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
#21751
Raymond Poulidor
#21762
Overall Influence
1936 - 2019 (83 years)
Raymond Poulidor , nicknamed "Pou-Pou" , was a French professional racing cyclist, who rode for his entire career. His distinguished career coincided with two other outstanding riders – Jacques Anquetil and Eddy Merckx. This underdog position may have been the reason Poulidor was a favourite of the public. He was known as "The Eternal Second", because he never won the Tour de France despite finishing in second place three times, and in third place five times . Despite his consistency, he never wore the yellow jersey as leader of the general classification in 14 Tours . He did win one Grand Tour, the 1964 Vuelta a España.
Go to Profile#21752
Jessy Terrero
#21763
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Jessy Terrero is a Dominican film and music video director. Career Terrero appeared as an extra on the 1992 film Juice starring Tupac Shakur. According to Terrero, it was his experience on the set of the movie that inspired him to become a director.
Go to Profile#21753
Stylianos Harkianakis
#21764
Overall Influence
1935 - 2019 (84 years)
Stylianos Harkianakis was the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Australia and Primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia. He served as inaugural and permanent Chairman of the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Churches in Australia and Dean of St Andrew's Greek Orthodox Theological College. He was a theologian specialising in ecclesiology and also an award-winning poet.
Go to Profile#21754
Margaret Mutu
#21765
Overall Influence
Margaret Shirley Mutu is a Ngāti Kahu leader, author and academic from Karikari, New Zealand and works at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is Māori and her iwi are Ngāti Kahu, Te Rarawa and Ngāti Whātua.
Go to Profile#21755
Massimo D'Alema
#21766
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Massimo D'Alema is an Italian politician and journalist who was the 53rd prime minister of Italy from 1998 to 2000. He was Deputy Prime Minister of Italy and Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2006 to 2008. D'Alema also served for a time as national secretary of the Democratic Party of the Left . Earlier in his career, D'Alema was a member of the Italian Communist Party and was the first former Communist party member to become prime minister of a NATO country and the only former PCI prime minister of Italy. Due to his first name and for his dominant position in the left-wing coalitions during the Second Republic, he is referred to as Leader Maximo.
Go to Profile#21756
Cormac McCarthy
#21767
Overall Influence
1933 - 2023 (90 years)
Cormac McCarthy was an American writer who authored twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories, spanning the Western and postapocalyptic genres. He was known for his graphic depictions of violence and his unique writing style, recognizable by a sparse use of punctuation and attribution. McCarthy is widely regarded as one of the greatest American novelists.
Go to Profile#21757
James Earl Baumgartner
#21768
Overall Influence
1943 - 2011 (68 years)
James Earl Baumgartner was an American mathematician who worked in set theory, mathematical logic and foundations, and topology. Baumgartner was born in Wichita, Kansas, began his undergraduate study at the California Institute of Technology in 1960, then transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, from which he received his PhD in 1970 from for a dissertation titled Results and Independence Proofs in Combinatorial Set Theory. His advisor was Robert Vaught. He became a professor at Dartmouth College in 1969, and spent his entire career there.
Go to Profile#21758
Jeffrey Meyers
#21769
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Jeffrey Meyers is an American biographer, literary, art and film critic. He currently lives in Berkeley, California. Biography Jeffrey Meyers was born in New York City in 1939 and grew up in New York. He was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan and earned his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. He taught at UCLA , for the Far East Division of the University of Maryland in Japan , and Tufts University , and then spent time writing in London and Málaga, Spain before teaching at the University of Colorado from 1975 to 1992. He has been a visiting professor at the un...
Go to Profile#21759
Raymond Barre
#21770
Overall Influence
1924 - 2007 (83 years)
Raymond Octave Joseph Barre was a French centre-right politician and economist. He was a Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs under three presidents . He later served as Prime Minister under Valéry Giscard d'Estaing from 1976 until 1981. As a candidate for the presidency in 1988, he came in third and was eliminated in the first round. He was born in Saint-Denis, on the French island of Réunion, and then still a colony .
Go to Profile#21760
Xu Xiaonian
#21771
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Xu Xiaonian is Professor of Economics and Finance at China Europe International Business School, named by Businessweek as one of China's Most Powerful People in 2009. From 1981 to 1985, he worked at Center of Development and Research, State Council of the People's Republic of China as Research Fellow. He got Doctor of Economics at University of California, Davis in 1991. From 1991 to 1995, he worked as assistant professor at Amherst College.
Go to Profile#21761
Robert Schlaifer
#21772
Overall Influence
1914 - 1994 (80 years)
Robert Osher Schlaifer was an American statistician who was a pioneer of Bayesian decision theory. At the time of his death he was William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration Emeritus of the Harvard Business School. In 1961 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.
Go to Profile#21762
Anatoly Larkin
#21773
Overall Influence
1932 - 2005 (73 years)
Anatoly Ivanovich Larkin was a Russian theoretical physicist, universally recognised as a leader in theory of condensed matter, and who was also a celebrated teacher of several generations of theorists.
Go to Profile#21763
John V. Tucker
#21774
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
John Vivian Tucker is a British computer scientist and expert on computability theory, also known as recursion theory. Computability theory is about what can and cannot be computed by people and machines. His work has focused on generalising the classical theory to deal with all forms of discrete/digital and continuous/analogue data; and on using the generalisations as formal methods for system design; based on abstract data types and on the interface between algorithms and physical equipment.
Go to Profile#21764
Sachin H. Jain
#21775
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Sachin H. Jain is an American physician who held leadership positions in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology . From 2015 to 2020, he served as president and chief executive officer of the CareMore Health System. In June 2020, it was announced that he would join the SCAN Group and Health Plan as its new president and CEO. He is also adjunct professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a Contributor at Forbes. In 2018, he was named one of American healthcare's most 100 most influ...
Go to Profile#21765
Radamel Falcao
#21776
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Radamel Falcao García Zárate is a Colombian professional footballer who plays as a striker for La Liga club Rayo Vallecano and the Colombia national team. Nicknamed "El Tigre" , he is considered one of the best strikers and players of his generation. Falcao is also regarded as one of the greatest Colombian footballers of all time, and by some as the greatest.
Go to Profile#21766
Harry Kreisler
#21777
Overall Influence
Harry Kreisler is an American historian who was formerly executive director of the Institute of International Studies at University of California, Berkeley. He is best known as the creator and host of the television program Conversations with History. In these video interviews, distinguished men and women from around the world talk about their lives and their work. Guests include diplomats, statesmen, and soldiers; economists and political analysts; scientists and historians; writers and foreign correspondents; activists and artists. The interviews include discussion of political, economic, military, legal, cultural, and social issues shaping our world.
Go to Profile#21767
Samson Jenekhe
#21778
Overall Influence
Samson Ally Jenekhe is the Boeing-Martin Professor of Chemical Engineering and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington. Jenekhe was previously a chemical engineer at the University of Rochester where his work focused on semiconducting polymers and quantum wires. He has authored over 300 research articles and 28 patents.
Go to Profile#21768
Lewis White Beck
#21779
Overall Influence
1913 - 1997 (84 years)
Lewis White Beck was an American philosopher and scholar of German philosophy. Beck was Burbank Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy at the University of Rochester and served as the Philosophy Department chair there from 1949 to 1966. He translated several of Immanuel Kant's works, such as the Critique of Practical Reason, and was the author of Studies in the Philosophy of Kant .
Go to Profile#21769
Wil Wheaton
#21780
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Richard William Wheaton III is an American actor and writer. He portrayed Wesley Crusher on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gordie Lachance in the film Stand by Me, Joey Trotta in Toy Soldiers, and Bennett Hoenicker in Flubber. Wheaton has also appeared in recurring voice acting roles as Aqualad in Teen Titans, Cosmic Boy in Legion of Super Heroes, and Mike Morningstar/Darkstar in the Ben 10 franchise's original continuity. He appeared regularly as a fictionalized version of himself on the sitcom The Big Bang Theory and in the roles of Fawkes on The Guild, Colin Mason on Leverage, and Dr.
Go to Profile#21770
Calestous Juma
#21781
Overall Influence
1953 - 2017 (64 years)
Calestous Juma was a Kenyan scientist and academic, specializing in sustainable development. He was named one of the most influential 100 Africans in 2012, 2013 and 2014 by the New African magazine. He was Professor of the Practice of International Development and Faculty Chair of the Innovation for Economic Development Executive Program at Harvard Kennedy School. Juma was Director of the School's Science, Technology and Globalization Project at Harvard Kennedy School as well as the Agricultural Innovation in Africa Project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. His last book, Inno...
Go to Profile#21771
Lloyd Humphreys
#21782
Overall Influence
1913 - 2003 (90 years)
Lloyd Girton Humphreys was an American differential psychologist and methodologist who focused on assessing individual differences in human behavior. His work is among the most widely cited in intelligence research, and he received awards in this field.
Go to Profile#21772
Ursula Günther
#21783
Overall Influence
1927 - 2006 (79 years)
Ursula Günther was a German musicologist specializing in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries and the music of Giuseppe Verdi. She coined the term , to categorize the rhythmically complex music that followed .
Go to Profile#21773
Tony Gonzalez
#21784
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Anthony David "Tony" Gonzalez is an American former football tight end who played in the National Football League for 17 seasons. Regarded as one of the greatest tight ends of all time, he is the NFL's all-time leader in receiving yards and receptions by a tight end, along with ranking third in overall receptions. Gonzalez spent his first 12 seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs, who selected him in the first round of the 1997 NFL Draft. During his last five seasons, he was a member of the Atlanta Falcons. Since retiring in 2013, Gonzalez has served as a football analyst for NFL on Prime Video...
Go to Profile#21774
Aude Oliva
#21785
Overall Influence
Aude Oliva is a French professor of computer vision, neuroscience, and human-computer interaction at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory . Education Oliva has a dual French baccalaureate in mathematics and physics. She then earned a Masters of Science in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience from the Institut National Polytechnique in Grenoble and then a doctorate from the same university in 1995. She joined the MIT faculty in 2004 and CSAIL in 2012.
Go to Profile#21775
Steven Henikoff
#21786
Overall Influence
Steven Henikoff is a scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and an HHMI Investigator. His field of study is chromatin-related transcriptional regulation. He earned his BS in chemistry at the University of Chicago. He earned his PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from Harvard University in the lab of Matt Meselson in 1977. He did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and HHMI. In 1992, Steven Henikoff, together with his wife Jorja Henikoff, introduced the BLOSUM substitution matrices.
Go to Profile#21776
Roy Yorke Calne
#21787
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Sir Roy Yorke Calne, FRCP, FRCS, FRS is a British surgeon and pioneer in organ transplantation. Career His most notable achievements are the world's first liver, heart, and lung transplant together with John Wallwork in 1987; the first successful combined stomach, intestine, pancreas, liver, and kidney cluster transplant in 1994, the first liver transplantation operation in Europe in 1968, and the first intestinal transplant in the UK in 1992.
Go to Profile#21777
Sue Grafton
#21788
Overall Influence
1940 - 2017 (77 years)
Sue Taylor Grafton was an American author of detective novels. She is best known as the author of the "alphabet series" featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone in the fictional city of Santa Teresa, California. The daughter of detective novelist C. W. Grafton, she said the strongest influence on her crime novels was author Ross Macdonald. Before her success with this series, she wrote screenplays for television movies.
Go to Profile#21778
Edward M. Miller
#21789
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Edward McCarthy Miller, Jr. is an American economist and writer. His writings on race and intelligence have sparked debates on academic freedom. He has written extensively for racialist publications.
Go to Profile#21779
Dario Floreano
#21790
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Dario Floreano is a Swiss-Italian roboticist and engineer. He is Director of the Laboratory of Intelligent System at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and was the founding director of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research Robotics.
Go to Profile#21780
Pierre Schapira
#21791
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Pierre Schapira is a French mathematician. He specializes in algebraic analysis, especially Mikio Sato's microlocal analysis, together with the mathematical concepts of sheaves and derived categories.
Go to Profile#21781
Vadym Adamyan
#21792
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Vadym Movsesovich Adamyan is a Soviet and Ukrainian mathematician and theoretical physicist, professor and head of the Department of Theoretical Physics at Odessa University. He is known for his contributions to operator theory and functional analysis.
Go to Profile#21782
Alexandre Matheron
#21793
Overall Influence
1926 - 2020 (94 years)
Alexandre Matheron was a French philosopher specializing in Baruch Spinoza and modern politics. His 1969 work Individu et communauté chez Spinoza is "widely regarded as one of the landmarks of Spinoza scholarship."
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Claire Bishop
#21794
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Claire Bishop is a British art historian, critic, and Professor of Art History at CUNY Graduate Center, New York where she has taught since September 2008. Bishop is known as one of the central theorists of participation in visual art and performance. Her 2004 essay titled “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” which was published in October, remains an influential critique of relational aesthetics. Bishop's books have been translated into over eighteen languages and she is a frequent contributor to art journals including Artforum and October.
Go to Profile#21784
Prince Edward, Duke of Kent
#21795
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, is a member of the British royal family. The son of Prince George, Duke of Kent, and Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, he is a grandson of King George V, nephew of King George VI, and first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. Edward's mother was also a first cousin of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, consort of Elizabeth II, making him both a second cousin and first cousin once removed to King Charles III. He is 41st in the line of succession to the British throne.
Go to Profile#21785
Adam Roberts
#21796
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Adam Charles Roberts is a British science fiction and fantasy novelist. In 2018 he was elected vice-president of the H.G. Wells Society. Career Roberts has a degree in English from the University of Aberdeen and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University on Robert Browning and the Classics. He teaches English literature and creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.
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Peer Hultberg
#21797
Overall Influence
1935 - 2007 (72 years)
Peer Hultberg was a Danish author and psychoanalyst. Peer Hultberg was born in Vangede northwest of Copenhagen and lived in Horsens and Viborg during his child and teenage years. From 1953 he studied at the University of Copenhagen . He lived for some years in Skopje and Warsaw and then moved to London in 1959. He continued his studies of Slavic languages at the University of London and achieved a B.A. in 1963.
Go to Profile#21787
Mark O'Mara
#21798
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Mark Matthew O'Mara is an American criminal defense lawyer in Orlando, Florida, known for being the attorney for George Zimmerman. He is a former prosecutor. O'Mara is a legal analyst for CNN. Early life and education Mark O'Mara is one of five siblings in a Roman Catholic family of Irish descent. He was raised in Rosedale, Queens, New York City. His father, John Joseph O'Mara, was a World War II veteran, shot down over Germany and spent the better part of a year in a POW camp, until liberated by the Soviets. His father came back to Brooklyn and married his fiancée, Anna "Nancy" McAteer. John Joseph O'Mara joined the New York Fire Department, where he rose to Battalion Chief.
Go to Profile#21788
Dale Jamieson
#21799
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Dale Jamieson is Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy at New York University, a scholar of environmental ethics and animal rights, and an analyst of climate change discourse. He also serves as a faculty affiliate for the NYU School of Law and as director of NYU's Animal Studies Initiative, which was funded by Brad Goldberg with a $1 million donation in 2010. In addition to his affiliation with the NYU Departments of Environmental Studies and Philosophy, Jamieson also holds positions at The Dickson Poon School of Law and at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia.
Go to Profile#21789
Henrik Enderlein
#21800
Overall Influence
1974 - 2021 (47 years)
Henrik Enderlein was a German economist and political scientist. He was president and professor of political economy at the Hertie School in Berlin and founding director of the Jacques Delors Centre at the Hertie School. He held degrees from Sciences Po, Columbia University and earned his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. From 2001 to 2003, he worked as an economist at the European Central Bank. He held visiting professorships at Harvard Kennedy School and at Duke University .
Go to Profile#21790
Gary Paul Nabhan
#21801
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Gary Paul Nabhan is an agricultural ecologist, Ethnobotanist, Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, and author whose work has focused primarily on the plants and cultures of the desert Southwest. He is considered a pioneer in the local food movement and the heirloom seed saving movement.
Go to Profile#21791
Mikel Arteta
#21802
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Mikel Arteta Amatriain is a Spanish professional football manager and former player who is the manager of club Arsenal. Arteta is known for his tactical innovation and his comprehensive football philosophy.
Go to Profile#21792
Kenneth A. Bollen
#21803
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Kenneth A. Bollen is the Henry Rudolf Immerwahr Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Bollen joined UNC-Chapel Hill in 1985. He is also a member of the faculty in the Quantitative Psychology Program housed in the L. L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory. He is a fellow at the Carolina Population Center, the American Statistical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also the Director of the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science from 2000 to 2010. His specialties are population studies and cross-...
Go to Profile#21793
Viktor Savinykh
#21804
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Viktor Petrovich Savinykh is a Soviet cosmonaut, scientist, and organizer of personnel training in the higher education system. Selected as a cosmonaut on 1 December 1978, he flew as Flight Engineer on Soyuz T-4, Soyuz T-13 and Soyuz TM-5, and has spent 252 days 17 hours 38 minutes in space. Savinykh retired on 9 February 1989.
Go to Profile#21794
Charles Tanford
#21805
Overall Influence
1921 - 2009 (88 years)
Charles Tanford was a German-born protein biochemist. He died in York, England, on October 1, 2009. Early life and education Charles Tanford was born in Halle, Germany in 1921 to Majer and Charlotte Tannenbaum. His parents, who were Jewish, fled to England in 1929 anticipating the coming rule of the Nazi Party, and changed their name to Tanford. At the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, Tanford was sent to New York to live with relatives. Despite Tanford's attempts to persuade them to leave, many of his relatives stayed behind in Germany and subsequently were murdered in the Holocaust. While in the United States, Tanford earned a B.A.
Go to Profile#21795
Morris B. Abram
#21806
Overall Influence
1918 - 2000 (82 years)
Morris Berthold Abram was an American lawyer, civil rights activist, and for two years president of Brandeis University. In 1953 he successfully sought the Democratic nomination for Congress from the Fifth District in Georgia, urging the desegregation of schools, but lost the election in 1954.
Go to Profile#21796
Alison Dundes Renteln
#21807
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Alison Dundes Renteln is an American college professor. She is a Professor of Political Science, Anthropology, Law, and Public Policy at the University of Southern California. Education She holds a B.A. from Harvard-Radcliffe, a J.D. from USC's Gould School of Law, and a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence & Social Policy and M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1981 to 1982 she studied International Law at the London School of Economics.
Go to Profile#21797
Ignatius IV of Antioch
#21808
Overall Influence
1920 - 2012 (92 years)
Patriarch Ignatius IV was the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch and All The East from 1979 to 2012. Life Habib Hazim was born on April 4, 1920, in the village of Mhardeh near Hama in Syria. He was the son of a pious Greek Orthodox Syrian Arab Christian family and from an early age was attracted to service within the Church. While studying in Beirut, Lebanon, for a literature degree, he entered the service of the local Antiochian Orthodox diocese, first by becoming an acolyte, then a subdeacon and then a deacon. During his studies at the American University of Beirut, young Habib was influenced by his outstanding philosophy professor Charles Malik.
Go to Profile#21798
Daniel Amit
#21809
Overall Influence
1938 - 2007 (69 years)
Daniel J. Amit was an Israeli physicist and pacifist, who was one of the pioneers in the field of computational neuroscience. Amit, Hanoch Gutfreund and Haim Sompolinsky, in a set of papers referred to as the ASG papers, were the first to demonstrate the utility of statistical mechanics in neural network research and helped establish theoretical and computational neuroscience as a novel approach that brings into brain research unique powerful sets of concepts, models, and standards of rigour.
Go to Profile#21799
Richard Joyce
#21810
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Richard Joyce is a British-Australian-New Zealand philosopher, known for his contributions to the fields of meta-ethics and moral psychology. He is Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington.
Go to Profile#21800
Harold Marcuse
#21811
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Harold Marcuse is an American professor of modern and contemporary German history and public history. He teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the grandson of philosopher Herbert Marcuse.
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