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
#24301
Patrick Hanks
#24312
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Patrick Hanks is an English lexicographer, corpus linguist, and onomastician. He has edited dictionaries of general language, as well as dictionaries of personal names. Background Hanks was educated at Ardingly College, University College, Oxford , and Masaryk University . After graduation from Oxford, he started his lexicographic career as editor of the Hamlyn Encyclopedic World Dictionary . In 1970, he was appointed editor of Collins English Dictionary . From 1980 to 1983, he was director of the Names Research Unit of the University of Essex, England, where he began a PhD under the supervis...
Go to Profile#24302
Robert C. Robbins
#24313
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Robert Clayton Robbins , known professionally as Robert C. Robbins or R.C. Robbins, is an American cardiothoracic surgeon and the 22nd and current president of The University of Arizona. In the spring of 2023, the Faculty Senate at the University of Arizona gave R.C. Robbins a vote of “no confidence” due, in part, to the university leadership’s inaction regarding a violent student who would go on to fatally shoot a professor in October of 2022. He received a pay raise in October of 2023 from the Arizona Board of Regents. Previously, he was the president and CEO of the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas, from 2012 to 2017.
Go to Profile#24303
Donald Macleod
#24314
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Donald Macleod was a Scottish theologian. Early life Macleod was born on 24 November 1940 at 3 Habost, Ness. He grew up at Laxdale in Stornoway. His primary schooling was spent at Laxdale Primary School, and later attended secondary at the Nicolson Institute. He was educated at the University of Glasgow and the Free Church College before being ordained as a minister of the Free Church of Scotland in 1964.
Go to Profile#24304
Kenny Roberts
#24315
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Kenneth Leroy Roberts is an American former professional motorcycle racer and racing team owner. In 1978, he became the first American to win a Grand Prix motorcycle racing world championship. He was also a two-time winner of the A.M.A. Grand National Championship. Roberts is one of only four riders in American Motorcyclist Association racing history to win the AMA Grand Slam, representing Grand National wins at a mile, half-mile, short-track, TT Steeplechase and road race events.
Go to Profile#24305
Mohammad Kibria
#24316
Overall Influence
1929 - 2011 (82 years)
Mohammad Kibria was a Bangladeshi artist. He was awarded Ekushey Padak in 1983 and Independence Day Award in 1999 by the Government of Bangladesh. Early life and career Kibria graduated from the Government School of Art at the University of Calcutta in 1950. In 1951, he came to Dhaka where he started his career as an art teacher at the Nawabpur High School. Kibria moved to Dhaka in 1951 and started his career as a school teacher at Nawabpur High School. In 1954, prompted by his teacher and mentor Zainul Abedin, Kibria joined the then Government College of Arts and Crafts as a lecturer. In th...
Go to Profile#24306
David Turnbull
#24317
Overall Influence
1915 - 2007 (92 years)
David Turnbull was an American physical chemist who worked in the interdisciplinary fields of materials science and applied physics. Turnbull made seminal contribution to solidification theory and glass formation. Turnbull was born in Elmira, Elmira Township, Stark County, Illinois. He graduated from high school in 1932 and then received a bachelor's degree in 1936 from Monmouth College , specializing in physical chemistry. He received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry under Thomas Erwin Phipps from the University of Illinois in 1939. He was on the faculty of Case Institute of Technology fro...
Go to Profile#24307
Dieter Fenske
#24318
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Dieter Fenske is a German inorganic chemist. Life Fenske studied chemistry at the University of Münster, received his PhD in 1973 and his Habilitation in 1978. He is Professor for Inorganic chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe and Director at the Institute for Nanotechnology of Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe.
Go to Profile#24308
Henk G. Sol
#24319
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Henk Gerard Sol is a Dutch organizational theorist and Emeritus Professor of Business Engineering and ICT at Groningen University. His research focuses on the development of services enabled by ICT, management information systems, decision enhancement and telematics.
Go to Profile#24309
Poopak NikTalab
#24320
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Poopak Niktalab is an Iranian education theorist, author, and literary researcher, especially of children's literature. Life She was born in 1970 in Tehran in a cultural and literary family. She is a member of Niktalab family and one of the daughters of Ahmad Niktalab. After receiving a diploma in mathematics and physics, she was immediately accepted to Al-Zahra University in the field of mathematics. She married Ali Latifiyan in 1999. The result of this marriage is two children named Parniya and Pouya.
Go to Profile#24310
Daniel J. Solove
#24321
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Daniel J. Solove is the Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard Professor of Intellectual Property and Technology Law at the George Washington University Law School. He is well known for his academic work on privacy and for popular books on how privacy relates with information technology.
Go to Profile#24311
Beverly Smith
#24322
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Beverly Smith in Cleveland, Ohio, is a Black feminist health advocate, writer, academic, theorist and activist who is also the twin sister of writer, publisher, activist and academic Barbara Smith. Beverly Smith is an instructor of Women's Health at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Go to Profile#24312
Karen Fleming
#24323
Overall Influence
Karen Renee Gibson Fleming is a Professor of Biophysics at Johns Hopkins University. She investigates the energetics of transmembrane helix-helix interactions. Fleming was awarded the 2020 Protein Society Carl Brändén Award.
Go to Profile#24313
Ichiro Kawachi
#24324
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Ichiro Kawachi is a social epidemiologist of Japanese origin who was trained in New Zealand. He is currently the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Social Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where he is also the chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Go to Profile#24314
Kurt Magnus
#24325
Overall Influence
1912 - 2003 (91 years)
Kurt Magnus was a German scientist, expert in the field of applied mechanics, a pioneer of mechatronics, modern navigation technology and inertial sensors. Kurt Magnus earned his doctorate in 1937 from the Georg-August University in Göttingen in the field of "force-coupled gyroscopes". In 1942 Magnus habilitated on the subject of "General movements of rigid bodies in moving reference systems".
Go to Profile#24315
Karel Lambert
#24326
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Karel Lambert is an American philosopher and logician at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Salzburg. He has written extensively on the subject of free logic, a term which he coined.
Go to Profile#24316
Danton Remoto
#24327
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Danton Relato Remoto is a Filipino writer, essayist, reporter, editor, columnist, and professor. Remoto received the first prize at the ASEAN Letter-Writing Contest for Young People. The award earned Remoto a scholarship at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. As a professor, Remoto taught English and Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University. Remoto is the chairman emeritus of Ang Ladlad, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender political party in the Philippines.
Go to Profile#24317
Charles Oakley
#24328
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Charles Oakley is an American former professional basketball player. Oakley played most of 19 seasons in the National Basketball Association with the New York Knicks. As a power forward, he consistently ranked as one of the best rebounders and defensive players in the NBA. He also played for the Chicago Bulls, Toronto Raptors, Washington Wizards, and Houston Rockets. Since 2017, he has been the coach of the Killer 3's of the BIG3.
Go to Profile#24318
Jill Pipher
#24329
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Jill Catherine Pipher was the president of the American Mathematical Society. She began a two-year term in 2019. She is also the past-president of the Association for Women in Mathematics , and she was the first director of the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics , an NSF-funded mathematics institute based in Providence, Rhode Island.
Go to Profile#24319
Timothy A. Springer
#24330
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Timothy "Tim" A. Springer is an immunologist and the Latham Family Professor at Harvard Medical School. He is also a professor at the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and of the Division of Medical Sciences, and a Senior Investigator at the Research Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine of the Boston Children's Hospital. Springer is best known for discovering the first integrins, LFA-1, and intercellular adhesion molecules , and for elucidating how these cell adhesion molecules function in the immune system. In recent years, Springer's research interest has e...
Go to Profile#24320
Ayşe Işıl Karakaş
#24331
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Ayşe Işıl Karakaş is a Turkish academic, professor of law, and former judge at the European Court of Human Rights in respect of the Republic of Turkey. Career In 1983, she graduated from the Department of Political Science of Istanbul University, and between 1984 and 1993, she worked as a research assistant in the same institution. In 1986, she gained her first master's degree in Public Law, Istanbul University. In 1986, she gained her second master's degree in the field of European Law at the Centre Européen Universitaire at the Nancy II University.
Go to Profile#24321
Mordecai Roshwald
#24332
Overall Influence
1921 - 2015 (94 years)
Mordecai Marceli Roshwald was an American academic and writer. Born in Drohobycz, Ukraine to Jewish parents, Roshwald later emigrated to Israel. His most famous work is Level 7 , a post-apocalyptic science-fiction novel. He is also the author of A Small Armageddon and Dreams and Nightmares: Science and Technology in Myth and Fiction .
Go to Profile#24322
Richard Hudson
#24333
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Richard Anthony Hudson FBA is a British linguist. He is best known for Word Grammar, a wide-ranging theory of syntax. Life Hudson is the son of the horticulturalist and bomb-disposal officer John Pilkington Hudson. He has lived in England for most of his life . He studied linguistics at Loughborough Grammar School in Leicestershire , Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and the School of Oriental and African Studies . He worked with Michael Halliday as research assistant on two projects at University College London: on the grammar of scientific English with Rodney Huddleston , and on Linguistics and English Teaching .
Go to Profile#24323
Robert Denhardt
#24334
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Robert B. Denhardt, scholar and author, was born in Kentucky in 1942. He received his Ph.D. in Public Administration from the University of Kentucky in 1968. Denhardt is best known for his work in public administration theory and organizational behavior, especially leadership and organizational change. In The New Public Service: Serving, not Steering, he developed a new model of governance that stresses the need to engage citizens in governance of their communities.
Go to Profile#24324
Alon Halevy
#24335
Overall Influence
Alon Yitzchack Halevy is an Israeli-American computer scientist and a leading researcher in the area of data integration. He was a research scientist at Google from 2005 to 2015, when he left to become head of Recruit Institute of Technology. He left Recruit in 2018 and joined Facebook AI in 2019. Until 2006, he was a professor of computer science at the University of Washington. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 1993.
Go to Profile#24325
Alexander Auzan
#24336
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Aleksandr Auzan is a Russian Economist, dean of the MSU Faculty of Economics, doctor of science, author of more than 130 scientific publications, member of numerous state councils and committees on strategic development of the Russian economics.
Go to Profile#24326
Lucy Riall
#24337
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Lucy Riall is an Irish historian. She was a professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London, and is currently a professor in the Department of History and Civilisation at the European University Institute in Florence.
Go to Profile#24327
Adrian Pagan
#24338
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Adrian Rodney Pagan is an Australian economist and Professor of Economics in the School of Economics at the University of Sydney. From 1995 to 2000, he was a member of the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Go to Profile#24328
Neil Denari
#24339
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Neil Denari is an American architect, professor, and author. Based since 1988 in Los Angeles, Denari emerged in New York during the 1980s with a series of theoretical projects and texts based on the collapse of the machine aesthetic of Modernism. His office, Neil M. Denari Architects is dedicated to exploring the realms of architecture, design, urbanism, and all aspects of contemporary life. As a teacher for more than 20 years, Denari has held visiting professorships at UC Berkeley, Columbia, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Texas at Arlington. Denari is a tenured...
Go to Profile#24329
Walter Scheel
#24340
Overall Influence
1919 - 2016 (97 years)
Walter Scheel was a German statesman. A member of the Nazi Party that joined the Free Democratic Party of Germany in 1946, he first served in government as the Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development from 1961 to 1966 and later as President of Germany from 1974 to 1979. He led the FDP from 1968 to 1974.
Go to Profile#24330
Pavel Nedvěd
#24341
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Pavel Nedvěd is a Czech former professional footballer who played as a midfielder. He is widely considered as one of the greatest midfielders of his generation and as one of the most successful players to emerge from the Czech Republic, winning domestic and European accolades with Italian clubs Lazio, including the last Cup Winners' Cup, and Juventus, whom he led to the 2003 UEFA Champions League Final.
Go to Profile#24331
Henry King Stanford
#24342
Overall Influence
1916 - 2009 (93 years)
Henry King Stanford was the interim president of the University of Georgia from 1986 through 1987 and the third president of the University of Miami from 1962 to 1981. Early life and education Stanford attended Emory University, where he obtained a A.B., the University of Denver, where he earned a M.Sc., and New York University, where he earned a PhD.
Go to Profile#24332
Richard Kluger
#24343
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Richard Kluger is an American author who has won a Pulitzer Prize. He focuses his writing chiefly on society, politics and history. He has been a journalist and book publisher. Early life and family Born in Paterson, New Jersey, in September 1934. Kluger grew up living with his mother, Ida, and older brother, Alan, on the Upper West Side of New York after his parents were divorced when he was seven. Though neither of his parents completed high school, they made sure their two sons had the advantage of a good education. He grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Kluger enrolled in the Columbia School of Journalism but did not graduate.
Go to Profile#24333
Peter Winkler
#24344
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Peter Mann Winkler is a research mathematician, author of more than 125 research papers in mathematics and patent holder in a broad range of applications, ranging from cryptography to marine navigation. His research areas include discrete mathematics, theory of computation and probability theory. He is currently a professor of mathematics and computer science at Dartmouth College.
Go to Profile#24334
Herch Moysés Nussenzveig
#24345
Overall Influence
1933 - 2022 (89 years)
Herch Moysés Nussenzveig was a Brazilian physicist, professor at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. He authored several textbooks, notably the collection Curso de Física Básica , winner of the Prêmio Jabuti in 1999 on the category Ciências Exatas, Tecnologia e Informática . He was president of the Brazilian Physical Society from 1981 to 1983.
Go to Profile#24335
Charles R. Kesler
#24346
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Charles R. Kesler is professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University. He is editor of the Claremont Review of Books, and the author of several books. He also serves on the Board of Trustees at New College of Florida.
Go to Profile#24336
Seth Green
#24347
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Seth Benjamin Green is an American actor, writer, director, and producer. His film debut came with a role in the comedy-drama film The Hotel New Hampshire , and he went on to have supporting roles in comedy films throughout the 1980s, including Radio Days and Big Business .
Go to Profile#24337
Jeremiah P. Ostriker
#24348
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Jeremiah Paul "Jerry" Ostriker is an American astrophysicist and a professor of astronomy at Columbia University and is the Charles A. Young Professor Emeritus at Princeton, where he also continues as a senior research scholar. Ostriker has also served as a university administrator as Provost of Princeton University.
Go to Profile#24338
Kenyon Martin
#24349
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Kenyon Lee Martin Sr. is an American former professional basketball player who played 15 seasons in the National Basketball Association . As a power forward, he played for the New Jersey Nets, Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Clippers, New York Knicks and Milwaukee Bucks of the NBA, and the Xinjiang Flying Tigers of China. He played college basketball for the Cincinnati Bearcats and was named the national college player of the year during his senior season. Martin was drafted with the first overall pick in the 2000 NBA draft by the New Jersey Nets. He was an NBA All-Star in .
Go to Profile#24339
Emma Rothschild
#24350
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Emma Georgina Rothschild is a British economic historian, a professor of history at Harvard University. She is director of the Joint Centre for History and Economics at Harvard, and an honorary Professor of History and Economics at the University of Cambridge. She formerly served as board member of United Nations Foundation and as a professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris.
Go to Profile#24340
Eberhard Freitag
#24351
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Eberhard Freitag is a German mathematician, specializing in complex analysis and especially modular forms. Education and career Freitag studied from 1961 mathematics, physics and astronomy at Heidelberg University, where he received in 1964 his Diplom and in 1966 his Ph.D. , supervised by Hans Maaß , with thesis Modulformen zweiten Grades zum rationalen und Gaußschen Zahlkörper, published in Sitzungsberichte Heidelberger Akad. Wiss. 1967. From 1964 he was a research assistant at the Mathematischen Institut in Heidelberg, where he received at the end of 1969 his habilitation and became there a Privatdozent and in 1970 a scientific advisor.
Go to Profile#24341
Jorge J. E. Gracia
#24352
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jorge J. E. Gracia was a Cuban-born American philosopher who was the Samuel P. Capen Chair, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Department of Comparative Literature in the State University of New York at Buffalo. Gracia was educated in Cuba, the United States, Canada, and Spain, and received his Ph.D. in Medieval Philosophy from the University of Toronto.
Go to Profile#24342
Shlomo Weber
#24353
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Shlomo Weber is an economics professor and president, New Economic School in Moscow, Russia; Academic Director of the Center for Study of Diversity and Social Interactions at NES; Robert H. and Nancy Dedman Trustee Professor of Economics Department of Economics, Southern Methodist University.
Go to Profile#24343
Manfred Lindner
#24354
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Manfred Lindner is a German physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. He conducts basic research in particle and astro-particle physics. Life and Scientific Work Manfred Lindner studied physics from 1978 bis 1984 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany, where he received his PhD in 1987. Subsequently, he was from 1987 to 1989 postdoc at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago and from 1989 to 1991 Fellow at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. After that, Manfred Lindner spent 1991–1993 with a Heisenberg-Fellowship ...
Go to Profile#24344
Susumu Tachi
#24355
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
is a professor of Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University and Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo. Education Dr. Tachi received the B.E., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in mathematical engineering and information physics from the University of Tokyo in 1968, 1970, and 1973, respectively.
Go to Profile#24345
Hisaki Matsuura
#24356
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Hisaki Matsuura is a noted Japanese professor, poet, and novelist. Life Matsuura was born in Tokyo. In 1981 he obtained his Ph.D. in French literature from the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle, and 1982 became an assistant professor in the French Department at the University of Tokyo where he is now a professor of culture and representation. He was supported by a 1997–98 Japan Foundation Fellowship at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#24346
Mason Porter
#24357
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Mason A. Porter is an American mathematician and physicist currently at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was elected to the 2018 class of fellows of the American Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#24347
David Ginzburg
#24358
Overall Influence
David Ginzburg is a professor of mathematics at Tel Aviv University working in number theory and automorphic forms. Career Ginzburg received his PhD in mathematics from Tel Aviv University in 1988 under the supervision of Stephen Gelbart. He is a professor of mathematics at Tel Aviv University.
Go to Profile#24348
Marc Rochkind
#24359
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Marc J. Rochkind invented the Source Code Control System while working at Bell Labs, as well as writing Advanced UNIX Programming, and founding XVT Software, Inc. External links Marc Rochkind's web site
Go to Profile#24349
Liah Greenfeld
#24360
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Liah Greenfeld is an Israeli-American Russian-Jewish interdisciplinary scholar engaged in the scientific explanation of human social reality on various levels, beginning with the individual mind and ending with the level of civilization. She has been called "the most iconoclastic" of contemporary sociologists and her approach represents the major alternative to the mainstream approaches in social science. Throughout her analyses, she emphasizes the empirical foundation of claims that she makes about human thought and action, underlining the importance of logical consistency between different...
Go to Profile#24350
Jeanne W. Ross
#24361
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Jeanne Wenzel Ross is an American organizational theorist and principal research scientist at MIT Sloan School of Management and the MIT Center for Information Systems Research , specializes in Enterprise Architecture, ICT and Management. She is known for her work on IT governance, and Enterprise architecture.
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