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
#30501
Alexei Shirov
#30513
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Alexei Shirov is a Latvian and Spanish chess player. Shirov was ranked number two in the world in 1994. He won a match against Vladimir Kramnik in 1998 to qualify to play as challenger for the classical world championship match with Garry Kasparov; it never took place due to a lack of sponsorship.
Go to Profile#30502
Jane C. Wright
#30514
Overall Influence
1919 - 2013 (94 years)
Jane Cooke Wright was a pioneering cancer researcher and surgeon noted for her contributions to chemotherapy. In particular, Wright is credited with developing the technique of using human tissue culture rather than laboratory mice to test the effects of potential drugs on cancer cells. She also pioneered the use of the drug methotrexate to treat breast cancer and skin cancer .
Go to Profile#30503
Stan Openshaw
#30515
Overall Influence
1946 - 2022 (76 years)
Stan Openshaw was a British geographer. His last post was professor of human geography based in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds. After eighteen years at Newcastle University, including three years as professor of quantitative geography, he moved to work in Leeds in 1992. Openshaw was a researcher in computer-based/computational geography and his work aimed to automate aspects of geographical research and reduce subjectivity in geographical analyses. He worked on geographical information systems, analysis technology and models. He debated the direction geography should take ...
Go to Profile#30504
Olivia Colman
#30516
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Sarah Caroline Sinclair , known professionally as Olivia Colman, is an English actress. Known for her work in film and television, she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, two Emmy Awards, three British Academy Television Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards.
Go to Profile#30505
William Diver
#30517
Overall Influence
1921 - 1995 (74 years)
William Diver was an American linguist. He was the founder of the Columbia School of Linguistics, which is named after Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in comparative Indo-European linguistics.
Go to Profile#30506
Jeroen van den Hoven
#30518
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Jeroen van den Hoven is a Dutch ethicist and a philosophy professor at Delft University of Technology. He specializes in ethics of information technology. Work Van den Hoven has written and worked with a range of scholars including Seumas Miller, Thomas Pogge, Martha Nussbaum and John Weckert.
Go to Profile#30507
Sanjoy K. Mitter
#30519
Overall Influence
1933 - 2023 (90 years)
Sanjoy Kumar Mitter was a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT who was a noted control theorist. Life and career Mitter was born in 1933 in Calcutta, India. He received a B.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Calcutta, and a B.Sc. in Engineering at City and Guilds of London Institute. He continued his studies in the United Kingdom and Ph.D. from Imperial College of Science and Technology, London. After graduation, he worked at Brown, Boveri & Cie, the Battelle Memorial Institute, and the Central Electricity Generating Board before joining Case Western Reserve University in 1965 as an assistant professor.
Go to Profile#30508
Andrew H. Knoll
#30520
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Andrew Herbert Knoll is the Fisher Research Professor of Natural History and a Research Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. Born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1951, Andrew Knoll graduated from Lehigh University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1973 and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1977 for a dissertation titled "Studies in Archean and Early Proterozoic Paleontology." Knoll taught at Oberlin College for five years before returning to Harvard as a professor in 1982. At Harvard, he serves in the departments of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and...
Go to Profile#30509
Brenda Andrews
#30521
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Brenda Jean Andrews is a Canadian academic, researcher and biologist specializing in systems biology and molecular genetics. Andrews is known for her studies on cell cycle-regulated transcription and protein kinase function in yeast and for pioneering work with Charles Boone on genetic networks. As an example, in 2015, Andrews co-led a team of biology scientists at the University of Toronto's Donnelly Centre to create the first ever fully detailed protein map of a cell, the map showed the location of all protein in a cell, the project aimed to benefit and help increase research for cancer cells.
Go to Profile#30510
Ishtiaq Ahmed
#30522
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ishtiaq Ahmed is a Swedish political scientist and author of Pakistani descent. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Stockholm University. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Stockholm University.
Go to Profile#30511
Willis Barnstone
#30523
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Willis Barnstone is an American poet, religious scholar, and translator. He was born in Lewiston, Maine and lives in Oakland, California. He has translated works by Jorge Luis Borges, Antonio Machado, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pedro Salinas, Pablo Neruda, and Wang Wei, as well as the New Testament and fragments by Sappho and pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus .
Go to Profile#30512
David Hartley
#30524
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
David Fielding Hartley FBCS is a computer scientist and Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. He was Director of the University of Cambridge Computing Service from 1970–1994, Chief Executive of United Kingdom Joint Academic Network 1994–1997, and Executive Director of Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre 1997–2002. He is now much involved with the National Museum of Computing.
Go to Profile#30513
Paul O. Carrese
#30525
Overall Influence
Paul O. Carrese is Director of the School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. For nearly two decades he was a professor of political science at the United States Air Force Academy. He is author of the book The Cloaking of Power: Montesquieu, Blackstone, and the Rise of Judicial Activism and co-editor of three other books. His most recent book is Democracy in Moderation: Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Sustainable Liberalism . He has held fellowships at Harvard University; the University of Delhi ; and the James Madison Program, Politics Department, Princeton University.
Go to Profile#30514
Kirsti Andersen
#30526
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Kirsti Andersen , published under the name Kirsti Pedersen, is a Danish historian of mathematics. She is an Associate Professor of the History of Science at Aarhus University, where she had her Candidate examination in 1967.
Go to Profile#30515
Robert Van de Noort
#30527
Overall Influence
Robert Van de Noort is a Dutch historian and archaeologist who is the Vice-Chancellor and the Chief Executive of the University of Reading. He is the chair of the Thames Regional Flood and Coastal Committee . He worked at the University of Exeter where he was the dean of the College of Social Sciences and International Studies. Van de Noort worked from 1988 to 1989 at the British School in Rome, from 1989 to 1991 at the Rotterdam Archaeology Unit, and then he went to the University of Hull . He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education...
Go to Profile#30516
Kenneth A De Jong
#30528
Overall Influence
Kenneth Alan De Jong is an American computer scientist and professor emeritus at George Mason University. He is one of the pioneers in evolutionary computation. Education and career De Jong was a student of John Henry Holland at the University of Michigan, where he completed a Ph.D. in 1975 with a dissertation on genetic algorithms. He became a faculty member at George Mason University in 1984.
Go to Profile#30517
Rekha
#30529
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Bhanurekha Ganesan , better known by her mononymous stage name Rekha, is an Indian actress who appears predominantly in Hindi films. Acknowledged as one of the finest actresses in Indian cinema, she has starred in more than 180 films and is the recipient of several accolades, including one National Film Award and three Filmfare Awards. She has often played strong and complicated female characters—from fictional to literary—in both mainstream and independent films. Though her career has gone through certain periods of decline, Rekha has gained a reputation for reinventing herself numerous times and has been credited for her ability to sustain her status.
Go to Profile#30518
Eleftherios Economou
#30530
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Eleftherios Ν. Economou is a Greek theoretical physicist and professor emeritus at the department of physics of the University of Crete. He has contributed to various areas of theoretical condensed matter physics, starting with the study of surface plasmons during his thesis in 1969.
Go to Profile#30519
Martha L. Ludwig
#30531
Overall Influence
1931 - 2006 (75 years)
Martha Ludwig was an American macromolecular crystallographer. She was the J. Lawrence Oncley Distinguished University Professor of Biological Chemistry at the University of Michigan. Personal life Ludwig was born on August 16, 1931, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her father was Leon Ludwig, a physicist, and her mother was Agnes Sutermeister Ludwig, a worker in the social services. Soon after her birth, her father accepted a job as the director of the Westinghouse facility, resulting in the family move to Buffalo, NY. As a child in school, Ludwig found a passion for mathematical puzzles and hop...
Go to Profile#30520
Stefan Brecht
#30532
Overall Influence
1924 - 2009 (85 years)
Stefan Sebastian Brecht was a German-born American poet, critic, and scholar of theatre. Early life and education Brecht was born in Berlin to playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht and actress Helene Weigel.
Go to Profile#30521
Rubén G. Rumbaut
#30533
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Rubén G. Rumbaut is a prominent Cuban-American sociologist and a leading expert on immigration and refugee resettlement in the United States. He is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine.
Go to Profile#30522
Nuray Mert
#30534
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Nuray Mert, is a Turkish columnist and political scientist. She is a columnist for Hürriyet Daily News. Mert is also a Bilderberg participant. Academic career After graduating from Feyziye Mektepleri Işık College, she studied political science and history at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, where she obtained the master's degree on a thesis entitled Prens Sabahaddin ve Terakki Mecmuası , and the doctorate on a thesis entitled Erken Cumhuriyet Döneminde Laik Düşünce . She worked for some time as a research assistant at Boğaziçi University, after which she became lecturer at the Department of Eco...
Go to Profile#30523
Noboru Iwamura
#30535
Overall Influence
1927 - 2005 (78 years)
Noboru Iwamura was a Japanese biologist, medical doctor and professor of medicine. He was the only survivor, amongst eighty high school classmates, of the 1945 Hiroshima bombing. This experience led him to resolve to live his life for others. Under the UMN program, Iwamura was the first Japanese volunteer to arrive in Nepal, a nation struck with a pandemic of tuberculosis. He spent 22 years helping those living in deprivation and his efforts laid the foundation for the establishment of multiple medical facilities around the area.
Go to Profile#30524
Harold Faltermeyer
#30536
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Hans Hugo Harold Faltermeyer is a German musician, composer and record producer. Faltermeyer is best known for composing the "Axel F" theme for the feature film Beverly Hills Cop, an influential synth-pop hit in the 1980s. He also composed the "Top Gun Anthem" for the feature film Top Gun, along with its score, and the music for the Chevy Chase Fletch feature films, Fletch and Fletch Lives. The Beverly Hills Cop and Top Gun projects earned him two Grammy Awards: the first in 1986 for Best Album of original score written for a motion picture or television special, as a co-writer of the Beverly...
Go to Profile#30525
Lisa Marie Presley
#30537
Overall Influence
1968 - 2023 (55 years)
Lisa Marie Presley was an American singer and songwriter. She was the only child of singer and actor Elvis Presley and actress Priscilla Presley, as well as the sole heir to her father's estate after her grandfather and her great-grandmother died. Her musical career consisted of three studio albums: To Whom It May Concern , Now What and Storm & Grace , with To Whom It May Concern being certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. Presley also released non-album singles, including duets with her father using tracks he had released before he died.
Go to Profile#30526
Michael A. Cusumano
#30538
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Michael A. Cusumano is the Sloan Management Review Distinguished Professor and Deputy Dean at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Previously he held a joint appointment in the MIT School of Engineering, Division of Engineering Systems. Professor Cusumano specializes in strategy, product development, and entrepreneurship in computer software as well as automobiles and consumer electronics. At MIT, he has recently taught Platform Strategy & Entrepreneurship as well as Strategy & the CEO. During 2016–17, he was on leave as Special Vice President and Dean of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Initiat...
Go to Profile#30527
Harald Holz
#30539
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Harald Holz is a German philosopher, logician, mathematician , poet and novelist. Life Holz studied philosophy from 1953 to 1957 in Pullach im Isartal/Germany and from 1959 until 1961 Catholic Theology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt/Germany . He continued his study of philosophy at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University Bonn/Germany. There he received his research doctorate in 1964 with Gottfried Martin with the thesis Transcendental philosophy and metaphysics.
Go to Profile#30528
Alan G. Marshall
#30540
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Alan G. Marshall is an American analytical chemist who has devoted his scientific career to developing a scientific technique known as Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry, which he co-invented.
Go to Profile#30529
Wolfgang Schüssel
#30541
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Wolfgang Schüssel is an Austrian politician. He was Chancellor of Austria for two consecutive terms from February 2000 to January 2007. While being recognised as a rare example of an active reformer in contemporary Austrian politics, his governments were also highly controversial from the beginning, starting with the fact that he formed a coalition government with Jörg Haider's Freedom Party of Austria on both occasions. In 2011, he retired from being an active member of parliament due to a multitude of charges of corruption against members of his governments.
Go to Profile#30530
Mitoji Yabunaka
#30542
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Mitoji Yabunaka is the current Japanese Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs in charge of administration. Prior to his current position, Yabunaka served as Ministry of Foreign Affair's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau Director-General. He has been a diplomat for nearly forty years.
Go to Profile#30531
George Tsutakawa
#30543
Overall Influence
1910 - 1997 (87 years)
George Tsutakawa was an American painter and sculptor best known for his avant-garde bronze fountain designs. Born in Seattle, Washington, he was raised in both the United States and Japan. He attended the University of Washington, where, after serving in the U.S. Army during World War Two, he became a teacher. He rose to international prominence as a fountain designer in the 1960s and 1970s. During his long career more than 70 of his distinctive fountains—many of them still extant—were placed in public spaces.
Go to Profile#30532
Ivan Petrella
#30544
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Ivan Petrella is an Argentine social theorist and liberation theologian. He is the Secretary of Culture in Argentina's Ministry of Culture and currently teaches at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida and co-executive editor of the “Reclaiming Liberation Theology” book series with SCM Press.
Go to Profile#30533
Tirone E. David
#30545
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Tirone Esperidiao David, is a Brazilian-born Canadian cardiac surgeon and professor of surgery at the University of Toronto. He is an attending cardiac surgeon at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, Toronto General Hospital. He is known for his 2007 development of a valve sparing aortic root replacement procedure to preserve the aortic valve in patients with aortic root aneurysms such as in Marfan syndrome; it is now known as the "David Operation".
Go to Profile#30534
Lincoln Caplan
#30546
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Lincoln W. Caplan, II is an American author, scholar, and journalist. He is the Truman Capote Visiting Lecturer in Law and a Senior Research Scholar in Law at Yale Law School. Early life and education Caplan was born in 1950 in New Haven, Connecticut. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, where he graduated cum laude in 1968. He then attended Harvard College, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1972, after which he attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge for one year. He earned a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School in 1976.
Go to Profile#30535
Naomi Eisenberger
#30547
Overall Influence
Naomi I. Eisenberger is a social psychologist known for her research on the neural basis of social pain and social connection. She is professor of social psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles where she directs the Social and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory and co-directs the Social Cognitive Science laboratory.
Go to Profile#30536
Elaine H. Kim
#30548
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Elaine H. Kim is an American writer, editor and professor emerita in Asian American Studies and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Kim retired from teaching in 2015. Her academic interests and research areas included Asian American cultural studies, art, literature, Asian diaspora studies, and Asian American feminism.
Go to Profile#30537
Jörg Hacker
#30549
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jörg Hinrich Hacker is a German microbiologist. He served as president of the Robert Koch Institute from 2008 to 2010 and of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina from 2010 to 2020. He is the editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Medical Microbiology.
Go to Profile#30538
J. Edwin Seegmiller
#30550
Overall Influence
1920 - 2006 (86 years)
J Edwin Seegmiller, or Jay Seegmiller, was an American physician and biochemical geneticist best known for his role in discovering the biochemical basis of the Lesch–Nyhan syndrome. He was a rheumatologist and a pioneer in research on arthritic diseases and on aging.
Go to Profile#30539
Bernadette Perrin-Riou
#30551
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Bernadette Perrin-Riou is a French number theorist. Early life Perrin-Riou was born on 1 August 1955 in Les Vans, Ardèche, France. Her parents had both had a scientific education; her mother and father were a physicist and chemist, respectively. She was brought up, along with her sisters, in Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Go to Profile#30540
Mary Schaps
#30552
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Mary Elizabeth Schaps , also known as Malka Elisheva Schaps, is an Israeli-American mathematician. She is Professor of Mathematics and Dean of the Faculty of Exact Sciences at Bar Ilan University. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University, and has published in deformation theory, group theory, and representation theory. She is also a writer, authoring several novels under the pseudonym Rachel Pomerantz.
Go to Profile#30541
Jennifer Morse
#30553
Overall Influence
Jennifer Leigh Morse is a mathematician specializing in algebraic combinatorics. She is a professor of mathematics at the University of Virginia. Research Morse's interests in algebraic combinatorics include representation theory and applications to statistical physics, symmetric functions, Young tableaux-Schur functions, which are a generalization of Schur polynomials.
Go to Profile#30542
Ulla Wessels
#30554
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Ulla Wessels is a German analytic philosopher working in practical philosophy, particularly ethics. She is a Professor of Practical Philosophy in the Philosophy Department of the Saarland University in Saarbrücken.
Go to Profile#30543
Michael Wellman
#30555
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Michael Paul Wellman is the Richard H. Orenstein Division Chair of Computer Science and Engineering and Lynn A. Conway Collegiate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Go to Profile#30544
Catherine Galbraith
#30556
Overall Influence
1913 - 2008 (95 years)
Catherine Galbraith was an American author who was the wife of economist and author John Kenneth Galbraith, and the mother of four sons: diplomat and political analyst, Peter W. Galbraith, economist James K. Galbraith, attorney J. Alan Galbraith, and Douglas Galbraith who died in childhood of leukemia.
Go to Profile#30545
Raymundo Favila
#30557
Overall Influence
Raymundo Acosta Favila was a Filipino mathematician. He has his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley from 1939 under the supervision of Pauline Sperry, and had his career at the University of the Philippines in Manila. Dr. Raymundo Favila was elected as Academician of the National Academy of Science and Technology in 1979. He was one of those who initiated mathematics in the Philippines. He contributed extensively to the progression of mathematics and the mathematics learning in the country. He has made fundamental studies such as on stratifiable congruences and geometric inequalities.
Go to Profile#30546
Maryanthe Malliaris
#30558
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Maryanthe Elizabeth Malliaris is a professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago, a specialist in model theory. Early life and education Malliaris is the daughter of Anastasios G. Malliaris, an economist at Loyola University Chicago, and Mary E. Malliaris, Professor of Information Systems at Loyola.
Go to Profile#30547
Masamune Shirow
#30559
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
, better known by his pen name , is a Japanese manga artist. Shirow is best known for the manga Ghost in the Shell, which has since been turned into three theatrical anime films, two anime television series, an anime television film, an anime ONA series, a theatrical live action film, and several video games.
Go to Profile#30548
Frank Tompa
#30560
Overall Influence
Frank Tompa is a Canadian-American computer scientist. He is best known for his contributions to the creation of an electronic version of the Oxford English Dictionary, work that was further commercialized in the founding of Open Text Corporation.
Go to Profile#30549
Mac Van Valkenburg
#30561
Overall Influence
1921 - 1997 (76 years)
Mac Elwyn Van Valkenburg was an American electrical engineer and university professor. He wrote seven textbooks and numerous scientific publications. Early life and education Van Valkenburg was born in Union, Utah. He graduated from the University of Utah in 1943 with a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, received a master's degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1946, and a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1952, under advisor Oswald Garrison Villard, Jr.
Go to Profile#30550
David P. Mills
#30562
Overall Influence
David Paul Mills is a British chemist and a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at The University of Manchester. His research typically investigates the chemistry of the lanthanide and actinide f-block elements. This is generally based on the synthesis of new f-block complexes, structural and bonding properties and their uses in different fields including in nuclear fuel cycles, energy and single molecule magnets.
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