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,
#11151
Josep Antoni Coderch
1913 - 1984 (71 years)
José Antonio Coderch y de Sentmenat , Spanish architect recognized as one of the most important post-World War II architects. Early life and career In 1932 Coderch started studying architecture at the Barcelona School of Architecture, which he graduated in 1940. He started his office with Manual Valls in 1942. After graduating he worked in Madrid with Pedro Muguruza and Secundino Zuazo. Years later, he was appointed city architect of Sitges, where he designed the Civil Guard garrison. After joining the CIAM, he became a member of Team 10 in 1960.
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Robert Hallowell Richards
1844 - 1945 (101 years)
Robert Hallowell Richards was an American mining engineer, metallurgist, and educator, born at Gardiner, Maine. In 1868, with the first class to leave the institution, he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and there he taught for 46 years, becoming professor of mineralogy and assaying in 1871, head of the department of mining engineering in 1873, and in 1884 professor also of metallurgy. The laboratories which he established at the Institute were the first of their kind in the world. He retired in 1914.
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William Hosking
1800 - 1861 (61 years)
William Hosking was an English writer, lecturer, and architect who had an important influence on the growth and development of London in Victorian times. He became the first Professor of Architecture at King's College London, and associated this discipline in a scholarly fashion with interests in town planning, civil engineering, history and antiquities.
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Dudley Allen Buck
1927 - 1959 (32 years)
Dudley Allen Buck was an electrical engineer and inventor of components for high-speed computing devices in the 1950s. He is best known for invention of the cryotron, a superconductive computer component that is operated in liquid helium at a temperature near absolute zero. Other inventions were ferroelectric memory, content-addressable memory, non-destructive sensing of magnetic fields, and writing printed circuits with a beam of electrons.
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Hermann Baagøe Storck
1839 - 1922 (83 years)
Hermann Baagøe Storck was a Danish architect and heraldist. As an architect, he is mainly known for the restoration of historic buildings. Among his own designs, his building for the Hirschsprung Collection in Copenhagen is the most widely known.
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Francis Palmer Smith
1886 - 1971 (85 years)
Francis Palmer Smith was an architect active in Atlanta and elsewhere in the Southeastern United States. He was the director of the Georgia Tech College of Architecture from 1909–1922. After working in Cincinnati, Ohio and then Columbus, Georgia, Smith was hired as a professor of Georgia Tech's new architecture school in 1908. He transferred the curriculum of the University of Pennsylvania which emphasized Beaux-Arts architecture. He met Robert Smith Pringle and formed a partnership with him in 1922, Pringle and Smith.
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Milan Zloković
1898 - 1965 (67 years)
Milan Zloković was a Serbian architect. His works epitomised two epochs of architecture in Belgrade. Biography Zloković studied in Graz and Belgrade , as well as Paris . He pioneered modernism in Yugoslav architecture, animating from 1928 to 1934 together with B. Kojić, J. Dubovi and D. Babić the Group of Architects of the Modern Style . From 1923 till 1963 he was a professor at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Architecture, exerting a great influence on several generations of Yugoslav architects.
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Bernhard Pankok
1872 - 1943 (71 years)
Bernhard Wilhelm Maria Pankok was a German painter, graphic artist, architect, and designer. His works are characterized by the transition between Art Nouveau and the International Style. His furniture and book design, such as the catalog for the German section of the Exposition Universelle in Paris, have garnered him the most recognition.
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Michael J. Adams
1930 - 1967 (37 years)
Michael James Adams was an American aviator, aeronautical engineer, and USAF astronaut. He was one of twelve pilots who flew the North American X-15, an experimental spaceplane jointly operated by the Air Force and NASA.
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Daniel Gooch
1816 - 1889 (73 years)
Sir Daniel Gooch, 1st Baronet was an English railway locomotive and transatlantic cable engineer. He was the first Superintendent of Locomotive Engines on the Great Western Railway from 1837 to 1864 and its chairman from 1865 until his death in 1889.
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John Wood, the Younger
1728 - 1782 (54 years)
John Wood, the Younger was an English architect, working principally in the city of Bath, Somerset. He was the son of the architect John Wood, the Elder. His designs were highly influential during the 18th century and the Royal Crescent is considered to be one of the best examples of Georgian Neo-Classical architecture in Britain.
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Wilhelm Wagenfeld
1900 - 1990 (90 years)
Wilhelm Wagenfeld was a German industrial designer and former student of the Bauhaus art school. He designed glass and metal works for the Jenaer Glaswerk Schott & Gen., the Vereinigte Lausitzer Glaswerke in Weißwasser, Rosenthal, Braun GmbH and WMF. Some of his designs are still produced to this day.
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Konstantin Bushuyev
1914 - 1978 (64 years)
Konstantin Davydovich Bushuyev was a Soviet engineer and director of the Apollo–Soyuz for the Soviet Union. Early life and education Bushuyev was born on 23 May 1914 in the village of Cherten, in the district of Mosaik, Kaluga Oblast, in what was then the Russian Empire. He was the son of rural teachers. Bushuyev graduated in 1930 from an industrial college in Pesochnya . He was then a foreman and later a deputy shop manager at the P.L.Voikov Moscow Iron Foundry before earning an admission to the Moscow Aviation Institute in 1936. Bushuyev graduated with a degree in aircraft mechanical engine...
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De Volson Wood
1832 - 1897 (65 years)
De Volson Wood was an American civil engineer and educator. He invented a steam rock drill and an air compressor and designed an ore dock. Wood was a professor, an author of multiple monographs on mathematics and engineering, vice-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the first president of the American Society for Engineering Education.
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Frank Miles Day
1861 - 1918 (57 years)
Frank Miles Day was a Philadelphia-based architect who specialized in residences and academic buildings. Career In 1883, he graduated from the Towne School of the University of Pennsylvania, and traveled to Europe. In England, he apprenticed under two architects, and won the 1885 prize from the Architectural Association of London. He returned to Philadelphia, and worked in the offices of George T. Pearson and Addison Hutton, before opening his own office in 1887. Day's first major commission was the Art Club of Philadelphia , on South Broad Street in Center City, Philadelphia. His brother Hen...
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Robert Ridgway
1862 - 1938 (76 years)
Robert Ridgway, sometimes spelled Robert Ridgeway , was an American civil engineer. He did not study engineering at any school, but worked 49 years for New York City in the construction of major projects, and became Chief Engineer of the Transit Commission in 1921. He became president of the American Society of Civil Engineers Metropolitan section. Further he became president of the national ASCE in 1925. The Ridgway Awards are an annual award of the ASCE Met section named for him.
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Thomas Egleston
1832 - 1900 (68 years)
Thomas Egleston was an American engineer who helped found Columbia University's School of Mines, now the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. Throughout his lifetime, Egleston published numerous lectures and books on metallurgy. Many of his books are preserved today at the archive in the Library of Congress.
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Leonard F. Fuller
1890 - 1987 (97 years)
Dr. Leonard F. Fuller was a noted American radio pioneer. In 1919, Fuller earned a PhD degree at the Stanford Department of Electrical Engineering. In World War I, he was part of the antisubmarine group of the National Research Council, and charged with the design and installation of the "high-power transoceanic radio telegraph stations" built by the United States Army and Navy. He held 24 patients for inventions before his death. He spent time as chair of the electrical engineering department at University of California, Berkeley, and then was acting professor of electrical engineering at St...
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Elmar Lohk
1901 - 1963 (62 years)
Elmar Lohk was an Estonian architect. Many of his buildings in Tallinn are now valued as great examples of 1930s architecture, for example, the prominent Scandic Hotel Palace on Freedom Square. His creation can be categorised as functionalism with some influence of Chicago school and traditional art.
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Edward Gordon Craig
1872 - 1966 (94 years)
Edward Henry Gordon Craig , sometimes known as Gordon Craig, was an English modernist theatre practitioner; he worked as an actor, director and scenic designer, as well as developing an influential body of theoretical writings. Craig was the son of actress Dame Ellen Terry.
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Johan Daniel Herholdt
1818 - 1902 (84 years)
Johan Daniel Herholdt was a Danish architect, professor and royal building inspector. He worked in the Historicist style and had a significant influence on Danish architecture during the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. His most famous work is the Copenhagen University Library in Fiolstræde in Copenhagen which heralded a new trend. The strong use of red brick in large-scale cultural and civic buildings was to characterize Danish architecture for several decades. He was a leading proponent of the "national" school in Danish architecture of the period as opposed to...
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Alfons Hoffmann
1895 - 1963 (68 years)
Professor Alfons Hoffmann was a Polish engineer and political activist. He attended Königliche Technische Hochschule zu Danzig, from 1905 to 1910, earning degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering. After graduating, between 1911–1913 and 1918–1919, Prof. Hoffman worked as an engineer for the Garbe Lahmeyer company in the electric machine laboratory and in the construction department, in Aachen, Westphalia.
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Kim Chung-up
1922 - 1988 (66 years)
Kim Chung-up was a prominent Korean architect and educator. Kim was born in Pyongyang as the second son of his father, Kim Yeong-pil and his mother, Yi Yeong-ja . He had six siblings; four brothers, and two sisters. He spent his childhood in various places such as Gangdong, Junghwa, Seongcheon and others due to his father's job as the country headman of the places. Kim was awarded the 1962 Cultural Award from Seoul Metropolitan Government in 1962, Chevalier from the France government in 1965, Order of Industrial Service Merit from the South Korea government in 1985.
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Leslie Stephen
1832 - 1904 (72 years)
Sir Leslie Stephen was an English author, critic, historian, biographer, mountaineer, and an early humanist activist. He was also the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Life Sir Leslie Stephen came from a distinguished intellectual family, and was born at 14 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington in London, the son of Sir James Stephen and Jane Catherine Stephen. His father was Colonial Undersecretary of State and a noted abolitionist. He was the fourth of five children, his siblings including James Fitzjames Stephen and Caroline Emelia Stephen .
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John Wood, the Elder
1704 - 1754 (50 years)
John Wood, the Elder was an English architect, working mainly in Bath. In 1740 he surveyed Stonehenge and the Stanton Drew stone circles. He later wrote extensively about Bladud and Neo-Druidism. Because of some of his designs he is also thought to have been involved in the early years of Freemasonry.
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Gaston du Bousquet
1839 - 1910 (71 years)
Gaston du Bousquet was a French engineer who was Chief of Motive Power of the Chemin de Fer du Nord, designer of locomotives and professor at École centrale de Lille. Steam locomotive designer Gaston du Bousquet taught mechanical engineering at the Institut industriel du Nord de la France from 1872. He was appointed chief engineer to the Chemins de Fer du Nord in 1890. He won a gold medal at the Universal Exhibition of 1894. He collaborated successfully with Alfred de Glehn and Edward Beugniot, both working for the Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques . He was president of the Soc...
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Ryszard Bartel
1897 - 1982 (85 years)
Ryszard Bartel was a Polish engineer, aircraft designer and aviator, one of Poland's aviation pioneers. Life and career Bartel was born in Sławniów village near Pilica. He was interested in aviation from his youth, and in 1911 he built his own gliders capable of short flights. In 1916, he enrolled in the Warsaw University of Technology, being one of three founders of the Aviation Section of that university's Students' Mechanical Club. In 1917, he completed a pilot course, and he joined the underground aviator organization . In 1918, after Poland regained its independence, he volunteered for the Polish Air Force.
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Frank Matcham
1854 - 1920 (66 years)
Francis Matcham was an English architect who specialised in the design of theatres and music halls. He worked extensively in London, predominantly under Moss Empires, for whom he designed the Hippodrome in 1900, Hackney Empire , Coliseum and Palladium . His last major commission before retirement was the Victoria Palace for the variety magnate Alfred Butt. During his 40-year career, Matcham was responsible for the design and construction of over 90 theatres and the redesign and refurbishment of a further 80 throughout the United Kingdom.
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Ludwig von Tetmajer
1850 - 1905 (55 years)
Ludwig von Tetmajer was a professor at the Eidgenössischen Polytechnikum, the fore-runner of modern ETH in Zurich. Tetmajer was a pioneer in the development of the research laboratories for determining the physical and mechanical properties of the construction materials and a co-founder of the Festigkeitsprüfungsanstalt, the modern Eidgenossische Materialprüfungs- und Forschungsanstalt of Switzerland.
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Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bonch-Bruevich
1888 - 1940 (52 years)
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bonch-Bruevich , sometimes spelled Bonch-Bruyevich, was a engineer, scientist, and professor. Generally considered the leading authority on radio in Russian Empire and Soviet Union in the first decades of the 20th century, he greatly influenced the pre-radar development of radio-location in that nation.
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Marian Walentynowicz
1896 - 1967 (71 years)
Marian Walentynowicz was a Polish graphic artist, architect, teacher, writer and a precursor to the comic book in Poland. He is probably best known for his collaboration as illustrator with Kornel Makuszyński in their creation of Koziołek Matołek, a popular classic children's series about a billy goat.
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Carl Abraham Pihl
1825 - 1897 (72 years)
Carl Abraham Pihl was a Norwegian civil engineer and director of the Norwegian State Railways from 1865 until his death. Pihl was one of the main architects of the use of narrow-gauge railways in Norway.
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Tony Smith
1912 - 1980 (68 years)
Anthony Peter Smith was an American sculptor, visual artist, architectural designer, and a noted theorist on art. He is often cited as a pioneering figure in American Minimalist sculpture. Education and early life Smith was born in South Orange, New Jersey, to a waterworks manufacturing family started by his grandfather and namesake, A. P. Smith. Tony contracted tuberculosis around 1916, which lasted through much of elementary school. In an effort to speed his recovery, protect his immune system, and protect his siblings, his family constructed a one-room prefabricated house in the backyard. ...
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Thomas Hudson Beare
1859 - 1940 (81 years)
Sir Thomas Hudson Beare FRSE RSSA was a British engineer. He was successively Professor of Engineering at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, at University College, London , and Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh.
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W. Harry Vaughan
1900 - Present (126 years)
William Harry Vaughan, Jr. was a professor of ceramic engineering at the Georgia School of Technology and the founder and first director of what is now the Georgia Tech Research Institute. Education Vaughan graduated from Georgia Tech with a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering chemistry in 1923. While at Georgia Tech, Vaughan was a member of Phi Kappa Phi and Pi Delta Epsilon; a contributor to The Technique in 1918 and 1919; Assistant Editor and Editor-in-Chief of the Blue Print; Captain, R.O.T.C; and President, Emerson Chemical Society. Vaughan subsequently earned a Master of Scienc...
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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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