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,
#1451
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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James Butler
1855 - 1934 (79 years)
James Butler was an American businessman from New York and prominent owner of racehorses and racetracks. With his cousin, Mother Marie Joseph Butler, he founded Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York in memory of his late wife.
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John Skelton
1831 - 1897 (66 years)
Sir John Skelton was a Scottish lawyer, author and administrator. He is best known for his contributions to The Guardian and Blackwood's Magazine. Life Born in Edinburgh, he was the son of James Skelton of Sandford Newton, writer to the signet, sheriff-substitute at Peterhead and original owner of Sandford Lodge, where he was brought up. His mother was Margaret Marjory Kinnear and his sister was Janet Georgina. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh. In 1854 he was admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates; but concentrated on writing.
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William Paterson
1847 - 1920 (73 years)
William Paterson was an Australian politician and businessman in Western Australia. He was a member of the unicameral Legislative Council from 1889 until its dissolution the following year, and then a member of the newly created Legislative Assembly from 1890 to 1895.
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Lucille Elizabeth Bishop Smith
1892 - 1985 (93 years)
Lucille Elizabeth Bishop Smith was an African American entrepreneur, chef, and inventor. She invented the first hot biscuit mix, and has been called "the first African American businesswoman in Texas".
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Montague Chamberlain
1844 - 1924 (80 years)
Montague Chamberlain was a Canadian-American businessman, naturalist, and ethnographer. Biography Chamberlain was born in St. John, New Brunswick, British North America. He spent the first few decades of his life as a bookkeeper and later manager of a grocery company in St. John. In his mid-twenties, he also became a dedicated amateur ornithologist. In 1883 he co-founded the American Ornithologists' Union, which today stakes its claim as "the oldest and largest organization in the New World devoted to the scientific study of birds." In 1888 Chamberlain became a resident member and editor for the Nuttall Ornithological Club, and a founding member of the American Ornithologists' Union.
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Louis L. Madsen
1907 - 1986 (79 years)
Louis Linden Madsen was an American agricultural scientist who served as president of Utah State University from 1950 to 1953 and later as a member of the Washington State University faculty. Biography Madsen was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He received his bachelor's degree at Utah State Agricultural College . He then received a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1934.
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Calvin B. T. Lee
1934 - 1983 (49 years)
Calvin Bow Tong Lee was an American educator and businessman who served as acting President of Boston University from 1970 to 1971 and Chancellor of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County from 1971 to 1976.
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George Smith
Sir George Smith of Madworthy-juxta-Exeter and Madford House, Exeter, Devon, was a merchant who served as MP for Exeter in 1604, was three times Mayor of Exeter and was Exeter's richest citizen, possessing 25 manorss. He was the grandfather of George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle KG and of John Grenville, 1st Earl of Bath .
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Thomas Brattle
1657 - 1713 (56 years)
Thomas Brattle was an American merchant who served as treasurer of Harvard College and member of the Royal Society. He is known for his involvement in the Salem Witch Trials and the formation of the Brattle Street Church.
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Harold Koontz
1909 - 1984 (75 years)
Harold D. Koontz was an American organizational theorist, professor of business management at the University of California, Los Angeles and a consultant for many of America's largest business organizations. Koontz co-authored the book Principles of Management with Cyril J. O'Donnell; the book has sold around two million copies and has been translated into 15 languages.
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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.
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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.
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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'...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Robert Gibson Eccles
#1473
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 ...
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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.
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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.
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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 .
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Eric K. Clemons
#1483
Marcel Pagnol
1895 - 1974 (79 years)
Marcel Paul Pagnol was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. Regarded as an auteur, in 1946, he became the first filmmaker elected to the . Although his work is less fashionable than it once was, Pagnol is still generally regarded as one of France's greatest 20th-century writers and is notable for the fact that he excelled in almost every medium—memoir, novel, drama and film.
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John Lloyd Newcomb
1881 - 1954 (73 years)
John Lloyd Newcomb was an American educator. He served as the second president of the University of Virginia, ascending to the position after the death of Edwin Alderman. Newcomb, a member of the engineering faculty of the university, oversaw the university through the Depression and the Second World War and managed its physical expansion, including the building of Scott Stadium, the Bayly Art Museum, and Alderman Library.
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Max Fesca
1846 - 1917 (71 years)
Max Fesca was a German specialist in agricultural science and agronomy, hired by the Meiji government of Japan as a foreign advisor from 1882 to 1894. Biography Fesca was born in Soldin, Neumark, Province of Brandenburg, Prussia as the son of a post office manager. From 1868 he studied agriculture and natural sciences at the University of Halle, and moved in 1873 to the University of Göttingen. His thesis in agricultural chemistry was based on the physical composition of tobacco leaves. He then worked for three semesters as a teaching assistant at the University of Halle. At the end of 1874 he returned to Göttingen and qualified as an expert on soil sciences.
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Sacha Guitry
1885 - 1957 (72 years)
Alexandre-Pierre Georges Guitry , known as Sacha Guitry, was a French stage actor, film actor, director, screenwriter, and playwright of the boulevard theatre. He was the son of a leading French actor, Lucien Guitry, and followed his father into the theatrical profession. He became known for his stage performances, particularly in boulevardier roles. He was also a prolific playwright, writing 115 plays throughout his career. He was married five times, always to rising actresses whose careers he furthered. Probably his best-known wife was Yvonne Printemps to whom he was married between 1919 and...
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Braxton Craven
1822 - 1882 (60 years)
Braxton Craven was an American educator. He served as the second president of the institution that became Duke University from 1842 to 1863 and then again from 1866 to 1882. The institution was known as Union Institute from 1841 to 1851, Normal College until 1859, and Trinity College until 1924. He taught ancient languages, ethics, philosophy, law, rhetoric, and logic at Duke.
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Frank Thomas Magiera
#1489
Geoffrey Peren
1892 - 1980 (88 years)
Brigadier Sir Geoffrey Sylvester Peren was an agricultural scientist, university professor, and agricultural college principal, as well as a soldier in the two world wars, serving in the Canadian, British, and New Zealand armies.
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Stephen Hemsley Longrigg
1893 - 1979 (86 years)
Stephen Hemsley Longrigg OBE was a British military governor, petroleum company manager and a leading authority on the history of oil in the Middle East. Early life and career Longrigg was born in Sevenoaks, Kent and educated at Highgate School in London, where he won the Governors' gold medal and was later Chairman of Governors from 1954 - 1965. After winning a scholarship to study Classics at Oriel College, Oxford, where he gained a 1st in Honour Moderations, he served in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment from 1914, was twice mentioned in dispatches and then returned to Oxford from Iraq for his MA degree at the end of his military service in 1921.
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Harrington Emerson
1853 - 1931 (78 years)
Harrington Emerson was an American efficiency engineer and business theorist, who founded the management consultancy firm Emerson Institute in New York City in 1900. Known for his pioneering contributions to scientific management, Emerson may have done more than anyone else to popularize the topic: His public testimony in 1910 to the Interstate Commerce Commission that the railroads could save $1,000,000 a day started a nationwide interest in the subject of "efficiency".
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John Thompson
1802 - 1891 (89 years)
John Thompson was an American banker, financial publisher, and dealer in bank notes. Early life Thompson was born in Peru, Massachusetts, near Pittsfield on November 27, 1802. He was the son of a farmer and former Revolutionary War soldier.
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Oskar Kellner
1851 - 1911 (60 years)
Oskar Johann Kellner was a German agricultural scientist . Biography Kellner was invited to teach in Japan as a foreign advisor by the Meiji government of the Empire of Japan to improve on Japanese agricultural productivity.
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Terence Fisher
1904 - 1980 (76 years)
Terence Fisher was a British film director best known for his work for Hammer Films. He was the first to bring gothic horror alive in full colour, and the sexual overtones and explicit horror in his films, while mild by modern standards, were unprecedented in his day. His first major gothic horror film was The Curse of Frankenstein , which launched Hammer's association with the genre and made British actors Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee leading horror stars of the era. He went on to film several adaptations of classic horror subjects, including Dracula , The Mummy , and The Curse of the W...
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Matthew Boulton
1728 - 1809 (81 years)
Matthew Boulton was an English businessman, inventor, mechanical engineer, and silversmith. He was a business partner of the Scottish engineer James Watt. In the final quarter of the 18th century, the partnership installed hundreds of Boulton & Watt steam engines, which were a great advance on the state of the art, making possible the mechanisation of factories and mills. Boulton applied modern techniques to the minting of coins, striking millions of pieces for Britain and other countries, and supplying the Royal Mint with up-to-date equipment.
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Dr Danny W. Scott
#1497
Charles M. Schwab
1862 - 1939 (77 years)
Charles Michael Schwab was an American steel magnate. Under his leadership, Bethlehem Steel became the second-largest steel maker in the United States, and one of the most important heavy manufacturers in the world.
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John Taylor
1781 - 1864 (83 years)
John Taylor was an English publisher, essayist, and writer. He is noted as the publisher of the poets John Keats and John Clare. Life He was born in East Retford, Nottinghamshire, the son of James Taylor and Sarah Drury; his father was a printer and bookseller. He attended school first at Lincoln Grammar School and then he went to the local grammar school in Retford. He was originally apprenticed to his father, but eventually he moved to London and worked for James Lackington in 1803. Taylor left after a short while because of low pay.
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Carman George Blough
1895 - 1981 (86 years)
Carman George Blough was an American accountant, professor of accounting, and civil servant. He is described as "one of the most influential 'high priests' of the profession in the Twentieth Century." He was inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame in 1954.
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Irving Pichel
1891 - 1954 (63 years)
Irving Pichel was an American actor and film director, who won acclaim both as an actor and director in his Hollywood career. Career Pichel was born to a Jewish family in Pittsburgh. He attended Pittsburgh Central High School with George S. Kaufman. The two collaborated on a play, The Failure. Pichel graduated from Harvard University in 1914 and went immediately into the theater. Pichel's first work in musical theatre was as a technical director for the theater of the San Francisco Bohemian Club; he also helped with the annual summer pageant, held at the elite Bohemian Grove, in which up to 300 of its wealthy, influential members from finance and government participate.
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