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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Engineering,
#3851
Paul J. Tikalsky
#108317
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Paul J. Tikalsky is an American engineer, and academic leader who currently serves as Dean & Donald and Cathey Humphreys Chair of Engineering at Oklahoma State University. Early life and education Paul Tikalsky has earned a Bachelor of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering from University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1983. He later earned Master of Science in Structural Engineering at University of Texas at Austin in 1986 and also Doctor of Philosophy in Structural Engineering at University of Texas at Austin in 1989.
Go to Profile#3852
Jerome Liebling
#36179
Overall Influence
1924 - 2011 (87 years)
Jerome Liebling was an American photographer, filmmaker, and teacher. The documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who studied with him at Hampshire College, called Liebling his mentor, and used one of Liebling's photographs on the cover of his 2022 book Our America: A Photographic History.
Go to Profile#3853
Dimitri Van De Ville
#120462
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Dimitri Van De Ville is a Swiss and Belgian computer scientist and neuroscientist specialized in dynamical and network aspects of brain activity. He is a professor of bioengineering at EPFL and the head of the Medical Image Processing Laboratory at EPFL's School of Engineering.
Go to Profile#3854
Lori Ann Setton
#100647
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Lori Ann Setton is an American biomechanical engineer noted for her research on mechanics and mechanobiology of the intervertebral disc, articular cartilage mechanics, drug delivery, and pathomechanisms of osteoarthritis. She is currently the department chair as well as the Lucy and Stanley Lopata Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.
Go to Profile#3855
Jia‐sheng Hong
#121584
Overall Influence
#3856
Eugene Terentjev
#81562
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Eugene M. Terentjev is professor of Polymer physics at the University of Cambridge, and fellow of Queens' College where he is the Director of Studies in Natural Sciences. Terentjev earned his MSc in Physics from Moscow State University, and his PhD from Institute of Crystallography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. He then carried out postdoctoral research at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, before moving to Cambridge in 1992. Terentjev's h-index is over 60, with over 16000 citations to his articles. His most notable contributions are in the scientific field of liquid...
Go to Profile#3857
Carlos Fernández-Pello
#96973
Overall Influence
Carlos Fernández-Pello is a faculty member of the University of California, Berkeley, Department of Mechanical Engineering. He also serves as an associate dean in the Graduate Division at Berkeley, where he oversees the Graduate Diversity Program, the American Indian Graduate Program, Graduate Division’s academic services, fellowships, publications, and websites. His research interests are in combustion, heat and mass transfer, microgravity combustion, micro and meso-scale combustion, ignition and flame propagation, smouldering and transition to flaming combustion. Fernández-Pello has been ...
Go to Profile#3858
Emina Soljanin
#82660
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Emina Soljanin is a Distinguished Researcher at Bell Labs who was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2014 for contributions to coding theory and coding schemes for transmission and storage systems.
Go to Profile#3859
Arif Hepbaşlı
#121658
Overall Influence
#3860
Daniel G Anderson
#121665
Overall Influence
#3861
De-shuang Huang
#121667
Overall Influence
#3862
Subburaman Mohan
#121672
Overall Influence
#3863
Alfred Gessow
#94120
Overall Influence
1922 - 2002 (80 years)
Prof. Alfred Gessow was an American pioneer in the field of helicopter aerodynamics and aerospace engineering. He was a co-author of the early rotorcraft engineering text Aerodynamics of the Helicopter, which, although published in 1952, has been in print for more than 50 years. Gessow was chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, and was ultimately promoted to Professor Emeritus.
Go to Profile#3864
Frederic Columbus Blake
#78953
Overall Influence
Frederic Columbus Blake was an American engineer, social scientist, academic, futurist, writer, and visionary. He was adviser of numerous outstanding scientists in Ohio State University including William Littell Everitt. His PhD adviser was Ernest Fox Nichols, a President of Dartmouth College.
Go to Profile#3865
Hong-seok Lee
#121718
Overall Influence
#3866
Joseph Papp
#2924
Overall Influence
1921 - 1991 (70 years)
Joseph Papp was an American theatrical producer and director. He established The Public Theater in what had been the Astor Library Building in Lower Manhattan. There Papp created a year-round producing home to focus on new plays and musicals. Among numerous examples of these were the works of David Rabe, Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Charles Gordone's No Place to Be Somebody , and Papp's production of Michael Bennett's Pulitzer Prize–winning musical A Chorus Line. Papp also founded Shakespeare in the Park, helped to develop other off-...
Go to Profile#3867
Venkatachalam Chandrasekar
#121790
Overall Influence
#3868
Michael Elliott
#121835
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
#3869
Kazimieras Ragulskis
#105306
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Kazimieras Ragulskis is a Lithuanian scientist and engineer. He created the scientific school of precise vibromechanics and vibroengineering. He is Dr. , Habil. Dr. , Professor Emeritus, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR , member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences , Honored Inventor of the USSR .
Go to Profile#3870
Liangfang Zhang
#110334
Overall Influence
Liangfang Zhang is a Chinese-American nanoengineer. He is the Chancellor Professor of Nanoengineering and Bioengineering and Director of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Zhang is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Inventors.
Go to Profile#3871
Lisa Pruitt
#110582
Overall Influence
Lisa Anne Pruitt is an American mechanical engineer known for her research on orthopedic biomaterials and medical polymers. Early life and education Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Pruitt double-majored in Materials Engineering and Chemical and Ocean Engineering at the University of Rhode Island, earning two bachelor's degrees in 1988. She earned her master's and PhD degrees from Brown University in 1990 and 1993 respectively.
Go to Profile#3872
Karthik Ramani
#110381
Overall Influence
Karthik Ramani is an Indian born American researcher, mechanical engineer, and entrepreneur. He is the Donald W. Feddersen Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, with courtesy appointments in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Educational Studies in the College of Education. Previously, from 2001-2008, he was the Director of the Center for Information Sciences in Engineering at Purdue University.
Go to Profile#3873
Wolfgang Marquardt
#121897
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
#3874
Maarja Kruusmaa
#35837
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Maarja Kruusmaa is an Estonian computer scientist, professor at Tallinn University of Technology, vice-rector for research and head of the biorobotics center at that university. Her main research area is bio-inspired underwater robotics to imitate the movements of fish and turtles.
Go to Profile#3875
Kathleen Giacomini
#98440
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Kathleen M. Giacomini is a professor of bioengineering and therapeutic sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Her work focuses on how genetics affects the efficacy of drugs. She is also the co-director UCSF-Stanford Center of Excellence in Regulatory Sciences and Innovation for the department of Bioengineering at the University of California, San Francisco.
Go to Profile#3876
Enrico Traversa
#121968
Overall Influence
#3877
Qiang Zheng
#122025
Overall Influence
#3878
Marom Bikson
#122034
Overall Influence
#3879
Leo Schmidt
#78317
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Leo Schmidt is a German curator of monuments and a historian of art and architecture. He is professor at the department of architectural conservation at the Brandenburg University of Technology. Early life and education Schmidt studied art history, classical archeology and history at the University of Freiburg and at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. In 1980 he gained his Doctor of Philosophie at the University of Freiburg with a thesis on the architecture of Holkham Hall.
Go to Profile#3880
Omar Ghattas
#92206
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Omar Ghattas is the John A. and Katherine G. Jackson Chair in Computational Geosciences and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Geological Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Early life and career Ghattas obtained a Ph.D. in computational mechanics from Duke University. He is the director of the Center for Computational Geosciences and Optimization at the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences.
Go to Profile#3881
Riccardo Betti
#96120
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Riccardo Betti is the Robert L. McCrory professor of Mechanical Engineering and Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester, in Rochester, NY. Since 2004, he has also acted as the Director of the Fusion Science Center at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. He received is Ph.D. from the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992. Prior to that he studied at the University of Rome , where he graduated with honors with a degree in Nuclear Engineering in 1987.
Go to Profile#3882
Fares Sami Haddad
#122086
Overall Influence
#3883
Wesley Le Mars Nyborg
#122117
Overall Influence
#3884
Earl E. Jr. Swartzlander
#122137
Overall Influence
#3885
Peter Morgan Banks
#122138
Overall Influence
#3886
Hong‐zheng Chen
#122175
Overall Influence
#3887
Catherine Rae
#105080
Overall Influence
Catherine Mary Fiona Rae is a Professor of Superalloys in the Department of Materials at the University of Cambridge. Rae is the Director of the Rolls-Royce UTC in Cambridge. She is known for her expertise in electron microscopy and the behaviour of materials in aerospace applications.
Go to Profile#3888
Lee Jong-ho
#103850
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Lee Jong-ho is a South Korean electronic engineer and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Seoul National University. He serves as Minister of Science and ICT in the Yoon Suk-yeol government since May 2022.
Go to Profile#3889
Annie Chu
#85707
Overall Influence
Annie Chu, FAIA, is a Chinese-American architect, interior designer, and academic based in Los Angeles. Work Chu fuses art and design in her work. As an educator working across the U.S. and abroad, Chu was recognized as a 2016 Presidential Honoree of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Architects Distinguished Educator Award.
Go to Profile#3890
Andrew Saint
#97762
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Andrew John Saint is an English architectural historian. Saint worked as the architectural editor of the Survey of London and then as a historian for Historic England 1986–95. He lectured in the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge and at University College London from May 2006.
Go to Profile#3891
Susumu Mori
#122219
Overall Influence
#3892
Charles A. Sorber
#71670
Overall Influence
1939 - 2013 (74 years)
Charles A. Sorber was an American civil engineer, engineering professor, and academic administrator He was born in 1939 in Kingston, Pennsylvania, US. He received a bachelor's of science degree in civil engineering in 1961 and a master's of science degree in civil engineering in 1966 at Pennsylvania State University, and a Ph.D. degree in environmental engineering in 1971 at the University of Texas at Austin. During his lifetime Dr. Sorber served in the U.S. Army and in a number of academic, research, and administrative positions in the United States.
Go to Profile#3893
Donald Barthelme
#72351
Overall Influence
1907 - 1996 (89 years)
Donald Barthelme Sr. was an architect in Houston, Texas, a teacher of architecture as a professor at the University of Houston and Rice University, and the father of novelists Donald Barthelme Jr, Frederick Barthelme, and Steven Barthelme.
Go to Profile#3894
Jenq‐neng Hwang
#122304
Overall Influence
#3895
Wayne Hendrix Wolf
#122417
Overall Influence
#3896
Kazuhiro Otsuka
#122445
Overall Influence
#3897
B. Samuel Raj
#122446
Overall Influence
#3898
Andrea Salonia
#122455
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
#3899
Natalia Trayanova
#93798
Overall Influence
Natalia Trayanova FAHA FHRS is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. She directs the Alliance for Cardiovascular Diagnostic and Treatment Innovation
Go to Profile#3900
Kenichi Soga
#122466
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
