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 female people in Education,
#801
Rie Kugimiya
#133469
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
is a Japanese voice actress and singer. She is best known for her voice performances in anime, which include Alphonse Elric in the Fullmetal Alchemist series, Kagura in Gin Tama, and Happy in Fairy Tail and Edens Zero, and in video games, such as Haruka Sawamura in the Yakuza series. Because of her roles for characters such as Shana in Shakugan no Shana, Louise in The Familiar of Zero, Nagi Sanzenin in Hayate the Combat Butler, Taiga Aisaka in Toradora!, Aguri Madoka/Cure Ace in DokiDoki! PreCure, and Aria Holmes Kanzaki in Aria the Scarlet Ammo, some of her fans have nicknamed her the "Queen ...
Go to Profile#802
María Concepción García Gainza
#172441
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
María Concepción García Gainza is a Spanish art historian, educator, and writer. She is Professor Emeritus at the University of Navarre. She is also a corresponding academic at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando and the Academy de Santa Isabel de Hungary in Seville.
Go to Profile#803
Sigrid Deger-Jalkotzy
#163707
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Sigrid Deger-Jalkotzy, née Sigrid Deger, also Sigrid Jalkotzy and Sigrid Jalkotzy-Deger , is an Austrian archaeologist who served as President of the Division of Humanities and the Social Sciences at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna. She is known for her study of Mycenaean Greece.
Go to Profile#804
Anne Rogers
#184313
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Anne Rogers is an English actress, dancer, and singer. Career Anne Rogers was born in Liverpool and began her stage career at the age of 15. She was in the original London production of The Boy Friend, playing the female lead of Polly Browne for nearly four years.
Go to Profile#805
Teresa Gali-Izard
#187391
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Teresa Gali-Izard is a Spanish landscape architect, agronomist and professor of landscape architecture. Early life and education Gali-Izard was born in Barcelona in 1968. She received degrees in Agricultural Engineering and a Postgraduate in Landscape Architecture from Escuela Superior de Agricultura de Barcelona, Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
Go to Profile#806
Minami Takayama
#161727
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
is a Japanese voice actress, narrator and singer who is currently affiliated with 81 Produce. She is also the main vocalist of Two-Mix and ES CONNEXION when it was active. Her uncle is a former New Japan Pro-Wrestling managing director Hisashi Shinma.
Go to Profile#807
Anna Gruetzner Robins
#31205
Overall Influence
Anna Gruetzner Robins is a Canadian art historian who is a professor at the University of Reading. She is a specialist in the art of Walter Sickert about which she has written three books. She completed her BA at the University of Toronto and her MA and PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Go to Profile#808
Dina Parakhina
#187770
Overall Influence
Dina Parakhina is a Russian pianist and teacher. Biography Born in Russia, Dina Parakhina studied at the Moscow Central School of Music with Tamara Bobovich and later at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with Yevgeny Malinin. . Following her graduation, she became Professor of Piano at the Central Music School-Moscow Conservatoire, and was the chair of the department for fifteen years.
Go to Profile#809
Maysoon Pachachi
#171966
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Maysoon Pachachi is a film director, editor and producer of Iraqi origin. She was educated in Iraq, the U.S., Britain and can speak English, Arabic, French and Italian. She studied Philosophy at University College London and Film under Thorold Dickinson at the Slade School of Art, where visiting lecturers included Jean Renoir and Gillo Pontecorvo. She has made documentaries in Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. Aside from making films, Maysoon has also taught film directing and editing in Britain, Iraq and Palestine . She now lives in Britain where she co-founded Act Together: ...
Go to Profile#810
Mary Sheriff
#142888
Overall Influence
1950 - 2016 (66 years)
Mary Diana Lee Sheriff was an American art historian, and W.R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Art History at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who specialized in eighteenth-century French art, decorative arts, gender studies, and material culture.
Go to Profile#811
Pilar Pedraza
#102381
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Pilar Pedraza Martínez is a Spanish professor and writer. Her work has two main aspects: horror narrative and essay. Biography After earning her doctorate in History at the University of Valencia, Pilar Pedraza has been teaching Film and avant-garde cinema there since 1982. She was Councilor of Culture of the Generalitat Valenciana from 1993 to 1995, during the last term of Joan Lerma, and member of the Board of Directors of RTVV. Throughout her career, she has combined teaching and research with literary creation.
Go to Profile#812
Peggy Ahwesh
#187923
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Peggy Ahwesh is an American experimental filmmaker and video artist. She received her B.F.A. at Antioch College. A bricoleur who has created both narrative works and documentaries, some projects are scripted and others incorporate improvised performance. She makes use of sync sound, found footage, digital animation, and Pixelvision video. Her work is primarily an investigation of cultural identity and the role of the subject in various genres. Her interests include genre; women, sexuality and feminism; reenactment; and artists' books. Her works have been shown worldwide, including in San Francisco, New York, Barcelona, London, Toronto, Rotterdam, and Créteil, France.
Go to Profile#813
Victoria Whitworth
#136079
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Victoria Whitworth is a British writer, archaeologist and art historian. Her published writings, which focus on Britain in the later first millennium AD, include novels, academic works and a memoir.
Go to Profile#814
Laura Kissel
#186109
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Laura K. Kissel is an American educator and documentary filmmaker based in Columbia, South Carolina. Kissel's work explores contemporary social and political landscapes, the representation of history and the use of orphan films.
Go to Profile#815
Julie Buck
#189696
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Julie Anne Buck is an American film producer, collage artist, photographer, experimental filmmaker, and film archivist. Life Buck studied at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. After graduating, she became the manager for the Harvard Film Archive at Harvard University. While sorting and preserving films in the Archive's collection, she and her friend and co-archivist Karin Segal became interested in the images of women which often appear on the leaders of older films. Buck and Segal began the long process of digitally cleaning, restoring and printing these enigmatic images for...
Go to Profile#816
Wendy Wassyng Roworth
#152456
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Wendy Wassyng Roworth is professor emerita of art history at the University of Rhode Island. Roworth is a specialist in eighteenth century British and Italian art and the art of Angelica Kauffman. Roworth curated the exhibition "Angelica Kauffman: A continental artist in Georgian England" which was held at the Royal Pavilion Art Gallery & Museums, Brighton in 1992 and also in York. She edited the accompanying book.
Go to Profile#817
Chi Jang Yin
#191273
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Chi Jang Yin is an American filmmaker, photographer, curator and educator. She is best known for her experimental films that explore displacement, alienation, the absence of representation, and narrative memory. Yin left China in the latter part of The Cultural Revolution. Her mother, an artist from an aristocratic family, first led the family to Taiwan, and then to Canada. Yin received her undergraduate and graduate degrees at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied with Yvonne Rainer and Shellie Fleming. She was the Head of Media Art at the Department of Art, Media, and Design at DePaul University.
Go to Profile#818
Ewa Lajer-Burcharth
#154605
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Ewa Lajer-Burcharth is a Polish art historian and William Dorr Boardman Professor of Fine Arts in the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University and Senior Adviser to the humanities program at the Radcliffe Institute. Her specialties include 18th-century French and contemporary art.
Go to Profile#819
Helen Willa Samuels
#103772
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Helen Willa Samuels is an American archivist and scholar in archival studies. She is best known for her essay "Who Controls the Past", which introduced the concept of archival documentation strategy, and her book Varsity Letters: Documenting Modern Colleges and Universities.
Go to Profile#820
Alanna Nobbs
#85069
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Professor Alanna Nobbs is the President of the Society for the Study of Early Christianity. She earned a BA Hons1 and PhD in Latin at the University of Sydney. She taught at Macquarie University and was Head of School. Her specialization being in Greek Early Christian and Byzantine documents.
Go to Profile#821
Heather Galbraith
#189566
Overall Influence
Heather Galbraith is a New Zealand fine art curator and academic. As of 2018 she is a full professor at Massey University in Wellington. Academic career After a MA from Goldsmiths, University of London, Galbraith worked at City Gallery Wellington and Te Papa before moving to the Massey University, rising to full professor.
Go to Profile#822
Hsio-yen Shih
#87634
Overall Influence
1933 - 2001 (68 years)
Hsio-yen Shih was a Chinese-born Canadian art historian who specialized in early Chinese and Japanese paintings, as well as ancient Chinese pottery and bronzeware. She was director of the National Gallery of Canada from 1977 to 1981.
Go to Profile#823
Gabrielle Goodman
#181179
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Gabrielle Goodman is an American jazz singer, composer, author, and associate professor of voice at Berklee College of Music. She began working as a backup vocalist for Roberta Flack while at the Peabody Institute and later sang with Michael Bublé and Chaka Khan.
Go to Profile#824
Marvalene Hughes
#109959
Overall Influence
Dr. Marvalene Hughes served as the president of Dillard University from 2005 to 2011. From 1994 to 2005, she was the president of California State University, Stanislaus. Ms. Hughes received a PhD in Counseling and Administration from Florida State University. Her MS, in Counseling, and her BS in English and History, are both from Tuskegee University. She also received an Honorary Doctorate from Brown University.
Go to Profile#825
Bonna Daix Wescoat
#139452
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Bonna Daix Wescoat is an art historian and Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Art History at Emory University. Her work focuses on ancient Greek art and architecture, particularly Archaic and Hellenistic architecture and sculpture.
Go to Profile#826
Angela Rosenthal
#176804
Overall Influence
1963 - 2010 (47 years)
Angela H. Rosenthal was an art historian at Dartmouth College and an expert on the art of Angelica Kauffman. Her masterwork was Angelica Kauffman: Art and sensibility, published by Yale University Press in 2006 which won the Historians of British Art Book Award in the pre-1800 category in 2007.
Go to Profile#827
Olga Sviblova
#181046
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Olga Lvovna Sviblova is a Russian curator, film director, and arts administrator. In 1996, she founded the Moscow House of Photography, which later became the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow; she has been a director there since the institution's establishment.
Go to Profile#828
Diane-Monique Daviau
#130987
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Diane-Monique Daviau is a Quebec educator, writer, translator and journalist. Biography She was born in Montreal. Daviau wrote literary columns for Le Devoir, Lettres québécoises and Liberté, also contributing to the radio programs En toutes lettres, Littératures actuelles and Paysages littéraires on Radio Canada FM. She has taught literature, German and translation at McGill University, at the Université de Montréal and at the Goethe-Institut. Daviau was an editor for several publishing houses and also worked as a translator from German to French and from French to German. She served on the editorial committees for Lettres québécoises and for XYZ, la revue de la nouvelle.
Go to Profile#829
Uranchimeg Tsultem
#190889
Overall Influence
Uranchimeg Tsultem is a scholar of the art and culture of Mongolia. She has served as a curator of Mongolian art at the international level since 1997. Her curated exhibits have been shown at Kasumi Tsukuba Center in Tsukuba, Japan, Frauen Museum in Bonn, Germany, E&J Frankel Gallery in New York City, Worth Ryder Gallery and Institute of East Asian Studies at University of California Berkeley, Venice Beinnale, Shanghai Beinnale, the Modern Art Gallery in Ulaanbaatar, and the Sapar Contemporary in New York City. Uranchimeg is the author four books on Mongolia and is the recipient of the Fulbright Fellowship , John W.
Go to Profile#830
Leah Gilliam
#191322
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
L. Franklin Gilliam is an American filmmaker and media artist. Her work explores issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Gilliam was the director of projects and community catalyst at gamelab's Institute of Play and a visiting faculty member at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. They are currently vice president of strategy and innovation at Girls Who Code.
Go to Profile#831
Danielle Fournier
#154779
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Danielle Fournier is a Quebec educator and writer. She was born in Montreal and received a PhD in literature from the Université de Sherbrooke. She also studied German at the University of New Brunswick. She has taught at the college and university level at various institutions including the Université de Sherbrooke, the University of New Brunswick, at McGill University, the Université du Québec à Montréal, at Concordia University and at the Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, where she held a permanent position.
Go to Profile#832
Karen Hearn
#96411
Overall Influence
Karen Hearn is a British art historian and curator. She has Master's degrees from the University of Cambridge and the University of London. She is an Honorary Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University College London. From 1992 to 2012 Hearn was the Curator of 16th & 17th Century British Art at the Tate where she curated major exhibitions on Tudor and Jacobean paintings, Anthony van Dyck, and Rubens. She was co-curator of Royalist Refugees at The Rubenshuis in Antwerp. She has also curated recent exhibitions at The National Portrait Gallery in London, The Harley Gallery, and The Foundling Museum.
Go to Profile#833
Judith Colton
#187172
Overall Influence
Judith Colton is an American historian of art who is a professor emerita at Yale University. One of her best known works is The Parnasse Franc̈ois: Titon Du Tillet and the Origins of the Monument to Genius , a study of Évrard Titon du Tillet.
Go to Profile#834
Yukari Tamura
#147039
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
is a Japanese voice actress and singer affiliated with Amuleto . She debuted as a voice actress in 1997, releasing her debut single "Yūki o Kudasai" on March 26, 1997. Her role as Nanoha Takamachi in the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha series contributed to a rise in her popularity, as several of her singles were used as the ending themes for the franchise's anime adaptations. Besides Nanoha, she voices the title characters Haruka Minazuki / Red Angel in Kaitō Tenshi Twin Angel, Ringo Kinoshita in No-Rin, Yamada in B Gata H Kei and Kaoru Tsunashi in I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying. O...
Go to Profile#835
Leslie Thornton
#175594
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Leslie Thornton is an American avant-garde filmmaker and artist. Life Leslie Thornton was born in 1951 in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Schenectady, New York. Both her father and grandfather worked on the Manhattan Project, but due to the project's high level of secrecy, neither knew of the other's involvement until many years later. Thornton learned as an adult, and as a result the atomic bomb and themes of apocalypse appear in some of her works . She first developed an interest in film as a teenager when she frequented experimental cinema screenings at her local Unitarian Church in Schenectady.
Go to Profile#836
Kim Woods
#188418
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Kim Wilford Woods is an art historian specialising in northern European late Gothic sculpture and is Senior Lecturer in art history at the Open University. Career Woods has a bachelor's degree in history from the University of York. She gained her PhD in art history in 1988 from the Courtauld Institute, University of London with a thesis titled 'Netherlandish Carved Wooden Altarpieces of the 15th and early 16th centuries in Britain'. She joined the Open University in 1999. She was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 11 November 2005.
Go to Profile#837
Ioli Kalavrezou
#185896
Overall Influence
Ioli Kalavrezou is Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine Art at Harvard University. Her research focuses on early Christian and Byzantine art. Career Prior to joining Harvard, Kalavrezou taught at UCLA and at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.
Go to Profile#838
Michelle Bubenicek
#122767
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Michelle Bubenicek is a French medievalist historian. She was appointed director of the École Nationale des Chartes on 1 September 2016. Works Books 2002: 2013: 2014: 2016: 2016: Pamphlet 1996: Awards Prix Madeleine-Lenoir 2002 de la Société de l'École des chartes pour Quand les femmes gouvernent, droit et politique au XIV.
Go to Profile#839
Mika Natif
#192109
Overall Influence
Mika Natif is an Israeli-born American scholar of art history specializing in art of the Islamic World, especially Mongol art. Dr. Natif currently serves as an assistant professor in Art History at the George Washington University. She has previously held a post-doctorate at the College of the Holy Cross and did curatorial work at the Harvard Art Museums on Islamic and Later Indian Art. Dr. Natif is a co-editor of Eros and Sexuality in Islamic Art.
Go to Profile#840
Caroline Arscott
#168665
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Caroline Arscott is an Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute. Career Arscott studied at Newnham College Cambridge and the University of Leeds. She is an expert on art of the Victorian period and has lectured at The Courtauld since 1988.
Go to Profile#841
Judith Wechsler
#191731
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Judith Wechsler is an American art historian and filmmaker. She is the National Endowment for the Humanities Professor Emerita at Tufts University, specializing in nineteenth-century French painting, drawing, and caricature, and an award-winning documentary filmmaker. She has also taught at MIT and Harvard.
Go to Profile#842
Carol Neuman de Vegvar
#117328
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Carol L. Neuman de Vegvar is an art historian and Professor of Fine Arts at Ohio Wesleyan University. Career De Vagvar undertook undergraduate study at Bryn Mawr College before completing her PhD on Anglo-Saxon art in Northumbria in 1981 at the University of Pennsylvania. She was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 5 June 2003.
Go to Profile#843
Charlotte Bolland
#121345
Overall Influence
Charlotte Bolland is senior curator for sixteenth century collections at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Career Bolland has a degree in history from the University of Durham and a master's degree in history of art from the Courtauld Institute of Art. She completed her PhD at the Queen Mary University of London in 2011 on "Italian Material Culture at the Tudor Court".
Go to Profile#844
Mercedes Bunz
#20243
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Mercedes Bunz is a German art historian, journalist, and the Professor of Digital Culture and Society at King's College London. Biography Early career Bunz studied philosophy and art history at the Freie Universität Berlin, after passing her final exams at the Celtis-Gymnasium secondary school in the German town of Schweinfurt in 1991. Together with Sascha Kösch, Riley Reinhold, and Benjamin Weiss she founded the Berlin music monthly De:Bug in 1997, becoming its co-editor and editor-in-chief from 1999 until 2001.
Go to Profile#845
Benita Raphan
#189951
Overall Influence
1962 - 2021 (59 years)
Benita Raphan was an American filmmaker and designer. She was known for directing short documentary films about "eccentric and unusual minds", including John Nash, Buckminster Fuller, Edwin Land and Emily Dickinson.
Go to Profile#846
Michela Magas
#190467
Overall Influence
Michela Magas is a designer, entrepreneur and innovation specialist, of Croatian-British nationality, and is the first woman from the Creative Industries to receive the European Woman Innovator of the Year award by the European Commission.
Go to Profile#847
Yvonne Ciannella
#121220
Overall Influence
1926 - 2022 (96 years)
Yvonne Regina Ciannella was an American coloratura soprano in opera and concert. She began her career performing and recording with the Robert Shaw Chorale in the early 1950s. After graduate voice studies at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, she embarked on a career as an opera singer; working mainly in Germany at the Staatstheater Braunschweig, Theater Bonn, and Theater Dortmund during the 1960s. She also appeared as a guest artist with opera companies in Berlin, Cologne, Florida, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Vienna. For many years she was a member of the voice faculty of the College of Music at Florida...
Go to Profile#848
Jadwiga Lipińska
#109679
Overall Influence
1932 - 2009 (77 years)
Jadwiga Lipińska née Freyer was a Polish Egyptologist. Biography Lipińska was the daughter of Edward Freyer and Zofia Kodis, an artist. She graduated from the University of Warsaw with her masters and her doctorate as a student of Prof. Kazimierz Michalowski. Following her studies, she went on to work at the National Museum, Warsaw from 1958. She began as an assistant in the Gallery of Ancient Art and by 1991, she became curator of the Gallery of Ancient Art, a position she held until she retired in 2002. She also lectured at University of Warsaw, and Akademii Teologii Katolickiej in Warsaw and the University of Lodz.
Go to Profile#849
Christa Grössinger
#134945
Overall Influence
1942 - 2008 (66 years)
Christa Grössinger was a German academic specialising in late medieval and early Renaissance art in northern Europe. She was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Grössinger was an expert on misericords and medieval church furniture. Her work included the role of women in medieval and Renaissance art and on women and women's writings from antiquity to the late Middle Ages. She joined the University of Manchester in 1972 where she became a Senior Lecturer.
Go to Profile#850
Ellen Beer
#177319
Overall Influence
1926 - 2004 (78 years)
Ellen Judith Beer was a Swiss art historian. She focused on Medieval art. Biography Beer received her doctorate degree at the University of Zurich with her publication about the "Rose der Kathedrale von Lausanne", the rose window in the Lausanne Cathedral. In 1965, she became associate professor and 1971 full professor at the University of Bern. The Ellen-J.-Beer Foundation was created in her memory; it supports young researchers and medieval art history projects.
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