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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people
#1401
Leslie Orgel
#1403
Overall Influence
1927 - 2007 (80 years)
Leslie Eleazer Orgel FRS was a British chemist. He is known for his theories on the origin of life. Biography Leslie Orgel was born in London, England, on . He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry with first-class honours from the University of Oxford in 1948. In 1951 he was elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford and in 1953 was awarded his PhD in chemistry.
Go to Profile#1402
Patrick Suppes
#1404
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Patrick Colonel Suppes was an American philosopher who made significant contributions to philosophy of science, the theory of measurement, the foundations of quantum mechanics, decision theory, psychology and educational technology. He was the Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Stanford University and until January 2010 was the Director of the Education Program for Gifted Youth also at Stanford.
Go to Profile#1403
Drew Gilpin Faust
#1405
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust is an American historian who served as the 28th president of Harvard University, the first woman in that role. She was Harvard's first president since 1672 without an undergraduate or graduate degree from Harvard and the first to have been raised in the South. Faust is also the founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She has been ranked among the world's most powerful women by Forbes, including as the 33rd most powerful in 2014.
Go to Profile#1404
Yogi Adityanath
#1406
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Yogi Adityanath is an Indian Hindu monk and politician from the Bharatiya Janata Party who is serving as the 21st and current Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh since 19 March 2017. He is the longest serving Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, who is currently running his tenure for over 6 years, surpassing Sampurnanand. He represents Gorakhpur Urban Assembly constituency in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly since 2022 and was member of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council from 2017 to 2022. He is a former Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha from Gorakhpur Lok Sabha constituency, Uttar Pradesh from 1998 to 2017 before he resigned to become the Chief Minister.
Go to Profile#1405
David Halberstam
#1407
Overall Influence
1934 - 2007 (73 years)
David Halberstam was an American writer, journalist, and historian, known for his work on the Vietnam War, politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, Korean War, and later, sports journalism. He won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1964. Halberstam was killed in a car crash in 2007, while doing research for a book.
Go to Profile#1406
Ray Brassier
#1408
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
#1407
Jeff Cheeger
#1409
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Jeff Cheeger is a mathematician. Cheeger is professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University in New York City. His main interests are differential geometry and its connections with topology and analysis.
Go to Profile#1408
George Carlin
#1410
Overall Influence
1937 - 2008 (71 years)
George Denis Patrick Carlin was an American stand-up comedian, actor, author, and social critic. Regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of all time, he was dubbed "the dean of counterculture comedians". He was known for his black comedy and reflections on politics, the English language, psychology, religion, and taboo subjects. His "seven dirty words" routine was central to the 1978 United States Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a 5–4 decision affirmed the government's power to censor indecent material on public airwaves.
Go to Profile#1409
Van Jones
#1411
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Anthony Kapel "Van" Jones is an American political analyst, media personality, lawyer, author, and civil rights advocate. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author, a CNN host and contributor, and an Emmy Award winner.
Go to Profile#1410
Konstantin Novoselov
#1412
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Sir Konstantin Sergeevich Novoselov is a Russian–British physicist, and a professor at the Centre for Advanced 2D Materials, National University of Singapore. He is also the Langworthy Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. His work on graphene with Andre Geim earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010.
Go to Profile#1411
Edmond H. Fischer
#1413
Overall Influence
1920 - 2021 (101 years)
Edmond Henri Fischer was a Swiss-American biochemist. He and his collaborator Edwin G. Krebs were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1992 for describing how reversible phosphorylation works as a switch to activate proteins and regulate various cellular processes. From 2007 until 2014, he was the Honorary President of the World Cultural Council. At the time of his death at age 101 in 2021, he was the oldest living Nobel Prize laureate.
Go to Profile#1412
Romila Thapar
#1414
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
#1413
James Rothman
#1415
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
James Edward Rothman is an American biochemist. He is the Fergus F. Wallace Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Yale University, the Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology at Yale School of Medicine, and the Director of the Nanobiology Institute at the Yale West Campus. Rothman also concurrently serves as adjunct professor of physiology and cellular biophysics at Columbia University and a research professor at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London.
Go to Profile#1414
Pattie Boyd
#1416
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Patricia Anne Boyd is an English model and photographer. She was one of the leading international models during the 1960s and, with Jean Shrimpton, epitomised the British female look of the era. Boyd married George Harrison in 1966, experiencing the height of the Beatles' popularity and sharing in their embrace of Indian spirituality. She divorced Harrison in 1977 and married Harrison's friend Eric Clapton in 1979; they divorced in 1989. Boyd inspired Harrison's song "Something", and Clapton's songs "Layla", "Bell Bottom Blues" and "Wonderful Tonight".
Go to Profile#1415
Frederik Pohl
#1417
Overall Influence
1919 - 2013 (94 years)
Frederik George Pohl Jr. was an American science-fiction writer, editor, and fan, with a career spanning nearly 75 years—from his first published work, the 1937 poem "Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna", to the 2011 novel All the Lives He Led.
Go to Profile#1416
Gregory S. Paul
#1418
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Gregory Scott Paul is an American freelance researcher, author and illustrator who works in paleontology. He is best known for his work and research on theropod dinosaurs and his detailed illustrations, both live and skeletal. Professionally investigating and restoring dinosaurs for three decades, Paul received an on-screen credit as dinosaur specialist on Jurassic Park and Discovery Channel's When Dinosaurs Roamed America and Dinosaur Planet. He is the author and illustrator of Predatory Dinosaurs of the World , The Complete Illustrated Guide to Dinosaur Skeletons , Dinosaurs of the Air , The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs , Gregory S.
Go to Profile#1417
Eli Broad
#1419
Overall Influence
1933 - 2021 (88 years)
Eli Broad was an American businessman and philanthropist. In June 2019, Forbes ranked him as the 233rd-wealthiest person in the world and the 78th-wealthiest in the United States, with an estimated net worth of $6.7 billion. He was known for his philanthropic commitment to transforming public K–12 education to a charter school model, scientific and medical research, and the visual and performing arts.
Go to Profile#1418
Jeffrey Goldberg
#1420
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Jeffrey Mark Goldberg is an American journalist and editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine. During his nine years at The Atlantic prior to becoming editor, Goldberg became known for his coverage of foreign affairs. Goldberg joined Washington Week as moderator in August 2023.
Go to Profile#1419
Garry Kasparov
#1421
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Garry Kimovich Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion , political activist and writer. His peak FIDE chess rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the highest recorded until being surpassed by Magnus Carlsen in 2013. From 1984 until his retirement from regular competitive chess in 2005, Kasparov was ranked world no. 1 for a record 255 months overall. Kasparov also holds records for the most consecutive professional tournament victories and Chess Oscars .
Go to Profile#1420
Bernard Bailyn
#1422
Overall Influence
1922 - 2020 (98 years)
Bernard Bailyn was an American historian, author, and academic specializing in U.S. Colonial and Revolutionary-era History. He was a professor at Harvard University from 1953. Bailyn won the Pulitzer Prize for History twice . In 1998 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected him for the Jefferson Lecture. He was a recipient of the 2010 National Humanities Medal.
Go to Profile#1421
Hsing Yun
#1423
Overall Influence
1927 - 2023 (96 years)
Hsing Yun was a Chinese Buddhist monk, teacher, and philanthropist based in Taiwan. He was the founder of the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist monastic order as well as the layperson-based Buddha's Light International Association. Hsing Yun was considered a major proponent of Humanistic Buddhism and one of the most influential teachers of modern Taiwanese Buddhism. In Taiwan, he was popularly referred to as one of the "Four Heavenly Kings" of Taiwanese Buddhism, along with his contemporaries: Master Sheng-yen of Dharma Drum Mountain, Master Cheng Yen of Tzu Chi and Master Wei Chueh of Chung Tai Shan.
Go to Profile#1422
Sidney Altman
#1424
Overall Influence
1939 - 2022 (83 years)
Sidney Altman was a Canadian-American molecular biologist, who was the Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Chemistry at Yale University. In 1989, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas R. Cech for their work on the catalytic properties of RNA.
Go to Profile#1423
James Mirrlees
#1425
Overall Influence
1936 - 2018 (82 years)
Sir James Alexander Mirrlees was a British economist and winner of the 1996 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was knighted in the 1997 Birthday Honours. Early life and education Born in Minnigaff, Kirkcudbrightshire, Mirrlees was educated at Douglas Ewart High School, then at the University of Edinburgh and Trinity College, Cambridge . He was a very active student debater. A contemporary, Quentin Skinner, has suggested that Mirrlees was a member of the Cambridge Apostles along with fellow Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen during the period.
Go to Profile#1424
John Kendrew
#1426
Overall Influence
1917 - 1997 (80 years)
Sir John Cowdery Kendrew, was an English biochemist, crystallographer, and science administrator. Kendrew shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Max Perutz, for their work at the Cavendish Laboratory to investigate the structure of haem-containing proteins.
Go to Profile#1425
Scott Carpenter
#1427
Overall Influence
1925 - 2013 (88 years)
Malcolm Scott Carpenter was an American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, astronaut, and aquanaut. He was one of the Mercury Seven astronauts selected for NASA's Project Mercury in April 1959. Carpenter was the second American to orbit the Earth and the fourth American in space, after Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and Glenn.
Go to Profile#1426
Laurence Tribe
#1428
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Laurence Henry Tribe is an American legal scholar who is a University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He previously served as the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard Law School. A constitutional law scholar, Tribe is co-founder of the American Constitution Society. He is also the author of American Constitutional Law , a major treatise in that field, and has argued before the United States Supreme Court 36 times. Tribe was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2010.
Go to Profile#1427
Allan Bloom
#1429
Overall Influence
1930 - 1992 (62 years)
Allan David Bloom was an American philosopher, classicist, and academician. He studied under David Grene, Leo Strauss, Richard McKeon, and Alexandre Kojève. He subsequently taught at Cornell University, the University of Toronto, Tel Aviv University, Yale University, the École normale supérieure, and the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#1428
Peter Jennings
#1430
Overall Influence
1938 - 2005 (67 years)
Peter Charles Archibald Ewart Jennings was a Canadian-American television journalist, best known for serving as the sole anchor of ABC World News Tonight from 1983 until his death from lung cancer in 2005. Despite dropping out of high school, Jennings transformed himself into one of American television's most prominent journalists.
Go to Profile#1429
Jean Laplanche
#1431
Overall Influence
1924 - 2012 (88 years)
Jean Laplanche was a French author, psychoanalyst and winemaker. Laplanche is best known for his work on psychosexual development and Sigmund Freud's seduction theory, and wrote more than a dozen books on psychoanalytic theory. The journal Radical Philosophy described him as "the most original and philosophically informed psychoanalytic theorist of his day."
Go to Profile#1430
Robert H. Dennard
#1432
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Robert Heath Dennard is an American electrical engineer and inventor. Biography Dennard was born in Terrell, Texas, U.S. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, in 1954 and 1956, respectively. He earned a Ph.D. from Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1958. His professional career was spent as a researcher for International Business Machines.
Go to Profile#1431
C. N. R. Rao
#1433
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao, , is an Indian chemist who has worked mainly in solid-state and structural chemistry. He has honorary doctorates from 84 universities from around the world and has authored around 1,800 research publications and 56 books. He is described as a scientist who had won all possible awards in his field except the Nobel Prize.
Go to Profile#1432
Sanjay Gupta
#1434
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Sanjay Gupta is an American neurosurgeon, medical reporter, and writer. He serves as associate chief of the neurosurgery service at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, associate professor of neurosurgery at the Emory University School of Medicine, member of the National Academy of Medicine and American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is the chief medical correspondent for CNN.
Go to Profile#1433
Timothy Garton Ash
#1435
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Timothy Garton Ash is a British historian, author and commentator. He is Professor of European Studies at Oxford University. Most of his work has been concerned with the contemporary history of Europe, with a special focus on Central and Eastern Europe.
Go to Profile#1434
John Quiggin
#1436
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
John Quiggin is an Australian economist, a professor at the University of Queensland. He was formerly an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Federation Fellow and a member of the board of the Climate Change Authority of the Australian Government.
Go to Profile#1435
Jerome Robbins
#1437
Overall Influence
1918 - 1998 (80 years)
Jerome Robbins was an American dancer, choreographer, film director, theatre director and producer who worked in classical ballet, on stage, film, and television. Among his numerous stage productions were On the Town, Peter Pan, High Button Shoes, The King and I, The Pajama Game, Bells Are Ringing, West Side Story, Gypsy, and Fiddler on the Roof. Robbins was a five-time Tony Award-winner and a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. He received two Academy Awards, including the 1961 Academy Award for Best Director with Robert Wise for West Side Story and a special Academy Honorary Award for ...
Go to Profile#1436
Yuval Noah Harari
#1438
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
#1437
Andrey Korotayev
#1439
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
#1438
Sam Harris
#1440
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Samuel Benjamin Harris is an American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and podcast host. His work touches on a range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics, philosophy of mind, politics, terrorism, and artificial intelligence. Harris came to prominence for his criticism of religion, and is known as one of the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism, along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett.
Go to Profile#1439
Ferid Murad
#1441
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Ferid Murad was an American physician and pharmacologist, and a co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Early life Ferid Murad was born in Whiting, Indiana, on September 14, 1936. His parents were Henrietta Josephine Bowman of Alton, Illinois, and Xhabir Murat Ejupi, an Albanian immigrant from Gostivar in present-day North Macedonia. who subsequently changed his name to John Murad after being processed at Ellis Island in 1913. His mother was from a Baptist family and ran away from home in 1935, aged 17, to marry his father, who was 39 and Muslim. Murad is the oldest of three boys.
Go to Profile#1440
Andrei Linde
#1442
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Andrei Dmitriyevich Linde is a Russian-American theoretical physicist and the Harald Trap Friis Professor of Physics at Stanford University. Linde is one of the main authors of the inflationary universe theory, as well as the theory of eternal inflation and inflationary multiverse. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Moscow State University. In 1975, Linde was awarded a PhD from the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow. He worked at CERN since 1989 and moved to the United States in 1990, where he became professor of physics at Stanford University. Among the various awards he has ...
Go to Profile#1441
John Markoff
#1443
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
John Gregory Markoff is a journalist best known for his work covering technology at The New York Times for 28 years until his retirement in 2016, and a book and series of articles about the 1990s pursuit and capture of hacker Kevin Mitnick.
Go to Profile#1442
Bryce DeWitt
#1444
Overall Influence
1923 - 2004 (81 years)
Bryce Seligman DeWitt was an American theoretical physicist noted for his work in gravitation and quantum field theory. Personal life He was born Carl Bryce Seligman, but he and his three brothers, including the noted ichthyologist, Hugh Hamilton DeWitt, added "DeWitt" from their mother's side of the family, at the urging of their father, in 1950. In the early-1970s, this change of name so angered Felix Bloch that he blocked DeWitt's appointment to Stanford University and DeWitt and his wife Cecile DeWitt-Morette, a mathematical physicist, accepted faculty positions at the University of Texas at Austin.
Go to Profile#1443
Stanislas Dehaene
#1445
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Stanislas Dehaene is a French author and cognitive neuroscientist whose research centers on a number of topics, including numerical cognition, the neural basis of reading and the neural correlates of consciousness. As of 2017, he is a professor at the Collège de France and, since 1989, the director of INSERM Unit 562, "Cognitive Neuroimaging".
Go to Profile#1444
Jon Elster
#1446
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Jon Elster is a Norwegian philosopher and political theorist who holds the Robert K. Merton professorship of Social Science at Columbia University. He received his PhD in social science from the École Normale Superieure in 1972. He has previously taught at the University of Paris, the University of Oslo, and the University of Chicago, where he became professor of political science in 1984. Since 1995, he has held the Robert K. Merton professorship of Social Science at Columbia University, as well as being professor of social science at the Collège de France since 2005.
Go to Profile#1445
Rodney Stark
#1447
Overall Influence
1934 - 2022 (88 years)
Rodney William Stark was an American sociologist of religion who was a longtime professor of sociology and of comparative religion at the University of Washington. At the time of his death he was the Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University, co-director of the university's Institute for Studies of Religion, and founding editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion.
Go to Profile#1446
Kurt Wüthrich
#1448
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Kurt Wüthrich is a Swiss chemist/biophysicist and Nobel Chemistry laureate, known for developing nuclear magnetic resonance methods for studying biological macromolecules. Education and early life Born in Aarberg, Switzerland, Wüthrich was educated in chemistry, physics, and mathematics at the University of Bern before pursuing his PhD supervised by Silvio Fallab at the University of Basel, awarded in 1964.
Go to Profile#1447
Nikolai Patrushev
#1449
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev is a Russian politician, security officer and intelligence officer who has served as the secretary of the Security Council of Russia since 2008. He previously served as the director of the Federal Security Service from 1999 to 2008. Belonging to the siloviki faction of president Vladimir Putin's inner circle, Patrushev is believed to be one of the closest advisors to Putin and a leading figure behind Russia's national security affairs. He played a key role in the decisions to invade Crimea in 2014, Syria in 2015, and Ukraine again in 2022. He is considered as very hawkish towards the West and the US.
Go to Profile#1448
Trayvon Martin
#1450
Overall Influence
1995 - 2012 (17 years)
Trayvon Benjamin Martin was a 17-year-old African-American from Miami Gardens, Florida, who was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida, by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Hispanic American. Martin had accompanied his father to visit his father's fiancée at her townhouse at The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford. On the evening of February 26, Martin was walking back to the fiancée's house from a nearby convenience store. Zimmerman, a member of the community watch, saw Martin and reported him to the Sanford Police as suspicious. Several minutes later, an altercation happened and Zimmerman fatally shot...
Go to Profile#1449
Shepard Fairey
#1451
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Frank Shepard Fairey is an American contemporary artist, activist and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene. In 1989 he designed the "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign while attending the Rhode Island School of Design .
Go to Profile#1450
Joan Didion
#1452
Overall Influence
1934 - 2021 (87 years)
Joan Didion was an American writer and journalist. She is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe. Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. Over the course of her career, Didion wrote essays for many magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Esquire, The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California.
Go to Profile