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
#26801
John Postgate
#26812
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
John Raymond Postgate , FRS was an English microbiologist and writer, latterly Professor Emeritus of Microbiology at the University of Sussex. Postgate's research in microbiology investigated nitrogen fixation, microbial survival, and sulphate-reducing bacteria. He worked for the Agricultural Research Council's Unit of Nitrogen Fixation from 1963 until he retired, by then its Director, in 1987. In 2011, he was described as a "father figure of British microbiology".
Go to Profile#26802
John Farnham
#26813
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
John Peter Farnham AO is a British-born Australian singer. Farnham was a teen pop idol from 1967 until 1979, billed until then as Johnny Farnham. He has since forged a career as an adult contemporary singer. His career has mostly been as a solo artist, although he replaced Glenn Shorrock as lead singer of Little River Band from 1982 to 1985.
Go to Profile#26803
Kai Arzheimer
#26814
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Kai Arzheimer is a German professor of Political Science at the University of Mainz and a visiting Fellow at the Department of Government at the University of Essex. He writes on right-wing extremism and his publications include "Politikverdrossenheit" and "Die Wähler der extremen Rechten 1980 - 2002".
Go to Profile#26804
Peter Edgerly Firchow
#26815
Overall Influence
1937 - 2008 (71 years)
Peter Edgerly Firchow was an American literary scholar and educator. He wrote extensively on the relationship between British and German literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he was a leading scholar of the British writer Aldous Huxley. He served as a faculty member in the University of Minnesota English Department from 1967 to 2008 and as director of the university's Comparative Literature program from 1972 to 1978.
Go to Profile#26805
Greg Jackson
#26816
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Gregory Jackson is an American mixed martial arts trainer who co-owns Jackson Wink MMA Academy in Albuquerque, New Mexico, widely considered one of the top MMA training centers in the world. Jackson has trained many successful fighters, including current UFC Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones, former UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St-Pierre, former UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion Holly Holm, former Light Heavyweight Champion Rashad Evans, and a roster of other UFC contenders and World Extreme Cagefighting champions.
Go to Profile#26806
James R. Norris
#26817
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
James Ritchie Norris is a mathematician working in probability theory and stochastic analysis. He is the Professor of Stochastic Analysis in the Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He has made contributions to areas of mathematics connected to probability theory and mathematical analysis, including Malliavin calculus, heat kernel estimates, and mathematical models for coagulation and fragmentation. He was awarded the Rollo Davidson Prize in 1997.
Go to Profile#26807
Cynthia Tucker
#26818
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Cynthia Tucker, born March 13, 1955, is an American journalist whose weekly column is syndicated by Universal Uclick. She received a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2007 for her work at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where she served as editorial page editor. She was also a Pulitzer finalist in 2004 and 2006.
Go to Profile#26808
Amr Shabana
#26819
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Amr Shabana is a former professional squash player from Egypt. He won the World Open in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, and reached the World No. 1 ranking in 2006. He represented the winning Egyptian team in the 1999 Men's World Team Squash Championships held in Cairo and the 2009 Men's World Team Squash Championships held in Denmark. Shabana's accomplishments in professional squash lead many to regard him as one of the greatest players of all time.
Go to Profile#26809
Grigory Yudin
#26820
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Grigory Borisovich Yudin, also known as Greg Yudin , is a Russian political scientist and sociologist. Yudin is an expert in public opinion and polling in Russia. He is columnist for the newspaper Vedomosti and the online magazine Republic, as well as the website Proekt. He has also written for Open Democracy.
Go to Profile#26810
Robert D. Martin
#26821
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Robert D. Martin is a British-born biological anthropologist who is currently an Emeritus Curator at The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois. He is also an adjunct professor at University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and University of Illinois Chicago. His research spans the fields of anthropology, evolutionary biology and human reproductive biology. Additionally, he writes a blog on human reproduction for Psychology Today.
Go to Profile#26811
Stéphane Dion
#26822
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Stéphane Maurice Dion is a Canadian diplomat, academic and former politician who has been the Canadian ambassador to France and Monaco since 2022 and special envoy to the European Union since 2017. Dion was Leader of the Opposition and the leader of the Liberal Party from 2006 to 2008. He served in cabinets as intergovernmental affairs minister , environment minister , and foreign affairs minister .
Go to Profile#26812
Ted Goertzel
#26823
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Ted George Goertzel , is an Emeritus Professor in the Sociology Department at Rutgers University–Camden. He is the author and co-author of books and articles spanning from social economy, politics, and conspiracy theories. He is the father of Ben Goertzel, with whom he co-authored the 1995 book Linus Pauling: A Life in Science and Politics.
Go to Profile#26813
William Proxmire
#26824
Overall Influence
1915 - 2005 (90 years)
Edward William Proxmire was an American politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a United States Senator from Wisconsin from 1957 to 1989. He holds the record for being the longest-serving Senator from Wisconsin.
Go to Profile#26814
Abigail Thompson
#26825
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Abigail A. Thompson is an American mathematician. She works as a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Davis, where she specializes in knot theory and low-dimensional topology. Education and career Thompson graduated from Wellesley College in 1979, and earned her Ph.D. in 1986 from Rutgers University under the joint supervision of Martin Scharlemann and Julius L. Shaneson. After visiting positions at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of California, Berkeley, she joined the University of California Davis faculty in 1988. Thompson had a postdoctoral fel...
Go to Profile#26815
Timo Honkela
#26826
Overall Influence
1962 - 2020 (58 years)
Timo Untamo Honkela was a computer scientist at the University of Helsinki, Aalto University School of Science and Aalto University School of Art, Design and Architecture. He holds a PhD from Helsinki University of Technology.
Go to Profile#26816
Lauren Resnick
#26827
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Lauren B. Resnick is an educational psychologist who has made notable contributions to the cognitive science of learning and instruction. She is a professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, and was previously director of the University's Learning Research and Development Center. In 1986-1987, Resnick was the president of the American Educational Research Association. She received the 1998 E. L. Thorndike Award from the American Psychological Association.
Go to Profile#26817
Nola Pender
#26828
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Nola J. Pender is a nursing theorist, author, and academic. She is a professor emerita of nursing at the University of Michigan. She created the Health Promotion Model. She has been designated a Living Legend of the American Academy of Nursing.
Go to Profile#26818
Naruhito
#26829
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
is Emperor of Japan. He acceded to the Chrysanthemum Throne on 1 May 2019, beginning the Reiwa era, following the abdication of his father, Akihito. He is the 126th monarch according to Japan's traditional order of succession.
Go to Profile#26819
M. Şükrü Hanioğlu
#26830
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
M. Şükrü Hanioğlu is a Turkish professor of late Ottoman history in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Between 2005 and 2014, he was the department chair. Education He received his B.A. in political science and economics and his Ph.D. in political science from Istanbul University. His thesis was on the political activities and thought of one of the founders of the Committee of Union and Progress , Dr. Abdullah Cevdet.
Go to Profile#26820
Mel Alexenberg
#26831
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Mel Alexenberg is an American-Israeli artist, art educator, and writer recognized for his pioneering work exploring the intersections of art, science, technology and digital culture. He created the first digital computer generated painting in 1965, experimental digital fine art prints in the 1980s that are in 30 museum collections worldwide, circumglobal cyberangel flights honoring Rembrandt in 1989 and in 2019, and a dialogue between tactile artworks and NFTs.
Go to Profile#26821
Lauri Vaska
#26832
Overall Influence
1925 - 2015 (90 years)
Lauri Vaska was an Estonian-American chemist who has made noteworthy contributions to organometallic chemistry. Vaska was born in Rakvere, Estonia. He was educated at the Baltic University in Hamburg, Germany and subsequently at the University of Göttingen , where he received his Vordiplom . He emigrated to the United States in 1952 and pursued his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry at the University of Texas . He was a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University where he conducted research on magnetochemistry. In 1957 he took a position as Fellow at the Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh, where he remained until 1964.
Go to Profile#26822
Georgi Lozanov
#26833
Overall Influence
1926 - 2012 (86 years)
Georgi Lozanov , known as 'the father of accelerated learning', was a Bulgarian scientist, neurologist, psychiatrist, psychologist and educator, creator of suggestology, suggestopedia , and integrated psychotherapy.
Go to Profile#26823
Haim Sompolinsky
#26834
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Haim Sompolinsky , is the William N. Skirball Professor of Neuroscience at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences , and a professor of physics at the Racah Institute of Physics at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He is also a visiting professor in the Center of Brain Science at Harvard University and the director of Harvard's Swartz Program in Theoretical Neuroscience. He is widely regarded as one of the leaders of theoretical neuroscience.
Go to Profile#26824
Tim Pedley
#26835
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Timothy John Pedley is a British mathematician and a former G. I. Taylor Professor of Fluid Mechanics at the University of Cambridge. His principal research interest is the application of fluid mechanics to biology and medicine.
Go to Profile#26825
Igor Larionov
#26836
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Igor Nikolayevich Larionov is a Russian ice hockey coach, sports agent and former professional ice hockey player, known as "the Professor". Considered one of the best hockey players of all time, he, along with Viacheslav Fetisov, were instrumental in forcing the Soviet government to let Soviet players compete in the National Hockey League . During his career, which lasted from 1977 to 2006, he primarily played the centre position.
Go to Profile#26826
Wolfgang Spohn
#26837
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Wolfgang Konrad Spohn is a German philosopher. He is professor of philosophy and philosophy of science at the University of Konstanz. Biography Wolfgang Spohn studied philosophy, logic and philosophy of science and mathematics at the University of Munich and acquired there the MA and the PhD with a thesis on the Grundlagen der Entscheidungstheorie. In his time as an assistant professor he earned the habilitation with a thesis about Eine Theorie der Kausalität. He held professorships at the University of Regensburg , the University of Bielefeld , and the University of Konstanz . Since 2019 ...
Go to Profile#26827
Matina Horner
#26838
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Matina Souretis Horner is an American psychologist who was the sixth president of Radcliffe College. Her research interests included intelligence, motivation, and achievement of women. She is known for pioneering the concept of "fear of success".
Go to Profile#26828
Marisa Matias
#26839
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Marisa Isabel dos Santos Matias is a Portuguese sociologist and Member of the European Parliament, elected for the first time in 2009 and re-elected in 2014. She currently sits on the Economic and Monetary Affairs and Industry, Research and Energy Committees. She is also Chairwoman of the Delegation of the European Parliament for relations with the Mashreq countries . Between 2010 and 2016 she was Vice-President of the Party of the European Left.
Go to Profile#26829
Glen Weyl
#26840
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Eric Glen Weyl is an American economist and a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and author of the book Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society with co-author Eric Posner.
Go to Profile#26830
Michael Holding
#26841
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Michael Anthony Holding is a Jamaican former cricketer and commentator who played for the West Indies cricket team. Widely regarded as one of the greatest pace bowlers in cricket history, he was nicknamed "Whispering Death" due to his silent, light-footed run up to the bowling crease. Holding was a key member of the West Indies team that won the 1979 Cricket World Cup, and had the most wickets for his team at the tournament. His bowling action was renowned for being smooth and extremely fast, and he used his height to generate large amounts of bounce and zip off the pitch. He was part of the...
Go to Profile#26831
Filippo Menczer
#26842
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Filippo Menczer is an American and Italian academic. He is a University Distinguished Professor and the Luddy Professor of Informatics and Computer Science at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University. Menczer is the Director of the Observatory on Social Media, a research center where data scientists and journalists study the role of media and technology in society and build tools to analyze and counter disinformation and manipulation on social media. Menczer holds courtesy appointments in Cognitive Science and Physics, is a founding member and advisory co...
Go to Profile#26832
Axel Haverich
#26843
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Axel Haverich is a German cardiac surgeon. Biography Born in Lemgo, Haverich completed his Abitur at the Barntrup Gymnasium in 1972. He studied medicine at the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover and graduated in 1978. One year later he received his M.D. title . During his work as an assistant surgeon he spend time as a research assistant at the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery of the Stanford University. In 1985 he became Senior Surgeon at the Clinic for Cardiac, Thoracic, and Vascular Surgery at the MHH. His habilitation was completed in 1987. From 1993 to 1996 he worked as the Director for heart and vascular surgery at the Kiel University.
Go to Profile#26833
Annie Kriegel
#26844
Overall Influence
1926 - 1995 (69 years)
Annie Kriegel, née Annie Becker was a French historian, a leading expert on communist studies and the history of Communism, a cofounder of the academic journal Communisme , and a columnist for Le Figaro.
Go to Profile#26834
Iván Rodríguez
#26845
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Iván Rodríguez Torres , nicknamed "Pudge" and "I-Rod", is a Puerto Rican former Major League Baseball catcher. A member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Rodríguez is widely regarded as one of the greatest catchers in MLB history. He played for the Texas Rangers , Florida Marlins, Detroit Tigers, New York Yankees, Houston Astros and Washington Nationals.
Go to Profile#26835
J. R. Jayewardene
#26846
Overall Influence
1906 - 1996 (90 years)
Junius Richard Jayewardene , commonly abbreviated in Sri Lanka as J.R., was the leader of Sri Lanka from 1977 to 1989, serving as Prime Minister from 1977 to 1978 and as the second President of Sri Lanka from 1978 to 1989. He was a leader of the nationalist movement in Ceylon, the French spelling of who served in a variety of cabinet positions in the decades following independence. A longtime member of the United National Party, he led it to a landslide victory in 1977 and served as Prime Minister for half a year before becoming the country's first executive president under an amended constit...
Go to Profile#26836
Ordal Demokan
#26847
Overall Influence
1946 - 2004 (58 years)
Ordal Demokan was a Turkish physicist. Biography Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Demokan graduated from TED Ankara Koleji in 1962, and received his BSc and MSc degrees on Electrical Engineering in 1966 and 1967 from Middle East Technical University in Ankara. He received TUBITAK scholarship between 1964 and 1967. He received his PhD degree on physics from University of Iowa in 1970, through Fulbright scholarship between 1967 and 1969 and University of Iowa Education Scholarship.
Go to Profile#26837
Daniel Albright
#26848
Overall Influence
1945 - 2015 (70 years)
Daniel Albright was the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard and the editor of Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources. He was born and grew up in Chicago, Illinois and completed his undergraduate studies on a full scholarship at Rice in 1967. He received his MPhil in 1969 and PhD in 1970, both from Yale. Albright is also the author of the book Quantum Poetics which was published by Cambridge University Press in 1997. He held an NEH fellowship from 1973 to 1974, was a Guggenheim Fellow from 1976 to 1977, and more recently, he was a 2012 Berlin Prize Fellow at the American ...
Go to Profile#26838
Artem Oganov
#26849
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Artem R. Oganov is a Russian theoretical crystallographer, mineralogist, chemist, physicist, and materials scientist. He is known mostly for his works on computational materials discovery and crystal structure prediction, studies of matter at extreme conditions, including matter of planetary interiors.
Go to Profile#26839
Kyozi Kawasaki
#26850
Overall Influence
1930 - 2021 (91 years)
was a Japanese physicist. His research interests include chemical physics and statistical mechanics. In 2001, Kawasaki was awarded the Boltzmann Medal for "his contribution to our understanding of dynamic phenomena in condensed matter systems, in particular the mode-coupling theory of fluids near criticality, and nonlinear problems, such as critical phenomena in sheared fluids and phase separations".
Go to Profile#26840
Charles Sawyers
#26851
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Charles L. Sawyers is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator who holds the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Chair of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center . HOPP is a program created in 2006 that comprises researchers from many disciplines to bridge clinical and laboratory discoveries.
Go to Profile#26841
Ranulph Fiennes
#26852
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 3rd Baronet , commonly known as Sir Ranulph Fiennes and sometimes as Ran Fiennes, is a British explorer, writer and poet, who holds several endurance records.
Go to Profile#26842
Adam Posen
#26853
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Adam Simon Posen CBE is an American economist and President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He became President of the Peterson Institute on January 1, 2013, having first joined PIIE in July 1997.
Go to Profile#26843
Karel C. Berkhoff
#26854
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Karel Cornelis Berkhoff is a senior researcher at NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. Berkhoff studied history and Russian studies at the University of Amsterdam, Soviet Studies at Harvard University and graduated in 1998 as a historian at the University of Toronto, studying under Paul Robert Magocsi, Chair of Ukrainian Studies. He studies primarily World War II in Russia and Eastern Europe. He was an advisor to the ZDF documentary "Holocaust" .
Go to Profile#26844
John M. Cooper
#26855
Overall Influence
1939 - 2022 (83 years)
John Madison Cooper was an American philosopher who was the Emeritus Henry Putnam University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University and an expert on ancient philosophy. Education and career Cooper earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1967 and taught there until 1971, when he accepted a tenured position in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught until he moved to Princeton in 1981. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2001.
Go to Profile#26845
Matthew Choptuik
#26856
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Matthew William Choptuik is a Canadian theoretical physicist specializing in numerical relativity. Choptuik graduated from University of British Columbia with a master's degree in 1982 and a Ph.D. advised by William Unruh in 1986. He became an associate professor in 1995 at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1999 he became a member of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and in the same year he became a professor at University of British Columbia.
Go to Profile#26846
J. Michael Bailey
#26857
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
John Michael Bailey is an American psychologist, behavioral geneticist, and professor at Northwestern University best known for his work on the etiology of sexual orientation and paraphilia. He maintains that male sexual orientation is most likely established in utero.
Go to Profile#26847
Edwin Gaustad
#26858
Overall Influence
1923 - 2011 (88 years)
Edwin Scott Gaustad was a professor of history at the University of California, Riverside. He achieved fame with his study of the genealogy of religion in the United States, Historical atlas of religion in America. The 1972 edition of this work has been used in secular histories of Mainline Protestantism and the Emergent church movement for decades, and his a Religious History of America was a standard text for college students. A graduate of Baylor University and Brown University, Gaustad dedicated his career to sharing his expansive research on religious history. Gaustad was president of the American Society of Church History.
Go to Profile#26848
José Sócrates
#26859
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
José Sócrates Carvalho Pinto de Sousa , commonly known as José Sócrates , is a Portuguese politician who was the prime minister of Portugal from 12 March 2005 to 21 June 2011. For the second half of 2007, he acted as the president-in-office of the Council of the European Union.
Go to Profile#26849
Murray Goldberg
#26860
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Murray Goldberg is a noted Canadian educational technologist and a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Goldberg is best known for being the founder of the elearning companies WebCT, Brainify, Silicon Chalk, AssociCom, and Marine Learning Systems. Goldberg was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and raised in Edmonton. He moved to British Columbia to attend the University of Victoria in 1980. Murray graduated from UVic in 1985 and then went on to earn an MSc from the University of British Columbia. In 2004 he was awarded an honorary Ph.D.
Go to Profile#26850
Leif Kobbelt
#26861
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Leif Kobbelt is a German university professor for Computer Science with a specialization in Computer Graphics. Since 2001 he is the head of the Institute for Computer Graphics and Multimedia at RWTH Aachen university.
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