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 in Business,
#1351
Judy Dlamini
#192101
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 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 (61 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 (81 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 (78 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 (79 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 (39 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
Joseph Breen
1890 - 1965 (75 years)
Joseph Ignatius Breen was an American film censor with the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America who applied the Hays Code to film production. Early life and career Breen was the youngest of three sons born to Mary and Hugh A. Breen in Philadelphia. His father had emigrated from Ireland and met his mother Mary in New Jersey. Breen was raised in a strict Roman Catholic home and attended Gesu Parish School until the eighth grade. He then attended Boys Catholic High School. He attended Saint Joseph's College but dropped out after two years, after which he worked as a newspaper reporter for fourteen years in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.
Go to Profile#1361
Eric Kohler
1892 - 1976 (84 years)
Eric Louis Kohler was an American accountant, the author of a widely used dictionary of accounting. Life and work Kohler was born on July 9, 1892, in Owosso, Michigan. He did his undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, graduating in 1914, and went on to earn a master's degree from Northwestern University. He then worked at Arthur Andersen from 1915 to 1920 . From 1922 to 1928 he held a faculty position at Northwestern, while also working with Paul W. Pettengill for their own accounting firm, Kohler, Pettengill & Co. From 1935 to 1937 he worked again for Arthur Andersen.
Go to Profile#1362
William Rainey Harper
1856 - 1906 (50 years)
William Rainey Harper was an American academic leader, an accomplished semiticist, and Baptist clergyman. Harper helped to establish both the University of Chicago and Bradley University and served as the first president of both institutions.
Go to Profile#1363
John Whitmore
1875 - Present (151 years)
John Whitmore was an American accountant, lecturer, and disciple of Alexander Hamilton Church, known for presenting "the first detailed description of a standard cost system." Biography Whitmore had obtained his licence as Certified Public Accountant in the State of New York. He joined the firm of Patterson, Teele & Dennis where he eventually became, and worked as certified public accountant in New York.
Go to Profile#1364
John D. Rockefeller Jr.
1874 - 1960 (86 years)
John Davison Rockefeller Jr. was an American financier and philanthropist. Rockefeller was the fifth child and only son of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller. He was involved in the development of the vast office complex in Midtown Manhattan known as Rockefeller Center, making him one of the largest real estate holders in the city. Towards the end of his life, he was famous for his philanthropy, donating over $500 million to a wide variety of different causes, including educational establishments. Among his projects was the reconstruction of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. He was ...
Go to Profile#1365
Jacob van Ruisdael
1628 - 1682 (54 years)
Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael was a Dutch painter, draughtsman, and etcher. He is generally considered the pre-eminent landscape painter of the Dutch Golden Age, a period of great wealth and cultural achievement when Dutch painting became highly popular.
Go to Profile#1366
Edmund Ezra Day
1883 - 1951 (68 years)
Edmund Ezra Day was an American educator. Biography Day received his undergraduate and master's degrees from Dartmouth College and his doctorate in economics from Harvard. While at Dartmouth, he became a brother of Theta Delta Chi. In 1921 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. In 1923 he went to the University of Michigan, where he served as professor of economics, organizer and first dean of the School of Business Administration, and Dean of the University. He went on to serve as the fifth president of Cornell University from 1937 to 1949. While in office, he ...
Go to Profile#1367
Russell Conwell
1843 - 1925 (82 years)
Russell Herman Conwell was an American Baptist minister, orator, philanthropist, author, lawyer, and writer. He is best remembered as the founder and first president of Temple University in Philadelphia, as the Pastor of The Baptist Temple, and for his inspirational lecture, "Acres of Diamonds". He was born in South Worthington, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#1368
Harry Anson Finney
1886 - 1966 (80 years)
Harry Anson Finney was an American accountant, and Professor of accounting at the Northwestern University. He is known as prolific author in the field of accounting. who had written a leading textbook in accounting, entitled "Principles of accounting" .
Go to Profile#1369
Martti Saario
1906 - 1988 (82 years)
Martti Saario was a Finnish organizational theorist and Professor of Accounting at the Helsinki School of Economics, known for his development of the Finnish expenditure-revenue theory. Saario obtained his PhD at the Helsinki School of Economics in 1945 with a thesis on the "Realisointiperiaate ja käyttöomaisuuden poistot tuloslaskennassa" . He served as Professor of Accounting at the Helsinki School from 1948 until his retirement in 1971. While he focussed on financial accounting , a second Professor of accounting Henrik Virkkunen focussed on management accounting.
Go to Profile#1370
Leland Lawrence Briggs
1893 - 1975 (82 years)
Leland Lawrence Briggs was an American accounting scholar, and Professor at the University of Vermont, known as founder of The Accountants Digest, which he edited and published until 1973. Biography Briggs was born in Byron, Minnesota to Edward Wellington, a farmer, and Alice Briggs. After primary education in Byron and Rochester, Minnesota, he obtained his BA in 1923 and his MA in 1924 both at the University of South Dakota. Subsequently, he obtained MBA at Northwestern University in 1927 with the thesis, entitled "Some Legal Aspects of Goodwill." and his PhD from Harvard University in 1930...
Go to Profile#1371
Henrik Virkkunen
1917 - 1963 (46 years)
Johan Henrik Virkkunen was a Finnish organizational theorist and Professor of Accounting at the Helsinki School of Economics, whose 1954 textbook Laskentatoimijohdon apuna influenced Finnish accountancy thinking for decades.
Go to Profile#1372
Oskar Schlemmer
1888 - 1943 (55 years)
Oskar Schlemmer was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer associated with the Bauhaus school. In 1923, he was hired as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, after working at the workshop of sculpture. His most famous work is Triadisches Ballett , which saw costumed actors transformed into geometrical representations of the human body in what he described as a "party of form and colour".
Go to Profile#1373
Henry Rand Hatfield
1866 - 1945 (79 years)
Henry Rand Hatfield was an American accountant and prominent pioneer in accounting education, known as author of the 1909 "Modern accounting : its principles and some of its problems." Life and work Born in Chicago to Robert M. and Elizabeth Ann Taft Hatfield, Hatfield obtained BA on the job at the Northwestern University in 1892, and his Ph.D. in political economy at the University of Chicago in 1897.
Go to Profile#1374
Thomas Killigrew
1612 - 1683 (71 years)
Thomas Killigrew was an English dramatist and theatre manager. He was a witty, dissolute figure at the court of King Charles II of England. Life Killigrew was one of twelve children of Sir Robert Killigrew of Hanworth, a courtier to James I, and his wife Mary née Woodhouse; he became a page to King Charles I at about the age of thirteen. According to Samuel Pepys, the boy Killigrew used to volunteer as an extra, or "devil," at the Red Bull Theatre, so that he could see the plays for free. The young Killigrew had limited formal education; the Court and the playhouse were his schoolroom.
Go to Profile#1375
Christoph Martin Wieland
1733 - 1813 (80 years)
Christoph Martin Wieland was a German poet and writer. He is best-remembered for having written the first Bildungsroman , as well as the epic Oberon, which formed the basis for Carl Maria von Weber's opera of the same name. His thought was representative of the cosmopolitanism of the German Enlightenment, exemplified in his remark: "Only a true cosmopolitan can be a good citizen."
Go to Profile#1376
Dimitar Dimov
1909 - 1966 (57 years)
Dimitar Todorov Dimov was a Bulgarian dramatist, novelist and veterinary surgeon. Biography Born in Lovech, Dimov is best known for his best-selling novel Tobacco which was made into the 1962 film Tobacco directed by Nikola Korabov. The plot of Dimov's Tobacco deals with the fates of a number of characters connected to a major tobacco factory. The central thread of the plot is the story of Boris, an ambitious youth of poor origins who renounces his first love Irina to marry Maria, the heiress of the tobacco business. He proceeds to steer the business with great greed and ruthlessness. His wi...
Go to Profile#1377
Narayana Guru
1855 - 1928 (73 years)
Sree Narayana Guru was a philosopher, spiritual leader and social reformer in India. He led a reform movement against the injustice in the caste-ridden society of Kerala in order to promote spiritual enlightenment and social equality. His famous quote was "one caste one religion and one god for all men".
Go to Profile#1378
Deane Waldo Malott
1898 - 1996 (98 years)
Deane Waldo Malott was an American academic and administrator. Biography The son of a banker, Malott was born in Abilene, Kansas and went on to study at the University of Kansas. While at school there, he wrote for the University Daily Kansan and was a brother in the Alpha Nu Chapter of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity and the Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity. He graduated in 1921 with a degree in economics, and he went on to the Harvard Business School. After his 1923 graduation, he worked as an administrator at Harvard until 1929 when he was hired by the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. He re...
Go to Profile#1379
John Home
1722 - 1808 (86 years)
Rev John Home was a Scottish minister, soldier and author. His play Douglas was a standard Scottish school text until the Second World War, but his work is now largely neglected. In 1783, he was one of the joint founders of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#1380
Paul B. Coremans
1908 - 1965 (57 years)
Paul Bernard Joseph Marie Coremans was a Belgian scientist who advanced the fields of cultural heritage management and cultural heritage curation. He was the founder and first director of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage.
Go to Profile#1381
Allan Dwan
1885 - 1981 (96 years)
Allan Dwan was a pioneering Canadian-born American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter. Early life Born Joseph Aloysius Dwan in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Dwan was the younger son of commercial traveler of woolen clothing Joseph Michael Dwan and his wife Mary Jane Dwan . The family moved to the United States when he was seven years old on December 4, 1892, by ferry from Windsor to Detroit, according to his naturalization petition of August 1939. His elder brother, Leo Garnet Dwan , became a physician.
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Philip W. Bell
1924 - 1990 (66 years)
Philip Wilkes Bell was an American accounting scholar and professor of accounting, known for seeking "to bring accounting and economics closer together." Biography Bell was born in 1924 in New York City to Samuel D. Bell and Miriam Wilkes Bell. He obtained his BA in economics from Princeton University in 1947, his MA in economics from University of California, Berkeley in 1949, and back at Princeton his PhD in international economics in 1954 under guidance of Jacob Viner with the thesis, entitled "The Sterling Area in the Post-War World."
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Hidesaburō Ueno
1872 - 1925 (53 years)
Hidesaburō Ueno was a Japanese agricultural scientist, famous in Japan as the guardian of Hachikō, a devoted Akita dog. Life and career Ueno was born on January 19, 1872, in Hisai-shi , Mie Prefecture. In 1895, he graduated from Tokyo Imperial University's agriculture department, and in the same year, he entered graduate school to study agricultural engineering and farm implement research. He finished his graduate work on July 10, 1900, and he began teaching at Tokyo Imperial University, as an assistant professor. In 1902, he became an associate professor in the agricultural university.
Go to Profile#1384
James Roscoe Day
1845 - 1923 (78 years)
The Rev. James Roscoe Day, D.D., L.L.D. was an American Methodist minister, educator and chancellor of Syracuse University. Early life and education Day was born in Whitneyville, Maine, on October 17, 1845 to Thomas and Mary Plummer Hillman Day. He attended Maine Wesleyan Seminary and then studied at Bowdoin College but had to stop due to poor health; he eventually received his degree in 1874. He married Anna E. Richards of Auburn, Maine in 1873. In 1872, he was ordained a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church and served as a pastor at Bath, Maine, from 1872 to 1874; Portland, Maine, fr...
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David Leavitt
1791 - 1879 (88 years)
David Leavitt was an early New York City banker and financier. As president of the American Exchange Bank of New York during the Financial Panic of 1837 he represented bondholders of the nascent Illinois and Michigan Canal, allowing completion of the historic canal linking the Midwest with the East Coast. For his role in helping prevent the collapse of the canal scheme, Chicago authorities named Leavitt Street after the financier. Leavitt was also an early art collector, and many of the artist Emanuel Leutze's paintings, including that of Washington at Valley Forge, were initially in Leavitt'...
Go to Profile#1386
Wilbur Olin Atwater
1844 - 1907 (63 years)
Wilbur Olin Atwater was an American chemist known for his studies of human nutrition and metabolism, and is considered the father of modern nutrition research and education. He is credited with developing the Atwater system, which laid the groundwork for nutrition science in the United States and inspired modern Olympic nutrition.
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William C. Durant
1861 - 1947 (86 years)
William Crapo Durant was a leading pioneer of the United States automobile industry and co-founder of General Motors and Chevrolet. He created a system in which a company held multiple marques – each seemingly independent, with different automobile lines – bound under a unified corporate holding company. Durant, along with Frederic L. Smith, co-founded General Motors, as well as Chevrolet with Louis Chevrolet. He also founded Frigidaire.
Go to Profile#1388
George Allen
1832 - 1907 (75 years)
George Allen was an English craftsman and engraver, who became an assistant to John Ruskin and then in consequence a publisher. His name persists in publishing through the Allen & Unwin company. Early life The son of John and Rebecca Allen, he was born on 26 March 1832 at Newark-on-Trent, and was educated at a private grammar school there. His father died in 1849, and in that year he was apprenticed for four years to an uncle , a builder in Clerkenwell, London. He became a skilled joiner, and was employed for three and a half years in that capacity on the woodwork of the interior of Dorchester House, Park Lane.
Go to Profile#1389
Benjamin Graham
1894 - 1976 (82 years)
Benjamin Graham was a British-born American economist, professor and investor. He is widely known as the "father of value investing", and wrote two of the discipline's founding texts: Security Analysis with David Dodd, and The Intelligent Investor . His investment philosophy stressed investor psychology, minimal debt, buy-and-hold investing, fundamental analysis, concentrated diversification, buying within the margin of safety, activist investing, and contrarian mindsets.
Go to Profile#1390
Robert Gibson Eccles
#1391
Malcolm Burns
1910 - 1986 (76 years)
Sir Malcolm McRae Burns was a New Zealand agricultural scientist, university lecturer and administrator. Early life, education, and family Burns was born in Ashley Bank, North Canterbury, on 19 March 1910, the son of Emily Burns and John Edward Burns. He was educated at Rangiora High School, and then studied at Canterbury University College, graduating Master of Science in 1932. He won a doctoral scholarship to the United Kingdom, and completed a PhD, supervised by Albert William Borthwick and William Gammie Ogg, at the University of Aberdeen in 1934; the title of his thesis was A study of ...
Go to Profile#1392
Arnold Theiler
1867 - 1936 (69 years)
Sir Arnold Theiler KCMG Pour le Mérite is considered to be the father of veterinary science in South Africa. He was born in Frick, Canton Aargau, Switzerland. He received his higher education, and later qualified as a veterinarian, in Zurich. In 1891, Theiler travelled to South Africa and at first found employment as a farm worker on Irene Estates near Pretoria, owned by Nellmapius, but later that year started practising as a veterinarian.
Go to Profile#1393
Edward P. Moxey
1881 - 1943 (62 years)
Edward Preston Moxey Jr. was an American accountant, and the first Professor of Accounting at the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania. He is known for his early works on cost-keeping in factories, which describe the elementary principles of cost accounting.
Go to Profile#1394
Oscar Loew
1844 - 1941 (97 years)
Oscar Loew was a German agricultural chemist, active in Germany, the United States, and Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Biography Loew was born in Marktredwitz, Bavaria, where his father was a pharmacist. He studied at the University of Munich under the noted chemist Justus von Liebig; he was Liebig's last student. Loew was an assistant in plant physiology at the City College of New York and participated in four expeditions to the southwestern United States in 1882 before returning to Munich, Germany, where he collaborated with Carl Nägeli. Loew became associate professor at Munich University in 1886.
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Jean Negulesco
1900 - 1993 (93 years)
Jean Negulesco was a Romanian-American film director and screenwriter. He first gained notice for his film noirs and later made such notable films as Johnny Belinda , How to Marry a Millionaire , Titanic , and Three Coins in the Fountain .
Go to Profile#1396
William W. Hagerty
1916 - 1986 (70 years)
William Walsh Hagerty was a teacher, former NASA Adviser, and president of Drexel University. Early life Born to William Walsh Hagerty and Alice Amanda Hagerty in 1916 Hagerty was raised in Minnesota. In 1939 Hagerty received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota. Hagerty went on to receive his M.S. in 1943 and his Ph.D. in 1947 from the University of Michigan. After receiving his first degree Hagerty worked as an engineer until 1940.
Go to Profile#1397
Umetaro Suzuki
1874 - 1943 (69 years)
was a Japanese scientist, born in what is now part of Makinohara, Shizuoka, Japan. He was a member of the Imperial Academy, and a recipient of the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure and the Order of Culture. His research was among the earliest of modern vitamin research.
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George Eastman
1854 - 1932 (78 years)
George Eastman was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream. After a decade of experiments in photography, he patented and sold a roll film camera, making amateur photography accessible to the general public for the first time. Working as the treasurer and later president of Kodak, he oversaw the expansion of the company and the film industry.
Go to Profile#1399
Samuel Lowell Price
1821 - 1887 (66 years)
Samuel Lowell Price was an English accountant. He is best known for having co-founded, with William Hopkins Holyland and Edwin Waterhouse, the accountancy practice of Price Waterhouse that now forms part of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Go to Profile#1400
