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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Engineering,
#2051
Edward Joseph Davison
#88543
Overall Influence
#2052
Enrique J. Lavernia
#85800
Overall Influence
Enrique Jose Lavernia is a Cuban-American material scientist and engineer. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Irvine's Henry Samueli School of Engineering. From 2015 to 2021, he served as UC Irvine's provost and executive vice chancellor. Lavernia previously taught at the University of California, Davis, where he served as Dean of the College of Engineering and as the university's interim provost and executive vice chancellor.
Go to Profile#2053
Andrew Kusiak
#88557
Overall Influence
#2054
Ralph Andre Logan
#88564
Overall Influence
#2055
Timothy S. Fisher
#74771
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Timothy S. Fisher is an American educator, engineer and expert in the application of nanotechnologies. He is a former professor of mechanical engineering at the School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University and Director, Nanoscale Transport Research Group-Purdue University. He currently teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles. He took his Bachelor of Science and doctorate at Cornell University in 1991 and 1998, respectively. Fisher became the chair of mechanical and aerospace engineering department at University of California, Los Angeles, starting July 1, 2018.
Go to Profile#2056
Anton Corbijn
#18228
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Anton Johannes Gerrit Corbijn van Willenswaard is a Dutch photographer, film director and music video director. He is the creative director behind the visual output of Depeche Mode and U2, having handled the principal promotion and sleeve photography for both bands over three decades. Some of his works include music videos for Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" , U2's "One" , Bryan Adams' "Do I Have to Say the Words?", Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box" and Coldplay’s "Talk" and "Viva la Vida" , as well as the Ian Curtis biographical film Control , The American , A Most Wanted Man , based on Joh...
Go to Profile#2057
Gary Haney
#52918
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Gary Paul Haney FRIBA, FAIA is an American architect, a design partner in the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Haney's approach draws heavily on environmental modeling techniques, deep materials research, and advanced building information modeling technologies. Buildings on which he was lead designer include the supertall Al Hamra Tower in Kuwait City and civic buildings in the United States including two Public Safety Answering Centers in New York City and the United States Census Bureau headquarters and the redesign of the National Museum of American History, both in Washington, D.C.
Go to Profile#2058
Christophe Caloz
#76726
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Christophe Caloz is a researcher and professor of electrical engineering and physics at KU Leuven. He graduated from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he received a Diploma of electrical engineering in telecommunications in 1995 and a Ph.D. in electromagnetics in 2000. From 2001 to 2004, he was a Postdoctoral Research Engineer at the Microwave Electronics Laboratory of University of California at Los Angeles. He was then a professor and a Canada Research Chair at the École Polytechnique de Montréal until 2019, before joining KU Leuven where he is th...
Go to Profile#2059
Tony Jun Huang
#32212
Overall Influence
Tony Jun Huang is the William Bevan Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University. Huang is an expert in the fields of acoustofluidics, optofluidics, and micro/nano systems for biomedical diagnostics and therapeutics. He is widely recognized for his breakthroughs in developing acoustic tweezer technologies to manipulate nanoparticles , cells and microorganisms in complex biofluids and applying acoustic tweezer technologies to various fields in biology and medicine.
Go to Profile#2060
Phil Freelon
#43478
Overall Influence
1952 - 2019 (67 years)
Philip Goodwin Freelon was an American architect. He was best known for leading the design team of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture. Some of his other projects include the Center for Civil & Human Rights, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture and the Museum of the African Diaspora. Freelon was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects , and a LEED Accredited Professional. In 2012, President Barack Obama appointed Freelon to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. Freelon was married to six-time Gram...
Go to Profile#2061
James Duncan Davidson
#21501
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
James Duncan Davidson is an American software developer and photographer. He's currently the Technology Advisor to Tobias Lütke, CEO of Shopify. While a software engineer at Sun Microsystems , Davidson created Tomcat, a Java-based webserver application and the Ant Java-based build tool. Davidson is the author or co-author of several books on both using and writing software, including Learning Cocoa with Objective-C, Cocoa in a Nutshell, Running Mac OS X Panther, and Mac OS X Panther Hacks, all published by O’Reilly Media. He also contributed to Agile Web Development with Rails, published by Th...
Go to Profile#2062
David I. Cleland
#19512
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
David Ira Cleland was an American engineer, Educator and professor emeritus in the School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, and was recognized as the "Father of Project Management". Biography Cleland received his bachelor's degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1954, his MBA from the University of Pittsburgh School of Business in 1958, and his Ph.D. from Ohio State University. He started working at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio as a project manager in the development of weapon systems. He was also very active in Project Management at the Air Force Institute of Technology .
Go to Profile#2063
Frank Mücklich
#88326
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Frank Mücklich is a German materials scientist. He is professor at Saarland University and leads the Chair of Functional Materials. Biography Frank Mücklich was born in Dresden, Germany. He grew up in Freiberg where he attended the Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium. From 1980 to 1985, Mücklich studied Physical Metallurgy and Materials Science at the Freiberg University of Mining and Technology. In 1988, he received his PhD with a dissertation on 'X-ray diffraction analysis of point defects in highly perfect Gallium arsenide single crystals' at the Heinrich Oettel Institute. As postdoctoral researc...
Go to Profile#2064
Jana Revedin
#74645
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Jana Revedin is a German scholar, researcher, architect and professor thereof. Born in Konstanz, Germany, Revedin has a degree from the Polytechnic University of Milan and a Doctor of Architecture from Università Iuav di Venezia. Having previously taught at Iuav, Umeå University, and the Blekinge Institute of Technology, , she was a professor at École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris and a UNESCO delegate. She founded the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture in 2006, which has been awarded by UNESCO since 2011.
Go to Profile#2065
Adolf Thiel
#59606
Overall Influence
1915 - 2001 (86 years)
Adolf Karl Thiel was an Austrian-born German expert in guided missiles during World War II, and later worked for the United States Army and TRW. Thiel had been an associate professor of engineering at the Institute of Technology in Darmstadt before joining Wernher von Braun's team at the Army Research Center Peenemünde, where he was involved in developing the V-2 rocket. By the end of the war, he was transferred to the United States by the US Army where he resumed his work with von Braun's group in Fort Bliss, Texas. During the nine years Thiel worked for the U.S. Army, he held positions at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and at Huntsville, Alabama.
Go to Profile#2066
Kara Kockelman
#80407
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Kara M. Kockelman, Ph.D., P.E. is an American civil and transportation engineer, who is currently the Dewitt Greer Centennial Professor of Transportation Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, previously the Clare Boothe Luce Professor of Civil Engineering, and a published author. Kockelman’s work focuses on transportation, and includes planning for future implementation of shared and autonomous vehicle systems, and policies like credit-based congestion pricing and urban growth boundaries.
Go to Profile#2067
Floyd Dunn
#67655
Overall Influence
1924 - 2015 (91 years)
Floyd Dunn was an American electrical engineer who made contributions to all aspects of the interaction of ultrasound and biological media. Dunn was a member of Scientific Committee 66 of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements as well as many FDA, NIH, AIUM, and ASA committees. He collaborated with scientists in the UK, Japan, China and Post-Soviet states.
Go to Profile#2068
George J. Pappas
#88898
Overall Influence
#2069
Semyon Kataev
#78744
Overall Influence
1904 - 1991 (87 years)
Semyon Isidorovich Kataev was a Soviet scientist and inventor in the field of television and radio electronics. He earned a doctorate of Technical Sciences , became a Professor and was awarded Honored Worker of Science and Technology .
Go to Profile#2070
Andrew N. Schofield
#74275
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Andrew Noel Schofield FRS FREng is a British soil mechanics engineer and an emeritus professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of Cambridge. Life Schofield was born on 1 November 1930, the son of Rev John Noel Schofield and Winifred Jane Mary Eyles in Cambridge, England. He married Margaret Eileen Green in 1961. He retired from Cambridge University in 1997.
Go to Profile#2071
Robert M. Koerner
#83523
Overall Influence
1933 - 2019 (86 years)
Robert M. Koerner was an American engineer and academic. He was Professor Emeritus at Drexel University and director emeritus of the Geosynthetic Institute. He died on December 1, 2019. Biography Koerner had been interested in geotechnical/geosynthetic engineering since graduating from Drexel with a Bachelor of Civil Engineering degree in 1956. Academically this was followed with an MSCE from Drexel in 1963 and a Ph.D. from Duke in 1968. He took additional engineering courses at Columbia and Delaware and also law courses at Temple between his masters and doctoral degrees. His teaching/rese...
Go to Profile#2072
Anthony Ephremides
#88968
Overall Influence
#2073
Alex Zelinsky
#58753
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Alexander ‘Alex’ Zelinsky, is an Australian computer scientist, systems engineer and roboticist. His career spans innovation, science and technology, research and development, commercial start-ups and education. Professor Zelinsky is Vice-chancellor and President of the University of Newcastle joining the university in November 2018. He was the Chief Defence Scientist of Australia from March 2012 until November 2018. As Chief Defence Scientist he led defence science and technology for Australia's Department of Defence.
Go to Profile#2074
AnnaLee Saxenian
#21679
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
AnnaLee Saxenian is a professor and the former Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Information, known widely for her work on technology clusters and social networks in Silicon Valley. She received her BA from Williams College in 1976 and her PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989.
Go to Profile#2075
Robert A. Scholtz
#61105
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Robert Arno Scholtz is a distinguished professor of Electrical engineering at University of Southern California, known for ultra-wideband and spread spectrum communications. A 1958 graduate and distinguished alumnus from University of Cincinnati, he obtained his PhD at Stanford University in 1964. Starting his career at Hughes Aircraft, he joined the University of Southern California in 1963. His research work centers on ultra wideband theory and wireless networks. He has also contributed extensively to spread spectrum communication and synchronization.
Go to Profile#2076
Gerald W. Smith
#53578
Overall Influence
1929 - 2017 (88 years)
Gerald W. Smith was the American author of "Engineering Economy: Analysis of Capital Expenditures" the textbook used by several generations of Industrial Engineering college students from around the world. He is an Emeritus Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa where he was a Professor of Industrial Engineering from 1956 to 1988. He received degrees in Engineering from Iowa State University with a Bachelor of Science in 1952, Masters of Science in 1958, P.H.D. in 1961. His 1958 masters theses was entitled "The Obsolescence Allowance in Equipment Replacement Decisions" and his 1961 P.H.D.
Go to Profile#2077
Subhasish Mitra
#41026
Overall Influence
Subhasish Mitra is an American Computer Science and Electrical Engineering professor at Stanford University. He directs the Stanford Robust Systems Group, leads the Computation Focus Area of the Stanford SystemX Alliance, and is a member of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. His research ranges across Robust Computing, NanoSystems, Electronic Design Automation , and Neurosciences.
Go to Profile#2078
Chang Ming Li
#89152
Overall Influence
#2079
David M. Pozar
#89175
Overall Influence
#2080
Vivek Borkar
#48347
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Vivek Shripad Borkar is an Indian electrical engineer, mathematician and an Institute chair professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. He is known for introducing analytical paradigm in stochastic optimal control processes and is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies viz. the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and the National Academy of Sciences, India. He also holds elected fellowships of The World Academy of Sciences, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Indian National Academy of Engineering and the American Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#2081
Barbara Bestor
#54161
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Barbara Bestor is an American architect based in Los Angeles, California. She is the principal of Bestor Architecture, founded in 1992. Examples of her work include the Beats Electronics Headquarters in Culver City, Blackbirds, small lot housing in Los Angeles, Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea in Los Angeles, the revitalization of Silvertop, originally designed by John Lautner and the Toro Canyon House in Santa Barbara. In 2017 she was elected to the AIA's College of Fellows.
Go to Profile#2082
Richard M. White
#72367
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
Richard Manning White was an electrical engineer and a professor emeritus in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley and a Co-Founding Director of the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center . He and Richard S. Muller founded the BSAC in 1986. They received 2013 IEEE/RSE James Clerk Maxwell Medal for pioneering innovation and leadership in MEMS technology. White is known for inventing the Interdigital Transducer and for his surface acoustic wave work, he received the 2003 Rayleigh Award. He received the IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award in 1986.
Go to Profile#2083
Sridhar Komarneni
#89299
Overall Influence
#2084
Johan Suykens
#88414
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Johan Suykens is a full professor from KU Leuven in Belgium. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for developing least squares support vector machines.
Go to Profile#2085
Alfonse T. Masi
#89457
Overall Influence
#2086
Julian Szekely
#73981
Overall Influence
1934 - 1995 (61 years)
Julian Szekely was a Hungarian-American chemical engineer and materials scientist. He was a professor of materials science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Born in Budapest, Hungary, Szekely received both his BSc and PhD in chemical engineering from Imperial College London. He moved to the United States in 1966, becoming a US citizen in 1972.
Go to Profile#2087
Murray Eden
#23148
Overall Influence
1920 - 2020 (100 years)
Murray Eden , was an American physical chemist and academic. He was a professor in electrical engineering, a lecturer, a visiting professor and adjunct professor at institutions including at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Institutes of Health.
Go to Profile#2088
Allison Okamura
#81730
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Allison Mariko Okamura is an American mechanical engineer and roboticist whose research concerns haptic technology, teleoperation, remote surgery, and robot-assisted surgery. She is the Richard W. Weiland Professor in the School of Engineering and a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University, where she directs the Collaborative Haptics and Robotics in Medicine laboratory and maintains a courtesy appointment as professor of computer science.
Go to Profile#2089
Zhisheng Niu
#87692
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Zhisheng Niu is a professor in the electrical engineering department of Tsinghua University. He became a Fellow of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers in 2007. In addition, he was named Fellow of the IEEE Communications Society in 2012 "for contributions to collaborative radio resource management in wireless networks". He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers , appointed 2007.
Go to Profile#2090
Paul J. Nahin
#31860
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Paul J. Nahin is an American electrical engineer and author who has written 20 books on topics in physics and mathematics, including biographies of Oliver Heaviside, George Boole, and Claude Shannon, books on mathematical concepts such as Euler's formula and the imaginary unit, and a number of books on the physics and philosophical puzzles of time travel.
Go to Profile#2091
Michael Lowe
#82418
Overall Influence
Michael Lowe FREng is a British mechanical engineer. Since 2019, he has been the Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London. He is a Professor in Non-Destructive Testing , with particular interests in structure-guided ultrasound, wave theory, wave scattering, materials characterisation, and analytical and numerical modelling.
Go to Profile#2092
Hisashi Kobayashi
#46537
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Hisashi Kobayashi was the Sherman Fairchild University Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Emeritus at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. His fields of expertise included applied probability; queueing theory; system modeling and performance analysis; digital communication and networks; network architecture; investigation of the Riemann hypothesis; and stochastic modeling of an infectious disease. He was a Senior Distinguished Researcher at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology , Japan from September 2008 to March 2016.
Go to Profile#2093
Kambiz Vafai
#89570
Overall Influence
#2094
Sabine Van Huffel
#60807
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Sabine J. A. Van Huffel is a Belgian computer scientist, applied mathematician, and electrical engineer, whose research concerns computational methods for medical diagnostics, and in particular methods based on total least squares.
Go to Profile#2095
Emilio Rosenblueth
#40438
Overall Influence
1926 - 1994 (68 years)
Emilio Rosenblueth Deutsch was a Mexican engineer who devoted himself to the research of seismic events, and in particular to study the behavior of buildings against earthquakes and other seismic activity.
Go to Profile#2096
Hisao Ishibuchi
#89663
Overall Influence
Hisao Ishibuchi from the Osaka Prefecture University, Osaka, Japan, was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2014 for contributions to evolutionary multiobjective optimization and fuzzy rule-based classifier design.
Go to Profile#2097
Earl R. Parker
#72568
Overall Influence
1912 - 1998 (86 years)
Earl Randall Parker was an American engineer and professor. Parker began his metallurgy career in the mid 1930s as a researcher for the General Electric Research Laboratory. In the mid 1940s, Parker began teaching metallurgy at the University of California, Berkeley and remained in his teaching position until 1978. While at Berkeley, Parker was chair of the material sciences department and director of engineering research between the 1950s and 1960s. For awards, Parker received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1960 and was named a National Medal of Science recipient in 1979.
Go to Profile#2098
Lionel Boulet
#77360
Overall Influence
1919 - 1996 (77 years)
Lionel Boulet, was a Canadian engineer, academic, and utilities executive. Born in Quebec City, Boulet received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1938 and a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1942 from Université Laval. He received a Master of Science degree in 1947 from the University of Illinois. Later he received a Doctor of Science degree in 1968 from Sir George Williams University and a D.Gén. from the University of Ottawa. He was made a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada in 1973 for leadership in the establishment and management of the Research Institute of H...
Go to Profile#2099
Mark Wilson Jones
#73641
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Mark Roland Wilson Jones is an architect and architectural historian whose research covers varied aspects of classical architecture while concentrating on that of ancient Greece and Rome. He is best known for his work on the design of monumental buildings, especially the Pantheon, Rome, and that of the Architectural orders in both Roman and Greek contexts. He is the author of two important books of classical architecture, and is currently a senior lecturer at the University of Bath.
Go to Profile#2100
Nesreen Ghaddar
#70826
Overall Influence
Nesreen Ghaddar is a professor of mechanical engineering at the American University of Beirut. She is Qatar Chair of Energy Studies and the Director of the Munib and Angela Institute of Energy and Natural Resources at AUB. She obtained her Bachelor in Engineering in 1980 and her Master in 1982 from Kuwait University and her PhD in 1985 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile