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
#22101
Akintunde Akinwande
#22112
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Akintunde Ibitayo Akinwande is a Nigerian American engineering professor at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was appointed as chairman of Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, and he said he will honour his appointment once he secure permission from his employers.
Go to Profile#22102
Tom Fenchel
#22113
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Tom Michael Fenchel is a Danish marine ecologist and professor first at the University of Aarhus, later at the University of Copenhagen. He is a highly cited scientist and known for, among other things, Fenchel's Law.
Go to Profile#22103
Teun Kloek
#22114
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Teunis Kloek is a Dutch economist and Emeritus Professor of Econometrics at the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. His research interests centered on econometric methods and their applications, especially nonparametric and robust methods in econometrics.
Go to Profile#22104
Will Steffen
#22115
Overall Influence
1947 - 2023 (76 years)
William Lee Steffen was an American-born Australian chemist. He was the executive director of the Australian National University Climate Change Institute and a member of the Australian Climate Commission until its dissolution in September 2013. From 1998 to 2004, he was the executive director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, a coordinating body of national environmental change organisations based in Stockholm. Steffen was one of the founding climate councillors of the Climate Council, with whom he frequently co-authored reports, and spoke in the media on issues relating to...
Go to Profile#22105
Mario Baldassarri
#22116
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Mario Baldassarri is an Italian economist and politician. He was a senator from 2006 to 2013. Born in Macerata, he was the vice-minister of economy and finance in Silvio Berlusconi's second and third governments, from 2001 to 2006.
Go to Profile#22106
Leonard Neidorf
#22117
Overall Influence
Leonard Neidorf is an American philologist who is Professor of English at Nanjing University. Neidorf specializes in the study of Old English and Middle English literature, and is a known authority on Beowulf.
Go to Profile#22107
Daniel Wolpert
#22118
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Daniel Mark Wolpert FRS FMedSci is a British medical doctor, neuroscientist and engineer, who has made important contributions in computational biology. He was Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge from 2005, and also became the Royal Society Noreen Murray Research Professorship in Neurobiology from 2013. He is now Professor of Neurobiology at Columbia University.
Go to Profile#22108
Roger S. Pressman
#22119
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Roger S. Pressman is an American software engineer, author and consultant, and President of R.S. Pressman & Associates. He is also Founder and Director of Engineering for EVANNEX, a company that sells parts and accessories for electric vehicles.
Go to Profile#22109
Kevin McKidd
#22120
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Kevin McKidd is a Scottish actor and television director. Before playing the role of Dr. Owen Hunt in Grey's Anatomy, for which he is widely known, McKidd appeared as Tommy Mackenzie in Danny Boyle's Trainspotting , Colin in the 2008 film Made of Honor, Count Vronsky in the BBC miniseries Anna Karenina , Lucius Vorenus in the historical drama series Rome and Dan Vasser in the NBC series Journeyman . He provided the voice of John "Soap" MacTavish in the video games Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. He also played Poseidon in the film Percy Jackson & the Olympi...
Go to Profile#22110
Beatrix Hamburg
#22121
Overall Influence
1923 - 2018 (95 years)
Beatrix A. Hamburg was an American psychiatrist whose long career in academic medicine advanced the field of child and adolescent psychiatry. Hamburg was the first known African-American to attend Vassar College, and was also the first African-American woman to attend Yale Medical School. Hamburg held professorships at Stanford, Harvard, Mt. Sinai and—most recently—at Weill Cornell Medical College. She was on the President's Commission on Mental Health under President Jimmy Carter. Hamburg was a president of the William T. Grant Foundation, and also directed the child psychiatry divisions at Stanford University and Mount Sinai.
Go to Profile#22111
Federico Rampini
#22122
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Federico Rampini is an Italian journalist, writer, and lecturer who holds both Italian and American citizenship. He served as deputy editor of Il Sole 24 Ore, and has worked as chief foreign correspondent for La Repubblica since 1997. He has been residing in the United States since 2000. He is the 2019 recipient of the Ernest Hemingway Prize.
Go to Profile#22112
Yong Poovorawan
#22123
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Yong Poovorawan is a professor of pediatrics at the Faculty of Medicine of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. He is known for research in the fields of pediatric hepatology, viral hepatitis and virology, and avian influenza.
Go to Profile#22113
Amy-Jill Levine
#22124
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Amy-Jill Levine is Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace. She is committed to eliminating antisemitic, sexist, and homophobic theologies.
Go to Profile#22114
Barry Glassner
#22125
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Barry Glassner is a professor of sociology and author or co-author of nine books, including The Culture of Fear, which discussed the culture of fear phenomenon. He says that many of Americans' concerns and fears are largely unfounded. In it, Glassner decries: "The use of poignant anecdotes in place of scientific evidence, the christening of isolated incidents as trends, depictions of entire categories of people as innately dangerous ... " A new and enlarged edition updated for the Trump era was published in late 2018. In the years since, Glassner discussed the new edition on CNN's "Reliable So...
Go to Profile#22115
Denise Riley
#22126
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Denise Riley is an English poet and philosopher. Life Riley lives in London. She was educated for a year at Somerville College, Oxford, and graduated from New Hall, Cambridge. She was, until recently, Professor of Literature with Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and is currently A. D. White Professor-at-large at Cornell University.
Go to Profile#22116
Ackbar Abbas
#22127
Overall Influence
Ackbar Abbas is a professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine. Previously he was chair of comparative literature at the University of Hong Kong and also co-director of the Centre for the Study of Globalization and Cultures.
Go to Profile#22117
Christine McVie
#22128
Overall Influence
1943 - 2022 (79 years)
Christine Anne McVie was an English musician and singer. She was the keyboardist and one of the vocalists and songwriters of Fleetwood Mac. McVie was a member of several bands, notably Chicken Shack, in the mid-1960s British Blues scene. She initially began working with Fleetwood Mac as a session player in 1968, before officially joining the band two years later. Her first compositions with Fleetwood Mac appeared on their fifth album, Future Games. She remained with the band through many changes of line-up, writing songs and performing lead vocals before partially retiring in 1998. McVie was ...
Go to Profile#22118
Bronwyn Hall
#22129
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Bronwyn Hughes Hall is the Emerita Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Education Hall received a B.A. in Physics from Wellesley College in 1966 and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 1988.
Go to Profile#22119
Bernard Lievegoed
#22130
Overall Influence
1905 - 1992 (87 years)
Bernardus Cornelis Johannes Lievegoed was a Dutch medical doctor, psychiatrist and author. He is most famous for establishing a theory of organizational development. He founded the N.P.I., or Netherlands Pedagogical Institute, which works with organizations and individuals to help these realize their economic, social and cultural goals. He also founded the Vrije Hogeschool in Driebergen.
Go to Profile#22120
Bernard Cohn
#22131
Overall Influence
1928 - 2003 (75 years)
Bernard S. Cohn was an American anthropologist and scholar of British colonialism in India, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Cohn received a B.A. in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1949 and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Cornell University in 1954. From 1952-3 he engaged in field research in India as a Fulbright scholar. In addition to Chicago, he also taught at the University of Rochester and was a research assistant for the US Army at Fort Benning. In 1968, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#22121
David Freedberg
#22132
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
David Freedberg is Pierre Matisse Professor of the History of Art and Director of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. He was also Director of the Warburg Institute at the University of London from July 2015 to April 2017.
Go to Profile#22122
Nicole Saphier
#22133
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Nicole Saphier is an American medical journalist, radiologist, and writer. She is the director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth, New Jersey. She is well known for providing her opinions as a contributor on Fox News, Fox Business, and MSNBC.
Go to Profile#22123
Serge Doubrovsky
#22134
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
Julien Serge Doubrovsky was a French writer and 1989 Prix Médicis winner for Le Livre brisé. He is also a critical theorist, and coined the term "autofiction" in the drafts for his novel Fils . Early life Julien Doubrovsky was born on 22 May 1928 in Paris. His father was a tailor and his mother was a secretary. His family was Jewish; in 1943, in the midst of World War II, they fled Le Vésinet and hid with a cousin.
Go to Profile#22124
Åke Öberg
#22135
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Per "Åke" Öberg, born 1937 in Härnösand, is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Linköping University, Sweden. Öberg received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1964 from Chalmers University of Technology and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering in 1971 from Uppsala University. In 1963-1972 he worked as a Research Associate at Uppsala University. He is since 1972 Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Linköping University. He is also active at the Linköping University Hospital.
Go to Profile#22125
Jean-Christophe Rufin
#22136
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jean-Christophe Rufin is a French doctor, diplomat, historian, globetrotter and novelist. He is the president of Action Against Hunger, one of the earliest members of Médecins Sans Frontières, and a member of the Académie française.
Go to Profile#22126
Daphna Hacker
#22137
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Daphna Hacker is a full professor at the Tel Aviv University law faculty and Women and Gender Studies Program. After publishing Legalized Families in the Era of Bordered Globalization, Hacker was awarded the 2018 LSA Jacob Book prize.
Go to Profile#22127
Robert P. Goldberg
#22138
Overall Influence
2000 - 1994 (-6 years)
Robert P. Goldberg was an American computer scientist, known for his research on operating systems and virtualization. With Gerald J. Popek he proposed the Popek and Goldberg virtualization requirements, a set of conditions necessary for a computer architecture to support system virtualization. In his Ph.D. thesis "Architectural Principles for Virtual Computer Systems" he also invented the classification for Hypervisors which is now widely adopted in the area of virtual computer systems and computer science in general.
Go to Profile#22128
Gershon Shaked
#22139
Overall Influence
1929 - 2006 (77 years)
Gershon Shaked was an Israeli scholar and critic of Hebrew literature. Biography Gerhard Mandel was born in Vienna, Austria. He immigrated to Mandate Palestine alone in 1939, and was later followed by his parents. He attended Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv. He hebraicized his surname to "Shaked". He was married to Malka, and had two daughters.
Go to Profile#22129
Alexander Christakis
#22140
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Alexander Christakis is a Greek American social scientist, systems scientist and cyberneticist, former faculty member of several Universities, organizational consultant and member of the Club of Rome, known for his "study and design of social systems".
Go to Profile#22130
Yves Agid
#22141
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Yves Agid is a neurologist, neuropsychiatrist, cell biologist, neurochemist, academician, university professor, hospital doctor, researcher in biology and scientist specializing in neurosciences. Early life and education Yves Agid is the son of university professor Rene Agid and Swedish artist painter Sylvia Stave. Rene Agid was a close friend of Romain Gary. The latter dedicated his novel The Promise at Dawn to Rene and Sylvia Agid.
Go to Profile#22131
Carla Harryman
#22142
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Carla Harryman is an American poet, essayist, and playwright often associated with the Language poets. She teaches Creative Writing at Eastern Michigan University and serves on the MFA faculty of the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College. She is married to the poet Barrett Watten.
Go to Profile#22132
Mira Nair
#22143
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Mira Nair is an Indian-American filmmaker based in New York City. Her production company, Mirabai Films, specializes in films for international audiences on Indian society, whether in the economic, social or cultural spheres. Among her best known films are Mississippi Masala, The Namesake, the Golden Lion–winning Monsoon Wedding, and Salaam Bombay!, which received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language.
Go to Profile#22133
Abu Zubaydah
#22144
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Abu Zubaydah is a Palestinian citizen and alleged terrorist born in Saudi Arabia currently held by the U.S. in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He is held under the authority of Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists .
Go to Profile#22134
Genevieve Bell
#22145
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Areas of Specialization: Culture and Technology Genevieve Bell is the Florence Violet McKenzie Chair and Distinguished Professor for the Australian National University College of Engineering and Computer Science, a Senior Fellow at Intel, Director of the Autonomy, Agency and Assurance Institute (3A Institute) at Australian National University, and the first SRI International Engelbert Distinguished Fellow. She earned a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College. She went on to earn an additional Master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. She is very well known...
Go to Profile#22135
Olga Russakovsky
#22146
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Olga Russakovsky is an assistant professor of computer science at Princeton University. Her research investigates computer vision and machine learning. She was one of the leaders of the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition challenge and has been recognised by MIT Technology Review as one of the world's top young innovators.
Go to Profile#22136
Edison O. Jackson
#22147
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Edison O. Jackson was the sixth president of Bethune-Cookman University. Previously, he was president of Medgar Evers College from 1989 to 2009. In 2013, Jackson was appointed president of Bethune-Cookman University. He resigned amidst turmoil on July 11, 2017.
Go to Profile#22137
René M. Stulz
#22148
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
René M. Stulz is a professor of finance at the Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University. He earned his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught at a variety of universities including the University of Rochester, the University of Chicago, Harvard University, Northwestern University, and the University of Southern California. He has published over 100 articles in finance and economic journals on topics ranging from corporate finance, corporate governance, asset pricing, financial institutions, and risk management, which have been cited over 47,000 times.
Go to Profile#22138
Michael J. Padilla
#22149
Overall Influence
Michael J. Padilla is the former Director of the Eugene P. Moore School of Education and Associate Dean of EC at Clemson University, from Spring 2007 until July 2012. Before then he was Aderhold Distinguished Professor of Science Education at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. Dr. Padilla was recognized with The Walter B. Hill Award for Distinguished Achievement in Public Service at the University of Georgia and was presented with the National Science Teachers Association Distinguished Service award in 2003. In 2012 Padilla was awarded the NSTA Robert H. Carleton award for national leadership, the association's most prestigious award.
Go to Profile#22139
Frank Daniel
#22150
Overall Influence
1926 - 1996 (70 years)
František "Frank" Daniel was a Czech-American screenwriter, film director and teacher. He is known for developing the sequence paradigm of screenwriting, in which a classically constructed movie can be broken down into three acts, and a total of eight specific sequences. He served as co-chair of the Columbia University film program, and as a dean of FAMU, the American Film Institute and the USC School of Cinema-Television. He was also an Artistic Director of the Sundance Institute.
Go to Profile#22140
Fatih Terim
#22151
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Fatih Terim is a Turkish association football manager and former player. He is the former manager of Galatasaray, a position he previously held four times. Terim has managed several clubs in Italy and Turkey, as well as the Turkey national team, most recently from 2013 to 2017. In a survey conducted by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics in 80 countries, he was placed among the best eight managers in the world, receiving his award at a ceremony held in Rothenburg, Germany, on 8 January 2001. Terim received a nomination for UEFA manager of the year 2008, and Eurosport named him the best coach at UEFA Euro 2008.
Go to Profile#22141
Dave Hickey
#22152
Overall Influence
1940 - 2021 (81 years)
David Hickey was an American art critic who wrote for many American publications including Rolling Stone, ARTnews, Art in America, Artforum, Harper's Magazine, and Vanity Fair. He was nicknamed "The Bad Boy of Art Criticism" and "The Enfant Terrible of Art Criticism". He had been professor of English at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and distinguished professor of criticism for the MFA program in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of New Mexico.
Go to Profile#22142
Heather Boushey
#22153
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Heather Marie Boushey is an American economist. Boushey currently serves as a member of President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisers. She also serves as the Chief Economist for the Invest in America Cabinet at the White House. She previously was the president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. She has also worked as an economist at the Center for American Progress and the United States Congress Joint Economic Committee.
Go to Profile#22143
Peter Richard Killeen
#22154
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Peter Richard Killeen is an American psychologist who has made major contributions to a number of fields in the behavioral sciences. He has been one of the few premier contributors in quantitative analysis of behavior, and memory.
Go to Profile#22144
Agustín Rayo
#22155
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Agustín Rayo is a Mexican philosopher of logic, metaphysics, and language. He is the dean of the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and a professor of philosophy. Rayo's number is named after him, as he is the creator of it.
Go to Profile#22145
Jeffrey K. Zeig
#22156
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Jeffrey K. Zeig , is a writer, teacher and practitioner of psychotherapy. He has edited, co-edited, authored or coauthored more than 20 books on psychotherapy that appear in fourteen languages. He organises several conferences on psychotherapy, and is the founder and director of the Milton H. Erickson Foundation.
Go to Profile#22146
Clive Owen
#22157
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Clive Owen is an English actor. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for playing the lead role in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991. He received critical acclaim for his work in the film Close My Eyes before earning international attention for his performance as a struggling writer in Croupier . In 2005, he won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in the drama Closer .
Go to Profile#22147
John Hardon
#22158
Overall Influence
1914 - 2000 (86 years)
John Anthony Hardon, SJ was an American Jesuit priest, writer, teacher and theologian. A candidate for sainthood since 2005, he is recognized by the Catholic Church as a Servant of God. Early life John Anthony Hardon was born in 1914 to a devout Catholic family in Midland, Pennsylvania. When he was a year old, his 27-year-old father died in an industrial accident. After the accident Hardon was raised by his 26-year-old mother Anna Hardon, who never remarried "out of concern for the influence a possible stepfather might have on her son's vocation." They moved to Cleveland, Ohio.
Go to Profile#22148
Arindrajit Dube
#22159
Overall Influence
Arindrajit Dube is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, known internationally for his empirical research on the effects of minimum wage policies. He is among the foremost scholars regarding the economic impact of minimum wages. In 2019, he was asked by the UK Treasury to conduct a review of the evidence on the impact of minimum wages, which informed the decision to set the level of the National Living Wage. His work is focused on the economics of the labor market, including the role of imperfect competition, institutions, norms, and behavioral factors that affe...
Go to Profile#22149
Ioan James
#22160
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Ioan Mackenzie James FRS is a British mathematician working in the field of topology, particularly in homotopy theory. Biography James was born in Croydon, Surrey, England, and was educated at St Paul's School, London and Queen's College, Oxford. In 1953 he earned a D. Phil. from the University of Oxford for his thesis entitled Some problems in algebraic topology, written under the direction of J. H. C. Whitehead.
Go to Profile#22150
Mark Kryder
#22161
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Mark Howard Kryder was Seagate Corp.'s senior vice president of research and chief technology officer. Kryder holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and physics from the California Institute of Technology.
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