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,
#4651
James L. Mills
#132904
Overall Influence
#4652
Gregg E. Trahey
#132919
Overall Influence
#4653
Richard K. Leach
#132921
Overall Influence
#4654
Marc A. Laruelle
#132946
Overall Influence
#4655
Igor Aharonovich
#84236
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Igor Aharonovich is an Australian physicist and materials engineer. He is a professor at the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney . Igor investigates optically active defects in solids, with an overarching goal to identify new generation of ultra-bright solid state quantum emitters. His main contributions include discovery of new color centers in diamond and hexagonal boron nitride as well as development of new methodologies to engineer nanophotonic devices from these materials.
Go to Profile#4656
Marcus G. Pandy
#132968
Overall Influence
#4657
Francis D. Pagani
#132973
Overall Influence
#4658
Rong Sun
#133022
Overall Influence
#4659
Marc Davis
#16799
Overall Influence
1913 - 2000 (87 years)
Marc Fraser Davis was a prominent American artist and animator for Walt Disney Animation Studios. He was one of Disney's Nine Old Men, the famed core animators of Disney animated films, and was revered for his knowledge and understanding of visual aesthetics. After his work on One Hundred and One Dalmatians he moved to Walt Disney Imagineering to work on rides for Disneyland and Walt Disney World before retiring in 1978.
Go to Profile#4660
Martin Wild
#133049
Overall Influence
#4661
Khurshid Ayub
#133052
Overall Influence
#4662
Fulvio Scarano
#133053
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
#4663
Albert H. Nuttall
#133067
Overall Influence
#4664
Xiuling Li
#111533
Overall Influence
Xiuling Li is an distinguished electrical and computer engineering professor in the field of nanostructured semiconductor devices. She is currently the Temple Foundation Endowed Professorship No. 3 in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Fellow of the Dow Professor in Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, she was a Donald Biggar Willet Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Interim Director of the Nick Holonyak Jr. Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Go to Profile#4665
Daniele Nardi
#133078
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#4666
Abraham Siegel
#40167
Overall Influence
1922 - 2011 (89 years)
Abraham J. Siegel was Dean , and later Howard W. Johnson Professor of Management Emeritus in the MIT Sloan School of Management. List of Publications Books The Public Interest in National Labor Policy , Committee for Economic Development., New York, 1961.A Work in Progress, The MIT Sloan School of Management 2002: Looking Back, Moving Forward, MIT Sloan School of Management, 2002.
Go to Profile#4667
Iraj Sadegh Amiri
#133115
Overall Influence
#4668
Denis Flandre
#133138
Overall Influence
#4669
Koichi Eguchi
#133150
Overall Influence
#4670
Mihai P. Datcu
#133163
Overall Influence
#4671
Shimeng Yu
#133175
Overall Influence
#4672
Rachel A. Segalman
#111361
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Rachel A. Segalman is the Edward Noble Kramer Professor and Department Chair of Chemical Engineering at University of California, Santa Barbara . Her laboratory works on semiconducting block polymers, polymeric ionic liquids, and hybrid thermoelectric materials. She is the associated director of the Center for Materials for Water Energy System, an associate editor of ACS Macro Letters, and co-editor of the Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
Go to Profile#4673
Klaas Bom
#21005
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Nicolaas "Klaas" Bom is a Dutch engineer. He was a professor of medical technology in cardiology at the Erasmus MC. His 1970s research on ultrasound technology provided several new medical devices, including the portable ultrasound scanner.
Go to Profile#4674
Carl − Fredrik Westin
#133225
Overall Influence
#4675
Kim Williams
#98050
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Kim Williams is an American architect, an independent scholar on the connections between architecture and mathematics, and a book publisher. She is the founder of the Nexus: Architecture and Mathematics conference series, the founder and co-editor-in-chief of Nexus Network Journal, and the author of several books on mathematics and architecture.
Go to Profile#4676
Laura M. Herz
#133235
Overall Influence
#4677
John Briscoe
#79467
Overall Influence
1948 - 2014 (66 years)
John Briscoe was a South African-born environmental engineer who was Visiting Professor of the Practice of Environmental Health in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health. He was known as "Mr. Water" to environmental economists. At Harvard, Briscoe also held appointments at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences as Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Environmental Engineering, and at the Harvard Kennedy School. His career focused on efforts on the developing world to successfully manage and preserve water as a precious resource. In e...
Go to Profile#4678
Frederick Sachs
#111799
Overall Influence
Frederick Sachs is an American biologist. He is a SUNY Distinguished Professor in the University at Buffalo's Department of Physiology and Biophysics. Early life and education Sachs grew up on a farm in Hudson Valley, where he learned how to milk cows and raise chickens and pigs. He completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in physics from the University of Rochester in 1962 and his PhD in physiology from the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in 1971.
Go to Profile#4679
Hossam S. Hassanein
#133264
Overall Influence
#4680
Zelda Fichandler
#63827
Overall Influence
1924 - 2016 (92 years)
Zelda Fichandler was an American stage producer, director and educator. Life and career Zelda Fichandler came from a family that emigrated from Russia when she was an infant. Her father, Harry Diamond, was a brilliant scientist who created the proximity fuse. Zelda started working in pursuing sciences until the day that she spilled hydrochloric acid down her shirt and burned herself; she decided to pursue acting instead.
Go to Profile#4681
Bede Liu
#133329
Overall Influence
#4682
Datta V. Gaitonde
#133342
Overall Influence
#4683
John S. Adams
#133363
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#4684
Jeromy Carriere
#71132
Overall Influence
Steven Jeromy Carrière is a Canadian computer software engineer. Carrière is a graduate of the University of Waterloo in Canada. He was technical staff member at Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute working on practical software architectural reconstruction and analysis.
Go to Profile#4685
Hartmuth Spliethoff
#133400
Overall Influence
#4686
Marco Ceccarelli
#133420
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#4687
Bruce L. Levine
#133424
Overall Influence
#4688
James A. Ashton‐miller
#133429
Overall Influence
#4689
Luc Avérous
#133461
Overall Influence
#4690
Wen-chang Chen
#133474
Overall Influence
#4691
Frank Mangrem White
#133475
Overall Influence
#4692
Feniosky Peña-Mora
#103736
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
#4693
Lucy Pao
#130413
Overall Influence
Lucy Ya Pao is an American electrical engineer and control theorist known for her work on controlling and maximizing the energy capture of wind turbines and more generally on the control of flexible structures. She is Richard and Joy Dorf Professor of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering and a Fellow of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Go to Profile#4694
Sang Won Kang
#59747
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Sang Won Kang is a South Korean professor of proteomics at the Ewha Womans University whose numerous peer-reviewed articles have appeared in such journals as Journal of Biological Chemistry and the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology with the highest one being cited over 1,000 times.
Go to Profile#4695
Vladimir V. Bolotin
#133555
Overall Influence
#4697
Pietro Lampertico
#133592
Overall Influence
#4698
Nir Tessler
#114091
Overall Influence
Nir Tessler is the Barbara and Norman Seiden professor in the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering and head of the Microelectronics and Nanoelectronics centers at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#4699
Naoya Hatakeyama
#84523
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Naoya Hatakeyama is a Japanese photographer. His work explores human intervention with the landscape and natural materials, including the life of cities and the built environment. Life Hatakeyama was born in Japan Rikuzentakata, Iwate, in 1958. He graduated from the University of Tsukuba, School of Art and Design in 1981 and completed postgraduate studies at the University of Tsukuba in 1984.
Go to Profile#4700
David Butler
#133636
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
