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 Education,
#1051
Gottfried Jäger
#72637
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Gottfried Jäger is a German photographer, photo-theorist and former university teacher. Biography Gottfried Jäger, son of photographer Ernst Jäger , learned the craft of photography in the years 1954 to 1958 with the master photographer Siegfried Baumann in Bielefeld, receiving his apprenticeship qualification in 1957. He then studied technical photography at the Staatliche Höhere Fachschule für Photographie in Cologne, graduating in 1960 from the master craftsman exam. There he discovered a work by the early pioneer of computer art, Herbert W. Franke's 1957 Kunst und Konstruktion. Its subtit...
Go to Profile#1052
Kenneth A. Feldman
#164647
Overall Influence
#1053
Franklin H. Westervelt
#11875
Overall Influence
1930 - 2015 (85 years)
Franklin Herbert Westervelt was an American engineer, computer scientist, and educator at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. Westervelt received degrees in Mathematics, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. He attained his PhD in 1961. He was a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan and an Associate Director at the U-M Computing Center. He was involved in early studies on how to use computers in engineering education.
Go to Profile#1054
Geert Kelchtermans
#164950
Overall Influence
#1055
Irene J. Winter
#41520
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Irene J. Winter is an American art historian who is an influential and pioneering scholar of ancient Near Eastern art. Life BA Barnard College, Anthropology, 1960; MA University of Chicago, Near Eastern Studies, 1967; PhD Columbia University, Art History and Archaeology. She has taught at Queens College, CUNY, 1971-1976, The University of Pennsylvania, 1976-1988, and Harvard University since 1988, chairing the department of Fine Arts from 1993-1996, and served on the Faculty Council, 2006-2009; retired June 2009. Slade Professor, University of Cambridge, 1997. She was elected a member of the...
Go to Profile#1056
Jamil Jalibi
#59028
Overall Influence
1929 - 2019 (90 years)
Jameel Jalibi was a noted linguist, critic, writer, and scholar of Urdu literature and linguistics from Pakistan. He also was Vice-Chancellor at the University of Karachi. Early life Jameel Jalibi was born Mohammad Jameel Khan on 12 June 1929 in a Yusufzai family of Aligarh, British India. His early schooling was in Aligarh. He matriculated in Saharanpur and did his Bachelor of Arts from Meerut College. One day before the partition of India, on 13 August 1947, Jalibi migrated to Karachi, Pakistan, where he continued his education and literary activities. He received Master of Arts in English , Bachelor of Laws , Ph.D.
Go to Profile#1057
Sonya Douglass Horsford
#103057
Overall Influence
Sonya Douglass Horsford is an American academic who researches educational inequality in the United States, social justice, and education policy. Horsford is a professor of educational leadership at the Teachers College, Columbia University.
Go to Profile#1058
Edith Balas
#76687
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Edith Balas is a Professor of Art History, College of Humanities & Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Biography Balas was born in 1929 in Cluj ; she is a Holocaust survivor. She is the widow of the late mathematician Egon Balas, who was a fellow professor at Carnegie Mellon.
Go to Profile#1059
Jean Leymarie
#34285
Overall Influence
1919 - 2006 (87 years)
Jean Leymarie was a French art historian. Biography Born into a peasant family, he pursued his studies in Toulouse then Paris. After the Second World War, he began his museum career. He was curator at Museum of Grenoble from 1950 to 1955, director of the Musée national d'Art moderne from 1968 to 1973 and director of the French Academy in Rome from 1979 to 1985. He taught for a long time at the Swiss universities of Lausanne and Geneva and published several works on the history of art. He remains one of those who imposed 20th-century painting on French national museums.
Go to Profile#1060
Andrew Pollard
#138465
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Andrew Pollard is an emeritus professor at the Institute of Education, University College London. Formerly, he was Professor of Education at the universities of Cambridge, Bristol and the West of England, Bristol. He chaired the Education Sub-panel for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework on behalf of UK Higher Education Funding Councils, which involves assessing the quality of research undertaken in UK universities. He was Director of the ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme from 2002 to 2009, of the UK Strategic Forum for Research in Education from 2008 to 2011 and of ESCalate, the Education Subject Centre of the UK's Higher Education Academy.
Go to Profile#1061
Eugene Goossen
#80381
Overall Influence
1920 - 1997 (77 years)
Eugene C. Goossen was an American art critic and art historian who organized more than 60 art exhibitions, wrote essays for catalogues in addition to books on the subject. He was on the faculty of Hunter College, where he headed the art department.
Go to Profile#1062
John F. White
#71311
Overall Influence
1917 - 2005 (88 years)
John F. White was an academic administrator, president of National Educational Television, and president of the Cooper Union. Early life and career White was born on October 11, 1917, in Waukegan, Illinois, to the Reverend Edward Sydney and Lilah McCormick White. He was educated at the Harvard School for Boys and Hyde Park High School and went on to receive his B.A. from Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin in 1941. He married Joan Glasow in May 1943 with whom he had three children: Susan, Michael, and Christopher. In 1944, he received his master's degree at the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#1063
Daniella Tilbury
#97082
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Daniella Tilbury is a Gibraltarian academic, educator and sustainable development leader who was the first woman in her country to hold the title of university professor. The inaugural Vice-Chancellor and CEO of the University of Gibraltar, Tilbury, who has long been involved in sustainability issues became the first Commissioner for Sustainable Development in May 2018. She was recognized as an honorary don of St Catharine's College, Cambridge in July 2018 because of her scientific and social contributions.
Go to Profile#1064
Tania Ka'ai
#135050
Overall Influence
Tania M. Ka'ai, sometimes known as Tania Kaai-Oldman, is a New Zealand education academic. She is a full professor of language revitalisation at the Auckland University of Technology. Academic career Ka'ai earned a 1995 education PhD from the University of Waikato, with a thesis titled ' Te tātari i te kaupapa' , which looked at ways the New Zealand qualifications framework could be used as a tool for indigenous knowledge to be integrated and recognised as a valid part of the education system in New Zealand. After working at the University of Otago, from which she was stood down in contentious circumstances, Ka'ai moved to the Auckland University of Technology with John Moorfield.
Go to Profile#1065
John Wilmerding
#70696
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
John Currie Wilmerding Jr. , is an American professor of art, collector, and curator, and is best known as a prolific author of books on American art. Early life Wilmerding was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 28, 1938, and is descended from prominent families in old New York City social circles. His parents were John Currie Wilmerding Sr. , a vice president in the personal trust division of Bankers Trust Company, and Lila Vanderbilt Wilmerding . He has two siblings, James Wilmerding and Lila Wilmerding. After his mother's death, his father remarried to Katharine Polk , the daughter o...
Go to Profile#1066
Ming-Te Wang
#166539
Overall Influence
#1067
Marie Smallface Marule
#106572
Overall Influence
1944 - 2014 (70 years)
Marie Smallface Marule was a Canadian academic administrator, activist, and educator. She served as executive director of the National Indian Brotherhood , chief administrator of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples , and secretary of the Indian Association of Alberta. Marule was president of Red Crow Community College for two decades, and led the creation of several indigenous studies programs. She was previously an assistant professor of Native American studies at the University of Lethbridge.
Go to Profile#1068
Michael Hobday
#166689
Overall Influence
#1069
Lorin W. Anderson
#166704
Overall Influence
#1070
Edward S. Shapiro
#166711
Overall Influence
#1071
Michael D. Aeschliman
#75812
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Michael D. Aeschliman is a U.S.–Swiss educator, literary critic and scholar, Professor Emeritus at Boston University, Professor of Anglophone Culture at the Università della Svizzera italiana and Curriculum Advisor to The American School in Switzerland Foundation Board.
Go to Profile#1072
Josh Kun
#29007
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Josh Kun is an American author, academic and music critic. Kun is Professor of Communication and Journalism and chair in Cross-Cultural Communication in the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California. He also holds a joint appointment at USC's Department of American Studies and Ethnicity. He is the director of USC Annenberg's School of Communication, director of The Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg's the Norman Lear Center and co-editor of the book series "Refiguring American Music" for Duke University Press.
Go to Profile#1073
Gary Schwartz
#61811
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Gary Schwartz is an American-born Dutch art historian, who is a scholar of Rembrandt and art of the Dutch Golden Age. Career A native of East New York, Brooklyn, Schwartz was born to Hungarian mother and a Polish American father, who worked in textile manufacturing. He then moved with his family to Far Rockaway, Queens, at the age of twelve. In 1961, Schwartz received a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from New York University, where he was inspired to study the topic after taking an introductory course by the noted art historian H. W. Janson. Schwartz then continued to Johns Hopkins Universit...
Go to Profile#1074
Margaret C. Wang
#166985
Overall Influence
#1075
Rebecca Eynon
#137784
Overall Influence
Rebecca Elizabeth Eynon is a British educationalist specializing in the sociology of education. She holds a joint academic post at the Oxford Internet Institute and Department of Education, University of Oxford. She is a Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor at the Oxford Internet Institute and she is a co-convenor for the MSc Education , at the Department for Education, University of Oxford. Her book Teenagers and Technology, Routledge, 2013 attracted coverage in the national press for its insight in to the nuances of how teenagers behave on the internet and the implications for teen...
Go to Profile#1076
Daniel Muijs
#167350
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
#1077
John Nicholson Black
#100602
Overall Influence
1922 - 2018 (96 years)
John Nicholson Black was Principal of Bedford College, London from 1971-81. Education John Nicholson Black was educated at Rugby School and Exeter College, Oxford. Career He did war service with the RAF from 1942–46 and then obtained a BA in agriculture at Exeter College, Oxford in 1949 followed by an MA and DPhil both in 1952. From 1952-63 he was a lecturer, senior lecturer and Reader at the University of Adelaide Waite Research Institute where he was awarded a DSc in 1965. Black was also an accomplished musician and while residing in Adelaide he established the Burnside Symphony Orchestra, then comprising both professional and amateur musicians.
Go to Profile#1078
Michael O. Tunnell
#93957
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Michael O. Tunnell is an American children's writer and educator. He was the department chair of children's literature at Brigham Young University , but recently retired. He has published several books on children's literature, especially on the work of Lloyd Alexander. Tunnell is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints .
Go to Profile#1079
Norbert Lynton
#64183
Overall Influence
1927 - 2007 (80 years)
Norbert Casper Lynton was Professor of the History of Art at the University of Sussex. From 1998 - 2006 he was Chairman of the Charleston Trust. He has published on architecture and on modern artists including Paul Klee, Ben Nicholson, William Scott. With Erika Langmuir, he coauthored the 'Yale Dictionary of Modern Art'. Among his significant works are 'The Story of Modern Art' published by Phaidon Press Ltd and the introduction for the book that accompanied the major international exhibition 'Painting the Century: 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900–2000' held at the National Portrait Gallery...
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Geoffrey D. Borman
#134232
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Geoffrey D. Borman is an American quantitative methodologist and policy analyst. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1997 and is currently the Alice Wiley Snell Endowed Professor at Arizona State University, Director of the Arizona State University Education Sciences Graduate Program, and Editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.
Go to Profile#1081
Joyce L. Vantassel-baska
#167768
Overall Influence
#1082
Miriam G. Sherin
#123731
Overall Influence
Miriam G. Sherin is a professor in the School of Education and Social Policy and the Learning Sciences Department at Northwestern University. Her areas of research include mathematics teaching and learning, teacher cognition, and teacher education. Sherin has published articles in Journal of Teacher Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, and Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education. Her most recent book, Mathematics Teacher Noticing: Seeing Through Teachers' Eyes, was publish in 2011 by Taylor & Francis. Since 2018 she has been associate provost for undergraduate education at Northwestern University.
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Benjamin Levin
#149726
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Benjamin Ruvin Levin is a Canadian former civil servant, educational scholar, and convicted sex offender. He was a Canada Research Chair in Education Leadership and Policy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education , University of Toronto. He served for three years in the Ontario Liberal provincial government of Dalton McGuinty, as Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Education, after having held a similar post in Manitoba. He also served as an advisor to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.
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Jack Stauffacher
#53872
Overall Influence
1920 - 2017 (97 years)
Jack Werner Stauffacher was an American printer, typographer, educator, and fine book publisher. He owned and operated Greenwood Press, a small book printing press based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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James Cuno
#26217
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
James "Jim" Bash Cuno is an American art historian and curator. From 2011–22 Cuno served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Career A native of St. Louis, Cuno received a Bachelor of Arts in History from Willamette University in 1973. He then earned two Master of Arts degrees in Art History from the University of Oregon and Harvard University, in 1978 and 1980 respectively. In 1977, Cuno married his Willamette classmate, Sarah Stewart. He continued on at Harvard to receive a Doctor of Philosophy in Art History in 1985, and his doctoral dissertation was on the ...
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Kris Gutiérrez
#99844
Overall Influence
Kris D. Gutiérrez is an American professor of learning sciences and literacy. She currently holds the Carol Liu Chair in Educational Policy at the University of California, Berkeley and formerly held the Inaugural Provost's Chair at University of Colorado, Boulder. She is professor emerita of the University of California, Los Angeles. She has specialized in "culture and learning in urban schools," according to the Los Angeles Times. She is a member of the National Academy of Education. In April 2020, Gutiérrez was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#1087
Sharon Patton
#110819
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Sharon F. Patton is an American historian who specializes in African art. Early life and education She was born in southern part of Chicago in 1944, where she received her bachelor's degree in 1966 from Roosevelt University. Patton attended University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana where she got her master's degree three years later. The same year, she became a student at the University of Chicago and by 1980, obtained her Ph.D. in the history of African art at the Northwestern University.
Go to Profile#1088
Franklin Patterson
#77807
Overall Influence
1916 - 1994 (78 years)
Franklin Kessel Patterson was a professor and author, and the first president of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He was also, along with the other presidents of the Five Colleges, a co-author of the New College Plan.
Go to Profile#1089
Claudio Pavone
#25303
Overall Influence
1920 - 2016 (96 years)
Claudio Pavone was an Italian historian and archivist. Pavone was the president of the Historic Institute of the Liberation movement in Italy, the president of the Italian Society of Contemporary History and the director of the historical journal Parolechiave . He died aged 95, just one day shy of his 96th birthday.
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Kate Crawford
#87175
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Kate Crawford is a researcher, writer, composer, producer and academic, who studies the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. She is based in New York and works as a principal researcher at Microsoft Research , the co-founder and former director of research at the AI Now Institute at NYU, a visiting professor at the MIT Center for Civic Media, a senior fellow at the Information Law Institute at NYU, and an associate professor in the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. She is also a member of the WEF's Global Agenda Council on Data...
Go to Profile#1091
Irene Fountas
#37995
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Irene C. Fountas is an American educational whole language theorist. She teaches at Lesley University as the Marie M. Clay Endowed Chair for Early Literacy and Reading Recovery.
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David Darts
#120549
Overall Influence
David Darts is an artist and Chair of the Department of Art and Art Professions at New York University. He holds a PhD from the University of British Columbia and was previously a faculty member in the School of Art at the University of Arizona. He created the PirateBox, which is an autonomous mobile file sharing device designed to create local file sharing networks. It is inspired by the Free Culture and Pirate Radio movements and is registered with a Free Art License . Darts is curatorial director of Conflux, the annual art and technology festival for the creative exploration of urban public space.
Go to Profile#1093
Fahmida Hussain
#91928
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Dr Fahmida Hussain was born in a literary family on July 5, 1948, in Tando Jam in district Hyderabad Sindh, Pakistan. Her father Mohammad Yakoon "Niaz" was also a scholar who had translated poetry of Hafiz Shirazi from Persian to Sindhi language. Her brother Sirajul Haq Memon was also a well-known author and researcher. She is a well-known author, scholar, linguist and intellectual of Pakistan. Her fields of work have been: Literature, Linguistics, Woman studies and Anthropology. Her specialization is in the study of the great classical mystic poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai. Dr Fahmida was the Chairperson of Sindhi Language Authority from May 2008 to March 2015.
Go to Profile#1094
William S. Heckscher
#51039
Overall Influence
1904 - 1999 (95 years)
William S. Heckscher was a German art historian and professor of fine art and art history at universities in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands. Early life and education Wilhelm Sebastian Martin Hugo Heckscher was born in Hamburg, Germany, on December 14, 1904. He was the son of Hulda Foerster and Siegfried Heckscher, a lawyer and director of the Hamburg America Line. His maternal grandfather was the astronomer and mathematician Wilhelm Foerster.
Go to Profile#1095
Margaret McKenna
#74996
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Margaret McKenna is an American religious sister and anti-militarist activist. Raised in Hackensack, New Jersey, she earned her PhD in the origins and religious thought of Christianity from the University of Pennsylvania. In the 1970s, McKenna began participating in non-violent civil disobedience with the Plowshares Movement, sometimes being arrested or imprisoned for her actions. Her activism has continued through recent years.
Go to Profile#1096
Pauly Shore
#53594
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Paul Montgomery Shore is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker best known for his roles in 1990s comedy films. Shore began as a stand-up comedian at the age of 17, before becoming an MTV VJ in 1989. This led to a starring role in the comedy film Encino Man in 1992, which was a modest hit. He followed this with leading man vehicles, including Son in Law and Bio-Dome . Shore provided the voice of Robert "Bobby" Zimuruski in A Goofy Movie and its direct-to-video sequel, An Extremely Goofy Movie.
Go to Profile#1097
Dietrich von Bothmer
#66884
Overall Influence
1918 - 2009 (91 years)
Dietrich Felix von Bothmer was a German-born American art historian, who spent six decades as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he developed into the world's leading specialist in the field of ancient Greek vases.
Go to Profile#1098
Maravene Loeschke
#129187
Overall Influence
1947 - 2015 (68 years)
Maravene Sheppard Loeschke was an American academic administrator who served as president of Towson University from 2012 to her retirement in 2014. She had previously taught at Towson from 1970 to 2002 before leaving Maryland for Pennsylvania, to become the provost of Wilkes University, then the president of Mansfield University.
Go to Profile#1099
Merlin Stone
#13378
Overall Influence
1931 - 2011 (80 years)
Merlin Stone was an American author, artist and academic. She was an important thinker of the feminist theology and Goddess movements and is known for her book When God Was a Woman. Biography Merlin Stone was born in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York. She attended P.S. 217 and Erasmus Hall High School, where she graduated in 1949 with a Metallic Art Medal Award. After enrolling at the University of Buffalo later that year and marrying in 1950, she continued her studies while raising her children, ultimately earning a B.S. and teaching certificate in art from the institution in 1958. She became in...
Go to Profile#1100
Christina Maranci
#67194
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Christina Maranci is an Armenian-American researcher, writer, translator, historian, and professor at currently serving as the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University. She is considered an expert on the history and development of Armenian architecture.
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