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).
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List of the most influential people
#25701
Philippe Burrin
#25712
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Philippe Burrin is a historian whose research focuses on ideologies, movements and political parties in Europe during the interwar period. With his work on the Second World War, he tried to define the notions of mass violence and genocide.
Go to Profile#25702
Michael Fourman
#25713
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Michael Paul Fourman FBCS FRSE is Professor of Computer Systems at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, UK, and was Head of the School of Informatics from 2001 to 2009. Fourman is worked in applications of logic in computer science, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science – more specifically, formal models of digital systems, system design tools, proof assistants, categorical semantics and propositional planning.
Go to Profile#25703
Esther Friesner
#25714
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Esther Mona Friesner-Stutzman, née Friesner is an American science fiction and fantasy author. She is also a poet and playwright. She is best known for her humorous style of writing, both in the titles and the works themselves. This humor allows her to discuss with broader audiences about issues like gender equality and social justice.
Go to Profile#25704
Bambi Schieffelin
#25715
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Bambi B. Schieffelin is a linguistic anthropologist and professor emerita at New York University in the department of Anthropology. Along with Elinor Ochs, she pioneered the field of language socialization. In addition, she has written extensively about language contact, language ideology, literacy, Haitian Creole, and missionization.
Go to Profile#25705
Rose McGowan
#25716
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Rósa Arianna "Rose" McGowan is an American actress and activist. After her film debut in a brief role in the comedy Encino Man , McGowan achieved recognition for her performance in the dark comedy The Doom Generation , receiving an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Debut Performance. She had her breakthrough in the horror film Scream and subsequently headlined the films Going All the Way , Devil in the Flesh and Jawbreaker .
Go to Profile#25706
Matt Ryan
#25717
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Matthew Thomas Ryan is an American football quarterback who is a free agent. Nicknamed "Matty Ice", Ryan spent his first 14 seasons with the Atlanta Falcons and holds the franchise records for passing yards, passing touchdowns, attempts, completions, passer rating, and wins. He played college football at Boston College, where he won the Manning and Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Awards as a senior, and was selected by the Falcons third overall in the 2008 NFL Draft. He is also an analyst for CBS Sports.
Go to Profile#25707
Diane Maclagan
#25718
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Diane Margaret Maclagan is a professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick. She is a researcher in combinatorial and computational commutative algebra and algebraic geometry, with an emphasis on toric varieties, Hilbert schemes, and tropical geometry.
Go to Profile#25708
Trenton Lee Stewart
#25719
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Trenton Lee Stewart is an American author best known for the Mysterious Benedict Society series. Stewart is a graduate of Hendrix College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Go to Profile#25709
Hugh B. Cave
#25720
Overall Influence
1910 - 2004 (94 years)
Hugh Barnett Cave was an American writer of various genres, perhaps best remembered for his works of horror, weird menace and science fiction. Cave was one of the most prolific contributors to pulp magazines of the 1920s and '30s, selling an estimated 800 stories not only in the aforementioned genres but also in western, fantasy, adventure, crime, romance and non-fiction. He used a variety of pen names, notably Justin Case under which name he created the antihero The Eel. A war correspondent during World War II, Cave afterwards settled in Jamaica where he owned and managed a coffee plantation...
Go to Profile#25710
David Hare
#25721
Overall Influence
1917 - 1992 (75 years)
David Hare was an American artist, associated with the Surrealist movement. He is primarily known for his sculpture, though he also worked extensively in photography and painting. The VVV Surrealism Magazine was first published and edited by Hare in 1942.
Go to Profile#25711
Daniel Lord Smail
#25722
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Daniel Lord Smail is Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of History at Harvard University, he teaches the history of Mediterranean societies between 1100 and 1600 and in special the French city of Marseille. He also studies deep history and History of Debt. He was a featured speaker at Beyond Belief @ University of San Diego, sponsored by The Science Network.
Go to Profile#25712
Claudia Sahm
#25723
Overall Influence
Claudia Rae Sahm is an American economist, leading the Macroeconomic Research initiative of the Jain Family Institute. She was formerly director of macroeconomic policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, and a Section Chief at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where she worked in various capacities from 2007 to 2019. Sahm specializes in macroeconomics and household finance. She is best known for the development of the Sahm Rule, a Federal Reserve Economic Data indicator for identifying recessions in real-time.
Go to Profile#25713
Peter Druschel
#25724
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Peter Druschel is a German computer scientist and founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Saarbrücken. Education and career Druschel studied electrical engineering specializing on data technology at the Munich University of Applied Sciences and completed his studies as a graduate engineer. He graduated in 1994 from the University of Arizona under Larry L. Peterson. In the same year he became Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Rice University. In 2000 he became Associate Professor, followed in 2002 by a full professorship.
Go to Profile#25714
Johannes Angermuller
#25725
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Johannes Angermuller is a discourse researcher in linguistics and sociology. He is Professor at Open University. He is also affiliated to CEMS/EHESS in Paris and the Centre for Applied Linguistics at Warwick . He mostly lives in London and Paris.
Go to Profile#25715
Carel S. Scholten
#25726
Overall Influence
1925 - 2009 (84 years)
Carel S. Scholten was a physicist and a pioneer of computing. He went to the Vossius Gymnasium in Amsterdam and then studied physics from 1945 to 1952 at the University of Amsterdam. In 1947 he was asked by the Dutch Mathematisch Centrum to collaborate in building an automatic calculator with his friend and fellow student Bram Loopstra. Their first system, the ARRA I was not a success, but its successor, the ARRA II, on which Gerrit Blaauw also collaborated, was.
Go to Profile#25716
Joseph R. Tanner
#25727
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Joseph Richard Tanner is an American instructor at the University of Colorado Boulder, mechanical engineer, a former naval officer and aviator, and a former NASA astronaut. He was born in Danville, Illinois. He is unusual among astronauts as he did not have a background in flight test nor did he earn any advanced academic degrees. Typically those who did not do military flight test have an M.D. or Ph.D., if not a master's, whereas Tanner's path to becoming an astronaut followed operational military flying and then into NASA for operational jet training before being selected into the NASA Ast...
Go to Profile#25717
Peter Abell
#25728
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Peter Abell is a British social scientist, currently professor emeritus at the London School of Economics where he has founded and directed the "Interdisciplinary Institute of Management". He has been teaching for many years at LSE's Department of Management, managerial economics and strategy group.
Go to Profile#25718
Benoît Hamon
#25729
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Benoît Hamon is a French politician known for his former role within the Socialist Party and Party of European Socialists and his political party Génération.s. Hamon joined the Socialist Party in 1988 and by 1993 became the leader of the Young Socialist Movement, serving until 1995. In 2004, Hamon was elected MEP for East of France and during his time as MEP he ran for leadership of the Socialist Party, losing in the first round of the Reims Congress and endorsing the Eurosceptic option in the 2005 European Constitution referendum.
Go to Profile#25719
Gary Megson
#25730
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Gary John Megson is an English former football player and manager. He has previously managed Norwich City, Blackpool, Stockport County, Stoke City, West Bromwich Albion, Nottingham Forest, Leicester City, Bolton Wanderers and Sheffield Wednesday. He guided West Brom to promotion in 2001–02 and 2003–04, both times from the First Division to the Premier League.
Go to Profile#25720
Kyriacos A. Athanasiou
#25731
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
#25721
Burghart Schmidt
#25732
Overall Influence
1942 - 2022 (80 years)
Burghart Schmidt was a German philosopher. He was professor at Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Education He was born in Wildeshausen, Oldenburg, Germany. Schmidt was educated in biology, chemistry, physics and then philosophy and history of art at the University of Tübingen. He was coworker for many years of Ernst Bloch, over whom he submitted later also numerous publications, among them the standard work Ernst Bloch . From 1968 to 1977 he worked as a scientific coworker of the philosopher and published his complete work at Suhrkamp. After the graduation in 1982 at the University of Tübingen as a Dr.
Go to Profile#25722
Chinmoy Guha
#25733
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Chinmoy Guha is Professor Emeritus at the University of Calcutta, a Bengali essayist and translator, and a scholar of French language and literature. He has served as the Vice-Chancellor of Rabindra Bharati University and Director of Publications, Embassy of France, New Delhi. Earlier he taught English at Vijaygarh Jyotish Ray College in Kolkata for more than two decades, and French at the Alliance Française and the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture for eleven and five years respectively.
Go to Profile#25723
Carel Stolker
#25734
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Carel Jan Jozef Marie Stolker is a Dutch academic administrator and the former rector magnificus and president of Leiden University from February 2013 to February 2021. He was the successor of Paul F. van der Heijden. Stolker is a professor of private law and former dean of the Leiden University Law School .
Go to Profile#25724
Zakk Wylde
#25735
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Zachary Phillip Wylde is an American musician. He is best known as the lead guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne and as the founder, lead guitarist, lead singer, songwriter and producer of the heavy metal band Black Label Society. His signature bulls-eye design appears on many of his guitars and is widely recognized. He was also the lead guitarist and vocalist of Pride & Glory, who released one self-titled album in 1994 before disbanding. As a solo artist, he released the albums Book of Shadows and Book of Shadows II. Wylde joined the reunited Pantera in 2022 as a touring guitarist.
Go to Profile#25725
Kang-Tae Kim
#25736
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Kang-Tae Kim is a South Korean mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at Pohang University of Science and Technology, and is the head of the Center for Geometric Research at the Center for Leading Research. He is one of executive editors of Complex Analysis and its Synergies, an international journal published by Springer-Verlag.
Go to Profile#25726
Chris Hillman
#25737
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Christopher Hillman is an American musician. He was the original bassist of the Byrds. With frequent collaborator Gram Parsons, Hillman was a key figure in the development of country rock, defining the genre through his work with the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Manassas and the country-rock group the Desert Rose Band. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 as a member of the Byrds.
Go to Profile#25727
Catherine Redgwell
#25738
Overall Influence
Catherine Redgwell is Chichele Professor of Public International Law and fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and Co-Director of the Oxford Geoengineering Programme of the Oxford Martin School. Professor Redgwell previously held positions as Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Laws, University College London, at the University of Oxford , the University of Nottingham and the University of Manchester. She has also served on secondment to the Legal Advisers, Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Go to Profile#25728
Andy Samberg
#25739
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Andy Samberg is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer, and musician. He is a member of the comedy music group The Lonely Island alongside childhood friends Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. Samberg was also a cast member and writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 2005 to 2012, where he and his fellow group members are credited with popularizing the SNL Digital Shortss.
Go to Profile#25729
Markos Mamalakis
#25740
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Markos Mamalakis is a Greek economist specialising in development economics, particularly in Latin America. Born in Salonika, he graduated from the Experimental High School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1950, then attended the Law School of the University and received a B.A. in Law, with the distinction summa cum laude in 1955. He did graduate work at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich from 1955 to 1957, and University of California, Berkeley from 1957 to 1962, where he received his M.A. , and Ph.D. with a dissertation entitled Inflation and Growth: An Asset Preference Analysis.
Go to Profile#25730
John Guillory
#25741
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
John David Guillory is an American literary critic best known for his book Cultural Capital . He is the Julius Silver Professor of English at New York University. Life Guillory "grew up in New Orleans in a working-class Catholic family, and attended Jesuit schools." Guillory gained his BA at Tulane University, and a PhD in English from Yale University in 1979. His PhD, Poetry and Authority: Spenser, Milton, and Literary History, was subsequently published as a monograph. Guillory taught at Yale University , Johns Hopkins University , and Harvard University before moving to New York Universit...
Go to Profile#25731
Keith Burnett
#25742
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Sir Keith Burnett, CBE, FRS FLSW FINSTP is a British physicist and President Elect of the Institute of Physics. He is Chair of the Nuffield Foundation — an independent charitable trust with a mission to advance educational opportunity and social well-being, founding Chair of the Academic Council the Schmidt Science Fellows, and a member of the Board of international education providers Study Group.
Go to Profile#25732
Klaus Brockhoff
#25743
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Klaus Brockhoff is a German economist, organizational theorist and Emeritus Professor at the University of Kiel. Biography Born in Koblenz Brockhoff studied economics at the University of Bonn, where he received his MA in 1962. In 1965 he received his PhD in economics with a thesis on corporate growth and product range changes. A year later, he obtained another MA in Business Administration at the University of Münster. From 1967 to 1968 he was granted a postdoctoral fellowship from the German Research Foundation to be Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. Back in German...
Go to Profile#25733
Micha Tomkiewicz
#25744
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Micha Tomkiewicz is a Polish scientist, professor and writer. Biography Marcelli Robert Tomkiewicz was born on May 25, 1939, in Warsaw, Poland, and lived in the Warsaw Ghetto before his family was sent off to the German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. On Friday, April 13, 1945, Tomkiewicz was among the 2,500 Jewish prisoners rescued from one of what have now come to be known as the Bergen-Belsen Death Trains. As the war drew to a close, the Germans, anticipating the arrival of Allied forces had evacuated these prisoners and loaded them onto trains headed to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp further from the front lines.
Go to Profile#25734
David Shoenberg
#25745
Overall Influence
1911 - 2004 (93 years)
David Shoenberg, MBE FRS, was a British physicist who worked in condensed matter physics. Shoenberg is known for having developed experimental and theoretical principles to study the De Haas–Van Alphen effect to characterize the electrical conduction of metals.
Go to Profile#25735
Marcus Camby
#25746
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Marcus Dion Camby is an American former professional basketball player who played 17 seasons in the National Basketball Association . He was named Defensive Player of the Year during the 2006–07 NBA season, leading the league in blocked shots per game. Camby is also a four-time member of the NBA All-Defensive Team and is 12th on the NBA's all-time career blocks list.
Go to Profile#25736
Allene Jeanes
#25747
Overall Influence
1906 - 1995 (89 years)
Allene Rosalind Jeanes was an American chemical researcher, whose studies focused mainly on carbohydrates and the development of Dextran, a substance that replaced blood plasma in the Korean War. A member of the American Chemical Society, Jeanes published over 60 works, compiled 24 presentations, and received ten patents.
Go to Profile#25737
Jon Brion
#25748
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Jon Brion is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and composer. He performed with the Excerpts, the Bats, 'Til Tuesday and the Grays before becoming an established producer and film score composer.
Go to Profile#25738
M. Zahid Hasan
#25749
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
M. Zahid Hasan is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Princeton University. His primary research area is quantum physics and quantum topology. Biography Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Hasan completed his higher secondary schooling at Dhanmondi Government Boys' High School and Dhaka College, then studied physics and mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2002 from Stanford University, working at SLAC/Stanford National Accelerator Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Go to Profile#25739
Douglas J. Moo
#25750
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Douglas J. Moo is a Reformed New Testament scholar who, after teaching for more than twenty years at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois, served as Blanchard Professor of New Testament at the Wheaton College Graduate School from 2000 until his retirement in 2023. He received his Ph.D. at the University of St. Andrews, in St. Andrews, Scotland.
Go to Profile#25740
Anupam Joshi
#25751
Overall Influence
Anupam Joshi is the Oros Family Professor and Acting Dean of the UMBC College of Engineering and Information Technology in the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA. He is also the Director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity.
Go to Profile#25741
János Aczél
#25752
Overall Influence
1924 - 2020 (96 years)
János Dezső Aczél , also known as John Aczel, was a Hungarian-Canadian mathematician, who specialized in functional equations and information theory. Professional career Aczél earned a doctorate in mathematical analysis from the University of Budapest, and held positions at the University of Cologne, Kossuth University, University of Miskolc, and University of Szeged. He joined the University of Waterloo faculty in 1965, eventually becoming Distinguished Professor in the Department of Pure Mathematics.
Go to Profile#25742
Christian Laettner
#25753
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Christian Donald Laettner is an American former professional basketball player. His college career for the Duke Blue Devils is widely regarded as one of the best in National Collegiate Athletic Association history. He was the star player on the back-to-back Duke National Championship teams of 1991 and 1992, and the NCAA player of the year in his senior year. He is particularly famous for his game-winning shot against Kentucky in the 1992 tournament and for the hatred he received from opposing fans.
Go to Profile#25743
Ravi Kant
#25754
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Ravi Kant is a professor of Surgery at Sharda University, who was the director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rishikesh from 2017 to 2021 and the Vice Chancellor of King George's Medical University from 2014 to 2017. Earlier he was head of surgery at All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Bhopal and faculty at Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi. The Government of India awarded him the Padma Shri in 2016.
Go to Profile#25744
Johan Braeckman
#25755
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Johan Braeckman is a Flemish philosopher. He is professor in philosophy at the University of Ghent and taught at various other institutions e.g. University of Amsterdam. He is editor of the skeptical organisation SKEPP's magazine Wonder en is gheen Wonder. His research, conducted along with a dozen doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, focuses on the philosophical problems associated with the life sciences, in particular the evolutionary theory and neuroscience.
Go to Profile#25745
Lauren Ackerman
#25756
Overall Influence
1905 - 1993 (88 years)
Lauren Vedder Ackerman was an American physician and pathologist, who championed the subspecialty of surgical pathology in the mid-20th century. Early life Ackerman was born in March 1905 in Auburn, New York, to Bertha and John Ackerman. Both of his parents were college graduates. His father was a civil and mechanical engineer, who later became city manager of Watertown, New York. Despite growing up in a learned family environment, Lauren was an indifferent student with mediocre grades. After high school graduation in 1923 Ackerman began his college studies at St. Lawrence University , later transferring to, and graduating from, Hamilton College in 1927 with a B.S.
Go to Profile#25746
David MacAdam
#25757
Overall Influence
1910 - 1998 (88 years)
David Lewis MacAdam was an American physicist and color scientist who made important contributions to color science and technology in the fields of colorimetry, color discrimination, color photography and television, and color order.
Go to Profile#25747
Julian Rushton
#25758
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Julian Gordon Rushton is an English musicologist, born in Cambridge. He has contributed the entry on Mozart in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera and several other articles in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and other reference works. He has written a critical study of the style of Hector Berlioz and was involved in critical editions of that composer's works. In 1999, he published an analysis of Elgar's Enigma Variations. His book Coffee with Mozart has been translated into German. He also wrote Mozart and Mozart: An Extraordinary Life . In addition to his 1983 work The Music...
Go to Profile#25748
Joel B. Green
#25759
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Joel B. Green is an American New Testament scholar, theologian, author, Associate Dean of the Center for Advanced Theological Study, and Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Green is a prolific author who has written on a diverse range of topics related to both New Testament scholarship and theology. He is an ordained elder of the United Methodist Church.
Go to Profile#25749
Steven Haberman
#25760
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Steven Haberman is Director and Deputy Dean in Cass Business School, Professor of Actuarial Science in its Faculty of Actuarial Science and Insurance and is Founding Editor of the Journal of Pension, Economics and Finance.
Go to Profile#25750
John Rex
#25761
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
John Rex was a South African-born British sociologist. Born in Port Elizabeth, he was radicalised after working for the South African Bantu Affairs Administration and moved to Britain. He was a lecturer at the universities of Leeds , Birmingham , Durham , Warwick , Aston , Toronto , Cape Town and New York . He was also a member of the UNESCO International Experts' Committee on Racism and Race Prejudice and president of the International Sociological Association's Research Committee on Racial and Ethnic Minorities .
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