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
Frederick Francis Charles Curtis
1903 - 1975 (72 years)
Frederick Francis Charles Curtis FRIBA was the first chief architect for British Railways from 1948. Career Curtis was born on 9th August, 1903, at Frankfurt-on-Main. His father, Francis Curtis, was a lecturer in English at the Technische Universität Darmstadt, and from 1922 to 1927, Frederick Francis Curtis studied there. He then worked as an assistant and lecturer at the same institution until 1933. With the ascent of the National Socialist Party in 1933, he left Germany and moved to Britain where he worked with Charles Holden on the Southern Railway until 1936.
Go to Profile#9502
Raouf Attia Ibrahim
#9503
Heinz Hajek-Halke
1898 - 1983 (85 years)
Heinz Hajek-Halke was a German experimental photographer and educator. He was an early member of the Fotoform group. Early life Hajek-Halke was born in Berlin, Germany, on 1 December 1898, the son of Paul Halke. He spent twelve years in Argentina while growing up and then moved back to Germany, studying graphics in Berlin in 1915. He was a soldier during World War I before returning to his artistic studies. He specialised in a number of areas, including engraving, illustrations, film posters and photo editing before becoming a photographer in 1924.
Go to Profile#9504
Charles Hershfield
1910 - 1990 (80 years)
Charles Hershfield, B.Sc., M.A.Sc, F.E.I.C, P.Eng. was widely recognized by the engineering community and known for his innovative structural engineering solutions, as a senior assistant engineer and lieutenant with the Department of National Defense, a professor at the University of Toronto, as co-founder of the North American firm Morrison Hershfield, and as a prolific author. He was a lifelong advocate of education and the engineering profession.
Go to Profile#9505
David Roberts
1859 - 1928 (69 years)
David Roberts was the Chief Engineer and managing director of Richard Hornsby & Sons in the early 1900s. His invention, the caterpillar track, was demonstrated to the army in 1907. Chester He grew up in Great Boughton in the east of Chester, the son of David Roberts and his wife Anne, being trained as a hydraulic engineer, starting work for Hydraulic Engineering Company Ltd in 1873, staying with them for fifteen years, living in England and overseas. He worked for Sir WG Armstrong Mitchell & Company Ltd in Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne from 1888, staying for eight years. For two and a half yea...
Go to Profile#9506
Carl Dreher
1896 - 1976 (80 years)
Carl Dreher was an American electrical engineer, two-time Academy Award-nominated sound engineer, and an author who primarily dealt with technical and scientific topics. Directly involved with two technological revolutions—the introduction of radio broadcasting and the development of sound movies—he observed that "No form of communication was safe from the innovative drive of electronics."
Go to Profile#9507
Chittoor V. Ramamoorthy
#9508
Robert Pflug
1832 - 1885 (53 years)
Robert Pflug was a Baltic German architect. Robert August Pflug was born in Saint Petersburg as the son of a merchant. He studied at the Technological Institute in Saint Petersburg between 1846 and 1850 and thereafter at the Imperial Academy of Arts. In 1860 he went on a study trip to Germany and Italy. From 1862 he worked as an architect in Riga, the present-day capital of Latvia, and was a teacher at the Riga Polytechnic Institute from 1869 to 1875.
Go to Profile#9509
Robert Smith
1722 - 1777 (55 years)
Robert Smith was a Scottish-born American architect who was based in Philadelphia and was the architect for some of the city's most prominent early building structures, including Carpenters' Hall, St. Peter's Episcopal Church, and the steeple on Christ Church. These structures constituted the greater part of Philadelphia's early skyline.
Go to Profile#9510
John Johnson
1732 - 1814 (82 years)
John Johnson was an English architect and surveyor to the county of Essex. He is best known for designing the Shire Hall, Chelmsford. Life Johnson was born in Leicester. He moved to London before his thirtieth birthday and in the late 1760s was engaged by William Berners in speculative building of Berners' estate in Marylebone. For most of the rest of his life he lived in one of the houses that he had built in Berners Street. In 1782 he succeeded William Hillyer as Surveyor to the County of Essex, a position that he held for thirty years, retiring at the age of 80. In 1785 he became a par...
Go to Profile#9511
Ronald Arnold
1908 - 1963 (55 years)
Ronald Nathan Arnold PhD MS DSc DEng MIMechE MICivilE was a distinguished British engineer. Life Born in Glasgow on 23 December 1908, he was schooled at Albert Road Academy and Shawlands Academy in Glasgow before completing, in 1932, a BSc with first-class honours in mechanical engineering at the Royal Technical College , Glasgow. He graduated with a PhD from Sheffield University in 1934, and an MS from Illinois in 1936, where he studied impact stresses in beams. His early training was conducted with Mirrlees Watson Ltd, in Glasgow.
Go to Profile#9512
Juana Pereyra
1897 - 1976 (79 years)
Juana Pereyra was a Uruguayan civil engineer, and one of the first women to graduate from the Faculty of Engineering of the Universidad de la República. Early life and education Juana Pereyra was born in Montevideo, Uruguay on 8 November 1897. At school she excelled at mathematics. After the initial opposition of her family and having to overcome the difficulties that women had to face in the professional fields of the time, she enrolled in the Faculty of Engineering of the Universidad de la República, graduating with high marks with the title of Ingeniera de Puentes y Caminos in November 19...
Go to Profile#9513
Arthur Rothstein
1915 - 1985 (70 years)
Arthur Rothstein was an American photographer. Rothstein is recognized as one of America's premier photojournalists. During a career that spanned five decades, he provoked, entertained and informed the American people.
Go to Profile#9514
William Smith
1817 - 1891 (74 years)
William Smith was a Scottish architect. He was a son of John Smith, also an architect, and his mother was Margaret Grant. A partner in the Aberdonian firms J & W Smith , W & J Smith and W & J Smith and Kelly , and employed as Aberdeen's superintendent of works , he designed a large number of buildings in north east Scotland.
Go to Profile#9515
Frederic Goudy
1865 - 1947 (82 years)
Frederic William Goudy was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. He was one of the most prolific of American type designers and his self-named type continues to be one of the most popular in America.
Go to Profile#9516
William Gedney
1932 - 1989 (57 years)
William Gale Gedney was an American documentary and street photographer. It wasn't until after his death that his work gained momentum and is now widely recognized. He is best known for his series on rural Kentucky, and series on India, San Francisco and New York shot in the 1960s and 1970s.
Go to Profile#9517
Henry Barraclough
1874 - 1958 (84 years)
Sir Samuel Henry Egerton Barraclough was an Australian mechanical engineer. He was appointed CBE in 1919 having served in the Great War, and a year later was appointed to the civil division as a KBE. He was Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sydney, 1915–1942 and President of the Australian Institution of Engineers .
Go to Profile#9518
Qian Ji
1917 - 1983 (66 years)
Qian Ji was a Chinese physicist and aerospace engineer who was instrumental in the development of China's first satellite, the Dong Fang Hong I, and its first successful 3-in-1 satellite launch, the Shijian 2. In 1999, he was posthumously awarded the Two Bombs, One Satellite Meritorious Medal.
Go to Profile#9519
James C. Sturm
#9520
Johannes A. G. Rhodin
#9521
George Eugene Bockrath
1911 - 1966 (55 years)
George Eugene Bockrath was an aeronautical engineer and early researcher in fracture mechanics. He earned a BS in aeronautical engineering from the University of Michigan and began his research career as an assistant professor at The Catholic University of America in 1936. He later moved to Douglas Aircraft Company, carrying on work in fracture and fatigue of metals. It was for work done during this period with James Glassco and Sitaram Valluri that he won the Wright Brothers Medal in 1963.
Go to Profile#9522
Henry Edward Kendall
1776 - 1875 (99 years)
Henry Edward Kendall was an English architect. Career Kendall was a student of Thomas Leverton and possibly of John Nash. His wide-ranging styles included Greek, Italian and Tudor revival. His son, Henry Edward Kendall Jr. was also an architect and, for a while, the two ran a practice together, which, in 1834, was located at 17, Suffolk Street, London. The Esplanade and Tunnel in Kemp Town, Brighton, dating between 1828 and 1830, was one of their notable works.
Go to Profile#9523
Frederick Law Olmsted
1822 - 1903 (81 years)
Frederick Law Olmsted was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the United States. Olmsted was famous for co-designing many well-known urban parks with his partner Calvert Vaux. Olmsted and Vaux's first project was New York's Central Park, which led to many other urban park designs, including Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Cadwalader Park in Trenton, New Jersey. He headed the preeminent landscape architecture and planning consultancy of late 19th century United States, which was carried on and expanded by his sons, Frederick Jr.
Go to Profile#9524
Peter W. Jones
#9525
Minor White
1908 - 1976 (68 years)
Minor Martin White was an American photographer, theoretician, critic, and educator. He had an intense interest in how people viewed and thought about photographs and a personal vision guided by several spiritual and intellectual philosophies.
Go to Profile#9526
Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard
1802 - 1872 (70 years)
Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard was a French inventor, photographer and photo publisher. Being a cloth merchant by trade, in the 1840s he developed interest in photography and focused on technical and economical issues of mass production of photo prints.
Go to Profile#9527
Karl Weißbach
1841 - 1905 (64 years)
Johann Karl Robert Weißbach was a German architect and Professor. Life and work After graduating from secondary school, he completed an apprenticeship in the building trade, while attending the local Baugewerkschule . Following that, he spent some time working in the studios of Bernhard Krüger , the Court Architect. He completed his studies at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts with Georg Hermann Nicolai. In 1863, he was awarded an academic travel grant, which he used to visit Italy and study Renaissance architecture. He was able to extend his stay there by participating in the preparation of T...
Go to Profile#9528
Gibb Gilchrist
1887 - 1972 (85 years)
Gibb Gilchrist was an American engineer, highway development expert and academic administrator. Gilchrist served as a Texas state highway engineer, president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas and the first chancellor of the Texas A&M University System. Gilchrist received numerous awards and honorary degrees. He is the namesake for several transportation-related entities.
Go to Profile#9529
Gertrude Sawyer
1895 - 1996 (101 years)
Gertrude Sawyer was one of the earliest American women architects to practice in Maryland and the Washington, D.C., area. Early life and education Sawyer was born April 2, 1895, in Tuscola, Illinois. She knew she wanted to be an architect from an early age. Sawyer graduated high school in Norborne, Missouri in 1913 and graduated from Tudor Hall School in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1914. She received a Bachelor of Science in landscape architecture from the University of Illinois in 1918 and went on to become one of the first students at the Cambridge School of Domestic and Landscape Architecture for Women, where she met landscape architect Rose Greely.
Go to Profile#9530
Yasuo Kuniyoshi
1893 - 1953 (60 years)
Yasuo Kuniyoshi was an eminent 20th-century Japanese-American painter, photographer and printmaker. Early life Kuniyoshi was born on September 1, 1889, in Okayama, Japan. He immigrated to the United States in 1906 at 17, choosing not to attend military school in Japan. Kuniyoshi originally intended to study English and return to Japan to work as a translator.
Go to Profile#9531
Pavel Florensky
1882 - 1937 (55 years)
Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky was a Russian Orthodox theologian, priest, philosopher, mathematician, physicist, electrical engineer, inventor, polymath, neomartyr and folk saint. During the later twentieth century, statements had appeared noting a recognition by the Russian Orthodox Church of him as a saint, though it was later firmly noted that no such decision had been made.
Go to Profile#9532
L. R. G. Treloar
1906 - 1985 (79 years)
Professor Leslie Ronald George Treloar, OBE was a leading figure in the science of rubber and elasticity, and writer of a number of influential texts. Leslie Treloar graduated in Physics from University College, Reading, in 1927 and subsequently joined GEC. He gained his PhD from the University of London in 1938. After working for GEC he moved to the British Rubber Producers Research Association. He worked briefly at the Telecommunications Research Establishment during World War II.
Go to Profile#9533
Christian Møller
1904 - 1980 (76 years)
Christian Møller was a Danish chemist and physicist who made fundamental contributions to the theory of relativity, theory of gravitation and quantum chemistry. He is known for Møller–Plesset perturbation theory and Møller scattering.
Go to Profile#9534
Warren P. Mason
1900 - 1986 (86 years)
Warren Perry Mason was an American electrical engineer and physicist at Bell Labs. A graduate of Columbia University, he had a prolific output, publishing four books and nearly a hundred papers. He was issued over two hundred patents, more than anyone else at Bell Labs. His work included acoustics, filters, crystals and ceramics, materials science, polymer chemistry, ultrasonics, bonding to semiconductors, internal friction, and viscoelasticity.
Go to Profile#9535
Ernst Giese
1832 - 1903 (71 years)
Ernst Friedrich Giese was a German architect and university professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and at the Technical University of Dresden. Early life Giese grew up in Bautzen. There he attended the high school. He then studied at the Dresden Polytechnic and at the Dresden Art Academy with Hermann Nicolai. From 1855 to 1858, Giese was on a grant in Italy for study purposes.
Go to Profile#9536
Carl August Benjamin Siegel
1757 - 1832 (75 years)
Carl August Benjamin Siegel was a German architecture professor and chief of works, active in Leipzig and Dresden. Life and Work Siegel received his education in Dresden as a student of Friedrich August Krubsacius and Gottlob August Hölzer. This was followed in Leipzig from 1785 by employment as a teacher of architectural drawing at the Academy of Art . He then became a full professor and was head of the Department of Architectural Art until 1823. He also served as a university architect in Leipzig. After 1823, he became a professor and head of the building school at the Dresden Academy of Art.
Go to Profile#9537
Bruno Schulz
1865 - 1932 (67 years)
Bruno Schulz was a German architectural historian. From 1893 onward, he was employed as a Regierungsbaumeister in Berlin. In 1897-98 he accompanied Friedrich Sarre on a research trip to Persia, and after his return to Europe, lived and worked in Venice during the years 1899–1900. He then served as technical director of the German archaeological excavation at Baalbek . Later on, he taught classes on the morphology of classical and Renaissance architecture at the Technical University of Hannover, and in 1912 was appointed professor of architecture at the Technical University of Berlin.
Go to Profile#9538
Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio
1330 - 1388 (58 years)
Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio , also known as Giovanni de' Dondi, was an Italian physician, astronomer and mechanical engineer in Padua, now in Italy. He is remembered today as a pioneer in the art of clock design and construction. The Astrarium, which he designed and built over a period of 16 years, was a highly complex astronomical clock and planetarium, constructed only 60 or so years after the very first all-mechanical clocks had been built in Europe, and demonstrated an ambitious attempt to describe and model the planetary system with mathematical precision and technological sophistication...
Go to Profile#9539
John Taylor
1833 - 1912 (79 years)
Sir John Taylor, KCB, FRIBA was a British architect working for the Office of Works. Early life The son of a joiner, Taylor first trained in the service of the Duke of Northumberland and under Anthony Salvin, who, from 1852, remodelled the duke's Alnwick Castle.
Go to Profile#9540
William Campbell
1876 - 1936 (60 years)
William Campbell, D.Sc., Ph.D., M.A. was an English metallurgist, born at Newcastle on Tyne, England. He graduated from the Durham College of Science of Durham University in 1898, and from Columbia University . He lectured on geology and metallurgy at Durham, and on geology at Columbia University where he became full professor of metallurgy in 1917.
Go to Profile#9541
George Webster
1797 - 1864 (67 years)
George Webster was an English architect who practised in Kendal, which was at the time in Westmorland, and later in Cumbria. All of his works were executed near his practice, and were located in Cumbria, in north Lancashire, and in the adjacent parts of Yorkshire. Most of his work was carried out on domestic buildings, but he also designed churches, and public and commercial buildings.
Go to Profile#9542
Reginald Otto Kapp
1885 - 1966 (81 years)
Reginald Otto Kapp was a professor of electrical engineering at UCL. He was appointed to the Pender chair in 1935. External links www.reginaldkapp.orgPortrait in the National Portrait Gallery
Go to Profile#9543
Branislav Kojić
1899 - 1987 (88 years)
Branislav Đ. Kojić was a Serbian architect, ruralist and painter. Biography He was born on 5 June 1899 to a family of teachers in Smederevo, Serbia. Kojić's early schooling was completed in Belgrade. In 1915, he found himself in France as a war refugee. He entered the French lycée in Poitiers, and later moved to the southern city of Nice, completing his studies there in 1917. He then moved north and enrolled in the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris, where he was awarded a degree in architecture in 1921. He then obtained a position in the Ministry of Infrastructure in Belgrade and received his architectural license in 1926.
Go to Profile#9544
Ludwig Lange
1808 - 1868 (60 years)
Ludwig Lange was a German architect and landscape designer. Life He was the son of a court official and began his training as an architect in 1823 under church designer Georg August Lerch. From 1826 to 1830, he attended the University of Gießen where he studied with Georg Moller. His studies continued in Munich, where he was a pupil of the landscape painter Carl Rottmann, with whom he undertook a study trip to Greece in 1834.
Go to Profile#9545
James S. Meditch
#9546
Boris Rosing
1869 - 1933 (64 years)
Boris Lvovich Rosing was a Russian scientist and inventor of television. Biography Boris Rosing was born in Saint Petersburg into the family of a government official. His father, Lev Nikolaevich Rozing, served on the commission for military service under Czar Alexander II. Rozing was a descendant of the noble Rozing family, founded by Dutch immigrant Peter Rozing. Lev developed an interest mathematics and technology, including recent inventions, which he communicated to his son. From 1879 to 1887, Boris studied at St. Petersburg's Vvdensky gymnasium, from which he graduated with a gold medal.
Go to Profile#9547
Melanie M. Hartmann
#9548
Otto Seitz
1846 - 1912 (66 years)
Otto Seitz, was a 19th-century German painter; born 3 September 1846 in Munich. As a professor with the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, he was the mentor of many major artists. Works His primary subjects were genre scenes, floral still life and landscapes. in works with titles such as:"Boozers and Ruffians in a Rural Tavern""Old Farmer at the Table with a Beer Bottle""Street Musicians in the Backyard,""Young Waitress"Woodland and Rocks"The Wedding Procession of Neptune and Amphitrite"The Love Letter""Portrait of a Young Italian Woman"Some of his most famous works are small, sometimes even mini...
Go to Profile#9549
John Hubley
1914 - 1977 (63 years)
John Kirkham Hubley was an American animated film director, art director, producer, and writer known for his work with the United Productions of America and his own independent studio, Storyboard, Inc. . A pioneer and innovator in the American animation industry, Hubley pushed for more visually and emotionally complex films than those being produced by contemporaries like the Walt Disney Company and Warner Brothers Animation. He and his second wife, Faith Hubley , who he worked alongside from 1953 onward, were nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning three.
Go to Profile#9550
John Shaw Jr.
1803 - 1870 (67 years)
John Shaw Jr. was an English architect of the 19th century who was complimented as a designer in the "Manner of Wren". He designed buildings in the classical Jacobean fashion and designed some of London's first semi-detached homes in the area close to Chalk Farm. Shaw retired in the early 1860s and moved to Kensington where he died in 1870. He is buried with the Shaw and Hardwick families at Kensal Green Cemetery.
Go to Profile