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
#17851
John Godber
#17862
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
John Harry Godber is known mainly for observational comedies. The Plays and Players Yearbook of 1993 rated him the third most performed playwright in the UK after William Shakespeare and Alan Ayckbourn. He has been creative director of the Theatre Royal Wakefield since 2011.
Go to Profile#17852
Yehoshafat Harkabi
#17863
Overall Influence
1921 - 1994 (73 years)
Yehoshafat Harkabi was chief of Israeli military intelligence from 1955 until 1959 and afterwards a professor of International Relations and Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Go to Profile#17853
Keith DeCandido
#17864
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Keith Robert Andreassi DeCandido is an American science fiction and fantasy writer and musician, who works on comic books, novels, role-playing games and video games, including numerous media tie-in books for properties such as Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who, Supernatural, Andromeda, Farscape, Leverage, Spider-Man, X-Men, Sleepy Hollow, and Stargate SG-1.
Go to Profile#17854
Mark Dion
#17865
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Mark Dion is an American conceptual artist best known for his use of scientific presentations in his installations. His work examines the manner in which prevalent ideologies and institutions influence our understanding of history, knowledge and the natural world. The job of the artist, according to him, is to "go against the grain of dominant culture, to challenge perception and convention". By locating the roots of environmental politics and public policy in the construction of knowledge about nature, Dion questions the objectivity and authoritative role of the scientific voice in contempor...
Go to Profile#17855
Marc Lankhorst
#17866
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Marc Martijn Lankhorst is a Dutch computer scientist, researcher and consultant, known for his publications on enterprise architecture, and as key developer of ArchiMate, a modelling language for enterprise architecture.
Go to Profile#17856
Werner Hildenbrand
#17867
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Werner Hildenbrand is a German economist and mathematician. He was educated at the University of Heidelberg, where he received his Diplom in mathematics, applied mathematics and physics in 1961. He continued his education at the University of Heidelberg and received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1964 and his habilitation in economics and mathematics in 1968.
Go to Profile#17857
Carl E. Stewart
#17868
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Carl E. Stewart is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He was appointed by Bill Clinton in 1994, and previously sat as a judge of the Louisiana Circuit Courts of Appeal from 1985 to 1994.
Go to Profile#17858
Baron Davis
#17869
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Baron Walter Louis Davis is an American former professional basketball player who is a studio analyst for the NBA on TNT. He was a two-time NBA All-Star, made the All-NBA Third Team in 2004, and twice led the NBA in steals. He was drafted with the third overall pick in the 1999 NBA draft by the Charlotte Hornets. He also played in the NBA for the New Orleans Hornets, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Clippers, Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks. Davis played college basketball for the UCLA Bruins, earning All-American honors before turning professional after his sophomore year. He was a star high school player while at Crossroads School.
Go to Profile#17859
Michael Leiter
#17870
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Michael E. Leiter was the director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center , having served in the Bush Administration and been retained in the Obama Administration. A statement released by the White House announced his resignation, effective July 8, 2011. His successor, Matthew G. Olsen, was sworn in on August 16, 2011. In September 2017, Leiter joined international law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Washington, D.C. as a partner in its national security practice.
Go to Profile#17860
Willoughby Sharp
#17871
Overall Influence
1936 - 2008 (72 years)
Willoughby Sharp was an American artist, independent curator, independent publisher , gallerist, teacher, author, and telecom activist. Avalanche published interviews they conducted with contemporary artists such as Vito Acconci, Dennis Oppenheim and Yvonne Rainer. Sharp also was contributing editor to four other publications: Impulse ; Video magazine ; Art Com , and the East Village Eye . He published three monographs on contemporary artists, contributed to many exhibition catalogues, and wrote on art for Artforum, Art in America, Arts magazine, Laica Journal, Quadrum and Rhobo. He was editor of the Public Arts International/Free Speech documentary booklet in 1979.
Go to Profile#17861
Alois, Hereditary Prince of Liechtenstein
#17872
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Alois, Hereditary Prince and Regent of Liechtenstein, Count of Rietberg , is the eldest son of Hans-Adam II, Prince of Liechtenstein, and Countess Marie Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau. The heir apparent to the throne of Liechtenstein, Alois has also been regent of the country since 15 August 2004. He is married to Duchess Sophie in Bavaria, who is a member of the House of Wittelsbach, and second in line for the Jacobite succession.
Go to Profile#17862
Nitish Kumar
#17873
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Nitish Kumar is an Indian politician, who is serving as 22nd Chief Minister of Bihar since 22 February 2015, having previously held the office from 2005 to 2014 and for a short period in 2000. He is Bihar's longest serving chief minister. He is the leader of the Janata Dal . Previously, Kumar also served as a Union Minister as the Samata Party member. He was member of the Samata Party until 2005 and Janata Dal from 1989 to 1994. Kumar first entered politics as a member of the Janata Dal, becoming an MLA in 1985. A socialist, Kumar founded the Samata Party in 1994 along with George Fernandes. ...
Go to Profile#17863
P. R. Wallace
#17874
Overall Influence
1915 - 2006 (91 years)
P. R. Wallace was a Canadian theoretical physicist and long-time professor at McGill University. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences . He had a distinguished career as educator, researcher, and activist in science and society, but he is increasingly well known for his pioneering paper in 1947 on the band structure of graphite, and particularly graphene, the subject of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Go to Profile#17864
Nicholas Higham
#17875
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Nicholas John Higham FRS is a British numerical analyst. He is Royal Society Research Professor and Richardson Professor of Applied Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Manchester.
Go to Profile#17865
Bernard Hopkins
#17876
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Bernard Hopkins Jr. is an American former professional boxer who competed from 1988 to 2016. He is one of the most successful boxers of the past three decades, having held multiple world championships in two weight classes, including the undisputed middleweight title from 2001 to 2005, and the lineal light heavyweight title from 2011 to 2012.
Go to Profile#17866
Andrew V. Goldberg
#17877
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Andrew Vladislav Goldberg is an American computer scientist working primarily on design, analysis, and experimental evaluation of algorithms. He also worked on mechanism design, computer systems, and complexity theory. Currently he is a Senior Principal Scientist at Amazon.com.
Go to Profile#17867
Frede Blaabjerg
#17878
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Frede Blaabjerg is a Danish professor at Aalborg University. At Aalborg, he works in the section of Power Electronic Systems of the department of Energy Technology. Blaabjerg's research concerns the applications of power electronics, including adjustable-speed drives, microgrids, photovoltaic systems, and wind turbines. By the number of citations, he is the most cited author of several IEEE journals: IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics.
Go to Profile#17868
Ole Petter Ottersen
#17879
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Ole Petter Ottersen is a Norwegian physician and neuroscientist. He serves as the Rector of Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and took office in August 2017. Ottersen has been professor of medicine at the University of Oslo since 1992 and served as the university's directly elected Rector from 2009 to 2017.
Go to Profile#17869
Mervyn Morris
#17880
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Mervyn Eustace Morris OM is a poet and professor emeritus at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. According to educator Ralph Thompson, "In addition to his poetry, which has ranked him among the top West Indian poets, he was one of the first academics to espouse the importance of nation language in helping to define in verse important aspects of Jamaican culture." Morris was Poet Laureate of Jamaica from 2014 to 2017.
Go to Profile#17870
Benjamin Widom
#17881
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Benjamin Widom is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University. His research interests include physical chemistry and statistical mechanics. In 1998, Widom was awarded the Boltzmann Medal "for his illuminating studies of the statistical mechanics of fluids and fluid mixtures and their interfacial properties, especially his clear and general formulation of scaling hypotheses for the equation of state and surface tensions of fluids near critical points."
Go to Profile#17871
Floyd Lounsbury
#17882
Overall Influence
1914 - 1998 (84 years)
Floyd Glenn Lounsbury was an American linguist, anthropologist and Mayanist scholar and epigrapher, best known for his work on linguistic and cultural systems of a variety of North and South American languages. Equally important were his contributions to understanding the hieroglyphs, culture and history of the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
Go to Profile#17872
Lars Calmfors
#17883
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Lars Calmfors is a Swedish economist and professor of international economics at the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University. He received his Ph.D. from the Stockholm School of Economics in 1978. He headed the official Swedish Government Commission on the EMU, which in 1996 recommended to wait with introducing the euro. In 2003 when Sweden held a referendum on whether to join the EMU, Calmfors advocated in favor of joining.
Go to Profile#17873
Fred Chappell
#17884
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Fred Davis Chappell is an author and poet. He was an English professor for 40 years at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He was the Poet Laureate of North Carolina from 1997 to 2002. He attended Duke University.
Go to Profile#17874
Michael Green
#17885
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Michael Jonathan Green is an American Japanologist currently serving as CEO of the United States Studies Centre. Green previously served as senior vice president for Asia, Japan Chair, and Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies , as well as Director of Asian Studies and Chair in Modern and Contemporary Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy at Georgetown University. He served as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council from January 2004 to December 2005 under George W.
Go to Profile#17875
Samuel I. Stupp
#17886
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Samuel I. Stupp , is a Board of Trustees Professor of Materials Science, Chemistry, and Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL. He is best known for his work on self-assembling materials and supramolecular chemistry. One of his most notable discoveries is a broad class of peptide amphiphiles that self-assemble into high aspect ratio nanofibers with extensive applications in regenerative medicine. He has also made significant contributions to the fields of supramolecular chemistry, nanotechnology, and organic electronic materials. He has over 500 peer-reviewed publications and ...
Go to Profile#17876
Joe Brown
#17887
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
Joseph Brown was an English mountaineer who was regarded as an outstanding pioneer of rock climbing during the 1950s and early 1960s. Together with his early climbing partner, Don Whillans, he was one of a new breed of British post-war climbers who came from working class backgrounds in contrast to the upper and middle class professionals who had dominated the sport up to the Second World War. He became the first person to climb the third-highest mountain in the world when he was on the 1955 British Kangchenjunga expedition. Some of his climbs were televised and he assisted with mountaineeri...
Go to Profile#17877
Kenneth W. Dam
#17888
Overall Influence
1932 - 2022 (90 years)
Kenneth Willard Dam was an American politician and academic who served as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury from 2001 to 2004, where he specialized in international economic development. He was a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution and a professor emeritus and senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.
Go to Profile#17878
Donald Guthrie
#17889
Overall Influence
1916 - 1992 (76 years)
Donald Guthrie was a British New Testament scholar, best known for his New Testament Introduction and New Testament Theology which are recognized as significant books related to the New Testament.
Go to Profile#17879
Patrice Buzzanell
#17890
Overall Influence
Patrice Buzzanell is a distinguished professor and former department chair for the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida and at the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. Buzzanell focuses on organizational communication from a feminist viewpoint. A majority of the research Dr. Buzzanell has completed is geared towards how everyday interactions, identities, and social structures can be affected by the intersections of gender. She researches how these dynamics can impact overall practices, decisions, and results in the workplace, and more specificall...
Go to Profile#17880
Howard Gruber
#17891
Overall Influence
1922 - 2005 (83 years)
Howard Ernest Gruber , was an American psychologist and pioneer of the psychological study of creativity. A native of Brooklyn, Gruber graduated from Brooklyn College with a degree in psychology, earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University, and went on to a distinguished academic career. He worked with Jean Piaget in Geneva and later co-founded the Institute for Cognitive Studies at Rutgers with Dorothy Dinnerstein. At Columbia University Teachers College, he continued to pursue his interests in the history of science, and particularly the work of Charles Darwin. Gruber's work led to several ...
Go to Profile#17881
Dale Earnhardt Jr.
#17892
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Ralph Dale Earnhardt Jr. is an American stock car racing driver. He competes occasionally in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, driving the No. 88 Chevrolet Camaro for his team JR Motorsports. A third generation driver, he is the son of 7-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Dale Earnhardt and relative to many former and current drivers in the NASCAR ranks.
Go to Profile#17882
Judy Mikovits
#17893
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Judy Anne Mikovits is an American former research scientist who is known for her discredited medical claims, such as that murine endogenous retroviruses are linked to chronic fatigue syndrome . As an outgrowth of these claims, she has engaged in anti-vaccination activism, promoted conspiracy theories, and been accused of scientific misconduct. She has made false claims about vaccines, COVID-19, and CFS, among others.
Go to Profile#17883
Gordon Rausser
#17894
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Gordon Rausser is an American economist. He is currently the Robert Gordon Sproul Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Dean Emeritus, at Rausser College of Natural Resources and more recently, a professor of the graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. On three separate occasions, he served as chairman of the Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics, served two terms as Dean of the Rausser College of Natural Resources, and has served on the board of trustees of public universities and one private university. Rausser has been appointed to more than 20 board of directors o...
Go to Profile#17884
Amy Hempel
#17895
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Amy Hempel is an American short story writer and journalist. She teaches creative writing at the Michener Center for Writers. Life Hempel was born in Chicago, Illinois. She moved to California at age 16, which is where much of her early fiction takes place. She moved to New York City in the mid-seventies. There, she connected with writer and editor Gordon Lish, with whom she maintained a long professional relationship. She formerly was professor of creative writing at the University of Florida. She was the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer of English at Harvard University from 2009 to 2014. Additionally, she taught fiction in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Writing at Bennington College.
Go to Profile#17885
John Batki
#17896
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
John Batki is an American short story writer, poet, and translator. Life Batki was born in Hungary in 1942, and has been living in the United States since 1957. He has taught at Harvard University. Batki's work has appeared in The New Yorker.
Go to Profile#17886
Lawrence J. Rosenblum
#17897
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Lawrence Jay Rosenblum is an American mathematician, and Program Director for Graphics and Visualization at the National Science Foundation. Career Rosenblum received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Ohio State University in 1971. From 1992 to 1994, he was Liaison Scientist for Computer Science at the Office of Naval Research European Office. From 1994 he has been Director of Virtual Reality Systems and Research at the Information Technology Division of the Naval Research Laboratory and Program Officer for Visualization and Computer Graphics at the Office of Naval Research for ten years. ...
Go to Profile#17887
Cody Keenan
#17898
Overall Influence
Cody Keenan is an American political advisor and speechwriter who served as the director of speechwriting for President Barack Obama. Keenan studied political science at Northwestern University. After graduation, he worked in the U.S. senate office of Ted Kennedy, before studying for a master's in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. After graduation, he took a full-time position on Barack Obama's presidential campaign in 2008. In 2009, he assumed the position of deputy director of speechwriting. After Jon Favreau left the White House in 2013, Keenan took over as director of speechwrit...
Go to Profile#17888
Steven Rudich
#17899
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Steven Rudich is a professor in the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science. In 1994, he and Alexander Razborov proved that a large class of combinatorial arguments, dubbed natural proofs, was unlikely to answer many of the important problems in computational complexity theory. For this work, they were awarded the Gödel Prize in 2007. He also co-authored a paper demonstrating that all currently known NP-complete problems remain NP-complete even under AC0 or NC0 reductions.
Go to Profile#17889
Evgeny Aramovich Abramyan
#17900
Overall Influence
1930 - 2014 (84 years)
Evgeny Aramovich Abramyan was a Soviet-Armenian physicist, Professor, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, Winner of USSR State Prize, one of the founders of several research directions in the Soviet and Russian nuclear technology. Author of more than 100 inventions and several books on applied physics, Evgeny Abramyan led research teams at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics, and the Institute of High Temperatures of USSR Academy of Sciences. In the 1960s he supervised the creation of a new research discipline – engineering physics – at the Novosibirsk State Technical University, chaired the university's major faculty.
Go to Profile#17890
Steven Feld
#17901
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Steven Feld is an American ethnomusicologist, anthropologist, and linguist, who worked for many years with the Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea. He earned a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991. Early life Feld was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on August 20, 1949. He graduated with a BA cum laude at Hofstra University in anthropology in 1971. He first went to the Bosavi territory in 1976, accompanied by anthropologist Edward L. Schieffelin, whose recordings of the Bosavi inspired him to pursue this work. His work there fulfilled his dissertation for his PhD from Indiana University in 1979 .
Go to Profile#17891
Daniel Trefler
#17902
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Daniel Trefler is a Canadian economist who is currently the J. Douglas and Ruth Grant Chair in Competitiveness and Prosperity at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. He is among the most influential and frequently cited economists worldwide.
Go to Profile#17892
Peter Duren
#17903
Overall Influence
1935 - 2020 (85 years)
Peter Larkin Duren was an American mathematician. He specialized in mathematical analysis and was known for the monographs and textbooks he has written. Academic career Duren received in 1956 his bachelor's degree from Harvard University and in 1960 his PhD from MIT under Gian-Carlo Rota with thesis Spectral theory of a class of non-self-adjoint infinite matrix operators. As a postdoc he was an instructor at Stanford University. At the University of Michigan, he became in 1962 an assistant professor, in 1966 an associate professor, in 1969 a professor, and in 2010 a professor emeritus.
Go to Profile#17893
Tiësto
#17904
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Tijs Michiel Verwest , known professionally as Tiësto , is a Dutch DJ and record producer. He was voted "The Greatest DJ of All Time" by Mix magazine in a 2010/2011 poll amongst fans. In 2013, he was voted by DJ Mag readers as the "best DJ of the last 20 years". He is also regarded as the "Godfather of EDM" by many sources.
Go to Profile#17894
Carlo M. Croce
#17905
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Carlo Maria Croce is an Italian–American professor of medicine at Ohio State University, specializing in oncology and the molecular mechanisms underlying cancer. Croce and his research have attracted public attention because of multiple allegations of scientific misconduct.
Go to Profile#17895
Christian Haass
#17906
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Christian Haass is a German biochemist who specializes in metabolic biochemistry and neuroscience. Haass studied biology in Heidelberg from 1981 to 1985. From 1990 on he was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dennis Selkoe at Harvard Medical School, where he worked from 1993 to 1995 as an assistant professor. Afterwards he returned to Germany as professor of molecular biology at the Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim. In 1999 he was offered a chair in the medical faculty at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Go to Profile#17896
Manuel Neuer
#17907
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Manuel Peter Neuer is a German professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Germany and captains club Bayern Munich. Widely regarded as one of the greatest goalkeepers in the history of the sport, Neuer has been described as a "sweeper-keeper" because of his playing style and speed when rushing off his line to anticipate opponents, going out of the penalty area. He was named the best goalkeeper of the decade from 2011 to 2020 by IFFHS.
Go to Profile#17897
Edwin F. Taylor
#17908
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Edwin F. Taylor is an American physicist known for his contributions to the teaching of physics. Taylor was editor of the American Journal of Physics, and is author of several introductory books to physics. In 1998 he was awarded the Oersted Medal for his contributions to the teaching of physics.
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Dagmar Reichardt
#17909
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Dagmar Reichardt is a leading German scholar in the area of transcultural studies. Life Dagmar Reichardt descends from a German Huguenot family with roots extending far back in time, the first documented Renaissance family crest of the Reichardt's being located in the cathedral St. Georg of Nördlingen, Bavaria, showing the then-mayor of Nördlingen Kilian Reichart as first ancestor. The House's later branches include German composer and music critic Johann Friedrich Reichardt , as its most prominent cultural representative who appeared in Königsberg, Halle and at the courts of three Prussian kings in Berlin and Potsdam.
Go to Profile#17899
Sau Lan Wu
#17910
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Sau Lan Wu is a Chinese American particle physicist and the Enrico Fermi Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She made important contributions towards the discovery of the J/psi particle, which provided experimental evidence for the existence of the charm quark, and the gluon, the vector boson of the strong force in the Standard Model of physics. Recently, her team located at the European Organization for Nuclear Research , using data collected at the Large Hadron Collider , was part of the international effort in the discovery of a boson consistent with ...
Go to Profile#17900
Gerald J. Wasserburg
#17911
Overall Influence
1927 - 2016 (89 years)
Gerald J. Wasserburg was an American geologist. At the time of his death, he was the John D. MacArthur Professor of Geology and Geophysics, emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology. He was known for his work in the fields of isotope geochemistry, cosmochemistry, meteoritics, and astrophysics.
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