Most Influential Engineers

Elon Musk- Engineer, businessman, inventor, genius - four of the many labels oft attached to South African-born Canadian Musk. Founder of SpaceX - which will almost certainly be taking the average joe on holiday to space sooner rather than later - Tesla Motors - electric cars that actually, you know, work - and SolarCity, which provide solar panels for businesses all over the world. Remember the name, but then again, how could you forget one as unusual as that?

Archimedes- The genius from Greece designed stuff to support his home city – Syracuse. He developed techniques to use heat rays and mirrors to burn the ships of their enemies and developed the famous Archimedes’ screw to remove bilge water from ships as well as the block and tackle pulley system. His inventions have been quite useful to his city and the people. He is known as a gifted mathematician, engineer, inventor, astronomer and physicist and has made some of the most influential contributions to the field of engineering. He is a true inspiration to all aspiring mechanical engineers.

Alan Turing- The world of the 21st century runs on computers, and the computer as we know it almost certainly wouldn’t exist without the work of Alan Turing, a genius computer engineer whose contributions were downplayed during his lifetime thanks to a public scandal involving his homosexuality. Turing developed the binary architecture used by computers to this day, cracked the Enigma code that the Nazis used to encrypt their messages during World War II, and made numerous other contributions to software development and the theory of computers. To this day, his “Turing Test” is still the theoretical standard used to judge whether or not a calculating machine can legitimately be called an “artificial intelligence.”

Nikola Tesla- Tesla has undergone a massive resurgence in popularity over the last decade, to the point that he is more famous and beloved now than he ever was during his lifetime. But the fact that Tesla was largely ignored while he was alive doesn’t minimize the value of his contributions to electrical engineering, which include the development of Alternating Current, the invention of fluorescent lighting, the induction motor, and, of course, the Tesla Coil.

Martha Coston- She quite literally blazed her way into engineering history books. Coston is credited with creating a signalling flare system, known as Coston Flares, still used by the US Navy today. At the age of 21, Coston was left a widow with four children to support. Desperate times called for some creative thinking. She discovered a design for a pyrotechnic flare that her late husband had left behind in his notebook, and set about designing a signal flare that would work. For nearly 10 years she worked on perfecting the design, which needed to be bright, multi-colored and long-lasting if they were to be effective tools for communication. She finally achieved a patent in 1859, with the US Navy paying her $20,000 for the rights to the flares - mega bucks in Martha’s time.

Lisa Su- A Taiwanese American business executive and electrical engineer, and the CEO and president of Advanced Micro Devices. Early in her career, Su worked at Texas Instruments, IBM, and Freescale Semiconductor in engineering and management positions