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 Engineering,

#7651

R. K. Kohli

#102230
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Prof. R. K. Kohli is an Indian educational administrator. He is Vice-Chancellor of Amity University Punjab, Mohali since August 22, 2020. Prior to joining Amity University, Mohali. He worked as the 2nd Vice-chancellor of Central University Punjab . He has also worked as the founder Vice Chancellor of DAV University, Jalandhar . He has 47 years of experience in teaching and research since July 1975. He is an elected Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi , The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bengaluru , the National Academy of Sciences , Allahabad , National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, New Delhi, , National Environmental Science Academy, New Delhi .
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#7652

Richard B. Hetnarski

#42588
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Richard B. Hetnarski is a Polish American and a professor emeritus in the department of mechanical engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology. He has been an ASME Fellow since 1983 and a New York State Licensed Professional Engineer since 1976. He is best known for his contributions to the fields of Thermal Stresses and Themoelasticity.
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#7653

Joan Littlewood

Joan Littlewood
#33745
Overall Influence
1914 - 2002 (88 years)
Joan Maud Littlewood was an English theatre director who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and is best known for her work in developing the Theatre Workshop. She has been called "The Mother of Modern Theatre". Her production of Oh, What a Lovely War! in 1963 was one of her more influential pieces.
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#7654

Thomas G. West

#57053
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Thomas G. West is an American academic. He is a professor of Politics at Hillsdale College, and the author of three books. Early life and education West was born in 1945. He received his B.A. from Cornell University in 1967 and his Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University in 1974. He served in the Vietnam War as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1969–70.
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#7655

Ken Anderson

#88036
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Ken Anderson is an American motorsport engineer, operating over the course of his career in Motocross, IndyCar, Formula One, IRL and NASCAR. US F1 Team In late 2008 it was announced that along with Peter Windsor, Anderson would be founding the Formula One team US F1, which lodged a successful bid for a 2010 season entry.
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#7656

Stanley Block

#36306
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Stanley Block, Ph.D., CFA, is an Emeritus Professor of Finance at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. He is best known as coauthor with Geoffrey Hirt of numerous books in finance, including Foundations of Financial Management and Fundamentals of Investment Management. The first-mentioned text has sold over a million copies.
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#7657

Ernest Hondros

#168996
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Ernest Demetrious Hondros was a British material scientist, and visiting professor at Imperial College London. Life He was born in Kastelorizo in Greece. He grew up in Queensland. He earned a Doctor of Science degree from the University of Melbourne. He was Director of the Petten Establishment, at the Joint Research Centre.
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#7658

Kimberly Bryant

Kimberly Bryant
#87792
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Kimberly Bryant is an American electrical engineer who worked in the biotechnology field at Genentech, Novartis Vaccines, Diagnostics, and Merck. In 2011, Bryant founded Black Girls Code, a nonprofit organization that focuses on providing technology and computer programming education to African-American girls. After founding Black Girls Code, Bryant was listed as one of the "25 Most Influential African-Americans In Technology" by Business Insider.
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#7659

Carla Seatzu

#168815
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Carla Seatzu is an Italian electrical engineer whose research concerns discrete-event simulation, Petri nets, fault detection and isolation, and networked control systems, with applications in manufacturing and transportation. She is an ordinary professor in the faculty of engineering at the University of Cagliari.
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#7660

Deep Medhi

#165644
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Deepankar Medhi is an Indo-American computer scientist and inventor. He is on leave as Curators' Distinguished Professor in the department of computer science and electrical engineering at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. He is a fellow of IEEE.
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#7661

Douglas Adams

#97374
Overall Influence
Douglas Edward Adams is an American engineer, currently the Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Daniel F. Flowers at Vanderbilt University, and also a published author. He was named a Fellow of the Society for Experimental Mechanics in 2021. He is also a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He was the recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2001 while a professor at Purdue University.
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#7662

Joseph Appelbaum

#167972
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Joseph Appelbaum is a professor in the Engineering Faculty at Tel Aviv University, and former holder of the Ludwig Jokel Chair of Electronics in the faculty. He is a life fellow of IEEE “for contributions to solar conversion systems”.
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#7663

Paul Chien

#32327
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Paul Kwan Chien is a Chinese-American biologist known for his research on the physiology and ecology of intertidal organisms and his support for intelligent design. Biography Chien was born on 1 January 1947 in Hong Kong and earned bachelor's degrees in Biology and Chemistry from Chung Chi College of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1966 and his Ph.D. in 1971 from the University of California at Irvine in the laboratory of marine invertebrate physiologist, Grover C. Stephens. After a brief postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Wheeler J. North at the Kerckhoff marine laboratory ...
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#7664

Wendy Ewald

#43107
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Wendy Ewald is an American photographer and educator. Early life and education Wendy Ewald was born in Detroit, Michigan, graduated from Abbot Academy in 1969 and attended Antioch College between 1969 and 1974, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied photography with Minor White.
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#7665

Vicki Chen

#126452
Overall Influence
Prof. Vicki Chen is an Australian engineer, a former Executive Dean for the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology at the University of Queensland, and current Provost and Senior Vice-President of the University of Technology Sydney.[10] In 2020 she was elected as the Fellow of Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering.
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#7666

Gordon Wallace

#99116
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Gordon Wallace, AO, FAA, FTSE, FRACI is a leading scientist in the field of electromaterials. His students and collaborators have pioneered the use of nanotechnology in conjunction with organic conductors to create new materials for energy conversion and storage as well as medical bionics. He has developed new approaches to fabrication that allow material properties discovered in the nano world to be translated into micro structures and macro scopic devices.
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#7667

Andre Kaup

#118120
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Andre Kaup is an electrical engineer at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Erlangen, Bavaria. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2013 for his contributions to video coding and object-based video signal processing.
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#7668

Scott Hauck

#169916
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Scott Hauck is an electrical engineer from the University of Washington in Seattle. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2016 for his contributions to field-programmable gate array-based systems.
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#7669

Ning Bin

#150881
Overall Influence
1959 - 2019 (60 years)
Ning Bin was a Chinese control systems engineer and professor who served as president of Beijing Jiaotong University from 2008 to 2019. He was elected an IEEE Fellow in 2014 "for contributions to train operation control systems" and was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2017. He was a four-time recipient of the State Science and Technology Progress Award and was awarded the Ho Leung Ho Lee Prize in 2016. He died in a traffic collision.
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#7670

Kōji Morimoto

#28718
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Kōji Morimoto is a Japanese anime director. Some of his works include being an animator in the Akira film; shorts in Robot Carnival, Short Peace, My Last Day and The Animatrix; and key animation in anime such as Kiki's Delivery Service, City Hunter, and Fist of the North Star. He is the co-founder of Studio 4°C. He has hosted the independent creative team 'phy' since 2009.
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#7671

Roger A. Broucke

#114453
Overall Influence
1932 - 2005 (73 years)
Roger A. Broucke was an aerospace engineer known for his solutions to the three-body problem. After working on practical orbital mechanics at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he became a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
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#7672

Markus Miessen

#138427
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Markus Miessen is a German architect and writer. Education and teaching Miessen received his bachelor's degree from the Glasgow School of Art , continuing his studies at the Architectural Association in London and at the London Consortium . His PhD was completed at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths in 2015 under the supervision of Eyal Weizman.
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#7673

Andrew Whittaker

#134050
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Andrew Stuart Whittaker is an American structural engineer who is currently a SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
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#7674

Emanuel Tutuc

#169964
Overall Influence
Emanuel Tutuc is an American physicist and professor at University of Texas at Austin and an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society.
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#7675

Moshe Matalon

#170021
Overall Influence
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#7676

Anne Noggle

Anne Noggle
#102196
Overall Influence
1922 - 2005 (83 years)
Anne Noggle was an American aviator, photographer, curator and professor. After receiving her pilot's license as a teenager, she enrolled as a WASP pilot during World War II, flying missions in 1943 and 1944. Following her time as a pilot, she returned to school to study art and photography. The photographs she subsequently made, documenting how women age, received wide recognition and are held in numerous museum collections. She taught art at the University of New Mexico from 1980 to 1994, and was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1992.
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#7677

Jacek Krenz

Jacek Krenz
#156855
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Jacek Krenz, born in 1948 in Poznań, Poland, is an academic architect and painter. He is a professor at Gdańsk University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture, taught also at University of Fine Arts in Poznań – both in Poland – and at Universidade da Beira Interior in Covilhã, Portugal. Charter member of The Polish Watercolour Society. Instructor of Urban Sketchers
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#7678

Hiroshi Harada

#170026
Overall Influence
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#7679

Vikas Berry

#120164
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Vikas Berry is an Indian-American scientist, engineer, and academic. He is a professor and department head of chemical engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago. He conducts research and develops technologies in the areas of bionanotechnology and two-dimensional materials . He holds the Dr. Satish C. Saxena professorship at University of Illinois Chicago and held the William H. Honstead endowed professorship at the Kansas State University from 2011 to 2014.
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#7680

Betül Kaçar

#57960
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Betül Kacar is a Turkish-American astrobiologist and an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin. She directs a NASA Astrobiology Research Center exploring the essential attributes of life, its origins and how they should shape our notions of habitability and the search for life on other worlds.
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#7681

Alan Parker

Alan Parker
#22772
Overall Influence
1944 - 2020 (76 years)
Sir Alan William Parker was an English filmmaker. His early career, beginning in his late teens, was spent as a copywriter and director of television advertisements. After about ten years of filming adverts, many of which won awards for creativity, he began screenwriting and directing films.
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#7682

Sean Sun

#153634
Overall Influence
Sean X. Sun is an American biophysicist. Sun completed a Bachelor of Science degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1994, and obtained a doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley in 1998. He teaches at Johns Hopkins University, where he operates the Cell Mechanics Group laboratory. Sun was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2016. The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering granted Sun an equivalent honor the following year.
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#7683

Judy Davis

Judy Davis
#33288
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Judith Davis is an Australian actress in film, television, and on stage. With a career spanning over 40 years, she has been commended for her versatility and regarded as one of the finest actresses of her generation. Frequent collaborator Woody Allen described her as "one of the most exciting actresses in the world". She is the most awarded recipient for the AACTA Award with nine accolades and has received numerous accolades, including three Emmy Awardss, two BAFTA Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards, and two nominations for Academy Awards.
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#7684

Michael Webber

#170200
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Michael Webber may refer to:Michael Webber , American professor of engineeringMichael Webber , American politician in MichiganMichael Webber , dean of HobartMike Webber, General Hospital character
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#7685

Jean-Louis Scartezzini

#164031
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Jean-Louis Scartezzini is a Swiss building physicist specialized in day lighting and solar buildings. He is a professor of physics at EPFL and the head of the Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory since 1994.
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#7686

Tom Sito

Tom Sito
#33153
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Tom Sito is an American animator, animation historian and teacher. He is currently a Professor at USC's School of Cinematic Arts in the Animation Division. In 1998, Sito was included by Animation Magazine in their list of the One Hundred Most Important People in Animation.
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#7687

Laurence Williams

#42517
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Laurence Glynn Williams, , FNucl, FLSW is a British nuclear engineer, health and safety expert, and academic. He specialises in nuclear safety and security. From 1998 to 2005, he was Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations. From 2010 to 2014, he was Professor of Nuclear Safety and Regulation at the University of Central Lancashire. He has served as Chairman of the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management in the Department of Energy and Climate Change since 2012, and Chairman of the Defence Nuclear Safety Committee in the Ministry of Defence since 2013. He has been described as...
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#7688

Deidre Brown

#128055
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Deidre Sharon Brown is a New Zealand art historian and architectural lecturer. Brown currently teaches at the University of Auckland and is the head of the School of Architecture and Planning. Additionally, she is a governor of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand, a member of the Māori Trademarks Advisory Committee of the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand, and a member of the Humanities Panel of the Marsden Fund. In 2021 Brown was made a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.
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#7689

Rudolf Vatinyan

#92130
Overall Influence
1941 - 2021 (80 years)
Rudolf Vatinyan was an Armenian cinematographer. He was born in Dilijan, Armenia. In 1969, he graduated from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography . He worked at Armenfilm studio from 1970 until his death, and had been lecturing in the Department of Culture of Yerevan State Pedagogical Institute since 1980, and since 1994 in the Institute of Cinema and Theatre.
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#7690

Peep Sürje

#170306
Overall Influence
1945 - 2013 (68 years)
Peep Sürje was an Estonian civil engineer specializing in road engineering, soil mechanics and geotechnics . In 1973, he graduated from Tallinn Polytechnical Institute in technical sciences . In 1984, he graduated from the State Road Research Institute in Moscow. Since 1992, he is professor of roads' engineering.
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#7691

Alex Gordon

#101597
Overall Influence
1917 - 1999 (82 years)
Sir Alexander John Gordon, CBE was a Welsh architect. Born in Ayr, Scotland, he was brought up and educated in Swansea and Cardiff. After World War II he designed several major buildings in Cardiff and Swansea, and from 1971 to 1973 he served as president of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 1974 he summarised the needs of new architecture as 'Long life, loose fit, low energy'.
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#7692

Monica Cox

Monica Cox
#74012
Overall Influence
Monica Farmer Cox is a professor of engineering education at Ohio State University. Cox was the first African-American woman to earn tenure in engineering at Purdue University. She won the 2008 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
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#7693

Peter Daland

#78222
Overall Influence
1921 - 2014 (93 years)
Peter Daland was an International Swimming Hall of Fame coach from the United States, best-known for coaching the University of Southern California Trojans team to nine NCAA championships from 1957-1992.
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#7694

Joseph Crisco

#170350
Overall Influence
Joseph Crisco is an American engineer, currently the Henry F. Lippitt Professor of Orthopedics and Professor of Engineering at Brown University and also Editor in Chief of Journal of Applied Biomechanics.
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#7695

Lillian Chrystall

#123276
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Lillian Jessie Chrystall was a New Zealand architect. She was the first woman to receive a national New Zealand Institute of Architects award. Biography Chrystall was born in the Auckland suburb of Herne Bay on 1 March 1926, one of three children of businessman Robert Laidlaw and American-born Lillian Viola Irene Laidlaw . One of her brothers was Lincoln Laidlaw, who founded the New Zealand toy manufacturing company, Lincoln Industries. She was raised in Herne Bay, and was educated at Bayfield School and Auckland Girls' Grammar School. Chrystall studied architecture at the University of Auck...
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#7696

Michael L. Madigan

#148140
Overall Influence
Michael L. Madigan is an American biomedical engineer. Madigan earned bachelor's and master's degrees in bioengineering from Texas A&M University in 1994 and 1996, respectively, followed by a doctorate in the subject at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2001. Maidgan began his teaching career at Virginia Tech upon completing his Ph.D. Between 2014 and 2017, he was a professor at Texas A&M University. He returned to Virginia Tech in 2017, and became editor of the Journal of Applied Biomechanics that year.
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#7697

Paul I. W. De Bakker

#170403
Overall Influence
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#7698

Hiroaki Okamoto

#170434
Overall Influence
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#7699

Harry Hemond

#170435
Overall Influence
Harry F. Hemond is an American engineer, focusing on environmental chemistry and wetland chemistry. He is currently the William E. Leonhard Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Education Hemond received a Bachelor of Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a Master of Arts from Connecticut College.
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#7700

Mai Kitazawa Arbegast

Mai Kitazawa Arbegast
#116594
Overall Influence
1922 - 2012 (90 years)
Mai Haru Kitazawa Arbegast was an American landscape architect, and professor based in Berkeley, California. She was a professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Berkeley. She was the first acting director Blake Garden after its gift to the UC Berkeley Department of Landscape Architecture . As a professional landscape architect who specialized in planting design and her work included estates, wineries, and large scale residential gardens, as well as public, commercial, and educational projects. Projects of note include the Hearst Castle planting restoration, California Palace o...
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