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
#14201
David Baker
#14212
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
David Baker is an American biochemist and computational biologist who has pioneered methods to predict and design the three-dimensional structures of proteins. He is the Henrietta and Aubrey Davis Endowed Professor in Biochemistry and an adjunct professor of genome sciences, bioengineering, chemical engineering, computer science, and physics at the University of Washington. He serves as the director of the Rosetta Commons, a consortium of labs and researchers that develop biomolecular structure prediction and design software. The problem of protein structure prediction to which Baker has contributed significantly has now been largely solved by DeepMind using artificial intelligence.
Go to Profile#14202
Kathleen M. Sutcliffe
#14213
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Kathleen Sutcliffe is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Business at the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School and School of Medicine and the Gilbert and Ruth Whitaker Professor Emerita of Business Administration at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. She studies high-reliability organizations and group decision making in order to understand how organizations and their members cope with uncertainty and unexpected events, with a focus on reliability, resilience, and safety in health care.
Go to Profile#14203
Danny La Rue
#14214
Overall Influence
1927 - 2009 (82 years)
Danny La Rue, was an Irish-English singer and entertainer, best known for his on-stage drag persona. He performed in drag and also as himself in theatrical productions, television shows and film. Early life Born Daniel Patrick Carroll in Cork City, Ireland, in 1927, La Rue was the youngest of five siblings. The family moved to England when he was six and he was brought up at Earnshaw Street in Covent Garden, Central London. When the family home was destroyed during the Blitz, his mother, a seamstress, moved her children to Kennford, a Devon village where young Daniel developed an interest in dramatics.
Go to Profile#14204
Bolívar Echeverría
#14215
Overall Influence
1941 - 2010 (69 years)
Bolívar Echeverría was a philosopher, economist and cultural critic, born in Ecuador and later nationalized Mexican. He was professor emeritus on the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the National Autonomous University of Mexico .
Go to Profile#14205
Barry R. Weingast
#14216
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Barry Robert Weingast is an American political scientist and economist, who is currently the Ward C. Krebs Family Professor at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Weingast's research concentrates on the relationship between politics and economics, particularly economic reform, regulation, and the political foundation of markets.
Go to Profile#14206
Salma Hayek
#14217
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Salma Hayek Pinault is a Mexican and American actress and film producer. She began her career in Mexico with starring roles in the telenovela Teresa as well as the romantic drama Midaq Alley . She soon established herself in Hollywood with appearances in films such as Desperado , From Dusk till Dawn , Wild Wild West , and Dogma .
Go to Profile#14207
David Truman
#14218
Overall Influence
1913 - 2003 (90 years)
David Bicknell Truman was an American academic who served as the 14th president of Mount Holyoke College from 1969–1978. He is also known for his role as a Columbia University administrator during the Columbia University protests of 1968. Truman was an elected member of both the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#14208
Christian Parenti
#14219
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Christian Parenti is an American investigative journalist, academic, and author. Early life and education Parenti is the son of Michael Parenti and Susan Parenti. He attended Buxton School in Williamstown, Massachusetts, The New School for Social Research, and the London School of Economics, where he earned a PhD in Sociology and Geography.
Go to Profile#14209
Phil S. Baran
#14220
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Phil S. Baran is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute and Member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology. Baran has authored over 130 published scientific articles. He has several patents. His work is focused on synthesizing complex organic compounds, the development of new reactions, and the development of new reagents.
Go to Profile#14210
Jen Golbeck
#14221
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Jennifer Golbeck is a computer scientist. She currently is a professor at the College of Information Studies, an affiliate professor in the Computer Science Department, and an affiliate professor in the Journalism Department, all at the University of Maryland, College Park. Golbeck was director of the University of Maryland Human–Computer Interaction Lab from 2011 to 2014.
Go to Profile#14211
Cyrus Chothia
#14222
Overall Influence
1942 - 2019 (77 years)
Cyrus Homi Chothia was an English biochemist who was an emeritus scientist at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Cambridge and emeritus fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#14212
Barbara Harff
#14223
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Barbara Harff is professor of political science emerita at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. In 2003 and again in 2005 she was a distinguished visiting professor at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Her research focuses on the causes, risks, and prevention of genocidal violence.
Go to Profile#14213
Eva Cantarella
#14224
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Eva Cantarella is an Italian classicist. She is professor of Roman law and ancient Greek law at the University of Milan, and has served as Dean of the Law School at the University of Camerino. Biography Cantarella is known for examining ancient law by relating it to modern legal issues through law and society perspective. She has researched subjects involving the legal and social history of sexuality, women's conditions, criminal law and capital punishment.
Go to Profile#14214
Richard Hieb
#14225
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Richard James Hieb is a former NASA astronaut and a veteran of three Space Shuttle missions. He was a mission specialist on STS-39 and STS-49, and was a payload commander on STS-65. After leaving NASA he worked at AlliedSignal and Orbital before spending 14 years as an executive at Lockheed Martin. He is currently a faculty member in the University of Colorado Boulder Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department.
Go to Profile#14215
Stanley Grenz
#14226
Overall Influence
1950 - 2005 (55 years)
Stanley James Grenz was an American Christian theologian and ethicist in the Baptist tradition. Early years Grenz was born on 7 January 1950 in Alpena, Michigan. He studied at the University of Colorado and obtained a Bachelor of Arts in 1973, then he studied theology at the Denver Seminary and obtained a Master of Divinity in 1979. He also studied at University of Munich and obtained a Doctor of Theology, under the supervision of theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg. He was ordained to pastoral ministry on 13 June 1976.
Go to Profile#14216
Shaun Wylie
#14227
Overall Influence
1913 - 2009 (96 years)
Shaun Wylie was a British mathematician and World War II codebreaker. Early life Wylie was born in Oxford, England. The fourth son of Sir Francis Wylie and his wife Kathleen , he was educated at the Dragon School and then Winchester College. He won a scholarship to New College, Oxford where he studied mathematics and classics. In 1934, he went to study topology at Princeton University, obtaining a PhD in 1937 with Solomon Lefschetz as his supervisor. At Princeton he met fellow English mathematician Alan Turing. He became a fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1938/1939.
Go to Profile#14217
T. Rajendar
#14228
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Thesingu Rajendar , also known as Vijaya T. Rajendar or T. R., is an Indian actor, filmmaker, musician, cinematographer and distributor who works primarily in the Tamil film industry. He is also a politician in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Rajendar is known for being able to speak in rhyming sentences spontaneously.
Go to Profile#14218
Harry B. Whittington
#14229
Overall Influence
1916 - 2010 (94 years)
Harry Blackmore Whittington FRS was a British palaeontologist who made a major contribution to the study of fossils of the Burgess Shale and other Cambrian fauna. His works are largely responsible for the concept of Cambrian explosion, whereby modern animal body plans are explained to originate during a short span of geological period. With initial work on trilobites, his discoveries revealed that these arthropods were the most diversified of all invertebrates during the Cambrian Period. He was responsible for setting the standard for naming and describing the delicate fossils preserved in Ko...
Go to Profile#14219
Jacques Balthazart
#14230
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jacques Balthazart is a Belgian biologist who specializes in behavioral neuroendocrinology, author of multiple publications and working at the University of Liège. He is currently director emeritus of the Research Group in Behavioral Neurobiology at the GIGA Neurosciences of the University of Liège.
Go to Profile#14220
Wayne Shorter
#14231
Overall Influence
1933 - 2023 (90 years)
Wayne Shorter was an American jazz saxophonist, composer and bandleader. Shorter came to mainstream prominence in 1959 upon joining Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, for whom he eventually became the primary composer. In 1964 he joined Miles Davis' Second Great Quintet, and then co-founded the jazz fusion band Weather Report in 1970. He recorded more than 20 albums as a bandleader.
Go to Profile#14221
Princess Benedikte of Denmark
#14232
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Princess Benedikte of Denmark, Dowager Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg is a member of the Danish royal family. She is the second daughter and child of King Frederick IX and Queen Ingrid of Denmark. She is the younger sister of the reigning Queen of Denmark, Margrethe II, and the older sister of Queen Anne-Marie of Greece.
Go to Profile#14222
Gerald Schatten
#14233
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Gerald Schatten is an American stem cell researcher with interests in cell, developmental, and reproductive biology. He is Professor and vice-chair of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences and Professor of Cell Biology and of Bioengineering in the Schools of Medicine and Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is also Director of the Division of Developmental and Regenerative Medicine at the university's School of Medicine. Additionally, he is deputy director of the Magee-Women's Research Institute and Director of the Pittsburgh Development Center.. He is a member of...
Go to Profile#14223
Abass Alavi
#14234
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Abass Alavi is an Iranian-American physician-scientist specializing in the field of molecular imaging, most notably in the imaging modality of positron emission tomography . In August 1976, he was part of the team that performed the first human PET studies of the brain and whole body using the radiotracer [18F]Fluorodeoxyglucose . Alavi holds the position of Professor of Radiology and Neurology, as well as Director of Research Education in the Department of Radiology at the University of Pennsylvania. Over a career spanning five decades, he has amassed over 2,300 publications and 60,000 citat...
Go to Profile#14224
Minxin Pei
#14235
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Minxin Pei is a Chinese-American political scientist and opinion columnist, who is the editor of the China Leadership Monitor. He is a specialist on governance in China, U.S.–East Asia relations, as well as democratization in developing nations. He is currently the Tom and Margot Pritzker '72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College and is a non-resident senior fellow with the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. He was formerly a senior associate with the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Go to Profile#14225
Ferenc Szabadváry
#14236
Overall Influence
1923 - 2006 (83 years)
Ferenc Szabadváry was a Hungarian chemist and historian. From 1971 he was director at the Hungarian National Museum for Science and Technology. In 1960 he published a history of analytical chemistry in Hungarian. A translation was made by Gyula Svehla in 1966, first published with Pergamon Press and later Gordon and Breach.
Go to Profile#14226
Manu Prakash
#14237
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Manu Prakash is an Indian scientist who is a professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. Manu was born in Meerut, India. He is best known for his contributions to the Foldscope and Paperfuge. Prakash received the MacArthur Fellowship in September 2016. He and his team are also working on a water droplet based computer in Stanford University. His work focuses on frugal innovation that makes medicine, computing and microscopy accessible to more people across the world.
Go to Profile#14227
E. Roy Weintraub
#14238
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Eliot Roy Weintraub is an American mathematician, economist, and, since 1976, professor of economics at Duke University. He was born in 1943 in New York City. Career Weintraub has published numerous articles in professional journals and other edited volumes. His teaching and research have traced the connection between mathematics and economics at technical, methodological or historical, and micro and macro levels. A broad theme of later work has been the transformation of economics from a historical to a mathematical discipline, as in General Equilibrium Analysis , Stabilizing Dynamics: Cons...
Go to Profile#14228
David Parlett
#14239
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
David Parlett is a games scholar, historian, and translator from South London, who has studied both card games and board games. He is the president of the British Skat Association. Life David Sidney Parlett was born in London on 18 May 1939 to Sidney Thomas Parlett and Eleanor May Parlett, née Nunan. He is one of three brothers. During the Second World War, Parlett lived in Barry, Glamorgan. Parlett was educated at Battersea Grammar School and the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth. He has a BA in Modern Languages. Parlett was a technical writer with PR companies and later a freelance write for Games & Puzzles magazine.
Go to Profile#14229
Theo van Boven
#14240
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Theodoor Cornelis van Boven is a Dutch jurist and professor emeritus in international law. In 1977, he was appointed director of the United Nations' Division for Human Rights, a precursor of the UN Human Rights Office.
Go to Profile#14230
Glenn Shafer
#14241
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Glenn Shafer is an American mathematician and statistician. He is the co-creator of Dempster–Shafer theory. He is a University Professor and Board of Governors Professor at Rutgers University. Early life and education Shafer grew up on a farm near Caney, Kansas. He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Princeton University, then entered the Peace Corps, serving in Afghanistan. He returned to Princeton, earning a PhD in mathematical statistics in 1973 under Geoffrey Watson.
Go to Profile#14231
Francesca Schiavone
#14242
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Francesca Schiavone is an Italian former tennis player. She turned professional in 1998 and won the 2010 French Open singles title, becoming the first Italian woman to win a Grand Slam event in singles. She was also runner-up at the 2011 French Open. Her career-high ranking is world No. 4, achieved on 31 January 2011. To date, Schiavone is the last one-handed-backhand player to win a Grand Slam title on the women's tour.
Go to Profile#14232
Amnon Netzer
#14243
Overall Influence
1934 - 2008 (74 years)
Amnon Netzer was an Iranian-born Israeli historian, researcher, professor and journalist. Netzer was a leading authority on Iranian history and culture as well as Persian and Judeo-Persian languages. Netzer founded Israel Broadcasting Authority's Persian Service in 1958 and was a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem until his death in 2008.
Go to Profile#14233
Maxine Greene
#14244
Overall Influence
1917 - 2014 (97 years)
Sarah Maxine Greene was an American educational philosopher, author, social activist, and teacher. Described upon her death as "perhaps the most iconic and influential living figure associated with Teachers College, Columbia University", she was a pioneer for women in the field of philosophy of education, often being the sole woman presenter at educational philosophy conferences as well as being the first woman president of the Philosophy of Education Society in 1967. Additionally, she was the first woman to preside over the American Educational Research Association in 1981.
Go to Profile#14234
Grigori Tokaty
#14245
Overall Influence
1913 - 2003 (90 years)
Grigory Aleksandrovich Tokaev also known as Grigory Tokaty; was a Soviet rocket scientist and politician. Eventually turned anti-communist, he defected to the United Kingdom and became a long-standing critic of Stalin's USSR.
Go to Profile#14235
Harry Kesten
#14246
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Harry Kesten was a Jewish American mathematician best known for his work in probability, most notably on random walks on groupss and graphs, random matrices, branching processes, and percolation theory.
Go to Profile#14236
Jean Delumeau
#14247
Overall Influence
1923 - 2020 (97 years)
Jean Léon Marie Delumeau was a French historian specializing in the history of the Catholic Church, and author of several books regarding the subject. He held the Chair of the History of Religious Mentalities at the Collège de France and was a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres.
Go to Profile#14237
Jim Bittermann
#14248
Overall Influence
Jim Bittermann is Senior European correspondent for CNN since 1996. Career Bittermann graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Southern Illinois University in 1970 and began in print journalism from 1965 to 1970 as a reporter for the Waukegan News-Sun in Waukegan, Illinois. His television career began at WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee from 1970 to 1972. From 1972 to 1973 he worked at WQED-TV in Pittsburgh and 1973 to 1975 he was as a reporter for WKYC-TV in Cleveland, Ohio. Bittermann was with CBC News as a Toronto-based correspondent and producer for CBC News Magazine from 1975 to 1978.
Go to Profile#14238
Patrick Blanc
#14249
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Patrick Blanc is a French botanist who works at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, where he specializes in plants from tropical forests. He is the modern innovator of the green wall, specifically, he invented the modern vertical hydroponics garden, which distinguishes it from its predecessors .
Go to Profile#14239
John L. Helgerson
#14250
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
John L. Helgerson is a retired career intelligence officer who spent 38 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, his final role was CIA Inspector General from 2002 until his retirement in 2009. He was responsible for investigating CIA interrogations of terror suspects, and compiled a report critical of agency practices in 2005 which was released in 2009 by the Obama administration.
Go to Profile#14240
David Eastwood
#14251
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Sir David Stephen Eastwood, , is a British academic and long serving university leader who was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Birmingham between 13 April 2009 and December 2021. Early life Eastwood was born on 5 January 1959 in Oldham, Lancashire, and educated at Sandbach School. In 1980, he graduated from St Peter's College, Oxford, with a First Class Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern History, and was promoted to Master of Arts in 1985. He completed his Doctor of Philosophy in 1985, also from the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#14241
Matthew Foreman
#14252
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Matthew Dean Foreman is an American mathematician at University of California, Irvine. He has made notable contributions in set theory and in ergodic theory. Biography Born in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Foreman earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1980 under Robert M. Solovay. His dissertation title was Large Cardinals and Strong Model Theoretic Transfer Properties.
Go to Profile#14242
Charlayne Hunter-Gault
#14253
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Alberta Charlayne Hunter-Gault is an Americann civil rights activist, journalist and former foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, CNN, and the Public Broadcasting Service. Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes were the first African-American students to attend the University of Georgia.
Go to Profile#14243
David Colander
#14254
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
David Charles Colander is an American economist, and the Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Economics at Middlebury College. He is known for his study of the economics profession itself and socioeconomics. His books The Making of an Economist and its later edition, The Making of an Economist, Redux, have been called "essential reading for prospective graduate students". He has authored over 35 books and 100 articles on a wide variety of subjects. He has expressed interest in complexity economics. His latest work focuses on economic education, complexity, and the methodology appr...
Go to Profile#14244
Wilhelm Walcher
#14255
Overall Influence
1910 - 2005 (95 years)
Wilhelm Walcher was a German experimental physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club; he worked on mass spectrometers for isotope separation. After the war, he was director of the Institute of Physics at the University of Marburg. He was a president of the German Physical Society and a vice president of the German Research Foundation. He helped found the Society for Heavy Ion Research and the German Electron Synchrotron DESY. He was also one of the 18 signatories of the Göttingen Manifest.
Go to Profile#14245
Andrew Arato
#14256
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Andrew Arato is a professor of Political and Social Theory in the Department of Sociology at The New School, best known for his influential book Civil Society and Political Theory, coauthored with Jean L. Cohen. He is also known for his work on critical theory and constitutions and was from 1994 to 2014 co-editor of the journal Constellations with Nancy Fraser and Nadia Urbinati.
Go to Profile#14246
Nicola Guarino
#14257
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Nicola Guarino is an Italian computer scientist and researcher in the area of Formal Ontology for Information Systems, and the head of the Laboratory for Applied Ontology , part of the Italian National Research Council in Trento.
Go to Profile#14247
John Lydon
#14258
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
John Joseph Lydon , also known by his former stage name Johnny Rotten, is an English-American singer and songwriter. He was the lead vocalist of the punk rock band the Sex Pistols, which was active from 1975 to 1978, and again for various revivals during the 1990s and 2000s. He is also the lead vocalist of post-punk band Public Image Ltd , which he founded and fronted from 1978 until 1993, and again since 2009.
Go to Profile#14248
Ben Hammersley
#14259
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Ben Hammersley FRSA FRGS is a British technologist, strategic foresight consultant, futurist, keynote speaker, broadcaster and systems developer, based in New York City. He specializes on Adaptive Futurism and Cognitive Risk from a multidisciplinary perspective.
Go to Profile#14249
John F. Rockart
#14260
Overall Influence
1931 - 2014 (83 years)
John Fralick Rockart was an American organizational theorist, and Senior Lecturer Emeritus at the Center for Information Systems Research at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Biography Born in New York City, Rockart received his AB from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, his MBA from Harvard Business School, and in 1968 his PhD in management from MIT.
Go to Profile#14250
Knut Schmidt-Nielsen
#14261
Overall Influence
1915 - 2007 (92 years)
Knut Schmidt-Nielsen was a prominent figure in the field of comparative physiology and Professor of Physiology Emeritus at Duke University. Background Born in Trondheim, Norway. He was educated in Oslo and Copenhagen. He became a student in the laboratory of August Krogh in Copenhagen in 1937. Schmidt-Nielsen moved to the United States, where he studied at Swarthmore College, Stanford University, and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He was the leader of expeditions to the Sahara Desert in 1953–54 and central Australia in 1962. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Trustee of Mt....
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