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
#21901
Brian Hoskins
#21912
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Professor Sir Brian John Hoskins, CBE FRS, is a British dynamical meteorologist and climatologist based at the Imperial College London and the University of Reading. A mathematician by training, his research has focused on understanding atmospheric motion from the scale of fronts to that of the Earth, using a range of theoretical and numerical models. He is perhaps best known for his work on the mathematical theory of extratropical cyclones and frontogenesis, particularly through the use of potential vorticity. He has also produced research across many areas of meteorology, including the Indi...
Go to Profile#21902
Auke Tellegen
#21913
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Auke Tellegen is a psychologist who served as a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota from 1968 to 1999. He worked on assessment, developing the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire and contributed to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.
Go to Profile#21903
Matthew Stafford
#21914
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
John Matthew Stafford is an American football quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League . He played college football at Georgia and was selected first overall by the Detroit Lions in the 2009 NFL Draft. Ranking in the top 12 of all-time in pass attempts, pass completions, passing yards and passing touchdowns, Stafford is currently sixth all-time in passing yards per game and is the fastest player in NFL history to have reached 40,000 career passing yards.
Go to Profile#21904
Carlos Tello Macías
#21915
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Carlos Tello Macías is a Mexican socialist-oriented economist, academic and diplomat. He is a former ambassador to Cuba, Portugal and Russia and a former Secretary of Budget and Planning in the cabinet of President José López Portillo. According to a document distributed in the Senate by his political rivals , he was responsible for the high inflation rate and the significant increase of the external debt in the López Portillo administration.
Go to Profile#21905
Marion Cotillard
#21916
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Marion Cotillard is a French actress. Known for her roles in independent films and blockbusters in both European and Hollywood productions, she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, an European Film Award, a Lumières Award and two César Awards. She became a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in France in 2010, and was promoted to Officer in 2016, the same year she was named a Knight of the Legion of Honour. She has served as a spokeswoman for Greenpeace since 2001. She was the face of the Lady Dior handbag for nine years, and since 2020 she is the face of the fragrance Chanel No.
Go to Profile#21906
John C. Sanford
#21917
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
John C. Sanford is an American geneticist and inventor. From 1980 to 1998 he was a professor at Cornell University. After retirement at Cornell, he continued as courtesy professor. He is known for advocacy of the pseudoscience of intelligent design.
Go to Profile#21907
Craig Chambers
#21918
Overall Influence
Craig Chambers has been a computer scientist at Google since 2007. Prior to this, he was a Professor in the department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. He received his B.S. degree in Computer Science from MIT in 1986 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford in 1992. He is best known for the influential research language Self, which introduced prototypes as an alternative to classes, and code-splitting, a compilation technique that generates separate code paths for fast and general cases to speed execution of dynamically typed programs.
Go to Profile#21908
James Ivory
#21919
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
James Francis Ivory is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. For many years, he worked extensively with Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant, his domestic as well as professional partner, and with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. All three were principals in Merchant Ivory Productions, whose films have won seven Academy Awards; Ivory himself has been nominated for four Oscars, winning one.
Go to Profile#21909
Geraldine Dawson
#21920
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Geraldine Dawson is an American child clinical psychologist, specializing in autism. She has conducted research on early detection, brain development, and treatment of autism spectrum disorders and collaborated on studies of genetic risk factors in autism. Dawson is William Cleland Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and professor of psychology and neuroscience, former director, Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and director of the Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development at Duke University Medical Center. Dawson was president of the International Society for Aut...
Go to Profile#21910
Dennis O'Neil
#21921
Overall Influence
1939 - 2020 (81 years)
Dennis Joseph O'Neil was an American comic book writer and editor, principally for Marvel Comics and DC Comics from the 1960s through the 1990s, and Group Editor for the Batman family of titles until his retirement.
Go to Profile#21911
Don Oberdorfer
#21922
Overall Influence
1931 - 2015 (84 years)
Donald Oberdorfer Jr. was an American professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University with a specialty in Korea, and was a journalist for 38 years, 25 of them with The Washington Post. He is the author of five books and several academic papers. His book on Mike Mansfield, Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat, won the D.B. Hardeman Prize in 2003.
Go to Profile#21912
Chris Dodd
#21923
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Christopher John Dodd is an American lobbyist, lawyer, and Democratic Party politician who served as a United States senator from Connecticut from 1981 to 2011. Dodd is the longest-serving senator in Connecticut's history. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1975 to 1981.
Go to Profile#21913
Robert Kleinberg
#21924
Overall Influence
Robert David Kleinberg is an American theoretical computer scientist and professor of Computer Science at Cornell University. Early life Robert Kleinberg was one of the finalists at the 1989 Mathcounts. He was a member of the 1991 and 1992 USA teams in the International Mathematical Olympiad, winning a silver medal and a gold medal, respectively. He was also a Putnam Fellow in 1996.
Go to Profile#21914
Michael Fellows
#21925
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Michael Ralph Fellows AC HFRSNZ MAE is a computer scientist and the Elite Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Informatics at the University of Bergen, Norway as of January 2016. Biography Fellows received his BA in Mathematics from Sonoma State University, and at the University of California, San Diego his M.A. in Mathematics in 1982 and in 1985 his Ph.D. in Computer Science with the dissertation Encoding Graphs in Graphs.
Go to Profile#21915
Malcolm Shaw
#21926
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Malcolm Nathan Shaw KC is a British legal academic, author, editor and lawyer. Early life Shaw studied at the University of Liverpool , the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Keele University . Career Shaw was the Sir Robert Jennings Professor of International Law at the University of Leicester and taught international law, human rights and equity and trusts. Following retirement, he was appointed as Senior Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge and made a Trustee of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. He is a practising...
Go to Profile#21916
Donald Hopkins
#21927
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Donald R. Hopkins is a Bahamian American physician, a MacArthur Fellow and is the Vice President and Director of Health Programs at The Carter Center. He graduated from Morehouse College with a B.S., from the University of Chicago with a Doctor of Medicine, and from the Harvard School of Public Health with a Master of Public Health. He studied at the Institute of European Studies, University of Vienna.
Go to Profile#21917
Seth P. Waxman
#21928
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Seth Paul Waxman is an American lawyer who served as the 41st Solicitor General of the United States from 1997 to 2001. He then returned to private legal practice, and serves as the co-chairman of the appellate and Supreme Court litigation practice group at the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. As of 2022, he has appeared before the Supreme Court more than 80 times.
Go to Profile#21918
Armando Peraza
#21929
Overall Influence
1924 - 2014 (90 years)
Armando Peraza was a Cuban Latin jazz percussionist and a member of the rock band Santana. Peraza played congas, bongos, and timbales. Biography Early life Born in Lawton Batista, Havana, Cuba in 1924 , he was orphaned by age 7 and lived on the streets. When he was twelve, he supported himself by selling vegetables, coaching boxing, playing semi-pro baseball, and becoming a loan shark. His music career began at seventeen when he heard at a baseball game that bandleader Alberto Ruiz was looking for a conga player. Ruiz's brother was on the same baseball team as Peraza. Despite the absence of ...
Go to Profile#21919
William Finnegan
#21930
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
William Finnegan is a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of works of international journalism. He has specially addressed issues of racism and conflict in Southern Africa and politics in Mexico and South America, as well as poverty among youth in the United States, and is well known for his writing on surfing.
Go to Profile#21920
Anselm Hollo
#21931
Overall Influence
1934 - 2013 (79 years)
Anselm Paul Alexis Hollo was a Finnish poet and translator. He lived in the United States from 1967 until his death in January 2013. Hollo published more than forty titles of poetry in the United Kingdom and in the United States, with a style strongly influenced by the American beat poets.
Go to Profile#21921
Nicky Butt
#21932
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Nicholas Butt is an English football coach and former player who was most recently the head of first-team development at Manchester United. He is also a co-owner and chief executive officer of Salford City.
Go to Profile#21922
Niels Birbaumer
#21933
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Niels Birbaumer is an Austrian academic who served as a professor at the University of Tübingen until 2019. Research career In 2017, Birbaumer's study claimed that a brain-computer interface device, applied via an electrode cap, enabled four ALS patients to communicate binary responses. This drew considerable attention due to its implications for quality of life. However, the study's replicability was questioned, leading to a German Research Foundation investigation, which found the research data incomplete and the results flawed. As a result, Birbaumer's work was retracted, his funding revoked, and he was dismissed from the university.
Go to Profile#21923
David H. Shinn
#21934
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
David H. Shinn is an American diplomat and professor. He is an Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at The George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. His diverse career in the foreign service of the United States has included ambassadorships to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. Shinn is also a frequent commentator in the news media on political issues, and has provided consultancy to the U.S. government on Horn of Africa related matters as well as Sino-African relations.
Go to Profile#21924
Robert Remez
#21935
Overall Influence
Robert Remez is an American experimental psychologist and cognitive scientist, and is Professor of Psychology at Barnard College, Columbia University and Chair of the Columbia University Seminar on Language & Cognition . His teaching focuses on the relationships between cognition, perception and language. He is best known for his theoretical and experimental work on perceptual organization and speech perception.
Go to Profile#21925
Eileen Southern
#21936
Overall Influence
1920 - 2002 (82 years)
Eileen Jackson Southern was an American musicologist, researcher, author, and teacher. Southern's research focused on black American musical styles, musicians, and composers; she also published on early music.
Go to Profile#21926
Mikhail Katz
#21937
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Mikhail "Mischa" Gershevich Katz is an Israeli mathematician, a professor of mathematics at Bar-Ilan University. His main interests are differential geometry, geometric topology and mathematics education; he is the author of the book Systolic Geometry and Topology, which is mainly about systolic geometry. The Katz–Sabourau inequality is named after him and Stéphane Sabourau.
Go to Profile#21927
Emily C. Hewitt
#21938
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Emily Clark Hewitt is a former judge and chief judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims. Early life and education Hewitt was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She graduated from the Roland Park Country School in Baltimore and in 1966, she earned a B.A. from Cornell University. She received an Master of Philosophy degree from the Union Theological Seminary in New York City in studies focusing on religion and education, and was ordained to the diaconate of the Episcopal Church in 1972.
Go to Profile#21928
Anne Bancroft
#21939
Overall Influence
1931 - 2005 (74 years)
Anne Bancroft was an American actress. Respected for her acting prowess and versatility, Bancroft received an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Cannes Film Festival Award. She is one of only 24 thespians to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting.
Go to Profile#21929
Michael Essien
#21940
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Michael Kojo Essien is a Ghanaian former professional footballer who played as a midfielder and is currently a member of Danish Superliga club Nordsjælland's coaching staff. He was also capped for the Ghana national team more than 50 times. During his prime, Essien was considered one of the best midfielders in the world. Essien was known not only for his defensive ability, but also his knack for scoring long-range goals.
Go to Profile#21930
Patrick Laude
#21941
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Patrick Laude is a scholar, author and teacher. His works deal with the relationship between mysticism, symbolism and poetry, as well as focusing on contemporary spiritual figures such as Simone Weil, Louis Massignon and Frithjof Schuon.
Go to Profile#21931
Ben Wallace
#21942
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Ben Camey Wallace is an American basketball executive and former professional player who played most of his career in the National Basketball Association with the Detroit Pistons. He is regarded by many to be the greatest undrafted player in NBA history, and was known for his shot-blocking, rebounding, and overall defensive play. A native of Alabama, Wallace attended Cuyahoga Community College and Virginia Union University. In his NBA career, he also played with the Washington Bullets/Wizards, Orlando Magic, Chicago Bulls, and Cleveland Cavaliers.
Go to Profile#21932
Arne Torp
#21943
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Arne Torp is a Norwegian professor of North Germanic languages in the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo. Torp has published widely, both for the higher education sector and for high school. Arne Torp was for years a member of the Norwegian Language Council and has participated in several radio and television programs in discussion of Nordic linguistics and the Norwegian language in particular.
Go to Profile#21933
Jaap Stam
#21944
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Jakob "Jaap" Stam is a Dutch professional football coach and former player. As a player, he played as a centre-back and is regarded as one of the best defenders of his generation. Stam played for several European clubs including PSV Eindhoven, Manchester United, Lazio, Milan and Ajax before retiring in October 2007. As well as club trophies, he won several personal awards, including being voted the best defender in the 1998–99 and 1999–2000 UEFA Champions League, as well as being included in three consecutive PFA Team of the Year sides from 1999 to 2001. Stam played 67 international matches for the Netherlands, scoring three goals.
Go to Profile#21934
James E. Ryan
#21945
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
James Edward Ryan is an American legal scholar and lawyer, currently serving as the ninth president of the University of Virginia since August 2018. He previously served as the eleventh dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education from 2013 to 2018.
Go to Profile#21935
Anne-Marie Eklund Löwinder
#21946
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Monika Ann-Mari Eklund Löwinder , born 26 September 1957 in Stockholm, is a Swedish Internet expert. Biography She is the Chief Information Security Officer at IIS, The Internet Foundation in Sweden. She also serves on the boards of internet-related organisations including the Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries and the Swedish Law and Informatics Research Institute.
Go to Profile#21936
Johannes Juilfs
#21947
Overall Influence
1911 - 1995 (84 years)
Johannes Wilhelm Heinrich Juilfs, also known by the alias Mathias Jules, was a German theoretical and experimental physicist. He was a member of the Sturmabteilung and then, in 1933, of the Schutzstaffel . Prior to World War II, he was one of three SS staff physicists who investigated the physicist Werner Heisenberg during the Heisenberg Affair, instigated, in part, by the ideological Deutsche Physik movement. During the war, he worked as a theoretical physics assistant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. During the denazification process after World War II, he was banned from working as a civil servant in academia.
Go to Profile#21937
Jeanne Lambrew
#21948
Overall Influence
Jeanne Lambrew is a United States professor of public affairs and health policy. She served in the Obama administration as Deputy Director of the White House Office of Health Reform. In December 2018, Lambrew was nominated to serve as Commissioner of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services by Governor-elect Janet Mills.
Go to Profile#21938
Joel Feldman
#21949
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Joel Shalom Feldman is a Canadian mathematical physicist and mathematician. Feldman studied mathematics and physics at the University of Toronto with bachelor's degree in 1970 and at Harvard University with master's degree in 1971 and with PhD in 1974 under Arthur Jaffe with thesis field theory in a finite volume. In 1974–1975 he did research at Harvard on constructive quantum field theory and was from 1975 to 1977 a Moore Instructor at MIT. At the University of British Columbia he became in 1977 an assistant professor, in 1982 an associate professor, and in 1987 a professor.
Go to Profile#21939
Bryan John Birch
#21950
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Bryan John Birch FRS is a British mathematician. His name has been given to the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture. Biography Bryan John Birch was born in Burton-on-Trent, the son of Arthur Jack and Mary Edith Birch. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He married Gina Margaret Christ in 1961. They have three children.
Go to Profile#21940
F. Michael Christ
#21951
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Francis Michael Christ is an American mathematician and professor at University of California, Berkeley, specializing in harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, and several complex variables. He is known for the Christ–Kiselev maximal inequality.
Go to Profile#21941
Jiang Qing
#21952
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jiang Qing is a contemporary Chinese Confucian. He is best known for his criticism of New Confucianism, which according to him, deviated from the original Confucian principles and is overly influenced by Western liberal democracy. He proposes an alternative path for China: Constitutional Confucianism, also known as Political Confucianism, or Institutional Confucianism, through the trilateral parliament framework.
Go to Profile#21942
Stuart Pimm
#21953
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Stuart Leonard Pimm is the Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology at Duke University. His early career was as a theoretical ecologist but he now specialises in scientific research of biodiversity and conservation biology.
Go to Profile#21943
Jerry D. Thompson
#21954
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jerry Don Thompson is Regents Professor of History at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Texas. He is a prolific author of books on a variety of related topics, specializing in the American Civil War, the history of the Southwestern United States, and Texas history. According to WorldCat, two of his books are available from more than six hundred major libraries worldwide – Confederate General of the West: Henry Hopkins Sibley, and Civil War in the Southwest: Recollections of the Sibley Brigade.
Go to Profile#21944
Sirivennela Seetharama Sastry
#21955
Overall Influence
1955 - 2021 (66 years)
Sirivennela Seetharama Sastry was an Indian poet and lyricist known for his works in Telugu cinema and Telugu theatre. He acquired the stage name Sirivennela after writing the lyrics for the 1986 film of same name. Sastry has garnered several awards including eleven state Nandi Awards and five Filmfare Awards South for his work. He has penned lyrics for over 3000 songs until 2020. In 2019, he was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth-highest civilian award in India, for his contributions towards the field of arts and aesthetics.
Go to Profile#21945
Kevin Danaher
#21956
Overall Influence
1913 - 2002 (89 years)
Kevin Danaher was an Irish folklorist with a special interest in ethnography and military history. Danaher is the author of 10 books about Irish traditional customs and beliefs, the best known of which are The Year in Ireland, In Ireland Long Ago, and Folktales from the Irish Countryside. A respected scholar, Danaher published more than 200 articles in academic journals.
Go to Profile#21946
Charlotte Sumner
#21957
Overall Influence
Charlotte Jane Sumner is an American neurologist. She is a professor in the Departments of Neurology and Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Sumner cares for patients with genetically mediated neuromuscular diseases and directs a laboratory focused on developing treatments for these diseases. She co-directs the Johns Hopkins Muscular Dystrophy Association Care Center, the Spinal Muscular Atrophy , and the Charcot-Marie-Tooth clinics, which deliver multidisciplinary clinical care, engage in international natural history studies, and provide cutting edge therapeutics.
Go to Profile#21947
Frans C. De Schryver
#21958
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Frans Carl De Schryver is a Belgian chemist currently serving as Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry of the KU Leuven. Pursuing his interests in polymer synthesis, time and space resolved chemistry, he founded the Laboratory for Photochemistry and Spectroscopy at the KU Leuven. He has co-authored over 650 papers in peer-reviewed journals.
Go to Profile#21948
Karl Miller
#21959
Overall Influence
1931 - 2014 (83 years)
Karl Fergus Connor Miller FRSL was a Scottish literary editor, critic and writer. Biography Miller was born in the village of Loanhead, Midlothian, and was educated at the Royal High School of Edinburgh and Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied English; he was a Cambridge Apostle. He became literary editor of The Spectator and the New Statesman. Miller resigned from the latter over a disagreement with the magazine's editor Paul Johnson, over the extent to which the literary pages treated difficult subjects and also Johnson's disapproval of The Beatles and their fans.
Go to Profile#21949
Frank N. von Hippel
#21960
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Frank N. von Hippel is an American physicist. He is Professor and Co-Director of Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
Go to Profile#21950
Pierre Berthelot
#21961
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Pierre Berthelot is a mathematician at the University of Rennes. He developed crystalline cohomology and rigid cohomology. Publications Berthelot, Pierre Cohomologie cristalline des schémas de caractéristique p>0. Lecture Notes in Mathematics, Vol. 407. Springer-Verlag, Berlin-New York, 1974. 604 pp.Berthelot, Pierre; Ogus, Arthur Notes on crystalline cohomology. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.; University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, 1978. vi+243 pp.
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