Search People Result | Academic Influence

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.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Engineering,

#9701

John Moffat

1841 - 1918 (77 years)

John Moffat was a Scottish-born entrepreneur who developed a mining and industrial empire around Loudoun Mill and Irvinebank in North Queensland which drove the development of north-eastern Australia. He was a devout Swedenborgian who was famous for both vision and enterprise. He was born in Newmilns , Ayrshire and spent most of his youth immersed in books. Extremely shy in temperament, he was known to hide whenever visitors approached. It was a habit he was to retain throughout his life.

#9702

Josiah Wedgwood II

1769 - 1843 (74 years)

Josiah Wedgwood II , the son of the English potter Josiah Wedgwood, continued his father's firm and was a Member of Parliament for Stoke-upon-Trent from 1832 to 1835. He was an abolitionist, and detested slavery.

#9703

Samuel Train Dutton

1849 - 1919 (70 years)

Samuel Train Dutton was the superintendent of schools at Teachers College, Columbia University. He was a founder of the New York Peace Society and the treasurer of the American College for Girls at Constantinople.

#9704

Igor Ilyinsky

1901 - 1987 (86 years)

Igor Vladimirovich Ilyinsky was a Soviet and Russian stage and film actor, director and comedian. Hero of Socialist Labour and People's Artist of the USSR . Early years Igor Ilyinsky was born on 24 July 1901 in Moscow. At age 16 he entered the Theatre Studio of Theodore Komisarjevsky and in half a year already debuted on the professional stage in Komissarzhevskaya Theatre. His first theatre role was that of the "Old Man" in Aristophanes' play Lysistrata. In 1920, he joined the Vsevolod Meyerhold Theatre. The young actor's style was in correspondence with the principles of Meyerhold, and so Ilyinsky soon became the central actor of that theatre.

#9705

Andrew Bryan

1893 - 1988 (95 years)

Sir Andrew Meikle Bryan was a Scottish mining engineer and academic. Life Andrew Bryan was born on 1 March 1893, the son of John Bryan, of Hamilton, Lanarkshire, and was educated at Greenfields School and at the former Hamilton Academy and is listed as a notable former pupil of the school in the Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association Magazine, February 1950, feature on Hamilton Academy in the article series 'Famous Scottish Schools'.

#9706

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.

#9707

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.

#9708

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.”

#9709

Luchino Visconti

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.

#9710

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.

#9711

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.

#9712

Mahendranath Gupta

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.

#9713

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

#9714

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.

#9715

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.

#9716

John G. Trump

1907 - 1985 (78 years)

John George Trump was an American electrical engineer, inventor, and physicist. A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1936 to 1973, he was a recipient of the National Medal of Science and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Trump was noted for developing rotational radiation therapy. Together with Robert J. Van de Graaff, he developed one of the first million-volt X-ray generators.

#9717

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.

#9718

George Roger Clemo

1889 - 1983 (94 years)

George Roger Clemo FRS was a British organic chemist. He was born in Slapton, Devon, the eldest son of farmer George and Blanche Ellen Clemo. He attended Kingsbridge Grammar School and went on to study science at the Royal Albert Memorial College Exeter, a forerunner of Exeter University, gaining a Bachelor of Science in 1910. He then commenced training to be a teacher and in 1911 was appointed deputy master at Penzance County School. In 1916, as part of the war effort, he joined the laboratory of William Henry Perkin, Jr. to work on dyestuffs. In 1922 he entered Queen's College, Oxford and gained an Oxford B.Sc.

#9719

Edward Percy Stebbing

1872 - 1960 (88 years)

Edward Percy Stebbing FRSE FRGS FZS was a pioneering English forester and forest entomologist in India. He was among the first to warn of desertification and desiccation and wrote on "The encroaching Sahara".

#9720

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.

#9721

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...

#9722

Doc Edgerton

1903 - 1990 (87 years)

Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton , also known as Papa Flash, was an American scientist and researcher, a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is largely credited with transforming the stroboscope from an obscure laboratory instrument into a common device. He also was deeply involved with the development of sonar and deep-sea photography, and his equipment was used in collaboration with Jacques Cousteau in searches for shipwrecks and even the Loch Ness Monster.

#9723

Norbert Wiener

1894 - 1964 (70 years)

Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician, computer scientist and philosopher. He became a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and mathematical noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.

#9724

Stephen Timoshenko

Stephen Timoshenko

1878 - 1972 (94 years)

Stepan Prokopovich Timoshenko , later known as Stephen Timoshenko, was an ethnic Ukrainian, citizen of the Russian Empire and later, an American engineer and academician. He is considered to be the father of modern engineering mechanics. An inventor and one of the pioneering mechanical engineers at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. A founding member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Timoshenko wrote seminal works in the areas of engineering mechanics, elasticity and strength of materials, many of which are still widely used today. Having started his scientific career in the Russi...

#9725

Forest Baskett

Forest Baskett is an American venture capitalist, computer scientist and former professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University. He is a venture capitalist at New Enterprise Associates. Baskett designed the operating system for the original Cray-1 supercomputer, was an original pioneer of Very Large Scale Integration, and co-introduced the eponymous BCMP networks.

#9726

Theodore von Kármán

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.

#9727

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.

#9728

Jesse Francis McClendon

1880 - 1976 (96 years)

Jesse Francis McClendon was an American chemist, zoologist, and physiologist known for the first pH measurement of human stomach in situ. McClendon made substantial contributions in a variety of fields, including invertebrate zoology, nutrition, life processes of cell membranes, the importance of pH control, the role of iodine in human health, and specifically its relation to prevention of goiters.

#9729

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.

#9730

Arnold Tustin

1899 - 1994 (95 years)

Arnold Tustin, , was a British engineer, and Professor of Engineering at the University of Birmingham and at Imperial College London, who made important contributions to the development of control engineering and its application to electrical machines.

#9731

Paul Davidoff

1930 - 1984 (54 years)

Paul Davidoff was an American planner, planning educator, and planning theoretician who conceptualized "advocacy planning" with his wife, Linda Stone Davidoff. In legal scholarship, he is known as the primary litigant in the Mount Laurel decision, which established a state-constitutional basis for inclusionary zoning in New Jersey, a doctrine which has been accepted in other United States jurisdictions. Davidoff founded the Suburban Action Institute and the urban planning department at Hunter College, and also taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University during his career...

#9732

Hardy Cross

1885 - 1959 (74 years)

Hardy Cross was an American structural engineer and the developer of the moment distribution method for structural analysis of statically indeterminate structures. The method was in general use from c. 1935 until c. 1960 when it was gradually superseded by other methods.

#9733

Ernest Edwin Sechler

1905 - 1979 (74 years)

Ernest Edwin Sechler was an aerospace engineer and scientist who specialized in thin-shell structures. He earned his doctorate in 1934 at Caltech as one of the early students of Theodore von Kármán with a dissertation on the mechanics of thin-plate compression.

#9734

Edward C. Molina

1877 - 1964 (87 years)

Edward Charles Dixon Molina was an American engineer, known for his contributions to teletraffic engineering. Biography Edward Molina was born on December 13, 1877. After completing high school, he went to work, and was self-taught in mathematics. He began working for the Western Electric Company in 1898 at the age of 21 and entered the AT&T research department in 1901. His invention of relay translators in 1906 resulted in the panel dial systems. In his studies of telephone traffic, Molina independently rediscovered the Poisson distribution in 1908. It was briefly named in his honor among American telephone engineers until the prior art was recovered.

#9735

Rudolf Kompfner

1909 - 1977 (68 years)

Rudolf Kompfner was an Austrian-born inventor, physicist and architect, best known as the inventor of the traveling-wave tube . Life Kompfner was born in Vienna to Jewish parents. He was originally trained as an architect and after receiving his university degree in 1933 he moved to England , where he worked as an architect until 1941. He had a strong interest in physics and electronics, and after being briefly detained by the British at the start of World War II he was recruited to work in a secret microwave vacuum tube research program at the University of Birmingham. While there, Kompfner invented the TWT in 1943.

#9736

John R. Ragazzini

John R. Ragazzini

1912 - 1988 (76 years)

John Ralph Ragazzini was an American electrical engineer and a professor of Electrical Engineering. Biography Ragazzini was born in Manhattan, New York City from Italian immigrants Luigi Ragazzini and Angelina Badelli and received the degrees of B.S. and E.E. at the City College of New York in 1932 and 1933 and earned the degrees of A.M. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Columbia University in 1939 and 1941.

#9737

Vikram Sarabhai

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.

#9738

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.

#9739

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...

#9740

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.

#9741

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.

#9742

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.

#9743

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.

#9744

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.

#9745

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.

#9746

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.

#9747

Dexter S. Kimball

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.

#9748

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...

#9749

Louis Conrad Rosenberg

1890 - 1983 (93 years)

Louis Conrad Rosenberg , was an American artist, architect, author, and educator active between 1914 and 1966 known for his precise staging and rendering of architectural scenes in Europe and the United States during the 1920s and 1930s.

#9750

Comfort A. Adams

Comfort A. Adams

1868 - 1958 (90 years)

Comfort Avery Adams was an American electrical engineer who as a student helped Albert A. Michelson with the Michelson–Morley experiment , which was later viewed as confirming the special relativity theory of Albert Einstein . He was a recipient of the IEEE Edison Medal and AIEE Lamme Medal.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions