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,
#8751
Neil LaBute
#42064
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Neil N. LaBute is an American playwright, film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is best known for a play that he wrote and later adapted for film, In the Company of Men , which won awards from the Sundance Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Awards, and the New York Film Critics Circle. He wrote and directed the films Your Friends & Neighbors , Possession , The Shape of Things , The Wicker Man , Some Velvet Morning , and Dirty Weekend . He directed the films Nurse Betty , Lakeview Terrace , and the American adaptation of Death at a Funeral . LaBute created the TV series Billy & Billie, writing and directing all of the episodes.
Go to Profile#8752
Paul Mees
#87197
Overall Influence
1961 - 2013 (52 years)
Paul Mees was an Australian academic, specialising in urban planning and public transport. Mees died on 19 June 2013, 14 months after the diagnosis of kidney cancer. He was 52. At the time of his death he was an associate professor in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University.
Go to Profile#8753
Murray Thomson
#185024
Overall Influence
#8754
Roy C. Craven
#130984
Overall Influence
1924 - 1996 (72 years)
Roy C. Craven was He was the founding director of the University Gallery at the University of Florida. Roy C. Craven authored, co-authored, and co-created numerous scholarly books and publications on art , including:Art: A Concise Historythe ocean of painting : India's popular paintings, 1589 to the presentcenters of the Mayacontemporary painters from Indiatreasury of Indian miniature paintingsPahari PaintingsConcise History of Indian Art, "The World of Art Library" seriesArt of India from Florida CollectionsOlmecas : the parent civilization of Mesoamericasculpture in the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Artof India : selections from the Samuel P.
Go to Profile#8755
Betsy Schneider
#109840
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Betsy Schneider is an American photographer who lives and works in the Boston Area. Biography After her graduation from the University of Michigan in 1987, she studied and received a second bachelor's degree in film and photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago 1990, from 1993 to 1995, she worked as an assistant to photographer Sally Mann she earned an MFA from Mills College in 1997. In 1997 she moved to London with Electro-acoustic composer Frank Ekeberg where their daughter Madeleine was born. During that time her work was exhibited frequently in the UK and Scandinavia.
Go to Profile#8756
LaVahn Hoh
#116942
Overall Influence
LaVahn Hoh is an expert on technical theater, special effects, drama and the circus. Since 1969 he has been a professor of drama in the Department of Drama at the University of Virginia. He was born and raised in Appleton, Wisconsin and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire where he majored in speech and drama. He later received his Master of Fine Arts in drama from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Go to Profile#8757
Judy Brown
#95420
Overall Influence
Judith "Judy" C. Brown is an American physicist and professor emerita at Wellesley College. She was a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Lab in the Machine Listening Group for over 20 years, and is recognized for her contributions in music information retrieval, including developing the constant-Q transform. She is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and has served on the ASA technical committees for musical acoustics and animal bioacoustics.
Go to Profile#8758
David G. Lowe
#185082
Overall Influence
#8759
Glen Searle
#178614
Overall Influence
Glen Searle is an Australian town planner, researcher and educator. He is an Honorary Associate Professor at The University of Queensland and at the University of Sydney. He is known for his planning research and work with British and New South Wales governments. He was engaged in strategic planning and policy formulation at a senior level in the NSW Department of Planning between 1981 and 1991. His papers have been published in Planning Theory, Urban Studies, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and Geographical Research.
Go to Profile#8760
Vicki Bier
#175781
Overall Influence
Vicki Marion Bier is an American systems engineer and decision analyst whose work concerns risk management, disaster preparedness, and critical infrastructure protection, including analysis of the safety of nuclear power, anti-terrorism, and preparedness for sea level rise caused by global warming. She is professor emerita of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, an external fellow in the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events at the University of Southern California, and editor-in-chief of the journal Decision Analysis.
Go to Profile#8761
Maciej Lasek
#69253
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Maciej Grzegorz Lasek – is a Polish engineer, specializing in flight mechanics, PhD, Chairman of the Committee for Investigation of National Aviation Accidents. He was the head of a commission that investigated the 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash.
Go to Profile#8762
John Darwell
#169045
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
John Darwell is a British photographer. Life and career Darwell was born in Bolton, Lancashire, in 1955. He has a BA in photography from Manchester Polytechnic, and a PhD from the University of Sunderland. He is a Reader in photography at the University of Cumbria.
Go to Profile#8763
Kong Xianjing
#184566
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Kong Xianjing is a Chinese engineer and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, formerly served as deputy party secretary and vice president of Dalian University of Technology. Biography Kong was born in Nanjing, Jiangsu, on 4 January 1952, while his ancestral home in Jining, Shandong. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1980, a master's degree in 1983, and a doctor's degree in 1990, all from Dalian Institute of Technology .
Go to Profile#8764
Caitriona Lally
#112008
Overall Influence
Caitríona Lally is an Irish writer. She has published two novels: Eggshells and Wunderland . In 2018 she was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Biography Lally studied English literature at Trinity College Dublin. After graduating in 2004, she taught English in Japan and spent time travelling abroad. She then worked as a copywriter, and as a home aide in New York.
Go to Profile#8765
John J O'Connor
#185155
Overall Influence
#8766
Edward Fox
#45431
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Edward Charles Morice Fox is an English actor. Fox starred in the film The Day of the Jackal , playing the part of a professional assassin, known only as the "Jackal", who is hired to assassinate the French president Charles de Gaulle in the summer of 1963. Fox is also known for his roles in Battle of Britain , The Go-Between , for which he won a BAFTA award, and The Bounty . He also collaborated with director Richard Attenborough, appearing in his films Oh! What a Lovely War , A Bridge Too Far and Gandhi .
Go to Profile#8767
Mara Servetto
#125502
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Margherita Servetto , better known as Mara, is an Italian architect and designer. Biography She studied at the Polytechnic University of Turin, where she received her degree in architecture under the supervision of Achille Castiglioni. When Castiglioni obtained a teaching position at the Polytechnic University of Milan, she moved to Milan in order to collaborate with Castiglioni, which she did until 1990.
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Mahyat Shafapour Tehrany
#185206
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Mahyat Shafapour Tehrany , is an Iranian geomatic engineer specializing in GIS, natural hazards and data analysis. Life Mahyat Shafapour Tehrany was born on July 29, 1985, in Tehran, Iran. In 2008, she completed a B.S. in environmental engineering, majoring in natural resources engineering and the environment at the Allameh Mohaddes Nouri University. In 2013, she earned a M.S. in remote sensing and geographic information system at the Universiti Putra Malaysia . She earned a Ph.D. in GIS and geomatic engineering at UPM in 2015.
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Zhang Yue
#173550
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Zhang Yue is a Chinese materials scientist currently serving as a professor and vice-president of the University of Science and Technology Beijing. Education Zhang was born in Changsha, Hunan in November 1958, while his ancestral home in Liling, Zhuzhou. After the resumption of college entrance examination, he entered Wuhan University of Water Resources and Electric Power , where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in February 1982. In September 1987, he was accepted to the University of Science and Technology Beijing, where he received his doctor of engineering degree in October 1993. H...
Go to Profile#8770
Mercedes Maroto-Valer
#178153
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Professor Mercedes Maroto-Valer FRSE FRSC FIChemE FRSA FEI is Champion and Director of the UK Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre focused on accelerating the transition to net zero of the UK largest industrial clusters and establishing the first world net-zero industrial cluster. Prof Maroto-Valer is Deputy Principal at Heriot-Watt University, leading institutional and global changes in sustainability, making a significant impact on achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and working with partners to achieve global carbon reduction targets. She is als...
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Michelle S. Hoo Fatt
#119226
Overall Influence
Michelle S. Hoo Fatt is an American mechanical engineer whose research concerns the mechanics of blasts, impacts, buckling, and the ability of sandwich-structured composite materials to resist blasts and ballistic impacts. She is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Akron.
Go to Profile#8772
Ren Qilong
#184709
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Ren Qilong is a Chinese engineer currently serving as dean of College of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Zhejiang University. Biography Ren was born in of Dongyang, Zhejiang, in January 1959. He secondary studied at Dongyang No.2 High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1982, a master's degree in 1987, and a doctor's degree in 1998, all from Zhejiang University. His supervisor was Prof.Wu Ping . During his university years, he was the champion of long-distance running in the school sports meetings. After graduation, he taught at the university. He was a researcher at Osaka Universi...
Go to Profile#8773
Elizabeth R. Cantwell
#178058
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Elizabeth R. Cantwell is the president of Utah State University, a role she began on August 1, 2023. Education Cantwell has a B.A. in Human Behavior from the University of Chicago . In 1992, she received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2003, she earned an MBA in Finance & Entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School.
Go to Profile#8774
Chen Jin
#185291
Overall Influence
#8775
Mark Kendall
#184679
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Mark A. F. Kendall is an Australian biomedical engineer, inventor, scientist and entrepreneur. He is Founder and CEO of WearOptimo Pty Ltd and the Vice-Chancellor's Entrepreneurial Professor at the Australian National University.
Go to Profile#8776
Ray Whitmore
#179153
Overall Influence
1920 - 2008 (88 years)
Ray Whitmore was a British mining and metallurgical engineer and academic, who specialised in research into radar, mining and metallurgical engineering and mining heritage in England and Australia.
Go to Profile#8777
Paolo Montuschi
#185340
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Paolo Montuschi is a professor at the Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy. He was awarded Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2014 for his contributions to the theory and applications of digital arithmetic.
Go to Profile#8778
Ted Cullinan
#108512
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Edward Horder Cullinan HonFRIAS was an English architect. Life Born in central London to Joy, an artist mother, and Edward, a doctor, Cullinan was educated at Ampleforth College, Queens' College, Cambridge, the Architectural Association, and the University of California, Berkeley before working for Denys Lasdun where he designed the student residences for the University of East Anglia.
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Muqeem Khan
#134217
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Muqeem Khan Pride of Pakistan is the first Pakistani who started working in the Hollywood visual effects industry in 1996. He is an animator, artist, interaction designer, percussionist, filmmaker, academician, and a herbal physician - Hakim , As a student at National College of Arts , Muqeem developed passion for computer graphics nearly twenty-five years ago in his early student life by doing some compositions and screen credits in BASIC language on IBM XT, ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 computers.
Go to Profile#8780
Jane H. Davidson
#183950
Overall Influence
Jane H. Davidson is an American mechanical engineer whose research involves renewable energy, thermal energy storage, alternative fuel, and solar-powered carbon capture and storage for the energy needs of homes, workplaces, and vehicles. She is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota, where she directs the Solar Energy Laboratory, and is the former Ronald L. and Janet A. Christenson chair of renewable energy at the university.
Go to Profile#8781
Aly El-Shafei
#132749
Overall Influence
Aly El-Shafei is an Egyptian academic. He is professor for Mechanical Engineering at Cairo University in Egypt. He is an expert on rotordynamics, machinery diagnostics and vibration analysis. Education El-Shafei holds a bachelor's and master's degree in mechanical engineering from Cairo University. He earned a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in mechanical engineering.
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A. David Edwards
#185389
Overall Influence
#8783
Lihuang Zhu
#185395
Overall Influence
#8784
William B. Lawson
#80943
Overall Influence
William B. Lawson is an American professor, psychiatrist and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association . Early life Lawson grew up on a farm in West Point, Virginia. Education Lawson earned his PhD in psychology from the University of New Hampshire. He then went on to earn his medical degree from the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago and finished a residency in adult psychiatry at Stanford University. He then finished a fellowship in psychopharmacology at the National Institute of Mental Health.
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Donald Camp
#149769
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Donald E. Camp is an American artist, photographer, and professor emeritus of photography at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. Camp holds both a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Fine Arts from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. Camp is notable for his portraits that explore the dignity and nobility that can be found in the human face, particularly those of African American men. Camp's unique printing methods are based on early 19th Century non-silver photographic processes.
Go to Profile#8786
Jean-Louis Barrault
#40183
Overall Influence
1910 - 1994 (84 years)
Jean-Louis Bernard Barrault was a French actor, director and mime artist who worked on both screen and stage. Biography Barrault was born in Le Vésinet in France in 1910. His father was 'a Burgundian pharmacist who died in the First World War.':87 He studied at the Collége Chaptal until 1930, when he began his studies at the École du Louvre.:87
Go to Profile#8787
Gareth Jones
#185315
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Gareth Jones is a professor of urban geography in the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics , and an Associate Fellow at the Institute for the Study of the Americas in the School of Advanced Study at the University of London.
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Lev Levitin
#185460
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Lev B. Levitin is a Russian-American engineer currently a Distinguished Professor at Boston University and a Life Fellow of the IEEE. His current research interests include information theory, physical aspects of computation, complex systems and quantum measurement. He is known for the Margolus–Levitin theorem.
Go to Profile#8789
Audeen W. Fentiman
#180453
Overall Influence
Audeen W. Fentiman is an American engineer, and Crowley Family Professor in Engineering Education, at Purdue University. She is Associate Dean of Graduate Education and Interdisciplinary Programs. She is a fellow of the American Nuclear Society. She won a Sharon Keillor Award for Women in Engineering Education.
Go to Profile#8790
Gang Sun
#185480
Overall Influence
#8791
Peter Wood
#106493
Overall Influence
1927 - 2016 (89 years)
Peter Wood was an English theatre and film director. Biography Wood was born on 8 October 1925 in Colyton, Devon. His father Frank Wood was a basketmaker and his mother, Lucy Eleanor , née Meeson was a seamstress. Wood developed his interest in acting while at Taunton School. After school, he spent his National Service with the RAF in Canada and on his return he studied English at Downing College, Cambridge. Wood joined an acting troupe after university, and by 1955 he was running the Oxford Playhouse. The following year, he became resident director at the London Arts Theatre, working alongsi...
Go to Profile#8792
Stéphane Laurent
#185511
Overall Influence
#8793
Yang Shuxing
#184936
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Yang Shuxing is a Chinese engineer and professor at Beijing Institute of Technology. He is the chief engineer of the 203 Research Institute of China Ordnance Industries Group Corporation Limited. Biography Yang was born in Tangshan, Hebei, in November 1962. He secondary studied at Tangshan No.1 High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1984, a master's degree in 1987, and a doctor's degree in 1991, all from Beijing Institute of Technology. After graduation, he taught at the university, where he was appointed its vice-president in 2002.
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Lynn Tomlinson
#107662
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Lynn Tomlinson is an animator and artist. She is a professor at Towson University. She lives in Baltimore, MD, with her husband, Craig J Saper, and her family. She has taught at Cornell University, the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Maryland Institute College of Art, and Delaware College of Art and Design, Richard Stockton College, and Tufts University. Her films have been screened at film festivals around the world over the past two decades. She has received awards and grants including several Mid-Atlantic Emmys, an ITVS production grant, and Individual Artist Fellowships from the S...
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Ronald Werner-Wilson
#162735
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Ronald Jay Werner-Wilson , Chair of the Family Studies Department and Kathryn Louise Chellgren Endowed Professor for Research in Family Studies at the University of Kentucky, is a scholar who has held faculty appointments since 1993. His has published one book, book chapters, and numerous peer-reviewed journal articles. He has investigated family and relationship influences on adolescent and young adult sexuality, positive youth development, therapy with adolescents, gender and power influences on therapeutic process, and physiological influences on family interaction.
Go to Profile#8796
David Rutledge
#86819
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
David B. Rutledge is the Kiyo and Eiko Tomiyasu Professor of Engineering and former chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology , United States. His earlier work on microwave circuits has been important for various advances in wireless communications and has been useful for applications such as radar, remote sensing, and satellite broadcasting. He also covers research in estimating fossil-fuel supplies, and the implications for alternative energy sources and climate change.
Go to Profile#8797
Glenda Dickerson
#107637
Overall Influence
1945 - 2012 (67 years)
Glenda Dickerson was an American director, folklorist, adaptor, writer, choreographer, actor, black theatre organizer, and educator. She was the second African-American woman to direct on Broadway, with her 1980 musical production of Reggae: a musical revelation. She is known throughout the American Theater as a promoter of a "womanist" direction in the theater and her work focused on folklore, myths, black legends, and classical works reinterpreted. She worked in venues including the Biltmore Theatre , Circle in the Square , The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre , Ford's Theatre and the Kennedy Center .
Go to Profile#8798
Clara Brink Shoemaker
#182711
Overall Influence
1921 - 2009 (88 years)
Clara Brink Shoemaker was a Dutch-born American crystallographer and a senior research professor at Oregon State University. As a postdoctoral researcher, she worked on the structure determination of vitamin B12 in the group of Dorothy Hodgkin. Together with her husband, David Shoemaker, she contributed to the research on transition metal phases and intermetallic compounds. They were the first to recognize that interstices in tetrahedrally close-packed metal crystals are exclusively tetrahedral and only have four types of coordination polyhedra.
Go to Profile#8799
Zhu Lizhong
#184012
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Zhu Lizhong is a Chinese environmental engineer who is a professor at Zhejiang University, and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Biography Zhu was born in Shangyu County, Zhejiang, on 19 October 1959. He secondary studied at Lihai High School and Chunhui High School . In 1978, he was admitted to Hangzhou University , majoring in chemistry.
Go to Profile#8800
Amitava Mukherjee
#185663
Overall Influence
