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
#30651
Colin Lloyd
#30663
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Colin Edward Lloyd , nicknamed Jaws, is an English former professional darts player. He is a former world number one ranked player and has won two major television titles in the Professional Darts Corporation – the 2004 World Grand Prix and the 2005 World Matchplay.
Go to Profile#30652
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn
#30664
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn is an editor, essayist, poet, and novelist. She is considered to be outspoken in her views about Native American politics, particularly in regards to tribal sovereignty. She has criticized those who make tenuous claims to Native/Indigenous ancestry with the purpose of advancing their own careers, and described such claimants with no community connections as "tribeless". She believes they damage the development of economic and social life of Native nations.
Go to Profile#30653
Eugene Nicholas Myers
#30665
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Eugene Nicholas Myers is an oncologist and otolaryngologist and a leader in the treatment of head and neck cancer. He has served on the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine since 1972, when he became chairman of the Department of Otolaryngology. He is the author or co-author of leading texts in the field of head and neck cancer, and has chaired and served on the boards of the preeminent societies and associations in the field.
Go to Profile#30654
Amrom Harry Katz
#30666
Overall Influence
1915 - 1997 (82 years)
Amrom Harry Katz was an American physicist who specialized in aerial reconnaissance as well as satellite technology. Katz developed methods for aerial reconnaissance supported by space satellites. His work was used by military intelligence, and for locating disaster victims. On August 18, 2000 he was acknowledged as one of the ten Founders of the National Reconnaissance Office.
Go to Profile#30655
Eric Stewart
#30667
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Eric Michael Stewart is an English singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer, best known as a founding member of the rock groups the Mindbenders with whom he played from 1963 to 1968, and likewise of 10cc from 1972 to 1995. Stewart co-owned Strawberry Studios in Stockport, England, from 1968 to the early 1980s, where he recorded albums with 10cc and artists including Neil Sedaka and Paul McCartney. Stewart collaborated with McCartney extensively in the 1980s, playing on or co-writing songs for McCartney's solo albums Tug of War , Pipes of Peace , Give My Regards to Broad Street , and Press to Play .
Go to Profile#30656
Franklin Lewis
#30668
Overall Influence
1961 - 2022 (61 years)
Franklin D. Lewis was an Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature, and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago with affiliations to the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. He taught classes on Persian language and literature, medieval Islamic thought, Sufism, Baha'i Studies, translation studies, and Iranian cinema.
Go to Profile#30657
Per Anders Rudling
#30669
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Per Anders Rudling is a Swedish-American historian and an associate professor in the Department of History at Lund University . He specializes in the areas of nationalism. Education Rudling holds a Master of Arts degree in Russian from Uppsala University , a Master of Arts degree in history from San Diego State University , a Ph.D. in history from the University of Alberta , and completed a post-doc at the University of Greifswald, Germany.
Go to Profile#30658
Chih-Kung Jen
#30670
Overall Influence
1906 - 1995 (89 years)
Chih-Kung Jen was a Chinese physicist who emigrated to the U.S. and participated in some of the 20th century's major scientific, political and social developments in both the United States and China.
Go to Profile#30659
Donda West
#30671
Overall Influence
1949 - 2007 (58 years)
Donda C. West was an American educator and chair of Chicago State University's Department of English, Communications, Media, and Theater. She was best known for being the mother of the American rapper Kanye West.
Go to Profile#30660
Dorothy Riddle
#30672
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Dorothy Riddle is an American-Canadian psychologist, feminist and economic development specialist. She is known as the author of the Riddle homophobia scale and published work on women's studies, homophobia, services and metaphysics.
Go to Profile#30661
Philippe Coutinho
#30673
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
Philippe Coutinho Correia is a Brazilian professional footballer who plays as an attacking midfielder or winger for Qatar Stars League club Al-Duhail, on loan from Premier League club Aston Villa, and the Brazil national team. He is known for his combination of vision, passing, dribbling and ability to conjure curling long-range shots.
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Miroslav Blažević
#30674
Overall Influence
1935 - 2023 (88 years)
Miroslav "Ćiro" Blažević was a Bosnian-Croatian professional football manager and player. His professional playing career spanned from 1954 to 1966, during which he played for Dinamo Zagreb, Lokomotiva Zagreb, Sarajevo, Rijeka and Swiss clubs Sion and Moutier.
Go to Profile#30663
Louis Diamond
#30675
Overall Influence
1902 - 1999 (97 years)
Louis Klein Diamond was an American pediatrician, known as the "father of pediatric hematology." Early life and career Diamond was born in Chişinău, Bessarabia Governorate as the son of Jewish parents, Eliezer Dimant and Lena Klein. His family emigrated to the United States in 1904, following the Kishinev pogrom.
Go to Profile#30664
Jane Hirshfield
#30676
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jane Hirshfield is an American poet, essayist, and translator, known as 'one of American poetry's central spokespersons for the biosphere' and recognized as 'among the modern masters,' 'writing some of the most important poetry in the world today.' A 2019 elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, her books include numerous award-winning collections of her own poems, collections of essays, and edited and co-translated volumes of world writers from the deep past. Widely published in global newspapers and literary journals, her work has been translated into over fifteen language...
Go to Profile#30665
Axel D. Becke
#30677
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Axel Dieter Becke is a physical chemist and Professor of Chemistry at Dalhousie University, Canada. He is a leading researcher in the application of density functional theory to molecules. Early life Becke was born in Esslingen, Germany. He graduated with a B.Sc. from Queen's University. He completed his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from McMaster University.
Go to Profile#30666
John H. Leith
#30678
Overall Influence
1919 - 2002 (83 years)
John Haddon Leith was a Presbyterian theologian and ordained minister who was the Pemberton Professor of Theology at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia from 1959 to 1990. He authored at least 18 books and countless essays on Christianity, over the years moving from a moderate to a strongly critical, conservative perspective on the Presbyterian Church .
Go to Profile#30667
Jürgen Rödel
#30679
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Jürgen Rödel is a German materials scientist and professor of non-metallic inorganic materials at the Technische Universität Darmstadt. He is particularly well known for his fundamental and pioneering work on the mechanical and functional properties of ceramics. This includes his research work on the sintering behaviour of ceramics and the development of lead-free piezoceramics. Until then, lead-free piezo materials were considered impossible. Through meticulous research, he found the first lead-free systems with "Giant" elongation. In 2008, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, th...
Go to Profile#30668
Nwankwo Kanu
#30680
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Nwankwo Christian Nwosu Kanu is a Nigerian former professional footballer who played as a forward. He was a member of the Nigeria national team, and played for Nigerian team Iwuanyanwu Nationale, Dutch side Ajax, Inter Milan of Italy, and English clubs Arsenal, West Bromwich Albion and Portsmouth.
Go to Profile#30669
Herman Cappelen
#30681
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Herman Wright Cappelen is a Norwegian philosopher. He is currently the Chair Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. Biography Cappelen is the son of author and publisher Peder Wright Cappelen and actress Kari Simonsen. Cappelen received a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford, Balliol College, in 1989. In 1996, Cappelen received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. The title of his dissertation was "The Metaphysics of Words and the Semantics of Quotation". His advisors were Charles Chihara, Stephen Neale, and John Searle.
Go to Profile#30670
Bernard Grofman
#30682
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
#30671
Sebastian Heilmann
#30683
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Sebastian Heilmann is a German political scientist and sinologist. He serves as the founding president of the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. Heilmann is a professor for the political economy of China at the University of Trier with many publications on China's political system, economic policy and international relations.
Go to Profile#30672
Lou Macari
#30684
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Luigi Macari is a Scottish former footballer and manager. He began his playing career at Celtic where he was one of the Quality Street Gang, the outstanding reserve team that emerged in the late 1960s that also included Kenny Dalglish and Danny McGrain. He is best known for his time at Manchester United, where he played over 400 games. He helped them win promotion back to the First Division and then played in their FA Cup win of 1977. He then finished his playing career at Swindon Town.
Go to Profile#30673
Albert Bregman
#30685
Overall Influence
1936 - 2023 (87 years)
Albert Stanley Bregman was a Canadian academic and researcher in experimental psychology, cognitive science, and Gestalt psychology, primarily in the perceptual organization of sound. Bregman was known for having defined and conceptually organized the field of auditory scene analysis in his 1990 book, Auditory Scene Analysis: the perceptual Organization of Sound . His ideas about ASA have provided a new framework for research in the auditory systems of both humans and non-human animals, for behavioral and neurological studies of speech perception, for music theory, hearing aids, audio technology, and the separation of speech from other sounds by computers .
Go to Profile#30674
Werner Abelshauser
#30686
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Werner Abelshauser is a German economic historian. Life Abelshauser studied economics at the University of Mannheim and graduated in 1970. He received his PhD at Ruhr University Bochum in 1973 with his dissertation on West German economy 1945–1948. In 1980 he was appointed as Professor for economic and social history in Bochum. From 1983 to 1988, he was acting director of the institute for the research on the European workers movement . He was visiting professor at Bielefeld, Göttingen, Cologne, , Oxford , Florence , St. Louis, Missouri and Sydney . From 1988 to 1991, he held the chair in European History of the 20th century at the European University Institute in Florence.
Go to Profile#30675
Miodrag Radulovacki
#30687
Overall Influence
1933 - 2014 (81 years)
Miodrag Radulovacki , was a Serbian American scientist and inventor. He was Professor of Pharmacology in the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago , Radulovacki's research accomplishments include: the Adenosine Sleep Theory, and pioneering pharmacological studies for the treatment of sleep apnea, together with research collaborator, David W. Carley, . Radulovacki and Carley invented several drug therapies for the treatment of sleep apnea which have been patented by the UIC. The UIC recognized them as the 2010 "Inventors of the Year." Radulovacki published more than 170 scientific papers.
Go to Profile#30676
Christopher Ré
#30688
Overall Influence
Christopher Ré is an American computer scientist. He is currently employed by Stanford University, where he is an associate professor. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015. Ré specializes in big data analysis. He co-founded Lattice.io, a data mining and machine learning company that was acquired by Apple in May 2017.
Go to Profile#30677
Mark Smith
#30689
Overall Influence
Mark Edmund Smith, is a British physicist, academic, and academic administrator. He specialises in nuclear magnetic resonance and materials physics. Since October 2019, he has been the President and Vice-Chancellor of University of Southampton, having previously held the office of Vice-Chancellor of Lancaster University, and Professor of Solid State NMR in its Department of Chemistry since 2012. He has previously lectured at the University of Kent and the University of Warwick.
Go to Profile#30678
Ian Brodie
#30690
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Ian Ross Brodie is a Canadian political scientist and was Chief of Staff in Stephen Harper's Prime Minister's Office from Harper's ascension to the position of prime minister until July 1, 2008. The news that he was leaving the post came days before the release of a report on the Clinton/Obama NAFTA leak controversy. He is currently a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Calgary.
Go to Profile#30679
Anwar al-Awlaki
#30691
Overall Influence
1971 - 2011 (40 years)
Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki was an American Islamic scholar and lecturer who was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a U.S. government drone strike ordered by President Barack Obama. Al-Awlaki became the first U.S. citizen to be targeted and killed by a drone strike from the U.S. government. U.S. government officials argued that Awlaki was a key organizer for the Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda, and in June 2014, a previously classified memorandum issued by the U.S. Department of Justice was released, justifying al-Awlaki's death as a lawful act of war. Civil liberties advocates have described th...
Go to Profile#30680
Helon Habila
#30692
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Helon Habila Ngalabak is a Nigerian novelist and poet, whose writing has won many prizes, including the Caine Prize in 2001. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in Nigeria before moving in 2002 to England, where he was a Chevening Scholar at the University of East Anglia, and now teaches creative writing at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
Go to Profile#30681
Harold J. Kushner
#30693
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Harold Joseph Kushner is an American applied mathematician and a Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics at Brown University. He is known for his work on the theory of stochastic stability , the theory of non-linear filtering , and for the development of numerical methods for stochastic control problems such as the Markov chain approximation method. He is commonly cited as the first person to study Bayesian optimization, based on work he published in 1964.
Go to Profile#30682
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
#30694
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa is an American historian specializing in modern Russian and Soviet history and the relations between Russia, Japan, and the United States. He taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was director of the Cold War Studies program until his retirement in 2016.
Go to Profile#30683
Henry Rzepa
#30695
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Henry Stephen Rzepa is a chemist and Emeritus Professor of Computational chemistry at Imperial College London. Education Rzepa was born in London in 1950, was educated at Wandsworth Comprehensive School, and then entered the chemistry department at Imperial College London where he graduated in 1971. He stayed to do a Ph.D. on the physical organic chemistry of indoles supervised by Brian Challis.
Go to Profile#30684
Reza Abedini
#30696
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Reza Abedini is an Iranian graphic designer and a professor. His works keep a modern theme as he blends traditional Islamic patterns, calligraphy and culture. He combines simple illustrations with poetic typography and elegant layouts, exploring the beauty of the Persian language. He is also an art critic, independent art director with Reza Abedini Studio and the editor-in-chief of Manzar magazine in Iran.
Go to Profile#30685
George Karniadakis
#30697
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
George Em Karniadakis is a professor of applied mathematics at Brown University. He is a Greek-American researcher who is known for his wide-spectrum work on high-dimensional stochastic modeling and multiscale simulations of physical and biological systems, and is a pioneer of spectral/hp-element methods for fluids in complex geometries, general polynomial chaos for uncertainty quantification, and the Sturm-Liouville theory for partial differential equations and fractional calculus.
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Shohei Ohtani
#30698
Overall Influence
1994 - Present (32 years)
, nicknamed "Shotime", is a Japanese professional baseball pitcher and designated hitter who is a free agent. He has played in Major League Baseball for the Los Angeles Angels and for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters of Nippon Professional Baseball's Pacific League. Widely acclaimed for his skill in both pitching and batting, he has been compared to two-way players such as Babe Ruth and Bullet Rogan, although such comparisons draw debate given the difference in era and overall ability of modern players.
Go to Profile#30687
Jonny Buckland
#30699
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Jonathan Mark Buckland is an English-born Welsh musician and songwriter best known as the lead guitarist and co-founder of the rock band Coldplay. Raised in Pantymwyn, he began to play guitar from an early age, being influenced by acts such as the Stone Roses, My Bloody Valentine and U2. Noted for sparse and delicate arrangements, he uses slide bars and delay pedals with a stylistic timbre that has led to comparisons to the Edge.
Go to Profile#30688
Jacob Bigeleisen
#30700
Overall Influence
1919 - 2010 (91 years)
Jacob Bigeleisen was an American chemist who worked on the Manhattan Project on techniques to extract uranium-235 from uranium ore, an isotope that can sustain nuclear fission and would be used in developing an atomic bomb but that is less than 1% of naturally occurring uranium. While the method of using photochemistry that Bigeleisen used as an approach was not successful in isolating useful quantities of uranium-235 for the war effort, it did lead to the development of isotope chemistry, which takes advantage of the ways that different isotopes of an element interact to form chemical bonds.
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Marc H. Bornstein
#30701
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Marc H. Bornstein is an Affiliate with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, International Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London, and senior advisor for research for ECD Parenting Programmes at UNICEF in New York City.
Go to Profile#30690
Eduard Verhagen
#30702
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Eduard Verhagen is an attorney and the medical director of the department of pediatrics at the University Medical Center Groningen . He is mainly known for his involvement in infant euthanasia in the Netherlands.
Go to Profile#30691
Tova Hartman
#30703
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Tova Hartman is the Dean of Humanities at the Ono Academic College. Biography Tova Hartman is the daughter of Rabbi Prof. David Hartman. She was married to Moshe Halbertal, and they have three daughters. She is a founder of Kehillat Shira Hadasha, a congregation organized to increase women's participation and leadership within traditional Jewish prayer and halakha.
Go to Profile#30692
Laurence Pearl
#30704
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Laurence Harris Pearl FRS FMedSci is a British biochemist and structural biologist who is currently Professor of Structural Biology in the Genome Damage and Stability Centre and was Head of the School of Life Sciences at the University of Sussex.
Go to Profile#30693
Lizhen Ji
#30705
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Lizhen Ji , is a Chinese-American mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Biography April 1964, Ji was born in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. Ji graduated BS from Hangzhou University in Hangzhou in 1984. From 1984 to 1985, Ji was a master student at the Department of Mathematics of Hangzhou University. Ji went to United States to continue his study in 1985, and in 1987 Ji obtained MS from the Department of Mathematics of the University of California, San Diego. In 1991, Ji obtained PhD from the Northeastern University .
Go to Profile#30694
Maria Petrou
#30706
Overall Influence
1953 - 2012 (59 years)
Maria Petrou FREng was a Greek-born British scientist who specialised in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine vision. She developed a number of novel image recognition techniques, taught at Surrey University and Imperial College London, and was a prolific author of scientific articles.
Go to Profile#30695
Meg Gardiner
#30707
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Meg Gardiner is an American thriller writer and author of fifteen published books. Her best-known books are the Evan Delaney novels, first published in 2002. In June 2008, she published the first novel in a new series, featuring forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett. More recently she has published three stand-alone novels—Ransom River , The Shadow Tracer , and Phantom Instinct —and three novels in a new series: Unsub , Into the Black Nowhere , and The Dark Corners of the Night .
Go to Profile#30696
Alan Andrew Watson
#30708
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Alan Andrew Watson, FRS, is a physicist and an emeritus professor at the University of Leeds, England. Education Watson was educated at the University of Edinburgh and was awarded the degree of PhD in 1964 for his thesis on the physics of condensation of water vapour: Examination and possible exploitation of certain unexplored features in the operation of high pressure cloud chambers. After completing his PhD, he took up a lectureship at the University of Leeds in 1964. His main areas of interest are high-energy cosmic rays, ultra high-energy gamma rays and high-energy astrophysics.
Go to Profile#30697
Brian Cox
#30709
Overall Influence
1928 - 2008 (80 years)
Charles Brian Cox CBE was an English academic and poet. Cox was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he received MA and MLitt degrees. In 1959 he and his friend A. E. Dyson founded the literary journal Critical Quarterly. English teachers in more than half the grammar schools in the country subscribed to it. The journal published five Black Papers between 1969 and 1977. These were controversial, due to their criticism of comprehensive schools and child-centred teaching methods.
Go to Profile#30698
James L. Hoard
#30710
Overall Influence
1905 - 1993 (88 years)
James Lynn Hoard was an American chemist, a member of the Manhattan Project. Hoard was internationally recognized for his research of boron. Linus Pauling, a Nobel Prize laureate, said that Hoard "contributed significantly to ... the chemistry of certain elements such as boron, and the structure of regions of hemoglobins where oxygen molecules are bonded to iron."
Go to Profile#30699
Robert R. Blake
#30711
Overall Influence
1918 - 2004 (86 years)
Robert Rogers Blake was an American management theoretician. He did pioneer work in the field of organizational dynamics. Together with Jane S. Mouton, he developed the Managerial Grid Model , which attempts to conceptualize management in terms of relations and leadership style.
Go to Profile#30700
Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.
#30712
Overall Influence
1929 - 2018 (89 years)
Geoffrey Cornell Hazard Jr. was Trustee Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he taught from 1994 to 2005, and the Thomas E. Miller Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law. He was also Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School.
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