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).
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List of the most influential people
#51
Tom Butters
#192010
Overall Influence
1939 - 2016 (77 years)
Thomas Arden Butters was an American professional baseball player who spent parts of four seasons in Major League Baseball with the Pittsburgh Pirates, then had a lengthy career as a college sports administrator at Duke University. He is best remembered for his time at Duke and for being a key figure in the financial success of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament.
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Hazel Kyrk
1886 - 1957 (71 years)
Hazel Kyrk was an American economist and pioneer of consumer economics. Early life and education Hazel Kyrk was born in 1886 in Ashley, Ohio and was the only child of Elmer Kyrk, a drayman, and Jane Kyrk, a homemaker.
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David A. Brodie
1867 - 1951 (84 years)
David Arthur Brodie was an American agriculturalist and college football coach. He served as the head football coach at Washington Agricultural College and School of Science—now known as Washington State University—for one season, in 1896, compiling a record of 2–0–1.
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Charles N. Sims
1835 - 1908 (73 years)
Charles N. Sims was an American Methodist preacher and the third chancellor of Syracuse University, serving from 1881 to 1893. Sims Hall and Sims drive on the Syracuse campus is named for him. Early life Sims was born in Fairfield, Indiana in 1835. He graduated in 1859 from Indiana Ashbury University and received a Masters of Arts degree from there in 1861. Sims served as the first president of Valparaiso Male and Female College for two years starting in 1860 before resigning to become a minister. He was granted a Doctor of Divinity degree from Ashbury in 1871. In addition, he received an honorary M.
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Mary Bigelow Ingham
1832 - 1923 (91 years)
Mary Bigelow Ingham was an American author, educator, and religious worker. Dedicated to teaching, missionary work, and temperance reform, she served as professor of French and belles-lettres in the Ohio Wesleyan College; presided over and addressed the first public meeting ever held in Cleveland conducted exclusively by religious women; co-founded the Western Reserve School of Design ; and was a charter member of the order of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
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Norman Vincent Peale
1898 - 1993 (95 years)
Norman Vincent Peale was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking, especially through his best-selling book The Power of Positive Thinking . He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932, leading this Reformed Church in America congregation for more than a half century until his retirement in 1984. Alongside his pulpit ministry, he had an extensive career of writing and editing, and radio and television presentations. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheles...
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Rachel Bodley
1831 - 1888 (57 years)
Rachel Littler Bodley was an American professor, botanist, and university leader. She was best known for her term as Dean of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania . She helped found the American Chemical Society in New York City.
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Amos Dolbear
1837 - 1910 (73 years)
Amos Emerson Dolbear was an American physicist and inventor. Dolbear researched electrical spark conversion into sound waves and electrical impulses. He was a professor at University of Kentucky in Lexington from 1868 until 1874. In 1874 he became the chair of the physics department at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. He is known for his 1882 invention of a system for transmitting telegraph signals without wires. In 1899 his patent for it was purchased in an unsuccessful attempt to interfere with Guglielmo Marconi's wireless telegraphy patents in the United States.
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Kate Wetzel Jameson
1870 - 1967 (97 years)
Kate Wetzel Jameson was a professor at several colleges and Dean of Women at Montana State University, the University of Arizona and then Oregon State College. Early life Kate Wetzel Jameson was born on October 15, 1870, in Perrysburg, Ohio, the daughter of Jacob Wetzel. She graduated from Perrysburg High School in 1888.
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Homer Clyde Snook
1878 - 1942 (64 years)
Homer Clyde Snook was an American electrical engineer and inventor. He developed the Snook apparatus, the first interrupterless device produced for X-ray work. Life and times Homer Clyde Snook was born in 1878, at Antwerp, Ohio, to Judge Wilson H. Snook and Nancy Jane Snook . He had 4 siblings, brothers Otto W. and Ward Hunt, and sisters Lee May and Ethel Maud. On 24 June 1903, Snook, age 24, occupation listed as science expert, form Philadelphia, married May Eusebia McKee , age 26, occupation listed as at home, from Warren, Ohio. He was the son of Wilson H. Snook and Nannie Graves. The bride was the daughter of John McKee and Mary E.
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John R. Park
1833 - 1900 (67 years)
John Rockey Park was a prominent educator in the Territory and State of Utah in the late 19th century, and in many ways was the intellectual father of the University of Utah. Educating "intelligent, industrious and moral" citizens There is a statue of John Rockey Park in an alcove just to the left of the west entrance to the University of Utah main administration building which bears his name. There is a plaque fixed to the base of the statue. The plaque lists biographical dates and statistics from Park's life and career, and then repeats the following quote from an 1885 speech he gave to f...
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A. R. Crook
1864 - 1930 (66 years)
Alja Robinson Crook was an American scientist and academic from Ohio. Crook attended Ohio Wesleyan University and received a Dr. phil. in Munich, Germany in 1892. He was a professor of mineralogy and economic geology at Northwestern University from 1893 to 1906, when he was named Illinois State Geologist. As state geologist, he greatly expanded the state museum.
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Leon C. Marshall
1879 - 1966 (87 years)
Leon Carroll Marshall was an American economist, Professor of Political Economy and fourth dean of the Booth School of Business from 1909 to 1924, Professor at the Law School of the Johns Hopkins University, and Professor at the American University. He is known for his works on our economic organization, business administration, curriculum-making in the social studies and the divorce court.
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LeRoy D. Brown
1848 - 1898 (50 years)
LeRoy D. Brown was the first president of University of Nevada. History Nevada became a state in 1864. Its constitution mandated the establishment of a state university with departments in agriculture, the mechanic arts, and mining, along with a state normal school for teacher training. The constitution specified that the state university would be controlled by an elected Board of Regents. The Nevada Legislature established the first State University campus in Elko, Nevada. Its Preparatory Department opened for enrollment in October 1874 with the goal of enhancing Nevada's young people to be ready for college-level study.
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Hurst Robins Anderson
1904 - 1989 (85 years)
Hurst Robins Anderson was president of American University from 1952 until 1968, during which he oversaw one of the institution's most important periods of growth and development. He was previously a faculty member of Allegheny College and president of Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He received a BA from Ohio Wesleyan University, a law degree from the University of Michigan and master's degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.
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Edwin C. Kemble
1889 - 1984 (95 years)
Edwin Crawford Kemble was an American physicist who made contributions to the theory of quantum mechanics and molecular structure and spectroscopy. During World War II, he was a consultant to the Navy on acoustic detection of submarines and to the Army on Operation Alsos.
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Benson Dillon Billinghurst
Benson Dillon Billinghurst, often known using his initials as B.D. Billinghurst, was an American educator in Nevada during the early 20th century. Born in Ohio in 1869, he served as the Superintendent of Schools of the Washoe County School District from 1908 until his death in 1935, and was famous for his school building projects, his expansion of the availability and quality of Reno education, the introduction of junior high schools to Nevada, and his influence in education laws and the establishment of the Nevada State Textbook Commission.
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Ernest Lyman Scott
1877 - 1966 (89 years)
Ernest Lyman Scott was an American physiologist and diabetes researcher who spent much of his career on the faculty at Columbia University. Scott's early work contributed to the modern understanding of the biology of insulin and its use in diabetes management, though the exact role and significance of his research in this context has been a subject of controversy. Later, Scott developed a standard blood test for diabetes. After retiring from Columbia in 1942, Scott went on to become a noted horticulturist.
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Hiram Perkins
1833 - 1924 (91 years)
Hiram Mills Perkins was Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Ohio Wesleyan University and benefactor of the Perkins Telescope in the Perkins Observatory. He helped build to observatory buildings and also left an endowment for the school, and also his house was later used as a dormitory before it was sold off.
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Robert White McFarland
1825 - 1910 (85 years)
Robert White McFarland was an American engineer who served as a university professor, president and Civil War officer. McFarland was born in Champaign County, Ohio, to Robert and Eunice McFarland. He received his A.B and M.A. degrees from Ohio Wesleyan University. In 1856 he received a teaching appointment at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he remained until the university closed in 1873. On leave from Miami, McFarland became an officer in the 86th Ohio Infantry during the American Civil War and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.
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Robert J. Havighurst
1900 - 1991 (91 years)
Robert James Havighurst was a chemist and physicist, educator, and expert on human development and aging. Havighurst worked and published well into his 80s. He died of Alzheimer's disease in January 1991 in Richmond, Indiana at the age of 90.
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Branch Rickey
1881 - 1965 (84 years)
Wesley Branch Rickey was an American baseball player and sports executive. Rickey was instrumental in breaking Major League Baseball's color barrier by signing black player Jackie Robinson. He also created the framework for the modern minor league farm system, encouraged the Major Leagues to add new teams through his involvement in the proposed Continental League, and introduced the batting helmet. He was posthumously elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1967.
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William F. Anderson
1860 - 1944 (84 years)
William Franklin Anderson was an American Methodist pastor, writer, and educator who served as Bishop of Chattanooga, Cincinnati, and Boston and was Acting President of Boston University from January 1, 1925, to May 15, 1926.
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Walter Ernest Clark
1873 - 1955 (82 years)
Walter Ernest Clark was president of the University of Nevada 1918–1938. Clark was born in Defiance, Ohio to Lemen Talor and Marth Clark, and graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1896. From 1893 to 1897 he was a sergeant in the signal corps of Company K, Fourth Ohio National Guard. And from 1896 to 1899 Clark was instructor in mathematics at Ohio Wesleyan. In 1903 Clark was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Columbia University. From 1901 to 1907 he was instructor in economics and politics at the College of the City of New York. Between 1903 and 1908 he was a resident and settl...
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Charles W. Fairbanks
1852 - 1918 (66 years)
Charles Warren Fairbanks was an American politician who served as a senator from Indiana from 1897 to 1905 and the 26th vice president of the United States from 1905 to 1909. He was also the Republican vice presidential nominee in the 1916 presidential election. Had the Republican ticket been elected, Fairbanks would have become the third vice president to multiple presidents, after George Clinton and John C. Calhoun.
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Edwin Conklin
1863 - 1952 (89 years)
Edwin Grant Conklin was an American biologist and zoologist. Life He was born in Waldo, Ohio, the son of A. V. Conklin and Maria Hull. He was educated at Ohio Wesleyan University and Johns Hopkins University. He was professor of biology at Ohio Wesleyan and professor of zoology at Northwestern University , the University of Pennsylvania , and Princeton University . He became coeditor of the Journal of Morphology, The Biological Bulletin, and the Journal of Experimental Zoology. He was president of the American Society of Naturalists in 1912 and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1936.
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Frank W. Gunsaulus
1856 - 1921 (65 years)
Frank Wakeley Gunsaulus was a noted preacher, educator, pastor, author and humanitarian. Famous for his "Million Dollar Sermon" which led Philip Danforth Armour to donate money to found Armour Institute of Technology where Gunsaulus served as president for its first 27 years. Gunsaulus lived in Chicago for 34 years where he was pastor of Plymouth Church and Central Church from 1899 until two years before his death. He was a prominent figure in Chicago's social, educational, and civic improvements. In 1893, he was named first president of Armour Institute of Technology . His extraordinary ene...
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William Hung
1893 - 1980 (87 years)
William Hung , was a Chinese historian and sinologist who taught for many years at Yenching University, Peking, which was China's leading Christian university, and at Harvard University. He is known for bringing modern standards of scholarship to the study of Chinese classical writings, for editing the Harvard-Yenching Index Series, and for his biography of Du Fu , Tu Fu: China's Greatest Poet, which is considered a classic in the English world on the studies of Du Fu. He became a Christian while a student at the Anglo-Chinese College in Fuzhou, then went to Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio, Columbia University, and Union Theological Seminary.
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Paul Sears
1891 - 1990 (99 years)
Paul Bigelow Sears was an American ecologist and writer. He was born in Bucyrus, Ohio. Sears attended Ohio Wesleyan University , the University of Nebraska at Lincoln , and the University of Chicago .
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