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
#19051
Stefan Klein
#19062
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Stefan Klein is a physicist, author, essayist and visiting professor at Berlin University of the Arts. He is best known for his books The Science of Happiness and Time: A User's Guide. His works have been translated into 25 languages and became best sellers in many countries.
Go to Profile#19052
William J. Duiker
#19063
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
William J. Duiker is a former United States Foreign Service officer and is currently Liberal Arts Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies at Penn State University. His area of expertise is East Asia; while in the Foreign Service, he was stationed in Taiwan , the Republic of Vietnam, and Washington, D.C.. After leaving the State Department in 1965, he received his PhD degree in East Asian studies at Georgetown University.
Go to Profile#19053
Jewelle Gomez
#19064
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Jewelle Lydia Gomez is an American author, poet, critic and playwright. She lived in New York City for 22 years, working in public television, theater, as well as philanthropy, before relocating to the West Coast. Her writing—fiction, poetry, essays and cultural criticism—has appeared in a wide variety of outlets, both feminist and mainstream. Her work centers on women's experiences, particularly those of LGBTQ women of color. She has been interviewed for several documentaries focused on LGBT rights and culture.
Go to Profile#19054
Alexander Balankin
#19065
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Alexander Balankin is a Mexican scientist of Russian origin whose work in the field of fractal mechanics and its engineering applications won him the UNESCO Science Prize in 2005. Currently he is a professor of physics at the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico, Head of the Fractal Mechanics Group, and since 2003, a member of the Science Consulting Council of the Presidency of the Republic, Mexico.
Go to Profile#19055
Peter Smith
#19066
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Peter H. Smith is a professor emeritus at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the University of Arizona, where he holds the inaugural Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Chair in Integrative Science. He is also the principal investigator for the $420 million robotic explorer Phoenix which landed at the north pole of the planet Mars on May 25, 2008. Peter H. Smith's papers are held at the University of Arizona Special Collections Library.
Go to Profile#19056
Jesse Russell
#19067
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Jesse Eugene Russell is an American inventor. He was trained as an electrical engineer at Tennessee State University and Stanford University, and worked in the field of wireless communication for over 20 years. He holds patents and continues to invent and innovate in the emerging area of next generation broadband wireless networks, technologies and services, often referred to as 4G. Russell was inducted into the US National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to the field of wireless communication. He pioneered the field of digital cellular communication in the 1980s through the use ...
Go to Profile#19057
Prathia Hall
#19068
Overall Influence
1940 - 2002 (62 years)
Prathia Laura Ann Hall Wynn was an American leader and activist in the Civil Rights Movement, a womanist theologian, and ethicist. She was the key inspiration for Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
Go to Profile#19058
David Newbery
#19069
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
David Michael Garrood Newbery, CBE, FBA , is a Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Cambridge. He got this position in 1988. He specializes in the field of energy economics, and he writes on the regulation of electricity markets. His interests also include climate change mitigation and environmental policy, privatisation, and risk.
Go to Profile#19059
N. T. Rama Rao
#19070
Overall Influence
1923 - 1996 (73 years)
Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao , often referred to by his initials NTR, was an Indian actor, filmmaker and politician who served as Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh for seven years over three terms. He starred in over 300 films, predominantly in Telugu cinema, and was referred by the media as Viswa Vikhyatha Nata Sarvabhouma . Rao received three National Film Awards for co-producing Thodu Dongalu and Seetharama Kalyanam under National Art Theater, Madras, and for directing Varakatnam . Known for his breakthrough performances in Raju Peda and Lava Kusa , Rao garnered the Nandi Award for Best Acto...
Go to Profile#19060
Laurent-Désiré Kabila
#19071
Overall Influence
1939 - 2001 (62 years)
Laurent-Désiré Kabila or more succinctly, Laurent Kabila , was a Congolese revolutionary and politician who served as the third President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1997 until his assassination in 2001.
Go to Profile#19061
Pavlina R. Tcherneva
#19072
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Pavlina R. Tcherneva is an American economist, of Bulgarian descent, working as associate professor of economics at Bard College. She is also a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute and expert at the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
Go to Profile#19062
Madhav Chavan
#19073
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Madhav Chavan is a social activist and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of the educational non-profit, Pratham. He also started the Read India campaign, which aims to teach basic reading, writing and arithmetic to underprivileged children across India. Pratham has been recognized by the Kravis Prize and the Skoll Award for its innovativeness and leadership as a social entrepreneurial organization in the area of education. Chavan was the 2012 recipient of the WISE Prize for Education, which is widely considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of education and recipien...
Go to Profile#19063
David D. Laitin
#19074
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
David D. Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science in the School of Humanities and Science at Stanford University. He is a comparative politics scholar who has written works on civil war, ethnic identity, culture and nationalism. He is known for his application of rational choice to the study of ethnic conflict, and for bridging a gap between ethnography and rational choice.
Go to Profile#19064
Mick Dodson
#19075
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Michael James Dodson is an Aboriginal Australian barrister, academic, and member of the Yawuru people in the Broome area of the southern Kimberley region of Western Australia. His brother is Pat Dodson, also a noted Aboriginal leader and a senator to Federal Parliament, representing Western Australia.
Go to Profile#19065
Nili Cohen
#19076
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Nili Cohen is an Israeli professor and legal expert. She is a recipient of the Israel Prize, and was the President of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, succeeding Prof. Ruth Arnon, Cohen's role model. She is aa member of the Academia Europaea, of the American Philosophical Society, and a foreign member of the accademia dei lincei.
Go to Profile#19066
Candice Bergen
#19077
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Candice Patricia Bergen is an American actress. She won five Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for her portrayal of the title character on the CBS sitcom Murphy Brown . She is also known for her role as Shirley Schmidt on the ABC drama Boston Legal . In films, Bergen was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Starting Over , and for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Gandhi .
Go to Profile#19067
Batya Gur
#19078
Overall Influence
1947 - 2005 (58 years)
Batya Gur was an Israeli writer. Her specialty was detective fiction. She was a 1994 recipient of the Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Literary Works. Biography Batya Gur was born in Tel Aviv in 1947 to parents who survived the Holocaust. She earned a master's degree in Hebrew literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Between 1971 and 1975 Batya lived in Greensboro, NC, where she taught Hebrew and Jewish studies to elementary students at the North Carolina Hebrew Academy at Greensboro . Before writing her first detective novel at the age of 39, she taught literature at the Hebrew University Secondary School.
Go to Profile#19068
Tetsuya Komuro
#19079
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Tetsuya Komuro is a Japanese musician, songwriter and record producer. He is recognized as the most successful producer in Japanese music history and has introduced contemporary electronic dance music to the Japanese mainstream. He was also a former owner of the disco Velfarre located in Roppongi, Tokyo.
Go to Profile#19069
Rohini Pande
#19080
Overall Influence
Rohini Pande is an economist who is currently the Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics and Director of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. She was previously the Rafik Hariri Professor of International Political Economy and Mohammed Kamal Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Pande was the Co-Director of Center for International Development at Harvard University's Evidence for Policy Design research program and serves on the board of directors of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, MIT. She also serves on the board of the Bureau for Research and Economic...
Go to Profile#19070
Elliot Meyerowitz
#19081
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Elliot Meyerowitz is an American biologist. Career Meyerowitz did his undergraduate work at Columbia University , where he worked part-time in the laboratory of Cyrus Levinthal on combined microscopic and computational methods for tracing axons and dendritic trees in the nervous systems of fish. His graduate work was in the Department of Biology at Yale University , where he worked in the laboratory of Douglas Kankel on the interaction of eye and brain development in Drosophila, by use of genetic mosaics. From 1977 to 1979 he was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of David Hogness in the...
Go to Profile#19071
Eva Crane
#19082
Overall Influence
1912 - 2007 (95 years)
Eva Crane born Ethel Eva Widdowson was a researcher and author on the subjects of bees and beekeeping. Trained as a quantum mathematician, she changed her field of interest to bees, and spent decades researching bees, traveling to more than 60 countries, often in challenging conditions.
Go to Profile#19072
Daniel Diermeier
#19083
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Daniel Diermeier is a German-American political scientist and university administrator. He is serving as the ninth Chancellor of Vanderbilt University. Previously, Diermeier was the David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, where he also served as Provost. He succeeded Eric Isaacs on July 1, 2016, and was succeeded by Ka Yee Christina Lee on February 1, 2020.
Go to Profile#19073
Cecilia Rouse
#19084
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Cecilia Elena Rouse is an American economist who was named as President of the Brookings Institution with an effective date of January 2024. She served as the 30th Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers between 2021 and 2023. She is the first Black American to hold this position. Prior to this, she served as the dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Joe Biden nominated Rouse to be Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in November 2020. Rouse was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate on March 2, 2021, by a vote of 95–4. She resigned on March 31, 2023 to return to teaching.
Go to Profile#19074
Claude Sumner
#19085
Overall Influence
1919 - 2012 (93 years)
Claude Sumner, SJ was a Canadian professor of philosophy who worked at Addis Ababa University from 1953. He was best known for his work on Zera Yacob. Sumner died on June 24, 2012, in Montreal, Canada, at the age of 92.
Go to Profile#19075
Eli Somer
#19086
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Eli Somer is an Israeli Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Haifa, School of Social Work. He is the former President of both the European Society for Trauma and Dissociation and the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation , and serves as scientific advisor in Trauma and Dissociation Israel.
Go to Profile#19076
Israel Michael Sigal
#19087
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Israel Michael Sigal is a Canadian mathematician specializing in mathematical physics. He is a professor at the University of Toronto Department of Mathematics. He was an invited speaker at International Congress of Mathematicians, Kyoto—1990 and in International Congress on Mathematical Physics, Lausanne—1979, W. Berlin—1981, Marselle—1986.
Go to Profile#19077
Yoichiro Murakami
#19088
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Yoichiro Murakami born in Tokyo, Japan on September 9, 1936, is a Japanese scholar. He specializes in the areas of history of science and philosophy of science. Murakami studied at the Hibiya High School before attaining his undergraduate degree at Tokyo University in the field of education. After teaching for a brief period at Sophia University in Yotsuya, he moved to teach at International Christian University in Mitaka, Tokyo.
Go to Profile#19078
Mike Mansfield
#19089
Overall Influence
1903 - 2001 (98 years)
Michael Joseph Mansfield was an American politician and diplomat. A Democrat, he served as a U.S. representative and a U.S. senator from Montana. He was the longest-serving Senate Majority Leader and served from 1961 to 1977. During his tenure, he shepherded Great Society programs through the Senate.
Go to Profile#19079
Vladislav Zubok
#19090
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#19080
Merrick Garland
#19091
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Merrick Brian Garland is an American lawyer and jurist who is the 86th and current United States attorney general. He previously served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1997 to 2021. In 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Republican-led U.S. Senate effectively blocked Garland's appointment.
Go to Profile#19081
Jean-François Le Gall
#19092
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Jean-François Le Gall is a French mathematician working in areas of probability theory such as Brownian motion, Lévy processes, superprocesses and their connections with partial differential equations, the Brownian snake, random trees, branching processes, stochastic coalescence and random planar maps. He received his Ph.D. in 1982 from Pierre and Marie Curie University under the supervision of Marc Yor. He is currently professor at the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay and is a senior member of the Institut universitaire de France. He was elected to French academy of sciences, December 201...
Go to Profile#19082
Lalu Prasad Yadav
#19093
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Lalu Prasad Yadav is an Indian politician and president of the Rashtriya Janata Dal . He is a former Chief Minister of Bihar , a former Railway Minister of India , and a former Member of Parliament of the Lok Sabha.
Go to Profile#19083
Amy S. Greenberg
#19094
Overall Influence
Amy S. Greenberg is an American historian, and Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Women's Studies, at Pennsylvania State University. Life She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and earned her PhD at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#19084
Caroline Garcia
#19095
Overall Influence
1993 - Present (33 years)
Caroline Garcia is a French professional tennis player. She has a career high ranking of world No. 4 in singles and world No. 2 in doubles. Garcia is the 2022 WTA Finals – Singles champion. She is also a two-time major champion in doubles, having won the French Open women's doubles title in 2016 and 2022 partnering Kristina Mladenovic. The pair were also runners-up at the 2016 US Open, and reached the semifinals at the 2017 Australian Open. Garcia reached her career-high doubles ranking of world No. 2 in October 2016, and has won eight doubles titles on the WTA Tour, including the 2016 Madrid Open.
Go to Profile#19085
Joel Brind
#19096
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Joel Lewis Brind is a professor of human biology and endocrinology at Baruch College, City University of New York and a leading advocate of the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis, which posits that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. This idea is rejected by mainstream medical professional organizations and there is overwhelming evidence in the peer-reviewed medical literature debunking it. Brind is openly contemptuous of mainstream medical professional organizations and journals, accusing them of conducting a deliberate cover-up with the goal of "protecting the abortion industry."
Go to Profile#19086
William Summer Johnson
#19097
Overall Influence
1913 - 1995 (82 years)
William Summer Johnson was an American chemist and teacher. From 1940 to 1958, Johnson was an instructor and then professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 1958, he moved to Stanford University in California where he spent the remainder of his scientific career. He did important research in the artificial production of steroids and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1987.
Go to Profile#19087
Chris Baldick
#19098
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Professor Chris Baldick is a British academic who teaches at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has worked in the fields of literary criticism, literary theory, literary history and literary terminology. He was previously Senior Lecturer in English at Edge Hill College of Higher Education in Ormskirk.
Go to Profile#19088
Joshua A. Fogel
#19099
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Joshua A. Fogel is an American-Canadian Sinologist, historian, and translator who specializes in the history of modern China, especially focusing on the cultural and political relations between China and Japan. He has held a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair at York University in Toronto since 2005. Before that he taught at Harvard University and the University of California, Santa Barbara . He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada .
Go to Profile#19089
Arun Kumar Basak
#19100
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Arun Kumar Basak is a Bangladeshi physicist. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics, University of Rajshahi. Early life and education Basak was born in Radhanagor of Pabna town, Bengal Presidency, British India to parents Haripada Basak and Usha Rani Basak. Basak matriculated in 1957 securing First Division from R.M. Academy. He secured the second position in the merit list in the Intermediate Science Examination in 1959 from Govt. Edward College. He was placed in First Class with the first position in the B.Sc. examination from Rajshahi College in 1961. In M.Sc. Examination ...
Go to Profile#19090
David Bartholomae
#19101
Overall Influence
1947 - 2023 (76 years)
David John Bartholomae was an American scholar in composition studies. He received his PhD from Rutgers University in 1975 and was a Professor of English and former Chair of the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh. His primary research interests are in composition, literacy, and pedagogy, and his work engages scholarship in rhetoric and in American literature/American Studies. His articles and essays have appeared in publications such as PMLA, Critical Quarterly, and College Composition and Communication.
Go to Profile#19091
Dennis Allison
#19102
Overall Influence
Dennis Allison is a lecturer at Stanford University, a position he has held since 1976. Allison was a founding member of the People's Computer Company. Allison in 1975 wrote a specification for a microcomputer interpreter for the BASIC programming language which became known as Tiny Basic. Allison was urged to create the standard by Bob Albrecht of the Homebrew Computer Club who had seen BASIC on minicomputers and felt it would be the perfect match for new machines like the MITS Altair 8800, which had been released in January 1975. This design did not support text strings or floating point arithmetic, thus only using integer arithmetic.
Go to Profile#19092
Richard Ferber
#19103
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Richard Ferber is a physician and the director of The Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders, at Children's Hospital Boston. He has been researching sleep and sleep disorders in children for over 30 years. He is best known for his methods—popularly called Ferberization—that purports to teach infants to learn how to fall asleep on their own, which are described in his book Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems .
Go to Profile#19093
Theodor Estermann
#19104
Overall Influence
1902 - 1991 (89 years)
Theodor Estermann was a German-born American mathematician, working in the field of analytic number theory. The Estermann measure, a measure of the central symmetry of a convex set in the Euclidean plane, is named after him.
Go to Profile#19094
Maurice Natanson
#19105
Overall Influence
1924 - 1996 (72 years)
Maurice Alexander Natanson was an American philosopher "who helped introduce the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Edmund Husserl in the United States". He was a student of Alfred Schutz at the New School for Social Research and helped popularize Schutz' work from the 1960s onward.
Go to Profile#19095
Ronald Enroth
#19106
Overall Influence
1938 - 2023 (85 years)
Ronald M. Enroth was an American professor of sociology at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, and an evangelical Christian author of books concerning what he defined as "cults" and "new religious movements" and important figure in the Christian countercult movement.
Go to Profile#19096
Dave O'Brien
#19107
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
David O'Brien , nicknamed "OB", is an American sportscaster who is a lead play-by-play announcer on the New England Sports Network for telecasts of the Boston Red Sox of Major League Baseball , and for college football and college basketball games aired on the ESPN Inc.-owned ACC Network. He has previously broadcast for MLB's Atlanta Braves, Florida Marlins, and New York Mets, and has announced other sports including basketball, football, and soccer.
Go to Profile#19097
Ellen Schrecker
#19108
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Ellen Wolf Schrecker is an American professor emerita of American history at Yeshiva University. She has received the Frederick Ewen Academic Freedom Fellowship at the Tamiment Library at NYU. She is known primarily for her work in the history of McCarthyism. Historian Ronald Radosh has described her as "the dean of the anti-anti-Communist historians."
Go to Profile#19098
Bernard Slicher van Bath
#19109
Overall Influence
1910 - 2004 (94 years)
Bernard Hendrik Slicher, since 1933 calling himself Slicher van Bath was a Dutch social historian, best known internationally for his 1960 work The Agrarian History of Western Europe, AD 500–1850 and regarded as the initiator of quantitative social history in his native country.
Go to Profile#19099
Alain Testart
#19110
Overall Influence
1945 - 2013 (68 years)
Alain Testart was a French social anthropologist, emeritus research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and member of the Laboratory for Social Anthropology at the Collège de France. He specialized in primitives societies and comparative anthropology. His research themes included: slavery, marriage arrangements, funeral practices, gift and exchange, typology of societies, the political, the evolution of the societies, and questions of interpretation in prehistoric archaeology.
Go to Profile#19100
David Leigh
#19111
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
