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
#19351
Myer Feldman
#19362
Overall Influence
1914 - 2007 (93 years)
Myer Feldman, known as Mike Feldman , was an American political aide in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Hailing from Philadelphia, Feldman was a trained lawyer and alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania, which he attended on a scholarship. He served in the Army Air Force during the Second World War prior to joining Kennedy's campaign trail in 1957.
Go to Profile#19352
Anthony Mamo
#19363
Overall Influence
1909 - 2008 (99 years)
Sir Anthony Joseph Mamo, was the first president of Malta and previously served as the last Governor-General of the State of Malta before the country became a republic. He was also the first Maltese citizen to be appointed Governor-General, and before independence, briefly served as acting Governor.
Go to Profile#19353
Charles Grier Sellers
#19364
Overall Influence
1923 - 2021 (98 years)
Charles Grier Sellers Jr. was an American historian. Sellers was best known for his book The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846, which offered a new interpretation of the economic, social, and political events taking place during the United States' Market Revolution.
Go to Profile#19354
Samoa Joe
#19365
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Nuufolau Joel "Joe" Seanoa , better known by the ring name Samoa Joe, is an American professional wrestler. He is currently performing for All Elite Wrestling and for AEW's sister promotion, Ring of Honor .
Go to Profile#19355
Robert C. James
#19366
Overall Influence
1918 - 2004 (86 years)
Robert Clarke James was an American mathematician who worked in functional analysis. Biography James attended UCLA as an undergraduate, where his father was a professor. As a devout Quaker, he was a conscientious objector during World War II.
Go to Profile#19356
Miller Puckette
#19367
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Miller Smith Puckette is the associate director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts as well as a professor of music at the University of California, San Diego, where he has been since 1994. Puckette is known for authoring Max, a graphical development environment for music and multimedia synthesis, which he developed while working at IRCAM in the late 1980s. He is also the author of Pure Data , a real-time performing platform for audio, video and graphical programming language for the creation of interactive computer music and multimedia works, written in the 1990s with input ...
Go to Profile#19357
David P. Farrington
#19368
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
#19358
Andrew Flintoff
#19369
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff is an English television and radio presenter, former international cricketer, and coach for the England cricket squad. Flintoff played all forms of the game and was one of the sport's leading all-rounderss, a fast bowler, middle-order batsman, and slip fielder. He was consistently rated by the ICC as being among the top international all-rounders in both ODI and Test cricket.
Go to Profile#19359
Hassan Hanafi
#19370
Overall Influence
1935 - 2021 (86 years)
Hassan Hanafi was a professor and chaired the philosophy department at Cairo University. He was a leading authority on modern Islam. As a young man motivated by a revolutionary political activism, Hanafi associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Later Hanafi studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. From 1967, he was a professor of philosophy in Cairo, as well as a visiting professor at universities in France, the United States, Belgium, Kuwait and Germany. He has been categorized as among "the big names" of the post-1967 Arab intellectual tradition.
Go to Profile#19360
Peter Walker
#19371
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Peter Walker is an American landscape architect and the founder of PWP Landscape Architecture. Early life and education Walker grew up in California, where he attended the University of California, Berkeley. Walker started out studying journalism but quickly changed his field and received a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture in 1955. He did graduate studies at the University of Illinois, where he studied under Stanley White.
Go to Profile#19361
Robert Allen Phillips
#19372
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Robert Phillips is the George R. Gardiner Professor in Business Ethics and Professor of Strategic Management and Public Policy at the Schulich School of Business; York University. In 2016–17, he was the Gourlay Visiting Professor of Ethics in Business. He has also taught at the University of Richmond, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business , the University of San Diego, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.
Go to Profile#19362
Gordon Neufeld
#19373
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Gordon Neufeld is a developmental psychologist from Vancouver, British Columbia. He is the author of the book Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers . Early life During the 1970s, Neufeld completed an undergraduate degree from the University of Winnipeg and graduate degrees from the University of British Columbia.
Go to Profile#19363
Steven M. Zeitels
#19374
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Steven Marc Zeitels is the Eugene B. Casey Professor of Laryngeal Surgery at Harvard Medical School and the Director of Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation . He specializes in diseases and disorders of the throat, voice, airway, and larynx. His contributions to voice and laryngeal surgery are highly recognized in the USA and throughout the world. In 2004, the first endowed Chair in Laryngeal Surgery at Harvard Medical School was created for him while he re-established a Harvard Laryngeal Surgery service at the MGH, which had not been present since the 1920s.
Go to Profile#19364
Dolph Lundgren
#19375
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Hans "Dolph" Lundgren is a Swedish actor, filmmaker and martial artist. Born in Spånga, Sweden, Lundgren became interested in martial arts at a young age. This would lead him to hold the rank of 4th dan black belt in Kyokushin karate and become European champion in 1980 and 1981. In 1982, while studying to get a master's degree, he became the boyfriend of singer Grace Jones. With her he moved to New York City and started to take acting classes. In 1985, Lundgren had a breakthrough role playing the lead villain as an imposing Soviet boxer named Ivan Drago in Sylvester Stallone's Rocky IV.
Go to Profile#19365
Bun B
#19376
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Bernard James Freeman , known professionally as Bun B, is an American rapper. He is best known as one half of the southern rap duo UGK , a group he formed in 1987 alongside Pimp C. Aside from his work with UGK, Bun B has released five solo albums, including 2010's Trill OG, which received the rare 5-mic rating from The Source.
Go to Profile#19366
Eric Klinenberg
#19377
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Eric M. Klinenberg is an American sociologist and a scholar of urban studies, culture, and media. He is currently Helen Gould Shepard Professor in Social Science and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. Klinenberg is best known for his contributions as a public sociologist.
Go to Profile#19367
Jacques Stern
#19378
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jacques Stern is a cryptographer, currently a professor at the École Normale Supérieure. He received the 2006 CNRS Gold medal. His notable work includes the cryptanalysis of numerous encryption and signature schemes, the design of the Pointcheval–Stern signature algorithm, the Naccache–Stern cryptosystem and Naccache–Stern knapsack cryptosystem, and the block ciphers CS-Cipher, DFC, and xmx. He also contributed to the cryptanalysis of the SFLASH signature scheme.
Go to Profile#19368
Sohrab Rohani
#19379
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Sohrab Rohani is a professor and former chairman of the University of Western Ontario's Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering. His main areas of research are crystallization of pharmaceuticals and process control.
Go to Profile#19369
Wojciech Samotij
#19380
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Wojciech Samotij is a Polish mathematician and an associate professor at the School of Mathematical Sciences at the Tel Aviv University. He is known for his work in combinatorics, additive number theory, Ramsey theory and graph theory.
Go to Profile#19370
Allan Schore
#19381
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Allan N. Schore is an American psychologist and researcher in the field of neuropsychology. Schore works at the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, and at the UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development.
Go to Profile#19371
Stanley Elkin
#19382
Overall Influence
1930 - 1995 (65 years)
Stanley Lawrence Elkin was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. His extravagant, satirical fiction revolves around American consumerism, popular culture, and male-female relationships.
Go to Profile#19372
Geoffrey Wawro
#19383
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Geoffrey Wawro is an American Professor of Military History at the University of North Texas, and Director of the UNT Military History Center. His primary area of emphasis is modern and contemporary military history, from the French Revolution to the present.
Go to Profile#19373
Arthur Stinchcombe
#19384
Overall Influence
1933 - 2018 (85 years)
Arthur Leonard Stinchcombe was an American sociologist. Stinchcombe was born on May 16, 1933, in Clare County, Michigan, and attended Central Michigan University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics. He then pursued graduate study in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, earning a doctorate.
Go to Profile#19374
Mignon Fogarty
#19385
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Mignon Fogarty is a former faculty member in journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a former science writer who produces an educational podcast about English grammar and usage titled Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, which was named one of the best podcasts of 2007 by iTunes. She is also the founder of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcasting network.
Go to Profile#19375
Manel Esteller
#19386
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Manel Esteller graduated in medicine from the University of Barcelona in 1992, where he also obtained his doctorate, specializing in the molecular genetics of endometrial carcinoma, in 1996. He was an invited researcher at the School of Biological and Medical Sciences at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, during which time his research interests focused on the molecular genetics of inherited breast cancer.
Go to Profile#19376
Ira Glasser
#19387
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Ira Saul Glasser served as the fifth executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1978 to 2001. His life was the subject of the 2020 documentary Mighty Ira. Early years Ira Glasser was born on April 18, 1938, at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. He earned a graduate degree in mathematics from Ohio State University.
Go to Profile#19377
Bruce William Stillman
#19388
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Bruce William Stillman, AO, FAA, FRS is a biochemist and cancer researcher who has served as the Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory since 1994 and President since 2003. He also served as the Director of its NCI-designated Cancer Center for 25 years from 1992 to 2016. During his leadership, CSHL has been ranked as the No. 1 institution in molecular biology and genetics research by Thomson Reuters. Stillman's research focuses on how chromosomes are duplicated in human cells and in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae; the mechanisms that ensure accurate inheritance of genetic material from one generation to the next; and how missteps in this process lead to cancer.
Go to Profile#19378
Naum Z. Shor
#19389
Overall Influence
1937 - 2006 (69 years)
Naum Zuselevich Shor was a Soviet and Ukrainian mathematician specializing in optimization. He made significant contributions to nonlinear and stochastic programming, numerical techniques for non-smooth optimization, discrete optimization problems, matrix optimization, dual quadratic bounds in multi-extremal programming problems.
Go to Profile#19379
Kevin Outterson
#19390
Overall Influence
Kevin Outterson is a lawyer, a professor of law and the N. Neal Pike Scholar in Health and Disability Law at Boston University . He is also the founding executive director and principal investigator of Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator , a global non-profit partnership that supports companies developing new antibiotics, diagnostics, vaccines and other products to address drug-resistant bacterial infections. CARB-X is funded by the United States, United Kingdom and German governments, Wellcome and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2022, CARB-X received a new commitment of funding from BARDA and Wellcome of up to $370 million.
Go to Profile#19380
Michael Healy
#19391
Overall Influence
1923 - 2016 (93 years)
Michael John Romer Healy was a British statistician known for his contributions to statistical computing, auxology, laboratory statistics and quality control, and methods for analysing longitudinal data, among other areas. He was professor of medical statistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine from 1977 until his retirement. The Royal Statistical Society awarded him the Guy Medal in Silver in 1979 and Gold in 1999, and he also acted as chairman of its medical section. He was the author or co-author of three books and over 200 scientific papers.
Go to Profile#19381
Svante Janson
#19392
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Carl Svante Janson is a Swedish mathematician. A member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences since 1994, Janson has been the chaired professor of mathematics at Uppsala University since 1987. In mathematical analysis, Janson has publications in functional analysis and probability theory. In mathematical statistics, Janson has made contributions to the theory of U-statistics. In combinatorics, Janson has publications in probabilistic combinatorics, particularly random graphs and in the analysis of algorithms: In the study of random graphs, Janson introduced U-statistics and the Hoeffding...
Go to Profile#19382
Benjamin R. Teitelbaum
#19393
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Benjamin Raphael Teitelbaum is an American ethnographer and political commentator. An associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Colorado, Boulder and former Head of Nordic Studies at the same institution. He is best known for his ethnographic research into far-right groups in Scandinavia and commentary on immigration, and is frequently cited as an expert in Scandinavian and American media.
Go to Profile#19383
John Lee Hooker
#19394
Overall Influence
1917 - 2001 (84 years)
John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues that he developed in Detroit. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie. Hooker was ranked 35 in Rolling Stones 2015 list of 100 greatest guitarists.
Go to Profile#19384
Bin Yu
#19395
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Bin Yu is a Chinese-American statistician. She is currently Chancellor's Professor in the Departments of Statistics and of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#19385
Scott Cutlip
#19396
Overall Influence
1915 - 2000 (85 years)
Scott Munson Cutlip was a pioneer in public relations education. Biography Cutlip was born in Buckhannon, West Virginia, the son of Okey Scott Cutlip and Janet Munson. He was raised by his uncle George Carper Reger. Cutlip started in newspapers with the Buckhannon Record in 1933. Moving to Morgantown, West Virginia in 1935, he worked for the West Virginia Newspaper Publishing Company for three years. In 1939 he obtained a bachelor's degree in journalism and political science from Syracuse University. His career in public relations began in 1941 with the West Virginia State Road Commission. In...
Go to Profile#19386
Richard Baum
#19397
Overall Influence
1940 - 2012 (72 years)
Richard Dennis Baum was an American China watcher, professor emeritus of political science at UCLA, and former director emeritus of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, noted for his many academic works on Chinese politics. Baum credited Rhoda Sutherland of Oxford University with inspiring his interest in linguistics.
Go to Profile#19387
Asha Bhosle
#19398
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Asha Bhosle is an Indian playback singer, entrepreneur, actress and television personality who predominantly works in Indian cinema. Known for her versatility, she has been described in the media as one of the greatest and most influential singers in Hindi cinema. In her career spanning over eight decades she has recorded songs for films and albums in various Indian languages and received several accolades including two National Film Awards, four BFJA Awards, eighteen Maharashtra State Film Awards, nine Filmfare Awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award and a record seven Filmfare Awards for Best Female Playback Singer, in addition to two Grammy nominations.
Go to Profile#19388
Alexander Kazhdan
#19399
Overall Influence
1922 - 1997 (75 years)
Alexander Petrovich Kazhdan was a Soviet-American Byzantinist. Among his publications was the three-volume Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, a comprehensive encyclopedic work containing over than 5,000 entries.
Go to Profile#19389
Manny Alvarez
#19400
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Manuel Alvarez is a Cuban-American obstetrician-gynecologist who has appeared on Fox News Channel shows such as America's Newsroom, Fox & Friends, Happening Now, Varney & Co., Money with Melissa, The O'Reilly Factor, The Kelly File, and Fox News Weekend, as well as on the local affiliate, WNYW-Fox 5 News. He currently serves as chairman of the department of obstetrics/gynecology at Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, New Jersey, and runs AskDrManny.com out of its headquarters in Hoboken, New Jersey. Alvarez is an outspoken opponent of the Patient Protection and Affordable Car...
Go to Profile#19390
Elisabeth Zinser
#19401
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Elisabeth Ann Zinser is a retired university president, most recently at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon. Previously she was the chancellor of the Lexington campus of the University of Kentucky , and the first female president of the University of Idaho, serving from 1989–95 in Moscow, Idaho.
Go to Profile#19391
Patricia Horoho
#19402
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Patricia D. Horoho is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served as the 43rd Surgeon General of the United States Army and Commanding General of the United States Army Medical Command. She was the second female Nurse Corps officer to hold the title of Army surgeon general but the first to be appointed and hold the position for a full term. In 2016, she was inducted into the United States Army Women's Foundation Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#19392
Gyula O. H. Katona
#19403
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Gyula O. H. Katona is a Hungarian mathematician known for his work in combinatorial set theory, and especially for the Kruskal–Katona theorem and his beautiful and elegant proof of the Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem in which he discovered a new method, now called Katona's cycle method. Since then, this method has become a powerful tool in proving many interesting results in extremal set theory. He is affiliated with the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#19393
John R. Klauder
#19404
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
John Rider Klauder is an American professor of physics and mathematics, and author of over 250 published articles on physics. He graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 1953 with a Bachelor of Science. He received his PhD in 1959 from Princeton University where he was a student of John Archibald Wheeler.
Go to Profile#19394
James Binney
#19405
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
James Jeffrey Binney, FRS, FInstP is a British astrophysicist. He is a professor of physics at the University of Oxford and former head of the Sub-Department of Theoretical Physics as well as an Emeritus Fellow of Merton College. Binney is known principally for his work in theoretical galactic and extragalactic astrophysics, though he has made a number of contributions to areas outside of astrophysics as well.
Go to Profile#19395
Kirk Hammett
#19406
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Kirk Lee Hammett is an American musician who has been the lead guitarist of heavy metal band Metallica since 1983. Prior to joining Metallica, he co-formed the thrash metal band Exodus in 1979. In 2003, Hammett, along with bandmate James Hetfield, was ranked 23rd on Rolling Stones list of Greatest Guitarists of All Time. In 2009, Hammett was ranked number 15 in Joel McIver's book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists.
Go to Profile#19396
Martin Daly
#19407
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Martin Daly is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and author of many influential papers on evolutionary psychology. His current research topics include an evolutionary perspective on risk-taking and interpersonal violence, especially male-male conflict and family violence. He and his wife, the late Margo Wilson, were formerly editors-in-chief of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior and presidents of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society.
Go to Profile#19397
Reuben Fine
#19408
Overall Influence
1914 - 1993 (79 years)
Reuben C. Fine was an American chess player, psychologist, university professor, and author of many books on both chess and psychology. He was one of the strongest chess players in the world from the mid-1930s until his retirement from chess in 1951. He was granted the title of International Grandmaster by FIDE in 1950, when titles were introduced.
Go to Profile#19398
Chi-fu Huang
#19409
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Chi-fu Huang is a private investor, a retired hedge fund manager, and a former finance academic. He has made contributions to the theory of financial economics, writing on dynamic general equilibrium theory, intertemporal utility theory, and the theory of individual consumption and portfolio decisions.
Go to Profile#19399
Justin Tornow
#19410
Overall Influence
Justin Tornow is an American dancer, choreographer, dance scholar, and dance teacher. She is the founder and artistic director of COMPANY, a co-founder and co-organizer of Durham Independent Dance Artists, former Board President of the North Carolina Dance Alliance, and producer of the PROMPTS art series in Durham, North Carolina. Tornow is trained in Cunningham technique and is a New York Public Library Research Fellow in Cunningham dance pedagogy. She serves on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Elon University, and the American Dance Festival.
Go to Profile#19400
Joseph Mifsud
#19411
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Joseph Mifsud is a British/Maltese academic, who had dual citizenship in the United Kingdom and Malta. In 2016, he became involved with George Papadopoulos, an advisor to the Donald Trump presidential campaign, and was later accused of being a link between that campaign and Russia. In 2018, he was described as missing, and an Italian court listed his location as "residence unknown". According to media reports, he was in Rome as of April 2019.
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