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
#24901
Mitsuaki Yoshida
#24912
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Mitsuaki Yoshida was a Japanese virologist known for identifying the molecular structure of Human T-lymphotropic virus 1 responsible for Adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma. Life Yoshida was born in Toyama, Japan and received his Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of Tokyo. After his postdoctoral fellowship at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, he worked to uncover the relationship between oncovirus and carcinogenesis at the Cancer Institute, Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research from 1975 to 1989. He was appointed as Professor at the Institute of Medical Science, University of Tokyo in 1989, where he served as Dean from 1996 to 1998.
Go to Profile#24902
Tim Cahill
#24913
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Timothy Filiga Cahill is an Australian former professional soccer player who played as an attacking midfielder but also played as a striker on many occasions. A box-to-box midfielder, Cahill became recognised for "his aggressive and powerful approach and his ability to head the ball in the penalty area". Cahill has scored 50 goals in 108 caps between 2004 and 2018 and is regarded as one of the greatest Australian soccer players of all time. He currently works as a pundit for BBC Sport and Sky Sports.
Go to Profile#24903
Linda Griffith
#24914
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Linda Gay Griffith is an American biological engineer, and Professor of Biological Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also directs the Center for Gynepathology Research.
Go to Profile#24904
Yuri Trutnev
#24915
Overall Influence
1927 - 2021 (94 years)
Yuri Alexeyevich Trutnev was a Russian physicist and a professor of engineering at the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI . His career in physics spent in the former Soviet program of development of nuclear weapons and was one the designers in the RDS-37 , and the RDS-220 and many other nuclear charges.
Go to Profile#24905
Justin Richards
#24916
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Justin Richards is a British writer. He has written science fiction and fantasy novels, including series set in Victorian or early-20th-century London, and also adventure stories set in the present day. He has written many spin-off novels, reference books and audio plays based on the long-running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, and he is Creative Consultant for the BBC Books range of Doctor Who novels.
Go to Profile#24906
Lloyd Carr
#24917
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Lloyd Henry Carr Jr. is a former American football player and coach. He served as the head football coach at the University of Michigan from 1995 through the 2007 season, replacing Gary Moeller. Under Carr, the Michigan Wolverines compiled a record of 122–40 and won or shared five Big Ten Conference titles . Carr's undefeated 1997 team was declared the national champion by the Associated Press. His record coaching against top ten-ranked opponents was 20–8. Carr was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 2011.
Go to Profile#24907
Robert R. Glauber
#24918
Overall Influence
1939 - 2021 (82 years)
Robert Rudolf Glauber was an American academic who was a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a visiting professor at the Harvard Law School. He was the former chairman, president, board member and chief executive officer of NASD, and Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance from 1989 to 1992. Glauber was executive director of the task force appointed by President Reagan to report on the 1987 stock market crash. He was also a director of Moody's Corporation, a trustee of the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation; and director of XL Capital Ltd.
Go to Profile#24908
Chung Kai-lai
#24919
Overall Influence
1917 - 2009 (92 years)
Kai Lai Chung was a Chinese-American mathematician known for his significant contributions to modern probability theory. Biography Chung was a native of Hangzhou, the capital city of Zhejiang Province. Chung entered Tsinghua University in 1936, and initially studied physics at its Department of Physics. In 1940, Chung graduated from the Department of Mathematics of the National Southwestern Associated University, where he later worked as a teaching assistant. During this period, he first studied number theory with Lo-Keng Hua and then probability theory with Pao-Lu Hsu.
Go to Profile#24909
Ekaterina Zhuravskaya
#24920
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Ekaterina Zhuravskaya is a Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics and EHESS and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research in the Public Policy and Development Economics programs. She was formerly the academic director of the Center for Economic and Financial Research at the New Economic School in Moscow. She was the 2018 recipient of the Birgit Grodal At New Economic School she held various professorships. She was given a biennial award as a "a European-based female economist who has made a significant contribution to the Economics profession." In 2021 she ...
Go to Profile#24910
Zachary Dutton
#24921
Overall Influence
Zachary John Dutton is an American physicist who has worked on research centred mainly around cold atomic gases, EIT, low light level nonlinear optics, quantum memories, and coherent optical. Dutton graduated from Lindsay High School in Lindsay CA, and was awarded a BSc in physics from UC Berkeley in 1996. He was awarded his PhD in theoretical physics at Harvard University in 2000. His doctoral advisor was Prof.Lene Hau for his thesis entitled "Ultra-slow, stopped, and compressed light in Bose–Einstein condensates" He worked on a number of papers with Hau and Cyrus Behroozi, being amongst the first group to stop light completely.
Go to Profile#24911
Norman Jouppi
#24922
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Norman Paul Jouppi is an American electrical engineer and computer scientist. Career Jouppi was one of the computer architects at the MIPS Stanford University Project , an early RISC project. He received his master's degree in electrical engineering from Northwestern University in 1980 and was awarded a PhD in 1984 from Stanford University. In 1984 he joined Digital Equipment Corporation's Western Research Laboratory. He worked at Compaq and at Hewlett-Packard in 2002, where he ran the Advanced Architecture Lab at HP Labs in Palo Alto from 2006 to 2008 and then the Exascale Computing Lab from 2008 to 2010 and the Intelligent Infrastructure Lab from 2010 to 2011.
Go to Profile#24912
Bert van Marwijk
#24923
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Lambertus van Marwijk is a Dutch football manager who was recently the head coach of the United Arab Emirates national team. As a player, he played for the Go Ahead Eagles, AZ, MVV and Fortuna Sittard amongst other clubs and also represented the Netherlands once.
Go to Profile#24913
Hiromi Shinya
#24924
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Hiromi Shinya was a Japanese-born general surgeon. He pioneered modern colonoscopic techniques, and invented the electrosurgical polypectomy snare now common on colonoscopes, allowing for removal of colon polyps without invasive surgery.
Go to Profile#24914
Giorgia Meloni
#24925
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Giorgia Meloni is an Italian politician who has been serving as the prime minister of Italy since 22 October 2022, the first woman to hold this position. A member of the Chamber of Deputies since 2006, she has led the Brothers of Italy political party since 2014, and she has been the president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party since 2020.
Go to Profile#24915
Gerrit Lekkerkerker
#24926
Overall Influence
1922 - 1999 (77 years)
Cornelis Gerrit Lekkerkerker was a Dutch mathematician. Education and career Lekkerkerker studied mathematics at Utrecht University during the periods 1940-1943 and 1945-1949 under Jurjen Koksma and Jan Popken. After completing his studies in 1949, he started work at the Amsterdam Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica , where he worked under Koksma in the pure mathematics division. In the academic year 1953-1954, he studied in Rome. In 1955 he received his doctorate under the guidance of Popken with the thesis On the Zeros of a Class of Dirichlet-Series; in Dutch: Over de nulpunten in een klasse van...
Go to Profile#24916
John Mack Faragher
#24927
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
John Mack Faragher is an American historian. Life Born in 1945, he was raised in southern California, the oldest of eight children. Several of his siblings have been in the music business, including Danny Faragher, Jimmy Faragher, Tommy Faragher, Davey Faragher, Pammy Faragher, and Marty Faragher. He graduated from the University of California, Riverside in 1967, did social work for several years, then graduated from Yale University with a Ph.D. in 1977. He taught at Mount Holyoke College from 1978 to 1993; then at Yale University from 1993 until his retirement as Howard R. Lamar Professor Emeritus of History and American Studies in 2016.
Go to Profile#24917
Doug Dorst
#24928
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Doug Dorst is an American novelist, short story writer, and creative writing instructor. Dorst is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. He is the current director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Texas State University in San Marcos.
Go to Profile#24918
Melissa Benn
#24929
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Melissa Ann Benn is a British journalist and writer. She is the daughter of Tony Benn and Caroline Benn, and a member of the political Benn family. Biography Benn was born in Hammersmith, London to politician Tony Benn and writer-educationalist Caroline Benn. She has three brothers, Joshua Benn, Hilary Benn and Stephen Benn, 3rd Viscount Stansgate, making her a member of the political Benn family. She attended Fox Primary School and Holland Park School and graduated with a first in History from the London School of Economics. Benn spent several years working at the National Council for Civil ...
Go to Profile#24919
Joe Davis
#24930
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Joe Davis is a research affiliate in the Department of Biology at MIT, and in the George Church Laboratory at Harvard Medical School. His research and art includes work in the fields of BioArt , "space art", and sculpture, using media including centrifuges, radios, prosthetics, magnetic fields, and genetic material. Davis' teaching positions have been at MIT, the Rhode Island School of Design , and the University of Kentucky.
Go to Profile#24920
Kerry King
#24931
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Kerry Ray King is an American musician, best known for being the co-lead guitarist and songwriter of thrash metal band Slayer. He co-founded the band with Jeff Hanneman in 1981 and was one of two members to stay with the band for its 38-year existence, along with lead singer and bassist Tom Araya. After Slayer's disbandment in 2019, King went on to pursue a solo career, with his first album intended for a 2024 release.
Go to Profile#24921
Leon Plantinga
#24932
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Leon B. Plantinga is an American musicologist specializing in music of the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His writings have influenced scholarship on Clementi, Beethoven, and Schumann, and his textbook Romantic Music continues to serve as a standard textbook on nineteenth-century music in American universities. Having served as a faculty member of the Department of Music at Yale University from 1963 to 2005, he is now a member of the emeritus faculty. He is the brother of philosopher Alvin Plantinga and theologian Cornelius Plantinga.
Go to Profile#24922
Dan Chiasson
#24933
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Dan Chiasson is an American poet, critic, and journalist. The Sewanee Review called Chiasson "the country’s most visible poet-critic." He is the Lorraine Chao Wang Professor of English Literature at Wellesley College.
Go to Profile#24923
Purana Kassapa
#24934
Overall Influence
Purana Kassapa was an Indian ascetic teacher who lived around the 6th century BCE, contemporaneous with Mahavira and the Buddha. Biography Purana taught a theory of "non-action" whereby the body acts independent of the soul, merit or demerit. In the Pali Canon, Purana is identified as an ahetuvadin, "denier of a cause" .
Go to Profile#24924
Joe Dumars
#24935
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Joe Dumars III is an American professional basketball executive and former player who is the executive vice president and head of basketball operations of the National Basketball Association . He could play either shooting guard or point guard on offense and was a highly effective defender. He played his entire 14-year career with the Detroit Pistons. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Dumars and Isiah Thomas combined to form one of the best backcourts in NBA history. Dumars was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006.
Go to Profile#24925
Irving Adler
#24936
Overall Influence
1913 - 2012 (99 years)
Irving Adler was an American author, mathematician, scientist, political activist, and educator. He was the author of 57 books about mathematics, science, and education, and the co-author of 30 more, for both children and adults. His books have been published in 31 countries in 19 different languages. Since his teenaged years, Adler was involved in social and political activities focused on civil rights, civil liberties, and peace, including his role as a plaintiff in the McCarthy-era case Adler vs. Board of Education that bears his name.
Go to Profile#24926
Nathan Keyfitz
#24937
Overall Influence
1913 - 2010 (97 years)
Nathan Keyfitz FRSC FRSS was a Canadian demographer, a pioneer of mathematical demography. Professional career Keyfitz studied at McGill University, graduating with a B.S. in mathematics in 1934. He worked for the Dominion Bureau of Statistics in Canada from 1936 to 1959, meanwhile earning a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1952. In 1959, he took a professorship at the University of Toronto; he moved from there to the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley before joining the faculty of Harvard University as Andelot Professor of Sociology in 1972. ...
Go to Profile#24927
David Herzog
#24938
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
David Herzog is an American expert on eating disorders research and treatment. He was one of the first doctors to advocate that treatments for bulimia, anorexia and other eating disorders include both psychotherapy and medical and nutritional monitoring, as well as careful follow up after patients recover. Today he is a researcher, teacher and advocate. Much of his work has focused on changing the way the fashion industry uses models.
Go to Profile#24928
Robert E. Lane
#24939
Overall Influence
1917 - 2017 (100 years)
Robert E. Lane was an American political scientist and political psychologist. He was the Eugene Meyer Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Yale University. Lane taught there for nearly 50 years; during that time, he twice headed the department and helped lead the shift towards behavioralism.
Go to Profile#24929
Nigel Clough
#24940
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Nigel Howard Clough is an English professional football manager and former player who is currently the manager of Mansfield Town. Playing predominantly as a forward, but later in his career used as a midfielder, Clough was capped by England 14 times in the early 1990s.
Go to Profile#24930
Yuval Neria
#24941
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Yuval Neria is a Professor of Medical Psychology at the Departments of Psychiatry and Epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center , and Director of Trauma and PTSD Program, and a Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University Department of Psychiatry. He is a recipient of the Medal of Valor, Israel's highest decoration, for his exploits during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Go to Profile#24931
Jessica Capshaw
#24942
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Jessica Brooke Capshaw is an American actress known for her roles as Jamie Stringer in The Practice, and as Arizona Robbins on the ABC medical drama Grey's Anatomy. Early life Capshaw was born on August 9, 1976, in Columbia, Missouri, the daughter of actress and producer Kate Capshaw and Robert Capshaw, a sales manager, marketing director, business executive and high school principal. She is the stepdaughter of director Steven Spielberg, whom her mother married when Capshaw was 15.
Go to Profile#24932
Rosalind Gill
#24943
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Rosalind Clair Gill is a British sociologist and feminist cultural theorist. She is currently Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at City, University of London. Gill is author or editor of ten books, and numerous articles and chapters, and her work has been translated into Chinese, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.
Go to Profile#24933
Heinz Leymann
#24944
Overall Influence
1932 - 1999 (67 years)
Heinz Leymann was a Swedish academic, famous for his studies on mobbing among humans. He held a degree in pedagogical psychology, and another one in psychiatry and worked as a psychologist. He was a professor at Umeå University.
Go to Profile#24934
Lawrence J. Christiano
#24945
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Lawrence J. Christiano is an American economist and researcher. He is a professor of economics at Northwestern University, where he also holds the title of the Alfred W. Chase Chair in Business Institutions, and was chairman of the department of economics from 2016 to 2018. He previously taught at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#24935
Paul Holdengräber
#24946
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Paul Bernard Holdengräber is an American interviewer, curator, and writer. He was director of the New York Public Library's public programming and organized literary conversations for the NYPL's public program series, LIVE from the NYPL, which he founded.
Go to Profile#24936
John Mayall
#24947
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
John Mayall is an English blues and rock musician, songwriter and producer. In the 1960s, he formed John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, a band that has counted among its members some of the most famous blues and blues rock musicians.
Go to Profile#24937
Jennifer Richeson
#24948
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Jennifer A. Richeson is an American social psychologist who studies racial identity and interracial interactions. She is currently the Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology at Yale University where she heads the Social Perception and Communication Lab. Prior to her appointment to the Yale faculty, Richeson was Professor of Psychology and African-American studies at Northwestern University. In 2015, she was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences. Richeson was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022. Since 2021, she has been a member of the President’s Counc...
Go to Profile#24938
David Nicholls
#24949
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
David Alan Nicholls is a British novelist and screenwriter. Early life and education Nicholls is the middle of three siblings. He attended Barton Peveril College at Eastleigh, Hampshire, taking A-levels in Drama, English Literature, Physics and Biology.
Go to Profile#24939
Marcel Trudel
#24950
Overall Influence
1917 - 2011 (94 years)
Marcel Trudel was a Canadian historian, university professor and author who published more than 40 books on the history of New France. He brought academic rigour to an area that had been marked by nationalistic and religious biases. His work was part of the marked changes to Quebec society during the Quiet Revolution. Trudel's work has been honoured with major awards, including the Governor General's Literary Award for French Non-Fiction in 1966, and a second nomination for the award in 1987.
Go to Profile#24940
Emilio García Gómez
#24951
Overall Influence
1905 - 1995 (90 years)
Emilio García Gómez, 1st Count of Alixares was a Spanish Arabist, literary historian and critic, whose talent as a poet enriched his many translations from Arabic. Life Emilio García Gómez decided to pursue Arabic as a career after attending Arabic language classes taught by Prof. Miguel Asín Palacios at the Complutense University of Madrid. He had been a student of law. In his Arabic studies he was mentored by the professors Julián Ribera y Tarragó, and by Asín.
Go to Profile#24941
Jonathan Harvey
#24952
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Jonathan Paul Harvey is an English screenwriter, actor, playwright and author. Life and works Harvey was born in Liverpool, Lancashire in 1968 to Maureen and Brian Harvey. He has a brother, Timothy, who is a music teacher in Chester. A former secondary school English teacher, his first serious attempt as a playwright was in 1987. He entered a competition, with a first prize of £1,000, for young writers at the Liverpool Playhouse, with his play The Cherry Blossom Tree, a blend of suicide, murder and nuns. He won National Girobank Young Writer of the Year Award for The Cherry Blossom Tree.
Go to Profile#24942
Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias
#24953
Overall Influence
1918 - 2019 (101 years)
Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias was a Peruvian philosopher, journalist and politician. In his works he discusses the belief in "human nature" on the basis that any collective assumption about such a nature will be frustrating, and will have negative public results. He was interested in so-called "unorthodox logics". The term "paraconsistent logic" was coined in 1976 by him. He made his editorial debut in 1941, with Sense of the phenomenological movement.
Go to Profile#24943
John D. Norton
#24954
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
John Daniel Norton is an Australian philosopher of physics and distinguished professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh. Biography He had originally studied chemical engineering at the University of New South Wales . After working at the Shell Oil Refinery at Clyde, Sydney for two years, he decided to switch fields, beginning doctoral studies in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of New South Wales . His dissertation was titled "The Historical Foundation of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity." After finishing his diss...
Go to Profile#24944
Mariarosa Dalla Costa
#24955
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Mariarosa Dalla Costa is an Italian autonomist feminist and co-author of the classic The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, with Selma James. This text launched the "domestic labour debate" by re-defining housework as reproductive labor necessary to the functioning of capital, rendered invisible by its removal from the wage-relation.
Go to Profile#24945
Barry Siegel
#24956
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Barry Siegel is an American journalist. He is a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times who won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 2002 for his piece "A Father's Pain, a Judge's Duty, and a Justice Beyond Their Reach." In 2003, University of California, Irvine recruited Siegel to chair the school's new undergraduate degree program in literary journalism. Siegel is the author of the true crime novel A Death in White Bear Lake, which is considered by many to be a seminal document regarding child abuse. He is also the author of Dreamers and Schemers: How an Improbable Bid...
Go to Profile#24946
Leonard Jeffries
#24957
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Leonard Jeffries Jr. is an American political scientist and academic. He was the departmental chair of Black Studies at the City College of New York, part of the City University of New York . He was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. He is the uncle of U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Ohio State University historian Hasan Kwame Jeffries.
Go to Profile#24947
Suzanne Lee
#24958
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Suzanne Lee is a Brooklyn, New York based fashion designer working on fashion and future technologies. She is a Senior Research Fellow at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, the Director of The BioCouture Research Project, and Chief Creative Officer at Modern Meadow.
Go to Profile#24948
Christopher Lovelock
#24959
Overall Influence
1940 - 2008 (68 years)
Christopher Lovelock was born in the town of Saltash, Cornwall in the United Kingdom. He was best known as a pioneer in the field of Services Marketing among other titles such as author, professor, and consultant. Lovelock was also known for his excellent case studies.
Go to Profile#24949
Bashirul Haq
#24960
Overall Influence
1942 - 2020 (78 years)
Bashirul Haq was a Bangladeshi architect, town planner and visiting professor of MIT. He was regarded as one of the most influential architects in South Asia in terms of environmentally and socially responsive design.
Go to Profile#24950
Philip Gossett
#24961
Overall Influence
1941 - 2017 (76 years)
Philip Gossett was an American musicologist and historian, and Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor of Music at the University of Chicago. His lifelong interest in 19th-century Italian opera began with listening to Metropolitan Opera broadcasts in his youth. Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera, a major work on the subject, won the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society as best book on music of 2006.
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