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
#27901
Wendy Larner
#27912
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Wendy Larner is a New Zealand social scientist who has focussed on the interdisciplinary areas of globalisation, governance and gender. She has been Vice-Chancellor and President of Cardiff University since September 2023, having previously been provost at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand.
Go to Profile#27902
Craig Arnold
#27913
Overall Influence
1967 - 2009 (42 years)
Craig Arnold was an American poet and professor. His first book of poems, Shells , was selected by W. S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. His many honors include the 2005 Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize Fellowship in literature, The Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, an Alfred Hodder Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a MacDowell Fellowship.
Go to Profile#27903
Lloyd Bryan Molander Adams
#27914
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Lloyd Bryan Molander is an American documentary, television and film director, and producer. Television series and specials Saving Heroes on American Heroes Channel - Executive Producer and directed several episodes.Outdoor Channel - Executive ProducerDuck CommandersSavage WildUltimate Match FishingMen’s Pro Ski Tour The Extremists Fusion TV Elite XC and Pro Elite - consultantHawaiian Tropic Pageant Planet X TV New Waves High Octane "Saving Heroes" "Seeking Nirvana" "Liquid Edge"
Go to Profile#27904
Hallie Lieberman
#27915
Overall Influence
Hallie Lieberman is a writer and a sex and gender historian. Her first book, Buzz: The Stimulating History of the Sex Toy traces the history of sex toys in the USA from the 1950s to the present. Lieberman teaches science and technology journalism at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#27905
Ilona Kickbusch
#27916
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Ilona Kickbusch is a German political scientist best known for her contribution to health promotion and global health. She is adjunct professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva.
Go to Profile#27906
Cyril Philips
#27917
Overall Influence
1912 - 2005 (93 years)
Sir Cyril Henry Philips, FRAS , knighted in the 1974 New Years Honours List, was a noted British historian and academic director. Early life His father had worked as an engine driver on the Indian railways, and Philips in the 1920s spent some years in Bihar.
Go to Profile#27907
Thomas Stockham
#27918
Overall Influence
1933 - 2004 (71 years)
Thomas Greenway Stockham was an American scientist who developed one of the first practical digital audio recording systems, and pioneered techniques for digital audio recording and processing. He also led the development of the Digital Audio Tape system.
Go to Profile#27908
Elan Closs Stephens
#27919
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Dame Elan Closs Stephens is a non-executive director and member for Wales on the BBC Board since 2017, and became its Acting chairwoman from 27 June 2023. She specialises in cultural and broadcasting policy. She is also the Electoral Commissioner for Wales; Pro Chancellor of Aberystwyth University; and chair of the UNESCO’s International Prize for the Creative Economy jury.
Go to Profile#27909
Tyler Volk
#27920
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Tyler Volk is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies and Biology at New York University. His areas of interest include principles of form and function in systems , environmental challenges to global prosperity, CO2 and global change, biosphere theory and the role of life in earth dynamics.
Go to Profile#27910
Piers Vitebsky
#27921
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Piers Vitebsky is an anthropologist who was Head of Anthropology and Russian Northern Studies and Assistant Director of Research at the Scott Polar Research Institute of the University of Cambridge in England.
Go to Profile#27911
Cyrus Longworth Lundell
#27922
Overall Influence
1907 - 1994 (87 years)
Cyrus Longworth Lundell was an American botanist. Education Lundell did his undergraduate studies at Columbia University and Southern Methodist University. He completed his BA at the later in 1932. He then entered New York University's graduate school of business administration, but seems not to have completed course work there. He received an M.A. from the University of Michigan in 1934 and a Ph.D. from the same institution in 1936. It appears based on his later professorship that his Ph.D. was in botany.
Go to Profile#27912
Charles R. Bentley
#27923
Overall Influence
1929 - 2017 (88 years)
Charles Raymond Bentley was an American glaciologist and geophysicist, born in Rochester, New York. He was a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Mount Bentley and the Bentley Subglacial Trench in Antarctica are named after him. In 1957, he and a handful of other scientists including Mario Giovinetto set out on an expedition across West Antarctica in tracked vehicles to make the first measurements of the ice sheet.
Go to Profile#27913
Hemchandra Kekre
#27924
Overall Influence
1935 - 2014 (79 years)
Hemchandra Baburao Kekre was a professor, author, and head of the Computer Science Department at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Kekre was among the initial professors who started the computer science department at IIT Mumbai.
Go to Profile#27914
Paul Augustin Mayer
#27925
Overall Influence
1911 - 2010 (99 years)
Paul Augustin Mayer, OSB was a German Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He held various positions in the Roman Curia from 1971 to 1991. Biography Mayer was born in Altötting, Germany, one of three children of Royal Bavarian General Ludwig Mayer and his wife Meta Hoeness. He was the nephew of Württemberg President Eugen Bolz.
Go to Profile#27915
Ram Mudambi
#27926
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Ram Mudambi is the Frank M. Speakman Professor of Strategy at the Fox School of Business and Management at Temple University. He has published over a hundred refereed journal articles and six books on the multinational strategies of entrepreneurial firms; the location and research and development strategies of multinational firmss, and the politics of international business. Mudambi serves as a co-editor of the Global Strategy Journal published by the Strategic Management Society . He also serves as a department editor at the Journal of International Business Policy published by the Academy of International Business .
Go to Profile#27916
Chas Chandler
#27927
Overall Influence
1938 - 1996 (58 years)
Bryan James "Chas" Chandler was an English musician, record producer and manager, best known as the original bassist in The Animals, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. He also managed the band Slade, and Jimi Hendrix, about whom he was regularly interviewed until his death in 1996.
Go to Profile#27917
Amr El Abbadi
#27928
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Amr El Abbadi is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He obtained B.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from Alexandria and Cornell universities respectively. He is an editor of the VLDB Journal and IEEE Transactions on Computers. He was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2014 for contributions to the design of fault-tolerant large-scale data management systems.
Go to Profile#27918
Keith Allan
#27929
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Keith Allan, FAHA is an Australian linguist and Emeritus Professor at Monash University. Allan sees language as a form of social interactive behaviour and believes this to be an important consideration in any thorough account of meaning in natural language. While he is interested in all aspects of meaning in language, his main interests are semantics, pragmatics, linguistic meta-theory and the history and philosophy of linguistics.
Go to Profile#27919
Paul Kariya
#27930
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Paul Tetsuhiko Kariya is a Canadian former professional ice hockey winger who played 15 seasons in the National Hockey League . Known as a skilled and fast-skating offensive player, he played in the NHL for the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, Colorado Avalanche, Nashville Predators, and St. Louis Blues between 1995 and 2010.
Go to Profile#27920
Martina McBride
#27931
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Martina Mariea McBride is an American country music singer-songwriter. She is known for her soprano singing range and her country pop material. McBride was born in Sharon, Kansas, and relocated to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1989. She signed to RCA Records in 1991, and made her debut the following year as a neo-traditionalist country singer with the single, "The Time Has Come". Over time, she developed a pop-styled crossover sound, similar to Shania Twain and Faith Hill, and had a string of major hit singles on the Billboard country chart and occasionally on the adult contemporary chart. Five of these singles went to No.
Go to Profile#27921
Bill Griggs
#27932
Overall Influence
William Middleton Griggs, is a retired Australian physician specialising in trauma. In 2006 Griggs became a Member of the Order of Australia for "service to medicine, particularly through trauma, emergency and care management and education, and critical care and retrieval and in support of the Australian Defence Force."
Go to Profile#27922
Hendrik Hart
#27933
Overall Influence
1935 - 2021 (86 years)
Hendrik Hart , often known as Henk Hart, was a Dutch-Canadian philosopher based in Toronto. History Hendrik Hart taught systematic philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, since its founding in 1967 until his retirement in 2001. Prior to that he was head of the philosophical Institute of the Free University in Amsterdam, where he studied under D. H. Th. Vollenhoven. His doctoral dissertation was written on the topic of John Dewey's theory of verification and was supervised by Dutch philosopher S. U. Zuidema.
Go to Profile#27923
C. C. Li
#27934
Overall Influence
1912 - 2003 (91 years)
In this Chinese name, the family name is Li . Ching Chun Li was a Chinese-American population geneticist and human geneticist. He was known for his research and the book An Introduction to Population Genetics.
Go to Profile#27924
Vance Bourjaily
#27935
Overall Influence
1922 - 2010 (88 years)
Vance Nye Bourjaily was an American novelist, playwright, journalist, creative writing teacher, and essayist. Life Bourjaily was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Monte Ferris Bourjaily, a Lebanese immigrant who was a journalist and later became editor of the United Features Syndicate, and Barbara Webb, an American-born features author and novelist. Bourjaily moved several times during his youth. His childhood was spent in Connecticut, Virginia, and New York. Bourjaily graduated from Handley High School in Winchester, Virginia in 1939. After graduating, Bourjaily enrolled in Bowdoin College. With the coming of World War II, Bourjaily became a volunteer ambulance driver from 1942 to 1944.
Go to Profile#27925
Benjamin Cravatt III
#27936
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Benjamin Franklin Cravatt III is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Considered a co-inventor of activity-based proteomics and a substantial contributor to research on the endocannabinoid system, he is a prominent figure in the nascent field of chemical biology. Cravatt was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016. He is Gilula Chair of Chemical Biology, a Cope Scholar, and a Searle Scholar.
Go to Profile#27926
Michel Chodkiewicz
#27937
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Michel Chodkiewicz was a French scholar of Sufism, particularly the works of Ibn 'Arabi. Biography Michel Chodkiewicz was from the Chodkiewicz family, a noble family of the Polish aristocracy who settled in France in 1832. He was born in Paris in 1929 and completed most of his education there. Chodkiewicz converted to Islam at age 17. He began studying Ibn 'Arabi under the Romanian traditionalist Michel Valsan.
Go to Profile#27927
Eduardo Francisco Pironio
#27938
Overall Influence
1920 - 1998 (78 years)
Eduardo Francisco Pironio was an Argentine Catholic prelate who served in numerous departments of the Roman Curia from 1975 to 1996. He was named a cardinal in 1976 and Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina-Poggio in 1995.
Go to Profile#27928
Elisabeth Bik
#27939
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Elisabeth Margaretha Harbers-Bik is a Dutch microbiologist and scientific integrity consultant. Bik is known for her work detecting photo manipulation in scientific publications, and identifying over 4,000 potential cases of improper research conduct, including 400 research papers published by authors in China from a research paper mill company. Bik is the founder of Microbiome Digest, a blog with daily updates on microbiome research, and the Science Integrity Digest blog.
Go to Profile#27929
John Darnton
#27940
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
John Darnton is an American journalist who wrote for the New York Times. He is a two-time winner of the Polk Award, of which he is now the curator, and the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. He also moonlights as a novelist who writes scientific and medical thrillers.
Go to Profile#27930
Norbert Peters
#27941
Overall Influence
1942 - 2015 (73 years)
Norbert Peters was a professor at RWTH Aachen University, Germany and one of the world-wide authorities in the field of combustion engineering. He headed the Institut für Technische Verbrennung . Born in Linz, Austria, he was educated at the Karlsruhe University of Technology and later at the Technical University of Berlin. He worked in Rourkela Steel Plant for six months.
Go to Profile#27931
Lawrence Welk
#27942
Overall Influence
1903 - 1992 (89 years)
Lawrence Welk was an American accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, who hosted The Lawrence Welk Show from 1951 to 1982. His style came to be known as "champagne music" to his radio, television, and live-performance audiences.
Go to Profile#27932
Earl Weaver
#27943
Overall Influence
1930 - 2013 (83 years)
Earl Sidney Weaver was an American professional baseball manager, author, and television broadcaster. After playing in minor league baseball, he retired without playing in Major League Baseball . He became a minor league manager, and then managed in MLB for 17 years with the Baltimore Orioles , winning a World Series championship in 1970. Weaver's style of managing was summed up in the quote: "pitching, defense, and the three-run homer." He did not believe in placing emphasis on "small ball" tactics such as stolen bases, hit and run plays, or sacrifice bunts. He was inducted into the Baseball...
Go to Profile#27933
Jack Barbalet
#27944
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Jack Barbalet is an Australian sociologist. Since 2017 he has been professor of sociology at the Australian Catholic University. He was previously Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology at Hong Kong Baptist University. He has held appointments at the University of Papua New Guinea, the University of Adelaide, and the Australian National University. He was professor of sociology at the University of Leicester, where he was head of department, and subsequently professorial fellow in the Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy at the University of Western Sydney.
Go to Profile#27934
Michele Bullock
#27945
Overall Influence
Michele Bullock is an Australian economist who is currently governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia . She commenced as governor on 18 September 2023, and is the first woman to hold the role. Early life, personal life and education Bullock was born in 1962 or 1963 in Melbourne. At approximately nine years of age, she moved to Armidale, New South Wales, where she attended Armidale High School.
Go to Profile#27935
Jacqueline Ferrand
#27946
Overall Influence
1918 - 2014 (96 years)
Jacqueline Lelong-Ferrand was a French mathematician who worked on conformal representation theory, potential theory, and Riemannian manifolds. She taught at universities in Caen, Lille, and Paris.
Go to Profile#27936
Jerry Spinelli
#27947
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Jerry Spinelli is an American writer of children's novels that feature adolescence and early adulthood. His novels include Maniac Magee, Stargirl, and Wringer. Biography Spinelli was born in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and currently lives in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. At the age of 16, his love of sports inspired him to compose a poem about a recent football victory, which his father published in the local newspaper without his knowledge. It was at this time he realized that he would not become a major league baseball player, so he decided to become a writer.
Go to Profile#27937
Jari Kurri
#27948
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Jari Pekka Kurri is a Finnish former professional ice hockey player. Beginning in 1980, he played right wing for five National Hockey League teams: the Edmonton Oilers, the Los Angeles Kings, the New York Rangers, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, and the Colorado Avalanche. Kurri played 17 seasons in the NHL and was the first Finnish player to be enshrined into the Hockey Hall of Fame, in 2001. He was a member of a Stanley Cup–winning team five times, all with the Oilers. In 2017, Kurri was named one of the '100 Greatest NHL Players' in history. He won the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy in 1985, and ...
Go to Profile#27938
Bastian Schweinsteiger
#27949
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Bastian Schweinsteiger is a German former professional footballer who played as a midfielder. Earlier in his career, he primarily played as a wide midfielder; he later switched to a central midfield role. He is regarded as one of the greatest midfielders of all time, due to his tactical awareness, positioning, passing and also due to his ability to read and control the flow of the game. Former Germany national team manager Joachim Löw has referred to Schweinsteiger as one of the greatest players the country has ever produced.
Go to Profile#27939
Maurice Olender
#27950
Overall Influence
1946 - 2022 (76 years)
Maurice Olender was a Belgian-French historian, professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. His teaching focused in particular on the genesis of the idea of race in the nineteenth century. He also published widely on the intellectual history of the concepts of Indo-European languages and Proto-language, most importantly in his monograph Les langues du Paradis. As editor, he headed the journal and La librairie du XXIe siècle at Éditions du Seuil.
Go to Profile#27940
Maurice Manning
#27951
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Maurice Manning is an American poet. His first collection of poems, Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions, was awarded the Yale Younger Poets Award, chosen by W.S. Merwin. Since then he has published four collections of poetry . He teaches English and Creative Writing at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he oversees the Judy Gaines Young Book Award, and is a member of the poetry faculty of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.
Go to Profile#27941
Luise F. Pusch
#27952
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Luise F. Pusch is a German linguist. She is regarded as the co-founder of feminist linguistics in Germany, along with Senta Trömel-Plötz. Life and education Luise Pusch studied English, Latin and linguistics at the University of Hamburg. In 1972 she received her doctorate in English. In 1978, she qualified for the linguistics faculty at the University of Konstanz. From 1979 to 1984 she was a Heisenberg Fellow in the field of feminist linguistic research. Before feminist linguistics became her specialty, she worked on syntactic issues such as construction of gerunds. From 1982 to 1985 she h...
Go to Profile#27942
Christophe Boesch
#27953
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Christophe Boesch is a primatologist who studies chimpanzeess. He and his wife work together, and he has both written articles and directed documentaries about chimpanzees. He is of French and Swiss nationality. He received his degree in biology from the University of Geneva, and his Ph.D. from the University of Zurich in 1984. His dissertation was entitled "Nut-Cracking Behaviour of Wild Chimpanzees". After this, he attended the University of Basel, to receive a degree in habilitation in 1994.
Go to Profile#27943
Simon Dalby
#27954
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Simon Dalby is an Irish born academic and CIGI Chair in the Political Economy of Climate Change at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Dalby works in the disciplines of environmental security and critical geopolitics.
Go to Profile#27944
Dee Snider
#27955
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Daniel Snider is an American singer, songwriter, radio personality, and actor. He was the lead singer and songwriter of the heavy metal band Twisted Sister. The band's song "We're Not Gonna Take It" reached No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and was ranked No. 47 on 100 Greatest 80's Songs. Snider later formed and was the lead singer in the heavy metal bands Desperado, Widowmaker, and SMFs . Snider was ranked #83 in the Hit Paraders Top 100 Metal Vocalists of All Time.
Go to Profile#27945
James Learmonth Gowans
#27956
Overall Influence
1924 - 2020 (96 years)
Sir James Learmonth Gowans was a British physician and immunologist. In 1945, while studying medicine at King's College Hospital, he assisted at the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as a voluntary medical student.
Go to Profile#27946
Agneta Marell
#27957
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Agneta Marell is professor in Business Administration and since 2010, Deputy vice-chancellor for external relations and innovation at Umeå University in northern Sweden. Between 2004 and 2007, she was the Dean of Umeå School of Business, succeeding Anders Söderholm. In 2008–2011, she was a municipal manager for Örnsköldsvik municipality. She received the assignment as vice rector for collaboration and innovation at Umeå University. As such, she was also chairman of Uminova Holding, the business incubator Uminova Innovation AB and Uminova eXpression AB, which runs Sliperiet at the Umeå Arts Ca...
Go to Profile#27947
Mehdi Haeri Yazdi
#27958
Overall Influence
1923 - 1999 (76 years)
Mehdi Haeri Yazdi was an Iranian philosopher and Shia Islamic cleric. He was the first son of Abdul Karim Haeri Yazdi, the founder of Qom Seminary and teacher of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who became the leader of the Iranian Revolution and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Go to Profile#27948
Pascal Hitzler
#27959
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Pascal Hitzler is a German American computer scientist specializing in Semantic Web and Artificial Intelligence. He is endowed Lloyd T. Smith Creativity in Engineering Chair, Co-Director of the Institute for Digital Agriculture and Advanced Analytics and Director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science at Kansas State University, and the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Semantic Web journal and the IOS Press book series Studies on the Semantic Web.
Go to Profile#27949
Nicholas Turro
#27960
Overall Influence
1938 - 2012 (74 years)
Nicholas J. Turro was an American chemist, Wm. P. Schweitzer Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University. He was a world renowned organic chemist and leading world expert on organic photochemistry. He was the recipient of the 2011 Arthur C. Cope Award in Organic Chemistry, given annually "to recognize outstanding achievement in the field of organic chemistry, the significance of which has become apparent within the five years preceding the year in which the award will be considered." He was also the recipient of the 2000 Willard Gibbs Award, which recognizes "eminent chemists who...have ...
Go to Profile#27950
James Sokolove
#27961
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
James G. Sokolove is an American attorney known for advertising legal services on television. Though he was the largest legal advertiser in the United States in 2007, Sokolove's firm acts only as a lead generator and does not currently try cases.
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