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
#10001
Helmut Gollwitzer
#10011
Overall Influence
1908 - 1993 (85 years)
Helmut Gollwitzer was a German Protestant theologian and author. Born in Pappenheim, Bavaria, Gollwitzer studied Protestant theology in Munich, Erlangen, Jena and Bonn ; he later completed a doctorate under Karl Barth in Basel , writing on the understanding of the eucharist in Martin Luther and John Calvin.
Go to Profile#10002
Robert M. W. Dixon
#10012
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Robert Malcolm Ward "Bob" Dixon is a Professor of Linguistics in the College of Arts, Society, and Education and The Cairns Institute, James Cook University, Queensland. He is also Deputy Director of The Language and Culture Research Centre at JCU. Doctor of Letters , he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa by JCU in 2018. Fellow of British Academy; Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and Honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America, he is one of three living linguists to be specifically mentioned in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics by Pe...
Go to Profile#10003
David M. Kreps
#10013
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
David Marc "Dave" Kreps is a game theorist and economist and professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University . The Stanford University Department of Economics appointed Kreps the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management. He is known for his analysis of dynamic choice models and non-cooperative game theory, particularly the idea of sequential equilibrium, which he developed with Stanford Business School colleague Robert B. Wilson.
Go to Profile#10004
Connie Willis
#10014
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis , commonly known as Connie Willis, is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. She has won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards for particular works—more major SF awards than any other writer—most recently the "Best Novel" Hugo and Nebula Awards for Blackout/All Clear . She was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Science Fiction Writers of America named her its 28th SFWA Grand Master in 2011.
Go to Profile#10005
Douglas Den Uyl
#10015
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Douglas J. Den Uyl is vice president of educational programs at Liberty Fund. Biography Den Uyl earned his B.A. from Kalamazoo College, his MA from the University of Chicago, and his Ph.D. from Marquette University. Den Uyl's areas of scholarly interest include the history of ideas, moral and political theory, and has published essays or books on Spinoza, Smith, Shaftesbury, Mandeville and others. He taught philosophy and was department chair and full professor at Bellarmine College before coming to Liberty Fund. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. Den Uyl has contributed articles to...
Go to Profile#10006
Sammy Smooha
#10016
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Sammy Smooha is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Haifa. Biography He is recipient of the Israel Prize. He specializes in comparative ethnic relations, and has researched the internal divisions in Israeli society, and the society of Israel in comparative perspective.
Go to Profile#10007
Jürgen Neukirch
#10017
Overall Influence
1937 - 1997 (60 years)
Jürgen Neukirch was a German mathematician known for his work on algebraic number theory. Education and career Neukirch received his diploma in mathematics in 1964 from the University of Bonn. For his Ph.D. thesis, written under the direction of Wolfgang Krull, he was awarded in 1965 the Felix-Hausdorff-Gedächtnis-Preis. He completed his habilitation one year later. From 1967 to 1969 he was guest professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after which he was a professor in Bonn. In 1971 he became a professo...
Go to Profile#10008
Alexander Stille
#10018
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Alexander Stille is an American author and journalist. Early life and education He is the son of Elizabeth and Michael U. Stille. Michael was a Russian-born journalist who was the longtime American correspondent and later chief editor of Milan's Corriere della Sera newspaper. Alexander graduated from Yale and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Go to Profile#10009
Anne Tyler
#10019
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-four novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant , The Accidental Tourist , and Breathing Lessons . All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker P...
Go to Profile#10010
Geoff Hurst
#10020
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Sir Geoffrey Charles Hurst is an English former professional footballer. A striker, he became the first and one of only two men to ever score a hat-trick in a World Cup final, when England recorded a 4–2 victory over West Germany at Wembley Stadium in 1966. With the death of Sir Bobby Charlton in October 2023, Hurst became the last living player from the team that won the 1966 final.
Go to Profile#10011
Richard D. Alexander
#10021
Overall Influence
1929 - 2018 (89 years)
Richard D. Alexander was an American zoologist who was a professor at the University of Michigan and curator at the university's museum of zoology of in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His scientific pursuits integrated the fields of systematics, ecology, evolution, natural history and behavior. The salient organisms in his research are wide-ranging, from the orthopterans and Cicadidae to vertebrates: dogs, horses, and primates, including humans.
Go to Profile#10012
Sian Beilock
#10022
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Sian Leah Beilock is a cognitive scientist who is the current president of Dartmouth College. Previous to serving at Dartmouth College, Beilock was the eighth president of Barnard College, the undergraduate women's college of Columbia University. As President of Barnard, she was also an academic dean within Columbia University. Beilock spent 12 years at the University of Chicago, departing Chicago as the Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology and Executive Vice Provost. She holds doctorates of philosophy in both kinesiology and psychology from Michigan State University.
Go to Profile#10013
Günther Landgraf
#10023
Overall Influence
1928 - 2006 (78 years)
Günther Landgraf was a German physicist and, from 1990 till 1994, President of Technische Universität Dresden. Günther Landgraf was born in Kryry, in Bohemia . He came to Dresden in 1938 and studied physics. Landgraf graduated in fatigue strength science at the Technische Hochschule Dresden in 1952 and received his Ph.D. in 1961 and Habilitation at the renamed Technische Universität Dresden in 1969.
Go to Profile#10014
Angela Duckworth
#10024
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Angela Lee Duckworth is an American academic, psychologist, and popular science author. She is the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studies grit and self-control. She is also the Founder and former CEO of Character Lab, a not-for-profit whose mission is to advance the science and practice of character development.
Go to Profile#10015
Qian Sanqiang
#10025
Overall Influence
1913 - 1992 (79 years)
Qian Sanqiang , also known as Tsien San-Tsiang, was a Chinese nuclear physicist and among the leading scientists of the Two Bombs, One Satellite program. Due to his central role in the development of China's nuclear industry and nuclear weapons program, he is referred to as the "father of China's atomic bomb". Coincidentally, China's first atomic bomb test was conducted on Qian's 51st birthday.
Go to Profile#10016
Heather Heying
#10026
Overall Influence
Heather E. Heying is an American evolutionary biologist, former professor, and author, who came to national attention following the Evergreen State College protests in 2017. She has been associated with the informal group known as the intellectual dark web and testified at the US Department of Justice forum on Free Speech on College Campuses in 2018. Heying opposed COVID-19 vaccines and promoted the discredited belief that the drug ivermectin is effective in treating the disease.
Go to Profile#10017
Patrick Stewart
#10027
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Sir Patrick Stewart is an English actor whose career has spanned seven decades in theatre, film, television and video games. He has been nominated for Olivier, Tony, Golden Globe, Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Awards. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1996 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to drama in 2010.
Go to Profile#10018
Severo Ornstein
#10028
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Severo M. Ornstein is a retired computer scientist and son of American composer Leo Ornstein. In 1955 he joined MIT's Lincoln Laboratory as a programmer and designer for the SAGE air-defense system. He later joined the TX-2 group and became a member of the team that designed the LINC. He moved with the team to Washington University in St. Louis where he was one of the principal designers of macromodules.
Go to Profile#10019
John Cassaday
#10029
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
John Cassaday is an American comic book artist, writer, and television director. He is best known for his work on the critically acclaimed Planetary with writer Warren Ellis, Astonishing X-Men with Joss Whedon, Captain America with John Ney Rieber, and Star Wars with Jason Aaron.
Go to Profile#10020
Robert C. Baker
#10030
Overall Influence
1921 - 2006 (85 years)
Robert Carl Baker was an American inventor and Cornell University professor. He invented the chicken nugget as well as many other poultry-related inventions. Due to his contributions to the poultry sciences, he is a member of the American Poultry Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#10021
Wacław Gajewski
#10031
Overall Influence
1911 - 1997 (86 years)
Wacław Gajewski was a Polish geneticist, one of the founders of the Polish post-war genetics and author of academic and popular scientific books. Biography Gajewski was born in Kraków in 1911. He graduated from the Warsaw University in 1934 and received his doctorate in 1937.
Go to Profile#10022
Gabriel Iglesias
#10032
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Gabriel Jesús Iglesias is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He has produced a number of stand-up specials for television outlets such as Comedy Central and Netflix, including I'm Not Fat… I'm Fluffy and Hot & Fluffy. As an actor, he has appeared in numerous live-action and animated TV shows and films, including starring in the sitcom Mr. Iglesias on Netflix, playing Tobias in the 2012 movie Magic Mike and its 2015 sequel, and providing the voice of Speedy Gonzales in Space Jam: A New Legacy. He was also the host of the shows Stand Up Revolution on Comedy Central and Fluffy's Food Adv...
Go to Profile#10023
Lawrence Douglas
#10033
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Lawrence R. Douglas is an American legal scholar, currently holding the James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He is also an author of both fiction and nonfiction.
Go to Profile#10025
Hassan Ugail
#10035
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Hassan Ugail is a Maldivian mathematician and computer scientist. He is a professor of visual computing at the Faculty of Engineering and Informatics at the University of Bradford. Early life Hassan Ugail was born in Hithadhoo, Maldives. He completed his primary education at Nooranee School in Hithadhoo.
Go to Profile#10026
Elsie Widdowson
#10036
Overall Influence
1906 - 2000 (94 years)
Elsie Widdowson , was a British dietitian and nutritionist. She and Dr Robert McCance, a pediatrician, physiologist, biochemist, and nutritionist, were responsible for overseeing the government-mandated addition of vitamins to food and wartime rationing in Britain during World War II.
Go to Profile#10027
Victor Skumin
#10037
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Victor Andreevich Skumin is a Russian and Soviet scientist, psychiatrist, philosopher and writer. After graduating from the Kharkiv National Medical University in 1973, he became a psychotherapist in Kiev Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery. In 1978, he described a new disease, the Skumin syndrome. He introduced a method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion for psychological rehabilitation of cardiosurgical patients .
Go to Profile#10028
Douglas B. Rasmussen
#10038
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Douglas B. Rasmussen is professor of philosophy at St. John's University, where he has taught since 1981. Biography Rasmussen earned his B.A. from the University of Iowa, and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Marquette University. Rasmussen's areas of scholarly interest include Political Philosophy, Ethics, Ontology, Epistemology, Business Ethics, and Political Economy.
Go to Profile#10029
Jan Dietz
#10039
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Jean Leonardus Gerardus Dietz is a Dutch Information Systems researcher, Professor Emeritus of Information Systems Design at the Delft University of Technology, known for the development of the Design & Engineering Methodology for Organisations. and his work on Enterprise Engineering.
Go to Profile#10030
Christopher Plummer
#10040
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer was a Canadian actor. His career spanned seven decades, gaining him recognition for his performances in film, stage, and television. He received multiple accolades, including an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards, making him the only Canadian recipient of the "Triple Crown of Acting". He also received a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award as well as a nomination for a Grammy Award.
Go to Profile#10031
Adrian Kantrowitz
#10041
Overall Influence
1918 - 2008 (90 years)
Adrian Kantrowitz was an American cardiac surgeon whose team performed the world's second heart transplant attempt at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York on December 6, 1967. The infant lived for only six hours. At a press conference afterwards, Kantrowitz emphasized that he considered the operation to have been a failure.
Go to Profile#10032
Dan Aykroyd
#10042
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Daniel Edward Aykroyd is a Canadian actor, comedian, screenwriter, producer, and musician. Aykroyd was a writer and an original member of the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" cast on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from its inception in 1975 until his departure in 1979. During his tenure on SNL, he appeared in a recurring series of sketches, particularly featuring the Coneheads and the Blues Brothers. For his work on the show, he received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations, winning for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series in 1977. After his departure, he has since r...
Go to Profile#10033
William H. Gass
#10043
Overall Influence
1924 - 2017 (93 years)
William Howard Gass was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and philosophy professor. He wrote three novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven volumes of essays, three of which won National Book Critics Circle Award prizes and one of which, A Temple of Texts , won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. His 1995 novel The Tunnel received the American Book Award. His 2013 novel Middle C won the 2015 William Dean Howells Medal.
Go to Profile#10034
Gordon S. Brown
#10044
Overall Influence
1907 - 1996 (89 years)
Gordon Stanley Brown was a professor of electrical engineering at MIT. He originated many of the concepts behind automatic-feedback control systems and the numerical control of machine tools. From 1959 to 1968, he served as the dean of MIT's engineering school. With his former student Donald P. Campbell, he wrote Principles of Servomechanisms in 1948, which is still a standard reference in the field.
Go to Profile#10035
Nancy Dorian
#10045
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Nancy Currier Dorian is an American linguist who has carried out research into the decline of the East Sutherland dialect of Scottish Gaelic for over 40 years, particularly in the villages of Brora, Golspie and Embo. Due to their isolation from other Gaelic-speaking communities, these East Sutherland villages presented a good opportunity to study language death. Dorian's study is possibly the longest such study in the field. She is considered "a prime authority" on language death. Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect, her study into the decline of Gaelic in East Sutherland, is considered "the first major monograph" on language death.
Go to Profile#10036
Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani
#10046
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani is a Bahraini engineer and retired lieutenant general. He is the foreign minister, having formerly been the secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council from 1 April 2011 to February 2020. He was the fifth GCC secretary general and the first with military background since the GCC was established.
Go to Profile#10037
Anatoliy Skorokhod
#10047
Overall Influence
1930 - 2011 (81 years)
Anatoliy Volodymyrovych Skorokhod was a Ukrainian mathematician. Skorokhod is well-known for a comprehensive treatise on the theory of stochastic processes, co-authored with Gikhman. Career Skorokhod worked at Kyiv University from 1956 to 1964. He was subsequently at the Institute of Mathematics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine from 1964 until 2002. Since 1993, he had been a professor at Michigan State University in the US, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#10038
Tony Campolo
#10048
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Anthony Campolo is an American sociologist, Baptist pastor, author, public speaker and former spiritual advisor to U.S. President Bill Clinton. Campolo is known as one of the most influential leaders in the evangelical left and has been a major proponent of progressive thought and reform within the evangelical community. He has also become a leader of the Red-Letter Christian movement, which aims to put emphasis on the teachings of Jesus. Campolo is a popular commentator on religious, political, and social issues, and has been a guest on programs such as The Colbert Report, The Charlie Rose S...
Go to Profile#10039
Irene Greif
#10049
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Irene Greif is an American computer scientist and a founder of the field of computer-supported cooperative work . She was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#10040
René Laurentin
#10050
Overall Influence
1917 - 2017 (100 years)
Father René Laurentin was a French theologian. He is widely recognized as "one of the world’s foremost students" of Mariology and is the author of numerous books and scholarly articles on topics including Marian apparitions such as Lourdes and Medjugorje; visionaries and mystics including Bernadette Soubirous, Thérèse de Lisieux, Catherine Labouré, and Yvonne Aimée de Malestroit; as well as biblical exegesis, theology, and Vatican II.
Go to Profile#10041
Toshihiko Izutsu
#10051
Overall Influence
1914 - 1993 (79 years)
was a Japanese scholar who specialized in Islamic studies and comparative religion. He took an interest in linguistics at a young age, and came to know more than thirty languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Persian, Sanskrit, Pali, Hindustani, Russian, Greek, and Chinese. He is widely known for his translation of the Qurʾān into Japanese.
Go to Profile#10042
Merrill M. Flood
#10052
Overall Influence
1908 - 1991 (83 years)
Merrill Meeks Flood was an American mathematician, notable for developing, with Melvin Dresher, the basis of the game theoretical Prisoner's dilemma model of cooperation and conflict while being at RAND in 1950 .
Go to Profile#10043
Mike Kelley
#10053
Overall Influence
1954 - 2012 (58 years)
Michael Kelley was an American artist. His work involved found objects, textile banners, drawings, assemblage, collage, performance and video. He often worked collaboratively and had produced projects with artists Paul McCarthy, Tony Oursler, and John Miller. Writing in The New York Times, in 2012, Holland Cotter described the artist as "one of the most influential American artists of the past quarter century and a pungent commentator on American class, popular culture and youthful rebellion."
Go to Profile#10044
Russell Barkley
#10054
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Russell Alan Barkley is an American retired clinical neuropsychologist who was a clinical professor of psychiatry at the VCU Medical Center until 2022 and an author of books on attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder . Involved in research since 1973 and a licensed psychologist since 1977, he is an expert on ADHD and has devoted much of his scientific career to studying ADHD and related fields like childhood defiance. He proposed to change the name of sluggish cognitive tempo to concentration deficit disorder and later cognitive disengagement syndrome .
Go to Profile#10045
David Hurley
#10055
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
General David John Hurley, is an Australian former senior officer in the Australian Army who has served as the 27th governor-general of Australia since 1 July 2019. He was previously the 38th governor of New South Wales, serving from 2014 to 2019.
Go to Profile#10046
Geoff Tootill
#10056
Overall Influence
1922 - 2017 (95 years)
Geoff C. Tootill was an electronic engineer and computer scientist who worked in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Manchester with Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn developing the Manchester Baby, "the world's first wholly electronic stored-program computer".
Go to Profile#10047
Harold G. White
#10057
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Harold G. "Sonny" White is a mechanical engineer, aerospace engineer, and applied physicist who is known for proposing new Alcubierre drive concepts and promoting advanced propulsion projects. Educational White obtained a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from University of South Alabama, an M.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Wichita State University in 1999, and a Ph.D. degree in Physics from Rice University in 2008.
Go to Profile#10048
Eric Bina
#10058
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Eric J. Bina is an American software programmer who is the co-creator of Mosaic and the co-founder of Netscape. In 1993, Bina along with Marc Andreessen authored the first version of Mosaic while working as a programmer at National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Go to Profile#10049
Paul Pierce
#10059
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Paul Anthony Pierce is an American former professional basketball player. He played 19 seasons in the National Basketball Association , predominantly with the Boston Celtics, and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2021. He was most recently an analyst on ESPN's basketball programs The Jump and NBA Countdown.
Go to Profile#10050
Gerd Müller
#10060
Overall Influence
1945 - 2021 (76 years)
Gerhard "Gerd" Müller was a German professional footballer. A prolific striker, especially in and around the six-yard box, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest goalscorers in the history of the sport. With success at club and international level, he is one of nine players to have won the FIFA World Cup, the UEFA Champions League and the Ballon d'Or.
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