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
#8101
Ramin Jahanbegloo
#8111
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Ramin Jahanbegloo is an Iranian philosopher and academic based in Toronto, Canada. Biography Ramin Jahanbegloo was born in Tehran, Iran. He has a doctorate in philosophy from Sorbonne University in Paris, France, where he lived for twenty years. He was a post-doctorate fellow in Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. He is married to Azin Moalej and has a daughter named Afarin Jahanbegloo.
Go to Profile#8102
William Wohlforth
#8112
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
William Curti Wohlforth is the Daniel Webster Professor of Government in the Dartmouth College Department of Government, of which he was chair for three academic years . Wohlforth was Editor-in-chief of Security Studies from 2008 to 2011. He is linked to the Neoclassical realism school and known for his work on American unipolarity.
Go to Profile#8103
Wei Shyy
#8113
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Wei Shyy is an aerospace engineer who served as the 4th President of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology from 2018 to 2022 with his acting presidency starting from 1 February 2018. He also holds a concurrent appointment as Chair Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. He first joined HKUST in August 2010 as Provost.
Go to Profile#8104
John Terry
#8114
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
John George Terry is an English professional football coach and former player who played as a centre-back. He was previously captain of Chelsea, the England national team and Aston Villa. He is regarded as one of the greatest defenders of his generation, as well as one of the best English and Premier League defenders ever.
Go to Profile#8105
John Law
#8115
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John Law , is a sociologist and science and technology studies scholar, currently on the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. Law coined the term Actor-Network Theory in 1992 when synthesising work done with colleagues at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation.
Go to Profile#8106
Rutger Bregman
#8116
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Rutger C. Bregman is a Dutch popular historian and author. He has published four books on history, philosophy, and economics, including Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World, which has been translated into thirty-two languages. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian and the BBC. He has been described by The Guardian as the "Dutch wunderkind of new ideas" and by TED Talks as "one of Europe's most prominent young thinkers". His TED Talk, "Poverty Isn't a Lack of Character; It's a Lack of Cash", was chosen by TED curator Chris Anderson as one of the top t...
Go to Profile#8107
Robert Elsie
#8117
Overall Influence
1950 - 2017 (67 years)
Robert Elsie was a Canadian-born German scholar who specialized in Albanian literature and folklore. Elsie was a writer, translator, interpreter, and specialist in Albanian studies, being the author of numerous books and articles that focused on various aspects of Albanian culture and affairs.
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Brian Leftow
#8118
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Brian Leftow is an American philosopher specializing in philosophy of religion, medieval philosophy, and metaphysics. He is the William P. Alston Professor for the Philosophy of Religion at Rutgers University. Previously, he held the Nolloth Chair of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oriel College, Oxford, succeeding Richard Swinburne.
Go to Profile#8109
Greg Boyle
#8119
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Gregory Joseph Boyle, S.J. is an American Catholic priest of the Jesuit order. He is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries, the world's largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program, and former pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles.
Go to Profile#8110
Marie Bashir
#8120
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Dame Marie Roslyn Bashir is the former and second longest-serving Governor of New South Wales. Born in Narrandera, New South Wales, Bashir graduated from the University of Sydney in 1956 and held various medical positions, with a particular emphasis in psychiatry. In 1993 Bashir was appointed the Clinical Director of Mental Health Services for the Central Sydney Area Health Service, a position she held until appointed governor on 1 March 2001. She has also served as the Chancellor of the University of Sydney . Bashir retired on 1 October 2014 and was succeeded as governor by General David Hu...
Go to Profile#8111
Radhika Nagpal
#8121
Overall Influence
Radhika Nagpal is an Indian-American computer scientist and researcher in the fields of self-organising computer systems, biologically-inspired robotics, and biological multi-agent systems. She is the Augustine Professor in Engineering in the Departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Computer Science at Princeton University. Formerly, she was the Fred Kavli Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University and the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. In 2017, Nagpal co-founded a robotics company under the name of Root Robotics. This educational company works to c...
Go to Profile#8112
Carlos Salinas de Gortari
#8122
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Carlos Salinas de Gortari is a Mexican economist and politician who served as 60th president of Mexico from 1988 to 1994. Affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party , earlier in his career he worked in the Secretariat of Programming and Budget, eventually becoming Secretary. He secured the party's nomination for the 1988 general election and was elected amid widespread accusations of electoral fraud.
Go to Profile#8113
Marcello Truzzi
#8123
Overall Influence
1935 - 2003 (68 years)
Marcello Truzzi was a professor of sociology at New College of Florida and later at Eastern Michigan University, founding co-chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal , a founder of the Society for Scientific Exploration, and director for the Center for Scientific Anomalies Research.
Go to Profile#8114
Masaaki Shirakawa
#8124
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
is a Japanese economist and the 30th Governor of the Bank of Japan , and professor at Aoyama Gakuin University. He is also a Director and Vice-Chairman of the Bank for International Settlements . Early life Shirakawa was born in Fukuoka. and he graduated from high school in Kokura.
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Henri Atlan
#8125
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Henri Atlan is a French biophysicist and philosopher. Early life and education Born to a Jewish family in French Algeria, Atlan gained degrees in medicine and biophysics at the University of Paris . He married Liliane Atlan in 1952; they had two children while living in Paris, Miri in 1953 and Michael in 1956. He then moved to the University of California, Berkeley working on ageing and mutation.
Go to Profile#8116
Martin Malia
#8126
Overall Influence
1924 - 2004 (80 years)
Martin Edward Malia was an American historian specializing in Russian history. He taught at the University of California at Berkeley from 1958 to 1991. He earned degrees from Yale University and Harvard University .
Go to Profile#8117
William Fulton
#8127
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
William Edgar Fulton is an American mathematician, specializing in algebraic geometry. Education and career He received his undergraduate degree from Brown University in 1961 and his doctorate from Princeton University in 1966. His Ph.D. thesis, written under the supervision of Gerard Washnitzer, was on The fundamental group of an algebraic curve.
Go to Profile#8118
Werner Nahm
#8128
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Werner Nahm is a German theoretical physicist. He has made contributions to mathematical physics and fundamental theoretical physics. Life and work Werner Nahm attended Gymnasium Philippinum Weilburg. After high school he studied from 1966 at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, where he earned his diploma in physics in 1970. He received his doctorate in 1972 at the University of Bonn, his dissertation was titled Analytical solution of the statistical bootstrap model, where he was then to 1975 as a post-doctoral student. From...
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Ray Allen
#8129
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Walter Ray Allen Jr. is an American former professional basketball player. He played 18 seasons in the National Basketball Association and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 2018. Allen is widely considered to be one of the greatest three-point shooters of all-time, and he held the record for most three-pointers made in a career from 2011 until 2021, when he was surpassed by Stephen Curry.
Go to Profile#8120
Henry Way Kendall
#8130
Overall Influence
1926 - 1999 (73 years)
Henry Way Kendall was an American particle physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990 jointly with Jerome Isaac Friedman and Richard E. Taylor "for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics."
Go to Profile#8121
Jeffrey I. Gordon
#8131
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Jeffrey Ivan Gordon is a biologist and the Dr. Robert J. Glaser Distinguished University Professor and Director of the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at Washington University in St. Louis. He is internationally known for his research on gastrointestinal development and how gut microbial communities affect normal intestinal function, shape various aspects of human physiology including our nutritional status, and affect predisposition to diseases. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine of the Na...
Go to Profile#8122
Arthur T. Benjamin
#8132
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Arthur T. Benjamin is an American mathematician who specializes in combinatorics. Since 1989 he has been a professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College, where he is the Smallwood Family Professor of Mathematics.
Go to Profile#8123
Albert R. Jonsen
#8133
Overall Influence
1931 - 2020 (89 years)
Albert R. Jonsen was one of the founders of the field of Bioethics. He was Emeritus Professor of Ethics in Medicine at the University of Washington, School of Medicine, where he was Chairman of the Department of Medical History and Ethics from 1987 to 1999. After retiring from UW, he returned to San Francisco, where he co-founded the Program in Medicine and Human Values at Sutter Health's California Pacific Medical Center in 2003.
Go to Profile#8124
Joan Tronto
#8134
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Joan Claire Tronto , is professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, and was previously professor of women's studies and political science at Hunter College and the Graduate School, City University of New York.
Go to Profile#8125
Kingsley Davis
#8135
Overall Influence
1908 - 1997 (89 years)
Kingsley Davis was an internationally recognized American sociologist and demographer. He was identified by the American Philosophical Society as one of the most outstanding social scientists of the twentieth century, and was a Hoover Institution senior research fellow.
Go to Profile#8126
Andrew Greeley
#8136
Overall Influence
1928 - 2013 (85 years)
Andrew M. Greeley was an American Catholic priest, sociologist, journalist and popular novelist. Greeley was a professor of sociology at the University of Arizona and the University of Chicago, and a research associate with the National Opinion Research Center . For many years, he wrote a weekly column for the Chicago Sun-Times and contributed regularly to The New York Times, the National Catholic Reporter, America, and Commonweal.
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Friedrich Katz
#8137
Overall Influence
1927 - 2010 (83 years)
Friedrich Katz was an Austrian-born anthropologist and historian who specialized in 19th- and 20th-century history of Latin America, particularly in the Mexican Revolution. "He was arguably Mexico's most widely regarded historian... The whole of the Mexican press, left, right and center, noted and lamented his passing." He served as co-director of the Mexican Studies Program at the University of Chicago, co-received the 1999 Bolton Prize for the best English-language book on Latin American History by The Conference on Latin American History, and was honored with the Order of the Aztec Eagle by the Government of Mexico.
Go to Profile#8128
Eavan Boland
#8138
Overall Influence
1944 - 2020 (76 years)
Eavan Aisling Boland was an Irish poet, author, and professor. She was a professor at Stanford University, where she had taught from 1996. Her work deals with the Irish national identity, and the role of women in Irish history. A number of poems from Boland's poetry career are studied by Irish students who take the Leaving Certificate. She was a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.
Go to Profile#8129
Maurice Druon
#8139
Overall Influence
1918 - 2009 (91 years)
Maurice Druon was a French novelist and a member of the Académie Française, of which he served as "Perpetual Secretary" between 1985 and 1999. Life and career Born in Paris, France, Druon was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrant Lazare Kessel and was brought up at La Croix-Saint-Leufroy in Normandy and educated at the lycée Michelet de Vanves. His father committed suicide in 1920 and his mother remarried in 1926; Maurice subsequently took the name of his adoptive father, the lawyer René Druon .
Go to Profile#8130
Sally Satel
#8140
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Sally L. Satel is an American psychiatrist based in Washington, D.C. She is a lecturer at Yale University School of Medicine, a visiting professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and an author.
Go to Profile#8131
Russ Salakhutdinov
#8141
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Ruslan "Russ" Salakhutdinov is a Canadian researcher of Tatar origin working in the field of artificial intelligence. He specializes in deep learning, probabilistic graphical models, and large-scale optimization.
Go to Profile#8132
Al Murray
#8142
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Alastair James Hay Murray , more commonly known as Al Murray, is an English comedian, actor, musician and writer. Murray was born in Buckinghamshire, where his father worked for British Rail. His paternal grandfather was the diplomat Ralph Murray, while his maternal grandfather was killed at the Battle of Dunkirk.
Go to Profile#8133
Mina Rees
#8143
Overall Influence
1902 - 1997 (95 years)
Mina Spiegel Rees was an American mathematician. She was the first female President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and head of the mathematics department of the Office of Naval Research of the United States. Rees was a pioneer in the history of computing and helped establish funding streams and institutional infrastructure for research. Rees was also the founding president and president emerita of the Graduate School and University Center at CUNY. She received the Public Welfare Medal, the highest honor of the National Academy of Sciences; the King's Medal for Ser...
Go to Profile#8134
Pamela Sue Anderson
#8144
Overall Influence
1955 - 2017 (62 years)
Pamela Sue Anderson was an American philosopher who specialized in philosophy of religion, feminist philosophy and continental philosophy. In 2007 she was an Official Fellow, Tutor in Philosophy and Christian Ethics, Dean, and Women's Advisor of Regent's Park College in the University of Oxford. Her former students include feminist philosopher Hanneke Canters.
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Keith R. Porter
#8145
Overall Influence
1912 - 1997 (85 years)
Keith Roberts Porter was a Canadian-American cell biologist. He created pioneering biology techniques and research using electron microscopy of cells. Porter also contributed to the development of other experimental methods for cell culture and nuclear transplantation. He was also responsible for naming the endoplasmic reticulum, conducting work on the 9 + 2 microtubule structure in the axoneme of cilia, and coining the term "microtrabecular lattice." In collaborations with other scientists, he contributed to the understanding of cellular structures and concepts such as compartmentalization, flagella, centrioles, fibrin, collagen, T-tubules and sarcoplasmic reticulum.
Go to Profile#8136
Jack Copeland
#8146
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Brian John Copeland is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and author of books on the computing pioneer Alan Turing. Education Copeland was educated at the University of Oxford, obtaining a Bachelor of Philosophy degree and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1978, where he undertook research on modal logic and non-classical logic supervised by Dana Scott.
Go to Profile#8137
Barry Jenkins
#8147
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Barry Jenkins is an American filmmaker. After making his filmmaking debut with the short film My Josephine , he directed his first feature film Medicine for Melancholy for which he received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Feature. He is also a member of The Chopstars collective as a creative collaborator.
Go to Profile#8138
Alan Gewirth
#8148
Overall Influence
1912 - 2004 (92 years)
Alan Gewirth was an American philosopher, a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, and author of Reason and Morality , Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Applications , The Community of Rights , Self-Fulfillment , and numerous other writings in moral philosophy and political philosophy.
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Stuart Madnick
#8149
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Stuart E. Madnick is an American computer scientist, and professor of information technology at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology school of engineering. He is the director of Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan , formerly called the MIT Interdisciplinary Consortium for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity .
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Peter Hegemann
#8150
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Peter Hegemann is a Hertie Senior Research Chair for Neurosciences and a Professor of Experimental Biophysics at the Department of Biology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. He is known for his discovery of channelrhodopsin, a type of ion channels regulated by light, thereby serving as a light sensor. This created the field of optogenetics, a technique that controls the activities of specific neurons by applying light. He has received numerous accolades, including the Rumford Prize, the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine, and the Albert Lasker Award for Ba...
Go to Profile#8141
Natasha Trethewey
#8151
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Natasha Trethewey is an American poet who served as United States Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014. She won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her 2006 collection Native Guard, and is a former Poet Laureate of Mississippi.
Go to Profile#8142
François Fillon
#8152
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
François Charles Armand Fillon is a French retired politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 2007 to 2012 under President Nicolas Sarkozy. He was the nominee of the Republicans , the country's largest centre-right political party, for the 2017 presidential election where he ranked third in the first round of voting.
Go to Profile#8143
Ernst-Günther Schenck
#8153
Overall Influence
1904 - 1998 (94 years)
Ernst-Günther Schenck was a German medical doctor and member of the SS in Nazi Germany. Because of a chance encounter with Adolf Hitler during the closing days of World War II, his memoirs proved historically valuable. His accounts of this period are prominent in the works of Joachim Fest and James P. O'Donnell regarding the end of Hitler's life, and were included in the film Downfall .
Go to Profile#8144
Helmuth Rilling
#8154
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Helmuth Rilling is a German choral conductor and an academic teacher. He is the founder of the Gächinger Kantorei , the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart , the Oregon Bach Festival , the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart and other Bach Academies worldwide, as well as the "Festival Ensemble Stuttgart" and the "Junges Stuttgarter Bach Ensemble" . He taught choral conducting at the Frankfurt Musikhochschule from 1965 to 1989 and led the Frankfurter Kantorei from 1969 to 1982.
Go to Profile#8145
Kaká
#8155
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite , commonly known as Kaká or Ricardo Kaká, is a Brazilian former professional footballer who played as an attacking midfielder. In his prime as a playmaker at AC Milan, a period marked by his creative passing, goal scoring and dribbles from midfield, Kaká is widely considered one of the best players of his generation. With success at club and international level, he is one of nine players to have won the FIFA World Cup, the UEFA Champions League and the Ballon d'Or.
Go to Profile#8146
Antjie Krog
#8156
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Antjie Krog is a South African writer and academic, best known for her Afrikaans poetry, her reporting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and her 1998 book Country of My Skull. In 2004, she joined the Arts faculty of the University of the Western Cape as Extraordinary Professor.
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Amihai Mazar
#8157
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Amihai "Ami" Mazar is an Israeli archaeologist. Born in Haifa, Israel , he has been since 1994 a professor at the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, holding the Eleazer Sukenik Chair in the Archaeology of Israel.
Go to Profile#8148
Tobias Wolff
#8158
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff is an American short story writer, memoirist, novelist, and teacher of creative writing. He is known for his memoirs, particularly This Boy's Life and In Pharaoh's Army . He has written four short story collections and two novels including The Barracks Thief , which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Wolff received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in September 2015.
Go to Profile#8149
Gregory Vlastos
#8159
Overall Influence
1907 - 1991 (84 years)
Gregory Vlastos was a preeminent scholar of ancient philosophy, and author of many works on Plato and Socrates. He transformed the analysis of classical philosophy by applying techniques of modern analytic philosophy to restate and evaluate the views of Socrates and Plato.
Go to Profile#8150
Grace Paley
#8160
Overall Influence
1922 - 2007 (85 years)
Grace Paley, Goodside was an American short story author, poet, teacher, and political activist. Paley wrote three critically acclaimed collections of short stories, which were compiled in the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist The Collected Stories in 1994. Her stories home in on the everyday conflicts and heartbreaks of city life, heavily informed by her childhood in the Bronx.
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