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,
#11201
Kageyoshi Noro
1854 - 1923 (69 years)
Kageyoshi Noro was a Japanese metallurgist who contributed to the modernization of Japan's steel industry. Biography Kageyoshi Noro was born in 1854 in Nagoya, Japan. After finishing his primary education in Nagoya and his secondary education in Tokyo, he studied mining and metallurgy at the college, which would later become part of Imperial University of Tokyo. After graduation in 1982, he became assistant to Curt Netto of his alma mater and continued to study metallurgy while he taught students.
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Edward Schroeder Prior
1857 - 1932 (75 years)
Edward Schroeder Prior was a British architect, instrumental in establishing the arts and crafts movement. He was one of the foremost theorists of the second generation of the movement, writing extensively on architecture, art, craftsmanship and the building process and subsequently influencing the training of many architects.
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Giuseppe Albenga
1882 - 1957 (75 years)
Giuseppe Albenga was an Italian civil engineer, professor of bridge construction, and historian of civil engineering. Biography A student of Camillo Guidi, Giuseppe Albenga received his laurea in civil engineering at the Politecnico di Torino in 1904.
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John Carr
1723 - 1807 (84 years)
John Carr was a prolific English architect, best known for Buxton Crescent in Derbyshire and Harewood House in West Yorkshire. Much of his work was in the Palladian style. In his day he was considered to be the leading architect in the north of England.
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Heinrich von Ferstel
1828 - 1883 (55 years)
Freiherr Heinrich von Ferstel was an Austrian architect and professor, who played a vital role in building late 19th-century Vienna. Life The son of Ignaz Ferstel , a bank clerk and later director of the Austrian national bank in Prague, Heinrich Ferstel, after wavering for some time between the different arts, finally decided on architecture. From 1847 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under Eduard van der Nüll and August Sicard von Sicardsburg. After several years during which he was in disrepute because of his part in the 1848 Revolution, he finished his studies in 1850 and en...
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Reginald Blomfield
1856 - 1942 (86 years)
Sir Reginald Theodore Blomfield was a prolific British architect, garden designer and author of the Victorian and Edwardian period. Early life and career Blomfield was born at Bow rectory in Devon, where his father, the Rev. George John Blomfield , was rector. His mother, Isabella, was a first cousin of his father and the second daughter of the Rt. Rev. Charles James Blomfield, Bishop of London. He was brought up in Kent, where his father became vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Dartford, in 1857 and then Rector of Aldington in 1868. He was educated at Highgate School in North London, whose Grad...
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Hertha Ayrton
1854 - 1923 (69 years)
Phoebe Sarah Hertha Ayrton was a British engineer, mathematician, physicist and inventor, and suffragette. Known in adult life as Hertha Ayrton, born Phoebe Sarah Marks, she was awarded the Hughes Medal by the Royal Society for her work on electric arcs and ripple marks in sand and water.
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John Douglas
1830 - 1911 (81 years)
John Douglas was an English architect who designed over 500 buildings in Cheshire, North Wales, and northwest England, in particular in the estate of Eaton Hall. He was trained in Lancaster and practised throughout his career from an office in Chester. Initially he ran the practice on his own, but from 1884 until two years before his death he worked in partnerships with two of his former assistants.
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Thomas W. Lamb
1870 - 1942 (72 years)
Thomas White Lamb was a Scottish-born, American architect. He was one of the foremost designers of theaters and cinemas of the 20th century. Career Born in Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom, Thomas W. Lamb came to the United States at the age of 12. He studied architecture at Cooper Union in New York and initially worked for the City of New York as an inspector. His architecture firm, Thomas W. Lamb, Inc., was located at 36 West 40th Street in Manhattan, New York.
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James Thomson
1822 - 1892 (70 years)
James Thomson FRS FRSE LLD was a British engineer and physicist, born in Belfast, and older brother of William Thomson . Biography Born in Belfast, much of his youth was spent in Glasgow. His father James was professor of mathematics at the University of Glasgow from 1832 onward and his younger brother William was to become Baron Kelvin. James attended Glasgow University from a young age and graduated with high honours in his late teens. After graduation, he served brief apprenticeships with practical engineers in several domains; and then gave a considerable amount of his time to theoretica...
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Alexander Baerwald
1877 - 1930 (53 years)
Alexander Baerwald was a German Jewish architect best known for his work in Haifa, today in Israel, during Late Ottoman and British rule. Life and career Baerwald was born in Berlin, Germany on 3 March 1877. He studied at the Technical University of Berlin , interrupted by the summer semester 1898 at the Technische Hochschule of Munich. From 1903 to 1927 he was employed with the Prussian Construction and Financial Direction of Berlin, responsible for public constructions in Berlin. He advanced to become a Royal Ministerial Construction Councillor . One of his tasks was the construction management for the new building of the Prussian Royal Library in Berlin between 1908 and 1913.
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Robert Henry Thurston
1839 - 1903 (64 years)
Robert Henry Thurston was an American engineer, and the first Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology. He was assistant professor at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis and a published specialist on iron and steel as well as steam engines, when he was invited in 1871 by Stevens' president Henry Morton to head mechanical engineering at Stevens. The same year Thurston was appointed the first professor of mechanical engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology.
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Juraj Neidhardt
1901 - 1979 (78 years)
Juraj Neidhardt was a Yugoslav architect, teacher, urban planner and writer. Biography Neidhardt was born in Zagreb on October 15, 1901. He studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, under Peter Behrens and gained a diploma in 1924. During his studies in Vienna he made an interesting project for the airport.
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Charles Herbert Reilly
1874 - 1948 (74 years)
Sir Charles Herbert Reilly was an English architect and teacher. After training in two architectural practices in London he took up a part-time lectureship at the University of London in 1900, and from 1904 to 1933 he headed the University of Liverpool School of Architecture, which became world-famous under his leadership. He was largely responsible for establishing university training of architects as an alternative to the old system of apprenticeship.
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Je Tsongkhapa
1357 - 1419 (62 years)
Tsongkhapa was an influential Tibetan Buddhist monk, philosopher and tantric yogi, whose activities led to the formation of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is also known by his ordained name Losang Drakpa or simply as "Je Rinpoche" . He is also known by Chinese as Zongkapa Lobsang Zhaba or just Zōngkābā .
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Wilhelm Dörpfeld
1853 - 1940 (87 years)
Wilhelm Dörpfeld was a German architect and archaeologist, a pioneer of stratigraphic excavation and precise graphical documentation of archaeological projects. He is famous for his work on Bronze Age sites around the Mediterranean, such as Tiryns and Hisarlik , where he continued Heinrich Schliemann's excavations. Like Schliemann, Dörpfeld was an advocate of the historical reality of places mentioned in the works of Homer. While the details of his claims regarding locations mentioned in Homer's writings are not considered accurate by later archaeologists, his fundamental idea that they correspond to real places is accepted.
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Conrad Wilhelm Hase
1818 - 1902 (84 years)
Conrad Wilhelm Hase was a German architect and Professor. He was a prominent representative of the Neo-Gothic style and is known for his preservation work. Biography He was one of ten children born to a tax collector. In 1834, he began his architectural studies in Hanover. After completing those studies in 1838, he was unable to find employment, so he returned home to assist his father. On the advice of one of his teachers, Ernst Ebeling, he began an apprenticeship as a bricklayer with the builder, Christoph August Gersting. He passed his journeyman's examination in 1840. He then went to observe various style of architecture on a six-month tour throughout Germany.
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Augustin Mouchot
1825 - 1912 (87 years)
Augustin Mouchot was a 19th-century French inventor of the earliest solar-powered engine, converting solar energy into mechanical steam power. Background Mouchot was born in Semur-en-Auxois, France on 7 April 1825. He first taught at the primary schools of Morvan and later Dijon, before attaining a degree in Mathematics in 1852 and a Bachelor of Physical Sciences in 1853. Subsequently, he taught mathematics in the secondary schools of Alençon , Rennes and Lycée de Tours . It was during this period that he undertook research into solar energy, which led eventually to his obtaining government ...
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Antonio da Sangallo the Younger
1484 - 1546 (62 years)
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger , also known as Antonio Cordiani, was an Italian architect active during the Renaissance, mainly in Rome and the Papal States. One of his most popular projects that he worked on designing is St. Peter’s basilica in the Vatican City. He was also an engineer who worked on restoring several buildings. His success was greatly due to his contracts with renowned artists during his time. Sangallo died in Terni, Italy, and was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica.
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Francesco Boffo
1796 - 1867 (71 years)
Francesco Carlo Boffo was a Neoclassical architect who designed more than 30 buildings in Odesa between 1818 and 1861, including the famous Potemkin Stairs. Boffo was probably born in 1796 in Sardinia and he was apprenticed to an architect in Ticino. He then joined the University of Turin before entering the service of the Potocki noble family in Poland. He served as Odesa's chief architect between 1822 and 1844. His patrons included Count Michael Vorontsov and his wife, Elisabeth Branicka. Boffo was responsible for transforming Odesa into the open-air museum of Neoclassical architecture, rivalling St.
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Robert Mapplethorpe
1946 - 1989 (43 years)
Robert Michael Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images. His most controversial works documented and examined the gay male BDSM subculture of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A 1989 exhibition of Mapplethorpe's work, titled Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, sparked a debate in the United States concerning both use of public funds for "obscene" artwork and the Constitutional limits of free sp...
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Rachel Shalon
1904 - 1988 (84 years)
Rachel Shalon was the first woman engineer in Israel and a professor of structural engineering. Shalon was first of all Technion graduates, male and female, to reach the rank of full professor. Early life and education Rachel Znanmirow was born in Kalush, Poland on the eve of Passover 1904 to Gittel and Hanoch Znanmirow, a Hassidic family. Her father was a lumber merchant, and she grew up in Kalisz.
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Ayodele Awojobi
1937 - 1984 (47 years)
Ayodele Oluwatumininu Awojobi , also known by the nicknames "Dead Easy", "The Akoka Giant", and "Macbeth", was a Nigerian academic, author, inventor, social crusader and activist. He was considered a scholarly genius by his teachers and peers alike.
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Livio Castiglioni
1911 - 1979 (68 years)
Livio Castiglioni was an Italian architect and designer. He made a significant contribution to twentieth-century Italian lighting design and was an early proponent of the practice of industrial design in Italy.
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James Knox Taylor
1857 - 1929 (72 years)
James Knox Taylor was Supervising Architect of the United States Department of the Treasury from 1897 to 1912. His name is listed ex officio as supervising architect of hundreds of federal buildings built throughout the United States during the period.
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Matthew Hunter
1878 - 1961 (83 years)
Matthew Albert Hunter was a metallurgist and inventor of the Hunter process for producing titanium metal. Hunter was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1878 and received his early education in local public schools. He completed his Secondary education at Auckland Grammar School. He attended Auckland University College, where he earned his Bachelor's in 1900, and his Master's degree in 1902, and later studied at University College, London, earning a Doctor of Science degree, and at various other European universities. He met his future wife Mary Pond in Europe, as a fellow student, and married after traveling to America.
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Henry J. Kelley
1926 - 1988 (62 years)
Henry J. Kelley was Christopher C. Kraft Professor of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. He produced major contributions to control theory, especially in aeronautical engineering and flight optimization.
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Alfred Grenander
1863 - 1931 (68 years)
Alfred Frederik Elias Grenander was a Swedish architect, who became one of the most prominent engineers during the first building period of the Berlin U-Bahn network in the early twentieth century. Biography Grenander was born at Skövde in Västra Götaland County, Sweden. He was raised in Stockholm and began studying at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in 1881. He changed to the Royal Technical College of Charlottenburg in 1885. After his final degree in 1890 he became a site engineer at the construction of the new Reichstag building under the direction of Paul Wallot and continued hi...
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Harold M. Westergaard
1888 - 1950 (62 years)
Harold Malcolm Westergaard was a Danish structural engineer. He was Professor of theoretical and applied mechanics at the University of Illinois in Urbana and of Civil Engineering at Harvard. Biography Westergaard graduated in engineering from Copenhagen Danmarks Tekniske Højskole in 1911. He continued his practice in reinforced concrete in Hamburg, London, Göttingen, and prepared his written dissertation at Königlich Bayerische Technische Hochschule München in 1915. He obtained a PhD at the University of Illinois in Urbana in 1916 and was appointed lecturer there for theoretical and applied mechanics.
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Franca Helg
1920 - 1989 (69 years)
Franca Helg was an Italian designer and architect. She also had a career teaching at Istituto Universitario Architettura Venezia and Polytechnic of Milan. She collaborated with Franco Albini from 1945 through 1977.
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Girard Desargues
1591 - 1661 (70 years)
Girard Desargues was a French mathematician and engineer, who is considered one of the founders of projective geometry. Desargues' theorem, the Desargues graph, and the crater Desargues on the Moon are named in his honour.
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Robert Stevenson
1772 - 1850 (78 years)
Robert Stevenson, FRSE, FGS, FRAS, FSA Scot, MWS was a Scottish civil engineer, and designer and builder of lighthouses. His works include the Bell Rock Lighthouse. Early life Robert Stevenson was born in Glasgow. His father was Alan Stevenson, a partner in a West Indies sugar trading house in the city. Alan died of an epidemic fever on the island of St. Christopher in the West Indies on 26 May 1774, a few days before Robert's second birthday. Robert's uncle died of the same disease around the same time. Since this left Alan's widow, Jean Lillie Stevenson, in much-reduced financial circumstan...
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Kenkichi Yabashi
1869 - 1927 (58 years)
was a Japanese architect and high-level official of Ministry of Finance, known as the person from the Yabashi family that has the known pedigree record dating back to the Saga Genji and Minamoto no Tōru who is sometimes mentioned as the model for Hikaru Genji in important Japanese literary classic The Tale of Genji , a branch line of Emperor Saga. He is known as the central figure who organised the construction of National Diet Building.
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Christian Friedrich von Leins
1814 - 1892 (78 years)
Christian Friedrich von Leins was a German architect. Life He was the son of masonry foreman. Until 1837, Leins attended the Friedrich-Eugens-Gymnasium in Stuttgart, then served an apprenticeship at a local architectural firm. From 1837 to 1840, he lived in Paris, where he found employment with Henri Labrouste, while he received training from Eugène Flachat and Jules Petiet. Upon returning home, he passed the state exam for structural engineering.
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Iwao Yamawaki
1898 - 1987 (89 years)
Iwao Yamawaki, born Iwao Fujita, was a Japanese photographer and architect who trained at the Bauhaus. Early life and education Born in Nagasaki, Yamawaki studied architecture at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts from 1921 to 1926.
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Wolfgang Klemperer
1893 - 1965 (72 years)
Dr. Wolfgang Benjamin Klemperer was born in Dresden, Germany, the son of the Austrian nationals Leon and Charlotte Klemperer. He was in his time a prominent aviation and aerospace scientist and engineer, who ranks among the pioneers of early aviation.
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Vassili Samarsky-Bykhovets
1803 - 1870 (67 years)
Vasili Yevgrafovich Samarsky-Bykhovets was a Russian mining engineer and the chief of Russian Mining Engineering Corps between 1845 and 1861. The mineral samarskite , and chemical element samarium are named after him. He was the first person whose name was given to a chemical element.
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Thomas Lomar Gray
1850 - 1908 (58 years)
Thomas Lomar Gray was a Scottish engineer noted for his pioneering work in seismology. Early life Born in Lochgelly, Fife, Scotland, Gray graduated in 1878 from the University of Glasgow with a BSc in engineering. At Glasgow, he awarded the Cleland Medal for "An Experimental Determination of Magnetic Moments in Absolute Measurements.".
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William Ward Watkin
1886 - 1952 (66 years)
William Ward Watkin was an architect primarily practicing in Houston, Texas. He was the founder of the Architecture Department of Rice University in 1912, and remained on the Rice faculty until his death. Concurrently, he also designed a number of important projects, mostly in the Houston area.
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Hermann Friedrich Waesemann
1813 - 1879 (66 years)
Hermann Friedrich Waesemann was a German architect. He was born in Danzig , the son of an architect. He studied mathematics and science in Bonn from 1830 to 1832, before going to Berlin to study architecture at the Bauakademie. His main work is the Rotes Rathaus in Berlin.
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Barbara Brukalska
1899 - 1980 (81 years)
Barbara Brukalska was a Polish architect, an architectural theorist, a prominent exponent of Functionalism, a member of the Praesens group, and a professor at Warsaw Polytechnic. She was also the wife of architect Stanisław Brukalski.
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Carl Roesner
1804 - 1869 (65 years)
Carl Roesner was an Austrian architect. Life He studied architecture in Vienna and Rome. In 1826, he began his work as a proofreader for lectures at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and, in 1835, became a Professor there. He gravitated to the Romanticists and concentrated on sacred art. Wilhelm Stiassny was one of his students. He was also editor of the Allgemeine Bauzeitung .
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Gaetano Cima
1805 - 1878 (73 years)
Gaetano Cima was an Italian architect, exponent of the neoclassical movement. Biography Gaetano Cima was born in Cagliari, Sardinia by an upper-middle-class family. Gaetano Cima died in Cagliari in 1878.
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Jacob Frederik Klinkhamer
1854 - 1928 (74 years)
Jacob Frederik Klinkhamer was a Dutch architect and professor of architecture. He designed several buildings in the Netherlands, Dutch East Indies and South Africa. Career Klinkhamer studied in Delft at the then Polytechnic, where in 1878 he graduated as a civil engineer. He started in 1882 as an independent architect in Amsterdam. With Dolf van Gendt he designed the Granary Korthals Altes . He designed railroad building including Main II , an office building for the NISM and the station building of Soestdijk and Baarn Station . He also designed villas and houses. Several of his works are recognized as significant.
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Turpin Bannister
1904 - 1982 (78 years)
Turpin Chambers Bannister was one of the leading American architectural historians of his generation. A long-time professor at the University of Illinois and the University of Florida, he is best known for his work in architectural history, including his work with The Society of Architectural Historians, and editorship of The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.
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Joseph Hansom
1803 - 1882 (79 years)
Joseph Aloysius Hansom was a British architect working principally in the Gothic Revival style. He invented the Hansom cab and founded the eminent architectural journal The Builder in 1843. Career Hansom was born in the parish of St Martin's , York to a large Roman Catholic family and baptised as Josephus Aloysius Handsom. He was the brother of the architect Charles Francis Hansom and the uncle of Edward J. Hansom. He was apprenticed to his father, Henry, as a joiner, but showing an early aptitude for draughtsmanship and construction, he transferred his apprenticeship to a York architect named Matthew Philips, without informing the City of York.
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