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,
#10651
John Philip Holland
1840 - 1914 (74 years)
John Philip Holland was an Irish engineer who developed the first submarine to be formally commissioned by the US Navy, and the first Royal Navy submarine, Holland 1. Early life Holland, the second of four siblings, all boys, was born in a coastguard cottage in Liscannor, County Clare, Ireland where his father, John Sr., was a member of the Royal Coastguard Service. His mother, a native Irish speaker from Liscannor, Máire Ní Scannláin , was John Holland's second wife; his first, Anne Foley Holland, believed to be a native of Kilkee, died in 1835. The area was heavily Irish-speaking and Holla...
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Michiel Coignet
1549 - 1623 (74 years)
Michiel Coignet was a Flemish polymath who made significant contributions to various disciplines including cosmography, mathematics, navigation and cartography. He also built new and improved scientific instruments and made military engineering designs.
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Kate Cory
1861 - 1958 (97 years)
Kate Cory was an American photographer and artist. She studied art in New York, and then worked as commercial artist. She traveled to the southwestern United States in 1905 and lived among the Hopi for several years, recording their lives in about 600 photographs.
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Jean Painlevé
1902 - 1989 (87 years)
Jean Painlevé was a photographer and filmmaker who specialized in underwater fauna. He was the son of mathematician and twice prime minister of France Paul Painlevé. Upbringing A few days after Painlevé was born, his mother, Marguerite Petit de Villeneuve, died from complications arising from an infection contracted during childbirth. Painlevé, an only son, was raised by his father's sister Marie, a widow.
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Willem van Bemmel
1630 - 1708 (78 years)
Willem van Bemmel, or Guillaume, or Wilhelm von Bemmel , was a Dutch Golden Age landscape painter who moved to Germany. He was born in Utrecht, where he was a student of Herman Saftleven. He made a Grand Tour to Rome, spending first the years 1647–9 in Venice before moving to Rome where he stayed for six years and became a member of the Bentvueghels. From Rome he crossed the Alps to Nuremberg. He died in Nuremberg, aged 78.
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Constantin C. Teodorescu
1892 - 1972 (80 years)
Constantin C. Teodorescu was a Romanian engineer. Born in Bucharest to a low-ranking employee of the Education Ministry, he attended primary school in his native city. Subsequently, he went to Iași on a scholarship, first going to the Costache Negruzzi High School, followed by the National High School. He graduated from the latter institution's science department in 1911, then winning a place at the National School for Bridges and Roads. There, his professors included Anghel Saligny, Elie Radu, Ion Ionescu-Bizeț, David Emmanuel and Nicolae Vasilescu-Karpen. After obtaining a degree as a bridg...
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Victor Fürth
1893 - 1984 (91 years)
Victor Fürth , was a Czech-Jewish architect working in Prague until 1939. Life His firm designed the Te-Ta department Store in Prague. This 7-story building can be seen at Jungmannova Street 747/28 110 00 Praha-Nové Město . It was renovated in 1997 at which time underground parking was added, and an apartment wing was included in the rear. The reinforced concrete building contains a parterre which allows passage between Jungmannova Street and the Franciscan Garden.
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Geoffrey de Havilland
1882 - 1965 (83 years)
Captain Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, was an English aviation pioneer and aerospace engineer. The aircraft company he founded produced the Mosquito, which has been considered the most versatile warplane ever built, and his Comet was the first jet airliner to go into production.
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Silston Cory-Wright
1888 - 1976 (88 years)
Silston Cory-Wright was an English-born New Zealand engineer, university lecturer, soldier, and company director. Early life Silston Cory-Wright was born at Sigglesthorne Hall, Hornsea, Yorkshire, England, on 22 September 1888. He was the son of George Henry Cory Wright and his wife, Ellen Green Wade. The grandson of Sir William Wright, the double-barrelled surname came about as a result of a disagreement between George's side of the family and his half-siblings.
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John Muir
1918 - 1977 (59 years)
John Muir was a structural engineer who worked for National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics , who "dropped out," 1960s-style, to become a writer and long-haired car mechanic with a garage in Taos, New Mexico, specializing in maintenance and repair of Volkswagens. He was a distant relative of the naturalist John Muir.
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Henry Payne
1871 - 1945 (74 years)
Henry Payne FRAeS M.Inst.C.E. was dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Melbourne. He was also the first occupant of the Corporation Chair of Engineering, South African College, Cape Town where he designed and equipped the Civil and Mechanical Engineering Departments. Payne's entry in the Dictionary of National Biography describes him as 'Dignified in manner and precise in speech, he was respected as a man of principle'.
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Fritz Kortner
1892 - 1970 (78 years)
Fritz Kortner was an Austrian stage and film actor and theatre director. Life and career Kortner was born in Vienna as Fritz Nathan Kohn into a Jewish family. He studied at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. After graduating, he joined Max Reinhardt in Berlin in 1911 and then Leopold Jessner in 1916. After his breakthrough performance in Ernst Toller's Transfiguration in 1919, he became one of Germany's best-known character actors and the nation's foremost performer of Expressionist works. He also appeared in over ninety films beginning in 1916.
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Edward B. Durham
1875 - Present (151 years)
Edward Benjamin Durham was an American mining engineer and Professor at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, especially known for his work on mine surveying. Biography Durham received his MA in mining at the Columbia University in 1893, where he was classmate of Halbert Powers Gillette.
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Giovan Battista Aleotti
1546 - 1636 (90 years)
Giovan Battista Aleotti was an Italian architect. Biography Aleotti was born in Argenta. For some years, Aleotti went to Ferrara, to work under Alfonso II d'Este where with Alessandro Balbi he designed the façade of the University in 1610. He gave a new façade to the Rocca Scandiano, the home of the Boiardo family. He is known for his designs in Parma, including the Teatro Farnese and, with the assistance of his pupil Giovanni Battista Magnani, the hexagonal church of Santa Maria del Quartiere . He also helped design the facades of the Palazzi Bentivoglio and Bevilacqua-Costabili in Ferrara...
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Fleeming Jenkin
1833 - 1885 (52 years)
Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin FRS FRSE LLD was Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, remarkable for his versatility. Known to the world as the inventor of the cable car or telpherage, he was an electrician and cable engineer, economist, lecturer, linguist, critic, actor, dramatist and artist. His descendants include the engineer Charles Frewen Jenkin and through him the Conservative MPs Patrick, Lord Jenkin of Roding and Bernard Jenkin.
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Julius Erasmus Hilgard
1825 - 1891 (66 years)
Julius Erasmus Hilgard was a Bavarian-American engineer. Biography Julius Erasmus Hilgard was born at Zweibrücken, Rhineland-Palatinate, Kingdom of Bavaria on January 7, 1825. His father, Theodore Erasmus Hilgard, was for many years Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals, but on account of his liberal opinions was so dissatisfied with conditions in his native country that in 1835 he emigrated to America. The journey from his native place to Havre was made in wagons. After a voyage of 62 days, the family landed at New Orleans at Christmas, and journeyed up the Mississippi to St. Louis, and thence to a farm at Belleville, Illinois.
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Johann Andreas Schubert
1808 - 1870 (62 years)
Johann-Andreas Schubert was a German general engineer , designer and university lecturer. Life Schubert was born on 19 March 1808 in Wernesgrün in the Kingdom of Saxony in Germany. He was the son of a day labourer and was brought up by foster parents, who enabled him to have a sound education at the St Thomas School in Leipzig, at the garrison school at Königstein Fortress and at the Freemasons Institute in Dresden's Friedrichstadt.
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James D. Hutton
1828 - 1868 (40 years)
James Dempsey Hutton was an artist, surveyor, cartographer and early photographer active in Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota and North Dakota in the years before the American Civil War. He served as an engineer in the Confederate States Army in that conflict, and died in exile in Mexico in 1868.
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Friedrich Wilhelm Leopold Pfeil
1783 - 1859 (76 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Leopold Pfeil was a German forester. Pfeil was born in Rammelburg. From 1801 onward, he trained and worked as a forester at several sites in the Harz region, Neuchâtel and Silesia. As a soldier in the Napoleonic Wars he fought at the Battles of Großbeeren and Wartenburg. From 1816 he was employed as a forester in the service of Heinrich Karl Erdmann, prince of Carolath-Beuthen. In 1821 he was awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Berlin, and despite lacking a university education, was named a professor of forest science. In 1830 when the department of forestry w...
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Constantin Avram
1911 - 1987 (76 years)
Constantin Avram was a Romanian structural engineer. Born in Ciumași, Bacău County, his parents Nicolai and Maria were peasants; in addition, his father was a mechanic for Căile Ferate Române. The couple worked hard for their children's education; their four sons all earned university degrees, with three becoming structural engineers and the fourth a chemical engineer. Constantin attended Ferdinand I High School in Bacău from 1923 to 1930. He then enrolled in the military engineers officers' school in Bucharest, graduating first in his class in 1932 and becoming a second lieutenant in the Romanian Army.
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May Hollinworth
1895 - 1968 (73 years)
May Hollinworth was an Australian theatre producer and director, former radio actress, and founder of the Metropolitan Theatre in Sydney. The daughter of a theatrical producer, she was introduced to the theatre at a young age. She graduated with a science degree, and worked in the chemistry department of the University of Sydney, before being appointed as director of the Sydney University Dramatic Society, a post she held from 1929 until 1943
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Guido Marx
1871 - 1949 (78 years)
Guido Hugo Marx was an American mechanical engineer who was active in progressive politics, the technocracy movement, and civil liberties. He contributed to helping feed and house hundreds of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake survivors and led the Stanford Academic Council through changes in academic freedom, culminating in founding both the American Association of University Professors and the California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
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Frederick Stark Pearson
1861 - 1915 (54 years)
Fred Stark Pearson was an American electrical engineer and entrepreneur. Biography Pearson was the son of Ambrose and Hannah Pearson. He graduated from Tufts University in 1883 with an A.M.B. and received an A.M.M. degree one year later. Previously, for one year , he was instructor in chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; later , he was instructor in mathematics and applied mechanics at Tufts College. From college, he went on to develop the electric transportation system in Boston and, with electric powered streetcars of major importance, in 1894 he was appointed the head engineer for Metropolitan Street Railways in New York City.
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Roberto Valturio
1405 - 1475 (70 years)
Roberto Valturio was an Italian engineer and writer born in Rimini. He was the author of the military treatise De Re militari . The work consists of a preface, with a dedication to Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta; a list of the classical works mentioned and an introduction on the history of warfare. The work was widely known: King Louis XI of France, King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, Duke of Urbino Federico da Montefeltro and the ruler of Florence Lorenzo de' Medici had a copy of the printed book. In Leonardo da Vinci's list of books Roberto Valturio has been mentioned. This indicates that Leo...
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François d'Aguilon
1567 - 1617 (50 years)
François d'Aguilon was a Jesuit, mathematician, physicist, and architect from the Spanish Netherlands. D'Aguilon was born in Brussels; his father was a secretary to Philip II of Spain. He became a Jesuit in Tournai in 1586. In 1598 he moved to Antwerp, where he helped plan the construction of the Saint Carolus Borromeus church. In 1611, he started a special school of mathematics in Antwerp, fulfilling a dream of Christopher Clavius for a Jesuit mathematical school; in 1616, he was joined there by Grégoire de Saint-Vincent. The notable geometers educated at this school included Jean-Charles d...
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Janet Parker
1938 - 1978 (40 years)
#10677
Hyrum Manwaring
1877 - 1956 (79 years)
Hyrum Manwaring was the president of Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho, from 1930 to 1944. Ricks College was the precursor to today's Brigham Young University–Idaho, a private university operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . Manwaring overcame delayed schooling – he was almost 29 when he graduated from high school – to become a dedicated champion of education. He led Ricks College through difficult times, when dissolution seemed inevitable, to a point where its future was assured. After retiring from the presidency in 1944, Manwaring continued to teach, and take classes ...
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Hugh Hutton Stannus
1840 - 1908 (68 years)
Hugh Hutton Stannus was a sculptor, architect and author. In his early career he worked with the sculptor Alfred Stevens; he was in later life a lecturer at art colleges. Life Stannus was born in Sheffield on 21 March 1840; his father, the Rev. Bartholomew Stannus, was a member of an old Irish family, and his mother Jane was daughter of the Rev. William Hutton of Belfast. His first artistic training was gained in Sheffield under Henry Dent Lomas at the Sheffield School of Art, after which he was articled to the firm of H. E. Hoole & Co. in that town, whose foundry was then engaged in producin...
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William Hutchison McMillan
1886 - 1947 (61 years)
William Hutchison McMillan OBE MIME FRSE was a British mining engineer. He was Head of the Department of Mining and Fuels at University College, Nottingham then Professor of Mining in Edinburgh. In authorship he usually appears as W. H. McMillan.
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Walter Mulford
1877 - 1955 (78 years)
Walter Mulford was an American forester for the state of Connecticut, and a professor. He was the first state forester in the United States. Biography He was born on September 16, 1877, in Millville, New Jersey.
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Adolf Miethe
1862 - 1927 (65 years)
Adolf Miethe was a German scientist, lens designer, photochemist, photographer, author and educator. He co-invented the first practical photographic flash and made important contributions to the progress of practical color photography.
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Dave Fleischer
1894 - 1979 (85 years)
Dave Fleischer was an American film director and producer who co-owned Fleischer Studios with his older brother Max Fleischer. He was a native of New York City. Biography Fleischer was the youngest of five brothers and grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a poor Jewish neighbourhood. By the time he was born, his father had lost his means of livelihood due to the mass production of garments.
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Robert Wilson
1803 - 1882 (79 years)
Robert Wilson FRSE FRSSA was a Scottish engineer, remembered as inventor of a special kind of a screw propeller, which he demonstrated in 1827 . Wilson also designed a self-acting motion for steam hammers which was key to making them practical for industrial use, among many other inventions.
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Peter Harrison
1918 - 1990 (72 years)
Peter Firman Harrison , town planner, was a champion of the Griffin Plan for Canberra and an influential advocate for the public interest in the development of Australia's national capital. Early career Harrison grew up in Sydney during the Great Depression. Between 1934 and 1951, he undertook part-time architecture studies, before switching to town planning studies, while working as a draftsman at AGL, the Commonwealth Department of the Interior, Commonwealth Department of Works and Housing, and the Cumberland County Council. He was appointed senior lecturer in town planning at the University of Sydney in 1951.
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Pavel Shteller
1910 - 1977 (67 years)
Pavel Pavlovich Shteller was a Soviet architect, urban planner, and teacher. In the 1930s, he was a noted swimmer and water polo player. He was made an Honored Architect of the RSFSR
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Wayne Andrews
1913 - 1987 (74 years)
Wayne Andrews was an American historian and architectural photographer. He was the author of numerous books, including Battle for Chicago, and Siegfried`s Curse: The German Journey from Nietzsche to Hesse.
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Ely Jacques Kahn
1884 - 1972 (88 years)
Ely Jacques Kahn was an American commercial architect who designed numerous skyscrapers in New York City in the twentieth century. In addition to buildings intended for commercial use, Kahn's designs ranged throughout the possibilities of architectural programs, including facilities for the film industry. Many of the buildings he designed under the 1916 Zoning Resolution feature architectural setbacks to keep the building profitably close to its permitted "envelope"; these have been likened to the stepped form of the Tower of Babel. Kahn is also known for his guidance to author Ayn Rand.
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Robert James Moon
1911 - 1989 (78 years)
Robert James Moon was an American physicist, chemist and engineer. A graduate of the University of Chicago, he served on the faculty there and participated in the Manhattan Project. External links Who Was Robert J. Moon? https://21sci-tech.com/articles/drmoon.html 21st Century Science & TechnologyUniversity of Chicago Photo Archive, Accelerator Building http://photoarchive.lib.uchicago.edu/db.xqy?one=apf2-00146.xmlInterview: Robert Moon. Part I. 'We grew up confident we could solve any problem.' https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1987/eirv14n43-19871030/eirv14n43-19871030_031-dr_robert_moon.pdf Executive Intelligence Review, Vol.
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Raoul Wallenberg
1912 - 1947 (35 years)
Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg was a Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat, and humanitarian. He saved thousands of Jews in German-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust from German Nazis and Hungarian fascists during the later stages of World War II. While serving as Sweden's special envoy in Budapest between July and December 1944, Wallenberg issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings which he declared as Swedish territory.
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William Adam
1689 - 1748 (59 years)
William Adam was a Scottish architect, mason, and entrepreneur. He was the foremost architect of his time in Scotland, designing and building numerous country houses and public buildings, and often acting as contractor as well as architect. Among his best known works are Hopetoun House near Edinburgh, and Duff House in Banff. His individual, exuberant style built on the Palladian style, but with Baroque details inspired by Vanbrugh and Continental architecture.
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Frederick B. Llewellyn
1897 - 1971 (74 years)
Frederick Britton Llewellyn was a noted American electrical engineer. Llewellyn was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He took a course at the Marconi School for Wireless Operators in 1915, spent some three years in the merchant marine, and almost a year in the Navy in 1917-18. He then studied under Professor Alan Hazeltine at Stevens Institute of Technology, receiving his M.E. degree in 1922. After a year as laboratory assistant to Dr. F. K. Vreeland, he joined Western Electric in 1923, transferring in 1925 to Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he worked on the long-wave transatlantic telephone based in Rocky Point, New York.
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Ambrose McCarthy Patterson
1877 - 1967 (90 years)
Ambrose McCarthy Patterson was a painter and printmaker. Life Patterson was born in Daylesford, Victoria. He studied at the Melbourne Art School under E. Phillips Fox and Tudor St. George Tucker, at the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne and continued his studies in Paris at the Académie Colarossi and the Académie Julian under Lucien Simon, André Lhote and Maxime Maufra. In Paris he became a friend of compatriot Nellie Melba, the famous soprano; Patterson's brother, Tom, was married to Melba's sister, Belle. Through Melba's influence, he was able to continue his studies with John Singer Sargent.
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William Allen
1870 - 1928 (58 years)
William Robert Allen was an early 20th-century architect in Utah. His most important work, the Davis County Courthouse, is no longer extant, yet a number of his works are listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Allen received training through the International Correspondence Schools which was based in Scranton, Pennsylvania, but allowed him to receive training and continue work in Utah.
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Asger Ostenfeld
1866 - 1931 (65 years)
Asger Skovgaard Ostenfeld was a Danish civil engineer who specialized in the theory of steel and reinforced concrete structures. He is now considered to be the founding father of the theory of structures in Denmark.
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Hans Hausamann
1897 - 1974 (77 years)
Ernst Johann Hausamann was a Swiss photographer, businessman, and freemason who later became an intelligence officer. Hausamann's father was a photographer, and when Hausamann grew up he became an amateur photographer himself. He joined the Swiss Militia during World War I and this established his political character. He was initially opposed to left-wing politics and supported a strong military. After the war, he opened a specialist photography business and published an associated magazine, that eventually led the company to work for the Swiss press. During the early 1930's, he worked in the militia's education film service, where he created films that promoted a strong military.
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Roy Williams
1907 - 1976 (69 years)
Roy Williams was an artist and entertainer for The Walt Disney Studios, best known as "Big Roy," the adult mouseketeer for four seasons on the Mickey Mouse Club television series and for his invention of the Mickey Mouse hats.
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Richard O. Papenguth
1903 - 1970 (67 years)
Richard O. Papenguth was an American college swimming coach at Purdue University and coach of the women's swim team in the 1952 Summer Olympics that won two bronze medals. Papenguth was a graduate of the University of Michigan. Papenguth is a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame
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Lyman Cornelius Smith
1850 - 1910 (60 years)
Lyman Cornelius Smith was an American innovator and industrialist. He is buried in a mausoleum in Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse, New York. Early business ventures L.C. Smith's first business venture occurred in 1873, when he opened a livestock commission in New York City. The business failed within two years. Undeterred, Smith next attempted to establish a lumber business in Syracuse in 1875. His success in lumber was limited. Again on the verge of financial failure, Smith decided to enter into the lucrative business of producing firearms. Although he and members of his family manufactured guns, they are not the 'Smith' from Smith & Wesson.
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John Perry
1743 - 1810 (67 years)
John Perry was the founder of the Blackwall Yard, where he built ships largely for the East India Company. He was buried at St Matthias Old Church, Poplar. Ephraim Seehl, an apothecary and chemist, was married to his sister Sarah.
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Karel Sluijterman
1863 - 1931 (68 years)
Theodorus Karel Lodewijk Sluijterman, was a Dutch architect, furniture designer, interior designer, illustrator, ceramist, book binding designer and professor. Life and work From 1880 to 1884 Sluijterman studied at the Polytechnic School in Delft under the designer Adolf le Comte and at the Academy of Fine and Applied Courses in Rotterdam.
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