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
#24601
Stillman Drake
#24612
Overall Influence
1910 - 1993 (83 years)
Stillman Drake , an American historian of science who moved to Canada in 1967 and acquired Canadian citizenship a few years later, is best known for his work on Galileo Galilei . Including his translations, Drake wrote 16 books on Galileo and contributed to 15 others.
Go to Profile#24602
Alessandra Buonanno
#24613
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Alessandra Buonanno is an Italian naturalized-American theoretical physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam. She is the head of the "Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity" department. She holds a research professorship at the University of Maryland, College Park, and honorary professorships at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and the University of Potsdam. She is a leading member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which observed gravitational waves from a binary black-hole merger in 2015.
Go to Profile#24603
Robert Lax
#24614
Overall Influence
1915 - 2000 (85 years)
Robert Lax was an American poet, known in particular for his association with Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton. Another friend of his youth was the painter Ad Reinhardt. After a long period of drifting from job to job about the world, Lax settled on the island of Patmos during the latter part of his life. Considered by some to be a self-exiled hermit, he nonetheless welcomed visitors to his home, but did nothing to court publicity or expand his literary career or reputation.
Go to Profile#24604
Marco Marra
#24615
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Marco A. Marra is a Distinguished Scientist and Director of Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre at the BC Cancer Research Centre and Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia . He also serves as UBC Canada Research Chair in Genome Science for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and is an inductee in the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. Marra has been instrumental in bringing genome science to Canada by demonstrating the pivotal role that genomics can play in human health and disease research.
Go to Profile#24605
Gregory Keyes
#24616
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Gregory Keyes is an American writer of science fiction and fantasy who has written both original and media-related novels under both the names J. Gregory Keyes and Greg Keyes. Early life Keyes was born in Meridian, Mississippi, as John Gregory Keyes. He received degrees in anthropology from Mississippi State University and the University of Georgia before becoming a full-time writer.
Go to Profile#24606
Kevin Fenton
#24617
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Professor Kevin Andrew Fenton, is a Public Health Physician and Infectious Disease Epidemiologist. He is the London Regional Director at Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, Regional Public Health Director at NHS London and the Statutory Health Advisor to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. He is the current President of the United Kingdom Faculty of Public Health and holds Honourable Professorships with the University College London and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Go to Profile#24607
Maurice Peress
#24618
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Maurice Peress was an American orchestra conductor, educator and author. After serving as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein beginning in 1961, Peress went on to stand as leader of the orchestra in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1962. In 1970, he also became leader for two years of the Austin Symphony Orchestra. In 1974, he left Texas to take over the Kansas City Philharmonic, where he remained until 1980. He conducted Leonard Bernstein's musical theatre work MASS in 1971, 1973 and 2014.
Go to Profile#24608
Arden L. Bement Jr.
#24619
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Arden Lee Bement Jr. is an American engineer and scientist and has served in executive positions in government, industry and academia. Bement was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1983 for contributions to the understanding of irradiation effects in nuclear materials and development of advanced materials concepts for defense applications.
Go to Profile#24609
Robert V. Bruce
#24620
Overall Influence
1923 - 2008 (85 years)
Robert Vance Bruce was an American historian specializing in the American Civil War, who won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876 . After serving in the Army during World War II, Bruce graduated from the University of New Hampshire, where he earned his Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering. He received his Master of Arts in history and his Doctor of Philosophy from Boston University, where he was later a professor. He also taught at the University of Bridgeport, Lawrence Academy at Groton, and the University of Wisconsin....
Go to Profile#24610
Lynn Gladden
#24621
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
#24611
Gerhard Meisenberg
#24622
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Gerhard Meisenberg is a German biochemist. As of 2018, he was a professor of physiology and biochemistry at Ross University School of Medicine in Dominica. He is a director, with Richard Lynn, of the Pioneer Fund, which has been described as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was, until 2018 or 2019, the editor-in-chief of Mankind Quarterly, which is commonly described as a white supremacist journal and purveyor of scientific racism.
Go to Profile#24612
Evelyn Nakano Glenn
#24623
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Evelyn Seiko Nakano Glenn is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to her teaching and research responsibilities, she served as founding director of the university's Center for Race and Gender , a leading U.S. academic center for the study of intersectionality among gender, race and class social groups and institutions. In June 2008, Glenn was elected president of the 15,000-member American Sociological Association. She served as president-elect during the 2008–2009 academic year, assumed her presidency at the annual ASA national convention in San Francisco in Augu...
Go to Profile#24613
Albert Schwartz
#24624
Overall Influence
1923 - 1992 (69 years)
Albert Schwartz was an American zoologist who worked extensively with the herpetofauna of Florida and the West Indies, and later with butterflies. One magazine article once dubbed him as one of the "Kings of West Indian Anole Taxonomy".
Go to Profile#24614
Pedro Bandeira
#24625
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Pedro Bandeira de Luna Filho is a Brazilian award-winning and best-selling children's novelist and poet, best known as the author of the Os Karas hexalogy of mystery novels which comprise A Droga da Obediência , Pântano de Sangue , Anjo da Morte , A Droga do Amor , Droga de Americana! and A Droga da Amizade .
Go to Profile#24615
Gerhard M. Sessler
#24626
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Gerhard M. Sessler is a German inventor and scientist. He is Professor emeritus at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of the Technische Universität Darmstadt. Together with James E. West, he invented the foil electret microphone at Bell Laboratories in 1962 and together with Dietmar Hohm the silicon microphone in 1983.
Go to Profile#24616
Martin Meyerson
#24627
Overall Influence
1922 - 2007 (85 years)
Martin Meyerson was an American city planner, academic, and president of the University of Pennsylvania from 1970 to 1981. His research, mentorship, essays, and consulting were focused on post-World War II urban policy at the municipal and federal levels.
Go to Profile#24617
Renaud Barbaras
#24628
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Renaud Barbaras is a French contemporary philosopher. An École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud alumnus, he is Chair of Contemporary Philosophy in the University of Paris 1, Sorbonne. Work A phenomenologist, Barbaras' works have primarily focused on the philosophies of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. More recently, his readings of Czech philosopher Jan Patočka have influenced him into conceiving a phenomenology of life and accordingly, a cosmology in which man's place is to be thought anew.
Go to Profile#24618
Witold Kieżun
#24629
Overall Influence
1922 - 2021 (99 years)
Witold Jerzy Kieżun was a Polish economist, soldier of the Home Army , participant of the Warsaw uprising and prisoner in the Soviet Gulags. Kieżun was a former professor at Temple University, Duquesne University, Universite de Montreal, Université du Québec à Montréal, Bujumbura University, Warsaw University. He served as Chief Technical Advisor of the United Nations Development Programme in Burundi, Rwanda, and Burkina Faso. Witold Kieżun was a lecturer at Kozminski University in Warsaw. He received Doctor Honoris Causa from Jagiellonian University and the National Defence University of Warsaw.
Go to Profile#24619
Yoram Cohen
#24630
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Yoram Cohen is a retired Israelii security person who served as the Director of Shin Bet, from May 15, 2011 until May 8, 2016, when he was replaced by Nadav Argaman. Biography Cohen was born in Israel to Moshe and Leah Cohen, Jewish immigrants from Afghanistan. He grew up in Tel Aviv and graduated from a religious high school in Pardes Hanna-Karkur. He was drafted into the IDF in 1979, and did his military service in the Golani Brigade. He served as a soldier and a squad leader in the brigade's reconnaissance company. In 1982, after finishing his compulsory service in the IDF, he started working at Shin Bet; his first post was security officer for the field coordinators.
Go to Profile#24620
Boris Katz
#24631
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Boris Katz is a principal American research scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and head of the Laboratory's InfoLab Group. His research interests include natural language processing and understanding, machine learning and intelligent information access. His brother Victor Kac is a mathematician at MIT.
Go to Profile#24621
Marvin Lewis
#24632
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Marvin Ronald Lewis is an American football coach who is the special advisor to the head coach at Arizona State. Previously, Lewis was the head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals in the National Football League for 16 seasons. He came to prominence as the defensive coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens from 1996 to 2001, whose defense in 2000 set the record for the fewest points allowed in a 16-game season and led the franchise to their first Super Bowl title in Super Bowl XXXV. This success resulted in Lewis being named the Bengals' head coach, where he served from 2003 to 2018. He was also a co...
Go to Profile#24622
David Lat
#24633
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
David Benjamin Lat is an American lawyer, author, and legal commentator. Lat is the founder of Above the Law, a website about law firms and the legal profession. Before blogging, Lat attended Harvard College and Yale Law School. After law school, he worked as a law clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain, became an associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and later was an assistant U.S. attorney for the appeals division in the District of New Jersey.
Go to Profile#24623
Sidney Udenfriend
#24634
Overall Influence
1918 - 1999 (81 years)
Sidney Udenfriend was an American biochemist, pharmacologist, founding director of the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology, co-discoverer of a color test to detect an intestinal tumor often linked with diseased heart valves. Udenfriend was also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a recipient of the Ames Award, Hillebrand Award, the Arthur S. Flemming award, Gairdner Award, the Van Slyke Award chief of the laboratory in the National Heart Institute, He was also a member the American Chemical Society, the American Society of Biological Chemists, American Society for Pharmacology...
Go to Profile#24624
Paul J. McAuley
#24635
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Paul J. McAuley is a British botanist and science fiction author. A biologist by training, McAuley writes mostly hard science fiction. His novels dealing with themes such as biotechnology, alternative history/alternative reality, and space travel.
Go to Profile#24625
Kenneth L. Cooke
#24636
Overall Influence
1925 - 2007 (82 years)
Kenneth L. Cooke was an American mathematical biologist known for his contributions to the study of epidemics. He was the W. M. Keck Professor of Mathematics at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
Go to Profile#24626
Charles Causley
#24637
Overall Influence
1917 - 2003 (86 years)
Charles Stanley Causley CBE FRSL was a British poet, school teacher and writer. His work is often noted for its simplicity and directness as well as its associations with folklore, legends and magic, especially when linked to his native Cornwall.
Go to Profile#24627
R. S. Sugirtharajah
#24638
Overall Influence
Rasiah S. Sugirtharajah, known as R. S. Sugirtharajah, is a biblical hermeneuticist and an emeritus professor at the University of Birmingham. He is known for his work in developing the field of postcolonial biblical criticism.
Go to Profile#24628
Louise Weinberg
#24639
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Louise Weinberg is an American legal scholar. She is known for her writings on legal theory, due process, and choice of law, and for her groundbreaking 1994 book, a 1200-page study on judicial federalism and judicial power.
Go to Profile#24629
Kamalini Ramdas
#24640
Overall Influence
Kamalini Ramdas is a Professor of Management Science and Operations and Deloitte Chair in Innovation & Entrepreneurship at London Business School, with expertise in the areas of innovation, entrepreneurship, and operations management. Ramdas' research examines innovative approaches, including service innovation, operational innovation, and business model innovation, to accelerate value creation in various service and manufacturing industries.
Go to Profile#24630
Ian Gibson
#24641
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Ian Gibson is an Irish author and Hispanist known for his biographies of the poet Antonio Machado, the artist Salvador Dalí, the bibliographer Henry Spencer Ashbee, the filmmaker Luis Buñuel. and particularly his work on the poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, for which he won several awards, including the 1989 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography. His work, La represión nacionalista de Granada en 1936 y la muerte de Federico García Lorca was banned in Spain under Franco.
Go to Profile#24631
Bill Walsh
#24642
Overall Influence
1931 - 2007 (76 years)
William Ernest Walsh was an American professional and college football coach. He served as head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and the Stanford Cardinal, during which time he popularized the West Coast offense. After retiring from the 49ers, Walsh worked as a sports broadcaster for several years and then returned as head coach at Stanford for three seasons.
Go to Profile#24632
Harley Race
#24643
Overall Influence
1943 - 2019 (76 years)
Harley Leland Race was an American professional wrestler, promoter, and trainer. Race wrestled in the National Wrestling Alliance , the American Wrestling Association , the World Wrestling Federation , and World Championship Wrestling . He was an eight time world champion, having won the WWA World Heavyweight Championship once and the NWA World Heavyweight Championship seven times and was the first NWA United States Heavyweight Champion .
Go to Profile#24633
Anita Ramasastry
#24644
Overall Influence
Anita Ramasastry is the D. Wayne & Anne Gittinger Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle and a director of the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce & Technology. She is also a regular columnist for the online legal commentary Writ.
Go to Profile#24634
Wendell Nedderman
#24645
Overall Influence
1921 - 2019 (98 years)
Wendell Herman Nedderman was an American academic administrator who was president of the University of Texas at Arlington for nearly 20 years, first as acting president , then as president, leaving that post in July 1992. He began his 33 years of full-time service at UT Arlington in 1959 as the founding dean of the College of Engineering. This was followed by four years as vice president for academic affairs, and then 20 years as president. A campus engineering building was named Nedderman Hall in 1991 by the UT System board of regents. Campus Street and a portion of Monroe Street were combined and named Nedderman Drive by the City of Arlington in 1992.
Go to Profile#24635
O. W. Wolters
#24646
Overall Influence
1915 - 2000 (85 years)
Oliver William Wolters was a British academic, historian and author. He was also a Malayan civil servant and administrator. At his death, he was the Goldwin Smith Professor of Southeast Asian History Emeritus at Cornell University.
Go to Profile#24636
Anne Schilling
#24647
Overall Influence
Anne Schilling is an American mathematician specializing in algebraic combinatorics, representation theory, and mathematical physics. She is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Davis.
Go to Profile#24637
Ahmad Alamolhoda
#24648
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Sayyid Ahmad Alamolhoda is an Iranian Shia Islamic cleric who has been described as "senior" and "ultra conservative" and "hardline." His rank has been given both as Hojjatoleslam and Ayatollah. He is the Friday Prayer leader in Mashhad, Iran and is also that city's representative in the Iranian Assembly of Experts. Alamolhoda is a member of Combatant Clergy Association.
Go to Profile#24638
Frank McDonough
#24649
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Frank McDonough is a British historian of the Third Reich and international history. Life Francis Xavier McDonough was born on 17 April 1957 in Liverpool. He read modern History at Balliol College, Oxford, as a Senior Status Scholar. He was at Balliol at the same time as Boris Johnson and knew him. He later earned a PhD in history from Lancaster University, under the supervision of Ruth Henig. He was Professor of International History in the History Department of the School of Humanities and Social Science at Liverpool John Moores University until his retirement in 2021. He is an avid Liverpool F.C.
Go to Profile#24639
John Hughes
#24650
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
John Hughes is a British neuroscientist who shared the 1978 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research for the discovery of met-enkephalin and leu-enkephalin. This discovery demonstrated that opiate drugs exert their effects on the human brain by mimicking endogenous neurotransmitters, the opioid peptides.
Go to Profile#24640
Kerry Sieh
#24651
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Kerry E. Sieh is an American geologist and seismologist. Sieh's principal research interest is earthquake geology, which uses geological layers and landforms to understand the geometries of active faults, the earthquakes they generate, and the crustal structure their movements produce. His early work on the San Andreas fault led to the discovery of how often and how regularly it produces large earthquakes in southern California.
Go to Profile#24641
Howard A. Stone
#24652
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Howard Alvin Stone is the Donald R. Dixon '69 and Elizabeth W. Dixon Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. His field of research is in fluid mechanics, chemical engineering and complex fluids. He became an Editor of the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics in 2021.
Go to Profile#24642
James W. York
#24653
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
James W. York Jr. is an American mathematical physicist who contributed to the theory of general relativity. In any physical theory, it is important to understand when solutions to the fundamental field equation exist, and answering this question has been a theme of York's scientific work, with Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat, of formulating the Einstein field equation as a well-posed system in the sense of the theory of partial differential equations.
Go to Profile#24643
Eli Maor
#24654
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Eli Maor , an historian of mathematics, is the author of several books about the history of mathematics. Eli Maor received his PhD at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He teaches the history of mathematics at Loyola University Chicago. Maor was the editor of the article on trigonometry for the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Go to Profile#24644
Stephen J. Friedman
#24655
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Stephen J. Friedman is the former commissioner of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and seventh president of Pace University from 2007 to 2017. Prior to that, Friedman has served as dean of the Pace Law School, and senior partner and co-chairman of Debevoise & Plimpton. On February 1, 2017, Friedman urged New York to increase student financial aid to both public and private universities.
Go to Profile#24645
Joseph McElroy
#24656
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Joseph Prince McElroy is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. He is noted for his long postmodern novels such as Women and Men. Personal background McElroy was born on August 21, 1930, in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Brooklyn Heights. He graduated from Poly Prep Country Day School in 1947 and was given an Alumni Distinguished Achievement Award in 2007 from the school's Board of Governors. He graduated from Williams College in 1951. The following year, McElroy earned a master's degree from Columbia University. He served in the Coast Guard from 1952 to 1954, and then returned to Columbia to complete his Ph.D.
Go to Profile#24646
Guy Deutscher
#24657
Overall Influence
Guy Deutscher is a professor emeritus of physics at Tel Aviv University, Israel. His area of research is experimental solid-state physics and superconductivity. He completed his dissertation under the direction of the theoretical physicist Pierre Gilles de Gennes at the University of Paris-Sud in 1967 as a member of "the Orsay group on superconductivity".
Go to Profile#24647
Yukio Hatoyama
#24658
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Yukio Hatoyama is a former Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and Leader of the Democratic Party of Japan from 2009 to 2010. He was the first Prime Minister from the modern Democratic Party of Japan.
Go to Profile#24648
Alwyn Young
#24659
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Alwyn Young is a professor of economics and the Leili & Johannes Huth Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science . He held a named chair at the University of Chicago and was on the faculty at Boston University and the MIT Sloan School of Management before joining the LSE faculty. A graduate of Cornell University, he holds an MA in law and diplomacy and a PhD in international relations, both from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a PhD in economics from Columbia University. Young has taught courses in introductory economics at the LSE to first...
Go to Profile#24649
Balázs Szegedy
#24660
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Balázs Szegedy is a Hungarian mathematician whose research concerns combinatorics and graph theory. Szegedy earned a master's degree in 1998 and a PhD in 2003 from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. His dissertation, supervised by Péter Pál Pálfy, was about group theory and was entitled "On the Sylow and Borel subgroups of classical groups". After temporary positions at the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, Microsoft Research, and the Institute for Advanced Study, he joined the faculty of the University of Toronto Scarborough in 2006. He returned to the Rényi Institute in 2013.
Go to Profile#24650
Nicholas Ambraseys
#24661
Overall Influence
1929 - 2012 (83 years)
Nicholas Neocles Ambraseys FICE FREng was a Greek engineering seismologist. He was emeritus professor of engineering seismology and senior research fellow at Imperial College London. For many years Ambraseys was considered the leading figure and an authority in earthquake engineering and seismology in Europe.
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