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).
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List of the most influential people
#22601
Jean Weissenbach
#22612
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Jean Weissenbach is a French biologist. He is the current director of the Genoscope. He is one of the pioneers of sequencing and genome analysis. Publications
Go to Profile#22602
Terry Pinkard
#22613
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Terry P. Pinkard is an American philosopher. He is a University Professor at Georgetown University. His research and teaching focus on the German tradition in philosophy from Kant to the present. Education and career Pinkard earned his BA and MA from the University of Texas at Austin and his Ph.D. from Stony Brook University. He taught at Georgetown University from 1975 to 2000, at Northwestern University from 2000 to 2005, but returned to Georgetown in 2005.
Go to Profile#22603
Donald Pizer
#22614
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Donald Pizer was an American academic and literary critic who was regarded as one of the principal authorities on the American naturalism literary movement. He was the Pierce Butler Professor of English Emeritus at Tulane University, and the author of numerous books on naturalism. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1962.
Go to Profile#22604
Pierre Salinger
#22615
Overall Influence
1925 - 2004 (79 years)
Pierre Emil George Salinger was an American journalist, author and politician. He served as the ninth press secretary for United States Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Salinger served as a United States Senator in 1964 and as campaign manager for the 1968 Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign.
Go to Profile#22605
James Barr
#22616
Overall Influence
1924 - 2006 (82 years)
James Barr was a Scottish Old Testament scholar, known for his critique of the notion that the vocabulary and structure of the Hebrew language may reflect a particular theological mindset. At the University of Oxford, he was the Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture from 1976 to 1978, and the Regius Professor of Hebrew from 1978 to 1989.
Go to Profile#22606
William Clinger
#22617
Overall Influence
William D. Clinger is an associate professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. He is known for his work on higher-order and functional programming languages, and for extensive contributions in helping create and implement international technical standards for the programming language Scheme via the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and American National Standards Institute . Clinger was an editor of the second through fifth Revised Reports on Scheme , and an invited speaker on Scheme at the Lisp50 conference celebrating the 50th birthday of the language Lisp.
Go to Profile#22607
Robert Ayres
#22618
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Robert Underwood Ayres was an American-born physicist and economist. His career focused on the application of physical ideas, especially the laws of thermodynamics, to economics; a long-standing pioneering interest in material flows and transformations —a concept which he originated. His most recent work challenged the widely held economic theory of growth.
Go to Profile#22608
Laurence Fishburne
#22619
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Laurence John Fishburne III is an American actor. He is a three time Emmy Award and Tony Award winning actor known for his roles on stage and screen. He has been hailed for his forceful, militant, and authoritative characters in his films. He is known for playing Morpheus in The Matrix series , Jason "Furious" Styles in the John Singleton drama film Boyz n the Hood , Tyrone "Mr. Clean" Miller in Francis Ford Coppola's war film Apocalypse Now , and "The Bowery King" in the John Wick film series .
Go to Profile#22609
Nancy Farriss
#22620
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Nancy Marguerite Farriss is an American historian who is professor emerita at the University of Pennsylvania. Life Nancy Marguerite Farriss was born on May 23, 1938. She specializes in the colonial history of Mexico, and completed her doctorate from University College London in 1965, after she earned a B.A. at Barnard College. This was followed by brief posts at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica and the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. In 1971 she was appointed as Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and continued there for the rest of her career, becoming Annenberg Professor of History in 1990.
Go to Profile#22610
Uroš Seljak
#22621
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Uroš Seljak is a Slovenian cosmologist and a professor of astronomy and physics at University of California, Berkeley. He is particularly well-known for his research in cosmology and approximate Bayesian statistical methods.
Go to Profile#22611
Leonie Kramer
#22622
Overall Influence
1924 - 2016 (92 years)
Dame Leonie Judith Kramer, was an Australian academic, educator and professor. She is notable as the first female professor of English in Australia, first woman to chair the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the first female chancellor of the University of Sydney. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and a Companion of the Order of Australia.
Go to Profile#22612
Alberto Ciaramella
#22623
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Alberto Ciaramella is an Italian computer engineer and scientist. He is notable for extensive pioneering contributions in the field of speech technologies and applied natural language processing, most of them at CSELT and Loquendo, with the amount of 40 papers and four patents.
Go to Profile#22613
David J. Eicher
#22624
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
David John Eicher is an American editor, writer, and popularizer of astronomy and space. He has been editor-in-chief of Astronomy magazine since 2002. He is author, coauthor, or editor of 23 books on science and American history and is known for having founded a magazine on astronomical observing, Deep Sky Monthly, when he was a 15-year-old high school student.
Go to Profile#22614
Frederick Kagan
#22625
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Frederick W. Kagan is an American resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Career He and his father, Donald Kagan, who was a professor at Yale and a fellow at the Hudson Institute, co-authored While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today . The book argued in favor of a large increase in military spending and warned of future threats, including from a potential revival of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. Frederick and Robert Kagan, who is a mem...
Go to Profile#22615
Francesca Happé
#22626
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Francesca Gabrielle Elizabeth Happé is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Director of the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London. Her research concerns autism spectrum conditions, specifically the understanding social cognitive processes in these conditions.
Go to Profile#22616
Sadulla Karjiker
#22627
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Sadulla Karjiker is a South African legal scholar and Professor & Anton Mostert Chair in Intellectual Property Law at Stellenbosch University. He is known for his works on corporate law and intellectual property.
Go to Profile#22617
Philippe Horvath
#22628
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Philippe Horvath is a French scientist working for DuPont Nutrition and Health. His work was integral to the development of CRISPR-Cas, a versatile biochemical method for targeted genetic engineering. For this work, he was awarded the 2015 Massry Prize along with Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, as well as the 2016 Canada Gairdner International Award, with his Massry co-laureates in addition to Feng Zhang, Rodolphe Barrangou, Anthony Fauci, and Frank Plummer.
Go to Profile#22618
Willie E. Gary
#22629
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Willie E. Gary is an American trial lawyer, philanthropist, and motivational speaker. Gary recognized the importance of education as a young child and became the first in his family to graduate from high school and go to college. Gary and his wife Gloria established Martin County's first Black law firm at the age of 27, presently known as, Gary, Williams, Parenti, Watson, Gary & Gillespie, P.L.L.C. Gary is portrayed by actor Jamie Foxx in the 2023 film The Burial.
Go to Profile#22619
Andy Merrifield
#22630
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Andy Merrifield is a Marxist urban theorist. Background He was born in Liverpool, UK. and attended Quarry Bank School until 1976. He left school at 16 and did office jobs and travelled. He graduated in geography, philosophy and sociology from Liverpool Polytechnic in the mid-1980s. Merrifield received his PhD in geography from Oxford University in 1993, supervised by David Harvey. Merrifield spent most of his early career teaching geography at the University of Southampton and King's College London, before moving to Clark University, USA in 2000. He was denied tenure in 2003, on grounds of collegiality, having chosen to live 178 miles away in Manhattan.
Go to Profile#22620
Andrew M. Stuart
#22631
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Andrew M. Stuart is a British and American mathematician, working in applied and computational mathematics. In particular, his research has focused on the numerical analysis of dynamical systems, applications of stochastic differential equations and stochastic partial differential equations, the Bayesian approach to inverse problems, data assimilation, and machine learning.
Go to Profile#22621
William Perraudin
#22632
Overall Influence
William R. M. Perraudin is a British economist. He is an adjunct professor and former Chair of Finance at Imperial College London, specialising in the fields of risk and pricing of debt instruments. He is a director of the risk management software and consultancy firm Risk Control Limited.
Go to Profile#22622
Candace A. Yano
#22633
Overall Influence
Candace A. Yano is Professor and Chair at Haas School of Business's Operations and Information Technology Management Group, and Professor and former Head of Department of Industrial Engineering & Operations Research, both at University of California, Berkeley. She is also a senior technical consultant on operations management issues for Yano Accountancy Corporation .
Go to Profile#22623
Alan Needleman
#22634
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Alan Needleman is a professor of materials science & engineering at Texas A&M University. Prior to 2009, he was Florence Pirce Grant University Professor of Mechanics of Solids and Structures at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
Go to Profile#22624
Richard L. Huganir
#22635
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Richard Lewis Huganir is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Neuroscience and Psychological and Brain Sciences, Director of the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience, and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Medicine Brain Science Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He has joint appointments in the Department of Biological Chemistry and the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#22625
Stanislav Menshikov
#22636
Overall Influence
1927 - 2014 (87 years)
Stanislav Mikhaĭlovich Menʹshikov , was a Russian economist and former Soviet diplomat. He is the author of numerous publications in Russian and English including The Anatomy of Russian Capitalism, and a chapter in Capitalism, Communism and Coexistence. He was a professor at the Central Economic Mathematical Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Menshikov was married to fellow economist Larissa Klimenko-Menshikova.
Go to Profile#22626
Daidō Moriyama
#22637
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Daidō Moriyama is a Japanese photographer best known for his black-and-white street photography and association with the avant-garde photography magazine Provoke. Moriyama began his career as an assistant to photographer Eikoh Hosoe, a co-founder of the avant-garde photo cooperative Vivo, and made his mark with his first photobook Japan: A Photo Theater, published in 1968. His formative work in the 1960s boldly captured the darker qualities of urban life in postwar Japan in rough, unfettered fashion, filtering the rawness of human experience through sharply tilted angles, grained textures, harsh contrast, and blurred movements through the photographer's wandering gaze.
Go to Profile#22627
Nikolai Borisovich Delone
#22638
Overall Influence
1926 - 2008 (82 years)
Nikolai Delaunay, Jr. was a Soviet physicist born in Leningrad, USSR . Life Delone was born in Leningrad on 22 May 1926. He was the son of Boris Delone, a mathematician. He graduated from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute in 1951, and obtained his Ph.D at the Lebedev Physical Institute in the late 1950s.
Go to Profile#22628
Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy
#22639
Overall Influence
1909 - 2001 (92 years)
Gleb Yevgenyevich Lozino-Lozinskiy was a Ukrainian engineer, General Director and General Designer of the JSC NPO Molniya, lead developer of the Russian Spiral and Shuttle Buran programme, Doctor of Sciences, Hero of Socialist Labour, laureate of Lenin Prize and Stalin Prizes .
Go to Profile#22629
Sally Falk Moore
#22640
Overall Influence
1924 - 2021 (97 years)
Sally Falk Moore was a legal anthropologist and professor emerita at Harvard University. She did her major fieldwork in Tanzania and published extensively on cross-cultural, comparative legal theory.
Go to Profile#22630
Robert Chaudenson
#22641
Overall Influence
1937 - 2020 (83 years)
Robert Chaudenson was a French linguist. Biography He was a specialist in creole languages and an emeritus professor of linguistics at the University of Provence. He was a widely known author on the subject of creolistics and president of the International Committee of Creole Studies. He was born in Lyon, and died aged 82, just 5 days before his 83rd birthday in Metropolitan France due to complications of COVID-19.
Go to Profile#22631
Lawrence L. Larmore
#22642
Overall Influence
Lawrence L. Larmore is an American mathematician and theoretical computer scientist. Since 1994 he has been a professor of computer science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas . Larmore developed the package-merge algorithm for the length-limited Huffman coding problem, as well as an algorithm for optimizing paragraph breaking in linear time. He is perhaps best known for his work with competitive analysis of online algorithms, particularly for the k-server problem. His contributions, with his co-author Marek Chrobak, led to the application of T-theory to the server problem.
Go to Profile#22632
Yngwie Malmsteen
#22643
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Yngwie Johan Malmsteen ; born 30 June 1963 Early life Malmsteen was born Lars Johan Yngve Lannerbäck in Stockholm, Sweden, the third child of a musical family. At age 10, Malmsteen created his first band, Track on Earth, consisting of himself and a friend from school playing the drums. At age 12, he took his mother's maiden name Malmsten as his surname, then slightly changed it to Malmsteen and altered his third given name Yngve to "Yngwie". As a teenager he was heavily influenced by classical music, particularly 19th century Italian virtuoso violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini as well as Johann Sebastian Bach.
Go to Profile#22633
Michael Woodruff
#22644
Overall Influence
1911 - 2001 (90 years)
Sir Michael Francis Addison Woodruff, was an English surgeon and scientist principally remembered for his research into organ transplantation. Though born in London, Woodruff spent his youth in Australia, where he earned degrees in electrical engineering and medicine. Having completed his studies shortly after the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Australian Army Medical Corps, but was soon captured by Japanese forces and imprisoned in the Changi Prison Camp. While there, he devised an ingenious method of extracting nutrients from agricultural wastes to prevent malnutrition among his f...
Go to Profile#22634
Xinyi Yuan
#22645
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Xinyi Yuan is a Chinese mathematician who is currently a professor of mathematics at Peking University working in number theory, arithmetic geometry, and automorphic forms. In particular, his work focuses on arithmetic intersection theory, algebraic dynamics, Diophantine equations and special values of L-functions.
Go to Profile#22635
Laura Bush
#22646
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Laura Lane Bush is the wife of George W. Bush and served as the first lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009. Bush previously served as the first lady of Texas from 1995 to 2000. She is also the daughter-in-law of former president George H. W. Bush.
Go to Profile#22636
Robert B. Lawton
#22647
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Robert B. Lawton is an American Jesuit and the 14th President of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He also holds tenured professorships in both the Classics and Archaeology Department and the Theological Studies Department of LMU.
Go to Profile#22637
Dennis Gilbert
#22648
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Dennis L. Gilbert is a professor emeritus and former chair of sociology at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Cornell University and has taught at the Universidad Católica in Lima, Peru, Cornell University, and joined Hamilton college in 1976. He has published a variety of sociology books, mainly dealing with socio-economic stratification.
Go to Profile#22638
Unni Wikan
#22649
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Unni Wikan is professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, Norway. She has served as visiting professor at the University of Chicago , Harvard University , Goethe University, Frankfurt , London School of Economics , École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris . She has also been a visiting scholar at Harvard University , guest lecturer at Harvard , guest lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel and visiting assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University .
Go to Profile#22639
Gerald Le Dain
#22650
Overall Influence
1924 - 2007 (83 years)
Gerald Eric Le Dain, was a Canadian lawyer and judge, who sat on the Supreme Court of Canada from 1984 to 1988. Life and education Born in Montreal, Quebec, the son of Eric George Bryant Le Dain and Antoinette Louise Whithard, he served during World War II as an artilleryman with the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery. He received a B.C.L from McGill University and was called to the Quebec Bar in 1949. He then studied at the University of Lyon in France, receiving a Docteur de l'Université degree in 1950.
Go to Profile#22640
John Whitney Hall
#22651
Overall Influence
1916 - 1997 (81 years)
John Whitney Hall was an American historian of Japan who specialized in premodern Japanese history. His life work was recognized by the Japanese government, which awarded him the Order of the Sacred Treasure.
Go to Profile#22641
Drew McIntyre
#22652
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Andrew McLean Galloway IV is a Scottish professional wrestler. He is currently signed to WWE, where he performs on the Raw brand under the ring name Drew McIntyre. Galloway began his career in 2001 in United Kingdom. He signed a development contract with WWE in 2007, when he was sent to Ohio Valley Wrestling and Florida Championship Wrestling. Under the character The Chosen One, he worked on SmackDown on 2009, winning the WWE Intercontinental Championship and the WWE Tag Team Championship. During the following years, he worked as a low card wrestler, being part of the stable 3MB. On 2014 he was released from his contract.
Go to Profile#22642
Mark Lepper
#22653
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Mark R. Lepper is the Albert Ray Lang Professor of psychology at Stanford University, and a leading theorist in social psychology. He is particularly known for his research on attribution theory and confirmation bias, and for his collaborations with Lee Ross.
Go to Profile#22643
Ram Gopal Varma
#22654
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Penmetsa Ram Gopal Varma , often referred to by his initials RGV, is an Indian film director, screenwriter and producer, known for his works in Telugu cinema in addition to Hindi, Kannada language films, and television. Varma has directed films across multiple genres, including parallel cinema and docudrama noted for their gritty realism, technical finesse, and craft. Regarded as one of the pioneers of new age Indian cinema, he was featured in the BBC World series Bollywood Bosses in 2004. In 2006, Grady Hendrix of Film Comment, published by the Film Society of Lincoln Center cited Varma as "B...
Go to Profile#22644
Dan Fouts
#22655
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Daniel Francis Fouts is an American former professional football quarterback who played for the San Diego Chargers of the National Football League throughout his 15-season career . After a relatively undistinguished first five seasons in the league, Fouts came to prominence as the on-field leader during the Chargers' Air Coryell period. He led the league in passing every year from 1979 to 1982, passing for over 4,000 yards in the first three of these—no previous quarterback had posted consecutive 4,000-yard seasons. Fouts was voted a Pro Bowler six times, first-team All-Pro twice, and Offensive Player of the Year in 1982.
Go to Profile#22645
José María Gay de Liébana
#22656
Overall Influence
1953 - 2021 (68 years)
José María Gay de Liébana y Saludas was a Spanish economist, lawyer, and university professor, popular as an economic commentator on several television programs. Biography and career Gay de Liébana was born in Barcelona on 6 May 1953. He earned a doctorate in economics and social sciences from the Abat Oliba CEU University, and a degree in law from the Universidad Camilo José Cela in Madrid.
Go to Profile#22646
Mary McAleese
#22657
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Mary Patricia McAleese is an Irish activist lawyer, academic, author, and former politician who served as the eighth president of Ireland from November 1997 to November 2011. McAleese was first elected as president in 1997, having received the nomination of Fianna Fáil. She succeeded Mary Robinson, making her the second female president of Ireland, and the first woman in the world to succeed another woman as president. She nominated herself for re-election in 2004 and was returned unopposed for a second term. McAleese is the first president of Ireland to have come from either Northern Ireland...
Go to Profile#22647
Alf Lüdtke
#22658
Overall Influence
1943 - 2019 (76 years)
Alf Lüdtke was a historian and a leading German representative of the history of everyday life . He said his main fields of interest and research include work as a social practice, the connection of production and destruction through "work", forms of taking part and acquiescing in European dictatorships in the 20th century, and remembering and memorialising forms of dealing with war and genocide in the modern era.
Go to Profile#22648
Krzysztof Penderecki
#22659
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki was a Polish composer and conductor. His best-known works include Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, Symphony No. 3, his St Luke Passion, Polish Requiem, Anaklasis and Utrenja. His oeuvre includes four operas, eight symphonies and other orchestral pieces, a variety of instrumental concertos, choral settings of mainly religious texts, as well as chamber and instrumental works.
Go to Profile#22649
Helmut Rix
#22660
Overall Influence
1926 - 2004 (78 years)
Helmut Rix was a German linguist and professor of the Sprachwissenschaftliches Seminar of Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg, Germany. He is best known for his research into Indo-European and Etruscan languages, as well as for being the author of the hypothesis of Tyrrhenian languages.
Go to Profile#22650
Myrna Wooders
#22661
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Myrna Wooders is a Canadian economist who has made significant contributions to public economic theory, network theory and game theory. Specifically, her work has focused on coalition theory, public good theory and club theory. Myrna currently is a professor of economics at Vanderbilt University and the University of Warwick.
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