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,
#4451
Wesley James Cantwell
#130357
Overall Influence
#4452
Richard E. Kerber
#130362
Overall Influence
#4453
Hao Shen
#130367
Overall Influence
#4454
Julie Cairney
#86084
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Julie M. Cairney is a professor in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering at the University of Sydney and Director of the Australian Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis and CEO of Microscopy Australia, a national user facility funded by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy . She is an expert in microscopy, focusing on the understanding and characterization of materials used for structural applications, renewable energy, medical science and geosciences including the use and development of the atom probe microscope.
Go to Profile#4455
Stuart L. Weinstein
#130371
Overall Influence
#4456
Sherman Wu
#66005
Overall Influence
1937 - 2010 (73 years)
Sherman Hsiu-huang Wu was a Chinese-American social activist and professor, whose experiences at Northwestern University brought the issue of discrimination against Asian Americans to the fore. The general condemnation of the prejudice exhibited against him presaged later actions in the Asian American movement.
Go to Profile#4457
Ross E. McKinney
#130387
Overall Influence
Ross E. McKinney is an American scientist and professor of environmental engineering. He is best known for his contributions to the biological engineering of wastewater treatment. McKinney was a member of faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he moved to the University of Kansas to begin the program in environmental engineering. Before he retired in 1993, McKinney held the first NT Veatch Distinguished Professorship of Civil Engineering.
Go to Profile#4458
Grant Hildebrand
#101653
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Grant Hildebrand is an American architect and architectural historian who is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Architecture in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Go to Profile#4459
Robert Lickley
#79869
Overall Influence
1912 - 1998 (86 years)
Sir Robert Lang Lickley was a Scottish aeronautical engineer, and Chief Engineer at Fairey Aviation during whose tenure the Fairey Delta 2 became the first aircraft to exceed 1,000 mph. Early life Lickley was born in Dundee in Scotland and was educated at the High School of Dundee. He studied Civil Engineering at the University of Edinburgh where he graduated BSc, and then went on to Imperial College London as a postgraduate, where he studied Aeronautics on a Caird Scholarship.
Go to Profile#4460
Huai‐wu Zhang
#130433
Overall Influence
#4461
Princess Imoukhuede
#116953
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Princess Imoukhuede is an American chemical engineer who is a Professor in Bioengineering at the University of Washington. Before 2022, she was an associate professor at the Washington University in St. Louis. She was awarded the 2018 Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy Distinguished Leadership Award and the 2018 Nano Research Young Innovators Award in Nanobiotechnology. Her first name is 'Princess' and she holds no royal title or position in any capacity.
Go to Profile#4462
Grant Theodore Gullberg
#130478
Overall Influence
#4463
Elena Losina
#130493
Overall Influence
#4464
Peter J Park
#130495
Overall Influence
#4465
Sophie D'Amours
#97080
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Sophie D’Amours is an engineer and a professor at Université Laval. On April 26, 2017, she was elected the 26th rector of Université Laval, the first woman to hold the position. Biography Sophie D’Amours has been a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Université Laval since 1995 and served as the University's vice rector of research and innovation from 2012 to 2015.
Go to Profile#4466
Abdolreza Simchi
#130519
Overall Influence
#4467
Ravi Jaya Shankar
#130539
Overall Influence
#4468
John Davies
#63028
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
John Davies is a British landscape photographer. He is known for completing long-term projects documenting Great Britain and exploring the industrialisation of space. In 2008, he was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.
Go to Profile#4469
John Wawrzynek
#54110
Overall Influence
John Wawrzynek is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley. He holds a joint appointment with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and is the Chief Faculty Director of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center. He is currently a principal researcher in multiple large research centers at UC Berkeley including Algorithms and Specializers for Provably Optimal Implementations with Resilience and Efficiency , the Parallel Computing Laboratory , and the TerraSwarm Research Center.
Go to Profile#4470
Douglas S. Reynolds
#130604
Overall Influence
#4471
Ehsan Samei
#130610
Overall Influence
#4472
Dawn Tilbury
#82608
Overall Influence
Dawn Marie Tilbury is an American control theorist whose research topics include logic control, networked control systems, robotics, human–machine systems, and autonomous vehicles. She is a professor of mechanical engineering and of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, and the head of the directorate for engineering at the National Science Foundation.
Go to Profile#4473
Jean-Baptiste Donnet
#64496
Overall Influence
1923 - 2014 (91 years)
Jean-Baptiste Donnet was a French chemist who is noted as a pioneer in the surface chemistry of carbon black and as a founder of the Upper Alsace University. He was the father of French journalist Pierre-Antoine Donnet.
Go to Profile#4474
Wolfgang Oehme
#111110
Overall Influence
1930 - 2011 (81 years)
Wolfgang Oehme was a German-American landscape architect. Early life Oehme grew up in Wissmannhof in Chemnitz. After leaving school in 1947, he began an apprenticeship at the Illge nursery. Upon completing his apprenticeship, he worked in an urban garden office, where he was a landscape architect with Hans-Joachim Bauer, and became familiar with the landscaping ideas of Karl Foerster. From 1952, he worked at the Spaeth nursery in Baumschulenweg in East Berlin.
Go to Profile#4475
Filippo Berto
#127593
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Filippo Berto is an Italian professor and engineer, who works on fracture mechanics and fatigue design for which he received several prestigious international awards. Biography In 2003, Filippo Berto is graduated in Industrial Engineering at the University of Padua . After that, he completed his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Florence , in 2006.
Go to Profile#4476
Rong-gui Yang
#130667
Overall Influence
#4477
Anthony Stentz
#130672
Overall Influence
#4478
Visvalingam Balasubramanian
#130701
Overall Influence
#4479
Mark Lee
#95525
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Mark Wai Tak Lee is a Hong Kong-born American architect and educator, who is based in Cambridge and Los Angeles. Lee is principal and founding partner, along with his wife Sharon Johnston, of the architecture firm Johnston Marklee & Associates, which was founded in 1999. He is also Professor in the Practice of Architecture and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Go to Profile#4480
Larry Lake
#89754
Overall Influence
Larry W. Lake is the Shahid and Sharon Ullah Endowed Chair in petroleum engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He has served on the faculty of the Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering since 1978. He obtained a B.S.E. from Arizona State University and a Ph.D. from Rice University, both in chemical engineering. He is a world-famous expert in reservoir engineering, geochemistry, fluid flow in porous media and enhanced oil recovery.
Go to Profile#4481
Dries Van Thourhout
#130716
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
#4482
Muyinatu Bell
#102064
Overall Influence
Muyinatu "Bisi" A. Lediju Bell is a researcher and faculty member. She is the John C. Malone Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University. She is also the director of the Photoacoustic and Ultrasonic Systems Engineering Laboratory.
Go to Profile#4483
Magdy Abd El-aziz. Bayoumi
#130720
Overall Influence
#4484
Bruce Bilby
#107826
Overall Influence
1922 - 2013 (91 years)
Bruce Alexander Bilby FRS was a British mechanical engineer, and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Sheffield. Life He was a graduate of Dover Grammar School for Boys. He once taught at University of Birmingham and was the Professor of the Theory of Materials at the University of Sheffield from 1966 to 1984. He was a colleague of Alan Cottrell.
Go to Profile#4485
Massimo V. Fischetti
#130735
Overall Influence
#4486
Choi Ki-young
#116287
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Choi Ki-young is a South Korean professor of electrical engineering at Seoul National University who served as Minister of Science and ICT under President Moon Jae-in from 2019 to 2021. After working at now-LG Electronics and Cadence Design Systems, he return to his first alma mater. He took several roles in his faculty including the director of Neural Processing Research Center and Embedded Systems Research Center.
Go to Profile#4487
R. C. Johnson
#130741
Overall Influence
#4488
Michael Y. Wang
#130758
Overall Influence
#4489
Sridha Sridharan
#130759
Overall Influence
#4490
Julian J. Bussgang
#68159
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (101 years)
Julian Jakub Bussgang was a Polish-American mathematician, businessman and author. He was most known for publishing the Bussgang theorem and for his work in the field of Applied Physics and communications. He published several technical papers and held six patents.
Go to Profile#4491
Anastasios Bakirtzis
#114141
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Anastasios Bakirtzis is a Professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for contributions to optimization of power systems operation and scheduling.
Go to Profile#4492
Rachel Neeson
#109587
Overall Influence
Rachel Neeson is an Australian architect and lecturer in architecture. Her architecture practice Neeson Murcutt Architects, formed with her late partner Nick Murcutt in 2004, was awarded the Australian Institute of Architects Robin Boyd Award for Residential Architecture – Houses in 2011.
Go to Profile#4493
Wim Bogaerts
#130793
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
#4494
Victor H. Rumsey
#89185
Overall Influence
1919 - 2015 (96 years)
Victor Henry Rumsey was an electrical engineer, best known for his studies of frequency-independent antennass. Rumsey was born in Devizes, Wiltshire, England, on Saint Cecilia's day, and received his BA in mathematics and Sc.D. in physics from Cambridge University. From 1941–1945 he performed radar research at the Telecommunications Research Establishment in England and the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C. After three years at the Canadian Atomic Research Laboratory he became director of the Antenna Laboratory at Ohio State University. In 1954 he moved to the University of Illinoi...
Go to Profile#4495
Duane T. Mcruer
#130836
Overall Influence
#4496
Xiaodong S. Lin
#130844
Overall Influence
#4497
Elizabeth Chesterton
#114200
Overall Influence
1915 - 2002 (87 years)
Dame Elizabeth Ursula Chesterton, DBE was a British architect and town planner. Biography Chesterton was born on 12 October 1915 in Hampstead Garden Suburb, London. Her father, Maurice Chesterton, was an architect, while her mother Dorothy Deck had connections with writers and artists in Bloomsbury. Her father would regularly live at sites where the buildings were being erected, including running the company that designed Royal Shakespeare Theatre under Elisabeth Scott.
Go to Profile#4498
Zhou Xuhong
#130507
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Zhou Xuhong is a Chinese physicist and educator. He is the current . He previously served as president of Chang'an University from May 2002 to July 2006, president of Lanzhou University between May 2006 to June 2013, and president of Chongqing University from June 2013 to December 2017.
Go to Profile#4499
Ben G. Streetman
#130860
Overall Influence
#4500
Stuart L. Stanton
#130861
Overall Influence
