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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people
#15051
Kenneth Feder
#15062
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Kenneth L. "Kenny" Feder is a professor of archaeology at Central Connecticut State University and the author of several books on archaeology and criticism of pseudoarchaeology such as Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. His book Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis to the Walam Olum was published in 2010. His book Ancient America: Fifty Archaeological Sites to See for Yourself was published in 2017. He is the founder and director of the Farmington River Archaeological Project.
Go to Profile#15052
Norman Sauer
#15063
Overall Influence
Norman J. Sauer is an American forensic anthropologist and professor emeritus of anthropology at Michigan State University . Education Sauer received his undergraduate degree from the State University of New York at Geneseo and his Ph.D. from Michigan State University.
Go to Profile#15053
Olga Holtz
#15064
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Olga Holtz is a Russian mathematician specializing in numerical analysis. She received the Sofia Kovalevskaya Award in 2006 and the European Mathematical Society Prize . Since 2008, she is a member of the Young Academy of Germany.
Go to Profile#15054
Edward Altman
#15065
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Edward I. Altman is a Professor of Finance, Emeritus, at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is best known for the development of the Altman Z-score for predicting bankruptcy which he published in 1968. Professor Altman is a leading academic on the High-Yield and Distressed Debt markets and is the pioneer in the building of models for credit risk management and bankruptcy prediction.
Go to Profile#15055
Camillo De Lellis
#15066
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Camillo De Lellis is an Italian mathematician who is active in the fields of calculus of variations, hyperbolic systems of conservation laws, geometric measure theory and fluid dynamics. He is a permanent faculty member in the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is also one of the two managing editors of Inventiones Mathematicae.
Go to Profile#15056
Hazel Rose Markus
#15067
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Hazel June Linda Rose Markus is an American social psychologist and a pioneer in the field of cultural psychology. She is the Davis-Brack Professor in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in Stanford, California. She is also a founder and faculty director of Stanford SPARQ, a "do tank" that partners with industry leaders to tackle disparities and inspire culture change using insights from behavioral science. She is a founder and former director of the Research Institute of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity . Her research focuses on how culture shapes mind and behavior.
Go to Profile#15057
Russell D. Moore
#15068
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Russell D. Moore is an American theologian, ethicist, and preacher. In June 2021, he became the director of the Public Theology Project at Christianity Today, and on August 4, 2022, was announced as the magazine's incoming Editor-in-Chief.
Go to Profile#15058
Lana Turner
#15069
Overall Influence
1921 - 1995 (74 years)
Julia Jean "Lana" Turner was an American actress. Over a career spanning nearly five decades, she achieved fame as both a pin-up model and a film actress, as well as for her highly publicized personal life. In the mid-1940s, she was one of the highest-paid American actresses and one of MGM's biggest stars, with her films earning more than $50 million for the studio during her 18-year contract with them. Turner is frequently cited as a popular culture icon of Hollywood glamour and a screen legend of classical Hollywood cinema. She was nominated for numerous awards.
Go to Profile#15059
Leland Wilkinson
#15070
Overall Influence
1944 - 2021 (77 years)
Leland Wilkinson was an American statistician and computer scientist at H2O.ai and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at University of Illinois at Chicago. Wilkinson developed the SYSTAT statistical package in the early 1980s, sold it to SPSS in 1995, and worked at SPSS for 10 years recruiting and managing the visualization team. He left SPSS in 2008 and became Executive VP of SYSTAT Software Inc. in Chicago. He then served as the VP of Data Visualization at Skytree, Inc and VP of Statistics at Tableau Software before joining H2O.ai. His research focused on scientific visualization and statistical graphics.
Go to Profile#15060
Paul Weller
#15071
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Paul John Weller is an English singer-songwriter and musician. Weller achieved fame with the new wave/mod revival band the Jam . He had further success with the blue-eyed soul music of the Style Council , before establishing himself as a solo artist with his eponymous 1992 album.
Go to Profile#15061
Mary K. Gaillard
#15072
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Mary Katharine Gaillard is an American theoretical physicist. Her focus is on particle physics. She is a professor of the graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, a member of the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, and visiting scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She was Berkeley's first tenured female physicist.
Go to Profile#15062
Joan Jett
#15073
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Joan Jett is an American rock singer, guitarist, songwriter, record producer and actress. She is best known for her work as the frontwoman of her band Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and for founding and performing with the Runaways, who recorded and released the hit song "Cherry Bomb". With the Blackhearts, Jett is known for her rendition of the song "I Love Rock 'n Roll" which was number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks in 1982. Jett's other notable songs include "Bad Reputation", "Light of Day", "I Hate Myself for Loving You" and her covers of "Crimson and Clover", "Do You Wanna...
Go to Profile#15063
Francis Daniels Moore
#15074
Overall Influence
1913 - 2001 (88 years)
Francis Daniels Moore was an American surgeon who was a pioneer in numerous experimental surgical treatments. Among his many achievements, he refined burn-treatment techniques, helped perform the world's first successful organ transplant , and accurately determined the volume of water and other nutrients in the human body using radioactive isotopes of those substances.
Go to Profile#15064
Zick Rubin
#15075
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Isaac Michael "Zick" Rubin is an American social psychologist, lawyer, and author. He is "widely credited as the author of the first empirical measurement of love," for his work distinguishing feelings of like from feelings of love via Rubin's Scales of Liking and Loving. Science Progress stated, "The major breakthrough in research on love came from the pioneer psychometric work of Zick Rubin."
Go to Profile#15065
Eurymedon the Hierophant
#15076
Overall Influence
Eurymedon the Hierophant was a representative of the priestly clan overseeing the Eleusinian Mysteries. Together with Demophilus he reportedly brought a charge of impiety against Aristotle after Alexander the Great's death in 323 BC.
Go to Profile#15066
Myrna Loy
#15077
Overall Influence
1905 - 1993 (88 years)
Myrna Loy was an American film, television and stage actress. As a performer, she was known for her ability to adapt to her screen partner's acting style. Born in Helena, Montana, Loy was raised in rural Radersburg during her early childhood, before relocating to Los Angeles with her mother in her early adolescence. There, she began studying dance, and trained extensively as a dancer throughout her high school education. She was discovered by production designer Natacha Rambova, who helped facilitate film auditions for her, and she began obtaining small roles in the late 1920s, Loy devoted herself fully to an acting career following a few minor roles in silent films.
Go to Profile#15067
David May
#15078
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Michael David May FRS FREng is a British computer scientist. He is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bristol and founder of XMOS Semiconductor, serving until February 2014 as the chief technology officer.
Go to Profile#15068
Alison Wylie
#15079
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Alison Wylie is a Canadian philosopher of archaeology. She is a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia and holds a Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of the Social and Historical Sciences.
Go to Profile#15069
Lambert Schmithausen
#15080
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Lambert Schmithausen is a retired professor of Buddhist Studies, having served in positions at the University of Münster and the University of Hamburg . He is one of the leading academics in the field.
Go to Profile#15070
Roger Fouts
#15081
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Roger S. Fouts is a retired American primate researcher. He was co-founder and co-director of the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute in Washington, and a professor of psychology at the Central Washington University. He is best known for his role in teaching Washoe the chimpanzee to communicate using a set of signs taken from American sign language.
Go to Profile#15071
Dorwin Cartwright
#15082
Overall Influence
1915 - 2008 (93 years)
Dorwin Philip Cartwright was an American social psychologist, and considered one of the founders of the field of group dynamics. Cartwright's research and writing topics included the mathematical foundations of group dynamics, the sources of social power, the nature of group structure and the causes of risk taking in groups. He was a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan for 31 years.
Go to Profile#15072
Jonathan Schell
#15083
Overall Influence
1943 - 2014 (71 years)
Jonathan Edward Schell was an American author and visiting fellow at Yale University, whose work primarily dealt with campaigning against nuclear weapons. Personal Schell was born in New York City on August 21, 1943, to Orville Hickock Schell Jr., a lawyer who chaired Human Rights Watch, and Marjorie Bertha. He studied at Dalton School in New York and graduated from The Putney School in Vermont. In 1965 he graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Far Eastern history. He then spent a year learning Japanese at the International Christian University in Tokyo.
Go to Profile#15073
Abdelaziz Bouteflika
#15084
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
Abdelaziz Bouteflika was an Algerian politician and diplomat who served as the seventh president of Algeria from 1999 to his resignation in 2019. Before his stint as an Algerian politician, Bouteflika served during the Algerian War as a member of the National Liberation Front. After Algeria gained its independence from France, he served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1963 until 1979. He served as President of the United Nations General Assembly during the 1974–1975 session. In 1983 he was convicted of stealing millions of dinars from Algerian embassies during his diplomatic career...
Go to Profile#15074
Ruth M. J. Byrne
#15085
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Ruth M.J. Byrne, FTCD, MRIA, is an Irish cognitive scientist and author of several books on human reasoning. She is the Professor of Cognitive Science, in the School of Psychology and Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin. She is the former Vice Provost of Trinity College Dublin.
Go to Profile#15075
Chrissie Hynde
#15086
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Christine Ellen Hynde is an American-British musician. She is a founding member and the lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter of the rock band the Pretenders, and one of the band's two remaining original members alongside drummer Martin Chambers. She is the only continuous member of the band, appearing on every studio album.
Go to Profile#15076
Alice Amsden
#15087
Overall Influence
1943 - 2012 (69 years)
Alice Hoffenberg Amsden was a political economist and scholar of state-led economic development. For the last two decades of her career, she was the Barton L. Weller Professor of Political Economy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#15077
Han Kang
#15088
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Han Kang is a South Korean writer. She won the Man Booker International Prize for fiction in 2016 for The Vegetarian, a novel about a woman's descent into mental illness and neglect from her family. The novel is also one of the first of her books to be translated into English.
Go to Profile#15078
Lierre Keith
#15089
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Lierre Keith is an American writer, radical feminist, food activist, and radical environmentalist. Biography Keith attended Brookline High School in Massachusetts. She began her public involvement in the feminist movement as the founding editor of Vanessa and Iris: A Journal for Young Feminists . During this same period, she also volunteered with a group called Women Against Violence Against Women in Cambridge, where she participated in educational events and protest campaigns. In 1984, she was a founding member of Minor Disturbance, a protest group against militarism from a feminist perspective.
Go to Profile#15079
Mary Allen Wilkes
#15090
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Mary Allen Wilkes is a lawyer, former computer programmer and logic designer, known for her work with the LINC computer, now recognized by many as the world's first "personal computer". Career Wilkes was born in Chicago, Illinois and graduated from Wellesley College in 1959 where she majored in philosophy and theology. Wilkes planned to become a lawyer, but was discouraged by friends and mentors from pursuing law because of the challenges women faced in the field. A geography teacher in the eighth grade had told Wilkes, "Mary Allen, when you grow up, you ought to be a computer programmer." Sh...
Go to Profile#15080
Gregory L. Fenves
#15091
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Gregory Louis Fenves is a structural engineer, professor and college administrator who is the twenty-first president of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Fenves was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2014 for contributions to computational modeling, creation of open source software for earthquake engineering analysis, and academic leadership.
Go to Profile#15081
Nancy Armstrong
#15092
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Nancy Armstrong is a scholar, critic and professor of English at Duke University. Overview Before moving to Duke, Armstrong was the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Comparative Literature, English, Modern Culture & Media, and Gender Studies at Brown University. She is currently the Gilbert, Louis & Edward Lehrman Professor of English at Duke. She is interested in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British and American fiction, empire and sexuality, narrative and critical theory, visual culture, and scientific discourses at work in literary forms. She is best known for her groundbreaking book o...
Go to Profile#15082
Stephen Cameron
#15093
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Stephen Cameron is an American financial analyst, economist and author. He is currently Adjunct Associate Professor and was for many years an Associate Professor of Economics at Columbia University, and is currently serving as Director at Citi.
Go to Profile#15083
Edward F. Crawley
#15094
Overall Influence
Edward F. Crawley is a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and of Engineering Systems at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His teaching and research focuses on Space Systems, Systems Architecture and Systems Engineering. He serves as the co-chair of NASA Exploration Technology Development Program Review Committee and formerly served as the Co-Director of the Gordon Engineering Leadership Program at MIT.
Go to Profile#15084
C. Robert Mesle
#15095
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Charles Robert Mesle is an American process theologian and was professor of philosophy and religion at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa, until his retirement in 2016. After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in religion at Graceland University and a Master of Arts degree in Christian theology at University of Chicago Divinity School , Mesle received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in philosophy and religion from Northwestern University .
Go to Profile#15085
Farouk Kamoun
#15096
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Farouk Kamoun is a Tunisian computer scientist and professor of computer science at the National School of Computer Sciences of Manouba University, Tunisia. He contributed in the late 1970s to significant research in the field of computer networking in relation with the first ARPANET network. He is also one of the pioneers of the development of the Internet in Tunisia in the early 1990s.
Go to Profile#15086
Afrika Bambaataa
#15097
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Lance Taylor , also known as Afrika Bambaataa , is an American DJ, rapper, and producer from the South Bronx, New York. He is notable for releasing a series of genre-defining electro tracks in the 1980s that influenced the development of hip hop culture. Afrika Bambaataa is one of the originators of breakbeat DJing.
Go to Profile#15087
Heiner Flassbeck
#15098
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Heiner Flassbeck is a German economist and public intellectual. From 1998 to 1999 he was a State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Finance where he also advised former finance minister Oskar Lafontaine on a reform of the European Monetary System. He became the Chief of Macroeconomics and Development of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva in January 2003, a position that he held until resigning at the end of 2012 due to his age.
Go to Profile#15088
David C. Geary
#15099
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
David Cyril Geary is an American cognitive developmental and evolutionary psychologist with interests in mathematical learning and sex differences. He is currently a Curators’ Professor and Thomas Jefferson Fellow in the Department of Psychological Sciences and Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri.
Go to Profile#15089
Peter Smith
#15100
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Sir Peter Winston Smith , styled The Hon Mr Justice Peter Smith, is a former judge of the High Court of Justice in England and Wales, having been appointed to that office on 15 April 2002 and assigned to the Chancery Division. His name is correctly abbreviated in English legal writing as "Peter Smith J," and not as "Smith J," because there were other senior judges also named Smith. He was the subject of comment and investigation in relation to his judicial behaviour in various circumstances. He retired on 28 October 2017.
Go to Profile#15090
Martin Shaw
#15101
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Martin Shaw is a British sociologist and academic. He is a research professor of international relations at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals, emeritus professor of international relations and politics at Sussex University and a professorial fellow in international relations and human rights at Roehampton University. He is best known for his sociological work on war, genocide and global politics.
Go to Profile#15091
Robert Jan van Pelt
#15102
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Robert Jan van Pelt is a Dutch author, architectural historian, professor at the University of Waterloo and a Holocaust scholar. One of the world's leading experts on Auschwitz, he regularly speaks on Holocaust related topics, through which he has come to address Holocaust denial. He was an expert witness in Deborah Lipstadt's successful defence in the civil libel suit brought against her by British author and Holocaust denier David Irving in 1996.
Go to Profile#15092
Joe B. Wyatt
#15103
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Joe Billy Wyatt served as the sixth chancellor of Vanderbilt University from 1982 to 2000. Prior to his appointment at Vanderbilt, Wyatt was the Vice President for Administration at Harvard University
Go to Profile#15093
Oakley Hall
#15104
Overall Influence
1920 - 2008 (88 years)
Oakley Maxwell Hall was an American novelist. He was born in San Diego, California, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and served in the Marines during World War II. Some of his mysteries were published under the pen names "O.M. Hall" and "Jason Manor." Hall received his Master of Fine Arts in English from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Go to Profile#15094
Cedric Robinson
#15105
Overall Influence
1940 - 2016 (76 years)
Cedric James Robinson was an American professor in the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara . He headed the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science. He served as the Director of the Center for Black Studies Research. Robinson's areas of interest included classical and modern political philosophy, radical social theory in the African diaspora, comparative politics, racial capitalism, and the relationships between and among media and politics.
Go to Profile#15095
Oscar Horta
#15106
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Óscar Horta Álvarez is a Spanish animal activist and moral philosopher who is currently a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Santiago de Compostela and one of the co-founders of the organization Animal Ethics. He is known for his work in animal ethics, especially around the problem of wild animal suffering. He has also worked on the concept of speciesism and on the clarification of the arguments for the moral consideration of nonhuman animals. In 2022, Horta published his first book in English, Making a Stand for Animals.
Go to Profile#15096
Teju Cole
#15107
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Teju Cole is a Nigerian-American writer, photographer, and art historian. He is the author of a novella, Every Day Is for the Thief , a novel, Open City , an essay collection, Known and Strange Things , a photobook Punto d'Ombra , and a second novel, Tremor . Critics have praised his work as having "opened a new path in African literature."
Go to Profile#15097
Howard Wilkinson
#15108
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Howard Wilkinson is an English former footballer and manager. Despite having a low-profile playing career, Wilkinson embarked on a successful managerial career. He won the First Division championship in 1992 with Leeds United, the final season before the creation of the Premier League. As FA Technical Director he was instrumental in the planning and development of English football's first National Football Centre. To date, he remains the last English manager to win the top-flight league in England. He later had spells as caretaker manager of the England senior and U21 teams.
Go to Profile#15098
William Barr
#15109
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
William Pelham Barr is an American attorney who served as the United States attorney general in the administration of President George H. W. Bush from 1991 to 1993 and again in the administration of President Donald Trump from 2019 to 2020.
Go to Profile#15099
Campbell Harvey
#15110
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Campbell Russell "Cam" Harvey is a Canadian economist, known for his work on asset allocation with changing risk and risk premiums and the problem of separating luck from skill in investment management. He is currently the J. Paul Sticht Professor of International Business at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business in Durham, North Carolina, as well as a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is also a research associate with the Institute of International Integration Studies at Trinity College Dublin and a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#15100
Akira Asada
#15111
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Akira Asada is a Japanese postmodern critic and curator, whose interests include contemporary arts, the history of social thought, and economic philosophy. He is currently the Dean of the Graduate School at the Kyoto University of Art and Design. Until March 2008, he served as an associate professor of economics at the Institute of Economic Research at Kyoto University . Asada is widely recognized as the author of the bestselling book, "構造と力─記号論を超えて ", which was published in 1983. He holds a position as a member of the supervisory committee at NTT InterCommunication Center, and was a co-editor...
Go to Profile