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,
#11101
Henry Selby Hele-Shaw
1854 - 1941 (87 years)
Henry Selby Hele-Shaw FRS was an English mechanical and automobile engineer. He was the inventor of the variable-pitch propeller, which contributed to British success in the Battle of Britain in 1940, and he experimented with flows through thin cells. Flows through such configurations are named in his honour . He was also a co-founder of Victaulic.
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David Belasco
1853 - 1931 (78 years)
David Belasco was an American theatrical producer, impresario, director, and playwright. He was the first writer to adapt the short story Madame Butterfly for the stage. He launched the theatrical career of many actors, including James O'Neill, Mary Pickford, Lenore Ulric, and Barbara Stanwyck. Belasco pioneered many innovative new forms of stage lighting and special effects in order to create realism and naturalism.
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Stanley Hart White
1891 - 1979 (88 years)
Stanley Hart White was a professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois from 1922 to 1959 and the inventor of the green wall. Career White called his invention "Botanical Bricks" and developed prototypes in his backyard in Urbana, Illinois. Stanley's brother E.B. White documented the invention in his 1937 letter to Katherine S. White, writing, “I guess everyone has crazy brothers and sisters. I know I have. Stan, by the way, has taken out a patent on an invention of his called ‘Botanical Bricks,’ which are simply plant units capable of being built up to any height, for quick landscape effects, the vertical surfaces covered with flowering vines, or the like.
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Henry Fox Talbot
1800 - 1877 (77 years)
William Henry Fox Talbot FRS FRSE FRAS was an English scientist, inventor, and photography pioneer who invented the salted paper and calotype processes, precursors to photographic processes of the later 19th and 20th centuries. His work in the 1840s on photomechanical reproduction led to the creation of the photoglyphic engraving process, the precursor to photogravure. He was the holder of a controversial patent that affected the early development of commercial photography in Britain. He was also a noted photographer who contributed to the development of photography as an artistic medium. He ...
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Hans Lorenz
1865 - 1940 (75 years)
Hans Lorenz was a German engineer and mathematical physicist. He was an influential professor at the University of Göttingen and at Danzig where he was involved in establishing the training of engineers with sound mathematical and physics foundations.
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Freidun Aghalyan
1876 - 1944 (68 years)
Freidun Aghalyan was an Armenian architect. In 1903 Aghalian finished a building for the Saint-Petersburg Institute of Civil Engineering. Between 1903 & 1921 he oversaw the construction of railroad bridges, gymnasia, the Treasury palace and Workers' House in Baku, and the Armenian church of Armavir, Russia. In 1921, he moved to Yerevan, here he headed the construction department of Kanaker. He was the author of Kanaker HES and several other buildings in Yerevan, Kanaker and Getamej. After 1917, Aghalian also worked as a lecturer in Baku and then in Yerevan.
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James A. Wetmore
1863 - 1940 (77 years)
James Alfonso Wetmore was an American lawyer and administrator, best known as the Acting Supervising Architect of the U.S. Office of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department from 1915 through 1933.
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Karl von Fischer
1782 - 1820 (38 years)
Karl von Fischer was a German architect. His plans had considerable influence on the architecture of neo-classicism in Munich and South Germany. Biography Fischer was born in Mannheim. From 1796 Fischer was trained by Maximilian von Verschaffelt before he moved to Vienna in 1799 to study architecture under Ferdinand von Hohenberg. An early design, at the age of only 22, the Prinz-Carl-Palais in Munich , made him famous and he became a professor of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich in 1809. In 1811–18 Fischer constructed the National Theatre, destroyed in an 1823 fire. He als...
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Hassan Kamel Al-Sabbah
1894 - 1935 (41 years)
Hassan Kamel Al-Sabbah was a Lebanese electrical and electronics research engineer, mathematician and inventor. He was born in Nabatieh in present-day Lebanon. Biography He studied at the American University of Beirut. In 1916, he was conscripted into the Ottoman army, and worked as a telegraph operator. He later taught mathematics in Damascus, Syria, and at the American University of Beirut.
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Giovan Battista Filippo Basile
1825 - 1891 (66 years)
Giovan Battista Filippo Basile was an Italian architect. Born to a family of humble means. From childhood, Vincenzo Tineo, an erudite horticulturalist in Palermo, recognized Basile's talent, and was able to sponsor his education, and gain him entry into the university to study physical and mathematical sciences. Basile and eventually received or won his degree in architecture, which at the time was a prize conferred through a competition. He also taught physics at university, and at the atheneum, taught descriptive geometry and its applications.
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Riccardo Morandi
1902 - 1989 (87 years)
Riccardo Morandi was an Italian civil engineer best known for his innovative use of reinforced concrete and prestressed concrete, although over the years some of his particular cable-stayed bridges have had some maintenance trouble.
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Peter Nicholson
1765 - 1844 (79 years)
Peter Nicholson was a Scottish architect, mathematician and engineer. Largely self-taught, he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker but soon abandoned his trade in favour of teaching and writing. He practised as an architect but is best remembered for his theoretical work on the skew arch , his invention of draughtsman's instruments, including a centrolinead and a cyclograph, and his prolific writing on numerous practical subjects.
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Robert Lee Flowers
1870 - 1951 (81 years)
Robert Lee Flowers served as president of Duke University from 1941 to 1948. Flowers graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and worked for Trinity College as a professor in electrical engineering and mathematics before becoming an administrator. He served the university for over sixty years – holding the positions of Treasurer, Vice-President, President, and Chancellor.
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Martin Dülfer
1859 - 1942 (83 years)
Martin Dülfer was a German architect and professor; best known for designing theatres in the Historical and Art-Nouveau styles. Life and work His father, Carl Dülfer, was a publisher and book dealer. After completing his secondary education, he attended a trade school in Schweidnitz. Then, from 1877 to 1879, he studied at the Polytechnic School in Hannover, with Conrad Wilhelm Hase and, from 1879 to 1880, at the Technischen Hochschule in Stuttgart with Christian Friedrich von Leins. Following a brief period of military service, he took a position at the Berlin offices of and Karl von Großheim.
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Leslie Green
1875 - 1908 (33 years)
Leslie William Green was an English architect. He is best known for his design of iconic stationss constructed on the London Underground railway system in central London during the first decade of the 20th century, with distinctive oxblood red faïence blocks including pillars and semi-circular first-floor windows, and patterned tiled interiors done in the Modern Style .
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Ub Iwerks
1901 - 1971 (70 years)
Ubbe Ert Iwwerks , known as Ub Iwerks , was an American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, and special effects technician, known for his work with Walt Disney Animation Studios in general, and for having worked on the development of the design of the character of Mickey Mouse, among others. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Iwerks grew up with a contentious relationship with his father, who abandoned him as a child. Iwerks met fellow artist Walt Disney while working at a Kansas City art studio in 1919. After briefly working as illustrators for a local newspaper company, Disney and Iwerks ventured into animation together.
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Carl Schäfer
1844 - 1908 (64 years)
Carl Wilhelm Ernst Schäfer was a German architect and university professor. Schäfer became the most important representative of the late Gothic Revival in Germany. He created several churches: Modification of the Catholic Propsteikirche St. Gertrude of Brabant in Wattenscheid , Catholic parish church of St. Nikolai in Lippstadt , Protestant church in Bralitz , Catholic parish church of St. John Baptist in Birkung , Old Catholic Church in Karlsruhe .
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Tetsuro Yoshida
1894 - 1956 (62 years)
was a Japanese architect. He graduated from Tokyo University and entered the Ministry of Communications in 1919. He designed many Japanese post offices, telegraph offices, and related buildings in Japan. He introduced Eastern architecture to the west, while incorporating Western architecture in his own designs, including architecture from Scandinavia, Germany, and the United States.
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Mykhailo Hrechyna
1902 - 1979 (77 years)
Mykhailo Hnatovych Hrechyna , a Soviet architect from Ukraine, recipient of the Ukrainian State Prize . Biography Mykhailo Hrechyna was born in the village of Budyshche, Kiev Governorate , today it's the village of Cherkasy Raion around the city of Cherkasy. In 1930 he graduated from the architect department of the Kiev Art Institute .
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Albert Rowe
1898 - 1976 (78 years)
Albert Percival Rowe, CBE , often known as Jimmy Rowe or A. P. Rowe, was a radar pioneer and university vice-chancellor. A British physicist and senior research administrator, he played a major role in the development of radar before and during World War II.
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Johannes Otzen
1839 - 1911 (72 years)
Johannes Otzen was a German architect, urban planner, architectural theorist and university teacher. He worked mainly in Berlin and Northern Germany. Otzen was involved in urban planning in Berlin. He built Gothic Revival brick buildings for the Lutheran Church, which were influential throughout Northern Germany.
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Richard Borrmann
1852 - 1931 (79 years)
Richard Borrmann was a German architect and classical archaeologist. He was involved in the German Archaeological project at Olympia, Greece. From 1874 to 1878, he studied at the Bauakademie in Berlin, later serving as a professor of architectural history at the Technical University of Berlin . He specialized in ancient architectural history, and also made significant contributions in the field of Islamic art history, of which, he performed studies of its decorative architectural elements from ancient to modern times.
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Wilhelm Marstrand
1810 - 1873 (63 years)
Nicolai Wilhelm Marstrand , painter and illustrator, was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, to Nicolai Jacob Marstrand, instrument maker and inventor, and Petra Othilia Smith. Marstrand is one of the most renowned artists belonging to the Golden Age of Danish Painting.
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Kanō Jigorō
1860 - 1938 (78 years)
was a Japanese educator, athlete, and the founder of Judo. Along with Ju-Jutsu, Judo was one of the first Japanese martial arts to gain widespread international recognition, and the first to become an official Olympic sport. Pedagogical innovations attributed to Kanō include the use of black and white belts, and the introduction of dan ranking to show the relative ranking among members of a martial art style. Well-known mottoes attributed to Kanō include "good use of energy" and "mutual welfare and benefit".
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Erwin Otto Marx
1893 - 1980 (87 years)
Erwin Otto Marx was a German electrical engineer who invented the Marx generator, a device for producing high voltage electrical pulses. He worked as an engineering scientist in Braunschweig from 1918 to 1950 where he performed research and development for electrical power distribution via long distances.
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Mihailo Valtrović
1839 - 1915 (76 years)
Mihailo Valtrović was a Serbian architect, professor of archeology, one of the first pioneers of art history in Serbia, and key representative of the Historismus along with architect Dragutin Dragiša Milutinović. Valtrović was the first professor of archeology in Serbia, the initiator and founder of Serbian Archeology and founder and first president of the Serbian Archaeological Society. He designed a number of state orders and decorations.
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Alexandre Horowitz
1904 - 1982 (78 years)
Alexandre "Sacha" Horowitz was a Belgian-born Dutch mechanical engineer and inventor. Alexandre "Sacha" Horowitz was born in 1904 in Antwerp, to parents of East-European Jewish heritage, and lived from 1914 in The Netherlands until his death in 1982. He has 136 patents awarded to his name over a period of 50 years, covering a wide variety of products including prefab housing, farm machinery and oil industry equipment. His most well-known invention, however, is the Philishave rotary electric razor.
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John Coulson
1910 - 1990 (80 years)
John Metcalfe Coulson was a British chemical engineering academic particularly known for co-writing a textbook on chemical engineering with Jack Richardson , which became an established series of texts now known as Coulson & Richardson's Chemical Engineering.
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William Farrar Smith
1824 - 1903 (79 years)
William Farrar Smith , known as "Baldy" Smith, was a Union general in the American Civil War, notable for attracting the extremes of glory and blame. He was praised for his gallantry in the Seven Days Battles and the Battle of Antietam, but was demoted for professional and political reasons after the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg. As chief engineer of the Army of the Cumberland, he achieved recognition by restoring a supply line that saved that army from starvation and surrender, known as the "Cracker Line", that helped Union troops to success in the Chattanooga Campaign in the autumn of 1863.
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John Oldrid Scott
1841 - 1913 (72 years)
John Oldrid Scott was a British architect. Biography He was the son of Sir Gilbert Scott and his wife Caroline . His brother George Gilbert Scott Junior and nephew Sir Giles Gilbert Scott were also prominent architects. In 1868 he married Mary Ann Stevens, eldest daughter of the Reverend Thomas Stevens, founder of Bradfield College. One of his nine children, Charles Marriott Oldrid Scott, worked in his architectural practice.
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Richard Redmayne
1865 - 1955 (90 years)
Sir Richard Augustine Studdert Redmayne was a British civil and mining engineer. Redmayne worked as manager of several mines in Britain and South Africa before becoming a professor at the University of Birmingham. He was a leading figure in improving mine safety in the early twentieth century and would become the first Chief Inspector of Mines, leading investigations into many of the mine disasters of his time. He became the president of three professional associations, namely the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, the Institution of Professional Civil Servants and the Institution of Civ...
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Georg Benoit
1868 - 1953 (85 years)
Georg Benoit was a professor of mechanical engineering at the former TH Karlsruhe . Life Benoit was born in Wesel in 1868. He was raised in a Huguenot family. He studied mechanical engineering at the TH Charlottenburg. After working in the industry sector for a couple of years and serving as director of the Preußische Höhere Maschinenbauschule in Hagen, he was appointed to professorship for elevation and transport machines at the TH Karlsruhe in 1901. This professorship was newly established at that time. He retired in 1935. While being a professor in Karlsruhe, he was appointed to president in 1911/12 as well as in 1921/22.
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Julius Carl Raschdorff
1823 - 1914 (91 years)
Julius Carl Raschdorff was a German architect and academic teacher. He is considered one of the notable architects of the second half of the 19th century in Germany and created his most important work with the Berlin Cathedral.
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Edward Joseph Mccluskey
#11135
René Goormaghtigh
1893 - 1960 (67 years)
René Goormaghtigh was a Belgian engineer, after whom the Goormaghtigh Conjecture is named. Goormaghtigh studied at Ghent University, gaining a Diploma in Civil Engineering from the Central Board of Le Havre in 1918. Throughout his subsequent life he worked as an engineer and industrial administrator. In 1952 he was appointed advisor to the Société Générale de Belgique. He was made a Knight of the Order of Leopold II in 1947, and an Officer of the Order of the Crown in 1956. After a heart attack in 1958, he retired to Saint-André-des-Bruges.
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Hippodamus of Miletus
498 BC - 408 BC (90 years)
Hippodamus of Miletus was an ancient Greek architect, urban planner, physician, mathematician, meteorologist and philosopher, who is considered to be "the father of European urban planning", and the namesake of the "Hippodamian plan" of city layout, although rectangular city plans were in use by the ancient Greeks as early as the 8th c. BC.
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Wilhelm Bockslaff
1858 - 1945 (87 years)
Wilhelm Ludwig Nikolai Bockslaff was a Baltic German architect working in Riga. He is considered one of the most important representatives of Eclecticism, Neo-Gothic and Art Nouveau styles in the city. He is noted in particular for his construction of churches.
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John Smith
1781 - 1852 (71 years)
John Smith was a Scottish architect. His career started in 1805 and he was appointed as the official city architect of Aberdeen in 1807, the first person to hold this post. Together with Archibald Simpson, he contributed significantly to the architecture of Aberdeen, and many of the granite buildings that gave the city the nickname "The Granite City" or also "The Silver City" are attributed to them.
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Adalbert Stifter
1805 - 1868 (63 years)
Adalbert Stifter was an Austrian writer, poet, painter, and pedagogue. He was notable for the vivid natural landscapes depicted in his writing and has long been popular in the German-speaking world, while remaining almost entirely unknown to English readers.
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Henry Schlacks
1867 - 1938 (71 years)
Henry John Schlacks was primarily known as an ecclesiologist in a 19th Century sense of the word, meaning one who designs and decorates churches. He was from Chicago, Illinois, and is considered by many to be the finest of Chicago's church architects. Schlacks trained at MIT and in the offices of Adler & Sullivan before starting his own practice. He founded the Architecture Department at the University of Notre Dame and designed several buildings in the Chicago area.
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Louis Roelandt
1786 - 1864 (78 years)
Louis Roelandt or Lodewijk Joseph Adriaan Roelandt with his full Dutch name, was a Belgian architect that played an important role in the evolution of Neo-Renaissance and Neo-Classical architecture in Belgium.
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Eduard Mezger
1807 - 1894 (87 years)
Friedrich Eduard Mezger was a Bavarian architect, painter, professor, and a high civil officer of the royal buildings administration, called Oberbaurat . Biography Mezger was born in Pahuppenheim, son of the government building officer Kaspar Mezger. He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he was a student of Friedrich von Gärtner from 1825 to 1828, who enabled him to take part in monumental works in Athens. After his return in 1833 he became a professor in civil engineering at the Technical University of Munich, then Oberbaurat in 1846. He contributed to the design of several public and private buildings, amongst them the house of the painter Friedrich Dürck.
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Charles Babcock
1829 - 1913 (84 years)
Charles Babcock was an American architect, academic, Episcopal priest and founding member of the American Institute of Architects. He was born in Ballston Spa, New York. After being educated at Union College in 1847, he served as an apprentice of Richard Upjohn while he designed Trinity Church in Manhattan. Remaining with the firm for five years, he became a partner and later married Upjohn's daughter. From 1858 to 1862 he taught in St. Stephen's college, Annandale, New York. His interest in Gothic Revival architecture led him to study for the ministry, and after his training he became the pr...
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Tatsuo Endo
1925 - 1989 (64 years)
Tatsuo Endo was a Japanese engineer who, in 1968 along with M. Matsuishi, developed the rainflow-counting algorithm for fatigue analysis of structures while a visiting professor at the University of Illinois.
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Lee Miller
1907 - 1977 (70 years)
Elizabeth "Lee" Miller, Lady Penrose , was an American photographer and photojournalist. She was a fashion model in New York City in the 1920s before going to Paris, where she became a fashion and fine art photographer. During the Second World War, she was a war correspondent for Vogue, covering events such as the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.
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Oscar Faber
1886 - 1956 (70 years)
Oscar Faber was a British structural engineer. He was influential in the development of the use of reinforced concrete in the United Kingdom. Because many engineers were not certain of the material, Faber pioneered simple deflection tests, which enabled him to develop his theory of ‘Plastic yield in concrete’, and to calculate shear in reinforced concrete beams.
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Pál Selényi
1884 - 1954 (70 years)
Engineer Pál Selényi was known as the "father of xerography" at Tungsram corporation. He is also known as Paul Selenyi. Chester Carlson read one of Selenyi's papers in the 1930s and was very greatly impressed; subsequently, he invested in a big effort to develop xerography. That may be the reason why Selenyi was known as the "father of xerography" by some people. Pál Selényi studied physics and mathematics at the Budapest University. After finishing his studies, Selényi started to work for the newly created Applied Physics Department of the University.
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Domingo García Ramos
1911 - 1978 (67 years)
Domingo García Ramos was a prominent Mexican architect. He is the author of several books:Iniciación al Urbanismo Arquitectura y artes decorativas Primeros pasos en diseño urbano Planificación de edificios para la enseñanza Todos Tenemos la Culpa... y por eso estamos como estamos
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Eugene Bourdon
1870 - 1916 (46 years)
Eugene Bourdon was a Professor of Architectural Design at the Glasgow School of Art, and was influential in the development of architectural thinking and education in Glasgow in the early 20th century.
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Hans Multhopp
1913 - 1972 (59 years)
Hans Multhopp was a German aeronautical engineer/designer. Receiving a degree from the University of Göttingen, Multhopp worked with the famous designer Kurt Tank at the Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau AG during World War II, and was the leader of the team responsible for the design of the Focke-Wulf Ta 183 lightweight jet fighter, which was the winner of the 1945 Emergency Fighter Competition. Emigrating to the United Kingdom after the war, he assisted in the advancement of British aeronautic science before moving to the United States, where his work for Martin Marietta on lifting bodies provided ae...
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