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.

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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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Engineering,

#1801

Henry L. Langhaar

#68164

Overall Influence

1909 - 1992 (83 years)

Henry Louis Langhaar was a mathematician, engineer, researcher, educator, and author in the field of engineering mechanics. In 1978, he retired as Professor Emeritus, after 31 years in the Department of Theoretical & Applied Mechanics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

#1802

Wessel de Jonge

#63684

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Wessel de Jonge is a Dutch architect, architectural historian and Professor Heritage & Design at the Department of Architectural Engineering and Technology of the TU Delft. He is specialized in the restoration and re-use of 20th century buildings.

#1803

Qi Kang

#46988

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Qi Kang , is a Chinese artist and architect. He is a supervisor in Southeast University, Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Foreign Academician of French Academy of Architecture , and Director of Research Institute of Architecture of Southeast University.

#1804

John Kricfalusi

John Kricfalusi

#3928

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Michael John Kricfalusi , known professionally as John K., is a Canadian illustrator and blogger, as well as a former animator and voice actor. He is the creator of the animated television series The Ren & Stimpy Show, which was highly influential on televised animation during the 1990s. From 1989 to 1992, he was heavily involved with the first two seasons of the show in virtually every aspect of its production, including providing the voice of Ren Höek and other characters. In 2009, he won the Inkpot Award.

#1805

Lianzhou Wang

#75689

Overall Influence

Lianzhou Wang is a Chinese Australian materials scientist and professor in the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Queensland. He is director of the Nanomaterials Centre and a senior group member at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland, as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

#1806

Javed Butler

#82665

Overall Influence

#1807

Bernard P. Zeigler

#43884

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Bernard P. Zeigler is a Canadian engineer, and emeritus professor at the University of Arizona, known for inventing Discrete Event System Specification in 1976. Zeigler received his BA in engineering physics in 1962 from McGill University, his M.S.E.E. from MIT in 1964, and his PhD in computer and communication science in 1969 from the University of Michigan. He started his academic career in 1969 as associate professor at the University of Michigan. From 1975 to 1980 he was faculty member of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Back in the States in 1980 he was visiting for a year at the University of Michigan, and full professor at the Wayne State University in Detroit.

#1808

Robert E. Newnham

#80565

Overall Influence

1929 - 2009 (80 years)

Robert E. Newnham, also known as Bob Newnham, was an American academic and writer who was a Alcoa Professor Emeritus of Solid State Science at the Pennsylvania State University. He is known for his contributions in the field of ferroelectrics.

#1809

Alison Noble

#42026

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Julia Alison Noble is a British engineer. She has been Technikos Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford and a fellow of St Hilda's College since 2011, and Associate Head of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division at the university. , she is the chief technology officer of Intelligent Ultrasound Limited, an Oxford spin-off in medical imaging that she cofounded. She was director of the Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering from 2012 to 2016.In 2023 she became the Foreign Secretary of The Royal Society .

#1810

Jeffrey Schlom

#82732

Overall Influence

#1811

Stanley Saitowitz

#61303

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Stanley Saitowitz is an American designer. He was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1949. He received his Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Witwatersrand in 1974. He received a Masters in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley in 1977.

#1812

Tom Palumbo

#58005

Overall Influence

1921 - 2008 (87 years)

Tomas Palumbo was an Italian-born American photographer and theatre director. Biography Palumbo was born in Molfetta, Italy, in 1921. His family moved to New York City when he was about twelve years old.

#1813

William L. Johnson

#82761

Overall Influence

#1814

Martin Felsen

#36102

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Martin Felsen is an American architect and Fellow of the American Institute of Architects . He directs UrbanLab, a Chicago-based architecture and urban design firm. Felsen's projects range in scale from houses such as the Hennepin, Illinois Residence, mixed-use residential and commercial buildings such as Upton's Naturals Headquarters, public open spaces such as the Smart Museum of Art Courtyard at the University of Chicago, and large scale, urban design projects such as Growing Water in Chicago and a masterplan for the Yangming Lake region of Changde, China. Felsen was awarded the 2009 Lat...

#1815

Luiz Bevilacqua

#39614

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Luiz Bevilacqua is a Brazilian scientist best known for his work as President of the Brazilian Space Agency and as Secretary General of the Ministry of Science and Technology . Currently serves as Emeritus Professor, UFRJ and coordinator of the Center for Cognition and Complex Systems of UFABC.

#1816

Anant Madabhushi

#57092

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Anant Madabhushi is the Donnell Institute Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, USA and founding director of CWRU's Center for Computational Imaging and Personalized Diagnostics . He is also a Research Scientist at the Louis Stokes Cleveland Veterans Administration Medical Center in Cleveland, OH, USA. He holds secondary appointments in the Case Western Reserve University departments of Urology, Radiology, Pathology, Radiation Oncology, General Medical Sciences, Computer & Data Sciences, and Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering.

#1817

Roderick Bronson

#82883

Overall Influence

Roderick T. Bronson, D.V.M. is an American pathologist and the director of the Rodent Pathology Core at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Bronson has authored or co-authored more than 400 scientific articles and has been recognized by I.S.I. Thompson as a highly cited author.

#1818

Hendrik Nijmeijer

#82922

Overall Influence

#1819

Amir Lerman

#82931

Overall Influence

#1820

Wei Cai

#81325

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Wei Cai is a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University. Early life and career In 1995, Cai received his Bachelor of Science degree in optoelectronics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Hubei province, China. In 2001, Cai received a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and immediately after it became a postdoc at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he remained until 2004. In July 2004, Cai became an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University, and in September 2011 was promoted to assoc...

#1821

Toshio Fukuda

#82978

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

#1822

Isaac Elishakoff

Isaac Elishakoff

#69559

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Isaac Elishakoff is a Distinguished Research Professor in the Ocean and Mechanical Engineering Department in the Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida. He is a figure in the area of mechanics. He has made several contributions in the areas of random vibrations, solid mechanics of composite material, semi-inverse problems of vibrations and stability, functionally graded material structures, and nanotechnology.

#1823

Thor I. Fossen

#71660

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Thor Inge Fossen is a Norwegian cyberneticist. Fossen received the MSc degree in Marine Technology and PhD in Engineering Cybernetics both from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology . He is a Fulbright alumni and he pursued postgraduate studies in Aerodynamics and Aeronautics at the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics of the University of Washington, Seattle . At age 28 he was appointed associated professor of guidance, navigation and control at NTNU and two years later he qualified as full professor. He has been elected member of the Norwegian Academy of Technological S...

#1824

John G. Linvill

John G. Linvill

#59497

Overall Influence

1919 - 2011 (92 years)

John G. Linvill was an American professor of Electrical engineering at Stanford University, known for his pioneering work in higher education, integrated circuits and semiconductors, and for development of the Optacon reading machine for the blind.

#1825

Stanford S. Penner

#68583

Overall Influence

1921 - 2016 (95 years)

Stanford Solomon Penner also known as Sol Penner, was a German-American scientist and engineer, a major figure in combustion physics, especially in rocket engines, and a founder of the Engineering program at University of California, San Diego. He obtained his PhD in 1946 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison under Farrington Daniels and Theodore von Kármán.

#1826

Sergei V. Kalinin

Sergei V. Kalinin

#66285

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Sergei V. Kalinin is a corporate fellow at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory . He is also the Weston Fulton Professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

#1827

Reynolds Paul Ross

#83183

Overall Influence

#1828

Saleh Uddin

#37683

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Mohammad Saleh Uddin, "Badal" is a Bangladeshi architect, professor, author and artist. His books, published by McGraw-Hill and John Wiley & Sons are widely used as graphical communication and design textbooks internationally. Some have been translated from English into Spanish and into Chinese. He is also the main architect of the Gulshan Club scheduled to be built in Gulshan, Dhaka in 2011, having won the international open design competition for it.

#1829

Fuensanta Nieto

Fuensanta Nieto

#77702

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Fuensanta Nieto de la Cierva is a Spanish architect. She is known for her work as a partner of Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, a firm which she co-founded in 1984. Fuensanta Nieto studied at the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid. From 1986 to 1991 she was co-director of the architectural journal ARQUITECTURA, published by the Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid.

#1830

Donald R. Uhlmann

#78428

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Donald Robert Uhlmann is the Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Professor of Optical Science at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, where he is also Chairman of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

#1831

Richard H. Lyon

#65893

Overall Influence

1929 - 2019 (90 years)

Richard H. Lyon was an American acoustical engineer. Early life Lyon was born in Evansville, Indiana, on August 24, 1929, to parents Chester and Gertrude Lyon. He attended Evansville College in his hometown, graduating in 1952 with a bachelor's degree in physics. Lyon pursued further study in the subject at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Upon earning his doctorate in 1955, Lyon joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota, where he was assistant professor of electrical engineering.

#1832

William F. Miller

#8486

Overall Influence

1925 - 2017 (92 years)

William F. Miller was an American academic who was professor public and private management emeritus and a professor of computer science emeritus. He was a vice president and provost of Stanford University from 1971 to 1979, and president and CEO of SRI International from 1979 to 1990. He died in September 2017 at the age of 91.

#1833

Alcherio Martinoli

#46731

Overall Influence

Alcherio Martinoli is a roboticist and an associate professor at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering where he heads the Distributed Systems and Algorithms Laboratory.

#1834

Andreas F. Molisch

#83277

Overall Influence

#1835

İlhan Aksay

#44213

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

İlhan Arif Aksay is American materials scientist. He is the Pomeroy and Betty Perry Smith Professor in Engineering and Emeritus Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering within the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States

#1836

Viswanathan Mohan

#83322

Overall Influence

#1837

Patrick Nuttgens

#40535

Overall Influence

1930 - 2004 (74 years)

Patrick John Nuttgens CBE was an influential English architect and academic. Early life Nuttgens was born in Whiteleaf, Buckinghamshire, the fourth of five children to Kathleen Mary an Irish woman and accomplished mathematician, and stained-glass artist Jozef Edward Nuttgens who was born in Aachen, Germany. His mother died when he was seven years old during his first term at Grace Dieu Manor School, near Leicester. His father subsequently remarried and had eight more children - one of which was the stained glass designer Joseph Ambrose Nuttgens. As a noted stained glass designer, Joseph took...

#1838

Mark D. Maughmer

#67078

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Mark D. Maughmer is a professor of Aerospace Engineering in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. He is a widely published author known throughout the world as one of the leading aerodynamicists, especially in the areas of airfoil and winglet design and analysis, wing optimization, natural laminar flow aerodynamics, and subsonic, low turbulence wind-tunnel design and operation.

#1839

Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani

#10046

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani is a Bahraini engineer and retired lieutenant general. He is the foreign minister, having formerly been the secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council from 1 April 2011 to February 2020. He was the fifth GCC secretary general and the first with military background since the GCC was established.

#1840

Jose Principe

#79828

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Jose C. Principe is an American Bioengineer, focusing in adaptive signal processing, kernel learning, information theoretic learning, neural networks, brain machine interfaces and cognitive architectures, currently Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering and BellSouth Professor at University of Florida.

#1841

Hon Ki Tsang

#83496

Overall Influence

Hon Ki Tsang is the Wei Lun Professor of Electronic Engineering at The Chinese university of Hong Kong. His research expertise is in photonic integrated circuits and silicon photonics. Tsang took a gap year after graduating from high school, during which he worked for GEC Plessey Telecommunications. Tsang studied at the University of Cambridge, where he completed a bachelor's degree and doctorate, both in engineering. Upon completing his studies in 1991, Tsang became a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bath. He returned to Hong Kong in 1993, for a lectureship at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

#1842

Guoxiu Wang

#83574

Overall Influence

#1843

Maurizio Porfiri

#27174

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Maurizio Porfiri is an engineering professor, mostly noted for his work with robotic fish and aquatic research. His research revolves around modeling and control of complex systems, with applications from mechanics to behavior, public health, and robotics. He is an Institute Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. He is also part of the core faculty of New York University's Center for Urban Science and Progress. In 2022, he was appointed the director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress.

#1844

Paul Carl Kocher

#20039

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Paul Carl Kocher is an American cryptographer and cryptography entrepreneur who founded Cryptography Research, Inc. and served as its president and chief scientist. Education and early life Kocher grew up in Oregon. He received a bachelor's degree in biology from Stanford University in 1995, where he worked part-time with Martin Hellman. According to Hellman, Kocher is mostly self-taught in cryptography and already knew an amazing amount when they first met in Kocher's sophomore year. As demand for Kocher's knowledge in cryptography escalated, he gave up on his original plan to become a vete...

#1845

Sayed Khatiboleslam Sadrnezhaad

Sayed Khatiboleslam Sadrnezhaad

#58964

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Sayed Khatiboleslam Sadrnezhaad is an Iranian distinguished professor of materials science and engineering, at the Sharif University of Technology. He received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979 and his B.Sc. from the Sharif University of Technology in 1974. He was entitled as 1% world's top scientists by the ESI citation database from Thomson Reuters 2015 and 2016. He is the holder of a research chair from the Iran National Science Foundation . His current interest is in the emerging bio-nano and SMA fields of the materials science and engineering discipline.

#1846

Stephen A. Boppart

Stephen A. Boppart

#67171

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Stephen A. Boppart is a principal investigator at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he holds an Abel Bliss Professorship in engineering. He is a faculty member in the departments of electrical and computer engineering, bioengineering, and internal medicine. His research focus is biophotonics, where he has pioneered new optical imaging technologies in the fields of optical coherence tomography, multi-photon microscopy, and computational imaging.

#1847

Amit Chakma

#24703

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Amit Chakma is a university administrator who was appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Western Australia in July 2020. Previously he served as the 10th president and vice-chancellor of the University of Western Ontario from 2009 to 2019.

#1848

Reza Abbaschian

#70349

Overall Influence

Reza Abbaschian is an Iranian/American engineer, currently the William R. Johnson, Jr. Family Professor, Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the former Dean of the Bourns College of Engineering and, also formerly the Vladimir Grodsky Professor of Materials Science at University of Florida. In 2006, he was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society and ASM, the latter of which he was a former president.

#1849

Lars Hultman

#83761

Overall Influence

#1850

Steven Ehrlich

#54439

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Steven Ehrlich, FAIA, RIBA is an American architect based in Culver City, California. He is the founding partner of the practice Ehrlich Yanai Rhee Chaney Architects, formerly known as Ehrlich Architects.

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