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,
#3701
Brooke T. Mossman
#70601
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Brooke T. Mossman is an American pathologist, a University Distinguished Professor emeritus at the University of Vermont. She is known for her research on diseases caused by asbestos.
Go to Profile#3702
Kerstin Thurow
#101460
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Kerstin Thurow is a German engineer specializing in automation technology. She has been Professor of Automation/Life Science Automation at the Faculty of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Rostock since 1999.
Go to Profile#3703
Rory A. Cooper
#91688
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Rory A. Cooper is an American bioengineer who currently serves as FISA/PVA Distinguished Professor, Past Chair, in the Department of Rehabilitation Science and Technology and professor of bioengineering, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and orthopedic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also assistant vice chancellor for research for STEM and Health Sciences Collaboration. He holds an adjunct faculty position at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, and is an invited professor at Xi'an Jiaotong University in Xi'an, China.
Go to Profile#3704
Henry Z. Movat
#119352
Overall Influence
#3705
Barbara Schock-Werner
#53120
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Barbara Schock-Werner is a German architect, and was until her retirement end of August 2012 the master builder at Cologne Cathedral with overall responsibility for conservation and restoration work. With the official title of Dombaumeisterin , she was the first and only woman to hold the position in the cathedral's 800 years history.
Go to Profile#3706
William Patrick Cooney
#119379
Overall Influence
#3707
Terry Friesz
#103859
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Terry L. Friesz is the first Harold and Inge Marcus Professor of Industrial Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. He is responsible for developing the basic theory of dynamic user equilibrium, which is the class of dynamic games studied in transportation planning and logistics. As of 2019, he is the editor-in-chief of the journal Networks and Spatial Economics.
Go to Profile#3708
William B. Russel
#101797
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
William Bailey Russel was an American chemical engineer, Arthur W. Marks '19 Professor of Chemical Engineering, emeritus, and dean emeritus of the graduate school at Princeton University. He earned his BA and MChE degrees at Rice University in 1969 and his PhD at Stanford University in 1973. He was a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at Cambridge University in 1974.
Go to Profile#3709
Anil Kumar Gupta
#119428
Overall Influence
#3710
Rajeev Thottappillil
#119475
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Rajeev Thottappillil is a Professor in Electric Power Engineering and Design at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. He was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for contributions to the understanding of lightning and electromagnetic interference.
Go to Profile#3711
Khalil Najafi
#119491
Overall Influence
#3712
Christopher Polge
#119498
Overall Influence
#3713
J. Max Bond Jr.
#78406
Overall Influence
1935 - 2009 (74 years)
J. Max Bond Jr. was an American architect. He developed an interest in architecture based on experiences ranging from viewing a staircase at a dormitory at the Tuskegee Institute to views of North African construction styles on a visit to Tunisia. He became one of a small number of nationally prominent African-American architects. He married writer Jean Carey Bond in 1961 and they had two children.
Go to Profile#3714
Laurie E. Locascio
#69136
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Laurie Ellen Locascio is an American biomedical engineer, analytical chemist, and former academic administrator serving as the under secretary of commerce for standards and technology and the director of National Institute of Standards and Technology. From 2017 to 2021, Locascio was vice president for research of University of Maryland, College Park and University of Maryland, Baltimore.
Go to Profile#3715
Wesley S. Moore
#119540
Overall Influence
#3716
Vincent Kin Nang Lau
#119542
Overall Influence
#3717
Brian M. Sadler
#119572
Overall Influence
#3718
Richard. C. Elphic
#119574
Overall Influence
#3719
Mohamed Gad-el-hak
#119581
Overall Influence
#3720
Madhavan Swaminathan
#102829
Overall Influence
Madhavan Swaminathan is the John Pippin Chair in Electromagnetics in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the Center for Co-Design of Chip, Package, System, Georgia Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#3721
Massimo Pagani
#119589
Overall Influence
#3722
Andrew F. Nagy
#119607
Overall Influence
#3723
Winka Dubbeldam
#78741
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
#3724
Mahmut Taylan Kandemir
#119611
Overall Influence
#3725
R. Oger T. Howe
#119623
Overall Influence
#3726
Jian‐bo Yang
#119632
Overall Influence
#3727
Robert Murase
#94593
Overall Influence
1938 - 2005 (67 years)
Robert Murase was an American landscape architect. He worked throughout the Pacific Northwest in the field of landscape design. Biography Murase was born in San Francisco as a third generation Japanese-American to Tokiichi and Yoneko Murase in 1938. At the age of three, following the signing of Executive Order 9066, Murase and his family were detained along with several thousand San Francisco Bay Area Japanese-Americans at the Tanforan horse-racing track in San Bruno, California before the family were split, with George, Yoneko, and Robert sent to internment at Topaz while his widowed grandmother and aunts Mieko and Grace were sent to Tule Lake.
Go to Profile#3728
John C.S. Lui
#83847
Overall Influence
John Chi-Shing Lui is a Hong Kong computer scientist. He was the chairman of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from UCLA. When he was a Ph.D. student at UCLA, he spent a summer working in IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. After his graduation, he joined the IBM Almaden Research Laboratory/San Jose Laboratory and participated in various research and development projects on file systems and parallel I/O architectures. He later joined the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Go to Profile#3729
Masanao Aoki
#117685
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Masanao Aoki was a Japanese engineer and economist. He was a Professor emeritus of Economics at University of California, Los Angeles. Selected publications A revised edition: External links Website at UCLA
Go to Profile#3730
Andrew V. Granato
#119704
Overall Influence
#3731
David P. Fairlie
#119710
Overall Influence
#3732
Suresh Senan
#119711
Overall Influence
#3733
David Boger
#99185
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
David Vernon Boger FRS is an Australian chemical engineer. In 2017, Boger was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for discoveries and fundamental research on elastic and particulate fluids and their application to waste minimization in the minerals industry.
Go to Profile#3734
Albert C.J. Luo
#111402
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Albert C.J. Luo is a distinguished research professor of mechanical engineering at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, Illinois. Luo is an internationally recognized scientist in the field of nonlinear dynamics and mechanics. His principal research interests lie in the field of Hamiltonian chaos, nonlinear mechanics, and discontinuous dynamical systems.
Go to Profile#3735
Michael S. Patterson
#119740
Overall Influence
#3736
Alan Jones
#71496
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Alan Montgomery Jones Hon FRIAS Hon AIA is a chartered architect and academic based in Northern Ireland, UK. He studied architecture at Queen's University Belfast, and after practising in London returned to Northern Ireland in 1998 to practise, and to teach at Queen's University Belfast. He jointly led architecture at Queen's and is currently professor of architecture in its School of Natural and Built Environment.
Go to Profile#3737
Clifton Bogardus
#119757
Overall Influence
#3738
Gerald C. Pomraning
#119771
Overall Influence
#3739
Joseph M. Prahl
#119805
Overall Influence
1943 - 2018 (75 years)
Joseph M. Prahl was an American mechanical engineer and professor who trained as a backup Payload Specialist for the Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-50 in 1992. Born in Beverly, Massachusetts, Prahl attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, completed a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Harvard College in Cambridge in 1963, and then an M.S. and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Harvard University in 1968.
Go to Profile#3740
Ernest Hamel
#119808
Overall Influence
#3741
Rudi Beyaert
#119816
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
#3742
Norman Jones
#119863
Overall Influence
#3743
Frank Kschischang
#90903
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Frank R. Kschischang Prof. Kschischang is a Fellow of the IEEE, "for contributions to trellis structures, graphical models and iterative decoding techniques for error-correcting codes." He is also a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, and is a recipient of the 2010 Killam Research Fellowship. He received the 2023 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, the 2012 Canadian Award for Telecommunications Research, and the 2016 Aaron D. Wyner Distinguished Service Award. From 2014 to 2016, Prof. Kschischang served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.
Go to Profile#3744
G. J. Kwakkel
#119903
Overall Influence
#3745
Peter J. Winzer
#119918
Overall Influence
#3746
Imrich Chlamtac
#120004
Overall Influence
#3747
Aharon Ben‐tal
#120007
Overall Influence
#3748
Ronald Paul Lepping
#120014
Overall Influence
#3749
Pierre Sagaut
#120019
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
#3750
William Prichard Jones
#120032
Overall Influence
