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
#8601
Callista Roy
#8611
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Sister Callista Roy, CSJ is an American nun, nursing theorist, professor and author. She is known for creating the adaptation model of nursing. She was a nursing professor at Boston College before retiring in 2017. Roy was designated as a 2007 Living Legend by the American Academy of Nursing.
Go to Profile#8602
Janet L. Kolodner
#8612
Overall Influence
Janet Lynne Kolodner is an American cognitive scientist and learning scientist. She is a Professor of the Practice at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College and co-lead of the MA Program in Learning Engineering. She is also Regents' Professor Emerita in the School of Interactive Computing, College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She was Founding Editor in Chief of The Journal of the Learning Sciences and served in that role for 19 years. She was Founding Executive Officer of the International Society of the Learning Sciences . From August, 2010 through July, 2014...
Go to Profile#8603
Samuel Eto'o
#8613
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Samuel Eto'o Fils is a Cameroonian football administrator and former player who is the current president of the Cameroonian Football Federation since 11 December 2021. In his prime, Eto'o was regarded by pundits as one of the best strikers in the world, and he is regarded as one of the greatest African players of all time, winning the African Player of the Year a record four times: in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2010.
Go to Profile#8604
Trevor McDonald
#8614
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Sir Trevor Lawson McDonald is a Trinidadian-British newsreader and journalist, best known for his career as a news presenter with ITN. After working as a print and broadcast journalist in Trinidad, McDonald was employed by BBC Radio as a producer, based in London but still broadcasting to the Caribbean. In 1973, he began his long association with Independent Television News as a general reporter and was also ITN's first black reporter. McDonald was promoted in 1992 as the sole presenter of News at Ten and became a well-known face on British television screens.
Go to Profile#8605
Janet Biehl
#8615
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Janet Biehl is an American author, copyeditor, translator, and artist. She authored several books and articles associated with social ecology, the body of ideas developed and publicized by Murray Bookchin. Formerly an advocate of his antistatist political program, she broke with it publicly in 2011 and now identifies as a progressive Democrat.
Go to Profile#8606
Thomas Gilovich
#8616
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Thomas Dashiff Gilovich an American psychologist who is the Irene Blecker Rosenfeld Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. He has conducted research in social psychology, decision making, behavioral economics, and has written popular books on these subjects. Gilovich has collaborated with Daniel Kahneman, Richard Nisbett, Lee Ross and Amos Tversky. His articles in peer-reviewed journals on subjects such as cognitive biases have been widely cited. In addition, Gilovich has been quoted in the media on subjects ranging from the effect of purchases on happiness to perception of judgment in social situations.
Go to Profile#8607
Vern Paxson
#8617
Overall Influence
Vern Edward Paxson is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He also leads the Networking and Security Group at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California. His interests range from transport protocols to intrusion detection and worms. He is an active member of the Internet Engineering Task Force community and served as the chair of the IRTF from 2001 until 2005. From 1998 to 1999 he served on the IESG as Transport Area Director for the IETF.
Go to Profile#8608
Thomas D. Pollard
#8618
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Thomas Dean Pollard is a prominent educator, cell biologist and biophysicist whose research focuses on understanding cell motility through the study of actin filaments and myosin motors. He is Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology and a professor of cell biology and molecular biophysics & biochemistry at Yale University. He was dean of Yale's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 2010 to 2014, and president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies from 1996 to 2001.
Go to Profile#8609
Bernard Galler
#8619
Overall Influence
1928 - 2006 (78 years)
Bernard A. Galler was an American mathematician and computer scientist at the University of Michigan who was involved in the development of large-scale operating systems and computer languages including the MAD programming language and the Michigan Terminal System operating system.
Go to Profile#8610
Loren Graham
#8620
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Loren R. Graham is an American historian of science, particularly science in Russia. Career He has taught and published at Indiana University, Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University, where he is currently a research associate. He was a participant in one of the first academic exchange programs between the United States and the Soviet Union, studying at Moscow University in 1960-61.
Go to Profile#8611
Dmitry Bykov
#8621
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Dmitry Lvovich Bykov is a Russian writer, poet, literary critic and journalist. He is also known as biographer of Boris Pasternak, Bulat Okudzhava and Maxim Gorky. Biography Born into a Jewish family, his father was a prominent medical scholar, Leva Zilbertrud.
Go to Profile#8612
Raymond T. Odierno
#8622
Overall Influence
1954 - 2021 (67 years)
Raymond Thomas Odierno was an American military officer who served as a four-star general of the United States Army and as the 38th chief of staff of the Army. Prior to his service as chief of staff, Odierno commanded United States Joint Forces Command from October 2010 until its disestablishment in August 2011. He served as Commanding General, United States Forces – Iraq and its predecessor, Multi-National Force – Iraq, from September 2008 through September 2010.
Go to Profile#8613
Chaim L. Pekeris
#8623
Overall Influence
1908 - 1993 (85 years)
Chaim Leib Pekeris was an Israeli-American physicist and mathematician. He made notable contributions to geophysics and the spectral theory of many-electron atoms, in particular the helium atom. He was also one of the designers of the first computer in Israel, WEIZAC.
Go to Profile#8614
Dwight B. Heath
#8624
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Dwight B. Heath is Research Professor of Anthropology at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He has published extensively in many areas of anthropology, especially on the subject of alcohol drinking patterns and their relationship to culture. Heath earned his Ph.D. from Yale in 1959, as well as his undergraduate degree from Harvard. Heath has critiqued the viability of neo-prohibitionism as an effective approach to reducing alcohol abuse and consults on a diversity of issues with governments and scientific organizations around the world.
Go to Profile#8615
Leon Uris
#8625
Overall Influence
1924 - 2003 (79 years)
Leon Marcus Uris was an American author of historical fiction who wrote many bestselling books including Exodus and Trinity . Life and career Uris was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Jewish American parents Wolf William and Anna Uris. His father, a Polish-born immigrant, was a paperhanger, then a storekeeper. His mother was first-generation Russian American. William spent a year in Palestine after World War I before entering the United States. He derived his last name from Yerushalmi, meaning "man of Jerusalem". "He was basically a failure", Uris later said of his father. "I think his personality was formed by the harsh realities of being a Jew in Czarist Russia.
Go to Profile#8616
Akshay Kumar
#8626
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Akshay Hari Om Bhatia , known professionally as Akshay Kumar , is an Indian actor and film producer working in Hindi cinema. Referred to in the media as "Khiladi Kumar", through his career spanning over 30 years, Kumar has appeared in over 100 films and has won several awards, including a National Film Awards and two Filmfare Awards. He received the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian honour, from the Government of India in 2009. Kumar is one of the most prolific actors in Indian cinema. Forbes included Kumar in their lists of both highest-paid celebrities and highest-paid actors in the world from 2015 to 2020.
Go to Profile#8617
Arne Meurman
#8627
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Arne Meurman is a Swedish mathematician working on finite groups and vertex operator algebras. Currently, he is a professor at Lund University. He is best known for constructing the monster vertex algebra together with Igor Frenkel and James Lepowsky.
Go to Profile#8618
Hale Trotter
#8628
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Hale Freeman Trotter was a Canadian-American mathematician, known for the Lie–Trotter product formula, the Steinhaus–Johnson–Trotter algorithm, and the Lang–Trotter conjecture. He was born in Kingston, Ontario. He died in Princeton, New Jersey on January 17, 2022.
Go to Profile#8619
David Byrne
#8629
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
David Byrne is a Scottish-American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, actor, writer, music theorist, visual artist, and filmmaker. He was a founding member, principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of the American new wave band Talking Heads.
Go to Profile#8620
Chiara Nappi
#8630
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Chiara Rosanna Nappi is an Italian physicist. Her research areas have included mathematical physics, particle physics, and string theory. Academic career Nappi obtained the Diploma della Scuola di Perfezionamento in physics from the University of Naples in 1976. Her advisor was Giovanni Jona-Lasinio of the University of Rome. She moved to the United States to carry out academic research, first at Harvard University, and later at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. She has since been a professor of physics at the University of Southern California and Princeton University .
Go to Profile#8621
Rushworth Kidder
#8631
Overall Influence
1944 - 2012 (68 years)
Rushworth Moulton Kidder was an American author, ethicist, and professor. Kidder founded the Institute for Global Ethics in 1990, and is the author of Moral Courage and How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living. He was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. He worked as a columnist and editor for The Christian Science Monitor. Kidder died in 2012 of natural causes in Naples, Florida at the age of 67. Kidder earned a doctorate from Columbia University in English and comparative literature and wrote the foreword to Compassion Wins, by Godfrey John. He wrote an award ...
Go to Profile#8622
Dan Zahavi
#8632
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Dan Zahavi is a Danish philosopher. He is currently a professor of philosophy at University of Copenhagen. Biography Dan Zahavi was born in Copenhagen, Denmark to an Israeli father and a Danish mother. He initially studied phenomenology at the University of Copenhagen. He obtained his PhD in 1994 from the Husserl Archives at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium, with Rudolf Bernet as his doctoral supervisor. In 1999 he defended his Danish Disputats at the University of Copenhagen. In 2002, at the age of 34, he became Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen.
Go to Profile#8623
Wolfgang Tillmans
#8633
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Wolfgang Tillmans is a German photographer. His diverse body of work is distinguished by observation of his surroundings and an ongoing investigation of the photographic medium’s foundations. Tillmans was the first photographer, and first non-British person, to be awarded the Turner Prize. He has been the subject of large-scale retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern and Moderna Museet. In 2023, Tillmans was named one of the most influential people in the world by Time. He lives in Berlin and London.
Go to Profile#8624
Paul Taylor
#8634
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Paul Belville Taylor Jr. was an American dancer and choreographer. He was one of the last living members of the third generation of America's modern dance artists. He founded the Paul Taylor Dance Company in 1954 in New York City.
Go to Profile#8625
Geoffroy de Lagasnerie
#8635
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Geoffroy de Lagasnerie is a French far-left philosopher and sociologist. He is the author of several books, articles and lectures pertaining to social and political philosophy, epistemology and critical theory, and the sociology of culture and intellectual life; with a particular interest in the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault.
Go to Profile#8626
Steve Fuller
#8636
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Steve William Fuller is an American social philosopher in the field of science and technology studies. He has published in the areas of social epistemology, academic freedom, and the subjects of intelligent design and transhumanism.
Go to Profile#8627
Andrew Linzey
#8637
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Andrew Linzey is an English Anglican priest, theologian, and prominent figure in Christian vegetarianism. He is a member of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford, and held the world's first academic post in Ethics, Theology and Animal Welfare, the Bede Jarret Senior Research Fellowship at Blackfriars Hall.
Go to Profile#8628
Jane H. Hill
#8638
Overall Influence
1939 - 2018 (79 years)
Frances Jane Hassler Hill was an American anthropologist and linguist who worked extensively with Native American languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family and anthropological linguistics of North American communities.
Go to Profile#8629
Juan Rosai
#8639
Overall Influence
1940 - 2020 (80 years)
Juan Rosai was an Italian-born American physician who contributed to clinical research and education in the specialty of surgical pathology. He was the principal author and editor of a major textbook in that field, and he characterized novel medical conditions such as Rosai-Dorfman disease and the desmoplastic small round cell tumor. Rosai is also well-known because of his role as teacher, mentor and consultant to many American and international surgical pathologists.
Go to Profile#8630
Kurt Semm
#8640
Overall Influence
1927 - 2003 (76 years)
Kurt Karl Stephan Semm was a German gynecologist and pioneer in minimally invasive surgery. He has been called "the father of modern laparoscopy". Biography Semm was born to Margarete and Karl Semm in Munich where he attended the Realgymnasium. At the end of World War II he was drafted for the Wehrmacht at the age of 16 and became briefly a Soviet prisoner of war. Upon his return he worked as a toolmaker, before, in 1946, he was able to begin his medical studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He received his MD degree in 1951 and worked at the II. Universitäts-Frauenklinik München.
Go to Profile#8631
Morton Halperin
#8641
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Morton H. Halperin is an American analyst who deals with U.S. foreign policy, arms control, civil liberties, and the workings of bureaucracies. He served in the Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, and Obama administrations. He has taught at Harvard University and as a visitor at other universities including Columbia, George Washington University, and Yale.
Go to Profile#8632
Robert L. Cook
#8642
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Robert L. Cook is a computer graphics researcher and developer, and the co-creator of the RenderMan rendering software. His contributions are considered to be highly influential in the field of animated arts.
Go to Profile#8633
Robert French
#8643
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Robert Shenton French is an Australian lawyer and judge who served as the twelfth Chief Justice of Australia, in office from 2008 to 2017. He has been the chancellor of the University of Western Australia since November 2017.
Go to Profile#8634
Mehran Sahami
#8644
Overall Influence
Mehran Sahami is an Iranian-born American computer scientist, engineer, and professor. He is the James and Ellenor Chesebrough Professor in the School of Engineering, and Professor and Associate Chair for Education in the Computer Science department at Stanford University. He is also the Robert and Ruth Halperin University Fellow in Undergraduate Education.
Go to Profile#8635
Miles Reid
#8645
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Miles Anthony Reid FRS is a mathematician who works in algebraic geometry. Education Reid studied the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge and obtained his Ph.D. in 1973 under the supervision of Peter Swinnerton-Dyer and Pierre Deligne.
Go to Profile#8636
Lucian Pye
#8646
Overall Influence
1921 - 2008 (87 years)
Lucian W. Pye was an American political scientist, sinologist and comparative politics expert considered one of the leading China scholars in the United States. Educated at Carleton College and Yale University, Pye chose to focus on the characteristics of specific cultures in forming theories of political development of modernization of Third World nations, rather than seeking universal and overarching theories like most political scientists. As a result, he became regarded as one of the foremost contemporary practitioners and proponents of the concept of political culture and political psychology.
Go to Profile#8637
Robert Peter Gale
#8647
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Robert Peter Gale is an American physician and medical researcher. He is known for research in leukemia and other bone marrow disorders . Education Gale received his A.B. degree with honors in biology and chemistry from Hobart College in 1966 and his M.D. degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1970 . His postgraduate medical training was at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1970 to 1973. In 1976 he received a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from the University of California at Los Angeles following doctoral work focusing on cancer immunology . His postdoctoral studies at UCLA were funded by the U.S.
Go to Profile#8638
Valentin Gapontsev
#8648
Overall Influence
1939 - 2021 (82 years)
Valentin P. Gapontsev was a Russian-American laser physicist, billionaire, and the founder, CEO, and chairman of IPG Photonics. At the time of his death, his net worth was estimated at US$2.3 billion.
Go to Profile#8639
Gordon Cooper
#8649
Overall Influence
1927 - 2004 (77 years)
Leroy Gordon "Gordo" Cooper Jr. was an American aerospace engineer, test pilot, United States Air Force pilot, and the youngest of the seven original astronauts in Project Mercury, the first human space program of the United States. Cooper learned to fly as a child, and after service in the United States Marine Corps during World War II, he was commissioned into the United States Air Force in 1949. After service as a fighter pilot, he qualified as a test pilot in 1956, and was selected as an astronaut in 1959.
Go to Profile#8640
Bruno Tonioli
#8650
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Bruno Tonioli is a British-Italian television personality, choreographer and dancer. He has judged on the British television talent shows Strictly Come Dancing , DanceX and Britain's Got Talent , and the American television talent shows Dancing with the Stars and Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann .
Go to Profile#8641
Francine Houben
#8651
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Francine Marie Jeanne Houben is a Dutch architect. She graduated with cum laude honours from the Delft University of Technology. She is the founding partner and creative director of Mecanoo architecten, based in Delft, The Netherlands.
Go to Profile#8642
Michael Phelps
#8652
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Michael Fred Phelps II is an American former competitive swimmer. He is the most successful and most decorated Olympian of all time with a total of 28 medals. Phelps also holds the all-time records for Olympic gold medals , Olympic gold medals in individual events , and Olympic medals in individual events . At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Phelps tied the record of eight medals of any color at a single Games, held by gymnast Alexander Dityatin, by winning six gold and two bronze medals. Four years later, when he won eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games, he broke fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz's 1972 record of seven first-place finishes at any single Olympic Games.
Go to Profile#8643
Kathryn D. Sullivan
#8653
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Kathryn Dwyer Sullivan is an American geologist, oceanographer, and former NASA astronaut and US Navy officer. She was a crew member on three Space Shuttle missions. A graduate of University of California, Santa Cruz, in the United States, and Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada—where she earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in geology in 1978—Sullivan was selected as one of the six women among the 35 astronaut candidate in NASA Astronaut Group 8, the first group to include women. During her training, she became the first woman to be certified to wear a United States Air Force pressur...
Go to Profile#8644
Helen Mirren
#8654
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Dame Helen Mirren is a British actor. She is the recipient of numerous accolades and is the only performer to have achieved both the American and the British Triple Crowns of Acting. Mirren has received an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, a Tony Award and a Laurence Olivier Award for portraying the same character in The Audience, as well as three British Academy Television Awards and four Primetime Emmy Awards for her role as DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect.
Go to Profile#8645
Al Jourgensen
#8655
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Alain David Jourgensen is a Cuban-American singer, musician and music producer. Closely related with the independent record label Wax Trax! Records, his musical career spans four decades. He is the frontman and lyricist of the industrial metal band Ministry, which he founded in 1981 and of which he remains the only constant member. He was the primary musician of several Ministry-related projects, such as Revolting Cocks, Lard, and Buck Satan and the 666 Shooters. Jourgensen is a prominent figure in industrial music, influencing numerous other groups and musicians, both in alternative and indu...
Go to Profile#8646
Leonard Berkowitz
#8656
Overall Influence
1926 - 2016 (90 years)
Leonard Berkowitz was an American social psychologist best known for his research on altruism and human aggression. He originated the cognitive neoassociation model of aggressive behavior, which was created to help explain instances of aggression for which the frustration-aggression hypothesis could not account.
Go to Profile#8647
Michael S. Gottlieb
#8657
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Michael Stuart Gottlieb is an American physician and immunologist known for his 1981 identification of acquired immune deficiency syndrome as a new disease, and for his HIV/AIDS research, HIV/AIDS activism, and philanthropic efforts associated with HIV/AIDS treatment.
Go to Profile#8648
Mark S. Miller
#8658
Overall Influence
Mark S. Miller is an American computer scientist. He is known for his work as one of the participants in the 1979 hypertext project known as Project Xanadu; for inventing Miller columns; and the open-source coordinator of the E programming language. He also designed the Caja compiler. Miller is a Senior Research Fellow at the Foresight Institute.
Go to Profile#8649
Liane Gabora
#8659
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Liane Gabora is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia - Okanagan. She is known for her theory of the "Origin of the modern mind through conceptual closure," which built on her earlier work on "Autocatalytic closure in a cognitive system: A tentative scenario for the origin of culture."
Go to Profile#8650
David B. Sentelle
#8660
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
David Bryan Sentelle is a Senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Early life, family and education David Sentelle was born in Canton, North Carolina. His father was a mill worker. Sentelle was raised in Candler, North Carolina. He graduated from Enka High School in 1961, where he was a classmate of Thomas A. Furness III, who is the "Grandfather of Virtual Reality."
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