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
#15251
John Ziman
#15262
Overall Influence
1925 - 2005 (80 years)
John Michael Ziman was a British-born New Zealand physicist and humanist who worked in the area of condensed matter physics. He was a spokesman for science, as well as a teacher and author. Ziman was born in Cambridge, England, in 1925. His parents were Solomon Netheim Ziman and, Nellie Frances, née Gaster. The family emigrated to New Zealand when Ziman was a baby. He obtained his early education at Hamilton High School and the Victoria University College. He obtained his PhD from Balliol College, Oxford and did his early research on the theory of electrons in liquid metals at the University...
Go to Profile#15252
D. Michael Quinn
#15263
Overall Influence
1944 - 2021 (77 years)
Dennis Michael Quinn was an American historian who focused on the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . He was a professor at Brigham Young University from 1976 until he resigned in 1988. At the time, his work concerned church involvement with plural marriage after the 1890 Manifesto, when new polygamous marriages were officially prohibited. He was excommunicated from the church as one of the September Six and afterwards was openly gay. Quinn nevertheless identified as a Latter-day Saint and continued to believe in many LDS teachings, though he did not actively practic...
Go to Profile#15253
George S. Day
#15264
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
George S. Day is an educator and consultant in the fields of marketing, strategy and innovation management. He is the Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor Emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He founded the Mack Institute for Innovation Management at the Wharton School, where he is presently Faculty Emeritus in Residence.
Go to Profile#15254
Kiron Skinner
#15265
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Kiron Kanina Skinner is a former Director of Policy Planning at the United States Department of State in the Trump administration. Skinner is presently the Taube Professor of International Relations and Politics at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy, where she teaches graduate courses in national security and public leadership. Prior to that, she was the Taube Professor of International Relations and Politics at Carnegie Mellon University, and the founding director of the Institute for Politics and Strategy and associated centers at the university. She is also the W. Glenn Campbell Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Go to Profile#15255
Cornelius Plantinga
#15266
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Cornelius "Neal" Plantinga Jr. is an American theologian. He most notably served as president of Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan from 2002 through 2011. Plantinga received an AB degree from Calvin College in 1967, a BD degree from Calvin Theological Seminary in 1971, and a PhD degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1982. He is the brother of philosopher Alvin Plantinga and musicologist Leon Plantinga.
Go to Profile#15256
Edward DeLong
#15267
Overall Influence
Edward Francis DeLong , is a marine microbiologist and professor in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and is considered a pioneer in the field of metagenomics. He is best known for his discovery of the bacterial use of the rhodopsin protein in converting sunlight to biochemical energy in marine microbial communities.
Go to Profile#15257
Thomas E. Crow
#15268
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Thomas E. Crow is an American art historian and art critic who is best known for his influential writing on the role of art in modern society and culture. Since 2007, Crow has served as the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU.
Go to Profile#15258
Liu Xiaofeng
#15269
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Liu Xiaofeng is a contemporary Chinese scholar and a professor at Renmin University of China. He has been considered the prototypical example of what is called a cultural Christian , meaning a believer who may lack a specific church identification or affiliation, and was, along with He Guanghu, one of the main forerunners of the academic field of Sino-Christian Theology . However, in recent years, his interest has shifted from studies in Christian theology to the political theories of Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt.
Go to Profile#15259
Olivier Giroud
#15270
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Olivier Jonathan Giroud is a French professional footballer who plays as a striker for club AC Milan and the France national team. He is currently France's all-time highest goalscorer. Giroud began his senior club career playing for hometown club Grenoble, before he signed with Tours in 2008, aged 21. He was named Ligue 2 Player of the Year in 2010 after finishing as the league's top goalscorer. He was subsequently the subject of a then-club record association football transfer when he moved to Montpellier in a transfer worth €2 million, winning the club's first Ligue 1 title and finishing as league top goalscorer in 2012.
Go to Profile#15260
David P. Anderson
#15271
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
David Pope Anderson is an American research scientist at the Space Sciences Laboratory, at the University of California, Berkeley, and an adjunct professor of computer science at the University of Houston. Anderson leads the SETI@home, BOINC, Bossa, and Bolt software projects.
Go to Profile#15261
Matthew Kahn
#15272
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Matthew E. Kahn is a leading American educator in the field of environmental economics. He is the Provost Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California. Between 2019 and 2021, he served on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Economics and Business, with appointments at both Carey Business School and Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#15262
Kazoh Kitamori
#15273
Overall Influence
1916 - 1998 (82 years)
Kazoh Kitamori was a Japanese theologian, pastor, author, professor, and churchman. His most famous work in the West is The Theology of the Pain of God, which was published in 1946 in Japan and in the United States in 1965. He was a longtime professor at Tokyo Union Theological Seminary. He was, along with Kōsuke Koyama, a leading contributor to Protestant Christian theology from twentieth century Japan.
Go to Profile#15263
Tanya Atwater
#15274
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Tanya Atwater is an American geophysicist and marine geologist who specializes in plate tectonics. She is particularly renowned for her early research on the plate tectonic history of western North America.
Go to Profile#15264
Roberto Durán
#15275
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Roberto Durán Samaniego is a Panamanian Mexican former professional boxer who competed from 1968 to 2001. He held world championships in four weight classes: lightweight, welterweight, light middleweight and middleweight, as well as reigns as the undisputed and lineal lightweight champion, and the lineal welterweight champion. He is also the second boxer to have competed over a span of five decades, the first being Jack Johnson. Durán was known as a versatile, technical brawler and pressure fighter, which earned him the nickname "Manos de Piedra" for his formidable punching power and excelle...
Go to Profile#15265
Darren Walker
#15276
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Darren Walker OBE currently serves as 10th president of the Ford Foundation, a private foundation dedicated to human welfare. In June 2020, Walker led the Ford Foundation to issue a $1 billion designated social bond to stabilize non-profit organizations in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic. Walker is a member of the Reimagining New York Commission and co-chair of 2020 New York City Census. In October 2021, Walker announced that the Ford Foundation will divest its investments from "fossil fuels and seek opportunities to invest in alternative and renewable energy in the future"; including investing...
Go to Profile#15266
Hartmut Lehmann
#15277
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Hartmut Lehmann is a German historian of modern history who specializes in religious and social history. He is known for his research on Pietism, secularization, religion and nationalism, transatlantic studies and Martin Luther. He was the founding director of the German Historical Institute Washington DC and was a director of the Max Planck Institute for History. He is an emeritus honorary professor at Kiel University and the University of Göttingen.
Go to Profile#15267
Joyce White
#15278
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Joyce C. White is an American archaeologist, an adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, and executive director of the new Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology. Her research primarily concerns decades-long multidisciplinary archaeological investigations in Thailand and Laos covering the prehistoric human occupation of the middle reaches of the Mekong River Basin. She is considered the world's leading expert on the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ban Chiang, Thailand, and directs an archaeological fieldwork program in the Luang Prabang Province of Laos. She has be...
Go to Profile#15268
James Chatters
#15279
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
James C. Chatters is an American archaeologist and paleontologist. , he is the owner of forensics consulting firm, Applied Paleoscience; and serves as a research associate in the Office of Graduate Studies, Research, and Continuing Education at Central Washington University; Deputy Coroner of Benton County, Washington; and a consulting scientist on staff with Foster Wheeler Environmental Corporation of Bothell, Washington. In 1996, Chatters was the first scientist to excavate and study the prehistoric skeletal remains, known as Kennewick Man, which were discovered on the banks of the Columbi...
Go to Profile#15269
Carrie Lam
#15280
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor is a Hong Kong retired politician who served as the 4th Chief Executive of Hong Kong from 2017 to 2022, after serving as Chief Secretary for Administration for five years.
Go to Profile#15270
Liel Leibovitz
#15281
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Liel Leibovitz is an Israeli journalist, author, media critic and video game scholar. Leibovitz was born in Tel Aviv, immigrated to the United States in 1999, and earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2007. In 2014, he was Visiting Assistant Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University.
Go to Profile#15271
Samuel Steward
#15282
Overall Influence
1909 - 1993 (84 years)
Samuel Morris Steward , also known as Phil Andros, Phil Sparrow, was an American tattoo artist and pornographer. Throughout his life, he kept extensive secret diaries, journals and statistics of his sex life. He lived most of his adult life in Chicago, where he tattooed sailor-trainees from the U.S. Navy's Great Lakes Naval Training Station out of a tattoo parlor on South State Street. He later moved to the San Francisco Bay area, where he spent the late 1960s as the official tattoo artist of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club.
Go to Profile#15272
Gerald Feinberg
#15283
Overall Influence
1933 - 1992 (59 years)
Gerald Feinberg was a Columbia University physicist, futurist and popular science author. He spent a year as a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, and two years at the Brookhaven Laboratories. Feinberg went to Bronx High School of Science with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow and obtained his bachelor's and graduate degrees from Columbia University. His father was Yiddish poet and journalist Leon Feinberg. Among his students were Scott Dodelson, physicist at Carnegie Mellon University.
Go to Profile#15273
Eugene Alexandrov
#15284
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Eugene Borisovich Alexandrov is a Russian physicist, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences , Doctor of Sciences, head of the Commission on Pseudoscience. Laureate of the 1978 USSR State Prize and of the 2016 Pyotr Lebedev Gold Medal and of the 1974 Rozhdestvensky Russian Academy of Sciences Prize.
Go to Profile#15274
Geoffrey Alderman
#15285
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Geoffrey Alderman is a British historian who specialises in 19th and 20th centuries Jewish community in England. He is also a political adviser and journalist. Life Born in Middlesex, Alderman was educated at Hackney Downs School , then studied history at Lincoln College, Oxford, from 1962, graduating with a BA in 1965 and an MA and D.Phil. in 1969. After short academic contracts at University College London, and the universities of Swansea and Reading, he joined Royal Holloway College in 1972, lecturing in politics and contemporary history. He was made Professor of Politics and Contemporary...
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Ruth Gavison
#15286
Overall Influence
1945 - 2020 (75 years)
Ruth Gavison was an Israeli expert of human rights, professor of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and recipient of the Israel Prize. Biography Ruth Gavison was born in Jerusalem on March 28, 1945 to a Sephardic Jewish family. Her father's ancestors were Moroccan Jews who immigrated from Tetouan to Jerusalem in the 19th century. Her mother's side was Greek Jewish. She grew up in Haifa. She graduated from Hebrew University law school in 1969. In 1970, she was also awarded a B.A. in Philosophy and Economics.
Go to Profile#15276
Carenza Lewis
#15287
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Carenza Rachel Lewis is a British academic archaeologist and television presenter. Early life Lewis received her formal education at the school of the Church of England Community of All Hallows, in Suffolk. She studied archaeology and anthropology at Girton College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#15277
James L. Mohler
#15288
Overall Influence
James Larue Mohler is a professor in the department of computer graphics technology at Purdue University, where he received his B.S. in technical graphics, M.S. in industrial technology and Ph.D. in education. Dr. Mohler has been an associate professor since 1996, and since 2002 he has also served as senior research scientist and acting director of informatics. In these capacities, he has received several major grants.
Go to Profile#15278
Roy Clarke
#15289
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Royston Clarke is an English comedy writer best known for creating the sitcoms Last of the Summer Wine, Keeping Up Appearances, Open All Hours and its sequel series, Still Open All Hours. Early life Clarke was born in Austerfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His jobs before becoming a writer included a teacher, a policeman, a taxi driver and a salesman, in addition to being a soldier in the Royal Corps of Signals of the British Army.
Go to Profile#15279
Milan Zeleny
#15290
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Milan Zeleny is a Czech American economist, currently a professor of management systems at Fordham University, New York City. He has done research in the field of decision-making, productivity, knowledge management, and business economics. Zeleny is also a visiting professor at the Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Czech Republic, and has been academic vice dean and professor at Xidian University in Xi’an, China. He is a distinguished visiting professor at Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei in 2006, at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur in 2007, and at IBMEC in Rio de Janeiro in 2009–10.
Go to Profile#15280
Laurie Olin
#15291
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Laurie Olin is an American landscape architect. He has worked on landscape design projects at diverse scales, from private residential gardens to public parks and corporate/museum campus plans. Early life Olin grew up in Alaska, and earned his degree in Architecture from the University of Washington in Seattle, where he was mentored under Richard Haag.
Go to Profile#15281
Anita K. Jones
#15292
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Anita Katherine Jones is an American computer scientist and former U.S. government official. She was Director, Defense Research and Engineering from 1993 to 1997. Jones was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to the theory and implementation of software systems and for extensive public service.
Go to Profile#15282
Walter Ledermann
#15293
Overall Influence
1911 - 2009 (98 years)
Walter Ledermann FRSE was a German and British mathematician who worked on matrix theory, group theory, homological algebra, number theory, statistics, and stochastic processes. He was elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1944.
Go to Profile#15283
William R. Hammer
#15294
Overall Influence
William Roy Hammer is an American paleontologist who is credited with the discovery of the first carnivorous dinosaur unearthed in Antarctica, Cryolophosaurus, in 1991. He was professor of geology and curator of the Frxyell Geology Museum at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL from 1981 to 2017.
Go to Profile#15284
Horst Bredekamp
#15295
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Horst Bredekamp is a German art historian and visual historian. Life and work Bredekamp studied art history, archaeology, philosophy and sociology in Kiel, Munich, Berlin and Marburg. In 1974 he received his doctorate at the Philipps-Universität Marburg with a thesis on art as a medium of social conflicts, especially the "Bilderkämpfe" of late antiquity to the Hussite revolution. He worked first as a volunteer at the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt am Main, from 1976 as assistant in the division of Art History at the University of Hamburg.
Go to Profile#15285
Richard Velkley
#15296
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Richard L. Velkley is an American philosopher and Celia Scott Weatherhead Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University. Velkley is known for his expertise on Kant, Rousseau, and post-Kantian philosophy. He is a former associate editor of The Review of Metaphysics and a former president of the Metaphysical Society of America .
Go to Profile#15286
James Blake
#15297
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
James Riley Blake is an American former professional tennis player. He won 10 titles on the ATP Tour , reaching a career-high singles ranking of world No. 4. His career highlights included reaching the final of the 2006 Tennis Masters Cup, the semifinals of the 2008 Beijing Olympics , the quarterfinals of the 2008 Australian Open and 2005 and 2006 US Openss, two titles at the Hopman Cup and being the American No. 1 in men's singles. Blake was also a key performer for the victorious United States 2007 Davis Cup team, winning both his matches in the championship tie against Russia.
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Jacques Marescaux
#15298
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Jacques Marescaux is a French doctor. He is Chairman of the digestive and endocrine surgery at the University Hospital, Strasbourg. Biography 1948: Born in Clermont1971: Major in the contest for the Internat1977: Doctor in surgery1980: He obtained a chair professor at the Universities digestive surgery. He was only 33 years old.1989 - 1992: Director of special education Visceral surgery at the Medical School of Strasbourg.1989 - 1992: Vice President of the regional council of the Inserm.Since 1989: Head of digestive and endocrine surgery University Hospitals of Strasbourg.Since 1994: Founding...
Go to Profile#15288
Daddy Yankee
#15299
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Ramón Luis Ayala Rodríguez , known professionally as Daddy Yankee, is a Puerto Rican rapper, singer, songwriter, and actor who will be retiring after completing his final "La Meta" tour in December 2023. Dubbed the "King of Reggaeton", he is often cited as an influence by other Hispanic urban performers.
Go to Profile#15289
Klaas Knot
#15300
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Klaas Henderikus Willem Knot is a Dutch economist and central banker who is the current President of the Dutch central bank De Nederlandsche Bank . In this capacity he serves as a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank , as well as of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund . Knot also holds a position as Professor in Monetary Stability at the University of Amsterdam and honorary professor at the University of Groningen.
Go to Profile#15290
Bernardo Bertolucci
#15301
Overall Influence
1941 - 2018 (77 years)
Bernardo Bertolucci was an Italian film director and screenwriter with a career that spanned 50 years. Considered one of the greatest directors in Italian cinema, Bertolucci's work achieved international acclaim. He was the first Italian filmmaker to win the Academy Award for Best Director for The Last Emperor , one of many accolades including a BAFTA Award, a César Award, and two Golden Globes. He also received a Golden Lion in 2007, and a Honorary Palme d'Or in 2011.
Go to Profile#15291
Adrian Wells
#15302
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Adrian Wells, CPsychol, is a British clinical psychologist who is the creator of metacognitive therapy. He is Professor of Clinical and Experimental Psychopathology at the University of Manchester, U.K. and is also Professor II of Clinical Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Go to Profile#15292
Geoffrey Watson
#15303
Overall Influence
1921 - 1998 (77 years)
Geoffrey Stuart Watson was an Australian statistician. Watson was born in Bendigo, Victoria in 1921. He studied at the University of Melbourne, and received his PhD at the North Carolina State University in 1951. After taking positions at the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University, the University of Toronto and Johns Hopkins University, he became chair of the Department of Statistics of Princeton University in 1970. He remained there until his death.
Go to Profile#15293
Meredith Jung-En Woo
#15304
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Meredith Jung-En Woo is an American academic and author. She is a Professor of Practice at the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. She served as President of Sweet Briar College, and is the former director of the International Higher Education Support Program at the Open Society Foundation in London. She also served as the Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia.
Go to Profile#15294
Allen Weinstein
#15305
Overall Influence
1937 - 2015 (78 years)
Allen Weinstein was an American historian, educator, and federal official who served in several different offices. He was, under the Reagan administration, cofounder of the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983. He served as the Archivist of the United States from February 16, 2005, until his resignation on December 19, 2008. After his resignation, he returned to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems as a senior strategist and was a visiting faculty member at the University of Maryland.
Go to Profile#15295
Ethan Hawke
#15306
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Ethan Green Hawke is an American actor, author and film director. He made his film debut in Explorers , before making a breakthrough performance in Dead Poets Society . Hawke starred alongside Julie Delpy in Richard Linklater's Before trilogy from 1995 to 2013. Hawke received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Training Day and Boyhood and two for Best Adapted Screenplay for co-writing Before Sunset and Before Midnight . Other notable roles include in Reality Bites , Gattaca , Great Expectations , Before the Devil Knows You're Dead , Maggie's Plan , First R...
Go to Profile#15296
Thomas Landauer
#15307
Overall Influence
1932 - 2014 (82 years)
Dr. Thomas K. Landauer was a Professor Emeritus at the Department of Psychology of the University of Colorado. He received his doctorate in 1960 from Harvard University, and also held academic appointments at Harvard, Dartmouth College, Stanford University and Princeton University. During his 25-year tenure as Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs and its successors, where he was the manager of an information science and human-computer interaction research group, he was one of the pioneers of Latent semantic analysis. His publications include:The Trouble with Computers, a contr...
Go to Profile#15297
Stuart Tyson Smith
#15308
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Stuart Tyson Smith is an Egyptologist and professor in the Anthropology department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His specialty is the interaction between ancient Egypt and Nubia. Smith is known for reconstruction of the ancient Egyptian language for the films Stargate and The Mummy
Go to Profile#15298
Michael Allen Gillespie
#15309
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Michael Allen Gillespie is an American philosopher and Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Duke University. His areas of interest are political philosophy, continental philosophy, history of philosophy, and the origins of modernity. He has published on the relationship between theology and philosophy, medieval theology, liberalism, and a number of philosophers such as Nietzsche, Hegel, Heidegger, and Kant.
Go to Profile#15299
Florence King
#15310
Overall Influence
1936 - 2016 (80 years)
Florence Virginia King was an American novelist, essayist and columnist. While her early writings focused on the American South and those who live there, much of King's later work was published in National Review. Until her retirement in 2002, her column in National Review, "The Misanthrope's Corner", was known for "serving up a smorgasbord of curmudgeonly critiques about rubes and all else bothersome to the Queen of Mean", as the magazine put it. After leaving retirement in 2006, she began writing a new column for National Review titled "The Bent Pin."
Go to Profile#15300
Colin A. Ross
#15311
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Colin A. Ross is a Canadian psychiatrist and former president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation from 1993 to 1994. There is controversy about his methods and claims, which include recovering memories through hypnosis of Satanic ritual abuse and his own assertion that he can harness chi energy from his eyes to manipulate electronics.
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