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).
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List of the most influential people
#14701
Robert Griess
#14712
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Robert Louis Griess, Jr. is a mathematician working on finite simple groups and vertex algebras. He is currently the John Griggs Thompson Distinguished University Professor of mathematics at University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#14702
Sam Treiman
#14713
Overall Influence
1925 - 1999 (74 years)
Sam Bard Treiman was an American theoretical physicist who produced research in the fields of cosmic rays, quantum physics, plasma physics, and gravity physics. He made contributions to the understanding of the weak interaction and he and his students are credited with developing the so-called standard model of elementary particle physics. He was a Higgins professor of physics at Princeton University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group. He was a student of Enrico Fermi and John Alexander Simpson Jr. Treiman published articles on quant...
Go to Profile#14703
Kermit Roosevelt III
#14714
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Kermit Roosevelt III is an American author, lawyer, and legal scholar. He is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a great-great-grandson of United States President Theodore Roosevelt and a distant cousin of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Go to Profile#14704
Nicole Hemmer
#14715
Overall Influence
Nicole Hemmer is an American historian. She is an is an associate professor of history and director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University. She specializes in the history of conservative media in the United States from the 1940s to the present, and the role of right-wing media in American electoral politics. She is particularly involved in public communication that aims to provide historical context for contemporary events in American politics. Hemmer has been a regular columnist or an editor of historical series at print media outlets like The Washington Post, U.S.
Go to Profile#14705
Harold Lewis
#14716
Overall Influence
1923 - 2011 (88 years)
Harold Warren Lewis was an American Emeritus Professor of Physics and former department chairman at the University of California, Santa Barbara . He was chairman of the JASON Defense Advisory Group from 1966 to 1973, and was active in US government investigations into safety of nuclear reactors.
Go to Profile#14706
Rolf Pfeifer
#14717
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Rolf Pfeifer is a former professor of computer science at the Department of Informatics University of Zurich, and director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where he retired from in 2014. Currently he is a specially appointed professor at Osaka University, and a visiting professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Go to Profile#14707
Thomas D. Brock
#14718
Overall Influence
1926 - 2021 (95 years)
Thomas Dale Brock was an American microbiologist known for his discovery of hyperthermophiles living in hot springs at Yellowstone National Park. In the late 1960s, Brock discovered high-temperature bacteria living in the Great Fountain region of Yellowstone, and with his colleague Hudson Freeze, they isolated a sample which they named Thermus aquaticus. "Life at High Temperatures", a 1967 article summarizing his research, was published in the journal Science and led to the study of extremophiles, organisms that live in extreme environments. By 1976, T. aquaticus was found useful for artificially amplifying DNA segments.
Go to Profile#14708
Peter Gutmann
#14719
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Peter Claus Gutmann is a computer scientist in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. He has a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Auckland. His Ph.D. thesis and a book based on the thesis were about a cryptographic security architecture. He is interested in computer security issues, including security architecture, security usability , and hardware security; he has discovered several flaws in publicly released cryptosystems and protocolss. He is the developer of the cryptlib open source software security library and contributed to PGP version 2.
Go to Profile#14709
Gabriela Shalev
#14720
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Gabriela Shalev is an Israeli jurist. She was Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. Early life Shalev was born in Tel Aviv in 1941. Her mother's parents were murdered in Auschwitz, and her father's parents had to leave a comfortable life in Berlin and immigrate to the Yishuv.
Go to Profile#14710
Jerry Manock
#14721
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Jerrold Clifford Manock is an American industrial designer. He worked for Apple Computer from 1977 to 1984, contributing to housing designs for the Apple II, Apple III, and earlier compact Apple Macintosh computers. Manock is widely regarded as the "father" of the Apple Industrial Design Group. Since 1976 he is the president and principal designer of Manock Comprehensive Design, Inc., with offices in Palo Alto, California, and Burlington, Vermont.
Go to Profile#14711
Lee Lorch
#14722
Overall Influence
1915 - 2014 (99 years)
Lee Alexander Lorch was an American mathematician, early civil rights activist, and communist. His leadership in the campaign to desegregate Stuyvesant Town, a large housing development on the East Side of Manhattan, helped eventually to make housing discrimination illegal in the United States but also resulted in Lorch losing his own job twice. He and his family then moved to the Southern United States where he and his wife, Grace Lorch, became involved in the civil rights movement there while also teaching at several Black colleges. He encouraged black students to pursue studies in mathemat...
Go to Profile#14712
Irving Greenberg
#14723
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Irving Yitzchak Greenberg , also known as Yitz Greenberg, is an American scholar, author and rabbi. He is known as a strong supporter of Israel, and a promoter of greater understanding between Judaism and Christianity.
Go to Profile#14713
Fred McLafferty
#14724
Overall Influence
1923 - 2021 (98 years)
Fred Warren McLafferty was an American chemist known for his work in mass spectrometry. He is best known for the McLafferty rearrangement reaction that was observed with mass spectrometry. With Roland Gohlke, he pioneered the technique of gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. He is also known for electron-capture dissociation, a method of fragmenting gas-phase ions.
Go to Profile#14714
Uriel Feige
#14725
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Uriel Feige is an Israeli computer scientist who was a doctoral student of Adi Shamir. Life Uriel Feige currently holds the post of Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot in Israel.
Go to Profile#14715
Avner Offer
#14726
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Avner Offer is an economic historian who held the Chichele Professorship in Economic history at the University of Oxford, England. He is an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and a fellow of the British Academy. He has published on international political economy, law, the First World War and land tenure. During the 1990s and 2000s, Offer's main interest was in post-war economic growth, particularly in developed societies, and the challenges that affluence presents to well being. His most recent work is on the strife between neoclassical economics and social democracy, each of them vying to shape the post-war decades.
Go to Profile#14716
Andrzej Paczkowski
#14727
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Prof. Andrzej Paczkowski is a Polish historian. Professor of Collegium Civitas, director of Modern History Studies in the Political Institute of Polish Academy of Sciences, member of Collegium of Institute of National Remembrance.
Go to Profile#14717
William B. Hurlbut
#14728
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
William B. Hurlbut is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University Medical Center. Born in 1945 in St. Helena, California, he grew up in Bronxville, New York. After completing his undergraduate studies at Stanford University in 1968, Hurlbut went on to pursue medical training and earned his medical degree in 1974, also from Stanford University. Following his medical education, he embarked on postdoctoral studies focused on theology and medical ethics.
Go to Profile#14718
Virginia Wade
#14729
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Sarah Virginia Wade is a British former professional tennis player. She won three Major tennis singles championships and four major doubles championships, and is the only British woman in history to have won titles at all four majors. She was ranked as high as No. 2 in the world in singles, and No. 1 in the world in doubles.
Go to Profile#14719
Michael Eysenck
#14730
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Michael William Eysenck is a British academic psychologist, and is an Emeritus Professor in Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London. He also holds an appointment as Professorial Fellow at Roehampton University. His research focuses on cognitive factors affecting anxiety. Eysenck has written and co-written many publications, including several textbooks. In the late 1990s, he developed the theory of the "hedonic treadmill", stating that humans are predisposed by genetics to plateau at a certain level of happiness, and that the occurrence of novel happy events merely elevates this lev...
Go to Profile#14720
Aida Imanguliyeva
#14731
Overall Influence
1939 - 1992 (53 years)
Aida Nasir gizi Imanguliyeva was an Azerbaijani scholar. She was born in Baku to a highly educated family. Her father, a well-known journalist, pedagogue, Honoured Worker of Science – Nasir Imanguliyev was one of the founders of Azerbaijani press, editor of "Bakı" and "Baku" newspapers for a long time. She was the mother of Azerbaijan's current First Lady and the current Vice President of Azerbaijan Mehriban Aliyeva.
Go to Profile#14721
Hubert Damisch
#14732
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
Hubert Damisch , was a French philosopher specialised in aesthetics and art history, and professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris from 1975 until 1996. Damisch studied at the Sorbonne with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and, later, with Pierre Francastel. In 1967 he founded the Cercle d’histoire/théorie de l’art that would later become the CEHTA at the EHESS.
Go to Profile#14722
George Rickey
#14733
Overall Influence
1907 - 2002 (95 years)
George Warren Rickey was an American kinetic sculptor. Early life and education Rickey was born on June 6, 1907, in South Bend, Indiana. When Rickey was still a child, his father, an executive with Singer Sewing Machine Company, moved the family to Glasgow, Scotland, in 1913. They lived near the river Clyde, and George learned to sail around the outer islands on the family's sailboat.
Go to Profile#14723
Ted DiBiase
#14734
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Theodore Marvin DiBiase Sr. is an American retired professional wrestler, manager, ordained minister and color commentator. He is signed to WWE as of 2023, where he works in their Legends program. DiBiase achieved championship success in a number of wrestling promotions, holding thirty titles during his professional wrestling career. He is best recalled by mainstream audiences for his time in the World Wrestling Federation , where he wrestled as "the Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase. He has been named as one of the best technical wrestlers, and greatest villains, in pro wrestling history.
Go to Profile#14724
Lamar Odom
#14735
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Lamar Joseph Odom is an American former professional basketball player. As a member of the Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association , he won championshipss in 2009 and 2010 and was named the NBA Sixth Man of the Year in 2011.
Go to Profile#14725
Mary-Dell Chilton
#14736
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Mary-Dell Chilton is one of the founders of modern plant biotechnology. Early life and education Chilton attended private school for her early education. She earned both a B.S. and Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She later completed postdoctoral work at the University of Washington at Seattle
Go to Profile#14726
Peter-Paul Verbeek
#14737
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Peter-Paul Verbeek is Rector Magnificus of the University of Amsterdam and Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Science and Technology in a Changing World since 1 October 2022. Prior to his appointment in Amsterdam, Verbeek, a Dutch philosopher of technology, has been chair of the philosophy department at the University of Twente. He was a member of the Dutch council for the Humanities and chair of the Society for Philosophy and Technology. Since 2018, he has also been University Professor of Philosophy of Humans and Technology and scientific codirector of the DesignLab at the University of Twente.
Go to Profile#14727
Lewis Aron
#14738
Overall Influence
1952 - 2019 (67 years)
Lewis Aron was an American psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, teacher and lecturer on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis who made contributions particularly within the specialty known as relational psychoanalysis. Aron was the Director of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in New York City. He was the founding president of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and was formerly President of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association. He was board certified in psychoanalysis by the American Board of Professional Psychology and a Fellow of the American Board of Psychoanalysis .
Go to Profile#14728
Robert Lustig
#14739
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Robert H. Lustig is an American pediatric endocrinologist. He is Professor emeritus of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco , where he specialized in neuroendocrinology and childhood obesity. He is also director of UCSF's WATCH program , and president and co-founder of the non-profit Institute for Responsible Nutrition.
Go to Profile#14729
Alexander Ovechkin
#14740
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Alexander Mikhailovich Ovechkin is a Russian professional ice hockey left winger and captain of the Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League . Nicknamed "Ovi" and "the Great Eight" in reference to his jersey number, Ovechkin is widely regarded as one of the greatest ice hockey players of all time. Second only to Wayne Gretzky for all-time goal scoring, Ovechkin also holds many records, including the most power play goals, most goals in away games, most overtime goals, and most goals with the same team in NHL history. He is the third NHL player, after Gordie Howe and Gretzky, to scor...
Go to Profile#14730
Lou Holtz
#14741
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Louis Leo Holtz is an American former football coach and analyst. He served as the head football coach at the College of William & Mary , North Carolina State University , the New York Jets , the University of Arkansas , the University of Minnesota , the University of Notre Dame , and the University of South Carolina , compiling a career college head coaching record of 249–132–7. Holtz's 1988 Notre Dame team went 12–0 with a victory in the Fiesta Bowl and was the consensus national champion. Holtz is the only college football coach to lead six different programs to bowl games and the only coa...
Go to Profile#14731
Nicholas Barberis
#14742
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Nicholas C. Barberis is the Stephen & Camille Schramm Professor of Finance at the Yale School of Management. Professor Barberis' research focuses on behavioral finance and in particular, on applications of cognitive psychology to understanding the pricing of financial assets.
Go to Profile#14732
Mona Jarrahi
#14743
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Mona Jarrahi is an Iranian Engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She investigates novel materials, terahertz/millimeter-wave electronics and optoelectronics, microwave photonics, imaging and spectroscopy systems.
Go to Profile#14733
Erik De Clercq
#14744
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Erik De Clercq M.D. Ph.D., is a Belgian physician and biologist. He studied medicine at the Catholic University of Leuven . He did research and later became a professor at the Department of Medicine, where he specialised in microbiology and immunology. He worked at the Rega Institute for Medical Research. He is one of the founders and the second president of the International Society for Antiviral Research.
Go to Profile#14734
Willem Dafoe
#14745
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
William James "Willem" Dafoe is an American actor. He is the recipient of various accolades, including the Volpi Cup for Best Actor and two Independent Spirit Awards, as well as nominations for four Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. He has frequently collaborated with filmmakers Paul Schrader, Abel Ferrara, Lars von Trier, Julian Schnabel, Wes Anderson, and Robert Eggers.
Go to Profile#14735
Guy Standing
#14746
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Guy Standing is a British labour economist. He is a professor of development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and a co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network . Standing has written widely in the areas of labour economics, labour market policy, unemployment, labour market flexibility, structural adjustment policies and social protection. He created the term precariat to describe an emerging class of workers who are harmed by low wages and poor job security as a consequence of globalisation. Since the 2011 publication of his book The Precariat: Th...
Go to Profile#14736
Vivian Gornick
#14747
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Vivian Gornick is an American radical feminist critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist. Early life and education In 1957 Gornick received a bachelor of arts degree from City College of New York and in 1960 a master of arts degree from New York University.
Go to Profile#14737
Geoffrey Parker
#14748
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Noel Geoffrey Parker is an English historian specialising in the history of Western Europe, Spain, and warfare during the early modern era. His best known book is The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800, first published by Cambridge University Press in 1988.
Go to Profile#14738
Ann Beattie
#14749
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ann Beattie is an American novelist and short story writer. She has received an award for excellence from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the short story form.
Go to Profile#14739
Amy Winehouse
#14750
Overall Influence
1983 - 2011 (28 years)
Amy Jade Winehouse was an English singer and songwriter. She was known for her deep, expressive contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres, including soul, rhythm and blues, reggae and jazz.
Go to Profile#14740
Oscar Reutersvärd
#14751
Overall Influence
1915 - 2002 (87 years)
Oscar Reutersvärd was a Swedish graphic artist, who in 1934 pioneered the art of 3D drawings that may initially appear feasible, yet cannot be physically constructed. He is sometimes described as "the father of the impossible figure", although there are much older examples, e.g. Hogarth's Satire on False Perspective.
Go to Profile#14741
Jack Maple
#14752
Overall Influence
1952 - 2001 (49 years)
Jack Maple was a New York City deputy police commissioner for crime control strategies. He created the CompStat methodology of crime fighting and law enforcement strategy, co-authored the book The Crime Fighter, and inspired the television series The District.
Go to Profile#14742
Frankie Dettori
#14753
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Lanfranco "Frankie" Dettori , is an Italian jockey based in England. In a career spanning over 35 years, he has been British flat racing Champion Jockey three times and has ridden the winners of 287 Group 1 races including 23 winners of the British Classic Races. His most celebrated achievement was riding all seven winners on British Festival of Racing Day at Ascot Racecourse on 28 September 1996.
Go to Profile#14743
Carl Amery
#14754
Overall Influence
1922 - 2005 (83 years)
Carl Amery , the pen name of Christian Anton Mayer, was a German writer and environmental activist. Born in Munich, he studied at the University of Munich. He was a participant of Gruppe 47. He died in Munich.
Go to Profile#14744
Michael Szwarc
#14755
Overall Influence
1909 - 2000 (91 years)
Michael Szwarc was a British and American polymer chemist who discovered and studied ionic living polymerization. Biography Michael Mojżesz Szwarc was born into a Polish-Jewish family in Będzin, Poland. In 1932 he received the title of engineer in chemistry at the Warsaw University of Technology. In 1935 he emigrated to Palestine, where he joined his sister and cousin. In 1942 he defended his first Ph.D. dissertation in organic chemistry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Go to Profile#14745
Eugene Merle Shoemaker
#14756
Overall Influence
1928 - 1997 (69 years)
Eugene Merle Shoemaker was an American geologist. He co-discovered Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with his wife Carolyn S. Shoemaker and David H. Levy. This comet hit Jupiter in July 1994: the impact was televised around the world. Shoemaker also studied terrestrial craters, such as Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona, and along with Edward Chao provided the first conclusive evidence of its origin as an impact crater. He was also the first director of the United States Geological Survey's Astrogeology Research Program.
Go to Profile#14746
John Selfridge
#14757
Overall Influence
1927 - 2010 (83 years)
John Lewis Selfridge , was an American mathematician who contributed to the fields of analytic number theory, computational number theory, and combinatorics. Education Selfridge received his Ph.D. in 1958 from the University of California, Los Angeles under the supervision of Theodore Motzkin.
Go to Profile#14747
Rirkrit Tiravanija
#14758
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Rirkrit Tiravanija is a Thai contemporary artist residing in New York City, Berlin, and Chiangmai, Thailand. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961. His installations often take the form of stages or rooms for sharing meals, cooking, reading or playing music; architecture or structures for living and socializing are a core element in his work.
Go to Profile#14748
David Ley
#14759
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
David Frederick Ley is a geographer and a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia. Ley was born in Swansea, Wales, earned his B.A. at Oxford University, and his M.S. and Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State University. He is known for his substantial empirical and theoretical contributions to the field of social, cultural and urban geography.
Go to Profile#14749
Witi Ihimaera
#14760
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Witi Tame Ihimaera-Smiler is a New Zealand author. Raised in the small town of Waituhi, he decided to become a writer as a teenager after being convinced that Māori people were ignored or mischaracterised in literature. He was the first Māori writer to publish a collection of short stories, with Pounamu, Pounamu , and the first to publish a novel, with Tangi . After his early works he took a ten-year break from writing, during which he focused on editing an anthology of Māori writing in English.
Go to Profile#14750
Robert Stam
#14761
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Robert Stam is an American film theorist working on film semiotics. He is a professor at New York University, where he teaches about the French New Wave filmmakers. Stam has published widely on French literature, comparative literature, and on film topics such as film history and film theory. Together with Ella Shohat, he co-authored Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media.
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