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,
#8951
Peter Langston
#117585
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Peter Langston is a computer programmer who wrote and distributed for free several games for Unix systems in the 1970s, including one of the earliest text adventure video games Wander, the original version of Empire and the program "Oracle" upon which the later net-wide Oracle was modeled. He is also an experienced jazz, rock, and folk musician.
Go to Profile#8952
Andrew Jackson
#187584
Overall Influence
#8953
Tracey Holloway
#103099
Overall Influence
Tracey Holloway is the Jeff Rudd and Jeanne Bissell Professor of Energy Analysis and Policy at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences. Her research focuses on the links between regional air quality, energy, and climate through the use of computer models and date from satellites.
Go to Profile#8954
Andrea Lynn Kritcher
#79142
Overall Influence
#8955
Michael A Sutton
#187611
Overall Influence
#8956
Freddie Francis
#73418
Overall Influence
1917 - 2007 (90 years)
Frederick William Francis was an English cinematographer and film director. Francis started his film career as a cameraman for John Huston and for the directing team of Powell and Pressburger before becoming a cinematographer for British films such as Jack Cardiff's Sons and Lovers , Jack Clayton's drama Room at the Top and psychological horror film The Innocents . He became known for his collaborations with David Lynch with The Elephant Man , Dune , and The Straight Story . He also earned acclaim for his work on The French Lieutenant's Woman starring Meryl Streep, and Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear .
Go to Profile#8957
Patrick Reid Stewart
#185626
Overall Influence
Patrick Reid Stewart, is a Canadian-born Nisga’a architect, designer and educator based in British Columbia. “Dr. Patrick Stewart, a citizen of the Nisga'a Nation in north-western British Columbia has been operating his architectural practice in Sto:lo territory in Chilliwack, B.C. since 1997.” Stewart is the first Aboriginal person in British Columbia to own and operate an architectural firm and consequently his works have a First Nations community development focus. He heads the Provincial Indigenous Homelessness Committee in BC, as well as the Indigenous Task Force for the Royal Architect...
Go to Profile#8958
Kim Hyunsook
#186640
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Kim Hyun-sook is a South Korean professor of urban engineering at Chonbuk National University previously served as the Administrator of Saemangeum Development and Investment Agency under President Moon Jae-in from February 2019 to August 2020. She is the first woman and non-government official to assume the post since its creation in 2013.
Go to Profile#8959
Lynne Parker
#83957
Overall Influence
Lynne Edwards Parker is Associate Vice Chancellor and Director of the AI Tennessee Initiative at the University of Tennessee. Previously, she was Deputy United States Chief Technology Officer and Founding Director of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office at the United States' White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She is an American roboticist specializing in multi-robot systems, swarm robotics, and distributed artificial intelligence.
Go to Profile#8960
Yogen K Dalal
#180779
Overall Influence
#8961
Nissim Calderon
#104013
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Nissim Calderon was a Goodyear executive and scientist, noted for his introduction of olefin metathesis in 1967. His work on olefin metathesis led to the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Education 1958 – MS Chemistry from Hebrew University1962 – PhD in Polymer science from the University of Akron
Go to Profile#8962
Mary Lynn Realff
#173678
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Mary Lynn Realff is an American mechanical engineer and materials scientist specializing in the mechanical properties of textiles. She is an associate professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech, and co-director of the Georgia Tech Center for Women, Science, and Technology. Beyond her research on textiles, she is also known for her explorations of group work in engineering education.
Go to Profile#8963
Charles H. Traub
#134709
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Charles H. Traub is an American photographer and educator, known for his ironic real world witness color photography. He was chair of the photography department at Columbia College Chicago, where he established its Museum of Contemporary Photography in 1976, and became a director of New York's Light Gallery in 1977. Traub founded the MFA program in Photography, Video, and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1987, which was the first program of its kind to fully embrace digital photographic practice. He has been Chairperson of the program since. Traub has published ...
Go to Profile#8964
Helen Perlstein Pollard
#99115
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Helen Perlstein Pollard is an American academic ethnohistorian and archaeologist, known for her publications and research on pre-Columbian cultures in the west-central Mexico region. Biography As an undergraduate Pollard studied at Barnard College, a women's liberal arts college in New York City affiliated with Columbia University, graduating in 1967. One of her contemporaries at Barnard, who graduated two years earlier, was Esther Pasztory, another Mesoamerican scholar who became renowned as an art historian and specialist in Teotihuacano art. Pollard obtained her PhD in anthropology in 1972...
Go to Profile#8965
Katherine Barbeau
#185709
Overall Influence
Katherine Barbeau is a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography known for her work on trace metals and the linkages between trace metals and biology. Education and career Barbeau graduated from Mercy High School in Middleton, Connecticut. She has a B.S. from Southampton College , and then moved to the Université libre de Bruxelles for one year. She earned a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1998. Following her Ph.D. she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara until 2001 when she joined t...
Go to Profile#8966
Michael Ernest Sweet
#65665
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Michael Ernest Sweet is a Canadian photographer, writer, and educator. He is the author of two books of street photography, The Human Fragment and Michael Sweet's Coney Island. Teaching Sweet was born and raised on his family's horse farm in Martock, Nova Scotia. He taught in public schools in Montreal, Quebec, from 2003 to 2015 and founded Learning for a Cause, which earned him two of Canada's highest civilian honors for service to education, A Prime Minister's Awards for Teaching Excellence and the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal. Sweet was also a national finalist for a 2011 Governor...
Go to Profile#8967
David Weir
#95291
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
David Weir is an American scholar who has written widely on the Decadent movement in literature and its impact in America. Weir is Professor Emeritus on the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.
Go to Profile#8968
Aaron Fenster
#88883
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Aaron Fenster is a medical physicist at the University of Western Ontario Robarts Research Institute in London, Ontario, Canada. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2013 for his contributions to medical imaging and three-dimensional ultrasound-guided interventions. He is also a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and co-program director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research Imaging Program. He holds Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and received further training at the Ontario Cancer Institute.
Go to Profile#8969
Mario Toral
#79358
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Mario Toral Muñoz is a Chilean painter and photographer. Career At the age of 16, Toral moved to Buenos Aires, where he saved money to enroll in the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Montevideo, Uruguay. He later went to Brazil, where at 21 the first exhibition of his work was shown at the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art. In 1957, Toral moved to France, where he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Paris.
Go to Profile#8970
Zenia Kotval
#182927
Overall Influence
Zenia Kotval , is a professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Michigan State University, specializing in community engagement and economic development. Education Kotval earned her Bachelor's in Architecture at the Academy of Architecture in Mumbai, India, followed by a Masters in Regional Planning , and a PhD in Regional Planning , at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Go to Profile#8971
Saak Ovsepian
#178162
Overall Influence
Saak Victor Ovsepian is an Armenian-Irish neuroscientist best known for his research in neurobiology, neurotherapeutics and translational biosciences. He is a professor in biosciences at the University of Greenwich.
Go to Profile#8972
Walter Rossa
#182286
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Walter Rossa is architect, urban planner, researcher and Professor of University of Coimbra. Training and career track Graduate in Architecture by the Technical University of Lisbon , Master in History of Art by the Universidade Nova de Lisboa , PhD and Aggregate in Architecture by the University of Coimbra. Full Professor at the Departament of Architecture of the University of Coimbra , and researcher at the Center for the History of Society and Culture of the University of Coimbra . He has been visiting professor at Federal University of Bahia, Fluminense Federal University, Pablo de Olavi...
Go to Profile#8973
Patricia Coogan
#187784
Overall Influence
Patricia Coogan is Senior Epidemiologist at the Slone Epidemiology Center and a Boston University School of Public Health Research Professor in the Department of Epidemiology. She is a co-investigator for the Black Women’s Health Study , a prospective study at the Slone Epidemiology Center.
Go to Profile#8974
Michael Phillips
#187793
Overall Influence
#8975
Robert Singerman
#82570
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Robert Singerman is a librarian, and a recognized Judaica bibliographer. He is often cited by Judaica rare book dealers. He holds the position of University Librarian, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, where he was the bibliographer for Jewish Studies, Anthropology, and Linguistics.
Go to Profile#8976
Robert Burrell
#187778
Overall Influence
Robert Burrell, , is a Canadian biomedical engineer, currently the Canada Research Chair at University of Alberta. Burrell was inducted into the Alberta Order of Excellence on October 17, 2019.
Go to Profile#8977
Pipo Nguyen-duy
#101744
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Pipo Hieu Nguyen-duy is a fine art photographer, and a professor of Photography at Oberlin College. Early life and education Pipo was born in Hue, Vietnam in 1962. As a teenager, he competed on the Vietnamese national table tennis team. In 1975 at age 13, he left Vietnam for the United States as a boat person.
Go to Profile#8978
Aaron Streets
#187166
Overall Influence
Aaron Michael Streets is an African American bioengineer and assistant professor in the Department of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, California. He is the principal investigator at the Streets Lab, where he and his team use tools from mathematics, physics, and engineering to study biology. Streets is currently developing microfluidic technology for single-cell measurements due to its high-resolution imaging.
Go to Profile#8979
Henry Rimisho
#104507
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Henry M. Rimisho is a Tanzanian Architect and Lecturer from the Department of Architecture, School of Architecture, Construction, Economics and Management at Ardhi University in Dar es Salaam. He is also a Missionary priest from the Congregation of The Apostles of Jesus based in Nairobi, Kenya.
Go to Profile#8980
Amanda Petford-Long
#185300
Overall Influence
Amanda Karen Petford-Long is a Professor of Materials Science and Distinguished Fellow at the Argonne National Laboratory. She is also a Professor of Materials Science at Northwestern University. Education and early career Petford-Long studied physics at University College London, graduating in 1981. She earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Oxford in 1985 for research on Beta-alumina solid electrolytes supervised by Colin Humphreys. She was a postgraduate student at St. Cross College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#8981
Susan D. Allen
#183373
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Susan Davis Allen is an American engineering professor and academic administrator. She is currently Associate Dean of Research for the College of Engineering and Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Her research has spanned multiple applications of lasers and optics, including spectroscopy, laser sensors, laser ablation, micromachining, and others.
Go to Profile#8982
Kōji Yamamura
#55208
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
is a Japanese independent animator who, after leaving a career as a background artist at an animation studio, directs, writes, edits, animates, creates the model sheets and background art for and sometimes produces his own short films and has worked on many commissions such as music videos, television advertisements, title sequences and station idents, both on his own and under or with other directors. He is also a regular illustrator of children's literature and textbooks.
Go to Profile#8983
Norman Malmuth
#137137
Overall Influence
Norman David Malmuth was an American aeronautical engineer. Malmuth was a native of Brooklyn, born on January 22, 1931. He was one of four children born to parents Jacob and Selma Malmuth. He had one sister, Gail, and two brothers, Bruce and Daniel. Norman Malmuth left New York to study aeronautical engineering at the University of Cincinnati, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1953. After completing his undergraduate study, Malmuth worked for Grumman Aircraft for three years. He continued studying aeronautical engineering, and earned a master's degree in the subject in 1956, from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.
Go to Profile#8984
Johney Green
#187285
Overall Influence
Johney Green is an American scientist who is the Associate Laboratory Director for Mechanical and Thermal Engineering Sciences at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. His research considers additive manufacturing and renewable energy systems. He is Chairman of the National GEM Consortium.
Go to Profile#8985
Juliet Gopinath
#187722
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Juliet Tara Gopinath is an American optical engineer who studies the design and synchronization of lasers, diode laser arrays, liquid and variable-focus lenses, and other optical devices, and the properties of optical materials including optical fibers. She is Alfred T. and Betty E. Look Endowed Professor of Photonics and Quantum Engineering in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Go to Profile#8986
Wilfrid Hyde-White
#77731
Overall Influence
1903 - 1991 (88 years)
Wilfrid Hyde-White was a British character actor of stage, film and television. He achieved international recognition for his role as Colonel Pickering in the film version of the musical My Fair Lady .
Go to Profile#8987
Corinna E. Lathan
#184734
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Corinna E. Lathan is an American entrepreneur, engineer, and social activist. She is the Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder, and Board Chair of AnthroTronix, Inc., a biomedical research and development company headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. Lathan is recognized for her work on digital health software and assistive technology.
Go to Profile#8988
David Hayman
#94615
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
David Hayman is a Scottish film, television and stage actor and director. His acting credits include Sid and Nancy , Hope and Glory , Rob Roy , The Jackal , Trial & Retribution , Legionnaire , Ordinary Decent Criminal , Vertical Limit , The Tailor of Panama , Flood , The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas , The Paradise , Taboo , Our Ladies , The Nest , Bull , and Andor .
Go to Profile#8989
Jan G.F. Veldhuis
#106274
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Johannes Gerardus Franciscus Veldhuis is a Dutch administrator/governor in the fields of scientific education and research, healthcare and culture, nationally and internationally. His last post was president of Utrecht University, from 1986 until 2003. He still holds various part-time governance positions.
Go to Profile#8990
Farhan Akhtar
#106685
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Farhan Akhtar is an Indian actor, filmmaker, singer and songwriter who works in Hindi films. Born in Mumbai to screenwriters Javed Akhtar and Honey Irani, Akhtar, after establishing a production company named Excel Entertainment along with Ritesh Sidhwani in 1999, made his directorial debut with the coming-of-age comedy-drama Dil Chahta Hai and received widespread critical acclaim for portraying realistic modern Indian youth in the film, which won the National Award for Best Hindi Film and the Filmfare Award for Best Film . Following this, he directed the cult war film Lakshya and made his ...
Go to Profile#8991
Benjamin deForest Bayly
#177428
Overall Influence
1903 - 1994 (91 years)
Benjamin deForest "Pat" Bayly was a Canadian electrical engineer and a professor at the University of Toronto. During World War II he invented a cypher machine called the Rockex and handled communications at the secret intelligence base Camp X. He later ran an engineering company in Ajax, Ontario, and was the first mayor of that town. A street there is named after him.
Go to Profile#8992
Sheila Benson
#96558
Overall Influence
1930 - 2022 (92 years)
Sheila Benson was an American journalist and film critic. She served as film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 1981 to 1991. Early life and education Benson was born in New York City on December 4, 1930. Her father, Dwight Franklin, was employed as a costume designer and her mother, Mary C. McCall Jr., worked as a screenwriter and novelist.
Go to Profile#8993
Ido Bachelet
#78199
Overall Influence
Ido Bachelet is an Israeli-Chilean scientist. Education Bachelet earned his Ph.D. in medical sciences from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and did two postdoctoral fellowships, engineering at M.I.T. and biologically inspired engineering at the George Church lab at Harvard University. His fields of expertise include DNA origami, synthetic biology, and biomimetics. He taught life sciences at Bar-Ilan University and industrial design at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. His research on the bio-inspired architecture was selected to represent Israel at the 16th Venice Bienn...
Go to Profile#8994
Jason Williams
#188094
Overall Influence
#8995
Elaine Saunders
#175757
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Elaine Saunders is an associate professor at the Swinburne University of Technology and executive director of Blamey Saunders, as well as an inventor, entrepreneur. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science Technology and Engineering in 2019. She is one of only nine women out of 160 to win the Clunies Ross award for entrepreneurship, and has won many other awards, as well as given numerous keynote addresses on the value of entrepreneurship and innovation in STEMM.
Go to Profile#8996
George Forrest
#45775
Overall Influence
1915 - 1999 (84 years)
George Forrest was an American writer of music and lyrics for musical theatre best known for the show Kismet, adapted from the works of Alexander Borodin. He was also known professionally at times as Chet Forrest.
Go to Profile#8997
Gonda Van Steen
#124454
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Gonda Aline Hector Van Steen is a Belgian-American classical scholar and linguist, who specialises in ancient and modern Greek language and literature. Since 2018, she has been Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature, the first woman to hold this position, and Director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College London. She previously held the Cassas Chair in Greek Studies at the University of Florida, and taught at the University of Arizona and at Cornell University. She has also served as the President of the Modern Greek Studies Association...
Go to Profile#8998
Ian Young
#158430
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Ian Robert Young, AO is an Australian academic. He is the Kernot Professor of Engineering at the University of Melbourne. He previously held the senior administrative roles of Vice-Chancellor of Swinburne University of Technology and Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University .
Go to Profile#8999
Matt Lipps
#178924
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Matt Lipps is an American photographer and artist. Early life and education Lipps was born in 1975 in Oakland, California. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He earned a MFA in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine in 2004. Lipps took his BFA in Photography from California State University, Long Beach in 1998. He teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles and San Francisco State University.
Go to Profile#9000
Singeetam Srinivasa Rao
#67440
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Singeetam Srinivasa Rao , commonly known as Singeetam, is an Indian film director, screenwriter, producer, composer, and actor. He is widely regarded as one of the most versatile directors of India. He is credited with having revolutionised the South Indian cinema with experimental films. He has directed about sixty films in Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Hindi, and English languages across multiple genres. He has garnered two National Film Awards, five Nandi Awards, three Karnataka State Film Awards, and three Filmfare Awards South. In 2011, Rao was honored with Life Achievement Award from the Film ...
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