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
#12801
Michael L. Tushman
#12812
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Michael L. Tushman is an American organizational theorist, management adviser, and Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is known for his early work on organizational design with David A. Nadler, and later work on disruptive innovation, organizational environments, and organizational evolution. He is also co-founder and director of Change-Logic, a consulting firm based in Boston, US.
Go to Profile#12802
Jeremy Howick
#12813
Overall Influence
Jeremy Howick is a Canadian-born, British residing clinical epidemiologist and philosopher of science. He researches evidence-based medicine, clinical empathy and the philosophy of medicine, including the use of placebos in clinical practice and clinical trials. He is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed papers, as well as two books, The Philosophy of Evidence-Based Medicine in 2011, and Doctor You in 2017. In 2016, he received the Dawkins & Strutt grant from the British Medical Association to study pain treatment. He publishes in Philosophy of Medicine and medical journals. He is a member of ...
Go to Profile#12803
Mariusz Pudzianowski
#12814
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Mariusz Zbigniew Pudzianowski , also known as "Pudzian" and "Dominator", is a Polish entrepreneur, mixed martial artist and former strongman competitor. With 43 international victories at a record 70% winning percentage in his strongman career he is considered by many to be one of the greatest strength athletes of all time.
Go to Profile#12804
Horst Stöcker
#12815
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Horst Stöcker is a German theoretical physicist and Judah M. Eisenberg Professor Laureatus at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Biography After Abitur 1971, Stöcker studied physics, chemistry, mathematics and philosophy at the Goethe University Frankfurt, where he got his Dr. phil.nat. in 1979 under Walter Greiner. Title of the dissertation was Shock waves in nuclear matter – proof by circumstantial evidence.
Go to Profile#12805
Michelle Fields
#12816
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Michelle Fields is an American political journalist who formerly wrote for The Huffington Post and was a reporter for Breitbart News, as well as a Fox News contributor. After graduating from college, Fields was hired as a reporter at The Daily Caller. She later became a correspondent for PJ Media. Fields is a former panelist on the Fox News program Cashin' In. In 2016, Fields accused Donald Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski of grabbing her arm at a press conference. At the time, Fields was a reporter for Breitbart, but resigned her position in March 2016, due to the organization's ha...
Go to Profile#12806
Joachim Radkau
#12817
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Joachim Radkau is a German historian. Life Radkau was born in Oberlübbe, now Hille, Landkreis Minden. Son of a Protestant priest, he studied history in Münster, Berlin and Hamburg from 1963 to 1968. He was influenced e.g. by Fritz Fischer. His doctorate, which he earned in 1970, treated the role of German immigrants 1933-45 on Franklin D. Roosevelt. From 1971 on he started to teach at Bielefeld University.
Go to Profile#12807
Masatake Kuranishi
#12818
Overall Influence
1924 - 2021 (97 years)
Masatake Kuranishi was a Japanese mathematician who worked on several complex variables, partial differential equations, and differential geometry. Education and career Kuranishi received in 1952 his Ph.D. from Nagoya University. He became a lecturer there in 1951, an associate professor in 1952, and a full professor in 1958. From 1955 to 1956 he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. From 1956 to 1961 he was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Princeton University. He became a professo...
Go to Profile#12808
Anisuzzaman
#12819
Overall Influence
1937 - 2020 (83 years)
Anisuzzaman was a Bangladeshi academic of Bengali literature. He was an activist who took part in the Language Movement , participated in the Mass Uprising , and took part in the Bangladesh Liberation War .
Go to Profile#12809
Horst Matthai Quelle
#12820
Overall Influence
1912 - 1999 (87 years)
Horst Matthai Quelle was a Spanish-speaking German philosopher. Biography Quelle was born in Hanover, Germany in 1912. In 1938, at the beginning of the German economic crisis and the rise of Nazism and fascism in Europe, Quelle moved to Mexico. There, he began studying philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico where he took classes with writer Carlos Monsivais and philosophers Leopoldo Zea and Emilio Uranga. Quelle earned his undergraduate degree, master's and doctorate in philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he returned as a professor of philosophy in the 1980s.
Go to Profile#12810
Ellie Goulding
#12821
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Elena Jane Goulding is an English singer and songwriter. Her career began when she met record producers Starsmith and Frankmusik, and she was later spotted by Jamie Lillywhite, who became her manager and A&R. After signing to Polydor Records in July 2009, Goulding released her debut extended play, An Introduction to Ellie Goulding, later that year.
Go to Profile#12811
Robert Ledley
#12822
Overall Influence
1926 - 2012 (86 years)
Robert Steven Ledley , professor of physiology and biophysics and professor of radiology at Georgetown University School of Medicine, pioneered the use of electronic digital computers in biology and medicine. In 1959, he wrote two influential articles in Science: "Reasoning Foundations of Medical Diagnosis" and "Digital Electronic Computers in Biomedical Science". Both articles encouraged biomedical researchers and physicians to adopt computer technology.
Go to Profile#12812
Mike Rutherford
#12823
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Michael John Cloete Crawford Rutherford is an English guitarist, bassist, songwriter and singer, best known as co-founder of the rock band Genesis. Rutherford and keyboardist Tony Banks are the group's two continuous members.
Go to Profile#12813
Kemal Karpat
#12824
Overall Influence
1923 - 2019 (96 years)
Kemal Haşim Karpat was a Romanian-Turkish naturalised American historian and professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Early life He was of Turkish origin and born in Babadag, Romania. He received his LLB from the University of Istanbul, his MA from the University of Washington and his PhD from New York University. He previously worked for the UN Economics and Social Council and taught at the University of Montana and New York University. His final post was at Istanbul Şehir University.
Go to Profile#12814
Franklin M. Fisher
#12825
Overall Influence
1934 - 2019 (85 years)
Franklin Marvin Fisher was an American economist. He taught economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1960 to 2004. Biography Fisher attended Harvard University, where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 1955 and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1956, followed by a Master's degree in 1957 and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard in 1960. His doctoral thesis was entitled A Priori Information and Time Series Analysis.
Go to Profile#12815
Robert G. Jahn
#12826
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Robert George Jahn was an American plasma physicist, Professor of Aerospace Science, and Dean of Engineering at Princeton University. Jahn was also a founder of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab , a parapsychology research program which ran from 1979 to 2007.
Go to Profile#12816
Akira Fujiwara
#12827
Overall Influence
1922 - 2003 (81 years)
was a Japanese historian. His academic speciality was modern Japanese history and he was a professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University. In 1980 he became a member of the Science Council of Japan and was a former chairman of the Historical Science Society of Japan.
Go to Profile#12817
Aníbal Torres
#12828
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Aníbal Torres Vásquez is a Peruvian lawyer, jurist, and politician who served as prime minister of Peru from February 2022 to November 2022. He was also Minister of Justice and Human Rights from July 2021 to February 2022 under the government of Pedro Castillo.
Go to Profile#12818
Jerry Pinkney
#12829
Overall Influence
1939 - 2021 (82 years)
Jerry Pinkney was an American illustrator and writer of children's literature. Pinkney illustrated over 100 books since 1964, including picture books, nonfiction titles and novels. Pinkney's works addressed diverse themes and were usually done in watercolors.
Go to Profile#12819
Samuel Warren Carey
#12830
Overall Influence
1911 - 2002 (91 years)
Samuel Warren Carey AO was an Australian geologist and a professor at the University of Tasmania. He was an early advocate of the theory of continental drift. His work on plate tectonics reconstructions led him to develop the Expanding Earth hypothesis.
Go to Profile#12820
Yoshiharu Sekino
#12831
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Yoshiharu Sekino is a Japanese surgeon, explorer, travel writer, photographer and anthropologist. Biography Sekino was born in 1949 in Tokyo. While a student at Hitotsubashi University, he cofounded and participated in a university team that descended the entire length of the Amazon, thereafter travelling around South America. He received a B.A. in law from Hitotsubashi University in 1975 and an M.D. from Yokohama City University School of Medicine in 1982.
Go to Profile#12821
Steve Squyres
#12832
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Steven Weldon Squyres is an American geologist and planetary scientist. He was the James A. Weeks Professor of Physical Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His research area is in planetary sciences, with a focus on large solid bodies in the Solar System such as the terrestrial planets and the moons of the Jovian planets. Squyres was the principal investigator of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission .
Go to Profile#12822
Barton Myers
#12833
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Barton Myers is an American architect and president of Barton Myers Associates Inc. in Santa Barbara, California. With a career spanning more than 40 years, Myers is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and was a member of the Ontario Association of Architects while working in Canada earlier in his career.
Go to Profile#12823
Martha Rosler
#12834
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Martha Rosler is an American artist. She is a conceptual artist who works in photography and photo text, video, installation, sculpture, and performance, as well as writing about art and culture. Rosler's work is centered on everyday life and the public sphere, often with an eye to women's experience. Recurrent concerns are the media and war, as well as architecture and the built environment, from housing and homelessness to places of passage and systems of transport.
Go to Profile#12824
Donald Sarason
#12835
Overall Influence
1933 - 2017 (84 years)
Donald Erik Sarason was an American mathematician who made fundamental advances in the areas of Hardy space theory and VMO. He was one of the most popular doctoral advisors in the Mathematics Department at UC Berkeley. He supervised 39 Ph.D. theses at UC Berkeley.
Go to Profile#12825
Tony Parker
#12836
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
William Anthony Parker Jr. is a French-American former professional basketball player and majority owner of ASVEL Basket in the LNB Pro A. Himself the son of a basketball pro, Parker started his career at Paris Basket Racing in the French basketball league before joining the San Antonio Spurs of the National Basketball Association . He was selected by the Spurs with the 28th overall pick in the 2001 NBA draft, and quickly became their starting point guard. Parker won four NBA championships , all of which were with the Spurs. He also played for ASVEL Basket in France during the 2011 NBA lockout, and finished his playing career after one season with the Charlotte Hornets.
Go to Profile#12826
Dirk Frimout
#12837
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Dirk Dries David Damiaan, Viscount Frimout is an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency. He flew aboard NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-45 as a payload specialist, making him the first Belgian in space.
Go to Profile#12827
Henri Ford
#12838
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Henri Ronald Ford is a Haitian-American pediatric surgeon. He previously served as chief of surgery at Children's Hospital Los Angeles and Vice Dean for Medical Education at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. In 2018, he was appointed dean of the University of Miami's Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine. Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Ford returned to Haiti to provide medical assistance to earthquake victims.
Go to Profile#12828
Peter Mandelson
#12839
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson is a British Labour Party politician who served as First Secretary of State from 2009 to 2010. He was President of the Board of Trade in 1998 and from 2008 to 2010. He is the president of international think tank Policy Network, honorary president of the Great Britain–China Centre, and chairman of strategic advisory firm Global Counsel. Mandelson is often referred to as a Blairite.
Go to Profile#12829
G. K. Podila
#12840
Overall Influence
1957 - 2010 (53 years)
Gopi K. Podila was an Indian–American biologist who served as a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He was one of three faculty members killed in a mass shooting at the university on February 12, 2010. Podila was chairperson of the university's department of biological sciences, with a particular interest in the ecology of Populus and their mycorrhizal symbionts.
Go to Profile#12830
Andrew Wilson
#12841
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Andrew Wilson is a British historian and political scientist specializing in Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine. He is a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and Professor in Ukrainian studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London. He wrote The Ukrainians: The Story of How a People Became a Nation and Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World.
Go to Profile#12831
Zehev Tadmor
#12842
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Zehev Tadmor is a retired Israeli chemical engineer who has served as distinguished professor, president, and chairman of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He is also chairman of the Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology, a policy research center. His main research interest is polymer and plastics engineering and processing. He won the Emet Prize in 2005.
Go to Profile#12832
Jerry Beck
#12843
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Jerry Beck is an American animation historian, author, blogger, and video producer. Beck wrote or edited several books on classic American animation and classic characters, including The 50 Greatest Cartoons , The Animated Movie Guide , Not Just Cartoons: Nicktoons! , The Flintstones: The Official Guide to the Cartoon Classic , The Hanna-Barbera Treasury: Rare Art Mementos from Your Favorite Cartoon Classics , The SpongeBob SquarePants Experience: A Deep Dive into the World of Bikini Bottom , Pink Panther: The Ultimate Guide , and Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros.
Go to Profile#12833
Steven Hyman
#12844
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Steven Edward Hyman is Director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is also Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. Hyman was Provost of Harvard University from 2001 to 2011 and before that Director of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health from 1996 to 2001. Hyman received the 2016 Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health from the National Academy of Medicine for "leadership in furthering understanding and treatment of psychiatr...
Go to Profile#12834
Gordon Banks
#12845
Overall Influence
1937 - 2019 (82 years)
Gordon Banks was an English professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. Widely regarded as one of the greatest goalkeepers of all time, he made 679 appearances during a 20-year professional career, and won 73 capss for England, highlighted by starting every game of the nation's 1966 World Cup victory.
Go to Profile#12835
Herb Grosch
#12846
Overall Influence
1918 - 2010 (92 years)
Herbert Reuben John Grosch was an early computer scientist, perhaps best known for Grosch's law, which he formulated in 1950. Grosch's Law is an aphorism that states "economy is as the square root of the speed."
Go to Profile#12836
Marek Karpinski
#12847
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Marek Karpinski is a computer scientist and mathematician known for his research in the theory of algorithms and their applications, combinatorial optimization, computational complexity, and mathematical foundations. He is a recipient of several research prizes in the above areas.
Go to Profile#12837
Michael Hamburger
#12848
Overall Influence
1924 - 2007 (83 years)
Michael Peter Leopold Hamburger was a noted German-British translator, poet, critic, memoirist and academic. He was known in particular for his translations of Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan, Gottfried Benn and W. G. Sebald from German, and his work in literary criticism. The publisher Paul Hamlyn was his younger brother.
Go to Profile#12838
Carlos Andrés Pérez
#12849
Overall Influence
1922 - 2010 (88 years)
Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez also known as CAP and often referred to as El Gocho , was a Venezuelan politician and the president of Venezuela from 12 March 1974 to 12 March 1979 and again from 2 February 1989 to 21 May 1993. He was one of the founders of Acción Democrática, the dominant political party in Venezuela during the second half of the twentieth century.
Go to Profile#12839
J. Turner Whitted
#12850
Overall Influence
John Turner Whitted is an electrical engineer and computer scientist who introduced recursive ray tracing to the computer graphics community with his 1979 paper "An improved illumination model for shaded display". His algorithm proved to be a practical method of simulating global illumination, inspired many variations, and is in wide use today. Simple recursive implementations of ray tracing are still occasionally referred to as Whitted-style ray tracing.
Go to Profile#12840
Michael C. Dorf
#12851
Overall Influence
Michael C. Dorf is an American law professor and a scholar of U.S. constitutional law. He is the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. In addition to constitutional law, Professor Dorf has taught courses in civil procedure and federal courts. He has written or edited three books, including No Litmus Test: Law Versus Politics in the Twenty-First Century, and Constitutional Law Stories, as well as scores of law review articles about American constitutional law. He is also a columnist for Findlaw.com and a regular contributor to The American Prospect. Dorf is a former law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S.
Go to Profile#12841
Pavel Grinfeld
#12852
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Pavel Grinfeld is an American mathematician and associate professor of Applied Mathematics at Drexel University working on problems in moving surfaces in applied mathematics , geometry, physics, and engineering.
Go to Profile#12842
Thomas Pangle
#12853
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Thomas Lee Pangle, is an American political scientist. He holds the Joe R. Long Chair in Democratic Studies in the Department of Government and is Co-Director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Core Texts and Ideas at the University of Texas at Austin. He has also taught at the University of Toronto and Yale University. He was a student of Leo Strauss.
Go to Profile#12843
Andrzej Koźmiński
#12854
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Andrzej Krzysztof Koźmiński is a professor of management, the founder of Kozminski University , 1993–2011 the rector of this school, and currently its president. He currently is one of two Polish Academy of Sciences members in management science.
Go to Profile#12844
Frank Ocean
#12855
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Christopher Francis Ocean is an American singer, songwriter, and rapper. According to some music critics his works feature avant-garde styles and introspective, elliptical lyrics. Ocean has won two Grammy Awards and a Brit Award for International Male Solo Artist among other accolades, and his two studio albums have been listed on Rolling Stones "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" .
Go to Profile#12845
Steve Albini
#12856
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Steve Albini is an American musician, record producer, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black, Rapeman and Flour, and is a member of Shellac. He is the founder, owner and principal engineer of Electrical Audio, a recording studio complex in Chicago. In 2018, Albini estimated that he had worked on several thousand albums over his career. He has worked with acts such as Nirvana, Pixies, the Breeders, PJ Harvey, and former Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.
Go to Profile#12846
Raman Parimala
#12857
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Raman Parimala is an Indian mathematician known for her contributions to algebra. She is the Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor of mathematics at Emory University. For many years, she was a professor at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research , Mumbai. She has been on the Mathematical Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize from 2019 and is on the Abel prize selection Committee 2021/2022.
Go to Profile#12847
Eric Freeman
#12858
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Eric Freeman is a computer scientist, author and constituent of David Gelernter on the Lifestreaming concept. Authored works Eric Freeman has publishing accolades for Head First HTML and CSS which he co-authored with Elisabeth Robson, and Head First Design Patterns also co-authored with Elisabeth Robson, Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates.
Go to Profile#12848
Frederic Vester
#12859
Overall Influence
1925 - 2003 (78 years)
Frederic Vester was a German biochemist, and an expert in the field of ecology. Biography Vester was born in Saarbrücken, and studied chemistry at the universities of Mainz, Paris and Hamburg. From 1955 to 1957, he was postdoctoral fellow at Yale University and Cambridge. From 1957 to 1966 he worked at Saarland University, Saarbrücken, and from 1969 he worked in Munich, first at the Max Planck Institute. In 1970 he founded the private Munich-based Frederic Vester Studiengruppe für Biologie und Umwelt GmbH , renamed Frederic Vester GmbH after his death.
Go to Profile#12849
Salim Joubran
#12860
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Salim Joubran is a former judge of the Supreme Court of Israel. He served as a Supreme Court justice from 2003, and became a permanent member in May 2004. Joubran is of Christian Maronite heritage and affiliated with the Arab Christian community. Joubran is sometimes described as the first Arab to receive a permanent appointment in the Israeli Supreme Court. He is also described as the second Arab judge to hold a Supreme Court appointment, preceded by Abdel Rahman Zuabi, who held a fixed nine-month appointment in 1999.
Go to Profile#12850
Jay Blumler
#12861
Overall Influence
1924 - 2021 (97 years)
Jay G Blumler was an American-British theorist of communication and media. He was Professor of Public Communication at the University of Leeds. Early life and education Blumler was born in New York, New York on 18 February 1924. Blumler's father was a Marxist and his mother a supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal. He described himself as a "red diaper baby".
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