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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people
#17751
Rory McIlroy
#17762
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (37 years)
Rory Daniel McIlroy is a Northern Irish professional golfer who is a member of both the European Tour and the PGA Tour. He is a former world number one in the Official World Golf Ranking, and has spent over 100 weeks in that position during his career. He is a four-time major champion, winning the 2011 U.S. Open, 2012 PGA Championship, 2014 Open Championship and 2014 PGA Championship. Along with Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, he is one of three players to win four majors by the age of 25.
Go to Profile#17752
John Wells
#17763
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
John Marcum Wells is an American producer, writer, and director. He is best known for his role as showrunner and executive producer of the television series ER, Third Watch, The West Wing, Southland, Shameless, Animal Kingdom, and American Woman, as well as the miniseries Maid and the upcoming series Rescue: HI-Surf. His company, John Wells Productions, is currently based at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, California. Wells is also a labor leader, having served as president of the Writers Guild of America, West from 1999 to 2001 and from 2009 to 2011. Wells serves on the Motion Picture & Television Fund Board of Governors.
Go to Profile#17753
Robert McAfee Brown
#17764
Overall Influence
1920 - 2001 (81 years)
Robert McAfee Brown was an American Presbyterian minister, theologian, and activist. Life Born on May 28, 1920, in Carthage, Illinois, Brown was the son of a Presbyterian minister and the grandson of theologian and Presbyterian minister Cleland Boyd McAfee. He earned a bachelor's degree from Amherst College in 1943 and was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1944. Brown earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in 1945, and served as a United States Navy chaplain from 1945 to 1946. The recipient of a Fulbright grant, Brown studied at the University of Oxford before completing a doctorate in the philosophy of religion at Columbia University in 1951.
Go to Profile#17754
Nicolás Almagro
#17765
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Nicolás Almagro Sánchez is a Spanish former professional tennis player. He reached the quarterfinals of the French Open in 2008, 2010 and 2012 , as well as the quarterfinals of the Australian Open in 2013 . Almagro won 13 singles titles and he achieved a career-high singles ranking of World No. 9 in May 2011.
Go to Profile#17755
Carlo Azeglio Ciampi
#17766
Overall Influence
1920 - 2016 (96 years)
Carlo Azeglio Ciampi was an Italian politician and banker who was the prime minister of Italy from 1993 to 1994 and the president of Italy from 1999 to 2006. Biography Education Ciampi was born in Livorno . He received a B.A. in ancient Greek literature and classical philology in 1941 from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, one of the country's most prestigious universities, defending a thesis, entitled Favorino d'Arelate e la consolazione Περὶ φυγῆς, under the direction of the Hellenist Augusto Mancini. Then he was called to military duty in Albania as a lieutenant. On 8 September 1943, ...
Go to Profile#17756
Philippa Marrack
#17767
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Philippa "Pippa" Marrack, FRS is an English immunologist and academic, based in the United States, best known for her research and discoveries pertaining to T cells. Marrack is the Ida and Cecil Green Professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Research at National Jewish Health and a distinguished professor of immunology and microbiology at the University of Colorado Denver.
Go to Profile#17757
Peter Pohl
#17768
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Peter Pohl is a Swedish author and former director and screenwriter of short films. He has received prizes for several of his books and films, as well as for his entire work. From 1966 until his retirement in 2005, he was lecturer in Numerical analysis at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.
Go to Profile#17758
Giuli Alasania
#17769
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Giuli Alasania is a Georgian historian and public figure. Her publications include 130 papers and 10 monographs. She is the mother of the third president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili. Biography She graduated from the Faculty of Oriental Studies of the Tbilisi State University and in 1973 received a Ph.D. degree in History. In 1987 she received a degree of a Doctor of Historical Sciences.
Go to Profile#17759
Charlize Theron
#17770
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Charlize Theron is a South African and American actress and producer. One of the world's highest-paid actresses, she is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. In 2016, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Go to Profile#17760
Fernand Ouellet
#17771
Overall Influence
1926 - 2021 (95 years)
Fernand Ouellet was a French Canadian historian, author and educator. Biography He was educated at Université Laval and gained a PhD in 1965. Ouellet taught at Université Laval, Carleton University, and the University of Ottawa in 1961–1985, prior to joining the History Department at York University in 1986.
Go to Profile#17761
Robert W. Funk
#17772
Overall Influence
1926 - 2005 (79 years)
Robert W. Funk was an American biblical scholar, founder of the Jesus Seminar and the nonprofit Westar Institute in Santa Rosa, California. Funk sought to promote research and education on what he called biblical literacy. His approach to hermeneutics was historical-critical, with a strongly skeptical view of orthodox Christian belief, particularly concerning the historical Jesus. He and his associates described Jesus' parables as containing shocking messages that contradicted established religious attitudes.
Go to Profile#17762
İoanna Kuçuradi
#17773
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Ioanna Kuçuradi is a Turkish philosopher from Istanbul. She is currently the president of Philosophical Society of Turkey and a full-time academic of Maltepe University. Biography Kuçuradi was born on October 4, 1936, in Istanbul, Turkey. After finishing Zappeion Greek Gymnasium for Girls in Istanbul in 1954, she studied philosophy at Istanbul University, from where she graduated with a B.A. degree in 1959. She earned a Ph.D. degree at the same university in 1965. Ioanna Kuçuradi worked as an assistant professor at her alma mater and the Atatürk University in Erzurum.
Go to Profile#17763
José Sarney
#17774
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
José Sarney de Araújo Costa is a Brazilian politician, lawyer, and writer who served as 31st president of Brazil from 1985 to 1990. He briefly served as the 20th vice president of Brazil for a month between April and May 1985.
Go to Profile#17764
Nigel Pearson
#17775
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Nigel Graham Pearson is an English football manager and former professional player, formerly the manager of Championship club Bristol City. During his playing career, he was a defender and played for Shrewsbury Town, Sheffield Wednesday and Middlesbrough. As a coach he has taken charge of Hull City, Southampton, Carlisle United, Leicester City, Derby County, OH Leuven, and Watford; and was assistant manager for England Under-21s and Newcastle United.
Go to Profile#17765
Paulo Ribenboim
#17776
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Paulo Ribenboim is a Brazilian-Canadian mathematician who specializes in number theory. Biography Ribenboim was born into a Jewish family in Recife, Brazil. He received his BSc in mathematics from the University of São Paulo in 1948, and won a fellowship to study with Jean Dieudonné in France at the University of Nancy in the early 1950s, where he became a close friend of Alexander Grothendieck. He has contributed to the theory of ideals and of valuations.
Go to Profile#17766
George Modelski
#17777
Overall Influence
1926 - 2014 (88 years)
George Modelski was Professor of political science in the University of Washington. Modelski was a professor there from 1967 to 1995. Before working at the University of Washington, Modelski was a senior research fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University.
Go to Profile#17767
Edinson Cavani
#17778
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Edinson Roberto Cavani Gómez is a Uruguayan professional footballer who plays as a striker for Argentine Primera División club Boca Juniors. He is nicknamed El Matador or Cazador for his clinical finishing as well as his celebration, in which he makes a gesture resembling a bow and arrow. Cavani is considered one of the best strikers of his generation and one of Uruguay's greatest players.
Go to Profile#17768
Marianne Ignace
#17779
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Marianne Boelscher Ignace is a Canadian linguist and anthropologist. Married into the Shuswap people, she is a Full professor in the departments of Linguistics and Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University , and Director of SFU's Indigenous Languages Program and First Nations Language Centre. In 2020, Ignace was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada for her work in revitalizing and preserving indigenous languages.
Go to Profile#17769
Enrico Arbarello
#17780
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Enrico Arbarello is an Italian mathematician who is a leading expert in algebraic geometry. He earned a Ph.D. at Columbia University in New York in 1973. He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1993-94. He is now a Mathematics Professor at Sapienza University of Rome. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#17770
Sami Al-Arian
#17781
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Sami Amin Al-Arian is a Kuwaiti-born political activist of Palestinian origin who was a computer engineering professor at University of South Florida. During the Clinton administration and Bush administration, he was invited to the White House. He actively campaigned for the Bush presidential campaign in the United States presidential election in 2000.
Go to Profile#17771
Eric Turkheimer
#17782
Overall Influence
Eric Nathan Turkheimer is an American psychologist and the Hugh Scott Hamilton Professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. Early life and education Turkheimer is the son of Nathan Turkheimer, the former board chairman of the public relations law firm Turkheimer & Ryan, Inc., and his wife, Barbara Tack Turkheimer. He grew up in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, where he graduated from Croton Harmon High School in 1971. He is Jewish. He received his B.A. in psychology from Haverford College in 1976. He earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1986, ...
Go to Profile#17772
Jack Herer
#17783
Overall Influence
1939 - 2010 (71 years)
Jack Herer , sometimes called the "Emperor of Hemp", was an American cannabis rights activist and the author of the 1985 book The Emperor Wears No Clothes. Herer founded and served as the director of the organization Help End Marijuana Prohibition .
Go to Profile#17773
Jack Hannah
#17784
Overall Influence
1913 - 1994 (81 years)
John Frederick Hannah was an American animator, writer and director of animated shorts. Biography Hannah was born on January 5, 1913, in Nogales, Arizona. He moved to Los Angeles in 1931 to study at the Art Guild Academy. One of his first jobs was designing movie posters for Hollywood theaters. In 1933, during the Great Depression, Hannah dropped off his portfolio at Walt Disney Studios, and soon afterward was hired as an in-between and clean-up artist, working on Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Silly Symphony cartoons.
Go to Profile#17774
Ron Hansen
#17785
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ron Hansen is an American novelist, essayist, and professor. He is known for writing literary westerns exploring the people and history of the American heartland, notably The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , which was adapted into an acclaimed film.
Go to Profile#17775
John E. McMurry
#17786
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
John E. McMurry is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University. He received an A.B. from Harvard University in 1964 and his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1967 working with Gilbert Stork. Following completion of his Ph.D., he joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1967 and moved to Cornell University in 1980.
Go to Profile#17776
Joseph W. Westphal
#17787
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Joseph William Westphal is an American politician and diplomat who was most recently the United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He served as the 30th United States Under Secretary of the Army from 2009 to 2014.
Go to Profile#17777
Bert W. O'Malley
#17788
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Bert W. O’Malley is the Tom Thompson Distinguished Service Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Chancellor at Baylor College of Medicine. A native of Pittsburgh, he has a bachelor's degree from the University of Pittsburgh and a M.D. from their School of Medicine . He completed his residency at Duke University and spent four years at the National Institute of Health followed by four years serving as the Luscious Birch Professor and the director of the Reproductive Biology Center at Vanderbilt University. He then moved to Baylor as Professor and Chairman of Molecular and Cellular Bi...
Go to Profile#17778
Carsten Thomassen
#17789
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Carsten Thomassen is a Danish mathematician. He has been a Professor of Mathematics at the Technical University of Denmark since 1981, and since 1990 a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. His research concerns discrete mathematics and more specifically graph theory.
Go to Profile#17779
Karen Tei Yamashita
#17790
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Karen Tei Yamashita is a Japanese American writer. Early life Yamashita was born on January 8, 1951, in Oakland, California. Career Yamashita is Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she teaches creative writing and Asian American literature. Her works, several of which contain elements of magic realism, include novels I Hotel , Circle K Cycles , Tropic of Orange , Brazil-Maru , and Through the Arc of the Rain Forest . Yamashita's novels emphasize the necessity of polyglot, multicultural communities in an increasingly globalized age, even as they destabi...
Go to Profile#17780
Jun'ichi Tsujii
#17791
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
is a Japanese computer scientist specializing in natural language processing and text mining, particularly in the field of biology and bioinformatics. Education Tsujii received his Bachelor of Engineering, Master of Engineering and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Kyoto University in 1971, 1973, and 1978 respectively. He was Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at Kyoto University, before accepting a position as Professor of Computational Linguistics at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in 1988. He was President of the Association for Computatio...
Go to Profile#17781
Elmira Süleymanova
#17792
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Elmira Süleymanova , is an Azerbaijani chemist and civil servant. In 2002 she became the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Republic. Biography Süleymanova was born in Baku on 17 July 1937 and graduated in Chemistry from the State University of Azerbaijan and graduated with honors. Since then she worked in the Institute of Petrochemical Processes of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences as a laboratory assistant and later became the Head of the laboratory. In 1967 she got a postgraduate from the National Academy of Sciences, in 1980 a doctorate and has been a university professor since 1988.
Go to Profile#17782
Alan Yuille
#17793
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Alan Yuille is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Computational Cognitive Science with appointments in the departments of Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University. Yuille develops models of vision and cognition for computers, intended for creating artificial vision systems. He studied under Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University on a PhD in theoretical physics, which he completed in 1981.
Go to Profile#17783
Gordon D. Kaufman
#17794
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Gordon Dester Kaufman was an American theologian and the Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, where he taught for over three decades beginning in 1963. He also taught at Pomona College and Vanderbilt University, and lectured in India, Japan, South Africa, England, and Hong Kong. Kaufman was an ordained minister in the Mennonite Church for 50 years.
Go to Profile#17784
S. Laurel Weldon
#17795
Overall Influence
#17785
Miguel Algarín
#17796
Overall Influence
1941 - 2020 (79 years)
Miguel Algarín Jr. was a Puerto Rican poet, writer, co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café, and a Rutgers University professor of English. Early years Algarín was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, and was educated and raised in a culturally-minded household. The love for all things involving culture always prevailed in his family. His family and he migrated to the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City in 1950. While there he received both his primary and secondary education. Algarín went on to study English at the University of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania State University . He then received his PhD in comparative literature at Rutgers University.
Go to Profile#17786
Rudy Crew
#17797
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Rudolph Franklin "Rudy" Crew is an American educator, academic administrator, and former government employee who currently serves as President of Medgar Evers College. A lifelong educator and public school administrator, Crew served as Oregon's first Chief Education Officer in 2012 and 2013. Appointed by Governor John Kitzhaber, Crew oversaw the integrated public education system in Oregon from pre-kindergarten through college and career readiness.
Go to Profile#17787
Steve Coppell
#17798
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Stephen James Coppell is an English professional football manager and former player. As a player, he was a highly regarded right winger known for his speed, technical ability and work rate. He won domestic honours with Manchester United and represented England at the World Cup. After a knee injury ended his playing career, he went into management.
Go to Profile#17788
Julius Grey
#17799
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Julius H. Grey is a Canadian lawyer and university professor. He is particularly known for his expertise in constitutional and human rights law. He is a senior partner at the law firm Grey Casgrain, s.e.n.c.
Go to Profile#17789
John Conyers
#17800
Overall Influence
1929 - 2019 (90 years)
John James Conyers Jr. was an American politician of the Democratic Party who served as a U.S. representative from Michigan from 1965 to 2017. Conyers was the sixth-longest serving member of Congress and the longest-serving African American member of Congress in history.
Go to Profile#17790
Silvio Ceccato
#17801
Overall Influence
1914 - 1997 (83 years)
Silvio Ceccato was an Italian philosopher and linguist. Born in Montecchio Maggiore, he studied law and music. In 1949 he founded the international magazine Methodos, which was published until 1964.
Go to Profile#17791
Anne Murray
#17802
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Morna Anne Murray is a Canadian singer of pop, country, and adult contemporary music, who has sold over 55 million album copies worldwide during her over 40-year career. Murray has won four Grammys including the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1979.
Go to Profile#17792
Christophe Soulé
#17803
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Christophe Soulé is a French mathematician working in arithmetic geometry. Education Soulé started his studies in 1970 at École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Paris in 1979 under the supervision of Max Karoubi and Roger Godement, with a dissertation titled K-Théorie des anneaux d'entiers de corps de nombres et cohomologie étale.
Go to Profile#17793
Bo Schembechler
#17804
Overall Influence
1929 - 2006 (77 years)
Glenn Edward "Bo" Schembechler Jr. was an American college football player, coach, and athletic administrator. He served as the head football coach at Miami University from 1963 to 1968 and at the University of Michigan from 1969 to 1989, compiling a career record of 234 wins, 65 losses and 8 ties. Only Nick Saban, Joe Paterno and Tom Osborne have recorded 200 victories in fewer games as a coach in major college football. In his 21 seasons as the head coach of the Michigan Wolverines, Schembechler's teams amassed a record of 194–48–5 and won or shared 13 Big Ten Conference titles. Though his ...
Go to Profile#17794
Suzanne Cory
#17805
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Suzanne Cory is an Australian molecular biologist. She has worked on the genetics of the immune system and cancer and has lobbied her country to invest in science. She is married to fellow scientist Jerry Adams, also a WEHI scientist, whom she met while studying for her PhD at the University of Cambridge, England.
Go to Profile#17795
Emma Castelnuovo
#17806
Overall Influence
1913 - 2014 (101 years)
Emma Castelnuovo was an Italian mathematician and teacher of Jewish descent. In 2013, the year of her 100th birthday, the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction created an award named after Castelnuovo to recognize outstanding contributions to mathematics education.
Go to Profile#17796
Joseph Kabila
#17807
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Joseph Kabila Kabange is a Congolese politician who served as President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between January 2001 and January 2019. He took office ten days after the assassination of his father, President Laurent-Désiré Kabila in the context of the Second Congo War. He was allowed to remain in power after the 2003 Pretoria Accord ended the war as the president of the country's new transitional government. He was elected as president in 2006 and re-elected in 2011 for a second term. Since stepping down after the 2018 election, Kabila, as a former president, serves as a senat...
Go to Profile#17797
Cyril M. Harris
#17808
Overall Influence
1917 - 2011 (94 years)
Cyril Manton Harris was Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Charles Batchelor Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University. He received his B.S. in mathematics and his M.S. in physics from UCLA, and his Ph.D. in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where he specialized in acoustics.
Go to Profile#17798
Jane Russell
#17809
Overall Influence
1921 - 2011 (90 years)
Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was an American actress. She was one of Hollywood's leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s. She starred in more than 20 films. Known for her beauty, silhouette and for having a great presence, with charisma and seriousness, Russell moved from the Midwest to California, where she had her first film role in Howard Hughes' The Outlaw . In 1947, Russell delved into music before returning to films. After starring in several films in the 1950s, including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , Russell again returned to music while completing several other films in the 1960...
Go to Profile#17799
Eckhard Jesse
#17810
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Eckhard Jesse is a German political scientist. Born in Wurzen, Saxony, he held the chair for "political systems and political institutions" at the Technical University of Chemnitz from 1993 to 2014. Jesse is one of the best known German political scholars in the field of extremism and terrorism studies. He has also specialized in the study of German political parties and the German political system.
Go to Profile#17800
Hubert Yockey
#17811
Overall Influence
1916 - 2016 (100 years)
Hubert Palmer Yockey was an American physicist and information theorist. He worked under Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project, and at the University of California, Berkeley. Yockey attended the University of California, Berkeley where he was awarded a bachelors in 1938 and a Ph.D. in 1942. In 1946 he married Mary Ann Leach.
Go to Profile