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
#17301
Bill Gropp
#17312
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
William Douglas Gropp is the director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is also the founding Director of the Parallel Computing Institute. Gropp helped to create the Message Passing Interface, also known as MPI, and the Portable, Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Computation, also known as PETSc.
Go to Profile#17302
Ted Selker
#17313
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Edwin Joseph Selker, better known as Ted Selker, is an American computer scientist known for his user interface inventions. Biography Selker graduated from Brown University in 1979 with a BS in Applied Mathematics, and from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with an MS in Computer and Information Sciences in 1981. From June 1981 to 1983 he worked as research assistant in the Stanford University, Robotics Laboratory. One of his projects was a collaborative display system for the WAITS system of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory . He worked for Atari for a year, then returned ...
Go to Profile#17303
J. Marshall Shepherd
#17314
Overall Influence
James Marshall Shepherd is an American meteorologist, professor at the University of Georgia's Department of Geography, director of the university's atmospheric sciences program, and 2013 president of the American Meteorological Society . In 2020 he was awarded the AAAS Award for Public Engagement with Science. In 2021, he was elected to the U. S. National Academy of Engineering.
Go to Profile#17304
May Berenbaum
#17315
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
May Roberta Berenbaum is an American entomologist whose research focuses on the chemical interactions between herbivorous insects and their host plants, and the implications of these interactions on the organization of natural communities and the evolution of species. She is particularly interested in nectar, plant phytochemicals, honey and bees, and her research has important implications for beekeeping.
Go to Profile#17305
Claude Makélélé
#17316
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Claude Makélélé Sinda is a football manager and former professional player who played as a defensive midfielder. He worked as a youth coach and technical mentor at Chelsea, having formerly been the head coach of Belgian First Division A club Eupen. Regarded as one of the greatest defensive midfielders of all time, Makélélé has been credited with redefining the defensive midfield role in English football, especially during the 2004–05 FA Premier League season, where he played a key role in helping Chelsea win the title with 95 points. In homage, the defensive midfield position is sometimes col...
Go to Profile#17306
Richard Wurtman
#17317
Overall Influence
1936 - 2022 (86 years)
Richard Wurtman was an American neuroscientist who spent his career doing basic and translational neuroscience research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Early life and education Richard Wurtman earned his undergraduate degree at University of Pennsylvania and then went to Harvard Medical School, where he earned his MD in 1960. He did a two year residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, and then joined Julius Axelrod's lab at the National Institutes of Health, which was pioneering studies of neurotransmitters and the ways that drugs affect them.
Go to Profile#17307
Anthony J. Culyer
#17318
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Anthony John Culyer CBE is a British economist, and emeritus professor of economics at the University of York, visiting professor at Imperial College London and adjunct professor in health policy, evaluation and management at the University of Toronto, known for his work in the field of health economics.
Go to Profile#17308
Maxie Clarence Maultsby Jr.
#17319
Overall Influence
1932 - 2016 (84 years)
Maxie Clarence Maultsby Jr. was an American psychiatrist, author of several books on emotional and behavioral self-management, Elected Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists. He is the founder of the method of psychotherapy called Rational Behavior Therapy, the emotional self-help technique called Rational Self-Counseling, and the New Self-Help Alcoholic Relapse Prevention Treatment Method. He was an Emeritus Professor at the College of Medicine at Howar...
Go to Profile#17309
Burke Marshall
#17320
Overall Influence
1922 - 2003 (81 years)
Burke Marshall was an American lawyer and who served as the United States Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division during the Civil Rights Movement. Early life Marshall was born in Plainfield, New Jersey. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, graduating in 1940, and received a BA from Yale University in 1943. He joined the army, working in the intelligence corps as a Japanese translator and cryptoanalyst. It was during his military service that he met Violet Person, whom he later married.
Go to Profile#17310
Jack Kramer
#17321
Overall Influence
1921 - 2009 (88 years)
John Albert Kramer was an American tennis player of the 1940s and 1950s. He won three Grand Slam tournaments . He also led the U.S. Davis Cup tennis team to victory in the 1946 and 1947 Davis Cup finals.
Go to Profile#17311
Carmen de Lavallade
#17322
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Carmen de Lavallade is an American actress, choreographer and dancer. Early life De Lavallade was born in Los Angeles, California, on March 6, 1931, to Creole parents from New Orleans, Louisiana. She was raised by her aunt, Adele, who owned one of the first African-American history bookshops on Central Avenue. De Lavallade's cousin, Janet Collins, was the first Creole/African descendant prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera. The family was Catholic.
Go to Profile#17312
Jackie Yi-Ru Ying
#17323
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Jackie Yi-Ru Ying is an American nanotechnology scientist based in Singapore. She is the founding executive director of the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology . Early life and career Ying was born in Taipei in 1966. She moved to Singapore with her family in 1973 as a child where she was a student at Rulang Primary School and Raffles Girls' School. She then went to New York City, earning a B.Eng. degree by graduating summa cum laude from Cooper Union in 1987. She then attended Princeton University, receiving her MA in 1988 and her PhD in 1991, both in chemical engineering. She spen...
Go to Profile#17313
Dave Wolverton
#17324
Overall Influence
1957 - 2022 (65 years)
John David Wolverton , better known by his pen names Dave Wolverton and David Farland, was an American author, editor, and instructor of online writing workshops and groups. He wrote in several genres but was known best for his science fiction and fantasy works. Books in his Runelords series hit the New York Times bestsellers list.
Go to Profile#17314
Ebrahim Chehrazi
#17325
Overall Influence
1908 - 2011 (103 years)
Ebrahim Chehrazi was an Iranian psychiatrist. He is known as the first Iranian psychiatrist, and the founder of the first psychiatric hospital in Iran , called Chehrazi. Background Ebrahim Chehrazi was the son of an Iranian doctor. After primary school, he first entered Dar ul-Funun and then the medical school in Tehran. At the end of his medical studies, he participated in the student expedition competition and after receiving the first ranking in both experimental and mathematical fields, he was sent to Europe in 1308 to study medicine.
Go to Profile#17315
Dudley Randall
#17326
Overall Influence
1914 - 2000 (86 years)
Dudley Randall was an African-American poet and poetry publisher from Detroit, Michigan. He founded a pioneering publishing company called Broadside Press in 1965, which published many leading African-American writers, among them Melvin Tolson, Sonia Sanchez, Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Etheridge Knight, Margaret Walker, and others.
Go to Profile#17316
Mary Pierce
#17327
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Mary Caroline Pierce is a retired tennis professional who represented France internationally in team competitions and the Olympics. She was born in Canada to an American father and a French mother, and holds citizenship of all three countries.
Go to Profile#17317
Nancy Lee Harris
#17328
Overall Influence
For the Irish playwright and screenwriter, see Nancy Harris. Nancy Lee Harris is an educator as well as a well-established medical professional. She currently serves as a professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School. She is also a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and an editor with the New England Journal of Medicine. She was trained at multiple different hospitals; however, the majority of her adult life has been spent working in Boston, Massachusetts. Throughout her life she has held many notable positions including but not limited to: Director of Hematopathology, Director of ...
Go to Profile#17318
Barry Stroud
#17329
Overall Influence
1935 - 2019 (84 years)
Barry Stroud was a Canadian philosopher and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Known especially for his work on philosophical skepticism, he wrote about David Hume, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the metaphysics of color, and many other topics.
Go to Profile#17319
Charles Sabel
#17330
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Charles Fredrick Sabel is an American academic and professor of Law and Social Science at the Columbia Law School. His research centers on public innovations, European Union governance, labor standards, economic development, and ultra-robust networks.
Go to Profile#17320
Barry Rubin
#17331
Overall Influence
1950 - 2014 (64 years)
Barry M. Rubin was an American-born Israeli writer and academic on terrorism and Middle Eastern affairs. Career Rubin was the director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs and a professor at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. He was the editor of the GLORIA center website. The GLORIA center has since been renamed to the Rubin Center in his honor. He was also editor of the journal Turkish Studies.
Go to Profile#17321
Sarah Caldwell
#17332
Overall Influence
1924 - 2006 (82 years)
Sarah Caldwell was an American opera conductor, impresario, and stage director. Early life Caldwell was born in Maryville, Missouri, and grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She was a child prodigy and gave public performances on the violin by the time she was ten years old. She graduated from Fayetteville High School at the age of 14.
Go to Profile#17322
Mika Yamamoto
#17333
Overall Influence
1967 - 2012 (45 years)
was an award-winning Japanese video and photojournalist for the news agency Japan Press. Yamamoto was killed on 20 August 2012 while covering the ongoing Syrian Civil War in Aleppo, Syria. She was the first Japanese and fourth foreign journalist killed in the Syrian Civil War that began in March 2011. She was the fifteenth journalist killed in Syria in 2012. Yamamoto was a recipient of the Vaughn-Uyeda Memorial Prize of the Japanese Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association for her reporting of international affairs in 2004.
Go to Profile#17323
Guy Rolnik
#17334
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Guy Rolnik is an Israeli journalist, executive, entrepreneur, and a clinical professor at the University of Chicago. He founded Israeli media organization TheMarker and is a deputy Publisher of the Haaretz daily newspaper.
Go to Profile#17324
Henry Paynter
#17335
Overall Influence
1923 - 2002 (79 years)
Henry Martyn Paynter was an American scientist and professor of mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is best known as the inventor of bond graphs, a methodology to describe dynamic systems.
Go to Profile#17325
Donald Fagen
#17336
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Donald Jay Fagen is an American musician best known as the co-founder, lead singer, co-songwriter, and keyboardist of the band Steely Dan, formed in the early 1970s with musical partner Walter Becker. In addition to his work with Steely Dan, Fagen has released four solo albums, beginning with The Nightfly in 1982, which was nominated for seven Grammys. In 2001, Fagen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Steely Dan. Following Becker's death in 2017, Fagen continued to tour under the Steely Dan name.
Go to Profile#17326
Yves Pomeau
#17337
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Yves Pomeau, born in 1942, is a French mathematician and physicist, emeritus research director at the CNRS and corresponding member of the French Academy of sciences. He was one of the founders of the Laboratoire de Physique Statistique, École Normale Supérieure, Paris. He is the son of literature professor René Pomeau.
Go to Profile#17327
Richard Dalitz
#17338
Overall Influence
1925 - 2006 (81 years)
Richard Henry Dalitz, FRS was an Australian physicist known for his work in particle physics. Education and early life Born in the town of Dimboola, Victoria, Dalitz studied physics and mathematics at Melbourne University before moving to the United Kingdom in 1946, to study at the University of Cambridge. His PhD was awarded in 1950 for research on zero-zero transitions in the atomic nucleus supervised by Nicholas Kemmer.
Go to Profile#17328
Chiranjeevi
#17339
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Chiranjeevi is an Indian actor, film producer and former politician. He is regarded as one of the most successful and influential actors in the history of Indian cinema. In a career spanning over four decades, he starred in over 150 feature films predominantly in Telugu, as well as some films in Hindi, Tamil and Kannada. Chiranjeevi won the Andhra Pradesh state's highest film award, the Raghupathi Venkaiah Award, three Nandi Awards, and nine Filmfare Awards South including the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2006, he was honoured with the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award, for his contributions to Indian cinema.
Go to Profile#17329
Richard Schlegel
#17340
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
C. Richard Schlegel is an American scientist and professor. He was the Chair of the Department of Pathology at Georgetown University from 2000-2019 and is now the director of the Center for Cell Reprogramming at Georgetown. Conditionally Reprogrammed Cells technology.
Go to Profile#17330
Christopher Udry
#17341
Overall Influence
Christopher R. Udry is an American economist who currently serves as King Professor of Economics at Northwestern University. Udry is the co-founder and current co-director of the Global Poverty Research Lab at the Kellogg School of Management. Udry's research focuses mostly on development economics, in particular rural development in Sub-Saharan Africa, to which he owes his position as one of the world's most prominent agricultural economists.
Go to Profile#17331
Linda McDowell
#17342
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Linda Margaret McDowell is a British geographer and academic, specialising in the ethnography of work and employment. She was Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford from 2004 to 2016. Early life and education McDowell studied for her PhD as a part-time student at the Bartlett School of Planning, where she had previously earned a master's degree. Supervised by Peter Cowan, she researched housing change in London.
Go to Profile#17332
John E. Woods
#17343
Overall Influence
1942 - 2023 (81 years)
John Edwin Woods was an American translator who specialized in translating German literature, since about 1978. His work includes much of the fictional prose of Arno Schmidt and the works of contemporary authors such as Ingo Schulze and Christoph Ransmayr. He also translated all the major novels of Thomas Mann, as well as works by many other German writers.
Go to Profile#17333
Juris Upatnieks
#17344
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Juris Upatnieks is a Latvian-American physicist and inventor, and pioneer in the field of holography. Upatnieks fled the Latvia with his parents at the close of World War II, seeking asylum in Germany. In 1951 the family emigrated to the United States. He attended high school in Akron, Ohio, and studied electrical engineering at the University of Akron, where he was awarded a bachelor's degree in 1960. Thereafter he studied at the Institute of Science and Technology of the University of Michigan, where he earned a master's degree in electrical engineering in 1965. From 1973 to 1993 he work...
Go to Profile#17334
Bill Nye
#17345
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
William Sanford Nye is an American mechanical engineer, science communicator, and television presenter. He is best known as the host of the science education television show Bill Nye the Science Guy and as a science educator in pop culture.
Go to Profile#17335
Philip Norton, Baron Norton of Louth
#17346
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Philip Norton, Baron Norton of Louth, , is an English author, academic and Conservative peer. He has been described as "the United Kingdom's greatest living expert on Parliament" and "a world authority on constitutional issues."
Go to Profile#17336
Wes Craven
#17347
Overall Influence
1939 - 2015 (76 years)
Wesley Earl Craven was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and editor. Craven has commonly been recognized as one of the greatest masters of the horror genre due to the cultural impact and influence of his work. Amongst his prolific filmography, Craven was best known for his pioneering work in the horror genre, particularly slasher films, where he mixed horror cliches with humor and satire.
Go to Profile#17337
Katerina Kolozova
#17348
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Katerina "Katarina" Kolozova Biography She is a director of and professor of gender studies and philosophy at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Skopje and a professor of the University American College Skopje, both in Skopje, North Macedonia. She has been associated with speculative realism and has written about the non-philosophy of François Laruelle and the works of Karl Marx. She has been a member of the Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale , with headquarters in Paris, France, since it was founded. She is a board member of The New Centre for Research & Practice of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Go to Profile#17338
Georges Matheron
#17349
Overall Influence
1930 - 2000 (70 years)
Georges François Paul Marie Matheron was a French mathematician and civil engineer of mines, known as the founder of geostatistics and a co-founder of mathematical morphology. In 1968, he created the Centre de Géostatistique et de Morphologie Mathématique at the Paris School of Mines in Fontainebleau. He is known for his contributions on Kriging and mathematical morphology. His seminal work is posted for study and review to the Online Library of the Centre de Géostatistique, Fontainebleau, France.
Go to Profile#17339
Michael Rhodes
#17350
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Michael Rhodes was an American bass player, known for his session work and touring in support of other artists, and his collaborations in bands and ensembles. Biography Rhodes was born in Monroe, Louisiana, and taught himself to play the guitar by age 13 and the bass soon after. In the early 1970s, Rhodes moved to Austin, Texas, where he performed with local bands. Four years later, Rhodes moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he performed with Charlie Rich's son Alan.
Go to Profile#17340
George W. Breslauer
#17351
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
George W. Breslauer is an academic in the field of social sciences and the former executive vice chancellor and provost of UC Berkeley. Introduction Breslauer is a specialist on Soviet and Russian politics and foreign relations, within the field of political science. He is the author or editor of twelve books on these topics. He joined the faculty of the department of political science at The University of California, Berkeley in 1971, rising to full professor and retiring to the honorific position of professor of the graduate school in 2014.
Go to Profile#17341
Reinhard Jahn
#17352
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Reinhard Jahn is a German biophysicist and neurobiologist known for his studies of cellular membrane fusion. For these investigations, he has been honored with numerous awards, including the 2000 Leibniz Award. Jahn is currently Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and the President of the University of Göttingen in Göttingen, Germany.
Go to Profile#17342
Slobodan Ćuk
#17353
Overall Influence
Slobodan Ćuk is a Serbian author, inventor, business owner, electrical engineer, and professor of electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology . The Ćuk switched-mode DC-to-DC voltage converter is named after him.
Go to Profile#17343
Carl H. June
#17354
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Carl H. June is an American immunologist and oncologist. He is currently the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. He is most well known for his research on T cell therapies for the treatment of several forms of cancers. In 2020 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Go to Profile#17344
George Efstathiou
#17355
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
George Petros Efstathiou is a British astrophysicist who is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge and was the first Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge from 2008 to 2016. He was previously Savilian Professor of Astronomy at the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#17345
Michael M. Richter
#17356
Overall Influence
1938 - 2020 (82 years)
Michael M. Richter was a German mathematician and computer scientist. Richter is well known for his career in mathematical logic, in particular non-standard analysis, and in artificial intelligence, in particular in knowledge-based systems and case-based reasoning . He is worldwide known as pioneer in case-based reasoning.
Go to Profile#17346
Sigurd Hofmann
#17357
Overall Influence
1944 - 2022 (78 years)
Sigurd Hofmann was a German physicist known for his work on superheavy elements. Biography Hofmann discovered his love for physics at the Max Planck High School in Groß-Umstadt, Germany, where he graduated in 1963. He studied physics at the Technical University in Darmstadt . From 1974 to 1989 he was responsible for the detection and identification of nuclei produced in heavy ion reactions at the velocity separator SHIP at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research. He was working in the Department Nuclear Chemistry II headed by Peter Armbruster. From 1989 he was leading, after Gottfried Münzenberg, the experiments for the synthesis of new elements.
Go to Profile#17347
William Drea Adams
#17358
Overall Influence
William Drea "Bro" Adams is an American educator and advocate for the humanities. He was the tenth Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2014 to 2017. He served as the 14th President of Bucknell University from 1995 to 2000, and as the 19th President of Colby College from 2000 to 2014.
Go to Profile#17348
Gilberto Calvillo Vives
#17359
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Gilberto Calvillo Vives is the president of the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics . He obtained a BSc in physics and mathematics at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional , a MSc in science, and a PhD in Operations Research at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
Go to Profile#17349
Gerald B. Whitham
#17360
Overall Influence
1927 - 2014 (87 years)
Gerald Beresford Whitham FRS was a British–born American applied mathematician and the Charles Lee Powell Professor of Applied Mathematics of Applied & Computational Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester in 1953 under the direction of Sir James Lighthill. He is known for his work in fluid dynamics and waves.
Go to Profile#17350
Friedrich Kratochwil
#17361
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Friedrich Kratochwil is a German university professor who studied at the University of Munich before migrating to the United States, then subsequently returning to Europe. He received a PhD from Princeton University.
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