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,
#3301
Carlo Di Mario
#112566
Overall Influence
#3302
James Samuel Clark
#112576
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#3303
Clayton Vernon Deutsch
#112616
Overall Influence
#3304
Dwight Harken
#21485
Overall Influence
1910 - 1993 (83 years)
Dwight Emary Harken was an American surgeon. He was an innovator in heart surgery and introduced the concept of the intensive care unit. Life Dwight Harken was born in Osceola, Iowa. He received his Bachelor's and Medical degrees from Harvard. While working at the Bellevue hospital in New York, he was awarded a fellowship to London to continue his studies in medicine.
Go to Profile#3305
Lee Merrill Jampol
#112633
Overall Influence
#3306
John Musker
#7330
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
John Edward Musker is an American animator, film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He often collaborates with fellow director Ron Clements and is best known for writing and directing the Disney films The Great Mouse Detective , The Little Mermaid , Aladdin , Hercules , Treasure Planet , The Princess and the Frog , and Moana .
Go to Profile#3307
James C. Weaver
#112690
Overall Influence
#3308
Joel Thompson
#112711
Overall Influence
#3309
Andre G. Journel
#99923
Overall Influence
André Georges Journel is a French American engineer who excelled in formulating and promoting geostatistics in the earth sciences and engineering, first from the Centre of Mathematical Morphology in Fontainebleau, France and later from Stanford University.
Go to Profile#3310
Megan Sykes
#112741
Overall Influence
#3311
Massimo Pinzani
#112759
Overall Influence
#3312
John Zaborszky
#72881
Overall Influence
1914 - 2008 (94 years)
John Zaborszky was a noted Hungarian-born applied mathematician and a professor in the Department of systems science and mathematics, Washington University in St. Louis. He received the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award in 1986. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1984.
Go to Profile#3313
Emilio Frazzoli
#112789
Overall Influence
#3314
Joe Mashburn
#111880
Overall Influence
Joseph Mashburn, AIA, has been the Dean of the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture at the University of Houston in Houston, Texas since August, 1998. This came shortly after being inducted into UH's Architecture Hall of Fame in 1996. Mashburn stepped down from his post at Hines in December 2009 and was replaced by Patricia Oliver. He has continued to teach at the college. He was also named to the American Institute of Architects' College of Fellows in 2010.
Go to Profile#3315
K. Arulanandan
#65026
Overall Influence
1925 - 2004 (79 years)
Professor Kandiah Arulanandan was a Ceylon Tamil engineer and academic. Known as Professor Arul, he was a lecturer at the University of California, Davis. Early life and family Arulanandan was born on 2 August 1925. He was the son of V. Kandiah and Sivakolunthu from Achchuveli in northern British Ceylon. He was educated at the American Mission School in Achchuveli and Jaffna College, Vaddukoddai from where he passed the London matriculation in the First Division. After school he joined the University of Ceylon from where he graduated with degree in science. He then went to the University of C...
Go to Profile#3316
Fumio Tatsuoka
#112875
Overall Influence
#3317
Domenico Prattichizzo
#68014
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Domenico Prattichizzo is an Italian scientist with a strong and international recognized expertise in the fields of Haptics, Robotics and, Wearable technology. His researches find their main applications in virtual and augmented reality scenarios and in the rehabilitation of people with upper and lower limbs, visual and cognitive impairments.
Go to Profile#3318
Jorge Cortes
#109986
Overall Influence
Jorge Cortés is a Spanish engineer and professor at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Geometric, Control and Numerical Aspects of Nonholonomic Systems.
Go to Profile#3319
Maggie Aderin-Pocock
#36625
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Margaret Ebunoluwa Aderin-Pocock is a British space scientist and science educator. She is an honorary research associate of University College London's Department of Physics and Astronomy, and has been the chancellor of the University of Leicester since February 2023. Since February 2014, she has co-presented the long-running astronomy television programme The Sky at Night with Chris Lintott. In 2020 she was awarded the Institute of Physics William Thomson, Lord Kelvin Medal and Prize for her public engagement in physics. She is the first black woman to win a gold medal in the Physics News ...
Go to Profile#3320
Hajime Handa
#112908
Overall Influence
#3321
Nina Bhardwaj
#112910
Overall Influence
#3322
Anne C. Steinemann
#98196
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Anne C. Steinemann is an American civil and environmental engineering academic who has specialized chiefly in the fields of "healthy built environments, indoor air quality, consumer product emissions and exposures, drought management, and climate-related hazards", with a focus on engineering and sustainability. Currently professor of civil engineering at the University of Melbourne and professor of engineering at James Cook University, she has also advised numerous government and industry bodies in the United States and Australia and appeared widely in press, radio, television and website segm...
Go to Profile#3323
Hiroyuki Suga
#112918
Overall Influence
#3324
Qiang Ji
#112619
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Qiang Ji from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, United States, was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for contributions to automatic facial image processing and affective computing.
Go to Profile#3325
Emilio Gatti
#49215
Overall Influence
1922 - 2016 (94 years)
Emilio Gatti was an Italian engineer. He was a professor of nuclear electronics at the Politecnico of Milan. With Pavel Rehak he invented the silicon drift detector in 1983; he later patented it. Life Gatti was born in Turin on 18 March 1922. In 1946 he graduated in electrical engineering at the University of Padua, and in 1947 did post-graduate work in electronics. From 1948 he worked at the Centro Informazioni Studi ed Esperienze in Milan, where in 1950, he became head of the electronics division. From 1951 he taught at the Politecnico di Milano, and from 1957 to 1997 was a there. In 1998,...
Go to Profile#3326
Jerzy A. Szpunar
#112963
Overall Influence
#3327
Duy-Loan Le
#55970
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Duy-Loan T. Le is an engineer and the first woman and Asian elected as a Texas Instruments Senior Fellow. Early life Born in Nha Trang, South Vietnam, in 1962 to a labor-class family, Duy-Loan Le fled to the U.S. without her father and a family of nine in 1975, eventually settling in Houston. Her family joined her in the U.S. few years later.
Go to Profile#3328
Stanford Anderson
#79402
Overall Influence
1934 - 2016 (82 years)
Stanford Anderson was an American architectural historian and professor. He taught architectural history, theory, and urban form at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1963 until 1991, and again from 2005 until the end of 2014 upon retirement. As an author, he has been collected by libraries.
Go to Profile#3329
Miomir K. Vukobratović
#113065
Overall Influence
#3330
Changying Sun
#113071
Overall Influence
#3331
Olav Solgaard
#106555
Overall Influence
Olav Solgaard is a Professor in the Stanford Department of Electrical Engineering. He was the Director of the Ginzton Lab from 2008 until 2014. Education Olav Solgaard completed a B. S. Electrical Engineering, from the Norwegian Institute of Technology, Norway in 1981. He completed degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1987 and 1992 .
Go to Profile#3332
Josef H. Neumann
#28198
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Josef H. Neumann is a German Art Photographer, media designer and art historian. He invented the chemogram, an experimental artform involving manipulating chemicals in film photography. Life Education From 1967 to 1970 Josef H. Neumann was apprenticed at the photographer Gustav Wenning in his birthplace Rheine. From 1974 to 1978 he studied visual communication at the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences, after completing his degree as a photo designer in 1978 with a degree and intermediate diploma in journalism, philosophy and art history at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster ...
Go to Profile#3333
Gérard Ghibaudo
#113107
Overall Influence
#3334
Miodrag Potkonjak
#113128
Overall Influence
#3335
John K. Eaton
#113173
Overall Influence
#3336
Víctor Cañas
#50935
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Víctor Cañas is a Costa Rican architect, founder of Cañas Arquitectos in 1972, a former professor at the University of Costa Rica. He is also a former diplomat. Víctor Cañas, the world of architecture is a bridge that links the everyday to the everlasting, a world where creations are simply an artifice of the daily and vital. Structured within his strong desire to harmonize space and time, Arq. Cañas is the creator of spaces that transcend walls; the frame and the barriers of typical construction. His buildings and homes reveal situations and elements in a world of three-dimensional schemes...
Go to Profile#3337
Lance Collins
#50832
Overall Influence
Lance Collins is an engineer and professor for mechanical and aerospace engineering at Virginia Tech. He was previously the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering at the Cornell University College of Engineering and is now the inaugural vice president and executive director of the new Virginia Tech Innovation Campus.
Go to Profile#3338
Róisín Owens
#69774
Overall Influence
2000 - 2017 (17 years)
Róisín Owens is a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Her research investigates new engineering technology for biological applications with a focus on organic bioelectronics, developing electroactive materials that can be used between physical transducers and soft biological tissues.
Go to Profile#3339
Heinz Tesar
#96789
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Heinz Tesar is an Austrian architect who has an international reputation for his church and museum architecture. Life Tesar studied architecture from 1961 to 1965 at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in the master class of Roland Rainer. After several stays in Hamburg , Munich and Amsterdam , he opened in 1973, his own studio in Vienna. From 1972 to 1977 he was a member of the Board of the Austrian Society for Architecture and from 2002 to 2006 he was a member of Baukollegiums of the city of Zurich. In 2000 he opened an office in Berlin.
Go to Profile#3340
Antti Räisänen
#90882
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Antti V. Räisänen , is a Finnish scientist. He is the Professor and Head of the Department of Radio Science and Engineering in Aalto University . He is also the Director of SMARAD . Räisänen received the Doctor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the Helsinki University of Technology , Finland, in 1981. Räisänen was appointed to the Professor Chair of Radio Engineering at TKK in 1989, after holding the same position in 1985 and 1987–1989. He has held visiting scientist and professor positions at the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory and University of Massachusetts Amherst , Amherst , at Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden , at the Dept.
Go to Profile#3341
Naira Hovakimyan
#62900
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Naira Hovakimyan is an Armenian control theorist who holds the W. Grafton and Lillian B. Wilkins professorship of the Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the director of AVIATE Center of flying cars at UIUC, funded through a NASA University Leadership Initiative. She was the inaugural director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory during 2015–2017, associated with the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Go to Profile#3342
Arthur Joseph Mccullough
#113240
Overall Influence
#3343
Jerry P. Nolan
#113247
Overall Influence
#3344
Detlef Zühlke
#81462
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Detlef Zuehlke is a German engineer and professor. Career Zühlke studied Electrical and Computer Engineering at the technical university RWTH Aachen. In 1983, he obtained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the Machine Tools Laboratory at Aachen's university. From 1985 to 1991, he worked for German Lufthansa AG, where he held several management positions such as head of the aircraft maintenance department.
Go to Profile#3345
Sundara Ramaprabhu
#113257
Overall Influence
#3346
Kevin P. Passino
#113259
Overall Influence
#3347
Moe Z. Win
#62087
Overall Influence
Moe Z. Win is a Burmese-American mathematician and electrical engineer known for his work in wireless communications. He is currently a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His current research topics include network localization and navigation, network interference exploitation, and quantum information science. He has served the IEEE Communications Society as an elected Member-at-Large on the Board of Governors , as elected Chair of the Radio Communications Committee, and as an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer . Recently, he served on the SIAM Diversity Advisory Committee.
Go to Profile#3348
Adrian Noble
#10880
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Adrian Keith Noble is a theatre director, and was also the artistic director and chief executive of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1990 to 2003. Education and career Noble was born in Chichester, Sussex, England. After leaving Chichester High School for Boys, he studied at the University of Bristol, where he studied English. He began his professional career as a director at Drama Centre London. In 1976 he moved on to the Bristol Old Vic and worked at the same time for TV. From 1980 till 1981 he worked at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, producing the Duchess of Malfi, which won him the London Drama Critics' Award and the Circle Theatre Award .
Go to Profile#3349
Hui Liu
#95926
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Dr. Hui Liu is a Chinese American professor and an entrepreneur in the field of wireless and satellite communications. He is a prolific researcher with more than 200 scholarly articles and 2 textbooks, and a creative innovator with 67 awarded patents in areas ranging from wireless systems, signal processing, satellite networks, to machine learning. He has more than 12,000 paper citations and an H-index of 56 as of 2018. Dr. Liu is also one of the principal designers of three industrial standards on cellular networks, terrestrial broadcasting, and satellite communications, respectively.
Go to Profile#3350
Michael Joseph Rybak
#113323
Overall Influence
