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
#7301
Alec Baldwin
#7311
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Alexander Rae Baldwin III is an American actor, comedian, and producer. He is known for his leading and supporting roles in a variety of genres, from comedy to drama, and has received numerous accolades including three Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for a Academy Award and Tony Award.
Go to Profile#7302
Walter Wink
#7312
Overall Influence
1935 - 2012 (77 years)
Walter Wink was an American Biblical scholar, theologian, and activist who was an important figure in Progressive Christianity. Wink spent much of his career teaching at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. He was well known for his advocacy of and work related to nonviolent resistance and his seminal works on "The Powers", Naming the Powers , Unmasking the Powers , Engaging the Powers , When the Powers Fall , and The Powers that Be , all of them commentaries on the Apostle Paul's ethic of spiritual warfare described here: Breaking with Christian hermeneutic tradition of Christian ...
Go to Profile#7303
Bernard Shaw
#7313
Overall Influence
1940 - 2022 (82 years)
Bernard Shaw was an American journalist and lead news anchor for CNN from 1980 until his retirement on March 2, 2001. Prior to his time at CNN, he was a reporter and anchor for WNUS, Westinghouse Broadcasting, CBS News, and ABC News.
Go to Profile#7304
Kathy Reichs
#7314
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Kathleen Joan Reichs is an American crime writer, forensic anthropologist and academic. She is an adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is well known for inspiring the television series Bones.
Go to Profile#7305
Richard Shiffrin
#7315
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Richard Shiffrin is an American psychologist, professor of cognitive science in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University, Bloomington. Shiffrin has contributed a number of theories of attention and memory to the field of psychology. He co-authored the Atkinson–Shiffrin model of memory in 1968 with Richard Atkinson, who was his academic adviser at the time. In 1977, he published a theory of attention with Walter Schneider. With Jeroen G.W. Raaijmakers in 1980, Shiffrin published the Search of Associative Memory model, which has served as the standard model of recall for cognitive psychologists well into the 2000s.
Go to Profile#7306
Rachel Marsden
#7316
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Rachel Marsden is a Canadian conservative political columnist, television commentator and university lecturer, based in Paris. She is also the CEO of Rachel Marsden Associates, a PR and media consultancy firm. As of March 2016, she hosts Le Désordre mondial, a French-language geopolitical talk show on Sputnik News from the network's Paris studio four times per week. As of 2020, she is also a nationally ranked competitive swimmer at the masters level in France in the 50m, 100m, 200m, 400m freestyle, 50m butterfly, and 200m individual medley and also in Canada.
Go to Profile#7307
Terrence Kaufman
#7317
Overall Influence
1937 - 2022 (85 years)
Terrence Kaufman was an American linguist specializing in documentation of unwritten languages, lexicography, Mesoamerican historical linguistics and language contact phenomena. He was an emeritus professor of linguistics and anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh.
Go to Profile#7308
Ezra Vogel
#7318
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
Ezra Feivel Vogel was an American sociologist who wrote prolifically on modern Japan, China, and Korea. He was Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. His 1978 book Japan as Number One: Lessons for America was a best-seller in both English and Japanese, and his 2011 book Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China won the Lionel Gelber Prize.
Go to Profile#7309
Tibor Gallai
#7319
Overall Influence
1912 - 1992 (80 years)
Tibor Gallai was a Hungarian mathematician. He worked in combinatorics, especially in graph theory, and was a lifelong friend and collaborator of Paul Erdős. He was a student of Dénes Kőnig and an advisor of László Lovász. He was a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences .
Go to Profile#7310
Harald Lesch
#7320
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Harald Lesch is a German physicist, astronomer, natural philosopher, author, television presenter, professor of physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and professor of natural philosophy at the Munich University of Philosophy.
Go to Profile#7311
Sophie Calle
#7321
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Sophie Calle is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like tendency to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing.
Go to Profile#7312
Chip Morningstar
#7322
Overall Influence
Chip Morningstar is an American software architect, mainly for online entertainment and communication. Morningstar held many jobs throughout his career in the research and development of technology and programs. Most notably was Morningstar's role as project leader for Lucasfilm's Habitat, the first large-scale virtual multiuser environment. In March 2001, Morningstar and colleague Randy Farmer were awarded the inaugural "First Penguin Award" by the International Game Developers Association for their work on Habitat. He also participated in Project Xanadu, for which the word hypertext was first coined.
Go to Profile#7313
David A. Evans
#7323
Overall Influence
1941 - 2022 (81 years)
David A. Evans was an American chemist who was the Abbott and James Lawrence professor of chemistry at Harvard University. He was a prominent figure in the field of organic chemistry and his research focused on synthetic chemistry and total synthesis, particularly of large biologically active molecules. Among his best-known works is the development of aldol reaction methodology .
Go to Profile#7314
Mick Foley
#7324
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Michael Francis Foley is an American professional wrestler and author. He is currently signed to WWE, under the company's "Legends" program, acting as a company ambassador. Foley worked for many wrestling promotions, including the World Wrestling Federation , World Championship Wrestling , Extreme Championship Wrestling , Total Nonstop Action Wrestling , and National Wrestling Alliance , as well as numerous promotions in Japan. He is widely regarded as one of the biggest stars of the Attitude Era and one of the greatest wrestlers in the history of WWE, and participated in the main event of WrestleMania in 1999 and 2000 .
Go to Profile#7315
Per Olov Enquist
#7325
Overall Influence
1934 - 2020 (86 years)
Per Olov Enquist, also known as P. O. Enquist, was a Swedish author. He had worked as a journalist, playwright and novelist. Biography Enquist was born and raised in , a village in present-day Skellefteå Municipality, Västerbotten. He was the only son of a single mother, who became a widow when he was half a year old. In his youth, he was a promising athlete with a high jump personal best of 1.97 meters. He studied at Uppsala University, receiving a degree in the history of literature.
Go to Profile#7316
Jean Grondin
#7326
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Jean Grondin is a Canadian philosopher and professor. He is a specialist in the thought of Immanuel Kant, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Martin Heidegger. His research focuses on hermeneutics, phenomenology, German classical philosophy and the history of metaphysics.
Go to Profile#7317
Reynold B. Johnson
#7327
Overall Influence
1906 - 1998 (92 years)
Reynold B. Johnson was an American inventor and computer pioneer. A long-time employee of IBM, Johnson is said to be the "father" of the hard disk drive. Other inventions include automatic test scoring equipment and the videocassette tape.
Go to Profile#7318
Charles Brenner
#7328
Overall Influence
1913 - 2008 (95 years)
Charles Brenner was an American psychoanalyst who served as president of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, and is perhaps best known for his contributions to drive theory, the structure of the mind, and conflict theory.
Go to Profile#7319
Björn Kraus
#7329
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Björn Kraus is a German philosopher, who unfolds epistemological theories for social work. He therefore picks up on the doubt about the possibilities of human perception, a topic that has been emphasized over and over in occidental philosophy. He thus stands in tradition of a skepticism as for example defined by Immanuel Kant and Ernst von Glasersfeld.
Go to Profile#7320
John Musker
#7330
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
John Edward Musker is an American animator, film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He often collaborates with fellow director Ron Clements and is best known for writing and directing the Disney films The Great Mouse Detective , The Little Mermaid , Aladdin , Hercules , Treasure Planet , The Princess and the Frog , and Moana .
Go to Profile#7321
Tapan Raychaudhuri
#7331
Overall Influence
1926 - 2014 (88 years)
Tapan Raychaudhuri was a British-Indian historian specialising in British Indian history, Indian economic history and the History of Bengal. Early life and education He was the son of Prativa and Amiya Kumar Raychaudhuri, the last zamindar of Kirtipasha in Barisal district of eastern Bengal. He came from a well-known Baidya family. He was a nephew of Kiran Shankar Roy and Hem Chandra Roychaudhuri, through his paternal aunts.
Go to Profile#7322
V. S. Ramachandran
#7332
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran is an Indian-American neuroscientist. He is known for his wide-ranging experiments and theories in behavioral neurology, including the invention of the mirror box. Ramachandran is a distinguished professor in UCSD's Department of Psychology, where he is the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition.
Go to Profile#7323
Ron Silliman
#7333
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Ron Silliman is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, The Alphabet. He has now begun writing a new poem, Universe, the first section of which appears to be called Revelator.
Go to Profile#7324
Gwen Stefani
#7334
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Gwen Renée Stefani is an American singer and songwriter. She is a co-founder, lead vocalist, and the primary songwriter of the band No Doubt, whose singles include "Just a Girl", "Spiderwebs", and "Don't Speak", from their 1995 breakthrough studio album Tragic Kingdom, as well as "Hey Baby" and "It's My Life" from later albums.
Go to Profile#7325
Edmund F. Robertson
#7335
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Edmund Frederick Robertson is a professor emeritus of pure mathematics at the University of St Andrews. Work Robertson is one of the creators of the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, along with John J. O'Connor. Robertson has written over 100 research articles, mainly on the theory of groups and semigroups. He is also the author or co-author of 17 textbooks.
Go to Profile#7326
Jürgen Osterhammel
#7336
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jürgen Osterhammel is a German historian specialized in Chinese and world history. He is professor emeritus at the University of Konstanz. Academia Osterhammel started his academic career as a research fee student at the London School of Economics in 1976/77 and studied and worked there under Professor Ian Nish. In 1980, he obtained his PhD from the University of Kassel in modern history.
Go to Profile#7327
Leonard A. Gordon
#7337
Overall Influence
Leonard Abraham Gordon is a historian of South Asia, especially of Bengal, whose 1990 book Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalist Leaders Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose is considered the definitive biography of Subhas Chandra Bose.
Go to Profile#7328
Joe Barresi
#7338
Overall Influence
Joe Barresi is an American record engineer and producer who has worked with Kyuss, The Melvins, Tool, Chevelle, Apocalyptica, Queens of the Stone Age, Coheed and Cambria, Tomahawk, L7, The Jesus Lizard, Parkway Drive, New Model Army, Bad Religion, Pennywise, Judas Priest, Soundgarden, Stam1na, Weezer, Avenged Sevenfold, Nine Inch Nails, and Slipknot.
Go to Profile#7329
Jonathan Raban
#7339
Overall Influence
1942 - 2023 (81 years)
Jonathan Mark Hamilton Priaulx Raban was a British award-winning travel writer, playwright, critic, and novelist. Background Jonathan Raban was born on 14 June 1942 in Norfolk. He was son of Monica Raban and the Rev Canon J. Peter C.P. Raban, whom he did not actually meet until he was three. He was sent to boarding school at the age of five. He was educated at King's School, Worcester, where like his father he was unhappy but discovered the comforting value of literature. He went on to study English at Hull University, where he became friends with the poet Philip Larkin. He supported himself...
Go to Profile#7330
Jaime Carbonell
#7340
Overall Influence
1953 - 2020 (67 years)
Jaime Guillermo Carbonell was a computer scientist who made seminal contributions to the development of natural language processing tools and technologies. His extensive research in machine translation resulted in the development of several state-of-the-art language translation and artificial intelligence systems. He earned his B.S. degrees in Physics and in Mathematics from MIT in 1975 and did his Ph.D. under Dr. Roger Schank at Yale University in 1979. He joined Carnegie Mellon University as an assistant professor of computer science in 1979 and lived in Pittsburgh from then. He was affilia...
Go to Profile#7331
William Hasker
#7341
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
R. William Hasker is an American philosopher and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Huntington University. For many years he was editor of the prestigious journal Faith and Philosophy. He has published many journal articles and books dealing with issues such as the mind–body problem, theodicy, and divine omniscience. He has argued for "open theism" and a view known as "emergentism" regarding the nature of the human person. Hasker regards the soul as an "emergent" substance, dependent upon the body for its existence.
Go to Profile#7332
Jim Rome
#7342
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
James Phillip Rome is an American sports radio host. His talk show, The Jim Rome Show, is syndicated by CBS Sports Radio. Broadcasting from a studio near Los Angeles, California, Rome hosts The Jim Rome Show on radio. For a number of years Rome hosted a television show Jim Rome Is Burning , which aired on ESPN in the United States and TSN2 in Canada. In 2011, Rome ended his relationship with ESPN to join the CBS network where he hosts his own show, as well as an interview-format show on the Showtime channel. His past hosting jobs included sports discussion television shows Talk2 , The FX Sports Show , and The Last Word .
Go to Profile#7333
Glenn Hoddle
#7343
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Glenn Hoddle is an English former football player and manager. He currently works as a television pundit and commentator for ITV Sport and TNT Sports. He is deemed to be one of the most gifted and creative English footballers of his generation.
Go to Profile#7334
Adunis
#7344
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Ali Ahmad Said Esber , also known by the pen name Adonis or Adunis , is a Syrian poet, essayist and translator. He led a modernist revolution in the second half of the 20th century, "exerting a seismic influence" on Arabic poetry comparable to T.S. Eliot's in the anglophone world.
Go to Profile#7335
Marc Melitz
#7345
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Marc J. Melitz is an American economist. He is currently a professor of economics at Harvard University. Melitz has published a number of highly cited articles in the area of international economics and international trade, most notably "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity" in Econometrica which explores the effects of international trade on the competition within domestic industries.
Go to Profile#7336
Michael Warner
#7346
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Michael David Warner is an American literary critic, social theorist, and Seymour H. Knox Professor of English Literature and American Studies at Yale University. He also writes for Artforum, The Nation, The Advocate, and The Village Voice. He is the author of Publics and Counterpublics, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life, The English Literatures of America, 1500–1800, Fear of a Queer Planet, and The Letters of the Republic. He edited The Portable Walt Whitman and American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Go to Profile#7337
Andrei Okounkov
#7347
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
#7338
W. Tecumseh Fitch
#7348
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
William Tecumseh Sherman Fitch III is an American evolutionary biologist and cognitive scientist at the University of Vienna where he is co-founder of the Department of Cognitive Biology. Fitch studies the biology and evolution of cognition and communication in humans and other animals, and in particular the evolution of speech, language and music. His work concentrates on comparative approaches as advocated by Charles Darwin .
Go to Profile#7339
Peter Walter
#7349
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Peter Walter is a German-American molecular biologist and biochemist. He is currently the Director of the Bay Area Institute of Science at Altos Labs and an emeritus professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the University of California, San Francisco . He was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator until 2022.
Go to Profile#7340
Kenya Hara
#7350
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
is a Japanese graphic designer, curator and writer. He is a graduate of Musashino Art University. Hara is employed by Musashino Art University as professor, and taught Communication Design and Design Theory in Science on Design Faculty since April 2003.
Go to Profile#7341
Carmelo Anthony
#7351
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Carmelo Kyam Anthony is an American former professional basketball player. He played 19 seasons in the National Basketball Association and was named an NBA All-Star ten times and an All-NBA Team member six times. He played college basketball for the Syracuse Orange, winning a national championship as a freshman in 2003 while being named the NCAA Tournament's Most Outstanding Player. In 2021, he was named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team, and is regarded as one of the greatest scorers in NBA history.
Go to Profile#7342
Sherry Ortner
#7352
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Sherry Beth Ortner is an American cultural anthropologist and has been a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at UCLA since 2004. Biography Ortner grew up in a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, and attended Weequahic High School, as did Philip Roth and Richie Roberts. She received her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College in 1962. She then studied anthropology at the University of Chicago with Clifford Geertz and obtained her Ph.D. in anthropology in 1970 for her fieldwork among the Sherpas in Nepal. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Michigan, the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Go to Profile#7343
David Moyes
#7353
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
David William Moyes is a Scottish professional football manager and former player who is the manager of Premier League club West Ham United. He was previously the manager of Preston North End, Everton, Manchester United, Real Sociedad, and Sunderland. Moyes was the 2003, 2005 and 2009 League Managers Association Manager of the Year. He is also on the committee for the League Managers Association in an executive capacity.
Go to Profile#7344
Roy Andrew Miller
#7354
Overall Influence
1924 - 2014 (90 years)
Roy Andrew Miller was an American linguist best known as the author of several books on Japanese language and linguistics, and for his advocacy of Korean and Japanese as members of the proposed Altaic language family.
Go to Profile#7345
Earl Babbie
#7355
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Earl Robert Babbie , is an American sociologist who holds the position of Campbell Professor Emeritus in Behavioral Sciences at Chapman University. He is best known for his book The Practice of Social Research , currently in its 15th English edition, with numerous non-English editions.
Go to Profile#7346
Manuela M. Veloso
#7356
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#7347
Jon Sobrino
#7357
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Jon Sobrino is a Jesuit Catholic priest and theologian, known mostly for his contributions to Latin American liberation theology. He received worldwide attention in 2007 when the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a notification for what they termed doctrines that are "erroneous or dangerous and may cause harm to the faithful."
Go to Profile#7348
Philippe Sands
#7358
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Philippe Joseph Sands, KC Hon FBA is a British and French writer and lawyer at 11 King's Bench Walk and Professor of Laws and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London. A specialist in international law, he appears as counsel and advocate before many international courts and tribunals, including the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the European Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court.
Go to Profile#7349
Edward Glaeser
#7359
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Edward Ludwig Glaeser is an American economist who is currently the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics and the Chairman of the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He is also Director for the Cities Research Programme at the International Growth Centre.
Go to Profile#7350
Dick Swaab
#7360
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Dick Ferdinand Swaab is a Dutch physician and neurobiologist . He is a professor of neurobiology at the University of Amsterdam and was until 2005 Director of the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences .
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