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
#25951
Thomas McFarland
#25962
Overall Influence
1926 - 2011 (85 years)
Professor Thomas A. McFarland was a literary critic who specialised in the literature of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was Murray Professor of Romantic English Literature at Princeton University. McFarland established his reputation with Coleridge and Pantheist Tradition , where he argued that Coleridge was struggling to reconcile two types of philosophy; the philosophy of the 'it is' and the philosophy of the 'I am'.
Go to Profile#25952
Tvrtko Jakovina
#25963
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Tvrtko Jakovina is a Croatian historian. Jakovina is a full time professor at the Department of History at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Zagreb. Biography Early life Tvrtko Jakovina was born in the eastern Croatian town of Požega where he finished elementary school and high school, and also completed his compulsory military service.
Go to Profile#25953
David Healy
#25964
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
David Healy FRCPsych, a professor of psychiatry at Bangor University in the United Kingdom, is a psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, scientist and author. His main areas of research are the contribution of antidepressants to suicide, conflict of interest between pharmaceutical companies and academic medicine, and the history of pharmacology. Healy has written more than 150 peer-reviewed articles, 200 other articles, and 20 books, including The Antidepressant Era, The Creation of Psychopharmacology, The Psychopharmacologists Volumes 1–3, Let Them Eat Prozac and Mania: A Short History of Bipolar...
Go to Profile#25954
Rick Nowels
#25965
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Richard Wright Nowels Jr. is an American songwriter, record producer, multi-instrumentalist and arranger. He has co-written and co-produced over 90 hit singles with multiple artists and albums his songs have appeared on have sold over 250 million copies. In 2020, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#25955
Robert L. Scott
#25966
Overall Influence
1928 - 2018 (90 years)
Robert Lee Scott was an American scholar influential in the study of rhetorical theory, criticism of public address, debate, and communication research and practice. He was professor emeritus in the Communication Studies Department at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of five books, numerous articles in speech, communications, philosophy, and rhetoric journals, and contributed many book chapters. His article "On Viewing Rhetoric As Epistemic", is considered one of the most important academic articles written in rhetorical studies in the past century.
Go to Profile#25956
Wm. Roger Louis
#25967
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
William Roger Louis CBE FBA , commonly known as Wm. Roger Louis or, informally, Roger Louis, is an American historian and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Louis is the editor-in-chief of The Oxford History of the British Empire, a former president of the American Historical Association , a former chairman of the U.S. Department of State's Historical Advisory Committee, and a founding director of the AHA's National History Center in Washington, D. C.
Go to Profile#25957
Dana L. Cloud
#25968
Overall Influence
Dana L. Cloud is an American communication professor. Cloud's primary research focuses on rhetoric, cultural theory, gender theory, and queer theory. She is best known for her 1998 book Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics: Rhetoric of Therapy in which she coined the term "rhetoric of therapy".
Go to Profile#25958
Joe Neilands
#25969
Overall Influence
1921 - 2008 (87 years)
John Brian "Joe" Neilands was a Canadian-born American biochemist and professor of biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught from 1951 until his retirement in 1993. Early life and education Neilands was born on September 11, 1921, in Glen Valley, British Columbia, to Thomas Abraham Neilands and Mary Rebecca Neilands , both of whom immigrated from Northern Ireland. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Guelph in 1944, his master's degree from Dalhousie University in 1946, and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in biochemistry in 1949.
Go to Profile#25959
Alfred Kröner
#25970
Overall Influence
1939 - 2019 (80 years)
Alfred Kröner was a German Professor of Geology at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Mainz, Germany. He specialized in the Precambrian geology of Africa and geology of China but worked on many other geologic problems around the world. His research focused on the tectonics of the continental crust, geochronology, geochemistry, palaeomagnetism, structural geology, and petrology. He was especially interested in the Precambrian and Palaeozoic evolution of the continental crust.
Go to Profile#25960
Shmuel Zaks
#25971
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Schmuel Zaks is a computer scientist and mathematician who works in the fields of distributed computing and computer networks. He is a professor at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where he holds the Joan Callner-Miller Chair in Computer Science.
Go to Profile#25961
Carlo Penco
#25972
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Carlo Penco is an Italian analytic philosopher and full professor in philosophy of language at the University of Genoa in Italy. Biography Penco received his Ph.D. in Philosophy Summa cum Laude at the University of Genoa in 1972 with a specialization in the philosophy of science . He studied with Evandro Agazzi in Genoa, with Michael Dummett in Oxford, and later with Robert Brandom at the University of Pittsburgh. He has received various academic awards and fellowships including: CNR Fellow , NATO Fellow at Oxford University and Fellow of the Center for Philosophy of Science in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania .
Go to Profile#25962
Cara Black
#25973
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Cara Cavell Black is a Zimbabwean former professional tennis player. Black was primarily a doubles specialist, winning 60 WTA Tour and 11 ITF doubles titles. A former doubles world No. 1, she won ten major titles. By winning the 2010 Australian Open mixed doubles title, Black became the third woman in the Open Era to complete the career Grand Slam in mixed doubles . Having also won one singles title on the WTA Tour, Black peaked at world No. 31 in the singles rankings in March 1999.
Go to Profile#25963
Leo Scheffczyk
#25974
Overall Influence
1920 - 2005 (85 years)
Leo Scheffczyk was a German cardinal and theologian. He was a long-time theologian at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and one of the strongest advocates for orthodoxy during the long pontificate of John Paul II. During the 1980s and 1990s, he severely criticized some of his former students, e.g. Leonardo Boff, who advocated a Marxist version of liberation theology. Scheffczyk likely played a major role in drafting the most controversial documents, such as Ordinatio sacerdotalis and Ad tuendam fidem. He was made a cardinal in 2001. He was regarded as an important thinker in late...
Go to Profile#25964
Bob Torres
#25975
Overall Influence
Robert "Bob" Torres was an assistant professor of sociology at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. He is the co-author, with his wife Jenna Torres, of Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World , and the author of Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights .
Go to Profile#25965
Adam Ferziger
#25976
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Adam S. Ferziger is an intellectual and social historian whose research focuses on Jewish religious movements and religious responses to secularization and assimilation in modern and contemporary North America, Europe and Israel. Ferziger holds the Samson Raphael Hirsch Chair for Research of the Torah with Derekh Erez Movement in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. He is a senior associate at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and is co-convener of the annual Oxford Summer Institute for Modern and Contemporary Judaism.
Go to Profile#25966
Philip D. Gingerich
#25977
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Philip Dean Gingerich is an American paleontologist and educator. He is Professor Emeritus of Geology, Biology, and Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He directed the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan from 1981-2010. His research focus is in vertebrate paleontology, especially the Paleocene-Eocene transition and early Cenozoic mammals. His primary research focus is in the origin of modern orders of mammals and he is a leading expert on the evolution of primates and whales. Gingerich was among the experts who analyzed the skeleton of Darwinius masilla...
Go to Profile#25967
Carl-Gustav Esseen
#25978
Overall Influence
1918 - 2001 (83 years)
Carl-Gustav Esseen was a Swedish mathematician. His work was in the theory of probability. The Berry–Esseen theorem is named after him. Life Carl-Gustav Esseen attended school in Linköping. Starting in 1936, he studied mathematics, astronomy, physics and chemistry at the University of Uppsala. Inspired by the harmonic-analytic research of Harald Cramér and Arne Beurling, Esseen examined the accuracy of the approximation to the normal distribution in the central limit theorem in the case of independent and identically distributed summandss. Esseen's bound is now called "the Berry-Esseen theorem", because it was independently proved by Andrew C.
Go to Profile#25968
Christopher S. Koper
#25979
Overall Influence
Christopher S. Koper is Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University, and a senior fellow and co-director of the evidence-based policing program in the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy.
Go to Profile#25969
Louis Sokoloff
#25980
Overall Influence
1921 - 2015 (94 years)
Louis Sokoloff was an American neuroscientist. He is considered to be a pioneer in functional imaging of the brain. Louis Sokoloff was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences from 1980. In 1981, he received the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. In 1987, he received the Karl Spencer Lashley Award; "For his elucidation of the physiological and biochemical processes involved in the metabolism of the brain and the application of these discoveries to the measurement of functional activity within that organ". In 1988, Sokoloff, together with Seymour S.
Go to Profile#25970
Edward F. Wente
#25981
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Edward Frank Wente is an American professor emeritus of Egyptology and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1959 and lectured there from 1963 to 1996. He is also a longstanding member of the Oriental Institute, Chicago. One of his major works is Letters from Ancient Egypt , published by the Scholarly Press. In 1999 the Oriental Institute published a collection of essays by Egyptologists in honor of Edward Wente "Gold of Praise: Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honor of Edward F. Wente". His wife was Dr.
Go to Profile#25971
Alan Hunter
#25982
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Alan Caldwell Hunter is one of the original five video jockeys on MTV from 1981 to 1987 . He is a host on SiriusXM Radio's The 80s on 8 channel and on the Classic Rewind channel. He co-owns the production company Hunter Films with his brother Hugh. He, Hugh and two other brothers also founded WorkPlay, a multipurpose office, studio and entertainment facility in Birmingham, Alabama. He also hosted the reality show Looking for Stars on the Starz cable television channel as well as the Encore series Big 80s Weekend.
Go to Profile#25972
Joseph Mazur
#25983
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Joseph C. Mazur is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Marlboro College, in Marlboro, Vermont. He holds a B.S. from Pratt Institute, where he first studied architecture. He spent his junior year in Paris, studying mathematics in classes with Claude Chevalley and Roger Godement and returned to Pratt to earn a B.S. in mathematics. From there he went directly to M.I.T to receive his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1972. He has held a visiting scholar position at M.I.T and several visiting professor positions at The Mathematics Institute of the University of Warwick.
Go to Profile#25973
Julia Polak
#25984
Overall Influence
1939 - 2014 (75 years)
Dame Julia Margaret Polak, was an Argentine-born Polish pathologist who lived in England. She was head of the Centre for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine at Imperial College London, a centre for medical research she set up with Larry Hench, also from Imperial College, to develop cells and tissues for transplantation into humans.
Go to Profile#25974
Richard A. Flavell
#25985
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Richard Anthony Flavell , PhD, FRS is an English molecular biologist, and Sterling Professor of Immunobiology, at Yale School of Medicine where he uses transgenic and gene-targeted mice to study Innate and Adaptive immunity, T cell tolerance and activation in immunity and autoimmunity, apoptosis, and regulation of T cell differentiation. He is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2013, Flavell received the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science. In July 2016, Flavell received an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Hull. He is an honorary member of the British Soc...
Go to Profile#25975
Paul Seidel
#25986
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Paul Seidel is a Swiss-Italian mathematician. He is a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Career Seidel attended Heidelberg University, where he received his Diplom under supervision of Albrecht Dold in 1994. He then pursued his Ph.D. studies at the University of Oxford under supervision of Simon Donaldson in 1998. He was a chargé de recherche at the CNRS from 1999 to 2002, a professor at Imperial College London from 2002 to 2003, a professor at the University of Chicago from 2003 to 2007, and then a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2007 on...
Go to Profile#25976
Franz Lackner
#25987
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Franz Lackner is an Austrian prelate who has been Archbishop of Salzburg since 2013. In June 2020 he was elected the president of the Austrian Bishops' Conference. Life Franz Lackner was born in Feldbach in the district of Styria. He served as a UN soldier and was stationed in Cyprus.
Go to Profile#25977
Betty Ford
#25988
Overall Influence
1918 - 2011 (93 years)
Elizabeth Anne Ford was the first lady of the United States from 1974 to 1977, as the wife of President Gerald Ford. As first lady, she was active in social policy and set a precedent as a politically active presidential spouse. Ford also was the second lady of the United States from 1973 to 1974 when her husband was vice president.
Go to Profile#25978
Kari Norgaard
#25989
Overall Influence
Kari Marie Norgaard is a Professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, a post she has held since 2017. She is known for her research into Indigenous environmental justice, climate change denial and the politics of global warming.
Go to Profile#25979
Yasuo Yuasa
#25990
Overall Influence
1925 - 2005 (80 years)
was a Japanese philosopher of religion. Yuasa is known for his works on the theory of the body in Western and Asian philosophy and for his teaching. He has been referred to as "one of the most provocative and far-reaching" among Japan's contemporary philosophers.
Go to Profile#25980
Fred Craddock
#25991
Overall Influence
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Fred Brenning Craddock Jr. was Bandy Distinguished Professor of Preaching and New Testament Emeritus in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. He was an ordained minister of the Christian Church from rural Tennessee. He was the director of the Craddock Center, a non-profit service group which operates in rural Appalachia.
Go to Profile#25981
Roman Yampolskiy
#25992
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Roman Vladimirovich Yampolskiy is a Russian computer scientist at the University of Louisville, known for his work on behavioral biometrics, security of cyberworlds, and artificial intelligence safety. He holds a PhD from the University at Buffalo . He is currently the director of Cyber Security Laboratory in the department of Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the Speed School of Engineering.
Go to Profile#25982
Fabrice Santoro
#25993
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Fabrice Vetea Santoro is a French former professional tennis player. Successful in both singles and doubles, he had an unusually long professional career, with many of his accomplishments coming towards the end of his career, and he is popular among spectators and other players alike for his winning demeanor and shot-making abilities; he is also one of a rare breed of player who plays two-handed on both the forehand and backhand sides.
Go to Profile#25983
Gertrude Neumark
#25994
Overall Influence
1927 - 2010 (83 years)
Gertrude Fanny Neumark, also known as Gertrude Neumark Rothschild, was an American physicist, most noted for her work in material science and physics of semiconductors with emphasis on optical and electrical properties of wide-bandgap semiconductors and their light-emitting devices.
Go to Profile#25984
Trevor Darrell
#25995
Overall Influence
Trevor Jackson Darrell is an American computer scientist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his research on computer vision and machine learning and is one of the leading experts on topics such as deep learning and explainable AI.
Go to Profile#25985
Alice Y. Ting
#25996
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Alice Yen-Ping Ting is Taiwanese-born American chemist. She is a professor of genetics, of biology, and by courtesy, of chemistry at Stanford University. She is also a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#25986
David Keen
#25997
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
David Keen is a political economist and Professor of Complex Emergencies at the London School of Economics, where he has worked since the 1990s. He was educated at Cambridge and Oxford in economics and anthropology, and was formerly a consultant for NGOs and development agencies, and a journalist.
Go to Profile#25987
Joseph Carens
#25998
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Joseph H. Carens is a professor at the Department of Political Science of the University of Toronto, Canada. His research interests are mainly focused on contemporary political theory, especially on issues related to immigration and political community. Carens is an advocate of open borders, and an ethical theorist in the field of immigration.
Go to Profile#25988
Abul Lais Siddiqui
#25999
Overall Influence
1916 - 1994 (78 years)
Abul Lais Siddiqui was a Pakistani author, researcher, critic, linguist and scholar of Urdu literature and linguistics. Career He remained associated with the University of Karachi as professor and chairman, Department of Urdu. After retirement, he devoted his time to writing, guiding research, public speaking and media appearances. Siddiqui headed as Chief Editor the Urdu Lughat Board from 1962 to 1984. During his period, Urdu Dictionary Board published its first six of 22 volumes.
Go to Profile#25989
Marcel Just
#26000
Overall Influence
Marcel Just is D. O. Hebb Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. His research uses brain imaging in high-level cognitive tasks to study the neuroarchitecture of cognition. Just's areas of expertise include psycholinguistics, object recognition, and autism, with particular attention to cognitive and neural substrates. Just directs the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging and is a member of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at CMU.
Go to Profile#25990
A. Walton Litz
#26001
Overall Influence
1929 - 2014 (85 years)
Arthur Walton Litz, Jr. was an American literary historian and critic who served as professor of English Literature at Princeton University from 1956 to 1993. He was the author or editor of over twenty collections of literary criticism, including various editions of Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Wallace Stevens, and T. S. Eliot.
Go to Profile#25991
Taha Abdurrahman
#26002
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Taha Abderrahmane, is a Moroccan philosopher, and one of the leading philosophers and thinkers in the Arab and Islamic worlds. His work centers on logic, philosophy of language and philosophy of morality and contractarian ethics. He believes in multiple modernities and seeks to establish an ethical and humanitarian modernity based on the values and principles of Islam and the Arab tradition.
Go to Profile#25992
Agnivesh
#26003
Overall Influence
1939 - 2020 (81 years)
Swami Agnivesh , was an Indian social activist and the founder of Arya Sabha, a political party based on the principles of Arya Samaj. He also served as a cabinet minister in the state of Haryana. He is best known for his work against bonded labour through the Bonded Labour Liberation Front, which he founded in 1981.
Go to Profile#25993
Esther Szekeres
#26004
Overall Influence
1910 - 2005 (95 years)
Esther Szekeres was a Hungarian–Australian mathematician. Biography Esther Klein was born to Ignaz Klein in a Jewish family in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary in 1910. As a young physics student in Budapest, Klein was a member of a group of Hungarians including Paul Erdős, George Szekeres and Pál Turán that convened over interesting mathematical problems.
Go to Profile#25994
T. K. Doraiswamy
#26005
Overall Influence
1921 - 2007 (86 years)
T. K. Doraiswamy , also known by his pen name Nakulan, was an Indian poet, professor of English, novelist, translator and short fiction writer, who wrote both in Tamil and English, and is known for his surrealism and experimentation as well as free verse. He served as Professor of English, Mar Ivanios College, Thiruvananthapuram for four decades.
Go to Profile#25995
Doina Precup
#26006
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Doina Precup is a Romanian researcher currently living in Montreal, Canada. She specializes in artificial intelligence . Precup is associate dean of research at the faculty of science at McGill University, Canada research chair in machine learning and a senior fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. She also heads the Montreal office of Deepmind.
Go to Profile#25996
John Bellany
#26007
Overall Influence
1942 - 2013 (71 years)
John Bellany was a Scottish painter. Early life Bellany was born in Port Seton. His father and grandfather were fishermen in Port Seton and Eyemouth near Edinburgh. During the early 1960s, he studied at Edinburgh College of Art, here he met with other young Scottish artists to begin lifelong friendships and share ideals for a renaissance in Scottish arts. His contemporaries included Alan Bold and Alexander Moffat. Bellany and Moffat studied under Robin Philipson. Their initial interest was in impressionism but with their common Scottish background they looked toward Alan Davie as a connecti...
Go to Profile#25997
Mikaela Fudolig
#26008
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
Mikaela Irene Dimaano Fudolig is a Filipino physicist and former child prodigy. She is known for earning her undergraduate degree at the age of 16. Life and career Fudolig was a sophomore at Quezon City Science High School before being pulled into the experimental Early College Placement Program . At the age of 11, she began her university education at the University of the Philippines Diliman . She was admitted without a high school diploma and without taking the UP College Admission Test .
Go to Profile#25998
Kirk Cousins
#26009
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Kirk Daniel Cousins is an American football quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League . He played college football at Michigan State and was drafted by the Washington Redskins in the fourth round of the 2012 NFL Draft as a backup to fellow rookie Robert Griffin III. Cousins occasionally appeared in games during his first three seasons before replacing Griffin following an injury in 2015, where he remained the team's starter until 2017. With the Redskins, Cousins set numerous franchise records and was named to the 2017 Pro Bowl.
Go to Profile#25999
Pushmeet Kohli
#26010
Overall Influence
Pushmeet Kohli is a computer scientist at Google DeepMind where he holds the position of Vice President of research for the "Secure and Reliable AI" and "AI for Science and Sustainability". Before joining DeepMind, he was partner scientist and director of research at Microsoft Research and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge. Kohli's research investigates applications of machine learning and computer vision. He has also made contributions in game theory, discrete algorithms and psychometrics.
Go to Profile#26000
Moi Meng Ling
#26011
Overall Influence
Sherry Moi Meng Ling is a Malaysian virologist, currently serving as a professor at the Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo. Her research focuses on innate immune system to mosquito-borne virus infection and field epidemiology.
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