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
#27701
Anthony Thiselton
#27712
Overall Influence
1937 - 2023 (86 years)
Anthony Charles Thiselton was an English Anglican priest, theologian, and academic. He wrote a number of books and articles on a range of topics in Christian theology, biblical studies, and the philosophy of religion. He served on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, appointed by the Minister of Health.
Go to Profile#27702
Oskaras Koršunovas
#27713
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Oskaras Koršunovas is a Lithuanian theatre director. Biography Oskaras Koršunovas was born on March 6, 1969, in Vilnius, Lithuania. He began his career as a theatre director in 1994 at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, where he obtained his master's degree in directing. During his studies he established already his individual signature in the most important theaters in Lithuania by producing a trilogy of plays such as the There to be Here , The Old Woman and Hello Sonya New Year , which were based on the work of Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky, both Russian avant-garde writers of the twentieth century.
Go to Profile#27703
Nicholas Talley
#27714
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Nicholas "Nick" Talley FRACP, FAFPHM, FRCP , FRCP , FACP, FACG, AGAF, FAHMS is an Australian gastroenterologist, epidemiologist, researcher, and clinical educator. Early life Talley grew up in Sydney, Australia. He is a first-generation Australian and the son of a Hungarian gastroenterologist, also known as Nicholas Talley OAM FRACP.
Go to Profile#27704
Charles Kolstad
#27715
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Charles D. Kolstad is an American economist, known for his work in environmental economics, environmental regulation, climate change and energy markets. He is professor and senior fellow at Stanford University . Prior to his appointment at Stanford, he was professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, appointed to both the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the department of economics. Kolstad was also chair of the UCSB Department of Economics and co-director of the University of California Center for Energy & Environmental Economics. He has previo...
Go to Profile#27705
Gerry Goffin
#27716
Overall Influence
1939 - 2014 (75 years)
Gerald Goffin was an American lyricist. Collaborating initially with his first wife, Carole King, he co-wrote many international pop hits of the early and mid-1960s, including the US No.1 hits "Will You Love Me Tomorrow", "Take Good Care of My Baby", "The Loco-Motion", and "Go Away Little Girl". It was later said of Goffin that his gift was "to find words that expressed what many young people were feeling but were unable to articulate."
Go to Profile#27706
Jacques Leider
#27717
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Jacques Pierre Leider is a French and Luxembourgian historian, teacher and former diplomat. He is known for his historical research on Burma/Myanmar, particularly pre-colonial Buddhism, the history of Arakan, today called Rakhine, in the Bay of Bengal and the ethno-historical background of the Burma/Myanmar-Bangladesh borderlands.
Go to Profile#27707
Robert Kroetsch
#27718
Overall Influence
1927 - 2011 (84 years)
Robert Paul Kroetsch was a Canadian novelist, poet and nonfiction writer. In his fiction and critical essays, as well as in the journal he co-founded, boundary 2, he was an influential figure in Canada in introducing ideas about postmodernism.
Go to Profile#27708
Patricia S. Cowings
#27719
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Patricia S. Cowings is an aerospace psychophysiologist. She was the first American woman to be trained as a scientist astronaut by NASA; though she was an alternate for a space flight in 1979, she did not travel to space. She is most known for her studies in the physiology of astronauts in outer space, as well as helping find cures for astronaut's motion sickness.
Go to Profile#27709
Sophie Scott
#27720
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Sophie Kerttu Scott is a British neuroscientist and Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow at University College London . Her research investigates the cognitive neuroscience of voices, speech and laughter particularly speech perception, speech production, vocal emotions and human communication. She also serves as director of UCL's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.
Go to Profile#27710
Harold Arthur Poling
#27721
Overall Influence
1925 - 2012 (87 years)
Harold Arthur "Red" Poling was a U.S. automobile businessman. Early life Harold Arthur Poling was born in Troy, Michigan, but grew up in Fairfax, Virginia. Poling graduated from Monmouth College in 1949. He earned his MBA at Indiana University.
Go to Profile#27711
Gerhard Klimeck
#27722
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Gerhard Klimeck is a German-American scientist and author in the field of nanotechnology. He is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Go to Profile#27712
Éric Toussaint
#27723
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Éric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist with a PhD from the universities of Paris VIII and Liège. He is spokesperson for the CADTM – formerly called Committee for the cancellation of Third World debt – international network, of which he is one of the founding members, and he took part in the process that launched the World Social Forum in 2001.
Go to Profile#27713
Warner R. Schilling
#27724
Overall Influence
1925 - 2013 (88 years)
Warner Roller Schilling was an American political scientist and international relations scholar at Columbia University , where he was the James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations. He was director of the university's Institute of War and Peace Studies from 1976 to 1986.
Go to Profile#27714
S. Jay Olshansky
#27725
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Stuart Jay Olshansky is a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago concentrating on biodemography and gerontology and is co-founder and Chief Scientist at Lapetus Solutions, Inc.
Go to Profile#27715
Michael Wolfe
#27726
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Michael B. Wolfe is an American poet, author, and the President and Co-Executive Producer of Unity Productions Foundation. A secular American born in Cincinnati, Ohio to a Christian mother and a Jewish father, Wolfe converted to Islam at 40 and has been a frequent lecturer on Islamic issues at universities across the United States including Harvard, Georgetown, Stanford, SUNY Buffalo, and Princeton. He holds a degree in Classics from Wesleyan University.
Go to Profile#27716
Nahum Rakover
#27727
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Nahum Rakover , professor emeritus at Bar-Ilan University, is an Israeli former deputy attorney general. Rakover is a leading researcher in the application of traditional Jewish rabbinic law to Israel's state legal system.
Go to Profile#27717
Ludwig Schwarz
#27728
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Ludwig Schwarz, S.D.B. is the Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Linz, Austria. Life Ludwig Schwarz was the first of nine children and grew up in Most pri Bratislave. After the expulsion of his family from Slovakia in 1945, he arrived in Vienna, where he attended primary school. He attended a gymnasium in Vienna for a time, but switched to the Salesian school in Ebreichsdorf-Unterwaltersdorf at the age of fourteen. In June 1959, he sat for the Matura exams and subsequently joined the order of the Salesians of Don Bosco. He was assigned a two-year teaching practicum; for the first year he serve...
Go to Profile#27718
Alexander George Ogston
#27729
Overall Influence
1911 - 1996 (85 years)
Alexander George Ogston FAA FRS was a British biochemist who specialised in the thermodynamics of biological systems. He was a grandson of Sir Alexander Ogston, a Scottish surgeon who discovered Staphylococcus.
Go to Profile#27719
Barry Jean Ancelet
#27730
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Barry Jean Ancelet is a Cajun folklorist in Louisiana French and ethnomusicologist in Cajun music. He has written several books, and under his pseudonym Jean Arceneaux, including poetry and lyrics to songs.
Go to Profile#27720
Spike Stent
#27731
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Mark "Spike" Stent is an English record producer and mixing engineer who has worked with many international artists including Madonna, Marshmello, U2, Beyoncé, Björk, Depeche Mode, Echo & the Bunnymen, Grimes, Ed Sheeran, Beth Orton, Harry Styles, Frank Ocean, Selena Gomez, All Saints, Spice Girls, Lady Gaga, Coldplay, Mansun, Maroon 5, Muse, Lily Allen, Gwen Stefani, Moby, No Doubt, Lenka, Usher, Kaiser Chiefs, Linkin Park, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Oasis, Keane, Massive Attack, Bastille, Diana Vickers and Take That.
Go to Profile#27721
Randall Hyde
#27732
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Randall Hyde is best known as the author of The Art of Assembly Language, a popular book on assembly language programming. He created the Lisa assembler in the late 1970s and developed the High Level Assembly language.
Go to Profile#27722
Arthur Ganson
#27733
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Arthur Ganson is a kinetic sculptor. He makes mechanical art demonstrations and Rube Goldberg machines with existential themes. His moving sculptures have been exhibited at a number of science museums and art galleries. Ganson's work appeals to viewers of all ages, and has been featured in an animated children's television show. He has invented mass-produced children's toys, and hosts an annual competition to make Rube Goldberg chain reaction machines.
Go to Profile#27723
Jeff Van Gundy
#27734
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Jeffrey William Van Gundy is an American commentator and former basketball coach. He served as head coach of the New York Knicks and the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association . During his tenure on the Knicks, he led the team to the 1999 NBA Finals, where they ultimately lost to the San Antonio Spurs. He currently serves as a senior consultant in the Boston Celtics front office.
Go to Profile#27724
Bryan Webber
#27735
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Bryan Ronald Webber, FRS, FInstP is a British physicist and academic. He was a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge from 1973 to 2010, and Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge from 1999 to 2010. He has been awarded the Dirac Medal by the Institute of Physics, the Sakurai Prize by the American Physical Society and the High Energy and Particle Physics Prize by the European Physical Society.
Go to Profile#27725
Leonardo Araújo
#27736
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Leonardo Nascimento de Araújo , known as Leonardo Araújo or simply Leonardo, is a Brazilian football executive and former player and manager. He last served as the sporting director of Ligue 1 club Paris Saint-Germain until May 2022.
Go to Profile#27726
John Sherwood
#27737
Overall Influence
John Neil Sherwood was a British physical chemist, who researched organic crystals. He spent his career at the University of Strathclyde, where he was professor of chemistry , as well as serving as vice-principal .
Go to Profile#27727
Nicholas C. Yannelis
#27738
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Nicholas C. Yannelis is the Henry B. Tippie Research Professor of Economics and Applied Mathematics and Computation at the University of Iowa. He is an emeritus Commerce Distinguished Alumni Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Also he was the Sir Johns Hicks Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester. His research includes the study of equilibrium concepts in games and economies with asymmetric information; equilibrium in infinite dimensional commodity spaces; equilibrium in games and economies with discontinuous preferences; and equilibrium theory and implementation under ambiguity.
Go to Profile#27728
Tom Glavine
#27739
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Thomas Michael Glavine is an American former professional baseball pitcher who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball, for the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets . With 164 victories during the 1990s, Glavine earned the second-highest number of wins as a pitcher in the National League, second only to teammate Greg Maddux's 176. He was a five-time 20-game winner and two-time Cy Young Award winner, and one of only 24 pitchers in major league history to earn 300 career wins. He was the Most Valuable Player of the 1995 World Series as the Braves beat the Cleveland Indians.
Go to Profile#27729
Andrew Dolkart
#27740
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Andrew Scott Dolkart is a professor of Historic Preservation at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and served as the Director of the school's Historic Preservation Program from 2008 to 2016.
Go to Profile#27730
Harold Gulliksen
#27741
Overall Influence
1903 - 1996 (93 years)
Harold Oliver Gulliksen was an American psychologist. A professor at Princeton University for most of his academic career, Gulliksen pioneered in the field of psychometrics. In 1952 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.
Go to Profile#27731
Bakhadyr Khoussainov
#27742
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Bakhadyr M. Khoussainov is a computer scientist and mathematician, who was born and educated in the Soviet Union, works in the fields of mathematical logic, computability theory, computable model theory and theoretical computer science. With Anil Nerode, he is the co-founder of the theory of automatic structures, which is an extension of the theory of automatic groups.
Go to Profile#27732
Butch Walker
#27743
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Bradley Glenn "Butch" Walker is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. He was the lead guitarist for the glam metal band SouthGang from the late 1980s to early 1990s and the lead vocalist and guitarist for rock band Marvelous 3 from 1997 until 2001.
Go to Profile#27733
Cheryl B. Schrader
#27744
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Cheryl B. Schrader is an American educator and former academic administrator. She began her presidency of Wright State University on July 1, 2017, and stepped down from the position December 31, 2019, midway through her five-year appointment. She was previously the chancellor of Missouri University of Science and Technology.
Go to Profile#27734
David Wells
#27745
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
David Lee Wells is an American former baseball pitcher who played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball for nine teams, most notably the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees. Nicknamed "Boomer", Wells was considered one of the league's top left-handed pitchers during his career and made three All-Star appearances. In 1998, he pitched the 15th perfect game in baseball history. Wells also appeared in the postseason as a member of six teams, tied for the most with Kenny Lofton, and won two World Series titles. Following his 2007 retirement, Wells served as a broadcaster for MLB on TBS and was t...
Go to Profile#27735
William Stafford
#27746
Overall Influence
1914 - 1993 (79 years)
William Edgar Stafford was an American poet and pacifist. He was the father of poet and essayist Kim Stafford. He was appointed the twentieth Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1970.
Go to Profile#27736
Frank Langella
#27747
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Frank A. Langella Jr. is an American actor known for his roles on stage and screen. Langella eschewed the career of a traditional film star by always making the stage the focal point of his career, appearing frequently on Broadway. He has received numerous accolades including four Tony Awards, a Drama Desk Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, an Emmy Award, and two Golden Globe Awards.
Go to Profile#27737
Rob Knight
#27748
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Rob Knight is a computational microbiologist and professor at the University of California, San Diego. His research involves the development of laboratory and computational techniques to characterize the microbiomes of humans, animals, and the environment.
Go to Profile#27738
Lyndon LaRouche
#27749
Overall Influence
1922 - 2019 (97 years)
Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche Jr. was an American political activist who founded the LaRouche movement and its main organization, the National Caucus of Labor Committees . He was a prominent conspiracy theorist and perennial presidential candidate. He began in far-left politics but in the 1970s moved to the far-right. His movement is sometimes described as, or likened to, a cult. Convicted of fraud, he served five years in prison from 1989 to 1994.
Go to Profile#27739
Kohei Itoh
#27750
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Kohei Ito is a Japanese physicist. He is the president of Keio University and Chairman of the Keio University Athletic Association. His research fields are solid-state physics, quantum computers, electronic materials, nanotechnology, and semiconductor isotope engineering. His favorite words are "the world becomes narrower if you move" and "the duty of the blessed".
Go to Profile#27740
Jacqueline Jones
#27751
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Jacqueline Jones is an American social historian. She held the Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History and Ideas from 2008 to 2017 and is Mastin Gentry White Professor of Southern History at the University of Texas at Austin. Her expertise is in American social history in addition to writing on economics , race, slavery, and class. She is a Macarthur Fellow, Bancroft Prize Winner, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize twice.
Go to Profile#27741
Claire Bertschinger
#27752
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Dame Claire Bertschinger, DBE, DL is an Anglo-Swiss nurse and advocate on behalf of suffering people in the developing world. Her work in Ethiopia in 1984 inspired Band Aid and subsequently Live Aid, the biggest relief programme ever mounted. Bertschinger received the Florence Nightingale Medal in 1991 for her work in nursing, and was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 2010 for "services to Nursing and to International Humanitarian Aid".
Go to Profile#27742
Henry Glassie
#27753
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Henry Glassie College Professor Emeritus at Indiana University Bloomington, has done fieldwork on five continents and written books on the full range of folkloristic interest, from drama, song, and story to craft, art, and architecture. Three of his books -- Passing the Time in Ballymenone, The Spirit of Folk Art, and Turkish Traditional Art Today -- were named among the "Notable Books of the Year" by The New York Times. Glassie has won many awards for his work, including the Charles Homer Haskins Prize of the American Council of Learned Societies for a distinguished career of humanistic scholarship.
Go to Profile#27743
José Feliciano
#27754
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
José Montserrate Feliciano García is a Puerto Rican musician, singer and composer. He recorded many international hits, including his rendition of the Doors' "Light My Fire" and his self-penned Christmas song "". Music genres he explores consist of fusion of many styles, such as Latin, blues, jazz, soul and rock music, created primarily with the help of his signature acoustic guitar sound.
Go to Profile#27744
Jack Paar
#27755
Overall Influence
1918 - 2004 (86 years)
Jack Harold Paar was an American talk show host, author, radio and television comedian, and film actor. He was the second host of The Tonight Show from 1957 to 1962. Time magazine's obituary of Paar reported wryly, "His fans would remember him as the fellow who split talk show history into two eras: Before Paar and Below Paar."
Go to Profile#27745
Debórah Dwork
#27756
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Debórah Dwork is an American historian, specializing in the history of the Holocaust. She is the Founding Director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and formerly served as the Rose Professor of Holocaust History at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#27746
David Blackbourn
#27757
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
David Gordon Blackbourn is Cornelius Vanderbilt distinguished chair of history at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches modern German and European history. Prior to arriving at Vanderbilt, Blackbourn was Coolidge Professor of history at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#27747
Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh
#27758
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh is an Australian scientist involved in research in the fields of materials sciences, electronics, and transducers. He is best known for his works on two-dimensional semiconductors, ingestible sensors and liquid metals. He led his group to the invention of an ingestible chemical sensor: human gas sensing capsule.
Go to Profile#27748
Saryu Doshi
#27759
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Saryu Vinod Doshi is an Indian art scholar, art historian, academic and curator, known for her erudition in Indian miniature paintings and Jain art. She is the founder director of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai and a former pro-tem chairman of the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. She is the author of several books including Masterpieces of Jain Painting, a monograph on selected Jain art pieces. The Government of India awarded her the fourth highest civilian award of the Padma Shri, in 1999.
Go to Profile#27749
Ellen McLaughlin
#27760
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Ellen McLaughlin is an American playwright and actress. Early years McLaughlin attended The Potomac School in McLean, Virginia for elementary school . She subsequently attended Sidwell Friends School, in Washington, D.C., graduating in 1976. She graduated from Yale University in 1980, summa cum laude.
Go to Profile#27750
John Novembre
#27761
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
John Peter Novembre is a computational biologist at the University of Chicago. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015. Novembre has developed data visualization and analysis techniques to investigate correlations between genomic diversity, geography, and demographic structure.
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