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
#2351
Zoya Popovic
#111348
Overall Influence
Zorana Popović is a Serbian American microwave engineer, currently Hudson Moore Jr. Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado. Popović was named a Fellow of the IEEE in 2002, "for contributions to the development of active antenna arrays and quasi-optical power combining techniques".
Go to Profile#2352
Myriam Gorospe
#111445
Overall Influence
#2353
Dim‐lee Kwong
#111455
Overall Influence
#2354
Guangzhao Mao
#111498
Overall Influence
Guangzhao Mao is an American chemical engineer and an academic. She is a professor and head of the school of chemical engineering at the University of New South Wales. She holds positions as chief investigator at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Carbon Science and Innovation, the ARC Research Hub for Resilient Intelligent Infrastructure Systems, and the ARC Research Hub for Connected Sensors for Health.
Go to Profile#2355
Xiuling Li
#111533
Overall Influence
Xiuling Li is an distinguished electrical and computer engineering professor in the field of nanostructured semiconductor devices. She is currently the Temple Foundation Endowed Professorship No. 3 in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Fellow of the Dow Professor in Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, she was a Donald Biggar Willet Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Interim Director of the Nick Holonyak Jr. Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Go to Profile#2356
Anne McCoy
#111572
Overall Influence
Anne Bowen McCoy is a theoretical chemist. She is the Natt-Lingafelter Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington, and her research interests include vibrational spectroscopy, hydrogen bonding, and charge-transfer bands. She received the 2023 Jack Simons Award in Theoretical Chemistry “for her development and application of theoretical methods for analyzing the vibrational spectra & dynamics of floppy molecules and clusters.”
Go to Profile#2357
J. R. Tucker
#111576
Overall Influence
1946 - 2014 (68 years)
John R. Tucker was an American physicist who made several contributions to the fields of electronics, physics and microwave theory, known for generalizing the microwave mixer theory and presenting the body of work, known as the "Tucker theory", and for his fundamental theoretical contributions which resulted into various advancements in experimental Submillimeter astronomy. He is also credited with laying down some of the technological foundations for making practical Quantum computing possible.
Go to Profile#2358
Nicholas Jarvis Proudfoot
#111577
Overall Influence
#2359
Murray Korc
#111613
Overall Influence
#2360
Diana L. Kormos-Buchwald
#111657
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Diana L. Kormos-Buchwald is a historian of modern physical science and the Robert M. Abbey Professor of History at the California Institute of Technology . Education Kormos-Buchwald received her bachelor's degree from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in 1981, and her master's degree from Tel Aviv University in 1983. She received an A.M. from Harvard University in 1985 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1990. At Caltech, Kormos-Buchwald was Instructor from 1989 to 1990, Assistant Professor from 1990 to 1996, Associate Professor from 1996 to 2005, and Professor from 2005 to 2017. Kormos-Buchwald was appointed Robert M.
Go to Profile#2361
Ramona Vogt
#111667
Overall Influence
Ramona Lynn Vogt is a high-energy physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Education Vogt received her Ph.D. in 1989 from the State University of New York at Stony Brook with the thesis topic "Charmonium Interactions with Hadronic Matter".
Go to Profile#2362
George M. Fuller
#111794
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
George Michael Fuller is an American theoretical physicist, known for his research on nuclear astrophysics involving weak interactions, neutrino flavor-mixing, and quark matter, as well as the hypothetical nuclear matter.
Go to Profile#2363
Cynthia Olson Reichhardt
#111818
Overall Influence
Cynthia J. Olson Reichhardt is an American condensed matter physicist whose research involves the use of computer simulations to study disordered media and non-equilibrium systems, with applications to the understanding of how aging affects stockpiled nuclear weapons. She is a member of the technical staff at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she is affiliated with the Physics and Chemistry of Materials Group, and with the Center for Nonlinear Studies.
Go to Profile#2364
Laird Boswell
#111825
Overall Influence
Laird Boswell is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specializing in the history of modern France. He was previous Assistant and then Associate Professor there, and before that, Instructor at the California Institute of Technology. He was visiting professor at Institut d’études politiques de Paris in 2008.
Go to Profile#2365
Richard Kopelman
#111847
Overall Influence
Richard E. Kopelman is an American academic, researcher and a management scholar. He is a Professor of Management at the City University of New York’s Baruch College. Kopelman has published over 150 research papers, chapters and professional articles on work motivation, productivity, careers, organizational performance, and human resource management. He recently completed a 20-year project whereby he conceptualized, validated, and developed instrumentation for the Cube One Framework. Kopelman is the author of Improving Organizational Performance: The Cube One Framework and previously, Managi...
Go to Profile#2366
F. Scott Mathews
#111849
Overall Influence
#2367
Carl Kesselman
#111850
Overall Influence
#2368
Victor D. Vacquier
#112007
Overall Influence
#2369
Robert Chang
#112019
Overall Influence
Robert P. H. Chang is an American materials scientist who served as the president of the Materials Research Society and as a general secretary and president of the International Union of Materials Research Societies . Currently Chang heads the Materials Research Institute at Northwestern University. He is a member of advisory boards of the National Institute for Materials Science and of the journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials.
Go to Profile#2370
Katharine Reeves
#112091
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (124 years)
Katharine Reeves is an astronomer and solar physicist who works at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian .. She is known for her work on high temperature plasmas in the solar corona, and measurement/analysis techniques to probe the physics of magnetic reconnection and thermal energy transport during solar flares; these are aspects of the coronal heating problem that organizes a large part of the field. She has a strong scientific role in multiple NASA and international space missions to observe the Sun: Hinode ; IRIS ; SDO; Parker Solar Probe; and suborbital sounding rockets inc...
Go to Profile#2371
Barry Luokkala
#112094
Overall Influence
Barry Luokkala is the Director of Undergraduate Physics Laboratories in the Department of Physics at Carnegie Mellon University and Program Director for the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences. Luokkala was the recipient of the MCS Teaching Award.
Go to Profile#2372
Laurie Butler
#112287
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Laurie Jeanne Butler is an American physical chemist known for her experimental work testing the Born–Oppenheimer approximation on separability of nuclear and electron motions. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#2373
Giorgio Coricelli
#112289
Overall Influence
Giorgio Coricelli is professor of economics and psychology at the University of Southern California, specializing in neuroeconomics. Having done his undergraduate studies at La Sapienza in Rome, he then completed his Ph.D. at the Economic Science Laboratory of the University of Arizona studying with Vernon Smith, shortly before Smith received his Nobel Prize in economics in 2002.
Go to Profile#2374
Stephen Arnold
#112295
Overall Influence
Stephen Arnold is a Professor of Physics and Chemical Engineering and the Thomas Potts Professor of Physics at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. He is also an Othmer-Potts Senior Faculty Fellow. The focus of Arnold's research is developing ultra-sensitive bio-sensors and detection of single bio-nanoparticles from virus down to single protein molecules, using Whispering-gallery wave bio-sensors.
Go to Profile#2375
Tanja Bosak
#112361
Overall Influence
Tanja Bosak is a Croatian-American experimental geobiologist who is currently an associate professor in the Earth, Atmosphere, and Planetary Science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her awards include the Subaru Outstanding Woman in Science Award from the Geological Society of America , the James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union , and was elected an AGU fellow . Bosak is recognized for her work understanding stromatolite genesis, in addition to her work in broader geobiology and geochemistry.
Go to Profile#2376
Alan Berger
#112568
Overall Influence
Alan Berger is an American landscape architect and urban designer currently the Leventhal Professor of Advanced Urbanism at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an Elected Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.
Go to Profile#2377
Ikuya Nonaka
#112592
Overall Influence
#2378
Miguel A. Marino
#112639
Overall Influence
Miguel A. Marino is an American engineer, currently the Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Hydrologic Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering and Biological & Agricultural Engineering at University of California, Davis, and also a published author. He was honored as a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1999, and a Life Member in 2005, as well as being the ASCE's Editor of its journal Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management in 1984-88.
Go to Profile#2379
Christine Wilson
#112645
Overall Influence
Christine D. Wilson is a Canadian-American physicist and astronomer, currently a University Distinguished Professor at McMaster University. On August 5, 1986, Wilson discovered a comet, later named Comet Wilson after her, while analyzing photographic plates from the Samuel Oschin telescope at the Palomar Observatory.
Go to Profile#2380
Elias Lazarides
#112722
Overall Influence
#2381
Megan Sykes
#112741
Overall Influence
#2382
Dale Cruikshank
#112751
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (86 years)
Dale P. Cruikshank is an astronomer and planetary scientist in the Astrophysics Branch at NASA Ames Research Center. His research specialties are spectroscopy and radiometry of planets and small bodies in the Solar System. These small bodies include comets, asteroids, planetary satellites, dwarf planets , and objects in the region beyond Neptune . He uses spectroscopic observations made with ground-based and space-based telescopes, as well as interplanetary spacecraft, to identify and study the ices, minerals, and organic materials that compose the surfaces of planets and small bodies.
Go to Profile#2383
Roy David Williams
#112802
Overall Influence
Roy David Williams is a physicist and data scientist. He is a professor at Caltech and is most known for his work with the LIGO, and VOTable and VOEvent standards. He is a proponent of open data. Selected research Fox, Geoffrey C., Roy D. Williams, and Paul C. Messina. Parallel computing works!. Elsevier, 2014.Giavalisco, M., et al. "The great observatories origins deep survey: initial results from optical and near-infrared imaging." The Astrophysical Journal Letters 600.2 : L93.Williams, Roy D. "Performance of dynamic load balancing algorithms for unstructured mesh calculations." Concurrency:...
Go to Profile#2384
Igor Bray
#112890
Overall Influence
#2385
Nina Bhardwaj
#112910
Overall Influence
#2386
Eric M. Rains
#112933
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (52 years)
Eric Michael Rains is an American mathematician specializing in coding theory and special functions, especially applications from and to noncommutative algebraic geometry. Biography Eric Rains was 14 when he began classes in 1987. He left Case Western Reserve University with bachelor's degrees in computer science and physics and a master's degree in mathematics at age 17.
Go to Profile#2387
Rich Carter
#112989
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (54 years)
Rich G. Carter is Professor of Chemistry of the Department of Chemistry at Oregon State University. His research fields are synthetic organic chemistry in general and natural product synthesis. He is also the co-founder and CEO of a chemical manufacturing company Valliscor.
Go to Profile#2388
Kristyn Masters
#113032
Overall Influence
Kristyn Simcha Masters is an American bioengineer who is professor and Chair of the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Colorado Denver. She works as Director of the Anschutz Medical Campus Center. Her research looks to create tissue-engineered models of disease, with a focus on cancer and cardiac disease.
Go to Profile#2389
Milton J. Rosen
#113046
Overall Influence
1920 - Present (105 years)
#2390
Anthonie Van Harreveld
#113048
Overall Influence
#2391
Zhengdao Wang
#113122
Overall Influence
Zhengdao Wang is a Chinese-American electrical engineer specializing in coding theory and signal processing for wireless communication. He is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Iowa State University, and a program director in the Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems of the National Science Foundation.
Go to Profile#2392
Roger Ekins
#113136
Overall Influence
1926 - 2016 (90 years)
Roger Ekins FRS was a British biophysicist and professor at University College London. He was awarded the 1998 Edwin F. Ullman Award. Life Elkins earned a PhD from Cambridge University. He revolutionized endocrinology by enabling the measurement of tiny quantities of analytes at levels so low as to be beyond chemical analysis, thus transforming endocrinology from a clinical descriptive specialty to a quantitative science. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and later received the Queen's Medal.
Go to Profile#2393
Jerold Chun
#113183
Overall Influence
#2394
L. Catherine Brinson
#113192
Overall Influence
L. Catherine Brinson is an American materials scientist who is the Sharon C. and Harold L. Yoh, III Distinguished Professor at Duke University. Her research considers nanostructured polymers and shape-memory alloys. She was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2020.
Go to Profile#2395
Sanjiv Kaul
#113318
Overall Influence
#2396
Lloyd D. Keigwin
#113341
Overall Influence
#2397
Xiao-feng Wu
#113417
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (40 years)
#2398
Carole A. Bewley
#113441
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Carole Ann Bewley is an American chemist. She is a senior investigator and Chief of the Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Bewley researches secondary metabolites and basic principles involved in protein-carbohydrate interactions and how these can be exploited to engineer therapeutics.
Go to Profile#2399
Daniel Chonghan Hong
#113518
Overall Influence
1956 - 2002 (46 years)
Daniel Chonghan Hong was a Korean-American theoretical physicist. Hong was born in Seoul. He studied physics at the Seoul National University . In 1979 he received his bachelor's degree there, and in 1981 his master's degree. Afterwards, he started his doctorate studies at Boston University, which he finished in 1985 with a Ph.D. After that, he got a postdoc research position at the University of California in Santa Barbara, and later another position at the Emory University. In the year 1988 he became an assistant professor at the physics department of the Lehigh University. In 1994, he beca...
Go to Profile#2400
Walter Adolph Schroeder
#113525
Overall Influence
