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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Computer Science,
#13301
Ruby Morton Gourdine
#191604
Overall Influence
Dr. Ruby M. Gourdine is a member of the School of Social Work faculty at Howard University and has worked has a clinician, administrator, consultant, and researcher in the areas of juvenile justice, child welfare, medical social work, school social work, and social work history. Gourdine has written extensively on child welfare, teenage pregnancy, transracial adoption, females and violence, school social work, and disability content in social work curricula. She has served as principal /co- principal investigator on a number of grants in these area. In 2010, the National Association of Social Workers celebrated Gourdine as a pioneer in social work.
Go to Profile#13302
Rahul Peter Das
#12217
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Rahul Peter Das was professor of South Asian studies at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, where he was also the dean of studies of the Faculty of Philosophy I. He retired in October 2020. Das was the President of the German Association for Asian Studies from 2016 to 2019, and received the Hind Rattan Award in 2006, the Nav Rattan Award in 2009.
Go to Profile#13303
Beena Sarwar
#172754
Overall Influence
Beena Sarwar is a Pakistani journalist, artist and filmmaker focusing on human rights, gender, media and peace. She resides in Boston and is currently Editor of the Aman ki Asha initiative, that aims to develop peace between the countries of India and Pakistan. The initiative is jointly sponsored by the Jang group in Pakistan and the Times of India across the border. In March 2021, she founded the Southasia Peace Action Network or Sapan along with other peace activists from across South Asia. In August 2022, Sapan informally launched Sapan News Network, a news and features syndicated service in the making.
Go to Profile#13304
Mary Macqueen
#115433
Overall Influence
1912 - 1994 (82 years)
Mary McCartney Macqueen was an Australian artist who was known for her drawing, printmaking and mixed media works on paper. Her artistic style was expressive, gestural and experimental. Life, training and influences Macqueen was born Mary McCartney Ballantine, elder daughter of Mr and Mrs A. D. Ballantine, in Carlton, Victoria, on 29 January 1912. Inspired by her grandmother's drawings, and encouraged by her parents, she developed a love for drawing from early childhood. Her primary and secondary schooling was at the Princes Hill State School, Mount Albert Central School and the Methodist Ladies College in Melbourne.
Go to Profile#13305
Christopher Chang
#191611
Overall Influence
#13306
J. Leland Daniel
#191618
Overall Influence
Jack L. Daniel is Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Professor of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh. He conducts research and teaches courses related to African American Rhetoric and African Americans and the Mass Media. Dr. Daniel began at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown and then earned his BS degree in psychology at the Pittsburgh campus in 1963 and the MA and PhD degrees in communication at the Pittsburgh campus in 1965 and 1968, respectively. He was an American Council on Education Fellow at Stanford University in 1973-74 and is a 1986 alumnus of Harvard University’s Institute for Educational Management.
Go to Profile#13307
Timothy Ahern
#191623
Overall Influence
#13308
Mustafa Yunus Eryaman
#128946
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Mustafa Yunus Eryaman is a professor of education at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. He is specialized on educational policy, philosophy of education, curriculum theory and research, critical pedagogy, and progressive education.
Go to Profile#13309
Andrew Campbell
#138389
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Andrew Campbell is a Scottish academic, solicitor, writer and editor specialising in the fields of international banking and finance law. He currently is a professor of international banking and finance law at the University of Leeds, England. He regularly acts as Consulting Counsel for the International Monetary Fund, Washington D.C. In 2007 Campbell became a member of the advisory panel of the International Association of Deposit Insurers.
Go to Profile#13310
Reid Robison
#112270
Overall Influence
Reid Robison is an American board-certified psychiatrist known primarily for his work with psychedelic medicines. As an early adopter and researcher of the use of ketamine in psychiatry, Robison has made significant contributions to ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and other treatment modalities using ketamine for mental health conditions. He previously served as coordinating investigator for a study on MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for eating disorders, sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies , and he continues to lead research and psychiatric clinical trials involving psychedelics.
Go to Profile#13311
Chris Gustin
#132516
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Chris Gustin is an American ceramicist. Gustin models his work on the human form, which is shown through the shape, color, and size of the pieces. Education and career Though born in the Midwest, Gustin grew up in Los Angeles, where his parents managed and co-owned several commercial ceramic factories. Growing up with these influences, Gustin developed an interest in ceramics. At his first semester at the University of California—Irvine, he majored in biology and sociology and enrolled in an introductory ceramics course under John Mason. After that initial semester, Gustin quit school to continue working in one of his parents' factories, Wildwood Ceramics.
Go to Profile#13312
Simon Vaughan
#191141
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Simon Vaughan is a British film and television producer and executive producer. Vaughan began his career as a child actor after being cast as Freddie Mainwaring in the BBC series Grange Hill. In 2009 Vaughan founded Lookout Point, a London-based drama production company with his wife Justine Vaughan. At Lookout Point Vaughan acted as CEO before stepping down in January 2019, following the sale of Lookout Point to the BBC.
Go to Profile#13313
John Carroll
#76000
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
John Carroll is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. Work John Carroll is the author of Puritan, Paranoid, Remissive , Guilt , Ego and Soul , Humanism: The Wreck of Western Culture , and Intruders In The Bush: The Australian Quest For Identity . His Cambridge doctoral dissertation on epistemological anarchistic and anti-rationalist themes in Max Stirner, Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky was published as Breakout from the Crystal Palace . It was supervised by George Steiner. Puritan, Paranoid, Remissive echoed and developed upon themes in Philip Rieff's Tri...
Go to Profile#13314
Adam Rountrey
#191643
Overall Influence
#13315
Yiyan Wang
#181996
Overall Influence
Yiyan Wang is a New Zealand Chinese academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the Victoria University of Wellington. Academic career After a 1999 PhD titled 'Narrating China : Defunct capital and the fictional world of Jia Pingwa' at the University of Sydney, Wang moved to the Victoria University of Wellington, rising to full professor in 2015.
Go to Profile#13316
Nicole M. Monteiro
#191650
Overall Influence
#13317
Lacey Wallace
#120332
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Lacey M Wallace is an archaeologist and Senior Lecturer in Roman History and Material Culture at the University of Lincoln. Biography Wallace complete undergraduate studies at Boston University in 2004 before attending Queens' College, Cambridge to complete her PhD in archaeology in 2011. She worked as a research associate in Roman archaeology at Cambridge before joining the University of Lincoln in 2016. Wallace was elected as a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 26 June 2021.
Go to Profile#13318
Sam Y. Zamrik
#150785
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Sam Yusuf Zamrik is a Syrian/American mechanical and consulting engineer, and Emeritus Professor at Pennsylvania State University and expert in the field of high pressure technology, and fracture mechanics. He is more generally known as former president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2007-08.
Go to Profile#13319
Gregory S. Brown
#61608
Overall Influence
Gregory Stephen Brown is an American historian specializing in French history and cultural History. His research regards "Enlightenment France and issues of 'self-fashioning,' performance and printing, patronage, and censorship." He is the General Editor and Senior Research Fellow at the Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford, for the Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment.
Go to Profile#13320
Guido Rings
#168263
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Guido Rings is Professor of Postcolonial Studies, director of the Research Unit for Intercultural and Transcultural Studies , and Course Leader for the MA Intercultural Communication at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, United Kingdom. He was previously Reader in Intercultural Studies and Head of Modern Foreign Languages at the same institution, and he was Visiting Professor for Romance Literature and Film at the University of Düsseldorf and the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Professor Rings is also co-editor of German as a Foreign Language and Interdisciplinary Mexico , the first fully refereed internet journals in Europe for their respective fields.
Go to Profile#13321
Roger Ailes
#188825
Overall Influence
1940 - 2017 (77 years)
Roger Eugene Ailes was an American television executive and media consultant. He was the chairman and CEO of Fox News, Fox Television Stations and 20th Television. Ailes was a media consultant for US Republican presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, and for Rudy Giuliani's 1989 New York City mayoral election. In July 2016, he was forced out of Fox News after sexually harassing many female Fox employees, including on-air hosts Gretchen Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Andrea Tantaros.
Go to Profile#13322
Chris Ifediora
#190686
Overall Influence
Christian Onyebuchi Ifediora is a Nigerian medical practitioner and educator. He currently serves as an associate professor at Griffith University. He was selected as the Eminent Peace Ambassador of the International Association of World Peace Advocates in 2021.
Go to Profile#13323
Satwant Pasricha
#15445
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Satwant Pasricha is the head of Department of Clinical Psychology at NIMHANS, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences at Bangalore. She also worked for a time at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in the USA. Pasricha investigates reincarnation and near-death experiences. Pasricha co-authored the 2011 book Making sense of near-death experiences, which was Highly Commended in the Psychiatry category at the 2012 British Medical Association Book Awards.
Go to Profile#13324
Wing Hung Wong
#191672
Overall Influence
#13325
Jakub Mlynář
#191674
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
#13326
Jonny Holmstrom
#191680
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
#13327
Joshua Miele
#57573
Overall Influence
Joshua A. Miele is an American research scientist who specializes in accessible technology design. Since 2019, Miele has been Principal Accessibility Researcher at Amazon Lab126, a subsidiary of Amazon that works on hardware products. Before joining Amazon, Miele conducted research on tactile graphics and auditory displays at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in California for fifteen years. He has been blind since early childhood.
Go to Profile#13328
Caitlin Creasy
#191685
Overall Influence
#13329
Debbie Sell
#27089
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Debbie Sell, OBE, FRCSLT is a leading British speech and language therapist. Life and career Sell qualified in 1976 with a diploma in speech pathology and therapeutics from the College of Education in Leicester. Her first appointment as a speech therapist was at Whipps Cross Hospital, where she worked from 1976 to 1978. Between 1978 and 1981, she worked at St. Georges Hospital, Tooting, London. In 1981 she moved to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and was appointed head of the department of speech and language therapy in 1996. She gained her Ph.D. in 1992 from De Montfort University for...
Go to Profile#13330
Léonce Bekemans
#45461
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Léonce Bekemans is a Belgian economist and scholar of European studies. Since 2002, he holds the Jean Monnet Chair in "Globalisation, Intercultural Dialogue and Inclusiveness in the EU" at the University of Padua. He is a former professor at the College of Europe in Bruges, where he was associate professor 1991–95 and full professor 1995–2001. He has previously been a research fellow at the European University Institute.
Go to Profile#13331
Karine Sargsyan
#190877
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Karine Sargsyan is an Armenian-Austrian medical doctor, geneticist, research manager, biobanker, researcher, and educator. She currently serves as the Scientific Director of Oncobiobank at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, California, US, and Managing Director for International Biobanking and Education at Medical University of Graz, Austria, since 2019. She is also an initiator and Vice Scientific Leader, and Lecturer of the first Bologna conform M.Sc. Biobanking since 2016 and University Course Artificial Intelligence in Medicine at the Medical University of Graz starting in 2022.
Go to Profile#13332
Johann Friedrich Tolksdorf
#191698
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Johann Friedrich Tolksdorf is a German prehistoric archaeologist and researcher with the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments. Tolksdorf is also affiliated with the University of Marburg and Technische Universität Darmstadt. He specializes in prehistory, sediments, geology, and landscape archaeology.
Go to Profile#13333
Lars Burman
#93814
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Lars Jakob Vilhelm Burman, born April 1, 1958, is a Swedish professor of Literature at Uppsala University, director of Uppsala University Library, and inspector at Värmlands nation. He is married to the author Carina Burman.
Go to Profile#13334
Yoann Doignon
#191703
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (37 years)
#13335
Igor Dvornik
#190937
Overall Influence
1923 - 2010 (87 years)
Igor Dvornik was a Croatian radiation chemist. Dvornik proposed and developed two original chemical dosimetry systems based on ethanol-chlorobenzene solutions of which the one designed for high-doses is accepted as an ISO standard and is one of the most widely used dosimetry systems. His work in understanding high hydrochloric acid yield of the ethanol-chlorobenzene dosimeter led to him being among the first to propose the existence of presolvated 'dry' electron reactions.
Go to Profile#13336
Pieter Brattinga
#57138
Overall Influence
1931 - 2004 (73 years)
Pieter Dirk Brattinga was a Dutch graphic designer. From 1951 until 1974 he was director of design at Steendrukkerij De Jong & Co in Hilversum. Between 1960 and 1964 he was professor and chairman at the visual communications faculty at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
Go to Profile#13337
Deon Miles
#86872
Overall Influence
Deon Terrell Miles is an American chemist who is professor of chemistry at the Sewanee: The University of the South. His research considers the development of functionalised nanoparticles and chemistry education.
Go to Profile#13338
Steven Levy
#191711
Overall Influence
#13339
Sajjad Fazel
#147630
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
Sajjad Sherally Fazel is a Canadian clinical pharmacist, public health researcher, and the founder of Afya Yako, Tanzania's first online health promotion initiative. Afya Yako impacted thousands of Tanzanians and inspired an online health movement in Tanzania.
Go to Profile#13340
Gloria Chisum
#117052
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Gloria Twine Chisum is an experimental psychologist who eventually became a board member of the American Psychological Association, among many other organizations. An expert in visual problems associated with the operation of high-performance aircraft, she developed eyewear to protect pilots' eyes in extreme conditions like sharp turns, lightning, or nuclear explosion.
Go to Profile#13341
Jerry J. Watson
#191713
Overall Influence
#13342
Alfred Appel Jr.
#75260
Overall Influence
1934 - 2009 (75 years)
Alfred Appel Jr. was an American professor, author and journal editor noted for his investigations into the works of Vladimir Nabokov, modern art, and jazz modernism. He edited The Annotated Lolita, an edition of Nabokov's Lolita. He also authored four other books about Nabokov, literature and music.
Go to Profile#13343
Robert Heinecken
#68595
Overall Influence
1931 - 2006 (75 years)
Robert Heinecken was an American artist who referred to himself as a "paraphotographer" because he so often made photographic images without a camera. Early life and education Born in Denver in 1931, Heinecken grew up in Riverside, California, the son of a Lutheran minister. He joined the Navy in 1954 and served as a fighter pilot . Heinecken later served as an officer in the Marines, discharged as a captain in 1957.
Go to Profile#13344
Harold Richman
#122879
Overall Influence
1937 - 2009 (72 years)
Harold Richman was the founding director of Chapin Hall Center for Children, a policy research center at the University of Chicago known for pioneering methods of collecting, linking, and analyzing administrative data from public agencies to help monitor outcomes of children and youth and their families involved in U. S. public programs. He was Hermon Dunlap Smith Professor Emeritus of Social Welfare Policy at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and the College.
Go to Profile#13345
John Bamborough
#41936
Overall Influence
1921 - 2009 (88 years)
John Bernard Bamborough was a British scholar of English literature and founding Principal of Linacre College, Oxford. Bamborough was educated at The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Elstree, Hertfordshire and at New College, Oxford. After serving five years in the Royal Navy during World War II he returned to Oxford as a Fellow of first New College and then Wadham College, where between 1947 and 1961 he was in succession Dean, Domestic Bursar and Senior Tutor.
Go to Profile#13346
Patricia Collarbone
#136378
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Dame Patricia Collarbone DBE, FRSA is a British educationist, writer and speaker. She was the founding director of the London Leadership Centre and of Creating Tomorrow Ltd, a consultancy focused on leadership development and delivering self-sustaining change programmes. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1997 for services to Education.
Go to Profile#13347
Cheryl J. Sanders
#62614
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Cheryl J. Sanders is an African-American professor and scholar of Christian Ethics. Her work on womanist ethics has been influential in the development of the field. She teaches Christian Ethics at Howard University School of Divinity. Her books include Ministry at the Margins, Saints in Exile: The Holiness Pentecostal Experience in African American Religion, and Empowerment Ethics for a Liberated People: A Path to African American Social Transformation.
Go to Profile#13348
Claire Ozanne
#62638
Overall Influence
Claire Ozanne is an insect ecologist in the UK, she is Professor of Ecology and Vice-Chancellor & Rector of Liverpool Hope University. Education and career Ozanne was educated at the University of Oxford where she gained a BA and then a DPhil in Agriculture and Forest Sciences graduating in 1991.
Go to Profile#13349
Caroline Woolard
#40963
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Caroline Woolard is an American artist and organizer, whose work explores intersections between art and the solidarity economy. She primarily works collaboratively and collectively and was a founding member of Trade School, OurGoods, BFAMFAPhD and the New York City Real Estate Investment Cooperative. Woolard previously worked as an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the University of Hartford and a mentor at the School of Visual Arts. She is now working for Open Collective and Open Collective Foundation.
Go to Profile#13350
Horace Huntley
#110472
Overall Influence
Horace Huntley is a retired professor from the University of Alabama, Birmingham in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Huntley has worked extensively as a historian in the fields of Civil Rights, Labor History, Black History and African American Studies. He was the inaugural Director of the Oral History Project of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
Go to Profile