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
#10601
George Saliba
#10611
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
George Saliba is an American historian who is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science at the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University, New York, where he has been since 1979. Saliba is currently the founding director of the Farouk Jabre Center for Arabic & Islamic Science & Philosophy and the Jabre-Khwarizmi Chair in the History Department.
Go to Profile#10602
Ravi Shankar
#10612
Overall Influence
1920 - 2012 (92 years)
Ravi Shankar, was an Indian sitarist and composer. A sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known expert of North Indian classical music in the second half of the 20th century, and influenced many musicians in India and throughout the world. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999.
Go to Profile#10603
Klaus-Jürgen Bathe
#10613
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Klaus-Jürgen Bathe is a civil engineer, professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and founder of ADINA R&D, who specializes in computational mechanics. Bathe is considered to be one of the pioneers in the field of finite element analysis and its applications.
Go to Profile#10604
Kira Hall
#10614
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Kira Hall is professor of Linguistics and Anthropology, as well as director for the Program in Culture, Language, and Social Practice , at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The majority of Hall's work focuses on language in India and the United States, with special attention to organizations of gender and sexuality. A special focus of her work has been the linguistic and sociocultural practices of Hindi-speaking Hijras in northern India, a transgender group often discussed in the anthropological literature as a "third sex."
Go to Profile#10605
Hans Zassenhaus
#10615
Overall Influence
1912 - 1991 (79 years)
Hans Julius Zassenhaus was a German mathematician, known for work in many parts of abstract algebra, and as a pioneer of computer algebra. Biography He was born in Koblenz in 1912. His father was a historian and advocate for Reverence for Life as expressed by Albert Schweitzer. Hans had two brothers, Guenther and Wilfred, and sister Hiltgunt, who wrote an autobiography in 1974. According to her, their father lost his position as school principal due to his philosophy. She wrote:Hans, my eldest brother, studied mathematics. My brothers Guenther and Wilfred were in medical school. ... only students who participated in Nazi activities would get scholarships.
Go to Profile#10606
Juan-David Nasio
#10616
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Juan-David Nasio , is an Argentinian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and writer. He is one of the founders of Séminaires Psychanalytiques de Paris. Biography After qualifying as a doctor from the University of Buenos Aires, Nasio completed his residency as a psychiatrist at the hospital in Lanús. He emigrated to France in 1969, where he attended the classes of Jacques Lacan. In May 1979, he did a course about the theme "subject of the unconscious", in the seminar of Lacan.
Go to Profile#10607
David Nirenberg
#10617
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
David Nirenberg is a medievalist and intellectual historian. He is the Director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. He previously taught at the University of Chicago, where he was Dean of the Divinity School, and Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Distinguished Service Professor of Medieval History and the Committee on Social Thought, as well as the former Executive Vice Provost of the University, Dean of the Social Sciences Division, and the founding Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Family Collegium for Culture and Society. He is also appointed to ...
Go to Profile#10608
Pierre N. Leval
#10618
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Pierre Nelson Leval is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. At the time of his appointment by President Bill Clinton in 1993, he was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Go to Profile#10609
Jacob Soll
#10619
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Jacob Soll is an American university professor and professor of philosophy, history and accounting at the University of Southern California. Soll's work examines the mechanics of politics, statecraft and economics by dissecting the various elements of how modern states and political systems succeed and fail. He studies the philosophies of political and economic freedom with a focus on the relationship of the individual to the state.
Go to Profile#10610
Predrag Cvitanović
#10620
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Predrag Cvitanović is a theoretical physicist regarded for his work in nonlinear dynamics, particularly his contributions to periodic orbit theory. Life Cvitanović earned his B.S. from MIT in 1969 and his Ph.D. at Cornell University in 1973. Before joining the physics department at the Georgia Institute of Technology he was the director of the Center for Chaos and Turbulence Studies of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen.
Go to Profile#10611
Yitzhak Arad
#10621
Overall Influence
1926 - 2021 (95 years)
Yitzhak Arad was an Israeli historian, author, IDF brigadier general and Soviet partisan. He also served as Yad Vashem's director from 1972 to 1993, and specialised in the history of the Holocaust. Names He was born Icchak Rudnicki, later adopting the Hebrew surname Arad . During World War II, he was known as Tolya in the underground and among the partisans.
Go to Profile#10612
Theodore Wilbur Anderson
#10622
Overall Influence
1918 - 2016 (98 years)
Theodore Wilbur Anderson was an American mathematician and statistician who specialized in the analysis of multivariate data. He was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was on the faculty of Columbia University from 1946 until moving to Stanford University in 1967, becoming Emeritus Professor in 1988. He served as Editor of Annals of Mathematical Statistics from 1950 to 1952. He was elected President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1962.
Go to Profile#10613
Charles Camarda
#10623
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Charles Joseph "Charlie" Camarda is an American engineer and a NASA astronaut who flew his first mission into space on board the Space Shuttle mission STS-114. He served as Senior Advisor for Engineering Development at NASA Langley Research Center. and was a senior advisor for innovation at the office of Chief Engineer in the Johnson Space Center.
Go to Profile#10614
Manfredi Nicoletti
#10624
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Manfredi Nicoletti was an Italian architect. Biography Nicoletti is considered a pioneer in Bioclimatic urban and architectural design. In the 1970s his book L'ecosistema urbano - a term which he coined - creates a connection between environmental matters and psychological and cultural values. In this volume experts in various disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, biology, engineering, botanics, urban history, economy and acoustics contribute to open a rich discussion on the theme of urban ecosystems.
Go to Profile#10615
Stanley Falkow
#10625
Overall Influence
1934 - 2018 (84 years)
Stanley "Stan" Falkow was an American microbiologist and a professor of microbiology at Georgetown University, University of Washington, and Stanford University School of Medicine. Falkow is known as the father of the field of molecular microbial pathogenesis. He formulated molecular Koch's postulates, which have guided the study of the microbial determinants of infectious diseases since the late 1980s. Falkow spent over 50 years uncovering molecular mechanisms of how bacteria cause disease and how to disarm them. Falkow also was one of the first scientists to investigate antimicrobial resis...
Go to Profile#10616
Susan Schwab
#10626
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Susan Carol Schwab is an American politician, who served under President George W. Bush as United States Trade Representative from June 2006 to January 2009. She is not related to Charles R. Schwab Sr., founder of the Charles Schwab Corporation; she is also not to be confused with his first wife Susan Schwab.
Go to Profile#10617
Paolo Maldini
#10627
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Paolo Cesare Maldini is an Italian former professional footballer who played primarily as a left back and centre back for AC Milan and the Italy national team. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest defenders of all time. As the Milan and Italy captain for many years he was nicknamed "Il Capitano". Maldini held the record for most appearances in Serie A, with 647, until 2020, when he was overtaken by Gianluigi Buffon and holds the joint-record for most European Cup/UEFA Champions League final appearances alongside Francisco Gento. He most recently served as technical director for Mila...
Go to Profile#10618
Marc Kirschner
#10628
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Marc Wallace Kirschner is an American cell biologist and biochemist and the founding chair of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. He is known for major discoveries in cell and developmental biology related to the dynamics and function of the cytoskeleton, the regulation of the cell cycle, and the process of signaling in embryos, as well as the evolution of the vertebrate body plan. He is a leader in applying mathematical approaches to biology. He is the John Franklin Enders University Professor at Harvard University. In 2021 he was elected to the American Philosophica...
Go to Profile#10619
Franco P. Preparata
#10629
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Franco P. Preparata is a computer scientist, the An Wang Professor, Emeritus, of Computer Science at Brown University. He is best known for his 1985 book "Computational Geometry: An Introduction" into which he blended salient parts of M. I. Shamos' doctoral thesis . This book, which represents a snapshot of the disciplines as of 1985, has been for many years the standard textbook in the field, and has been translated into four foreign Languages . He has made several contributions to the computational geometry, the most recent being the notion of "algorithmic degree" as a key feature to contro...
Go to Profile#10620
Urs Fischbacher
#10630
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Urs Fischbacher is a Swiss economist and professor of applied economic research at the University of Konstanz. He is director of the Thurgau Economic Institute, an affiliated institute of the University of Konstanz. He pioneered the field of software tools for experimental economics.
Go to Profile#10621
Robin Kelley
#10631
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Robin Davis Gibran Kelley is an American historian and academic, who is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at the University of California, Los Angeles . From 2006 to 2011, he was Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California , and from 2003 to 2006 he was the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia University. From 1994 to 2003, he was a professor of history and Africana Studies at New York University as well the chair of NYU's history department from 2002 to 2003. Kelley has also served as a Hess Scholar-in-Residence at Brooklyn College.
Go to Profile#10622
Yury Gogotsi
#10632
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Yury Georgievich Gogotsi is a Ukrainian scientist in the field of material chemistry, professor at Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA since the year 2000 in the fields of Materials Science and Engineering and Nanotechnology. Distinguished University and Trustee Chair professor of materials science at Drexel University — director of the A.J. Drexel Nanotechnology Institute .
Go to Profile#10623
Leonid Grinin
#10633
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Leonid Efimovich Grinin is a Russian philosopher of history, sociologist, political anthropologist, economist, and futurologist. Born in Kamyshin , Grinin attended Volgograd State Pedagogical University, where he got an M.A. in 1980. He got his Ph.D. from Moscow State University in 1996.
Go to Profile#10624
Felix Otto
#10634
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Felix Otto is a German mathematician. Biography He studied mathematics at the University of Bonn, finishing his PhD thesis in 1993 under the supervision of Stephan Luckhaus. After postdoctoral studies at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University and at Carnegie Mellon University, in 1997 he became a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. From 1999 to 2010 he was professor for applied mathematics at the University of Bonn, and currently serves as one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig.
Go to Profile#10625
Alejandro Portes
#10635
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Alejandro Portes is a Cuban-American sociologist. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and of the Board of Trustees and the Scientific Council at the IMDEA Social Sciences Institute. He also served as the president of the American Sociological Association in 1999. His academic studies have focused on immigration to the United States and factors affecting the fates of immigrants and their children. He has also done work on shack settlements in Latin America. His work is highly cited in the sub-fields of economic sociology, cultural sociology a...
Go to Profile#10626
Frank H. T. Rhodes
#10636
Overall Influence
1926 - 2020 (94 years)
Frank Harold Trevor Rhodes was the ninth president of Cornell University from 1977 to 1995. Biography Rhodes was born in Warwickshire, England, on October 29, 1926, the son of Gladys and Harold Cecil Rhodes. He was educated at Solihull School from 1937–45, during which time he was elected as head boy. Rhodes then attended the University of Birmingham, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1948, and then went on to complete a Ph.D. there, in geology, in 1950; later, in 1963, he also earned a third degree from Birmingham, a D.Sc. , also in geology. Following his doctoral studies, he...
Go to Profile#10627
Mark H. Moore
#10637
Overall Influence
Mark H. Moore is the Hauser Professor for Nonprofit Organizations and Faculty Chair of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is also the author of a strategic management book called Creating Public Value.
Go to Profile#10628
Craig Reynolds
#10638
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Craig W. Reynolds , is an artificial life and computer graphics expert, who created the Boids artificial life simulation in 1986. Reynolds worked on the film Tron as a scene programmer, and on Batman Returns as part of the video image crew. Reynolds won the 1998 Academy Scientific and Technical Award in recognition of "his pioneering contributions to the development of three-dimensional computer animation for motion picture production." He is the author of the OpenSteer library.
Go to Profile#10629
Frederic M. Scherer
#10639
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Frederic Michael Scherer is an American economist and expert on industrial organization. Since 2006, he continues as a professor of economics at the JFK School of Government at Harvard University. Early and family life Scherer received his A.B. degree with honors and distinction from the University of Michigan and his M.B.A. with high distinction from Harvard University in 1958 and his PhD in economics from Harvard in 1963.
Go to Profile#10630
Herwig Wolfram
#10640
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Herwig Wolfram is an Austrian historian who is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History and Auxiliary Sciences of History at the University of Vienna and the former Director of the . He is a leading member of the Vienna School of History, and internationally known for his authoritative works on the history of Austria, the Goths, and relationships between the Germanic peoples and the Roman Empire.
Go to Profile#10631
Andrej Karpathy
#10641
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Andrej Karpathy is a Slovak-Canadian computer scientist who served as the director of artificial intelligence and Autopilot Vision at Tesla. He currently works for OpenAI, where he specializes in deep learning and computer vision.
Go to Profile#10632
Charles D. Ellis
#10642
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Charles “Charley” D. Ellis is an American investment consultant. In 1972, Ellis founded Greenwich Associates, an international strategy consulting firm focused on financial institutions. Ellis is known for his philosophy of passive investing through index funds, as detailed in his book Winning the Loser’s Game.
Go to Profile#10633
Ira Pastan
#10643
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Ira Pastan is an American scientist at the National Cancer Institute. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the AAAS and the American Society of Microbiology. In 2009, he was awarded the prestigious International Antonio Feltrinelli Prize for Medicine. His wife, Linda Pastan, was an American poet.
Go to Profile#10634
Enrico Giusti
#10644
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Enrico Giusti , is an Italian mathematician mainly known for his contributions to the fields of calculus of variations, regularity theory of partial differential equations, minimal surfaces and history of mathematics. He has been professor of mathematics at the Università di Firenze; he also taught and conducted research at the Australian National University at Canberra, at the Stanford University and at the University of California, Berkeley. After retirement, he devoted himself to the managing of the "Giardino di Archimede", a museum entirely dedicated to mathematics and its applications. Gi...
Go to Profile#10635
Vitaly Naumkin
#10645
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Vitaliy Vyacheslavovich Naumkin ; born 21 May 1945 Career Naumkin earned his PhD from Moscow State University in 1972, writing his dissertation on medieval Islamic theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. In 1980, he released a translation of al-Ghazali's work.
Go to Profile#10636
Jessica Meir
#10646
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Jessica Ulrika Meir is an American NASA astronaut, marine biologist, and physiologist. She was previously an assistant professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, following postdoctoral research in comparative physiology at the University of British Columbia. She has studied the diving physiology and behavior of emperor penguins in Antarctica, and the physiology of bar-headed geese, which are able to migrate over the Himalayas. In September 2002, Meir served as an aquanaut on the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 4 crew. In 2013, she was selected by NASA to Astronaut Group 21.
Go to Profile#10637
Paul E. Meehl
#10647
Overall Influence
1920 - 2003 (83 years)
Paul Everett Meehl was an American clinical psychologist, Hathaway and Regents' Professor of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, and past president of the American Psychological Association. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Meehl as the 74th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, in a tie with Eleanor J. Gibson. Throughout his nearly 60-year career, Meehl made seminal contributions to psychology, including empirical studies and theoretical accounts of construct validity, schizophrenia etiology, psychological assessment, behavioral prediction, and p...
Go to Profile#10638
Guillermo Vilas
#10648
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Guillermo Vilas is an Argentine former professional tennis player. Vilas was the world No. 1 of the Grand Prix seasons in 1974, 1975 and 1977. He won four major titles, the year-end championshipss, and 62 ATP titles overall. World Tennis, Agence France-Presse and Livre d'or du tennis 1977 , among other rankings and publications, rated him as world No. 1 in 1977. In the computerized ATP rankings, he peaked at No. 2 in April 1975, a position he held for a total of 83 weeks, although some have argued that Vilas should have been ranked No. 1 for at least 10 weeks, particularly in 1977 when he won 2 majors.
Go to Profile#10639
Bruce Hood
#10649
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Bruce MacFarlane Hood is a Canadian-born British experimental psychologist and philosopher who specialises in developmental cognitive neuroscience. He is currently based at the University of Bristol and his major research interests include intuitive theories, self identity, essentialism and the cognitive processes behind adult magical thinking.
Go to Profile#10640
Hun Sen
#10650
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Samdech Hun Sen is a Cambodian politician and former military commander who served as the prime minister of Cambodia from 1985 to 2023. He is the longest-serving head of government in Cambodia's history. He is the president of the Cambodian People's Party , which has governed Cambodia since 1979, and a member of the National Assembly for Kandal. His full honorary title is Samdech Akka Moha Sena Padei Techo Hun Sen .
Go to Profile#10641
Louis Henkin
#10651
Overall Influence
1917 - 2010 (93 years)
Louis Henkin , widely considered one of the most influential contemporary scholars of international law and the foreign policy of the United States, who was "often credited with creating the field of human rights law". He was a former president of the American Society of International Law and of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy and University Professor emeritus at Columbia Law School. He was until his death the chairman of the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University. He was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Ph...
Go to Profile#10642
Kenneth MacMillan
#10652
Overall Influence
1929 - 1992 (63 years)
Sir Kenneth MacMillan was a British ballet dancer and choreographer who was artistic director of the Royal Ballet in London between 1970 and 1977, and its principal choreographer from 1977 until his death. Earlier he had served as director of ballet for the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. He was also associate director of the American Ballet Theatre from 1984 to 1989, and artistic associate of the Houston Ballet from 1989 to 1992.
Go to Profile#10643
James R. Heath
#10653
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
James R. Heath is an American chemist and the president and professor of Institute of Systems Biology. Previous to this, he was the Elizabeth W. Gilloon Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, after having moved from University of California Los Angeles.
Go to Profile#10644
Nancy Snyderman
#10654
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Nancy Lynn Snyderman is an American physician, author, and former broadcast journalist. She served as a medical correspondent for ABC News for 15 years, and was the chief medical editor for NBC News from 2006 to 2015, frequently appearing on the Today show, NBC Nightly News and MSNBC to discuss medical-related issues. Snyderman is also on the staff of the otolaryngology-head and neck surgery department at the University of Pennsylvania, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#10645
Paul Fraisse
#10655
Overall Influence
1911 - 1996 (85 years)
Paul Fraisse was a French psychologist known his work in the field of perception of time. Biography Fraisse did not go directly into psychology but initially planned to become a Jesuit priest. These plans were abandoned owing to poor health. Nevertheless, Fraisse resumed philosophical studies at the Catholic University of Lyon, still hoping to prepare for the priesthood. A faculty member suggested that he go to the Catholic University of Louvain where experimental psychology had an important place in the Institute of Philosophy. There he spent 1935-37 as laboratory assistant to Professor Albert Michotte, doing experiments on visual perception and preparing for examinations in philosophy.
Go to Profile#10646
Geoffrey Burnstock
#10656
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Geoffrey Burnstock was a neurobiologist and President of the Autonomic Neuroscience Centre of the UCL Medical School. He is best known for coining the term purinergic signalling, which he discovered in the 1970s. He retired in October 2017 at the age of 88.
Go to Profile#10647
Clément Mouhot
#10657
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Clément Mouhot is a French mathematician and academic. He is Professor of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge. His research is primarily in partial differential equations and mathematical physics .
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John Cairns
#10658
Overall Influence
1922 - 2018 (96 years)
Hugh John Forster Cairns FRS was a British physician and molecular biologist who made significant contributions to molecular genetics, cancer research, and public health. Career Cairns received his M.D. from Oxford. He then worked as a virologist at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia and at the Virus Research Institute at Entebbe, Uganda. He returned to Australia to work in the School of Microbiology at the John Curtin School of Medical Research. Cairns took a sabbatical to research at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory between 1960 and 1961, and returned there to serve as the director from 1963 to 1968.
Go to Profile#10649
Jonathan Schaffer
#10659
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Jonathan Schaffer is an American philosopher specializing in metaphysics and also working in epistemology, mind, and language. He is best known for his work on grounding and his development of monism, and is also a notable proponent of contrastivism.
Go to Profile#10650
Susanne Bobzien
#10660
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Susanne Bobzien is a German-born philosopher whose research interests focus on philosophy of logic and language, determinism and freedom, and ancient philosophy. She currently is senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford and professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford.
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