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
#23251
Allan Border
#23262
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Allan Robert Border is an Australian cricket commentator and former international cricketer. A batsman, Border was for many years the captain of the Australian team, and led his team to victory in the 1987 Cricket World Cup, the maiden world title for Australia. His playing nickname was "A.B.". He played 156 Test matches in his career, a record until it was passed by fellow Australian Steve Waugh. Border formerly held the world record for the number of consecutive Test appearances of 153, before it was surpassed in June 2018 by Alastair Cook, and is second on the list of number of Tests as c...
Go to Profile#23252
Rita Steblin
#23263
Overall Influence
1951 - 2019 (68 years)
Rita Katherine Steblin was a musicologist, specializing in archival work combining music history, iconography and genealogical research. Steblin was born in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada; she died in Vienna, Austria. She was the daughter of Sergei and Renata Steblin, a co-founder of Richmond Baptist Church.
Go to Profile#23253
Werner Gitt
#23264
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Werner Gitt is a German engineer and young earth creationist. Before retirement, he was Head of the Department of Information Technology at Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt. Biography Gitt was born in Stallupönen, East Prussia. He became an engineering professor at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Germany's national institute for natural and engineering sciences. By the 1990s he was assuming a leadership role in the German creationist movement, through the publication of several influential creationist books. He was one of the leaders of the nondenominational Wort und Wissen society, the largest creationist society in Germany.
Go to Profile#23254
James Deetz
#23265
Overall Influence
1930 - 2000 (70 years)
James Deetz was an American anthropologist, often known as one of the fathers of historical archaeology. His work focused on culture change and the cultural aspects inherent in the historic and archaeological record, and was concerned primarily with the Massachusetts and Virginia colonies. James Deetz was interested in obtaining valuable information that could be used to better understand the lives of early North American colonists, natives, and African Americans. He investigated a variety of material culture related to these groups to better comprehend their social behavior.
Go to Profile#23255
Kate Bowler
#23266
Overall Influence
Kate Bowler is a Canadian academic and writer from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Bowler is currently an associate professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School. Career Bowler is the author of Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel . She then wrote Everything Happens for a Reason , which was a New York Times hardcover nonfiction best seller.
Go to Profile#23256
Edward Cussler
#23267
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Edward L. Cussler is an American chemical engineer and professor in the department of chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Minnesota. He is internationally known for his work in fluid mechanics, transport phenomena, and gas separations, especially in the areas of membranes and gas sorption. Cussler is an author of more than 250 academic papers, dozens of patents, and five books including the acclaimed text: “Diffusion” . He has served as director, vice president and president of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers , and he presented the AIChE Institute Lecture in 2014.
Go to Profile#23257
Claudia Cardinale
#23268
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinale , known as Claudia Cardinale , is an Italian actress. Born and raised in La Goulette, a neighbourhood of Tunis, Cardinale won the "Most Beautiful Italian Girl in Tunisia" competition in 1957, the prize being a trip to Italy, which quickly led to film contracts, due above all to the involvement of Franco Cristaldi, who acted as her mentor for a number of years and later married her. After making her debut in a minor role with the Egyptian star Omar Sharif in Goha , Cardinale became one of the best-known actresses in Italy with roles in films such as Rocco and His...
Go to Profile#23258
François Bozizé
#23269
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
François Bozizé Yangouvonda is a Central African politician who was President of the Central African Republic from 2003 to 2013. He was also the only Central African president born in modern day Gabon.
Go to Profile#23259
Laura Michaelis
#23270
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Laura A. Michaelis is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics and a faculty fellow in the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. Background and research She received her BA, MA and PhD in linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, writing her thesis under the direction of Charles J. Fillmore.
Go to Profile#23260
Albert de la Chapelle
#23271
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Albert Fredrik de la Chapelle, MD, Ph.D was a Finnish human geneticist, long-time head of Finland's first Department of Medical Genetics at the University of Helsinki, and subsequently professor of Human Cancer Genetics at Ohio State University. He was best known for his role in the elucidation of the genetics of hereditary colorectal cancer and Lynch syndrome.
Go to Profile#23261
Andy Pettitte
#23272
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Andrew Eugene Pettitte is an American former professional baseball pitcher who played 18 seasons in Major League Baseball , primarily for the New York Yankees. He also pitched for the Houston Astros. Pettitte won five World Series championships with the Yankees and was a three-time All-Star. He ranks as MLB's all-time postseason wins leader with 19.
Go to Profile#23262
Gustavo A. Mellander
#23273
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Gustavo "Gus" Adolfo Mellander is a leader in the field of university and college administration in the United States. He served as dean of academic affairs and interim chancellor at Inter American University of Puerto Rico, 1966–69, dean of York College, 1969–72, president of Passaic College in New Jersey from 1975 to 1985, president of Mission College, 1985, chancellor of the West Valley-Mission College District in California from 1985 to 1992, and subsequently as Dean of a Graduate School at George Mason University. In 1981 he was appointed by the governor of New Jersey to the State Board of Education.
Go to Profile#23263
Jakša Cvitanić
#23274
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Jakša Cvitanić is a Richard N. Merkin Professor of Mathematical Finance at the California Institute of Technology. His main research interests are in mathematical finance, contract theory, stochastic control theory, and stochastic differential equations.
Go to Profile#23264
Fatos Arapi
#23275
Overall Influence
1929 - 2018 (89 years)
Fatos Arapi was an Albanian poet, short story writer, translator and journalist. Arapi's publications have been highly praised by his readers and his peers and have been awarded various national and international poetry prizes. In 2008 Arapi became the first Albanian poet to win the Golden Wreath Award .
Go to Profile#23265
Wolfgang Lück
#23276
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Wolfgang Lück is a German mathematician who is an internationally recognized expert in algebraic topology. Life and work After receiving his Abitur from the Ravensberger Gymnasium in Herford in 1975, he studied at the University of Göttingen where he obtained his Diplom in 1981 and his doctoral degree under Tammo tom Dieck in 1984. His thesis was entitled Eine allgemeine Beschreibung für Faserungen auf projektiven Klassengruppen und Whiteheadgruppen.
Go to Profile#23266
David Rees
#23277
Overall Influence
1918 - 2013 (95 years)
David Rees FRS was a British professor of pure mathematics at the University of Exeter, having been head of the Mathematics / Mathematical Sciences Department at Exeter from 1958 to 1983. During the Second World War, Rees was active on Enigma research in Hut 6 at Bletchley Park.
Go to Profile#23267
Dave Mason
#23278
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
David Thomas Mason is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist from Worcester, who first found fame with the rock band Traffic. Over the course of his career, Mason has played and recorded with many notable pop and rock musicians, including Paul McCartney, George Harrison, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Steve Winwood, Fleetwood Mac, Delaney & Bonnie, Leon Russell, and Cass Elliot. One of Mason's best known songs is "Feelin' Alright", recorded by Traffic in 1968 and later by many other performers, including Joe Cocker, whose version of the song was a hit in 1969.
Go to Profile#23268
Shigeaki Hinohara
#23279
Overall Influence
1911 - 2017 (106 years)
Shigeaki Hinohara was a Japanese physician. In 1941 he began his long working association with St. Luke's International Hospital in central Tokyo and worked as a medical doctor throughout the wartime firebombing of the city. From 1990 he served as the hospital's honorary director. He was also Sophia University's Grief Care Institute director emeritus. He was honorary chairman of the Foundation Sasakawa Memorial Health Cooperation. Hinohara is credited with establishing and popularizing Japan's practice of annual medical checkups.
Go to Profile#23269
Courteney Cox
#23280
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Courteney Bass Cox is an American actress and filmmaker. She gained international recognition for her starring role as Monica Geller in the NBC sitcom Friends . Cox received further recognition for starring as Gale Weathers in the horror film franchise Scream .
Go to Profile#23270
Meir Wieseltier
#23281
Overall Influence
1941 - 2023 (82 years)
Meir Wieseltier was an Israeli poet and translator. Biography Meir Wieseltier was born in Moscow in 1941, shortly before the German invasion of Russia. He was taken to Novosibirsk in southwestern Siberia by his mother and two older sisters. His father was killed while serving in the Red Army in Leningrad. After two years in Poland, Germany, and France, the family immigrated to Israel. Wieseltier grew up in Netanya.
Go to Profile#23271
Phil Manzanera
#23282
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Phillip Geoffrey Targett-Adams , known professionally as Phil Manzanera, is an English musician, songwriter and record producer. He is the lead guitarist with Roxy Music, and was the lead guitarist with 801 and Quiet Sun. In 2006, Manzanera co-produced David Gilmour's album On an Island, and played in Gilmour's band for tours in Europe and North America. He wrote and presented a series of 14 one-hour radio programmes for station Planet Rock entitled The A-Z of Great Guitarists.
Go to Profile#23272
Joyce Vance
#23283
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Joyce Alene White Vance is an American lawyer who served as the United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017. She was one of the first five U.S. attorneys, and the first female U.S. attorney, nominated by President Barack Obama.
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Alan Jackson
#23284
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Alan Eugene Jackson is an American singer-songwriter. He is known for performing a style widely regarded as "neotraditional country", as well as penning many of his own songs. Jackson has recorded 21 studio albums, including two Christmas albums, and two gospel albums, as well as released three greatest-hits albums.
Go to Profile#23274
Frederick Newmeyer
#23285
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Frederick J. Newmeyer is an American linguist who is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Washington and adjunct professor in the University of British Columbia Department of Linguistics and the Simon Fraser University Department of Linguistics. He has published widely in theoretical and English syntax and is best known for his work on the history of generative syntax and for his arguments that linguistic formalism and linguistic functionalism are not incompatible, but rather complementary. In the early 1990s he was one of the linguists who helped to renew interest in the evolutionary origin of language.
Go to Profile#23275
Sherrilyn Ifill
#23286
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Sherrilyn Ifill is an American lawyer and the Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq. Endowed Chair in Civil Rights at Howard University. She is a law professor and former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She was the Legal Defense Fund's seventh president since Thurgood Marshall founded the organization in 1940. Ifill is a nationally recognized expert on voting rights and judicial selection. In 2021, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world on its annual Time 100 list.
Go to Profile#23276
John Cornwell
#23287
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
John Cornwell FRSL is a British journalist, author, and academic. Since 1990 he has directed the Science and Human Dimension Project at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was also, until 2017, Founder and Director of the Rustat Conferences. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters in 2011. He was nominated for the PEN/Ackerley Prize for best UK memoir 2007 and shortlisted Specialist Journalist of the Year , British Press Awards 2006. He won the Scientific and Medical Network Book of the Year Award for Hitler's Scientists, 2005; and...
Go to Profile#23277
Ronald Vale
#23288
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Ronald David Vale ForMemRS is an American biochemist and cell biologist. He is a professor at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, University of California, San Francisco. His research is focused on motor proteins, particularly kinesin and dynein. He was awarded the Canada Gairdner International Award for Biomedical Research in 2019, the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine in 2017 together with Ian Gibbons, and the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 2012 alongside Michael Sheetz and James Spudich. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#23278
Dusty Baker
#23289
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Johnnie B "Dusty" Baker Jr. is an American former professional baseball outfielder and manager in Major League Baseball . He played in MLB for 19 seasons, most notably with the Los Angeles Dodgers. During his Dodgers tenure, he was a two-time All-Star, won two Silver Slugger Awards and a Gold Glove Award, and became the first NLCS MVP, which he received during the 1977 National League Championship Series. He also made three World Series appearances, winning one in 1981.
Go to Profile#23279
Roger Sandall
#23290
Overall Influence
1933 - 2012 (79 years)
Frederick Roger Sandall was a New Zealand-born Australian anthropologist, essayist, cinematographer, and scholar. He was a critic of romantic primitivism, which he called designer tribalism, and argued that this rooted Indigenous people in tradition and discouraged them to assimilate to Western culture.
Go to Profile#23280
Robert A. Chase
#23291
Overall Influence
1923 - Present (103 years)
Robert Arthur Chase is an American retired surgeon, researcher and educator. He is considered to be a pioneer in the field of surgery of the hand and of plastic and reconstructive surgery. Early life and education Robert A. Chase obtained a Bachelor of Science from the University of New Hampshire in 1945. Due to war-time acceleration, he was able to earn an M.D. from Yale University in 1947.
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David Vogel
#23292
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
David Vogel is the Soloman P. Lee Distinguished Professor in Business Ethics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of both the Political Science Department and the Haas School of Business, and is Editor of the California Management Review. He was the Jean Monnet Chair, European University Institute, in 1994 and the BP Chair in Transatlantic Relations, there in 2000. At INSEAD he was the Novartis Professor of Management and the Environment in 2000-2001 and the Shell Fellowship in Business and the Environment in 2002.
Go to Profile#23282
Walter George Muelder
#23293
Overall Influence
1907 - 2004 (97 years)
Walter George Muelder was an American social ethicist, public theologian, ecumenist, and Methodist minister. He studied under Edgar S. Brightman at Boston University and began his teaching career at Berea College and the University of Southern California. He served as Dean of Boston University School of Theology from 1945 to 1972, and was known as the "Red Dean" because of his socialist and pacifist leanings.
Go to Profile#23283
George H. Mealy
#23294
Overall Influence
1927 - 2010 (83 years)
George H. Mealy was an American mathematician and computer scientist who invented the namesake Mealy machine, a type of finite state transducer. He was also a pioneer of modular programming, one of the lead designers of the IPL-V programming language, and an early advocate of macro processors in assembly language programming.
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Gérard Férey
#23295
Overall Influence
1941 - 2017 (76 years)
Gérard Férey was a French chemist who was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and a professor at the Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University. He specialized in the physical chemistry of solids and materials. He focused on the crystal chemistry of inorganic fluorides and on porous solids.
Go to Profile#23285
Metin Sitti
#23296
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Metin Sitti is the Director of the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, which he founded in 2014. He is also a Professor in the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at ETH Zurich, a Professor at the School of Medicine and College of Engineering at Koç University and co-founder of Setex Technologies Inc. based in Pittsburgh, USA.
Go to Profile#23286
Len Wein
#23297
Overall Influence
1948 - 2017 (69 years)
Leonard Norman Wein was an American comic book writer and editor best known for co-creating DC Comics' Swamp Thing and Marvel Comics' Wolverine, and for helping revive the Marvel superhero team the X-Men . Additionally, he was the editor for writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons' influential DC miniseries Watchmen.
Go to Profile#23287
Rajit Gadh
#23298
Overall Influence
Rajit Gadh is a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and the founding director of the UCLA Smart Grid Energy Research Center , the UCLA Wireless Internet for Mobile Enterprise Consortium , and the Connected and Autonomous Electric Vehicles Consortium .
Go to Profile#23288
Peter Hammill
#23299
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Peter Joseph Andrew Hammill is an English musician and recording artist. He was a founder member of the progressive rock band Van der Graaf Generator. Best known as a singer-songwriter, he also plays guitar and piano and produces his own recordings and occasionally those of other artists. In 2012, he was recognised with the Visionary award at the first Progressive Music Awards.
Go to Profile#23289
Mark Handley
#23300
Overall Influence
Mark James Handley is Professor of Networked Systems in the Department of Computer Science of University College London since 2003, where he leads the Networks Research Group. Education Handley received his PhD from UCL in 1997, under the supervision of Jon Crowcroft.
Go to Profile#23290
Alexis Sánchez
#23301
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Alexis Alejandro Sánchez Sánchez , also known mononymously as Alexis, is a Chilean professional footballer who plays as a forward for Serie A club Inter Milan and the Chile national team. He is often regarded as the greatest Chilean player of all time.
Go to Profile#23291
Myron Weiner
#23302
Overall Influence
1931 - 1999 (68 years)
Myron Weiner was an American political scientist and renowned scholar of India, South Asia, internal and international migration, ethnic conflict, child labor, democratization, political demography, and the politics and policies of developing countries.
Go to Profile#23292
Naomi Halas
#23303
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Naomi J. Halas is the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and professor of biomedical engineering, chemistry and physics at Rice University. She is also the founding director of Rice University Laboratory for Nanophotonics, and the Smalley-Curl Institute. She invented the first nanoparticle with tunable plasmonic resonances, which are controlled by their shape and structure, and has won numerous awards for her pioneering work in the field of nanophotonics and plasmonics. She was also part of a team that developed the first dark pulse soliton in 1987 while working...
Go to Profile#23293
John Carlstrom
#23304
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
John E. Carlstrom is an American astrophysicist, and Professor, Departments of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Physics, at the University of Chicago. He graduated from Vassar College with a B.A. in 1981, and from the University of California, Berkeley with a Ph.D. in 1988.
Go to Profile#23294
Edwin Mansfield
#23305
Overall Influence
1930 - 1997 (67 years)
Edwin Mansfield was a professor of economics at University of Pennsylvania from 1964 and until his death. From 1985 he was also a director of the Center for Economics and Technology. Edwin Mansfield is best known for his scientific results concerning technological change / diffusion of innovations, and also for his textbooks on microeconomics, managerial economics, and econometrics that were published in millions copies and translated into foreign languages.
Go to Profile#23295
Zoe Todd
#23306
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Zoe Todd is a Métis anthropologist and scholar of Indigenous studies, human-animal studies, science and technology studies and the Anthropocene. She is an associate professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University and a Presidential Visiting Fellow at Yale University during the 2018–19 academic year.
Go to Profile#23296
Dessima Williams
#23307
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Dessima D Williams is a Grenadian diplomat and former Ambassador to the United Nations from Grenada who was reappointed to the ambassadorship in 2008. Since 2022 she has been President of the Senate.
Go to Profile#23297
José Viñals
#23308
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
José Maria Viñals Íñiguez is a Spanish economist and businessman. He serves as Group Chairman of Standard Chartered and Chairman of Standard Chartered Bank, the United Kingdom subsidiary of Standard Chartered.
Go to Profile#23298
Robert C. Stebbins
#23309
Overall Influence
1915 - 2013 (98 years)
Robert Cyril Stebbins was an American herpetologist and illustrator known for his field guides and popular books as well as his studies of reptiles and amphibians. His Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians, first published in 1966, is still considered the definitive reference of its kind, owing to both the quality of the illustrations and the comprehensiveness of the text. A professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, for over 30 years, he was the first curator of herpetology at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, a 1949 Guggenheim fellow, and author of over 70 scientific articles.
Go to Profile#23299
Jamshid Momtaz
#23310
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jamshid Momtaz is an Iranian jurist and academic. He earned his degree in public law at the Faculty of Law and Economy from University of Paris . In 1968, he graduated from the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and held his PhD in public law at the Faculty of Law, Economics and Social Sciences of Panthéon-Assas University .
Go to Profile#23300
Louis Cozolino
#23311
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Louis John Cozolino is an American psychologist and professor of psychology at Pepperdine University. He holds degrees in philosophy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, theology from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UCLA. He has conducted empirical research in schizophrenia, the long-term impact of stress, and child abuse. Cozolino has published numerous articles, several books, and maintains a clinical and consulting practice in Los Angeles.
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