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,
#2651
Pallab K. Bhattacharya
#101394
Overall Influence
#2652
Sethu Vijayakumar
#60310
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Sethu Vijayakumar FRSE is Professor of Robotics at the University of Edinburgh and a judge on the BBC2 show Robot Wars. He is the Programme co-Director for Artificial Intelligence at The Alan Turing Institute, the UK's National Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, with the responsibility for defining and driving the institute's Robotics and Autonomous Systems agenda. He co-founded the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics in 2015 and was instrumental in bringing the first NASA Valkyrie humanoid robot out of the United States of America, and to Europe, where is it a focus of research at the School of Informatics.
Go to Profile#2653
Albert W. Schömig
#101425
Overall Influence
#2654
Fariborz Haghighat
#92521
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Fariborz Haghighat is an Iranian-Canadian academic, engineer and Distinguished Professor of Building, Civil & Environmental Engineering at Concordia University. Haghighat has a Concordia University Research Chair in Energy and Environment and he was Inducted into the Provost's Circle of Distinction in 2009.
Go to Profile#2655
Josef Lutz
#67585
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Josef Lutz is a German physicist and electrical engineer. Career Lutz grew up in a small village called Baldern in the southern part of Germany, his father was smith and farmer. In 1973, Lutz received his high-school diploma from the Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium, Aalen. He studied Physics at the University of Stuttgart and received his Diploma in Physics in 1982. After his military service he joined Semikron Electronics in Nuremberg. The main focus of his work was on Gate turn-off thyristor and fast diodes. In 1999, he graduated as PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany.
Go to Profile#2656
Saeid Eslamian
#59280
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Saeid Eslamian is a full professor of hydrology and water resources sustainability at Isfahan University of Technology in the Department of Water Engineering. His research focuses mainly on statistical and environmental hydrology and climate change. In particular, he is working on forecasting natural hazards including flood, drought, storm, wind, pollution toward a sustainable environment. He is now the Director of Excellence in risk management and natural hazards. Formerly, he was a visiting professor at Princeton University, United States, university of ETH Zurich, Switzerland and McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Go to Profile#2657
Boualem Boashash
#101487
Overall Influence
#2658
Peter Cawley
#101502
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
#2659
Ronald A. Roy
#77251
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Ronald A. Roy is an American engineer, physicist, and academic, who is an expert in physical acoustics and its applications to ultrasonics, biomedical acoustics, acousto-optics, cavitation, and bubble swarm acoustics.
Go to Profile#2660
Sarah Lucas
#6369
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Sarah Lucas is an English artist. She is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged in 1988. Her works frequently employ visual puns and bawdy humour by incorporating photography, sculpture, collage and found objects.
Go to Profile#2661
İrşadi Aksun
#42201
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
M. İrşadi Aksun is a Turkish professor of electrical and electronics engineering and the dean of College of Engineering at Koç University. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from ODTÜ and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois in 1990.
Go to Profile#2662
Salvatore D. Morgera
#69024
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Salvatore Domenic Morgera is an American and Canadian engineer, scientist, inventor, and academic. Morgera is a Tau Beta Pi Eminent Engineer, Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers , Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association , Professor of Electrical Engineering, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and Director of the C4ISR Defense & Intelligence and Bioengineering Laboratories at the University of South Florida and Pr...
Go to Profile#2663
Carol M. Highsmith
#26077
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Carol McKinney Highsmith is an American photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed in all the states of the United States as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. She photographs the entire American vista in all fifty U.S. states as a record of the early 21st century.
Go to Profile#2664
Arthur Kantrowitz
#38490
Overall Influence
1913 - 2008 (95 years)
Arthur Robert Kantrowitz was an American scientist, engineer, and educator. Kantrowitz grew up in The Bronx and graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School. He earned his B.S., M.A. and, in 1947, his Ph.D. degrees in physics from Columbia University.
Go to Profile#2665
Hon-Yim Ko
#55353
Overall Influence
Hon-Yim Ko is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado, where he held the Glenn L. Murphy Professor and Chair of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering from 2000 to 2010. He has won national renown in research and teaching in the specialties of centrifuge modeling, earthquake engineering, mechanical properties of soil and rock, constitutive modeling and soil-structure interaction. His research resulted in over 200 scholarly publications, and prestigious research awards, including the Huber Research Prize by the American Society of Civil Engineers; and the Colorado Engine...
Go to Profile#2666
Evan Douglis
#47183
Overall Influence
Evan Douglis is an American architect, scholar, and Dean of the Rensselaer School of Architecture at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Prior to his appointment as Dean of the School of Architecture he served as chair of the undergraduate program at Pratt Institute, an associate professor and the director of the architecture galleries at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, and a visiting instructor at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from Cooper...
Go to Profile#2667
Philip A. Meyers
#101671
Overall Influence
#2668
Peter Jacobs
#54820
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Peter Daniel Alexander Jacobs is a Canadian landscape architect specializing in the conservation and development of rural and northern landscapes and in urban landscape design. He is Emeritus professor of the School of Planning and Landscape Architecture of the Universite de Montreal, Emeritus Chair of the Commission on Environmental Planning of the International Union for the conservation of nature , Past President of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects , Chair of the Kativik Environmental Quality Commission and a Member of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts.
Go to Profile#2669
Jacobo Bielak
#75131
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Jacobo Bielak is a Mexican-born earthquake engineer. Bielak was raised in Mexico City and earned his bachelor's of science degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1963. He subsequently attended Rice University in the United States, completing his master's degree in 1966, followed by a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology, graduating in 1971. Bielak taught at Carnegie Mellon University, where he was named Hamerschlag University Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and granted emeritus status upon retirement in 2018.
Go to Profile#2670
François Tavenas
#70129
Overall Influence
1942 - 2004 (62 years)
François Tavenas, was a Canadian engineer and academic. Born in Bourg-de-Péage, Drôme, France, he received an engineering degree in civil engineering from Institut national des sciences appliquées de Lyon in 1963 and a doctorate with specialization in soil mechanics in 1965 from the Université de Grenoble. In 1968, he moved to Canada to become a lecturer in the Department of Civil Engineering at Université Laval. A Canadian citizen since 15 July 1971, he became an assistant professor in 1970, an associate professor in 1973, and a professor in 1978. He was the dean, Faculty of Science and Eng...
Go to Profile#2671
Mahdi Ghalibafian
#65975
Overall Influence
1935 - 2007 (72 years)
Mehdi Ghalibafian was an Iranian civil engineer and university professor. He is credited as introducing reinforced concrete in Iran. Career After ending the elementary education, he finished his first two years of junior high school in Ferdosi High School in his birthplace Tabriz. Then he moved to Tehran and completed his recent school-time in Sharaf High School. Afterwards Ghalibafian was graduated in the field of structure in civil engineering department of University of Tehran in 1959. He was working as the director of the first part of Avaj- Pahlavi road in technic corporation during November 1959 till September 1960.
Go to Profile#2672
Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla
#48690
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Anke Kaysser-Pyzella is a German materials scientist and mechanical engineer who has been the CEO of the German Aerospace Center since October 2020. She had previously served as the President of the Technical University of Braunschweig from 2017 until 2020.
Go to Profile#2673
Edmund O. Schweitzer III
#57617
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Edmund O. Schweitzer III is an electrical engineer, inventor, and founder of Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories . Schweitzer launched SEL in 1982 in Pullman, Washington. Today, SEL manufacturers a wide variety of products that protect the electric power grid and industrial control systems at its five state-of-the-art U.S. manufacturing facilities in Pullman, Washington; Lewiston, Idaho; Lake Zurich, Illinois; West Lafayette, Indiana, and; Moscow, Idaho. SEL products and technologies are used in virtually every substation in North America and are in operation in 164 countries.
Go to Profile#2674
Stephen Burgess
#101881
Overall Influence
#2675
Christoph Beckermann
#69325
Overall Influence
Christoph Beckermann is a University of Iowa Foundation Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Iowa. He also directs the Solidification Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering there.
Go to Profile#2676
Harlan Cabot Amstutz
#101900
Overall Influence
#2677
Brian Derby
#96000
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Brian Derby FIMMM is professor of materials science at Manchester University. He has been at the forefront of research into inkjet printing and 3D bioprinting, winning the Edward de Bono Medal for Original Thinking in 2007 for his work on Printing Skin and Bones: using inkjet printing technology to fabricate complex tissue scaffolds on which cells can be grown.
Go to Profile#2678
Ahmed Amin Aly Ahmed Shabana
#101911
Overall Influence
#2679
Alper Erturk
#78941
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Alper Erturk is a mechanical engineer and the Woodruff Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Research Erturk leads the Smart Structures and Dynamical Systems Laboratory at Georgia Tech. His publications are mostly in the areas of dynamics, vibration, and wave propagation involving smart materials and metamaterials. Erturk made fundamental contributions in the field of energy harvesting from dynamical systems. His distributed-parameter piezoelectric energy harvester models have been widely used by many research groups. He was o...
Go to Profile#2680
Namas Chandra
#101998
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Namas Chandra is the retired Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director, Center for Injury Bio-mechanics, Materials, and Medicine at New Jersey Institute of Technology. He was Elmer-Koch Professorship of Engineering and Associate Dean for research and Graduate Studies at the College of Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln . He was the director of the Trauma Mechanics Research Initiative and the BioMechanics and Materials Laboratory at UNL. He was also the Director of $5.8 M UNL-Army Center for Trauma Mechanics. From 1986 to 2006, he was at Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Florida State University.
Go to Profile#2681
Richard M. Epand
#102007
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
#2682
Shie-Ming Peng
#49328
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Shie-Ming Peng is a Taiwanese chemist. Peng attended National Hsinchu Senior High School and graduated from National Taiwan University prior to completing a doctorate from the University of Chicago. He returned to teach at NTU in 1976, after two years as a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University. Peng was granted a Humboldt Fellowship in 1983, elected a member of Academia Sinica in 1998, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2009.
Go to Profile#2683
Yaakov Nahmias
#40531
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Yaakov "Koby" Nahmias is an Israeli biomedical engineer and entrepreneur. Nahmias is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an affiliated member of the NIH-funded BioMEMS Resource Center at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Go to Profile#2684
Ian Fells
#48371
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Ian Fells is Emeritus Professor of Energy Conversion at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and former chairman of the "New and Renewable Energy Centre" at Blyth, Northumberland, England. Education and career Fells was educated at King Edward VII School, Broomhill, Sheffield, then carried out national service in the British army, before studying at Trinity College, Cambridge where he gained an M.A. then in 1958 a Ph.D. entitled "The kinetics of the hydrolysis of the chlorinated methanes". After lecturing in Chemical Engineering and Fuel Technology at the University of Sheffield he was appointed Reader in Fuel Science at King's College of University of Durham in 1962.
Go to Profile#2685
Nele De Belie
#102102
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
#2686
Michael Branicky
#85119
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Michael S. Branicky is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas. He was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2016 for contributions to switched and hybrid control systems.
Go to Profile#2687
Johnny Grey
#57483
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Johnny Grey is a British designer, author and educator specialising in kitchens. He has authored five books. Early life and education Grey studied architecture at the Architectural Association from 1970 to 1976 , with tutors Jeremy Dixon and Mike Gold. One of the first kitchens he designed was for the food writer Elizabeth David, his aunt.
Go to Profile#2688
K. Tanaka
#102135
Overall Influence
#2689
Emmanuel Lubezki
#15831
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Emmanuel Lubezki Morgenstern is a Mexican cinematographer. He sometimes goes by the nickname Chivo, which means "goat" in Spanish. Lubezki has worked with many acclaimed directors, including Mike Nichols, Tim Burton, Michael Mann, Joel and Ethan Coen, David O. Russell, and frequent collaborators Terrence Malick, Alfonso Cuarón, and Alejandro González Iñárritu.
Go to Profile#2690
Murat Arcak
#78358
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Murat Arcak is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley who was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2012 for contributions to theory and application of nonlinear observer design and the passivity approach to control of distributed systems. In 2007 he was a recipient of the SIAG/Control and Systems Theory Prize from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics of which he is also a member.
Go to Profile#2691
José E. Andrade
#102242
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
José E. Andrade is a professor of civil and mechanical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, where he holds the George W. Housner professorship. From January 2016 to February 2022, he served as Executive Officer and held the title of Cecil and Sally Drinkward Leadership Chair for Mechanical and Civil Engineering at Caltech.
Go to Profile#2692
Gregory Crewdson
#18163
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Gregory Crewdson is an American photographer who makes large-scale, cinematic, psychologically-charged prints of staged scenes set in suburban landscapes and interiors. He directs a large production and lighting crew to construct his images.
Go to Profile#2693
Jaime Peraire
#83363
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Jaime Peraire , a native of Barcelona, is the H. N. Slater Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and former head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He specializes in computational aspects of aeronautics and astronautics, and is interested in improved teaching methods in various fields of engineering.
Go to Profile#2694
Suzanne G. Schouten
#102289
Overall Influence
#2695
Arseny Mironov
#31336
Overall Influence
1917 - 2019 (102 years)
Arseny Dmitrievich Mironov was a Russian scientist, aerospace engineer, and aviator. He was one of the oldest researchers in aircraft aerodynamics and flight testing, a Gromov Flight Research Institute director from 1981 to 1985, a recipient of the Stalin Prize in 1948 and the USSR State Prize in 1976, and an honorary citizen of Zhukovsky.
Go to Profile#2696
Gregory E. Simon
#102345
Overall Influence
#2697
Martin Z. Bazant
#85482
Overall Influence
Martin Zdenek Bazant is an American chemical engineer, mathematician, physicist, and academic. He is the E. G. Roos Professor of Chemical Engineering and Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . From 2016 to 2020, he served as executive officer of the department of chemical engineering.
Go to Profile#2698
Atul H. Goel
#102362
Overall Influence
#2699
Steve Wereley
#81345
Overall Influence
Steve Wereley is a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University. His areas of research include Micro- and Nanofluidics, Particle Image Velocimetry, Opto-microfluidics and bio-MEMS. He is the co-inventor of micro-PIV.
Go to Profile#2700
Bishin Jumonji
#51493
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Bishin Jumonji is a photographer who has done advertising, portrait, architectural, and other work. Jumonji was born in Yokohama on 4 March 1947. After studying at the Tokyo College of Photography he worked as an assistant to Kishin Shinoyama and went freelance in 1971, when he was the cameraman for advertisements for Matsushita Electric and Shiseido products.
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