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,
#3951
John Appleby
#87704
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
John Appleby, FAcSS is a British economist. He was chief economist at the King's Fund from 1998 to 2016 and is now Director of Research and Chief Economist at the Nuffield Trust. Appleby has worked in the National Health Service in Birmingham and London, and was a senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham and University of East Anglia. He is a Visiting Professor at the City Health Economics Centre, City University London. For five years he worked for the National Association of Health Authorities as manager of the Association’s Central Policy Unit. He writes extensively about current ...
Go to Profile#3952
Mansoob Murshed
#178787
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Mansoob Murshed is a Professor of International Industrial Economics at the University of Birmingham whose research interests are development, globalisation and conflict / post-conflict reconstruction. Alongside his post at Birmingham he also holds a Professorship at the Institute of Social Studies The Hague, on the Economies of Conflict and Peace. He holds an honorary fellowship at the Peace Research Institute Oslo and his having been the first to be awarded the Prince Claus rotating Chair in Development and Equity .
Go to Profile#3953
Caitlin Myers
#93000
Overall Influence
Caitlin Knowles Myers is a professor of economics at Middlebury College and a Research Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor , known for her recent research on the impact of contraception and abortion policies in the United States. In 2021, when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization case, she led an effort to compile the best economic research on the impact of abortion access on women's lives into an amicus brief, which was signed by more than 150 economists.
Go to Profile#3954
Petra Persson
#158625
Overall Influence
Petra Persson is a Swedish economist and Assistant Professor in Economics at Stanford University. Persson is best known for her work in Public and Labour Economics where her research focuses on the interactions between family decisions and the policy environment. Specifically, Persson's research agenda is centered on studying government policy, family wellbeing, and informal institutions.
Go to Profile#3955
Sugato Chakravarty
#75441
Overall Influence
Sugato Chakravarty is a visiting professor of management at Purdue University. He serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Financial Markets. Sugato completed high school at St. Xavier's School in Calcutta. He graduated from Jadavpur University in Calcutta with a Bachelor of Technology in Chemical Engineering before relocating to the United States for graduate studies. Chakravarty obtained a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kentucky, and his PhD in Finance from Indiana University.
Go to Profile#3956
Josep Figueras
#83005
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Josep Figueras Marimont is a Spanish physician, health policy expert, and health services researcher who serves as the director of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. Biography Born in Medinyà, Girona, Spain, Josep was educated at the University of Barcelona where he received his medical degree with honors in 1983, after which he specialized in family medicine in 1987 at the University of Valencia. He proceeded to move to the United Kingdom where he obtained a Master of Public Health from the University of Leeds, and a MSc and Ph.D. in health planning and financing from ...
Go to Profile#3957
Arshad Ayub
#54643
Overall Influence
1928 - 2022 (94 years)
Tun Arshad bin Ayub was a Malaysian academician and educator. He was a founding father of the Universiti Teknologi MARA , Malaysia's largest higher learning institution, where he was its director from 1967 to 1975, later served as its Pro-Chancellor from 2000 until his death in 2022. He was widely known as the national education icon.
Go to Profile#3958
George Shaw Wheeler
#76235
Overall Influence
1908 - 1998 (90 years)
George Shaw Wheeler was an American economist and advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, best known for being the first American to defect over the Iron Curtain to Czechoslovakia in November 1947.
Go to Profile#3959
Ed Nelson
#179126
Overall Influence
#3960
Adedoyin Salami
#133167
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Adedoyin Salami is a Nigerian economist who is currently chief economic adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari. He is a senior fellow and associate professor at the Lagos Business School of the Pan-Atlantic University. He began his career with Adetutu & Co before joining the University of Lagos as a lecturer in the Department of Economics. He was a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria from 2010 to 2017.
Go to Profile#3961
Ted Snyder
#121208
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Edward Adams "Ted" Snyder is currently the William S. Beinecke Professor of Economics and Management at Yale School of Management. He has held two other business school deanships and was Senior Associate Dean at University of Michigan Ross School of Business.
Go to Profile#3962
Frank Holmes
#92138
Overall Influence
1924 - 2011 (87 years)
Sir Frank Wakefield Holmes was a New Zealand economist and government advisor. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 1975 Queen's Birthday Honours, for public services. He was an economics professor at Victoria University of Wellington, where he remained Emeritus Professor of the Institute of Policy Studies up until his death.
Go to Profile#3963
María Soledad Martínez Pería
#176328
Overall Influence
María Soledad Martínez Pería is an economist who, as of 2020, is Chief of the Macro-Financial Division of the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. She obtained her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor's degree from Stanford University.
Go to Profile#3964
Sophia N. Antonopoulou
#121615
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Sophia N. Antonopoulou is a professor at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece and holds a PhD in economics from the University College London, UK. She has published four books as well as scientific and opinion articles in numerous publications in Greece and abroad.
Go to Profile#3965
Bengt Hansson
#179227
Overall Influence
#3966
Friederike Mengel
#119120
Overall Influence
Friederike Mengel is a German economist who is a Professor of economics at the University of Essex. Education and career Friederike Mengel earned an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Mainz in 2003, followed by a PhD in economics from the University of Alicante in 2008, under the supervision of Fernando Vega Redondo. After her PhD, she joined Maastricht University where she was an Assistant Professor from 2008 to 2011 and an Associate Professor from 2011 to 2013. After a period at the University of Nottingham, she joined the University of Essex in 2012 where she has been a Professor since 2015.
Go to Profile#3967
Neil A. Doherty
#87171
Overall Influence
Neil A. Doherty is an American economist, currently the Frederick H. Ecker Professor Emeritus of Insurance and Risk Management at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Books Doherty's books include:Corporate Risk Management: A Financial Exposition The Financial Theory of Pricing Property-Liability Insurance Contracts Integrated Risk Management: Techniques and Strategies for Reducing Risk At War With the Weather: Managing Large-Scale Risks in a New Era of Catastrophes The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable in Financial Risk Management: Measurement and Theory Advancing Practice
Go to Profile#3968
Hassan Tavanayanfard
#144102
Overall Influence
1943 - 2015 (72 years)
Hasan Tavanayan Fard was an Iranian economist, author and poet. He wrote more than 40 books in his lifetime in the field of economics, history and literature and wrote many articles. Education He completed his Economics degree at Tehran University. He studied Masters in Economics at Swansea University in 1972 and wrote a thesis titled 'U.K. private short term capital movements ' .
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Jackie Cumming
#135863
Overall Influence
Jacqueline Margaret Cumming is a New Zealand professor in the School of Government at Victoria University of Wellington Academic career After a BA and MA from the University of Auckland and a Diploma in Health Economics from the University of Tromsø, Cumming completed a PhD at Victoria University of Wellington in 2003 titled Health Services Coverage Regulation: an Evaluation of Policy Options for New Zealand. She later joined the Victoria faculty, rising to professor.
Go to Profile#3970
Barbara Reagan
#179504
Overall Influence
1920 - 2002 (82 years)
Barbara Reagan was an American economist. From 1967 - 1990, she was a professor at the Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. Her areas of specialization included analysis and methodology of national surveys of income and expenditure, labour migration of African and Mexican Americans, and occupational segregation by sex and factors affecting women’s labour supply. She was a founding member of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. After her retirement from Southern Methodist University, she was a director of the American Savings Bank and The Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corporation.
Go to Profile#3971
Guy Debelle
#136952
Overall Influence
Guy Debelle is an Australian economist who is the former Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, having been appointed in 2016. Career In 2022, after 7 years as Deputy Governor and 25 years at the RBA Debelle unexpectedly resigned from his post at the Reserve Bank of Australia, pursuing a position at clean energy non-profit Fortescue Future Industries.
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Michael Scott
#21658
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Michael Scott is a British academic and university administrator. A professor of English literature, he was vice-chancellor of Glyndŵr University in Wrexham, Wales until 2015. Educated at the University of Wales, Lampeter and the University of Nottingham, Scott holds a PhD from De Montfort University. He was professor of English and head of the school of humanities at Sunderland Polytechnic, before becoming pro vice-chancellor of De Montfort University in 1989. Scott was, for 14 years, visiting professor of English at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
Go to Profile#3973
Stephen Devereux
#179550
Overall Influence
#3974
Clive Emmanuel
#125681
Overall Influence
1947 - 2012 (65 years)
Clive R. Emmanuel was a British academic, he held the Ernst & Young Chair of Accountancy at the University of Glasgow from 1987 til 2011. At the start of his career, Emmanuel took a job at the Steel Company of Wales in Port Talbot from 1964 as assistant cost accountant and later organisation and methods officer. After completing a part-time HNC in Business Studies, he went on to study Economics at the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology. In 1971 he then took an MA in Financial Control at Lancaster University, where he also completed a PhD on corporate transfer pricing.
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Gigi Foster
#88430
Overall Influence
Gigi Foster is a U.S. born academic and economist. She is currently a professor of economics at the University of New South Wales. She regularly appears in the Australian media on the topic of economics, having been a panellist on discussion television show Q&A and host of a radio show on the ABC.
Go to Profile#3976
Aaron Sojourner
#87389
Overall Influence
Aaron Sojourner is an American economist and senior researcher at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. He was formerly an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management and senior economist for the Council of Economic Advisers. His work has been widely covered by the media, particularly on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the labor market in the United States.
Go to Profile#3977
Brynhildur Davíðsdóttir
#174187
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Brynhildur Davíðsdóttir is a professor of environment and natural resources at the University of Iceland and the academic director of the Environment and Natural Resources graduate programme as well as the director of University of Iceland Arctic Initiative.
Go to Profile#3978
Nisvan Erkal
#41318
Overall Influence
Nisvan Erkal FASSA is an economist of Turkish-Australian nationality. She is a professor of economics at the University of Melbourne and she is a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Erkal has studied a range of subjects including the effect of policies like China's One Child Policy and how the use of information and traditional methods of choosing leaders can result in discrimination against women.
Go to Profile#3979
Ibrahim Warde
#36609
Overall Influence
Ibrahim A. Warde is a scholar and consultant in the fields of international finance and global political economy. He is an adjunct professor of international business at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he previously served as the director of the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies. Warde is a Carnegie Scholar and the author of several books, which include The Price of Fear: The Truth Behind the Financial War on Terror and Islamic Finance in the Global Economy. He is also a writer for Le Monde Diplomatique. Warde currently serves the academic dire...
Go to Profile#3980
Kusum Ailawadi
#86385
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Kusum Lata Ailawadi is an American economist. She is currently the Charles Jordan 1911 TU'12 Professor of Marketing at Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College. Education PhD, University of Virginia, 1991MBA, Indian Institute of Management, 1984BSc , St. Stephen's College, Delhi University, 1982
Go to Profile#3981
Alicia García-Herrero
#171962
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Alicia Garcia Herrero is a Spanish economist and academic who has been the chief economist for Asia-Pacific at French investment bank Natixis since June 2015. Beyond her work, she is an academic and has worked in Bruegel, a Think Tank based in Brussels. She is an adjunct professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, and non-resident Research Fellow at Real Instituto Elcano. Alicia is also a Member of the Advisory Board of Berlin-based think tank on China, MERICS.
Go to Profile#3982
Allen N. Berger
#179694
Overall Influence
#3983
Mária Augusztinovics
#179767
Overall Influence
1930 - 2014 (84 years)
Mária Augusztinovics was a Hungarian macroeconomist known for her work in labour economics and on pension systems. Augusztinovics graduated from the Karl Marx University of Economics in Budapest in 1952, defended her doctoral dissertation there in 1956, and completed a habilitation in 1980. In 1979, as Head of Department in the Hungarian National Planning Office, Augusztinovics was elected as a Fellow of the Econometric Society. She was given the in 2000, the prize of the János Arany Public Foundation for Science in 2002, the Officer's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit in 2008, and the Széchenyi Prize in 2010.
Go to Profile#3984
Roy Bin Wong
#66162
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Roy Bin Wong is a Chinese economic historian at UCLA. He was the Director of the UCLA Asia Institute from 2004 to 2016. He received his BA from the University of Michigan, and received his MA and PhD from Harvard University.
Go to Profile#3985
Oliver D. Doleski
#63021
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Oliver D. Doleski is a German economist, author and management consultant. Life Doleski studied economics at the Bundeswehr University Munich. He has worked in the public sector and as a management consultant in the areas of corporate management and process management, among others with his own consulting firm Fiduiter. This company is inactive since 2019.
Go to Profile#3986
George P. Baker
#63933
Overall Influence
1903 - 1995 (92 years)
George Pierce Baker was the fifth dean of the Harvard Business School. Baker earned his bachelor's, master's and Ph.D. all from Harvard University. He began teaching at Harvard in 1928 and joined Harvard Business School faculty in 1936. He left Harvard and joined the Civil Aeronautics Board in 1942. In 1945 he became the director of the Office of Transport and Communications Policy for the United States Department of State. From 1946 to 1956 he served as the United States member of the United Nations Transport and Communications Commission. In 1946 Baker also returned to Harvard Business School as the James J.
Go to Profile#3987
Zsolt. Darvas
#179925
Overall Influence
#3988
David D. Friedman
#179978
Overall Influence
#3989
David Chandler Thomas
#91863
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
David Chandler Thomas is an American economist and technology executive who was a professor at Ball State University, where he performed research into public health and business cycles. He served on the advisory board of the College of Health and Human Services at George Mason University.
Go to Profile#3990
Ida Craven Merriam
#110481
Overall Influence
1904 - 1997 (93 years)
Ida Craven Merriam was an American economist and statistician who became "one of the seminal figures in the early administration of the Social Security program", helping to found the nonprofit National Academy of Social Insurance.
Go to Profile#3991
George Wells Ladd
#179357
Overall Influence
1925 - 2016 (91 years)
George Wells Ladd was an American economist. George Wells Ladd was born to parents Leonard L. Ladd and Helen Johnston Ladd on April 28, 1925. He was raised on the family farm near Brookings, South Dakota, until the family moved to Mitchell in 1933. After his mother died there, Ladd moved again in 1936 to Huron, and graduated from Huron High School. Following high school graduation, Ladd served in the United States Marine Corps between 1943 and 1946, then began attending South Dakota State College. Ladd completed his undergraduate degree in 1950, then obtained a master's degree from the University of Michigan in 1951, followed by a doctoral degree from the University of Illinois in 1955.
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Sylvain Charlebois
#27663
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Sylvain Charlebois is a Canadian researcher and professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is a former dean of the university's Faculty of Management.
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Jackson Nickerson
#102757
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Jackson Nickerson is an American academic who studies leadership, organizations, and strategy. Nickerson was the Frahm Family Professor of Organization and Strategy in Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. He also was the Associate Dean and Director of Brookings Executive Education from 2009-2017, was a non-resident Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution from 2010-2020, and is a Fellow of the Strategic Management Society.
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Nirupam Bajpai
#108962
Overall Influence
Nirupam Bajpai, a US-based Indian educationist and economist, is the Senior Research Scholar at the Earth Institute of the Columbia University and the Senior Development Advisor and Director of its South Asia Program. He is the founding director of the Columbia Global Centers South Asia, an office he held between July 2010 and August 2014, and is the author of a number of publications, including India in the Era of Economic Reforms.
Go to Profile#3995
Annette Vissing-Jørgensen
#172036
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Annette Vissing-Jørgensen is a Danish financial economist who holds the Arno A. Rayner Chair in Finance and Management in the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Topics in her research include monetary policy, household economics, and entrepreneurial finance. She was director of the American Finance Association for 2010 and 2012, of the European Finance Association for 2013, and of the Western Finance Association for 2017.
Go to Profile#3996
Thomas J. Trebat
#94722
Overall Influence
Thomas J. Trebat is an American economist, political scientist, and professor. He teaches at the School of International and Public Affairs , at Columbia University. He is also the director of the Columbia Global Centers | Rio de Janeiro, Columbia University's representation in Brazil. He has served as executive director at Columbia University's Institute of Latin American Studies and Center for Brazilian Studies. He became head of ILAS when his colleague Albert Fishlow, who had brought him to the Institute, stepped down.
Go to Profile#3997
Umberto Meoli
#122408
Overall Influence
1920 - 2002 (82 years)
Umberto Meoli was an Italian historian of economics, known as a maverick of the Italian Left who eschewed Marxism in favour of British pragmatism. Biography Early life Meoli was born in Padua, one of nineteen brothers; his father was a pharmacist from a small town near Benevento, and his mother was from Padua.
Go to Profile#3998
Ruth Hall
#173278
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Ruth Hall is a professor at PLAAS at the University of the Western Cape, which she joined in 2002. A political scientist by training, she specialises in the politics and the political economy of agrarian reform, land redistribution, and poverty.
Go to Profile#3999
Michael Jansson
#180320
Overall Influence
Michael Jansson is an economist and the Edward G. and Nancy S. Jordan Family professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Jansson is an associate editor with Econometrica and a co-editor of Econometric Theory and The Econometrics Journal.
Go to Profile#4000
Melissa Siegel
#172664
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Melissa Siegel is an American academic specialising in migration. She is professor of migration studies at the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance and UNU-MERIT where she has also been head of the migration and development research section since 2010.
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