The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Economics,
#2851
Mauro Panteghini
#131186
Overall Influence
#2852
Euclid Tsakalotos
#75734
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Euclid Stefanou Tsakalotos is a Greek economist and politician who was Minister of Finance of Greece from 2015 to 2019. He is also a member of the Central Committee of Syriza and has represented Athens B in the Hellenic Parliament since May 2012.
Go to Profile#2853
Aleksander Surdej
#89575
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Aleksander Surdej is a Polish economist and scientist who since 2023 serves as an Ambassador to Vietnam; previously he was permanent representative to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development . His research interests focus on the methodology of policy analysis, labour market policies and policies of social regulations.
Go to Profile#2854
Björn Bjerke
#29974
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Björn Bjerke was a Swedish economist, professor in entrepreneurship and small firms at Stockholm University, known for the 1997 book "Methodology for Creating Business Knowledge" written with Ingeman Arbnor.
Go to Profile#2855
Pier Carlo Padoan
#76966
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Pier Carlo Padoan is an Italian economist who served as Minister of Economy and Finance of Italy from 2014 to 2018. Padoan was director of the International Monetary Fund for Italy from 2001 to 2005. On 1 June 2007, he became Deputy Secretary General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development .
Go to Profile#2856
John Lorne Campbell
#131434
Overall Influence
#2857
Mariarosa Dalla Costa
#24955
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Mariarosa Dalla Costa is an Italian autonomist feminist and co-author of the classic The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, with Selma James. This text launched the "domestic labour debate" by re-defining housework as reproductive labor necessary to the functioning of capital, rendered invisible by its removal from the wage-relation.
Go to Profile#2858
Wim N. J. Groot
#131458
Overall Influence
#2859
Michael Lechner
#131476
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
#2860
Garance Genicot
#69711
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Garance Genicot is a Belgian-American economist and associate professor of economics at Georgetown University. She is a member of the Core Group at Theoretical Research in Development Economics , a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research Development Economics Program, a research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in both the Political Economy Program and in the Development Economics Program, a Fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development and a research fellow at the IZA Institute. From 2013 to 2018, she served as an External Member of the World Bank Research Management Committee.
Go to Profile#2861
Thomas Hyclak
#109313
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Thomas Hyclak is an American economist and Economics Professor. He has acted as the chair of the economics department of Lehigh University of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and is now the Interim Dean of their business school. Most of his research has to do with labor studies, urban-regional economics, and wage studies. He is currently studying labor aspects of the transition to a market economy in Poland. He has published numerous academic papers on regional unemployment, wage and income inequality, gender and racial wage differentials and human resource management practices. Notably, he is the a...
Go to Profile#2862
Andrey Piontkovsky
#9699
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Andrey Andreyevich Piontkovsky is a Russian scientist and political writer and analyst, a member of International PEN Club. He is a former member of the Russian Opposition Coordination Council. Biography He graduated from the Mathematics Department of Moscow State University and has published more than a hundred scientific papers on applied mathematics.
Go to Profile#2863
Mário Centeno
#83672
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Mário José Gomes de Freitas Centeno is a Portuguese economist, university professor, and politician. From 2015 to 2020, he was Minister of Finance of Portugal in the government cabinet of Prime Minister António Costa of the Portuguese Socialist Party . He was the president of the Eurogroup and chairman of the board of Governors of the European Stability Mechanism from 2018 to 2020. Previously, he was a board member economist of the Bank of Portugal. On 9 June 2020, he announced his resignation from the Ministry of Finance, effective 15 June. On 16 July 2020, the Council of Ministers approved ...
Go to Profile#2864
Chinhui Juhn
#116682
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Chinhui Juhn is the Henry Graham Professor of Economics at the University of Houston, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Research Fellow of IZA Institute of Labor Economics. She graduated from Yale University in 1984, and completed her PhD in economics at the University of Chicago in 1991. She is an Editor of the American Economic Review, one of the most cited journals in the world. Together with her husband, Edward R. Allen III, she is a patron of the arts in Houston.
Go to Profile#2865
Patrick Clawson
#36429
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Patrick Lyell Clawson is an American economist and Middle East scholar. He is currently the Director for Research at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and senior editor of Middle East Quarterly.
Go to Profile#2866
Albert Wagelmans
#94581
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Albert Peter Marie Wagelmans is a Dutch economist and Professor of Management Science at the Erasmus School of Economics of the Erasmus University Rotterdam working in the fields of mathematical optimization methods for production, public transport and health care planning.
Go to Profile#2867
Don Patinkin
#131740
Overall Influence
#2868
Siem Jan Koopman
#131825
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
#2869
Jo Ann Schmitt
#131858
Overall Influence
#2870
Neil Conn
#74917
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Neil Raymond Conn, is an Australian economist and former Administrator of the Northern Territory . Conn was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II as Lord Prior of the Order of Saint John in 2014. He was succeeded by Sir Malcolm Ross in 2016.
Go to Profile#2871
Friederike Welter
#131892
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
#2872
Ioana Marinescu
#105622
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Ioana Elena Marinescu is an associate professor of public policy at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a columnist for Libération, whose research is widely covered in the popular media.
Go to Profile#2873
Frits Bolkestein
#43835
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Frederik "Frits" Bolkestein is a Dutch retired politician and businessman who served as Leader of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy from 1990 to 1998 and European Commissioner for Internal Market from 1999 until 2004 under Romano Prodi. Bolkestein studied Mathematics at the Oregon State University getting a Bachelor of Mathematics degree and continued his study at the University of Amsterdam obtaining a Master of Mathematics degree followed by a postgraduate education in Philosophy and Greek literature at his alma mater obtaining Masters of Philosophy and Arts degrees, followed by...
Go to Profile#2874
Hideki Kandori
#132058
Overall Influence
#2875
Susanne Schennach
#115413
Overall Influence
Susanne Maria Schennach is an economist and professor at Brown University. She is an econometrician whose work focuses on measurement error. Schennach has been an assistant editor at The Econometrics Journal, Econometric Theory, and Econometrica.
Go to Profile#2877
Sylvie Fogiel Bijaoui
#54018
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Sylvie Fogiel-Bijaoui is a professor of sociology at College of Management in Israel. Her research is in the field of equality in the modern and post-modern era. Biography Fogiel-Bijaoui was raised in Paris. In 1969, at the age of 18, she made aliyah to Israel and attended ulpan at Kibbutz Ma'abarot.
Go to Profile#2878
Ronan Lyons
#40293
Overall Influence
Ronan Lyons OBE FFPH FFPHMI FLSW is the inaugural Clinical Professor of Public Health at Swansea University Medical School. He is Director of the National Centre for Population Health and Wellbeing Research , Director of the Farr Institute Centre for the Improvement of Population Health through E-records Research , Co-director of the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage system, co-director of the Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement , and co-director of the Administrative Data Research Centre Wales.
Go to Profile#2879
Nebojša Nakićenović
#132334
Overall Influence
#2880
Tony Lawson
#132356
Overall Influence
#2881
Harvey M. Wagner
#37537
Overall Influence
1931 - 2017 (86 years)
Harvey Maurice Wagner was an American management scientist, consultant, and Professor of Operations Research and Innovation Management at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, known for his books on Operations Research and his seminal work on the dynamic lot-size model with Thomson M. Whitin.
Go to Profile#2882
Phillip Levine
#87548
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Phillip B. Levine is the Katharine Coman and A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Wellesley College. He is known for his research on the effect of interventions intended to benefit disadvantaged youth, as well as factors that affect the rate of teenage childbearing in the United States. His research has included a study reporting a beneficial effect of Sesame Street on academic achievement in elementary school children. He is also the founder of MyinTuition, a tool that aims to calculate the actual amount a prospective college student will have to pay in tuition, based on students' income, investments, and homeownership.
Go to Profile#2883
Anu Muhammad
#54683
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Anu Muhammad Anisur Rahman, better known as Anu Muhammad , is a Bangladeshi economist, public intellectual, writer, editor, and political activist. He is the member-secretary of the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports.
Go to Profile#2884
Christopher J. Mayer
#95923
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Christopher "Chris" J. Mayer is an American economist. He is the Paul Milstein Professor of real estate at Columbia Business School, where he is also the research director of the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate. He has also been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Go to Profile#2885
Eric Edmonds
#109341
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Eric Edmonds is a development economist and Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. His research focuses on child and forced labor, human trafficking, youth migration, and human capital in developing countries with the purpose of improving policy in these areas.
Go to Profile#2886
Mikhail Mishustin
#31368
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Mikhail Vladimirovich Mishustin is a Russian politician and economist serving as the prime minister of Russia since 16 January 2020. He previously served as the director of the Federal Taxation Service from 2010 to 2020.
Go to Profile#2887
Lajos Bokros
#67156
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Lajos András Bokros is a Hungarian economist, who served as Minister of Finance from 1995 to 1996. He was a Member of the European Parliament for Hungary in the 2009–2014 session. He was the leader of the Movement for a Modern Hungary, which he founded in April 2013, and sat in the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament. The Bokros package was named after him.
Go to Profile#2888
Gerhard Scherhorn
#64686
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Gerhard Scherhorn was a German Professor and economist. Career Doctoral thesis on "Needs and Wants" 1959Qualification as a university lecturer in Economics at the University of Cologne 1965Professor of Economics at the Academy of Economy and Policy, Hamburg, 1966-75 Professor of Consumer Economics at Hohenheim University, Stuttgart, 1975–98In 1993, Seghorn formed the project group "Ethical-Ecological Rating" together with Johannes Hoffmann. This resulted in 1997 in the Frankfurt-Hohenheim Leitfaden, which was the first criteriology for the ethical evaluation of companies and capital investme...
Go to Profile#2889
James A. Wilcox
#93607
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
James A. Wilcox is a former James J. and Marianne B. Lowery Chair and professor of economics at Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. A current employee at CRA International and research fellow at Filene Research Institute, Wilcox was a professor of economics since 1978. He obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University and BA in history and economics from Binghamton University. From 1990 to 1991, Wilcox was a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers during last term of President George H. W. Bush. He then served as an economist for the Federal ...
Go to Profile#2890
Lubos Pastor
#101069
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Lubos Pastor is a Slovakian-American financial economist, currently the Charles P. McQuaid Professor of Finance and Robert King Steel Faculty Fellow at Booth School of Business, University of Chicago. He earned his Ph.D. in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#2891
Jan Oosterhaven
#118764
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Jan Oosterhaven is a Dutch economist, who currently is Professor of Spatial Economics at the University of Groningen. Before that, he held positions as associate and assistant professor at the same university since 1970. Between 1985 and 1986, he was a visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, teaching urban economics, and between 1998 and 1999 was as a senior consultant for TNO.
Go to Profile#2892
John A. Laitner
#84648
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
John A. "Skip" Laitner is an American-born economist, author and lecturer. He focuses on developing a more robust technology and behavioral characterization of energy efficiency resources for use in energy and climate economic policy models.
Go to Profile#2893
Radhika Balakrishnan
#73479
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Radhika Balakrishnan is the faculty director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University. Currently, she serves as the Chair of the Board of the United States Human Rights Network and Chair on the Board of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Commissioner for the Commission for Gender Equity for the City of New York, and President of the International Association for Feminist Economics for 2020-2021.
Go to Profile#2894
Frederick E. Jr. Webster
#133217
Overall Influence
#2895
Chuck Benbrook
#61300
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Charles M. "Chuck" Benbrook is an American agricultural economist, pesticide litigation consultant and former adjunct professor with the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State University. Benbrook was also the scientific advisor for the Organic industry research organization "The Organic Center" from 2004 to June 2012.
Go to Profile#2896
Angus Grimard Franque Deaton
#133282
Overall Influence
#2897
Gary Burtless
#88491
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Gary Burtless is an American economist. He received his A.B. from Yale University in 1972 and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977. He worked as an economist from the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from 1977 to 1979 and the U.S. Department of Labor from 1979 to 1981.
Go to Profile#2898
Markus Schwaninger
#84670
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Markus Schwaninger is an Austrian economist and Professor of Management at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and Director of the International World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics. He is known for his co-authorship of the St. Galler Management-Model.
Go to Profile#2899
B Dayakar Rao
#103684
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
B Dayakar Rao is an Indian Agricultural Economics scientist, who works as Principal Scientist at the Indian Institute of Millets Research. Biography Rao was born in Warangal. He obtained both his Bachelors and master's degree from PJTSAU, Hyderabad and obtained a PhD from NDRI, Karnal. He worked briefly at the Indian Institute of Horticultural Research Institute , Bangalore, where he worked on Betel vine, before he joined IIMR, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad in 1993.
Go to Profile#2900
Elizabeth Hoffman
#66225
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Celia Elizabeth Hoffman was executive vice president and provost of Iowa State University from 2007 to 2012, where she remains as professor of economics. From 2000 to 2005, she was president of the University of Colorado System, where she is president emerita. She is also a senior distinguished fellow at the Searle Center on Law, Regulations, and Economic Growth at Northwestern University School of Law, and serves on numerous for-profit and non-profit Boards. She served on the National Science Board from 2002 to 2008. Her published research is in the areas of Experimental economics, Cliom...
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