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,
#301
Charles Moore
#13848
Overall Influence
1925 - 1993 (68 years)
Charles Willard Moore was an American architect, educator, writer, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and winner of the AIA Gold Medal in 1991. He is often labeled as the father of postmodernism. His work as an educator was important to a generation of American architects who read his books or studied with him at one of the several universities where he taught.
Go to Profile#302
Ephraim M. Sparrow
#23146
Overall Influence
1928 - 2019 (91 years)
Ephraim Maurice Sparrow was a Professor of Engineering at the University of Minnesota. He is known for his contributions to all aspects of heat transfer and fluid mechanics. Sparrow has been listed as an ISI Highly Cited Author in Engineering by the ISI Web of Knowledge, Thomson Scientific Company.
Go to Profile#303
Edward F. Crawley
#15094
Overall Influence
Edward F. Crawley is a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and of Engineering Systems at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His teaching and research focuses on Space Systems, Systems Architecture and Systems Engineering. He serves as the co-chair of NASA Exploration Technology Development Program Review Committee and formerly served as the Co-Director of the Gordon Engineering Leadership Program at MIT.
Go to Profile#304
Rustum Roy
#11789
Overall Influence
1924 - 2010 (86 years)
Rustum Roy was a physicist, born in India, who became a professor at Pennsylvania State University and was a leader in materials research. As an advocate for interdisciplinarity, he initiated a movement of materials research societies and, outside of his multiple areas of scientific and engineering expertise, wrote impassioned pleas about the need for a fusion of religion and science and humanistic causes.
Go to Profile#305
Lynn Conway
#3130
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Lynn Ann Conway is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer and transgender activist. She worked at IBM in the 1960s and invented generalized dynamic instruction handling, a key advance used in out-of-order execution, used by most modern computer processors to improve performance. She initiated the Mead–Conway VLSI chip design revolution in very large scale integrated microchip design. That revolution spread rapidly through the research universities and computing industries during the 1980s, incubating an emerging electronic design automation industry, spawning the modern 'foundry...
Go to Profile#306
Ivan A. Getting
#13164
Overall Influence
1912 - 2003 (91 years)
Ivan Alexander Getting was an American physicist and electrical engineer, credited with the development of the Global Positioning System . He was the co-leader of the research group which developed the SCR-584, an automatic microwave tracking fire-control system, which enabled M9 Gun Director directed anti-aircraft guns to destroy a significant percentage of the German V-1 flying bombs launched against London late in the Second World War.
Go to Profile#307
Qingyun Ma
#14507
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Qingyun Ma is a Chinese architect. Early life and education Born in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, Ma received a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering in Architecture from Tsinghua University in Beijing. Later on, he pursued architecture at the Graduate School of Fine Art at the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#308
John Cioffi
#12697
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
John Mathew Cioffi is an American electrical engineer, educator and inventor who has made contributions in telecommunication system theory, specifically in coding theory and information theory. Best known as "the father of DSL," Cioffi's pioneering research was instrumental in making digital subscriber line technology practical and has led to over 400 publications and more than 100 pending or issued patents, many of which are licensed.
Go to Profile#309
Gary Flandro
#19814
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Gary Arnold Flandro is an American aerospace engineer who is currently the professor for the Boling Chair of Excellence in Space Propulsion at the University of Tennessee Space Institute. He is also the Vice President and Chief Engineer for Gloyer-Taylor Laboratories .
Go to Profile#310
Aldo R. Boccaccini
#25925
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Aldo Roberto Boccaccini is a nuclear engineer and material scientist. He is currently a Professor of Biomaterials and Head of the Institute of Biomaterials at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany.
Go to Profile#311
Duncan Dowson
#8807
Overall Influence
1928 - 2020 (92 years)
Duncan Dowson was a British engineer who was Professor of Engineering Fluid Mechanics and Tribology at the University of Leeds. Early life and education Dowson's father, Wilfrid Dowson, was an ornamental blacksmith, and as a child his son helped him in his work.
Go to Profile#312
Pat Hanrahan
#4408
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Patrick M. Hanrahan is an American computer graphics researcher, the Canon USA Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University. His research focuses on rendering algorithms, graphics processing units, as well as scientific illustration and visualization. He has received numerous awards, including the 2019 Turing Award.
Go to Profile#313
Shlomo Shamai
#10809
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Professor Shlomo Shamai is a distinguished professor at the Department of Electrical engineering at the Technion − Israel Institute of Technology. Professor Shamai is an information theorist and winner of the 2011 Shannon Award.
Go to Profile#314
Anatoly Kitov
#5842
Overall Influence
1920 - 2005 (85 years)
Anatoly Ivanovich Kitov was a pioneer of cybernetics in the Soviet Union. Early life and education Anatoly Kitov was born in Samara in 1920. The Kitov family moved to Tashkent in 1921, as Anatoly's father, Ivan Stepanovich Kitov, had served as a junior officer in the White Army and wanted to avoid the repercussions of the Russian Civil War. Anatoly excelled at secondary school and graduated in 1939. However, his enrollment at Tashkent State Technical University was interrupted when he was called up for military service.
Go to Profile#315
Ralph Brazelton Peck
#19034
Overall Influence
1912 - 2008 (96 years)
Ralph Brazelton Peck was a civil engineer specializing in soil mechanics. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1976 "for his development of the science and art of subsurface engineering, combining the contributions of the sciences of geology and soil mechanics with the practical art of foundation design"?
Go to Profile#316
B. Jayant Baliga
#15260
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Bantval Jayant Baliga is an Indian electrical engineer best known for his work in power semiconductor devices, and particularly the invention of the insulated gate bipolar transistor . In 1993, Baliga was elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to power semiconductor devices leading to the advent of smart power technology.
Go to Profile#317
Steven Sasson
#9877
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Steven J. Sasson is an American electrical engineer and the inventor of the self-contained digital camera. He joined Kodak shortly after his graduation from engineering school and retired from Kodak in 2009.
Go to Profile#318
Lennart Ljung
#15175
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Lennart Ljung is a Swedish professor in the Chair of Control Theory at Linköping University since 1976. He is known for his pioneering research in system identification, and is regarded as a leading researcher in control theory.
Go to Profile#319
Ernst R. G. Eckert
#17238
Overall Influence
1904 - 2004 (100 years)
Ernst Rudolph Georg Eckert was an Austrian American engineer and scientist who advanced the film cooling technique for aeronautical engines. He earned his Diplom Ingenieur and doctorate in 1927 and 1931, respectively, and habilitated in 1938. Eckert worked as a jet engine scientist at the Aeronautical Research Institute in Braunschweig, Germany, then via Operation Paperclip, began jet propulsion research in 1945 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. In 1951, Eckert joined the University of Minnesota in the department of mechanical engineering. Eckert published over 550 scientific papers and books.
Go to Profile#320
Akira Yoshino
#3850
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
#321
Richard O. Duda
#5185
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Richard O. Duda is Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at San Jose State University renowned for his work on sound localization and pattern recognition. He lives in Menlo Park, California. Education Duda received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1958 and 1959, and the PhD in Electrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962.
Go to Profile#322
Joel Moses
#4276
Overall Influence
1941 - 2022 (81 years)
Joel Moses was an Israeli-American mathematician, computer scientist, and Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Biography Joel Moses was born in Mandatory Palestine on 25 November 1941 and emigrated to the United States in 1954. He attended Midwood High School in Brooklyn, New York. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Columbia University and a Master of Arts in mathematics, also from Columbia.
Go to Profile#323
Fujio Masuoka
#3596
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
is a Japanese engineer, who has worked for Toshiba and Tohoku University, and is currently chief technical officer of Unisantis Electronics. He is best known as the inventor of flash memory, including the development of both the NOR flash and NAND flash types in the 1980s. He also invented the first gate-all-around MOSFET transistor, an early non-planar 3D transistor, in 1988.
Go to Profile#324
Werner Sobek
#16580
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Werner Sobek is a German architect and structural engineer. Life Werner Sobek was born 1953 in Aalen, Germany. From 1974 to 1980, he studied structural engineering and architecture at the University of Stuttgart. From 1980 to 1986, he was a post-graduate fellow in the research project 'Wide-Span Lightweight Structures' at the University of Stuttgart and finished his PhD 1987 in structural engineering. In 1983, Sobek won the Fazlur Khan International Fellowship from the SOM Foundation.
Go to Profile#325
Arumugam Manthiram
#14188
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Arumugam Manthiram is an American materials scientist and engineer, best known for his identification of the polyanion class of lithium ion battery cathodes, understanding of how chemical instability limits the capacity of layered oxide cathodes, and technological advances in lithium sulfur batteries. He is a Cockrell Family Regents Chair in engineering, Director of the Texas Materials Institute, the Director of the Materials Science and Engineering Program at the University of Texas at Austin, and a former lecturer of Madurai Kamaraj University. Manthiram delivered the 2019 Nobel Lecture in Chemistry on behalf of Chemistry Laureate John B.
Go to Profile#326
Eberhardt Rechtin
#16137
Overall Influence
1926 - 2006 (80 years)
Eberhardt Rechtin was an American systems engineer and respected authority in aerospace systems and systems architecture. Biography Eberhardt Rechtin was born in East Orange, New Jersey on January 16, 1926. He served in the U.S. Navy on active duty from 1943 to 1946 and continued as a reserve officer until 1958. He completed his undergraduate work at the California Institute of Technology during his Navy service. He received his doctorate in electrical engineering, also from Caltech, in 1950. He was a founding father of systems architecture as a distinct discipline.
Go to Profile#327
David Hanson
#11662
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
David Hanson Jr. is an American roboticist who is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Hanson Robotics, a Hong Kong-based robotics company founded in 2013. The designer and researcher creates human-looking robots who have realistic facial expressions, including Sophia and other robots designed to mimic human behavior. Sophia has received widespread media attention, and was the first robot to be granted citizenship.
Go to Profile#328
Manson Benedict
#14432
Overall Influence
1907 - 2006 (99 years)
Manson Benedict was an American nuclear engineer and a professor of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . From 1958 to 1968, he was the chairman of the advisory committee to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
Go to Profile#329
Ronald A. Howard
#6271
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Ronald Arthur Howard is an emeritus professor in the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems in the School of Engineering at Stanford University. Howard directs teaching and research in decision analysis at Stanford and is the Director of the Decisions and Ethics Center, which examines the efficacy and ethics of decision-making under uncertainties. He coined the term "Decision Analysis" in a paper in 1966, kickstarting the field. He was a founding Director and Chairman of Strategic Decisions Group. Current research interests are improving the quality of decisions, life-and-death decision-making, and the creation of a coercion-free society.
Go to Profile#330
Beatriz Colomina
#14788
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Beatriz Colomina is an architecture historian, theorist and curator. She is the founding director of the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University, the Howard Crosby Butler Professor of the History of Architecture and director of graduate studies in the School of Architecture.
Go to Profile#331
Utkan Demirci
#13343
Overall Influence
Utkan Demirci is a tenured professor and a successful serial academic entrepreneur at Stanford University at the departments of Radiology and Electrical Engineering . He served as the Interim Division Chief and Director of the Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection in the Department of Radiology.
Go to Profile#332
John G. Webster
#15370
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
#333
Jo Coenen
#7452
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Jo Coenen is a Dutch architect and urban planner. He studied architecture at the Eindhoven University of Technology , and later held professorships at TU Karlsruhe, Eindhoven University of Technology and Delft University of Technology.
Go to Profile#334
Wolf Hilbertz
#20475
Overall Influence
1938 - 2007 (69 years)
Wolf Hartmut Hilbertz was a German-born futurist architect, inventor, and marine scientist. Notable contributions to science include the discovery of artificial mineral accretetion / biorock and its use to create electrified reefs.
Go to Profile#335
Vistasp Karbhari
#8497
Overall Influence
Vistasp Karbhari is an Indian-American civil engineer and university administrator. Karbhari was the eighth president of the University of Texas at Arlington. Prior to that, he was provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He is known for his research in composite materials and structural engineering.
Go to Profile#337
Christopher Charles Benninger
#4957
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Christopher Charles Benninger is an Indian architect and urban planner. Born in the US, he permanently migrated to India in 1971. Benninger is an important figure in Indian architecture and planning and is noted for his contributions to the evolution of critical regionalism and sustainable planning in India.
Go to Profile#338
Wei Shyy
#8113
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Wei Shyy is an aerospace engineer who served as the 4th President of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology from 2018 to 2022 with his acting presidency starting from 1 February 2018. He also holds a concurrent appointment as Chair Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. He first joined HKUST in August 2010 as Provost.
Go to Profile#339
Paul E. Gray
#13558
Overall Influence
1932 - 2017 (85 years)
Paul Edward Gray was the 14th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is known for his accomplishments in promoting engineering education, practice, and leadership at MIT and in the world at large.
Go to Profile#340
Diana Agrest
#10828
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Diana I. Agrest is a practicing architect and urban designer and an architecture and urban design theorist, in New York City. From the beginning of her career, while still a student, she started developing critical work on urban discourse as a result of the inefficiency of the existing urban design theories and models, and her need to find alternative ways to think about the city in relation to her practice. As a result, she developed critical work, both in theory and practice alternatively. She was on the forefront of a poststructuralist approach as a tool for critically re-thinking architec...
Go to Profile#341
John Tsitsiklis
#7156
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
John N. Tsitsiklis is a Clarence J. Lebel Professor of Electrical Engineering with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He serves as the director of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems and is affiliated with the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society , the Statistics and Data Science Center and the MIT Operations Research Center.
Go to Profile#342
Ram Karmi
#10106
Overall Influence
1931 - 2013 (82 years)
Ram Karmi was an Israeli architect. He was head of the Tel Aviv-based Ram Karmi Architects company, and is known for his Brutalist style. Biography Ram Karmi was born in Jerusalem. His father was architect Dov Karmi. Karmi grew up in Tel Aviv, served in the Israel Defense Forces in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. He was one of the first soldiers to join the Nahal.
Go to Profile#343
Leslie Martin
#8582
Overall Influence
1908 - 2000 (92 years)
Sir John Leslie Martin was an English architect, and a leading advocate of the International Style. Martin's most famous building is the Royal Festival Hall. His work was especially influenced by Alvar Aalto.
Go to Profile#344
Ben van Berkel
#13643
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Ben van Berkel is a Dutch architect; founder and principal architect of the architectural practice UNStudio. With his studio he designed, among others, the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam, the Moebius House in the Netherlands, the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, Arnhem Central Station, the Singapore University of Architecture and Design, Raffles City in Hangzhou and numerous other buildings.
Go to Profile#345
Shuvo Roy
#12631
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Shuvo Roy is an American scientist and engineer of Bangladeshi descent. Early life and education Roy received most of his education in Uganda, where his father worked as a public health physician. Roy later completed his education and earned his BS degree from University of Mount Union, Ohio in 1992. He then earned his MS degree in Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics from Case Western Reserve University in 1995. He went on to earn his PhD degree from the same school in 2001.
Go to Profile#346
James Ingo Freed
#12636
Overall Influence
1930 - 2005 (75 years)
James Ingo Freed was an American architect born in Essen, Germany during the Weimar Republic. After coming to the United States at age nine with his sister Betty, followed later by their parents, he studied at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he graduated with a degree in architecture.
Go to Profile#347
Victor Vasarely
#3479
Overall Influence
1906 - 1997 (91 years)
Victor Vasarely was a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a "grandfather" and leader of the Op art movement. His work titled Zebra, created in 1937, is considered by some to be one of the earliest examples of Op art.
Go to Profile#348
Edward Larrabee Barnes
#5936
Overall Influence
1915 - 2004 (89 years)
Edward Larrabee Barnes was an American architect. His work was characterized by the "fusing [of] Modernism with vernacular architecture and understated design." Barnes was best known for his adherence to strict geometry, simple monolithic shapes and attention to material detail. Among his best-known projects are the Haystack School, Christian Theological Seminary, Dallas Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, 599 Lexington Avenue, the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building, and the IBM Building at 590 Madison Avenue.
Go to Profile#349
Arun Netravali
#10925
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Arun N. Netravali is an Indian–American computer engineer credited with contributions in digital technology including HDTV. He conducted research in digital compression, signal processing and other fields. Netravali was the ninth President of Bell Laboratories and has served as Lucent's Chief Technology Officer and Chief Network Architect. He received his undergraduate degree from IIT Bombay, India, and an M.S. and a Ph.D. from Rice University in Houston, Texas, all in electrical engineering. Several global universities, including the Ecole Polytechnique Federale in Lausanne, Switzerland, hav...
Go to Profile#350
Robert Kearns
#13110
Overall Influence
1927 - 2005 (78 years)
Robert William Kearns was an American mechanical engineer, educator and inventor who invented the most common intermittent windshield wiper systems used on most automobiles from 1969 to the present. His first patent for the invention was filed on December 1, 1964, after a few previous designs by other inventors had failed to gain any traction in manufacturing.
Go to Profile