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,
#2351
Robert King Brayton
#95168
Overall Influence
#2352
Cervin Robinson
#49870
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
Cervin Robinson was an American photographer and author best known for architectural photography and historical writings that span his career, active from 1957 to his death. Early life Robinson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the younger child of Frank Robinson and Mary Burchill Robinson.
Go to Profile#2353
Joel Emer
#52444
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Joel S. Emer is a pioneer in computer performance analysis techniques and a microprocessor architect. He is currently a researcher at Nvidia, and a Professor of the Practice at MIT, and was formerly an Intel Fellow. He was the 2009 recipient of the Eckert–Mauchly Award, an ACM/IEEE joint award for contributions to computer and digital systems architecture.
Go to Profile#2354
Treena Livingston Arinzeh
#79475
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Treena Livingston Arinzeh is professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University in New York, New York, joining in 2022. She was formerly a Distinguished Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey. She is known for her research on adult stem-cell therapy. Arinzeh takes part in the American Chemical Society's Project Seeds program, opening up her lab for high school students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds for summer internships.
Go to Profile#2355
Patrizio Lancellotti
#95203
Overall Influence
#2356
Reshef Tenne
#32541
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Reshef Tenne is an Israeli scientist. Biography Born in Kibbutz Usha, Tenne received his BSc in Chemistry and Physics from Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1969, where he also received his MSc and PhD .
Go to Profile#2357
Ignasi de Solà-Morales
#71882
Overall Influence
1942 - 2001 (59 years)
Ignasi de Solà-Morales Rubió was an architect, historian and philosopher from Catalonia, Spain. He was professor of composition at the Barcelona School of Architecture, and also taught at the universities of Princeton, Columbia, Turin, and Cambridge.
Go to Profile#2358
Thomas Sutherland
#16770
Overall Influence
1931 - 2016 (85 years)
Thomas Sutherland , Dean of Agriculture at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, was kidnapped by Islamic Jihad members near his Beirut home on June 9, 1985. He was released on November 18, 1991, at the same time as Terry Waite, having been held hostage for 2,353 days.
Go to Profile#2359
Eli Eduardo de Gortari
#25860
Overall Influence
1918 - 1991 (73 years)
Eli Eduardo de Gortari de Gortari was a logician, philosopher of science and engineer. Biography Elí de Gortari was a student of the Engineering School of the National Autonomous University of Mexico , matriculating in 1938. His goal was to become an engineer, which he achieved in two years. His commitment to public welfare led him to enroll in sanitation engineering, but he continued his studies of mathematics and philosophy. Eventually, in 1948, he would become a professor of philosophy of science. In 1949 he obtained a master's degree in philosophy and published a thesis "The Science of Lo...
Go to Profile#2360
Chein‐i Chang
#95270
Overall Influence
#2361
David Mohney
#78197
Overall Influence
David Mohney FAIA is an American architect, urbanist, writer, and dean at Kean University and Wenzhou-Kean University. Biography He is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, holds a M.Arch from Princeton University School of Architecture and attended Harvard University to study Fine Arts, where he received his A.B.. He is the dean at Kean University and Wenzhou-Kean University for The Michael Graves College and previously the dean for University of Kentucky College of Design. He has taught at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York City, the Graduate School of ...
Go to Profile#2362
Wendi Heinzelman
#68769
Overall Influence
Wendi Beth Rabiner Heinzelman is an American electrical engineer and computer scientist specializing in wireless networks, cloud computing, and multimedia. She is dean of the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Rochester, and the former dean of graduate studies for arts, sciences, and engineering at Rochester.
Go to Profile#2363
Idit Keidar
#59548
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Idit Keidar is a professor of electrical engineering and an author of more than 180 articles which gave her an h-index of 38 and were cited more than 5,000 times. Some of them were published in such journals as Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing and SIAM Journal on Computing.
Go to Profile#2364
Jerome I. Elkind
#25779
Overall Influence
Jerome Elkind is an American electrical engineer and computer scientist. In 1988 he was co-founder of the Lexia Institute. Biography Elkind was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning his undergraduate degree in 1951 and Sc.D. in 1957. He went on to join BBN Technologies and participated for them in the 1960 Symposium on Principles of Self-Organization. He then was appointed head of the Computer Science Laboratory at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center . Here he held budgetary responsibility for new projects. He also worked with Bob Taylor on the Xerox Alto. He went on to ...
Go to Profile#2365
Robert E. Collin
#70891
Overall Influence
1928 - 2010 (82 years)
Robert Emmanuel Collin was a Canadian American electrical engineer, university professor and life fellow of the IEEE. Collin was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1990. Biography Collin was born on 24 October 1928 in the small town of Donalda, Alberta, Canada. He received an undergraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan and a PhD in electrical engineering from University of London . He worked at the Canadian Armament and Research Development Establishment on guided missile antennas, radomes and radar system evaluations.
Go to Profile#2366
Zenon J. Pudlowski
#41489
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Zenon Jan Pudlowski is an engineer and educator. He is currently director of the World Institute for Engineering and Technology Education based in Melbourne, Australia. He is also a visiting professor at Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia.
Go to Profile#2367
Umesh. K. Mishra
#95425
Overall Influence
#2368
Moe Z. Win
#95446
Overall Influence
#2369
Pierre Comon
#95509
Overall Influence
#2370
David G Armstrong
#95521
Overall Influence
#2371
Bart Lootsma
#89222
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Bart Lootsma studied architecture at the Eindhoven University of Technology during 1975–1984. He is a historian, critic, and curator in the fields of architecture, design, and fine arts. He holds the chair for architectural theory at the Leopold-Franzens University of Innsbruck and is also professor at the Institute for History, Theory and Critic in Architecture at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna.
Go to Profile#2372
Kenneth A. Schwartz
#81340
Overall Influence
Kenneth A. Schwartz, FAIA is an architect, community designer, planner, and educator based in New Orleans, LA. He is a Favrot Professor and former Dean of the Tulane School of Architecture. Schwartz received a Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Architecture and Urban Design from Cornell University. He arrived at the University of Virginia School of Architecture in 1984 after teaching for several years at Cornell and Syracuse University. He also served as a visiting assistant professor at Princeton University from 1986 to 1987.
Go to Profile#2373
Paul Midgley
#82270
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Paul Anthony Midgley FRS is a Professor of Materials Science in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. Education Midgley was educated at the University of Bristol where he was awarded a Master of Science degree in 1988 and a PhD in 1991 for work on electron microscopy of high-temperature superconductors.
Go to Profile#2374
N'irwan Ansari
#95599
Overall Influence
#2375
Anthony N. Michel
#79272
Overall Influence
1935 - 2020 (85 years)
Anthony N. Michel , a life fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, was an American engineering educator. His expertise was in qualitative analysis of dynamical systems with emphasis on stability theory and applications.
Go to Profile#2376
Michael Ulrich Hensel
#73735
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Michael Ulrich Hensel is a German architect, researcher and writer. His primary areas of interest and inquiry include performance-oriented architecture, embedded architectures - architecture and environment integration, and advanced data-driven design. His work is located in the intersection between architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, micro-climatology and ecology.
Go to Profile#2377
Ekmel Ozbay
#95724
Overall Influence
#2378
Heine R. Boeing
#95757
Overall Influence
#2379
In So Kweon
#95762
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
#2380
Guy André Boy
#50591
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Guy André Boy is a French and American scientist and engineer, Fellow of the International Council on Systems Engineering , the Air and Space Academy, and the International Academy of Astronautics. He is FlexTech chair holder at CentraleSupélec and ESTIA Institute of Technology. He is also a visiting scholar at ISAE-SUPAERO. He was a university professor and dean at Florida Institute of Technology , where he created the Human-Centered Design Institute in 2010. He was senior research scientist at Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition . He was Chief Scientist for Human-Centered Design at NASA Kennedy Space Center from 2010 to 2016.
Go to Profile#2381
Amable Liñán
#47738
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Amable Liñán Martínez is a Spanish aeronautical engineer considered a world authority in the field of combustion. Biography He holds a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering from the Technical University of Madrid, advised by :es:Gregorio Millán Barbany and Degree of Aeronautical Engineer from the Caltech advised by Frank E. Marble.
Go to Profile#2382
Roland W. Schmitt
#37290
Overall Influence
1923 - 2017 (94 years)
Roland Walter Schmitt was an American physicist, business executive and the sixteenth president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He was born on July 24, 1923, in Seguin, Texas to Walter L. Schmitt and Myrtle F. Schmitt. On June 2, 1951, he married Alice V. Calhoun and they had two sons: Lorenz and Brian . Alice died on July 17, 1956. He later married Claire F. Kunz on September 19, 1957; they had two children: Alice and Henry .
Go to Profile#2383
Vittorio Storaro
#9779
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Vittorio Storaro, A.S.C., A.I.C. , is an Italian cinematographer widely recognized as one of the best and most influential in cinema history, for his work on numerous classic films including The Conformist , Apocalypse Now , and The Last Emperor . In the course of over fifty years, he has collaborated with directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Ford Coppola, Warren Beatty, Woody Allen and Carlos Saura.
Go to Profile#2384
Kazuyuki Aihara
#95880
Overall Influence
#2385
David M. Mannino
#95901
Overall Influence
#2386
Eleanor Stride
#80896
Overall Influence
Eleanor Phoebe Jane Stride is a Professor of Biomaterials at St Catherine's College, Oxford. Stride engineers drug delivery systems using carefully designed microbubbles and studies how they can be used in diagnostics.
Go to Profile#2387
Beaumont Newhall
#13294
Overall Influence
1908 - 1993 (85 years)
Beaumont Newhall was an American curator, art historian, writer, photographer, and the second director of the George Eastman Museum. His book The History of Photography remains one of the most significant accounts in the field and has become a classic photographic history textbook. Newhall was the recipient of numerous awards and accolades for his accomplishments in the study of photo history.
Go to Profile#2388
Kate Darling
#46779
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Katherine 'Kate' Irene Maynard Darling is an American-Swiss academic. She works on the legal and ethical implications of technology. As of 2019, she is a Research Specialist at the MIT Media Lab. Academic career Darling was born in the US, but grew up in Basel, Switzerland. Darling received degrees in Economics and Law from the University of Basel. After completing her 2014 dissertation titled Copyright and new technologies: theoretical and empirical analysis of copyright transfers and content production incentives at ETH Zurich, Darling returned to the US, to teach a robot ethics course at Harvard Law School with Lawrence Lessig.
Go to Profile#2389
Amnon Sonnenberg
#96028
Overall Influence
#2390
Enrique Carral Icaza
#63810
Overall Influence
1914 - 2005 (91 years)
Enrique Carral Icaza was a Mexican architect. He was born in Mexico City. Biography Carral studied at the Escuela Nacional de Arquitectura of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México from 1933 to 1938, and started his architectural work in 1941. His rationalistic design works had a large impact on the history of contemporary Mexican architecture. His works include residential, educational, industrial, commercial, religious and public buildings, hospitals, recovery and tourist complexes. He also managed projects of the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social and of the UNAM.
Go to Profile#2391
Richard J. Goldstein
#96116
Overall Influence
#2392
Kannan Ramchandran
#96121
Overall Influence
#2393
Jörg J. Kühn
#87277
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Jörg J. Kühn is a German architect and professor. Life and career Jörg Kühn studied Architecture at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt under teachers such as Günter Behnisch, Walter Belz and Max Bächer. He graduated in 1980 with Helmut Striffler as his supervisor. After his graduation he worked as assistant professor at Helmut Stiffler's chair until 1985, followed by a position as lecturer for building construction and architectural design at the chairs of Walter Belz and Peter Steiger. In 1993 he became professor at the chair of design and building science at Brandenburg University of Tec...
Go to Profile#2394
Steven X. X. Ding
#96143
Overall Influence
#2395
Ian David Brown
#96161
Overall Influence
#2396
Anastasios Venetsanopoulos
#74415
Overall Influence
1941 - 2014 (73 years)
Anastasios Venetsanopoulos was a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto, Ontario and a professor emeritus with the Edward S. Rogers Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. In October 2006, Venetsanopoulos joined what was then Ryerson University and served as the founding vice-president of research and innovation. His portfolio included oversight of the university's international activities, research ethics, Office of Research Services, and Office of Innovation and Commercialization. He retired from that position in 2010, but remained a distinguished advisor to the role.
Go to Profile#2397
Forrest S. Mozer
#72477
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Forrest S. Mozer is an American experimental physicist, inventor, and entrepreneur known best for his pioneering work on electric field measurements in space plasma and for development of solid state electronic speech synthesizers and speech recognizers.
Go to Profile#2398
Timothy Beatley
#27798
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Dr Timothy Beatley is an internationally recognized sustainable city researcher and author. His writings have focused on creative strategies cities can use to reduce their ecological footprints and become more livable and equitable places in the process. Beatley coined the term green urbanism and uses it frequently in his writings to describe the planning process used to create a sustainable city.
Go to Profile#2399
Gary Williamson
#96212
Overall Influence
#2400
Christopher R. Wronski
#80733
Overall Influence
Christopher R. Wronski was an electrical engineer and Professor Emeritus at Pennsylvania State University, noted for his pioneering research in photovoltaic cells including discovery of amorphous silicon solar cell and the Staebler–Wronski effect.
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