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
#29401
Stephen Semmes
#29412
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Stephen William Semmes is the Noah Harding Professor of Mathematics at Rice University. He is known for contributions to analysis on metric spaces, as well as harmonic analysis, complex variables, partial differential equations, and differential geometry. He received his B.S. at the age of 18, a Ph.D. at 21 from Washington University in St. Louis and became a full professor at Rice at 25.
Go to Profile#29402
Michael Young
#29413
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Michael Young is a British industrial designer and creative director based in Hong Kong. He works in the areas of product, furniture and interior design with studios in Hong Kong and Brussels. He is known for unconventional use of materials and manufacturing processes, and collaborations with brands such as Brionvega, Cappellini, KEF, La Manufacture, and MOKE International. He is interested in "how disruption in society always has a design response, because it usually creates a need for things that perform."
Go to Profile#29403
Dan Heath
#29414
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Dan Heath is an American bestselling author, speaker and fellow at Duke University's CASE center. He, along with his brother Chip Heath, has co-authored four books, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die , Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard , Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work, and The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact . Heath released his first solo work, Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, in 2020.
Go to Profile#29404
DJ Snake
#29415
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
William Sami Étienne Grigahcine , known by his stage name DJ Snake, is a French music producer and DJ, first achieving international recognition in 2013 by releasing an instrumentation-oriented single called "Turn Down for What" .
Go to Profile#29405
Nick Van Exel
#29416
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Nickey Maxwell Van Exel is an American professional basketball coach and former player who last served as an assistant coach for the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association . Van Exel played for six NBA teams from 1993 through 2006. He was an NBA All-Star with the Los Angeles Lakers in 1998.
Go to Profile#29406
Juliet Floyd
#29417
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Juliet Floyd is professor of philosophy at Boston University. Her strongest research interests lie in early analytic philosophy and she has used early analytic philosophy as a lens to examine a diverse array of topics.
Go to Profile#29407
James Fraser Mustard
#29418
Overall Influence
1927 - 2011 (84 years)
James Fraser Mustard was a Canadian doctor and renowned researcher in early childhood development. Born, raised and educated in Toronto, Ontario, Mustard began his career as a research fellow at the University of Toronto where he studied the effects of blood lipids, their relation to heart disease and how Aspirin could mitigate those effects. He published the first clinical trial showing that aspirin could prevent heart attacks and strokes. In 1966, he was one of the founding faculty members at McMaster University's newly established medical school. He was the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and the medical school at McMaster University from 1972 to 1982.
Go to Profile#29408
Joseph A. Paradiso
#29419
Overall Influence
Joseph Paradiso is the Alexander W. Dreyfoos Professor at MIT's Program in Media Arts and Sciences. He directs the MIT Media Lab's Responsive Environments Group, which explores how sensor networks augment and mediate human experience, interaction and perception. He received a B.S. in electrical engineering and physics summa cum laude from Tufts University, and a Ph.D. in physics from MIT with Prof. Ulrich Becker in the Nobel Prize-winning group headed by Prof. Samuel C.C. Ting at the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science.
Go to Profile#29409
Charles E. M. Pearce
#29420
Overall Influence
1940 - 2012 (72 years)
Charles Edward Miller Pearce was a New Zealand/Australian mathematician. At the time of his death on 8 June 2012 he was the Elder Professor of Mathematics at the University of Adelaide. Early life Pearce was born in Wellington. His early schooling was in Wellington and he was dux of Hutt Valley High School in 1957. He earned his Bachelor of Science and in 1962 he earned a Masters of Science with first class honours in Mathematics, all from Victoria University of Wellington. The bachelor's degree was from the University of New Zealand, as the constituent colleges of UNZ, of which Victoria ...
Go to Profile#29410
Donald Mitchell
#29421
Overall Influence
1925 - 2017 (92 years)
Donald Charles Peter Mitchell CBE was a British writer on music, particularly known for his books on Gustav Mahler and Benjamin Britten and for the book The Language of Modern Music, published in 1963.
Go to Profile#29411
Alice Mattison
#29423
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Alice Mattison is an American novelist and short story writer. Life Mattison was born in Brooklyn and attended Queens College and Harvard University, where she received a doctorate in literature. She has lived in New Haven, Connecticut since the 1970s. She has taught fiction in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Writing at Bennington College since 1995 and at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. Mattison has also taught at Brooklyn College, Yale University and Albertus Magnus College.
Go to Profile#29412
Arshi Pipa
#29424
Overall Influence
1920 - 1997 (77 years)
Arshi Pipa was an Albanian and American writer, philosopher, poet and literary critic. Biography Arshi Pipa was born on 28 July 1920 in Shkodër and attended school there until 1938. Pipa received a BA equivalent degree in philosophy at the University of Florence in 1942. After he completed his studies he was a teacher of Italian language in different schools in Albania.
Go to Profile#29413
David Suchet
#29425
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Sir David Courtney Suchet is an English actor known for his work on stage and in television. He portrayed Edward Teller in the television serial Oppenheimer and received the RTS and BPG awards for his performance as Augustus Melmotte in the British serial The Way We Live Now . International acclaim and recognition followed his performance as Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie's Poirot , for which he received a 1991 British Academy of Film and Television Arts nomination.
Go to Profile#29414
Richard Grandy
#29426
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Richard Grandy is an American philosopher and logician, who is emeritus professor of philosophy at Rice University. Education and career Grandy earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton University under the direction of Paul Benacerraf. He taught at Princeton University from 1967 to 1974, then at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill before moving to Rice University in 1980, where he spent the rest of his career.
Go to Profile#29415
Siegbert Salomon Prawer
#29427
Overall Influence
1925 - 2012 (87 years)
Siegbert Salomon Prawer was Taylor Professor of the German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. Life and works Prawer was born on 15 February 1925 in Cologne, Germany, to Jewish parents Marcus and Eleanora Prawer. Marcus was a lawyer from Poland and Eleanora's father was cantor of Cologne's largest synagogue. His sister Ruth was born in 1927. The family fled the Nazi regime in 1939, emigrating to Britain.
Go to Profile#29416
Ian Thorpe
#29428
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Ian James Thorpe is an Australian retired swimmer who specialised in freestyle, but also competed in backstroke and the individual medley. He has won five Olympic gold medals, the most won by any Australian along with fellow swimmer Emma McKeon. With three gold and two silver medals, Thorpe was the most successful athlete at the 2000 Summer Olympics, held in his hometown of Sydney.
Go to Profile#29417
Suresh P. Sethi
#29429
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Suresh P. Sethi is Eugene McDermott Chair of operations management and director of the Center for Intelligent Supply Networks at the University of Texas at Dallas. He has contributed in the fields of manufacturing and operations management, finance and economics, marketing, industrial engineering, operations research, and optimal control. He is known for his developments of the Sethi advertising model and DNSS Points, and for his textbook on optimal control.
Go to Profile#29418
Ronald A. Bosco
#29430
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Ronald A. Bosco is the Distinguished Professor of English and American Literature at the University at Albany, State University of New York, is currently President of the Association for Documentary Editing and General Editor of Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson published by Harvard University Press. Bosco is one of the country's leading experts on the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and on American Puritan homiletics and poetics.
Go to Profile#29419
Aminul Islam
#29431
Overall Influence
1935 - 2017 (82 years)
Aminul Islam was a Bangladeshi academic. He was the President of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences. He was a fellow of the academy since 1978. Early life and education Aminul Islam was born on 1 January 1935 in Nagerchar village of Homna Upazila of Comilla District. He completed his B.Sc. in chemistry in 1954 and M.Sc. in Soil Science in 1955 from the University of Dhaka and Ph.D. in Soil Science from Michigan State University in 1962.
Go to Profile#29420
Ivan R. Schwab
#29432
Overall Influence
Ivan Roy Schwab is a professor of ophthalmology at the University of California Davis School of Medicine. Dr. Schwab completed his undergraduate degree at West Virginia University and received his M.D. from the West Virginia University School of Medicine. Dr. Schwab then completed a residency in ophthalmology at California Pacific Medical Center and a fellowship in corneal surgery at University of California San Francisco in 1982. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.
Go to Profile#29421
Bebe Rexha
#29433
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (37 years)
Bleta Rexha , known professionally as Bebe Rexha , is an American singer and songwriter. After signing with Warner Records in 2013, Rexha received songwriting credits on Eminem's single "The Monster" and has also contributed songwriting to songs recorded by Shinee, Selena Gomez, and Nick Jonas. Rexha released her debut extended play in 2015, I Don't Wanna Grow Up, which saw the moderate commercial success of the singles "I Can't Stop Drinking About You" and "I'm Gonna Show You Crazy".
Go to Profile#29422
Don E. Fehrenbacher
#29434
Overall Influence
1920 - 1997 (77 years)
Don Edward Fehrenbacher was an American historian. He wrote on politics, slavery, and Abraham Lincoln. He won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics, his book about the Dred Scott Decision. In 1977 David M. Potter's The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861, which he edited and completed, won the Pulitzer Prize. In 1997 he won the Lincoln Prize.
Go to Profile#29423
Peter J. N. Sinclair
#29435
Overall Influence
1946 - 2020 (74 years)
Peter James Niven Sinclair was a British economist. He was Professor, and subsequently Emeritus Professor, in Economics at the University of Birmingham. Previously, he had been a fellow and tutor at Brasenose College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#29424
Sławomir Cenckiewicz
#29436
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Sławomir Cenckiewicz is a Polish historian and journalist. Life A former employee of the Institute of National Remembrance, since 2016 Cenckiewicz is president of the Polish Army's History Office. He gained much media attention following the 2008 publication of a book he co-authored with Piotr Gontarczyk, SB a Lech Wałęsa. Przyczynek do biografii , about Lech Wałęsa's service as an informant of the communist Służba Bezpieczeństwa. Gontarczyk and Cenckiewicz argued that in the 1970s the Solidarity leader and former President of Poland Lech Wałęsa was a secret informant for the Polish communis...
Go to Profile#29425
Mitch Miller
#29437
Overall Influence
1911 - 2010 (99 years)
Mitchell William Miller was an American choral conductor, record producer, record-industry executive, and professional oboist. He was involved in almost all aspects of the industry, particularly as a conductor and artists and repertoire man. Miller was one of the most influential people in American popular music during the 1950s and early 1960s, both as the head of A&R at Columbia Records and as a best-selling recording artist with an NBC television series, Sing Along with Mitch. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester in the early 1930s, Miller began his mus...
Go to Profile#29426
Troy A. Paredes
#29438
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Troy A. Paredes served as a Commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from August 1, 2008 to August 3, 2013. Commissioner Paredes was appointed to the SEC by President George W. Bush on June 30, 2008 to replace Paul S. Atkins, a Republican commissioner, who was retiring at the end of his term. Paredes was replaced by Michael Piwowar who was sworn in on August 15, 2013.
Go to Profile#29427
W. Russell Neuman
#29439
Overall Influence
W. Russell Neuman is Professor of Media Technology, NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and Professor , Communication Studies, University of Michigan. From 2001 to 2013, Dr. Neuman was the John Derby Evans Professor of Media Technology at the University of Michigan. Neuman received a Ph.D. And M.A. At the University of California, Berkeley Department of Sociology as well as a B.A. from Cornell University's Department of Government. He has an extensive teaching and research career at Yale University, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#29428
Jean Castex
#29440
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Jean Castex is a French politician who was the country's Prime Minister from 3 July 2020 to 16 May 2022. He was a member of The Republicans until 2020, when he joined La République En Marche! . Castex served for twelve years as mayor of the small town of Prades prior to his appointment as Prime Minister by President Emmanuel Macron. He resigned his post in May 2022.
Go to Profile#29429
Muzammil H. Siddiqi
#29441
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Muzammil H. Siddiqi is an Indian-American Muslim writer who has been on the faculty of Chapman University. Education Born in India in 1943, Siddiqi received his early education at Aligarh Muslim University and Darul-uloom Nadwatul Ulama, Lucknow, India. He graduated from the Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia in 1965 with a higher degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies. Siddiqi received an M.A. in Theology from Birmingham University in England, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Religion from Harvard University in the United States.
Go to Profile#29430
Jill P. Mesirov
#29442
Overall Influence
Jill P. Mesirov is an American mathematician, computer scientist, and computational biologist who is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Computational Health Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. She previously held an adjunct faculty position at Boston University and was the associate director and chief informatics officer at the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Go to Profile#29431
Mildred T. Stahlman
#29443
Overall Influence
1922 - Present (104 years)
Mildred T. Stahlman is an American neonatologist and academic. She worked as a professor of pediatrics and pathology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Early life Mildred T. Stahlman was born on July 31, 1922, in Nashville, Tennessee. Her father, James Geddes Stahlman, was a Tennessee newspaper publisher who was opposed to desegregation and was a trustee of Vanderbilt University. Her paternal great-grandfather, Major Edward Bushrod Stahlman, was a German-born railroad executive, the owner of the Nashville Banner, and the developer of The Stahlman.
Go to Profile#29432
Viacheslav Fetisov
#29444
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Viacheslav Alexandrovich "Slava" Fetisov is a Russian former professional ice hockey defenceman and a coach and political and sports figure. He played for HC CSKA Moscow for 13 seasons before joining the National Hockey League , where he played with the New Jersey Devils and Detroit Red Wings. With the Wings, he won back-to-back Stanley Cups and was part of the team's Russian Five unit. After retiring from his playing career, he became the assistant coach for the New Jersey Devils. Having a very successful four years, he helped get the team to two Stanley Cup finals and one Stanley Cup victory.
Go to Profile#29433
Muzaffar Ahmed
#29445
Overall Influence
1936 - 2012 (76 years)
Muzaffar Ahmad was a Bangladeshi economist and an emeritus professor at the Institute of Business Administration of the University of Dhaka. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago. He was also the Chairman of the Trustee Board of Transparency International Bangladesh . Ahmed was awarded the Ekushey Padak by the Government of Bangladesh in 2008.
Go to Profile#29434
Atta-ur Rahman
#29446
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Atta-ur-Rahman , h-index 75, with 36,000 citations is a Pakistani organic chemist and is currently serving as Professor Emeritus at the International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences at the University of Karachi and as Chairman of PM Task Force on Science and Technology. He has twice served as the President of Pakistan Academy of Sciences . He was the Federal Minister of Science and Technology , Federal Minister of Education and Chairman Higher Education Commission with status of Federal Minister He is also the President of the Network of Academies of Sciences in Countries of the Organisation of Islamic Countries .
Go to Profile#29435
Geerat J. Vermeij
#29447
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Geerat J. Vermeij is a Dutch-born paleoecologist and evolutionary biologist in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Davis. He studies marine molluscs, both as fossils and as living creatures, as well as influence creatures have on each other's evolutionary fates, alongside having worked on plants, crabs, extinction, biological invasions, and biogeography. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992, and in 2000, was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. He was also a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences ...
Go to Profile#29436
Stephan Kuttner
#29448
Overall Influence
1907 - 1996 (89 years)
Stephan George Kuttner , an expert in Canon Law, was recognized as a leader in the discovery, interpretation and analysis of important texts and manuscripts that are key to understanding the evolution of legal systems from Roman law to modern constitutional law.
Go to Profile#29437
Hilary Knight
#29449
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Hilary Knight is an American writer and artist. He is the illustrator of more than 50 books and the author of nine books. He is best known as the illustrator and co-creator of Kay Thompson's Eloise and others in the Eloise series.
Go to Profile#29438
John Salley
#29450
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
John Thomas Salley is an American former professional basketball player. He was the first player in NBA history to win championships with three franchises , as well as the first player in the NBA to win a championship in three different decades .
Go to Profile#29439
Celia Cruz
#29451
Overall Influence
1925 - 2003 (78 years)
Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso , known as Celia Cruz, was a Cuban singer and one of the most popular Latin artists of the 20th century. Cruz rose to fame in Cuba during the 1950s as a singer of , earning the nickname "". In the following decades, she became known internationally as the "Queen of Salsa" due to her contributions to Latin music. She had sold over 10 million copies, making her one of the best-selling Latin music artists.
Go to Profile#29440
Ülle Madise
#29452
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Ülle Madise is an Estonian lawyer who has served as Chancellor of Justice since 2015. Madise is the daughter of former member of the Supreme Court of Estonia Tõnu Anton. In December 2021 Madise was re-appointed by the Riigikogu for a second term as Chancellor of Justice.
Go to Profile#29441
Katherine Freese
#29453
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Katherine Freese is a theoretical astrophysicist. She is currently a professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin, where she holds the Jeff and Gail Kodosky Endowed Chair in Physics. She is known for her work in theoretical cosmology at the interface of particle physics and astrophysics.
Go to Profile#29442
Mark Davis
#29454
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Mark Edward Davis is an American specialist in the internationalization and localization of software and the co-founder and president of the Unicode Consortium. He is one of the key technical contributors to the Unicode specifications, being the primary author or co-author of bidirectional text algorithms , collation , Unicode normalization, Unicode scripts, text segmentation, identifiers, regular expressions, data compression, character encoding and security.
Go to Profile#29443
Abbas Shafiee
#29455
Overall Influence
1944 - 2016 (72 years)
Abbas Shafiee was an Iranian pharmaceutical chemist. He was the president of faculty of pharmacy at Tehran University. He published more than 350 scientific articles in peer reviewed international journals.
Go to Profile#29444
Ángel Cabrera
#29456
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Ángel Cabrera Izquierdo is the 12th and current President of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Previously, he served as the President of George Mason University and of Thunderbird School of Global Management, and the former dean of IE Business School. His scholarship includes work on learning, management and leadership.
Go to Profile#29445
Santiago Genovés
#29457
Overall Influence
1923 - 2013 (90 years)
Santiago Genovés Tarazaga was a Spanish-born Mexican anthropologist who was affiliated with the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He designed the 1973 "Peace Project" experiment, in which he and ten other people aimed to sail on the Acali raft from the Canary Islands to Mexico. He hoped that this experiment would shed light on the causes of violence in humans and on how it could be prevented. The 101-day experiment, frequently dubbed the "Sex Raft" by the media, was the subject of the 2018 documentary film The Raft, by Marcus Lindeen. He was also one of the researchers who originated...
Go to Profile#29446
Lyn Miles
#29458
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
H. Lyn Miles is an American bio-cultural anthropologist and animal rights advocate. Miles is known for a 1970s experiment in which a baby orangutan named Chantek was videotaped during sign language acquisition. She was teaching sign language providing a full human experience in the immersive-participant-observation way, the same way human babies are taught during infancy.
Go to Profile#29447
Bernhard Nebel
#29459
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Bernhard Nebel, born on 6 May 1956, is a German artificial intelligence scientist. He is a full professor at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg where he holds the chair for foundations of artificial intelligence.
Go to Profile#29448
Suzie Navot
#29460
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Suzie Navot is an Israeli full professor of constitutional law. She is the Vice President of Research at the Israel Democracy Institute. Prior to her appointment at the I.D.I, she was a member of faculty at the Striks Faculty of Law at the College of Management Academic Studies.
Go to Profile#29449
Željko Obradović
#29461
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Želimir "Željko" Obradović is a Serbian professional basketball coach and former professional player who is the head coach for Partizan of the Basketball League of Serbia , the ABA League and the EuroLeague.
Go to Profile#29450
Vince Tinto
#29462
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Vincent Tinto is a Distinguished University Professor of sociology at Syracuse University's School of Education. He is a noted theorist in the field of higher education, particularly concerning student retention and learning communities.
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