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
#19501
David I. Cleland
#19512
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
David Ira Cleland was an American engineer, Educator and professor emeritus in the School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, and was recognized as the "Father of Project Management". Biography Cleland received his bachelor's degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1954, his MBA from the University of Pittsburgh School of Business in 1958, and his Ph.D. from Ohio State University. He started working at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio as a project manager in the development of weapon systems. He was also very active in Project Management at the Air Force Institute of Technology .
Go to Profile#19502
Rolf Steininger
#19513
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Rolf Steininger is a German historian and former university professor for contemporary history. Steininger studied English language and literature and history at the universities of Marburg, Göttingen, Munich, Lancaster and Cardiff. He received a doctor's degree in 1971 and habilitated at Leibniz University Hannover in 1976. In 1980, he became a professor in Hannover. In 1983 he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Innsbruck.
Go to Profile#19503
John W. Kirklin
#19514
Overall Influence
1917 - 2004 (87 years)
John Webster Kirklin was an American cardiothoracic surgeon, general surgeon, prolific author and medical educator who is best remembered for refining John Gibbon's heart–lung bypass machine via a pump-oxygenator to make feasible under direct vision, routine open-heart surgery and repairs of some congenital heart defects. The success of these operations was combined with his other advances, including teamwork and developments in establishing the correct diagnosis before surgery and progress in computerized intensive care unit monitoring after open heart surgery.
Go to Profile#19504
Chris Abani
#19515
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Christopher Abani is a Nigerian-American and Los Angeles- based author. He says he is part of a new generation of Nigerian writers working to convey to an English-speaking audience the experience of those born and raised in "that troubled African nation".
Go to Profile#19505
Thomas Tymoczko
#19516
Overall Influence
1943 - 1996 (53 years)
A. Thomas Tymoczko was a philosopher specializing in logic and the philosophy of mathematics. He taught at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts from 1971 until his death from stomach cancer in 1996, aged 52.
Go to Profile#19506
Michael Steinberg
#19517
Overall Influence
1928 - 2009 (81 years)
Carl Michael Alfred Steinberg was an American music critic and author who specialized in classical music. He was best known, according to San Francisco Chronicle music critic Joshua Kosman, for "the illuminating, witty and often deeply personal notes he wrote for the San Francisco Symphony's program booklets, beginning in 1979." He contributed several entries to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, wrote articles for music journals and magazine, notes for CDs, and published a number of books on music, both collected published annotations and new writings.
Go to Profile#19507
Stanley Kramer
#19518
Overall Influence
1913 - 2001 (88 years)
Stanley Earl Kramer was an American film director and producer, responsible for making many of Hollywood's most famous "message films" and a liberal movie icon. As an independent producer and director, he brought attention to topical social issues that most studios avoided. Among the subjects covered in his films were racism , nuclear war , greed , creationism vs. evolution , and the causes and effects of fascism . His other films included High Noon , The Caine Mutiny , and Ship of Fools .
Go to Profile#19508
Sarit Kraus
#19519
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Sarit Kraus is a professor of computer science at the Bar-Ilan University in Israel. She was named the 2020-2021 ACM Athena Lecturer recognising her contributions to artificial intelligence, notably to multiagent systems, human-agent interaction, autonomous agents and nonmonotonic reasoning, in addition to exemplary service and leadership in these fields.
Go to Profile#19509
Zeynep Korkmaz
#19520
Overall Influence
1922 - Present (104 years)
Zeynep Korkmaz is a Turkish scholar and dialectologist. Early life and education Korkmaz was born in Nevşehir on 5 July 1921. Her parents are Yusuf Hüsnü Dengi and Şefika Dengi. She has an elder sister and a brother.
Go to Profile#19510
Jean-Pierre Filiu
#19521
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Jean-Pierre Filiu is a French professor of Middle East studies at Sciences Po, Paris School of International Affairs, an orientalist and an arabist. Life and career Before joining Sciences Po in 2006, Jean-Pierre Filiu was a career-diplomat who served as a junior officer in Jordan and the US, before becoming the French Deputy Chief of Mission in Syria and in Tunisia . Filiu was also diplomatic adviser to the French minister of Interior , the minister of Defense and the Prime Minister . He was one of the ten independent experts that President François Hollande designated to contribute to th...
Go to Profile#19511
Steven T. Seagle
#19522
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Steven T. Seagle is an American writer who works in the comic book, television, film, live theater, video game and animation industries. He is best known for his graphic novel memoir It's a Bird... , and as part of his Man of Action Studios which created the animated Cartoon Network series Ben 10.
Go to Profile#19512
James Blaylock
#19523
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
James Paul Blaylock is an American fantasy author. He is noted for a distinctive, humorous style, as well as being one of the pioneers of the steampunk genre of science fiction. Blaylock has cited Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens as his inspirations.
Go to Profile#19513
Agnes Gund
#19524
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Agnes Gund is an American philanthropist and arts patron, collector of modern and contemporary art, and arts education and social justice advocate. She is President Emerita and Life Trustee of the Museum of Modern Art and Chairman of its International Council. She is a board member of MoMA PS1. In 1977, in response to New York City's fiscal crisis that led to budget cuts that virtually eliminated arts education in public schools, Gund founded Studio in a School, a nonprofit organization that engages professional artists as art instructors in public schools and community-based organizations t...
Go to Profile#19514
Olga Broumas
#19525
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Olga Broumas is a Greek poet, resident in the United States. She has been Poet-in-Residence and Director of Creative Writing at Brandeis University since 1995. Biography Born and raised on the island of Syros, Broumas secured a fellowship through the Fulbright program to study in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania. There, she earned her bachelor's degree in architecture. She later went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Oregon.
Go to Profile#19515
Fiona Graham
#19526
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Fiona Caroline Graham was an Australian anthropologist working as a geisha in Japan. She made her debut as a geisha in 2007 in the Asakusa district of Tokyo under the name Sayuki as a part of her anthropological study, and was working in the Fukagawa district of Tokyo.
Go to Profile#19516
Alaric Hall
#19527
Overall Influence
Alaric Hall is a British philologist who is an associate professor of English and director of the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds. He has, since 2009, been the editor of the academic journal Leeds Studies in English and its successor Leeds Medieval Studies.
Go to Profile#19517
Paul Anastas
#19528
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Paul T. Anastas is an American scientist, inventor, author, entrepreneur, professor, and public servant. He is the Director of Yale University's Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering, Previously he served as the Science Advisor to the United States Environmental Protection Agency as well as the Agency's Assistant Administrator for Research and Development, appointed by President Barack Obama.
Go to Profile#19518
Margo Wilson
#19529
Overall Influence
1942 - 2009 (67 years)
Margo Wilson was a Canadian evolutionary psychologist. She was a professor of psychology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, noted for her pioneering work in the field of evolutionary psychology and her contributions to the study of violence.
Go to Profile#19519
John Heath-Stubbs
#19530
Overall Influence
1918 - 2006 (88 years)
John Francis Alexander Heath-Stubbs was an English poet and translator. He is known for verse influenced by classical myths, and for a long Arthurian poem, "Artorius" . Biography and works Heath-Stubbs was born in Streatham, London. The family later lived in Hampstead. His parents were Francis Heath-Stubbs, a non-practising, independently wealthy solicitor, and his wife Edith Louise Sara, a concert pianist under her maiden name, Edie Marr. His boyhood was largely spent near the New Forest.
Go to Profile#19520
Alexis Jay
#19531
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Alexandrina Henderson Farmer Jay, OBE is a British academic. She is visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde and the independent chair of the Centre for Excellence for Children's Care and Protection .
Go to Profile#19521
Quavo
#19532
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
Quavious Keyate Marshall , known professionally as Quavo , is an American rapper. He is best known as the frontman of the hip hop group Migos, being the uncle of late member Takeoff. Outside of Migos, Quavo has been featured on several Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hits, including Post Malone's "Congratulations"—which was certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America —as well as DJ Khaled's "No Brainer" and "I'm the One", the latter of which peaked at number one on the chart. In 2018, he released his debut solo album Quavo Huncho, which peaked at number 2 on the Billboard 200.
Go to Profile#19522
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa
#19533
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Marcelo Nuno Duarte Rebelo de Sousa is a Portuguese politician and academic. He is the 20th and current president of Portugal, since 9 March 2016. He is a member of the Social Democratic Party, though he suspended his party membership for the duration of his presidency. Rebelo de Sousa has previously served as a government minister, parliamentarian in the Assembly of the Portuguese Republic, legal scholar, journalist, political analyst, law professor, and pundit.
Go to Profile#19523
John Wozencraft
#19534
Overall Influence
1925 - 2009 (84 years)
John McReynolds "Jack" Wozencraft was an electrical engineer and information theorist, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of the pioneers of coding theory, Wozencraft developed the sequential decoding techniques for convolutional codes that made error-free communication possible with relatively low computing power.
Go to Profile#19524
Dennis Choi
#19535
Overall Influence
Dennis W. Choi is an American neurologist who was on the faculty of Stanford University in the 1980s, and served as the Jones Professor and Head of Neurology at Washington University in St. Louis during the 1990s, leaving in January 2001 to work in industry . While a faculty member at Washington University School of Medicine, Choi was a key contributor to research on glutamate-mediated toxicity as a mechanism of neural injury in stroke and traumatic brain injury.
Go to Profile#19525
Ioan Petru Culianu
#19536
Overall Influence
1950 - 1991 (41 years)
Ioan Petru Culianu or Couliano was a Romanian historian of religion, culture, and ideas, a philosopher and political essayist, and a short story writer. He served as professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago from 1988 to his death, and had previously taught the history of Romanian culture at the University of Groningen.
Go to Profile#19526
Henry J. Abraham
#19537
Overall Influence
1921 - 2020 (99 years)
Henry Julian Abraham was a German-born American scholar on the judiciary and constitutional law. He was James Hart Professor of Government Emeritus at the University of Virginia. He was the author of 13 books, most in multiple editions, and more than 100 articles on the U.S. Supreme Court, judicial appointments, judicial process, and civil rights and liberties.
Go to Profile#19527
Norman Margolus
#19538
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Norman H. Margolus is a Canadian-American physicist and computer scientist, known for his work on cellular automata and reversible computing. He is a research affiliate with the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#19528
Gordon Agnew
#19539
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Gordon B. Agnew is a Canadian engineering professor at the University of Waterloo. Agnew's primary research interests are in the fields of encryption and data security. Education Agnew earned a B.A.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo in 1978 and a Ph.D. in 1982.
Go to Profile#19529
Jeremy Butterfield
#19540
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Jeremy Nicholas Butterfield FBA is a philosopher at the University of Cambridge, noted particularly for his work on philosophical aspects of quantum theory, relativity theory and classical mechanics.
Go to Profile#19530
Caroline Benn
#19541
Overall Influence
1926 - 2000 (74 years)
Caroline Middleton DeCamp Benn , formerly Viscountess Stansgate, was an educationalist and writer, and wife of the British Labour politician Tony Benn . Biography Benn was born Caroline Middleton DeCamp in Cincinnati, Ohio, the eldest daughter of Anne Hetherington and James Milton DeCamp, a Cincinnati lawyer. Educated at Vassar College and the University of Cincinnati , she travelled to the United Kingdom in 1948 to study at Oxford University and voted for Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party candidate in that year's American Presidential election. She gained an English MA on Jacobean drama ...
Go to Profile#19531
Josef Paldus
#19542
Overall Influence
1935 - 2023 (88 years)
Josef Paldus, was a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Josef Paldus became associate professor at the University of Waterloo after emigration to Canada from Czechoslovakia in 1968. In 1975 he was promoted to full professor at this university, and he retired in 2001.
Go to Profile#19532
Paula Jones
#19543
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Paula Corbin Jones is an American civil servant. A former Arkansas state employee, Jones sued United States President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment in 1994. In the initial lawsuit, Jones cited Clinton for sexual harassment at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas on May 8, 1991. Following a series of civil suits and appeals through the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals from May 1994 to January 1996, Clinton v. Jones eventually reached the United States Supreme Court on May 27, 1997. The case was later settled on November 13, 1998.
Go to Profile#19533
Pasuk Phongpaichit
#19544
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Pasuk Phongpaichit is a Thai economist. A professor at Chulalongkorn University, she is the author of several books on corruption in Thailand. Pasuk earned BA and MA degrees in economics at Monash University in Australia, and received her PhD at Cambridge University in England. Her books include A History of Thailand, Thaksin: The Business of Politics in Thailand, and Thailand's Crisis , and Guns, Girls, Gambling, Ganja .
Go to Profile#19534
Makhdoom Ali Khan
#19545
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Makhdoom Ali Khan , is a practising Senior Advocate Supreme Court. Makhdoom Ali Khan is a former Attorney General of Pakistan, former chairman Pakistan Bar Council, former member of the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan, former board member of the Federal Judicial Academy of Pakistan and a former board member of the Sindh Judicial Academy. He is a serving Member on the Governing Board of the British Pakistan Law Council, an Officer of the Board of the Forum for International Conciliation and Arbitration , a member of the Board of Trustees of the Dubai International Arbitration Centre, a m...
Go to Profile#19535
Eino Jutikkala
#19546
Overall Influence
1907 - 2006 (99 years)
Eino Kaarlo Ilmari Jutikkala , until 1931 Rinne, was a Finnish historian, and professor of history at the University of Helsinki from 1950 to 1974. He had an exceptionally long and prolific career, and is considered one of the most important Finnish historians of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#19536
P. N. Dhar
#19547
Overall Influence
1919 - 2012 (93 years)
Prithvi Nath Dhar was an Indian economist and the head of Indira Gandhi's secretariat and one of her closest advisers. Early life and career P. N. Dhar was born into a Kashmiri Pandit family on 1919 to Dr. Vishnu Hakim and Radha Hakim. His wife was the singer-writer Sheila Dhar. He attended Tyndale Biscoe School in Srinagar, India, and then studied economics at the Hindu College of the University of Delhi.
Go to Profile#19537
Mark Sanchez
#19548
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Mark Travis John Sanchez is an American former professional football player who was a quarterback in the National Football League for 10 seasons. He played college football for the USC Trojans and was selected by the New York Jets in the first round of the 2009 NFL Draft. He is currently a color analyst for NFL coverage on Fox and Fox Sports 1.
Go to Profile#19538
Christopher Jenks
#19549
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Christopher Jenks is a British sociologist who was Vice-Chancellor of Brunel University from 2006 to 2012. He was educated at Westminster City School, the University of Surrey and the University of London . From 1971 to 1994, he taught at Goldsmiths College, University of London, rising to become Reader in Sociology. In 1995, he joined Brunel as Professor of Sociology and Pro-Warden. He was then pro-vice-chancellor from 2004 to 2006, before being appointed Vice-Chancellor of Brunel University in 2006. He retired in 2012 and was made emeritus professor.
Go to Profile#19539
Gunter Schmidt
#19550
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Gunter Schmidt is a German sexologist, psychotherapist and social psychologist. He was born in Berlin. Schmidt was the director of the centre for sexual research in the clinic of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf . He started many projects for research over sexuality and biographies. He was a director of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sexualforschung and president of International Academy of Sex Research .
Go to Profile#19540
James Heisig
#19551
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
James Wallace Heisig is a philosopher who specialises in the field of philosophy of religion. He has published a number of books on topics ranging from the notion of God in analytical psychology, the Kyoto School of Philosophy to contemporary inter-religious dialogue. His books, translations, and edited collections, which have appeared in 18 languages, currently number 90 volumes.
Go to Profile#19541
David A. Thomas
#19552
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
David Anthony Thomas is an American psychologist, expert on organizational behavior, and academic administrator who currently serves as the 12th president of Morehouse College, a historically Black men's college in Atlanta. From 2017 to 2018, he was the H. Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Thomas served at the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business as its Dean from 2011 to 2016 and as the William R. Berkley Chair and Professor of Management from 2016 to 2017.
Go to Profile#19542
Chuck Smith
#19553
Overall Influence
1927 - 2013 (86 years)
Charles Ward "Chuck" Smith was an American pastor who founded the Calvary Chapel movement. Beginning with the 25-person Costa Mesa congregation in 1965, Smith's influence now extends to "more than 1,000 churches nationwide and hundreds more overseas", some of which are among the largest churches in the United States. He has been called "one of the most influential figures in modern American Christianity." The founding of Calvary Chapel is depicted in the 2023 film Jesus Revolution, with Smith being portrayed by Kelsey Grammer.
Go to Profile#19543
Wu Liangyong
#19554
Overall Influence
1922 - Present (104 years)
Wu Liangyong is a Chinese architect and urban planner. He was a former professor in urban planning, architecture, and design. In preparation to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, he was leading the team that studied the buildings of the games. He is considered the most influential architect and urban planner in China.
Go to Profile#19544
Huajian Gao
#19555
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Huajian Gao is a Chinese-American mechanician who is widely known for his contributions to the field of solid mechanics, particularly on the micro- and nanomechanics of thin films, hierarchically structured materials, and cell-nanomaterial interactions. He is a Distinguished University Professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Walter H. Annenberg Professor Emeritus of Engineering at Brown University. He is the editor-in-chief of Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids.
Go to Profile#19545
Peter Levi
#19556
Overall Influence
1931 - 2000 (69 years)
Peter Chad Tigar Levi, FSA, FRSL was a British poet, archaeologist, Jesuit priest, travel writer, biographer, academic and prolific reviewer and critic. He was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford .
Go to Profile#19546
Kartik Chandran
#19557
Overall Influence
Kartik Chandran is an American environmental engineer at Columbia University, where he is a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering. He primarily works on the interface between environmental molecular and microbiology, environmental biotechnology and environmental engineering. The focus of his research is on elucidating the molecular microbial ecology and metabolic pathways of the microbial nitrogen cycle. Applications of his work have ranged from energy and resource efficient treatment of nitrogen containing wastewater streams, development and implementation of sustainable approaches to sanitation to novel models for resource recovery.
Go to Profile#19547
Michael Meaney
#19558
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Michael J. Meaney, CM, CQ, FRSC, is a professor at McGill University specializing in biological psychiatry, neurology, and neurosurgery, who is primarily known for his research on stress, maternal care, and gene expression. His research team has "discovered the importance of maternal care in modifying the expression of genes that regulate behavioral and neuroendocrine responses to stress, as well as hippocampal synaptic development" in animal studies. The research has implications for domestic and public policy for maternal support and its role in human disease prevention and economic health.
Go to Profile#19548
Thomas S. Hibbs
#19559
Overall Influence
Thomas S. Hibbs is an American philosopher and the 9th President of the University of Dallas, a Catholic liberal arts university. He served as president from July 1, 2019 until March 7, 2021. As of July 1, 2021 he is the J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University, where had served as dean of the honors college and distinguished professor of ethics and culture from 2003 until 2019. Hibbs' predecessor in the Rayzor Chair was the Scottish Catholic philosopher, John Haldane.
Go to Profile#19549
James Gilbert Baker
#19560
Overall Influence
1914 - 2005 (91 years)
James Gilbert Baker was an American astronomer and designer of optics systems. Biography He was born in Louisville, Kentucky to Jesse B. Baker and Hattie M. Stallard, the fourth child of that couple. He attended Louisville duPont Manual High School then majored in mathematics at the University of Louisville. During his time at the university, he became interested in astronomy and grinding his own mirrors. In 1931 he helped to form the Louisville Astronomical Society. He graduated with a B.A. in 1935.
Go to Profile#19550
H. C. Robbins Landon
#19561
Overall Influence
1926 - 2009 (83 years)
Howard Chandler Robbins Landon was an American musicologist, journalist, historian and broadcaster, best known for his work in rediscovering the huge body of neglected music by Haydn and in correcting misunderstandings about Mozart.
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