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
#9801
Giovanni Reale
#9811
Overall Influence
1931 - 2014 (83 years)
Giovanni Reale was an Italian historian of philosophy. Biography Reale was born in Candia Lomellina, Pavia. He attended the Gymnasium and the Liceo classico of Casale Monferrato, and was then educated at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, where he graduated. He later continued his studies in Marburg an der Lahn and Munich.
Go to Profile#9802
Kehinde Wiley
#9812
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Kehinde Wiley is an American portrait painter based in New York City, who is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of Black people, frequently referencing the work of Old Master paintings. He was commissioned in 2017 to paint a portrait of former President Barack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, which has portraits of all previous American presidents. The Columbus Museum of Art, which hosted an exhibition of his work in 2007, describes his work as follows: "Wiley has gained recent acclaim for his heroic portraits which address the image and status of young African-Am...
Go to Profile#9803
Richard Carrier
#9813
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Richard Cevantis Carrier is an ancient historian. He is long-time contributor to skeptical websites, including The Secular Web and Freethought Blogs, Carrier has published a number of books and articles on philosophy and religion in classical antiquity, discussing the development of early Christianity from a skeptical viewpoint, and concerning religion and morality in the modern world. He has publicly debated a number of scholars on the historical basis of the Bible and Christianity. He is a prominent advocate of the theory that Jesus did not exist, which he has argued in a number of his works.
Go to Profile#9804
Dave Ulrich
#9814
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Dave Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and a partner at the RBL Group, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations and leaders deliver value. He has published over 200 articles and book chapters and over 30 books. He edited Human Resource Management 1990-1999, served on editorial board of 4 other journals and on the Board of Directors for Herman Miller (16 years), has spoken to large audiences in 90 countries; performed workshops for over half of the Fortune 200; coached successful business leaders, and is a Distinguished Fellow in the National Academy of Human Resources.
Go to Profile#9805
Oleg A. Mukhanov
#9815
Overall Influence
Oleg A. Mukhanov is a Russian electrical engineer. He is an IEEE fellow who has focused on superconductivity. He is the co-inventor of SFQ digital technology. He authored and co-authored over 200 scientific papers and holds 24 patents. He is American and resides in the United States.
Go to Profile#9806
Max August Zorn
#9816
Overall Influence
1906 - 1993 (87 years)
Max August Zorn was a German mathematician. He was an algebraist, group theorist, and numerical analyst. He is best known for Zorn's lemma, a method used in set theory that is applicable to a wide range of mathematical constructs such as vector spaces, and ordered sets amongst others. Zorn's lemma was first postulated by Kazimierz Kuratowski in 1922, and then independently by Zorn in 1935.
Go to Profile#9807
Nicholas Serota
#9817
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota, , is an English art historian and curator, who served as the Director of the Tate from 1988 to 2017. He is currently Chair of Arts Council England, a role which he has held since February 2017.
Go to Profile#9808
Jemele Hill
#9818
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Jemele Juanita Hill is an American sports journalist. She worked for the Raleigh News & Observer, the Detroit Free Press, and the Orlando Sentinel. She joined ESPN in 2006 and worked in various roles until 2013, when she succeeded Jalen Rose as host of ESPN2's Numbers Never Lie. The show was rebranded to His & Hers which she co-hosted with Michael Smith. Hill and Michael Smith co-hosted SC6, the 6 p.m. edition of ESPN's flagship SportsCenter from 2017 to 2018.
Go to Profile#9809
Lawrence Otis Graham
#9819
Overall Influence
1961 - 2021 (60 years)
Lawrence Otis Graham was an American attorney, political analyst, cultural influencer and celebrated New York Times best-selling author. Early life and education Born on December 25, 1961 to Richard and Betty Graham, the story of the life of Lawrence Otis Graham began rooted in the segregated Jim Crow era of the south, where his Memphis, Tennessee-born parents were raised and his grandparents owned and operated a trucking company.
Go to Profile#9810
Drew Fudenberg
#9820
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Drew Fudenberg is a Professor of Economics at MIT. His extensive research spans many aspects of game theory, including equilibrium theory, learning in games, evolutionary game theory, and many applications to other fields. Fudenberg was also one of the first to apply game theoretic analysis in industrial organization, bargaining theory, and contract theory. He has also authored papers on repeated games, reputation effects, and behavioral economics.
Go to Profile#9811
Burkard Polster
#9821
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Burkard Polster is a German mathematician who runs and presents the Mathologer channel on YouTube. He is a professor of mathematics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Education and career Polster earned a doctorate from the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg in 1993 under the supervision of Karl Strambach. Other universities that Polster has been affiliated with, before joining Monash University in 2000, include the University of Würzburg, University at Albany, University of Kiel, University of California, Berkeley, University of Canterbury, and University of Adelaide.
Go to Profile#9812
János Kollár
#9822
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
#9813
Dave Mustaine
#9823
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
David Scott Mustaine is an American musician. He is the co-founder, frontman, primary songwriter and sole consistent member of the thrash metal band Megadeth. Mustaine has released sixteen studio albums with Megadeth, sold over 38 million records worldwide, with six albums platinum-certified, and won a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 2017 at the 59th Grammy Awards, for the title track of their fifteenth studio album, Dystopia.
Go to Profile#9814
Judy Goldsmith
#9824
Overall Influence
Judith Anne Goldsmith is a computer scientist whose publications span a wide range of topics including artificial intelligence, computational complexity theory, decision theory, and computer science education. She is a professor of computer science at the University of Kentucky.
Go to Profile#9815
Future
#9825
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Nayvadius DeMun Cash , known professionally as Future, is an American rapper and singer. Known for his mumble-styled vocals and prolific output, Future is considered a pioneer of the use of auto-tuned melodies in modern trap music. Due to the sustained popularity of this musical style, he is commonly regarded as one of the most influential rappers of his generation.
Go to Profile#9816
Jacob Palis
#9826
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Jacob Palis Jr. is a Brazilian mathematician and professor. Palis' research interests are mainly dynamical systems and differential equations. Some themes are global stability and hyperbolicity, bifurcations, attractors and chaotic systems.
Go to Profile#9817
Peter Railton
#9827
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Peter Albert Railton is an American philosopher who is Gregory S. Kavka Distinguished University Professor and John Stephenson Perrin Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he has taught since 1979.
Go to Profile#9818
Octavia E. Butler
#9828
Overall Influence
1947 - 2006 (59 years)
Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction author and a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
Go to Profile#9819
David Pingree
#9829
Overall Influence
1933 - 2005 (72 years)
David Edwin Pingree was an American historian of mathematics in the ancient world. He was a University Professor and Professor of History of Mathematics and Classics at Brown University. Life Pingree graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts in 1950. He studied at Harvard University, where he earned his doctorate in 1960 with a dissertation on the supposed transmission of Hellenistic astrology to India. His dissertation was supervised by Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls, Sr. and Otto Eduard Neugebauer. After completing his PhD, Pingree remained at Harvard three more years as a memb...
Go to Profile#9820
John Argyris
#9830
Overall Influence
1913 - 2004 (91 years)
Johann Hadji Argyris FRS was a Greek pioneer of computer applications in science and engineering, among the creators of the finite element method , and lately Professor at the University of Stuttgart and Director of the Institute of Structural Mechanics and Dynamics in Aerospace Engineering.
Go to Profile#9821
Peter Daszak
#9831
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Peter Daszak is a British zoologist, consultant and public expert on disease ecology, in particular on zoonosis. He is the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit non-governmental organization that supports various programs on global health and pandemic prevention. He is also a member of the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. He lives in Suffern, New York.
Go to Profile#9822
John DeFrancis
#9832
Overall Influence
1911 - 2009 (98 years)
John DeFrancis was an American linguist, sinologist, author of Chinese language textbooks, lexicographer of Chinese dictionaries, and Professor Emeritus of Chinese Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Go to Profile#9823
Teddy Sheringham
#9833
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Edward Paul Sheringham, MBE is an English football manager and former player. He played as a forward, mostly as a second striker, in a 24-year professional career. Sheringham began his career at Millwall, where he scored 111 goals between 1983 and 1991, and is the club's second all-time leading scorer. He left to join First Division Nottingham Forest. A year later, Sheringham scored Forest's first ever Premiership goal, and was signed by Tottenham Hotspur. After five seasons at Spurs, Sheringham joined Manchester United where he won three Premiership titles, one FA Cup, one UEFA Champions League, an Intercontinental Cup and an FA Charity Shield.
Go to Profile#9824
Olaf Helmer
#9834
Overall Influence
1910 - 2011 (101 years)
Olaf Helmer was a German-American logician and futurologist. He was a researcher at the RAND Corporation from 1946 to 1968 and a co-founder of the Institute for the Future. Born in Berlin, Helmer studied mathematics and logic at the University of Berlin. He earned his doctorate there in 1934, under direction from philosopher Hans Reichenbach. That year he moved to London where he began a second doctorate study, on Russell's paradox, under direction from Susan Stebbing at the University of London. Russell himself was one of Helmer's examiners.
Go to Profile#9825
Michael Swanwick
#9835
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Michael Swanwick is an American fantasy and science fiction author who began publishing in the early 1980s. Writing career Swanwick's fiction writing began with short stories, starting in 1980 when he published "Ginungagap" in TriQuarterly and "The Feast of St. Janis" in New Dimensions 11. Both stories were nominees for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1981. His first novel was In the Drift , a look at the results of a more catastrophic Three Mile Island incident, which expands on his earlier short story "Mummer's Kiss". This was followed in 1987 by Vacuum Flowers, an adventurous ...
Go to Profile#9826
Boris Chirikov
#9836
Overall Influence
1928 - 2008 (80 years)
Boris Valerianovich Chirikov was a Soviet and Russian physicist. He was the founder of the physical theory of Hamiltonian chaos and made pioneering contributions to the theory of quantum chaos. In 1959, he invented the Chirikov criterion which gives an analytical estimate for the overlap of resonances and provides the conditions for transition from integrability to global chaos in Hamiltonian dynamical systems.
Go to Profile#9827
Fred Bronson
#9837
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Fredric M. "Fred" Bronson is an American journalist, author and writer. He is the author of books related to number one songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and other books related to various music charts as well. He is also known for his appearances on American Idol and the weekly "Chart Beat" column in Billboard magazine.
Go to Profile#9828
Diane Warren
#9838
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Diane Eve Warren is an American songwriter. She has won an Academy Honorary Award, Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, two Golden Globe Awards and a consecutive Billboard Music Award for Songwriter of the Year .
Go to Profile#9829
Fernando de la Rúa
#9839
Overall Influence
1937 - 2019 (82 years)
Fernando de la Rúa was an Argentine politician and a member of the Radical Civic Union political party who served as President of Argentina from 10 December 1999 to 21 December 2001. De la Rúa was born in Córdoba; he entered politics after graduating with a degree in law. He was elected senator in 1973 and unsuccessfully ran for the office of Vice President as Ricardo Balbín's running mate the same year. He was re-elected senator in 1983 and 1993, and as deputy in 1991. He unsuccessfully opposed the pact of Olivos between President Carlos Menem and party leader Raúl Alfonsín, which enabled t...
Go to Profile#9830
George Shevelov
#9840
Overall Influence
1908 - 2002 (94 years)
George Yurii Shevelov also known by his numerous literary pseudonyms Yurii Sherekh, Hryhory Shevchuk, Šerech, Sherekh, Sher; , , etc. was a Ukrainian-American professor, linguist, philologist, essayist, literary historian, and literary critic of German heritage. A longtime professor of Slavic philology at Columbia University, he challenged the prevailing notion of a unified East Slavic language from which Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian later developed, instead proposing that these languages emerged independently from one another.
Go to Profile#9831
Elliot Eisner
#9841
Overall Influence
1933 - 2014 (81 years)
Elliot Wayne Eisner was a professor of Art and Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, and was one of the United States' leading academic minds. He was active in several fields including arts education, curriculum reform, qualitative research, and was the recipient of a University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in 2005 for his work in education as well as the Brock International Prize in 2004. In 1992, he became the recipient of the José Vasconcelos World Award of Education in recognition to his 30 years of scholarly and professional work, particularly his contribution in th...
Go to Profile#9832
Gloria Townsend
#9842
Overall Influence
Gloria Townsend is an American computer scientist and professor in the department of Computer Science at DePauw University in Indiana. She is known for her work in evolutionary computation and her involvement with women in computing. She has served on the executive committee of the Association for Computing Machinery Council on Women in Computing. She is the author of One Hundred One Ideas for Small Regional Celebrations of Women in Computing. In 2013, she received the Mr. and Mrs. Fred C. Tucker Jr. Distinguished Career Award for notable contributions to DePauw through her commitments to s...
Go to Profile#9833
Georges Cottier
#9843
Overall Influence
1922 - 2016 (94 years)
Georges Marie Martin Cottier O.P., was a Swiss prelate and theologian of the Catholic Church who served from 1990 to 2005 as theologian to Pope John Paul II as Theologian of the Pontifical Household after a career as a theologian and teacher. He was made a cardinal in 2003.
Go to Profile#9834
Michael Wilbon
#9844
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Michael Wilbon is an American commentator for ESPN and former sportswriter and columnist for The Washington Post. He is an analyst for ESPN and has co-hosted Pardon the Interruption on ESPN since 2001.
Go to Profile#9835
K. R. Sridhar
#9845
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
KR Sridhar is an Indian American engineer, professor, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Bloom Energy. He was a professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering as well as Director of the Space Technologies Laboratory at the University of Arizona. Sridhar is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Go to Profile#9836
Peter Travers
#9846
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Peter Joseph Travers is an American film critic, journalist, and television presenter. He reviews films for ABC News and previously served as a movie critic for People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts the film interview program Popcorn with Peter Travers for ABC News.
Go to Profile#9837
John Money
#9847
Overall Influence
1921 - 2006 (85 years)
John William Money was a New Zealand American psychologist, sexologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University known for his research on human sexual behavior and gender. Believing that gender identity was malleable within the first two years of life, Money advocated for the surgical "normalization" of the genitalia of intersex infants.
Go to Profile#9838
Alenka Zupančič
#9848
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Alenka Zupančič is a Slovenian philosopher whose work focuses on psychoanalysis and continental philosophy. She is a Slovenian psychoanalytic theorist and philosopher who along with Mladen Dolar and Slavoj Žižek have in large measure been responsible for the popularity in North America of a politically infused Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Go to Profile#9839
Richard S. Westfall
#9849
Overall Influence
1924 - 1996 (72 years)
Richard S. Westfall was an American academic, biographer and historian of science. He is best known for his biography of Isaac Newton and his work on the scientific revolution of the 17th century. Life Born in Fort Collins, Colorado, Westfall graduated from high school in 1942 and enrolled at Yale University. His time at Yale was interrupted by two years of service in World War II, but he returned to complete his B.A. degree in 1948. He subsequently earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale, with a dissertation entitled Science and Religion in Seventeenth Century England. The work was an early ...
Go to Profile#9840
Steve Winwood
#9850
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Stephen Lawrence Winwood is an English musician and songwriter whose genres include blue-eyed soul, rhythm and blues, blues rock, and pop rock. Though primarily a guitarist, keyboard player, and vocalist prominent for his distinctive, soulful high tenor voice, Winwood plays other instruments proficiently, including drums, mandolin, bass, and saxophone.
Go to Profile#9841
Martin Newell
#9851
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Martin Edward Newell is a British-born computer scientist specializing in computer graphics who is perhaps best known as the creator of the Utah teapot computer model. Career Before emigrating to the US, he worked at what was then the Computer-Aided Design Centre in Cambridge, UK, along with his brother Dick Newell . At CADCentre, the two Newells and Tom Sancha developed Newell's algorithm, a technique for eliminating cyclic dependencies when ordering polygons to be drawn by a computer graphics system.
Go to Profile#9842
David S. Tatel
#9852
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
David Stephen Tatel is an American lawyer who serves as a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Education and career Tatel received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan in 1963. He graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1966 with a Juris Doctor.
Go to Profile#9843
Didier Sornette
#9853
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Didier Sornette is a French researcher studying subjects including complex systems and risk management. He is Professor on the Chair of Entrepreneurial Risks at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and is also a professor of the Swiss Finance Institute, He was previously a Professor of Geophysics at UCLA, Los Angeles California and a Research Professor at the French National Centre for Scientific Research .
Go to Profile#9844
Peter Gleick
#9854
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Peter H. Gleick is an American scientist working on issues related to the environment. He works at the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California, which he co-founded in 1987. In 2003 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his work on water resources. Among the issues he has addressed are conflicts over water resources, water and climate change, development, and human health.
Go to Profile#9845
Edwin E. Moise
#9855
Overall Influence
1918 - 1998 (80 years)
Edwin Evariste Moise was an American mathematician and mathematics education reformer. After his retirement from mathematics he became a literary critic of 19th-century English poetry and had several notes published in that field.
Go to Profile#9846
Charles Bazerman
#9856
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Charles Bazerman is an American educator and scholar. He was born and raised in New York. He has contributed significantly to the establishment of writing as a research field, as evidenced by the collection of essays written by international scholars in Writing as A Human Activity: Implications and Applications of the Work of Charles Bazerman. Best known for his work on genre studies and the rhetoric of science, he is a Professor of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he also served as Chair of the Program in Education for eight years. He served as Chair of the Con...
Go to Profile#9847
Maura Johnston
#9857
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Maura K. Johnston is a writer, editor and music critic. A member of Boston College's journalism faculty, she has written for Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Pitchfork, The Awl, The New York Times, Spin and The Guardian. She is working on a critical biography of Madonna for the Harlequin Enterprises subsidiary Hanover Square Press.
Go to Profile#9848
Toshio Suzuki
#9858
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Toshio Suzuki is a Japanese film producer of anime and a long-time colleague of Hayao Miyazaki, as well as a co-founder and the president of Studio Ghibli. Suzuki is renowned as one of Japan's most successful producers after the enormous box office success of many Ghibli films.
Go to Profile#9849
Ruud van Nistelrooy
#9859
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Rutgerus Johannes Martinus "Ruud" van Nistelrooij is a Dutch professional football coach and former player. He was most recently the manager of PSV Eindhoven, and is often considered one of the best strikers of all time. He has been the top scorer in three separate UEFA Champions League seasons, and is the sixth-highest goalscorer in the competition's history with 56 goals. He has also been the top scorer in three different European domestic leagues. In 2004, he was listed in the FIFA 100 of the world's greatest living players.
Go to Profile#9850
Stewart Shapiro
#9860
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Stewart Shapiro is O'Donnell Professor of Philosophy at the Ohio State University and distinguished visiting professor at the University of Connecticut. He is a leading figure in the philosophy of mathematics where he defends the abstract variety of structuralism.
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