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
#7151
Iraj Bashiri
#7161
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Iraj Bashiri is professor of history at the University of Minnesota, United States, and one of the leading scholars in the fields of Central Asian studies and Iranian Studies. Fluent in English, Persian, Tajik, and several Turkic languages, Bashiri has been able to study and translate works otherwise inaccessible to the mostly Russian-speaking Central Asian studies community. Bashiri’s career focus started on Iran, and engaged also with Central Asia, notably the Tajik identity and the relations between Tajiks and the Turkic people of Central Asia, namely the Uzbeks.
Go to Profile#7152
John Piper
#7162
Overall Influence
1903 - 1992 (89 years)
John Egerton Christmas Piper CH was an English painter, printmaker and designer of stained-glass windows and both opera and theatre sets. His work often focused on the British landscape, especially churches and monuments, and included tapestry designs, book jackets, screen-prints, photography, fabrics and ceramics. He was educated at Epsom College and trained at the Richmond School of Art followed by the Royal College of Art in London. He turned from abstraction early in his career, concentrating on a more naturalistic but distinctive approach, but often worked in several different styles thr...
Go to Profile#7153
Michelle Goldberg
#7163
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Michelle Goldberg is an American journalist and author, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times. She has been a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, a columnist for The Daily Beast and Slate, and a senior writer for The Nation. Her books are Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism ; The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World ; and The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West .
Go to Profile#7154
Benny Tai
#7164
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Benny Tai Yiu-ting is a Hong Kong legal scholar, political figure, and democracy activist. He was an associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong. From 2013, Tai launched and is known for his initiation of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace, as he considered Hong Kong to lack "true universal suffrage" and should participate in an Occupy movement to win universal suffrage in the 2017 Hong Kong Chief Executive election. His suggestion ultimately resulted in the eruption of the Umbrella Movement the following year, as a result of which he was found guilty of "conspiracy to commi...
Go to Profile#7155
Mordehai Milgrom
#7165
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Mordehai "Moti" Milgrom is an Israeli physicist and professor in the department of Particle Physics and Astrophysics at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel. Biography He received his B.Sc. degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1966. Later he studied at the Weizmann Institute of Science and completed his doctorate in 1972. Before 1980 he worked primarily on high-energy astrophysics and became well-known for his kinematical model of the star system SS 433. In the academic years 1980–1981 and 1985–1986 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 1983, he propose...
Go to Profile#7156
Irwin Altman
#7166
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Irwin Altman , is a social psychologist who earned his B.A. degree from New York University in 1951, his M.A. degree from the University of Maryland in 1954 and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1957. He is active in many groups and associations including the International Association of Applied Psychology, American Psychological Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Association of University Professors, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Society of Experimental Social Psychology, Society of Personality and Social Psychology, A...
Go to Profile#7157
Edmund Morgan
#7167
Overall Influence
1916 - 2013 (97 years)
Edmund Sears Morgan was an American historian and an eminent authority on early American history. He was the Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, where he taught from 1955 to 1986. He specialized in American colonial history, with some attention to English history. Thomas S. Kidd says he was noted for his incisive writing style, "simply one of the best academic prose stylists America has ever produced." He covered many topics, including Puritanism, political ideas, the American Revolution, slavery, historiography, family life, and numerous notables such as Benjamin Franklin.
Go to Profile#7158
David Pringle
#7168
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
David Pringle is a Scottish science fiction editor and critic. Pringle served as the editor of Foundation, an academic journal, from 1980 to 1986, during which time he became one of the prime movers of the collective which founded Interzone in 1982. By 1988, he was the sole publisher and editor of Interzone, a position he retained until he sold the magazine to Andy Cox in 2004. For two-and-a-half years, from 1991 to 1993, he also edited and published a magazine entitled Million: The Magazine About Popular Fiction.
Go to Profile#7159
Jack Minker
#7169
Overall Influence
1927 - 2021 (94 years)
Jack Minker was a leading authority in artificial intelligence, deductive databases, logic programming and non-monotonic reasoning. He was also an internationally recognized leader in the field of human rights of computer scientists. He was an Emeritus Professor in the University of Maryland Department of Computer Science, which is part of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences.
Go to Profile#7160
David M. Jacobs
#7170
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
David Michael Jacobs is an American historian and retired Associate Professor of History at Temple University specializing in 20th-century American history. Jacobs is a prominent figure in ufology and the study of the alleged alien abduction phenomenon, including the use of hypnosis on subjects claiming to be abductees. Jacobs has authored several books on the subject.
Go to Profile#7161
Rajmohan Gandhi
#7171
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Rajmohan Gandhi is an Indian biographer, historian, and research professor at the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US. His paternal grandfather is Mahatma Gandhi, and his maternal grandfather is Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari. He is also a scholar in residence at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar.
Go to Profile#7162
Paul Oskar Kristeller
#7172
Overall Influence
1905 - 1999 (94 years)
Paul Oskar Kristeller was a scholar of Renaissance humanism. He was awarded the Haskins Medal in 1992. He was last active as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University in New York, where he mentored both Irving Louis Horowitz and A. James Gregor.
Go to Profile#7163
Bill Blass
#7173
Overall Influence
1922 - 2002 (80 years)
William Ralph Blass was an American fashion designer. He was the recipient of many fashion awards, including seven Coty Awards and the Fashion Institute of Technology's Lifetime Achievement Award . Early life Blass was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the son of Ralph Aldrich Blass, a traveling hardware salesman, and his wife, Ethyl Blass.
Go to Profile#7164
Hugh Lowell Montgomery
#7174
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Hugh Lowell Montgomery is an American mathematician, working in the fields of analytic number theory and mathematical analysis. As a Marshall scholar, Montgomery earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. For many years, Montgomery has been teaching at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#7165
Uri Sivan
#7175
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Uri Sivan , an Israeli physicist, is the 17th President of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He is also the holder of the Bertoldo Badler Chair in the Technion's Faculty of Physics. Biography Uri Sivan's parents immigrated to Mandatory Palestine from Poland in 1936. They studied at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology after being banned from European universities because they were Jewish.
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Robin Gandy
#7176
Overall Influence
1919 - 1995 (76 years)
Robin Oliver Gandy was a British mathematician and logician. He was a friend, student, and associate of Alan Turing, having been supervised by Turing during his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where they worked together.
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Dietrich Dörner
#7177
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Dietrich Dörner is emeritus professor for General and Theoretical Psychology at the Institute of Theoretical Psychology at the Otto-Friedrich University in Bamberg, Germany. In 1986, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research.
Go to Profile#7168
Carlin Romano
#7178
Overall Influence
Carlin Romano is an American writer and educator. Romano writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Career Romano was a writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. He previously taught at Ursinus College and Bennington College.
Go to Profile#7169
Muhammad Suhail Zubairy
#7179
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Muhammad Suhail Zubairy, HI, SI, FPAS , is a University Distinguished Professor as of 2014 in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Texas A&M University and is the inaugural holder of the Munnerlyn-Heep Chair in Quantum Optics.
Go to Profile#7170
Frances Moore Lappé
#7180
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Frances Moore Lappé is an American researcher and author in the field of food and democracy policy. She is the author of 20 books including the 2.5-million-copy selling 1971 book Diet for a Small Planet, which the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History describes as "one of the most influential political tracts of the times." She has co-founded three organizations that explore the roots of hunger, poverty, and environmental crises, as well as solutions emerging worldwide through what she calls "living democracy". Her latest work is a report entitled Crisis of Trust: How Can Democracies Protect Against Dangerous Lies? with Max Boland and Rachel Madison.
Go to Profile#7171
Sheila Jasanoff
#7181
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Sheila Sen Jasanoff is an Indian American academic and significant contributor to the field of Science and Technology Studies. In 2021 she was elected to the American Philosophical Society. Her research has been recognized with many awards, including the 2022 Holberg Prize "for her groundbreaking research in science and technology studies."
Go to Profile#7172
Helen Caldicott
#7182
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Helen Mary Caldicott is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate. She founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation, and military action in general.
Go to Profile#7173
Ruth Fowler Edwards
#7183
Overall Influence
1930 - 2013 (83 years)
Ruth Fowler Edwards, Lady Edwards was a British geneticist and the long-time wife and collaborator of Robert G. Edwards, the "father" of in vitro fertilization. Life Ruth was descended from a line of distinguished scientists. According to Martin Johnson, She was the granddaughter of Ernest Rutherford, who himself won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1908, ‘for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances’ . Her father was Sir Ralph Fowler FRS , who was Plummer Professor of Mathematical Physics in Cambridge from 1932 to 1944.Her mothe...
Go to Profile#7174
Forrest Mims
#7184
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Forrest M. Mims III is an American amateur scientist, magazine columnist, and author of Getting Started in Electronics and Engineer's Mini-Notebook series of instructional books that were originally sold in Radio Shack electronics stores and are still in print. Mims graduated from Texas A&M University in 1966 with a major in government and minors in English and history. He became a commissioned officer in the United States Air Force, served in Vietnam as an Air Force intelligence officer , and a Development Engineer at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory .
Go to Profile#7175
Peter Fonagy
#7185
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Peter Fonagy, is a Hungarian-born British psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist. He studied clinical psychology at University College London. He is a Professor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Developmental Science Head of the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College London, Chief Executive of the Anna Freud Centre, and a training and supervising analyst in the British Psycho-Analytical Society in child and adult analysis. His clinical interests center on issues of borderline psychopathology, violence, and early attachment relationships. His work attempts to integrate empirical research with psychoanalytic theory.
Go to Profile#7176
John L. Horn
#7186
Overall Influence
1928 - 2006 (78 years)
John Leonard Horn was a scholar, cognitive psychologist and a pioneer in developing theories of intelligence. The Cattell-Horn- Carroll theory is the basis for many modern IQ tests. Horn's parallel analysis, a method for determining the number of factors to keep in an exploratory factor analysis, is also named after him.
Go to Profile#7177
Warren Beatty
#7187
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Henry Warren Beatty is an American actor and filmmaker. His career has spanned over six decades and he has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award and three Golden Globe Awards. He also received the Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1999, the BAFTA Fellowship in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2007, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2008.
Go to Profile#7178
Jung Chang
#7188
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jung Chang is a Chinese-British writer now living in London, best known for her family autobiography Wild Swans, selling over 10 million copies worldwide but banned in the People's Republic of China.
Go to Profile#7179
Charles Seife
#7189
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Charles Seife is an American author, journalist, and professor at New York University. He has written extensively on scientific and mathematical topics. Career Seife holds a mathematics degree from Princeton University , an M.S. in mathematics from Yale University and a M.S. in journalism from Columbia University.
Go to Profile#7180
Kenneth B. Clark
#7190
Overall Influence
1914 - 2005 (91 years)
#7181
Charles Moose
#7191
Overall Influence
1953 - 2021 (68 years)
Charles Alexander Moose was an American author and police officer. He was best known for his role as being the primary official in charge of the efforts to apprehend the D.C. snipers in October 2002. During his law enforcement career, Moose served as the chief of police for Montgomery County, Maryland, and Portland, Oregon.
Go to Profile#7182
Olivier Weber
#7192
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Olivier Weber is a French writer, novelist and reporter at large, known primarily for his coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has been a war correspondent for twenty-five years, especially in Central Asia, Africa, Middle-East and Iraq. He is an assistant professor at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, president of the Prize Joseph Kessel and today ambassador of France at large. Weber has won several national and international awards of literature and journalism, in particular for his stories on Afghanistan and for his books on wars. His novels, travels writing books and e...
Go to Profile#7183
Nima Arkani-Hamed
#7193
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Nima Arkani-Hamed is an American-Canadian theoretical physicist of Iranian descent, with interests in high-energy physics, quantum field theory, string theory, cosmology and collider physics. Arkani-Hamed is a member of the permanent faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He is also director of the Carl P. Feinberg Cross-Disciplinary Program in Innovation at the Institute and director of The Center for Future High Energy Physics in Beijing, China.
Go to Profile#7184
Ashok Goel
#7194
Overall Influence
Ashok K. Goel is a professor of computer science and human-centered computing in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, and the chief scientist with Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities. He conducts research into cognitive systems at the intersection of artificial intelligence and cognitive science with a focus on computational design and creativity. Goel is also the executive director of National Science Foundation's AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education and an editor emeritus of AAAI's AI Magazine.
Go to Profile#7185
John Kosh
#7195
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
John Kosh, known simply as Kosh, is an English art director, album cover designer, graphic artist, and documentary producer/director. He was born in London, England and rose to prominence in the mid-1960s while designing for the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera House. He was the creative director of Apple Corps for The Beatles and was art director and album cover designer for Abbey Road and Let It Be, as well as other Apple artists.
Go to Profile#7186
Rich Lowry
#7196
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Richard Lowry is an American writer who is the former editor and now editor-in-chief of National Review, an American conservative news and opinion magazine. Lowry became editor of National Review in 1997 when selected by its founder, William F. Buckley, Jr., to lead the magazine. Lowry is also a syndicated columnist, author, and political analyst who is a frequent guest on NBC News and Meet the Press. He has written four books.
Go to Profile#7187
Miles Copeland III
#7197
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Miles Axe Copeland III is an American music and entertainment executive and former manager of the Police. Copeland later managed Sting's musical and acting career. In 1979, Copeland founded the I.R.S. Records label, producing R.E.M., the Bangles, Berlin, the Cramps, Dead Kennedys, the Alarm, the Go-Go's, and others.
Go to Profile#7188
Menachem Mazuz
#7198
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Menachem "Meni" Mazuz is an Israeli jurist and Supreme Court justice, who served as the Israeli Attorney General in the years 2004–2010. Childhood and studies Mazuz was born in Djerba, Tunisia, the fifth in a family of nine children of the rabbi of one of the island's Jewish communities. His family immigrated to Israel a year after his birth, settling in Netivot.
Go to Profile#7189
Yoshizumi Ishino
#7199
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Yoshizumi Ishino is a Japanese molecular biologist, known for his discovering the DNA sequence of Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats . Biography Ishino was born in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. He received his BS, MS and PhD in 1981, 1983 and 1986, respectively, from Osaka University. From 1987 to 1989, he served as a post-doctoral fellow in Dieter Söll's laboratory at Yale University.
Go to Profile#7190
Zandra Rhodes
#7200
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Dame Zandra Lindsey Rhodes, , is an English fashion and textile designer. Her early education in fashion set the foundation for a career in the industry creating textile prints. Rhodes has designed garments for Diana, Princess of Wales and numerous celebrities such as rock stars Freddie Mercury and Marc Bolan. She has also designed textiles for interiors, featuring her prints on furniture and homewares. In 2003 Rhodes founded the Fashion and Textile Museum in London.
Go to Profile#7191
Rammal Rammal
#7201
Overall Influence
1951 - 1991 (40 years)
Rammal Hassan Rammal was a Lebanese condensed matter physicist. He was born in Doueir, South Lebanon. He lived and went to school in Beirut. He was the top student in his class. He graduated high school and ranked first place in the official exams of the baccalaureate Section II in Lebanon. At 18 years old, he traveled to France to continue his education and start his scientific career. He studied at the Joseph Fourier University in France and got his baccalaureate in mathematics and physics. In 1981, he achieved his international doctorate there and started working at CNRS in Grenoble. Ramm...
Go to Profile#7192
Robion Kirby
#7202
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Robion Cromwell Kirby is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in low-dimensional topology. Together with Laurent C. Siebenmann he developed the Kirby–Siebenmann invariant for classifying the piecewise linear structuress on a topological manifold. He also proved the fundamental result on the Kirby calculus, a method for describing 3-manifolds and smooth 4-manifolds by surgery on framed links. Along with his significant mathematical contributions, he has over 50 doctoral students and is the editor of an influential problem list.
Go to Profile#7193
Kurt M. Campbell
#7203
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Kurt Michael Campbell is an American diplomat and businessman currently serving as the National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific. In this capacity, Campbell has been referred to as the "Asia co-ordinator" or "Asia Tsar" of the Joe Biden administration.
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Emma Donoghue
#7204
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Emma Donoghue is an Irish-Canadian playwright, literary historian, novelist, and screenwriter. Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Booker Prize and an international best-seller. Donoghue's 1995 novel Hood won the Stonewall Book Award and Slammerkin won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. She is a 2011 recipient of the Alex Awards. Room was adapted by Donoghue into a film of the same name. For this, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Go to Profile#7195
Osvaldo Bayer
#7205
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Osvaldo Bayer was an Argentine writer and journalist. He lived in Buenos Aires. In 1974, during the presidency of Isabel Perón, he went into exile, residing in Linz am Rhein, Germany, throughout the National Reorganization Process dictatorship .
Go to Profile#7196
Gary A. Klein
#7206
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Gary Klein is a research psychologist famous for pioneering in the field of naturalistic decision making. By studying experts such as firefighters in their natural environment, he discovered that laboratory models of decision making could not describe it under uncertainty. His recognition-primed decision model has influenced changes in the ways the Marines and Army train their officers to make decisions.
Go to Profile#7197
Robert A. Scott
#7207
Overall Influence
Robert Allyn Scott is an American educator and academic administrator who served as ninth president of Adelphi University located in Garden City, New York from 2000–2015. Biography Robert Scott was a member of Bucknell University's class of 1961 with a B.A. in English and received his Ph.D. in Sociology and Organizational Ethnography from Cornell University. He started his career as a member of the Bucknell's Admissions staff in 1965. From 1969 to 1979, he worked at Cornell University, starting as Assistant Dean and then as Associate Dean and Senior Administrator of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#7198
C. T. C. Wall
#7208
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Charles Terence Clegg "Terry" Wall is a British mathematician, educated at Marlborough and Trinity College, Cambridge. He is an emeritus professor of the University of Liverpool, where he was first appointed professor in 1965. From 1978 to 1980 he was the president of the London Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#7199
Tommy Vance
#7209
Overall Influence
1940 - 2005 (65 years)
Richard Anthony Crispian Francis Prew Hope-Weston , known professionally as Tommy Vance, was an English radio broadcaster. He was an important factor in the rise of the new wave of British heavy metal , along with London-based disc jockey Neal Kay, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Vance was one of the first radio hosts in the United Kingdom to broadcast hard rock and heavy metal in the early 1980s, providing the only national radio forum for both bands and fans. The Friday Rock Show that he hosted gave new bands airtime for their music and fans an opportunity to hear it. He used a personal tag-line of "TV on the radio".
Go to Profile#7200
Barry Nalebuff
#7210
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Barry J. Nalebuff is an American businessman, business theorist, and writer. He is a Milton Steinbach Professor of Management at Yale School of Management and author who specializes in business strategy and game theory. His published books include Thinking Strategically and The Art of Strategy. Nalebuff's class on negotiation has over 67,000 active learners through Coursera and has the second-highest net promoter score on the platform. He has a semi-regular column in Forbes with Ian Ayres called "Why Not?"
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