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,
#3601
Georges Zaccour
#167746
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
#3602
Rebecca Diamond
#73841
Overall Influence
Rebecca Diamond is Class of 1988 Professor of Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business and an associate editor of Econometrica and American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. Her research areas include urban economics and labor economics.
Go to Profile#3603
Zeyyat Hatiboğlu
#113244
Overall Influence
1925 - 2018 (93 years)
Zeyyat Hatiboğlu was a Turkish professor of economics and business administration at Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey. He also served on the board of trustees of Doğuş University. Career Zeyyat Hatiboğlu completed elementary school and high school in Trabzon, Turkey, his birthplace. He obtained his BA in economics at Istanbul University in 1946 and his Ph.D. in economics at Istanbul University in 1950. He became an assistant professor at Istanbul Technical University and became an associate professor in 1952 and a full professor in 1962. He completed post-doctoral studies at Ha...
Go to Profile#3604
Joeri Rogelj
#109636
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Joeri Rogelj is a Belgian climate scientist working on solutions to climate change. He explores how societies can transform towards sustainable futures. He is a Reader in Climate Science and Policy at the Centre for Environmental Policy and Director of Research at the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and Environment, both at Imperial College London. He is also affiliated with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. He is an author of several climate reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations Environment Programme , and a member of t...
Go to Profile#3605
Flavio Delbono
#120808
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Flavio Delbono is an Italian politician and economist. He served as the mayor of Bologna from 25 June 2009 until 28 January 2010, when he was forced to resign as he was being investigated for crimes such as embezzlement, fraud and aggravated abuse of office following allegations made by his former lover.
Go to Profile#3606
Yannis Bakos
#30104
Overall Influence
Yannis Bakos is a professor at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University. His primary area of expertise is the economic and business implications of information technology, the Internet, and online media. He is the co-founder of the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics , and the co-inventor of Flexplay DVDs.
Go to Profile#3607
David Chadwick Smith
#72701
Overall Influence
1931 - 2000 (69 years)
David Chadwick Smith was a Canadian economist, and the sixteenth Principal of Queen's University from 1984 to 1994. In 1993, he was made a member of the Order of Canada. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1976.
Go to Profile#3608
David W. Slater
#24402
Overall Influence
1921 - 2010 (89 years)
David Walker Slater was a Canadian economist, civil servant and former President of York University. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, he received a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1942 from the University of Manitoba. After serving with the Canadian Army in World War II in Europe , he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics in 1947 from Queen's University. He received a Master of Arts degree in 1950 and a Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#3609
David Coates
#135812
Overall Influence
1946 - 2018 (72 years)
David Coates was a British-American political economist. Coates earned an undergraduate degree at the University of York in 1967 and completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of Oxford in 1979. He began teaching prior to earning an advanced degree, serving as lecturer at the University of York from 1970 to 1971, and moving to the University of Leeds in 1977. Coates left Leeds in 1995 for the University of Manchester, and became the Worrell Chair in Anglo-American Studies at Wake Forest University in 1999. He died on 7 August 2018, aged 71.
Go to Profile#3610
Larry D. Singell
#110524
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Larry D. Singell is an American economist and Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is known for work in applied economics, for example on the effects of green belts on residential property, and the National Maximum Speed Law.
Go to Profile#3611
Francisco Rodríguez
#70042
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Francisco R. Rodríguez is a Venezuelan economist. From 2000 to 2004, he served as the head of the economic and financial advisory of the Venezuelan National Assembly . He also joined Torino Economics, the economic analysis branch of New-York based Torino Capital, as chief economist between 2016 and 2019, and served as policy advisor for presidential candidate Henri Falcón in 2018.
Go to Profile#3612
Gilbert Blardone
#128582
Overall Influence
1925 - 2021 (96 years)
Gilbert Blardone was a French economist. Biography Born into a family of artisans, Blardone studied law, earning his law license. He then earned a doctorate in economic sciences from the Sorbonne. Once certified, Blardone began working for the Catholic University of Lyon and the Institut d'études politiques de Lyon as an associate professor. From 1960 to 1980, he served as director of the Institute for Applied Social Sciences of the Catholic University of Lyon. He was a longtime friend and follower of François Perroux, a professor at the Collège de France. He was also a close friend of Mauric...
Go to Profile#3613
Ken Froewiss
#84897
Overall Influence
Kenneth C. Froewiss was a Clinical Professor of Finance at the New York University Stern School of Business, and specialized investment banking, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate governance. Professor Froewiss also taught for the TRIUM Global Executive MBA Program, an alliance of NYU Stern, the London School of Economics and HEC School of Management, and served as Academic Director of Executive Programs at NYU Stern.
Go to Profile#3614
Stephen T. Parente
#78537
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Stephen T. Parente is an American health economist. He currently serves as a Professor of Finance and the Minnesota Insurance Industry Chair at the Carlson School of Management and Finance at the University of Minnesota. In April 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Parente to be Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
Go to Profile#3615
B. Espen Eckbo
#109435
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
B. Espen Eckbo is an American economist, currently the Tuck Centennial Professor at Dartmouth College.
Go to Profile#3616
Ann Dryden Witte
#123178
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Ann Dryden Witte is an American economist, known for her work on "a variety of interesting and eclectic problems" and as a "prolific author of books, monographs, and professional articles". She is a professor emerita of economics at Wellesley College, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Go to Profile#3617
Elisabet Rutström
#130061
Overall Influence
Eva Elisabet Rutström is a Swedish born experimental economist, and an accomplished field researcher in individual decision making and interactive group behaviors. Over the last 40 years she has worked as an instructor and researcher at universities in Canada, the United States, and Sweden. She currently serves as the program director of field experiments at Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business.
Go to Profile#3618
Ivan Mikloš
#90146
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Ivan Mikloš is a Slovak politician and the former Minister of Finance of Slovakia . He previously served as Slovakia's Minister of Finance from 2002 to 2006, and Deputy Prime Minister for Economy between 1998 and 2002.
Go to Profile#3619
Meric Gertler
#34113
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Meric Slover Gertler is a Canadian academic, who is the 16th and current president of the University of Toronto since 2013. Previously, he served as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science at the university from 2008 to 2013. Gertler is an urban theorist and geographer.
Go to Profile#3620
Jacques Theeuwes
#90595
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Jacobus A.M. Theeuwes is a Dutch economist, accountant, consultant and Emeritus Professor of Business economics at the Eindhoven University of Technology, known for his contributions to the fields of Management Accounting en Operations Management.
Go to Profile#3621
Jason Saul
#70407
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Jason Saul is an American author, entrepreneur, and educator, best known as an expert on measuring social impact and benchmarking. He is the founder and CEO of Mission Measurement, a consulting firm that advises corporations, governments, and nonprofit agencies on their social impact. Saul was also the founder of the Center For What Works, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization that focused on benchmarking and performance measurement. In 2013 he founded the Center for Innovation and Public Value, a nonprofit organization that assists governments with getting value of its expenditures.
Go to Profile#3622
Caroline Saunders
#162437
Overall Influence
Caroline Mary Saunders is a New Zealand academic, and as of 2020 is a Distinguished Professor at Lincoln University, specialising in environmental economics. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.
Go to Profile#3623
Jerzy Hausner
#91816
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jerzy Krzysztof Hausner is a Polish politician and economist. He was a Member of the 4th Sejm of the Republic of Poland. Life Jerzy Hausner has graduated from Kraków University of Economics. From 1994 to 1996 he served as Director-General of the Prime Minister's Office. In that capacity, he was in charge of a group of advisers to Grzegorz Kolodko - then the Deputy Prime Minister responsible for the economy. He coordinated preparatory work for, and worked to implement, the "Strategy for Poland" - at the time the key government program of economic and social development of the country. He also the outline for the "Compact for Silesia", a program of economic renewal for the region.
Go to Profile#3624
Raúl Padilla López
#47206
Overall Influence
1954 - 2023 (69 years)
Raúl Padilla López was a Mexican professor and academic. He was the rector of the University of Guadalajara from 1989 to 1995. He was also president of the Guadalajara International Book Fair, the Guadalajara International Film Festival, and had control of cultural and diverse infrastructure of the UdeG, such as a soccer club , travel agencies and hotels. Padilla López died at his home on 2 April 2023 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 68.
Go to Profile#3625
Alex Nicholls
#103078
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Alex Nicholls is a Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, a Fellow of Harris Manchester College and a member of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship . He was the first staff member of the Skoll Centre.
Go to Profile#3626
Jeffrey MacKie-Mason
#75468
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Jeff MacKie-Mason is an American economist specializing in information, incentive-centered design and public policy. MacKie-Mason is the university librarian and chief digital scholarship officer of the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also a professor in the School of Information and a professor of economics. At the University of Michigan he was the Arthur W. Burks Collegiate Professor of Information and Computer Science at the School of Information, professor of economics, and professor of public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. MacKie-Mason was the found...
Go to Profile#3627
Guoqiang Tian
#117843
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Guoqiang Tian is a Chinese-American economist. He is the Alfred F. Chalk Professor of Economics at Texas A&M University. He is Honorary Dean of Institute for Advanced Research at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.
Go to Profile#3628
Philip Booth
#45960
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Philip Booth is a British economist. He is Dean of the Faculty of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences at St Mary's University, Twickenham, and Senior Academic Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs. His primary areas of research and writing are social insurance, financial regulation and Catholic social teaching.
Go to Profile#3629
Deborah Schofield
#115516
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Deborah Schofield is an Australian academic in the Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University where she is the director of the Centre for Economic Impacts of Genomic Medicine Background Schofield was born in 1965 in Wahroonga, Sydney. She has worked for the Australian Government, in academia and clinical practice and studied health microsimulation modelling at National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling.
Go to Profile#3630
Martin Wolf
#167504
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Karl Martin Wolf is a German experimental physicist specializing in electron and optical spectroscopy and their use for studying the dynamical processes in solid state materials, surfaces, and interfaces. He is the current director of the Department of Physical Chemistry at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, Germany.
Go to Profile#3631
Catherine Samary
#35749
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Catherine Samary born in 1945, is a French researcher in political economy, specialized on the former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe. She received her Phd in economics in 1986 : her thesis on the contradictory logics of the reforms in the Yugoslav self-management system was published in 1988 under the title « Le Marché contre l’autogestion - l’expérience yougoslave » with a preface from Ernest Mandel .
Go to Profile#3632
Samuel Myers Jr.
#60731
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Samuel L. Myers Jr. is an American economist and Roy Wilkins Professor of Human Relations and Social Justice in the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He has been awarded the Samuel Z. Westerfield Jr., Award by the National Economic Association and the Marilyn J. Gittell Activist Scholar Award from the Urban Affairs Association and SAGE Publishing. In 2007, Myers was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
Go to Profile#3633
Thomas Armbrüster
#87996
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Thomas Armbrüster is a German economist and college professor. Life After completing his Abitur Armbrüster joined the German Bundeswehr as regular soldier. He then studied Business Administration and Engineering at the Technical University of Berlin. Afterwards Armbrüster worked for a business consulting company, until he, in 1999, earned his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His thesis was titled The German corporation: An open or closed society? An application of Popperian ideas to organizational analysis. He joined different activities at the University of R...
Go to Profile#3634
Iulie Aslaksen
#139603
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Iulie Margrethe Nicolaysen Aslaksen is a Norwegian economist and Senior Researcher at Statistics Norway. She was a member of the Petroleum Price Board from 1990 to 2000. She is an expert on energy and environmental economics, including petroleum economics, climate policy and economics and sustainable development. She is cand.oecon. from the University of Oslo in 1981 and dr.polit. from 1990. She has been a visiting researcher and Fulbright Fellow at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Oslo. She was a member o...
Go to Profile#3635
Rodney Wilson
#141435
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Rodney James Alexander Wilson is a British economist and Emeritus Professor of Economics at Durham University. He is known for his expertise on Islamic economics. He is a recipient of Islamic Development Bank Prize in Islamic Banking and Finance.
Go to Profile#3636
Carmine Gorga
#120461
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Carmine Gorga is an Italian political scientist naturalized American working as President of The Somist Institute. Life and career Born in Roccadaspide , during the great depression in Southern Italy. He was born on December 8, 1935. Came to the United States in 1965. Gorga left Italy to continue his study of The Political Thought of Louis D. Brandeis, the subject of his PhD dissertation at the University of Naples in 1959. This work earned him a Council of Europe Scholarship that led him to the Bologna Center of the Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies in 1961 and the fol...
Go to Profile#3637
Murat Ali Dulupçu
#101340
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Murat Ali Dulupçu is a Turkish economist at the Süleyman Demirel University. Biography Murat Ali Dulupcu attended the Isparta Anatolian High School in Isparta. He graduated from Istanbul University in 1989 with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and from Suleyman Demirel University in 1995 with a M.A. in Economics. He completed his Ph.D. in Regional Science at Kütahya Dumlupınar University.
Go to Profile#3638
David W. Breneman
#55002
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
David W. Breneman is an American educator, economist, and the former president and CEO of The Society of the Four Arts where he presided from January 1, 2015, to September 30, 2019. The Four Arts is a nonprofit cultural organization in Palm Beach, Florida. Established in 1936, The Society of the Four Arts is dedicated to presenting notable speakers, concerts, films, educational programs, and art exhibitions to the public. Dr. Breneman oversaw the administration of more than 500 cultural programs each year, including the prestigious Esther B. O’Keeffe Speaker Series, which features leading ex...
Go to Profile#3639
Travis Bradford
#99684
Overall Influence
Travis Bradford is a professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University. He teaches at the Columbia Business School, the Earth Institute and the School of International and Public Affairs within the fields of energy and natural resource markets and innovation.
Go to Profile#3640
Mary Bowman
#116190
Overall Influence
1908 - 2002 (94 years)
Mary Jean Bowman was an American economist who mostly focused on education economics. Personal life and education Mary Jean Bowman was born to mother Mary K. Kauffman and father Harold Martin Bowman on October 17, 1908 in New York City. She was raised in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College in 1930. She received her Master of Arts degree from Radcliffe College two years later and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1938. She relocated to Chicago, Illinois with her husband, C. Arnold Anderson, in 1949. The two were married on July 18, 1942 in Iowa City, Iowa.
Go to Profile#3641
Ramazan Gençay
#169139
Overall Influence
1961 - 2018 (57 years)
Ramazan Gençay was a Turkish-born Canadian economist. Born in Turkey, he graduated from Middle East Technical University in Ankara and attended graduate school in North America, where he earned a master's degree from the University of Guelph and a PhD from the University of Houston. He taught economics at the University of Windsor and Carleton University until 2004, and he was a professor of economics at Simon Fraser University from 2004 to 2018. He was "found dead" in Colombia on December 24, 2018 due to suspected scopolamine poisoning. According to SFU, he was "a pioneer in the use of wavel...
Go to Profile#3642
Richard J. Sauer
#80854
Overall Influence
Richard J. Sauer is an American academic and academic administrator. Sauer was interim president of the University of Minnesota in 1988. Richard Sauer grew up in Walker, Minnesota, and graduated from high school in 1957. He attended St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, with a major in biology and a minor in chemistry. Sauer went to the University of Michigan for a master's of science in zoology and high school teaching qualification. Instead of teaching, Sauer chose a National Defense Education Act fellowship to attend North Dakota State University for a Ph.D. in entomology with a thesis on the crab spiders of North Dakota.
Go to Profile#3643
Greg J Duncan
#169283
Overall Influence
#3644
Maureen O'Hara
#115064
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Maureen Patricia O'Hara is an American financial economist. O'Hara is the Robert W. Purcell Professor of Management, a professor of finance, and acting director in Graduate Studies at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. She has won numerous awards and grants for her research, served on numerous boards, served as an editor for numerous finance journals, and chaired the dissertations of numerous students. In addition, she is well known as the author of Market Microstructure Theory. She was the first female president of the American Finance Association. ...
Go to Profile#3645
Marta Verginella
#34610
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Marta Verginella is a Slovenian historian from the Slovene minority in Italy in Trieste, notable as one of the most prominent contemporary Slovene historians. Together with Alenka Puhar, she is considered a pioneer in the history of family relations in the Slovene Lands.
Go to Profile#3646
Eric Britton
#65077
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Francis Eric Knight Britton was an American political scientist and sustainability activist who has lived and worked in Paris, France, since 1969. As the main convenor of The Commons: Open Society Sustainability Initiative and its various networks, he is well known for promoting integrated public transport, carsharing and bike sharing.
Go to Profile#3647
Geoffrey G. Parker
#80222
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Geoffrey G Parker is a scholar whose work focuses on distributed innovation, energy markets, and the economics of information. He co-developed the theory of two-sided markets with Marshall Van Alstyne.
Go to Profile#3648
Nancy Gordon
#80475
Overall Influence
Nancy May Gordon is an American economist and statistician who works for the United States Census Bureau. Education and career Gordon majored in economics and statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, and earned a doctorate in economics from Stanford University. Her dissertation, Ex ante and Ex post Substitutability in Economic Growth, was supervised by Kenneth Arrow.
Go to Profile#3649
James Wyckoff
#74070
Overall Influence
James H. Wyckoff is a U.S.-American education economist who currently serves as Memorial Professor of Education and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, where he is also the Director of the Center for Education Policy and Workforce Competitiveness. His research on the impact of teacher compensation on teacher performance has been awarded the Raymond Vernon Memorial Award of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management in 2015.
Go to Profile#3650
Lourdes Casanova
#50263
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Lourdes S. Casanova is an academic, author and currently a Senior Lecturer of Management at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management and Gail and Rob Cañizares Director of the Emerging Markets Institute. Before her appointment to Johnson School, Casanova was a lecturer in the Strategy Department at INSEAD. She specializes in international business with a focus on Latin America and multinationals from emerging markets. In 2014 and 2015, Lourdes Casanova was appointed as one of the 50 most influential Iberoamerican intellectuals by Esglobal. Also, she is member of the Board of Dir...
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