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,
#1201
Demetrio Paparoni
#47109
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Demetrio Paparoni is an Italian art critic, curator, writer, and editor who has taught History of Modern Art and History of Contemporary Art at the University of Catania. Art Criticism Paparoni is the art critic of the Italian newspaper Domani. He has curated a number of major exhibitions. In 1983 he founded the contemporary art magazine Tema Celeste and the publishing house of the same name, which he ran until 2000.
Go to Profile#1202
Michael McMillan
#92291
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Michael McMillan is a British playwright, artist, curator and educator, born in England to parents who were migrants from St Vincent and the Grenadines . As an academic, he focuses his research on "the creative process, ethnography, oral histories, material culture and performativity". He is the author of several plays, and as an artist his first installation, The West Indian Front Room, was exhibited at the Geffrye Museum in 2005, going on to inspire a 2007 BBC Four documentary Tales from the Front Room, a website, a 2009 book, The Front Room: Migrant Aesthetics in the Home, and various inte...
Go to Profile#1203
Robert Hillenbrand
#80768
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Robert Hillenbrand FBA is a British art historian who specialises in Persian and Islamic art. He is a professorial fellow of the universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge for 2008–09. He gave the 2010 Aspects of Art Lecture.
Go to Profile#1204
J. Douglas Willms
#124541
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
J. Douglas Willms is the Founder and President of The Learning Bar Inc. He is a member of the US National Academy of Education, Past-President of the International Academy of Education and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. From 1995 to 2018, Willms was Professor of Education at the University of New Brunswick, where for eight years he held the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Chair in Human Development and for fourteen years held the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Literacy and Human Development.
Go to Profile#1205
Marlene Dietrich
#49624
Overall Influence
1901 - 1992 (91 years)
Marie Magdalene "Marlene" Dietrich was a German and American actress and singer whose career spanned from the 1910s to the 1980s. In 1920s Berlin, Dietrich performed on the stage and in silent films. Her performance as Lola-Lola in Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel brought her international acclaim and a contract with Paramount Pictures. She starred in many Hollywood films, including six iconic roles directed by Sternberg: Morocco , Dishonored , Shanghai Express and Blonde Venus , The Scarlet Empress , The Devil Is a Woman , Desire , and Destry Rides Again . She successfully traded on her glamorous persona and exotic looks, and became one of the era's highest-paid actresses.
Go to Profile#1206
Hwawei Ko
#61181
Overall Influence
1952 - 2020 (68 years)
Hwawei Ko was a Taiwanese pedagogue and professor who specialised in the promotion of reading education in Taiwan. She was the first director of the Learning and Teaching Institute of the Faculty of Letters at the National Central University and was professor of both the Department of Psychology of the National Chengchi University and at the National Chung Cheng University's Department of Psychology. Hwawei was a visiting scholar of the Harvard Institute for Educational Management and the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh.
Go to Profile#1207
Mitchell Chang
#168970
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Mitchell J. Chang is a Professor of Higher Education and Organizational Change and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been on the UCLA faculty since 1999. From March 2018- February 2022, Chang served as the Editor in Chief of The Journal of Higher Education. On July 1, 2023, he began an appointment as Interim Vice Provost at UCLA, after having served as Associate Vice Chancellor of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
Go to Profile#1208
Eliyahu Zini
#55241
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Eliyahu Rahamim Zini is the rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Or Vishua, which he founded in Haifa in 2001. In the past, he has served as the rabbi of the Technion, as a lecturer in its Faculty of Mathematics, and in the Department of Humanities and Arts.
Go to Profile#1209
Julie Andrews
#58846
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Dame Julie Andrews is an English actress, singer, and author. She has garnered numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over seven decades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, two Emmy Awards, three Grammy Awards, and six Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for three Tony Awards. One of the biggest box office draws of the 1960s, Andrews has been honoured with the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2007, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2022. She was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000.
Go to Profile#1210
Lorenz Eitner
#71242
Overall Influence
1919 - 2009 (90 years)
Lorenz Edwin Alfred Eitner was an art historian and museum director of the Stanford University Museum of Art. He served in the Office of Strategic Services, and, after World War II ended, provided materials for the Ministries Trial and the Judges' Trial. His research interest focused on the work of French Romantic artist Théodore Géricault .
Go to Profile#1211
Mary Harron
#55767
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Mary Harron is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. She wrote and directed American Psycho, Charlie Says,The Notorious Bettie Page, and I Shot Andy Warhol. Early life Born in Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada, Harron grew up with a family that was entrenched in the world of film and theatre. She is the daughter of Gloria Fisher and Don Harron, a Canadian actor, comedian, author, and director. Her parents divorced when she was six years old. Harron spent her early life residing between Toronto and Los Angeles. Harron's first stepmother, Virginia Leith, was discovered by Stanley Kubrick and ac...
Go to Profile#1212
Collette Tayler
#142246
Overall Influence
1951 - 2017 (66 years)
Collette Tayler was an Australian academic and researcher whose worked influenced early childhood education policy. She held the Chair of Early Childhood Education and Care, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, at the University of Melbourne for ten years.
Go to Profile#1213
Sarah Landau
#80118
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Sarah Bradford Landau was an architectural historian who taught for many years in the Department of Art History at New York University. Education Landau earned her B.F.A. at the University of North Carolina . She earned her Ph.D. from New York University Institute of Fine Arts, where she was a student of Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the noted architectural historian. Her dissertation chronicled the work of the architects Henry Tuckerman Potter and William Appleton Potter.
Go to Profile#1214
José María de Azcárate
#30732
Overall Influence
1919 - 2001 (82 years)
José María de Azcárate y Ristori was a Spanish art historian, author, researcher, curator, and professor, specializing in medieval Castilian art and Renaissance sculpture. Biography Born 18 April 1919 in Vigo, in the province of Pontevedra, Spain. His father was a sailor and early in his son's life he moved the family to Cádiz, Spain. He studied at University of Seville and at University of Madrid in the subjects of Philosophy and Literature, eventually earning a doctorate from University of Madrid. He was disciple of Manuel Gómez-Moreno Martinez.
Go to Profile#1215
Nick Sousanis
#104211
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Walter Nickell "Nick" Sousanis is an American scholar, art critic, and cartoonist; a co-founder of the TheDetroiter.com, he is also the first person at Columbia University to write a dissertation entirely in a comic book format.
Go to Profile#1216
Ralf van Bühren
#44455
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Ralf van Bühren is a German art historian, architectural historian, church historian, and theologian. He is professor of art history at the School of Church Communications at the Pontifical University of Santa Croce in Rome, and also lecturing at the Pontificia Università Gregoriana. His courses on Sacred Art and Architecture in Rome are open to students of US universities with campus in Rome.
Go to Profile#1217
João Mário Grilo
#94376
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
João Mário Lourenço Bagão Grilo is a Portuguese film director, author and professor, born in Figueira da Foz. He attended economics at the University of Coimbra but dropped out. In 1983, he graduated in sociology at Lisbon's ISCTE and in 1994 earned a Ph.D. in communication sciences from the NOVA University Lisbon. He is a full professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the NOVA University Lisbon, where, among other courses, he teaches Filmology and Film Direction.
Go to Profile#1218
Alexander Nemerov
#73399
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Alexander Nemerov is an American art historian. He is the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University. He specializes in American art dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Go to Profile#1219
Susan L. Smith
#86826
Overall Influence
1947 - 2021 (74 years)
Susan Louise Smith was an associate professor emeritus in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego . She was noted for her 1995 book The Power of Women: A Topos in Medieval Art and Literature, an expansion of her 1978 doctoral dissertation on the Power of Women topos.
Go to Profile#1220
Madlyn L. Hanes
#112006
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Madlyn L. Hanes is an American academic, and the former Chancellor of Penn State Harrisburg. She is now Vice President of the Commonwealth Campuses at Penn State University. Hanes graduated with her bachelor's degree in English education from the University of Florida in 1969. She received her master's degree in speech-language pathology and her Doctorate in curriculum and instruction from the University of Florida. Hanes previously served at chief academic officer of both Penn State Great Valley and Penn State Brandywine.
Go to Profile#1221
Charles C. Eldredge
#64665
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Charles "Charlie" Child Eldredge is an American art historian, educator, and curator. Eldredge is the Hall Distinguished Professor of American Art and Culture Emeritus at the University of Kansas. He also served as Director of the Spencer Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum during his career.
Go to Profile#1222
David Joselit
#87852
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
David Joselit is an American art historian who is currently Professor of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University, and also a published author, including being an editor of October. Career Joselit received his PhD from Harvard University.
Go to Profile#1223
Andy Tompkins
#80609
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
John Andrew Tompkins is an American educator in Kansas. Prior to his previous post at Wichita State University, he served as interim president at Fort Hays State, as well as the president of the Kansas Board of Regents from 2010 to 2015. Tompkins was a professor and dean at Pittsburg State University two different times, and served as a superintendent of three different Kansas school districts. Tompkins is also the former Commissioner of the Kansas State Department of Education, serving from June 1, 1996 to June 30, 2005.
Go to Profile#1224
Harry Armytage
#129017
Overall Influence
1915 - 1998 (83 years)
Walter Harry Green Armytage was a social historian and historian of education at the University of Sheffield. He was later the Gerald Read Professor of Education at Kent State University in Ohio. Early life Walter Harry Green Armytage was born in Kimberley, South Africa, on 22 November 1915. He graduated with first class honours in the historical tripos from Cambridge University in 1937 and then completed a Certificate in Education and a master's degree.
Go to Profile#1225
Henry C. Moses
#97680
Overall Influence
1941 - 2008 (67 years)
Dr. Henry Clay Moses was an American educator. A teacher, college administrator, and school headmaster, he instituted important changes while the dean of freshmen at Harvard College and helped to lead Trinity School into its third century. A dedicated outdoorsman, he enjoyed running, cycling, backpacking, and mountain climbing.
Go to Profile#1226
Jan van der Marck
#84546
Overall Influence
1929 - 2010 (81 years)
Jan van der Marck was a Dutch-born American museum administrator, art historian, and curator, focused on modern and contemporary art. Van der Marck authored and published many essays, articles and books about artists and art.
Go to Profile#1227
Ann Phoenix
#102543
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Ann Phoenix, is a British psychologist and academic, whose research focuses on psychosocial issues related to identity. She is Professor of Psychosocial Studies at the Institute of Education, University College London. She was previously ESRC Professorial Fellow for the Transforming Experiences research programme. She was previously Co-Director of the Thomas Coram Research Unit, and Reader in Psychology at the Open University.
Go to Profile#1228
Linda Dalrymple Henderson
#53032
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Linda Dalrymple Henderson is an American art historian, educator, and curator. Henderson is currently the David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professor in Art History Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on modern art, specifically twentieth-century American and European art.
Go to Profile#1229
Ute Jung-Kaiser
#99850
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Ute Jung-Kaiser, née Jung is a German musicologist. Life and work Born in Essen, Jung-Kaiser completed studies for the teaching profession at grammar schools in Cologne. After her first Staatsexamen in the fields of musicology, German studies, philosophy and school music she was awarded a Doctorate in 1968. She passed the second Staatsexamen in 1975. In 1981 she received her habilitation in historical musicology at the University of Hamburg.
Go to Profile#1230
Ranbir Chander Sobti
#50281
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Ranbir Chander Sobti is an Indian educationist, cell biologist. He is a former vice chancellor of the Panjab University, Chandigarh and Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow. He is known to have involved in advanced research in plant genetic studies and has written over 240 articles, and 22 books including Essentials of Biotechnology and Emerging Trends in Biomedical Science and Health. He is an elected Fellow of several major science academies such as Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, National Academy of Medical Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India, and Punjab Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#1231
Inge Hansen-Schaberg
#104163
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Inge Hansen-Schaberg is a German educational researcher. Life Born in Flensburg, Hansen-Schaberg studied German and biology at the from 1974 and passed the state examinations in 1980 and 1983. She then worked at a West Berlin primary and secondary school until 1989. Hansen-Schaberg was awarded a doctorate in 1991 with her dissertation Minna Specht – eine Sozialistin in der Landerziehungsheimbewegung . Untersuchung zur pädagogischen Biographie einer Reformpädagogin. at the TU Berlin and his habilitation in 1998 at the University of Potsdam.
Go to Profile#1232
Beatriz de la Fuente
#39873
Overall Influence
1929 - 2005 (76 years)
Beatriz Ramírez de la Fuente was a Mexican art historian, notable for her work on pre-Hispanic art in America. In 1998, she was elected a member of the Academia Mexicana de la Historia. Biography Beatriz Ramírez was born in Mexico City. She studied literature in National Autonomous University of Mexico , graduating in 1953. She subsequently obtained the master's degree in art history from the Universidad Iberoamericana in 1957, and a doctorate in art history from UNAM in 1967. She was teaching at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature at UNAM, at Universidad Iberoamericana, as well as at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología.
Go to Profile#1233
Ericka Hart
#130819
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (38 years)
Ericka Hart is an American academic, sex educator, and model. Early life Hart's mother died of breast cancer when Hart was 13, prompting her family to move from Maryland to Puerto Rico. She graduated from the University of Miami in 2008 with a degree in theater and psychology. Hart has a Master’s of Education in Human Sexuality from Widener University. From 2008 to 2010, Hart served as a HIV/AIDS volunteer in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia.
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Jordana Mendelson
#119643
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Jordana Mendelson is an art historian author, curator, and professor. Mendelson is a professor at NYU and, since 2020, Director of its King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center. Education and Teaching Mendelson received bachelors in art history with a Spanish minor from Boston University in 1988 and her Masters and PhDs from Yale in 1993 and 1999, respectively. She currently serves as associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literature at New York University. Previously, Mendelson was an associate professor of Art History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-C...
Go to Profile#1235
Rafał de Weryha-Wysoczański
#99534
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Chevalier Rafał Hugon Maria de Weryha-Wysoczański-Pietrusiewicz is a Polish art historian, genealogist and writer, who was a representative of the auction house Sotheby's. Per the "Genealogy of the de Weryha-Wysoczański Family" pedigree he produced for the Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels in 2008, he is the only child of sculptor Jan, 6th Chevalier de Weryha-Wysoczański-Pietrusiewicz, and nephew of Olympic Bronze Medallist and Vice World Champion in fencing Madame Ryszard Weryha-Wysoczańska-Pietrusiewicz and millionaire landowner and philanthropist Basil, 1st Chevalier de Weryha-Wysoczański-...
Go to Profile#1236
Stan Brakhage
#47624
Overall Influence
1933 - 2003 (70 years)
James Stanley Brakhage was an American filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film. Over the course of five decades, Brakhage created a large and diverse body of work, exploring a variety of formats, approaches and techniques that included handheld camerawork, painting directly onto celluloid, fast cutting, in-camera editing, scratching on film, collage film and the use of multiple exposures. Interested in mythology and inspired by music, poetry, and visual phenomena, Brakhage sought to reveal the universal, in particular exploring themes of birth, mortality, sexuality, and innocence.
Go to Profile#1237
Ratna Ghosh
#126209
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Ratna Ghosh is a Canadian academic and education scholar. She is a Distinguished James McGill Professor and Sir William C. Macdonald Professor of Education at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where she previously served as the Dean of the Faculty of Education from 1998 – 2003.
Go to Profile#1238
Signe Horn Fuglesang
#135000
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Signe Horn Fuglesang is a Norwegian art historian and Professor Emerita at the University of Oslo, best known for her published research and writings on Viking art. She is a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Go to Profile#1239
John R. Clarke
#76708
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
John R. Clarke is Annie Laurie Howard Regents Professor of Fine Arts, University of Texas at Austin, teaching in the Department of Art and Art History. Clarke , joined the University of Texas at Austin in 1980. His research and teaching focus on Roman art and archaeology, art-historical methodology, art of the sixties, and digital modeling.
Go to Profile#1240
Fiona Murray
#73230
Overall Influence
Dame Fiona Elizabeth Murray is the Associate Dean for Innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She is a member of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom's Council for Science and Technology and Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of the NATO Innovation Fund.
Go to Profile#1241
Hilary Robinson
#31086
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Hilary Robinson is a British academic and art theorist. She is Professor of Feminism, Art, and Theory at Loughborough University's School of Social Sciences and Humanities. She was Dean of the School of Art and Design and a professor at Middlesex University, and previously served as Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on the history, theory, and practice of feminist art.
Go to Profile#1242
Kim H. Veltman
#81922
Overall Influence
1948 - 2020 (72 years)
Kim Henry Veltman was a Dutch/Canadian historian of science and art, director of the Virtual Maastricht McLuhan Institute , consultant and author, known for his contributions in the fields of "linear perspective and the visual dimensions of science and art," new media, culture and society.
Go to Profile#1243
Jean Anyon
#174128
Overall Influence
#1244
Sherman Lee
#94955
Overall Influence
1918 - 2008 (90 years)
Sherman Emery Lee was an American academic, writer, art historian and expert on Asian art. He was Director of the Cleveland Museum of Art from 1958 to 1983. Lee earned his B.A. and M.A. at American University in Washington, D.C. He was awarded his PhD at Western Reserve University in 1941.
Go to Profile#1245
Julius S. Held
#67314
Overall Influence
1905 - 2002 (97 years)
Julius Samuel Held was an art historian, collector, and expert on Dutch painters Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Rembrandt. He published several monographs and was a professor of art history at Barnard College, Columbia University, from 1937 to 1970.
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Lillian Negrón Colón
#175888
Overall Influence
Lillian Negrón Colón is a Puerto Rican educator and university administrator. She became president of Bayamón Central University in 2010. Negrón Colón served 16 years as dean of the college of education at Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico.
Go to Profile#1247
Paul Soulellis
#105651
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Paul Soulellis is an American graphic designer, artist, and educator. His writings and work in the field of experimental publishing and network culture are cited in influential scholarly research. His publications are collected and exhibited worldwide and on the internet. He works in New York City and Providence, Rhode Island.
Go to Profile#1248
William Pierson Jr.
#75113
Overall Influence
1911 - 2008 (97 years)
William Harvey Pierson Jr. was an American painter and art historian. Teaching studio art and art history at Williams College for most of his career, Pierson was in large part responsible for the development of the cadre of Williams-educated museum curators and art historians now known as the Williams Art Mafia, including Earl A. Powell III of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, Glenn D. Lowry of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, James N. Wood of the Art Institute of Chicago and the J. Paul Getty Trust and Thomas Krens of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Go to Profile#1249
Jaś Elsner
#88406
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
John Richard "Jaś" Elsner, is a British art historian and classicist, who is Professor of Late Antique Art in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Oxford , Humfry Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Archaeology and Art at Corpus Christi College, Oxford , and Visiting Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago . He is mainly known for his work on Roman art, including Late Antiquity and Byzantine art, as well as the historiography of art history, and is a prolific writer on these and other topics. Elsner has been described as "one of the most well-known figures in the ...
Go to Profile#1250
Ruth A. Myers
#141611
Overall Influence
1926 - 2001 (75 years)
Ruth A. Myers was known as the “grandmother of American Indian Education in Minnesota.” A persistent voice for American Indian children and their families, Myers focused on education policy. She focused on learning opportunities for American Indian children. She also worked for curriculum and resource materials that reflected the American Indian history and culture for all Minnesota learners.
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