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
#20201
Zillur Rahman Siddiqui
#20212
Overall Influence
1928 - 2014 (86 years)
Zillur Rahman Siddiqui was a Bangladeshi writer, academic and educationist. Career Siddiqui was a professor of English at Rajshahi University. He served as a Vice-Chancellor of Jahangirnagar University from 1976 to 1984.
Go to Profile#20202
Roy Richard Grinker
#20213
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Roy Richard Grinker is an American author and Professor of anthropology, international affairs, and human sciences at The George Washington University. Grinker is an authority on North and South Korean relations. As part of his PhD research, he spent two years living with the Lese farmers and the Efé pygmies in the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo as a Fulbright scholar. He has also conducted epidemiological research on autism in Korea.
Go to Profile#20203
Carl Davidson
#20214
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Carl Davidson is a former student leader of the New Left of the 1960s, serving as a Vice President and National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society. From 1968 to 1976, he worked on the Guardian newsweekly as a writer and news editor. Born in 1943, he graduated with a B.A. in philosophy from Penn State, and later taught and did graduate work at the University of Nebraska, between 1965 and 1966.
Go to Profile#20204
Dan McKenzie
#20215
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Dan Peter McKenzie is a Professor of Geophysics at the University of Cambridge, and one-time head of the Bullard Laboratories of the Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences. He wrote the first paper defining the mathematical principles of plate tectonics on a sphere, and his early work on mantle convection created the modern discussion of planetary interiors.
Go to Profile#20205
A. Carl Leopold
#20216
Overall Influence
1919 - 2009 (90 years)
Aldo Carl Leopold was an American academic and plant physiologist, son of Aldo Leopold, a noted ecologist. He is known for his research on soybeans which led to techniques allowing insulin to be dried and later processed into an inhalable insulin.
Go to Profile#20206
Norman N. Holland
#20217
Overall Influence
1927 - 2017 (90 years)
Norman N. Holland was an American literary critic and Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar Emeritus at the University of Florida. Holland's scholarship focused largely on psychoanalytic criticism and cognitive poetics, subjects on which he wrote fifteen books and nearly 250 scholarly articles. He is widely recognized for his scholarship specifically related to psychoanalytic applications in literary study. He was known as a major scholar of literary theory, primarily for having been one of the pioneers of reader-response criticism. Holland's writings have been translated into Chinese, Dutch, Pers...
Go to Profile#20207
Dale G. Renlund
#20218
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Dale Gunnar Renlund is an American religious leader and former cardiologist who serves in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . He has been a general authority of the church since 2009. Currently, he is the twelfth most senior apostle in the church.
Go to Profile#20208
Adam Gilchrist
#20219
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Adam Craig Gilchrist is an Australian cricket commentator and former international cricketer and captain of the Australia national cricket team. He was an attacking left-handed batsman and record-breaking wicket-keeper, who redefined the role for the Australia national team through his aggressive batting. Widely regarded as one of the greatest wicket-keeper-batsmen in the history of the game, Gilchrist held the world record for the most dismissals by a wicket-keeper in One Day International cricket until it was surpassed by Kumar Sangakkara in 2015 and the most by an Australian in Test cricket.
Go to Profile#20209
John M. Sides
#20220
Overall Influence
John M. Sides is an American political scientist. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1996, and pursued a doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. Sides then began his teaching career as an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He subsequently joined the George Washington University faculty, then was appointed William R. Kenan, Jr. Chair and Professor at Vanderbilt University.
Go to Profile#20210
Ali Chamseddine
#20221
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Ali H. Chamseddine is a Lebanese physicist known for his contributions to particle physics, general relativity and mathematical physics. , Chamseddine is a physics Professor at the American University of Beirut and the Institut des hautes études scientifiques.
Go to Profile#20211
Robert Theobald
#20222
Overall Influence
1929 - 1999 (70 years)
Robert Theobald was an American private consulting economist and futurist author. In economics, he was best known for his writings on the economics of abundance and his advocacy of a Basic Income Guarantee. Theobald was a member of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution in 1964, and later listed in the top 10 most influential living futurists in The Encyclopedia of the Future.
Go to Profile#20212
Sebastian Seung
#20223
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Hyunjune Sebastian Seung is President at Samsung Electronics & Head of Samsung Research and Anthony B. Evnin Professor in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Department of Computer Science. Seung has done influential research in both computer science and neuroscience. He has helped pioneer the new field of connectomics, "developing new computational technologies for mapping the connections between neurons," and has been described as the cartographer of the brain.
Go to Profile#20213
Dan M. Frangopol
#20224
Overall Influence
Dan Mircea Frangopol is an American civil engineer and the inaugural holder of the Fazlur R. Khan Endowed Chair of Structural Engineering and Architecture at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#20214
Lawrence Ritter
#20225
Overall Influence
1922 - 2004 (82 years)
Lawrence Stanley Ritter was an American writer whose specialties were economics and baseball. Ritter was a professor of economics and finance, and chairman of the Department of Finance at the Graduate School of Business Administration of New York University. He also edited The Journal of Finance from 1964 to 1966. In 1970, Ritter served as president of the American Finance Association. He died at age 81 in New York City. His book, Principles of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets, coauthored with William L. Silber and Gregory F. Udell, has gone through twelve editions and has been a standar...
Go to Profile#20215
Birgitte, Duchess of Gloucester
#20226
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Birgitte, Duchess of Gloucester, is a Danish born member of the British royal family. She is married to Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester, a grandson of George V. They have three children. Early life and education Birgitte was born Birgitte Eva van Deurs Henriksen, in Odense, Denmark, the younger daughter of Asger Preben Wissing Henriksen, a lawyer, and his wife, Vivian van Deurs. She was educated in Odense and at finishing schools in Lausanne and Cambridge. She took her mother's ancestral name van Deurs on 15 January 1966, after her parents' separation. After completing a three-year course...
Go to Profile#20216
David R. Marples
#20227
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
David Roger Marples is a Canadian historian and Distinguished University Professor at the Department of History & Classics, University of Alberta. He specializes in history and contemporary politics of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
Go to Profile#20217
Javier Solana
#20228
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Francisco Javier Solana de Madariaga CYC is a Spanish physicist and PSOE politician. After serving in the Spanish government as Foreign Affairs Minister under Felipe González and as the Secretary General of NATO , leading the alliance during Operation Allied Force, he was appointed the European Union's High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, Secretary General of the Council of the European Union and Secretary-General of the Western European Union and held these posts from October 1999 until December 2009.
Go to Profile#20218
James Kakalios
#20229
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
James Kakalios is a physics professor at the University of Minnesota. Known within the scientific community for his work with amorphous semiconductors, granular materials, and 1/f noise, he is known to the general public as the author of the book The Physics of Superheroes, which considers comic book superheroes from the standpoint of fundamental physics.
Go to Profile#20219
Dennis P. Tarnow
#20230
Overall Influence
Dennis Perry Tarnow is an Americann dentist specializing in periodontics, prosthodontics and implant dentistry and is renown for his mark on dental implant research and education. He is currently director of implant dentistry at Columbia University College of Dental Medicine and former chairman of the department of periodontics and implant dentistry at New York University College of Dentistry. He is a sought after speaker on the subject of implant dentistry.
Go to Profile#20220
Jeffrey Kaplan
#20231
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Jeffrey Kaplan is an American academic who has written and edited a number of books on racism, religious violence, terrorism and the far-right. He is an associate professor of religion at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh and a member of the board of academic advisors of the university's Institute for the Study of Religion, Violence and Memory.
Go to Profile#20221
Kristian Kersting
#20232
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
#20222
Jody Freeman
#20233
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Jody Freeman is a professor at Harvard Law School in administrative law and environmental law. From 2009 to 2010, she was Counselor for Energy and Climate Change in the Obama White House. In August 2023, she resigned from her position as director of the board of ConocoPhillips, after more than one and a half years of criticism by Harvard students and faculty. She had denied having violated conflict of interest rules. Emails demonstrated she participated in the company's lobbying efforts to convince the Securities and Exchange Commission to weaken its climate risk disclosure rules.
Go to Profile#20223
Vittorio Erspamer
#20234
Overall Influence
1909 - 1999 (90 years)
Vittorio Erspamer was an Italian pharmacologist and chemist, known for the identification, synthesis and pharmacological studies of more than sixty new chemical compounds, most notably serotonin and octopamine.
Go to Profile#20224
Nick Kyrgios
#20235
Overall Influence
1995 - Present (31 years)
Nicholas Hilmy Kyrgios is an Australian professional tennis player. Kyrgios achieved his career-high ATP singles ranking of world No. 13 on 24 October 2016. He has won seven ATP Tour singles titles, including the 2019 and 2022 Washington Open, and reached eleven finals, most notably a major final at the 2022 Wimbledon Championships, and a Masters 1000 final at the 2017 Cincinnati Masters. In doubles, during his professional career, Kyrgios has a career-high ranking of world No. 11, achieved on 7 November 2022, winning a major doubles title at the 2022 Australian Open and reaching the semifinals of the Miami Open, both times partnering with Thanasi Kokkinakis.
Go to Profile#20225
Derk Pereboom
#20236
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Derk Pereboom is the Susan Linn Sage Professor in Philosophy and Ethics at Cornell University. He specializes in free will and moral responsibility, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and the work of Immanuel Kant.
Go to Profile#20226
Antonio Citterio
#20237
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Antonio Citterio is an Italian architect, furniture designer and industrial designer who lives and works in Milan. Biography He received a degree in architecture from Politecnico di Milano in 1972, and subsequently started working as a designer and industrial design consultant. From 1987 to 1996, he worked in association with Terry Dwan, designing buildings in Europe and Japan.
Go to Profile#20227
Bryan Sykes
#20238
Overall Influence
1947 - 2020 (73 years)
Bryan Clifford Sykes was a British geneticist and science writer who was a Fellow of Wolfson College and Emeritus Professor of human genetics at the University of Oxford. Sykes published the first report on retrieving DNA from ancient bone . He was involved in a number of high-profile cases dealing with ancient DNA, including that of Ötzi the Iceman. He also suggested a Florida accountant by the name of Tom Robinson was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, a claim that was subsequently disproved.
Go to Profile#20228
Kofi Kingston
#20239
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Kofi Nahaje Sarkodie-Mensah is a Ghanaian-born American professional wrestler. He is currently signed to WWE, where he performs on the Raw brand under the ring name Kofi Kingston and is part of The New Day.
Go to Profile#20229
John D. H. Downing
#20240
Overall Influence
John D. H. Downing is a communications scholar who has written extensively on Alternative Media and Social Movements. He is Professor Emeritus of International Communication at the College of Mass Communication & Media Arts, Southern Illinois University and currently affiliated with Northwestern University in Qatar. He is founding Director of the Global Media Research Center.
Go to Profile#20230
Stuart Cheshire
#20241
Overall Influence
Stuart Cheshire is a Distinguished Engineer, Scientist and Technologist at Apple. He pioneered Zeroconf networking while employed at Apple. Zeroconf was originally released by Apple as Rendezvous, but later renamed Bonjour. Subsequently, he co-authored the book Zero Configuration Networking: The Definitive Guide, published by O'Reilly, with Daniel H Steinberg.
Go to Profile#20231
David Altheide
#20242
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
David L. Altheide is an American sociologist. He taught for thirty-seven years at Arizona State University and is Regents' Professor Emeritus of the School of Justice and Social Inquiry there. Educational background David Altheide received his B.A. in 1967 from Central Washington State College, with a distinction in Sociology and a minor in Philosophy. After receiving his bachelor's degree, he was awarded a Title IV National Defense Education Act Fellowship to attend the University of Washington, where he graduated in 1969 with an M.A. in Sociology. Altheide continued his graduate studies ...
Go to Profile#20232
Mercedes Bunz
#20243
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Mercedes Bunz is a German art historian, journalist, and the Professor of Digital Culture and Society at King's College London. Biography Early career Bunz studied philosophy and art history at the Freie Universität Berlin, after passing her final exams at the Celtis-Gymnasium secondary school in the German town of Schweinfurt in 1991. Together with Sascha Kösch, Riley Reinhold, and Benjamin Weiss she founded the Berlin music monthly De:Bug in 1997, becoming its co-editor and editor-in-chief from 1999 until 2001.
Go to Profile#20233
Der Scutt
#20244
Overall Influence
1934 - 2010 (76 years)
Der Scutt was an American architect and designer of a number of major and notable buildings throughout New York City and the United States. Scutt worked on Trump Tower next to the Tiffany & Co. flagship store on Fifth Avenue, New York City, developed by Donald Trump. His other major buildings include One Astor Plaza, 520 Madison Avenue, the Continental Insurance Corporation headquarters in New York City, and the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company Headquarters in Milwaukee. He was the design consultant for the Grand Hyatt New York.
Go to Profile#20234
Eta Linnemann
#20245
Overall Influence
1926 - 2009 (83 years)
Eta Linnemann was a German Protestant theologian. In her last years, she broke completely with the theology of her teacher Rudolf Bultmann. Life Eta Linnemann studied Protestant theology in Marburg, Tübingen and Göttingen from October 1948 to July 1953. She passed her first and second state examinations in August 1953 and in August 1957, respectively. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover commissioned Linnemann to write interpretations of biblical texts for religious education. From this work arose her dissertation on the parables of Jesus - Gleichnisse Jesu, Einführung und Auslegung - w...
Go to Profile#20235
Manijeh Razeghi
#20246
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Manijeh Razeghi is an Iranian-American scientist in the fields of semiconductors and optoelectronic devices. She is a pioneer in modern epitaxial techniques for semiconductors such as low pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition , vapor phase epitaxy , molecular beam epitaxy , GasMBE, and MOMBE. These techniques have enabled the development of semiconductor devices and quantum structures with higher composition consistency and reliability, leading to major advancement in InP and GaAs based quantum photonics and electronic devices, which were at the core of the late 20th century optical ...
Go to Profile#20236
Karla Jay
#20247
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Karla Jay is a distinguished professor emerita at Pace University, where she taught English and directed the women's and gender studies program between 1974 and 2009. A pioneer in the field of lesbian and gay studies, she is widely published.
Go to Profile#20237
A. Dale Kaiser
#20248
Overall Influence
1927 - 2020 (93 years)
Armin Dale Kaiser was an American biochemist, molecular geneticist, molecular biologist and developmental biologist. Biography Kaiser received in 1950 his bachelor's degree from Purdue University and in 1955 his PhD from Caltech in biology. At Caltech he was in Max Delbrück's bacteriophage group and received his PhD in biology under Jean Weigle with thesis A genetic analysis of bacteriophage lambda. Kaiser was in 1956 a postdoc at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and afterward became an instructor and then in 1958 an assistant professor in microbiology at Washington University in St. Louis. I...
Go to Profile#20238
Mark B. Wise
#20249
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Mark Brian Wise is a Canadian-American theoretical physicist. He has conducted research in elementary particle physics and cosmology. He is best known for his role in the development of heavy quark effective theory , a mathematical formalism that has allowed physicists to make predictions about otherwise intractable problems in the theory of the strong nuclear interactions. He has also published work on mathematical models for finance and risk assessment.
Go to Profile#20239
Candace Vogler
#20250
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Candace A. Vogler is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, and a specialist in moral philosophy, philosophy of action, and G. E. M. Anscombe. Education and career Vogler received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh in 1995, and has taught at the University of Chicago since 1994.
Go to Profile#20240
Alan Cook
#20251
Overall Influence
1922 - 2004 (82 years)
Sir Alan Hugh Cook FRS was an English physicist who specialised in geophysics, astrophysics and particularly precision measurement. Early life and family Cook was born in Felsted, Essex in 1922. He was the eldest of the six children of Reginald Thomas Cook, a customs and excise officer, and his wife, Ethel, Saxon, who was active in the Congregational church. His family were active churchgoers and Cook retained a lifelong Christian commitment. He was educated first at the village school at Felsted, then at West Leigh School and finally at Westcliff High School for Boys. In 1939 he won a majo...
Go to Profile#20241
Roberta Baskin
#20252
Overall Influence
Roberta Baskin is an American journalist and nonprofit director. She co-founded and served as Executive Director of the AIM2Flourish global learning initiative, hosted at Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
Go to Profile#20242
Alan Hansen
#20253
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Alan David Hansen is a Scottish former footballer and BBC television football pundit. He played as a central defender for Partick Thistle, for the successful Liverpool team of the late 1970s and 1980s, and for the Scotland national team. As a football pundit, Hansen became known for his outspoken views, particularly on teams' defensive performances, frequently criticising what he believed was "diabolical" or "shocking" defending. He co-hosted Match of the Day from 1992 to 2014.
Go to Profile#20243
Carl Barks
#20254
Overall Influence
1901 - 2000 (99 years)
Carl Barks was an American cartoonist, author, and painter. He is best known for his work in Disney comic books, as the writer and artist of the first Donald Duck stories and as the creator of Scrooge McDuck. He worked anonymously until late in his career; fans dubbed him The Duck Man and The Good Duck Artist. In 1987, Barks was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#20244
Notker Wolf
#20255
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Notker Wolf is a German Benedictine monk, priest, abbot, musician, and author. He is a member of St. Ottilien Archabbey located in Bavaria, Germany, which is part of the Benedictine Congregation of Saint Ottilien. He previously was elected and served as the ninth Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Confederation of the Order of Saint Benedict. He was elected to his position as Abbot Primate in 2000 and ended his final term in 2016.
Go to Profile#20245
Cafu
#20256
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Marcos Evangelista de Morais , known as Cafu , is a Brazilian former professional footballer who played as a right-back. Known for his pace and energetic attacking runs along the right flank, he is regarded as one of the greatest full-backs of all time. He is the most-capped player for the Brazil national team with 142 appearances.
Go to Profile#20246
Dimitrios Trichopoulos
#20257
Overall Influence
1938 - 2014 (76 years)
Dimitrios Trichopoulos , was a Mediterranean Diet expert and tobacco harms researcher. He was Vincent L. Gregory Professor of Cancer Prevention and Professor of Epidemiology, and a past chair of the Department of Epidemiology, in the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
Go to Profile#20247
Itamar Willner
#20258
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
#20248
Daniel David
#20259
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Daniel David is a Romanian academic. He is "Aaron T. Beck" professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at the Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. He was the head of the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy of the Babeş-Bolyai University between 2007 and 2012. Daniel David is also an adjunct professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and is the head of the Research Program at Albert Ellis Institute in New York.
Go to Profile#20249
Ghulam Mustafa Khan
#20260
Overall Influence
1912 - 2005 (93 years)
Ghulam Mustafa Khan, SI was a Pakistani researcher, literary critic, linguist, author, scholar of Urdu literature and linguistics, educationist and religious and spiritual leader belonging to Naqshbandi order of Sufism.
Go to Profile#20250
Lucien Szpiro
#20261
Overall Influence
1941 - 2020 (79 years)
Lucien Serge Szpiro was a French mathematician known for his work in number theory, arithmetic geometry, and commutative algebra. He formulated Szpiro's conjecture and was a Distinguished Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and an emeritus at the CNRS.
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