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
#26701
Jean Christophe Iseux von Pfetten
#26712
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Jean Christophe Iseux, Baron von Pfetten zu St. Mariakirchen , is a diplomat, academic and landowner. Pfetten is the chairman of the Institute for East West Strategic Studies and a bye-fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge University.
Go to Profile#26702
Cecilia Braslavsky
#26713
Overall Influence
1952 - 2005 (53 years)
Cecilia Braslavsky was an Argentine educator, pedagogue, and author. She served as Director-General of Educational Research in the Argentine Ministry of Education and Director of UNESCO's International Bureau of Education.
Go to Profile#26703
Bolaji Akinyemi
#26714
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Akinwande Bolaji Akinyemi is a Nigerian professor of political science who was Nigeria External Affairs Minister from 1985 to late 1987. He is the chairman of the National Think Tank. Early life, academic career, and personal life Akinyemi was born in Ilesa, in what is now Osun State. He attended Igbobi College in Yaba from 1955 until 1959, Christ's School Ado Ekiti from 1960 to 1961, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, from 1962 to 1964, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, US, 1964 to 1966, and Trinity College, Oxford, Eng...
Go to Profile#26704
Caroline Walker Bynum
#26715
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Caroline Walker Bynum, FBA is a Medieval scholar from the United States. She is a University Professor emerita at Columbia University and Professor emerita of Western Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She was the first woman to be appointed University Professor at Columbia. She is former Dean of Columbia's School of General Studies, served as president of the American Historical Association in 1996, and President of the Medieval Academy of America in 1997–1998.
Go to Profile#26705
Peter Pagé
#26716
Overall Influence
1939 - 2020 (81 years)
Peter Pagé was a German software pioneer. He joined Software AG in Darmstadt in 1971 as one of 6 employees and in 1975 became Vice President of Software AG. Page developed NATURAL as the first fourth-generation programming language, which was instrumental in Software AG's success.
Go to Profile#26706
Noura Erakat
#26717
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Noura Saleh Erakat is an American activist, university professor, legal scholar, and human rights attorney. She is currently an associate professor at Rutgers University, specializing in international studies. With her primary focus being the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, she is a vocal critic of the State of Israel.
Go to Profile#26707
Lorinda Cherry
#26718
Overall Influence
1944 - 2022 (78 years)
Lorinda Cherry was an American computer scientist and programmer. Much of her career was spent at Bell Labs, where she was for many years a member of the original Unix Lab. Cherry developed several mathematical tools and utilities for text formatting and analysis, and influenced the creation of others.
Go to Profile#26708
Shenggen Fan
#26719
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Shenggen Fan was the Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute between 2009 and 2019. He is known for his work on transition economies and rural development in China. His research has focused on analysis of the role of public and private investments in agriculture and public infrastructure in the fight against chronic poverty and hunger. In addition to his work on his home country, he has also worked extensively in other Asian countries, and East Africa.
Go to Profile#26709
Keith Black
#26720
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Keith L. Black is an American neurosurgeon specializing in the treatment of brain tumors and a prolific campaigner for funding of cancer treatment. He is chairman of the neurosurgery department and director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.
Go to Profile#26710
David Bodian
#26721
Overall Influence
1910 - 1992 (82 years)
David Bodian was an American medical scientist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who worked in polio research. In the early 1940s he helped lay the groundwork for the eventual development of polio vaccines by combining neurological research with the study of the pathogenesis of polio. With his understanding of the disease, he made a series of crucial discoveries that paved the way for the final development of a vaccine by Jonas Salk and later by Albert Sabin. He received the E. Mead Johnson Award in Pediatrics and the Karl Spencer Lashley Award for his work, along with nume...
Go to Profile#26711
Thomas J. Kelly
#26722
Overall Influence
1929 - 2002 (73 years)
Thomas Joseph Kelly was an American aerospace engineer. Kelly primarily worked on the Apollo Lunar Module, which earned him the name of "Father of the Lunar Module" from NASA. Kelly graduated from Cornell University in 1951, where he was a member of the Quill and Dagger society. Afterwards, Kelly obtained his MS degree from Columbia University and Ph.D. from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.
Go to Profile#26712
Bob Guccione
#26723
Overall Influence
1930 - 2010 (80 years)
Robert Charles Joseph Edward Sabatini Guccione was an American photographer and publisher. He founded the adult magazine Penthouse in 1965. This was aimed at competing with Hugh Hefner's Playboy, but with more explicit erotic content, a special style of soft-focus photography, and in-depth reporting of government corruption scandals and the art world. By 1982 Guccione was listed in the Forbes 400 wealth list, and owned one of the biggest mansions in Manhattan. However, he made some extravagant investments that failed, and the growth of free online pornography in the 1990s greatly diminished his market.
Go to Profile#26713
Bruce Dern
#26724
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Bruce MacLeish Dern is an American actor. He has received several accolades, including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and the Silver Bear for Best Actor. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Coming Home and the Academy Award for Best Actor for Nebraska . He is also a BAFTA Award, two-time Genie Award, and three-time Golden Globe Award nominee.
Go to Profile#26714
Greg Chappell
#26725
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Gregory Stephen Chappell is a former cricketer who represented Australia at international level in both Tests and One-Day Internationals . The second of three brothers to play Test cricket, Chappell was the pre-eminent Australian batsman of his time who allied elegant stroke making to fierce concentration. An exceptional all round player who bowled medium pace and, at his retirement, held the world record for the most catches in Test cricket, Chappell's career straddled two eras as the game moved toward a greater level of professionalism after the WSC schism.
Go to Profile#26715
Pino Palladino
#26726
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Giuseppe Henry "Pino" Palladino is a Welsh musician, songwriter, and record producer. A prolific session bassist, he has played bass for acts such as The Who, the John Mayer Trio, Nine Inch Nails, Gary Numan, Jeff Beck and D'Angelo.
Go to Profile#26716
Seymour Lipschutz
#26727
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Seymour Saul Lipschutz was an author of technical books on pure mathematics and probability, including a collection of Schaum's Outlines. Lipschutz received his Ph.D. in 1960 from New York University's Courant Institute . He received his BA and MA degrees in Mathematics at Brooklyn College. He was a mathematics professor at Temple University, and before that on the faculty at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.
Go to Profile#26717
Robert Kelly
#26728
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Robert Kelly is an American poet associated with the deep image group. He was named the first Dutchess County poet laureate 2016-2017. Early life and education Kelly was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Samuel Jason and Margaret Rose Kelly née Kane. In 1935, he studied at the City College of the City University of New York, graduating with a degree in 1955. He then spent three years at Columbia University.
Go to Profile#26718
Louise Bourgeois
#26729
Overall Influence
1911 - 2010 (99 years)
Louise Joséphine Bourgeois was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a variety of themes over the course of her long career including domesticity and the family, sexuality and the body, as well as death and the unconscious. These themes connect to events from her childhood which she considered to be a therapeutic process. Although Bourgeois exhibited with the Abstract Expressionists and her work has much in common with Surrealism and Feminist art, she was not f...
Go to Profile#26719
Taylor Carman
#26730
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Taylor Carman is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at Barnard College, Columbia University. Education and career Carman earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford University, where he worked with Dagfinn Føllesdal, but was also influenced by Hubert Dreyfus.
Go to Profile#26720
Jacques Freymond
#26731
Overall Influence
1911 - 1998 (87 years)
Jacques Freymond was a Swiss political historian. He was born in Lausanne, and studied in his hometown as well as in München, Sorbonne and Sciences Po. He worked in the upper secondary school from 1935 to 1942. From 1943 to 1955 he was a professor in modern history at the University of Lausanne. He was also a writer in Gazette de Lausanne from 1946. In 1949–50 he was a guest scholar at Yale and Columbia. He spent his later career at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. He chaired the International Political Science Association from 1964 to 1967.
Go to Profile#26721
Andrea Grimes Parker
#26732
Overall Influence
Andrea Grimes Parker is an American computer scientist, researcher, and Associate Professor, known for her interdisciplinary study of human computer interaction and personal health informatics. Parker is currently an associate professor at Georgia Institute of Technology School of Interactive Computing. She also currently serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.
Go to Profile#26722
Steven Galloway
#26733
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Steven Galloway is a Canadian novelist and a former professor at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of the award-winning novel The Cellist of Sarajevo . Early life Galloway was born in Vancouver, and raised in Kamloops, British Columbia. He attended the University College of the Cariboo and the University of British Columbia .
Go to Profile#26723
Christopher Middleton
#26734
Overall Influence
1926 - 2015 (89 years)
Christopher Middleton was a British poet and translator, especially of German literature. Life He was born John Christopher Middleton in Truro, Cornwall, in 1926. Following four years' service in the Royal Air Force, he studied at Merton College, Oxford, matriculating in 1948. He then held academic positions at the University of Zürich and King's College London. In 1966 he took up a position as Professor of Germanic Languages & Literature at the University of Texas, Austin, retiring in 1998. Middleton has published translations of Robert Walser, Nietzsche, Hölderlin, Goethe, Gert Hofmann and many others.
Go to Profile#26724
Hugh White
#26735
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Hugh White is an Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre of the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, long-time defence and intelligence analyst, and author who has published works on military strategy and international relations. He was Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence in the Australian Department of Defence from 1995 until 2000 and was the inaugural Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute . His 2019 book How to Defend Australia attracted national attention after raising the proposition of re-examining ...
Go to Profile#26725
Farish A. Noor
#26736
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Farish A. Noor also known as Badrol Hisham Ahmad Noor is a Malaysian academician, historian, and political scientist that is currently serving as a professor at the Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya.
Go to Profile#26726
Ma Bo
#26737
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ma Bo is a Chinese non-fiction writer who currently resides in Beijing, China. After graduating from Beijing University with a degree in journalism, he wrote and published the book Blood Red Sunset in 1988 which sold over 400,000 copies in China.
Go to Profile#26727
Peter Coles
#26738
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Peter Coles is a theoretical cosmologist at Maynooth University. He studies the large scale structure of our Universe. He studied for his PhD in 1985–1988, subsequently becoming a postdoctoral researcher at Sussex and Queen Mary, subsequently becoming a lecturer there. He was a professor at Cardiff University starting in 2007, and from 2013 he was the head of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sussex. In 2017 he started working at Maynooth University, becoming head of the Department of Theoretical Physics in 2019.
Go to Profile#26728
Irving Lavin
#26739
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Irving Lavin was an art historian of Late Antique, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Modern painting, sculpture, and architecture. His wide-ranging contributions centered primarily on the correlation between form and meaning in the visual arts.
Go to Profile#26729
Frans Oort
#26740
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Frans Oort is a Dutch mathematician who specializes in algebraic geometry. Career Oort studied from 1952 to 1958 at Leiden University, where he graduated with a thesis on elliptic curves. He received his doctorate in 1961 in Leiden from and Jaap Murre with thesis Reducible and Multiple Algebraic Curves, but had previously studied under Jean-Pierre Serre in Paris and Aldo Andreotti in Pisa. Oort was from 1961 at the University of Amsterdam, where he became a professor in 1967. In 1977, until his retirement in 2000, he was a professor at Utrecht University.
Go to Profile#26730
Juan Gabriel
#26741
Overall Influence
1950 - 2016 (66 years)
Alberto Aguilera Valadez , known professionally as Juan Gabriel , was a Mexican singer, songwriter and actor. Colloquially nicknamed Juanga and El Divo de Juárez, Juan Gabriel was known for his flamboyant style, which broke barriers within the Latin music industry. Widely regarded as one of the best and most prolific Mexican composers and singers of all time, he is often been referred to as a pop icon.
Go to Profile#26731
Katharine Hayhoe
#26742
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Katharine Anne Scott Hayhoe is a Canadian atmospheric scientist. She is a Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor and an Endowed Chair in Public Policy and Public Law at the Texas Tech University Department of Political Science. In 2021, Hayhoe joined the Nature Conservancy as Chief Scientist.
Go to Profile#26732
Michael L. Brown
#26743
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Michael L. Brown is an American radio host, author, apologist, activist, and proponent of Messianic Judaism, Christian Zionism, and the Charismatic Movement. His nationally syndicated radio show, The Line of Fire, airs throughout the United States. He contributes articles to the Christian news platform The Stream as well as to the news site Townhall, and serves as head of the Coalition of Conscience, a Christian organization in the Charlotte, North Carolina area. He holds a Ph.D in Near Eastern Languages and Literature from New York University.
Go to Profile#26733
David Marsh
#26744
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
David Wayne Marsh is a British financial specialist, business consultant and writer on political, economic and monetary issues. Career and education Marsh was born in Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex on 30 July 1952. He started his career at Reuters in 1973 having graduated with a BA in chemistry from Queen's College Oxford. Between 1978 and 1995, he worked for the Financial Times newspaper in France and Germany, latterly as European Editor in London.
Go to Profile#26734
Don Grierson
#26745
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Don Grierson is a British geneticist, and Emeritus Professor at University of Nottingham. Education Grierson graduated from the University of East Anglia with a degree in Biological Sciences in 1967, after working for a short time in an industrial research lab, he obtained his PhD in Plant Science from the University of Edinburgh in 1972 for research on ribosomal ribonucleic acid in developing primary leaves of the mung bean Phaseolus aureus supervised by Ulrich Loening.
Go to Profile#26735
Tom Finney
#26746
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Sir Thomas Finney was an English international footballer who played from 1946 to 1960 as a winger or centre forward for Preston North End and England. He is widely acknowledged to have been one of England's greatest-ever players. He was noted for his loyalty to Preston, for whom he made 433 Football League and 39 FA Cup appearances, scoring a total of 210 goals. He played for England 76 times, scoring 30 goals. He was nicknamed the "Preston Plumber" because of his local business.
Go to Profile#26736
Takayuki Ohira
#26747
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Takayuki Ohira is a Japanese engineer and the creator of the Megastar, a planetarium projector which was recorded in Guinness World Records as the planetarium projector that can project the highest number of stars in the world. Ohira has also designed the Sega Homestar, a home planetarium projector for Sega. According to the Japan Planetarium Association, the popularity of this educational toy has contributed to an increase in visitors to full-sized planetaria in Japan. The newest model, released in 2019, is called Homestar Flux.
Go to Profile#26737
David Wood
#26748
Overall Influence
David Ronald Wood is a Professor in the School of Mathematics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. His research area is discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science, especially structural graph theory, extremal graph theory, geometric graph theory, graph colouring, graph drawing, and combinatorial geometry.
Go to Profile#26738
Vincenzo Fagiolo
#26749
Overall Influence
1918 - 2000 (82 years)
Vincenzo Fagiolo was an Italian cardinal and President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts from 1990 until 1994. Biography Fagiolo was educated at the Seminary of Segni, the Seminary of Anagni and at the Pontifical Lateran University, earning doctorates in theology and canon law. He was ordained on 6 March 1943, and worked in the Diocese of Rome from 1943 to 1971.
Go to Profile#26739
Jean Simmons
#26750
Overall Influence
1929 - 2010 (81 years)
Jean Merilyn Simmons was a British actress and singer. One of J. Arthur Rank's "well-spoken young starlets", she appeared predominantly in films, beginning with those made in Great Britain during and after the Second World War, followed mainly by Hollywood films from 1950 onwards.
Go to Profile#26740
Charles McNulty
#26751
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Charles McNulty is the chief theatre critic for the Los Angeles Times newspaper and a recipient of Cornell University's prestigious Nathan Award for dramatic criticism, who, himself, served as chairman of the Pulitzer Prize drama jury. McNulty was engaged in the year 2005 as the Times newspaper's chief theater critic after an exhaustive 4-year search.
Go to Profile#26741
Hiroomi Umezawa
#26752
Overall Influence
1924 - 1995 (71 years)
Hiroomi Umezawa was a physicist and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and later at the University of Alberta. He is known for his fundamental contributions to quantum field theory and for his work on quantum phenomena in relation to the mind.
Go to Profile#26742
Clinton Bennett
#26753
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Clinton Bennett is a British-American scholar of Religious studies and participant in interfaith dialogue, specializing in Islamic studies and the relations between Islam and other religions. He is also a published author.
Go to Profile#26743
Dafna D. Gladman
#26754
Overall Influence
Dafna D. Gladman, MD, FRCPC, is a Canadian doctor and medical researcher working in the fields of psoriatic arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, and rheumatoid arthritis. She is a professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine and Senior Scientist at the Krembil Research Institute. She is Deputy Director, Centre for Prognosis Studies in the Rheumatic Diseases , Co-Director, Lupus Clinic, Toronto Western Hospital and Director, Psoriatic Arthritis Program, Toronto Western Hospital.
Go to Profile#26744
Bruno H. Zimm
#26755
Overall Influence
1920 - 2005 (85 years)
Bruno Hasbrouck Zimm was an American chemist. He was a professor of chemistry and biochemistry from University of California, San Diego, and a leading polymer chemist and DNA researcher. Early life Zimm was born an only child in 1920 in Woodstock, New York. His father was the sculptor Bruno Louis Zimm, and his mother a writer. Zimm graduated from Kent School in Kent, Connecticut in 1938. After obtaining his Ph.D. in physical chemistry under the tutelage of Joe Mayer at Columbia University in 1944, he moved across town for postdoctoral work with Herman Mark at the Polytechnic Institute of Bro...
Go to Profile#26745
John Keane
#26756
Overall Influence
John Denison Keane is an American record producer based in Athens, Georgia, who has worked extensively with R.E.M., Indigo Girls and Widespread Panic. He owns and operates John Keane Studios in Athens, his hometown, which opened in 1981.
Go to Profile#26746
Ian Lowe
#26757
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Ian Lowe is an Australian academic and writer focused on environmental issues. A physics graduate, he is an Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society and former Head of the School of Science at Griffith University. He is also an adjunct professor at Sunshine Coast University and Flinders University.
Go to Profile#26747
Anne Schuchat
#26758
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Anne Schuchat is an American medical doctor. She is a former rear admiral and assistant surgeon general in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. She also served as the principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . In May 2021, Schuchat stepped down from her post.
Go to Profile#26748
Louis Hodes
#26759
Overall Influence
1934 - 2008 (74 years)
Louis Hodes was an American mathematician, computer scientist, and cancer researcher. Early life and computer science work Louis Hodes got his Bachelor of Science from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. He got his Doctor of Philosophy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962, under Hartley Rogers with a thesis on computability. With John McCarthy, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he helped produce the earliest implementations of the programming language Lisp, and under Marvin Minsky he did early research on visual pattern recognition in Lisp. He is also credited by some...
Go to Profile#26749
Olaf Pedersen
#26760
Overall Influence
1920 - 1997 (77 years)
Olaf Pedersen was a Danish historian of science who was "leading authority on astronomy in classical antiquity and the Latin middle ages." Pedersen was active in the journal Centaurus, the Steno Museum, the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, and the International Academy of the History of Science.
Go to Profile#26750
Robert Beckford
#26761
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Robert Beckford is a British academic theologian and currently Professor of Climate and Social Justice at the University of Winchester, and has associate roles as a Professor of Black Theology at The Queen's Foundation, and a Professor of Theology at Vu University, Amsterdam. His documentaries for both the BBC and Channel 4 have caused debate among the religious community, instigated policy change and won national and international awards.
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