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
#22901
Zhang Peigang
#22912
Overall Influence
1913 - 2011 (98 years)
Zhang Peigang , also romanized as Chang Pei-kang, was a Chinese economist, considered a founder of development economics in the country. He was a founding professor of Huazhong University of Science and Technology and served as Honorary Dean of the School of Economics. In 1992 the university established the Zhang Peigang Development Economics Prize in his honour.
Go to Profile#22902
Catherine E. Snow
#22913
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Catherine Elizabeth Snow is an educational psychologist and applied linguist. In 2009 Snow was appointed to the Patricia Albjerg Graham Professorship in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, having previously held the Henry Lee Shattuck Professorship also in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Snow is past president of the American Educational Research Association . She chaired the RAND Corporation 'reading study group' from 1999.
Go to Profile#22903
Bilal U. Haq
#22914
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Bilal U. Haq is a Pakistani-American geoscientist who is currently affiliated with and divides his time between the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and Sorbonne University's Institute of Earth Sciences in Paris, France. He is best known for his work on the Phanerozoic sea-level fluctuations and eustatic curves that are widely used in the academia and industry as the basis for global stratigraphy and in exploration geology. He is a laureate of the Prestwich Prize for geosciences from France.
Go to Profile#22904
Jennifer Platt
#22915
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Jennifer Platt FAcSS is a sociologist who is Emeritus Professor at the University of Sussex, where she taught from 1964 to 2002. She has been President of the British Sociological Association in 1987–89, and edited its journal Sociology for 1985–87. She was a member of the International Sociological Association’s executive from 1994–2002. Her research interests in the history of sociology have been reflected in her terms as Secretary and President of the ISA’s Research Committee on the History of Sociology, as Chair of the American Sociological Association’s Section on the History of Sociology, In 2002 she became an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences.
Go to Profile#22905
Robert J. O'Neill
#22916
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Robert J. O'Neill is a former United States Navy SEAL , TV news contributor, and author. After participating in the May 2011 Operation Neptune Spear with SEAL Team Six, O'Neill was the subject of controversy for claiming to be the sole individual to kill Osama bin Laden.
Go to Profile#22906
Amalia Kahana-Carmon
#22917
Overall Influence
1926 - 2019 (93 years)
Amalia Kahana-Carmon was an Israeli author and literary critic. She was awarded the Israel Prize for literature in 2000. Biography Amalia Kahana-Carmon was born in Kibbutz Ein Harod on October 18, 1926. She moved to Tel Aviv as a child and studied at Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium, but her studies were interrupted by the 1948 Palestine war where she served in the Negev Brigade of Palmach as a signals operator and wrote the famous telegram for the capture of Eilat. Upon her return from military service, Kahana-Carmon attended the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and studied library science and philology.
Go to Profile#22907
Christof Wetterich
#22918
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Christof Wetterich is a German theoretical physicist. Biography Born in Freiburg, Wetterich studied physics in Paris, Cologne and Freiburg, where he received his PhD in 1979. He worked at CERN in Geneva and DESY in Hamburg. Since 1992 he has a chair for theoretical physics at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. His major research interests are cosmology and particle physics. The development of the theoretical method of functional renormalization by Wetterich has found applications in many areas of physics, e.g. it provides a suitable framework to study quantum gravity , Yang-Mills theories...
Go to Profile#22908
Harold Brown
#22919
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Harold Brown was an American nuclear physicist who served as United States Secretary of Defense from 1977 to 1981, under President Jimmy Carter. Previously, in the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations, he held the posts of Director of Defense Research and Engineering and United States Secretary of the Air Force .
Go to Profile#22909
Robyn Creswell
#22920
Overall Influence
Robyn Creswell is an American critic, scholar and translator. He graduated from Brown University in 1999 and gained a doctorate in comparative literature from New York University in 2011. In addition to teaching comparative literature at Brown University, he also serves as poetry editor of the Paris Review. Creswell's specialization is contemporary Arabic literature.
Go to Profile#22910
Li Xiannian
#22921
Overall Influence
1909 - 1992 (83 years)
Li Xiannian was a Chinese Communist military and political leader, president of the People's Republic of China from 1983 to 1988 under paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and then chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 1988 until his death. He was a full member of the Politburo from 1956 to 1987, and of its Standing Committee from 1977 to 1987.
Go to Profile#22911
Radu Florescu
#22922
Overall Influence
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
Radu Florescu was a Romanian academic who held the position of Emeritus Professor of History at Boston College. His work on Vlad Dracula includes a series of bestselling books that he co-authored with his colleague Raymond T. McNally. Along with serving as Director of the East European Research Center at Boston College, Florescu was also a philanthropist and an adviser to Edward Kennedy on Balkan and Eastern European affairs. At the time of his death, Radu Florescu was considered the patriarch of the .
Go to Profile#22912
Colm Mulcahy
#22923
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Colm Mulcahy is an Irish mathematician, academic, columnist, book author, public outreach speaker, and amateur magician. He is Professor Emeritus at Spelman College, where he was on the faculty from 1988 to 2020. In addition to algebra, number theory, and geometry, his interests include mathemagical card magic and the culture of mathematics–particularly the contributions of Irish mathematicians and also the works of iconic mathematics writer Martin Gardner. He has blogged for the Mathematical Association of America, The Huffington Post, Scientific American, and for The Aperiodical; his puzzles have been featured in The New York Times.
Go to Profile#22913
Ron Arad
#22924
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Ron Arad, is a British-Israeli industrial designer, artist, and architectural designer. Biography Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, to a Jewish family. He studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem between 1971 and 1973, and at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London from 1974 to 1979. Ron Arad co-founded the design and production studio One Off in 1981 with Caroline Thorman. Ron Arad Associates architecture and design practice was formed in 1989 and in 2008 Ron Arad Architects was established alongside Ron Arad Associates, with Caroline Thorman and Asa Bruno.
Go to Profile#22914
Cheryl Rubenberg
#22925
Overall Influence
1946 - 2017 (71 years)
Cheryl A. Rubenberg was a writer and researcher specializing in the Middle East, formerly an associate professor in the department of political science at Florida International University. Life Born in Pennsylvania, Rubenberg specialized in political science and obtained her B.A. at Hunter College, and then earned an M.A. in international relations at Johns Hopkins University. The latter topic was the object of her Ph.D. at the University of Miami. Soon after, she joined the political science faculty at Florida International University. Her initial research focus was on Latin America where he...
Go to Profile#22915
Victor Rios
#22926
Overall Influence
Victor M. Rios is a professor, author, and speaker. His research examines how inequality plays a determining role in the educational and life outcomes of marginalized populations. Rios is of Mexican American origin. He has written several books and is known for developing the theories of the youth control complex, Cultural Misframing, Legitimacy Policing, Masbloom, and Educator Projected Self-Actualization.
Go to Profile#22916
Bhargav Bhatt
#22927
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Bhargav Bhatt is a mathematician who is the Fernholz Joint Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University and works in arithmetic geometry and commutative algebra. Early life and education Bhatt graduated with an B.S. in Applied Mathematics, summa cum laude from Columbia University under the supervision of Shou-Wu Zhang. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2010 under the supervision of Aise Johan de Jong.
Go to Profile#22917
Cesare Maldini
#22928
Overall Influence
1932 - 2016 (84 years)
Cesare Maldini was an Italian professional football manager and player who played as a defender. Father to Paolo Maldini and grandfather to Daniel Maldini, Cesare began his career with Italian side Triestina, before transferring to AC Milan in 1954, whom he captained to win four Serie A league titles and one European Cup during his twelve seasons with the club. He retired in 1967, after a season with Torino. Internationally, he played for Italy, earning 14 caps and participating in the 1962 World Cup. He served as team captain for both Milan and Italy.
Go to Profile#22918
John Howland Rowe
#22929
Overall Influence
1918 - 2004 (86 years)
John Howland Rowe was an American archaeologist and anthropologist known for his extensive research on Peru, especially on the Inca civilization. Rowe studied classical archaeology at Brown University and anthropology at Harvard University . After graduating he traveled to Peru where he undertook archaeological research and taught until 1943. Between 1944 and 1946 he served as sergeant in the U.S. Combat Engineers in Europe. From 1946 to 1948 he studied the Guambía people in Colombia for the Smithsonian Institution, returning briefly to Harvard in 1946 to complete his doctorate in Latin American history and anthropology in 1947.
Go to Profile#22919
Sylvia Serfaty
#22930
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Sylvia Serfaty is a French mathematician working in the United States. She won the 2004 EMS Prize for her contributions to the Ginzburg–Landau theory, the Henri Poincaré Prize in 2012, and the of the French Academy of Sciences in 2013.
Go to Profile#22920
Nadey Hakim
#22931
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Nadey S. Hakim FASMBS , is a British-Lebanese professor of transplantation surgery at Imperial College London and general surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic London. He is also a writer, musician and sculptor, known for kidney and pancreas transplantations, and being part of the surgical team that performed the world's first hand transplantation in 1998 and then the double arm transplantation in 2000. Several of his sculptures are on display around the world, including President Macron at the Élysée Palace in Paris, Pope Francis at the Vatican, Michelangelos David in the Madonna del Parto Museum ...
Go to Profile#22921
Henry Rapoport
#22932
Overall Influence
1918 - 2002 (84 years)
Henry Rapoport was an internationally renowned organic chemist and Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. He is widely recognized for his work in the development of the chemical synthesis of biologically important compounds and pharmaceuticals.
Go to Profile#22922
Ronald McKinnon
#22933
Overall Influence
1935 - 2014 (79 years)
Ronald Ian McKinnon was an applied economist. His primary interests were international economics and economic development, with strong secondary interests in transitional economies and fiscal federalism. Understanding financial institutions in general, and monetary institutions in particular, was central to his teaching and research, with interests ranging from the proper regulation of banks and financial markets in poorer countries to the historical evolution of global and regional monetary systems in the context of the world dollar standard.
Go to Profile#22923
Evelyn Farkas
#22934
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Evelyn Nicolette Farkas is an American national security advisor, author, and foreign policy analyst. She is the current executive director of the McCain Institute, a nonprofit focused on democracy, human rights, and character-driven leadership.
Go to Profile#22924
Mark Amerika
#22935
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Mark Amerika is an American artist, theorist, novelist and professor of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado. He is a graduate of the Literary Arts program at Brown University, where he received his MFA in creative writing in 1997.
Go to Profile#22925
Edmund Copeland
#22936
Overall Influence
Edmund "Ed" J. Copeland is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and professor of physics working in the Faculty of Science at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. Copeland won the 2013 Rayleigh Medal and Prize awarded by the Institute of Physics for his work on particle/string cosmology. He obtained his PhD from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1985, with a thesis entitled "Quantum aspects of Kaluza-Klein cosmologies".
Go to Profile#22926
Peter Vaill
#22937
Overall Influence
Peter Brown Vaill was an organizational change theorist who published widely in the fields of organizational behavior, organization development , and leadership studies, including the intersection of spirituality and leadership.
Go to Profile#22927
Ettore Gotti Tedeschi
#22938
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Ettore Gotti Tedeschi is an Italian economist and banker, and ex-President of the Institute for Works of Religion, also known as the Vatican Bank . Biography Tedeschi worked as an industrial and financial strategy consultant with the French IT company Sema-Metra from 1973 to 1984. In 1985 he began to work on finance for the financier Procomin Imi-BNL, and then switched to Sogei. He worked on the IPO of Parmalat, an Italian dairy and food corporation, which led him to be involved in the negotiations for the acquisition of Federconsorzi in 1991. Meanwhile, Tedeschi entered the Board of Directo...
Go to Profile#22928
Eliz Sanasarian
#22939
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Eliz Sanasarian is an Iranian-American professor of political science at the University of Southern California. She is best known for her expertise and books on ethnic politics and feminism, particularly regarding the Middle East and Iran. Sanasarian joined the faculty in 1985.
Go to Profile#22929
Stefan Johansson
#22940
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Stefan Nils Edwin Johansson is a Swedish racing driver who drove in Formula One for both Ferrari and McLaren, among other teams. Since leaving Formula One he has won the 1997 24 Hours of Le Mans and raced in a number of categories, including CART, various kinds of Sports car racing and Grand Prix Masters.
Go to Profile#22930
John Drewe
#22941
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
John Drewe is a British purveyor of art forgeries who commissioned artist John Myatt to paint them. Drewe earned about £1.8 million executing these art crimes. Early life Drewe was born John Cockett in 1948 in Sussex, England. At the age of 17 he dropped out of school and changed his surname to Drewe. He worked briefly with the British Atomic Energy Authority, having initially convinced his superiors that he had a Ph.D. in physics. He resigned two years later, after this was found to be false. After that, there is a 15-year gap in official records about him — no employment or tax records.
Go to Profile#22931
Gregory Possehl
#22942
Overall Influence
1941 - 2011 (70 years)
Gregory Louis Possehl was a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, United States, and curator of the Asian Collections at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He was involved in excavations of the Indus Valley civilization in India and Pakistan since 1964, and was an author of many books and articles on the Indus Civilization and related topics. He received his BA in anthropology from the University of Washington in 1964, his MA in anthropology from the University of Washington in 1967, and his PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1974.
Go to Profile#22932
Roberto Car
#22943
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Roberto Car is an Italian physicist and the Ralph W. Dornte *31 Professor in Chemistry at Princeton University, where he is also a faculty member in the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials. He conducts research on the simulation of molecular dynamics phenomena.
Go to Profile#22933
Frank L. Lambert
#22944
Overall Influence
1918 - 2018 (100 years)
Frank L. Lambert was an American academic who was Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Occidental College, Los Angeles. He is known for his advocacy of changing the definition of thermodynamic entropy as "disorder" in US general chemistry texts to its replacement by viewing entropy as a measure of energy dispersal. He died in December 2018 at the age of 100.
Go to Profile#22934
Jean-Pierre Chevènement
#22945
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Jean-Pierre Chevènement is a French politician who served as a minister in the 1980s and 1990s best known for his candidacy in the 2002 French presidential election. After serving as mayor of Belfort, he was elected to the Senate for the Territoire de Belfort in 2008. As a cofounder of the PS and founder of the Republican and Citizen Movement , he is a significant figure of the French left.
Go to Profile#22935
Elzbieta Ettinger
#22946
Overall Influence
1925 - 2005 (80 years)
Elżbieta Ettinger was a Polish-American Jewish writer. Early life and education The daughter of Emmanuel Ettinger and Regina Stahl, she was born in Łódź. Along with her family, she was transferred to the Warsaw Ghetto but in 1942, she was able to escape the ghetto with the help of her mother and, using forged identity papers, adopted the name Elżbieta Chodakowska. She worked with the Polish resistance during World War II. In 1946, she received a degree in English and German philology from Jagellonian University and, in 1949, a MA in English philology from Warsaw University. In 1966, she earne...
Go to Profile#22936
David F. Larcker
#22947
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
David F. Larcker is an American academic and author. He is the James Irvin Miller Professor of Accounting, and director of the Corporate Governance Research Initiative at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, senior faculty of The Arthur and Toni Rembi Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, codirector of the Stanford Directors' Consortium Executive Program and Professor of Law , of Stanford Law School. He also serves as a trustee of the Wells Fargo Advantage Funds.
Go to Profile#22937
Halyna Lozko
#22948
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Halyna Lozko is Ukrainian ethnologist, theologian and neopagan leader. In 1993 she founded the group Pravoslavia in Kyiv, which adheres to Slavic Native Faith in the tradition established by Volodymyr Shaian. Lozko also co-founded the Native Faith Association of Ukraine , founded in 1998 and registered on 24 May 2001.
Go to Profile#22938
Robert Hugh Ferrell
#22949
Overall Influence
1921 - 2018 (97 years)
Robert Hugh Ferrell was an American historian and a prolific author or editor of more than 60 books on a wide range of topics, including the U.S. presidency, World War I, and U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy. One of the country's leading historians, Ferrell was widely considered the preeminent authority on the administration of Harry S. Truman, and also wrote books about half a dozen other 20th-century presidents. He was thought by many in the field to be the "dean of American diplomatic historians", a title he disavowed.
Go to Profile#22939
Katie Salen
#22950
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Katie Salen Tekinbas is an American game designer, animator, and educator. She is a professor at the University of California, Irvine. Previously, she taught at DePaul University College of Computing and Digital Media, Parsons The New School for Design the University of Texas at Austin, New York University, and the Rhode Island School of Design. She has an MFA in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Go to Profile#22940
Pratima Bansal
#22951
Overall Influence
Pratima "Tima" Bansal is a Canadian economist and management professor. She is a professor of strategy at the Ivey Business School and director of Ivey's Centre on Building Sustainable Value. She is the founder and executive director of the Network for Business Sustainability, a vehicle aimed at sharing academic research on business sustainability with managers. In April 2020, she was appointed to chair the expert panel on the circular economy by the Council of Canadian Academies.
Go to Profile#22941
Joan Donovan
#22952
Overall Influence
Joan Donovan is an American social science researcher and assistant professor at the College of Communication, Boston University. She was previously a researcher and lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, an affiliate at Data and Society, and was research director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
Go to Profile#22942
Lucy Liu
#22953
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Lucy Alexis Liu is an American actress. She has received several accolades including a Critics' Choice Television Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Seoul International Drama Award, in addition to a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award.
Go to Profile#22943
Wendy Suzuki
#22954
Overall Influence
Wendy Suzuki is a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the New York University Center for Neural Science and popular science communicator. She is the author of Healthy Brain, Happy Life: A Personal Program to Activate Your Brain and Do Everything Better. Since September 1, 2022, she has served as Dean of the New York University College of Arts & Science.
Go to Profile#22944
Matt Cameron
#22955
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Matthew David Cameron is an American musician who is the drummer for the rock band Pearl Jam. He first gained fame as the drummer for Seattle-based rock band Soundgarden, which he joined in 1986. He appeared on each of the band's studio albums until its break-up in 1997. In 1998, Cameron was invited to join Pearl Jam's U.S. Yield Tour and then became a permanent member of the band. In 2010, Cameron became simultaneously a member of Pearl Jam and the reunited Soundgarden. He remained with Soundgarden until its disbandment after the death of lead singer Chris Cornell in 2017. Cameron, along wit...
Go to Profile#22945
Ali Khademhosseini
#22956
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Ali Khademhosseini is the CEO of the Terasaki Institute, non-profit research organization in Los Angeles, and Omeat Inc., a cultivated-meat startup. Before taking his current CEO roles, he spent one year at Amazon Inc. Prior to that he was the Levi Knight chair and professor at the University of California-Los Angeles where he held a multi-departmental professorship in Bioengineering, Radiology, Chemical, and Biomolecular Engineering as well as the Director of Center for Minimally Invasive Therapeutics . From 2005 to 2017, he was a professor at Harvard Medical School, and the Wyss Institute...
Go to Profile#22946
John Tosh
#22957
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
#22947
Anthony J. Lisska
#22958
Overall Influence
Anthony J. Lisska was Maria Theresa Barney professor of philosophy at Denison University. He was a specialist in Thomism and analytic philosophy and the thinking of St. Thomas Aquinas. He described his "intellectual avocation" as regional history and wrote several books on the history of Ohio. In 2016, the Denison University Gilpatrick Center was rededicated as the Lisska Center for Scholarly Engagement in honor of Anthony Lisska and his contributions to the university. These contributions include serving as dean, chairing the philosophy department, and founding and chairing the Honors Program...
Go to Profile#22948
Mark J. Ablowitz
#22959
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Mark Jay Ablowitz is a professor in the department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado. He was born in New York City. Education Ablowitz received his Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from University of Rochester, and completed his Ph.D. in Mathematics under the supervision of David Benney at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1971.
Go to Profile#22949
Peter Gordon
#22960
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Peter Eli Gordon is a historian of philosophy, a critical theorist, and intellectual historian. The Amabel B. James Professor of History at Harvard University, Gordon focuses on continental philosophy and modern German and French thought, with particular emphasis on the German philosophers Theodor Adorno and Martin Heidegger, critical theory, continental philosophy during the interwar crisis, and most recently, secularization and social thought in the 20th century.
Go to Profile#22950
Alan Farthing
#22961
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Alan John Farthing is an English obstetrician and gynaecologist who served as Surgeon-Gynaecologist to Queen Elizabeth II's Royal Household. Career Farthing was born in Winchester, Hampshire. He attended Beacon School in Crowborough, East Sussex, where his father was headmaster. After training at St George's Hospital Medical School, London, Farthing qualified as a doctor in 1986. He became a member of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1991, and a Fellow in 2003.
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