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
#30201
Marvin Chester
#30213
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Marvin Chester was a UCLA emeritus professor of Physics who specialized in quantum mechanics. After receiving his B.S. undergraduate degree from the City College of New York in 1952, he studied under Richard Feynman and John R. Pellam at California Institute of Technology where he received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1961. Thereafter he spent the following 31 years as a faculty member in the Physics department at UCLA.
Go to Profile#30202
Manuel Fraga
#30214
Overall Influence
1922 - 2012 (90 years)
Manuel Fraga Iribarne was a Spanish professor and politician in Francoist Spain, who was also the founder of the People's Party. Fraga was Minister of Information and Tourism between 1962 and 1969, Ambassador to the United Kingdom between 1973 and 1975, Minister of the Interior in 1975, Second Deputy Prime Minister between 1975 and 1976, President of the People's Alliance/People's Party between 1979 and 1990 and President of the Regional Government of Galicia between 1990 and 2005. He was also a Member of the Congress of Deputies and a Senator.
Go to Profile#30203
Nargiz Pashayeva
#30215
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Nargiz Arif gizi Pashayeva is an Honored Scientist of Azerbaijan, Honorary member of ANAS , vice-president of ANAS , Doctor of Philology, rector of the Lomonosov Moscow State University's Baku branch, head of the Nizami Ganjavi Scientific Center of the University of Oxford, from the Azerbaijani side, chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the British Foundation for the Study of Azerbaijan and the Caucasus, permanent member of Chancellor's Court of Benefactors of University of Oxford., co-chairman of the Anglo-Azerbaijani Society.
Go to Profile#30204
Michael Auslin
#30216
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Michael Robert Auslin is an American writer, policy analyst, historian, and scholar of Asia. He is currently the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a Senior Fellow in the Asia and National Security Programs at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and a senior fellow at London's Policy Exchange. He was formerly an associate professor at Yale University and a resident scholar and director of Japanese studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
Go to Profile#30205
Howie Choset
#30217
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Howie Choset is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. His research includes snakebots, or robots designed in a segmented fashion to mimic snake-like actuation and motion, demining, and coverage. His snake robots have also been used in surgical applications for diagnosis and tumor removal; nuclear power plant inspection, archaeological excavations, manufacturing applications and understanding biological behaviors of a variety of animals.
Go to Profile#30206
James R. Downing
#30218
Overall Influence
James R. Downing is an American clinical executive. He is the president and chief executive officer of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Early life and education James R. Downing was born to Lillian and Robert W. Downing and grew up in Detroit, Michigan with five siblings. Downing enjoyed playing football and baseball while he attended Aquinas High School, and initially hoped to play baseball professionally. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan-Dearborn, where he initially majored in engineering before switching to biochemistry. He attended the University of M...
Go to Profile#30207
T. P. Wiseman
#30219
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Timothy Peter Wiseman , who usually publishes as T. P. Wiseman and is named as Peter Wiseman in other sources, is a classical scholar and professor emeritus of the University of Exeter. He has published numerous books and articles, primarily on the literature and the social and political history of the late Roman Republic, but also the mythography of early Rome and Roman theatre.
Go to Profile#30208
Joel Spring
#30220
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Joel H. Spring is an American academic at the City University of New York who specializes in American and global educational policy. His major research interests are history of education, globalization and education, multicultural education, Native American culture, the politics of education, and human rights education. He received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in educational policy studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Go to Profile#30209
Howard Kahane
#30221
Overall Influence
1928 - 2001 (73 years)
Howard Kahane was an American professor of philosophy at Bernard M. Baruch College in New York City. He was noted for promoting a popular, and non-mathematical, approach to logic, now known as informal logic. His best known publication in that area is his textbook Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric: The Use of Reason in Everyday Life, now at the 12th edition, published in 2014.
Go to Profile#30210
Petar V. Kokotovic
#30222
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Petar V. Kokotovic is professor emeritus in the College of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. He has made contributions in the areas of adaptive control, singular perturbation techniques, and nonlinear control especially the backstepping stabilization method.
Go to Profile#30211
Paul G. Risser
#30223
Overall Influence
1939 - 2014 (75 years)
Paul Gillan Risser was an American ecologist and academic from Oklahoma. He served as president of Miami University and Oregon State University before becoming chancellor of the Oklahoma State System of Higher Education.
Go to Profile#30212
John Mullarkey
#30224
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
John Mullarkey is the Professor in Film and Television at Kingston University, London, and a member of The London Graduate School. Mullarkey's work explores variations of "non-standard-philosophy", arguing that philosophy is a subject that continually shifts its identity through engaging with "non-philosophical" fields such as film. Mullarkey's work notably engages with that of François Laruelle and Henri Bergson.
Go to Profile#30213
Gerard Delanty
#30225
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Gerard Delanty is a British-based sociologist and Professor of Sociology and Social & Political Thought at the University of Sussex. He is also the editor of European Journal of Social Theory. Bibliography Delanty, Gerard Formations of European modernity: a historical and political sociology of Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. Delanty, Gerard, ed. Handbook of cosmopolitanism studies. Routledge International Handbooks . Routledge. Delanty, Gerard, Giorgi, Liana and Sassatelli, Monica, eds. Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere. Routledge Advances in Sociology . Routledge, Abingdon and New York.
Go to Profile#30214
Barkley L. Hendricks
#30226
Overall Influence
1945 - 2017 (72 years)
Barkley L. Hendricks was a contemporary American painter who made pioneering contributions to Black portraiture and conceptualism. While he worked in a variety of media and genres throughout his career , Hendricks' best known work took the form of life-sized painted oil portraits of Black Americans.
Go to Profile#30215
Kristi Yamaguchi
#30227
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Kristine Tsuya Yamaguchi is an American former competitive figure skater and author. A former competitor in women's singles, Yamaguchi is the 1992 Olympic champion, a two-time World champion , and the 1992 U.S. champion. In 1992, she became the first Asian American to win a gold medal in a Winter Olympic competition. As a pairs skater with Rudy Galindo, she is the 1988 World Junior champion and a two-time national champion .
Go to Profile#30216
Horia-Roman Patapievici
#30228
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Horia-Roman Patapievici is a Romanian physicist and essayist who served as the head of the Romanian Cultural Institute from 2005 until August 2012. Between 2000 and 2005, he was a member of the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives, supporting more openness regarding the files of the Securitate.
Go to Profile#30217
Ajmal Mian
#30229
Overall Influence
1934 - 2017 (83 years)
Ajmal Mian was a Pakistani jurist who served as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan from 23 December 1997 to 30 June 1999. See also List of PakistanisChief Justice of Pakistan
Go to Profile#30218
So-Young Pi
#30230
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
So-Young Pi is a South Korean physicist. So-Young Pi's father was the Korean writer Pi Chun-deuk. She attended Seoul National University, graduating with a degree in physics, before moving to the United States to pursue a doctorate in the subject at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Pi then completed postdoctoral research at Rockefeller University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During her postdoctoral research, Pi met and later married fellow physicist Roman Jackiw. The two had a son, violinist Stefan Jackiw.
Go to Profile#30219
Pascale Ehrenfreund
#30231
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Pascale Ehrenfreund is an Austrian astrophysicist. Ehrenfreund holds degrees from the University of Vienna and Webster Leiden . Prior to becoming a Research Professor of Space Policy and International Affairs at George Washington University, she was a professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, Leiden University, and University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. She was the first woman president of the Austrian Science Fund and from 2015-2020, she was the CEO of the German Aerospace Center. Since 2019, she is the President of the International Astronautical Federation and since 2018, she is the Chancellor of the International Space University .
Go to Profile#30220
Raymond Winbush
#30232
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Raymond Arnold Winbush a.k.a. Tikari Bioko is an American scholar and activist known for his systems-thinking approaches to understanding the impact of racism/white supremacy on the global African community. He is currently Research Professor and Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Go to Profile#30221
Andrej Šali
#30233
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Andrej Šali is a computational structural biologist. Since 2003, he has been Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at University of California, San Francisco. He also serves as an editor of the journal Structure.
Go to Profile#30222
Stephen Chow
#30234
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Stephen Chow Sing-chi is a Hong Kong filmmaker, former actor and comedian, known for Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle. Early life and education Stephen Chow was born in Hong Kong on 22 June 1962 to Ling Po-yee , an alumna of Guangzhou Normal University, and Chow Yik-sheung , an immigrant from Ningbo, Zhejiang. Chow has an elder sister named Chow Man-kei and a younger sister named Chow Sing-ha . Chow's given name "Sing-chi" derives from Tang dynasty Chinese poet Wang Bo's essay Preface to the Prince of Teng's Pavilion. After his parents divorced when he was seven, Chow was raised by his mother.
Go to Profile#30223
Satish Nagarajaiah
#30235
Overall Influence
Satish Nagarajaiah is an Indian-American academic professor, who teaches and conducts research in the departments of civil engineering and of mechanical engineering at Rice University. He was elected in 2019 to the United States National Academy of Inventors. He got elected in 2021 as Distinguished Member of American Society of Civil Engineers for achieving eminence in structural engineering, in 2017 as fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and in 2012 as fellow of ASCE's Structural Engineering Institute. He has been honored with the 2020 Nathan N. Newmark Medal, 2017 Reese Research Prize, 2015 Leon S.
Go to Profile#30224
Janez Janša
#30236
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Ivan Janša , baptized and best known as Janez Janša , is a Slovenian politician who served three times as a prime minister of Slovenia, a position he had held from 2004 to 2008, from 2012 to 2013, and from 2020 to 2022. Since 1993, Janša has led the Slovenian Democratic Party, which has emerged as the pre-eminent Slovenian conservative party. Janša lost his fourth bid for prime minister in April 2022, his party defeated by the Freedom Movement party.
Go to Profile#30225
Mel Watkins
#30237
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
Melville Henry Watkins was a Canadian political economist and activist and professor emeritus of economics and political science at the University of Toronto. He was a founder and co-leader with James Laxer of the Waffle, a left-wing political formation within the New Democratic Party that advocated an "independent socialist Canada" and Canadian nationalism. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2019.
Go to Profile#30226
Rafail Ostrovsky
#30238
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Rafail Ostrovsky is a distinguished professor of computer science and mathematics at UCLA and a well-known researcher in algorithms and cryptography. Biography Rafail Ostrovsky received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1992.
Go to Profile#30227
Lee Ellis
#30239
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Altis Lee Ellis is an American sociologist who was a professor of sociology at Minot State University from 1976 to 2007. He was also an assistant and associate professor there from 1976 to 2009, after which he served as a visiting professor at the University of Malaya from 2010 to 2012.
Go to Profile#30228
Christoph Badelt
#30240
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Christoph Badelt is the current director of the Austrian Institute of Economic Research and professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. He was the Vienna University of Economics and Business's vice-chancellor from March 2002 until September 2015.
Go to Profile#30229
Izkia Siches
#30241
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Izkia Jasvin Siches Pastén is a Chilean physician and politician, who served in 2022 as Minister of Interior and Public Security for President Gabriel Boric. She was the first woman to hold that position, the second most important in government after the President.
Go to Profile#30230
Karlina Leksono Supelli
#30242
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Karlina Leksono Supelli is an Indonesian philosopher and astronomer. One of Indonesia's first female astronomers, she received her bachelor's degree in Astronomy at ITB and MSc in Space Science from the University College London, and completed her doctorate in Philosophy at Universitas Indonesia in 1997.
Go to Profile#30231
Choi Yang-do
#30243
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Choi Yang-do is a South Korean agricultural biotechnologist. His research focuses on the development of crops with stress-tolerant and yield-enhancing traits. One of his academic achievements is the discovery of a new jasmonate which enhances resistance against external stress of the crop. Choi is currently professor at Seoul National University in South Korea.
Go to Profile#30232
Alexander Vucinich
#30244
Overall Influence
1914 - 2002 (88 years)
Alexander S. Vucinich was an American historian. He taught at the department of history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania from 1976 until his retirement in 1985. He also taught at San Jose State College , the University of Illinois , and the University of Texas . After his retirement he and his wife Dorothy moved to Berkeley, California, where he participated in the activities of Berkeley's Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. His field of research was the history of science and social thought in Russia and the Soviet Union.
Go to Profile#30233
Joseph W. Singer
#30245
Overall Influence
Joseph William Singer is an American legal theorist specializing in property law. He is the Bussey Professor of Law at Harvard University, where he has been teaching since 1992. Previously, he taught at Boston University School of Law and practiced law in Boston. He also served as a law clerk in the Supreme Court of New Jersey.
Go to Profile#30234
Claude Crépeau
#30246
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Claude Crépeau is a professor in the School of Computer Science at McGill University. Ηe was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1962. He received a master's degree from the Université de Montréal in 1986, and obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT in 1990, working in the field of cryptography with Silvio Micali as his Ph.D. advisor and Gilles Brassard as his M.Sc advisor. He spent two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Université d'Orsay, and was a CNRS researcher at École Normale Supérieure from 1992 to 1995. He was appointed associate professor at Université de Montréal in 1995, and has been a faculty member at McGill University since 1998.
Go to Profile#30235
Ted Landsmark
#30247
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Theodore "Ted" Carlisle Landsmark is an American educator and lawyer. Landsmark is currently distinguished professor of public policy and urban affairs and director of the Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University. His research interests include diversity in design, environmental design, design education, higher education administration, community-based economic development, public policy, historic preservation, and African American art and artisanry.
Go to Profile#30236
Geoffrey Wainwright
#30248
Overall Influence
1939 - 2020 (81 years)
Geoffrey Wainwright was an English theologian. He spent much of his career in the United States and taught at Duke Divinity School. Wainwright made major contributions to modern Methodist theology and Christian liturgy, and played a significant role on producing the text Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, as a member of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches .
Go to Profile#30237
Seymour Itzkoff
#30249
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Seymour William Itzkoff is an American psychologist and writer who has published research on intelligence. He has taught at Smith College since 1965 where he is professor emeritus of education and child study.
Go to Profile#30238
Aleksandr Matveyev
#30250
Overall Influence
1926 - 2010 (84 years)
Aleksandr Konstantinovich Matveyev was a Russian linguist known for his works in toponymics , onomastics , and etymology . Biography Aleksandr Matveyev was born in Sverdlovsk but because of World War II he entered and graduated from the Khabarovsk University. Starting in 1952 he worked at the Ural State University in Sverdlovsk. In 1970 he defended his second thesis and became professor of the philological department. Since 1961 – chief of the chair of Russian language and general linguistics at the Ural State University. In 1988 he received the title of Scientist Emeritus of Russia. In 1991...
Go to Profile#30239
Allison Janney
#30251
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Allison Brooks Janney is an American actress. Known for her performances across the screen and stage, she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, and seven Primetime Emmy Awards, in addition to nominations for two Tony Awards.
Go to Profile#30240
Robert S. Adler
#30252
Overall Influence
Robert S. Adler is a consumer advocate in the United States. He was a member of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, and recently served as its acting chairman from October 2019 to October 2021. He is a Democrat, and became acting chair due to a surprise vote crossing party lines from former acting chair Ann Marie Buerkle.
Go to Profile#30241
Clayton Eshleman
#30253
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Clayton Eshleman was an American poet, translator, and editor, noted in particular for his translations of César Vallejo and his studies of cave painting and the Paleolithic imagination. Eshleman's work has been awarded with the National Book Award for Translation, the Landon Translation prize from the Academy of American Poets , a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Rockefeller Study Center residency in Bellagio, Italy, among other awards and honors.
Go to Profile#30242
Francis Rossi
#30254
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Francis Dominic Nicholas Michael Rossi, is an English musician. He is the co-founder, lead singer, lead guitarist and the sole continuous member of the rock band Status Quo. Early life Rossi was born on 29 May 1949 in Forest Hill, London. His father's side of the family were Italian ice cream merchants and had an ice cream business in South London, and his mother was a Northern Irish Roman Catholic from Liverpool. He grew up in a household with his parents, grandmother, and "lots of aunts and uncles" and was given a Roman Catholic upbringing, having been named after Saint Francis of Assisi. He spent his summer holidays as a child with an aunt in Waterloo, Merseyside.
Go to Profile#30243
Alma Dawson
#30255
Overall Influence
Alma Dawson is an American scholar of librarianship. She retired as Russell B. Long Professor at the School of Library & Information Science, Louisiana State University in 2014 and was awarded Emeritus status in 2015. In 2019 Dr. Dawson was honored with the Essae Martha Culver Distinguished Service Award from the Louisiana Library Association which honors a librarian whose professional service and achievements, whose leadership in Louisiana association work, and whose lifetime accomplishments in a field of librarianship within the state merit recognition of particular value to Louisiana librar...
Go to Profile#30244
Nancy Soderberg
#30256
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Nancy Elisabeth Soderberg is an American foreign policy strategist who currently serves as Resident Director for National Democratic Institute in Kosovo. Soderberg served as the third-ranking official on the Clinton Administration's National Security Council from 1993 to 1997 and as an Alternate Representative to the United Nations as a Presidential Appointee, with the rank of Ambassador, from 1997 to 2001. She has also held positions at the International Crisis Group, Connect U.S. Fund, and the Public Interest Declassification Board. In 2012 she ran unsuccessfully for Florida Senate District 4.
Go to Profile#30245
John Stein
#30257
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
John Frederick Stein is a British physiologist. He is a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and holds a professorship in physiology at the University of Oxford. He has research interests in the neurological basis of dyslexia.
Go to Profile#30246
Scott Walker
#30258
Overall Influence
1943 - 2019 (76 years)
Noel Scott Engel , better known by his stage name Scott Walker, was an American-British singer-songwriter and record producer who resided in England. Walker was known for his emotive voice and his unorthodox stylistic path which took him from being a teen pop icon in the 1960s to an avant-garde musician from the 1990s to his death. Walker's success was largely in the United Kingdom, where his first four solo albums reached the top ten. He lived in the UK from 1965 onward and became a UK citizen in 1970.
Go to Profile#30247
Ziva Ben-Porat
#30259
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Ziva Ben-Porat is a literary theorist, writer, and editor who lives in Israel and is a professor at Tel Aviv University. Personal life Ben-Porat graduated with a bachelor's degree in English and Hebrew literature and a master's degree in English literature from Tel Aviv University, as well as a doctorate in comparative literature from University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#30248
Carlo Pedretti
#30260
Overall Influence
1928 - 2018 (90 years)
Carlo Pedretti was an Italian historian. In his lifetime, he was considered one of the world's leading experts on the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci. He was a professor of art history and Armand Hammer Chair in Leonardo Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1960 until his retirement in 1993.
Go to Profile#30249
Ryan Tannehill
#30261
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Ryan Timothy Tannehill III is an American football quarterback for the Tennessee Titans of the National Football League . He played college football at Texas A&M, where he was a wide receiver until his junior year, and was drafted eighth overall by the Miami Dolphins in the 2012 NFL Draft.
Go to Profile#30250
Glenn Robinson
#30262
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Glenn Alan Robinson Jr. is an American former professional basketball player. Nicknamed "Big Dog" and "The Chosen One", he played in the National Basketball Association from 1994 to 2005 for the Milwaukee Bucks, Atlanta Hawks, Philadelphia 76ers, and San Antonio Spurs. Robinson attended Purdue University and was the first overall pick in the 1994 NBA draft. He is the father of Glenn Robinson III, who played college basketball at the University of Michigan and has also played in the NBA.
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