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,
#3201
Brian H. Rowe
#110874
Overall Influence
#3202
Philip Greenberg
#92547
Overall Influence
Philip Greenberg is a professor of medicine, oncology, and immunology at the University of Washington and head of program in immunology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. His research is centered around T cell biology and therapeutic cell therapies. He is a co-founder of Juno Therapeutics.
Go to Profile#3203
Charles G Drake
#110908
Overall Influence
#3204
Marlon Blackwell
#72794
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Marlon Blackwell is an American architect and university professor in Arkansas. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He is founder and principal at Marlon Blackwell Architects, a design firm established in 1992 in Fayetteville.
Go to Profile#3205
Roy Crawford
#88031
Overall Influence
1948 - 2016 (68 years)
Robert James "Roy" Crawford was a university administrator and mechanical engineering academic, whose primary research interest has been in the mechanical properties and processing behaviour of plastics.
Go to Profile#3206
William W. Nazaroff
#110982
Overall Influence
#3207
Jason W. Fleischer
#77011
Overall Influence
Jason W. Fleischer is an American electrical engineer, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Princeton University. Fleischer received his Ph.D. in 1999, from the University of California, San Diego. His research is in the area of nonlinear optics, including the use of light to model superfluids and the recovery of images from scenes obscured by translucent materials. In 2007, a team of researchers led by him noted that light waves passing through nonlinear crystals and superfluids have comparable qualities: The collective motion of superfluid particles looks like the coherent waves in laser light.
Go to Profile#3208
Michael Christopher Wendl
#57641
Overall Influence
Michael Christopher Wendl is a mathematician and biomedical engineer who has worked on DNA sequencing theory, covering and matching problems in probability, theoretical fluid mechanics, and co-wrote Phred. He was a scientist on the Human Genome Project and has done bioinformatics and biostatistics work in cancer. Wendl is of ethnic German heritage and is the son of the aerospace engineer Michael J. Wendl.
Go to Profile#3209
Martin Kaltschmitt
#59173
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Martin Kaltschmitt is a German engineer and professor at Hamburg University of Technology. He is head of the Institute of Environmental technology and Energy economics at Hamburg University of Technology.
Go to Profile#3210
Charles Hirsch
#111064
Overall Influence
#3211
David G. Maloney
#60399
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
David G. Maloney is an oncologist and researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington who specializes in developing targeted immunotherapies for the treatment of blood cancers.
Go to Profile#3212
John Lasseter
#12509
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
John Alan Lasseter is an American filmmaker and animator. He is the head of animation at Skydance Animation. He was also previously the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Disneytoon Studios, as well as the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.
Go to Profile#3213
Professor Peter M. Schlag
#111143
Overall Influence
#3214
Anthony Rodgers
#111184
Overall Influence
#3215
David T. Blaauw
#111193
Overall Influence
#3216
Stojan Radic
#83353
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Stojan Radic is an electrical engineer at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla since 2003. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2016 for his contributions to optical signal processing by leveraging optical fiber non-linearities.
Go to Profile#3217
David Hui
#111237
Overall Influence
#3218
Torgeir Moan
#106980
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Torgeir Moan is a Norwegian engineer and professor of marine technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Career Born on 2 June 1944, Moan graduated as a construction engineer in 1968 and as a doctorate in 1975. He was appointed professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology from 1978.
Go to Profile#3219
Rik W. A. A. De Doncker
#111254
Overall Influence
#3220
Ed Caraeff
#16138
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Ed Caraeff is an American photographer, illustrator and graphic designer, who has worked largely in the music industry. He has art directed, photographed and designed more than 400 record album covers from 1967 to 1981 for numerous artists, including Bee Gees, Elton John, Steely Dan, Carly Simon, Three Dog Night, Tom Waits and Dolly Parton. His photography has appeared on the cover of four issues of Rolling Stone Magazine and is included in the permanent collection of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#3221
Reid Ewing
#110466
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Reid H. Ewing is an American urban planner and distinguished professor of city and metropolitan planning and a distinguished research chair for resilient places at the University of Utah. Ewing is the director of the Metropolitan Research Center and he a long-time columnist for the planning magazine, Planning Research You Can Use.
Go to Profile#3222
Ivan Marusic
#106879
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Ivan Marusic is an Australian engineer and physicist. He is known for his work on turbulence at high Reynolds number, using both theoretical and experimental approaches. He received his PhD in 1992 and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1987 from the University of Melbourne. From 1998 to 2002 he was a faculty member at the University of Minnesota, USA, where he was a recipient of an NSF Career Award, Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering and Taylor Career Development Award. He received an ARC Federation Fellowship in 2006, ARC Laureate Fellowship in 2012 and since 2014 is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
Go to Profile#3223
Anant Madabhushi
#111311
Overall Influence
#3224
Paul Nealey
#103688
Overall Influence
Paul Franklin Nealey is an American molecular engineer. Nealey studied chemical engineering at Rice University, then earned a doctorate in the subject from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He undertook postdoctoral research at Harvard University before working for Solvay et Compagnie in Brussels. During his teaching career at University of Wisconsin–Madison, Nealey received the National Science Foundation Career Award in 1997, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 2001, and was subsequently named Shoemaker Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering. He was granted fellowsh...
Go to Profile#3225
Joseph Schofer
#77068
Overall Influence
Joseph L. Schofer is an American civil engineer specializing in transportation engineering. He has been a professor, consultant and advisor of transportation systems planning, urban planning, urban infrastructure, and related topics.
Go to Profile#3226
Tatjana Schneider
#65570
Overall Influence
Tatjana Schneider is an architect and academic. She is currently head of the Institute for History and Theory of Architecture and the City at the Technical University Braunschweig in Germany. Before this, she was a Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture, University of Sheffield, England and, in 2014/15, Professor for History and Theory of the City at HafenCity University Hamburg, Germany. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Strathclyde , her thesis title being "Mechanisms of the themed environment".
Go to Profile#3227
Mary Ellen Mark
#12936
Overall Influence
1940 - 2015 (75 years)
Mary Ellen Mark was an American photographer known for her photojournalism, documentary photography, portraiture, and advertising photography. She photographed people who were "away from mainstream society and toward its more interesting, often troubled fringes".
Go to Profile#3228
Ananth Dodabalapur
#62237
Overall Influence
Ananth Dodabalapur is an Indian-American engineer, currently the Motorola Regents Chair Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and previously the Ashley H. Priddy Centennial Professor, at University of Texas at Austin and a published author. He was formerly with Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ for more than 10 years.
Go to Profile#3229
Dragan Damjanovic
#109301
Overall Influence
Dragan Damjanovic is a Swiss-Bosnian-Herzegovinian materials scientist. From 2008 to 2022, he was a professor of material sciences at EPFL and head of the Group for Ferroelectrics and Functional Oxides.
Go to Profile#3230
David E. Kuhl
#27809
Overall Influence
1929 - 2017 (88 years)
David Edmund Kuhl was an American scientist specializing in nuclear medicine. He was well known for his pioneering work in positron emission tomography. Dr. Kuhl served as the Chief of the Division of Nuclear Medicine at the University of Michigan for 20 years and retired in June 2011.
Go to Profile#3231
Myriam Gorospe
#111445
Overall Influence
#3232
Robert H. Cofield
#111448
Overall Influence
#3233
Dim‐lee Kwong
#111455
Overall Influence
#3234
Liang Tong
#111458
Overall Influence
#3235
Demetris Koutsoyiannis
#111463
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
#3236
Simon J. Griffin
#111488
Overall Influence
#3237
Bin Cao
#111543
Overall Influence
#3238
Mark Boswell
#59225
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Mark Boswell is the founder and leading theorist of the NOVA-KINO experimental cinema movement. Born 1960 in Asheville, North Carolina, Boswell studied film, film theory, and art history in Switzerland, France, Germany and the Florida Space Coast from 1984–1992. He co-founded the Alliance Film/Video Cooperative in 1993 and the Anti Film Festival in 1994. Some of his most widely screened films are Unknown Unknown, USSA: Secret Manual of the Soviet Politburger, Agent Orange, the feature film The Subversion Agency and the documentary 60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero.
Go to Profile#3239
Thomas T. Veblen
#88589
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Thomas Thorstein Veblen is an American forest ecologist and physical geographer known for his work on the ecology of Nothofagus forests in the Southern Hemisphere and on the ecology of conifer forests in the southern Rocky Mountains of the U.S.A. He is an Arts and Sciences College Professor of Distinction at University of Colorado at Boulder, USA .
Go to Profile#3240
Hamid Abolhasani Toliyat
#111592
Overall Influence
#3241
Diane Ghirardo
#85743
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Diane Ghirardo is a professor of architecture at the University of Southern California. She is also the author of several books and essays on architectural history and theory. Her translation of The Architecture of the City by Aldo Rossi into English was first published in 1982.
Go to Profile#3242
Christian Jutten
#111594
Overall Influence
#3243
Chip Silverman
#57849
Overall Influence
1942 - 2008 (66 years)
Howard Burton "Chip" Silverman, Ph.D, M.P.H., M.S., C.A.S., was the author of five books, coached the NCAA's only African-American college lacrosse team and was the former head of the Maryland Drug Abuse Administration.
Go to Profile#3244
Hsiao‐hwa Chen
#111629
Overall Influence
#3245
Horacio Ahuett Garza
#96901
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Horacio Ahuett Garza is a Mexican engineer, professor and researcher specializing in rapid prototypess, computerized processing and manufacturing and mold design. His work has been recognized with Level II membership in Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Investigadores.
Go to Profile#3246
Yuriy Polyakov
#59165
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Yuriy Sergeyevich Polyakov is a Russian-American scientist at Duality Technologies. He is best known for his work in cryptography , chemical engineering , and physics . Biography Polyakov wrote his first scientific paper when he was a freshman student at the Moscow State University of Environmental Engineering. In April 1998, he moved to the United States. Polyakov received a Bachelor of Science in computer information systems summa cum laude from Excelsior College in 2002 and Master of Science in computer science from New Jersey Institute of Technology in 2003, where he carried out scientific research in computer science and computational mathematics.
Go to Profile#3247
Jason Reese
#89557
Overall Influence
1967 - 2019 (52 years)
Jason Meredith Reese His research was in multiscale flow systems in which the molecular or discrete nature of the fluid determines the overall fluid dynamics. A winner of the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Engineering , the Lord Kelvin Medal , and a MacRobert Award finalist, he was previously Weir Professor of Thermodynamics & Fluid Mechanics, and Head of the Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department, at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
Go to Profile#3248
Li-wei Lin
#111686
Overall Influence
#3249
Kendra Sharp
#101857
Overall Influence
Kendra Vail Sharp is an American engineer. She is a professor of mechanical engineering and the Richard and Gretchen Evans Professor in Humanitarian Engineering at Oregon State University College of Engineering.
Go to Profile#3250
David R. Clarke
#68812
Overall Influence
David R. Clarke is a material scientist and the inaugural Extended Tarr Family Professor of Material Science and Applied Physics at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences . He is the principal investigator of the Materials Discovery and Applications Group.
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