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
#28851
Gerhard Berger
#28862
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Gerhard Berger is an Austrian former Formula One racing driver. He competed in Formula One for 14 seasons, twice finishing 3rd overall in the championship , both times driving for Ferrari. He won ten Grands Prix, achieved 48 podiums, 12 poles and 21 fastest laps. With 210 starts he is amongst the most experienced Formula One drivers of all time. He led 33 of the 210 races he competed in and retired from 95 of them. His first and last victories were also the first and last victories for the Benetton team, with eleven years separating them. He was also a race winner with Ferrari and with McLaren.
Go to Profile#28852
Jerome Nriagu
#28863
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jerome Okon Nriagu is a Nigerian-born, American environmental chemist, academician and researcher. He is Professor Emeritus in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. He was formerly a Research Scientist at Environment Canada in the former National Water Research Institute, Burlington, Ontario, and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Waterloo, Canada.
Go to Profile#28853
Kenneth Singleton
#28864
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Kenneth Jan Singleton is an American economist. He is a leading figure in empirical financial economics, and a faculty member at Stanford University. As the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Emeritus at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Singleton teaches a variety of degree courses in finance.
Go to Profile#28854
Hannah Monyer
#28865
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Hannah Monyer is a Romanian-born German neurobiologist and, since 1999, she has been Director of the Department of Clinical Neurology at the University Hospital in Heidelberg. In 2004 she was awarded the 1.55 million euro Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. She received the Philip Morris Research Prize—described by Bio-pro as "one of the most prestigious science awards in Germany"—in 2006. In 2010, the European Research Council awarded her a total of 1.87 million euros for her research.
Go to Profile#28855
John Waterlow
#28866
Overall Influence
1916 - 2010 (94 years)
John Conrad Waterlow was a British physiologist who specialised in childhood malnutrition. Waterlow was born into a well known London printing family. Whilst growing up, the family home was often visited by the likes of EM Forster and Virginia Woolf.
Go to Profile#28856
Chieko Asakawa
#28867
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Chieko Asakawa is a blind Japanese computer scientist, known for her work at IBM Research – Tokyo in accessibility. A Netscape browser plug-in she developed, the IBM Home Page Reader, became the most widely used web-to-speech system available. She is the recipient of numerous industry and government awards.
Go to Profile#28857
Michael Woolfson
#28868
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Michael Mark Woolfson was a British physicist and planetary scientist. His research interests were in the fields of x-ray crystallography, biophysics, colour vision and the formation of stars and planets.
Go to Profile#28858
John Tirman
#28869
Overall Influence
1949 - 2022 (73 years)
John Tirman was an American political theorist. From 2004, Tirman was executive director and principal research scientist at the MIT Center for International Studies. There he led the Persian Gulf Initiative, which conducted work on Iraq war mortality and U.S. and Iran relations, as well as other projects. He was the author or coauthor of 13 books on international affairs, many of them exploring and advocating the “human security” paradigm in global affairs, and was a frequent contributor to AlterNet, The Huffington Post, and The Boston Globe.
Go to Profile#28859
Kori Schake
#28870
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Kori N. Schake is the Director of Foreign and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. She has held several high positions in the U.S. Defense and State Departments and on the National Security Council. She was a foreign-policy adviser to the McCain-Palin 2008 presidential campaign. Schake is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She serves on the board of advisors of the Alexander Hamilton Society.
Go to Profile#28860
Gary Brooker
#28871
Overall Influence
1945 - 2022 (77 years)
Gary Brooker was an English singer and pianist, and the founder and lead singer of the rock band Procol Harum. Early life Born in Hackney Hospital, East London, on 29 May 1945, Brooker grew up in Hackney before the family moved out to Middlesex . His father Harry Brooker was a professional musician, playing pedal steel guitar with Felix Mendelssohn's Hawaiian Serenaders, and as a child Brooker learned to play piano, cornet, and trombone. In 1954 the family moved to the seaside resort of Southend-on-Sea, Essex, where Brooker attended Westcliff High School for Boys. His father died of a heart ...
Go to Profile#28861
Chua Beng Huat
#28872
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Chua Beng Huat is a Singaporean sociologist. He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Social Science at the National University of Singapore, and concurrently serving as a faculty member at the Yale-NUS College. "He has previously served as Provost Chair Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Science , Research Leader, Cultural Studies in Asia Research Cluster, Asia Research Institute ; Convenor Cultural Studies Programmes and Head, the Department of Sociology , National University of Singapore".
Go to Profile#28862
Valerie Taylor
#28873
Overall Influence
1913 - 1997 (84 years)
Valerie Taylor was an American author of books published in the lesbian pulp fiction genre, as well as poetry and novels after the "golden age" of lesbian pulp fiction. She also published as Nacella Young , Francine Davenport , and Velma Tate. Her publishers included Naiad Press, Banned Books, Universal, Gold Medal Books, Womanpress, Ace and Midwood-Tower.
Go to Profile#28863
Chris Swecker
#28874
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Chris Swecker is a Spanish-born American attorney and law enforcement officer who served as assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the Criminal Investigative Division from 2004 to 2006. He later established a law practice in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and was appointed by North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory as chairman of the Governor's Crime Commission in 2013.
Go to Profile#28864
John Heskett
#28875
Overall Influence
1937 - 2014 (77 years)
John Heskett was a British writer and lecturer on the economic, political, cultural and human value of industrial design. Heskett taught primary in the fields of design history and design thinking, and was a professor at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology and the School of Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University , where he became the acting dean . He was also a visiting professor at various universities in Turkey, Japan, Chile, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland.
Go to Profile#28865
Xin-She Yang
#28876
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Xin-She Yang is Reader at the Middlesex University and was a senior research scientist at National Physical Laboratory, best known as a developer of various heuristic algorithms for engineering optimization. He obtained a DPhil in applied mathematics from Oxford University. He has given invited keynote talks at SEA2011, SCET2012, BIOMA2012 and Mendel Conference on Soft Computing . He has been elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Application in 2021. He has been on the prestigious list of Highly Cited Researchers since 2016 by Clarivate Analyatics/Web of Science.
Go to Profile#28866
Heinz Bechert
#28877
Overall Influence
1932 - 2005 (73 years)
Heinz Bechert was a German Indologist and Buddhologist. Life The son of lawyer Rudolf Bechert and his wife, Herta , from 1965 to 2000, Heinz Bechert held the Chair of Indology at the University of Göttingen. In 1971, on his initiative, the former "Indological Seminar" was renamed "Seminar for Indology and Buddhist Studies".
Go to Profile#28867
Charles Daellenbach
#28878
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Conrad Charles Daellenbach C.M. is an American and Canadian tubist. He is best known as one of the founding members of the Canadian Brass, in which he remains the quintet's tuba player, publisher, business administrator and professional relationships manager. Daellenbach is the most recorded tuba performer in history.
Go to Profile#28868
Valentin Poénaru
#28879
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Valentin Alexandre Poénaru is a Romanian–French mathematician. He was a Professor of Mathematics at University of Paris-Sud, specializing in low-dimensional topology. Life and career Born in Bucharest, Romania, he did his undergraduate studies at the University of Bucharest. In 1962, he was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Stockholm, Sweden. While at the congress, Poénaru defected, subsequently leaving for France. He arrived in mid-September 1962 at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in Bures-sur-Yvette; the IHÉS decided to support him, and he h...
Go to Profile#28869
Hauke Brunkhorst
#28880
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Hauke Brunkhorst is a German political sociologist, Professor of Sociology and Head of the Institute of Sociology at the University of Flensburg, Germany. He specializes in European constitutionalism, political theory and European affairs. He received his doctorate in 1977 from the University of Frankfurt with a thesis "". During the 2009-2010 academic year, he was the Theodor Heuss Professor at the New School for Social Research in New York City.
Go to Profile#28870
Michael Spinks
#28881
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Michael Spinks is an American former professional boxer who competed from 1977 to 1988. He held world championships in two weight classes, including the undisputed light heavyweight title from 1983 to 1985, and the lineal heavyweight title from 1985 to 1988. As an amateur he won a gold medal in the middleweight division at the 1976 Summer Olympics.
Go to Profile#28871
Ralph Reitan
#28882
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Ralph M. Reitan was an American neuropsychologist and one of the founding fathers of American clinical neuropsychology having brought the notion of brain-behavior relationships to the forefront of the field. He is best known for his role in developing the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery and his strong belief in empiricism and evidence-based practice. He was a strong advocate of use of a fixed battery in neuropsychological assessment, published prolifically, and mentored many students who also became prominent in the field. As an author, he has been collected by libraries.
Go to Profile#28872
Michel-Rolph Trouillot
#28883
Overall Influence
1949 - 2012 (63 years)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot was a Haitian American academic and anthropologist. He was Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. He was best known for his books Open the Social Science , Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History , and Global Transformations , which explored the origins and application of social science in academia and its implications in the world. Trouillot has been one of the most influential thinkers of Afro-Caribbean diaspora, because he developed wide-ranging academic work centered on Caribbean issues. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall holds that "Trouillot was one of the most original and thoughtful voices in academia.
Go to Profile#28873
Vincent D'Onofrio
#28884
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Vincent Philip D'Onofrio is an American actor and filmmaker. He is known for his supporting and leading roles in both film and television. He has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. His roles include Private Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence in Full Metal Jacket , Edgar the Bug in Men in Black and Men in Black: The Series , Carl Stargher in The Cell , New York City Police Detective Robert Goren in Law & Order: Criminal Intent , Victor "Vic" Hoskins in Jurassic World , and Wilson Fisk / Kingpin in four television series of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Go to Profile#28874
Avishai Dekel
#28885
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Avishai Dekel is a professor of physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, holding the Andre Aisenstadt Chair of Theoretical Physics. His primary research interests are in astrophysics and cosmology.
Go to Profile#28875
Jim Vallance
#28886
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
James Douglas Vallance is a Canadian songwriter, arranger and producer. He is best known as the songwriting partner of Canadian musician Bryan Adams. Vallance began his professional career as the original drummer and main songwriter for Canadian rock band Prism under the pseudonym "Rodney Higgs." In addition to Adams, Vallance has written songs for many famous international artists such as Bonnie Raitt, Aerosmith, Carly Simon, Rod Stewart, Roger Daltrey, Tina Turner, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, Europe, Kiss, Scorpions, Anne Murray, and Joe Cocker. His most recognizable songs are "What About...
Go to Profile#28876
Ofer Grosskopf
#28887
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Ofer Grosskopf is an Israeli judge and former law professor who has served as a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court since 2018. Early life and education Grosskopf was born in Israel in 1969 to Yossi and Ayala Grosskopf, and grew up in Herzliya. His father was a computer project manager and his mother was a laboratory technician at the Tel Aviv University School of Dental Research. He has a younger sister, Yael.
Go to Profile#28877
Valery Durov
#28888
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Valery Semenovich Durov is a Russian antiquarian, philologist, and academic . From 1992 until 2013, he was head of the Department of Classical Philology at St. Petersburg State University. Career Durov graduated from the Philological Faculty of Leningrad University in 1968, was in graduate school at the Department of Classical Philology and in 1974 he defended his thesis "The Tenth Satire of Juvenal".
Go to Profile#28878
Gary Wolf
#28889
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Gary Wolf is an American writer, contributing editor at Wired magazine, and co-founder of the Quantified Self. Wolf earned a BA from Reed College in Portland, Oregon and an MA from the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#28879
Sergey Obraztsov
#28890
Overall Influence
1901 - 1992 (91 years)
Sergey Vladimirovich Obraztsov was a Soviet and Russian puppeteer who is credited by the Encyclopædia Britannica with "establishing puppetry as an art form in the Soviet Union." Puppet theaters in many countries owe their establishment to Obraztsov's influence. His collection of exotic puppets was the largest in Russia and one of the largest in the world.
Go to Profile#28880
Anatoly Vishnevsky
#28891
Overall Influence
1935 - 2021 (86 years)
Anatoly Vishnevsky was a Russian demographer and economist. He also wrote novels. Biography Vishnevsky earned a doctorate in economics in 1983, which would later effectively make him a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. He directed the Institute of Demography at the Higher School of Economics.
Go to Profile#28881
Mark Pieth
#28892
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Mark Pieth is Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Basel, Switzerland and a prominent anti-corruption expert. Pieth's career as a legal expert, defence lawyer, judge and compliance advisor includes several roles on the international stage, such as a member of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering, Chair of a United Nations Intergovernmental Expert Group on illicit drug trafficking and 24 years as Chair of the OECD Working Group on Bribery, which monitors the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.
Go to Profile#28882
Mary Lou Zeeman
#28893
Overall Influence
Mary Lou Zeeman is a British mathematician at Bowdoin College in the US, where she is R. Wells Johnson Professor of Mathematics. She specializes in dynamical systems and their application to mathematical biology; she helped found the SIAM Activity Group on the Mathematics of Planet Earth, and co-directs the Mathematics and Climate Research Network.
Go to Profile#28883
Milič Čapek
#28894
Overall Influence
1909 - 1997 (88 years)
Milič Čapek, was a Czech–American philosopher. Čapek was strongly influenced by the process philosophy of Henri Bergson and to a lesser degree by Alfred North Whitehead. Much of his work was devoted to the relation of philosophy and modern physics, especially the philosophy of space and time and metaphysics.
Go to Profile#28884
Tavia Nyong'o
#28895
Overall Influence
Tavia Nyong'o is a critic and scholar of art and performance. He is William Lampson professor of African American studies, American studies and theater and performance studies at Yale University where he teaches courses on black diaspora performance, cultural studies, and critical and aesthetic theory.
Go to Profile#28885
Antoine Georges
#28896
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Antoine Georges is a French physicist. He is a professor at the Collège de France in Paris and the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Physics at the Flatiron Institute, New York. In 2023, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#28886
Arie Zaban
#28897
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Arie Zaban is an Israeli professor of chemistry. He is President of Bar-Ilan University. Biography Arie Zaban was born in Israel. He served in the Israel Air Force as a Phantom pilot. He earned a B.Sc. in Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Electrochemistry from Bar-Ilan University. He spent two years of postdoctoral work at the United States National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.
Go to Profile#28887
Jon Ronson
#28898
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Jon Ronson is a British-American journalist, author, and filmmaker whose works include Them: Adventures with Extremists , The Men Who Stare at Goats , and The Psychopath Test . He has been described as a gonzo journalist, becoming a faux-naïf character in his stories. He produces informal but sceptical investigations of controversial fringe politics and science. He has published nine books and his work has appeared in publications such as The Guardian, City Life and Time Out. He has made several BBC Television documentary films and two documentary series for Channel 4.
Go to Profile#28888
Chad Pennington
#28899
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
James Chadwick Pennington is an American former professional football player who was a quarterback for 11 seasons in the National Football League . He played college football for the Marshall Thundering Herd, winning the Sammy Baugh Trophy. Pennington was selected by the New York Jets in the first round of the 2000 NFL Draft. He spent his first eight seasons with the Jets and was a member of the Miami Dolphins in his last three.
Go to Profile#28889
Harro Heuser
#28900
Overall Influence
1927 - 2011 (84 years)
Harro Heuser was a German mathematician. In German-speaking countries he is best known for his popular two-volume introduction into real analysis, Lehrbuch der Analysis. Heuser studied mathematics, physics and philosophy from 1948 to 1954 at the University of Tübingen to receive a teaching degree and went on to study for his PhD, which he received in 1957. The advisor of his thesis, entitled Über Operatoren mit endlichen Defekten, was Helmut Wielandt. After receiving his PhD he moved to the University of Karlsruhe, where he received his habilitation in 1962. In 1963 he became a professor at the University of Kiel and in 1964 at the University of Mainz.
Go to Profile#28890
Masao Doi
#28901
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
is a Professor Emeritus at Nagoya University and The University of Tokyo. He is a Fellow of the Toyota Physical and Chemical Research Institute. In 1978 and 1979 he wrote a series of papers with Sir Sam Edwards expanding on the concept of reptation introduced by Pierre-Gilles de Gennes in 1971. In 1996 he authored the textbook Introduction to Polymer Physics.
Go to Profile#28891
Andrzej Gwiazda
#28902
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Andrzej Gwiazda is an engineer and prominent opposition leader, who participated in Polish March 1968 Events and December 1970 Events; one of the founders of Free Trade Unions, Member of the Presiding Committee of the Strike at Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk in August 1980, Vice President of the Founding Committee of Solidarity, then Vice President of Solidarity in 1980 and 1981; in December 1981 interned and next imprisoned with six other Solidarność leaders . His wife, Joanna Duda-Gwiazda also was a prominent member of the anticommunist opposition in the 1970s and 1980s.
Go to Profile#28892
John Sewel, Baron Sewel
#28903
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John Buttifant Sewel, Baron Sewel, , is a British politician, life peer, and former academic. He served as Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords, its deputy speaker. He is also a former senior vice principal of the University of Aberdeen and a former parliamentary under-secretary of state.
Go to Profile#28893
Nick Perumov
#28904
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Nick Perumov is the pen name of Nikolay Daniilovich Perumov , a Russian fantasy and science fiction writer. Biography Perumov was born 21 November 1963 in Leningrad, USSR. His father, Daniil Alexandrovich Perumov, was a biologist. Nikolai began writing short stories when he was a teenager, and after reading The Lord of the Rings in the early 1980s, he became a fantasy fan. After studying at the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute, Perumov worked at a research institute, and later as a translator.
Go to Profile#28894
Crista Arangala
#28905
Overall Influence
Crista Arangala is an American mathematician and textbook author, specializing in numerical analysis. She is a professor of mathematics and chair of the department of mathematics and statistics at Elon University, and a Fulbright Scholar.
Go to Profile#28895
Jean-Marie Basset
#28906
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Jean-Marie Basset is a French chemist, and is currently the director of KAUST catalysis research center. Biography Jean Marie Basset is an engineer from the École Supérieure de Chimie Industrielle de Lyon. He is doing a doctoral thesis under the supervision of Professor Marcel Prettre, a corresponding member of the institute. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto in Toronto and Imperial College in London , he joined the CNRS Catalytic Institute, where he became deputy director. He was then a founding member, along with Jean Claude Charpentier, of the École de Chimie Physique et Électronique de Lyon , where he became scientific director.
Go to Profile#28896
James Spader
#28907
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
James Todd Spader is an American actor. He is known for often portraying eccentric and morally ambiguous characters. He started his career in critically acclaimed independent films before transitioning into television for which he received numerous awards and acclaim including three Primetime Emmy Awards as well as nominations for three Golden Globe Awards, and ten Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Go to Profile#28897
Ebrahim Sheibani
#28908
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Ebrahim Sheibani is an Iranian economist who served as the 16th governor of the Central Bank of Iran from 2003 to 2007. He held the longest tenure as a member of the board of governors in Iran's central bank history. Before his appointment as the governor, he was the deputy of economic affairs and the secretary general of the Central Bank of Iran from 1989 to 2003. In 2007, Sheibani resigned due to conflicts with President Ahmadinejad over economic policies and was appointed as the Iran's Ambassador to Austria, Slovenia, and Slovakia.
Go to Profile#28898
John D. Kasarda
#28909
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
John D. Kasarda is an American academic and airport business consultant focused on aviation-driven economic development. He is a faculty member at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School, the CEO of Aerotropolis Business Concepts LLC and the President of the Aerotropolis Institute in China. He was the founding editor-in-chief of Logistics, an open-access journal published by MDPI. Kasarda is often referred to as "father of the aerotropolis".
Go to Profile#28899
Victor W. Sidel
#28910
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Victor W. Sidel was an American physician and a president of the American Public Health Association. He was a founder and president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and later was co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.
Go to Profile#28900
Abbe Lowell
#28911
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Abbe David Lowell is an American defense attorney who has represented several high-profile defendants. Some of the well known political figures Lowell has represented include Bob Menendez, John Edwards, Jared Kushner, Hunter Biden, Jim Wright, Dan Rostenkowski, Charles Keating, Joseph McDade, Joe Bruno, Gary Condit, and Jim Gibbons.
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