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
#24851
Harold Perkin
#24862
Overall Influence
1926 - 2004 (78 years)
Harold James Perkin was a distinguished English social historian who was the founder of the Social History Society in 1976. Background Perkin was born in Hanley, Staffordshire of humble origins. He attended Hanley High School and won a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge from 1945, gaining a starred First Class degree in 1948. After National Service in the RAF, he was rejected by his Cambridge college to study for a PhD. He began extramural history teaching from 1950 with the University of Manchester.
Go to Profile#24852
Alan Aderem
#24863
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Alan Aderem is an American biologist, specializing in immunology and cell biology. Aderem's particular focus is the innate immune system, the part of the immune system that responds generically to pathogens. His laboratory's research focuses on diseases afflicting citizens of resource poor countries, including AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and influenza.
Go to Profile#24853
Mario Gaudino
#24864
Overall Influence
Mario F.L. Gaudino, MD, PhD, MSCE, FEBCTS, FACC, FAHA is an Italian cardiothoracic surgeon who is the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Professor in Cardiothoracic Surgery and Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research at Weill Cornell Medicine and an attending cardiac surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical Center. He is an expert in coronary revascularization and clinical trialist. He is known for conducting the PALACS trial, which demonstrated that posterior pericardiotomy at the time of cardiac surgery reduced the incidence of post-operative atrial ...
Go to Profile#24854
Edgar Wright
#24865
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Edgar Howard Wright is an English filmmaker. He is known for his fast-paced and kinetic, satirical genre filmss, which feature extensive utilisation of expressive popular music, Steadicam tracking shots, dolly zooms and a signature editing style that includes transitions, whip pans and wipes. He began making independent short films before making his first feature film A Fistful of Fingers in 1995. Wright created and directed the comedy series Asylum in 1996, written with David Walliams. After directing several other television shows, Wright directed the sitcom Spaced , which aired for two ser...
Go to Profile#24855
George Stanley Rushbrooke
#24866
Overall Influence
1915 - 1995 (80 years)
Prof George Stanley Rushbrooke FRS FRSE was a 20th century British theoretical physicist. Biography Rushbrooke was born in Willenhall, one of twin sons of George Henry Rushbrooke, baker and confectioner, and Frances Isabel . After attending a small private school he moved, at age 10, to Wolverhampton Grammar School, from where he gained a State Scholarship and passed the entrance scholarship exam to St John's College, Cambridge. He entered the college in October 1933, where he read mathematics and gained Firsts throughout his examinations. He and Fred Hoyle were jointly awarded the Mayhew P...
Go to Profile#24856
Michael Katehakis
#24867
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Michael N. Katehakis is a Professor of Management Science at Rutgers University. He is noted for his work in Markov decision process, Gittins index, the multi-armed bandit, Markov chains and other related fields.
Go to Profile#24857
Petr Fradkov
#24868
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Petr Mikhaylovich Fradkov is a Russian economist and banker serving as the chairman and CEO of Promsvyazbank and the general director of the . Early life and education Fradkov was born in 1978 in Moscow. He is the son of Mikhail Fradkov. Fradkov graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 2000. In 2007, he earned a Master of Business Administration from the Kingston Business School. Fradkov completed a second MBA and a degree at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
Go to Profile#24858
Ronit Matalon
#24869
Overall Influence
1959 - 2017 (58 years)
Ronit Matalon was an Israeli fiction writer. Biography Ronit Matalon was born in Ganei Tikva, Israel, the daughter of Egyptian Jewish immigrants. Matalon studied literature and philosophy at Tel Aviv University and worked as a journalist for Haaretz newspaper, where she covered Gaza and the West Bank between 1987 and 1993. She was a resident of Haifa and taught literature at the University of Haifa. She also taught at the Camera Obscura school for the Arts in Tel Aviv.
Go to Profile#24859
Gennady Osipov
#24870
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Gennady Vasilievich Osipov is a Russian scientist, sociologist and philosopher, Ph.D., Professor, full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences /RAS/ since 1991; scientific leader of the Institute of Socio-Political Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences ; President of the Russian Academy of Social Sciences ; member of RAS Social Sciences Department Bureau; President of the Eurasian International Association; member of the Scientific Council of the Russian Security Council; Honorary President of the Russian Sociological Association. Osipov graduated from Moscow State Institute of Inte...
Go to Profile#24860
Henry Odera Oruka
#24871
Overall Influence
1944 - 1995 (51 years)
Henry Odera Oruka was a Kenyan philosopher who is best known for "Sage Philosophy". It was a project started in the 1970s in an attempt to preserve the knowledge of the indigenous thinkers in traditional African communities.
Go to Profile#24861
Deborah Cameron
#24872
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Deborah Cameron is a British linguist and feminist who currently holds the Rupert Murdoch Professorship in Language and Communication at Worcester College, Oxford University. Cameron is mainly interested in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. A large part of her academic research is focused on the relationship of language to gender and sexuality. She wrote the book The Myth of Mars And Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages?, which was published in 2007.
Go to Profile#24862
Yosef Garfinkel
#24873
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Yosef Garfinkel is an Israeli archaeologist and academic. He is a professor of Prehistoric Archaeology and of Archaeology of the Biblical Period at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Biography Yosef Garfinkel was born in 1956 in Haifa, Israel. He served in the Israel Defense Forces between 1975 and 1978. He studied at Hebrew University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in geography and archaeology in 1981, a Master of Arts degree in prehistory and Biblical archaeology in 1987, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1991.
Go to Profile#24863
Katie Cannon
#24874
Overall Influence
1949 - 2018 (69 years)
Katie Geneva Cannon was an American Christian theologian and ethicist associated with womanist theology and black theology. In 1974 she became the first African-American woman ordained in the United Presbyterian Church .
Go to Profile#24864
Jesse Thorn
#24875
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Jesse Michael Gabriel Thorn is an American media entrepreneur and public radio and podcast host/creator. He is the owner and founder of the Maximum Fun podcast network, and the host and producer of the podcasts Judge John Hodgman and Jordan, Jesse, Go! and the radio show and podcast Bullseye. Bullseye , is distributed by National Public Radio to several hundred public terrestrial radio stations. In addition to his work in radio and podcasts, Jesse Thorn also hosted the television program The Grid, which formerly aired on IFC, and The Sound of Young America, which aired on Current, and runs a blog and web video series devoted to men's fashion called Put This On.
Go to Profile#24865
Juliane Koepcke
#24876
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Juliane Margaret Beate Koepcke , also known by her married name Juliane Diller, is a German-Peruvian mammalogist who specialises in bats. The daughter of German zoologists Maria and Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke, she became famous at the age of 17 as the sole survivor of the 1971 LANSA Flight 508 plane crash; after falling while strapped to her seat and suffering numerous injuries, she survived 11 days alone in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest until she was rescued by local fishermen after finding their camp.
Go to Profile#24866
Claudine Gay
#24877
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Claudine Gay is an American political scientist serving as the 30th president of Harvard University. Assuming office in 2023, she became the university's first black president 368 years after its founding.
Go to Profile#24867
James C. Adamson
#24878
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
James Craig Adamson is a former NASA astronaut and retired Colonel of the United States Army. He is married with 3 children. James Adamson flew on two missions, STS-28 and STS-43, and completed 263 orbits and 334 hours in space. After retiring from NASA, he was recruited by Allied Signal where he retired in 2001. Adamson has logged over 3,000 hours in over 30 different types of helicopters and airplanes.
Go to Profile#24868
Larry Kramer
#24879
Overall Influence
1935 - 2020 (85 years)
Laurence David Kramer was an American playwright, author, film producer, public health advocate, and gay rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to London, where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for the film Women in Love and received an Academy Award nomination for his work.
Go to Profile#24869
Peter Selz
#24880
Overall Influence
1919 - 2019 (100 years)
Peter Howard Selz was a German-born American art historian and museum director and curator who specialized in German Expressionism. Biography Peter Selz was born in Munich of Jewish parents. In 1936, aged 17, he fled Nazi Germany because his parents wanted to send him to study in the United States. His family managed to escape Germany just before the Night of Broken Glass, with the help of some nuns, whom his optometrist father had treated for free. He spent one year at Columbia University and discovered that he was distantly related to Alfred Stieglitz, who became his mentor. After serving in World War II he received an A.M.
Go to Profile#24870
Jesús A. De Loera
#24881
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Jesús Antonio De Loera is a Mexican-American mathematician at the University of California, Davis, specializing in discrete mathematics and discrete geometry. Education De Loera did his undergraduate studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, earning a B.S. in mathematics in 1989. After earning a master's degree from Western Michigan University a year later, and another master's degree in 1993 from Cornell University, he finished his doctorate from Cornell in 1995 under the supervision of Bernd Sturmfels.
Go to Profile#24871
María Rosa Menocal
#24882
Overall Influence
1953 - 2012 (59 years)
María Rosa Menocal was a Cuban-born scholar of medieval culture and history and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. Education Menocal earned a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, working under Samuel Armistead, a student of Américo Castro. Before joining the Yale faculty in 1986, she taught Romance philology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#24872
Alberto Campo Baeza
#24883
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Alberto Campo Baeza is a Spanish architect and Full-Time Design Professor at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid from 1986 to 2017. He retired the same year. He has built a selected number of awarded buildings.
Go to Profile#24873
Laurie Glimcher
#24884
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Laurie Hollis Glimcher is an American physician-scientist who was appointed president and CEO of Dana–Farber Cancer Institute in October 2016. She was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.
Go to Profile#24874
Samir Mitragotri
#24885
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Samir Mitragotri is an Indian American professor at Harvard University, an inventor, an entrepreneur, and a researcher in the fields of drug delivery and biomaterials. He is currently the Hiller Professor of Bioengineering and Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Prior to 2017, he was the Duncan and Suzanne Mellichamp Chair Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara.
Go to Profile#24875
Charalambos D. Aliprantis
#24886
Overall Influence
1946 - 2009 (63 years)
Charalambos Dionisios Aliprantis was a Greek-American economist and mathematician who introduced Banach space and Riesz space methods in economic theory. He was born in Cefalonia, Greece in 1946 and immigrated to the US in 1969, where he obtained his PhD in Mathematics from Caltech in June 1973.
Go to Profile#24876
Raymond Finkelstein
#24887
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Raymond Antony Finkelstein is an Australian lawyer and judge. From 1997 until 2011, he served as a judge of the Federal Court of Australia. His judgments were highly influential in commercial law, giving rise to new approaches in insolvency, competition law and class actions.
Go to Profile#24877
Giordano Bruno Guerri
#24888
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Giordano Bruno Guerri is an Italian historian, writer, and journalist. He is an important scholar of twentieth-century Italy, in particular of the Fascist period and the relationship between Italians and the Catholic Church.
Go to Profile#24878
Diane E. Meier
#24889
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Diane E. Meier , an American geriatrician and palliative care specialist. In 1999, Dr. Meier founded the Center to Advance Palliative Care, a national organization devoted to increasing access to quality health care in the United States for people living with serious illness. She continues to serve as CAPC's Director Emerita and Strategic Medical Advisor. Meier is also Vice-Chair for Public Policy, Professor of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine and Catherine Gaisman Professor of Medical Ethics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Meier was founder and Dire...
Go to Profile#24879
C. David Marsden
#24890
Overall Influence
1938 - 1998 (60 years)
David Marsden , FRS was a British neurologist who made a significant contribution to the field of movement disorders. He was described as ‘arguably the leading academic neurologist and neuroscientist of his generation in the UK’.
Go to Profile#24880
Kenneth C. Smith
#24891
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Kenneth C. Smith is a Canadian electrical engineer and professor. He is currently Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto. Academic career Smith received the Bachelor of Applied Science degree from the Division of Engineering Physics in 1954, the M.A.Sc in electrical engineering in 1956, and the Ph.D. in Physics in 1960, all from the University of Toronto.
Go to Profile#24881
Hilary Swank
#24892
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Hilary Ann Swank is an American actress and film producer. Swank first became known in 1992 for her role on the television series Camp Wilder and made her film debut with a minor role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer . She then had her breakthrough for starring as Julie Pierce in The Next Karate Kid , the fourth installment of The Karate Kid franchise, and as Carly Reynolds on the eighth season of Beverly Hills, 90210 .
Go to Profile#24882
Vincenzo Montella
#24893
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Vincenzo Montella is an Italian football manager and former striker. He is the current head coach of the Turkey national football team. Montella's nickname during his playing career was "Aeroplanino", in reference to his small stature and trademark goal celebration, in which he spread his arms like wings. A prolific goalscorer, throughout his playing career Montella played as a forward for Italian clubs Empoli, Genoa, Sampdoria and Roma, and also had a spell on loan in England with Fulham. He is mostly remembered for his performances with Roma , where he won the Serie A title and the Superco...
Go to Profile#24883
Jennifer Wilby
#24894
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jennifer M. Wilby is an American and UK management scientist, and past director of the Centre for Systems Studies, and a senior lecturer and researcher in management systems and sciences in The Business School, University of Hull. She served as president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences for the term 2010–2011.
Go to Profile#24884
Arnold R. Weber
#24895
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Arnold Robert Weber was the president of Northwestern University from 1984–1994. His tenure at Northwestern was marked by stabilizing the university's finances and enhancing the Evanston campus environment.
Go to Profile#24885
Anjelica Huston
#24896
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Anjelica Huston is an American actress and director known for often portraying eccentric and distinctive characters. She has received multiple accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for three British Academy Film Awards and six Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2010, she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Go to Profile#24886
Jewel Prestage
#24897
Overall Influence
1931 - 2014 (83 years)
Jewel Limar Prestage was an American political scientist, citizen activist, educator, mentor, and author. She is the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate in political science in the United States. Prestage mentored many others in her field, which is how she received the title, "The Mother of Black Political Science." Prestage conducted ample research on African Americans' role in the political process. In 1977, she co-authored the anthology A Portrait of Marginality, which examines the political socialization of Black women.
Go to Profile#24887
Taylor Howard
#24898
Overall Influence
1932 - 2002 (70 years)
H. Taylor Howard was an American scientist and radio engineer. Howard was a major player in the development of consumer satellite television in the USA. In 1976, he demonstrated the possibility of receiving of TV signal from a communications satellite direct to the home of an ordinary householder, using a home-made satellite dish and a self-designed and built analog satellite receiver. He co-founded San Jose, California-based Chaparral Communications. He was born in Peoria, Illinois.
Go to Profile#24888
Iraj Afshar
#24899
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Iraj Afshar was a bibliographer, historian, scholar, professor, and a figure in the field of Persian studies. Afshar was a professor emeritus of the University of Tehran. He was a consulting editor of Encyclopædia Iranica at Columbia University.
Go to Profile#24889
Ricky Steamboat
#24900
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Richard Henry Blood Sr. , better known by his ring name Ricky "the Dragon" Steamboat, is an American retired professional wrestler best known for his work with the American Wrestling Association , Jim Crockett Promotions , World Championship Wrestling , and the World Wrestling Federation . Steamboat is often regarded as one of the best professional wrestlers of all time.
Go to Profile#24890
Chris Carter
#24901
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Christopher Carl Carter is an American television and film producer, director and writer who gained fame in the 1990s as the creator of the Fox science fiction supernatural drama series The X-Files.
Go to Profile#24891
Sidney S. Culbert
#24902
Overall Influence
1913 - 2003 (90 years)
Sidney Spence Culbert was a linguist, psychologist and Esperantist. Biography Born in Miles City, Montana, Culbert moved to Tacoma, Washington with his family in 1923 and lived in Tacoma and Seattle for most of his life.
Go to Profile#24892
David Robert Nelson
#24903
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
David R. Nelson is an American physicist, and Arthur K. Solomon Professor of Biophysics, at Harvard University. Education and research David R. Nelson is currently the Arthur K. Solomon Professor of Biophysics and Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University. He graduated from Cornell University Summa cum laude with a double major in physics and mathematics in 1972, and received an M.S. in theoretical physics in 1974, and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in January, 1975. He was in the fourth and final class of Cornell's short-lived "Six-year Ph.D. program". He then became a ...
Go to Profile#24893
Graham Brightwell
#24904
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Graham Brightwell is a British mathematician working in the field of discrete mathematics. Currently a professor at the London School of Economics, he has published nearly 100 papers in pure mathematics, including over a dozen with Béla Bollobás. His research interests include random combinatorial structures; partially ordered sets; algorithms; random graphs; discrete mathematics and graph theory.
Go to Profile#24894
Horst Seehofer
#24905
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Horst Lorenz Seehofer is a German politician who served as Minister of the Interior, Building and Community under Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2018 to 2021. A member of the Christian Social Union , he served as the 18th Minister-President of Bavaria from 2008 to 2018 and Leader of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria from 2008 to 2019.
Go to Profile#24895
Giday WoldeGabriel
#24906
Overall Influence
Giday WoldeGabriel is an Ethiopian geologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who co-discovered human skeletal remains at Herto Bouri, Ethiopia, now classified as Homo sapiens idaltu. Life He graduated from Case Western Reserve University.
Go to Profile#24896
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
#24907
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Emily Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is a psychologist and primatologist most known for her work with two bonobos, Kanzi and Panbanisha, investigating their linguistic and cognitive abilities using lexigrams and computer-based keyboards. Originally based at Georgia State University's Language Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, she worked at the Iowa Primate Learning Sanctuary in Des Moines, Iowa from 2006 until her departure in November 2013. She currently sits on the Board of Directors of Bonobo Hope.
Go to Profile#24897
Alice Kaplan
#24908
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Alice Yaeger Kaplan is an American literary critic, translator, historian, and educator. She is the Sterling Professor of French and Director of the Whitney Center for the Humanities at Yale University.
Go to Profile#24898
Coralie Colmez
#24909
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Coralie Colmez is a French author and tutor in mathematics and mathematics education. Early life and career Coralie Colmez is the daughter of mathematicians Pierre Colmez and Leila Schneps. Colmez was raised in Paris, France.
Go to Profile#24899
Bolaji Aluko
#24910
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Mobolaji E. Aluko is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Howard University. He was appointed as the inaugural vice-chancellor of Federal University, Otuoke by the Federal Government of Nigeria from 2011 till the expiration of his tenure in 2016.
Go to Profile#24900
Julia Ebner
#24911
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
Julia Ebner is an Austrian researcher, and author, based in London. She has written the books The Rage: the Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism and Going Dark: the Secret Social Lives of Extremists.
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