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 Mathematics,
#8601
Frank T. Smith
#189965
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Frank Thomas Smith FRS is a Goldsmid professor in the department of mathematics in the University College London, a specialist in Fluid Mechanics. Biography Frank Smith completed his doctoral degree in 1972 at the University of Oxford. Smith has made significant contributions to triple-deck theory applied to boundary layer flows, separated flows, biofluid mechanics, skimming-stone problem, etc. He is the director of Lighthill institute of mathematical sciences.
Go to Profile#8602
Brannon Braga
#52282
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Brannon Braga is an American television producer, director and screenwriter. Best known for his work in the Star Trek franchise, Braga was a key creative force behind three of the franchise's live action series. He later became an executive producer and writer on several Fox shows including 24, Terra Nova, and The Orville. His film credits include Mission: Impossible 2, Star Trek Generations and Star Trek: First Contact.
Go to Profile#8603
Eduardo Héctor Zarantonello
#189981
Overall Influence
1918 - 2010 (92 years)
Eduardo Héctor Zarantonello was an Argentine mathematician working on analysis. His doctorate was awarded by the Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
Go to Profile#8604
John A. Dawson
#99289
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
John Alan Dawson is Professor of Marketing at the University of Edinburgh; he is a Geographer, and specialist in retail innovation, Dawson graduated in Geography from University College London in 1965 with an interest in urban geography. He then studied for an MPhil on central place theory and the work of the early economists, completing his formal education in 1970 with a PhD from the University of Nottingham with a thesis on the post-war changes in retailing in selected European regions.
Go to Profile#8605
Thomas C. Butler
#29510
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Thomas Campbell Butler is an American scientist specializing in infectious diseases including cholera and bubonic plague at Texas Tech University since 1987. He is credited with making oral hydration the standard treatment for diarrhea.
Go to Profile#8606
J. Michael Clarke
#139515
Overall Influence
Professor John Michael Clarke is Director of the Electroacoustic Music Studio at the University of Huddersfield. He graduated from St Chad's College, Durham. As a composer his works have received many performances and broadcasts throughout the world. In 1983 Soundings won the CIM France prize at Bourges, in 1984 Uppvaknande was awarded the Chandos Prize at Musica Nova in Glasgow and in 1997 he was awarded the Musica Nova Prize in Prague for the octophonic tape work Time.
Go to Profile#8607
Frank Merle
#190043
Overall Influence
#8608
Sergei Mukhin
#145796
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Sergei Mukhin is a Russian mathematician, Professor, Dr.Sc., and a professor at the Faculty of Computer Science at the Moscow State University. He graduated from the faculty MSU CMC in 1981. Mukhin has worked at Moscow State University since 1984. In 2009, he defended his thesis "Mathematical modeling of hemodynamics" for the degree of Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. He has authored 3 books and more than 80 scientific articles.
Go to Profile#8609
Xing Xie
#190061
Overall Influence
#8610
Isaac Sir Newton
#190100
Overall Influence
#8611
Peter Green
#190127
Overall Influence
#8612
Walter Mauderli
#80762
Overall Influence
1924 - 2005 (81 years)
Walter Mauderli DSc was a pioneer in the development of the field of medical physics. He earned his doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology under the instruction of notable physicists as Nobel Laureate physicist Wolfgang Pauli.
Go to Profile#8613
Robert Wolak
#190233
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Robert Antoni Wolak is a Polish mathematician, habilitated doctor of mathematical sciences. He specializes in differential geometry, foliation theory and differential topology. Associate professor of the Department of Geometry of the Institute of Mathematics, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of the Jagiellonian University.
Go to Profile#8614
Marc Cherry
#45415
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Marc Cherry is an American television writer and producer. He is best known for creating the ABC dramedy series Desperate Housewives. Personal life Early life Marc Cherry was born in Long Beach, California, and lived briefly in Oklahoma during his childhood. His father was an accountant whose work brought him back to California. After graduating from Troy High School in Fullerton, Cherry attended California State University, Fullerton. He graduated from the school’s theater program in 1995 and initially considered a career in performance. After winning $15,000 as a contestant on The $100,000 Pyramid in 1986, he decided to move to Hollywood and pursue writing work.
Go to Profile#8615
Joan Bernard
#83723
Overall Influence
1918 - 2012 (94 years)
Joan Constance Churchill Bernard, FRSA was Principal of Trevelyan College, University of Durham from its foundation in 1966 to 1978. During World War II, she was an officer of the Auxiliary Territorial Service and was instrumental in Britain's defence against V-1 and V-2 rockets. In later life, she was active in the Church of England.
Go to Profile#8616
Craig Steven Wright
#117103
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Craig Steven Wright is an Australian computer scientist and businessman. He has publicly claimed to be the main part of the team that created bitcoin, and the identity behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. These claims are regarded as false by much of the media and the cryptocurrency community. As of 2019, he lives in the United Kingdom.
Go to Profile#8617
Carole Dawn Reinhart
#103223
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Carole Dawn Reinhart is an American musician. She is a trumpet soloist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Early life Reinhart was born on December 20, 1941, in Roselle, New Jersey, the daughter of C. O. Reinhart and Mabel Geiger Reinhart. Her mother, a trombonist, gave Reinhart her first brass lessons on the slide cornet aged two and a half years. By the age of seven she was playing trumpet duets with her brother, Rolfe, who was known as a "boy trumpeter" and also received scholarships to study music.
Go to Profile#8618
Jim Clark
#142072
Overall Influence
1931 - 2016 (85 years)
Jim Clark was a British film editor and film director. He has more than forty feature film credits between 1956 and 2008. Clark directed eight features and short films. Among his most recognized films are Midnight Cowboy , Marathon Man , The Killing Fields , and Vera Drake . In 2011, Clark published Dream Repairman: Adventures in Film Editing, a memoir of his career.
Go to Profile#8619
Michael Mealling
#189701
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Michael Mealling is co-founder of Pipefish Inc, and was the cofounder, Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Business Development of Masten Space Systems, CEO of Refactored Networks, long time participant within the IETF, a Space Frontier Foundation Advocate, and a former Director of the Moon Society. He operates a blog site called Rocketforge and has been interviewed twice on The Space Show and twice on SpaceVidcast.
Go to Profile#8620
Billy Joe Walker Jr.
#100466
Overall Influence
1952 - 2017 (65 years)
Billy Joe Walker Jr. was an American songwriter, record producer and recording artist. He composed singles for Eddie Rabbitt, including "I Wanna Dance with You", "That's Why I Fell in Love with You" and "B-B-B-Burnin' Up with Love". He produced the first three albums of Bryan White, and for Pam Tillis, Collin Raye and Travis Tritt. He was also a session musician who played guitar. Between 1987 and 1994, he recorded seven solo albums, all for major labels.
Go to Profile#8621
Almadena Chtchelkanova
#140623
Overall Influence
Almadena Yurevna Chtchelkanova is a Russian-American scientist. She is a program director in the Division of Computing and Communication Foundations at the National Science Foundation. Education Chtchelkanova completed a Ph.D. in physics from Moscow State University in 1988. In 1996, she earned a M.A. in the department of computer sciences at University of Texas at Austin. Her master's thesis was titled The application of object-oriented analysis to sockets system calls library testing. James C. Browne was her advisor.
Go to Profile#8622
Neil Goodman
#53928
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Neil Goodman is an American sculptor and educator, known for bronze works that combine elegant arrangements and forms with hand-wrought, textured surfaces. He has explored a wide range of formats—still-life compositions, wall and floor installations, free-standing works and monumental public art—in a formalist style that has evolved from spare representation to abstraction and minimalism.
Go to Profile#8623
Liao Shantao
#175265
Overall Influence
1920 - 1997 (77 years)
Liao Shantao was a Chinese mathematician. Biography Liao was born into a family of farming background on January 4, 1920, in Hengshan County, Hunan. His father was Liao Zihao and his mother was Zeng Ping . He attended Mingde Middle School and Changsha No. 1 High School in Changsha, capital of Hunan province. In 1938 he was accepted to National Southwestern Associated University and graduated in 1941. After graduation, he taught at Mingde Middle School. He moved to Peking University in 1946 as an associate professor and then to Academia Sinica as a research assistant in 1948. He pursued adva...
Go to Profile#8624
Thomas Rajna
#181481
Overall Influence
1928 - 2021 (93 years)
Thomas Rajna was a British pianist and composer of Hungarian birth. He had been domiciled in Cape Town in South Africa since 1970. Biography Rajna was born in Budapest, Hungary. He started to play the piano and compose at an early age and studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music where he won the Liszt Prize in 1947. That year he left Hungary to settle in London and enrolled at the Royal College of Music. He soon appeared at the Proms under such conductors as Carlo Maria Giulini, Colin Davis and John Pritchard, also becoming a frequent broadcaster at the BBC. In 1963 he was appointed Profes...
Go to Profile#8625
Stefan Brands
#177850
Overall Influence
Stefan Brands is the designer of the core cryptographic protocols of Microsoft's U-Prove technology. Following his academic research on these protocols during the nineties, they were implemented and marketed under the U-Prove name by Credentica until Microsoft acquired the technology.
Go to Profile#8626
Germano D'Abramo
#150833
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (52 years)
Germano D'Abramo is an Italian mathematician, physicist and discoverer of minor planets. Career In the late 1990s, he has been a collaborator of the Spaceguard Foundation which observes and studies near-Earth objects , modelling NEO-populations and maintaining the foundation's online observation platform, the Spaceguard Central Node. He is credited by the Minor Planet Center with the co-discovery of 3 minor planets he made in collaboration with astronomer Andrea Boattini at Pistoia Mountains Astronomical Observatory in April 1999.
Go to Profile#8627
William Paul Fife
#54013
Overall Influence
1917 - 2008 (91 years)
Colonel William Paul Fife USAF was a United States Air Force officer that first proved the feasibility for U.S. Air Force Security Service airborne Communications Intelligence collection and Fife is considered the "Father of Airborne Intercept". Fife was also a hyperbaric medicine specialist who was known for his pioneering research on pressurized environments ranging from high altitude to underwater habitats. Fife was a Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University.
Go to Profile#8628
Syed Iqbal Hasnain
#120218
Overall Influence
Syed Iqbal Hasnain is an Indian glaciologist, writer, educationist and the Chairman of the Glacier and Climate Change Commission of the Government of Sikkim. He is a former vice chancellor of the University of Calicut and a member of the United Nations Environment Program Committee on Global Assessment of Black Carbon and Troposphere Ozone.
Go to Profile#8629
Alyson Stoner
#172263
Overall Influence
1993 - Present (32 years)
Alyson Rae Stoner is an American actor, singer, and dancer. Their film roles include Cheaper by the Dozen , Cheaper by the Dozen 2 , and the Step Up franchise . Their television roles include serving as the host of Disney Channel's Mike's Super Short Show , playing Max in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody , voicing Isabella Garcia-Shapiro in Phineas and Ferb , and portraying Caitlyn in Camp Rock and Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam .
Go to Profile#8630
Hugh McGregor Ross
#180367
Overall Influence
1917 - 2014 (97 years)
Hugh McGregor Ross was an early pioneer in the history of British computing. He was employed by Ferranti from the mid-1960s, where he worked on the Pegasus thermionic valve computer. He was involved in the standardization of ASCII and ISO 646 and worked closely with Bob Bemer. ASCII was first known in Europe as the Bemer–Ross Code. He was also one of the four main designers of ISO 6937, with Peter Fenwick, Bernard Marti and Loek Zeckendorf. He was one of the principal architects of the Universal Character Set ISO/IEC 10646 when it was first conceived.
Go to Profile#8631
Pam Lins
#143064
Overall Influence
Pam Lins is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She refers to all of her work primarily as sculpture, although she uses the term expansively. Through it she contemplates the social, the political, and the historical by constructing situations inquisitive and equivocal to sculpture and the making of it. Her range of adoptive methods includes painting, producing jewelry, drawing cartoons, and growing mushrooms. She currently teaches at Cooper Union School of Art and Princeton University.
Go to Profile#8632
Jeni Tennison
#56352
Overall Influence
Jenifer Fays Alys Tennison is a British software engineer and consultant who co-chairs the data governance working group within the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence . She also serves on the board of directors of Creative Commons, the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data and the information law and policy centre of the School of Advanced Study at the University of London. She was previously Chief Executive Officer of the Open Data Institute .
Go to Profile#8633
Steve Wharton
#51427
Overall Influence
Steve Wharton is Associate Professor of French and Communication at the University of Bath's Department of Politics, Language and International Studies, where he has worked since 1990. He was appointed to a consultancy rôle as Interim Head of Governance from mid-February to the end of July 2019.
Go to Profile#8634
Daniel W. Stroock
#190682
Overall Influence
#8635
Marjan van den Akker
#186540
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Janna Magrietje van den Akker is a Dutch computer scientist and operations researcher specializing in scheduling algorithms with applications including transportation and software engineering. She is an associate professor in the Department of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University, where she directs the Utrecht AI & Mobility Lab and Robust Rail Lab. She also holds a research affiliation with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
Go to Profile#8636
Arild Stubhaug
#78615
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Arild Stubhaug is a Norwegian mathematician, poet and biographer. Stubhaug was born in Naustdal, and is married to Kari Bøge. He made his literary debut in 1970 with the poetry collection Utkantane. He has written biographies of the mathematicians Sophus Lie, Niels Henrik Abel and Gösta Mittag-Leffler.
Go to Profile#8637
Gil McVean
#181742
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (52 years)
Gilean Alistair Tristram McVean is a professor of statistical genetics at the University of Oxford, fellow of Linacre College, Oxford and co-founder and director of Genomics plc. He also co-chaired the 1000 Genomes Project analysis group.
Go to Profile#8638
Jane Powell
#127771
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Jane Powell was an American actress, singer, and dancer who first appeared in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals in the 1940s and 50s. With her soprano voice and girl-next-door image, Powell appeared in films, television and on the stage, performing in the musicals A Date with Judy , Royal Wedding , Seven Brides for Seven Brothers , and Hit the Deck .
Go to Profile#8639
Rob Burnett
#168048
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Rob Burnett is a producer, director and writer, best known for being the executive producer of Late Show with David Letterman and as the former president of Worldwide Pants. He is a five-time Emmy award winner, and has received 31 nominations.
Go to Profile#8640
Donald Livingstone
#190737
Overall Influence
Donald Livingstone was a South African mathematician and former Chair of Pure Mathematics at the University of Birmingham. Previously he was a professor at the University of Michigan. He was a member of the London Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#8641
Kenneth Pennycuick
#182098
Overall Influence
1911 - 1995 (84 years)
Dr. Kenneth Pennycuick was a British philatelist who was added to the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists in 1980. He was president and later chairman of the Society of Postal Historians. Pennycuick was a specialist in the philately of East Africa.
Go to Profile#8642
Donald Rubin
#190750
Overall Influence
#8643
Feng Jiao
#190785
Overall Influence
#8644
Obada Abdel Shafy
#190350
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Abdel-Shafy Fahmy Obada FAAS is an Egyptian professor of mathematics at the Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Al-Azhar University. He is an elected member and the former Vice president of African Academy of Sciences. A fellow of the British Institute of Physics, a founding member and the first president of the Egyptian Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#8645
Andy Watson
#156108
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Andrew James Watson FRS is a British marine and atmospheric scientist and an expert in processes affecting atmospheric carbon dioxide and oxygen concentrations. He was formerly a Professor of biogeochemistry in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, in 2013 he moved to a position as Professor at the College of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Exeter.
Go to Profile#8646
Maurice Levitas
#73986
Overall Influence
1917 - 2001 (84 years)
Maurice Levitas was an Ireland-born academic and communist. Levitas was involved with the Communist Party of Great Britain and was a Marxist-Lenininist throughout his political life. He was involved in military activity; first becoming involved with Comintern's International Brigades against the Nationalist insurgency during the Spanish Civil War and then during the Second World War, as a British citizen, he joined the British Army's Royal Army Medical Corps. After the War, he remained involved in Communist politics and also became a sociology lecturer at Durham University. In the 1980s, he r...
Go to Profile#8647
Michael Piller
#70936
Overall Influence
1948 - 2005 (57 years)
Michael Piller was an American television scriptwriter and producer, who was best known for his contributions to the Star Trek franchise. Early life and career Piller was born to a Jewish family in Port Chester, New York. With parents who were both involved in writing; Gene Piller, his father, was a Hollywood screenwriter and his mother, Ruth Roberts, was a songwriter. He planned to be a scriptwriter from an early age, but a college lecturer discouraged him, and Piller started out in television working as an Emmy Award-winning journalist for CBS News in New York, WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina, and WBBM-TV in Chicago, Illinois.
Go to Profile#8648
Jonathan David Farley
#190863
Overall Influence
Dr. Jonathan Farley is Associate Professor of Mathematics at Morgan State University. He holds a bachelor’s in mathematics from Harvard University and a PhD in mathematics from University of Oxford. Farley interest are in Combinatorics, Lattice Theory, and the Theory of Ordered Sets, which he has applied to homeland security and counterterrorism efforts. A prize-winning mathematician earning Oxford’s highest mathemtics awards, Farley has interesting side projects as well. He’s written for a number of popular magazines on a variety of topics, and he runs a company that consults with television ...
Go to Profile#8649
Hu Shihua
#187413
Overall Influence
1912 - 1998 (86 years)
Hu Shihua was a Chinese mathematician. He was a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#8650
Hans Brügelmann
#55266
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Hans Brügelmann is a German professor of pedagogy. From 1971 until 1973, he has been assistant to the committee "strategies for curriculum reform" at the commission "Deutscher Bildungsrat," a commission for educational planning of the German federal and state governments. Before and after his conferral of a doctorate in 1975, he worked on several evaluation projects from preschool to college. In 1980, he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Bremen; in 1993, he was appointed professor for primary school pedagogics and didactics at the University of Siegen.
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