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
#16951
Robert C. Michelson
#16962
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Robert C. Michelson is an American engineer and academic widely known for inventing the entomopter, a biologically inspired flapping-winged aerial robot, and for having established the International Aerial Robotics Competition. He has received degrees in electrical engineering from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Michelson's professional career began at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory where he worked on radar-based ocean surveillance systems. He later became a member of the research faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology. At the Georgi...
Go to Profile#16952
Kari S. Tikka
#16963
Overall Influence
1944 - 2006 (62 years)
Kari Sulo Tikka was a Finnish legal scholar. He was a Professor of Finance Law at the University of Helsinki and one of Finland's leading experts on taxation. Career Kari S. Tikka had a long career in justice education and development of education, both in the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He had also previously worked as chairman of the Finnish Lawyer Union.
Go to Profile#16953
Steven Plaut
#16964
Overall Influence
1951 - 2017 (66 years)
Steven Plaut was an Israeli economist, academic and writer. He was an associate professor of Business Administration at the University of Haifa as well as a member of the editorial board of the Middle East Quarterly, a publication of the Middle East Forum think tank.
Go to Profile#16954
Tonya Harding
#16965
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Tonya Maxene Price is an American former figure skater, retired boxer and reality television personality. Born in Portland, Oregon, Harding was raised by her mother, who enrolled her in ice skating lessons at 3 years old. Harding spent much of her early life training, eventually dropping out of high school to devote her time to the sport. After climbing the ranks in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships between 1986 and 1989, Harding won the 1989 Skate America competition. She became the 1991 and 1994 U.S. champion before being stripped of her 1994 title, and 1991 World silver medalist. In 19...
Go to Profile#16955
Olufunmilayo Olopade
#16966
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Olufunmilayo I. Olopade born in the year 1957, is a Nigerian hematology oncologist, Associate Dean for Global Health and Walter L. Palmer, Distinguished Service Professor in Medicine and Human Genetics at the University of Chicago. She also serves as director of the University of Chicago Hospital's Cancer Risk Clinic.
Go to Profile#16956
Julie Vargas
#16967
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Julie Skinner Vargas is an American educator who has written extensively on the science of behavior. Vargas is the daughter of B.F. Skinner and is the president of the B. F. Skinner Foundation, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is an officer of The International Society for Behaviorology.
Go to Profile#16957
Stewart Copeland
#16968
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Stewart Armstrong Copeland is an American musician and composer. He is best known for his work as the drummer of the English rock band the Police from 1977 to 1986, and again from 2007 to 2008. Before playing with the Police, he played drums with English rock band Curved Air from 1975 to 1976. As a composer, his work includes the films Wall Street , Men at Work , Good Burger , and We Are Your Friends ; the television shows The Equalizer , The Amanda Show , and Dead Like Me ; and video games such as the Spyro series and Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare . He has also written various pieces...
Go to Profile#16958
Nariman Behravesh
#16969
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Nariman Behravesh is Chief Economist at the consulting firm IHS Markit, and author of Spin-Free Economics: A No-Nonsense, Nonpartisan Guide to Today's Global Economic Debates . Directing the economic forecasting process at IHS Markit, Behravesh is responsible for developing the economic outlook and risk analysis for the United States, Europe, Japan, China, and other emerging markets. He oversees the work of over 400 professionals located in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa who cover economic, financial, and political developments in 200 countries.
Go to Profile#16959
Ariel Fernandez
#16970
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Ariel Fernandez is an Argentinian–American physical chemist and pharmaceutical researcher. Education and early career Fernandez received Licentiate degrees in Chemistry and Mathematics from the Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina. He then earned a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1984 with a thesis entitled Structural Stability of Chemical Systems at Critical Regimes
Go to Profile#16960
Cameron Crowe
#16971
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Cameron Bruce Crowe is an American filmmaker and journalist. He has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Grammy Award as well as a nomination for a Tony Award. Crowe started his career as a contributing editor and writer at Rolling Stone magazine in 1973 where he covered numerous rock bands on tour.
Go to Profile#16961
Olivia S. Mitchell
#16972
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Olivia S. Mitchell is an American economist and the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her interests focus on pensions and social security, and she is the executive director of the Pension Research Council, the oldest U.S. center devoted to scholarship and policy-relevant research on retirement security. She also heads Wharton's Boettner Center for Pensions and Retirement Research.
Go to Profile#16962
Wolfgang Kubin
#16973
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Wolfgang Kubin is a German poet, essayist, sinologist and translator of literary works. He is the former director of the Institute for Oriental and Asian Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany. Kubin has frequently been a guest professor at universities in China, for instance at Beijing Foreign Studies University, but also in Madison, Wisconsin and in Jerusalem. Since 1989, Kubin has been the editor of the journals ORIENTIERUNGEN: Zeitschrift zur Kultur Asiens and Minima sinica: Zeitschrift zum chinesischen Geist.
Go to Profile#16963
Alexander García Düttmann
#16974
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Alexander García Düttmann studied Philosophy in Frankfurt as a student of Alfred Schmidt and in Paris as a student of Jacques Derrida. Career After obtaining his PhD from Frankfurt, he spent two years at Stanford University as a Mellon Fellow. His first academic position in the UK was a lecturership in Philosophy at Essex University. Currently he is professor of Aesthetics and Art Theory at the Berlin University of the Arts. He has taught at Monash University, Melbourne; at Middlesex University, where he was professor of Philosophy for seven years; at New York University, where he was a visit...
Go to Profile#16964
John Levi Martin
#16975
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
#16965
Rana Foroohar
#16976
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Rana Aylin Foroohar is an American author, business columnist and an associate editor at the Financial Times. She is also CNN's global economic analyst. Life and career Foroohar was born Rana Aylin Dogar in Frankfort, Indiana, graduating from Frankfort Senior High School in 1988. Her father Aygen Erol Dogar is a Turkish immigrant and an engineer who started a small manufacturing business in the Midwest. Her mother Ann was a school teacher, and herself the daughter of immigrants from Sweden and England. In 1992, Foroohar graduated from Barnard College with a B.A. in English literature.
Go to Profile#16966
Peter Eades
#16977
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Peter D. Eades is an Australian computer scientist, an emeritus professor in the School of Information Technologies at the University of Sydney, known for his expertise in graph drawing. Eades received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Australian National University in 1974, and his Ph.D. in mathematics from the same university in 1977 under the supervision of Jennifer Seberry. He then did postdoctoral studies at the University of Waterloo before taking an academic position at the University of Queensland, where he remained until 1991. He was a professor of computer science at the University of Newcastle from 1992 to 1999, and joined the University of Sydney faculty in 2000.
Go to Profile#16967
Luca Ronconi
#16978
Overall Influence
1933 - 2015 (82 years)
Luca Ronconi was an Italian actor, theatre director, and opera director. Biography Ronconi was born in Sousse, Tunisia. After growing up in Tunisia, where his mother was a school teacher, Ronconi graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome in 1953. He acted in productions of Luigi Squarzina, Orazio Costa, Michelangelo Antonioni, and others. In 1963, he directed his first play, La buona moglie, and from then on worked almost exclusively as a director. His first great success was with Orlando furioso that also toured in the US in 1970.
Go to Profile#16968
Malcolm Grant
#16979
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Sir Malcolm John Grant, , is a barrister, academic lawyer, and former law professor. Born and educated in New Zealand, he was the ninth President and Provost of University College London – the head as well as principal academic and administrative officer of the university – for over a decade from 2003 until 2013. He then served for 7 years as chairman of NHS England . He has published extensively in planning and environmental law, and local government law, including serving for 23 years as the editor of the 8 loose leaf volume Encyclopaedia of Planning Law and Practice of which he remains a...
Go to Profile#16969
Rolf Singer
#16980
Overall Influence
1906 - 1994 (88 years)
Rolf Singer was a German-born mycologist and one of the most important taxonomists of gilled mushrooms in the 20th century. He wrote major books like "The Agaricales in Modern Taxonomy". He fled to various countries during the Nazi period, pursuing mycology in far-flung places like the Soviet Union, Argentina, and finally the United States, as mycologist at the Field Museum in Chicago.
Go to Profile#16970
Santiago Zabala
#16981
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Santiago Zabala is a philosopher and ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University. His books have been translated into several languages and his articles have been published in The Guardian, Al Jazeera English, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other international media outlets.
Go to Profile#16971
Wilson Bryan Key
#16982
Overall Influence
1925 - 2008 (83 years)
Wilson Bryan Key was the author of several books about subliminal messages and subliminal advertising. Career Key obtained his doctorate in communications from the University of Denver and taught journalism for a short period of time at the University of Western Ontario. He was a colleague and friend of Marshall McLuhan.
Go to Profile#16972
Billie Joe Armstrong
#16983
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Billie Joe Armstrong is an American musician who is the lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter of the rock band Green Day, which he co-founded with Mike Dirnt in 1987. He is also a guitarist and vocalist for the punk rock band Pinhead Gunpowder, and provides lead vocals for Green Day's side projects Foxboro Hot Tubs, The Network, The Longshot and The Coverups. Armstrong has been considered by critics as one of the greatest punk rock guitarists of all time.
Go to Profile#16973
Steve Awodey
#16984
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Steven M. Awodey is an American mathematician and logician. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University. Biography Awodey studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Marburg and the University of Chicago. He earned his Ph.D. from Chicago under Saunders Mac Lane in 1997. He is an active researcher in the areas of category theory and logic, and has also written on the philosophy of mathematics. He is one of the originators of the field of homotopy type theory. He was a member of the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in 2012–1...
Go to Profile#16974
Aloys Grillmeier
#16985
Overall Influence
1910 - 1998 (88 years)
Aloys Grillmeier was a German Jesuit priest, theologian and cardinal-deacon of the Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II created him cardinal-deacon of San Nicola in Carcere on 26 November 1994. Life Aloys Grillmeier was born in Pechbrunn in the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1910 to Joseph Grillmeier and Maria Weidner. He entered the Jesuit Order in April 1929 after completing grammar school in Regensburg. He studied philosophy in Munich and theology in Valkenburg in the Netherlands. He was ordained priest on 24 June 1937 in the middle of further theological studies in Frankfurt am Main. After studyin...
Go to Profile#16975
Blaise Compaoré
#16986
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Blaise Compaoré is a Burkinabé-Ivorian former politician who served as the second president of Burkina Faso from 1987 to 2014. He was a close associate of the first president, Thomas Sankara, during the 1980s and in October 1987 he led a coup d'état during which Sankara was killed. Subsequently, he introduced a policy of 'rectification', overturning the leftist and Third Worldist policies pursued by Sankara. He won elections in 1991, 1998, 2005 and 2010, in what were considered unfair circumstances. His attempt to amend the constitution to extend his 27-year term caused the 2014 Burkinabé uprising.
Go to Profile#16976
John McLean Morris
#16987
Overall Influence
1911 - 1993 (82 years)
John McLean Morris was an American gynecologist, surgeon and researcher. Earlly life Morris was born on September 1, 1914, in Kuling, China, where his father, DuBois S. Morris, was a Presbyterian missionary. He later recalled being affected by the widespread infanticide of baby girls, saying "Unwanted female infants were disposed of by throwing them through a small hole in one of the dozens of stone huts erected for the purpose around the countryside." The family returned to the United States where Morris attended the preparatory Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut.
Go to Profile#16977
Peter J. Huber
#16988
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Peter Jost Huber is a Swiss statistician. He is known for his contributions to the development of heteroscedasticity-consistent standard errors. A native of Wohlen, Aargau, Huber earned his Ph.D. at the ETH Zürich in 1962, under supervision of Beno Eckmann. He later changed his research area from topology to statistics. In 2012, he became one of the inaugural fellows of the American Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#16978
Gregory Beale
#16989
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Gregory Kimball Beale is a biblical scholar, currently a Professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas. He is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. He has made a number of contributions to conservative biblical hermeneutics, particularly in the area of the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament and is one of the most influential and prolific active New Testament scholars in the world. He served as the president of the Evangelical Theological Society in 2004. In 2013, he was elected by Westminster Theological Seminary to be the first occupant of the J.
Go to Profile#16979
Nathan Aviezer
#16990
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Nathan Aviezer is an American-Israeli physicist who writes on Torah and science, especially on evolution and cosmology from an Orthodox Jewish perspective. He is a Professor of Physics and former Chairman of the Physics Department of Bar-Ilan University.
Go to Profile#16980
Johnny Bench
#16991
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
John Lee Bench is an American former professional baseball player. He played his entire Major League Baseball career, which lasted from through , with the Cincinnati Reds, primarily as a catcher. Bench was the leader of the Reds team known as the Big Red Machine that dominated the National League in the mid-1970s, winning six division titles, four National League pennants and two World Series championships.
Go to Profile#16981
Jonathan Capehart
#16992
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Jonathan T. Capehart is an American journalist and television commentator. He writes for The Washington Post PostPartisan blog and is host of The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC.
Go to Profile#16982
Jan Fagerberg
#16993
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Jan Fagerberg is professor at the University of Oslo, Norway. He is, or has been, affiliated with many institutions including: the Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture , the Centre for Innovation, Research and Competence in the Learning Economy ; the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, the Norwegian Institute for Foreign Affairs and Aalborg University, Denmark. He has also been visiting professor at University of California San Diego, the University of Maastricht, the University of Paris XIII, Copenhagen Business School and was a “Gulbenkian Professor” at the Technical University of Li...
Go to Profile#16983
Jan Luiten van Zanden
#16994
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Jan Luiten van Zanden is a Dutch economic historian and professor of Global Economic History at Utrecht University. He is a widely acknowledged specialist in Dutch, European and Global Economic History.
Go to Profile#16984
Joachim Weickert
#16995
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Joachim Weickert is a German professor of mathematics and computer science at Saarland University. In 2010, Weickert was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize for his work in image processing.
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Roy Schwitters
#16996
Overall Influence
1944 - 2023 (79 years)
Roy F. Schwitters was an American physicist, professor of physics at Harvard, Stanford, and finally the University of Texas at Austin. He was also director of the Superconducting Super Collider between 1989 and 1993.
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David Breashears
#16997
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
David Finlay Breashears is an American mountaineer, filmmaker, author, and motivational speaker. In 1985, he reached the summit of Mount Everest a second time, becoming the first American to reach the summit of Mount Everest more than once. He is perhaps best known as the director and cinematographer of Everest —which became the highest-grossing IMAX documentary—and for his assistance in the rescue efforts during the 1996 Everest disaster, which occurred during the film's production.
Go to Profile#16987
Patrick Vinton Kirch
#16998
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Patrick Vinton Kirch is an American archaeologist and Professor Emeritus of Integrative Biology and the Class of 1954 Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the former Curator of Oceanic Archaeology in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, and director of that museum from 1999 to 2002. Currently, he is professor in the department of anthropology at the University of Hawai'i Manoa, and a member of the board of directors of the Bishop Museum.
Go to Profile#16988
Kylie Moore-Gilbert
#16999
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert is an Australian-British academic in Middle Eastern political science. She was employed as a lecturer at the University of Melbourne's Asia Institute and has carried out research into contemporary political developments in the Middle East. The subject of her PhD research was post-Arab Spring Bahrain.
Go to Profile#16989
Ronald Daus
#17000
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Ronald Daus is a German university Professor of Romance philology and cultural studies at the Free University of Berlin involved in multi-disciplinary studies. Daus researches in the field of study "Neue Romania" for over 40 years, with the focus on the contacts between European and extra-European cultures. He was a visiting professor in Mexico City for two years, at Colegio de Mexico, and for one year in Singapore, at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, in Manila, at the University of the Philippines, and also in Tahiti, at the Université du Pacifique. Many research trips and lecture ...
Go to Profile#16990
Phillips Talbot
#17001
Overall Influence
1915 - 2010 (95 years)
William Phillips Talbot was a United States Ambassador to Greece and, at his death, member of the American Academy of Diplomacy, the Council of American Ambassadors and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Go to Profile#16991
Bruce Spizer
#17002
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
David "Bruce" Spizer is a tax attorney in New Orleans, Louisiana, who is also recognized as an expert on the Beatles. He has published thirteen books, and is frequently quoted as an authority on the history of the band and its recordings.
Go to Profile#16992
Roberto Martínez
#17003
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Roberto Martínez Montoliu is a Spanish professional football coach and former professional player who is currently the head coach of the Portugal national team. Martínez played as a defensive midfielder and began his career at Real Zaragoza, with whom he won the Copa del Rey. He spent a year at lower league side CF Balaguer, before signing for English Third Division side Wigan Athletic. Becoming part of a small Spanish contingent at the club known as "the three amigos" alongside Jesús Seba and Isidro Díaz, he was a regular first team player for six years, the longest period of time he spent at one club.
Go to Profile#16993
Rutherford Aris
#17004
Overall Influence
1929 - 2005 (76 years)
Rutherford "Gus" Aris was a chemical engineer, control theorist, applied mathematician, and a regents professor emeritus of chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota . Early life Aris was born in Bournemouth, England, to Algernon Aris and Janet . From a young age, Aris was interested in chemistry. Aris's father owned a photo-finishing works, where he would experiment with chemicals and reactions. He attended St Martin's, a small local kindergarten and moved to St Wulfran's, a local preparatory school, now Queen Elizabeth's School. Here, he studied Latin and was encouraged to continue pursuing his interest in chemistry.
Go to Profile#16994
Andrew Hussey
#17005
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Andrew Hussey OBE is an English historian of French culture and biographer. He has published multiple books, focusing primarily on 20th century French history and biography. Early life Born in Liverpool, Hussey was educated at the University of Manchester and the Jean Moulin University Lyon 3. He received his PhD for a thesis on Georges Bataille, eventually published as his first book.
Go to Profile#16995
John Carey
#17006
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
John Carey, is a British literary critic, and post-retirement emeritus Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He is known for his anti-elitist views on high culture, as expounded in several books. He has twice chaired the Booker Prize committee, in 1982 and 2003, and chaired the judging panel for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005.
Go to Profile#16996
Gerald Uelmen
#17007
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Gerald F. Uelmen is an American attorney, writer, civil servant, and academic. He was part of O. J. Simpson's defense team during the O. J. Simpson murder case, dubbed the "Dream Team." Uelmen says he devised the memorable line used by Johnnie Cochran in the closing argument, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."
Go to Profile#16997
Neve Gordon
#17008
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Neve Gordon is an Israeli professor and academic. He is a professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London and writes on issues relating to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and human rights. He used to teach at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. A member of Academia for Equality, an organization working to promote democratization, equality and access to higher education for all communities living in Israel.
Go to Profile#16998
Elisabet Sahtouris
#17009
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Elisabet Sahtouris is an evolution biologist, futurist, speaker, author and sustainability consultant to businesses, government agencies and other organizations. She is a US and Greek citizen who has lived in the US, Canada, Greece, Peru and Spain while lecturing, doing workshops and media appearances on all continents. She has a PhD from Dalhousie University in Canada. She consults with corporations and government organizations in Australia, Brazil, Europe, Asia, Africa and the United States.
Go to Profile#16999
Burhanuddin Rabbani
#17010
Overall Influence
1940 - 2011 (71 years)
Burhānuddīn Rabbānī was an Afghan politician and teacher who served as President of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996, and again from November to December 2001 . Born in the Badakhshan Province, Rabbani studied at Kabul University and worked there as a professor of Islamic theology. He formed the Jamiat-e Islami at the university which attracted then-students Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Massoud, both of whom would eventually become the two leading commanders of the Afghan mujahideen in the Soviet–Afghan War from 1979. Rabbani was chosen to be the President of Afghanistan after the end of the former communist regime in 1992.
Go to Profile#17000
Patricia Goldman-Rakic
#17011
Overall Influence
1937 - 2003 (66 years)
Patricia Goldman-Rakic was an American professor of neuroscience, neurology, psychiatry and psychology at Yale University School of Medicine. She pioneered multidisciplinary research of the prefrontal cortex and working memory.
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