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,
#401
Ahmed Sharif
#18946
Overall Influence
1921 - 1999 (78 years)
Ahmed Sharif was an educationist, philosopher, critic, writer and scholar of medieval Bengali literature. He is recognized as one of the most outspoken atheist and radical thinkers of Bangladesh. Background Sharif was born on 13 February 1921 in Patiya, Chittagong District. His father was Abdul Aziz and his uncle was Abdul Karim Sahitya Bisharad, a prominent historian of Bangla literature. He did his master's and Ph.D. degrees in Bengali literature from the University of Dhaka, in 1944 and 1967 respectively. From 1945 to 1949, he taught at Laksham Nawab Faizunnessa College and later on at Feni College.
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Claire Bishop
#21794
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Claire Bishop is a British art historian, critic, and Professor of Art History at CUNY Graduate Center, New York where she has taught since September 2008. Bishop is known as one of the central theorists of participation in visual art and performance. Her 2004 essay titled “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” which was published in October, remains an influential critique of relational aesthetics. Bishop's books have been translated into over eighteen languages and she is a frequent contributor to art journals including Artforum and October.
Go to Profile#403
Neil MacGregor
#7547
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Robert Neil MacGregor is a British art historian and former museum director. He was editor of the Burlington Magazine from 1981 to 1987, then Director of the National Gallery, London, from 1987 to 2002, Director of the British Museum from 2003 to 2009, and founding director of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin until 2018.
Go to Profile#404
Mel Ainscow
#68517
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Melvin Ainscow CBE FRSA is Professor of Education at the University of Manchester. He is also adjunct professor at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. He was educated at Ducie High School, the University of Birmingham , and the University of East Anglia . He worked as a lecturer at the University of Cambridge from 1985 to 1995, before being appointed Professor of Education at Manchester in 1995. At Manchester he is also co-director of the Centre for Equity in Education. In 2013 he was appointed a specialist adviser to the House of Commons Education Committee.
Go to Profile#405
John Fentress Gardner
#83918
Overall Influence
1912 - 1998 (86 years)
John Fentress Gardner was an American author and educator. He wrote about education, spiritualism, and anthroposophy. He was the longtime headmaster of what is now called The Waldorf School of Garden City.
Go to Profile#406
Keith James Topping
#85320
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Keith James Topping is a researcher in education. He designs intervention programs for teachers, parents and others to help children, then researches whether and how they work. The public impact of his research work has been reported over the last 35 years in national and international newspapers and on radio, television and in news media online.
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Gloria J. Ladson-billings
#104208
Overall Influence
#408
Margaret Just Butcher
#50622
Overall Influence
1913 - 2000 (87 years)
Margaret Just Butcher was an American educator and civil rights activist. Butcher worked as an English professor at Howard University and Federal City College. She also taught for years overseas. She was a fellow of the Julius Rosenwald Foundation. In the 1950s, she was a Fulbright Visiting Professor at two universities in France. In the early 1960s she taught in two cities in Morocco, and then served as a cultural affairs attache in Paris, returning to Washington, D.C., in 1968. She taught in its public schools for a time.
Go to Profile#409
Sheng-Ching Chang
#45281
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Sheng-Ching Chang is a Taiwanese art historian. She serves as the director of the Graduate Institute of Museum Studies at Fu Jen Catholic University and the professor at the Department of History of Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei.
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John W. Creswell
#38292
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
John Ward Creswell is an American academic known for his work in mixed methods research. He has written numerous journal articles and 27 books on mixed methods research, research methods, and qualitative research.
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Jennifer Chang
#53453
Overall Influence
Jennifer Chang is an American poet and scholar. Life and career Jennifer Chang was born in New Jersey. She earned a BA from the University of Chicago in 1998, and an MFA from University of Virginia in 2002, where she returned to pursue a PhD and received her degree in 2017.
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Simon Leys
#9046
Overall Influence
1935 - 2014 (79 years)
Pierre Ryckmans , better known by his pen name Simon Leys, was a Belgian-Australian writer, essayist and literary critic, translator, art historian, sinologist, and university professor, who lived in Australia from 1970. His work particularly focused on the politics and traditional culture of China, calligraphy, French and English literature, the commercialization of universities, and nautical fiction. Through the publication of his trilogy Les Habits neufs du président Mao , Ombres chinoises and Images brisées , he was one of the first intellectuals to denounce the Cultural Revolution in Chi...
Go to Profile#413
Shirley Raines
#54232
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Shirley C. Raines is an American public speaker, author and leadership consultant who retired from academia after serving as president of the University of Memphis from 2001 to 2013. Before entering administration she was a professor of education, specializing in early childhood.
Go to Profile#414
Th Omas R. Guskey
#104864
Overall Influence
#415
Harold Rosen
#57107
Overall Influence
1919 - 2008 (89 years)
Harold Rosen was an American-born British educationalist who lived in the UK for most of his life. His particular field was teaching English, and he eventually became an academic at the Institute of Education, part of London University.
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Chester E. Finn Jr.
#72296
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Chester Evans "Checker" Finn Jr. is a former professor of education, an educational policy analyst, and a former United States Assistant Secretary of Education. He is currently the president emeritus of the nonprofit Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in Washington, D.C. He is also a Fellow of the International Academy of Education, an Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute, and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution where he chairs the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. He was also a member of the Maryland Kirwan Commission on Education during its authorization period from 2...
Go to Profile#417
Noel James Entwistle
#105344
Overall Influence
#418
Lynn Okagaki
#62860
Overall Influence
Lynn Okagaki is deputy provost for academic affairs at the University of Delaware. She was appointed to this position in January 2016, after serving as interim since July 2015. As chief advisor to the Provost and a member of the senior leadership team for the University of Delaware, Okagaki oversees a number of academic and administrative units. Her major responsibilities include academic program planning and review, working with the Faculty Senate and deans to establish and review academic programs, working with the colleges in the design and delivery of general education, and overseeing the ...
Go to Profile#419
Michalinos Zembylas
#105491
Overall Influence
#420
Donda West
#30671
Overall Influence
1949 - 2007 (58 years)
Donda C. West was an American educator and chair of Chicago State University's Department of English, Communications, Media, and Theater. She was best known for being the mother of the American rapper Kanye West.
Go to Profile#421
Barbara Jatta
#41734
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Barbara Jatta is an Italian art historian who has been the director of the Vatican Museums since June 2016. Early life and education Jatta has joked that she was born among the smell of solvents. Her mother was a painter and conservator, and her sister a conservator.
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Thoma S. L. Good
#105637
Overall Influence
#423
Margarita McCoy
#55396
Overall Influence
1923 - 2016 (93 years)
Margarita Piel McCoy was an American urban planner and educator. McCoy was among the first women in the United States to achieve academic tenure as a professor of urban planning, and the first to chair an urban planning department.
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T. J. Bryan
#62356
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
T. J. Bryan is an American educator who rose from poverty in rural Maryland to become the first African-American woman to be elected by the University of North Carolina Board of Governors to serve as Chancellor of one of its constituent institutions.
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Ruth Farwell
#33011
Overall Influence
Ruth Sarah Farwell retired as Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Buckinghamshire New University in February 2015. Farwell held a research fellowship in theoretical physics at Imperial College, London, in the early eighties. Her research is at the boundary between applied mathematics and theoretical physics. Her use of Clifford algebras in her mathematics generated her interest in the Victorian mathematician William Kingdon Clifford. She continues to research the mathematical contribution of Clifford, and mathematical models of particle physics, as well as undertaking research on higher education policy.
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George Holmes
#65288
Overall Influence
George Holmes is a British academic administrator. He has served as the vice-chancellor of the University of Bolton since 2006. Life Holmes was born to a property developer. He earned a BSc in Economics, a master’s degree in business administration, and a Doctorate in Education.
Go to Profile#427
William Chace
#45762
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
William Chace is a Professor of English Emeritus at Emory University as well as Honorary Professor of English Emeritus at Stanford University. He specializes in the work of James Joyce in addition to the work of W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Also the former president of Emory University, he lives in Palo Alto, California, with his wife JoAn Johnstone Chace.
Go to Profile#428
N'Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba
#37577
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
N'Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba is Ivorian researcher who studies the African diaspora and education. She is a Professor of Africana Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University. She also serves as President of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies and Chair of UNESCO's Management of Social Transformations Scientific Advisory Committee.
Go to Profile#429
Rebecca Zwick
#43148
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Rebecca Zwick is an American statistician and researcher in educational assessment and psychometrics. She is a professor emeritus in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the author of a book on university and college admission, Who Gets In? Strategies for Fair and Effective College Admissions .
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Johanna Drucker
#11992
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Johanna Drucker is an American author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic. Her scholarly writing documents and critiques visual language: letterforms, typography, visual poetry, art, and lately, digital art aesthetics. She is currently the Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professor in the Department of Information Studies at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. In 2023, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
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Ursula Franklin
#24032
Overall Influence
1921 - 2016 (95 years)
Ursula Martius Franklin was a Canadian metallurgist, research physicist, author, and educator who taught at the University of Toronto for more than 40 years. Franklin is best known for her writings on the political and social effects of technology. She was the author of The Real World of Technology, which is based on her 1989 Massey Lectures; The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map, a collection of her papers, interviews, and talks; and Ursula Franklin Speaks: Thoughts and Afterthoughts, containing 22 of her speeches and five interviews between 1986 and 2012. Franklin was a practising Quaker and actively worked on behalf of pacifist and feminist causes.
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Eric Fernie
#37750
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Eric Campbell Fernie is a Scottish art historian. Education Fernie was educated at the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of London . Career Fernie has had a long career in the academic and art worlds, occupying a number of important posts. He was Director of the Courtauld Institute from 1995 to 2003 and was President of the Society of Antiquaries of London from 2004 to 2007.
Go to Profile#433
Sheri Everts
#46859
Overall Influence
Sheri Everts is an American academic and educator serving as the chancellor of Appalachian State University in North Carolina. Early life and education Born and raised in Nebraska, Everts attended elementary school in a one-room schoolhouse. She completed her undergraduate education at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1980. She worked as a high school English teacher in Nebraska and Kansas for several years, later returning to UNL to complete an Master of Arts in literacy education and Doctor of Education.
Go to Profile#434
Trevor Colbourn
#26096
Overall Influence
1927 - 2015 (88 years)
Harold Trevor Colbourn was an Australian professor and academic administrator, who served as the second president of the University of Central Florida, previously named Florida Technological University.
Go to Profile#435
Michael G. Moore
#81720
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Michael Grahame Moore is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Education at the Pennsylvania State University. He is known for his major contributions to the field of distance education. In 1972, he published his first statement of distance learning theory, which asserted that "distance education is not simply a geographical separation of learners and teachers, but, more importantly, is a pedagogical concept" [1]. Half a century of study, teaching, experimentation and advocacy of distance education justifies a claim that he is the founder of contemporary online education, a claim supported by h...
Go to Profile#436
Stanford T. M. D. Shulman
#107276
Overall Influence
#437
Harald Szeemann
#12048
Overall Influence
1933 - 2005 (72 years)
Harald Szeemann was a Swiss curator, artist, and art historian. Having curated more than 200 exhibitions, many of which have been characterized as groundbreaking, Szeemann is said to have helped redefine the role of an art curator. It is believed that Szeemann elevated curating to a legitimate art-form itself.
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Claire McLachlan
#37739
Overall Influence
Claire Jane McLachlan is a New Zealand teaching academic. She is currently professor and dean at Federation University Australia. Her speciality is early-childhood literacy. Career McLachlan did a M.A by thesis at Massey entitled 'Experience as a mother of a "crying baby": a single collaborative case study' completed in 1991, and then a PhD 'Emergent literacy in New Zealand kindergartens : an examination of policy and practices' in 1996. Between 2000 and 2006 she worked in Auckland at the University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology before returning to Massey University, where she rose to full professor in 2013.
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Patty Murray
#33216
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Patricia Lynn Murray is an American politician who has served as president pro tempore of the United States Senate since 2023 and the senior United States Senator from Washington since 1993. A member of the Democratic Party, Murray served in the Washington State Senate from 1989 to 1993. She was Washington's first female U.S. senator and is the first woman in American history to hold the position of president pro tempore. Murray is also the youngest senator to occupy the office of president pro tempore in more than five decades. As president pro tempore, Murray is third in the line of succession to the U.S.
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Leo Steinberg
#10295
Overall Influence
1920 - 2011 (91 years)
Leo Steinberg was an American art critic and art historian. Life Steinberg was born in Moscow, Russian SFSR, the son of Isaac Nachman Steinberg, a Jewish lawyer and Socialist Revolutionary Party politician who was People's magistrate of Justice under Vladimir Lenin from 1917 to 1918. His family left the Soviet Union in 1923, and settled in Berlin, Germany. In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, the Steinbergs were forced to move again, this time to the United Kingdom. Intending to become an artist, Steinberg studied at the Slade School of Fine Art .
Go to Profile#441
Basil B. Bernstein
#107876
Overall Influence
#442
Barbara K. Rimer
#107927
Overall Influence
#443
Ronald Mcg. Harden
#107944
Overall Influence
#444
Richard D'Aeth
#50988
Overall Influence
1912 - 2008 (96 years)
Richard D'Aeth was a British educationalist and President of Hughes Hall, Cambridge, from 1978 to 1984. Early life D'Aeth was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, the son of Walter D'Aeth and Marion Turnbull. He was educated at Bedford School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. At Emmanuel, he was a scholar and took a first class Honours degree in Natural Science before completing his PhD.
Go to Profile#445
John Patrick Crecine
#12663
Overall Influence
1939 - 2008 (69 years)
John Patrick "Pat" Crecine was an American educator and economist who served as President of Georgia Tech, Dean at Carnegie Mellon University, business executive, and professor. After receiving his early education at public schools in Lansing, Michigan, he earned a bachelor's degree in industrial management, and master's and doctoral degrees in industrial administration from the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie Mellon University. He also spent a year at the Stanford University School of Business.
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Alan Shapiro
#52390
Overall Influence
1926 - 2011 (85 years)
Alan Shapiro was an American educator and educational reformer who became a leading contributor to Teachable Moment, a New York City-based teacher education project of the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility which is an important proponent of effective, universal education. A graduate of Adelphi University and Columbia University Teachers College he also attended the University of Illinois before serving as a combat infantryman in the American Army in World War II. Shapiro taught for many years in the public school system of New Rochelle, New York.
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Michael D. Higgins
#21028
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Michael Daniel Higgins is an Irish politician, poet, broadcaster and sociologist who has served as the ninth president of Ireland since 2011. Entering national politics through the Labour Party, he served as a senator from 1973 to 1977 having been nominated by the Taoiseach. Elected in 1981 as a Teachta Dála , he represented the Galway West constituency from 1981 to 1982 and 1987 to 2011. Between these terms, he returned to Seanad Éireann from 1983 to 1987 as a senator for the National University. He served as minister for arts, culture and the Gaeltacht from 1993 to 1997 and mayor of Galway from 1981 to 1982 and 1990 to 1991.
Go to Profile#448
H. Lee Swanson
#87851
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
H. Lee Swanson is a Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside. He is currently the editor of the Journal of Learning Disabilities and is the author of numerous academic publications in the areas of working memory, learning disabilities, cognition, intelligence, and achievement. Between 1976 and 2011, he authored or contributed to over 224 academic books and articles, including The Handbook of Learning Disabilities and his contributions to the National Center for Learning Disabilities, making him an influential researcher in the fie...
Go to Profile#449
Samuel Baskin
#87930
Overall Influence
1901 - 2002 (101 years)
Samuel Baskin was an American psychologist and educational reformer who served on the faculty of Stephens College, Antioch College and was the first president of the Union Institute & University. Baskin received his undergraduate education at Brooklyn College and his Ph.D. from New York University. While director of educational planning at Antioch College, Baskin helped lead the creation of the Union for Research and Experimentation in Higher Education . As head of the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities, Baskin was the "driving force" behind the national initiative to create "Un...
Go to Profile#450
Sue Middleton
#42198
Overall Influence
Sue Middleton is a retired New Zealand academic who spent her career at the University of Waikato focused on life histories. Career After a 1979 MSc thesis, A phenomenological perspective for the classroom teacher and its application to the education of women at Victoria University of Wellington and a 1985 PhD dissertation Feminism and education in post-war New Zealand: a sociological analysis at University of Waikato, New Zealand, Middleton joined the faculty.
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