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
#30451
Stefan Grimm
#30463
Overall Influence
1963 - 2014 (51 years)
Stefan Grimm was a German biologist and professor of toxicology at Imperial College London. He researched signalling cascades in the development of tumours. Grimm was found dead in Northwood, Middlesex on 25 September 2014 after being told that he was "struggling to fulfil the metrics" of a professorial post by his head of department. The coroner described his death as "needless".
Go to Profile#30452
John Dovidio
#30464
Overall Influence
John Francis Dovidio is the Carl Iver Hovland Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Public Health at Yale University, where he is also the former director of the Intergroup Relations Lab. He is known for his research on the concept of aversive racism and on reducing people's intergroup biases. He was the president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues from 1999 to 2000. He served as the editor-in-chief of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin from 1994 to 1997, of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychologys Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes section from 2002 to 2008, and the co-editor of Social Issues and Policy Review from 2006 to 2011.
Go to Profile#30453
Coenraad Bron
#30465
Overall Influence
1937 - 2006 (69 years)
Coenraad Bron was a Dutch computer scientist. He worked with Edsger W. Dijkstra on the THE multiprogramming system. Together with Joep Kerbosch he invented the Bron–Kerbosch algorithm for the clique problem.
Go to Profile#30454
Michael Shub
#30466
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Michael Ira Shub is an American mathematician who has done research into dynamical systems and the complexity of real number algorithms. Career 1967: Ph.D. and early career In 1967, Shub obtained his Ph.D. degree at the University of California, Berkeley with a thesis entitled Endomorphisms of Compact Differentiable Manifolds. In his Ph.D. thesis, he introduced the notion of expanding maps, which gave the first examples of structurally stable strange attractors. His advisor was Stephen Smale.
Go to Profile#30455
Josef Stoer
#30467
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Josef Stoer is a German mathematician specializing in numerical analysis and professor emeritus of the Institut für Mathematik of Universität Würzburg. He was born in Meschede, and earned his Ph.D. in 1961 at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz under Friedrich Ludwig Bauer and Klaus Samelson. He has advised over 20 doctoral students.
Go to Profile#30456
Michael Mann
#30468
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Michael Kenneth Mann is an American film director, screenwriter, author, and producer, best known for his stylized crime dramas. Mann has received numerous accolades including a BAFTA Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards as well as nominations for four Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. His most acclaimed works include the films Thief , Manhunter , The Last of the Mohicans , Heat , The Insider , Ali , Collateral , and Public Enemies . He is also known for his role as executive producer on the popular TV series Miami Vice , which he adapted into a 2006 feature film.
Go to Profile#30457
Philip Selway
#30469
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Philip James Selway is an English musician and the drummer of the rock band Radiohead. He combines rock drumming with electronic percussion. Since 2011, he has performed with a second drummer, Clive Deamer. Selway was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Radiohead in 2019.
Go to Profile#30458
Christopher Waller
#30470
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Christopher J. Waller is an American economist who is a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors since 2020. A nominee of then-President Donald Trump, he was confirmed by the Senate in December 2020, to serve through January 2030.
Go to Profile#30459
Marisa Lino
#30471
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Marisa Linois an Italian-born American retired diplomat who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Albania between 1996 and 1999. Early life Lino was born in the Free Territory of Trieste, today part of Italy, but grew up in Portland, Oregon from the age of five. She received an M.A. in international affairs from The George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs in 1972 and B.A. in political science from Portland State University in 1971. In May 1999, she received an honorary doctorate of international affairs from John Cabot University. She also completed a Certificate in Advanced Engineering Studies at M.I.T.
Go to Profile#30460
Wolfgang Ernst
#30472
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Wolfgang Hermann Wernher Ernst is a German lawyer and Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford. Life Ernst studied from 1976 to 1980 at the University of Bonn and the Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany. He took his comprehensive examination in 1981 in Bonn and continued his studies 1981–82 at Yale University to achieve a Master of Laws . In 1982 he continued his studies in Germany and was admitted to the bar in 1985. From 1986 to 1990 he was a lecturer at the Institute of Roman Law at the University of Bonn and attained his Habilitation in 1989.
Go to Profile#30461
Ulrich Libbrecht
#30473
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
Ulrich Libbrecht was a Belgian philosopher and author in the field of comparative philosophy. His magnum opus consists of four books in Dutch - called "Introduction to Comparative Philosophy". An abbreviated version of these works in English, entitled "Within the Four Seas... Introduction to Comparative Philosophy" was published by Peeters Ed. This book explains how a comparative model, based on the paradigm-free axes of energy and information, accommodates the current world-views of Taoism, Buddhism and Rationalism – representing the Chinese, Indian and Western heritage - and shows how scie...
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Bouthaina Shaaban
#30474
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Bouthaina Shaaban is a Syrian politician and political and media adviser to the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. Shaaban served as the first Minister of Expatriates for the Syrian Arab Republic, between 2002 and 2008, and has been described as the Syrian government's face to the outside world.
Go to Profile#30463
John D. Morris
#30475
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John David Morris was an American young earth creationist. He was the son of "the father of creation science", Henry M. Morris, and served as president of the Institute for Creation Research from the time of his father's retirement in 1996 until 2020. Morris was a creationist author and spoke at a variety of churches. Many of his presentations discussed the fossil record and its relation to evolution.
Go to Profile#30464
Bill Thompson
#30476
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
William George Thompson is an English technology writer, best known for his weekly column in the Technology section of BBC News Online and his appearances on Digital Planet, a radio show on the BBC World Service. He is also an honorary senior visiting fellow at City University London's Journalism Department and writes for BBC WebWise.
Go to Profile#30465
Valery Gergiev
#30477
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Valery Abisalovich Gergiev is a Russian conductor and opera company director. In 1988 he became general director and artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre and artistic director of the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg. He was chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic from September 2015 until he was dismissed on 1 March 2022.
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Henri Leconte
#30478
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Henri Leconte is a French former professional tennis player. He reached the men's singles final at the French Open in 1988, won the French Open men's doubles title in 1984, and helped France win the Davis Cup in 1991. Leconte's career-high singles ranking was world No. 5.
Go to Profile#30467
Brian MacMahon
#30479
Overall Influence
1923 - 2007 (84 years)
Brian MacMahon was a British-born American epidemiologist who chaired the Department of Epidemiology of the Harvard School of Public Health from 1958 until 1988. Best known for his work on the epidemiology of breast cancer, he also pioneered research on associations between passive smoking and lung cancer, and between diet and risk of cancer.
Go to Profile#30468
Paddy Ashdown
#30480
Overall Influence
1941 - 2018 (77 years)
Jeremy John Durham Ashdown, Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, , better known as Paddy Ashdown, was a British politician and diplomat who served as Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 1988 to 1999. Internationally, he is recognised for his role as High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2002 to 2006, following his vigorous lobbying for military action against Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Go to Profile#30469
Gholamali Montazer
#30481
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Gholam Ali Montazer was born on 22 March in 1969 in Davan village located 10-km away from Kazeroon city . He spent his childhood in Abadan and Shiraz and received his high school Diploma as the first-ranked student from Towhid high school in Shiraz in 1987. In the same year, having been elected to the National Students Mathematics Competitions, he has been admitted in Electrical Engineering Department at Khaje Nasireddin Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran and graduated in 1992. Then he continued his education at Tarbiat Modares University and received the MSc. and Ph.D. degre...
Go to Profile#30470
Bobby Womack
#30482
Overall Influence
1944 - 2014 (70 years)
Robert Dwayne Womack was an American singer, musician and songwriter. Starting in the early 1950s as the lead singer of his family musical group the Valentinos and as Sam Cooke's backing guitarist, Womack's career spanned more than 60 years and multiple styles, including R&B, jazz, soul, rock and roll, doo-wop, and gospel.
Go to Profile#30471
Kipling Williams
#30483
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Kipling D. Williams is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Ohio State University. He is most noted for his research on ostracism and has developed unique methods to study the processes and consequences.
Go to Profile#30472
Julia Slingo
#30484
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#30473
Piyare Jain
#30485
Overall Influence
1921 - 2019 (98 years)
Piyare Lal Jain was a particle physicist at University at Buffalo. On December 6, 2006, he claimed the discovery of the long-sought axion subatomic particle. Biography On December 6, 2006, he claimed discovery of the long-sought axion subatomic particle.
Go to Profile#30474
Ayo Bamgbose
#30486
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Ayọ̀ Bámgbóṣé is an academic linguist, the first professor of Linguistics in Nigeria. He has made contributions to education and linguistics, achieving recognition in form of honours and election to offices in professional bodies.
Go to Profile#30475
William Safran
#30487
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
William Safran is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. It has been argued that Safran "has contributed substantially to the body of knowledge regarding ethnic politics, nationalism, and related subjects, such as institutional and cultural pluralism, citizenship, immigration, diaspora, national identity, and the politics of language and religion". He is a specialist on France, and much of his research concerns French ethnic politics.
Go to Profile#30476
Benno Werlen
#30488
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Benno Werlen is a Swiss geographer who is known for his action-centered approach to human geography and his concept of a Geography of Everyday Regionalizations. Werlen currently holds the UNESCO-Chair on Global Understanding for Sustainability at the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena . From 1998 to 2018, he held the chair of social geography at Jena University. Werlen was a visiting professor at the Universities of Salzburg, Geneva and Nijmegen as well as a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, the London School of Economics, and the University of California, Los Angeles. He has ...
Go to Profile#30477
Phil Neal
#30489
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Philip George Neal is an English retired footballer who played for Northampton Town, Liverpool and Bolton Wanderers as a full-back. He is one of the most successful English players of all time, having won seven First Divisionss, four League Cupss, five FA Charity Shields, four European Cups, one UEFA Cup and one UEFA Super Cup during his eleven years at Liverpool. He later returned to Bolton Wanderers as manager, leading them to victory in the Football League Trophy before spells managing Coventry City, Cardiff City and Manchester City.
Go to Profile#30478
Marc Lavoie
#30490
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Marc Lavoie is a Canadian professor in economics at the University of Ottawa and a former Olympic fencing athlete. Academic career Born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Marc Lavoie is a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Ottawa, where he started teaching in 1979. He got his doctorate from the University of Paris-1. Besides having published nearly two hundred articles in refereed journals, he has written a number of books, among which are Post-Keynesian Economics: New Foundations , Introduction to Post-Keynesian Economics , translated into four languages, Foundations of ...
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Lawrie McMenemy
#30491
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Lawrence McMenemy MBE is an English retired football coach, best known for his spell as manager of Southampton. He is rated in the Guinness Book of Records as one of the twenty most successful managers in post-war English football.
Go to Profile#30480
Scott Sowerby
#30492
Overall Influence
Scott Sowerby is a Canadian historian and Associate Professor in the Department of History, Northwestern University. He was awarded a PhD from Harvard University in 2006. His book Making Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution was awarded the Royal Historical Society's The Whitfield Prize and was shortlisted for Phi Beta Kappa Society's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award. The book is about James II of England's allies in repealing penal laws against religious minorities , a group Sowerby labels the Repealers.
Go to Profile#30481
Paul Marquess
#30493
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Paul Marquess is a television producer from Belfast, Northern Ireland. His credits include Brookside, The Bill, Family Affairs, Hollyoaks, Crime Stories, Suspects and Hope Street. He also originated the idea for the series Footballers' Wives. He currently holds the post of managing director of Newman Street, a label of Fremantlemedia.
Go to Profile#30482
Atsushi Koyano
#30494
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Atsushi Koyano is a Japanese scholar of comparative literature and critic. He also has advanced degrees and pedagogy careers in Osaka University, Meiji University, Tokyo University. Early life and education Born in Mitsukaido, Ibaraki on 21 December 1962, Koyano moved to Koshigaya, Saitama, a suburb of Tokyo when he was a third grader. He spent three years at Kaijo High School at Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, which had been founded in 1891 as a prep school for Japan's Naval Academy, before entering the prestigious University of Tokyo . After graduating from Todai, Faculty of Letters , his academic career further progressed.
Go to Profile#30483
Graeme Turner
#30495
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Graeme Turner is an Australian professor of cultural studies and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Queensland. During his institutional academic career he was a Federation Fellow, a President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, founding Director of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, and Convenor of the ARC Cultural Research Network.
Go to Profile#30484
Rose McDermott
#30496
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Rose McDermott is an American political scientist who is the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor of International Relations at Brown University. She has also taught at Cornell, UCSB, and Harvard. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. Her work is situated at the intersection of several disciplines including political science, psychology, biology, methods, development, and gender studies.
Go to Profile#30485
Joel H. Ferziger
#30497
Overall Influence
1937 - 2004 (67 years)
Joel Henry Ferziger was a Professor Emeritus of mechanical engineering at the Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, United States. Ferziger was an internationally recognized authority in fluid mechanics. His main area of research was computational fluid dynamics. He was known for developing computer simulations to model complex turbulent flows.
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Ange Postecoglou
#30498
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Angelos Postecoglou is a soccer manager and former player who is the head coach of Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur. Born in Greece, Postecoglou grew up in Melbourne from the age of five. As a player, he spent most of his club career as a defender for South Melbourne Hellas and played four games for the Australia national team in the late 1980s. He began managing at South Melbourne Hellas in 1996, winning the National Soccer League twice and the OFC Champions League in 1999. He then led the national under-17 and under-20 teams.
Go to Profile#30487
Chase Utley
#30499
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Chase Cameron Utley , nicknamed "the Man" and "Silver Fox", is an American former professional baseball second baseman who played in Major League Baseball for 16 seasons, primarily for the Philadelphia Phillies. He also played for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He is a six-time All-Star, won a World Series with the Phillies in 2008, and was chosen as the second baseman on the Sports Illustrated All-Decade Team for the 2000s. He batted left-handed and threw right-handed.
Go to Profile#30488
Howard Raggatt
#30500
Overall Influence
Howard Raggatt is an Australian architect, member of the firm Ashton Raggatt McDougall, and best known for the design of the National Museum of Australia, opened in 2001.
Go to Profile#30489
Karl-Heinz Höcker
#30501
Overall Influence
1915 - 1998 (83 years)
Karl-Heinz Höcker was a German theoretical nuclear physicist who worked in the German Uranverein. After World War II, he worked at the university of Stuttgart and was the founder of the Institut für Kernenergetik und Energiesysteme.
Go to Profile#30490
Miranda Lambert
#30502
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Miranda Leigh Lambert is an American country singer, songwriter and guitarist. Born in Longview, Texas, she started out in early 2001 when she released her self-titled debut album independently. In 2003, she finished in third place on the television program Nashville Star, a singing competition which aired on the USA Network. Outside her solo career, she is a member of the Pistol Annies formed in 2011 alongside Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley. Lambert has been honored by the Grammy Awards, the Academy of Country Music Awards and the Country Music Association Awards. Lambert has been honor...
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Margot Shiner
#30503
Overall Influence
1923 - 1998 (75 years)
Margot Shiner was a German-British gastroenterologist and medical researcher who worked in London and Israel. As a result of her development of a new technique to biopsy the small intestine in children, she has been credited with launching the subspecialty of paediatric gastroenterology.
Go to Profile#30492
Allan Temko
#30504
Overall Influence
1924 - 2006 (82 years)
Allan Bernard Temko was an architectural critic and writer based in San Francisco. History Born in New York City and raised in Weehawken, New Jersey, Temko served as a U.S. Navy officer in World War II, graduated from Columbia University in 1947, and continued his graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. He taught for several years in France and produced a landmark book about the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Notre Dame of Paris, in 1955. He wrote architectural criticism for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1961 to 1993. He also taught city...
Go to Profile#30493
Jesse Eisenberg
#30505
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Jesse Adam Eisenberg is an American actor and writer. He has received numerous accolades, including nominations for an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards, and a Golden Globe Award. Eisenberg made his television debut with the short-lived comedy-drama series Get Real . Following his first leading role in the film Roger Dodger , he appeared in the films The Village and The Squid and the Whale and led the 2009 comedies Adventureland and Zombieland. He gained wider recognition for starring as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in David Fincher's film The Social Network .
Go to Profile#30494
Ed Reed
#30506
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Edward Earl Reed Jr. is an American former professional football player who was a safety in the National Football League , spending the majority of his career with the Baltimore Ravens. He played college football for the Miami Hurricanes, where he played on Miami's 2001 national championship team and was named a unanimous All-American. He was selected by the Ravens in the first round of the 2002 NFL Draft and played 11 seasons with them before playing with the Houston Texans and New York Jets in 2013.
Go to Profile#30495
Matt Yocum
#30507
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Matthew Yocum is a long-standing reporter in motorsports, best known for being a NASCAR pit reporter. He works for ESPN as a pit reporter to cover the Superstar Racing Experience as of 2023 as well as for NBC Sports as a pit reporter for the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship Series. He most recently worked in that role for NASCAR on Fox for 20 years, from 2001 to 2020 as well as working for CBS to cover the SRX from 2021 to 2022. He has one daughter, Madison , they currently live in North Carolina.
Go to Profile#30496
Kwame Gyekye
#30508
Overall Influence
1939 - 2019 (80 years)
Kwame Gyekye was a Ghanaian philosopher, and an important figure in the development of modern African philosophy. Gyekye was an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Ghana, and a visiting professor of philosophy and African-American studies at Temple University. He is known for theorizing the concept of person-hood on the basis of Akan cultural paradigm in debate with Kwasi Wiredu, which is seen as one of the defining moments of modern African philosophy.
Go to Profile#30497
Jose Rodriguez
#30509
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. is an American former intelligence officer who served as Director of the National Clandestine Service of the Central Intelligence Agency . He was the final CIA deputy director for operations before that position was expanded to D/NCS in December 2004. Rodriguez was a central figure in the 2005 CIA interrogation videotapes destruction, leading to The New York Times Editorial Board and Human Rights Watch to call for his prosecution.
Go to Profile#30498
Satoru Nakajima
#30510
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Satoru Nakajima is a Japanese former racing driver. He is a five-time Japanese Top Formula champion, and was the first full-time Japanese Formula One driver. Accordingly, he is responsible for several firsts for Japanese drivers in Formula One, including being the first to score championship points , and being the first to record a fastest lap .
Go to Profile#30499
Rayna Rapp
#30511
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Rayna Rapp is a professor and associate chair of anthropology at New York University, specializing in gender and health; the politics of reproduction; science, technology, and genetics; and disability in the United States and Europe. She has contributed over 80 published works to the field of anthropology, independently, as a co-author, editor, and foreword-writing, including Robbie Davis-Floyd and Carolyn Sargent's Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge. Her 1999 book, Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America, received multiple awards upon release and h...
Go to Profile#30500
Abbas Anvari
#30512
Overall Influence
Abbas Anvari is an Iranian Professor in Physics. He has a Ph.D. in physics from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. He served as the chancellor of Sharif University of Technology for two terms: 1980–1982 and 1985–1989.
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