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,
#3401
Kai–kit Wong
#114193
Overall Influence
#3402
Peggy Cyphers
#81040
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Peggy Cyphers is an American painter, printmaker, professor and art writer, who has shown her work in the U.S. and internationally since 1984. Since Cyphers’ move to New York City over 30 years ago, her inventive and combinatory approaches to the materials of paint, silkscreen and sand have developed into canvases that explore the “Politics of Progress” as it impacts culture and the natural world.
Go to Profile#3403
Shiwen Mao
#114228
Overall Influence
#3404
Larry C. Olsen
#103279
Overall Influence
1937 - 2020 (83 years)
Larry C. Olsen was a pioneer in the commercialization of betavoltaic technology. While working for the McDonnell Douglas Corporation in the 1970s, Olsen lead the development of the first commercially available betavoltaic nuclear battery. Several hundred of these batteries were fabricated and a large number were used to power implanted heart pacemakers. Olsen has published more than 80 articles in the fields of betavoltaics, photovoltaics, thermoelectric materials, and solid state physics. He has also earned several awards for his research, including the R&D 100 Award, presented each year by...
Go to Profile#3405
Don Brian Chaffin
#114251
Overall Influence
#3406
Burt Goldberg
#28148
Overall Influence
Burt Goldberg is a Clinical Professor of Chemistry at New York University. Goldberg received his B.S. from Pace University, an M.Phil from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, and a Ph.D. from the University of Cardiff. Prior to retiring from research, his main area of focus was in microbiology.
Go to Profile#3407
George Truskey
#96045
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
George Alexander Truskey is an American biomedical engineer noted for his research on transport phenomena in biological systems, cardiovascular tissue engineering, and cell adhesion to natural and synthetic surfaces.
Go to Profile#3408
Pablo Parrilo
#29132
Overall Influence
Pablo A. Parrilo from MIT was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2016 for contributions to semidefinite and sum-of-squares optimization. He was named a SIAM Fellow in 2018.
Go to Profile#3409
Holger Boche
#114313
Overall Influence
#3410
John Vincent Forrester
#114333
Overall Influence
#3411
Patrick Thiran
#103698
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Patrick Thiran is an electrical engineering professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, who was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2014 for contributions to network performance analysis.
Go to Profile#3412
Susie Wee
#87388
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Susie J. Wee is an American technology expert. In 2011, she became the Vice President and Chief Technology and Experience Officer of Collaboration at Cisco Systems. In 2018, she became the Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Cisco DevNet, which she founded in 2014. Wee is a WITI Hall of Fame inductee.
Go to Profile#3413
Carlos Conca
#32404
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Carlos Conca is a Chilean applied mathematician, engineer and scientist. He is the first Chilean scientist to be recognized by the French government with a distinction in the field of Exact and Natural Sciences.
Go to Profile#3414
Young Moo Lee
#114446
Overall Influence
#3415
John J. Uicker
#94626
Overall Influence
John J. Uicker, Jr was a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin from 1967 to 2007 and professor emeritus from 2007 until his death in 2023. Education Uicker received his BME degree from the University of Detroit, and his MS and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering from Northwestern University. During his education, Uicker joined the engineering honor societies Pi Tau Sigma and Sigma Xi. He developed the matrix method for kinematic analysis as part of his doctoral research. Following his education, Uicker served two years in the US Army Metrology and Calibration Center at the Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia, PA.
Go to Profile#3416
Robert M. Freedom
#114485
Overall Influence
#3417
Zigang Dong
#114490
Overall Influence
#3418
Lingyang Song
#114506
Overall Influence
#3419
Tai-gang Nieh
#114508
Overall Influence
#3420
Yong-ming Li
#114509
Overall Influence
#3421
Braja M. Das
#114510
Overall Influence
#3422
Prafulla Kumar Jena
#61049
Overall Influence
1931 - 2023 (92 years)
Prafulla Kumar Jena was an Indian metallurgist who served as director of the National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Bhubaneshwar. He previously held the TATA Chair for the Distinguished Professor of Metallurgical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award, in 1977.
Go to Profile#3423
Vladimir Bulović
#114528
Overall Influence
#3424
Nils‐erik Andén
#114537
Overall Influence
#3425
Alan B. Zonderman
#114544
Overall Influence
#3426
Ping Zhi Fan
#114547
Overall Influence
#3427
Gregory Sivashinsky
#64355
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Gregory I. Sivashinsky is a professor at Tel Aviv University, working in the field of combustion and theoretical physics. Biography Sivashinsky was born in Moscow to Israel and Tatiana Sivashinsky. He is married to Terry Sivashinsky. He finished his master's degree at Moscow State University in 1967 and worked as a research assistant there until 1971. He emigrated to Israel in 1971. He was a pupil of Grigory Isaakovich Barenblatt and Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich. He completed his PhD at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 1973 and worked as a lecturer there for two years. He joined Tel Aviv University in 1974 and settled there.
Go to Profile#3428
Guy T. Houlsby
#99717
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Guy Tinmouth Houlsby FREng is Professor of Civil Engineering and former Head of the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford. He specialises in Geotechnical Engineering and more particularly in offshore foundations.
Go to Profile#3429
Veena Misra
#94607
Overall Influence
Veena Misra is an academic electrical engineer whose research has spanned a range of scales from forming individual circuit components out of semiconductors to wearable technology. She is MC Dean Distinguished University Professor at North Carolina State University, and interim head of the university's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Go to Profile#3430
Chang-shui Zhang
#114701
Overall Influence
#3431
Shuxiang Guo
#114703
Overall Influence
#3432
Tasso Katselas
#41246
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Tasso Katselas is an architect in the United States known for his modernist concrete buildings especially in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His work includes Pittsburgh International Airport, public housing, and mansions. His firm was known as Tasso Katselas Associates and became TKA when he semi-retired in 2005 while continuing to consult for the firm.
Go to Profile#3433
Ka Yiu San
#98561
Overall Influence
Ka Yiu San is an American bioengineer currently on the faculty at Rice University and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Education In 1978, San earned a BS degree from Rice University. San earned a MS and PhD degrees from the California Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#3434
Gang Tao
#114740
Overall Influence
#3435
John Adel Fisher
#114772
Overall Influence
#3436
Federico Faggin
#62959
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Federico Faggin is an Italian physicist, engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. He is best known for designing the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004. He led the 4004 project and the design group during the first five years of Intel's microprocessor effort. Faggin also created, while working at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968, the self-aligned MOS silicon-gate technology , which made possible MOS semiconductor memory chips, CCD image sensors, and the microprocessor. After the 4004, he led development of the Intel 8008 and 8080, using his SGT methodology for random logic chip design, which was essential to the creation of early Intel microprocessors.
Go to Profile#3437
C. Daniel Mote Jr.
#89876
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Clayton Daniel Mote Jr. is the President Emeritus of the National Academy of Engineering. He served as the president of the NAE from July 2013 to June 2019. He also served as President of the University of Maryland, College Park from September 1998 until August 2010. From 1967 to 1991, Mote was a professor in mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and served as Vice Chancellor at Berkeley from 1991 to 1998. Mote is a judge for the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.
Go to Profile#3438
John C. Boothroyd
#92621
Overall Influence
John C. Boothroyd is the Burt and Marion Avery Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University. In 2016 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in Microbial Biology and Animal, Nutritional, and Applied Microbial Sciences.
Go to Profile#3439
Frédéric Barlat
#110486
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Biography Professor Frédéric Barlat is a French/American scientist in the field of plasticity, damage and metal forming. He is currently the director of A&S Center at Graduate Institute of Ferrous Technology at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea. Professor Barlat's contribution in the field of plasticity, particularly his models on anisotropic plasticity of metallic materials, has been recognized worldwide.
Go to Profile#3440
Carlos Torres-Verdin
#105754
Overall Influence
Carlos Torres-Verdin is Zarrow Centennial Professor in Petroleum Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He obtained his B.Sc. degree in geophysical engineering from the National Polytechnic Institute of México, his M.Sc. in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley. He has more than eight years of industrial experience and has been affiliated with UT Austin since 1999.
Go to Profile#3441
Blake Hannaford
#114882
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#3442
Chang‐yu Shen
#114902
Overall Influence
#3443
Howard Johnson
#79674
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Howard Johnson is an electrical engineer, known for his consulting work and commonly referenced books on the topic of signal integrity, especially for high speed electronic circuit design. He served as the chief technical editor for Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet standardisation, and was recognized by the IEEE as an "Outstanding Contributor" to the IEEE P802.3z Gigabit Task Force.
Go to Profile#3444
Mohamad Sawan
#102864
Overall Influence
Mohamad Sawan is a Canadian-Lebanese electrical engineer, academic and researcher. He is a Chair Professor at Westlake University, China, and an Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal, Canada.
Go to Profile#3445
Danielle Wood
#43251
Overall Influence
Danielle Wood is an assistant professor in the MIT Media Lab, where she directs the research group Space Enabled. Prior to joining MIT, Wood worked as special assistant to Dava Newman at NASA. Wood looks to advance justice using technology created in space.
Go to Profile#3446
Jeffrey Silverthorne
#92561
Overall Influence
1946 - 2022 (76 years)
Jeffrey Silverthorne was an American photographer mainly known for taking pictures of physical and psychological borders, including death and nudity. He was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1946, and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design's BFA, MAT, and MFA programs. He taught at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island until 2018.
Go to Profile#3447
Armand Keating
#114936
Overall Influence
#3448
Wiren Becker
#75791
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Wiren Dale Becker, who works for IBM, was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for contributions to power distribution and signal integrity in high-speed interconnects for computing systemss.
Go to Profile#3449
John R. Howell
#114991
Overall Influence
#3450
Stefano Schiavon
#115017
Overall Influence
