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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people
#9851
James A. Shapiro
#9861
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
James Alan Shapiro is an American biologist, an expert in bacterial genetics and a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago. Academic biography Shapiro obtained his Bachelor's degree in English from Harvard College in 1964. Then, inspired by a genetics course he had taken as a senior, he shifted from English to science. He was awarded a Marshall scholarship for postgraduate research at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge from 1964 to 1967, spending his final year at Hammersmith hospital under the supervision of William Hayes, and being awarded a PhD in genetics in 1968.
Go to Profile#9852
Esa Saarinen
#9862
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Esa Jouni Olavi Saarinen is a Finnish philosopher who was a professor of applied philosophy at Aalto University and co-director of the Systems Intelligence Research Group. until his retirement in 2021.
Go to Profile#9853
Jason Gaverick Matheny
#9863
Overall Influence
Jason Gaverick Matheny is an American national security expert serving as president and CEO of the RAND Corporation since July 2022. He was previously a senior civil servant in the Biden Administration from March 2021 to June 2022. He served as deputy assistant to the president for technology and national security, deputy director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and coordinator for technology and national security at the White House National Security Council.
Go to Profile#9854
Pieranna Garavaso
#9864
Overall Influence
Pieranna Garavaso is an analytic philosopher and professor emerita at the University of Minnesota Morris. Her areas of interest include epistemological and metaphysical issues in philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and feminist epistemology. She received her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. She is the recipient of two distinguished teaching awards: the University of Minnesota, Morris Alumni Association Teaching Award in 2003 and the Horace T. Morse University of Minnesota Alumni in 2004.
Go to Profile#9855
Yolanda Shea
#9865
Overall Influence
Yolanda Shea is a Research Physical Scientist at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. In 2019, Shea earned a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for her work in pioneering shortwave spectral measurements.
Go to Profile#9856
Jack Weatherford
#9866
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Jack McIver Weatherford is the former DeWitt Wallace Professor of anthropology at Macalester College in Minnesota. He is best known for his 2004 book, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. In 2006, he was awarded the Order of the Polar Star, and the Order of Chinggis Khan in 2022, Mongolia’s two highest national honors. Moreover, he was honoured with the Order of the Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho by the Government of Bolivia in 2014.
Go to Profile#9857
Robert Alexy
#9867
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Robert Alexy is a jurist and a legal philosopher. Alexy studied law and philosophy at the University of Göttingen. He received his J.D. in 1976 with the dissertation A Theory of Legal Argumentation, and he achieved his Habilitation in 1984 with a Theory of Constitutional Rights.
Go to Profile#9858
Richard Ofshe
#9868
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Richard Jason Ofshe is an American sociologist and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his expert testimony relating to coercion in small groups, confessions, and interrogations.
Go to Profile#9859
Tom Johnson
#9869
Overall Influence
Wyatt Thomas Johnson is an American journalist and media executive, best known for serving as president of Cable News Network during the 1990s and, before that, as publisher of the Los Angeles Times newspaper. He was a member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors from 1976 to 1980. In addition, Johnson is a long-time member of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation board of trustees and a former member of the Rockefeller Foundation board of trustees.
Go to Profile#9860
Frank Rijkaard
#9870
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Franklin Edmundo Rijkaard is a Dutch former footballer and former manager who played as a defensive midfielder. Rijkaard played for Ajax, Real Zaragoza and AC Milan and played for the Netherlands national team side 73 times, scoring 10 goals. In his managerial career, he was at the helm of the Netherlands national team, Sparta Rotterdam, Barcelona, Galatasaray and the Saudi Arabia national team.
Go to Profile#9861
Vittorio Gallese
#9871
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Vittorio Gallese is professor of Psychobiology at the University of Parma, Italy, and was professor in Experimental Aesthetics at the University of London, UK . He is an expert in neurophysiology, cognitive neuroscience, social neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. Gallese is one of the discoverers of mirror neurons. His research attempts to elucidate the functional organization of brain mechanisms underlying social cognition, including action understanding, empathy, language, mindreading and aesthetic experience.
Go to Profile#9862
David A. Bednar
#9872
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
David Allan Bednar is a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . A former educator, Bednar was president of Brigham Young University–Idaho from 1997 to 2004.
Go to Profile#9863
William Hague
#9873
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
William Jefferson Hague, Baron Hague of Richmond, is a British politician and life peer who served as Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1997 to 2001. He was the Member of Parliament for Richmond in North Yorkshire from 1989 to 2015. He served in the Cameron government as First Secretary of State from 2010 to 2015, Foreign Secretary from 2010 to 2014, and Leader of the House of Commons from 2014 to 2015.
Go to Profile#9864
Robin Blackburn
#9874
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Robin Blackburn is a British historian, a former editor of New Left Review , and emeritus professor in the department of sociology at Essex University. Background Blackburn was educated at Hurstpierpoint College, Oxford University and the London School of Economics. Between 2001 and 2010 he was distinguished visiting professor of historical studies at The New School in New York City. He is an emeritus professor in the department of sociology at Essex University. He has been a regular contributor to New Left Review since 1962.
Go to Profile#9865
Iain Dale
#9875
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Iain Dale is a British broadcaster, author and political commentator, and a former publisher and book retailer. He has been a blogger since 2002. In 2005, he became the first openly gay Conservative candidate to contest a parliamentary election. He was the publisher of the Total Politics magazine between 2008 and 2012, and the managing director of Biteback Publishing until May 2018. Since September 2010, he has hosted a regular discussion show on the radio station LBC. He was named Radio Presenter of the Year at the Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards in both 2013 and 2016.
Go to Profile#9866
Hilbrand J. Groenewold
#9876
Overall Influence
1910 - 1996 (86 years)
Hilbrand Johannes "Hip" Groenewold was a Dutch theoretical physicist who pioneered the largely operator-free formulation of quantum mechanics in phase space known as phase-space quantization. Biography Groenewold was born on 29 June 1910 in Muntendam in the province of Groningen. He graduated from the University of Groningen, with a major in physics and minors in mathematics and mechanics in 1934. After a visit to Cambridge to interact with John von Neumann on the links between classical and quantum mechanics, and a checkered career working with Frits Zernike in Groningen, then Leiden, the ...
Go to Profile#9867
Steven Sasson
#9877
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Steven J. Sasson is an American electrical engineer and the inventor of the self-contained digital camera. He joined Kodak shortly after his graduation from engineering school and retired from Kodak in 2009.
Go to Profile#9868
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
#9878
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Hans Joachim "John" Schellnhuber is a German atmospheric physicist, climatologist and founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and former chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change .
Go to Profile#9869
Fred Kaplan
#9879
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Fred M. Kaplan is an American author and journalist. His weekly "War Stories" column for Slate magazine covers international relations and U.S. foreign policy. Biography Kaplan was born in Hutchinson, Kansas, to Julius E. and Ruth Kaplan. He received a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and a Master of Science and Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1978 to 1980, he was a foreign and defense policy adviser to U.S. Congressman Les Aspin .
Go to Profile#9870
Adrian Smith
#9880
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Adrian D. Smith is an American architect. He designed the world's tallest structure, Burj Khalifa, as well as the building projected to surpass it, the Jeddah Tower. A long-time principal of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, he founded his own architectural partnership firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture in Chicago in 2006. Among his other projects, he was the senior architect for Central Park Tower in New York City, Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago, the Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai, and Zifeng Tower in Nanjing.
Go to Profile#9871
Grzegorz Rozenberg
#9881
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Grzegorz Rozenberg is a Polish and Dutch computer scientist. His primary research areas are natural computing, formal language and automata theory, graph transformations, and concurrent systems. He is referred to as the guru of natural computing, as he was promoting the vision of natural computing as a coherent scientific discipline already in the 1970s, gave this discipline its current name, and defined its scope.
Go to Profile#9872
Fernando Torres
#9882
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Fernando José Torres Sanz is a Spanish football manager and former player who played as a striker. He is the current manager of Atlético Madrid Juvenil A. Due to his consistent goalscoring rate as a young player, Torres came to be nicknamed El Niño , which stuck with him throughout his career. In his prime, he was praised for his pace, accurate finishing, and proficiency in heading, and was named in the FIFA World XI twice.
Go to Profile#9873
Jafar Shahidi
#9883
Overall Influence
1918 - 2008 (90 years)
Jafar Shahidi known as Seyed Jafar Shahidi was a distinguished scholar of the Persian language and literature, and a renowned historian of Islam. Born in Boroujerd, Lorestan Province, Iran, Shahidi dedicated his life to Persian studies, acting as the director of the Dehkhoda Dictionary Institute and International Center for Persian Studies , serving as the Dean of the Faculty of Literature and Humanities at the University of Tehran , and mastering the fields of jurisprudence and Islamic history. As a member of the Faculty of Literature and Humanities at the University of Tehran, Shahidi speci...
Go to Profile#9874
Jeffrey Herbst
#9884
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Jeffrey I. Herbst is an American political scientist, specializing in comparative politics, and in July 2018 became the president of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, California. Herbst was previously the 16th president of Colgate University, and president and CEO of the Newseum in Washington, D.C. He resigned from his post at the Newseum in 2017 as the museum announced financial issues. Prior to assuming the presidency of Colgate in 2010, he was provost, executive vice president for academic affairs, and professor of political science at Miami University. He received his B.A. from Princeton University in 1983, M.A., MPhil from Yale University in 1985, and Ph.D.
Go to Profile#9875
Peter Swinnerton-Dyer
#9885
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Sir Henry Peter Francis Swinnerton-Dyer, 16th Baronet, was an English mathematician specialising in number theory at the University of Cambridge. As a mathematician he was best known for his part in the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture relating algebraic properties of elliptic curves to special values of L-functions, which was developed with Bryan Birch during the first half of the 1960s with the help of machine computation, and for his work on the Titan operating system.
Go to Profile#9876
Robert Shaw
#9886
Overall Influence
1916 - 1999 (83 years)
Robert Lawson Shaw was an American conductor most famous for his work with his namesake Chorale, with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. He was known for drawing public attention to choral music through his wide-ranging influence and mentoring of younger conductors, the high standard of his recordings, his support for racial integration in his choruses, and his support for modern music, winning many awards throughout his career.
Go to Profile#9877
David B. Weishampel
#9887
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Professor David Bruce Weishampel is an American palaeontologist in the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Weishampel received his Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981. His research focuses include dinosaur systematics, European dinosaurs of the Late Cretaceous, jaw mechanics and herbivory, cladistics and heterochrony and the history of evolutionary biology. Weishampel's best known published work is The Dinosauria University of California Press; 2nd edition . He consulted for Jurassic Park and is a good friend of Steven Spielberg.
Go to Profile#9878
Michel Balinski
#9888
Overall Influence
1933 - 2019 (86 years)
Michel Louis Balinski was an American and French applied mathematician, economist, operations research analyst and political scientist. Educated in the United States, from 1980 he lived and worked in France. He was known for his work in optimisation , convex polyhedra, stable matching, and the theory and practice of electoral systems, jury decision, and social choice. He was Directeur de Recherche de classe exceptionnelle of the C.N.R.S. at the École Polytechnique . He was awarded the John von Neumann Theory Prize by INFORMS in 2013.
Go to Profile#9879
Edgar Gilbert
#9889
Overall Influence
1923 - 2013 (90 years)
Edgar Nelson Gilbert was an American mathematician and coding theorist, a longtime researcher at Bell Laboratories whose accomplishments include the Gilbert–Varshamov bound in coding theory, the Gilbert–Elliott model of bursty errors in signal transmission, and the Erdős–Rényi model for random graphs.
Go to Profile#9880
Avner Greif
#9890
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Avner Greif is an economics professor at Stanford University, Stanford, California. He holds a chaired professorship as Bowman Family Professor in the Humanities and Sciences. Greif received his PhD in Economics at Northwestern University, where Joel Mokyr acted as his supervisor, in 1989 and started his career at Stanford University in 1989 until he received tenure in 1994. In 1998 he received a 'genius grant' from the MacArthur Foundation. His works deal with economic history and role of institutions in economic development, including analysis of trade in medieval Europe and Levant.
Go to Profile#9881
Grant Morrison
#9891
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Grant Morrison MBE is a Scottish comic book writer, screenwriter, and producer. Their work is known for its nonlinear narratives, humanist philosophy and countercultural leanings. Morrison has written extensively for the American comic book publisher DC Comics, penning lengthy runs on Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, Action Comics, and The Green Lantern as well as the graphic novels Arkham Asylum, JLA: Earth 2, and Wonder Woman: Earth One, the meta-series Seven Soldiers and The Multiversity, the mini-series DC One Million and Final Crisis, both of which served as centrepieces for the eponymous company-wide crossover storylines, and the maxi-series All-Star Superman.
Go to Profile#9882
André Kuipers
#9892
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
André Kuipers is a Dutch physician and ESA astronaut. He became the second Dutch citizen, third Dutch-born and fifth Dutch-speaking astronaut upon launch of Soyuz TMA-4 on 19 April 2004. Kuipers returned to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-3 11 days later.
Go to Profile#9883
Richard Sylvan
#9893
Overall Influence
1935 - 1996 (61 years)
Richard Sylvan was a New Zealand–born philosopher, logician, and environmentalist. Biography Sylvan was born Francis Richard Routley in Levin, New Zealand, and his early work is cited with this surname. He studied at Victoria University College of the University of New Zealand , and then Princeton University, before taking positions successively at several Australian institutions, including the University of Sydney. From 1971 until his death in Bali, Indonesia, he was a fellow at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University in Canberra.
Go to Profile#9884
Rolf-Dieter Heuer
#9894
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Rolf-Dieter Heuer is a German particle physicist. From 2009 to 2015 he was Director General of CERN and from 5 April 2016 to 9 April 2018 President of the German Physical Society . Since 2015 he has been Chair of the European Commission's Group of Chief Scientific Advisors, and since May 2017 he has been President of the SESAME Council.
Go to Profile#9885
Michael Che
#9895
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Michael Che Campbell is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. Che is best known for his work on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live, where he has served as co-anchor on Weekend Update alongside Colin Jost, and the two were co-head writers from 2017 until 2022. Che and Jost co-hosted the 70th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2018.
Go to Profile#9886
Ilham Tohti
#9896
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Ilham Tohti is a Uyghur economist serving a life sentence in China, on separatism-related charges. He is a vocal advocate for the implementation of regional autonomy laws in China, was the host of Uyghur Online, a website founded in 2006 that discusses Uyghur issues, and is known for his research on Uyghur-Han relations. Ilham was summoned from his Beijing home and detained shortly after the July 2009 Ürümqi riots by the authorities because of his criticism of the Chinese government's policies toward Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Ilham was released on August 23 after international pressure and condemnation.
Go to Profile#9887
Alexander Lerner
#9897
Overall Influence
1913 - 2004 (91 years)
Alexander Yakovlevich Lerner was a scientist and Soviet refusenik. He was born to a Jewish family in Vinnytsia, Russian Empire . Lerner graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute in 1938, and received a Ph.D. from the same institution in 1940. During World War II, Lerner served as the chief engineer of the Central Autonomous Laboratory at the Soviet Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy in Moscow.
Go to Profile#9888
William Tenn
#9898
Overall Influence
1920 - 2010 (90 years)
William Tenn was the pseudonym of Philip Klass , a British-born American science fiction author, notable for many stories with satirical elements. Biography Born to a Jewish family in London, Phillip Klass moved to New York City with his parents before his second birthday and grew up in Brooklyn, the oldest of three children. After serving in the United States Army during World War II as a combat engineer in Europe, he held a job as a technical editor with an Air Force radar and radio laboratory and was employed by Bell Labs.
Go to Profile#9889
Jay L. Garfield
#9899
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
#9890
Robin Denselow
#9900
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Robin Denselow is a British writer, journalist, and broadcaster. Education Denselow was educated at Leighton Park School, a boys' Quaker boarding independent school in Reading, Berkshire, followed by New College, Oxford, where he studied English.
Go to Profile#9891
Gérard Laumon
#9901
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Gérard Laumon is a French mathematician, best known for his results in number theory, for which he was awarded the Clay Research Award. Life and work Laumon studied at the École Normale Supérieure and Paris-Sud 11 University, Orsay. He was awarded the Silver Medal of the CNRS in 1987, and the E. Dechelle prize of the French Academy of the Sciences in 1992.
Go to Profile#9892
Ramamurti Shankar
#9902
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ramamurti Shankar is the Josiah Willard Gibbs professor of Physics at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut. Education He received his B. Tech in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras and his Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics from the University of California, Berkeley .
Go to Profile#9893
Zdzisław Najder
#9903
Overall Influence
1930 - 2021 (91 years)
Zdzisław Najder was a Polish literary historian, critic, and political activist. He was primarily known for his studies on Joseph Conrad, for his periods of service as political adviser to Lech Wałęsa and Jan Olszewski, and for having served as chief of the Polish-language section of Radio Free Europe.
Go to Profile#9894
Ossip K. Flechtheim
#9904
Overall Influence
1909 - 1998 (89 years)
Ossip Kurt Flechtheim was a German jurist, political scientist, author, futurist, and a humanist. He is credited with coining of the term "Futurology". Early life Flechtheim was born in Nikolaev , into a Jewish family, the son of bookseller Herrmann Flechtheim and his wife Olga, née Farber . In 1910 the family moved back into the father's hometown of Westphalian Münster, where his relatives had a grain trade business, and later to Düsseldorf. The art dealer Alfred Flechtheim was his uncle.
Go to Profile#9895
Piero Scaruffi
#9905
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Piero Scaruffi is an Italian-American writer who maintains a website on which his reviews of music, film, and art are published. He has created his own publishing entity called Omnipublishing, which exclusively releases his books about music and science.
Go to Profile#9896
Ivor Cutler
#9906
Overall Influence
1923 - 2006 (83 years)
Ivor Cutler was a Scottish poet, singer, musician, songwriter, artist and humorist. He became known for his regular performances on BBC radio, and in particular his numerous sessions recorded for John Peel's influential eponymous late night radio programme , and later for Andy Kershaw's programme. He appeared in the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour film in 1967 and on Neil Innes' television programmes. Cutler also wrote books for children and adults and was a teacher at A. S. Neill's Summerhill School and for 30 years in inner-city schools in London.
Go to Profile#9897
John McCarthy
#9907
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
John Patrick McCarthy is a British journalist, writer and broadcaster, and one of the hostages in the Lebanon hostage crisis. McCarthy was the United Kingdom's longest-held hostage in Lebanon, where he was a prisoner for more than five years.
Go to Profile#9898
Gordon Hirabayashi
#9908
Overall Influence
1918 - 2012 (94 years)
Gordon Kiyoshi Hirabayashi was an American sociologist, best known for his principled resistance to the Japanese American internment during World War II, and the court case which bears his name, Hirabayashi v. United States.
Go to Profile#9899
Widukind Lenz
#9909
Overall Influence
1919 - 1995 (76 years)
Widukind Lenz was a distinguished German pediatrician, medical geneticist and dysmorphologist who was among the first to recognize the thalidomide syndrome in 1961 and alert the world to the dangers of limb and other malformations due to the mother's exposure to this drug during pregnancy.
Go to Profile#9900
Alan Fersht
#9910
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Sir Alan Roy Fersht is a British chemist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, and an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. He was Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge from 2012 to 2018. He works on protein folding, and is sometimes described as a founder of protein engineering.
Go to Profile