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
#10451
Ana Maria Machado
#10461
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Ana Maria Machado is a Brazilian writer of children's books, one of the most significant alongside Lygia Bojunga Nunes and Ruth Rocha. She received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2000 for her "lasting contribution to children's literature". She also won the SM Ibero-American Prize for Children's and Young Adult Literature in 2012.
Go to Profile#10452
Jerome Apt
#10462
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jerome' "Jay" Apt III is an American astronaut and professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Before becoming an astronaut, Apt was a physicist who worked on the Pioneer Venus 1978 space probe project, and used visible light and infrared techniques to study the planets and moons of the solar system from ground-based observatories.
Go to Profile#10453
Georgios Papadopoulos
#10463
Overall Influence
1919 - 1999 (80 years)
Geórgios Papadopoulos was a Greek military officer and dictator who led a coup d'etat in Greece in 1967 and became the country's Prime Minister from 1967 to 1973. He also was the President of Greece under the junta in 1973, following a referendum. However, after the effective suppression of the Athens Polytechnic uprising, he was, in turn, overthrown by hardliner Dimitrios Ioannidis, in a string of events that would culminate to the fall of the regime in 1974. His and the dictatorship's legacy, as well as its methods he constructed and effects on Greek economy and society as a whole, are stil...
Go to Profile#10454
Katy Milkman
#10464
Overall Influence
Katherine L. Milkman is an American economist who is the James G. Dinan endowed Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She is the President of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making.
Go to Profile#10455
Paul Gascoigne
#10465
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Paul John Gascoigne , nicknamed Gazza, is an English former professional footballer who played as an attacking midfielder. Regarded as one of the best playmakers of his generation and one of the best English footballers of all time, Gascoigne is described by the National Football Museum as "widely recognised as the most naturally talented English footballer of his generation". Gascoigne was immensely popular during his playing career, with television broadcaster Terry Wogan calling him “probably the most popular man in Britain today” in September 1990, and public interest in and adoration for ...
Go to Profile#10456
Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma
#10466
Overall Influence
1930 - 2010 (80 years)
Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma and Piacenza was the head of the ducal House of Bourbon-Parma from 1977 until his death. Carlos Hugo was Carlist claimant to the throne of Spain and sought to change the political direction of the Carlist movement through the Carlist Party, of which he was the official head during the fatal Montejurra incidents. His marriage to Princess Irene of the Netherlands in 1964 caused a constitutional crisis in the Netherlands.
Go to Profile#10457
David J. Skorton
#10467
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
David Jan Skorton is an American physician and academic. He has been president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges since July 15, 2019. Prior to the AAMC, he led the Smithsonian Institution, the national research museums of the United States, as its 13th Secretary from July 2015 to June 2019. A cardiologist, he was president of Cornell University from 2006 to 2015. Before arriving at Cornell, he served as president of the University of Iowa, where he had been a longtime professor and then vice president. He began his career as a professor of medicine and engineering.
Go to Profile#10458
Donald L. Horowitz
#10468
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Donald L. Horowitz is James B. Duke Professor of Law and Political Science Emeritus at Duke Law School and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, United States. With law degrees from Syracuse and Harvard Universities, Donald Horowitz earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard. Most of his work has concerned ethnic conflict and accommodation in severely divided societies, based on a combination of extensive field research and wide knowledge of the phenomena in multiple countries, beginning with a long series of stays in Malaysia immediately after his Ph.D. studies. He has also pu...
Go to Profile#10459
Martin Brundle
#10469
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Martin John Brundle is a British former racing driver, best known as a Formula One driver and as a commentator for ITV Sport from 1997 to 2008, the BBC from 2009 to 2011, and Sky Sports since 2012. Brundle contested the 1983 British Formula Three Championship, finishing a close second to Ayrton Senna, and the two progressed to Formula One the next year. Brundle was the 1988 World Sportscar Champion with Silk Cut Jaguar, with a record points score; and won the 1988 24 Hours of Daytona, and the 1990 24 Hours of Le Mans for Jaguar Cars.
Go to Profile#10460
Diane Coyle
#10470
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Dame Diane Coyle is a British economist, academic and writer. Since March 2018, she has been the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, co-directing the Bennett Institute.
Go to Profile#10461
Alex de Waal
#10471
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Alexander William Lowndes de Waal , a British researcher on African elite politics, is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Previously, he was a fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative at Harvard University, as well as program director at the Social Science Research Council on AIDS in New York City.
Go to Profile#10462
Bob Scheifler
#10472
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Robert William Scheifler is an American computer scientist. He was born in Kirkwood, Missouri. He is most notable for leading the development of the X Window System from the project's inception in 1984 until the closure of the MIT X Consortium in 1996. He later became one of the architects of the Jini architecture at Sun Microsystems.
Go to Profile#10463
Roin Metreveli
#10473
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Roin Metreveli is a Georgian academician and historian. He was the first elected rector of the Tbilisi State University, after Petre Melikishvili and Ivane Javakhishvili. Metreveli served as a secretary of the Central Committee of the Georgian Communist Party during the Soviet Union, from 1960 to 1972, and subsequently as its first secretary. From 1972, he was a major editor of the Georgian Encyclopedia. He is the author of multiple scientific publications and books about Georgian history and Caucasiology. For several years, he was member of the Georgian Parliament. He was chairman of the boa...
Go to Profile#10464
Jarkko Oikarinen
#10474
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Jarkko Oikarinen is a Finnish IT professional and the inventor of the first Internet chat network, called Internet Relay Chat , where he is known as WiZ. Biography and career Oikarinen was born in Kuusamo. While working at the University of Oulu in August 1988, he wrote the first IRC server and client programs, which he produced to replace the MUT program on the Finnish BBS OuluBox. Using the Bitnet Relay chat system as inspiration, Oikarinen continued to develop IRC over the next four years, receiving assistance from Darren Reed in co-authoring the IRC Protocol. In 1997, his development of ...
Go to Profile#10465
Arrigo Sacchi
#10475
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Arrigo Sacchi is an Italian former professional football coach. He has twice managed AC Milan , with great success. He won the Serie A title in his 1987–88 debut season and then dominated European football by winning back to back European Cupss in 1989 and 1990. From 1991 to 1996, he was head coach of the Italy national team and led them to the 1994 FIFA World Cup Final, where they lost to Brazil in a penalty shoot-out.
Go to Profile#10466
Peter A. McCullough
#10476
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Peter Andrew McCullough is an American cardiologist. He was vice chief of internal medicine at Baylor University Medical Center and a professor at Texas A&M University. During the COVID-19 pandemic, McCullough has promoted misinformation about COVID-19, its treatments, and mRNA vaccines.
Go to Profile#10467
P. H. Newby
#10477
Overall Influence
1918 - 1997 (79 years)
Percy Howard Newby CBE was an English novelist and broadcasting administrator. He was the first winner of the Booker Prize, his novel Something to Answer For having received the inaugural award in 1969.
Go to Profile#10468
Frederick G. Lawrence
#10478
Overall Influence
Frederick G. Lawrence is an American hermeneutic philosopher and theologian, and a specialist in Bernard Lonergan, teaching in the Department of Theology at Boston College, Boston, US. Life Fred Lawrence is married to Sue Lawrence. He has been running the annual Lonergan Workshop at Boston College for many years, and is editor of Lonergan Workshop, which publishes the proceedings. He also convened the First and Second International Lonergan Conferences at Rome and Toronto , and the Third and Fourth International Lonergan Conferences at Mainz and Jerusalem respectively.
Go to Profile#10469
June Jordan
#10479
Overall Influence
1936 - 2002 (66 years)
June Millicent Jordan was an American poet, essayist, teacher, and activist. In her writing she explored issues of gender, race, immigration, and representation. Jordan was passionate about using Black English in her writing and poetry, teaching others to treat it as its own language and an important outlet for expressing Black culture.
Go to Profile#10470
Michael J. Nelson
#10480
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Michael John Nelson is an American comedian and writer, most known for his work on the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 . Nelson was the head writer of the series for most of the show's original eleven-year run, and spent half of that time as the on-air host, also named Mike Nelson. In addition to writing books, Nelson is currently part of the online movie riffing site RiffTrax, and was previously part of the straight-to-DVD Film Crew with fellow MST3K alumni, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy.
Go to Profile#10471
Bonnie Raitt
#10481
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Bonnie Lynn Raitt is an American songwriter, blues singer and guitarist. In 1971, Raitt released her self-titled debut album. Following this, she released a series of critically acclaimed roots-influenced albums that incorporated elements of blues, rock, folk, and country. She was also a frequent session player and collaborator with other artists, including Warren Zevon, Little Feat, Jackson Browne, the Pointer Sisters, John Prine, and Leon Russell.
Go to Profile#10472
DJ Khaled
#10482
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Khaled Mohammed Khaled , known professionally as DJ Khaled, is an American disc jockey, record producer, and record executive. Originally a Miami-based radio hype man, Khaled has become known for his extensive curation of high-profile music industry artists and producers to record singles or albums. His distinctions are his booming voice presence, "motivational" abstractions, and numerous catchphrases. While his musical contribution is often questioned, Khaled's role has been widely described as "organization, direction, [and] promotion".
Go to Profile#10473
Garth Fisher
#10483
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Garth Fisher , is an American plastic surgeon best known as the first doctor selected for the ABC television show Extreme Makeover. Fisher's clientele includes entertainers, celebrities and business executives and he specializes in aesthetic/cosmetic plastic surgery of the face, nose, breast and other parts of the body.
Go to Profile#10474
Josh Fisher
#10484
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Joseph A "Josh" Fisher is an American and Spanish computer scientist noted for his work on VLIW architectures, compiling, and instruction-level parallelism, and for the founding of Multiflow Computer. He is a Hewlett-Packard Senior Fellow .
Go to Profile#10475
Thierry Bardini
#10485
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Thierry Bardini is a French sociologist, author of the book Bootstrapping, about Douglas Engelbart. He is a full professor in the Department of Communication at the Université de Montréal, Canada. He is known for his work on innovation and sociology of technology.
Go to Profile#10476
Gopi Chand Narang
#10486
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Gopi Chand Narang was an Indian theorist, literary critic, and scholar who wrote in Urdu and English. His Urdu literary criticism incorporated a range of modern theoretical frameworks including stylistics, structuralism, post-structuralism, and Eastern poetics.
Go to Profile#10477
Gustáv Husák
#10487
Overall Influence
1913 - 1991 (78 years)
Gustáv Husák was a Czechoslovak politician who served as the long-time First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from 1969 to 1987 and the President of Czechoslovakia from 1975 to 1989.
Go to Profile#10478
Robert Calderbank
#10488
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Robert Calderbank is a professor of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Mathematics and director of the Information Initiative at Duke University. He received a BSc from Warwick University in 1975, an MSc from Oxford in 1976, and a PhD from Caltech in 1980, all in mathematics. He joined Bell Labs in 1980, and retired from AT&T Labs in 2003 as Vice President for Research and Internet and network systems. He then went to Princeton as a professor of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Applied and Computational Mathematics, before moving to Duke in 2010 to become Dean of Natural S...
Go to Profile#10479
Eric Isaacs
#10489
Overall Influence
Eric Isaacs is an American physicist who is the 11th President of the Carnegie Institution for Science where he oversees the research and business functions across six research departments on the East and West coasts and observatories in Chile.
Go to Profile#10480
Shih Choon Fong
#10490
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Shih Choon Fong is a Singaporean college administrator and fracture mechanics expert who served as the founding president of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology between 2008 and 2013. Prior joining KAUST as its founding president, he was the president of the National University of Singapore for nine years and has been widely acknowledged for creating the university's research-intensive focus with an entrepreneurial dimension, as well as for NUS' elevated global reputation. Drawing from his experiences abroad, Shih institutionalised a performance- and market-based evaluat...
Go to Profile#10481
David Lean
#10491
Overall Influence
1908 - 1991 (83 years)
Sir David Lean was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Widely considered one of the most important figures of British cinema, Lean directed the large-scale epics The Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia , Doctor Zhivago , Ryan's Daughter , and A Passage to India . He also directed the film adaptations of two Charles Dickens novels, Great Expectations and Oliver Twist , as well as the romantic drama Brief Encounter .
Go to Profile#10482
Raphael Samuel
#10492
Overall Influence
1934 - 1996 (62 years)
Raphael Elkan Samuel was a British Marxist historian, described by Stuart Hall as "one of the most outstanding, original intellectuals of his generation". He was professor of history at the University of East London at the time of his death and also taught at Ruskin College from 1962 until his death.
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Ronald Brown
#10493
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Ronald Brown FLSW is an English mathematician. Emeritus Professor in the School of Computer Science at Bangor University, he has authored many books and more than 160 journal articles. Education and career Born on 4 January 1935 in London, Brown attended Oxford University, obtaining a B.A. in 1956 and a D.Phil. in 1962. Brown began his teaching career during his doctorate work, serving as an assistant lecturer at the University of Liverpool before assuming the position of Lecturer. In 1964, he took a position at the University of Hull, serving first as a Senior Lecturer and then as a Reader be...
Go to Profile#10484
Christoph M. Schmidt
#10494
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Christoph Matthias Schmidt is a German economist. He has been President of RWI - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research in Essen since 2002 and also holds the Chair for Economic Policy and Applied Econometrics at the Faculty of Management and Economics at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He was a member of the German Council of Economic Experts from 2009 to 2020 and its chairman from 2013 to 2020. Since 2019 he has been a member, and since 2020 co-chairman, of the Franco-German Council of Economic Experts. From 2011 to 2013, he was a member of the Enquete Commission "Growth, Prosperity, Quality of Life" of the German Bundestag.
Go to Profile#10485
Ilan Chet
#10495
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Ilan Chet is an Israeli microbiologist and a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot. He was appointed Deputy Secretary General of the Union of the Mediterranean in 2010 with responsibility for its Higher Education and Research Division In 2000 he was nominated for the position of President of the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Go to Profile#10486
Erich Leo Lehmann
#10496
Overall Influence
1917 - 2009 (92 years)
Erich Leo Lehmann was a German-born American statistician, who made a major contribution to nonparametric hypothesis testing. He is one of the eponyms of the Lehmann–Scheffé theorem and of the Hodges–Lehmann estimator of the median of a population.
Go to Profile#10487
Andrés Iniesta
#10497
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Andrés Iniesta Luján is a Spanish professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for UAE Pro League club Emirates. Considered one of the greatest midfielders of all time, he was lauded for his balance, ball control and agility in close spaces, combined with his skill, composure, and flair on the ball. Iniesta has spent most of his career at Barcelona, where along with his midfield partners Xavi and Sergio Busquets they played a major role in the club's success.
Go to Profile#10488
Mike Love
#10498
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Michael Edward Love is an American singer and songwriter who co-founded t<!-- DO NOT CAPITALIZE -->he Beach Boys with his cousins Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson and their friend Al Jardine. Characterized by his nasal tenor and occasional bass-baritone singing, Love has been one of the band's vocalists and lyricists for their entire career, contributing to each of their studio albums and serving as their frontman for live performances. During the mid-1960s, he was one of Brian's main collaborators, contributing lyrics to hit records such as "Fun, Fun, Fun" , "I Get Around" , "Help Me, Rhonda" ...
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John Williamson
#10499
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
John Harold Williamson was a British-born economist who coined the term Washington Consensus. He served as a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics from 1981 until his retirement in 2012. During that time, he was the project director for the United Nations High-Level Panel on Financing for Development in 2001. He was also on leave as chief economist for South Asia at the World Bank during 1996–99, adviser to the International Monetary Fund from 1972 to 1974, and an economic consultant to the UK Treasury from 1968 to 1970. He was also an economics professor at Pont...
Go to Profile#10490
Elena Dementieva
#10500
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Elena Viacheslavovna Dementieva is a Russian former professional tennis player. She won the singles gold medal at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, having previously won the silver medal at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. She won 16 WTA singles titles, reached the finals of the 2004 French Open and 2004 US Open and reached seven other Grand Slam semifinals. Dementieva was also part of the Russian team that won the 2005 Fed Cup. In doubles, she won the 2002 WTA Championships with Janette Husárová and was the runner-up in two US Open doubles finals – in 2002 with Husárová and in 2005 with Flavia Pennetta.
Go to Profile#10491
Peter Kohl
#10501
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Peter Kohl is a German businessman and author, who resides in Switzerland. He is the younger son of former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Hannelore Kohl, and brother of Walter Kohl. He grew up at the family home in Ludwigshafen-Oggersheim. Kohl attended the Waldorf school in Ludwigshafen and the Liselotte – Gymnasium across the river in Mannheim. He was also schooled in the UK and at the Jesuit Lycée la Providence in Amiens, France. He is a reserve officer and served for two years in the Paratrooper Battalion 263 , now Paratrooper Regiment 26. He holds a BSc. in economics from Massachuset...
Go to Profile#10492
Kate Winslet
#10502
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Kate Elizabeth Winslet is an English actress. Known for her work in independent films, particularly period dramas, and for her portrayals of headstrong and complicated women, she has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, five BAFTA Awards and five Golden Globe Awards. Time magazine named Winslet one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009 and 2021. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2012.
Go to Profile#10493
Constance Reid
#10503
Overall Influence
1918 - 2010 (92 years)
Constance Bowman Reid was the author of several biographies of mathematicians and popular books about mathematics. She received several awards for mathematical exposition. She was not a mathematician but came from a mathematical family—one of her sisters was Julia Robinson, and her brother-in-law was Raphael M. Robinson.
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Daniel arap Moi
#10504
Overall Influence
1924 - 2020 (96 years)
Daniel Toroitich arap Moi was a Kenyan politician who served as the second president of Kenya from 1978 to 2002. He is the country's longest-serving president to date. Moi previously served as the third vice president of Kenya from 1967 to 1978 under President Jomo Kenyatta, becoming the president following the latter's death.
Go to Profile#10495
Mike Oldfield
#10505
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Michael Gordon Oldfield is an English musician, songwriter, and producer best known for his debut studio album Tubular Bells , which became an unexpected critical and commercial success. Though primarily a guitarist, Oldfield plays a range of instruments, which includes keyboards and percussion, as well as vocals. He has adopted a range of musical styles throughout his career, including progressive rock, world, folk, classical, electronic, ambient, and new age music.
Go to Profile#10496
Ernst Muldashev
#10506
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Ernst Rifgatovich Muldashev , Russian surgeon ophthalmologist, general director of the All-Russian Center for Ophthalmic and Plastic Surgery in the city of Ufa, author of esoteric books. Biography Ernst Muldashev was born on January 1, 1948, in the village of Verkhne-Sermenevo, Beloretsky District, of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. He is the son of Bashkir Rifgat Iskandarovich Muldashev and Ukrainian Valentina Kirsanovna Makhini, brother of Albert Rifgatovich Muldashev and Eduard Rifgatovich Muldashev. From 1955 to 1965 Muldashev studied at the school of the city of Salava...
Go to Profile#10497
Bill James
#10507
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
George William James is an American baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books about baseball history and statistics. His approach, which he named sabermetrics after the Society for American Baseball Research , scientifically analyzes and studies baseball, often through the use of statistical data, in an attempt to determine why teams win and lose.
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Eric Flint
#10508
Overall Influence
1947 - 2022 (75 years)
Eric Flint was an American author, editor, and e-publisher. The majority of his main works are alternate history science fiction, but he also wrote humorous fantasy adventures. His works have been listed on The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Locus magazine best seller lists. He was a co-founder and editor of the Baen Free Library.
Go to Profile#10499
Lorraine Code
#10509
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Lorraine Code is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her principal area of research is feminist epistemology and the politics of knowledge.
Go to Profile#10500
Robert A. Jarrow
#10510
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Robert Alan Jarrow is the Ronald P. and Susan E. Lynch Professor of Investment Management at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University. Professor Jarrow is a co-creator of the Heath–Jarrow–Morton framework for pricing interest rate derivatives, a co-creator of the reduced form Jarrow–Turnbull credit risk models employed for pricing credit derivatives, and the creator of the forward price martingale measure. These tools and models are now the standards utilized for pricing and hedging in major investment and commercial banks.
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