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
#29601
Tudor Ratiu
#29613
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Tudor Stefan Rațiu is a Romanian-American mathematician who has made contributions to geometric mechanics and dynamical systems theory. Education His father, Mircea Ratiu, an engineer, was the younger brother of Ion Rațiu, a well-known Romanian politician, while his mother, Rodica Bucur, was a piano professor at the Conservatory of Music in Timișoara. Ratiu did his undergraduate studies at the University of Timișoara, completing his B.Sc. in 1973 and his M.S. in 1974.
Go to Profile#29602
Adam Ragusea
#29614
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Adam Ragusea is an American YouTuber who creates videos about food recipes, food science, and culinary culture. Until 2020, Ragusea was a professor of journalism at Mercer University. Early life and education Ragusea grew up in State College, Pennsylvania. Ragusea attended the Eastman School of Music but left before the end of his first year. He finished his bachelor's degree in music theory and composition at Penn State University in 2004. He completed all coursework towards a Master of Music at Indiana University Bloomington, but did not graduate.
Go to Profile#29603
Maiken Nedergaard
#29615
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Maiken Nedergaard is a Danish neuroscientist most well known for discovering the glymphatic system. She is a jointly appointed professor in the Departments of Neuroscience and Neurology at the University of Rochester Medical Center. She holds a part-time appointment in the Department of Neurosurgery within the University of Rochester Center for Translational Neuromedicine, where she is the principal investigator of the Division of Glial Disease and Therapeutics laboratory. She is also Professor of Glial Cell Biology at the University of Copenhagen, Center for Translational Neuromedicine.
Go to Profile#29604
Per Fugelli
#29616
Overall Influence
1943 - 2017 (74 years)
Per Fugelli was a Norwegian physician and professor of General Practice at the University of Bergen from 1984 to 1992, and social medicine at the University of Oslo from 1992 until his death in 2017.
Go to Profile#29605
Erast Parmasto
#29617
Overall Influence
1928 - 2012 (84 years)
Erast Parmasto was a noted Estonian mycologist, bioscientist and botanist and onetime director of the Estonian Institute of Zoology and Botany. Parmasto was born in Nõmme. He became a member of the Estonian Institute of Zoology and Botany in 1950 and served as its director from 1985 to 1990. His establishment of a mushroom herbarium in 1950 has since seen recognition of 160,000 samples, 37,000 of which Parmasto himself collected.
Go to Profile#29606
Erich Mielke
#29618
Overall Influence
1907 - 2000 (93 years)
Erich Fritz Emil Mielke was a German communist official who served as head of the East German Ministry for State Security , better known as the Stasi, from 1957 until shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Go to Profile#29607
Eric K. Meyer
#29619
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Eric K. Meyer is an American associate professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a newspaper publisher. He is also a former associate dean for academic and administrative affairs with the university's College of Media.
Go to Profile#29608
Judith Tarr
#29620
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Judith Tarr is an American fantasy and science fiction author. Life Tarr was born in Augusta, Maine on January 30, 1955. She is the daughter of Earle A. Tarr, Jr. , and Regina . She received her B.A. in Latin and English from Mount Holyoke College in 1976, and has an M.A. in Classics from Cambridge University, and an M.A. and PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale University. She taught Latin at Wesleyan University from 1990 to 1993.
Go to Profile#29609
Anna N. Żytkow
#29621
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Anna N. Żytkow is a Polish astrophysicist working at the Institute of Astronomy of the University of Cambridge. Żytkow and Kip Thorne proposed a model for what is called the Thorne–Żytkow object, which is a star within another star. Żytkow in 2014 was part of the team led by Emily M. Levesque which discovered the first candidate for such an object.
Go to Profile#29610
Warren Goldfarb
#29622
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Warren David Goldfarb is Walter Beverly Pearson Professor of Modern Mathematics and Mathematical Logic at Harvard University. He specializes in the history of analytic philosophy and in logic, most notably the classical decision problem.
Go to Profile#29611
Roberta Millstein
#29623
Overall Influence
Roberta L. Millstein is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis, with affiliations in the Science and Technology Studies Program and the John Muir Institute for the Environment. She is the Senior Co-chair of the Philosophy of Science Association’s Women's Caucus and an Editor of the peer-reviewed online open-access journal Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology. She also serves as a member of the executive committee and Council for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Pacific Division as well as the council for the International Society for the ...
Go to Profile#29612
Javier Aguirre
#29624
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Javier Aguirre Onaindía , nicknamed El Vasco , is a Mexican former professional footballer and manager who is currently head coach of La Liga club Mallorca. Aguirre played for Mexico at the 1986 World Cup, and was twice manager of the team, taking them to the World Cup in 2002 and 2010. He also won the 2009 CONCACAF Gold Cup and led them to the final of the 2001 Copa América. Later, he managed Japan and Egypt.
Go to Profile#29613
Pamela Matson
#29625
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
#29614
Sextus of Chaeronea
#29626
Overall Influence
Sextus of Chaeronea was a philosopher, a nephew or grandson of Plutarch, and one of the teachers of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Biography The Suda identifies Sextus of Chaeronea as being a student of Herodotus of Tarsus and being the same person as Sextus Empiricus, in which case Sextus would be a Pyrrhonist. Diogenes Laertius also says that Sextus Empiricus was a student of Herodotus. A Latin translation of Outlines of Pyrrhonism ascribe them to Sextus of Chaeronea.
Go to Profile#29615
Oswald Oberhuber
#29627
Overall Influence
1931 - 2020 (89 years)
Oswald Oberhuber was an Austrian painter, sculptor, and graphic artist. Biography Oberhuber learned sculpture at the Federal Trade School in Innsbruck. He also studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. In 1972, Oberhuber represented Austria at the Venice Biennale. The following year, he became a professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where he worked until his retirement in 1998. The State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart recognized Oberhuber as an honorary member in 1982, and as an honorary senator in 2004.
Go to Profile#29616
Alexander Kluge
#29628
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Alexander Kluge is a German author, philosopher, academic and film director. Early life, education and early career Kluge was born in Halberstadt, Province of Saxony , Germany. After growing up during World War II, he studied history, law and music at the University of Marburg Germany, and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany. He received his doctorate in law in 1956.
Go to Profile#29617
Helene Langevin
#29629
Overall Influence
Helene Langevin is Director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health at the National Institutes of Health . She was a professor in the University of Vermont College of Medicine's Department of Neurological Sciences. She is best known for characterizing certain cellular and mechanical effects of acupuncture. She was also a Professor in Residence of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital. Prior to working at NIH, Langevin was the Director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, jointly owned by Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medic...
Go to Profile#29618
Roger Jowell
#29630
Overall Influence
1942 - 2011 (69 years)
Sir Roger Mark Jowell, CBE was a British social statistician and academic. He founded Social and Community Planning Research, now known as the National Centre for Social Research, and the Centre for Comparative Social Surveys at City University.
Go to Profile#29619
Nevin S. Scrimshaw
#29631
Overall Influence
1918 - 2013 (95 years)
Nevin Stewart Scrimshaw was an American food scientist and Institute Professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Scrimshaw was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During the course of his long career he developed nutritional supplements for alleviating protein, iodine, and iron deficiencies in the developing world. His pioneering and extensive publication
Go to Profile#29620
Jan Eugeniusz Krysiński
#29632
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Jan Eugeniusz Krysiński is a Polish scientist, specializing in fluid mechanics and turbomachinery research, and former rector of Lodz University of Technology. Krysiński is a graduate of General Secondary School number three under the patronage of Tadeusz Kosciuszko in Lodz. In 1957 he completed his studies at the Technical University of Lodz, where he then started his scientific work. Since that time, he has remained employed at the university. He defended his PhD dissertation in 1965 and habilitation in 1975. In 1980 he was awarded the title of a professor in technical sciences. Since 1991 he has held the position of a full professor.
Go to Profile#29621
Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan
#29633
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan is a French and Nigerien anthropologist, and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Marseilles. He is also Emeritus Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and associate professor at Abdou Moumouni University in Niamey where he founded the master of socio-anthropology of health.
Go to Profile#29622
Jim Wright
#29634
Overall Influence
1922 - 2015 (93 years)
James Claude Wright Jr. was an American politician who served as the 48th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1987 to 1989. He represented Texas' 12th congressional district as a Democrat from 1955 to 1989.
Go to Profile#29623
Frank Kreith
#29635
Overall Influence
1922 - 2018 (96 years)
Frank Kreith was an American mechanical engineer. Born in Vienna, Kreith fled Austria after the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938 as a member of the Kindertransport. He obtained degrees from the University of California, Berkeley , the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Paris . Kreith worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, received a fellowship from the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation to study at Princeton University and taught at Berkeley and Lehigh University before becoming a faculty member at University of Colorado Boulder in 1959. He wa...
Go to Profile#29624
Truls Lie
#29636
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#29625
Daryl Hannah
#29637
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Daryl Hannah is an American actress and environmental activist. She made her screen debut in Brian De Palma's supernatural horror film The Fury . She has starred in various films across the years, including as Pris Stratton in Ridley Scott's science fiction thriller Blade Runner and as Cathy Featherstone in Randal Kleiser's romantic comedy Summer Lovers , as the mermaid Madison in Ron Howard's fantasy-romantic comedy Splash , Roxanne Kowalski in the romantic comedy Roxanne , Darien Taylor in Oliver Stone's drama Wall Street , and Annelle Dupuy Desoto in the comedy-drama Steel Magnolias . In ...
Go to Profile#29626
Malkhaz Abdushelishvili
#29638
Overall Influence
1926 - 1998 (72 years)
Malkhaz Abdushelishvili was a famous Soviet and Georgian scientist, one of the founders of the Georgian scientific school of Anthropology, Academician of the Georgian Academy of Sciences , Meritorious Scholar of Georgia, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor.
Go to Profile#29627
Keith Lee Morris
#29639
Overall Influence
Keith Lee Morris is an American author who has published three novels, The Greyhound God , The Dart League King and Traveler's Rest as well as two collections of short stories, The Best Seats in the House and Other Stories and Call It What You Want . His work has been published in A Public Space, Tin House, The Southern Review, Ninth Letter, Story Quarterly, The New England Review, The Cincinnati Review, and The Georgia Review.
Go to Profile#29628
Michael Blakey
#29640
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Michael Blakey is an American anthropologist who specializes in physical anthropology and its connection to the history of African Americans. Since 2001, he has been a National Endowment for the Humanities professor at the College of William & Mary, where he directs the Institute for Historical Biology. Previously, he was a professor at Howard University and the curator of Howard University's Montague Cobb Biological Anthropology Laboratory.
Go to Profile#29629
Bernard Lo
#29641
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Bernard Lo is a Canadian television anchor on CNBC Asia. Biography Bernard Lo is a Hong Kong-based anchor for CNBC. Prior to that he was a Hong Kong-based anchor at Bloomberg Television from 2004-2010. He also hosted the chat show Asia Confidential with Bernie Lo. Prior to joining Bloomberg, he was the Hong Kong Anchor and Talk Show Host for CNBC Asia. He has most recently been anchor of Asia Squawk Box.
Go to Profile#29630
Pinchas Polonsky
#29642
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Pinchas Polonsky is a rabbi, Russian-Israeli Jewish-religious philosopher, researcher, and educator active among the Russian-speaking Jewish community. He has written original books and a number of translations of works on Judaism.
Go to Profile#29631
Bessie Blount Griffin
#29643
Overall Influence
1914 - 2009 (95 years)
Bessie Virginia Blount, also known as Bessie Blount Griffin, was an American writer, nurse, physical therapist, inventor and forensic scientist. Early life Bessie Blount Griffin was born on November 24, 1914, to George Woodard and Mary Elizabeth. A native of Virginia, Blount was born in the Hickory, Virginia community, in Princess Anne County .
Go to Profile#29632
Martyn Percy
#29644
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Martyn William Percy is a British academic, educator, social scientist and theologian. Ordained as a priest in the Church of England, in 2022 he announced that he was leaving the Church of England, though remains Episcopalian-Anglican. He had been Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, from 2014 to 2022 and principal of Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford, from 2004 to 2014.
Go to Profile#29633
David Lubinski
#29645
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
David J. Lubinski is an American psychology professor known for his work in applied research, psychometrics, and individual differences. His work has focussed on exceptionally able children: the nature of exceptional ability, the development of people with exceptional ability . He has published widely on the impact of extremely high ability on outputs such as publications, creative writing and art, patents etc. This work disconfirmed the "threshold hypothesis" which suggested that a certain minimum of IQ might be needed, but higher IQ did not translate into greater productivity or creativity....
Go to Profile#29634
Jagjit Chadha
#29646
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Jagjit Singh Chadha He is on secondment from his position as Professor and Chair in Money and Banking in the Department of Economics at the University of Kent. He is Professor of Commerce at Gresham College and was Chair of the Money, Macro and Finance Research Group and was previously a specialist adviser to the Treasury Select Committee. He is also a part-time, Visiting Professor of Economics at Cambridge University.
Go to Profile#29635
Gene Sarazen
#29647
Overall Influence
1902 - 1999 (97 years)
Gene Sarazen was an American professional golfer, one of the world's top players in the 1920s and 1930s, and the winner of seven major championships. He is one of five players to win each of the four majors at least once, now known as the Career Grand Slam: U.S. Open , PGA Championship , The Open Championship , and Masters Tournament .
Go to Profile#29636
Colin Murray Parkes
#29648
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Colin Murray Parkes is a British psychiatrist and the author of numerous books and publications on grief. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to bereaved people in June 1996.
Go to Profile#29637
Wolf Erlbruch
#29649
Overall Influence
1948 - 2022 (74 years)
Wolf Erlbruch was a German illustrator and writer of children's books, who became professor at several universities. He combined various techniques for the artwork in his books, including cutting and pasting, drawing, and painting. His style was sometimes surrealist and is widely copied inside and outside Germany. Some of his storybooks have challenging themes such as death and the meaning of life. They won many awards, including the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1993 and 2003. Erlbruch received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2006 for his "lasting contribution" as a children's illustrator.
Go to Profile#29638
Catherine Larrère
#29650
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Catherine Larrère is a French philosopher and academic. She is a professor of philosophy emeritus . She is a specialist in Montesquieu's philosophy and an advocate for environmental ethics. Biography Catherine Delafoss was born in La Rochelle in 1944. She first became interested in the history of economics, then in the philosopher Montesquieus ideas. In the 1990s, she met and was inspired by John Baird Callicott the American academic concerned with environmental ethics. She became an expert and was an advocate for similar British and American research. She translated works by John Baird Cal...
Go to Profile#29639
Marc Henneaux
#29651
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Marc, Baron Henneaux is a Belgian theoretical physicist and professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles who was born in Brussels on 5 March 1955. Education and career Henneaux studied physics at ULB and received his doctoral degree in 1980 under the supervision of Jules Géhéniau. He was a visiting fellow at Princeton University for the academic year 1978-1979 where a long-term collaboration with Claudio Bunster was initiated. He was then postdoctoral research associate and lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin from 1981 to 1984, to continue working with Claudio Bunster. From there,...
Go to Profile#29640
Ranveer Singh
#29652
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Ranveer Singh Bhavnani is an Indian actor who works in Hindi films. He is the recipient of several awards, including five Filmfare Awards. He is among the highest-paid Indian actors and has been featured in Forbes Indias Celebrity 100 list since 2012.
Go to Profile#29641
Richard A. Bettis
#29653
Overall Influence
Richard A. Bettis is the Ellison Distinguished Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is known for his work on corporate strategy, global business strategy and strategic management. He is a former president of the Strategic Management Society and was the Co-Editor of Strategic Management Journal from 2007-2015.
Go to Profile#29642
Wai-lim Yip
#29654
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Wai-lim Yip , is a Chinese poet, translator, critic, editor, and professor of Chinese and comparative literature at UC San Diego. He received his PhD in comparative literature from Princeton University. He is also a visiting teacher at China's Peking University and Tsinghua University.
Go to Profile#29643
Markolf Niemz
#29655
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Markolf H. Niemz is a German physicist, biophysicist, and author. He is a full professor at Heidelberg University. Biography Markolf Niemz studied physics at Frankfurt University and Heidelberg University, and bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego. In 1992, he submitted his PhD thesis on the construction of a pulse compressed Nd:YLF laser to study the plasma-induced ablation of tissue.
Go to Profile#29644
Sam Viviano
#29656
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Sam Viviano is an American caricature artist and art director. Viviano's caricatures are known for their wide jaws, which Viviano has explained is a result of his incorporation of side views as well as front views into his distortions of the human face. He has also developed a reputation for his ability to do crowd scenes. Explaining his twice-yearly covers for Institutional Investor magazine, Viviano has said that his upper limit is sixty caricatures in nine days.
Go to Profile#29645
Danny Calegari
#29657
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Danny Matthew Cornelius Calegari is a mathematician and, , a professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago. His research interests include geometry, dynamical systems, low-dimensional topology, and geometric group theory.
Go to Profile#29646
Ilkka Tuomi
#29658
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Ilkka Tuomi is a Finnish computer scientist, noted for writings on the subject of the Internet. Works Ilkka Tuomi has written books, including Networks of Innovation: Change and Meaning in the Age of the Internet which develops theory of open innovation based on analysis of Internet-related innovations and open source, and Corporate Knowledge: Theory and Practice of Intelligent Organizations, which develops theory of knowledge management.
Go to Profile#29647
Szczepan Pieniążek
#29659
Overall Influence
1913 - 2008 (95 years)
Szczepan Aleksander Pieniążek was a Polish pomologist, professor of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, and a vice-president of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He was a pioneer in Polish horticulture, which was in need of reform after World War II. Having studied in the United States, Pieniążek brought to Poland innovative solutions to various fruit-growing problems. In his scientific research, he generally focused on pomology, plant physiology, and conservation of orchards. He published over one hundred publications, including an academic handbook "Horticulture".
Go to Profile#29648
Francis Edward Peters
#29660
Overall Influence
1927 - 2020 (93 years)
Francis Edward Peters, SJ , was an American academic. He served as professor emeritus of history, religion and Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University . Early life and education Peters was born in New York City and graduated from Regis High School in Manhattan in 1945. He entered the Jesuits that summer and spent four years at their novitiate at St. Andrew on Hudson in Hyde Park, N.Y. He then studied at St. Louis University for three years, earning his B.A. in 1950 and his M.A. in Latin and Greek in 1952, as well as a licentiate in philosophy awarded by a Pontifical Institute...
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Piero Boitani
#29661
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Piero Boitani is an Italian literary critic. Life Born in Rome, Boitani received his Ph.D. from Cambridge while teaching there and has taught in the University of Pescara and University of Perugia. He is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at the Sapienza University of Rome and has taught at the Gregorian University and at the University of Italian Switzerland.
Go to Profile#29650
Lamin Sanneh
#29662
Overall Influence
1942 - 2019 (77 years)
Lamin Sanneh was the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale Divinity School and Professor of History at Yale University. Biography Sanneh was born and raised in Gambia as part of an ancient African royal family, and was a naturalized United States citizen. After studying at the University of Birmingham and the Near East School of Theology, Beirut, he earned his doctorate in Islamic History at the University of London. Sanneh taught and worked at the University of Ghana, the University of Aberdeen, Harvard, and, from 1989–2019, at Yale. He was an editor-at-large of The Christian Century, and served on the board of several other journals.
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