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,
#10551
David Seymour
1911 - 1956 (45 years)
David Seymour , or Chim , was a Polish photographer and photojournalist. Chim was known for his images from the Spanish Civil War, for co-founding Magnum Photos with Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa and George Rodger, and for his project "Children of War" with UNICEF that captured the plight of children in the aftermath of World War II.
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Edmund Burke
1850 - 1919 (69 years)
Edmund Burke was a highly regarded Canadian architect best known for building Toronto's Prince Edward Viaduct or "Bloor Street Viaduct", and Toronto's Robert Simpson store. He served as the vice-president, then President of the Ontario Association of Architects.
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William Etty
1675 - 1734 (59 years)
William Etty was an English architect and craftsman, best known for designing Holy Trinity Church, Leeds and Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland. Life and work He was the son of John Etty of York , also an architect and craftsman, to whom there is a monument in All Saints', North Street. William Etty's first known building was the Moot Hall, Leeds . Holy Trinity, Sunderland, followed in 1719 and Holy Trinity Church, Leeds, in 1722–7 . He also worked at John Vanbrugh's Castle Howard from 1701 onwards and at Seaton Delaval Hall from 1719.
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Ramsay Traquair
1874 - 1952 (78 years)
Ramsay Traquair was a Scottish architect and academic with strong links to Canada. He is remembered more for his numerous publications than for his buildings, which are limited in number. He was a particular expert on Early Canadian and French-Canadian architecture.
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Hugh Cleghorn
1820 - 1895 (75 years)
Hugh Francis Clarke Cleghorn was a Madras-born Scottish physician, botanist, forester and land owner. Sometimes known as the father of scientific forestry in India, he was the first Conservator of Forests for the Madras Presidency, and twice acted as Inspector General of Forests for India. After a career spent in India Cleghorn returned to Scotland in 1868, where he was involved in the first ever International Forestry Exhibition, advised the India Office on the training of forest officers, and contributed to the establishment of lectureships in botany at the University of St Andrews and in forestry at the University of Edinburgh.
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Hermann Wilhelm Vogel
1834 - 1898 (64 years)
Hermann Wilhelm Vogel was a German photochemist and photographer who discovered dye sensitization, which is of great importance to photography. Academic career After finishing school in Frankfurt , he studied at the Royal Industrial Institute of Berlin, earning his Ph.D. with Karl Friedrich August Rammelsberg in 1863. Vogel's thesis, which was published in Poggendorffs Annalen , had the title: Über das Verhalten des Chlorsilbers, Bromsilbers und Iodsilbers im Licht und die Theorie der Photographie . This marked the beginning of his research into the photographic process.
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Charles Francis O'Connor
1897 - 1979 (82 years)
Charles Francis "Frank" O'Connor was an American actor, painter, and rancher and the husband of novelist Ayn Rand. Frank O'Connor performed in several films, typically as an extra, during the silent and early sound eras until about 1934. While working on the set of the 1927 The King of Kings, O'Connor met Rand, and they eventually dated each other steadily. They married in 1929. When O'Connor and Rand moved to California so Rand could work on the movie adaptation of her novel The Fountainhead, O'Connor purchased and managed a ranch in the San Fernando Valley for several years. In addition to ...
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Konstantin Stanislavski
1863 - 1938 (75 years)
Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski was a seminal Soviet Russian theatre practitioner. He was widely recognized as an outstanding character actor, and the many productions that he directed garnered him a reputation as one of the leading theatre directors of his generation. His principal fame and influence, however, rests on his "system" of actor training, preparation, and rehearsal technique.
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David Wyn Roberts
1911 - 1982 (71 years)
David Wyn Roberts was a British architect and educator, who designed more university buildings for Cambridge University than any other architect. With a modernist practice based in Cambridge, he also designed many city housing projects, schools, and private residences.
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Louis Blériot
1872 - 1936 (64 years)
Louis Charles Joseph Blériot was a French aviator, inventor, and engineer. He developed the first practical headlamp for cars and established a profitable business manufacturing them, using much of the money he made to finance his attempts to build a successful aircraft. Blériot was the first to use the combination of hand-operated joystick and foot-operated rudder control as used to the present day to operate the aircraft control surfaces. Blériot was also the first to make a working, powered, piloted monoplane. In 1909 he became world-famous for making the first airplane flight across the English Channel, winning the prize of £1,000 offered by the Daily Mail newspaper.
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Robert Abraham
1774 - 1850 (76 years)
Robert Abraham was an English building surveyor and later architect in London. He was the son of a builder and was educated as a surveyor as a pupil of James Bowen. He turned to architecture after 1818, and was chiefly employed by the leading Roman Catholic families in England, including the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Shrewsbury.
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Thomas Claxton Fidler
1841 - 1917 (76 years)
Thomas Claxton Fidler was a British civil engineer, noteworthy for his 1887 book on bridge construction. Career As successor to Alfred Ewing, T. Claxton Fidler was appointed in 1891 a professor in the Chair of Engineering & Drawing at University College, Dundee. Ewing's Practical Treatise on Bridge-Construction went through 5 editions with the 3rd edition in 1901, 4th edition in 1909, and paperback 5th edition in 1924. The book was praised for its clarity and thoroughness. He retired as professor emeritus in 1909. In retirement he lived in Ventnor, Isle of Wight.
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Edith Schryver
1901 - 1984 (83 years)
Edith Eleanor Schryver was a founding partner of Lord & Schryver, the first female owned and operated landscape architecture firm in the Pacific Northwest from 1929 to 1969. Early years Edith Schryver was born on March 20, 1901, in Kingston, New York. She grew up in an apartment over the Kingston railroad station where her father, George Schryver, managed the restaurant and her mother Eleanor Young was a homemaker. In 1903, her brother Harry Schryver was born.
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Annie Rockfellow
1866 - 1954 (88 years)
Annie Graham Rockfellow was an influential and prolific architect active in Tucson, Arizona during the first half of the 20th century. Life and work Born in Mount Morris, New York on March 12, 1866, Annie was the daughter of Samuel L. and Julia Lucinda Rockfellow. She studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology receiving a special certificate in 1887. In 1905, she moved to Tombstone, Arizona to care for her father, Samuel, then living with his son, John A. Rockfellow. By 1916, she had moved to Tucson and worked for the firm of architect Henry O. Jaastad from 1916 to 1938 as chief designer.
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Ludwig Föppl
1887 - 1976 (89 years)
Karl Ludwig Föppl was a German mechanical engineer who succeeded his father, August Föppl as Professor of Technical Mechanics at the Technical University of Munich. During World War I, Föppl worked as a cryptanalyst, initially in Inspectorate 7/VI, and later in the war within General der Nachrichtenaufklärung.
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David Carlisle Humphreys
1855 - 1921 (66 years)
David Carlisle Humphreys was an engineer, architect, cartographer, hydrographer, inventor, educator and co-founder of Omicron Delta Kappa, a national leadership honor society, with chapters at more than three hundred college campuses. He was also a member of Phi Gamma Delta in the Class of 1878.
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Robert McKimson
1910 - 1977 (67 years)
Robert Porter McKimson Sr. was an American animator and illustrator, best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros. Cartoons and later DePatie–Freleng Enterprises. He wrote and directed many animated cartoon shorts starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, Hippety Hopper, Speedy Gonzales, and the Tasmanian Devil, among other characters. He also developed Bugs Bunny's design in the 1943 short Tortoise Wins by a Hare.
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Robert Hartig
1839 - 1901 (62 years)
Robert Hartig was a German forestry scientist and mycologist. He has been called the father of forest pathology. Biography He was educated at the Collegium Carolinum of Braunschweig, and at Berlin. In 1878, he was appointed professor of botany at Munich. Hartig made significant contributions to knowledge of vegetable pathology. Prior to his investigations on the progressive stages of disease in trees, little or nothing had been done in this area, so that Hartig may be considered the founder of arboreal pathology.
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David Sarnoff
1891 - 1971 (80 years)
David Sarnoff was a Russian and American businessman who played an important role in the American history of radio and television. He led RCA for most of his career in various capacities from shortly after its founding in 1919 until his retirement in 1970.
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Oscar Henry Cooper
1852 - 1932 (80 years)
#10571
Fredrik Ljungström
1875 - 1964 (89 years)
Fredrik Ljungström was a Swedish engineer, technical designer, and industrialist. Considered one of the foremost inventors of Sweden, Fredrik Ljungström accounted for hundreds of technical patents alone and in collaboration with his brother Birger Ljungström : from early bicycling free wheeling hubs techniques and mechanical automatic transmissions for vehicles, to steam turbines, air preheaters, and circular arc hulls for sailing boats. He co-founded companies such as The New Cycle Company, Ljungström Steam Turbine Co. and Ljungström Swedish Turbine Manufacturing Co. , and associated with ot...
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John Johnson
1807 - 1878 (71 years)
John Johnson was an English architect who specialised in religious buildings and churches in the Gothic style. He was regularly employed by the civil engineer Sir John Kelk to design the homes and public buildings Kelk funded. Johnson is best known for his collaboration with Alfred Meeson on designs for Alexandra Palace in north London; his designs for the Church of St Edward the Confessor in Romford, Essex; and for the Grade I listed St Mary's Church in Tidworth, Wiltshire, which was completed the year he died.
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John B. Peddle
1868 - 1933 (65 years)
John Bailey Peddle was an American mechanical engineer, Professor of Machine Design at the Rose Polytechnic Institute and author, known for his seminal work Construction of Graphical Charts, 1910. Life and work Peddle was the son of Charles R. and Mary Elizabeth Ball Peddle. He graduated at the Rose Rose Polytechnic Institute in 1888, and after six years in business joint the faculty in 1894 as instructor in machine design. From 1897 until 1933 he was Professor of Machine Design back at the Rose Polytechnic Institute.
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Willy Spatz
1861 - 1931 (70 years)
Willy Spatz was a German painter and lithographer. Life and work Born in Düsseldorf, Spatz, called Willy, was the fifth child of eight children of Gustav Wilhelm Gerhard Spatz, merchant and lottery collector in Düsseldorf and Johanna Wilhelmina, née Erbach.
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Archibald Barr
1855 - 1931 (76 years)
Archibald Barr LLD, FRS FRSE was a Scottish scientific engineer, inventor and businessman. He was a co-founder of Barr & Stroud, and invented the Barr & Stroud Rangefinder. Early life and education Barr was born in Glenfield House in Abbey, near Paisley, the third son of Archibald Barr, a yarn merchant, and Jeanie Stirrat, Barr was educated at Paisley Grammar School and apprenticed as an engineer to A F Craig & Co in Paisley before attending University of Glasgow to study engineering.
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Alfred Rosenberg
1893 - 1946 (53 years)
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of the NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs during the entire rule of Nazi Germany , and led Amt Rosenberg , an official Nazi body for cultural policy and surveillance, between 1934 and 1945. During World War II, Rosenberg was the head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories . After the war, he was convicted of crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials in 1946.
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Fritz Eckert
1852 - 1920 (68 years)
Fritz Herman Vilhelm Eckert, was a Swedish architect. Biography Fritz Herman Vilhelm Eckert was born in Stockholm, Sweden. He attended the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts from 1871-1878 and spent 1879 travelling abroad. He was employed as an architect by the Swedish public construction service in 1878 and was made a curator of this service in 1904. From 1880 he lectured at the Stockholm-based KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
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Edward Sargent
1842 - 1914 (72 years)
Edward A. Sargent was an English-born American architect, known for his work on New York City schools, churches, office buildings, clubs, armory and country homes. Life and career Sargent was born Ebenezer Alfred Sargent on November 1, 1842, in Hastings, England. He later changed his first name to Edward. Emigrating to New York City in 1867, he attended Cooper Union College.
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William Gillette
1853 - 1937 (84 years)
William Hooker Gillette was an American actor-manager, playwright, and stage-manager in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best remembered for portraying Sherlock Holmes on stage and in a 1916 silent film.
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Tom Arnold
1897 - 1969 (72 years)
Tom Arnold, OBE was a theatrical producer in the United Kingdom. Born in Yorkshire, Thomas Charles Arnold spent much of his life travelling, although he considered Brighton to be his second home. His business activities were extensive, and included opera, classical playss, films, revues, American rodeo and variety, ice spectaculars and circuses. He had interests in seaside piers and pleasure steamers and controlled the Ice Palace in Brighton. One of the most versatile and successful theatrical businessmen of his day, his empire extended to the continent and South Africa. He started in the the...
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Henry Kennedy
1814 - 1898 (84 years)
Henry Kennedy was a British architect. He was born the son of John and Anne Kennedy in Hammersmith, London. In the early 1840s, after training as an architect, he moved to live in Bangor, North Wales.
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William Jolly Duncan
1894 - 1960 (66 years)
William Jolly Duncan CBE FRS was a 20th century Scottish physicist remembered as a pioneer of aeroelasticity and "air flutter" theory critical to modern aviation. Life He was born in Govan on 26 April 1894 the only son and eldest child of Robert Duncan, of Ross & Duncan engineers and boilermakers, and his wife, Mary Ann Jolly . He was educated at Allan Glen's School in Glasgow, then, when his father was elected MP for Govan, he was sent to boarding school in England, studying at Dulwich College before studying Engineering at University College, London under Prof J. D. Cormack.
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James Wilson
1816 - 1900 (84 years)
James Wilson was a prominent Victorian architect practising in Bath, Somerset and partner in the firm Wilson & Willcox. On 12 January 1843 he married Maria Buckley of Llanelli, and in 1846 they had a son, James Buckley Wilson, who followed his father to also become an architect.
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Rudolf Diesel
1858 - 1913 (55 years)
Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel was a German inventor and mechanical engineer who is famous for having invented the Diesel engine, which burns Diesel fuel; both are named after him. Early life and education Diesel was born at 38 Rue Notre Dame de Nazareth in Paris, France in 1858 the second of three children of Elise and Theodor Diesel. His parents were Bavarian immigrants living in Paris. Theodor Diesel, a bookbinder by trade, left his home town of Augsburg, Bavaria, in 1848. He met his wife, a daughter of a Nuremberg merchant, in Paris in 1855 and became a leather goods manufacturer there.
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Washington Roebling
1837 - 1926 (89 years)
Washington Augustus Roebling was an American civil engineer who supervised the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, designed by his father John A. Roebling. He served in the Union Army during the American Civil War as an officer at the Battle of Gettysburg.
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Juan Antonio Scasso
1892 - 1973 (81 years)
Juan Antonio Scasso was a Uruguayan architect and urbanist. He was also an association football leader at C.A. Peñarol, of which he was chairman. Works Escuela Experimental de Malvín Estadio Centenario Hotel Miramar Urban expansion of La Paloma, Rocha
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John Ridley
1806 - 1887 (81 years)
John Ridley was an English miller, inventor, landowner, investor, farming machinery manufacturer, farmer and preacher who lived in Australia between 1839 and 1853. He is best known for the development, manufacture and invention of "Ridley's Stripper", a machine that removed the heads of grain, with the threshing being done later by a separate machine. The suburb of Ridleyton in the city of Adelaide, Australia was named for him.
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Louis C. Spiering
1874 - 1912 (38 years)
Louis Clemens Spiering was an American architect and architecture professor based in St. Louis who worked on building designs for the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904 and other local commissions. He died at the age of 37.
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John Douglas
1709 - 1778 (69 years)
John Douglas of Pinkerton was a Scottish architect who designed and reformed several country houses in the Scottish Lowlands. His work deserves to be noted for what the 2002 history of Scottish architecture remarks as an approach "of relentless surgery or concealment.". His most notable works are Killin and Ardeonaig Church, Stirlingshire ; Archerfield House, East Lothian ; Finlaystone House, Renfewshire , Wardhouse , Insch, Aberdeenshire ; and Campbeltown Town Hall, Argyll and Bute . Several of these are listed buildings.
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Enzo Ferrari
1898 - 1988 (90 years)
Enzo Anselmo Giuseppe Maria Ferrari was an Italian motor racing driver and entrepreneur, the founder of the Scuderia Ferrari Grand Prix motor racing team, and subsequently of the Ferrari automobile marque. He was widely known as Il Commendatore or Il Drake. In his final years he was often referred to as L'Ingegnere or Il Grande Vecchio .
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Richard S. Morse
1911 - 1988 (77 years)
Richard S. Morse was an American inventor and scientist credited with the invention of orange juice concentrate, the founder of the Minute Maid, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, Assistant Secretary of the Army, and senior lecturer at Sloan School of Management of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Eduard Krüger
1901 - 1967 (66 years)
Eduard Krüger was a German architect. His work was part of the architecture event in the art competition at the 1936 Summer Olympics.
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Charles B. Breed
1875 - 1958 (83 years)
Charles Blaney Breed was professor of civil engineering and head of the Department of Civil and Sanitary Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He studied and worked at MIT from the late 1800s to 1946. He co-wrote with George L. Hosmer the textbook, The Principles and Practice of Surveying, which was republished multiple times during the first half of the twentieth century. He was a consulting engineer in and around Boston until 1950.
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Ira Osborn Baker
1853 - 1925 (72 years)
Ira Osborn Baker was an engineering professor at the University of Illinois and author. Biography Baker was born in Linton, Indiana, on Sep. 23 1853 the son of Amanda Osborn Baker and Hiram Walker Baker. Baker enrolled at the University of Illinois in March 1871 and graduated in civil engineering in 1874, to become an assistant in civil engineering and physics and then in charge of the department in 1878. He was in charge of the civil engineering department for 39 years, with an overall teaching career spanning 48 years. His married his first wife Emma Burr on 1877-08-05 and his second wife A...
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Eliza Newkirk Rogers
1877 - 1966 (89 years)
Eliza Newkirk Rogers was an architect and a professor at Wellesley College. Biography Eliza Newkirk grew up in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, and pursued undergraduate degrees in art and math at Wellesley College, beginning in 1896 and graduating in 1900. She garnered a fellowship in architecture and attended classes from 1902-4 at MIT and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Subsequently, she spent 15 months in Italy researching her thesis "Domes of Renaissance Italy", which was completed in 1906; she received a master's degree from Wellesley in 1907.
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Johann Balthasar Lauterbach
1663 - 1694 (31 years)
Johann Balthasar Lauterbach was a German mathematician, architect and master builder at the Court in Braunschweig, from 1688 until his death. Life and work His father, Johann , was a shoemaker and guild master. His half-brother, from his father's second marriage, was the cartographer, . After grammar school, he studied theology at the University of Tübingen, then studied mathematics at the University of Jena.
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Alfred Morton Githens
1876 - 1973 (97 years)
Alfred Morton Githens was an American architect particularly known for his work designing library buildings. Early life and education Githens was born on August 25, 1876, in Philadelphia to William H.H. Githens, a doctor, and Frances Adelle Stotesbury Githens. He attended Episcopal Boys Academy and the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1896 with a B.S. in Architecture. He received a Stewardson Scholarship to study at the American Academy in Rome and then spent two years at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris.
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Robert Alfred Herman
1861 - 1927 (66 years)
Robert Alfred Herman was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who coached many students to a high wrangler rank in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos. Herman was senior wrangler in 1882. In the early days of Tripos, coaches were in private business in rooms off-campus. In the 1880s and 1890s instruction at college improved to the point that coaches merely supervised their students’ progress. Under these conditions the tradition of private coaching fell away, and fellows such as Herman coached students.
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Jeremy Greene
Jeremy A. Greene is the William H. Welch Professor of Medicine and the History of Medicine, at Johns Hopkins University. Career Greene is a professor of Medicine and History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Greene has studied the generic drug industry. His work appears in Slate.
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William Hamilton
1751 - 1801 (50 years)
William Hamilton was an English painter and illustrator. Life Hamilton was born in Chelsea, London, but travelled and worked in Italy with Antonio Zucchi for several years. He trained first as an architectural draftsman, but soon moved to theatrical portraits and scenes from plays.
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