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
#18951
Anima Anandkumar
#18962
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Animashree Anandkumar is the Bren Professor of Computing at California Institute of Technology. She is a director of Machine Learning research at NVIDIA. Her research considers tensor-algebraic methods, deep learning and non-convex problems.
Go to Profile#18952
Norbert Pohlmann
#18963
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Norbert Pohlmann is a computer scientist and a professor at the . He is also chairman of the board of the IT security association TeleTrusT. Career Born in Ratingen, Pohlmann studied electrical engineering from 1981 to 1985, specialising in computer science. He wrote his doctoral thesis on "Possibilities and Limitations of Firewall Systems".
Go to Profile#18953
Charles David Allis
#18964
Overall Influence
1951 - 2023 (72 years)
Charles David Allis was an American molecular biologist, and the Joy and Jack Fishman Professor at the Rockefeller University. He was also the Head of the Laboratory of Chromatin Biology and Epigenetics, and a professor at the Tri-Institutional MD–PhD Program .
Go to Profile#18954
Manfred T. Reetz
#18965
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Manfred Theodor Reetz is a German chemist and professor of organic chemistry, who served as director of the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research from 1991 until 2011. His research focuses on directed evolution, enzymes in organic chemistry, and stereoselective biocatalysis.
Go to Profile#18955
Bart Preneel
#18966
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Bart Preneel is a Belgian cryptographer and cryptanalyst. He is a professor at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in the COSIC group. He was the president of the International Association for Cryptologic Research in 2008-2013 and project manager of ECRYPT.
Go to Profile#18956
Henry Harris
#18967
Overall Influence
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
Sir Henry Harris was an Australian professor of medicine at the University of Oxford who led pioneering work on cancer and human genetics in the 2000s. Early life and education Harris was born in 1925 to a Jewish family in the Soviet Union. In 1929, his family emigrated to Australia. Harris studied at Sydney Boys High School from 1937 to 1941. In 1941, he first read modern languages, but was subsequently attracted to medicine through his literary interests. He studied medicine at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and began a career in medical research rather than in clinical practice.
Go to Profile#18957
Fumio Hayashi
#18968
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
is a Japanese economist. He is a professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. Hayashi received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Tokyo and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1980. He has taught at Northwestern University, the University of Tokyo, the University of Tsukuba, Osaka University, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, and Hitotsubashi University.
Go to Profile#18958
Vincent Ialenti
#18969
Overall Influence
Vincent Ialenti is an American anthropologist who studies the culture of nuclear energy and weapons waste organizations. He is the author of Deep Time Reckoning, an anthropological exploration of how experts assessed the potential impact of Finland's Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository on future ecosystems and civilization.
Go to Profile#18959
Ping-ti Ho
#18970
Overall Influence
1917 - 2012 (95 years)
Ping-ti Ho or Bingdi He , who also wrote under the name P.T. Ho, was a Chinese-American historian. He wrote widely on China's history, including works on demography, plant history, ancient archaeology, and contemporary events. He taught at University of Chicago for most of his career, and was president of the Association for Asian Studies in 1975, the first scholar of East Asian descent to have that honor.
Go to Profile#18960
Paul Brest
#18971
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Paul Brest is an American scholar of constitutional law, a former president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and a former dean of Stanford Law School. He is an influential theorist on the role of non-profit organizations in society, and is widely credited with coining the name originalism to describe a particular approach to interpreting the United States Constitution.
Go to Profile#18961
Vinny Testaverde
#18972
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Vincent Frank Testaverde Sr. is an American former football quarterback who played in the National Football League for 21 seasons. He played college football for the Miami Hurricanes, where he was a consensus All-American and won the Heisman Trophy in 1986.
Go to Profile#18962
Sebastian Vettel
#18973
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Sebastian Vettel is a German racing driver who competed in Formula One from 2007 to 2022 for BMW Sauber, Toro Rosso, Red Bull, Ferrari and Aston Martin. Vettel is one of the most successful drivers in Formula One history and has won four World Drivers' Championship titles, which he won consecutively from to . Vettel holds the record for being the youngest World Champion in Formula One. He also has the fourth-most race victories , third-most podium finishes , and fourth-most pole positions .
Go to Profile#18963
Harold J. Berman
#18974
Overall Influence
1918 - 2007 (89 years)
Harold Joseph Berman was an American legal scholar who was an expert in comparative, international and Soviet/Russian law as well as legal history, philosophy of law and the intersection of law and religion. He was a law professor at Harvard Law School and Emory University School of Law for more than sixty years, and held the James Barr Ames Professorship of Law at Harvard before he was appointed as the first Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory. He has been described as "one of the great polymaths of American legal education."
Go to Profile#18964
Stephen Frears
#18975
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Sir Stephen Arthur Frears is an English director and producer of film and television often depicting real life stories as well as projects that explore social class through sharply drawn characters. He has received numerous accolades including three BAFTA Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award as well as nominations for two Academy Awards. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph named Frears among the 100 most influential people in British culture. In 2009, he received the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He received a knighthood in 2023 for his contributions to the film and television industr...
Go to Profile#18965
Peggy Levitt
#18976
Overall Influence
Peggy Levitt is professor and chair of the sociology department at Wellesley College and an associate at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organization where she co-directs the Transnational Studies Initiative. Peggy writes regularly about globalization, arts and culture, immigration, and religion. Her latest book, Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation on Display, is published by the University of California Press.
Go to Profile#18966
Rogers Smith
#18977
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
#18967
Bruce Biggs
#18978
Overall Influence
1921 - 2000 (79 years)
Bruce Grandison Biggs was an influential figure in the academic field of Māori studies in New Zealand. The first academic appointed to teach the Māori language at a New Zealand university, he taught and trained a whole generation of Māori academics.
Go to Profile#18968
Esa Itkonen
#18979
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Esa Itkonen is a Finnish linguist, philosopher and language theorist. He is professor emeritus of general linguistics at the University of Turku. Itkonen has authored several publications on linguistic methodology, philosophy of linguistics, history of linguistics, and linguistic typology. He has defended a humanist approach to linguistics, criticising sociobiology, generative grammar, and Cognitive Linguistics.
Go to Profile#18969
Peter Rousseeuw
#18980
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Peter J. Rousseeuw is a statistician known for his work on robust statistics and cluster analysis. He obtained his PhD in 1981 at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, following research carried out at the ETH in Zurich, which led to a book on influence functions. Later he was professor at the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Next he was a senior researcher at Renaissance Technologies. He then returned to Belgium as professor at KU Leuven, until becoming emeritus in 2022. His former PhD students i...
Go to Profile#18970
Christian Siriano
#18981
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Christian Vincent Siriano is an American fashion designer and member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America . Siriano first gained attention after winning the fourth season of American design competition show Project Runway in 2007, becoming the series' youngest winner. He launched his namesake "Christian Siriano" collection in 2008, which brought in revenue of over $1.2 million by 2010 and was estimated to have reached $5 million by 2012.
Go to Profile#18971
Luciano Berio
#18982
Overall Influence
1925 - 2003 (78 years)
Luciano Berio was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work , and for his pioneering work in electronic music. His early work was influenced by Igor Stravinsky and experiments with serial and electronic techniques, while his later works explore indeterminacy and the use of spoken texts as the basic material for composition.
Go to Profile#18972
Iván Szelényi
#18983
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Iván Szelényi is a noted Hungarian-American sociologist, as of 2010 the Dean of Social Sciences at New York University Abu Dhabi. Biography He is the son of Gusztáv Szelényi, an entomologist and Julianna Csapó.
Go to Profile#18973
Kendall Houk
#18984
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Kendall Newcomb Houk is a Distinguished Research Professor in Organic Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research group studies organic, organometallic, and biological reactions using the tools of computational chemistry. This work involves quantum mechanical calculations, often with density functional theory, and molecular dynamics, either quantum dynamics for small systems or force fields such as AMBER, for solution and protein simulations.
Go to Profile#18974
Robert Fossier
#18985
Overall Influence
1927 - 2012 (85 years)
Robert Fossier was a French Historian, specializing in the Western Middle Ages. Biography Family and Education Robert Fossier was born into Catholicism. His father, a soldier who served in World War I, was angered by the Munich Agreement. His mother, a piano teacher, encouraged an interest in history and fiction. He did his secondary education in Paris, first at the lycée Janson-de-Sailly, then at the lycée Henri-IV, where he prepped for the entrance exam of the École des chartes.
Go to Profile#18975
Germán Dehesa
#18986
Overall Influence
1944 - 2010 (66 years)
Germán Dehesa was a Mexican journalist, academic and writer. Dehesa was born in Mexico City on July 1, 1944. He studied both Hispanic literature and chemical engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Go to Profile#18976
Andrey Illarionov
#18987
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Andrey Nikolayevich Illarionov is a Russian economist and former senior policy advisor to Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, from April 2000 to December 2005. Since April 2021, he is a senior fellow at the non-governmental organization Center for Security Policy, which is based out of Washington, D.C. in the United States.
Go to Profile#18977
Lee Blessing
#18988
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Lee Knowlton Blessing is an American playwright best known for his 1988 work, A Walk in the Woods. A lifelong Midwesterner, Blessing continued to work in regional theaters in and around his hometown of Minneapolis through his 40s before relocating to New York City.
Go to Profile#18978
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
#18989
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin is an Irish academic lawyer specialising in human rights law. She is the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism for the United Nations Human Rights Council since August 1, 2017.
Go to Profile#18979
Richard Saller
#18990
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Richard Paul Saller is an American professor of European studies. He is the former provost of the University of Chicago and the former dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, where he is currently the university's president.
Go to Profile#18980
Angus Macintyre
#18991
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Angus John Macintyre FRS, FRSE is a British mathematician and logician who is a leading figure in model theory, logic, and their applications in algebra, algebraic geometry, and number theory. He is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, at Queen Mary University of London.
Go to Profile#18981
Morten P. Meldal
#18992
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Morten Peter Meldal is a Danish chemist and Nobel laureate. He is a professor of chemistry at the University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is best known for developing the CuAAC-click reaction, concurrently with but independent of Valery V. Fokin and K. Barry Sharpless.
Go to Profile#18982
Kabir Chowdhury
#18993
Overall Influence
1923 - 2011 (88 years)
Kabir Chowdhury was a Bangladeshi academic, essayist, materialist, translator, cultural worker and civil society activist. Early life and education Chowdhury was born in Brahmanbaria of the then Tipperah district of the Bengal Presidency where his father was working as a civil servant. His father, Khan Bahadur Abdul Halim Chowdhury, was a district magistrate. He grew up in an atmosphere of liberal ideas and secular thinking. His family hailed from Chatkhile of Noakhali district of Bangladesh and his father was a devout Muslim. Kabir's many close friends in school belonged to the Hindu community.
Go to Profile#18983
Shlomo Havlin
#18994
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Shlomo Havlin is a Professor in the Department of Physics at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. He served as President of the Israel Physical Society , Dean of Faculty of Exact Sciences , Chairman, Department of Physics .
Go to Profile#18984
Deborah Mash
#18995
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Deborah Carmen Mash is an American professor of neurology and of molecular and cellular pharmacology at the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, and director of the Brain Endowment Bank at the University of Miami. She is also the Chief Executive Officer and founder of DemeRx.
Go to Profile#18985
Christopher Kimball
#18996
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Christopher Kimball is an American editor, publisher, and radio and TV personality. He is notable as one of the founders of America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Country and as the creator of Christopher Kimball's Milk Street.
Go to Profile#18986
Natascha Artin Brunswick
#18997
Overall Influence
1909 - 2003 (94 years)
Natascha Artin Brunswick, née Jasny was a Russian-American mathematician and photographer. St. Petersburg and Hamburg Natascha Artin Brunswick was the daughter of , a Russian Jewish economist from Kharkiv. Her mother was a Russian orthodox aristocrat and dentist. Since at the time Russian orthodox Christians were prohibited from marrying Jews, she converted to Protestantism. They were married in Finland.
Go to Profile#18987
Joseph M. Reagle Jr.
#18998
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. is an American academic and writer focused on digital technology and culture, including Wikipedia, online comments, geek feminism, and life hacking. He is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University. He was an early member of the World Wide Web Consortium, based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 1998 and 2010 he was a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
Go to Profile#18988
Walidah Imarisha
#18999
Overall Influence
Walidah Imarisha is an American writer, activist, educator and spoken word artist. Career Writing Imarisha is co-editor, with adrienne maree brown, of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements, named after the legendary science fiction writer Octavia Butler. She also co-edited Another World Is Possible, the first anthology out in response to the 9/11 attacks.
Go to Profile#18989
Robert T. Paine
#19000
Overall Influence
1933 - 2016 (83 years)
Robert Treat "Bob" Paine III was an American ecologist who spent most of his career at the University of Washington. Paine coined the keystone species concept to explain the relationship between Pisaster ochraceus, a species of starfish, and Mytilus californianus, a species of mussel.
Go to Profile#18990
Erwan Dianteill
#19001
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Erwan Dianteill is a French sociologist and anthropologist, graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, holder of the aggregation in the Social Sciences, Doctor of Sociology and professor of Cultural and Social anthropology at the Sorbonne . He is also Senior Laureate of the Institut Universitaire de France since 2012 and Non-Resident Fellow of the WEB DuBois Research Institute at Harvard University since 2017. Dianteill's work explores anthropological and sociological theories about religion and interconnections between political and religious powers. It also includes the study o...
Go to Profile#18991
Goh Chok Tong
#19002
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Goh Chok Tong AC is a Singaporean former politician who served as the second Prime Minister of Singapore from 1990 to 2004, and Secretary-General of the People's Action Party from 1992 to 2004. He was the Member of Parliament for Marine Parade SMC from 1976 to 1988, and Marine Parade GRC from 1988 to 2020.
Go to Profile#18992
Richard Padovan
#19003
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Richard Padovan is an architect, author, translator and lecturer. In the 1950s he studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture; he has practised architecture in several European countries, and taught at the University of Bath and Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education. He is the namesake of the Padovan sequence.
Go to Profile#18993
William Crano
#19004
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
William Dean Crano is an American psychologist. He is the Oskamp Distinguished Professor of Psychology in the Division of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences , Claremont Graduate University. He has also written almost 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, in journals including Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Studies on Alcohol, Psychological Inquiry, Journal of Social Psychology, and AIDS Education and Prevention, and is the co-author of an article in Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 57, 2006. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and Associati...
Go to Profile#18994
Anton Schwarzkopf
#19005
Overall Influence
1924 - 2001 (77 years)
Anton Schwarzkopf was a German engineer who founded Schwarzkopf Industries GmbH, a German manufacturer of roller coasters and other amusement rides that were sold to amusement parks and travelling funfairs around the world.
Go to Profile#18995
Gopalakrishna Adiga
#19006
Overall Influence
1918 - 1992 (74 years)
Mogeri Gopalakrishna Adiga was a modern Kannada poet. He is known by some commentators as the "pioneer of New style" poetry. Biography He was born in the coastal village of Mogeri, Udupi district, in Karnataka State. After primary education in Mogeri and Baindooru, he went to high school in Kundapur. As editor of Saakshi magazine he helped bring Kannada literature to the masses.
Go to Profile#18996
Hélène Rey
#19007
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Hélène Rey is a French economist who serves as Professor at London Business School . Her work focuses on international trade, financial imbalances, financial crises and the international monetary system.
Go to Profile#18997
Babette Babich
#19008
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Babette Babich is an American philosopher who writes from a continental perspective on aesthetics, philosophy of science, especially Nietzsche's, and technology, especially Heidegger's and Günther Anders, in addition to critical and cultural theory.
Go to Profile#18998
Mirjan Damaška
#19009
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Mirjan Damaška is an American and Croatian jurist and legal scholar, known for his works in the sphere of comparative criminal justice and international criminal law. He was a professor at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, where he was an acting dean in 1970. He is currently a Sterling Professor emeritus at the Yale Law School, where he has taught since 1976.
Go to Profile#18999
Haleh Esfandiari
#19010
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Haleh Esfandiari is an Iranian-American academic and former Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Her areas of expertise include Middle Eastern women's issues, contemporary Iranian intellectual currents and politics, and democratic developments in the Middle East. She was detained in solitary confinement at Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran for more than 110 days from May 8 to August 21, 2007.
Go to Profile#19000
Amit Sahai
#19011
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Amit Sahai is an American computer scientist. He is a professor of computer science at UCLA and the director of the Center for Encrypted Functionalities. Biography Amit Sahai was born in 1974 in Thousand Oaks, California, to parents who had immigrated from India. He received a B.A. in mathematics with a computer science minor from the University of California, Berkeley, summa cum laude, in 1996. At Berkeley, Sahai was named Computing Research Association Outstanding Undergraduate of the Year, North America, and was a member of the three-person team that won first place in the 1996 ACM Interna...
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