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,
#9101
Eleni Antoniadou
#181100
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Eleni Antoniadou is a Greek public figure and scientist. Background Early life and education Eleni Antoniadou was born in 1988 in Thessaloniki, Greece. She studied Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics at the University of Central Greece and received a master's degree in Nanotechnology and Regenerative Medicine from University College London.
Go to Profile#9102
Ralph Etienne-Cummings
#187005
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Ralph Etienne-Cummings is an academic in the field of electrical engineering. He is a professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Early life and education Etienne-Cummings was born on August 20, 1967, in Mahe, Seychelles. At age 12 he entered boarding school in the United Kingdom, then moved to the United States with his family during high school.
Go to Profile#9103
Maitland McDonagh
#105058
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Maitland McDonagh is an American film critic, writer-editor and podcaster. She is the author of Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento and other books and articles on horror and exploitation films, as well as about erotic fiction and erotic cinema. In 2022, McDonagh was inducted into the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards' Monster Kid Hall of Fame. She is the founder of the small press 120 Days Books, which became an imprint of Riverdale Avenue Books.
Go to Profile#9104
Rodica Ramer
#186248
Overall Influence
Rodica Ramer is a Romanian born Australian professor of microelectronics at the University of New South Wales, where she and her team work on the development of radio-frequency microelectronic technologies, advancing wireless communication technology. She earned a Ph.D from the University of Bucharest in solid-state physics in 1992. Prior to working at UNSW, she was a senior research scientist at the Microwave Laboratory, National Centre for Nuclear Energy of Romania, a research associate at the Superconductivity Laboratory, the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and at the Microwave Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins.
Go to Profile#9105
Margaret O'Brien
#60987
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Angela Maxine O'Brien is an American film, radio, television, and stage actress, and is one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. Beginning a prolific career as a child actress in feature films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at age four, O'Brien became one of the most popular child stars in cinema history and was honored with a Juvenile Academy Award as the outstanding child actress of 1944. In her later career, she appeared on television, on stage, and in supporting film roles.
Go to Profile#9106
Martin Barratt
#136530
Overall Influence
1936 - 2014 (78 years)
Thomas Martin Barratt was a British paediatrician and professor of paediatric nephrology. Barratt was most notable for developing a specialist service for children with kidney diseases in Britain, bringing peritoneal dialysis, haemodialysis, and later renal transplantation to ever younger children. Barratt was an early advocate for multidisciplinary care and developed a model that was later taken up by many other specialist centres across the world. His research led to a new treatments for many types of childhood kidney diseases., and for research into childhood Nephrotic syndrome and Hemoly...
Go to Profile#9107
María Ángeles Martín Prats
#188502
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
María Ángeles Martín Prats is a Spanish engineer and entrepreneur. She is the director of aeronautical research within the University of Seville's ICT-109 Electronic Technology Group, a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers , and founder of the spin-off Skylife Engineering. She is a board member of the Partnership of a European Group of Aeronautics and Space Universities , and is the European university coordinator of the European Defence Agency . She is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Commission's Clean Sky Joint Undertaking. In 2015...
Go to Profile#9108
Ward Winer
#188120
Overall Influence
Ward O. Winer is an American engineer, currently the Regents' Professor Emeritus at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers, American Society for Engineering Education and ASME.
Go to Profile#9109
Blaine A. Brownell
#110451
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Blaine Allison Brownell is an American university teacher, administrator, and specialist in U.S. urban, southern, and twentieth-century history, and was the 12th president of Ball State University. Author or co-author of seven books and over twenty-five articles, he has been a tenured full professor at four universities.
Go to Profile#9110
Roozbeh Ghaffari
#186446
Overall Influence
Roozbeh Ghaffari is a biomedical engineer and neuroscientist. He is currently CEO and co-founder of Epicore Biosystems, research associate professor at Northwestern University's Biomedical Engineering Department, and Director of Translational Research in the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics.
Go to Profile#9111
Stephen DiRado
#129514
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Stephen DiRado is an American photographer. His work is mostly black-and-white, and he makes frequent use of large-format cameras. He is most noted for his portraiture, night-astronomical photography, and semi-composed group photography, and for the extensive length of his projects.
Go to Profile#9112
Aaron Hawkins
#170070
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Aaron Roe Hawkins is an American engineer known for his work in optofluidics. He is a professor and chair in the department of electrical and computer engineering at Brigham Young University. Education and career Hawkins was born in Rehoboth, New Mexico. He received his B.S. degree from the California Institute of Technology in applied physics in 1994, and went on to the University of California, Santa Barbara for his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering, which he completed in 1998. His dissertation, Silicon-Indium-Gallium-Arsenide Avalanche Photodetectors, was supervised by John E. Bowers.
Go to Profile#9113
Judith Ivey
#65291
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Judith Lee Ivey is an American actress and theatre director. She twice won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play: for Steaming and Hurlyburly . She also received Best Actress In A Play nomination for Park Your Car in Harvard Yard and another Best Featured Actress in a Play nomination for The Heiress.
Go to Profile#9114
Amiran Khuskivadze
#185106
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Amiran Pimenovich Khuskivadze is a physicist, cyberneticist, philosopher, creator of the Theory of Integrity, author of two laws of nature's harmony: The Law of the Integral System Existence and The Law of Intrasystem Harmony.
Go to Profile#9115
Gary Hart
#87399
Overall Influence
1942 - 2008 (66 years)
Gary Richard Williams was an American professional wrestling manager, as well as a professional wrestler in his early career, best known by his ring name Gary Hart. Hart was one of the pivotal driving forces behind what is considered to be World Class Championship Wrestling's "golden years" in the early 1980s.
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Kui-juan Jin
#184534
Overall Influence
Kui-juan Jin is a Chinese physicist. Jin studied optics at Shandong University. After completing her bachelor's degree, Jin pursued a doctorate at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Jin engaged in postdoctoral research under the direction of Gerald Mahan at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, then moved to Lund University, where she was advised by Koung-An Chao. Jin subsequently returned to China and IOPCAS, becoming a full professor in 2004. In 2012, Jin was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society, "[f]or her significant contribution i...
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James E. Hubbard Jr.
#178746
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Dr. James E. Hubbard Jr is a mechanical engineer who has made significant contributions to the field of aerospace engineering throughout a career spanning more than four decades in academia and industry.
Go to Profile#9118
Charles R. Embry
#113523
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Charles R. Embry is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Texas A&M University–Commerce, he joined then East Texas State University in 1969. Dr. Embry has just published The Philosopher and the Storyteller: Eric Voegelin and Twentieth-Century Literature, University of Missouri Press, . Dr. Embry previously edited the following two books; Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin: A Friendship in Letters, 1944–1984 and coeditor of Philosophy, Literature, and Politics: Essays Honoring Ellis Sandoz.
Go to Profile#9119
David Esrig
#56479
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
David Esrig is a Romanian theater director. Education He studied directing at the Bucharest Caragiale Academy of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography. Career In 1995, he founded the Athanor Academy of Performing Arts in Burghausen, which was relocated to Passau in 2014. Esrig is multiple Doctor h.c. in several universities in Romania and Moldova.
Go to Profile#9120
Rachel Esson
#160349
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Rachel Margaret Esson is the National Librarian Te Pouhuaki of New Zealand. Before moving into that role in 2020, she served in several positions at the Victoria University of Wellington library and the National Library of New Zealand, including Director of Content Services. Esson also served as the president of LIANZA, New Zealand's national library association, from 2019 to 2020.
Go to Profile#9121
Micree Zhan
#177410
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Micree Zhan or Zhan Ketuan is a Chinese electronics engineer and businessman. He is the co-founder and CEO of Bitmain, the world's largest computer chip company for cryptocurrency mining. In 2018, Hurun Report named him the richest cryptocurrency billionaire in the world. In 2019, Bloomberg ranked Zhan as the world's 9th richest self-made billionaire aged 40 or younger, with a net worth of US$5.2 billion.
Go to Profile#9122
Tom Snyder
#50207
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Tom Snyder is an American animator, writer and producer known for the Squigglevision animation technique. His first success with this method was Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, starring Jonathan Katz.
Go to Profile#9123
Derek Lamb
#52122
Overall Influence
1936 - 2005 (69 years)
Derek Reginald Lamb was a British animation filmmaker and producer. While serving as executive producer of the National Film Board of Canada's English Animation Studio from 1976 to 1982, he produced the Oscar-winner Special Delivery, directed by John Weldon and Eunice Macaulay, and produced and scripted Eugene Fedorenko's Every Child. He also created numerous animated sketches for Sesame Street, sometimes in collaboration with John Canemaker.
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Joshua E. Siegel
#188837
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Joshua Siegel is an American mechanical engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur. As of January 2019, he is an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was a research scientist at MIT, the lead instructor of MIT's Internet of things Bootcamp, a parallel entrepreneur and founder of the connected car startup and consultancy CarKnow LLC as well as the vehicle prognostic startup DataDriven. His research areas include connected vehicle technologies, pervasive sensing, and secure and efficient architectures for connectivity. Siegel and his comp...
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Ernst Volgenau
#185861
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Ernst Volgenau is a retired United States Air Force officer and founder and former CEO of SRA International. He later served as chairman of the board for the company, and rector of the George Mason University board of visitors.
Go to Profile#9126
Catherine Gfeller
#188076
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Catherine Gfeller is a Swiss artist. She currently lives and works in Paris and Southern France after having lived in New York from 1995 to 1999. Career After a Master in Fine Arts in 1991 at the Universities of Neuchâtel and Lausanne, she devoted herself to photography. Gfeller traveled to many different continents to create large landscape triptychs . In 1995, she received a grant for a one-year residency in New York. There, she developed a printing technique which combines paper, monoprint and photography on the theme of urban landscape .
Go to Profile#9127
Jim Reardon
#97837
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Jim Reardon is an American animator, storyboard artist, screenwriter, and television director. He is best known for his work on the animated TV series The Simpsons. He has directed over 30 episodes of the series and was credited as a supervising director for seasons 9 through 15. He has been described by Ralph Bakshi as "one of the best cartoon writers in the business".
Go to Profile#9128
James P. Liautaud
#181312
Overall Influence
1936 - 2015 (79 years)
James P. Liautaud was an American industrialist, inventor and business theorist. He is the father of Jimmy John's founder Jimmy John Liautaud. Liautaud provided his son with the seed money to start his restaurant business in 1983.
Go to Profile#9129
Kathy Vargas
#71340
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Kathy Vargas is an American artist who creates photographs from multiple exposures that she hand colors. She often devotes several works to a particular theme, creating series. Biography Vargas was born in San Antonio, Texas. She was influenced early on by her Catholic faith, her grandmother's ghost stories and her father's retelling of pre-Columbian history.
Go to Profile#9130
P. Vasu
#68867
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Vasudevan Peethambharan Nair, known professionally as P Vasu, is an Indian director, writer and actor who works predominantly in Tamil and Kannada films apart from a few Telugu, Hindi, and Malayalam language films. In a career spanning three decades, Vasu has directed over 64 films to his credit.
Go to Profile#9131
J. Robert Nelson
#73849
Overall Influence
1920 - 2004 (84 years)
J. Robert Nelson was an American Methodist theologian, academic administrator, and ethicist. He was the dean of the Vanderbilt University Divinity School from 1957 to 1960, and a professor of ecumenism at Boston University School of Theology from 1965 to 1984. He was the author of several books and published research about the relationship between cloning and Christian ethics.
Go to Profile#9132
James Miller
#76019
Overall Influence
1968 - 2003 (35 years)
James Henry Dominic Miller was a Welsh cameraman, producer, and director, and recipient of numerous awards, including five Emmy Awards. He was killed by Israel Defense Forces gunfire while filming a documentary in the Gaza Strip. Miller worked regularly with Saira Shah for several years, and they formed a business partnership to operate an independent production company called Frostbite Productions in 2001.
Go to Profile#9133
Elizabeth Hsiao-Wecksler
#189174
Overall Influence
Elizabeth T. Hsiao-Wecksler is an American biomechanics researcher specializing in human gait and balance, and in the design of devices for assisting in gait and posture. She is a professor and Willett Faculty Scholar in the Department of Mechanical Science & Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Go to Profile#9134
Barbara Kegerreis Lunde
#126286
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Barbara Kegerreis Lunde is an American physicist and electrical engineer. She worked for NASA in the 1960s, where she developed several instruments for various projects. Lunde became the second woman to graduate from Iowa State University with a doctorate in physics and the first woman in Iowa to become a professional electrical engineer.
Go to Profile#9135
Max Shulaker
#180738
Overall Influence
Max M. Shulaker is a Stanford-educated American electrical engineer and a professor at MIT credited with the development of the first carbon nanotube computer and the first modern microprocessor built from carbon nanotube transistors. His research was widely reported in US and British media.
Go to Profile#9136
David West
#189740
Overall Influence
#9137
John Scott
#168781
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
John Scott is an English darts player currently playing in World Darts Federation events. His nickname is Gnasher. Career Scott made his major debut at the 2012 UK Open at the Reebok Stadium in Bolton. He lost out 4–2 to Brian Woods in the preliminary round. He qualified via the UK Open Order of Merit in tied 96th place with a total of £600 - winning £200 in three of the eight qualifying events. Scott also qualified for the Austrian Darts Open by defeating Mark Hylton in the qualifying event. He lost 6–5 in the first round of the main event to Denis Ovens.
Go to Profile#9138
Anthony Grbic
#120068
Overall Influence
Anthony Grbic from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2016 for contributions to the theory and design of electromagnetic metamaterials.
Go to Profile#9139
William Paul King
#100584
Overall Influence
William Paul King is an American mechanical engineer, currently the Ralph A. Andersen Endowed Chair at the University of Illinois.
Go to Profile#9140
Ron Tarver
#138021
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Ronald Tarver is an American artist and educator. He was the first Black photographer at the Muskogee Phoenix and also worked at the Springfield News-Leader in Missouri , before joining The Philadelphia Inquirer. His career at the Inquirer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, spans more than three decades . Tarver currently serves as Associate Professor of Art specializing in photography at Swarthmore College.
Go to Profile#9141
Jyh-shing Roger Jang
#189794
Overall Influence
#9142
Roel in 't Veld
#16090
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Roeland Jaap in 't Veld is a Dutch scholar of public administration and Labour Party politician. He was briefly State Secretary for the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in 1993. Biography Born and raised in The Hague, In 't Veld attended the gymnasium from 1953 to 1959. In 1959 he obtained his Propaedeutics in economics at the Netherlands School of Economics in Rotterdam . He continued to study law at the University of Leiden, where he obtained his MA in 1964. Later in 1975 he obtained a PhD in law, his thesis being titled Majority System Theory and Prosperity.
Go to Profile#9143
Marcy Page
#177155
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Marcy Page is an animation filmmaker and educator. Page was born and raised in California. She animated her own projects and for several companies, and she taught courses at both San Francisco State University and the California College of Arts before she emigrated to Canada. Her own film Paradisia won awards at many international festivals.
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John Paul Jones
#107579
Overall Influence
1924 - 1999 (75 years)
John Paul Jones was an American painter and printmaker, described as "one of America's foremost printmakers" in the 1950s and '60s. He had a write-up in Time magazine in 1962. In 1963 he had a retrospective exhibition of his prints and drawings at The Brooklyn Museum, New York City. A posthumous retrospective exhibition was held at the Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, in 2010.
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Lado Kralj
#94643
Overall Influence
1938 - 2022 (84 years)
Lado Kralj was a Slovene writer, theatre critic and literary historian. From 1987 to 2005 he worked as a professor in comparative literature at the University of Ljubljana. He published and contributed to numerous books on literature and theatre.
Go to Profile#9146
Edward F. Sherman
#81145
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Edward F. Sherman served as the 20th dean and is currently the W.R. Irby Chair in Law at the Tulane University Law School. He teaches Civil Procedure and Alternative Dispute Resolution. He was previously the Moise F. Steeg, Jr. Professor of Law at Tulane. He has taught at several other schools, including the University of Texas , Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, and the University of London. Through the United States Agency for International Development he helped Vietnam write a new code of civil procedure. In 1970, he was a founding board member of the Lawyers Military Defense Committee, which provided free-of-charge civilian counsel to U.S.
Go to Profile#9147
Dorota Grejner-Brzezińska
#186411
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Dorota A. Grejner-Brzezińska is a Polish-American geodetic engineer known for her work on the Global Positioning System. She is University Distinguished Professor and Lowber B. Strange Endowed Chair in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering at Ohio State University, and director of the Satellite Positioning and Inertial Navigation at Ohio State, where she was also the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Engineering and senior associate vice president for research of the university. She current serves as Vice President of the Office of Knowledge Enterprise, p...
Go to Profile#9148
Paul Young
#134789
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Paul Young is an Irish animator, illustrator, cartoonist, producer, and director. He is the CEO of Cartoon Saloon, a four-times Academy Award nominated and BAFTA nominated Irish animation studio. He co-founded the studio in 1999 with Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey. In 2015 he was a finalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. He has been a board member of Animation Ireland.
Go to Profile#9149
Om Prakash
#97307
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Om Prakash is an Indian cinematographer, primarily working in Tamil cinema, though he has also worked in Hindi, Telugu and Malayalam films. He has years of experience in feature Films, corporate films, documentaries, music videos and over 500 advertising films.
Go to Profile#9150
Sholeh Maani
#102137
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Sholeh Maani is a New Zealand economics academic. She is a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career Maani is the first female Professor of Economics at the University of Auckland. She is a specialist in applied microeconomics, in particular the economics of the labour market, and the economics of education. Sholeh has a PhD degree in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After completing her PhD, titled A Study of Female Labor Force Participation and Fertility: A Cross-Cultural Approach, she moved to the University of Auckland, rising to full profe...
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