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
Su Song
1020 - 1101 (81 years)
Su Song , courtesy name Zirong , was a Chinese polymathic scientist and statesman. Excelling in a variety of fields, he was accomplished in mathematics, astronomy, cartography, geography, horology, pharmacology, mineralogy, metallurgy, zoology, botany, mechanical engineering, hydraulic engineering, civil engineering, invention, art, poetry, philosophy, antiquities, and statesmanship during the Song dynasty .
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Imogen Cunningham
1883 - 1976 (93 years)
Imogen Cunningham was an American photographer known for her botanical photography, nudes, and industrial landscapes. Cunningham was a member of the California-based Group f/64, known for its dedication to the sharp-focus rendition of simple subjects.
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Howard M. Raymond
1872 - 1943 (71 years)
Howard Monroe Raymond was an American physicist, Professor of Physics and President of the Armour Institute of Technology from 1892 to 1932, also known as the editor of the early 20th century Cyclopedia of Modern Shop Practice.
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Sune Lindström
1906 - 1989 (83 years)
Sune Lindström was a Swedish architect. He was born in Malmö, Sweden, the son of Gustaf Lindström and Astrid Dahlén. He studied at the Royal Institute of Technology between 1926 and 1931. He followed with training at the Bauhaus in Dessau. Lindström was a professor at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg from 1959 to 1969.
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Teofil Żebrawski
1800 - 1887 (87 years)
Teofil Wincenty Żebrawski was a Polish mathematician, bibliographer, architect, biologist, archeologist, cartographer and geodesist; an erudite and polymath. Pioneer of the modern Polish mathematical bibliography.
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Lysandros Kaftanzoglou
1811 - 1885 (74 years)
Lysandros Kaftanzoglou was a Greek architect of the 19th century and Chancellor of the National Technical University of Athens. He was born in Thessaloniki. During the massacres of the Greek community in 1821 by the Ottomans, his family left to Marseille. He later studied architecture in Rome.
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Nathan Clifford Ricker
1843 - 1924 (81 years)
Nathan Clifford Ricker, D.Arch was a professor and architect known for his work at the University of Illinois. He was born on a farm near Acton, Maine June 24, 1843. In 1875, he was married to Mary Carter Steele of Galesburg, Illinois. Mary Steele graduated with honors from the University of Illinois in 1875. His only child, Ethel, was born in 1883. He died March 19, 1924.
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Eduardo Le Monnier
1873 - 1931 (58 years)
Eduardo Le Monnier was a French architect recognized for his work in Brazil, Uruguay and mostly in Argentina. Education He studied at the National School of Decorative Arts in Paris and moved to Brazil in 1894. There he worked on different projects, such as the General Carneiro station in Belo Horizonte and was a professor at the School of Fine Arts in Curitiba.
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Oskar Sosnowski
1880 - 1939 (59 years)
Oskar Sosnowski was a leading Polish architect and art conservator and restorer of monuments during the period between World War I and World War II. Biography Sosnowski received his education at a Russian polytechnic in Warsaw, in the Engineering and Construction Faculty Department.
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Lu Chih-houng
1897 - 1973 (76 years)
Lu Chih-houng , courtesy name Youhai , was a Chinese/Taiwanese educator, metallographist, materials scientist and engineer. Biography Lu was born into a prominent family in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, Qing dynasty. His family was descendants of Tang dynasty Chancellor Lu Zhi. His father was former President of Zhejiang Provincial Library .
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Charles Janet
1849 - 1932 (83 years)
Charles Janet was a French engineer, company director, inventor and biologist. He is also known for his innovative left-step presentation of the periodic table of chemical elements. Life and work Janet graduated from the École Centrale Paris in 1872, and worked for some years as a chemist and engineer in a few factories in Puteaux , Rouen , and Saint-Ouen . He was then employed by Philippe Alphonse Dupont, at Société A. Dupont & Cie, a factory that produced bone buttons and fine brushes. He married Berthe Marie Antonia Dupont, the daughter of the owner, in November 1877, and worked there for the rest of his life, finding time for research in various branches of science.
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Hans Linstow
1787 - 1851 (64 years)
Hans Ditlev Franciscus von Linstow was a Danish/Norwegian architect who designed the Royal Palace in Oslo and much of the surrounding park and the street Karl Johans gate. Background Hans Ditlev Franciscus von Linstow was born in Nordsjælland, Denmark. His parents were Hartvig Christoph von Linstow and Charlotta Benedicta Eleonora von der Lühe . Linstow belonged to a noble family from Mecklenburg who were naturalized in Denmark. He grew up in Hirschholm Castle in Hørsholm. He matriculated in 1805 and earned a law degree at Copenhagen University in 1812. He first studied painting and draw...
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Moritz von Jacobi
1801 - 1874 (73 years)
Moritz Hermann or Boris Semyonovich Jacobi was a Prussian and Russian Imperial engineer and physicist of Jewish descent. Jacobi worked mainly in the Russian Empire. He furthered progress in galvanoplasticss, electric motors, and wire telegraphy.
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Luigi Piccinato
1899 - 1983 (84 years)
Luigi Piccinato was an Italian architect and town planner. Works Urbanistica medioevale, Florence, 1943Napoli Centrale railway station, Naples, 1954Stadio Adriatico, Pescara, 1955A-Block Apartment Buildings in the First Section of Ataköy, Istanbul, 1957La strada come strumento di progettazione urbanistica, Rome, 1960
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Nigel Gresley
1876 - 1941 (65 years)
Sir Herbert Nigel Gresley was a British railway engineer. He was one of Britain's most famous steam locomotive engineers, who rose to become Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London and North Eastern Railway . He was the designer of some of the most famous steam locomotives in Britain, including the LNER Class A1 and LNER Class A4 4-6-2 Pacific engines. An A1 Pacific, Flying Scotsman, was the first steam locomotive officially recorded over 100 mph in passenger service, and an A4, number 4468 Mallard, still holds the record for being the fastest steam locomotive in the world .
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Ernest George Coker
1869 - 1946 (77 years)
Prof Ernest George Coker FRS FRSE MIME MICE Wh.Ex. was a British mathematician and engineer. He won the Howard N. Potts Medal for Physics in 1922, and the Rumford Medal for work on polarised light in 1936. He was an expert on stress analysis and Photoelasticity. He contributed to Encyclopædia Britannica and other works under the initials E.G.C.
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Joseph Reed
1823 - 1890 (67 years)
Joseph Reed , a Cornishman by birth, was a prolific and influential Victorian era architect in Melbourne, Australia. He established his practice in 1853, which through various partnerships and name changes, continues today as Bates Smart, one of the oldest firms continually operating in Australia.
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Franz Dischinger
1887 - 1953 (66 years)
Franz Dischinger was a pioneering German civil and structural engineer, responsible for the development of the modern cable-stayed bridge. He was also a pioneer of the use of prestressed concrete, patenting the technique of external prestressing in 1934.
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Alfred Friedrich Bluntschli
1842 - 1930 (88 years)
Alfred Friedrich Bluntschli was a Swiss architect and educator. Life and work Son of a distinguished legal scholar, Johann Caspar Bluntschli, A. F. "Fritz" Bluntschli commenced his architectural education in 1860 at the Zürich Polytechnikum under Gottfried Semper, and later attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the atelier of Charles-Auguste Questel. By 1866, Bluntschli was shuttling between Heidelberg and Konstanz, and in 1870 he settled in Frankfurt-am-Main where he met , with whom he established a successful architectural practice. One of their first successful commissions was ...
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William D. Travis
#10671
Volodymyr Sichynskyi
1894 - 1962 (68 years)
Volodymyr Sichynskyi was a Ukrainian émigré architect, graphic artist, and art historian. Volodymyr Sichynskyi was born to the family of Ievtym Sitsinskyi in Kamianets-Podilskyi, Podilia guberniya, Russia, which is in present-day Ukraine.
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Konstantin Khrenov
1894 - 1984 (90 years)
Konstantin Konstantinovich Khrenov was a Soviet engineer and inventor who in 1932 introduced underwater welding and cutting of metals. For this method, extensively used by the Soviet Navy during World War II, Khrenov was awarded the State Stalin Prize in 1946.
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Wilmer L. Barrow
1903 - 1975 (72 years)
Wilmer Lanier Barrow was an American electrical engineer, inventor, teacher, industrial manager, and a counselor to government agencies. He obtained a BSEE degree in 1926 from Louisiana State University, and a doctorate from the Technical University of Munich in 1931. During the pre-World War 2 development of radar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Barrow performed research on microwaves, inventing waveguide in 1936 and the horn antenna in 1938.
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William Henry Jackson
1843 - 1942 (99 years)
William Henry Jackson was an American photographer, Civil War veteran, painter, and an explorer famous for his images of the American West. He was a great-great nephew of Samuel Wilson, the progenitor of America's national symbol Uncle Sam. He was the great-grandfather of cartoonist Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead comics.
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Dietrich Brandis
1824 - 1907 (83 years)
Sir Dietrich Brandis was a German-British botanist and forestry academic and administrator, who worked with the British Imperial Forestry Service in colonial India for nearly 30 years. He joined the British civil service in Burma in 1856, shortly afterwards became head of the British forestry administration in all of Burma, and served as Inspector General of Forests in India from 1864 to 1883. He returned to Europe in 1883, dividing his time between Bonn and Greater London. In retirement he dedicated himself to scholarly work, resulting in the book Indian Trees , his magnum opus. Brandis is ...
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Rolla C. Carpenter
1852 - 1919 (67 years)
Rolla Clinton Carpenter C.E. M.M.E. LL.D. was an American engineer, academic, and writer. Carpenter was born in Orion , Michigan. He earned a B.S. in 1873 from Michigan State Agricultural College and later received additional bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Michigan in 1875. From 1875 to 1890 he was professor of mathematics and civil engineering in the Michigan State Agricultural College; while there, he designed and supervised much of the construction at the young school. In 1887, he and Professor William J. Beal laid out "Collegeville", the first neighborhood in what...
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Erwin Piscator
1893 - 1966 (73 years)
Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator was a German theatre director and producer. Along with Bertolt Brecht, he was the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content of drama, rather than its emotional manipulation of the audience or the production's formal beauty.
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Dénes Györgyi
1886 - 1961 (75 years)
Dénes Györgyi was a Hungarian architect, a member of the Györgyi-Giergl artistic family. Biography Family background Gyorgyi was born in Budapest into a well-known clan of artists which stretched back generations. On his father's side, his great grandfather, Alajos Giergl was a silversmith who originated from the Tyrol and his grandfather, Alajos Györgyi Giergl , was a well-known painter in Pest. His father, Kálmán Györgyi was a craftsman and art theorist, the director of the National Society of Applied Arts and editor of its journal. Two other close relatives, Géza Gyorgyi and Kálmán Giergl were well known architects.
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Hans Bellmer
1902 - 1975 (73 years)
Hans Bellmer was a German artist, best known for the life-sized female dolls he produced in the mid-1930s. Historians of art and photography also consider him a Surrealist photographer. Biography Bellmer was born in the city of Kattowitz, then part of the German Empire . Up until 1926, he worked as a draftsman for his own advertising company.
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Thomas Edison
1847 - 1931 (84 years)
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He established the first industrial research laboratory.
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A. Lawrence Kocher
1885 - 1969 (84 years)
A. Lawrence Kocher was an American architect, editor, and teacher. He was a pioneering advocate of modern architecture and the preservation of historic landmarks Education and career In 1909, he studied Bachelor of Arts in history at Stanford University. Subsequently, in 1916 he studied Master of Arts in Pennsylvania State College . He is graduated also from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and New York University. His extensive education in both history and architecture informed his forward-thinking approach to consolidation between old and new, and led to his appointment as Director of...
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Rouben Mamoulian
1897 - 1987 (90 years)
Rouben Zachary Mamoulian was an American film and theater director. Early life Mamoulian was born in Tiflis, Russian Empire , to a family of Armenian descent. His mother, Virginia , was a director of the Armenian theatre, and his father, Zachary Mamoulian, was a bank president. On New Year's Eve, 1920, Mamoulian arrived, in London, worked with émigré actors and directed a play, at St. James Theatre, based on the Russian Revolution, The Beating on the Door, invited by Austin Page and Vladimir Rosing to co-direct.
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Johann Arzberger
1778 - 1835 (57 years)
Johann Arzberger was an Austrian technologist. He worked as a manager of equipment of the Fürstlich Salm'sche Eisenwerke by in Moravia. From 1816 on, he served as a professor of mechanical technology at the Polytechnic Institute in Vienna. He published scientific articles in the field of mechanics in Gilbert's Annalen der Physik as well as in the Annals of the Polytechnic Institute in Vienna.
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Rudolph Weaver
1880 - 1944 (64 years)
Rudolph Weaver was an American architect, university professor and administrator renowned for various buildings that he designed in Florida, Idaho and Washington, many of which are academic. Early life, work and education Weaver was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the son of Henry Weaver and his wife, Sara Jane Barnhart. Before college he worked as a bookbinder, printer and steelworker. He attended Pennsylvania State College for the year 1902-03 and then went to Drexel Institute where he received a diploma in architecture in 1905. He continued his study of architecture at Columbia Universi...
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Robert Lorimer
1864 - 1929 (65 years)
Sir Robert Stodart Lorimer, KBE was a prolific Scottish architect and furniture designer noted for his sensitive restorations of historic houses and castles, for new work in Scots Baronial and Gothic Revival styles, and for promotion of the Arts and Crafts movement.
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Lingan S. Randolph
1859 - 1922 (63 years)
Lingan Strother Randolph was an American mechanical and consulting engineer, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering from 1893 to 1918 at Virginia Tech. Life and work Born in Martinsburg, Virginia to James Lingan and Emily Strother, he attended the Shenandoah Valley Academy from 1873 to 1876. After a year at the Virginia Military Institute, he moved to the Stevens Institute of Technology, where he graduated in mechanical engineer in 1883.
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William Dunkel
1893 - 1980 (87 years)
William Dunkel was a Swiss architect and painter. He worked in Germany until 1929 when he relocated to Switzerland upon obtaining a teaching job at the ETH in Zürich. Dunkel was born in 1893 in the US. His parents, Jacob Dunkel and Berta Marie Dunkel, née Kruse, were Swiss, and William grew up in Buenos Aires and Lausanne. In 1912 he started to study architecture in Germany at the Dresden University of Technology. He received his doctorate from Dresden in 1917 from Cornelius Gurlitt, for a dissertation entitled "Beiträge zur Entwicklung des Städtebaues in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amer...
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Robert Whitehead
1823 - 1905 (82 years)
Robert Whitehead was an English engineer who was most famous for developing the first effective self-propelled naval torpedo. Early life He was born in Bolton, England, the son of James Whitehead, a cotton-bleacher, and his wife Ellen Whitehead née Swift. He trained as an engineer and draughtsman, and attended the Mechanics' Institute, Manchester.
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Erich Schelling
1904 - 1986 (82 years)
Erich Schelling was a German architect. He was born in Wiesloch near Heidelberg and studied at the State Technical College in Karlsruhe from 1924 to 1928 and the Technical University , until May 1933.
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Karl Mayreder
1856 - 1935 (79 years)
Karl Mayreder was an Austrian architect. Life and work Karl Mayreder was born the son of hotelier Leopold Mayreder and his wife Henriette Mayreder. Leopold Mayreder had taken over the famous hotel “Matschakerhof” at number 5 in the Spiegelgasse/number 7 in the Seilergasse in the first district of Vienna from his father and ran it successfully.
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Remus Răduleț
1904 - 1984 (80 years)
Remus Răduleț was a Romanian electrical engineer, who contributed to the development of the International Electrotechnical Vocabulary and theoretical electrotechnology. He was a titular member of the Romanian Academy and served as president of the International Electrotechnical Commission from 1964 to 1967.
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Emil Victor Langlet
1824 - 1898 (74 years)
Emil Victor Langlet was a Swedish architect. He is most commonly associated with his design for the Norwegian Parliament Building in Oslo, Norway. Background Langlet was born in Borås, Sweden. He was educated at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg and at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm where he trained under Per Axel Nyström . From 1850, he attended the École des Beaux-arts in Paris where he trained under Guillaume-Abel Blouet .
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Jørgen Henrich Rawert
1751 - 1823 (72 years)
Jørgen Henrich Rawert was a was a Danish architect. He created the masterplan for the rebuilding of Copenhagen after the Great Fire of 1795 in his capacity of city architect and was also involved in many building projects, mostly of townhouses, often collaborating with Andreas Hallander.
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Alexander Graham Christie
1880 - 1964 (84 years)
Alexander Graham Christie was a Canadian/American mechanical engineer and Professor at the Johns Hopkins University, who served as president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1939–40.
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Edith Hughes
1888 - 1971 (83 years)
Edith Mary Wardlaw Burnet Hughes HonFRIAS was a Scottish architect, and is considered Britain's first practising female architect, having established her own architecture firm in 1920. Early life Edith Mary Burnet was born in Edinburgh, the daughter of May Crudelius and George Wardlaw Burnet, an advocate. The family lived at 6 West Circus Place in the Stockbridge district. The family moved to 59 Queens Road in Aberdeen when her father was created Sheriff Substitute for Aberdeenshire around 1890.
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Walter Maria Kersting
1889 - 1970 (81 years)
Walter Maria Kersting was a German architect and industrial designer. Career In 1928, he published the Bilderbuch für Kaufleute, a publicity handbook containing examples of catalogues, posters and packaging designs which had been created by Kersting and his wife in a plain and functional style. From 1927 to 1932 he was Professor of Artistic and Technical Design at the Kölner Werkschulen. With his students, Kersting designed the bakelite cabinet for the radio receiver, Volksempfänger model VE 301, which was launched at the 1933 Berlin Radio Show and which, on account of its striking design and the number of units sold, would become an icon of the Nazi period.
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Aleksandr Chernyshyov
1882 - 1940 (58 years)
Aleksandr Alekseyevich Chernyshyov , anglicised Alexander Chernyshov, was an electrical engineer. He graduated from Saint Petersburg Polytechnical Institute in 1907, and worked there until the end of his life. His research consisted of radio engineering and high-voltage techniques. He won the Lenin Prize in 1930.
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Charles H. Wacker
1856 - 1929 (73 years)
Charles Henry Wacker , born in Chicago, Illinois, was a German American businessman and philanthropist. He was vice chairman of the general committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and in 1909 was appointed chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission by Mayor Fred A. Busse. As commission chairman from 1909 to 1926, he championed the Burnham Plan for improving Chicago. His work to promote the plan included addresses, obtaining wide publicity from newspapers, and publishing Wacker's Manual of the Plan of Chicago as a textbook for local schoolchildren.
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Konstantine Hovhannisyan
1911 - 1984 (73 years)
Konstantine Hovhannisyan was an Armenian professor, architect and archaeologist. He was the head of an excavation team that was responsible for the excavations of the ancient Urartian city of Erebuni .
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Robert E. Stiemke
1915 - 1979 (64 years)
Robert E. Stiemke was an American civil engineer, director of the Georgia Tech School of Civil Engineering from 1950 to 1962, director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute from 1961 to 1963, and Georgia Tech's first Associate Dean of Faculties and Administrator of Research after July 1, 1963.
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