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
#10251
Carolyn Bertozzi
#10261
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Carolyn Ruth Bertozzi is an American chemist and Nobel laureate, known for her wide-ranging work spanning both chemistry and biology. She coined the term "bioorthogonal chemistry" for chemical reactions compatible with living systems. Her recent efforts include synthesis of chemical tools to study cell surface sugars called glycans and how they affect diseases such as cancer, inflammation, and viral infections like COVID-19. At Stanford University, she holds the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professorship in the School of Humanities and Sciences. Bertozzi is also an Investigator at the Howard H...
Go to Profile#10252
Raj Chetty
#10262
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Nadarajan "Raj" Chetty is an Indian-American economist and the William A. Ackman Professor of Public Economics at Harvard University. Some of Chetty's recent papers have studied equality of opportunity in the United States and the long-term impact of teachers on students' performance. Offered tenure at the age of 28, Chetty became one of the youngest tenured faculty in the history of Harvard's economics department. He is a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal and a 2012 MacArthur Fellow. Currently, he is also an advisory editor of the Journal of Public Economics. In 2020, he was awarded th...
Go to Profile#10253
Anand Bakshi
#10263
Overall Influence
1930 - 2002 (72 years)
Anand Bakshi was an Indian poet and lyricist. He was nominated for the Filmfare Award for Best Lyricist a total of 40 times, resulting in 4 wins. Early life Anand Bakshi was born in Rawalpindi in the Punjab Province of British India , on 21 July 1930 into a Mohyal Brahmin family of the Vaid clan. The family arrived in Delhi, via a Dakota aircraft after the Partition of India and then migrated to Pune, then Meerut and settled again finally in Delhi.
Go to Profile#10254
Lemn Sissay
#10264
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Lemn Sissay FRSL is a British author and broadcaster. Sissay was the official poet of the 2012 London Olympics, was chancellor of the University of Manchester from 2015 until 2022, and joined the Foundling Museum's board of trustees two years later, having previously been appointed one of the museum's fellows. He was awarded the 2019 PEN Pinter Prize. He has written a number of books and plays.
Go to Profile#10255
Géraldine Muhlmann
#10265
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Géraldine Muhlmann is a French political scientist and political journalist. She is a former host of the France 5 program C politique . Education and positions Muhlmann received the 1er accessit in the philosophy concours général in 1989.
Go to Profile#10256
Okwui Enwezor
#10266
Overall Influence
1963 - 2019 (56 years)
Okwui Enwezor was a Nigerian curator, art critic, writer, poet, and educator, specializing in art history. He lived in New York City and Munich. In 2014, he was ranked 24 in the ArtReview list of the 100 most powerful people of the art world.
Go to Profile#10257
Jean Baker Miller
#10267
Overall Influence
1927 - 2006 (79 years)
Jean Baker Miller was a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, social activist, feminist, and author. She wrote Toward a New Psychology of Women, which brings psychological thought together with relational-cultural theory.
Go to Profile#10258
Michael Bronski
#10268
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Michael Bronski is an American academic and writer, best known for his 2011 book A Queer History of the United States. He has been involved with LGBT politics since 1969 as an activist and organizer. He has won numerous awards for LGBTQ activism and scholarship, including the prestigious Publishing Triangle's Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. Bronski is a Professor of Practice in Media and Activism at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#10259
Robert L. Flood
#10269
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Robert Louis Flood is a British organizational scientist, former Professor of Management Sciences at the University of Hull, specialized in applied systemic thinking, particularly in the areas of strategic management, organizational behavior and organizational improvement.
Go to Profile#10260
Eric S. Roberts
#10270
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Eric S. Roberts is an American computer scientist noted for his contributions to computer science education through textbook authorship and his leadership in computing curriculum development. He is a co-chair of the ACM Education Council, former co-chair of the ACM Education Board, and a former member of the SIGCSE Board. He led the Java task force in 1994. He was a Professor emeritus at Stanford University. He currently teaches at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.
Go to Profile#10261
Henning Schulzrinne
#10271
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Henning Schulzrinne is a German-American computer scientist who led research and development of the voice over IP network protocols. Life Schulzrinne studied engineering management at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of the German Technische Universität Darmstadt in Darmstadt, where he earned his Vordiplom , then went on to earn his M.Sc. at the University of Cincinnati and his Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Go to Profile#10262
Janusz Kochanowski
#10272
Overall Influence
1940 - 2010 (70 years)
Janusz Bogumił Kochanowski was a Polish lawyer, diplomat, and the Commissioner for Civil Rights Protection of the Republic of Poland . Life and career Janusz Kochanowski was born in Częstochowa in Poland on 18 April 1940. He was married to a Polish philologist, Ewa and had two children: Marta, a lawyer, and Mateusz, a law student.
Go to Profile#10263
Michael Butler
#10273
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Michael J. Butler is an Irish computer scientist. As of 2022, he is professor of computer science and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton, England.
Go to Profile#10264
Jacques Delors
#10274
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (101 years)
Jacques Lucien Jean Delors is a French retired politician who served as the eighth president of the European Commission from 1985 to 1995. He served as Minister of Finance of France from 1981 to 1984. He was a Member of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1981. As President, Delors was the most visible and influential leader in European affairs. He implemented the policies that closely linked the member nations together and promoted the need for unity. He created a single market that made the free movement of persons, capital, goods, and services within the European Economic Community possible.
Go to Profile#10265
Rick Mercer
#10275
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Richard Vincent "Rick" Mercer is a Canadian comedian, television personality, political satirist, and author. He is best known for his work on the CBC Television comedy shows This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Rick Mercer Report. He is the author of four books based on content from the shows and a memoir, Talking to Canadians, published on November 2, 2021. Mercer has received more than 25 Gemini Awards for his work on television.
Go to Profile#10266
Taylor Wang
#10276
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Taylor Gun-Jin Wang is a Chinese-born American scientist and in 1985, became the first person of Chinese origin to go into space. While an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Wang was a payload specialist on the Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-51-B.
Go to Profile#10267
Alfonso Vallejo
#10277
Overall Influence
1943 - 2021 (78 years)
Alfonso Rodríguez Vallejo was a Spanish playwright, poet, painter and neurologist. He had published 34 plays and 25 poetry books. Vallejo was awarded the Lope de Vega prize in 1976 for his play "El desgüace". "Ácido Sulfúrico" was the runner up prize in 1975. In 1978 he received the Internacional Tirso de Molina prize for his work A Tumba Abierta. The Spanish Royal Academy , in 1981, awarded Vallejo the Fastenrath Award for "El cero transparente".
Go to Profile#10268
Dagfinn Aarskog
#10278
Overall Influence
1928 - 2014 (86 years)
Dagfinn Aarskog was a Norwegian physician. Life He was born in Ålesund, Norway. He received his MD at the University of Bergen in 1956, and received a PhD in medicine in 1965. Aarskog was a specialist in pediatrics from 1964 and in medical genetics from 1974. In the period 1964 to 1965, he worked as a research assistant at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Go to Profile#10269
Joe Medicine Crow
#10279
Overall Influence
1913 - 2016 (103 years)
Joseph Medicine Crow was a Native American writer, historian and war chief of the Crow Nation. His writings on Native American history and reservation culture are considered seminal works, but he is best known for his writings and lectures concerning the Battle of the Little Bighorn of 1876.
Go to Profile#10270
Glenn Hubbard
#10280
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Robert Glenn Hubbard is an American economist and academic. He served as the Dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Business from 2004 to 2019, where he remains the Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics. On September 13, 2018, he announced that he would retire from his position after his contract expired on June 30, 2019. Hubbard previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 1991 to 1993, and as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2001 to 2003.
Go to Profile#10271
Hermann Lübbe
#10281
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Hermann Lübbe is a German philosopher. He is considered a member of the Ritter School. Biography Lübbe was born in Aurich. From 1947 to 1951, he studied philosophy, theology and sociology in Göttingen, Münster and Freiburg. Among his academic teachers were Joachim Ritter and Heinrich Scholz. From 1963 to 1969, Lübbe was professor in Bochum. Since 1966, he was also secretary of state in the education ministry of the German state North Rhine-Westphalia. In 1969, Lübbe became professor in Bielefeld and secretary of state with the minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia. From 1971 to 1991, h...
Go to Profile#10272
Ilesanmi Adesida
#10282
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Ilesanmi Adesida is a Nigerian American physicist of Yoruba descent. He has been the provost at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan, from September 2016. Adesida is also the Donald Biggar Willett Professor Emeritus of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; he retired from Illinois in 2016. In May 2012, the board of trustees of the University of Illinois selected Adesida to be the next vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost of the Urbana campus, a position he held from August 15, 2012 to August 31, 2015. Other positions that Adesida held at Illinois in...
Go to Profile#10273
Mariano Rajoy
#10283
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Mariano Rajoy Brey is a Spanish politician who served as Prime Minister of Spain from 2011 to 2018, when a vote of no confidence ousted his government. On 5 June 2018, he announced his resignation as People's Party leader.
Go to Profile#10274
Motosaburo Masuyama
#10284
Overall Influence
1912 - 2005 (93 years)
Motosaburo Masuyama was a Japanese statistician who championed the ideas of R.A. Fisher and went on to influence the fields of quality control and biometrics. Life Born Otaru, Hokkaidō, Masuyama graduated in physics from the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1937 and earned his doctorate in 1943. Characterising Fisher's approach to statistics as the science of inference and planning, Masuyama worked across a wide range of agencies including: the Japan Meteorological Agency; the University of Tokyo School of Medicine; the Institute of Statistical Mathematics; the Indian Statistical Institute, whe...
Go to Profile#10275
Tony Ross
#10285
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Anthony Lee Ross is a British author and illustrator of children's picture books. In Britain, he is best known for writing and illustrating his Little Princess books and for illustrating the Horrid Henry series by Francesca Simon, both of which have become TV series for Milkshake! and CITV respectively based on his artwork. He also illustrates the works of David Walliams. He has also illustrated the Amber Brown series by Paula Danziger, the Dr. Xargle series by Jeanne Willis, and the Harry The Poisonous Centipede series by Lynne Reid Banks.
Go to Profile#10276
John Thompson
#10286
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
John Brookshire Thompson is a British sociologist. He is a sociology professor at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Jesus College. Education Thompson gained his first degree in philosophy, sociology and social anthropology at Keele University in 1975. His PhD was from the University of Cambridge, obtained in 1979.
Go to Profile#10277
Paul Buhle
#10287
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Paul Merlyn Buhle is a Senior Lecturer at Brown University, author or editor of 35 volumes including histories of radicalism in the United States and the Caribbean, studies of popular culture, and a series of nonfiction comic art volumes. He is the authorized biographer of C. L. R. James.
Go to Profile#10278
Michael Musto
#10288
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Michael Musto is an American journalist who has long been a prevalent presence in entertainment-related publications, as well as on websites and television shows. Best known as a columnist for The Village Voice, where he wrote the La Dolce Musto column of gossip, nightlife, reviews, interviews, and political observations, in 2021, he started writing articles about nightlife, movies, theater, NYC, and LGBTQ politics for the revived Village Voice, which returned as a print publication, with accompanying website.
Go to Profile#10279
Stan Musial
#10289
Overall Influence
1920 - 2013 (93 years)
Stanley Frank Musial , nicknamed "Stan the Man", was an American baseball outfielder and first baseman. Widely considered to be one of the greatest and most consistent hitters in baseball history, Musial spent 22 seasons in Major League Baseball , playing for the St. Louis Cardinals, from 1941 to 1944 and from 1946 to 1963, before becoming a first-ballot inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969. He batted .331 over the course of his career and set National League records for career hits , runs batted in , games played , at bats , runs scored and doubles . His 475 career home runs then ranked second in NL history behind Mel Ott's total of 511.
Go to Profile#10280
Sven Birkerts
#10290
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Sven Birkerts is an American essayist and literary critic. He is best known for his book The Gutenberg Elegies , which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other technologies of the "electronic culture." In 2006 he published a revised edition with new introduction and afterword, reflecting on the endurance of reading.
Go to Profile#10281
Pau Gasol
#10291
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Pau Gasol Sáez is a Spanish former professional basketball player. He was a six-time NBA All-Star and a four-time All-NBA team selection, twice on the second team and twice on the third team. Gasol won two NBA championships, both with the Los Angeles Lakers back-to-back in 2009 and 2010. He was the NBA Rookie of the Year in 2002 with the Memphis Grizzlies, being the first non-American player to have won that award. He is regarded as one of the greatest power forwards of all time and is also considered as one of the greatest European players of all time. He is the older brother of former NBA p...
Go to Profile#10282
Roy Strong
#10292
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Sir Roy Colin Strong, is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has served as director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Strong was knighted in 1982.
Go to Profile#10283
Elena Conti
#10293
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Elena Conti is an Italian biochemist and molecular biologist. She serves as Director and Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany, where she uses structural biology and biophysical techniques to study RNA transport and RNA metabolism. Together with Elisa Izaurralde, she helped characterize proteins important for exporting mRNA out of the nucleus.
Go to Profile#10284
Shizuo Akira
#10294
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Shizuo Akira is a professor at the Department of Host Defense, Osaka University, Japan. He has made ground-breaking discoveries in the field of immunology, most significantly in the area of innate host defense mechanisms.
Go to Profile#10285
Leo Steinberg
#10295
Overall Influence
1920 - 2011 (91 years)
Leo Steinberg was an American art critic and art historian. Life Steinberg was born in Moscow, Russian SFSR, the son of Isaac Nachman Steinberg, a Jewish lawyer and Socialist Revolutionary Party politician who was People's magistrate of Justice under Vladimir Lenin from 1917 to 1918. His family left the Soviet Union in 1923, and settled in Berlin, Germany. In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, the Steinbergs were forced to move again, this time to the United Kingdom. Intending to become an artist, Steinberg studied at the Slade School of Fine Art .
Go to Profile#10286
Mwai Kibaki
#10296
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Emilio Mwai Kibaki was a Kenyan politician who served as the third President of Kenya from December 2002 until April 2013. He had previously served as the fourth Vice-President of Kenya for ten years from 1978 to 1988 under President Daniel arap Moi. He also held cabinet ministerial positions in the Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi governments, including as minister for Finance under Kenyatta, and Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Health under Moi.
Go to Profile#10287
Kannan Soundararajan
#10297
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Kannan Soundararajan is an Indian-born American mathematician and a professor of mathematics at Stanford University. Before moving to Stanford in 2006, he was a faculty member at University of Michigan, where he had also pursued his undergraduate studies. His main research interest is in analytic number theory, particularly in the subfields of automorphic L-functions, and multiplicative number theory.
Go to Profile#10288
Louis Kauffman
#10298
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Louis Hirsch Kauffman is an American mathematician, mathematical physicist, and professor of mathematics in the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He does research in topology, knot theory, topological quantum field theory, quantum information theory, and diagrammatic and categorical mathematics. He is best known for the introduction and development of the bracket polynomial and the Kauffman polynomial.
Go to Profile#10289
Jean-Paul Riopelle
#10299
Overall Influence
1923 - 2002 (79 years)
Jean-Paul Riopelle, was a Canadian painter and sculptor from Quebec. He had one of the longest and most important international careers of the sixteen signatories of the Refus Global, the 1948 manifesto that announced the Quebecois artistic community's refusal of clericalism and provincialism. He is best known for his abstract painting style, in particular his "mosaic" works of the 1950s when he famously abandoned the paintbrush, using only a palette knife to apply paint to canvas, giving his works a distinctive sculptural quality. He became the first Canadian painter since James Wilson Morr...
Go to Profile#10290
Charles Sheffield
#10300
Overall Influence
1935 - 2002 (67 years)
Charles Sheffield , an English-born mathematician, physicist and science-fiction writer, served as a President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and of the American Astronautical Society.
Go to Profile#10291
José López Portillo
#10301
Overall Influence
1920 - 2004 (84 years)
José Guillermo Abel López Portillo y Pacheco was a Mexican writer, lawyer and politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party who served as the 58th president of Mexico from 1976 to 1982. López Portillo was the only official candidate in the 1976 presidential election, being the only president in recent Mexican history to win an election unopposed.
Go to Profile#10292
J. Dwight Pentecost
#10302
Overall Influence
1915 - 2014 (99 years)
John Dwight Pentecost was an American Christian theologian, best known for his book Things to Come. Pentecost was born in Pennsylvania and died in Dallas, Texas. His wife was Dorothy Harrison Pentecost . John and Dorothy had two daughters: Jane Pentecost Fenby and Gwendolyn Ann Pentecost Arnold.
Go to Profile#10293
Pandurang Shastri Athavale
#10303
Overall Influence
1920 - 2003 (83 years)
Rev. Pandurang Shastri Athavale , also known as Dada /Dadaji, which literally translates as "elder brother" in Marathi, was an Indian activist, philosopher, spiritual leader, social revolutionary, and religion reformist, who founded the Swadhyaya Parivar in 1954. Swadhyaya is a self-study process based on the Bhagavad Gita which has spread across nearly 100,000 villages in India, Americas, Europe, Middle East, Oceania and other Asian countries with five million adherents. Noted for his discourses on the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas and the Upanishads, Dadaji is also known for his selfless work an...
Go to Profile#10294
Wu Guanzhong
#10304
Overall Influence
1919 - 2010 (91 years)
Wu Guanzhong was a contemporary Chinese painter widely recognized as a founder of modern Chinese painting. He is considered to be one of the greatest contemporary Chinese painters. Wu's artworks display both Western and Eastern influences, such as the Western style of Fauvism and the Eastern style of Chinese calligraphy. Wu painted various aspects of China, including its architecture, plants, animals, people, as well as many of its landscapes and waterscapes, in a style reminiscent of the impressionist painters of the early 1900s. He was also a writer on contemporary Chinese art.
Go to Profile#10295
Menachem Magidor
#10305
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Menachem Magidor is an Israeli mathematician who specializes in mathematical logic, in particular set theory. He served as president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was president of the Association for Symbolic Logic from 1996 to 1998 and as president of the Division for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology of the International Union for History and Philosophy of Science from 2016 to 2019. In 2016 he was elected an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2018 he received the Solomon Bublick Award.
Go to Profile#10296
Zhao Tingyang
#10306
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Zhao Tingyang is a political philosopher credited with modernising the ancient Chinese concept of Tianxia. Biography Zhao Tingyang graduated from Renmin University of China and Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and is now a professor in the Institute of Philosophy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and is a senior fellow of Peking University Berggruen Research Institute. He was also a Pusey Distinguished Fellow at the Harvard–Yenching Institute in 2013.
Go to Profile#10297
Stephen Goldsmith
#10307
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Stephen "Steve" Goldsmith is an American politician and writer who was the 46th mayor of Indianapolis. He also served as the deputy mayor of New York City for operations from 2010 to 2011. A member of the Republican Party, he ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor of Indiana in 1988 and governor of Indiana in 1996. He is currently the Derek Bok Professor of the Practice of Urban Policy and Director of Data-Smart City Solutions at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In 2006, Goldsmith was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
Go to Profile#10298
Kanhaiya Kumar
#10308
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Kanhaiya Kumar is an Indian political activist who served as the president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union and leader of the All India Students Federation . He served as National Executive Council member of Communist Party of India. He joined Indian National Congress on 28 September 2021.
Go to Profile#10299
Tom Ridge
#10309
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Thomas Joseph Ridge is an American politician and author who served as the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security from 2001 to 2003, and the first United States Secretary of Homeland Security from 2003 to 2005. A member of the Republican Party, he was the 43rd governor of Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2001 and a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1983 to 1995.
Go to Profile#10300
Joe Cocker
#10310
Overall Influence
1944 - 2014 (70 years)
John Robert "Joe" Cocker was an English singer known for his gritty, bluesy voice and dynamic stage performances that featured expressive body movements. Most of his best known singles, such as "Feelin' Alright?" and "Unchain My Heart", were recordings of songs written by other song writers, though he composed a number of songs for most of his albums as well, often in conjunction with songwriting partner Chris Stainton.
Go to Profile