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
#8851
Mary Haas
#8861
Overall Influence
1910 - 1996 (86 years)
Mary Rosamond Haas was an American linguist who specialized in North American Indian languages, Thai, and historical linguistics. She served as president of the Linguistic Society of America. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#8852
Henry Stommel
#8862
Overall Influence
1920 - 1992 (72 years)
Henry Melson Stommel was a major contributor to the field of physical oceanography. Beginning in the 1940s, he advanced theories about global ocean circulation patterns and the behavior of the Gulf Stream that form the basis of physical oceanography today. Widely recognized as one of the most influential and productive oceanographers of his time, Stommel was both a groundbreaking theoretician and an astute, seagoing observer.
Go to Profile#8853
Lilly Singh
#8863
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Lilly Saini Singh is a Canadian YouTuber, television host, comedian, actress and writer. Singh began making YouTube videos in 2010. She originally appeared under the pseudonym Superwoman , her YouTube username until 2019. In 2016, she was included in Forbes list of world's highest paid YouTubers ranking third and earning a reported $7.5 million. By 2017, she was ranked tenth on the Forbes list of the world's highest-paid YouTube stars, earning a reported $10.5 million; as of February 2022 she has 14.7 million subscribers and over three billion video views. Forbes named her one of the 40 most powerful people in comedy in 2019.
Go to Profile#8854
Pierre Boulle
#8864
Overall Influence
1912 - 1994 (82 years)
Pierre François Marie Louis Boulle was a French author. He is best known for two works, The Bridge over the River Kwai and Planet of the Apes , that were both made into award-winning films. Boulle was an engineer serving as a secret agent with the Free French in Singapore, when he was captured and subjected to two years' forced labour. He used these experiences in The Bridge over the River Kwai, about the notorious Death Railway, which became an international bestseller. The film, named The Bridge on the River Kwai, by David Lean won seven Oscars, and Boulle was credited with writing the scr...
Go to Profile#8855
Kenji Fukaya
#8865
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Kenji Fukaya is a Japanese mathematician known for his work in symplectic geometry and Riemannian geometry. His many fundamental contributions to mathematics include the discovery of the Fukaya category. He is a permanent faculty member at the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics and a professor of mathematics at Stony Brook University.
Go to Profile#8856
Michael Cook
#8866
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Michael Allan Cook FBA is a British historian and scholar of Islamic history. Cook is the general editor of The New Cambridge History of Islam. Biography Michael Cook developed an early interest in Turkey and Ottoman history and studied history and oriental studies at King's College, Cambridge 1959-1963 and did postgraduate studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London 1963–1966. He was lecturer in Economic History with reference to the Middle East at SOAS 1966-1984 and reader in the History of the Near and Middle East 1984–1986. In 1986, he was appointed Cleveland E.
Go to Profile#8857
Michael Otsuka
#8867
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Michael H. Otsuka is an American left-libertarian political philosopher and Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Career Otsuka earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in politics from Balliol College, Oxford, under the direction of G. A. Cohen, on a Marshall Scholarship, after graduating from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in political science summa cum laude in 1986.
Go to Profile#8858
Ruud Gullit
#8868
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Ruud Gullit is a Dutch former footballer and subsequent manager who played professionally in the 1980s and 1990s as a defender, midfielder or forward. In 2004, he was named one of the Top 125 greatest living footballers as part of FIFA's 100th anniversary celebration.
Go to Profile#8859
Randal L. Schwartz
#8869
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Randal L. Schwartz , also known as merlyn, is an American author, system administrator and programming consultant. He has written several books on the Perl programming language, and plays a promotional role within the Perl community. He was a co-host of FLOSS Weekly.
Go to Profile#8860
Warren Mosler
#8870
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Warren Mosler is an American hedge fund manager and entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of the Center for Full Employment And Price Stability at University of Missouri-Kansas City. and the founder of Mosler Automotive.
Go to Profile#8861
Thomas Jessell
#8871
Overall Influence
1951 - 2019 (68 years)
Thomas Michael Jessell was the Claire Tow Professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at Columbia University in New York and a prominent developmental neuroscientist. In 2018, Columbia University announced his termination from his administrative positions after an internal investigation uncovered violations of university policies. He died shortly after from a rapidly neurodegenerative condition diagnosed as progressive supranuclear palsy.
Go to Profile#8862
Kendall Walton
#8872
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Kendall Lewis Walton is an American philosopher, the Emeritus Charles Stevenson Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Art and Design at the University of Michigan. His work mainly deals with theoretical questions about the arts and issues of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of language. His book Mimesis as Make Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts develops a theory of make-believe and uses it to understand the nature and varieties of representation in the arts. He has also developed an account of photography as transparent, defending the idea t...
Go to Profile#8863
Cecil Balmond
#8873
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
#8864
Robert Parr
#8874
Overall Influence
1921 - 2017 (96 years)
Robert Ghormley Parr was an American theoretical chemist who was a professor of chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Career Parr received an A. B. degree magna cum laude from Brown University in 1942, and then entered the University of Minnesota, receiving a Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 1947. He joined the faculty at Minnesota upon receiving his Ph.D. and remained there one year. In 1948 he moved to the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, becoming a full professor in 1957. In 1962 he moved to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland...
Go to Profile#8865
C. Robert Cloninger
#8875
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Claude Robert Cloninger is an American psychiatrist and geneticist noted for his research on the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual foundation of both mental health and mental illness. He previously held the Wallace Renard Professorship of Psychiatry, and served as professor of psychology and genetics, as well as director of the Sansone Family Center for Well-Being at Washington University in St. Louis. Cloninger is a member of the evolutionary, neuroscience, and statistical genetics programs of the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences at Washington University, and is rec...
Go to Profile#8866
Stuart A. Rice
#8876
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Stuart Alan Rice is an American theoretical chemist and physical chemist. He is well known as a theoretical chemist who also does experimental research, having spent much of his career working in multiple areas of physical chemistry. He is currently the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. During his tenure at the University of Chicago, Rice has trained more than 100 Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers. He received the National Medal of Science in 1999.
Go to Profile#8867
Raymond Boudon
#8877
Overall Influence
1934 - 2013 (79 years)
Raymond Boudon was a sociologist, philosopher and Professor in the Paris-Sorbonne University. Career With Alain Touraine, Michel Crozier and Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Boudon is one of the leading French sociologists of the last quarter of the 20th century. He is known for his research on social mobility and inequality of opportunities as well as for his defense of methodological individualism.
Go to Profile#8868
Robert W. White
#8878
Overall Influence
1904 - 2001 (97 years)
Robert W. White was an American psychologist whose professional interests centered on the study of personality, both normal and abnormal. His book The Abnormal Personality, published in 1948, became the standard textbook on Abnormal Psychology.
Go to Profile#8869
Mary Zimmerman
#8879
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Mary Zimmerman is an American theatre and opera director and playwright from Nebraska. She is an ensemble member of the Lookingglass Theatre Company, the Manilow Resident Director at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, and also serves as the Jaharis Family Foundation Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University.
Go to Profile#8870
Eugene Sledge
#8880
Overall Influence
1923 - 2001 (78 years)
Eugene Bondurant Sledge was a United States Marine, university professor, and author. His 1981 memoir With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa chronicled his combat experiences during World War II and was used as source material for the Ken Burns PBS documentary The War , as well as the HBO miniseries The Pacific , in which he is portrayed by Joseph Mazzello.
Go to Profile#8871
Marge Piercy
#8881
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Marge Piercy is an American progressive activist, feminist, and writer. Her work includes Woman on the Edge of Time; He, She and It, which won the 1993 Arthur C. Clarke Award; and Gone to Soldiers, a New York Times Best Seller and a sweeping historical novel set during World War II. Piercy's work is rooted in her Jewish heritage, Communist social and political activism, and feminist ideals.
Go to Profile#8872
Trisha Brown
#8882
Overall Influence
1936 - 2017 (81 years)
Trisha Brown was an American choreographer and dancer, and one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater and the postmodern dance movement. Brown’s dance/movement method, with which she and her dancers train their bodies, remains pervasively impactful within international postmodern dance.
Go to Profile#8873
Victor Ambros
#8883
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Victor R. Ambros is an American developmental biologist who discovered the first known microRNA . He is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts. Background Ambros was born in New Hampshire. His father was a Polish war refugee and Victor grew up on a small dairy farm in Hartland, Vermont in a family of eight children, and went to school at Woodstock Union High School. He received his BS in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and completed his PhD in 1979 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under the supervision of Nobel laureate David Baltimore.
Go to Profile#8874
C. Boyden Gray
#8884
Overall Influence
1943 - 2023 (80 years)
Clayland Boyden Gray was an American lawyer and diplomat who served as White House Counsel from 1981 to 1993 and as U.S. Ambassador to the European Union from 2006 to 2007. He was a founding partner of the Washington, D.C.–based law firm Boyden Gray & Associates LLP.
Go to Profile#8875
Joseph Rykwert
#8885
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Joseph Rykwert CBE is Paul Philippe Cret Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, and one of the foremost architectural historians and critics of his generation. He has spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom and America. He has taught the history and theory of architecture at several institutions in Europe and North America. Rykwert is the author of many influential works on architecture, including The Idea of a Town , On Adam's House in Paradise , The Dancing Column and The Seduction of Place . All his books have been translated into several langua...
Go to Profile#8876
Uskali Mäki
#8886
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Ismo Uskali Mäki is a Finnish professor in the Department of Political and Economic Studies at the University of Helsinki. He is also director of the Trends and tensions in Intellectual Integration centre, which was recently nominated "Finnish Centre of Excellence" in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Previous posts and roles have included his being a professor of philosophy at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam where he directed the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics and his being the editor of the Journal of Economic Methodology. His main research interests lie in the met...
Go to Profile#8877
Chevy Chase
#8887
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase is an American comedian, actor, and writer. He became the breakout cast member in the first season of Saturday Night Live , where his recurring Weekend Update segment became a staple of the show. As both a performer and a writer on the series, he earned two Primetime Emmy Awards out of four nominations.
Go to Profile#8878
Susan Sontag
#8888
Overall Influence
1933 - 2004 (71 years)
Susan Lee Sontag was an American writer, critic, and public intellectual. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. Her best-known works include the critical works Against Interpretation , On Photography , Illness as Metaphor and Regarding the Pain of Others, as well as the fictional works The Way We Live Now , The Volcano Lover , and In America .
Go to Profile#8879
Richard E. Petty
#8889
Overall Influence
Richard E. Petty is university professor of psychology at Ohio State University. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from Ohio State in 1977. After graduation Richard E. Petty went on to start his academic career as the assistant professor of psychology at the University of Missouri, and in 1985 he was named the Frederick A. Middlebush Professor of Psychology. In 1987 he returned to Ohio State University for an appointment as a professor of psychology and director of the Social Psychology Doctoral Program and has been a distinguished university professor since 1998. He served as chai...
Go to Profile#8880
Daniel N. Robinson
#8890
Overall Influence
1937 - 2018 (81 years)
Daniel Nicholas Robinson was an American psychologist who was a professor of psychology at Georgetown University and later in his life became a fellow of the faculty of philosophy at Oxford University.
Go to Profile#8881
Vittorio Hösle
#8891
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Vittorio Hösle is an Italian-born German philosopher. He has authored works including Hegels System , Moral und Politik , and Der philosophische Dialog . He has been in the United States since 1999, at the University of Notre Dame where he is the Paul Kimball Professor of Arts and Letters . Since 2008, he has also served as the founding Director of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study.
Go to Profile#8882
Alan G. Gross
#8892
Overall Influence
1936 - 2020 (84 years)
Alan G. Gross was a professor of rhetoric and Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities where he also held appointments in the Center for Philosophy of Science, and in the rhetoric, scientific, and technical communication graduate program, the latter of which he was a founding faculty member.
Go to Profile#8883
Prem Saran Satsangi
#8893
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Prem Saran Satsangi is the eighth and current Sant Satguru of Radha Soami Sect, Dayalbagh. He holds the Emeritus Chair from the East of the Integrated East-West Forum at The Science of Consciousness Conferences since 2012. He is the chairman of Advisory Committee on Education, Dayalbagh Educational Institute.
Go to Profile#8884
Laurence Iannaccone
#8894
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Laurence Robert Iannaccone is a Professor of Economics at Chapman University, Argyros School of Business and Economics, Orange County, California. Before moving to Chapman in 2009 he was a Koch Professor of Economics at George Mason University. He has established "Religion, Economics, and Culture", an interdisciplinary "Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture" , and a new "Consortium for the Economic Study of Religion" . He is currently working on two books on the economics of religion. He is considered one of the pioneers of the field, and one of its most staunch advoca...
Go to Profile#8885
Francesco Totti
#8895
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Francesco Totti is an Italian former professional footballer who played solely for Roma and the Italy national team. A creative offensive playmaker who could play as an attacking midfielder and as a forward , renowned for his vision, technique, and goalscoring ability, Totti is considered to be one of the best players of his generation.
Go to Profile#8886
Jared Bernstein
#8896
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Jared Bernstein is an American economist who is the chair of the United States Council of Economic Advisers. He is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. From 2009 to 2011, Bernstein was the chief economist and economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden in the Obama Administration. In 2008, Michael D. Shear described Bernstein as a progressive and "a strong advocate for workers".
Go to Profile#8887
James C. Kaufman
#8897
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
#8888
Raghu Ramakrishnan
#8898
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Raghu Ramakrishnan is a researcher in the areas of database and information management. He is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft. He has been a Vice President and Research Fellow for Yahoo! Inc. Ramakrishnan spent 22 years as a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. With Johannes Gehrke, he authored the popular textbook Database Management Systems, also known as the "Cow Book".
Go to Profile#8889
Deion Sanders
#8899
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Deion Luwynn Sanders is an American football coach and former professional football and baseball player. Sanders serves as the head football coach at the University of Colorado Boulder. Nicknamed "Neon Deion" and "Prime Time" during his playing career and "Coach Prime" during his coaching career, he played in the National Football League for 14 seasons with the Atlanta Falcons, the San Francisco 49ers, the Dallas Cowboys, the Washington Redskins, and the Baltimore Ravens as a cornerback and return specialist. Sanders also played nine seasons in Major League Baseball with the New York Yankees, the Atlanta Braves, the Cincinnati Reds, and the San Francisco Giants.
Go to Profile#8890
Graham Kennedy
#8900
Overall Influence
1934 - 2005 (71 years)
Graham Cyril Kennedy AO was an Australian entertainer, comedian and variety performer, as well as a personality and star of radio, theatre, television and film. He often performed in the style of vaudevillian and radio comedy star Roy Rene and was often called "Gra Gra" .
Go to Profile#8891
Rebekah Mercer
#8901
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Rebekah Mercer is an American heiress, Republican political donor, and director of the Mercer Family Foundation. Mercer began overseeing day-to-day operations of political projects for the Mercer family when the Mercers became involved in conservative causes. Her father, billionaire Robert Mercer, said in November 2017 that he had sold his stake in the news site Breitbart to his daughters. In August 2018, she funded and co-founded the social networking service Parler.
Go to Profile#8892
Roger Conant
#8902
Overall Influence
1909 - 2003 (94 years)
Roger Conant was an American herpetologist, author, educator and conservationist. He was Director Emeritus of the Philadelphia Zoo and adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico. He wrote one of the first comprehensive field guides for North American reptiles in 1958 entitled: A Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern and Central North America, in the Peterson Field Guide series.
Go to Profile#8893
Sydney Shoemaker
#8903
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Sydney Sharpless Shoemaker was an American philosopher. He was the Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University and is well known for his contributions to philosophy of mind and metaphysics.
Go to Profile#8894
William J. Rutter
#8904
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
William J. Rutter is an American biochemist who cofounded the early biotechnology company Chiron Corporation together with Edward Penhoet and Pablo DT Valenzuela. As chairman of the department of biochemistry and biophysics of the University of California, San Francisco, Rutter helped establish that department as a leader in the academic side of the biotechnology during the San Francisco Bay Area biotech boom of the 1980s.
Go to Profile#8895
William Kumuyi
#8905
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
William Folorunso Kumuyi is the founder and General Superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry situated at Gbagada, Lagos, Nigeria. He is the author of several Christian books and devotionals.
Go to Profile#8896
Richard Musgrave
#8906
Overall Influence
1910 - 2007 (97 years)
Richard Abel Musgrave was an American economist of German heritage. His most cited work is The Theory of Public Finance , described as "the first English-language treatise in the field," and "a major contribution to public finance thought."
Go to Profile#8897
Cyrus Vance Jr.
#8907
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Cyrus Roberts Vance Jr. is an American attorney and politician who served as the District Attorney of New York County, New York, also known as the Manhattan District Attorney. He was previously a principal partner at the law firm of Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, Anello, & Bohrer, P.C. He is the son of Cyrus Vance Sr., former Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter. Vance did not seek reelection as District Attorney in the 2021 election, and was succeeded by Alvin Bragg. He is currently a partner at Baker McKenzie.
Go to Profile#8898
Manindra Agrawal
#8908
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Manindra Agrawal is an Indian computer scientist and professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He was the recipient of the first Infosys Prize for Mathematics, the Godel Prize in 2006; and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Mathematical Sciences in 2003. He has been honoured with Padma Shri, India's 4th highest civilian award, in 2013.
Go to Profile#8899
Boris Khesin
#8909
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Boris Aronovich Khesin is a Russian and Canadian mathematician working on infinite-dimensional Lie groups, Poisson geometry and hydrodynamics. He is a professor at the University of Toronto. Khesin obtained his Ph.D. from Moscow State University in 1990 under the supervision of Vladimir Arnold .
Go to Profile#8900
David Croft
#8910
Overall Influence
1922 - 2011 (89 years)
Major David John Croft, was an English television comedy screenwriter, producer and director. He produced and wrote a string of BBC sitcoms with partners Jimmy Perry and Jeremy Lloyd, including Dad's Army, Are You Being Served?, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Hi-de-Hi! and 'Allo 'Allo!
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