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
#19801
Lance Taylor
#19812
Overall Influence
1940 - 2022 (82 years)
Lance Jerome Taylor was an American economist who was known for his contributions to structuralist macroeconomics. He was the Arnhold Professor of International Cooperation and Development and director of the Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research
Go to Profile#19802
Rosie O'Donnell
#19813
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Roseann O'Donnell is an American comedian, television producer, actress, author, and television personality. She began her comedy career as a teenager and received her breakthrough on the television series Star Search in 1984. After a series of television and film roles that introduced her to a larger national audience, O'Donnell hosted her own syndicated daytime talk show, The Rosie O'Donnell Show, between 1996 and 2002, which won several Daytime Emmy Awards. During this period, she developed the nickname "Queen of Nice", as well as a reputation for philanthropic efforts.
Go to Profile#19803
Gary Flandro
#19814
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Gary Arnold Flandro is an American aerospace engineer who is currently the professor for the Boling Chair of Excellence in Space Propulsion at the University of Tennessee Space Institute. He is also the Vice President and Chief Engineer for Gloyer-Taylor Laboratories .
Go to Profile#19804
John E. Herbst
#19815
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
John Edward Herbst is a retired American diplomat who was the United States Ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2000 to 2003 and United States Ambassador to Ukraine from September 2003 to May 2006. Education Herbst received a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1974 and a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in 1978. He also attended the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy. Herbst was married for 37 years until her death ...
Go to Profile#19805
Harriet Creighton
#19816
Overall Influence
1909 - 2004 (95 years)
Harriet Baldwin Creighton was an American botanist, geneticist and educator. Background Born in Delavan, Illinois, Creighton graduated from Wellesley College in 1929, and went on to complete her Ph.D. at Cornell University in 1933.
Go to Profile#19806
John J. Leonard
#19817
Overall Influence
John J. Leonard is an American roboticist and Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory , Leonard is a researcher in simultaneous localization and mapping, and was the team lead for MIT's team at the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, one of the six teams to cross the finish line in the final event, placing fourth overall.
Go to Profile#19807
Augusta H. Teller
#19818
Overall Influence
1909 - 2000 (91 years)
Augusta Maria "Mici" Teller was a Hungarian-American scientist and computer programmer, involved in the development of the Metropolis algorithm. Life and career Teller was born as Auguszta Mária Harkányi in Hungary, the daughter of Ella/Gabriella and Ede Harkányi, originally Hirsch Sámuel. Her parents were Jewish, but had converted to Christianity. Known as "Mici," she and her brother, Ede, were adopted by their foster father after their biological father's death, who gave them their second last name. In 1924, Ede "Szuki" Schütz-Harkányi introduced Mici to his childhood friend, Edward Teller...
Go to Profile#19808
Rose Laub Coser
#19819
Overall Influence
1916 - 1994 (78 years)
Rose Laub Coser was a German-American sociologist, educator, and social justice activist. She taught sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1968 until her retirement in 1987. She was interested in the effect of social structures on individuals, and much her work fell within medical sociology, role theory, and sociology of the family.
Go to Profile#19809
Iggy Azalea
#19820
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (36 years)
Amethyst Amelia Kelly , known professionally as Iggy Azalea , is an Australian rapper and model. Azalea's accolades include two American Music Awards, three Billboard Music Awards, an MTV Video Music Award, a People's Choice Award, four Teen Choice Awards and four Grammy Award nominations. Azalea is popular on video sites, her Youtube channel has accumulated 3.4 billion views, and 15 of her music videos have received over 100 million views on Vevo.
Go to Profile#19810
Norman Rush
#19821
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Norman Rush is an American writer most of whose introspective novels and short stories are set in Botswana in the 1980s. He won the U.S. National Book Award and the 1992 Irish Times/Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize for his novel Mating.
Go to Profile#19811
Anthony Joshua
#19822
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (37 years)
Anthony Oluwafemi Olaseni Joshua is a British professional boxer. He is a two-time former unified world heavyweight champion, having held the World Boxing Association , International Boxing Federation , and World Boxing Organization titles twice between 2016 and 2021. He also held the International Boxing Organization title twice during that reign. At regional level, he held the British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles from 2015 to 2016.
Go to Profile#19812
Georgiy Starostin
#19823
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Georgiy Sergeevich "George" Starostin is a Russian linguist. He is the son of the late historical linguist Sergei Starostin , and his work largely continues his father's. He is also known as a self-published music reviewer, author of the Only Solitaire Blog.
Go to Profile#19813
Dick Martin
#19824
Overall Influence
1922 - 2008 (86 years)
#19814
Andrew Oswald
#19825
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Andrew Oswald is a Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science at the University of Warwick, England. He is an ISI highly cited researcher and has been a professorial fellow of the ESRC. He is currently a member of the board of reviewing editors of Science. He held previous posts at Oxford, the London School of Economics, Princeton, Dartmouth and Harvard.
Go to Profile#19815
Clay Armstrong
#19826
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Clay Margrave Armstrong is an American physiologist and a former student of Andrew Fielding Huxley. Armstrong received his MD from Washington University School of Medicine in 1960. He is currently emeritus professor of physiology at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also held professorial appointments at Duke University and the University of Rochester.
Go to Profile#19816
Jonathan Eisen
#19827
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Jonathan Andrew Eisen is an American evolutionary biologist, currently working at University of California, Davis. His academic research is in the fields of evolutionary biology, genomics and microbiology and he is the academic editor-in-chief of the open access journal PLOS Biology.
Go to Profile#19817
Daniel C. Peterson
#19828
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Daniel Carl Peterson is a former professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University . Background A native of southern California, Peterson received a bachelor's degree in Greek and philosophy from BYU and, after several years of study in Jerusalem and Cairo, earned a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from the University of California, Los Angeles . Peterson is currently a professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at BYU, where he teaches courses in Arabic language and Islamic religion, history and culture. He has authored several books and numerous articles on Islamic and Latter-day Saint topics.
Go to Profile#19818
Ruth Klüger
#19829
Overall Influence
1931 - 2020 (89 years)
Ruth Klüger was Professor Emerita of German Studies at the University of California, Irvine and a Holocaust survivor. She was the author of the bestseller about her childhood in Vienna and in Nazi concentration camps.
Go to Profile#19819
David Crane
#19830
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
David Patrick Crane is an American video game designer and programmer. Crane originally worked in the field of hardware design for National Semiconductor. He went to college at DeVry Institute of Technology in Phoenix, Arizona and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering Technology degree in 1975. Crane started his programming career at Atari, making games for the Atari 2600. He also worked on the operating system for the Atari 800 computer. After meeting co-worker Alan Miller in a tennis game, Miller told Crane about a plan he had to leave Atari and found a company that would give game designers more recognition.
Go to Profile#19820
Harry Nilsson
#19831
Overall Influence
1941 - 1994 (53 years)
Harry Edward Nilsson III , sometimes credited as Nilsson, was an American singer-songwriter who reached the peak of his success in the early 1970s. His work is characterized by pioneering vocal overdub experiments, a return to the Great American Songbook, and fusions of Caribbean sounds. Nilsson was one of the few major pop-rock recording artists to achieve significant commercial success without performing major public concerts or touring regularly.
Go to Profile#19821
Ernie Els
#19832
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Theodore Ernest Els is a South African professional golfer. A former , he is nicknamed "The Big Easy" due to his physical stature along with his fluid golf swing. Among his more than 70 career victories are four major championships: the U.S. Open in 1994 at Oakmont and in 1997 at Congressional, and The Open Championship in 2002 at Muirfield and in 2012 at Royal Lytham & St Annes. He is one of six golfers to twice win both the U.S. Open and The Open Championship.
Go to Profile#19822
Sabina Jeschke
#19833
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Sabina Jeschke is a German university professor for information sciences in mechanical engineering at the RWTH Aachen University. As of 10 November 2017, she was named member of the management board of Deutschen Bahn AG for digitalization and technology. She is also the director of the Cybernetics Lab IMA/ZLW & IfU. In the summer semester of 2017, she is on sabbatical leave to develop her research in the area of artificial consciousness , and is involved in building a think tank "Strong Artificial Intelligence" at the Volvo Car Corporation in Göteborg. Since May 2015, Jeschke has been a member of the supervisory board of Körber AG, since April 2012 chairman of the board of VDI Aachen.
Go to Profile#19823
Meredith L. Patterson
#19834
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Meredith L. Patterson is an American technologist, science fiction writer, and journalist. She has spoken at numerous industry conferences on a wide range of topics. She is also a blogger and software developer, and a leading figure in the biopunk movement.
Go to Profile#19824
Sheilagh Ogilvie
#19835
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Sheilagh Catheren Ogilvie, FBA is a Canadian historian, economist, and academic, specialising in economic history. Since 2020, she has been Chichele Professor of Economic History at the University of Oxford. Previously, she taught at the University of Cambridge.
Go to Profile#19825
John M. Riddle
#19836
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
John Marion Riddle is an American historian and specialist in the history of medicine. He is Alumni Distinguished Professor emeritus of History at North Carolina State University. Career Riddle specializes in pharmacological history particularly of the classical and medieval periods, based on previously under-utilized ancient and medieval sources. His methodology is to draw on the modern understanding of medicine, pharmacy, and chemistry to interpret texts and uncover the rationality of early medicine. He has written extensively about Dioscorides, who published a description of 500 distinct p...
Go to Profile#19826
John Tsotsos
#19837
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
John Tsotsos is a Canadian Computer Scientist whose research spans the fields of Computer Vision, Human Vision, Robotics, and Artificial Intelligence. He is best known for his work in visual attention, specifically for establishing the need for visual attention in both biological and computational systems through an argument based on the computational complexity of visual information processing and subsequently developing a computational framework for visual attention known as the Selective Tuning model. He is also acknowledged as a pioneer in the area of Active Vision, his students and he being first to propose strategies for active object recognition and object visual search by a robot.
Go to Profile#19827
Stephen Victor Wilson
#19838
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Stephen Victor Wilson is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Education and career Wilson has claimed that he was born in New York City, New York, although his parents were in Connecticut when he was born. Wilson received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lehigh University in 1963. He received a Juris Doctor from Brooklyn Law School in 1967. He received a Master of Laws from George Washington University Law School in 1973. He was a trial attorney of the Tax Division of the United States Department of Justice from 1968 to 1971.
Go to Profile#19828
Louis Dudek
#19839
Overall Influence
1918 - 2001 (83 years)
Louis Dudek, was a Canadian poet, academic, and publisher known for his role in defining Modernism in poetry, and for his literary criticism. He was the author of over two dozen books. In A Digital History of Canadian Poetry, writer Heather Prycz said that "As a critic, teacher and theoretician, Dudek influenced the teaching of Canadian poetry in most [Canadian] schools and universities".
Go to Profile#19829
Arnold Eisen
#19840
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Arnold M. Eisen is an American Judaic scholar who was Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He stepped down at the end of the 2019-2020 academic year. Prior to this appointment, he served as the Koshland Professor of Jewish Culture and Religion and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty in 1986, he taught at Tel Aviv University and Columbia University.
Go to Profile#19830
John S. Toll
#19841
Overall Influence
1923 - 2011 (88 years)
John Sampson Toll was an American physicist and educational administrator. Education Toll received his bachelor's degree in physics from Yale University in 1944, after which he served in the U.S. Navy in World War II. He finished his Ph.D. in physics at Princeton in 1952.
Go to Profile#19831
Charles Figley
#19842
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Charles Figley is an American university professor in the fields of psychology, family therapy, psychoneuroimmunology family studies, social work, traumatology, and mental health. He is the Paul Henry Kurzweg, MD Distinguished Chair in Disaster Mental Health and Graduate School of Social Work Professor at Tulane University . He was a full professor and Traumatology Institute Director at the Florida State University College of Social Work. Figley became a Purdue University Full Professor in 1983 with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Psychological Sciences.
Go to Profile#19832
Robert Pires
#19843
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Robert Emmanuel Pires is a French football coach and former professional player. He is widely considered as one of Arsenal's greatest ever players. Pires played for French clubs Metz and Marseille prior to his time with Arsenal, where he won three FA Cups and two Premier League titles, including the club's unbeaten season of 2003–04. A former France international, Pires earned 79 caps between 1996 and 2004 for his country, including winning both the 1998 FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro 2000. He has been included in the PFA Team of the Year for the 2001–02, 2002–03 and 2003–04 seasons, was the Pl...
Go to Profile#19833
Laura Ingraham
#19844
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Laura Anne Ingraham is an American conservative television host. She has been the host of The Ingraham Angle on Fox News Channel since October 2017, and is the editor-in-chief of LifeZette. She formerly hosted the nationally syndicated radio show The Laura Ingraham Show.
Go to Profile#19834
Elżbieta Zawacka
#19845
Overall Influence
1909 - 2009 (100 years)
Elżbieta Zawacka , known also by her war-time nom de guerre Zo, was a Polish university professor, scouting instructor, SOE agent and a freedom fighter during World War II. She was promoted to brigadier general of the Polish Army by President Lech Kaczyński on 3 May 2006. Sometimes called "the only woman among the Cichociemni", she served as a courier for the Home Army, carrying letters and other documents from Nazi-occupied Poland to the Polish government in exile in London and back. Her regular route ran from Warsaw through Berlin and Sweden to London. She was also responsible for organizin...
Go to Profile#19835
Susan Michie
#19846
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Susan Fiona Dorinthea Michie is a British academic, clinical psychologist, and professor of health psychology, director of The Centre for Behaviour Change and head of The Health Psychology Research Group, all at University College London. She is also an advisor to the British Government via the SAGE advisory group on matters concerning behavioural compliance with government regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, she was appointed Chair of the World Health Organisation’s Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health.
Go to Profile#19836
John Waters
#19847
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John Samuel Waters Jr. is an American filmmaker, writer, actor, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, including Multiple Maniacs , Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble . He wrote and directed the comedy film Hairspray , which was later adapted into a hit Broadway musical and a 2007 musical film. Other films he has written and directed include Desperate Living , Polyester , Cry-Baby , Serial Mom , Pecker , and Cecil B. Demented . His films contain elements of post-modern comedy and surrealism. Waters often worked with actor and drag queen Divine and his...
Go to Profile#19837
Kaja Silverman
#19848
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Kaja Silverman is an American art historian and critical theorist. She is currently the Katherine and Keith L. Sachs Professor of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania. She received B.A. and M.A. degrees in English from the University of California Santa Barbara and a Ph.D. in English from Brown University. Thereafter, she taught at Yale University, Trinity College, Simon Fraser University, Brown University, the University of Rochester and for many years was the Class of 1940 Professor in the Rhetoric Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008, and is currently the holder of an Andrew W.
Go to Profile#19838
Estanislao Esteban Karlic
#19849
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Estanislao Esteban Karlic is an Argentine cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Paraná from 1986 to 2003, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 2007. Biography Estanislao Karlic was born in Oliva, Villa María, to an immigrant Croatian family. He studied at the Major Seminary of Córdoba, and at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, from where he obtained a licentiate in theology. Following his ordination to the priesthood on 8 December 1954, Karlic served as superior of the philosophy section of the Major Seminary of Córdoba, where he was also professor of theolog...
Go to Profile#19839
Marie Maynard Daly
#19850
Overall Influence
1921 - 2003 (82 years)
Marie Maynard Daly was an American biochemist. She was the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Columbia University and the first African-American woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry. Daly made important contributions in four areas of research: the chemistry of histones, protein synthesis, the relationships between cholesterol and hypertension, and creatine's uptake by muscle cells.
Go to Profile#19840
Maria Nikolajeva
#19851
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Maria Nikolajeva is a Swedish literary critic and academic, specialising in children's literature. Since 2008, she has been Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge and a Professorial Fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge. She has also been Director of Cambridge's Centre for Children's Literature since 2010. She previously taught at Stockholm University and Åbo Akademi University.
Go to Profile#19841
Rick Carlisle
#19852
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Richard Preston Carlisle is an American basketball coach and former player who is the head coach for the Indiana Pacers of the National Basketball Association . He has previously served as head coach of the Detroit Pistons and Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association . As a player, Carlisle played for the Boston Celtics, New York Knicks, and New Jersey Nets. He is also one of only eleven people to win an NBA championship both as a player and as a coach.
Go to Profile#19842
Mahadev Satyanarayanan
#19853
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Mahadev "Satya" Satyanarayanan is an Indian experimental computer scientist, an ACM and IEEE fellow, and the Carnegie Group Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University . He is credited with many advances in edge computing, distributed systems, mobile computing, pervasive computing, and Internet of Things. His research focus is around performance, scalability, availability, and trust challenges in computing systems from the cloud to the mobile edge.
Go to Profile#19843
Anthony Ichiro Sanda
#19854
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Anthony Ichiro Sanda is a Japanese-American particle physicist. Along with Ikaros Bigi, he was awarded the 2004 Sakurai Prize for his work on CP violation and B meson decays. Academic life Sanda studied at the University of Illinois and Princeton University . He was a researcher at Columbia University from 1971 to 1974 and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. From 1974 to 1992 he was an Assistant Professor and then associate professor at Rockefeller University. From 1992 he was a professor of physics at Nagoya University. Since 2006 he is a Professor Emeritus at Nagoya University and a professor at Kanagawa University.
Go to Profile#19844
Jefferson Fish
#19855
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Jefferson Morris Fish is a professor emeritus of psychology at St. John's University in New York City, where he previously served as Chair of the Department of Psychology and as Director of the PhD Program in Clinical Psychology.
Go to Profile#19845
Mark Casson
#19856
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Mark Casson is a British economist and academic. He is a professor of economics at the University of Reading in England. He held the position of Head of Department from 1987until 1994 and is the institution's current Director of the Centre for Institutional Performance.
Go to Profile#19846
Ratan Lal Basu
#19857
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ratan Lal Basu is an economist and English fiction author. Most of his books and articles in economics are based on ancient Indian economic ideas, especially embedded in the epics , dharmasastras and Arthasastra of Kautilya and their modern relevance. He is also specialized in yoga and tantra cult and has written several books and articles on these topics.
Go to Profile#19847
Eben Alexander
#19858
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Eben Alexander III is an American neurosurgeon and author. His book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife describes his near-death experience that happened in 2008 under medically-induced coma when treated for meningitis. He asserts that the coma resulted in brain death, that consciousness is not only a product of the brain and that this permits access to an afterlife.
Go to Profile#19848
Hal Clement
#19859
Overall Influence
1922 - 2003 (81 years)
Harry Clement Stubbs , better known by the pen name Hal Clement, was an American science fiction writer and a leader of the hard science fiction subgenre. He also painted astronomically oriented artworks under the name George Richard.
Go to Profile#19849
Dawn Chatty
#19860
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Dawn Chatty, is an American Emerita Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration, who specialises in the Middle East, nomadic pastoral tribes, and refugees. From 2010 to 2015, she was Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration at the University of Oxford and from 2011 to 2014, Director of the Refugee Studies Centre.
Go to Profile#19850
Jim Plunkett
#19861
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
James William Plunkett is an American former football quarterback who played in the National Football League for sixteen seasons. He achieved his greatest professional success during his final eight seasons with the Raiders franchise, whom he led to two Super Bowl titles.
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