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,
#10351
Eadweard Muybridge
1830 - 1904 (74 years)
Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. He adopted the first name "Eadweard" as the original Anglo-Saxon form of "Edward", and the surname "Muybridge", believing it to be similarly archaic. A noted photographer in the 19th century American West, he photographed Yosemite, San Francisco, the newly acquired Alaskan Territory, subjects involved in the Modoc War, and lighthouses on the West Coast. He also made his early "moving" picture studies in California.
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Roque Ruaño
1877 - 1935 (58 years)
Roque Ruaño Garrido, O.P. was a Spanish priest and civil engineer. He was known after he drew up plans for University of Santo Tomas Main Building, the first earthquake-shock resistant building in Asia, which was constructed at the Sulucan property of the Dominican order in city of Manila.
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Ernest Hébrard
1875 - 1933 (58 years)
Ernest Hébrard was a French architect, archaeologist and urban planner, best known for his urban plan for the center of Thessaloniki, Greece, after the great fire of 1917. Background Hebrard studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, and in 1904 won the Grand Prix de Rome, allowing him to study at the Académie de France in Rome, located in the Villa Medici. It was here that he chose to study Diocletian's palace at Split, eventually leading to the 1912 publication of a monograph containing what is still regarded as the most accurate image of the original appearance of the Palace. At the Academie, he...
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Tytus Maksymilian Huber
1872 - 1950 (78 years)
Tytus Maksymilian Huber was a Polish mechanical engineer, educator, and scientist. He was a member of the pre-war Polish scientific foundation, Kasa im. Józefa Mianowskiego. His career began as a professor at Lwów Polytechnic in 1908, later serving as rector from 1922 to 1923. In the late 1920s he was professor and department chair of Warsaw University of Technology. After the Second World War he helped organize the Gdańsk University of Technology.
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Rufino Tamayo
1899 - 1991 (92 years)
Rufino del Carmen Arellanes Tamayo was a Mexican painter of Zapotec heritage, born in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico. Tamayo was active in the mid-20th century in Mexico and New York, painting figurative abstraction with surrealist influences.
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Martin Elsaesser
1884 - 1957 (73 years)
Martin Elsaesser was a German architect and professor of architecture. He is especially well known for the many churches he built. Life From 1901 to 1906, Elsaesser studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich under Friedrich von Thiersch and the Technical University of Stuttgart under Theodor Fischer. In 1905 he won the competition for the Lutheran church of Baden-Baden and started to be active as a freelance architect.
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William Hubert Burr
1851 - 1934 (83 years)
William Hubert Burr C.E. was an American civil engineer, born at Watertown, Connecticut. He received his education at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Over several decades, he worked at various places. In 1884 he became assistant engineer to the Phoenix Bridge Company. After 1893 he was consulting engineer to New York departments, especially in connection with the Catskill Aqueduct work. In 1892–1893 he had been Professor at Harvard University and 1893–1916 Professor for Civil Engineering at Columbia University. In 1904 he was appointed a member of the Isthmian Canal Commission.
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Alajos Hauszmann
1847 - 1926 (79 years)
Alajos Hauszmann was a Hungarian architect, professor, and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Life Hauszmann was born in Buda in 1847 into a family of Bavarian origin as the son of Ferenc Hauszmann and Anna Maár . He studied painting from 1861, then became a bricklayer's apprentice. In 1864 he attended Technical University of Budapest, and in 1866 he continued architecture studies at the Bauakademie in Berlin, along with Ödön Lechner.1868 Assistant Professor at the Technical University of Budapest1869–1870. Grand tour of Italy to study renaissance architecture1872 Professor at the...
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Panteleimon Golosov
1882 - 1945 (63 years)
Panteleimon Alexandrovich Golosov was a Constructivist architect from the Soviet Union and brother of Ilya Golosov. Career Golosov graduated from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1911. From 1918 he taught at the State Free Artist Studios , then at VKhUTEMAS and at the Moscow Architectural Institute. He later became a member of the OSA Group.
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Carl Culmann
1821 - 1881 (60 years)
Carl Culmann was a German structural engineer. Born in Bad Bergzabern, Rhenish Palatinate, in modern-day Germany, Culmann's father, a pastor, tutored him at home before enrolling him at the military engineering school at Metz to prepare for entry to the École Polytechnique. Culmann's ambitions were frustrated by an attack of typhoid and, after a long convalescence, he attended the Karlsruhe Polytechnic School. He joined the Bavarian civil service in 1841 as an apprentice engineer in the design of railroad bridges.
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John Alexander Low Waddell
1854 - 1938 (84 years)
Dr. John Alexander Low Waddell was a Canadian-American civil engineer and prolific bridge designer, with more than a thousand structures to his credit in the United States, Canada, as well as Mexico, Russia, China, Japan, and New Zealand. Waddell’s work set standards for elevated railroad systems and helped develop materials suitable for large span bridges. His most important contribution was the development of the steam-powered high-lift bridge. Waddell was a widely respected writer on bridge design and engineering theory, as well as an advocate for quality in higher education engineering programs.
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Carl Benz
1844 - 1929 (85 years)
Carl Friedrich Benz was a German engine designer and automotive engineer. His Benz Patent Motorcar from 1885 is considered the first practical modern automobile and first car put into series production. He received a patent for the motorcar in 1886, the same year he first publicly drove the Benz Patent-Motorwagen.
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Luis Huergo
1837 - 1913 (76 years)
Luis Augusto Huergo was an Argentine engineer prominent in the development of his country's ports. Life and times Early career Luis Huergo was born in Buenos Aires, in 1837, to a family of prosperous retailers. He was sent to the Jesuit Mount St. Mary's University previously known as Mount St. Mary's College, where he obtained his secondary education from 1852 to 1857. Returning to Argentina, he assisted urbanist Pedro Benoit plan the first road to Ensenada and earned a degree as a surveyor from the Topography and Geodesics School of Buenos Aires, in 1862. Huergo was among the first class t...
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John Hopkinson
1849 - 1898 (49 years)
John Hopkinson, FRS, was a British physicist, electrical engineer, Fellow of the Royal Society and President of the IEE twice in 1890 and 1896. He invented the three-wire system for the distribution of electrical power, for which he was granted a patent in 1882. He also worked in many areas of electromagnetism and electrostatics, and in 1890 was appointed professor of electrical engineering at King's College London, where he was also director of the Siemens Laboratory.
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Marcin Knackfus
1740 - 1821 (81 years)
Marcin Knackfus , also known in Lithuanian as Martynas Knakfusas, was an architect, professor, and military captain from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was first person to introduce Neoclassical architecture in Lithuania. He designed several important buildings in Vilnius, the capital and largest city of Lithuania.
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Carlo Fontana
1638 - 1714 (76 years)
Carlo Fontana was an Italian architect originating from today's Canton Ticino, who was in part responsible for the classicizing direction taken by Late Baroque Roman architecture. Biography There seems to be no proof that he belonged to the family of famous architects of the same name, which included Domenico Fontana, although he is sometimes called his great nephew.
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Gisbert Kapp
1852 - 1922 (70 years)
Gisbert Johann Eduard Kapp was an Austrian-English electrical engineer. His parents were an Austrian counselor Gisbert Kapp and Luisa Kapp-Young. After finishing his studies in Austria, Kapp moved to England where he was naturalized in 1881. He was awarded a Telford Medal in 1885/6. In 1904 he was offered the position as the first Chair of Electrical Engineering at the University of Birmingham, a post he held until 1919. In 1909 he was elected the president of the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
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Helena Syrkus
1900 - 1982 (82 years)
Helena Syrkus was a Polish architect, urban planner and educator. She was born Helena Eliasberg in Warsaw and studied architecture at the Warsaw Technical Academy from 1918 to 1923. In 1922, she changed her last name to Niemirowska. Syrkus also studied drawing with Roman Kramsztyk and philosophy at the University of Warsaw. She was a co-founder of the avant-garde Praesens group. She was also a member of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne and served as vice-chairperson from 1945 to 1954. In 1950, she began lecturing on architecture at the Polish Technical Academy.
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Akira Nakashima
Akira Nakashima was a Japanese electrical engineer of the NEC. He got a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Imperial University of Tokyo. Nakashima introduced switching circuit theory in papers from 1934 to 1936, laying the foundations for digital circuit design, in digital computers and other areas of modern technology. This is considered to be an achievement on a par with Claude Shannon, who presented a similar theory at the same time.
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Robert William Chapman
1866 - 1942 (76 years)
Sir Robert William Chapman MIEAust was an Australian mathematician and engineer. History Chapman was born in Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire, England, eldest son of Charles Chapman , a currier from Melbourne, Australia, and his wife Matilda, née Harrison . His parents returned to Melbourne in 1876, where he was educated at Wesley College and the University of Melbourne, graduating MA and BCE with first class honours in Physics and Mathematics.
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Christian Colliex
#10372
James H. Lubowitz
#10373
Ambrose Poynter
1796 - 1886 (90 years)
Ambrose Poynter was a British architect. He was one of the founding members of the Institute of British Architects in 1834. Early life Born in London on 16 May 1796, he was second son of Ambrose Lyon Poynter by Thomasine Anne Peck; the family was of Huguenot origin. Poynter was employed by John Nash from 1814 to 1818. In 1819–21, he travelled to Italy, Sicily, and the Ionian islands. He was present at John Keats's funeral in Rome on 26 February 1821.
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Carl von Linde
1842 - 1934 (92 years)
Carl Paul Gottfried von Linde was a German scientist, engineer, and businessman. He discovered a refrigeration cycle and invented the first industrial-scale air separation and gas liquefaction processes, which led to the first reliable and efficient compressed-ammonia refrigerator in 1876. These breakthroughs laid the backbone for the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics that was awarded to Heike Kamerlingh Onnes. Linde was a member of scientific and engineering associations, including being on the board of trustees of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
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Ulisse Stacchini
1871 - 1947 (76 years)
Ulisse Stacchini was an Italian architect. He was born in Florence and studied in Milan and died in Sanremo. His major works include the Milan Central Station and Stadio Giuseppe Meazza. External links Page at artnet.com
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Giorgio Costantino Schinas
1834 - 1894 (60 years)
Giorgio Costantino Schinas was a Maltese architect and civil engineer. He was of Greek descent. He was born in Valletta in 1834 to Costantino Schinas and his wife Elisabetta Camilleri. He studied at the Royal University of Pavia, the Reale Scuola d'Applicazione degli Ingegneri of Turin, and the University of Malta, graduating as a civil engineer in 1863. He worked in the civil service, and he was the Superintendent for Public Works from 1888 until his death. He was granted the warrant of architect and land surveyor.
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Frank Eugene
1865 - 1936 (71 years)
Frank Eugene was an American-born photographer who was a founding member of the Photo-Secession and one of the first university-level professors of photography in the world. Early life Eugene was born in New York City as Frank Eugene Smith. His father was Frederick Smith, a German baker who changed his last name from Schmid after moving to America in the late 1850s. His mother was Hermine Selinger Smith, a singer who performed in local German beer halls and theaters.
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David Garrick
1717 - 1779 (62 years)
David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of European theatrical practice throughout the 18th century, and was a pupil and friend of Samuel Johnson. He appeared in a number of amateur theatricals, and with his appearance in the title role of Shakespeare's Richard III, audiences and managers began to take notice.
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Edmond Bour
1832 - 1866 (34 years)
Jacques Edmond Émile Bour was a French engineer famous for the . His parents were Joseph Bour and Gabrielle Jeunet. He was a student at l'École Polytechnique and graduated at the top of his class in 1852. After teaching for a year as a professor at l'École des Mines de Saint-Étienne, he became a professor of engineering at l'École Polytechnique. In 1858 he obtained the grand prize in mathematics from the Académie des Sciences for his treatise on L'intégration des équations aux dérivées partielles des premier et deuxième degrés. Most of his work was on the deformation of surfaces, and in parti...
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Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis
1792 - 1843 (51 years)
Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis was a French mathematician, mechanical engineer and scientist. He is best known for his work on the supplementary forces that are detected in a rotating frame of reference, leading to the Coriolis effect. He was the first to apply the term travail for the transfer of energy by a force acting through a distance, and he prefixed the factor ½ to Leibniz's concept of vis viva, thus specifying today's kinetic energy.
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Herta Hammerbacher
1900 - 1985 (85 years)
Herta Hammersbacher was a German landscape architect who taught for more than 20 years at the TU Berlin. Life Hammersbacher was the daughter of engineer and economist John Hammersbacher and his wife Luise Feilitzsch. She initially grew up in Nuremberg. In 1910, the family moved to Berlin, where Hammersbacher attended the Cecilie Lyceum Girls school in Berlin-Wilmersdorf.
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Joe Weatherly
1922 - 1964 (42 years)
Joseph Herbert Weatherly was an American stock car racing driver. Weatherly was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2009 after winning NASCAR's Grand National Series championships in 1962 and 1963, three AMA Grand National Championships, and two NASCAR Modified championships.
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David R. Jones
1832 - 1915 (83 years)
David Richard Jones was a Welsh-American architect and poet. Early life Jones was born October 24, 1832, in Dolwyddelan, North Wales, the son of Richard James Jones and Ann Jones. On September 2, 1845, Richard, Ann and family immigrated to the United States. Richard purchased 480 acres of government land east of the village of Cambria, Wisconsin. He built a log house and moved there in the spring of 1846. The farm was named Oakland. In May 1852, David R. left Oakland for the city of Racine, Wisconsin, where he apprenticed with architect Lucas Bradley. His brother, Evan O. Jones, remained in...
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Michael George Cooke
1934 - 1990 (56 years)
Michael George Cooke was an American academic. Cooke graduated from Yale University in 1957, and completed doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 1962. He then began teaching at Yale, accepting an assistant professorship at his alma mater in 1968. Cooke later taught at the University of Iowa and at Boston University, before returning to Yale in 1971. Cooke was a defendant named for sexual harassment in the famous lawsuit Alexander v. Yale that helped established the legal responsibility of universities to curtail sexual misconduct. Cooke was later appointed by Yale as the Bird White Housum Professor of English Literature in 1987.
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John Edward Fletcher
#10386
Joshua Logan
1908 - 1988 (80 years)
Joshua Lockwood Logan III was an American theatre and film director, playwright and screenwriter, and actor. He shared a Pulitzer Prize for co-writing the musical South Pacific and was involved in writing other musicals.
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George Vernon Russell
1905 - 1989 (84 years)
George Vernon Russell was an American architect. He designed many residential properties and commercial buildings in Los Angeles, California. He also designed the masterplans and a library unit for the University of California, Riverside as well as the 1976 expansion of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
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Gerhard Fischer
1890 - 1977 (87 years)
Gerhard Fischer was a Norwegian architect and archaeologist. Biography Johan Adolf Gerhard Fischer was born in Bergen, Norway. He was the son of architect Adolph Fischer and Dorothea Margaretha Elisabeth Wilcken . Fischer studied at the Bergen Technical School , the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry in Oslo and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.
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Robert L. Sumwalt
1895 - Present (131 years)
Robert Llewellyn Sumwalt was an American engineer and academic, who was President of the University of South Carolina. Sumwalt was born in Baltimore on July 8, 1895. He began undergraduate studies at Delaware College in 1914, belonged to the Sigma Nu fraternity there, and received a B.S. degree in 1918, for which his thesis was "The Design of A Type Emergency Mill Building".
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John Shaw Sr.
1776 - 1832 (56 years)
John Shaw Sr. was an English architect. He was architect to Christ's Hospital in London, and to the Port of Ramsgate. Many of his works, including the church of St Dunstan-in-the-West in Fleet Street, London, were in a Gothic Revival style.
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Amaza Lee Meredith
1895 - 1984 (89 years)
Amaza Lee Meredith was an American architect, educator and artist. Meredith was unable to enter the profession as an architect because of "both her race and her sex" as an African-American woman, and worked primarily as an art teacher at Virginia State University , where she founded the art department. She is best known for her residence, Azurest South, where she and her partner, Dr. Edna Meade Colson, resided together. Moreover, she co-founded the Azurest Syndicate Inc., a vacation destination for black middle class Americans on Sag Harbor, New York. As an educated black woman, Meredith is a...
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John Webb
1754 - 1828 (74 years)
John Webb was an English landscape designer, who also trained as an architect. He studied under William Emes between 1782 and 1793, and then established his own practice. He worked mainly in the Midlands and the north of England. In Staffordshire he was commissioned by Josiah Wedgwood to work in the gardens of Lowther Hall and Maer Hall. In Cheshire he designed work in the gardens of Rode Hall, Tabley House, Crewe Hall, Tatton Park, and Ardene Hall. He followed Emes at Eaton Hall where he added new terrace walls, improved one of the approach roads by levelling it and planting 130,000 tree...
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Henry Wilson
1864 - 1934 (70 years)
Henry Wilson was a British architect, jeweller and designer. Career He was born at 91 Red Rock Street in West Derby near Liverpool on 12 March 1864. He studied at the Kidderminster School of Art before being articled to the architect Edward James Shrewsbury in Maidenhead. He then worked and was trained in the practices of John Oldrid Scott, John Belcher and J. D. Sedding.
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Jean Tschumi
1904 - 1962 (58 years)
Jean André Tschumi was a Swiss architect and professor at the . A member of the Modern Movement, Jean Tschumi is known for his buildings for Sandoz , Nestlé , la Mutuelle Vaudoise , as well as for some of his projects .
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Peter Meyn
1749 - 1808 (59 years)
Peter Meyn was a Danish architect. Early life and education Meyn was born in Copenhagen, the son of master joiner Anton Christian Meyn and Helena Klefts . He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts where he won the small gold medal in 1767 and the large gold medal in 1768 with a project for a royal military academy. The large gold medal qualified him for the first vacant travel stipend. He worked for Caspar Frederik Harsdorff on the marble baths in Frederiksberg Palace and as executing architect on Frederick V's Chapel at Roskilde Cathedral. In 1777, when Nicolai Abildgaard had re...
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Vincente Minnelli
1903 - 1986 (83 years)
Vincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director. He directed the classic movie musicals Meet Me in St. Louis , An American in Paris , The Band Wagon , and Gigi . An American in Paris and Gigi both won the Academy Award for Best Picture, with Minnelli winning Best Director for Gigi. In addition to having directed some of the best-known musicals of his day, Minnelli made many comedies and melodramas. He was married to Judy Garland from 1945 until 1951; the couple were the parents of Liza Minnelli.
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James Murphy
1834 - 1907 (73 years)
James Murphy, FAIA, was an Irish-American architect active in late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century New England, who designed numerous Roman Catholic churches and related structures. Early life and career Murphy was born in 1834 in County Tipperary, Ireland. In 1852, he emigrated to the United States along with his brother Michael. Soon after his arrival, he entered the Brooklyn, New York, firm of Patrick C. Keely as an apprentice. Keely was already an established architect specializing in ecclesiastical design. Eventually, Murphy became a partner in the firm, operating as Keely & Murphy.
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Hans Georg Küssner
1900 - 1984 (84 years)
Hans Georg Küssner was a German physicist and aeronautical scientist known for his work in the field of aeroelasticity. Work Hans Georg Küssner was born on September 14, 1900, in Bartenstein, then part of the East Prussian district of in the German Reich. Küssner studied at the Technical University of the Free City of Danzig and received his doctorate in 1928 with his dissertation "Das wirtschaftliche Ozeanflugzeug" under Viktor Rembold. In the same year he moved to the German Research Institute for Aviation in Berlin, where he worked on the aircraft problem of flutter, which was reflected ...
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William Wallace
William Wallace was a Scottish master mason and architect. He served as King's Master Mason under James VI. From 1615, Wallace is known to have been the leading mason working on the King's Lodgings at Edinburgh Castle. On 18 April 1617 he was appointed King's Master Mason, holding this post until his death. Wallace was commissioned in 1618 to rebuild the north range of Linlithgow Palace, which had collapsed in 1605. He was responsible for design as well as building, and executed the new range in an Anglo-Flemish style, which he helped to popularise in Scotland.
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Georg Ludwig Hartig
1764 - 1837 (73 years)
Georg Ludwig Hartig was a German forester. Education Hartig was born at Gladenbach, in present-day Hesse. After obtaining a practical knowledge of forestry from his uncle at Harzburg, he studied from 1781 to 1783 at the University of Giessen, which had commenced a course of instruction in forestry just a few years earlier, in 1778.
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