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
#14251
Andre Iguodala
#14262
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Andre Tyler Iguodala is an American former professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association . The swingman was an NBA All-Star in 2012 and was named to the NBA All-Defensive Team twice. He won four NBA championships with the Golden State Warriors and was named the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player in 2015. He was also a member of the U.S. national team at the 2010 FIBA World Championship and 2012 Summer Olympics, winning the gold medal both times.
Go to Profile#14252
Harvey Keitel
#14263
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Harvey Keitel is an American actor known for his portrayal of morally ambiguous and "tough guy" characters. He rose to prominence during the New Hollywood movement, earning particular acclaim from his collaborations with Martin Scorsese, having starred in six of his films: Who's That Knocking at My Door , Mean Streets , Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore , Taxi Driver , The Last Temptation of Christ , and The Irishman . He has also appeared in three films directed by Wes Anderson: Moonrise Kingdom , The Grand Budapest Hotel , and Isle of Dogs .
Go to Profile#14253
Ryuichi Sakamoto
#14264
Overall Influence
1952 - 2023 (71 years)
was a Japanese composer, pianist, record producer, and actor who pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra . With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto influenced and pioneered a number of electronic music genres.
Go to Profile#14254
John Barton
#14265
Overall Influence
1928 - 2018 (90 years)
John Bernard Adie Barton, CBE , was a British theatre director and teacher whose close association with the Royal Shakespeare Company spanned more than half a century. Early life John Barton was the son of Sir Harold Montague and Lady Barton . He was educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge and while at Cambridge directed and acted in many productions for the Marlowe Society and the ADC. At the Westminster Theatre in July 1953 he directed his first London production, Henry V for the Elizabethan Theatre Company. He created a 12-part series for BBC Radio on the medieval Mysteries,...
Go to Profile#14255
Vladimir Skulachev
#14266
Overall Influence
1935 - 2023 (88 years)
Vladimir Petrovich Skulachev was a Russian biochemist, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences , Doctor of Biological Sciences, Distinguished Professor at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, where he also was Dean of the Faculty of Bioengineering and Bioinformatics and Director of the A.N. Belozersky Institute Of Physico-Chemical Biology. Member of Academia Europaea. Laureate of the 1975 USSR State Prize and of the 2017 Demidov Prize. President of the Biochemical Society .
Go to Profile#14256
Eric Mazur
#14267
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Eric Mazur is a physicist and educator at Harvard University, and an entrepreneur in technology start-ups for the educational and technology markets. Mazur's research is in experimental ultrafast optics, condensed matter physics and peer instruction. Born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, he received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Leiden University.
Go to Profile#14257
Eduard Zehnder
#14268
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Eduard J. Zehnder is a Swiss mathematician, considered one of the founders of symplectic topology. Biography Zehnder studied mathematics and physics at ETH Zurich from 1960 to 1965, where he also did his Ph.D. in theoretical physics, defending his thesis on the three-body problem in 1971 under the direction of Res Jost. He was a visiting professor at Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences , visiting member of Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1972 to 1974. He passed his habilitation in mathematics in 1974 at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He had appointments at the Uni...
Go to Profile#14258
Adam Frank
#14269
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Adam Frank is an American physicist, astronomer, and writer. His scientific research has focused on computational astrophysics with an emphasis on star formation and late stages of stellar evolution. His work includes studies of exoplanet atmospheres and astrobiology. The latter include studies of the generic response of planets to the evolution of energy-intensive civilizations .
Go to Profile#14259
Debabrata Basu
#14270
Overall Influence
1924 - 2001 (77 years)
Debabrata Basu was an Indian statistician who made fundamental contributions to the foundations of statistics. Basu invented simple examples that displayed some difficulties of likelihood-based statistics and frequentist statistics; Basu's paradoxes were especially important in the development of survey sampling. In statistical theory, Basu's theorem established the independence of a complete sufficient statistic and an ancillary statistic.
Go to Profile#14260
Terrell Ward Bynum
#14271
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Terrell Ward Bynum is an American philosopher, writer and editor. Bynum is currently director of the Research Center on Computing and Society at Southern Connecticut State University, where he is also a professor of philosophy, and visiting professor in the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility in De Montfort University, Leicester, England. He is best known as a pioneer and historian in the field of computer and information ethics; for his achievements in that field, he was awarded the Barwise Prize of the American Philosophical Association, the Weizenbaum Award of the International ...
Go to Profile#14261
Gene Likens
#14272
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Gene Elden Likens is an American limnologist and ecologist. He co-founded the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in 1963, and founded the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York in 1983.
Go to Profile#14262
Martin Puryear
#14273
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Martin L. Puryear is an American artist known for his devotion to traditional craft. Working in wood and bronze, among other media, his reductive technique and meditative approach challenge the physical and poetic boundaries of his materials. The artist's Liberty/Libertà exhibition represented the United States at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
Go to Profile#14263
John Hurt
#14274
Overall Influence
1940 - 2017 (77 years)
Sir John Vincent Hurt was an English actor whose career spanned over five decades. Hurt was regarded as one of Britain's finest actors. Director David Lynch described him as "simply the greatest actor in the world". He possessed what was described as the "most distinctive voice in Britain". He received numerous awards including the BAFTA Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award in 2012 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2015 for his services to drama.
Go to Profile#14264
Sayako Kuroda
#14275
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Sayako Kuroda, formerly Sayako, Princess Nori, is the youngest child and only daughter of Emperor Emeritus Akihito and Empress Emerita Michiko, and the younger sister of the current Emperor of Japan, Naruhito. She is an imperial Shinto priestess of the Ise Grand Shrine, currently serving as the Supreme Priestess.
Go to Profile#14265
Amanda Conner
#14276
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Amanda Conner is an American comics artist and commercial art illustrator. She began her career in the late 1980s for Archie Comics and Marvel Comics, before moving on to contribute work for Claypool Comics' Soulsearchers and Company and Harris Comics' Vampirella in the 1990s. Her 2000s work includes Mad magazine, and such DC Comics characters as Harley Quinn, Power Girl, and Atlee.
Go to Profile#14266
Daniel Simberloff
#14277
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Daniel Simberloff is an American biologist and ecologist. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1969. He is currently Gore Hunger Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Tennessee, editor-in-chief of the journal Biological Invasions, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#14267
Cornelius M. Kerwin
#14278
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Cornelius Martin "Neil" Kerwin is an American academic in public administration and former president of American University. A 1971 undergraduate alumnus of American University, Kerwin continued his education with a Master of Arts degree in political science from the University of Rhode Island in 1973. In 1975, Kerwin returned to his alma mater and joined the faculty of the American University School of Public Affairs, then the School of Government and Public Administration. Kerwin completed his doctorate in political science from Johns Hopkins University in 1978 and continued to teach until 1989, when he became the dean of the school.
Go to Profile#14268
Henry Wansbrough
#14279
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Henry Wansbrough is an English biblical scholar, Catholic priest, and monk of Ampleforth Abbey. From 1990 to 2004, he served as Master of St Benet's Hall, Oxford. Biography Born as Joseph Wansbrough on 9 October 1934 in London, England, Henry Wansbrough is Cathedral Prior of Norwich , Magister Scholarum of the English Benedictine Congregation , member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission , Chairman of the Trustees of the Catholic Biblical Association , and Emeritus Member of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Oxford . He is Alexander Jones Professor of Biblical Studies within the Department of Theology, Philosophy and Religious studies at Liverpool Hope University.
Go to Profile#14269
Zhou Ruchang
#14280
Overall Influence
1918 - 2012 (94 years)
Zhou Ruchang , was a Chinese writer noted for his study of the novel Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin. He is regarded as among the most renowned and influential redologists of the 20th century. In addition, Zhou was also an accomplished calligrapher and expert on traditional Chinese poetry and fiction.
Go to Profile#14270
John Reif
#14281
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
John H. Reif is an American academic, and Professor of Computer Science at Duke University, who has made contributions to large number of fields in computer science: ranging from algorithms and computational complexity theory to robotics. He has also published in many other scientific fields including chemistry , optics , and mathematics
Go to Profile#14271
Jacob Turkel
#14282
Overall Influence
1935 - 2023 (88 years)
Jacob Turkel was an Israeli judge who was a Supreme Court of Israel Justice. Turkel served as a judge for 38 years, a decade of that time on the Israeli Supreme Court. In June 2010, he was appointed to head the Israeli special independent Turkel Commission of Inquiry into the Gaza flotilla raid.
Go to Profile#14272
Hans Hermes
#14283
Overall Influence
1912 - 2003 (91 years)
Hans Hermes was a German mathematician and logician, who made significant contributions to the foundations of mathematical logic. Personal life Hermes was born in Neunkirchen. From 1931, he studied mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and philosophy at the University of Freiburg. In 1937, he passed the state examination in Münster and was attending there in 1938 when the physicist Adolf Kratzer was present. After that, he went on a scholarship to the University of Göttingen and then became an assistant at the University of Bonn. During World War II, he was a soldier on the Channel Island of Jersey until 1943 and then on to the Chemical Physics Institute of the Navy in Kiel.
Go to Profile#14273
Robert S. Levine
#14284
Overall Influence
Robert S. Levine is a scholar of American and African American literature. He is currently Distinguished University Professor and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Go to Profile#14274
Simon Haykin
#14285
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Simon Haykin is an electrical engineer noted for his pioneering work in Adaptive Signal Processing with emphasis on applications to Radar Engineering and Telecom Technology. He is currently Distinguished University Professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Go to Profile#14275
Martyn Hammersley
#14286
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Martyn Hammersley is a British sociologist whose main publications cover social research methodology and philosophical issues in the social sciences. Biography He studied sociology as an undergraduate at the London School of Economics , and was subsequently a postgraduate student in the sociology department at the University of Manchester, obtaining an MPhil and PhD with a thesis reporting an ethnography of an inner-city secondary school. At that time Manchester was a major centre for ethnomethodology, where it was in tension with symbolic interactionism and Marxism, and his work was influenc...
Go to Profile#14276
Tim Poston
#14287
Overall Influence
1945 - 2017 (72 years)
Timothy Poston was an English mathematician and polymath best known for his work on catastrophe theory. His early childhood was in Moscow where his father served in the British Embassy for 18 months. When his father moved back to the UK to work for the BBC, Tim went to Datchworth primary school. Later his father ran The Near East Broadcasting Station Sharq al-Adna; his mother taught her children by PNEU until Tim went to The Junior School in Nicosia as a boarder. After the Suez débâcle, his father returned to the UK to train as a parson, and the family lived in Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Dorset.
Go to Profile#14277
Jim Courier
#14288
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
James Spencer Courier is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. He won four major singles titles, two at the French Open and two at the Australian Open. He was the youngest man to reach the singles finals of all four majors, at the age of 22 years and 11 months. He also won five Masters titles. Since 2005 he has worked as a tennis commentator, notably for the host broadcaster of the Australian Open, Nine , and as an analyst for Tennis Channel and Prime Video Sport.
Go to Profile#14278
Peter Pouncey
#14289
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Peter R. Pouncey was a British-American author, classicist, and president of Amherst College. He was known for his wit, his erudition, and his sophisticated works of both academic analysis and fiction.
Go to Profile#14279
J. Barkley Rosser Jr.
#14290
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
John Barkley Rosser Jr. was a mathematical economist and Professor of Economics at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia since 1988. He was known for work in nonlinear economic dynamics, including applications in economics of catastrophe theory, chaos theory, and complexity theory . With Marina V. Rosser he invented the concept of the "new traditional economy". He introduced into economic discourse the concepts of chaotic bubbles, chaotic hysteresis , and econochemistry. He also invented the concepts of the megacorpstate and hypercyclic morphogenesis. He was the first to provide a mathematical model of the period of financial distress in a speculative bubble.
Go to Profile#14280
Gio Wiederhold
#14291
Overall Influence
1936 - 2022 (86 years)
Giovanni Corrado Melchiore Wiederhold was an Italian-born American computer scientist who spent most of his career at Stanford University. His research focused on the design of large-scale database management systems, the protection of their content, often using knowledge-based techniques. After his formal retirement he focused on valuation methods for intellectual property and intellectual capital.
Go to Profile#14281
Jos Stam
#14292
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Jos Stam is a researcher in the field of computer graphics, focusing on the simulation of natural physical phenomena for 3D-computer animation. He achieved technical breakthroughs with the simulation of fluids and gases, new rendering algorithms and subdivision surfaces, which are a mix between two previously incompatible worlds of Nurbs- and polygon-modeling in 3D.
Go to Profile#14282
Eberhard Umbach
#14293
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Eberhard Umbach is a German physicist. Career He studied physics at the Technical University of Munich and received his doctorate in 1980 with honors. After conducting research in the United States he returned to habilitate at TU Munich in 1986.
Go to Profile#14283
John Rewald
#14294
Overall Influence
1912 - 1994 (82 years)
John Rewald was an American academic, author and art historian. He was known as a scholar of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cézanne, Renoir, Pissarro, Seurat, and other French painters of the late 19th century. He was recognized as a foremost authority on late 19th-century art. His History of Impressionism is a standard work.
Go to Profile#14284
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé
#14295
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Luis Álvarez-Gaumé is a Spanish theoretical physicist who works on string theory and quantum gravity. Luis Álvarez-Gaumé obtained his PhD in 1981 from Stony Brook University and worked from 1981 to 1984 at Harvard University as a Junior Fellow, before he moved to Boston University to work as a professor. From 1986 until 2016, Álvarez-Gaumé was a permanent member of the CERN Theoretical Physics unit. In 2016, he became the director of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook.
Go to Profile#14285
Audie Cornish
#14296
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Audie N. Cornish is an American journalist and a former co-host of NPR's All Things Considered. She is an anchor and correspondent for CNN and the host of The Assignment, a CNN Audio podcast. She was previously the host of Profile by Buzzfeed News, a web-only interview show that lasted one season, as well as NPR Presents, a long-form conversation series with creatives about their projects, processes, and shaping culture in America.
Go to Profile#14286
Michael Barnsley
#14297
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Michael Fielding Barnsley is a British mathematician, researcher and an entrepreneur who has worked on fractal compression; he holds several patents on the technology. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry from University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1972 and BA in mathematics from Oxford in 1968. In 1987 he founded Iterated Systems Incorporated, and in 1988 he published a book entitled Fractals Everywhere and in 2006 SuperFractals.
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Anne Truitt
#14298
Overall Influence
1921 - 2004 (83 years)
Anne Truitt , born Anne Dean, was an American sculptor of the mid-20th century. She became well known in the late 1960s for her large-scale minimalist sculptures, especially after influential solo shows at André Emmerich Gallery in 1963 and the Jewish Museum in 1966. Unlike her contemporaries, she made her own sculptures by hand, eschewing industrial processes. Drawing from imagery from her past, her work also deals with the visual trace of memory and nostalgia. This is exemplified by a series of early sculptures resembling monumental segments of white picket fence.
Go to Profile#14288
Michel Rocard
#14299
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Michel Rocard was a French politician and a member of the Socialist Party . He served as Prime Minister under François Mitterrand from 1988 to 1991 during which he created the Revenu minimum d'insertion , a social minimum welfare program for indigents, and achieved the Matignon Accords regarding the status of New Caledonia. He was a member of the European Parliament, and was strongly involved in European policies until 2009. In 2007, he joined a Commission under the authority of Nicolas Sarkozy's Minister of Education, Xavier Darcos.
Go to Profile#14289
Jan Mycielski
#14300
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Jan Mycielski is a Polish-American mathematician, logician and philosopher, a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is known for contributions to graph theory, combinatorics, set theory, topology and philosophy of mathematics.
Go to Profile#14290
Barry Posen
#14301
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Barry Ross Posen is Ford International Professor of Political Science at MIT and the director of MIT's Security Studies Program. An expert in the field of security studies, he currently serves on the editorial boards of the journals International Security and Security Studies and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served as a study group member for the Hart-Rudman Commission. Posen is a structural realist.
Go to Profile#14291
Catherine Opie
#14302
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Catherine Sue Opie is an American fine-art photographer and educator. She lives and works in Los Angeles, as a professor of photography at University of California at Los Angeles. Opie studies the connections between mainstream and infrequent society. By specializing in portraiture, studio, and landscape photography, she is able to create pieces relating to sexual identity. Through photography, Opie, documents the relationship between the individual and the space inhabited, offering an exploration of the American identity, particularly probing the tensions between the constructed American dream and the diverse realities of its citizens.
Go to Profile#14292
William R. Ferris
#14303
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
William Reynolds Ferris Jr. is an American author and scholar and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. With Judy Peiser he co-founded the Center for Southern Folklore in Memphis, Tennessee; he was the founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, and is co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.
Go to Profile#14293
Linda Thomas-Greenfield
#14304
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Linda Thomas-Greenfield is an American diplomat who serves as the United States ambassador to the United Nations under President Joe Biden. She served as the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 2013 to 2017. Thomas-Greenfield then worked in the private sector as a senior vice president at business strategy firm Albright Stonebridge Group in Washington, D.C.
Go to Profile#14294
Peter Halley
#14305
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Peter Halley is an American artist and a central figure in the Neo-Conceptualist movement of the 1980s. Known for his Day-Glo geometric paintings, Halley is also a writer, the former publisher of index Magazine, and a teacher; he served as director of graduate studies in painting and printmaking at the Yale University School of Art from 2002 to 2011. Halley lives and works in New York City.
Go to Profile#14295
John H. Garvey
#14306
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
John Hugh Garvey was the 15th president of the Catholic University of America. Trained as a lawyer, Garvey assumed this position in 2010. Education John H. Garvey attended the University of Notre Dame where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1970. He was candidate for a Master of Theological Studies degree at Harvard Divinity School , and then entered the Harvard Law School, where he earned a Juris Doctor degree in 1974.
Go to Profile#14296
Willis Reed
#14307
Overall Influence
1942 - 2023 (81 years)
Willis Reed Jr. was an American professional basketball player, coach, and general manager. He spent his entire ten-year pro playing career with the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association . Reed was a seven-time NBA All-Star and five-time All-NBA selection, including once on the first team in 1970, when he was named the NBA Most Valuable Player . He was a two-time NBA champion and was voted the NBA Finals MVP both times. In 1982, Reed was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. He was named to both the NBA's 50th and 75th anniversary teams.
Go to Profile#14297
Ofer Gabber
#14308
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Ofer Gabber is a mathematician working in algebraic geometry. Life In 1978 Gabber received a Ph.D. from Harvard University for the thesis Some theorems on Azumaya algebras, written under the supervision of Barry Mazur. Gabber has been at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in Bures-sur-Yvette in Paris since 1984 as a CNRS senior researcher. He won the Erdős Prize in 1981 and the Prix Thérèse Gautier from the French Academy of Sciences in 2011. In 1981 Gabber with Victor Kac published a proof of a conjecture stated by Kac in 1968.
Go to Profile#14298
Joseph Ladapo
#14309
Overall Influence
Joseph Abiodun Ladapo is the surgeon general of Florida. He has attracted attention for spreading misinformation on COVID-19 and promoting vaccine hesitancy. After immigrating to the United States from Nigeria, Ladapo earned an M.D. and a Ph.D. in Health Policy from Harvard University; he served as a professor of medicine at New York University before being tenured at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Go to Profile#14299
Esther Thelen
#14310
Overall Influence
1941 - 2004 (63 years)
Esther Thelen was an expert in the field of developmental psychology. Thelen's research was focused on human development, especially in the area of infant development. Thelen was also president of the Society for Research in Child Development and the International Society for Infant Studies. She was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Psychological Society.
Go to Profile#14300
Walter F. Buckley
#14311
Overall Influence
1922 - 2006 (84 years)
Walter Frederick Buckley was an American sociologist, and professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire. Buckley was among the first to apply concepts from general systems theory based on the work of Bertalanffy to sociology
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