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
#14651
Homer R. Warner
#14662
Overall Influence
1911 - 2012 (101 years)
Homer Richards Warner was an American cardiologist who was an early proponent of medical informatics who pioneered many aspects of computer applications to medicine. Author of the book, Computer-Assisted Medical Decision-Making, published in 1979, he served as CIO for the University of Utah Health Sciences Center, as president of the American College of Medical Informatics , and was actively involved with the National Institutes of Health. He was first chair of the Department of Medical Informatics at the University of Utah School of Medicine, the first American medical program to formally of...
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Bert Bolin
#14663
Overall Influence
1925 - 2007 (82 years)
Bert Rickard Johannes Bolin was a Swedish meteorologist who served as the first chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , from 1988 to 1997. He was professor of meteorology at Stockholm University from 1961 until his retirement in 1990.
Go to Profile#14653
Vishal Mangalwadi
#14664
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Vishal Mangalwadi is a social reformer, political columnist, Indian Christian philosopher, writer and lecturer. Early life Vishal was born in Chhattarpur , India, to Victor and Kusum Mangalwadi and grew up along with his six siblings in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
Go to Profile#14654
Hein Kötz
#14665
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Hein Kötz is a German jurist, former Director of the Max-Planck-Institute for foreign and international private law , the Bucerius Law School and Vice President of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft .
Go to Profile#14655
Claude Steele
#14666
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Claude Mason Steele is a social psychologist and emeritus professor at Stanford University, where he is the I. James Quillen Endowed Dean, Emeritus at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, and Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, Emeritus.
Go to Profile#14656
Malcolm Casadaban
#14667
Overall Influence
1949 - 2009 (60 years)
Malcolm Casadaban was associate professor of molecular genetics, cell biology and microbiology at the University of Chicago. Casadaban died following an accidental laboratory exposure to an attenuated strain of Yersinia pestis, a bacterium that causes plague.
Go to Profile#14657
Emilie Townes
#14668
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Emilie Maureen Townes is an American Christian social ethicist and theologian. She is currently Dean and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School. Townes was the first African-American woman to be elected president of the American Academy of Religion in 2008 and served as president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion from 2012–2016.
Go to Profile#14658
Lily Tomlin
#14669
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Mary Jean "Lily" Tomlin is an American actress, comedian, writer, singer, and producer. Tomlin started her career in stand-up comedy and sketch comedy before transitioning her career to acting onstage and on-screen. In a career spanning over fifty years, Tomlin has received numerous accolades, including seven Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, and two Tony Awards. She was also awarded the Kennedy Center Honor in 2014 and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2017.
Go to Profile#14659
Grace Hartigan
#14670
Overall Influence
1922 - 2008 (86 years)
Grace Hartigan was an American Abstract Expressionist painter and a significant member of the vibrant New York School of the 1950s and 1960s. Her circle of friends, who frequently inspired one another in their artistic endeavors, included Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem and Elaine de Kooning and Frank O'Hara. Her paintings are held by numerous major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. As director of the Maryland Institute College of Art's Hoffberger School of Painting, she influenced numerous young artists.
Go to Profile#14660
Douglas H. Ubelaker
#14671
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Douglas H. Ubelaker is an American forensic anthropologist. He works as a curator for the Smithsonian Institution, and has published numerous papers and monographs that have helped establish modern procedures in forensic anthropology. He has also done work in Latin America, with Native Americans, and has assisted the Federal Bureau of Investigation in forensic cases.
Go to Profile#14661
John Corvino
#14672
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
John Frank Corvino is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy and the dean of the Honors College at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan and the author of several books, with a focus on the morality of homosexuality. Corvino is sometimes referred to as "The Gay Moralist", a sobriquet he assumed while writing a column of the same name.
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John Naughton
#14673
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John Naughton is an Irish academic, journalist and author. He is a senior research fellow in the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at Cambridge University, Director of the Press Fellowship Programme at Wolfson College, Cambridge, Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the British Open University, adjunct professor at University College, Cork and the Technology columnist of the London Observer newspaper.
Go to Profile#14663
Claude Berrou
#14674
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Claude Berrou is a French professor in electrical engineering at École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Bretagne, now IMT Atlantique. He is the sole inventor of a groundbreaking quasi-optimal error-correcting coding scheme called turbo codes as evidenced by the sole inventorship credit given on the fundamental patent for turbo codes. The original patent filing for turbo codes issued in the US as US Patent 5,446,747.
Go to Profile#14664
Molly Mahood
#14675
Overall Influence
1919 - 2017 (98 years)
Molly Maureen Mahood was a British literary scholar, whose interests ranged from Shakespeare to postcolonial African literature. She taught at St Hugh's College, Oxford , the University of Ibadan in Nigeria , the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania , and the University of Kent at Canterbury .
Go to Profile#14665
Mario Blejer
#14676
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Mario J. Blejer is an Argentine economist and a former president of the Central Bank of Argentina. Life and times Blejer was born in Córdoba, Argentina, in 1948. He enrolled at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and graduated cum laude with degrees in Economics and Jewish History in 1970, as well as with a master's degree in Economics from the same institution, in 1972. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in the latter discipline at the University of Chicago , and joined the Boston University Department of Economics as an Assistant Professor, where he remained until 1980.
Go to Profile#14666
Bertalan Farkas
#14677
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Bertalan Farkas is the first Hungarian cosmonaut, space explorer and fighter pilot. Hungary became the seventh nation to be represented in space by him. Farkas is also the first Esperantist cosmonaut. He is currently the president of Airlines Service and Trade.
Go to Profile#14667
Haim Gaifman
#14678
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Haim Gaifman is a logician, probability theorist, and philosopher of language who is professor of philosophy at Columbia University. Education and career In 1958 he received his M.Sc. at Hebrew University. Then in 1962, he received his Ph.D. at University of California, Berkeley under Alfred Tarski on the topic of infinite Boolean algebras. Since, he has held various permanent and visiting positions in mathematics, philosophy and computer science departments. While he was professor of mathematics at the Hebrew University, he taught courses in philosophy and directed the program in History an...
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Yves Beauchemin
#14679
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Yves Beauchemin is a Quebec novelist. Born in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec and raised in the village of Clova, Beauchemin received his degree in French literature and art history at the Université de Montréal in 1965. He taught literature at the Collège Garneau and Université Laval. Beauchemin was working as an editor in a Montreal publishing firm when he began contributing essays and stories to magazines and newspapers. In 1969 he accepted a position as a researcher at Radio-Québec.
Go to Profile#14669
Evan McMullin
#14680
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
David Evan McMullin is an American political candidate and former Central Intelligence Agency officer. McMullin ran as an independent in the 2016 United States presidential election and in the 2022 United States Senate election in Utah.
Go to Profile#14670
Terrence Roberts
#14681
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Terrence James Roberts is one of the Little Rock Nine, a group of African-American students who, in 1957, were the first black students ever to attend classes at Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1999, he and the other people of the Little Rock Nine were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President Bill Clinton.
Go to Profile#14671
E. Adamson Hoebel
#14682
Overall Influence
1906 - 1993 (87 years)
E. Adamson Hoebel was Regents Professor Emeritus of anthropology at the University of Minnesota. Having studied under Franz Boas, he held a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University. There he also attended the seminars of Karl N. Llewellyn, who taught at the Columbia Law School from 1925 to 1951. Llewellyn was the most important figure associated with the American Legal Realism of the 1920s and 1930s, which held that the law was indeterminate on the basis of statutes and precedents alone and required study of the how disputes are resolved in practice. The "sociological" wing of legal rea...
Go to Profile#14672
Jeremy Shearmur
#14683
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Jeremy Shearmur is a British former reader in philosophy in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University, who retired at the end of 2013. He is currently an emeritus fellow, lives in Dumfries, Scotland, and is undertaking research and a limited amount of lecturing and Ph.D. supervision. He was educated at the London School of Economics.
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Lawrence Schick
#14684
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Lawrence Schick is a game designer and writer associated with role-playing games. Early life and education Schick attended Kent State University in Ohio. Career Schick, as the head of design and development at TSR, brought aboard Tom Moldvay and David Cook and many other new employees as TSR continued to grow in the early 1980s. Schick created White Plume Mountain in 1979, an adventure module for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, published by TSR in 1979; the adventure was incorporated into the Greyhawk setting after the publication of the World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting .
Go to Profile#14674
Edward Guinan
#14685
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Edward F. Guinan is a professor in Villanova University's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. He and two colleagues observed evidence of Neptune's ring system in 1968, which was later discovered by Voyager 2 in 1989. He was also involved in building Iran's first high-powered telescope in the 1970s. He has been, and continues to be, involved in various international astronomical collaborations, such as helping to organize teaching and development programs in North Korea.
Go to Profile#14675
Lisa Wedeen
#14686
Overall Influence
Lisa Wedeen is Professor of Political Science and the College and Co-Director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at the University of Chicago. In 1995, Wedeen received her Ph.D. in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her former advisor is Hanna Pitkin. She has taught courses on nationalism, identity formation, power and resistance, and citizenship. Her work on the Middle East includes Ambiguities of Domination, an ethnographic study of the culture of the spectacle in Syria under Hafez al-Assad.
Go to Profile#14676
Reza Iravani
#14687
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Mohammad Reza Iravani is a professor in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. He holds the L. Lau Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering in same department .
Go to Profile#14677
Maurice Kottelat
#14688
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Maurice Kottelat is a Swiss ichthyologist specializing in Eurasian freshwater fishes. Kottelat obtained a License in Sciences at the University of Neuchâtel in 1987 and in 1989 a doctoral degree from the University of Amsterdam. In 1980 he went to Thailand where he began his field research on Southeast Asian and Indonesian fresh water fishes. In 1997 he wrote an important revision on the genus Coregonus, which includes the fish species from Lake Geneva, Lake Constance and other lakes in Switzerland. Together with Dr. Tan Heok Hui he worked in Sumatra, where they discovered Paedocypris progenetica, which is considered the smallest fish in the world.
Go to Profile#14678
Erkki Oja
#14689
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Erkki Oja is a Finnish computer scientist and Aalto Distinguished Professor in the Department of Information and Computer Science at Aalto University School of Science. He is recognized for developing Oja's rule, which is a model of how neurons in the brain or in artificial neural networks learn over time.
Go to Profile#14679
Franz Halberg
#14690
Overall Influence
1919 - 2013 (94 years)
Franz Halberg was a scientist and one of the founders of modern chronobiology. He first began his experiments in the 1940s and later founded the Chronobiology Laboratories at the University of Minnesota. Halberg published many papers also in the serials of the History Commission of International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy. He also published in "Wege zur Wissenschaft, Pathways to Science". He was a member of many international bodies, was awarded five honorary doctorates and was a member of the Leibniz Sozietät der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. In the 1950s, he introduced the word ci...
Go to Profile#14680
Aimee Bender
#14691
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Aimee Bender is an American novelist and short story writer, known for her surreal stories and characters. She is a 2011 recipient of the Alex Awards. Biography Born to a Jewish family, Bender received her undergraduate degree from the University of California at San Diego, and a Master of Fine Arts from the creative writing MFA program at University of California at Irvine. While at UCI she studied with Judith Grossman and Geoffrey Wolff. She received ArtsBridge scholarships and worked with mentor Keith Fowler to create writing programs for K-12 students in Orange County, California. She cu...
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Maggie Smith
#14692
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Dame Margaret Natalie Smith is an English actress. With an extensive career in theatre, film, and television over seven decades, she is one of Britain's most recognisable and prolific actresses. She is particularly noted for her wit in comedic roles.
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Leonid Rogozov
#14693
Overall Influence
1934 - 2000 (66 years)
Leonid Ivanovich Rogozov was a Soviet general practitioner who took part in the sixth Soviet Antarctic Expedition, 1960–1961. In April 1961 he had developed appendicitis while at Novolazarevskaya Station, and being the only medical professional there at the time, had to perform his own appendectomy.
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Craig Thompson
#14694
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Craig Matthew Thompson is an American graphic novelist best known for his books Good-bye, Chunky Rice , Blankets , Carnet de Voyage , Habibi , and Space Dumplins . Thompson has received four Harvey Awards, three Eisner Awards, and two Ignatz Awards. In 2007, his cover design for the Menomena album Friend and Foe received a Grammy nomination for Best Recording Package.
Go to Profile#14684
William O. Baker
#14695
Overall Influence
1915 - 2005 (90 years)
William Oliver Baker was president of Bell Labs from 1973 to 1979 and advisor on scientific matters to five United States presidents. Biography He was born on July 15, 1915, in Chestertown, Maryland.
Go to Profile#14685
Jean Borella
#14696
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Jean Borella is a Christian philosopher and theologian. Borella's works are inspired by Ancient and Christian Neoplatonism, but also by the Traditionalist School of René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon.
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Robert Barry
#14697
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Robert Barry is an American artist. Since 1967, Barry has produced non-material works of art, installationss, and performance art using a variety of otherwise invisible media. In 1968, Robert Barry is quoted as saying "Nothing seems to me the most potent thing in the world."
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Merrill Markoe
#14698
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Merrill Markoe is an American author, television writer, and occasional standup comedian. Early life Markoe was born in New York City. Her family moved several times including stays in Miami, Florida and San Francisco, California. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a B.A. in Art in 1970 and an M.A. in 1972. Her first job after leaving the university was teaching art at the University of Southern California.
Go to Profile#14688
Herwig Schopper
#14699
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (102 years)
Herwig Franz Schopper is a German experimental physicist and was the director general of CERN from 1981 to 1988. Biography Schopper was born in Lanškroun, Bohemia, to a family of Austrian descent. He obtained his diploma and doctorate from the University of Hamburg, studying under Wilhelm Lenz and Rudolf Fleischmann. In 1950–51 he was a research assistant with Lise Meitner at Stockholm and in 1956–57 at the Cavendish Laboratory under Otto Robert Frisch.
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Thomas Talbott
#14700
Overall Influence
Thomas Talbott is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He is best known for his advocacy of trinitarian universalism. The 2003 book Universal Salvation?: The Current Debate presents Talbott's defense of Trinitarian universalism together with responses from various fields theologians, philosophers, church historians and other religious scholars supporting or opposing Talbott's universalism.
Go to Profile#14690
Xinzhong Yao
#14701
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Professor Yao Xinzhong is Dean of the School of Philosophy at Renmin University of China in Beijing, as well as author and editor of the Encyclopaedia of Confucianism. He was formerly director of the King's China Institute at King's College London. Prior to this appointment, Professor Yao was Professor of Religion and Ethics at the University of Wales, Lampeter, and a senior research fellow at the Ian Ramsey Centre, University of Oxford. He was educated at Renmin University, and took his Doctorate Degree at University of Wales.
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Charles Nemeroff
#14702
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Charles Barnet Nemeroff is an American psychiatrist known for his works about depression. He is the author of numerous textbooks, papers, and clinical studies. Early life and education Nemeroff was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York. During his freshman year at the college, he visited Manhattan State Hospital where he decided to pursue his career studying mental illness. He also participated in an undergraduate research program sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Nemeroff went to work as a technician in a neuropathology laboratory in Boston after graduating in 1970.
Go to Profile#14692
Gilbert Lazard
#14703
Overall Influence
1920 - 2018 (98 years)
Gilbert Lazard was a French linguist and Iranologist. His works include the study of various Iranian languages, translations of classical Persian poetry, and research on linguistic typology, notably on morphosyntactic alignment. He also studied various Polynesian languages most notably the Tahitian language.
Go to Profile#14693
Katherine Faber
#14704
Overall Influence
Katherine T. Faber is an American materials scientist and one of the world's foremost experts in continuum mechanics, ceramic engineering, and material strengthening. Faber is the Simon Ramo Professor of Materials Science at the California Institute of Technology . Currently, Faber is the faculty representative for the Materials Science option at Caltech. She is also an adjunct professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University.
Go to Profile#14694
Kenneth D. West
#14705
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Kenneth David West is the John D. MacArthur and Ragnar Frisch Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the University of Wisconsin. He is currently co-editor of the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, and has previously served as co-editor of the American Economic Review. He has published widely in the fields of macroeconomics, finance, international economics and econometrics. Among his honors are the John M. Stauffer National Fellowship in Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, Fellow of the Econometric Society, and Abe Fellowship. He...
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Lemmy
#14706
Overall Influence
1945 - 2015 (70 years)
Ian Fraser Kilmister , better known as Lemmy Kilmister or simply Lemmy, was an English musician. He was the founder, lead singer, bassist and primary songwriter of the rock band Motörhead, of which he was the only continuous member, and a member of Hawkwind from 1971 to 1975.
Go to Profile#14696
Stuart R. Bell
#14707
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Stuart Ray Bell is an American academic. He was named the 29th president of The University of Alabama, located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on July 15, 2015. Early life Stuart R. Bell was born in Abilene, Texas in 1957. He graduated from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Nuclear Engineering in 1979. He received his master's and doctorate degrees in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M in 1981 and 1986, respectively.
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Andrew Fraknoi
#14708
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Andrew Fraknoi is a retired professor of astronomy recognized for his lifetime of work using everyday language to make astronomy more accessible and popular for both students and the general public. In 2017 Fraknoi retired from his position as Chair of the Department of Astronomy at Foothill College. In retirement he continues to teach through the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University, to give public lectures, and to add to his body of written work. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors in his field.
Go to Profile#14698
Héctor-Neri Castañeda
#14709
Overall Influence
1924 - 1991 (67 years)
Héctor-Neri Castañeda was a Guatemalan-American philosopher and founder of the journal Noûs. Biography Born in San Vicente, Zacapa, Guatemala, he emigrated to the United States in 1948 and studied under Wilfrid Sellars at the University of Minnesota, where he earned a B.A. in 1950 and M.A. in 1952. Castañeda received his Ph.D. in June 1954 from the University of Minnesota for his dissertation The Logical Structure of Moral Reasoning. Sellars served as his doctoral advisor. He studied at Oxford University from 1955–1956, after which he once again returned to the U.S. to take a sabbatical-replacement position in philosophy at Duke University.
Go to Profile#14699
Julián Herranz Casado
#14710
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Julián Herranz Casado is a Spanish cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as President of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts in the Roman Curia from 1994 to 2007, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 2003 by Pope John Paul II.
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Mikhail Youzhny
#14711
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Mikhail Mikhailovich Youzhny , nicknamed "Misha" and "Colonel" by his fans, is a Russian former professional tennis player who was ranked inside the top 10 and was the Russian No. 1. He achieved a top-10 ranking by the Association of Tennis Professionals for the first time on 13 August 2007, and reached a career peak of World No. 8 in January 2008, and again in October 2010.
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