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
#12001
John F. Haught
#12012
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
John F. Haught is an American theologian. He is a Distinguished Research Professor at Georgetown University. He specializes in Roman Catholic systematic theology, with a particular interest in issues pertaining to physical cosmology, evolutionary biology, geology, and Christianity.
Go to Profile#12002
Stewart Sutherland, Baron Sutherland of Houndwood
#12013
Overall Influence
1941 - 2018 (77 years)
Stewart Ross Sutherland, Baron Sutherland of Houndwood, was a Scottish academic and public servant and one of Britain's most distinguished philosophers of religion. He sat as a crossbencher in the House of Lords.
Go to Profile#12003
David Fury
#12014
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
David Fury is an American television writer, producer, actor and director. Career He is well known for his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Lost, 24, Fringe, Tyrant and The Tick. Fury was a co-executive producer and writer for the first season of Lost. He was nominated for a Best Writing Emmy for his episode "Walkabout." He and the writing staff won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2006 ceremony for their work on the first season.
Go to Profile#12004
Grace Bates
#12015
Overall Influence
1914 - 1996 (82 years)
Grace Elizabeth Bates was an American mathematician and one of few women in the United States to be granted a Ph.D. in mathematics in the 1940s. She became an emeritus professor at Mount Holyoke College. Bates specialized in algebra and probability theory, and she co-authored two textbooks: The Real Number System and Modern Algebra, Second Course. Throughout her own education, Bates overcame obstructions to her pursuit of knowledge, opening the way for future women learners.
Go to Profile#12005
Joy Bauer
#12016
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Joy L. Bauer, MS, RDN , is the host of NBC's "Health & Happiness" and the health and nutrition expert on The Today Show. Bauer is the author of 15 bestsellers. Bauer is a monthly columnist for Woman's Day and the official nutritionist for the New York City Ballet. She was formerly the co-host of the RLTV show "Good Food, Good Deeds."
Go to Profile#12006
Charles Nesson
#12017
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Charles Rothwell Nesson is the William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society. He is author of Evidence, with Murray and Green, and has participated in several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including the landmark case Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals.
Go to Profile#12007
Petr Hájek
#12018
Overall Influence
1940 - 2016 (76 years)
Petr Hájek was a Czech scientist in the area of mathematical logic and a professor of mathematics. Born in Prague, he worked at the Institute of Computer Science at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and as a lecturer at the faculty of mathematics and physics at the Charles University in Prague and at the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague.
Go to Profile#12008
Jean Alesi
#12019
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Jean Robert Alesi is a French professional racing driver. He competed in Formula One between 1989 and 2001, including spells at Tyrrell, Benetton, Sauber, Prost, Jordan and Ferrari, where he proved very popular among the Tifosi. He won the 1995 Canadian Grand Prix, but this proved to be the only win of his Formula One career. During his time in Formula One, Alesi was particularly good in the wet and was a mercurial and passionate racer, whose emotions sometimes got the better of him.
Go to Profile#12009
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi
#12020
Overall Influence
1932 - 2009 (77 years)
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi was the Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture and Society at Columbia University, a position he held from 1980 to 2008. Early life and education Yerushalmi was born in the Bronx, New York City on May 20, 1932, to Yiddish-speaking Russian parents who had immigrated to the United States. His father was a Hebrew teacher. His name was originally Joseph Hyman Erushalmy.
Go to Profile#12010
Geoffrey Parrinder
#12021
Overall Influence
1910 - 2005 (95 years)
Edward Geoffrey Simons Parrinder — known as E.G. Parrinder or Geoffrey Parrinder — was a professor of Comparative Religion at King's College London, a Methodist minister, and the author of over 30 books on world religions. At least one — What World Religions Teach Us — achieved bestseller status. He was an authority, and pioneering researcher, on West African indigenous religions.
Go to Profile#12011
Ian Tattersall
#12022
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Ian Tattersall is a British-born American paleoanthropologist and a curator emeritus with the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, New York. In addition to human evolution, Tattersall has worked extensively with lemurs. Tattersall is currently working with the Templeton Foundation.
Go to Profile#12012
Otto Penzler
#12023
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Otto Penzler is an American editor of mystery fiction, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. Biography Born in Germany to a German-American mother and a German father, Penzler moved to The Bronx at age five after the death of his father. Penzler graduated from the University of Michigan, having studied English literature.
Go to Profile#12013
Hugh Herr
#12024
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Hugh Herr is an American rock climber, engineer, and biophysicist. Early life The youngest of five siblings of a Mennonite family from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Hugh Herr was a prodigy rock climber: by age 8, he had scaled the face of the Mount Temple in the Canadian Rockies, and by 17 he was acknowledged to be one of the best climbers in the United States.
Go to Profile#12014
Donald Sutherland
#12025
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Donald McNichol Sutherland is a Canadian actor whose film career spans over six decades. He has received numerous accolades including a Primetime Emmy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Critics Choice Award. He has been cited as one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination. In 2017, he received an Academy Honorary Award.
Go to Profile#12015
Gary Gorton
#12026
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Gary Bernard Gorton is an American economist who currently serves as the Frederick Frank Class of 1954 Professor of Finance at Yale School of Management. He is known for his theory on the role of repurchase agreements on the 2008 financial crisis.
Go to Profile#12016
Tim Besley
#12027
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Sir Timothy John Besley, is a British academic economist who is the School Professor of Economics and Political Science and Sir W. Arthur Lewis Professor of Development Economics at the London School of Economics .
Go to Profile#12017
Peter J. Ratcliffe
#12028
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Sir Peter John Ratcliffe, FRS, FMedSci is a British Nobel Laureate physician-scientist who is trained as a nephrologist. He was a practising clinician at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford and Nuffield Professor of Clinical Medicine and head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford from 2004 to 2016. He has been a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford since 2004. In 2016 he became Clinical Research Director at the Francis Crick Institute, retaining a position at Oxford as a member of the Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research and director of the Target Discovery ...
Go to Profile#12018
Steven R. Nagel
#12029
Overall Influence
1946 - 2014 (68 years)
Steven Ray Nagel , , was an American astronaut, aeronautical and mechanical engineer, test pilot, and a United States Air Force pilot. In total, he logged 723 hours in space. After NASA, he worked at the University of Missouri College of Engineering as an instructor in its Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department.
Go to Profile#12019
Christia Mercer
#12030
Overall Influence
Christia Mercer is an American philosopher and the Gustave M. Berne Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University. She is known for her work on the history of early modern philosophy, the history of Platonism, and the history of gender. She has received national attention for her work teaching in prisons and advocating for educational opportunities for incarcerated people. She is the Director and Founder of the Center for New Narratives in Philosophy at Columbia University, which "supports innovative research in the history of philosophy and promotes diversity in the teachin...
Go to Profile#12020
Arthur Kellermann
#12031
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Arthur L. Kellermann is an American physician and epidemiologist. Until his resignation in November 2022, he served as a professor of emergency medicine at the VCU School of Medicine, senior vice president of health sciences for Virginia Commonwealth University, and CEO of the VCU Health System. He was formerly professor and dean of the F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Kellerman served as director of the RAND Institute of Health and founded the department of emergency medicine at Emory University and the Center for Injury Control at Rollins School of Public Health.
Go to Profile#12021
Marc Anthony
#12032
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Marco Antonio Muñiz , known professionally as Marc Anthony, is an American singer, songwriter, and actor. He is the top selling tropical salsa artist of all time. A four-time Grammy Award, eight-time Latin Grammy Award and twenty-nine-time Lo Nuestro Awards winner , he has sold more than 12 million albums worldwide.
Go to Profile#12022
David DeGrazia
#12033
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
David DeGrazia is an American moral philosopher specializing in bioethics and animal ethics. He is Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University, where he has taught since 1989, and the author or editor of several books on ethics, including Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status , Human Identity and Bioethics , and Creation Ethics: Reproduction, Genetics, and Quality of Life .
Go to Profile#12023
Arthur Aron
#12034
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Arthur Aron is a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is best known for his work on intimacy in interpersonal relationships, and development of the self-expansion model of motivation in close relationships.
Go to Profile#12024
Zakes Mda
#12035
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Zakes Mda , legally Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda is a South African novelist, poet and playwright and he is the son of politician A. P. Mda. He has won major South African and British literary awards for his novels and plays.
Go to Profile#12025
Shaye J. D. Cohen
#12036
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Shaye J. D. Cohen is an American Hebraist, historian, and rabbi. He is a modern scholar of Hebrew Bible. Currently he is the Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of Harvard University.
Go to Profile#12026
Susan Carey
#12037
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Susan E. Carey is an American psychologist who is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. She studies language acquisition, children's development of concepts, conceptual changes over time, and the importance of executive functions. She has conducted experiments on infants, toddlers, adults, and non-human primates. Her books include Conceptual Change in Childhood and The Origin of Concepts .
Go to Profile#12027
Rajinikanth
#12038
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Shivaji Rao Gaikwad , known professionally as Rajinikanth , is an Indian actor who works mainly in Tamil cinema. In a career spanning over five decades, he has done 169 films that includes films in Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, and Malayalam. He is widely regarded to be one of the most successful and popular actors in the history of Indian cinema. Known for his uniquely styled lines and idiosyncrasies in films, he has a huge fan base internationally and has a cult following. The Government of India honoured him with Padma Bhushan in 2000, Padma Vibhushan in 2016, India's third and se...
Go to Profile#12028
Joanne Harris
#12039
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Joanne Michèle Sylvie Harris is an English-French author, best known for her novel Chocolat , which was adapted the following year for the film Chocolat. Early life Harris was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, to an English father and a French mother. Both of her parents were teachers of modern languages and literature at a local grammar school. Her first language was French, which caused divisions between her English family, where nobody spoke French, and her French family, where nobody spoke English. Both families had turbulent histories and a tradition of strong women, kitchen gardening, story...
Go to Profile#12029
Jay Keasling
#12040
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Jay D. Keasling is a professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also associate laboratory director for biosciences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and chief executive officer of the Joint BioEnergy Institute. He is considered one of the foremost authorities in synthetic biology, especially in the field of metabolic engineering.
Go to Profile#12030
Reggie Miller
#12041
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Reginald Wayne Miller is an American former professional basketball player who played his entire 18-year career in the National Basketball Association with the Indiana Pacers. He was known for his precision three-point shooting, especially in pressure situations and most notably against the New York Knicks, for which he earned the nickname "Knick Killer". A five-time All-Star selection, Miller was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012 and named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team in 2021.
Go to Profile#12031
Joseph Maguire
#12042
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Joseph Maguire is an American officer who served as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center and Acting Director of National Intelligence under President Donald Trump. He retired from the United States Navy as a vice admiral in 2010 after 36 years of military service. Prior to retiring from active duty, he was the deputy director for strategic operational planning at National Counterterrorism Center .
Go to Profile#12032
Loujain al-Hathloul
#12043
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (37 years)
Loujain al-Hathloul is a Saudi women's rights activist, a social media figure, and political prisoner. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia. Al-Hathloul has been arrested and released on several occasions for defying the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia and was arrested in May 2018, with several prominent women's rights activists, on the charge of "attempting to destabilise the kingdom" after being effectively kidnapped in the United Arab Emirates . , her husband, Saudi stand-up comedian Fahad al-Butairi, had also been forcibly returned from Jordan to the Kingdom and wa...
Go to Profile#12033
Anthony Kiedis
#12044
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Anthony Kiedis is an American musician, singer, songwriter and rapper, best known as a founding member and lead vocalist of the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers. Kiedis and his fellow band members were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.
Go to Profile#12034
Rahul Dravid
#12045
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Rahul Sharad Dravid is an Indian cricket coach and former captain of the Indian national team, currently serving as its head coach. Prior to his appointment to the senior men's national team, Dravid was the Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy , and the head coach of the India Under-19 and India A teams. Under his tutelage, the Under-19 team finished as runners-up at the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup and won the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Known for his outstanding batting technique, Dravid scored 24,177 runs in international cricket and is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket.
Go to Profile#12035
Richard M. Ryan
#12046
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Richard M. Ryan is a professor at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at the Australian Catholic University and a research professor at the University of Rochester. He earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University for Rochester and his B.A. from the University of Connecticut. Ryan is a clinical psychologist and co-developer with Edward L. Deci, of Self-Determination Theory , one of the most influential theories of human motivation. SDT is a macrotheory of motivation, psychological development and wellness. The theory has spawned basic research on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and the facilitation and undermining of volitional motivation.
Go to Profile#12036
Francis L. K. Hsu
#12047
Overall Influence
1909 - 1999 (90 years)
Francis L. K. Hsu was a China-born American anthropologist, one of the founders of psychological anthropology. He was president of the American Anthropological Association from 1977 to 1978. Career Hsu was born on October 28, 1909, in Zhuanghe, Liaoning, China. He entered Tianjin Nankai High School in 1923, graduated from the Department of Sociology at the University of Shanghai in 1933, entered the Graduate School of Fu Jen Catholic University in the same year, and later engaged in social work at Peking Union Medical College Hospital.
Go to Profile#12037
Harald Szeemann
#12048
Overall Influence
1933 - 2005 (72 years)
Harald Szeemann was a Swiss curator, artist, and art historian. Having curated more than 200 exhibitions, many of which have been characterized as groundbreaking, Szeemann is said to have helped redefine the role of an art curator. It is believed that Szeemann elevated curating to a legitimate art-form itself.
Go to Profile#12038
ContraPoints
#12049
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Natalie Wynn is an American left-wing YouTuber, political commentator, and cultural critic. She is best known for her YouTube channel, ContraPoints, where she creates video essays exploring a wide range of topics such as politics, gender, ethics, race, and philosophy.
Go to Profile#12039
Rajendra Bhatia
#12050
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Rajendra Bhatia is an Indian mathematician, author, and educator. He is currently a professor of mathematics at Ashoka University located in Sonipat, Haryana ,India. Education He studied at the University of Delhi, where he completed his BSc degree in physics and MSc degree in mathematics, and moved to the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1982 under the probabilist K. R. Parthasarathy.
Go to Profile#12040
Lawrence Einhorn
#12051
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Lawrence Einhorn is an American oncologist at Indiana University School of Medicine. A pioneer in cancer treatment research, Einhorn developed cisplatin-based chemotherapy regimens that increased cure rates while minimizing toxic side effects.
Go to Profile#12041
Floyd Landis
#12052
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Floyd Landis is an American former professional road racing cyclist. At the 2006 Tour de France, he would have been the third non-European winner in the event's history, but was disqualified after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. The competition was ultimately won by Óscar Pereiro.
Go to Profile#12042
Gary Thorne
#12053
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Gary Francis Thorne is an American sportscaster. He was the lead play-by-play announcer for Baltimore Orioles games on MASN from 2007 to 2020. He has also worked for ESPN and ABC, including National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, college football, and the Frozen Four hockey tournament. He also works for World Wrestling Entertainment , where he is the narrator for the WrestleMania Rewind program on its WWE Network streaming video service.
Go to Profile#12043
Ardeshir Hosseinpour
#12054
Overall Influence
1962 - 2007 (45 years)
Ardeshir Hosseinpour was an Iranian nuclear scientist, physics professor, and electromagnetism expert, who was involved in the Iranian nuclear program. He died mysteriously in early 2007 during his nuclear work at Isfahan.
Go to Profile#12044
Henry E. Allison
#12055
Overall Influence
1937 - 2023 (86 years)
Henry Edward Allison was an American scholar of Immanuel Kant, widely considered to be one of the most eminent English-language Kant scholars of the postwar era. He was a professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of California, San Diego and a professor at Boston University.
Go to Profile#12045
Selmer Bringsjord
#12056
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Selmer Bringsjord is the chair of the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a professor of Computer Science and Cognitive Science. He also holds an appointment in the Lally School of Management & Technology and teaches artificial Intelligence , formal logic, human and machine reasoning, and philosophy of AI.
Go to Profile#12046
Jeremy Fogel
#12057
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jeremy Don Fogel is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Fogel was appointed by President Bill Clinton. He was a judge for the municipal court and superior court of Santa Clara County, California from 1981 to 1998. He served as Director of the Federal Judicial Center from 2011 to 2018.
Go to Profile#12047
Gary Gutting
#12058
Overall Influence
1942 - 2019 (77 years)
Gary Michael Gutting was an American philosopher and holder of an endowed chair in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. His daughter is writer Tasha Alexander. Work Gutting was an expert on the philosopher Michel Foucault and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Through his publications in such media outlets as The New York Times and The Stone, he adopted the role of a public intellectual. He dealt with both continental and analytic philosophy and had written on bridging the analytic-continental divide.
Go to Profile#12048
Peter Novick
#12059
Overall Influence
1934 - 2012 (78 years)
Peter Novick was an American historian who was Professor of History at the University of Chicago. He was best known for writing That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession and The Holocaust in American Life. The latter title has also been published as The Holocaust and Collective Memory, especially for non-US anglophonic markets.
Go to Profile#12049
Nikos Logothetis
#12060
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Nikos K. Logothetis is a Greek biologist and neuroscientist. Logothetis studies visual perception and object recognition; he is well-known for his work demonstrating that BOLD fMRI data is related to neuronal activity. Logothetis directed the department of Physiology of Cognitive Processes at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen from 1996 to 2020. He will co-direct the International Center for Primate Brain Research in Shanghai beginning in late 2020 or early 2021.
Go to Profile#12050
Myles Tierney
#12061
Overall Influence
1937 - 2017 (80 years)
Myles Tierney was an American mathematician and Professor at Rutgers University who founded the theory of elementary toposes with William Lawvere. Tierney obtained his B.A. from Brown University in 1959 and his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1965. His dissertation, On the classifying spaces for K-Theory mod p, was written under the supervision of Samuel Eilenberg. Following positions at Rice University and ETH Zurich , he became an associate professor at Rutgers in 1968.
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