Search People Result | Academic Influence

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.

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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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School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Engineering,

#1301

Giorgio Strehler

#6624

Overall Influence

1921 - 1997 (76 years)

Giorgio Strehler was an Italian stage director, theatre practitioner, actor and politician. He was one of the most significant figures in Italian theatre during his lifetime, described by Mel Gussow as "the grand master of Italian theater" and "one of the world's boldest and most innovative directors." He co-founded Italy's first and most significant repertory company, the Piccolo Teatro of Milan, and the Union of the Theatres of Europe.

#1302

Howard Harry Rosenbrock

Howard Harry Rosenbrock

#16915

Overall Influence

1920 - 2010 (90 years)

Howard Harry Rosenbrock was a leading figure in control theory and control engineering. He was born in Ilford, England in 1920, graduated in 1941 from University College London with a 1st class honors degree in Electrical Engineering. He served in the Royal Air Force during World War II. He received the PhD from London University in 1955. After some time spent at Cambridge University and MIT, he was awarded a Chair at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, where he founded the Control Systems Centre. He died on 21 October 2010.

#1303

Robert Tavernor

#37200

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Robert Tavernor is an English Emeritus Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the London School of Economics and Political Science , and founding director of the Tavernor Consultancy in London. He is an architecture historian and urbanist, who has published widely on architecture and urban design, including the impact of tall buildings on historic cities. His long academic career includes being appointed to the Forbes Chair in Architecture at the University of Edinburgh at age 36.

#1304

Nari Gandhi

#44064

Overall Influence

1934 - 1993 (59 years)

Nariman Dossabhai Gandhi was an Indian architect known for his highly innovative works in organic architecture. He practiced as an architect in India from 1964 to 1993 having worked on approximately 27 projects. He primarily focused on designing residences with a secondary focus on designing furniture, objects, and upholstery textiles.

#1305

Muriel Médard

#44171

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Muriel Médard is an information theorist and electrical engineer. She is the Cecil H. Green Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is known for her research in network coding.

#1306

Franz-Josef Ulm

#60352

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Franz-Josef Ulm is a structural engineer, an engineering scientist and a professor since 1999. He is Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , the Faculty Director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub . He is credited for discovering the nanogranular structure of Calcium-Silicate-Hydrates , the binding phase of concrete, and for the development of concepts of nanoengineering of concrete which combine advanced nanomechanics experiments with molecular simulation results. He speaks up for an environmental sustainable engineering, with “greener” c...

#1307

Zhou Guozhi

#32035

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Zhou Guozhi is a Chinese material scientist and physical chemist. He is an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences , and a professor of material science and engineering in Shanghai University.

#1308

Ronald G. Larson

#52797

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Ronald G. Larson is George G. Brown Professor of Chemical Engineering and Alfred H. White Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan, where he holds joint appointments in macromolecular science and engineering, biomedical engineering, and mechanical engineering. He is internationally recognized for his research contributions to the fields of polymer physics and complex fluid rheology, especially in the development of theory and computational simulations. Notably, Larson and collaborators discovered new types of viscoelastic instabilities for polymer molecules and developed predictive theories for their flow behavior.

#1309

Avinash Kumar Agarwal

#55560

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Avinash Kumar Agarwal is an Indian mechanical engineer, tribologist and a professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He is known for his studies on internal combustion engines, Emissions, alternate fuels and CNG engines and is an elected fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering , Society of Automotive Engineers, US , National Academy of Science, Allahabad , Royal Society of Chemistry, UK , International Society for Energy, Environment and Sustainability , and Indian National Academy of Engineering . The Council of Scien...

#1310

Wibool Piyawattanametha

#29190

Overall Influence

Wibool Piyawattanametha is the head of Advanced Imaging Research Center, King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Thailand. Education Piyawattanametha completed his Bachelor of Electronics Engineering from the King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok, Thailand. He completed his post graduate degrees in Electrical engineering from University of California, Los Angeles, USA in 1999 and 2004 .

#1311

Farshid Guilak

#29309

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Farshid Guilak is an American engineer and orthopedic researcher. He is the Mildred B. Simon Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Washington University in St. Louis and director of research at Shriners Hospitals for Children. He is also on the faculty of the departments of Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, and Developmental Biology at Washington University.

#1312

Alfred Mansfeld

#46244

Overall Influence

1912 - 2004 (92 years)

Alfred Mansfeld was an Israeli architect. Biography Mansfeld was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia in 1912. While still a child, he moved with his family to Berlin, Germany. He began studying architecture in 1931 at the Technische Hochschule Berlin but, with the rise of the Nazis to power, he moved in 1933 to Paris, France, where he completed his studies in 1935 at the École Spéciale d'Architecture, as a student of the architect, Auguste Perret, a pioneer of concrete construction. In 1935, he emigrated to Mandate Palestine.

#1313

Luigi Broglio

#26267

Overall Influence

1911 - 2001 (90 years)

Luigi Broglio , was an Italian aerospace engineer, airforce lieutenant colonel and dean of the school of aeronautical engineering at the University of Rome La Sapienza. Known as "the Italian von Braun", he is best known as the architect of the San Marco programme.

#1314

Joseph Alcamo

#47986

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Joseph Alcamo is a U.S. environmental scientist who served as Chief Scientist of the United Nations Environment Programme from 2009 to 2013. Career Alcamo received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1973 and a master's degree in environmental engineering from Manhattan College, and earned his PhD for civil-environmental engineering at the University of California. From 1973 to 1980, he worked as an environmental engineer in the private sector, before changing to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1981 and from there to the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria in 1982.

#1315

Girish Karnad

#995

Overall Influence

1938 - 2019 (81 years)

Girish Karnad was an Indian actor, film director, Kannada writer, playwright and a Jnanpith awardee, who predominantly worked in Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Marathi films. His rise as a playwright in the 1960s marked the coming of age of modern Indian playwriting in Kannada, just as Badal Sarkar did in Bengali, Vijay Tendulkar in Marathi, and Mohan Rakesh in Hindi. He was a recipient of the 1998 Jnanpith Award, the highest literary honour conferred in India.

#1316

John Horlock

#36953

Overall Influence

1928 - 2015 (87 years)

Sir John Harold Horlock FRS FREng was a British professor of mechanical engineering, and was vice-chancellor of both the Open University and the University of Salford, as well as vice-president of the Royal Society. In 1977, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering

#1317

Friedrich Bassler

Friedrich Bassler

#27346

Overall Influence

1909 - 1992 (83 years)

Friedrich Bassler was a German hydraulic engineer. From 1961 to 1977 he was director of the Institut für Wasserbau und Wasserwirtschaft at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt. From 1964 till 1973 Bassler helped to develop the hydro-solar energy project at the Qattara Depression further. He directed the "Board of Advisers" which was responsible for the planning and financing of the project. For the Egyptian government he served as an advisor on the project.

#1318

Martin Faulstich

#47523

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Martin Faulstich is a German research scientist. He is a professor at the Clausthal University of Technology, chairman of the German Advisory Council on the Environment and the managing director of the Clausthal Institute of Environmental Technology in Clausthal-Zellerfeld.

#1319

Donald Firesmith

Donald Firesmith

#21020

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Donald G. Firesmith is an American software engineer, consultant, and trainer at the Software Engineering Institute. Biography Firesmith received his B.A. in Mathematics and German from Linfield College in 1975 and his M.A. in Mathematics from Arizona State University in 1977. He also studied one year at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

#1320

Akintunde Akinwande

#22112

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Akintunde Ibitayo Akinwande is a Nigerian American engineering professor at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was appointed as chairman of Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, and he said he will honour his appointment once he secure permission from his employers.

#1321

Luca Benini

#69584

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

#1322

Michael Laughton

#48563

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Professor Michael Arthur Laughton FREng is Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering at Queen Mary, University of London, and currently Visiting Professor at the Department of Environmental Science and Technology at Imperial College.

#1323

Ole Sigmund

#64922

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Ole Sigmund is a Danish Professor in Mechanical Engineering who has made fundamental contributions to the field of topology optimization, including microstructure design, nano optics, photonic crystals, Matlab code, acoustics, and fluids. In 2003 he co-authored the highly cited book "Topology Optimization: Theory, Methods and Applications" with Martin P. Bendsøe. His research group was the first to achieve giga-resolution topology optimization, making it for the first time possible to optimize an entire Boeing 777 wing structure.

#1324

Marco Frascari

#48925

Overall Influence

1945 - 2013 (68 years)

Marco Frascari was an Italian architect and architectural theorist. He was born in Mantua, in northern Italy, in 1945. He studied with Carlo Scarpa and Arrigo Rudi at Università Iuav di Venezia and received his PhD in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. He taught for several years at the University of Pennsylvania, then as Visiting Professor at Columbia and Harvard. He served as G. Truman Ward Professor of Architecture at Virginia Tech from 1998 to 2005. In 2005, he became director of the David Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada....

#1325

Joseph I. Goldstein

Joseph I. Goldstein

#55611

Overall Influence

1939 - 2015 (76 years)

Joseph Irwin Goldstein was an American scientist and engineer, working mainly in the fields of materials science and mechanical engineering. He was a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and emeritus Dean of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research into the nature of outer-space materials led to the naming of an asteroid after him in 2000, 4989 Joegoldstein.

#1326

Hamid Soltanian-Zadeh

#32150

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Hamid Soltanian-Zadeh is an Iranian biomedical engineer. He was born in Yazd in 1960. Education He received BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering: electronics from the University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran in 1986 and MSE and PhD degrees in electrical engineering: systems and bio-electrical sciences from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, in 1992.

#1327

Rodica Baranescu

#39933

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Rodica A. Baranescu is a Romanian-American mechanical engineer known for her research in automotive diesel engines. Specifically she focuses on alternative fuels and optimization in emissions and performance of the engines.

#1328

Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy

#5114

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Andy Goldsworthy is an English sculptor, photographer, and environmentalist who produces site-specific sculptures and land art situated in natural and urban settings. Early life Goldsworthy was born in Cheshire on 26 July 1956, the son of Muriel and F. Allin Goldsworthy , a former professor of applied mathematics at the University of Leeds. He grew up on the Harrogate side of Leeds. From the age of 13, he worked on farms as a labourer. He has likened the repetitive quality of farm tasks to the routine of making sculpture: "A lot of my work is like picking potatoes; you have to get into the ...

#1329

Georgia Louise Harris Brown

Georgia Louise Harris Brown

#45440

Overall Influence

1918 - 1999 (81 years)

Georgia Louise Harris Brown , is considered to be the second African American woman to become a licensed architect in the United States. She was also the first black woman to earn a degree in architecture from the University of Kansas. She was also the only black member of the Chicago chapter of Alpha Alpha Gamma .

#1330

Adolf Krischanitz

Adolf Krischanitz

#54722

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Adolf Krischanitz is an Austrian-born architect. Biography Krischanitz was born in Schwarzach im Pongau, Salzburg, Austria. He studied architecture at the Vienna University of Technology from 1965 to 1972.

#1331

Lawrence Larson

#46691

Overall Influence

Lawrence E. Larson is an American electrical engineer, and served as interim provost of Brown University in 2023. Previously, he was the Sorensen Family Dean of Engineering and Founding Dean at the Brown University School of Engineering. He is a Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

#1332

Dennis P. Lettenmaier

#65976

Overall Influence

Dennis P. Lettenmaier is an American hydrologist. Lettenmaier earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Washington in 1970, then attended George Washington University, where he pursued a master's degree in civil, mechanical and environmental engineering. He returned to UW to complete a doctorate in civil engineering in 1975, and accepted a faculty position at his alma mater in 1976. Lettenmaier joined the University of California, Los Angeles faculty in 2014, and was appointed to a distinguished professorship.

#1333

Harald Deilmann

Harald Deilmann

#56803

Overall Influence

1920 - 2008 (88 years)

Harald Deilmann was a German architect. Born in Gladbeck, Westphalia, Deilmann was best known for his work on public spaces, such as opera houses and museums, throughout Germany and worldwide. He was a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, as well as the Deutsche Akademie für Städtebau und Landesplanung in Hanover, Germany.

#1334

Terry Richardson

Terry Richardson

#3559

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Terrence Richardson is an American fashion and portrait photographer. He has shot advertising campaigns for Marc Jacobs, Aldo, Supreme, Sisley, Tom Ford, and Yves Saint Laurent among others, and also done work for magazines such as Rolling Stone, GQ, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, i-D, and Vice.

#1335

Noriaki Okabe

#55070

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

is a Japanese architect. He was born in Shizuoka, Japan. He worked with Renzo Piano for twenty years in Europe, from the designing construction supervision of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. In 1988, Okabe, then the representative of Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Japan, won the international competition of Kansai International Airport Terminal Building and was responsible for the design and construction supervision. While not currently on display, the Museum of Modern Art holds a model of the building's main structural truss in its Architecture and Design department.

#1336

Geetam Tiwari

#49174

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Prof. Geetam Tiwari is currently the TRIPP Chair Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering of the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, India. She teaches transportation planning, traffic engineering, and transport economics and finance, transport safety, and non-motorised transportation to undergraduate and graduate students.

#1337

Sarah Williams Goldhagen

#33608

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Sarah Williams Goldhagen is an American author and architecture critic. She sits on the board of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture and the Advisory Committee for the Intentional Spaces summit convened by the International Arts+ Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins Medical School . Her advocacy for science-informed, human-centered design, her scholarship on modern architecture, her criticism for the New Republic and Architectural Record, and her writings on the perceptual and social psychology of built environmental experience call for improved architectural and urban design practices and recognition of their profound social impact.

#1338

Jennifer Elisseeff

Jennifer Elisseeff

#30832

Overall Influence

Jennifer Hartt Elisseeff is an American biomedical engineer, ophthalmologist and academic. She is the Morton Goldberg Professor and Director of the Translational Tissue Engineering Center at Johns Hopkins Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Wilmer Eye Institute with appointments in Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Materials Science and Orthopedic Surgery. Elisseeff's research is in the fields of regenerative medicine and immunoengineering.

#1339

Michael Dickson

#49658

Overall Influence

1944 - 2018 (74 years)

Michael Dickson was a structural engineer and a founding partner of Buro Happold. He was a Visiting Professor of Engineering Design at the University of Bath Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering.

#1340

Jean-Yves Bouguet

#54309

Overall Influence

Jean-Yves Bouguet was a member of the Computer Vision Research Group in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology, having graduated from the École Supérieure d'Ingénieurs en Électronique et Électrotechnique. Bouguet developed and holds a patent for a new method for 3D scanning based on dual-space geometry.

#1341

Peter Bradshaw

#67302

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Peter Bradshaw FRS is an aeronautical engineer specialising in fluid mechanics. He was educated at Torquay Grammar School and Cambridge University, where he was awarded a B.A. in Aeronautical Engineering in 1957.

#1342

Bojan Kraut

#58078

Overall Influence

1908 - 1991 (83 years)

Bojan Kraut was a Slovene mechanical engineer who wrote "Strojniški Priročnik" , a well-known reference text from former Yugoslavia. Biography Kraut was born in Kamnik where he finished elementary school. He finished Gymnasium in Ljubljana in 1926. In 1932 he became a mechanical engineer after graduating from Zagreb University.

#1343

Michael Roth

#34659

Overall Influence

1936 - 2019 (83 years)

Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at :de:Michael Roth ; see its history for attribution. Michael Roth was a German engineer and professor of automation, specializing in microprocessor technology, computer science and sociology as well as philosophy of science. He was one of the pioneers in the area of computer engineering in Germany.

#1344

Suman Datta

#30372

Overall Influence

Suman Datta is an Indian born American engineer. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and Joseph M. Pettit Chair Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. Prior to that, he was the Stinson Professor of Nanotechnology at the University of Notre Dame. Between 2007 and 2015, he was a Full Professor of Electrical Engineering at Penn State University. He was a Principal Engineer at Intel Corporation from 1999 to 2007.

#1345

Volker Quaschning

Volker Quaschning

#48657

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Volker Quaschning is a German engineer and professor of renewable energy systems at the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin, Germany. Life Quaschning studied electrical engineering at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, then wrote his PhD on photovoltaics at the Technische Universität Berlin. After obtaining his habilitation on low-carbon power system scenarios for Germany, he worked for the German Aerospace Center in Almeria, Spain and lead research into concentrated solar power. In 2004, Quaschning was appointed professor of renewable energy systems at the Hochschule für Technik und...

#1346

Steven Swanson

#23683

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Steven Roy Swanson is an American engineer and retired NASA astronaut. Swanson has flown two shuttle flights, STS-117 and STS-119, and one Soyuz flight, TMA-12M. All of the flights were to the International Space Station. He has logged over 195 days in space and completed five spacewalks totaling 28 hours and 5 minutes. Swanson has served in other roles at NASA, such as a CAPCOM for both International Space Station and Space Shuttle missions. His awards and honors include the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal and the JSC Certificate of Accommodation. Prior to becoming a NASA astronaut, Swanson worked for GTE in Phoenix, Arizona, as a software engineer.

#1347

Toshio Mura

#58067

Overall Influence

1925 - 2009 (84 years)

Toshio Mura was a professor of engineering. He was born in Ono, a small port village of Kanazawa Japan, on December 7, 1925. He received a doctorate in the Department of Applied Mathematics of the University of Tokyo in 1954. He taught at Meiji University, Japan from 1954 to 1958. In 1958, he went to the United States to work in the Department of Materials Science at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He became a professor in the Department of Civil Engineering in 1966 before his retirement in 1996, and also held an appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

#1348

Hazhir Rahmandad

#40198

Overall Influence

Hazhir Rahmandad is an Iranian American Scientist and Engineer. Dr. Rahmandad is a dynamic modeling expert. His research applies dynamic modeling to a broad range of problems in strategy, organizational learning, and public health.

#1349

Jonas Coersmeier

#37935

Overall Influence

Jonas Coersmeier is an architect and designer, born in Germany and working in the United States. He is finalist and first runner-up in the World Trade Center Memorial Competition. He was born in Cologne, Germany and studied architecture at Columbia University, M.I.T. and Technische Universität Darmstadt. He teaches at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture, where he coordinates the Architecture and Urban Design program University of Pennsylvania School of Design and University of Kassel School of Architecture, where he was head of the Digital Design Department.

#1350

Radovan Kovacevic

#49630

Overall Influence

Radovan Kovacevic is a Serbian-American university professor. He is the director of the Southern Methodist University Research Center for Advanced Manufacturing. He holds several U.S. patents.

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