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,
#10001
Ernst Barlach
1870 - 1938 (68 years)
Ernst Heinrich Barlach was a German expressionist sculptor, medallist, printmaker and writer. Although he was a supporter of the war in the years leading to World War I, his participation in the conflict made him change his position, and he is mostly known for his sculptures protesting against the war. This created many conflicts during the rise of the Nazi Party, when most of his works were confiscated as degenerate art. Stylistically, his literary and artistic work would fall between the categories of twentieth-century Realism and Expressionism.
Go to Profile#10002
Hubert Schardin
1902 - 1965 (63 years)
Hubert Hermann Reinhold Schardin was a German ballistics expert, engineer and academic who studied in the field of high-speed photography and cinematography. He also was the director of the German-French Research Institute in Saint-Louis and founder and director of the Fraunhofer Society Institute for High-Speed Dynamics - Ernst-Mach-Institut - in Freiburg im Breisgau.
Go to Profile#10003
Paolo Monti
1908 - 1982 (74 years)
Paolo Monti was an Italian photographer, known for his architectural photography. In his early period, Monti experimented with abstractionism as well as with effects such as blurringring and diffraction. In 1953, he became a professional photographer. He mainly worked with architecture reproductions which were used by magazines and book editors for illustration. Starting from 1966, Monti catalogued historic centers of Italian cities.
Go to Profile#10004
Theodate Pope Riddle
1867 - 1946 (79 years)
Theodate Pope Riddle was an American architect and philanthropist. She was one of the first American women architects and a survivor of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. Life Born Effie Brooks Pope in Cleveland, Ohio, she was the only child of industrialist and art collector Alfred Atmore Pope and his wife Ada Lunette Brooks and was a first cousin to Louisa Pope, the future mother of architect Philip Johnson.
Go to Profile#10005
Stephen O. Rice
1907 - 1986 (79 years)
Stephen Oswald Rice was a pioneer in the related fields of information theory, communications theory, and telecommunications. Biography Rice was born in Shedds, Oregon . He received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University and did graduate work at Caltech and at Columbia University. He worked for nearly forty years at Bell Labs. At Bell Labs, Rice discovered the Rice distribution and Rice's formula. In 1957–58 he was a visiting professor at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#10006
Henry Bacon
1866 - 1924 (58 years)
Henry Bacon was an American Beaux-Arts architect who oversaw the engineering and design of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., built between 1915 and 1922, which was his final project before his 1924 death.
Go to Profile#10007
Marian Peretyatkovich
1872 - 1916 (44 years)
Marian Marianovich Peretyatkovich was a Russian and Polish architect. His premature death at the age of 43 limited his career to only eight years of independent practice , however, he managed to excel in a rational variety of late Art Nouveau, Renaissance Revival and Russian Revival in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. He is sometimes compared with Louis Sullivan on account of his insistence on functionality of office buildings.
Go to Profile#10008
Edmund Blacket
1817 - 1883 (66 years)
Edmund Thomas Blacket was an Australian architect, best known for his designs for the University of Sydney, St. Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney and St. Saviour's Cathedral, Goulburn. Arriving in Sydney from England in 1842, at a time when the city was rapidly expanding and new suburbs and towns were being established, Blacket was to become a pioneer of the revival styles of architecture, in particular Victorian Gothic. He was the most favoured architect of the Church of England in New South Wales for much of his career, and between late 1849 and 1854 was the official "Colonial Architect to New Sou...
Go to Profile#10009
Kageyoshi Noro
1854 - 1923 (69 years)
Kageyoshi Noro was a Japanese metallurgist who contributed to the modernization of Japan's steel industry. Biography Kageyoshi Noro was born in 1854 in Nagoya, Japan. After finishing his primary education in Nagoya and his secondary education in Tokyo, he studied mining and metallurgy at the college, which would later become part of Imperial University of Tokyo. After graduation in 1982, he became assistant to Curt Netto of his alma mater and continued to study metallurgy while he taught students.
Go to Profile#10010
Edward Schroeder Prior
1857 - 1932 (75 years)
Edward Schroeder Prior was a British architect, instrumental in establishing the arts and crafts movement. He was one of the foremost theorists of the second generation of the movement, writing extensively on architecture, art, craftsmanship and the building process and subsequently influencing the training of many architects.
Go to Profile#10011
Giuseppe Albenga
1882 - 1957 (75 years)
Giuseppe Albenga was an Italian civil engineer, professor of bridge construction, and historian of civil engineering. Biography A student of Camillo Guidi, Giuseppe Albenga received his laurea in civil engineering at the Politecnico di Torino in 1904.
Go to Profile#10012
John Carr
1723 - 1807 (84 years)
John Carr was a prolific English architect, best known for Buxton Crescent in Derbyshire and Harewood House in West Yorkshire. Much of his work was in the Palladian style. In his day he was considered to be the leading architect in the north of England.
Go to Profile#10013
Heinrich von Ferstel
1828 - 1883 (55 years)
Freiherr Heinrich von Ferstel was an Austrian architect and professor, who played a vital role in building late 19th-century Vienna. Life The son of Ignaz Ferstel , a bank clerk and later director of the Austrian national bank in Prague, Heinrich Ferstel, after wavering for some time between the different arts, finally decided on architecture. From 1847 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under Eduard van der Nüll and August Sicard von Sicardsburg. After several years during which he was in disrepute because of his part in the 1848 Revolution, he finished his studies in 1850 and en...
Go to Profile#10014
Reginald Blomfield
1856 - 1942 (86 years)
Sir Reginald Theodore Blomfield was a prolific British architect, garden designer and author of the Victorian and Edwardian period. Early life and career Blomfield was born at Bow rectory in Devon, where his father, the Rev. George John Blomfield , was rector. His mother, Isabella, was a first cousin of his father and the second daughter of the Rt. Rev. Charles James Blomfield, Bishop of London. He was brought up in Kent, where his father became vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Dartford, in 1857 and then Rector of Aldington in 1868. He was educated at Highgate School in North London, whose Grad...
Go to Profile#10015
Hertha Ayrton
1854 - 1923 (69 years)
Phoebe Sarah Hertha Ayrton was a British engineer, mathematician, physicist and inventor, and suffragette. Known in adult life as Hertha Ayrton, born Phoebe Sarah Marks, she was awarded the Hughes Medal by the Royal Society for her work on electric arcs and ripple marks in sand and water.
Go to Profile#10016
John Douglas
1830 - 1911 (81 years)
John Douglas was an English architect who designed over 500 buildings in Cheshire, North Wales, and northwest England, in particular in the estate of Eaton Hall. He was trained in Lancaster and practised throughout his career from an office in Chester. Initially he ran the practice on his own, but from 1884 until two years before his death he worked in partnerships with two of his former assistants.
Go to Profile#10017
Thomas W. Lamb
1870 - 1942 (72 years)
Thomas White Lamb was a Scottish-born, American architect. He was one of the foremost designers of theaters and cinemas of the 20th century. Career Born in Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom, Thomas W. Lamb came to the United States at the age of 12. He studied architecture at Cooper Union in New York and initially worked for the City of New York as an inspector. His architecture firm, Thomas W. Lamb, Inc., was located at 36 West 40th Street in Manhattan, New York.
Go to Profile#10018
James Thomson
1822 - 1892 (70 years)
James Thomson FRS FRSE LLD was a British engineer and physicist, born in Belfast, and older brother of William Thomson . Biography Born in Belfast, much of his youth was spent in Glasgow. His father James was professor of mathematics at the University of Glasgow from 1832 onward and his younger brother William was to become Baron Kelvin. James attended Glasgow University from a young age and graduated with high honours in his late teens. After graduation, he served brief apprenticeships with practical engineers in several domains; and then gave a considerable amount of his time to theoretica...
Go to Profile#10019
Alexander Baerwald
1877 - 1930 (53 years)
Alexander Baerwald was a German Jewish architect best known for his work in Haifa, today in Israel, during Late Ottoman and British rule. Life and career Baerwald was born in Berlin, Germany on 3 March 1877. He studied at the Technical University of Berlin , interrupted by the summer semester 1898 at the Technische Hochschule of Munich. From 1903 to 1927 he was employed with the Prussian Construction and Financial Direction of Berlin, responsible for public constructions in Berlin. He advanced to become a Royal Ministerial Construction Councillor . One of his tasks was the construction management for the new building of the Prussian Royal Library in Berlin between 1908 and 1913.
Go to Profile#10020
Robert Henry Thurston
1839 - 1903 (64 years)
Robert Henry Thurston was an American engineer, and the first Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology. He was assistant professor at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis and a published specialist on iron and steel as well as steam engines, when he was invited in 1871 by Stevens' president Henry Morton to head mechanical engineering at Stevens. The same year Thurston was appointed the first professor of mechanical engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#10021
Juraj Neidhardt
1901 - 1979 (78 years)
Juraj Neidhardt was a Yugoslav architect, teacher, urban planner and writer. Biography Neidhardt was born in Zagreb on October 15, 1901. He studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, under Peter Behrens and gained a diploma in 1924. During his studies in Vienna he made an interesting project for the airport.
Go to Profile#10022
Charles Herbert Reilly
1874 - 1948 (74 years)
Sir Charles Herbert Reilly was an English architect and teacher. After training in two architectural practices in London he took up a part-time lectureship at the University of London in 1900, and from 1904 to 1933 he headed the University of Liverpool School of Architecture, which became world-famous under his leadership. He was largely responsible for establishing university training of architects as an alternative to the old system of apprenticeship.
Go to Profile#10023
Je Tsongkhapa
1357 - 1419 (62 years)
Tsongkhapa was an influential Tibetan Buddhist monk, philosopher and tantric yogi, whose activities led to the formation of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is also known by his ordained name Losang Drakpa or simply as "Je Rinpoche" . He is also known by Chinese as Zongkapa Lobsang Zhaba or just Zōngkābā .
Go to Profile#10024
Wilhelm Dörpfeld
1853 - 1940 (87 years)
Wilhelm Dörpfeld was a German architect and archaeologist, a pioneer of stratigraphic excavation and precise graphical documentation of archaeological projects. He is famous for his work on Bronze Age sites around the Mediterranean, such as Tiryns and Hisarlik , where he continued Heinrich Schliemann's excavations. Like Schliemann, Dörpfeld was an advocate of the historical reality of places mentioned in the works of Homer. While the details of his claims regarding locations mentioned in Homer's writings are not considered accurate by later archaeologists, his fundamental idea that they correspond to real places is accepted.
Go to Profile#10025
Conrad Wilhelm Hase
1818 - 1902 (84 years)
Conrad Wilhelm Hase was a German architect and Professor. He was a prominent representative of the Neo-Gothic style and is known for his preservation work. Biography He was one of ten children born to a tax collector. In 1834, he began his architectural studies in Hanover. After completing those studies in 1838, he was unable to find employment, so he returned home to assist his father. On the advice of one of his teachers, Ernst Ebeling, he began an apprenticeship as a bricklayer with the builder, Christoph August Gersting. He passed his journeyman's examination in 1840. He then went to observe various style of architecture on a six-month tour throughout Germany.
Go to Profile#10026
Augustin Mouchot
1825 - 1912 (87 years)
Augustin Mouchot was a 19th-century French inventor of the earliest solar-powered engine, converting solar energy into mechanical steam power. Background Mouchot was born in Semur-en-Auxois, France on 7 April 1825. He first taught at the primary schools of Morvan and later Dijon, before attaining a degree in Mathematics in 1852 and a Bachelor of Physical Sciences in 1853. Subsequently, he taught mathematics in the secondary schools of Alençon , Rennes and Lycée de Tours . It was during this period that he undertook research into solar energy, which led eventually to his obtaining government ...
Go to Profile#10027
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger
1484 - 1546 (62 years)
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger , also known as Antonio Cordiani, was an Italian architect active during the Renaissance, mainly in Rome and the Papal States. One of his most popular projects that he worked on designing is St. Peter’s basilica in the Vatican City. He was also an engineer who worked on restoring several buildings. His success was greatly due to his contracts with renowned artists during his time. Sangallo died in Terni, Italy, and was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Go to Profile#10028
Francesco Boffo
1796 - 1867 (71 years)
Francesco Carlo Boffo was a Neoclassical architect who designed more than 30 buildings in Odesa between 1818 and 1861, including the famous Potemkin Stairs. Boffo was probably born in 1796 in Sardinia and he was apprenticed to an architect in Ticino. He then joined the University of Turin before entering the service of the Potocki noble family in Poland. He served as Odesa's chief architect between 1822 and 1844. His patrons included Count Michael Vorontsov and his wife, Elisabeth Branicka. Boffo was responsible for transforming Odesa into the open-air museum of Neoclassical architecture, rivalling St.
Go to Profile#10029
Robert Mapplethorpe
1946 - 1989 (43 years)
Robert Michael Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images. His most controversial works documented and examined the gay male BDSM subculture of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A 1989 exhibition of Mapplethorpe's work, titled Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, sparked a debate in the United States concerning both use of public funds for "obscene" artwork and the Constitutional limits of free sp...
Go to Profile#10030
Rachel Shalon
1904 - 1988 (84 years)
Rachel Shalon was the first woman engineer in Israel and a professor of structural engineering. Shalon was first of all Technion graduates, male and female, to reach the rank of full professor. Early life and education Rachel Znanmirow was born in Kalush, Poland on the eve of Passover 1904 to Gittel and Hanoch Znanmirow, a Hassidic family. Her father was a lumber merchant, and she grew up in Kalisz.
Go to Profile#10031
Ayodele Awojobi
1937 - 1984 (47 years)
Ayodele Oluwatumininu Awojobi , also known by the nicknames "Dead Easy", "The Akoka Giant", and "Macbeth", was a Nigerian academic, author, inventor, social crusader and activist. He was considered a scholarly genius by his teachers and peers alike.
Go to Profile#10032
Livio Castiglioni
1911 - 1979 (68 years)
Livio Castiglioni was an Italian architect and designer. He made a significant contribution to twentieth-century Italian lighting design and was an early proponent of the practice of industrial design in Italy.
Go to Profile#10033
James Knox Taylor
1857 - 1929 (72 years)
James Knox Taylor was Supervising Architect of the United States Department of the Treasury from 1897 to 1912. His name is listed ex officio as supervising architect of hundreds of federal buildings built throughout the United States during the period.
Go to Profile#10034
Matthew Hunter
1878 - 1961 (83 years)
Matthew Albert Hunter was a metallurgist and inventor of the Hunter process for producing titanium metal. Hunter was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1878 and received his early education in local public schools. He completed his Secondary education at Auckland Grammar School. He attended Auckland University College, where he earned his Bachelor's in 1900, and his Master's degree in 1902, and later studied at University College, London, earning a Doctor of Science degree, and at various other European universities. He met his future wife Mary Pond in Europe, as a fellow student, and married after traveling to America.
Go to Profile#10035
Henry J. Kelley
1926 - 1988 (62 years)
Henry J. Kelley was Christopher C. Kraft Professor of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. He produced major contributions to control theory, especially in aeronautical engineering and flight optimization.
Go to Profile#10036
Alfred Grenander
1863 - 1931 (68 years)
Alfred Frederik Elias Grenander was a Swedish architect, who became one of the most prominent engineers during the first building period of the Berlin U-Bahn network in the early twentieth century. Biography Grenander was born at Skövde in Västra Götaland County, Sweden. He was raised in Stockholm and began studying at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in 1881. He changed to the Royal Technical College of Charlottenburg in 1885. After his final degree in 1890 he became a site engineer at the construction of the new Reichstag building under the direction of Paul Wallot and continued hi...
Go to Profile#10037
Harold M. Westergaard
1888 - 1950 (62 years)
Harold Malcolm Westergaard was a Danish structural engineer. He was Professor of theoretical and applied mechanics at the University of Illinois in Urbana and of Civil Engineering at Harvard. Biography Westergaard graduated in engineering from Copenhagen Danmarks Tekniske Højskole in 1911. He continued his practice in reinforced concrete in Hamburg, London, Göttingen, and prepared his written dissertation at Königlich Bayerische Technische Hochschule München in 1915. He obtained a PhD at the University of Illinois in Urbana in 1916 and was appointed lecturer there for theoretical and applied mechanics.
Go to Profile#10038
Franca Helg
1920 - 1989 (69 years)
Franca Helg was an Italian designer and architect. She also had a career teaching at Istituto Universitario Architettura Venezia and Polytechnic of Milan. She collaborated with Franco Albini from 1945 through 1977.
Go to Profile#10039
Girard Desargues
1591 - 1661 (70 years)
Girard Desargues was a French mathematician and engineer, who is considered one of the founders of projective geometry. Desargues' theorem, the Desargues graph, and the crater Desargues on the Moon are named in his honour.
Go to Profile#10040
Robert Stevenson
1772 - 1850 (78 years)
Robert Stevenson, FRSE, FGS, FRAS, FSA Scot, MWS was a Scottish civil engineer, and designer and builder of lighthouses. His works include the Bell Rock Lighthouse. Early life Robert Stevenson was born in Glasgow. His father was Alan Stevenson, a partner in a West Indies sugar trading house in the city. Alan died of an epidemic fever on the island of St. Christopher in the West Indies on 26 May 1774, a few days before Robert's second birthday. Robert's uncle died of the same disease around the same time. Since this left Alan's widow, Jean Lillie Stevenson, in much-reduced financial circumstan...
Go to Profile#10041
Ernst Ziller
1837 - 1923 (86 years)
Ernst Moritz Theodor Ziller was a German-born university teacher and architect who later became a Greek national. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he was a major designer of royal and municipal buildings in Athens, Patras, and other Greek cities.
Go to Profile#10042
Lars Israel Wahlman
1870 - 1952 (82 years)
Lars Israël Wahlman was a Swedish architect. He was a supporter of the Arts and Crafts movement in Sweden and his architecture was influenced by romantic nationalism. His most famous work include Tjolöholm Castle and Engelbrekt Church. In his birthplace Hedemora one of the buildings he designed, the Wahlman building, bears his name.
Go to Profile#10043
Gustav Gull
1858 - 1942 (84 years)
Gustav Gull was a Swiss architect. Life He came from a family of architects. He studied architecture at the Polytechnic of Zürich attended courses at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Geneva from 1879 to 1880. This was followed by an internship with Benjamin Recordon in Lausanne until 1882. After a trip to Italy , he first entered into a partnership with Conrad von Muralt, with whom he built the main post office in Lucerne, the Lavater schoolhouse in Zurich, among other things. In 1890, he received the first commission from the city of Zurich to draw up a plan for a Swiss National Museum. From...
Go to Profile#10044
Benjamin Franklin Bailey
1875 - 2000 (125 years)
Benjamin Franklin Bailey was an American electrical engineer. A native of Sheridan, Michigan, Benjamin Franklin Bailey studied electrical engineering at the University of Michigan and later held the positions of chief engineer of the Fairbanks Morse Electrical Manufacturing Company and Howell Electrical Motor Company, director of Bailey Electrical Company, and vice-president and director of the Fremont Motor Corporation.
Go to Profile#10045
Nikola Dobrović
1897 - 1967 (70 years)
Nikola Dobrović was a Serbian architect, teacher, and urban planner. Dobrović designed a number of buildings including the Yugoslav Ministry of Defence building, later destroyed during the Kosovar War by NATO bombings.
Go to Profile#10046
Robert Vorhoelzer
1884 - 1954 (70 years)
Robert Vorhoelzer was a German architect. Vorhoelzer belonged to the classical modernist school of architecture that is otherwise rather underrepresented in Bavaria. Most of his works were built when Vorhoelzer was Oberbaurat of the Bavarian postal administration. Together with Robert Poeverlein he founded the "Bayerische Postbauschule". In the early stages of his work, such as at the post office Penzberg or the post office on Ismaninger Straße in Munich, the influence of the "Heimatstil" was dominant. But later Vorhoelzer built many modern and functional buildings in the style of Neue Sachlichkeit.
Go to Profile#10047
Arnold Böcklin
1827 - 1901 (74 years)
Arnold Böcklin was a Swiss Symbolist painter. Biography He was born in Basel. His father, Christian Frederick Böcklin , was descended from an old family of Schaffhausen, and engaged in the silk trade. His mother, Ursula Lippe, was a native of the same city. Arnold studied at the Düsseldorf academy under Schirmer, and became a friend of Anselm Feuerbach. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting. Schirmer, who recognized in him a student of exceptional promise, sent him to Antwerp and Brussels, where he copied the works of Flemish and Dutch masters. Böcklin then went to Paris, wo...
Go to Profile#10048
Luchino Visconti
1906 - 1976 (70 years)
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian filmmaker, theatre and opera director, and screenwriter. He was one of the fathers of cinematic neorealism, but later moved towards luxurious, sweeping epics dealing with themes of beauty, decadence, death, and European history, especially the decay of the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Critic Jonathan Jones wrote that “no one did as much to shape Italian cinema as Luchino Visconti.”
Go to Profile#10049
Alfred Albini
1896 - 1978 (82 years)
Alfred Albini was a Croatian-Jewish architect. He received a Vladimir Nazor Award for architecture and urban planning. Albini was born and died in Zagreb. He worked at the ateliers of Viktor Kovačić and Hugo Ehrlich and as a professor at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Zagreb. He projected single-family houses and apartment buildings, together with civic buildings . He synthesized modernistic ideas into his own architectural expression. Furthermore, he discussed the problem of urban planning and the protection of landmarks, wrote expert works and theoretical articles, and painted.
Go to Profile#10050
Cornelis van Eesteren
1897 - 1988 (91 years)
Cornelis van Eesteren was a prominent Dutch architect and urban planner. He worked for the Town Planning department of Amsterdam and was the chairman of the CIAM . He contributed to the De Stijl movement, with its founder Theo van Doesburg, the artist Piet Mondrian, and others.
Go to Profile