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
#13951
Bjarni Tryggvason
#13962
Overall Influence
1945 - 2022 (77 years)
Bjarni Valdimar Tryggvason was an Icelandic-born Canadian engineer and a NRC/CSA astronaut. He served as a Payload Specialist on Space Shuttle mission STS-85 in 1997, a 12-day mission to study changes in the Earth's atmosphere.
Go to Profile#13952
Avner Cohen
#13963
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Avner Cohen is an Israeli writer, historian, and professor. He is well known for his works on Israel's nuclear history and strategic policy. He is currently a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and the Director of the Education Program and Senior Fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
Go to Profile#13953
Christopher Phillips
#13964
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Christopher Phillips is an American author, educator, consultant, lecturer, and pro-democracy advocate. He is best known for his 2001 book Socrates Café. Public Radio International called Phillips the "Johnny Appleseed of Philosophy."
Go to Profile#13954
Michael Grant
#13965
Overall Influence
1914 - 2004 (90 years)
Michael Grant was an English classicist, numismatist, and author of numerous books on ancient history. His 1956 translation of Tacitus's Annals of Imperial Rome remains a standard of the work. Having studied and held a number of academic posts in the United Kingdom and the Middle East, he retired early to devote himself fully to writing. He once described himself as "one of the very few freelancers in the field of ancient history: a rare phenomenon". As a populariser, his hallmarks were his prolific output and his unwillingness to oversimplify or talk down to his readership. He published ove...
Go to Profile#13955
Kapil Dev
#13966
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Kapil Dev Ramlal Nikhanj is an Indian former cricketer. One of the greatest all-rounders in the history of cricket, he was a fast-medium bowler and a hard-hitting middle-order batsman, Dev is the only player in the history of cricket to have taken more than 400 wickets and scored more than 5,000 runs in Test.
Go to Profile#13956
Fuat Sezgin
#13967
Overall Influence
1924 - 2018 (94 years)
Fuat Sezgin was a Turkish scholar and researcher who specialized in the history of Arabic-Islamic science. He was professor emeritus of the History of Natural Science at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany and the founder and honorary director of the Institute of the History of the Arab Islamic Sciences there. He also created museums in Frankfurt and Istanbul with replicas of historical Arabic-Islamic scientific instruments, tools and maps. His best known publication is the 17-volume Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums, a standard reference in the field.
Go to Profile#13957
Francis Allotey
#13968
Overall Influence
1932 - 2017 (85 years)
Francis Kofi Ampenyin Allotey was a Ghanaian mathematical physicist. Together with Daniel Afedzi Akyeampong, he became the first Ghanaian to obtain a doctorate in mathematical sciences, earned in 1966.
Go to Profile#13958
Anthony Epstein
#13969
Overall Influence
1921 - Present (105 years)
Sir Michael Anthony Epstein is a British pathologist and academic. He is one of the discoverers of the Epstein–Barr virus, along with Yvonne Barr and Bert Achong. Early and personal life Epstein was born on 18 May 1921, and educated at St Paul's School in London, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Middlesex Hospital Medical School.
Go to Profile#13959
Klay Thompson
#13970
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (36 years)
Klay Alexander Thompson is an American professional basketball player for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association . Widely regarded as one of the greatest three-point shooters of all-time, he is a four-time NBA champion, a five-time NBA All-Star, a two-time All-NBA Third Team honoree, and was once named to the NBA All-Defensive Second Team. He has also won gold medals with the United States national team on their 2014 World Cup team and 2016 Olympic team.
Go to Profile#13960
Chris Dobson
#13971
Overall Influence
1949 - 2019 (70 years)
Sir Christopher Martin Dobson was a British chemist, who was the John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Chemical and Structural Biology in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and Master of St John's College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#13961
Nadia Petrova
#13972
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Nadezhda Viktorovna "Nadia" Petrova is a Russian former professional tennis player. A former top-five player in both singles and doubles, she reached a career-high ranking of No. 3 in the world in both disciplines . Petrova won a total of 37 titles on the WTA Tour in her career, 13 in singles and 24 in doubles, as well as over $12.4 million in prize money, making her one of the most successful Russian tennis players of all time.
Go to Profile#13962
Víctor García de la Concha
#13973
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Víctor García de la Concha is a Spanish philologist. He is a past director of the Cervantes Institute and a past director of the Royal Spanish Academy. He served three four-year terms in that position, from 1998 to 2010. Directors usually serve no more than two terms.
Go to Profile#13963
Geoffrey C. Fox
#13974
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Geoffrey Charles Fox is a British-born American theoretical physicist and computer scientist, and professor of informatics and computing, and physics at Indiana University. Fox was educated at the Leys School and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1964, he was the senior wrangler at Cambridge, the best performer in the mathematics tripos. In the same year, he also played in the annual chess match against Oxford University.
Go to Profile#13964
Robert Altenkirch
#13975
Overall Influence
Robert A. Altenkirch was the President of University of Alabama in Huntsville and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Life Altenkirch holds a B.S. from Purdue University, a M.S. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from Purdue University, all in Mechanical Engineering. He is the author of over 50 publications and nearly 100 presentations in combustion and heat transfer and served as principal investigator for ten Space Shuttle experiments investigating the spread of fire in reduced gravity. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. While an under...
Go to Profile#13965
Herbert Busemann
#13976
Overall Influence
1905 - 1994 (89 years)
Herbert Busemann was a German-American mathematician specializing in convex and differential geometry. He is the author of Busemann's theorem in Euclidean geometry and geometric tomography. He was a member of the Royal Danish Academy and a winner of the Lobachevsky Medal , the first American mathematician to receive it. He was also a Fulbright scholar in New Zealand in 1952.
Go to Profile#13966
Nathan Mantel
#13977
Overall Influence
1919 - 2002 (83 years)
Nathan Mantel was an American biostatistician best known for his work with William Haenszel that led to the Mantel–Haenszel test and its associated estimate, the Mantel–Haenszel odds ratio. The Mantel–Haenszel procedure and its extensions allow data from several sources or groups to be combined while avoiding confounding.
Go to Profile#13967
Patricia McFadden
#13978
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Patricia McFadden is a radical African feminist, sociologist, writer, educator, and publisher from eSwatini. She is also an activist and scholar who worked in the anti-apartheid movement for more than 20 years. McFadden has worked in the African and global women’s movements as well. As a writer, she has been the target of political persecution. She has worked as editor of the Southern African Feminist Review and African Feminist Perspectives. She currently teaches, and advocates internationally for women's issues. McFadden has served as a professor at Cornell University, Spelman College, Syracuse University and Smith College in the United States.
Go to Profile#13968
John Woo
#13979
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John Woo Yu-Sen is a Hong Kong filmmaker, known as a highly influential figure in the action film genre. He is a pioneer of heroic bloodshed films and the gun fu genre in Hong Kong action cinema, before working in Hollywood films. He is known for his highly chaotic "bullet ballet" action sequences, stylized imagery, Mexican standoffs, frequent use of slow motion and allusions to wuxia, film noir and Western cinema.
Go to Profile#13969
Stephen P. Cohen
#13980
Overall Influence
1936 - 2019 (83 years)
Stephen Philip Cohen was an American political scientist and professor of security studies. He was a leading expert on India, Pakistan and South Asian security, He was a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution and an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He authored, co-authored or edited over 12 books, was named as one of America's 500 most influential people in foreign affairs, and was a fixture on radio and television talk shows.
Go to Profile#13970
Robert Glaser
#13981
Overall Influence
1921 - 2012 (91 years)
Robert Glaser was an American educational psychologist, who has made significant contributions to theories of learning and instruction. The key areas of his research focused on the nature of aptitudes and individual differences, the interaction of knowledge and skill in expertise, the roles of testing and technology in education, and training adapted to individual differences. Glaser has also been noted for having developed the idea of individually prescribed instruction as well as making major contributions to the theory of adaptive education.
Go to Profile#13971
Rowan Atkinson
#13982
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Rowan Sebastian Atkinson is an English actor, comedian and writer. He played the title roles in the sitcoms Blackadder and Mr. Bean , and in the film series Johnny English . Atkinson first came to prominence in the BBC sketch comedy show Not the Nine O'Clock News , receiving the 1981 British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance, and The Secret Policeman's Ball where he performed a skit. Subsequent skits on stage have featured solo performances as well as collaborations.
Go to Profile#13972
David Jacobs
#13983
Overall Influence
1926 - 2013 (87 years)
David Lewis Jacobs, CBE was a British broadcaster. He was the presenter of the BBC Television series Juke Box Jury in the 1960s, and chaired the long-running BBC Radio 4 topical discussion series Any Questions?. His earlier radio work included small acting parts: over the years he played himself or presenter characters in film, television and radio productions. Jacobs finally stepped down as a BBC Radio 2 presenter shortly before his death in August 2013, his career having spanned more than 65 years.
Go to Profile#13973
Seymour Drescher
#13984
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Seymour Drescher is an American historian and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, known for his studies on Alexis de Tocqueville and slavery and his published work Econocide. Career Seymour Drescher has been publishing since 1959. He initially focused his research on Tocqueville. He was the first to attract scholarly attention to Tocqueville's views of problems of poverty, colonial slavery, and race. Of his work in this field, Tocqueville scholar Matthew Mancini, calls Seymour Drescher "arguably the finest Tocqueville scholar writing in English..."
Go to Profile#13974
William W. Destler
#13985
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
William Wallace Destler is an American university professor and administrator. In 2017 he retired after having served for exactly 10 years as the 9th president of the Rochester Institute of Technology. He held the position from July 1, 2007, succeeding Albert J. Simone.
Go to Profile#13975
Margaret H. Wright
#13986
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Margaret H. Wright is an American computer scientist and mathematician. She is a Silver Professor of Computer Science and former Chair of the Computer Science department at Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, with research interests in optimization, linear algebra, and scientific computing. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1997 for development of numerical optimization algorithms and for leadership in the applied mathematics community. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005. She was the first woman to serve as Presiden...
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Alex Smith
#13987
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Alexander Douglas Smith is a former American football quarterback who played in the National Football League for 16 seasons. Smith played college football with Utah, earning first-team All-American honors and winning the 2005 Fiesta Bowl as a senior. He was selected first overall by the San Francisco 49ers in the 2005 NFL Draft.
Go to Profile#13977
Andrew Solomon
#13988
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Andrew Solomon is a writer on politics, culture and psychology, who lives in New York City and London. He has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, Travel and Leisure, and other publications on a range of subjects, including depression, Soviet artists, the cultural rebirth of Afghanistan, Libyan politics, and Deaf politics.
Go to Profile#13978
Edwin van der Sar
#13989
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Edwin van der Sar is a Dutch football executive and former professional player who was most recently the chief executive of Ajax, with whom he began his senior playing career in the early 1990s; he is considered to be a member of the club's golden generation and was part of the Ajax team that won the UEFA Champions League in 1995. A goalkeeper, he left Ajax for Juventus in 1999, where he spent two years before moving to England, first to Fulham and then to Manchester United in 2005. There he won a second Champions League title in 2008, making him one of just eight players at the time to have won the competition with more than one club.
Go to Profile#13979
Sourav Chatterjee
#13990
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Sourav Chatterjee is an Indian mathematician, specializing in mathematical statistics and probability theory. Chatterjee is credited with work on the study of fluctuations in random structures, concentration and super-concentration inequalities, Poisson and other non-normal limits, first-passage percolation, Stein's method and spin glasses. He has received a Sloan Fellowship in mathematics, Tweedie Award, Rollo Davidson Prize, Doeblin Prize, Loève Prize, and Infosys Prize in mathematical sciences. He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2014.
Go to Profile#13980
Mark Lemley
#13991
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Mark A. Lemley is currently the William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the Director of the Stanford Law School Program in Law, Science & Technology, as well as a founding partner of the law firm of Durie Tangri LLP, which he has been practicing with since 2009. According to Web of Science on 2023-06-16 he has 117 indexed publications and a Hirsch index of 46, which puts him in top 5% of law professors in the USA.
Go to Profile#13981
Kathleen Rubins
#13992
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Kathleen Hallisey Rubins is an American microbiologist and NASA astronaut. She became the 60th woman to fly in space when she launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station on July 7, 2016. She returned to Earth in Kazakhstan on October 30, 2016, aboard a Soyuz. She was a crew member of Expedition 48/49 and Expedition 63/64 of the ISS. Rubins has spent a total of 300 days, 1 hour, and 31 minutes in space which is the fourth most days in space by a U.S female astronaut.
Go to Profile#13982
Lawrence Mishel
#13993
Overall Influence
Lawrence Mishel is distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., a pro-labor think-tank that seeks to advance the interests of American workers. He has been at EPI since 1987, first serving as Research Director, then as Vice-president and then as president from 2002 to 2017.
Go to Profile#13983
Waylon Jennings
#13994
Overall Influence
1937 - 2002 (65 years)
Waylon Arnold Jennings was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. He is considered one of the pioneers of the outlaw movement in country music. Jennings started playing guitar at the age of eight and performed at age fourteen on KVOW radio, after which he formed his first band, the Texas Longhorns. Jennings left high school at age sixteen, determined to become a musician, and worked as a performer and DJ on KVOW, KDAV, KYTI, KLLL, in Coolidge, Arizona, and Phoenix. In 1958, Buddy Holly arranged Jennings's first recording session, a cover of Jole Blon, and hired him to play bass. Jennings gave up his seat on the ill-fated flight in 1959 that crashed and killed Holly, J.
Go to Profile#13984
Theodore Zoli
#13995
Overall Influence
Theodore P. Zoli, III is an American structural engineer, and a leading designer of cable-stayed bridges. He is currently the National Bridge Chief Engineer at HNTB Corporation and is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow.
Go to Profile#13985
Hans-Bernd Schäfer
#13996
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Hans-Bernd Schäfer is a German economist and a pioneer in the field of law and economics in Germany and Europe. Schäfer is professor emeritus at the University of Hamburg and former director of the Institute of Law & Economics. Currently he is an affiliate professor at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany. He has been visiting professor at various universities abroad, including the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University faculty of law, George Mason University School of Law , and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research. He was a visiting scholar at the Univers...
Go to Profile#13986
H. George Frederickson
#13997
Overall Influence
1934 - 2020 (86 years)
H. George Frederickson was born in Twin Falls, Idaho. He was a generalist in the field of public administration with particular interests in public things, theories of public administration, systems of multi-level governance, and American local government. He served as the Edwin O. Stene Distinguished Professor of Public Administration at the University of Kansas. He was President Emeritus of Eastern Washington University until 1987 and served as President of the American Society for Public Administration] . Frederickson was the founding editor of the Journal of Public Affairs Education and...
Go to Profile#13987
Rana Mitter
#13998
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Rana Shantashil Rajyeswar Mitter is a British historian and political scientist of Indian descent who specialises in the history of the Republic of China. He is ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. Until 2023 he was Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, formerly director of Oxford's China Centre, and a Fellow and Vice-Master of St Cross College. His 2013 book China’s War with Japan, 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival , about the Second Sino-Japanese War, was we...
Go to Profile#13988
Robert Brenner
#13999
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Robert Paul Brenner is an American economic historian. He is a professor emeritus of history and director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at UCLA, editor of the socialist journal Against the Current, and editorial committee member of New Left Review. His research interests are early modern European history, economic, social and religious history, agrarian history, social theory/Marxism, and Tudor–Stuart England.
Go to Profile#13989
Herbert Spohn
#14000
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Herbert Spohn is a German mathematician and mathematical physicist working in kinetic equations; dynamics of stochastic particle systems, hydrodynamic limit; kinetic of growths processes; disordered systems; open quantum systems dynamics of charged particles coupled to their radiation field; Schrödinger operators; functional integration and stochastic analysis.
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Erwin Hahn
#14001
Overall Influence
1921 - 2016 (95 years)
Erwin Louis Hahn was an American physicist, best known for his work on nuclear magnetic resonance . In 1950 he discovered the spin echo. Education He grew up in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. He received his B.S. in Physics from Juniata College and his M.S. and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He served as an enlisted sailor in the United States Navy and was an instructor on radar and sonar.
Go to Profile#13991
Wayne Flynt
#14002
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
James Wayne Flynt is University Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Auburn University. He has won numerous teaching awards and been a Distinguished University Professor for many years. His research focuses on Southern culture, Alabama politics, Southern religion, education reform, and poverty. He was the first Editor-in-Chief of the online Encyclopedia of Alabama. Flynt received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Howard College in 1961 before taking his Master of Science and Ph.D. from Florida State University. After teaching at Samford for 12 years, he joined the faculty at Auburn University in 1977, where he remained until his retirement in 2005.
Go to Profile#13992
Eddie Van Halen
#14003
Overall Influence
1955 - 2020 (65 years)
Edward Lodewijk Van Halen was an American musician. He was the guitarist, keyboardist, backing vocalist, and primary songwriter of the rock band Van Halen, which he founded with his brother Alex in 1972.
Go to Profile#13993
Fabio Fognini
#14004
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Fabio Fognini is an Italian professional tennis player. He has a career-high ATP ranking of world No. 9 achieved on 15 July 2019. Fognini's most successful surface is red clay, where he has won eight of his nine ATP singles titles, most notably at the 2019 Monte-Carlo Masters. He also reached the quarterfinals of the 2011 French Open. Together with Simone Bolelli, Fognini won the 2015 Australian Open doubles championship, becoming the first all-Italian men's pair to win a Grand Slam title in the Open Era.
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Joseph L. Gormley
#14005
Overall Influence
1914 - 2004 (90 years)
Joseph Leo Gormley was the chief of chemistry and toxicology for the FBI. Born in Clinton, Massachusetts, he was raised in Somerville, Massachusetts. Gormley received his bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry from Boston College. With his wife Frances he fathered and raised nine children.
Go to Profile#13995
Yury Bandazhevsky
#14006
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Yury Bandazhevsky , former director of the Medical Institute in Gomel , is a scientist working on consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. He was the founding Rector of Gomel State Medical Institute in Belarus in 1991, specially dedicated to scientific work on the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Since 2013, Professor Bandazhevsky has been leading Chernobyl Ecology and Health https://chernobyl-health.org/ in Ukraine, supported by European Commission. In the aftermath of Chernobyl accident and also 2020 April wildfire near Chernobyl, Bandazhevsky has been calling for international help.
Go to Profile#13996
Yi Gang
#14007
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Yi Gang is a Chinese economist and banker who served as the governor of the People's Bank of China from 2018 to 2023, vice governor of the People's Bank of China from 2007 to 2018, director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange from 2009 to 2015, and assistant governor of the People's Bank of China from 2004 to 2007.
Go to Profile#13997
Michael Luby
#14008
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Michael George Luby is a mathematician and computer scientist, CEO of BitRipple, senior research scientist at the International Computer Science Institute , former VP Technology at Qualcomm, co-founder and former chief technology officer of Digital Fountain. In coding theory he is known for leading the invention of the Tornado codes and the LT codes. In cryptography he is known for his contributions showing that any one-way function can be used as the basis for private cryptography, and for his analysis, in collaboration with Charles Rackoff, of the Feistel cipher construction. His distribute...
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Sharad Panday
#14009
Overall Influence
1934 - 2004 (70 years)
Sharad Pandey was an Indian heart surgeon. He was on the team of surgeons who performed the first-ever heart transplant in India at the King Edward Memorial Hospital and Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College in Mumbai. He was a specialist in bloodless heart surgery, and was an early exponent of bloodless open heart surgery in India.
Go to Profile#13999
Tamer Başar
#14010
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Mustafa Tamer Başar is a control and game theorist who is the Swanlund Endowed Chair and Center for Advanced Study Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is also the Director of the Center for Advanced Study .
Go to Profile#14000
Gonçalo Byrne
#14011
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Gonçalo Byrne, GCIH is a Portuguese architect. Byrne is responsible for a vast accomplishment of architectural work, and has been awarded with many national and international prizes. In 2005 he was awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the Lisbon Faculty of Architecture, Technical University of Lisbon, and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Santiago da Espada by the President of the Portuguese Republic. Included in his diversified body of work, in terms of scale, theme and programme, the more relevant examples are the recent interventions in the Monastery of Alcobaça and its...
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