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
#28401
John T. Edge
#28412
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
John T. Edge is a writer, commentator, and, since its founding in 1999, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. He has written several books on Southern food. He contributes to the Oxford American and the New York Times, and has written for Garden & Gun and Afar. In 2017, he published The Potlikker Papers, a personal history of Southern food.
Go to Profile#28402
Thomas Hurka
#28413
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Thomas Hurka is a Canadian philosopher who holds the Jackman Distinguished Chair in Philosophical Studies at the University of Toronto and who taught previously, from 1978 to 2002, at the University of Calgary.
Go to Profile#28403
D. Michael Lindsay
#28414
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
David Michael Lindsay is an American sociologist and the president of Taylor University. He was also president of Gordon College, a private, Evangelical Christian liberal arts college on Boston's North Shore from 2011 to 2021. Before arriving at Gordon, Lindsay was on faculty for five years at Rice University and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. He is known as a scholar in the study of leadership, elites, evangelicalism, and higher education.
Go to Profile#28404
Joe Perry
#28415
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Joseph Anthony Pereira , professionally known as Joe Perry, is an American musician best known as the founding member, lead guitarist, backing and occasional lead vocalist of the rock band Aerosmith. Perry also has his own solo band called the Joe Perry Project, and is a member of the all-star band Hollywood Vampires with Alice Cooper and Johnny Depp.
Go to Profile#28405
Henry Lipson
#28416
Overall Influence
1910 - 1991 (81 years)
Henry Lipson CBE FRS was a British physicist. He was Professor of Physics, Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, 1954–77, then professor emeritus. Background Lipson was born in Liverpool, England, into a family of Polish Jewish immigrants. His father was a steelworker at the Shotton works in Flintshire. His mother was very insistent about the importance of education and ensured that he attended Hawarden Grammar School where he won a scholarship and exhibition to study physics at Liverpool University. He graduated with First Class Honours in 1930 and stayed on to do research at Liv...
Go to Profile#28406
Gurdev Khush
#28417
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Gurdev Singh Khush is an Agronomist and Geneticist who, along with mentor Henry Beachell, received the 1996 World Food Prize for his achievements in enlarging and improving the global supply of rice during a time of exponential population growth.
Go to Profile#28407
David Currie, Baron Currie of Marylebone
#28418
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
David Anthony Currie, Baron Currie of Marylebone is a British economist specialising in regulation, and a cross-bench member of the House of Lords. Currie was the inaugural Chairman of the Competition and Markets Authority .
Go to Profile#28408
Kyle Korver
#28419
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Kyle Elliot Korver is an American former professional basketball player who currently serves as the assistant general manager for the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association . He played college basketball for the Creighton Bluejays.
Go to Profile#28409
Sven Kalisch
#28420
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Sven Kalisch is a German scholar, formerly an Islamic theologian. He converted to Islam at age 15, became the first in Germany to hold a chair in Islamic theology , then in 2008 announced that he had come to the conclusion that the Islamic prophet Muhammad probably never existed. Official Islamic groups in Germany have referred to him as an apostate. Germany's Muslim Coordinating Council withdrew from the advisory board of professor Kalisch's centre.
Go to Profile#28410
Gary Sinise
#28421
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Gary Alan Sinise is an American actor of stage and screen, as well as a director, producer, musician, and humanitarian. Among other awards, he has won a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. He has also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and he has been nominated for an Academy Award. Sinise has also received numerous awards and honors for his extensive humanitarian work and involvement with charitable organizations. He is a supporter of various veterans' organizations and founded the Lt. Dan Band , which plays at military b...
Go to Profile#28411
Brian Reffin Smith
#28422
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Brian Reffin Smith is an artist, writer, teacher and musician born in Sudbury, Suffolk, in the United Kingdom, who won the first-ever Prix Ars Electronica, the Golden Nica, in Linz, Austria, 1987. He lives in Berlin, Germany.
Go to Profile#28412
Michael Hinchey
#28423
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Michael Gerard Hinchey is an Irish computer scientist and former Director of the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre , a multi-university research centre headquartered at the University of Limerick, Ireland. He now serves as Head of Department of the Department of Computer Science & Information Systems at University of Limerick.
Go to Profile#28413
Richard Arculus
#28424
Overall Influence
Richard John Arculus is an Australian petrologist and volcanologist, formerly a professor of the School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University. His research interests and areas of expertise include inorganic geochemistry, igneous petrology, metamorphic petrology, volcanology, and chemical oceanography.
Go to Profile#28414
Rodney J. Bartlett
#28425
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Rodney Joseph Bartlett is Graduate Research Professor of Chemistry and Physics, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA. Career He received his B.Sc. degree from Millsaps College in 1966 and Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 1971. Bartlett was an NDEA and IBM predoctoral fellow at the University of Florida under the joint supervision of N. Yngve Öhrn and Per-Olov Löwdin. Bartlett was subsequently an NSF postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University, Denmark with Jan Linderberg and a postdoctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins University with Robert G. Parr. Bartlett became a staff scientist at Battelle's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and then at Battelle Memorial Institute, Ohio.
Go to Profile#28415
Holly Hunter
#28426
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Holly Hunter is an American actress. Hunter won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Ada McGrath in the 1993 drama film The Piano. She earned three additional Academy Award nominations for Broadcast News , The Firm , and Thirteen . She won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for the television films Roe vs. Wade and The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom . She also starred in the TNT drama series Saving Grace .
Go to Profile#28416
Gary LaFree
#28427
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Gary LaFree is a Professor and Chair of the Criminology and Criminal Justice department at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Director of the Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center and the Founding Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism . His main areas of expertise are sociology, criminology, race and crime, cross-national comparative research and political violence and terrorism.
Go to Profile#28417
Milton Dean Slaughter
#28428
Overall Influence
Milton Dean Slaughter is an American theoretical and phenomenological physicist and affiliate professor of physics at Florida International University. Slaughter was a visiting associate professor of physics in the Center for Theoretical Physics, University of Maryland, College Park while on sabbatical from Los Alamos National Laboratory of the University of California from 1984 to 1985. He is also chair emeritus and university research professor of physics emeritus at the University of New Orleans . Prior to joining UNO as chair of the physics department: He was a postdoctoral fellow in the ...
Go to Profile#28418
Irwin Abrams
#28429
Overall Influence
1914 - 2010 (96 years)
Irwin Martin Abrams was a long-time professor of history at Antioch College, a pioneer in the field of peace research, and a global authority on the Nobel Peace Prize. His book, The Nobel Peace Prize and the Laureates, first published in 1988 and subsequently updated and revised, is regarded as the authoritative reference work on the subject. His other books included Words of Peace, which brought together selections from the acceptance speeches of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, and five volumes of Nobel Lectures in Peace.
Go to Profile#28419
Karl Malden
#28430
Overall Influence
1912 - 2009 (97 years)
Karl Malden was an American stage, movie and television actor who first achieved acclaim in the original Broadway productions of Arthur Miller's All My Sons and Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire in 1946-7. Recreating the role of Mitch in the 1951 film of Streetcar, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Go to Profile#28420
Jean Paul Jacob
#28431
Overall Influence
1937 - 2019 (82 years)
Jean Paul Jacob was a Brazilian electronic engineer, researcher and professor. He received his electronic engineering degree from the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, in Brazil, and his MS and PhD degrees in Mathematics and Engineering from the University of California, at Berkeley, in 1966.
Go to Profile#28421
Suzi Quatro
#28432
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Susan Kay Quatro is an American singer, bass guitarist, songwriter and actor. In the 1970s, she scored a string of singles that found success in Europe and Australia, with both "Can the Can" and "Devil Gate Drive" reaching #1 in several countries.
Go to Profile#28422
Park Honan
#28433
Overall Influence
1928 - 2014 (86 years)
Leonard Hobart Park Honan was an American academic and author who spent most of his career in the UK. He wrote widely on the lives of authors and poets and published important biographies of such writers as Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.
Go to Profile#28423
Robert A. Alberty
#28434
Overall Influence
1921 - 2014 (93 years)
Robert Arnold Alberty was an American biophysical chemist, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Alberty earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Nebraska in 1943 and 1944, respectively, then a doctoral degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1947. For his work in the area of biochemical thermodynamics, Alberty was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1965. In 1968 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was dean of the MIT School of Science b...
Go to Profile#28424
Christoph Ingenhoven
#28435
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Christoph Ingenhoven is a German architect. He established his architecture practice ingenhoven associates in Düsseldorf in 1985. His major works include Lufthansa HQ in Frankfurt ,. 1 Bligh in Sydney , Marina One in Singapore , Toranomon Hills Towers in Tokyo and Stuttgart Main Station
Go to Profile#28425
Mohamed Nasheed
#28436
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Mohamed Nasheed GCSK , commonly known as Anni , is a Maldivian politician and activist who served as president of the Maldives from 2008 until his resignation in 2012. A founding member of the Maldivian Democratic Party, he subsequently served as the 19th speaker of the People's Majlis from May 2019 until his resignation in November 2023. He is the first democratically elected president of the Maldives and the only president to resign from office. He is currently a member of The Democrats.
Go to Profile#28426
Alan A. Altshuler
#28437
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Alan Anthony Altshuler is an American educator and government official. Altshuler is the Ruth and Frank Stanton Professor in Urban Policy and Planning, Emeritus, at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Go to Profile#28427
James R. Lupski
#28438
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
James R. Lupski is the Cullen Endowed Chair in Molecular Genetics and Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine. Lupski obtained his BA degree from New York University in 1979 and his PhD and MD degrees in 1984 and 1985, respectively, from the same institution. He later moved for his Residency in Pediatrics to Baylor College of Medicine, where he has stayed since. Lupski is affected by a genetic disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth and has studied the condition as part of his research. He has contributed to the discovery and definition of genomic disorders and se...
Go to Profile#28428
Jens Ludwig
#28439
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Jens Otto Ludwig is a University of Chicago economist whose research focuses on social policy, particularly urban issues such as poverty, crime, and education. He is McCormick Foundation Professor of Social Service Administration, Law, and Public Policy in the School of Social Service Administration and Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago, where he also serves as Co-Director of the university's Urban Education and Crime Labs.
Go to Profile#28429
Norman MacCaig
#28440
Overall Influence
1910 - 1996 (86 years)
Norman Alexander MacCaig DLitt was a Scottish poet and teacher. His poetry, in modern English, is known for its humour, simplicity of language and great popularity. Life Norman Alexander MacCaig was born at 15 East London Street, Edinburgh, to Robert McCaig , a chemist from Dumfriesshire, and Joan née MacLeod , from Scalpay in the Outer Hebrides. He was their fourth child and only son. He attended the Royal High School and in 1928 went to the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1932 with a degree in classics. He divided his time, for the rest of his life, between his native city and Assyn...
Go to Profile#28430
Thomas Bangalter
#28441
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Thomas Bangalter is a French musician, record producer, singer, songwriter, DJ and composer. He is best known as one half of the former French house music duo Daft Punk, alongside Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. He has recorded and released music as a member of the trio Stardust, the duo Together, as well as a solo artist. Bangalter's work has influenced a wide range of artists in various genres.
Go to Profile#28431
Richard Bonnie
#28442
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Richard J. Bonnie is the Harrison Foundation Professor of Law and Medicine, Professor of Public Policy, Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Science, and Director of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy at the University of Virginia and the University of Virginia School of Law. He teaches and writes about criminal law, bioethics, and public policies relating to mental health, substance abuse, aging and public health.
Go to Profile#28432
Charlton W. Tebeau
#28443
Overall Influence
1904 - 2000 (96 years)
Charlton W. Tebeau was the former chairperson of the department of history and a professor of history at the University of Miami and an American historian and author who specialized in the history of Florida.
Go to Profile#28433
Emile Heskey
#28444
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Emile William Ivanhoe Heskey is an English former professional footballer who currently serves as head of football development of Leicester City Women. Playing as a striker, he made more than 500 appearances in the Football League and Premier League over an 18-year career, and represented England in international football. He also had a spell in Australia, playing for the A-League club Newcastle Jets.
Go to Profile#28434
Martin Zirnbauer
#28445
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Martin R. Zirnbauer is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Cologne. Zirnbauer studied at the Technical University of Munich and Oxford University, where he earned his PhD. In 1987 he was appointed at age 29 to Cologne. In 1996 he acquired his professorial chair. Among his foreign research sabbaticals, he visited the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. His research specialty is the mathematical physics of mesoscopic systems.
Go to Profile#28435
David O. Sears
#28446
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
David O’Keefe Sears is an American psychologist who specializes in political psychology. He is a distinguished professor of psychology and political science at the University of California, Los Angeles where he has been teaching since 1961. He served as dean of social sciences at UCLA between 1983 and 1992. Best known for his theory of symbolic racism, Sears has published many articles and books about the political and psychological origins of race relations in America, as well as on political socialization and life cycle effects on attitudes, the role of self-interest in attitudes, and multiculturalism.
Go to Profile#28436
Keith Morris
#28447
Overall Influence
1938 - 2005 (67 years)
Keith Morris was an English rock photographer. Morris was responsible for several iconic images of Marc Bolan. He photographed musical figures including Led Zeppelin, Van der Graaf Generator, Nick Drake, Janis Joplin, Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson, The Albion Band, B. B. King, Jimi Hendrix, John Cale, Fred Astaire and album covers such as Pictures at an Exhibition by ELP.
Go to Profile#28437
Warren Sapp
#28448
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Warren Carlos Sapp is an American former football defensive tackle who played in the National Football League for 13 seasons, primarily with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Sapp played college football at the University of Miami, where he won the Lombardi Award, Bronko Nagurski Trophy, and Bill Willis Trophy as a junior, and was selected by the Buccaneers in the first round of 1995 NFL Draft. He spent nine seasons with the Buccaneers and was a member of the Oakland Raiders in his last four seasons. Following Sapp's NFL career, he was an analyst on NFL Network until 2015.
Go to Profile#28438
Torben Iversen
#28449
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Torben Iversen is a Danish political economist, currently Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. In 2016, he was named BP Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics.
Go to Profile#28439
James A. D. W. Anderson
#28450
Overall Influence
James Arthur Dean Wallace Anderson, known as James Anderson, is a retired member of academic staff in the School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading, England, where he used to teach compilers, algorithms, fundamentals of computer science and computer algebra, programming and computer graphics.
Go to Profile#28440
Anne Glover
#28451
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Dame Lesley Anne Glover is a Scottish biologist and academic. She was Professor of molecular biology and cell biology at the University of Aberdeen before being named Vice Principal for External Affairs and Dean for Europe. She served as Chief Scientific Adviser to the President of the European Commission from 2012 to 2014. In 2018 she joined the Principal's senior advisory team at the University of Strathclyde.
Go to Profile#28441
Amol Dighe
#28452
Overall Influence
Amol Dighe is a Professor of Physics in Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India. He studied in Saraswati Secondary School, Thane, Maharashtra up to 10th grade and attended D. G. Ruparel College for the next 2 years. He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for science and technology, the highest science award in India, for the year 2013 in physical science category. His main research interest is in the area of high energy physics with focus on particles known as neutrinos, their nature and the role they play in astrophysics and cosmology. Dighe completed his BTech in En...
Go to Profile#28442
Mats Sundin
#28453
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Mats Johan Sundin is a Swedish former professional ice hockey player who played the majority of his career in the National Hockey League , retiring in 2009. Originally drafted first overall in 1989, Sundin played his first four seasons in the NHL with the Quebec Nordiques. He was then traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1994, where he played the majority of his career, serving 11 seasons as team captain. At the end of the 2007–08 season, Sundin was the longest-serving non-North American-born captain in NHL history. Sundin last played for the Vancouver Canucks in the 2008–09 season before announcing his retirement on 30 September 2009.
Go to Profile#28443
Lee Sallows
#28454
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Lee Cecil Fletcher Sallows is a British electronics engineer known for his contributions to recreational mathematics. He is particularly noted as the inventor of golygons, self-enumerating sentences, and geomagic squares.
Go to Profile#28444
Ruth Bishop
#28455
Overall Influence
1933 - 2022 (89 years)
Ruth Frances Bishop was an Australian virologist, who was a leading member of the team that discovered the human rotavirus. Biography Bishop was born in Dandenong, Victoria, and grew up in Frankston where her father was principal of Frankston High School.
Go to Profile#28445
Gérard Roland
#28456
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Gérard Roland is a Belgian economist, and a professor of economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley since 2001. He graduated from the Free University of Brussels in 1988 where he taught from 1991 to 2001.
Go to Profile#28446
Marvin A. Sweeney
#28457
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Marvin Alan Sweeney is Professor of Hebrew Bible at Claremont School of Theology . Dr. Sweeney was trained under the tutelage of Rolf P. Knierim at Claremont Graduate University. He was a Yad ha-Nadiv/Barecha Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he worked with Moshe Greenberg ; a Lilly Theological Research Grant Recipient ; and a Fellow of the Summer Institute for Modern Israel Studies, sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and Brandeis University . Sweeney previously taught in the Religious Studies Department and Judaic Studie...
Go to Profile#28447
Yasuhiro Matsuda
#28458
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Yasuhiro Matsuda is a Japanese professor of international politics at the University of Tokyo. Biography Matsuda received his Ph.D. in law from Graduate School of Law at Keio University in Tokyo. He spent sixteen years in the National Institute for Defense Studies , Japan Defense Agency , as an assistant and a senior research fellow. He moved to the Institute of Oriental Culture of the University of Tokyo in 2008. He is specializing in political and diplomatic history of Asia, politics and foreign relations in the PRC and Taiwan, the Cross-Strait Relations, and Japan's foreign and security policies.
Go to Profile#28448
Stig Hagström
#28459
Overall Influence
1932 - 2011 (79 years)
Stig B. Hagström was a Professor Emeritus of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Career He was trained at Uppsala University under the Nobel Laureate Kai Siegbahn. He received his B.Sc. in 1957, his M.Sc. in 1958, his licentiate in 1961 and his Ph.D. in 1964. After a period in 1964–1966 as a researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, he was appointed university lecturer and docent at Chalmers University of Technology in 1966. In 1969 he was appointed as a chaired full professor in Physics and vice chancellor at Linköping Ins...
Go to Profile#28449
Irina Beletskaya
#28460
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Irina Petrovna Beletskaya is a Soviet and Russian professor of chemistry at Moscow State University. She specializes in organometallic chemistry and its application to problems in organic chemistry. She is best known for her studies on aromatic reaction mechanisms, as well as work on carbanion acidity and reactivity. She developed some of the first methods for carbon-carbon bond formation using palladium or nickel catalysts, and extended these reactions to work in aqueous media. She also helped to open up the chemistry of organolanthanides.
Go to Profile#28450
Patrick S. Moore
#28461
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Patrick S. Moore is an Irish and American virologist and epidemiologist who co-discovered together with his wife, Yuan Chang, two different human viruses causing the AIDS-related cancer Kaposi's sarcoma and the skin cancer Merkel cell carcinoma. The couple met while in medical school together and were married in 1989 while they pursued fellowships at different universities.
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