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
#25451
Charles Cantor
#25462
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Charles R. Cantor is an American molecular geneticist who, in conjunction with David Schwartz, developed pulse field gel electrophoresis for very large DNA molecules. Cantor's three-volume book Biophysical Chemistry, co-authored with Paul Schimmel, was an influential textbook in the 1980s and 1990s.
Go to Profile#25452
Anabel Medina Garrigues
#25463
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Ana Isabel Medina Garrigues is a Spanish tennis coach and former professional player. As a player she reached a career-high ranking of world No. 16 in 2020, and won 11 singles and 28 doubles titles, including the 2008 and 2009 French Open with Virginia Ruano Pascual. Like many of her Spanish compatriots, she was a clay-court specialist who grinds to win most of her rallies. However, unlike most of her fellow Spaniards, she preferred to play on hardcourts. She won the WTA tournament in Strasbourg, beating Katarina Srebotnik in the final in May 2008, thus defending the title she won the previous year against Amélie Mauresmo.
Go to Profile#25453
Rudi Studer
#25464
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Rudi Studer is a German computer scientist and professor emeritus at KIT, Germany. He served as head of the knowledge management research group at the Institute AIFB and one of the directors of the Karlsruhe Service Research Institute . He is a former president of the Semantic Web Science Association, an STI International Fellow, and a member of numerous programme committees and editorial boards. He was one of the inaugural editors-in-chief of the Journal of Web Semantics, a position he held until 2007. He is a co-author of the "Semantic Wikipedia" proposal which led to the development of Wik...
Go to Profile#25454
Brooks Robinson
#25465
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Brooks Calbert Robinson Jr. was an American baseball player who played his entire 23 seasons in Major League Baseball as third baseman for the Baltimore Orioles from 1955 to 1977. Nicknamed "Mr. Hoover" and "the Human Vacuum Cleaner", he is generally considered to have been the greatest defensive third baseman in major league history. An 18-time All-Star, he won 16 consecutive Gold Glove Awards, the most by a position player, and tied with Jim Kaat for the second-most of all-time, behind Greg Maddux. His 2,870 career games at third base not only exceeded the closest player by nearly 700 games...
Go to Profile#25455
Joey Barton
#25466
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Joseph Anthony Barton is an English professional football manager and former player who played as a midfielder. He made 269 appearances in the Premier League, including 130 for Manchester City. He was most recently the manager of League One side Bristol Rovers.
Go to Profile#25456
Jorge María Mejía
#25467
Overall Influence
1923 - 2014 (91 years)
Jorge María Mejía was an Argentine cardinal of the Catholic Church . Early life and ordination Mejía was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and ordained to the priesthood for the Metropolitan See of Buenos Aires on 22 September 1945. He taught Sacred Scripture at several universities, participated at the Second Vatican Council as a peritus and was made a Chaplain of His Holiness on 20 September 1978. He held a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas and a license in biblical science from the Pontifical Biblical Institute.
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Patrizia A. Caraveo
#25468
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Patrizia Caraveo is an Italian astrophysicist. Biography Patrizia Caraveo graduated in Physics at the physics department of the University of Milan in 1977. After a period abroad, in 2002 she began working at the Institute of Cosmic Physics in Milan as Director of Research, and is currently Director of the institute. She has worked on several international space missions dedicated to particle physics, starting with the European mission Cos-B. She is currently involved in the European INTEGRAL mission, the NASA Swift mission, the Italian AGILE mission and the NASA Fermi mission, all of which a...
Go to Profile#25458
Nathan Gardels
#25469
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Nathan Gardels is the editor-in-chief of Noema Magazine. He is also the co-founder of and a senior adviser to the Berggruen Institute. He previously served as editor-in-chief of The WorldPost, a partnership with The Washington Post, as well as editor-in-chief of Global Viewpoint Network and Nobel Laureates Plus, both services of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Tribune Media
Go to Profile#25459
Artine Artinian
#25470
Overall Influence
1907 - 2005 (98 years)
Artine Artinian was a distinguished French literature scholar of Armenian descent, notable for his valuable collection of French literary manuscripts and artwork. He was immortalized as a fictional character by his Bard colleague Mary McCarthy in the novel The Groves of Academe and by his friend Gore Vidal in the play The Best Man .
Go to Profile#25460
David K. Smith
#25471
Overall Influence
David Kelham Smith is a professor of chemistry at the University of York in England. His research focuses on nanochemistry and self-assembling nanomaterials. Smith is also well known for his education and public outreach activities, such as his channel dedicated to combatting chemistry disparagement. Smith is openly gay and has been described as "one of the most visible out gay scientists."
Go to Profile#25461
Shirin R. Tahir-Kheli
#25472
Overall Influence
Shirin R. Tahir-Kheli is an American political scientist who also served in the Department of State. In 2006, she was appointed as the first Ambassador for women's empowerment by the United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as well as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State on United Nations Reform. She was sworn in as the First American Muslim Ambassador in July 1990. Dr. Tahir-Kheli was the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations at the White House National Security Council, from 2003-2005. She has served thr...
Go to Profile#25462
Ora Lassila
#25473
Overall Influence
Ora Lassila is a Finnish computer scientist who lives in the U.S. and works as a technologist at Amazon Web Services. He has been conducting research into the Semantic Web since 1996, and was co-author, with Tim Berners-Lee and James Hendler, of the article "The Semantic Web" which appeared in Scientific American in 2001, now the most cited paper in the Semantic Web area. His early work in this area included proposing the original RDF Specification with Ralph R. Swick and he has been an elected member of the World Wide Web Consortium Advisory Board since 1998. He also belongs to the steering ...
Go to Profile#25463
Dennis M. Hanno
#25474
Overall Influence
Dennis M. Hanno is an American accountant and academic administrator was served as 11th president of Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, for more than seven-year term. He also served as provost of Babson College. Hanno is a Clinical Associate Professor at Gabelli School of Business at Fordham University.
Go to Profile#25464
Bobby Cox
#25475
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Robert Joe Cox is an American former professional baseball third baseman and manager in Major League Baseball . Cox played for the New York Yankees and managed the Atlanta Braves and Toronto Blue Jays. He is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He recorded a 100-win season six times, a record matched only by Joe McCarthy.
Go to Profile#25465
Donald Eric Capps
#25476
Overall Influence
1939 - 2015 (76 years)
Donald Eric Capps was an American theologian and William Harte Felmeth Professor of Pastoral Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Biography Donald Eric Capps was born in Omaha, Nebraska. After studying at Lewis & Clark College and Yale Divinity School and University of Chicago , he earned his Ph.D. also at the University of Chicago in 1970. His dissertation explored a psycho-historical analysis of the personality of the English theologian John Henry Cardinal Newman, and particularly his vocational struggles.
Go to Profile#25466
Roland Dobrushin
#25477
Overall Influence
1929 - 1995 (66 years)
Roland Lvovich Dobrushin was a mathematician who made important contributions to probability theory, mathematical physics, and information theory. Life and work Dobrushin received his Ph.D. at Moscow State University under the supervision of Andrey Kolmogorov.
Go to Profile#25467
Vytautas Mažiulis
#25478
Overall Influence
1926 - 2009 (83 years)
Vytautas Juozapas Mažiulis was a highly distinguished Lithuanian Balticist, an expert on the Old Prussian language and Indo-European languages. Biography He studied classical philology at the Vilnius University in 1947–1952, receiving his Ph.D. in 1956 at the Lomonosov Moscow State University with his thesis on Lithuanian numerals. In 1955 he started working at the Vilnius University, holding a Chair of Lithuanian Language in 1968–1973.
Go to Profile#25468
Thiago Silva
#25479
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Thiago Emiliano da Silva is a Brazilian professional footballer who plays as a centre-back for club Chelsea and the Brazil national team. Widely regarded as one of the greatest defenders of his generation, he is known for his defensive prowess, discipline, and leadership.
Go to Profile#25469
Geoff Raby
#25480
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Geoffrey William "Geoff" Raby is an Australian economist and diplomat. He served as the Australian Ambassador to the People's Republic of China from February 2007 until August 2011. He is now the chairman and CEO of Geoff Raby and Associates, a Beijing-based business advisory firm. Raby currently sits on the board of an Australian subsidiary of Chinese state-run Yanzhou Coal Mining Company.
Go to Profile#25470
Amin Azzam
#25481
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Amin Azzam is a clinical professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. He is also a clinical professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the associate director of the UC Berkeley – UCSF Joint Medical Program, and the director of the program's "Problem-Based Learning" curriculum, besides being the director of Open Learning Initiatives and Faculty Engagement coordinator at Osmosis Medical Company. He is known for teaching an elective class for fourth year medical students that consists entirely of editing Wikipedia articles about medical topics.
Go to Profile#25471
Jerry Stackhouse
#25482
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Jerry Darnell Stackhouse is an American basketball coach and former professional player who is the head coach of the Vanderbilt Commodores men's team. Stackhouse played college basketball for the North Carolina Tar Heels and played 18 seasons in the National Basketball Association and was a two-time NBA All-Star. He was the head coach of Raptors 905 and an assistant coach for the Toronto Raptors and Memphis Grizzlies. Additionally, he has worked as an NBA TV analyst.
Go to Profile#25472
Laurell K. Hamilton
#25483
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Laurell Kaye Hamilton is an American fantasy and romance writer. She is best known as the author of two series of stories. Her New York Times-bestselling Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series centers on Anita Blake, a professional zombie raiser, vampire executioner and supernatural consultant for the police, which includes novels, short story collections, and comic books. Six million copies of Anita Blake novels are in print. Her Merry Gentry series centers on Meredith Gentry, Princess of the Unseelie court of Faerie, a private detective facing repeated assassination attempts. Both of these fan...
Go to Profile#25473
Robby Krieger
#25484
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Robert Alan Krieger is an American guitarist and founding member of the rock band the Doors. Krieger wrote or co-wrote many of the Doors' songs, including the hits "Light My Fire", "Love Me Two Times", "Touch Me", and "Love Her Madly". When the Doors disbanded following the death of lead singer Jim Morrison, Krieger continued to perform and record with other musicians including former Doors bandmates John Densmore and Ray Manzarek.
Go to Profile#25474
James H. Ammons
#25485
Overall Influence
James H. Ammons is an American educator, who is the Chancellor of Southern University at New Orleans. He served as president of Florida A&M University from July 2, 2007, until his resignation took effect on July 16, 2012. He is a native Floridian who grew up in the heart of Florida's citrus belt. He graduated from Winter Haven High School in 1970 and entered Florida A&M University on the Thirteen College Curriculum Program during the fall semester of 1970. Ammons was appointed Chancellor at Southern University in New Orleans January 8, 2021.
Go to Profile#25475
Dinesh Sharma
#25486
Overall Influence
Dinesh J. Sharma is an American social scientist, psychologist, academic and entrepreneur in the fields of human development and rights, leadership and globalization; his recent publications include, “The Global Obama: Crossroads of Leadership in the 21st Century” and most recently “The Global Hillary: Women's Political Leadership in Cultural Context."
Go to Profile#25476
José Ferrer
#25487
Overall Influence
1912 - 1992 (80 years)
José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón was a Puerto Rican actor and director of stage, film and television. He was one of the most celebrated and esteemed Hispanic American actors—or, indeed, actors of any ethnicity—during his lifetime and after, with a career spanning nearly 60 years between 1935 and 1992. He achieved prominence for his portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac in the play of the same name, which earned him the inaugural Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1947. He reprised the role in a 1950 film version and won an Academy Award for Best Actor, making him the first Hispanic actor ...
Go to Profile#25477
Oksana Ivanenko
#25488
Overall Influence
1906 - 1997 (91 years)
Oksana Dmytrivna Ivanenko was a Ukrainian children's writer and translator. In 1974, she was the winner of the Lesia Ukrainka Literary Prize for the novels Рідні діти , Тарасові шляхи , and Лісові казки . She was also the winner of the Shevchenko National Prize in 1986, for the book Завжди в житті . She was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples, three Orders of the Badge of Honor, and medals.
Go to Profile#25478
Wade Boggs
#25489
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Wade Anthony Boggs is an American former professional baseball third baseman. He spent 18 seasons in Major League Baseball, primarily with the Boston Red Sox. He also played for the New York Yankees , winning the 1996 World Series with them, and finished his career with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays .
Go to Profile#25479
David Lindenmayer
#25490
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Distinguished Professor David Lindenmayer, , is an Australian scientist and academic. His research focuses on the adoption of nature conservation practices in agricultural production areas, developing ways to improve integration of native forest harvesting and biodiversity conservation, new approaches to enhance biodiversity conservation in plantations, and improved fire management practices in Australia. He specialises in large-scale, long-term research monitoring programs in south-eastern Australia, primarily in forests, reserves, national parks, plantations, and on farm land.
Go to Profile#25480
Susan J. Wolfson
#25491
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Susan J. Wolfson is Professor of English at Princeton University. She received her PhD from University of California, Berkeley and, previous to Princeton, taught for thirteen years at Rutgers University New Brunswick.
Go to Profile#25481
Hugh Brady
#25492
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Hugh Redmond Brady is an Irish academic, the 17th President of Imperial College London, and a professor of medicine. He was the 13th President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol. He is also President Emeritus of University College, Dublin , having served as UCD's eighth President from 2004 to 2013.
Go to Profile#25482
Alex Hannum
#25493
Overall Influence
1923 - 2002 (79 years)
Alexander Murray Hannum was a professional basketball player and coach. Hannum coached two National Basketball Association teams and one American Basketball Association team to league championships. He had a combined NBA-ABA record of 649–564 in the regular season and 61–46 in the playoffs over 16 seasons. In 1998, he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach.
Go to Profile#25483
John Clayton
#25494
Overall Influence
1954 - 2022 (68 years)
John Travis Clayton was an American sports journalist who was a National Football League writer and reporter for ESPN, as well as a senior writer for ESPN.com. He also worked for The Pittsburgh Press and The News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington. Clayton received the Dick McCann Memorial Award from the Pro Football Writers of America in recognition of his long-time coverage of professional football.
Go to Profile#25484
Roland Glowinski
#25495
Overall Influence
1937 - 2022 (85 years)
Roland Glowinski was a French-American mathematician. He obtained his PhD in 1970 from Jacques-Louis Lions and was known for his work in applied mathematics, in particular numerical solution and applications of partial differential equations and variational inequalities. He was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and held an endowed chair at the University of Houston from 1985. Glowinski wrote many books on the subject of mathematics. In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#25485
Valerie M. Hudson
#25496
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Valerie M. Hudson is an American professor of political science in the Department of International Affairs at The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University as of January 2012. Prior to coming to Texas A&M, Hudson was a professor of political science at Brigham Young University for over 24 years. She is most noted for having co-authored the book Bare Branches which discussed the effects of China's demographic decisions on sex ratios in China and other countries.
Go to Profile#25486
Mark Crispin Miller
#25497
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media studies at New York University. He has promoted conspiracy theories about U.S. presidential elections, the September 11 attacks and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting as well as misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines.
Go to Profile#25487
Nizar Ibrahim
#25498
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Nizar Ibrahim is a German-Moroccan vertebrate paleontologist and comparative anatomist. He is currently a senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth. Ibrahim has led several expeditions to Africa's Sahara and is notable for his research on fossil vertebrates from the Kem Kem Group, including pterosaurs, crocodyliforms, and dinosaurs. In recent years, research led by Ibrahim radically changed ideas about the morphology and life habits of one of the largest predatory dinosaurs, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. Ibrahim also has interests in bioinformatics and contributed to the NSF-funded Phenoscape project.
Go to Profile#25488
Giuseppe Scaraffia
#25499
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Giuseppe Scaraffia is an Italian writer and professor. Biography Giuseppe Scaraffia was born in Turin, Italy, in 1950. He graduated in Philosophy at the University of Milan with a thesis on the idea of happiness in Diderot. He has taught French Literature at the Sapienza University of Rome since 1976. Over the years his research has focused in particular on the great myths of seduction of the 19th century, from the figure of the femme fatale to that of the tall dark stranger.
Go to Profile#25489
David Watson
#25500
Overall Influence
1949 - 2015 (66 years)
Sir David John Watson was a British academic and educationalist. He was Director of Brighton Polytechnic from 1990 to 1992 and Vice-Chancellor of its successor the University of Brighton from 1992 to 2005. In 2005 he was appointed Professor of Higher Education Management at the Institute of Education and was Course Director of the Institute's MBA in Higher Education Management. Between 2010 and 2015 he was Principal of Green Templeton College, Oxford and Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#25490
Erin McKean
#25501
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Erin McKean is an American lexicographer. Early life and education McKean was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. She graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA/MA in Linguistics. As an undergraduate, she worked in a junior capacity on the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary. She has since served on the Visiting Committee to the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library, and she helped organize a dictionary-themed exhibit, The Meaning of Dictionaries, there in 2007.
Go to Profile#25491
Javier Mascherano
#25502
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Javier Alejandro Mascherano is an Argentine professional football coach and former player. As a player, he played as a centre-back or defensive midfielder, most notably for Liverpool, Barcelona and the Argentina national team.
Go to Profile#25492
Hu Hesheng
#25503
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Hu Hesheng is a Chinese mathematician. She served as vice-president of Chinese Mathematical Society, president of the Shanghai Mathematical Society, and is an academician of Chinese Academy of Science. She held the Noether Lecture in 2002.
Go to Profile#25493
Christian Settipani
#25504
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Christian Settipani is a French genealogist, historian and IT professional, currently working as the Technical Director of a company in Paris. Biography Settipani holds a Master of Advanced Studies from the Paris-Sorbonne University , received a doctorate in history in December 2013 from the University of Lorraine with a dissertation titled Les prétentions généalogiques à Athènes sous l'empire romain and obtained in June 2019 from the Sorbonne university an habilitation for a dissertation titled "Liens dynastiques entre Byzance et l'étranger à l'époque des Comnène et des Paléologue" . He co...
Go to Profile#25494
Masashi Kishimoto
#25505
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Masashi Kishimoto is a Japanese manga artist. His manga series, Naruto, which was in serialization from 1999 to 2014, has sold over 250 million copies worldwide in 46 countries as of May 2019. The series has been adapted into two anime and multiple films, video games, and related media. Besides the Naruto manga, Kishimoto also personally supervised the two canonical anime films, The Last: Naruto the Movie and Boruto: Naruto the Movie, and has written several one-shot stories. In 2019, Kishimoto wrote Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru which ended in March 2020. From May 2016 through October 2020...
Go to Profile#25495
Ben Harper
#25506
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Benjamin Charles Harper is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Harper plays an eclectic mix of blues, folk, soul, reggae, and rock music and is known for his guitar-playing skills, vocals, live performances, and activism. He has released twelve studio albums, mostly through Virgin Records, and has toured internationally.
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Christian G. Fritz
#25507
Overall Influence
Christian G. Fritz is a legal historian and a law professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law. He writes on U.S. constitutional history, and his 2007 book American Sovereigns: the People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War, published by Cambridge University Press, traces the historical roots of popular sovereignty in U.S. law.
Go to Profile#25497
Kevin Roose
#25508
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Kevin Roose is an American author and journalist. He is the author of three books, a technology columnist and podcast host for The New York Times. He wrote a book about Liberty University, an evangelical Christian university known for strict rules imposed on students. He was named on Forbes "30 Under 30" list in 2015.
Go to Profile#25498
Caroline Series
#25509
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Caroline Mary Series is an English mathematician known for her work in hyperbolic geometry, Kleinian groups and dynamical systems. Early life and education Series was born on March 24, 1951, in Oxford to Annette and George Series. She attended Oxford High School for Girls and from 1969 studied at Somerville College, Oxford, where she was interviewed for admission by Anne Cobbe. She obtained a B.A. in Mathematics in 1972 and was awarded the university Mathematical Prize. She was awarded a Kennedy Scholarship and studied at Harvard University from 1972, obtaining her Ph.D. in 1976 supervised ...
Go to Profile#25499
Dorothy Hewett
#25510
Overall Influence
1923 - 2002 (79 years)
Dorothy Coade Hewett was an Australian playwright, poet and author, and a romantic feminist icon. In writing and in her life, Hewett was an experimenter. As her circumstances and beliefs changed, she progressed through different literary styles: modernism, socialist realism, expressionism and avant garde. She was a member of the Australian Communist Party in the 1950s and 1960s, which informed her work during that period.
Go to Profile#25500
Eugene Victor Wolfenstein
#25511
Overall Influence
1940 - 2010 (70 years)
Eugene Victor Wolfenstein was an American social theorist, practicing psychoanalyst, and a professor of political science at University of California, Los Angeles. Early life and education Wolfenstein graduated with his Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude from Columbia College in 1962. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
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