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 Economics,

#3151

Mardi Dungey

#116440
Overall Influence
1966 - 2019 (53 years)
Mardi Helen Dungey was an Australian macroeconomist. Birth and education Dungey was born in 1966. She graduated from the University of Tasmania with a BEc in 1988. She won a cadetship with the Reserve Bank of Australia, working there until 1994, when she commenced her PhD at the Australian National University . She completed her thesis titled "International influences on the Australian economy" in 1998.
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#3152

Lucia Foster

#97851
Overall Influence
Lucia Smith Foster is the Chief of the Center for Economic Studies and the Chief Economist at the U.S Census Bureau in Washington, D.C. Biography Foster received a B.A. in economics from Georgetown University in 1983 and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland in 1988.
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#3153

Mari Rege

#99211
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Mari Rege is a Norwegian economist and professor of economics at the University of Stavanger. Appointed there in 2009, she is the youngest such professor to be appointed in Norway. She specializes in family, gender equality, working life, and school performance issues.
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#3154

Yu-chien Kuan

#39301
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Yu-chien Kuan or Guan Yuqian was a Chinese-born German sinologist, writer and translator. The son of a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party official, he was denounced as a "rightist" and persecuted during the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution. This drove him to escape from China using a Japanese passport stolen from his workplace. He landed in Egypt and spent a year and half in prison for illegal entry, before being admitted to West Germany in 1969 as a political refugee.
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#3155

Robert A. Boyer

#144858
Overall Influence
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#3156

Philippe Baumard

#70619
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Philippe N. Baumard graduated from the University of Aix-Marseille II , and Paris Dauphine University . Philippe Baumard is an organizational scientist who has held visiting professorships at New York University from 1997 to 1998, University of California, Berkeley from 2004 to 2007, Stanford University from 2008 to 2010. He is currently professor at the French National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts , associate-researcher at École Polytechnique's Chair on Innovation & Regulation, Paris, and president of the scientific council of France's High Council for Strategic Education and Research
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#3157

Paul A. Dodd

#60686
Overall Influence
1902 - 1992 (90 years)
Paul Albert Dodd was an American educator, economist, and labor arbitrator. He served as professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1928 to 1962, and was appointed as the first director of the Institute of Industrial Relations from 1945 to 1947 at UCLA, before specializing as an educational administrator.
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#3158

Pierre‐richard Agénor

#145057
Overall Influence
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#3159

Erik Teodoor Verhoef

#145167
Overall Influence
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#3160

Bingu wa Mutharika

#49570
Overall Influence
1934 - 2012 (78 years)
Bingu wa Mutharika was a Malawian politician and economist who was President of Malawi from May 2004 until his death in April 2012. He was also President of the Democratic Progressive Party, which he founded in February 2005; it obtained a majority in Malawi's parliament in the 2009 general election.
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#3161

Thomas D. Willett

#145258
Overall Influence
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#3162

Tamim Andrew Bayoumi

#145364
Overall Influence
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#3163

Richard Gilbert

#129528
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Richard J. Gilbert is an American Economist, professor at UC Berkeley from 1976 to 2000, and founder of LECG Corp. . Richard Gilbert served as Deputy Assistant General in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in the White House from 1993 to 1995, and author of Innovation Matters: Competition Policy for the Knowledge Economy, published by M.I.T. Press. While serving for the United States Justice Department, Richard Gilbert led the development of Joint Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property. Currentl...
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#3164

William Dickens

#29700
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
William T. Dickens is an American economist. He is a University Distinguished Professor of Economics and Social Policy at Northeastern University. Career Dickens was on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley from 1980 until 1995. While on leave he served as a senior economist with the President of the United States' Council of Economic Advisers, in 1993-94 where he worked for Laura Tyson. He was a Faculty Research Fellow and then a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1982 to 1998. He was a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Inst...
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#3165

Jeffrey Liebman

#68087
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Jeffrey B. Liebman is an American economist and academic. Since 2014, Liebman has served as director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard Kennedy School. During the Obama administration, Liebman served within the Office of Management and Budget . Prior to this, Liebman was a top economic advisor for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.
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#3166

James K. Hammitt

#145548
Overall Influence
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#3167

Terence W. Hutchison

#145587
Overall Influence
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#3168

Wim van Hulst

#94861
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Wilhelmus Gijsbertus Henri van Hulst was a Dutch business economist who was Emeritus Professor Business Economics at the Tilburg University. Biography Born in Breda Van Hulst received his MA in business economics in 1965 at the Tilburg University, where in 1973 he also received his Phd for the thesis "De vervanging van duurzame produktiemiddelen" under supervision of Piet A. Verheyen.
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#3169

Robert Lensink

#145701
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
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#3170

Bruce A. Babcock

#145756
Overall Influence
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#3171

Guofu Zhou

#145808
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Guofu Zhou is an American economist, currently the Frederick Bierman and James E. Spears Professor of Finance at Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis.
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#3172

Alfons Verplaetse

#63313
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
Alfons "Fons" Remi Emiel, Viscount Verplaetse was a Belgian economist who served as Governor of the National Bank of Belgium from 1989 until 1999. He was one of the architects of the devaluation of the Belgian Frank in 1982 when he worked at the cabinet of Wilfried Martens in the government Martens V. As governor of the NBB, he prepared the entry of Belgium to the euro in 1999.
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#3173

Robert B. Noland

#145828
Overall Influence
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#3174

Massimiliano Giuseppe Marcellino

#145956
Overall Influence
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#3175

Michael J. Greenwood

#146066
Overall Influence
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#3176

Geert Rouwenhorst

#53899
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
K. Geert Rouwenhorst is the Robert B. and Candice J. Haas Professor at Yale School of Management and Deputy Director for International Financial Center at Yale. He is also a partner at SummerHaven Investment management. His work has traced the history of mutual funds through 18th century Netherlands. The International Financial Center at Yale also holds the oldest non-defaulted bond in the world.
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#3177

Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln

#55893
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln is a German economist and currently holds the Chair for Macroeconomics and Development at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research has been awarded the Gossen Prize in 2016 and the Leibniz Prize in 2018. The Leibniz award is considered to be one of the highest scientific awards in all of Germany.
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#3178

Henryk Szlajfer

#31331
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Henryk Szlajfer – Polish economist and political scientist of Jewish origin, professor at the University of Warsaw, in the years 1993–2008, director of the Department of Strategy and Policy Planning, then of the American Department and archive at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, appointed by then Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek as an ambassador ad personam, former ambassador-head of the Polish Permanent Representation to the OSCE, IAEA and other international organizations in Vienna.
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#3179

Joanna Coast

#146194
Overall Influence
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#3180

George Hilton

#64850
Overall Influence
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
George Woodman Hilton was a United States historian and economist, who specialized in social history, transportation economics, regulation by commission, the history of economic thought and labor history.
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#3181

Graham R. Bird

#146240
Overall Influence
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#3182

Isabella Weber

#85567
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Isabella M. Weber is a German economist. She is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Weber is known for having taken a position in favor of a price control policy. Her article published in The Guardian in December 2021 caused an uproar among economists.
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#3183

Murat Iyigun

Murat Iyigun
#52252
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Murat Iyigun is an American and Turkish scholar and author in the field of the economics of family, economic development, political economy and cliometrics. He is a professor at the University of Colorado.
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#3184

John Luke Gallup

#101215
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
John Luke Gallup is an American economist. Gallup got his PhD in 1994 at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1996 to 2000 he was a Research Fellow at the Center for International Development at Harvard University. From 2008 to 2009 he was Fulbright Scholar at the Vietnam University of Commerce in Hanoi. He worked with Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Mellinger on the issue of geography.
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#3185

Robert Robert H. Topel

#146464
Overall Influence
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#3186

Evangelos Kontopantelis

#146520
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
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#3187

Michael Spence

#19220
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Michael James Spence is an Australian university administrator who served as the vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Sydney from 2008 to 2020. He is currently the president and provost of University College London.
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#3188

Claudia Ringler

#146586
Overall Influence
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#3189

William Zame

#118376
Overall Influence
William R. Zame is an American economist and mathematician, and distinguished professor of economics. Dr Zame earned his PhD degree at Tulane University. Before joining the University of California, Los Angeles in 1991, he held appointments in the Mathematics Departments of Rice University, Tulane University and the State University of New York at Buffalo, and in the Economics and Mathematics Departments at The Johns Hopkins University. His research areas are Experimental Economics, Finance, Game Theory, Microeconomic. Research topics include the impact of culture on economic outcomes in diver...
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#3190

Joakim Westerlund

#146767
Overall Influence
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#3191

Robert G. Evans

#102717
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Robert G. Evans, OC, FRSC is a Canadian economist. He is currently Emeritus Professor at the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia. He was the recipient of the William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research in 2001 and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2004.
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#3192

Marcel P. Timmer

#146828
Overall Influence
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#3193

Gabriel R. G. Benito

#91360
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Gabriel Robertstad Garcia Benito is a Norwegian economist, Professor of Strategy and International Business and a previous Dean of Doctoral Studies at BI Norwegian Business School, in Oslo, Norway. He is known for his work on foreign direct investments.
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#3194

Faïz Gallouj

#146975
Overall Influence
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#3195

Laurits Rolf Christensen

#146988
Overall Influence
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#3196

Michio Morishima

#146990
Overall Influence
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#3197

Albert Satorra

#147005
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
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#3198

Peter Berck

#128611
Overall Influence
1950 - 2018 (68 years)
Peter Berck was an American economist. Berck studied mathematics and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and completed a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976. Berck returned to Berkeley as a faculty member and was named the S.J. Hall Professor of Forest Economics.
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#3199

William H. Lazonick

#147117
Overall Influence
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#3200

Peter Grossman

#118692
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Peter Z. Grossman is the Clarence Efroymson Professor of Economics, now emeritus, at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is the author of seven books, including a comprehensive history of American Express. He was a columnist for the Indianapolis Star from 2000 to 2007. Grossman earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis in 1990 and 1992, respectively, and his B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from Columbia University in 1970 and 1972, respectively.
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