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
#10101
V. Ramgopal Rao
#10111
Overall Influence
Venu Ramgopal Rao is an Indian academic currently serving as the Vice Chancellor of Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. He was previously the Director of IIT, Delhi. He was the P.K.Kelkar Chair Professor in Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay before joining IIT Delhi as the Director. Rao has more than 500 publications in various journals, and over 50 patents in the areas of Electron devices and Nanoelectronics. Rao was the first elected chairman for the Indian Section of the American Nano Society. He is also the recipient of multiple prize...
Go to Profile#10102
Tomlinson Holman
#10112
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Tomlinson M. Holman is an American film theorist, audio engineer, and inventor of film technologies, notably the Lucasfilm's THX sound system. He developed the world's first 10.2 sound system. Career Early in his career, Holman developed what was known as the Holman Preamplifier for the APT Corporation, a former Massachusetts entity founded by Holman. He holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign .
Go to Profile#10103
Emmanuel Todd
#10113
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Emmanuel Todd is a French historian, anthropologist, demographer, sociologist and political scientist at the National Institute of Demographic Studies in Paris. His research examines the different family structures around the world and their relationship with beliefs, ideologies, political systems, and historical events. He has also published a number of political essays, which have received broad coverage in France.
Go to Profile#10104
Jerzy Rzedowski
#10114
Overall Influence
1926 - 2023 (97 years)
Jerzy Rzedowski Rotter was a Polish-born Mexican botanist, whose focus was on Mexican floristics, taxonomy, and ecology. Early life and education Rzedowski was born in Lwów, Poland to Arnold and Ernestyna Rzedowski. The family moved to Silesia when he was a child. When he was young the family was imprisoned in a concentration camp until World War II ended, when he was liberated by the Allies. They then travelled to Mexico in 1946 for a new life.
Go to Profile#10105
Debito Arudou
#10115
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Debito Arudou is an American-born Japanese writer, blogger, and human rights activist. He was born in the United States and became a naturalized Japanese citizen in 2000. Arudou has since left Japan after living in the country for over 20 years.
Go to Profile#10106
Trevor Robbins
#10116
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Trevor William Robbins CBE FRS FMedSci is a professor of cognitive neuroscience and the former Head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. Robbins interests are in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, behavioural neuroscience and psychopharmacology.
Go to Profile#10107
Thomas Borody
#10117
Overall Influence
Thomas J. Borody is an Australian gastroenterologist. In the 1980s Borody contributed to development of a treatment for Helicobacter pylori. During the COVID-19 pandemic he became embroiled in controversy for advocating an ivermectin-based purported "cure" for COVID-19 without transparently declaring his financial interest in it.
Go to Profile#10108
Romaldo Giurgola
#10118
Overall Influence
1920 - 2016 (96 years)
Romaldo "Aldo" Giurgola AO was an Italian academic, architect, professor, and author. Giurgola was born in Rome, Italy in 1920. After service in the Italian armed forces during World War II, he was educated at the Sapienza University of Rome. He studied architecture at the University of Rome, completing the equivalent of a B.Arch. with honors in 1949. That same year, he moved to the United States and received a master's degree in architecture from Columbia University. In 1954, Giurgola accepted a position as an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Shortly thereafter, Giurgola formed Mitchell/Giurgola Architects in Philadelphia with Ehrman B.
Go to Profile#10109
Martin Hyland
#10119
Overall Influence
Martin Elliott Hyland is professor of mathematical logic at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of King's College, Cambridge. His interests include mathematical logic, category theory, and theoretical computer science.
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Michael Vick
#10120
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Michael Dwayne Vick is a former American football quarterback who played in the National Football League for 13 seasons. Regarded as having transformed the quarterback position with his rushing abilities, he is the NFL leader in quarterback rushing yards and was the league's first quarterback to rush for 1,000 yards in a season. Vick played college football at Virginia Tech, where he received first-team All-American honors and was selected first overall by the Atlanta Falcons in the 2001 NFL Draft. During his six years with the Falcons, he was named to three Pro Bowls and finished second in ...
Go to Profile#10111
Richard White
#10121
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Richard White is an American historian who is the Margaret Byrne Professor of American History Emeritus at Stanford University. Earlier in his career, he taught at the University of Washington, University of Utah, and Michigan State University.
Go to Profile#10112
Julia Cagé
#10122
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Julia Cagé is a French economist specializing in development economics, political economy, and economic history. Early life Julia Cagé has a twin sister, Agathe Cagé, who is a technocrat and an advisor to Najat Vallaud-Belkacem.
Go to Profile#10113
Elaine Fuchs
#10123
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Elaine V. Fuchs is an American cell biologist famous for her work on the biology and molecular mechanisms of mammalian skin and skin diseases, who helped lead the modernization of dermatology. Fuchs pioneered reverse genetics approaches, which assess protein function first and then assess its role in development and disease. In particular, Fuchs researches skin stem cells and their production of hair and skin. She is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development at The Rockefeller University.
Go to Profile#10114
Eoin Colfer
#10124
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Eoin Colfer is an Irish author of children's books. He worked as a primary school teacher before he became a full-time writer. He is best known for being the author of the Artemis Fowl series. In September 2008, Colfer was commissioned to write the sixth installment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, titled And Another Thing ..., which was published in October 2009. In October 2016, in a contract with Marvel Comics, he released Iron Man: The Gauntlet. He served as Laureate na nÓg between 2014 and 2016.
Go to Profile#10115
Myles Brand
#10125
Overall Influence
1942 - 2009 (67 years)
Myles Neal Brand was a philosopher and university administrator who served as the 14th president of the University of Oregon, the 16th president of Indiana University, and the fourth president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association of the United States.
Go to Profile#10116
Edward Tsang
#10126
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Edward Tsang is a Computer Science professor at the University of Essex. He holds a first degree in Business Administration from the Chinese University of Hong Kong , and an MSc and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Essex . Prior to his PhD studies, he served for five years in various positions in the commercial sector in Hong Kong.
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Hope Jahren
#10127
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Anne Hope Jahren is an American geochemist and geobiologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, known for her work using stable isotope analysis to analyze fossil forests dating to the Eocene. She has won many prestigious awards in the field, including the James B. Macelwane Medal of the American Geophysical Union.
Go to Profile#10118
Adam Marcus
#10128
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Adam Wade Marcus is an American mathematician. He holds the Chair of Combinatorial Analysis in the Institute of Mathematics at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. The team of Marcus, Daniel Spielman and Nikhil Srivastava was awarded the Pólya Prize in 2014 for their resolution of the Kadison–Singer problem and later the Michael and Sheila Held Prize in 2021 for their solution to long-standing conjectures in the study of Ramanujan graphs.
Go to Profile#10119
Charles Coulston Gillispie
#10129
Overall Influence
1918 - 2015 (97 years)
Charles Coulston Gillispie was an American historian of science. He was the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History of Science, Emeritus at Princeton University. He was succeeded by Arno J. Mayer. Life The son of Raymond Livingston Gillispie and Virginia Coulston, Gillispie grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He attended Wesleyan University, graduating in 1940 with a major in Chemistry and gained his PhD from Harvard University in 1949. He also served in the U.S. Army during World War II.
Go to Profile#10120
Glen Culler
#10130
Overall Influence
1927 - 2003 (76 years)
Glen Jacob Culler was an American professor of electrical engineering and an important early innovator in the development of the Internet. Culler joined the University of California, Santa Barbara mathematics faculty in 1959 and helped put the campus in the forefront of what would become the field of computer science. He later served as director of the UCSB Computer Center and professor in the College of Engineering and extended his revolutionary view of the role of computers to include their use in the classroom. He left UCSB to work in industry and establish his own company, called Culler-Harrison, in 1969.
Go to Profile#10121
Phyllida Lloyd
#10131
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Phyllida Christian Lloyd, is an English film and theatre director and producer. Her theatre work includes directing productions at the Royal Court Theatre and Royal National Theatre, and opera director for Opera North and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. Her adaptation of three Shakespeare plays received acclaim from critics, with The Guardian calling it "one of the most important theatrical events of the past 20 years".
Go to Profile#10122
Willem Buiter
#10132
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Willem Hendrik Buiter CBE is an American-British economist. He spent most of his career as an academic, teaching at various universities. More recently, he was Chief Economist at Citigroup. Early life and education Buiter was born in The Hague, Netherlands on 26 September 1949. He is a national of the United States and the United Kingdom. Willem's father, Harm Buiter, was a Dutch economist, international trades union official and politician of the Labour Party , who had served as Mayor of Groningen.
Go to Profile#10123
Mousa Ghaninejad
#10133
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Mousa Ghaninejad is a senior Iranian economist. He has been an honorary visiting professor at the Sharif University of Technology and is currently a faculty member of Petroleum University of Technology. He was editor-in-chief of the daily economic newspaper, Donya-e-Eqtesad.
Go to Profile#10124
Carl L. Bankston
#10134
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Carl L. Bankston III is an American sociologist, author and educator. He is best known for his work on immigration to the United States, particularly on the adaptation of Vietnamese American immigrants, and for his work on ethnicity, social capital, sociology of religion and the sociology of education.
Go to Profile#10125
Michael Bliss
#10135
Overall Influence
1941 - 2017 (76 years)
John William Michael Bliss was a Canadian historian and author. Though his early works focused on business and political history, he also wrote biographies of physicians Frederick Banting, William Osler and Harvey Cushing. Bliss was a frequent commentator on political events and issues. He was an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Go to Profile#10126
Kurt Waldheim
#10136
Overall Influence
1918 - 2007 (89 years)
Kurt Josef Waldheim was an Austrian politician and diplomat. Waldheim was the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981 and president of Austria from 1986 to 1992. While he was running for the latter office in the 1986 election, the revelation of his service in Greece and Yugoslavia, and participation in Nazi atrocities, as an intelligence officer in Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht during World War II, raised international controversy.
Go to Profile#10127
Juan Carlos Onganía
#10137
Overall Influence
1914 - 1995 (81 years)
Juan Carlos Onganía Carballo was President of Argentina from 29 June 1966 to 8 June 1970. He rose to power as dictator after toppling the president Arturo Illia in a coup d'état self-named Revolución Argentina.
Go to Profile#10128
Joyce K. Reynolds
#10138
Overall Influence
1952 - 2015 (63 years)
Joyce Kathleen Reynolds was an American computer scientist who played a significant role in developing protocols underlying the Internet. She authored or co-authored many RFCs, most notably those introducing and specifying the Telnet, FTP, and POP protocols.
Go to Profile#10129
Stefan Oster
#10139
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Stefan Oster S.D.B. is a German bishop of the Catholic Church who has served as the Bishop of Passau since 2014. Early life Oster was born on 3 June 1965 in Amberg, a town in Bavaria, Germany. He graduated from Neutraubling high school and trained as a newspaper and radio editor from 1984 to 1986. He spent some years working in this profession. In 1988 he started his studies in philosophy, history and religious studies in Regensburg, Kiel, at Keele University and the University of Oxford. From 1990 to 1991 he was a fellow in the Erasmus Programme of the European Union. He graduated from Oxfor...
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Philip M. Parker
#10140
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Philip M. Parker is an American economist and academic, currently the INSEAD Chaired Professor of Management Science at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. He has patented a method to automatically produce a set of similar books from a template which is filled with data from database and Internet searches. He claims that his programs have written more than 200,000 books.
Go to Profile#10131
Ted Jensen
#10141
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Ted Jensen is an American mastering engineer, known for having mastered many recordings, including the Eagles' Hotel California, Green Day's American Idiot and Norah Jones' Come Away with Me. Biography Ted Jensen was born to Carl and Margaret Jensen, both of whom were musicians. Carl had studied at Yale University. Margaret went to Oberlin College & Conservatory and Skidmore College and was also a pilot. Carl and Margaret met on a train while going to a choral workshop. Ted has one brother, Rick, and two daughters, Kristen and Kim. While attending High School, Jensen was building his own stereo and recording equipment and began recording local bands both in the studio and at live events.
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Mark Johnson
#10142
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Mark L. Johnson is Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. He is known for contributions to embodied philosophy, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics, some of which he has coauthored with George Lakoff such as Metaphors We Live By. However, he has also published on philosophical topics such as John Dewey, Immanuel Kant and ethics.
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Evelyn Boyd Granville
#10143
Overall Influence
1924 - 2023 (99 years)
Evelyn Boyd Granville was the second African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from an American university; she earned it in 1949 from Yale University. She graduated from Smith College in 1945. She performed pioneering work in the field of computing.
Go to Profile#10134
Adrian Zenz
#10144
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Adrian Nikolaus Zenz is a German anthropologist known for his studies of the Xinjiang internment camps and Uyghur genocide. He is a director and senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, an anti-communist think tank established by the US government and based in Washington, DC.
Go to Profile#10135
Robert Rosenthal
#10145
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Robert Rosenthal is a German-born American psychologist who is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside. His interests include self-fulfilling prophecies, which he explored in a well-known study of the Pygmalion effect: the effect of teachers' expectations on students.
Go to Profile#10136
Gregory Clark
#10146
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Gregory Clark is an economic historian at the University of Southern Denmark. He is known for his economic research on the industrial revolution and social mobility. Biography Clark, whose grandfathers were migrants to Scotland from Ireland, was born in Bellshill, Scotland. He attended Holy Cross High School in Hamilton. In 1974 he and fellow pupil Paul Fitzpatrick won the Scottish Daily Express schools debating competition. He earned a BA degree in economics and philosophy at King's College, Cambridge in 1979 and a PhD in economics at Harvard University in 1985. He has also taught as an assi...
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Guy Sorman
#10147
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Guy Sorman is a French-American professor, columnist, author, and public intellectual in economics and philosophy. Biography Guy Sorman has written twenty books that promote the ideals of creativity and modern capitalism. His views are close to classical liberalism. He is assertive in regard to human rights in China and in regard to democracy in many places including Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Chile, Poland, and Argentina. Sorman was a founder of a French NGO, Action against Hunger , in 1979 and was its President until 1990, when he became its Honorary President. He was an advisor to former South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
Go to Profile#10138
Gautama Maharishi
#10148
Overall Influence
Gautama Maharishi , was a sage in Hinduism, who is also mentioned in Jainism and Buddhism. Gautama is mentioned in the Yajurveda, Ramayana, and Gaṇeśa Pūrana and is known for cursing his wife Ahalyā. Another important story related to Gautama is about the creation of river Godavari, which is also known as Gautami.
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Jennifer Capriati
#10149
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Jennifer Maria Capriati is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. A member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, she won three singles Grand Slam titles and was the gold medalist at the 1992 Summer Olympics.
Go to Profile#10140
Hans Zimmer
#10150
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Hans Florian Zimmer is a German film score composer and music producer. He has won two Oscars and four Grammys, and has been nominated for three Emmys and a Tony. Zimmer was also named on the list of Top 100 Living Geniuses, published by The Daily Telegraph in 2007.
Go to Profile#10141
Peter Gzowski
#10151
Overall Influence
1934 - 2002 (68 years)
Peter John Gzowski , known colloquially as "Mr. Canada", or "Captain Canada", was a Canadian broadcaster, writer and reporter, most famous for his work on the CBC radio shows This Country in the Morning and Morningside. His first biographer argued that Gzowski's contribution to Canadian media must be considered in the context of efforts by a generation of Canadian nationalists to understand and express Canada's cultural identity. Gzowski wrote books, hosted television shows, and worked at a number of newspapers and at Maclean's magazine. Gzowski was known for a friendly, warm, interviewing s...
Go to Profile#10142
Willis Adcock
#10152
Overall Influence
1922 - 2003 (81 years)
Dr. Willis Alfred Adcock was a Canadian-American physical chemist, electrical engineer, and university professor who worked on the first atomic bomb and assisted with the invention of the silicon transistor, as well as the integrated circuit. He held several US patents.
Go to Profile#10143
Reid W. Barton
#10153
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Reid William Barton is a mathematician and also one of the most successful performers in the International Science Olympiads. Biography Barton is the son of two environmental engineers. Barton took part-time classes at Tufts University in chemistry , physics , and subsequently Swedish, Finnish, French, and Chinese. Since eighth grade he worked part-time with MIT computer scientist Charles E. Leiserson on CilkChess, a computer chess program. Subsequently, he worked at Akamai Technologies with computer scientist Ramesh Sitaraman to build one of the earliest video performance measurement systems that have since become a standard in industry.
Go to Profile#10144
Roy Rosenzweig
#10154
Overall Influence
1950 - 2007 (57 years)
Roy Alan Rosenzweig was an American historian. He was the founder and director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University from 1994 until his death in October 2007 from lung cancer, aged 57. After his death, the center was renamed the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media in his honor.
Go to Profile#10145
Henning Mankell
#10155
Overall Influence
1948 - 2015 (67 years)
Henning Georg Mankell was a Swedish crime writer, children's author, and dramatist, best known for a series of mystery novels starring his most noted creation, Inspector Kurt Wallander. He also wrote a number of plays and screenplays for television.
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François Bourguignon
#10156
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
François Bourguignon is the former Chief Economist of the World Bank. He has been the Director of the Paris School of Economics, and from 1985 to his retirement in 2013 a professor of economics at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. in 2016 Bourguignon was awarded the Dan David Prize. He focuses on the study of income and wealth inequality, economy-wide country studies , international trade and trade policy, education, wealth, income, redistribution, and tax policy.
Go to Profile#10147
Cat Stevens
#10157
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Yusuf Islam , commonly known by his stage names Cat Stevens, Yusuf, and Yusuf / Cat Stevens, is a British singer-songwriter and musician. He has sold more than 100 million records and has more than two billion streams. His musical style consists of folk, pop, rock, and, later in his career, Islamic music. Following two decades in which he performed only music which met strict religious standards, he returned to making secular music in 2006. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.
Go to Profile#10148
John Beddington
#10158
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Sir John Rex Beddington HonFREng is a British population biologist and Senior Adviser at the Oxford Martin School, and was previously Professor of Applied Population Biology at Imperial College London, and the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser from 2008 until 2013.
Go to Profile#10149
Hamilton Naki
#10159
Overall Influence
1926 - 2005 (79 years)
Hamilton Naki was a laboratory assistant to cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard in South Africa. He was recognised for his surgical skills and for his ability to teach medical students and physicians such skills despite not having received a formal medical education, and took a leading role in organ transplant research on animals.
Go to Profile#10150
Lance Parkin
#10160
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Lance Parkin is a British author. He is best known for writing fiction and reference books for television series, in particular Doctor Who and as a storyliner on Emmerdale. Doctor Who Parkin first became known in Doctor Who fan circles, writing both criticism and fan fiction. His most notable work was for Seventh Door Fanzines, including the novella Snare in the Odyssey series and 1994's The Doctor Who Chronology, a detailed timeline of events in the Doctor Who universe. The Odyssey series later included novellas by Parkin's then-girlfriend Cassandra May and his later protégé Mark Clapham.
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