The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people
#10851
John Hawkes
#10861
Overall Influence
1925 - 1998 (73 years)
John Clendennin Talbot Burne Hawkes, Jr. was a postmodern American novelist, known for the intensity of his work, which suspended some traditional constraints of narrative fiction. Biography Born in Stamford, Connecticut, Hawkes was educated at Harvard College, where fellow students included John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and Robert Creeley. Although he published his first novel, The Cannibal, in 1949, it was The Lime Twig that first won him acclaim. Thomas Pynchon is said to have admired the novel. His second novel, The Beetle Leg , an intensely surrealistic Western set in a Montana landscape...
Go to Profile#10852
Thomas J.R. Hughes
#10862
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Thomas Joseph Robert Hughes is a Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics and currently holds the Computational and Applied Mathematics Chair at the Oden Institute at The University of Texas at Austin. Hughes has been listed as an ISI Highly Cited Author in Engineering by the ISI Web of Knowledge, Thomson Scientific Company.
Go to Profile#10853
Michael Showalter
#10863
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Michael Showalter is an American comedian, actor, director, writer, and producer. He first came to recognition as a cast member on MTV's The State, which aired from 1993 to 1995. He and David Wain created the Wet Hot American Summer franchise, with Showalter co-writing and starring in Wet Hot American Summer , and the Netflix series. Showalter wrote and directed The Baxter , in which he starred with Michelle Williams, Justin Theroux, and Elizabeth Banks. Both films featured many of his co-stars from The State, and so do several of his other projects. Showalter is also a co-creator, co-producer, actor, and writer for the TV series Search Party.
Go to Profile#10854
Andy Reid
#10864
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Andrew Walter Reid is an American football coach who is the head coach for the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League . Reid was previously head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles from 1999 to 2012. From 2001 to 2012, he was also the Eagles' executive vice president of football operations becoming the general manager. Nicknamed, "Big Red," he is the only NFL coach to win 100 games, have the most wins and appear in four consecutive conference championships with two different franchises. Reid is regarded as one of the greatest coaches in NFL history.
Go to Profile#10855
Ivo Pitanguy
#10865
Overall Influence
1923 - 2016 (93 years)
Ivo Hélcio Jardim de Campos Pitanguy was a plastic surgeon based in Rio de Janeiro. Pitanguy studied at the Bethesda North Hospital in Cincinnati, where he worked with John Longacre. Soon after, Pitanguy went to France and England where he studied plastic surgery.
Go to Profile#10856
Jane Smiley
#10866
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jane Smiley is an American novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for her novel A Thousand Acres . Biography Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from Community School and from John Burroughs School. She obtained a BA in literature at Vassar College , then earned an MA , MFA , and PhD from the University of Iowa. While working toward her doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. From 1981 to 1996 she was a Professor of English at Iowa State University, teaching undergraduate and graduate creative writing workshops.
Go to Profile#10857
Robert Irwin
#10867
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Robert Graham Irwin is a British historian, novelist, and writer on Arabic literature. Biography Irwin attended Epsom College, read modern history at the University of Oxford, and did graduate research at the School of Oriental and African Studies under the supervision of Bernard Lewis. His thesis was on the Mamluk reconquest of the Crusader states, but he failed to complete it. During his studies, he converted to Islam and spent some time in a dervish monastery in Algeria. From 1972 he was a lecturer in medieval history at the University of St. Andrews. He gave up academic life in 1977 in order to write fiction, while continuing to lecture part-time at Oxford, Cambridge and SOAS.
Go to Profile#10858
Paul Ryan
#10868
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Paul Davis Ryan is an American politician who served as the 54th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he was the vice presidential nominee in the 2012 election with Mitt Romney, but the ticket lost to incumbents President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden.
Go to Profile#10859
Janet Carsten
#10869
Overall Influence
Janet Carsten is an anthropologist and professor currently employed at the University of Edinburgh. Carsten studies social and cultural anthropology. She is the daughter of the British historian Francis Ludwig Carsten.
Go to Profile#10860
Michael Garey
#10870
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Michael Randolph Garey is a computer science researcher, and co-author of Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-completeness. He and Johnson received the 1979 Frederick W. Lanchester Prize from the Operations Research Society of America for the book. Garey earned his PhD in computer science in 1970 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was employed by AT&T Bell Laboratories in the Mathematical Sciences Research Center from 1970 until his retirement in 1999. For his last 11 years with the organization, he served as its director. His technical specialties included...
Go to Profile#10861
Alexandra Aikhenvald
#10871
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Alexandra Yurievna "Sasha" Aikhenvald is an Australian-Brazilian linguist specialising in linguistic typology and the Arawak language family of the Brazilian Amazon basin. She is a professor at the James Cook University.
Go to Profile#10862
David Leavitt
#10872
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
David Leavitt is an American novelist, short story writer, and biographer. Biography Leavitt was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Gloria and Harold Leavitt. Harold was a professor who taught at Stanford University and Gloria was a political activist. Leavitt grew up in Palo Alto, California, and graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in English in 1983. After his first book's success, he spent much of the 1990s living in Italy working and restoring an old house in Semproniano in Tuscany with his partner. He has also taught at Princeton University.
Go to Profile#10863
Jean-Jacques Laffont
#10873
Overall Influence
1947 - 2004 (57 years)
Jean-Jacques Marcel Laffont was a French economist specializing in public economics and information economics. Educated at the University of Toulouse and the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Economique in Paris, he was awarded PhD in economics by Harvard University in 1975.
Go to Profile#10864
Stephen Shore
#10874
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Stephen Shore is an American photographer known for his images of scenes and objects of the banal, and for his pioneering use of color in art photography. His books include Uncommon Places and American Surfaces , photographs that he took on cross-country road trips in the 1970s.
Go to Profile#10865
Erich Segal
#10875
Overall Influence
1937 - 2010 (73 years)
Erich Wolf Segal was an American author, screenwriter, educator, and classicist who wrote the bestselling novel Love Story and its hit film adaptation. Early life and education Born and raised in a Jewish household in Brooklyn, New York, Segal was the first of three brothers. His father was a rabbi and his mother was a homemaker. His interest in writing and narrating stories developed as a child. He went to Midwood High School, during which he suffered a serious accident while canoeing. His coach advised him to jog as a part of his rehabilitation, which ended up becoming his passion and caused him to participate in the Boston Marathon more than 12 times.
Go to Profile#10866
John M. Ball
#10876
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Sir John Macleod Ball is a British mathematician and former Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He was the president of the International Mathematical Union from 2003 to 2006 and a Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#10867
Donn B. Parker
#10877
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Donn B. Parker was an information security researcher and consultant and a 2001 Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. Parker had over 50 years of experience in the computer field in computer programming, computer systems management, consulting, teaching, and research.
Go to Profile#10868
Yves Lévy
#10878
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Yves Lévy is a French physician researcher and professor of clinical immunology who served as CEO of the French Institute of Health and Medical Research from 2014 until 2018. Early life and education Lévy was born in Casablanca, Morocco, and arrived in France with his parents in 1973. He was naturalised one and a half years later. His passion was literature, before he turned to medicine. After studying medicine and finishing his residency he dedicated himself to HIV research in 1986.
Go to Profile#10869
Manfred Lachs
#10879
Overall Influence
1914 - 1993 (79 years)
Manfred Lachs was a Polish diplomat and jurist who served as a Judge of the International Court of Justice and greatly influenced the development of international law after World War II. Life Lachs was born to a Jewish family. Lachs attended the Jagiellonian University in Kraków where he earned a doctorate in Laws . Right after his studies, he started working for the Consular Academy of Vienna and afterwards in the London School of Economics. Lachs was drafted in the army and throughout his military service he was advisor to the Polish government.
Go to Profile#10870
Adrian Noble
#10880
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Adrian Keith Noble is a theatre director, and was also the artistic director and chief executive of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1990 to 2003. Education and career Noble was born in Chichester, Sussex, England. After leaving Chichester High School for Boys, he studied at the University of Bristol, where he studied English. He began his professional career as a director at Drama Centre London. In 1976 he moved on to the Bristol Old Vic and worked at the same time for TV. From 1980 till 1981 he worked at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, producing the Duchess of Malfi, which won him the London Drama Critics' Award and the Circle Theatre Award .
Go to Profile#10871
Gordon Willey
#10881
Overall Influence
1913 - 2002 (89 years)
Gordon Randolph Willey was an American archaeologist who was described by colleagues as the "dean" of New World archaeology. Willey performed fieldwork at excavations in South America, Central America and the Southeastern United States; and pioneered the development and methodology for settlement patterns theories. He worked as an anthropologist for the Smithsonian Institution and as a professor at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#10872
Martyn Poliakoff
#10882
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
#10873
Faisal Kutty
#10883
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Faisal Kutty is a lawyer, academic, writer, public speaker and human rights activist. He is Visiting Associate Professor of LAWS at Southwestern Law School. He served as an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and was an Associate Professor of Law Emeritus at Valparaiso University. He has previously taught at Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law of Barry University and guest lectured at dozens of universities around North America.
Go to Profile#10874
Peter Hirsch
#10884
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (101 years)
Sir Peter Bernhard Hirsch HonFRMS FRS is a British metallurgist who has made fundamental contributions to the application of transmission electron microscopy to metals. Biography Born in 1925, Hirsch lived in Germany until 1939; he was one of hundreds of Jewish children that escaped Germany via the various Kindertransport missions that saved many such children from the impending dangers of World War II and the Holocaust.
Go to Profile#10875
Dorothy Maharam
#10885
Overall Influence
1917 - 2014 (97 years)
Dorothy Maharam Stone was an American mathematician born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, who made important contributions to measure theory and became the namesake of Maharam's theorem and Maharam algebra.
Go to Profile#10876
Teresa A. Sullivan
#10886
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Teresa Ann "Terry" Sullivan is an American sociologist. She previously served as interim provost of Michigan State University from 2019 to 2020, the 8th president of the University of Virginia from 2010 to 2018, and provost of the University of Michigan from 2006 to 2010.
Go to Profile#10877
Charles Wright
#10887
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Charles Wright is an American poet. He shared the National Book Award in 1983 for Country Music: Selected Early Poems and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for Black Zodiac. From 2014 to 2015, he served as the 20th Poet Laureate of the United States.
Go to Profile#10878
Franz Josef Och
#10888
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Franz Josef Och is a German computer scientist. He is best known for being the chief architect of Google Translate. He has worked as a Director at Facebook. Prior to this, he was Head of Data Science at Grail, , Chief Data Scientist at Human Longevity Inc., and earlier worked for Google as a Distinguished Research Scientist and head of machine translation based at Google's Mountain View, California, headquarters south of San Francisco.
Go to Profile#10879
Laurence Boone
#10889
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Laurence Boone is a French economist who has been serving as the Secretary of State for European affairs in the government of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne since 2022. Boone’s fields of interest include macroeconomics, European politics and public finance. She served as an economic advisor to President François Hollande between July 2014 and March 2016.
Go to Profile#10880
Andrew Sears
#10890
Overall Influence
Andrew Sears is an American computer scientist. He is a professor and dean of the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. His research explores issues related to human-computer interaction including mobile computing, speech recognition, information technology accessibility, and situationally-induced impairments and disabilities. He earned his B.S. in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland Department of Computer Science in College Park. His expert opinion on information technology and IT workforce issues have been repor...
Go to Profile#10881
Peter Shilton
#10891
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Peter Leslie Shilton is an English former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. His 30-year career included spells at 11 clubs and he has the distinction of playing over 1,000 league games, including in excess of 100 for five different clubs. During his time at Nottingham Forest, Shilton won many honours, including two European Cupss, a UEFA Super Cup, the First Division championship, and the Football League Cup.
Go to Profile#10882
Reiner Knizia
#10892
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Reiner Knizia is a prolific German-style board game designer. Early life and education Born in Germany, he developed his first game at the age of eight. He gained a Master of Science from Syracuse University in the United States and a doctorate in Mathematics from the University of Ulm in Germany. He went on to manage a two-billion-dollar financial company.
Go to Profile#10883
Catherine Deneuve
#10893
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Catherine Fabienne Dorléac , known professionally as Catherine Deneuve , is a French actress as well as an occasional singer, model, and producer, considered one of the greatest European actresses. She gained recognition for her portrayal of aloof and mysterious beauties for various directors, including Luis Buñuel, François Truffaut, and Roman Polanski. In 1985, she succeeded Mireille Mathieu as the official face of Marianne, France's national symbol of liberty. A 14-time César Award nominee, she won for her performances in Truffaut's The Last Metro , for which she also won the David di Donat...
Go to Profile#10884
Alain Carpentier
#10894
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Alain Frédéric Carpentier is a French surgeon whom the President of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery calls the father of modern mitral valve repair. He is most well known for the development and popularization of a number of mitral valve repair techniques. In 1996, he performed the first minimally invasive mitral valve repair in the world and in 1998 he performed the first robotic mitral valve repair with the DaVinci robot prototype. He is the recipient of the 2007 Lasker Prize.
Go to Profile#10885
James Matisoff
#10895
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
James Alan Matisoff is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a noted authority on Tibeto-Burman languages and other languages of mainland Southeast Asia.
Go to Profile#10886
Ralph Anspach
#10896
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Ralph Anspach was a German-born American economics professor and games creator from San Francisco State University. Anspach was a graduate of the University of Chicago and fought with the Mahal in 1948 in support of the independence of Israel. He is best known for creating the game Anti-Monopoly and the legal battles that followed.
Go to Profile#10887
David Shambaugh
#10897
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
David Shambaugh is the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science & International Affairs, and director of the China Policy Program at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington DC. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Go to Profile#10888
Bettany Hughes
#10898
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Bettany Mary Hughes is an English historian, author and broadcaster, specialising in classical history. Her published books cover classical antiquity and myth, and the history of Istanbul. She is active in efforts to encourage the teaching of the classics in UK state schools. Hughes was appointed OBE in 2019.
Go to Profile#10889
Daniel Gorenstein
#10899
Overall Influence
1923 - 1992 (69 years)
Daniel E. Gorenstein was an American mathematician. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Harvard University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1950 under Oscar Zariski, introducing in his dissertation a duality principle for plane curves that motivated Grothendieck's introduction of Gorenstein rings. He was a major influence on the classification of finite simple groups.
Go to Profile#10890
Ton Roosendaal
#10900
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Ton Roosendaal is a Dutch software developer and film producer. He is the original creator of the open-source 3D creation suite Blender and Traces . He is also known as the founder and chairman of the Blender Foundation, and for pioneering large scale open-content projects. In 2007, he established the Blender Institute in Amsterdam, where he works on coordinating Blender development, publishing manuals and DVD training, and organizing 3D animation and game projects.
Go to Profile#10891
Tadao Kasami
#10901
Overall Influence
1930 - 2007 (77 years)
Tadao Kasami was a noted Japanese information theorist who made significant contributions to error correcting codes. He was the earliest to publish the key ideas for the CYK algorithm, separately discovered by Daniel Younger and John Cocke .
Go to Profile#10892
André Haefliger
#10902
Overall Influence
1929 - 2023 (94 years)
André Haefliger was a Swiss mathematician who worked primarily on topology. Education and career Haefliger went to school in Nyon and then attended his final years at Collège de Genève in Geneva. He studied mathematics at the University of Lausanne from 1948 to 1952. He worked for two years as a teaching assistant at École Polytechnique de l'Université de Lausanne. He then moved to University of Strasbourg, then he followed Charles Ehresmann in Paris, where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1958. His thesis was entitled "Structures feuilletées et cohomologie à valeurs dans un faisceau de groupo...
Go to Profile#10893
Carly Simon
#10903
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Carly Elisabeth Simon is an American musician, singer, songwriter, memoirist, and children's author. She rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of hit records; her 13 Top 40 U.S. hits include "Anticipation" , "The Right Thing to Do" , "Haven't Got Time for the Pain" , "You Belong to Me" , "Coming Around Again" , and her four Gold-certified singles "You're So Vain" , "Mockingbird" , "Nobody Does It Better" from the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, and "Jesse" . She has authored two memoirs and five children's books.
Go to Profile#10894
Bill English
#10904
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
William Kirk English was an American computer engineer who contributed to the development of the computer mouse while working for Douglas Engelbart at SRI International's Augmentation Research Center. He would later work for Xerox PARC and Sun Microsystems.
Go to Profile#10895
Hyam Maccoby
#10905
Overall Influence
1924 - 2004 (80 years)
Hyam Maccoby was a Jewish-British scholar and dramatist specialising in the study of the Jewish and Christian religious traditions. He was known for his theories of the historical Jesus and the origins of Christianity.
Go to Profile#10896
David Johnston
#10906
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
David Lloyd Johnston is a Canadian academic, author, and statesman who served from 2010 to 2017 as Governor General of Canada, the 28th since Canadian Confederation. Johnston was the special rapporteur appointed to investigate reports of foreign interference in recent Canadian federal elections until his resignation on June 9, 2023.
Go to Profile#10897
Craig Callender
#10907
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Craig Callender is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. His main areas of research are philosophy of science, philosophy of physics and metaphysics. Education and career Callender obtained his PhD in 1997 from Rutgers University with a thesis entitled Time's Arrow under the supervision of Robert Weingard. From 1996-2000, he worked in the Department of Philosophy, Logic & Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. Currently, he is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego where he is also the co-director of the Institute for Practical Ethics at the University of California, San Diego.
Go to Profile#10898
Lewis C. Cantley
#10908
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Lewis C. Cantley is an American cell biologist and biochemist who has made significant advances to the understanding of cancer metabolism. Among his most notable contributions are the discovery and study of the enzyme PI-3-kinase, now known to be important to understanding cancer and diabetes mellitus. He is currently Meyer Director and Professor of Cancer Biology at the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. He was formerly a professor in the Departments of Systems Biology and Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the Director of Cancer Research at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#10899
Giorgi Dvali
#10909
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Georgi Dvali is a Georgian theoretical physicist. He is a professor of theoretical physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, and holds a Silver Professorship Chair at the New York University. His research interests include String theory, Extra dimensions, Quantum gravity, and the Early universe.
Go to Profile#10900
Jack Tuszyński
#10910
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Jack Tuszyński is a Polish professor of oncology and physicist. Biography Tuszyński graduated with a master's degree in physics from the University of Poznan in 1980 and obtained his PhD in condensed matter physics three years later from the University of Calgary. He became a postdoctoral fellow at the chemistry department the same year. From 1983 to 1988 he worked at the Department of Physics of the Memorial University of Newfoundland, then worked in the same department at the University of Alberta for two years. From 1990 to 1993 he was promoted to associate, then full professor, and as of 2005 became Allard Chair of the Cross Cancer Institute.
Go to Profile