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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people
#28651
Yiannis Gabriel
#28662
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Yiannis Gabriel is a Greek-British sociologist, best known for his contributions to the academic field of organisational storytelling. Gabriel earned his Ph.D. in sociology in 1981 from UC Berkeley on a dissertation titled Freud and Society. Since 1989, he is affiliated with the University of Bath School of Management, where he since 2009 holds a chair in organisational theory. He has previously held professorships in organisational theory at Imperial College London and Royal Holloway, University of London.
Go to Profile#28652
Arthur I. Miller
#28663
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Arthur I. Miller is Emeritus Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at University College London. He took a PhD in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1991 to 2005 he was Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at University College London . At UCL, Professor Miller helped restructure an academic unit combining history and philosophy of science, sociology of science, and science communication to create UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies, renamed in 1994. He was instrumental in developing the UK's first undergraduate single honours BSc degree ...
Go to Profile#28653
Omid Tabibzadeh
#28664
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Omid Tabibzadeh Ghamsari is an Iranian linguist and Professor of Linguistics at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies. He is a winner of Farabi International Award and is known for his research on Persian phonology, Persian grammar, Dependency grammar and Persian metres. Tabibzadeh received his BA in English from Shahid Bahonar University and his MA and PhD in linguistics from University of Tehran. Tabibzadeh previously taught at the Bu-Ali Sina University. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal Language and Linguistics.
Go to Profile#28654
Robert Arrington
#28665
Overall Influence
1938 - 2015 (77 years)
Robert L. Arrington was an American philosopher, specialising in moral philosophy, the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the philosophy of psychology. Arrington was born in Bainbridge, Georgia, and educated at Vanderbilt University and Tulane University .
Go to Profile#28655
Samih Farsoun
#28666
Overall Influence
1937 - 2005 (68 years)
Samih K. Farsoun was a professor emeritus of sociology at American University, where he taught for thirty years until his retirement in 2003. He graduated from Hamilton College in New York. He received a master's degree in 1961 and a PhD in 1971, both in sociology from the University of Connecticut. He died June 9 of a heart attack while on a walk with his wife in New Buffalo, Michigan. He was a resident of Florida and Washington, D.C. During his career at AU, Farsoun served as chairman of the Department of Sociology for eleven years, chairman and member of numerous university-wide committees.
Go to Profile#28656
Michael Rowan-Robinson
#28667
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Michael Rowan-Robinson is an astronomer, astrophysicist and Professor of Astrophysics at Imperial College London. He previously served as head of the astrophysics group until May 2007 and from 1981 to 1982, and as Gresham Professor of Astronomy.
Go to Profile#28657
Lindley Darden
#28668
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Lindley Darden is a contemporary philosopher of science, with a research focus on the philosophy of biology. Biography She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1974 and B.A. in 1968 from Rhodes College, and is currently Distinguished Scholar Teacher at the University of Maryland. Between 2001 and 2003, she was the president of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology.
Go to Profile#28658
Kevin Martin
#28669
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Kevin Jeffrey Martin is a lobbyist for Facebook and former member and Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission , an independent agency of the United States government. He was nominated to be a commissioner by President George W. Bush on April 30, 2001, and was confirmed on May 25, 2001. On March 16, 2005, President Bush designated him as FCC chairman, to replace Michael K. Powell. President Bush renominated Martin to a new five-year term on the Commission on April 25, 2006, and he was reconfirmed by the U.S. Senate on November 17, 2006. In January 2009, Martin announced that he ...
Go to Profile#28659
Vladimir Khavinson
#28670
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Vladimir Khavinson - is a professor, Treasurer of the European region of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics; Main gerontologist of the Health Committee of the Government of Saint Petersburg, Russia; Director of the Saint Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology; Vice-president of Gerontological Society of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Head of the Chair of Gerontology and Geriatrics of the North-Western State Medical University, St-Petersburg; Colonel of medical service , retired.
Go to Profile#28660
Charles E. Schaefer
#28671
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Charles E. Schaefer was an American psychologist considered by many to be the "Father of Play Therapy" who has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show and Good Morning America. He was Professor of Psychology and was Director of both the Center for Psychological Services and the Crying Baby Clinic at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, New Jersey.
Go to Profile#28661
Elizabeth Hight
#28672
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Elizabeth Ann Hight is a retired United States Navy rear admiral who served as the vice director of the Defense Information Systems Agency . She assumed this post in December 2007. In 2008, she was nominated for appointment to the grade of vice admiral and assignment as director, Defense Information Systems Agency; commander, Joint Task Force – Global Network Operations; and deputy commander, U.S. Strategic Command Global Network Operations and Defense, Arlington, Virginia. Her nomination was rejected by the Senate due to a perceived conflict of interest with her husband, retired Air Force Br...
Go to Profile#28662
Aleš Debeljak
#28673
Overall Influence
1961 - 2016 (55 years)
Aleš Debeljak was a Slovenian cultural critic, poet, and essayist. Biography Debeljak was born in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, then part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to a family with rural origins; he was the first of the family to attend university. In his youth he was the junior Slovenian champion in judo, and got a silver medal at the Yugoslav championship. He stopped his sport career after an injury.
Go to Profile#28663
René Cortázar
#28674
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
René Cortázar is a Chilean economist, researcher, academic, and politician of the Christian Democratic Party . He was Minister of State for Presidents Patricio Aylwin and Michelle Bachelet. Biography He is the second of the children of the marriage of the agricultural engineers and Carmen Sanz Briso-Montiano. His father worked for many years at La Platina, a property of the University of Chile, where he carried out agricultural research. He was awarded the National Prize for Applied and Technological Sciences in 1994.
Go to Profile#28664
Fredrick J. Stare
#28675
Overall Influence
1911 - 2002 (91 years)
Fredrick John Stare was an American nutritionist regarded as one of the country's most influential teachers of nutrition. Life and career Stare was born in Columbus, Wisconsin, and educated in chemistry and medicine at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Chicago. In the aftermath of the Second World War he worked in the Netherlands, devising a dietary regime to cope with the malnutrition facing the Dutch population.
Go to Profile#28665
Hans-Jürgen Appelrath
#28676
Overall Influence
1952 - 2016 (64 years)
Hans-Jürgen Appelrath was a professor of computer science and information technology at the University of Oldenburg from 1987. Early career After graduating from high school in Duisburg in June 1970, Appelrath studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Bonn from 1970 to 1972. He then enrolled in the diploma course in computer science with minor in mathematics at the University of Dortmund, which he successfully completed in March 1977. From 1977 to 1983, he was a research associate of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Dortmund in various industrial collaboration projects.
Go to Profile#28666
Ilsetraut Hadot
#28677
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Ilsetraut Hadot in Berlin, is a philosopher and historian of philosophy who specialised in Stoicism, Neoplatonism and more generally in Ancient Philosophy. Biography In 1978, Hadot won the Victor Cousin prize of the Académie française for her work The problem of Alexandrian Neoplatonism. Hierocles and Simplicius. In 2015, she received the François-Millepierres prize by the Académie for her work Seneca. Spiritual Direction and Practice of Philosophy.
Go to Profile#28667
Wu Teh Yao
#28678
Overall Influence
1915 - 1994 (79 years)
Wu Teh Yao was a Chinese political scientist. He was an educator and a specialist in Confucianism and political science. Education Wu completed his senior school certificate at the Anglo-Chinese School in Penang at the age of seventeen. He was admitted to the Chung Ling High School, a well-known bilingual school teaching in both Chinese and English, despite not knowing any Chinese, after an interview with the principal David Chen. After his graduation from Chung Ling in 1936, he was admitted to Nanking University for a course of Bachelor of Arts under Chen's recommendation. He later obtained...
Go to Profile#28668
Ben Delo
#28679
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Ben Delo is a British entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and former executive of BitMEX. In 2022, Delo pleaded guilty to a United States Bank Secrecy Act violation and received a 30-month probation sentence.
Go to Profile#28669
William MacDonald
#28680
Overall Influence
1917 - 2007 (90 years)
William MacDonald was President of Emmaus Bible College, teacher, Plymouth Brethren theologian and a prolific author of over 84 published books. Biography Early life and education William MacDonald was born on January 7, 1917, in Leominster, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#28670
Martha Kneale
#28681
Overall Influence
1909 - 2001 (92 years)
Martha Kneale was a British philosopher. Education and career Martha Hurst was born in Skipton, Yorkshire. She obtained her B.A. degree from Somerville College, Oxford in 1933. Martha was a tutor and Fellow in philosophy at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1936 to 1966.
Go to Profile#28671
Sean D. Murphy
#28682
Overall Influence
Sean David Murphy is an American international law scholar currently serving as the Manatt/Ahn Professor of International Law at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., where he has been teaching since 1998. His primary areas of scholarly research are public international law, foreign affairs and the Constitution of the United States, international organizations, international dispute settlement, and law of the sea. Murphy served for ten years on the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law and is a former president of the American Society of International Law.
Go to Profile#28672
George Ranalli
#28683
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
George Joseph Ranalli is an American modernist architect, scholar, curator, and fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He is based in New York City. Early life and education A native of The Bronx, New York, of Italian American descent, he was inspired to become an architect at the age of about 13 when he saw the then-unfinished Guggenheim Museum, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Ranalli attended Mount Saint Michael Academy high school in New York City and graduated in 1964. From 1967 to 1968, he attended New York Institute of Technology, and Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, where he received a Bachelor of Architecture in 1972.
Go to Profile#28673
Lucien Carr
#28684
Overall Influence
1925 - 2005 (80 years)
Lucien Carr was a key member of the original New York City circle of the Beat Generation in the 1940s and also a convicted manslaughterer. He later worked for many years as an editor for United Press International.
Go to Profile#28674
Edward Baugh
#28685
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Edward Alston Cecil Baugh is a Jamaican poet and scholar, recognised as an authority on the work of Derek Walcott, whose Selected Poems Baugh edited, having in 1978 authored the first book-length study of the Nobel-winning poet's work, Derek Walcott: Memory as Vision.
Go to Profile#28675
Mikko Kaasalainen
#28686
Overall Influence
1965 - 2020 (55 years)
Mikko K.J. Kaasalainen was a Finnish applied mathematician and mathematical physicist. He was professor of mathematics at the department of mathematics at Tampere University of Technology. Kaasalainen mostly worked on inverse problems and their applications especially in astrophysics, as well as on dynamical systems.
Go to Profile#28676
Jan Anderson
#28687
Overall Influence
1932 - 2015 (83 years)
Joan Mary "Jan" Anderson FAA FRS was a New Zealand scientist who worked in Canberra, Australia, distinguished by her investigation of photosynthesis. Life Joan Mary Anderson was born in 1932 in Queenstown, New Zealand. Her father Dr Bill Anderson was a country doctor. Her mother died, after a long illness, when Anderson was eight. Much to the disappointment of her father, who had wanted her to become a doctor, she studied organic chemistry at the University of Otago. At the time, degrees were issued by the University of New Zealand, and she obtained a BSc and MSc with first class honours.
Go to Profile#28677
Vasek Pospisil
#28688
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (36 years)
Vasek Pospisil is a Canadian professional tennis player. Pospisil has a career-high world singles ranking of No. 25, and No. 4 in doubles. Along with partner Jack Sock, he won the 2014 Wimbledon Championships and the 2015 Indian Wells Masters men's doubles titles. He also reached the quarterfinals in singles at the 2015 Wimbledon Championships.
Go to Profile#28678
Joseph Hilbe
#28689
Overall Influence
1944 - 2017 (73 years)
Joseph Michael Hilbe was an American statistician and philosopher, founding President of the International Astrostatistics Association and one of the most prolific authors of books on statistical modeling in the early twenty-first century. Hilbe was an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association as well as an elected member of the International Statistical Institute , for which he founded the ISI astrostatistics committee in 2009. Hilbe was also a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and Full Member of the American Astronomical Society.
Go to Profile#28679
Govind P. Agrawal
#28690
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Govind P. Agrawal is an Indian American physicist and a fellow of Optica, Life Fellow of the IEEE, and Distinguished Fellow of the Optical Society of India. He is the recipient of James C. Wyant Professorship of Optics at the Institute of Optics and a professor of physics at the University of Rochester. He is also a Distinguished scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics in the University of Rochester. Agrawal has authored and co-authored several highly cited books in the fields of non-linear fiber optics, optical communications, and semiconductor lasers.
Go to Profile#28680
Alfredo Bengzon
#28691
Overall Influence
Alfredo Rafael Antonio Bengzon, also known as Alfredo R. A. Bengzon, is a Filipino doctor, educator, and former public official. He is currently Vice President for the Professional Schools of the Ateneo de Manila University, dean of the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health, dean emeritus of the Ateneo Graduate School of Business, and President and CEO of The Medical City.
Go to Profile#28681
Lanny D. Schmidt
#28692
Overall Influence
1938 - 2020 (82 years)
Lanny D. Schmidt was an American chemist, inventor, author, and Regents Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota. He is well known for his extensive work in surface science, detailed chemistry , chemical reaction engineering, catalysis, and renewable energy. He is also well known for mentoring over a hundred graduate students and his work on millisecond reactors and reactive flash volatilization.
Go to Profile#28682
Michael Adas
#28693
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Michael Adas is an American historian and currently the Abraham E. Voorhees Professor of History at Rutgers University. He specializes in the history of technology, the history of anticolonialism and in global history.
Go to Profile#28683
Benjamin Arthur Quarles
#28694
Overall Influence
1904 - 1996 (92 years)
Benjamin Arthur Quarles was an American historian, administrator, educator, and writer, whose scholarship centered on black American social and political history. Major books by Quarles include The Negro in the Civil War , The Negro in the American Revolution , Lincoln and the Negro , and Black Abolitionists . He demonstrated that blacks were active participants in major conflicts and issues of American history. His books were narrative accounts of critical wartime periods that focused on how blacks interacted with their white allies and emphasized blacks' acting as vital agents of change rat...
Go to Profile#28684
Jens Peter Christensen
#28695
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Jens Peter Christensen is the president of the Supreme Court of Denmark. He finished his upper secondary level education in 1975, became a Candidate of Philosophy in 1980, Candidate of Political Science in 1982, Licentiate of Law in 1990, Candidate of Law in 1992 and a Doctor of Law in 1997.
Go to Profile#28685
Shahid Afridi
#28696
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Sahibzada Mohammad Shahid Khan Afridi is a Pakistani former cricketer and captain of the Pakistan national cricket team. An all-rounder, Afridi was a right-handed leg spinner and a right-handed batsman.
Go to Profile#28686
Herbert Rosendorfer
#28697
Overall Influence
1934 - 2012 (78 years)
Herbert Rosendorfer was a German jurist, writer, historian, and composer. Biography Herbert Rosendorfer was born in the village of Gries in the South Tyrol. From 1939 to 1943, he lived in Munich. In 1943, he was evacuated to Kitzbühel, returning to Munich five years later.
Go to Profile#28687
Rohan Pethiyagoda
#28698
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Rohan David Pethiyagoda is a Sri Lankan biodiversity scientist, amphibian and freshwater-fish taxonomist, author, conservationist and public-policy advocate. Early life and career Born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on 19 November 1955 Pethiyagoda had his secondary education at S. Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia. He was awarded a BSc Hons. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from King's College, University of London in 1977, and a M.Phil. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Sussex in 1980.
Go to Profile#28688
Svante Nordin
#28699
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Per Svante Gudmund Nordin is a Swedish historian of ideas and author. He is a professor of history of ideas at Lund University. With his dissertation Interpretation and method. Studies in the explication of nature Nordin became a PhD in theoretical philosophy. In 1981 he became an associate professor in history of ideas and in 1999 a full professor in the same discipline.
Go to Profile#28689
Lenos Trigeorgis
#28700
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Lenos Trigeorgis is the Bank of Cyprus Chair Professor of Finance in the School of Economics and Management, University of Cyprus. He is considered a leading authority on capital budgeting and strategy, having pioneered the field of real options, and having authored several books on related topics.
Go to Profile#28690
Hideo Nomo
#28701
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Hideo Nomo is a Japanese former baseball pitcher who played in Nippon Professional Baseball and Major League Baseball . He achieved early success in his native country, where he played with the Kintetsu Buffaloes from to . He then exploited a loophole to free himself from his contract, and became the first Japanese major leaguer to permanently relocate to MLB in the United States, debuting with the Los Angeles Dodgers in . Although he was not the first Japanese player in American professional baseball, Nomo is often credited with opening the door for Japanese players in MLB, due to his star ...
Go to Profile#28691
Roger Owen
#28702
Overall Influence
1935 - 2018 (83 years)
Edward Roger John Owen was a British historian who wrote several classic works on the history of the modern Middle East. His research interests included the economic, social and political history of the Middle East, especially Egypt, from 1800 to the present, as well as the theories of imperialism, including military occupations.
Go to Profile#28692
Bruce Lawrence
#28703
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Bruce Bennett Lawrence is the Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor of Religion at Duke University. He has taught at Duke since 1971. Education A graduate of Fay School and Princeton University, with a Master of Divinity from Episcopal Divinity School , he earned his doctorate at Yale University in History of Religions. There he was trained to engage West Asia and South Asia, with particular reference to the cultures and languages, the history and religious practices marked as Muslim. But he also concerns himself with the non-Muslim religious traditions of Asia, especially Hinduism, ...
Go to Profile#28693
Kenneth Anger
#28704
Overall Influence
1927 - 2023 (96 years)
Kenneth Anger was an American underground experimental filmmaker, actor, and author. Working exclusively in short films, he produced almost 40 works beginning in 1937, nine of which have been grouped together as the "Magick Lantern Cycle". Anger's films variously merge surrealism with homoeroticism and the occult, and have been described as containing "elements of erotica, documentary, psychodrama, and spectacle". He has been called "one of America's first openly gay filmmakers", with several films released before homosexuality was legalized in the U.S. Anger also explored occult themes in ma...
Go to Profile#28694
Stephen R. Bloom
#28705
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Sir Stephen Robert Bloom FRS is a British Professor of Medicine at Imperial College London where he leads the Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism division. Education Bloom was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a Master of Arts degree in 1968 and a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1979. He received his Doctor of Science degree from the University of London in 1982. Bloom completed appointments as a house officer, senior house officer and specialist registrar at Middlesex Hospital, University College London, where he also received his Medical Research Council Clinica...
Go to Profile#28695
Dana S. Richards
#28706
Overall Influence
Dana S. Richards is a writer, mathematics popularizer and Associate Professor in Computer Science at George Mason University. His research interests include comparisons of protein sequences, Steiner tree algorithms, information dissemination in networks, parallel heuristics, methodology for computationally intractable problems and parallel algorithms for median filters. He is the longtime bibliographer of polymath Martin Gardner.
Go to Profile#28696
Géza Alföldy
#28707
Overall Influence
1935 - 2011 (76 years)
Géza Alföldy was a Hungarian historian of ancient history. Life Géza Alföldy was born in Budapest. He studied at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Budapest from 1953 to 1958, where he in 1959 received a doctorate. Alföldy worked at the Budapest city museum from 1957 to 1960, and from 1960 to 1965 he was an assistant professor at the Institute for Ancient History at the University of Budapest. In 1965, he emigrated to West Germany, where he initially worked at the Bonn Rhenanian State Museum from 1965 to 1968. During this time, Alföldy earned a habilitation at the University of Bonn in 1966, where he served as a university lecturer and eventually as a full professor.
Go to Profile#28697
Helm Stierlin
#28708
Overall Influence
1926 - 2021 (95 years)
Helm Stierlin , born as Wilhelm Paul Stierlin, was a German psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and systemic family therapist. From 1974 to 1991 he was the medical director and chairowner of the Department for psychoanalytic basic research and Family Therapy at the Medical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg. Stierlin contributed significantly to the establishment and further development of systemic therapy in Germany.
Go to Profile#28698
Yuri Neprintsev
#28709
Overall Influence
1909 - 1996 (87 years)
Yuri Mikhailovich Neprintsev was a Soviet and Russian painter, graphic artist, art teacher, professor of the Repin Institute of Arts, and a member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR. He is regarded by art historian Sergei V. Ivanov as one of the brightest representatives of the Leningrad School of Painting, most famous for his genre and battle paintings.
Go to Profile#28699
John Grant
#28710
Overall Influence
1949 - 2020 (71 years)
Paul le Page Barnett , known by the pen name of John Grant, was a Scottish writer and editor of science fiction, fantasy, and non-fiction. Biography Born Paul le Page Barnett in Aberdeen, Scotland, Grant has sometimes written under his own name , as Eve Devereux, and under various other pseudonyms; he has also ghostwritten a number of books. The author of some 70 books in all , he has published several original novels as well as one novel in the Judge Dredd series and, with Joe Dever, 11 novels and a novella collection in the Legends of Lone Wolf series; edited several anthologies, beginning w...
Go to Profile#28700
Robert McCarley
#28711
Overall Influence
1937 - 2017 (80 years)
Robert W. McCarley, MD, was Chair and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the VA Boston Healthcare System. He is also Director of the Laboratory of Neuroscience located at the Brockton VA Medical Center and the McLean Hospital. McClarley was a prominent researcher in the field of sleep and dreaming as well as schizophrenia.
Go to Profile