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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people
#20351
John Howard
#20362
Overall Influence
John Jackson Howard is an American physician, professor, and public health administrator who served a 6-year term as the director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and was appointed to be a special coordinator to respond to the health effects of the September 11 attacks. In this role, Howard advocated for rescue workers, introducing a program to provide screening, medical exams, and treatment for them. In 2009, Howard was again appointed as director of NIOSH and as World Trade Center Programs coordinator for HHS. In 2011, Howard became the Administrator of the World Trade Center Health Program.
Go to Profile#20352
Antonio Gotto
#20363
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Antonio M. Gotto, Jr. was Dean of Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He was succeeded by Laurie H. Glimcher in January 2012. Prior to his appointment in 1997, Gotto was chairman of the department of internal medicine at Baylor College of Medicine for 20 years, where he collaborated extensively with Michael DeBakey. Gotto is best known for his research into blood lipids. As administrator, he presided over an enormous growth at Cornell, an affiliation with Houston Methodist Hospital when it separated from Baylor, and a deepening of Cornell's longtime affiliation with New York Hospit...
Go to Profile#20353
Raquel Welch
#20364
Overall Influence
1940 - 2023 (83 years)
Jo Raquel Welch was an American actress and model. Welch first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage , after which she won a contract with 20th Century Fox. They lent her contract to the British studio Hammer Film Productions, for whom she made One Million Years B.C. . Although Welch had only three lines of dialogue in the film, images of her in the doe-skin bikini became bestselling posters that turned her into an international sex symbol. She later starred in Bedazzled , Bandolero! , 100 Rifles , Myra Breckinridge , Hannie Caulder , Kansas City Bomber , The Last of Sheila , The Wild Party , and Mother, Jugs & Speed .
Go to Profile#20354
Pat Metheny
#20365
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Patrick Bruce Metheny is an American jazz guitarist and composer. He was the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and continues to work in various small-combo, duet, and solo settings, as well as other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progressive and contemporary jazz, latin jazz, and jazz fusion. He has three gold albums and 20 Grammy Awards, and is the only person to have won Grammys in 10 categories.
Go to Profile#20355
Jay A. Levy
#20366
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Jay A. Levy is an American AIDS and cancer research physician. He is a professor of medicine with specialties in virology and immunology at the University of California, San Francisco . Biography Levy was born in Wilmington, Delaware, with his twin brother, Stuart B. Levy. Levy received his B.A. degree with high honors from Wesleyan University in 1960 and subsequently his M.D. from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in 1965. He conducted research for a year on regeneration in planaria at the Université de Paris on Fulbright and French government fellowships. ...
Go to Profile#20356
John Worthen
#20367
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
John Worthen taught at universities in North America and Wales before becoming Professor of D.H. Lawrence Studies at the University of Nottingham, where he remains Emeritus Professor. His inaugural lecture as Professor of D.H. Lawrence Studies was published under the title Cold Hearts and Coronets. His career as Lawrence’s biographer began in the 1980s and culminated in the celebrated D.H. Lawrence: The Early Years 1885–1912, the first part of the definitive three-volume Cambridge biography . Material from this project later formed the foundation of Worthen's single-volume study, D.H. Lawren...
Go to Profile#20357
Richard McNally
#20368
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Richard McNally is an American psychologist and director of clinical training at Harvard University's department of psychology. As a clinical psychologist and experimental psycho-pathologist, McNally studies anxiety disorders and related syndromes, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive–compulsive disorder, and complicated grief.
Go to Profile#20358
Ally Condie
#20369
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Allyson Braithwaite Condie is an author of young adult and middle grade fiction. Her novel Matched was a #1 New York Times and international bestseller, and spent over a year on the New York Times Bestseller List. The sequels are also New York Times bestsellers. Matched was chosen as one of YALSA's 2011 Teens' Top Ten and named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Children's Books of 2010. All three books are available in 30+ languages.
Go to Profile#20359
Clemens van Blitterswijk
#20370
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Clemens A. van Blitterswijk is a Dutch tissue engineer who contributed to the use of biomaterials to heal bone injuries, especially using osteoinductive ceramics. In collaboration with Jan de Boer and others, he has contributed to screening microtextures to study cell-biomaterial interactions, an approach termed materiomics.
Go to Profile#20360
Jun Hyun-moo
#20371
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Jun Hyun-moo is a South Korean host and television personality. Before becoming a host, he was a news anchor and radio announcer. Education Jeon graduated from Yonsei University with a degree in Sociology and English Literature.
Go to Profile#20361
Warren Moon
#20372
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Harold Warren Moon is an American former football quarterback who played professionally for 23 seasons. He spent the majority of his career with the Houston Oilers of the National Football League and the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League . Moon also played for the NFL's Minnesota Vikings, Seattle Seahawks, and Kansas City Chiefs. He is considered one of the greatest undrafted players in NFL history.
Go to Profile#20362
Mark Watson
#20373
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Mark Andrew Watson is an English comedian and novelist. Early life Watson was born in Bristol to a Welsh mother and English father. He has younger twin sisters and a brother, Paul. He attended Bristol Grammar School, where he won a "Gabbler of the Year" award. He went on to study English at Queens' College, Cambridge, graduating with first class honours. At university he was a member of the Footlights and contemporary of Stefan Golaszewski, Tim Key and Dan Stevens. He was part of the revue which was nominated for the Best Newcomer category in the Perrier Comedy Awardss at the 2001 Edinburgh F...
Go to Profile#20363
Susanne Schröter
#20374
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Susanne Schröter is a contemporary Social Anthropologist focussing primarily on Islam, Gender and Conflict Studies. Biography Susanne Schröter is head of a research group on "Contemporary discourses on state and society in the Islamic world" and carries out a research project founded by the German Research Foundation entitled "Re-negotiating gender in contemporary Indonesia. Empowerment strategies of Muslim and secular women activists".
Go to Profile#20364
Alan Mycroft
#20375
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Alan Mycroft is a professor at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge, where he is also director of studies for computer science. Education Mycroft read mathematics at Cambridge then moved to Edinburgh where he completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree with a thesis on Abstract interpretation and optimising transformations for applicative programs supervised by Rod Burstall and Robin Milner.
Go to Profile#20365
Richard J. Sullivan
#20376
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Richard Joseph Sullivan is an American lawyer who serves as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He was formerly a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York from 2007 to 2018.
Go to Profile#20366
Nasrollah Pourjavady
#20377
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Nasrollah Pourjavady is an Iranian philosopher, Sufi scholar and a professor of philosophy at the University of Tehran in Tehran, Iran. He is the founder and former head of the Iran University Press and a permanent member of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature.
Go to Profile#20367
Tony Smith
#20378
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
#20368
David M. Sabatini
#20379
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
David M. Sabatini is an American scientist and a former professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2002 to 2021, he was a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He was also an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 2008 to 2021 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016. He is known for his contributions in the areas of cell signaling and cancer metabolism, most notably the co-discovery of mTOR.
Go to Profile#20369
Ulrich Walter
#20380
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Ulrich Hans Walter is a German physicist, engineer and former DFVLR astronaut. Education Walter was born in Iserlohn. After finishing secondary school there and two years in the Bundeswehr, he studied physics at the University of Cologne. In 1980, he was awarded a diploma degree, and five years later a doctorate, both in the field of solid-state physics.
Go to Profile#20370
Alimuddin Zumla
#20381
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Sir Alimuddin Zumla, , FRCP, FRCPath, FRSB is a British-Zambian professor of infectious diseases and international health at University College London Medical School. He specialises in infectious and tropical diseases, clinical immunology, and internal medicine, with a special interest in HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections , and diseases of poverty. He is known for his leadership of infectious/tropical diseases research and capacity development activities. He was awarded a Knighthood in the 2017 Queens Birthday Honours list for services to public health and protection from infectious disease. I...
Go to Profile#20371
Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash
#20382
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash is an Iraqi scientist and academic, often demonized as "Mrs. Anthrax" by Anglo-American media for her unproven association with the discontinued Iraqi biological weapons program as a part of the propaganda campaign to justify the Iraq War. Ammash was number 53 on the Pentagon's list of the 55 most wanted, the five of hearts in the deck of most wanted Iraqi playing cards, and the only woman to be featured. She was captured by coalition forces but later released without being charged.
Go to Profile#20372
George Shire
#20383
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
George Shire is a Zimbabwean who lives in London in the United Kingdom. He is a veteran of the war to liberate Rhodesia from white minority rule. He has written newspaper articles and participated in television and radio programs defending the actions of Robert Mugabe's government.
Go to Profile#20373
David Bates
#20384
Overall Influence
1916 - 1994 (78 years)
Sir David Robert Bates was a Northern Irish mathematician and physicist. Born in Omagh, County Tyrone, Ireland, he moved to Belfast with his family in 1925, attending the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He enrolled with the Queen's University of Belfast in 1934. In 1939 he became a research student under Harrie Massey.
Go to Profile#20374
Kenneth B. Storey
#20385
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Kenneth B. Storey is a Canadian scientist whose work draws from a variety of fields including biochemistry and molecular biology. He is a Professor of Biology, Biochemistry and Chemistry at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Storey has a world-wide reputation for his research on biochemical adaptation - the molecular mechanisms that allow animals to adapt to and endure severe environmental stresses such as deep cold, oxygen deprivation, and desiccation.
Go to Profile#20375
John Menkes
#20386
Overall Influence
1928 - 2008 (80 years)
John Hans Menkes was an Austrian-American pediatric neurologist and author of fictional novels and plays. He identified two inherited diseases: maple syrup urine disease which is a defect in amino acid metabolism, and a defect in copper transport which bears his name. In addition to a career in academic medicine, he pursued a career in writing, publishing novels and plays.
Go to Profile#20376
Michael Gorra
#20387
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Michael Gorra is an American professor of English and literature, currently serving as the Mary Augusta Jordan Professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College, where he has taught since 1985.
Go to Profile#20377
John Smoltz
#20388
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
John Andrew Smoltz , nicknamed "Smoltzie" and "Marmaduke", is an American former baseball pitcher who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball from 1988 to 2009, all but the last year with the Atlanta Braves. An eight-time All-Star, Smoltz was part of a celebrated trio of starting pitchers, along with Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, who propelled Atlanta to perennial pennant contention in the 1990s, highlighted by a championship in the 1995 World Series. He won the National League Cy Young Award in 1996 after posting a record of 24–8, equaling the most victories by an NL pitcher since 1972. Th...
Go to Profile#20378
Keith Hernandez
#20389
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Keith Barlow Hernandez is an American former Major League Baseball first baseman who played the majority of his career with the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets. Hernandez was a five-time All-Star who shared the 1979 NL MVP award and won two World Series titles, one each with the Cardinals and Mets. Since 1998, he has been a color commentator on the Mets television broadcasts.
Go to Profile#20379
Diane Larsen-Freeman
#20390
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Diane Larsen-Freeman is an American linguist. She is currently a Professor Emerita in Education and in Linguistics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. An applied linguist, known for her work in second language acquisition, English as a second or foreign language, language teaching methods, teacher education, and English grammar, she is renowned for her work on the complex/dynamic systems approach to second language development.
Go to Profile#20380
Belinda Carlisle
#20391
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Belinda Jo Carlisle is an American singer. She gained fame as the lead vocalist of the Go-Go's, the most successful all-female rock band of all time, and went on to have a prolific career as a solo artist.
Go to Profile#20381
Ashley Bryan
#20392
Overall Influence
1923 - 2022 (99 years)
Ashley Frederick Bryan was an American writer and illustrator of children's books. Most of his subjects are from the African-American experience. He was U.S. nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2006 and he won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for his contribution to American children's literature in 2009. His picture book Freedom Over Me was short-listed for the 2016 Kirkus Prize and received a Newbery Honor.
Go to Profile#20382
Chandrashekhar Patil
#20393
Overall Influence
1939 - 2022 (83 years)
Chandrashekar Patil , popularly known as Champa, was an Indian poet, playwright and public intellectual writing in Kannada. Patil was a recipient of the Karnataka Sahitya Akademi Award for Poetry in 1989 and the Karnataka state government's Pampa Award in 2009. Patil had served as the president of the Kannada Sahitya Parishat, a Kannada language literary organization.
Go to Profile#20383
Jim Fowler
#20394
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
James Mark Fowler was an American professional zoologist and host of the acclaimed wildlife documentary television show Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Early years Born in Albany, Georgia, Fowler spent his youth in the town of Falls Church, Virginia, exploring all things in nature in the stream valley of Four Mile Run near his family home. He graduated from Westtown School in 1947, a Quaker college preparatory school in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and Earlham College in 1952.
Go to Profile#20384
Türkan Rado
#20395
Overall Influence
1915 - 2007 (92 years)
Türkan Rado was a Turkish professor of jurisprudence specializing in Roman law at Istanbul University. She was the first ever female professor of law in Turkey. Biography She was born on 30 October 1915 in Istanbul, then Ottoman Empire. Her father, Cevdet Ferit, was a lawyer and lecturer of criminal procedure at Darülfünun, in what is today Istanbul University; her mother was Ayşe Nikfal. She had two sisters, Şeküre and Gülgün.
Go to Profile#20385
Will McCants
#20396
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Will McCants , also known as William Faizi McCants, is a scholar of militant Islamism. He is a fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy and director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution. An adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins University, he is a former senior advisor on violent extremism to the U.S. State Department's Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. Founder and co-editor of the website Jihadica, he is also a former research analyst for CNA, a non-profit organization that encompasses the Center for Naval Analyses and the In...
Go to Profile#20386
Robert W. Clower
#20397
Overall Influence
1926 - 2011 (85 years)
Robert Wayne Clower was an American economist. He is credited with having largely created the field of stock-flow analysis in economics and with seminal works on the micro-foundations of monetary theory and macroeconomics.
Go to Profile#20387
Jerry Bruckheimer
#20398
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Jerome Leon Bruckheimer is an American film and television producer. He has been active in the genres of action, drama, comedy, fantasy, and science fiction. Bruckheimer has produced films like Flashdance, Top Gun, The Rock, Crimson Tide, Con Air, Armageddon, Enemy of the State, Black Hawk Down, Pearl Harbor, Kangaroo Jack, as well as the Beverly Hills Cop, Bad Boys, Pirates of the Caribbean, and National Treasure franchises. Many of his films have been co-produced by Paramount and Disney, while many of his television series have been co-produced by Warner Bros. and CBS Studios. In July 2003,...
Go to Profile#20388
Bengt Saltin
#20399
Overall Influence
1935 - 2014 (79 years)
Bengt Saltin was a Swedish professor in exercise physiology, who spent parts of his career in Denmark. After starting his medical studies at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, in the 1950s, he commenced his doctoral studies at the Department of Physiology at the Royal Gymnastic Central Institute in Stockholm in 1960. Per-Olof Åstrand became his tutor, and in 1964 he presented his doctoral thesis. He thereafter proceeded with introducing muscle physiology and biochemistry studies at the same department.
Go to Profile#20389
Peter van Onselen
#20400
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Peter van Onselen is an Australian political academic, author, political journalist and commentator. He is a contributing editor at The Australian newspaper. Between 2010 and 2017, he hosted several programs at Sky News Australia. Since December 2018 he has served as Network 10's political editor and a co-host of The Project.
Go to Profile#20390
James J. O'Donnell
#20401
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
James Joseph O'Donnell is a classical scholar and University Librarian at Arizona State University. He formerly served as University Professor at Georgetown University and as Provost of Georgetown University . O'Donnell was previously Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing at the University of Pennsylvania . He is a former President of the American Philological Association and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. From 2012 to 2018, he chaired the Board of the American Council of Learned Societies.
Go to Profile#20391
Per-Olof Åstrand
#20402
Overall Influence
1922 - 2015 (93 years)
Per-Olof Åstrand was a Swedish professor of physiology at the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences in Stockholm 1970–1977, and 1977–1988 at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and a member of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet . Åstrand is considered a "pioneer", "legend" and one of the "founding fathers" of modern exercise physiology.
Go to Profile#20392
Daniel Bump
#20403
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Daniel Willis Bump is a mathematician who is a professor at Stanford University. He is a fellow of the American Mathematical Society since 2015, for "contributions to number theory, representation theory, combinatorics, and random matrix theory, as well as mathematical exposition".
Go to Profile#20393
Derek H. Sleeman
#20404
Overall Influence
Derek H. Sleeman is Emeritus Professor of Computing Science at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland , and Visiting Professor, in the School of Medicine and the University of Glasgow . He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh , the British Computer Society , and the European AI Society .
Go to Profile#20394
Alexandra Grant
#20405
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Alexandra Grant is an American visual artist who examines language and written texts through painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and other media. She uses language and exchanges with writers as a source for much of that work. Grant examines the process of writing and ideas based in linguistic theory as it connects to art and creates visual images inspired by text and collaborative group installations based on that process. She is based in Los Angeles.
Go to Profile#20395
James D. Murray
#20406
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
James Dickson Murray FRSE FRS, is professor emeritus of applied mathematics at University of Washington and University of Oxford. He is best known for his authoritative and extensive work entitled Mathematical Biology.
Go to Profile#20396
Rae Langton
#20407
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Rae Helen Langton, FBA is an Australian-British professor of philosophy. She is currently the Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. She has published widely on Immanuel Kant's philosophy, moral philosophy, political philosophy, metaphysics, and feminist philosophy. She is also well known for her work on pornography and objectification.
Go to Profile#20397
Linda Wertheimer
#20408
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Linda Wertheimer is an American radio journalist for NPR. She's considered one of NPR's "Founding Mothers" along with Susan Stamberg, Nina Totenberg and the late Cokie Roberts. Background and education Wertheimer was born Linda Cozby on March 19, 1943, in Carlsbad, New Mexico, the daughter of June and Miller Cozby, a grocery store operator and owner. She graduated from Wellesley College with the class of 1965.
Go to Profile#20398
Erik M. Conway
#20409
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Erik M. Conway is the historian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He is the author of several books. He previously completed a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1998, with a dissertation on the development of aircraft landing aids.
Go to Profile#20399
Bruce Andrews
#20410
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Bruce Andrews is an American poet who is one of the key figures associated with the Language poets . Life and work Andrews was born in Chicago and studied international relations at Johns Hopkins University and political science at Harvard. His first book, Edge, was published in 1973.
Go to Profile#20400
Lorenzo A. Richards
#20411
Overall Influence
1904 - 1993 (89 years)
Lorenzo Adolph Richards or known as Ren was one of the 20th century's most influential minds in the field of soil physics. Biography Early life Lorenzo A. Richards was born on April 24, 1904, in the town of Fielding, Utah, and received a B.S. and M.A. degree in physics from Utah State University. He was the grandson of early Mormon leader and pioneer Willard Richards. His PhD thesis, completed at Cornell University in 1931 and entitled Capillary conduction of liquids through porous mediums, was arguably one of the best known in the field of soil physics.
Go to Profile