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).
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List of the most influential people
#16601
Sigvard Eklund
#16612
Overall Influence
1911 - 2000 (89 years)
Sigvard Arne Eklund was Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1961 to 1981. Career Eklund was born in Kiruna, Norrbotten County, Sweden, the son of train driver Severin Eklund and his wife Vilhelmina . Eklund obtained his Master of Science degree in 1936, a Licentiate of Philosophy degree in 1941 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Uppsala University in 1946. He was Docent in nuclear physics at the Royal Institute of Technology and an employee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Institute of Physics from 1937 to 1945. Eklund was an associate professor at ...
Go to Profile#16602
Paul Shrivastava
#16613
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Paul Shrivastava is Professor of Management & Organizations, at The Pennsylvania State University. He served as Chief Sustainability Officer and Director of the Sustainability Institute, until July 1, 2022. In November 2023 he was elected as Co-President of the Club of Rome. Previously he was the Executive Director of Future Earth, an international sustainability research program. Before that, he was Distinguished Professor and Director of the David O'Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise at Concordia University.
Go to Profile#16603
George I. Mavrodes
#16614
Overall Influence
1926 - 2019 (93 years)
George I. Mavrodes was an American philosopher and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. Biography Mavrodes received his B.S. degree from Oregon State College, his B.D. degree from Western Baptist Theological Seminary, and his M.A. and PhD degrees in philosophy from the University of Michigan. He retired on March 31, 1995, being named professor emeritus of philosophy after thirty three years at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#16604
Nüzhet Gökdoğan
#16615
Overall Influence
1910 - 2003 (93 years)
Hatice Nüzhet Gökdoğan was a Turkish astronomer, mathematician and academic. After studying mathematics and astronomy in France as a young adult, Gökdoğan joined the faculty of Istanbul University in 1934 and completed her PhD. She was elected Dean of the university's Faculty of Science in 1954, becoming the first Turkish woman to serve as a university dean, and she was later made Chair of the astronomy department, significantly expanding her department's capacity and working to improve national and international collaboration between astronomers.
Go to Profile#16605
Alain Bensoussan
#16616
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Alain Bensoussan, born on 12 May 1940 in Tunis, is a French mathematician. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris-Dauphine and Professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. Biography Alain Bensoussan is a former student of the École polytechnique , a graduate of ENSAE and a doctor of mathematics from the Faculty of Sciences in Paris under the supervision of Jacques-Louis Lions. He was a lecturer at the École polytechnique from 1970 to 1986 and a professor at the École normale supérieure from 1980 to 1985. He was Director of the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management, Brussels from 1975 to 1977.
Go to Profile#16606
Franciscus Bernardus Jacobus Kuiper
#16617
Overall Influence
1907 - 2003 (96 years)
Franciscus Bernardus Jacobus Kuiper was a distinguished scholar in Indology, and "one of the last great Indologists of the past century ... His very innovative work covers virtually all the fields of Indo-Iranian and Indo-Aryan philology, linguistics, mythology and theater, as well as Indo-European, Dravidian, Munda and Pan-Indian linguistics".
Go to Profile#16607
Roger Lewis
#16618
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Roger Lewis is a Welsh academic, biographer and journalist. Biography Lewis was raised in Bedwas, Monmouthshire, and educated at Bassaleg School in Newport. He then attended the University of St Andrews, graduating MA, then Magdalen College, Oxford, where he gained the MLitt degree, both with first class honours. He became a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, in 1984.
Go to Profile#16608
Danielle Allen
#16619
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Danielle Susan Allen is an American political scientist. She is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is also the former Director of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#16609
Volodymyr Marchenko
#16620
Overall Influence
1922 - Present (104 years)
Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Marchenko is a Soviet and Ukrainian mathematician who specializes in mathematical physics. Biography He was born in Kharkiv in 1922. He defended his PhD thesis in 1948 under the supervision of Naum Landkof, and in 1951, he defended his DSc thesis. He worked in Kharkiv University until 1961. For 4 decades, he headed the Mathematical Physics Department at the Verkin Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Go to Profile#16610
V. Mohan Reddy
#16621
Overall Influence
Vadiyala Mohan Reddy is an Indian professor at UCSF Medical Center in the United States. External links https://web.archive.org/web/20070228142022/http://med.stanford.edu/profiles/Vadiyala_Reddy/http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2015/09/ucsf-lures-top-pediatric-heart-surgeon-stanford.html
Go to Profile#16611
Virat Kohli
#16622
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Virat Kohli is an Indian international cricketer and the former captain of the Indian national cricket team. He currently represents Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL and Delhi in domestic cricket. Kohli is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of the sport, and the best of this era. He is the highest run scorer in T20I and IPL. In 2020, the International Cricket Council named him the male cricketer of the decade. Kohli is currently fourth-highest run-scorer in international cricket and stands second in the list of most international centuries scored. He also holds the record for scoring the most centuries in One Day International cricket.
Go to Profile#16612
Pier Cesare Bori
#16623
Overall Influence
1937 - 2012 (75 years)
Pier Cesare Bori was a professor of religious history, moral philosophy, and multiculturalism at the University of Bologna. He was also a leading Italian Quaker and Tolstoy scholar. For many years he kept a writing studio in Livergnano near Bologna.
Go to Profile#16613
Richard A. Swanson
#16624
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Richard A. Swanson is an American organizational theorist and Distinguished Research Professor of Human Resource Development and the Sam Lindsey Chair at the University of Texas at Tyler , known for his synthesis work on the financial research related to human resource development.
Go to Profile#16614
Jean Rudolf von Salis
#16625
Overall Influence
1901 - 1996 (95 years)
Jean Rudolf von Salis was a Swiss historian who gained prominence with his weekly "Weltchronik" radio broadcasts from 1940 until 1947. As von Salis never wrote English publications and his works were rarely translated, he is little known outside of the European historical sciences.
Go to Profile#16615
John Lorne Campbell
#16626
Overall Influence
1906 - 1996 (90 years)
Dr John Lorne Campbell FRSE LLD OBE was a Scottish historian, farmer, environmentalist and folklorist, and recognized scholar of both Celtic studies and Scottish Gaelic literature. Early life According to his biographer, Ray Perman, the family of John Lorne Campbell claimed descent from the Clan Campbell tacksmen of Craignish , through a son of disinherited 16th-century heir Tearlach Mòr. According to Penman, however, there is no documentary proof that the son of Tearlach Mòr ever existed.
Go to Profile#16616
Herbert Edelsbrunner
#16627
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Herbert Edelsbrunner is a computer scientist working in the field of computational geometry, the Arts & Science Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics at Duke University, Professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria , and the co-founder of Geomagic, Inc. He was the first of only three computer scientists to win the National Science Foundation's Alan T. Waterman Award.
Go to Profile#16617
Katherine Ann Power
#16628
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Katherine Ann Power , also known under the aliaseses Mae Kelly and Alice Louise Metzinger, is an American ex-convict and long-time fugitive, who, along with her fellow student and accomplice Susan Edith Saxe, was placed on the FBI's Most Wanted Fugitives list in 1970. The two participated in robberies at a Massachusetts National Guard armory and a bank in Brighton, Massachusetts, where Boston police officer Walter Schroeder was shot and killed. Power remained at large for twenty-three years.
Go to Profile#16618
Nancy F. Cott
#16629
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Nancy Falik Cott is an American historian and professor who has taught at Yale and Harvard universities, specializing in gender topics in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. She has testified on same-sex marriage in several US states.
Go to Profile#16619
Jacob Rubinovitz
#16630
Overall Influence
1947 - 2018 (71 years)
Jacob Rubinovitz is an Israeli scientist. He was the head of the Laboratory for robotics and Computer Integrated Manufacturing at the Technion. Biography Rubinovitz was born in Łódź, Poland, 6 September 1947. In 1957 he moved to Israel, in Aliath Gomulka, in the movement of Jews from Poland to Israel which started in 1956, after the Polish October. He graduated from the Faculty of Industrial engineering and Management at the Technion. From 1969 to 1973 he was a senior systems analyst at Mamram and senior systems analyst at Control Data . He managed the industrial software team and initially...
Go to Profile#16620
Monica Olvera de la Cruz
#16631
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Monica Olvera de la Cruz is a Mexican born, American and French soft-matter theorist who is the Lawyer Taylor Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Professor of Chemistry, and by courtesy Professor of Physics and Astronomy and of Chemical and Biological Engineering, at Northwestern University.
Go to Profile#16621
Van Dyke Parks
#16632
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Van Dyke Parks is an American musician, songwriter, arranger, and record producer who has composed various film and television soundtracks. He is best known for his 1967 album Song Cycle and for his collaborations with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys . In addition to producing or arranging albums by Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, Phil Ochs, Little Feat, Happy End, Ry Cooder and Joanna Newsom, Parks has worked with performers such as Syd Straw, Ringo Starr, U2, Grizzly Bear, Inara George, Kimbra, Suzy Williams, Bob Dylan and Silverchair.
Go to Profile#16622
Yang Xianyi
#16633
Overall Influence
1915 - 2009 (94 years)
Yang Xianyi was a Chinese literary translator, known for rendering many ancient and a few modern Chinese classics into English, including Dream of the Red Mansions. Life and career Born into a wealthy banking family in Tianjin, he was sent to Merton College, Oxford to study Classics in 1936. There he married Gladys Tayler. They had two daughters and a son, who committed suicide in 1979.
Go to Profile#16623
Valery Rubakov
#16634
Overall Influence
1955 - 2022 (67 years)
Valery Anatolyevich Rubakov was a Russian theoretical physicist. His scientific interests included quantum field theory, elementary particle physics, and cosmology. He was affiliated with the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
Go to Profile#16624
Ab Osterhaus
#16635
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Albertus Dominicus Marcellinus Erasmus "Ab" Osterhaus is a leading Dutch virologist and influenza expert. An Emeritus Professor of Virology at Erasmus University Rotterdam since 1993, Osterhaus is known throughout the world for his work on SARS and H5N1, the pathogen that causes avian influenza.
Go to Profile#16625
Sara Ishikawa
#16636
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Sara Ishikawa is an architect and academic specializing in people-space relationships. She is a professor emerita at the College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley. She is co-author of A Pattern Language, The Oregon Experiment and Houses Generated By Patterns.
Go to Profile#16626
Gábor A. Somorjai
#16637
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Gabor A. Somorjai is a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and is a leading researcher in the field of surface chemistry and catalysis, especially the catalytic effects of metal surfaces on gas-phase reactions . For his contributions to the field, Somorjai won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 1998, the Linus Pauling Award in 2000, the National Medal of Science in 2002, the Priestley Medal in 2008, the 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Science and the NAS Award in Chemical Sciences in 2013. In April 2015, Somorjai was awarded the American Chemical Society's William H.
Go to Profile#16627
Olivier De Schutter
#16638
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Olivier De Schutter is a Belgian legal scholar specialising in economic and social rights. He served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food from 2008 to 2014. He is a Professor of international human rights law, European Union law and legal theory at the University of Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, as well as at the College of Europe and at Sciences Po in Paris. He was a regular visiting professor at Columbia University between 2008 and 2012 and has regularly contributed to the American University Washington College of Law's Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.
Go to Profile#16628
Jakob Kellenberger
#16639
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Jakob Kellenberger is a former Swiss diplomat and former president of the International Committee of the Red Cross . Since 2013 he has been the president of swisspeace. Biography Jakob Kellenberger was born in the Swiss canton of Appenzell in 1944.
Go to Profile#16629
Iraj Malekpour
#16640
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Iraj Malekpour is an born Amol Iranian university professor of space physics. He was famous in Iran for writing and preparing the annual calendar that was officially used in Iran until 2002. He holds an adjunct faculty position at Tehran University, and works at the Tehran University's Institute of Geophysics.
Go to Profile#16630
T. S. Rukmani
#16641
Overall Influence
Trichur Subramaniam Rukmani, often known as T. S. Rukmani, is a Sanskritist who served many years on the faculty of Concordia University and retired in 2012. She translated many Sanskrit texts into English.
Go to Profile#16631
Li Chenyang
#16642
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Li Chenyang is a professor of Philosophy at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He is internationally recognized for his work in Chinese philosophy and comparative philosophy, probably best known for his work in the Confucian philosophy of harmony, and comparative studies of Confucian ethics and feminist care ethics.
Go to Profile#16632
Harold Cohen
#16643
Overall Influence
1928 - 2016 (88 years)
Harold Cohen was a British-born artist who was noted as the creator of AARON, a computer program designed to produce paintings and drawings autonomously. His work in the intersection of computer artificial intelligence and painting lead to exhibitions at many museums, including the Tate Gallery in London.
Go to Profile#16633
Rita Orji
#16644
Overall Influence
Rita Orji is a Nigerian-Canadian computer scientist who is a Canada Research Chair in Persuasive Technology and the Director of the Persuasive Computing Lab at Dalhousie University. Her work is in the area of human–computer interaction with a major focus on designing interactive systems to achieve health and well being objectives. She has won over 70 awards and recognitions from both national and international organizations. She has addressed a United Nations panel about the status of women and at the Parliament of Canada.
Go to Profile#16634
Graham Loomes
#16645
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Graham Loomes, is a British economist and academic, specialising in behavioural economics. Since 2009, he has been Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science at the University of Warwick. He previously worked at the University of Newcastle, the University of York and the University of East Anglia.
Go to Profile#16635
Albert Finney
#16646
Overall Influence
1936 - 2019 (83 years)
Albert Finney was an English actor. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked in the theatre before attaining prominence on screen in the early 1960s, debuting with The Entertainer , directed by Tony Richardson, who had previously directed him in the theatre. He maintained a successful career in theatre, film and television.
Go to Profile#16636
Stefan Müller
#16647
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Stefan Müller is a German mathematician and currently a professor at the University of Bonn. He has been one of the founding directors of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in 1996 and was acting there until 2008.
Go to Profile#16637
Albert Messiah
#16648
Overall Influence
1921 - 2013 (92 years)
Albert Messiah was a French physicist. He studied at the Ecole Polytechnique. He spent the Second World War in the Free France forces: he embarked on 22 June 1940 at Saint-Jean-de-Luz for England and participated in the Battle of Dakar with Charles de Gaulle in September 1940. He joined the Free French Forces in Chad, and the 2nd Armored Division in September 1944, and participated in the assault of Hitler's Eagle's nest at Berchtesgaden in 1945.
Go to Profile#16638
Ching Wan Tang
#16649
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ching Wan Tang is a Hong Kong–American physical chemist. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2018 for inventing OLED , and was awarded the 2011 Wolf Prize in Chemistry. Tang is the IAS Bank of East Asia Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and previously served as the Doris Johns Cherry Professor at the University of Rochester.
Go to Profile#16639
Martin Kemp
#16650
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Martin John Kemp is a British art historian and exhibition curator who is one of the world's leading authorities on the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci. The author of many books on Leonardo, Kemp has also written about visualisation in art and science, particularly anatomy, natural sciences and optics. Instrumental in the controversial authentication of Salvator Mundi to Leonardo, Kemp has been vocal on attributions to Leonardo, including support of La Bella Principessa and opposition of the Isleworth Mona Lisa.
Go to Profile#16640
Karl Hugo Strunz
#16651
Overall Influence
1910 - 2006 (96 years)
Karl Hugo Strunz was a German mineralogist. He is best known for creating the Nickel-Strunz classification, the ninth edition of which was published together with Ernest Henry Nickel. Biography Strunz was born on 24 February 1910 in Weiden in der Oberpfalz . He attended the 'Goethe-Oberrealschule Regensburg', a high school with a strong scientific background in Regensburg. In 1929 he began his studies in natural sciences at the University of Munich and specialized in Mineralogy. He received his doctorate degree in philosophy in 1933 from the University of Munich and two years later his doctor...
Go to Profile#16641
John R. P. French
#16652
Overall Influence
1913 - 1995 (82 years)
John Robert Putnam French Jr. was an American psychologist who served as professor emeritus at the University of Michigan. He may be best known for his collaboration with Bertram Raven on French and Raven's five bases of power in 1959.
Go to Profile#16642
Jean-Jacques Goldman
#16653
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Jean-Jacques Goldman is a French retired singer-songwriter and record producer whose work remains hugely popular in the French-speaking world. Since the death of Johnny Hallyday in 2017 he has been the highest grossing living French pop rock act. Born in Paris and active on the music scene from 1975, he had a highly successful solo career in the 1980s, before he was part of the trio Fredericks Goldman Jones, releasing another string of hits in the 1990s.
Go to Profile#16643
Shigeru Iitaka
#16654
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Shigeru Iitaka is a Japanese mathematician at Gakushuin University working in algebraic geometry who introduced the Kodaira dimension and Iitaka dimension. He was a worldly leader in the field of Algebraic geometry.
Go to Profile#16644
Warren Christopher
#16655
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Warren Minor Christopher was an American lawyer, diplomat and politician. During Bill Clinton's first term as president, he served as the 63rd United States Secretary of State. Born in Scranton, North Dakota, Christopher clerked for Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas after graduating from Stanford Law School. He became a partner in the firm of O'Melveny & Myers and served as Deputy Attorney General from 1967 to 1969 under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He served as Deputy Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter, holding that position from 1977 to 1981. In 1991, he chaired the Chri...
Go to Profile#16645
Maarten Boudry
#16656
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Maarten Boudry is a Dutch-speaking Belgian philosopher and skeptic. He has been a researcher and teaching member of the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences at Ghent University since 2006. To date, he has published over 30 articles in various philosophy of science journals.
Go to Profile#16646
Fatboy Slim
#16657
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Norman Quentin Cook , also known by his stage name Fatboy Slim , is an English musician, DJ, and record producer who helped to popularise the big beat genre in the 1990s. In the 1980s, Cook was the bassist for the Hull-based indie rock band the Housemartins, who achieved a UK number-one single with their a cappella cover of "Caravan of Love". After the Housemartins split up, Cook formed the electronic band Beats International in Brighton, who produced the number-one single "Dub Be Good to Me". He then played in Freak Power, Pizzaman, and the Mighty Dub Katz with moderate success.
Go to Profile#16647
Konrad Osterwalder
#16658
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Konrad Osterwalder is a Swiss mathematician and physicist, former Undersecretary-General of the United Nations, former Rector of the United Nations University , and Rector Emeritus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich . He is known for the Osterwalder–Schrader theorem.
Go to Profile#16648
Hervé Bazin
#16659
Overall Influence
1911 - 1996 (85 years)
Hervé Bazin was a French writer, whose best-known novels covered semi-autobiographical topics of teenage rebellion and dysfunctional families. Biography Bazin, born Jean-Pierre Hervé-Bazin in Angers, Maine-et-Loire, France came from a high-bourgeois Catholic family. He was the great-nephew of the writer René Bazin. His father was a magistrate who with his wife had been sent to China to take up a diplomatic post. Hervé and his brother were brought up in the ancestral home, the chateau of Le Patys, by their grandmother. When she died, his mother returned from Hanoi with reluctance. She sent Baz...
Go to Profile#16649
Gail R. Martin
#16660
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Gail Roberta Martin is an American biologist. She is professor emerita in the Department of Anatomy, University of California, San Francisco. She is known for her pioneering work on the isolation of pluripotent stem cells from normal embryos, for which she coined the term ‘embryonic stem cells’. She is also widely recognized for her work on the function of Fibroblast Growth Factors and their negative regulators in vertebrate organogenesis. She and her colleagues also made valuable contributions to gene targeting technology.
Go to Profile#16650
Barry Voight
#16661
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Barry Voight is an American geologist, volcanologist, author, and engineer. After earning his Ph.D. at Columbia University, Voight worked as a professor of geology at several universities, including Pennsylvania State University, where he taught from 1964 until his retirement in 2005. He remains an emeritus professor there and still conducts research, focusing on rock mechanics, plate tectonics, disaster prevention, and geotechnical engineering.
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