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
#23801
Chris Isaak
#23812
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Christopher Joseph Isaak is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional actor. Noted for his reverb-laden rockabilly revivalist style and wide vocal range, he is popularly known for his breakthrough hit and signature song "Wicked Game"; as well as international hits such as "Blue Hotel", "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing" and "Somebody's Crying".
Go to Profile#23802
Rolf Niedergerke
#23813
Overall Influence
1921 - 2011 (90 years)
Rolf Nidergerke was a German physiologist and physician, and one of the discoverers of the sliding filament theory of muscle contraction. He and Andrew Huxley, complimenting the independent works of Hugh Huxley and Jean Hanson, revealed that muscle contraction is due to shortening of the muscle fibres. He studied medicine throughout the Second World War, and obtained his MD degree as the war ended in 1945. After a brief practise in his hometown, he chose a research career. He became associated with Huxley, whom he joined at Cambridge University. Together they published a landmark paper in Nat...
Go to Profile#23803
Hyun-Song Shin
#23814
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Hyun Song Shin is a South Korean economic theorist and financial economist who focuses on global games. He has been the Economic Adviser and Head of Research of the Bank for International Settlements since May 1, 2014.
Go to Profile#23804
Ed Rendell
#23815
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Edward Gene Rendell is an American lawyer, prosecutor, politician, and author who served as the 45th governor of Pennsylvania from 2003 to 2011. He previously served as chair of the national Democratic Party from 1999 to 2001, as the 96th mayor of Philadelphia from 1992 to 2000, and as district attorney of Philadelphia from 1978 to 1986.
Go to Profile#23805
Nasrin Husseini
#23816
Overall Influence
Nasrin Husseini is an Afghan-born Canadian advocate of refugees, veterinary researcher, and a food activist, working to remake the food system. Her research focuses on advancing animal health through breeding and improving the productivity of the food derived from farm animals. In 2021, she was part of the 100 Women BBC list, which includes the most inspiring and influential women in the world.
Go to Profile#23806
Sly Stone
#23817
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Sylvester Stewart , better known by his stage name Sly Stone, is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer who is most famous for his role as frontman for Sly and the Family Stone, playing a critical role in the development of funk with his pioneering fusion of soul, rock, psychedelia and gospel in the 1960s and 1970s. AllMusic stated that "James Brown may have invented funk, but Sly Stone perfected it," and credited him with "creating a series of euphoric yet politically charged records that proved a massive influence on artists of all musical and cultural backgrounds." Crawdaddy!...
Go to Profile#23807
David States
#23818
Overall Influence
David J. States is an American biophysicist who is Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Michigan. His research group is using computational methods to understand the human genome and how it relates to the human proteome. He is the Director of the Michigan NIH Bioinformatics Training Progra] and a Senior Scientist in the National Center for Integrative Biomedical Informatics.
Go to Profile#23808
Bernard Budiansky
#23819
Overall Influence
1925 - 1999 (74 years)
Bernard Budiansky was an American scholar in the field of applied mechanics, and made seminal contributions to the mechanics of structures and mechanics of materials. He was a recipient of the Timoshenko Medal.
Go to Profile#23809
Robert Gernhardt
#23820
Overall Influence
1937 - 2006 (69 years)
Robert Gernhardt was a German writer, painter, graphic artist and poet. Life Robert Gernhardt was born the son of a judge and a chemist in Tallinn, where his family was part of the Baltic German minority. In 1939 they had to relocate to Poznań. In 1945 his father was killed in the war, and after the end of the war, his mother fled west with her three sons Robert, Per, and Andreas, finally ending up in Göttingen, where Robert Gernhardt finished school in 1956.
Go to Profile#23810
Harry Coonce
#23821
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Harry Bernard Coonce is an American mathematician notable for being the originator of the now-popular Mathematics Genealogy Project, launched in 1996, a web-based catalog of mathematics doctoral advisors and students.
Go to Profile#23811
Joaquin Bernas
#23822
Overall Influence
1932 - 2021 (89 years)
Joaquin G. Bernas SJ was a Jesuit priest, lawyer, college professor and writer who was Dean Emeritus of the Ateneo de Manila Law School in Makati, Philippines. He was a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission which drafted the 1987 Philippine Constitution.
Go to Profile#23812
Sara Bareilles
#23823
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Sara Beth Bareilles is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. She has sold over three million albums and over 15 million singles in the United States. Bareilles has earned various accolades, including two Grammy Awards, as well as nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards, and three Tony Awards. In 2012, VH1 named her one of the Top 100 Greatest Women in Music.
Go to Profile#23813
James Belich
#23824
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
James Christopher Belich is a New Zealand historian, known for his work on the New Zealand Wars and on New Zealand history more generally. One of his major works on the 19th-century clash between Māori and Pākehā, the revisionist study The New Zealand Wars , was also published in an American edition and adapted into a television series and DVD.
Go to Profile#23814
Krishna Saraswat
#23825
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Krishna Saraswat is a professor in Stanford Department of Electrical Engineering in the United States. He is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher in engineering, placing him in the top 250 worldwide in engineering research, and a recipient of IEEE's Andrew S. Grove Award for "seminal contributions to silicon process technology".
Go to Profile#23815
Frank Ching
#23826
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Francis D. K. "Frank" Ching is an architecture and design graphics writer. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington. Ching was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He received his B.Arch. from the University of Notre Dame in 1966. After several years of practice, in 1972 he joined the faculty at Ohio University to teach drawing. To support his lectures in architectural graphics, Ching hand-drew and hand-lettered his lecture notes. Department chairman Forrest Wilson presented these notes to the publisher, Van Nostrand Reinhold, and they were published in 1975, in an edited version, as Architectural Graphics, a book now in its sixth edition.
Go to Profile#23816
Dennis J. Hutchinson
#23827
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Dennis J. Hutchinson is an American legal scholar. After beginning his teaching career at the Georgetown University Law Center, Hutchinson joined the University of Chicago Law School in 1981. Currently, he is the William Rainey Harper Professor at the University of Chicago, a senior lecturer in law, and master of the undergraduate college's New Collegiate Division where he directs the Law, Letters, and Society program. His interests primarily lie in the field constitutional law, paying special attention to issues of race. He is best known within the legal community at large for his work as ed...
Go to Profile#23817
Deborah E. McDowell
#23828
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Deborah E. McDowell is a scholar, author and member of the University of Virginia faculty since 1987 where she serves as the Alice Griffin professor of Literary Studies. In 2008 professor McDowell was named director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, at the University of Virginia.
Go to Profile#23818
Macy Gray
#23829
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Natalie Renée McIntyre , known by her stage name Macy Gray, is an American R&B and soul singer and actress. She is known for her distinctive raspy voice and a singing style heavily influenced by Billie Holiday.
Go to Profile#23819
Kari Martinsen
#23830
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Kari Martinsen is a Norwegian nurse and academic, whose work focuses on nursing theory. After competing nursing training and working as a psychiatric nurse, she returned to school to earn a bachelor's, master's and PhD degree. Developing ideas about the philosophy involved in taking care of other people, she moved away from practicing nursing and turned toward academia. She taught at various universities in Norway and Denmark and was recognized as a Knight 1st Class of the Order of St. Olav for nursing by the Norwegian crown in 2011.
Go to Profile#23820
Boris Gelfand
#23831
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Boris Gelfand is a Belarusian-Israeli chess player. A six-time World Championship candidate , he won the Chess World Cup 2009 and the 2011 Candidates Tournament, making him challenger for the World Chess Championship 2012. Although the match with defending champion Viswanathan Anand finished level at 6–6, Gelfand lost the deciding rapidplay tiebreak by 2½–1½.
Go to Profile#23821
Israel Charny
#23832
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Israel W. Charny is an Israeli psychologist and genocide scholar. He is the editor of two-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide, and executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem.
Go to Profile#23822
Laura E. Gómez
#23833
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Laura E. Gómez is a professor at the School of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles where she also holds appointments in Sociology and the Department of Chicana & Chicano Studies and Central American Studies.
Go to Profile#23823
Douglas R. Green
#23834
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Douglas Green , is an American biologist. He holds the Peter C. Doherty Endowed Chair of Immunology in St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. His research has focused on the process of active cell death and cell survival, extending from the role of cell death in cancer regulation and immune responses in the whole organism to the molecular events directing the death of the cell. Green was editor in chief of the journal Oncogene from 2009-2016, is a Deputy Editor of the journal "Science Advances" and the author of the book Cell Death, Means To An End.
Go to Profile#23824
Ian Bell
#23835
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Ian Colin Graham Bell programmed, designed and developed the computer game Elite with David Braben, which met with much acclaim. Education Bell attended the independent St Albans School. He studied at Jesus College, Cambridge, graduating with a degree in Mathematics in 1985, and a Cambridge Diploma in Computer Science in 1986.
Go to Profile#23825
Jim Kurose
#23836
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Jim Kurose is a Distinguished University Professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, USA. He received his B.A. degree from Wesleyan University and, in 1984, his Ph.D. degree from Columbia University . Kurose's main area of teaching is computer networking. He is a coauthor of the well-known textbook Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach.
Go to Profile#23826
Peter Dendle
#23837
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Peter Dendle is a professor of English at Penn State Mont Alto, teaching classes on folklore, 20th and 21st century representations of the Middle Ages, Old and Middle English , and the monstrous . Dendle has written books and articles on a number of topics, including cryptozoology, philology, the demonic in literature, zombie movies, and Medieval plants and medicine. His work on zombies was featured by NPR.
Go to Profile#23827
Vijay Singh
#23838
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Vijay Singh , nicknamed "The Big Fijian", is a Fijian professional golfer. He has won 34 events on the PGA Tour, which is the most by a player from outside of the United States, including three major championships: one Masters title and two PGA Championships . He is the first person of South Asian descent to win a major championship. He was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2006.
Go to Profile#23828
Kurt Starke
#23839
Overall Influence
1911 - 2000 (89 years)
Kurt Starke was a German radiochemist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club. He independently discovered the transuranic element neptunium. From 1947 to 1959, he taught and did research in Canada and the United States. From 1959 until he achieved emeritus status, he was at the German University of Marburg, where he established and became director of the Institute of Nuclear Chemistry. He was also the first dean of the Department of Physical Chemistry of the University of Marburg, which opened in 1971.
Go to Profile#23829
Owen Dudley Edwards
#23840
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Owen Dudley Edwards is an Irish historian and former Reader in Commonwealth and American History at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Life He is the son of Professor Robert Dudley Edwards and brother to the Irish writer, Ruth Dudley Edwards. He is the general editor of the Oxford Sherlock Holmes series, and is a recognised expert on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, P. G. Wodehouse and Oscar Wilde.
Go to Profile#23830
Peter Roquette
#23841
Overall Influence
1927 - 2023 (96 years)
Peter Jaques Roquette was a German mathematician working in algebraic geometry, algebra, and number theory. Biography Roquette was born in Königsberg on 8 October 1927. He studied in Erlangen, Berlin, and Hamburg. In 1951 he defended a dissertation at the University of Hamburg under Helmut Hasse, providing a new proof of the Riemann hypothesis for algebraic function fields over a finite field . In 1951/1952 he was an assistant at the Mathematical Research Institute at Oberwolfach and from 1952 to 1954 at the University of Munich. From 1954 to 1956 he worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Go to Profile#23831
Nancy Haigwood
#23842
Overall Influence
Nancy Logan Haigwood is an American scientist. She is a professor and the director of the Oregon National Primate Research Center. Haigwood is an HIV/AIDS researcher and serves as a volunteer board member on the Cascade AIDS Project. She is an advocate of science education and outreach.
Go to Profile#23832
Marcel Berlins
#23843
Overall Influence
1941 - 2019 (78 years)
Marcel Berlins was a French-born lawyer, legal commentator, author, broadcaster and columnist. He was best known for his work in the United Kingdom, writing for British national newspapers The Times and The Guardian, presenting BBC Radio 4's legal programme Law in Action for 16 years, and teaching Media Law at City, University of London.
Go to Profile#23833
Riccardo Campa
#23844
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Riccardo Campa is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cracow. He possesses two Master of Arts degrees, in Political Science and Philosophy, from the University of Bologna and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. Prior to becoming an academic, Campa was a police lieutenant with Guardia di Finanza and a journalist for La Voce di Mantova and the newsmagazine Il Mondo . Since 2010 he is vice president of the Filomati Association in Italy.
Go to Profile#23834
Franklin Sirmans
#23845
Overall Influence
Franklin Sirmans is an American art critic, editor, writer, curator and has been the director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami since October 2015. His initiatives there include ensuring that PAMM's art program reflects the community in Miami and securing donations. In his first six months at PAMM, he managed to secure the largest donation of works in the museum's short history, over a hundred pieces of art were donated by Design District developer Craig Robins.
Go to Profile#23835
Vijay Raghunath Pandharipande
#23846
Overall Influence
1940 - 2006 (66 years)
Vijay Raghunath Pandharipande was an Indian-American physicist, who played a leading role in the development of the nuclear many-body problem. Biography Pandharipande obtained his bachelor's and master's degree from Nagpur University in 1959 and 1961 respectively. He earned his PhD degree from University of Bombay in 1969.
Go to Profile#23836
Mathew Chandrankunnel
#23847
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Prof. Dr. Mathew Chandrankunnel CMI is a professor of philosophy of science at Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram and Christ University, both in Bangalore, India. He is the author of several books including "Philosophy of Quantum mechanics" and "Ascent to Truth: The Physics, philosophy and Religion of Galileo Galilei". He is a scientist, philosopher and theologian.
Go to Profile#23837
Lars E. O. Svensson
#23848
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Lars Erik Oscar Svensson, is a Swedish economist. He was on the faculty of Princeton University 2001–2009. Since June 2014, he is Affiliated Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics. Since 2009 he is Affiliated Professor at Stockholm University. He has published significant research in macroeconomics, especially monetary economics, international trade and general equilibrium theory. He is among the most influential economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc. He is a well-known proponent of price path targeting, a topic on which he published significant research.
Go to Profile#23838
David Michaels
#23849
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
David Michaels is an American epidemiologist and professor in the Departments of Environmental and Occupational Health and Epidemiology at the Milken Institute School of Public Health of the George Washington University. He held high-level, senate-confirmed public health positions in the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, including a stint from 2009 to 2017 as the administrator of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Go to Profile#23839
Silvio Funtowicz
#23850
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Silvio O. Funtowicz is a philosopher of science active in the field of science and technology studies. He created the NUSAP, a notational system for characterising uncertainty and quality in quantitative expressions, and together with Jerome R. Ravetz he introduced the concept of post-normal science. He is currently a guest researcher at the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities , University of Bergen .
Go to Profile#23840
Sergei Shoigu
#23851
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Sergei Kuzhugetovich Shoigu is a Russian politician and military officer who has served as Minister of Defence of Russia since 2012. Shoigu has served as the chairman of the Council of Ministers of Defense of the Commonwealth of Independent States since 2012.
Go to Profile#23841
Vijay Mahajan
#23852
Overall Influence
Vijay Mahajan is the John P. Harbin Centennial Chair in Business at McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin. He was born on April 5, 1948, in Jammu, India. He is known for his work on marketing strategy, international marketing and innovation. He was the dean of the Indian School of Business from 2002 to 2004 and is a former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Marketing Research.
Go to Profile#23842
Bobby Valentine
#23853
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Robert John Valentine , nicknamed "Bobby V", is an American former professional baseball player and manager. He also served as the athletic director at Sacred Heart University. Valentine played for the Los Angeles Dodgers , California Angels , San Diego Padres , New York Mets , and Seattle Mariners in MLB. He managed the Texas Rangers , the New York Mets , and the Boston Red Sox of MLB, as well as the Chiba Lotte Marines of Nippon Professional Baseball .
Go to Profile#23843
Jean Ginibre
#23854
Overall Influence
1938 - 2020 (82 years)
Jean Ginibre was a French mathematical physicist. He is known for his contributions to random matrix theory , statistical mechanics , and partial differential equations. With Martine Le Berre and Yves Pomeau, he provided a kinetic theory for the emission of photons by an atom maintained in an excited state by an intense field that creates Rabi oscillations. He received the Paul Langevin Prize in 1969.
Go to Profile#23844
Bernard Haisch
#23855
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Bernard Haisch is a German-born American astrophysicist who has done research in solar-stellar astrophysics and stochastic electrodynamics. He has developed with Alfonso Rueda a speculative theory that the non-zero lowest energy state of the vacuum, as predicted by quantum mechanics, might provide a physical explanation for the origin of inertia, and might someday be used for spacecraft propulsion. Haisch has advocated the serious scientific study of phenomena outside the traditional scope of science and is known for his interest in the UFO phenomenon as well as a variety of other unorthodox t...
Go to Profile#23845
Amir-Hossein Aryanpour
#23856
Overall Influence
1925 - 2001 (76 years)
Amir-Hossein Aryanpour was an Iranian lexicographer, writer, translator, philosopher, sociologist, and literary figure. Aryanpour was an expert in western philosophy and Persian culture. Education He studied social sciences at the American University of Beirut, graduating in 1944. He later studied philosophy and social sciences at the University of Tehran and received his doctorate in 1951 in Princeton University. He was one of the students of Badiozzaman Forouzanfar, one of the most prominent figures in the history of Persian literature.
Go to Profile#23846
Vin Diesel
#23857
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Mark Sinclair , known professionally as Vin Diesel, is an American actor and film producer. One of the world's highest-grossing actors, he is best known for playing Dominic Toretto in the Fast & Furious franchise.
Go to Profile#23847
Christopher McKay
#23858
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Dr Christopher P. McKay is an American planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, studying planetary atmospheres, astrobiology, and terraforming. McKay majored in physics at Florida Atlantic University, where he also studied mechanical engineering, graduating in 1975, and received his PhD in astrogeophysics from the University of Colorado in 1982.
Go to Profile#23848
Betty Glad
#23859
Overall Influence
1927 - 2010 (83 years)
Betty Glad was an American political scientist who specialized in the American presidency and American foreign policy. Her first work on Charles Evans Hughes led to a nomination for a Pulitzer Prize.
Go to Profile#23849
Gail Goodrich
#23860
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Gail Charles Goodrich Jr. is an American former professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association . He is best known for scoring a then record 42 points for UCLA in the 1965 NCAA championship game vs. Michigan, and his part in the Los Angeles Lakers' 1971–72 season. During that season the team won a still-record 33 consecutive games, posted what was at the time the best regular season record in NBA history, and also won the franchise's first NBA championship since relocating to Los Angeles. Goodrich was the leading scorer on that team. He is also acclaimed for leading UCLA...
Go to Profile#23850
Albert van den Berg
#23861
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Albert van den Berg is a Dutch physicist who works on nanotechnology-miniaturization in physics, chemistry, biology and biotechnology . Van den Berg was born in Zaandam. In 1988 he earned his PhD at the University of Twente with a thesis on chemically modified ISFETss. Then until 1993 he worked at the Centre Suisse d’Electronique et de Microtechnique in Neuchâtel and the Institut de microtechnique at the University of NeuchâtelTAS, i.e. miniaturized systems for chemical analysisMiCSMESA+NanoNedH=63
Go to Profile