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
#9201
Adolf Muschg
#9211
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Adolf Muschg is a Swiss writer and professor of literature. Muschg was a member of the Gruppe Olten. Biography Adolf Muschg was born in Zollikon, canton of Zürich, Switzerland. He studied German studies, English studies and philosophy at the universities of Zürich and Cambridge and earned his doctoral degree with a work about Ernst Barlach.
Go to Profile#9202
George Dickie
#9212
Overall Influence
1926 - 2020 (94 years)
George Thomas Dickie was an American philosopher. He was a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at University of Illinois at Chicago. His specialities included aesthetics, philosophy of art, and Eighteenth Century theories of taste.
Go to Profile#9203
James W. Loewen
#9213
Overall Influence
1942 - 2021 (79 years)
James William Loewen was an American sociologist, historian, and author. He was best known for his 1995 book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Early life Loewen was born in Decatur, Illinois, on February 6, 1942. His father, David, was a medical director and physician from an immigrant Mennonite community; his mother, Winifred , was a librarian and teacher. Loewen was raised in Decatur, where he attended MacArthur High School and was a National Merit Scholar as a graduate in 1960.
Go to Profile#9204
Johan Olsen
#9214
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Johan Peder Olsen is a Norwegian political scientist, and professor emeritus in political science at the University of Bergen, known for his work on new institutionalism. Life and work Olsen obtained his MA in political science, with a minor in economics and political history, at the University of Oslo in 1967. In 1971 he obtained his PhD at the University of Bergen. He obtained an honorary doctorate from the Åbo Akademi, Finland in, 1988, from the University of Copenhagen in 1990. and from the Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2003.
Go to Profile#9205
Frank Rowlett
#9215
Overall Influence
1908 - 1998 (90 years)
Frank Byron Rowlett was an American cryptologist. Life and career Rowlett was born in Rose Hill, Lee County, Virginia and attended Emory & Henry College in Emory, Virginia. In 1929 he received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and chemistry. He was hired by William Friedman as a "junior cryptanalyst" for the Signals Intelligence Service on April Fools' Day 1930; shortly after, he was followed into SIS by Abraham Sinkov and Solomon Kullback.
Go to Profile#9206
G. Spencer-Brown
#9216
Overall Influence
1923 - 2016 (93 years)
George Spencer-Brown was an English polymath best known as the author of Laws of Form. He described himself as a "mathematician, consulting engineer, psychologist, educational consultant and practitioner, consulting psychotherapist, author, and poet".
Go to Profile#9207
Stephen Stigler
#9217
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Stephen Mack Stigler is the Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor at the Department of Statistics of the University of Chicago. He has authored several books on the history of statistics; he is the son of the economist George Stigler.
Go to Profile#9208
Allan H. Meltzer
#9218
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
Allan H. Meltzer was an American economist and Allan H. Meltzer Professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business and Institute for Politics and Strategy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Meltzer specialized on studying monetary policy and the US Federal Reserve System, and authored several academic papers and books on the development and applications of monetary policy, and about the history of central banking in the US. Together with Karl Brunner, he created the Shadow Open Market Committee: a monetarist council that deeply criticized the Federal Open Mark...
Go to Profile#9209
Noel Gallagher
#9219
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Noel Thomas David Gallagher is an English musician, singer and songwriter. He was the primary songwriter, lead guitarist and co-lead vocalist of the rock band Oasis until their split in 2009. After leaving Oasis, he formed Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds. He is one of the most successful songwriters in British music history, as the writer of eight UK number-one singles and co-writer of a further number one, as well as the sole or primary writer of ten UK number-one studio albums. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential songwriters in the history of British rock music, cit...
Go to Profile#9210
Marco van Basten
#9220
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Marcel "Marco" van Basten is a Dutch former football manager and player who played for Ajax and AC Milan, as well as the Netherlands national team. Widely regarded as one of the greatest footballers of all time, he scored 300 goals in a high-profile career, but played his last match in 1993, at the age of 28, due to an ankle injury which forced him to announce his retirement two years later. He was later the head coach of Ajax and the Netherlands national team.
Go to Profile#9211
Constantino Tsallis
#9221
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Constantino Tsallis is a naturalized Brazilian physicist of Greek descent, working in Rio de Janeiro at Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas , Brazil. Biography Tsallis was born in Greece, and grew up in Argentina, where he studied physics at Instituto Balseiro, in Bariloche. In 1974, he received a Doctorat d'État ès Sciences Physiques degree from the University of Paris-Sud. He moved to Brazil in 1975 with his wife and daughter.
Go to Profile#9212
Pavel Curtis
#9222
Overall Influence
Pavel Curtis is an American software architect at Microsoft who is best known for having founded and managed LambdaMOO, an online community. In the mid- to late 1980s Curtis developed and taught parts of the computer science course at the Center for Talented Youth summer program.
Go to Profile#9213
George Segal
#9223
Overall Influence
1924 - 2000 (76 years)
George Segal was an American painter and sculptor associated with the pop art movement. He was presented with the United States National Medal of Arts in 1999. Works Although Segal started his art career as a painter, his best known works are cast life-size figures and the tableaux the figures inhabited. In place of traditional casting techniques, Segal pioneered the use of plaster bandages as a sculptural medium. In this process, he first wrapped a model with bandages in sections, then removed the hardened forms and put them back together with more plaster to form a hollow shell. These ...
Go to Profile#9214
Augustin Banyaga
#9224
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Augustin Banyaga is a Rwandan-born Americann mathematician whose research fields include symplectic topology and contact geometry. He is currently a Professor of Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University.
Go to Profile#9215
Feryal Özel
#9225
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Feryal Özel is a Turkish-American astrophysicist born in Istanbul, Turkey, specializing in the physics of compact objects and high energy astrophysical phenomena. As of 2022, Özel is the Department Chair and a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Physics in Atlanta. She was previously a professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson, in the Astronomy Department and Steward Observatory.
Go to Profile#9216
Adrian Smith
#9226
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Sir Adrian Frederick Melhuish Smith, PRS is a British statistician who is chief executive of the Alan Turing Institute and president of the Royal Society. Early life and education Smith was born on 9 September 1946 in Dawlish. He was educated at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and University College London, where his PhD supervisor was Dennis Lindley.
Go to Profile#9217
Larry Holmes
#9227
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Larry Holmes is an American former professional boxer who competed from 1973 to 2002 and was world heavyweight champion from 1978 until 1985. He is often considered to be one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time. He grew up in Easton, Pennsylvania, which led to his boxing nickname of the "Easton Assassin".
Go to Profile#9218
Virgilio S. Almario
#9228
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Virgilio Senadren Almario , better known by his pen name Rio Alma, is a Filipino author, poet, critic, translator, editor, teacher, and cultural manager. He is a National Artist of the Philippines. He formerly served as the chairman of the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino , the government agency mandated to promote and standardize the use of the Filipino language. On January 5, 2017, Almario was also elected as the chairman of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts .
Go to Profile#9219
Rick Barry
#9229
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Richard Francis Dennis Barry III is an American retired professional basketball player who starred at the NCAA, American Basketball Association and National Basketball Association levels. Barry ranks among the most prolific scorers and all-around players in basketball history. He is the only one to lead the National Collegiate Athletic Association , ABA, and NBA in points per game in a season. He ranks as the all-time ABA scoring leader in regular season and postseason play, while his 36.3 points per game are the most in the NBA Finals history. Barry was also the only player to score at l...
Go to Profile#9220
Ramanathan V. Guha
#9230
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Ramanathan V. Guha is the creator of widely used web standards such as RSS, RDF and Schema.org. He is also responsible for products such as Google Custom Search. He was a co-founder of Epinions and Alpiri. He currently works at Google as a Google Fellow.
Go to Profile#9221
Paul Ernest
#9231
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Paul Ernest is a contributor to the social constructivist philosophy of mathematics. Life Paul Ernest is currently emeritus professor of the philosophy of mathematics education at Exeter University, UK. He is best known for his work on philosophical aspects of mathematics education and his contributions to developing a social constructivist philosophy of mathematics. He is currently working on questions about ethics in mathematics.
Go to Profile#9222
Sissela Bok
#9232
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Sissela Bok is a Swedish-born American philosopher and ethicist, the daughter of two Nobel Prize winners: Gunnar Myrdal who won the Economics prize with Friedrich Hayek in 1974, and Alva Myrdal who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982. She is considered one of the premier American women moral philosophers of the latter part of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#9223
Andrew N. Meltzoff
#9233
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Andrew N. Meltzoff is an American psychologist and an internationally recognized expert on infant and child development. His discoveries about infant imitation greatly advanced the scientific understanding of early cognition, personality and brain development.
Go to Profile#9224
Jean-Marc Fontaine
#9234
Overall Influence
1944 - 2019 (75 years)
Jean-Marc Fontaine was a French mathematician. He was one of the founders of p-adic Hodge theory. He was a professor at Paris-Sud 11 University from 1988 to his death. Life In 1962 Fontaine entered the École Polytechnique, from 1965 to 1971 was a researcher at CNRS and received his doctorate in 1972. From 1971 to 72 he was at the University of Paris VI and from 1972 to 1988 was at the University of Grenoble . From 1989 he was professor at the University of Paris-Sud XI in Orsay.
Go to Profile#9225
Donatella della Porta
#9235
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Donatella della Porta is an Italian sociologist and political scientist, who is Professor of political science and political sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore. She is known for her research in the areas of social movements, corruption, political violence, police and policies of public order. In 2022, she was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#9226
David Kolb
#9236
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
David Kolb is an American philosopher and the Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Bates College in Maine. Kolb received a B.A. from Fordham University in 1963 and an M.A. in 1965. He later received a M.Phil. from Yale University in 1970 and a Ph.D. in 1972. Kolb's Dissertation was titled "Conceptual Pluralism and Rationality." Most of Kolb's writing deals with "what it means to live with historical connections and traditions at a time when we can no longer be totally defined by that history." Professor Kolb taught at the University of Chicago before moving to Bates in 1977 ...
Go to Profile#9227
Robert L. Glass
#9237
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Robert L. Glass is an American software engineer and writer, known for his works on software engineering, especially on the measuring of the quality of software design and his studies of the state of the art of software engineering research.
Go to Profile#9228
Stephen L. Carter
#9238
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Stephen Lisle Carter is an American legal scholar who serves as the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He writes on legal and social issues. Early life and education Carter was born in Washington, D.C., the second of his parents' five children. He was raised in a family committed to public service. His mother worked as an executive assistant for Julian Bond and M. Carl Holman of the National Urban Coalition. An attorney turned administrator, his father was executive director of the Washington Urban League, and later a vice president at Cornell University. Carter's gr...
Go to Profile#9229
George Szekeres
#9239
Overall Influence
1911 - 2005 (94 years)
George Szekeres AM FAA was a Hungarian–Australian mathematician. Early years Szekeres was born in Budapest, Hungary, as Szekeres György and received his degree in chemistry at the Technical University of Budapest. He worked six years in Budapest as an analytical chemist. He married Esther Klein in 1937. Being Jewish, the family had to escape from the Nazi persecution so Szekeres took a job in Shanghai, China. There they lived through World War II, the Japanese occupation and the beginnings of the Communist revolution.
Go to Profile#9230
Yukari Fujimoto
#9240
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
is a manga researcher and professor of global Japanese studies at Meiji University. She was born in Kumamoto Prefecture. She was an editor for Chikuma Shobō. She is a manga critic, gender theorist, family theorist, current events critic, author, sexologist, and a liberal feminist. She is a member of the Agency for Cultural Affairs awards selection committee. She is a member of the Japanese National Diet Library legal deposit deliberation committee.
Go to Profile#9231
René König
#9241
Overall Influence
1906 - 1992 (86 years)
René König was a German sociologist. He was very influential on West German sociology after 1949. Born in Magdeburg, he 1925 took up Philosophy, Psychology, Ethnology, and Islamic Studies at the Universities of Vienna and Berlin. He gained his doctorate 1930 at the Berlin University. As an enemy of the Nazis, he could not obtain his post-doctoral degree in the Reich, so he emigrated to Switzerland in 1937 and passed the examination at the university of Zürich, 1938. By then, he was strongly influenced by Émile Durkheim, Maurice Halbwachs, and Marcel Mauss. 1949, he was called to the chair o...
Go to Profile#9232
Bobby Bowden
#9242
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Robert Cleckler Bowden was an American college football coach. Bowden coached the Florida State Seminoles of Florida State University from 1976 to 2009 and is considered one of the greatest college football coaches of all time for his accomplishments with the Seminoles.
Go to Profile#9233
Shimon Even
#9243
Overall Influence
1935 - 2004 (69 years)
Shimon Even was an Israeli computer science researcher. His main topics of interest included algorithms, graph theory and cryptography. He was a member of the Computer Science Department at the Technion since 1974. Shimon Even was the PhD advisor of Oded Goldreich, a prominent cryptographer.
Go to Profile#9234
Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri
#9244
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri is a Pakistani–Canadian Islamic scholar and former politician who founded Minhaj-ul-Quran International and Pakistan Awami Tehreek. He was also a professor of international constitutional law at the University of the Punjab. Qadri is also the founding chairman of various sub-organisations of Minhaj-ul-Quran International. He has been included in all editions for the rankings of The 500 Most Influential Muslims since its first edition in 2009.
Go to Profile#9235
Fred Foldvary
#9245
Overall Influence
1946 - 2021 (75 years)
Fred Emanuel Foldvary was a lecturer in economics at San Jose State University, California, and a research fellow at The Independent Institute. He previously taught at Santa Clara University and other colleges. He was also a commentator and senior editor for the online journal The Progress Report and an associate editor of the online journal Econ Journal Watch. He served on the board of directors for the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.
Go to Profile#9236
Donald Lynden-Bell
#9246
Overall Influence
1935 - 2018 (83 years)
Donald Lynden-Bell CBE FRS was a British theoretical astrophysicist. He was the first to determine that galaxies contain supermassive black holes at their centres, and that such black holes power quasars. Lynden-Bell was President of the Royal Astronomical Society and received numerous awards for his work, including the inaugural Kavli Prize for Astrophysics. He worked at the University of Cambridge for his entire career, where he was the first director of its Institute of Astronomy.
Go to Profile#9237
Nancy Scheper-Hughes
#9247
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Areas of Specialization: Medical Anthropology Nancy Scheper-Hughes is a program director and professor for medical anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She graduated from University of California at Berkeley with a B.A. in social science and a Ph.D. in anthropology. She also served a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health, Laboratory of Human Development at Harvard University. Her research has specialized in many areas, including, but not limited to: cultural forensic anthropology, human organ trafficking, invisible genocides, Pope Francis, violence, death squads, and epidemics.
Go to Profile#9238
Bruce Waltke
#9248
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Bruce K. Waltke is an American Reformed evangelical professor of Old Testament and Hebrew. He has held professorships in the Old Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary, Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida, and Knox Theological Seminary in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Go to Profile#9239
Joe Orlando
#9249
Overall Influence
1927 - 1998 (71 years)
Joseph Orlando was an Italian-American illustrator, writer, editor and cartoonist during a lengthy career spanning six decades. He was the associate publisher of Mad and the vice president of DC Comics, where he edited numerous titles and ran DC's Special Projects department.
Go to Profile#9240
Jerome E. Singer
#9250
Overall Influence
1934 - 2010 (76 years)
Jerome Everett Singer was the founding chair of the Medical and Clinical Psychology Department at Uniformed Services University. He is best known for his contributions to the two-factor theory of emotion. He also served as one of the fourteen members on the National Research Council committee on human performance in 1985. Singer played a role in the cognitive revival of modern psychology. His main area of expertise was the psychological and physiological effects of various types of stress.
Go to Profile#9241
Néstor Kirchner
#9251
Overall Influence
1950 - 2010 (60 years)
Néstor Carlos Kirchner Ostoić was an Argentine lawyer and politician who served as the President of Argentina from 2003 to 2007. A member of the Justicialist Party, he previously served as Governor of Santa Cruz Province from 1991 to 2003, and mayor of Río Gallegos from 1987 to 1991. He later served as the first ever First Gentleman of Argentina during the first tenure of his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. By the time he died in October 2010, he was First Gentlemen from 2007, President of the Justicialist Party and National Deputy from 2009, and Secretary General of UNASUR from May 2010.
Go to Profile#9242
Nurul Islam
#9252
Overall Influence
1929 - 2023 (94 years)
Nurul Islam was a Bangladeshi economist, philanthropist, and politician. Islam is famous for his contributions during the independence war of Bangladesh, as well as for his pivotal role in the economy and foreign affairs during the 1970’s as Cabinet Minister and Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission. He was the closest advisor to, and confidant of, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman throughout the 1960s and until the Prime Minister's assassination in 1975. Islam is responsible for establishing Bangladesh's economy, financial system, and trade relationships; his leadership laid the foundations for Bangladesh's unprecedented economic growth over the last 5 decades.
Go to Profile#9243
Keren Rice
#9253
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Keren D. Rice is a Canadian linguist. She is a professor of linguistics and serves as the Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Initiatives at the University of Toronto. Education and career Rice earned her PhD in 1976 from the University of Toronto, with a dissertation entitled, "Hare phonology."
Go to Profile#9244
Chenming Hu
#9254
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Chenming Calvin Hu is a Chinese-American electronic engineer who specializes in microelectronics. He is TSMC Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the electronic engineering and computer science department of the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States. In 2009, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers described him as a “microelectronics visionary … whose seminal work on metal-oxide semiconductor MOS reliability and device modeling has had enormous impact on the continued scaling of electronic devices”.
Go to Profile#9245
İlber Ortaylı
#9255
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
İlber Ortaylı is a Turkish historian and professor of history of Crimean Tatar origin at the MEF University, Galatasaray University in Istanbul and at Bilkent University in Ankara. In 2005, he was appointed as the director of the Topkapı Museum in Istanbul, until he retired in 2012.
Go to Profile#9246
Kenneth Binmore
#9256
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Kenneth George "Ken" Binmore, is an English mathematician, economist, and game theorist, a Professor Emeritus of Economics at University College London and a Visiting Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol. As a founder of modern economic theory of bargaining , he made important contributions to the foundations of game theory, experimental economics, evolutionary game theory and analytical philosophy. He took up economics after holding the Chair of Mathematics at the London School of Economics. The switch has put him at the forefront of developments in game theory. His other interests include political and moral philosophy, decision theory, and statistics.
Go to Profile#9247
Laurie L. Patton
#9257
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Laurie L. Patton is an American academic, author, and poet who serves as the 17th president of Middlebury College. Early life and education Patton was raised in Danvers, Massachusetts, and graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University, a doctorate from the University of Chicago, and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 2000.
Go to Profile#9248
Eric Idle
#9258
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Eric Idle is an English actor, comedian, musician and writer. He was a member of the British surreal comedy group Monty Python and the parody rock band the Rutles. Idle studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and joined Cambridge University Footlights. He reached stardom when he co-created and acted in the sketch series Monty Python's Flying Circus and the films Monty Python and the Holy Grail , Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life with John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, and Graham Chapman.
Go to Profile#9249
André Brink
#9259
Overall Influence
1935 - 2015 (80 years)
André Philippus Brink was a South African novelist, essayist and poet. He wrote in both Afrikaans and English and taught English at the University of Cape Town. In the 1960s Brink, Ingrid Jonker, Etienne Leroux and Breyten Breytenbach were key figures in the significant Afrikaans dissident intellectual and literary movement known as Die Sestigers . These writers sought to expose the Afrikaner people to world literature, to use the Afrikaans language to speak out against the extreme Afrikaner nationalist and white supremacist National Party-controlled government, and also to introduce literar...
Go to Profile#9250
Eamon Duffy
#9260
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
