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 Business,
#101
Christoph Loch
#26261
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Christoph Loch was the Director of Cambridge Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge from 2011 until August 31, 2021 when he was replaced by Professor Mauro Guillén who joined from Wharton . He also held a fellowship at Pembroke College. He was announced he would step down in the summer of 2021 after two mandates. Professor Loch took office on 1 September 2011, having previously held the position of GlaxoSmithKline Chaired Professor of Corporate Innovation and Professor of Technology and Operations Management at INSEAD, where he also served as Dean of the INSEAD PhD programme from 2006-2009.
Go to Profile#102
Robert E. Whaley
#15675
Overall Influence
Robert E. Whaley is Valere Blair Potter Professor of Management and Director of the Financial Markets Research Center at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. Whaley developed the Market Volatility Index for the Chicago Board Options Exchange in 1993.
Go to Profile#103
Christopher A. Bartlett
#25432
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Christopher A. Bartlett is an Australian organizational theorist, and Emeritus Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, known for his work on multinational corporation and transnational management with Sumantra Ghoshal.
Go to Profile#104
René M. Stulz
#22148
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
René M. Stulz is a professor of finance at the Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University. He earned his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught at a variety of universities including the University of Rochester, the University of Chicago, Harvard University, Northwestern University, and the University of Southern California. He has published over 100 articles in finance and economic journals on topics ranging from corporate finance, corporate governance, asset pricing, financial institutions, and risk management, which have been cited over 47,000 times.
Go to Profile#105
Gerry George
#22293
Overall Influence
Gerard "Gerry" George is currently Professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. Previously, he was Dean and Lee Kong Chian Chair Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University.
Go to Profile#106
Christopher Marquis
#10569
Overall Influence
Christopher Marquis is the Sinyi Professor of Chinese Management at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, England, and a Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge. Marquis's research takes a sociological perspective and focuses on corporate strategies, entrepreneurship and social innovation, building sustainable businesses, and doing business in China. He is the author of the award-winning books Better Business: How the B Corp Movement is Remaking Capitalism and and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise
Go to Profile#107
Richard Lyons
#21428
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Richard Kent Lyons was the 14th Dean of the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, until 2018. In 2020 he became UC Berkeley's first Chief Innovation and Entrepreneurship Officer.
Go to Profile#108
David A. Whetten
#28260
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
David Allred Whetten is an American organizational theorist and Professor of Organizational Leadership and Strategy at the Marriott School of Management at the Brigham Young University. He is known for his work on organizational identity research methodology, and organizational effectiveness.
Go to Profile#109
Derek S. Pugh
#17141
Overall Influence
1930 - 2015 (85 years)
Derek Salman Pugh was a British psychologist, business theorist and Emeritus Professor of International Management at the Open University, known for his work in the field of organisational development , and particularly the Pugh Matrix, a tool within OD.
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Robert Scheer
#5409
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Robert Scheer is an American left-wing journalist who has written for Ramparts, the Los Angeles Times, Playboy, Hustler Magazine, Truthdig, Scheerpost and other publications as well as having written many books. His column for Truthdig was nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate in publications such as The Huffington Post and The Nation. He is a clinical professor of communications at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California. Scheer is the former editor in-chief for the Webby Award-winning online magazine Truthdig. For many years, he co-...
Go to Profile#111
Zvi Bodie
#20540
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Zvi Bodie is an American economist, author and professor. He was the Norman and Adele Barron Professor of Management at Boston University, teaching finance at Questrom for 43 years before retiring in 2015. His textbook, Investments, is the market leader and is used in the certification programs of the CFA Institute and the Society of Actuaries. Bodie's work has centered on pension finance and investment strategy. He continues to do consulting work and media interviews.
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W. Steve Albrecht
#33378
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
W. Steve Albrecht is the Andersen Alumni Professor at the Marriott School of Management of Brigham Young University . He is a former president of the American Accounting Association and was previously president of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. He was also formerly an associate dean of the Marriott School of Management. Albrecht served as the mission president for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Tokyo, Japan.
Go to Profile#113
Kenneth Merchant
#26889
Overall Influence
Kenneth Merchant holds the Deloitte and Touche LLP Chair of Accountancy at the Leventhal School of Accounting, part of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. He is the former dean of the Leventhal School.
Go to Profile#114
Glen L. Urban
#18916
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Glen L. Urban has been a member of the MIT Sloan School of Management faculty since 1966 and dean at the school from 1993 to 1998. Urban is a leading educator, prize-winning researcher specializing in marketing and new product development, entrepreneur, and author. He is the Chairman of Sloan's MIT Center for Digital Business.
Go to Profile#115
Marti G. Subrahmanyam
#16274
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Marti G. Subrahmanyam is the Charles E. Merrill Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University. Biography Professor Subrahmanyam holds a Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School of Management, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management and a BTech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras.
Go to Profile#116
Howard H. Stevenson
#24376
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Howard H. Stevenson is the Sarofim-Rock Baker Foundation Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. Forbes magazine described him as Harvard Business School's "lion of entrepreneurship" in a 2011 article. Howard is credited with defining entrepreneurship as "the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control." INC Magazine described Howard's definition of entrepreneurship as "the best answer ever."
Go to Profile#117
Rajdeep Grewal
#30868
Overall Influence
Rajdeep 'Raj' Grewal is the Townsend Family Distinguished Professor of Marketing at Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the editor-in-chief of Journal of Marketing Research. He is known for his work on marketing research, marketing strategy and business to business marketing.
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Frank Bournois
#20887
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Frank Bournois is a French academic. He was appointed on 17 February 2023 to be the vice-president and dean of CEIBS, effective 1 April 2023, under the presidency of Professor Wang Hong and Dominique Turpin. He was previously the Executive President and dean of ESCP Business School from August 2014 to January 2023, and professor of general management, European management and cross-cultural leadership at Panthéon-Assas University . He specialises in the study of how very large corporate organisations identify, develop and manage their future top level leaders.
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Guy Rolnik
#17334
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Guy Rolnik is an Israeli journalist, executive, entrepreneur, and a clinical professor at the University of Chicago. He founded Israeli media organization TheMarker and is a deputy Publisher of the Haaretz daily newspaper.
Go to Profile#120
John F. Rockart
#14260
Overall Influence
1931 - 2014 (83 years)
John Fralick Rockart was an American organizational theorist, and Senior Lecturer Emeritus at the Center for Information Systems Research at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Biography Born in New York City, Rockart received his AB from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, his MBA from Harvard Business School, and in 1968 his PhD in management from MIT.
Go to Profile#121
Richard M. Freeland
#6426
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Richard Middleton Freeland was president of Northeastern University from 1996 to 2006 and served as the Commissioner of Higher Education for Massachusetts from 2008 until 2015. Freeland grew up in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, and was a 1959 graduate of Mountain Lakes High School; he was inducted into the school's hall of fame in 2014. He was granted a bachelor's degree in American Studies from Amherst College and a doctorate in American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania.
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Krishna Palepu
#26174
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Krishna Palepu is an American academic, author, consultant and director of various corporations. He is the Ross Graham Walker Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He serves as Senior Adviser to the President of Harvard University for Global Strategy.
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Micael Dahlén
#23153
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Micael Dahlén is a Swedish author, public speaker and Professor of marketing and consumer behavior at the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden. His award-winning research within marketing, creativity and consumer behavior has been published in four books and numerous journal articles. Dahlén's books have reached a global audience, rights being sold to countries such as the U.S, U.K, Germany, South Korea, Russia and Brazil. In 2013 Dahlén stated in an interview that he was writing a novel.
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Brian Wansink
#10919
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Brian Wansink is a former American professor and researcher who worked in consumer behavior and marketing research. He is the former executive director of the USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion and held the John S. Dyson Endowed Chair in the Applied Economics and Management Department at Cornell University, where he directed the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.
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Bruce Kogut
#27022
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Bruce Mitchel Kogut is an American organizational theorist, and Professor of Leadership and Ethics Director of the Columbia Business School. He is particularly known for his work with Udo Zander on knowledge-based theory of the firm.
Go to Profile#126
Stuart Madnick
#8149
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Stuart E. Madnick is an American computer scientist, and professor of information technology at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology school of engineering. He is the director of Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan , formerly called the MIT Interdisciplinary Consortium for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity .
Go to Profile#127
Shekhar Chaudhuri
#25613
Overall Influence
Shekhar Chaudhuri is an Indian academic and management professor. He is a former director of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Currently, Chaudhari is the director with Calcutta Business School, a fully residential premium Management Institute located close to IIM Calcutta.
Go to Profile#128
Paul Tiffany
#22475
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Paul Tiffany is a senior lecturer at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Decline of American Steel, How Management, Labor and Government Went Wrong and Business Plans for Dummies.
Go to Profile#129
Kenneth D. Mackenzie
#22345
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Kenneth D. Mackenzie is an American organizational theorist, former professor at the University of Kansas and management consultant. He is known for his early work on the "Theory of Group Structures" and his later work on organizational design
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Dr. Luke
#12200
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Łukasz Sebastian Gottwald , known professionally as Dr. Luke, Tyson Trax, and Made in China, is an American record producer and songwriter. His professional music career began in the late-night television sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live as its house band's lead guitarist in 1997 and producing remixes for artists such as Bon Jovi and Gravediggaz. He came into music prominence in 2004 for producing Kelly Clarkson's single "Since U Been Gone" with Swedish record producer Max Martin.
Go to Profile#131
Richard A. Bettis
#29653
Overall Influence
Richard A. Bettis is the Ellison Distinguished Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is known for his work on corporate strategy, global business strategy and strategic management. He is a former president of the Strategic Management Society and was the Co-Editor of Strategic Management Journal from 2007-2015.
Go to Profile#132
Arthur G. Bedeian
#24602
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Arthur G. Bedeian is an American business theorist and Emeritus Professor of Management at Louisiana State University, known from his book coauthored with Daniel A. Wren, titled "The evolution of management thought."
Go to Profile#133
Sandra Dawson
#25879
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Dame Sandra June Noble Dawson, is a British social scientist and academic. She was Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge from 1999 to 2009, making her the first woman to be master of a formerly all male College at the University of Cambridge. She was the inaugural KPMG Professor of Management Studies at the Cambridge Judge Business School.
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Joern Meissner
#31629
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Joern Meissner is a German academic, business consultant, entrepreneur and Professor of Supply Chain Management & Pricing Strategy at Kühne Logistics University in Hamburg. Biography Meissner received MA in Business Management in 1997 at the University of Hamburg, and his Ph.D. in Management Science in 2005 from the Columbia Business School under the supervision of Professors Awi Federgruen and Costis Maglaras.
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Derek Bok
#2338
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Derek Curtis Bok is an American lawyer and educator, and the former president of Harvard University. Life and career Bok was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Following his parents' divorce, he, his mother, brother and sister moved several times, ultimately to Los Angeles, where he spent much of his childhood. He graduated from Stanford University , Harvard Law School , attended Sciences Po, and George Washington University .
Go to Profile#136
Angelo Kinicki
#34944
Overall Influence
Angelo Kinicki is an Arizona State University, Professor Emeritus of management, the recipient of the Weatherup/Overby Chair in Leadership, an author and consultant. After joining the faculty in 1982, receiving his doctorate in business administration from Kent State University, he became one of the Dean's Council of 100 Distinguished Scholars at the W. P. Carey School of Business.
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Shaker Zahra
#32159
Overall Influence
Shaker A. Zahra is the Robert E. Buuck Chair of Entrepreneurship and professor of strategy and entrepreneurship, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. He is also the academic director of the Gary S. Holmes Entrepreneurship Center.
Go to Profile#138
Modesto Maidique
#14030
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Modesto Alex "Mitch" Maidique was the fourth president of Florida International University , a public university in the United States, whose main campus is named after him. Appointed in 1986, Maidique was the longest-serving university president in Florida and the second longest-serving research university president in the United States . On November 14, 2008, Maidique presented his resignation to the FIU Board of trustees. On April 25, 2009, Mark B. Rosenberg was chosen to succeed Maidique and assumed office on August 3, 2009.
Go to Profile#139
William H. Beaver
#29215
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
William H. Beaver is an accounting researcher and educator. He is the Joan E. Horngren Professor of Accounting, Emeritus, at Stanford University. Early in his career, he was professor at University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#140
Remko Van Hoek
#35040
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Remko I. Van Hoek is a professor of Supply Chain Management in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. He has held several executive roles including positions at Disney and PwC. He is also a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply and the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport.
Go to Profile#141
Aria Finger
#20957
Overall Influence
Aria Finger is the Chief of Staff to Reid Hoffman. She also co-hosts, along with Hoffman, the podcast Possible. Background Finger attended Washington University in St. Louis where she graduated magna cum laude in economics and political science in 2005.
Go to Profile#142
Kim S. Cameron
#11680
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Kim Sterling Cameron is the William Russell Kelly Professor of Management and Organizations at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He was formerly the dean of the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. He has also served as associate dean at both the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University and in the Ross School of Business.
Go to Profile#143
Linda Argote
#12274
Overall Influence
Linda Argote is an American academic specializing in industrial and organizational psychology. She is Thomas Lord Professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory in the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, where she directs the Center of Organizational Learning, Innovation and Knowledge.
Go to Profile#144
Alison Davis-Blake
#28810
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Alison Davis-Blake is an American academic administrator. She served as the eighth president of Bentley University. Before Bentley, she served as dean of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota and of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. At Ross, Davis-Blake was the school’s first female dean, and at the time of her appointment she was the highest-ranking female dean at any U.S. business school.
Go to Profile#145
Francis Longstaff
#27993
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Francis A. Longstaff is an American educator and pioneer in quantitative finance. He serves as the Allstate Professor of Insurance and Finance at the Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, and the former Finance Area Chair.
Go to Profile#146
Robert Bruner
#34487
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Robert F. Bruner is University Professor at the University of Virginia, Distinguished Professor of Business Administration, and Dean Emeritus of the Darden School of Business. He was the eighth dean of Darden and has been a faculty member there since 1982. He teaches and conducts research in finance and management at the University of Virginia and has won numerous teaching awards.
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Geoff Meeks
#30105
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Geoffrey Meeks is a British accounting scholar and Professor of Financial Accounting at the University of Cambridge, known for his work "Accounting standards and the economics of standards." Biography Meeks obtained his BA in Economics from the University of Cambridge in 1971 and a Ph.D. in Accounting and Economics from the University of Edinburgh in 1975
Go to Profile#148
Lillian Mills
#32401
Overall Influence
Lillian F. Mills is an American accountant and the first female dean of the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business. Mills completed bachelor's and master's degrees in accounting at the University of Florida in 1980 and 1981, respectively, before moving to the University of Michigan to earn a doctorate in the subject, where she was advised by Joel Slemrod and published the dissertation Essays in Corporate Tax Compliance and Financial Reporting in 1996. She was a research fellow at the United States Department of the Treasury and worked as a certified public accountant for two firms from 1981 to 1989 before joining the University of Arizona faculty in 1997.
Go to Profile#149
Philippe Jorion
#31944
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Philippe Jorion is an author, professor and risk manager. He is the author of more than 100 publications on the topic of risk management and international finance, and is credited with pioneering the Value at Risk approach to risk management.
Go to Profile#150
Pratima Bansal
#22951
Overall Influence
Pratima "Tima" Bansal is a Canadian economist and management professor. She is a professor of strategy at the Ivey Business School and director of Ivey's Centre on Building Sustainable Value. She is the founder and executive director of the Network for Business Sustainability, a vehicle aimed at sharing academic research on business sustainability with managers. In April 2020, she was appointed to chair the expert panel on the circular economy by the Council of Canadian Academies.
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