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,
#4551
Alexandr Grigorievich Merzhanov
#131449
Overall Influence
#4552
Federico Rosei
#131492
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
#4553
Cecilia M. Giachelli
#131498
Overall Influence
#4554
Dariush Divsalar
#131500
Overall Influence
#4555
Andrew Simmons
#131512
Overall Influence
#4556
Piotr Perzyna
#131524
Overall Influence
#4557
Joachim Pius Spatz
#131525
Overall Influence
#4558
Robert W. Bilger
#131534
Overall Influence
#4559
Nikolaos V. Sahinidis
#131552
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
#4560
Sergio Barbarossa
#86539
Overall Influence
Sergio Barbarossa is an Italian professor, engineer and inventor. He is a professor at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Research contribution Signal Processing Barbarossa, together with his students, introduced the framework of Topological Signal Processing, a general methodology used to analyze signals defined over a topological space, focusing on graphs, simplicial and cell complexes. This framework encompasses the conventional discrete signal processing as a very particular case. More specifically, he derived the uncertainty principle for signals defined over a graph and established the fundamental correspondence between uncertainty principle and sampling theory for graph signals.
Go to Profile#4561
Howard Hu
#118126
Overall Influence
Howard Hu is an American physician-scientist, internist, and specialist in preventive medicine and environmental health. He is currently the Flora L. Thornton Chair and Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. He previously taught at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, University of Michigan School of Public Health, and University of Toronto, where he served as founding dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Hu has served on the Board of Directors for Physicians for Human Rights, where he was...
Go to Profile#4562
William Douglas Allen
#100625
Overall Influence
1914 - 2008 (94 years)
William Douglas Allen was a physicist and electrical engineer. Allen was born on 27 July 1914 in Mussooree, British India. He was educated in South Australia at Prince Alfred College and the University of Adelaide, where he received a BSc in 1935. In 1937, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to New College, Oxford, where he completed a D.Phil. in 1940.
Go to Profile#4563
Zhou Yaohe
#119587
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Zhou Yaohe was a Chinese materials scientist. He was elected as academician of the Chinese Academy of Science in 1991. Born in May 1927, Zhou attended Tsinghua University. He went to the Soviet Union in 1953, and returned to China with a Candidate of Sciences degree from the Moscow Institute of Steel, in 1957. He specialized in solidification theory and technology for metal casting, and developed a new method of metal casting, which is used to produce aluminium alloy for aerospace engineering. He received the highest award of Chinese aviation industry in 1991.
Go to Profile#4564
Jon Peha
#59029
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Jon Michael Peha is a full professor of electrical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Peha holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University and BS from Brown University. He is also known for his work at SRI International, Bell Labs, and Microsoft.
Go to Profile#4565
Ram Bilas Pachori
#131644
Overall Influence
#4566
Johnp P. Donoghue
#131680
Overall Influence
#4567
Claudio Borri
#114843
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Claudio Borri is an Italian engineer, academic, writer full professor of Construction Science at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of Florence. Career Member of the scientific committee of the Stretto di Messina S.p.A., the mandatary company for the construction of the Strait of Messina Bridge, from 2009 to 2011.
Go to Profile#4568
David James Lloyd
#131723
Overall Influence
#4569
Joan Redwing
#64528
Overall Influence
Joan M. Redwing is an American materials scientist known for research on electronic and optoelectronic materials, including the processing of semiconductor thin films and nanomaterials by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition . Redwing is a distinguished professor of materials science and engineering and electrical engineering at Pennsylvania State University and director of the university's 2D Crystal Consortium research facility. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and the Materials Research Society.
Go to Profile#4570
Martin Dr.-ing. Haardt
#131739
Overall Influence
#4571
Huai‐cheng Yan
#131775
Overall Influence
#4572
Richard E. Goodman
#131783
Overall Influence
#4573
Avideh Zakhor
#131797
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
#4574
Robert Wears
#119809
Overall Influence
1947 - 2017 (70 years)
Robert L. Wears was an American medical doctor, professor of emergency medicine, and safety researcher who integrated human factors in healthcare, doing studies of technical work in complex socio-technical systems, joint and distributed cognitive systems, and the impact of information technology on safety and resilient performance.
Go to Profile#4575
Sudarshan K. Loyalka
#131830
Overall Influence
#4576
Nasser Paydar
#113222
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Nasser Hamed Paydar is an American academic administrator who currently serves as the Assistant Secretary of Education for Postsecondary Education. He previously served as the chancellor of Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis from 2015 to 2022.
Go to Profile#4577
De-yu Meng
#131855
Overall Influence
#4578
Ming Chuan Leu
#131863
Overall Influence
#4579
Joe Hong Chow
#131876
Overall Influence
#4580
Ramón Torres Martínez
#131878
Overall Influence
1924 - 2008 (84 years)
Ramón Torres Martínez was a Mexican architect. His 1950s designs were influenced by the Bauhaus movement. Together with Héctor Velázquez Moreno he founded the architecture bureau Torres y Velázquez Arquitectos y Asociados, and was director of the Faculty of Architecture of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México . He co-designed Plaza Jacaranda shopping center in Zona Rosa, Mexico City, opened in 1957.
Go to Profile#4581
David G. Birch
#131879
Overall Influence
#4582
Alex Xiangyang Liu
#131886
Overall Influence
#4583
Lawrence Douglas Frank
#131896
Overall Influence
#4584
Nolan B. Aughenbaugh
#98192
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
Nolan B. Aughenbaugh is an American Professor Emeritus of Geological Engineering at the University of Mississippi. Biography Aughenbaugh was born in Akron, Ohio and was an Antarctic explorer during the International Geophysical Year. He also holds a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Purdue University.
Go to Profile#4585
Eugene Fitzgerald
#131930
Overall Influence
Eugene A. Fitzgerald is an American materials scientist and engineer currently the Merton C. Flemings-SMA Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#4586
Sheldon H. Jacobson
#96256
Overall Influence
Sheldon H. Jacobson is an American educator, noted for contributions that apply operations research to problems related to aviation security, public health, Presidential election forecasting, and NCAA basketball. He holds the position of Founder Professor of Engineering in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Go to Profile#4587
Hiroshi Yoneyama
#131946
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
#4588
David Paul Taggart
#131949
Overall Influence
#4589
Feng Liu
#131132
Overall Influence
Feng Liu is a material physicist. Liu earned a bachelor's of science degree in materials science at Tsinghua University in 1984. He left Tsinghua in 1986 with a master's of science in solid state physics and obtained a doctorate in chemical physics at Virginia Commonwealth University in 1990. Liu then served as a postdoctoral researcher for four years, first with Rutgers University, before moving to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Go to Profile#4590
Connie M. Borror
#115659
Overall Influence
1966 - 2016 (50 years)
Connie M. Borror was an American statistician and industrial engineer interested in quality control and forensic toxicology. She was named the winner of the Shewhart Medal of the American Society for Quality shortly before her death, for "outstanding technical leadership in the field of modern quality control, especially through the development to its theory, principles, and techniques", and became the first woman to win the medal.
Go to Profile#4591
Kevin J. Dooley
#94463
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Kevin John Dooley is an American scholar, and Professor of Supply Chain Management at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. Biography Dooley studied at the University of Illinois, where he received his BS in Industrial Engineering in 1982, his MS in Industrial Engineering in 1984, and his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 1987 for the thesis "A fault classification system for quality and productivity improvements in continuous processes" under supervision of Shiv G. Kapoor.
Go to Profile#4592
Robert J Schwartz
#131979
Overall Influence
#4593
Tadao Nagatsuma
#132020
Overall Influence
Tadao Nagatsuma from the Osaka University, Japan was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for contribution to millimeter and terahertzwave communications using photonics.
Go to Profile#4594
Glenn E. Smith
#132074
Overall Influence
#4595
Graham Goodwin
#106778
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Graham Clifford Goodwin is an Australian Laureate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Life Graham Goodwin is an Emeritus Laureate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Newcastle. His education includes B.Sc., B.E. and Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales. He won the 1990 M A Sargent Medal, Engineers Australia. In 2010 he was awarded the IEEE Control Systems Field Award and in 2013 he received the Rufus T. Oldenburger Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He was twice awarded the International Federation of Automatic Control triannual Best Engineering Text Book Prize.
Go to Profile#4596
Pan Wen-Yuan
#69721
Overall Influence
1912 - 1995 (83 years)
Pan Wen-Yuan was a Chinese-American electrical engineer. Following a three-decade-long career as a researcher at RCA, he played a key role in establishing the integrated circuit industry in Taiwan in the 1970s and is known as the "father" of Taiwan's IC industry. After his death, the Industrial Technology Research Institute of Taiwan set up the Pan Wen Yuan Foundation and the Pan Wen Yuan Prize to reward people who have made significant contributions to Taiwan's semiconductor industry. Pan was a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for...
Go to Profile#4597
John V. Wayland Frangioni
#132159
Overall Influence
#4598
Xiuping Jia
#122467
Overall Influence
Xiuping Jia is a Chinese-Australian electrical engineer and image processing researcher whose topics of interest include image classification, photogrammetry, remote sensing, and hyperspectral imaging. She is an associate professor of electrical engineering in the School of Engineering and Information Technology at the Australian Defence Force Academy campus of the University of New South Wales . She also held an affiliation with the Sino-Australian Joint Research Center for Coastal Zone Management, a joint research project of UNSW with the Ocean University of China.
Go to Profile#4599
Jun-hao Chu
#132192
Overall Influence
#4600
John Robertson
#97684
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
John Robertson FRS is a Professor of Electronics, in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. He is a leading specialist in the theory of amorphous carbon and related materials.
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