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,
#1401
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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Robert Morris
1734 - 1806 (72 years)
Robert Morris Jr. was an English-American merchant and a Founding Father of the United States. He served as a member of the Pennsylvania legislature, the Second Continental Congress, and the United States Senate, and he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. From 1781 to 1784, he served as the Superintendent of Finance of the United States, becoming known as the "Financier of the Revolution." Along with Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin, he is widely regarded as one of the founders of the financial system of the...
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Moses Montefiore
1784 - 1885 (101 years)
Sir Moses Haim Montefiore, 1st Baronet, was a British financier and banker, activist, philanthropist and Sheriff of London. Born to an Italian Sephardic Jewish family based in London, after he achieved success, he donated large sums of money to promote industry, business, economic development, education and health among the Jewish community in the Levant. He founded Mishkenot Sha'ananim in 1860, the first Jewish settlement outside the Old City of Jerusalem.
Go to Profile#1405
Luca Pacioli
1445 - 1517 (72 years)
Fra. Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli was an Italian mathematician, Franciscan friar, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci, and an early contributor to the field now known as accounting. He is referred to as the father of accounting and bookkeeping and he was the first person to publish a work on the double-entry system of book-keeping on the continent. He was also called Luca di Borgo after his birthplace, Borgo Sansepolcro, Tuscany.
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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#1407
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#1408
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.
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John Whitmore
1875 - Present (149 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.
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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 ...
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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.
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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 ...
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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.
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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" .
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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".
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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...
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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".
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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...
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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.
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John Henry MacCracken
1875 - 1948 (73 years)
John Henry MacCracken was an American academic administrator who served as president of Westminster College and Lafayette College. When he was chosen as president of Westminster College in 1899, MacCracken was the youngest college president in the United States. MacCracken was the son of Henry MacCracken, a chancellor of New York University, and the brother of Henry Noble MacCracken, a president of Vassar College.
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John Wilkes
1750 - 1810 (60 years)
John Wilkes was an English printer, bookseller and stationer. Life Wilkes was a Freeman of Winchester and proprietor of the Hampshire Chronicle. With Peter Barfoot he ran the British Directory Office in London, which published the Universal British Directory from 1790 to 1798 after obtaining a royal patent.
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Robert von Ostertag
1864 - 1940 (76 years)
Robert von Ostertag was a German veterinarian who was a native of Schwäbisch Gmünd. He studied medicine in Berlin and veterinary medicine in Stuttgart, afterwards becoming a professor of hygiene at Tierärztliche Hochschule Stuttgart and at the College of Veterinary Medicine in Berlin . In 1907 he became head of the veterinary department in the Reich Health Office in Berlin. In 1910 he traveled to German Southwest Africa in order to study diseases of sheep, and in 1913 he investigated rinderpest in German East Africa. In 1920 he became head of veterinary services in Germany.
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Toshiwo Doko
1896 - 1988 (92 years)
Toshiwo Doko was a Japanese engineer born in Mitsu District, Okayama, Manager, President and Chairman of Ishikawajima Heavy Industry and Toshiba. Background Dokō was a key manager in the Japanese economic miracle after World War II, in particular, from 1974 to 1980 when he helmed the Toshiba Corporation and was appointed chairman of the Japan Business Federation .
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Hubert Marischka
1882 - 1959 (77 years)
Hubert Marischka , brother of Ernst Marischka, was an Austrian operetta tenor, actor, film director and screenwriter. Career Marischka was born in Brunn am Gebirge, the son of Jiří Marischka, a supplier to the court of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and his wife Bertha. Hubert began work as a joiner but trained as a singer and in 1904 began a new career in operetta in the town theatre of St. Pölten in Der arme Jonathan by Karl Millöcker. He had his first success as a singer in Brno in 1906, as Danilo in Die lustige Witwe. On 27 July 1907 he sang at the premiere of the Der fidele Bauer by Leo ...
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Joseph Welles Henderson
1890 - 1957 (67 years)
Joseph Welles Henderson , born in Montgomery, Pennsylvania, was acting president of Bucknell University from 1953 to 1954. Education Henderson received his A.B. and master's degrees from Bucknell, and his law degree from Harvard Law School .
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Henry Minor Faser
1882 - 1960 (78 years)
Henry Minor Faser was an American academic administrator, life insurance business executive and political activist. He was the founding dean of the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy, the vice president of the Lamar Life Insurance Company, and a supporter of the States' Rights Democratic Party's 1948 presidential campaign.
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LeRoy D. Brown
1848 - 1898 (50 years)
LeRoy D. Brown was the first president of University of Nevada. History Nevada became a state in 1864. Its constitution mandated the establishment of a state university with departments in agriculture, the mechanic arts, and mining, along with a state normal school for teacher training. The constitution specified that the state university would be controlled by an elected Board of Regents. The Nevada Legislature established the first State University campus in Elko, Nevada. Its Preparatory Department opened for enrollment in October 1874 with the goal of enhancing Nevada's young people to be ready for college-level study.
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John Holt
1841 - 1915 (74 years)
John Holt was an English merchant, who founded a shipping line operating between Liverpool and West Africa, and a number of businesses in Nigeria, which are now incorporated in John Holt plc. Life Holt was born in Garthorpe, Lincolnshire in 1841 to the family of Thomas Godfrey Holt. In 1857, he began an apprenticeship with the firm of William and Hamilton Laird, a family business that was engaged in trade with West Africa through their agency with the African Steam Ship Company, founded by Macgregor Laird. During his time with the firm, Alfred Jones who later managed a shipping business with trade routes to West Africa was also working there.
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Margery Knight
1889 - 1973 (84 years)
Margery Knight was an algologist, artist and lecturer at the Port Erin Marine Biological Station, University of Liverpool. Career Knight was a lecturer in botany at University of Liverpool from 1912 until she retired in 1954. She was based at the University’s Port Erin Marine Biological Station on the Isle of Man.
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William V. Mong
1875 - 1940 (65 years)
William V. Mong was an American film actor, screenwriter and director. He appeared in almost 200 films between 1910 and 1939. His directing and screenwriting were mostly for short films. He was born June 25, 1875, in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and married Esme Warde. He started out as a vaudeville and stage actor, appearing in plays in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City. He made his film debut in the 1910 film A Connecticut Yankee.
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Kim Chong-hee
1922 - 1981 (59 years)
Kim Chong-hee was the founder of Hanwha Group and a leading figure of the South Korean explosives industry. Korea Explosives Corporation Kim established the Korea Explosives Corporation, a forerunner of the Hanwha Corporation, in 1952. He succeeded in domestically producing dynamite in 1957, and began its commercial production from 1958, contributing to South Korea's industrial growth by enabling the construction of the national infrastructure, including bridges, tunnels and highways.
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Paul Smith
1906 - 1985 (79 years)
Paul J. Smith was an American music composer and violinist best known for his work at Disney. Life and career Smith was born in Calumet, Michigan on October 30, 1906. Upon graduating high school, he studied music at The College of Idaho from 1923 to 1925 before he was accepted into the Bush Conservatory of Music in Chicago, Illinois. His abilities in theory and composition earned him a scholarship to study music theory at Juilliard, however, it is unclear if he ever pursued this invitation.
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Niels Johannes Fjord
1825 - 1891 (66 years)
Niels Johannes Fjord , often referred to as N. J. Fjord, was a Danish Professor at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University. He was a pioneer in dairy and milk research in the mid-1800s. He was a driving force and the first leader of the Landøkonomisk Forsøgslaboratorium on Rolighedsvej in 1883.
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Cornelius L. Keedy
1834 - 1911 (77 years)
Cornelius Luther Keedy was an American pastor, physician, and academic administrator. He served as owner and president of Kee Mar College for 25 years. Life Keedy was born March 28, 1834, in Rohrersville, Maryland to Daniel and Sophia Miller Keedy. He was admitted to Pennsylvania College and the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. Keedy was ordained to preach by the East Pennsylvania Lutheran Synod. He was licensed in 1859. He was pastor of Lutheran churches at various times at Johnstown, Riegelsville, Barren Hill, and Waynesboro. In 1860, Keedy married Elizabeth Wyatt Marbourg, the daughter of a Alexander Marbourg, a Johnstown merchant.
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George S. Patton
1856 - 1927 (71 years)
George Smith Patton was an American attorney, businessman and politician who served as Los Angeles County District Attorney and the first mayor of San Marino, California. Patton was the son of Susan Thornton Glassell and George S. Patton Sr., a Confederate colonel during the American Civil War. His mother moved to California after his father was killed during the war, and Patton was educated in Los Angeles. He returned to Virginia to attend Virginia Military Institute, from which he graduated in 1877. After studying law at his uncle's firm, he was admitted to the bar and practiced in Los Angeles.
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Daniel Massey
1798 - 1856 (58 years)
Daniel Massey was an American-born blacksmith and businessman in what is now Newcastle, Ontario, who began production of agricultural implements in 1847. Life and career Massey was born in Windsor, Vermont, to Daniel Massey Sr. and Rebecca Kelley. The Massey family originated in Cheshire, England, and arrived in America around 1630, first in Essex, Massachusetts, and later in New Hampshire and Watertown, New York.
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James White
1877 - 1927 (50 years)
James White was an English financier, property developer and speculator. From a working-class family in Lancashire, he worked at a number of jobs before becoming well known in the years before the First World War as a boxing promoter. From that, he moved into property and other transactions, making large sums of money in major deals. He became a racehorse owner and theatre proprietor.
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Harry Williams
1879 - 1922 (43 years)
Harry Hiram Williams was an American composer, lyricist, and publisher of popular music from 1903 until his death in 1922. One of his early hits, written in 1905 with Egbert Van Alstyne, is "In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree". He also produced story ideas and directed silent movies with Mack Sennett for Keystone Studios, according to Sennett's biography The King of Comedy. Williams joined The Lambs Club in 1908.
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Horace B. Carpenter
1875 - 1945 (70 years)
Horace B. Carpenter was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. He appeared in more than 330 films between 1914 and 1946. He also directed 15 films between 1925 and 1934. Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Carpenter died in Hollywood, California, from a heart attack.
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John Lynch
1825 - 1892 (67 years)
John Lynch was a nineteenth-century politician, merchant, manufacturer and newspaper publisher from Maine. Born in Portland, Maine, Lynch attended public schools as a child and graduated from Portland High School in 1842. He engaged in mercantile pursuits, was manager of the Portland Daily Press in 1862 and was a member of the Maine House of Representatives from 1862 to 1864. He was elected a Republican to the United States House of Representatives in 1864, serving from 1865 to 1873. There, Lynch served as chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of the Navy from 1869 to 1871 and of the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of the Treasury from 1871 to 1873.
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John Franklin Witter
1906 - 1982 (76 years)
John Franklin Witter was a veterinarian specialist in avian medicine as well as a researcher and professor at the University of Maine, Orono. Early life Frank Witter was born on June 11, 1906, in Frederick, Maryland, the eighth of nine children. His parents were Harry and “Jennie” Miller Witter. He was raised on a farm, and his father was a professional livestock showman. In his early life, Witter learned about different breeds of farm animals and later said that he saw farming as "a way of life".
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Rufus Carrollton Harris
1896 - 1988 (92 years)
Rufus Carrollton Harris was the president of Tulane University from 1937 to 1959 and the 12th dean of the Tulane University Law School, from 1927 to 1937. Education He completed his undergraduate studies at Mercer University and earned two law degrees at Yale University, where he completed his Juris Doctor degree in 1924.
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James H. Dolan
1885 - 1977 (92 years)
James H. Dolan, S.J. was one of the founders and the 2nd President of Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut, from 1944 to 1951. He was born to James B. and Ellen T. Dolan in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and entered the Society of Jesus on August 14, 1905, at St. Andrew-on-Hudson, Hyde Park, New York.
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Henry Adams Bellows
1885 - 1939 (54 years)
Henry Adams Bellows was a newspaper editor and radio executive who was an early member of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. He is also known for his translation of the Poetic Edda for The American-Scandinavian Foundation.
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