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
#21501
Lan Samantha Chang
#21512
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Lan Samantha Chang is an American writer of novels and short stories. She is the author of The Family Chao and Hunger. For her fiction, which explores Chinese American experiences, she is a recipient of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Berlin Prize, the PEN/Open Book Award and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award.
Go to Profile#21502
Bent Fuglede
#21513
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (101 years)
Bent Fuglede is a Danish mathematician and, since 1992, professor emeritus at the University of Copenhagen. Biography He is known for his contributions to mathematical analysis, in particular functional analysis, where he has proved Fuglede's theorem and stated Fuglede's conjecture.
Go to Profile#21503
Bernard Mayes
#21514
Overall Influence
1929 - 2014 (85 years)
Anthony Bernard Duncan Mayes was a British broadcaster, university dean and author who founded one of America's first suicide prevention hotline. Biography Born in London, Mayes was educated at University College School. After studying classical civilizations at Downing College, Cambridge, he worked first as a school teacher of Latin, Greek and history. He was then ordained as an Anglican priest. Mayes emigrated to the United States in 1958 and became an Episcopal worker-priest and director of a student house attached to Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village and New York University. He then moved to the Diocese of California where he held a parish near San Francisco.
Go to Profile#21504
Menachem Kellner
#21515
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Menachem Kellner is an American-Israeli academic and Jewish scholar of medieval Jewish philosophy with a particular focus on the philosophy of Maimonides. He is a retired Professor of Jewish Thought at the University of Haifa and is the founding chair of the Department of Philosophy and Jewish Thought at Shalem College in Jerusalem. He has taught courses in philosophy, religious studies, medieval and modern Jewish philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, the College of William & Mary, the University of Virginia, and the University of Haifa. He is probably best known for his book Must...
Go to Profile#21505
Salman of Saudi Arabia
#21516
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is King of Saudi Arabia, reigning since 2015 and had previously served as Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia from 2015 to 2022. The 25th son of King Abdulaziz, the founder of Saudi Arabia, he assumed the throne on 23 January 2015. Prior to his accession, he was Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia from 18 June 2012 to 23 January 2015. Salman is the third oldest living head of state and the oldest living monarch besides being the country's first head of state born after the unification of Saudi Arabia. He has a reported personal wealth of at least $18 billion, which makes him...
Go to Profile#21506
Sadio Mané
#21517
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
Sadio Mané is a Senegalese professional footballer who plays as a forward or winger for Saudi Pro League club Al Nassr and the Senegal national team. Known for his pressing, dribbling and speed, Mané is often considered one of the greatest African players of all time.
Go to Profile#21507
Hubert Lamb
#21518
Overall Influence
1913 - 1997 (84 years)
Hubert Horace Lamb was an English climatologist who founded the Climatic Research Unit in 1972 in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. Career Most of Lamb's scientific life was spent at the Meteorological Office, UK, where he started as a Technical Officer progressing by special merit promotion. As a Quaker and conscientious objector, Lamb refused to work on the meteorology of gas spraying during World War II, and was transferred to the Irish Meteorological Service, then still closely associated with the UK Met Office. On returning to the UK service after th...
Go to Profile#21508
Arran Gare
#21519
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Arran Emrys Gare is an Australian philosopher known mainly for his work in environmental philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of culture and the metaphysics of process philosophy. He currently holds the position of Associate Professor in the Faculty of Life and Social Sciences at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.
Go to Profile#21509
Bruce Lee Rothschild
#21520
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Bruce Lee Rothschild is an American mathematician and educator, specializing in combinatorial mathematics. He is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Early life and education Rothschild was born in 1941 in Los Angeles, California.
Go to Profile#21510
Mrinal Sen
#21521
Overall Influence
1923 - 2018 (95 years)
Mrinal Sen was an Indian film director and screenwriter known for his work primarily in Bengali, and a few Hindi and Telugu language films. Regarded as one of the finest Indian filmmakers, along with his contemporaries Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, and Tapan Sinha, Sen played major role in the New Wave cinema of eastern India.
Go to Profile#21511
Stefan Jentsch
#21522
Overall Influence
1955 - 2016 (61 years)
Stefan Jentsch was a German cell biologist. He was a director at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. He is known for his pioneering work in the field of protein modifications by ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like modifiers.
Go to Profile#21512
Peter J. Taylor
#21523
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Peter James Taylor is an English geographer. Born in Calverton in Nottinghamshire, he was Professor of Political Geography at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne between 1970 and 1996, before joining Loughborough University as Professor of Geography Since 2010, he has worked at Northumbria University. He is the co-founding editor of the journal Political Geography, and is the founder and director of the Globalization and World Cities Research Network and is the author of over 300 publications, of which over 60 have been translated into other languages. In September 2010, he became a Profes...
Go to Profile#21513
Sunita Williams
#21524
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Sunita Lyn Williams , nicknamed Suni in the United States and Sončka in Slovenia, is an American astronaut, United States Navy officer, and former record holder for most spacewalks by a woman and most spacewalk time for a woman . Williams was assigned to the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 14 and Expedition 15. In 2012, she served as a flight engineer on Expedition 32 and then commander of Expedition 33.
Go to Profile#21514
Andrzej Schinzel
#21525
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
Andrzej Bobola Maria Schinzel was a Polish mathematician studying mainly number theory. Education Schinzel received an MSc in 1958 at Warsaw University, Ph.D. in 1960 from Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences where he studied under Wacław Sierpiński, with a habilitation in 1962. He was a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#21515
Denis Sassou Nguesso
#21526
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Denis Sassou Nguesso is a Congolese politician and former military officer who became president of the Republic of the Congo in 1997. He served a previous term as president from 1979 to 1992. During his first period as president, he headed the Congolese Party of Labour for 12 years. He introduced multiparty politics in 1990, but was stripped of executive powers by the 1991 National Conference, remaining in office as a ceremonial head of state. He stood as a candidate in the 1992 presidential election but placed third.
Go to Profile#21516
Luciano Spalletti
#21527
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Luciano Spalletti is an Italian football manager and former player. He is currently the head coach of the Italy national team. He started his managerial career with Empoli in 1993 before going on to coach clubs in Italy including two spells with Roma where he won two consecutive Coppa Italia titles. Spalletti managed Zenit St. Petersburg from 2009 to 2014, winning two Russian Premier League titles. Following two seasons in charge at Inter Milan, he was appointed manager of Napoli in 2021 where he won the Serie A in the 2022–23 season before leaving the club in June 2023. In August 2023, he wa...
Go to Profile#21517
Don Mattingly
#21528
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Donald Arthur Mattingly is an American professional baseball coach, and former first baseman and manager in Major League Baseball . He is the bench coach for the Toronto Blue Jays of MLB. Nicknamed "the Hit Man" and "Donnie Baseball", he spent his entire 14-year MLB playing career with the New York Yankees and later managed the Los Angeles Dodgers for five years and the Miami Marlins for seven seasons.
Go to Profile#21518
Ernest Borgnine
#21529
Overall Influence
1917 - 2012 (95 years)
Ernest Borgnine was an American actor whose career spanned over six decades. He was noted for his gruff but relaxed voice and gap-toothed Cheshire Cat grin. A popular performer, he also appeared as a guest on numerous talk shows and as a panelist on several game shows.
Go to Profile#21519
Martin J. Ball
#21530
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Martin J. Ball FRCSLT FRSA FLSW is Honorary Professor in Linguistics at Bangor University in Wales. Until August 2017 he was Professor of Speech-Language Pathology at Linköping University in Sweden. He holds dual UK-US citizenship. As of June 2019 he lives in Cork, Ireland.
Go to Profile#21520
Robin Gibb
#21531
Overall Influence
1949 - 2012 (63 years)
Robin Hugh Gibb was a British singer and songwriter. He gained worldwide fame as a member of the Bee Gees with elder brother Barry and fraternal twin brother Maurice. Robin Gibb also had his own successful solo career. Their youngest brother Andy was also a singer.
Go to Profile#21521
Jimmy Webb
#21532
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Jimmy Layne Webb is an American songwriter, composer, and singer. He achieved success at an early age, winning the Grammy Award for Song of the Year at the age of 21. During his career, he established himself as one of America's most successful and honored songwriter/composers.
Go to Profile#21522
Stavros Thomadakis
#21533
Overall Influence
Stavros Thomadakis is a Greek economist who served as chairman of the Hellenic Capital Market Commission, Professor of Finance at the University of Athens and chairman of the Public Interest Oversight Board.
Go to Profile#21523
Gillian Beer
#21534
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Dame Gillian Patricia Kempster Beer, is a British literary critic and academic. She was President of Clare Hall from 1994 to 2001, and King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge from 1994 to 2002.
Go to Profile#21524
Mete Sozen
#21535
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Mete Avni Sözen was Kettelhut Distinguished Professor of Structural Engineering at Purdue University, Indiana, United States from 1992 to 2018. Academic career Sozen earned his undergraduate education at the Engineering School of Robert College in Istanbul , and his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He earned his Ph.D. under the direction of Chester P. Siess and Nathan M. Newmark performing experimental studies to develop theories governing the shear strength of prestressed concrete girders. He then began his academic career at University o...
Go to Profile#21525
Denis Auroux
#21536
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Denis Auroux is a French mathematician working in geometry and topology. Education and career Auroux was admitted in 1993 to the École normale supérieure. In 1994, he received a licentiate and maîtrise in mathematics from Paris Diderot University . In 1995, he received a licentiate in physics from Pierre and Marie Curie University and passed the agrégation. In 1995, he received a master's degree in mathematics from Paris-Sud University with a thesis on Seiberg-Witten invariants of symplectic manifolds. In 1999, he received his doctorate from the École polytechnique with supervisors Jean-Pier...
Go to Profile#21526
Jerry Green
#21537
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Jerry Richard Green is the John Leverett Professor in the University and the David A. Wells Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. He is known for his research in economic theory, as well as writing the most commonly used microeconomic theory textbook for graduate school with Andreu Mas-Colell and Michael Whinston, Microeconomic Theory.
Go to Profile#21527
K. Michael Hays
#21538
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Kenneth Michael Hays is an American architectural historian and professor. He currently serves as Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He is also co-director of the school's doctoral programs, namely Ph.D and DDes or Doctor of Design.
Go to Profile#21528
Natarajan Shankar
#21539
Overall Influence
Natarajan Shankar is a computer scientist working at SRI International in Menlo Park, California, where he leads the Symbolic Analysis Laboratory. Education Shankar received his Ph.D. degree in computer science, under advisors Robert S. Boyer and J Strother Moore, from the University of Texas at Austin in 1986.
Go to Profile#21529
Stephen Smith
#21540
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Stephen A. Smith is a University of Arkansas communications professor who was a top gubernatorial aide to Bill Clinton in Arkansas, helping the governor run his office. He is an internationally known First Amendment scholar and author of numerous books.
Go to Profile#21530
Louis Nowra
#21541
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Mark Doyle, better known by his stage name Louis Nowra, is an Australian writer, playwright, screenwriter and librettist. He is best known as one of Australia's leading playwrights. His works have been performed by all of Australia's major theatre companies, including Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Belvoir, and many others, and have also had many international productions. His most significant plays are Così, Radiance , Byzantine Flowers, Summer of the Aliens and The Golden Age. In 2006 he completed The ...
Go to Profile#21531
Ricardo J. Caballero
#21542
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Ricardo Jorge Caballero is a Chilean macroeconomist who is the Ford International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also served as the Chairman of MIT's Economic Department from 2008 to 2011. He is a director of the World Economic Laboratory at MIT and an NBER Research Associate. Caballero received his PhD from MIT in 1988, and he taught at Columbia University before returning to the MIT faculty.
Go to Profile#21532
Franck Ribéry
#21543
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Franck Henry Pierre Ribéry is a French former professional footballer who primarily played as a winger, preferably on the left side, and was known for his pace, energy, skill, and precise passing. Ribéry has been described as a player who is fast, tricky and an excellent dribbler, who has great control with the ball at his feet. While with Bayern, he was recognised on the world stage as one of the best players of his generation. The previous talisman of the French national team, Zinedine Zidane, once referred to Ribéry as the "jewel of French football".
Go to Profile#21533
David J. Kramer
#21544
Overall Influence
David J. Kramer was United States Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from 2008 to 2009. He was President of Freedom House from October 2010 to November 2014, and later worked at the McCain Institute. Following a professorship at the Florida International University, he became executive director of the George W. Bush Institute.
Go to Profile#21534
Albert Levan
#21545
Overall Influence
1905 - 1998 (93 years)
Albert Levan was a Swedish botanist and geneticist. Albert Levan is best known today for co-authoring the report in 1956 that humans had forty-six chromosomes . This epochal discovery was made by Joe Hin Tjio in Levan's laboratory.
Go to Profile#21535
John Brooks Slaughter
#21546
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
John Brooks Slaughter is an American electrical engineer and former college president who served as the first African-American director of the National Science Foundation . His work focuses on development of computer algorithms for system optimization and discrete signal processing.
Go to Profile#21536
Roger Hodgson
#21547
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Charles Roger Pomfret Hodgson is an English singer, musician and songwriter, best known as the former co-frontman and founding member of the progressive rock band Supertramp. Hodgson composed and sang the majority of the band’s hits, including "Dreamer", "Give a Little Bit", "Take the Long Way Home", "The Logical Song", "It's Raining Again", and "Breakfast in America".
Go to Profile#21537
E. Tendayi Achiume
#21548
Overall Influence
E. Tendayi Achiume is the Alicia Miñana Professor of Law and former Faculty Director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights at the University of California, Los Angeles. She served as the United Nations special rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance from her appointment in September 2017 until November 2022. She was the first woman appointed to this position since its creation in 1993.
Go to Profile#21538
Marc Feldmann
#21549
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Sir Marc Feldmann, , is an Australian-educated British immunologist. He is a professor at the University of Oxford and a senior research fellow at Somerville College, Oxford. Biography Feldmann was born 2 December 1944 in Lvov to a Jewish family who managed to get to France immediately postwar. He emigrated from France to Australia at age eight. After graduating with an MBBS degree from the University of Melbourne in 1967, he earned a Ph.D. in Immunology at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in 1972 with Sir Gustav Nossal.
Go to Profile#21539
Barbara Bush
#21550
Overall Influence
1925 - 2018 (93 years)
Barbara Bush was the first lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993, as the wife of George H. W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States. She was previously the second lady of the United States from 1981 to 1989, and founded the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. Among her children are George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, and Jeb Bush, the 43rd governor of Florida. She and Abigail Adams are the only two women to be the wife of one U.S. president and the mother of another. At the time she became first lady, she was the second oldest woman to hold the position, behind only Anna Harrison, who never lived in the capital.
Go to Profile#21540
Thomas F Krauss
#21551
Overall Influence
Thomas F Krauss is a physics researcher at the University of York, where he is the head of the photonics group and of the nanocentre cleanroom. Before he was head of the school of physics and astronomy at the University of St Andrews. He has several research interests, but is mostly known for his work in the field of photonic crystals, where he made the first demonstration of two-dimensional photonic band-gap effects at optical wavelengths. More recently, his research has been to use slow-light in photonic crystal waveguides in order to improve the performance of optoelectronic components.
Go to Profile#21541
Gaylord Nelson
#21552
Overall Influence
1916 - 2005 (89 years)
Gaylord Anton Nelson was an American politician from Wisconsin who served as a United States senator and governor. He was a member of the Democratic Party and the founder of Earth Day, which launched a new wave of environmental activism.
Go to Profile#21542
Ruth Park
#21553
Overall Influence
1917 - 2010 (93 years)
Rosina Ruth Lucia Park AM was a New Zealand–born Australian author. Her best known works are the novels The Harp in the South and Playing Beatie Bow , and the children's radio serial The Muddle-Headed Wombat , which also spawned a book series .
Go to Profile#21543
Michael Inwood
#21554
Overall Influence
1944 - 2021 (77 years)
Michael Inwood was a British philosopher and fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. He is known for his works on Hegel, Heidegger and ancient philosophy. Inwood died from lung cancer in Kidlington on 31 December 2021, at the age of 77.
Go to Profile#21544
Arthur Cain
#21555
Overall Influence
1921 - 1999 (78 years)
Arthur James Cain FRS was a British evolutionary biologist and ecologist. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1989. Life Arthur James Cain was awarded an open scholarship in 1939 to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he graduated with first class honors in zoology in 1941. Entering the British Army in December 1941, Cain was commissioned second lieutenant in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and was later transferred to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers on its formation. He was promoted to captain in 1942.
Go to Profile#21545
John Kenneth Muir
#21556
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
John Kenneth Muir is an American literary critic. As of 2022, he has written thirty reference books in the fields of film and television, with a particular focus on the horror and science fiction genres.
Go to Profile#21546
Tarja Halonen
#21557
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Tarja Kaarina Halonen is a Finnish politician who served as the 11th president of Finland, and the first woman to hold the position, from 2000 to 2012. She first rose to prominence as a lawyer with the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions , and as the Prime Minister's parliamentary secretary and a member of the City Council of Helsinki . Halonen was a Social Democratic Party member of parliament from 1979 until her election to the presidency in 2000. She also served as a minister at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health from 1987 to 1990, as Minister of Justice from 1990 to 1991,...
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M. Night Shyamalan
#21558
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Manoj Nelliyattu M. Night Shyamalan is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is best known for making original films with contemporary supernatural plots and twist endings. The cumulative gross of his films exceeds $3.3 billion globally.
Go to Profile#21548
Marko Petkovšek
#21559
Overall Influence
1955 - 2023 (68 years)
Marko Petkovšek was a Slovenian mathematician working mainly in symbolic computation. He was a professor of discrete and computational mathematics at the University of Ljubljana. He is best known for Petkovšek's algorithm, and for the book that he coauthored with Herbert Wilf and Doron Zeilberger, A = B.
Go to Profile#21549
Willy Rozenbaum
#21560
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Willy Rozenbaum is a Polish-born French physician. A co-discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus with Jean-Claude Chermann of Luc Montagnier's team, he has since 19 November 2003 held the chair of France's "conseil national du SIDA" and before that had since 1989 practiced in the infectious and tropical diseases service at l'Hôpital Tenonfr and been professor of infectious and tropical diseases at l'Hôpital Saint-Antoine in Paris.
Go to Profile#21550
Rikki Klieman
#21561
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Rikki Klieman is an American criminal defense lawyer and television personality. A native of Chicago, she is a legal analyst for CBS News, having previously worked in criminal defense in Boston and taught at Columbia Law School. Additionally, she is an author, actress, and is married to William Bratton, former chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and former Police Commissioner of the New York Police Department.
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