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
#5051
Rory Bremner
#5059
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Roderick Keith Ogilvy "Rory" Bremner, is a Scottish impressionist and comedian, noted for his work in political satire and impressions of British public figures. He is also known for his work on Mock the Week as a panellist , Rory Bremner...Who Else?, and sketch comedy series Bremner, Bird and Fortune.
Go to Profile#5052
Ben Zimmer
#5060
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Benjamin Zimmer is an American linguist, lexicographer, and language commentator. He is a language columnist for The Wall Street Journal and contributing editor for The Atlantic. He was formerly a language columnist for The Boston Globe and The New York Times Magazine, and editor of American dictionaries at Oxford University Press. Zimmer was also an executive editor of Vocabulary.com and VisualThesaurus.com.
Go to Profile#5053
Saeb Erekat
#5061
Overall Influence
1955 - 2020 (65 years)
Saeb Muhammad Salih Erekat was a Palestinian politician and diplomat who was the secretary general of the executive committee of the PLO from 2015 until his death in 2020. He served as chief of the PLO Steering and Monitoring Committee until 12 February 2011. He participated in early negotiations with Israel and remained chief negotiator from 1995 until May 2003, when he resigned in protest from the Palestinian government. He reconciled with the party and was reappointed to the post in September 2003.
Go to Profile#5054
Robert Kagan
#5062
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Robert Kagan is an American neoconservative scholar. He is a critic of U.S. foreign policy and a leading advocate of liberal interventionism. A co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, he is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kagan has been a foreign policy adviser to U.S. Republican presidential candidates as well as Democratic administrations via the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He writes a monthly column on world affairs for The Washington Post. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kagan left the Republican Party due to the party's...
Go to Profile#5055
Anatole Klyosov
#5063
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Anatole A. Klyosov is a Russian scientist who worked in the fields of physical chemistry, enzyme catalysis, and industrial biochemistry. In 1989 Klyosov immigrated to the US. He spent most of his career developing ways to use enzymes to convert agricultural waste products into useful products — first to convert cotton waste to glucose in the USSR, and later in the US, turning paper mill waste into useful products. He later helped found a company, and later joined it as CSO, that was founded to use enzymes to alter existing anticancer drugs via glycosylation. In 2008 he began publishing work...
Go to Profile#5056
Richard Shweder
#5064
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Richard Allan Shweder is an American cultural anthropologist and a figure in cultural psychology. He is currently Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Human Development in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#5057
John Zachary Young
#5065
Overall Influence
1907 - 1997 (90 years)
John Zachary Young FRS , generally known as "JZ" or "JZY", was an English zoologist and neurophysiologist, described as "one of the most influential biologists of the 20th century". Biography Young went to school at Marlborough College. In 1928, he received a first class honours degree in zoology from Magdalen College, Oxford. On Oct. 12, 1942, Young spoke at the Socratic Club in Oxford on the topic "Purpose and Design in Nature" as part of the series of talks and debates led by C. S. Lewis. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1945 and served as Professor of Anatomy at University College London from then until 1974.
Go to Profile#5058
Bertell Ollman
#5066
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Bertell Ollman is a professor of politics at New York University. He teaches both dialectical methodology and socialist theory. He is the author of several academic works relating to Marxist theory.
Go to Profile#5059
Devin J. Stewart
#5067
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Devin J. Stewart is a professor of Islamic studies and Arabic language and literature. His research interests include Islamic law, the Qur'an, Islamic schools and branches and varieties of Arabic. Education Stewart graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. in Near Eastern studies from Princeton University in 1984 after completing a 143-page long senior thesis titled "Three Wise Men: The Safawi Religious Institution 1576 - 1629." He completed the Center for Arabic Study Abroad's program at the American University in Cairo, and then earned his PhD with distinction in Arabic and Islamic studies at t...
Go to Profile#5060
Ed Sanders
#5068
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Edward Sanders is an American poet, singer, activist, author, publisher and longtime member of the rock band the Fugs. He has been called a bridge between the Beat and hippie generations. Sanders is considered to have been active and "present at the counterculture's creation."
Go to Profile#5061
Franklin C. Crow
#5069
Overall Influence
Franklin C. Crow is a computer scientist who has made important contributions to computer graphics, including some of the first practical spatial anti-aliasing techniques. Crow also proposed the shadow volume technique for generating geometrically accurate shadows.
Go to Profile#5062
Rebecca Solnit
#5070
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Rebecca Solnit is an American writer. She has written on a variety of subjects, including feminism, the environment, politics, place, and art. Early life and education Solnit was born in 1961 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to a Jewish father and Irish Catholic mother. In 1966, her family moved to Novato, California, where she grew up. "I was a battered little kid. I grew up in a really violent house where everything feminine and female was hated," she has said of her childhood. She skipped high school altogether, enrolling in an alternative junior high in the public school system that took her through tenth grade, when she passed the General Educational Development tests.
Go to Profile#5063
Theo de Raadt
#5071
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Theo de Raadt is a South African-born software engineer who lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is the founder and leader of the OpenBSD and OpenSSH projects and was also a founding member of NetBSD. In 2004, De Raadt won the Free Software Award for his work on OpenBSD and OpenSSH.
Go to Profile#5064
Fabian Nicieza
#5072
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Fabian Nicieza is an Argentine-American comic book writer and editor who is best known for his work on Marvel titles such as X-Men, X-Force, New Warriors, Nomad, Cable, Deadpool and Thunderbolts, for all of which he helped create numerous characters, among them Deadpool, Domino, Shatterstar, and Silhouette.
Go to Profile#5065
Kate Adie
#5073
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Kathryn Adie is an English journalist. She was Chief News Correspondent for BBC News between 1989 and 2003, during which time she reported from war zones around the world. She retired from the BBC in early 2003 and works as a freelance presenter with From Our Own Correspondent on BBC Radio 4.
Go to Profile#5066
Imre Kertész
#5074
Overall Influence
1929 - 2016 (87 years)
Imre Kertész was a Hungarian author and recipient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history". He was the first Hungarian to win the Nobel in Literature. His works deal with themes of the Holocaust , dictatorship, and personal freedom.
Go to Profile#5067
Harold Tafler Shapiro
#5075
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Harold Tafler Shapiro is an economist and university administrator. He is currently a professor of economics and public affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Shapiro served as the president of University of Michigan from 1980 to 1988 and as the president of Princeton University from 1988 to 2001.
Go to Profile#5068
Yum-Tong Siu
#5076
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Yum-Tong Siu is the William Elwood Byerly Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University. Siu is a prominent figure in the study of functions of several complex variables. His research interests involve the intersection of complex variables, differential geometry, and algebraic geometry. He has resolved various conjectures by applying estimates of the complex Neumann problem and the theory of multiplier ideal sheaves to algebraic geometry.
Go to Profile#5069
Golo Mann
#5077
Overall Influence
1909 - 1994 (85 years)
Golo Mann was a popular German historian and essayist. Having completed a doctorate in philosophy under Karl Jaspers at Heidelberg, in 1933 he fled Hitler's Germany. He followed his father, the writer Thomas Mann and other members of his family in emigrating to France, Switzerland and the United States. From the late 1950s he re-established himself in Switzerland and West Germany as a literary historian.
Go to Profile#5070
Rachel Whiteread
#5078
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Dame Rachel Whiteread is an English artist who primarily produces sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She was the first woman to win the annual Turner Prize in 1993. Whiteread was one of the Young British Artists who exhibited at the Royal Academy's Sensation exhibition in 1997. Among her most renowned works are House, a large concrete cast of the inside of an entire Victorian house; the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial in Vienna, resembling the shelves of a library with the pages turned outwards; and Untitled Monument, her resin sculpture for the empty fourth plinth in London's...
Go to Profile#5071
David S. Johnson
#5079
Overall Influence
1945 - 2016 (71 years)
David Stifler Johnson was an American computer scientist specializing in algorithms and optimization. He was the head of the Algorithms and Optimization Department of AT&T Labs Research from 1988 to 2013, and was a visiting professor at Columbia University from 2014 to 2016. He was awarded the 2010 Knuth Prize.
Go to Profile#5072
Laurie Baker
#5080
Overall Influence
1917 - 2007 (90 years)
Lawrence Wilfred "Laurie" Baker was a British-born Indian architect, renowned for his initiatives in cost-effective energy-efficient architecture and designs that maximized space, ventilation and light and maintained an uncluttered yet striking aesthetic sensibility. Influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and his own experiences in the remote Himalayas, he promoted the revival of regional building practices and use of local materials; and combined this with a design philosophy that emphasized a responsible and prudent use of resources and energy. He was a pioneer of sustainable architecture as well as ...
Go to Profile#5073
Daniel M. Hausman
#5081
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Daniel M. Hausman is an American philosopher. His research has focused primarily on methodological, metaphysical, and ethical issues at the boundaries between economics and philosophy. He is currently Herbert A. Simon Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Go to Profile#5074
Robert D. Richtmyer
#5082
Overall Influence
1910 - 2003 (93 years)
Robert Davis Richtmyer was an American physicist, mathematician, educator, author, and musician. Biography Richtmyer was born on October 10, 1910, in Ithaca, New York. His father was physicist Floyd K. Richtmyer and mother was Bernice Davis Richtmyer. He studied physics at the University of Göttingen and Cornell University, graduating in 1932 when his father was dean of the graduate school. He received a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1935 under advisor John C. Slater. He taught at Stanford University as an instructor in the physics department from 1936 through 1940.
Go to Profile#5075
E. L. Doctorow
#5083
Overall Influence
1931 - 2015 (84 years)
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known for his works of historical fiction. He wrote twelve novels, three volumes of short fiction and a stage drama, including the award-winning novels Ragtime , Billy Bathgate , and The March . These, like many of his other works, placed fictional characters in recognizable historical contexts, with known historical figures, and often used different narrative styles. His stories were recognized for their originality and versatility, and Doctorow was praised for his audacity and imagination.
Go to Profile#5076
Thabo Mbeki
#5084
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki is a South African politician who served as the second president of South Africa from 14 June 1999 to 24 September 2008, when he resigned at the request of his party, the African National Congress . Before that, he was deputy president under Nelson Mandela from 1994 to 1999.
Go to Profile#5077
Donald Meichenbaum
#5085
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Donald H. Meichenbaum is an American psychologist and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. He is a research director of the Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention and Treatment at the University of Miami. Meichenbaum is known for his research and publications on psychotherapy, and contributed to the development of the technique of cognitive-behavioural therapy . In 1982, a survey of 800 members of the American Psychological Association voted Meichenbaum the tenth most influential psychotherapist of the 20th century. At the time of his retir...
Go to Profile#5078
Alessandra Ambrosio
#5086
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Alessandra Corine Ambrósio is a Brazilian-American model. She is known for her work with Victoria's Secret and was chosen as the first spokesmodel for the company's PINK line. She was a Victoria's Secret Angel from 2004 to 2017 and has modeled for fashion houses such as Christian Dior, Armani, Ralph Lauren, and Next.
Go to Profile#5079
Mark Rowlands
#5087
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Mark Rowlands is a Welsh writer and philosopher. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami, and the author of several books on the philosophy of mind, the moral status of non-human animals, and cultural criticism. He is known within academic philosophy for his work on the animal mind and is one of the principal architects of the view known as vehicle externalism, or the extended mind, the view that thoughts, memories, desires and beliefs can be stored outside the brain and the skull. His works include Animal Rights , The Body in Mind , The Nature of Consciousness , Animals Like...
Go to Profile#5080
Anthony F. C. Wallace
#5088
Overall Influence
1923 - 2015 (92 years)
Anthony Francis Clarke Wallace was a Canadian-American anthropologist who specialized in Native American cultures, especially the Iroquois. His research expressed an interest in the intersection of cultural anthropology and psychology. He was famous for the theory of revitalization movements.
Go to Profile#5081
Leonard E. Baum
#5089
Overall Influence
1931 - 2017 (86 years)
Leonard Esau Baum was an American mathematician, known for the Baum–Welch algorithm and Baum–Sweet sequence. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University in 1953, and earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard in 1958, with a dissertation titled Derivations in Commutative Semi-Simple Banach Algebras.
Go to Profile#5082
Sanjay Sarma
#5090
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Sanjay E. Sarma an Indian mechanical engineer who is the Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers professor of mechanical engineering and the Vice President for Open Learning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is credited with developing many standards and technologies in the commercial RFID industry. Sarma is co-author of The Inversion Factor: How to Thrive in the IOT Economy , along with Linda Bernardi and the late Kenneth Traub. Sarma also serves on the board of the MOOC provider edX as a representative of MIT.
Go to Profile#5083
Eugenio Garin
#5091
Overall Influence
1909 - 2004 (95 years)
Eugenio Garin was an Italian philosopher and Renaissance historian. He was recognised as an authority on the cultural history of the Renaissance. Born at Rieti, Garin studied philosophy at the University of Florence, graduating in 1929, and after a period as professor of philosophy at the liceo scientifico Stanislao Cannizzaro in Palermo and the University of Cagliari, Garin began teaching at his alma mater in 1949 until 1974, then moving to the Scuola Normale di Pisa until his retirement in 1984. The Graduate School of Historical Studies at San Marino was inaugurated with a public lecture by Eugenio Garin on 30 September 1989.
Go to Profile#5084
Yehuda Amichai
#5092
Overall Influence
1924 - 2000 (76 years)
Yehuda Amichai was an Israeli poet and author, one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew in modern times. Amichai was awarded the 1957 Shlonsky Prize, the 1969 Brenner Prize, 1976 Bialik Prize, and 1982 Israel Prize. He also won international poetry prizes, and was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Jed Rubenfeld
#5093
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
#5086
Gerald Holton
#5094
Overall Influence
1922 - Present (104 years)
Gerald James Holton is an American physicist, historian of science, and educator, whose professional interests also include philosophy of science and the fostering of careers of young men and women. He is Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and professor of the history of science, emeritus, at Harvard University. His contributions range from physical science and its history to their professional and public understanding, from studies on gender problems and ethics in science careers to those on the role of immigrants. These have been acknowledged by an unusually wide spectrum of appointments and...
Go to Profile#5087
Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez
#5095
Overall Influence
1915 - 2011 (96 years)
Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez was a Spanish-born Mexican philosopher, writer and professor born in Algeciras, Andalucia. Biography After studying philosophy at the University of Madrid, Vázquez emigrated to Mexico in 1939 with thousands of other intellectuals, scientists and artists following the defeat of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War, in which he participated as editor of the central publication of the Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas “Ahora”. Sánchez was appointed a full-time professor of philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1959, becoming a professor emeritus of the university in 1985.
Go to Profile#5088
Ulf Grenander
#5096
Overall Influence
1923 - 2016 (93 years)
Ulf Grenander was a Swedish statistician and professor of applied mathematics at Brown University. His early research was in probability theory, stochastic processes, time series analysis, and statistical theory . In recent decades, Grenander contributed to computational statistics, image processing, pattern recognition, and artificial intelligence. He coined the term pattern theory to distinguish from pattern recognition.
Go to Profile#5089
Alan Wolfe
#5097
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Alan Wolfe is an American political scientist and a sociologist on the faculty of Boston College who serves as director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Future of American Democracy Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan foundation in partnership with Yale University Press and the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, "dedicated to research and education aimed at renewing and sustaining the historic vision of American democracy".
Go to Profile#5090
Mary J. Blige
#5098
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Mary Jane Blige is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Often referred to as the "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" and "Queen of R&B", Blige has won nine Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, four American Music Awards, twelve NAACP Image Awards, and twelve Billboard Music Awards, including the Billboard Icon Award. She has been nominated for three Golden Globe Awards and two Academy Awards, including one for her supporting role in the film Mudbound and another for its original song "Mighty River", becoming the first person nominated for acting and songwriting in the same year.
Go to Profile#5091
Olga Taussky-Todd
#5099
Overall Influence
1906 - 1995 (89 years)
Olga Taussky-Todd was an Austrian and later Czech-American mathematician. She published more than 300 research papers on algebraic number theory, integral matrices, and matrices in algebra and analysis.
Go to Profile#5092
Peter Piot
#5100
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Sir Peter Karel, Baron Piot, is a Belgian-British microbiologist known for his research into Ebola and AIDS. After helping discover the Ebola virus in 1976 and leading efforts to contain the first-ever recorded Ebola epidemic that same year, Piot became a pioneering researcher into AIDS. He has held key positions in the United Nations and World Health Organization involving AIDS research and management. He has also served as a professor at several universities worldwide. He is the author of 16 books and over 600 scientific articles.
Go to Profile#5093
Edna B. Foa
#5101
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Edna Foa is an Israeli professor of clinical psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she serves as the director of the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety. Foa is an internationally renowned authority in the field of psychopathology and treatment of anxiety. She approaches the understanding and treatment of mental disorders from a cognitive-behavioral perspective.
Go to Profile#5094
Michael Moore
#5102
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Michael Francis Moore is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and author. A prominent left-wing figure in the United States, Moore's work frequently addresses various social, political, and economic topics. He first became publicly known for his award-winning debut documentary Roger & Me, a scathing look at the downfall of the automotive industry in 1980s Detroit.
Go to Profile#5095
Al Pacino
#5103
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Alfredo James Pacino is an American actor. Considered one of the greatest and most influential actors of the 20th century, Pacino has received numerous accolades: including an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards achieving the Triple Crown of Acting. He has also been honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2001, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2007, the National Medal of Arts in 2011, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2016.
Go to Profile#5096
Jared Taylor
#5104
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Samuel Jared Taylor is an American white supremacist and editor of American Renaissance, an online magazine espousing such opinions, which was founded by Taylor in 1990. He is also the president of American Renaissances parent organization, New Century Foundation, through which many of his books have been published. He is a former member of the advisory board of The Occidental Quarterly and a former director of the National Policy Institute, a Virginia-based white nationalist think tank. He is also a board member and spokesperson of the Council of Conservative Citizens.
Go to Profile#5097
Charles Handy
#5105
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Charles Brian Handy CBE is an Irish author/philosopher specialising in organisational behaviour and management. Among the ideas he has advanced are the "portfolio career" and the "shamrock organization" .
Go to Profile#5098
Michał Heller
#5106
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Michał Kazimierz Heller is a Polish philosopher, theoretical physicist, cosmologist, theologian, and Roman Catholic priest. He is a professor of philosophy at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków, Poland, and an adjunct member of the Vatican Observatory staff.
Go to Profile#5099
Vasily Aksyonov
#5107
Overall Influence
1932 - 2009 (77 years)
Vasily Pavlovich Aksyonov was a Soviet and Russian novelist. He became known in the West as the author of The Burn and of Generations of Winter , a family saga following three generations of the Gradov family between 1925 and 1953.
Go to Profile#5100
André Leon Talley
#5108
Overall Influence
1948 - 2022 (74 years)
André Leon Talley was an American fashion journalist, stylist, creative director, and editor-at-large of Vogue magazine. He was the magazine's fashion news director from 1983 to 1987, its first African-American male creative director from 1988 to 1995, and then its editor-at-large from 1998 to 2013. Often regarded as a fashion icon, he was known for supporting emerging designers and advocating for diversity in the fashion industry; while the capes, kaftans, and robes he wore became his trademark look. Talley also served on the judging panel for America's Next Top Model .
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