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
#28451
Rudolf G. Wagner
#28462
Overall Influence
1941 - 2019 (78 years)
Rudolf G. Wagner was a German sinologist. He was Senior Professor at the Department of Chinese Studies at the Heidelberg University and Co-Director of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows".
Go to Profile#28452
Cris Carter
#28463
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Graduel Christopher Darwin Carter is an American former professional football wide receiver who played in the National Football League for the Philadelphia Eagles , the Minnesota Vikings and the Miami Dolphins . He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wide receivers of all time.
Go to Profile#28453
Rush Rehm
#28464
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Rush Rehm is professor of drama and classics at Stanford University in California, in the United States. He also works professionally as an actor and director. He has published many works on classical theatre. Rehm is the artistic director of Stanford Repertory Theater , a professional theater company that presents a dramatic festival based on a major playwright each summer. SRT's 2016 summer festival, Theater Takes a Stand, celebrates the struggle for workers' rights. A political activist, Rehm has been involved in Central American and Cuban solidarity, supporting East Timorese resistance to ...
Go to Profile#28454
James A. Thurber
#28465
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
James Allen Thurber is university distinguished professor of government and founder and former director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies and affiliate distinguished professor of public administration and policy at American University, Washington, D.C. He is author or editor of numerous books and more than 90 articles and chapters on Congress, the U.S. presidency, interest groups and lobbying, and campaigns and elections.
Go to Profile#28455
Caster Semenya
#28466
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
Mokgadi Caster Semenya OIB is a South African middle-distance runner and winner of two Olympic gold medals and three World Championships in the women's 800 metres. She first won gold at the World Championships in 2009 and went on to win at the 2016 Olympics and the 2017 World Championships, where she also won a bronze medal in the 1500 metres. After the doping disqualification of Mariya Savinova, she was also awarded gold medals for the 2011 World Championships and the 2012 Olympics.
Go to Profile#28456
Ernesto Damiani
#28467
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Ernesto Damiani is a professor of computer science at the University of Milan, where he leads the Architectures Research Lab. He is the Senior Director of the Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems Institute at Khalifa University, in the UAE. He holds visiting positions at Tokyo Denki University, Université de Bourgogne. Damiani received an honorary doctorate from Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon, France . His research spans security, Big Data and knowledge processing, where he has published over 400 peer-reviewed articles and books. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a Distinguished Scientist of ACM.
Go to Profile#28457
George Kateb
#28468
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
George Kateb is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics, Emeritus, at Princeton University. A staunch individualist, he has written scholarly works on Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Stuart Mill, and Hannah Arendt and on the ethical dimensions of the individual in a constitutional democracy. More recently he has turned his attention to what he sees as the increasing erosion of individual liberty wrought by the Bush administration and the poisonous influence of religious, ethnic and statist group identity on morality.
Go to Profile#28458
João Biehl
#28469
Overall Influence
João Guilherme Biehl is a Brazilian anthropologist who is the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, where he is also the Co-Director of the Program of Global Health and Health Policy and where he holds an Old Dominion Professorship at the Council of Humanities, as well as being a Visitor at the School of Social Sciences of the Institute for Advanced Study. He specializes in medical anthropology, and his interests include social studies of science and religion, psychological anthropology, globalization and development, global health, ethnographic methods, critical theory, and Brazilian and Latin American societies.
Go to Profile#28459
Stephen Z. D. Cheng
#28470
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Stephen Z. D. Cheng is a Chinese-American polymer scientist and chemical engineer. Cheng is the R.C.Musson & Trustees Professor of Polymer Science, and was the former Dean of the College of Polymer Science & Polymer Engineering at the University of Akron.
Go to Profile#28460
Cassia Spohn
#28471
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#28461
C. Eric Lincoln
#28472
Overall Influence
1924 - 2000 (76 years)
Charles Eric Lincoln was an American scholar. He was the author of several books, including sociological works such as The Black Church Since Frazier and Race, Religion and the Continuing American Dilemma , as well as fiction and poetry.
Go to Profile#28462
Chuck Bednarik
#28473
Overall Influence
1925 - 2015 (90 years)
Charles Philip Bednarik , nicknamed "Concrete Charlie", was an American professional football player in the National Football League . He was a first round draft selection by the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1949 NFL Draft. Bednarik is ranked one of the hardest hitting tacklers in NFL history and was one of the league's last two-way players. Bednarik's November 20, 1960, tackle of New York Giants running back Frank Gifford in an Eagles game against the Giants at Yankee Stadium, known simply as "The Hit", is widely considered the hardest tackle and one of the most notable plays in NFL history.
Go to Profile#28463
Robyn
#28474
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Robin Miriam Carlsson , known as Robyn , is a Swedish pop singer, songwriter, record producer, and DJ. Her 1995 debut album Robyn Is Here produced two Billboard Hot 100 top 10 singles: "Do You Know " and "Show Me Love". Her second and third albums, My Truth and Don't Stop the Music , were released in Sweden.
Go to Profile#28464
Anson D. Shupe
#28475
Overall Influence
1948 - 2015 (67 years)
Anson D. Shupe, Jr. was an American sociologist noted for his studies of religious groups and their countermovements, family violence and clergy misconduct. Work Shupe was a professor of sociology at the Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne campus at Fort Wayne, Indiana. He completed his doctorate in political sociology at Indiana University in 1975 and held office in various professional associations, including the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Association for the Sociology of Religion, and the Association for the Scientific Study of Religion. Shupe often collaborated with other scholars, notably David G.
Go to Profile#28465
Barbara Creed
#28476
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Barbara Creed is a professor of cinema studies in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of six books on gender, feminist film theory, and the horror genre. Creed is a graduate of Monash and La Trobe universities where she completed doctoral research using the framework of psychoanalysis and feminist theory to examine horror films. She is known for her cultural criticism.
Go to Profile#28466
José Casanova
#28477
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
José Casanova is a sociologist of religion whose research focuses on globalization, religions, and secularization. He is a professor at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from the Seminario Metropolitano, a Master of Arts degree from the University of Innsbruck in theology, and Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in sociology from the New School for Social Research. During 2017 he was the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North at the US Library of Congress' John W.
Go to Profile#28467
Catherine Tate
#28478
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Catherine Jane Ford , known professionally as Catherine Tate, is an English actress, comedian and writer. She has won numerous awards for her work on the BBC sketch comedy series The Catherine Tate Show , as well as being nominated for an International Emmy Award and seven BAFTAs. Tate played Donna Noble in the 2006 Christmas special of Doctor Who, and later reprised her role for the fourth series in 2008, and the 60th anniversary episodes in 2023.
Go to Profile#28468
Dominique Lambert
#28479
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Dominique baron Lambert is a Belgian philosopher of science, ethicist, and historian of science. Education and career At the Université catholique de Louvain , Lambert graduated with an undergraduate degree in theoretical physics in 1984, a master's degree in philosophy in 1986. a Ph.D. in physics in 1988, and a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1996. He became a full professor at the Université de Namur and has held several visiting professorships. He is also a professor of logic and philosophy of nature at the Diocesan Seminary of Namur.
Go to Profile#28469
Simon Hornblower
#28480
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Simon Hornblower, FBA is an English classicist and academic. He was Professor of Classics and Ancient History in the University of Oxford and, before retiring, was most recently a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#28470
Lamar Alexander
#28481
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Andrew Lamar Alexander Jr. is an American politician and attorney who served as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 2003 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he also was the 45th governor of Tennessee from 1979 to 1987 and the 5th United States Secretary of Education from 1991 to 1993, where he helped the implementation of Education 2000.
Go to Profile#28471
Nellie Y. McKay
#28482
Overall Influence
1930 - 2006 (76 years)
Nellie Yvonne McKay was an American academic and author who was the Evjue-Bascom Professor of American and African-American Literature at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she also taught in English and women's studies, and is best known as the co-editor of the Norton Anthology of African-American Literature.
Go to Profile#28472
Martin L. Kersten
#28483
Overall Influence
1953 - 2022 (69 years)
Martin L. Kersten was a computer scientist with research focus on database architectures, query optimization and their use in scientific databases. He was an architect of the MonetDB system, an open-source column store for data warehouses, online analytical processing and geographic information systems . He has been founder of several successful spin-offs of the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica .
Go to Profile#28473
H. E. Carter
#28484
Overall Influence
1910 - 2007 (97 years)
Herbert Edmund Carter was an American biochemist and educator. He grew up in central Indiana and received his bachelor's degree from DePauw University. He received a Ph.D. in 1934 in organic chemistry from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#28474
Gabriel Aeppli
#28485
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Gabriel Aeppli, PhD FRS is a Swiss-American electrical engineer, co-founder of the London Centre for Nanotechnology and professor of physics at ETH Zürich and EPF Lausanne, and head of the Synchrotron and Nanotechnology department of the Paul Scherrer Institute, also in Switzerland.
Go to Profile#28475
Lars Bildsten
#28486
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Lars Bildsten is an American astrophysicist, best known for his work on the physics of white dwarfs and their explosions as Type Ia supernovae. He is the sixth director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a professor in the UCSB Physics Department.
Go to Profile#28476
William Seager
#28487
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
William Edward Seager is a Canadian philosopher. Now retired, he spent his career as a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. His academic specialties lie in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science.
Go to Profile#28477
Carl W. Helstrom
#28488
Overall Influence
1925 - 2013 (88 years)
Carl W. Helstrom was one of the earliest pioneers in the field of quantum information theory. He is well known in this field for discovering what is now known as the Helstrom measurement, the quantum measurement with minimum error probability for distinguishing one quantum state from another. He has written a textbook which has been widely read by experts in quantum information theory. He authored several other textbooks on signal detection and estimation theory.
Go to Profile#28478
Ernests Gulbis
#28489
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Ernests Gulbis is a Latvian professional tennis player. In 2008, Gulbis won his first ATP Tour doubles title at the U.S. Men's Clay Court Championships, teaming with Rainer Schüttler, and in 2010, he won his first ATP Tour singles title in the Delray Beach, defeating Ivo Karlović in the final. In total, Gulbis has six ATP titles to his name. His best performance at a Grand Slam is reaching the semifinals of the 2014 French Open. He had previously reached the quarterfinals of the 2008 French Open. Gulbis' career-high singles ranking is world No. 10, making him the only Latvian tennis player ever to be ranked inside the top 10 in ATP Singles Ranking.
Go to Profile#28479
John Sayles
#28490
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
John Thomas Sayles is an American independent film director, screenwriter, editor, actor, and novelist. He is known for writing and directing the films The Brother from Another Planet , Matewan , Eight Men Out , Passion Fish , The Secret of Roan Inish , Lone Star , and Men with Guns .
Go to Profile#28480
Jake Paul
#28491
Overall Influence
1997 - Present (29 years)
Jake Joseph Paul is an American professional boxer and YouTuber. He initially rose to fame on Vine, before playing the role of Dirk Mann on the Disney Channel series Bizaardvark for two seasons. Paul's boxing career began in August 2018 when he defeated British YouTuber Deji Olatunji in an amateur contest via TKO in the fifth round. Turning professional in January 2020, Paul beat the YouTuber AnEsonGib, via TKO in the first round. Between 2020 and 2022, Paul won fights against retired basketballer Nate Robinson by second round KO, retired mixed martial artists Ben Askren, Tyron Woodley, and Anderson Silva by 1st-round TKO, twice by SD and 6th-round KO, and UD, respectively.
Go to Profile#28481
Michael A. Peel
#28492
Overall Influence
Michael A. Peel is a human resources professional and a fellow of The National Academy of Human Resources. He served as the vice-president of human resources and administration for Yale University until his retirement in 2017. Prior to his position a Yale, he served 17 years at General Mills.
Go to Profile#28482
Florian Pop
#28493
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Florian Pop is a Romanian mathematician, a professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. Pop received his Ph.D. in 1987 and his habilitation in 1991, both from the University of Heidelberg. He has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and a professor at the University of Bonn prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania faculty.
Go to Profile#28483
Mike Watt
#28494
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Michael David Watt is an American bassist, vocalist and songwriter. He co-founded and played bass guitar for the rock bands Minutemen , Dos , and Firehose . He began a solo career with the 1994 album Ball-Hog or Tugboat?, he has since released three additional solo albums, most recently in 2010 with Hyphenated-man. He is also the frontman for the supergroup Big Walnuts Yonder , a member of the art rock group Banyan and is involved with several other musical projects. From 2003 until 2013, he was the bass guitarist for The Stooges.
Go to Profile#28484
John Thompson
#28495
Overall Influence
1941 - 2020 (79 years)
John Robert Thompson Jr. was an American college basketball coach for the Georgetown Hoyas men's team. He became the first African-American head coach to win a major collegiate championship in basketball when he led the Hoyas to the NCAA Division I national championship in 1984. Thompson was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#28485
Yadolah Dodge
#28496
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Yadolah Dodge is an Iranian and Swiss statistician. His major contributions are in the theory of operational research, design of experiments, simulation and regression. Early life He spent his early years in Abadan, Iran. He went then to the Gundeshapur or Jundi Shapour University and obtained his Post Licentiate in Engineering in Agriculture in 1966 with distinction. He got his PhD at the Oregon State University in 1974.
Go to Profile#28486
Alexander Klibanov
#28497
Overall Influence
Alexander L. Klibanov is associate professor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine and Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia. He specializes in the study of ultrasound and medical imaging techniques.
Go to Profile#28487
Henry Franken
#28498
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Hendrik Marinus Franken is a retired Dutch engineer, enterprise architect and co-founder and former managing director of BiZZdesign, known for his work in the field of systems and control engineering, and business process management.
Go to Profile#28488
Marilyn Nelson
#28499
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Marilyn Nelson is an American poet, translator, biographer, and children's book author. She is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, and the former poet laureate of Connecticut. She is a winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, and the Frost Medal. From 1978 to 1994 she published under the name Marilyn Nelson Waniek. She is the author or translator of over twenty books and five chapbooks of poetry for adults and children. While most of her work deals with historical subjects, in 2014 she published a memoir, named one of NPR's Be...
Go to Profile#28489
Robert Greenstein
#28500
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Robert Greenstein is founder and former president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities , a Washington, D.C. think tank that focuses on federal and state fiscal policy and public programs that affect low and moderate-income families and individuals. For four decades he was considered the capitol's de facto lobbyist for the poor, where he "won countless fights that cumulatively directed hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars to programs for low-income people."
Go to Profile#28490
Robert Bechtle
#28501
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
Robert Alan Bechtle was an American painter, printmaker, and educator. He lived nearly all his life in the San Francisco Bay Area and whose art was centered on scenes from everyday local life. His paintings are in a Photorealist style and often depict automobiles.
Go to Profile#28491
Emilio Del Giudice
#28502
Overall Influence
1940 - 2014 (74 years)
Emilio Del Giudice was an Italian theoretical physicist who worked in the field of condensed matter. Pioneer of string theory in the early 1970s, later on he became better known for his work with Giuliano Preparata at the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics ;
Go to Profile#28492
CeeLo Green
#28503
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Thomas DeCarlo Callaway-Burton , known professionally as CeeLo Green , is an American singer, rapper, and record producer. He is known for his soul-infused delivery in hip hop and R&B, displayed in his signature song "Crazy" and his solo single "Fuck You".
Go to Profile#28493
David Andrich
#28504
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
David Andrich is an Australian academic and assessment specialist. He has made substantial contributions to quantitative social science including seminal work on the Polytomous Rasch model for measurement, which is used in the social sciences, in health and other areas.
Go to Profile#28494
Ulrike Guérot
#28505
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Ulrike Beate Guérot is a Berlin-based German political thinker and Founder and Director of the European Democracy Lab . In April 2016, the University for Continuing Education Krems appointed Ulrike Guérot as Professor for European Policy and the Study of Democracy. She was the head of the Department for European Policy and the Study of Democracy. From 2021 until March 2023, she held the professorship for European Politics at the University of Bonn.
Go to Profile#28495
Ralph D. Stacey
#28506
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Ralph Douglas Stacey was a British organizational theorist and Professor of Management at Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, in the UK and one of the pioneers of enquiring into the implications of the natural sciences of complexity for understanding human organisations and their management. He is best known for his writings on the theory of organisations as complex responsive processes of relating.
Go to Profile#28496
Manuel Berberian
#28507
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Manuel Berberian is an Iranian-Armenian earth scientist. He was born on the 27th of October, 1945 into an immigrant Armenian family in Tehran. He specializes in earthquake seismology, active faulting and folding, active tectonics, continental tectonics, historical seismicity, archaeoseismicity, earthquake hazard minimization, geological mapping, and environmental science and engineering.
Go to Profile#28497
Hein Wellens
#28508
Overall Influence
1935 - 2020 (85 years)
Henrick Joan Joost Wellens, M.D., was a Dutch cardiologist who is considered one of the founding fathers of clinical cardiac electrophysiology - a discipline which enables patients with cardiac arrhythmias to have catheter electrode mapping and ablation.
Go to Profile#28498
Kenneth Harris
#28509
Overall Influence
1919 - 2005 (86 years)
David Kenneth Harris, CBE was a British journalist who worked for The Observer. He was born in South Wales and educated at Trowbridge grammar school, Wiltshire and Wadham College, Oxford. His undergraduate life was interrupted by the Second World War, where he served in the Royal Artillery. In 1947 he took part in the first postwar Oxford Union debating tour of the United States and wrote a book about the experience, Travelling Tongues . He graduated in 1948.
Go to Profile#28499
J. Marshall Unger
#28510
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
James Marshall Unger is emeritus professor of Japanese at the Ohio State University. He specializes in historical linguistics and the writing systems of East Asia, but he has also published on Japanese mathematics of the Edo period.
Go to Profile#28500
Herbert Koch
#28511
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Herbert Koch is a German mathematician active in the field of partial differential equations. He occupies the position of a professor at the University of Bonn. Together with Daniel Tataru, he is known for his work on the well-posedness of the Navier–Stokes equations, one of their results being known as Koch–Tataru solution.
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