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
#20901
Sylvain Cappell
#20912
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Sylvain Edward Cappell , a Belgian American mathematician and former student of William Browder at Princeton University, is a topologist who has spent most of his career at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU, where he is now the Silver Professor of Mathematics.
Go to Profile#20902
Tadahiko Fukuhara
#20913
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Tadahiko Fukuhara is a Japanese academics, professor of civil law, member of the board of INES Corp and Japan Payment Service Association. In 2011 he became the president and chancellor of Chuo University, prior to that he was dean of the Chuo Graduate Law School at the Chuo University.
Go to Profile#20903
Christian Slater
#20914
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Christian Michael Leonard Slater is an American actor and producer. He made his film debut with a leading role in The Legend of Billie Jean and gained wider recognition for his breakthrough role as Jason "J.D." Dean, a sociopathic high school student, in the satire Heathers . He has received critical acclaim for his title role in the USA Network television series Mr. Robot , for which he earned the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film in 2016, with additional nominations in 2017 and 2018.
Go to Profile#20904
Helmut Anheier
#20915
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Helmut K. Anheier is a German-American academic. He is professor of sociology and past president of the Hertie School in Berlin. Until September 2019 he held a chair at the Max Weber Institute of Sociology, Heidelberg University, where he was also the Academic Director of the Center for Social Investment and Innovation. His research interests include civil society, social innovation, organizational theory, governance and policy research, social science methodology, including indicator models
Go to Profile#20905
Robert Arneson
#20916
Overall Influence
1930 - 1992 (62 years)
Robert Carston Arneson was an American sculptor and professor of ceramics in the Art department at University of California, Davis for nearly three decades. Early life and education Robert Carston Arneson was born on September 4, 1930, in Benicia, California. He graduated from Benicia High School and spent much of his early life as a cartoonist for a local paper. Arneson studied at California College of the Arts in Oakland, California, for his BFA degree and went on to receive an MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California, in 1958. At Mills College he studied under Antonio Prieto.
Go to Profile#20906
Markus Büchler
#20917
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Markus Wolfgang Büchler is a German surgeon and university full professor. He specialises in gastrointestinal, hepatobiliary and transplant surgery, and is especially known for pioneering operations on the pancreas.
Go to Profile#20907
Vince Russo
#20918
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Vincent James Russo is an American professional wrestling booker, writer, and pundit. He is notable for his tenures with the World Wrestling Federation , World Championship Wrestling and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling in creative roles. He also occasionally made appearances as an on-screen authority figure, and professional wrestler, in WCW and TNA. His writing style often blurred the lines between reality and fiction, while also favoring elements such as shock twists, grand moments and larger-than-life characters over in-ring action, which made him a controversial figure amongst certain wrestling fans.
Go to Profile#20908
Jerry Morris
#20919
Overall Influence
1910 - 2009 (99 years)
Jeremiah Noah Morris was a Scottish epidemiologist who established the importance of physical activity in preventing cardiovascular disease. Early life Morris was born on 6 May 1910 in Liverpool. His Jewish family had emigrated to escape pogroms in Poland. Arriving by boat in Liverpool, the family adopted the surname of the ship's captain. His family moved to Glasgow, where Jerry was brought up in poverty. His childhood experiences of Glasgow's slums informed his later work, and led to his membership of the Labour Party which he joined at the age 16, and only left when in his nineties in his disgust at the Second Gulf War.
Go to Profile#20909
David D. Hall
#20920
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
David Drisko Hall is an American historian, and was Bartlett Professor of New England Church History, at Harvard Divinity School. Life Hall was born on July 8, 1936. He graduated from Harvard University, and from Yale University with a PhD. He is well known for introducing lived religion to religious studies scholarship in the United States, most notably at Harvard Divinity School.
Go to Profile#20910
Bernard Bigot
#20921
Overall Influence
1950 - 2022 (72 years)
Bernard Bigot was an academic, civil servant. He served as the Director-General of the ITER organization between 2015 and 2022. He was the president of the École normale supérieure de Lyon, and director of the French Commission for Atomic Energy.
Go to Profile#20911
Vytautas Straižys
#20922
Overall Influence
1936 - 2021 (85 years)
Vytautas Straižys was a Lithuanian astronomer. In 1963–65 he and his collaborators created and developed the Vilnius photometric system, a seven-color intermediate band system, optimized for photometric stellar classification. In 1996 he was elected a Corresponding Member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. Straižys was an editor of the journal Baltic Astronomy. He spent a lot of time working at the Molėtai Astronomical Observatory. Asteroid 68730 Straizys in 2002 was named after him.
Go to Profile#20912
Nana Mouskouri
#20923
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Ioanna "Nana" Mouskouri is a Greek singer and politician. Over the span of her career, she has released over 200 albums in at least twelve languages, including Greek, French, English, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Hebrew, Welsh, Mandarin Chinese and Corsican.
Go to Profile#20913
Tom R. Tyler
#20924
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Tom R. Tyler is a professor of psychology and law at Yale Law School, known for his contributions to understanding why people obey the law. A 2012 review article on procedural justice by Anthony Bottoms and Justice Tankebe noted that, "Unquestionably the dominant theoretical approach to legitimacy within these disciplines is that of 'procedural justice,' based especially on the work of Tom Tyler.". Professor Tyler was at New York University, where he was a University Professor, from 1997 until he joined the faculty at Yale in January 2012. He earned his B.A. from Columbia University and Ph.D.
Go to Profile#20914
Vincent Sarich
#20925
Overall Influence
1934 - 2012 (78 years)
Vincent Matthew Sarich was an American anthropologist and biochemist. He was Professor Emeritus in anthropology at University of California, Berkeley. Sarich and his PhD advisor, Allan Wilson, used molecular data to estimate that humans and chimpanzees have a common ancestor just four to five million years ago. Their paper on their finding was published in 1967. At the time, scientists considered the common ancestor to live ten to 30 million years ago, and their revised estimate has become well accepted. Sarich generated controversy with his support for analyzing human behavior and population...
Go to Profile#20915
John P. Costas
#20926
Overall Influence
1923 - 2008 (85 years)
John Peter Costas was an American electrical engineer. Costas invented, among other things, the Costas loop and Costas arrays. Biography Costas studied at Purdue University as an undergraduate. During World War II, he was involved in radar engineering, serving in the U.S. Navy as a radar officer. He was a graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where he worked on interference filtering and linear systems coding. While there, he worked with Norbert Wiener, R. M. Fano, J. B. Wiesner and Y. W. Lee. He worked for General Electric from 1951 until the early 1980s, and for Cogent Systems, Inc.
Go to Profile#20916
Nurhan Atasoy
#20927
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Nurhan Atasoy is a Turkish art historian. She specializes in history of Ottoman and Islamic art. She served as a chair in the Department of Fine Arts, Archeology and Art History at Istanbul University until 1999 when she retired. She is a resident scholar of the Turkish Cultural Foundation.
Go to Profile#20917
Karen Dynan
#20928
Overall Influence
Karen Dynan is an American economist who is Professor of the Practice of Economics at Harvard University and a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. She previously served as the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and Chief Economist of the United States Department of the Treasury, having been nominated to that position by President Barack Obama in August 2013 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in June 2014. From 2009 to 2013, Dr. Dynan was the Vice President and Co-director of the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution.
Go to Profile#20918
Jendayi Frazer
#20929
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Jendayi Elizabeth Frazer is the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, heading the Bureau of African Affairs. She was a Distinguished Service Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College and Department of Social and Decision Sciences.
Go to Profile#20919
Max H. Bazerman
#20930
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Max Hal Bazerman is an author and researcher whose work focuses on negotiation, behavioral economics, and ethics. In his most recent book, Better, Not Perfect, Bazerman provides insight into how individuals can make better decisions for themselves and for the world. In their 2020 book The Power of Experiments, Bazerman and Michael Luca describe how technology companies and other organizations are increasingly relying on randomized control trials to test their ideas, generating both benefits and costs for society at large. Bazerman is the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
Go to Profile#20920
Charles A. Reich
#20931
Overall Influence
1928 - 2019 (91 years)
Charles Alan Reich was an American academic and writer best known for writing the 1970 book, The Greening of America, a paean to the counterculture of the 1960s. Excerpts of the book first appeared in The New Yorker, and its seismic reception there contributed to the book leading The New York Times Best Seller list. Due to the theme and implications of this book Reich was described as a "high priest of antitechnology".
Go to Profile#20921
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
#20932
Overall Influence
1906 - 2001 (95 years)
Anne Spencer Morrow Lindbergh was an American writer and aviatrix. She was the wife of decorated pioneer aviator Charles Lindbergh, with whom she made many exploratory flights. Raised in Englewood, New Jersey, and later New York City, Anne Morrow graduated from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1928. She married Charles in 1929, and in 1930 became the first woman to receive a U.S. glider pilot license. Throughout the early 1930s, she served as radio operator and copilot to Charles on multiple exploratory flights and aerial surveys. Following the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the...
Go to Profile#20922
Marta Hillers
#20933
Overall Influence
1911 - 2001 (90 years)
#20923
Robert Tally
#20934
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Robert T. Tally Jr. is a professor of English at Texas State University. His research and teaching focuses on the relations among space, narrative, and representation, particularly in U.S. and comparative literature, and he is active in the emerging scholarly fields of geocriticism, literary geography, and the spatial humanities. Tally is the editor of "Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies," a Palgrave Macmillan book series established in 2013. The translator of Bertrand Westphal's Geocriticism: Real and Fictional Spaces and the editor of Geocritical Explorations, In addition to his nume...
Go to Profile#20924
Donald Brown
#20935
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Donald Edward Brown is an American professor of anthropology . Work He worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is best known for his theoretical work regarding the existence, characteristics and relevance of universals of human nature. In his best-known work, Human Universals , he says these universals, "comprise those features of culture, society, language, behavior, and psyche for which there are no known exceptions." He is quoted at length by Steven Pinker in an appendix to The Blank Slate , where Pinker cites some of the hundreds of universals listed by Brown. In area st...
Go to Profile#20925
Paul Bailey
#20936
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Paul Bailey FRSL is a British novelist and critic, as well as a biographer of Cynthia Payne and Quentin Crisp. Biography Paul Bailey attended Sir Walter St John's Grammar School For Boys in Battersea, London. He won a scholarship to the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1953 and worked as an actor between 1956 and 1964. He became a freelance writer in 1967.
Go to Profile#20926
Abdul El-Sayed
#20937
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed is an American politician, former public health professor, and civil servant serving as the director of the Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services for Wayne County. He was a candidate in Michigan's 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary election, placing second out of three candidates. In September 2018, he founded Southpaw Michigan, a political action committee, to help elect other progressive candidates in Michigan.
Go to Profile#20927
David Kyle Johnson
#20938
Overall Influence
David Kyle Johnson is a Professor of Philosophy at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He specializes in logic, metaphysics, free will, and philosophy of religion. Early life Johnson was born in Guymon, Oklahoma in 1977.
Go to Profile#20928
Roger Vadim
#20939
Overall Influence
1928 - 2000 (72 years)
Roger Vadim Plemiannikov was a French screenwriter, film director and producer, as well as an author, artist and occasional actor. His best-known works are visually lavish films with erotic qualities, such as And God Created Woman , Blood and Roses , Barbarella , and Pretty Maids All in a Row .
Go to Profile#20929
John Arquilla
#20940
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
John Arquilla is an American analyst and academic of international relations. Biography Arquilla received a B.A. from Rosary College in 1975. Until 1987, he worked as a surety-bond executive. He then enrolled at Stanford University, where he studied Political Science, receiving the M.A. degree in 1989 and a Ph.D. in 1991.
Go to Profile#20930
David Nabarro
#20941
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Sir David Nunes Nabarro is a British Special Envoy on Covid-19 for the World Health Organization. He has made his career in the international civil service, working for either the Secretary-General of the United Nations or the Director-General of the World Health Organization. Since February 2020, he has helped the DGWHO deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Go to Profile#20931
William S. McArthur
#20942
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
William Surles McArthur Jr. is a retired United States Army colonel and NASA astronaut and a veteran of three Space Shuttle missions and one expedition to the International Space Station via the Russian Soyuz capsule.
Go to Profile#20932
Robert Alexander Rankin
#20943
Overall Influence
1915 - 2001 (86 years)
Robert Alexander Rankin FRSE FRSAMD was a Scottish mathematician who worked in analytic number theory. Life Rankin was born in Garlieston in Wigtownshire the son of Rev Oliver Rankin , minister of Sorbie and his wife, Olivia Theresa Shaw. His father took the name Oliver Shaw Rankin on marriage and became Professor of Old Testament Language, Literature and Theology in the University of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#20933
Manoj Joshi
#20944
Overall Influence
Manoj Joshi is an Indian journalist and author specialising in security and international relations. As of 2013 he is a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi–based think tank. Before that he was a professional journalist whose previous job was as Comment Editor with the Mail Today newspaper in India.
Go to Profile#20934
Cody Rhodes
#20945
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Cody Garrett Runnels Rhodes is an American professional wrestler currently signed to WWE, where he performs on the Raw brand. He is also known for his time in All Elite Wrestling from 2019 to 2022, where he served as an executive vice president and was the inaugural and record-tying three-time AEW TNT Champion.
Go to Profile#20935
Nirmal Puwar
#20946
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Nirmal Puwar is a senior lecturer at the department of Sociology at Goldsmiths University and Co-Director of Methods Lab. She is a member of the Feminist Review editorial collective since 2000. Puwar has co-edited 17 Collections, including: Post-colonial Bourdieu; Orientalism and Fashion; Intimacy in Research; Live Methods and, South Asian Women in the Diaspora.
Go to Profile#20936
Gregorio Salvador Caja
#20947
Overall Influence
1927 - 2020 (93 years)
Gregorio Salvador Caja was a Spanish linguist specialized in structural semantics. Salvador was born in Cúllar, Granada, and studied at the University of Granada and Complutense University. He was one of the most important disciples of Manuel Alvar. He wrote for the Spanish newspaper ABC.
Go to Profile#20937
Selim Deringil
#20948
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Selim M. Deringil is a Turkish academic, and professor of history at Boğaziçi University and at the Lebanese American University. Career Deringil earned his doctorate from the University of East Anglia in 1979, and joined Boğaziçi University the same year. He is a notable lecturer on Late Ottoman History, Ottoman Islam and relationships between Ottomans and Europe. He has lectured in the United States, England, France, Lebanon and Palestine . He has written several essays on the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the history of the Republic of Turkey. His book "The Well-Protected Domains: Ideolog...
Go to Profile#20938
Sparky Anderson
#20949
Overall Influence
1934 - 2010 (76 years)
George Lee "Sparky" Anderson was an American Major League Baseball player, coach, and manager. He managed the National League's Cincinnati Reds to the 1975 and 1976 championships, then added a third title in 1984 with the Detroit Tigers of the American League. Anderson was the first manager to win the World Series in both leagues. His 2,194 career wins are the sixth-most for a manager in Major League history. Anderson was named American League Manager of the Year in and . He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000.
Go to Profile#20939
Susan Leigh Star
#20950
Overall Influence
1954 - 2010 (56 years)
Susan Leigh Star was an American sociologist. She specialized in the study of information in modern society; information worlds; information infrastructure; classification and standardization; sociology of science; sociology of work; and the history of science, medicine, technology, and communication/information systems. She commonly used the qualitative methods methodology and feminist theory approach. She was also known for developing the concept of boundary objects and for contributions to computer-supported cooperative work.
Go to Profile#20940
Morton Brown
#20951
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Morton Brown is an American mathematician, who specializes in geometric topology. In 1958 Brown earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison under R. H. Bing. From 1960 to 1962 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study. Afterwards he became a professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
Go to Profile#20941
Alasdair Urquhart
#20952
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Alasdair Ian Fenton Urquhart is a Scottish–Canadian philosopher and emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. He has made contributions to the field of logic, especially non-classical logic. One of his ideas is proving the undecidability of the relevance logic R. He also published papers in theoretical computer science venues, mostly on mathematical logic topics of relevance to computer science.
Go to Profile#20942
Diedrich Diederichsen
#20953
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Diedrich Diederichsen is a German author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is an intellectual writer at the crossroads of the arts, politics, and pop culture. Diedrich Diederichsen was born and grew up in Hamburg where he worked as a music journalist and editor of the German Sounds magazine in the heyday of punk and new wave from 1979 to 1983. Until the 1990s he was then the editor-in-chief of the influential subculture magazine Spex in Cologne. Diederichsen worked as visiting professor in Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart, Pasadena, Offenbach am Main, Gießen, Weimar, Bremen, Vienna, St. Louis, Cologne, Los Angeles and Gainesville.
Go to Profile#20943
Eartha Kitt
#20954
Overall Influence
1927 - 2008 (81 years)
Eartha Mae Kitt was an American singer and actress known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 recordings of "C'est si bon" and the Christmas novelty song "Santa Baby". Kitt began her career in 1942 and appeared in the 1945 original Broadway theatre production of the musical Carib Song. In the early 1950s, she had six US Top 30 entries, including "Uska Dara" and "I Want to Be Evil". Her other recordings include the UK Top 10 song "Under the Bridges of Paris" , "Just an Old Fashioned Girl" and "Where Is My Man" . Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the world".
Go to Profile#20944
Uriel Frisch
#20955
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Uriel Frisch is a French mathematical physicist known for his work on fluid dynamics and turbulence. Biography From 1959 to 1963 Frisch was a student at the École Normale Supérieure. Early in his graduate studies, he became interested in turbulence, under the mentorship of Robert Kraichnan, a former assistant to Albert Einstein. Frisch earned a Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of Paris, and since then he has worked at the French National Centre for Scientific Research . He retired in 2006, and became a director of research emeritus at CNRS.
Go to Profile#20945
Metrodorus
#20956
Overall Influence
Metrodorus was a Greek grammarian and mathematician, who collected mathematical epigrams which appear in the Greek Anthology. Nothing is known about the life of Metrodorus. The time he lived is not certain: he may have lived as early as the 3rd century AD, but it is more likely that he lived in the time of the emperors Anastasius I and Justin I, in the early 6th century.
Go to Profile#20946
Aria Finger
#20957
Overall Influence
Aria Finger is the Chief of Staff to Reid Hoffman. She also co-hosts, along with Hoffman, the podcast Possible. Background Finger attended Washington University in St. Louis where she graduated magna cum laude in economics and political science in 2005.
Go to Profile#20947
Natalie Cole
#20958
Overall Influence
1950 - 2015 (65 years)
Natalie Maria Cole was an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She was the daughter of singer and jazz pianist Nat King Cole. She rose to prominence in the mid-1970s, with the release of her debut album Inseparable , along with the song "This Will Be ", and the album's title track. Its success led to her receiving the Grammy Award for Best New Artist at the 18th Annual Grammy Awards, for which she became the first African-American recipient, as well as the first R&B act to win the award. The singles "Sophisticated Lady" , "I've Got Love on My Mind", and "Our Love" followed.
Go to Profile#20948
Laurent Fignon
#20959
Overall Influence
1960 - 2010 (50 years)
Laurent Patrick Fignon was a French professional road bicycle racer who won the Tour de France in 1983 and 1984 and the Giro d'Italia in 1989. He is former FICP World No. 1 in 1989. He nearly captured the Tour de France for a third time in 1989 before being edged by Greg LeMond by 8 seconds, the closest margin ever to decide the Tour. Fignon won many classic races, including taking Milan–San Remo back-to-back in 1988 and 1989. He died from cancer in 2010.
Go to Profile#20949
Jan Hjärpe
#20960
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jan Östen Hjärpe is a Swedish Islamicist and a professor emeritus in Islamic studies at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University. Hjärpe was born in Gothenburg, Sweden. He earned a B.D. from Uppsala University ín 1965 and a B.A. in the history of religions and Semitic languages in 1967. From 1967 to 1968 he studied at University of Strasbourg. He studied for a Licentiate of Theology at Uppsala University in 1971 and defended his thesis in the history of religions in 1972. From 1972 to 1976 he was a senior lecturer in the history of religions at Uppsala University and Umeå University.
Go to Profile#20950
John Currie Gunn
#20961
Overall Influence
1916 - 2002 (86 years)
Sir John Currie Gunn was an influential Scottish mathematician and physicist. Early life and education Gunn was born at 19 Kelvinside Gardens East, Glasgow, the son of Richard Robertson Gunn, a tailor and clothier, and his wife, Jane Blair, née Currie.
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