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

#2401

Charles Santori

#113581
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Charles Santori is an American physicist. He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from MIT in 1997 and then got his Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford University six years later after finishing his studies on semiconductors with Professor Yoshihisa Yamamoto. In 2005 Charles joined HP Labs where he researches diamond photonics. A year before his graduation from Stanford he along with other classmates of Yamamoto team have invented quantum cryptography that used photon turnstile device. The same year, he published one of his most cited works on indistinguishable photons called Indistingui...
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#2402

George Trilling

#113594
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
George H. Trilling was a Polish-born American particle physicist. He was co-discoverer of the J/ψ meson which evinced the existence of the charm quark. Trilling joined the Physics Department faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1960, where he was Department Chair from 1968 through 1972. Trilling was on sabbatical leave to CERN in 1973–74, where he worked on the study of the properties of charm particles, their decay modes and excited states. He was also Director of the Physics Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 1984 until 1987. Trilling was a principa...
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#2403

Ron Milo

#113668
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (50 years)
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#2404

Alfred S. Yue

Alfred S. Yue
#113711
Overall Influence
1918 - 2014 (96 years)
Alfred Shui-Choh Yue , was an American materials science engineer. Yue was a professor emeritus of engineering at the University of California in Los Angeles, having concluded a career of discovery regarding crystal growth as it relates to semi-conductor and solar-power devices.
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#2405

Kennda Lynch

#113741
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (50 years)
Kennda Lian Lynch is an American astrobiologist and geomicrobiologist who studies polyextremophiles. She has primarily been affiliated with NASA. She identifies environments on Earth with characteristics that may be similar to environments on other planets, and creates models that help identify characteristics that would indicate an environment might host life. Lynch also identifies what biosignatures might look like on other planets. Much of Lynch's research on analog environments has taken place in the Pilot Valley Basin in the Great Salt Desert of northwestern Utah, U.S. Her work in that pa...
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#2406

John S. Chen

John S. Chen
#113860
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
John S. Chen is a Hong Kong-American businessman who served as executive chairman and chief executive officer of BlackBerry Ltd. Previously, he served as the chief executive officer and president of Sybase, a software vendor specializing in data management, analytics, and mobility technology.
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#2407

Yuet W Kan

#113873
Overall Influence
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#2408

Susan M. Kauzlarich

#113880
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Susan M. Kauzlarich is an American chemist and is presently a distinguished professor of chemistry at the University of California, Davis . At UC Davis, Kauzlarich leads a research group focused on the synthesis and characterization of Zintl phases and nanoclusters with applications in the fields of thermoelectric materials, magnetic resonance imaging, energy storage, opto-electronics, and drug delivery. Kauzlarich has published over 250 peer-reviewed publications and has been awarded several patents. In 2009, Kauzlarich received the annual Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathem...
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#2409

Georg Seelig

#113934
Overall Influence
Georg Seelig is a Swiss computer scientist, bioengineer, and synthetic biologist. He is an associate professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. He is a researcher in the field of DNA nanotechnology.
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#2410

James T. Randerson

#114012
Overall Influence
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#2411

James Sauls

#114108
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
James Avery Sauls is an American physicist. Sauls studied physics at the Colorado School of Mines, graduating in 1975, and pursued a doctorate in the subject at Stony Brook University, which he completed in 1980. Sauls began his academic career at Princeton University, as research associate, instructor, then assistant professor of physics. In 1987, Sauls joined the faculty of Northwestern University as associate professor. He became a full professor in 1991. In 2021, Sauls was appointed the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Physics.
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#2412

Robert H. Bates

#114146
Overall Influence
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#2413

Renã A. S. Robinson

#114257
Overall Influence
Renã A. S. Robinson is an associate professor and the Dorothy J. Wingfield Phillips Chancellor's Faculty Fellow in the department of chemistry at the Vanderbilt University, where she is the principal investigator of the RASR Laboratory.
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#2414

Randall M. Feenstra

#114309
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Randall M. Feenstra is a Canadian physicist. Feenstra completed a bachelor's degree in engineering physics at the University of British Columbia in 1978, followed by his master's and doctorate in applied physics at the California Institute of Technology. From 1982 to 1995 he was a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. Since 1995, he has taught at Carnegie Mellon University, where he conducts research in semiconductors.
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#2415

Axel Laguna Beach Scherer

#114317
Overall Influence
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#2416

Mary Ellen Jones

#114332
Overall Influence
1922 - 1996 (74 years)
Mary Ellen Jones was an American biochemist. She was notable for discovery of carbamoyl phosphate, a chemical substance that is key to the biosynthesis of arginine and urea, and for the biosynthesis of pyrimidine nucleotides. Jones became the first woman to hold a chair at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the first woman to become a department chair at the medical school. She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She was also president of the Association of Medical School Departments of Biochemistry, president of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and president of the American Association of University Professors.
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#2417

Bruno Chaudret

Bruno Chaudret
#114346
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Bruno Chaudret, born on 25 December 1953, is a French chemist and director of research at the CNRS. His research is in organometallic chemistry, particularly the interactions between hydrogen and transition metals.
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#2418

Guotong Zhou

#114414
Overall Influence
Guotong Zhou is a Chinese engineer from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Shenzhen. She was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2012 for her contributions to the analysis of nonlinear systems and signals.
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#2419

Young Moo Lee

#114446
Overall Influence
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#2420

Luis F Parada

#114480
Overall Influence
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#2421

Charles Shipley Cox

#114500
Overall Influence
1922 - 2015 (93 years)
Charles "Chip" Shipley Cox was an oceanographic physicist. He was particularly well known for his work on electromagnetic phenomenon, fine grained pressure and salinity measurements in the ocean depths and surface.
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#2422

James L. Beck

#114564
Overall Influence
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#2423

John R. Rice

#114581
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (91 years)
John Rischard Rice is an American mathematician and computer scientist, the W. Brooks Fortune Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and a professor of mathematics at Purdue University. He specializes in numerical computing, founded the ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software and is the author of more than 20 books and approximately 300 research articles.
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#2424

Gerard Johan Holzmann

#114713
Overall Influence
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#2425

Christopher J. Hernandez

#114812
Overall Influence
Christopher J. Hernandez is an American engineer and scientist who currently serves as professor at the University of California, San Francisco in the departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences.
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#2426

Randall Q. Snurr

#114855
Overall Influence
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#2427

Gilda H. Loew

#114954
Overall Influence
1930 - 2001 (71 years)
Gilda H. Loew was an American chemist known for applying computational chemistry to biology. She was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1975. Career A native of Brooklyn, New York, Loew attended Erasmus Hall High School and then went on to earn a bachelor's degree from New York University and a master's from Columbia, both in chemistry, before going on to doctoral work at UC Berkeley, where she earned a PhD in chemical physics. In the 1950s and 1960s, she held a number of research positions, at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company and the Hansen Laboratories, Stanford University.
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#2428

Maryam Shanechi

#115055
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (40 years)
Maryam M. Shanechi is an Iran-born American neuroengineer. She studies ways of decoding the brain's activity to control brain-machine interfaces. She was honored as one of MIT Technology Review's Innovators under 35 in 2014 and one of the Science News 10 scientists to watch in 2019. She is Professor and Viterbi Early Career Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering, and a member of the Neuroscience Graduate Program at the University of Southern California.
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#2429

Michael Rotkowitz

#115066
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (51 years)
Michael Charles Rotkowitz is an applied mathematician best known for his work in decentralized control theory. He was a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he held appointments in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Institute for Systems Research , and was also affiliated with the Applied Mathematics & Statistics, and Scientific Computation Program .
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#2430

Fan Ren

#115129
Overall Influence
Fan Ren is an American chemical engineer, focusing in wide energy bandgap electronic services and semiconductor device passivation, currently Fred and Bonnie Edie Professor, distinguished professor and UF Term Professor at University of Florida.
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#2431

Al Mok

#115159
Overall Influence
Aloysius "Al" Mok is an American computer scientist, currently the Quincy Lee Centennial Professor at University of Texas at Austin, and also a published author.
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#2432

Harrison Farber

#115206
Overall Influence
Harrison "Hap" Farber is Professor of Medicine and Director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Center at Boston University. He attended undergraduate at Duke University before moving to Belgium and became a member of the Belgium cycling team. He then went on to attend medical school at George Washington University and entered into residency at the Medical College of Virginia. He completed a fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Boston University and Boston City Hospital Program. Dr. Farber completed an additional research year at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in basic science. Dr.
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#2433

Julia Kalow

#115236
Overall Influence
Julia Ann Kalow is an assistant professor of chemistry at Northwestern University. She is primarily a synthetic chemist, who works on polymers, photochemistry and tissue engineering. She is interested in synthetic strategies that can turn molecular structure and chemical reactivity into macroscopic properties. She has been awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Thieme Award and was selected by the University of Chicago as a Rising Star in Chemistry.
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#2434

Laurence E. Nyquist

#115386
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (86 years)
Laurence E. Nyquist is an American planetary scientist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He is known for his contributions to knowledge of the chronometry of planetary materials, which have been important in understanding time-scales for accretion, differentiation, and impacts on meteorite parent bodies. His NASA biography also records contributions to the study of noble gases in iron meteorites and lunar samples, radiometric age dating and isotope geochemistry of lunar, Martian, and meteoric samples, and the application of stable isotope methods to biomedical research. H...
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#2435

Donald F. Hagen

Donald F. Hagen
#115401
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Donald Floyd Hagen was a vice admiral in the United States Navy. He was Surgeon General of the United States Navy from 1991 to 1995. Hagen was commissioned in 1951 as an ensign and retired on June 29, 1995 as a vice admiral.
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#2436

Claus Rolfs

#115472
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Claus E. Rolfs is a German experimental physicist, known for his laboratory research related to nuclear astrophysics. He is a co-initiator of Nuclei in the Cosmos. Biography Rolfs went to school in Offenburg and studied physics at the University of Freiburg. From 1973 he was a close associate of William A. Fowler at Caltech, where Rolfs was a Millikan Fellow. In the 1970s and 1980s Rolfs was a professor at the University of Münster. He was a professor at the Ruhr University Bochum from 1990 to 2007, when he retired as professor emeritus. He lives in Münster. In 1980 he was a visiting professo...
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#2437

Hal Helgeson

#115481
Overall Influence
1931 - 2007 (76 years)
Harold C. Helgeson was an American scientist and educator. A pioneering theoretical geochemist, he was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Early life Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he grew up in St. Paul. He received a B.S. in geology at Michigan State University in 1953. Helgeson went to Harvard University for graduate school, supervised by Robert M. Garrels. Helgeson received his Ph.D. in 1962.
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#2438

John-Michael Kendall

#115571
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
John-Michael Kendall is a Geophysicist and Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford. Education Kendall was educated at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1984 and a PhD in 1991 supervised by Colin J. Thomson.
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#2439

Kari Christine Nadeau

#115888
Overall Influence
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#2440

Shigeo Ted Oyama

#115974
Overall Influence
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#2441

Gottfried Otting

#116068
Overall Influence
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#2442

Din Ping Tsai

#116118
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Din Ping Tsai is a physicist known for his work in the fields of photonics. He is currently a Distinguished Professor at the National Taiwan University and Director of the Research Center for Applied Sciences, Academia Sinica. He has been President of Taiwan Information Storage Association since 2015.
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#2443

Barry F. Madore

#116140
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
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#2444

Peter N. Schlegel

#116151
Overall Influence
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#2445

Athanasios Nenes

#116232
Overall Influence
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#2446

Isabel Arends

#116274
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Isabel W.C.E. Arends is a Dutch chemist and professor of biocatalysis and organic chemistry at Utrecht University. She was appointed dean of its Faculty of Science in July 2018. Her research specializes in environmentally-friendly, or 'green', chemistry; for example, using enzymes as biocatalysts while avoiding the need for toxic solvents.
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#2447

Charles Bruce Stephenson

#116291
Overall Influence
1929 - 2001 (72 years)
Charles Bruce Stephenson was an American astronomer. He was born on a ranch in Little Rock, Arkansas, the only son of Chauncey Elvira Stephenson and Ona Richards. During his youth he made a telescope and was a winner of the Bausch & Lomb Science Award while in High School. He attended Little Rock Junior College, then transferred to the University of Chicago. After being awarded a B.S. in mathematics in 1949, he went on to study astronomy in graduate school, attaining a M.S. in 1951.
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#2448

Enos Regnet Wicher

#116293
Overall Influence
Enos Regnet Wicher was an American professor of physics at Columbia University. He had been married to Rae Kidd, future star of the 1938 nudist movie "The Unashamed," while both were students at the University of Wisconsin 1935-37. During World War II he worked in the Wave Propagation Group at Columbia's Division of War Research and was alleged to have spied for Soviet intelligence with code name "Keen" .
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#2449

George G. Adams

#116403
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
George G. Adams is an American mechanical engineer specializing in tribology, contact mechanics, dynamics, and microelectromechanical systems . He is a distinguished professor in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering department at Northeastern University, Boston. Together with João Arménio Correia Martins, he discovered the frictional dynamic instabilities or Adams-Martins instabilities. Adams has published more than 120 papers in peer-reviewed journals, presenting new mathematical solutions of fundamental problems of mechanics, such as the dynamics of elastic structures subjected to movi...
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#2450

Dawn Sumner

Dawn Sumner
#116405
Overall Influence
Dawn Yvonne Sumner is an American geologist, planetary scientist, and astrobiologist. She is a professor at the University of California, Davis. Sumner's research includes evaluating microbial communities in Antarctic lakes, exploration of Mars via the Curiosity rover, and characterization of microbial communities in the lab and from ancient geologic samples. She is an investigator on the NASA Mars Science Laboratory and was Chair of the UC Davis Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences from 2014 to 2016. She is Fellow of the Geological Society of America.
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