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

#2951

Mireille Broucke

#148626
Overall Influence
Mireille Esther Broucke is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto, interested in control theory, mathematical systems theory, and swarm robotics. Broucke did her undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where her father Roger A. Broucke, an immigrant from Belgium, was a professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics. She graduated in 1984, with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. She went on to graduate study in electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, earning a m...
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#2952

Douglas Patrick Harrison

#148778
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Douglas Patrick Harrison is a professor emeritus of chemical engineering from Louisiana State University's Gordon A. and Mary Cain Department of Chemical Engineering, where he taught undergraduate and graduate classes and served as a dissertations advisor to Ph.D. and M.S. students.
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#2953

Bernardo Rudy

#148798
Overall Influence
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#2954

Park Yung-woo

#148854
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Park Yung-woo is a South Korean physicist, who has worked in the field of materials science. Education Park graduated summa cum laude in 1975 from the Physics Department of Seoul National University in South Korea. He received his Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States in 1980. Park's Ph.D. thesis on the "Electrical Transport Studies of Pure and Doped Polyacetylene" was supervised by Professor Alan J. Heeger.
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#2955

Peter A. Wolff

#148899
Overall Influence
1923 - 2013 (90 years)
Peter Adalbert Wolff was an American physicist who is considered a pioneer in semiconductor research. He earned his PhD in physics at UC Berkeley with Robert Serber as thesis advisor in 1951 and began his career at the Bell Telephone Laboratories the following year. Thereafter Wolff joined the physics department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970, becoming head of the condensed matter and atomic physics division. Together with P. M. Platzman, he coauthored the textbook Waves and Interactions in Solid State Plasmas . In 1976 he moved on to the directorship of the Research Laboratory of Electronics and then of the Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory in 1981.
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#2956

Kevan A. C. Martin

#148907
Overall Influence
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#2957

John O. Ledyard

#149005
Overall Influence
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#2958

Bruce Caterson

#149028
Overall Influence
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#2959

Sadao Imamura

#149033
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (90 years)
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#2960

Benjamin A. Borenstein

#149066
Overall Influence
1928 - 2006 (78 years)
Benjamin Borenstein was an American food scientist who was involved in vitamin fortification. Employed with Hoffman-La Roche until his 1987 retirement, Borenstein played a key role in fortifying vitamins. He also served as an adjunct professor, and late honorary professor, at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
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#2961

Ronald F. Scott

#149097
Overall Influence
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#2962

Joel Anthony Huberman

#149121
Overall Influence
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#2963

Thomas D. Albright

#149185
Overall Influence
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#2964

Garry Rumbles

#149241
Overall Influence
Garry Rumbles is a British chemist and researcher at CU-Boulder. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and has written more than 130 journal articles. He has an h-index of 67.
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#2965

G. Mark Voit

#149391
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
G. Mark Voit is an American physicist and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Michigan State University. His most cited solely-authored paper is "Tracing Cosmic Evolution with Clusters of Galaxies", in Reviews of Modern Physics, at Michigan State University. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research involves theoretical investigations of clusters of galaxies, galaxy evolution, and the role of supermassive black holes in galaxy evolution. Voit is an expert in the physics of astrophysical gas and dust.
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#2966

Emily Warren

#149407
Overall Influence
Emily Warren is an American chemical engineer who is a staff scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Her research considers high efficiency crystalline photovoltaics. Early life and education Warren became interested in science as a child. At elementary school, she campaigned to save the rainforest. Warren was an undergraduate student at Cornell University, where she studied chemical engineering and became aware of the energy industry. She travelled to Nigeria for a course on sustainable development. She was a graduate student at California Institute of Technology. Her research considered the growth of silicon microwire arrays using vapor–liquid–solid methods.
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#2967

Yia-Chung Chang

#149413
Overall Influence
Yia-Chung Chang is a Taiwanese physicist. Chang studied physics at National Cheng Kung University and completed a doctorate in the same field at the California Institute of Technology. Upon graduating, he joined the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign faculty. Chen was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2001. He returned to Taiwan in 2005, as a research fellow at Academia Sinica.
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#2968

Jonathan B. Freund

#149447
Overall Influence
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#2969

Robert B. Best

#149488
Overall Influence
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#2970

Amitava Dasgupta

#149553
Overall Influence
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#2971

Ilya Mandel

#149652
Overall Influence
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#2972

Douglas L. Rosene

#149671
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
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#2973

Sacha B. Nelson

#149716
Overall Influence
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#2974

Christian Frankenberg

#149786
Overall Influence
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#2975

Amy Herr

#149814
Overall Influence
Amy Elizabeth Herr is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is attached to the Department of Bioengineering. At Berkeley she was also the founding executive director of the Bakar Bioenginuity Hub. Herr is a Chan Zuckerberg BioHub Investigator and the Chief Technology Officer of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network, a fellow of both the National Academy of Inventors and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, as well as a co-founder of Zephyrus Biosciences, a biotechnology company that was acquired by Bio-Tech...
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#2976

Rahul Satija

#149905
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
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#2977

Karl Mechtler

#149973
Overall Influence
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#2978

Baojun Bai

#150054
Overall Influence
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#2979

Alvin H. Schmaier

#150060
Overall Influence
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#2980

Lucia Reining

Lucia Reining
#150203
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Lucia Reining is a German theoretical spectroscopist who works in France as a director of research with the French National Centre for Scientific Research , in the Laboratoire des Solides Irradiés at the École Polytechnique.
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#2981

Christophe Sotin

#150289
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
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#2982

Alexander F. H. Goetz

#150455
Overall Influence
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#2983

Roger Jones

#150524
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Roger D. Jones is an American physicist and entrepreneur. He currently is a Research Fellow at the European Centre for Living Technology at the University of Venice, Italy. Scientific Interests Jones, trained in physics at Dartmouth College, worked as a staff physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1979 to 1995. His primary research interests were in plasma physics, laser fusion, and machine learning. Jones's current interests are in molecular computation in biological systems and serious gaming. He is currently involved in a European-Union project to personalize treatment for diabet...
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#2984

Guangbin Dong

#150700
Overall Influence
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#2985

Sydney Meshkov

Sydney Meshkov
#150763
Overall Influence
1927 - 2020 (93 years)
Sydney Meshkov was a Theoretical Physicist who worked in gravitational wave, atomic, nuclear and particle physics. Academic career Meshkov received his undergraduate A.B. degree in physics and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as his M.S. from the University of Illinois. He held positions at many institutions, most notably at the National Bureau of Standards as a member of the Senior Executive Service , and at Caltech, where he was a Visiting Associate and a Visiting Professor of Theoretical Physics in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a LIGO staff member from 1994 to 2020.
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#2986

Robert O. Green

#150770
Overall Influence
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#2987

Steven B. Shirey

#150884
Overall Influence
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#2988

Andrey B. Matsko

#151010
Overall Influence
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#2989

George Efstratios Apostolakis

#151026
Overall Influence
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#2990

Michael S. Krangel

#151052
Overall Influence
Michael Steven Krangel is an American immunologist. He is the Mary Bernheim Distinguished Professor of Immunology in the Department of Immunology at the Duke University School of Medicine. In 2010, Krangel was appointed chair of the Department of Immunology at Duke University School of Medicine.
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#2991

Robert J. Strangeway

#151100
Overall Influence
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#2992

Douglas A Levine

#151111
Overall Influence
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#2993

Philip Bevilacqua

#151190
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Philip C. Bevilacqua is a biological chemist. He was born on September 7, 1965, in North Collins, NY. He currently serves as a distinguished professor at the Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA. In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science
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#2994

Vadapalli Chandrasekhar

#151220
Overall Influence
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#2995

John C. Mallinson

John C. Mallinson
#151272
Overall Influence
1932 - 2015 (83 years)
John C. Mallinson was a British physicist who made significant contributions to the understanding of magnetism and magnetic recording. He is perhaps best remembered for his theoretical work on structures with one-sided magnetic flux. Their use is exemplified in the Halbach array and in the familiar refrigerator magnet.
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#2996

Geoffrey D. Rubin

#151455
Overall Influence
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#2997

Jordan A. Goodman

#151502
Overall Influence
Jordan A. Goodman is an American physicist whose expertise is in particle astrophysics. He is the former Chair of Physics Department, at the University of Maryland. In 2009, Goodman was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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#2998

Manfred L. Gahr

#151557
Overall Influence
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#2999

Aditya Bardia

#151586
Overall Influence
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#3000

William D. Spotnitz

#151729
Overall Influence
William D. Spotnitz is a cardiothoracic surgeon and medical researcher who has made significant contributions to the development and testing of surgical techniques. He is a notable researcher in the United States in use of fibrin glue . Spotnitz serves as a heart surgeon in the University of Virginia Health System. He also previously served as the director of the hospital's Tissue Adhesive Center, which promoted and advanced the use of adhesives in surgery. He currently serves as the director of the Surgical Therapeutic Advancement Center, a successor program conducting more generalized resear...
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