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
#5301
Brian Herbert
#5309
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Brian Patrick Herbert is an American author who lives in Washington state. He is the elder son of science fiction author Frank Herbert . Brian Herbert's novels include Sidney's Comet, Prisoners of Arionn, Man of Two Worlds , and Sudanna Sudanna. In 2003, Herbert wrote a biography of his father titled Dreamer of Dune: The Biography of Frank Herbert. The younger Herbert has edited the Songs of Muad'dib and the Notebooks of Frank Herbert's Dune. Herbert has also created a concordance for the Dune universe based on his father's notes, though, according to the younger Herbert, there are no immedia...
Go to Profile#5302
Frederick Chapman Robbins
#5310
Overall Influence
1916 - 2003 (87 years)
Frederick Chapman Robbins was an American pediatrician and virologist. He was born in Auburn, Alabama, and grew up in Columbia, Missouri, attending David H. Hickman High School. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1954 along with John Franklin Enders and Thomas Huckle Weller, making Robbins the only Nobel laureate born in Alabama. The award was for breakthrough work in isolating and growing the poliovirus in tissue culture, paving the way for vaccines developed by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin. He attended the University of Missouri and Harvard University.
Go to Profile#5303
Kai Nielsen
#5311
Overall Influence
1926 - 2021 (95 years)
Kai Nielsen was an American professor, latterly emeritus, of philosophy at the University of Calgary. He specialized in naturalism, metaphilosophy, ethics, analytic philosophy, social and political philosophy. Nielsen also wrote about philosophy of religion, and was an advocate of contemporary atheism. He was also known for his defense of utilitarianism, writing in response to Bernard Williams's criticism of it.
Go to Profile#5304
David Hawkins
#5312
Overall Influence
1913 - 2002 (89 years)
David Hawkins was an American scientist whose interests included the philosophy of science, mathematics, economics, childhood science education, and ethics. He was also an administrative assistant at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory and later one of its official historians. Together with Herbert A. Simon, he discovered and proved the Hawkins–Simon theorem.
Go to Profile#5305
Bernard Ingham
#5313
Overall Influence
1932 - 2023 (91 years)
Sir Bernard Ingham was a British journalist and civil servant. He was Margaret Thatcher's chief press secretary throughout her time as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. Background Ingham was born in Halifax and was raised in Hebden Bridge, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He left school at the age of 16 to join the Hebden Bridge Times newspaper, for whom he continued to write until 2013. He attended Bradford Technical College on day release as part of the studies required to qualify for the Certificate of Training for Junior Journalists, which he described as being "take...
Go to Profile#5306
Joseph Fletcher
#5314
Overall Influence
1905 - 1991 (86 years)
Joseph Francis Fletcher was an American professor who founded the theory of situational ethics in the 1960s, and was a pioneer in the field of bioethics. Fletcher was a leading academic proponent of the potential benefits of abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, eugenics, and cloning. Ordained as an Episcopal priest, he later identified himself as an atheist.
Go to Profile#5307
John Muth
#5315
Overall Influence
1930 - 2005 (75 years)
John Fraser Muth was an American economist. He is "the father of the rational expectations revolution in economics", primarily due to his article "Rational Expectations and the Theory of Price Movements" from 1961.
Go to Profile#5308
John Hagee
#5316
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
John Charles Hagee is an American pastor and televangelist. He founded John Hagee Ministries, which telecasts to the United States and Canada. He is also the founder and chairman of the Christian Zionist organization Christians United for Israel.
Go to Profile#5309
Tony Bennett
#5317
Overall Influence
1926 - 2023 (97 years)
Anthony Dominick Benedetto , known professionally as Tony Bennett, was an American jazz and traditional pop singer. He received many accolades, including 20 Grammy Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award, and two Primetime Emmy Awards. Bennett was named an NEA Jazz Master and a Kennedy Center Honoree and founded the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens, New York. He sold more than 50 million records worldwide and earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Go to Profile#5310
Robert Ettinger
#5318
Overall Influence
1918 - 2011 (93 years)
Robert Chester Wilson Ettinger was an American academic, known as "the father of cryonics" because of the impact of his 1962 book The Prospect of Immortality. Ettinger founded the Cryonics Institute and the related Immortalist Society and until 2003 served as the groups' president. His body has been cryopreserved, like the bodies of his first and second wives, and his mother.
Go to Profile#5311
Olga Tokarczuk
#5319
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk is a Polish writer, activist, and public intellectual. She is one of the most critically acclaimed and successful authors of her generation in Poland; in 2019, she was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Polish female prose writer for "a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life". For her novel Flights, Tokarczuk has been awarded the 2018 Man Booker International Prize . Her works include Primeval and Other Times, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, and The Books of Jacob.
Go to Profile#5312
Brandon Sanderson
#5320
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Brandon Winn Sanderson is an American author of high fantasy and science fiction. He is best known for the Cosmere fictional universe, in which most of his fantasy novels, most notably the Mistborn series and The Stormlight Archive, are set. Outside of the Cosmere, he has written several young adult and juvenile series including The Reckoners, the Skyward series, and the Alcatraz series. He is also known for finishing Robert Jordan's high fantasy series The Wheel of Time. Sanderson has created several graphic novel fantasy series, including White Sand and Dark One.
Go to Profile#5313
David Pears
#5321
Overall Influence
1921 - 2009 (88 years)
David Francis Pears, FBA was a British philosopher renowned for his work on Ludwig Wittgenstein. An Old Boy of Westminster School, he was in the Royal Artillery during World War II, and was seriously injured in a practice gas attack. After leaving the army he studied classics at Balliol College, Oxford, and was then for many years a Student of Christ Church, Oxford.
Go to Profile#5314
Steven Runciman
#5322
Overall Influence
1903 - 2000 (97 years)
Sir James Cochran Stevenson Runciman , known as Steven Runciman, was an English historian best known for his three-volume A History of the Crusades . His works had a profound impact on the popular conception of the Crusades.
Go to Profile#5315
Melvin Conway
#5323
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Melvin Edward Conway is an American computer scientist, computer programmer, and hacker who coined what is now known as Conway's law: "Organizations, who design systems, are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." The adage remains relevant in modern software engineering and is still being referenced and investigated.
Go to Profile#5316
Hon Lik
#5324
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Han Li or Hon Lik is a Chinese pharmacist who invented the modern electronic cigarette. Early life Hon Lik was born in Shenyang, China in 1951. He started smoking at age 18. He attended Liaoning University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and graduated with a pharmaceutical degree. He joined the Liaoning Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in 1982.
Go to Profile#5317
Melissa Dell
#5325
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Melissa Dell is the Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Her research interests include development economics, political economy, and economic history. In 2014, the International Monetary Fund named Dell among the 25 Brightest Young Economists. In 2018, she was awarded the Elaine Bennett Research Prize and the Calvó-Armengol International Prize; The Economist also named her one of "the decade’s eight best young economists." She was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 2020.
Go to Profile#5318
Mark Overmars
#5326
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Markus Hendrik Overmars is a Dutch computer scientist and teacher of game programming known for his game development application GameMaker. GameMaker lets people create computer games using a drag-and-drop interface. He is the former head of the Center for Geometry, Imaging, and Virtual Environments at Utrecht University, in the Netherlands. This research center concentrates on computational geometry and its application in areas like computer graphics, robotics, geographic information systems, imaging, multimedia, virtual environments, and games.
Go to Profile#5319
Rick Rubin
#5327
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Frederick Jay Rubin is an American record executive and record producer. He is a co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, founder of American Recordings, and former co-president of Columbia Records. Rubin helped popularize hip hop by producing records for acts such as the Beastie Boys, Geto Boys, Run-DMC, Public Enemy, and LL Cool J. He has also produced hit records for acts from a variety of other genres, predominantly heavy metal , alternative rock , hard rock , nu-metal , and country .
Go to Profile#5320
K. N. Raj
#5328
Overall Influence
1924 - 2010 (86 years)
Kakkadan Nandanath Rajan was an Indian economist. He is popularly known as K. N. Raj. He played an important role in India's planned development, drafting sections of India's first Five Year Plan, specifically the introductory chapter when he was only 26 years old. He was a veteran economist in the Planning Commission. He worked out a plan to raise India's rate of savings in the post-Second World War period when the country was in need of foreign aid. He computed India's Balance of Payments for the first time for the Reserve Bank of India. Raj was an advisor to several prime ministers from Jawaharlal Nehru to P.V.
Go to Profile#5321
Katia Sycara
#5329
Overall Influence
Ekaterini Panagiotou Sycara is a Greek computer scientist. She is an Edward Fredkin Research Professor of Robotics in the Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University internationally known for her research in artificial intelligence, particularly in the fields of negotiation, autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. She directs the Advanced Agent-Robotics Technology Lab at Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. She also serves as academic advisor for PhD students at both Robotics Institute and Tepper School of Business.
Go to Profile#5322
Pedro Aspe
#5330
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Pedro Carlos Aspe Armella is a Mexican economist. He served as secretary of finance in the cabinet of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, where he successfully renegotiated foreign debt, gave autonomy to the central bank and promoted a controversial privatization plan.
Go to Profile#5323
Ramsey Campbell
#5331
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awards. Three of his novels have been adapted into films.
Go to Profile#5324
John F. Helliwell
#5332
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
John F. Helliwell is a Canadian economist and editor of the World Happiness Report. He is a senior fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and co-director of the CIFAR Programme on Social Interactions, Identity, and Well-Being; Board Director of the International Positive Psychology Association, and professor emeritus of Economics at the University of British Columbia.
Go to Profile#5325
David Spiegelhalter
#5333
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Sir David John Spiegelhalter is a British statistician and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. From 2007 to 2018 he was Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk in the Statistical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Spiegelhalter is an ISI highly cited researcher.
Go to Profile#5326
Tu Weiming
#5334
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Tu Weiming is a Chinese-born American philosopher. He is Chair Professor of Humanities and Founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University. He is also Professor Emeritus and Senior Fellow of Asia Center at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#5327
Herbert Wilf
#5335
Overall Influence
1931 - 2012 (81 years)
Herbert Saul Wilf was an American mathematician, specializing in combinatorics and graph theory. He was the Thomas A. Scott Professor of Mathematics in Combinatorial Analysis and Computing at the University of Pennsylvania. He wrote numerous books and research papers. Together with Neil Calkin he founded The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics in 1994 and was its editor-in-chief until 2001.
Go to Profile#5328
Matthew Goldstein
#5336
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Matthew Goldstein is the former chancellor of the City University of New York . Goldstein was appointed CUNY chancellor on September 1, 1999. He was the first City University graduate to head the University, having received his undergraduate degree from City College. Previously, Goldstein served as president of Baruch College from 1991 to 1998, and president of Adelphi University, from 1998 to 1999.
Go to Profile#5329
Norman Cantor
#5337
Overall Influence
1929 - 2004 (75 years)
Norman Frank Cantor was a Canadian-American medievalist. Known for his accessible writing and engaging narrative style, Cantor's books were among the most widely read treatments of medieval history in English. He estimated that his textbook The Civilization of the Middle Ages, first published in 1963, had a million copies in circulation.
Go to Profile#5330
Alan Lightman
#5338
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Alan Paige Lightman is an American physicist, writer, and social entrepreneur. He has served on the faculties of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is currently a professor of the practice of the humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .
Go to Profile#5331
Hugh Nibley
#5339
Overall Influence
1910 - 2005 (95 years)
Hugh Winder Nibley was an American scholar and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who was a professor at Brigham Young University for nearly 50 years. He was a prolific author, and wrote apologetic works supporting the archaeological, linguistic, and historical claims of Joseph Smith. He was a member of the LDS Church, and wrote and lectured on LDS scripture and doctrinal topics, publishing many articles in the LDS Church magazines.
Go to Profile#5332
Vali Nasr
#5340
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Vali Reza Nasr is an Iranian-American academic and author, specializing in the Middle East and the Islamic world. He is Majid Khaddouri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. He served as the eighth dean of the school from 2012 to 2019. Nasr is also a Non-Resident Fellow in South Asia at Atlantic Council and is described by The Economist as "a leading world authority on Shia Islam".
Go to Profile#5333
Robert Shaw
#5341
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Robert Stetson Shaw is an American physicist who was part of Eudaemonic Enterprises in Santa Cruz in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1988 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his work in chaos theory.
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Michael Wolffsohn
#5342
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Michael Wolffsohn is a German historian. Wolffsohn was born in Tel Aviv, in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine and today is Israel. His parents were German Jews who fled in 1939. In 1954, the Wolffsohns moved to Germany, settling in West Berlin. In 1966, Wolffsohn began his studies at the Free University of Berlin and continued his studies at Tel Aviv University and Columbia University. He obtained a PhD in History in 1975. From 1967 to 1970, Wolffsohn served in the Israeli Defence Forces. From 1975 until 1980, Wolffsohn taught at the University of the Saarland. Since 1981, Wolffs...
Go to Profile#5335
Graeme Souness
#5343
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Graeme James Souness is a Scottish former professional football player, manager and television pundit. A midfielder, Souness was the captain of the successful Liverpool team of the early 1980s, player-manager of Rangers in the late 1980s and captain of the Scotland national team. He also played for Tottenham Hotspur, Middlesbrough and Sampdoria.
Go to Profile#5336
Mike Resnick
#5344
Overall Influence
1942 - 2020 (78 years)
Michael Diamond Resnick was an American science fiction writer and editor. He won five Hugo awards and a Nebula award, and was the guest of honor at Chicon 7. He was the executive editor of the defunct magazine Jim Baen's Universe, and the creator and editor of Galaxy's Edge magazine.
Go to Profile#5337
John Edmonstone
#5345
Overall Influence
John Edmonstone was a taxidermist and teacher of taxidermy in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was an influential Black Briton. Born into slavery on a wood plantation in Demerara, British Guiana , he was given the surname of his slave-owner, Charles Edmonstone, who owned the plantation and also owned the Cardross Park estate at Cardross, near Dumbarton in Scotland. Around 1812 the plantation was visited by the naturalist Charles Waterton, who spent considerable time teaching John Edmonstone taxidermy.
Go to Profile#5338
Matthias Mann
#5346
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Matthias Mann is a scientist in the area of mass spectrometry and proteomics. Early life and education Born in Germany he studied mathematics and physics at the University of Göttingen. He received his Ph.D. in 1988 at Yale University where he worked in the group of John Fenn, who was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Go to Profile#5339
Stanley Osher
#5347
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Stanley Osher is an American mathematician, known for his many contributions in shock capturing, level-set methods, and PDE-based methods in computer vision and image processing. Osher is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles , Director of Special Projects in the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics and member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.
Go to Profile#5340
Peter Goddard
#5348
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Peter Goddard is a British mathematical physicist who works in string theory and conformal field theory. Among his many contributions to these fields is the Goddard–Thorn theorem . Biography Goddard was educated at Emanuel School and the University of Cambridge, where he was a professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics , and founding deputy director of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences. He was Master of St John's College from 1994 until 2004. He was Director of the Institute for Advanced Study from January 2004 through June 2012. He is now ...
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Kamala Harris
#5349
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Kamala Devi Harris is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th and incumbent vice president of the United States under President Joe Biden. She is the first female vice president and the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history, as well as the first African-American and first Asian-American vice president. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017 and as a U.S. senator from California from 2017 to 2021.
Go to Profile#5342
James Dickey
#5350
Overall Influence
1923 - 1997 (74 years)
James Lafayette Dickey was an American poet and novelist. He was appointed the eighteenth United States Poet Laureate in 1966. He also received the Order of the South award. Dickey is best known for his novel Deliverance , which was adapted into the acclaimed 1972 film of the same name.
Go to Profile#5343
Charles Thorn
#5351
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Charles Thorn is a Professor of Physics at University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. He played an important role in the development of dual models and string theory. Among his contributions is the proof of the non-existence of ghosts in string theory. The Goddard–Thorn theorem is a result about certain vector spaces in string theory. Thorn developed it with Peter Goddard.
Go to Profile#5344
Londa Schiebinger
#5352
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Londa Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science, Department of History, and by courtesy the d-school, Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1984. An international authority on the theory, practice, and history of gender and intersectionality in science, technology, and medicine, she is the founding Director of Gendered Innovations in Science, Medicine, Engineering, and Environment. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Schiebinger received honorary doctorates from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium , from the Faculty of Science, Lund University, Sweden , and from Universitat de València, Spain .
Go to Profile#5345
William Shatner
#5353
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
William Shatner is a Canadian actor. In a career spanning seven decades, he is best known for his portrayal of James T. Kirk in the Star Trek franchise, from his 1966 debut as the captain of the starship Enterprise in the second pilot of the first Star Trek television series to his final appearance as Captain Kirk in the seventh Star Trek feature film, Star Trek Generations .
Go to Profile#5346
Dan Graham
#5354
Overall Influence
1942 - 2022 (80 years)
Daniel Graham was an American visual artist, writer, and curator in the writer-artist tradition. In addition to his visual works, he published a large array of critical and speculative writing that spanned the spectrum from heady art theory essays, reviews of rock music, Dwight D. Eisenhower's paintings, and Dean Martin's television show. His early magazine-based art predates, but is often associated with, conceptual art. His later work focused on cultural phenomena by incorporating photography, video, performance art, glass and mirror installation art structures, and closed-circuit television.
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Thomas W. Gilligan
#5355
Overall Influence
Thomas W. Gilligan is an American economist who was the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University from 2015 to 2020. Prior to taking over as head of the Stanford-based think tank, he served as dean of the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. Gilligan previously held a variety of positions at the University of Southern California from 1987 until 2008.
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Karl Malone
#5356
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Karl Anthony Malone is an American former professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association . Nicknamed "the Mailman", he is considered one of the greatest power forwards in NBA history. Malone spent his first 18 seasons in the NBA with the Utah Jazz and formed a formidable duo with his teammate John Stockton. He was a two-time NBA Most Valuable Player, a 14-time NBA All-Star, and an 11-time member of the All-NBA first team. His 36,928 career points scored rank third all-time in NBA history behind LeBron James and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and he holds the records for most fre...
Go to Profile#5349
Ellen von Unwerth
#5357
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Ellen von Unwerth is a German photographer. She began her career as a fashion model, before becoming a fashion, editorial, and advertising photographer. Early life and education Von Unwerth was born in Frankfurt, West Germany. As an orphan, during her early childhood, she often ended up in Bavarian foster care systems. Eventually, von Unwerth was able to graduate high school in Munich, where she would work as a circus magician's assistant for three years.
Go to Profile#5350
Hiroaki Kitano
#5358
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Hiroaki Kitano is a Japanese scientist. He is the head of the Systems Biology Institute ; Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Sony Group Corporation, Chief Executive Officer of Sony Research Inc. and Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc.; a Group Director of the Laboratory for Disease Systems Modeling at and RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences; and a professor at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology . Kitano is known for developing AIBO, and the robotic world cup tournament known as Robocup.
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