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
#24951
Spike Mendelsohn
#24962
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Evangelos Spiros "Spike" Mendelsohn is a Washington, D.C.-based chef and restaurateur best known as the fifth-place finisher of the fourth season of Top Chef, which aired 2008–2009. He is the chef and owner of multiple restaurants: Good Stuff Eatery, Santa Rosa Taqueria, and We, The Pizza in Washington, D.C. In the summer of 2017, Mendelsohn closed his restaurant Béarnaise in Washington's Capitol Hill and opened Santa Rosa Taqueria in its place. In 2019, Mendelsohn opened PLNT Burger, a vegan restaurant featuring Beyond Meat, inside Whole Foods Market in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Go to Profile#24952
Claude Calame
#24963
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Claude Calame is a Swiss writer on Greek mythology and the structure of mythic narrative from the perspective of a Hellenist trained in semiotics and ethnology as well as philology. He was a professor of Greek language and literature at the University of Lausanne and is now Director of Studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, in Paris. He taught also at the Universities of Urbino and Siena in Italy, and at Yale University in the US.
Go to Profile#24953
Steve Wright
#24964
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Steven Gerald James Wright is an English serial killer, also known as the Suffolk Strangler. He is serving a whole-life term in prison for the murder of five women who worked in Ipswich, Suffolk. The killings took place during the final months of 2006 and Wright was found guilty in February 2008.
Go to Profile#24954
Kaisa Matomäki
#24965
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Kaisa Sofia Matomäki is a Finnish mathematician specializing in number theory. Since September 2015, she has been working as an Academic Research Fellow in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Turku, Turku, Finland. Her research includes results on the distribution of multiplicative functions over short intervals of numbers; for instance, she showed that the values of the Möbius function are evenly divided between +1 and −1 over short intervals. These results, in turn, were among the tools used by Terence Tao to prove the Erdős discrepancy problem.
Go to Profile#24955
David C. Page
#24966
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
David C. Page is an American biologist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , the director of the Whitehead Institute, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He is best known for his work on mapping the Y-chromosome and on its evolution in mammals and expression during development. He was cited by Bryan Sykes in Adam's Curse: A Future Without Men.
Go to Profile#24956
Jesse R. Pitts
#24967
Overall Influence
1921 - 2003 (82 years)
Jesse Richard Pitts , was an American sociologist specializing in deviance and social control, family sociology, sociological theory, French society, and criminology. He is considered one of the leading disciples of Talcott Parsons, dean of American sociologists for much of the 20th century. Pitts is perhaps best known for his contributions to a large textbook on sociology, Theories of Society: Foundations of Modern Sociological Theory, edited by Parsons and published in 1961. He pioneered sociological work on marginality, deviance and conformity. He was interested particularly in criminology and the institutional treatment of mental illness.
Go to Profile#24957
Michael Fassbender
#24968
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Michael Fassbender is an Irish actor. He is the recipient of various accolades, including nominations for two Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. In 2020, he was listed at number nine on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Go to Profile#24958
İbrahim Kalın
#24969
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
İbrahim Kalın is a Turkish bureaucrat who is the current director of the National Intelligence Organization. A member of the AK Party, he previously served as the presidential spokesperson and adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from 2014 to 2023 and as the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Security and Foreign Policy in the Presidential Complex.
Go to Profile#24959
Ron Carlson
#24970
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ron Carlson is an American novelist, short story writer and professor. Life and career Carlson was born in Logan, Utah, and grew up in Salt Lake City. He received a master's degree in English from the University of Utah. He then taught at The Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, where he began his first novel. He became a professor of English at Arizona State University in 1985, teaching creative writing to undergraduates and graduates, and ultimately becoming director of its Creative Writing program. Carlson then moved to the University of California, Irvine. Carlson was the director of UCI's ...
Go to Profile#24960
Pedro León Zapata
#24971
Overall Influence
1929 - 2015 (86 years)
Pedro León Zapata was a prominent Venezuelan artist, humorist and cartoonist. Biography In 1945 he entered the "Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Caracas" but in 1947 he abandoned the school to join the foundation of the "Taller La Barraca de Maripérez" where he exhibited his first works. In the same year, he traveled to Mexico to learn the techniques of the great muralist Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco and studied at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, at La Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes La Esmeralda and the workshop of Siqueiros.
Go to Profile#24961
John Urschel
#24972
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
John Cameron Urschel is a Canadian-American mathematician and former professional American football guard and center. He played college football at Penn State and was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens in the fifth round of the 2014 NFL Draft. Urschel played his entire NFL career with Baltimore before announcing his retirement on July 27, 2017, at 26 years old.
Go to Profile#24962
Goro Azumaya
#24973
Overall Influence
1920 - 2010 (90 years)
was a Japanese mathematician who introduced the notion of Azumaya algebra in 1951. His advisor was Shokichi Iyanaga. At the time of his death he was an emeritus professor at Indiana University. External links Biography of Azumaya by BiRep, Bielefeld University
Go to Profile#24963
David Tong
#24974
Overall Influence
David Tong is a British professor of theoretical physics at Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in Cambridge, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and joint recipient of the 2008 Adams Prize. He was a postdoc at the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics and an adjunct professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research . He is currently also a Simons Investigator. His main research interest is in quantum field theory.
Go to Profile#24964
Isabelle Adjani
#24975
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Isabelle Yasmina Adjani is a French actress and singer of Algerian and German descent. She is the only performer to win five César Awards for acting—all in the Best Actress category—for Possession , One Deadly Summer , Camille Claudel , La Reine Margot , and Skirt Day . She was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 2010 and a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2014.
Go to Profile#24965
James A. Jensen
#24976
Overall Influence
1918 - 1998 (80 years)
James Alvin Jensen , was an American paleontologist. His extensive collecting program at Brigham Young University in the Utah-Colorado region which spanned 23 years was comparable in terms of the number of specimens collected to that of Barnum Brown during the early 20th century. He was given the name "Dinosaur Jim" during the media coverage of his activities. Perhaps his most significant contribution to paleontology was to replace the 19th-century web of external metal struts, straps and posts that had been used to mount dinosaurs with a system of supports which were placed inside of bones, ...
Go to Profile#24966
Czesław Olech
#24977
Overall Influence
1931 - 2015 (84 years)
Czesław Olech was a Polish mathematician. He was a representative of the Kraków school of mathematics, especially the differential equations school of Tadeusz Ważewski. Education and career In 1954 he completed his mathematical studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, obtained his doctorate at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 1958, habilitation in 1962, the title of associate professor in 1966, and the title of professor in 1973.1970–1986: director of The Institute of Mathematics, Polish Academy of Sciences.1972–1991: director of Stefan Banach International Mathematical Cent...
Go to Profile#24967
Joshua Landy
#24978
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Joshua Landy is the Andrew B. Hammond Professor in French Language, Literature and Civilization at Stanford University. He is also a Professor of Comparative Literature and co-director of the Literature and Philosophy Initiative at Stanford.
Go to Profile#24968
David P. Williamson
#24979
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
David Paul Williamson is a professor of operations research at Cornell University, and the editor-in-chief of the SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics. He earned his Ph.D. in 1993 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of Michel Goemans, and is best known for his work with Goemans on approximation algorithms based on semidefinite programming, for which they won the Fulkerson Prize in 2000. He also received the Frederick W. Lanchester Prize in 2013. In 2022 he received the AMS Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research.
Go to Profile#24969
Yuri Mikhailovich Orlov
#24980
Overall Influence
1928 - 2000 (72 years)
Yuri Mikhailovich Orlov - Russian scientist, professor of pedagogy, psychology and philosophy, practicing psychologist, creator of the theory and practices of SanoGene Thinking , author of books on personality psychology .
Go to Profile#24970
Trefor Jenkins
#24981
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Trefor Jenkins is a human geneticist from South Africa, noted for his work on DNA. He is the former dean of the medical school at the University of Witwatersrand. Early life Jenkins qualified in medicine at King's College and Westminster Hospital in London. He came to Africa as a mine medical officer in Southern Rhodesia in 1960 where he first encountered sickle cell anaemia which started his interest in genetics.
Go to Profile#24971
Nancy-Ann DeParle
#24982
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Nancy-Ann Min DeParle served as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy in the administration of President Obama from January 2011 to January 2013. Previously, she served as the director of the White House Office of Health Reform, leading the administration's efforts on health care issues, including the passing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. She served as the director of the Health Care Financing Administration from 1997 to 2000, administering the Medicare program for the Clinton administration, and before then worked at the Office of Management and Budget.
Go to Profile#24972
Yongge Wang
#24983
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Yongge Wang is a computer science professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte specialized in algorithmic complexity and cryptography. He is the inventor of IEEE P1363 cryptographic standards SRP5 and WANG-KE and has contributed to the mathematical theory of algorithmic randomness. He co-authored a paper demonstrating that a recursively enumerable real number is an algorithmically random sequence if and only if it is a Chaitin's constant for some encoding of programs. He also showed the separation of Schnorr randomness from recursive randomness. He also invented a distance based statistical testing technique to improve NIST SP800-22 testing in randomness tests.
Go to Profile#24973
Yiannis N. Moschovakis
#24984
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Yiannis Nicholas Moschovakis is a set theorist, descriptive set theorist, and recursion theorist, at UCLA. His book Descriptive Set Theory is the primary reference for the subject. He is especially associated with the development of the effective, or lightface, version of descriptive set theory, and he is known for the Moschovakis coding lemma that is named after him.
Go to Profile#24974
Wang Xiji
#24985
Overall Influence
1921 - Present (105 years)
Wang Xiji is a Chinese aerospace engineer. The chief designer of China's first sounding rocket , first space launch vehicle and first recoverable satellites, he was awarded the Two Bombs, One Satellite Meritorious Medal in 1999. He is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the International Academy of Astronautics, and was inducted into the International Astronautical Federation Hall of Fame in 2016. Wang turned 100 in July 2021.
Go to Profile#24975
Juan Marichal
#24986
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Juan Antonio Marichal Sánchez , nicknamed "the Dominican Dandy", is a Dominican former right-handed pitcher who played 16 seasons in Major League Baseball from 1960 to 1975, mostly with the San Francisco Giants. Known for his high leg kick, variety of pitches, arm angles and deliveries, pinpoint control, and durability, Marichal won 18 games to help the Giants reach the 1962 World Series, and went on to earn 191 victories in the 1960s, the most of any major league pitcher. He won over 20 games six times, on each occasion posting an earned run average below 2.50 and striking out more than 200 ...
Go to Profile#24976
Parnelli Jones
#24987
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Rufus Parnell "Parnelli" Jones is an American former professional racing driver and racing team owner. He is notable for his accomplishments while competing in the Indianapolis 500 and the Baja 1000 desert race, and the Trans-Am Championship series. In 1962, he became the first driver to qualify over 150 mph. He won the race in 1963, then famously broke down while leading the 1967 race with three laps to go in a turbine car. During his career as an owner, he won the Indy 500 in 1970–1971 with driver Al Unser.
Go to Profile#24977
Jeph Loeb
#24988
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Joseph "Jeph" Loeb III is an American film and television writer, producer and comic book writer. Loeb was a producer/writer on the TV series Smallville and Lost, writer for the films Commando and Teen Wolf, and a writer and co-executive producer on the NBC TV show Heroes from its premiere in 2006 to November 2008. From 2010 to 2019, Loeb was the Head of and Executive Vice President of Marvel Television.
Go to Profile#24978
Burl Ives
#24989
Overall Influence
1909 - 1995 (86 years)
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives was an American musician, singer and actor with a career that spanned more than six decades. Ives began his career as an itinerant singer and guitarist, eventually launching his own radio show, The Wayfaring Stranger, which popularized traditional folk songs. In 1942, he appeared in Irving Berlin's This Is the Army and became a major star of CBS Radio. In the 1960s, he successfully crossed over into country music, recording hits such as "A Little Bitty Tear" and "Funny Way of Laughin'". Ives was also a popular film actor through the late 1940s and '50s. His film roles i...
Go to Profile#24979
Michael Wooldridge
#24990
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Michael John Wooldridge is a professor of computer science at the University of Oxford. His main research interests is in multi-agent systems, and in particular, in the computational theory aspects of rational action in systems composed of multiple self-interested agents. His work is characterised by the use of techniques from computational logic, game theory, and social choice theory.
Go to Profile#24980
Jyotsna Dhawan
#24991
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Jyotsna Dhawan is an Indian Cell and Developmental Biologist, Emeritus Scientist at Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and Visiting Professor, Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine . Dhawan's research has focused on adult stem cell function and skeletal muscle regeneration. Dhawan is the current President of the Indian Society for Cell Biology and the Indian Society of Developmental Biologists . Dhawan was elected as a fellow to the Indian National Science Academy in 2019.
Go to Profile#24981
Volker Perthes
#24992
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Volker Perthes is a German political scientist, academic and writer. Apart from his focus on research, writing and teaching about the Middle East, he was director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs . From 2021 to 2023, he served as Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Sudan and Head of the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan .
Go to Profile#24982
Cesar L. Villanueva
#24993
Overall Influence
Cesar L. Villanueva, also known as CLV, was the former Dean of the Ateneo Law School in Makati, Philippines. He is a certified public accountant and specializes in Philippine commercial law. Villanueva was nominated for the position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines Villanueva is the valedictorian of his batch in Chevalier School, Angeles.
Go to Profile#24983
Geoffrey Boothroyd
#24994
Overall Influence
1925 - 2001 (76 years)
Geoffrey Boothroyd was a British expert on firearms who wrote several standard reference works on the subject. He provided weapons advice to author Ian Fleming for the James Bond novels and their film adaptions.
Go to Profile#24984
Jacqueline Bisset
#24995
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Winifred Jacqueline Fraser Bisset is a British actress. She began her film career in 1965 and first came to prominence in 1968 with roles in The Detective, Bullitt, and The Sweet Ride, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination as Most Promising Newcomer. In the 1970s, she starred in Airport , The Mephisto Waltz , Day for Night , which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Le Magnifique , Murder on the Orient Express , St. Ives , The Deep , The Greek Tycoon and Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? , which earned her a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress – Moti...
Go to Profile#24985
Nicholas Onuf
#24996
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Nicholas Onuf is an American scholar. Onuf is currently Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Florida International University and is on the editorial boards of International Political Sociology, Cooperation and Conflict, and Contexto Internacional. He is a constructivist scholar of international relations. He has been credited with coining the term "Constructivism."
Go to Profile#24986
Julian Schnabel
#24997
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Julian Schnabel is an American painter and filmmaker. In the 1980s, he received international attention for his "plate paintings" — with broken ceramic plates set onto large-scale paintings. Since the 1990s, he has been a proponent of independent arthouse cinema. Schnabel directed Before Night Falls, which became Javier Bardem's breakthrough Academy Award-nominated role, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which was nominated for four Academy Awards. For the latter, he won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director and the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, as well as receiving no...
Go to Profile#24987
John Kinsella
#24998
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
John Kinsella is an Australian poet, novelist, critic, essayist and editor. His writing is strongly influenced by landscape, and he espouses an 'international regionalism' in his approach to place. He has also frequently worked in collaboration with other writers, artists and musicians.
Go to Profile#24988
David Thompson
#24999
Overall Influence
David Thompson is an Australian chef, restaurateur and cookery writer, known for his skill and expertise in Thai cuisine. Career Thompson made his name at Darley Street Thai in Sydney, which he opened in 1992 in Darley St, Newtown upon his return from living and working in Bangkok for several years. He then opened Sailors Thai in 1995, also in Sydney. The success of these restaurants got him noticed by Singaporean hotelier Christina Ong, who asked him to open a restaurant in one of her COMO hotels.
Go to Profile#24989
Rajkumar Buyya
#25000
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Rajkumar Buyya is an Indian born Australian academic. As of 2022, he is distinguished professor and director of the Cloud Computing and Distributed Systems Laboratory at the University of Melbourne. He was made a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for contributions to cloud computing.
Go to Profile#24990
Martin Fido
#25001
Overall Influence
1939 - 2019 (80 years)
Martin Austin Fido was a university professor, true crime writer and broadcaster. His many books include The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper, The Official Encyclopedia of Scotland Yard, Serial Killers, and The Murder Guide to London. He is also one of the authors of The complete Jack the Ripper A to Z.
Go to Profile#24991
Dean Spielmann
#25002
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Dean Spielmann is a Luxembourgish lawyer and a former president of the European Court of Human Rights. He has been a judge of the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Luxembourg since 2004, president of the Fifth Section of the Court since 2011 and was elected vice-president and then, shortly afterwards, president in 2012. He is also a member of the Grand Ducal Institute of Luxembourg and has held academic posts at the universities of Luxembourg, Nancy and Louvain.
Go to Profile#24992
Ashwin Ram
#25003
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Ashwin Ram is an Indian-American computer scientist. He was chief innovation officer at PARC from 2011 to 2016, and published books and scientific articles and helped start at least two companies. Biography Ashwin Ram was born in New Delhi, India, on July 27, 1960. He is a great-grandson of Sir Ganga Ram and is the eldest of three children. He grew up in New Delhi with a brief stint in Bombay, and attended one of India's oldest boarding schools, Mayo College.
Go to Profile#24993
Alberto Jori
#25004
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Alberto Jori is an Italian neo-Aristotelian philosopher. Born in Mantua, on his father's side he is the descendant of an old noble Swiss family of barons from Ticino and patricians from Zurich. On his mother's side he is related to a long Jewish line of Mantuan rabbis, from which the kabbalists Moses ben Mordecai Zacuto , Solomon Aviad Sar Shalom Basilea and the mathematician Gino Fano were also members. He studied in Padua, Cambridge and Heidelberg and received a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2003, with his book on Aristotle, he won the prize of the International Academy of the History of Science .
Go to Profile#24994
Sarah Parcak
#25005
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Sarah Helen Parcak is an American archaeologist and Egyptologist, who has used satellite imagery to identify potential archaeological sites in Egypt, Rome and elsewhere in the former Roman Empire. She is a professor of Anthropology and director of the Laboratory for Global Observation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In partnership with her husband, Greg Mumford, she directs survey and excavation projects in the Faiyum, Sinai, and Egypt's East Delta.
Go to Profile#24995
Scott C. Beardsley
#25006
Overall Influence
Scott C. Beardsley is an American-French professor and academic administrator. He serves as the dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, where he is also the Charles C. Abbott Professor of Business.
Go to Profile#24996
Beth A. Simmons
#25007
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Beth A. Simmons is an American academic and notable international relations scholar. She is the Andrea Mitchell University Professor in Law, Political Science and Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She is a former Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University and Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs at the Department of Government. Her research interests include international relations, political economy, international law, and international human rights law compliance.
Go to Profile#24997
Richard Turner
#25008
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Richard Turner is a distinguished service professor in the School of Systems and Enterprises of Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Turner has a BA in mathematics from Huntingdon College, an MS in computer science from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, and a DSc in engineering management from the George Washington University.
Go to Profile#24998
Ringo Sheena
#25009
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
, known by her stage name , is a Japanese singer, songwriter and musician. She is also the founder and lead vocalist of the band Tokyo Jihen. She describes herself as "". She was ranked number 36 in a list of Japan's top 100 musicians compiled by HMV in 2003.
Go to Profile#24999
Udo Steiner
#25010
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Udo Steiner was a justice of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany from 1995 to 2007. He grew up in Franconia, and went on to study law in Erlangen, Saarbrücken and Cologne. In 1965, he earned a doctorate with the thesis Verfassunggebung und verfassunggebende Gewalt des Volkes. Subsequently, he earned his Habilitation in 1972, with the thesis Öffentliche Verwaltung durch Private.
Go to Profile#25000
Samuel Gitler Hammer
#25011
Overall Influence
1933 - 2014 (81 years)
Samuel Carlos Gitler Hammer was a Mexican mathematician. He was an expert in Yang–Mills theory and is known for the Brown–Gitler spectrum. Born to a Jewish family in Mexico City, Gitler studied civil engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, graduating in 1956. He then did his graduate studies in mathematics at Princeton University with Norman Steenrod, earning a doctorate in 1960. He taught briefly at Brandeis University and then returned to Mexico, where he was one of the founders of the mathematics department of CINVESTAV.
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