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
#20751
Holden Thorp
#20762
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Herbert Holden Thorp is an American chemist, professor and entrepreneur. He is a professor of chemistry at George Washington University. He was the tenth chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, assuming the position on July 1, 2008, succeeding James Moeser, and, at age 43, was noted as being among the youngest leaders of a university in the United States. At the time of his selection as chancellor, Thorp was the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and a Kenan Professor of chemistry at the university. Thorp is a 1986 graduate of UNC; he later earned a Ph.D. in chemi...
Go to Profile#20752
Peter Nazareth
#20763
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Peter Nazareth is a Ugandan-born literary critic and writer of fiction and drama. Life Peter Nazareth was born in Uganda of Indian Goan ancestry, and his mother's family was earlier based in Malaya-Malaysia-Singapore. He was educated at Makerere University , where he received his BA in English Literature in 1962, and at the universities of London and Leeds in England.
Go to Profile#20753
Simon Saunders
#20764
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Simon Wolfe Saunders is a British philosopher of physics. He is noted for his work on quantum mechanics , on identity and indiscernibility in physics, and on structural realism. Saunders is currently Professor of Philosophy of Physics at the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Merton College, having moved to Oxford in 1996. He has previously held untenured posts at Harvard University , and temporary or visiting positions at Wolfson College, Oxford , the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , Harvard , École Polytechnique , University of British Columbia , Perimeter Institute , and IMéRA . He is ma...
Go to Profile#20754
Byron Scott
#20765
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Byron Antom Scott is an American former professional basketball player and head coach in the National Basketball Association . As a player, Scott won three NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers during their Showtime era in the 1980s. He was named the NBA Coach of the Year with the New Orleans Hornets in 2008.
Go to Profile#20755
Chai Feldblum
#20766
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Chai Rachel Feldblum is an American author and activist for disability and LGBT rights. A former law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, she served as Commissioner at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She was nominated to the position on the EEOC by president Barack Obama in 2009. In April 2010, she received a recess appointment to the EEOC, and in December 2010 she was confirmed to serve on the EEOC by the United States Senate. The Senate confirmed her in December 2013 for a second term on the Commission which expired in July 2018.
Go to Profile#20756
Brian McTernan
#20767
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Brian McTernan is an American musician and record producer from Baltimore, Maryland. McTernan was the lead vocalist in the hardcore punk band Battery, the guitarist in Ashes, and is the singer in Be Well. In 2009, he was named one of "the 50 most influential people in Maryland" by the editors of The Daily Record.
Go to Profile#20757
Andreas J. Köstenberger
#20768
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Andreas Johannes Köstenberger , is Research Professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Until 2018, he was Senior Research Professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. His primary research interests are the Gospel of John, biblical theology, and hermeneutics.
Go to Profile#20758
C. Stephen Evans
#20769
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Charles Stephen Evans is an American philosopher. He is one of the United States' leading experts on Søren Kierkegaard and has also published extensively on subjects including philosophy of religion and the relationship of psychology and Christianity. He is University Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Baylor University.
Go to Profile#20759
Kurt Hirschhorn
#20770
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Kurt Hirschhorn was an Austrian-born American pediatrician, medical geneticist, and cytogeneticist who identified the chromosomal defects that underlie Wolf–Hirschhorn syndrome. Early life Hirschhorn was born in Vienna. Fleeing anti-Semitic persecution, the family relocated to Switzerland, then to the US, briefly in New York City before settling in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#20760
Fred Gage
#20771
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Fred "Rusty" Gage is an American geneticist known for his discovery of stem cells in the adult human brain. Gage is a former president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he holds the Vi and John Adler Chair for Research on Age-Related Neurodegenerative Disease and works in the Laboratory of Genetics.
Go to Profile#20761
Robert Stainton
#20772
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Robert Stainton is a Canadian philosopher/linguist and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Western Ontario. He is known for his works on the philosophy of language, cognitive science/philosophy of the mind, analytic metaphysics/philosophical logic, semantics and pragmatics. He is currently leading a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant-funded project on The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Languages with Christopher Viger. He is also “a fanatical carp fisher,” as he told Outdoor Canada.
Go to Profile#20762
Viggo Mortensen
#20773
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Viggo Peter Mortensen Jr. R is an American actor. He made his film debut in a small role in Peter Weir's 1985 thriller Witness. He appeared in several notable films, including The Indian Runner , Carlito's Way , Crimson Tide , Daylight , The Portrait of a Lady , G.I. Jane , A Perfect Murder , A Walk on the Moon , and 28 Days .
Go to Profile#20763
Yoshihisa Okumura
#20774
Overall Influence
1926 - 2023 (97 years)
Yoshihisa Okumura was a Japanese engineer, known for development of cellular telephone networks. His radio survey of signal strength as a function of distance as measured in drive tests in automobiles was critical to the system planning of mobile radio telephone systems.
Go to Profile#20764
Lee-Jen Wei
#20775
Overall Influence
Lee-Jen Wei is a Taiwanese-American professor of biostatistics at Harvard University. Career He was graduated from Fu Jen Catholic University's Mathematics Department in 1970. He obtained his PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1975. He has been a tenured Professor of Biostatistics at Harvard University since 1991 and was the co-director of the Bioinformatics Core at the Harvard School of Public Health from 2003 to 2007. From 2003 to 2004, he served as the acting chair of the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard University. Under his supervision, the department successfully converted the doctor of science degree program in biostatistics to a conventional Ph.D.
Go to Profile#20765
Abraham Klein
#20776
Overall Influence
1927 - 2003 (76 years)
Abraham Klein was an American theoretical physicist. Klein received his B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1947, and his S.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University under Julian Schwinger. In 1955, he became associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, achieving full professorship in 1958 and retiring in 1994.
Go to Profile#20766
W. D. Snodgrass
#20777
Overall Influence
1926 - 2009 (83 years)
William De Witt Snodgrass was an American poet who also wrote under the pseudonym S. S. Gardons. He won the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Life Snodgrass was born on January 5, 1926, in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, to Bruce De Witt, an accountant, and Jesse Helen Snodgrass. The family lived in Wilkinsburg, but drove to Beaver Falls for his birth since his grandfather was a doctor in the town. Eventually the family moved to Beaver Falls and Snodgrass graduated from the local high school in 1943. He then attended Geneva College until 1944 when he was drafted into the United States Navy. After ...
Go to Profile#20767
Niven Busch
#20778
Overall Influence
1903 - 1991 (88 years)
Niven Busch was an American novelist and screenwriter of movies such as the acclaimed The Postman Always Rings Twice. His novels included Duel in the Sun and California Street . He was married to actress Teresa Wright for ten years beginning in 1942.
Go to Profile#20768
Andrei Serban
#20779
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Andrei Șerban is a Romanian-American theater director. A major name in twentieth-century theater, he is renowned for his innovative and iconoclastic interpretations and stagings. In 1992 he became Professor of Theater at the Columbia University School of the Arts, a position he resigned from in 2019, citing oppressive pressure in the name of "political correctness" on a level which reminded him of communist Romania.
Go to Profile#20769
Ronald Breiger
#20780
Overall Influence
Ronald Breiger is an American sociologist and a Regents Professor, a professor of sociology and government and public policy, an affiliate of the interdisciplinary graduate program in statistics and data science, and an affiliate of the interdisciplinary graduate program in applied mathematics at the University of Arizona. Prior to coming to Arizona he served on the faculties of Harvard University and Cornell University . He is well cited in the fields of social networks, social stratification, mathematical sociology, organizational sociology and cultural sociology and, with Linton Freeman, edited the influential academic journal Social Networks from 1998 to 2006.
Go to Profile#20770
Marv Levy
#20781
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (101 years)
Marvin Daniel Levy is an American former football coach and executive who was a head coach in the National Football League for seventeen seasons. He spent most of his head coaching career with the Buffalo Bills, leading them from 1986 to 1997. Levy's first head coaching position was with the Montreal Alouettes of Canadian Football League from 1973 to 1977, where he won two Grey Cup titles.
Go to Profile#20771
Lucien Le Cam
#20782
Overall Influence
1924 - 2000 (76 years)
Lucien Marie Le Cam was a mathematician and statistician. Biography Le Cam was born November 18, 1924, in Croze, France. His parents were farmers, and unable to afford higher education for him; his father died when he was 13. After graduating from a Catholic school in 1942, he began studying at a seminary in Limoges, but immediately quit upon learning that he would not be allowed to study chemistry there. Instead he continued his studies at a lycée, which did not teach chemistry but did teach mathematics. In May 1944 he joined an underground group, and then went into hiding, returning to his ...
Go to Profile#20772
Hedy Lamarr
#20783
Overall Influence
1914 - 2000 (86 years)
Hedy Lamarr was an Austro-Hungarian-born American actress and technology inventor. She was a film star during Hollywood's Golden Age. After a brief early film career in Czechoslovakia, including the controversial Ecstasy , she fled from her first husband, a wealthy Austrian ammunition manufacturer, and secretly moved to Paris. Traveling to London, she met Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio head Louis B. Mayer, who offered her a movie contract in Hollywood. She became a film star with her performance in Algiers . Her MGM films include Lady of the Tropics , Boom Town , H.M. Pulham, Esq. , and White Cargo .
Go to Profile#20773
Francine du Plessix Gray
#20784
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
Francine du Plessix Gray , was a French-American Pulitzer Prize–nominated writer and literary critic. Early life and education She was born on September 25, 1930, in Warsaw, Poland, where her father, Vicomte Bertrand Jochaud du Plessix, was a French diplomat – the commercial attaché. She spent her early years in Paris, where a milieu of mixed cultures and a multilingual family influenced her. Her father, then a sub-lieutenant in the Free French Air Force died in 1940, shot down near Gibraltar.
Go to Profile#20774
Sophie Long
#20785
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Sophie Rebecca Long is an English journalist who works for BBC News, mainly appearing as a presenter on the BBC News Channel. On 18 March 2013, Long and co-presenter Simon McCoy read the final BBC News bulletin from BBC Television Centre.
Go to Profile#20775
David Fontana
#20786
Overall Influence
1934 - 2010 (76 years)
David G. J. Fontana FBPsS was a British psychologist, parapsychologist and author. He was a Professor of Psychology at Cardiff University. He was also a visiting professor at Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Algarve.
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Lawrence Rosen
#20787
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Lawrence Rosen is an American anthropologist and scholar of law. He is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University and adjunct professor of law at Columbia University.
Go to Profile#20777
Yung Suk Kim
#20788
Overall Influence
Yung Suk Kim is a Korean-American biblical scholar. Kim is professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology . He studied in Korean and American schools. Kim obtained a PhD in New Testament studies from Vanderbilt University in 2006, an M.Div. from McCormick Theological Seminary in 1999, and a B.A. from Kyungpook National University in 1985. He is the editor of the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion.
Go to Profile#20778
Prasanna
#20789
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Prasanna , is a major Indian theatre director and playwright from Karnataka. He is one of the pioneers of modern Kannada theatre. He graduated from the National School of Drama . He founded Samudaya and gave a creative direction to Kannada theatre in the 1970s with other activists. Prasanna lives in Heggodu in Karnataka. He is known for his organisational skills and new ideas and innovations in theatre. He is a Sangeet Natak Akademi Awardee. He has directed plays for National School of Drama , Ninasam, Rangamandal-Bhopal, Rangayana and worked with many theatre organizations of India. He electe...
Go to Profile#20779
Jean-Marie Robine
#20790
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Jean-Marie Robine is a French social scientist, who works in the field of demography and gerontology, and is an author and journalist, who is best known as being the co-validator of the longevity of Jeanne Calment, the oldest verified supercentenarian of all time, with whom he collaborated.
Go to Profile#20780
Steven Gould
#20791
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Steven Charles Gould is an American science fiction writer. He has written ten novels. His 1992 novel Jumper was adapted into a film released in 2008. Biography Steven Charles Gould was born in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, on February 7, 1955, to James Alan and Carita Louise Gould. His father was an Army officer; when Gould was in junior high his father was stationed at Fort Shafter in Hawaii for three years. The whole family learned to scuba dive there, and Gould went diving frequently.
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Suhaib Webb
#20792
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Suhaib Webb is an American Muslim imam who converted from Christianity to Islam in 1992. He has previously been the imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center . Biography Early life He was born William Webb in 1972 in Oklahoma to a Christian family, including a grandfather who served as a preacher. At age 14, he lost interest in religion, going through a self-described spiritual crisis. He also began engaging in delinquency by joining a local gang and became a local hip hop DJ and producer, making records with various artists.
Go to Profile#20782
Gabriele Rosenthal
#20793
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Gabriele Rosenthal is a German sociologist and head of Department for Qualitative Methods of the Center for Methods in Social Sciences of the University of Göttingen, Germany. Rosenthal is recognized for the introduction of the method of biographical case reconstruction using biographical narrative interviews . She is known for systemizing the influences of the Gestalt theory , the sociology of knowledge , and the sociology of figurations and processes to explain the interrelationship between experience, memory and narrative, as well as how social figurations intertwine with individual biog...
Go to Profile#20783
George E. Mendenhall
#20794
Overall Influence
1916 - 2016 (100 years)
George Emery Mendenhall was an American Biblical scholar who taught at the University of Michigan's Department of Near Eastern Studies. Career Mendenhall graduated from Midland College in Nebraska in 1936, and from Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg in 1938. Mendenhall was first an ordained Lutheran minister, and during World War II he served as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy. After the war, Mendenhall obtained a Ph.D. in Semitic languages from Johns Hopkins University and began a career in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical studies as well as related archeology. He was professor at the University of Michigan from 1952 to 1986.
Go to Profile#20784
Leslie P. Kaelbling
#20795
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Leslie Pack Kaelbling is an American roboticist and the Panasonic Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is widely recognized for adapting partially observable Markov decision processes from operations research for application in artificial intelligence and robotics. Kaelbling received the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award in 1997 for applying reinforcement learning to embedded control systems and developing programming tools for robot navigation. In 2000, she was elected as a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial I...
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Mary Sears
#20796
Overall Influence
1905 - 1997 (92 years)
Mary Sears was a Commander in the United States Naval Reserve and an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution . Early life and education Mary Sears was born on July 18, 1905, to Leslie and Edmund Sears in Wayland, Massachusetts. She was the oldest child, and had a younger brother and sister. In 1911, Leslie died from polio when she was 28-years-old. After his wife's death, Edmund moved to Europe and left his children in the care of relatives and nannies. During this time, one of their caretakers was their mother's friend, Sophie Bennett, who was a teacher at The Winsor School in Boston, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#20786
Marianne Janack
#20797
Overall Influence
Marianne Janack is an American philosopher and John Stewart Kennedy Professor of Philosophy at Hamilton College. She is the president of the Richard Rorty Society. She was the Phi Bet Kappa Romanell Professor of Philosophy in 2017-18.
Go to Profile#20787
Peter Jahrling
#20798
Overall Influence
Peter B. Jahrling is chief of the Emerging Viral Pathogens Section of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Jahrling received his PhD in medical microbiology from Cornell Medical College. He joined the military as an officer at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases , and remained employed as a civilian after his service. Since 2005, Jahrling has been the chief scientist of the NIAID Integrated Research Facility in Frederick, Maryland, and chief of the Emerging Viral Pathogens Section.
Go to Profile#20788
Andrew Hurrell
#20799
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Andrew James Hurrell, FBA is a leading British scholar of international relations. He is currently a senior research fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, having previously been Montague Burton Professor of International Relations from 2008 to 2021.
Go to Profile#20789
François Golse
#20800
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
François Golse is a French mathematician. Golse was awarded a doctorate in 1986 at the Paris XIII University with thesis advisor Claude Bardos and thesis Contributions à l'étude des équations du transfert radiatif. In 1987 he became a scientist of CNRS at the École normale supérieure. In 1993 he became a professor at Pierre and Marie Curie University . He has been a professor at the École Polytechnique since 2006.
Go to Profile#20790
Lilia Shevtsova
#20801
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Lilia Fyodorovna Shevtsova is a Kremlinology expert. Biography Shevtsova received B.A. and M.A. in history and journalism from Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1971. She also received Ph.D. in political science from the Academy of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1976. She served as director of the Center for Political Studies in Moscow, and as deputy director of the Moscow Institute of International Economic and Political Studies.
Go to Profile#20791
Andre Dawson
#20802
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Andre Nolan Dawson , nicknamed "the Hawk" and "Awesome Dawson", is an American former professional baseball player and inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame. During a 21-year baseball career, he played for four different teams as a center and right fielder, spending most of his career with the Montreal Expos and Chicago Cubs .
Go to Profile#20792
Hans Blix
#20803
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Hans Martin Blix is a Swedish diplomat and politician for the Liberal People's Party. He was Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs and later became the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. As such, Blix was the first Western representative to inspect the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union on site, and led the agency response to them. Blix was also the head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission from March 2000 to June 2003, when he was succeeded by Dimitris Perrikos. In 2002, the commission began searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, ultimately finding none.
Go to Profile#20793
Anthony Finkelstein
#20804
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Sir Anthony Charles Wiener Finkelstein is a British engineer and computer scientist. He is the President of City, University of London. He was Chief Scientific Adviser for National Security to HM Government until 2021.
Go to Profile#20794
Warwick Fox
#20805
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Warwick Fox is an Australian-UK philosopher. He is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Central Lancashire, and his books include Toward a Transpersonal Ecology: Developing New Foundations for Environmentalism; Ethics and the Built Environment ; A Theory of General Ethics: Human Relationships, Nature, and the Built Environment; and On Beautiful Days Such as This: A Philosopher's Search for Love, Work, Place, Meaning, and Suchlike. His main areas of philosophical interest are environmental philosophy, General Ethics , and the nature of the interior lives of humans and other animals.
Go to Profile#20795
Antonia Pantoja
#20806
Overall Influence
1922 - 2002 (80 years)
Antonia Pantoja , was a Puerto Rican educator, social worker, feminist, civil rights leader and the founder of ASPIRA, the Puerto Rican Forum, Boricua College and Producir. In 1996, she was the first Puerto Rican woman to receive the American Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Go to Profile#20796
Diego Forlán
#20807
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Diego Martín Forlán Corazo is a Uruguayan professional football manager and former player who played as a striker. Regarded as one of the best forwards of his generation, Forlán is a two-time winner of both the Pichichi Trophy and the European Golden Shoe at club level. With the Uruguay national team, he had notable individual success at the 2010 FIFA World Cup, finishing as joint top scorer with five goals, winning the goal of the tournament, and winning the Golden Ball as the tournament's best player.
Go to Profile#20797
Frankie Valli
#20808
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Francesco Stephen Castelluccio , better known by his stage name Frankie Valli, is an American singer, known as the frontman of the Four Seasons beginning in 1960. He is known for his unusually powerful lead falsetto voice.
Go to Profile#20798
Athanasios Angelopoulos
#20809
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Athanasios Angelopoulos is a Professor of Pastoral Theology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki; founder and in-honour president of the Institute for National and Religious Studies . He has studied at the Theology School of the University of Athens as well as in University of Belgrade's Theology School. From 1973 to 1981 he was instructor of theology at Aristotle University; in 1982 he became an assistant professor and in 1984, full professor of Ecclesiastic History at the Department of Pastoral Theology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Go to Profile#20799
John L. Thornton
#20810
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
John Lawson Thornton is an American businessman and professor and director of the Global Leadership Program at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He is also executive chairman of Barrick Gold Corporation and non-executive chairman of PineBridge Investments. Thornton stepped down as co-president of Goldman Sachs in 2003.
Go to Profile#20800
Ulla-Lena Lundberg
#20811
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ulla-Lena Lundberg is a Finland-Swedish author living in Porvoo, Finland. Her Swedish-language books have been translated into several languages, including Finnish, Danish, German, Russian and Dutch.
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