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
#16801
Douglas C. Wallace
#16812
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Douglas Cecil Wallace is a geneticist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. He pioneered the use of human mitochondrial DNA as a molecular marker.
Go to Profile#16802
Martin Day
#16813
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Martin Day is a screenwriter and novelist best known for his work on various spin-offs related to the BBC Television series Doctor Who, and many episodes of the soaps Fair City, Doctors and Family Affairs. Having worked previously at Bath Spa University, he is now visiting lecturer in creative writing at the University of Winchester and the Wessex regional representative of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain.
Go to Profile#16803
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
#16814
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is a Romanian-born German, Roman Catholic feminist theologian, who is currently the Krister Stendahl Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School. Life Elisabeth Schüssler was born on April 17, 1938, in Cenad, a locality in the Banat region of the Kingdom of Romania, where she belonged to the Banat Swabian German-speaking Catholic population of an ethnically mixed community. As the Russian army advanced through Romania in late 1944, she and her parents fled to southern Germany. They subsequently moved to Frankfurt, where she attended local schools. Sh...
Go to Profile#16804
Emilio Ambasz
#16815
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Emilio Ambasz is an Argentinian-US architect and award-winning industrial designer. From 1969 to 1976 he was Curator of Design at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York. Ambasz has been labeled as "the father, poet, and prophet" of the green architecture by Japanese architect Tadao Ando.
Go to Profile#16805
Joseph T. Salerno
#16816
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Joseph T. Salerno is an American Austrian School economist who is Professor Emeritus of Economics in the Finance and Graduate Economics departments at the Lubin School of Business at Pace University, Academic Vice President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and holds the John V. Denson II Endowed Professorship in the economics department at Auburn University. He earned his B.A. at Boston College and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Rutgers University.
Go to Profile#16806
Olli Lehto
#16817
Overall Influence
1925 - 2020 (95 years)
Olli Erkki Lehto was a Finnish mathematician, specializing in geometric function theory, and a chancellor of the University of Helsinki. Lehto earned his PhD in 1949 from the University of Helsinki under Rolf Nevanlinna with thesis Anwendung orthogonaler Systeme auf gewisse funktionentheoretische Extremal- und Abbildungsprobleme. At the University of Helsinki, Lehto was from 1961 to 1988 a professor, from 1978 the dean of science, from 1983 the rector, and from 1988 to 1993 the chancellor.
Go to Profile#16807
Owen M. Fiss
#16818
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Owen M. Fiss is an American professor who is a Sterling Professor emeritus at Yale Law School. Biography Born in the Bronx, N.Y., Fiss received his B.A. degree from Dartmouth College in 1959, B.Phil. from Oxford University in 1961, and LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1964.
Go to Profile#16808
John Harris
#16819
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
John Morley Harris, FMedSci, FRSA, FRSB , is a British bioethicist and philosopher. He is the Lord Alliance Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester.
Go to Profile#16809
Lien Chan
#16820
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Lien Chan is a Taiwanese politician. He was the Chairman of the Taiwan Provincial Government from 1990 to 1993, Premier of the Republic of China from 1993 to 1997, Vice President of the Republic of China from 1996 to 2000, and was the Chairman of the Kuomintang from 2000 to 2005, apart from various ministerial posts he had also held. Lien ran for the President of the Republic of China on behalf of the Kuomintang twice in 2000 and 2004, but both lost to Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party. Upon his retirement as KMT Chairman in August 2005, he was given the title Honorary Chairman of KMT.
Go to Profile#16810
Niels Peter Lemche
#16821
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Niels Peter Lemche is a biblical scholar at the University of Copenhagen, whose interests include early Israel and its relationship with history, the Old Testament, and archaeology. Career In 1971 Lemche received his undergraduate degree in theology at the University of Copenhagen, starting his long career at that institution. From 1972 to 1978 he worked there in various capacity until he was taken on as an associate professor. In 1985 he finished his doctorate in theology with a thesis on "Early Israel", a topic which has kept his interest for the last three decades. In 1987 Lemche founded t...
Go to Profile#16811
John Cyril Smith
#16822
Overall Influence
1922 - 2003 (81 years)
Sir John Cyril Smith , born Barnard Castle, County Durham, was an English legal academic. Smith was an authority on English criminal law and the philosophy of criminal liability. Together with Brian Hogan he was the author of Smith & Hogan's Criminal Law, a leading undergraduate text on English criminal law. The textbook is now in its sixteenth edition and has been used as persuasive authority on crimes prosecuted in the law courts of England and Wales and elsewhere in the common law world. In 1998, Lord Bingham praised Smith; "whom most would gladly hail as the outstanding criminal lawyer o...
Go to Profile#16812
Russell Impagliazzo
#16823
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Russell Graham Impagliazzo is a professor of computer science at the University of California, San Diego, specializing in computational complexity theory. Education Impagliazzo received a BA in mathematics from Wesleyan University. He obtained a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley in 1992. His advisor was Manuel Blum. He joined the faculty of UCSD in 1989, having been a postdoc there from 1989 to 1991.
Go to Profile#16813
Isher Judge Ahluwalia
#16824
Overall Influence
1945 - 2020 (75 years)
Isher Judge Ahluwalia was an Indian economist, public policy researcher, and professor. She was Chairperson Emeritus, Board of Governors, at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations . She had also served as the chairperson of the board of the International Food Policy Research Institute, and the chairperson of the Government of India's High-Powered Committee on Urban Infrastructure Services. She was awarded India's 3rd highest civilian award, Padma Bhushan, in 2009.
Go to Profile#16814
Frances Cress Welsing
#16825
Overall Influence
1935 - 2016 (81 years)
Frances Luella Welsing was an American psychiatrist and well-known proponent of the black supremacist melanin theory. Her 1970 essay, The Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism , offered her interpretation of what she described as the origins of white supremacy culture.
Go to Profile#16815
Jonathan Gottschall
#16826
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Jonathan Gottschall is an American literary scholar specializing in literature and evolution. He holds the title of Distinguished Fellow in the English department of Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania. He is the author or editor of eight books.
Go to Profile#16816
Ilkay Altintas
#16827
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Ilkay Altintas is a Turkish-American data and computer scientist, and researcher in the domain of supercomputing and high-performance computing applications. Since 2015, Altintas has served as chief data science officer of the San Diego Supercomputer Center , at the University of California, San Diego , where she has also served as founder and director of the Workflows for Data Science Center of Excellence since 2014, as well as founder and director of the WIFIRE lab. Altintas is also the co-initiator of the Kepler scientific workflow system, an open-source platform that endows research scien...
Go to Profile#16817
Lil Jon
#16828
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Jonathan H. Smith , better known by his stage name Lil Jon, is an American rapper and the former frontman of the rap group Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz. He was instrumental in the emergence of the hip hop subgenre crunk, and is credited with bringing the genre into mainstream success. Lil Jon frequently collaborates with Miami-based rapper Pitbull, and Bay Area-based rappers Too Short and E-40. He participates as one-third of an unofficial trio consisting of Atlanta-based artists Ludacris and Usher who frequently create songs together.
Go to Profile#16818
Nick Swardson
#16829
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Nicholas Roger Swardson is an American actor, stand-up comedian, screenwriter, and producer. He is best known for his recurring role as Terry Bernadino in the comedy series Reno 911!, for his work with Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions, and for his own personal sketch comedy series Nick Swardson's Pretend Time. He also had starring roles in the films Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star and 30 Minutes or Less .
Go to Profile#16819
Thomas J. Christensen
#16830
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Thomas J. Christensen is an American political scientist. He is the James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. Education Christensen received his B.A. with honors from Haverford College, M.A. in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania, and Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. Among his advisers at Columbia was Robert Jervis. His research interests include international relations, security, and the international relations of East Asia. He coined the terms Chain ganging and Buc...
Go to Profile#16820
Jim Keltner
#16831
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
James Lee Keltner is an American drummer and percussionist known primarily for his session work. He was characterized by Bob Dylan biographer Howard Sounes as "the leading session drummer in America".
Go to Profile#16821
Tyson Fury
#16832
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Tyson Luke Fury is a British professional boxer. He has held the World Boxing Council heavyweight title since 2020. Previously, he held the unified heavyweight titles from 2015 to 2016, and the Ring magazine title twice between 2015 and 2022. He also held the International Boxing Organization title during his first reign as champion.
Go to Profile#16822
Supriyo Datta
#16833
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Supriyo Datta is an Indian–American researcher and author. A leading figure in the modeling and understanding of nano-scale electronic conduction, he has been called "one of the most original thinkers in the field of nanoscale electronics."
Go to Profile#16823
Gill Valentine
#16834
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Gill Valentine is a British geographer, currently Professor of Geography and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sheffield. She is a member of the university's executive board and has chaired the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Committee.
Go to Profile#16824
Boris Vallejo
#16835
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Boris Vallejo is a Peruvian-American painter who works in the science fiction, fantasy, and erotica genres. His hyper-representational paintings have appeared on the covers of numerous science fiction and fantasy fiction novels. They are also sold through a series of annual calendars.
Go to Profile#16825
Franz Hillenkamp
#16836
Overall Influence
1936 - 2014 (78 years)
Franz Hillenkamp was a German scientist known for his development of the laser microprobe mass analyzer and, with Michael Karas, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization . Early life and education Franz Hillenkamp was born in 1936 in Essen, Germany. He attended high school in Lünen, graduating in 1955. He received a M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University in 1961. He received a Ph.D. from the Technische Universität München in 1966 with a thesis entitled “An Absolutely Calibrated Calorimeter for the Measurement of Pulsed Laser Radiation.”
Go to Profile#16826
Marc Lazar
#16837
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Marc Lazar is a french academic who serves as a professor and director of the Doctoral School at the Paris Institute of Political Studies . He is also the President of the LUISS school of government in Rome. He manages a research group on contemporary Italy with CERI . He is a specialist of the History of left-wing parties, and Italian politics. He graduated from the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences .
Go to Profile#16827
Robert Storr
#16838
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Robert Storr is an American curator, critic, painter, and writer. Early life and education Storr received his B.A. in History and French from Swarthmore College in 1972, and earned an M.F.A. in Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978.
Go to Profile#16828
James Gilligan
#16839
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
James Gilligan is an American psychiatrist and author, husband of Carol Gilligan and best known for his series of books entitled Violence, where he draws on 25 years of work in the American prison system to describe the motivation and causes behind violent behavior.
Go to Profile#16829
Mihailo Đurić
#16840
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Mihailo Đurić was one of Serbia's most prominent philosophers. He was a professor at the University of Belgrade's Law School and member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Within the frame of ancient Greek culture, he studied philosophy, law, politics and history, but also modern political theory and ethics. A majority of his works are within the field of philosophy and method of sociology, history of political theories and political science. In the past two decades, his work was mainly devoted to the study of Nietzsche and Heidegger.
Go to Profile#16830
Djibril Tamsir Niane
#16841
Overall Influence
1932 - 2021 (89 years)
Djibril Tamsir Niane was a Guinean historian, playwright, and short story writer. Biography Born in Conakry, Guinea, his secondary education was in Senegal and his degree from the University of Bordeaux. He was an honorary professor of Howard University and the University of Tokyo. He is noted for introducing the Epic of Sundiata, about Sundiata Keita , founder of the Mali Empire, to the Western world in 1960 by translating the story told to him by Djeli Mamoudou Kouyate, a griot or traditional oral historian. He also edited Volume IV —Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century— of the UNESCO General History of Africa and did other UNESCO projects.
Go to Profile#16831
Yongcheol Shin
#16842
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Yongcheol Shin is a South Korean-born British economist at the University of York. He has previously held positions at leading academic institutions such as University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh and University of Leeds. His notable contributions to econometrics include asymmetric autoregressive distributed lag model, unit root tests in ESTAR framework, and the long-run structural VAR modelling approach.
Go to Profile#16832
Daniel Kan
#16843
Overall Influence
1927 - 2013 (86 years)
Daniel Marinus Kan was a Dutch mathematician working in category theory and homotopy theory. He was a prolific contributor to both fields for six decades, having authored or coauthored several dozen research papers and monographs.
Go to Profile#16833
Alizé Cornet
#16844
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (36 years)
Alizé Cornet is a French professional tennis player. She has won six singles and three doubles titles on the WTA Tour, as well as three singles and three doubles titles on the ITF Circuit. On 16 February 2009, she reached her highest WTA singles ranking of world No. 11. Cornet has also made the second week at each of the four Grand Slam events, having reached the quarterfinals at the 2022 Australian Open, and the fourth round at the 2014 Wimbledon Championships, the 2015 and 2017 French Opens, and the 2020 US Open. She holds the record for most consecutive Grand Slam appearances with 67 an...
Go to Profile#16834
Kelly James Clark
#16845
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Kelly James Clark is an American philosopher noted for his work in the philosophy of religion, science and religion, and the cognitive science of religion. He is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Professor at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids Michigan.
Go to Profile#16835
Craig Silverstein
#16846
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Craig Silverstein is a software engineer and was the first person employed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google, having studied for a PhD alongside them at Stanford University. He graduated from Harvard and was admitted to Phi Beta Kappa.
Go to Profile#16836
Michael D. Bordo
#16847
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Michael David Bordo is a Canadian and American economist, currently Board of Governors Professor of Economics and Distinguished Professor of Economics at Rutgers University. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research as well as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the third most influential economic historian worldwide according to the RePEc/IDEAS rankings. He was a student of Milton Friedman and has co-authored numerous books and articles with Anna Schwartz.
Go to Profile#16837
Maurice Gross
#16848
Overall Influence
1934 - 2001 (67 years)
Maurice Gross was a French linguist and scholar of Romance languages. Beginning in the late 1960s he developed Lexicon-Grammar, a method of formal description of languages with practical applications.
Go to Profile#16838
Joel Hayward
#16849
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Joel Hayward is a New Zealand-born British scholar, academic and writer. He has been listed in the 2023 and 2024 editions of The World's 500 Most Influential Muslims. He has been the Dean of the Royal Air Force College Cranwell and is now the Chief Executive of the Cambridge Muslim College in the United Kingdom.
Go to Profile#16839
Anna Kisselgoff
#16850
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Anna Kisselgoff is a dance critic and cultural news reporter for The New York Times. She began at the Times as a dance critic and cultural news reporter in 1968, and became its Chief Dance Critic in 1977, a role she held until 2005. She left the Times as an employee at the end of 2006, but still contributes to the paper.
Go to Profile#16840
Jun Rekimoto
#16851
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Jun Rekimoto is a Professor of Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at The University of Tokyo. He is also a co-founder of Koozyt Inc., and a Deputy Director of the Interaction Laboratory at Sony Computer Sciences Laboratories.
Go to Profile#16841
Dan Kahan
#16852
Overall Influence
Dan M. Kahan is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law at Yale Law School. His professional expertise is in the fields of criminal law and evidence, and he is known for his theory of cultural cognition.
Go to Profile#16842
C. K. Williams
#16853
Overall Influence
1936 - 2015 (79 years)
Charles Kenneth "C. K." Williams was an American poet, critic and translator. Williams won many poetry awards. Flesh and Blood won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987. Repair won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a National Book Award finalist and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The Singing won the 2003 National Book Award and Williams received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2005. The 2012 film The Color of Time relates aspects of Williams' life using his poetry.
Go to Profile#16843
Klaus Lackner
#16854
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#16844
Stephen Faraone
#16855
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Stephen Vincent Faraone is an American psychologist. He has worked mainly on attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and related disorders. Education and career Faraone graduated in 1978 from the State University of New York at Stony Brook with a BA in Psychology. He then went to the University of Iowa where he obtained his Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy. Faraone completed a postdoctoral clinical psychology internship and a research fellowship at Brown University.
Go to Profile#16845
James Oakes
#16856
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
James Oakes is an American historian, and is a Distinguished Professor of History and Graduate School Humanities Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where he teaches courses on the American Civil War and Reconstruction, Slavery, the Old South, Abolitionism, and U.S. and World History. He taught previously at Princeton University and Northwestern University.
Go to Profile#16846
Philip Hartman
#16857
Overall Influence
1915 - 2015 (100 years)
Philip Hartman was an American mathematician at Johns Hopkins University working on differential equations who introduced the Hartman–Grobman theorem. He served as Chairman of the Mathematics Department at Johns Hopkins for several years. He has an Erdös number of 2.
Go to Profile#16847
Fernando Mönckeberg Barros
#16858
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Fernando Rafael Mönckeberg Barros is a Chilean surgeon, doctor of medicine specializing in nutrition, professor, researcher, and economist at the University of Chile. He is the founder of the and president of the .
Go to Profile#16848
Rintaro
#16859
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Rintaro is the pseudonym of Shigeyuki Hayashi, a well-known director of anime. He works frequently with the animation studio Madhouse , though he is a freelance director not employed directly by any one studio. He began working in the animation industry—at age 17—as an in-between animator on the 1958 film Hakujaden. His works have won and been nominated for multiple awards, including a nomination for Best Film at the 2001 Festival de Cine de Sitges.
Go to Profile#16849
Henry Rollins
#16860
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Henry Lawrence Garfield , known professionally as Henry Rollins, is an American singer, writer, spoken word artist, actor, comedian, and presenter. After performing in the short-lived hardcore punk band State of Alert in 1980, Rollins fronted the California hardcore band Black Flag from 1981 to 1986. Following the band's breakup, he established the record label and publishing company 2.13.61 to release his spoken word albums, and formed the Rollins Band, which toured with a number of lineups from 1987 to 2003 and in 2006.
Go to Profile#16850
Peter McCullagh
#16861
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Peter McCullagh is a Northern Irish-born American statistician and John D. MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Chicago. Education McCullagh is from Plumbridge, Northern Ireland. He attended the University of Birmingham and completed his PhD at Imperial College London, supervised by David Cox and Anthony Atkinson.
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