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
#16051
Ulrik Fredrik Malt
#16062
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Ulrik Fredrik Malt is a Norwegian psychiatrist. He was a consultant psychiatrist at Oslo University Hospital, Rikshospitalet, and was Director of the Department of Neuropsychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine from 1987 to 2013. Since 2014 he is a senior consultant, Department of Research and Education, Division of Surgery and Clinical Neuroscience, Oslo University Hospital. Holding a position of Professor II at the University of Oslo since 1988, in 2016 he became professor emeritus.
Go to Profile#16052
Eqbal Ahmad
#16063
Overall Influence
1933 - 1999 (66 years)
Eqbal Ahmad was a Pakistani political scientist, writer and academic known for his anti-war activism, his support for resistance movements globally and academic contributions to the study of the Near East. Born in Bihar, British India, Ahmad migrated to Pakistan as a child and went on to study economics at the Forman Christian College. After graduating, he worked briefly as an army officer and was wounded in the First Kashmir War in 1948. He participated in the Algerian Revolution, then studied the Vietnam War and U.S. imperialism, becoming an early opponent of the war upon his return to the U.S.
Go to Profile#16053
Catherine Millot
#16064
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Catherine Millot is a French Lacanian psychoanalyst and author, professor of psychoanalysis at the University of Paris-VIII. Millot studied philosophy before turning to psychoanalysis. In 1971 she started an eight-year analysis with Lacan, and attended his seminars from 1971 until his death. Her thesis, turned into the book Freud anti-pédagogue, argued that pedagogy could not be based on psychoanalysis, since the role of analyst involved a radical openness to lack which was incompatible with the role of teacher. In 1975 she started teaching in the department of psychoanalysis at Paris VIII.
Go to Profile#16054
Sumantra Bose
#16065
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Sumantra Bose is an Indian political scientist and professor of international and comparative politics at the London School of Economics. He specialises in the study of ethnic and national conflicts and their management, with a particular focus on the Indian subcontinent and the former Yugoslavia .
Go to Profile#16055
Rick Trainor
#16066
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Sir Richard Hughes Trainor, , is an academic administrator and historian who served as the Principal of King's College London from 2004 to 2014. He was previously the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Greenwich from 2000 to 2004. He is currently Rector of Exeter College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#16056
Miomir Vukobratović
#16067
Overall Influence
1931 - 2012 (81 years)
Miomir Vukobratović was a Serbian mechanical engineer and pioneer in humanoid robots. His major interest laid in the development of efficient modeling and control of robot dynamics. He was born in Botoš, near Zrenjanin, Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
Go to Profile#16057
Frank Thomas
#16068
Overall Influence
1912 - 2004 (92 years)
Franklin Rosborough Thomas was an American animator and pianist. He was one of Walt Disney's leading team of animators known as the Nine Old Men. Biography Thomas was born on September 5, 1912, in Santa Monica, California, to Frank Thomas, a teacher, and Ina Gregg. He had two older brothers, Lawrence and Welburne. He grew up in Fresno. Frank Thomas attended Stanford University, where he was a member of Theta Delta Chi fraternity and worked on campus humor magazine The Stanford Chaparral with Ollie Johnston. After graduating from Stanford in 1933, he attended Chouinard Art Institute, then joined The Walt Disney Company on September 24, 1934, as employee number 224.
Go to Profile#16058
George L. Hart
#16069
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
George Luzerne Hart, III is Professor Emeritus of Tamil language at the University of California, Berkeley. His work focuses on the classical Tamil literature and on identifying the relationships between the Tamil and Sanskrit literature. In 2015 the Government of India awarded him the title of Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian honour.
Go to Profile#16059
Nonna Mayer
#16070
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Nonna Mayer is an academic French political scientist and researcher in political science. She is a research director at the CNRS, and a specialist of electoral sociology and of far right movements in France. She was president of the Association Française de Science Politique from 2005 to 2016.
Go to Profile#16060
Stephen Hopkins
#16071
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Stephen Hopkins is a Jamaican-born British-Australian director and producer of film and television. He directed Predator 2, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, Blown Away, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Lost in Space and Under Suspicion. He also produced and directed several episodes of the first season of 24.
Go to Profile#16061
Jessica Wilson
#16072
Overall Influence
Jessica M. Wilson is an American professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Her research focuses on metaphysics, especially on the metaphysics of science and mind, the epistemologies of skepticism, a priori deliberation, and necessity. Wilson was awarded the Lebowitz Prize for excellence in philosophical thought by Phi Beta Kappa in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association.
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Mark Emmert
#16073
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Mark Allen Emmert is the former president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. He was the fifth CEO of the NCAA; he was named as the incoming president on April 27, 2010, and assumed his duties on November 1, 2010, and remained in office until March 1, 2023.
Go to Profile#16063
Jüri Allik
#16074
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jüri Allik , is an Estonian psychologist. Career Allik holds Ph.D. degrees in psychology both from the University of Moscow, Russia and University of Tampere, Finland . Spending his academic career at the University of Tartu , he became Professor of Psychophysics in 1992, and is since 2002 Professor of Experimental Psychology. He was also the head of the University of Tartu's Department of Psychology and the chairman of the Estonian Science Foundation , as well as an editor of the Estonian English-language social science and humanities journal Trames.
Go to Profile#16064
Raimund Seidel
#16075
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Raimund G. Seidel is a German and Austrian theoretical computer scientist and an expert in computational geometry. Seidel was born in Graz, Austria, and studied with Hermann Maurer at the Graz University of Technology. He received his M. Sc. in 1981 from University of British Columbia under David G. Kirkpatrick. He received his Ph.D. in 1987 from Cornell University under the supervision of John Gilbert. After teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, he moved in 1994 to Saarland University. In 1997 he and Christoph M. Hoffmann were program chairs for the Symposium on Computational Geometry.
Go to Profile#16065
G. E. R. Lloyd
#16076
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Sir Geoffrey Ernest Richard Lloyd , usually cited as G. E. R. Lloyd, is a historian of ancient science and medicine at the University of Cambridge. He is the senior scholar in residence at the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge, England.
Go to Profile#16066
Vitold Belevitch
#16077
Overall Influence
1921 - 1999 (78 years)
Vitold Belevitch was a Belgian mathematician and electrical engineer of Russian origin who produced some important work in the field of electrical network theory. Born to parents fleeing the Bolsheviks, he settled in Belgium where he worked on early computer construction projects. Belevitch is responsible for a number of circuit theorems and introduced the now well-known scattering parameters.
Go to Profile#16067
Donald E. Westlake
#16078
Overall Influence
1933 - 2008 (75 years)
Donald Edwin Westlake was an American writer with more than one hundred novels and non-fiction books to his credit. He specialized in crime fiction, especially comic capers, with an occasional foray into science fiction and other genres. Westlake created two professional criminal characters who each starred in a long-running series: the relentless, hardboiled Parker , and John Dortmunder, who featured in a more humorous series.
Go to Profile#16068
Marshall Faulk
#16079
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Marshall William Faulk is an American former professional football player who was a running back in the National Football League for 13 seasons with the Indianapolis Colts and St. Louis Rams. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest running backs of all time.
Go to Profile#16069
Bernhard Häring
#16080
Overall Influence
1912 - 1998 (86 years)
Bernard Häring, CSsR was a German moral theologian and a Redemptorist priest in the Catholic Church. Life Häring was born at Böttingen in Germany to a prosperous farmer. In 1934, he entered the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, was ordained a priest in 1939, and completed doctoral studies moral theology in obedience to his superiors at the University of Tübingen.
Go to Profile#16070
Kevin McHale
#16081
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Kevin Edward McHale is an American former professional basketball player, coach and analyst who played his entire professional career for the Boston Celtics. He is a Basketball Hall of Fame inductee and is regarded as one of the greatest power forwards of all time.
Go to Profile#16071
Michel Aoun
#16082
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Michel Naim Aoun is a Lebanese politician and former military general who served as the President of Lebanon from 31 October 2016 until 30 October 2022. Born in Haret Hreik to a Maronite Christian family, Aoun joined the Military Academy in 1955 and graduated as an artillery officer in the Lebanese Army. In 1984, he became the youngest Commander of the Army, at the age of 49 years. On 22 September 1988 during the fourth phase of the Lebanese Civil War, the departing President Amine Gemayel appointed him as the interim Prime Minister of a Military Government, after the parliament failed to ele...
Go to Profile#16072
Tony Adams
#16083
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Tony Alexander Adams is an English former football manager and player. Adams played for Arsenal and England, captaining both teams. He spent his entire playing career of 19 years as a centre-back at Arsenal, making 672 total appearances and winning 4 English league titles. He is considered as one of Arsenal's greatest ever players, and is also included in the Football League 100 Legends.
Go to Profile#16073
Peter Beyer
#16084
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Peter Beyer is a German Professor for Cell Biology at the Faculty of Biology of the University of Freiburg. He is known as co-inventor of Golden Rice, together with Ingo Potrykus from the ETH Zurich.
Go to Profile#16074
Denis Johnson
#16085
Overall Influence
1949 - 2017 (68 years)
Denis Hale Johnson was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet. He is perhaps best known for his debut short story collection, Jesus' Son . His most successful novel, Tree of Smoke , won the National Book Award for Fiction. Johnson was twice shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Altogether, Johnson was the author of nine novels, one novella, two books of short stories, three collections of poetry, two collections of plays, and one book of reportage. His final work, a book of short stories titled The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, was published posthumously in 2018.
Go to Profile#16075
Robert S. Corrington
#16086
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Robert S. Corrington is an American philosopher and author of many books exploring human interpretation of the universe as well as biographies on C.S. Peirce and Wilhelm Reich. He is currently the Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Philosophical Theology at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Before that he was a professor at Pennsylvania State University. He is a Senior Fellow of the American Institute for Philosophical and Cultural Thought.
Go to Profile#16076
Gary Chartrand
#16087
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Gary Theodore Chartrand is an American-born mathematician who specializes in graph theory. He is known for his textbooks on introductory graph theory and for the concept of a highly irregular graph.
Go to Profile#16077
Celia Amorós
#16088
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Celia Amorós Puente is a Spanish philosopher, essayist and supporter of feminist theory. She is a key figure in the so-called equality feminism and focused an important part of her research in the building of relations between Enlightenment and feminism. Her book Hacia una crítica de la razón patriarcal constitutes a new outlook on the gender perspective of philosophy, revealing the biases of androcentrism and claims a critical review on behalf of women.
Go to Profile#16078
Krister Stendahl
#16089
Overall Influence
1921 - 2008 (87 years)
Krister Olofson Stendahl was a Swedish theologian, New Testament scholar, and Church of Sweden Bishop of Stockholm. He also served as dean, professor, and professor emeritus at Harvard Divinity School.
Go to Profile#16079
Roel in 't Veld
#16090
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Roeland Jaap in 't Veld is a Dutch scholar of public administration and Labour Party politician. He was briefly State Secretary for the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in 1993. Biography Born and raised in The Hague, In 't Veld attended the gymnasium from 1953 to 1959. In 1959 he obtained his Propaedeutics in economics at the Netherlands School of Economics in Rotterdam . He continued to study law at the University of Leiden, where he obtained his MA in 1964. Later in 1975 he obtained a PhD in law, his thesis being titled Majority System Theory and Prosperity.
Go to Profile#16080
Jon Callas
#16091
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Jon Callas is an American computer security expert, software engineer, user experience designer, and technologist who is the co-founder and former CTO of the global encrypted communications service Silent Circle. He has held major positions at Digital Equipment Corporation, Apple, PGP, and Entrust, and is considered "one of the most respected and well-known names in the mobile security industry." Callas is credited with creating several Internet Engineering Task Force standards, including OpenPGP, DKIM, and ZRTP, which he wrote. Prior to his work at Entrust, he was Chief Technical Officer and...
Go to Profile#16081
Gordon Royle
#16092
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Gordon F. Royle is a professor at the School of Mathematics and Statistics at The University of Western Australia. Royle is the co-author of the book Algebraic Graph Theory . Royle is also known for his research into the mathematics of Sudoku and his search for the Sudoku puzzle with the smallest number of entries that has a unique solution.
Go to Profile#16082
Joe Strummer
#16093
Overall Influence
1952 - 2002 (50 years)
John Graham Mellor , known professionally as Joe Strummer, was a British singer-songwriter and musician. He was the co-founder, lyricist, rhythm guitarist and co-lead vocalist of punk rock band the Clash, formed in 1976. The Clash's second studio album Give 'Em Enough Rope reached No. 2 on the UK charts. Soon after, they achieved success in the US, starting with London Calling and peaking with Combat Rock , which reached No. 7 on the US charts and was certified 2× platinum there. The Clash's explosive political lyrics, musical experimentation, and rebellious attitude had a far-reaching influence on rock music in general, especially alternative rock.
Go to Profile#16083
David Stahel
#16094
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
David Stahel is a historian, author and senior lecturer in history at the University of New South Wales. He specialises in German military history of World War II. Stahel has authored several books on the military operations of the first six months of the Eastern Front, including on the launching of Operation Barbarossa, the Battle of Kiev and the Battle for Moscow.
Go to Profile#16084
Lee Edelman
#16095
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Lee Edelman is an American literary critic and academic. He is a professor of English at Tufts University. He is the author of four books. Early life Lee Edelman was born in 1953. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Northwestern University, and he received an MPhil and a PhD from Yale University.
Go to Profile#16085
Ken Friedman
#16096
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Ken Friedman is a design researcher. He was a member of Fluxus, an international laboratory for experimental art, architecture, design, and music. Friedman joined Fluxus in 1966 as the youngest member of the classic Fluxus group. He has worked closely with other Fluxus artists and composers such as George Maciunas, Dick Higgins, and Nam June Paik, as well as collaborating with John Cage and Joseph Beuys. He was the general manager of Dick Higgins's Something Else Press in the early 1970s. In the 1990s, Friedman's work as a management consultant and designer led him to an academic career, firs...
Go to Profile#16086
Roger Walsh
#16097
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Roger N. Walsh is an Australian professor of Psychiatry, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, within UCI's College of Medicine. Walsh is respected for his views on psychoactive drugs and altered states of consciousness in relation with the religious/spiritual experience, and has been quoted in the media regarding psychology, spirituality, and the medical effects of meditation.
Go to Profile#16087
Jean Pisani-Ferry
#16098
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Jean Pisani-Ferry is a French economist and public policy expert. He is a fellow at think tanks Bruegel in Brussels and the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C. He is also a senior professor in economics and public management at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, and a professor at the European University Institute near Florence.
Go to Profile#16088
Helge Kragh
#16099
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Helge Stjernholm Kragh is a Danish historian of science who focuses on the development of 19th century physics, chemistry, and astronomy. His published work includes biographies of Paul Dirac, Julius Thomsen and Ludvig Lorenz, and The Oxford Handbook of the History of Modern Cosmology which he co-edited with Malcolm Longair.
Go to Profile#16089
Zindel Segal
#16100
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Zindel V. Segal is a cognitive psychologist, a specialist on depression and one of the founders of Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy . A professor of psychology at University of Toronto, Segal combines mindfulness with conventional cognitive behavioral therapy, which teaches patients to develop a different relationship to sadness or unhappiness by observing and without judgment. Presently he is Distinguished Professor of Psychology in Mood Disorders in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He is also the Director of Clinical Training in the Graduate Departme...
Go to Profile#16090
George Bournoutian
#16101
Overall Influence
1943 - 2021 (78 years)
George A. Bournoutian was an Iranian-American professor, historian, and author of Armenian descent. He was a professor of history and the author of over 30 books, particularly focusing on Armenian history, Iran and the Caucasus. He taught Iranian history at UCLA, and Armenian history at Columbia University, Tufts University, New York University, Rutgers University, the University of Connecticut, Ramapo College, and Glendale Community College and Russian and Soviet history at Iona College. Bournoutian was one of the 40 editors of the Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Go to Profile#16091
Bernard Kouchner
#16102
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Bernard Kouchner is a French politician and doctor. He is the co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde. From 2007 until 2010, he was the French Minister of Foreign and European Affairs in the center-right Fillon government under president Nicolas Sarkozy, although he had been in the past a minister in socialist governments. In 2010, The Jerusalem Post considered Kouchner the 15th most influential Jew in the world. Since 2015 Kouchner is workstream leader for the AMU , where he contributes his expertise in healthcare.
Go to Profile#16092
Mary Beth Norton
#16103
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Mary Beth Norton is an American historian, specializing in American colonial history and well known for her work on women's history and the Salem witch trials. She is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor Emeritus of American History at the Department of History at Cornell University. Norton served as president of the American Historical Association in 2018. She is a recipient of the Ambassador Book Award in American Studies for In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. Norton received her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Michigan . The next year she completed a Master of Arts , going on to receive her Ph.D.
Go to Profile#16093
Alain M. Robert
#16104
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Alain M. Robert is Honorary Professor at University of Neuchâtel. Robert received his PhD from the University of Neuchâtel in 1967, where he studied under Roger Bader. His dissertation Quelques Questions d'Espaces Vectoriels Topologiques concerned topological vector spaces.
Go to Profile#16094
Nina Fedoroff
#16105
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Nina Vsevolod Fedoroff is an American molecular biologist known for her research in life sciences and biotechnology, especially transposable elements or jumping genes. and plant stress response. In 2007, President George W. Bush awarded her the National Medal of Science, she is also a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology.
Go to Profile#16095
Rainbow Rowell
#16106
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Rainbow Rowell is an American author known for young adult and adult contemporary novels. Her young adult novels Eleanor & Park , Fangirl and Carry On have been subjects of critical acclaim. She was the writer of the 2017 revival of Marvel Comics' Runaways and is currently the writer for She-Hulk.
Go to Profile#16096
Paul Debevec
#16107
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Paul Ernest Debevec is a researcher in computer graphics at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies. He is best known for his work in finding, capturing and synthesizing the bidirectional scattering distribution function utilizing the light stages his research team constructed to find and capture the reflectance field over the human face, high-dynamic-range imaging and image-based modeling and rendering.
Go to Profile#16097
Charles Bigelow
#16108
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Charles A. Bigelow is an American type historian, professor, and designer. Bigelow grew up in the Detroit suburbs and attended the Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1982, the Frederic W. Goudy Award in 1987, Sloan Science and Film screenwriting awards in 2001 and 2002, and other honors. Along with Kris Holmes, he is the co-creator of Lucida and Wingdings font families. He is a principal of the Bigelow and Holmes studio.
Go to Profile#16098
John Kuriyan
#16109
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
John Kuriyan is the dean of basic sciences and a professor of biochemistry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He was formerly the Chancellor's Professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the departments of molecular and cell biology and chemistry, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's physical biosciences division, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and he has also been on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2009, 2019 and 2020.
Go to Profile#16099
Fred Hollows
#16110
Overall Influence
1929 - 1993 (64 years)
Frederick Cossom Hollows was a New Zealand–Australian ophthalmologist who became known for his work in restoring eyesight for people in Australia and many other countries through initiatives such as The Fred Hollows Foundation.
Go to Profile#16100
Katherine Flegal
#16111
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Katherine Mayhew Flegal is an American epidemiologist and senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. She is one of the most highly cited scientists in the field of the epidemiology of obesity according to Thomson Reuters and has been called "one of the great epidemiologists" by former FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler.
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