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
#20451
Fred Pestello
#20462
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Fred P. Pestello is an American sociologist and administrator in higher education. He currently serves as the 33rd President of Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri. Prior to this, he was the 13th President of Le Moyne College, a post he had held since July 1, 2008.
Go to Profile#20452
Jon Favreau
#20463
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Jonathan Kolia Favreau is an American filmmaker and actor. As an actor, Favreau has appeared in films such as Rudy , PCU , Swingers , Very Bad Things , Deep Impact , The Replacements , Daredevil , The Break-Up , Four Christmases , Couples Retreat , I Love You, Man , People Like Us , The Wolf of Wall Street , Chef , and several films created by Marvel Studios.
Go to Profile#20453
Joshua Wurman
#20464
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Joshua Michael Aaron Ryder Wurman is an American atmospheric scientist and inventor noted for tornado, tropical cyclone, and weather radar research. Life and career Education Joshua Wurman's father is noted architect and founder of the TED conferences, Richard Saul Wurman. He attended Radnor High School in suburban Philadelphia. He earned a S.B. in physics and interdisciplinary science in 1982, a S.M. in meteorology in 1982, and a Sc.D. in meteorology in 1991, all from MIT. His masters thesis was The Long Range Dispersion of Radioactive Particulates and his doctoral dissertation was Forcing Mechanisms of Thunderstorm Downdrafts.
Go to Profile#20454
Kenneth Bruffee
#20465
Overall Influence
1934 - 2019 (85 years)
Kenneth Bruffee was an American writing center administrator and professor emeritus in the department of English at Brooklyn College. Background Bruffee published the first peer tutoring handbook, A Short Course in Writing, in 1972. While a writing program administrator at Brooklyn College, Bruffee played a leading role in the development of writing center studies, and collaborated with both educators and administrators across several CUNY institutes to establish peer tutoring as a standard academic support service within NYC public higher education. The rise of writing centers was necessitated by a growing population of students who were unprepared for college writing.
Go to Profile#20455
Kamaloddin Jenab
#20466
Overall Influence
1908 - 2006 (98 years)
Kamaloddin Jenab was an Iranian pioneer physicist. He is often credited for founding academic experimental science in Iranian universities. He was the first Iranian to obtain a PhD in nuclear physics, and is often credited for laying the foundations of that science in Iran.
Go to Profile#20456
Julie Christie
#20467
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Julie Frances Christie is a British actress. An icon of the Swinging Sixties, Christie is the recipient of numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has appeared in six films ranked in the British Film Institute's BFI Top 100 British films of the 20th century, and in 1997, she received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement.
Go to Profile#20457
Saad Albazei
#20468
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Saad Abdulrahman Albazei is a Saudi intellectual who is known for his critiques of Arabic culture and comparative studies that map the East-West cultural and literary relations. Life Albazei was born in Saudi Arabia in 1953. He completed his university education in Riyadh and earned his Ph.D. from Purdue University, in the USA in 1983.
Go to Profile#20458
Eddie George
#20469
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Edward Nathan George Jr. is an American football coach and former player who is the current head football coach at Tennessee State University. He played as a running back in the National Football League for nine seasons, primarily for the Houston / Tennessee Oilers / Titans franchise.
Go to Profile#20459
Kevin McCarthy
#20470
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Kevin Owen McCarthy is an American politician who served as the 55th speaker of the United States House of Representatives. A member of the Republican Party, he was the leader of the House Republican Conference from 2019 to 2023 and served as House Minority Leader from 2019 until his election as speaker in January 2023. His tenure ended after only ten months, when he became the only Speaker to be removed from the position following a motion to vacate. Since 2007, he represents , which encompasses most of the San Joaquin Valley.
Go to Profile#20460
Magdalena Skipper
#20471
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Magdalena Skipper is a British geneticist and the editor-in-chief of the journal Nature. She previously served as an editor of Nature Reviews Genetics and the open access journal Nature Communications.
Go to Profile#20461
Cris Collinsworth
#20472
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Anthony Cris Collinsworth is an American sports broadcaster and former professional football player. Collinsworth was a wide receiver in the National Football League for eight seasons , all with the Cincinnati Bengals. He played college football at the University of Florida, where he was recognized as an All-American. He is currently a television sportscaster for NBC, Showtime, and the NFL Network, and winner of 17 Sports Emmy Awards. He is also the majority owner of Pro Football Focus.
Go to Profile#20462
Steven Mintz
#20473
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Steven Mintz , is an American historian at the University of Texas at Austin. For five years, from 2012 through 2017, he served as executive director of the University of Texas System's Institute for Transformational Learning. This institute is tasked with delivering a high-quality education that is more affordable and accessible across the System's 14 academic campuses and health science centers. He previously taught history at Oberlin College, University of Houston, and Columbia University, where he directed the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Teaching Center. He has also held visit...
Go to Profile#20463
Carl F. Nathan
#20474
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Carl F. Nathan is the chair of the department of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine and a former dean of the Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences at Cornell University. Some of his most notable work has been in the characterization of IFNγ, TGF-β, and TNFα in immunology. The Nathan lab studies the immune response to M. tuberculosis.
Go to Profile#20464
Wolf Hilbertz
#20475
Overall Influence
1938 - 2007 (69 years)
Wolf Hartmut Hilbertz was a German-born futurist architect, inventor, and marine scientist. Notable contributions to science include the discovery of artificial mineral accretetion / biorock and its use to create electrified reefs.
Go to Profile#20465
Peter Cetera
#20476
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Peter Paul Cetera is a retired American musician best known for being a frontman, vocalist, and bassist for the American rock band Chicago from 1967 until his departure in 1985. His career as a recording artist encompasses 17 studio albums with Chicago and eight solo studio albums.
Go to Profile#20466
John A. DiBiaggio
#20477
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
John Angelo DiBiaggio was an American dentist and academic who served as president of the University of Connecticut from 1979 to 1985, president of Michigan State University from 1985 to 1992, and president of Tufts University from 1992 to 2001. He was a "people person" known for his fundraising skills and fostering collaboration, interdisciplinary research and learning, and civic engagement.
Go to Profile#20467
Robert L. Millet
#20478
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Robert L. Millet is a professor of ancient scripture and emeritus Dean of Religious Education at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Millet is a Latter-day Saint author and speaker with more than 60 published works on virtually all aspects of Mormonism. Millet was at the forefront of establishing evangelical-Mormon dialogue.
Go to Profile#20468
Martin Blumenson
#20479
Overall Influence
1918 - 2005 (87 years)
Martin Blumenson was an American military historian who served as a historical officer with the Third and Seventh Armies in World War II and later became a prolific author. His works included a biography of General George S. Patton.
Go to Profile#20469
Brian Tucker
#20480
Overall Influence
Brian E. Tucker is an American seismologist specializing in disaster prevention. He is also the founder of GeoHazards International , a non-profit dedicated to ending preventable death and suffering caused by natural disasters in the world’s most vulnerable communities.
Go to Profile#20470
Giacomo Agostini
#20481
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Giacomo Agostini is an Italian former Grand Prix motorcycle road racer. Nicknamed Ago, he amassed 122 Grand Prix wins and 15 World Championship titles. Of these, 68 wins and 8 titles came in the 500 cc class, the rest in the 350 cc class. For these achievements obtained over the course of a career spanning 17 years, the AMA described him as "...perhaps the greatest Grand Prix rider of all time". In 2000, Agostini was inducted into the MotoGP Hall of Fame as a MotoGP Legend, while in 2010, he was named an FIM Legend for his motorcycling achievements.
Go to Profile#20471
Stefan Mittnik
#20482
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Stefan Mittnik is a German economist, currently holds the Chair of Financial Econometrics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He is a fellow of the Center for Financial Studies and known for his work on financial market and financial risk modeling as well as macroeconometrics. He is also a co-founder of the German-British robo-advisor Scalable Capital.
Go to Profile#20472
Ryuta Kawashima
#20483
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Ryuta Kawashima is a Japanese neuroscientist known for his appearances in the Brain Age series of video games for the Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch. Biography Kawashima was born May 23, 1959, in Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan. In the 1970s, he enrolled in Tohoku University. After graduating with an M.D. at the school of medicine, he emigrated to Sweden to become a guest researcher at the Karolinska Institute. He moved back to Tohoku and is now a resident Professor with tenure. He is famous in Japan and is a former member of Japan's National Council, concerning Language and...
Go to Profile#20473
Leonard Berry
#20484
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
#20474
Alexander Braverman
#20485
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Alexander Braverman is an Israeli mathematician. Life and work Braverman was born in Moscow.. He earned in 1993 a BA degree in mathematics from the University of Tel Aviv, where in 1998 he received a Ph.D. under supervision of Joseph Bernstein. From 1997 to 1999 he was a C.L.E. Moore instructor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in 2004 Benjamin Peirce Lecturer at Harvard University. He was an associate professor at Brown University from 2004 to 2009 and then a full professor from 2009 to 2015. He is a full professor at University of Toronto since 2015 and an associate faculty member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
Go to Profile#20475
James West
#20486
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
James Edward Maceo West is an American inventor and acoustician. He holds over 250 foreign and U.S. patents for the production and design of microphones and techniques for creating polymer foil electretss.
Go to Profile#20476
Peter Thullen
#20487
Overall Influence
1907 - 1996 (89 years)
Peter Thullen was a German/Ecuadorian mathematician. Academic career He studied under Heinrich Behnke at the University of Münster and received his doctoral degree in 1931 at the age of 23. He is noted for work on several complex variables. One of his achievements is a classification of 2-dimensional bounded Reinhardt domains. He obtained a subsequent research fellowship with Professor Francesco Severi in Rome to explore how algebraic geometry could be integrated into the theory of functions of several complex variables.
Go to Profile#20477
Stephen P. Hubbell
#20488
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Stephen P. Hubbell is an American ecologist on the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of the unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography , which seeks to explain the diversity and relative abundance of species in ecological communities not by niche differences but by stochastic processes among ecologically equivalent species. Hubbell is also a senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama. He is also well known for tropical forest studies. In 1980, he and Robin B. Foster of the Field Museum in Chicago, launched the first of the 50 hectare forest dynamics studies on Barro Colorado Island in Panama.
Go to Profile#20478
Claire Bloom
#20489
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Patricia Claire Bloom is an English actress. She is known for leading roles in plays such as A Streetcar Named Desire, A Doll's House, and Long Day's Journey into Night, and has starred in nearly sixty films.
Go to Profile#20479
Herbert Keller
#20490
Overall Influence
1925 - 2008 (83 years)
Herbert Bishop Keller was an American applied mathematician and numerical analyst. He was professor of applied mathematics, emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology. Early life and education Keller graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a bachelor's in electrical engineering in 1945; and from New York University, later known as the Courant Institute, with a Ph.D. in 1954.
Go to Profile#20480
Thomas Givon
#20491
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Thomas Givon is a linguist and writer. He is one of the founders of "West Coast Functionalism", today classified as a usage-based model of language, and of the linguistics department at the University of Oregon. Givón advocates an evolutionary approach to language and communication.
Go to Profile#20481
Stewart Brown
#20492
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Stewart Brown is an English poet, university lecturer and scholar of African and Caribbean Literature. Life and study Brown is an English-born lecturer in Caribbean and African culture, particularly Literature, at the Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham, since 1988, and has also spent periods teaching in schools and universities in Jamaica, Nigeria, Wales and Barbados.
Go to Profile#20482
Nathan Rosenberg
#20493
Overall Influence
1927 - 2015 (88 years)
Nathan Rosenberg was an American economist specializing in the history of technology. Biography Rosenberg earned his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1955, and taught at Indiana University , the University of Pennsylvania , Purdue University , Harvard University , the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University , where he was the Fairleigh S. Dickinson, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Public Policy in the Department of Economics. In 1989 he was visiting Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at the University of Cambridge.
Go to Profile#20483
Nadja Durbach
#20494
Overall Influence
Nadja Durbach is a professor of History at the University of Utah. She is a specialist of modern Britain and co-editor of the Journal of British Studies. Her research, grounded in her first book, Bodily Matters: The Anti-Vaccination Movement in England, 1853-1907, focuses on immunization, vaccination, and alternative medicine politics in the nineteenth century. Her research has also focused on the history of the body and food politics in Britain. She was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016.
Go to Profile#20484
Tadashi Tokieda
#20495
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Tadashi Tokieda is a Japanese mathematician, working in mathematical physics. He is a professor of mathematics at Stanford University; previously he was a fellow and Director of Studies of Mathematics at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He is also very active in inventing, collecting, and studying toys that uniquely reveal and explore real-world surprises of mathematics and physics. In comparison with most mathematicians, he had an unusual path in life: he started as a painter, and then became a classical philologist, before switching to mathematics.
Go to Profile#20485
Werner J. A. Dahm
#20496
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Werner J.A. Dahm is an ASU Foundation Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at Arizona State University. Dahm is the director of the Security & Defense Systems Initiative at ASU. Dahm is Emeritus Professor of Aerospace Engineering at University of Michigan. He is a member of the United States Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.
Go to Profile#20486
Margo Jefferson
#20497
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Margo Lillian Jefferson is an American writer and academic. Biography Jefferson received her B.A. from Brandeis University, where she graduated cum laude, and her M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She became an associate editor at Newsweek in 1973 and stayed at the magazine until 1978. She then served as an assistant professor at the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at New York University from 1979 to 1983 and from 1989 to 1991. Since then she has taught at the Columbia University School of the Arts, where she is now professor of professional practice in writing.
Go to Profile#20487
Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki
#20498
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki is an author and United Methodist professor emerita of theology at Claremont School of Theology. She is also co-director of the Center for Process Studies at Claremont. Suchocki earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Pomona College in 1970 and both Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in religion from Claremont Graduate School in 1974. She taught at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary from 1977 to 1983. From 1983 to 1990 she was professor of systematic theology and dean of Wesley Theological Seminary. In 1990 Suchocki returned to Claremont School...
Go to Profile#20488
Yehuda Shoenfeld
#20499
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Yehuda Shoenfeld is an Israeli physician and autoimmunity researcher. Biography Yehuda Shoenfeld works at Sheba Medical Center in Tel HaShomer and the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel-Aviv University. He studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the incumbent of the Laura Schwarz-Kipp Chair for Research of Autoimmune Diseases. Shoenfeld is the editor of two journals, Harefuah in Hebrew with English abstracts and Israel Medical Association Journal . He is co-editor-in-chief of Autoimmunity Reviews, and co-editor of the Journal of Autoimmunity, and member of the editorial board of...
Go to Profile#20489
Francisco Javier González-Acuña
#20500
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Francisco Javier González-Acuña is a mathematician in the UNAM's institute of mathematics and CIMAT, specializing in low-dimensional topology. Education He did his graduate studies at Princeton University, obtaining his Ph.D. in 1970. His thesis, written under the supervision of Ralph Fox, was titled On homology spheres.
Go to Profile#20490
Mahendra Bhandari
#20501
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Mahendra Bhandari is an Indian surgeon who has made substantial contributions to the specialty of urology, medical training, hospital administration, robotic surgery and medical ethics. For his efforts, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the government of India in 2000. Bhandari is currently Senior Bio-scientist and Director of Robotic Surgery Research & Education at the Vattikuti Urology Institute in Detroit, MI. He was the Symposium coordinator of the International Robotic Urology Symposium. He also has been the CEO of the Vattikuti Foundation since 2010.
Go to Profile#20491
Thomas Gerard Gallagher
#20502
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Thomas Gerard Philip Gallagher is a Scottish political scientist. He taught politics at the University of Bradford until 2011 and is now Emeritus Professor of Politics at the university. Career Gallagher obtained a BA hons degree in Politics and Modern History from the University of Manchester in 1975 and a Ph.D. from Government from the same institution in 1978. He taught history at Edge Hill College, Lancashire until 1980, before joining the staff at the University of Bradford where he obtained a personal chair in 1996.
Go to Profile#20492
Kenneth Lipper
#20503
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Kenneth Lipper is a prominent figure in the arts, the world of finance, and government. He served as New York City's Deputy Mayor under Mayor Ed Koch. Lipper was a general partner at Lehman Brothers and Salomon Brothers. He was Adjunct Professor at Columbia School of International Affairs in the field of international economics. Lipper serves as a director of corporations and government agencies. He is Chairman of Lipper & Co, an investment bank and investment management company, and also serves as Chairman of the Board of Lippmann Enterprises LLC, a cosmetics company. In November 2010, after ...
Go to Profile#20493
Jack Knight
#20504
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jack Knight is a political scientist and legal theorist. His academic contributions are about political, social, and law theory. He is currently a professor of law, politics, philosophy and economics at Duke University School of Law and at the Duke's Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of several books such as Institutions and Social Conflict , Explaining Social Institutions , and The Choices Justices Make with which he won the American Political Science Association C. Herman Prichett Award. He has also written many journal articles and edited volumes about democratic theory, rules of law, judicial decision-making, and theories of institutional emergence and change.
Go to Profile#20494
Linda Bilmes
#20505
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Linda J. Bilmes is an American economist who is the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer Chair in Public Policy and Public Finance at Harvard University. She is a faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School where she teaches public policy, budgeting and public finance. She served as Assistant Secretary and Chief Financial Officer of the US Department of Commerce during the presidency of Bill Clinton.
Go to Profile#20495
Ad Bax
#20506
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Adriaan "Ad" Bax is a Dutch-American molecular biophysicist. He was born in the Netherlands and is the Chief of the Section on Biophysical NMR Spectroscopy at the National Institutes of Health. He is known for his work on the methodology of biomolecular NMR spectroscopy.
Go to Profile#20496
Verena Huber-Dyson
#20507
Overall Influence
1923 - 2016 (93 years)
Verena Esther Huber-Dyson was a Swiss-American mathematician, known for her work on group theory and formal logic. She has been described as a "brilliant mathematician", who did research on the interface between algebra and logic, focusing on undecidability in group theory. At the time of her death, she was emeritus faculty in the philosophy department of the University of Calgary, Alberta.
Go to Profile#20497
Ronald F. Levant
#20508
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Ronald F. Levant is a psychologist, a professor, and a former president of the American Psychological Association . After earning an undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley, Levant completed a Doctor of Education at Harvard University. He also holds a Master of Business Administration from Boston University.
Go to Profile#20498
Claud Lovelace
#20509
Overall Influence
1934 - 2012 (78 years)
Claud Lovelace was a theoretical physicist noted for his contributions to string theory, specifically, the idea that strings did not have to be restricted to the four dimensions of spacetime. A study in 2009 ranked him as the 14th most influential physicist in the world for the period 1967–1973.
Go to Profile#20499
Jim Chen
#20510
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Jim Chen is an American legal scholar known for his expertise in constitutional law. He holds the Justin Smith Morrill Chair in Law at Michigan State University College of Law. From 2007 to 2012, he served as the dean of the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law.
Go to Profile#20500
Rainer Moormann
#20511
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Rainer Moormann is a German chemist and nuclear whistleblower. He grew up in Osnabrück. After finishing highschool he studied physical chemistry in Braunschweig and received a doctor's degree with Raman spectroscopic and theoretical investigations on hydrogen bonds in liquids.
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