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
#19851
Robert Hanbury Brown
#19862
Overall Influence
1916 - 2002 (86 years)
Robert Hanbury Brown, AC FRS was a British astronomer and physicist born in Aruvankadu, India. He made notable contributions to the development of radar and later conducted pioneering work in the field of radio astronomy.
Go to Profile#19852
David Schramm
#19863
Overall Influence
1945 - 1997 (52 years)
David Norman Schramm was an American astrophysicist and educator, and one of the world's foremost experts on the Big Bang theory. Schramm was a pioneer in establishing particle astrophysics as a vibrant research field. He was particularly well known for the study of Big Bang nucleosynthesis and its use as a probe of dark matter and of neutrinos. He also made important contributions to the study of cosmic rays, supernova explosions, heavy-element nucleosynthesis, and nuclear astrophysics generally.
Go to Profile#19853
Jean-Paul Vinay
#19864
Overall Influence
1910 - 1999 (89 years)
Jean-Paul Vinay was a French-Canadian linguist. He is considered one of the pioneers in translation studies, along with Jean Darbelnet, with whom Vinay co-authored Stylistique comparée du français et de l'anglais , a seminal work in the field.
Go to Profile#19855
Loretta Ford
#19866
Overall Influence
1920 - Present (106 years)
Loretta C. Ford is an American nurse and the co-founder of the first nurse practitioner program. Along with pediatrician Henry Silver, Ford started the pediatric nurse practitioner program at the University of Colorado in 1965. In 1972, Ford joined the University of Rochester as founding dean of the nursing school.
Go to Profile#19856
Tove Stang Dahl
#19867
Overall Influence
1938 - 1993 (55 years)
Tove Stang Dahl was a Norwegian legal scholar, criminologist, Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo from 1988 until her death, and a pioneer of "feminist jurisprudence". She graduated with the cand.jur. degree in 1965 and was employed at the Faculty of Law directly upon graduation, first at the Department of Criminology and Criminal Law and then at the Department of Public and International Law. She was one of the founders of the field of women's law as an academic discipline at the University of Oslo in 1975, and became head of department for the new Department of Women's Law in 1978.
Go to Profile#19857
George S. Odiorne
#19868
Overall Influence
1920 - 1992 (72 years)
George Stanley Odiorne was an American academic and management theorist. He was one of the developers of the theory, Management by Objectives . Early life George S. Odiorne was born in 1920 in Merrimac, Massachusetts. He grew up in Lowell, and he had a brother and two sisters. During World War II, he served in the United States Army in the Pacific. He graduated from Rutgers University. He then earned a master's degree and a doctorate in business administration from New York University, where he was taught by Peter Drucker.
Go to Profile#19858
Jack Windsor Lewis
#19869
Overall Influence
1926 - 2021 (95 years)
Jack Windsor Lewis was a British phonetician. He is best known for his work on the phonetics of English and the teaching of English pronunciation to foreign learners. His blog postings on English phonetics and phoneticians are prolific and widely read.
Go to Profile#19859
Martin Stuart-Fox
#19870
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Martin Stuart-Fox is a retired Australian professor and foreign correspondent who writes about the history, politics and international relations of Southeast Asia, primarily Laos. After studying biological sciences at the University of Queensland, Martin Stuart-Fox worked as a marine biologist in Papua New Guinea, then taught science in Hong Kong. In 1963 he was employed by the U.S. Agency for International Development as an agricultural extension officer in Laos. There he began reporting for United Press International, initially as a stringer and then as a staff correspondent. In 1965 UPI assigned him to cover the war in Vietnam.
Go to Profile#19860
Simon Fisher
#19871
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Simon E. Fisher is a British geneticist and neuroscientist who has pioneered research into the genetic basis of human speech and language. He is a director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and Professor of language and genetics at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Go to Profile#19861
Eugene Trubowitz
#19872
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Eugene Trubowitz is an American mathematician who studies analysis and mathematical physics. He is a Global Professor of Mathematics at New York University Abu Dhabi. Life and work Trubowitz, who was born in 1951, received his doctorate in 1977 under the supervision of Henry McKean at New York University, with thesis titled The inverse problem for periodic potentials. Since 1983, he wais a full professor of mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. As of 2016, he has retired from his position at ETH.
Go to Profile#19862
Brad Paisley
#19873
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Bradley Douglas Paisley is an American country music singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Starting with his 1999 debut album Who Needs Pictures, he has released twelve studio albums and a Christmas compilation on the Arista Nashville label, with all of his albums certified Gold or higher by the RIAA. He has scored 35 Top 10 singles on the US Billboard Country Airplay chart, 20 of which have reached number one. He set a new record in 2009 for the most consecutive singles reaching the top spot on that chart.
Go to Profile#19863
Kwang-chih Chang
#19874
Overall Influence
1931 - 2001 (70 years)
Kwang-chih Chang , commonly known as K. C. Chang, was a Chinese / Taiwanese-American archaeologist and sinologist. He was the John E. Hudson Professor of archaeology at Harvard University, Vice-President of the Academia Sinica, and a curator at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. He helped to bring modern, western methods of archaeology to the study of ancient Chinese history. He also introduced new discoveries in Chinese archaeology to western audiences by translating works from Chinese to English. He pioneered the study of Taiwanese archaeology, encouraged multi-disciplinal anth...
Go to Profile#19864
Allen Steere
#19875
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Allen Caruthers Steere is an American rheumatologist. He is a professor of rheumatology at Harvard University and previously at Tufts University and Yale University. Steere and his mentor, Stephen Malawista of Yale University, are credited with discovering and naming Lyme disease, and he has published almost 300 scholarly articles on Lyme disease during his more than 40 years of studies of this infection. At a ceremony in Hartford, Connecticut in 1998, Governor John G. Rowland declared September 24 to be "Allen C. Steere Day."
Go to Profile#19865
Luis Aragonés
#19876
Overall Influence
1938 - 2014 (76 years)
Luis Aragonés Suárez was a Spanish football player and manager. Aragonés spent the majority of his career as a player and coach at Atlético Madrid. He was a prominent player and then coach of the successful Atlético team of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The team were national champions four times, reached the 1974 European Cup Final. Between 1964 and 1974, he played 265 Primera Liga games for Atlético and scored 123 goals. He also played for several other clubs, including Real Madrid, and played 11 times for Spain, scoring three goals.
Go to Profile#19866
Lara Aknin
#19877
Overall Influence
Lara Beth Aknin is a Canadian social psychologist. She is an assistant professor of psychology at Simon Fraser University and a distinguished university professor. Career After earning her PhD from the University of British Columbia, Aknin joined the faculty of psychology at Simon Fraser University in 2012. That year, she published "Giving Leads to Happiness in Young Children" with J. Kiley Hamlin and Elizabeth Dunn, which supported the idea that humans may have evolved to find giving rewarding.
Go to Profile#19867
Deborah Loewenberg Ball
#19878
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Deborah Loewenberg Ball is an educational researcher noted for her work in mathematics instruction and the mathematical preparation of teachers. From 2017 to 2018 she served as president of the American Educational Research Association. She served as dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan from 2005 to 2016, and she currently works as William H. Payne Collegiate Professor of education. Ball directs TeachingWorks, a major project at the University of Michigan to redesign the way that teachers are prepared for practice, and to build materials and tools that will serve the field of teacher education broadly.
Go to Profile#19868
Richard Arneson
#19879
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Richard J. Arneson is an American philosopher specializing in political philosophy who has taught at the University of California, San Diego since 1973. He chaired the department during 1992–1996 and served as graduate adviser. In 1996, he also served as visiting professor in the ethics, politics, and economics program at Yale University. Arneson earned his PhD in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1975. His work has largely focused on utilitarianism and on luck egalitarianism. He is also a proponent of prioritarianism.
Go to Profile#19869
Paul A. David
#19880
Overall Influence
1935 - 2023 (88 years)
Paul Allan David was an American academic economist, noted for his work on the economics of scientific progress and technical change. He was also well-known for his work in American economic history and in demographic economics.
Go to Profile#19870
Frederick M. Ausubel
#19881
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Frederick M Ausubel is an American molecular biologist and professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School in Boston and is the Karl Winnacker Distinguished Investigator in the Department of Molecular Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston., Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#19871
Bob Holman
#19882
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Bob Holman is an American poet and poetry activist, most closely identified with the oral tradition, the spoken word, and poetry slam. As a promoter of poetry in many media, Holman has spent the last four decades working variously as an author, editor, publisher, performer, emcee of live events, director of theatrical productions, producer of films and television programs, record label executive, university professor, and archivist. He was described by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in The New Yorker as "the postmodern promoter who has done more to bring poetry to cafes and bars than anyone since Ferli...
Go to Profile#19872
Marcelo Viana
#19883
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Marcelo Miranda Viana da Silva is a Brazilian mathematician working in dynamical systems theory. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1993. He received the TWAS Prize in 1998 and in 2005 he was awarded the inaugural ICTP Ramanujan Prize for his research achievements.
Go to Profile#19873
Raymund Schwager
#19884
Overall Influence
1935 - 2004 (69 years)
Raymund Schwager was a Swiss Roman Catholic priest and theologian, and member of the Society of Jesus. Life Schwager was born on 11 November 1935 in Balterswil into a Swiss farming family as the second of seven children. After primary and secondary school he joined the Society of Jesus in 1955. Following Jesuit custom, he studied philosophy and theology , separated by educational work as a prefect in a Jesuit boarding school .
Go to Profile#19874
Theodore Holmes Bullock
#19885
Overall Influence
1915 - 2005 (90 years)
Theodore Holmes Bullock is one of the founding fathers of neuroethology. During a career spanning nearly seven decades, this American academic was esteemed both as a pioneering and influential neuroscientist, examining the physiology and evolution of the nervous system across organizational levels, and as a champion of the comparative approach, studying species from nearly all major animal groups—coelenterates, annelids, arthropods, echinoderms, molluscs, and chordates.
Go to Profile#19875
Seema Jayachandran
#19886
Overall Influence
Seema Jayachandran is an economist who currently works as Professor of Economics at Princeton University. Her research interests include development economics, health economics, and labor economics. Biography Seema Jayachandran earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993. As a Marshall Scholar, she studied Physics and Philosophy at the University of Oxford. In 1997, she began graduate studies in Physics at Harvard University, but completed a PhD in Economics in 2004.
Go to Profile#19876
Michael T. Cahill
#19887
Overall Influence
Michael T. Cahill is a law professor, and the Dean and President of Brooklyn Law School. He is also the former co-Dean of Rutgers Law School. Biography Raised in Pompton Plains, New Jersey, Cahill graduated from Pequannock Township High School.
Go to Profile#19877
James L. Jones
#19888
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
James Logan Jones Jr. is a retired United States Marine Corps four-star general and consultant who served as the 21st United States National Security Advisor from 2009 to 2010. During his military career, he served as the 32nd Commandant of the Marine Corps from July 1999 to January 2003, and Commander, United States European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe from 2003 to 2006. Jones retired from the Marine Corps on February 1, 2007, after 40 years of service.
Go to Profile#19878
Vadim Gerasimov
#19889
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Vadim Viktorovich Gerasimov is an engineer at Google. From 1994 to 2003, Vadim worked and studied at the MIT Media Lab. Vadim earned a BS/MS in applied mathematics from Moscow State University in 1992 and a Ph.D. from MIT in 2003.
Go to Profile#19879
Doku Zavgayev
#19890
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Doku Gapurovich Zavgayev is a Soviet and Russian diplomat and politician from Chechnya. He was the leader of the Checheno-Ingush ASSR. Communist leadership In 1989, Zavgayev, a former collective farm manager and senior Communist Party official, was elected as the first Chechen First Secretary of the Checheno-Ingush ASSR since the Chechens' return in 1957.
Go to Profile#19880
George Metallinos
#19891
Overall Influence
1940 - 2019 (79 years)
George Metallinos was a Greek Orthodox theologian, priest , historian, author and professor. Biography He was born in Corfu, Greece on 11 March 1940, where he also completed his secondary education. He was a graduate of the University of Athens in theology and classical Literature . After his military service he became research assistant at the department of patrology and in 1969 he went to Western Germany for postgraduate studies in Bonn and Cologne, where he resided until 1975. During this time he also conducted studies and archival research in England. In 1971, he was ordained a member o...
Go to Profile#19881
David Lane
#19892
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Sir David Philip Lane is a British immunologist, molecular biologist and cancer researcher. He is currently working in the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology at the Karolinska Institute and is Chairman of Chugai Pharmabody. He is best known for the discovery of p53, one of the most important tumour suppressor genes.
Go to Profile#19882
Yair Hirschfeld
#19893
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Yair Hirschfeld is an Israeli lecturer at the University of Haifa. Hirschfeld was a key architect of the Oslo Accords in 1993. He was born in Vienna and has been a strong supporter of the two-state solution, and has urged the Palestinian National Authority and the Israeli government to accept some form of this solution.
Go to Profile#19883
Jens Allwood
#19894
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Jens Allwood is a professor of linguistics at the University of Gothenburg and Head of SCCIIL - Interdisciplinary center, University of Gothenburg. Jens Allwood has been professor of Linguistics at Göteborg University since 1986. He is also director of the interdisciplinary cognitive science and communication oriented center SSKKII at the same university.
Go to Profile#19884
Andrew M. Gleason
#19895
Overall Influence
1921 - 2008 (87 years)
Andrew Mattei Gleason was an American mathematician who made fundamental contributions to widely varied areas of mathematics, including the solution of Hilbert's fifth problem, and was a leader in reform and innovation in teaching at all levels. Gleason's theorem in quantum logic and the Greenwood–Gleason graph, an important example in Ramsey theory, are named for him.
Go to Profile#19885
Gennady Golovkin
#19896
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Gennadiy Gennadyevich Golovkin , often known by his nickname "GGG" or "Triple G", is a Kazakhstani professional boxer. He has held multiple middleweight world championships, and is a two-time former unified champion. He held the WBA , WBC and IBF titles at varying points between 2014 and 2023, and challenged once for the undisputed super middleweight championship in 2022. He is also a two-time former IBO middleweight champion, having held the title twice between 2011 and 2023.
Go to Profile#19886
Karl Kroeber
#19897
Overall Influence
1926 - 2009 (83 years)
Karl Kroeber was an American literary scholar, known for his writing on the English Romantics and American Indian literature. He was the son of Theodora and Alfred L. Kroeber, both anthropologists. He wrote an account of his father's work with Ishi called Ishi in Three Centuries.
Go to Profile#19887
György Ligeti
#19898
Overall Influence
1923 - 2006 (83 years)
György Sándor Ligeti was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" and "one of the most innovative and influential among progressive figures of his time".
Go to Profile#19888
Karl Holzamer
#19899
Overall Influence
1906 - 2007 (101 years)
Johannes Karl Holzamer was a German philosopher, pedagogue and former director general of the German television station ZDF. Life Karl Holzamer was born in Frankfurt am Main and after the abitur in 1926 studied philosophy, pedagogy, psychology, and German at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the Sorbonne, the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main and the University of Bonn. In 1929, he was awarded his Ph.D. from Munich. After university he applied to the Pedagogic Academy in Bonn and did his First Examination as a Volksschullehrer. His reason for becoming a teacher wa...
Go to Profile#19889
Detlev Ganten
#19900
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Detlev Ganten is a specialist in pharmacology and molecular medicine and is one of the leading scientists in the field of hypertension. He founded the World Health Summit in 2009. He was Chairman of the Foundation Board of the Charité Foundation , editor of the Journal of Molecular Medicine , Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces and Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology as well as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Ethnological Museum Dahlem of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.
Go to Profile#19890
Carme Pinós
#19901
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Carme Pinós is a Spanish architect. Biography Pinós graduated Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona in Barcelona in 1979 and returned to the school in 1981 to study Urbanism. From 1982 on she formed a partnership with her husband, Enric Miralles, which ended in 1991. During this period the projects developed include the Igualada Cemetery Park, the Archery Range Buildings for the 1992 Summer Olympic Games and the La Llauna School in Badalona. The work of Pinós-Miralles received awards on several occasions, including the FAD prize for the La Llauna School and the Igualada Cemet...
Go to Profile#19891
Justin E. H. Smith
#19902
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Justin Smith-Ruiu is an American-Canadian professor of history and philosophy of science at the Université Paris Cité. His primary research interests include Leibniz, Post-structuralism, early modern philosophy, history and philosophy of biology, classical Indian philosophy, the history and philosophy of anthropology.
Go to Profile#19892
Gideon Rose
#19903
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Gideon Rose is a former editor of Foreign Affairs and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as associate director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the staff of the National Security Council from 1994 to 1995 under the Clinton Administration.
Go to Profile#19893
Dragomir R. Radev
#19904
Overall Influence
1968 - 2023 (55 years)
Dragomir R. Radev was an American computer scientist who was a professor at Yale University, working on natural language processing and information retrieval. He also served as a University of Michigan computer science professor and Columbia University computer science adjunct professor, as well as a Member of the Advisory Board of Lawyaw.
Go to Profile#19894
Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska
#19905
Overall Influence
Ina-Maria Zweiniger-Bargielowska, known professionally as Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, is a British-American academic historian specialising in 20th-century Britain. Since 2010, she has been Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Go to Profile#19895
Jerry March
#19906
Overall Influence
1929 - 1997 (68 years)
Jerry March, Ph.D. was an American organic chemist and a professor of chemistry at Adelphi University. March authored the March's Advanced Organic Chemistry text, which is considered to be a pillar of graduate-level organic chemistry texts. The book was prepared in its fifth edition at the time of his death.
Go to Profile#19896
Bruce Mau
#19907
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Bruce Mau is a Canadian designer and educator. He began his career a graphic designer and has since applied his design methodology to architecture, art, museums, film, eco-environmental design, education, and conceptual philosophy. Mau is the chief executive officer of Massive Change Network, a Chicago-based design consultancy he co-founded with his wife, Bisi Williams. In 2015, he became the Chief Design Officer at Freeman, a global provider of brand experiences. Mau is also a professor and has taught at multiple institutions in the United States and Canada.
Go to Profile#19897
Idea Vilariño
#19908
Overall Influence
1920 - 2009 (89 years)
Idea Vilariño Romani was a Uruguayan poet, essayist and literary critic. She belonged to the group of intellectuals known as "Generación del 45". In this generation, there are several writers such as Juan Carlos Onetti, Mario Benedetti, Sarandy Cabrera, Carlos Martínez Moreno, Ángel Rama, Carlos Real de Azúa, Carlos Maggi, Alfredo Gravina, Mario Arregui, Amanda Berenguer, Humberto Megget, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Gladys Castelvecchi and José Pedro Díaz among others.
Go to Profile#19898
Roger Douglas
#19909
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Sir Roger Owen Douglas is a retired New Zealand politician who served as a minister in two Labour governments. He became best known for his prominent role in New Zealand's radical economic restructuring in the 1980s, when the Fourth Labour Government's economic policy became known as "Rogernomics".
Go to Profile#19899
Richard Gaffin
#19910
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. is a Calvinist theologian, Presbyterian minister, and was the Charles Krahe Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1999 to 2008. He became the Professor Emeritus, Biblical and Systematic Theology in 2008.
Go to Profile#19900
Michael Greenstone
#19911
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Michael Greenstone is an American economist and the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, the College, and the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He serves as director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago , director of the Becker Friedman Institute, and co-chair of the Energy and Environment sector at Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab . Under the first Obama administration, he served as chief economist on the Council of Economic Advisors. His research interests focus on the nexus between development economics and envi...
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