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
Adolf Martens
1850 - 1914 (64 years)
Adolf Martens , 6 March 1850 in Gammelin – 24 July 1914 in Groß-Lichterfelde, was a German metallurgist and the namesake of the steel structure martensite and the martensitic transformation, a type of diffusionless phase transition in the solid state. He also made significant contributions to the field of tribology. The functional relationship between the coefficient of friction and the product of sliding speed and viscosity divided by the normal load was experimentally explored by Adolf Martens in 1888, long before Richard Stribeck made his pioneering measurements in 1902.
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Yakov Modestovich Gakkel
1874 - 1945 (71 years)
Yakov Modestovich Gakkel was a Soviet and Russian scientist and engineer who made significant contributions to the development of aircraft and locomotives in the former Soviet Union. Biography His father was a military engineer and he attended the Petersburg Electrotechnical Institute. In 1896, he was arrested for revolutionary activities and imprisoned for several months. After being released, he was allowed to graduate, then exiled to Siberia. He was sent to work at The Lena Goldfields , near Bodaybo. While there, he participated in the construction of hydroelectric facilities and helped wi...
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Constantin Dinculescu
1898 - 1990 (92 years)
Constantin N. Dinculescu was a Romanian energy engineer and educator. Dinculescu designed the electrification of the Bucharest-Brașov railway for Căile Ferate Române, implemented between 1959 and 1966. Serving as rector of the Polytechnic University of Bucharest between August 1954 and January 1956, and then between December 1956 and April 1968, he contributed to the development of energy engineering education in Romania, introducing a nuclear energy engineering discipline to the curriculum.
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Aurelio Lucchini
1910 - 1989 (79 years)
Aurelio Lucchini was a Uruguayan architect and architectural historian. From March 1983 till his death he was a member of the Academia Nacional de Letras del Uruguay. Selected works Cronología comparada de la historia del Uruguay 1830-1945, with Blanca París de Oddone, Carlos Real de Azúa, Otilia Muras, Arturo Ardao, Washington Buño, Lauro Ayestarán, and Susana Salgado; Montevideo, 1966.Ideas y formas en la arquitectura nacional. Colección Nuestra Tierra, Vol. 6, Montevideo, 1969.Julio Vilamajó. Su arquitectura, with the collaboration of Mariano Arana; FArq, IHA, Montevideo, 1970.El Concepto de Arquitectura y su traducción a formas en el territorio que hoy pertenece a Uruguay.
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William E. Wickenden
1882 - 1947 (65 years)
William Elgein Wickenden was the third president of Case School of Applied Science, now Case Western Reserve University. Wickenden was born in Toledo, Ohio, on December 24, 1882. He graduated from Denison University in 1904 and married Marion Lamb, also a Denison graduate, in Toledo on Sept 2, 1908.
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Juan Giuria
1880 - 1957 (77 years)
Juan Giuria was a Uruguayan architect and architectural historian. Biography He was a student of the old Faculty of Mathematics of Montevideo, where he obtained his degree in Architecture. He devoted himself to lecturing and investigation. He was one of the founders of the Institute of Architectural History; among his collaborators were Aurelio Lucchini and Elzeario Boix.
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Peder Oluf Pedersen
1874 - 1941 (67 years)
Peder Oluf Pedersen was a Danish engineer and physicist. He is notable for his work on electrotechnology, his cooperation with Valdemar Poulsen on the developmental work on Wire recorders, which he called a telegraphone, the arc converter known as the Poulsen Arc Transmitter, and his work on electrical currents in the ionosphere.
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William Haywood
1876 - 1957 (81 years)
William Joseph Haywood was an English architect, urban planner and Secretary of The Birmingham Civic Society for twenty-nine years, being a founder member in 1918. Life Born on 2 November 1876 in Ingleby Street, Ladywood, Birmingham, he was the son of Joseph Haywood, a local silversmith, and Emma Haywood . As a student he won the Maintenance Scholarship of Birmingham School of Art in 1894, the Pugin Studentship in 1897 and the RIBA Silver Medal.
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Eduard Scotland
1885 - 1945 (60 years)
Eduard Scotland was a German architect active in Bremen. He is remembered in particular for the Böttcherstraße houses he and his associate Alfred Runge built for the coffee merchant Ludwig Roselius.
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Gustave Eiffel
1832 - 1923 (91 years)
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was a French civil engineer. A graduate of École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, he made his name with various bridges for the French railway network, most famously the Garabit Viaduct. He is best known for the world-famous Eiffel Tower, designed by his company and built for the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, and his contribution to building the Statue of Liberty in New York. After his retirement from engineering, Eiffel focused on research into meteorology and aerodynamics, making significant contributions in both fields.
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Henry Adams
1858 - 1929 (71 years)
Henry Adams was an American mechanical engineer. He emigrated at age 22 to Baltimore from Duisburg, Kingdom of Prussia, having been educated as a building engineer. He later worked with the District of Columbia government buildings, and established a longstanding private practice in Baltimore, Maryland.
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Jacob Wilhelm Nordan
1824 - 1892 (68 years)
Jacob Wilhelm Nordan was a Danish-born, Norwegian architect. During his career, he was one of the most prolific church architects in Norway. Biography Nordan was born in Copenhagen, Denmark and came to Norway as a child with his mother. He attended the Royal Drafting School in Christiania , where Johannes Flintoe, Christian Heinrich Grosch and Johan Henrik Nebelong were among his teachers. From 1849 to 1852, Nordan worked under architect Johan Henrik Nebelong as assistant and building manager during the construction of Oscarshall. From 1852 to 1855, he studied at the Royal Danish Academy...
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Godofredo García
1888 - 1970 (82 years)
Godofredo García was a Peruvian mathematician and engineer. He was the author of more than 80 publications covering mathematics, physics, astronomy, astrophysics, and engineering. Background He studied at the Colegio de Lima, under Pedro A. Labarthe. In 1906 he entered the Faculty of Sciences of the National University of San Marcos, where he received a bachelor's degree and later his doctorate degree in Mathematical Sciences , with his thesis on "Singular points of flat curves" and "Resistance of Columns of reinforced concrete", respectively. Simultaneously, he studied at the School of Engi...
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Don Carlos Young
1855 - 1938 (83 years)
Joseph Don Carlos Young was an American architect and the Church Architect for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1887 until 1893. In 1893, the office of Church Architect was dissolved , Young thereafter practiced privately with the LDS Church as a frequent client. Young practiced as an architect, landscape architect and designer from 1879 to circa 1935. A preponderance of his work centered on church commissions, or commissions offered him by extended Young family members, or higher echelon church friends.
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Algirdas Anthony Avizienis
#10966
Robert Howson Pickard
1874 - 1949 (75 years)
Sir Robert Howson Pickard FRS was a chemist who did pioneering work in stereochemistry and also for the cotton industry in Lancashire. He was also involved in educational administration and was Vice Chancellor of the University of London from 1937-1939. He was Principal of Battersea Polytechnic from 1920 to 1927.
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William W Murdoch
#10968
Rafayel Israyelian
1908 - 1973 (65 years)
Rafayel "Rafo" Israyelian was a Soviet Armenian architect. Seen as a follower of Alexander Tamanian, Israyelian designed some of Soviet Armenia's most prominent structures, including the Sardarapat Memorial, the Yerevan Wine Factory and several churches, both in Armenia and abroad, most notably St. Sargis in Yerevan and St. Vartan in New York.
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John Gilbert
1742 - 1795 (53 years)
John Gilbert was land agent and engineer to the third Duke of Bridgewater and is credited with the idea that led to the building of the Bridgewater Canal. John Gilbert was born in Staffordshire. When he was aged 12–13 he was apprenticed to Matthew Boulton, a manufacturer of small metal objects and the father of Matthew Boulton, the engineer. When Gilbert was aged 19 his father died and he left his apprenticeship to superintend the family lime works. John's brother, Thomas, was working as agent to Lord Gower, brother-in-law of the Duke of Bridgewater. Thomas invited John to inspect the Duke's ...
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Franziska Hoffmann
#10971
Eduard Ludwig
1906 - 1960 (54 years)
Eduard Ludwig was a German architect. He was a student at the Bauhaus design school and later worked with notable architects from the school. He designed the Berlin Airlift Monument in Platz der Luftbrücke, Berlin.
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Vincenzo Leuzzi
1909 - 1983 (74 years)
Vincenzo Leuzzi was Director of the Transport Institute, University of Rome Engineering School. Prof. Leuzzi's main contributions were in public transport policy at international and national levels, especially in electric rails.
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Wang Guosong
1902 - 1983 (81 years)
Wang Guosong , was a Chinese electrical engineer, and a pioneer of electrotechniques in modern China. Wang was also an educator, and best known for his acting President position of Zhejiang University in history.
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Ángel Guido
1896 - 1960 (64 years)
Ángel Francisco Guido was an Argentine architect, engineer and writer. Guido was educated at the National University of Córdoba and graduated as an architect in 1921. Most of his work is in his home town of Rosario. With fellow architect Alejandro Bustillo, Guido designed the National Flag Memorial of Argentina, circa 1944. The structure was inaugurated in 1957. His other significant designs includethe Dr. Julio Marc Provincial Historical Museum on the grounds of the Parque de la Independencia in Rosariothe Palacio de Correos de Rosario in the Plaza 25 de Mayo in RosarioGuido was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1932.
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Warren Powers Laird
1861 - 1948 (87 years)
Warren Powers Laird was an American architect from Minnesota. He was Dean of the School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania from 1920 to his retirement in 1932. Biography Laird was born in Winona, Minnesota, on August 8, 1861. He attended public schools in Winona, followed by study at the Winona Normal School. From 1885 to 1887, Laird took an architecture course at Cornell University. He then practiced for six years in architectural offices in Minnesota, Boston, and New York City, then studied in Paris. Near the end of his Cornell coursework, he was named an instructor of architecture.
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Paul G. Mermelstein
#10977
Kindred McLeary
1901 - 1949 (48 years)
Kindred McLeary was an American architect, artist and educator. Education Kindred McLeary studied architecture at the University of Texas and earned his degree in 1927. While teaching at the University of Texas the following year, McLeary entered one of his paintings, Cotton, in a national art exhibit at the Witte Memorial Museum in San Antonio. The painting portrayed an African-American woman reclining in a field of cotton with several men standing around her, one of them strumming a guitar. Some artists and ministers attacked the picture as obscene, but the art curator of the museum defende...
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Vasily Grinevetsky
1871 - 1919 (48 years)
Vasily Ignatievich Grinevetsky was a professor of engineering at the Imperial Moscow Technical School in the Russian Empire. Along with his colleague, Karl Vasilievich Kirsh, he proposed founding the All-Russia Thermal Engineering Institute, which was eventually founded in 1921.
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Friedrich Eisenlohr
1805 - 1855 (50 years)
Jakob Friedrich Eisenlohr was a German architect and university professor. His design for a cuckoo clock, now known as the Bahnhäusle style, was the first to be mass-produced and helped make the clocks popular outside of Germany.
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Vytautas Landsbergis-Žemkalnis
1893 - 1993 (100 years)
Vytautas Landsbergis-Žemkalnis was a Lithuanian architect most active in interwar Lithuania . He was the father of Vytautas Landsbergis, the first Lithuanian head of state after independence from the Soviet Union.
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John Roberts
1712 - 1796 (84 years)
John Roberts was an Anglo-Irish architect of the 18th century, working in the Georgian style. Born in the city of Waterford, he is best known for the buildings he designed in that city. Early life Roberts was born in Waterford in 1712 or 1714, son of Thomas Roberts, an architect and builder. Little is known of his early life, although John Roberts may have trained in London for a time. At 17, he eloped with Mary Susannah Sautelle, a Huguenot heiress who also lived in Waterford.
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George Bates Nichols Tower
1834 - 1889 (55 years)
George Bates Nichols Tower was an American civil and mechanical engineer and Union naval officer during the American Civil War. He served for at least part of his term of service on the as chief engineer. He was also a Chandler Instructor in civil engineering at Dartmouth College.
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Frederick Francis Charles Curtis
1903 - 1975 (72 years)
Frederick Francis Charles Curtis FRIBA was the first chief architect for British Railways from 1948. Career Curtis was born on 9th August, 1903, at Frankfurt-on-Main. His father, Francis Curtis, was a lecturer in English at the Technische Universität Darmstadt, and from 1922 to 1927, Frederick Francis Curtis studied there. He then worked as an assistant and lecturer at the same institution until 1933. With the ascent of the National Socialist Party in 1933, he left Germany and moved to Britain where he worked with Charles Holden on the Southern Railway until 1936.
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Raouf Attia Ibrahim
#10985
Heinz Hajek-Halke
1898 - 1983 (85 years)
Heinz Hajek-Halke was a German experimental photographer and educator. He was an early member of the Fotoform group. Early life Hajek-Halke was born in Berlin, Germany, on 1 December 1898, the son of Paul Halke. He spent twelve years in Argentina while growing up and then moved back to Germany, studying graphics in Berlin in 1915. He was a soldier during World War I before returning to his artistic studies. He specialised in a number of areas, including engraving, illustrations, film posters and photo editing before becoming a photographer in 1924.
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Charles Hershfield
1910 - 1990 (80 years)
Charles Hershfield, B.Sc., M.A.Sc, F.E.I.C, P.Eng. was widely recognized by the engineering community and known for his innovative structural engineering solutions, as a senior assistant engineer and lieutenant with the Department of National Defense, a professor at the University of Toronto, as co-founder of the North American firm Morrison Hershfield, and as a prolific author. He was a lifelong advocate of education and the engineering profession.
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David Roberts
1859 - 1928 (69 years)
David Roberts was the Chief Engineer and managing director of Richard Hornsby & Sons in the early 1900s. His invention, the caterpillar track, was demonstrated to the army in 1907. Chester He grew up in Great Boughton in the east of Chester, the son of David Roberts and his wife Anne, being trained as a hydraulic engineer, starting work for Hydraulic Engineering Company Ltd in 1873, staying with them for fifteen years, living in England and overseas. He worked for Sir WG Armstrong Mitchell & Company Ltd in Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne from 1888, staying for eight years. For two and a half yea...
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Carl Dreher
1896 - 1976 (80 years)
Carl Dreher was an American electrical engineer, two-time Academy Award-nominated sound engineer, and an author who primarily dealt with technical and scientific topics. Directly involved with two technological revolutions—the introduction of radio broadcasting and the development of sound movies—he observed that "No form of communication was safe from the innovative drive of electronics."
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Chittoor V. Ramamoorthy
#10990
Robert Pflug
1832 - 1885 (53 years)
Robert Pflug was a Baltic German architect. Robert August Pflug was born in Saint Petersburg as the son of a merchant. He studied at the Technological Institute in Saint Petersburg between 1846 and 1850 and thereafter at the Imperial Academy of Arts. In 1860 he went on a study trip to Germany and Italy. From 1862 he worked as an architect in Riga, the present-day capital of Latvia, and was a teacher at the Riga Polytechnic Institute from 1869 to 1875.
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Robert Smith
1722 - 1777 (55 years)
Robert Smith was a Scottish-born American architect who was based in Philadelphia and was the architect for some of the city's most prominent early building structures, including Carpenters' Hall, St. Peter's Episcopal Church, and the steeple on Christ Church. These structures constituted the greater part of Philadelphia's early skyline.
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John Johnson
1732 - 1814 (82 years)
John Johnson was an English architect and surveyor to the county of Essex. He is best known for designing the Shire Hall, Chelmsford. Life Johnson was born in Leicester. He moved to London before his thirtieth birthday and in the late 1760s was engaged by William Berners in speculative building of Berners' estate in Marylebone. For most of the rest of his life he lived in one of the houses that he had built in Berners Street. In 1782 he succeeded William Hillyer as Surveyor to the County of Essex, a position that he held for thirty years, retiring at the age of 80. In 1785 he became a par...
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Ronald Arnold
1908 - 1963 (55 years)
Ronald Nathan Arnold PhD MS DSc DEng MIMechE MICivilE was a distinguished British engineer. Life Born in Glasgow on 23 December 1908, he was schooled at Albert Road Academy and Shawlands Academy in Glasgow before completing, in 1932, a BSc with first-class honours in mechanical engineering at the Royal Technical College , Glasgow. He graduated with a PhD from Sheffield University in 1934, and an MS from Illinois in 1936, where he studied impact stresses in beams. His early training was conducted with Mirrlees Watson Ltd, in Glasgow.
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Juana Pereyra
1897 - 1976 (79 years)
Juana Pereyra was a Uruguayan civil engineer, and one of the first women to graduate from the Faculty of Engineering of the Universidad de la República. Early life and education Juana Pereyra was born in Montevideo, Uruguay on 8 November 1897. At school she excelled at mathematics. After the initial opposition of her family and having to overcome the difficulties that women had to face in the professional fields of the time, she enrolled in the Faculty of Engineering of the Universidad de la República, graduating with high marks with the title of Ingeniera de Puentes y Caminos in November 19...
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Arthur Rothstein
1915 - 1985 (70 years)
Arthur Rothstein was an American photographer. Rothstein is recognized as one of America's premier photojournalists. During a career that spanned five decades, he provoked, entertained and informed the American people.
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William Smith
1817 - 1891 (74 years)
William Smith was a Scottish architect. He was a son of John Smith, also an architect, and his mother was Margaret Grant. A partner in the Aberdonian firms J & W Smith , W & J Smith and W & J Smith and Kelly , and employed as Aberdeen's superintendent of works , he designed a large number of buildings in north east Scotland.
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Frederic Goudy
1865 - 1947 (82 years)
Frederic William Goudy was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. He was one of the most prolific of American type designers and his self-named type continues to be one of the most popular in America.
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William Gedney
1932 - 1989 (57 years)
William Gale Gedney was an American documentary and street photographer. It wasn't until after his death that his work gained momentum and is now widely recognized. He is best known for his series on rural Kentucky, and series on India, San Francisco and New York shot in the 1960s and 1970s.
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Henry Barraclough
1874 - 1958 (84 years)
Sir Samuel Henry Egerton Barraclough was an Australian mechanical engineer. He was appointed CBE in 1919 having served in the Great War, and a year later was appointed to the civil division as a KBE. He was Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sydney, 1915–1942 and President of the Australian Institution of Engineers .
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Qian Ji
1917 - 1983 (66 years)
Qian Ji was a Chinese physicist and aerospace engineer who was instrumental in the development of China's first satellite, the Dong Fang Hong I, and its first successful 3-in-1 satellite launch, the Shijian 2. In 1999, he was posthumously awarded the Two Bombs, One Satellite Meritorious Medal.
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