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
#30401
Julian Hunt, Baron Hunt of Chesterton
#30413
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Julian Charles Roland Hunt, Baron Hunt of Chesterton is a British meteorologist who was Director General and Chief Executive of the British Meteorological Office from 1992 to 1997. He was made a Life peer of the Labour Party by Tony Blair in 2000 where he sat until 30th October 2021. He was the leader on the Labour group of Cambridge City Council in the 1970s.
Go to Profile#30403
Harry Saltzman
#30415
Overall Influence
1915 - 1994 (79 years)
Herschel "Harry" Saltzman was a Canadian theatre and film producer. He is best remembered for co-producing the first nine of the James Bond film series with Albert R. Broccoli. He lived most of his life in Denham, Buckinghamshire, England.
Go to Profile#30404
Glenn Tipton
#30416
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Glenn Raymond Tipton is an English guitarist. Often noted for his complex playing style and classically influenced solos, he is best known as one of the lead guitarists for the heavy metal band Judas Priest. He is the second longest-serving member of the band, after bassist and co-founder Ian Hill. Tipton and Hill are the only two members of the band who have appeared on every studio album.
Go to Profile#30405
Jacquelyn Grant
#30417
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Jacquelyn Grant is an American theologian, a Methodist minister. Alongside Katie Cannon, Delores S. Williams, and Kelly Brown Douglas, Grant is considered one of the four founders of womanist theology. Womanist theology addresses theology from the viewpoint of Black women, reflecting on both their perspectives and experience in regards to faith and moral standards. Grant is currently the Callaway Professor of Systematic Theology at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta.
Go to Profile#30406
Bilal M. Ayyub
#30418
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#30407
Gevorg Jahukyan
#30419
Overall Influence
1920 - 2005 (85 years)
Gevorg Jahukyan was an Armenian linguist and philologist, Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Honored Scientist of the Armenian SSR. Biography He was born on April 1, 1920, in the village of Shahnazar in the present-day Lori Province of Armenia. In 1941 he graduated from Yerevan State University Faculty of Philology. From 1941 to 1943 he participated in the WWII.
Go to Profile#30408
Haroon Ahmed
#30420
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Haroon Ahmed FREng , is a British Pakistani scientist in specialising the fields of microelectronics and electrical engineering. He is Emeritus Professor of Microelectronics at the Cavendish Laboratory, the Physics Department of the University of Cambridge, Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Go to Profile#30409
Josefina Gómez Mendoza
#30421
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Josefina Gómez Mendoza is a Spanish geographer, writer, and professor emerita. From 2001 to 2005, she was Rector of the National University of Distance Education . She is a member of the Royal Academy of History, Medal No. 7 , and the Royal Academy of Engineering, Medal No. 58 .
Go to Profile#30410
Jeremy Stone
#30422
Overall Influence
1935 - 2017 (82 years)
Jeremy J. Stone was an American scientist who was president of the Federation of American Scientists from 1970 to 2000, where he led that organization's advocacy initiatives in arms control, human rights, and foreign policy. In 2000, he was succeeded as president by Henry Kelly. Stone continued his work at a new organization called Catalytic Diplomacy. Stone was the son of the journalist I. F. Stone.
Go to Profile#30411
Ragavendra R. Baliga
#30423
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Ragavendra R. Baliga, FACC, FACP, FRCP is a Professor of Medicine at The Ohio State University School of Medicine in Columbus, Ohio. He is a consulting editor of Heart Failure Clinics of North America, an indexed medical journal along with James B. Young, MD, Executive Dean, Lerner College of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio. This is journal is known for editorials championing novel and esoteric mechanisms pertaining to cardiac function including ‘The Heart as the Concertina Pump’ and suggesting that stiffness of the great arteries contribute to cardiorenal syndrome. The most provo...
Go to Profile#30412
Kyu Ha Kim
#30424
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Kyu Ha Kim was a South Korean judoka. He was the youngest judoka to get his kudan . He was posthumously promoted to, jūdan the 10th degree black belt. He also practiced in the Korean martial art, Taekwondo and attained the rank of 9th degree black belt. Prior to his death he taught martial arts for over sixty years. He established a school in Brentwood, PA and taught at the University of Pittsburgh. In June 2008, he became the oldest successful heart transplant recipient of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Go to Profile#30413
Suh Yoo-hun
#30425
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Suh Yoo-hun is a South Korean neuroscientist. His researches focus on neurodegeneration, especially on the discovery of genes and therapies for Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Education and work Suh Yoo-hun was born in Seoul. He obtained his MD in 1973 and his PhD in medicine and pharmacology in 1981, both degrees at the college of medicine in Seoul National University. He was professor at Seoul National University. He was the first president of Korean Brain Research Institute. In 2013 he received the National Government Medal for his academic achievements.
Go to Profile#30414
Mark G. Lebwohl
#30426
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Mark G. Lebwohl is an American dermatologist and author who is Professor and Chairman Emeritus of the Kimberly and Eric J. Waldman Department of Dermatology and the Dean for Clinical Therapeutics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Go to Profile#30415
Vesna Goldsworthy
#30427
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Vesna Goldsworthy FRSL , is a Serbian writer and poet. She is from Belgrade and obtained her BA in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from Belgrade University in 1985. She has lived in England since 1986. Goldsworthy became a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Exeter in 2017. She previously worked at Kingston University where she was Director of the Centre for Suburban Studies. Goldsworthy is a Professor Emeritus of the School of Literature, Drama, and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.
Go to Profile#30416
Martin Freeman
#30428
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Martin John Christopher Freeman is an English actor. Among other accolades, he has won an Emmy Award, a BAFTA Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, and has been nominated for a Golden Globe Award. Freeman's most notable roles are that of Tim Canterbury in the mockumentary series The Office , Dr. John Watson in the British crime drama series Sherlock , young Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit film trilogy , and Lester Nygaard in the first season of the dark comedy-crime drama series Fargo . He has also appeared in films including the romantic comedy Love Actually , the horror comedy Shaun of the Dea...
Go to Profile#30417
Bill Maurer
#30429
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Areas of Specialization: Economic Anthropology Bill Maurer is the dean of the School of Social Sciences for the University of California, Irvine, the founding director of the Institute for Money Technology and Financial Inclusion, and a scholar of legal and economic anthropology. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Vassar College and his Ph.D. from Stanford University. His research has focused on a niche subfield, the anthropology of finance. In this area, Maurer became a famous anthropologist by studying finance and economics through the lens of human anthropology, with explorations of off-shore institutions in the Caribbean, Islamic finance, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain.
Go to Profile#30418
Preben Hertoft
#30430
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
Preben Hertoft , was a Danish psychiatrist and professor in medical sexology, senior doctorate in medicine. After the death of his mentor Kirsten Auken, Hertoft worked over 40 years as a sexologist doing research, treatment, counseling and education. In 1986 he founded the first medical centre for sexology in Denmark. Most of the time he had heterosexual and homosexual patients with sexual problems in therapy, but he also treated and counselled transvestites and pedophiles.
Go to Profile#30419
Rosemarie Said Zahlan
#30431
Overall Influence
1937 - 2006 (69 years)
Rosemarie Said Zahlan was a Palestinian-American historian and writer on the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. She was a sister of Edward Said. In addition to her books, she also wrote for the Financial Times, the Middle East Journal, the International Journal of Middle East Studies and the Encyclopedia of Islam.
Go to Profile#30420
Varghese Mathai
#30432
Overall Influence
Mathai Varghese is a mathematician at the University of Adelaide. His first most influential contribution is the Mathai–Quillen formalism, which he formulated together with Daniel Quillen, and which has since found applications in index theory and topological quantum field theory. He was appointed a full professor in 2006. He was appointed Director of the Institute for Geometry and its Applications in 2009. In 2011, he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. In 2013, he was appointed the Elder Professor of Mathematics at the University of Adelaide, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Australia.
Go to Profile#30421
Xanana Gusmão
#30433
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
José Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmão is an East Timorese politician who has served as the prime minister of East Timor since 2023, previously serving in that position from 2007 to 2015. A former rebel, he also served as East Timor's first president since its re-establishment of independence, from 20 May 2002 to 20 May 2007.
Go to Profile#30422
Brian McClair
#30434
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Brian John McClair is a Scottish football coach and former professional footballer. As a player, he was a forward from 1980 to 1998, notable for his near 11-year spell at Manchester United where he won 14 trophies including four Premier League titles, as well as important tenures at Scottish clubs Celtic and Motherwell. At Motherwell, he combined his football with studying mathematics at the University of Glasgow. He was nicknamed "Choccy", as his last name rhymed with the delicacy "chocolate éclair".
Go to Profile#30423
Jeffrey Dahmer
#30435
Overall Influence
1960 - 1994 (34 years)
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer , also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, was an American serial killer and sex offender who killed and dismembered seventeen males between 1978 and 1991. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts—typically all or part of the skeleton.
Go to Profile#30424
Alessandro Nesta
#30436
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Alessandro Nesta is an Italian professional football manager and former player who is currently manager of Serie B club Reggiana. Usually deployed as a centre-back, he is widely considered one of the best defenders of all time. He was best known for his pace, artistic tackles, elegance on the ball, distribution and tight marking of opponents.
Go to Profile#30425
Laura-Ann Petitto
#30437
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Laura-Ann Petitto is a cognitive neuroscientist and a developmental cognitive neuroscientist known for her research and scientific discoveries involving the language capacity of chimpanzees, the biological bases of language in humans, especially early language acquisition , early reading, and bilingualism, bilingual reading, and the bilingual brain. Significant scientific discoveries include the existence of linguistic babbling on the hands of deaf babies and the equivalent neural processing of signed and spoken languages in the human brain. She is recognized for her contributions to the creation of the new scientific discipline, called educational neuroscience.
Go to Profile#30426
Marek Mlodzik
#30438
Overall Influence
Marek Mlodzik is the Chair of the Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology and also holds professorships in Oncological Sciences and Ophthalmology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Prior to this he was a Group Leader at EMBL Heidelberg. In 1997, Mlodzik was elected as a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization.
Go to Profile#30427
Stefanie Dehnen
#30439
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Stefanie Dehnen is a German chemist. She is the executive director of the Institute of Nanotechnology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. From 2006 to 2022, she was a full professor for inorganic chemistry at the University of Marburg. She has received numerous awards for her research in inorganic chemistry. In 2024 and 2025, she will be the president of the German Chemical Society.
Go to Profile#30428
Matias Zaldarriaga
#30440
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Matias Zaldarriaga is a theoretical physicist best known for his work on cosmology. He has made significant contributions toward understanding both astrophysical phenomena and fundamental physics, most notably through his research on modeling the early universe and analyzing statistical properties of cosmic microwave background data. Zaldarriaga grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Buenos Aires in 1994. He received his PhD in 1998 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.
Go to Profile#30429
Leland Sklar
#30441
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Leland Bruce Sklar is an American bassist and session musician. Sklar rose to prominence as a member of James Taylor's backing band, which coalesced into a group in its own right, The Section. This group of musicians so frequently supported many of the artists on Asylum Records, both on stage and in the studio, that they became known as Asylum's de facto house band. Those artists would become the standard bearers of the singer-songwriter era in the 1970s. Since then, Sklar has recorded and toured with artists such as James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, Phil Collins, Toto, Lyle Lovett and others.
Go to Profile#30430
Shuichi Nosé
#30442
Overall Influence
1951 - 2005 (54 years)
was a Japanese physicist. Nosé is best known for his two 1984 papers in which he proposed a method to specify the temperature of molecular dynamics simulations. This method was later improved by William G. Hoover and is known as the Nosé–Hoover thermostat.
Go to Profile#30431
Christine Petit
#30443
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Christine Petit is a French geneticist. She holds professorships at the Collège de France and the Pasteur Institute. Biography Petit was born in Laignes in 1948. She initially studied at the Paris teaching hospital, Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital and at the Pasteur Institute. She completed two pieces of post-doctoral research at the Centre for Molecular Research in Gif-sur-Yvette and another in Basel.
Go to Profile#30432
James R. Browning
#30444
Overall Influence
1918 - 2012 (94 years)
James Robert Browning was an American attorney and jurist who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Early life and education Browning was born on October 1, 1918, in Great Falls, Montana. He grew up in Belt, Montana and attended high school there.
Go to Profile#30433
Jimmy Garoppolo
#30445
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
James Richard Garoppolo , nicknamed "Jimmy G", is an American football quarterback for the Las Vegas Raiders of the National Football League . He played college football at Eastern Illinois University, setting multiple school records for career passing yards and passing touchdowns and winning the Walter Payton Award as a senior. Garoppolo was selected in the second round of the 2014 NFL Draft by the New England Patriots, where he spent his first four seasons as Tom Brady's backup and was a member of two Super Bowl-winning teams.
Go to Profile#30434
Vijay
#30446
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Joseph Vijay Chandrasekhar , known professionally as Vijay, is an Indian actor and singer who works mainly in Tamil cinema. He is among the highest paid actors in India and has featured in Forbes Indias Celebrity 100 list on seven occasions. He has played the lead in 67 films. Referred to as Thalapathy , Vijay has a significant following internationally. He has won several awards, including an Osaka Best Actor Award and a South Indian International Movie Award. In 2023, he became the highest paid actor in India and one of the top paid actors in the world.
Go to Profile#30435
Martin Head-Gordon
#30447
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Martin Philip Head-Gordon is a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory working in the area of computational quantum chemistry. He is a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.
Go to Profile#30436
Vincent Lecavalier
#30448
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Vincent "Vinny" Lecavalier is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player who is currently a special advisor of hockey operations for the Montreal Canadiens. Lecavalier played seventeen seasons in the National Hockey League between 1998 and 2016. He was the captain of the Tampa Bay Lightning for the 2000–2001 season and again from 2008–2013 and spent his first 14 NHL seasons with the Tampa Bay Lightning before being bought out following the 2012–13 season and signing with the Philadelphia Flyers for $22.5 million over 5 years. He was chosen first overall by the Lightning in the 1998 NHL Entry Draft and was a member of their 2004 Stanley Cup championship team.
Go to Profile#30437
Natalya Pochinok
#30449
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Natalya Borisovna Pochinok born Gribkova is a D.Sc. in Economic Sciences, professor, rector of Russian State Social University . Biography As a member of junior national teams of the USSR and the Russian Federation in athletics Natalia Pochinok won several international competitions in running from 1991 to 1994.
Go to Profile#30438
Michael Brennan
#30450
Overall Influence
1942 - 2007 (65 years)
Michael J. Brennan is emeritus professor of finance at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Brennan co-designed the Brennan-Schwartz interest rate model and was a pioneer of real options theory. His writings on real options and asset pricing, corporate finance, derivative securities, market microstructure, the role of information in capital markets, and risk management have been published extensively.
Go to Profile#30439
Frank Kelly
#30451
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Francis Patrick Kelly, CBE, FRS is Professor of the Mathematics of Systems at the Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He served as Master of Christ's College, Cambridge from 2006 to 2016.
Go to Profile#30440
Graeme Goldsworthy
#30452
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Graeme L. Goldsworthy is an Australian evangelical Anglican theologian specialising in the Old Testament and Biblical theology. His most significant work is a trilogy: Gospel and Kingdom, Gospel and Wisdom, and The Gospel in Revelation. Goldsworthy has authored several other books including According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible, and Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture. He holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Cambridge in England, and Master of Theology and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia .
Go to Profile#30441
Manlio Sgalambro
#30453
Overall Influence
1924 - 2014 (90 years)
Manlio Sgalambro was an Italian philosopher and writer, born in Lentini. Biography Philosophical production Sgalambro did not have certificates or degrees as business cards: how he became a writer of philosophy – whose books are translated into French, German and Spanish – is a mystery that he was not able to explain.
Go to Profile#30442
Mladen Bestvina
#30454
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Mladen Bestvina is a Croatian-American mathematician working in the area of geometric group theory. He is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Utah. Biographical info Mladen Bestvina is a three-time medalist at the International Mathematical Olympiad . He received a B. Sc. in 1982 from the University of Zagreb. He obtained a PhD in Mathematics in 1984 at the University of Tennessee under the direction of John Walsh. He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1987-88 and again in 1990–91. Bestvina had been a faculty member at UCLA, and joined the faculty in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Utah in 1993.
Go to Profile#30443
Pier Vellinga
#30455
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Pier Vellinga is an environmental scientist and one of the Netherlands' experts on the impacts of climate change. Career He was among the first scientists to publish on climate change and its implications regarding water and energy in the eighties. His education and training includes a Fulbright scholarship in the US in 1967–68, an Msc and doctors degree at Delft University of Technology .
Go to Profile#30444
Charles P. Roland
#30456
Overall Influence
1918 - 2022 (104 years)
Charles Pierce Roland was an American historian and professor emeritus of the University of Kentucky who was known for his research field of the American South and the U.S. Civil War. Roland was a captain in the United States Army and a World War II veteran. He served as the elected president of the Southern Historical Association and contributed to several other historical societies.
Go to Profile#30445
Andrew Peacock
#30457
Overall Influence
1939 - 2021 (82 years)
Andrew Sharp Peacock was an Australian politician and diplomat. He served as a cabinet minister and went on to become leader of the Liberal Party on two occasions , leading the party to defeat at the 1984 and 1990 elections.
Go to Profile#30446
Frederic Tuten
#30458
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Frederic Tuten is an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He has written five novels – The Adventures of Mao on the Long March , Tallien: A Brief Romance , Tintin in the New World: A Romance , Van Gogh's Bad Café and The Green Hour – as well as one book of inter-related short stories, Self-Portraits: Fictions , and essays, many of the latter being about contemporary art. His memoir My Young Life was published by Simon & Schuster. In 2022, he published a collection of short stories, The Bar at Twilight, and On a Terrace in Tangier, a book of Tuten's drawings, each drawing accompanied by a short story.
Go to Profile#30447
Katharina Fritsch
#30459
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Katharina Fritsch is a German sculptor. She lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. Early life and education Fritsch was born on 14 February 1956 in Essen, West Germany. Fritsch first studied history and art history at the University of Münster and, in 1977, transferred to Kunstakademie Düsseldorf where she was a student of Fritz Schwegler until 1984.
Go to Profile#30448
Donald J. Farish
#30460
Overall Influence
1942 - 2018 (76 years)
Donald J. Farish was a Canadian American biologist and zoologist who served as the 10th president of Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. He was president of Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey from 1998 to 2011.
Go to Profile#30449
Sheldon M. Ross
#30461
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Sheldon M. Ross is the Daniel J. Epstein Chair and Professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. He is the author of several books in the field of probability. Biography Ross received his B. S. degree in mathematics from Brooklyn College in 1963, his M.S. degrees in mathematics from Purdue University in 1964 and his Ph.D. degree in Statistics from Stanford University in 1968, studying under Gerald Lieberman and Cyrus Derman. He served as a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley from 1976 until joining the USC Viterbi School of Engineering in 2004. He serves as the Editor for several journals, among which Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences.
Go to Profile#30450
Anine Kierulf
#30462
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Anine Kierulf is Associate Professor of constitutional law at the University of Oslo Department of Public and International Law, and a special advisor to the Norwegian National human rights institution, where she was Research Director from 2017-2020. Her main areas of research are constitutional law, human rights and freedom of expression.
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