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
#18101
John Aldridge
#18112
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
John William Aldridge is a former football player and manager. He was a prolific, record-breaking striker best known for his time with English club Liverpool in the late 1980s. His tally of 330 Football League goals is the sixth-highest in the history of English football.
Go to Profile#18102
Richard Felder
#18113
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Richard M. Felder is the Hoechst Celanese Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University. Education and career history Felder received a BChE degree from the City College of New York in 1962 and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton University in 1966 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "Energy distributions of energetic atoms in irradiated media." He spent a year as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment and then two years as a research engineer at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1969 he joined the chemic...
Go to Profile#18103
Alexander L. Wolf
#18114
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Alexander L. Wolf is an American computer scientist known for his research in software engineering, distributed systems, and computer networking. He is credited, along with his collaborators, with introducing the modern study of software architecture, content-based publish/subscribe messaging, content-based networking, automated process discovery, and the software deployment lifecycle. Wolf's 1985 Ph.D. dissertation developed language features for expressing a module's import/export specifications and the notion of multiple interfaces for a type, both of which are now common in modern compute...
Go to Profile#18104
Suren Arakelov
#18115
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Suren Yurievich Arakelov is a Soviet mathematician of Armenian descent known for developing Arakelov theory. Biography From 1965 onwards Arakelov attended the Mathematics department of Moscow State University, where he graduated in 1971.
Go to Profile#18105
Isabelle Huppert
#18116
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Isabelle Anne Madeleine Huppert is a French actress. Known for her portrayals of austere and morally ambiguous women, she is considered one of the preeminent actresses of her generation. Huppert is the most nominated actress at the César Awards with 16 overall and 2 wins and is also the recipient of several accolades, including five Lumières Awards, a BAFTA Award, three European Film Awards, two Berlin International Film Festival, three Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival honors, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award nomination. In 2020, The New York Times ranked her second on ...
Go to Profile#18106
Harold Goodglass
#18117
Overall Influence
1920 - 2002 (82 years)
Harold Goodglass was a prominent pioneer of neuropsychological tests and assessment, and spent much of his career investigating aphasia. The Boston VA Hospital, where he spent many years investigating brain function, now houses the Harold Goodglass Aphasia Research Center.
Go to Profile#18107
Lynn Lashbrook
#18118
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Lynn Lashbrook is an American sports agent and educator. He is currently an NFL certified contract advisor who has represented over 150 NFL football players throughout his career – including Kansas City Chiefs Quarterback Matt Moore . A former college athletic director and sports agent, Lashbrook is founder and president of Sports Management Worldwide, a sports agency and an international, online sports career training school with over 20,000 graduates from more than 162 countries.
Go to Profile#18108
Joseph J. Rotman
#18119
Overall Influence
1934 - 2016 (82 years)
Joseph J. Rotman was a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and also a published author of 10 textbooks. Rotman was born in Chicago. He did his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Chicago, where he received his doctorate in 1959 with a thesis in abelian groups written under the direction of Irving Kaplansky. In 1959 he moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he spent the rest of his mathematical career. Rotman retired from UIUC in 2004. His research interests lay in the area of algebra, involving abelian groups, mod...
Go to Profile#18109
Pearl Primus
#18120
Overall Influence
1919 - 1994 (75 years)
Pearl Eileen Primus was an American dancer, choreographer and anthropologist. Primus played an important role in the presentation of African dance to American audiences. Early in her career she saw the need to promote African dance as an art form worthy of study and performance. Primus' work was a reaction to myths of savagery and the lack of knowledge about African people. It was an effort to guide the Western world to view African dance as an important and dignified statement about another way of life.
Go to Profile#18110
J. Michael Brady
#18121
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Sir John Michael Brady is an emeritus professor of oncological imaging at the University of Oxford. He has been a Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, since 1985 and was elected a foreign associate member of the French Academy of Sciences in 2015. He was formerly BP Professor of Information Engineering at Oxford from 1985 to 2010 and a senior research scientist in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 1980 to 1985.
Go to Profile#18111
C. M. Naim
#18122
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Choudhri Mohammed Naim is an American scholar of Urdu language and literature. He is currently professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. Naim is the founding editor of both Annual of Urdu Studies and Mahfil , as well as the author of the definitive textbook for Urdu pedagogy in English.
Go to Profile#18112
Marilynn Brewer
#18123
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Marilynn B. Brewer is an American social psychologist. She is professor emeritus of psychology at Ohio State University and resides in New South Wales. She was formerly Professor of Psychology and Director of the Institute for Social Science Research at UCLA.
Go to Profile#18113
H. D. Deve Gowda
#18124
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Haradanahalli Doddegowda Deve Gowda is an Indian politician who served as the 11th prime minister of India from 1 June 1996 to 21 April 1997. He was previously the 14th Chief Minister of Karnataka from 1994 to 1996. He presently is a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha representing Karnataka. He is the national president of the Janata Dal party. Born in a farming family, he joined the Indian National Congress party in 1953, and remained a member until 1962. He was imprisoned during the Emergency. He became President of the state unit of Janata Dal in 1994, and was considered to be a driving force in the party's victory in Karnataka.
Go to Profile#18114
Claude LeBrun
#18125
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Claude R. LeBrun is an American mathematician who holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Stony Brook University. Much of his research concerns the Riemannian geometry of 4-manifolds, or related topics in complex and differential geometry.
Go to Profile#18115
Howard Wesley Johnson
#18126
Overall Influence
1922 - 2009 (87 years)
Howard Wesley Johnson was an American educator. He served as dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management between 1959 and 1966, president of MIT between 1966 and 1971, and chairman of the MIT Corporation from 1971 to 1983. He was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
Go to Profile#18116
Shauna Shapiro
#18127
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Shauna L. Shapiro is a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University who works on mindfulness. Education Shapiro graduated summa cum laude from Duke University, and received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Arizona. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System She has received training in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and mindfulness based stress reduction, as well as studied mindfulness meditation in monasteries in Nepal and Thailand.
Go to Profile#18117
Deena Hinshaw
#18128
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Deena Hinshaw is a Canadian doctor who serves as a Deputy Provincial Health Officer for British Columbia and served as Chief Medical Officer of Health for the province of Alberta from January 28, 2019, to November 14, 2022, after being removed by Danielle Smith. She provided daily updates on the COVID-19 pandemic in Alberta to the public throughout most of 2020 and into 2021, though she stopped holding regular briefings in at the end of June 2021. She also provided recommendations to Jason Kenney, the former Premier of Alberta and the Emergency Management Cabinet Committee.
Go to Profile#18118
Michelle Grattan
#18129
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Michelle Grattan is an Australian journalist who was the first woman to become editor of an Australian metropolitan daily newspaper. Specialising in political journalism, she has written for and edited many significant Australian newspapers. She is currently the chief political correspondent with The Conversation, Australia's largest independent news website.
Go to Profile#18119
Kenny Albert
#18130
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Kenneth Gary Albert is an American sportscaster, the son of NBA sportscaster Marv Albert and nephew of sportscasters Al Albert and Steve Albert. He is the only sportscaster who currently does play-by-play for all four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada .
Go to Profile#18120
Jeffrey Harborne
#18131
Overall Influence
1928 - 2002 (74 years)
Jeffrey Barry Harborne FRS was a British chemist who specialised in phytochemistry. He was Professor of Botany at the University of Reading, 1976–93, then Professor emeritus. He contributed to more than 40 books and 270 research papers and was a pioneer in ecological biochemistry, particularly in the complex chemical interactions between plants, microbes and insects.
Go to Profile#18121
Hans-Rudolf Wiedemann
#18132
Overall Influence
1915 - 2006 (91 years)
Hans-Rudolf Wiedemann was a German pediatrician, University teacher, and autograph collector. Life Wiedemann was born in Bremen. His father was a medical practitioner. His mother came from a medical family. Wiedemann studied medicine at the University of Freiburg, the University of Munich, the University of Hamburg, the University of Lausanne and the University of Jena.
Go to Profile#18122
Mark Olssen
#18133
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Mark Olssen, FAcSS, a political theorist, is Emeritus Professor of Political Theory and Education Policy in the Department of Politics within the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Surrey.
Go to Profile#18123
Miriam Rothschild
#18134
Overall Influence
1908 - 2005 (97 years)
Dame Miriam Louisa Rothschild was a British natural scientist and author with contributions to zoology, entomology, and botany. Early life Miriam Rothschild was born in 1908 in Ashton Wold, near Oundle in Northamptonshire, the daughter of Charles Rothschild of the Rothschild banking family of England of Jewish bankers and Rózsika Edle Rothschild , a Hungarian sportswoman, of Austrian-Jewish descent. Her brother was Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild and one of her sisters Pannonica Rothschild would later be a bebop jazz enthusiast and patroness of Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker.
Go to Profile#18124
Herbert McCabe
#18135
Overall Influence
1926 - 2001 (75 years)
Herbert John Ignatius McCabe was a Dominican priest, theologian and philosopher. Biography Herbert McCabe was born in Middlesbrough in the North Riding of Yorkshire. He studied chemistry at Manchester University, but influenced by Dorothy Emmet switched to philosophy. He contributed a number of pieces to Humanitas, and became friends with Eric John among others.
Go to Profile#18125
Rudi Völler
#18136
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Rudolf "Rudi" Völler is a German professional football manager and former player, who is currently the director of the Germany national team. In Germany, he is nicknamed "Tante Käthe" , a name bestowed upon him by Thomas Berthold, and in Italy, he is nicknamed "Il tedesco volante" by supporters of Roma.
Go to Profile#18126
Ingemar Lundström
#18137
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Ingemar Lundström, born 9 May 1941 in Skellefteå, Sweden, is a Swedish professor of applied physics at Linköping University. Professor Lundström received his B.S. in electrical engineering in 1967 at Chalmers University of Technology and his Ph.D. in solid state physics in 1970 from the same university. He worked at Chalmers until 1978, when he was appointed a professor in the chair of applied physics at Linköping University, a position he still holds.
Go to Profile#18127
Naoki Yoshida
#18138
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Naoki Yoshida, also known by the nickname Yoshi-P, is a Japanese video game producer, director and designer working for Square Enix. He is best known for his work on massively multiplayer online role-playing games , mainly as director and producer of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and its expansions.
Go to Profile#18128
Christopher Voss
#18139
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Christopher “Chris” Voss is an American businessman, author, and academic. Voss is a former FBI hostage negotiator , the CEO of The Black Swan Group Ltd, a company registered in East Grinstead, England, and co-author of the book Never Split the Difference. He is an adjunct Professor at Harvard Law School, Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, and a lecturer at the Marshall School of Business at University of Southern California .
Go to Profile#18129
Louis Malle
#18140
Overall Influence
1932 - 1995 (63 years)
Louis Marie Malle was a French film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in both French cinema and Hollywood. Described as "eclectic" and "a filmmaker difficult to pin down", Malle made documentaries, romances, period dramas, and thrillers. He often depicted provocative or controversial subject matter.
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Jerry Cantrell
#18141
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Jerry Fulton Cantrell Jr. is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is best known as the founder, lead guitarist, co-lead vocalist, and main songwriter of the rock band Alice in Chains. The band rose to international fame in the early 1990s during Seattle's grunge movement, and is known for its distinctive vocal style and the harmonized vocals between Cantrell and Layne Staley . Cantrell started to sing lead vocals on Alice in Chains' 1992 EP Sap. After Staley's death in 2002, Cantrell took the role of Alice in Chains' lead singer on most of the songs from the band's post-Staley alb...
Go to Profile#18131
Sue Black
#18142
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Susan Elizabeth Black is a British computer scientist, academic and social entrepreneur. She is known for saving Bletchley Park, with her Saving Bletchley Park campaign. Since 2018, she has been Professor of Computer Science and Technology Evangelist at Durham University. She was previously based at the University of Westminster and University College London.
Go to Profile#18132
Ingo Potrykus
#18143
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Ingo Potrykus is Professor Emeritus of Plant Sciences at the Institute of Plant Sciences of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology , Zurich from which he retired in 1999. His research group applied gene technology to contribute to food security in developing countries. Together with Peter Beyer, he is one of the co-inventors of golden rice. In 2014 he was chairman of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board.
Go to Profile#18133
Ken Caldeira
#18144
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Kenneth Caldeira is an American atmospheric scientist. His areas of research include ocean acidification, climate effects of trees, intentional climate modification, interactions in the global carbon cycle/climate system, and sustainable energy.
Go to Profile#18134
Marion Tinsley
#18145
Overall Influence
1927 - 1995 (68 years)
Marion Franklin Tinsley was an American mathematician and checkers player. He is considered to be the greatest checkers player who ever lived. Tinsley was world champion 1955–1958 and 1975–1991 and never lost a world championship match, and lost only seven games from 1950 until his death in 1995. He withdrew from championship play during the years 1958–1975, relinquishing the title during that time. Derek Oldbury, sometimes considered the second-best player of all time, thought that Tinsley was "to checkers what Leonardo da Vinci was to science, what Michelangelo was to art and what Beethov...
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Amina J. Mohammed
#18146
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Amina Jane Mohammed is a British Nigerian diplomat and politician who is serving as the fifth Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations. Previously, she was Nigerian Minister of Environment from 2015 to 2016 and was a player in the Post-2015 Development Agenda process. She is also Chair of United Nations Sustainable Development Group.
Go to Profile#18136
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
#18147
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Benjamin Alire Sáenz is an American poet, novelist, and writer of children's books. Early life and education Sáenz was raised near Las Cruces, New Mexico. He earned a BA in Humanities and Philosophy from St. Thomas Seminary in Denver, Colorado and a MA in creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso. He continues to live and work in El Paso, Texas. After 15 years of marriage to his wife, an El Paso family court judge, he came out as gay, and they filed for divorce in 2009.
Go to Profile#18137
Bernard Yack
#18148
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Bernard Yack is a Canadian born American political theorist. He received his B.A. from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University, where he was a student of Judith Shklar. Yack has taught at numerous universities including Princeton University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the author of works of political and social philosophy such as The Problems of a Political Animal, and The Longing for Total Revolution: The Philosophic Sources of Social Discontent from Rousseau to Marx and Nietzsche. His most recent book is titled Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community.
Go to Profile#18138
Steven Connor
#18149
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Steven Kevin Connor, FBA is a British literary scholar. Since 2012, he has been the Grace 2 Professor of English in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was formerly the academic director of the London Consortium and professor of modern literature and theory at Birkbeck, University of London.
Go to Profile#18139
Robert Abelson
#18150
Overall Influence
1928 - 2005 (77 years)
Robert Paul Abelson was a Yale University psychologist and political scientist with special interests in statistics and logic. Biography He was born in New York City and attended the Bronx High School of Science. He did his undergraduate work at MIT and his Ph.D. in psychology at Princeton University's Department of Psychology under John Tukey and Silvan Tomkins.
Go to Profile#18140
Spiros Zodhiates
#18151
Overall Influence
1922 - 2009 (87 years)
Spiros Zodhiates was a Greek-American Bible scholar, author, and ministry innovator. He was best known for his work in developing AMG International, a Christian missions and relief agency with operations in over 40 countries. He is also known for publishing The Hebrew-Greek KeyWord Study Bible, which indexes key terms in the English Bible with the words they were translated from in the original languages.
Go to Profile#18141
Evelyn Hu
#18152
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Evelyn L. Hu is the Tarr-Coyne Professor of Applied Physics and of Electrical Engineering at Harvard University. Hu has made major contributions to nanotechnology by designing and creating complex nanostructures. Her work has focused on nanoscale devices made from compound semiconductors and on novel devices made by integrating various materials, both organic and inorganic. She has also created nanophotonic structures that might someday facilitate quantum computing.
Go to Profile#18142
Lev Dodin
#18153
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Lev Abramovich Dodin is a modern Russian theater director, the leader of Saint Petersburg Maly Drama Theater. Biography Lev Dodin was born in Novokuznetsk in 1944. He first experienced theatrical production as a child at the Theater of Youth Creativity directed by Matvey Dubrovin. Studied at Leningrad State Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinema under Boris Sohn and Georgy Tovstonogov which he graduated in 1966.
Go to Profile#18143
Piotr Hofmański
#18154
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Piotr Józef Hofmański is a Polish jurist and judge who has served as President of the International Criminal Court since 2021. He has been a judge of the ICC since 2015. His election into the Presidency of the ICC is for a three-year term. Prior to his tenure as a judge of the ICC, Hofmański was a legal expert and advisor at the Council of Europe.
Go to Profile#18144
David C. Munson
#18155
Overall Influence
David C. Munson Jr. is an American university professor and administrator and the current president of the Rochester Institute of Technology. Previously, Munson was dean of the University of Michigan College of Engineering from 2006 to 2016. He also served as a professor of electrical engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#18145
Henryk Witek
#18156
Overall Influence
Henryk A. Witek is a chemist of Polish origin, and is a Professor of Chemistry in the National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. He obtained his scientific degrees from the Jagiellonian University and the University of Tokyo . His research interests encompass quantum and physical chemistry, applied linear algebra, as well as perturbation theory.
Go to Profile#18146
Stephen C. Stearns
#18157
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Stephen C. Stearns is an American biologist, and the Edward P. Bass Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Emeritus at Yale University. He is known for his work in life history theory and evolutionary medicine.
Go to Profile#18147
Madis Kõiv
#18158
Overall Influence
1929 - 2014 (85 years)
Madis Kõiv was an Estonian writer, philosopher and physicist. Education Kõiv attended school in Tartu after the second World War, graduating in the early 1950s with a degree in nuclear physics. Kõiv worked as a scientist and lecturer until 1991.
Go to Profile#18148
Robert G. Bergman
#18159
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
#18149
Stephen Van Evera
#18160
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Stephen William Van Evera is a professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specializing in international relations. His research includes U.S. foreign and national security policy as well as causes and prevention of war. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Go to Profile#18150
Timothy Luehrman
#18161
Overall Influence
Timothy A. Luehrman is a finance academic, formerly a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. He is best known for his work on valuation and real options; specifically, he conceived the idea of treating business strategy as a series of options, and his papers here are widely quoted.
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