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,
#9651
George Washington
1871 - 1946 (75 years)
George Constant Louis Washington was a Belgian inventor and businessman. He is best remembered for his improvement of an early instant coffee process and for the company he founded to mass-produce it, the G. Washington Coffee Company.
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H. B. Warner
1875 - 1958 (83 years)
Henry Byron Warner was an English film and theatre actor. He was popular during the silent era and played Jesus Christ in The King of Kings. In later years, he successfully moved into supporting roles and appeared in numerous films directed by Frank Capra. Warner's most recognizable role to modern audiences is Mr. Gower in It's a Wonderful Life, directed by Capra. He appeared in the original 1937 version of Lost Horizon as Chang, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
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Haig P. Manoogian
1916 - 1980 (64 years)
Haig Manoogian was an Armenian-American professor of film at New York University who served as the main influence for many filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, who was a student of his at New York University. Martin Scorsese called Manoogian teachings “The most precious gift I have ever received.”
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Luchino Visconti
1287 - 1349 (62 years)
Luchino Visconti was lord of Milan from 1339 to 1349. He was also a condottiero, and lord of Pavia. Biography Ruler of Pavia from 1315, five years later he was podestà of Vigevano, where he erected the castle that is still visible. In 1323, along with all his family, he was excommunicated with the charge of heresy. The charges of heresy and excommunication were later withdrawn and he became a Papal Vicar in 1341.
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Peter Faber
1810 - 1877 (67 years)
Peter Christian Frederik Faber was a Danish telegraphy pioneer and song writer. In Denmark, he is remembered first and foremost for his songwriting. Faber was also an amateur photographer and is credited with the oldest photograph on record in Denmark.
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Édouard Collignon
1831 - 1913 (82 years)
Édouard Charles Romain Collignon was a French engineer and scientist, known for the Collignon projection and for his role in building railways in Russia. Career After graduating from the l'École polytechnique in 1849, he became an ingénieur des ponts et chaussées. He became inspecteur des Ponts et chaussées in 1878.
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Mahendranath Gupta
1854 - 1932 (78 years)
Mahendranath Gupta , , was a disciple of Ramakrishna and a great mystic himself. He was the author of Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita , a Bengali classic; in English, it is known as The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. He was also an early teacher to Paramahansa Yogananda, a famous 20th-century yogi, guru and philosopher. In his autobiography, Yogananda noted that Gupta ran a small boys' high school in Kolkata, and he recounted their visits, as they often traveled to the Dakshineshwar Kali Temple together. Having a devotional nature, Gupta worshipped the Divine Mother in the form of Kali, and often reflected the wisdom of his guru Ramakrishna in his daily life and mannerisms.
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Emil Wohlwill
1835 - 1912 (77 years)
Wolf Emil Wohlwill was a German-Jewish engineer of electrochemistry. He invented the Wohlwill process in 1874. Literary works Galilei und sein Kampf für die copernikanische Lehre, the 1st volume, 1909the 2nd volume, 1926
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Charles Combes
1801 - 1872 (71 years)
Charles Pierre Mathieu Combes was a French engineer. He was Inspector-General of Mines and the Director of the School of Mines in Paris. His name is on the Eiffel Tower. Biography Early life Charles-Pierre-Mathieu Combes was born on 26 December 1801 in Cahors. His father was a senior policeman named Pierre Combes Mathieu. He joined the Ecole Polytechnique before the usual starting age of seventeen on 1 September 1817 and completed his studies in 1820 when he was admitted to the School of Mines. Combes completed the three-year course in just two years. He graduated on 1 July 1822.
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Émile Jouguet
1871 - 1943 (72 years)
Jacques Charles Émile Jouguet was a French engineer and scientist, whose name is attached to the Chapman–Jouguet condition. He was the son of Félix Jouguet , mining engineer and mayor of Bessèges.
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Mária Telkes
1900 - 1995 (95 years)
Mária Telkes was a Hungarian-American biophysicist and inventor who worked on solar energy technologies. She moved to the United States in 1925 to work as a biophysicist. She became an American citizen in 1937 and started work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create practical uses of solar energy in 1939.
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Alexander Tselikov
1904 - 1984 (80 years)
Alexander Ivanovich Tselikov was a Soviet metallurgist, industrial machines designer, and Hero of Socialist Labor . He was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1953 and full member in 1964.
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Edward Kimbark
1902 - 1982 (80 years)
Edward Wilson Kimbark was a noted power engineer and professor of Electrical Engineering at Northwestern University. Kimbark was born in Chicago, Illinois to Edward Hall and Maude Kimbark. In 1920 Kimbark enrolled at Northwestern University where he earned his B.S. in 1924 and his E.E. in 1925. After graduation, he worked for two years as a substation operator and testing lab assistant for the Public Service Company of Northern Illinois at Evanston, and for two years as an instructor at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Antoine Marc Gaudin
1900 - 1974 (74 years)
Antoine Marc Gaudin was a metallurgist who laid the foundation for understanding the scientific principles of the froth flotation process in the minerals industry. He was also a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and during World War II developed there the ore-processing techniques needed to extract uranium from its low grade ores for the Manhattan Project. He was a founding member of the National Academy of Engineering.
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Bill Wittrick
1922 - 1986 (64 years)
Professor William Henry Wittrick FAA FRS was a British engineer and academic who spent 20 years in Australia, including 10 years as Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Sydney . He was Professor of Structural Engineering at the University of Birmingham , and Beale Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Birmingham .
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Rufus Oldenburger
1908 - 1969 (61 years)
Rufus Oldenburger was an American mathematician and mechanical engineer. Education and career Oldenburger received an A.B. degree from the University of Chicago in 1928, a master's degree in mathematics in 1930, and a Ph.D. in 1934. After teaching mathematics at the University of Michigan, at the Case Institute of Technology, at Illinois Institute of Technology, and at DePaul University, he changed the focus of his research from pure mathematics to mechanical engineering and automatic control. He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1936 at Oslo. For the a...
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Joseph Paul Robinson
1900 - Present (126 years)
J. Paul Robinson is an Australian/American educator, biologist, biomedical engineer, and expert in the applications of flow cytometry. He is a Distinguished Professor of Cytometry in the Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Basic Medical Sciences, a professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, a professor of Computer and Information Management at Purdue University, an adjunct professor of Microbiology & Immunology at West Lafayette Center for Medical Education, Indiana University School of Medicine, and the Director of Purdue U...
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Frederick Terman
1900 - 1982 (82 years)
Frederick Emmons Terman was an American professor and academic administrator. He was the dean of the school of engineering from 1944 to 1958 and provost from 1955 to 1965 at Stanford University. He is widely credited as being the father of Silicon Valley.
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William B. Kouwenhoven
1886 - 1975 (89 years)
William Bennet Kouwenhoven , also known as the "Father of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation," is famous for his contributions to the development of the closed-chest cardiac massage and his invention of the cardiac defibrillator. After obtaining his doctorate degree in engineering from the Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule in Germany, Kouwenhoven began his career as the dean at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Kouwenhoven focused his research mainly on improving and saving lives of patients through the application of electricity. With the help and cooperation of the Johns Hopkins School of ...
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Maurice Anthony Biot
1905 - 1985 (80 years)
Maurice Anthony Biot was a Belgian-American applied physicist. He made contributions in thermodynamics, aeronautics, geophysics, earthquake engineering, and electromagnetism. Particularly, he was accredited as the founder of the theory of poroelasticity.
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Theodore von Kármán
1881 - 1963 (82 years)
Theodore von Kármán , was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist who worked in aeronautics and astronautics. He was responsible for crucial advances in aerodynamics characterizing supersonic and hypersonic airflow. The human-defined threshold of outer space is named the "Kármán line" in recognition of his work. Kármán is regarded as an outstanding aerodynamic theoretician of the 20th century.
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John D. Eshelby
1916 - 1981 (65 years)
John Douglas Eshelby FRS was a scientist in micromechanics. He made significant contributions to the fields of defect mechanics and micromechanics of inhomogeneous solids for fifty years, including important aspects of the controlling mechanisms of plastic deformation and fracture.
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Harry Bolton Seed
1922 - 1989 (67 years)
Harry Bolton Seed was an educator, scholar, former professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was regarded as the founding father of geotechnical earthquake engineering. Biography Early life Harry Bolton Seed was born in Bolton, England, on August 19, 1922, into a family of a cotton mill manager. His father was Arthur Bolton Seed, and his mother's maiden name was Annie Wood; his sister Dorothy was nine years older than he was. He spent his childhood in Lancashire and attended Farnworth Grammar School, where he exhibited talent both at sports and academics. At the age of eighteen he chose a scholarship to King's College London over a possible professional soccer career.
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Nathan M. Newmark
1910 - 1981 (71 years)
Nathan Mortimore Newmark was an American structural engineer and academic, who is widely considered one of the founding fathers of earthquake engineering. He was awarded the National Medal of Science for engineering.
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Gerald T. Heydt
Gerald Thomas Heydt is an American electrical engineer and Regents’ Professor at Arizona State University, Tempe. Heydt was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1997 for contributions to the technology of electric power quality.
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Robert J. Linhardt
Robert J. Linhardt is the Ann and John Broadbent, Jr. '59 Senior Constellation Professor Biocatalysis & Metabolic Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His primary appointment at RPI is based in the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, consisting of joint appointments with the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, Department of Biology, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Rensselaer Nanotechnology Center. He is highly cited in his field, with over 100 papers having each over 100 citations.
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Geoffrey Raynor
1913 - 1983 (70 years)
Geoffrey Vincent Raynor FRS was an English metallurgist and university academic. Life Raynor was educated at Nottingham High School before studying Chemistry at Keble College, Oxford, obtaining a first-class degree in 1936. He then worked as a research assistant at the University of Oxford, working with William Hume-Rothery, and carried out metallurgical research for the Ministry of Supply and Ministry of Aircraft Production during the Second World War. In 1945, he moved to the University of Birmingham as a research fellow, with the course that he taught in structural and theoretical metallurgy becoming "the forerunner for the development of metallurgical teaching all over the world".
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Lan Jen Chu
1913 - 1973 (60 years)
Lan Jen Chu was a noted electrical engineer and a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Chu is noted for his work on the fundamental limitations for small antennas, also known as Chu's limit.
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Harold Barlow
1899 - 1989 (90 years)
Harold Everard Monteagle Barlow FRS was a British engineer. He was born in Islington, London, the son of Leonard Barlow, an electrical engineer. He entered University College, London where, apart from the World War II years , he spent most of his working life. He was taught by Ambrose Fleming, who held the Pender Chair there. Barlow went on to succeed Fleming in that chair, and hence also in the post of head of department. Among his students, Barlow supervised Charles Kao, the 2009 Nobel Laureate for Physics, for a doctoral degree.
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Katie Atkinson
Katie Marie Atkinson is a professor of computer science and the Dean of the School of Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Liverpool. She works on researching and building artificial intelligence tools to help judges and lawyers. Atkinson previously served as the President of the International Association for AI and Law.
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Arthur T. Ippen
1907 - 1974 (67 years)
Arthur Thomas Ippen was a noted hydrologist and engineer and was an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Born to German parents, he attended high school and college in Aachen, Germany graduating with a degree in Civil Engineering in 1931. He then took an Institute of International Education scholarship to study at the University of Iowa but after his doctoral advisor, Floyd Nagler, died suddenly, Ippen transferred to Caltech to complete his Ph.D. His doctoral work, supervised by Theodore von Kármán and Robert T. Knapp, explored sediment transport and open-channel ...
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Frederick Vinton Hunt
1905 - 1972 (67 years)
Frederick Vinton Hunt was an inventor, a scientist and a professor at Harvard University who worked in the field of acoustic engineering. He made significant contributions to room acoustics, regulated power supply, lightweight phonograph pickups and electronic reproduction equipment, and notably, during World War II, invented new techniques for sonar . He developed the first efficient and modern sonar system, for this work he received the Medal for Merit from President Truman , and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal by the U.S. Navy in 1970.
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Frank Benford
1883 - 1948 (65 years)
Frank Albert Benford Jr. was an American electrical engineer and physicist best known for rediscovering and generalizing Benford's Law, an earlier statistical statement by Simon Newcomb, about the occurrence of digits in lists of data.
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Ben Shahn
1898 - 1969 (71 years)
Ben Shahn was an American artist. He is best known for his works of social realism, his left-wing political views, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content. Biography Shahn was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, to Jewish parents Joshua Hessel and Gittel Shan. His father was exiled to Siberia for possible revolutionary activities in 1902, at which point Shahn, his mother, and two younger siblings moved to Vilkomir . In 1906, the family immigrated to the United States where they rejoined Hessel, a carpenter, who had fled Siberia and emigrated to the US by way of South Africa.
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Horst Rittel
1930 - 1990 (60 years)
Horst Wilhelm Johannes Rittel was a design theorist and university professor. He is best known for popularizing the concept of wicked problem, but his influence on design theory and practice was much wider.
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Alan Mara Bateman
1889 - 1971 (82 years)
Alan Mara Bateman was an economic geologist who worked on mining in North America and a professor at Yale University who also served as a long-standing editor of the journal Economic Geology. He also wrote several textbooks on mining including the Formation of Mineral Deposits.
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Herbert Reich
1900 - 2000 (100 years)
Herbert Reich was a pioneering figure in electrical engineering. Reich made substantial contributions towards the design of early oscilloscopes as a graduate student at Cornell University. Reich later taught as a Professor of Electrical Engineering at University of Illinois and Yale University . From 1944 to 1946 he worked at the Radio Research Laboratory at Harvard University with Frederick Terman. After his retirement from Yale, he periodically taught courses at Deep Springs College.
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Mayo D. Hersey
1886 - 1978 (92 years)
Mayo Dyer Hersey was an American engineer, physicist at the National Bureau of Standards and other government agencies, and Professor of Engineering at Brown University. He received the 1957 ASME Medal, and the first Mayo D. Hersey award in 1965.
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Vikram Sarabhai
1919 - 1971 (52 years)
Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai Jain was an Indian physicist and astronomer who initiated space research and helped to develop nuclear power in India. He was honoured with Padma Bhushan in 1966 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1972.
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Robert Lumiansky
1913 - 1987 (74 years)
Robert Mayer Lumiansky was an American scholar of Medieval English and president of the American Council of Learned Societies. Born in Darlington, South Carolina, Robert Lumiansky received a bachelor's degree from The Citadel, a master's degree from the University of South Carolina, and a doctorate from the University of North Carolina. He was professor and chairman of the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania from 1965 to 1973 and professor of English at New York University from 1975 to 1983. He was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
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Clark Blanchard Millikan
1903 - 1966 (63 years)
Clark Blanchard Millikan was a distinguished professor of aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology , and a founding member of the National Academy of Engineering. Biography Millikan's parents were noted physicist Robert A. Millikan and Greta Erwin Blanchard. He attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, graduated from Yale College in 1924, then earned his PhD in physics and mathematics at Caltech in 1928 under Professor Harry Bateman. He became a professor upon receiving his degree, full professor of aeronautics in 1940, and director of the Guggenheim Aeronautical La...
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Wilhelm Flügge
1904 - 1990 (86 years)
Gottfried Wilhelm Flügge was a German engineer, and Professor of Applied Mechanics at Stanford University. He is known as recipient of the 1970 Theodore von Karman Medal in Engineering Mechanics, and the 1970 Worcester Reed Warner Medal.
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William M. Harlow
1900 - 1986 (86 years)
William M. Harlow was an American professor of engineering and silviculture at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. He was also a nature photographer and filmmaker, particularly of time-lapse films.
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Earle Buckingham
1887 - 1978 (91 years)
Earle Buckingham was an American mechanical engineer and pioneer in the theory of gears. Buckingham was one of the founders of the theory of gearing and gear design and made significant contributions to this area. His monographs gained him international recognition in addition to the great respect he had already earned in English-speaking countries.
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Vladimir Karapetoff
1876 - 1948 (72 years)
Vladimir Karapetoff was a Russian-American electrical engineer, inventor, professor, and author. Life He was the son of Nikita Ivanovich Karapetov and Anna Joakimovna Karapetova. Karapetoff first studied at Petersburg State University of Means of Communication taking his first certification in 1897 and a second in 1902. During his studies he was a consultant to the Russian government and served as an instructor teaching electrical engineering and hydraulics in three of Saint Petersburg's colleges.
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Edgar Bain
1891 - 1971 (80 years)
Edgar Collins Bain was an American metallurgist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, who worked for the US Steel Corporation of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He worked on the alloying and heat treatment of steel; Bainite is named in his honor.
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Catherine Bauer Wurster
1905 - 1964 (59 years)
Catherine Krouse Bauer Wurster was an American public housing advocate and educator of city planners and urban planners. A leading member of the "housers," a group of planners who advocated affordable housing for low-income families, she dramatically changed social housing practice and law in the United States. Wurster's influential book Modern Housing was published by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1934 and is regarded as a classic in the field.
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John Voelcker
1927 - 1972 (45 years)
John Harold Westgarth Voelcker was an English architect. A member of the Team 10 group of architects, he ran a small rural practice before his appointment first Professor of Architecture at the University of Glasgow.
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Dexter S. Kimball
1865 - 1952 (87 years)
Dexter Simpson Kimball was an American engineer, professor of industrial engineering at Cornell University, early management author and president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1922–23.
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Luciano Orlando
1887 - 1915 (28 years)
Luciano Orlando was an Italian mathematician and military engineer. Biography Orlando received in 1903 his laurea from the University of Messina, where he was a student of Bagnera and Marcolongo. After a year of graduate study at the University of Pisa, he became an assistant and libero docente at the University of Messina. After the 1908 Messina earthquake, he moved to Rome, where he taught at the Istituto superiore di Magistero and at the Aeronautical School of Engineering of the Sapienza University of Rome. He took part in some university competitions but was unsuccessful and when, in 1915...
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