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
#20551
Lyndall Ryan
#20562
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
#20552
Daniel Wise
#20563
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Daniel T. Wise is an American mathematician who specializes in geometric group theory and 3-manifolds. He is a professor of mathematics at McGill University. Education Daniel Wise obtained his PhD from Princeton University in 1996 supervised by Martin Bridson His thesis was titled non-positively curved squared complexes, aperiodic tilings, and non-residually finite groups.
Go to Profile#20553
Rama Cont
#20564
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Rama Cont is the Professor of Mathematical Finance at the University of Oxford. He is known for contributions to probability theory, stochastic analysis and mathematical modelling in finance, in particular mathematical models of systemic risk. He was awarded the Louis Bachelier Prize by the French Academy of Sciences in 2010.
Go to Profile#20554
Wahbah al-Zuhayli
#20565
Overall Influence
1932 - 2015 (83 years)
Wahbah Mustafa al-Zuhayli born in Dair Atiah, Syria was a Syrian professor and Islamic scholar specializing in Islamic law and legal philosophy. He was also a preacher at Badr Mosque in Dair Atiah. He was the author of scores of books on Islamic and secular law, many of which have been translated to English. He was chairman of Islamic jurisprudence in the College of Sharia at Damascus University, and a signatory to the Amman Message and A Common Word documents.
Go to Profile#20555
Viktor Troicki
#20566
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Viktor Troicki is a Serbian former professional tennis player. He won his first ATP singles title at the 2010 Kremlin Cup, and his second and third ATP singles titles at the 2015 and 2016 Apia International Sydney. His biggest achievements were a career-high singles ranking of world No. 12 and winning the deciding rubber in Serbia's Davis Cup final against France in 2010. Since then, in every Davis Cup he attended, he contributed to Serbia reaching a quarterfinal or better. He is known for serving a 12-month ban for anti-doping rule violation in 2013–14 for missing a blood test. By winning t...
Go to Profile#20556
John Gater
#20567
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
John Gater is a British archaeological geophysicist who featured regularly on the Channel 4 archaeological television series Time Team. He was educated at the University of Bradford and graduated with a BSc Archaeological Sciences in 1979. He worked with British Gas , the Ancient Monuments Laboratory and Bradford University Research. In 1983 he became a member of the Institute of Field Archaeologists and is now also an associate editor for the Journal of Archaeological Prospection. In 1986 he founded Geophysical Surveys of Bradford , an independent consultancy in geophysics for archaeology, ...
Go to Profile#20557
Hal Blaine
#20568
Overall Influence
1929 - 2019 (90 years)
Hal Blaine was an American drummer and session musician, thought to be among the most recorded studio drummers in the music industry, claiming over 35,000 sessions and 6,000 singles. His drumming is featured on 150 US top 10 hits, 40 of which went to number one.
Go to Profile#20558
K. Balachander
#20569
Overall Influence
1930 - 2014 (84 years)
Kailasam Balachander was an Indian filmmaker and playwright who worked mainly in the Tamil cinema. He was well known for his distinct film-making style, and the Indian film industry knew him as a master of unconventional themes and hard-hitting contemporary subject matter. Balachander's films are well known for their portrayal of women as bold personalities and central characters. Popularly referred to as Iyakkunar Sigaram , his films are usually centred on unusual or complicated interpersonal relationships and social themes. He started his film career in 1964 as a screenwriter and graduated ...
Go to Profile#20559
Richard Sugarman
#20570
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Richard Sugarman is an American academic and political consultant. He is a professor of religion at the University of Vermont and "a world-renowned expert on the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas." He was an advisor to presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on his 2016 presidential campaign.
Go to Profile#20560
Stuart McLean
#20571
Overall Influence
1948 - 2017 (69 years)
Andrew Stuart McLean, was a Canadian radio broadcaster, humorist, monologist, and author, best known as the host of the CBC Radio program The Vinyl Cafe. Often described as a "story-telling comic" although his stories addressed both humorous and serious themes, he was known for fiction and non-fiction work which celebrated the decency and dignity of ordinary people, through stories which often highlighted the ability of their subjects, whether real or fictional, to persevere with grace and humour through embarrassing or challenging situations.
Go to Profile#20561
Huzihiro Araki
#20572
Overall Influence
1932 - 2022 (90 years)
was a Japanese mathematical physicist and mathematician who worked on the foundations of quantum field theory, on quantum statistical mechanics, and on the theory of operator algebras. Biography Araki is the son of the University of Kyoto physics professor Gentarō Araki, with whom he studied and with whom in 1954 he published his first physics paper. He earned his diploma under Hideki Yukawa and in 1960 he attained his doctorate at Princeton University with thesis advisors Rudolf Haag and Arthur Wightman. He was a professor at the University of Kyoto starting in 1966, and became the director o...
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Charles Halpern
#20573
Overall Influence
Charles Halpern is a lawyer, activist, author, educator, and meditation practitioner. He also served as the founding dean of CUNY School of Law, and as a faculty member of various prominent law schools across the country.
Go to Profile#20563
Rangasami L. Kashyap
#20574
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Rangasami Lakshminarayan Kashyap was an Indian applied mathematician and a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Purdue University. He developed the Ho-Kashyap rule, an important result in pattern recognition.
Go to Profile#20564
Mike Calvert
#20575
Overall Influence
1913 - 1998 (85 years)
Brigadier James Michael Calvert, was a British Army officer who was involved in special operations in Burma during the Second World War. He participated in both Chindit operations and was instrumental in popularizing the unorthodox ideas of Orde Wingate. He frequently led attacks from the front, a practice that earned him the nickname amongst the men under his command of "Mad Mike."
Go to Profile#20565
Javier Echevarría Rodríguez
#20576
Overall Influence
1932 - 2016 (84 years)
Javier Echevarría Rodríguez was a Spanish bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. Until his death, he was the head of the Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei. He held doctorates in both civil and canon law.
Go to Profile#20566
Peter Falk
#20577
Overall Influence
1927 - 2011 (84 years)
Peter Michael Falk was an American film and television actor, comedian, singer and television director and producer. He is best known for his role as Lieutenant Columbo on the NBC/ABC series Columbo , for which he won four Primetime Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award . In 1996, TV Guide ranked Falk No. 21 on its 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time list. He received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013.
Go to Profile#20567
A. R. Penck
#20578
Overall Influence
1939 - 2017 (78 years)
Ralf Winkler, alias A. R. Penck, who also used the pseudonyms Mike Hammer, T. M., Mickey Spilane, Theodor Marx, "a. Y." or just "Y" was a German painter, printmaker, sculptor, and jazz drummer. A neo-expressionist, he became known for his visual style, reminiscent of the influence of primitive art.
Go to Profile#20568
William Hamilton Meeks, III
#20579
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
William Hamilton Meeks III is an American mathematician, specializing in differential geometry and minimal surfaces. Meeks studied at the University of California, Berkeley, with bachelor's degree in 1971, master's degree in 1974, and Ph.D. in 1975 with supervisor H. Blaine Lawson and thesis . He was an assistant professor in 1975–1977 at the University of California, Los Angeles , in 1977–1978 at the Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada , and in 1978–1979 at Stanford University. From 1979 to 1983 he was a professor at IMPA. He was from 1983 to 1984 a visiting member of the Institute for ...
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Meg Ryan
#20580
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Meg Ryan is an American actress. She made her acting debut in 1981 in the drama film Rich and Famous. She joined the cast of the CBS soap opera As the World Turns in 1982. In the 1980s, Ryan appeared in Top Gun, Promised Land and the Rob Reiner-directed romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally... , for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination.
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Ole Holsti
#20581
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Olavi Rudolf Holsti was an American political scientist and academic. He held the position of George V. Allen Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Duke University. He was noted for his writings on international affairs, American foreign policy, content analysis, decision-making in politics and diplomacy, and crises.
Go to Profile#20571
David Foot
#20582
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
David K. Foot is a Canadian economist and demographer. Foot did his undergraduate work at the University of Western Australia and his graduate work in economics at Harvard University, where he was supervised by Martin Feldstein. Following his PhD, he joined the department of economics at the University of Toronto.
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Jan Koster
#20583
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Jan Koster is a Dutch linguist and professor emeritus at the University of Groningen. Koster studied at the University of Amsterdam, where, after being a visiting scientist at MIT , he received his PhD in 1978. Before being appointed full professor and chair of the linguistics department at Groningen , Koster was assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University, and associate professor at Tilburg University.
Go to Profile#20573
Debraj Ray
#20584
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Debraj Ray is an Indian-American economist, who is currently teaching and working at New York University. His research interests focus on development economics and game theory. Ray served as Co-editor of the American Economic Review between 2012 and 2020.
Go to Profile#20574
William Kaplan
#20585
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
William Kaplan is a Canadian lawyer and writer. Biography Born in Toronto, Ontario, Kaplan is the son of Igor Kaplan and Cara Cherniak. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He went on to Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, where he graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Laws. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1985 with a Master of Arts, and from Stanford University Law School in 1988 with a J.S.D. degree.
Go to Profile#20575
David Sylvian
#20586
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
David Sylvian is an English musician, singer and songwriter who came to prominence in the late 1970s as frontman and principal songwriter of the band Japan. The band's androgynous look and increasingly electronic sound made them an important influence on the UK's early-1980s New Romantic scene.
Go to Profile#20576
Vladislav Tretiak
#20587
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Vladislav Aleksandrovich Tretiak, MSM is a Russian former goaltender for the Soviet Union national ice hockey team. He was inducted into the inaugural class of the International Ice Hockey Federation Hall of Fame in 1997. Considered to be one of the greatest goaltenders in the history of the sport, he was voted one of six players to the IIHF Centennial All-Star Team in a poll conducted by a group of 56 experts from 16 countries. He is the current president of the Ice Hockey Federation of Russia and was the general manager of the Russian 2010 Winter Olympic team.
Go to Profile#20577
Pierre Mamie
#20588
Overall Influence
1920 - 2008 (88 years)
Pierre Mamie was a Swiss prelate of the Catholic Church who served as the bishop of the Diocese of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg from 1970 to 1995, following two years as auxiliary bishop there. His earlier career was devoted to teaching at the Fribourg seminary and at the University of Fribourg.
Go to Profile#20578
Joanna Harcourt-Smith
#20589
Overall Influence
1946 - 2020 (74 years)
Joanna Harcourt-Smith was an author, poet, psychedelic activist and the founder of Future Primitive Podcast. Biography She was born at the Palace Hotel, St. Moritz, in Switzerland. Harcourt-Smith wrote two unpublished biographies and many poems. She is also the author of Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary: My Psychedelic Love Story. The book recounts her experiences while "she was a flower-power teenager in the Sixties," lived with the Rolling Stones in France, cavorted with playboy Gunter Sachs, Salvador Dalí and the Aga Khan, before falling in love with Timothy Leary in 1972.
Go to Profile#20579
Ralph Hexter
#20590
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Ralph Jay Hexter is a distinguished professor of classics and comparative literature at the University of California, Davis. Previously, he served as the fifth president of Hampshire College. Education Hexter received an A.B. in English literature from Harvard College in 1974. He then studied in England, where he earned a B.A. and M.A. in classics and modern languages at Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1977 and 1982, respectively. He also earned an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Yale University in 1979 and 1982, respectively. Hexter subsequently taught in the classics d...
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Emil Frei
#20591
Overall Influence
1924 - 2013 (89 years)
Emil "Tom" Frei III was an American physician and oncologist. He was the former director and former physician-in-chief of the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. He was also the Richard and Susan Smith Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Go to Profile#20581
Bernd Giese
#20592
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Bernd Giese is a German chemist and guest professor in chemistry at the University of Fribourg in Fribourg, Switzerland since 2010. Biography Born in Hamburg, Germany, Giese received his PhD from the University of Munich under Rolf Huisgen in 1969. From 1969 to 1971 he worked in pharmaceutical research at BASF in Ludwigshafen. He obtained his Habilitation from the University of Freiburg in 1976. From 1977 to 1988 he was full professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt and from 1989 to 2010 at the University of Basel.
Go to Profile#20582
Jean-Claude Schmitt
#20593
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Jean-Claude Schmitt is a prominent French medievalist, the former student of Jacques Le Goff, associated with the work of the Annales School. He studies the socio-cultural aspects of medieval history in Western Europe and has made important contributions in his use of anthropological and art historical methods to interpret history. His most significant work has dealt with the relationships among elites and laymen in medieval life, particularly in the realm of religious culture, where he has focused on ideas and topics such as superstition, the occult and heresy in order to flesh out the diffe...
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Dewi Zephaniah Phillips
#20594
Overall Influence
1934 - 2006 (72 years)
Dewi Zephaniah Phillips , known as D. Z. Phillips or simply DZ, was a Welsh philosopher. He was a leading proponent of the Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion. He had an academic career spanning five decades, and at the time of his death he held the Danforth Chair in Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University, California, and was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Swansea University.
Go to Profile#20584
Elizabeth Holmes
#20595
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
According to Wikipedia, Elizabeth Anne Holmes is an American former businesswoman who was the founder and chief executive of Theranos, a now-defunct health technology company. Theranos soared in valuation after the company claimed to have revolutionized blood testing by developing testing methods that could use surprisingly small volumes of blood, such as from a fingerprick. By 2015, Forbes had named Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in America on the basis of a $9-billion valuation of her company. The next year, following revelations of potential fraud about Ther...
Go to Profile#20585
Dan Klein
#20596
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Daniel Klein is an American computer scientist and professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on natural language processing and artificial intelligence.
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Adrianus Mooy
#20597
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Adrianus Mooy is an Indonesian economist and diplomat. He hold the office of Governor of Bank of Indonesia, serving the role from 1988 to 1993 during Soeharto's reign. He served as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in 1995—2000. He studied at Gadjah Mada University and University of Wisconsin. From 1993 to 1995, he was appointed as Ambassador of Indonesia to Belgium. He held to post of Rector of Pelita Harapan University Surabaya from 2010 until 2018.
Go to Profile#20587
Nicholas Penny
#20598
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Sir Nicholas Beaver Penny is a British art historian. From 2008 to 2015 he was director of the National Gallery in London. Early life Penny was educated at Shrewsbury School before he studied English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. He then studied for a doctorate at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where he was taught by Michael Kitson. While a student at the Courtauld, Penny contributed photographs to the Art & Architecture section of the Conway Library collection.
Go to Profile#20588
Dino De Laurentiis
#20599
Overall Influence
1919 - 2010 (91 years)
Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis was an Italian and naturalized-American film producer. Along with Carlo Ponti, he was one of the producers who brought Italian cinema to the international scene at the end of World War II. He produced or co-produced more than 500 films, of which 38 were nominated for Academy Awards. He also had a brief acting career in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Go to Profile#20589
Lewis Elton
#20600
Overall Influence
1923 - 2018 (95 years)
Lewis Richard Benjamin Elton was a German-born British physicist and researcher into education, specialising in higher education. Early life Born in Tübingen to the scholars Victor Ehrenberg and Eva Dorothea Sommer, Ehrenberg moved with his family to Prague in 1929, and from there to England in February 1939, to escape Nazi persecution of the Jews. Ehrenberg naturalised as a British subject and changed his name by deed poll in June 1947. He was educated at Rydal School in Colwyn Bay, and thereafter at Christ's College, Cambridge, the Regent Street Polytechnic, London, and University College London.
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Ben Saul
#20601
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Ben Saul is the current Challis Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. He has appeared as an advocate in international, regional and national courts outside Australia, and he is also admitted to practice as a barrister in New South Wales. His research interests include international law, in particular, international aspects of anti-terrorism law, humanitarian law, human rights law, among others.
Go to Profile#20591
Monica C. Lozano
#20602
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Monica Cecilia Lozano is the president of the College Futures Foundation, based in San Francisco. Previously she was an American newspaper editor, the publisher and CEO of La Opinión and CEO of its parent company, ImpreMedia, LLC. Based in Los Angeles, La Opinión is the largest Spanish publication in the United States. She was a member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. She was appointed by the California State Legislature to join Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Commission on the 21st Century Economy.
Go to Profile#20592
Liz Trotta
#20603
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Elizabeth Trotta is an American journalist and conservative commentator. Life and career Trotta was born in New Haven, Connecticut. Her parents, Gaetano "Thomas" Trotta, a successful pharmacist, and Lillian Theresa Mazzacane, were both Catholicss who had emigrated from Italy. Trotta had a sister, Mary L. Juba, who died in 2002.
Go to Profile#20593
Michael P. Murphy
#20604
Overall Influence
1976 - 2005 (29 years)
Michael Patrick Murphy was a United States Navy SEAL officer who was awarded the U.S. military's highest decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his actions during the War in Afghanistan. He was the first member of the United States Navy to receive the award since the Vietnam War. His other posthumous awards include the Silver Star Medal and the Purple Heart.
Go to Profile#20594
Charles Goldfarb
#20605
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Charles F. Goldfarb, is known as the father of Standard Generalized Markup Language and grandfather of HTML and the World Wide Web, also referred to as WWW, W3, or the Web. He co-invented the concept of markup languages.
Go to Profile#20595
Mounir Laroussi
#20606
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Mounir Laroussi is a Tunisian-American scientist. He is known for his work in plasma science, especially low temperature plasmas and their biomedical applications. Biography Early life Mounir Laroussi was born and raised in Sfax, Tunisia, the son of Habib Laroussi and Manana Jeloul. He is the middle child of three siblings.
Go to Profile#20596
David Pimentel
#20607
Overall Influence
1925 - 2019 (94 years)
David Pimentel was a professor of Insect Ecology & Agricultural Sciences in the Department of Entomology and Section of Ecology and Systematics at Cornell University. He made contributions in ecology, entomology, agriculture, biotechnology, conservation, and environmental policy. He was recognized as an international authority on many important interactions between humans and the environment. He published over 700 scientific items, of which 37 are books, and served on many national and government committees, including the National Academy of Sciences, the President's Science Advisory Council, the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S.
Go to Profile#20597
Rachel Barkow
#20608
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Rachel Elise Barkow is an American professor of law at the New York University School of Law. She is also faculty director of the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law. Her scholarship focuses on administrative and criminal law, and she is especially interested in applying the lessons and theory of administrative law to the administration of criminal justice. In 2007, Barkow won the Podell Distinguished Teaching Award at NYU. In the fall of 2008, she served as the Beneficial Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
Go to Profile#20598
Ernst Hairer
#20609
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Ernst Hairer is a professor of mathematics at the University of Geneva known for his work in numerical analysis. His PhD was completed at the University of Innsbruck. He is the father of the mathematician Martin Hairer, who won the Fields medal in 2014.
Go to Profile#20599
Ted Joyce
#20610
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Theodore Jay Joyce is a professor of economics and finance at Baruch College and also at CUNY Graduate Center He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Education Joyce received his B.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in education in 1976 and his Ph.D. in economics from the CUNY Graduate Center in 1985.
Go to Profile#20600
Glen Ballard
#20611
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Basil Glen Ballard Jr. is an American songwriter, lyricist, and record producer. He is best known for co-writing and producing Alanis Morissette's 1995 album Jagged Little Pill, which won Grammy Awards for Best Rock Album and Album of the Year, and was ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. He is also well known for his collaborations with composer Alan Silvestri, with whom he most notably wrote the musical adaptation of Back to the Future . He was involved in the recording and writing of Michael Jackson's albums Thriller, Bad and Dangerous. As a writer, he co-wrote songs including "Man in the Mirror" and "Hand in My Pocket" .
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