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,
#1551
Juan Herreros
#52085
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Juan Herreros is a Spanish architect. Biography He graduated in 1985 at the Technical School of Architecture of Madrid where after being professor of construction until 1988 he became professor of Architectural Design obtaining his PhD in 1994 and the title of Professor in 2010. Since 2007 teaches at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York where he holds the rank of Professor in Professional Practice. He has also taught at American universities of Princeton in New Jersey, Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago; and European Architectural Association in London, EPFL Lausanne, Ljubljana and Alicante.
Go to Profile#1552
Mario Schjetnan
#32403
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Mario Schjetnan is a Mexican architect and landscape architect that manages to "unite social concerns, aesthetics and, increasingly, ecology- all by way of interpreting and celebrating Mexico's rich and diverse culture." He is co-founder of the interdisciplinary firm Grupo de Diseño Urbano in Mexico City known for designs in which the building is subordinate to the landscape. Among his numerous awards are the Prince of Wales/Green Prize in Urban Design for Xochimilco Ecological Park and the ASLA President's Award for Excellence for Parque El Cedazo.
Go to Profile#1553
Yutaka Takanashi
#27830
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Yutaka Takanashi is a Japanese photographer who has photographed fashion, urban design, and city life, and is best known for his depiction of Tokyo. Life and career Takanashi was born on 6 February 1935 in Shirogane-chō, Ushigome-ku , Tokyo. In 1943 he was evacuated to Saitama . In 1953 he graduated from Tokyo Metropolitan Aoyama High School and entered the photography department of Nihon University. His first camera was a Canon IVSb 35 mm rangefinder.
Go to Profile#1554
Li Enliang
#32599
Overall Influence
1912 - 2008 (96 years)
Li Enliang was a Chinese civil engineer and educator. Li was a former Vice-president of Zhejiang University and former President of the Zhejiang University of Technology. Life Li was born in Xinning , Guangdong Province in 1912. Li received BEng in civil engineering from Zhijiang University in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.
Go to Profile#1555
Thomas K. Caughey
#71523
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (97 years)
Thomas Kirk Caughey is a Scottish-born academic who served as a professor of applied mechanics. Thomas K. Caughey Dynamics Award is named after him. Biography Born in Rutherglen, Scotland, Caughey graduated with a bacelor's degree from the University of Glasgow. Later, he moved to the United States as a Fulbright scholar and attended Cornell University. In 1954, he completed his PhD from Caltech.
Go to Profile#1556
Nikolaus Correll
#38355
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Nikolaus Correll is a roboticist and an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the Department of Computer Science with courtesy appointments in the departments of Aerospace, Electrical and Materials Engineering. Nikolaus is the faculty director of the Interdisciplinary Research Theme on Multi-functional Materials at the College of Engineering and Applied Science, and the founder and CTO of Robotic Materials Inc.
Go to Profile#1557
David Watkin
#31273
Overall Influence
1941 - 2018 (77 years)
#1558
D. P. Kothari
#70268
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Dwarkadas Prahladadas Kothari is an educationist and professor who has held leadership positions at engineering institutions in India including IIT Delhi, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur and VIT University, Vellore. Currently, He is with Electrical Engineering Department as Hon. Adjunct Professor. As a recognition of his contributions to engineering education, he was honoured as an IEEE Fellow. Previously he was Vice-Chancellor at VIT University.. On his 75th Birthday , he was given the title of "Electrical Professor" by all his research scholars, faculty and well-wishers and a personal website of him was launched titled www.electricalprofessor.com.
Go to Profile#1559
Harry Poulos
#72547
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Harry George Poulos is an Australian of Greek descent civil engineer specialising in geotechnical engineering and soil mechanics, internationally known as an expert on soil behaviour and pile foundations.
Go to Profile#1560
Knud Holscher
#64447
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Knud Helmuth Holscher is a Danish architect and industrial designer. For many years he was a partner in KHR Architects with Svend Axelsson and designed many of their works together. Biography Holscher studied with Erik Christian Sørensen and professor Arne Jacobsen at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, graduating in 1957. He joined the office of Arne Jacobsen in 1960 and moved to England to oversee construction of Jacobsen's St Catherine's College, Oxford in 1962. Holscher was awarded the British Design Award in 1965 and 1966 for work done in collaboration with Ala...
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James Spilker
#56598
Overall Influence
1933 - 2019 (86 years)
James Julius Spilker Jr. was an American engineer and a consulting professor in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department at Stanford University. He was one of the principal architects of the Global Positioning System . He was a co-founder of the space communications company Stanford Telecommunications, and was most recently executive chairman of AOSense Inc., Sunnyvale, CA.
Go to Profile#1562
Panos Prevedouros
#59813
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Panos D. Prevedouros , is Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, subcommittee chair of the Transportation Research Board , co-author of the textbook Transportation Engineering and Planning, published by Prentice Hall in 1993 and 2001. He was a two-time unsuccessful candidate for Mayor of the City and County of Honolulu, running on a program of absolute opposition to mass transit.
Go to Profile#1563
Herb Ritts
#3289
Overall Influence
1952 - 2002 (50 years)
Herbert Ritts Jr. was an American fashion photographer and director known for his photographs of celebrities, models, and other cultural figures throughout the 1980s and 1990s. His work concentrated on black and white photography and portraits, often in the style of classical Greek sculpture, which emphasized the human shape.
Go to Profile#1564
Gion A. Caminada
#64536
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Gion Antoni Caminada is a Swiss architect and professor of architecture at the ETH Zurich. He is known for his works in and around the Swiss village of Vrin, including the Stiva da morts mortuary. Many of Caminada's projects are built of wood in a minimalist style mixing modern design with traditional Swiss methods and materials.
Go to Profile#1565
Hanan Samet
#43599
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Hanan Samet is a Computer Science researcher and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland's Computer Science Department, which is part of the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. He completed his PhD at Stanford University in 1975.
Go to Profile#1566
Swati Mohan
#54192
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (41 years)
Swati Mohan is an Indian-American aerospace engineer and was the Guidance and Controls Operations Lead on the NASA Mars 2020 mission. Early life and education Mohan was born in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, and emigrated to the United States when she was one year old. She became interested in space upon seeing Star Trek at age 9. She had originally planned to be a pediatrician but at the age of 16 took a physics class and decided to study engineering as a way to pursue a career in space exploration. She studied Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University, before completing her master's degree and Ph.D.
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Jasmina Vujic
#63439
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Jasmina Vujic is an American professor of nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley and the first woman to serve as chair of a collegiate nuclear engineering department in the United States.
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Mary Jackson
#18573
Overall Influence
1921 - 2005 (84 years)
Mary Jackson was an American mathematician and aerospace engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics , which in 1958 was succeeded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration . She worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, for most of her career. She started as a computer at the segregated West Area Computing division in 1951. In 1958, after taking engineering classes, she became NASA's first black female engineer.
Go to Profile#1569
Rohan Abeyaratne
#57771
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Rohan Abeyaratne is a Sri Lankan born American academic and engineer and the Quentin Berg Professor of Mechanics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He was the CEO & Director of the Singapore–MIT Alliance for Research and Technology , and prior to that the Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT.
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Lee Bontecou
#19964
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Lee Bontecou was an American sculptor and printmaker and a pioneer figure in the New York art world. She kept her work consistently in a recognizable style, and received broad recognition in the 1960s. Bontecou made abstract sculptures in the 1960s and 1970s and created vacuum-formed plastic fish, plants, and flower forms in the 1970s. Rich, organic shapes and powerful energy appear in her drawings, prints, and sculptures. Her work has been shown and collected in many major museums in the United States and in Europe.
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Victoria Coleman
#29202
Overall Influence
Victoria Stavridou-Coleman is currently serving as the 37th chief scientist of the United States Air Force. She took her oath of office on April 6, 2021, administered by the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.
Go to Profile#1572
Rajesh K. Gupta
#47326
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Rajesh K. Gupta is a computer scientist and engineer, currently the Qualcomm Professor in Embedded Microsystems at University of California, San Diego. His research concerns design and optimization of cyber-physical systems . He is a Principal Investigator in the NSF MetroInsight project and serves as Associate Director of the Qualcomm Institute . His research contributions include SystemC and SPARK Parallelizing High-level Synthesis. Earlier he led NSF Expeditions on Variability in Microelectronic circuits.
Go to Profile#1573
Ann Marie Sastry
#64917
Overall Influence
Ann Marie Sastry is an American engineer, educator, and businessperson. She was President of Sakti3, a solid-state battery company based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sastry was the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Mechanical, Biomedical and Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan from 1995 to 2012.
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Charles D. Strang
#33743
Overall Influence
1921 - 2018 (97 years)
Charles Daniel Strang was an American inventor who was the President, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Outboard Marine Corporation, a multibillion-dollar Fortune 500 corporation. Strang was born in Brooklyn, New York in April 1921. He graduated from what is now NYU Poly. Prior to joining Outboard Marine, Strang was a faculty member at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and chief engineer for Mercury Marine. Strang is the inventor of the modern Sterndrive. From 1998 to 2009, Strang was NASCAR National Commissioner. Strang died in March 2018 at the age of 96.
Go to Profile#1575
Richard W. Conway
#8310
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Richard Walter Conway is an American industrial engineer and computer scientist who is the Emerson Electric Company Professor of Manufacturing Management, Emeritus in the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. Conway has spent his entire academic career, both as a student and a professor, at Cornell and has held faculty positions at Cornell in several different areas: industrial engineering, operations research, computer science, and management science. He is especially known for his work and publications in foundational questions about computer simulation methodology;...
Go to Profile#1576
Claire J. Tomlin
#48181
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Claire Jennifer Tomlin is a British researcher in hybrid systems, distributed and decentralized optimization and control theory and holds the Charles A. Desoer Chair at the University of California, at Berkeley.
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William J. Kaiser
#64127
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
William Joseph Kaiser is a professor and former department chair of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles . He is a winner of 2007 Gold Shield Prize and has been a Fellow of American Vacuum Society since 1994. He is the director of Actuated Sensing & Coordinated Embedded Networked Technologies research group at UCLA and co-director of UCLA Wireless Health Institute.
Go to Profile#1578
Jeffrey Bokor
#48830
Overall Influence
Jeffrey Bokor is an American electrical engineer. Bokor earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and completed a doctorate in the same field at Stanford University in 1980. He then worked for AT&T Bell Laboratories until joining the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley in 1993. At Berkeley, Bokor was the National Semiconductor Distinguished Professor of Engineering, and accepted a later appointment as Paul R. Gray Distinguished Professor of Engineering. Bokor is also affiliated with the Materials Science Division o...
Go to Profile#1579
Derek Fray
#44844
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Derek John Fray is a British material scientist, and professor at the University of Cambridge. Education Fray was educated at Emanuel School, and earned a Bachelor of Science degree followed by a PhD from Imperial College London.
Go to Profile#1580
Karen Bausman
#54862
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
#1581
Robert Istepanian
#22439
Overall Influence
Robert S. H. Istepanian is a visiting professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College, London. Istepanian is widely recognized as the first scientist to coin the phrase m-Health. In 2012, Istepanian coined the new term 4G Health which is defined as "The evolution of m-health towards targeted personalized medical systems with adaptable functionalities and compatibility with the future 4G networks."
Go to Profile#1582
Sunil K. Agrawal
#68884
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Sunil K. Agrawal is an Indian roboticist and professor of Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science with secondary appointment in Rehabilitation and Regenerative Medicine at Columbia University. Agrawal is the author of more than 500 journals, three books, and has 15 U.S. patents.
Go to Profile#1583
Aldons Jake Lusis
#76843
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
#1584
Takamitsu Azuma
#26290
Overall Influence
1933 - 2015 (82 years)
Takamitsu Azuma was a Japanese architect, and winner of the 1995 the Prize of AIJ . He was a follower of Le Corbusier and was one of the most significant architects of the 20th century, combining traditional Japanese styles with modernism, and designed new types of houses symbolized living in the metropolis.
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René Vidal
#51052
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
René Vidal is a Chilean electrical engineer and computer scientist who is known for his research in machine learning, computer vision, medical image computing, robotics, and control theory. He is the Herschel L. Seder Professor of the Johns Hopkins Department of Biomedical Engineering, and the founding director of the Mathematical Institute for Data Science .
Go to Profile#1586
Steven A. Moore
#70227
Overall Influence
Steven A. Moore is the Bartlett Cocke Regents Professor Emeritus in Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Moore received his undergraduate degree in Architecture from Syracuse University after which he practiced in Iran, Boston and in Maine as a Principal of Moore/Weinrich Architects . He was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1990-91 and received his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 1996. At The University of Texas he has taught design and courses related to the philosophy, history, and application of sustainable technology. His sp...
Go to Profile#1587
Ernest Kirkendall
#16701
Overall Influence
1914 - 2005 (91 years)
Ernest Oliver Kirkendall was an American chemist and metallurgist. He is known for his 1947 discovery of the Kirkendall effect. Life and works He was raised in Highland Park, Michigan and received his bachelor's from Wayne State University. His master's and PhD came from the University of Michigan, but he returned to Wayne to teach chemical engineering. In 1984 he was inducted into the College of Engineering's Hall of Fame. He died in a nursing home in Alexandria, Virginia.
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George V. Eleftheriades
#57210
Overall Influence
George V. Eleftheriades is a researcher in the field of metamaterials. He has been endowed with a Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto and is a professor in the Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering there. He has received notable awards for his achievements, is a fellow of the IEEE and the Royal Society of Canada.
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Andrzej Górak
#45944
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Andrzej Górak is a Polish process engineer and the Head of Laboratory of Fluid Separations at the Department of Biochemical and Chemical Engineering at the TU Dortmund University. Career Professor Andrzej Górak studied chemistry at the Technical University of Lodz in Poland. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Process Engineering in 1979. His thesis treated continuous distillation of multi-component mixtures. He worked at the same faculty as senior researcher until 1988. The following four years he spent as a researcher at Henkel KGaA in Düsseldorf. Having completed his “habilitation” a...
Go to Profile#1590
Evi Nemeth
#10668
Overall Influence
1940 - 2013 (73 years)
Evi Nemeth was an engineer, author, and teacher known for her expertise in computer system administration and networks. She was the lead author of the "bibles" of system administration: UNIX System Administration Handbook , Linux Administration Handbook , and UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook . Evi Nemeth was known in technology circles as the matriarch of system administration.
Go to Profile#1591
Khaled Ben Letaief
#77182
Overall Influence
#1592
Farrokh Saidi
#14039
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Farrokh Saidi is an Iranian surgeon, academician, former Under-Secretary for Medical Education and Health Services of Iran, and former Dean of Medical School, Pahlavi University School of Medicine , Shiraz, Iran.
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Krishna Shenoy
#50527
Overall Influence
1968 - 2023 (55 years)
Krishna Vaughn Shenoy was an American neuroscientist and neuroengineer at Stanford University. Shenoy was the Hong Seh and Vivian W. M. Lim Professor in the Stanford University School of Engineering. He focused on neuroscience topics, including neurotechnology such as brain-computer interfaces. On 21 January 2023, he died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. According to Google Scholar, he amassed an h-index of 79.
Go to Profile#1594
Uri Shaked
#64803
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Uri Shaked is an Israeli professor of Electrical Engineering in the Engineering Faculty at Tel Aviv University, specializing in control theory of uncertain systems. In 2017 he was awarded the Israel Prize for engineering research.
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Sanjeev Shroff
#66630
Overall Influence
Sanjeev Shroff is an American bioengineer currently the Distinguished Professor of and Gerald E. McGinnis Chair in Bioengineering at University of Pittsburgh and an Elected Fellow of the American Physiological Society, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and Biomedical Engineering Society.
Go to Profile#1596
T. Leslie Youd
#68136
Overall Influence
T. Leslie Youd is an American geotechnical engineer and earthquake engineer, specializing in soil liquefaction and ground failure. He currently lives in Orem, Utah. Education Youd received his BES in civil engineering from Brigham Young University in 1964. He then attended Iowa State University where he received his PhD in civil engineering in 1967. He performed post doctoral study in soil mechanics and engineering seismology from 1975 to 1976 at Imperial College of Science and Technology in London.
Go to Profile#1597
Martin H. Graham
#60943
Overall Influence
1926 - 2015 (89 years)
Martin H. Graham was an American professor at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of the University of California at Berkeley. Biography Martin Graham was born in Jamaica, Queens, in 1926. At the age of 16 he enrolled as a freshman at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, New York. Then, he served in the U.S. Navy as an electronic technician mate from 1944 to 1946. After completing service in the U.S. Navy, he studied electrical engineering under the GI Bill and became an instructor at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. In 1948, he received a M.Sc. degree from Harvard University.
Go to Profile#1598
Glen Culler
#10130
Overall Influence
1927 - 2003 (76 years)
Glen Jacob Culler was an American professor of electrical engineering and an important early innovator in the development of the Internet. Culler joined the University of California, Santa Barbara mathematics faculty in 1959 and helped put the campus in the forefront of what would become the field of computer science. He later served as director of the UCSB Computer Center and professor in the College of Engineering and extended his revolutionary view of the role of computers to include their use in the classroom. He left UCSB to work in industry and establish his own company, called Culler-Harrison, in 1969.
Go to Profile#1599
Lorrie Cranor
#25954
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Lorrie Faith Cranor, D.Sc. is the FORE Systems Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and is the director of the Carnegie Mellon Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory. She has served as Chief Technologist of the Federal Trade Commission, and she was formerly a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation Board of Directors. Previously she was a researcher at AT&T Labs-Research and taught in the Stern School of Business at New York University. She has authored over 110 research papers on online privacy, phishing and semantic attacks, spam...
Go to Profile#1600
Mehdi Zakerian
#33279
Overall Influence
Mehdi Zakerian, visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the University of Pennsylvania, President of Iranian International Studies Association, editor-in-chief of International Studies Journal .
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