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 …
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List of the most influential people in Engineering,
#1001
Anne Tyng
#33122
Overall Influence
1920 - 2011 (91 years)
Anne Griswold Tyng was an architect and professor. She is best known for having collaborated for 29 years with Louis Kahn at his practice in Philadelphia. She served as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania for 27 years, teaching classes in urban morphology. She was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and an academician of the National Academy of Design. She is the first woman licensed as an architect by the state of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#1002
Hirofumi Akagi
#57679
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
is a Japanese electrical engineer and professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology , IEEE Fellow. He received his B.S. degree from Nagoya Institute of Technology in 1974, and his M.S. and Ph. D. degrees from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1976 and 1979, in all electrical engineering.
Go to Profile#1003
Bruce Weber
#1809
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Bruce Weber is an American fashion photographer and occasional filmmaker. He has made ad campaigns for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Pirelli, Abercrombie & Fitch, Revlon, and Gianni Versace, and made work for Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, Elle, Life, Interview, and Rolling Stone magazines.
Go to Profile#1004
Howie Choset
#30217
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Howie Choset is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. His research includes snakebots, or robots designed in a segmented fashion to mimic snake-like actuation and motion, demining, and coverage. His snake robots have also been used in surgical applications for diagnosis and tumor removal; nuclear power plant inspection, archaeological excavations, manufacturing applications and understanding biological behaviors of a variety of animals.
Go to Profile#1005
Vilhelm Helander
#38939
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Arne Anders Vilhem Helander , is a Finnish architect and was Professor of Architecture History at Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland from 1986 until 2005, when he became professor emeritus.
Go to Profile#1006
Jan Camiel Willems
#11171
Overall Influence
1939 - 2013 (74 years)
Jan Camiel Willems was a Belgian mathematical system theorist who has done most of his scientific work while residing in the Netherlands and the United States. He is most noted for the introduction of the notion of a dissipative system and for the development of the behavioral approach to systems theory.
Go to Profile#1007
Shane Kimbrough
#17436
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Robert Shane Kimbrough is a retired United States Army officer and NASA astronaut. He was part of the first group of candidates selected for NASA astronaut training following the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Kimbrough is a veteran of three spaceflights, the first being a Space Shuttle flight, and the second being a six-month mission to the ISS on board a Russian Soyuz craft. He was the commander of the International Space Station for Expedition 50, and returned to Earth in April 2017. He is married to the former Robbie Lynn Nickels.
Go to Profile#1008
Keith Glover
#14659
Overall Influence
Keith Glover FRS, FREng, FIEEE is a British electrical engineer. He is an emeritus professor of control engineering at the University of Cambridge. He is notable for his contributions to robust controller design and model order reduction.
Go to Profile#1009
Geoffrey Ozin
#30285
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Geoffrey Alan Stuart Ozin FRSC is a British chemist, currently Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Materials Chemistry and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Toronto. Ozin is the recipient of numerous awards for his research on nanomaterials, including the Meldola Medal and Prize in 1972 and the Rutherford Memorial Medal in 1982. He won the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 2011, the Royal Society of Chemistry's Centenary Prize in 2015, and the Humboldt Prize in 2005 and 2019. He has co-founded three university spin-off companies: Torrovap in 1985, which manufactures m...
Go to Profile#1010
Anne S. Kiremidjian
#58068
Overall Influence
Anne Setian Kiremidjian is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. Biography Kiremidjian was born on August 11, 1949, in Sofia, Bulgaria. She earned her BA in physics from Queens College, City University of New York and BS in civil engineering from Columbia University. She then earned her MS and PhD from Stanford University. From 1987 to 2002 she served as the Co-Director and Director of the John A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center at Stanford University. Her research has focused on earthquake hazard as well as structural risk analysis.
Go to Profile#1011
Edward H. Sargent
#52286
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Edward H. Sargent is a Canadian scientist, who serves as University Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Vice-President of Research and Innovation, and Strategic Initiatives at the University of Toronto. He also is the Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology. He will join the Departments of Chemistry and of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northwestern University, and will be affiliated with the International Institute for Nanotechnology at Northwestern.
Go to Profile#1012
Shih-Fu Chang
#43753
Overall Influence
Shih-Fu Chang is a Taiwanese American computer scientist and electrical engineer noted for his research on multimedia information retrieval, computer vision, machine learning, and signal processing. Chang is currently the dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science of Columbia University, where he is also the Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professor. He served as the chair of the Special Interest Group of Multimedia of Association for Computing Machinery from 2013 to 2017. He was ranked as the Most Influential Scholar in the field of Multimedia by Aminer in 2016. He was elected as an ...
Go to Profile#1013
Ellen von Unwerth
#5357
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Ellen von Unwerth is a German photographer. She began her career as a fashion model, before becoming a fashion, editorial, and advertising photographer. Early life and education Von Unwerth was born in Frankfurt, West Germany. As an orphan, during her early childhood, she often ended up in Bavarian foster care systems. Eventually, von Unwerth was able to graduate high school in Munich, where she would work as a circus magician's assistant for three years.
Go to Profile#1014
Tessy Thomas
#10748
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Tessy Thomas is an Indian scientist and Director General of Aeronautical Systems and the former Project Director for Agni-IV missile in Defence Research and Development Organisation. She is the first ever woman scientist to head a missile project in India.
Go to Profile#1015
Thomas Demand
#22310
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Thomas Cyrill Demand is a German sculptor and photographer. He currently lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles, and teaches at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg. He makes photographs of three-dimensional models that look like real images of rooms and other spaces, often sites loaded with social and political meanings. Demand thus describes himself not as a photographer, but as a conceptual artist for whom photography is an intrinsic part of his creative process.
Go to Profile#1016
Blanche Lemco van Ginkel
#32607
Overall Influence
1923 - 2022 (99 years)
Blanche Lemco van Ginkel was a British-born Canadian architect, city planner, and educator who worked mostly in Montreal and Toronto. She is known for her Modernist designs, as well as for planning Expo 67 and spearheading the preservation of Old Montreal. Lemco van Ginkel was the first woman to head a faculty of architecture in Canada and be elected a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. She was also the first woman to be awarded a fellowship by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and in 2020, was awarded their highest honour, the RAIC Gold Medal.
Go to Profile#1017
Caroline Bos
#43014
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Caroline Bos is a Dutch architect. She is a co-founder of UNStudio, a large award-winning architecture firm in Amsterdam. Bos writes, lectures and teaches architecture at various schools. Her architectural drawings and models are shown at museums like MoMA.
Go to Profile#1018
Sarah Whiting
#26075
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Sarah M. Whiting is an American architect, critic, and academic administrator. Whiting is currently Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design, in addition to being a founding partner of WW Architecture, along with her husband, Ron Witte. She previously served as Dean and William Ward Watkin Professor of Architecture at Rice School of Architecture. In addition to her work as an academic administrator, Whiting is most commonly identified as an intellectual figure within the field of architecture's "post-critical" turn in the early 2000s.
Go to Profile#1019
Stanisław Jankowski
#45736
Overall Influence
1911 - 2002 (91 years)
Stanisław Jankowski was an SOE agent and Polish resistance fighter during World War II, and an architect thereafter, who played a prominent role in the post-war reconstruction of Warsaw. Life Jankowski was a student and later, assistant lecturer in architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology in the Second Polish Republic before World War II. He was mobilized as an officer during the German invasion of Poland of 1939. He was captured by the Soviets in eastern Poland but escaped and joined the Polish Armed Forces in the West. Jankowski became an SOE agent and in 1942 was parachuted back into occupied Poland, where he became an expert document forger for the Polish resistance.
Go to Profile#1020
Rahul Mehrotra
#19668
Overall Influence
Rahul Mehrotra is Founder Principal of architecture firm RMA Architects of Mumbai + Boston, and is Professor of Urban Design and Planning and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#1021
Ekmel Özbay
#41450
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Ekmel Özbay is a Turkish professor of Electrical and Electronics Engineering and Physics Departments at Bilkent University and the director of the Nanotechnology Research Center, and Space Technologies Research Center in Ankara.
Go to Profile#1022
Piotr Kowalski
#28990
Overall Influence
1927 - 2004 (77 years)
Piotr Kowalski was a Polish artist, sculptor, and architect. Kowalski worked in non-traditional materials including electronic and mechanical devices, neon art, large earth works, explosions and other natural phenomena including plant growth and gravity. Kowalski attended MIT in order to study mathematics, but turned to architecture, and then to sculpture. He immigrated to France as an architect for UNESCO and spent most of the rest of his life in Paris. Along with gallery works, he installed several large outdoors projects.
Go to Profile#1023
Arnaldo Maria Angelini
#53454
Overall Influence
1909 - 2002 (93 years)
Arnaldo Maria Angelini was an Italian engineer and Professor of Electrotechnics at the Sapienza University of Rome, known for contributions in the development of nuclear generating stations as well as hydro and pumped hydro stations, and the improvement of Italy's transmission and distribution systems.
Go to Profile#1024
Edvard Ravnikar
#19439
Overall Influence
1907 - 1993 (86 years)
Edvard Ravnikar was a Slovenian architect. Ravnikar was born in Novo Mesto and was a student of architect Jože Plečnik. Later, he led the new generation of Slovene architects, notable for developing the Slovene architecture field's infrastructure, organizing architectural competitions etc. He was a professor at the Ljubljana School of Architecture. He also promoted Scandinavian architectural style in Slovenia, particularly Finnish achievements in architecture accomplished by those such as Alvar Aalto. His most notable creations feature prominently in Ljubljana, among them Republic Square, Cankar Hall, Maximarket department store, and the Museum of Modern Art.
Go to Profile#1025
Deji Akinwande
#25917
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Deji Akinwande is a Nigerian-American professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering with courtesy affiliation with Materials Science at the University of Texas at Austin. He was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2016 from Barack Obama. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the African Academy of Sciences, the Materials Research Society , and the IEEE.
Go to Profile#1026
Cristina Amon
#33368
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (123 years)
Cristina H. Amon is a mechanical engineer, academic administrator and was the 13th dean of the University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. She was the Faculty's first female dean. Prior to her appointment at the University of Toronto in 2006, she was the Raymond J. Lane Distinguished Professor and director of the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems at Carnegie Mellon University.
Go to Profile#1027
J. David Irwin
#36069
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
J. David Irwin is an American engineering educator and author of popular textbooks in electrical engineering and related areas. He is the Earle C. Williams Eminent Scholar and former Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Head at Auburn University. Irwin is one of the longest serving Department Heads of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the world, having been appointed to lead the Department at Auburn in 1973. He had also served as President of the ECE honor society Eta Kappa Nu; President of the US National Electrical Engineering Department Head Association; and President ...
Go to Profile#1028
Yannis Tsividis
#58772
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Yannis Tsividis is Charles Batchelor Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University. Tsividis designed and built the first integrated MOSFET operational amplifier in 1976. Tsividis is Fellow of the IEEE and received the Golden Jubilee Medal of the IEEE in 2000. He is a well known lecturer who taught over 30 classes across Columbia University, MIT, UC Berkeley and the National Technical University of Athens. He is the author of several books, including a common reference on the operation and modeling of MOS transistors.
Go to Profile#1029
James S. Harris
#46944
Overall Influence
James S. Harris is a scientist and engineer and fellow of IEEE, American Physical Society and Optical Society of America. His research primarily deals with optoelectronic devices and semiconductor material research.
Go to Profile#1030
Sheila Widnall
#21312
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Sheila Marie Evans Widnall is an American aerospace researcher and Institute Professor Emerita at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . She served as United States Secretary of the Air Force from 1993 to 1997, making her the first woman to hold that post and the first woman to lead an entire branch of the United States Armed Forces in the Department of Defense. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2003.
Go to Profile#1031
Yu Hao
#11105
Overall Influence
Yu Hao was a Chinese architect, structural engineer, and writer during the Song Dynasty. Legacy Yu Hao was given the title of Master-Carpenter for his architectural skill. He wrote the Mu Jing when he was active sometime between 965 and 995, considered an important piece of classical Chinese architectural literature, and although it no longer survives, Shen Kuo quoted from it. In 989, his architectural design and structural engineering work culminated in the construction of the Kai-Bao Pagoda, a wooden Chinese pagoda of medieval Kaifeng . The pagoda was lost in a 1040 lightning conflagratio...
Go to Profile#1032
Fabio Reinhart
#39257
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Fabio Reinhart is a Swiss architect. Biography Reinhart studied architecture at the Polytechnic of Zürich, where he graduated in 1969. In the 1970s he got associated with Bruno Reichlin and opened a practice in Lugano. They were strongly influenced by Italian architect Aldo Rossi.
Go to Profile#1033
Bob O. Evans
#21748
Overall Influence
1927 - 2004 (77 years)
Bob Overton Evans , also known as "Boe" Evans, was an American computer pioneer and corporate executive at IBM . He led the groundbreaking development of compatible computers that changed the industry.
Go to Profile#1034
Harshad Bhadeshia
#38255
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Sir Harshad "Harry" Kumar Dharamshi Hansraj Bhadeshia is an Indian-British metallurgist and Emeritus Tata Steel Professor of Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge. In 2022 he joined Queen Mary University of London as Professor of Metallurgy.
Go to Profile#1035
Graeme Davies
#19737
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Sir Graeme John Davies was a New Zealand engineer, academic and administrator. During his career, he was Vice-Chancellor of three universities: the University of Liverpool, the University of Glasgow and the University of London.
Go to Profile#1036
Klaus Lackner
#16854
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
#1037
R. Byron Pipes
#38439
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Robert Byron Pipes is an educator, researcher in polymer sciences and was the seventeenth president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He was born on August 14, 1941, in Shreveport, Louisiana. He and his wife Ruth Ellen had two children: Christopher and Mark.
Go to Profile#1038
Wendell Lovett
#31091
Overall Influence
1922 - 2016 (94 years)
Wendell Harper Lovett was a Pacific Northwest architect and teacher. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Lovett entered the University of Washington program in architecture in 1940, but his college years were interrupted by wartime service. He graduated from the University of Washington with a B.Arch in 1947. While at Washington he was significantly influenced by Professor Lionel Pries. Lovett attended MIT for one year, studying under Alvar Aalto and receiving his M.Arch. in June 1948. He returned to Seattle and after a brief apprenticeship, opened his own practice.
Go to Profile#1039
Behnaam Aazhang
#21241
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Behnaam Aazhang is the J.S. Abercrombie Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University and Director of the Rice Neuroengineering Initiative. Early life and education Aazhang was born in Bandar-Anzali, Iran, and attended Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran from 1975 until 1978. He moved to the United States in 1979. Aazhang received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1981, 1983, and 1986, respectively, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Aazhang was a research assistant in the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois from 1981 to 1985.
Go to Profile#1040
Ernst Plischke
#35177
Overall Influence
1903 - 1992 (89 years)
Ernst Anton Plischke was an Austrian-New Zealand modernist architect, town planner and furniture designer whose work is well known throughout Europe and New Zealand. Early years Plischke was born in the town of Klosterneuburg near Vienna in 1903. His father worked as an architect and his mother came from a family of cabinet-makers. From an early age he spent time in workshops and studios, before studying interior- and furniture-design at Vienna's College of Arts and Crafts.
Go to Profile#1041
Henry Franken
#28498
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Hendrik Marinus Franken is a retired Dutch engineer, enterprise architect and co-founder and former managing director of BiZZdesign, known for his work in the field of systems and control engineering, and business process management.
Go to Profile#1042
Ramachandran S. Vasan
#59383
Overall Influence
#1043
Eyal Weizman
#19620
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Eyal Weizman MBE FBA is a British Israeli architect. He is the director of the research agency Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London where he is Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures and a founding director there of the Centre for Research Architecture at the department of Visual Cultures. In 2019 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy.
Go to Profile#1044
Norton Juster
#13404
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Norton Juster was an American academic, architect, and writer. He was best known as an author of children's books, notably for The Phantom Tollbooth and The Dot and the Line. Early life Juster was born in Brooklyn on June 2, 1929. Both his parents were Jewish and immigrated to the United States. His father, Samuel Juster, was born in Romania and became an architect through a correspondence course. His mother, Minnie Silberman, was of Polish Jewish descent. His brother, Howard, became an architect as well. Juster studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, obtaining a bachelor's degree in 1952.
Go to Profile#1045
Calvin Mackie
#41067
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Calvin Mackie is an American motivational speaker and entrepreneur. He is the older brother of actor Anthony Mackie. Education Mackie was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and graduated in 1985 from McDonogh 35 High School, the first high school for African Americans in New Orleans. In 1990, Mackie earned a B.S. in mathematics from Morehouse College and a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech through a dual-degree program. He also completed a M.S. in 1992 and a Ph.D. in 1996, both in mechanical engineering.
Go to Profile#1046
Anthony Cheetham
#27575
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Sir Anthony Kevin Cheetham is a British materials scientist. From 2012 to 2017 he was Vice-President and Treasurer of the Royal Society. Education Cheetham was educated at Stockport Grammar School and read chemistry at St Catherine's College, Oxford, matriculating in 1965, and graduated with first class honours in 1969. He started his doctorate at Wadham College, Oxford in the same year, with a thesis on 'The Structures of some Non-stoichiometric Compounds'; his doctorate was awarded in 1972.
Go to Profile#1047
Mohammad Kaykobad
#15593
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Mohammad Kaykobad is a computer scientist, educator, author, and columnist from Bangladesh. Along with Muhammed Zafar Iqbal, he started the national mathematics olympiad. He was a professor of computer science and engineering in Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. and currently is a faculty member of computer science and engineering in BRAC University.Also a faculty member of University of information technology and Sciences.
Go to Profile#1048
Ernst Hiesmayr
#29747
Overall Influence
1920 - 2006 (86 years)
Ernst Hiesmayr was an Austrian architect, artist and former rector of the Technical University Vienna. Life As a student in his high school years Ernst Hiesmayr already worked on construction sites, where he appropriated his material, construction and practical orientation. During the Second World War, he worked at the labor service and as an officer in the German Wehrmacht. Between 1945 and 1948 Hiesmayr studied architecture at the Graz University of Technology in the class of Friedrich Zotter.
Go to Profile#1049
Sten Samuelson
#55035
Overall Influence
1926 - 2002 (76 years)
Sten Samuelson was a Swedish architect. Biography Samuelson studied architecture at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He was professor at Lund University of Technology from 1964–1983. Together with architect Fritz Jaenecke , Sten Samuelson started a joint office in 1950. Samuelson worked with Jaenecke & Samuelson until 1970. Together they came to draw several well-known public buildings in the 1950s and 1960s. Jaenecke & Samuelson designed the Malmö Stadion in Malmö and Ullevi, the multi-purpose stadium in Gothenburg, which were constructed for the 1958 FIFA World Cup.
Go to Profile#1050
Jarl-Thure Eriksson
#27588
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Jarl-Thure Eriksson is Doctor of Science in Technology, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Rector of Tampere University of Technology in Finland between the years 1997–2008. During Eriksson's period as rector, the university expanded vigorously and its scientific publishing activity amplified. Due to his scientific merits, Eriksson has been a member of the Finnish Academy of Technology since 1989 and of the Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in Finland since 1997. His perhaps most significant position of trust outside the university is membership in the Governing Board of the Millennium Prize Foundation since 2003.
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