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,
#4201
Alexandre Proutiere
#103817
Overall Influence
Alexandre Proutiere is a professor of Electrical Engineering at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology. He received an engineering degree from Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecoms and then, from 1998 to 2000, he worked in the radio communication department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris. He received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France in 2003 under the supervision of James Roberts. Following his PhD he worked as a researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge before joining KTH as an associate professor.
Go to Profile#4202
Christos N. Markides
#126890
Overall Influence
#4203
Gerald Friedland
#58103
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Gerald Friedland is an adjunct professor at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of the University of California, Berkeley. He also maintains an affiliation with the International Computer Science Institute.
Go to Profile#4204
Yuk Kwan Clare Cheng
#126947
Overall Influence
#4205
David J. Norris
#126960
Overall Influence
#4206
Celestino Soddu
#62752
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Celestino Soddu is an Italian architect and academic. He teaches generative design at Polytechnic University of Milan and is a pioneer of generative art and design. In 2005, he described generative design as a "design philosophy."
Go to Profile#4207
Mark A. Richards
#127026
Overall Influence
#4208
Thomas L. Schumacher
#101130
Overall Influence
1941 - 2009 (68 years)
Thomas L Schumacher was an American academic architect and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. He was well known throughout the architecture community for his role in the development of Contextualism, along with Colin Rowe, under whom he studied at Cornell; and for his expertise in rationalist Italian architecture. Schumacher is ranked in the 90th percentile for research in architecture in a survey of over 3,000 architecture professors. He was also a registered architect and a member of the Society of Architectural Historians.
Go to Profile#4209
Jürgen Klauke
#50037
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Jürgen Klauke is a German artist. Beginning in the 1960s, he used his own body as a subject of his photographs. He also experimented with minimalism and surrealism. The ZKM in Karlsruhe exhibits his work. Since 1968 he lives and works in Cologne.
Go to Profile#4210
Bir Bhanu
#75337
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Bir Bhanu is the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns Endowed University of California Presidential Chair in Engineering, the Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Cooperative Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Bioengineering, at the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering at the University of California, Riverside . He is the first Founding Faculty of the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering at UCR and served as the Founding Chair of Electrical Engineering from 1/1991 to 6/1994 and the Founding Director of the Center for Research in Intelligent Systems from 4/1998 to 6/2019.
Go to Profile#4211
David Sinton
#127075
Overall Influence
#4212
Michael David Lebowitz
#127123
Overall Influence
#4213
Chunmiao Zheng
#127168
Overall Influence
#4214
Eric Jakeman
#127192
Overall Influence
#4215
Zhi Ding
#127215
Overall Influence
#4216
Amit Gefen
#127222
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
#4217
Saravanamuthu Vigneswaran
#127229
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
#4218
Manfred Fiebig
#127244
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
#4219
Chi‐chuan Wang
#127250
Overall Influence
#4220
Wei Shoukun
#103386
Overall Influence
1907 - 2014 (107 years)
Wei Shoukun was a Chinese metallurgist, physical chemist, and materials engineer. Considered a founder of metallurgical physical chemistry in China, he taught for eight decades at ten different universities. He was a founding professor and Vice President of the University of Science and Technology Beijing, and was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1980.
Go to Profile#4221
Wolf-gang Osten
#127260
Overall Influence
#4222
Richard W. Ziolkowski
#82251
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Richard W. Ziolkowski is an American electrical engineer and academician, who was the president of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society , and a former vice president of this same society . In 2006, he became an OSA Fellow. He is also an IEEE Fellow. He was born on November 22, 1952, in Warsaw, New York.
Go to Profile#4223
Volodymyr Biletskyy
#55540
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Volodymyr Stefanovych Biletskyy is a Ukrainian mining engineer, D.Sc. scientist and researcher in the field of coal mining, publisher and political scientist. He has published many technical articles on the subject of mining, and was the initiator and editor of the first Ukrainian Mining Encyclopedia.
Go to Profile#4224
André Pineau
#127267
Overall Influence
#4225
Andrea Cossarizza
#127283
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#4226
J. Robert Cameron
#127286
Overall Influence
#4227
S. Stanford Manson
#127300
Overall Influence
#4228
Stephen Schwartz
#27972
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
#4229
Katherine Ferrara
#85801
Overall Influence
Katherine Whittaker Ferrara is an American engineer who is a professor of radiology at Stanford University. Ferrara has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
Go to Profile#4230
Stephen Yurkovich
#104238
Overall Influence
Stephen Yurkovich is a Fellow of the IEEE, and holds the Louis Beecherl Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas, United States, where he is also Program Head of Systems Engineering. Until early 2011, he held a joint appointment as Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering, at The Ohio State University, where he was also Director of the Honda-OSU Partnership Program in which he oversaw endowments of over $40M. Also at Ohio State, he served as Acting Director of the Center for Automotive Research in 2007.
Go to Profile#4231
Charles Nicholson
#127346
Overall Influence
#4232
Bruno Clerckx
#127349
Overall Influence
#4233
Robert Edmund Sinclair
#127355
Overall Influence
#4234
Christopher Williams
#49673
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Christopher Williams is an American conceptual artist and fine-art photographer. He lives in Cologne and works in Düsseldorf. Early life and education Williams was born in 1956 in Los Angeles, California. In the 1970s and early 1980s, he studied at the California Institute of the Arts where he received his B.F.A. and M.F.A. under the first generation of West Coast conceptual artists.
Go to Profile#4235
Theo H. Siegrist
#96865
Overall Influence
Theo H. Siegrist is an American professor of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering at Florida State University, where he is also affiliated with the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. A leading researcher in materials characterization with x-ray diffraction and on the structural analysis of crystalline materials, he was selected as a Research Fellow by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany in 2008 and an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2006. For over 20 years Siegrist served in a research position at Bell Laboratories. where he made contributions in the fiel...
Go to Profile#4236
Erdoğan Büyükkasap
#97969
Overall Influence
1962 - 2010 (48 years)
Erdoğan Büyükkasap was a Turkish scientist and academic. He was president of Erzincan University, a university in Erzincan, Turkey. Büyükkasap was born in Tosya, Kastamonu, Turkey on February 3, 1962. He received a bachelor's degree in 1983 and a master's degree in 1988 from Atatürk University. He became an associate professor at the university in 1994 and a full professor in 1999. He was later appointed as a dean. He was appointed by Ahmet Nejdet Sezer who was president until 2007. He was married and had one son and one daughter.
Go to Profile#4237
Sarah E. Pinder
#127459
Overall Influence
#4238
Frank Buttgereit
#127488
Overall Influence
#4239
David Pickar
#127494
Overall Influence
#4240
Jont B. Allen
#127502
Overall Influence
#4241
Koh Gou Young
#98835
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Koh Gou Young is a researcher from South Korea studying organ vasculature and lymphatic vessels with an interest in angiogenesis, lymphangiogenesis, adipogenesis, and cardiogenesis. His research has contributed to the publication of more than 200 journal articles, including multiple publications on how Tie2 deficits are related to sepsis, blood-retinal barrier damage, and an imbalance of intraocular pressure in Schlemm's canal which induces glaucoma.
Go to Profile#4242
Bruno Sudret
#127560
Overall Influence
#4243
Brian Charles Greensborough Williams
#127563
Overall Influence
#4244
Hatem Abdel Latif
#115505
Overall Influence
Hatem Abdel Latif is an Egyptian politician who served as transport minister in the cabinet headed by Hisham Qandil from January to July 2013. Education Latif holds a PhD in transportation planning and traffic engineering, which he received in 1990.
Go to Profile#4245
Wei-ming Hu
#127575
Overall Influence
#4246
Christoph Weder
#116965
Overall Influence
Christoph Weder is the former director of the Adolphe Merkle Institute at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and a professor of polymer chemistry and materials. He is best known for his work on stimuli-responsive polymers, polymeric materials that change one or more of their properties when exposed to external cues. His research is focused on the development, investigation, and application of functional materials, in particular stimuli-responsive and bio-inspired polymers.
Go to Profile#4247
Jerry Dolovich
#127597
Overall Influence
#4248
Walter J. D. Annand
#120589
Overall Influence
1920 - 2002 (82 years)
Walter "Gus" John Dinnie Annand was a Scottish aeronautical research engineer, academic and author. Biography Annand was born 21 August 1920 in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, Scotland. He was the younger brother of the painter and film-maker Louise Gibson Annand and like his sister was educated at the Hamilton Academy school, where their father was English principal. Graduating in 1940 from the University of Glasgow, with first class honours in mechanical engineering.
Go to Profile#4249
Dong-hua Zhou
#127602
Overall Influence
#4250
Raymond W. Lam
#127612
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
