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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Engineering,
#1251
Bruno A. Boley
#65418
Overall Influence
1924 - 2017 (93 years)
Bruno A. Boley was the Dean of Engineering at Northwestern University for 20 years. He also served as an engineering faculty member at Ohio State University, Columbia University and Cornell University. He received the B.S. in Civil Engineering from City College of New York and the Sc.D. in Aeronautical Engineering from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Go to Profile#1252
John Baras
#43926
Overall Influence
John S. Baras is a Greek American electrical engineer. He is a Professor and Lockheed Martin Chair in Systems Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park. Education He received a Diploma in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens and an MS in and a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Harvard.
Go to Profile#1253
Frank E. Marble
#54258
Overall Influence
1918 - 2014 (96 years)
Frank Earl Marble was an American scientist who worked in the field of aerodynamics and combustion. He obtained his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1940 and Master's degree in Applied Mathematics in 1942, both from Case Institute of Technology. He obtained an engineer's degree in 1947 and PhD in 1948 under the supervision of Theodore von Kármán and Hans W. Liepmann from California Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#1254
Matthew Rolston
#6832
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Matthew Russell Rolston is an American artist, photographer, director and creative director, known for his lighting techniques and detailed approach to art direction and design. Rolston has been identified throughout his career with the revival and modern expression of Hollywood glamour.
Go to Profile#1255
Bill Wattenburg
#36426
Overall Influence
1936 - 2018 (82 years)
Willard Harvey Wattenburg was an American inventor, engineer, author, and talk radio show host from California. Advertisements for his show often referred to him as "The Smartest Man in the World." Early life Born and raised in Greenville, California, in rural Plumas County, Wattenburg grew up working with his father in the logging business. His scientific talent was discovered by a teacher, who encouraged him to apply to several schools, including the University of California, Berkeley where he completed his first year with honors. After his freshman year, Wattenburg moved back to assist his...
Go to Profile#1256
John Seely Brown
#4001
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
John Seely Brown , also known as "JSB", is an American researcher who specializes in organizational studies with a particular bend towards the organizational implications of computer-supported activities. Brown served as Director of Xerox PARC from 1990 to 2000 and as Chief Scientist at Xerox from 1992 to 2002; during this time the company played a leading role in the development of numerous influential computer technologies. Brown is the co-author of The Social Life of Information, a 2000 book which analyzes the adoption of information technologies.
Go to Profile#1257
Massoud Pedram
#48644
Overall Influence
Massoud Pedram is an Iranian American computer engineer noted for his research in green computing, energy storage systems, low-power electronics and design, electronic design automation and quantum computing. In the early 1990s, Pedram pioneered an approach to designing VLSI circuits that considered physical effects during logic synthesis. He named this approach layout-driven logic synthesis, which was subsequently called physical synthesis and incorporated into the standard EDA design flows. Pedram's early work on this subject became a significant prior art reference in a litigation between Synopsys Inc.
Go to Profile#1258
Armen Der Kiureghian
#33684
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Armen Der Kiureghian , is an Iranian-born Armenian-American academic, one of the founders of the American University of Armenia, where he served as the president from 2014 to 2019. He is the professor of civil engineering at the University of California.
Go to Profile#1259
Daniel W. Dobberpuhl
#39241
Overall Influence
1945 - 2019 (74 years)
Daniel "Dan" William Dobberpuhl was an electrical engineer in the United States who led several teams of microprocessor designers. Background Dobberpuhl was born in Streator, Illinois on March 25, 1945. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1967. He worked as an engineer for the Department of Defense until 1973 when he worked for GE Integrated Circuits Laboratory in Syracuse, New York, making application-specific integrated circuits.
Go to Profile#1260
Björn Schuller
#53147
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Björn Wolfgang Schuller is a scientist of electrical engineering, information technology and computer science as well as entrepreneur. He is professor of artificial intelligence at Imperial College London., UK, and holds the chair of embedded intelligence for healthcare and wellbeing at the University of Augsburg in Germany. He was a university professor and holder of the chair of complex and intelligent systems at the University of Passau in Germany. He is also co-founder and managing director as well as the current chief scientific officer of audEERING GmbH, Germany, as well as permanent v...
Go to Profile#1261
Alan Colquhoun
#41500
Overall Influence
1921 - 2012 (91 years)
Alan Harold Colquhoun was an English architect, historian, critic and teacher. Biography Colquhoun was born in Eton, Buckinghamshire on 27 June 1921 and attended Bradfield School. He went on to study architecture at the Edinburgh College of Art and the Architectural Association in London. In the Second World War Colquhoun was a captain in the Bengal Sappers and Miners, at Roorkee, India, where he first met future friend and architectural colleague Robert Maxwell. Colquhoun started his career as an architect at London County Council , and then in the practice of Lyons Israel Ellis where he des...
Go to Profile#1262
Ralph Alger Bagnold
#67997
Overall Influence
#1263
Philippe Rahm
#47752
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Philippe Rahm Dipl. EPFL - Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne - Switzerland 1993 is a principal architect in the office of Philippe Rahm architectes, based in Paris, France. His work, which extends the field of architecture from the physiological scale of the body to the climatic scale of the city has received an international audience in the context of sustainability.
Go to Profile#1264
Robert Helliwell
#41511
Overall Influence
1920 - 2011 (91 years)
Robert A. Helliwell was an electrical engineer and professor at Stanford University. He was one of the pioneering scientists in the study of whistlers and related ionospheric phenomena. Early life Helliwell was born in Red Wing, Minnesota, on September 2, 1920. He and his mother moved to Palo Alto, California after his father died. Helliwell and his wife, whom he knew in high school, were both undergraduates at Stanford University.
Go to Profile#1265
Morteza Gharib
#47627
Overall Influence
Morteza Gharib is the Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Bio-Inspired Engineering at Caltech. Gharib was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2015 for contributions to fluid flow diagnostics and imagery, and engineering of bioinspired devices and phenomena.
Go to Profile#1266
Gunnar Johannsen
#58296
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Gunnar Johannsen is a German cyberneticist, and Emeritus Professor of Systems Engineering and Human-Machine Systems at the University of Kassel, known for his contributions in the field of human-machine systems.
Go to Profile#1267
Ian Waitz
#58229
Overall Influence
Ian A. Waitz is the Vice Chancellor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was a MacVicar Faculty Fellow from 2003 to 2013.
Go to Profile#1268
Michael A. Sutton
#60427
Overall Influence
Michael A. Sutton is an American Engineering professor. He is Carolina Distinguished Professor and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at the University of South Carolina-Columbia. He served as Chairperson of Mechanical Engineering and Chair of the University Tenure and Promotion Committee. In 1998, Dr. Sutton co-founded Correlated Solutions, Inc. in Columbia, SC, and he still serves as its CSO.
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Mohamed El Naschie
#6805
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Mohamed El Naschie is an Egyptian engineer and the former editor of a controversial journal, Chaos, Solitons & Fractals. The controversy concerned El Naschie's publication, over many years, of over 300 papers of questioned scientific merit authored by himself in his own journal with little or no apparent peer review. Published reports of his eventual departure from the editorship of the journal led to a lengthy libel court case that raised questions about the libel laws in Great Britain. The controversy has also played a role in discussions of the "impact factor" as a quality measure for sci...
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John Schlesinger
#1357
Overall Influence
1926 - 2003 (77 years)
John Richard Schlesinger was an English film and stage director, and actor. He emerged in the early 1960’s as a leading light of the British New Wave, before embarking on a successful career in Hollywood, often directing films dealing frankly in provocative subject matter, combined with his status as one of the only openly-gay directors working in mainstream films.
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Jean-Baptiste Mondino
#5210
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Jean-Baptiste Mondino is a French fashion photographer and music video director. He has directed music videos for Madonna, David Bowie, Sting, Björk, Don Henley, Neneh Cherry, Axel Bauer and Les Rita Mitsouko. Mondino has also photographed the covers and album packaging for the Marianne Faithfull albums Before The Poison and Easy Come, Easy Go , Shakespear's Sister's Hormonally Yours , Alain Bashung's Osez Joséphine , Chatterton , Mylène Farmer's Désobéissance , J.'s We Are the Majority and Prince's Lovesexy . He also designed the titles for the Anglo-French TV music show Rapido.
Go to Profile#1272
Helen M. Chan
#30939
Overall Influence
Helen M. Chan is the New Jersey Zinc Professor at Lehigh University. Her work considers the development of ceramic-metal nanocomposites. She is on the board of directors of the American Ceramic Society.
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Massimo Scolari
#32939
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Massimo Scolari , is an Italian architect, painter and designer. Career Scolari graduated in architecture in Milan in 1969. In 1973 he became a professor of History of Architecture at Palermo, and of Drawing at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia . Between 1975 and 1993, he was visiting professor at various universities including: Cornell University, Cooper Union in New York City, the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, Technische Universität in Vienna, Harvard University, and University of Cambridge. From 2006, he was a Davenport Visiting Professor at t...
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Iñaki Ábalos
#61553
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Iñaki Ábalos is a Spanish architect and author. Ábalos is a graduate of Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid, and from 2013 to 2016 he was Professor in Residence and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He had also taught at Columbia University, the Architectural Association, Princeton University, and Cornell University.
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José Rodríguez Pérez
#57993
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
José Rodríguez Pérez is a Chilean engineer and professor of electrical engineering at the Universidad Andrés Bello. Early life and education Rodríguez was born in Valdivia, Chile. He received the degrees of Technician in Electronics and Electrical Engineer at the Federico Santa María Technical University in 1977 and his doctorate in electrical engineering at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in 1985. Since 1977 he is working at USM where he is currently Professor in the Department of Electronical Engineering.
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William Tietz
#14048
Overall Influence
1927 - 2020 (93 years)
William John Tietz Jr. was an American veterinarian who was Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University from 1971 to 1977 and president of Montana State University from 1977 to 1990. A group of historians named Tietz one of Montana State's four most important presidents in 2011.
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Ali Akansu
#13288
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Ali Naci Akansu is a Turkish-American Professor of electrical & computer engineering and scientist in applied mathematics. He is best known for his seminal contributions to the theory and applications of linear subspace methods including sub-band and wavelet transforms, particularly the binomial QMF and the multivariate framework to design statistically optimized filter bank .
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Andrew S. Levey
#57091
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Andrew S. Levey is an American nephrologist who transformed chronic kidney disease clinical practice, research, and public health by developing equations to estimate glomerular filtration rate , and leading the global standardization of CKD definition and staging.
Go to Profile#1279
Leo Rafael Reif
#30599
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
#1280
G. P. "Bud" Peterson
#40526
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
George Paul "Bud" Peterson is the former president of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Peterson is a graduate of Kansas State University, where he earned B.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics and an M.S. in Engineering, and Texas A&M University, where he earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. On January 7, 2019, Peterson announced his upcoming retirement from Georgia Tech, effective summer of 2019. His successor, Ángel Cabrera, assumed the office September 1, 2019, after serving for seven years as president of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. In September ...
Go to Profile#1281
Ben G. Streetman
#57690
Overall Influence
Ben G. Streetman is the former dean of the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Texas in 1966, and became a professor there in 1982. He founded the university's Microelectronics Research Center and holds the Dula D. Cockrell Centennial Chair Emeritus in Engineering. Streetman is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Electrochemical Society. He was awarded the IEEE Education Meda...
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Dinesh Mohan
#51636
Overall Influence
1945 - 2021 (76 years)
Dinesh Mohan was honorary professor at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi since 2017. He was distinguished professor at Shiv Nadar University, Gautam Buddha Nagar from 2016 to 2018. From 2010 to 2015 he was Emeritus Volvo Chair Professor for Transportation Planning & Safety at IITD. He was head of Centre for Biomedical Engineering , Coordinator of the Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Programme and head, W.H.O. Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Safety Technology at IIT Delhi . He was also Director, Independent Council for Road Safety International .
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Wai-Chi Fang
#31159
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Wai-Chi Fang is a Taiwanese engineer. Education He received his B.Sc. from the Electronics Engineering Department at National Chiao Tung University in 1978. He completed his M.Sc. in 1982 from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his Ph.D. in 1992 at the University of Southern California. He is currently the TSMC Chair Professor of National Chiao Tung University.
Go to Profile#1284
Bernd Becher
#41300
Overall Influence
1931 - 2007 (76 years)
#1285
Benjamin Wah
#24859
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Professor Benjamin Wan-Sang Wah is the Wei Lun Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, as well as the former provost of this university. He was elected President of IEEE Computer Society in 2001.
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John F. Forester
#40512
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
John F. Forester is a planning theorist with a particular emphasis on participatory planning. His scholarship appeals moral philosophy, oral history and ethnographic social science, as well as planning and policy studies. He is the author of Critical Theory and Public Life , Planning in the Face of Power , The Deliberative Practitioner and "Dealing with Differences: Dramas of Mediating Public Disputes" .
Go to Profile#1287
Werner Seligmann
#52487
Overall Influence
1930 - 1998 (68 years)
Werner Seligmann was an architect, urban designer and educator. Biography Werner Seligmann was born on March 30, 1930, in Osnabrück, Germany. His father, Fritz, was born December 31, 1902, in Krefeld, Germany, survived a labor camp in Bielefeld and deportation to KZ Theresienstadt, Terezin in Czechoslovakia. He died March 10, 1971, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. His mother, Charlotte Louise , was Fritz's second wife and was born June 1, 1902. She died in KZ Ravensbrück, Germany, about 1944. Fritz was Jewish but Charlotte was not. His sister, Helga Seligmann, was born in Osnabrück September 17, 1...
Go to Profile#1288
William Peltier
#68596
Overall Influence
#1289
Frank A. McClintock
#56873
Overall Influence
1921 - 2011 (90 years)
Frank A. McClintock of Concord, Massachusetts, was an American mechanical engineer in material science. A pioneer in the study of ductile fracture, McClintock was an Emeritus professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Perry McCarty
#46205
Overall Influence
1931 - 2023 (92 years)
Perry L. McCarty was an American scientist and professor of environmental engineering. He is best known for his contributions to the environmental engineering profession through education, research, and service to government and industry. McCarty passed on June 4, 2023.
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Martin A. Schmidt
#45719
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Martin Arnold Schmidt is the 19th President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Prior to this role, Schmidt was Provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2014 to 2022. Education Schmidt earned his BS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1981 and PhD from MIT in 1988.
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Richard Haag
#25130
Overall Influence
1923 - 2018 (95 years)
Richard Haag was an American landscape architect who was known for his role in Gas Works Park in Seattle, Washington and on the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island. Richard Haag's modernist and minimalist ideals also set the tone for Northwestern landscape design.
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Munther A. Dahleh
#29954
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Munther A. Dahleh is the William Coolidge Professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Institute for Data, Systems, and Society .
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Hamid Shirvani
#26353
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Hamid Augustine Shirvani is an architecture scholar, university president and chancellor emeritus. Early life and education Shirvani was born in Tehran, Iran, and raised in London, England; he was educated in the United Kingdom and attended graduate schools in the United States. He holds a BA in Architecture from the Polytechnic of Central London, a M.Arch from Pratt Institute, a M.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an M.L.A. from Harvard University and both an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.
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M. Jagadesh Kumar
#20355
Overall Influence
Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar is an Indian academician, electrical engineer, education administrator. He is currently the chairman of University Grants Commission, since February 2022. He is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Delhi. Kumar also served as the VC of JNU from in January 2016 to 2022.
Go to Profile#1296
Molly Shoichet
#41261
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Molly S. Shoichet , is a Canadian science professor, specializing in chemistry, biomaterials and biomedical engineering. She was Ontario's first Chief Scientist. Shoichet is a biomedical engineer known for her work in tissue engineering, and is the only person to be a fellow of the three National Academies in Canada.
Go to Profile#1297
Frederick S. Billig
#48172
Overall Influence
1933 - 2006 (73 years)
Frederick Stucky Billig was an American aerospace engineer who was a pioneer in the development of scramjet propulsion. Billig's primary research was in the area of high-speed, air-breathing propulsion for advanced flight vehicles including pioneering work in external burning and supersonic combustion. He was responsible for highspeed propulsion programs sponsored by the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force and NASA.
Go to Profile#1298
John S. Mayo
#36752
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
John Sullivan Mayo is an American engineer, AT&T executive and seventh president of Bell Labs, known for contributions to the computer and telecommunications industry. In 1979, Mayo was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions and leadership in the realization of digital facilities for the telecommunications network.
Go to Profile#1299
Catherine J. Murphy
#41258
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Catherine "Cathy" J. Murphy is an American chemist and materials scientist, and is the Larry Faulkner Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign . The first woman to serve as the head of the department of chemistry at UIUC, Murphy is known for her work on nanomaterials, specifically the seed-mediated synthesis of gold nanorods of controlled aspect ratio. She is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.
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Jose L. Torero
#30603
Overall Influence
José Luis Torero FREng FTSE FRSE FRSN is the Head of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at University College London. He took this appointment after two years as the John L. Bryan Chair in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering and Director of the Center for Disaster Resilience in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland . He was formerly the Head of the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland . He is Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering since 2010, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering since 2014 and The Royal Society of Edinburgh since 2008.
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