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
#23401
Albert Doja
#23412
Overall Influence
Albert Doja is an Albanian-born French University Professor in Anthropology. He obtained his PhD in Social Anthropology in 1993 from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences Paris and his Habilitation in 2004 from the University of Paris , the Sorbonne.
Go to Profile#23402
Thomas Reilly
#23413
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Thomas Francis Reilly is an American attorney and politician who served as the 45th Massachusetts Attorney General. He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to Irish immigrant parents. He was one of three candidates who sought the Democratic nomination for governor of Massachusetts in the 2006 election. Former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Deval Patrick won the party's nomination and the general election, defeating Reilly and businessman Chris Gabrieli.
Go to Profile#23403
Boris Levit
#23414
Overall Influence
Boris Ya. Levit is a professor of statistics at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Career Levit obtained his M.Sc. in mathematics from Moscow State University and his Ph.D. in statistics from Russian Academy of Science in 1975 . While at Moscow State University, he was influenced by many famous mathematicians of the era, including Andrei Kolmogorov.
Go to Profile#23404
Patricia Schulte
#23415
Overall Influence
Patricia M. Schulte is a Canadian zoologist who is a Professor of Zoology at the University of British Columbia. Her research considers physiology, genomics and population genetics. Schulte is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the former President of the Canadian Society of Zoologists.
Go to Profile#23405
Michael Eigen
#23416
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Michael Eigen is a psychologist and psychoanalyst. He is the author of 26 books and numerous papers. He has given a private seminar on Winnicott, Bion, Lacan and his own work since the 1970s. Eigen is known for his work with patients "who had been given up on by others", including people who experience psychosis.
Go to Profile#23406
Martin St. Louis
#23417
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Martin St. Louis is a Canadian hockey coach and former professional ice hockey player. He is the current head coach of the Montreal Canadiens of the National Hockey League . An undrafted player, St. Louis played 1,134 games and scored 391 goals and 1,033 points in an NHL career that began with the Calgary Flames in 1998 and ended with the New York Rangers in 2015. St. Louis is best remembered for having played with the Tampa Bay Lightning from 2000 until being traded to the Rangers in 2014. He also briefly played with HC Lausanne of the Swiss National League A. He was a member of the Tampa Bay Lightning's 2004 Stanley Cup championship team.
Go to Profile#23407
Yuvraj Singh
#23418
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Yuvraj Singh is a former Indian international cricketer who played in all formats of the game. He is an all-rounder who batted left-handed in the middle order and bowled slow left-arm orthodox . He has won 7 Player of the Series awards in ODI cricket, which is joint 3rd highest by an Indian, shared with former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly. He is also the son of former Indian fast bowler and Punjabi actor Yograj Singh.
Go to Profile#23408
Stefano Soatto
#23419
Overall Influence
Stefano Soatto is professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles , in Los Angeles, CA, where he is also professor of electrical engineering and founding director of the UCLA Vision Lab.
Go to Profile#23409
Roberto Cingolani
#23420
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Roberto Cingolani is an Italian physicist, academic and manager who served as minister for ecological transition in the cabinet of Prime Minister Mario Draghi from 2021 to 2022. On May 10 2023, the Board of Directors of Leonardo appointed Mr. Roberto Cingolani to the position of Chief Executive Officer and General Manager.
Go to Profile#23410
John R. Stilgoe
#23421
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
John Robert Stilgoe is a historian and photographer who is the Robert and Lois Orchard Professor in the History of Landscape at the Visual and Environmental Studies Department of Harvard University, where he has been teaching since 1977. He is also a fellow of the Society of American Historians. He was featured on a 60 Minutes episode in 2004 entitled "The Eyes Have It".
Go to Profile#23411
John S. Fossey
#23422
Overall Influence
John S. Fossey was a British chemist. He was a professor of synthetic chemistry at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, and a visiting professor at Henan Normal University and guest professor at East China University of Science and Technology, both in China. His research was in molecular recognition and catalysis, and he was a user of boronic acid derivatives. He was a former industry fellow of the Royal Society.
Go to Profile#23412
Dana D. Nelson
#23423
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Dana D. Nelson is a professor of English at Vanderbilt University and a prominent progressive advocate for citizenship and democracy. She is notable for her criticism—in her books such as Bad for Democracy—of excessive presidential power and for exposing a tendency by Americans towards presidentialism, which she defines as the people's neglect of basic citizenship duties while hoping the president will solve most problems. Her scholarship focuses on early American literature relating to citizenship and democratic government.
Go to Profile#23413
Guy Terjanian
#23424
Overall Influence
Guy Terjanian is a French mathematician who has worked on algebraic number theory. He achieved his Ph.D. under Claude Chevalley in 1966, and at that time published a counterexample to the original form of a conjecture of Emil Artin, which suitably modified had just been proved as the Ax-Kochen theorem.
Go to Profile#23414
George Soros
#23425
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
George Soros is a Hungarian-American billionaire investor and philanthropist. , he had a net worth of US$6.7 billion, having donated more than $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations, of which $15 billion has already been distributed, representing 64% of his original fortune. Forbes called Soros the "most generous giver" . He is a resident of New York.
Go to Profile#23415
Richard Hooker
#23426
Overall Influence
1924 - 1997 (73 years)
Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr. was an American writer and surgeon who wrote under the pseudonym Richard Hooker. Hornberger's best-known work is his novel MASH , based on his experiences as a wartime United States Army surgeon doctor during the Korean War and written in collaboration with W.C. Heinz. It was used as the basis for an award-winning, critically and commercially successful movie – M*A*S*H — and two years later in an acclaimed long running television series of the same title.
Go to Profile#23416
Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher
#23427
Overall Influence
1940 - 2023 (83 years)
Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher was an Ethiopian scientist who won the Right Livelihood Award in 2000 "for his exemplary work to safeguard biodiversity and the traditional rights of farmers and communities to their genetic resources."
Go to Profile#23417
Ethan Canin
#23428
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Ethan Andrew Canin is an American author, educator, and physician. He is a member of the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. Canin was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, while his parents were vacationing from Iowa City, where his father, Stuart Canin, taught violin at the University of Iowa. He and his family moved around the midwestern and northeastern United States, and eventually settled in San Francisco, California, where he attended Town School and later graduated from San Francisco University High School. He attended Stanford University and earned an undergraduate degree in English.
Go to Profile#23418
Frank Steglich
#23429
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Frank Steglich is a German physicist and the founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden, Germany. Education and career Steglich was born in Dresden and studied physics in the University of Münster and the University of Göttingen, where he received his PhD under Rudolf Hilsch.
Go to Profile#23419
Selwyn Cudjoe
#23430
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Selwyn Cudjoe is a Trinidadian academic, scholar, historian, essayist and editor who is Professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. He was also the Margaret E. Deffenbaugh and LeRoy T. Carlson Professor in Comparative Literature and the Marion Butler McClean Professor in the History of Ideas at Wellesley. Cudjoe's particular expertise is Caribbean literature and Caribbean intellectual history, and he teaches courses on the African-American literary tradition, African literature, black women writers, and Caribbean literature.
Go to Profile#23420
Carolyn Fischer
#23431
Overall Influence
Carolyn Fischer is an environmental economist. She was born in Ontario, later moving to the United States. She is a senior fellow for Resources for the Future, as well as being a Canada 150 Research Chair in Climate Economics, Innovation, and Policy. She is also a professor of environmental and natural resource economics at Vrije Universiteit-Amsterdam.
Go to Profile#23421
Kyle Powys Whyte
#23432
Overall Influence
Kyle Powys Whyte is an Indigenous philosopher and climate/environmental justice scholar. He is a Professor of Environment and Sustainability and George Willis Pack Professor at the University of Michigan's School for Environment and Sustainability. Whyte formally served as the Timnick Chair in the Humanities in the Department of Philosophy at Michigan State University's College of Arts & Letters.
Go to Profile#23422
Yoshiyuki Sakaki
#23433
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
is a Japanese molecular biologist. He was the sixth president of Toyohashi University of Technology and an emeritus professor of the University of Tokyo. Sakaki was born in Nagoya. He received a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from the University of Tokyo, and received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Tokyo in 1971.
Go to Profile#23423
Donald Acheson
#23434
Overall Influence
1926 - 2010 (84 years)
Sir Ernest Donald Acheson was a British physician and epidemiologist who served as Chief Medical Officer of the United Kingdom from 1983 to 1991. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Early life Acheson was born in Belfast on 17 September 1926. His father, Captain Malcolm King Acheson, MC, MD, was a doctor who specialised in public health, and his mother, Dorothy Josephine , was the daughter of a Tyneside ship builder. He was educated at Merchiston Castle School, Brasenose College, Oxford . His elder brother, Roy Acheson , is Emeritus Professor of Community Medicine in the University of ...
Go to Profile#23424
Lawrence M. Principe
#23435
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Lawrence M. Principe is the Drew Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of History of Science and Technology and the Department of Chemistry. He is also currently the Director of the Charles Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe, an interdisciplinary center for research at Johns Hopkins. He is the first recipient of the Francis Bacon Medal for significant contributions to the history of science. Principe's research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and a 2015-2016 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Go to Profile#23425
John Mills
#23436
Overall Influence
1908 - 2005 (97 years)
Sir John Mills was an English actor who appeared in more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades. He excelled on camera as an appealing British everyman who often portrayed guileless, wounded war heroes. In 1971, he received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Ryan's Daughter.
Go to Profile#23426
Daniel Gottesman
#23437
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Daniel Gottesman is a physicist, known for his work regarding quantum error correction, in particular the invention of the stabilizer formalism for quantum error-correcting codes, and the Gottesman–Knill theorem. He is a faculty member at the University of Maryland.
Go to Profile#23427
Michael W. Holmes
#23438
Overall Influence
Michael W. Holmes is the former Chair of the Department of Biblical and Theological Studies at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota and has taught at Bethel since 1982. Life Holmes received a BA in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara , an MA in New Testament from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School , and a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary . He did his PhD work under Bruce Metzger, who was widely considered to be one of the most influential New Testament scholars of the 20th century. Holmes' primary research areas are in New Testament textual criticism and the A...
Go to Profile#23428
David Gordon
#23439
Overall Influence
1944 - 1996 (52 years)
David M. Gordon was an American economist and Professor of Economics at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research. He founded the Institute for Labor Education and Research in 1975 and later the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis in New York City. Gordon worked to disseminate progressive economic ideas to the general public and to contribute to the development of a left-political movement in the United States. Gordon's work dealt mainly with discrimination and labor market segmentation. He coined the term social structure of accumulation which gave rise to an extens...
Go to Profile#23429
Kobe Bryant
#23440
Overall Influence
1978 - 2020 (42 years)
Kobe Bean Bryant was an American professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he spent his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association . Widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the sport, Bryant won five NBA championships and was an 18-time All-Star, a 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, a 12-time member of the All-Defensive Team, the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player , and a two-time NBA Finals MVP. Bryant also led the NBA in scoring twice and ranks fourth in league all-time regular season and postseason scoring. He was p...
Go to Profile#23430
Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek
#23441
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek is a Polish utilitarian philosopher and a university professor at the Institute of Philosophy at University of Łódź. She has also taught at a summer seminar on utilitarian ethics at the European Graduate School and Spring School for PhD students at the Dutch Research School of Philosophy. She is best known for her collaborations with the Australian philosopher Peter Singer.
Go to Profile#23431
Alexander Pines
#23442
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Alexander Pines is an American chemist. He is the Glenn T. Seaborg Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, Chancellor's Professor Emeritus and Professor of the Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences and the Department of Bioengineering. He was born in 1945, grew up in Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia and studied undergraduate mathematics and chemistry in Israel at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Coming to the United States in 1968, Pines obtained his Ph.D. in chemical physics at M.I.T. in 1972 ...
Go to Profile#23432
Idriz Ajeti
#23443
Overall Influence
1917 - 2019 (102 years)
Idriz Ajeti was an Albanologist from Kosovo and one of the main researchers and authorities on the Albanian language studies of post World War II. He was involved for a long period in the academic life of the University of Pristina, and was a member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo, being its chairman for seven years.
Go to Profile#23433
Douglas Davies
#23444
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Douglas James Davies, is a Welsh Anglican theologian, anthropologist, and academic, specialising in the history, theology, and sociology of death. He is Professor in the Study of Religion at the University of Durham. His fields of expertise also include anthropology, the study of religion, the rituals and beliefs surrounding funerary rites and cremation around the globe, Mormonism and Mormon studies. His research interests cover identity and belief, and Anglican leadership.
Go to Profile#23434
Eric H. Cline
#23445
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Eric H. Cline is an American author, historian, archaeologist, and professor of ancient history and archaeology at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he is Professor of Classics and Anthropology and the former Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, as well as Director of the GWU Capitol Archaeological Institute. He is also the advisor for the undergraduate archaeology majors, for which he was awarded the GWU Award for "Excellence in Undergraduate Departmental Advising" . Cline served as co-editor of the Bulletin of the Amer...
Go to Profile#23435
Neophyte of Bulgaria
#23446
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Patriarch Neophyte has been the Patriarch of All Bulgaria, head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church since 24 February 2013. Prior to his election, he was the Metropolitan Bishop of Ruse and Bishop of Dorostol and Cherven .
Go to Profile#23436
Nigel Barber
#23447
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Nigel William Thomas Barber is an Irish-born American biopsychologist and author. Biography Barber emigrated from his native Ireland to the United States in 1982. He received his Ph.D. in biopsychology from Hunter College of the City University of New York in 1989, after which he taught at Bemidji State University as an instructor for one year, and then at Birmingham-Southern College as an assistant professor.
Go to Profile#23437
Mikhail Kapranov
#23448
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Mikhail Kapranov, is a Russian mathematician, specializing in algebraic geometry, representation theory, mathematical physics, and category theory. He is currently a professor of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at the University of Tokyo.
Go to Profile#23438
Gary L. Wolfram
#23449
Overall Influence
Gary Lee Wolfram is an American economist. He is the William E. Simon Professor in Economics and Public Policy at Hillsdale College and President of Hillsdale Policy Group, a consulting firm specializing in taxation and policy analysis.
Go to Profile#23439
Tammam Hassan
#23450
Overall Influence
1918 - 2011 (93 years)
Tammam Hassan was an academic in the field of Arabic linguistics. Education and career Hassan was born in 1918 in the Upper Egyptian village of ElKarank. In 1929 Hassan completed memorizing the Qur’an. The following year he moved to Cairo to attend Al-Azhar primary-school institute. He graduated from Al-Azhar high-school institute in 1939. He attended Dar Al-Ulom College, where he majored in Arabic Language and graduated in 1943 with an associate degree. He then continued to study education and psychology at Dar Al-Ulom College, graduating in 1945 with his teaching license. The following year he moved to London to learn English and finish his graduate studies.
Go to Profile#23440
J. Michael Straczynski
#23451
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Joseph Michael Straczynski is an American filmmaker and comic book writer. He is the founder of Synthetic Worlds Ltd. and Studio JMS and is best known as the creator of the science fiction television series Babylon 5 and its spinoff Crusade , as well as the series Jeremiah and Sense8 . He is the executor of the estate of Harlan Ellison.
Go to Profile#23441
The Notorious B.I.G.
#23452
Overall Influence
1972 - 1997 (25 years)
Christopher George Latore Wallace , better known by his stage names The Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls, or simply Biggie, was an American rapper. Rooted in East Coast hip hop and particularly gangsta rap, he is widely considered one of the greatest rappers of all time. Wallace became known for his distinctive laid-back lyrical delivery, offsetting the lyrics' often grim content.
Go to Profile#23442
Awi Federgruen
#23453
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Awi Federgruen is a Dutch/American mathematician and operations researcher and Charles E. Exley Professor of Management at the Columbia Business School and affiliate professor at the university's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Go to Profile#23443
Marion Maddox
#23454
Overall Influence
Marion Maddox is an Australian author, academic and political commentator. She is a professor in the department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University. Maddox is a regular commentator on issues of religion and politics in the Australian media and is a member of the Uniting Church. She authored the book God Under Howard: The rise of the religious right in Australian politics which compared the Howard Government with the religious right in the United States and criticised the decline of mainstream Christianity in Australia.
Go to Profile#23444
Giuliano Amato
#23455
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Giuliano Amato is an Italian politician who twice served as Prime Minister of Italy, first from 1992 to 1993 and again from 2000 to 2001. Upon Arnaldo Forlani's death in July 2023, Amato became the country's earliest-serving Prime Minister.
Go to Profile#23445
John Graham
#23456
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
John D. Graham is a former senior official in the George W. Bush administration and the former dean of the Indiana University O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs . Graham stepped down from the deanship to return to the O'Neill School faculty in the 2019 academic year.
Go to Profile#23446
Ron Geaves
#23457
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Ron Geaves is a British scholar of religious studies who was professor of the comparative study of religion at Liverpool Hope University in England, retiring in December 2013. He was formerly Programme Leader and Chair in religious studies at the University of Chester in England and Head of Department at the University of Chichester . He was chair of the Muslims in Britain Research Network and instrumental in the creation of BRAIS , remaining on their advisory board.
Go to Profile#23447
Nicholas Bloom
#23458
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Nicholas Bloom is the William Eberle Professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University, a Courtesy Professor at Stanford Business School and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a co-director of the Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Go to Profile#23448
Joy Paul Guilford
#23459
Overall Influence
#23449
J. Philip Grime
#23460
Overall Influence
1935 - 2021 (86 years)
John Philip Grime was an ecologist and emeritus professor at the University of Sheffield. He is best known for the universal adaptive strategy theory and the twin filter model of community assembly with Simon Pierce, eco-evolutionary dynamics, the unimodal relationship between species richness and site productivity , the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, and DST classification .
Go to Profile#23450
Ashley Bloomfield
#23461
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Sir Ashley Robin Bloomfield is a New Zealand public health official. He served as the chief executive of the Ministry of Health and the country's Director-General of Health from 2018 to 2022. He was the public-facing health specialist liaising with the media during the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand on behalf of the government, from the first press conference on 27 January 2020.
Go to Profile