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
#10551
Joseph Epstein
#10561
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Joseph Epstein is an American writer who was the editor of the magazine The American Scholar from 1975 to 1997. His essays and stories have appeared in books and other publications. Early life Epstein was born to Maurice and Belle Epstein in Chicago, Illinois on January 9, 1937. He graduated from Senn High School and attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He served in the U.S. Army from 1958 to 1960, and received a bachelor of arts in absentia from the University of Chicago in 1959.
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Claire Messud
#10562
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Claire Messud is an American novelist and literature and creative writing professor. She is best known as the author of the novel The Emperor's Children . Early life Born in Greenwich, Connecticut, Messud grew up in the United States, Australia, and Canada, returning to the United States as a teenager. Messud's mother is Canadian, and her father is a Pied-noir from French Algeria. She was educated at the University of Toronto Schools and Milton Academy. She did undergraduate and graduate studies at Yale University and Cambridge University, where she met her spouse James Wood.
Go to Profile#10553
Egbert Brieskorn
#10563
Overall Influence
1936 - 2013 (77 years)
Egbert Valentin Brieskorn was a German mathematician who introduced Brieskorn spheres and the Brieskorn–Grothendieck resolution. Education Brieskorn was born in 1936 as the son of a mill construction engineer in East Prussia. He grew up in Freudenberg and studied mathematics and physics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. In 1963 he received his doctorate at Bonn under Friedrich Hirzebruch with thesis Zur differentialtopologischen und analytischen Klassifizierung gewisser algebraischer Mannigfaltigkeiten, followed by his habil...
Go to Profile#10554
Qingyan Chen
#10564
Overall Influence
Qingyan Chen is the Director of the PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research and Chair Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, active in the field of building science. He is Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University in the United States. He is the editor-in-chief of the academic journal Building and Environment.
Go to Profile#10555
Fulvio Melia
#10565
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Fulvio Melia is an Italian-American astrophysicist, cosmologist and author. He is professor of physics, astronomy and the applied math program at the University of Arizona and was a scientific editor of The Astrophysical Journal and an associate editor of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. A former Presidential Young Investigator and Sloan Research Fellow, he is the author of six English books and 230 refereed articles on theoretical astrophysics and cosmology.
Go to Profile#10556
Brian Mansfield
#10566
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Brian Mansfield is an American writer and journalist. Early life and education Mansfield grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. He graduated from David Lipscomb High School. In 1984, Mansfield received a bachelor's degree cum laude from Berklee College of Music. From 1984 to 1987 he attended Belmont University in Nashville, taking classes in journalism and the music industry.
Go to Profile#10557
Eric Liu
#10567
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Eric P. Liu is an American writer, former civil servant, and founder of Citizen University, a non-profit organization promoting civics education and awareness. Liu served as Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy at the White House between 1999 and 2000. He served as Speechwriter and Director of Legislative Affairs for the National Security Council at the White House from 1993 to 1994. President Obama nominated him in January 2015 to serve on the board of directors of the federal Corporation for National and Community Service and he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate; his ter...
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Peter Lorange
#10568
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Peter Lorange is a Norwegian economist. He was the owner, President, and CEO of the Lorange Institute of Business Zürich, formerly known as GSBA Zurich, which he bought in July 2009. Peter Lorange has previously been President of the International Institute for Management Development from 1993 and Rector of the BI Norwegian Business School. He has taught at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Go to Profile#10559
Christopher Marquis
#10569
Overall Influence
Christopher Marquis is the Sinyi Professor of Chinese Management at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, England, and a Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge. Marquis's research takes a sociological perspective and focuses on corporate strategies, entrepreneurship and social innovation, building sustainable businesses, and doing business in China. He is the author of the award-winning books Better Business: How the B Corp Movement is Remaking Capitalism and and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise
Go to Profile#10560
Koen Lamberts
#10570
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Koenraad Lamberts is a British/Belgian psychologist and academic. Since 2018, he has served as President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield. From 2014 to 2018, he was the Vice-Chancellor of the University of York. Previously, he had taught at the University of Chicago, University of Birmingham, and the University of Warwick. Lamberts was chair of UCAS between 2019 and 2020. During his time at Sheffield, Lamberts oversaw the closure of its "world-renowned archaeology department".
Go to Profile#10561
Neil Ashcroft
#10571
Overall Influence
1938 - 2021 (83 years)
Neil William Ashcroft was a British solid-state physicist. Early life and education Ashcroft was born in London on 27 November 1938, and migrated to New Zealand in 1947. He was educated at Hutt Valley High School, and completed his undergraduate studies at Victoria University College, earning a Bachelor of Science degree, in 1958. He received his PhD in 1964 from the University of Cambridge for research investigating the Fermi surfaces of metals.
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W. Wesley Peterson
#10572
Overall Influence
1924 - 2009 (85 years)
William Wesley Peterson was an American mathematician and computer scientist. He was best known for designing the cyclic redundancy check , for which research he was awarded the Japan Prize in 1999.
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Amintore Fanfani
#10573
Overall Influence
1908 - 1999 (91 years)
Amintore Fanfani was an Italian politician and statesman, who served as 32nd prime minister of Italy for five separate terms. He was one of the best-known Italian politicians after the Second World War and a historical figure of the left-wing faction of Christian Democracy. He is also considered one of the founders of the modern Italian centre-left.
Go to Profile#10564
Richard Blundell
#10574
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Sir Richard William Blundell CBE FBA is a British economist and econometrician. Blundell is the David Ricardo Professor of Political Economy at the Department of Economics of University College London and the Co-Director of the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. He is also Associate Faculty Member, TSE, Toulouse. He was the Research Director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies between 1986 and 2016. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society , Fellow of the British Academy , Honorary Member of the American Economic Association , Hon...
Go to Profile#10565
Roberto Torretti
#10575
Overall Influence
1930 - 2022 (92 years)
Roberto Torretti was a Chilean philosopher, author and academic who was internationally renowned for his contributions to the history of philosophy, philosophy of physics and philosophy of mathematics.
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Josef Škvorecký
#10576
Overall Influence
1924 - 2012 (88 years)
Josef Škvorecký was a Czech-Canadian writer and publisher. He spent half of his life in Canada, publishing and supporting banned Czech literature during the communist era. Škvorecký was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1980. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country. Škvorecký's fiction deals with several themes: the horrors of totalitarianism and repression, the expatriate experience, and the miracle of jazz.
Go to Profile#10567
Isaac Levi
#10577
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Isaac Levi was an American philosopher who served as the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. He is noted for his work in epistemology and decision theory. Education and career Levi was one of several doctoral students of Ernest Nagel at Columbia University who were influential in American post-war philosophy; others were Morton White, Patrick Suppes, and Henry E. Kyburg, Jr. Levi taught at Case Western Reserve University before joining the Columbia faculty in 1970. He was elected in 1986 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#10568
Robert B. Pippin
#10578
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Robert Buford Pippin is an American philosopher. He is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy, and the College at the University of Chicago.
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John Clayton Taylor
#10579
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
John Clayton Taylor is a British mathematical physicist. He is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Physics at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of the University of Cambridge and an Emeritus Fellow of Robinson College. He is the father of mathematician Richard Taylor.
Go to Profile#10570
Jacques Revel
#10580
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jacques Revel is a French historian. He is the emeritus director of studies and past president of l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales . Publications with Michel de Certeau and Dominique Julia, Une politique de la langue. La Révolution française et les patois. L'enquête de Grégoire , Paris, 1975 ; rééd. augmentée d'une postface de D. Julia et J. Revel, Paris, Gallimard, Folio, 2002.with Dominique Julia and Roger Chartier, Histoire sociale des populations étudiantes, Paris, EHES, 2 vol., Jeux d'échelle, Paris, Le Seuil-Gallimard, 1996with François Hartog , Les usages politiques du passé, Enquête, Paris, éditions de l'EHESS, 2001.with G.
Go to Profile#10571
Robert Plutchik
#10581
Overall Influence
1927 - 2006 (79 years)
Robert Plutchik was a professor emeritus at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and adjunct professor at the University of South Florida. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and he was also a psychologist. He authored or coauthored more than 260 articles, 45 chapters and eight books and edited seven books. His research interests included the study of emotions, the study of suicide and violence, and the study of the psychotherapy process.
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Enoch Adeboye
#10582
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Enoch Adejare Adeboye is a Nigerian pastor, and the present General Overseer of Redeemed Christian Church of God. He served as the second national president of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria.
Go to Profile#10573
David Kelly
#10583
Overall Influence
1944 - 2003 (59 years)
David Christopher Kelly was a Welsh scientist and authority on biological warfare . A former head of the Defence Microbiology Division working at Porton Down, Kelly was part of a joint US-UK team that inspected civilian biotechnology facilities in Russia in the early 1990s and concluded they were running a covert and illegal BW programme. He was appointed to the United Nations Special Commission in 1991 as one of its chief weapons inspectors in Iraq and led ten of the organisation's missions between May 1991 and December 1998. He also worked with UNSCOM's successor, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and led several of their missions into Iraq.
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Jonathan Potter
#10584
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Jonathan Potter is Dean of the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University and one of the originators of discursive psychology. Life Jonathan Potter was born in Ashford, Kent, and spent most of his childhood in the village of Laughton, East Sussex; his father was a school teacher and his mother was a batik artist. He went to School in Lewes and then on to a degree in Psychology at the University of Liverpool in 1974 where he was exposed to the radical politics of the city, became interested in alternative therapies, and responded to the traditional British empirical psychology that was the mainstay of the Liverpool psychology degree programme at the time.
Go to Profile#10575
Wolf Singer
#10585
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Wolf Joachim Singer is a German neurophysiologist. Life and career Singer was born in Munich and studied medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich from 1965 onwards and 1965/66 two semesters at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1968, he received his Ph.D. from Ludwig Maximilian University with his doctoral thesis on "The role of telencephalic commissures in bilateral EEG-synchrony." His doctoral supervisor was Otto Detlev Creutzfeldt of the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry. During his advanced training in neurophysiology, he spent a year at the University of Sussex in England. In 19...
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Thomas Cahill
#10586
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Thomas Quinn Cahill was an American scholar and writer. He was best known for The Hinges of History series, a prospective seven-volume series in which the author recounts formative moments in Western civilization.
Go to Profile#10577
Revilo P. Oliver
#10587
Overall Influence
1908 - 1994 (86 years)
Revilo Pendleton Oliver was an American professor of Classical philology, Spanish, and Italian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was one of the founders of National Review in 1955, and also was a co-founder of the John Birch Society in 1958, where he published in its magazine, American Opinion, before resigning in 1966. He later advised a Holocaust denial group. He was a polemicist for right-wing, white nationalist and antisemitic causes.
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Glen Campbell
#10588
Overall Influence
1936 - 2017 (81 years)
Glen Travis Campbell was an American country singer, guitarist, songwriter, and actor. He was best known for a series of hit songs in the 1960s and 1970s, and for hosting The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour on CBS television from 1969 until 1972. He released 64 albums in a career that spanned five decades, selling over 45 million records worldwide, including twelve gold albums, four platinum albums, and one double-platinum album.
Go to Profile#10579
Merrill Singer
#10589
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Merrill Singer is a medical anthropologist and a professor at the University of Connecticut. At the University of Connecticut, he teaches anthropology and community medicine. He earned his M.A. from California State University, Northridge and a Ph.D in anthropology from the University of Utah. In his role as the director for the Center for Community Health Research at the Hispanic Health Council, he has pioneered two new public health concepts – syndemics and oppression illness. Syndemics is a term he uses to explain disease clusters in populations, with an emphasis on the influence of social conditions.
Go to Profile#10580
György Kepes
#10590
Overall Influence
1906 - 2001 (95 years)
György Kepes was a Hungarian-born painter, photographer, designer, educator, and art theorist. After immigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus in Chicago. In 1967 he founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he taught until his retirement in 1974.
Go to Profile#10581
Boy Abunda
#10591
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Eugenio "Boy" Romerica Abunda Jr. is a Filipino television presenter, publicist, and talent manager. Known as the "King of Talk", Abunda has presented several talk shows centered on the Philippine entertainment industry. On GMA, he co-presented Show & Tell and Startalk . After transferring to ABS-CBN, he hosted The Buzz , Kontrobersyal , Homeboy , The Bottomline with Boy Abunda , and Tonight with Boy Abunda . He partnered with Kris Aquino in hosting Boy & Kris , SNN: Showbiz News Ngayon , and Aquino & Abunda Tonight . After the ABS-CBN shutdown, he returned to GMA to host Fast Talk with Boy Abunda .
Go to Profile#10582
Rounaq Jahan
#10592
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Rounaq Jahan is a Bangladeshi political scientist, feminist leader and author. A former faculty of the University of Dhaka, Jahan teaches and researches at the Columbia University since 1990. She was a representative of Bangladesh to the 32nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1977. She founded Women for Women, one of the first feminist research centres in Bangladesh, in 1973, and is the director of Research Initiatives Bangladesh .
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K. S. Chandrasekharan
#10593
Overall Influence
1920 - 2017 (97 years)
Komaravolu Chandrasekharan was a professor at ETH Zurich and a founding faculty member of School of Mathematics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research . He is known for his work in number theory and summability. He received the Padma Shri, the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, and the Ramanujan Medal, and he was an honorary fellow of TIFR. He was president of the International Mathematical Union from 1971 to 1974.
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Ellen Pompeo
#10594
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Ellen Kathleen Pompeo is an American actress. One of the world's highest-paid actors since 2017, she has made multiple appearances on Forbes' year-end lists. Her accolades include a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Golden Globe Award nomination.
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Joe Slovo
#10595
Overall Influence
1926 - 1995 (69 years)
Joe Slovo was a South African politician, and an opponent of the apartheid system. A Marxist-Leninist, he was a long-time leader and theorist in the South African Communist Party , a leading member of the African National Congress , and a commander of the ANC's military wing uMkhonto we Sizwe .
Go to Profile#10586
Henny Youngman
#10596
Overall Influence
1906 - 1998 (92 years)
Henry "Henny" Youngman was a British-born American comedian and musician famous for his mastery of the "one-liner", his best known being "Take my wife... please". In a time when many comedians told elaborate anecdotes, Youngman's routine consisted of telling simple one-liner jokes, occasionally with interludes of violin playing. These depicted simple, cartoon-like situations, eliminating lengthy build-ups and going straight to the punch line. Known as "the King of the One-Liners", a title conferred to him by columnist Walter Winchell, a stage performance by Youngman lasted only 15 to 20 minut...
Go to Profile#10587
James A. Robinson
#10597
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
#10588
Margaret Wetherell
#10598
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Margaret Wetherell is a prominent academic in the area of discourse analysis. Career Wetherell worked for 23 years at the Open University, UK from which she retired as Emeritus Professor in 2011. She then took up a part-time post of Professor in Psychology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Go to Profile#10589
Valentin Lebedev
#10599
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Valentin Vitalyevich Lebedev is a former Soviet cosmonaut who made two flights into space. His stay aboard the Space Station Salyut 7 with Anatoly Berezovoy in 1982, which lasted 211 days, was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records.
Go to Profile#10590
John Simon
#10600
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
John Simon is an American music producer, composer, writer and performer. Recognized as one of the top record producers in the United States during the late 1960s and the 1970s, Simon produced numerous classic albums that continue to sell more than 50 years later, including the Band’s Music from Big Pink, The Band, and The Last Waltz, Cheap Thrills by Big Brother & the Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin, Songs of Leonard Cohen by Leonard Cohen, and Child Is Father to the Man by Blood, Sweat & Tears.
Go to Profile#10591
Linda C. Babcock
#10601
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Linda C. Babcock is an American academic. She is the James M. Walton Professor of Economics and former dean at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, and is the former head of the Social and Decision Sciences department. She is also the founder and faculty director of the Program for Research and Outreach on Gender Equity in Society .
Go to Profile#10592
Howard Giles
#10602
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Howard Giles is a British-American social psychologist and a Distinguished Research Professor of Communication at the Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara. He was the chair of the department from 1991 to 1998, and has been president of both the International Communication Association and the International Association for the Study of Language and Social Psychology. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Language and Social Psychology and the Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, and was the editor of Human Communication Research from 1992 to 1995. He ...
Go to Profile#10593
Tsutomu Shimomura
#10603
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Tsutomu Shimomura is a Japanese-born physicist and computer security expert. He is known for helping the FBI track and arrest hacker Kevin Mitnick. Takedown, his 1996 book on the subject with journalist John Markoff, was later adapted for the screen in Track Down in 2000.
Go to Profile#10594
Jean Talairach
#10604
Overall Influence
1911 - 2007 (96 years)
Jean Talairach was a psychiatrist and neurosurgeon who practiced at the Sainte-Anne Hospital Center in Paris, and who is noted for the Talairach coordinates, which are relevant in stereotactic neurosurgery.
Go to Profile#10595
Jacques Drèze
#10605
Overall Influence
1929 - 2022 (93 years)
Jacques H. Drèze was a Belgian economist noted for his contributions to economic theory, econometrics, and economic policy as well as for his leadership in the economics profession. Drèze was the first President of the European Economic Association in 1986 and was the President of the Econometric Society in 1970.
Go to Profile#10596
Dominik Duka
#10606
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Dominik Jaroslav Duka, O.P. is a Czech prelate of the Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Prague from 2010 to 2022. He was made a cardinal in 2012. Duka served as Bishop of Hradec Králové from 1998 to 2010. He was the spiritual protector and chaplain general of the Orléans obedience of the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem from 2012 to 2021.
Go to Profile#10597
Kenneth Rogoff
#10607
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Kenneth Saul Rogoff is an American economist and chess Grandmaster. He is the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and professor of economics at Harvard University. Early life Rogoff grew up in Rochester, New York. His father was a professor of radiology at the University of Rochester.
Go to Profile#10598
Dawn Song
#10608
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Dawn Song is a Chinese American academic and is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. She received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2010.
Go to Profile#10599
Lenny Wilkens
#10609
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Leonard Randolph Wilkens is an American former basketball player and coach in the National Basketball Association . He has been inducted three times into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, first in 1989 as a player, as a coach in 1998, and in 2010 as part of the 1992 United States Olympic "Dream Team," for which he was an assistant coach. In 1996, Wilkens was named to the NBA 50th Anniversary Team, and in 2021 he was named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team. In addition, in 2022 he was also named to the list of the 15 Greatest Coaches in NBA History, being the only person to be in both NBA 75th season celebration list as player and coach.
Go to Profile#10600
Juan Felipe Herrera
#10610
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Juan Felipe Herrera is an American poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist. Herrera was the 21st United States Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017. He is a major figure in the literary field of Chicano poetry.
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