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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people
#2101
Pierre Trudeau
#2103
Overall Influence
1919 - 2000 (81 years)
Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 15th prime minister of Canada from 1968 to 1979 and from 1980 to 1984. He also briefly served as the leader of the Opposition from 1979 to 1980.
Go to Profile#2102
Ruth Barcan Marcus
#2104
Overall Influence
1921 - 2012 (91 years)
Ruth Barcan Marcus was an American academic philosopher and logician best known for her work in modal and philosophical logic. She developed the first formal systems of quantified modal logic and in so doing introduced the schema or principle known as the Barcan formula. Marcus, who originally published as Ruth C. Barcan, was, as Don Garrett notes "one of the twentieth century's most important and influential philosopher-logicians". Timothy Williamson, in a 2008 celebration of Marcus' long career, states that many of her "main ideas are not just original, and clever, and beautiful, and fasci...
Go to Profile#2103
Donald T. Campbell
#2105
Overall Influence
1916 - 1996 (80 years)
Donald Thomas Campbell was an American social scientist. He is noted for his work in methodology. He coined the term evolutionary epistemology and developed a selectionist theory of human creativity. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Campbell as the 33rd most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#2104
Robert Gilpin
#2106
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Robert Gilpin was an American political scientist. He was Professor of Politics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University where he held the Eisenhower professorship.
Go to Profile#2105
Jean Drapeau
#2107
Overall Influence
1916 - 1999 (83 years)
Jean Drapeau was a Canadian politician who served as mayor of Montreal, Canada for 2 non-consecutive terms from 1954 to 1957 and from 1960 to 1986. Major accomplishments of the Drapeau Administration include the development of the Montreal Metro entirely underground mass transit subway system running on 'whisper quiet' rubber wheels, a successful international exposition Expo 67 as well as the construction of a major performing arts centre, the Place des Arts. Drapeau also secured the hosting of the 1976 Summer Olympics and was instrumental in building the Olympic Stadium and then world's tallest inclined tower.
Go to Profile#2106
Ruth Westheimer
#2108
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
Karola Ruth Westheimer , better known as Dr. Ruth, is a German-American who is a sex–therapist, talk show host, author, professor, and Holocaust survivor. Westheimer was born in Germany to a Jewish family. As the Nazis came to power, her parents sent the ten-year-old girl to a school in Switzerland for safety, remaining behind themselves because of her elderly grandmother. They were both subsequently sent to concentration camps by the Gestapo, where they were killed. After World War II ended, she immigrated to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine. Despite being only 4 feet 7 inches tall and 17 years of age, she joined the Haganah, and was trained as a sniper, but never saw combat.
Go to Profile#2107
Lesley Stahl
#2109
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Lesley Rene Stahl is an American television journalist. She has spent most of her career with CBS News, where she began as a producer in 1971. Since 1991, she has reported for CBS's 60 Minutes. She is known for her news and television investigations and award-winning foreign reporting. For her body of work she has earned various journalism awards including a Lifetime Achievement News and Documentary Emmy Award in 2003 for overall excellence in reporting.
Go to Profile#2108
Marc Bekoff
#2110
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Marc Bekoff is an American biologist, ethologist, behavioural ecologist and writer. He was a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder for 32 years. He cofounded the Jane Goodall Institute of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and he is Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Go to Profile#2109
Karl Barry Sharpless
#2111
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Karl Barry Sharpless is an American stereochemist. He is a two-time Nobel laureate in Chemistry known for his work on stereoselective reactions and click chemistry. Sharpless was awarded half of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his work on chirally catalysed oxidation reactions", and one third of the 2022 prize, jointly with Carolyn R. Bertozzi and Morten P. Meldal, "for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry". Sharpless is the fifth person , to have twice been awarded a Nobel prize, along with Marie Curie, John Bardeen, Linus Pauling and Frederick Sanger, and th...
Go to Profile#2110
Joe Quesada
#2112
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Joseph Quesada is an American comic book artist, writer, editor, and television producer. He became known in the 1990s for his work on various Valiant Comics books, such as Ninjak and Solar, Man of the Atom. He later worked on numerous books for DC Comics and Marvel Comics, such as Batman: Sword of Azrael and X-Factor, before forming his own company, Event Comics, where he published his creator-owned character, Ash.
Go to Profile#2111
Sol LeWitt
#2113
Overall Influence
1928 - 2007 (79 years)
Solomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism. LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" but was prolific in a wide range of media including drawing, printmaking, photography, painting, installation, and artist's books. He has been the subject of hundreds of solo exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world since 1965. The first biography of the artist, Sol LeWitt: A Life of Ideas, by Lary Bloom, was published by Wesleyan University Press in the spring of 2019.
Go to Profile#2112
Algirdas Julien Greimas
#2114
Overall Influence
1917 - 1992 (75 years)
Algirdas Julien Greimas was a Lithuanian literary scientist who wrote most of his body of work in French while living in France. Greimas is known among other things for the Greimas Square . He is, along with Roland Barthes, considered the most prominent of the French semioticianss. With his training in structural linguistics, he added to the theory of signification, plastic semiotics, and laid the foundations for the Parisian school of semiotics. Among Greimas's major contributions to semiotics are the concepts of isotopy, the actantial model, the narrative program, and the semiotics of the natural world.
Go to Profile#2113
Manmohan Singh
#2115
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Manmohan Singh is an Indian politician, economist, academician and bureaucrat who served as the 13th Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2014. He is the third longest-serving prime minister after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. A member of the Indian National Congress, Singh was the first Sikh and non-Hindu prime minister of India. He was also the first prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to be re-elected after completing a full five-year term.
Go to Profile#2114
Atal Bihari Vajpayee
#2116
Overall Influence
1924 - 2018 (94 years)
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an Indian politician and poet who served three terms as the 10th Prime Minister of India, first for a term of 13 days in 1996, then for a period of 13 months from 1998 to 1999, followed by a full term from 1999 to 2004. Vajpayee was one of the co-founders and a senior leader of the BJP. He was a member of the RSS, a Hindu nationalist volunteer organisation. He was the first Indian prime minister not of the INC to serve a full term in office. He was also a renowned poet and a writer.
Go to Profile#2115
Stephen C. Johnson
#2117
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Stephen Curtis Johnson is a computer scientist who worked at Bell Labs and AT&T for nearly 20 years. He is best known for Yacc, Lint, spell, and the Portable C Compiler, which contributed to the spread of Unix and C. He has also contributed to fields as diverse as computer music, psychometrics and VLSI design.
Go to Profile#2116
David Buss
#2118
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
#2117
Bärbel Inhelder
#2119
Overall Influence
1913 - 1997 (84 years)
Bärbel Elisabeth Inhelder was a Swiss psychologist most known for her work under psychologist and epistemologist Jean Piaget and their contributions toward child development. Born in St. Gallen, Switzerland, Inhelder initially showed interest in education. While attending high school she became interested in Sigmund Freud's writing and information on adolescents. She then moved to Geneva where she studied at the University of Geneva Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau earning her bachelor's and doctoral degrees both in psychology. Inhelder continued her work at the University of Geneva up until her retirement.
Go to Profile#2118
Warren Bennis
#2120
Overall Influence
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
Warren Gamaliel Bennis was an American scholar, organizational consultant and author, widely regarded as a pioneer of the contemporary field of Leadership studies. Bennis was University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and Founding Chairman of The Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California.
Go to Profile#2119
Jean-Claude Carrière
#2121
Overall Influence
1931 - 2021 (90 years)
Jean-Claude Carrière was a French novelist, screenwriter and actor. He received an Academy Award for best short film for co-writing Heureux Anniversaire , and was later conferred an Honorary Oscar in 2014. He was nominated for the Academy Award three other times for his work in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie , That Obscure Object of Desire , and The Unbearable Lightness of Being . He also won a César Award for Best Original Screenplay in The Return of Martin Guerre .
Go to Profile#2120
Roger Eatwell
#2122
Overall Influence
Roger Eatwell is a British academic currently an Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Bath. Since the late 1970s, Eatwell has engaged in research in fascism and populism. He defines fascism as a syncretic ideology, which could attract both the masses and intellectuals in some countries, and lead elites to think they could use radical fascism. It centered on three tropes: the need to create a holistic nation which transcended divisions; to forge a New Man elite and people fervently committed to this nation, and to build an authoritarian third way state . Eatwell has sought to dis...
Go to Profile#2121
David C. Evans
#2123
Overall Influence
1924 - 1998 (74 years)
David Cannon Evans was the founder of the computer science department at the University of Utah and co-founder of Evans & Sutherland, a pioneering firm in computer graphics hardware. Biography Evans was born in Salt Lake City. He attended the University of Utah and studied electrical engineering; he earned his Bachelor of Science in Physics in 1949 and his Doctorate in Physics in 1953. Evans first worked at the Bendix aviation electronics company, where he acted as project manager in 1955 to develop what some describe as an early personal computer that ran on an interpretive operating system.
Go to Profile#2122
Robert Freitas
#2124
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Robert A. Freitas Jr. is an American nanotechnologist. Early life and education Freitas was born in Camden, Maine. His father worked in agriculture and his mother was a homemaker. Freitas married Nancy, his childhood sweetheart in 1974.
Go to Profile#2123
Robert Thurman
#2125
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman is an American Buddhist author and academic who has written, edited, and translated several books on Tibetan Buddhism. He was the Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, before retiring in June 2019. He was the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West. He also is the co-founder and president of the Tibet House US New York. He translated the Vimalakirti Sutra from the Tibetan Kanjur into English. He is the father of actress Uma Thurman.
Go to Profile#2124
Robert N. Bellah
#2126
Overall Influence
1927 - 2013 (86 years)
Robert Neelly Bellah was an American sociologist and the Elliott Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was internationally known for his work related to the sociology of religion.
Go to Profile#2125
Paul Kurtz
#2127
Overall Influence
1925 - 2012 (87 years)
Paul Kurtz was an American scientific skeptic and secular humanist. He has been called "the father of secular humanism". He was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, having previously also taught at Vassar, Trinity, and Union colleges, and the New School for Social Research.
Go to Profile#2126
Patrick Demarchelier
#2128
Overall Influence
1943 - 2022 (79 years)
Patrick Demarchelier was a French fashion photographer. Early life and education Born near Paris in 1943 to a modest family, Demarchelier spent his childhood in Le Havre, Normandy, with his mother and four brothers. For his seventeenth birthday, his stepfather bought him his first Eastman Kodak camera. Demarchelier learned how to develop film, retouch negatives and began photographing friends and weddings.
Go to Profile#2127
Phil Collins
#2129
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Philip David Charles Collins is an English singer, drummer, songwriter, record producer and actor. He was the drummer and later lead singer of the rock band Genesis and also has a career as a solo performer. Between 1982 and 1990, Collins achieved three UK and seven US number one singles as a solo artist. When his work with Genesis, his work with other artists, as well as his solo career are totalled, he is responsible for more US top 40 singles than any other artist during the 1980s. His most successful singles from the period include "In the Air Tonight", "Against All Odds ", "One More Nig...
Go to Profile#2128
Nicholas Wolterstorff
#2130
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Nicholas Paul Wolterstorff is an American philosopher and theologian. He is currently Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. A prolific writer with wide-ranging philosophical and theological interests, he has written books on aesthetics, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and philosophy of education. In Faith and Rationality, Wolterstorff, Alvin Plantinga, and William Alston developed and expanded upon a view of religious epistemology that has come to be known as Reformed epistemology. He also helped to establish the ...
Go to Profile#2129
Velupillai Prabhakaran
#2131
Overall Influence
1954 - 2009 (55 years)
Velupillai Prabhakaran was an Eelam Tamil revolutionary. Prabhakaran was a major figure of Tamil nationalism, and the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam . The LTTE was a militant organization that sought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka in reaction to the oppression of the country's Tamil population by the Sri Lankan government. Under his direction, the LTTE undertook a military campaign against the Sri Lankan government for more than 25 years.
Go to Profile#2130
Shango
#2132
Overall Influence
Shango is an Orisha in Yoruba religion. Genealogically speaking, Shango is a royal ancestor of the Yoruba as he was the third Alaafin of the Oyo Kingdom prior to his posthumous deification. Shango has numerous manifestations, including Airá, Agodo, Afonja, Lubé, and Obomin. He is known for his powerful double axe . He is considered to be one of the most powerful rulers that Yorubaland has ever produced.
Go to Profile#2131
Richard Overy
#2133
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Richard James Overy is a British historian who has published on the history of World War II and Nazi Germany. In 2007, as The Times editor of Complete History of the World, he chose the 50 key dates of world history.
Go to Profile#2132
Newt Gingrich
#2134
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Newton Leroy Gingrich is an American politician and author who served as the 50th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1998. A member of the Republican Party, he was the U.S. representative for Georgia's 6th congressional district serving north Atlanta and nearby areas from 1979 until his resignation in 1999. In 2012, Gingrich unsuccessfully ran for the Republican nomination for president of the United States.
Go to Profile#2133
Michael Beinhorn
#2135
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Michael Beinhorn is a North American record producer, composer, author, and musician. He has produced albums for Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Hole, Violent Femmes, and Marilyn Manson. Career 1977–1983: early years, Material, Herbie Hancock Beinhorn began his career as a Synthesist. His first instrument was a Moog Micromoog, after which he began working with a Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, an EMS Synthi AKS, Oberheim OB-Xa and Rhodes Chroma, as well as other instruments such as a Roland TR-808 drum machine, Roland SVC-350 Vocoder, Oberheim DMX drum machine and Oberheim DSX sequencer. L...
Go to Profile#2134
Greg Dyke
#2136
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Gregory Dyke is a British media executive, football administrator, journalist, and broadcaster. Since the 1960s, Dyke has had a long career in the UK in print and then broadcast journalism. He is credited with introducing 'tabloid' television to British broadcasting, and reviving the ratings of TV-am. In the 1990s, he held chief executive positions at LWT Group, Pearson Television, and Channel 5.
Go to Profile#2135
Adil Najam
#2137
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Adil Najam is a Pakistani academic who also serves as the President of WWF, the Worldwide Fund for Nature , and is Dean Emerıtus and Professor of International Relations and Earth and Environment at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. He was the founding Dean of the Pardee School from its creation in 2014 until 2022, when he was awarded the status of Dean Emeritus by Boston University. Previously he had served as vice-chancellor of the LUMS ın Lahore, Pakıstan.
Go to Profile#2136
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
#2138
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is an American former professional basketball player who played 20 seasons in the National Basketball Association for the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Lakers. During his career as a center, Abdul-Jabbar was a record six-time NBA Most Valuable Player . He was a 19-time NBA All-Star—tied for the most ever—a 15-time All-NBA Team member, and an 11-time NBA All-Defensive Team selection. He was a member of six NBA championship teams as a player and two more as an assistant coach, and was twice voted the NBA Finals MVP. He was named to three NBA anniversary teams . Widely...
Go to Profile#2137
Robert Silverberg
#2139
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Robert Silverberg is an American author and editor, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both Hugo and Nebula Awards, a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and a Grand Master of SF. He has attended every Hugo Award ceremony since the inaugural event in 1953.
Go to Profile#2138
Richard F. Heck
#2140
Overall Influence
1931 - 2015 (84 years)
Richard Frederick Heck was an American chemist noted for the discovery and development of the Heck reaction, which uses palladium to catalyze organic chemical reactionss that couple aryl halides with alkenes. The analgesic naproxen is an example of a compound that is prepared industrially using the Heck reaction.
Go to Profile#2139
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
#2141
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is a Nigerian-American economist, who has been serving as the Director-General of the World Trade Organization since March 2021. Notably, she is the first woman and first African to lead the World Trade Organization as Director-General. She sits on boards of: Danone, Standard Chartered Bank, MINDS: Mandela Institute for Development Studies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, One Campaign, GAVI: Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, Rockefeller Foundation, R4D: Results for Development, ARC: African Risk ...
Go to Profile#2140
Ray Harryhausen
#2142
Overall Influence
1920 - 2013 (93 years)
Raymond Frederick Harryhausen was an American-British animator and special effects creator who created a form of stop motion model animation known as "Dynamation". His works include the animation for Mighty Joe Young with his mentor Willis H. O'Brien ; his first color film, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad ; and Jason and the Argonauts , which featured a sword fight with seven skeleton warriors. His last film was Clash of the Titans , after which he retired.
Go to Profile#2141
Yakov Sinai
#2143
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Yakov Grigorevich Sinai is a Russian–American mathematician known for his work on dynamical systems. He contributed to the modern metric theory of dynamical systems and connected the world of deterministic systems with the world of probabilistic systems. He has also worked on mathematical physics and probability theory. His efforts have provided the groundwork for advances in the physical sciences.
Go to Profile#2142
Karl E. Weick
#2144
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Karl Edward Weick is an American organizational theorist who introduced the concepts of "loose coupling", "mindfulness", and "sensemaking" into organizational studies. He is the Rensis Likert Distinguished University Professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#2143
Wolfgang Paul
#2145
Overall Influence
1913 - 1993 (80 years)
Wolfgang Paul was a German physicist, who co-developed the non-magnetic quadrupole mass filter which laid the foundation for what is now called an ion trap. He shared one-half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989 for this work with Hans Georg Dehmelt; the other half of the Prize in that year was awarded to Norman Foster Ramsey, Jr.
Go to Profile#2144
Ann Powers
#2146
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Ann K. Powers is an American writer and popular music critic. She is a music critic for NPR and a contributor at the Los Angeles Times, where she was previously chief pop critic. She has also written for other publications, such as The New York Times, Blender and The Village Voice. Powers is the author of Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America, a memoir; Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black & White, Body and Soul in American Music, on eroticism in American pop music; and Piece by Piece, co-authored with Tori Amos.
Go to Profile#2145
Neil Aspinall
#2147
Overall Influence
1941 - 2008 (67 years)
Neil Stanley Aspinall was a Welsh-born British music industry executive. A school friend of Paul McCartney and George Harrison, he went on to head the Beatles' company Apple Corps. The Beatles employed Aspinall first as their road manager, which included driving his old Commer van to and from shows, both day and night. After Mal Evans started work for the Beatles, Aspinall was promoted to become their personal assistant, later becoming chief executive of their company, Apple Corps.
Go to Profile#2146
Jennifer Widom
#2148
Overall Influence
Jennifer Widom is an American computer scientist known for her work in database systems and data management. She is notable for foundational contributions to semi-structured data management and data stream management systems. Since 2017, Widom is the dean of the School of Engineering and professor of computer science at Stanford University. Her honors include the Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science and multiple lifetime achievement awards from the Association for Computing Machinery.
Go to Profile#2147
Thierry Henry
#2149
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Thierry Daniel Henry is a French professional football coach, pundit, sports broadcaster and former player. He is currently the manager of the France national under-21 team. He is considered one of the greatest strikers of all time, and one of the greatest players in Premier League history. He has been named by Arsenal as the club's greatest ever player. Henry was runner-up for both the Ballon d'Or in 2003 and the FIFA World Player of the Year in 2003 and 2004. He was named the FWA Footballer of the Year a record three times, the PFA Players' Player of the Year a joint-record two times, and was named in the PFA Team of the Year six consecutive times.
Go to Profile#2148
Michael Cacoyannis
#2150
Overall Influence
1921 - 2011 (90 years)
Michael Cacoyannis , sometimes credited as Michael Yannis, was a Greek Cypriot theatre and film director, writer, producer, and actor. Much of his work was rooted in classical texts, especially those of the Greek tragedian Euripides. His most acclaimed work is the 1964 film Zorba the Greek, an adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis' novel of the same name. He also directed the 1983 Broadway revival of the musical based on the film. In addition to directing, he also wrote, produced, translated, and designed dozens of stage play and opera productions.
Go to Profile#2149
Umesh Vazirani
#2151
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Umesh Virkumar Vazirani is an Indian–American academic who is the Roger A. Strauch Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and the director of the Berkeley Quantum Computation Center. His research interests lie primarily in quantum computing. He is also a co-author of a textbook on algorithms.
Go to Profile#2150
Beverley McLachlin
#2152
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Beverley Marian McLachlin is a Canadian jurist and author who served as the 17th chief justice of Canada from 2000 to 2017. She is the longest-serving chief justice in Canadian history and the first woman to hold the position. She is considered by many to be among the finest legal minds in the history of the Supreme Court.
Go to Profile