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
#9751
Richard Veryard
#9761
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Richard Veryard FRSA is a British computer scientist, author and business consultant, known for his work on service-oriented architecture and the service-based business. Biography Veryard attended Sevenoaks School from 1966 to 1972, where he attended classes by Gerd Sommerhoff. He received his MA Mathematics and Philosophy from Merton College, Oxford, in 1976, and his MSc Computing Science at the Imperial College London in 1977. Later he also received his MBA from the Open University in 1992.
Go to Profile#9752
Sabina Alkire
#9762
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Sabina Alkire is the director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative , an economic research centre within the Oxford Department of International Development at the University of Oxford, England, which was established in 2007. She is a fellow of the Human Development and Capability Association. She has worked with organizations such as the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, the United Nations Human Development Programme Human Development Report Office, the European Commission, and the UK's Department for International Development.
Go to Profile#9753
Patrick Cousot
#9763
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Patrick Cousot is a French computer scientist, currently Silver Professor of Computer Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, USA. Before he was Professor at the École Normale Supérieure , Paris, France, the École Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France and the University of Metz, France and a Research Scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research at the Joseph Fourier University, Grenoble, France.
Go to Profile#9754
James P. Womack
#9764
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
James P. Womack was the research director of the International Motor Vehicle Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is the founder and chairman of the Lean Enterprise Institute, a nonprofit institution for the dissemination and exploration of the Lean thinking with the aim of his further development of the Lean Enterprise.
Go to Profile#9755
David Silverman
#9765
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
David Silverman is an American animator who has directed numerous episodes of the animated television series The Simpsons, as well as its 2007 film adaptation. Silverman was involved with the series from the very beginning, animating all of the original short Simpsons cartoons that aired on The Tracey Ullman Show. He went on to serve as director of animation for several years. He also did the animation for the 2016 film The Edge of Seventeen, which was produced by Gracie Films.
Go to Profile#9756
Mao Yushi
#9766
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Mao Yushi is a Chinese economist. Mao graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1950 and was labeled a 'rightist' in 1958. In 1986, Mao was a visiting scholar at Harvard University, and in 1990, Mao was a senior lecturer at Queensland University.
Go to Profile#9757
Bo Rothstein
#9767
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Bo Abraham Mendel Rothstein is a Swedish political scientist. He is a former Professor of Government and Public Policy at University of Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government. Rothstein is a contributor to Swedish public debate about politics and academic freedom. He has been especially critical of what he perceives as politicized research at some universities in Sweden. In 2003, he received the Swedish Association of University Teachers' prize for academic freedom. Rothstein received the prize for having "in the public debate argued for the importance of independent university teaching and ...
Go to Profile#9758
Catherine Perret
#9768
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Catherine Perret is associate professor of modern and contemporary aesthetics and theory at Nanterre University . She obtained her Ph.D. in philosophy and is known for her work on Walter Benjamin, most notably by her book Walter Benjamin ou la critique en effet. Dr. Perret was the director of the Art of Exhibition Department at Paris X. She served as a program director at the Collège International de Philosophie from 1995 to 2001. She is a recipient of the prestigious title Chevalier des Palmes académiques. She collaborated with Bernard Stiegler in Ars Industrialis. Dr. Perret is currently re...
Go to Profile#9759
Raymond Laflamme
#9769
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Raymond Laflamme , OC, FRSC is a Canadian theoretical physicist and founder and until mid 2017, was the director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo. He is also a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo and an associate faculty member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Laflamme is currently a Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information. In December 2017, he was named as one of the appointees to the Order of Canada.
Go to Profile#9760
Paulin J. Hountondji
#9770
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Paulin Jidenu Hountondji is a Beninese philosopher, politician and academic considered one of the most important figures in the history of African philosophy. Since the 1970s he has taught at the Université Nationale du Bénin in Cotonou, where he is Professor of Philosophy. In the early 1990s he briefly served as Minister of Education and Minister for Culture and Communications in the Government of Benin.
Go to Profile#9761
Stefan Edberg
#9771
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Stefan Bengt Edberg is a Swedish former professional tennis player. A major practitioner of the serve-and-volley style of tennis, he won six Grand Slam singles titles and three Grand Slam men's doubles titles between 1985 and 1996. He is one of only two men in the Open Era to have been ranked world No. 1 in both singles and doubles . He also won the Masters Grand Prix and was a part of the Swedish Davis Cup-winning team four times. In addition, he won four Masters Series titles, four Championship Series titles and the unofficial 1984 Olympic tournament, was ranked in the singles top 10 for ten successive years, and ranked nine years in the top 5.
Go to Profile#9762
William Schutz
#9772
Overall Influence
1925 - 2002 (77 years)
William Schutz was an American psychologist. Biography Schutz was born in Chicago, Illinois. He practiced at the Esalen Institute in the 1960s. He later became the president of BConWSA International. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA. In the 1950s, he was part of the peer-group at the University of Chicago's Counseling Center that included Carl Rogers, Thomas Gordon, Abraham Maslow and Elias Porter. He taught at Tufts University, Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and was chairman of the holistic studies department at Antioch Uni...
Go to Profile#9763
Kristin Ross
#9773
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Kristin Ross is a professor emeritus of comparative literature at New York University. She is primarily known for her work on French literature and culture of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Life and work Ross received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1981 and since then has written a number of books, including The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune , Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture and May '68 and its Afterlives . She edited Anti-Americanism with Andrew Ross . In 2015, her book Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary...
Go to Profile#9764
Carlo M. Cipolla
#9774
Overall Influence
1922 - 2000 (78 years)
Carlo M. Cipolla was an Italian economic historian. He was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Biography As a young man, Cipolla wanted to teach history and philosophy in an Italian high school, and therefore enrolled at the political science faculty at the University of Pavia. While a student there, thanks to professor Franco Borlandi, a specialist in medieval economic history, he discovered his passion for economic history. He graduated from Pavia in 1944. Subsequently, he studied at the University of Paris and the London School...
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Cini Boeri
#9775
Overall Influence
1924 - 2020 (96 years)
Maria Cristina Mariani Dameno, known as "Cini Boeri" was an Italian architect and designer. She was considered "one of the great pioneering women in Italian design and architecture", who was described as a "formidable architect and designer, paragon of Milanese elegance and verve."
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François Wahl
#9776
Overall Influence
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
François Wahl was a French editor and structuralist. Biography François Wahl was editor at the Éditions du Seuil, a publishing company in Paris. He was the editor of Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, among others.
Go to Profile#9767
Donald Black
#9777
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
#9768
Brian De Palma
#9778
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and screenwriter. With a career spanning over 50 years, he is best known for work in the suspense, crime and psychological thriller genres. His films include mainstream box office hits such as Carrie , Dressed to Kill , Scarface , The Untouchables , and Mission: Impossible , as well as cult favorites such as Sisters , Phantom of the Paradise , Blow Out , Casualties of War , and Carlito's Way .
Go to Profile#9769
Vittorio Storaro
#9779
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Vittorio Storaro, A.S.C., A.I.C. , is an Italian cinematographer widely recognized as one of the best and most influential in cinema history, for his work on numerous classic films including The Conformist , Apocalypse Now , and The Last Emperor . In the course of over fifty years, he has collaborated with directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Ford Coppola, Warren Beatty, Woody Allen and Carlos Saura.
Go to Profile#9770
Reender Kranenborg
#9780
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Reender Kranenborg is a former editor of the magazine Religious Movement in the Netherlands published by the institute of religious studies of the Free University in Amsterdam. He received his PhD in the theological faculty about the subject of self-realization. He stated in the dissertation that he had attempted to research the subject following the norms of religious studies, not a theological one.
Go to Profile#9771
Mani Ratnam
#9781
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Gopalaratnam Subramaniam , known professionally as Mani Ratnam, is an Indian film director, film producer and screenwriter who predominantly works in Tamil cinema and few Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada films. He is one of India's most acclaimed and commercially successful filmmakers. Ratnam has won six National Film Awards, four Filmfare Awards, six Filmfare Awards South, and numerous awards at various film festivals across the world. In 2002, the Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri, acknowledging his contributions to film.
Go to Profile#9772
Daniel P. Sanders
#9782
Overall Influence
Daniel P. Sanders is an American mathematician. He is known for his 1996 efficient proof of proving the Four color theorem . He used to be a guest professor of the department of computer science at Columbia University.
Go to Profile#9773
Sarita Schoenebeck
#9783
Overall Influence
Sarita Yardi Schoenebeck is an American computer scientist at the University of Michigan, where she serves as Director of the Living Online Lab. Her research considers human–computer interactions, social media and social computing. She was awarded the University of Michigan School of Information Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award in 2017 for her work on LGBTQ+ families and online communities.
Go to Profile#9774
John Graham-Cumming
#9784
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
John Graham-Cumming is a British software engineer and writer best known for starting a successful petition to the Government of the United Kingdom asking for an apology for its persecution of Alan Turing. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued the apology in September 2009., Graham-Cumming serves as Chief Technology Officer at Cloudflare; previously he co-founded Electric Cloud.
Go to Profile#9775
Andreas Umland
#9785
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
#9776
Phil Hellmuth
#9786
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Phillip Jerome Hellmuth Jr. is an American professional poker player who has won a record seventeen World Series of Poker bracelets. He is the winner of the Main Event of the 1989 World Series of Poker and the Main Event of the 2012 World Series of Poker Europe , and he is a 2007 inductee of the WSOP's Poker Hall of Fame. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest tournament players of all time.
Go to Profile#9777
Paul Hirst
#9787
Overall Influence
1946 - 2003 (57 years)
Paul Quentin Hirst was a British sociologist and political theorist. He became Professor of Social Theory at Birkbeck College, London, in 1985 and held the post until his death from a stroke and brain haemorrhage.
Go to Profile#9778
Ricardo Lagos
#9788
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Ricardo Froilán Lagos Escobar is a Chilean lawyer, economist and social-democratic politician who served as president of Chile from 2000 to 2006. During the 1980s he was a well-known opponent of the Chilean military dictatorship and astounded contemporaries in 1988 by openly denouncing dictator Augusto Pinochet on live television. He served as Minister of Education from 1990 to 1992 and Minister of Public Works from 1994 to 1998 under president Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle before narrowly winning the 1999-2000 presidential election in a runoff against Independent Democrat Union candidate Joaquín Lavín.
Go to Profile#9779
Jonathan Grudin
#9789
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jonathan Grudin was a researcher at Microsoft from 1998 to 2022 and is affiliate professor at the University of Washington Information School working in the fields of human-computer interaction and computer-supported cooperative work. Grudin is a pioneer of the field of computer-supported cooperative work and one of its most prolific contributors. His collaboration distance to other researchers of human-computer interactions has been described by the "Grudin number". Grudin is also well known for the "Grudin Paradox" or "Grudin Problem", which states basically with respect to the design of co...
Go to Profile#9780
Gilles Fauconnier
#9790
Overall Influence
1944 - 2021 (77 years)
Gilles Fauconnier was a French linguist, researcher in cognitive science, and author, who worked in the U.S. He was distinguished professor at the University of California, San Diego, in the Department of Cognitive Science.
Go to Profile#9781
Louis Narens
#9791
Overall Influence
Louis Narens was the Graduate Director of Mathematical Behavioral Science, Professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences and the Department of Logic and the Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine.
Go to Profile#9782
Boris Uspensky
#9792
Overall Influence
1927 - 2005 (78 years)
Boris Aleksandrovich Uspensky , , was a prominent Russian poster and graphics painter. Biography Boris Uspensky was born in Moscow. He studied in the Surikov Moscow Art Institute 1947–1953. In 1953 he became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR. From 1985 he was Professor and Head of the Graphical Dep., Surikov Institute. In 1986 he became People's Artist of the USSR. From 1992 he was a full member of Russian Academy of Arts.
Go to Profile#9783
Douglas R. White
#9793
Overall Influence
1942 - 2021 (79 years)
Douglas R. White was an American complexity researcher, social anthropologist, sociologist, and social network researcher at the University of California, Irvine. Biography Douglas White was born in Minneapolis in 1942. He attended the University of Michigan, Columbia University, and the University of Minnesota, where he received a B.A. in 1964, an M.A. in 1967, and a Ph.D. degree in 1969, all under advisor E. Adamson Hoebel and the Travelling Scholars Program.
Go to Profile#9784
Upendra Baxi
#9794
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Upendra Baxi is a legal scholar, since 1996 professor of law in development at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. He is presently a Research Professor of Law and Distinguished Scholar in Public Law and Jurisprudence at the Jindal Global Law School, OP Jindal Global University. He has been the vice-chancellor of University of Delhi , prior to which he held the position of professor of law at the same university for 23 years . He has also served as the vice-chancellor of the University of South Gujarat, Surat, India .
Go to Profile#9785
Jeff Bezanson
#9795
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
#9786
Jeremy M. Berg
#9796
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Jeremy Mark Berg was founding director of the University of Pittsburgh's Institute for Personalized Medicine. He holds positions as Associate Senior Vice Chancellor for Science Strategy and Planning and Professor of Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh. From 2016 to 2019, Berg was editor in chief of the Science journals.
Go to Profile#9787
Cyrus Vance
#9797
Overall Influence
1917 - 2002 (85 years)
Cyrus Roberts Vance Sr. was an American lawyer and United States Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1980. Prior to serving in that position, he was the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Johnson administration. During the Kennedy administration he was Secretary of the Army and General Counsel of the Department of Defense.
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Kim Dae-jung
#9798
Overall Influence
1924 - 2009 (85 years)
Kim Dae-jung , often referred to by his initials DJ, was a South Korean politician and activist who served as the eighth president of South Korea from 1998 to 2003. He was a 2000 Nobel Peace Prize recipient for his work for democracy and human rights in South Korea and in East Asia in general, and for peace and reconciliation with North Korea and Japan. He is also the only Korean to have won the Nobel Prize to date. He was sometimes referred to as "the Nelson Mandela of Asia". Kim was the first opposition candidate to win the presidency.
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Emmitt Smith
#9799
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Emmitt James Smith III is an American former football running back who played in the National Football League for 15 seasons, primarily with the Dallas Cowboys. Among other accolades, he is the league's all-time leading rusher.
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Paul Cartledge
#9800
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Paul Anthony Cartledge is a British ancient historian and academic. From 2008 to 2014 he was the A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge. He had previously held a personal chair in Greek History at Cambridge.
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Willie Rushton
#9801
Overall Influence
1937 - 1996 (59 years)
William George Rushton was an English actor, cartoonist, comedian and satirist who co-founded the satirical magazine Private Eye. Early life Rushton was born 18 August 1937 at 3 Wilbraham Place, Chelsea, London, the only child of publisher John Atherton Rushton and his Welsh wife Veronica . He was educated at Shrewsbury School, where he was not academically successful but met his future Private Eye colleagues Richard Ingrams, Paul Foot and Christopher Booker. He also contributed to the satirical magazine The Wallopian, mocking school spirit, traditions and the masters. Later, he said he recalled little of his schooldays, except that "it was Blandings country.
Go to Profile#9792
Vern Bullough
#9802
Overall Influence
1928 - 2006 (78 years)
Vern Leroy Bullough was an American historian and sexologist. He was a distinguished professor emeritus at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Faculty President at California State University, Northridge, a past president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, past Dean of natural and social sciences at the Buffalo State College in Buffalo, New York, one of the founders of the American Association for the History of Nursing, and a member of the editorial board of Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia.
Go to Profile#9793
Klaus Mollenhauer
#9803
Overall Influence
1928 - 1998 (70 years)
Klaus Mollenhauer was one of the most important German pedagogical theorists of the post-war era. His work focused on questions of critical pedagogy and the cultural and historical nature of education and upbringing. His final monograph, Forgotten Connections: On Culture and Upbringing, is available in English translation.
Go to Profile#9794
Tom Gehrels
#9804
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Anton M.J. "Tom" Gehrels was a Dutch–American astronomer, Professor of Planetary Sciences, and Astronomer at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Biography Youth and education Gehrels was born at Haarlemmermeer, the Netherlands on February 21, 1925. He was born in bible-belt Netherlands, and was forced to attend church regularly, an act he despised. When he was older he rejoiced when he found out his childhood church had been destroyed. During World War II he was, as a teenager, active in the Dutch Resistance. After he escaped to England, he was sent back by parachute as an organizer for Sp...
Go to Profile#9795
Florence Wald
#9805
Overall Influence
1917 - 2008 (91 years)
Florence Wald was an American nurse, former Dean of Yale School of Nursing, and largely credited as "the mother of the American hospice movement". She led the founding of Connecticut Hospice, the first hospice program in the United States. Late in life, Wald became interested in the provision of hospice care within prisons. In 1998, Wald was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#9796
Joe Walsh
#9806
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Joseph Fidler Walsh is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Best known as a member of the rock band Eagles, his five-decade career has also included solo work and stints in two other successful rock bands: James Gang and Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. He was also part of the New Zealand band Herbs. In the 1990s, he was a member of the short-lived supergroup the Best.
Go to Profile#9797
Edward Gibson
#9807
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Edward George Gibson is a former NASA astronaut, pilot, engineer, and physicist. Before becoming an astronaut, Gibson graduated from the University of Rochester and the California Institute of Technology. He became a research assistant in jet propulsion while completing his studies, and eventually became a research scientist for Philco Corporation until joining NASA in 1965. Gibson is the last surviving crew member of Skylab 4.
Go to Profile#9798
Gérard de Vaucouleurs
#9808
Overall Influence
1918 - 1995 (77 years)
Gérard Henri de Vaucouleurs was a French astronomer best known for his studies of galaxies. Life and career Gerard de Vaucouleurs was born on April 25th, 1918 in Paris, he took the maiden name of his mother as his last name. He had an early interest in amateur astronomy and received his undergraduate degree in 1939 at the Sorbonne in that city.
Go to Profile#9799
Marcus Brigstocke
#9809
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Marcus Alexander Brigstocke is a British comedian and actor. He has worked in stand-up comedy, television, radio and musical theatre. He has appeared on many BBC television and radio shows. Early life Brigstocke is the son of Nick Brigstocke, a stockbroker from a Welsh landed gentry family, and Carol, daughter of senior Royal Air Force officer Air Marshal Sir Walter Pretty. He was raised in Surrey, and educated at St Edmunds School in the village of Hindhead in Surrey, at Westbourne House School in Chichester, West Sussex, King's School, Bruton in Somerset, and Hammersmith & Fulham College in west London.
Go to Profile#9800
Ted Harris
#9810
Overall Influence
1919 - 2005 (86 years)
Theodore Edward Harris was an American mathematician known for his research on stochastic processes, including such areas as general state-space Markov chains , the theory of branching processes and stochastic models of interacting particle systems such as the contact process. The Harris inequality in statistical physics and percolation theory is named after him.
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