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,
#2601
Adrian Carter
#75989
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Adrian Carter is an English architect, Associate professor at the Department of Architecture and Design at Aalborg University , Denmark and Director of the Utzon Research Center in Aalborg. Carter also teaches at the Aarhus School of Architecture, Århus, Denmark. Under the auspices of Aalborg University, Adrian Carter initiated and established the Utzon Center and became its first director. The Utzon Center building on the Aalborg harbourfront was designed by Jørn Utzon in conjunction with his architect son Kim Utzon¹s office and opened to the public in May 2008.
Go to Profile#2602
Michelle Kaufmann
#69897
Overall Influence
Michelle Kaufmann is an American architect and designer. In 2002, Kaufmann founded Michelle Kaufmann Designs, which designed and built single-family and multi-family green homes using prefabricated modular technology. The firm was closed in May 2009 and Kaufmann started a new design firm, Michelle Kaufmann Studio. Kaufmann is also a co-founder of Flux.io, a company developing collaborative design software for the building design and construction industry.
Go to Profile#2603
Alexander Vardy
#65399
Overall Influence
1963 - 2022 (59 years)
Alexander Vardy was a Russian-born and Israeli-educated electrical engineer known for his expertise in coding theory. He held the Jack Keil Wolf Endowed Chair in Electrical Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. The Parvaresh–Vardy codes are named after him.
Go to Profile#2604
David Shu-cheong Hui
#100525
Overall Influence
#2605
Frank Irving
#49101
Overall Influence
1925 - 2005 (80 years)
Frank Irving was a British aeronautical engineer, glider pilot, author and university lecturer. Early life and education Francis George Irving was born in Liverpool, United Kingdom. He attended St. Edward's College, and then Liverpool University.
Go to Profile#2606
Gerd Hirzinger
#82970
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Gerd Hirzinger received his Dipl.-Ing. degree and the doctor’s degree from the Technical University of Munich, in 1969 and 1974 respectively. In 1969 he joined DLR where he first worked on fast digital control systems. 1976 he became head of the automation and robotics laboratory of DLR, where he and his co-workers soon got several awards for innovative technology transfer from robotics research to applications. In 1991 he received a joint professorship from the Technical University of Munich, and in 2003 an honorary professorship at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China.
Go to Profile#2607
Stuart White
#37645
Overall Influence
Stuart White is a recording and mix engineer. He is best known for his work with Beyoncé, namely on studio albums Beyoncé, Lemonade, and Renaissance. White has three Grammy awards and has been nominated ten times.
Go to Profile#2608
Stephen E. Levinson
#71620
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Stephen E. Levinson is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , leader of the Language Acquisition and Robotics Lab at UIUC, and a full-time faculty member of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at UIUC. He works on speech synthesis, acquisition and recognition and the development of anthropomorphic robots.
Go to Profile#2609
Lionel March
#70332
Overall Influence
1934 - 2018 (84 years)
Lionel John March was a British mathematician, architect and digital artist, perhaps best known for his early pioneering of computer-aided architecture and art. Early life and education March was born in Hove, England on 26 January 1934. As a teenager, his interests included mathematics, theatre and design. At the age of 17 he wrote an original mathematical paper generalizing the theory of complex numbers to n-dimensions, for which the computer pioneer Alan Turing wrote "you have done this research with imagination and competence".
Go to Profile#2610
John Holdren
#14095
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
John Paul Holdren is an American scientist who served as the senior advisor to President Barack Obama on science and technology issues through his roles as assistant to the president for science and technology, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology .
Go to Profile#2611
Ian A. Young
#61231
Overall Influence
Ian A. Young is an Intel engineer. Young is a co-author of 50 research papers, and has 71 patents in switched capacitor circuits, DRAM, SRAM, BiCMOS, x86 clocking, Photonics and spintronics. Biography Born in Melbourne, Australia, Young received his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Melbourne, Australia. He received his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1978, where he did research on MOSFET switched-capacitor filters.
Go to Profile#2612
Don Bluth
#1936
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Donald Virgil Bluth is an American filmmaker and animator. He is best known for directing the animated films The Secret of NIMH , An American Tail , The Land Before Time , All Dogs Go to Heaven , Anastasia , and Titan A.E. , for his involvement in the LaserDisc game Dragon's Lair , and for competing with former employer Walt Disney Productions during the years leading up to the films that became the Disney Renaissance. He is the older brother of illustrator Toby Bluth.
Go to Profile#2613
R J R Blair
#100721
Overall Influence
#2614
George D Dangas
#100737
Overall Influence
#2615
George L. Mellor
#100743
Overall Influence
#2616
Mark Kachanov
#79616
Overall Influence
Mark Kachanov is an American mechanical engineer, currently a professor at Tufts University and also the Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier's International Journal of Engineering Sciences and Springer's Letters in Fracture and Micromechanics.
Go to Profile#2617
Galen Rowell
#12112
Overall Influence
1940 - 2002 (62 years)
Galen Avery Rowell was a wilderness photographer, adventure photojournalist and mountaineer. Born in Oakland, California, he became a full-time photographer in 1972. Early life and education Rowell was introduced to the wilderness at a very young age and completed his first roped climb in Yosemite Valley when he was 16. For the rest of his life, he climbed mountains and explored landscapes. He began taking pictures on excursions into the wild so that he could share his experiences with friends and family. After graduating from Berkeley High School in 1958, he stayed in Berkeley to study at t...
Go to Profile#2618
Bhawani Shankar Chowdhry
#50008
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Bhawani Shankar Chowdhry is a Pakistani ICT Professional and an electronics engineer. He is the Distinguished National Professor, Meritorious Professor, Emeritus Professor and former Dean Faculty of Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering at the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology Jamashoro, Sindh, Pakistan.
Go to Profile#2619
Hansjörg Göritz
#79914
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Hansjörg Göritz is a German-American architect, professor, author and designer associated with pure and minimalist architecture that emphasizes place, space, light and material. For his early works he was awarded one of the most prestigious architecture awards in Germany in 1996, the Development Award Baukunst to the Kunstpreis Berlin by the Academy of Arts, Berlin. In 2013 he was recognized as an Affiliated Fellow to the American Academy in Rome.
Go to Profile#2620
Zen Ji Horita
#100782
Overall Influence
#2621
Jasper A. Vrugt
#72919
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
#2622
Anuradha M. Annaswamy
#100798
Overall Influence
#2623
Eric Jan Mittemeijer
#100801
Overall Influence
#2624
Fumiyuki Adachi
#100836
Overall Influence
#2625
Nelson B. Schiller
#100860
Overall Influence
#2626
Mason Peck
#36385
Overall Influence
Mason Peck is an associate professor at Cornell University and former NASA Chief Technologist. His immediate predecessor in the NASA position was Bobby Braun. Peck has published in various aerospace sub-disciplines including; air-bearing spacecraft simulation, low-power space robotics, hopping rovers, and Lorentz-augmented orbits.
Go to Profile#2627
Baltasar Mena Iniesta
#55778
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Baltasar Mena Iniesta is a Spanish-born Mexican mechanical engineer specialized in Rheology. He has been laureated with Mexico's National Prize for Arts and Sciences , UNESCO Science Prize , and has chaired both the International Committee on Rheology and the Mexican Society of Rheology .
Go to Profile#2628
Freddy Haesebrouck
#100884
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
#2629
Fuj Io Izumi
#100899
Overall Influence
#2630
David M. Levinson
#80439
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
David Matthew Levinson is an American civil engineer and transportation analyst, a professor at the University of Sydney since 2017. He formerly held the RP Braun/CTS Chair in Transportation at the University of Minnesota, from 2006 to 2016. He has authored or co-authored 8 books, edited 3 collected volumes, and authored or co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed articles on various aspects of transportation. His most widely cited works are on transportation accessibility and on the travel time budget. He has developed models of the co-evolution of transport and land use systems, demonstrating mutual causality empirically.
Go to Profile#2631
Amale Andraos
#81688
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Amale Andraos is a New York-based designer. She was dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and serves as advisor to the Columbia Climate School. She is the co-founder of the New York City architecture firm WORKac with her husband, Dan Wood. Her impact on architectural practice around the world was recognized when she was named Honorary Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada in 2021.
Go to Profile#2632
Berthold K.P. Horn
#20011
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Berthold Klaus Paul Horn is an American scientist working in the field of artificial intelligence and computer vision. He is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He is also Principal Investigator at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT.
Go to Profile#2633
Edward J. Delp
#100926
Overall Influence
#2634
Paul Jowitt
#50516
Overall Influence
Professor Paul William Jowitt is a British civil engineer, Professor of Civil Engineering Systems at Heriot Watt University, and executive director of the Scottish Institute of Sustainable Technology. On 3 November 2009, he became the 145th President of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2011 Birthday Honours for services to technology. He is currently President of the Commonwealth Engineers Council. He was elected in 2012 as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Go to Profile#2635
Milton Van Dyke
#54937
Overall Influence
1922 - 2010 (88 years)
Milton Denman Van Dyke was Professor of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. He was known for his work in fluid dynamics, especially with respect to the use of perturbation analysis in aerodynamics. His often-cited book An Album of Fluid Motion presents a collection of about 400 selected black-and-white photographs of flow visualization in experiments, received – on his request – from researchers all over the world.
Go to Profile#2636
Uzō Nishiyama
#51604
Overall Influence
1911 - 1994 (83 years)
was a Japanese modernist architect, city planner, and architectural scholar. He is noted for his application of methods of scientific research to the study of architecture and urban planning. Nishiyama served as a professor at Kyoto University for over 25 years, and produced a number of seminal writings on architectural theory.
Go to Profile#2637
Herbert Lepor
#100985
Overall Influence
#2638
Kenneth Kidd
#75766
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Kenneth Kay Kidd is an American human geneticist and emeritus professor of genetics at Yale University School of Medicine. He is known for his work on the role of genetics in disorders such as manic depression and schizophrenia, on human genetic variation and its relationship to geography, and the Out of Africa theory of human evolution. He also helped discover the DRD4-7R gene that has been linked to exploratory behaviour.
Go to Profile#2639
Ruth A. David
#37877
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Ruth A. David is an American engineer. While at the CIA, David was responsible for encouraging the agency to pursue partnerships with the private sector and designed a proposal to procure technology at the stage of development from the private sector. She has been awarded the CIA Director's Award, the Defense Intelligence Agency Director's Award, the CIA Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the National Reconnaissance Officer's Award for Distinguished Service, and the National Security Agency Distinguished Service Medal.
Go to Profile#2640
John Baillieul
#80414
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
John Baillieul is an American control theorist and distinguished professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Boston University. Baillieul is a fellow of the International Federation of Automatic Control, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He served as president of the IEEE Control Systems Society in 2006, and was editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control from 1992 to 1998 and editor-in-chief of the SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization from 2006 to 2011.
Go to Profile#2641
Kyu Ha Kim
#30424
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Kyu Ha Kim was a South Korean judoka. He was the youngest judoka to get his kudan . He was posthumously promoted to, jūdan the 10th degree black belt. He also practiced in the Korean martial art, Taekwondo and attained the rank of 9th degree black belt. Prior to his death he taught martial arts for over sixty years. He established a school in Brentwood, PA and taught at the University of Pittsburgh. In June 2008, he became the oldest successful heart transplant recipient of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Go to Profile#2642
Keren Bergman
#96199
Overall Influence
Keren Bergman is an American electrical engineer who is the Charles Batchelor Professor at Columbia University. She also serves as the director of the Lightwave Research Laboratory, a silicon photonics research group at Columbia University. Her research focuses on nano-photonics and particularly optical interconnects for low power, high bandwidth computing applications.
Go to Profile#2643
W. David Kingery
#36900
Overall Influence
1926 - 2000 (74 years)
William David Kingery was an American material scientist who developed systematic methods for the study of ceramics. For his work, he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in 1999. Life Kingery was born on July 27, 1926, in White Plains, New York, one of four children. His father was a doctor in private practice. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , he majored in inorganic chemistry, receiving his BSc in 1948.
Go to Profile#2644
David Rosowsky
#67345
Overall Influence
Dr. David V. Rosowsky is the current Vice President for Research at Kansas State University. Rosowsky is the former Provost and Senior Vice President at the University of Vermont. He previously served as the Dean of Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Prior to that, he was Head of the Department of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M and a faculty member at Clemson. Widely known for his work applying probability models to building structural safety in natural hazards, he is member of the editorial board for the journal Structural Safety. He is a graduate of Tufts University, holds a Ph.D.
Go to Profile#2645
Nasser M. Nasrabadi
#101333
Overall Influence
#2646
Thomas Hubka
#50453
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Thomas C. Hubka is an American architectural historian whose primary focus is vernacular architecture and related issues of architecture and cultural meaning. Education Hubka received his Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1969, and his Master of Architecture from the University of Oregon in 1972. While at Carnegie Mellon, he was a varsity football player and played quarterback.
Go to Profile#2647
John Raymond Willis
#101351
Overall Influence
#2648
Jason A Burdick
#101356
Overall Influence
#2649
Nicola Pugno
#99672
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Nicola Maria Pugno is an Italian scientist, mechanical engineer, astrophysicist, with phds in fracture mechanics and biology. He is a full professor of solid and structural mechanics at the University of Trento and of materials science at the Queen Mary University of London .
Go to Profile#2650
Robert Samuel Weiss
#101379
Overall Influence
