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,
#1351
Judy Dlamini
#192101
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Judy Dlamini is a South African businesswoman and author who is the Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand and the founding chairman of Mbekani Group. She served as chairperson of the board of Aspen Pharmacare Holdings from November 2007 until December 2015 while concurrently serving as non-executive director from July 2005 until December 2015. In 2020 the magazine Forbes called her one of Africas 50 most powerful women. In 2022, she was mentioned by Forbes as one of the 50 over 50 women leading the way throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Go to Profile#1352
William Russell
#191998
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Sir William Anthony Bowater Russell is a British financier who served as the 692nd Lord Mayor of the City of London from 2019 to 2021. Biography Educated at Eton and Durham University, graduating B.A., Russell started his career in financial services at First Boston in 1987, and joined Merrill Lynch in 1992, working in Hong Kong, New York and London, before leaving in 2006 for public service.
Go to Profile#1353
Françoise Soussaline
#191817
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Françoise Soussaline is a French biophysicist and businesswoman, a specialist in cell imaging. She studied physics at the Pierre and Marie Curie University and completed a PhD in molecular spectroscopy in 1973. She began her career as a researcher at Inserm, where she was involved in the development of the first digital scanner in nuclear medicine. She then joined the Frédéric-Joliot hospital department of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission where she developed Positron emission tomography locally as part of a second thesis in biophysics completed in 1984 at the University of Paris-Sud under the direction of Nobel Prize winner Georges Charpak.
Go to Profile#1354
James Webster
#191828
Overall Influence
1925 - 2022 (97 years)
James Joseph Webster was an Australian politician. He was a Senator for Victoria from 1964 to 1980, representing the National Country Party . He served as Minister for Science and Science and the Environment in the Fraser government. He left politics to become High Commissioner to New Zealand, serving from 1980 to 1983.
Go to Profile#1355
Justin Picard
#191687
Overall Influence
Justin Picard is a Swiss-Canadian engineer and entrepreneur who currently serves as the chief technology officer of Scantrust, a company he co-founded in 2013. He is the inventor of the copy detection pattern , a digital authentication technology for detecting product and document counterfeiting.
Go to Profile#1356
O. Richard Bundy
#89592
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Orrin Richard Bundy is an American music academic. Bundy was the director of the Penn State Athletic Bands, most notably the Penn State Blue Band. He originally joined the University Park faculty of The Pennsylvania State University in 1982 as a graduate assistant, then became Assistant Director of the Blue Band in 1988 before becoming Director in 1996. In addition to his role as director, he teaches courses in conducting, marching band techniques, instrumental music education, and band literature. He retired as director in 2015.
Go to Profile#1357
Helene Maimann
#174560
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Helene Maimann is an Austrian historian, writer, filmmaker and exhibition organizer. She won an Axel Corti Prize, and Käthe Leichter Prize. Life After studying history, German studies and philosophy in Vienna she did her doctorate in 1973 about the Austrian Exile. Between 1980 and 1994 she worked as a lecturer at the universities of Vienna and Salzburg. In the 1980s Maimann managed various exhibitions about Austria’s contemporary history. From 1995 on – after many years of work for the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft - she started working as an editor for the ORF. In addition she published numerous articles and books.
Go to Profile#1358
Michael Azzopardi
#191654
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (37 years)
Michael Azzopardi is a Maltese songwriter and designer. He released his first 4-song EP "Pistola" on February 12, 2021, with Ultralow Records. Biography Michael Azzopardi is a singer-songwriter from Malta. Having debuted his first EP, PISTOLA in February 2021, Michael's songs present an intimate and varied song arrangement with emotionally rich and often vulnerable lyrics.
Go to Profile#1359
Leo Fraser
#192102
Overall Influence
1926 - 2013 (87 years)
Leo W. Fraser, Jr. was an American lawyer, businessman, and politician. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Fraser served in the United States Marine Corps 1944–1946. He then received his degree from Northeastern University and his law degree from the New England School of Law. He was a claim adjuster in Boston. In 1970 he moved to Pittsfield, New Hampshire, serving as the New Hampshire Insurance Commissioner. In 1976 he established Fraser Financial Services in Pittsfield. A Republican, he served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives from 1985 to 1991 and then in the New Hampshire State Senate from 1991 to 2002.
Go to Profile#1360
Frank L. McVey
1869 - 1953 (84 years)
Frank LeRond McVey was an American economist, educator and academic administrator. He served as the fourth president of the University of North Dakota from 1909 to 1917 and the third president of the University of Kentucky from 1917 to 1940.
Go to Profile#1361
John Ross
1818 - 1871 (53 years)
John Ross was a Canadian lawyer, politician, and businessman. Born in County Antrim, Ireland, he was brought to Canada as an infant. Ross married twice, first to Margaret Crawford who died in 1847, secondly to Augusta Elizabeth Baldwin February 4, 1851, the daughter of Robert Baldwin. Ross was president of the Grand Trunk Railway from 1853 to 1862 when he was succeeded by Sir Edward William Watkin. In 1867, he was appointed to the Senate representing the senatorial division of Ontario. A Conservative, the Honourable John Ross served until his death in 1871 in Toronto, Ontario.
Go to Profile#1362
Dudley Hooper
1911 - 1968 (57 years)
Dudley W. Hooper MA FCA was a British businessman in the UK National Coal Board and an early President of the British Computer Society . He was an accountant and an early promoter of electronic data processing .
Go to Profile#1363
George Smith
1800 - 1868 (68 years)
George Smith was an English businessman, historian and theologian. He is now best known for historical work relating to the Methodist conference. Life Born at Condurrow, near Camborne, Cornwall, on 31 August 1800, he was the son of William Smith, a carpenter and small farmer at Condurrow , by his wife, Philippa Moneypenny . He was educated at the British and Foreign schools in Falmouth, and in Plymouth where his father retired in 1808, when the lease of his farm expired. In 1812 he returned with his parents to Cornwall, and was employed for several years in farm work and carpentering. Having ...
Go to Profile#1364
William Oliver
1885 - 1962 (77 years)
Sir William Oliver FRSE was a 20th-century Scottish business advisor and the first Professor of Organisation of Industry and Commerce. Life Oliver was born in Edinburgh in 1885. He was educated at George Watson's College. He then studied engineering at the University of Edinburgh before joining Parsons Peebles Ltd. working on power plant design and creation.
Go to Profile#1365
Jesse E. Moorland
1863 - 1940 (77 years)
Jesse Edward Moorland was an American minister, community executive, civic leader and book collector. Born in Coldwater, Ohio, he was the only child of a farming family. Moorland attended Northwestern Normal University in Ada, Ohio. Then he moved to Washington D. C., where he attended the Theological department of Howard University and earned his master's degree in 1891. He was ordained a Congressional minister. That same year he was hired as secretary of the Washington D.C. branch of the YMCA.
Go to Profile#1366
Owen Roberts
1912 - 1953 (41 years)
Owen Roberts was a British Royal Air Force officer, aviator and founder of Caribbean International Airways. Early life George Marshall Endicott Roberts was born on 17 September 1912 in London. He was a son of the former Irene Helene Murray and Marshall Owen Roberts , an American who became a British subject.
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William Robinson
1840 - 1921 (81 years)
William Robinson was an American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer and businessman. He invented the first track circuit used in railway signaling, a major development that improved railroad safety and efficiency.
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Timothy Brown
1743 - 1820 (77 years)
Timothy Brown was an English banker, merchant and radical, known for his association with other radicals of the time, such as John Horne Tooke, Robert Waithman, William Frend, William Cobbett, John Cartwright and George Cannon; his political views gave him the nickname "Equality Brown". He was also one of the early partners of Whitbread, and became the master of the Worshipful Company of Brewers.
Go to Profile#1369
William Parker
1793 - 1873 (80 years)
William Parker was an American businessman and politician, who served as acting mayor of Boston, Massachusetts in early 1845. He was an unsuccessful candidate in the 1844–45 and 1847 Boston mayoral elections.
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James Law
1838 - 1921 (83 years)
James Law was a Scottish veterinary surgeon who became the first veterinary professor at an American university, teaching biology, agriculture and veterinary medicine at Cornell University from 1868.
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Li Zhaohuan
1898 - 1969 (71 years)
Li Zhaohuan , also known as Juwan Usang Ly, was a Chinese educator, politician and banker. He served as President of National Chiao Tung University and the last President of Hangchow University. Biography Li was born in Nanhai County, Guangdong Province in 1898. Li's courtesy name was Yaosheng .
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Marie Stopes
1880 - 1958 (78 years)
Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes was a British author, palaeobotanist and campaigner for eugenics and women's rights. She made significant contributions to plant paleontology and coal classification, and was the first female academic on the faculty of the University of Manchester. With her second husband, Humphrey Verdon Roe, Stopes founded the first birth control clinic in Britain. Stopes edited the newsletter Birth Control News, which gave explicit practical advice. Her sex manual Married Love was controversial and influential, and brought the subject of birth control into wide public discourse.
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Ferdinand Victor Alphons Prosch
1820 - 1885 (65 years)
Ferdinand Victor Alphons Prosch was a Danish doctor, veterinarian and biologist. Prosch's father, Johannes Henrik William Prosch was a secretary in the Danish War Chancery and his mother, Caroline Sophie was French. In 1837 Prosch was a student at the Metropolitan School in Copenhagen and by 1843 he had taken his medical exams. Between 1843 and 1846 Prosch was employed by the university as a prosector, i.e. a preparer of specimens for dissection in the university's Zoological museum.
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Horace Mann Bond
1904 - 1972 (68 years)
Horace Mann Bond was an American historian, college administrator, social science researcher and the father of civil-rights leader Julian Bond. He earned graduate and doctoral degrees from University of Chicago at a time when only a small percentage of any young adults attended any college. He was an influential leader at several historically black colleges and was appointed the first president of Fort Valley State University in Georgia in 1939, where he managed its growth in programs and revenue. In 1945, he became the first African-American president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
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Mac McMeekan
1908 - 1972 (64 years)
Campbell Percy "Mac" McMeekan was a New Zealand university professor, agricultural scientist and administrator. McMeekan was born in Otaki, New Zealand, in 1908. He received his secondary education at Midhirst School and then at New Plymouth Boys' High School. He had further training at Stratford Technical High School before starting at Victoria University College in agriculture in 1927. After a merger, he continued at the newly-formed Massey Agricultural College in Palmerston North from the following year, from where he graduated in 1932. He remained as a lecturer at Massey and then did further study at the University of Cambridge where he gained his PhD.
Go to Profile#1376
Sydney Harland
1891 - 1982 (91 years)
Sydney Cross Harland was a British agricultural botanist with considerable international experience. His area of expertise was especially in the growing of cotton. Early life and education Sydney Cross Harland was born in Snainton in Yorkshire on 19 June 1891, the son of Erasmus Harland and his wife Eliza. He was educated at the municipal secondary school in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.
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Benn Konsynski
Benn Konsynski has been the George S. Craft Distinguished University Professor of Information Systems and Operations Management at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University since 1994. Previously, he spent six years on the faculty at the Harvard Business School, where he taught in the MBA program and several executive programs. He also served as professor at the University of Arizona, where he was a co-founder of the university's multimillion-dollar group decision support laboratory. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Purdue University. He did a dissertation on "Computer Aided Logical Applications Software Design" under advisors Jay Frank Nunamaker, Jr.
Go to Profile#1378
Henry C. Metcalf
1867 - 1942 (75 years)
Henry Clayton Metcalf was an early American organizational theorist, Professor of Political Science at Tufts College in Massachusetts, and Chairman of Tufts College. He is best known from his publications on management with Ordway Tead and Lyndall Urwick.
Go to Profile#1379
William O. Hotchkiss
1878 - 1954 (76 years)
William Otis Hotchkiss was the third president of Michigan Technological University and the tenth president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Biography He was born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin on September 17, 1878. He earned a geology degree in 1903, a civil engineering degree in 1908 and a Ph.D. in 1916, all from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Go to Profile#1380
Kenyon L. Butterfield
1868 - 1935 (67 years)
Kenyon Leech Butterfield was an American agricultural scientist and college administrator known for developing the Cooperative Extension Service at the Land Grant Universities. He was president of the Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts ; the Massachusetts Agricultural College , and the Michigan Agricultural College, from 1924 to 1928.
Go to Profile#1381
Edward Conradi
1869 - 1944 (75 years)
Edward Conradi served as President of Florida State College for Women from 1909 to 1941, and as President Emeritus from 1941 until his death in 1944. He was born on 20 February 1869 in New Bremen, Ohio. Conradi received bachelor's and master's degrees from Indiana University Bloomington, and completed a Ph.D. in Psychology from Clark University in 1904.
Go to Profile#1382
James Graaskamp
1933 - 1988 (55 years)
James A. "Jim" Graaskamp was a professor and department chairman of real estate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is credited with developing a multi-faceted ethics-based curriculum now widely used in teaching real estate.
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William Weipers
1904 - 1990 (86 years)
Sir William Lee Weipers, FRCVS FRSE was a Scottish veterinary surgeon and educator. Glasgow University's Weiper Memorial Lecture is named in his honour as is the Weipers Centre for Equine Welfare. He was President of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons for the period 1963/64.
Go to Profile#1384
Michiyo Tsujimura
1888 - 1969 (81 years)
Michiyo Tsujimura was a Japanese agricultural scientist and biochemist whose research focused on the components of green tea. She was the first woman in Japan to receive a doctoral degree in agriculture.
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Arthur F. Whittem
1879 - 1958 (79 years)
Arthur Fisher Whittem was the Chairman of Commission on Extension Courses and Director of the University Extension at Harvard University from 1922 to 1946. He was the second person to hold the position.
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Adolph Matz
1905 - 1986 (81 years)
Adolph Matz was a German/American organizational theorist, and Professor of Accounting at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, known for his work on cost accounting. Life and work Matz was born in Karlsruhe or Heidelberg, Germany and started his studies in Weimar Republic. In the early 1930s he came to the United States, and obtained the American citizenship in 1933. He obtained his BA in 1932 at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he also obtained his MA in 1933 and his PhD in 1937. He started his academic career at the Wharton School of the Universit...
Go to Profile#1387
George Colby Chase
1844 - 1919 (75 years)
George Colby Chase was an American intellectual and professor of English who served as the second President of Bates College succeeding its founder, Oren Burbank Cheney, from March 1894 to November 1919.
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John A. Gilruth
1871 - 1937 (66 years)
John Anderson Gilruth was a Scottish-Australian veterinary scientist and administrator. He is particularly noted for being Administrator of the Northern Territory from 1912 to 1918, when he was recalled after an angry mob demanded that he resign. This incident is known as the Darwin Rebellion.
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Louis-Joseph Alcide Railliet
1852 - 1930 (78 years)
Louis-Joseph Alcide Railliet was a French veterinarian and helminthologist. Professor at the Veterinary School of Alfort, he is considered one of the founders of modern parasitology and wrote several books of veterinary parasitology. He chaired the Société zoologique de France in 1891. He was a member of the French Académie Nationale de Médecine, from 29 December 1896 to his death. He received the Legion of Honor.
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Margarete von Wrangell
1877 - 1932 (55 years)
Margarethe Mathilde von Wrangell, after 1928 Princess Andronikow, née Baroness von Wrangell was a Baltic German agricultural chemist and the first female full professor at a German university. Studies and early professional years Margarete von Wrangell originated from the old Baltic German noble house of Wrangel. She spent her childhood in Moscow, Ufa and Reval . She attended a German girls’ school in Tallinn. After passing the teachers' qualifying examination with honours in 1894, she gave private lessons in science for several years. She also occupied herself in painting and writing short stories.
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Frederick Hilgendorf
1874 - 1942 (68 years)
Frederick William Hilgendorf was a New Zealand teacher, lecturer and agricultural scientist. He was born in Waihola, South Otago, New Zealand on 23 January 1874. In 1935, he was awarded the King George V Silver Jubilee Medal. The Hilgendorf Wing at Lincoln University was named after him.
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Sydney Dodd
1874 - 1926 (52 years)
Sydney Dodd, FRCVS , was a British veterinary surgeon and scientist. He contributed to the development of bacteriology and protozoology in England, South Africa and Australia. Dodd established a research station in Queensland that was to become the Animal Research Institute, and he was the first lecturer in veterinary bacteriology at the University of Sydney. He became one of the foremost bacteriologists in Australia.
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Ravi J. Matthai
1927 - 1984 (57 years)
Ravi John Matthai was an educationist and a professor and the first full-time Director of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He is also the co-founder, along with Dr. K. Varghese, of Institute of Rural Management, Anand.
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Feliks Młynarski
1884 - 1972 (88 years)
Feliks Młynarski was a Polish banker, philosopher and economist. Biography Feliks Młynarski was born to Jan Młynarski, a school teacher, and Honorate née Dziurzyńska. He attended a gymnasium in Jarosław, but because of his involvement in organizing meetings in favor of Polish independence, he was expelled by the Austrian authorities, and had to finish his secondary education at a school in Sanok, in 1903.
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William Tecumseh Sherman
1820 - 1891 (71 years)
William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War , achieving recognition for his command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the scorched-earth policies that he implemented against the Confederate States. British military theorist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart declared that Sherman was "the most original genius of the American Civil War" and "the first modern general".
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Vannevar Bush
1890 - 1974 (84 years)
Vannevar Bush was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development , through which almost all wartime military R&D was carried out, including important developments in radar and the initiation and early administration of the Manhattan Project. He emphasized the importance of scientific research to national security and economic well-being, and was chiefly responsible for the movement that led to the creation of the National Science Foundation.
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Henry Villard
1835 - 1900 (65 years)
Henry Villard was an American journalist and financier who was an early president of the Northern Pacific Railway. Born and raised by Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard in the Rhenish Palatinate of the Kingdom of Bavaria, Villard clashed with his more conservative father over politics, and was sent to a semi-military academy in northeastern France. As a teenager, he emigrated to the United States without his parents' knowledge. He changed his name to avoid being sent back to Europe, and began making his way west, briefly studying law as he developed a career in journalism. He supported John C....
Go to Profile#1398
Margaret Sanger
1879 - 1966 (87 years)
Margaret Higgins Sanger , also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
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Douglas McGregor
1906 - 1964 (58 years)
Douglas Murray McGregor was an American management professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and president of Antioch College from 1948 to 1954. He also taught at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. His 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise had a profound influence on education practices.
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Luther Burbank
1849 - 1926 (77 years)
Luther Burbank was an American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science. He developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55-year career. Burbank's developments included those of fruits, flowers, grains, grasses, and vegetables. He developed a spineless cactus and the plumcot.
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