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
#23901
Munish Chander Puri
#23912
Overall Influence
1939 - 2005 (66 years)
Munish Chander Puri was Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at IIT Delhi. He was Organizing Chair, Asia Pacific Operational Research Societies . He was killed in Bangalore in the 2005 Indian Institute of Science shooting.
Go to Profile#23902
Jeffrey K. Hadden
#23913
Overall Influence
1936 - 2003 (67 years)
Jeffrey K. Hadden was an American professor of sociology. He began his teaching career at Western Reserve University and then at the University of Virginia commencing in 1972. Hadden earned his Ph.D. in 1963 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was trained as a demographer and human ecologist.
Go to Profile#23903
James Duane
#23914
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
James Joseph Duane is an American law professor at the Regent University School of Law, former criminal defense attorney, and Fifth Amendment expert. Duane has received considerable online attention for his lecture "Don't Talk to the Police", in which he advises citizens to avoid incriminating themselves by speaking to law enforcement officers.
Go to Profile#23904
Robert Root-Bernstein
#23915
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Robert Root-Bernstein is a professor of physiology at Michigan State University. In 1981, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as a "genius grant." He has also researched and consulted on creativity for more than fifteen years. Among other books, he has authored Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People, Discovering: Inventing and Solving Problems at the Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge, and Rethinking AIDS: The Tragic Cost of Premature Consensus. In Rethinking AIDS, Root-Bernstein postulated that factors in addition to HIV may contribute to AIDS.
Go to Profile#23905
Neil Lawrence
#23916
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Neil David Lawrence is the DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge in the Department of Computer Science and Technology, senior AI fellow at the Alan Turing Institute and visiting professor at the University of Sheffield.
Go to Profile#23906
Gerard J. Foschini
#23917
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Gerard Joseph Foschini , was an American telecommunications engineer who worked for Bell Laboratories since 1961 until his retirement. Dr. Foschini passed away in September 2023. His research has covered many kinds of data communications, particularly wireless communications and optical communications. Foschini has also worked on point-to-point systems and networks.
Go to Profile#23907
James Abegglen
#23918
Overall Influence
1926 - 2007 (81 years)
James Christian Abegglen was a Japanese business theorist and professor in management and economics at Sophia University. He was one of the founders of the Boston Consulting Group in 1963, and the first representative director of its Tokyo branch, founded in 1966.
Go to Profile#23908
Chung Tao Yang
#23919
Overall Influence
1923 - 2005 (82 years)
Chung Tao Yang, or Chung-Tao Yang, Yang Zhongdao , was a notable Chinese American topologist. He was an academician of the Academia Sinica and served as the chair of the Department of Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#23909
Lothar Göttsche
#23920
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Lothar Göttsche is a German mathematician, known for his work in algebraic geometry. He is a research scientist at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. He is also editor for Geometry & Topology.
Go to Profile#23910
Vladimir Braginsky
#23921
Overall Influence
1931 - 2016 (85 years)
Vladimir Borisovich Braginsky was a Russian experimental and theoretical physicist and a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences , and foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#23911
Philip Seymour Hoffman
#23922
Overall Influence
1967 - 2014 (47 years)
Philip Seymour Hoffman was an American actor. Known for his distinctive supporting and character roles—eccentrics, underdogs, and misfits—he acted in many films and theatrical productions, including leading roles, from the early 1990s until his death in 2014. He was voted one of the 50 greatest actors of all time in a 2022 readers' poll by Empire magazine.
Go to Profile#23912
Brett Giroir
#23923
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Brett P. Giroir is an American pediatrician. He was formerly the U.S. assistant secretary for health, a four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and an acting Food and Drug Administration commissioner.
Go to Profile#23913
Mike Trout
#23924
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
Michael Nelson Trout is an American professional baseball center fielder for the Los Angeles Angels of Major League Baseball . Trout is an 11-time MLB All-Star, three-time American League Most Valuable Player , and nine-time winner of the Silver Slugger Award. He also captained the United States national team during the 2023 World Baseball Classic.
Go to Profile#23914
Robert Barnett
#23925
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Robert B. Barnett is an American lawyer who is a partner at the law firm Williams & Connolly. Family, early life, and education Robert Bruce Barnett was born on August 26, 1946, in Waukegan, Illinois, the son of Betty and Bernard Barnett. His father ran the Waukegan office of the Social Security Administration and had a popular call-in radio show that offered advice on federal retirement benefits. In 1964, he graduated from Waukegan High School where he served as senior class president. In 1968, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison , and in 1971 he graduated with a J.D.
Go to Profile#23915
Edwin M. Truman
#23926
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Edwin M. Truman is an American economist specializing in international financial institutions, especially the International Monetary Fund and sovereign wealth funds. He has been a Senior Fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics since 2001. Truman has worked quietly over the years on international financial crises issues. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman described Truman as the "George Smiley of international economics".
Go to Profile#23916
James L. Buckley
#23927
Overall Influence
1923 - Present (103 years)
James Lane Buckley was an American politician and judge who served in the United States Senate as a member of the Conservative Party of New York State in the Republican caucus from 1971 to 1977 and additionally held multiple positions within the Reagan administration. He was also the Republican nominee in the 1980 Connecticut Senate race, but he was defeated by Democrat Chris Dodd.
Go to Profile#23917
Tomislav Sunić
#23928
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Tomislav Sunić , sometimes known as Tom Sunic, is a Croatian-American translator, far-right activist and a former professor. His views are often cited as part of the European New Right. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Sunić as a white nationalist.
Go to Profile#23918
James Gustave Speth
#23929
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
James Gustave Speth is an American environmental lawyer and advocate who co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council. Early life and education He was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina in 1942. He graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1964, attended Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and graduated from Yale Law School, where he was a member of St. Anthony Hall and the Yale Law Journal, in 1969.
Go to Profile#23919
Urmila Mahadev
#23930
Overall Influence
Urmila Mahadev is an American mathematician and theoretical computer scientist known for her work in quantum computing and quantum cryptography. Education and career Mahadev is originally from Los Angeles, where her parents are physicians. She became interested in quantum computing through a course with Leonard Adleman at the University of Southern California, where she graduated in 2010.
Go to Profile#23920
Bhushan Kumar
#23931
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Bhushan Kumar Dua is an Indian film producer and music producer. He is the chairman and managing director of Super Cassettes Industries Limited, also known as T-Series. He is known for his work in Bollywood.
Go to Profile#23921
Naum Meiman
#23932
Overall Influence
1912 - 2001 (89 years)
Naum Natanovich Meiman was a Soviet mathematician, and dissident. He is known for his work in complex analysis, partial differential equations, and mathematical physics, as well as for his dissident activity, in particular, for being a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group.
Go to Profile#23922
Eugenia Malinnikova
#23933
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Eugenia Malinnikova is a mathematician, winner of the 2017 Clay Research Award which she shared with Aleksandr Logunov "in recognition of their introduction of a novel geometric combinatorial method to study doubling properties of solutions to elliptic eigenvalue problems".
Go to Profile#23923
Michael Balls
#23934
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Michael Balls is a British zoologist and professor emeritus of medical cell biology at the University of Nottingham. He is best known for his work on laboratory animal welfare and alternatives to animal testing.
Go to Profile#23924
John Cadogan
#23935
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
Sir John Ivan George Cadogan was a British organic chemist. Early life Cadogan was born in Pembrey, Carmarthenshire, Wales, United Kingdom. He was educated at Swansea Grammar School, where he achieved State Scholar in 1948, and at King's College London, where he earned a 1st Class Honours degree as well as a PhD, and was awarded the Millar Thomson Medal, and the Samuel Smiles Prize.
Go to Profile#23925
Irene Tracey
#23936
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Irene Mary Carmel Tracey is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford and former Warden of Merton College, Oxford. She is also Professor of Anaesthetic Neuroscience in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences and formerly Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford. She is a co-founder of the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain , now the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging. Her team’s research is focused on the neuroscience of pain, specifically pain perception and analgesia as well as how anaesthetics produce altered states of consciousness.
Go to Profile#23926
Édouard Brézin
#23937
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Édouard Brézin is a French theoretical physicist. He is professor at Université Paris 6, working at the laboratory for theoretical physics of the École Normale Supérieure since 1986. Biography Brézin was born in Paris, France, to agnostic Jewish parents from Poland. His father served in the French army during World War II and was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1940, but escaped, The family used false names and Brézin was hidden by farmers.
Go to Profile#23927
Heinrich Guggenheimer
#23938
Overall Influence
1924 - 2021 (97 years)
Heinrich Walter Guggenheimer was a German-born Swiss-American mathematician who has contributed to knowledge in differential geometry, topology, algebraic geometry, and convexity. He has also contributed volumes on Jewish sacred literature.
Go to Profile#23928
Michael J. Sheeran
#23939
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Michael J. Sheeran, S.J., is a Jesuit priest, former president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities , former president of Regis University in Denver, Colorado, and author of the book Beyond Majority Rule: Voteless Decisions in the Society of Friends.
Go to Profile#23929
John Hattie
#23940
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
John Allan Clinton Hattie is a New Zealand education academic. He has been a professor of education and director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia, since March 2011. He was previously professor of education at the University of Auckland, the University of North Carolina Greensboro, and the University of Western Australia. In addition to being lauded as a leading educational expert, previously John Hattie taught both middle school and high school as a classroom teacher for two years before entering graduate studies.
Go to Profile#23930
Herb Asher
#23941
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Herbert B. Asher is a professor emeritus of political science at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He is a well known commentator on current political events, writing numerous books on political polling and the like. One of the foremost authorities on Ohio politics, he has been interviewed by a host of news organizations that include CNN and CNBC. He gave the commencement address to Ohio State's graduating class of Winter 1996.
Go to Profile#23931
Selena
#23942
Overall Influence
1971 - 1995 (24 years)
Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was an American singer. Referred to as the "Queen of Tejano Music", her contributions to music and fashion made her one of the most celebrated Mexican-American entertainers of the late 20th century. In 2020, Billboard magazine put her in third place on their list of "Greatest Latino Artists of All Time", based on both Latin albums and Latin songs chart. Media outlets called her the "Tejano Madonna" for her clothing choices. She also ranks among the most influential Latin artists of all time and is credited for catapulting the Tejano genre into the mainstream market.
Go to Profile#23932
Daoxing Xia
#23943
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Daoxing Xia is a Chinese American mathematician. He is currently a professor at the Department of Mathematics, Vanderbilt University in the United States. He was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Science in 1980.
Go to Profile#23933
Morris Moscovitch
#23944
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Morris Moscovitch is Max and Gianna Glassman Chair in Neuropsychology and Aging and Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. He is also a Senior Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute of Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Moscovitch is a leading neuropsychologist, with over 150 research articles focusing mainly on the neural substrates of high-level cognitive processes such as memory, attention, and recognition of faces and objects. According to Google Scholar, he has an h-index of 121 and over 52000 citations . He has formulated a neuropsycholo...
Go to Profile#23934
Shavkat Mirziyoyev
#23945
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Shavkat Miromonovich Mirziyoyev is an Uzbek politician who has served as President of Uzbekistan and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Uzbekistan since 14 December 2016. Previously, Mirziyoyev led the government as a Prime Minister of Uzbekistan from 2003 to 2016.
Go to Profile#23935
Daria Mochly-Rosen
#23946
Overall Influence
Daria Mochly-Rosen is a Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where she also holds the George D. Smith Chair for Translational Medicine. She is in addition the founder of Mitoconix Bio, a startup company whose goal is to produce drugs that treat Huntington's disease and other neurodegenerative illnesses.
Go to Profile#23936
Kang G. Shin
#23947
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Kang Geun Shin is a South Korean-born computer scientist and the Kevin and Nancy O'Connor Professor of Computer Science in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Michigan. He is also the founding director of the Real-Time Computing Laboratory . He is known for his contributions to the field of real-time fault-tolerant systems. Shin is a recipient of the Korean Ho-Am Prize in Engineering. This prize is awarded for the "outstanding contributions to the development of science and culture and enhancement of the welfare of mankind".
Go to Profile#23937
Bhakta B. Rath
#23948
Overall Influence
Bhakta B. Rath is an Indian American material physicist and head of the Materials Science and Component Technology of the United States Naval Research Laboratory , the corporate research laboratory for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. He is the chief administrative officer for program planning, interdisciplinary coordination, supervision and control of research and is the associate director of research for Materials Science and Component Technology at NRL.
Go to Profile#23938
Tan Tai Yong
#23949
Overall Influence
Tan Tai Yong is a Singaporean academic who is the current President of Singapore University of Social Sciences. He served as the President of Yale-NUS College from 2017 to 2022. He is also Chairman of the Management Board of the Institute of South Asian Studies, an autonomous university-level research institute in NUS. He was a former Nominated Member of Parliament and served from 2014 to 2015.
Go to Profile#23939
Bernard Lahire
#23950
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Bernard Lahire is a French sociologist and author who serves as a professor of sociology at the ENSL graduate school in Lyon. Lahire is also a member of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies. By the late 2000s, Lahire rose to prominence as one of the country's most eminent living sociologists.
Go to Profile#23940
Ron Perlman
#23951
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Ronald Perlman is an American actor. His credits include the roles of Amoukar in Quest for Fire , Salvatore in The Name of the Rose , Vincent in the television series Beauty and the Beast , for which he won a Golden Globe Award, One in The City of Lost Children , Johner in Alien Resurrection , Hellboy in both Hellboy and its sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army , Clay Morrow in the television series Sons of Anarchy , Nino in Drive and Benedict Drask in Don't Look Up . As a known collaborator of Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro, he has had roles in the del Toro films Cronos , Blade II , Pac...
Go to Profile#23941
Chris Bury
#23952
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Christopher Robert Bury is an American journalist best known for being a correspondent at ABC News Nightline, where he also served as substitute anchor. Bury was also a national correspondent based in Chicago for World News with Diane Sawyer and Good Morning America. He is now Senior Journalist in Residence at DePaul University in Chicago. Bury's recent work includes contributions to PBS NewsHour and Al Jazeera America.
Go to Profile#23942
Martina Löw
#23953
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Martina Löw is a German sociologist. Vita Martina Löw, former president of the German Sociological Association; Professor of sociology/sociology of architecture and planning at Technical University Berlin; Director of Collaborative Research Centre SFB 1265 “Re-Figuration of Spaces” in Berlin. In January 2023 the ranking website Academic Influence ranked her #3 of "Influential Women in Sociology from the Last 10 Years."
Go to Profile#23943
Marcia Chatelain
#23954
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Marcia Chatelain is an American academic who serves as the Penn Presidential Compact Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2021, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History for her book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, for which she also won the James Beard Award for Writing in 2022. Chatelain was the first black woman to win the latter award.
Go to Profile#23944
Gert Jäger
#23955
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Gert Jäger is a German translation scholar and a specialist in the Polish and Czech languages. After obtaining his Abitur in 1952, Jäger studied Czech studies, Polish studies, Russian studies, Serbo-Croatian and Lithuanian at Leipzig University, obtaining his degree in 1956. While holding several posts at the University, he obtained his PhD in 1963 and another doctorate in 1973.
Go to Profile#23945
Paul A. Lombardo
#23956
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Paul A. Lombardo is an American legal historian known for his work on the legacy of eugenics and sterilization in the United States. Lombardo’s foundational research corrected the historical record of the 1927 U.S. Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell. He found Carrie Buck’s school grades and the grades of her child Vivian. He was the last person to interview her, and he discovered the pictures of all three generations of the Buck family. In 2002, he sponsored and paid for a memorial plaque that was installed in Buck’s hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia.
Go to Profile#23946
Linda Perry
#23957
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Linda Perry is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. She was the lead singer and primary songwriter of 4 Non Blondes, and has since founded two record labels and composed and produced songs for other artists, which include: "Beautiful" by Christina Aguilera; "What You Waiting For?" by Gwen Stefani; and "Get the Party Started" by Pink. Perry has also contributed to albums by Adele, Alicia Keys, and Courtney Love, as well as signing and distributing James Blunt in the United States. Perry was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015.
Go to Profile#23947
Paul Moyer
#23958
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Paul Moyer is an American journalist. He co-anchored the 5 PM and 11 PM weekday editions of KNBC-TV's Channel 4 News with Colleen Williams for a decade after earlier co-anchoring with Kelly Lange. Moyer has worked primarily in the two major television markets—New York and Los Angeles—in addition to briefly working on network newscasts. Moyer was Los Angeles' longest-running news anchor following the death of KTLA anchor Hal Fishman on August 7, 2007. He is married and has four children, Elise, Paul, Dylan and Kyle.
Go to Profile#23948
George Marino
#23959
Overall Influence
1947 - 2012 (65 years)
George Marino was an American mastering engineer known for working on albums by rock bands starting in the late 1960s. Biography Marino was born on April 15, 1947, in the New York City borough The Bronx. He attended Christopher Columbus High School there and learned to play the saxophone and bass fiddle in the high school band and was classically trained on guitar. Marino broke into the music business as a guitarist playing rock and roll in local New York City bands such as The Chancellors and The New Sounds Ltd. until most of the band members were drafted into the service for the war in Viet...
Go to Profile#23949
Steve Harvey
#23960
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Broderick Stephen Harvey Sr. is an American television host, producer, actor, and comedian. He hosts The Steve Harvey Morning Show, Family Feud, Celebrity Family Feud, Family Feud Africa, the arbitration-based court comedy Judge Steve Harvey, and he formerly hosted the Miss Universe competition. His accomplishments include seven Daytime Emmy Awards, two Marconi Awards, and fourteen NAACP Image Awards.
Go to Profile#23950
Tracie Morris
#23961
Overall Influence
Tracie Morris is an American poet. She is also a performance artist, vocalist, voice consultant, creative non-fiction writer, critic, scholar, bandleader, actor and non-profit consultant. Morris is from Brooklyn, New York. Morris' experimental sound poetry is progressive and improvisational. She is a tenured professor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
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