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
#27601
Anne Sheppard
#27612
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Anne Sheppard is professor of ancient philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London. She studied "Greats", , at St Anne's College, Oxford before completing her DPhil at Oxford on the literary theory of the Neoplatonist philosopher, Proclus. Sheppard's research interests relate to the interaction between philosophy and literature.
Go to Profile#27602
Anatoly Sobchak
#27613
Overall Influence
1937 - 2000 (63 years)
Anatoly Aleksandrovich Sobchak was a Russian politician, a co-author of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the first democratically elected mayor of Saint Petersburg, and a mentor and teacher of future presidents Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev.
Go to Profile#27603
Jainendra K. Jain
#27614
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Jainendra K. Jain is an Indian-American physicist and the Evan Pugh University Professor and Erwin W. Mueller Professor of Physics at Pennsylvania State University. He is also Infosys Chair Visiting Professor at IISc, Bangalore. Jain is known for his theoretical work on quantum many body systemss, most notably for postulating particles known as Composite Fermions.
Go to Profile#27604
Yoshiyuki Tomino
#27615
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Yoshiyuki Tomino is a Japanese anime director, screenwriter, songwriter and novelist best known for creating the Gundam anime franchise. Early life and family Tomino was born on November 5, 1941, in Odawara, Kanagawa Prefecture, to an old family of regional landowners in Ōjima . His grandfather Kiheiji Tomino was the mayor of Ōjima and statutory auditor of Ōtsuka Rubber Works. His father Kihei Tomino was an employee at Japan Processed Fabrics, and his mother Sachiko was the daughter of town councillor and celluloid toy manufacturer Sakichi Tanaka. His uncle Kiheiji Tomino was a member of the T...
Go to Profile#27605
Gerry Anderson
#27616
Overall Influence
1929 - 2012 (83 years)
Gerald Alexander Anderson was an English television and film producer, director, writer and occasional voice artist. He is known for his futuristic television programmes, especially his 1960s productions filmed with "Supermarionation" .
Go to Profile#27606
Michael Tonry
#27617
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
#27607
Shannon Sharpe
#27618
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Shannon Sharpe is an American former football tight end who played 14 seasons in the National Football League , primarily with the Denver Broncos. Regarded as one of the greatest tight ends of all time, he ranks third in tight end receptions, receiving yards, and receiving touchdowns. He was also the first NFL tight end to amass over 10,000 receiving yards. He was inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2011.
Go to Profile#27608
Whitey Herzog
#27619
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Dorrel Norman Elvert "Whitey" Herzog is an American former professional baseball outfielder and manager, most notable for his Major League Baseball managerial career. He made his MLB debut as a player in 1956 with the Washington Senators. After his playing career ended in 1963, Herzog went on to perform a variety of roles in Major League Baseball, including scout, manager, coach, general manager, and farm system director.
Go to Profile#27609
Brock Lesnar
#27620
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Brock Edward Lesnar is an American professional wrestler and former mixed martial artist, amateur wrestler, and professional American football player. He is currently signed to WWE where he is designated a "free agent", allowing him to appear on both the Raw and SmackDown brands. Often regarded as one of the most prolific athletes in the world, Lesnar is the only person to have won all of the primary heavyweight championships in WWE, Ultimate Fighting Championship , New Japan Pro-Wrestling , and the National Collegiate Athletic Association .
Go to Profile#27610
Helen Asemota
#27621
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Helen Nosakhare Asemota is a biochemist and agricultural biotechnologist based in Jamaica. She is Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Director of the Biotechnology Centre at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. Her research develops biotechnology strategies for production and improvement of tropical tuber crops. She is notable for leading large international biotechnology collaborations, as well as for acting as an international biotechnology consultant for the United Nations .
Go to Profile#27611
Ayşe Erzan
#27622
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Ayşe Erzan is a Turkish theoretical physicist. She has received a number of awards including a L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science in 2003 and a Rammal Award in 2009. Biography Ayşe Erzan was born in 1949 in Ankara. Following secondary studies in Istanbul, Erzan attended Bryn Mawr College in the United States, earning her BA in 1970. She received a PhD in physics from Stony Brook University in 1976.
Go to Profile#27612
Mehmet Oz
#27623
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Mehmet Cengiz Öz , also known as Dr. Oz , is an American television presenter, physician, author, professor emeritus of cardiothoracic surgery at Columbia University, and former political candidate.
Go to Profile#27613
Steve Charnovitz
#27624
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Steve Charnovitz is a scholar of public international law, living in the United States. He teaches at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., and is best known for his writings on the linkages between trade and environment and trade and labor rights. He is also known for his scholarship on the historical role of nongovernmental organizations in international governance.
Go to Profile#27614
Marcel Kinsbourne
#27625
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Marcel Kinsbourne is an Austrian-born pediatric neurologist and cognitive neuroscientist who was an early pioneer in the study of brain lateralization. Kinsbourne obtained his M.D. degree in 1955 and D.M. degree in 1963 at Oxford University, where he served on the Psychology Faculty from 1964, before relocating to the United States in 1967. He has held Professorships in both Neurology and Psychology at Duke University and the University of Toronto, and he has headed the Behavioral Neurology Research Division at the Shriver Center in Boston, Massachusetts. He also served as Presidents of the ...
Go to Profile#27615
Jeanne Altmann
#27626
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Jeanne Altmann, born March 18, 1940, in New York City, is a professor emerita and Eugene Higgins Professor of ecology and evolutionary biology currently at Princeton University. She is known for her research on the social behaviour of baboons and her contributions to contemporary primate behavioural ecology. She is a founder and co-director of the Amboseli Baboon Research Project. Her paper in 1974 on the observational study of behaviour is a cornerstone for ecologists and has been cited more than 10,000 times. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, and a member of the American ...
Go to Profile#27617
Dorothy Ross
#27628
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Dorothy Ross is an American historian and Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. She attended Smith College and Columbia University and taught at Hunter College and at the University of Virginia before Johns Hopkins. Her books include the G. Stanley Hall: The Psychologist as Prophet and The Origins of American Social Science . The Society for U.S. Intellectual History named the Dorothy Ross Prize after Ross to honor her work in the history of psychology and modern social science.
Go to Profile#27618
Otto Kaiser
#27629
Overall Influence
1924 - 2017 (93 years)
Otto Kaiser was a German Old Testament scholar. Biography Education Kaiser was born in Prenzlau, Germany, where he attended the Gymnasium in Eberswalde and went to the University of Berlin to study medicine, as well as philosophy with Nicolai Hartmann. He served in World War II on the Eastern Front and was wounded. Returning, he studied Protestant theology and Oriental Studies and Philosophy at the University of Tübingen. He received his Doctor of Divinity degree in 1961 and his habilitation less than a year later. He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Jena, the University of T...
Go to Profile#27619
Carl Phillips
#27630
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Carl Phillips is an American writer and poet. He is a Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. In 2023, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020.
Go to Profile#27620
Hugh D. Young
#27631
Overall Influence
1930 - 2013 (83 years)
Hugh David Young was an American physicist who taught physics for 52 years at Carnegie Mellon University. Young is best known for co-authoring the later editions of University Physics, a highly regarded introductory physics textbook, with Francis Sears and Mark Zemansky .
Go to Profile#27621
Rajnath Singh
#27632
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Rajnath Singh is an Indian politician and lecturer who is serving as the 29th Defence Minister of India since 2019. He is currently the deputy Leader of the House, Lok Sabha since 2014. He was the 8th President of Bharatiya Janata Party from 2005 to 2009 and again from 2013 to 2014. He is a veteran leader of the BJP who started his career as a RSS Swayamsevak.
Go to Profile#27622
Jan Timman
#27633
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Jan Timman is a Dutch chess grandmaster who was one of the world's leading chess players from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. At the peak of his career, he was considered to be the best non-Soviet player and was known as "The Best of the West". He has won the Dutch Chess Championship nine times and has been a Candidate for the World Chess Championship several times. He lost the title match of the 1993 FIDE World Championship against Anatoly Karpov.
Go to Profile#27623
U. A. Fanthorpe
#27634
Overall Influence
1929 - 2009 (80 years)
Ursula Askham Fanthorpe CBE FRSL was an English poet, who published as U. A. Fanthorpe. Her poetry comments mainly on social issues. Life and work Early years and education Born in south-east London, Fanthorpe was the daughter of a judge, or as she put it "middle-class but honest parents". She was educated at St Catherine's School, Bramley, in Surrey, and at St Anne's College, Oxford, where she "came to life", receiving a first-class degree in English language and literature.
Go to Profile#27624
Archie Moore
#27635
Overall Influence
1913 - 1998 (85 years)
Archie Moore was an American professional boxer and the longest reigning World Light Heavyweight Champion of all time . He had one of the longest professional careers in the history of the sport, competing from 1935 to 1963. Nicknamed "The Mongoose", and then "The Old Mongoose" in the latter half of his career, Moore was a highly strategic and defensive boxer. As of December 2020, BoxRec ranks Moore as the third greatest pound-for-pound boxer of all time. He also ranks fourth on The Rings list of "100 greatest punchers of all time". Moore was also a trainer for a short time after retirement, ...
Go to Profile#27625
Sirajul Islam
#27636
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Sirajul Islam is Bangladeshi historian, writer, columnist, professor and academician. He is the chairman of the Board of Editors of Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia of Bangladesh, and the editor of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. He is also famous for his works on agriculture, British era land tenure and social history of Bengal.
Go to Profile#27626
John Shanks
#27637
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
John Matthew Shanks is an American songwriter, record producer and guitarist. Early life and education Shanks was born in New York City and moved to Los Angeles when he was 17 years old. He was in a band called Line One with jazz saxophonist Boney James.
Go to Profile#27627
Arne Öhman
#27638
Overall Influence
1943 - 2020 (77 years)
Arne Öhman was a Swedish psychologist who served as professor of psychology at the Karolinska Institutet from 1993 to 2010, where he was the head of the Department of Clinical Neuroscience from 2001 to 2004. He previously served as a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Uppsala from 1982 to 1993. He was noted for his research in the fields of experimental psychology and psychophysiology, and on the psychology of emotion. He was president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research from 1984 to 1985, and received its award for Distinguished Contribution to Psychophysiology in 2001.
Go to Profile#27628
Gérald Bronner
#27639
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Gérald Bronner is a French social scientist and author. Bronner is a professor of sociology at Université Paris-Diderot and is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France . He is one of the main proponents of cognitive sociology in France and is known for his work on collective beliefs as well as for his involvement in jihadist radicalization prevention programs with the French government. More generally, his research has focused on the key success factors of a belief in social contexts.
Go to Profile#27629
Adrian Forty
#27640
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Adrian Forty is an Emeritus Professor of Architectural History at The Bartlett, the Faculty of the Built Environment at University College London. He is also the former Programme Director of the master's programme in Architectural History.
Go to Profile#27630
Sergei Tretyakov
#27641
Overall Influence
1956 - 2010 (54 years)
Colonel Sergei Olegovich Tretyakov was a Russian SVR officer, who defected to the United States in October 2000. Intelligence career Born 5 October 1956 in Moscow, Tretyakov was a career KGB/SVR officer. Before being posted in New York, he worked in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Go to Profile#27631
Houchang Chehabi
#27642
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Houchang Esfandiar Chehabi is a scholar of Iranian studies at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University where he is Professor of International Relations and History. Chehabi is Iranian-German and was born in Tehran, Iran. He is a former Harvard faculty member, as well as UCLA. He received his MA and DPhil from Yale University.
Go to Profile#27632
Harvey Locke
#27643
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Harvey Locke is a Canadian conservationist, writer, and photographer. He is a recognized global leader in the field of parks, wilderness, wildlife and large landscape conservation. He is a founder of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, with the goal to create a continuous corridor for wildlife from Yellowstone National Park in the United States to the Yukon in Northern Canada. In 2017, Locke was appointed chair of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas Beyond the Aichi Targets Task Force, with the goal of ensuring the new global conservation targets set at the next Conferen...
Go to Profile#27633
Mark Rylance
#27644
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Sir David Mark Rylance Waters is an English actor, playwright and theatre director. He is known for his roles on stage and screen having received numerous awards including an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Olivier Awards and three Tony Awards. In 2016, he was included in the Time 100 list of the world's most influential people. In 2017 he was made a knight by Queen Elizabeth II.
Go to Profile#27634
Dylan C. Penningroth
#27645
Overall Influence
Dylan C. Penningroth is a historian and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2012, he was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellows Program grant. Life Penningroth received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University in 1993 and his Masters and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. His studies focus on elements of African American life under slavery and in the half-century following slavery’s abolition.
Go to Profile#27635
Folasade Ogunsola
#27646
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Folasade Tolulope Ogunsola OON is a Nigerian professor of medical microbiology, and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos. She specializes in disease control, particularly HIV/AIDS. Ogunsola was provost of College of Medicine, University of Lagos and is reputed as being the first woman to occupy the position. She was also the Deputy Vice Chancellor of the institution between 2017 and 2021. She was acting vice chancellor of the University of Lagos for a short period in 2020 when the University was plunged into crisis as a result of the removal of the Vice Chancellor by the University ...
Go to Profile#27636
Jennifer Francis
#27647
Overall Influence
Jennifer Ann Francis is an American atmospheric scientist. She became a senior scientist at Woods Hole Research Center in 2018, after being a research professor at Rutgers University's Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences starting in 1994.
Go to Profile#27637
Greg Boyd
#27648
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Gregory A. Boyd is an American theologian, pastor, and author. Boyd is Senior Pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota and President of Reknew.org. He is one of the leading spokesmen in the growing Neo-Anabaptism movement, which is based in the tradition of Anabaptism and advocates Christian pacifism and a non-violent understanding of God.
Go to Profile#27638
Steven Schwartz
#27649
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Steven Schwartz is an American and Australian academic and, until late 2012, the Vice Chancellor of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He was previously Vice Chancellor of Brunel University in the UK and of Murdoch University in Western Australia. He is a trained psychologist and served both as senior academic and researcher, then as a university corporate manager. His style of management was controversial and attracted considerable opposition. He defended his record by saying that he wished universities to be more market-oriented, research-focused, accountable, transparent and held...
Go to Profile#27639
Peter Sinfield
#27650
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Peter John Sinfield is an English poet and songwriter. He is best known as the co-founder and former lyricist of King Crimson. Their debut album In the Court of the Crimson King is considered one of the first and most influential progressive rock albums ever released.
Go to Profile#27640
Rob Krier
#27651
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Rob Krier was a Luxembourgish sculptor, architect, urban designer, and theorist. He was a professor of architecture at Vienna University of Technology, Austria. From 1993 to mid-2010s he worked in partnership with architect Christoph Kohl in a joint office based in Berlin, Germany.
Go to Profile#27641
Matt Kaufmann
#27652
Overall Influence
Matt Kaufmann is a senior research scientist in the department of computer sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, United States. He was a recipient of the 2005 ACM Software System Award along with Robert S. Boyer and J Strother Moore, for his work on the Boyer-Moore Theorem Prover.
Go to Profile#27642
Élisabeth Lutz
#27653
Overall Influence
1914 - 2008 (94 years)
Élisabeth Lutz was a French mathematician. The Nagell–Lutz theorem in Diophantine geometry describes the torsion points of elliptic curves; it is named after Lutz and Trygve Nagell, who both published it in the 1930s.
Go to Profile#27643
David S. Moore
#27654
Overall Influence
David Sheldon Moore is an American statistician, who is known for his leadership of statistics education for many decades. Biography David S. Moore received his A.B. from Princeton University and the Ph.D. from Cornell University in mathematics.
Go to Profile#27644
Justin Knapp
#27655
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Justin Anthony Knapp , also known by his online moniker Koavf, is an American Wikipedia user who was the first person to contribute more than one million edits to Wikipedia. , Knapp has made over 2.1 million edits on the English Wikipedia. He was ranked No. 1 among the most active Wikipedia contributors of all time from April 18, 2012 to November 1, 2015, when he was surpassed by Steven Pruitt.
Go to Profile#27645
Lawrie Sanchez
#27656
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Lawrence Sanchez is a Northern Irish football manager and former international footballer. The defining moment of his playing career came in the 1988 FA Cup Final, when he scored the winning goal for Wimbledon against Liverpool, producing one of the biggest upsets in the competition's long history.
Go to Profile#27646
Douglas Scott Falconer
#27657
Overall Influence
1913 - 2004 (91 years)
Douglas Scott Falconer was a Scottish geneticist known for his work in quantitative genetics. Falconer's book Introduction to quantitative genetics was written in 1960 and became a valuable reference for generations of scientists. Its latest edition dates back to 1996 and is coauthored by Trudy Mackay.
Go to Profile#27647
Susan D. Healy
#27658
Overall Influence
Susan Denise Healy FRSE professor of biology at the University of St. Andrews, specialist in cognitive evolution and behavioural studies of birds and understanding the neurological basis of this. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2021.
Go to Profile#27648
Susham Bedi
#27659
Overall Influence
1945 - 2020 (75 years)
Susham Bedi was an Indian author of novels, short stories and poetry. She was a professor of Hindi language and literature at the department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University, New York. She wrote predominantly about the experiences of Indians in the South Asian diaspora, focusing on psychological and 'interior' cultural conflicts. Unlike other prominent Indian American novelists she wrote mainly in Hindi rather than in English. She has been widely translated into English, French, Dutch and other languages by artists, academics, and students.
Go to Profile#27649
Afe Babalola
#27660
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Afe Babalola is a Nigerian lawyer and founder of Afe Babalola University. Early life and education Afe Babalola was born in Ekiti State South Western Nigeria. He attended Emmanuel Primary School, Ado Ekiti. He enrolled for the Senior Cambridge School Certificate examination by private study from Wolsey Hall, Oxford. He later obtained the A’Level certificate of London University before he proceeded to London School of Economics where he received a bachelor's degree in Economics. He worked briefly at the Central Bank of Nigeria before he left to the University of London where he obtained a bachelor's degree in Law.
Go to Profile#27650
Walter Homolka
#27661
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Walter Homolka is a German rabbi. Homolka studied in Munich, London, Lampeter and Leipzig and has a PhD from King's College London. He is an adjunct full professor at the University of Potsdam and rector at its Abraham Geiger College, which was founded in 1999. On 14 September 2006, Homolka ordained the first three rabbis in Germany since the Holocaust at the New Synagogue of Dresden. Rabbi Homolka is chairman of the Leo Baeck Foundation and an executive board member of the World Union for Progressive Judaism.
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