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
#14051
Gary Hart
#14062
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Gary Warren Hart is an American politician, diplomat, and lawyer. He was the front-runner for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination until he dropped out amid revelations of extramarital affairs. He represented Colorado in the United States Senate from 1975 to 1987.
Go to Profile#14052
Fred Donner
#14063
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Fred McGraw Donner is a scholar of Islam and Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Near Eastern History at the University of Chicago. He has published several books about early Islamic history. Life Donner was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, where he attended public schools. In 1968 he completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in Oriental Studies at Princeton University, having interrupted his studies from 1966 to 1967 to pursue the study of Arabic at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies in the village of Shimlan, Lebanon. From 1968 to 1970 he served with the U. S. Army, seeing duty with U.
Go to Profile#14053
Michael Kasha
#14064
Overall Influence
1920 - 2013 (93 years)
Michael Kasha was an American physical chemist and molecular spectroscopist who was one of the original founders of the Institute of Molecular Biophysics at Florida State University . Education and early work Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey to a family of Ukrainian immigrants, Kasha studied chemical engineering at night at the Cooper Union in New York City for two years while working full-time during the days at the Merck & Co. research facility in New Jersey. He then received a full scholarship to the University of Michigan, where he completed a bachelor's degree in chemistry. He earned his Ph.D.
Go to Profile#14054
Jonathan Bowen
#14065
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Jonathan P. Bowen FBCS FRSA is a British computer scientist and an Emeritus Professor at London South Bank University, where he headed the Centre for Applied Formal Methods. Prof. Bowen is also the Chairman of Museophile Limited and has been a Professor of Computer Science at Birmingham City University, Visiting Professor at the Pratt Institute , University of Westminster and King's College London, and a visiting academic at University College London.
Go to Profile#14055
Jorie Graham
#14066
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jorie Graham is an American poet. The Poetry Foundation called Graham "one of the most celebrated poets of the American post-war generation." She replaced poet Seamus Heaney as Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard, becoming the first woman to be appointed to this position. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994 and was chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1997 to 2003. She won the 2013 International Nonino Prize in Italy.
Go to Profile#14056
George A. Romero
#14067
Overall Influence
1940 - 2017 (77 years)
George Andrew Romero was an American-Canadian filmmaker, writer, editor and actor. His Night of the Living Dead series of films about an imagined zombie apocalypse began with the original Night of the Living Dead and is considered a major contributor to the image of the zombie in modern culture. Other films in the series include Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead . He later revived his attachment to the sub-genre with Land of the Dead , Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead , his final film. Aside from this series, his works include The Crazies , Martin , Knightriders , Creepshow , Monkey Shines , The Dark Half , and Bruiser .
Go to Profile#14057
Adam Levine
#14068
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Adam Noah Levine is an American musician who serves as the lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist, and sole continuous member of the pop rock band Maroon 5. Levine began his musical career in 1994 with the band Kara's Flowers, of which he was the lead vocalist and lead guitarist. After the commercial failure of their only album, The Fourth World, the group was reformed in 2001 as Maroon 5 – with James Valentine replacing him as lead guitarist. In 2002, they released their first album, Songs About Jane, which went multi-platinum in the US; since then, they have released six more albums: It Won't Be Soon Before Long , Hands All Over , Overexposed , V , Red Pill Blues , and Jordi .
Go to Profile#14058
Maryellen Fullerton
#14069
Overall Influence
Maryellen Fullerton is an American lawyer and academic. She is a professor of law and former interim dean at Brooklyn Law School. She was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Trento for 2012-13.
Go to Profile#14059
Johnny Unitas
#14070
Overall Influence
1933 - 2002 (69 years)
John Constantine Unitas was an American football quarterback who played 18 seasons in the National Football League , primarily with the Baltimore Colts. Following a career that spanned from 1956 to 1973, he has been listed as one of the greatest NFL players of all time.
Go to Profile#14060
Kevin Kline
#14071
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Kevin Delaney Kline is an American actor. Kline is known for his over five decade career as a leading man on stage and screen. He is the recipient of an Academy Award and three Tony Awards, and has been nominated for two British Academy Film Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and five Golden Globe Awards. In 2003, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#14061
John Laws
#14072
Overall Influence
1945 - 2020 (75 years)
Sir John Grant McKenzie Laws was a Lord Justice of Appeal. He served from 1999 to 2016. He was the Goodhart Visiting Professor of Legal Science at the University of Cambridge, and an Honorary Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#14062
Stuart Macintyre
#14073
Overall Influence
1947 - 2021 (74 years)
Stuart Forbes Macintyre was an Australian historian, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne from 1999 to 2008. He was voted one of Australia's most influential historians. Early life and education The son of Forbes Macintyre and Alison Stevens Macintyre, Stuart Macintyre was born in Melbourne on 21 April 1947. His schooling took place at Scotch College, and later at the University of Melbourne. While an undergraduate he specialised in history, and obtained his bachelor's degree in 1968. He also held a Master of Arts degree from Monash University and a PhD from the University of Cambridge , for which he was awarded the Blackwood Prize.
Go to Profile#14063
Tony Romo
#14074
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Antonio Ramiro Romo is an American former football quarterback who played in the National Football League for 14 seasons with the Dallas Cowboys. He played college football for the Eastern Illinois Panthers, where he made an Ohio Valley Conference championship appearance in 2001 and won the Walter Payton Award the following year. Romo signed with the Cowboys as an undrafted free agent in 2003. Romo was fifth in the line of succession of Cowboys franchise quarterbacks since 1963, preceding current franchise player Dak Prescott.
Go to Profile#14064
Kenneth Minogue
#14075
Overall Influence
1930 - 2013 (83 years)
Kenneth Robert Minogue , also known as Ken Minogue, was an Australian academic and political theorist. Long residing in the United Kingdom, Minogue was a prominent part of the intellectual life of British conservatism.
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George Eman Vaillant
#14076
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
George Eman Vaillant is an American psychiatrist and Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of Research for the Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital. Vaillant has spent his research career charting adult development and the recovery process of schizophrenia, heroin addiction, alcoholism, and personality disorder. Through 2003, he spent 30 years as Director of the Study of Adult Development at the Harvard University Health Service. The study has prospectively charted the lives of 724 men and women for over 60 years.
Go to Profile#14066
Dion Forster
#14077
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Dion Angus Forster is an academic and clergyman. He serves as a professor of Public Theology in the Faculty of Religion and Theology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is a Research Fellow in the Department of Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology, in the Faculty of Theology, Stellenbosch University where he previously served as full professor and head of department until October 2023. In addition, Prof Forster is a Research Fellow at Wesley House, Cambridge, and an Associate of the Allan Gray Centre for Values Based Leadership at the University of Cape Town, Graduate School of Business.
Go to Profile#14067
Chunying Chen
#14078
Overall Influence
Chunying Chen is a Chinese chemist who is a professor at the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology. Her research considers nanoscale biological interactions. She was awarded the 2021 Royal Society of Chemistry Environment, Sustainability and Energy Award. She is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Go to Profile#14068
Zhenan Bao
#14079
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Zhenan Bao is a chemical engineer. She serves as K. K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, with courtesy appointments in Chemistry and Material Science and Engineering. She served as the Department Chair of Chemical Engineering from 2018 to 2022. Bao is known for her work on organic field-effect transistors and organic semiconductors, for applications including flexible electronics and electronic skin.
Go to Profile#14069
Auberon Waugh
#14080
Overall Influence
1939 - 2001 (62 years)
Auberon Alexander Waugh was an English journalist and novelist, and eldest son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. He was widely known by his nickname "Bron". After a traditional classical education at Downside School, he was commissioned in the army during National Service, where he was badly injured in a shooting accident. He went on to study for a year at Oxford University.
Go to Profile#14070
Wolfgang Fritz Haug
#14081
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Wolfgang Fritz Haug was from 1979 till his retirement in 2001 professor of philosophy at the Free University Berlin, where he had also studied romance languages and religious studies and taken his PhD .
Go to Profile#14071
Dennis H. Holtschneider
#14082
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Dennis Henry Holtschneider is president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. Previously, he was the executive vice president and chief operations officer for Ascension Health, serving from July 2017 through June 2019. Prior to this, he served as president of DePaul University in Chicago, United States, serving from July 2004 through June 2017.
Go to Profile#14072
Christopher Wise
#14083
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Christopher Wise is a cultural theorist, literary critic, scholar, and translator. His publications largely focus on Sahelian West Africa, especially Mali, Burkina Faso, and Senegal, as well as Palestine, Jordan, and Israel. He has also published theoretical works on Fredric Jameson, Jacques Derrida, and Noam Chomsky.
Go to Profile#14073
Brian Jones
#14084
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Brian George Jones is an English balloonist. Brian Jones, along with Bertrand Piccard, co-piloted the first successful uninterrupted circumnavigation of the world on board a balloon, the Breitling Orbiter 3. They set off on 1 March 1999 from Château d'Oex in Switzerland and landed in Egypt after a flight lasting 19 days, 21 hours and 47 minutes. For this achievement, he received awards including the Harmon Trophy, the Hubbard Medal, the FAI Gold Air Medal, the Charles Green Salver, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of t...
Go to Profile#14074
Adam Kendon
#14085
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Adam Kendon was one of the world's foremost authorities on the topic of gesture, which he viewed broadly as meaning all the ways in which humans use visible bodily action in creating utterances including not only how this is done in speakers but also in the way it is used in speakers or deaf when only visible bodily action is available for expression. At the University of Cambridge, he read Botany, Zoology and Human Physiology, as well as Experimental Psychology for the Natural Sciences. At the University of Oxford, he studied Experimental Psychology, focusing on the temporal organization of utterances in conversation, using Eliot Chapple's chronography.
Go to Profile#14075
Russell Howard
#14086
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Russell Joseph Howard is an English comedian, television presenter, radio presenter, and actor. He was known for his television show Russell Howard's Good News and his appearances on the topical panel TV show Mock the Week, and is currently doing The Russell Howard Hour. He won "Best Compère" at the 2006 Chortle Awards and was nominated for an Edinburgh Comedy Award for his 2006 Aberdeen Festival Fringe show. Howard has cited comedians Lee Evans, Richard Pryor, and Frank Skinner as influences.
Go to Profile#14076
Theodore Drange
#14087
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Theodore "Ted" Michael Drange is a philosopher of religion and Professor Emeritus at West Virginia University, where he taught philosophy from 1966 to 2001. Life After graduating from Fort Hamilton High School, he received a B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1955 and a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1963, where he moved to after one year of graduate school at Yale.
Go to Profile#14077
Francesca Stavrakopoulou
#14088
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Francesca Stavrakopoulou is a British biblical scholar and broadcaster. She is currently Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter. The main focus of her research is on the Hebrew Bible, and on Israelite and Judahite history and religion.
Go to Profile#14078
Baruch Fischhoff
#14089
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Baruch Fischhoff is an American academic who is the Howard Heinz University Professor in the Institute for Strategy and Technology and the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. His research focuses on judgment and decision making, including risk perception and risk Analysis. He has numerous academic books and articles. Fischhoff completed his graduate education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.
Go to Profile#14079
Martin Balluch
#14090
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Martin Balluch is an Austrian physicist, philosopher, vegan and prominent animal rights activist. He co-founded the Austrian Vegan Society in 1999, and has been president of the Austrian Association Against Animal Factories since 2002. The philosopher Peter Singer has called Balluch "one of the foremost spokesmen in the worldwide animal rights movement for pursuing the nonviolent, democratic road to reform."
Go to Profile#14080
Paul Edwards
#14091
Overall Influence
1923 - 2004 (81 years)
Paul Edwards was an Austrian-American moral philosopher. He was the editor-in-chief of MacMillan's eight-volume Encyclopedia of Philosophy from 1967, and lectured at New York University, Brooklyn College and the New School for Social Research from the 1960s to the 1990s.
Go to Profile#14081
James A. Forbes
#14092
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
James Alexander Forbes, Jr. is the Senior Minister Emeritus of the Riverside Church, an interdenominational church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City. He was the first African American minister to lead this multicultural congregation, and served it for 18 years.
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Jorge Majfud
#14093
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Jorge Majfud is a Uruguayan American professor and writer. Life He was born in Tacuarembó, Uruguay. He received a professional degree in Architecture in 1996 from the University of the Republic in Montevideo and studied at Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes. He traveled extensively to gather material that would later become part of his novels and essays and was a professor at the Universidad Hispanoamericana of Costa Rica and at Escuela Técnica del Uruguay, where he taught art and mathematics.
Go to Profile#14083
Spike Milligan
#14094
Overall Influence
1918 - 2002 (84 years)
Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan was an Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright and actor. The son of an English mother and Irish father, he was born in British Colonial India, where he spent his childhood before relocating in 1931 to England, where he lived and worked for the majority of his life. Disliking his first name, he began to call himself "Spike" after hearing the band Spike Jones and his City Slickers on Radio Luxembourg.
Go to Profile#14084
John Holdren
#14095
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
John Paul Holdren is an American scientist who served as the senior advisor to President Barack Obama on science and technology issues through his roles as assistant to the president for science and technology, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology .
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Helen Sawyer Hogg
#14096
Overall Influence
1905 - 1993 (88 years)
Helen Battles Sawyer Hogg was an American-Canadian astronomer who pioneered research into globular clusters and variable stars. She was the first female president of several astronomical organizations and a scientist when many universities would not award scientific degrees to women. Her scientific advocacy and journalism included astronomy columns in the Toronto Star and the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada . She was considered a "great scientist and a gracious person" over a career of sixty years.
Go to Profile#14086
Antonia Darder
#14097
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Antonia Darder is a Puerto Rican and American scholar, artist, poet and activist. She holds the Leavey Presidential Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Leadership in the School of Education at Loyola Marymount University. She also is Professor Emerita of Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Go to Profile#14087
Doc Rivers
#14098
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Glenn Anton "Doc" Rivers is an American former professional basketball coach, player, and current analyst for ESPN. He played in the National Basketball Association for 14 seasons and served as a head coach for 25 seasons.
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Anne Allison
#14099
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Anne Allison is a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University in the United States, specializing in contemporary Japanese society. She wrote the book Nightwork on hostess clubs and Japanese corporate culture after having worked at a hostess club in Tokyo.
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Oriana Bandiera
#14100
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Oriana Bandiera, FBA is an Italian economist and academic, specialising in development economics. She has been Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics since 2009. She is currently the Sir Anthony Atkinson Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, and co-editor of Econometrica. Her area of study primarily concerns organizations and labor markets, and their relationship with the process of economic development.
Go to Profile#14090
Yaşar Nuri Öztürk
#14101
Overall Influence
1951 - 2016 (65 years)
Yaşar Nuri Öztürk was a Turkish Islamic scholar, university professor of Islamic philosophy, lawyer, columnist and a former member of Turkish parliament. He has been described as a Quranist and has given many conferences on Islamic thought, humanity and human rights in Turkey, the USA, Europe, the Middle East and the Balkans. In 1999, members of a violent extremist group called Great Eastern Islamic Raiders' Front confessed that they had planned an assassination attempt that never took place.
Go to Profile#14091
Herbert Ginsburg
#14102
Overall Influence
Herbert P. Ginsburg is Jacob H. Schiff Foundation Professor of Psychology & Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is a leading interpreter of children's understanding of mathematics, with research and teaching interests in intellectual development, mathematics education, and testing and assessment. He is a co-author of the Big Math for Little Kids curriculum for prekindergarten and kindergarten.
Go to Profile#14092
James G. Lennox
#14103
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
James G. Lennox is an emeritus professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, United States, with secondary appointments in the departments of Classics and Philosophy. He is a leader in the study of Aristotelian science in light of his groundbreaking work on Aristotle's biology and philosophy of biology. In particular, Lennox's work in the 1980s catalyzed a renewed interest in Aristotle's biology by arguing that his natural historical works are consistent with and even demonstrative of the scientific methodology he lays out in the Posterior Analytics.
Go to Profile#14093
Raymond Federman
#14104
Overall Influence
1928 - 2009 (81 years)
Raymond Federman was a French–American novelist and academic, known also for poetry, essays, translations, and criticism. He held positions at the University at Buffalo from 1973 to 1999, when he was appointed Distinguished Emeritus Professor. Federman was a writer in the experimental style, one that sought to deconstruct traditional prose. This type of writing is quite prevalent in his book Double or Nothing, in which the linear narrative of the story has been broken down and restructured so as to be nearly incoherent. Words are also often arranged on pages to resemble images or to suggest r...
Go to Profile#14094
Mihir Bellare
#14105
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Mihir Bellare is a cryptographer and professor at the University of California San Diego. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Caltech and a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has published several seminal papers in the field of cryptography , many of which were co-written with Phillip Rogaway. Bellare has published a number of papers in the field of Format-Preserving Encryption. His students include Michel Abdalla, Chanathip Namprempre, Tadayoshi Kohno and Anton Mityagin. Bellare is one of the authors of skein.
Go to Profile#14095
Wendy Lower
#14106
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Wendy Lower is an American historian and a widely published author on the Holocaust and World War II. Since 2012, she holds the John K. Roth Chair at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, and in 2014 was named the director of the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont. As of 2016, she serves as the interim director of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.
Go to Profile#14096
Delores S. Williams
#14107
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Delores Seneva Williams was an American Presbyterian theologian and professor notable for her formative role in the development of womanist theology and best known for her book Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk. Her writings use black women's experiences as epistemological sources, and she is known for her womanist critique of atonement theories. As opposed to feminist theology, predominantly practiced by white women, and black theology, predominantly practiced by black men, Williams argued that black women's experiences generate critical theological insights and q...
Go to Profile#14097
Peter Vardy
#14108
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Peter Christian Vardy is a British theologian. The author or co-author of 18 books about religion and ethics, Vardy was vice-principal of Heythrop College, a Jesuit college in London, from 1999 to 2011. He is known for the religious-studies conferences he runs in the UK for schools.
Go to Profile#14098
Jan Švejnar
#14109
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jan Švejnar is a United States-based, Czech-born economist. He was a candidate for the 2008 election of the President of the Czech Republic. Professor Švejnar is director of the Center on Global Economic Governance and professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University. He is also a founder and chairman of CERGE-EI in Prague . He also served as the chairman of the Supervisory Board of ČSOB Bank and co-editor of the Economics of Transition. Since 2007, he is a member of the International Advisory Council of the Center for Social and Economic Research . He is also a Fellow of...
Go to Profile#14099
Gerard Egan
#14110
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Gerard Egan is Professor Emeritus of Loyola University of Chicago. He was born in Chicago, Illinois on 17 June 1930, graduated from Loyola Academy, Chicago in June 1948, and from Loyola University, June 1953, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. He studied philosophy at West Baden College in Indiana, then a Jesuit seminary linked to Loyola University, and received a Licentiate in Philosophy in June 1955. From September 1966 to June 1967, he taught French and Spanish at St. Ignatius High School, Chicago, and began teaching philosophy at Loyola University in September 1968.
Go to Profile#14100
Yusuke Nakamura
#14111
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
is a Japanese prominent geneticist and cancer researcher best known for developing Genome-Wide Association Study . He is one of the world's pioneers in applying genetic variations and whole genome sequencing, leading the research field of personalized medicine.
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