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
#9501
Charles Curran
#9511
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Charles E. Curran is an American moral theologian and Catholic priest. He currently serves at Southern Methodist University as the Elizabeth Scurlock University Professor of Human Values. Biography Curran grew up in Rochester, New York, and was ordained there in 1958 for the Diocese of Rochester. After intensive graduate work and earning two doctorates in theology in Rome, Curran taught at the seminary in Rochester, New York. In 1965 he joined the theology faculty at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Contrary to some sources, he did not serve as a peritus or expert at the...
Go to Profile#9502
Israr Ahmed
#9512
Overall Influence
1932 - 2010 (78 years)
Israr Ahmad , was a Pakistani based Islamic scholar, and theologian. He developed a following in South Asia but also among some South Asian Muslims in the Middle East, Western Europe, and North America.
Go to Profile#9503
Philip Ridley
#9513
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Philip Ridley is an English storyteller working in a wide range of artistic media. As a visual artist he has been cited as a contemporary of the 'Young British Artists', and had his artwork exhibited internationally.
Go to Profile#9504
Joel Siegel
#9514
Overall Influence
1943 - 2007 (64 years)
Joel Steven Siegel was an American film critic for the ABC morning news show Good Morning America for over 25 years. The winner of multiple Emmy Awards, Siegel also worked as a radio disc jockey and an advertising copywriter.
Go to Profile#9505
Emilio Lledó
#9515
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Emilio Lledó Íñigo is a Spanish philosopher. He has been a professor at several universities and is a member of the Royal Spanish Academy. Career He took his bachelor's degree at the Instituto de Bachillerato Cervantes and, in 1952, his degree in philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid. He went to Germany to continue his studies in classical philosophy with Hans-Georg Gadamer, who helped him to finish his doctoral thesis by securing him a scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 1955, he obtained a position at the Complutense University of Madrid, but returned to ...
Go to Profile#9506
Andrea Bocelli
#9516
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Andrea Bocelli is an Italian tenor. He was born visually impaired, with congenital glaucoma, and at the age of 12, Bocelli became completely blind, following a brain hemorrhage resulting from a football accident. After performing evenings in piano bars and competing in local singing contests, Bocelli signed his first recording contract with the Sugar Music label. He rose to fame in 1994, winning the newcomer's section of the 44th Sanremo Music Festival performing "Il mare calmo della sera".
Go to Profile#9507
Minouche Shafik
#9517
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Nemat Talaat Shafik, Baroness Shafik, , also known as Minouche Shafik, is a British-American economist. She served as the President and Vice Chancellor of the London School of Economics from September 2017 to June 2023. On 1 July 2023, she became the 20th president of Columbia University, the first woman since its founding in the year 1754. She also serves on the board of directors of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Go to Profile#9508
Chenyang Xu
#9518
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Chenyang Xu is a Chinese mathematician in the area of algebraic geometry and a professor at Princeton University. Xu is known for his work in birational geometry, the minimal model program, and the K-stability of Fano varieties.
Go to Profile#9509
David C. Lindberg
#9519
Overall Influence
1935 - 2015 (80 years)
David Charles Lindberg was an American historian of science. His main focus was in the history of medieval and early modern science, especially physical science and the relationship between religion and science. Lindberg was the author or editor of many books and received numerous grants and awards. He also served as president of the History of Science Society and in 1999 was the recipient of its Sarton medal.
Go to Profile#9510
William Trevor
#9520
Overall Influence
1928 - 2016 (88 years)
William Trevor Cox , known by his pen name William Trevor, was an Irish novelist, playwright, and short story writer. One of the elder statesmen of the Irish literary world, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary writers of short stories in the English language.
Go to Profile#9511
Plácido Domingo
#9521
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
José Plácido Domingo Embil is a Spanish opera singer, conductor, and arts administrator. He has recorded over a hundred complete operas and is well known for his versatility, regularly performing in Italian, French, German, Spanish, English and Russian in the most prestigious opera houses in the world. Although primarily a lirico-spinto tenor for most of his career, especially popular for his Cavaradossi, Hoffmann, Don José and Canio, he quickly moved into more dramatic roles, becoming the most acclaimed Otello of his generation. In the early 2010s, he transitioned from the tenor repertory into exclusively baritone parts, most notably Simon Boccanegra.
Go to Profile#9512
Leo Beranek
#9522
Overall Influence
1914 - 2016 (102 years)
Leo Leroy Beranek was an American acoustics expert, former MIT professor, and a founder and former president of Bolt, Beranek and Newman . He authored Acoustics, considered a classic textbook in this field, and its updated and extended version published in 2012 under the title Acoustics: Sound Fields and Transducers. He was also an expert in the design and evaluation of concert halls and opera houses, and authored the classic textbook Music, Acoustics, and Architecture, revised and extended in 2004 under the title Concert Halls and Opera Houses: Music, Acoustics, and Architecture.
Go to Profile#9513
Mark van Vugt
#9523
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Mark van Vugt is a Dutch evolutionary psychologist who holds a professorship in evolutionary psychology and work and organizational psychology at the VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Van Vugt has affiliate positions at the University of Oxford, Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology .
Go to Profile#9514
Shrinivas Kulkarni
#9524
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Shrinivas Ramchandra Kulkarni is a US-based astronomer born and raised in India. He is currently a professor of astronomy and planetary science at California Institute of Technology, and he served as director of Caltech Optical Observatory at California Institute of Technology, in which capacity he oversaw the Palomar and Keck among other telescopes. He is the recipient of a number of awards and honours.
Go to Profile#9515
Pushpa Mittra Bhargava
#9525
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
Pushpa Mittra Bhargava was an Indian scientist, writer, and administrator. He founded the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, a federally funded research institute, in Hyderabad. He was outspoken and highly influential in the development of scientific temper in India, and argued that scientific rationalism needed to be cultivated as a civic duty.
Go to Profile#9516
Gilbert Chu
#9526
Overall Influence
Gilbert Chu is an American biochemist. He is a Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at the Stanford Medical School. Biography Chu graduated from Garden City High School in New York in 1963. He received a B.A. in physics from Princeton University in 1967, a Ph.D. in physics from M.I.T. in 1973, and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1980.
Go to Profile#9517
Marcello Ferrada de Noli
#9527
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Marcello Ferrada de Noli is a Swedish professor emeritus of epidemiology, and medicine doktor in psychiatry . He was research fellow and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and was later head of the research group of International and Cross-Cultural Injury Epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute until 2009. Ferrada de Noli is known for his investigations on suicidal behaviour associated with severe trauma. He is the founder of the NGO Swedish Doctors for Human Rights, SWEDHR. He is also a writer, and painting artist.
Go to Profile#9518
Giles Brindley
#9528
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Giles Skey Brindley, FRS is a British physiologist, musicologist and composer, known for his contributions to the physiology of the retina and colour vision, and treatment of erectile dysfunction. Medical career Brindley is perhaps best known for an unusual scientific presentation at the 1983 Las Vegas meeting of the American Urological Association, where he removed his pants to show the audience his chemically induced erection and invited them to inspect it closely. He had injected phenoxybenzamine into his penis in his hotel room before the presentation.
Go to Profile#9519
Alan García
#9529
Overall Influence
1949 - 2019 (70 years)
Alan Gabriel Ludwig García Pérez was a Peruvian politician who served as President of Peru for two non-consecutive terms from 1985 to 1990 and from 2006 to 2011. He was the second leader of the Peruvian Aprista Party and to date the only party member ever to have served as President. Mentored by the founder of the APRA, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, he served in the Constituent Assembly of 1978–1979. Elected to the Peruvian Congress in 1980, he rose to the position of General Secretary of the APRA in 1982, and was subsequently elected to the presidency in 1985 in a landslide victory at the ag...
Go to Profile#9520
Micha Sharir
#9530
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Micha Sharir is an Israeli mathematician and computer scientist. He is a professor at Tel Aviv University, notable for his contributions to computational geometry and combinatorial geometry, having authored hundreds of papers.
Go to Profile#9521
Janice Rogers Brown
#9531
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Janice Rogers Brown is an American jurist. She served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2005 to 2017 and before that, Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court from 1996 to 2005. She is a member of the Federalist Society and frequently features at events hosted by the organization.
Go to Profile#9522
Richard Painter
#9532
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Richard William Painter is an American lawyer, professor, and political candidate. From 2005 to 2007 Painter was the chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration. He is the S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Minnesota, and since 2016 has served as vice-chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington , a government watchdog group.
Go to Profile#9523
Gábor Tardos
#9533
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Gábor Tardos is a Hungarian mathematician, currently a professor at Central European University and previously a Canada Research Chair at Simon Fraser University. He works mainly in combinatorics and computer science. He is the younger brother of Éva Tardos.
Go to Profile#9524
Kate Grenville
#9534
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Catherine Elizabeth Grenville is an Australian author. She has published fifteen books, including fiction, non-fiction, biography, and books about the writing process. In 2001, she won the Orange Prize for The Idea of Perfection, and in 2006 she won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for The Secret River. The Secret River was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
Go to Profile#9525
Gary Player
#9535
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Gary Jim Player DMS, OIG is a South African retired professional golfer who is widely considered to be one of the greatest golfers of all time. During his career, Player won nine major championships on the regular tour and nine major championships on the Champions Tour. At the age of 29, Player won the 1965 U.S. Open and became the only non-American to win all four majors in a career, known as the career Grand Slam. At the time, he was the youngest player to do this, though Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods subsequently broke this record. Player became only the third golfer in history to win th...
Go to Profile#9526
Eric Darken
#9536
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Eric A. Darken is an American percussionist, composer, and programmer. Biography Drawing inspiration from his grandfather, a band leader. Darken began playing drums at age 12, and played timpani and mallets in high school. Darken attended Brevard College in Brevard, North Carolina, then transferred to Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Darken was also a part of the ORTV Richard Roberts television show.
Go to Profile#9527
Eddie Vedder
#9537
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Eddie Jerome Vedder is an American singer, musician, songwriter, and the lead vocalist and one of three guitarists for the rock band Pearl Jam. He previously was a guest vocalist for supergroup Temple of the Dog, a tribute band dedicated to the late singer Andrew Wood.
Go to Profile#9528
Jane Chance
#9538
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Jane Chance , also known as Jane Chance Nitzsche, is an American scholar specializing in medieval English literature, gender studies, and J. R. R. Tolkien. She spent most of her career at Rice University, where since her retirement she has been the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor Emerita in English.
Go to Profile#9529
Ferenc Puskás
#9539
Overall Influence
1927 - 2006 (79 years)
Ferenc Puskás was a Hungarian footballer and manager, widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time and the sport's first international superstar. A forward and an attacking midfielder, he scored 84 goals in 85 international matches for Hungary and played four international matches for Spain. He became an Olympic champion in 1952 and led his nation to the final of the 1954 World Cup. He won three European Cups , ten national championships and eight top individual scoring honors. Known as the "Galloping Major", in 1995, he was recognized as the greatest top division scorer of the 20th century by the IFFHS.
Go to Profile#9530
Marc Tessier-Lavigne
#9540
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Marc Trevor Tessier-Lavigne is a Canadian-American neuroscientist who was the eleventh president of Stanford University. Previously, he was a professor at the University of California, San Francisco and then president of Rockefeller University in New York City. He was formerly executive vice president for research and chief scientific officer at Genentech. He is a member of the Cure Alzheimer's Fund's Scientific Advisory Board. As of 2021, he is on the boards of directors of Denali Therapeutics and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, as well as the scientific advisory boards of Denali Therapeutics an...
Go to Profile#9531
Joseph L. Fleiss
#9541
Overall Influence
1937 - 2003 (66 years)
Joseph L. Fleiss was an American professor of biostatistics at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, where he also served as head of the Division of Biostatistics from 1975 to 1992. He is known for his work in mental health statistics, particularly assessing the reliability of diagnostic classifications, and the measures, models, and control of errors in categorization.
Go to Profile#9532
John Tuzo Wilson
#9542
Overall Influence
1908 - 1993 (85 years)
John Tuzo Wilson was a Canadian geophysicist and geologist who achieved worldwide acclaim for his contributions to the theory of plate tectonics. Plate tectonics is the scientific theory that the rigid outer layers of the Earth , the lithosphere, is broken up into around 13 pieces or "plates" that move independently over the weaker asthenosphere. Wilson maintained that the Hawaiian Islands were formed as a tectonic plate shifted to the northwest over a fixed hotspot, spawning a long series of volcanoes. He also conceived of the transform fault, a major plate boundary where two plates move p...
Go to Profile#9533
Russell Stannard
#9543
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Russell Stannard, was a British high-energy particle physicist. Stannard was born in London, England. He was a Professor of Physics at the Open University . In 1986, he was awarded the Templeton UK Project Award for "significant contributions to the field of spiritual values; in particular for contributions to greater understanding of science and religion". He was awarded the OBE for "contributions to physics, the Open University, and the popularisation of science" and the Bragg Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics for "distinguished contributions to the teaching of physics" . He was...
Go to Profile#9534
George B. Thomas
#9544
Overall Influence
1914 - 2006 (92 years)
George Brinton Thomas Jr. was an American mathematician and professor of mathematics at MIT. Internationally, he is best known for being the author of the widely used calculus textbook Calculus and Analytical Geometry, known today as Thomas' Calculus.
Go to Profile#9535
Gero Miesenböck
#9545
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Gero Andreas Miesenböck is an Austrian scientist. He is currently Waynflete Professor of Physiology and Director of the Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#9536
Martin Hoffman
#9546
Overall Influence
1950 - 2022 (72 years)
Martin L. Hoffman was an American psychologist and a professor emeritus of clinical and developmental psychology at New York University. In his career, Hoffman is primarily focused on development of empathy and its relationship with moral development, which he defines as "people's consideration for others." His research also touches on areas such as empathic anger, sympathy, guilt and feelings of injustice.
Go to Profile#9537
Michael Ian Shamos
#9547
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Michael Ian Shamos is an American mathematician, attorney, book author, journal editor, consultant and company director. He is the author of Computational Geometry , which was for many years the standard textbook in computational geometry, and is known for the Shamos–Hoey sweep line algorithm for line segment intersection detection and for the rotating calipers technique for finding the width and diameter of a geometric figure. His publications also include works on electronic voting, the game of billiards, and intellectual property law in the digital age.
Go to Profile#9538
Steven Brust
#9548
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Steven Karl Zoltán Brust is an American fantasy and science fiction author of Hungarian descent. He is best known for his series of novels about the assassin Vlad Taltos, one of a disdained minority group of humans living on a world called Dragaera. His recent novels also include The Incrementalists and its sequel The Skill of Our Hands , with co-author Skyler White.
Go to Profile#9539
Clark Pinnock
#9549
Overall Influence
1937 - 2010 (73 years)
Clark H. Pinnock was a Christian theologian, apologist and author. He was Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at McMaster Divinity College. Education and career Pinnock was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on February 3, 1937. He grew up in a liberal Baptist congregation. Pinnock once recounted that as a child he had little interest in the church. Even though he was brought up in Liberal Christianity, he later became part of the broad Evangelical tradition, and explored Reformed, Arminian and Pentecostal streams of thought.
Go to Profile#9540
Peter H. Russell
#9550
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Peter Howard Russell is a Canadian political scientist, serving as professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto, where he taught from 1958 to 1997. He was a member of the Toronto chapter of Alpha Delta Phi. He was the Principal of Innis College, at the University of Toronto, from 1973 to 1978. He is the author of several books including: Two Cheers for Minority Government: The Evolution of Canadian Parliamentary Democracy, Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Become a Sovereign People?, Recognizing Aboriginal Title: The Mabo Case and Indigenous Resistance to English ...
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Steven E. Koonin
#9551
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Steven Elliot Koonin is an American theoretical physicist and former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. He is also a professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering. From 2004 to 2009, Koonin was employed by BP as the oil and gas company’s Chief Scientist. From 2009 to 2011, he was Under Secretary for Science, Department of Energy, in the Obama administration.
Go to Profile#9542
Ronnie Wood
#9552
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ronald David Wood is an English rock musician, best known as a member of the Rolling Stones since 1975, as well as a member of Faces and the Jeff Beck Group. Wood began his career in 1964, playing lead guitar with several British rhythm and blues bands in short succession, including the Birds and the Creation. He joined the Jeff Beck Group in 1967 as a guitarist and bassist, playing on the albums Truth and Beck-Ola. The group split in 1969, and Wood departed along with lead vocalist Rod Stewart to join former Small Faces members Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones in a new group named Faces with Wood now primarily on lead guitar.
Go to Profile#9543
Jeffrey M. Friedman
#9553
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Jeffrey M. Friedman is a molecular geneticist at New York City's Rockefeller University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His discovery of the hormone leptin and its role in regulating body weight has had a major role in the area of human obesity. Friedman is a physician scientist studying the genetic mechanisms that regulate body weight. His research on various aspects of obesity received national attention in late 1994, when it was announced that he and his colleagues had isolated the mouse ob gene and its human homologue. They subsequently found that injections ...
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Gerald L. Thompson
#9554
Overall Influence
1923 - 2009 (86 years)
Gerald L. Thompson was the IBM Professor of Systems and Operations Research in the Tepper School of Business of Carnegie Mellon University. From 1943 to 1946, Thompson served in the Navy as an ensign on the , which was stationed in the Pacific. By correspondence he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from Iowa State University in 1944. After the war he attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating with Master of Science in 1948. He then took up further graduate study at University of Michigan, obtaining the Ph.D. in 1953 under the supervision of Robert M. Thrall.
Go to Profile#9545
Orley Ashenfelter
#9555
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Orley Clark Ashenfelter is an American economist and the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics at Princeton University. His areas of specialization include labor economics, econometrics, and law and economics. He was influential in contributing to the applied turn in economics.
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David Reich
#9556
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
David Emil Reich is an American geneticist known for his research into the population genetics of ancient humans, including their migrations and the mixing of populations, discovered by analysis of genome-wide patterns of mutations. He is professor in the department of genetics at the Harvard Medical School, and an associate of the Broad Institute. Reich was highlighted as one of Nature's 10 for his contributions to science in 2015. He received the Dan David Prize in 2017, the NAS Award in Molecular Biology, the Wiley Prize, and the Darwin–Wallace Medal in 2019. In 2021 he was awarded the Mas...
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Stanley Reiter
#9557
Overall Influence
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
Stanley Reiter was an American author, economist, and Emeritus Professor at Northwestern University. Reiter was a leading pioneer in the field of mechanism design. In 2006, he and the 2007 Nobel prize-winning economist Leonid Hurwicz authored the book Designing Economic Mechanisms.
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Philip Rieff
#9558
Overall Influence
1922 - 2006 (84 years)
Philip Rieff was an American sociologist and cultural critic, who taught sociology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1961 until 1992, and also, during the 1950s, at the University of Chicago, where he met Susan Sontag. He was the author of a number of books on Sigmund Freud and his legacy, including Freud: The Mind of the Moralist and The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud . He married his 17-year-old student Susan Sontag after 10 days of courtship in the 1950s. The marriage lasted eight years during which their son, David Rieff—a writer and editor of his mother's personal journals—was born.
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Jude Law
#9559
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
David Jude Heyworth Law is an English actor. He began his career in theatre before landing small roles in various British television productions and feature films, later gaining recognition for his role in Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley , for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and was nominated for an Academy Award.
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John Tierney
#9560
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
John Marion Tierney is an American journalist and a contributing editor to City Journal, the Manhattan Institute's quarterly publication. Previously he had been a reporter and columnist at the New York Times for three decades since 1990. A self-described contrarian, Tierney is a critic of aspects of environmentalism, the "science establishment," and big government, but he does support the goal of limiting overall emissions of carbon dioxide.
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