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
#18301
Charles Mace
#18312
Overall Influence
F. Charles Mace is a behavioral psychologist. He received his undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire and received his doctorate at the University of Arizona. He is well known for his research on the functional analysis of severe behavior disorders, behavioral momentum, and the matching law. He has published over one hundred articles and chapters.
Go to Profile#18302
Shon Hopwood
#18313
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Shon Robert Hopwood is an American appellate lawyer and professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. Hopwood became well-known as a jailhouse lawyer who served time in prison for bank robbery. While in prison, he started spending time in the law library, and became an accomplished United States Supreme Court practitioner by the time he left in 2009.
Go to Profile#18303
H. Blaine Lawson
#18314
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Herbert Blaine Lawson, Jr. is a mathematician best known for his work in minimal surfaces, calibrated geometry, and algebraic cycles. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Stony Brook University. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 1969 for work carried out under the supervision of Robert Osserman.
Go to Profile#18304
Larry Fitzgerald
#18315
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Larry Darnell Fitzgerald Jr. is an American former football wide receiver who played in the National Football League for 17 seasons with the Arizona Cardinals. He played college football for the Pittsburgh Panthers and was selected by the Cardinals with the third overall pick in the 2004 NFL Draft. He is widely considered by fans, coaches and peers to be one of the greatest receivers in NFL history.
Go to Profile#18305
David A. Freedman
#18316
Overall Influence
1938 - 2008 (70 years)
David Amiel Freedman was Professor of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a distinguished mathematical statistician whose wide-ranging research included the analysis of martingale inequalities, Markov processes, de Finetti's theorem, consistency of Bayes estimators, sampling, the bootstrap, and procedures for testing and evaluating models. He published extensively on methods for causal inference and the behavior of standard statistical models under non-standard conditions – for example, how regression models behave when fitted to data from randomized experiments. Fre...
Go to Profile#18306
P. Chidambaram
#18317
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Palaniappan Chidambaram , better known as P. Chidambaram, is an Indian politician and lawyer who currently serves as Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha. He served as the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs from 2017 to 2018. And also served Interim Deputy Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha from 2022 to 2023 under Mallikarjun Kharge.
Go to Profile#18307
Roger Kaufman
#18318
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
Roger Kaufman was an American figure in the history of educational technology and performance improvement as well as in strategic thinking and planning for public and private-sector organizations. Regarded as one of the founding figures of the field, he is referred to as the father of needs assessment.
Go to Profile#18308
Alondra Nelson
#18319
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Alondra Nelson is an American academic, policy advisor, non-profit administrator, and writer. She is the Harold F. Linder chair and professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, an independent research center in Princeton, New Jersey. From 2021 to 2023, Nelson was deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and principal deputy director for science and society of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy , where she performed the duties of the director from February to October 2022. She was the first African American and first woman of color to lead OSTP.
Go to Profile#18309
Allen Kent
#18320
Overall Influence
1921 - 2014 (93 years)
Allen Kent was an American information scientist. Early life He was born in New York City. At City College of New York he earned a degree in chemistry. During World War II, he served in the United States Army Air Forces. After the war, he worked on a classified project at MIT in mechanized document encoding and search.
Go to Profile#18310
Ronald S. Weinstein
#18321
Overall Influence
1938 - 2021 (83 years)
Ronald S. Weinstein was an American pathologist. He was a professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson. Weinstein served for 32 years as an academic pathology department chair, in Chicago, Illinois and then Tucson, Arizona, while also serving as a serial entrepreneur engaged in university technology transfer.
Go to Profile#18311
Claire Vaye Watkins
#18322
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Claire Vaye Watkins is an American author and academic. Her book of short stories Battleborn , won The Story Prize, among other awards. In 2012 the National Book Foundation named her a "5 under 35" honoree. Of her parents' influence on her award-winning collection, Watkins has said, “My father’s story is more in the collective subconscious but my mom’s is closer to the project.” In 2014 Watkins was the recipient of the Guggenheim Award.
Go to Profile#18312
Donald Kraybill
#18323
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Donald B. Kraybill is an American author, lecturer, and educator on Anabaptist faiths and culture. Kraybill is widely recognized for his studies on Anabaptist groups and in particular the Amish. He has researched and written extensively on Anabaptist culture. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Elizabethtown College and Senior Fellow Emeritus at Elizabethtown's Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies.
Go to Profile#18313
Joanne Simpson
#18324
Overall Influence
1923 - 2010 (87 years)
Joanne Simpson was the first woman in the United States to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, which she received in 1949 from the University of Chicago. Simpson received both her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Chicago, and did post-doctoral work at Dartmouth College. Simpson was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and taught and researched meteorology at numerous universities as well as the federal government. Simpson contributed to many areas of the atmospheric sciences, particularly in the field of tropical meteorology. She has researched hot towers, hur...
Go to Profile#18314
Brian P. Monahan
#18325
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Brian Patrick Monahan is the Attending Physician of the United States Congress and the United States Supreme Court and holds the rank of rear admiral in the United States Navy. Monahan was nominated to the position and rank by United States President Barack Obama in January 2009. He previously served as the director of hematology and medical oncology at the National Naval Medical Center. He is a Master of The American College of Physicians and a Member of the Academy of Medicine.
Go to Profile#18315
Leslie Fox
#18326
Overall Influence
1918 - 1992 (74 years)
Leslie Fox was a British mathematician noted for his contribution to numerical analysis. Overview Fox studied mathematics as a scholar of Christ Church, Oxford graduating with a first in 1939 and continued to undertake research in the engineering department. While working on his D.Phil. in computational and engineering mathematics under the supervision of Sir Richard Southwell he was also engaged in highly secret war work. He worked on the numerical solution of partial differential equations at a time when numerical linear algebra was performed on a desk calculator. Computational efficiency and accuracy was thus even more important than in the days of electronic computers.
Go to Profile#18316
Roland McKean
#18327
Overall Influence
1917 - 1993 (76 years)
Roland Neely McKean is an American economist. He received his A.B. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from the University of Chicago. From 1951 to 1963, he was a research economist at the RAND Corporation, where he and Charles J. Hitch developed the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System , which was first implemented by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1961. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson extended adoption of PPBS to all executive departments.
Go to Profile#18317
Albert Lindsey Zobrist
#18328
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Albert Lindsey Zobrist is an American computer scientist, games researcher, and inventor of the famous Zobrist Hashing, which was published in 1970. He is further author of the first Go program in 1968 as part of his PhD Thesis on pattern recognition at the Computer Science Department of the University of Wisconsin.
Go to Profile#18318
Iain Duncan Smith
#18329
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Sir George Iain Duncan Smith , often referred to by his initials IDS, is a British politician who served as Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from 2001 to 2003. He was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2010 to 2016. He has been Member of Parliament for Chingford and Woodford Green, formerly Chingford, since 1992.
Go to Profile#18319
Jay Lynch
#18330
Overall Influence
1945 - 2017 (72 years)
Jay Patrick Lynch was an American cartoonist who played a key role in the underground comix movement with his Bijou Funnies and other titles. He is best known for his comic strip Nard n' Pat and the running gag Um tut sut. His work is sometimes signed Jayzey Lynch. Lynch was the main writer for Bazooka Joe comics from 1967 to 1990; he contributed to Mad, and in the 2000s expanded into the children's book field.
Go to Profile#18320
Tilda Swinton
#18331
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Katherine Matilda Swinton is a British actress. Known for her roles in independent films and blockbusters, she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award, in addition to nominations for three Golden Globe Awards. In 2020, The New York Times ranked her as one of the greatest actors of the 21st century.
Go to Profile#18321
Andrea Prosperetti
#18332
Overall Influence
Andrea Prosperetti is the Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston, the Berkhoff Professor of Applied Physics at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2012 . He is known for his work in the field of multiphase flows including bubble dynamics and cavitation.
Go to Profile#18322
Eli Wallach
#18333
Overall Influence
1915 - 2014 (99 years)
Eli Herschel Wallach was an American film, television, and stage actor from New York City. Known for his character actor roles, his entertainment career spanned over six decades. He received a BAFTA Award, a Tony Award and an Emmy Award. He also was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1988 and received the Academy Honorary Award in 2010.
Go to Profile#18323
Hans Egon Holthusen
#18334
Overall Influence
1913 - 1997 (84 years)
Hans Egon Holthusen was a German Nazi, lyric poet, essayist, and literary scholar. Holthusen was born in Rendsburg the Province of Schleswig-Holstein, the son of a Protestant clergyman. He studied German philology, history, and philosophy at the universities of Tübingen, Berlin, and Munich, gaining reputation as a Rilke scholar with the publication of his Rilkes Sonette an Orpheus: Versuch einer Interpretation in 1937, at the age of 24.
Go to Profile#18324
Filippo Inzaghi
#18335
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Filippo "Pippo" Inzaghi is an Italian professional football manager and former player who played as a striker. He is currently the manager of club Salernitana. He was nicknamed "Superpippo" or "Alta tensione" by fans and commentators during his playing career. His younger brother, Simone Inzaghi, is also a football manager and former player.
Go to Profile#18325
Christof Heyns
#18336
Overall Influence
1959 - 2021 (62 years)
Christoffel Hendrik Heyns was a Professor of Human Rights Law, Director of the Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa at the University of Pretoria and a South African member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee. He served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions from 2010 to 2016. Heyns was a visiting professor at American University Washington College of Law's Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law .
Go to Profile#18326
Gunnar von Heijne
#18337
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Professor Nils Gunnar Hansson von Heijne, born 10 June 1951 in Gothenburg, is a Swedish scientist working on signal peptides, membrane proteins and bioinformatics at the Stockholm Center for Biomembrane Research at Stockholm University.
Go to Profile#18327
Kausalya
#18338
Overall Influence
Kausalya is the senior queen-consort of Kosala in the Hindu epic Ramayana. She is the mother of Rama, the titular hero of the epic, and the senior wife of Dasharatha, who ruled Kosala from its capital of Ayodhya.
Go to Profile#18328
Hans Bergström
#18339
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Nils Hans Ingemar Bergström is a Swedish-American journalist and political scientist. Biography Bergström was born in Ambjörby, Torsby Municipality, Värmland County, Sweden. His father was a local politician of the Social Democratic Party and editor of the local newspaper Värmlands Folkblad. He studied at Karlstad campus of the University of Gothenburg from 1967 to 1970 and earned a B.A. in political science, economics, cultural geography and statistics. Thereafter he was employed as a secretary at the People's Party's parliament office . In 1972 he became a speech writer and assistant to People's Party leader Gunnar Helén.
Go to Profile#18329
Ronald P. Dore
#18340
Overall Influence
1925 - 2018 (93 years)
Ronald Philip Dore was a British sociologist specialising in Japanese economy and society and the comparative study of types of capitalism. He was an associate of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and was a fellow of the British Academy, the Japan Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The citation for his eminent scholar award from the Academy of International Business describes him as "an outstanding scholar whose deep understanding of the empirical phenomena he studied and ability to build on it to develop theoretical contributions are ...
Go to Profile#18330
Gary Steiner
#18341
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Gary Steiner is an American moral philosopher, and the John Howard Harris Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University. Steiner's particular focus is animal rights, Descartes, and 19th- and 20th-century continental philosophy.
Go to Profile#18331
Robert Lepper
#18342
Overall Influence
1906 - 1991 (85 years)
Robert Lepper was an American artist and art professor at Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University, who developed the country's first industrial design degree program. Lepper's work in industrial design, his fascination with the impact of technology on society and its potential role for artmaking formed the background for his class "Individual and Social Analysis", a two semester class focusing on community and personal memory as factors in artistic expression, which with his theoretical dialogues with his most promising students outside the classroom fostered the inte...
Go to Profile#18332
Lorne Lanning
#18343
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Lorne Lanning is an American game designer, director, writer and voice actor. He is also co-founder and president of the video game developer Oddworld Inhabitants. He is best known for creating the Oddworld series including the games Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty! and Oddworld: Soulstorm.
Go to Profile#18333
Lester Dubins
#18344
Overall Influence
1920 - 2010 (90 years)
Lester Dubins was an American mathematician noted primarily for his research in probability theory. He was a faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley from 1962 through 2004, and in retirement was Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Statistics.
Go to Profile#18334
Bob Elliott
#18345
Overall Influence
1923 - 2016 (93 years)
Robert Brackett Elliott was an American comedian and actor, one-half of the comedy duo of Bob and Ray. He was the father of comedian/actor Chris Elliott and grandfather of actress and comedians Abby Elliott and Bridey Elliott. He is most remembered for the character of radio reporter Wally Ballou.
Go to Profile#18335
Martin Kneser
#18346
Overall Influence
1928 - 2004 (76 years)
Martin Kneser was a German mathematician. His father Hellmuth Kneser and grandfather Adolf Kneser were also mathematicians. He obtained his PhD in 1950 from Humboldt University of Berlin with the dissertation: Über den Rand von Parallelkörpern. His advisor was Erhard Schmidt.
Go to Profile#18336
Eric Burdon
#18347
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Eric Victor Burdon is an English singer and songwriter. He was previously lead vocalist of the R&B and rock band The Animals and the funk band War. He is regarded as one of the British Invasion's most distinctive singers with his deep, powerful blues-rock voice. Burdon is also known for his intense stage performances.
Go to Profile#18337
Dmitri Trenin
#18348
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Dmitri Vitalyevich Trenin is a member of . He was the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a Russian think tank. A former colonel of Russian military intelligence, Trenin served for 21 years in the Soviet Army and Russian Ground Forces, before joining Carnegie in 1994.
Go to Profile#18338
Jay Katz
#18349
Overall Influence
1922 - 2008 (86 years)
Jacob "Jay" Katz was an American physician and Yale Law School professor whose career was devoted to addressing complex issues of medical ethics and other ethical problems involving the overlaps of ethics, law, medicine and psychology.
Go to Profile#18339
Carlo Strenger
#18350
Overall Influence
1958 - 2019 (61 years)
Carlo Strenger was a Swiss and Israeli psychologist, philosopher, existential psychoanalyst and public intellectual who served as professor of psychology and philosophy at Tel Aviv University . He was a senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of Terrorism at John Jay College, on the scientific advisory board of the Sigmund Freud Foundation in Vienna, and a member of the Seminar for Existential Psychoanalysis in Zurich. His research focused on the impact of globalization on meaning, personal and group identity.
Go to Profile#18340
Charles Janeway
#18351
Overall Influence
1943 - 2003 (60 years)
Charles Alderson Janeway, Jr. was a noted immunologist who helped create the modern field of innate immunity. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, he held a faculty position at Yale University's Medical School and was an Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.
Go to Profile#18341
Maria Hinojosa
#18352
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Maria de Lourdes Hinojosa Ojeda is a Mexican-American journalist. She is the anchor and executive producer of Latino USA on National Public Radio, a public radio show devoted to Latino issues. She is also the founder, president and CEO of Futuro Media Group, which produces the show. In 2022, Hinojosa won a Pulitzer Prize.
Go to Profile#18342
Patricia Smith
#18353
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Patricia Smith is an American poet, spoken-word performer, playwright, author, writing teacher, and former journalist. She has published poems in literary magazines and journals including TriQuarterly, Poetry, The Paris Review, Tin House, and in anthologies including American Voices and The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry. She is on the faculties of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing and the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Sierra Nevada University.
Go to Profile#18343
Rodolphe Barrangou
#18354
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Rodolphe Barrangou is the Todd R. Klaenhammer Distinguished Professor in Probiotics Research in the Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences at North Carolina State University; Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CRISPR Biotechnologies; Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Ancilia Biosciences; Co-Founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer of TreeCo; and Co-Founder and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Intellia Therapeutics. His research focuses on CRISPR-Cas9 in bacteria.
Go to Profile#18344
James D. Wallace
#18355
Overall Influence
1937 - 2019 (82 years)
James Donald Wallace was an American philosopher. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for 49 years. Biography Wallace was born in Troy, New York, on May 21, 1937.
Go to Profile#18345
Geoff Eley
#18356
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Geoffrey Howard [Geoff] Eley is a British-born historian of Germany. He studied history at Balliol College, Oxford, and received his PhD from the University of Sussex in 1974. He has taught at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in the Department of History since 1979 and the Department of German Studies since 1997. He now serves as the Karl Pohrt Distinguished University Professor of Contemporary History at Michigan.
Go to Profile#18346
Owen Wilson
#18357
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Owen Cunningham Wilson is an American actor. He has had a long association with filmmaker Wes Anderson with whom he shared writing and acting credits for Bottle Rocket , Rushmore , and The Royal Tenenbaums , the last of which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay. He has also appeared in Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou , The Darjeeling Limited , Fantastic Mr. Fox , The Grand Budapest Hotel , and The French Dispatch . Wilson also starred in the Woody Allen romantic comedy Midnight in Paris as unsatisfied screenwriter Gil Pender, a role which earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination.
Go to Profile#18347
Todd McCarthy
#18358
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Todd McCarthy is an American film critic and author. He wrote for Variety for 31 years as its chief film critic until 2010. In October of that year, he joined The Hollywood Reporter, where he subsequently served as chief film critic until 2020. McCarthy subsequently began writing regularly for Deadline Hollywood in 2020.
Go to Profile#18348
Alexander Zverev
#18359
Overall Influence
1997 - Present (29 years)
Alexander Zverev is a German professional tennis player. He has been ranked by the Association of Tennis Professionals as high as world No. 2, and was continuously ranked in the top 10 from July 2017 to November 2022. Zverev's singles career highlights include a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and titles at the 2018 and the 2021 ATP Finals. He has won 21 ATP Tour titles in singles and two in doubles, and contested a major final at the 2020 US Open.
Go to Profile#18349
Cedric Smith
#18360
Overall Influence
1917 - 2002 (85 years)
Cedric Austen Bardell Smith was a British statistician and geneticist. Smith was born in Leicester. He was the younger son of John Bardell Smith , a mechanical engineer, and Ada . He was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys until 1929, when the family moved to London. His education continued at Bec School, Tooting, for three years, then at University College School, London. In 1935, although having failed his Higher School Certificate, he was awarded an exhibition to Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated in the Mathematical Tripos, with a First in Part II in 1937 and a Distinction in Part III in 1938.
Go to Profile#18350
Bob Hepple
#18361
Overall Influence
1934 - 2015 (81 years)
Sir Bob Alexander Hepple OLG was a South African-born legal academic and leader in the fields of labour law, equality and human rights. Early life and education He was the son of Alexander Hepple , who was Leader of the South African Labour Party, and Josephine Zwarenstein a Dutch Jew. He was educated at Jeppe High School for Boys , the University of the Witwatersrand , and the University of Cambridge .
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