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
#26001
Piek Vossen
#26012
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Piek Th.J.M. Vossen , is professor of computational lexicology at the VU University Amsterdam, head of the Computational Lexicology & Terminology Lab, and founder and president of the Global WordNet Association.
Go to Profile#26002
Jörg Bewersdorff
#26013
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Jörg Bewersdorff is a German mathematician who is working as mathematics writer and game designer. Life and work After obtaining his Abitur from the Werner-Heisenberg-Gymnasium in Neuwied Bewersdorff studied mathematics from 1975 to 1982 at the University of Bonn. In 1982 he submitted his diploma in mathematics in Bonn and in 1985 he received his doctorate there under the supervision of Günter Harder .
Go to Profile#26003
Reggie White
#26014
Overall Influence
1961 - 2004 (43 years)
Reginald Howard White was an American professional football defensive end in the National Football League for 15 seasons during the 1980s and 1990s. White played college football for the University of Tennessee, and was recognized as a unanimous All-American. After playing two professional seasons for the Memphis Showboats of the United States Football League , he was selected in the first round of the 1984 Supplemental Draft, and then played for the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles, Green Bay Packers, and Carolina Panthers, becoming one of the most awarded defensive players in NFL history.
Go to Profile#26004
Seyyed Hassan Eslami Ardakani
#26015
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Seyyed Hassan Eslami Ardakani is an Iranian philosopher and professor of ethics at the University of Religions and Denominations. He is known for his expertise on virtue ethics, environmental ethics and research ethics. Eslami is a winner of Farabi International Award for his book Human Cloning in Catholic and Islamic Perspectives.
Go to Profile#26005
Georg Nolte
#26016
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Georg Nolte is a German jurist and Judge of the International Court of Justice. He is professor of public international law at the Humboldt University of Berlin and has been a member of the UN's International Law Commission from 2007 to 2021, serving as its chairman in 2017. In November 2020 he was elected Judge of the International Court of Justice by the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council, and he took office on 6 February 2021.
Go to Profile#26006
Amie Wilkinson
#26017
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Amie Wilkinson is an American mathematician and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Chicago. Her research topics include smooth dynamical systems, ergodic theory, chaos theory, and semisimple Lie groups. Wilkinson, in collaboration with Christian Bonatti and Sylvain Crovisier, partially resolved the twelfth problem on Stephen Smale's list of mathematical problems for the 21st Century.
Go to Profile#26007
Stephen Thomas
#26018
Overall Influence
Stephen Thomas is a professor at the University of Greenwich Business School, working in the area of energy policy. Before moving to the University of Greenwich in 2001, Thomas worked for twenty-two years at the University of Sussex.
Go to Profile#26008
Wang Yinglai
#26019
Overall Influence
1907 - 2001 (94 years)
Wang Yinglai , also known as Ying-Lai Wang, was a Chinese biochemist recognized as the first person to create synthetic insulin, a major scientific breakthrough that produced a biologically active compound from inorganic chemicals. He was one of the first group of scientists elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955. He founded the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry in 1958 and served as its director until his retirement in 1984.
Go to Profile#26009
Alan Nussbaum
#26020
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Alan Jeffrey "Jerry" Nussbaum is an American linguist of the Indo-European languages and a classical philologist, best known for his work on the language of the Homeric epics and modern and Proto-Indo-European nominals. He has specialized in nominals' derivational semantics and morphology . He is a professor of Indo-European linguistics, and the Greek and Latin languages at Cornell University.
Go to Profile#26010
Susan Ahn Cuddy
#26021
Overall Influence
1915 - 2015 (100 years)
Susan Ahn Cuddy was the first female gunnery officer in the United States Navy. She was the eldest daughter of Korean independence activist Ahn Chang-ho and Helen Ahn, the first married Korean couple to immigrate to the United States in 1902. She joined the Navy in 1942 and served until 1946, reaching the rank of lieutenant. She was the first Asian-American woman to join the U.S. Navy.
Go to Profile#26011
Kurt Mislow
#26022
Overall Influence
1923 - 2017 (94 years)
Kurt Martin Mislow was a German-born American organic chemist who specialized in stereochemistry. Born in Berlin on June 5, 1923, Mislow had moved to London by 1938, after some time in Milan. With the help of his uncle Alfred Eisenstaedt, Mislow's family left London for New York City in 1940. Mislow earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Tulane University in 1944, and received a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology, where he was supervised by Linus Pauling. Mislow first taught at New York University, then moved to Princeton University in 1964. While at Princeton, Mislow...
Go to Profile#26012
J. C. Catford
#26023
Overall Influence
1917 - 2009 (92 years)
John Cunnison "Ian" Catford was a Scottish linguist and phonetician of worldwide renown. Biography Catford was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. After his secondary and university studies, he studied phonetics. He taught English abroad , including during World War II.
Go to Profile#26013
Benjamin Page
#26024
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Benjamin Ingrim Page is the Gordon S. Fulcher professor of decision making at Northwestern University. His interests include American politics and U.S. foreign policy, with particular interests in public opinion and policy making, the mass media, empirical democratic theory, and political economy. In 2014, Page, alongside co-author Martin Gilens, appeared on The Daily Show to discuss their study that found the policy-making process of American politics is dominated by economic elites.
Go to Profile#26014
David Conlon
#26025
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
David Conlon is an Irish mathematician who is a Professor of Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology. His research interests are in Hungarian-style combinatorics, particularly Ramsey theory, extremal graph theory, combinatorial number theory, and probabilistic methods in combinatorics. He proved the first superpolynomial improvement on the Erdős–Szekeres bound on diagonal Ramsey numbers. He won the European Prize in Combinatorics in 2011 for his work in Ramsey theory and for his progress on Sidorenko's conjecture, and the Whitehead Prize in 2019.
Go to Profile#26015
Jose Canseco
#26026
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
José Canseco Capas Jr. , nicknamed "Parkway Jose", "Mr. 40-40", and "El Cañonero Cubano" , is a Cuban-American former professional baseball outfielder and designated hitter who played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball . During his time with the Oakland Athletics, he established himself as one of the premier power hitters in the game. He won the Rookie of the Year , and Most Valuable Player award , and was a six-time All-Star. Canseco is a two-time World Series champion with the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees .
Go to Profile#26016
Colleen M. Fitzpatrick
#26027
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Colleen M. Fitzpatrick is an American forensic scientist, genealogist and entrepreneur. She helped identify remains found in the crash site of Northwest Flight 4422, that crashed in Alaska in 1948, and co-founded the DNA Doe Project which identifies previously unidentified bodies and runs Identifinders International, an investigative genetic genealogy consulting firm which helps identify victims and perpetrators of violent crimes.
Go to Profile#26017
Michael Hochella
#26028
Overall Influence
Michael F. Hochella, Jr. is an American geoscientist and currently a university distinguished professor at Virginia Tech and a laboratory fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Royal Society of Chemistry, Geochemical Society, European Association of Geochemistry, Mineralogical Society of America, International Association of GeoChemistry, Geological Society of America and American Geophysical Union. His interests are nanogeoscience, minerals, biogeochemistry and geochemistry. Currently among greater than 22,...
Go to Profile#26018
Shirin Akiner
#26029
Overall Influence
1943 - 2019 (76 years)
Shirin Akiner was a scholar of Central Asia and Belarus. She was a research associate at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies . Life Shirin Akiner was born in 1943 in Dacca, British India. She studied at London University, gaining her first degree in Slavonic philology, and Turkish language and literature . She gained her doctorate in 1980 from University College London as a researcher of the heritage of the Belarusian Lipka Tatars, with her dissertation titled "The religious vocabulary of the British Library Tatar-Byelorussian Kitab".
Go to Profile#26019
Daunte Culpepper
#26030
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Daunte Rachard Culpepper is an American former football quarterback who played in the National Football League for 11 seasons, primarily with the Minnesota Vikings. He played college football at University of Central Florida and was selected by the Vikings in the first round of the 1999 NFL Draft.
Go to Profile#26020
David Blumenthal
#26031
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
David Blumenthal is an academic physician and health care policy expert, known as the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology from 2009 to 2011 during the early implementation of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act provisions on "meaningful use".
Go to Profile#26021
Ronald Hingley
#26032
Overall Influence
1920 - 2010 (90 years)
Ronald Francis Hingley was an English scholar, translator and historian of Russia, specializing in Russian history and literature. Hingley was the translator and editor of the nine-volume collection of Chekhov's works published by Oxford University Press between 1974 and 1980 . He also wrote numerous books including biographies of Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Stalin and Boris Pasternak. He won the James Tait Black Award for his 1976 biography A New Life of Anton Chekhov. He also translated several works of Russian literature, among them Alexander Solzhenitsyn's classic One Day in the Life of Ivan De...
Go to Profile#26022
Sohail Inayatullah
#26033
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Sohail Inayatullah is a Pakistani-born Australian academic, futures studies researcher and a professor at the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies at Tamkang University in Taipei, Taiwan. Biography Born in 1958 in Lahore, Pakistan, to a father who worked as a researcher for the United Nations and a Sufi mother, he grew up in numerous countries including the United States, Switzerland and Malaysia. His main influences include James Dator, Johan Galtung, William Irwin Thompson and in particular P. R. Sarkar.
Go to Profile#26023
Patrick Corrigan
#26034
Overall Influence
Patrick W. Corrigan is a US-based author and advocate for people with a mental illness, particularly in relation to the issue of stigma. He has written more than 15 books and 400 peer reviewed articles specializing in issues related to the mental illness stigmas. Corrigan suffered from mental illness himself and is most likely the reason his research has this focus. Corrigan currently resides in Northern Illinois, and family life is unknown.
Go to Profile#26024
Olivier Danvy
#26035
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Olivier Danvy is a French computer scientist specializing in programming languages, partial evaluation, and continuations. He is a professor at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. Danvy received his PhD degree from the Université Paris VI in 1986. He is notable for the number of scientific papers which acknowledge his help. Writing in Nature, editor Declan Butler reports on an analysis of acknowledgments on nearly one third of a million scientific papers and reports that Danvy is "the most thanked person in computer science".
Go to Profile#26025
Nolan McCarty
#26036
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Nolan Matthew McCarty is an American political scientist specializing in U.S. politics, democratic political institutions, and political methodology. He has made notable contributions to the study of partisan polarization, the politics of economic inequality, theories of policy-making, and the statistical analysis of legislative voting.
Go to Profile#26026
Stephen Bainbridge
#26037
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Stephen Bainbridge is the William D. Warren Professor of Law at UCLA, teaching courses on corporations and business law. Bainbridge graduated with an A.B. Western Maryland College, 1980; a Master of Science in Chemistry, University of Virginia, 1983; and a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia, 1985. Bainbridge has been a law professor at UCLA since 1997.
Go to Profile#26027
Günther Wilke
#26038
Overall Influence
1925 - 2016 (91 years)
Günther Wilke was a German chemist who was influential in organometallic chemistry. He was the director of the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research from 1967–1992, succeeding Karl Ziegler in that post. During Wilke's era, the MPI made several discoveries and achieved some financial independence from patents and a gift from the Ziegler family. The institute continued as a center of excellence in organometallic chemistry.
Go to Profile#26028
Alan Pears
#26039
Overall Influence
Alan Pears, AM, is an environmental consultant, and a pioneer of energy efficiency policy in Australia since the late 1970s. In the 1980s, Pears worked on the Home Energy Advisory Service, star-rating appliance energy labels, and mandatory home insulation regulations, while with the Victorian Government's Energy Information Centre. He has been an environmental consultant since 1991, involved in energy/environmental rating and regulation of buildings, green building developments, and efficient appliance development. He is an adjunct professor at RMIT University, and writes a regular column for ...
Go to Profile#26029
Ian Affleck
#26040
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Ian Keith Affleck is a Canadian physicist specializing in condensed matter physics. He is Killam University Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia. Work Ian Affleck currently studies theoretical aspects of condensed matter physics, including high temperature superconductivity, low dimensional magnetism, quantum dots and quantum wires.
Go to Profile#26031
Gianfranco Fini
#26042
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Gianfranco Fini is an Italian politician who served as the president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 2008 to 2013. He is the former leader of the far-right Italian Social Movement, the conservative National Alliance, and the center-right Future and Freedom party. He was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs in Silvio Berlusconi's government from 2001 to 2006.
Go to Profile#26032
Pedro Celis
#26043
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Pedro Celis is a retired Distinguished Engineer from Microsoft Corporation. He served at the U.S. President's Information Technology Advisory Committee from 2003 to 2005. PITAC advises the president on policies and investments that the federal government should pursue to enhance and maintain the preeminence of the U.S. in information technology.
Go to Profile#26033
Anupam Kher
#26044
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Anupam Kher is an Indian actor, director and producer who works primarily in Hindi language films. Considered one of the finest actors in Indian cinema, he has played a variety of characters including numerous critically acclaimed leading or parallel roles. His accolades include two National Film Awards and eight Filmfare Awards. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri in 2004 and the Padma Bhushan in 2016 for his contribution in the field of Indian cinema and arts.
Go to Profile#26034
Cyril Stanley Smith
#26045
Overall Influence
1903 - 1992 (89 years)
Cyril Stanley Smith was a British metallurgist and historian of science. He is most famous for his work on the Manhattan Project where he was responsible for the production of fissionable metals. A graduate of the University of Birmingham and Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Smith worked for many years as a research metallurgist at the American Brass Company. During World War II he worked in the Chemical-Metallurgical Division of the Los Alamos Laboratory, where he purified, cast and shaped uranium-235 and plutonium, a metal hitherto available only in microgram amounts, and whose properties were largely unknown.
Go to Profile#26035
Christopher J. L. Murray
#26046
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Christopher Murray is an American physician, health economist, and global health researcher. He is a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he is Chair of Health Metrics Science and the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation .
Go to Profile#26036
Menardo Guevarra
#26047
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Menardo "Boy" Ilasco Guevarra is a Filipino lawyer and public servant who is the incumbent Solicitor General of the Philippines under the Marcos administration since 2022. He previously served as the Secretary of Justice and deputy executive secretary under the Duterte and Aquino administrations. Prior to his government stint, he was involved in private litigation practice as a founding partner of the Medialdea Ata Bello Guevarra & Suarez law firm since 1990. He was also an active faculty member at his alma mater Ateneo de Manila University, where he graduated in 1974. Guevarra's appointment ...
Go to Profile#26037
Dave Collins
#26048
Overall Influence
Dave Collins is an American Grammy Award winning mastering engineer. He has worked with numerous artists and musicians, including Alice in Chains, Metallica, Soundgarden, Weezer, Grateful Dead, Madonna, Linkin Park, The Police, Porno for Pyros, Oingo Boingo, Alice Cooper, KMFDM, Sepultura, Puscifier, Chris Cornell, Bon Jovi, Buckcherry, Monster Magnet, Sting, Flogging Molly, Bad Religion, Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, Chevelle and Bruce Springsteen.
Go to Profile#26038
Kevin E. Trenberth
#26049
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Kevin Edward Trenberth was part of the Climate Analysis Section at the US NCAR National Center for Atmospheric Research. He was appointed Distinguished Scholar at NCAR in 2020. He is also an honorary faculty member in the Physics Department at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He was a lead author of the 1995, 2001 and 2007 IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change and served on the Scientific Steering Group for the Climate Variability and Predictability program. He chaired the WCRP Observation and Assimilation Panel from 2004 to 2010 and chaired the Global Energy and Water Exchanges scientific steering group from 2010 to 2013 .
Go to Profile#26039
E. Michael McCann
#26050
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Edward Michael McCann is an American attorney and politician who served as district attorney of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin from 1969 to 2007. A Democrat, McCann gained recognition for the length of his tenure and his successful record as a trial attorney.
Go to Profile#26040
Hume Feldman
#26051
Overall Influence
Hume A. Feldman is a physicist specializing in cosmology and astrophysics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a professor and chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kansas.
Go to Profile#26041
John M. Opitz
#26052
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
John M. Opitz was a German-American medical geneticist and professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine. He is best known for rediscovering the concept of the developmental field in humans and for his detection and delineation of many genetic syndromes, several now known as the "Opitz syndromes" including Smith–Lemli–Opitz syndrome , Opitz–Kaveggia syndrome , Opitz G/BBB syndrome, Bohring–Opitz syndrome, and other autosomal and X-linked conditions. He is founder of the Wisconsin Clinical Genetics Center, the American Journal of Medical Genetics, and was a cofounder of the American ...
Go to Profile#26042
Plaxico Burress
#26053
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Plaxico Antonio Burress is an American former professional football player who was a wide receiver for 12 seasons in the National Football League . He played college football for the Michigan State Spartans, and was selected by the Pittsburgh Steelers with the eighth overall pick in the 2000 NFL Draft. He also played for the New York Giants and the New York Jets, and caught the game-winning touchdown in Super Bowl XLII as the Giants beat the then-undefeated New England Patriots.
Go to Profile#26043
Francisco Rodríguez Adrados
#26054
Overall Influence
1922 - 2020 (98 years)
Francisco Rodríguez Adrados was a Spanish Hellenist, linguist and translator. He worked most of his career at the Complutense University of Madrid. He was a member of the Real Academia Española and Real Academia de la Historia.
Go to Profile#26044
Robert A. Doughty
#26055
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Robert Allan Doughty is an American military historian and retired United States Army officer. Early life Doughty was born in Tullos, Louisiana, on November 4, 1943, to parents John and Georgia Doughty.
Go to Profile#26045
Denis Istomin
#26056
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Denis Olegovich Istomin is an Uzbekistani professional tennis player. He has won two singles titles and achieved a career-high singles ranking of world No. 33 in August 2012. In January 2017, he defeated defending champion Novak Djokovic in the second round of the Australian Open.
Go to Profile#26046
Jean-Pierre Dupuy
#26057
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Jean-Pierre Dupuy is a French engineer and philosopher. Biography Dupuy attended the Ecole polytechnique, where he graduated in 1965 and attended the Ecole des Mines. He was a professor of French and a researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information of Stanford University, California. He also taught social and political philosophy and the ethics of science and technology until 2006 at the École Polytechnique.
Go to Profile#26047
Chris Kenny
#26058
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Chris Kenny is an Australian conservative political commentator, author and former political adviser. He is a columnist for The Australian newspaper as well as the host of a weeknight current affairs program, The Kenny Report on Sky News Australia.
Go to Profile#26048
Yoshihiko Noda
#26059
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Yoshihiko Noda is a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and Leader of the Democratic Party of Japan from 2011 to 2012. He is a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, and a member of the House of Representatives in the Diet . He was named to succeed Naoto Kan as a result of a runoff vote against Banri Kaieda in his party, and was formally appointed by the Emperor Akihito on 2 September 2011.
Go to Profile#26049
Andy Hargreaves
#26060
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Andrew Hargreaves is Visiting Professor at the University of Ottawa and Research Professor at Boston College. Hargreaves grew up in the small Lancashire textile and engineering town of Accrington in England, home to football club Accrington Stanley. In 2002, he laid the foundation stone for the new building at his old primary school, Spring Hill Community Primary School, with his former teacher, Mary Hindle. The youngest of three brothers, he was the first in his extended family history to enter higher education, studying sociology at Sheffield University.
Go to Profile#26050
Lucrezia Reichlin
#26061
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Lucrezia Reichlin is an Italian economist who has been a professor at London Business School since 2008. Reichlin's research focuses on forecasting, business cycle analysis and monetary policy. She pioneered now-casting in economics by developing econometrics methods capable of reading the real time data flow through the lenses of a formal econometric model. These methods are now widely used by central banks and private investors around the world.
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