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,
#3251
Wilbur R. LePage
#87043
Overall Influence
1911 - 1996 (85 years)
Wilbur Reed LePage was an American professor and department chair of electrical and computer engineering at Syracuse University. He was the author of numerous textbooks, including Complex Variables and the Laplace Transform for Engineers and Applied APL Programming. He was a noted authority on the APL programming language.
Go to Profile#3252
Paul J. Coleman
#70293
Overall Influence
1932 - 2019 (87 years)
Paul J. Coleman Jr. was an American space scientist, NASA veteran, professor of space physics at the University of California, Los Angeles and founding chairman of the Girvan Institute of Technology. Coleman was also a co-founder of JumpStartFund, an online crowdsourcing platform.
Go to Profile#3253
Gustavus Simmons
#20161
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Gustavus J. Simmons is a retired cryptographer and former manager of the applied mathematics Department and Senior Fellow at Sandia National Laboratories. He worked primarily with authentication theory, developing cryptographic techniques for solving problems of mutual distrust and in devising protocols whose function could be trusted, even though some of the inputs or participants cannot be. Simmons was born in West Virginia and was named after his grandfather, a prohibition officer who was gunned down three years before Gustavus was born. He began his post-secondary education at Deep Spring...
Go to Profile#3254
Marianne McKenna
#60918
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Marianne McKenna, OC, FRAIC, OAA, OAQ, AIA, RIBA is a Canadian architect and a founding partner of KPMB Architects, a Toronto-based practice established in 1987. She is an invested Officer of The Order of Canada "for her contributions as an architect, designing structures that enrich the public realm". Her projects include the renovation and expansion of The Royal Conservatory TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning and Koerner Hall. McKenna and KPMB were selected by The Brearley School, an independent all-girls school located in New York City, to lead the renovation of its building located on the Upper East Side.
Go to Profile#3255
Ajayan Vinu
#111793
Overall Influence
#3256
Hiroyuki Suzuki
#36641
Overall Influence
1945 - 2014 (69 years)
was a prominent Japanese architectural historian who also established a reputation abroad. For most of his career Suzuki was Professor of the History of Architecture at the University of Tokyo , and for a period was also Chairman of Tokyo University's Graduate School of Architecture. Later in life he joined the faculty of the School of Cultural and Creative Studies at Aoyama University. He was the author of over a dozen books and countless articles in Japanese, but was best known to English readers as the co-author of Contemporary Architecture of Japan, 1958-1984 and Shuhei Endo: Paramoder...
Go to Profile#3257
Morton Denn
#85279
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Morton Mace Denn is a rheologist, chemical engineer, and the Albert Einstein Professor Emeritus of Science and Engineering at the City College of New York. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and winner of a Fulbright Lectureship award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Bingham Medal. He previously taught at the University of Delaware and the University of California, Berkeley and was the director of the Benjamin Levich Institute for Physicochemical Hydrodynamics from 2001 to 2015. He was also a program leader at Lawrence ...
Go to Profile#3258
Harold T. Dodge
#111829
Overall Influence
#3259
Edward Kavazanjian
#89050
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Edward Kavazanjian Jr. is an American civil engineer who specializes in geotechnical engineering. He is the Ira A. Fulton Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at the Arizona State University School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environmental.
Go to Profile#3260
Dwight Nishimura
#83463
Overall Influence
Dwight G. Nishimura is the Addie and Al Macovski professor in the School of Engineering, and professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He leads the Magnetic Resonance Systems Research Laboratory , which designs improved MRI techniques and equipment.
Go to Profile#3261
P. John Clarkson
#111882
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
#3262
Wolfgang Peukert
#39755
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Wolfgang Peukert is a German process engineer. He won the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2005. Life Wolfgang Peukert studied chemical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe and received his doctorate in 1990 at the Institute of Mechanical Process Engineering with the topic "The combined separation of particles and gases in packed bed filters". After seven years in the development department of the Japanese Hosokawa Group, he became a full professor at the Institute of Particle Technology, Technical University of Munich in 1998. He moved to the Institute of Particle Technology at the ...
Go to Profile#3263
Alessandro Astolfi
#111919
Overall Influence
#3264
Peter Wroth
#99447
Overall Influence
1929 - 1991 (62 years)
Charles Peter Wroth was a British civil engineer, a world pioneer in geotechnical engineering and soil mechanics. He led the design and construction of the Hammersmith flyover. Education Wroth was educated at Marlborough College and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he studied Engineering and carried out research in Soil Mechanics under Kenneth H. Roscoe, leading to the award of a PhD degree in 1958 with his thesis titled "The behaviour of soils and other granular media when subjected to shear". He served as Professor at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. He also serve...
Go to Profile#3265
Alan Hardwick Windle
#111937
Overall Influence
#3266
D. Louis Collins
#111953
Overall Influence
#3267
Symeon Chatzinotas
#111984
Overall Influence
#3268
Lester D. R. Thompson
#111991
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#3269
Billy Koen
#81607
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Billy V. Koen is professor emeritus, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin where he has taught for over 41 years. Koen is a nuclear engineer, author, and innovator in engineering methods and education.
Go to Profile#3270
Jeremy Neil Ruskin
#112022
Overall Influence
#3271
Maurizio Milan
#87385
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Maurizio Milan is an Italian engineer. He works in collaboration with world-famous architects such as Von Gerkan, Marg und Partner, Arata Isozaki, Rem Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron, Michele De Lucchi, Matteo Thun, Bolles+Wilson, Mario Cucinella. A long-time consultant of Renzo Piano, he has taken part in numerous projects of the Italian architect.
Go to Profile#3272
David Richardson
#35625
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
David John Richardson is a British academic who was formerly the Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia. As a result of the financial crisis that engulfed the university in early 2023, under his management, he resigned from the position on 27 February 2023, effective immediately, with Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost Christine Bovis-Cnossen taking over as acting Vice-Chancellor.
Go to Profile#3273
Taylor Eighmy
#70647
Overall Influence
Thomas Taylor Eighmy is an American engineer and academic administrator serving as the sixth president of the University of Texas at San Antonio. Education Eighmy graduated from Tufts University in 1980 with a B.S. in biology. He earned a M.S. in civil engineering in 1983 and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering in 1986, both from the University of New Hampshire.
Go to Profile#3274
Constantine Caramanis
#112083
Overall Influence
#3275
Ricky Burdett
#70102
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Richard Burdett is professor of Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the director of LSE Cities and the Urban Age project. Biography His interests and activities focus on the interactions between the physical and social worlds of cities. Professor Burdett is a member of the Mayor of London's Cultural Leadership Board, was a member of Council of the Royal College of Art in London and is Trustee of the Norman Foster Foundation. He was the architectural adviser to the Mayor of London from 2001 to 2006 and Chief Adviser on Architecture and Urbanism for the London 2012 Olympics.
Go to Profile#3276
Christine Shoemaker
#85558
Overall Influence
Christine A. Shoemaker joined the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering & Management and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering as NUS Distinguished Professor on 31 August 2015. Prof Shoemaker obtained her Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Southern California supervised by Richard Bellman in Dynamic Programming. Upon her graduation, she joined the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and later the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA. She was promoted to full Professor in 1985. From 1985 to 198...
Go to Profile#3277
Tuncer Cebeci
#112209
Overall Influence
#3278
Helen H. Lu
#104375
Overall Influence
Helen Haiyan Lu is a Chinese American biomedical engineer and the Percy K. and Vida L. W. Hudson professor of biomedical engineering at the Columbia University Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. Her work focuses on understanding and developing therapies in complex tissue systems, especially the interface between soft tissue and bone.
Go to Profile#3279
Clare Cooper Marcus
#67262
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Clare Cooper Marcus is a prominent educator in landscape architecture and architecture and a pioneer in the field of social issues in housing, open space design, and healing landscapes. Clare Cooper Marcus was born in 1934 and raised in a north London suburb. She received her undergraduate degree in historical geography from University College, London and a Masters in urban and cultural Geography from University of Nebraska at Lincoln. She returned to England to teach cartography at the University of Sheffield, and worked as urban planner at the Ministry of Housing and London County Council. S...
Go to Profile#3280
Markos Papageorgiou
#112245
Overall Influence
#3281
Jón Karlsson
#112286
Overall Influence
#3282
William Charles Feldman
#112302
Overall Influence
#3283
David L. Neuhoff
#112330
Overall Influence
#3284
Hazel Assender
#73952
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Hazel Elaine Assender , is the head of Department and Professor of Materials at the Department of Materials, University of Oxford. She is an expert in polymer chemistry, thin film electronics and nanomaterials. Assender is a fellow of Linacre College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#3285
Chanan Singh
#93376
Overall Influence
Chanan Singh is an Indian-American electrical engineer and professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering, Texas A&M University. He was named Irma Runyon Chair Professor and Texas A&M System Regents Professor.
Go to Profile#3286
Jack Richardson
#68528
Overall Influence
1920 - 2011 (91 years)
John Francis Richardson OBE was a UK chemical engineering academic, notable for his research into multiphase flow and rheology, but best known for a series of textbooks. Life Richardson was born 29 July 1920 in Palmers Green, London, and achieved a first class BSc in chemical engineering at Imperial College, London, in 1941 and a PhD at the same institution in 1949. He joined the academic staff and rose to Senior Lecturer.
Go to Profile#3287
Judith Driscoll
#100874
Overall Influence
Judith Louise MacManus-Driscoll is a Professor of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge. Driscoll is known for her interdisciplinary work on thin film engineering. She has a particular focus on functional oxide systems, demonstrating new ways to engineer thin films to meet the required applications performance. She has worked extensively in the fields of high temperature superconductors, ferroics and multiferroics, ionics, and semiconductors. She holds several licensed patents.
Go to Profile#3288
Jan Maciejowski
#104350
Overall Influence
Jan M. Maciejowski FIEEE is a British electrical engineer. He is Professor Emeritus of Control Engineering at the University of Cambridge. He is notable for his contributions to system identification and control.
Go to Profile#3289
Dr. Dimitri N. Mavris
#112415
Overall Influence
#3290
Guo Dongming
#112257
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Guo Dongming is a Chinese engineer, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and currently president of Dalian University of Technology. He was an alternate member of the 19th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.
Go to Profile#3291
Alessandro Gandini
#112434
Overall Influence
#3292
Anders Bill
#112444
Overall Influence
#3293
Hamid Jafarkhani
#112447
Overall Influence
#3294
Tricia Carmichael
#33620
Overall Influence
Tricia L. Carmichael is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Windsor. She develops new materials for stretchable electronics with a current focus on wearable electronic devices.
Go to Profile#3295
Walter Mauderli
#80762
Overall Influence
1924 - 2005 (81 years)
Walter Mauderli DSc was a pioneer in the development of the field of medical physics. He earned his doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology under the instruction of notable physicists as Nobel Laureate physicist Wolfgang Pauli.
Go to Profile#3296
Philippe Fauchet
#106623
Overall Influence
Philippe Max Fauchet is a Belgian-born engineer and academic. He has served as Bruce and Bridgitt Evans Dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering since July 2012. Fauchet received an undergraduate degree from the Faculté polytechnique de Mons in 1978. He completed a Master of Science in engineering at Brown University and a Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford University in 1984. Fauchet received a Sloan Research Fellowship in 1988.
Go to Profile#3297
Jenny P. Y. Ting
#103174
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jenny Pan-Yun Ting is a Taiwanese-American immunologist and microbiologist at University of North Carolina. She is a highly cited researcher who studies the role of NLR genes in regulating inflammation and how nanoparticles and microparticles can be used as vaccine adjuvants. She was president of the American Association of Immunologists from 2020 to 2021.
Go to Profile#3298
Marc Eugene Schiler
#74124
Overall Influence
Marc Eugene Schiler is a professor of the USC School of Architecture at the University of Southern California. He is a Fellow of the American Solar Energy Society and a winner of the Passive Solar Pioneer award in 2015. Schiler completed an undergraduate degree in architecture at USC School of Architecture and a Master of Architecture at Cornell University. He was an assistant professor of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Cornell for four years prior to returning to USC in 1982. He was invited for a year to do research at the EMPA . He served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar to the Mi...
Go to Profile#3299
Daniel Buser
#112519
Overall Influence
#3300
Thomas Joseph Weiland
#112559
Overall Influence
