The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people
#29751
Nicholas Burbules
#29763
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Nicholas C. Burbules is a Gutgsell Endowed Professor of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership and an affiliate of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretative Theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the director of the Ubiquitous Learning Institute and has served as Editor of the journal Educational Theory since 1991.
Go to Profile#29752
Frank Bainimarama
#29764
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Josaia Voreqe "Frank" Bainimarama is a Fijian politician and former naval officer who served as the prime minister of Fiji from 2007 until 2022. A member of the FijiFirst party, which he founded in 2014, he began his career as an officer in the Fijian navy and commander of the Fijian military. He served as the opposition leader from 24 December 2022 despite being suspended from Parliament until 8 March 2023, when he resigned and was replaced by Inia Seruiratu.
Go to Profile#29753
Stanley Corngold
#29765
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Stanley Alan Corngold is an American literary scholar. He is an emeritus professor of German and comparative literature at Princeton University. Biography Corngold was born in Brooklyn in 1934. In 1957, he received his B.A. from Columbia University, which was interrupted by two years of military service. He then studied Sanskrit at the School of Oriental and African Studies and German at Columbia's graduate school. Having taught at the University of Maryland, Corngold entered Cornell University for his Ph.D. program, receiving his doctorate on Rousseau and Kant under the guidance of Paul de Man, Robert M.
Go to Profile#29754
Maria Grazia Spillantini
#29766
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Maria Grazia Spillantini , is Professor of Molecular Neurology in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge. She is most noted for identifying the protein alpha-synuclein as the major component of Lewy bodies, the characteristic protein deposit found in the brain in Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. She has also identified mutations in the MAPT gene as a heritable cause for frontotemporal dementia.
Go to Profile#29755
Ibrahim Rugova
#29767
Overall Influence
1944 - 2006 (62 years)
Ibrahim Rugova was a Kosovo Albanian politician, scholar, and writer, who served as the President of the partially recognised Republic of Kosova, serving from 1992 to 2000 and as President of Kosovo from 2002 until his death in 2006. He oversaw a popular struggle for independence, advocating a peaceful resistance to Yugoslav rule and lobbying for U.S. and European support, especially during the Kosovo War.
Go to Profile#29756
Mack Brown
#29768
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
William Mack Brown is an American college football coach. He is currently in his second stint as the head football coach for the University of North Carolina, where he first coached from 1988 until departing in 1997, when he left Chapel Hill to become head coach for the University of Texas. In 2018, Brown was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Two days after Carolina fired Larry Fedora in November 2018, Brown was announced to return as the Tar Heels' head coach after a five-year hiatus from coaching, which he spent as an ESPN analyst.
Go to Profile#29757
Nick Rhodes
#29769
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Nick Rhodes is an English keyboardist and producer, best known as a founding member and the keyboardist of the band Duran Duran. He is also informally monikered as "the Controller", after being introduced as such on stage by bandmate Simon Le Bon during the Astronaut album world tours of 2004–2005.
Go to Profile#29758
Hélène de Beauvoir
#29770
Overall Influence
1910 - 2001 (91 years)
Henriette-Hélène de Beauvoir was a French painter. She was the younger sister of philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Her art was exhibited in Europe, Japan, and the US. She married Lionel de Roulet. When Hélène de Beauvoir lived in Goxwiller, a village near Strasbourg, she became president of the center for battered women. She continued painting until she was 85. Her paintings were related to feminist philosophy and women's issues.
Go to Profile#29759
Ray Wilkins
#29771
Overall Influence
1956 - 2018 (62 years)
Raymond Colin Wilkins was an English football player and coach. Born into a footballing family with his father and three brothers involved in the game, Wilkins played as a midfielder. He began his career at Chelsea, where he was appointed captain at the age of 18, and later played for clubs including Manchester United, A.C. Milan, Queens Park Rangers and Rangers. He won 84 caps for the England national football team from 1976 to 1986, playing at UEFA Euro 1980 and the 1982 and 1986 FIFA World Cups.
Go to Profile#29760
Shirley Brice Heath
#29772
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Shirley Brice Heath is an American linguistic anthropologist, and Professor Emerita, Margery Bailey Professorship in English, at Stanford University. She graduated from Lynchburg College, Ball State University, and Columbia University, with a Ph.D. in 1970. She is a Brown University professor-at-large, and a visiting research professor at the Watson Institute.
Go to Profile#29761
Allan Sekula
#29773
Overall Influence
1951 - 2013 (62 years)
Allan Sekula was an American photographer, writer, filmmaker, theorist and critic. From 1985 until his death in 2013, he taught at California Institute of the Arts. His work frequently focused on large economic systems, or "the imaginary and material geographies of the advanced capitalist world."
Go to Profile#29762
John Niland
#29774
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
John Rodney Niland is an Australian academic and board director. Niland obtained a Bachelor and Master of Commerce from UNSW and his PhD is from the University of Illinois. He has held academic positions at Cornell University, The Australian National University, and UNSW. He served as a mediator of labour disputes in the US while at Cornell, and in Australia has undertaken extensive academic and policy work in conflict resolution, theory and practice, particularly enterprise bargaining. John Niland is a Professor Emeritus of UNSW and was its fourth Vice Chancellor and President . Before that he was the Dean of the Faculty of Commerce and Economics.
Go to Profile#29763
June Jones
#29775
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
June Sheldon Jones III is an American football coach and former player who was most recently the offensive coordinator of the Seattle Sea Dragons. Jones was the head football coach at the University of Hawaii at Manoa from 1999 to 2007 and was the head football coach at Southern Methodist University from 2008 to 2014, before resigning on September 8, 2014. Previously, he coached in the National Football League : a three-year tenure as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons from 1994 to 1996 and a ten-game stint as interim head coach of the San Diego Chargers in 1998; he also spent seasons as head coach of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the Canadian Football League .
Go to Profile#29764
David Axelrod
#29776
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
David M. Axelrod is an American political consultant, analyst, and former White House official. He is best known for being the chief strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns. After Obama's election, Axelrod was appointed as Senior Advisor to the President. He left the position in early 2011 and became the Senior Strategist for Obama's successful re-election campaign in 2012. Axelrod wrote for the Chicago Tribune, and joined CNN as Senior Political Commentator in 2015. Until recently, Axelrod served as the director of the non-partisan University of Chicago Institute of Politics. H...
Go to Profile#29765
Sorin Antohi
#29777
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Sorin Antohi is a Romanian historian, essayist, and journalist. Biography Antohi was born in Târgu Ocna, Bacău County. He received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from the University of Iași and a DEA from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
Go to Profile#29766
Jarle Aarbakke
#29778
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jarle Aarbakke was the rector at the University of Tromsø from 2002 until 2013, and the mayor of Tromsø municipality from October 2015 to July 2016 Before being elected rector in 2001, Aarbakke served as a professor of pharmacy at the Department of Medical Microbiology. From 2007 to 2009 he was chair of the Norwegian Association of Higher Education Institutions .
Go to Profile#29767
Paul A. Libby
#29779
Overall Influence
1921 - 2021 (100 years)
Paul Andrews Libby was a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, San Diego, a specialist in the field of combustion and aerospace engineering. Biography Libby received his bachelor's degree in 1942 and obtained his PhD in 1949, both from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. After his bachelor's degree, he worked at Chance Vought Aircraft for two years and then served in the United States Navy during World War II until 1946 in between his Bachelors and Doctorate degrees; he was a Junior Grade Lieutenant when discharged.
Go to Profile#29768
Virginie Razzano
#29780
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Virginie Razzano is a French former professional tennis player. She won two WTA Tour singles titles, both of them in 2007. Razzano reached her career-high WTA singles ranking of world No. 16 on 14 September 2009. She represented France in the Fed Cup from 2001 to 2014; her overall Fed Cup win–loss record is 16–9 .
Go to Profile#29769
Lila R. Gleitman
#29781
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Lila Ruth Gleitman was an American professor of psychology and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. She was an internationally renowned expert on language acquisition and developmental psycholinguistics, focusing on children's learning of their first language.
Go to Profile#29770
Vinnie Colaiuta
#29782
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Vincent Peter Colaiuta is an American drummer who has worked as a session musician in many genres. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Classic Drummer Hall of Fame in 2014. Colaiuta has won one Grammy Award and has been nominated twice. Since the late 1970s, he has recorded and toured with Frank Zappa, Joni Mitchell, and Sting, among many other appearances in the studio and in concert.
Go to Profile#29771
Henning Scheich
#29783
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Henning Scheich is a German brain researcher and psychiatrist. He was director of the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology until 2010 and head of the institute department until 2013. Since 2014 he serves as the chairman of an emeritus group at the institute. He has made substantial contributions to the field of brain research, in particular on the mechanisms of perception, behaviour and their adaptability. Within the framework of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Science Association he has exerted a lasting influence on the German community of researchers.
Go to Profile#29772
Eleanor Coerr
#29784
Overall Influence
1922 - 2010 (88 years)
Eleanor Coerr was a Canadian-born American writer of children's books, including Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes and many picture books. Biography She was born in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in Saskatoon. As a child, she liked to think up and read new stories. Through her best friend in high school, who was born to Japanese immigrants, Coerr developed an interest in calligraphy, Japanese food, and origami. She was exposed to Japanese scenery and told her friend that she wished to visit Japan one day, a request which Coerr fulfilled during the writing of Sadako and the Thou...
Go to Profile#29773
Alex Gibney
#29785
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Philip Alexander Gibney is an American documentary film director and producer. In 2010, Esquire magazine said Gibney "is becoming the most important documentarian of our time." Gibney's works as director include The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief , We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God , Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room ; Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer , Casino Jack and the United States of Money, and Taxi to the Dark Side , focusing on a taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed at Bagram Air Force Base in 2002.
Go to Profile#29774
Susanna S. Epp
#29786
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Susanna Samuels Epp is an author, mathematician, and professor. Her interests include discrete mathematics, mathematical logic, cognitive psychology, and mathematics education, and she has written numerous articles, publications, and textbooks. She is currently professor emerita at DePaul University, where she chaired the Department of Mathematical Sciences and was Vincent de Paul Professor in Mathematics.
Go to Profile#29775
Chittoor Mohammed Habeebullah
#29787
Overall Influence
1937 - 2010 (73 years)
Chittoor Mohammed Habeebullah was an Indian gastroenterologist, known for his contributions to the medical discipline of gastroenterology in India. Born in 1937 in the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, Habeebullah graduated in medicine from the Guntur Medical College in 1958, after which he secured his master's degree in general medicine from Andhra University and DM from the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh. He started his career as an assistant professor at the Department of Gastroenterology, Osmania Medical College and served as the professor and the Head of the Department from 1975 to 1992 and thereafter as the principal till 1994.
Go to Profile#29776
José Bautista
#29788
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
José Antonio Bautista Santos , nicknamed "Joey Bats", is a Dominican former professional baseball right fielder and third baseman who played 15 seasons in Major League Baseball , primarily for the Toronto Blue Jays. Bautista also played for Baltimore Orioles, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Kansas City Royals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Atlanta Braves, New York Mets, and Philadelphia Phillies.
Go to Profile#29777
Alan Mackworth
#29789
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Alan Mackworth is a professor emeritus in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia. He is known as "The Founding Father" of RoboCup. He is a former president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and former Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence from 2001–2014.
Go to Profile#29778
Sergiu Hart
#29790
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Sergiu Hart is an Israeli mathematician and economist. He is the Chairperson of the Humanities Division of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the past President of the Game Theory Society . He also is emeritus professor of mathematics at the Kusiel-Vorreuter University, and the emeritus professor of economics at the Center for the Study of Rationality at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.
Go to Profile#29779
Mohammad Azharuddin
#29791
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Mohammad Azharuddin is an Indian politician and former cricketer. He is a right handed middle order batter and an occasional medium fast bowler. He played 99 Test matches and 334 One Day Internationals representing the Indian national cricket team. He also served as the captain of the Indian team and led the team to wins in the 1990-91 and 1995 Asia Cups and the semi-finals of the 1996 Cricket World Cup.
Go to Profile#29780
David Stras
#29792
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
David Ryan Stras is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He is a former Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Early life and education Stras was born in 1974 in Wichita, Kansas. He graduated from the University of Kansas in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts with highest honors. He then jointly attended the University of Kansas's School of Law and School of Business, receiving a JD–MBA in 1999. As a law student, Stras was editor-in-chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review, and he received his law degree with ...
Go to Profile#29781
Adoor Gopalakrishnan
#29793
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Adoor Gopalakrishnan is an Indian film director, script writer, and producer and is regarded as one of the most notable and renowned filmmakers in India. With the release of his first feature film Swayamvaram , Gopalakrishnan pioneered the new wave in Malayalam cinema during the 1970s. In a career spanning over five decades, Gopalakrishnan has made only 12 feature films to date. His films are made in the Malayalam language and often depict the society and culture of his native state Kerala. Nearly all of his films premiered at Venice, Cannes and Toronto International Film Festival. Along with...
Go to Profile#29782
Leslie Wong
#29794
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Leslie Eric Wong is an American academic, university administrator, and psychology professor. He was President of Northern Michigan University and San Francisco State University. Effective July 1st, 2023, he became the interim President of Connecticut College.
Go to Profile#29783
Amos Yong
#29795
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Amos Yong is a Malaysian-American Pentecostal theologian and Professor of Theology and Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary. He has been Dean of School of Theology and School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Seminary, since July 1, 2019.
Go to Profile#29784
Jason Aldean
#29796
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Jason Aldean is an American country music singer. Since 2005, he has been signed to Broken Bow Records, a record label for which he has released eleven albums and 40 singles. His 2010 album, My Kinda Party, is certified quadruple-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America . His 2012 album Night Train is certified double-platinum, while his 2005 self-titled debut, 2007 album Relentless, 2009 album Wide Open, and 2014 album Old Boots, New Dirt are all certified platinum. Aldean has received five Grammy Award nominations throughout his career, twice for Best Country Album.
Go to Profile#29785
Grigor Gurzadyan
#29797
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Grigor Gurzadyan was an Armenian astronomer, and pioneer of space astronomy. Life Gurzadyan was born in 1922 in Baghdad, to parents that survived the Armenian genocide. Upon graduating from the Hydrotechnical and Constructional Department of Yerevan Polytechnic Institute in 1944, he became a graduate student of Victor Ambartsumian, who had just moved to Armenia. Being in Ambartsumian’s founding team of Byurakan Observatory, he later headed a Laboratory, in 1960s became deputy director of the Observatory for space research. Then, he headed the branch of Byurakan observatory on space research.
Go to Profile#29786
Seth
#29798
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Gregory Gallant , better known by his pen name Seth, is a Canadian cartoonist. He is best known for his series Palookaville and his mock-autobiographical graphic novel It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken .
Go to Profile#29787
Lee Tai-young
#29799
Overall Influence
1914 - 1998 (84 years)
Lee Tai-young , also spelled Yi T'ai Yǒng, was Korea's first female lawyer [other sources refer to her as the first female lawyer in South Korea]. She was also the founder of the country's first legal aide centre. She fought for women's rights all through her career. Her often mentioned refrain was, "No society can or will prosper without the cooperation of women." Her dedication to law also got her the epithet "the woman judge."
Go to Profile#29788
Stan Collymore
#29800
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Stanley Victor Collymore is an English football pundit, sport strategist, and former player who played as a striker from 1990 to 2001, most notably for Nottingham Forest and later Liverpool, who he joined from the former for an English transfer record of £8.5 million in 1995. He is currently senior football strategist at Southend United.
Go to Profile#29789
Raymond D. Fowler
#29801
Overall Influence
1930 - 2015 (85 years)
Raymond D. Fowler was an American psychologist and Professor Emeritus of the University of Alabama. He was president of the American Psychological Association and served as APA's executive vice president and chief executive officer from 1989 to 2003.
Go to Profile#29790
John Urquhart Cameron
#29802
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
John Urquhart Cameron is an academic and social reformer and a former parish minister of the Church of Scotland. He met and married the Anglo-Swedish skier Jill Sjoberg when he was a marketing executive with GlaxoSmithKline in London and they have a daughter Clare and a son Alex.
Go to Profile#29791
Kim Fowley
#29803
Overall Influence
1939 - 2015 (76 years)
Kim Vincent Fowley was an American record producer, songwriter and musician who was behind a string of novelty and cult pop rock singles in the 1960s, and managed The Runaways in the 1970s. He has been described as "one of the most colorful characters in the annals of rock & roll", as well as "a shadowy cult figure well outside the margins of the mainstream".
Go to Profile#29792
Tracy D. Terrell
#29804
Overall Influence
1943 - 1991 (48 years)
Tracy Dale Terrell was an American education theorist who, along with Stephen Krashen, wrote The Natural Approach. The natural approach is a comprehension-based language learning methodology which emphasizes the idea of exposure and the lowering of affective or emotional barriers to learning.
Go to Profile#29793
Yuen Kwok-yung
#29805
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Yuen Kwok-yung is a Hong Kong microbiologist, physician and surgeon. He is a prolific researcher, with most of his nearly 800 papers related to research on novel microbes or emerging infectious diseases. He led a team identifying the SARS coronavirus that caused the SARS pandemic of 2003–4, and traced its genetic origins to wild bats. During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, he has acted as expert adviser to the Hong Kong government.
Go to Profile#29794
Xavier Serra
#29806
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Xavier Serra is a researcher in the field of Sound and Music Computing and professor at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is the founder and director of the Music Technology Group at the UPF.
Go to Profile#29795
Loup Verlet
#29807
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Loup Verlet was a French physicist who pioneered the computer simulation of molecular dynamics models. In a famous 1967 paper he used what is now known as Verlet integration and the Verlet list . He received his PhD in 1957; his PhD work was initially conducted in the group of Victor Weisskopf at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and concluded under the guidance of Maurice Lévy at the École normale supérieure in Paris. From 1957 to 1993 he worked mostly on the physics of the liquid state.
Go to Profile#29796
Brian Vickers
#29808
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Sir Brian William Vickers is a British academic, now Emeritus Professor at ETH Zurich. He is known for his work on the history of rhetoric, Shakespeare, John Ford, and Francis Bacon. He joined the English department at University College London as a visiting professor in 2012.
Go to Profile#29797
Evan Bayh
#29809
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Birch Evans "Evan" Bayh III is an American politician who served as the 46th governor of Indiana from 1989 to 1997 and as a United States senator representing Indiana from 1999 to 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he currently serves on the President's Intelligence Advisory Board.
Go to Profile#29798
Evelyn Miralles
#29810
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Evelyn Rodriguez Miralles is a Venezuelan-American engineer that served as the chief principal engineer with CACI International at NASA Johnson Space Center Houston Texas. Her work at the virtual reality laboratory at NASA furthered human spaceflight by training United States astronauts to perform spacewalks and working outside a spacecraft in micro-gravity. Miralles is currently the Associate vice president for Strategic Information Initiatives and Technology at the University of Houston–Clear Lake.
Go to Profile#29799
Jerzy Lewandowski
#29811
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Jerzy Lewandowski is a Polish theoretical physicist who studies quantum gravity. He is a professor of physics at the University of Warsaw. Lewandowski received his doctorate in Warsaw under Andrzej Trautman. He worked closely with Abhay Ashtekar at Pennsylvania State University in the 1990s on the mathematical justification of Loop Quantum Gravity . Among other things, he was at the Erwin Schrödinger Institute in Vienna and at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Golm near Potsdam.
Go to Profile#29800
Carl Wilson
#29812
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Carl Wilson is a Canadian music critic who has written for many publications including The Globe and Mail and, as of 2022, Slate. He started the Zoilus blog. He is most well known for his book Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste. It was published in Continuum's 33⅓ series. Though set up as a critique of Celine Dion's album Let's Talk About Love, Wilson attempts to critique himself and music criticism in general. In 2014, an expanded version of Let's Talk About Love was released, featuring essays by, among others, James Franco, Mary Gaitskill, Nick Hornby, and Krist Novoselic.
Go to Profile