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
#20501
Robert V. Kohn
#20512
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Robert V. Kohn is an American mathematician working on partial differential equations, calculus of variations, mathematical materials science, and mathematical finance. He is a professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University.
Go to Profile#20502
Daniel Nagin
#20513
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
#20503
Jamie Bishop
#20514
Overall Influence
1971 - 2007 (36 years)
Christopher James Bishop , known as Jamie Bishop, was an instructor of German language at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, as well as an artist and craftsman. He was among those shot and killed in the Virginia Tech shooting. He was the son of Michael Bishop, an award-winning science fiction author.
Go to Profile#20504
Mike Piazza
#20515
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Michael Joseph Piazza is an American former professional baseball catcher who played 16 seasons in Major League Baseball , from 1992 to 2007. He currently serves as the manager of the Italian national baseball team. He played most notably for the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers, while also having brief stints with the Florida Marlins, San Diego Padres, and Oakland Athletics. A 12-time All-Star and 10-time Silver Slugger Award winner at catcher, Piazza produced strong offensive numbers at his position; in his career, he recorded 427 home runs—a record 396 of which were hit as catcher—alo...
Go to Profile#20505
Helen Milner
#20516
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Helen V. Milner is an American political scientist and the B. C. Forbes Professor of Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where she is also the Director of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance. She has written extensively on issues related to international political economy like international trade, the connections between domestic politics and foreign policy, globalization and regionalism, and the relationship between democracy and trade policy.
Go to Profile#20506
Donlyn Lyndon
#20517
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Donlyn Lyndon is an American Third Bay Tradition architect and the Eva Li Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of California, Berkeley. Lyndon was a co-designer of Sea Ranch, California.
Go to Profile#20507
Henrik Frystyk Nielsen
#20518
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Henrik Frystyk Nielsen is a Danish engineer and computer scientist. He is best known for his pioneering work on the World Wide Web and subsequent work on computer network protocols. Biography Henrik Frystyk Nielsen was born 1 August 1969 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Go to Profile#20508
Walter Kintsch
#20519
Overall Influence
1932 - 2023 (91 years)
Walter Kintsch was an American Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder . He is renowned for his groundbreaking theories in cognitive psychology, especially in relation to text comprehension.
Go to Profile#20509
Steven Kerckhoff
#20520
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Steven Paul Kerckhoff is a professor of mathematics at Stanford University, who works on hyperbolic 3-manifolds and Teichmüller spaces. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1978, under the direction of William Thurston. Among his most famous results is his resolution of the Nielsen realization problem, a 1932 conjecture by Jakob Nielsen. Along with William J. Floyd, he wrote large parts of Thurston's influential Princeton lecture notes, and he is well known for his work in exploring and clarifying Thurston's hyperbolic Dehn surgery.
Go to Profile#20510
Stephen Graham Jones
#20521
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Stephen Graham Jones is a Blackfoot Native American author of experimental fiction, horror fiction, crime fiction, and science fiction. His most widely known works include the horror novels The Only Good Indians, My Heart is a Chainsaw, and Night of the Mannequins.
Go to Profile#20511
David N. Payne
#20522
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Sir David Neil Payne CBE FRS FREng is a British professor of photonics who is director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton. He has made several contributions in areas of optical fibre communications over the last fifty years and his work has affected telecommunications and laser technology. Payne’s work spans diverse areas of photonics, from telecommunications and optical sensors to nanophotonics and optical materials, including the introduction of the first optical fibre drawing tower in a university.
Go to Profile#20512
Salem Hanna Khamis
#20523
Overall Influence
1919 - 2005 (86 years)
Salem Hanna Khamis was a Palestinian economic statistician for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization who helped formalise the Geary-Khamis method of computing purchasing power parity of currencies.
Go to Profile#20513
Livia Kohn
#20524
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Livia Kohn is an emeritus professor of Religion and East Asian Studies at Boston University, specializing in studies of Taoism . Kohn completed her Ph.D. at Bonn University in 1980. She has held academic positions at Kyoto University , University of Michigan , and Boston University . Kohn has authored or edited over 50 books and many articles on Daoism. She has served as an executive editor of Three Pines Press since 2000 and the Journal of Daoist Studies since 2008. Kohn is a multilingual scholar and has written or translated works in German, English, Chinese, and Japanese.
Go to Profile#20514
Mark McMenamin
#20525
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Mark A. S. McMenamin is an American paleontologist and professor of geology at Mount Holyoke College. He has contributed to the study of the Cambrian explosion and the Ediacaran biota. He is the author of several books, most recently Deep Time Analysis and Dynamic Paleontology . His earlier works include The Garden of Ediacara: Discovering the Earliest Complex Life , one of the only popular accounts of research on the Ediacaran biota, and Science 101: Geology . He is credited with co-naming several geological formations in Mexico, describing several new fossil genera and species, and naming the Precambrian supercontinent Rodinia.
Go to Profile#20515
Christine Beatty
#20526
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Christine Rowland Beatty served as the Chief of Staff from 2002 to 2008 to Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. In January 2008, Beatty resigned amid an emerging political sex scandal and criminal charges of perjury related to a whistleblower trial for lying under oath about her extramarital affair with Kilpatrick. Beatty and Kilpatrick sought to mislead jurors when they testified that they did not fire Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown. Kilpatrick pleaded guilty September 4, 2008, to two felony obstruction of justice charges, and was sentenced to four months in jail on October 28, 2008. Beatty was o...
Go to Profile#20516
Shahid Hussain Bokhari
#20527
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Shahid H. Bokhari is a highly cited Pakistani researcher in the field of parallel and distributed computing. He is a fellow of both IEEE and ACM. Bokhari's ACM Fellow citation states that he received the award for his "research contributions to automatic load balancing and partitioning of distributed processes", while his IEEE Fellow award recognises his "contributions to the mapping problem in parallel and distributed computing".
Go to Profile#20517
Teruhisa Matsusaka
#20528
Overall Influence
1926 - 2006 (80 years)
was a Japanese-born American mathematician, who specialized in algebraic geometry. Matsusaka received his Ph.D. in 1954 at Kyoto University; he was a member of the Brandeis Mathematics Department from 1961 until his retirement in 1994, and was that department's chair from 1984–1986. He was invited to address the International Congress of Mathematicians held in Edinburgh in 1958 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1966.
Go to Profile#20518
David Lewis-Williams
#20529
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
James David Lewis-Williams is a South African archaeologist. He is best known for his research on southern African San rock art. He is the founder and previous director of the Rock Art Research Institute and is currently professor emeritus of cognitive archaeology at the University of the Witwatersrand .
Go to Profile#20519
Mehdi Mohaghegh
#20530
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Mehdi Mohaghegh, sometimes transliterated Mahdi Muhaqqiq, is an Iranian scholar specializing in Persian literature, Islamic studies and philosophy. He has a Ph.D. in both Ilahiyyat and Persian language and literature; he joined The Faculty of Literature and Humanities at Tehran University in 1960. He has been teaching at the School of Oriental and African Studies in England , McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies in Canada , and The International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization in Malaysia . He is founder and director of the McGill Institute of Islamic Studies Tehran B...
Go to Profile#20520
Kenneth Turan
#20531
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Kenneth Turan is an American retired film critic, author, and lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. He was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 1991 until 2020 and was described by The Hollywood Reporter as "arguably the most widely read film critic in the town most associated with the making of movies".
Go to Profile#20521
James M. Jasper
#20532
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
James Macdonald Jasper is a writer and sociologist who has taught Ph.D. students at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York since 2007. He is best known for his research and theories about culture and politics, especially the cultural and emotional dimensions of protest movements.
Go to Profile#20522
Christopher Duggan
#20533
Overall Influence
1957 - 2015 (58 years)
Christopher John Hesketh Duggan was a British historian and academic. He specialised in the political, social and cultural history of modern Italy. He began his career as a research fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford and then at All Souls College, Oxford. In 1987, he moved to the University of Reading where he remained until his death. He was Professor of Modern Italian History from 2002.
Go to Profile#20523
Fergus Millar
#20534
Overall Influence
1935 - 2019 (84 years)
Sir Fergus Graham Burtholme Millar, was a British ancient historian and academic. He was Camden Professor of Ancient History at the University of Oxford between 1984 and 2002. He numbers among the most influential ancient historians of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#20524
Janet B. W. Williams
#20535
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Janet B. W. Williams is an American social worker who focuses on the diagnosis and assessment of mental disorders. She is Professor Emerita of Clinical Psychiatric Social Work at Columbia University. She was a major force in writing the PHQ-9, a 9-question instrument given to patients in a primary care setting to screen for the presence and severity of depression.
Go to Profile#20525
Yair Auron
#20536
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Yair Auron is an Israeli historian, scholar and expert specializing in Holocaust and genocide studies, racism and contemporary Jewry. Since 2005, he has served as the head of the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication of The Open University of Israel and an associate professor.
Go to Profile#20526
Robert Stone
#20537
Overall Influence
1937 - 2015 (78 years)
Robert Anthony Stone was an American novelist, journalist, and college professor. He was five times a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, which he did receive in 1975 for his novel Dog Soldiers. Time magazine included this novel in its list 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. Stone was also twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and once for the PEN/Faulkner Award.
Go to Profile#20527
Jake LaMotta
#20538
Overall Influence
1922 - 2017 (95 years)
Giacobbe "Jake" LaMotta was an American professional boxer who was world middleweight champion between 1949 and 1951. Nicknamed "The Bronx Bull" or "Raging Bull" for his technique of constant stalking, brawling and inside fighting, he developed a reputation for being a "bully"; he was what is often referred to today as a swarmer and a slugger.
Go to Profile#20528
Shankha Ghosh
#20539
Overall Influence
1932 - 2021 (89 years)
Sankha Ghosh was an Indian poet and literary critic. He was born in Chandpur District of the then Bengal Presidency, present day Bangladesh. His ancestral home was at Banaripara Upazila in Barisal District. He spent his childhood and adolescence in Ishwardi Upazila of Pabna District, which was his father's workplace.
Go to Profile#20529
Zvi Bodie
#20540
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Zvi Bodie is an American economist, author and professor. He was the Norman and Adele Barron Professor of Management at Boston University, teaching finance at Questrom for 43 years before retiring in 2015. His textbook, Investments, is the market leader and is used in the certification programs of the CFA Institute and the Society of Actuaries. Bodie's work has centered on pension finance and investment strategy. He continues to do consulting work and media interviews.
Go to Profile#20530
Benedict Kiely
#20541
Overall Influence
1919 - 2007 (88 years)
Benedict "Ben" Kiely was an Irish writer and broadcaster from Omagh, County Tyrone. Early life Kiely was born near Dromore, County Tyrone and was a student at the Christian Brothers School in Omagh. In 1937, he went to County Laois to take up a Jesuit novitiate, but went down with a tubercular spinal complaint in 1938. Lacking by then a vocation to the priesthood, he went on to University College Dublin. In 1943, he graduated B.A. from the National University.
Go to Profile#20531
Merlyna Lim
#20542
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Merlyna Lim is a scholar studying ICT , particularly on the socio-political shaping of new media in non-Western contexts. She has been appointed a Canada Research Chair in Digital Media and Global Network Society in the School of Journalism and Communication Carleton University. Formerly she was a visiting research scholar at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy and a distinguished scholar of technology and public engagement of the School of Social Transformation Justice and Social Inquiry Program and the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University.
Go to Profile#20532
Vladimir A. Zorich
#20543
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Vladimir Antonovich Zorich was a Soviet and Russian mathematician. He was the author of the textbook "Mathematical Analysis" for students of mathematical and physical specialties of higher education, which was reprinted several times and translated into many languages.
Go to Profile#20533
Chester Bennington
#20544
Overall Influence
1976 - 2017 (41 years)
Chester Charles Bennington was an American singer and songwriter who served as the lead vocalist of rock band Linkin Park. He was also a lead vocalist of Grey Daze, Dead by Sunrise and Stone Temple Pilots at various points.
Go to Profile#20534
Ethan Kleinberg
#20545
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Ethan Kleinberg works on the acrobatics of modern thought. He is Class of 1958 Distinguished Professor of History and Letters at Wesleyan University, Editor-in-Chief of History and Theory and was Director of Wesleyan University's Center for the Humanities. Kleinberg's research interests include European intellectual history with special interest in France and Germany, critical theory, educational structures, and the philosophy of history. Kleinberg's wide-ranging scholarly work spans across the fields of history, philosophy, comparative literature and religion. Together with Joan Wallach Scot...
Go to Profile#20535
Victor Friedman
#20546
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Victor A. Friedman is an American linguist, Slavist. He is the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Service Professor in Humanities at the University of Chicago. He holds an appointment in the Department of Linguistics and an associate appointment in the Department of Anthropology. He has published numerous articles in English, Macedonian, and Albanian.
Go to Profile#20536
Egidijus Kūris
#20547
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Egidijus Kūris is a Lithuanian judge, professor and PhD in law. He is the former President of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania and current representative justice for Lithuania to the European Court of Human Rights.
Go to Profile#20537
Raymond Crotty
#20548
Overall Influence
1925 - 1994 (69 years)
Raymond Dominick Crotty was an Irish economist, writer, academic and farmer, who was known for his opposition to Ireland's membership of the European Union. In 1987, he mounted a successful legal challenge in the Irish Supreme Court against the Government of Ireland's attempt to ratify the Single European Act without reference to the people in a referendum.
Go to Profile#20538
Andreas Tietze
#20549
Overall Influence
1914 - 2003 (89 years)
Andreas Tietze was an Austrian scholar of Turkish lexicography and language. Biography Tietze was born on April 26, 1914, in the early months of World War I to art historians Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat.
Go to Profile#20539
Paul Saffo
#20550
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Paul Saffo is a technology forecaster based in Silicon Valley. A Consulting Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, Saffo teaches courses on the future of engineering and the impact of technological change on the future. In 2008, Saffo was named Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Stanford Media X research network.
Go to Profile#20540
Ruth Lehmann
#20551
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Ruth Lehmann is a developmental and cell biologist. She is the Director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. She previously was affiliated with the New York University School of Medicine, where she was the Director of the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Professor of Cell Biology, and the Chair of the Department of Cell Biology. Her research focuses on germ cells and embryogenesis.
Go to Profile#20541
Nicholas Campion
#20552
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Nicholas Campion is a British astrologer and historian of astrology and cultural astronomy. He is the author of a number of books and currently pursues an academic career. Career Astrology Campion is a former Daily Mail astrologer, where he took over from John Naylor, the son of R. H. Naylor, the first sun sign astrologer. He was president of the Astrological Lodge of London from 1985 to 1987 and of the Astrological Association of Great Britain from 1994 to 1999. He published a number of books on the practice of astrology between 1987 and 2004 .
Go to Profile#20542
Rosamond McKitterick
#20553
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Rosamond Deborah McKitterick is an English medieval historian. She is an expert on the Frankish kingdoms in the eighth and ninth centuries AD, who uses palaeographical and manuscript studies to illuminate aspects of the political, cultural, intellectual, religious, and social history of the Early Middle Ages. From 1999 until 2016 she was Professor of Medieval History and director of research at the University of Cambridge. She is a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College and Professor Emerita of Medieval History in the University of Cambridge.
Go to Profile#20543
Michael First
#20554
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Michael B. First is an American psychiatrist who focuses on diagnostic criteria for mental disorders. He is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University. First was one of the editors of DSM-IV-TR, the Editor of Text and Criteria for the DSM-IV, and the editor of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV. He also served as consultant to the World Health Organization for the revision of ICD-11.
Go to Profile#20544
Tom Nairn
#20555
Overall Influence
1932 - 2023 (91 years)
Thomas Cunningham Nairn was a Scottish political theorist and academic. He was an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University. He was known as an essayist and a supporter of Scottish independence.
Go to Profile#20545
August Komendant
#20556
Overall Influence
1906 - 1992 (86 years)
August Eduard Komendant was an Estonian and American structural engineer and a pioneer in the field of prestressed concrete, which can be used to build stronger and more graceful structures than normal concrete. He was born in Estonia and educated in engineering in Germany. After World War II he immigrated to the United States, where he wrote several books on structural engineering and served as a professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#20546
Sam Bradford
#20557
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Samuel Jacob Bradford is an American former professional football player who was a quarterback for nine seasons in the National Football League , most notably with the St. Louis Rams and Minnesota Vikings. He was also a member of the Philadelphia Eagles and Arizona Cardinals. Bradford attended Putnam City North High School in Oklahoma City, where he starred in football, basketball and golf. As a senior quarterback in 2005, he threw for 2,029 yards and 17 touchdowns in 12 games. Bradford was not highly recruited coming out of high school, but he did receive a scholarship offer from the University of Oklahoma, which he accepted.
Go to Profile#20547
David Goeddel
#20558
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
David V. Goeddel is an American molecular biologist who, employed at the time by Genentech, successfully used genetic engineering to coax bacteria into creating synthetic human insulin, human growth hormone, and human tissue plasminogen activator for use in therapeutic medicine.
Go to Profile#20548
Josh Homme
#20559
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Joshua Michael Homme is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He is best known as the founder and only continuous member of the rock band Queens of the Stone Age, which he formed in 1996. Homme is the band's primary songwriter and mainly sings lead vocals and plays guitar. He also plays drums in the rock band Eagles of Death Metal, which he in 1998.
Go to Profile#20549
Bobby Brown
#20560
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Robert Barisford Brown Sr. is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, and dancer. Brown, alongside frequent collaborator Teddy Riley, is noted as one of the pioneers of new jack swing: a fusion of hip hop and R&B. Brown started his career in the R&B and pop group New Edition, from its inception in 1978 until his exit from the group in December 1985.
Go to Profile#20550
Gilbert LaFreniere
#20561
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Gilbert LaFreniere is an American ecological philosopher, active in the study of geology, ecology, and human impact upon nature. Biography Gilbert attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst and earned a Masters of Geology from Dartmouth College before completing a Ph.D in intellectual history from the University of California at Santa Barbara, in 1976.
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