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
#28301
Latrell Sprewell
#28312
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Latrell Fontaine Sprewell is an American former professional basketball player who played for the Golden State Warriors, the New York Knicks, and the Minnesota Timberwolves in the National Basketball Association . During his career, Sprewell received four NBA All-Star selections and an All-NBA First Team selection; he also helped the Knicks reach the 1999 NBA Finals and the Timberwolves to the 2004 Western Conference finals. Despite Sprewell's accomplishments, his career was overshadowed by a 1997 incident in which he choked and punched then-Warriors coach P. J. Carlesimo during practice, whi...
Go to Profile#28302
Mala Htun
#28313
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
#28303
Julianna Margulies
#28314
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Julianna Margulies is an American actress. After several small television roles, Margulies received wide recognition for her starring role as Carol Hathaway in the NBC medical drama series ER , for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award and six Screen Actors Guild Awards, in addition to four Golden Globe Award nominations. In 2009, she took on the lead role of Alicia Florrick in the CBS legal drama series The Good Wife . Her performance garnered critical acclaim, winning a further two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Television Critics Ass...
Go to Profile#28304
Ernest van den Haag
#28315
Overall Influence
1914 - 2002 (88 years)
Ernest van den Haag was a Dutch-born American sociologist, social critic, and author. He was John M. Olin Professor of Jurisprudence and Public Policy at Fordham University. He was best known for his contributions to National Review.
Go to Profile#28305
Leonard Mlodinow
#28316
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Leonard Mlodinow is an American theoretical physicist and mathematician, screenwriter and author. In physics, he is known for his work on the large N expansion, a method of approximating the spectrum of atoms based on the consideration of an infinite-dimensional version of the problem, and for his work on the quantum theory of light inside dielectrics.
Go to Profile#28306
Michael Winner
#28317
Overall Influence
1935 - 2013 (78 years)
Robert Michael Winner was a British filmmaker, writer, and media personality. He is known for directing numerous action, thriller, and black comedy films in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, including several collaborations with actors Oliver Reed and Charles Bronson.
Go to Profile#28307
Eric Midwinter
#28318
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Eric Clare Midwinter OBE, is an English author, broadcaster and academic. He is a consumer advocate, a social policy analyst, a historian of the sport of cricket and an expert on British comedy. Life and career Eric Midwinter was born in Sale, Lancashire, in 1932, and was educated at a local grammar school and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he read history. Between 1968 and 1971 he led the team for action research in the Liverpool Education Priority Area. Between 1972 and 1975, as Principal of the Liverpool Teachers’ Centre, he established an organisational structure capable of delivering continuing professional development to all teachers in Liverpool.
Go to Profile#28308
T. S. Ellis III
#28319
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Thomas Selby Ellis III is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, appointed by Ronald Reagan. Education and career Born in 1940 in Bogotá, Colombia, Ellis graduated from Princeton University where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in 1961. Ellis served in the United States Navy as a Naval aviator from 1961 to 1967. Ellis earned a Juris Doctor magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1969. Harvard awarded Ellis a Knox Fellowship for study in England. He then received a Diploma in Law in 1970 from Magdalen College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#28309
Elizabeth Murray
#28320
Overall Influence
1940 - 2007 (67 years)
Elizabeth Murray was an American painter, printmaker and draughtsman. Her works are in many major public collections, including those of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Wadsworth Atheneum. Murray was known for her use of shaped canvases.
Go to Profile#28310
Stephen A. Schuker
#28321
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Stephen Alan Schuker is an American historian who is currently William W. Corcoran Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He was educated at Cornell University, where he gained a BA in 1959. In 1958 Cornell awarded him a $500 prize for being their outstanding history student. He was awarded an MA and a PhD by Harvard University in 1962 and 1969, respectively. According to Walter A. McDougall, Schuker's book The End of French Predominance in Europe is the definitive work on the circumstances leading to the adoption of the 1924 Dawes Plan on German reparations. The book was awarded...
Go to Profile#28311
Leo Varadkar
#28322
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Leo Eric Varadkar is an Irish politician who has served as Taoiseach since December 2022, and previously from 2017 to 2020. He served as Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment from June 2020 to December 2022. He has been Leader of Fine Gael since June 2017, and a Teachta Dála for the Dublin West constituency since 2007. He previously served under Taoiseach Enda Kenny as Minister for Social Protection from 2016 to 2017, Minister for Health from 2014 to 2016 and Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport from 2011 to 2014.
Go to Profile#28312
Kevin Young
#28323
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Kevin Young is an American poet and the director of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture since 2021. Author of 11 books and editor of eight others, Young previously served as Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. A winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a finalist for the National Book Award for his 2003 collection Jelly Roll: A Blues, Young was Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and curator of Emory's Raymond Danowski Poetry Library. In Mar...
Go to Profile#28313
Silver Donald Cameron
#28324
Overall Influence
1937 - 2020 (83 years)
Silver Donald Cameron was a Canadian journalist, author, playwright, and university teacher whose writing focused on social justice, nature, and the environment. His 15 books of non-fiction dealt with everything from history and politics to education and community development.
Go to Profile#28314
Dorothy Edgington
#28325
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Dorothy Margaret Doig Edgington FBA is a philosopher active in metaphysics and philosophical logic. She is particularly known for her work on the logic of conditionals and vagueness. Life and education Dorothy Edgington was born on 29 April 1941 to Edward Milne and his wife Rhoda née Blair. She attended St Leonards School before going to St Hilda's College, Oxford to read PPE. She obtained her BA in 1964, followed in 1967 by a BPhil at Nuffield College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#28315
Seiji Ozawa
#28326
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
is a Japanese conductor known for his advocacy of modern composers and for his work with the San Francisco Symphony, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna State Opera, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he served as music director for 29 years. He is the recipient of numerous international awards.
Go to Profile#28316
John W. Welch
#28327
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John Woodland "Jack" Welch is a scholar of law and religion. Welch is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and currently teaches at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where he is the Robert K. Thomas University Professor of Law. He is notable for his contributions to LDS scholarship, including his discovery of the ancient literary form chiasmus in the Book of Mormon.
Go to Profile#28317
Leela Dube
#28328
Overall Influence
1923 - 2012 (89 years)
Leela Dube was a renowned anthropologist and feminist scholar, fondly called Leeladee by many. She had been married to the renowned anthropologist and sociologist LateShyama Charan Dube. Leela Dube was the younger sister of the late classical singer Sumati Mutatkar. Her elder son Late Mukul Dube was an avid photographer. She is survived by her younger son, Saurabh Dube. Known for her work on kinship and in women's studies, she wrote several books including Matriliny and Islam: religion and society in the Laccadives and Women and kinship: comparative perspectives on gender in South and South‑e...
Go to Profile#28318
Ronald V. Clarke
#28329
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
#28319
David Sanborn
#28330
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
David William Sanborn is an American alto saxophonist. Though Sanborn has worked in many genres, his solo recordings typically blend jazz with instrumental pop and R&B. He released his first solo album Taking Off in 1975, but has been playing the saxophone since before he was in high school.
Go to Profile#28320
Eugene D. Commins
#28331
Overall Influence
1932 - 2015 (83 years)
Eugene David Commins was a professor of physics at University of California, Berkeley. He was named a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1987. He was also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#28321
Benno Teschke
#28332
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Benno Teschke is a German international relations theorist. He is professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex. Teschke's scholarship is a contribution to Marxist international relations theory, specifically in the Political Marxism tendency. He obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics in 1999, with a thesis titled The making of the Westphalian state-system: Social property relations, geopolitics and the myth of 1648.
Go to Profile#28322
Hugh Masekela
#28333
Overall Influence
1939 - 2018 (79 years)
Hugh Ramapolo Masekela was a South African trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, singer and composer who was described as "the father of South African jazz". Masekela was known for his jazz compositions and for writing well-known anti-apartheid songs such as "Soweto Blues" and "Bring Him Back Home". He also had a number-one US pop hit in 1968 with his version of "Grazing in the Grass".
Go to Profile#28323
Daniel D. Blinka
#28334
Overall Influence
Daniel D. Blinka is a practicing trial lawyer and law professor at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As a scholar, Blinka focuses primarily on evidence law, criminal procedure, and American history. He teaches evidence, trial advocacy, criminal law, constitutional criminal procedure, ethics, and American history. Blinka holds a Ph.D. in American history and a JD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he has also taught history courses.
Go to Profile#28324
Richard Grathoff
#28335
Overall Influence
1934 - 2013 (79 years)
Richard Helmut Grathoff was a phenomenologist and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at Bielefeld University, Germany. Born on August 30, 1934, in Unna, Westphalia, Germany, he received his PhD from the New School for Social Research in 1969 after studying under Aron Gurwitsch, Thomas Luckmann and Peter L. Berger. Influenced by Charles Sanders Peirce, Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz, his work has included research in the topics of milieu and life-world and contemporary social theory. He died in Oerlinghausen, Germany on November 10, 2013.
Go to Profile#28325
Takashi Hikino
#28336
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Takashi Hikino is specially appointed professor at the Graduate School of Management at Kyoto University after serving as associate professor of industrial and business organization at the Graduate School of Management at Kyoto University where he taught industrial organization, business economics, and corporate strategy, and comparative management since 1998. He attended Hitotsubashi University, where he studied at the Graduate School of Sociology
Go to Profile#28326
Katharine Kolcaba
#28337
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Katharine Kolcaba is an American nursing theorist and nursing professor. Dr. Kolcaba is responsible for the Theory of Comfort, a broad-scope mid-range nursing theory commonly implemented throughout the nursing field up to the institutional level.
Go to Profile#28327
Walter Kamba
#28338
Overall Influence
1931 - 2007 (76 years)
Walter Kamba was a Zimbabwean lawyer and academic, one of the few black lawyers practicing in the then British colony of Rhodesia. He fled following the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by Prime Minister Ian Smith. He joined the Faculty of Law at the University of Dundee, Scotland in 1969, where he taught Jurisprudence and Comparative Law. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer and in 1977 became Dean of the Faculty. He was awarded an honorary degree by the University in 1982 as part of its centenary celebrations.
Go to Profile#28328
Jim Peacock
#28339
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
William James Peacock, is an Australian molecular biologist who was Chief Scientist of Australia , President of the Australian Academy of Science and Chief of CSIRO Plant Industry . Peacock was born in Leura, New South Wales and educated at the University of Sydney, where he studied botany and zoology and gained a PhD in genetics. He followed this with post-doctoral positions in genetics at the University of Oregon in Eugene and molecular biology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, before returning to Australia to work with the CSIRO.
Go to Profile#28329
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
#28340
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is an American poet and novelist, and a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma. She has published five collections of poetry and a novel. Her 2020 collection The Age of Phillis reexamines the life of American poet Phillis Wheatley, based on years of archival research; it was long-listed for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry, and she was the recipient in 2021 of a United States Artists fellowship. She published her debut novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, in 2021.
Go to Profile#28330
Doja Cat
#28341
Overall Influence
1995 - Present (31 years)
Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini , known professionally as Doja Cat , is an American rapper and singer. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she began making and releasing music on SoundCloud as a teenager. Her song "So High" caught the attention of Kemosabe and RCA Records, with whom she signed a recording contract prior to the release of her debut extended play, Purrr! in 2014.
Go to Profile#28331
Robert Almgren
#28342
Overall Influence
Robert F. Almgren is an applied mathematician, academic, and businessman focused on market microstructure and order execution. He is the son of Princeton mathematician Frederick J. Almgren, Jr. With Neil Chriss, he wrote the seminal paper "Optimal execution of portfolio transactions," which Institutional Investor said "helped lay the groundwork for arrival-price algorithms being developed on Wall Street." In 2008 with Christian Hauff, he cofounded Quantitative Brokers, a financial technology company providing agency algorithmic execution in futures and interest rate markets. He is currently C...
Go to Profile#28332
Donald Serrell Thomas
#28343
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Donald Serrell Thomas was a British crime writer. His work primarily included Victorian-era historical, crime and detective fiction, as well as books on factual crime and criminals, in particular several academic books on the history of crime in London. He wrote a number of biographies, two volumes of poetry, and also edited volumes of poetry by John Dryden and the Pre-Raphaelites.
Go to Profile#28333
Michael Wex
#28344
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Michael Wex is a Canadian novelist, playwright, translator, lecturer, performer, and author of books on language and literature. His specialty is Yiddish and his book Born to Kvetch was a surprise bestseller in 2005. Wex lives in Toronto with his wife Marilla and daughter Sabina.
Go to Profile#28334
Richard Prum
#28345
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Richard O. Prum is an evolutionary biologist and ornithologist. He is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, as well as the head curator of vertebrate zoology at the university's Peabody Museum of Natural History. His 2017 book The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2017 by The New York Times and was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.
Go to Profile#28335
Paul Yu
#28346
Overall Influence
Paul Yu was a Chinese-American academic who was the President of State University of New York at Brockport between 1997–2004. Early life and education Born in Chongqing, China, Yu moved with his family to Hong Kong in 1949 before resettling in Michigan. Yu went on to receive bachelor's, master's, and a doctorate in philosophy all from the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#28336
Jos Verstappen
#28347
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Johannes Franciscus Verstappen is a Dutch former racing driver who competed in Formula One for Benetton, Simtek, Footwork Arrows, Tyrrell, Stewart, and Minardi. Verstappen was the German Formula Three champion and Masters of Formula Three winner in 1993.
Go to Profile#28337
Daniel A. Keim
#28348
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Daniel A. Keim is a German computer scientist and full professor in the Computer Science department at the University of Konstanz, Germany. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Munich in 1994. He has been assistant professor in the Computer Science department at the University of Munich, and associate professor in the Computer Science department of the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. Keim has also worked as a senior researcher at AT&T's Shannon Research Labs, Florham Park, NJ, USA.
Go to Profile#28338
Constantin Floros
#28349
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Constantin Floros is a Greek-German musicologist. He studied law at the University of Thessaloniki and then composition and conducting at the Vienna Music Academy. At the same time he studied musicology with Erich Schenk at the Vienna University as well as art history , philosophy and psychology. In 1955 he obtained the doctorate in Vienna with a dissertation on Campioni. He continued his musicological studies with Husmann at Hamburg University , where in 1961 he completed his Habilitation in musicology with a work on the Byzantine kontakion. In 1967 he became supernumerary professor, in 1972 professor of musicology and in 1995 professor emeritus at the University of Hamburg.
Go to Profile#28339
Barry White
#28350
Overall Influence
1944 - 2003 (59 years)
Barry Eugene Carter , better known by his stage name Barry White, was an American singer and songwriter. A two-time Grammy Award winner known for his bass voice and romantic image, his greatest success came in the 1970s as a solo singer and with The Love Unlimited Orchestra, crafting many enduring soul, funk, and disco songs such as his two biggest hits: "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe" and "You're the First, the Last, My Everything".
Go to Profile#28340
Bob Menendez
#28351
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Robert Menendez is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from New Jersey, a seat he has held since 2006. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first appointed to the U.S. Senate by Governor Jon Corzine, and chaired the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 2013 to 2015, and again from 2021 to 2023.
Go to Profile#28341
Timo Glock
#28352
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Timo Glock is a German professional racing driver, and BMW Motorsport works driver. He raced in Formula One for the Jordan, Toyota, Virgin Racing and Marussia F1 teams. He finished 10th in the Drivers' Championship in both 2008 and 2009, scoring three podium finishes.
Go to Profile#28342
Mario Sergio Cortella
#28353
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Mario Sergio Cortella is a Brazilian philosopher, writer, educator and speaker most known for putting into the public sphere and helping popularize in questions related to philosophy in Brazilian contemporary society. He is also known as a prominent educator. Having studied with Paulo Freire, Cortella applied Freire's approach to education while he was secretary of education of São Paulo city during the '90s. He is professor of theological philosophy at PUC-SP.
Go to Profile#28343
Tamás Aczél
#28354
Overall Influence
1921 - 1994 (73 years)
Tamás Aczél was a Kossuth Prize-winning Hungarian poet, writer, journalist and university professor. Career Aczél was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1921. He graduated in his hometown in 1939, subsequently he went to Italy to study commerce and catering . After returned to Hungary, Aczél enrolled at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University and earned academic degree from Hungarian and English.
Go to Profile#28344
Giorgio Samorini
#28355
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Giorgio Samorini is a psychedelics researcher. He has published many essays and monographs regarding the use of psychoactive compounds and sacred plants. He was a frequent contributor to, and sometime editor of Eleusis the Journal of Psychoactive Plants & Compounds.
Go to Profile#28345
Carole Goble
#28356
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Carole Anne Goble, is a British academic who is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. She is principal investigator of the myGrid, BioCatalogue and myExperiment projects and co-leads the Information Management Group with Norman Paton.
Go to Profile#28346
Keith Spicer
#28357
Overall Influence
Keith Spicer was a Canadian academic, public servant, journalist, and writer. Between 1970 and 1977, Spicer was Canada's first Commissioner of Official Languages. Education Spicer held a BA in Modern Languages from Victoria College, University of Toronto ; the Diplôme en relations internationales from l'Institut d'Études Politiques , Paris ; and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto .
Go to Profile#28347
L. R. Ford Jr.
#28358
Overall Influence
1927 - 2017 (90 years)
Lester Randolph Ford Jr. was an American mathematician specializing in network flow problems. He was the son of mathematician Lester R. Ford Sr. Ford's paper with D. R. Fulkerson on the maximum flow problem and the Ford–Fulkerson algorithm for solving it, published as a technical report in 1954 and in a journal in 1956, established the max-flow min-cut theorem. In 1962 they published Flows in Networks with Princeton University Press. According to the preface, it "included topics that were purely mathematically motivated, together with those that are strictly utilitarian in concept." In his review, S.W.
Go to Profile#28348
Walter Knödel
#28359
Overall Influence
1926 - 2018 (92 years)
Walter Knödel was an Austrian mathematician and computer scientist. He was a computer science professor at the University of Stuttgart. Born in Vienna, Walter Knödel studied mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna. Also in Vienna, Knödel received his PhD in 1948 for his work on number theory under the direction of Edmund Hlawka and got habilitated in 1953. In 1961, Walter Knödel became professor for mathematics at the University of Stuttgart.
Go to Profile#28349
Roger J-B Wets
#28360
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Roger Jean-Baptiste Robert Wets is a "pioneer" in stochastic programming and a leader in variational analysis who publishes as Roger J-B Wets. His research, expositions, graduate students, and his collaboration with R. Tyrrell Rockafellar have had a profound influence on optimization theory, computations, and applications. Since 2009, Wets has been a distinguished research professor at the mathematics department of the University of California, Davis.
Go to Profile#28350
Laurence R. Horn
#28361
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Laurence Robert Horn is an American linguist. He is professor emeritus of linguistics in the department of linguistics at Yale University with specialties in pragmatics and semantics. He received his doctorate in 1972 from UCLA and formerly served as director of undergraduate studies, director of graduate studies, and chair of Yale's department of linguistics. In 2021, he served as president of the Linguistic Society of America.
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