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
#24201
Maria Van Kerkhove
#24212
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Maria DeJoseph Van Kerkhove is an American infectious disease epidemiologist. With a background in high-threat pathogens, Van Kerkhove specializes in emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and is based in the Health Emergencies Program at the World Health Organization . She is the technical lead of COVID-19 response and the head of emerging diseases and zoonosis unit at WHO.
Go to Profile#24202
Mark von Hagen
#24213
Overall Influence
1954 - 2019 (65 years)
Mark Louis von Hagen was an American military historian who taught Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian history at Arizona State University. He was formerly at Columbia University. He was commissioned by The New York Times to write an independent assessment of Times correspondent Walter Duranty and his reporting on the Soviet Union after the newspaper received a letter from the Pulitzer Prize Board regarding allegations of Duranty's role in the cover-up of the Holodomor in Soviet Ukraine.
Go to Profile#24203
Henry Harpending
#24214
Overall Influence
1944 - 2016 (72 years)
Henry Cosad Harpending was an American anthropologist and writer. He was a distinguished professor at the University of Utah, and formerly taught at Penn State and the University of New Mexico. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is known for the book The 10,000 Year Explosion, which he co-authored with Gregory Cochran.
Go to Profile#24204
Angie Dickinson
#24215
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Angie Dickinson is an American retired actress. She began her career on television, appearing in many anthology series during the 1950s, before gaining her breakthrough role in Gun the Man Down with James Arness and the Western film Rio Bravo with John Wayne and Dean Martin, for which she received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year.
Go to Profile#24205
John Freeman
#24216
Overall Influence
1915 - 2014 (99 years)
Major John Horace Freeman , PC was a British politician, diplomat, broadcaster and British Army officer. He was the Labour Member of Parliament for Watford from 1945 to 1955. Early life Freeman was born in a house in the Regent's Park neighbourhood of London on 19 February 1915, the son of a barrister. The family later moved to Brondesbury. He joined the Labour Party whilst a student at Westminster School in the early 1930s, and later obtained his degree at Brasenose College, Oxford. He worked for a time at the advertising firm Ashley Courtenay.
Go to Profile#24206
Ashleigh Barty
#24217
Overall Influence
1996 - Present (30 years)
Ashleigh Jacinta Barty is an Australian former professional tennis player and cricketer. She was the second Australian tennis player to be ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Women's Tennis Association , holding the ranking for 121 weeks overall. She was also a top-10 player in doubles, having achieved a career-high ranking of No. 5 in the world. Barty is a three-time Grand Slam singles champion, claiming titles at the 2019 French Open, the 2021 Wimbledon Championships, and the 2022 Australian Open. She is also a major doubles champion, having won the 2018 US Open with CoCo Vandeweghe. Bart...
Go to Profile#24207
Ahmadou Lamine Ndiaye
#24218
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Ahmadou Lamine Ndiaye is a former professor of Veterinary Sciences from Senegal who has held many senior administrative positions in African educational institutions and organizations. Birth and education Ahmadou Lamine Ndiaye was born on 20 May 1937 in Saint-Louis, Senegal. He attended the Lycée Faidherbe in Saint-Louis for his secondary education between 1950 and 1957. He studied at the Lycée Marcelin Berthelot de Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, France for a year, and then was admitted to the National Veterinary School of Lyon , where he studied from 1958 to 1962. In 1963 he gained diplomas from the...
Go to Profile#24208
Richard Dixon
#24219
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Richard Dixon is an English translator of Italian literature. He translated the last works of Umberto Eco, including his novels The Prague Cemetery, shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012, and Numero Zero, commended by the judges of the John Florio Prize, 2016. He has also translated works by Giacomo Leopardi, Roberto Calasso and Antonio Moresco.
Go to Profile#24209
Sauli Niinistö
#24220
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Sauli Väinämö Niinistö is a Finnish politician who has served as the 12th president of Finland since March 2012. A lawyer by education, Niinistö was Chairman of the National Coalition Party from 1994 to 2001, Minister of Justice from 1995 to 1996, Minister of Finance from 1996 to 2003, Deputy Prime Minister from 1995 to 2001 and the NCP candidate in the 2006 presidential election. He served as the Speaker of the Parliament of Finland from 2007 to 2011 and has been the honorary president of the European People's Party since 2002.
Go to Profile#24210
John Doyle
#24221
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
John Doyle is a Canadian writer who is a television critic at The Globe and Mail. Early life John Doyle was born in 1957 in Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland, and came to Canada in 1980. Career Doyle was first hired by The Globe and Mail to write for Broadcast Week, the paper's weekly television listings, as a columnist. In 2000, he was appointed the newspaper's daily television critic. Doyle also covers soccer for the paper. His writing on soccer has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, the ECW Press anthology Best Canadian Sports Writing, and the soccer magazine Eight by Eight.
Go to Profile#24211
Robert Michael White
#24222
Overall Influence
1924 - 2010 (86 years)
Robert Michael White was an American electrical engineer, test pilot, fighter pilot, and astronaut. He was one of twelve pilots who flew the North American X-15, an experimental spaceplane jointly operated by the Air Force and NASA. As an engineer, he supervised the design and development of several modern military aircraft.
Go to Profile#24212
Laurence Veysey
#24223
Overall Influence
1932 - 2004 (72 years)
Laurence Russ Veysey was a historian best known for his history of higher education, The Emergence of the American University. He also wrote The Communal Experience. Notes
Go to Profile#24213
Riad Barmada
#24224
Overall Influence
1929 - 2014 (85 years)
Riad Barmada , a Syrian-American orthopaedic surgeon and professor. Barmada was the head of orthopedics at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 1984 to 1998 and served as the president of the Illinois Orthopedic Society and president of the Chicago Committee on Trauma.
Go to Profile#24214
Henry Gordon Rice
#24225
Overall Influence
1920 - 2003 (83 years)
Henry Gordon Rice was an American logician and mathematician best known as the author of Rice's theorem, which he proved in his doctoral dissertation of 1951 at Syracuse University with thesis advisor Paul C. Rosenbloom. Rice was also a Professor of Mathematics at the University of New Hampshire. After 1960 he was employed by Computer Sciences Corporation in El Segundo.
Go to Profile#24215
Jessica Stern
#24226
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Jessica Eve Stern is an American scholar and academic on terrorism. Stern serves as a research professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. Earlier she had been a lecturer at Harvard University. She serves on the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law. In 2001, she was featured in Time magazine's series on Innovators. In 2009, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her work on trauma and violence. Her book ISIS: The State of Terror , was co-authored with J.M. Berger.
Go to Profile#24216
Amy Perez
#24227
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Maria Armida Parale Perez-Castillo , known professionally as Amy Perez-Castillo or Tyang Amy , is a Filipino TV and radio presenter, entrepreneur and occasional actress. Noted for her distinct brand in hosting & strong opinions about life, she has established herself as a dependable figure in morning and noontime variety shows since 1986, which marked the beginning of her career.
Go to Profile#24217
Ana Caraiani
#24228
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Ana Caraiani is a Romanian-American mathematician, who is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Hausdorff Chair at the University of Bonn. Her research interests include algebraic number theory and the Langlands program.
Go to Profile#24218
Romelu Lukaku
#24229
Overall Influence
1993 - Present (33 years)
Romelu Lukaku Bolingoli is a Belgian professional footballer who plays as a striker for club Roma, on loan from club Chelsea, and the Belgium national team. Lukaku began his senior club career playing for Anderlecht, where he won a Belgian Pro League title and finished as the league's top goalscorer. In 2011, he joined Chelsea in a transfer worth £10 million , but limited playing time resulted in loans to West Bromwich Albion and Everton; in 2014, Lukaku signed with Everton in a then club-record transfer worth £28 million , going on to finish as the league's second-top goalscorer. He subseq...
Go to Profile#24219
Timothy Dalton
#24230
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Timothy Leonard Dalton Leggett is a British actor. He gained international prominence as the fourth actor to portray fictional secret agent James Bond in the Eon Productions film series, starring in The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill .
Go to Profile#24220
Coco Fusco
#24231
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Coco Fusco is a Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator whose work has been exhibited and published internationally. Fusco's work explores gender, identity, race, and power through performance, video, interactive installations, and critical writing.
Go to Profile#24221
Arie Belldegrun
#24232
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Arie S. Belldegrun , FACS, is an Israeli-American urologic oncologist, billionaire businessman and investor. Early life and education Belldegrun was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. He received his medical degree from the Hadassah Medical Center at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1974, and conducted his post-graduate studies at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1979. He completed his urologic surgery residency at Harvard Medical School in 1985, and his Surgical Oncology fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in 1988. He is certified by the American Board of Urology, and is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the American Association of Genitourinary Surgeons.
Go to Profile#24222
Jonathan Metzl
#24233
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Jonathan Michel Metzl is an American psychiatrist and author. He is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, where he is also Director of the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society. He is the author of multiple books, including The Protest Psychosis, Prozac on the Couch, Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality, and Dying of Whiteness.
Go to Profile#24223
David Kretzmer
#24234
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
David Kretzmer is an Israeli expert in international and constitutional law. He is professor emeritus of international law of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and professor of law at the Transitional Justice Institute at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. He has been a member of international and Israeli Human Rights organizations, including the UN Human Rights Committee under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, serving as its vice-chairperson in 2001 and 2002. He established the Centre for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was a found...
Go to Profile#24224
Toshirō Mutō
#24235
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
is the former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Japan. On March 7, 2008, the government of Japan announced that it planned to nominate him for promotion to replace Toshihiko Fukui as governor. Fukui's term was to expire on March 19. His nomination was rejected.
Go to Profile#24225
Arun Rai
#24236
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Arun Rai is an Indian-born American scientist. Arun Rai is a permanent Regent's Professor at the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University and holds J. Mack Robinson Chair of IT-Enabled Process Innovation and Supply Chains and the Harkins Chair of Information Systems. He served as an Editor-in-Chief of Management Information Systems Quarterly for five years between 2016 and 2020. He has previously served as Senior Editor for Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, and Journal of Strategic Information Systems and as Associate Editor for several journals .
Go to Profile#24226
Ranbir Kapoor
#24237
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Ranbir Kapoor is an Indian actor known for his work in Hindi-language films. He is one of the highest-paid actors of Hindi cinema and has featured in Forbes India Celebrity 100 list since 2012. Kapoor is the recipient of several awards, including six Filmfare Awards.
Go to Profile#24227
Victoria Camps
#24238
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Victoria Camps is a Spanish philosopher and professor of ethics. Career She obtained a degree in philosophy at the University of Barcelona, completing her thesis, entitled “La dimensión pragmática del lenguaje”, in 1975.
Go to Profile#24228
Fariborz Raisdana
#24239
Overall Influence
1945 - 2020 (75 years)
Fariborz Raisdana was an Iranian economist, socialist, activist, professor, and a member of the Iranian Writers' Association . He was the author of numerous articles and books, including Applied Development Economics; Money and Inflation; Political Economy of Development, and Globalization.
Go to Profile#24229
Kenan Evren
#24240
Overall Influence
1917 - 2015 (98 years)
Ahmet Kenan Evren was a Turkish politician and military officer who served as the seventh President of Turkey from 1980 to 1989. He assumed the post by leading the 1980 military coup. On 18 June 2014, a Turkish court sentenced him to life imprisonment and demotion of his military rank, for leading the military coup in 1980. He was found guilty of obstructing democracy by deposing the prime minister Süleyman Demirel and of abolishing the parliament, senate and the constitution. This sentence was under appeal at the time of his death.
Go to Profile#24230
Russ Meyer
#24241
Overall Influence
1922 - 2004 (82 years)
Russell Albion Meyer was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor. He is known primarily for writing and directing a series of successful sexploitation films that featured campy humor, sly satire and large-breasted women, such as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!. Meyer often named Beyond the Valley of the Dolls as his definitive work.
Go to Profile#24231
Ernst Badian
#24242
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Ernst Badian was an Austrian-born classical scholar who served as a professor at Harvard University from 1971 to 1998. Early life and education Badian was born in Vienna in 1925 and in 1938 fled the Nazis with his family to New Zealand. There he attended the University of Canterbury, Christchurch , where he met his future wife Nathlie Ann Wimsett. He received a BA in 1945 and an MA the following year.
Go to Profile#24232
Óscar Hahn
#24243
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Óscar Arturo Hahn Garcés is a Chilean writer and poet, and a member of the literary generation of the 1960s. Hahn has won multiple distinguished awards, notably the National Prize for Literature and the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award.
Go to Profile#24233
Graça Machel
#24244
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Graça Machel is a Mozambican politician and humanitarian. She is the widow of former President of Mozambique Samora Machel and former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela . Machel is an international advocate for women's and children's rights and was made an honorary Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997 for her humanitarian work. She is the only woman in modern history to have served as First Lady of two countries, South Africa and Mozambique.
Go to Profile#24234
Annette Bening
#24245
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Annette Carol Bening is an American actress. In a career spanning more than four decades, she has received many accolades, including a BAFTA Award and two Golden Globes as well as nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award, two Tony Awards, and four Academy Awards.
Go to Profile#24235
Rory M. McVeigh
#24246
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Rory M. McVeigh is an American sociologist, Nancy Reeves Dreux Chair professor of sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Social Movements and former chair of the department of sociology at the University of Notre Dame. From 2015 through 2020 he served as one of the lead editors of the American Sociological Review, the flagship journal of the American Sociological Association. He is widely cited in the field of social movements, particularly right-wing movements. He also edited the academic journal Mobilization from 2008 through 2015 and is the current the co-editor of the acade...
Go to Profile#24236
Samir Husni
#24247
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Samir Husni is a United States–based analyst of the magazine industry. He was born in Tripoli, Lebanon then immigrated to the United States. He earned a master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas in 1980 and a Ph.D. in journalism from the University of Missouri in 1983.
Go to Profile#24237
Martin Vingron
#24248
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Martin Vingron is an Austrian mathematician working in the fields of bioinformatics and computational biology. Since 2000, he has been Director of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics. Education Vingron grew up in Vienna, and gained his Diploma in Mathematics from the University of Vienna in 1985. He later studied at Heidelberg University and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, gaining his Dr. rer. nat. in Applied Mathematics in 1991. His thesis studied the applications of multiple sequence alignment in molecular biology.
Go to Profile#24238
G. Scott Hubbard
#24249
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
G. Scott Hubbard is a physicist who has been engaged in space-related research as well as program, project and executive management for more than 45 years including 20 years with NASA, culminating as director of NASA's Ames Research Center. As of 2012, Hubbard chairs SpaceX Safety Advisory Panel, he previously served as the NASA representative on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, was NASA's first Mars program director and restructured the Mars program in the wake of mission failures.
Go to Profile#24239
Sufjan Stevens
#24250
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Sufjan Stevens is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He has released ten solo studio albums and multiple collaborative albums with other artists. Stevens has received Grammy and Academy Award nominations.
Go to Profile#24240
Stanley Tucci
#24251
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Stanley Tucci Jr. is an American actor and filmmaker. Known as a character actor, he has played a wide variety of roles ranging from menacing to sophisticated. Tucci has earned numerous accolades, including five Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Tony Award.
Go to Profile#24241
Natalia Berloff
#24252
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Natalia G. Berloff is a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Her research includes the use of polaritons to simulate structures such as the classical XY model. Early life and education Berloff grew up in Russia. She earned her Ph.D. from Florida State University in 1996, under the supervision of Louis Norberg Howard.
Go to Profile#24242
Stephania Bell
#24253
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Stephania Bell is an American physical therapist who has become an author, as well as both on-air and online sports commentator at ESPN where she serves as an American football injury analyst. Career Bell formerly served as an injury analyst for KFFL, RotoWire and XM Radio. Hired in 2007, she actively blogs National Football League injury analysis for ESPN where she is a regular columnist. Bell complements on-air journalists with analysis of breaking news. She serves as a co-host of Fantasy Focus on ESPN Radio and an analyst for SportsNation on ESPN.com. She co-authored The Clinical Orthopedic Assessment Guide.
Go to Profile#24243
Jean Rouch
#24254
Overall Influence
1917 - 2004 (87 years)
Jean Rouch was a French filmmaker and anthropologist. He is considered one of the founders of cinéma vérité in France. Rouch's practice as a filmmaker, for over 60 years in Africa, was characterized by the idea of shared anthropology. Influenced by his discovery of surrealism in his early twenties, many of his films blur the line between fiction and documentary, creating a new style: ethnofiction. The French New Wave filmmakers hailed Rouch as one of their own.
Go to Profile#24244
Miriam Makeba
#24255
Overall Influence
1932 - 2008 (76 years)
Zenzile Miriam Makeba , nicknamed Mama Africa, was a South African singer, songwriter, actress, and civil rights activist. Associated with musical genres including Afropop, jazz, and world music, she was an advocate against apartheid and white-minority government in South Africa.
Go to Profile#24245
Bernard Davis
#24256
Overall Influence
1916 - 1994 (78 years)
Bernard David Davis was an American biologist who made major contributions in microbial physiology and metabolism. Davis was a prominent figure at Harvard Medical School in microbiology and in national science policy. He was the 1989 recipient of the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology from the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#24246
Karl Gustav Jöreskog
#24257
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Karl Gustav Jöreskog is a Swedish statistician. Jöreskog is a professor emeritus at Uppsala University, and a co-author of the LISREL statistical program. He is also a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Jöreskog received his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees at Uppsala University. He is also a former student of Herman Wold. He was a statistician at Educational Testing Service and a visiting professor at Princeton University.
Go to Profile#24247
Linda P. Fried
#24258
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Linda P. Fried is an American geriatrician and epidemiologist, who is also the first female Dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Her research career is focused on frailty, healthy aging, and how society can successfully transition to benefit from an aging population.
Go to Profile#24248
Sissel Tolaas
#24259
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Sissel Tolaas is a Norwegian artist and researcher known for her work with smell. Sissel Tolaas was born in 1961 in Stavanger, Norway and is now based in Berlin. Tolaas has a background in chemistry, mathematics, linguistics, languages and art; she studied at the universities of Oslo, Warsaw, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Oxford.
Go to Profile#24249
Boz Scaggs
#24260
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
William Royce "Boz" Scaggs is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He was a bandmate of Steve Miller in The Ardells in the early 1960s and the Steve Miller Band from 1967 to 1968. Scaggs began his solo career in 1969, though he lacked a major hit until his 1976 album, Silk Degrees, peaked at number 2 on the Billboard 200, and produced the hit singles "Lido Shuffle" and "Lowdown". Scaggs produced two more platinum-certified albums in Down Two Then Left and Middle Man, the latter of which produced two top-40 singles "Breakdown Dead Ahead" and "Jojo".
Go to Profile#24250
David Southall
#24261
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
David Southall is a retired British paediatrician who specialised in international maternal and child hospital healthcare and in child protection. He worked in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993-1995, for which he received an OBE in 1999. In 1995 he set up the charity Maternal and Childhealth Advocacy International , of which he remains a trustee as of 2023. His child protection work and research into Munchausen syndrome by proxy attracted controversy and led to conflict with the General Medical Council.
Go to Profile