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
#14901
Farzaneh Milani
#14912
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Farzaneh Milani is an Iranian-born American scholar, author, poet, translator, and educator. Milani teaches Persian literature and women's studies at the University of Virginia; and serves as the Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures. She is also a poet, award-winning translator, and a recipient of the Carnegie Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Milani's 1992 book Veils and Words: the Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers , has seen its sixteenth printing.
Go to Profile#14902
Roger Tory Peterson
#14913
Overall Influence
1908 - 1996 (88 years)
Roger Tory Peterson was an American naturalist, ornithologist, illustrator and educator, and one of the founding inspirations for the 20th-century environmental movement. Background Peterson was born in Jamestown, New York, a small, industrial city in western New York, on August 28, 1908. His father, Charles Gustav Peterson, was an immigrant from Sweden who came to America as an infant. At the age of ten, Charles Peterson lost his father to appendicitis and was sent off to work in the mills. After leaving the mills, he earned his living as a traveling salesman. Roger's mother, Henrietta Badar...
Go to Profile#14903
Scott Morrison
#14914
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Scott John Morrison is an Australian politician who served as the 30th prime minister of Australia from 2018 to 2022, holding office as leader of the Liberal Party of Australia. He is currently the member of parliament for the New South Wales seat of Cook, a position he has held since 2007.
Go to Profile#14904
Linda Thompson
#14915
Overall Influence
1953 - 2009 (56 years)
Linda Thompson , born Linda Diane Capps, was an American lawyer and militia movement supporter. In 1993, she quit her job as a lawyer in Indianapolis, Indiana, to start the American Justice Federation, a non-profit group that promoted pro-gun causes through a shortwave radio program, a computer bulletin board system, and sales of its newsletter and videos. She died of a prescription drug overdose in 2009.
Go to Profile#14905
Gro Harlem Brundtland
#14916
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Gro Brundtland is a Norwegian politician , who served three terms as the 29th Prime Minister of Norway , as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1981 to 1992, and as the director-general of the World Health Organization from 1998 to 2003. She is also known for having chaired the Brundtland Commission which presented the Brundtland Report on sustainable development.
Go to Profile#14906
James F. Bonner
#14917
Overall Influence
1910 - 1996 (86 years)
James Frederick Bonner was an American molecular biologist, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, notable for discoveries in plant biochemistry. Bonner invented a better way to collect natural rubber from trees. As result of his invention Malaysia nearly doubled its production of natural rubber. Bonner was instrumental in the invention of a method of mechanical harvesting of oranges. One of his most notable discoveries was finding how histones control gene activity. Bonner was professor and professor emeritus of biology at the California Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#14907
Carlo Montemagno
#14918
Overall Influence
1956 - 2018 (62 years)
Carlo Montemagno was an American engineer and expert in nanotechnology and biomedical engineering, focusing on futuristic technologies to create interdisciplinary solutions for the grand challenges in health, energy and the environment. He has been considered one of the pioneers of bionanotechnology. Some of his fundamental contributions include the development of biomolecular motors for powering inorganic nanodevices while at Cornell and muscle-driven self-assembled nanodevices while at UCLA.
Go to Profile#14908
Richard Mouw
#14919
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Richard John Mouw is an American theologian and philosopher. He held the position of President at Fuller Theological Seminary for 20 years , and continues to hold the post of Professor of Faith and Public Life.
Go to Profile#14909
Stephen Skowronek
#14920
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Stephen Skowronek is an American political scientist, noted for his research on American national institutions and the U.S. presidency, and for helping to stimulate the study of American political development.
Go to Profile#14910
Sarah Sze
#14921
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Sarah Sze is an American artist and professor of visual arts at Columbia University. She has exhibited internationally and her works are in the collections of several major museums. Sze's work explores the role of technology and information in contemporary life utilizing everyday materials. Drawing from Modernist traditions, Sze's work often represents objects caught in suspension.
Go to Profile#14911
Benjamin H. Bratton
#14922
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Benjamin H. Bratton is an American Philosopher of Technology known for his work spanning social theory, computer science, design, artificial intelligence, and for his writing on the geopolitical implications of what he terms "planetary scale computation".
Go to Profile#14912
Eloy Rodriguez
#14923
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Eloy Rodriguez is an American biochemist. He is the James Perkins Professor of Environmental Studies at Cornell University. He was born in Edinburg, Texas. Collaborating with primatologist Richard Wrangham, Rodriguez introduced the concept of zoopharmacognosy.
Go to Profile#14913
Stephan Feuchtwang
#14924
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Stephan Feuchtwang is emeritus professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics . His main area of research is China. He was born in Berlin in 1937, the son of Wilhelm Feuchtwang and Eva Neurath. His grandfather, David Feuchtwang, was the chief rabbi of Vienna.
Go to Profile#14914
John Tyrrell
#14925
Overall Influence
1942 - 2018 (76 years)
John Tyrrell was a British musicologist. He published several books on Leoš Janáček, including an authoritative and largely definitive two-volume biography. Tyrrell was born in Salisbury, Zimbabwe and worked as a professor of music and executive editor of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. He died on October 4, 2018, aged 76.
Go to Profile#14915
Tony Schwartz
#14926
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Tony Schwartz is an American journalist and business book author who is best known for ghostwriting Trump: The Art of the Deal. Early life and education Schwartz was born to Irving Schwartz and Felice Schwartz, the founder of the nonprofit organization Catalyst, Inc., which works to build inclusive workplaces and expand opportunities for women and businesses. In 1974, Schwartz graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Michigan, where he majored in American Studies.
Go to Profile#14916
Louis S. Goodman
#14927
Overall Influence
1906 - 2000 (94 years)
Louis Sanford Goodman was an American pharmacologist. He is best known for his collaborations with Alfred Gilman, Sr., with whom he authored the popular textbook The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics in 1941 and pioneered the first chemotherapy trials using nitrogen mustard.
Go to Profile#14917
Takeo Matsubara
#14928
Overall Influence
1921 - 2014 (93 years)
Takeo Matsubara was a Japanese physicist. Matsubara proposed a method of statistical mechanics related to Green's function , by applying quantum field theory techniques to statistical physics. This method, commonly known as Matsubara Green's function technique, introduces the notion of imaginary time, and the reciprocal variable to this imaginary time is known as discrete Matsubara frequency.
Go to Profile#14918
James Kirchner
#14929
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
James W. Kirchner is professor of Earth and Planetary Science at University of California, Berkeley. His current research spans the fields of geomorphology, hydrology, environmental geochemistry, evolutionary ecology, and paleobiology. He currently serves as the director of Berkeley's Central Sierra Field Research Stations.
Go to Profile#14919
Abdullah Gül
#14930
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Abdullah Gül is a Turkish politician who served as the 11th President of Turkey, in office from 2007 to 2014. He previously served for four months as Prime Minister from 2002 to 2003, and concurrently served as both Deputy Prime Minister and as Foreign Minister between 2003 and 2007. He is currently a member of the Advisory Panel for the President of the Islamic Development Bank.
Go to Profile#14920
Ron Padgett
#14931
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Ron Padgett is an American poet, essayist, fiction writer, translator, and a member of the New York School. Great Balls of Fire, Padgett's first full-length collection of poems, was published in 1969. He won a 2009 Shelley Memorial Award. In 2018, he won the Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America.
Go to Profile#14921
Bill Sharman
#14932
Overall Influence
1926 - 2013 (87 years)
William Walton Sharman was an American professional basketball player and coach. He is mostly known for his time with the Boston Celtics in the 1950s, partnering with Bob Cousy in what was then considered the greatest backcourt duo of all time. As a coach, Sharman won titles in the ABL, ABA, and NBA, and is credited with introducing the now-ubiquitous morning shootaround.
Go to Profile#14922
John Antonakis
#14933
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
John Antonakis is a professor of organizational behavior at the Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Lausanne and former editor-in-chief of The Leadership Quarterly. Life He was born and raised in South Africa of Greek parents and is Swiss naturalized. He received his Ph.D. in applied management and decision sciences with a focus on leadership measurement and psychometrics, and was a post-doc in cognitive psychology ; he did undergraduate work at the University of the Witwatersrand in business and economics, and received his Bachelor and master's degrees at Johnson and Wa...
Go to Profile#14923
Lars Feld
#14934
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Lars Peter Feld is a German economist who currently serves as director of the Walter Eucken Institut and as Professor for Economic Policy at the University of Freiburg. From 2020 to 2021 he also chaired the German Council of Economic Experts. Federal Minister of Finance Christian Lindner made Feld his personal economic policy advisor in February 2022.
Go to Profile#14925
Stephen Marglin
#14936
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Stephen Alan Marglin is an American economist. He is the Walter S. Barker Professor of Economics at Harvard University, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and a founding member of the World Economics Association.
Go to Profile#14926
Adam Vinatieri
#14937
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Adam Matthew Vinatieri is an American former football placekicker who played in the National Football League for 24 seasons with the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts. Considered one of the greatest placekickers of all time, he is the NFL's all-time leading scorer at 2,673 points. He also holds the NFL records for field goals made , postseason points , and overtime field goals made .
Go to Profile#14927
Martin Eichler
#14938
Overall Influence
1912 - 1992 (80 years)
Martin Maximilian Emil Eichler was a German number theorist. Eichler received his Ph.D. from the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in 1936. Eichler and Goro Shimura developed a method to construct elliptic curves from certain modular forms. The converse notion that every elliptic curve has a corresponding modular form would later be the key to the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.
Go to Profile#14928
Mary G. Enig
#14939
Overall Influence
1931 - 2014 (83 years)
Mary Gertrude Enig was a nutritionist and researcher known for her unconventional positions on the role saturated fats play in diet and health. She promoted skepticism towards the consensus in the scientific and medical communities that diets high in saturated fats can contribute to development of heart disease, while she advocated for a diet based on whole foods and rich in certain saturated fats.
Go to Profile#14929
Rahel Jaeggi
#14940
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Rahel Jaeggi is a professor of practical philosophy and social philosophy at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Her research areas are in social philosophy, political philosophy, ethics, philosophical anthropology, social ontology, and critical theory. Since February 2018 she has been the head of the Berlin campus of the newly founded International Center for Humanities and Social Change.
Go to Profile#14930
Douglas Laycock
#14941
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Douglas Laycock is the Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, and a leading scholar in the areas of religious liberty and the law of remedies. He also serves as the 2nd Vice President of the American Law Institute and is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Go to Profile#14931
Douglas Q. Adams
#14942
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Douglas Quentin Adams is a professor of English at the University of Idaho and an Indo-European comparativist. Adams studied at the University of Chicago, taking his PhD in 1972. He is an expert on Tocharian and a contributor on this subject to the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Go to Profile#14932
Toshio Yanagida
#14943
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Toshio Yanagida is a Japanese biophysicist famous for his pioneer research in single molecule biology, and made important contributions to single molecule fluorescence microscopy. Contribution Yanagida has been leading the development of single molecule detection techniques to study molecular motors, enzyme reactions, protein dynamics, and cell signaling since he succeeded in the direct observation of motion of single F-actin filaments in the presence of myosin in 1984. His single molecule experiments designed to investigate how thermal fluctuations play a positive role in the unique operati...
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Dominic Joyce
#14944
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Dominic David Joyce FRS is a British mathematician, currently a professor at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Lincoln College since 1995. His undergraduate and doctoral studies were at Merton College, Oxford. He undertook a DPhil in geometry under the supervision of Simon Donaldson, completed in 1992. After this he held short-term research posts at Christ Church, Oxford, as well as Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley in the United States.
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John Paul Jones
#14945
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John Baldwin , better known by his stage name John Paul Jones, is an English musician, composer, and record producer who was the bassist and keyboardist for the rock band Led Zeppelin. Prior to forming the band with Jimmy Page in 1968, he was a session musician and arranger. After the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980, Led Zeppelin disbanded, and Jones developed a solo career. He has collaborated with musicians across a variety of genres, including the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures with Dave Grohl and Josh Homme, and Alain Johannes. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in ...
Go to Profile#14935
John Avise
#14946
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
John Charles Avise is an American evolutionary geneticist, conservationist, ecologist and natural historian. He is a Distinguished Professor of Ecology & Evolution, University of California, Irvine, and was previously a Distinguished Professor of Genetics at the University of Georgia.
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Oswald Ducrot
#14947
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Oswald Ducrot is a French linguist. He was a professor and former research fellow at CNRS. He is currently a professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is the author of a number of works, particularly on enunciation. He developed a theory of argumentation in language with Jean-Claude Anscombre.
Go to Profile#14937
Renzo De Felice
#14948
Overall Influence
1929 - 1996 (67 years)
Renzo De Felice was an Italian historian, who specialized in the Fascist era, writing, among other works, a 6000-page biography of Mussolini . He argued that Mussolini was a revolutionary modernizer in domestic issues but a pragmatist in foreign policy who continued the Realpolitik policies of Italy from 1861 to 1922. Historian of Italy Philip Morgan has called De Felice's biography of Mussolini "a very controversial, influential and at the same time problematic re-reading of Mussolini and Fascism" and rejected the contention that his work rose above politics to "scientific objectivity", as c...
Go to Profile#14938
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz
#14949
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz is an American historian and the Sydenham Clark Parsons Professor of American Studies and History, emerita, at Smith College. Early life and education Horowitz was born on 31 Jan. 1942 in Shreveport, Louisiana, to Rabbi David Lefkowitz, Jr. and Leona Atlas Lefkowitz. Rabbi David served as rabbi at Temple B'nai Zion in Shreveport and Leona was a tutor in math, informal college counselor, civic worker, community board member, and housewife. David Lefkowitz is her paternal grandfather. Horowitz was educated in Shreveport, and graduated from C. E. Byrd High School in 195...
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Ernest J. Gaines
#14950
Overall Influence
1933 - 2019 (86 years)
Ernest James Gaines was an American author whose works have been taught in college classrooms and translated into many languages, including French, Spanish, German, Russian and Chinese. Four of his works were made into television movies.
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Richard Gordon
#14951
Overall Influence
1921 - 2017 (96 years)
Richard Gordon , was an English ship's surgeon and anaesthetist. As Richard Gordon, Ostlere wrote numerous novels, screenplays for film and television and accounts of popular history, mostly dealing with the practice of medicine. He was best known for a long series of comic novels on a medical theme beginning with Doctor in the House, and the subsequent film, television, radio and stage adaptations. His The Alarming History of Medicine was published in 1993, and he followed this with The Alarming History of Sex.
Go to Profile#14941
Rodney Jerkins
#14952
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Rodney Roy Jerkins , also known by his stage name Darkchild, is an American record producer, rapper, and songwriter. He has collaborated with a broad range of popular artists. Jerkins has won multiple Grammy Awards. Among his most successful productions are "The Boy Is Mine" by Brandy, "Say My Name" by Destiny's Child, "If You Had My Love" by Jennifer Lopez, "Déjà Vu" by Beyoncé, "Telephone" by Lady Gaga, and "As Long as You Love Me" by Justin Bieber.
Go to Profile#14942
Terry Karl
#14953
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Terry Lynn Karl is the Gildred Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Political Science specializing in comparative politics in the Political Science Department at Stanford University.
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Alice Ambrose
#14954
Overall Influence
1906 - 2001 (95 years)
Alice Ambrose Lazerowitz was an American philosopher, logician, and author. Early life and education Alice Loman Ambrose was born in Lexington, Illinois and orphaned when she was 13 years old. She studied philosophy and mathematics at Millikin University . After completing her PhD at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1932, she went to Cambridge University to study with G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein, where she earned a second PhD in 1938.
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V. P. Singh
#14955
Overall Influence
1931 - 2008 (77 years)
Vishwanath Pratap Singh , shortened to V. P. Singh, was an Indian politician who was the 7th Prime Minister of India from 1989 to 1990 and the 41st Raja Bahadur of Manda. He is India's only prime minister to have been former royalty.
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David Wills
#14956
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
David Robert Wills is a noted translator of Jacques Derrida, including The Gift of Death, Right of Inspection, Counterpath, and The Animal That Therefore I Am. Currently, Wills is a professor of French at Brown University.
Go to Profile#14946
Sylvia Walby
#14957
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Sylvia Theresa Walby is a British sociologist, currently Professor of Sociology, Director of the Violence and Society Centre at the City University of London. She has an Honorary Doctorate from Queen's University Belfast for distinction in sociology. She is noted for work in the fields of the domestic violence, patriarchy, gender relations in the workplace and globalisation.
Go to Profile#14947
Imanuel Geiss
#14958
Overall Influence
1931 - 2012 (81 years)
Imanuel Geiss was a German historian. Life Imanuel Geiss was born in Frankfurt am Main, the youngest of the five children of a working-class family affected by the economic crisis. His unemployed father had to raise the children alone as their mother suffered from meningitis. She was killed in 1941 by Aktion T4 after the father had died in 1940. The five children were brought to a rather liberal orphan home which made it possible for Imanuel to study after completing his Abitur in 1951 at Carl-Schurz-Gymnasium.
Go to Profile#14948
Terence E. Fretheim
#14959
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Terence E. Fretheim was an Old Testament scholar and the Elva B. Lovell professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary. His writings have played a major part in the development of process theology and open theism.
Go to Profile#14949
John Mullan
#14960
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
John Mullan is a professor of English at University College London . He is a specialist in eighteenth-century literature, currently writing the 1709–1784 volume of the Oxford English Literary History.
Go to Profile#14950
Ward Farnsworth
#14961
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Ward Farnsworth is Professor of Law and holder of the W. Page Keeton Chair at the University of Texas School of Law, where he was Dean from 2012-2022. He served as Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Liability for Economic Harm, and is the author of books on law, rhetoric, philosophy, and chess.
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