koji Sugioka
#9505
John D. Letcher
John Davidson Letcher was an American academic and an acting president of Oregon State University. He served as the acting president for 4 months in 1892, upon the death of the second president Benjamin Lee Arnold.
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Eugene W. O'Brien
1897 - 1984 (87 years)
Eugene William O'Brien was an American electrical, mechanical and consulting engineer, editor, and publisher, who was 66th president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in the year 1947-48.
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Karl Maximilian von Bauernfeind
1818 - 1894 (76 years)
Karl Maximilian von Bauernfeind was a German geodesist and civil engineer. Education At the age of 18, Bauernfeind studied under Georg Ohm at the Polytechnic School in Nuremberg. Two years later, he studied mathematics and physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and passed the state examination in 1841.
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William Roy
1726 - 1790 (64 years)
Major-General William Roy was a Scottish military engineer, surveyor, and antiquarian. He was an innovator who applied new scientific discoveries and newly emerging technologies to the accurate geodetic mapping of Great Britain. His masterpiece is usually referred to as Roy's Map of Scotland.
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Dmitry Pavlovich Grigorovich
1883 - 1938 (55 years)
#9510
J. T. W. Jennings
1856 - Present (170 years)
John T. W. Jennings was the Milwaukee Railroad's architect from 1885 to 1893, and was part-time supervising architect for the University of Wisconsin from 1899 to 1906. He contributed to many prominent campus buildings.
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Dadasaheb Phalke
1870 - 1944 (74 years)
Dhundiraj Govind Phalke , popularly known as Dadasaheb Phalke , was an Indian producer-director-screenwriter, known as "the Father of Indian cinema". His debut film, Raja Harishchandra, was the first Indian movie released in 1913, and is now known as India's first full-length feature film. He made 95 feature-length films and 27 short films in his career, spanning 19 years, until 1937, including his most noted works: Mohini Bhasmasur , Satyavan Savitri , Lanka Dahan , Shri Krishna Janma and Kaliya Mardan .
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Robert Kerr
1823 - 1904 (81 years)
Robert Kerr was a British architect, architectural writer and co-founder of the Architectural Association. Biography Kerr was born in Aberdeen, where he trained as an architect. In 1844, he moved to London and in 1845 spent a year in New York City, from where he returned to London with a rebellious spirit.
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Józef Czajkowski
1872 - 1947 (75 years)
Józef Czajkowski; 21 January 1872, in Warsaw – 27 July 1947, in Warsaw Czajowski's arts in all forms sought to distill and improve upon that which was best about Polish tradition, and his aim was to celebrate the culture of the people his art served. He wrote, in 1928, "Poland has been politically resurrected and it shall be reborn internally as well, and as such it must find its visual mode of expression. [...] It was through art that Poland endured from within during the invasion, and it is through art in these times of freedom that it must win the place it deserves in the world of culture, bringing in its own creative values.
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Jay DeFeo
1929 - 1989 (60 years)
Jay DeFeo was a visual artist who became celebrated in the 1950s as part of the spirited community of Beat artists, musicians, and poets in San Francisco. Best known for her monumental work The Rose, DeFeo produced courageously experimental works throughout her career, exhibiting what art critic Kenneth Baker called “fearlessness.”
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John Henderson
1804 - 1862 (58 years)
John Henderson was a Scottish architect operational in the mid-19th century. He is chiefly remembered as a church architect, with his early work being in the Gothic revival and tractarian style, before developing his own distinct style.
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Jakoba Mulder
1900 - 1988 (88 years)
Jakoba Helena Mulder was a Dutch architect and urban planner remembered for her designs of two large city parks and the creation of livable housing and play spaces in Amsterdam. Biography When she was 18, Ko Mulder enrolled in the architecture program at the Delft University of Technology as "one of the first girls to apply to study architecture." She completed her degree as a construction engineer in 1926 and was the first female to graduate in the urban design program. According to Dijksterhuis, she met with early success. When she won a fire station design competition after graduation, he...
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Robert W. Gillham
#9518
Leman Tomsu
1913 - 1988 (75 years)
Leman Cevat Tomsu was a Turkish architect. Together with Münevver Belen, she was one of the first Turkish women to qualify as an architect when she graduated in 1934 from the Academy of Fine Arts, Istanbul. She was also the first women to teach architecture in Turkey. Later she became a professor at Istanbul Technical University.
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Joseph Carré
1870 - 1941 (71 years)
Joseph Paul Adrien Carré was a French architect practicing in Uruguay. Literature
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Andrew Robertson
1883 - 1977 (94 years)
Andrew Robertson FRS D.Sc MIMechE, MICE, Wh.Ex was a British mechanical engineer. Education He was the son of a marine engineer and was apprenticed at his father's works - J. Robertson & Sons in Fleetwood, Lancashire. He was a graduate of the University of Manchester, with a first-class honours degree, a Fairbairn engineering prize and a Whitworth Exhibitioner in 1904.
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Peter Celsing
1920 - 1974 (54 years)
Peter Elof Herman Torsten Folke von Celsing was a Swedish modernist architect. Biography Celsing was born in Stockholm, Sweden and was the son of bank executive Folke von Celsing and Margareta and brother of diplomat Lars von Celsing .
Go to Profile#9522
William Minot Guertler
1880 - 1959 (79 years)
William Minot Guertler was a German professor of metallurgy at the Technical University in Berlin. He contributed to the development of metallurgy as an engineering discipline in Germany and advanced metallography with a three volume treatise. He was a member of the NSDAP from 1931.
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Charles Vickery Drysdale
1874 - 1961 (87 years)
Charles Vickery Drysdale FRSE CB OBE was an English electrical engineer, eugenicist, and social reformer. He is remembered for opening the second birth control clinic in Britain in 1921 and co-founding the Family Planning Association in 1930.
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Robert Rodes McGoodwin
1886 - 1967 (81 years)
Robert Rhodes McGoodwin was an American architect and educator, best known for his suburban houses in the Chestnut Hill and Mount Airy sections of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He taught at University of Pennsylvania from 1910 to 1924, and served as a trustee of its School of Fine Arts from 1925 to 1959. McGoodwin was active in the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, serving as its president in 1943.
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Bernhard Fernow
1851 - 1923 (72 years)
Bernhard Eduard Fernow was the third chief of the USDA's Division of Forestry of the United States from 1886 to 1898, preceding Gifford Pinchot in that position, and laying much of the groundwork for the establishment of the United States Forest Service in 1905. Fernow's philosophy toward forest management may be traced to Heinrich Cotta's preface to Anweisung zum Waldbau or Linnaeus' ideas on the "economy of nature." Fernow has been called the "father of professional forestry in the United States."
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Samuel Walker Shattuck
1841 - 1913 (72 years)
Samuel Walker Shattuck was an American academic from Massachusetts. He graduated from Norwich University in Vermont and taught at the school until 1867, with a break to serve in the Civil War. He then accepted a position at Illinois Industrial University , where he taught for the next forty-four years .
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Edgar Johan Kuusik
1888 - 1974 (86 years)
Edgar Johan Kuusik was an Estonian architect and furniture and interior designer. Biography Kuusik was born in Võrumaa, in Pikavärve mansion's masters family. 1899-1906 he studied in Tartu Reaalkool and 1906–1914 in Riga Polytechnic Institute, which he graduated in 1914 as an architect. After graduation he travelled around Finland where he had hoped to return in autumn of 1914 to work in Eliel Saarinen's architectural bureau. At the time World War had begun and he had to change his plans. He couldn't find job in Estonia so he decided to go to St. Petersburg where worked for an architect named B.
Go to Profile#9528
Bruce Irons
1924 - 1983 (59 years)
Bruce Moncur Irons was an engineer and mathematician, known for his fundamental contribution to the finite element method, including the patch test, the frontal solver and, along with Ian C. Taig, the isoparametric element concept.
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Erik Glemme
1905 - 1959 (54 years)
Erik Glemme was a Swedish designer and landscape architect. Biography Glemme was born in Jönköping, Sweden. He trained at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm from 1927 to 1929. He apprenticed with architect Osvald Almqvist . He was employed at the Royal Institute of Technology as an assistant 1943-1947 and as a teacher 1947–1952. From 1936 to 1956 he was chief architect of the design office of the city of Stockholm Parks Department.
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Domenico Ferrari
#9531
John Young
1797 - 1877 (80 years)
John Young was an English architect and surveyor whose career spanned the grace of the Regency period and the pragmatism of the Industrial Revolution. While based primarily in the City of London, his practice, John Young & Son, Architects, was both eclectic and wide-ranging in South East England. He is particularly noted for his creative use of polychromatic brickwork whether in industrial, civic or residential contexts.
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Michele Besso
1873 - 1955 (82 years)
Michele Angelo Besso was a Swiss-Italian engineer best known for working closely with Albert Einstein. Biography Besso was born in Riesbach from a family of Italian Jewish descent. He was a close friend of Albert Einstein during his years at the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, and then at the patent office in Bern, where he helped Einstein to get a job. Besso is credited with introducing Einstein to the works of Ernst Mach, the sceptical critic of physics who influenced Einstein's approach to the discipline. Einstein introduced Besso to his future wife, Anna Winteler, the sister of...
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Robert Wilson
1834 - 1901 (67 years)
Robert Wilson was architect for the Edinburgh Board of Education and responsible for a high percentage of the city's schools. He is also noteworthy for involvement in several institutions aimed at improving the life of the poor and destitute in the city.
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Helen Binkerd Young
1877 - 1959 (82 years)
Helen Binkerd Young was an early New York architect who graduated from Cornell University in 1900 and taught without being paid in the Cornell Home Economics Department from 1910 to 1921. Many of her lectures focused on architectural themes and organization. Her publications are still used in academic studies on housing design.
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George Smith
1782 - 1869 (87 years)
George Smith was an English architect and surveyor of the early 19th century, with strong connections with central and south-east London. Life and work Smith was born on 28 September 1783 at Aldenham in Hertfordshire. He was articled to Robert Furze Brettingham, and later worked for James Wyatt, Daniel Asher Alexander, and then Charles Beazley, before eventually setting up his own practice in the City of London.
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James R. Barr
1884 - 1910 (26 years)
James Robertson Barr A.M.I.E.E. was a Scottish engineer and lecturer in Electrical Engineering at Heriot-Watt College, Edinburgh. He was an apprentice to Bruce Peebles & Co. Ltd. and spent a year at the Leith Power Station. He then was designer to the Electric Construction Company and took some plant to West Africa for erection.
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Charles Wilson
1810 - 1863 (53 years)
Charles Wilson was a Scottish architect from Glasgow. Biography Charles Wilson was the younger son of a Glasgow-based master mason and builder. After working for his father, he was articled to the architect David Hamilton in 1827. In Hamilton's office, Wilson worked on jobs including Hamilton Palace, the Glasgow Royal Exchange, Castle Toward and Lennox Castle.
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William Tuthill
1855 - 1929 (74 years)
William Burnet Tuthill was an American architect celebrated for designing New York City's Carnegie Hall. Early life, education and family William Burnet Tuthill was born on February 11, 1855, in Hoboken, New Jersey, the son of George Flavius Tuthill and Jane Louise Price. Tuthill graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1875. He trained in the office of Richard Morris Hunt and in 1878 set up practice for himself in the city. He was later granted an M.A. degree.
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Diedrich Uhlhorn
1764 - 1837 (73 years)
Diedrich Uhlhorn was a German engineer, mechanic and inventor. Life Uhlhorn was an engineer, mechanic and inventor, who invented in 1817 the first mechanical tachometer. Between 1817 and 1830 he was inventor of the Presse Monétaire which bears his name. He was married.
Go to Profile#9540
Ove Arup
1895 - 1988 (93 years)
Sir Ove Nyquist Arup, CBE, MICE, MIStructE, FCIOB was an English engineer who founded Arup Group Limited, a multinational corporation that offers engineering, design, planning, project management, and consulting services for building systems. Ove Arup is considered to be among the foremost architectural structural engineers of his time.
Go to Profile#9541
Harold Desbrowe-Annear
1865 - 1933 (68 years)
Harold Desbrowe-Annear was an influential Australian architect who was at the forefront of the development of the Arts and Crafts movement in the country. During the 1890s he was an instructor in architecture at the Working Men's College where he founded the T-Square in 1900. The club acted as a meeting point for Melbourne's architects, artists and craft workers and helped to develop a strong Arts and Crafts culture in the city. Desbrowe-Annear was also a supporter of the Victorian Arts and Crafts Society, founded in 1908.
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Louis Ayres
1874 - 1947 (73 years)
William Louis Ayres , better known by his professional name Louis Ayres, was an American architect who was one of the most prominent designers of monuments, memorials, and buildings in the nation in the early part of the 20th century. His style is characterized as Medievalist, often emphasizing elements of Romanesque Revival and Italian Renaissance, and Byzantine Revival architecture. He is best known for designing the United States Memorial Chapel at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial and the Herbert C. Hoover U.S. Department of Commerce Building.
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Charles Reade
1880 - 1933 (53 years)
Charles Compton Reade was a town planner who supported the garden city movement of the early twentieth century. Born in Invercargill, New Zealand in 1880, Reade became the major figure in disseminating garden city ideas in Australia. Reade saw the evils of inner city slums while working as a journalist in England and began writing of the need for improved town planning, becoming active in the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association of Great Britain, of which he was acting secretary and editor for its magazine in 1913.
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Francis Drummond Greville Stanley
1839 - 1897 (58 years)
Francis Drummond Greville Stanley was an architect in Queensland, Australia. He was the Queensland Colonial Architect. Many of his designs are now heritage-listed buildings. Early life Stanley was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 1 January 1839, the son of actor and painter Montague Talbot Stanley and his wife Mary Susan .
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Barbara Morgan
1900 - 1992 (92 years)
Barbara Morgan was an American photographer best known for her depictions of modern dancers. She was a co-founder of the photography magazine Aperture. Morgan is known in the visual art and dance worlds for her penetrating studies of American modern dancers Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, José Limón, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman and others. Morgan's drawings, prints, watercolors and paintings were exhibited widely in California in the 1920s, and in New York and Philadelphia in the 1930s.
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Alexander Russell
1861 - 1943 (82 years)
Alexander Russell, FRS was a Scottish electrical engineer and educator. He was born in Ayr, Scotland and educated at Glasgow University and Caius College, Cambridge. He was later awarded a doctorate.
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Robert William Chapman
1866 - 1942 (76 years)
Sir Robert William Chapman MIEAust was an Australian mathematician and engineer. History Chapman was born in Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire, England, eldest son of Charles Chapman , a currier from Melbourne, Australia, and his wife Matilda, née Harrison . His parents returned to Melbourne in 1876, where he was educated at Wesley College and the University of Melbourne, graduating MA and BCE with first class honours in Physics and Mathematics.
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Christian Colliex
#9549
James H. Lubowitz
#9550
Ambrose Poynter
1796 - 1886 (90 years)
Ambrose Poynter was a British architect. He was one of the founding members of the Institute of British Architects in 1834. Early life Born in London on 16 May 1796, he was second son of Ambrose Lyon Poynter by Thomasine Anne Peck; the family was of Huguenot origin. Poynter was employed by John Nash from 1814 to 1818. In 1819–21, he travelled to Italy, Sicily, and the Ionian islands. He was present at John Keats's funeral in Rome on 26 February 1821.
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