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,
#10951
Albert H. Taylor
1879 - 1961 (82 years)
Albert Hoyt Taylor was an American electrical engineer who made important early contributions to the development of radar. Biography Taylor entered Northwestern University in 1896. In 1899 he was employed by Western Electric Co. He returned to Northwestern in 1900, lacking only one semester of graduating when lack of funds forced him to accept a position as an instructor at Michigan State College. He was awarded his Bachelor of Science degree by Northwestern University in 1902. He taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1903 to 1908 before going to Germany for his graduate studies, receiving a Ph.D.
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Dietrich Küchemann
1911 - 1976 (65 years)
Dietrich Küchemann CBE FRS FRAeS was a German aerodynamicist who made several important contributions to the advancement of high-speed flight. He spent most of his career in the UK, where he is best known for his work on Concorde.
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Rupert Cross
1912 - 1980 (68 years)
Sir Alfred Rupert Neale Cross was an English legal scholar. He was the second of two sons of Arthur George Cross, an architect in Hastings, and Mary Elizabeth . Biography He was born with cancer of the eyes and was completely blind after an operation at the age of 1. Worcester College for the Blind provided his education before he went to Worcester College, Oxford in 1930 where he took a Second in Modern History in 1933.
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Moshé Feldenkrais
1904 - 1984 (80 years)
Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais was a Ukrainian-Israeli engineer and physicist, known as the founder of the Feldenkrais Method, a system of physical exercise that aims to improve human functioning by increasing self-awareness through movement.
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Félix Pollaczek
1892 - 1981 (89 years)
Félix Pollaczek was an Austrian-French engineer and mathematician, known for numerous contributions to number theory, mathematical analysis, mathematical physics and probability theory. He is best known for the Pollaczek–Khinchine formula in queueing theory , and the Pollaczek polynomials.
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H. L. D. Kirkham
1887 - 1949 (62 years)
Harold Laurens Dundas Kirkham was an Anglo-American plastic surgeon. He was the first Professor of Plastic Surgery at Baylor University, Texas and also served with the US Navy Medical Corps, becoming head of plastic surgery at the United States Naval Medical Center San Diego during the Second World War.
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Daniel Frost Comstock
1883 - 1970 (87 years)
Daniel Frost Comstock was an American physicist and engineer. Biography Comstock attained a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1904. He also studied in Berlin, Zürich, and Basel, where he attained his Ph.D. in 1906. At the University of Cambridge he studied under J. J. Thomson. Beginning in 1904 he was a member of the faculty at MIT in theoretical physics .
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Shintaro Uda
1896 - 1976 (80 years)
Shintaro Uda was a Japanese inventor, and assistant to Professor Hidetsugu Yagi at Tohoku Imperial University, where together they invented the Yagi–Uda antenna in 1926. In February 1926, Yagi and Uda published their first report on the wave projector antenna in a Japanese publication. Yagi applied for patents on the new antenna both in Japan and the United States. His was issued in May 1932 and assigned to the Radio Corporation of America.
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Albert Francis Zahm
1862 - 1954 (92 years)
Albert Francis Zahm was an early aeronautical experimenter, a professor of physics, and a chief of the Aeronautical Division of the U.S. Library of Congress. He testified as an aeronautical expert in the 1910–14 lawsuits between the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss.
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Lillian Moller Gilbreth
1878 - 1972 (94 years)
Lillian Evelyn Gilbreth was an American psychologist, industrial engineer, consultant, and educator who was an early pioneer in applying psychology to time-and-motion studies. She was described in the 1940s as "a genius in the art of living." Gilbreth, one of the first female engineers to earn a Ph.D., is considered to be the first industrial/organizational psychologist. She and her husband, Frank Bunker Gilbreth, were efficiency experts who contributed to the study of industrial engineering, especially in the areas of motion study and human factors. Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their ...
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H. Gene Slottow
1921 - 1989 (68 years)
Hiram Gene Slottow was a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He was the co-inventor of the plasma display. After completing his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Chicago, he completed MS in electrical engineering from the Johns Hopkins University and PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He was a professor of electrical engineering at Illinois from 1968 to 1986. He was also employed as an electrical engineer at the Coordinated Science Laboratory and the Computer-Based Education Re...
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Josep Lluís Sert
1902 - 1983 (81 years)
Josep Lluís Sert i López was a Spanish architect and city planner. Biography Born in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, Sert showed keen interest in the works of his uncle, the painter Josep Maria Sert, and of Antoni Gaudí. He studied architecture at the Escola Superior d'Arquitectura in Barcelona and set up his own studio in 1929. That same year Sert moved to Paris, in response to an invitation from Le Corbusier to work for him . Returning to Barcelona in 1930, he continued his practice there until 1937. During the 1930s, Sert co-founded the group GATCPAC , which later was the prominent associatio...
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Harry H. Goode
1909 - 1960 (51 years)
Harry H. Goode was an American computer engineer and systems engineer and professor at the University of Michigan. He is known as co-author of the book Systems Engineering from 1957, which is one of the earliest significant books directly related to systems engineering.
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Asa S. Knowles
1909 - 1990 (81 years)
Asa Smallidge Knowles was the ninth President of the University of Toledo and the third President of Northeastern University. A graduate of Thayer Academy, Knowles went on to earn his AB from Bowdoin College in 1930 and his MA from Boston University a few years later. Knowles began his teaching career at Northeastern, leaving for several years to attend several administrative positions at the University of Rhode Island, the Associated Colleges of Upper New York , Cornell University , and the University of Toledo. During his time as president of Northeastern, lasting from 1959 to 1975, he exp...
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Joseph Wickham Roe
1871 - 1960 (89 years)
Joseph Wickham Roe was an American engineer and Professor of Industrial Engineering at the New York University, known for his seminal work on machine tools and machine tool builders history. Biography Roe was born in 1871 as youngest child of Alfred Cox, pastor of a Presbyterian church and educator, and Emma Wickham Roe. After attending the Burr and Burton Academy, he graduated in 1895 at the Yale's Sheffield Scientific School, and after years of practice received his Master of Engineering in 1907.
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Hallie Flanagan
1890 - 1969 (79 years)
Hallie Flanagan Davis was an American theatrical producer and director, playwright, and author, best known as director of the Federal Theatre Project, a part of the Works Progress Administration . Background Hallie Flanagan was born in Redfield, South Dakota. When she was around 10, her family moved to Grinnell, Iowa. She attended Grinnell College where she majored in Philosophy and German, and was an active member in the Literary and Dramatic Clubs. During her time at Grinnell she became friends with Harry Hopkins, who had also grown up in Grinnell and was a year behind her at Grinnell College.
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Robert Scott Troup
1874 - 1939 (65 years)
Robert Scott Troup CMG CIE FRS was a British forestry expert. He spent the first part of his career in Colonial India, returning to England in 1920 to head Oxford's School of Forestry. Education Troup was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and the University of Aberdeen. He then entered Cooper's Hill College, which trained engineers and forest conservators for Indian service; there he trained under William Schlich.
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Kinjiro Okabe
1896 - 1984 (88 years)
Kinjiro Okabe was a Japanese electrical engineering researcher and professor who made major contributions to magnetron and radar development. He did work after the Second World War on medical instruments using ultrasounds.
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Friedrich Eisenkolb
1901 - 1967 (66 years)
Friedrich Eisenkolb was a German metallurgist. Life Eisenkolb was born at the start of the twentieth century in Warnsdorf, at that time a small German-speaking town in northern Bohemia. His father was employed in finance security. Eisenkolb passed his School final exams in 1919 and then, from 1919 till 1923, studied Chemistry and Metallurgy at the Prague Poly-technical Institute. He received his doctorate in 1924 and went to work for Eisenwerke AG at Rothau-Neudek, on the Bohemian side of the Western Ore Mountains. In 1928 Eisenkolb completed a second dissertation, his subject being the pickling of sheet-metals.
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Tokushichi Mishima
1893 - 1975 (82 years)
Tokushichi Mishima was a Japanese metallurgist and inventor. He discovered that aluminum restored magnetism to non-magnetic nickel steel. He invented MKM steel, which was an extremely inexpensive magnetic substance that has been used in many applications. It is also closely related to the modern Alnico magnets. He later became a professor at the Tokyo Imperial University. After his death, his remains were buried in the Tama Cemetery in Tokyo.
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Bernard D. H. Tellegen
1900 - 1990 (90 years)
Bernard D.H. Tellegen was a Dutch electrical engineer and inventor of the pentode and the gyrator. He is also known for a theorem in circuit theory, Tellegen's theorem. He obtained a master's degree in electrical engineering from Delft University in 1923, and joined the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium in Eindhoven. In 1926, he invented the pentode vacuum tube. The gyrator was invented by him around 1948. The gyrator is useful to simulate the effect of an inductor without using a coil. For example, it is used in hi-fi graphic equalizers. He held 41 US patents.
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Walter Curt Behrendt
1884 - 1945 (61 years)
Walter Curt Behrendt was a German-American architect and active advocate of German modernism. He was an authority on city planning and housing, editor of Die Form, and author of The Victory of the New Building Style among many other works.
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Otto Lindig
1895 - 1966 (71 years)
Otto Lindig was a German master potter who was a student and later a workshop manager at the famous Bauhaus art school in Weimar, Germany. Background Lindig was born in Pößneck, Germany. Initially trained as an artist and modeler, he also studied sculpture with architect and designer Henry van de Velde in 1913-15 at the Weimar Kunstgewerbeschule , in the building that would soon become the first location of the Bauhaus. Shortly after the Bauhaus opened in 1919, Lindig enrolled in the program and, beginning in 1920, studied ceramics with sculptor Gerhard Marcks, his Formmeister and Master Pot...
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Ralph C. Bryant
1877 - 1939 (62 years)
Ralph Clement Bryant, Sr. was an early American professor of forestry, the author of the pioneer textbook and other books and notes in forestry. Logging Education and career R. C. Bryant was the first person to receive a forestry degree in the United States, as a graduate from the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell .
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Sylvia Lavin
1900 - Present (126 years)
Sylvia Lavin is a professor of history and theory of architecture at Princeton University, School of Architecture. She was previously the head of the Ph.D. in Architecture program from 2007-2017 and professor of architectural history and theory at UCLA, where she was chairperson of the department of architecture and urban design from 1996 to 2006. Lavin is also a frequent visitor at Harvard Graduate School of Design and was a visiting professor of architectural theory at Princeton University School of Architecture. She is a member of the board of trustees of the Canadian Centre for Architectur...
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Kevin A. Lynch
1918 - 1984 (66 years)
Kevin Andrew Lynch was an American urban planner and author. He is known for his work on the perceptual form of urban environments and was an early proponent of mental mapping. His most influential books include The Image of the City , a seminal work on the perceptual form of urban environments, and What Time is This Place? , which theorizes how the physical environment captures and refigures temporal processes.
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Morien Morgan
1912 - 1978 (66 years)
Sir Morien Bedford Morgan CB FRS , was a noted Welsh aeronautical engineer, sometimes known as "the Father of Concorde". He spent most of his career at the Royal Aircraft Establishment , before moving to Whitehall for ten years as the Controller of Aircraft within the Ministry of Aviation. He spent the last years of his life as master of Downing College, Cambridge.
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Thomas Tallmadge
1876 - 1940 (64 years)
Thomas Eddy Tallmadge was an American architect, best known for his Prairie School works with Vernon S. Watson as Tallmadge & Watson. Biography Thomas Eddy Tallmadge was born in Washington, D.C., on April 24, 1876. He was raised in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, graduating from Evanston Township High School. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1898 with a bachelor's degree in Architecture. He returned to Chicago to study under Daniel H. Burnham, one of the city's most prominent architects. While working for Burnham, Tallmadge received a scholarship from the Chicago Architectural Club for his work "A Crèche in a Manufacturing District".
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Charlemae Hill Rollins
1897 - 1979 (82 years)
Charlemae Hill Rollins was a pioneering librarian, writer and storyteller in the area of African-American literature. During her thirty-one years as head librarian of the children's department at the Chicago Public Library as well as after her retirement, she instituted substantial reforms in children's literature.
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Ernst Julius Berg
1871 - 1941 (70 years)
Ernst Julius Berg was a Swedish-born, American electrical engineer. Biography Ernst Julius Berg was born in Östersund, Jämtland County in Sweden. After graduating from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 1892, he immigrated to the United States. He began working as an assistant to Charles Proteus Steinmetz at General Electric. He then joined the faculty of electrical engineering at Union College.
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Giuseppe Colombo
1920 - 1984 (64 years)
Giuseppe "Bepi" Colombo was an Italian scientist, mathematician and engineer at the University of Padua, Italy. Mercury Colombo studied the planet Mercury, and it was his calculations which showed how to get a spacecraft into a solar orbit which would encounter Mercury multiple times, using a gravity assist maneuver with Venus. Due to this idea, NASA was able to have the Mariner 10 accomplish three fly-bys of Mercury instead of one. Mariner 10 was the first spacecraft to use gravity assist. Since then, the technique has become common.
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Buckminster Fuller
1895 - 1983 (88 years)
Richard Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more than 30 books and coining or popularizing such terms as "Spaceship Earth", "Dymaxion" , "ephemeralization", "synergetics", and "tensegrity".
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Miller McClintock
1894 - 1960 (66 years)
Miller McClintock was an American expert in traffic control who developed the "friction theory" of traffic. He became interested in educational broadcasting and was a member of the board of Encyclopædia Britannica Films. He subsequently presented the early American factual television series Serving Through Science which showed films from Encyclopædia Britannica.
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W. A. Lambeth
1867 - 1944 (77 years)
William Alexander Lambeth was a medical professor who was the first athletic director at the University of Virginia. He is often called "the father of intercollegiate athletics" at the university. Lambeth was integral in the foundation of the Southern Conference and once a member of the Football Rules Committee. He was the namesake of Lambeth Field; the "Colonnades" where the university used to play football before the building of Scott Stadium. He was also a student of architecture. The Lambeth House, currently used by the Curry School of Education, used to be his residence.
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Heinrich Hertel
1901 - 1982 (81 years)
Heinrich Hertel was a German aeronautical engineer. After graduating as an engineer from Munich Technical College, he joined the Junkers company in 1926. In 1932, he was recruited by Ernst Heinkel and two years later was made the Technical Director of the Heinkel company — within which Siegfried and Walter Günter were already well-established as top engineers — where he oversaw many projects including the Heinkel He 100 and He 111.
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Benjamin Miessner
1890 - 1976 (86 years)
Benjamin Franklin Miessner was an American radio engineer and inventor. He is most known for his electronic organ, electronic piano, and other musical instruments. He was the inventor of the Cat's whisker detector.
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John I. Yellott
1908 - 1986 (78 years)
John Ingle Yellott was an American engineer recognized as a pioneer in passive solar energy, and an inventor with many patents to his credit. In his honor the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Solar Division confers a biannual "John I. Yellott Award" which "recognizes ASME members who have demonstrated sustained leadership within the Solar Energy Division, have a reputation for performing high-quality solar energy research and have made significant contributions to solar engineering through education, state or federal government service or in the private sector."
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William Lyman Underwood
1864 - 1929 (65 years)
William Lyman Underwood was an American photographer who was also involved in the research of time-temperature canning research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1895 to 1896. Biography A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Underwood was the second son of William James Underwood, one of the nine children of William Underwood, the founder of the William Underwood Company.
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Max Beckmann
1884 - 1950 (66 years)
Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920s, he was associated with the New Objectivity , an outgrowth of Expressionism that opposed its introverted emotionalism. Even when dealing with light subject matter like circus performers, Beckmann often had an undercurrent of moodiness or unease in his works. By the 1930s, his work became more explicit in its horrifying imagery and distorted forms with combination of brutal realism and socia...
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Johanna Piesch
1898 - 1992 (94 years)
Johanna Camilla Piesch was an Austrian librarian, physicist and mathematician who is remembered for the pioneering contributions she made to switching algebra, one of the fundamentals of digital computing and programming languages.
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Robert Peele
1858 - 1942 (84 years)
Robert Peele was an American mining engineer. He was an emeritus professor at Columbia University and author of the Mining Engineers' Handbook, which was in print from 1918 to 1989. Biography Peele was born on July 15, 1858, in New York City, the son of Raymond and Anne Westervelt Peele. He received the degree of Engineer of Mining from Columbia School of Mines in 1883 and immediately entered the mining business. He worked in gold and silver mines in North Carolina, Arizona, and Colorado, and performed evaluations of mining fields in New Mexico, Colombia, and Dutch Guiana. He served as superi...
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Edwin Duerr
1904 - 1985 (81 years)
Edwin Duerr was a theater and radio director. He was director of the Little Theater at University of California, Berkeley when he discovered Gregory Peck. He wrote the books The Length and Depth of Acting and Radio and Television Acting: Criticism, Theory and Practice. According to author Sean Egan in the James Kirkwood biography Ponies & Rainbows, Duerr co-wrote a play with Kirkwood called The Marriage Habit which failed to get staged.
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Frederick E. Turneaure
1866 - 1951 (85 years)
Frederick Eugene Turneaure was an American civil engineer and academic from Illinois. A graduate of Cornell University, Turneaure briefly worked in the private sector before joining Washington University in St. Louis as an instructor. In 1892, he was named a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Turneaure was Dean of Engineering there from 1902 to 1937.
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Harriett B. Rigas
1934 - 1989 (55 years)
Harriett B. Rigas FIEEE was a Canadian electrical engineer and innovative lecturer who was recognised worldwide for her hybrid computer and computer simulation research. Early life and education Rigas was born on 30 April 1934 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She graduated from Queens University in 1956 with a bachelor's degree. She completed her master's in electrical engineering in 1959, the same year she got married. Rigas completed her doctorate in 1963 also from Kansas University as the first woman to do so.
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Albert Arnulf
1898 - 1984 (86 years)
Albert Arnulf was a French engineer and physicist. In 1939, Arnulf received the Prix Jules Janssen, the highest award of the Société astronomique de France, the French astronomical society.
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George Howe
1886 - 1955 (69 years)
George Howe was an American architect and educator, and an early convert to the International style. His personal residence, High Hollow , established the standard for house design in the Philadelphia region through the early 20th century. His partnership with William Lescaze yielded the design of Philadelphia's PSFS Building , considered the first International style skyscraper built in the United States.
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Charles F. Scott
1864 - 1944 (80 years)
Charles Felton Scott was an electrical engineer, professor at Yale University and known for his invention of the Scott-T transformer in the 1890s. He graduated from Ohio State University in 1885 and went on to graduate study at Johns Hopkins University. Scott joined the engineering staff of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1888. He assisted the inventor Nikola Tesla with his work on the alternating-current induction motor. Scott also carried out experimental high voltage transmission line work at Telluride, Colorado with Ralph D. Mershon.
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Henry Vincent Hubbard
1875 - 1947 (72 years)
Henry Vincent Hubbard was an American landscape architect and planner, famous for his unique teaching styles at Harvard University, and his many publications. He was one of the prime supporters for a national system of public parks.
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Halbert Powers Gillette
1869 - 1958 (89 years)
Halbert Powers Gillette was an American engineer and prolific author of textbooks and handbooks for the engineering and construction fields. Biography Born on August 5, 1869, in Waverly, Iowa, to Theodore Weld and Laetitia S. , Gillette attended the Hammond Hall Academy in Salt Lake City, from which he graduated in 1886. Six years later in 1892, he received his engineering degree at the School of Mines at Columbia University, where he was classmate of Edward B. Durham.
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Lionel Bailey Budden
1887 - 1956 (69 years)
Lionel Bailey Budden FRIBA was an English architect. Born to William Budden and Elizabeth Adams, Budden attended Merchant Taylors' School, Crosby. From 1933 Budden was Roscoe Professor in Architecture in the Liverpool University School of Architecture. He retired in 1952.
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