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
#27751
Siamon Gordon
#27762
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Siamon Gordon is a British pathologist. He is Glaxo Wellcome Professor Emeritus of Cellular Pathology at the University of Oxford. Education He gained his medical degrees from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He earned his PhD from Rockefeller University, where he taught from 1971 to 1976. The rest of his career, from 1976 to 2008, was at the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#27752
Jonathan Ashmore
#27763
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Jonathan Felix Ashmore is a British physicist and Bernard Katz Professor of Biophysics at University College London. Early life and education He is the son of Rosalie Crutchley who played Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities.
Go to Profile#27753
Antony Polonsky
#27764
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Antony Barry Polonsky is Emeritus Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University. He is the author of many historical works on the Holocaust, and is an expert on Polish Jewish history. Career Antony Polonsky was born in Johannesburg, South Africa to Lithuanian Jewish immigrant parents who arrived in South Africa in the late 19th century. His father was from a Yiddish speaking family from near Grodno and his mother was from a Russified Jewish family from Lithuania. Polonsky was not raised in a Polish speaking background.
Go to Profile#27754
Jonathan D. G. Jones
#27765
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Jonathan Dallas George Jones is a senior scientist at the Sainsbury Laboratory and a professor at the University of East Anglia using molecular and genetic approaches to study disease resistance in plants.
Go to Profile#27755
Agustín Landa Verdugo
#27766
Overall Influence
1923 - 2009 (86 years)
Agustín Landa Verdugo was a Mexican architect and urban planner, born in Mexico City. He studied architecture in the National University of Mexico . In 1945 he established a firm with his brother Enrique, with whom he designed hundreds of public and private buildings during four decades of partnership. The firm's work distinguished itself by its modern language and the efficiency and economy of the solutions it proposed.
Go to Profile#27756
Jean-Jacques Hublin
#27767
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Areas of Specialization: Evolutionary Anthropology, Paleoanthropology Jean-Jacques Hublin is a paleoanthropologist, president of the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution, and a professor of anthropology at Leiden University, Max Planck Society, and the Leipzig University. He is also founder and director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology’s Department of Human Evolution. Originally from Algeria, Hublin studied geology and paleontology at Pierre and Marie Curie University, where he earned his doctorate. He went on to earn a state doctorate at the University of Bordeaux.
Go to Profile#27757
Marco Tardelli
#27768
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Marco Tardelli is an Italian former football player and manager. At club level, he played as a midfielder for several Italian clubs; he began his career with Pisa, and later played for Como, Juventus, and Internazionale, before retiring with Swiss club St. Gallen. He enjoyed a highly successful career with Juventus, winning five league titles, as well as multiple Coppa Italia titles, and four major UEFA competitions , becoming one of the first three players ever to win all three major UEFA club competitions, along with Italy and Juventus teammates Antonio Cabrini and Gaetano Scirea.
Go to Profile#27758
John Gray
#27769
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
John Gray is an American relationship counselor, lecturer, and author. In 1969, he began a nine-year association with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi before beginning his career as an author and personal relationship counselor. In 1992 he published the book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, which became a long-term best seller and formed the central theme of his subsequent books and career activities. His books have sold millions of copies.
Go to Profile#27759
Jon McKenzie
#27770
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Jon McKenzie is a performance theorist, media maker, and transdisciplinary researcher and teacher at Cornell University. He is founder of the StudioLab pedagogy and former director of DesignLab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. McKenzie's main interests are in new media, performance theory, and the role of art and technology in cultural research, contemporary processes of globalization, and emerging forms of social activism.
Go to Profile#27760
Paul Volberding
#27771
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Paul A. Volberding is an American physician who is best known for his pioneering work in treating people with HIV. Work In 1983, Volberding founded the first inpatient ward for persons with AIDS in the San Francisco General Hospital. He worked on early clinical trials to evaluate antiretroviral therapy in HIV infection, and has served on the two major guidelines panels for antiretroviral therapy, addressing issues such as the optimal timing of treatment in early HIV infection when no symptoms are evident.
Go to Profile#27761
Tim Spector
#27772
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Timothy David Spector is a British epidemiologist, medical doctor, and science writer. Biography Spector was born in North London in July 1958. He trained in medicine and rose to the position of consultant rheumatologist, before turning to genetic epidemiology, the study of genetic factors in health and disease, in 1992.
Go to Profile#27762
Ryan Leaf
#27773
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Ryan David Leaf is an American former professional football player who was a quarterback in the National Football League for four seasons. He played for the San Diego Chargers and the Dallas Cowboys between 1998 and 2001, and also played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Seattle Seahawks.
Go to Profile#27763
Tim Ferguson
#27774
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Timothy Dorcen Langbene Ferguson is an Australian comedian, film director, screenwriter, author and screenwriting teacher. Early life and education Timothy Dorcen Langbene Ferguson grew up in Singapore, and later on a rural property near the town of Perthville, New South Wales. He is the son of Tony Ferguson, who was a Vietnam War correspondent, the first reporter to release news of the Tet Offensive to the world media. Tony became executive producer of This Day Tonight and Four Corners at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and network liaison for the ABC's managing director, David Hill...
Go to Profile#27764
Gad Horowitz
#27775
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Gad Horowitz is a Canadian political scientist. He is a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. Biography Horowitz was born in Jerusalem in 1936 and immigrated to Canada at the age of 2. His father Rabbi Aaron Horowitz, was a prominent member of the Jewish community and a key figure in founding Camp Massad in Canada. He grew up in Calgary, Winnipeg, and Montreal.
Go to Profile#27765
Too Short
#27776
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Todd Anthony Shaw , better known by his stage name Too Short , is an American rapper and record producer. He became famous in the West Coast hip hop scene in the late 1980s, with lyrics often based on pimping and promiscuity, but also drug culture and street survival. This is respectively exemplified in his most popular songs "Blow the Whistle" and "The Ghetto".
Go to Profile#27766
Prahalad Chunnilal Vaidya
#27777
Overall Influence
1918 - 2010 (92 years)
Prahalad Chunnilal Vaidya , was an Indian physicist and mathematician, renowned for his instrumental work in the general theory of relativity. Apart from his scientific career, he was also an educationist and a follower of Gandhian philosophy in post-independence India, specifically in his domicile state Gujarat.
Go to Profile#27767
Daniel J. Evans
#27778
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (101 years)
Daniel Jackson Evans is an American politician who served as the 16th governor of Washington from 1965 to 1977, and as United States senator representing Washington State from 1983 to 1989. Described as a moderate Republican, particularly on social and environmental issues, Evans supported Nelson Rockefeller for the Republican nomination for president in 1968 and refused to endorse Richard Nixon, despite giving the keynote address at that year's Republican National Convention. He was considered for the Republican vice presidential nomination that year, as well as in 1976.
Go to Profile#27768
Krzysztof Antoni Meissner
#27779
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Krzysztof Antoni Meissner is a Polish theoretical physicist, specializing in elementary particles theory, and a professor of physics at the University of Warsaw, Faculty of Physics, Institute of Theoretical Physics.
Go to Profile#27769
William B. Taylor
#27780
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
William B. Taylor is a historian of colonial Mexico, who held the Sonne Chair of History at University of California, Berkeley until his retirement. He made major contributions to the study of colonial land tenure, peasant rebellions, and many aspects of colonial religion in Mexico. In 2007 he received the Distinguished Service Award of the Conference on Latin American History, the highest honor of the professional organization of Latin American historians.
Go to Profile#27770
Vince Cable
#27781
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Sir John Vincent Cable is a British politician who was Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2017 to 2019. He was Member of Parliament for Twickenham from 1997 to 2015 and from 2017 to 2019. He also served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills from 2010 to 2015.
Go to Profile#27771
John O. Limb
#27782
Overall Influence
John O. Limb is an Australian engineer, known for fundamental contributions to the development of digital video communications and holder of a series of patents related to computer communications. Early life and education Born in Western Australia, he got a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. on the thesis Vision Oriented Coding of Visual Signal , both from the University of Western Australia. Limb studied the human vision's role in the encoding of picture, partially under the direction of Dr. Albert Seyler and Professor Zig Budrikis.
Go to Profile#27772
Riek Machar
#27783
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Dr. Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon is a South Sudanese politician who is serving as the First Vice President of South Sudan. Political life In February 2020, Machar was re-sworn in as first vice president following a revitalised peace agreement with Salva Kiir, the current President of South Sudan. He is also the head of the rebel faction known as SPLM-IO that was founded in 2014 following the 2013 war outbreak and has been historically in opposition to Kiir. Between April and July 2016 Machar served as the First Vice President of South Sudan. He is designated to be the First Vice President according to the new "revitalized" peace agreement signed in September 2018.
Go to Profile#27773
Margaret O'Mara
#27784
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Margaret O'Mara is an American historian and professor at the University of Washington. Background Margaret O'Mara was born Margaret Pugh on November 15, 1970. O'Mara received her B.A. from Northwestern University, and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#27774
H. Evan Runner
#27785
Overall Influence
1916 - 2002 (86 years)
Howard Evan Runner was professor of philosophy at Calvin College from 1951 until his retirement in 1981. Runner was born in Oxford, Pennsylvania and graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois, Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia , and The Free University of Amsterdam. It was at the Free University that he was taught by Herman Dooyeweerd and D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, whose ideas relating to the construction of a whole new way of doing philosophy Christianly from a biblical basis radically changed the direction of his life, and whose teachings he later brought to North America. Runner's dissertation applied D.
Go to Profile#27775
J. Drew Lanham
#27786
Overall Influence
Joseph Drew Lanham is an American author, poet and wildlife biologist who in 2022 entered the MacArthur Fellows Program for his work "combining conservation science with personal, historical, and cultural narratives of nature." Raised in Edgefield, South Carolina, Lanham studied zoology and ecology at Clemson University, where he earned a PhD in 1997. Lanham received his B.A. and M.S. in zoology, and his Ph.D. in Forest Resources. He also currently holds an endowed chair as an Alumni Distinguished Professor. He was also named an alumni master teacher in 2012. He is currently a professor of wildlife science and teaches several classes and lectures on birding.
Go to Profile#27776
Dalton McGuinty
#27787
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Dalton James Patrick McGuinty Jr. is a former Canadian politician who served as the 24th premier of Ontario from 2003 to 2013. He was the first Liberal leader to win two majority governments since Mitchell Hepburn nearly 70 years earlier. In 2011, he became the first Liberal premier to secure a third consecutive term since Oliver Mowat after his party was re-elected in that year's provincial election.
Go to Profile#27777
V. G. Narayanan
#27788
Overall Influence
V. G. Narayanan is an Indian-born American economist. He is the Thomas D. Casserly, Jr. Professor of Business Administration Chair at Harvard Business School. He is the author of two self-published books, and the author of many research articles.
Go to Profile#27778
Andrea Alù
#27789
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Andrea Alù is an Italian American scientist and engineer, currently Einstein Professor of Physics at The City University of New York Graduate Center. He is known for his contributions to the fields of optics, photonics, plasmonics, and acoustics, most notably in the context of metamaterials and metasurfaces. He has co-authored over 650 journal papers and 35 book chapters, and he holds 11 U.S. patents.
Go to Profile#27779
Peter Shergold
#27790
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Peter Roger Shergold is an Australian academic, company director, and former public servant. Shergold was the Chancellor of Western Sydney University from 2011 through 2022. Between February 2003 and February 2008, he was the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and as such was the most senior official in the Australian Public Service.
Go to Profile#27780
John Leo
#27791
Overall Influence
1935 - 2022 (87 years)
John Patrick Leo was an American writer and journalist. He was noted for authoring columns in the National Catholic Reporter and U.S. News & World Report, as well as for his reporting with The New York Times and Time magazine. He later became editor-in-chief of "Minding the Campus", a conservative-libertarian web site focusing on America's colleges and universities. After retiring from journalism, he joined the Manhattan Institute as a senior fellow in 2007.
Go to Profile#27781
Michael C. Burda
#27792
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Michael Christopher Burda is an American macroeconomist and professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Since 1993 he has served as director of the Institute for Economic Theory II and since 2007 visiting professor at the European School of Management and Technology . He has also taught at Berkeley and INSEAD. In 1998, Burda received the Gossen Prize of the German Verein für Socialpolitik. He is research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research , Institute for the Study of Labor and a fellow of the European Economic Association.
Go to Profile#27782
Michael J. C. Gordon
#27793
Overall Influence
1948 - 2017 (69 years)
Michael John Caldwell Gordon was a British computer scientist. Life Mike Gordon was born in Ripon, Yorkshire, England. He attended Dartington Hall School and Bedales School. In 1966, he was accepted to study engineering at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, but transferred to mathematics. During his studies, in 1969 he worked at the National Physical Laboratory in London during the summer, gaining his first exposure to computers.
Go to Profile#27783
John G. Fleagle
#27794
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John G. Fleagle is an American anthropologist, primatologist, and Distinguished Professor at State University of New York, Stony Brook. Education He graduated from Yale University cum laude in 1971, and from Harvard University with a M.S. in Anthropology in 1973, and from Harvard University, with a Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology in 1976.
Go to Profile#27784
Leon Sterling
#27795
Overall Influence
Professor Leon Sterling is a career academic with a distinguished academic record. After completing a PhD at the Australian National University, he worked for 15 years at universities in the UK, Israel and the United States. He returned to Australia as Professor of Computer Science at the University of Melbourne in 1995. He served as Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering for 6 years. After stepping down as Head, he took up an industry-sponsored chair becoming the Adacel Professor of Software Innovation and Engineering. In 2010, he moved to Swinburne where he served as Dean...
Go to Profile#27785
Dustin Johnson
#27796
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Dustin Hunter Johnson is an American professional golfer. He has won two major championships, the 2016 U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club with a 4-under-par score of 276 and the 2020 Masters Tournament with a record score of 268, 20-under-par. He had previously finished in a tie for second at both the 2011 Open Championship and the 2015 U.S. Open. He has six World Golf Championships victories, with only Tiger Woods having won more, and was the first and only player to win each of the four World Golf Championship events. He has played in The LIV Golf League since 2022.
Go to Profile#27786
Carroll Morgan
#27797
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Charles Carroll Morgan is an American computer scientist who moved to Australia in his early teens. He completed his education there , including a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Sydney, and then moved to the United Kingdom in the early 1980s. In 2000, he returned to Australia.
Go to Profile#27787
Timothy Beatley
#27798
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Dr Timothy Beatley is an internationally recognized sustainable city researcher and author. His writings have focused on creative strategies cities can use to reduce their ecological footprints and become more livable and equitable places in the process. Beatley coined the term green urbanism and uses it frequently in his writings to describe the planning process used to create a sustainable city.
Go to Profile#27788
Guenther Roth
#27799
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Guenther Roth was a German-American sociologist. He was recognized as the leading scholar, translator and editor of the work of Max Weber in the English-speaking world; together with Claus Wittich, he translated and edited the first complete version of Weber's classic Economy and Society in English. He was professor emeritus at Columbia University. Later, his research interest extended to the biographical aspects of the sociological classics, in particular the genealogy of Weber's family.
Go to Profile#27789
John Beloff
#27800
Overall Influence
1920 - 2006 (86 years)
John Beloff was an English psychology professor at Edinburgh University and parapsychologist. Biography Beloff was born and brought up in London, and was from a Russian Jewish family. His parents were Semion Beloff and Maria Katzin. His paternal great-grandmother was Leah Horowitz-Winograd, the sister of Eliyahu Shlomo Horowitz-Winograd and a descendant of the Hasidic master Shmelke Horowitz of Nikolsburg . He was the brother of the historian Max Beloff, the politician and educationalist Renee Soskin, the biochemist Anne Beloff-Chain, and the journalist Nora Beloff. He served in the British Army in the Second World War.
Go to Profile#27790
Jan Kratochvíl
#27801
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Jan Kratochvíl is a Czech mathematician and computer scientist whose research concerns graph theory and intersection graphs. Kratochvíl was born on 10 February 1959 in Prague. He studied at Charles University in Prague, earning a master's degree in 1983 and a Ph.D. in 1987; his dissertation, supervised by Jaroslav Nešetřil, combined graph theory with coding theory. He remained at Charles University as a faculty member, earned his habilitation in 1995, and was promoted to full professor in 2003. From 2003 to 2011 he chaired the department of applied mathematics at Charles University, and from ...
Go to Profile#27791
Alejandro Sanz
#27802
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Alejandro Sánchez Pizarro, better known as Alejandro Sanz , is a Spanish musician, singer and composer. He has won 22 Latin Grammy Awards and four Grammy Awards. He has received the Latin Grammy for Album of the Year three times. The singer is notable for his flamenco-influenced ballads, and has also experimented with several other genres including pop, rock, funk, R&B and jazz.
Go to Profile#27792
Tom Coburn
#27803
Overall Influence
1948 - 2020 (72 years)
Thomas Allen Coburn was an American politician and physician who served as a United States senator from Oklahoma from 2005 to 2015. A Republican, Coburn previously served as a United States representative from 1995 to 2001.
Go to Profile#27793
Margaret Simons
#27804
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Margaret Simons is an Australian academic, freelance journalist and author. She has written numerous articles and essays as well as many books, including a biography of Senate leader of the Australian Labor Party Penny Wong and Australian minister for the environment Tanya Plibersek. Her essay Fallen Angels won the Walkley Award for Social Equity Journalism.
Go to Profile#27794
Patricia Neal
#27805
Overall Influence
1926 - 2010 (84 years)
Patricia Neal was an American actress of stage and screen. She is well known for, among other roles, playing World War II widow Helen Benson in The Day the Earth Stood Still , radio journalist Marcia Jeffries in A Face in the Crowd , wealthy matron Emily Eustace Failenson in Breakfast at Tiffany's , and the worn-out housekeeper Alma Brown in Hud . She also featured as the matriarch in the television film The Homecoming: A Christmas Story ; her role as Olivia Walton was re-cast for the series it inspired, The Waltons. A major star of the 1950s and 1960s, she was the recipient of an Academy Aw...
Go to Profile#27795
Sydel Silverman
#27806
Overall Influence
1933 - 2019 (86 years)
Sydel Finfer Silverman Wolf was an American anthropologist notable for her work as a researcher, writer, and advocate for the archival preservation of anthropological research. Silverman's early research focused on the study of complex societies and the history of anthropology. This work involved conducting anthropological research in Central Italy, with a focus on traditional agrarian systems, land reform, and festivals in central Italy. She later became active as an administrator, advocating for the study of cultural anthropology and an important force within the community where she organiz...
Go to Profile#27796
Charles Hill
#27807
Overall Influence
1936 - 2021 (85 years)
Morton Charles Hill was an American diplomat and academic. He served as diplomat-in-residence and lecturer in international studies at Yale University. A career foreign service officer, Hill was a senior adviser to George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, and Ronald Reagan, as well as Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the sixth secretary-general of the United Nations.
Go to Profile#27797
Ian Hinchliffe
#27808
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Ian Hinchliffe is a British physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He obtained his BA and his PhD in physics from Oxford University. In 1983 he became a Staff Senior Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he served as head of the theoretical physics group from 1992 to 1999.
Go to Profile#27798
David E. Kuhl
#27809
Overall Influence
1929 - 2017 (88 years)
David Edmund Kuhl was an American scientist specializing in nuclear medicine. He was well known for his pioneering work in positron emission tomography. Dr. Kuhl served as the Chief of the Division of Nuclear Medicine at the University of Michigan for 20 years and retired in June 2011.
Go to Profile#27799
János Kertész
#27810
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
János Kertész is a Hungarian physicist. He is one of the pioneers of econophysics, complex networks and application of fractal geometry in physical problems. He is the director of the Institute of Physics in Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary.
Go to Profile#27800
Reinder van de Riet
#27811
Overall Influence
1939 - 2008 (69 years)
Reinder Pieter van de Riet was a Dutch computer scientist and Emeritus Professor Information Systems at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, known for the development of COLOR-X, a linguistically-based event modeling language for object modeling.
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