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
#27101
Lonnie Thompson
#27112
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Lonnie Thompson , is an American paleoclimatologist and university professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University. He has achieved global recognition for his drilling and analysis of ice cores from ice caps and mountain glaciers in the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. He and his wife, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, run the ice core paleoclimatology research group at the Byrd Polar Research Center.
Go to Profile#27102
Daniel Lieberman
#27113
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Daniel E. Lieberman is a paleoanthropologist at Harvard University, where he is the Edwin M Lerner II Professor of Biological Sciences, and Professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. He is best known for his research on the evolution of the human head and the human body.
Go to Profile#27103
Sediq Afghan
#27114
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Sediq Afghan is an Afghan mathematician. He is the founder and head of the World Philosophical Math Research Center in Kabul, Afghanistan. He is also a political activist. He had a prominent role in protests in Kabul about Afghanistan- and Islam-related issues, including an anti-American protest in 2003, a hunger strike to protest beatings of journalists by Afghan security officers in 2006, and another one to protest the 2008 Danish Muhammad cartoons.
Go to Profile#27104
Zeresenay Alemseged
#27115
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Zeresenay "Zeray" Alemseged is an paleoanthropologist who is a faculty member at the University of Chicago. In 2013, he was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2021. In 2022, he was appointed to the Comité Scientifique International du Musée d’Anthropologie Préhistorique de Monaco and the Pontifical Academy of Science. Alemseged is best known for his discovery, on 10 December 2000, of Selam, also referred to as the "Dikika child" or “Lucy’s child”, the almost-complete fossilized remains of a 3.3 million-year-old child of the species Australopithecus afarensis.
Go to Profile#27105
Marion Mann
#27116
Overall Influence
1920 - 2022 (102 years)
Marion Mann was an American physician and pathologist. He was a Dean of the College of Medicine at Howard University from 1970 to 1979. Early life Marion was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and was raised, along with five brothers, by his mother, C.C. Mann, who was a church organist . She also was a piano teacher until her death in 1981 at the age of 92. The best known, though not necessarily most talented, of the musical Mann brothers were probably Levi and Howard. Levi played jazz bass with the Lucky Millinder Orchestra in the 1930s and 1940s and later held down the house musician gig, playing the Hammond B3 organ at the famous 20 Grand Club in Detroit, Michigan during the early Motown years.
Go to Profile#27106
Marshall N. Rosenbluth
#27117
Overall Influence
#27107
José Graziano da Silva
#27118
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
José Graziano da Silva is a Brazilian American agronomist and writer. As a scholar, he has authored several books about the problems of agriculture in Brazil. Between 2003 and 2004, Graziano served in the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva cabinet as Extraordinary Minister for Food Security, being responsible for implementing the Fome Zero program, which was a focal point of the Lula Administration's cash transfer program Bolsa Familia. On June 26, 2011, Graziano was elected director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization , becoming the first Latin American ever to hold the position. After...
Go to Profile#27108
Chris Horrocks
#27119
Overall Influence
Chris Horrocks is an associate professor in art history at Kingston University, London. Biography Chris Horrocks mainly wrote on art and cultural theory. He finished his graduation in Fine Art in 1986 and a MA from in Cultural history in 1991. Then followed a PHD awarded for his portfolio of texts published in his 20-year career. He also works in arts and science documentary film making. Presently living and working in London, his hobbies include, playing electronic music and traditional banjo.
Go to Profile#27109
Stephen E. Braude
#27120
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Stephen E. Braude is an American philosopher and parapsychologist. He is a past president of the Parapsychological Association, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Scientific Exploration, and a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Go to Profile#27110
Suketu Mehta
#27121
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Suketu Mehta is the New York-based author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, which won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award, and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, the Lettre Ulysses Prize, the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award. His autobiographical account of his experiences in Mumbai, Maximum City, was published in 2004. The book, based on two and a half years of research, explores the underbelly of the city.
Go to Profile#27111
Kalevi Wiik
#27122
Overall Influence
1932 - 2015 (83 years)
Kaino Kalevi Wiik was a professor of phonetics at the University of Turku, Finland. He was best known for his controversial hypothesis about the effect of the Uralic contact influence on the creation of various Indo-European protolanguages in Northern Europe such as Germanic, Slavic, and Baltic. He also based much of his hypothetical structures on results of genetics of his time. Ludomir R. Lozny states, "Wiik's controversial ideas are rejected by the majority of the scholarly community, but they have attracted the enormous interest of a wider audience."
Go to Profile#27112
Gayl Jones
#27123
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Gayl Carolyn Jones is an American writer from Lexington, Kentucky. She is recognized as a key figure in 20th-century African-American literature. Jones published her debut novel, Corregidora , at the age of 25. The book, edited by Toni Morrison, was met with critical acclaim and praised by leading intellectuals including James Baldwin and John Updike. Her sophomore novel Eva's Man was met with less renown and characterized as "dangerous" by some critics for its raw depiction of cruelty and violence. Jones continued publishing in the late 1990s, releasing The Healing and Mosquito—the former of which was shortlisted for the National Book Award.
Go to Profile#27113
Charles Wood
#27124
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
Charles Gerald Wood was a playwright and scriptwriter for radio, television, and film. He lived in England. His work has been staged at the Royal National Theatre as well as at the Royal Court Theatre and in the theatres of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984. Wood served in the 17th/21st Lancers and military themes are found in many of his works.
Go to Profile#27114
Frank Barnaby
#27125
Overall Influence
1927 - 2020 (93 years)
Frank Charles Barnaby was the Nuclear Issues Consultant to the Oxford Research Group, a freelance defence analyst, and a prolific author on military technology. He was based in the United Kingdom. He was born in Andover, Hampshire, and was educated at Andover Grammar School and the University of London.
Go to Profile#27115
Esteban Rossi-Hansberg
#27126
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Esteban Rossi-Hansberg is a Mexican-American economist currently the Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor in the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. Until June 2021, he was the Theodore A. Wells '29 Professor of Economics at Princeton University. He performs research in macroeconomics, international trade, and urban and regional economics. His research focuses on the internal structure of cities, the distribution of economic activity in space, economic growth and the size distribution of cities, the effect of offshoring on wage inequality, the rol...
Go to Profile#27116
Anke Ehlers
#27127
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Anke Ehlers is a German psychologist and expert in post-traumatic stress disorder . She is a Fellow of the major science academies of the UK and Germany. She currently works at the University of Oxford as Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and Professor of Experimental Psychopathology.
Go to Profile#27117
Harold See
#27128
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Harold Frend See, Jr. is a legal scholar and was an associate justice of the Alabama Supreme Court from 1997 to 2009. The son of Harold F. See, Sr., and Corinne See, he was born at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois while his father was serving with the United States Navy in the South Pacific.
Go to Profile#27118
Axel Scherer
#27129
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Axel Scherer is the Bernard Neches Professor of Electrical Engineering, Physics, and Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He is also a distinguished visiting professor at Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. He is known for fabricating the world's first semiconducting vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser at Bell Labs. In 2006, Scherer was named the director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute. He graduated from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in 1985. At Caltech he teaches a very popular freshman lab course on semiconductor device fabrica...
Go to Profile#27119
Alexander Povetkin
#27130
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Alexander Vladimirovich "Sasha" Povetkin is a Russian former professional boxer who competed from 2005 to 2021. He held the WBA heavyweight title from 2011 to 2013, the WBC interim heavyweight title from 2020 to 2021, and challenged twice for the unified heavyweight championship.
Go to Profile#27120
Eric Santner
#27131
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Eric L. Santner is an American scholar. He is Philip and Ida Romberg Professor in Modern Germanic Studies, and Chair, in the Department of Germanic Studies, at the University of Chicago, where he has been based since 1996. A graduate of Oberlin College in 1977, Santner received his doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin, in 1984, then going on to teach at Princeton University.
Go to Profile#27121
Ethan Paquin
#27132
Overall Influence
Ethan Paquin is an American poet and a native of New Hampshire. Biography Ethan Paquin grew up in Londonderry, New Hampshire. He earned a BA in English/writing from Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire, and his MFA in creative writing from the MFA Program for Poets & Writers, University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is founding editor of the online literary journal Slope, which he launched in 1999, and co-founded with Christopher Janke the nonprofit poetry press Slope Editions in 2001. He previously taught at Plymouth State University, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Med...
Go to Profile#27122
Richard P. Lifton
#27133
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Richard Priestley Lifton is an American biochemist and the 11th and current president of The Rockefeller University. He earned his B.A. in biological sciences from Dartmouth College and in 1986 he got his M.D. and Ph.D. in biochemistry from Stanford University. He trained at Brigham and Women's Hospital before starting his lab at Yale in 1993. He has been awarded the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences for his discovery of genes that are associated with the regulation of blood pressure. In 2014 he was awarded the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for his work. He has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator since 1994.
Go to Profile#27123
Gerald A. Larue
#27134
Overall Influence
1916 - 2014 (98 years)
Gerald Alexander Larue was an American scholar of religion and professor emeritus of gerontology, a former ordained minister who became an agnostic, archaeologist, debunker of biblical stories and accounts of miracles, and humanist.
Go to Profile#27124
Steven Reiss
#27135
Overall Influence
1947 - 2016 (69 years)
Steven Reiss was an American psychologist who contributed original ideas, new assessment methods, and influential research studies to four topics in psychology: anxiety disorders, developmental disabilities, intrinsic motivation, and the psychology of religion.
Go to Profile#27125
Petr Sgall
#27136
Overall Influence
1926 - 2019 (93 years)
Petr Sgall was a Czech linguist. He specialized in dependency grammar, topic–focus articulation and Common Czech. Biography Sgall was born on 27 May 1926 in České Budějovice. His father was an attorney and a translator from Litomyšl of Jewish descent. Sgall studied at Česká Třebová high school; however he was expelled in the 1942/43 academic year because of his Jewish father. Most of Sgall's closest relatives were killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Go to Profile#27126
Alvin S. Felzenberg
#27137
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Alvin Stephen Felzenberg is an American author, columnist, consultant, educator, historian, public official, and spokesperson. He served as spokesperson of the 9/11 Commission. He has authored books on American history and biographies of U.S. presidents, including The Leaders We Deserved and A Man and His Presidents: The Political Odyssey of William F. Buckley, Jr. .
Go to Profile#27127
Jñanasrimitra
#27138
Overall Influence
Jñānaśrīmitra was an Indian Buddhist philosopher of the epistemological tradition of Buddhist philosophy, which goes back to Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. Jñānaśrīmitra was also known as a Yogācāra Buddhist who defended a form of Buddhist idealism termed Sākāravada which holds that cognitive content or aspects of consciousness are real and not illusory.
Go to Profile#27128
Stephen Hendry
#27139
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Stephen Gordon Hendry is a Scottish professional snooker player who is best known for dominating the sport during the 1990s, when he became one of the most successful players in its history. After turning professional in 1985 at age 16, Hendry rose rapidly through the snooker world rankings, reaching number four in the world by the end of his third professional season. He won his first World Snooker Championship in 1990 aged 21 years and 106 days, surpassing Alex Higgins as the sport's youngest world champion, a record he still holds. From 1990 to 1999, he won seven world titles, setting a modern-era record that stood outright until Ronnie O'Sullivan equalled it in 2022.
Go to Profile#27129
Pamela L. Gay
#27140
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Pamela L. Gay is an American astronomer, educator, podcaster, and writer, best known for her work in astronomical podcasting and citizen science astronomy projects. She is a senior education and communication specialist and senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute. Her research interests include analysis of astronomy data, as well as examination of the impact of citizen science initiatives. Gay has also appeared as herself in various television documentary series.
Go to Profile#27130
Emily Martin
#27141
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Emily Martin is a sinologist, anthropologist, and feminist. Currently, she is a professor of socio-cultural anthropology at New York University. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and her PhD degree from Cornell University in 1971. Before 1984, she published works under the name of Emily Martin Ahern.
Go to Profile#27131
Kathy Griffin
#27142
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Kathleen Mary Griffin is an American comedian and actress who has starred in television comedy specials and has released comedy albums. In 2007 and 2008, Griffin won Primetime Emmy Awards for her reality show Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. She has also appeared in supporting roles in films.
Go to Profile#27132
Curtis L. Carter
#27143
Overall Influence
Curtis L. Carter is a professor of Philosophy at Marquette University, focusing on aesthetics. He received a PhD from the University of Boston. His greatest accomplishment at Marquette was the creation of the Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art. Carter was the founding director from 1984-2007. Haggerty Museum attempts to build a greater appreciation for the arts in the Milwaukee and Marquette Community. He also teaches several classes on the philosophy of art.
Go to Profile#27133
Ekrem Akurgal
#27144
Overall Influence
1911 - 2002 (91 years)
Ekrem Akurgal was a Turkish archaeologist. During a career that spanned more than fifty years, he conducted definitive research in several sites along the western coast of Anatolia such as Phokaia , Pitane , Erythrai and old Smyrna .
Go to Profile#27134
Jens Beckert
#27145
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Jens Beckert is a German sociologist with a strong interest in economic sociology. The author of books on inherited wealth and the social foundations of economic efficiency, he focuses on the role of the economy in society – especially based on studies of markets – as well as organizational sociology, the sociology of inheritance, and sociological theory. He is director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany, and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Go to Profile#27135
Alan Marcus
#27146
Overall Influence
Alan J. Marcus is an American economist, and the first recipient of the Mario J. Gabelli Endowed Professorship at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, where he currently teaches. He is an author of several textbooks widely used in finance and MBA programs internationally, including Fundamentals of Corporate Finance with Stewart Myers and Richard A. Brealey. Marcus serves on the advisory board of the CFA Institute.
Go to Profile#27136
Eric Ghysels
#27147
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Eric Ghysels is a Belgian economist with interest in finance and time series econometrics, and in particular the fields of financial econometrics and financial technology. He is the Edward M. Bernstein Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina and a Professor of Finance at the Kenan-Flagler Business School. He is also the Faculty Research Director of the Rethinc.Labs at the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.
Go to Profile#27137
Astrid Norberg
#27148
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Astrid Norberg, born 1939 is a registered nurse and professor emerita in nursing at Umeå University, Sweden. Norberg has a PhD in pedagogy from Lund University and started as a Sweden's first professor in nursing research in 1987. Her research has mainly been about dementia and ethics.
Go to Profile#27138
Rick Davies
#27149
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Richard Davies is an English musician, singer and songwriter best known as founder, vocalist and keyboardist of the rock band Supertramp. Davies was its only constant member, and composed some of the band's best known songs, including "Rudy", "Bloody Well Right", "Crime of the Century" , "From Now On", "Ain't Nobody But Me", "Gone Hollywood", "Goodbye Stranger", "Just Another Nervous Wreck", "Cannonball", and "I'm Beggin' You". He is generally noted for his rhythmic blues piano solos and jazz-tinged progressive rock compositions and cynical lyrics.
Go to Profile#27139
Lisa Kudrow
#27150
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Lisa Valerie Kudrow is an American actress. She rose to international fame for her role as Phoebe Buffay in the American television sitcom Friends, which aired from 1994 to 2004. The series earned her Primetime Emmy, Screen Actors Guild, Satellite, American Comedy and TV Guide awards. Phoebe has since been named one of the greatest television characters of all time and is considered to be Kudrow's breakout role, spawning her successful film career.
Go to Profile#27140
Patrick Chabal
#27151
Overall Influence
1951 - 2014 (63 years)
Patrick Chabal was an Africanist of the late 20th and early 21st century. He had a long academic career. Patrick Chabal's latest position was Chair in African History & Politics at King's College London. He published numerous books, book chapters and articles about Africa. He was one of the founders of AEGIS and was a board member for many years.
Go to Profile#27141
Janet Rossant
#27152
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Janet Rossant is president and Science Director at Gairdner Foundation, a senior scientist in the developmental & stem cell biology program, chief of research at the Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, university professor at the University of Toronto teaching molecular genetics, pediatrics, and obstetrics/gynecology. He is deputy scientific director for the Canadian Stem Cell Network and senior editor of the journal eLife. She earned a B.A. in zoology from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. in mammalian development from the University of Cambridge. Rossant uses live imaging, pro...
Go to Profile#27142
Rolf Drechsler
#27153
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Rolf Drechsler is an electrical engineer at the University of Bremen, Germany. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for his contributions in testing and verification of electronic circuits and systems.
Go to Profile#27143
Miguel Abensour
#27154
Overall Influence
1939 - 2017 (78 years)
Miguel Abensour was a French philosopher specializing in political philosophy. Beginning his academic career as a professor of political science at Dijon, then at the University of Reims, before teaching political philosophy at the Paris Diderot University , where he became emeritus professor. Founder and director of the editorial collection "Critique de la politique" at Payot and president of the Collège international de philosophie from 1985 to 1987, he is generally viewed as a left-libertarian thinker and as a theoretician of radical democracy.
Go to Profile#27144
Claire Mathieu
#27155
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Claire Mathieu is a French computer scientist and mathematician, known for her research on approximation algorithms, online algorithms, and auction theory. She works as a director of research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique.
Go to Profile#27145
Lester L. Grabbe
#27156
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Lester L. Grabbe is a retired American scholar and Emeritus Professor of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism at the University of Hull, England. As an historian of ancient Judaism, he has authored several standard treatments. He founded and convenes the European Seminar on Methodology in Israel's History, and publishes the proceedings in the sub-series European Seminar in Historical Methodology. Before retirement, he established and taught for several years a module, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, and another module, Religious Sectarianism in History and the Modern World.
Go to Profile#27146
Daniel S. Papp
#27157
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Daniel S. Papp is an American scholar of international affairs and policy. Papp served in a variety of professorial and administrative roles in the University System of Georgia . From 2006 to 2016, Papp served as President of Kennesaw State University , the third-largest university in the State of Georgia. During Papp's tenure, the University's enrollment increased by approximately seventy-five percent, growing from 19,854 to 33,252 undergraduate and graduate students. Under Papp, the University also significantly increased its research and graduate profile, adding a number of new academic programs and becoming classified as a Doctoral University with Moderate Research Activity.
Go to Profile#27147
Anne Marie Rafferty
#27158
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Dame Anne Marie Rafferty FRCN is a British nurse, academic and researcher. She is professor of nursing policy and former dean of the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care at King's College London. She served as President of the Royal College of Nursing from 2019 to 2021.
Go to Profile#27148
Russel Ward
#27159
Overall Influence
1914 - 1995 (81 years)
Russel Braddock Ward AM was an Australian historian best known for writing The Australian Legend , an examination of the development of the "Australian character", which was awarded the Ernest Scott Prize.
Go to Profile#27149
Lawrence Schiffman
#27160
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Lawrence Harvey Schiffman is a professor at New York University ; he was formerly Vice-Provost of Undergraduate Education at Yeshiva University and Professor of Jewish Studies . He had previously been Chair of New York University's Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and served as the Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University . He is currently the Judge Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University and Director of the Global Institute for Advanced Research in Jewish Studies. He is a specialist in th...
Go to Profile#27150
Rajeev Bhargava
#27161
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
is a noted Indian political theorist, who was professor of political theory at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. His works on political theory, multiculturalism, identity politics and secularism have evoked sharp debates.
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