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
#30101
Chris Porter
#30113
Overall Influence
Chris Porter is a British record producer, audio engineer and narrator. He has worked with Sir Elton John, Take That, George Michael and Chris de Burgh. External links Official site
Go to Profile#30102
Aviad Raz
#30114
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Aviad Raz is an Israeli professor of sociology. He is director of the Behavioral Sciences program of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Academic career Aviad Raz earned his B.Sc. and Ph.D. from Tel-Aviv University. He was a Post-doctoral Fellow at Harvard and held fellowships from the Japan Foundation and the Israeli Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on religious/ethnic groups and identities in contemporary Israeli society, especially in the context of health and family studies. He studies the social and bioethical aspects of medical organizations, community genetics and patient support organizations.
Go to Profile#30103
J. Michael Harrison
#30115
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
John Michael Harrison is an American researcher, known for his contributions to the theory of operations research, in particular stochastic networks and financial engineering. He has authored two books and nearly 90 journal articles.
Go to Profile#30104
Sandra Díaz
#30116
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Sandra Myrna Díaz ForMemRS is an Argentine ecologist and professor of ecology at the National University of Córdoba. She studies the functional traits of plants and investigates how plants impact the ecosystem.
Go to Profile#30105
John P. Moore
#30117
Overall Influence
John P. Moore is an American virologist and professor at Cornell University's Weill Cornell Medicine college, known for his research on HIV/AIDS. He previously worked at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center. A former section editor of the Journal of General Virology, he is an outspoken critic of HIV/AIDS denialism, including the work of Peter Duesberg.
Go to Profile#30106
Chandrika Kumaratunga
#30118
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga , commonly referred to by her initials CBK, is a Sri Lankan politician who served as the fifth president of Sri Lanka, from 12 November 1994 to 19 November 2005. The country's first and only female president to date and the country's second female prime minister. She is the daughter of two former prime ministers and was the leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party until the end of 2005.
Go to Profile#30107
Tom Rivett-Carnac
#30119
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Thomas Charles Rivett-Carnac is a former political strategist for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. He is also an author on climate change policy, a podcaster and an advisor to corporations and governments on climate solutions.
Go to Profile#30108
Douglas LePan
#30120
Overall Influence
1914 - 1998 (84 years)
Douglas Valentine LePan was a Canadian diplomat, poet, novelist and professor of literature. Born in Toronto, Ontario, LePan was educated at the University of Toronto, at Harvard , and at Merton College, Oxford. During the Second World War, he was on staff at the Canadian High Commission in London and then served in the Canadian Army as an artilleryman during the Italian campaign. He joined the Canadian diplomatic service in 1946, and during his years as a diplomat served in London and in Washington, as well as in Ottawa. He was formally in the employ of the Department of External Affairs u...
Go to Profile#30109
D. A. Pennebaker
#30121
Overall Influence
1925 - 2019 (94 years)
Donn Alan Pennebaker was an American documentary filmmaker and one of the pioneers of direct cinema. Performing arts and politics were his primary subjects. In 2013, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award. Pennebaker was called by The Independent as "arguably the pre-eminent chronicler of Sixties counterculture".
Go to Profile#30110
Morgan Tsvangirai
#30122
Overall Influence
1952 - 2018 (66 years)
Morgan Richard Tsvangirai was a Zimbabwean politician who was Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 2009 to 2013. He was president of the Movement for Democratic Change, and later the Movement for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai , and a key figure in the opposition to former president Robert Mugabe.
Go to Profile#30111
Marshall B. Clinard
#30123
Overall Influence
1911 - 2010 (99 years)
Marshall Barron Clinard was an American sociologist who specialized in criminology. Criminological studies spanned across his entire career, from an examination of the Black Market during World War II to much more general treatments of white collar crime. His 1957 textbook Sociology of Deviant Behavior is now in its 15th edition. In addition to studies within the United States, Clinard did research in Sweden, India, Uganda and Switzerland: supported, respectively, by the Fulbright Program, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the U. S. National Science Foundation.
Go to Profile#30112
Graham Gouldman
#30124
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Graham Keith Gouldman is an English singer, musician and songwriter, best known as the co-lead singer and bassist of the art rock band 10cc. He has been the band's only constant member since its formation in 1972. Before 10cc, Gouldman worked as a freelance songwriter and penned many hits for major rock and pop groups, including the Yardbirds, the Hollies, Herman's Hermits and Ohio Express.
Go to Profile#30113
Pi Chun-deuk
#30125
Overall Influence
1910 - 2007 (97 years)
Pi Cheon-deuk was a Korean poet and an English literature scholar, but primarily an essayist. Life Born in Seoul on April 21, 1910, his pen name was Geum-a. He majored in English literature at Hujiang University in Shanghai. He was a professor at Seoul National University from 1946 - 1974 and taught many students. Before liberation he concentrated on poetic composition and English poetry as an instructor at Gyeongseong Central Business Institute, and after liberation he taught the arts at Gyeongseong University and later taught at Seoul National University.
Go to Profile#30114
Deepak Dhar
#30126
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Deepak Dhar is an Indian theoretical physicist known for his research on statistical physics and stochastic processes. In 2022, he became the first Indian to be awarded the Boltzmann Medal, the highest recognition in statistical physics awarded once every three years by IUPAP, for exceptional contributions to the subject.
Go to Profile#30115
Thomas Carell
#30127
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Thomas Carell is a German biochemist. Carell was born in 1966 in Herford Germany, he studied chemistry from 1985 till 1990 at the University of Münster finishing with a diploma thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research Heidelberg. After his PhD thesis on Porphyrin chemistry at the same institute, he did his postdoctoral at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993. He finished his habilitation on DNA repair proteins at the Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschule Zürich in 1998. From 2000 till 2004 he was Professor for organic chemistry at the University of Marburg until he became Professor for organic chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Go to Profile#30116
John Hughes
#30128
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
R. John M. Hughes, born , is a computer scientist and professor in the department of Computing Science at the Chalmers University of Technology. Contributions In 1984, Hughes received his PhD from the University of Oxford for the thesis "The Design and Implementation of Programming Languages".
Go to Profile#30117
John Skorupski
#30129
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John Skorupski is a British philosopher whose main interests are epistemology, ethics and moral philosophy, political philosophy, and the history of 19th and 20th century philosophy. He is best known for his work on John Stuart Mill and his study of normativity, The Domain of Reasons. His most recent publication is Being and Freedom: on Late Modern Ethics in Europe.
Go to Profile#30118
Aziz Ansari
#30130
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Aziz Ismail Ansari is an American actor and stand-up comedian. He is known for his role as Tom Haverford on the NBC series Parks and Recreation and as creator and star of the Netflix series Master of None for which he won several acting and writing awards, including two Emmys and a Golden Globe, which was the first award received by an Indian American and Asian American actor for acting on television.
Go to Profile#30119
Montserrat Caballé
#30131
Overall Influence
1933 - 2018 (85 years)
María de Montserrat Bibiana Concepción Caballé i Folch or Folc , known simply as Montserrat Caballé , was a Spanish operatic soprano from Catalonia. Widely considered to be one of the best sopranos of the 20th century, she won a variety of musical awards thoroughout her six-decade career, including three Grammy Awards.
Go to Profile#30120
Dieter Lüst
#30132
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Dieter Lüst is a German physicist, full professor for mathematical physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich since 2004 and a director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich. His research focusses on string theory. In 2000, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research.
Go to Profile#30121
Jeffrey Young
#30133
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jeffrey E. Young is an American psychologist best known for having developed schema therapy. He is the founder of the Schema Therapy Institute. After earning an undergraduate degree at Yale University, he obtained a higher education degree at the University of Pennsylvania, where he then pursued postdoctoral studies with Aaron Beck.
Go to Profile#30122
Adrien Brody
#30134
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Adrien Nicholas Brody is an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Władysław Szpilman in Roman Polanski's war drama The Pianist , for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor at age 29, becoming the youngest actor to win in that category. He also became the second American male actor to win the César Award for Best Actor for the same film. He has starred in several other films and has received several other awards including nominations for a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award.
Go to Profile#30123
Eleanor Saffran
#30135
Overall Influence
1938 - 2002 (64 years)
Eleanor M. Saffran , an American neuroscientist, was a researcher in the field of Cognitive Neuropsychology. Her interest in Neuropsychology began at the Baltimore City hospitals of Johns Hopkins University, where her research unit focused on neurological patients with language or cognitive impairments. In papers published between 1976 and 1982, Dr. Saffran spelled out the methodological tenets of “cognitive neuropsychology” exemplified in her studies of aphasia, alexia , auditory verbal agnosia, and short-term memory impairment.
Go to Profile#30124
Vanderlei Luxemburgo
#30136
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Vanderlei Luxemburgo da Silva is a Brazilian professional football coach and former player. He was recently the head coach of Corinthians. A left wingback, Luxemburgo represented Flamengo, Internacional and Botafogo before retiring in 1980. He subsequently became a coach and led Palmeiras, Corinthians, Cruzeiro and Santos to Série A titles, winning the tournament five times, a record total. In 2005 he worked at Real Madrid, but was dismissed in December of that year.
Go to Profile#30125
Park Yu-ha
#30137
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Park Yu-ha is a professor at the College of Liberal Arts, Sejong University. Her research focuses on Japanese–Korean relations. Her 2013 book Comfort Women of the Empire criticized the Korean interpretation of comfort women as exclusively "sex slaves".
Go to Profile#30126
Sara Wilford
#30138
Overall Influence
1932 - 2021 (89 years)
Sara Delano Wilford was a psychologist who taught at Sarah Lawrence College from 1982 to 2014. Early life Sara Delano Roosevelt was a daughter of Betsey Cushing Roosevelt Whitney, a philanthropist in medicine and art, and businessman James Roosevelt, the oldest son of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Wilford's adoptive father was John Hay Whitney.
Go to Profile#30127
Spiro Kostof
#30139
Overall Influence
1936 - 1991 (55 years)
Spiro Konstantine Kostof was a Turkish-born American leading architectural historian, and educator. He was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His books continue to be widely read and some are routinely used in collegiate courses on architectural history.
Go to Profile#30128
Ben Kelly
#30140
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Ben Kelly is a British interior designer, who owns interior design firm Ben Kelly Design. He has also won awards for graphic design. Biography Ben Kelly grew up in the village of Appletreewick, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Kelly trained at Lancaster College of Art from 1964 to 1969, and graduated in Interior Design from the Royal College of Art in 1974. He was awarded the title Royal Designer for Industry in 2007. Kelly is an Honorary Doctor, and Professor of Interior Design at London's Kingston University. In 2018, Kelly was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal College of A...
Go to Profile#30129
Parag Pathak
#30141
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Parag A. Pathak is Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research where he co-founded and directs the working group on market design.
Go to Profile#30130
David Coulthard
#30142
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
David Marshall Coulthard is a British former racing driver from Scotland, later turned presenter, commentator and journalist. Nicknamed 'DC', he competed in 15 seasons of Formula One between and , taking 13 Grand Prix victories and 62 podium finishes. He was runner-up in the championship, driving for McLaren.
Go to Profile#30131
KT Tunstall
#30143
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Kate Victoria "KT" Tunstall is a Scottish singer-songwriter and musician. She first gained attention with a 2004 live solo performance of her song "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" on Later... with Jools Holland.
Go to Profile#30132
Luke Pyungse Lee
#30144
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Luke Pyungse Lee is the Arnold and Barbara Silverman Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering, Biophysics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, at University of California, Berkeley. He is founding director of the Biomedical Institute for Global Health Research and Technology at the National University of Singapore.
Go to Profile#30133
Ryan Lochte
#30145
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Ryan Steven Lochte is an American professional swimmer and 12-time Olympic medalist. Along with Natalie Coughlin, Dara Torres, and Jenny Thompson, he is the second-most decorated swimmer in Olympic history measured by total number of medals, behind only Michael Phelps. Lochte's seven individual Olympic medals rank second in history in men's swimming , tied for second among all Olympic swimmers. He currently holds the world records in the 200-meter individual medley . As part of the American teams, he also holds the world record in the 4×200-meter freestyle and 4×100-meter freestyle relay.
Go to Profile#30134
Allen Tannenbaum
#30146
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Allen Robert Tannenbaum is an American applied mathematician who is presently the Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics & Statistics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is also Visiting Investigator of Medical Physics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. He has held a number of other positions in the United States, Israel, and Canada including the Bunn Professorship of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Interim Chair, and Senior Scientist at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. He received his B.A.
Go to Profile#30135
Saina Nehwal
#30147
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (36 years)
Saina Nehwal is an Indian professional badminton player. A former world no. 1, she has won 24 international titles, which includes ten Superseries titles. Although she reached the world's 2nd in 2009, it was only in 2015 that she was able to attain the world no. 1 ranking, thereby becoming the only female player from India and thereafter the second Indian player – after Prakash Padukone – to achieve this feat. She has represented India three times in the Olympics, winning a bronze medal in her second appearance at London 2012.
Go to Profile#30136
Annamaria Lusardi
#30148
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Annamaria Lusardi is an Italian-born economist and the Denit Trust Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Economics and Accountancy at The George Washington University School of Business. In 2011 she founded and continues to serve as the Academic Director of the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center. Her interests focus on financial literacy and financial education.
Go to Profile#30137
Ibrahim Sirkeci
#30149
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
İbrahim Sirkeci is a British Turkish social scientist, currently Director of International Business School, Manchester, UK. Previous he was the Head of Enterprise Subject Group at Salford Business School, University of Salford, Manchester, UK. He served as a Professor at various British universities including his 16 years long service at the European Business School London, Regent's University London, and was the Director of Regent's Centre for Transnational Studies.
Go to Profile#30138
Juan Román Riquelme
#30150
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Juan Román Riquelme is an Argentine former professional footballer and current vice-president of Boca Juniors, the club where he spent the majority of his playing career. He is considered by various journalists, players and coaches as one of the greatest playmakers of all time.
Go to Profile#30139
Andrew Hoffman
#30151
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Andrew J. Hoffman is a scholar of environmental issues and sustainable enterprise. He is the Holcim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and School for Environment and Sustainability . His research uses a sociological perspective to understand the cultural and institutional aspects of environmental issues for organizations. In particular, he focuses on the processes by which environmental issues both emerge and evolve as social, political and managerial issues. He has written extensively about: the evolving nature of field level pressur...
Go to Profile#30140
Roberto Moreno
#30152
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Roberto Pupo Moreno , usually known as Roberto Moreno and also as Pupo Moreno, is a Brazilian former racing driver. He participated in 75 Formula One Grands Prix, achieved 1 podium, and scored a total of 15 championship points. He raced in CART in 1986, and was Formula 3000 champion before joining Formula One full-time in 1989. He returned to CART in 1996 where he enjoyed an Indian summer in 2000 and 2001, and managed to extend his career in the series until 2008. He also raced in endurance events and GT's in Brazil, but now works as a driver coach and consultant, and although this takes up a lot of his time, he is not officially retired yet, as he appears in historic events.
Go to Profile#30141
John Singleton
#30153
Overall Influence
1968 - 2019 (51 years)
John Daniel Singleton was an American director, screenwriter, and producer. He made his feature film debut writing and directing Boyz n the Hood , for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, becoming, at age 24, the first African American and youngest person to have ever been nominated for that award.
Go to Profile#30142
Joe Shuster
#30154
Overall Influence
1914 - 1992 (78 years)
Joseph Shuster , was a Canadian American comic book artist best known for co-creating the DC Comics character Superman, with Jerry Siegel, in Action Comics #1 . Shuster was involved in a number of legal battles over ownership of the Superman character. His comic book career after Superman was relatively unsuccessful, and by the mid-1970s, Shuster had left the field completely due to partial blindness.
Go to Profile#30143
John Asimakopoulos
#30155
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
John Asimakopoulos is an American sociologist and author. He is a professor of sociology at the Bronx Community College of the City University of New York. Asimakopoulos co-founded the Transformative Studies Institute.
Go to Profile#30144
Mary Wheeler
#30156
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Mary Fanett Wheeler is an American mathematician. She is known for her work on numerical methods for partial differential equations, including domain decomposition methods. In 1998, Wheeler was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for "the computer simulation of subsurface flow and the underlying mathematical algorithms".
Go to Profile#30145
Fakrul Alam
#30157
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Fakrul Alam is a Bangladeshi academic, writer, and translator. He writes on literary matters and postcolonial issues and translated works of Jibanananda Das and Rabindranath Tagore into English. He is the recipient of Bangla Academy Literary Award in translation literature and SAARC Literary Award .
Go to Profile#30146
Steve Vladeck
#30158
Overall Influence
Stephen Isaiah Vladeck is the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at the University of Texas School of Law, where he specializes in national security law, especially with relation to the prosecution of war crimes. Vladeck has commented on the legality of the United States' use of extrajudicial detention and torture, and is a regular contributor to CNN.
Go to Profile#30147
Jim Thome
#30159
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
James Howard Thome is an American former professional baseball corner infielder and designated hitter, who played in Major League Baseball for 22 seasons . He played for six different teams throughout his career, most notably the Cleveland Indians. A prolific power hitter, Thome hit 612 home runs during his career—the eighth-most all time—along with 2,328 hits, 1,699 runs batted in , and a .276 batting average. He was a member of five All-Star teams and won a Silver Slugger Award in 1996.
Go to Profile#30148
John Glad
#30160
Overall Influence
1941 - 2015 (74 years)
John Glad was an American academic who specialized in the literature and politics of exile, especially Russian literature. He also wrote about, and advocated for, eugenics. Biography John Glad was born in Gary, Indiana in a family of immigrants from Croatia. His surname in Croatian means "hunger". "I am Ivan Hunger", he used to tell his Russian colleagues.
Go to Profile#30149
Carol Anderson
#30161
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Carol Elaine Anderson is an American academic. She is the Charles Howard Candler professor of African American Studies at Emory University. Her research focuses on public policy with regard to race, justice, and equality.
Go to Profile#30150
Andrew Hargadon
#30162
Overall Influence
Professor Andrew Hargadon is the Charles J. Soderquist Chair in Entrepreneurship and a professor of Technology Management at the Graduate School of Management, University Of California, Davis. Professor Hargadon is the founding director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and the Energy Efficiency Center at UC Davis. His research focuses on the effective management of innovation and entrepreneurship, particularly in the development and commercialization of sustainable technologies. Professor Hargadon is the author of How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate, w...
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