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,
#1901
Marc Edwards
#42698
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Marc Edwards is a civil engineering/environmental engineer and the Charles Edward Via Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. An expert on water treatment and corrosion, Edwards's research on elevated lead levels in Washington, DC's municipal water supply gained national attention, changed the city's recommendations on water use in homes with lead service pipes, and caused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to admit to publishing a report so rife with errors that a congressional investigation called it "scientifically indefensible." He is considered one...
Go to Profile#1902
Jose B. Cruz Jr.
#70165
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Jose Bejar Cruz Jr. is a noted control theorist and a Distinguished Professor of Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ohio State University. Cruz was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1980 for contributions to the control of large-scale systems with multiple goals and to sensitivity analysis. He is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the International Federation of Automatic Control, and the American Society for Engineering Education. He is also the recipient of the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984, the Richard E.
Go to Profile#1903
John Ofori-Tenkorang
#39009
Overall Influence
John Ofori-Tenkorang is a Ghanaian public servant, an investment banker, an engineer and an academic. He is currently the Director General of Social Security and National Insurance Trust . Early life and education Ofori-Tenkorang had his secondary education at St. Peter's Boys Senior High School, Nkwatia Kwahu. He proceeded to Pearson College UWC in Victoria, British Columbia Canada. There, he obtained his International Baccalaureate Diploma. He enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned his bachelors, masters and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering and compu...
Go to Profile#1904
Jean Michel Larrasket
#53674
Overall Influence
1950 - 2018 (68 years)
Jean-Michel Larrasket , was a French professor and engineer, as well as vice president for the French Basque Country in the Basque Studies Society. He was a promoter of several projects for the social and economic development of the French Basque Country, and he was also one of the founders of the Eticoop cooperative that promotes entrepreneurship in this geographical area.
Go to Profile#1905
J. Kim Vandiver
#71054
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
J. Kim Vandiver is an American university professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Vandiver is the dean of undergraduate research and a professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering. He is one of the foremost authorities on the dynamics of offshore structures and flow-induced vibration and is a member of the faculty of the MIT-WHOI joint program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering.
Go to Profile#1906
Kongjian Yu
#51607
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Kongjian Yu , is a landscape architect and urbanist, writer and educator, commonly credited with the invention of Sponge City concept, and winner of the International Federation of Landscape Architects’ Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award in 2020. Received his Doctor of Design Degree from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1995, Doctor Honoris Causa from Sapienza University of Rome in 2017 and Honorary Doctorate from Norwegian University of Life Sciences in 2019, Yu was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.
Go to Profile#1907
Takashi Yamaguchi
#65648
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Takashi Yamaguchi is a Japanese architect, born in Kyoto. He graduated from Kyoto University and worked for Tadao Ando and Associates. He founded his own architectural firm, Takashi Yamaguchi & Associates, in 1996. Yamaguchi served as a visiting professor at the Osaka University of Arts in 2005, and in 2009 served as visiting professor at Columbia University and visiting scholar at Harvard. He is a professor at Osaka Sangyo University and a member of the Japan Institute of Architects and the Architectural Institute of Japan. He is an elite member of the Supporters of Romania Research at the Academy of Romanian Scientists.
Go to Profile#1908
Ada Poon
#66540
Overall Influence
Ada Poon is a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University. She is the principal investigator of Stanford Integrated Biomedical Systems Lab. Education, Career and Research Ada Poon completed her undergraduate study in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Hong Kong. She completed her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the EECS department at the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#1909
Andrew Parfitt
#35695
Overall Influence
Andrew James Parfitt is the 5th Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Technology Sydney. He was appointed to the role in November 2021. He was previously the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Newcastle from 2012 to 2016, and Provost of the University of Technology Sydney from 2017 to 2021.
Go to Profile#1910
Bernhard Walke
#48099
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Bernhard H. Walke is a pioneer of mobile Internet access and professor emeritus at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. He is a driver of wireless and mobile 2G to 5G cellular radio networks technologies. In 1985, he proposed a local cellular radio network comprising technologies in use today in 2G, 4G and discussed for 5G systems. For example, self-organization of a radio mesh network, integration of circuit- and packet switching, de-centralized radio resource control, TDMA/spread spectrum data transmission, antenna beam steering, spatial beam multiplexing, interference coordination, S-Aloha b...
Go to Profile#1911
Adolfo Moran
#71641
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Adolfo Moran born in Valladolid, Spain, architect and city planner 1975 doctor Ph.D.1989 University of Navarra, theoretical physicist and co-founder of World Physics Society. He was professor of architecture at University of Valladolid, in which he was Projects I chairman and at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Salamanca,full titular professor of Architectural Ideation Department, full professor of Architectural Imagination and City Imagination, and director of Permanent Seminar of Housing Studies at Technical University of Madrid.
Go to Profile#1912
Melvin Charney
#42881
Overall Influence
1935 - 2012 (77 years)
Melvin Charney C.Q. was a Canadian artist and architect. Career Charney grew up in a working-class family in The Plateau neighbourhood of Montreal, the eldest of three sons of Hyman and Fanny Charney. Fanny was originally from what is now Belarus, and worked in a sewing factory. Hyman Charney was from Poland, and worked as a paint salesman as well as an accomplished woodworker and decorator, creating doors for synagogues and churches. Hyman was also interested in visual arts, and from a young age, Melvin took Saturday classes at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Later in his childhood the f...
Go to Profile#1913
Phil Ligrani
#52855
Overall Influence
Phillip Meredith Ligrani is a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He is also the Eminent Scholar in Propulsion Research Center. Career Ligrani was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming. After receiving his Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1974, he pursued his graduate studies at Stanford University where he received his master's degree in 1975 and his PhD in 1980. His doctoral dissertation was entitled The thermal and hydrodynamic behaviour of thick, roughwall, turbulent boundary layers.
Go to Profile#1914
Fotis Sotiropoulos
#82599
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Fotis Sotiropoulos is a Greek-born American engineering professor and university administrator known for his research contributions in computational fluid dynamics for river hydrodynamics, renewable energy, biomedical and biological applications. He currently serves as the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs of Virginia Commonwealth University, a position he has held since August 1, 2021
Go to Profile#1915
Yet-Ming Chiang
#52543
Overall Influence
Yet-Ming Chiang is a Taiwanese American materials scientist and engineer currently the Kyocera Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been influential in the development of new materials for energy storage, transfer, and power of a variety of different devices and vehicles.
Go to Profile#1916
Jerry L. Prince
#85476
Overall Influence
#1917
M. Sam Mannan
#45001
Overall Influence
1954 - 2018 (64 years)
M. Sam Mannan was an American chemical engineer who was professor of chemical engineering at Texas A&M University. He was also the director of the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station.
Go to Profile#1918
Igor Mezić
#40450
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Igor Mezić is a mechanical engineer, mathematician, and Distinguished Professor of mechanical engineering and mathematics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is best known for his contributions to operator theoretic, data driven approach to dynamical systems theory that he advanced via articles based on Koopman operator theory, and his work on theory of mixing, that culminated in work on microfluidic mixer design, and mapping oil refuse from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to aid in cleaning efforts,.
Go to Profile#1919
Derek Hull
#78262
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Derek Hull FREng, FRS is a British material scientist, and Henry Bell Wortley Chair of Metallurgy, at the University of Liverpool. He was awarded the A. A. Griffith Medal and Prize in 1985. He is the son of William Hull and Nellie Hayes. He is the elder brother of paediatrician Sir David Hull.
Go to Profile#1920
Aaron Daniel Wyner
#85551
Overall Influence
#1921
Tom Turner
#20745
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Tom Turner is an English landscape architect, garden designer and garden historian teaching at the University of Greenwich in London. He is the author of books and articles on landscape and gardens and is the editor of the Garden History Reference Encyclopedia. Educated at the Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh, he studied landscape architecture under Frank Clark.
Go to Profile#1922
James N. Brune
#85578
Overall Influence
#1923
Anna Balazs
#77532
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Anna Christina Balazs is an American materials scientist and engineer. She currently is Distinguished Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and holds the John A. Swanson Chair at the Swanson School of Engineering.
Go to Profile#1924
Dario Farina
#85607
Overall Influence
#1925
Marita Cheng
#59944
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (35 years)
Marita Cheng is the founder of Robogals. She was named the 2012 Young Australian of the Year. She is the founder and current CEO of Aubot, a start-up robotics company. She co-founded Aipoly, an app to assist blind people to recognise objects using their mobile phones. She was named as one of the World's Top 50 women in Technology by Forbes in 2018 and was recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2016. On 9 June 2019, Cheng was appointed a member of the Order of Australia for significant service to science and technology, particularly to robotics.
Go to Profile#1926
James J. Kuffner Jr.
#58419
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
James J. Kuffner Jr. is an American roboticist and chief executive officer of Woven by Toyota. Dr. Kuffner is also Chief Digital Officer and a member of the Board of Directors of Toyota Motor Corporation. Kuffner continues to serve as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and as Executive Advisor to Woven by Toyota. Kuffner earned a Ph.D. from the Stanford University Dept. of Computer Science Robotics Laboratory in 1999.
Go to Profile#1927
Claudio Cobelli
#85666
Overall Influence
#1928
Jason Pomeroy
#72785
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Jason Pomeroy is an architect, academicand author. He is the founder of sustainable design firm Pomeroy Studio and sustainable educator Pomeroy Academy. Life Pomeroy studied at the Canterbury School of Architecture, took a master's degree at the University of Cambridge, and a PhD from the University of Westminster with a thesis titled ‘Skycourts and skygardens: towards a vertical urban theory’.
Go to Profile#1929
Helmut Newton
#2448
Overall Influence
1920 - 2004 (84 years)
Helmut Newton was a German-Australian photographer. The New York Times described him as a "prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications."
Go to Profile#1930
Peter Lund
#85771
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
#1931
Brigitte Shim
#56419
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Brigitte Shim, FRAIC, OC, RCA, Hon. FAIA, OAA is a Canadian architect known for her small house designs in Canada and other works in architecture of different scales. Shim is a founding partner of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, along with her husband, Howard Sutcliffe. Before the establishment of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects in 1994, she was a practicing architect who also taught at the University of Toronto's John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. She continues to guide young designers as a tenured professor at University of Toronto and as a visiting professor to many other institutions until today.
Go to Profile#1932
Yutaka Takahasi
#45532
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (97 years)
was a Japanese engineer notable for his work on river basin management and reduction of water-related disasters. Takahasi received the 2015 Japan Prize "for the contribution to development of innovative concept on river basin management and reduction of water-related disasters."
Go to Profile#1933
Hiroshi Hara
#62094
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Hiroshi Hara is a Japanese architect and author on architecture. His major works, including Kyōto Station, the Umeda Sky Building in Osaka, the Yamato International building in Tokyo, the Sapporo Dome in Hokkaidō, and other important structures in Japan, have earned many awards. With a doctorate in engineering, he was a professor at the University of Tokyo until 1997, and has held an emeritus position since that time.
Go to Profile#1934
Daniel Sperling
#50203
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Daniel Sperling is the American founding Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis ; Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Professor of Environmental Science and Policy; and Faculty Director of the Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy at the University of California, Davis.
Go to Profile#1935
Lisa C. Klein
#72233
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Lisa C. Klein is an American engineer. She is a distinguished professor of engineering at Rutgers University in New Jersey. In 1977, she became the first female faculty member in the Rutgers School of Engineering. She is the director of the graduate program in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
Go to Profile#1936
Glenn H. Fredrickson
#85869
Overall Influence
#1937
Vijay S. Pande
#8597
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Vijay Satyanand Pande is a Trinidadian–American scientist and venture capitalist. Pande is the former director of the biophysics program and is best known for orchestrating the distributed computing disease research project known as Folding@home. His research is focused on distributed computing and computer-modelling of microbiology and on improving computer simulations regarding drug-binding, protein design, and synthetic bio-mimetic polymers. Pande became the ninth general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in November 2015. He is the founding investor of their Bio + Health ...
Go to Profile#1938
David Zurakowski
#85897
Overall Influence
#1939
Nambirajan Seshadri
#34121
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Nambirajan Seshadri is a professor of practice at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Jacobs School of Engineering, University of California, San Diego. Education Seshadri completed his Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Regional Engineering College, Tiruchirappalli , India, in 1982. He obtained his Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, United States, in 1984 and 1986 respectively.
Go to Profile#1940
Jean-Pierre Adam
#53083
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Jean-Pierre Adam is a French architect and archaeologist specialising in ancient architecture. Biography Adam was born in Paris. Following a special diploma from the School of Architecture in 1965, he entered the ancient architecture department of the CNRS. He produced several monumental studies in France and worldwide, and became director of the Office of Ancient Architecture of Paris, located in the north tower of the Castle of Vincennes.
Go to Profile#1941
Anantha P. Chandrakasan
#31903
Overall Influence
Anantha P. Chandrakasan is the dean of the School of Engineering and Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is chair of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium and MIT AI Hardware Program, and co-chair the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab, the MIT–Takeda Program, and the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology.
Go to Profile#1942
Kejian Wu
#85928
Overall Influence
#1943
Robert J. Mears
#65324
Overall Influence
Robert J. Mears is an English physicist and engineer. In the 1980s, Dr. Mears invented and demonstrated the Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier with the help of members of the Optoelectronics Research Group led by Alec Gambling and David Payne. In 2001 he founded Atomera, and as CTO led the invention and development of Mears Silicon Technology , a method for improving the mobility and other characteristics of semiconductor devices. Mears has authored and co-authored more than 250 publications and patents, and is co-inventor of 46 granted US patents. He is an Emeritus Fellow of Pembroke College, Camb...
Go to Profile#1944
Norman C. Beaulieu
#70875
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Norman Charles Joseph Beaulieu is a Canadian engineer and former professor in the ECE department of the University of Alberta. Education He received the B.Sc. , M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in 1980, 1983, and 1986, respectively. He was a Queen’s National Scholar Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, from September 1986 to June 1988, an associate professor from July 1988 to June 1993, and a professor from July 1993 to August 2000. In September 20...
Go to Profile#1945
Saad Mekhilef
#86019
Overall Influence
#1946
Paul Baran
#53420
Overall Influence
1926 - 2011 (85 years)
Paul Baran was a Polish-American engineer who was a pioneer in the development of computer networks. He was one of the two independent inventors of packet switching, which is today the dominant basis for data communications in computer networks worldwide, and went on to start several companies and develop other technologies that are an essential part of modern digital communication.
Go to Profile#1947
Andrew Viterbi
#63785
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
#1948
Patrick J. Dowling
#52120
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Patrick Joseph A. Dowling, CBE FRS was an Irish engineer and educationalist. Early life Patrick Joseph A. Dowling was born in Sandymount, Dublin on 23 March 1939. He was educated at University College Dublin, graduating in 1960 with a degree in civil engineering.
Go to Profile#1949
Michele Zorzi
#86035
Overall Influence
#1950
Joshua Pearce
#21620
Overall Influence
Joshua M. Pearce is an academic engineer at Western University and Michigan Tech known for his work on protocrystallinity, photovoltaic technology, open-source-appropriate technology, and open-source hardware including RepRap 3D printers.
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