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
#9701
Timothy Radcliffe
#9711
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Timothy Peter Joseph Radcliffe, OP is an English Catholic priest and Dominican friar who served as master of the Order of Preachers from 1992 to 2001. He is the only member of the order's English Province to hold that office.
Go to Profile#9702
Sonia Gandhi
#9712
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Sonia Gandhi is an Indian politician. She is the longest serving president of the Indian National Congress, a social democratic political party, which has governed India for most of its post-independence history. She took over as the party leader in 1998, seven years after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, her husband and a former Prime Minister of India, and remained in office until 2017 after serving for twenty-two years. She returned to the post in 2019 and remained the President for another three years.
Go to Profile#9703
Sandra Faber
#9713
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Sandra Moore Faber is an American astrophysicist known for her research on the evolution of galaxies. She is the University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and works at the Lick Observatory. She has made discoveries linking the brightness of galaxies to the speed of stars within them and was the co-discoverer of the Faber–Jackson relation. Faber was also instrumental in designing the Keck telescopes in Hawaii.
Go to Profile#9704
June Goodfield
#9714
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
June Goodfield is a British historian, scientist, and writer of both fiction and non-fiction. Biography Born Gwyneth June Goodfield in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1927, she read zoology at the University of London and undertook a PhD in history and philosophy of science at Leeds University, graduating in 1959, and spending the following year as a research assistant at Oxford University. After teaching biology at Benenden School, Kent, and Cheltenham Ladies' College, Goodfield lectured in history and philosophy of science at Leeds University until 1960. She was consultant at Harvard University's Dep...
Go to Profile#9705
Alma Guillermoprieto
#9715
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Alma Guillermoprieto is a Mexican journalist. She has written extensively about Latin America for the British and American press, especially The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. Her writings have also been widely disseminated within the Spanish-speaking world and she has published eight books in both English and Spanish, and been translated into several more languages.
Go to Profile#9706
Carlos Frenk
#9716
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Carlos Silvestre Frenk is a Mexican-British cosmologist. Frenk graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the University of Cambridge, and spent his early research career in the United States, before settling permanently in the United Kingdom. He joined the Durham University Department of Physics in 1986 and since 2001 has served as the Ogden Professor of Fundamental Physics at Durham University.
Go to Profile#9707
Bob Cousy
#9717
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Robert Joseph Cousy is an American former professional basketball player. Cousy played point guard for the Boston Celtics from 1950 to 1963, and briefly with the Cincinnati Royals during the 1969–70 season. A 13-time NBA All-Star and 1957 NBA Most Valuable Player , he was a core piece during the early half of the Celtics dynasty winning six NBA championships during his 13-year tenure with the Celtics. Nicknamed "The Houdini of the Hardwood", Cousy was the NBA assists leader for eight consecutive seasons, introducing a new blend of ball-handling and passing skills to the NBA. He is regarded as...
Go to Profile#9708
Mogol
#9718
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Giulio Rapetti , in art Mogol , is an Italian music lyricist. He is best known for his collaborations with Lucio Battisti, Gianni Bella, Adriano Celentano and Mango. Career Mogol was born in Milan. His father, Mariano Rapetti, was an important director of the Ricordi record label, and had been in his own time a successful lyricist of the 1950s. Young Giulio, who was likewise employed by Ricordi as a public relations expert, began his own career as a lyricist against his father's wishes.
Go to Profile#9709
Thomas J. J. Altizer
#9719
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Thomas Jonathan Jackson Altizer was an American university professor, religious scholar, and theologian, noted for his incorporation of Death of God theology and Hegelian dialectical philosophy into his body of work. He regarded his philosophical theology as also being grounded in the works of William Blake and considered his theology to have come into its own with his extended study of Blake's radical visionary thinking: The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake ; indeed he regarded himself as the first and only fully Blakean theologian.
Go to Profile#9710
David Luenberger
#9720
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
David Gilbert Luenberger is a mathematical scientist known for his research and his textbooks, which center on mathematical optimization. He is a professor in the department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University.
Go to Profile#9711
Alex Wilkie
#9721
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Alex James Wilkie FRS is a British mathematician known for his contributions to model theory and logic. Previously Reader in Mathematical Logic at the University of Oxford, he was appointed to the Fielden Chair of Pure Mathematics at the University of Manchester in 2007.
Go to Profile#9712
Ralph Johnson
#9722
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Ralph Henry Johnson is a Canadian American philosopher, born in Detroit, Michigan. Johnson has been credited as one of the founding members of the informal logic movement in North America, along with J. Anthony Blair who co-published one of the movement's most influential texts, Logical Self-Defense, with Johnson. Alongside its founder, Blair, Johnson co-directed the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation, and Rhetoric at the University of Windsor. As Johnson and Blair write in the preface to the newest edition of Logical Self-Defense on the influential nature of the text:
Go to Profile#9713
Arthur Marwick
#9723
Overall Influence
1936 - 2006 (70 years)
Arthur John Brereton Marwick was a British social historian, who served for many years as Professor of History at the Open University. His research interests lay primarily in the history of Britain in the twentieth century, and the relationship between war and social change. He is probably best known, however, for his more theoretical book The Nature of History , and its greatly reworked and expanded version The New Nature of History . In the latter work he defended an empirical and source-based approach towards the writing of history, and argued against the turn towards postmodernism. He be...
Go to Profile#9714
Aleksandr Kaleri
#9724
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Aleksandr "Sasha" Yuriyevich Kaleri is a former Russian cosmonaut and veteran of extended stays on the Mir Space Station and the International Space Station . Kaleri has most recently been in space in 2010 and 2011 aboard the ISS serving as a flight engineer for the long duration Expedition 25/26 missions. He has spent the fourth-longest time in space of any person, and the longest time in space of any person not born in what is now Russia.
Go to Profile#9715
Paolo Budinich
#9725
Overall Influence
1916 - 2013 (97 years)
Paolo Budinich was an Italian theoretical physicist. Born in Lussingrande to a family of sailors, he grew up and studied in Trieste, where the family resided and his father Antonio Budini taught in the local high school, which Paolo attended until 1934. He later began his studies at Università Degli Studi di Pisa graduating from the Scuola Normale Superiore in 1938, with a thesis written under the direction of Leonida Tonelli.
Go to Profile#9716
Sean O'Hagan
#9726
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Sean O'Hagan is an Irish writer for The Guardian and The Observer, his specialty being photography. Early life and education O'Hagan was brought up in Armagh, Northern Ireland, during "The Troubles", and has written about the experience. As an undergraduate, he studied English in London.
Go to Profile#9717
Bernie Wrightson
#9727
Overall Influence
1948 - 2017 (69 years)
Bernard Albert Wrightson was an American artist, known for co-creating the Swamp Thing, his adaptation of the novel Frankenstein illustration work, and for his other horror comics and illustrations, which feature his trademark intricate pen and brushwork.
Go to Profile#9718
Michael L. Kazar
#9728
Overall Influence
Michael L. Kazar is an American engineer and technology executive. Kazar received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in Computer Science.
Go to Profile#9719
Mark B. Rosenberg
#9729
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Mark B. Rosenberg is a professor and former university administrator who served as the president of Florida International University from August 2009 until January 2022 and former Chancellor of the State University System of Florida. He is member of the Council on Foreign Relations think tank and has testified before the United States Congress numerous times. He also served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Rosenberg earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science with Omicron Delta Kappa honors in 1971 from Miami University in Ohio.
Go to Profile#9720
Werner Maser
#9730
Overall Influence
1922 - 2007 (85 years)
Werner Maser was a German historian, journalist and professor at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. Maser was the first historian to claim that the Hitler Diaries were forgeries. He was born in Paradeningken to a farmer and horse breeder. During the Second World War he served in the German Army as an infantry officer. After Germany's defeat, Maser was interned by the Soviets in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After his release, he studied theology, philosophy and political science at Berlin, Munich and Erlangen. His doctoral thesis was titled The Organisation of the Führer Legend.
Go to Profile#9721
Tracy Caldwell Dyson
#9731
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Tracy Caldwell Dyson is an American chemist and NASA astronaut. Caldwell Dyson was a mission specialist on Space Shuttle Endeavour flight STS-118 in August 2007 and part of the Expedition 23 and Expedition 24 crew on the International Space Station from April 2010 to September 2010. She has completed three spacewalks, logging more than 22 hours of extravehicular activity. She is scheduled to return to space on March 13th, 2024 for a third time on board Soyuz MS-25 for a 6 months mission onboard the ISS.
Go to Profile#9722
Alan Baker
#9732
Overall Influence
1939 - 2018 (79 years)
Alan Baker was an English mathematician, known for his work on effective methods in number theory, in particular those arising from transcendental number theory. Life Alan Baker was born in London on 19 August 1939. He attended Stratford Grammar School, East London, and his academic career started as a student of Harold Davenport, at University College London and later at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he received his PhD. He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1970 when he was awarded the Fields Medal at the age of 31. In 1974 he was appointed Professor of Pure Mathematics at Cambridge University, a position he held until 2006 when he became an Emeritus.
Go to Profile#9723
Michael Scammell
#9733
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Michael Scammell is an English author, biographer and translator of Slavic literature. Education Michael Scammell was born in Lyndhurst, Hampshire, England, attended Brockenhurst Grammar School, and after two years working as a copy boy for the Southern Daily Echo in Southampton, was drafted into the British army, spending most of his time at the Joint Services School for Linguists in Cambridge and Bodmin, where he was trained as a Russian interpreter. In 1958 he earned a B.A. degree with first class honors in Slavic Studies from the University of Nottingham, and edited the prize-winning student newspaper, The Gongster.
Go to Profile#9724
Nicolaus Tideman
#9734
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Thorwald Nicolaus Tideman is a Georgist economist and professor at Virginia Tech. He received his Bachelor of Arts in economics and mathematics from Reed College in 1965 and his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 1969. Tideman was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard University from 1969 to 1973, during which time from 1970 to 1971 he was a Senior Staff Economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisors. Since 1973, he has been at Virginia Tech, with various visiting positions at Harvard Kennedy School , University of Buckingham , and the American Institute f...
Go to Profile#9725
Kevin Lane Keller
#9735
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Kevin Lane Keller is the E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He is most notable for having authored Strategic Brand Management , a widely used text on brand management. The book is focused on the "how to" and "why" of brand management, this strategy guide provides specific tactical guidelines for planning, building, measuring, and managing brand equity. He has published his research in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of Consumer Research. In addition, Philip Kotler selected Keller to be his co-author on...
Go to Profile#9726
John Lions
#9736
Overall Influence
1937 - 1998 (61 years)
John Lions was an Australian computer scientist. He is best known as the author of Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code, commonly known as the Lions Book. Early life Lions gained a degree with first-class honours from the University of Sydney in 1959. He applied, and received a scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge where he earned his doctorate on Control engineering in 1963. After his graduation, he worked at the consulting firm KCS Ltd in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 1967, he briefly took a position at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada before moving on...
Go to Profile#9727
Werner Döring
#9737
Overall Influence
1911 - 2006 (95 years)
Werner Döring was a German theoretical physicist. From 1963 until his retirement in 1977, he was an ordinary professor at the University of Hamburg. His main interest was the theory of magnetism. His textbooks on theoretical physics have influenced several generations of students.
Go to Profile#9728
Anita Elberse
#9738
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Anita Elberse is a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, specializing in the entertainment, media and sports sectors. Trained as an economist and econometrician, according to The Wall Street Journal, she "takes the same statistically rigorous approach to entertainment and cultural industries that sabermetricians do to baseball" in her scholarly research. She has published more than four dozen in-depth case studies on companies and personalities in the world of entertainment, and one book, “Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment.”
Go to Profile#9729
Jack Mapanje
#9739
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Jack Mapanje is a Malawian writer and poet. He was the head of English at the Chancellor College, the main campus of the University of Malawi before being imprisoned in 1987 for his collection Of Chameleons and Gods, which indirectly criticized the administration of President Hastings Banda. He was released in 1991 and emigrated to the UK, where he worked as a teacher.
Go to Profile#9730
Rudolf Macúch
#9740
Overall Influence
1919 - 1993 (74 years)
Rudolf Macuch was a Slovak linguist, naturalized as German after 1974. He was noted in the field of Semitic studies for his research work in three main areas: Mandaic studies, Samaritan studies and New Syriac language and literature. Although his scholarly work also covers the far larger range of Arabic and Iranian Studies as well as Theology and History of Religions, most of his monographs, and a large number of his numerous articles, are dedicated to the study of the languages and literatures of ethnic and religious minorities of the Near East, especially the Mandaeans, Samaritans and Nestorian Christians .
Go to Profile#9731
William Leuchtenburg
#9741
Overall Influence
1922 - Present (104 years)
William Edward Leuchtenburg is an American historian. He is the William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a leading scholar of the life and career of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Go to Profile#9732
Jeremy Narby
#9742
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Jeremy Narby is a Canadian anthropologist and author. In his books, Narby examines shamanism, molecular biology, and shamans' knowledge of botanics and biology through the use of entheogens across many cultures.
Go to Profile#9733
Ken Perlin
#9743
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Kenneth H. Perlin is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at New York University, founding director of the Media Research Lab at NYU, director of the Future Reality Lab at NYU, and the Director of the Games for Learning Institute. He holds a BA. degree in Theoretical Mathematics from Harvard University , a MS degree in Computer Science from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University , and a PhD degree in Computer Science from the same institution . His research interests include graphics, animation, multimedia, and science education. He developed or was in...
Go to Profile#9734
Nadim Kobeissi
#9744
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (36 years)
Nadim Kobeissi is a French-Lebanese computer science researcher specialized in applied cryptography. He is the author of Cryptocat, an open-source encrypted web chat client. Kobeissi is also known for speaking publicly against Internet censorship and Internet surveillance.
Go to Profile#9735
Emmy Werner
#9745
Overall Influence
1929 - 2017 (88 years)
Emmy E. Werner was an American developmental psychologist known for her research on risk and resilience in children. Early life She received her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska and was a professor emerita in the Department of Human and Community Development at the University of California, Davis.
Go to Profile#9736
Frank Robinson
#9746
Overall Influence
1935 - 2019 (84 years)
Frank Robinson was an American professional baseball outfielder and manager in Major League Baseball who played for five teams over 21 seasons: the Cincinnati Reds , Baltimore Orioles , Los Angeles Dodgers , California Angels , and Cleveland Indians . In 1975, Robinson became the first Black manager in big-league history, as the player-manager of the Indians.
Go to Profile#9737
Barrington Moore Jr.
#9747
Overall Influence
1913 - 2005 (92 years)
Barrington Moore Jr. was an American political sociologist, and the son of forester Barrington Moore. He is well-known for his Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy , a comparative study of modernization in Britain, France, the United States, China, Japan, Russia, Germany, and India. The book puts forth a neo-Marxist argument that class structures and class alliances at particular points in time can account for the kinds of social revolutions that occurred and did not occur in those countries, putting some countries on a path to democracy, whereas others were put on a path to authoritarianism or communism.
Go to Profile#9738
Douglas Elmendorf
#9748
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Douglas William Elmendorf is an American economist who is the dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He previously served as the Director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2009 to 2015. He was a Brookings Institution senior fellow from 2007 to 2009, and briefly in 2015 following his time at the CBO, and was a director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings.
Go to Profile#9739
Tadanori Yokoo
#9749
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Tadanori Yokoo is a Japanese graphic designer, illustrator, printmaker and painter. Yokoo’s signature style of psychedelia and pastiche engages a wide span of modern visual and cultural phenomena from Japan and around the world.
Go to Profile#9740
David Snellgrove
#9750
Overall Influence
1920 - 2016 (96 years)
David Llewellyn Snellgrove, FBA was a British Tibetologist noted for his pioneering work on Buddhism in Tibet as well as his many travelogues. Biography Snellgrove was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, and educated at Christ's Hospital near Horsham in West Sussex. He went on to study German and French at Southampton University. In 1941 he was called up to do his military service as a member of the Royal Engineers. He attended the Officers Cadet Training Unit in the Scottish seaside town of Dunbar, and was commissioned as an infantry officer. Thereafter he attended various intelligence courses an...
Go to Profile#9741
Tanith Lee
#9751
Overall Influence
1947 - 2015 (68 years)
Tanith Lee was a British science fiction and fantasy writer. She wrote more than 90 novels and 300 short stories, and was the winner of multiple World Fantasy Society Derleth Awards, the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Horror. She also wrote a children's picture book , and many poems. She wrote two episodes of the BBC science fiction series Blake's 7. She was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award best novel award , for her book Death's Master .
Go to Profile#9742
Paul McCarthy
#9752
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Paul McCarthy is an American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Life McCarthy was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1945. He studied art at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, and later continued to study at the University of Utah until 1969. He went on to study at the San Francisco Art Institute, receiving a BFA in painting. In 1972 he studied film, video, and art at the University of Southern California, receiving an MFA. From 1982 to 2002 he taught performance, video, installation, and performance art history at the University of California, Los Angeles. McCarthy curr...
Go to Profile#9743
Masayoshi Nagata
#9753
Overall Influence
1927 - 2008 (81 years)
Masayoshi Nagata was a Japanese mathematician, known for his work in the field of commutative algebra. Work Nagata's compactification theorem shows that varieties can be embedded in complete varieties. The Chevalley–Iwahori–Nagata theorem describes the quotient of a variety by a group.
Go to Profile#9744
Drazen Prelec
#9754
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Drazen Prelec is a professor of management science and economics in the MIT Sloan School of Management, and holds appointments in the Department of Economics and in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT as well. He is a pioneer in the field of neuroeconomics.
Go to Profile#9745
Simon Stephens
#9755
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Simon Stephens is a British-Irish playwright and Professor of Scriptwriting at Manchester Metropolitan University. Having taught on the Young Writers' Programme at the Royal Court Theatre for many years, he is now an Artistic Associate at the Lyric Hammersmith. He is the inaugural Associate Playwright of Steep Theatre Company, Chicago, where four of his plays, Harper Regan, Motortown, Wastwater, and Birdland had their U.S. premieres. His writing is widely performed throughout Europe and, along with Dennis Kelly and Martin Crimp, he is one of the most performed English-language writers in Germ...
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Garth Brooks
#9756
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Troyal Garth Brooks is an American country singer and songwriter. His integration of pop and rock elements into the country genre has earned him his immense popularity, particularly in the United States with success on the country music single and album charts, multi-platinum recordings and record-breaking live performances, while also crossing over into the mainstream pop arena.
Go to Profile#9747
Steven Roman
#9757
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Steven Roman is a mathematician, currently Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at California State University, Fullerton and Visiting Professor of Mathematics at University of California, Irvine. He is one of the main developers of umbral calculus. He has written about 40 books on mathematics and computer programming.
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Germund Dahlquist
#9758
Overall Influence
1925 - 2005 (80 years)
Germund Dahlquist was a Swedish mathematician known primarily for his early contributions to the theory of numerical analysis as applied to differential equations. Dahlquist began to study mathematics at Stockholm University in 1942 at the age of 17, where he cites the Danish mathematician Harald Bohr as a profound influence.
Go to Profile#9749
Randy Johnson
#9759
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Randall David Johnson , nicknamed "the Big Unit", is an American former professional baseball pitcher who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball for six teams, primarily the Seattle Mariners and Arizona Diamondbacks.
Go to Profile#9750
Hans Georg Dehmelt
#9760
Overall Influence
1922 - 2017 (95 years)
Hans Georg Dehmelt was a German and American physicist, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989, for co-developing the ion trap technique with Wolfgang Paul, for which they shared one-half of the prize . Their technique was used for high precision measurement of the electron magnetic moment.
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