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).
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List of the most influential people
#3551
Alfred Mirsky
1900 - 1974 (74 years)
Alfred Ezra Mirsky was an American pioneer in molecular biology. Mirsky graduated from Harvard College in 1922, after which he studied for two years at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons until 1924 when he moved to the University of Cambridge on a US National Research Council fellowship for the academic year 1924–1925. He received his PhD from Cambridge in 1926, with a dissertation under Lawrence J. Henderson on the Haemoglobin molecule, completing work begun under Joseph Barcroft.
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John Stuart Foster
1890 - 1964 (74 years)
John Stuart Foster was a Canadian physicist. Biography Born in Clarence, Nova Scotia, he completed his Ph.D. at Yale University with a dissertation on the first measurements of the Stark effect in Helium. In 1924 he gained an appointment as assistant professor at McGill University in Montreal, where he taught physics. He became associate professor in 1930.
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Eric Temple Bell
1883 - 1960 (77 years)
Eric Temple Bell was a Scottish-born mathematician and science fiction writer who lived in the United States for most of his life. He published non-fiction using his given name and fiction as John Taine.
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Rose May Davis
1894 - Present (131 years)
Rose May Davis was an American chemist. In 1929 she became the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. from Duke University. Early life and education Rose May Davis was born on 17 November 1894 in Cumberland, Maryland, to Baptist Minister Quinton C. Davis and Sarah E. Davis. She studied a variety of subjects, such as music, law, and chemistry, and attended several institutions in pursuit of her education, including Chowan College , the Southern Conservatory of Music , Trinity College , the University of Virginia , Duke University . During her time at Trinity College, Davis was a member of the Panhellenic Council, the Chanticleer Board, Athena Literary Society, Eko-L, and Zeta Tau Alpha.
Go to Profile#3555
Harvey Elliott White
1902 - 1988 (86 years)
Harvey Elliott White was an American physicist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Early life and education White was born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, but grew up in Pasadena, California. He received an A.B. from Occidental College in 1925 and a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1929. In 1929–30 he was a National Research Council Fellow at the Physikalische Technische Reichsanstalt in Germany, working on atomic spectroscopy under Friedrich Paschen.
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Brian O'Brien
1898 - 1992 (94 years)
Brian O'Brien was an optical physicist and "the founder of the Air Force Studies Board and its chairman for 12 years. O'Brien received numerous awards, including the Medal for Merit, the nation's highest civilian award, for his work on optics in World War II and the Frederic Ives Medal in 1951. Circa 1966 he "chaired an ad hoc committee under the USAF Science Advisory Board looking into the UFO problem". He also had steering power over National Academy of Sciences projects, Project Blue Book, and helped pave the way for the Condon Committee.
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Wyatt C. Whitley
1900 - 1982 (82 years)
Wyatt C. Whitley was an American chemist, professor of chemistry and a former director of the Engineering Experiment Station at the Georgia Institute of Technology from 1963 until 1968. Education Whitley received a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Wake Forest College in 1929. He received a Master of Science in Chemistry from the Georgia School of Technology in 1934, and attended the University of Wisconsin for his PhD.
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Harrison Brown
1917 - 1986 (69 years)
Harrison Scott Brown was an American nuclear chemist and geochemist. He was a political activist, who lectured and wrote on the issues of arms limitation, natural resources and world hunger. During World War II, Brown worked at the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory and Clinton Engineer Works, where he worked on ways to separate plutonium from uranium. The techniques he helped develop were used at the Hanford Site to produce the plutonium used in the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki. After the war he lectured on the dangers of nuclear weapons.
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Herman Kahn
1922 - 1983 (61 years)
Herman Kahn was an American physicist and a founding member of the Hudson Institute, regarded as one of the preeminent futurists of the latter part of the twentieth century. He originally came to prominence as a military strategist and systems theorist while employed at the RAND Corporation. He analyzed the likely consequences of nuclear war and recommended ways to improve survivability during the Cold War. Kahn posited the idea of a "winnable" nuclear exchange in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War for which he was one of the historical inspirations for the title character of Stanley Kubrick's classic black comedy film satire Dr.
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Marc Aaronson
1950 - 1987 (37 years)
Marc Aaronson was an American astronomer. Life Aaronson was born in Los Angeles. He was educated at the California Institute of Technology, where he received a BS in 1972. He completed his Ph.D. in 1977 at Harvard University with a dissertation on the near-infrared aperture photometry of galaxies. He joined Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona as a postdoctoral research associate in 1977 and became an Associate Professor of Astronomy in 1983. Aaronson and Jeremy Mould won the George Van Biesbroeck Prize in 1981 and the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy in 1984 from the American Astronomical Society.
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Charles Francis Richter
1900 - 1985 (85 years)
Charles Francis Richter was an American seismologist and physicist. Richter is most famous as the creator of the Richter magnitude scale, which, until the development of the moment magnitude scale in 1979, quantified the size of earthquakes. Inspired by Kiyoo Wadati's 1928 paper on shallow and deep earthquakes, Richter first used the scale in 1935 after developing it in collaboration with Beno Gutenberg; both worked at the California Institute of Technology.
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Helen Schaeffer Huff
1883 - 1913 (30 years)
Helen Schaeffer Huff was an American physicist. She received her PhD in physics from Bryn Mawr College in 1908, with a minor in pure and applied mathematics. Her dissertation was entitled A Study of the Electric Spark in a Magnetic Field.
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Forrest Shepherd
1800 - 1888 (88 years)
Forrest Shepherd was an American scientist. Shepherd, son of Daniel and Anna Shepherd, was born in Boscawen, N. H., October 31, 1800. He entered Dartmouth College in 1823, but spent the Senior year at Yale College. He was admitted to the bachelor's degree at both Colleges in 1827. He remained in New Haven as a graduate student for two or three years, and on April 29, 1832, married Sophia W. Storer, of Rutland, Vt. In 1841 and 1842 he took a partial course in the Yale Divinity School.
Go to Profile#3564
Robert Brode
1900 - 1986 (86 years)
Robert Bigham Brode was an American physicist, who during World War II led the group at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory that developed the fuses used in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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Gladys Anslow
1892 - 1969 (77 years)
Gladys Amelia Anslow was an American physicist who spent her career at Smith College. She was the first woman to work with the cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley. Early life and education Anslow was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to John Anslow and Ella Iola Leonard. Anslow attended Springfield Central High School and entered Smith College in 1909. While studying at Smith College, Anslow was a member of the Mathematical Society and served as vice president of the Physics Club. In her second year, Anslow elected a focus on physics under Frank Allan Waterman. Following her graduation with an A.B.
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Rodman W. Paul
1912 - 1987 (75 years)
Rodman Wilson Paul was an American historian who taught at the California Institute of Technology. He was known primarily as a foremost authority on California mining and agricultural Native American history.
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Jon Mathews
1932 - 1979 (47 years)
Jon Mathews was a physicist, yachtsman, scholar, and adventurer. After a 23-year career as a physics professor, he was lost at sea and presumed drowned during a circumnavigation attempt with his wife Jean in 1979.
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Harris J. Ryan
1866 - 1934 (68 years)
Harris J. Ryan was an American electrical engineer and a professor first at Cornell University and later at Stanford University. Ryan is known for his significant contributions to high voltage power transmission, for which he received the IEEE Edison Medal. Ryan was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1920 and served as president of the AIEE during 1923-1924.
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Obed Crosby Haycock
1901 - 1983 (82 years)
Obed Crosby Haycock was a scientist and educator. He was born in Panguitch, Utah on October 5, 1901. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Utah in 1925. He also had studied at Utah State University. He received a master of Science from Purdue University in 1931. He was a research Engineer at Rutgers University from 1944-1945. He became the Director of Upper Air Research labs at the University of Utah in 1957. He started a radio station KLGN in Logan, Utah in 1954 which he later sold.
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Nils Otto Myklestad
1909 - 1972 (63 years)
Nils Otto Myklestad was an American mechanical engineer and engineering professor. An authority on mechanical vibration, he was employed by a number of important US engineering firms and served on the faculty of several major engineering universities. Myklestad made significant contributions to both engineering practice and engineering education, publishing a number of widely influential technical journal papers and textbooks. He also was granted five US patents during his career.
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James Madison Porter III
1864 - 1928 (64 years)
James Madison Porter III was an American civil engineer notable for his role in designing two unique bridges across the Delaware River and for his development of the civil engineering program at Lafayette College. His grandfather, James Madison Porter, was one of the college's founders. Porter III served on the civil engineering faculty at Lafayette from 1890 to 1917 and was an early advocate for materials testing.
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Frederick Kaufman
1919 - 1985 (66 years)
Frederick Kaufman was an Austrian-born American chemist. Kaufman was most notable for his research work which led to a ban on the use of chloro-fluorocarbon aerosol propellants in the United States. Kaufman was director of the University of Pittsburgh's Space Research Coordination Center, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, president of the Combustion Institute. He served on various committees of the National Academy of Sciences, NASA, AFOSR, National Science Foundation, and National Research Council. He was also president of Space Research Coordination Center. The National A...
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Morgan Ward
1901 - 1963 (62 years)
Henry Morgan Ward was an American mathematician, a professor of mathematics at the California Institute of Technology. Education and career Ward was born in New York City. He studied at University of California, Berkeley, receiving his BA in 1924. He obtained his Ph.D. in mathematics from Caltech in 1928, with a dissertation titled The Foundations of General Arithmetic; his advisor was Eric Temple Bell. He became a research fellow at Caltech, and then in 1929 a member of the faculty; he remained at Caltech until his death in 1963. Among his doctoral students was Robert P. Dilworth, who also became a Caltech professor.
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Leland John Haworth
1904 - 1979 (75 years)
Leland John Haworth was an American particle physicist. In his long career he was head of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Atomic Energy Commission, the National Science Foundation, and was assistant to the president of Associated Universities, Inc.
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Thomas Thompson
1933 - 1982 (49 years)
Thomas Thompson was a journalist and author. Career Thompson was born in Fort Worth, Texas, to Clarence Arnold Thompson and Ruth Oswalt . He graduated from the University of Texas in 1955. He then worked as a reporter and editor at the Houston Press.
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Benjamin Franklin Bailey
1875 - 2000 (125 years)
Benjamin Franklin Bailey was an American electrical engineer. A native of Sheridan, Michigan, Benjamin Franklin Bailey studied electrical engineering at the University of Michigan and later held the positions of chief engineer of the Fairbanks Morse Electrical Manufacturing Company and Howell Electrical Motor Company, director of Bailey Electrical Company, and vice-president and director of the Fremont Motor Corporation.
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John J. Turin
1913 - 1973 (60 years)
John J. Turin was an American mathematician and physicist, especially active in the field of astronomy. Turin received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Wayne State University and his doctorate in nuclear physics from the University of Michigan.
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Edward Bennett Rosa
1873 - 1921 (48 years)
Edward Bennett Rosa was an American physicist, specialising in measurement science. He received B.S. at Wesleyan University and taught physics at a school in Providence, Rhode Island before graduate studies in physics at Johns Hopkins University, obtaining a Ph.D. in 1891 on the thesis entitled The Specific Inductive Capacity of Electrolytes, advised by Henry Augustus Rowland. After a short stay at University of Wisconsin he was professor of physics at Wesleyan University where he and Wilbur Olin Atwater developed a respiration calorimeter which for human beings confirmed conservation of energy laws and allowed for calculation of caloric values of different foods.
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J. Curry Street
1906 - 1989 (83 years)
Jabez Curry Street was an American physicist, a co-discoverer of atomic particles called muons. Street was also notable for heading the group at MIT that created ground and ship radar systems. He also directed development of LORAN Navigation System, which is used worldwide for navigation purposes. Street was chairman of the physics department at Harvard University and acting director of the Cambridge Electron Accelerator, a member of the National Academy of Sciences. The National Academies Press called him "a boldly innovative experimental physicist whose discoveries in cosmic rays influe...
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Charles R. Hauser
1900 - 1970 (70 years)
Charles Roy Hauser was an American chemist. Hauser was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a professor of chemistry at Duke University. Notable work The Sommelet–Hauser rearrangement is a named reaction based on the work of Hauser and Sommelet involving the rearrangement of certain benzyl quaternary ammonium salts. The reagent is sodium amide or another alkali metal amide and the reaction product a N,N-dialkylbenzylamine with a new alkyl group in the aromatic ortho position. For example, benzyltrimethylammonium iodide, [N3]I, rearranges in the presence of sodium amide to yield t...
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Frits Warmolt Went
1903 - 1990 (87 years)
Frits Warmolt Went was a Dutch biologist whose 1928 experiment demonstrated the existence of auxin in plants. Went's father was the prominent Dutch botanist Friedrich August Ferdinand Christian Went. After graduating from the University of Utrecht, Holland in 1927 with a dissertation on the effects of the plant hormone auxin, Went then worked as a plant pathologist in the research labs of the Royal Botanical Garden in Buitenzorg, Dutch East Indies from 1927 to 1933. He then took a position at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, first researching plant hormones. His interest gradually shifted to environmental influences on plant growth.
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Frederick Leslie Ransome
1868 - 1935 (67 years)
Frederick Leslie Ransome, Ph.D. was a British-born American geologist. Ransome was born in Greenwich, England and educated at the University of California . Ransome described and named the mineral Lawsonite after Andrew Lawson. Ransome was employed by the United States Geological Survey. Ransome's many official reports and bulletins dealt mainly with phases of economic geology. Ransome helped found the journal Economic Geology in 1905, and was associate editor of the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences. Ransome was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and served as NAS Treasurer in 1919.
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John Gallalee
1883 - 1961 (78 years)
John Morin Gallalee was an American engineer, who became President of the University of Alabama. Gallalee was raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, and earned a master's degree in engineering from the University of Virginia. He began teaching at the University of Alabama in 1913, and later oversaw campus construction. Gallalee's tenure as university president began in 1948. During his time in office, UA added nine residence halls, two classroom buildings and a stadium expansion to its campus, as well as the Capstone College of Nursing. Gallalee was succeeded by interim president Lee Bidgood in 1953, and continued working as a consultant engineer.
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Warren Weaver
1894 - 1978 (84 years)
Warren Weaver was an American scientist, mathematician, and science administrator. He is widely recognized as one of the pioneers of machine translation and as an important figure in creating support for science in the United States.
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Charles A. Joy
1823 - 1891 (68 years)
Charles Arad Joy was a United States chemist. Biography He was born in Ludlowville, New York. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1847. During the same year, he was appointed on the U.S. Geological Survey of the Lake Superior region, under Josiah D. Whitney and Charles T. Jackson. Subsequently, he went to Europe and studied chemistry at Berlin, at Göttingen, where in 1852 he received the degree of doctor of philosophy, and at the Sorbonne in Paris.
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Barbara Stoddard Burks
1902 - 1943 (41 years)
Barbara Stoddard Burks was an American psychologist known for her research on the nature-nurture debate as it pertained to intelligence and other human traits. She has been credited with "...pioneer[ing] the statistical techniques which continue to ground the trenchant nature/nurture debates about intelligence in American psychology."
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Marshall Hall
1910 - 1990 (80 years)
Marshall Hall Jr. was an American mathematician who made significant contributions to group theory and combinatorics. Education and career Hall studied mathematics at Yale University, graduating in 1932. He studied for a year at Cambridge University under a Henry Fellowship working with G. H. Hardy. He returned to Yale to take his Ph.D. in 1936 under the supervision of Øystein Ore.
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Geoffrey Blewitt
#3589
Henry Dye
1926 - 1986 (60 years)
Henry Abel Dye Jr. was an American mathematician, specializing in operator algebras and ergodic theory. Education and career Dye received from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute a bachelor's degree and in 1950 a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. As a postdoc he was from 1950 to 1952 at California Institute of Technology and from 1952 to 1953 at the Institute for Advanced Study. He was from 1953 to 1956 an assistant professor at the University of Iowa, from 1956 to 1959 an associate professor at the University of Southern California , and from 1959 to 1960 a full professor at the University of Iowa.
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James Rainwater
1917 - 1986 (69 years)
Leo James Rainwater was an American physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975 for his part in determining the asymmetrical shapes of certain atomic nuclei. During World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bombs. In 1949, he began developing his theory that, contrary to what was then believed, not all atomic nuclei are spherical. His ideas were later tested and confirmed by Aage Bohr's and Ben Mottelson's experiments. He also contributed to the scientific understanding of X-rays and participated in the United States Atomic Energy Commission ...
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Boris Jacobsohn
1918 - 1966 (48 years)
Boris Abbott Jacobsohn was an American physicist, known for his contributions to the study of muonic atoms. Jacobsohn graduated from Columbia University with B.S. in 1938 and M.S in 1939. At the beginning of the Manhattan Project, he worked with Enrico Fermi at Columbia. Jacobsohn, along with his wife Ruth, moved with Fermi's team in early 1942 to the University of Chicago for the team's relocation to the Metallurgical Laboratory, where he worked until the end of WWII. In late 1945, Edward Teller invited Maria Goeppert-Mayer, along with her two students Boris Jacobsohn and Harris Mayer, to Los Alamos to work on the development of the thermonuclear bomb.
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Frank Capra
1897 - 1991 (94 years)
Frank Russell Capra was an Italian-American film director, producer, and screenwriter who became the creative force behind some of the major award-winning films of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Italy and raised in Los Angeles from the age of five, his rags-to-riches story has led film historians such as Ian Freer to consider him the "American Dream personified".
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Joseph Howey
1901 - 1973 (72 years)
Joseph H. Howey was a physicist and academic administrator at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was the director of Georgia Tech's School of Physics for 28 years, from 1935 to 1963. Early life Howey received a Bachelor of Arts from the College of Wooster in 1923, and a PhD from Yale University in 1930. Howey was also a physicist in Firestone Tire and Rubber Corp's research laboratory from 1929 to 1931, after which he returned to Yale as an instructor.
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Albert Tyler
1906 - 1968 (62 years)
Albert Tyler was an American biologist whose research was focused on reproductive biology and development in marine organisms. Tyler was born in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Columbia University majoring in chemistry. When he started graduate studies he took interest in the work of Thomas Hunt Morgan. Morgan took Tyler, and several other graduate students and research fellows with him, to the California Institute of Technology when he was hired to establish the new Division of Biology. Tyler completed his Ph.D. studies on reproductive biology and was appointed to the faculty at Caltech.
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Louis Ridenour
1911 - 1959 (48 years)
Louis N. Ridenour was a physicist instrumental in U.S. development of radar, Vice President of Lockheed, and an advisor to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Biography and positions held During World War II, Ridenour worked at the MIT Radiation Laboratory. He was co-leader with Ivan A. Getting of the group that developed the SCR-584 radar. He directed a committee in 1949 that recommended the establishment of a separate Research and Development Command and a new Air Staff Deputy Chief of Staff for Research and Development. In 1950, Ridenour was named the first Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Forc...
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Dinsmore Alter
1888 - 1968 (80 years)
Dinsmore Alter was an American astronomer, meteorologist, and United States Army officer. He is known for his work with the Griffith Observatory and his creation of a lunar atlas. Early life He was born in Colfax, Washington, and attended college at Westminster College in Pennsylvania. After graduating in 1909 with a B.S. degree, he married Ada McClelland. The couple had one child, Helen.
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William G. Pollard
1911 - 1989 (78 years)
William Grosvenor Pollard was an American physicist and an Episcopal priest. He started his career as a professor of physics in 1936 at the University of Tennessee. In 1946 he championed the organization of the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies . He was its executive director until 1974. He was ordained as a priest in 1954. He authored and co-authored a significant amount of material in the areas of Christianity and Science and Religion found in books, book chapters, and journal articles. He was sometimes referred to as the "atomic deacon".
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John Zeleny
1872 - 1951 (79 years)
John Zeleny was an American physicist who, in 1911, invented the Zeleny electroscope. He also studied the effect of an electric field on a liquid meniscus. His work is seen by some as a beginning to emergent technologies like liquid metal ion sources and electrospraying and electrospinning.
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H. Orin Halvorson
1897 - 1975 (78 years)
Halvor Orin Halvorson was an American microbiologist. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1928, he continued to teach there until 1949, becoming director of their Hormel Institute in 1943. He served as head of the Bacteriology Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign beginning in 1949, and first director of the School of Life Sciences there beginning in 1959. He retired from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1965, whereupon he returned to the University of Minnesota faculty. He served as president of the Society of American Bacteriologists in 1955.
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Krafft Arnold Ehricke
1917 - 1984 (67 years)
Krafft Arnold Ehricke was a German rocket-propulsion engineer and advocate for space colonization. Ehricke is a co-designer of the first Centaur liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen upper stage. Biography Born in Berlin, Ehricke believed in the feasibility of space travel from a very young age, influenced by his viewing of the Fritz Lang film Woman in the Moon. At the age of 12, he formed his own rocket society. He attended Technical University of Berlin and studied celestial mechanics and nuclear physics under physicists including Hans Geiger and Werner Heisenberg, attaining his degree in Aeronaut...
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