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,
#3551
John R. Rosenberg
#72813
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
John R. Rosenberg is currently the Washington Irving Professor of Spanish and American Relations at Brigham Young University . Rosenberg holds bachelor's and master's degrees from BYU and master's and PhD degrees from Cornell University.
Go to Profile#3552
David Luff
#186221
Overall Influence
David Luff is a professor at Université Libre de Bruxelles, and visiting professor at the College of Europe, He is a partner in the international law firm Appleton Luff. He also teaches at the MGIMO University in Moscow and the University Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo. He has also held visiting appointments in Italy , India, China, Vietnam, and Switzerland.
Go to Profile#3553
Masao Ito
#18781
Overall Influence
1928 - 2018 (90 years)
was a Japanese neuroscientist, and director of the Riken Brain Science Institute. Overviews Masao Ito was the main force behind Japanese neuroscience and its international recognition for many years. He was very active in the International Brain Research Organisation and went on to establish the Federation of Asian-Oceanian Neuroscience Societies in an effort to join together East Asian neuroscientists and facilitate interactions without dependence on American/European influences. This organisation is still active and acts in concert with IBRO's own Asia-Pacific Regional Committee which was set up in 1999.
Go to Profile#3554
Charles Repole
#188283
Overall Influence
Charles Repole is an American actor, theater director, and college professor. Repole made his Broadway debut in Very Good Eddie in 1975, earning a Tony Award nomination and a Theatre World Award for his performance. Additional Broadway credits include the 1979 revival of Whoopee!, which garnered him a Drama Desk Award nomination, Doubles , and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , which he directed.
Go to Profile#3555
Oscar Holmes
#91556
Overall Influence
1916 - 2001 (85 years)
Oscar Wayman Holmes was an American naval aviator in World War II and civilian flight controller, the first African-American in each position. Biography Holmes graduated from Garnet High School in Charleston, West Virginia, in 1932, West Virginia State College in 1936 with a B.S. and Ohio State University the following year with a master's degree in chemistry. He taught chemistry for three years at Claflin College, a historically black school in Orangeburg, South Carolina. In 1940, he went to work for the Erie Lighting Company in Erie, Pennsylvania, as a chemical analyst.
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Tucker Viemeister
#66968
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Tucker L. Viemeister is an American industrial designer, and founder of Viemeister Industries in New York. Tucker helped found many important design businesses: Smart Design, frog design's New York studio, Razorfish's physical design group, Springtime-USA, and was chief of the lab at the Rockwell Group.
Go to Profile#3557
Luz Bulnes
#184638
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Luz Bulnes Aldunate was a Chilean lawyer who was a member of the Constitutional Court.
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Waldron Fox-Decent
#125739
Overall Influence
1937 - 2019 (82 years)
Rear-Admiral Norman Waldron "Wally" Fox-Decent was a Canadian professor, mediator and advisor on constitutional issues and labour relations. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, he received a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1959 and a Master of Arts in 1971 from the University of Manitoba. From 1962 to 1995, he was professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba.
Go to Profile#3559
Lynda Grose
#100002
Overall Influence
Lynda Grose is a designer in fashion and sustainability, educator, and consultant known for her pioneering work in sustainable fashion design. Career In 1990 Grose co-founded Esprit's e-collection division, a five-year research and development project marketed in 13 countries, which is cited "as the first ecologically responsible clothing line developed by a major corporation" and in doing so, Grose "set pioneering standards for the textile industry". Her Ecollection was founded in response to Esprit's company-wide focus on environmental awareness, begun by Esprit co-founder Doug Tompkins. G...
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Christine Lee
#63609
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Christine Lee is an English medical researcher. She is Emerita Professor of Haemophilia at the University of London, and founding Editor of Haemophilia. She trained in medicine at Somerville College, Oxford, where she was awarded First Class Honours and was the first female scholar of the Oxford University Medical School. She was awarded a Doctorate of Science by the University of London in 1996.
Go to Profile#3561
Gregg Polsky
#191952
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Gregg Polsky is an American lawyer currently the Francis Schackelford Professor of Taxation Law at University of Georgia.
Go to Profile#3562
Joe Odom
#178771
Overall Influence
1948 - 1991 (43 years)
Joseph Algerine Odom was an American attorney who later became a musician. He came to prominence after his appearance as one of the main characters in John Berendt's true-crime book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, although he died three years before its publication.
Go to Profile#3563
Amy Landers
#191983
Overall Influence
Amy L. Landers is an American lawyer, currently at Drexel University and formerly a Distinguished Professor at University of the Pacific.
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Lothar Binding
#109935
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Lothar Binding is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany who served as a member of the Bundestag from the 1998 until 2021. Early life Binding was born in Sandershausen. After his apprenticeship as a heavy- current electrician he graduated Hesse College in 1972. Following his national civil service as a nurse's helper he studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at the universities of Heidelberg and Tübingen. In 1981 he obtained a Diplom degree in mathematics and physics at Ruprecht Karl University Heidelberg.
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Juanita Tamayo Lott
#142963
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Juanita Tamayo Lott is a Filipina-American author and activist. A chronicler of the Filipino experience in America, Lott has authored several popular and scholarly works on Asian Americans. She has also contributed to the establishment of several Asian American studies departments. As a college student in 1969, Lott co-founded the first U.S. Filipino American Studies Program at San Francisco State; in 2007, she developed the Filipino American Studies Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. Trained as a statistician and demographer, she spent her career as a policy analyst for the...
Go to Profile#3566
Bernard Edelman
#83921
Overall Influence
1938 - 2020 (82 years)
Bernard Edelman was a French jurist, philosopher, and lawyer. Biography Edelman worked as a lawyer and was a specialist in literary and artistic property as well as copyright. He also served as a lecturer at the École normale supérieure, the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, and Sciences Po. His expertise in philosophy caused him to focus on simplicity and humanity, enabling him to meet intellectuals from many different countries. He published his first novel, Verticon, in 2017.
Go to Profile#3567
William A. Beeton Jr.
#191916
Overall Influence
1943 - 2002 (59 years)
William Arthur Beeton, Jr. was an American attorney and Republican politician. In 1981, he was elected alongside Charles R. Hawkins and Kenneth E. Calvert to the Virginia House of Delegates, but a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found the state's multi-member districts to violated the equal protection clause and ordered that new elections take place the following year. Beeton was defeated in the 1982 22nd district Republican primary by Joseph P. Crouch. He moved to northern Virginia, practiced law, and served as chairman of the board of directors of Wakefield Country Day School.
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Anne Ormisson
#180217
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Anne Ormisson is an Estonian medical researcher and pediatrician. Biography Anne Tampere was born on 19 November 1942 in Tartu, Estonia and is the second child of a four-child family of Vanemuine orchestra player Arnold and a music school teacher Helene. She graduated school in 1961 from Tartu 7th Secondary School. She graduated University of Tartu in 1967 and was sent to Võru hospital as a paediatrician. She later moved to Viljandi where she met and married Toivo Ormisson, and her daughter Liis and a son Niil were born. In 1971, she started working as a researcher at the Department of Pediat...
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Mirza Hashem Eshkevari
#133270
Overall Influence
Mirza Hashem Eshkevari was a Shi'a philosopher, jurist and mystic. He is one of the most important pupils of Agha Muhammad reza Qomshehi and his mystical school. Early life He was born in Eshkevar at Gilan. Eshkevar had given rise to scientists such as Qutb Al Din Eshkevari and Sayyed Abul Qasem Eshkevari. He was born there in 1250 Hijra lunar. His family lineage goes back to the regress of Sadat.
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Barbara A. Bintliff
#192130
Overall Influence
Barbara A. Bintliff was the Joseph C. Hutcheson Professor and Director of the Tarlton Law Library/Jamail Center for Legal Research at University of Texas School of Law, and was previously the Nicholas Rosenbaum Professor of Law and Director of the William A. Wise Law Library at University of Colorado.
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Mary Berkheiser
#192145
Overall Influence
Mary E. Berkheiser is an American lawyer, currently the Joyce Mack Professor of Law at William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
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Casey R. Luskin
#192163
Overall Influence
Casey Luskin (born February 9, 1978) is an American scientist and an attorney with graduate degrees in science and law. He holds a PhD in Geology from the University of Johannesburg where his thesis focused on paleomagnetism and the early plate tectonic history of South Africa (”Paleomagnetism of the Nsuze Group of the Pongola Supergroup and Related Igneous Units: Implications for Mesoarchean Paleogeography of the Kaapvaal Craton, Southern Africa“). His B.S. and M.S. degrees in Earth Sciences are from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He earned a law degree from the University of...
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Jr. Attorney General Eric H. Holder
#192179
Overall Influence
#3574
María Leoba Castañeda Rivas
#192184
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
María Leoba Castañeda Rivas, a tenured University Professor in the UNAM Faculty of Law, earned her Master's Degree studying Electoral Institutions and Procedures of the Federal Electoral Institute , now the National Electoral Institute , in Mexico. She also studied a Specialty at the University of Castilla-La Mancha . After this, She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree by the Autonomous University of the State of Morelos .
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Steve Nickles
#167087
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Steve Nickles is an American lawyer and known figure in his field, currently the C. C. Hope Chair in Law and Management and previously the Bess and Walter Williams Distinguished Professor of Law, at Wake Forest University. He was also the Roger F. Noreen Chair in Law at University of Minnesota.
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David Monacchi
#181687
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
David Monacchi is an Italian sound artist, researcher and eco-acoustic composer, best known for his multidisciplinary project Fragments of Extinction, patented periphonic device, the Eco-Acoustic Theatre, and award-winning music and sound-art installations.
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Leo Fraser
#192102
Overall Influence
1926 - 2013 (87 years)
Leo W. Fraser, Jr. was an American lawyer, businessman, and politician. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Fraser served in the United States Marine Corps 1944–1946. He then received his degree from Northeastern University and his law degree from the New England School of Law. He was a claim adjuster in Boston. In 1970 he moved to Pittsfield, New Hampshire, serving as the New Hampshire Insurance Commissioner. In 1976 he established Fraser Financial Services in Pittsfield. A Republican, he served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives from 1985 to 1991 and then in the New Hampshire State Senate from 1991 to 2002.
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Alexander Jun
#109355
Overall Influence
Alexander Jun is an American academic and Presbyterian official. He is a professor of Higher Education at Azusa Pacific University, and former moderator of the Presbyterian Church in America. He was also the first-place winner of the 2020 Korean American ROAR Story Slam in Los Angeles, CA.
Go to Profile#3579
Peter Klinken
#120195
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Svend Peter Klinken is an Australian medical researcher and academic. He is currently the Chief Scientist of Western Australia. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in the June 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours.
Go to Profile#3580
Samuel B. Kazman
#192276
Overall Influence
#3581
Kenneth Walsh
#117122
Overall Influence
Kenneth Walsh is an American medical researcher specializing in the study of cardiovascular medicine. He is a professor of medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He was formerly a professor at Tufts University. Along with Mark T. Nelson, he succeeded David Julius in 2021 as the co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal the Annual Review of Physiology.
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G. I. Lieftinck
#174539
Overall Influence
1902 - 1994 (92 years)
Gerard Isaäc Lieftinck , known in print as G.I. Lieftinck, was a Dutch academic specialising in medieval European manuscripts. Personal life The eldest of two boys and three girls, Lieftinck was born in Amsterdam in 1902 to Gerard Lieftinck , an entrepreneur and director of the tobacco brokerage J.H. Lieftinck & Son, and his wife Elisabeth Esser . He married twice, had two sons, and died in Deventer in 1994.
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Jens Edvin A. Skoghøy
#192331
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Jens Edvin A. Skoghøy is a Norwegian judge. He hails from Ringvassøya. He graduated as cand.jur. at the University of Oslo in 1976 and took the dr.juris degree at the University of Tromsø in 1990. He subsequently became a professor there, and has also worked as a lawyer. He was appointed Supreme Court Justice in 1998, as one of the youngest ever. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. In early 2017 he resigned from the Supreme Court—the third to do so before the retirement age, after Oscar Christian Gundersen and Nina Frisak—to resume his professorship at the Universi...
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Gladys Triveño
#137547
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Gladys Mónica Triveño Chan Jan is a Peruvian lawyer. She was Minister of Production, from 14 May 2012 until 24 February 2014. Biography She graduated of lawyer in the Pontificia Catholic University of the Peru in 1994 with a master's in Administration of Companies by the School of Businesses in Madrid, Spain. She also has a degree in Strategic Direction of Finances by the University of the Pacific.
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Jacqueline Samuda
#165606
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Jacqueline Samuda is a Canadian actress, director and writer. Biography Samuda was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and grew up in both the United States and Canada. She received a B.F.A. Degree in Performance from York University in Toronto, and apprenticed at the prestigious Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the Lake, Ontario. An experienced film/TV/stage/voice actress, Jacqueline has appeared in recurring roles on TV's Spooksville, The L Word and the epic sci-fi series Stargate SG-1 and in many other feature film, TV episodic and animation projects. She is a busy voiceover performer who has voiced many i...
Go to Profile#3586
Anne Brenon
#100753
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Annie Brenon, known as Anne Brenon is a French writer and historian, specialising in Catharism. She is the founder of Heresis, a review on Catharism and other medieval heresies and from 1982 to 1998 was director of the Centre national d'études cathares René-Nelli in Carcassonne.
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Edin Velez
#114949
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Edin Velez is a Puerto Rican video artist, director and professor. He is best known for his work on the documentary films State of Rest and Motion and Dance of Darkness. Life and career Edin was born and raised in Puerto Rico and is currently based in New York. He studied painting at the University of Puerto Rico and the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. He moved to the US in the early 1970s and became part of the first generation of video artists working in SoHo, Manhattan. His directorial debut documentary film on Japanese Butoh, Dance of Darkness, was broadcast nationally in the US by PBS....
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Coco Chanel
1883 - 1971 (88 years)
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a French fashion designer and businesswoman. The founder and namesake of the Chanel brand, she was credited in the post–World War I era with popularizing a sporty, casual chic as the feminine standard of style. This replaced the "corseted silhouette" that had earlier been dominant with a style that was simpler, far less time-consuming to put on and remove, more comfortable, and less expensive, all without sacrificing elegance. She is the only fashion designer listed on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. A prolific f...
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Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos
1744 - 1811 (67 years)
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos was a Spanish neoclassical statesman, author, philosopher and a major figure of the Age of Enlightenment in Spain. Life and influence of his works Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos was born at Gijón in Asturias, Spain. Selecting law as his profession, he studied at Oviedo, Ávila, and the University of Alcalá, before becoming a criminal judge at Seville in 1767.
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James Bradley Thayer
1831 - 1902 (71 years)
James Bradley Thayer was an American legal theorist and educator. Life Born at Haverhill, Massachusetts, he graduated from Harvard College in 1852, where he established the overcoat fund for needy undergraduates. In 1856 he graduated from Harvard Law School, was admitted to the bar of Suffolk County and began to practice law in Boston. From 1873 to 1883 he was Royall professor of law at Harvard. In 1883 he was transferred to the professorship which after 1893 was known as the Weld professorship and which he held until his death on February 14, 1902. He took a special interest in the historica...
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Rufus King
1755 - 1827 (72 years)
Rufus King was an American Founding Father, lawyer, politician, and diplomat. He was a delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress and the Philadelphia Convention and was one of the signers of the United States Constitution in 1787. After formation of the new Congress, he represented New York in the United States Senate. He emerged as a leading member of the Federalist Party and was the party's last presidential nominee during the 1816 presidential election.
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Adhémar Esmein
1848 - 1913 (65 years)
Jean Paul Hippolyte Emmanuel Adhémar Esmein was a French jurist. He authored numerous textbooks on the history of French public law and French constitutional law. He also wrote numerous monographs on other subjects, particularly including canon law, the teaching of which in France he renewed through his works. His most famous one is perhaps his "History of Continental Criminal Procedure" which was first published in 1913 and has since been widely received in academic literature.
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John Selden
1584 - 1654 (70 years)
John Selden was an English jurist, a scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution and scholar of Jewish law. He was known as a polymath; John Milton hailed Selden in 1644 as "the chief of learned men reputed in this land."
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Gustave Boissonade
1825 - 1910 (85 years)
Gustave Émile Boissonade de Fontarabie was a French legal scholar, responsible for drafting much of Japan's civil code during the Meiji Era, and honored as one of the founders of modern Japan's legal system.
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Samuel Williston
1861 - 1963 (102 years)
Samuel Williston was an American lawyer and law professor who authored an influential treatise on contracts. Early life, education and family Williston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to a family prosperous from the mercantile trade but whose fortunes declined during his youth, which he recalled, "served as a spur to endeavor."
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Ivan Fojnickij
1847 - 1913 (66 years)
Ivan Jakovlevich Fojnickij was a leading theorist of criminal law in the late Russian Empire. In 1877, Fojnickij was appointed senior public prosecutor in Saint Petersburg. He was also the chairman of the Russian section of the International Union of Criminologists and taught law at the Saint Petersburg State University from 1881 onwards.
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Soia Mentschikoff
1915 - 1984 (69 years)
Soia Mentschikoff was a Russian American lawyer, law professor, legal scholar and law school dean, best known for her work in the development and drafting of the Uniform Commercial Code. She served as dean of University of Miami School of Law. She was also the first woman to teach at Harvard Law School.
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Arthur Nussbaum
1877 - 1964 (87 years)
Arthur Nussbaum was a German-born American jurist. He studied legal science in Berlin from 1894 till 1897. He taught at Humboldt University of Berlin . In 1934, he moved to the United States, and in 1940, he became a US citizen.
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John Bassett Moore
1860 - 1947 (87 years)
John Bassett Moore was an American lawyer and authority on international law. Moore was a State Department official, a professor at Columbia University, and a judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice from 1922 to 1928, the first American judge to sit on that judicial body.
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Robert H. Jackson
1892 - 1954 (62 years)
Robert Houghwout Jackson was an American lawyer, jurist, and politician who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1941 until his death in 1954. He had previously served as United States Solicitor General and United States Attorney General, and is the only person to have held all three of those offices. Jackson was also notable for his work as Chief United States Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals following World War II.
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