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).
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List of the most influential people
#10401
Martin Krampen
#10411
Overall Influence
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Martin Krampen was a leading German semiotician, semiotics Professor in Göttingen. Biography The son of a Protestant pastor, Krampen was born on March 9, 1928, in Siegen and was raised in Wuppertal. He took courses in psychology, philosophy, and theology the University of University of Tübingen and the University of Heidelberg, and studied design with a focus on painting at Accademia delle Belle Arti di Firenze. In 1953 Krampen began studying graphic design and visual communication at the Hochschule für Gestaltung. After graduating from the school with a diploma in, he went on to obtain his PhD in Visual Communications from Michigan State University in 1962.
Go to Profile#10402
A. B. Yehoshua
#10412
Overall Influence
1936 - 2022 (86 years)
Avraham Gabriel Yehoshua was an Israeli novelist, essayist, and playwright. The New York Times called him the "Israeli Faulkner". Underlying themes in Yehoshua's work are Jewish identity, the tense relations with non-Jews, the conflict between the older and younger generations, and the clash between religion and politics.
Go to Profile#10403
Michael Howard
#10413
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Michael Howard, Baron Howard of Lympne is a British politician who served as Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from November 2003 to December 2005. He previously held cabinet positions in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, including Secretary of State for Employment, Secretary of State for the Environment and Home Secretary.
Go to Profile#10404
A. Scott Berg
#10414
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Andrew Scott Berg is an American biographer. After graduating from Princeton University in 1971, Berg expanded his senior thesis on editor Maxwell Perkins into a full-length biography, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius , which won a National Book Award. His second book Goldwyn: A Biography was published in 1989.
Go to Profile#10405
Bruce Mazlish
#10415
Overall Influence
1923 - 2016 (93 years)
Bruce Mazlish was an American historian who was a professor in the Department of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His work focused on historiography and philosophy of history, history of science and technology, artificial intelligence, history of the social sciences, the two cultures and bridging the humanities and sciences , revolution, psychohistory, history of globalization and the history of global citizenship. He worked to build the latter two fields of inquiry into a public intellectual movement, through initiatives such as the New Global History conferences.
Go to Profile#10406
Glenn R. Simpson
#10416
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Glenn Richard Simpson is an American former journalist who worked for The Wall Street Journal until 2009, and then co-founded the Washington-based research business Fusion GPS. He was also a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
Go to Profile#10407
Dorothy E. Denning
#10417
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Dorothy Elizabeth Denning is a US-American information security researcher known for lattice-based access control , intrusion detection systems , and other cyber security innovations. She published four books and over 200 articles. Inducted into the National Cyber Security Hall of Fame in 2012, she is now Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Defense Analysis, Naval Postgraduate School.
Go to Profile#10408
Geoffrey Warnock
#10418
Overall Influence
1923 - 1995 (72 years)
Sir Geoffrey James Warnock was an English philosopher and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. Before his knighthood , he was commonly known as G. J. Warnock. Life Warnock was born at Neville House, Chapel Allerton, Leeds, West Yorkshire, to James Warnock , OBE, a general practitioner from Northern Ireland who had been a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and Kathleen . The Warnocks later lived at Grade II-listed Pull Croft, Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire .
Go to Profile#10409
Jean-Paul Benzécri
#10419
Overall Influence
1932 - 2019 (87 years)
Jean-Paul Benzécri was a French mathematician and statistician. He studied at École Normale Supérieure and was professor at Université de Rennes and later for most of his career at the Paris Institute of Statistics , Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie in Paris. He is most known for his specific inductive approach to data analysis which led to the creation of Correspondence analysis, a statistical technique for analyzing contingency tables and for the invention of the nearest-neighbor chain algorithm for agglomerative hierarchical clustering.
Go to Profile#10410
Dirk Verhofstadt
#10420
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Dirk Verhofstadt is a Belgian social liberal theorist and younger brother of former Belgian Prime Minister and former ALDE European Parliament Leader Guy Verhofstadt. He has a keen interest in political philosophy, and his philosophical outlook is influenced by Karl Popper, John Stuart Mill, Cesare Beccaria, Thomas Paine, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum.
Go to Profile#10411
Kaveh Pahlavan
#10421
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Kaveh Pahlavan , is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science and the director of the Center for Wireless Information Network Studies , Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts. Pahlavan started doing research on Wi-Fi when it was in its infancy, and has worked on wireless indoor geolocation, and Body Area Networking.
Go to Profile#10412
Nancy Birdsall
#10422
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Nancy Birdsall is an American economist, the founding president of the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC, USA, and former executive vice-president of the Inter-American Development Bank. She co-founded CGD in November 2001 with C. Fred Bergsten and Edward W. Scott Jr. and served as president until 2016. Prior to becoming the President of CGD, Birdsall served for three years as Senior Associate and Director of the Economic Reform Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her work at Carnegie focused on issues of globalization and inequality, as well as the reform of the international financial institutions.
Go to Profile#10413
Valerio Massimo Manfredi
#10423
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Valerio Massimo Manfredi is an Italian historian, writer, essayist, archaeologist and journalist. Biography He was born in Piumazzo di Castelfranco Emilia province of Modena and, after getting a degree in Classical Arts at the University of Bologna, he became an archaeologist at the Catholic University of Milan, specialising in the topography of the Ancient World.
Go to Profile#10414
Nathan Hare
#10424
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Nathan Hare is an American sociologist, activist, academic, and psychologist. In 1968 he was the first person hired to coordinate a Black studies program in the United States. He established the program at San Francisco State. A graduate of Langston University and the University of Chicago, he had become involved in the Black Power movement while teaching at Howard University.
Go to Profile#10415
Michel Henry
#10425
Overall Influence
1922 - 2002 (80 years)
Michel Henry was a French philosopher, phenomenologist and novelist. He wrote five novels and numerous philosophical works. He also lectured at universities in France, Belgium, the United States, and Japan.
Go to Profile#10416
Steven K. Feiner
#10426
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Steven K. Feiner is an American computer scientist, serving as Professor for computer science at Columbia University in the field of computer graphics. He is well-known for his research in augmented reality , and co-author of Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice. He directs the Columbia University Computer Graphics and User Interface Lab.
Go to Profile#10417
Norman Solomon
#10427
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Norman Solomon is an American journalist, media critic, activist, and former U.S. congressional candidate. Solomon is a longtime associate of the media watch group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting . In 1997 he founded the Institute for Public Accuracy, which works to provide alternative sources for journalists, and serves as its executive director.
Go to Profile#10418
Lee Shulman
#10428
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Lee S. Shulman is an American educational psychologist and reformer. He has made notable contributions to the study of teaching, assessment of teaching, and the fields of medicine, science, and mathematics.
Go to Profile#10419
Anthony W. England
#10429
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Anthony Wayne England , better known as Tony England, is an American former NASA astronaut. Selected in 1967, England was among a group of astronauts who served as backups during the Apollo and Skylab programs. Like most others in his class, he flew during the Space Shuttle program, serving as a mission specialist on STS-51-F in 1985. He has logged more than 4,000 hours of flying time and 188 hours in space.
Go to Profile#10420
Kid Rock
#10430
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Robert James Ritchie , known professionally as Kid Rock, is an American musician, singer, rapper, and songwriter. After having established himself in the Detroit hip hop scene, he broke through into mainstream success with a rap rock sound before shifting his performance style to country rock. A self-taught musician, he has said that he can play every instrument in his backing band and has overseen production on all but two of his albums.
Go to Profile#10421
Walter Savitch
#10431
Overall Influence
1943 - 2021 (78 years)
Walter John Savitch was best known for defining the complexity class NL , and for Savitch's theorem, which defines a relationship between the NSPACE and DSPACE complexity classes. His work in establishing complexity classes has helped to create the background against which non-deterministic and probabilistic reasoning can be performed.
Go to Profile#10422
Jack Michael
#10432
Overall Influence
1926 - 2020 (94 years)
Jack Michael was an American psychologist and professor at Western Michigan University. He developed one of the first token economies, the concept of motivating operations , and is a pioneer of what is now referred to as applied behavior analysis .
Go to Profile#10423
Anthony Shaffer
#10433
Overall Influence
1926 - 2001 (75 years)
Anthony Joshua Shaffer was an English playwright, screenwriter, novelist, barrister, and advertising executive. Early life Shaffer was born to a Jewish family in Liverpool, the son of Reka and Jack Shaffer, who was an estate agent with his wife's family. He was the identical twin brother of writer and dramatist Peter Shaffer, and they had another brother, Brian. He graduated with a law degree from Trinity College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#10424
Larry Trask
#10434
Overall Influence
1944 - 2004 (60 years)
Robert Lawrence Trask was an American-British professor of linguistics at the University of Sussex, and an authority on the Basque language and the field of historical linguistics. Biography Born in Olean, New York, he initially studied chemistry in his home country, but after a brief stint in the Peace Corps he took an interest in linguistics. He received his doctorate in linguistics from the University of London, and thereafter taught at various universities in the United Kingdom. He became a professor of linguistics at the University of Sussex.
Go to Profile#10425
Liz Lochhead
#10435
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Liz Lochhead Hon FRSE is a Scottish poet, playwright, translator and broadcaster. Between 2011 and 2016 she was the Makar, or National Poet of Scotland, and served as Poet Laureate for Glasgow between 2005 and 2011.
Go to Profile#10426
Anton Shammas
#10436
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Anton Shammas , is a Palestinian writer, poet and translator of Arabic, Hebrew and English. Biography Anton Shammas was one of six children born to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother, who moved to Fassuta in northern Palestine in 1937 to teach at the local girls' school. In 1962, the family moved to Haifa where Shammas studied in an integrated Jewish-Arab high school. In 1968, Shammas moved to Jerusalem and studied English and Arabic literature and art history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Go to Profile#10427
Amy Finkelstein
#10437
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Amy Nadya Finkelstein is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , the co-director and research associate of the Public Economics Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the co-Scientific Director of J-PAL North America. She was awarded the 2012 John Bates Clark Medal for her contributions to economics. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and won a MacArthur "Genius" fellowship in 2018.
Go to Profile#10428
Eva Illouz
#10438
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Eva Illouz is a professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. She was the first woman president of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.
Go to Profile#10429
Koentjaraningrat
#10439
Overall Influence
1923 - 1999 (76 years)
Kanjeng Pangeran Haryo Prof. Dr. Koentjaraningrat was an Indonesian anthropologist. He is sometimes referred to as "the father of Indonesian anthropology". Biography Koentjaraningrat was born in Yogyakarta, Indonesia on 15 June 1923 to a Pakualaman family. His mother wanted him to obtain a Dutch education, so he was educated at Europeesche Lagere School, followed by Middelbare Uitgebreid Lager Onderwijs and Algemeen Middelbare School in Yogyakarta, later moving to Jakarta to continue his schooling. He became fluent in Dutch and English.
Go to Profile#10430
Elvis Duran
#10440
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Elvis Duran is an American radio personality. He is the host of the daily morning radio program Elvis Duran and the Morning Show in New York on Z100 and in syndication on Premiere Networks. Before his job at Z100, Duran's previous radio work included a stint as an on-air personality at WIOQ in Philadelphia. He served as WIOQ's program director from May 1989 until just before he was fired in February 1990. In October 1991, Duran became both the program director and morning show host of KBTS in Austin, Texas.
Go to Profile#10431
John Macquarrie
#10441
Overall Influence
1919 - 2007 (88 years)
John Macquarrie was a Scottish-born theologian, philosopher and Anglican priest. He was the author of Principles of Christian Theology and Jesus Christ in Modern Thought . Timothy Bradshaw, writing in the Handbook of Anglican Theologians, described Macquarrie as "unquestionably Anglicanism's most distinguished systematic theologian in the second half of the 20th century."
Go to Profile#10432
Teodor Oizerman
#10442
Overall Influence
1914 - 2017 (103 years)
Teodor Ilyich Oizerman was a Soviet and Russian philosopher and academician. Biography Oizerman was born in Petroverovka village, Tiraspolsky Uyezd, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire, into a Jewish family. His parents were teachers. During World War II he served in the Red Army.
Go to Profile#10433
Ian G. Macdonald
#10443
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Ian Grant Macdonald was a British mathematician known for his contributions to symmetric functions, special functions, Lie algebra theory and other aspects of algebra, algebraic combinatorics, and combinatorics.
Go to Profile#10434
Lori Andrews
#10444
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Lori B. Andrews is an American professor of law. She is on the faculty of Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent College of Law and serves as Director of IIT's Institute for Science, Law, and Technology. In 2002, she was a visiting professor at Princeton University. She received her B.A. summa cum laude from Yale College and her J.D. from Yale Law School. Andrews is a Fellow of the Hastings Center.
Go to Profile#10435
Bartlett Sher
#10445
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Bartlett B. Sher is an American theatre director. The New York Times has described him as "one of the most original and exciting directors, not only in the American theater but also in the international world of opera". Sher has been nominated for nine Tony Awards, winning a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for the 2008 Broadway revival of South Pacific.
Go to Profile#10436
Claus Roxin
#10446
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Claus Roxin is a German jurist. He is one of the most influential dogmatists of German penal law and has gained national and international reputation in this field. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate by 28 universities around the world as well as the Bundesverdienstkreuz first class.
Go to Profile#10437
André-Georges Haudricourt
#10447
Overall Influence
1911 - 1996 (85 years)
André-Georges Haudricourt was a French botanist, anthropologist and linguist. Biography He grew up on his parents' farm, in a remote area of Picardy. From his early childhood, he was curious about technology, plants and languages. After he obtained his baccalauréat in 1928, his father advised him to enter the National Institute of Agriculture , in the hope that he would obtain a prestigious position in the administration. However, at graduation , Haudricourt got the worst mark of the entire year group. Unlike his peers, he was interested not in promoting modern tools and technology but in understanding traditional technology, societies and languages.
Go to Profile#10438
Max Schmeling
#10448
Overall Influence
1905 - 2005 (100 years)
Maximilian Adolph Otto Siegfried Schmeling was a German boxer who was heavyweight champion of the world between 1930 and 1932. His two fights with Joe Louis in 1936 and 1938 were worldwide cultural events because of their national associations. Schmeling is the only boxer to win the world heavyweight championship on a foul.
Go to Profile#10439
James McBride
#10449
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
James McBride is an American writer and musician. He is the recipient of the 2013 National Book Award for fiction for his novel The Good Lord Bird. Early life McBride's father, Rev. Andrew D. McBride was African-American; he died of cancer at the age of 45. His mother, Ruchel Dwajra Zylska , was a Jewish immigrant from Poland. James was raised in Brooklyn's Red Hook housing projects until he was seven years old and was the last child Ruth had from her first marriage, the last child of Rev. Andrew McBride, and the eighth of 12 children.
Go to Profile#10440
Daniel Pedoe
#10450
Overall Influence
1910 - 1998 (88 years)
Dan Pedoe was an English-born mathematician and geometer with a career spanning more than sixty years. In the course of his life he wrote approximately fifty research and expository papers in geometry. He is also the author of various core books on mathematics and geometry some of which have remained in print for decades and been translated into several languages. These books include the three-volume Methods of Algebraic Geometry , The Gentle Art of Mathematics, Circles: A Mathematical View, Geometry and the Visual Arts and most recently Japanese Temple Geometry Problems: San Gaku .
Go to Profile#10441
Allen Varney
#10451
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Allen Varney is an American writer and game designer. Varney has produced numerous books, role-playing game supplements, technical manuals, articles, reviews, columns, and stories, as well as the fantasy novel Cast of Fate . Since the 1990s, he has worked primarily in computer games.
Go to Profile#10442
Mengistu Haile Mariam
#10452
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Mengistu Haile Mariam is an Ethiopian former politician and former army officer who was the head of state of Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991 and General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Ethiopia from 1984 to 1991. He was the chairman of the Derg, the socialist military junta that governed Ethiopia, from 1977 to 1987, and the president of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia from 1987 to 1991.
Go to Profile#10443
Desson Thomson
#10453
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Desson Patrick Thomson is a former speechwriter for the Obama administration and former film critic for The Washington Post. He was known as Desson Howe until 2003 when he changed his name after reuniting with his birth father.
Go to Profile#10444
Michael Marletta
#10454
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Michael A. Marletta is an American biochemist. He was born in Rochester, New York, the son of Italian immigrants. He graduated from the State University of New York at Fredonia in 1973 with an A.B. degree in biology and chemistry, and from the University of California, San Francisco in 1978 with a Ph.D. degree in pharmaceutical chemistry, where he studied with George Kenyon. He was a postdoctoral fellow with Christopher T. Walsh at MIT from 1978-1980 and continued as a faculty member at MIT from 1980-1987 whereupon he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He was John G. ...
Go to Profile#10445
Isaac Schapera
#10455
Overall Influence
1905 - 2003 (98 years)
Isaac Schapera FBA FRAI , was a social anthropologist at the London School of Economics specialising in South Africa. He was notable for his contributions of ethnographic and typological studies of the indigenous peoples of Botswana and South Africa. Additionally, he was one of the founders of the group that would develop British social anthropology.
Go to Profile#10446
Red Auerbach
#10456
Overall Influence
1917 - 2006 (89 years)
Arnold Jacob "Red" Auerbach was an American professional basketball coach and executive. He served as a head coach in the National Basketball Association , most notably with the Boston Celtics. Auerbach was also the head coach of the Washington Capitols and Tri-Cities Blackhawks. As a coach, Auerbach set NBA records with 938 wins and nine championships. After his coaching retirement in 1966, he served as president and front office executive of the Celtics until his death. As general manager and team president of the Celtics, he won an additional seven NBA titles for a grand total of 16 in a ...
Go to Profile#10447
Kid Cudi
#10457
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi , also known by his stage name Kid Cudi , is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, and fashion designer. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Cudi moved to New York City in pursuit of a musical career, where he first gained major recognition following the release of his debut single "Day 'n' Nite", which he initially self-published on his MySpace page. The song became a worldwide hit and served as a catalyst for Cudi to team with record producers Plain Pat and Emile Haynie to record his first full-length project, a mixtape titled A Kid Named Cudi .
Go to Profile#10448
Kate Raworth
#10458
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Kate Raworth is an English economist known for "doughnut economics", an economic model that balances between essential human needs and planetary boundaries. Raworth is senior associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and a Professor of Practice at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.
Go to Profile#10449
Ezra T. Newman
#10459
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Ezra Theodore Newman was an American physicist, known for his many contributions to general relativity theory. He was professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh. Newman was awarded the 2011 Einstein Prize from the American Physical Society.
Go to Profile#10450
John Thirkell
#10460
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
John Thirkell is a British trumpet and flugelhorn player, who has appeared on hundreds of pop, rock, and jazz recordings. Through the 1980s and early 1990s he was on at least one album in the UK Charts continuously, without a break, for over 13 years. In 2009 he had two consecutive UK No.1 singles with Pixie Lott and was the first person to be inducted into the Musician's Union "Hall of Fame." One of his recent number-one albums that he performed on includes Olly Murs' 2022 album Marry Me. According to Thirkell's own research, he has performed on 36 number-one albums, with his 36th occurring...
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