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
#12851
Alberto Gonzales
#12862
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Alberto R. Gonzales is an American lawyer who served as the 80th United States Attorney General from 2005 to 2007 and is the highest-ranking Hispanic American in executive government to date. He previously served as Secretary of State of Texas, as a Texas Supreme Court Justice, and as White House Counsel, becoming the first Hispanic to hold that office.
Go to Profile#12852
Gerry Neugebauer
#12863
Overall Influence
1932 - 2014 (82 years)
Gerhart "Gerry" Neugebauer was an American astronomer known for his pioneering work in infrared astronomy. Neugebauer was born in Göttingen, Germany and was the son of Otto Neugebauer, an Austrian-American mathematician and historian of science, and Grete Bruck. After moving to the United States at age seven, he received his B.A. in physics from Cornell University in 1954 and his Ph.D. in physics from California Institute of Technology in 1960, with a thesis on the photoproduction of negative and positive pions from deuterium.
Go to Profile#12853
Gerald O'Collins
#12864
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Gerald Glynn O'Collins is an Australian Jesuit priest and academic. He was a research professor and writer-in-residence at the Jesuit Theological College in Parkville, Victoria, and a research professor in theology at St Mary's University College in Twickenham. For more than three decades, he was professor of systematic and fundamental theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University .
Go to Profile#12854
Charles R. H. Tripp
#12865
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Charles Rees Howard Tripp, is an academic and author specializing in the politics and history of the Near and Middle East. Early life and education Tripp was born on 8 March 1952 in Sudan. He was educated at Winchester College, then an all-boys independent boarding school in Winchester, Hampshire, England. He then studied at New College, Oxford and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London .
Go to Profile#12855
Donald C. Hodges
#12866
Overall Influence
1923 - 2009 (86 years)
Donald Clark Hodges was a philosophy professor at Florida State University, who wrote about revolutions and revolutionaries . Growing up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Hodges returned to the USA in 1941. He was a student of James Burnham, the author of "The Managerial Revolution," which argued that both in the Communist and the capitalist world the managers "rule the world." Hodges was a devoted Marxist and an organizer for the Communist Party and labor organizations as a young man.
Go to Profile#12856
Graham E. Fuller
#12867
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Graham E. Fuller is an American author and political analyst, specializing in Islamist extremism. Formerly vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council, he also served as Station Chief in Kabul for the CIA. A "think piece" that Fuller wrote for the CIA was identified as instrumental in leading to the Iran–Contra affair.
Go to Profile#12857
Tupac Shakur
#12868
Overall Influence
1971 - 1996 (25 years)
Tupac Amaru Shakur , also known by his stage names 2Pac and Makaveli, was an American rapper. He is widely considered one of the most influential and successful rappers of all time. Shakur is among the best-selling music artists, having sold more than 75 million records worldwide. Much of Shakur's music has been noted for addressing contemporary social issues that plagued inner cities.
Go to Profile#12858
Leon Golub
#12869
Overall Influence
1922 - 2004 (82 years)
Leon Golub was an American painter. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, where he also studied, receiving his BA at the University of Chicago in 1942, and his BFA and MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1949 and 1950, respectively.
Go to Profile#12859
Neal D. Barnard
#12870
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Neal D. Barnard, born 10 July 1953 in Fargo, North Dakota, is an American author, clinical researcher, and founding president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine . Early life and education Barnard grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. He received his medical training at George Washington University School of Medicine in psychiatry, where he began to explore vegan diets. He is board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and a lifetime member of the American Medical Association.
Go to Profile#12860
Mary Hawkesworth
#12871
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Mary Hawkesworth is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She is a political scientist trained in feminist theory and has conducted extensive research in women and politics, gender, and contemporary feminist activism. Hawkesworth was previously the Editor-in-Chief of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, an internationally recognized journal in feminist scholarship.
Go to Profile#12861
Kenneth Holmes
#12872
Overall Influence
1934 - 2021 (87 years)
Kenneth Charles Holmes FRS was a British molecular biologist. He was born in Hammersmith, London. He was a former colleague of Rosalind Franklin at Birkbeck College with Aaron Klug and John Finch and moved to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge in 1962. From 1975 and 1976 he was acting Head of Outstation, EMBL Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory at DESY, Hamburg. He worked at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research as an "Emeritus Scientific Member".
Go to Profile#12862
Carol Gluck
#12873
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Carol Gluck is an American academic and Japanologist. She is the George Sansom Professor Emerita of History at Columbia University and served as the president of the Association for Asian Studies in 1996.
Go to Profile#12863
Durvasa
#12874
Overall Influence
In Hindu scriptures, Durvasa , also known as Durvasas , is a legendary rishi . He is the son of Anasuya and Atri. According to some Puranas, Durvasa is a partial avatar of Shiva, known for his short temper. Wherever he goes, he is received with great reverence by humans and devas alike.
Go to Profile#12864
Jackie Collins
#12875
Overall Influence
1937 - 2015 (78 years)
Jacqueline Jill Collins was an English romance novelist and actress. She moved to Los Angeles in 1985 and spent most of her career there. She wrote 32 novels, all of which appeared on The New York Times bestsellers list. Her books have sold more than 500 million copies and have been translated into 40 languages. Eight of her novels have been adapted for the screen, either as films or television miniseries. She was the younger sister of Dame Joan Collins.
Go to Profile#12865
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
#12876
Overall Influence
1929 - 1994 (65 years)
Jacqueline "Jackie" Lee Kennedy Onassis was an American socialite, writer, photographer, and book editor who served as the first lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963, as the wife of President John F. Kennedy. A popular first lady, she endeared the American public with her devotion to her family, dedication to the historic preservation of the White House, the campaigns she led to preserve and restore historic landmarks and architecture along with her interest in American history, culture and arts. During her lifetime, she was regarded as an international icon for her unique fashion choi...
Go to Profile#12866
Herbert Fingarette
#12877
Overall Influence
1921 - 2018 (97 years)
Herbert Fingarette was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Early life and education Fingarette was born Herbert Borenstein in Brooklyn. His father, David Borenstein, manufactured sewing machine parts. As a teenager, he moved with his family to Los Angeles. He later adopted the last name of his stepfather, Harry Fingarette. Fingarette initially studied chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, but left to serve in the United States Army during World War II, where he was assigned to the Pentagon. He later earned a Bac...
Go to Profile#12867
Marty Kuehnert
#12878
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Marty Kuehnert is a current senior advisor to the Japanese professional basketball team Sendai 89es and Japanese professional baseball team Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. He was also the team's first general manager and Nippon Professional Baseball's first foreign general manager.
Go to Profile#12868
Lennart Nilsson
#12879
Overall Influence
1922 - 2017 (95 years)
Lennart Nilsson was a Swedish photographer noted for his photographs of human embryos and other medical subjects once considered unphotographable, and more generally for his extreme macro photography. He was also considered to be among Sweden’s first modern photojournalists.
Go to Profile#12869
David Mabuza
#12880
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
David Dabede "DD" Mabuza is a South African politician who served as deputy president of South Africa from February 2018 to February 2023. He was the deputy president of the African National Congress from December 2017 to December 2022 and was previously the premier of Mpumalanga from 2009 to 2018, throughout the presidency of his former political ally Jacob Zuma. Mabuza served as a Member of Parliament from 2018 until his resignation in 2023.
Go to Profile#12870
Samuel K. Skinner
#12881
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Samuel Knox Skinner is an American politician, lawyer, and businessman. Skinner served as U.S. Secretary of Transportation and White House Chief of Staff under President George H. W. Bush. Prior to the Bush administration, Skinner served as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois under President Gerald R. Ford from 1975-1977, succeeding James R. Thompson.
Go to Profile#12871
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh
#12882
Overall Influence
1958 - 2020 (62 years)
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi was an Iranian nuclear physicist and scientist. He was regarded as the chief of Iran's nuclear program. Born in Qom in 1958, Fakhrizadeh joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after the Iranian revolution of 1979. He attended Shahid Beheshti University and later received a PhD from the University of Isfahan. Beginning in 1991, he was a physics professor at Imam Hossein University.
Go to Profile#12872
Sverker Johansson
#12883
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Sverker Johansson is a Swedish physicist, linguist, textbook author and university professor. He created Lsjbot, a Wikipedia bot. Biography Sverker Johansson studied technical physics at the University of Lund from 1979 to 1982. He moved to the University of Gothenburg in 1982 where he graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1984.
Go to Profile#12873
Gregory Ulmer
#12884
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Gregory Leland Ulmer is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Florida and a professor of Electronic Languages and Cybermedia at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.
Go to Profile#12874
Paul Ince
#12885
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Paul Emerson Carlyle Ince is an English professional football manager and former player who was most recently manager of EFL Championship side Reading. A former midfielder, Ince played professionally from 1986 to 2007, starting his career with West Ham United and later representing Manchester United, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Swindon Town and Macclesfield Town in England, as well as Inter Milan in Italy. With a combined total of 271 league appearances for the two, Ince is one of the few players, especially in the Premier League era, to have represented both of arch ri...
Go to Profile#12875
Ranulph Glanville
#12886
Overall Influence
1946 - 2014 (68 years)
Ranulph Glanville was an Anglo-Irish cybernetician and design theorist. He was a founding vice-president of the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences and president of the American Society for Cybernetics .
Go to Profile#12876
Jeff Sagarin
#12887
Overall Influence
Jeff Sagarin is an American sports statistician known for his development of a method for ranking and rating sports teams in a variety of sports. His Sagarin Ratings have been a regular feature in the USA Today sports section from 1985 to 2023, have been used by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee to help determine the participants in the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship tournament since 1984, and were part of the college football Bowl Championship Series throughout its history from 1998 to 2014.
Go to Profile#12877
Ugo Bardi
#12888
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Ugo Bardi is a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Florence. Career Bardi is a researcher on materials for new energy sources, a contributor to the now-defunct website, "The Oil Drum". He is the co-founder and former president of ASPO Italy, a member of the scientific committee of the , a member of the Club of Rome, and author of several books, including The Limits to Growth Revisited.
Go to Profile#12878
John Malkovich
#12889
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
John Malkovich is an American actor. He is the recipient of several accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards.
Go to Profile#12879
Adrian Johnston
#12890
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Adrian Johnston is an American philosopher. He is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and a faculty member at the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute in Atlanta.
Go to Profile#12880
Gunnar Heinsohn
#12891
Overall Influence
1943 - 2023 (80 years)
Gunnar Heinsohn was a German author, sociologist and economist and professor emeritus at the University of Bremen where he had a chair in social pedagogy from 1984. Heinsohn published on a wide array of topics, starting from economics, demography and its relationship with security policy and genocide, and revisionist chronology theories in the tradition of Immanuel Velikovsky.
Go to Profile#12881
Shigeru Omi
#12892
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Shigeru Omi is the President of the Japan Community Health Care Organization. He previously served as Regional Director of the Western Pacific Regional Office for the World Health Organization. He has been a member of the World Health Organization Executive Board since 2013.
Go to Profile#12882
Richard Ned Lebow
#12893
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Richard Ned Lebow is an American political scientist best known for his work in international relations, political psychology, classics and philosophy of science. He is Professor of International Political Theory at the Department of War Studies, King's College London, Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, and James O. Freedman Presidential Professor Emeritus at Dartmouth College. Lebow also writes fiction. He has published a novel and collection of short stories and has recently finished a second novel.
Go to Profile#12883
Miguel Vences
#12894
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Professor Miguel Vences is a German herpetologist and evolutionary biologist. Much of his research is focused on the reptiles and amphibians of Madagascar. Life The son of Galiciann philosopher Sergio Vences Fernández , Vences attended the Schiller-Gymnasium Köln from 1979 to 1988, and graduated with the German Abitur. The following year he began to study Biology at the University of Cologne. There he met Frank Glaw, and as undergraduate students they undertook their first excursions to Madagascar. After completing the Vordiplom in 1993, Vences transferred to the University of Bonn and the Museum König, where he completed his Diplom studies.
Go to Profile#12884
Bentley Layton
#12895
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Bentley Layton , is Professor of Religious Studies and Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University . He is a Harvard-educated scholar who has been central to the late 20th-century Rediscovery of Gnosticism, which was the title of the international conference he hosted at Yale in 1980 and the volume that came of it. His interests lie in the History of Christianity from its origins until the rise of Islam, Gnostic studies and Coptic.
Go to Profile#12885
Richard E. King
#12896
Overall Influence
Richard E. King is currently Professor of Global Philosophy at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London . He was previously Professor of Buddhist and Asian Studies at the University of Kent. He specialises in South Asian traditions and critical theory and Religious Studies.
Go to Profile#12886
Xiaokai Yang
#12897
Overall Influence
1948 - 2004 (56 years)
Xiaokai Yang was a Chinese-Australian economist. He was one of the world's pre-eminent theorists in economic analysis, and an influential campaigner for democracy in China. Biography Early life Yang was born in China, the son of Chinese Communist Party officials. His parents' status meant that he initially had a privileged life, receiving an excellent education by Chinese standards at the time.
Go to Profile#12887
Dimitris Bertsimas
#12898
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Dimitris Bertsimas is an American applied mathematician, and a professor in the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2005, Bertsimas was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to optimization theory and stochastic systems and innovative applications in financial engineering and transportation.
Go to Profile#12888
Tobin J. Marks
#12899
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
#12889
Ruth Wisse
#12900
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Ruth Wisse is a Canadian academic and is the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University emerita. She is a noted scholar of Yiddish literature and of Jewish history and culture.
Go to Profile#12890
Mark Zakharov
#12901
Overall Influence
1933 - 2019 (86 years)
Mark Anatolyevich Zakharov was a Soviet and Russian stage and film director, screenwriter and pedagogue best known for his fantasy parable movies. He was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1991. Zakharov served as the artistic director at the Lenkom Theatre from 1973 till his death. He gathered a "dream team" of actors and reestablished Lenkom as one of the leading Soviet theatres.
Go to Profile#12891
Charles R. Johnson
#12902
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Charles Richard Johnson is a scholar and the author of novels, short stories, screen-and-teleplays, and essays, most often with a philosophical orientation. Johnson has directly addressed the issues of black life in America in novels such as Dreamer and Middle Passage. Johnson was born in 1948 in Evanston, Illinois, and spent most of his career at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Go to Profile#12892
Werner Gruber
#12903
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Werner Gruber is an Austrian physicist, author, lecturer, and cabaret artist and is well known from ORF and as a member of the Social Democratic Party of Austria . Biography Gruber was born in Ostermiething. Gruber grew up in Ansfelden, Upper Austria and graduated in 1999 with a degree in physics from the University of Vienna. He then worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Vienna. Since February 2013 Gruber manages the astronomical institutions of the Adult Education centers in Vienna – the Planetarium Wien, the Kuffner Observatory and the Urania Observatory.
Go to Profile#12893
Naoko Yamazaki
#12904
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
is a Japanese engineer and former astronaut at JAXA. She was the second Japanese woman to fly in space. The first was Chiaki Mukai. Early life Yamazaki was born Naoko Sumino in Matsudo City. She spent two years of her childhood in Sapporo. After graduating from Ochanomizu University Senior High School in 1989, Yamazaki earned a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1993 and a Master of Science degree with a major in Aerospace Engineering in 1996.
Go to Profile#12894
Luisa Valenzuela
#12905
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Luisa Valenzuela Levinson is an Argentine post-'Boom' novelist and short story writer. Her writing is characterized by an experimental style which questions hierarchical social structures from a feminist perspective.
Go to Profile#12895
Colin S. Gray
#12906
Overall Influence
1943 - 2020 (77 years)
Colin S. Gray was a British-American writer on geopolitics and professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading, where he was the director of the Centre for Strategic Studies. In addition, he was a Senior Associate to the National Institute for Public Policy.
Go to Profile#12896
Ellen S. Berscheid
#12907
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Ellen S. Berscheid is an American social psychologist who is currently a Regents professor at the University of Minnesota, where she earlier had earned her PhD in 1965. Berscheid conducted research on interpersonal relationships, emotions and moods, and social cognition. Berscheid wrote books, articles and other publications to contribute to the field of Social Psychology. She was involved in controversy surrounding the funding for her research on why people fall in love. In addition to her position at the University of Minnesota as a Psychology and Business professor; she has also held a position at Pillsbury.
Go to Profile#12897
Douglas Vakoch
#12908
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Douglas A. Vakoch is an American astrobiologist, search for extraterrestrial intelligence researcher, psychologist, and president of METI International, a nonprofit research and educational organization devoted to transmitting intentional signals to extraterrestrial civilizations. Vakoch led METI's participation in Sónar Calling GJ 273b, which transmitted a series of interstellar messages to Luyten's Star, located 12.4 light years from Earth. Vakoch advocates ongoing transmission projects, arguing that this does not increase risks of an alien invasion as suggested by British cosmologist Stephen Hawking.
Go to Profile#12898
Karl Larenz
#12909
Overall Influence
1903 - 1993 (90 years)
Karl Larenz was a German jurist and philosopher of law. He is known for his influential contributions to German civil law, as well as for being one of the leading Nazi legal theorists in the domain of civil law.
Go to Profile#12899
Beatrice Weder di Mauro
#12910
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Beatrice Weder di Mauro is a Swiss economist who is currently Professor of economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Research Professor and Distinguished Fellow-in-residence at the Emerging Markets Institute of INSEAD Singapore, and senior fellow at the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research . Since 2018, she also serves as President of the Centre for Economic Policy Research .
Go to Profile#12900
Abraham Verghese
#12911
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Abraham Verghese is an American physician, author and Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Vice Chair of Education at Stanford University Medical School. He is the author of four best-selling books: two memoirs and two novels. In 2011, he was elected to be a member of the Institute of Medicine. He received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2015. He is the co-host with Eric Topol of the podcast Medscape Medicine and the Machine.
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