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).
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List of the most influential people
#13001
Pran Nath
#13012
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Pran Nath is a theoretical physicist working at Northeastern University, with research focus in elementary particle physics. He holds a Matthews Distinguished University Professor chair. Research His main area of research is in the fields of supergravity and particle physics beyond the standard model. He is one of the originators of the first supergravity theory in 1975. In 1982 in collaboration with Richard Arnowitt and Ali Hani Chamseddine, he developed the field of Applied Supergravity and the supergravity grand unification popularly known as SUGRA or mSUGRA model for gravity mediated breaking of supersymmetry.
Go to Profile#13002
Kurt Lehovec
#13013
Overall Influence
1918 - 2012 (94 years)
Kurt Lehovec was one of the pioneers of the integrated circuit. While also pioneering the photo-voltaic effect, light-emitting diodes and lithium batteries, he innovated the concept of p-n junction isolation used in every circuit element with a guard ring: a reverse-biased p-n junction surrounding the planar periphery of that element. This patent was assigned to Sprague Electric.
Go to Profile#13003
Leslie Marmon Silko
#13014
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Leslie Marmon Silko is an American writer. A woman of Laguna Pueblo descent, she is one of the key figures in the First Wave of what literary critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.
Go to Profile#13004
John Iliffe
#13015
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
John Iliffe is a British historian, specialising in the history of Africa and especially Tanzania. He was Professor of African History at the University of Cambridge and fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. He was awarded the 1988 Herskovits Prize for The African Poor: A History.
Go to Profile#13005
Marion Bartoli
#13016
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Marion Bartoli is a French former professional tennis player. Bartoli won the 2013 Wimbledon Championships singles title after previously being runner-up in 2007, and was a semifinalist at the 2011 French Open. She also won eight WTA Tour singles and three doubles titles.
Go to Profile#13006
Ruth Huenemann
#13017
Overall Influence
Ruth Lois Huenemann was an American public health nutritionist. She was a pioneer in the study of childhood obesity. Huenemann was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and she was the chair of the Department of Social and Administrative Health Sciences in the School of Public Health.
Go to Profile#13007
Harold Chestnut
#13018
Overall Influence
1917 - 2001 (84 years)
Harold Chestnut was an American electrical engineer, control engineer and manager at General Electric and author, who helped establish the fields of control theory and systems engineering. Biography Born in Albany, New York, where his father, educated as a civil engineer, worked in the family candy business. Chestnut was raised in the 1920s and went on a scholarship to MIT in 1934 to study chemical engineering. In the first year he was awarded for his outstanding performance in chemistry, but switched anyway to electrical engineering and became co-op student. After five years of study he received a combined B.S.
Go to Profile#13008
David Lipsky
#13019
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
David Lipsky is an American author. His works have been New York Times bestsellers, New York Times Notable Books, Time, Amazon, and NPR Best Books of the Year, and have been included in The Best American Magazine Writing and The Best American Short Stories collections.
Go to Profile#13009
Shirley Strum Kenny
#13020
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Shirley Strum Kenny is an English scholar and retired university president. Kenny was the fourth president of Stony Brook University from 1994 until the end of the 2008-2009 academic year. She was the first woman to hold that position. She had served as the president of Queens College from 1985 to 1994. In 2012, Kenny served as the interim president of Augusta State University upon the retirement of its long time president William A. Bloodworth from July 1 until the position was eliminated on December 31, 2012 as a result of Augusta State University's merger with Georgia Health Sciences Unive...
Go to Profile#13010
Buchi Emecheta
#13021
Overall Influence
1944 - 2017 (73 years)
Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta was a Nigerian-born novelist, based in the UK from 1962, who also wrote plays and an autobiography, as well as works for children. She was the author of more than 20 books, including Second Class Citizen , The Bride Price , The Slave Girl and The Joys of Motherhood . Most of her early novels were published by Allison and Busby, where her editor was Margaret Busby.
Go to Profile#13011
Charlie Sheen
#13022
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Carlos Irwin Estévez , known professionally as Charlie Sheen, is an American actor and film producer. He has appeared in films such as Platoon , Wall Street , Young Guns , The Rookie , The Three Musketeers , and The Arrival . In the 2000s, when Sheen replaced Michael J. Fox as the star of ABC's Spin City, his portrayal of Charlie Crawford earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. He then starred as Charlie Harper on the CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men , for which he received multiple Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy nominations, and as Dr. Charles "Charlie" Goodson on the FX series Anger Management .
Go to Profile#13012
John Frusciante
#13023
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
John Anthony Frusciante is an American musician. He has been the guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers across three stints , and has released 11 solo albums and 7 EPs, ranging in style from acoustic guitar to electronic music. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2012. Rolling Stone named Frusciante among the greatest guitarists of all time.
Go to Profile#13013
Wendell Pritchett
#13024
Overall Influence
Wendell Eric Pritchett is an American lawyer, legal scholar, professor, and university administrator. He is currently the James S. Riepe Presidential Professor of Law and Education at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. From February to June 2022, Pritchett served as interim president of the University of Pennsylvania; he is the first Black individual to serve as the university's president.
Go to Profile#13014
Manfred Einsiedler
#13025
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Manfred Leopold Einsiedler is an Austrian mathematician who studies ergodic theory. He was born in Scheibbs, Austria in 1973. Education and career Einsiedler studied mathematics at the University of Vienna, where he received his undergraduate degree in 1996 and his PhD in 1999 under Klaus Schmidt with thesis Problems in higher dimensional dynamics. He was a postdoc in the academic year 2000–2001 at the University of East Anglia in Norwich and in the academic year 2001–2002 at Penn State University. In 2001 he earned his habilitation at the University of Vienna and then became there a professor extraordinarius .
Go to Profile#13015
Dana Priest
#13026
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Dana Louise Priest is an American journalist, writer and teacher. She has worked for nearly 30 years for the Washington Post and became the third John S. and James L. Knight Chair in Public Affairs Journalism at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism in 2014. Before becoming a full-time investigative reporter at the Post, Priest specialized in intelligence reporting and wrote many articles on the U.S. "War on terror" and was the newspaper's Pentagon correspondent. In 2006 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting citing "her persistent, painstaking reports on se...
Go to Profile#13016
Robert Bryant
#13027
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Robert Leamon Bryant is an American mathematician. He works at Duke University and specializes in differential geometry. Education and career Bryant grew up in a farming family in Harnett County and was a first-generation college student. He obtained a bachelor's degree at North Caroline State University at Raleigh in 1974 and a PhD at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1979. His thesis was entitled "Some Aspects of the Local and Global Theory of Pfaffian Systems" and was written under the supervision of Robert Gardner.
Go to Profile#13017
Tom Maniatis
#13028
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Tom Maniatis , is an American professor of molecular and cellular biology. He is a professor at Columbia University, and serves as the Scientific Director and CEO of the New York Genome Center. Education Maniatis received B.A. and M.S. degrees from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and a PhD in Molecular Biology from Vanderbilt University. He carried out postdoctoral studies at Harvard University and at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.
Go to Profile#13018
Edmund Pellegrino
#13029
Overall Influence
1920 - 2013 (93 years)
Edmund Daniel Pellegrino was an American bioethicist and academic who served as the 11th president of The Catholic University of America from 1978 to 1982. For 35 years, Pellegrino was a distinguished professor of medicine and medical ethics and the Director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. Pellegrino was an expert both in clinical bioethics, and in the field of medicine and the humanities, specifically, the teaching of humanities in medical school, which he helped pioneer
Go to Profile#13019
Peter Leithart
#13030
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Peter James Leithart is an American author, minister, and theologian, who serves as president of Theopolis Institute for Biblical, Liturgical, & Cultural Studies in Birmingham, Alabama. He previously served as Senior Fellow of Theology and Literature as well as Dean of Graduate Studies at New Saint Andrews College. He was selected by the Association of Reformed Institutions of Higher Education to be one of the organization's 2010–2012 Lecturers. He is the author of commentaries on the Book of Kings, the Book of Samuel, the Books of Chronicles, the Book of Revelation, as well as a Survey of the Old Testament.
Go to Profile#13020
Robert Lewandowski
#13031
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Robert Lewandowski is a Polish professional footballer who plays as a striker for La Liga club Barcelona and captains the Poland national team. He is regarded as one of the best strikers of all time, as well as one of the most successful players in Bundesliga and Bayern Munich history. He has scored over 600 senior career goals for club and country.
Go to Profile#13021
Tohru Eguchi
#13032
Overall Influence
1948 - 2019 (71 years)
Tohru Eguchi was a Japanese theoretical physicist. Life and career Tohru Eguchi was a professor at the University of Tokyo, and then at the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics at Kyoto University, of which he was acting director in 2009. From 2012, he was a specially-appointed professor at Rikkyo University. He dealt in particular with differential geometric methods in physics, with Superstring theory, Conformal field theory, Topological quantum field theory, Lattice gauge theory, Quantum gravity, and the Theory of Gravitation.
Go to Profile#13022
Akhil Reed Amar
#13033
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Akhil Reed Amar is an American legal scholar known for his expertise in constitutional law and criminal procedure. He holds the position of Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, and is an adjunct professor of law at Columbia University. In 2008, a Legal Affairs poll placed Amar among the top 20 contemporary American legal thinkers.
Go to Profile#13023
David J. Lipman
#13034
Overall Influence
David J. Lipman is an American biologist who from 1989 to 2017 was the director of the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Institutes of Health. NCBI is the home of GenBank, the U.S. node of the International Sequence Database Consortium, and PubMed, one of the most heavily used sites in the world for the search and retrieval of biomedical information. Lipman is one of the original authors of the BLAST sequence alignment program, and a respected figure in bioinformatics. In 2017, he left NCBI and became Chief Science Officer at Impossible Foods.
Go to Profile#13024
Alain Fuchs
#13035
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Alain Fuchs is a Swiss-born French Doctor of Science and chemistry Professor, specialized in molecular simulation. He served as the president of Chimie ParisTech - PSL from 2006 to 2010. He has served as the president of the French National Centre for Scientific Research from 2010 to 2017. He became an Officer of the Legion of Honour in 2014.
Go to Profile#13025
Harvey Molotch
#13036
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Harvey Luskin Molotch is an American sociologist known for studies that have reconceptualized power relations in interaction, the mass media, and the city. He helped create the field of environmental sociology and has advanced qualitative methods in the social sciences. In recent years, Molotch helped develop a new field—the sociology of objects. He is currently a professor of Sociology and of Metropolitan Studies at New York University. His Introduction to Sociology is featured as one of NYU Open Education's courses available to stream freely. Other courses that he teaches include Approaches to Metropolitan Studies and Urban Objects.
Go to Profile#13026
Kathryn Hughes
#13037
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Kathryn Hughes is a British academic, journalist and biographer. Educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University and the University of East Anglia ; her doctorate in Victorian history was developed into her first book, The Victorian Governess. She is the Director of Creative Non-Fiction at the University of East Anglia,
Go to Profile#13027
Heinz Dieterich
#13038
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Heinz Dieterich or Heinz Dieterich Steffan is a German sociologist and a political analyst residing in Mexico. He is best known for his leftist ideals. He contributes to several journals and has published more than 30 books about conflict in Latin America, global society and the ideological controversies that characterised the 20th century, among other philosophical and social scientific topics.
Go to Profile#13028
Thierry Lodé
#13039
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Thierry Lodé is a French biologist and professor of evolutionary ecology in a CNRS lab at the University of Rennes 1. His work deals mainly with sexual conflict. Selected works Thierry Lodé Darwin et après ? Manifeste pour une écologie évolutive 2014 Eds Odile Jacobs, ParisThierry Lodé La biodiversité amoureuse, sexe et évolution 2011 Eds Odile Jacob Thierry Lodé La guerre des sexes chez les animaux, une histoire naturelle de la sexualité 2006 Eds Odile Jacob Thierry Lodé Les stratégies de reproduction des animaux 2001 Éditions Dunod Masson SciencesThierry Lodé Génétique des populations 1998 ...
Go to Profile#13029
James Fieser
#13040
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
James Fieser is professor of philosophy at the University of Tennessee at Martin. He received his B.A. from Berea College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from Purdue University. He is founder and general editor of the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He is author, coauthor or editor of more than ten text books. Fieser is also known for being the guitarist in the hit band Oxford Street Band.
Go to Profile#13030
Beyers Naudé
#13041
Overall Influence
1915 - 2004 (89 years)
Christiaan Frederick Beyers Naudé was a South African Afrikaner Calvinist Dominee, theologian and the leading Afrikaner anti-apartheid activist. He was known simply as Beyers Naudé, or more colloquially, Oom Bey .
Go to Profile#13031
Joseph Jordania
#13042
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Joseph Jordania is an Australian–Georgian ethnomusicologist and evolutionary musicologist and professor. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne and the Head of the Foreign Department of the International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony at Tbilisi State Conservatory. Jordania is known for his model of the origins of human choral singing in the wide context of human evolution and was one of founders of the International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony in Georgia.
Go to Profile#13032
Kesha
#13043
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Kesha Rose Sebert , known mononymously as Kesha , is an American singer and songwriter. In 2005, at age 18, she was signed to Kemosabe Records. Kesha's first major success came in early 2009 when she was featured on rapper Flo Rida's number-one single, "Right Round".
Go to Profile#13033
Dave Grossman
#13044
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
David Allen Grossman is an American author and trainer who conducts seminars on the psychology of lethal force. He is a retired lieutenant colonel in the United States Army. Early life and military career Grossman was born in Frankfurt, West Germany on August 23, 1956. His career includes service in the U.S. Army.
Go to Profile#13034
John Wisdom
#13045
Overall Influence
1904 - 1993 (89 years)
Arthur John Terence Dibben Wisdom , usually cited as John Wisdom, was a leading British philosopher considered to be an ordinary language philosopher, a philosopher of mind and a metaphysician. He was influenced by G.E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Sigmund Freud, and in turn explained and extended their work.
Go to Profile#13035
Barbara Scholz
#13046
Overall Influence
1947 - 2011 (64 years)
Barbara Caroline Scholz was an American philosopher of science, with a particular focus on the philosophy of cognitive science and linguistics. She taught at the University of Toledo, at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and at San Jose State University. She was a fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2005–2006. From 1994 until her death in 2011, she was married to linguist Geoff Pullum.
Go to Profile#13036
Akihiro Kanamori
#13047
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
is a Japanese-born American mathematician. He specializes in set theory and is the author of the monograph on large cardinals, The Higher Infinite. He has written several essays on the history of mathematics, especially set theory.
Go to Profile#13037
Melvyn Goldstein
#13048
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Melvyn C. Goldstein is an American social anthropologist and Tibet scholar. He is a professor of anthropology at Case Western Reserve University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on Tibetan society, history and contemporary politics, population studies, polyandry, studies in cultural and development ecology, economic change and cross-cultural gerontology.
Go to Profile#13038
Daniel Negreanu
#13049
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Daniel Negreanu is a Canadian professional poker player who has won six World Series of Poker bracelets and two World Poker Tour championship titles. In 2014, independent poker ranking service Global Poker Index recognized Negreanu as the best poker player of the previous decade.
Go to Profile#13039
Afshin Ellian
#13050
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Afshin Ellian is an Iranian-born Dutch professor of law, philosopher, poet, and critic of political Islam. He is an expert in international public law and philosophy of law. Biography In 1989, Ellian came to the Netherlands as a political refugee. Having experienced first-hand the Islamic theocratic government of Iran, he writes often about how such issues are affecting the world in general and the Netherlands in particular. Due to threats on his life tied to such criticism, he is currently heavily guarded.
Go to Profile#13040
Gary Oldman
#13051
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Gary Leonard Oldman is an English actor and filmmaker. Known for his versatility and intense acting style, he has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and three British Academy Film Awards. His films have grossed over $11 billion worldwide, making him one of the highest-grossing actors of all time.
Go to Profile#13041
Blase J. Cupich
#13052
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Blase Joseph Cupich is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, a cardinal who serves as archbishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Cupich was ordained a priest there in 1975. He was named Bishop of Rapid City in South Dakota, by Pope John Paul II in 1998. Cupich was then named bishop of the Diocese of Spokane in Washington State by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. After being chosen by Pope Francis to succeed Cardinal Francis George as Archbishop of Chicago, Cupich was installed there in 2014. He was subsequently also appointed to the Roman Curia's Congregation for Bishops, which plays a role in advising the pope on episcopal matters, including appointments.
Go to Profile#13042
Alex Grossmann
#13053
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
Alexander Grossmann was a French-American physicist of Croatian origin. Career He travelled to the United States in 1955, working in the physics departments of the Institute for Advanced Study , Princeton, Brandeis University, and the Courant Institute, NYU, then again at the IAS until 1963.
Go to Profile#13043
Shashi Tharoor
#13054
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Shashi Tharoor is an Indian former international civil servant, diplomat, bureaucrat, politician, a noted writer and public intellectual who has been serving as Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, since 2009. He is the present Chairman of the Standing Committee on Chemicals and Fertilizers. He was formerly an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and unsuccessfully ran for the post of Secretary-General in 2006. Founder-Chairman of All India Professionals Congress, he formerly served as Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs and on Informational Technology.
Go to Profile#13044
Melissa Franklin
#13055
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Melissa Eve Bronwen Franklin is a Canadian experimental particle physicist and the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics at Harvard University. In 1992, Franklin became the first woman to receive tenure in the physics department at Harvard University and she served as chair of the department from 2010 to 2014. While working at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago, her team found some of the first evidences for the existence of the top quark. In 1993, Franklin was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society. She is currently member of the CDF and ATLAS collaborations.
Go to Profile#13045
Aidan O'Brien
#13056
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Aidan Patrick O'Brien is an Irish horse racing trainer. Since 1996, he has been the private trainer at Ballydoyle Stables near Rosegreen in County Tipperary for John Magnier and his Coolmore Stud associates. He is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest horse racing trainers of all time.
Go to Profile#13046
Norman B. Anderson
#13057
Overall Influence
1955 - 2018 (63 years)
Norman Bruce Anderson is an American scientist who was a tenured professor studying health disparities and mind/body health, and later an executive in government, non-profit, university sectors. Anderson is assistant vice president for research and academic affairs, and research professor of social work and nursing at Florida State University. He previously served as chief executive officer of the American Psychological Association , the largest scientific and professional association for psychologists in the United States. Anderson became the APA's first African-American CEO when he was named to the post in 2003.
Go to Profile#13047
Carolyn Talcott
#13058
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Carolyn Talcott is an American computer scientist known for work in formal reasoning, especially as it relates to computers, cryptanalysis and systems biology. She is currently the program director of the Symbolic Systems Biology group at SRI International.
Go to Profile#13048
Ruthellen Josselson
#13059
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Ruthellen Josselson is professor of clinical psychology at The Fielding Graduate University and a psychotherapist in practice. Work She was formerly a professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Towson University, a visiting professor at Harvard University and a visiting fellow at Cambridge University. Her research focuses on women's identity and on human relationships. She received the Henry A. Murray Award, the Theodore R. Sarbin Award and the Distinguished Contributions to Qualitative Research Award from the American Psychological Association as well as a Fulbright Fellowship. She ...
Go to Profile#13049
Sandra Roelofs
#13060
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Sandra Elisabeth Roelofs–Saakashvili is a Dutch–Georgian activist and diplomat who was the First Lady of Georgia from 2004 to 2013, when her husband Mikheil Saakashvili was president of the country.
Go to Profile#13050
Nanos Valaoritis
#13061
Overall Influence
1921 - 2019 (98 years)
Ioannis Valaoritis was a Greek writer, widely published as a poet, novelist and playwright since 1939; his correspondence with George Seferis was a bestseller. Raised within a cosmopolitan family with roots in the Greek War of Independence but twice driven into exile by events, Valaoritis lived in Greece, the United Kingdom, France and the United States, and as a writer and academic he played a significant role in introducing the literary idioms of each country to the rest. The quality, the international appeal, and the influence of his work led Valaoritis to be described as the most imp...
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