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

#20001

Nicole C. Karafyllis

#20012
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Nicole C. Karafyllis is a German philosopher and biologist. As of 2010, she has been a Professor of Philosophy at the TU Braunschweig, Braunschweig/Brunswick Institute of Technology . Biography Nicole Christine Karafyllis was born in Germany to a German mother and a Greek father. From 1989 to 1994, she studied biology at the Universities of Erlangen and Tübingen. She was awarded her doctorate in biology from the International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities at the University of Tübingen in 1999. Her Habilitation in philosophy was completed at the University of Stuttgart in 2006, dealing with the topic Phenomenology of Growth.
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#20002

Joan Fontaine

Joan Fontaine
#20013
Overall Influence
1917 - 2013 (96 years)
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland , known professionally as Joan Fontaine, was a British-American actress who is best known for her starring roles in Hollywood films during the "Golden Age". Fontaine appeared in more than 45 films in a career that spanned five decades. She was the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland. Their rivalry was well-documented in the media at the height of Fontaine's career.
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#20003

Kathleen Barry

#20014
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Kathleen Barry is an American sociologist and feminist. After researching and publishing books on international human sex trafficking, she cofounded the United Nations NGO, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women . In 1985 she received the Wonder Woman Foundation Award for her strides towards the empowerment of women. She has taught at Brandeis University and Penn State University.
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#20004

Yasmin Kafai

#20015
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Yasmin B. Kafai is a German American academic who is Professor of Learning Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, with a secondary appointment in Computer and Information Sciences at University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science. She is a past president of the International Society of the Learning Sciences , and an executive editor of the Journal of the Learning Sciences.
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#20005

Brett Whiteley

#20016
Overall Influence
1939 - 1992 (53 years)
Brett Whiteley AO was an Australian artist. He is represented in the collections of all the large Australian galleries, and was twice winner of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes. He held many exhibitions, and lived and painted in Australia as well as Italy, England, Fiji and the United States.
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#20006

Joseph L. McCauley

#20017
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Joseph L. McCauley is Professor of Physics at the University of Houston. He was Lars Onsager's last graduate student. His main research fields are economics and finance , nonlinear dynamics, and statistical physics. He has also published papers on the theory of superfluids, quantum theory of vortices, cosmology, porous media, critical phenomena, and science wars.
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#20007

Gunther Eysenbach

Gunther Eysenbach
#20018
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Gunther Eysenbach is a German-Canadian researcher on healthcare, especially health policy, eHealth, and consumer health informatics. Career Eysenbach was born on 22 March 1967 in West Berlin, West Germany. While a medical student, he served on the executive board as elected communication director, later as vice-president of the European Medical Students' Association. He received an M.D. from the University of Freiburg and a Master of Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health. From 1999 to 2002 he founded and headed a research unit on cybermedicine and ehealth at the University of Heidelberg and organized and chaired the World Congress on Internet in Medicine.
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#20008

Adrian Goldsworthy

Adrian Goldsworthy
#20019
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Adrian Keith Goldsworthy is a British historian and novelist who specialises in ancient Roman history. Education Adrian Goldsworthy attended Westbourne School, Penarth. He then read Ancient and Modern History at St John's College, Oxford, completing a D.Phil. in ancient military history from the University of Oxford in 1994. That dissertation laid the foundation of his first book, The Roman Army at War 100 BC – AD 200.
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#20009

John Frankenheimer

John Frankenheimer
#20020
Overall Influence
1930 - 2002 (72 years)
John Michael Frankenheimer was an American film and television director known for social dramas and action/suspense films. Among his credits were Birdman of Alcatraz , The Manchurian Candidate , Seven Days in May , The Train , Seconds , Grand Prix , French Connection II , Black Sunday , The Island of Dr. Moreau , and Ronin .
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#20010

Merritt Roe Smith

#20021
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Merritt Roe Smith is an American historian. He is the Leverett and William Cutten Professor of the History of Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Life Smith graduated from Georgetown University, and Pennsylvania State University with a Ph.D. His research focuses on the history of technological innovation and social change. He is currently writing a monograph on technology and the American Civil War. Smith is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is past president of the Society for the History of Technology.
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#20011

Ian Edginton

#20022
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Ian Edginton is a British comic book writer, known for his work on such titles as X-Force, Scarlet Traces, H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds and Leviathan. Career Ian Edginton is known for his steampunk/alternate history work and is the co-creator of Scarlet Traces, a sequel to H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, which they later went on to adapt in turn, and The Great Game, a sequel to Scarlet Traces. For 2000 AD he has written Leviathan, Stickleback and, with art by Steve Yeowell, The Red Seas as well as one-off serials such as American Gothic .
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#20012

Ayelet Waldman

Ayelet Waldman
#20023
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Ayelet Waldman is an Israeli-American novelist and essayist. She has written seven mystery novels in the series The Mommy-Track Mysteries and four other novels. She has also written autobiographical essays about motherhood. Waldman spent three years working as a federal public defender and her fiction draws on her experience as a lawyer.
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#20013

Robert Slavin

#20024
Overall Influence
1950 - 2021 (71 years)
Robert Edward Slavin was an American psychologist who studied educational and academic issues. He was known for the Success for All educational model. Until his death, he was a distinguished professor and director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University.
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#20014

Kamel Ajlouni

Kamel Ajlouni
#20025
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Kamel Mohammed Saleh Ajlouni, M.D. is a physician in the field of endocrinology. He earned a doctor of medicine degree from the Heidelberg University School of Medicine in 1967. Ajlouni became professor of endocrinology in the Department of Internal medicine at the University of Jordan in 1985. Professor Ajlouni has written more than 120 professional papers in the field of endocrinology. In recognition of his contributions, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists presented him with the International Clinician Award in 2008. He received Hamdan Award for honoring distinguished per...
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#20015

Loch K. Johnson

#20026
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Loch K. Johnson is Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia. He is editor of the journal Intelligence and National Security and has written numerous books on American foreign policy. Johnson was special assistant to the chair of the Senate Select Committee House Subcommittee on Intelligence from 1975 to 1976. He also served as staff director of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence Oversight from 1977 to 1979. In 1995 and 1996, Johnson worked with the chair of the Aspin-Brown Commission on Intelligence.
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#20016

McKay McKinnon

#20027
Overall Influence
McKay McKinnon is an Americann physician specializing in plastic surgery. He works at Saint Joseph Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California and the French-Vietnam Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
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#20017

Tony Dorsett

#20028
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Anthony Drew Dorsett Sr. is an American former football running back who played in the National Football League for the Dallas Cowboys and the Denver Broncos. Raised in western Pennsylvania, Dorsett played college football for the Pittsburgh Panthers, where he led the Panthers to the national championship as a senior in the 1976 season and won the Heisman Trophy. He was the first-round, second overall draft choice of the Dallas Cowboys in the 1977 NFL Draft. Dorsett was the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year and played for the team for 11 seasons, through 1987. He won a Super Bowl title in his...
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#20018

Megan Squire

#20029
Overall Influence
Megan Squire is a professor of computer science at Elon University. A researcher and Anti-Defamation League fellow with a focus on right-wing political extremism online, her work has been described as operating as an intermediary between non-profits like the Southern Poverty Law Center and militant groups on the far-left.
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#20019

Tom Hornbein

#20030
Overall Influence
1930 - 2023 (93 years)
Thomas Hornbein was an American mountaineer who made the first ascent of Everest via the west ridge; the Hornbein Couloir on Everest was named in his honour. Biography Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Hornbein developed an interest in geology as a teenager. His study of geology led to a fascination with mountains. Eventually, he also became interested in medicine; he received his MD in 1956 from Washington University School of Medicine and worked as an anesthesiologist. He also studied human physiological limits and performance at high altitudes. He was Professor and Chairman of the Department ...
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#20020

Sergio Villalobos

Sergio Villalobos
#20031
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Sergio Villalobos Rivera is a Chilean historian, and Chilean National History Award in 1992. Among his most significant works is the Historia del pueblo Chileno .
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#20021

Samuel M. Nabrit

#20032
Overall Influence
1905 - 2003 (98 years)
Samuel Milton Nabrit was an American marine biologist. He was the first African American to be awarded a doctoral degree from Brown University, the first Morehouse College graduate to earn a Ph.D. and the first African American appointed to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission . He was also the first African American to serve on the Brown University Board of Trustees.
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#20022

Darwyn Cooke

Darwyn Cooke
#20033
Overall Influence
1962 - 2016 (54 years)
Darwyn Cooke was a Canadian comics artist, writer, cartoonist, and animator who worked on the comic books Catwoman, DC: The New Frontier, The Spirit and Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter. His work has been honoured with numerous Eisner, Harvey, and Joe Shuster Awards.
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#20023

Margee Ensign

#20034
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Margee M. Ensign is the former President of the American University of Nigeria. Life President Ensign was born in Los Angeles, California. She earned her BA in Peace Studies and International Relations from New College of Florida, and her PhD in International Political Economy from the University of Maryland. She began her academic and administrative career at Columbia University in New York City as Assistant Professor of Politics and Economy and Director of the International Political Economy Program, 1984-89.
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#20024

Bina Shaheen Siddiqui

#20035
Overall Influence
Bina Shaheen Siddiqui is a Pakistani chemist and the Director of the H.E.J. Research Institute of Chemistry at the University of Karachi. Siddiqui graduated from the University of Karachi with an MPhil in 1978. In 1980, she graduated from the same university with a PhD in organic chemistry.
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#20025

Visu

#20036
Overall Influence
1945 - 2020 (75 years)
Meenakshisundaram Ramasamy Viswanathan , best known by his stage name Visu, was an Indian writer, director, stage, film and television actor and talk-show host. Visu initially worked as an assistant to director K. Balachander until becoming a director himself. He later began acting, with his first film being Kudumbam Oru Kadambam , directed by S. P. Muthuraman.
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#20026

Katsuhiko Ishibashi

#20037
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
is a professor in the Research Center for Urban Safety and Security in the Graduate School of Science at Kobe University, Japan and a seismologist who has written extensively in the areas of seismicity and seismotectonics in and around the Japanese Islands. He also coined the term genpatsu-shinsai , from the Japanese words for "nuclear power" and "quake disaster".
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#20027

Susan Bailey

#20038
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Dame Susan Mary Bailey, is a British psychiatrist and academic who specialises in children's mental health. Since 2004, she has been Professor of Child Mental Health at the University of Central Lancashire. From 2011 to 2014, she was President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Since January 2015, she has been Chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.
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#20028

Paul Carl Kocher

#20039
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Paul Carl Kocher is an American cryptographer and cryptography entrepreneur who founded Cryptography Research, Inc. and served as its president and chief scientist. Education and early life Kocher grew up in Oregon. He received a bachelor's degree in biology from Stanford University in 1995, where he worked part-time with Martin Hellman. According to Hellman, Kocher is mostly self-taught in cryptography and already knew an amazing amount when they first met in Kocher's sophomore year. As demand for Kocher's knowledge in cryptography escalated, he gave up on his original plan to become a vete...
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#20029

Alan Menken

Alan Menken
#20040
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Alan Irwin Menken is an American composer, pianist, music director, and record producer, best known for his scores and songs for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Menken's music for The Little Mermaid , Beauty and the Beast , Aladdin , and Pocahontas has each won him two Academy Awards. He also composed the scores and songs for Little Shop of Horrors , Newsies , The Hunchback of Notre Dame , Hercules , Home on the Range , Enchanted , Tangled , and Disenchanted , among others. His accolades include winning eight Academy Awards — becoming the second most prolific Oscar winner in...
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#20030

Håkan Lans

#20041
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Anders Håkan Lans is a Swedish inventor. He holds two patents:a memory controller for a framebuffer: "Data processing system and apparatus for color graphics display". Framebuffer with memory controllers had been in common use for years at the time of this 1979 patent filing.a calligraphic display "Arrangement for producing a pattern on a light-sensitive surface"
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#20031

Zulfiqar Bhutta

#20042
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Zulfiqar A. Bhutta trained as a physician in Pakistan in the early stages of his career. He holds titles across various organizations in diverse geographies. Professor Bhutta is the Founding Director of the Center of Excellence in Women and Child Health & Institute for Global Child Health & Development, at the Aga Khan University South-Central Asia, East Africa & United Kingdom.
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#20032

Ronnie Bell

Ronnie Bell
#20043
Overall Influence
1907 - 1996 (89 years)
Ronald Percy Bell FRS FRSC FRSE was a leading British physical chemist who worked in the Physical Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Oxford. Life Ronald Percy Bell was the eldest child of Edwin Alfred Bell and his wife Beatrice Annie , teachers at an elementary school. He was born on 24 November 1907 at Willowfield, Court House Road, Maidenhead; he had a brother, Kenneth, and an adopted sister, Margaret.
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#20033

Tom Shone

#20044
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Tom Shone is an American film critic and writer. He was the Sunday Times film critic from 1994 to 1999 and has written for Vogue, Slate, the New Yorker, the New York Times and The Guardian. He is the author of Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer, published in 2004 by Simon & Schuster. The book is an analysis of the Hollywood blockbuster phenomenon driven chiefly by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas in the 1970s, based on interviews with these and other filmmakers. Shone's first novel, In the Rooms was published in the U.K. by Hutchinson on July 2, 2009 and in the U.S.
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#20034

Amrita Narlikar

#20045
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Amrita Narlikar is the president of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies and Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences at the University of Hamburg, Germany. She is also an Honorary Fellow of Darwin College , a non-resident senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation , a Distinguished International Fellow of the Indian Association of International Studies .
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#20035

Margaret Burnett

#20046
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Margaret M. Burnett is a computer scientist specializing in work at the intersection of human computer interaction and software engineering, and known for her pioneering work in visual programming languages, end-user software engineering, and gender-inclusive software. She is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Oregon State University,, a member of the CHI Academy, and a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
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#20036

Stephen Thompson

#20047
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Stephen Thompson is a host, commentator, writer, and editor for NPR and NPR Music. He is a regular on the NPR podcasts Pop Culture Happy Hour and All Songs Considered, a recurring guest host of NPR's New Music Friday, and also serves as an occasional music commentator for Morning Edition. He created NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts with Bob Boilen in 2008.
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#20037

Jason Miller

#20048
Overall Influence
Jason Miller is an American communications strategist, political adviser and CEO, best known as the chief spokesman for the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign and transition of Donald Trump. He was a Senior Adviser to the Trump 2020 re-election campaign. From 2010 through 2016, Miller was a partner and executive vice-president at Jamestown Associates. He was initially announced as the incoming White House Communications Director during the presidential transition, though he withdrew shortly after amidst news of an extramarital relationship with a staffer who joined the 2016 campaign two ...
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#20038

Tasneem Zehra Husain

#20049
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Tasneem Zehra Husain is a Pakistani theoretical physicist. She is one of few Pakistani women to obtain a doctorate in physics, and the first Pakistani woman string theorist. An eminent scientist, she has been a guest speaker at a various schools and colleges in an effort to promote science and technology in Pakistan.
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#20039

Adrian Snodgrass

#20050
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Adrian Snodgrass is an Australian architect and scholar in Buddhist studies and Buddhist art. He has developed theories in the area of hermeneutical philosophy and its application to knowledge production and cross-cultural understanding. Snodgrass is co-editor of the journal Architectural Theory Review and Editor of Architectural Theory.
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#20040

B. Montgomery Pettitt

#20051
Overall Influence
B. Montgomery "Monte" Pettitt is the Director of the Sealy Center for Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, holder of the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Chemistry, and tenured Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, as well as the department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. He is also affiliated with and former director of The W. M. Keck Center at Rice University, and a faculty member of the Structural and Computational Biology and Molecular Biophysics program at Baylor College of Medicine. At ...
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#20041

James A. Stockman...

#20052
Overall Influence
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#20042

Alejandro Sieveking

Alejandro Sieveking
#20053
Overall Influence
1934 - 2020 (86 years)
Alejandro Sieveking Campano was a Chilean playwright, theatre director and actor. Career Sieveking was born in the Chilean city of Rengo on 5 September 1934. He performed as an actor on theatrical productions by Instituto del Teatro , Teatro de la Universidad Católica , Teatro del Ángel and Teatro Itinerante . He worked together with Víctor Jara on a number of theatrical and musical projects, including in his album: “La Población” – in which he co-wrote the song “Herminda de la Victoria” with Jara.
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#20043

Stéphane François

#20054
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Stéphane François is a French political scientist who specializes on radical right-wing movements. He also studies conspiracy theories, political ecology and countercultures. Life and career Born on 1 January 1973, Stéphane François attended Lille 2 University of Health and Law, where he obtained a PhD in political science after a doctoral thesis on the "Paganism of the Nouvelle Droite."
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#20044

James Bieri

#20055
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
James Bieri is a psychologist and biographer who introduced in 1955 the concept of cognitive complexity, derived from his doctoral study with George A. Kelly. Subsequently, integrating ideas from information theory and psychophysics, Bieri and his research team at Columbia University published a volume entitled Clinical and Social Judgment .
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#20045

Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova

Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova
#20056
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
Anastasia Sergeyevna "Nastia" Pavlyuchenkova is a Russian professional tennis player. A junior prodigy, Pavlyuchenkova won three Grand Slam titles and became the junior world No. 1, in January 2006, at the age of 14. She continued her success after turning professional, reaching a career-high singles ranking of world No. 11 on 8 November 2021.
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#20046

Nigel Unwin

#20057
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Peter Nigel Tripp Unwin FRS is a British scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, where he was Head of the Neurobiology Division from 1992 until 2008. He is currently also Emeritus Professor of Cell Biology at the Scripps Research Institute.
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#20047

François Chollet

François Chollet
#20058
Overall Influence
François Chollet is a French software engineer and artificial intelligence researcher currently working at Google. Chollet is the creator of the Keras deep-learning library, released in 2015, and a main contributor to the TensorFlow machine learning framework. His research focuses on computer vision, the application of machine learning to formal reasoning, abstraction, and how to achieve greater generality in artificial intelligence.
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#20048

Bob Shaw

Bob Shaw
#20059
Overall Influence
1931 - 1996 (65 years)
Robert Shaw was a science fiction writer and fan from Northern Ireland, noted for his originality and wit. He won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 1979 and 1980. His short story "Light of Other Days" was a Hugo Award nominee in 1967, as was his novel The Ragged Astronauts in 1987.
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#20049

Kathryn Barger

Kathryn Barger
#20060
Overall Influence
Kathryn Ann Barger-Leibrich is an American politician, serving as a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for the 5th District since 2016. A member of the Republican Party, Barger served as Chair of Los Angeles County from 2019 to 2020. She previously served as Chief Deputy Supervisor and Chief of Staff to her predecessor Mayor Michael D. Antonovich.
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#20050

Amit Patel

#20061
Overall Influence
Amit Nilkanth Patel MD, BS, MS is an Indian-American cardiac surgeon and former director of clinical regenerative medicine and tissue engineering at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He was a tenured professor of surgery-cardiothoracic at the University of Utah until December 2016.
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