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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people
#23051
Michael Cooper
#23062
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Michael Jerome Cooper is an American basketball coach and former player who is the boys varsity coach at Culver City High School. He played for the Los Angeles Lakers during his entire career in the National Basketball Association, winning five NBA championships with the Lakers during their Showtime era. He was an eight-time selection to the NBA All-Defensive Team, including five times on the first team. He was named the NBA Defensive Player of the Year in 1987.
Go to Profile#23052
Bobby Jindal
#23063
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Piyush "Bobby" Jindal is an American politician who served as the 55th governor of Louisiana from 2008 to 2016. A member of the Republican Party, Jindal previously served as a U.S. representative from Louisiana from 2005 to 2008, and served chair of the Republican Governors Association from 2012 to 2013.
Go to Profile#23053
Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani
#23064
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa bin Hamad bin Abdullah bin Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani is a member of the ruling Al Thani Qatari royal family. He was the ruling Emir of Qatar from 1995 until 2013 when he abdicated the throne, handing power to his son Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. The Qatari government refers to him as the Father Emir.
Go to Profile#23054
Bijan Abdolkarimi
#23065
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Bijan Abdolkarimi is an Iranian philosopher, thinker, translator, and editor. His main interests are ontology, political philosophy and the critique of religious and intellectual traditions. He claims to challenge the dominant ideological discourse in Iran. He has participated in debates at Iranian universities and also in IRIB TV4 in which he has opposed the notion of Islamic humanities. He is also a scholar of Heidegger's thought and philosophy.
Go to Profile#23055
John Prine
#23066
Overall Influence
1946 - 2020 (74 years)
John Edward Prine was an American singer-songwriter of country-folk music. Widely cited as one of the most influential songwriters of his generation, Prine was known for his signature blend of humorous lyrics about love, life, and current events, as well as serious songs about melancholy tales from his life. His songs would often have elements of social commentary and satire. He was active as a composer, recording artist, live performer, and occasional actor from the early 1970s until his death.
Go to Profile#23056
Albert Sacco
#23067
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Albert Sacco Jr. is an American chemical engineer who flew as a Payload Specialist on the Space Shuttle Columbia on Shuttle mission STS-73 in 1995. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Sacco completed a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Northeastern University in Boston in 1973, and then a Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977. He then joined the faculty of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, becoming a full professor and rising to department head in 1989.
Go to Profile#23057
Teori Zavascki
#23068
Overall Influence
1948 - 2017 (69 years)
Teori Albino Zavascki was a Brazilian judge who served as a Minister of the Superior Court of Justice from 8 May 2003 until 29 November 2012, appointed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and as a Minister of the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil from 29 November 2012 until his death on 19 January 2017, having been appointed to the position by President Dilma Rousseff. At the time of his death he was the justice in charge of the trials resulting from Operation Car Wash.
Go to Profile#23058
Lisa Sanders
#23069
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Lisa Sanders is an American physician, medical author and journalist, and associate professor of internal medicine and education at Yale School of Medicine. In 2002, she began writing a column for The New York Times called Diagnosis, that covered medical mystery cases. She is an attending physician at Yale-New Haven Hospital, which serves as the model on which Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital was fashioned for the series House M.D. Her column was the inspiration for the television series House M.D., and she worked as a consultant on the show. In 2019, Netflix aired the program Diagnosis, featuri...
Go to Profile#23059
Eric Goles
#23070
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Eric Antonio Goles Chacc is a Chilean mathematician and computer scientist of Croatian descent. He studied civil engineering at the University of Chile before taking two doctorates at the University of Grenoble in France. A professor at the University of Chile, he is known for his work on cellular automata.
Go to Profile#23060
Nicholas Johnson
#23071
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Nicholas Johnson is an American academic and lawyer. He wrote How to Talk Back to Your Television Set and was a Federal Communications Commission commissioner from 1966 to 1973. He is retired from teaching at the University of Iowa College of Law, with an emphasis on communications and Internet law, and since 2006 has posted over 1000 blog essays.
Go to Profile#23061
Marcel Roche
#23072
Overall Influence
1920 - 2003 (83 years)
Marcel Roche Dugand was a physician, scientist and scientific leader. He was born into a wealthy family of French origin. His father, Luis Roche was a well known urbanist. His secondary education was conducted in Paris, France, graduating in 1938. Following this, he moved to the US and got a Bachelor of Science degree at St. Joseph's College, in Philadelphia, followed by studies in medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School, in Baltimore. After graduation in 1946, he specialized in endocrinology and nuclear medicine. Before returning to Venezuela in 1951, he carried out biomedical research for...
Go to Profile#23062
Anatoly Dorodnitsyn
#23073
Overall Influence
1910 - 1994 (84 years)
Anatoly Alekseyevich Dorodnitsyn 19 November , 2 December , 1910 – 7 June 1994, Moscow Dorodnitsyn was a Full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences ,and a professor at the department of physical and mathematical sciences , majoring in geophysics.
Go to Profile#23063
Casey Kasem
#23074
Overall Influence
1932 - 2014 (82 years)
Kemal Amin "Casey" Kasem was an American disc jockey, actor and radio presenter, who created and hosted several radio countdown programs, notably American Top 40. He was the first actor to voice Shaggy Rogers in the Scooby-Doo franchise and as Dick Grayson/Robin in Super Friends .
Go to Profile#23064
Diego Costa
#23075
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Diego da Silva Costa is a professional footballer who plays as a striker for Campeonato Brasileiro Série A club Botafogo. Costa began his football career in his native Brazil before joining Braga in Portugal in 2006, aged 17. He never played for the club but spent time on loan at Penafiel, and signed with Atlético Madrid the following year. Over the next two seasons he had loan periods with Braga, Celta Vigo and Albacete. His form earned him a move to fellow La Liga club Real Valladolid in 2009, where he spent one season, finishing as their top goalscorer, before returning to Atlético Madrid....
Go to Profile#23065
Fritz Gesztesy
#23076
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Friedrich "Fritz" Gesztesy is a well-known Austrian-American mathematical physicist and Professor of Mathematics at Baylor University, known for his important contributions in spectral theory, functional analysis, nonrelativistic quantum mechanics , ordinary and partial differential operators, and completely integrable systems . He has authored more than 300 publications on mathematics and physics.
Go to Profile#23066
Richard Wassersug
#23077
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Richard Joel Wassersug was an Honorary professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences at the University of British Columbia. He was also an adjunct professor in the Department of Medical Neuroscience at Dalhousie University with a cross appointment in the Department of Psychology. In addition, he is an adjunct professor at The Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health & Society , La Trobe University.
Go to Profile#23067
Mohamed Atta
#23078
Overall Influence
1968 - 2001 (33 years)
Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta was an Egyptian terrorist hijacker from al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, he was the ringleader of the September 11 attacks and served as the hijacker-pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, which he crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center as part of the coordinated suicide attacks. Aged 33, he was the oldest of the 19 hijackers who took part in the mission.
Go to Profile#23068
Terrell Davis
#23079
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Terrell Lamar Davis is an American former professional football player who was a running back for the Denver Broncos of the National Football League from 1995 to 2001. He is the Broncos all-time leading rusher and still holds the record for most postseason single-season touchdowns , which he achieved in 1997. He is also credited with starting the "Mile High Salute", a celebratory tradition among Denver Broncos players after scoring a touchdown. Davis was elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2017. Despite his short seven year tenure , Davis is often regarded as one of the greatest ru...
Go to Profile#23069
Narasimhaiengar Mukunda
#23080
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Narasimhaiengar Mukunda is an Indian theoretical physicist. Mukunda's higher education began at Delhi University, where he was granted a B.Sc. degree in 1953. For his Ph.D. he studied at University of Rochester with E. C. G. Sudarshan and graduated in 1964. Mukunda’s thesis dealt with Hamiltonian mechanics, symmetry groups and elementary particles. He also studied group theory at Princeton University with Valentine Bargmann, including topological groups and Lie theory.
Go to Profile#23070
Frances Bronet
#23081
Overall Influence
Frances Bronet is a Canadian architect and academic administrator, currently serving as president of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Education Bronet holds three undergraduate degrees from McGill University, including a Bachelor of Science in Architecture and professional Bachelor of Architecture from the McGill School of Architecture as well as a degree in civil engineering. She also completed a management diploma program. Bronet later earned an Master of Science in Architectural Design from Columbia University. She is a member of Ordre des architectes du Québec.
Go to Profile#23071
Charles Palliser
#23082
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Charles Palliser is an American-born and British-based novelist. His most well-known novel, The Quincunx, has sold over a million copies internationally. He is the elder brother of the late author and freelance journalist Marcus Palliser.
Go to Profile#23072
Verna Wright
#23083
Overall Influence
1928 - 1998 (70 years)
Verna Wright, MD, FRCP, was a British evangelist, physician, professor of rheumatology at the University of Leeds and co-founder of United Beach Missions. Biography Wright was educated at Bedford School and studied medicine at the University of Liverpool, then spent two years at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. As an actively practising evangelical Christian, Wright helped to found United Beach Missions, an organization whose goal was to preach the Christian gospel message to holidaymakers in Llandudno. The organization, under his leadership, grew to over 3000 people, ministering on the beaches of Britain, France and Belgium.
Go to Profile#23073
Mazisi Kunene
#23084
Overall Influence
1930 - 2006 (76 years)
Mazisi Kunene was a South African poet best known for his translation of the epic Zulu poem Emperor Shaka the Great. While in exile from South Africa's apartheid regime, Kunene was an active supporter and organiser of the anti-apartheid movement in Europe and Africa. He would later teach at University of California, Los Angeles , and become Africa's and South Africa's first poet laureate.
Go to Profile#23074
Paul Cohn
#23085
Overall Influence
1924 - 2006 (82 years)
Paul Moritz Cohn FRS was Astor Professor of Mathematics at University College London, 1986–1989, and author of many textbooks on algebra. His work was mostly in the area of algebra, especially non-commutative rings.
Go to Profile#23075
Sheldon Stryker
#23086
Overall Influence
1924 - 2016 (92 years)
Sheldon Stryker was an American sociologist. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on May 26, 1924, Stryker was raised by his grandfather and his aunts after his mother died. He sought to enlist in the United States Army in 1942, but was rejected due to bad vision. Stryker was drafted and became a combat medic the next year. After World War II ended, he enrolled at the University of Minnesota to study social work. Stryker changed his major to sociology later completed a doctorate in the subject at UM in 1955. He taught at Indiana University, Bloomington from 1950 to 2002. Stryker served as editor in c...
Go to Profile#23076
Tor Nørretranders
#23087
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Tor Nørretranders is a Danish author of popular science. He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. His books and lectures have primarily been focused on light popular science and its role in society, often with Nørretranders' own advice about how society should integrate new findings in popular science. He introduced the notion of exformation in his book The User Illusion.
Go to Profile#23077
Jordi Sabater Pi
#23088
Overall Influence
1922 - 2009 (87 years)
Jordi Sabater Pi was a Spanish primatologist and worldwide specialist in ethology, the study of animal behavior. Sabater was known for describing the cultural behaviors of several species, including the use of tools by chimpanzeess. During the 1960s, he purchased Snowflake, a very rare albino gorilla, and transported him to Barcelona Zoo, where he lived until his death in 2003.
Go to Profile#23078
Stephen Mulhern
#23089
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Stephen Daniel Mulhern is an English television presenter, magician and comedian. He began his career at CITV presenting the children’s television shows Finger Tips and Tricky TV . Mulhern has presented various television shows for ITV, including Britain's Got More Talent , Animals Do the Funniest Things , This Morning's Hub , Catchphrase , Big Star's Little Star , In for a Penny , Rolling In It , Deal or No Deal and Dancing on Ice .
Go to Profile#23079
Jason Derulo
#23090
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (37 years)
Jason Joel Desrouleaux , known professionally as Jason Derulo , is an American pop and R&B singer and songwriter. Since the start of his solo recording career in 2009, he has sold over 250 million singles worldwide and has achieved eleven platinum singles including "Wiggle", "Talk Dirty", "Want to Want Me", "Trumpets", "It Girl", "In My Head", "Ridin' Solo", and "Whatcha Say".
Go to Profile#23080
Tony Scott
#23091
Overall Influence
1944 - 2012 (68 years)
Anthony David Leighton Scott was an English film director and producer. He made his theatrical film debut with The Hunger and went on to direct highly successful action and thriller films such as Top Gun , Beverly Hills Cop II , Days of Thunder , The Last Boy Scout , Crimson Tide , Enemy of the State , Man on Fire , Déjà Vu , and Unstoppable .
Go to Profile#23081
Masakazu Konishi
#23092
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Masakazu "Mark" Konishi was a Japanese neurobiologist, known for his research on the neuroscience underlying the behavior of owls and songbirds. Early life and education Konishi was born on 17 February 1933 in Kyoto, Japan, the only child of poor "Nishijin" weavers. As a child during the Second World War, he grew edible plants in his family's backyard and rooftop, and raised rabbits for food. In his spare time, he enjoyed playing with animals, including insects, fish, birds, rabbits, and dogs.
Go to Profile#23082
Nils Ole Oermann
#23093
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Nils Ole Oermann is a German academic and business ethicist. Education and academic career At the University of Leipzig, Oermann received his master's degree in Protestant theology in 1997 after studying theology, law, history and philosophy there and at Münster for four years. In 1996, he obtained his master’s degree and his D.Phil. in 1998 as he was a Rhodes Scholar at Christ Church, Oxford. His doctoral thesis was on colonial history. In 2013 he was appointed by the Rhodes Trust as its national secretary administering the Rhodes Scholarship for German nationals in Oxford.
Go to Profile#23083
Jacques Aumont
#23094
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jacques Aumont is a French academic and writer on film theory. Born in Avignon he initially trained as an engineer but started contributing film criticism to Cahiers du cinéma in the late 1960s. He is professor emeritus at University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle, director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, and professor at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts.
Go to Profile#23084
C. George Boeree
#23095
Overall Influence
1952 - 2021 (69 years)
Cornelis George Boeree was an American psychologist and professor emeritus at Shippensburg University, specializing in personality theory and the history of psychology. Life Boeree was born in Badhoevedorp, near Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. He moved with his parents and brother to the United States in 1956 and grew up on Long Island, New York. He married Judy Kovarik in 1972 and had three daughters. He received his doctoral degree in 1980 from Oklahoma State University. He died on January 5, 2021, at his home in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#23085
Luis Miguel
#23096
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Luis Miguel Gallego Basteri is a Mexican singer and record producer. Born in Puerto Rico to parents of Spanish and Italian descent, he is often referred to as El Sol de Mexico , derived from the nickname his mother gave him as a child: "Mi sol" . Luis Miguel has sung in multiple genres and styles, including pop songs, ballads, boleros, tangos, jazz, big band, and mariachi. Luis Miguel is also recognized as the only Latin singer of his generation to not cross over to the Anglo market during the "Latin Explosion" in the 1990s.
Go to Profile#23086
Meindert Fennema
#23097
Overall Influence
1946 - 2023 (77 years)
Meindert Fennema was a Dutch political scientist and Emeritus Professor of political science, who was attached to the Department of Political Science and the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies of the University of Amsterdam, where he held the chair on Political Theory of Ethnic Relations.
Go to Profile#23087
Charles Epstein
#23098
Overall Influence
1933 - 2011 (78 years)
Charles Joseph Epstein was an American geneticist who was severely injured in 1993 when he became a victim of a mail bomb attack by the Unabomber. He was a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco and the Buck Institute for Age Research.
Go to Profile#23088
Douglas E. Winter
#23099
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Douglas E. Winter is an American writer, critic and lawyer. Winter grew up in Granite City, Illinois. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1975 and became a lawyer in Washington, DC, currently working as Of Counsel/Director of Analytics Review Technology at internationally based law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP, concentrating on complex litigation, information management, electronic discovery, and entertainment law. Winter has also taught legal writing at the University of Iowa.
Go to Profile#23089
David Hurst Thomas
#23100
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
David Hurst Thomas is the curator of North American Archaeology in the Division of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History and a professor at Richard Gilder Graduate School. He was previously a chairman of the American Museum of Natural History's Anthropology Division.
Go to Profile#23090
Edward D. Goldberg
#23101
Overall Influence
1921 - 2008 (87 years)
Edward David Goldberg was a marine chemist, known for his studies of pollution in the oceans. Biography Goldberg was born on August 2, 1921, in Sacramento, California. He received his B.S. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1942, and then, after serving in the Navy during World War II, did his graduate studies under the supervision of Harrison Brown at the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1949. For the rest of his life, he worked as a professor of chemistry at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.
Go to Profile#23091
Lisa Leslie
#23102
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Lisa Deshaun Leslie is an American former professional basketball player. She is currently the head coach for Triplets in the BIG3 professional basketball league, as well as a studio analyst for Orlando Magic broadcasts on Bally Sports Florida. In 2002, Leslie made history as the first player to dunk during a Women's National Basketball Association game. Leslie was ranked 5th on ESPN.com's 2021 list of the WNBA's greatest players of all time.
Go to Profile#23092
Tirthankar Roy
#23103
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Tirthankar Roy is an Indian economic historian and Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics. He is one of the most influential researchers of the Economic History of South Asia and India, having published over 25 books and numerous articles. His work spans the fields of Economic History, Business History and Social History, particularly studying the effects of British colonialism in India on its economic development.
Go to Profile#23093
Richard D. Smith
#23104
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Richard Dale Smith is a chemist and a Battelle Fellow and chief scientist within the biological sciences division, as well as the director of proteomics research at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory . Smith is also director of the NIH Proteomics Research Resource for Integrative Biology, an adjunct faculty member in the chemistry departments at Washington State University and the University of Utah, and an affiliate faculty member at the University of Idaho and the Department of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology, Oregon Health & Science University. He is the author or co-author of ap...
Go to Profile#23094
Denis Villeneuve
#23105
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Denis Villeneuve is a Canadian filmmaker. He is a four-time recipient of the Canadian Screen Award for Best Direction, winning for Maelström in 2001, Polytechnique in 2009, Incendies in 2010 and Enemy in 2013. The first three of these films also won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Motion Picture, while the latter was awarded the prize for best Canadian film of the year by the Toronto Film Critics Association.
Go to Profile#23095
Alan Taylor
#23106
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Alan Shaw Taylor is an American historian and scholar who is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. A specialist in the early history of the United States, Taylor has written extensively about the colonial history of the United States, the American Revolution and the early American Republic. Taylor has received two Pulitzer Prizes and the Bancroft Prize, and was also a finalist for the National Book Award for non-fiction. In 2020 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Go to Profile#23096
Ivan Mauger
#23107
Overall Influence
1939 - 2018 (79 years)
Ivan Gerald Mauger was a New Zealand motorcycle speedway rider. He won a record six World Championships , a feat equalled only with the inclusion of the Speedway GP Championships by Tony Rickardsson of Sweden who won one World Final and five GP Championships. Mauger rode for several British teams – Wimbledon Dons, Newcastle Diamonds, Belle Vue Aces, Exeter Falcons and the Hull Vikings. In 2010, Mauger was named an FIM Legend for his motorcycling achievements.
Go to Profile#23097
Jens Frahm
#23108
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Jens Frahm is a German biophysicist and physicochemist. He is Research Group Leader of the Biomedical NMR group at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen, Germany . Early life and education From 1969 to 1974 Frahm studied physics at the University of Göttingen. His PhD thesis under the guidance of Hans Strehlow at the MPI for Biophysical Chemistry was devoted to the use of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for a characterization of the molecular dynamics of hydrated ions in complex solutions. He received his PhD degree in 1977 in physical chemistry.
Go to Profile#23098
Bernard J. Lechner
#23109
Overall Influence
1932 - 2014 (82 years)
Bernard J. Lechner was an electronics engineer and formerly vice president, RCA Laboratories, where he worked for 30 years covering various aspects of television and information display technologies.
Go to Profile#23099
Anthony Neuberger
#23110
Overall Influence
Anthony Neuberger is an academic in the United Kingdom, currently Professor of Finance at Cass Business School. Neuberger has previously held senior positions at other academic institutions including Warwick Business School and London Business School.
Go to Profile#23100
George Rousseau
#23111
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
George Sebastian Rousseau is an American cultural historian resident in the United Kingdom. Early life and education George Rousseau was educated at Amherst College and Princeton University, where he obtained his doctorate.
Go to Profile