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
#18751
T. Tony Cai
#18762
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Tianwen Tony Cai is a Chinese statistician. He is the Daniel H. Silberberg Professor of Statistics and Vice Dean at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is also professor of Applied Math & Computational Science Graduate Group, and associate scholar at the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology & Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. In 2008 Tony Cai was awarded the COPSS Presidents' Award.
Go to Profile#18752
Herbert Goldstein
#18763
Overall Influence
1922 - 2005 (83 years)
Herbert Goldstein was an American physicist and the author of the standard graduate textbook Classical Mechanics. Life and work Goldstein, long recognized for his scholarship in classical mechanics and reactor shielding, was the author of the graduate textbook, Classical Mechanics. The book has been a standard text since it first appeared in 1950 and has been translated into nine languages. He received a B.S. from City College of New York in 1940 and a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1943. From 1942 to 1946, Goldstein was a staff member of the wartime Radiation Laboratory ...
Go to Profile#18753
William P. Gottlieb
#18764
Overall Influence
1917 - 2006 (89 years)
William Paul Gottlieb was an American photographer and newspaper columnist who is best known for his classic photographs of the leading performers of the Golden Age of American jazz in the 1930s and 1940s. Gottlieb's photographs are among the best known and widely reproduced images of this era of jazz.
Go to Profile#18754
Yuichi Shoda
#18765
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Yuichi Shoda is a Japanese-born psychologist and academic who contributed to the development of the cognitive-affective personality system theory of personality. Biography Shoda was born and grew up in Japan. He studied physics at Hokkaido University in Sapporo. After attending the University of California, Santa Cruz, he started graduate school in psychology at Stanford, and finished at Columbia University with a PhD degree in psychology in 1990. He joined the University of Washington in 1996.
Go to Profile#18755
Hıfzı Topuz
#18766
Overall Influence
1923 - Present (103 years)
Hıfzı Topuz was a Turkish journalist, travel writer and novelist. He also served as a lecturer on journalism at several universities. Early life Topuz was born on 25 January 1923 in Istanbul. After finishing his secondary education at the Galatasaray High School in 1942, he studied law at Istanbul University, graduating in 1948. Later, he went to France, where he attended University of Strasbourg to conduct further studies in international law and journalism between 1957 and 1959. In 1960, he earned a doctoral degree in journalism from the same university.
Go to Profile#18756
Bowen Yang
#18767
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (36 years)
Bowen Yang is an Australian-born American actor, comedian, writer, and podcaster based in New York City. Yang was hired to join the writing staff of the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live in September 2018, ahead of its 44th season, and a year later, in September 2019, he was promoted to on-air cast status for SNL's 45th season as a featured player alongside Chloe Fineman, becoming its first Chinese-American, first Australian-American, third openly gay male, and fourth-ever cast member of Asian descent. He made history becoming the first SNL featured player to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in 2021.
Go to Profile#18757
George Herbig
#18768
Overall Influence
1920 - 2013 (93 years)
George Howard Herbig was an American astronomer at the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy. He is perhaps best known for his contribution to the discovery of Herbig–Haro objects. Background Born in 1920 in Wheeling, West Virginia, Herbig received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1948 at the University of California, Berkeley; his dissertation is titled A Study of Variable Stars in Nebulosity.
Go to Profile#18758
Peter Gärdenfors
#18769
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Björn Peter Gärdenfors is professor of cognitive science at the University of Lund, Sweden. Gärdenfors is a recipient of the Gad Rausing Prize . He received his doctorate from Lund University in 1974. Internationally, he is one of Sweden's most notable philosophers. In 1996, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities and in 2009 he became a member of Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He is member of Deutsche Akademie für Naturforscher and of Academia Europaea. In 2014 Gärdenfors was awarded a Senior Fellowship of the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz.
Go to Profile#18759
Donald Pederson
#18770
Overall Influence
1925 - 2004 (79 years)
Donald Oscar Pederson was an American professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the designers of SPICE, a simulator for integrated circuits that has been universally used as a teaching tool and in the everyday work of circuits engineers. The IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits is named in his honor.
Go to Profile#18760
Tanya Reinhart
#18771
Overall Influence
1943 - 2007 (64 years)
Tanya Reinhart was an Israeli linguist who wrote frequently on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. She contributed columns to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot and longer articles to the CounterPunch, Znet, and Israeli Indymedia websites.
Go to Profile#18761
Valery Shumakov
#18772
Overall Influence
1931 - 2008 (77 years)
Valery Ivanovich Shumakov was a Russian surgeon and transplantologist, famous for being the founding father of organ transplants in Russia and was a pioneer of artificial organ surgery. Career Shumakov began his medical career by researching blood flow during congenital heart disorder operations.
Go to Profile#18762
George Zames
#18773
Overall Influence
1934 - 1997 (63 years)
George Zames was a Polish-Canadian control theorist and professor at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Zames is known for his fundamental contributions to the theory of robust control, and was credited for the development of various well-known results such as small-gain theorem, passivity theorem, circle criterion in input–output form, and most famously, H-infinity methods.
Go to Profile#18763
Drew Endy
#18774
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Andrew David Endy is a synthetic biologist and tenured associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, California. Education and Work History Endy received his PhD from Dartmouth College in 1997 for his work on genetic engineering using T7 phage.
Go to Profile#18764
Francis Gurry
#18775
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Francis Gerard Gurry is an Australian lawyer who served as the fourth director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization from 2008 to 2020. During that time, he was also the secretary-general of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants . Gurry also served as a deputy director general of WIPO from 2003 to 2008.
Go to Profile#18765
Leslie B. Vosshall
#18776
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Leslie Birgit Vosshall is an American neurobiologist and currently a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and the Robin Chemers Neustein Professor of Neurogenetics and Behavior at The Rockefeller University. In 2022 she was appointed Chief Scientific Officer and vice president of HHMI. She is also the director of the Kavli Neural Systems Institute at The Rockefeller University. Vosshall, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, is known for her contributions to the field of olfaction, particularly for the discovery and subsequent characterization of the insect olfactory receptor family, and the genetic basis of chemosensory behavior in mosquitoes.
Go to Profile#18766
Mark Brzezinski
#18777
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Mark Francis Brzezinski is an American lawyer serving as the United States Ambassador to Poland since 2022. He previously served as the United States Ambassador to Sweden from 2011 to 2015 under President Barack Obama.
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John Doyle
#18778
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
John Doyle is a Scottish stage director of musicals and plays, as well as operas. He served as artistic director at several regional theatres in the United Kingdom, where he staged more than 200 professional productions during his career spanning over 40 years.
Go to Profile#18768
Johnnie Johnson
#18779
Overall Influence
1915 - 2001 (86 years)
Air Vice Marshal James Edgar Johnson, , DL , nicknamedd "Johnnie", was an English Royal Air Force pilot and flying ace who flew and fought during the Second World War. Johnson grew up and was educated in the East Midlands, where he qualified as an engineer. A sportsman, Johnson broke his collarbone while playing rugby, an injury that later complicated his ambitions of becoming a fighter pilot. Johnson had been interested in aviation since his youth and applied to join the RAF. He was initially rejected, first on social, and then on medical grounds; he was eventually accepted in August 1939. T...
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Crispin Sartwell
#18780
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Crispin Gallagher Sartwell is an American academic, philosopher, and journalist who is a faculty member of the philosophy department at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He has taught philosophy, communication, and political science at a number of schools, including Vanderbilt University, University of Alabama, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and Dickinson College.
Go to Profile#18770
Masao Ito
#18781
Overall Influence
1928 - 2018 (90 years)
was a Japanese neuroscientist, and director of the Riken Brain Science Institute. Overviews Masao Ito was the main force behind Japanese neuroscience and its international recognition for many years. He was very active in the International Brain Research Organisation and went on to establish the Federation of Asian-Oceanian Neuroscience Societies in an effort to join together East Asian neuroscientists and facilitate interactions without dependence on American/European influences. This organisation is still active and acts in concert with IBRO's own Asia-Pacific Regional Committee which was set up in 1999.
Go to Profile#18771
Claudia Maria Buch
#18782
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Claudia Maria Buch is a German economist who currently serves as Vice President of the Bundesbank. She previously worked as professor at the University of Tübingen and served as a member of the German Council of Economic Experts. Buch worked as scientific director at the Institut für Angewandte Wirtschaftsforschung in Tübingen and as chairperson of the economic council at the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. She still teaches at the Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg. Her research focuses on regulation and supervision of banking.
Go to Profile#18772
J. Scott Armstrong
#18783
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
John Scott Armstrong was an author, forecasting and marketing expert, and an Emeritus Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Armstrong's research and writing in forecasting promote the ideas that in order to maximize accuracy, forecasting methods should rely on evidence-based methods.
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Roh Tae-woo
#18784
Overall Influence
1932 - 2021 (89 years)
Roh Tae-woo was a South Korean politician and army general who served as the sixth president of South Korea from 1988 to 1993. He was the first democratically elected president of South Korea. Roh was a close ally and friend of Chun Doo-hwan, the predecessor leader of the country who ruled as an unelected military dictator from 1980 to 1988, and unofficially since 1979. In 1996, both leaders were sentenced for their roles in orchestrating coups as well as their subsequent human rights abuses such as the Gwangju Massacre, but were pardoned the following year by Kim Young-sam on advice of presi...
Go to Profile#18774
Michael Sells
#18785
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Michael Anthony Sells is John Henry Barrows Professor of Islamic History and Literature in the Divinity School and in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. Michael Sells studies and teaches in the areas of Qur'anic studies, Sufism, Arabic and Islamic love poetry, mysticism , and religion and violence.
Go to Profile#18775
Michael Argyle
#18786
Overall Influence
1925 - 2002 (77 years)
Michael Argyle was one of the best known English social psychologists of the twentieth century. He spent most of his career at the University of Oxford, and worked on numerous topics. Throughout his career, he showed strong preferences for experimental methods in social psychology, having little time for alternative approaches such as discourse analysis.
Go to Profile#18776
Clare Lloyd
#18787
Overall Influence
Clare Margaret Lloyd is a Professor of Medicine and Vice Dean for Institutional Affairs at Imperial College London. She investigates allergic immunity in early life. Early life and education Lloyd earned her BSc and PhD in immunology at King's College London. She earned her Bachelor's degree in 1987 and her PhD in 1991. She was awarded a National Kidney Research Fund Fellowship and joined the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals. Her work considered mouse models of glomerulonephritis. She joined Harvard University to work on chronic inflammatory glomerulonephritis.
Go to Profile#18777
Tokushi Kasahara
#18788
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Tokushi Kasahara is a Japanese historian. He is a professor emeritus at Tsuru University and his area of expertise is modern Chinese history. Life and career He was born in Gunma Prefecture and graduated from Gunma Prefectural Maebashi High School and the department of humanities at Tokyo University of Education. He started a master's degree at the same university but did not complete it. After serving as a teacher in the faculty of education of Utsunomiya University, he has worked regularly since 1999 at the Nanjing Massacre Research Center of Nanjing Normal University as a visiting professor...
Go to Profile#18778
Steven G. Johnson
#18789
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Steven Glenn Johnson is an American mathematician known for being a co-creator of the FFTW library for software-based fast Fourier transforms and for his work on photonic crystals. He is professor of Applied Mathematics and Physics at MIT where he leads a group on Nanostructures and Computation.
Go to Profile#18779
Borys Gudziak
#18790
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Borys Gudziak is the current Metropolitan-Archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia. He founded the Institute of Church History and served as the rector and president of the Ukrainian Catholic University. He was previously ordained as a priest, and later a bishop. Gudziak has authored and edited several books on church history, theology, modern church life, and higher education reforms.
Go to Profile#18780
Werner Ulrich
#18791
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Werner Ulrich is a Swiss social scientist and practical philosopher, and a former professor of the theory and practice of social planning at the University of Fribourg. He is known as one of the originators of critical systems thinking and in particular for the development of critical systems heuristics.
Go to Profile#18781
Carl H. Brans
#18792
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Carl Henry Brans is an American mathematical physicist best known for his research into the theoretical underpinnings of gravitation elucidated in his most widely publicized work, the Brans–Dicke theory.
Go to Profile#18782
Detlef Gromoll
#18793
Overall Influence
1938 - 2008 (70 years)
Detlef Gromoll was a mathematician who worked in Differential geometry. Biography Gromoll was born in Berlin in 1938, and was a classically trained violinist. After living and attending school in Rosdorf and graduating from high school in Bonn, he obtained his Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Bonn in 1964. Following sojourns at several universities, he joined the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1969.
Go to Profile#18783
Claire Bowern
#18794
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Claire Louise Bowern is a linguist who works with Australian Indigenous languages. She is currently a professor of linguistics at Yale University, and has a secondary appointment in the department of anthropology at Yale.
Go to Profile#18784
Cindy Kiro
#18795
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Dame Alcyion Cynthia Kiro is a New Zealand public-health academic, administrator, and advocate, who has served as the 22nd governor-general of New Zealand since 21 October 2021. Kiro is the first Māori woman, the third person of Māori descent, and the fourth woman to hold the office.
Go to Profile#18785
Christopher Robert Hallpike
#18796
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Christopher Robert Hallpike is an English-Canadian anthropologist and an emeritus professor of anthropology at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada. He is known for his extensive study of the Konso of Ethiopia and Tauade of New Guinea.
Go to Profile#18786
Peter Mair
#18797
Overall Influence
1951 - 2011 (60 years)
Peter Mair was an Irish political scientist. He was a professor of comparative politics at the European University Institute in Florence. Career Peter Mair was born in Rosses Point, County Sligo, Ireland, and studied history and politics at University College Dublin. He continued to work as assistant professor at the University of Limerick, Strathclyde, Manchester and the European University Institute in Florence during the 1980s. In 1987 at Leiden University he gained a doctorate, which as The changing Irish party system became a standard work on the Irish party system. In 1990, he co-authored the book Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability with Stefano Bartolini.
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Wiktor Zin
#18798
Overall Influence
1925 - 2007 (82 years)
Wiktor Zin was a Polish architect, graphic artist, professor, architectural preservationist, cultural activist, and promoter of Polish history and culture. Biography Zin finished architectural studies at Akademia Górniczo-Hutnicza in Kraków. In 1952 he received his doctorate, with further advancement in his professorial degrees in 1959, 1967, and 1979.
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Brigitte Hamann
#18799
Overall Influence
1940 - 2016 (76 years)
Brigitte Hamann was a German-Austrian author and historian based in Vienna. Biography Born in Essen, Germany, Hamann studied history in Münster and Vienna. She worked as a journalist in her native Essen for some time. In 1965, she married historian Günther Hamann , moved to Vienna and obtained Austrian citizenship in addition to her German. The couple had three children; one of them is journalist and feminist Sibylle Hamann. Brigitte Hamann worked with her husband at the University of Vienna and in 1978 obtained a doctor's degree on the basis of a thesis on the life of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria.
Go to Profile#18789
Mike Tomlin
#18800
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Michael Pettaway Tomlin is an American football coach who is the head coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the National Football League . Since joining the Steelers in 2007, he has led the team to ten playoff runs, seven division titles, three AFC Championship Games, two Super Bowl appearances, and a title in Super Bowl XLIII. At age 36, Tomlin became the youngest head coach to win the Super Bowl, a record which was later beaten by Sean McVay in Super Bowl LVI. He has never had a losing season.
Go to Profile#18790
Pavel Bure
#18801
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Pavel Vladimirovich Bure is a Russian former professional ice hockey player who played the right wing position. Nicknamed "the Russian Rocket" for his speed, Bure played for 12 seasons in the National Hockey League with the Vancouver Canucks, Florida Panthers and New York Rangers between 1991 and 2003. Trained in the Soviet Union, he played three seasons with the Central Red Army team before his NHL career.
Go to Profile#18791
Dwight Garner
#18802
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Dwight Garner is an American journalist and longtime writer and editor for The New York Times. In 2008, he was named a book critic for the newspaper. He is the author of Garner's Quotations: A Modern Miscellany and Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements. In 2023 he published his memoir, The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading.
Go to Profile#18792
Paul E. Green
#18803
Overall Influence
1927 - 2012 (85 years)
Paul E. Green He was the founder of conjoint analysis and one of "major architects of modern marketing science and practice", having popularised the use of Bayesian statistics, multidimensional scaling, clustering, and qualitative data analysis within the marketing discipline. He wrote more than sixteen books and 200 articles on market research-related subjects. His seminal article, "Conjoint Analysis in Consumer Research: Issues and Outlook," has been cited more than 750 times in ISI and has some 4,000 citations on Google Scholar.
Go to Profile#18793
Jeff Hearn
#18804
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Jeffery Richard Hearn is a British sociologist, and Research Professor at the University of Huddersfield, and Professor at the Hanken School of Economics. Biography Hearn obtained his MA at the University of Oxford in 1973 and another MA in Organisational Sociology at the University of Leeds in 1974, and his PhD in Social Theory, Social Planning and Theories of Patriarchy at the University of Bradford in 1986.
Go to Profile#18794
Pete Wentz
#18805
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III is an American musician who is best known as the bassist and lyricist for the rock band Fall Out Boy. Before the band's formation in 2001, Wentz was a fixture of the Chicago hardcore scene and was the lead singer and songwriter for Arma Angelus, a metalcore band. During Fall Out Boy's hiatus from 2009 to 2012, Wentz formed the experimental, electropop and dubstep group Black Cards. He owns a record label, DCD2 Records, which has signed bands including Panic! at the Disco and Gym Class Heroes.
Go to Profile#18795
Michael Trebilcock
#18806
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Michael J. Trebilcock is a New Zealand-born, Canadian-based law academic. He is currently distinguished university professor and professor of law at the University of Toronto, specializing in law and economics.
Go to Profile#18796
Amir Faghri
#18807
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Amir Faghri is an American professor and leader in the engineering profession as an educator, scientist, and administrator. He is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Distinguished Dean Emeritus at the University of Connecticut. He is also currently Distinguished Adjunct Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Faghri served as Head of the Mechanical Engineering Department from 1994 to 1998, and Dean of the School of Engineering at the University of Connecticut from 1998 to 2006. Faghri is well known for his contributions to the field of heat transfer. ...
Go to Profile#18797
George Nelson
#18808
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
George Driver "Pinky" Nelson is an American physicist, astronomer, science educator, and retired NASA astronaut. Early life and education Nelson was born on July 13, 1950, in Charles City, Iowa, but considers Willmar, Minnesota, to be his hometown. He graduated from Willmar Senior High School, Willmar, Minnesota, in 1968. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Harvey Mudd College in 1972, and a Master of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy degrees in astronomy from the University of Washington in 1974 and 1978, respectively.
Go to Profile#18798
Stephen Macedo
#18809
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Stephen Macedo is an American political scientist who serves as the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics at Princeton University, where he was the former director at the University Center for Human Values. Macedo served as the president of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy from 2018 until 2021.
Go to Profile#18799
Yoshimasa Hirata
#18810
Overall Influence
1915 - 2000 (85 years)
Yoshimasa Hirata was a Japanese organic chemist. Biography Hirata was born in Yamaguchi, Japan in 1915. He received a Bachelor of Science from the Tokyo Imperial University in 1941, and then joined the faculty there as a Lecturer of Chemistry. In 1944, he moved to Nagoya University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry. In that same year, he was promoted Associate Professor. He received his Ph.D. from Nagoya University in 1949, and was promoted to Full Professor in 1954.
Go to Profile#18800
Malcolm Rowe
#18811
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Malcolm H. Rowe is a Puisne Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Rowe is the first judge from Newfoundland and Labrador to sit on the Supreme Court. Early life and education Rowe was born in 1953 in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, to parents who grew up in the province's small fishing communities.
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