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
#21951
Lev Davidovich Landau
#21962
Overall Influence
#21952
Alberto Fernández
#21963
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Alberto Ángel Fernández is an Argentine politician, lawyer, and professor serving as president of Argentina since 2019. Born in Buenos Aires, Fernández attended the University of Buenos Aires, where he earned his law degree at age 24, and later became a professor of criminal law. He entered public service as an adviser to Deliberative Council of Buenos Aires and the Argentine Chamber of Deputies. In 2003, he was appointed Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers, serving during the entirety of the presidency of Néstor Kirchner, and the early months of the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner...
Go to Profile#21953
Don Mitchell
#21964
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Don Mitchell is Professor of Cultural Geography at Uppsala University and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Geography in the Maxwell School, Syracuse University. From an academic household in California, he is a graduate of San Diego State University , Pennsylvania State University and received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1992, working with Neil Smith. He taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder before joining Syracuse in the late 1990s.
Go to Profile#21954
Edwin Spanier
#21965
Overall Influence
1921 - 1996 (75 years)
Edwin Henry Spanier was an American mathematician at the University of California at Berkeley, working in algebraic topology. He co-invented Spanier–Whitehead duality and Alexander–Spanier cohomology, and wrote what was for a long time the standard textbook on algebraic topology .
Go to Profile#21955
Matthew Haughey
#21966
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Matthew Haughey is an American programmer, web designer, and blogger best known as the founder of the community weblog MetaFilter, where he is known as mathowie. Life and career Haughey grew up in Placentia, California. He graduated from the University of California, Riverside with a B.S. and M.S. in environmental science.
Go to Profile#21956
Charles M. Eastman
#21967
Overall Influence
1940 - 2020 (80 years)
Charles M. Eastman was a professor and a pioneer in the areas of design cognition, building information modeling , solid and parametric modeling, engineering databases, product models, and interoperability. He is best known for his work on building description system, which later gave him a title as the 'father of BIM.'
Go to Profile#21957
John R. Yates
#21968
Overall Influence
John R. Yates III is an American chemist and Ernest W. Hahn Professor in the Departments of Molecular Medicine and Neurobiology at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. His work is focused on developing tools and in proteomics and he specializes in mass spectrometry. He is best known for the development of the SEQUEST algorithm for automated peptide sequencing and Multidimensional Protein Identification Technology and data independent analysis . His laboratory has made important contributions to understanding the biochemical mechanisms behind the failure of DF508 cystic fi...
Go to Profile#21958
Sandra Fredman
#21969
Overall Influence
Sandra Fredman FBA, KC is a professor of law in the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. Early life and education Fredman was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and received her undergraduate degree in mathematics and philosophy from Witwatersrand University. She then worked for a short time as a political and labour journalist before attending Wadham College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She received First Class Honours for the BA in Law and the BCL.
Go to Profile#21959
Norm Coleman
#21970
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Norman Bertram Coleman Jr. is an American politician, attorney, and lobbyist. From 2003 to 2009, he served as a United States Senator for Minnesota. From 1994 to 2002, he was mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota. First elected as a member of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party , Coleman became a Republican in 1996. Elected to the Senate in 2002, he was narrowly defeated in his 2008 reelection bid. As of , he is the most recent Republican to have represented Minnesota in the U.S. Senate.
Go to Profile#21960
Ash Amin
#21971
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Ash Amin, is a British academic known for his writing on urban and regional development, contemporary cultural change, progressive politics, and the collaborative economy. He holds the 1931 chair at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. Since September 2015 he has held the post of foreign secretary of the British Academy.
Go to Profile#21961
Samuel Finer
#21972
Overall Influence
1915 - 1993 (78 years)
Samuel Edward Finer FBA was a British political scientist and historian specializing in comparative politics, who was instrumental in advancing political studies as an academic subject in the United Kingdom, pioneering the study of UK political institutions. His most notable work is The History of Government from the Earliest Times – a three-volume comparative analysis of all significant government systems. He was also a major contributor to the study of civil–military relations with the publication of his book, The Man on Horseback.
Go to Profile#21962
Zvi Gitelman
#21973
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Zvi Gitelman is a professor of Political Science, and Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. Career Gitelman received a Ph.D., an M.A., and a B.A. degree from Columbia University. He has usually written about the connection of ethnicity and politics especially in former Communist countries. He has also written about Israeli politics, East European politics, as well as Jewish political attitude. Gitelman received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1983.
Go to Profile#21963
Farman Fatehpuri
#21974
Overall Influence
1926 - 2013 (87 years)
Farman Fatehpuri was an Urdu linguist, researcher, writer, critic and scholar of Pakistan. He is widely regarded as a leading authority on the life and work of Ghalib. He wrote many scholarly articles, book reviews, and editorials. He received Sitara-e-Imtiaz Award for his literary accomplishments in 1985 from the President of Pakistan.
Go to Profile#21964
Paul Wilkinson
#21975
Overall Influence
1937 - 2011 (74 years)
Paul Wilkinson CBE was a British terrorism expert and an Emeritus Professor of International Relations and director of the University of St Andrews Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence . Dubbed "Britain's leading academic specialist in the study of terrorism", he was a frequent commentator in mainstream British media and an advisor to the UK government.
Go to Profile#21965
Ian Holloway
#21976
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Ian Scott Holloway is an English professional football manager, former player, media personality and television pundit who was most recently the manager of Grimsby Town. A midfielder, he notably played in the Premier League with Queens Park Rangers where he made just under 150 league appearances in a five-year spell. He spent most of his career at boyhood club Bristol Rovers where he had three spells which included the start and finish of his playing career. He was part of the Wimbledon team that won promotion to the top flight in 1986, a place they would remain for the next fourteen seasons....
Go to Profile#21966
Vinod Aggarwal
#21977
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Vinod K. Aggarwal is Distinguished Professor and Alan P. Bedford Endowed Chair of Asian Studies, Travers Department of Political Science. He is a Travers Family Senior Faculty Fellow of Political Science in the Haas School of Business, and directs the Berkeley APEC Study Center at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a visiting professor at INSEAD's Asia campus, a blogger for the Harvard Business Review, and has contributed to the New York Times. He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Business and Politics. Aggarwal is a frequent commentator and author about issues relat...
Go to Profile#21967
Ralf Dahrendorf
#21978
Overall Influence
1929 - 2009 (80 years)
Ralf Gustav Dahrendorf, also known as Baron Dahrendorf and Lord Dahrendorf, was a German-British sociologist, philosopher, political scientist and liberal politician. A class conflict theorist, Dahrendorf was a leading expert on explaining and analysing class divisions in modern society. Dahrendorf wrote multiple articles and books, his most notable being Class and Conflict in Industrial Society and Essays in the Theory of Society .
Go to Profile#21968
Tim Newburn
#21979
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
William Henry Timothy Newburn is an academic, specialising in criminology and policing. Career He was president of the British Society of Criminology from 2005–2008, director of the Mannheim Centre for Criminology from 2003-2008 and is currently head of the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. From 1997, he was Director of the Public Policy Research Unit at Goldsmiths College and has previously worked at the Policy Studies Institute, the National Institute for Social Work, the Home Office and Leicester University.
Go to Profile#21969
Jiří Čížek
#21980
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Jiří Čížek is a distinguished emeritus professor at University of Waterloo in Canada. Together with colleague Josef Paldus, in 1966 he reformulated the coupled cluster method for the study of electron correlation in atoms and molecules. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and has been honored by the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.
Go to Profile#21970
Edward Giovannucci
#21981
Overall Influence
Edward L. Giovannucci is a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is also an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Cancer Causes & Control.
Go to Profile#21971
Michèle Audin
#21982
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Michèle Audin is a French mathematician, writer, and a former professor. She has worked as a professor at the University of Geneva, the University of Paris-Saclay and most recently at the University of Strasbourg, where she performed research notably in the area of symplectic geometry.
Go to Profile#21972
George Klein
#21983
Overall Influence
1925 - 2016 (91 years)
George Klein was a Hungarian–Swedish microbiologist and public intellectual. Specializing in cancer research, he was professor of tumour biology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm from 1957 to 1992, a chair created for him, and as professor emeritus continued to work as research group leader in the microbiology and tumor biology center. According to Nature, the department Klein founded was "international and influential". In the 1960s he and his wife, Eva Klein, "laid the foundation for modern tumour immunology".
Go to Profile#21973
Mojib Latif
#21984
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Mojib Latif is a German meteorologist and oceanographer of Pakistani descent. Latif graduated with a Diplom in meteorology in 1983. He took a position as scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in 1985. In 1987 he earned a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Hamburg. In 2003 he became professor at IFM-GEOMAR, Kiel, the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences. Latif is a regular guest at TV discussions about global warming.
Go to Profile#21974
Justin Bieber
#21985
Overall Influence
1994 - Present (32 years)
Justin Drew Bieber is a Canadian singer. He is recognized for his genre-melding artistry and global influence in modern-day popular music. Bieber was discovered by American record executive Scooter Braun and signed with RBMG Records in 2008, gaining recognition with the release of his debut seven-track EP My World and soon establishing himself as a teen idol.
Go to Profile#21975
George Segal
#21986
Overall Influence
1934 - 2021 (87 years)
George Segal Jr. was an American actor. He became popular in the 1960s and 1970s for playing both dramatic and comedic roles. After first rising to prominence with roles in acclaimed films such as Ship of Fools and King Rat , he co-starred in the classic drama Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? .
Go to Profile#21976
Yoshio Okamoto
#21987
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Yoshio Okamoto is a Japanese chemist, who was awarded the 2019 Japan Prize for his groundbreaking work in asymmetric polymerization and its practical applications in drug discovery. Okamoto was the first to prove that synthetic polymer conformations could be controllable, publishing work on asymmetric polymerization from 1979 onwards.
Go to Profile#21977
Emmanuel Adebayor
#21988
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Sheyi Emmanuel Adebayor is a Togolese former professional footballer who played as a striker. He previously played for English clubs Arsenal, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Crystal Palace, as well as French side Metz, Monégasque team Monaco, Spanish team Real Madrid, Turkish clubs İstanbul Başakşehir and Kayserispor, Paraguay's Club Olimpia and Togolese club Semassi.
Go to Profile#21978
George Takei
#21989
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
George Takei is an American actor, author and activist known for his role as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise in the Star Trek franchise. Takei was born to Japanese American parents, with whom he lived in U.S.-run internment camps during World War II. He began pursuing acting in college, which led in 1965 to the role of Sulu, to which he returned periodically into the 1990s. Upon coming out as gay in 2005, he became a prominent proponent of LGBT rights and active in state and local politics. He has been a vocal advocate of the rights of immigrants, in part through his work on the 2...
Go to Profile#21979
M. R. S. Rao
#21990
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Manchanahalli Rangaswamy Satyanarayana Rao was an Indian scientist. He was awarded the fourth-highest civilian award, the Padma Shri, for Science and Engineering in 2010. From 2003 to 2013 he was president of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, India.
Go to Profile#21980
Amir Attaran
#21991
Overall Influence
Amir Attaran is a Canadian professor in both the Faculty of Law and the School of Epidemiology, Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Ottawa. Early life and education Attaran was born in California to immigrants from Iran. He attended public schools in the Sacramento area.
Go to Profile#21981
Boris Derjaguin
#21992
Overall Influence
1902 - 1994 (92 years)
Boris Vladimirovich Derjaguin was a Soviet and Russian chemist. As a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he laid the foundation of the modern science of colloids and surfaces. An epoch in the development of the physical chemistry of colloids and surfaces is associated with his name.
Go to Profile#21982
Jennifer Lerner
#21993
Overall Influence
Jennifer S. Lerner is an American experimental social psychologist known for her research in emotion and decision theory. She is the first psychologist at the Harvard Kennedy School to receive tenure. At Harvard, her titles include Professor of Public Policy and Management, Professor of Psychology , Faculty Director in the Graduate Commons Program, co-founder of the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory and co-director of the Harvard Faculty Group on Emotion, Decision Making, and Health. Her research interests include the effects of accountability on judgment and choice. She founded and directs...
Go to Profile#21983
Jean Lindenmann
#21994
Overall Influence
1924 - 2015 (91 years)
Jean Lindenmann was a Swiss virologist and immunologist. Lindenmann, together with his colleague, the British virologist Alick Isaacs, co-discovered and identified interferon in 1957 through their research at the National Institute for Medical Research. Interferon, a group of proteins involved in immune regulation and defence against viruses, is now used to treat a variety of conditions, including hepatitis C, multiple sclerosis, and some cancers.
Go to Profile#21984
Imrich Chlamtac
#21995
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Imrich Chlamtac was born in Zlaté Moravce, Slovakia, where in 2015, he received an Honorary Citizenship. Professor Chlamtac is the President of EAI, the European Alliance For Innovation., a private non-profit organization hosting conferences Through its international presence and being the largest European professional community in information technologies and their applications, EAI is dedicated to making information technologies a catalyst for the improvement of society, to advance worldwide research communities and help professionals build their career in an open, innovative community driven environment.
Go to Profile#21985
Nathan Pusey
#21996
Overall Influence
1907 - 2001 (94 years)
Nathan Marsh Pusey was an American academic. Originally from Council Bluffs, Iowa, Pusey won a scholarship to Harvard University out of high school and went on to earn bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees in the classics at Harvard. Pusey began his academic career as a professor of literature at Scripps College and Wesleyan University before serving as president of Lawrence College from 1944 to 1953.
Go to Profile#21986
Ed O'Brien
#21997
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Edward John O'Brien is an English guitarist, songwriter and member of the rock band Radiohead. He releases solo music under the name EOB. O'Brien attended Abingdon School in Oxfordshire, England, where he formed Radiohead with schoolmates. O'Brien said his role was to "service the songs" and support the songwriter, Thom Yorke. He often creates ambient sounds and textures, using effectss, sustain units and the EBow, and provides backing vocals.
Go to Profile#21987
Alan Langlands
#21998
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Sir Robert Alan Langlands FRSE FRCP FRCGP FRCS FRCPSG FFPH FCGI FIA is a former vice-chancellor of the University of Leeds. He is notable for past service as the fourth chief executive of the National Health Service executive in England , as principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Dundee , and Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England .
Go to Profile#21988
Penina Muhando
#21999
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Penina Muhando, also known as Penina Mlama , is a Tanzanian Kiswahili playwright, a theorist and practitioner of Theatre for Development in Tanzania. Life and literary career Muhando was born in Berega, Morogoro Region in Tanzania in 1948. She gained a BA in theatre arts, a BA in education, and a PhD in language and linguistics from the University of Dar es Salaam.
Go to Profile#21989
Rick Stevens
#22000
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Rick Stevens is a professor of computer science at the University of Chicago and associate laboratory director for Computing, Environment and Life Sciences at Argonne National Laboratory. Early life and education Stevens started programming at the age of 14 with IBM computer. From 1978 to 1980, Stevens attended Michigan State University where he majored in physics and computer science, before moving to Western Michigan University where he got his B.S. in applied mathematics and philosophy in 1984. Following it, he moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign where he passed both M.S.
Go to Profile#21990
Arkady Migdal
#22001
Overall Influence
1911 - 1991 (80 years)
Arkady Beynusovich Migdal was a Soviet physicist and member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. He developed the formula that accounts for the Landau–Pomeranchuk–Migdal effect, a reduction of the bremsstrahlung and pair production cross sectionss at high energies or high matter densities.
Go to Profile#21991
Michel Waldschmidt
#22002
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Michel Waldschmidt is a French mathematician, specializing in number theory, especially transcendental numbers. Biography Waldschmidt was educated at Lycée Henri Poincaré and the University of Nancy until 1968. In 1972 he defended his thesis, titled Indépendance algébrique de nombres transcendants and directed by Jean Fresnel, the University of Bordeaux, where he was research associate of CNRS in 1971–2. He was then a lecturer at Paris-Sud 11 University in 1972–3, then a lecturer at the University of Paris VI , where he is Professor since 1973. Waldschmidt was also a visiting professor at places including the École normale supérieure.
Go to Profile#21992
Rick Baker
#22003
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Richard Alan Baker , known professionally as Rick Baker, is an American retired special make-up effects creator and actor. He is mostly known for his creature designs and effects. Baker has won the Academy Award for Best Makeup a record seven times from a record eleven nominations, beginning when he won the inaugural award for the 1981 horror comedy film An American Werewolf in London.
Go to Profile#21993
Mathias Fink
#22004
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Mathias Fink, born in 1945 in Grenoble, is a French physicist, professor at ESPCI Paris and member of the French Academy of Sciences. Life and career Mathias Fink received a M.S. degree in mathematics from Paris University, and the Ph.D. degree in solid state physics. Then he moved to medical imaging and received the Doctorat es-Sciences degree from Paris University in the area of ultrasonic focusing for real-time medical imaging under the direction of Pierre Alais .
Go to Profile#21994
T. Neil Davis
#22005
Overall Influence
1932 - 2016 (84 years)
Thomas Neil Davis was a professor of geophysics from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the author of several books. Born in Greeley, Colorado, Davis received his B.S in geophysics from University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1955, an M.S. in geophysics from California Institute of Technology in 1957, and a Ph.D. in geophysics from University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1961. Davis spent most of his working career at the Geophysical Institute, pioneering the use of all-sky and low-level light cameras for the study of the aurora borealis and conducting rocket studies of the aurora. With Masahisa Sugiura he introduced the AE index now commonly used as a measure of solar-terrestrial interaction.
Go to Profile#21995
Katherine Rowe
#22006
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Katherine Anandi Rowe is an American scholar of Renaissance literature and media history. She was named the twenty-eighth president of the College of William & Mary on February 20, 2018. She began her service on July 2, 2018 succeeding W. Taylor Reveley III, who had served as president since 2008. After seven months in office, Rowe was formally inaugurated February 8, 2019 as part of the university's annual Charter Day ceremony.
Go to Profile#21996
Midge Ure
#22007
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
James "Midge" Ure is a Scottish musician, singer-songwriter and record producer. His stage name, Midge, is a phonetic reversal of Jim, the diminutive form of his actual name. Ure enjoyed particular success in the 1970s and 1980s in bands including Slik, Thin Lizzy, Rich Kids and Visage, and as the second frontman of Ultravox. In 1984, he co-wrote and produced the charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", which has sold 3.7 million copies in the UK. The song is the second-highest-selling single in UK chart history. Ure co-organised Band Aid, Live Aid and Live 8 with Bob Geldof. He acts a...
Go to Profile#21997
Michel Gondry
#22008
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Michel Gondry is a French filmmaker noted for his inventive visual style and distinctive manipulation of mise en scène. Along with Charlie Kaufman, he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay as one of the writers of the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which he also directed.
Go to Profile#21998
C. Scott Green
#22009
Overall Influence
Cumer Scott Green is an American businessman and academic administrator serving as the 19th president of the University of Idaho in Moscow. Green took office in July 2019, and has been characterized as a "non-traditional" choice for the role, as he has neither a doctorate nor a background in higher education.
Go to Profile#21999
Dan Flores
#22010
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Dan Louie Flores is an American writer and historian who specializes in cultural and environmental studies of the American West. He held the A.B. Hammond Chair in Western History at the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana until he retired in May 2014.
Go to Profile#22000
Eugenio Trías Sagnier
#22011
Overall Influence
1942 - 2013 (71 years)
Eugenio Trías Sagnier was a Spanish philosopher. Critics have likened his work to Ortega y Gasset in the philosophical literature written in Spanish. Biography Trías was born in Barcelona. After obtaining his bachelor's degree in philosophy at the University of Barcelona in 1964, he continued his studies in Pamplona, Madrid, Bonn and Cologne. Since 1965 he was assistant professor and, later, associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona and the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona . In 1976 he became assistant professor of aesthetics and composition at the School of Architecture of Barcelona.
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