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
#22251
Sania Mirza
#22262
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Sania Mirza is an Indian former professional tennis player. A former doubles world No. 1, she won six major titles – three in women's doubles and three in mixed doubles. From 2003 until her retirement from singles in 2013, she was ranked by the Women's Tennis Association as the No. 1 Indian in singles. Throughout her career, Mirza has established herself as one of the most known, highest-paid, and influential athletes in India.
Go to Profile#22252
Martín Guzmán
#22263
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Martín Maximiliano Guzmán is an Argentine economist, who served as Minister of Economy in the cabinet of President Alberto Fernández from December 2019 to July 2022. Early life and education Martín Maximiliano Guzmán was born on 12 October 1982 in La Plata, Buenos Aires Province. Guzmán studied at the National University of La Plata, where he graduated with a degree of Licenciate in Economics in 2005, then going on to receive a Master of Science in Economics in 2007. In 2013 he earned a doctorate on Economics from Brown University. His theoretical influences include Carlos Daniel Heymann and ...
Go to Profile#22253
David Wands
#22264
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
David Wands is professor of cosmology at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, in the University of Portsmouth. He was educated at Dr Challoner's Grammar School, Amersham, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read Natural Sciences and Mathematics. He received his PhD from the University of Sussex in 1994, supervised by John D. Barrow in the Astronomy Centre.
Go to Profile#22254
Giulio Giorello
#22265
Overall Influence
1945 - 2020 (75 years)
Giulio Giorello was an Italian philosopher, mathematician, and epistemologist. Biography Giorello graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1968 and in mathematics in 1971 at the University of Milan. While there, he studied under the philosopher Ludovico Geymonat. He then taught physics and natural sciences at the University of Pavia, University of Catania, University of Insubria and the University of Milan. Giorello was a professor of philosophy of science at the University of Milan; he was also President of SILFS . He directed the "Scienza e idee" series by Raffaello Cortina Editore and col...
Go to Profile#22255
Oliver Krüger
#22266
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Oliver Krüger is a German professor in Religious studies at the University of Fribourg . From 1994 to 1999 he studied sociology, classical archaeology, and comparative religion at the University of Bonn. In 2003, he graduated there with a PhD in religious studies. His thesis was the first in-depth study of posthumanism and transhumanism that shed light on the philosophical, religious, and cultural contexts of these utopias. In 2004 the thesis was awarded by the German Association for the History of Religion.
Go to Profile#22256
Murray S. Daw
#22267
Overall Influence
Murray S. Daw is an American physicist and Clemson University professor. He is best known for his work on the embedded atom model. Early life and education Daw graduated from the University of Florida in 1976 with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics. He undertook doctoral study in the subject at the California Institute of Technology, guided by advisers Darryl Smith and Tom McGill. Upon completing his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1981, Daw worked at the Sandia National Laboratories until 1994, when he began teaching at Clemson.
Go to Profile#22257
Steven Moffat
#22268
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Steven William Moffat is a Scottish television writer, television producer and screenwriter. He is best known for his work as showrunner, writer and executive producer of the science fiction television series Doctor Who and the contemporary crime drama television series Sherlock, based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. In the 2015 Birthday Honours, Moffat was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his services to drama.
Go to Profile#22258
Graham Gooch
#22269
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Graham Alan Gooch, is a former English first-class cricketer who captained Essex and England. He was one of the most successful international batsmen of his generation, and through a career spanning 1973 until 1997, he was the most prolific run scorer of all time, with 67,057 runs across first-a class and limited-overs games. His List A cricket tally of 22,211 runs is also a record. He is one of only 25 players to have scored over 100 first-class centuries.
Go to Profile#22259
Vladimir Kvint
#22270
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Vladimir L’vovich Kvint is a Russian-American economist and strategist, and President of the International Academy of Emerging Markets. Since 2007, he has been the Chair of the Department of Economic and Financial Strategy at the Moscow School of Economics of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. Kvint is also the Head of the Center for Strategic Studies at Institute of Complex Systems Mathematical Research of this University. He is a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#22260
Sheila West
#22271
Overall Influence
Sheila Kay West is an American ophthalmologist who is the El-Maghraby Professor of Preventive Ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute. She is also the vice-chair for Research. Early life and education West was born in Salt Lake City. She started her academic career at the University of California, Santa Barbara, then moved to the California State University, East Bay for graduate studies, before joining the UCSF Medical Center. She worked toward her first doctorate in pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco, then moved to the Johns Hopkins University for her second doctorate...
Go to Profile#22261
Robert Mallet
#22272
Overall Influence
1915 - 2002 (87 years)
Robert Mallet was a French writer and academic. He was the first Dean of the University of Antananarivo. He was also the Rector of the Academy of Amiens, Rector-Chancellor of the Académie de Paris, one of the founders of and a professor of the University of Paris-VII, and Chairman of the board of directors of the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie . In 1993 he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca.
Go to Profile#22262
Max Taylor
#22273
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Maxwell "Max" Taylor is a criminal and legal psychologist. His early work specialised in the study of terrorism but he also became involved in the study of sex offenders, and in the development of capacity building activities for disadvantaged children in conflict zones, returning later to the study of terrorism.
Go to Profile#22263
Ernest R. May
#22274
Overall Influence
1928 - 2009 (81 years)
Ernest Richard May was an American historian of international relations, whose 14 published books include analyses of American involvement in World War I and the causes of the Fall of France during World War II. His 1997 book The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis became the primary sources of the 2000 film Thirteen Days starring Kevin Costner that viewed the Missile Crisis from the perspective of American political leaders. He served on the 9/11 commission and highlighted the failures of the government intelligence agencies. May taught full-time on the faculty of Harvard University for 55 years, until his death.
Go to Profile#22264
Gregory Cochran
#22275
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Gregory M. Cochran is an American anthropologist and author who argues that cultural innovation resulted in new and constantly shifting selection pressures for genetic change, thereby accelerating human evolution and divergence between human races. From 2004 to 2015, he was a research associate at the anthropology department at the University of Utah. He is co-author of the book The 10,000 Year Explosion.
Go to Profile#22265
Alvy Ray Smith
#22276
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Alvy Ray Smith III is an American computer scientist who co-founded Lucasfilm's Computer Division and Pixar, participating in the 1980s and 1990s expansion of computer animation into feature film. Education In 1965 Alvy Smith received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from New Mexico State University . He created his first computer graphic in 1965 at NMSU. In 1970 he received a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University, with a dissertation on cellular automata theory jointly supervised by Michael A. Arbib, Edward J. McCluskey, and Bernard Widrow.
Go to Profile#22266
Rich Gannon
#22277
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Richard Joseph Gannon is an American former football quarterback who played 18 seasons in the National Football League . Subsequently, he was a sports commentator with CBS Sports for 16 years. Gannon was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and played college football at the University of Delaware where he directed coach Tubby Raymond's Wing-T offense. He recorded at least 2,000 offensive yards for three straight seasons at Delaware and was Yankee Conference Offensive Player of the Year as a senior. In the 1987 NFL Draft, the New England Patriots selected Gannon in the fourth round intent upon converting Gannon to running back.
Go to Profile#22267
Danny Dorling
#22278
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Danny Dorling is a British social geographer. Since 2013, he has been Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography of the School of Geography and the Environment of the University of Oxford. He is also a visiting professor in the Department of Sociology of Goldsmiths, University of London, a visiting professor in the School of Social and Community Medicine of the University of Bristol, a visiting fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, and a member of the National Advisory Panel for the Centre for Labour and Social Studies . He is a patron of RoadPeace since 2011 and from 2007 to 20...
Go to Profile#22268
Nicholas Conard
#22279
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Nicholas J. Conard, is an American and naturalized German citizen who works as an archaeologist and prehistorian. He is the director of the department for early prehistory and quaternary ecology and the founding director of the Institute of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Tübingen in Germany.
Go to Profile#22269
Shalom Carmy
#22280
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Shalom Carmy is an Orthodox rabbi teaching Jewish studies and philosophy at Yeshiva University, where he is Chair of Bible and Jewish philosophy at Yeshiva College and an affiliated scholar at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. He is also Editor Emeritus of Tradition, an Orthodox theological journal, and formerly wrote a regular column in First Things.
Go to Profile#22270
Gerald Dworkin
#22281
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Gerald Dworkin is a professor of moral, political and legal philosophy. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of California, Davis. In 2016–17, he was Brady Distinguished Visiting Professor of Ethics and Civic Life at Northwestern University. He has written for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Go to Profile#22271
Richard Widmark
#22282
Overall Influence
1914 - 2008 (94 years)
Richard Weedt Widmark was an American film, stage, and television actor and producer. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the villainous Tommy Udo in his debut film, Kiss of Death , for which he also won the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer. Early in his career, Widmark was typecast in similar villainous or anti-hero roles in films noir, but he later branched out into more heroic leading and supporting roles in Westerns, mainstream dramas, and horror films among others.
Go to Profile#22272
Charles A. Hale
#22283
Overall Influence
1930 - 2008 (78 years)
Charles Adam Hale was a distinguished historian of Mexico, who published major works on nineteenth and early twentieth-century Liberalism in Mexico. Life Hale was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Lloyd and Elizabeth Hale. He attended Amherst College, graduating in 1951, and elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1957, he earned a doctorate in history at Columbia University, with Frank Tannenbaum as his mentor. He married Lenore Briggs Rice, the daughter of Paul North Rice and Genevieve Briggs Rice. He spent most of his academic career in the History Department of University of Iowa. Following his re...
Go to Profile#22273
Roland Rainer
#22284
Overall Influence
1910 - 2004 (94 years)
Roland Rainer was an Austrian architect. Born in Klagenfurt, Roland Rainer decided to become an architect when he was 18, so he studied at the Vienna University of Technology. His thesis was about the Karlsplatz in Vienna. Then, he left Austria visiting the Netherlands and the German Academy for Urban Design in Berlin. He became a Member of the ruling Nazi Party and endorsed their policies in his theoretical works. After World War II, he returned to Austria and continued writing, including his most famous work Urban design prose.
Go to Profile#22274
José Serra
#22285
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
José Serra Chirico is a Brazilian politician who has served as a Congressman, Senator, Minister of Planning, Minister of Health, Mayor of São Paulo, Governor of São Paulo state, and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Brazil.
Go to Profile#22275
Wim Kok
#22286
Overall Influence
1938 - 2018 (80 years)
Willem "Wim" Kok was a Dutch politician and trade union leader who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 22 August 1994 until 22 July 2002. He was a member of the Labour Party . Kok studied business administration at the Nyenrode Business School obtaining a Bachelor of Business Administration degree and worked as a trade union leader for the Dutch Confederation of Trade Unions from 1961 until 1976, serving as its chairman from 1972. In 1976, it merged to form the Federation of Dutch Trade Unions, with Kok serving as its first chairman until 1986. In the 1986 general election, Kok was elected to the House of Representatives, taking office on 3 June 1986.
Go to Profile#22276
Bong-Ho Son
#22287
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Bong-Ho Son is a South Korean Christian ethics scholar and social activist. Son was born in Korea, and graduated from and Seoul National University. He then studied theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in the United States, and received his Ph.D from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He has taught at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and Seoul National University, and has served as president of Hansung University and of Dongduk Women's University. In 2011, he established the Sharing National Movement Headquarters, where he is in charge of representation. He is w...
Go to Profile#22277
Amaney Jamal
#22288
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Amaney A. Jamal is an American scholar of Middle Eastern politics who is currently the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics and Director of the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice at Princeton University. Jamal earned her bachelor's degree in politics at UCLA in 1993, followed by her PhD in political science from the University of Michigan. A Carnegie Scholar, Jamal specializes in democratization and civic engagement in the Arab world as well as Muslim and Arab civic engagement in the US. She currently directs the Workshop on Arab Political Development at Princeton University, ...
Go to Profile#22278
Thomas Barthel
#22289
Overall Influence
1923 - 1997 (74 years)
Thomas Sylvester Barthel was a German ethnologist and epigrapher who is best known for cataloguing the undeciphered rongorongo script of Easter Island. Life and career Barthel grew up in Berlin and graduated from secondary school in 1940. During the Second World War, he worked as a cryptographer for the Wehrmacht. After the war he studied folklore, geography, and prehistory in Berlin, Hamburg, and Leipzig. He received his doctorate in Hamburg in 1952 with a thesis on Mayan writing. From 1953 to 1956 he was a Fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, in 1957 a lecturer in Hamburg, and fr...
Go to Profile#22279
C. Sue Carter
#22290
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
C. Sue Carter is an American biologist and behavioral neurobiologist. She is an internationally recognized expert in behavioral neuroendocrinology. In 2014 she was appointed Director of The Kinsey Institute and Rudy Professor of Biology at Indiana University. Carter was the first person to identify the physiological mechanisms responsible for social monogamy.
Go to Profile#22280
John Cornyn
#22291
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
John Cornyn III is an American politician, attorney, and former jurist serving as the senior United States senator from Texas, a seat he has held since 2002. A member of the Republican Party, he served on the Texas Supreme Court from 1991 to 1997 and as the attorney general of Texas from 1999 to 2002.
Go to Profile#22281
Maitreesh Ghatak
#22292
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Maitreesh Ghatak is an Indian economist who is the professor of economics at the London School of Economics. He is an applied microeconomic theorist with research interests in economic development, public economics, and the economics of organisations.
Go to Profile#22282
Gerry George
#22293
Overall Influence
Gerard "Gerry" George is currently Professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. Previously, he was Dean and Lee Kong Chian Chair Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University.
Go to Profile#22283
Oleg Itskhoki
#22294
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Oleg Itskhoki is a Russian-American economist specialized on macroeconomics and international economics and a professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He won the John Bates Clark Medal for his "fundamental contributions to both international finance and international trade" in 2022.
Go to Profile#22284
Bud Grant
#22295
Overall Influence
1927 - 2023 (96 years)
Harry Peter "Bud" Grant Jr. was an American professional gridiron football player and coach in the National Football League and Canadian Football League . Grant was head coach of the NFL's Minnesota Vikings for 18 seasons; he was the team's second and fourth head coach, leading them to four Super Bowl appearances, 11 division titles, one league championship and three National Football Conference championships. Before coaching the Vikings, he was the head coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers for 10 seasons, winning the Grey Cup four times.
Go to Profile#22285
Dominic Welsh
#22296
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
James Anthony Dominic Welsh is an English mathematician and emeritus professor of Oxford University's Mathematical Institute. He is an expert in matroid theory, the computational complexity of combinatorial enumeration problemss, percolation theory, and cryptography.
Go to Profile#22286
Jersey Joe Walcott
#22297
Overall Influence
1914 - 1994 (80 years)
Arnold Raymond Cream , best known as Jersey Joe Walcott, was an American professional boxer who competed from 1930 to 1953. He held the NYSAC, NBA, and The Ring heavyweight titles from 1951 to 1952, and broke the record for the oldest man to win the title, at the age of 37. That record would eventually be broken in 1994 by 45-year-old George Foreman. Despite holding the world heavyweight title for a relatively short period of time, Walcott was regarded among the best heavyweights in the world during the 1940s and 1950s.
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Alice Schlegel
#22298
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Alice Schlegel is an anthropologist known for her work on adolescence. She was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1972. Education and career Schlegel attended Smith College from 1952 until 1954, and then graduated with a B.A. from Northwestern University. She went on to earn an M.A. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1971. Following her Ph.D., she held academic positions at multiple institutions including the University of Baroda, India, Museum of Northern Arizona, University of Tubingen, University of Frankfurt.
Go to Profile#22288
Marek Kukula
#22299
Overall Influence
Marek Janusz Kukula is a British astronomer and an author of works on popular science. After gaining a PhD in radio astronomy from the University of Manchester in 1994, he specialised in studying distant galaxies. As his research reached the limits of telescopes, he moved into the field of public engagement. In 2008 he was appointed Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
Go to Profile#22289
Howard Ensign Evans
#22300
Overall Influence
1919 - 2002 (83 years)
Howard Ensign Evans was an American entomologist who was a specialist on wasps. He was also the author of several popular works on entomology including Life on a Little-known Planet , The Pleasures of Entomology and Wasp Farm .
Go to Profile#22290
Norma Field
#22301
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Norma M. Field is an author and emeritus professor of East Asian studies at the University of Chicago. She has taught Premodern Japanese Poetry and Prose, Premodern Japanese Language, and Gender Studies as relating to Japanese women.
Go to Profile#22291
Anastasia Myskina
#22302
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Anastasia Andreyevna Myskina is a Russian former professional tennis player. Myskina won the 2004 French Open singles title, becoming the first Russian woman to win a major singles title. Due to this victory, she rose to No. 3 in the Women's Tennis Association rankings, becoming the first Russian woman to reach the top 3 in the history of the rankings. In September 2004, she reached a career-high ranking of No. 2.
Go to Profile#22292
Setsuko Thurlow
#22303
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Setsuko Thurlow, born Setsuko Nakamura, is a Japanese–Canadian nuclear disarmament campaigner and Hibakusha who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. She is mostly known throughout the world for being a leading figure of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons and to have given the acceptance speech for its reception of the 2017 Nobel peace prize.
Go to Profile#22293
Walter Pohl
#22304
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Walter Pohl is an Austrian historian who is Professor of Auxiliary Sciences of History and Medieval History at the University of Vienna. He is a leading member of the Vienna School of History. Biography Walter Pohl was born in Vienna, Austria, on 27 December 1953. He received his PhD at the University of Vienna in 1984 under the supervision of Herwig Wolfram with a thesis on the Pannonian Avars. He received his habilitation in medieval history at the University of Vienna in 1989.
Go to Profile#22294
Immanuel Bloch
#22305
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Immanuel Bloch is a German experimental physicist. His research is focused on the investigation of quantum many-body systems using ultracold atomic and molecular quantum gases. Bloch is known for his work on atoms in artificial crystals of light, optical lattices, especially the first realization of a quantum phase transition from a weakly interacting superfluid to a strongly interacting Mott insulating state of matter.
Go to Profile#22295
Marc Ravalomanana
#22306
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Marc Ravalomanana is a Malagasy politician who served as the sixth President of Madagascar from 2002 to 2009. Born into a farming Merina family in Imerinkasinina, near the capital city of Antananarivo, Ravalomanana first rose to prominence as the founder and CEO of the vast dairy conglomerate TIKO, later launching successful wholesaler MAGRO and several additional companies.
Go to Profile#22296
K. C. Jones
#22307
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
K. C. Jones was an American professional basketball player and coach. He is best known for his association with the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association , with whom he won 11 of his 12 NBA championships . As a player, he is tied for third for most NBA championships in a career, and is one of three NBA players with an 8–0 record in NBA Finals series. He is the only African-American coach other than Bill Russell to have won multiple NBA championships. Jones was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1989.
Go to Profile#22297
Douglas West
#22308
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Douglas Brent West is a professor of graph theory at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1978; his advisor was Daniel Kleitman. He is the "W" in G. W. Peck, a pseudonym for a group of six mathematicians that includes West. He is the editor of the journal Discrete Mathematics.
Go to Profile#22298
Jim Shooter
#22309
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
James Shooter is an American writer, editor and publisher for various comic books. He started professionally in the medium at the age of 14, and is known for his successful and controversial run as Marvel Comics' seventh editor-in-chief, and his work as editor in chief of Valiant Comics.
Go to Profile#22299
Thomas Demand
#22310
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Thomas Cyrill Demand is a German sculptor and photographer. He currently lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles, and teaches at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg. He makes photographs of three-dimensional models that look like real images of rooms and other spaces, often sites loaded with social and political meanings. Demand thus describes himself not as a photographer, but as a conceptual artist for whom photography is an intrinsic part of his creative process.
Go to Profile#22300
Dave Matthews
#22311
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
David John Matthews is an American musician, songwriter, record producer and political activist. He is best known as the lead vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist for the Dave Matthews Band . Matthews was born in Johannesburg, and moved frequently among South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States while growing up. Matthews started playing acoustic guitar at the age of nine.
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