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 Law,
#1901
Laurence Helfer
#57024
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Laurence R. Helfer is an American lawyer. Helfer graduated from Yale University before pursuing legal studies at the New York University School of Law. He also completed a master's in public administration from Princeton University. Helfer clerked for Dolores Sloviter and practiced law at Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinksy & Lieberman, a firm in New York. He has taught at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, the University of Chicago Law School, Harvard Law School, Loyola Law School, Princeton University, and Vanderbilt University Law School. From 2009, Helfer has taught at Duke University School of Law as Harry R.
Go to Profile#1902
David Iglesias
#49189
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
David Claudio Iglesias is an American attorney from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Iglesias serves as the Director of the Wheaton Center for Faith, Politics and Economics in Illinois. He is also the Jean and E. Floyd Kvamme Associate Professor of Politics and Law. In April 2014, Iglesias retired from the U.S. Naval Reserve Judge Advocate General's Corps after 30 years of active and reserve service.
Go to Profile#1903
Lawrence Bacow
#9077
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Lawrence Seldon Bacow is an American economist and retired university administrator. He was the 29th president of Harvard University from 2018 to 2023. Before that, Bacow was the Hauser leader-in-residence at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School.
Go to Profile#1904
James E. Fleming
#74110
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
James E. Fleming is an American legal scholar who serves as the Paul J. Liacos Professor of Law at the Boston University School of Law. He is a scholar in standard constitutional theory and constitutional interpretation, with special attention to criticizing originalism and defending moral readings of the U.S. Constitution, developing a civic liberalism concerned with protecting rights and instilling civic virtues, and justifying rights to autonomy and equality as central to constitutional self-government.
Go to Profile#1905
Steven Wilf
#84862
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Steven R. Wilf is a professor of law at the University of Connecticut School of Law. He is an expert on intellectual property law, historical jurisprudence, and legal history. Education and career Born in Philadelphia, Wilf earned his J.D. from Yale Law School and his Ph.D. from the Yale Department of History in 1995. He has been a visiting professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and DADD guest professor at the Free University of Berlin. Most recently, he has served as Maurice Greenberg Visiting Professor at Yale Law School.
Go to Profile#1906
Bill Nelson
#31891
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Clarence William Nelson II is an American politician and attorney serving as the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration . Nelson previously served as a United States senator from Florida from 2001 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served in the Florida House of Representatives from 1972 to 1978 and in the United States House of Representatives from 1979 to 1991. In January 1986, Nelson became the second sitting member of U.S. Congress to fly in space, after Senator Jake Garn, when he served as a payload specialist on mission STS-61-C aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia.
Go to Profile#1907
Shigetake Sasayama
#108128
Overall Influence
#1908
James Bessen
#48206
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
James Bessen is an economist who has been a Lecturer at Boston University School of Law since 2004,. He is presently best known for his data-led research concerning software and innovation. He has also demonstrated the diverse impacts of automation on employment and wages. In more recent work, he has established links between investment in software and market dominance in a number of sectors. Before entering academia professionally, Bessen was previously a software developer and CEO of Bestinfo, a software company. Bessen was also a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Go to Profile#1909
Vernon Valentine Palmer
#87031
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Vernon Palmer is an American-born legal scholar, the Thomas Pickles Professor of Law at Tulane University Law School and the co-director of its Eason Weinmann Center of Comparative Law. He is a specialist in civil law and mixed jurisdiction legal studies, with a primary focus on the study of comparative international law.
Go to Profile#1910
Arnulf Baring
#31449
Overall Influence
1932 - 2019 (87 years)
Arnulf Martin Baring was a German lawyer, journalist, political scientist, contemporary historian and author. He was a member of the German-British Baring family of bankers. Life Arnulf Baring was born to jurist and politician Martin Eberhard Baring and Gertrud Stolze. He was the grandson of German jurist Adolf Baring .
Go to Profile#1911
Michel Friedman
#66655
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Julien Michel Friedman is a German author, former CDU politician and talk show host. From 2000 to 2003 Friedman was vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and president of the European Jewish Congress from 2001 to 2003. From 1998 to 2003 he had his own show on German television. Since 2004 he has been hosting a weekly talk show on N24 called Studio Friedman. Friedman is a lawyer by profession and studied law and philosophy.
Go to Profile#1912
Larry Catá Backer
#58238
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Larry Catá Backer is a Cuban-American legal scholar and professor of law and international affairs. He holds a professorship at the Penn State University, and is the W. Richard and Mary Eshelman Faculty Scholar Professor of Law and International Affairs, Penn State Law and School of International Affairs, Pennsylvania State University , Ashgate Publishing Globalization Law & Policy Series editor , and the executive director of the Washington-based NGO Coalition for Peace and Ethics .
Go to Profile#1913
Jay Michaelson
#35071
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Jay Michaelson is an American writer, journalist, professor, and rabbi. He is a commentator on CNN, and a columnist for Rolling Stone, and other publications, having been the legal affairs columnist at The Daily Beast for eight years. He is the author of ten books, and won the 2023 National Jewish Book Award for scholarship and the 2023 New York Society for Professional Journalists Award for Opinion Writing.
Go to Profile#1914
Ted Sorensen
#37919
Overall Influence
1928 - 2010 (82 years)
Theodore Chaikin Sorensen was an American lawyer, writer, and presidential adviser. He was a speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy, as well as one of his closest advisers. President Kennedy once called him his "intellectual blood bank". Notably, though it was a collaborative effort with Kennedy, Sorensen was generally regarded as the author of the majority of the final text of Profiles in Courage, and stated in his memoir that he helped write the book. Profiles in Courage won Kennedy the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Sorensen helped draft Kennedy's inaugural address and was also the...
Go to Profile#1915
Howard S. Levie
#98651
Overall Influence
1907 - 2009 (102 years)
Howard Sidney Levie was one of America's foremost legal experts on the law of war and the key draftsman of the Korean Armistice Agreement. Early life and education Levie was born in Wolverine, Michigan and grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and New York City. He earned his Bachelor of Arts and Juris Doctor degrees from Cornell University and a Master of Laws degree from George Washington University. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and The Hague Academy of International Law in The Netherlands.
Go to Profile#1916
Reince Priebus
#32587
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Reinhold Richard Priebus is an American lawyer and politician who served as chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2011 to 2017 and as White House chief of staff during the first six months of Donald Trump's presidency.
Go to Profile#1917
Virgil Abloh
#2908
Overall Influence
1980 - 2021 (41 years)
Virgil Abloh was an American fashion designer and entrepreneur. He began his own line of luxury streetwear clothing, Pyrex Vision, in 2012, and became the chief executive officer of the Milan-based label Off-White, a fashion house he founded in 2013. Abloh was also the artistic director of Louis Vuitton's menswear collection beginning in 2018, and was given increased creative responsibilities across the LVMH brand in early 2021.
Go to Profile#1918
Stuart L. Deutsch
#95406
Overall Influence
Stuart L. Deutsch was Dean and Professor of Law at Rutgers School of Law–Newark from 1999 to 2009. Upon stepping down as dean, he was awarded the title of University Professor in recognition of his service as dean. As a university professor, his salary is over $300,000 per year as reported by The Daily Targum, the newspaper of Rutgers University.
Go to Profile#1919
Noel Cox
#73674
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Noel Cox is a New Zealand-born lawyer, legal scholar, and Anglican priest. Personal Cox was raised in Auckland, New Zealand. He is an advocate of the monarchy in New Zealand. Career Cox earned an LLB and an LLM degree from the University of Auckland, an MTh degree, an MA degree in ecclesiastical law, an LTh from the University of Wales Lampeter, and a PhD degree in Political Studies from the University of Auckland. His doctoral thesis was titled The evolution of the New Zealand monarchy: The recognition of an autochthonous polity. His main field of research has been constitutional law. In 2...
Go to Profile#1920
Dominic Raab
#38156
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Dominic Rennie Raab is a British Conservative Party politician who has been Member of Parliament for Esher and Walton since 2010. From 2019 to 2023, with a brief period out of office during the Truss premiership, Raab was deputy to prime ministers Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak - as First Secretary of State until 2021 then as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom until 2023. Additionally he has served in the cabinet positions of Brexit Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor.
Go to Profile#1921
Ramin Mehmanparast
#23390
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Ramin Mehmanparast is an Iranian diplomat, the former spokesman of the Iranian foreign ministry and the former ambassador to Poland and Lithuania. He was the deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, the head of the "Center for Public Diplomacy & Media" and the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 31 October 2009 until his resignation on 11 May 2013. He was also the ambassador of Iran to Thailand from 1996 to 2000 and Kazakhstan from 2004 to 2009.
Go to Profile#1922
Satvinder S. Juss
#80425
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Satvinder Singh Juss FRSA, is a British academic and professor. He is professor of law at King's College London and a barrister-at-law in Gray's Inn. He has published widely on the subjects of migration and international human rights law.
Go to Profile#1923
Ben Cardin
#37055
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Benjamin Louis Cardin is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Maryland, a seat he has held since 2007. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the U.S. representative for from 1987 to 2007. Cardin served in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1967 to 1987 and as its speaker from 1979 to 1987, the youngest person to ever hold the position. In his half-century career as an elected official, he had never lost an election.
Go to Profile#1924
Gillian Hadfield
#74319
Overall Influence
Gillian Kereldena Hadfield is a professor of law and of strategic management who is the inaugural Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. She is also director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Previously, she was the Richard L. and Antoinette Schamoi Kirtland Professor of Law and Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California. At USC, Hadfield directed the Southern California Innovation Project and the USC Center in Law, Economics, and Organization. She is a former member of the board of directo...
Go to Profile#1925
Steven G. Poskanzer
#38985
Overall Influence
Steven Poskanzer was the 11th president of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Previously he was chief of staff to the president at the University of Chicago for four years, then spent 12 years at the State University of New York at New Paltz where he served as president from 2001 until 2010, when he became Carleton's president.
Go to Profile#1926
Milan Sonka
#108637
Overall Influence
#1927
Thomas W. Mitchell
#66315
Overall Influence
Thomas Wilson Mitchell is an American law professor. He is a professor at Boston College Law School. His work focuses on property law, particularly the legal doctrines that have caused Black Americans to lose millions of acres of land since the early 1900s. Mitchell was a 2020 MacArthur Fellow. Recently, he founded and became Director of the Initiative on Land, Housing & Property Rights alongside his wife, Professor Lisa T. Alexander, at Boston College Law School.
Go to Profile#1928
Tamar Frankel
#75703
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (99 years)
Tamar Frankel has been a professor of law at Boston University School of Law since 1968. She is the author of The Ponzi Scheme Puzzle: A History and Analysis of Con Artists and Victims, Fiduciary Law, Trust and Honesty: America’s Business Culture at a Crossroad, Investment Management Regulation, Securitization, and The Regulation of Money Managers. Her areas of scholarship include financial system regulation, fiduciary law, corporate governance, the Internet, and Space Law. A native of Israel, she has taught at Oxford University, Tokyo University, and lectured in Geneva and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and has consulted with the People's Bank of China.
Go to Profile#1929
Patricia Steeg
#103638
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Patricia Steeg is a cancer researcher working in the field of breast cancer metastasis, and was the first person to discover the NME1 gene, which spreads breast cancer to other parts of the body. Education Steeg attended the University of Maryland, which is where she got her PhD in 1982.
Go to Profile#1930
Venkaiah Naidu
#44339
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Muppavarapu Venkaiah Naidu is an Indian politician who served as the 13th vice president of India from 2017 to 2022. He is the first Indian vice president born in independent India. He has also served as the minister of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Urban Development and Information and Broadcasting in the Modi Cabinet.
Go to Profile#1931
Boaventura de Sousa Santos
#46149
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Boaventura de Sousa Santos is a sociologist, Professor emeritus at the Department of Sociology of the School of Economics of the University of Coimbra , Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, and Director Emeritus of the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra. A Marxist, outspoken sympathizer and avowed supporter of the Bloco de Esquerda party, he is regarded as one of the most prominent Portuguese living left-wing intellectuals. In 2023, after a sexual harassment scandal, the University of Coimbra suspended his academic positions unti...
Go to Profile#1932
Michael Posner
#47389
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
#1933
Prokopis Pavlopoulos
#65526
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Prokopios Pavlopoulos , commonly shortened to Prokopis , is a Greek retired politician, who served as the president of Greece from 2015 to 2020. A member of New Democracy, he previously was Minister of the Interior from 2004 to 2009. He was succeeded by Katerina Sakellaropoulou on 13 March 2020, who became the first woman to serve as President of Greece.
Go to Profile#1934
Rosemarie Aquilina
#79950
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Rosemarie Elizabeth Aquilina is an American judge. She is a judge of the 30th circuit court in Ingham County, Michigan. Previously, Aquilina was the 55th District Court Judge, where she served as both a Sobriety Court Judge as well as the Chief Judge. She is best known as the judge who sentenced Larry Nassar in the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal.
Go to Profile#1935
Theodor Baums
#74828
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Theodor Baums is a German legal scholar. He is professor emeritus of business law at the Goethe University Frankfurt and former advisor to the German federal government. Career Theodor Baums studied law and Catholic theology at the University of Bonn and completed his legal studies in 1974 with his first state examination followed by the second in 1977. Until 1985 he was a research assistant at the Institute for Commercial and Business Law at the University of Bonn where he wrote his dissertation in 1980 and his postdoctoral thesis in 1985. He worked as visiting professor at U.C. Berkeley fro...
Go to Profile#1936
Robert Senelle
#87290
Overall Influence
1918 - 2013 (95 years)
Robert Senelle was a Belgian academic and constitutionalist. Biography Senelle was born in the at that time still quite Flemish north Brussels suburb of Schaerbeek, and grew up in nearby Vilvoorde. He studied law at the Free University of Brussels before starting a legal career at the Brussels bar. After the liberation, in September 1944, he progressed, becoming in 1946 a judge at Leuven and, in 1947, a Courts-martial magistrate. In 1949 he became an auditor at the Council of State, which gave him the opportunity to extend his network of contacts in the county's legal establishment.
Go to Profile#1937
Alison Dundes Renteln
#21807
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Alison Dundes Renteln is an American college professor. She is a Professor of Political Science, Anthropology, Law, and Public Policy at the University of Southern California. Education She holds a B.A. from Harvard-Radcliffe, a J.D. from USC's Gould School of Law, and a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence & Social Policy and M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1981 to 1982 she studied International Law at the London School of Economics.
Go to Profile#1938
Rick Owens
#9012
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Richard Saturnino Owens is an American fashion designer from Porterville, California. In addition to his main line, Owens has a furniture line and a number of diffusion lines. Early life and education Richard Saturnino Owens was raised in Porterville, California. His parents are John and Concepción "Connie" Owens. His mother is Mexican. Owens was raised in a conservative, Catholic household. After graduating high school, he moved to Los Angeles, California to study art at Otis College of Art and Design for two years before taking pattern-making and draping courses at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College.
Go to Profile#1939
Derek Bowett
#85921
Overall Influence
1927 - 2009 (82 years)
Sir Derek William Bowett, was an international lawyer and academic. He was appointed Whewell Professor of International Law in 1981 and was President of Queens' College, Cambridge 1970–1982. Early life and education Raised near Manchester Bowett was a chorister at Manchester Cathedral, attended William Hulme's Grammar School and joined the Royal Navy at 18 years of age in 1945. After demobilisation he studied law at Downing College, Cambridge. After gaining a first class degree Bowett was encouraged to continue his studies by Hersch Lauterpacht the then Whewell Professor of International La...
Go to Profile#1940
Katheryn Russell-Brown
#50710
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Katheryn Russell-Brown is an American social scientist, professor of law and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations at University of Florida Law School. Her main areas of expertise are race and crime, sociology of law and criminal law.
Go to Profile#1941
Hermann-Josef Blanke
#91012
Overall Influence
1957 - 2023 (66 years)
Hermann-Josef Blanke was a German academic and legal scholar. Biography Blanke was born on 26 August 1957. He studied law and romance studies at the University of Bonn, the Complutense University of Madrid, and the University of Florence. He received his Doctor of Law from Osnabrück University. He worked as a Wissenschaftlicher Assistent at the University of Cologne from 1990 to 1991. He was then a lecturer at the University of Trier, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, the University of Bonn, and the University of Cologne.
Go to Profile#1942
E. M. S. Namboodiripad
#22073
Overall Influence
1909 - 1998 (89 years)
Elamkulam Manakkal Sankaran Namboodiripad , popularly known by his initials 'E. M. S.' was an Indian communist politician and theorist, who served as the first Chief Minister of Kerala in 1957–1959 and then again in 1967–1969. As a member of the Communist Party of India , he became the first non-Congress Chief Minister in the Indian republic. In 1964, he led a faction of the CPI that broke away to form the Communist Party of India .
Go to Profile#1943
Michael Alpers
#33854
Overall Influence
Michael Philip Alpers , , is an Australian medical researcher, and John Curtin distinguished Professor of International Health, at Curtin University. Education Alpers graduated from University of Adelaide with a B.Sc. and M.B.B.S. and from University of Cambridge with an M.A.
Go to Profile#1944
Michael Gableman
#65462
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Michael J. Gableman is an American lawyer and former justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. A Republican, he has been described as a hard-line conservative. From June 2021 until August 2022, Gableman was employed as a "special counsel" by Wisconsin Assembly speaker Robin Vos to investigate the results of the 2020 United States presidential election in Wisconsin. His fourteen month investigation resulted in various unsubstantiated accusations against municipal clerks and members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, but found nothing of substance. Gableman himself became a lightning rod fo...
Go to Profile#1945
Robert Raben
#57889
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Robert Raben is the founder and president of the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying and consulting firm The Raben Group, and was Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice under former President Bill Clinton.
Go to Profile#1946
Lasse Simonsen
#99471
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Lasse Simonsen , is a professor at the University of Oslo. He took his cand.jur. degree at University of Oslo in 1979 and his doctorate in law in 1997. He became associate professor and later professor in 2001 and has been dean of the Department of Private Law since 2004. He has also been a magistrate and for a period of time also a judge in the Court of Appeal.
Go to Profile#1947
Steven T. Wax
#89184
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Steven T. Wax was a U.S. federal Public Defender for the District of Oregon in Portland, Oregon. Wax resigned from his position after 31 years and now works with the Oregon Innocence Project. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for districts of Southern and Eastern New York, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second and Ninth circuits, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Go to Profile#1948
Adam Dodek
#61984
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Adam Dodek is the current dean of the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law where he is also a full professor. Dodek has written books on the Canadian Constitution and solicitor-client privilege.
Go to Profile#1949
Jawwad S. Khawaja
#40498
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Jawwad S. Khawaja is a Pakistani jurist, and former professor of law at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, who served as the 23rd Chief Justice of Pakistan. He was nominated for the position by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on 17 August 2015, and approved to take office by President Mamnoon Hussain on the same day.
Go to Profile#1950
Joel Dudley
#91718
Overall Influence
Joel Dudley is currently Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and founding Director of the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. In March, 2018 Dr. Dudley was named Executive Vice President for Precision Health for the Mount Sinai Health System . In 2017 he was awarded an Endowed Professorship by Mount Sinai in Biomedical Data Science. Prior to Mount Sinai, he held positions as Co-founder and Director of Informatics at NuMedii, Inc. and Consulting Professor of Systems Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine.
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