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
#30001
Tom Hiddleston
#30013
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Thomas William Hiddleston is an English actor. He gained international fame portraying Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe , starting with Thor in 2011 and most recently headlining the Disney+ series Loki since 2021.
Go to Profile#30002
Jonathan Cain
#30014
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jonathan Leonard Friga , known professionally as Jonathan Cain, is an American musician, singer and songwriter. He is best known as the keyboardist and rhythm guitarist for Journey. He has also worked with The Babys and Bad English. Cain was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Journey in 2017. He also maintains a solo career as a contemporary Christian artist.
Go to Profile#30003
Willi Semmler
#30015
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Willi Semmler is a German born American economist who currently teaches at The New School in New York. Academic career Willi Semmler studied at the University of Munich, Technical University of Berlin and Free University of Berlin. He has a PHD and a Habilitation from the Free University of Berlin. He began his teaching career at the University of Berlin, was a Post-Doc at Columbia University, funded by the American Council of Learned Society, taught at the American University, Washington, D.C., and the University of Bielefeld, . He is currently the Henry Arnhold Professor of International Cooperation and Development at the New School for Social Research, The New School, New York.
Go to Profile#30004
Tim Hubbard
#30016
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Timothy John Phillip Hubbard is a Professor of Bioinformatics at King's College London, Head of Genome Analysis at Genomics England and Honorary Faculty at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK. Starting March 1, 2024, Tim will become the director of Europe's Life Science Data Infrastructure ELIXIR.
Go to Profile#30005
John Podesta
#30017
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
John David Podesta Jr. is an American political consultant who has served as senior advisor to the president for clean energy innovation and implementation since September 2022. Podesta previously served as White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001 and counselor to President Barack Obama from 2014 to 2015. Before that, he served in the Clinton administration as White House staff secretary from 1993 to 1995 and White House deputy chief of staff for operations from 1997 to 1998.
Go to Profile#30006
Frank Glorius
#30018
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Frank Glorius is a German chemist and W3-Professor of organic chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster. Life and work Glorius studied chemistry at the Leibniz University Hannover, completing his Diploma thesis in 1997. During his Diploma he also undertook a nine-month research stay at Stanford University with Paul A. Wender in 1995/1996. Glorius completed his Doctorate in 2000 investigating "New chiral bis-oxazoline ligands for enantioselective catalysis" at the University of Basel with Andreas Pfaltz. His PhD was divided between the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung and the University of Basel .
Go to Profile#30007
William Craig
#30019
Overall Influence
1918 - 2016 (98 years)
William Craig was an American academic and philosopher, who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California. His research interests included mathematical logic, and the philosophy of science, and he is best known for the Craig interpolation theorem.
Go to Profile#30008
Yoshikichi Furui
#30020
Overall Influence
1937 - 2020 (83 years)
Yoshikichi Furui was a Japanese author and translator. He has won the Akutagawa Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, and the Yomiuri Prize, among other literary awards. Biography Furui was born in Tokyo, Japan. He was educated at the University of Tokyo, where he majored in German literature, receiving a BA in 1960. His undergraduate thesis was on Franz Kafka. He remained at Tokyo University for graduate work for another two years, earning an MA in German literature in 1962. After graduating, he accepted a position at Kanazawa University where he taught German language and literature for three years. He...
Go to Profile#30009
Mindy Kaling
#30021
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Vera Mindy Chokalingam , known professionally as Mindy Kaling , is an American actress, screenwriter, and producer. She has received numerous awards for her work, including two Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Tony Award, and was nominated for six Primetime Emmy Awards.
Go to Profile#30010
Roopika Risam
#30022
Overall Influence
Roopika Risam is an associate professor of film and media studies and of comparative literature and faculty in the Digital Humanities and Social Engagement cluster at Dartmouth College. She is a scholar of digital and postcolonial humanities.
Go to Profile#30011
Carlos Moore
#30023
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Carlos Moore is a writer, social researcher, professor and activist, dedicated to the study of African and Afro-American history and culture. Moore holds two doctorates, in Human sciences and in Ethnology from the Paris Diderot University, and speaks five languages. At various periods he lived in France, Africa, the United States of America, Brazil and the Caribbean
Go to Profile#30012
James A. Wilson
#30024
Overall Influence
James Arthur Wilson is a mathematician working on special functions and orthogonal polynomials who introduced Wilson polynomials, Askey–Wilson polynomials and the Askey–Wilson beta integral.
Go to Profile#30013
Kefah Mokbel
#30025
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Professor Kefah Mokbel FRCS is the lead consultant breast surgeon at the London Breast Institute of the Princess Grace Hospital, Professor of Breast Cancer Surgery at Brunel University London, an honorary consultant breast surgeon at St George's Hospital. Kefah Mokbel is the founder and current president of Breast Cancer Hope; a UK-based charity "dedicated to improving the quantity and quality of life in women diagnosed with breast cancer". He was appointed as a substantive consultant breast surgeon at St George's Hospital NHS trust in February 2001. He was named in Tatler magazine's Best Doctors Guide as one of the featured "Top Breast Surgeons" in 2006, 2007 and 2013.
Go to Profile#30014
Anne Dudley
#30026
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Anne Jennifer Dudley is a British composer, keyboardist, conductor and pop musician. She was the first BBC Concert Orchestra's Composer in Association in 2001. She has worked in the classical and pop genres, as a film composer, and was one of the core members of the synth-pop band Art of Noise. In 1998, Dudley won an Oscar for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score for The Full Monty. In addition to over twenty other film scores, in 2012 she served as music producer for the film version of Les Misérables, also acting as arranger and composing some new additional music.
Go to Profile#30015
Hartmut Erbse
#30027
Overall Influence
1915 - 2004 (89 years)
Hartmut Erbse was a German classical philologist. Life The son of a dentist from Thüringen, Erbse studied classical philology in Hamburg, where he was well known for his lively hat-wear and received his doctorate in 1940. In 1948 he completed his habilitation at Graz with a study of Attic lexica; in the same year he received his first lectureship, in Hamburg. In 1954 he was appointed to a special professorship there, and six years later he was appointed a full professor. In 1965 he accepted an invitation to take the chair of Greek philology at Tübingen, and in 1968 a further invitation to the University of Bonn.
Go to Profile#30016
Harry Morgan
#30028
Overall Influence
1915 - 2011 (96 years)
Harry Morgan was an American actor whose television and film career spanned six decades. Morgan's major roles included Pete Porter in both December Bride and Pete and Gladys ; Officer Bill Gannon on Dragnet ; Amos Coogan on Hec Ramsey ; and his starring role as Colonel Sherman T. Potter in M*A*S*H and AfterMASH . Morgan also appeared as a supporting player in more than 100 films.
Go to Profile#30017
Stephanie Powell Watts
#30029
Overall Influence
Stephanie Powell Watts is an American author. She won a Whiting Award in 2013 and an Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence in 2012 for her book We are Taking Only what We Need a collection of 11 stories which chronicles the lives of African-Americans in North Carolina. Her short fiction has been included in two volumes of the Best New Stories from the South anthology and honored with a Pushcart Prize.
Go to Profile#30018
Anne Marie Albano
#30030
Overall Influence
Anne Marie Albano is a clinical psychologist known for her clinical work and research on psychosocial treatments for anxiety and mood disorders, and the impact of these disorders on the developing youth. She is the CUCARD professor of medical psychology in psychiatry at Columbia University, the founding director of the Columbia University Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders , and the clinical site director at CUCARD of the New York Presbyterian Hospital's Youth Anxiety Center.
Go to Profile#30019
L. Song Richardson
#30031
Overall Influence
Leah Song Richardson is an American lawyer, legal scholar, and higher education administrator who is currently president of Colorado College. She was previously dean and a chancellor's professor of law of the University of California, Irvine School of Law.
Go to Profile#30020
John Hartley
#30032
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
John Hartley , , FAHA, , FLSW, ICA Fellow, is an Australian academic. He was formerly Professor of Cultural Science and the Director of the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University in Western Australia, and Professor of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University. He has published over twenty books about communication, journalism, media and cultural studies, many of which have been translated into other languages. Hartley continues with CCAT as an adjunct professor .
Go to Profile#30021
Herbert Walter Levi
#30033
Overall Influence
1921 - 2014 (93 years)
Herbert Walter Levi was professor emeritus of zoology and curator of arachnology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University. He was born in Germany, and was educated there and at Leighton Park School, Reading in England. He then received his higher education at the University of Connecticut and the University of Wisconsin. Levi authored about 150 scientific papers on spiders and on biological conservation. He is the author of the popular Golden Guide Spiders and their Kin, with Lorna Rose Levi and Herbert Zim.
Go to Profile#30022
Jonathan Rosenbaum
#30034
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for The Chicago Reader from 1987 to 2008, when he retired. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has contributed to such notable film publications as Cahiers du cinéma and Film Comment.
Go to Profile#30023
Michael Arad
#30035
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Michael Arad is an Israeli-American architect who is best known for being the designer of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. He won the competition to design the memorial in 2004. Early life and education Arad, an Israeli citizen, was born in 1969 in London. London was where his father, Moshe Arad, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States and Mexico, was on a diplomatic mission. Arad lived in Jerusalem for nine years. He did his military service in a Golani Brigade commando unit.
Go to Profile#30024
Lydia White
#30036
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Lydia White is a Canadian linguist and educator in the area of second language acquisition . She is James McGill Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at McGill University. Biography She received her BA in Moral Sciences and Psychology from Cambridge University in 1969 and PhD in linguistics from McGill University in 1980.
Go to Profile#30025
David K. Bernard
#30037
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
David K. Bernard is an American New Testament scholar and Oneness Pentecostal theologian. He currently serves as the General Superintendent of the United Pentecostal Church International, the largest Oneness Pentecostal organization with constituents worldwide. He teaches as a Professor of Biblical Studies and Apostolic Leadership at Urshan Graduate School of Theology, where he also serves as Chancellor.
Go to Profile#30026
Elliot Forbes
#30038
Overall Influence
1917 - 2006 (89 years)
Elliot Forbes , known as "El", was an American conductor and musicologist noted for his Beethoven scholarship. Life and career Forbes came from a Boston Brahmin family; his father, Edward W. Forbes, was the director of Harvard's Fogg Art Museum. He attended Harvard, receiving a BA in 1941 and an MA in 1947, both in music; he studied with Walter Piston, and while he was a graduate student, he was assistant conductor of the Harvard Glee Club. From 1947 to 58, he taught at Princeton University, but in 1958 he returned to Harvard and remained there for the rest of his life as Fanny Peabody Profes...
Go to Profile#30027
Johannes Krause
#30039
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Johannes Krause is a German biochemist with a research focus on historical infectious diseases and human evolution. Since 2010, he has been professor of archaeology and paleogenetics at the University of Tübingen. In 2014, Krause was named a founding co-director of the new Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena.
Go to Profile#30028
Jouke de Vries
#30040
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Professor Jouke de Vries is chairman of the Executive Board of the University of Groningen in The Netherlands. Before that he was Dean of the University of Groningen/Campus Fryslân in Leeuwarden. De Vries grew up in the village of Balk in Friesland and in 1979 started his studies in political science at the University of Amsterdam. He has been working at the group Leaderships Art at the University of Leiden since 1984. De Vries obtained his PhD in 1989 from H. Daudt and H. Daalder on the article he wrote on "Ground Politics" and the educational essay "Cabinet Crisis in the Netherlands".
Go to Profile#30029
Babatunde Lawal
#30041
Overall Influence
Babatunde Lawal is an art historian and scholar of the arts of Nigeria. His research is focused on the visual culture of the Yoruba and its influences in the Americas. He is currently a professor of Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Go to Profile#30030
Jack Benaroya
#30042
Overall Influence
1921 - 2012 (91 years)
Jack A. Benaroya was a pioneering real estate developer who built what became the Northwest’s largest privately-held commercial real-estate empire which he sold in 1984 for $315 million. After selling his company, he became a venture capitalist and was an early investor in Starbucks. He was noted more for being a philanthropist and prominent civic leader in Seattle, Washington.
Go to Profile#30031
Alice Stewart
#30043
Overall Influence
1906 - 2002 (96 years)
Alice Mary Stewart, née Naish was a British physician and epidemiologist specialising in social medicine and the effects of radiation on health. Her study of radiation-induced illness among workers at the Hanford plutonium production plant, Washington, is frequently cited by those who seek to demonstrate that even very low doses of radiation cause substantial hazard. She was the first person to demonstrate the link between x-rays of pregnant women and high cancer rates in their children. She was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1986 "for bringing to light in the face of official opposit...
Go to Profile#30032
Ross M. Lence
#30044
Overall Influence
1943 - 2006 (63 years)
Ross Marlo Anthony Lence, was a professor of political science at the University of Houston from 1971 to 2006, where he was John and Rebecca Moores Scholar and held the Ross M. Lence Distinguished Teaching Chair. He taught political philosophy, American political thought, and American government as a member of the political science and honors college faculties. His edited volume of the works of John C. Calhoun, Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun, is one of the foremost references on Calhoun.
Go to Profile#30033
Ben Bradlee
#30045
Overall Influence
1921 - 2014 (93 years)
Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee was an American journalist who served as managing editor and later as executive editor of The Washington Post, from 1965 to 1991. He became a public figure when the Post joined The New York Times in publishing the Pentagon Papers and gave the go-ahead for the paper's extensive coverage of the Watergate scandal. He was also criticized for editorial lapses when the Post had to return a Pulitzer Prize in 1981 after it discovered its award-winning story was false.
Go to Profile#30034
Beth Phoenix
#30046
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Elizabeth Copeland , known professionally as Beth Phoenix, is an American professional wrestler. She is signed to WWE. She is a former WWE Divas Champion and a three-time WWE Women's Champion. Kociański had a successful amateur wrestling career in high school, winning several tournaments before being trained for professional wrestling by the All-Knighters. After her debut in May 2001, she wrestled for numerous independent promotions. She also appeared at the inaugural Shimmer Women Athletes shows. In 2004, she began working for Ohio Valley Wrestling and signed a developmental contract with WWE in October 2005.
Go to Profile#30035
Harold Guskin
#30047
Overall Influence
1941 - 2018 (77 years)
Harold Saul Guskin was an American actor and acting coach. He coached Glenn Close, James Gandolfini and Gabriel Macht. Early life He learned playing the trombone in high school but replaced it with theatre, then he started attending acting classes and did bachelor's degree in drama at Rutgers University, then earned a master's from Indiana University.
Go to Profile#30036
Kenneth W. Mack
#30048
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Kenneth W. Mack is a historian and the inaugural Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he has been a member of the faculty since 2000. He is the author of the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer, and co-editor of New Black: What Has Changed--and What Has Not--With Race in America.
Go to Profile#30037
Andrey Rublev
#30049
Overall Influence
1997 - Present (29 years)
Andrey Andreyevich Rublev is a Russian professional tennis player. He has been ranked as high as world No. 5 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals , which he first achieved in September 2021. Rublev has won 14 ATP Tour singles titles, including a Masters 1000 title at the 2023 Monte-Carlo Masters. He has a career-high doubles ranking of No. 44, achieved on 6 November 2023. He has won four doubles titles, including an Olympic gold medal in the mixed doubles at the 2020 Summer Olympics with Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and a Masters 1000 title at the 2023 Madrid Open with Karen Khac...
Go to Profile#30038
Harry Kewell
#30050
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Harry Kewell is an Australian association football coach, manager and former player. His most recent role as a club manager was at English National League side Barnet, and he is currently a first team coach at Celtic.
Go to Profile#30039
J. Budziszewski
#30051
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
J. Budziszewski is an American philosopher and professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has taught since 1981. He specializes in ethics, political philosophy and the interaction of these two fields with religion and theology.
Go to Profile#30040
Matthew Modine
#30052
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Matthew Avery Modine is an American actor. He rose to prominence through his role as U.S. Marine Private/Sergeant J.T. "Joker" Davis in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket . Other films include Birdy , Vision Quest , Married to the Mob , Gross Anatomy , Pacific Heights , Short Cuts , Cutthroat Island , The Dark Knight Rises , and Oppenheimer . On television, he portrayed Dr. Don Francis in the HBO film And the Band Played On , the oversexed Sullivan Groff on Weeds , Ivan Turing in Proof , and Dr. Martin Brenner in Netflix's Stranger Things .
Go to Profile#30041
Robin Cohen
#30053
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Robin Cohen is a social scientist working in the fields of globalisation, migration and diaspora studies. He is Emeritus Professor of Development Studies and former Director of the International Migration Institute, University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#30042
Laisenia Qarase
#30054
Overall Influence
1941 - 2020 (79 years)
Laisenia Qarase was a Fijian politician. He served as the sixth Prime Minister of Fiji from 2000 to 2006. After the military quashed the coup that led to the removal of Mahendra Chaudhry, Qarase joined the Interim Military Government as a financial adviser on 9 June 2000, until his appointment as Prime Minister on 4 July. He won two parliamentary elections, but a military coup removed him from power on 5 December 2006. He was later imprisoned on corruption charges brought by the military-backed regime.
Go to Profile#30043
Henry Lieberman
#30055
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Henry Lieberman is an American computer scientist at the MIT CSAIL in the fields of programming languages, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. He received the 2018 ACM Impact Award Intelligent User Interaction for work on mining affect from text and has been applied to the problem of prevention of cyberbullying. He has been a principal research scientist at the Media Lab and Director of the Software Agents Research group.
Go to Profile#30044
Shivaji Sondhi
#30056
Overall Influence
Shivaji Lal Sondhi is an Indian-born theoretical physicist who is currently the Wykeham Professor of Physics in the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford, known for contributions to the field of quantum condensed matter. He is son of former Lok Sabha MP Manohar Lal Sondhi.
Go to Profile#30045
Cynthia Friend
#30057
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Cynthia Friend is president and chief operating officer of The Kavli Foundation. She is on leave from the department of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University. Friend was the first female full professor of chemistry at Harvard, attaining the position in 1989. Friend has held the Theodore William Richards Chiar in Chemistry and served as professor of materials science in the Paulson School of Engineering. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Association of Arts and Sciences and the American Chemical Society.
Go to Profile#30046
Melvin Kranzberg
#30058
Overall Influence
1917 - 1995 (78 years)
Melvin Kranzberg was an American historian, and professor of history at Case Western Reserve University from 1952 until 1971. He was a Callaway professor of the history of technology at Georgia Tech from 1972 to 1988.
Go to Profile#30047
Per Michael Johansen
#30059
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Per Michael Johansen is a Danish engineer and physicist and the current rector of Aalborg University . Early life Johansen was born in 1960 in the small holiday and fishing village Agger in the Thy district, which is located in the northwestern part of Jutland in Denmark. He graduated from high school in Thisted in 1980. He subsequently studied Technical Physics at Aalborg University and holds a master's degree within this particular field which he was awarded in 1986. In addition to his master's degree he also holds a PhD and a title of Doctor of Science in physics .
Go to Profile#30048
Abdulaziz bin Mohieddin Khoja
#30060
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Abdulaziz bin Mohieddin Khoja is a former Saudi ambassador and the minister of culture and information between 2009 and 2014. Early life and education Khoja was born in Mecca in 1940. He obtained a bachelor of science degree from King Saud University. Then he earned a master of science degree in organic chemistry in Birmingham University in 1967. He also holds a PhD in organic chemistry at Birmingham University in 1969.
Go to Profile#30049
Lawton Chiles
#30061
Overall Influence
1930 - 1998 (68 years)
Lawton Mainor Chiles Jr. was an American politician and military officer. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a United States senator from Florida from 1971 to 1989 and as the 41st governor of Florida from 1991 until his death in 1998.
Go to Profile#30050
Herman Van der Wee
#30062
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Herman Frans Anna baron Van der Wee is a Belgian economic historian. He was a full professor of social and economic history at the KU Leuven from 1969 to 1993. The academic output of Van der Wee spans economic history, the history of banking, financial history. He has performed research on the period from the Middle Ages to the present time. Geographically he has performed broad research as well, looking into Antwerp, Belgium, the Low Countries, Europe and the world.
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