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
#1501
Joe Boyd
#1503
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Joe Boyd is an American record producer and writer. He formerly owned Hannibal Records. Boyd has worked on recordings of Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, The Incredible String Band, R.E.M., Vashti Bunyan, John and Beverley Martyn, Maria Muldaur, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Billy Bragg, James Booker, 10,000 Maniacs, and Muzsikás. He was also one of the founders of the highly influential nightclub venue UFO.
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James Lighthill
#1504
Overall Influence
1924 - 1998 (74 years)
Sir Michael James Lighthill was a British applied mathematician, known for his pioneering work in the field of aeroacoustics and for writing the Lighthill report which pessimistically stated that "In no part of the field have the discoveries made so far produced the major impact that was then promised" contributing to the gloomy climate of AI winter.
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Giorgio Parisi
#1505
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Giorgio Parisi is an Italian theoretical physicist, whose research has focused on quantum field theory, statistical mechanics and complex systems. His best known contributions are the QCD evolution equations for parton densities, obtained with Guido Altarelli, known as the Altarelli–Parisi or DGLAP equations, the exact solution of the Sherrington–Kirkpatrick model of spin glasses, the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang equation describing dynamic scaling of growing interfaces, and the study of whirling flocks of birds. He was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Klaus Hasselmann and Syukuro...
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Gene Wolfe
#1506
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Gene Rodman Wolfe was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He was noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith. He was a prolific short story writer and novelist, and won many literary awards. Wolfe has been called "the Melville of science fiction", and was honored as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
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Mick Jagger
#1507
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Sir Michael Philip Jagger is an English singer, songwriter, actor, filmmaker, and dancer. He is the front man and one of the founder members of the rock band the Rolling Stones. Jagger has written most of the band's songs alongside lead guitarist Keith Richards; their songwriting partnership is one of the most successful in history, and they continue to collaborate musically. His career has spanned over six decades, and he has been widely described as one of the most popular and influential front men in the history of rock music. His distinctive voice and energetic live performances, along with Richards' guitar style, have been the Rolling Stones' trademark throughout the band's career.
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S. T. Joshi
#1508
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Sunand Tryambak Joshi is an American literary critic whose work has largely focused on weird and fantastic fiction, especially the life and work of H. P. Lovecraft and associated writers. Career His literary criticism focuses upon the worldviews of authors. His The Weird Tale examines horror and fantasy writing by Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M. R. James, Ambrose Bierce, and Lovecraft.
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Isao Takahata
#1509
Overall Influence
1935 - 2018 (83 years)
Isao Takahata was a Japanese director, screenwriter and producer. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, he earned international critical acclaim for his work as a director of Japanese animated feature films. Born in Ujiyamada, Mie Prefecture, Takahata joined Toei Animation after graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1959. He worked as an assistant director, holding various positions over the years and collaborating with colleague Hayao Miyazaki, eventually directing his own film, The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun . He continued his partnership with Miyazaki, and under Nippon Animat...
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Barry Miles
#1510
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Barry Miles is an English author known for his participation in and writing on the subjects of the 1960s London underground and counterculture. He is the author of numerous books and his work has also regularly appeared in leftist newspapers such as The Guardian. In the 1960s, he was co-owner of the Indica Gallery and helped start the independent newspaper International Times.
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Kay Ivey
#1511
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Kay Ellen Ivey is an American politician who is the 54th governor of Alabama, serving since 2017. Originally a conservative Southern Democrat, Ivey became a member of the Republican Party in 2002. She was the 38th Alabama state treasurer from 2003 to 2011 and the 30th lieutenant governor of Alabama from 2011 to 2017.
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Yehuda Bauer
#1512
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (98 years)
Yehuda Bauer is a Czech-born Israeli historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He is a professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Yochai Benkler
#1513
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
#1512
Gilbert Strang
#1514
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
William Gilbert Strang is an American mathematician known for his contributions to finite element theory, the calculus of variations, wavelet analysis and linear algebra. He has made many contributions to mathematics education, including publishing mathematics textbooks. Strang was the MathWorks Professor of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He taught Linear Algebra, Computational Science, and Engineering, Learning from Data, and his lectures are freely available through MIT OpenCourseWare.
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Gordon Pask
#1515
Overall Influence
1928 - 1996 (68 years)
Andrew Gordon Speedie Pask was a British cybernetician, inventor and polymath who made during his lifetime multiple contributions to cybernetics, educational psychology, educational technology, epistemology, chemical computing, architecture, and the performing arts. During his life he gained three doctorate degrees. He was an avid writer, with more than two hundred and fifty publications which included a variety of journal articles, books, periodicals, patents, and technical reports . He also worked as an academic and researcher for a variety of educational settings, research institutes, and ...
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Guido Calabresi
#1516
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
#1515
Arthur Jensen
#1517
Overall Influence
1923 - 2012 (89 years)
Arthur Robert Jensen was an American psychologist and writer. He was a professor of educational psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Jensen was known for his work in psychometrics and differential psychology, the study of how and why individuals differ behaviorally from one another.
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Dolores Huerta
#1518
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta is an American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Cesar Chavez, is a co-founder of the United Farmworkers Association, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers . Huerta helped organize the Delano grape strike in 1965 in California and was the lead negotiator in the workers' contract that was created after the strike.
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Frank Harary
#1519
Overall Influence
1921 - 2005 (84 years)
Frank Harary was an American mathematician, who specialized in graph theory. He was widely recognized as one of the "fathers" of modern graph theory. Harary was a master of clear exposition and, together with his many doctoral students, he standardized the terminology of graphs. He broadened the reach of this field to include physics, psychology, sociology, and even anthropology. Gifted with a keen sense of humor, Harary challenged and entertained audiences at all levels of mathematical sophistication. A particular trick he employed was to turn theorems into games—for instance, students w...
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Lyle Campbell
#1520
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Lyle Richard Campbell is an American scholar and linguist known for his studies of indigenous American languages, especially those of Central America, and on historical linguistics in general. Campbell is professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
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Michael C. Jensen
#1521
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Michael Cole "Mike" Jensen is an American economist who works in the area of financial economics. Between 2000 and 2009 he worked for the Monitor Company Group, a strategy-consulting firm which became "Monitor Deloitte" in 2013. He holds the position of Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, at Harvard University.
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Geoffrey Blainey
#1522
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Geoffrey Norman Blainey, is an Australian historian, academic, best selling author and commentator. He is noted for having written authoritative texts on the economic and social history of Australia, including The Tyranny of Distance. He has published over 40 books, including wide-ranging histories of the world and of Christianity. He has often appeared in newspapers and on television. He held chairs in economic history and history at the University of Melbourne for over 20 years. In the 1980s, he was visiting professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University. He received the 1988 Brita...
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Gordon B. Hinckley
#1523
Overall Influence
1910 - 2008 (98 years)
Gordon Bitner Hinckley was an American religious leader and author who served as the 15th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from March 1995 until his death in January 2008 at age 97. Considered a prophet, seer, and revelator by church members, Hinckley was the oldest person to preside over the church in its history until Russell M. Nelson surpassed his age in 2022.
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Nate Silver
#1524
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Nathaniel Read Silver is an American statistician, writer, and poker player who analyzes baseball , basketball, and elections . He is the founder of FiveThirtyEight, and held the position of editor-in-chief there, along with being a special correspondent for ABC News, until May 2023.
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Thomas C. Südhof
#1525
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Thomas Christian Südhof , ForMemRS, is a German-American biochemist known for his study of synaptic transmission. Currently, he is a professor in the school of medicine in the department of molecular and cellular physiology, and by courtesy in neurology, and in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University.
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David Langford
#1526
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
David Rowland Langford is a British author, editor, and critic, largely active within the science fiction field. He publishes the science fiction fanzine and newsletter Ansible and holds the all-time record for most Hugo Awards, with a total of 29 wins.
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Tom Kilburn
#1527
Overall Influence
1921 - 2001 (80 years)
Tom Kilburn was an English mathematician and computer scientist. Over his 30-year career, he was involved in the development of five computers of great historical significance. With Freddie Williams he worked on the Williams–Kilburn tube and the world's first electronic stored-program computer, the Manchester Baby, while working at the University of Manchester. His work propelled Manchester and Britain into the forefront of the emerging field of computer science.
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Richard Axel
#1528
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Richard Axel is an American molecular biologist and university professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His work on the olfactory system won him and Linda Buck, a former postdoctoral research scientist in his group, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004.
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Dave Cutler
#1529
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
David Neil Cutler Sr. is an American software engineer. He developed several computer operating systems, namely Microsoft's Windows NT, and Digital Equipment Corporation's RSX-11M, VAXELN, and VMS. Personal history Cutler was born in Lansing, Michigan and grew up in DeWitt, Michigan. After graduating from Olivet College, Michigan, in 1965, he went to work for DuPont.
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Edward T. Hall
#1530
Overall Influence
1914 - 2009 (95 years)
Edward Twitchell Hall, Jr. was an American anthropologist and cross-cultural researcher. He is remembered for developing the concept of proxemics and exploring cultural and social cohesion, and describing how people behave and react in different types of culturally defined personal space. Hall was an influential colleague of Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller.
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Mike Tyson
#1531
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Michael Gerard Tyson is an American former professional boxer who competed from 1985 to 2005. Nicknamed "Iron Mike" and "Kid Dynamite" in his early career, and later known as "the Baddest Man on the Planet", Tyson is regarded as one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time. He reigned as the undisputed world heavyweight champion from 1987 to 1990. Tyson won his first 19 professional fights by knockout, 12 of them in the first round. Claiming his first belt at 20 years, 4 months, and 22 days old, Tyson holds the record as the youngest boxer ever to win a heavyweight title. He was the fir...
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Robin Hahnel
#1532
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Robin Eric Hahnel is an American economist and professor emeritus of economics at American University. He was a professor at American University for many years and traveled extensively advising on economic matters all over the world. He is best known for his work on participatory economics with Z Magazine editor Michael Albert.
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Arata Isozaki
#1533
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Arata Isozaki was a Japanese architect, urban designer, and theorist from Ōita. He was awarded the Royal Gold Medal in 1986 and the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2019. He taught at Columbia University, Harvard University, and Yale University.
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Charlie Brooker
#1534
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Charlton Brooker is an English writer, television presenter, producer and satirist. He is the creator and co-showrunner of the sci-fi drama anthology series Black Mirror, and has written for comedy series such as Brass Eye, The 11 O'Clock Show, and Nathan Barley.
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Benjamin Netanyahu
#1535
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is an Israeli politician who has been serving as the prime minister of Israel since 2022, having previously held the office from 1996 to 1999 and again from 2009 to 2021. He is the chairman of the Likud party. Netanyahu is the longest-tenured prime minister in the country's history, having served for a total of over 16 years. He is also the first prime minister to have been born in Israel after its Declaration of Independence.
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Steve Keen
#1536
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Steve Keen is an Australian economist and author. He considers himself a post-Keynesian, criticising neoclassical economics as inconsistent, unscientific, and empirically unsupported. Keen was formerly an associate professor of economics at University of Western Sydney, until he applied for voluntary redundancy in 2013, due to the closure of the economics program at the university. In 2014, he became a professor and Head of the School of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University in London. He has since taken retirement and is crowd source funded to undertake independent research...
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Armen Alchian
#1537
Overall Influence
1914 - 2013 (99 years)
Armen Albert Alchian was an American economist. He spent almost his entire career at the University of California, Los Angeles . A major microeconomic theorist, he is known as one of the founders of new institutional economics and widely acknowledged for his work on property rights.
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Michael Frayn
#1538
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Michael Frayn, FRSL is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy. His novels, such as Towards the End of the Morning, Headlong and Spies, have also been critical and commercial successes, making him one of the handful of writers in the English language to succeed in both drama and prose fiction. He has also written philosophical works, such as The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of the Universe .
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Gary Bettman
#1539
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Gary Bruce Bettman is an American sports executive who serves as the commissioner of the National Hockey League , a post he has held since February 1, 1993. Previously, Bettman was a senior vice president and general counsel to the National Basketball Association . Bettman is a graduate of Cornell University and New York University School of Law. Bettman was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018.
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Robert Brandom
#1540
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Robert Boyce Brandom is an American philosopher who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. He works primarily in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and philosophical logic, and his academic output manifests both systematic and historical interests in these topics. His work has presented "arguably the first fully systematic and technically rigorous attempt to explain the meaning of linguistic items in terms of their socially norm-governed use , thereby also giving a non-representationalist account of the intentionality of thought and the rationality of action as well."
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William Vickrey
#1541
Overall Influence
1914 - 1996 (82 years)
William Spencer Vickrey was a Canadian-American professor of economics and Nobel Laureate. Vickrey was awarded the 1996 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with James Mirrlees for their research into the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information, becoming the only Nobel laureate born in British Columbia.
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Pauline Marois
#1542
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Pauline Marois is a retired Canadian politician, who served as the 30th premier of Quebec from 2012 to 2014. Marois had been a member of the National Assembly in various ridings since 1981 as a member of the Parti Québécois , serving as party leader from 2007 to 2014. She is the first female premier of Quebec.
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Enrico Bombieri
#1543
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Enrico Bombieri is an Italian mathematician, known for his work in analytic number theory, Diophantine geometry, complex analysis, and group theory. Bombieri is currently Professor Emeritus in the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Bombieri won the Fields Medal in 1974 for his contributions to large sieve mathematics, conceptualized by Linnick 1941, and its application to the distribution of prime numbers.
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Cesar Chavez
#1544
Overall Influence
1927 - 1993 (66 years)
Cesar Chavez was an American labor leader and civil rights activist. Along with Dolores Huerta, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association , which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers labor union. Ideologically, his worldview combined leftist politics with Catholic social teachings.
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William Nordhaus
#1545
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
William Dawbney Nordhaus is an American economist, a Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University, best known for his work in economic modelingling and climate change, and a co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Nordhaus received the prize "for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis".
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Molefi Kete Asante
#1546
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Molefi Kete Asante is an American professor and philosopher. He is a leading figure in the fields of African-American studies, African studies, and communication studies. He is currently a professor in the Department of Africology at Temple University, where he founded the PhD program in African-American Studies. He is president of the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies.
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Norman Davies
#1547
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
#1546
Susan Rice
#1548
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Susan Elizabeth Rice is an American diplomat, policy advisor, and public official. A member of the Democratic Party, Rice served as the 22nd Director of the United States Domestic Policy Council from 2021 to 2023, as the 27th U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013, and as the 23rd U.S. National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2017.
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Jan Woleński
#1549
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Jan Hertrich-Woleński is a Polish philosopher specializing in the history of the Lwów–Warsaw school of logic and in analytic philosophy. He has spent most of his academic career at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, where he is currently professor emeritus. His main fields of research are logic, epistemology, and the history of philosophy in Poland.
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Russell Means
#1550
Overall Influence
1939 - 2012 (73 years)
Russell Charles Means was an Oglala Lakota activist for the rights of Native Americans, libertarian political activist, actor, musician and writer. He became a prominent member of the American Indian Movement after joining the organization in 1968 and helped organize notable events that attracted national and international media coverage.
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Kwame Anthony Appiah
#1551
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
#1550
Sergey Sobyanin
#1552
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Sergey Semyonovich Sobyanin is a Russian politician, serving as the 3rd mayor of Moscow since 21 October 2010. Sobyanin previously served as the governor of Tyumen Oblast , Head of the presidential administration and Deputy Prime Minister of Russia . He has the federal state civilian service rank of 1st class Active State Councillor of the Russian Federation.
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