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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people
#7001
A. R. Gurney
#7010
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Albert Ramsdell Gurney Jr. was an American playwright, novelist and academic. Gurney is known for plays including The Dining Room , Sweet Sue , The Cocktail Hour , and for his Pulitzer Prize nominated play Love Letters . His series of plays about upper-class WASP life in contemporary America have been called "penetratingly witty studies of the WASP ascendancy in retreat."
Go to Profile#7002
Valery Yemelyanov
#7011
Overall Influence
1929 - 1999 (70 years)
Valery Nikolayevich Yemelyanov was a Soviet-Russian Arabist and public figure, teacher of Arabic and Hebrew, and candidate of economic sciences. One of the founders of Russian neo-paganism, a representative of the "first wave" of the Russian neo-pagan movement, the creator of a pseudo-historical concept of the ancient civilization of the "Aryans-Veneti", and an author of antisemitic ideas. He was the founder and chairman of World Anti-Zionist and Anti-Masonic Front "Pamyat" and author of the books Dezionization and Jewish Nazism and the Asiatic Mode of Production.
Go to Profile#7003
Sylvia Massy
#7012
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Sylvia Lenore Massy is an American record producer, mixer, engineer, instructor and author. Massy is renowned for her multifaceted production/mixing and engineering skills, with her first major breakthrough occurring with 1993's Undertow, the full-length triple platinum-selling debut for Los Angeles alternative metal band Tool as well as her work with System of a Down, Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Brazilian band South Cry.
Go to Profile#7004
Aaron Rodgers
#7013
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Aaron Charles Rodgers is an American football quarterback for the New York Jets of the National Football League . He played college football at California , before being selected in the first round of the 2005 NFL Draft by the Green Bay Packers. He is regarded amongst the greatest and most talented quarterbacks of all time.
Go to Profile#7005
Ira Berlin
#7014
Overall Influence
1941 - 2018 (77 years)
Ira Berlin was an American historian, professor of history at the University of Maryland, and former president of Organization of American Historians. Berlin is the author of such books as Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America and Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves .
Go to Profile#7006
Meera Nanda
#7015
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Meera Nanda is an Indian writer and historian of science, who has authored several works critiquing the influence of Hindutva, postcolonialism and postmodernism on science, and the flourishing of pseudoscience and vedic science. In 2019–2020, she was a Guest Faculty in Humanities and Social Sciences at IISER Pune.
Go to Profile#7007
Rachel Robinson
#7016
Overall Influence
1922 - Present (104 years)
Rachel Annetta Robinson is an American former professor and registered nurse. She is the widow of professional baseball player Jackie Robinson. After her husband's death, she founded the Jackie Robinson Foundation.
Go to Profile#7008
Sophia Loren
#7017
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone , known professionally as Sophia Loren , is an Italian actress. She was named by the American Film Institute as one of the greatest stars of classical Hollywood cinema and is one of the last surviving major stars from the era. Loren is also the only remaining living person to appear on AFI's list of the 50 greatest stars of American film history, positioned 21st.
Go to Profile#7009
Richard Friend
#7018
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Sir Richard Henry Friend is a British physicist who was the Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge from 1995 until 2020 and is Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professor at the National University of Singapore. Friend's research concerns the physics and engineering of carbon-based semiconductors. He also serves as Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Research Foundation of Singapore.
Go to Profile#7010
Richard Horton
#7019
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Richard Charles Horton is editor-in-chief of The Lancet, a United Kingdom–based medical journal. He is an honorary professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University College London, and the University of Oslo.
Go to Profile#7011
Eberhard Jäckel
#7020
Overall Influence
1929 - 2017 (88 years)
Eberhard Jäckel was a German historian. In the 1980s, he was a principal protagonist in the Historians' Dispute over how to incorporate Nazi Germany and the Holocaust into German historiography and over Hitler's intentions.
Go to Profile#7012
Marie Tharp
#7021
Overall Influence
1920 - 2006 (86 years)
Marie Tharp was an American geologist and oceanographic cartographer. In the 1950s, she collaborated with geologist Bruce Heezen to produce the first scientific map of the Atlantic Ocean floor. Her cartography revealed a more detailed topography and multi-dimensional geographical landscape of the ocean bottom.
Go to Profile#7013
Jacques Gauthier
#7022
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Jacques Armand Gauthier is an American vertebrate paleontologist, comparative morphologist, and systematist, and one of the founders of the use of cladistics in biology. Life and career Gauthier is the son of Edward Paul Gauthier and Patricia Marie Grogan. He received a B.S. degree in zoology at San Diego State University in 1973, a master's in biological science at the same institute in 1980, and a PhD in paleontology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1984. Currently he is a professor of geology and geophysics and ecology and evolutionary biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology and vertebrate zoology at Yale University.
Go to Profile#7014
William Bundy
#7023
Overall Influence
1917 - 2000 (83 years)
William Putnam Bundy was an American attorney and analyst with the CIA. Bundy served as a foreign affairs advisor to both presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He had key roles in planning the Vietnam War, serving as deputy to Paul Nitze at Defense under Kennedy and as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs under Johnson.
Go to Profile#7015
Barre Toelken
#7024
Overall Influence
1935 - 2018 (83 years)
John Barre Toelken was an award-winning American folklorist, noted for his study of Native American material and oral traditions. Early life and education Barre Toelken was born in Enfield, Massachusetts, to parents John and Sylvia Toelken. The family later moved to Springfield. He began to attend the Utah State University in 1953, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in English. Toelken completed a master's degree in English literature from Washington State University, followed by a doctorate from the University of Oregon.
Go to Profile#7016
Peter Stearns
#7025
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Peter Nathaniel Stearns is a professor at George Mason University, where he was provost from January 1, 2000 to July 2014. Stearns was chair of the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University and also served as the Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. In addition, he founded and edited the Journal of Social History. While at Carnegie Mellon, he developed a pioneering approach to teaching World History, and has contributed to the field as well through editing, and contributing to, the Routledge series, Themes in World History. He is als...
Go to Profile#7017
Joseph Jacobson
#7026
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Joseph Jacobson , is a tenured professor and head of the Molecular Machines group at the Center for Bits and Atoms at the MIT Media Lab, and is one of the inventors of microencapsulated electrophoretic display commonly used in electronic devices such as e-readers. He is the founder of several companies including E Ink Corporation, Gen9, Inc., and Kovio, is on the scientific board of several more companies .
Go to Profile#7018
Akshay Venkatesh
#7027
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Akshay Venkatesh is an Australian mathematician and a professor at the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study. His research interests are in the fields of counting, equidistribution problems in automorphic forms and number theory, in particular representation theory, locally symmetric spaces, ergodic theory, and algebraic topology.
Go to Profile#7019
Bernard Lafayette
#7028
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Bernard Lafayette , Jr. is an American civil rights activist and organizer, who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He played a leading role in early organizing of the Selma Voting Rights Movement; was a member of the Nashville Student Movement; and worked closely throughout the 1960s movements with groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee , the Southern Christian Leadership Conference , and the American Friends Service Committee.
Go to Profile#7020
Salikoko Mufwene
#7029
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Salikoko Mufwene is a linguist born in Mbaya-Lareme in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago. Mufwene was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022.
Go to Profile#7021
Takashi Negishi
#7030
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Takashi Negishi is a Japanese neo-Walrasian economist. Career Negishi graduated Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo in 1956 and received a PhD in Economics from University of Tokyo in 1963. Contributions Negishi's research has provided a wide range of extensions to orthodox general equilibrium modelling. These additions have typically involved imperfect competition, stability and unemployment.
Go to Profile#7022
Donald Bitzer
#7031
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Donald L. Bitzer is an American electrical engineer and computer scientist. He was the co-inventor of the plasma display, is largely regarded as the "father of PLATO", and has made a career of improving classroom productivity by using computer and telecommunications technologies.
Go to Profile#7023
David S. Broder
#7032
Overall Influence
1929 - 2011 (82 years)
David Salzer Broder was an American journalist, writing for The Washington Post for over 40 years. He was also an author, television news show pundit, and university lecturer. For more than half a century, Broder reported on every presidential campaign, beginning with the 1956 United States presidential election between Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson II. Known as the dean of the Washington, D.C. press corps, Broder made over 400 appearances on NBC's Meet the Press. The Forbes Media Guide Five Hundred, 1994 stated: "Broder is the best of an almost extinct species, the daily news repo...
Go to Profile#7024
Vincent Nichols
#7033
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Vincent Gerard Nichols is a British cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, Archbishop of Westminster and President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. He previously served as Archbishop of Birmingham from 2000 to 2009. He was created cardinal in 22 February 2014.
Go to Profile#7025
Gary Owens
#7034
Overall Influence
1934 - 2015 (81 years)
Gary Owens was an American disc jockey, voice actor, announcer and radio personality. His polished baritone speaking voice generally offered deadpan recitations of total nonsense, which he frequently demonstrated as the announcer on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Owens was equally proficient in straight or silly assignments and was frequently heard on television and radio as well as in commercials.
Go to Profile#7026
Leila Schneps
#7035
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Leila Schneps is an American mathematician and fiction writer at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique working in number theory. Schneps has written general audience math books and, under the pen name Catherine Shaw, has written mathematically themed murder mysteries.
Go to Profile#7027
David Norris
#7036
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
David Patrick Bernard Norris is an Irish scholar, independent Senator and civil rights activist. Internationally, Norris is credited with having "managed, almost single-handedly, to overthrow the anti-homosexuality law which brought about the downfall of Oscar Wilde", a feat he achieved in 1988 after a fourteen-year campaign. He has also been credited with being "almost single-handedly responsible for rehabilitating James Joyce in once disapproving Irish eyes".
Go to Profile#7028
Jimmy McGovern
#7037
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
James Stanley McGovern is an English screenwriter and producer. He is best known for creating the drama series Cracker , for which he received two Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America. He also received recognition for creating drama series such as Hillsborough, The Lakes, The Street, and Accused, among others. On 8 December 2021 Jimmy was conferred the Freedom of Liverpool, in recognition of his life's work.
Go to Profile#7029
Nancy Stokey
#7038
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Nancy Laura Stokey has been the Frederick Henry Prince Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago since 1990 and focuses particularly on mathematical economics while recently conducting research about Growth Theory, economic dynamics, and fiscal/monetary policy. She earned her BA in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1972 and her PhD from Harvard University in 1978, under the direction of thesis advisor Kenneth Arrow. She is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. She prev...
Go to Profile#7030
Albert Lord
#7039
Overall Influence
1912 - 1991 (79 years)
Albert Bates Lord was a professor of Slavic and comparative literature at Harvard University who carried on Milman Parry's research on epic poetry after Parry's death. Early life Lord was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Boston Latin School in 1930 and attended Harvard College, where he received an A.B. in classics in 1934 and a Ph.D. in comparative literature in 1949.
Go to Profile#7031
James R. Rice
#7040
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
James Robert Rice is an American engineer, scientist, geophysicist, and Mallinckrodt Professor of Engineering Sciences and Geophysics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Go to Profile#7032
Jane Drew
#7041
Overall Influence
1911 - 1996 (85 years)
Dame Jane Drew , was an English modernist architect and town planner. She qualified at the Architectural Association School in London, and prior to World War II became one of the leading exponents of the Modern Movement in London.
Go to Profile#7033
Pierre Boulez
#7042
Overall Influence
1925 - 2016 (91 years)
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war contemporary classical music. Born in Montbrison, in the Loire department of France, the son of an engineer, Boulez studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Olivier Messiaen, and privately with Andrée Vaurabourg and René Leibowitz. He began his professional career in the late 1940s as music director of the Renaud-Barrault theatre company in Paris. He was a leading figure in avant-garde music, playing an important role in the ...
Go to Profile#7034
Charles M. Rice
#7043
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Charles Moen Rice is an American virologist and Nobel Prize laureate whose main area of research is the hepatitis C virus. He is a professor of virology at the Rockefeller University in New York City and an adjunct professor at Cornell University and Washington University School of Medicine. At the time of the award he was a faculty at Rockefeller.
Go to Profile#7035
Abbas Edalat
#7044
Overall Influence
Abbas Edalat is a British-Iranian academic who is a professor of computer science and mathematics at the Department of Computing, Imperial College London and a political activist. In a 2018 letter to The Guardian, 129 experts in computer science, mathematics and machine learning described him as "a prominent academic, making fundamental contributions to mathematical logic and theoretical computer science" Edalat also founded SAF and CASMII, a campaign against sanctions and military intervention in Iran.
Go to Profile#7036
Ramayya Krishnan
#7045
Overall Influence
Ramayya Krishnan is an Indian American Management and Information technology scholar from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the dean of Heinz College, and is the W. W. Cooper and Ruth F. Cooper Professor of Management science and Information systems at Carnegie Mellon University. Krishnan is also a past president of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science .
Go to Profile#7037
Patricia J. Williams
#7046
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Patricia J. Williams is an American legal scholar and a proponent of critical race theory, a school of legal thought that emphasizes race as a fundamental determinant of the American legal system. Early life Williams received her bachelor's degree from Wellesley College in 1972, and her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1975.
Go to Profile#7038
James Maynard
#7047
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
#7039
Alfred Schmidt
#7048
Overall Influence
1931 - 2012 (81 years)
Alfred Schmidt was a German philosopher. Biography Schmidt studied history and English as well as classical philology at the Goethe University Frankfurt and later philosophy and sociology. He was a student of Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer and gained his doctorate with his The Concept of Nature in Marx.
Go to Profile#7040
Andrew Barto
#7049
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Andrew G. Barto is an American computer scientist, currently Professor Emeritus of computer science at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Barto is best known for his foundational contributions to the field of modern computational reinforcement learning.
Go to Profile#7041
Ken Goldberg
#7050
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Kenneth Yigael Goldberg is an American artist, writer, inventor, and researcher in the field of robotics and automation. He is professor and chair of the industrial engineering and operations research department at the University of California, Berkeley, and holds the William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering at Berkeley, with joint appointments in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences , Art Practice, and the School of Information. Goldberg also holds an appointment in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco.
Go to Profile#7042
Toby Wright
#7051
Overall Influence
Toby Wright is an American record producer and mixing engineer who has worked with artists such as Alice in Chains, Metallica, Sevendust and Korn. Credits Producer 3rd Strike - Lost Angel8stops7 - In ModerationAlice in Chains - Alice in ChainsAlice in Chains - UnpluggedArcane Saints - Turning the TideBiohazard - Reborn in DefianceBrad Gillis – Gilrock RanchBrighton Rock - Love MachineBrown Brigade - Into the Mouth of BaddnessBurn to Shine - Signs Chris Whitley - Terra IncognitaChris Whitley - Long Way AroundCraving Lucy - Craving LucyDeity's Muse - TBAFear Factory - TransgressionFishbone - Fi...
Go to Profile#7043
Nicky Campbell
#7053
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Nicholas Andrew Argyll Campbell OBE is a Scottish broadcaster and journalist. He has worked in television and radio since 1981 and as a network presenter with BBC Radio since 1987. Early life Campbell was born in Portobello, Edinburgh, in April 1961, and was taken for adoption at just a few days old. His biological parents were both Irish. His unmarried mother, Stella Lackey, was an Irish Protestant matron at a Dublin Hospital. She was single when Campbell was conceived during a secretive affair. She travelled from Ireland to Edinburgh, where she gave birth to her son. His Belfast-born father...
Go to Profile#7044
Anna Tsing
#7054
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing is an American anthropologist. She is a professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2018, she was awarded the Huxley Memorial Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Go to Profile#7045
Ray Huang
#7055
Overall Influence
1918 - 2000 (82 years)
Ray Huang was a Chinese-American historian and philosopher who was an officer in the National Revolutionary Army and fought in the Burma Campaign. In 1964, Huang earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan. He worked with Joseph Needham and was a contributor to Needham's Science and Civilisation in China. Huang taught history at universities in the US and the UK, and he is best known in his later years for the idea of macro-history.
Go to Profile#7046
Daphne Caruana Galizia
#7056
Overall Influence
1964 - 2017 (53 years)
Daphne Anne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese writer, journalist, blogger and anti-corruption activist, who reported on political events in Malta and was known internationally for her investigation of the Panama Papers, and subsequent assassination by car bomb. In particular, she focused on investigative journalism, reporting on government corruption, nepotism, patronage, and allegations of money laundering, links between Malta's online gambling industry and organized crime, Malta's citizenship-by-investment scheme, and payments from the government of Azerbaijan. Caruana Galizia's national and in...
Go to Profile#7047
Frank Jobe
#7057
Overall Influence
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
Frank James Jobe was an American orthopedic surgeon and co-founder of the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic. Jobe pioneered both elbow ligament replacement and major reconstructive shoulder surgery for baseball players.
Go to Profile#7048
Chris Brown
#7058
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (37 years)
Christopher Maurice Brown is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, dancer, and actor. One of the most successful R&B singers of all time, he has often been referred to by contemporaries as the "King of R&B". His musical style has been defined as polyhedric, with his R&B being characterized by several influences from other genres, mainly pop music and hip hop. His lyrics develop predominantly over themes of romance, sex, fast life, desire, lovesickness, regret, emotional conflict and loneliness. Brown has had wide comparisons to Michael Jackson for his talent and stage presence.
Go to Profile#7049
Reynolds Price
#7059
Overall Influence
1933 - 2011 (78 years)
Edward Reynolds Price was an American poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist and James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University. Apart from English literature, Price had a lifelong interest in Biblical scholarship. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Go to Profile#7050
Mary Boyce
#7060
Overall Influence
1920 - 2006 (86 years)
Nora Elisabeth Mary Boyce was a British scholar of Iranian languages, and an authority on Zoroastrianism. She was Professor of Iranian Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. The Royal Asiatic Society's annual Boyce Prize for outstanding contributions to the study of religion is named after her.
Go to Profile