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
#11651
David Hanson
#11662
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
David Hanson Jr. is an American roboticist who is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Hanson Robotics, a Hong Kong-based robotics company founded in 2013. The designer and researcher creates human-looking robots who have realistic facial expressions, including Sophia and other robots designed to mimic human behavior. Sophia has received widespread media attention, and was the first robot to be granted citizenship.
Go to Profile#11652
Heinrich Dumoulin
#11663
Overall Influence
1905 - 1995 (90 years)
Heinrich Dumoulin, S.J. was a Jesuit theologian, a widely published author on Zen, and a professor of philosophy and history at Sophia University in Tokyo, where he was Professor Emeritus. He was the founder of its Institute for Oriental Religions, as well as the first Director of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.
Go to Profile#11653
Roger Guesnerie
#11664
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Roger Guesnerie is an economist born in France in 1943. He is currently the Chaired Professor of Economic Theory and Social Organization of the Collège de France, Director of Studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, and the chairman of the board of directors of the Paris School of Economics.
Go to Profile#11654
William A. Barnett
#11665
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
William Arnold Barnett is an American economist, whose current work is in the fields of chaos, bifurcation, and nonlinear dynamics in socioeconomic contexts, econometric modeling of consumption and production, and the study of the aggregation problem and the challenges of measurement in economics.
Go to Profile#11655
Mona Hatoum
#11666
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Mona Hatoum is a British-Palestinian multimedia and installation artist who lives in London. Biography Mona Hatoum was born in 1952 in Beirut, Lebanon, to Palestinian parents. Although born in Lebanon, Hatoum was ineligible for a Lebanese identity card and does not identify as Lebanese. As she grew up, her family did not support her desire to pursue art. She continued to draw throughout her childhood, though, illustrating her work from poetry and science classes.
Go to Profile#11656
Anil Aggrawal
#11667
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Anil Aggrawal is a professor of forensic medicine at the Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India. He is known chiefly for his online journal, Anil Aggrawal's Internet Journal of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology. He joined Maulana Azad Medical College as a faculty member in 1985. Dr. Aggrawal proposed a new classification of necrophilia, and is considered the leading authority on necrophilia.
Go to Profile#11657
Benson Mates
#11668
Overall Influence
1919 - 2009 (90 years)
Benson Mates was an American philosopher, noted for his work in logic, the history of philosophy, and skepticism. Mates studied philosophy and mathematics at the University of Oregon, Cornell University, and the University of California at Berkeley. Some of his teachers included J. Barkley Rosser, Harold Cherniss, and Alfred Tarski. From 1948 until his retirement in 1989, he was a professor of philosophy at Berkeley. He remained Professor Emeritus of philosophy at University of California at Berkeley until his death.
Go to Profile#11658
Albert Nijenhuis
#11669
Overall Influence
1926 - 2015 (89 years)
Albert Nijenhuis was a Dutch-American mathematician who specialized in differential geometry and the theory of deformations in algebra and geometry, and later worked in combinatorics. His high school studies at the gymnasium in Arnhem were interrupted by the evacuation of Arnhem by the Nazis after the failure of Operation Market Garden by the Allies. He continued his high school mathematical studies by himself on his grandparents’ farm, and then took state exams in 1945.
Go to Profile#11659
John Fiske
#11670
Overall Influence
1939 - 2021 (82 years)
John Fiske was a media scholar and cultural theorist who taught around the world. His primary areas of intellectual interest included cultural studies, critical analysis of popular culture, media semiotics, and television studies.
Go to Profile#11660
Fritz Leonhardt
#11671
Overall Influence
1909 - 1999 (90 years)
Fritz Leonhardt was a German structural engineer who made major contributions to 20th-century bridge engineering, especially in the development of cable-stayed bridges. His book Bridges: Aesthetics and Design is well known throughout the bridge engineering community.
Go to Profile#11661
Frank Rizzo
#11672
Overall Influence
1920 - 1991 (71 years)
Francis Lazarro Rizzo was an American police officer and politician. He served as commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department from 1968 to 1971 and mayor of Philadelphia from 1972 to 1980. He was a member of the Democratic Party throughout the entirety of his career in public office. He switched to the Republican Party in 1986 and campaigned as a Republican for the final five years of his life.
Go to Profile#11662
Lee M. Silver
#11673
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Lee M. Silver is an American biologist. He is a professor at Princeton University in the Department of molecular biology and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. He also has joint appointments in the Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy, the Center for Health and Wellbeing, the Office of Population Research, and the Princeton Environmental Institute, all at Princeton University.
Go to Profile#11663
Tom Hull
#11674
Overall Influence
Thomas C. Hull is an associate professor of applied mathematics at Franklin & Marshall College and is known for his expertise in the mathematics of paper folding. Career Hull was an undergraduate at Hampshire College. He earned a master's degree and Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Rhode Island. His 1997 dissertation, Some Problems in List Coloring Bipartite Graphs, involved graph coloring, and was supervised by Nancy Eaton.
Go to Profile#11664
M. Hashem Pesaran
#11675
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Mohammad Hashem Pesaran is a British–Iranian economist. He received his BSc in economics at the University of Salford and his PhD in Economics at Cambridge University. Previously, Pesaran was professor at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge and a professorial fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is the John Elliott Distinguished Chair in Economics at the University of Southern California and has held that position since August 2005. He also serves as the director of the USC Dornsife Center for Applied Financial Economics Research. In January 2013, he was made a dis...
Go to Profile#11665
Dino Zoff
#11676
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Dino Zoff is an Italian former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. He is the oldest ever winner of the World Cup, which he lifted as captain of the Italy national team in the 1982 tournament, at the age of 40 years, 4 months and 13 days. He also won the award for best goalkeeper of the tournament and was elected to the team of the tournament for his performances, keeping two clean-sheets, an honour he also received after winning the 1968 European Championship on home soil. Zoff is the only Italian player to have won both the World Cup and the European Championship. He also ac...
Go to Profile#11666
Per Aage Brandt
#11677
Overall Influence
1944 - 2021 (77 years)
Per Aage Brandt was a Danish writer, poet, linguist and musician, born in Buenos Aires. He got his Master of Arts in Romance Philology from the University of Copenhagen & held a Doctorate of Semiotics from the Sorbonne University .
Go to Profile#11667
Jürgen Mittelstraß
#11678
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Jürgen Mittelstraß is a German philosopher especially interested in the philosophy of science. Career Mittelstraß studied philosophy, history and protestant theology at the universities of Bonn, Erlangen, Hamburg and Oxford from 1956 until 1961. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Erlangen in 1961, where he afterwards wrote his habilitation, completing in 1968. He was influenced by the Erlanger Konstruktivismus.
Go to Profile#11668
Salim Yusuf
#11679
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Salim Yusuf is an Indian-born Canadian physician, the Marion W. Burke Chair in Cardiovascular Disease at McMaster University Medical School. He is a cardiologist and epidemiologist. Yusuf has criticized the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and disputes the scientific consensus on dietary sodium and saturated fat intake.
Go to Profile#11669
Kim S. Cameron
#11680
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Kim Sterling Cameron is the William Russell Kelly Professor of Management and Organizations at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He was formerly the dean of the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. He has also served as associate dean at both the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University and in the Ross School of Business.
Go to Profile#11670
Kathleen Thelen
#11681
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Kathleen Thelen is an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. She is the Ford Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , a permanent external member of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies , and a faculty associate at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#11671
Peter Ridd
#11682
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Peter Vincent Ridd is an Australian physicist, author, and former professor at James Cook University , North Queensland, Australia. Ridd is known for his participation in a media campaign seeking to discredit the science informing the protection of the Great Barrier Reef.
Go to Profile#11672
Mike Tenay
#11683
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Michael William Tenay is an American podcast presenter and retired professional wrestling play-by-play announcer known for his time as an announcer for World Championship Wrestling and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling . Tenay, according to Impact, "is known as 'The Professor' for his extensive knowledge of the sport". Former Impact Executive Producer and WCW president Eric Bischoff has described Tenay as "a walking encyclopedia of knowledge".
Go to Profile#11673
Alev Alatlı
#11684
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Alev Alatlı is a Turkish columnist and bestselling novelist. Early years She was born 1944 in the town of Menemen in western Turkey to an officer's family. She spent her childhood in Japan, where her father was appointed as the Military attaché in the Embassy of Turkey and also as the Liaison officer of the Turkish Brigade in Korea to the United Nations.
Go to Profile#11674
John Waterbury
#11685
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
John Waterbury is an American academic and former president of the American University of Beirut. Early years Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Waterbury attended Princeton University , studied Arabic at the American University of Cairo , and got his PhD in political science in 1968 at Columbia University. He went on to the University of Michigan as assistant professor of political science.
Go to Profile#11675
William Kenneth Hartmann
#11686
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
William Kenneth Hartmann is a noted planetary scientist, artist, author, and writer. He was the first to convince the scientific mainstream that the Earth had once been hit by a planet sized body , creating both the Moon and the Earth's 23.5° tilt.
Go to Profile#11676
Omer Reingold
#11687
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Omer Reingold is an Israeli computer scientist. He is the Rajeev Motwani professor of Computer Science in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University and the director of the Simons Collaboration on the Theory of Algorithmic Fairness. He received a PhD in computer science at Weizmann in 1998 under Moni Naor. He received the 2005 Grace Murray Hopper Award for his work in finding a deterministic logarithmic-space algorithm for st-connectivity in undirected graphs. He, along with Avi Wigderson and Salil Vadhan, won the Gödel Prize for their work on the zig-zag product. He became a Fel...
Go to Profile#11677
Greg Fulginiti
#11688
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Gregory Fulginiti is an American recording and mastering engineer. He was nominated for the TEC Awards by Mix magazine six times, in 1985 and 1987–1991. Career Fulginiti grew up in Wildwood, New Jersey, and graduated from Wildwood High School in 1969.
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Jules Coleman
#11689
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Jules Leslie Coleman is a scholar of law and jurisprudence. He was the Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld Professor of Jurisprudence and Professor of Philosophy at Yale Law School until 2012. Jules currently is chief academic officer at MYX, a new, hybrid approach to higher education with campuses launching globally beginning in fall 2021. Prior to joining MYX , he most recently served as the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Planning at New York University.
Go to Profile#11679
Bernard Carr
#11690
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Bernard J. Carr is a British professor of mathematics and astronomy at Queen Mary University of London . His research interests include the early universe, dark matter, general relativity, primordial black holes, and the anthropic principle.
Go to Profile#11680
Arno Gruen
#11691
Overall Influence
1923 - 2015 (92 years)
Arno Gruen was a Swiss-German psychologist and psychoanalyst. Biography Gruen was born in Berlin in 1923, and emigrated to the United States as a child in 1936 when his parents, James and Rosa Gruen, fled Germany to save their lives. During the journey, Gruen celebrated his Bar Mitzvah in the Great Synagogue of Warsaw, on June 6, 1936.
Go to Profile#11681
Vincent Schaefer
#11692
Overall Influence
1906 - 1993 (87 years)
Vincent Joseph Schaefer was an American chemist and meteorologist who developed cloud seeding. On November 13, 1946, while a researcher at the General Electric Research Laboratory, Schaefer modified clouds in the Berkshire Mountains by seeding them with dry ice. While he was self-taught and never completed high school, he was issued 14 patents.
Go to Profile#11682
Claudia Rankine
#11693
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Claudia Rankine is an American poet, essayist, playwright and the editor of several anthologies. She is the author of five volumes of poetry, two plays and various essays. Her book of poetry, Citizen: An American Lyric, won the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Award, the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry , the 2015 Forward Prize for Best Collection, the 2015 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry, the 2015 NAACP Image Award in poetry, the 2015 PEN Open Book Award, the 2015 PEN American Center USA Literary Award, the 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Award, and the 2015 VIDA Literary Award.
Go to Profile#11683
Aharon Razin
#11694
Overall Influence
1935 - 2019 (84 years)
Aharon Razin was an Israeli biochemist. Biography Aharon Razin was raised in Petah Tikva. He began his academic studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, majoring in physics and mathematics. He completed his M.A. and PhD in biochemistry, and did post-doctoral work at the California Institute of Technology. When he returned to Israel in 1971, he served as senior lecturer, associate professor and full professor of cellular biochemistry and human genetics at the Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine.
Go to Profile#11684
Nils Melzer
#11695
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Nils Melzer is a Swiss academic, author, and practitioner in the field of international law. From 2016 until 2022, Melzer was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. He is a professor of international law at the University of Glasgow. From 2011-2013, he was Swiss Chair of International Humanitarian Law at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. Melzer has criticised the governments of the U.S., the U.K., Ecuador and Sweden over their treatment of Julian Assange.
Go to Profile#11685
Oldřich Vašíček
#11696
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Oldřich Alfons Vašíček is a Czech mathematician and quantitative analyst, best known for his pioneering work on interest rate modelling; see Vasicek model. Vašíček received his master's degree in math from the Czech Technical University, 1964, and a doctorate in probability theory from Charles University four years later. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he defected to America, settled in San Francisco, and found employment in the management science department of Wells Fargo Bank in January 1969. In 1989 Stephen Kealhofer, John McQuown and Oldřich Vašíček founded company KMV.
Go to Profile#11686
Sarvepalli Gopal
#11697
Overall Influence
1923 - 2002 (79 years)
Sarvepalli Gopal was a well-known Indian historian. He was the son of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the first Vice-President and the second President of India. He was the author of the Radhakrishnan: A Biography and Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography.
Go to Profile#11687
Paul Bénichou
#11698
Overall Influence
1908 - 2001 (93 years)
Paul Bénichou was a French/Algerian writer, intellectual, critic, and literary historian. Bénichou first achieved prominence in 1948 with Morales du grand siècle, his work on the social context of the French seventeenth-century classics. Later Bénichou undertook a prodigious research program, seeking to understand the radical pessimism and disappointment expressed by mid-nineteenth writers. This project resulted in a series of major works, beginning with Le Sacre de l’écrivain, 1750-1830 . A 1995 volume, Selon Mallarmé, may be considered an extension of this series. Together, these works amount to an important reinterpretation of French romanticism.
Go to Profile#11688
Neagu Djuvara
#11699
Overall Influence
1916 - 2018 (102 years)
Neagu Bunea Djuvara was a Romanian historian, essayist, philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat. Biography Early life A native of Bucharest, he was descended from an aristocratic Aromanian family. His father, Marcel, a graduate of the Technical University of Berlin and a captain in the Romanian Royal Army's Engineer Corps, died of the Spanish flu in 1918; his mother, Tinca, was the last descendant of the Grădișteanu family of boyar origins . Djuvara's uncles Trandafir and Alexandru Djuvara were notable public figures. Djuvara was born during World War I; as an infant, he was taken by...
Go to Profile#11689
David Pakman
#11700
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
David Pakman is an American progressive talk show host and political commentator. He is the host of the talk radio program The David Pakman Show. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and is a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Go to Profile#11690
Iraj Etesam
#11701
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Iraj Etesam was an Iranian contemporary architect, educator, and author. He was the designer and architect of the Mellat Park of Tehran and the Cyrus Park, as well as a professor of architecture in Iran.
Go to Profile#11691
James Franco
#11702
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
James Edward Franco is an American actor and filmmaker. He has starred in numerous films, including Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy , Milk , Eat Pray Love , Rise of the Planet of the Apes , Spring Breakers , and Oz the Great and Powerful . He is known for his collaborations with fellow actor Seth Rogen, having appeared in eight films and one television series with him, examples being Pineapple Express , This Is the End , Sausage Party , and The Disaster Artist , for which he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. For his role in 127 Hours , he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Acto...
Go to Profile#11692
Daniel Treisman
#11703
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
#11693
Tsuneko Okazaki
#11704
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Tsuneko Okazaki is a Japanese pioneer of molecular biology known for her work on DNA replication and specifically for discovering Okazaki fragments, along with her husband Reiji. Dr. Tsuneko Okazaki has continued to be involved in academia, contributing to more advancements in DNA research.
Go to Profile#11694
Stanton Glantz
#11705
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Stanton Arnold Glantz is an American professor, author, and tobacco control activist. Glantz is a faculty member at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, where he is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology, the American Legacy Foundation Distinguished Professor of Tobacco Control, and former director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. Glantz's research focused on the health effects of tobacco smoking.
Go to Profile#11695
Michael H. Stone
#11706
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Michael H. Stone is an American psychiatrist and Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. Early life and education Stone was born in Syracuse, New York, on October 27, 1933. He acquired his B.A. from Cornell University in 1954, where he was mentored by Professor Harry Caplan in Latin and Greek, and completed medical school at Cornell University in 1958. He was mentored by psychoanalyst Dr. Harold Searles from 1958 to 1963, and trained in hematology under Dr. Allyn Ley at Memorial Sloan-Kettering from 1961 to 1963. He comp...
Go to Profile#11696
Sani Abacha
#11707
Overall Influence
1943 - 1998 (55 years)
Sani Abacha Abacha served as Chief of Army Staff from 1985 to 1990, as Chief of Defence Staff from 1990 to 1993, and as Minister of Defence. Abacha is noted for having been the first Nigerian Army officer to attain the rank of a full military general without skipping a single rank.
Go to Profile#11697
William von Eggers Doering
#11708
Overall Influence
1917 - 2011 (94 years)
William von Eggers Doering was the Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. Before Harvard, he taught at Columbia and Yale . Doering was born in Fort Worth, Texas to academics Carl Rupp Doering and Antoinette Mathilde von Eggers, both of whom were professors at Texas Christian University. His maternal great-uncle was the prominent German financier and economist Hjalmar Schacht, sometime President of the Reichsbank and cabinet minister in Nazi Germany.
Go to Profile#11698
Janet E. Helms
#11709
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#11699
David A. Wagner
#11710
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
David A. Wagner is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley and a well-known researcher in cryptography and computer security. He is a member of the Election Assistance Commission's Technical Guidelines Development Committee, tasked with assisting the EAC in drafting the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. He is also a member of the ACCURATE project.
Go to Profile#11700
Robert N. Hall
#11711
Overall Influence
1919 - 2016 (97 years)
Robert Noel Hall was an American engineer and applied physicist. He demonstrated the first semiconductor laser and invented a type of magnetron commonly used in microwave ovens. He also contributed to the development of rectifiers for power transmission.
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