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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people
#30751
Stephen Matthews
#30763
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Stephen Matthews is a British linguist in Hong Kong. He is Co-Director of the Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His specialist areas include language typology, syntax and semantics. His current interests include the word order typology of Chinese; the grammar of Chinese languages, notably Cantonese, Chaozhou and other Minnan dialects; language contact and bilingualism, with particular reference to Sinitic languages.
Go to Profile#30752
David G. Kirkpatrick
#30764
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
David Galer Kirkpatrick is a Professor Emeritus of computer science at the University of British Columbia. He is known for the Kirkpatrick–Seidel algorithm and his work on polygon triangulation, and for co-inventing α-shapes and the β-skeleton. He received his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1974.
Go to Profile#30753
Abdullah bin Abdul Rahman Al Hussein
#30765
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Abdullah bin Abdul Rahman Al Hussein is a Saudi engineer. He has been the minister of water and electricity since 2004. Education Al Hussein obtained a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering in 1973. He received a master of science degree in computer science from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1976.
Go to Profile#30754
Vladimir Torchilin
#30766
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Vladimir Petrovich Torchilin is a Soviet, Russian and American biochemist, pharmacologist , and an expert in medical nanotechnology. Torchillin is a University Distinguished Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Northeastern University. He also serves as a director at both the Center for Translational Cancer Nanomedicine and at the Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and Nanomedicine at Northeastern University.
Go to Profile#30755
Salaam Remi
#30767
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Salaam Remi Gibbs is an American record producer. He is most known for producing material for close associates Nas, Amy Winehouse, and Jazmine Sullivan, but has also produced for other mainstream acts including Alicia Keys, Fugees, Doja Cat, Miguel, Fergie, Alessia Cara, Nelly Furtado, and Estelle, among others. Gibbs is noted for his reggae-tinged approach to production.
Go to Profile#30756
David Jablonski
#30768
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
David Ira Jablonski is an American professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago. His research focuses upon the ecology and biogeography of the origin of major novelties, the evolutionary role of mass extinctions—in particular the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event—and other large-scale processes in the history of life.
Go to Profile#30757
Bob Vaughan
#30769
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Robert Charles "Bob" Vaughan FRS is a British mathematician, working in the field of analytic number theory. Life Since 1999 he has been Professor at Pennsylvania State University, and since 1990 Fellow of the Royal Society. He did his PhD at the University of London under supervision of Theodor Estermann. He supervised Trevor Wooley's PhD.
Go to Profile#30758
Eliezer E. Goldschmidt
#30770
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Eliezer E. Goldschmidt is an emeritus professor of agriculture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He earned his Ph.D. in 1968 and has been a professor since 1982. Contributions His research has focused on general agriculture and on various citrus species.
Go to Profile#30759
Mary Czerwinski
#30771
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Mary Czerwinski is an American cognitive scientist and computer-human interaction expert who works for Microsoft Research as manager of their research group on visualization and interaction. Czerwinski earned her doctorate in cognitive science from Indiana University. She worked in computer-human interaction for Bellcore, the Johnson Space Center, and Compaq, and also held an adjunct position at Rice University while at Compaq. She moved to Microsoft in 1996, as a usability tester in product development. Two years later, she joined Microsoft Research, as the first social scientist to work there.
Go to Profile#30760
Carol Ruth Silver
#30772
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Carol Ruth Silver is an American lawyer and civil rights activist. She was a Freedom Rider, arrested and incarcerated for 40 days in Mississippi. She was among those on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors allegedly targeted by Dan White in the Moscone–Milk assassinations, but escaped assassination because she was not in her office at the time of the murders.
Go to Profile#30761
Bridget Mary McCormack
#30773
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Bridget Mary McCormack is an American lawyer, professor, and retired justice. She served on the Michigan Supreme Court from 2013 to 2022, first as an associate justice, and as chief justice from 2019 to 2022. Previously she was a professor at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, where she taught criminal law and legal ethics and oversaw the law school's clinical programs as associate dean of clinical affairs. Her academic work focused on practical experience in legal education. McCormack launched and worked in a pediatric advocacy law clinic focusing on children with health problems, and a domestic violence clinic.
Go to Profile#30762
Tom Courtenay
#30774
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Sir Thomas Daniel Courtenay is an English actor. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he achieved prominence in the 1960s as part of actors of the British New Wave. Courtenay received numerous accolades including three BAFTA Awards, a Golden Globe Award, the Silver Bear, and the Volpi Cup for Best Actor as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, two Tony Awards, and a Emmy Award. He was knighted for his services to cinema and theatre in the 2001 New Year Honours.
Go to Profile#30763
Zaghloul El-Naggar
#30775
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Zaghloul Ragheb Mohammed Al Naggar , also known as Zaghloul El-Naggar, is an Egyptian geologist, Muslim scholar, and author. The main theme of El-Naggar's books has been science in Quran; his philosophy of science is blended with religion. He left his academic career to become the Chairman of Committee of Scientific Notions in the Qur'an, Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, Cairo, Egypt.
Go to Profile#30764
Antonio Davis
#30776
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Antonio Lee Davis is an American former professional basketball player who played for the Indiana Pacers, Toronto Raptors, Chicago Bulls, and New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association . He also played for Panathinaikos B.C. in Greece and Philips Milano in Italy. Davis is also the former president of the National Basketball Players Association . On October 31, 2012, ESPN announced the hiring of Davis as a studio analyst for NBA broadcasts. He is also currently a co-host/analyst on SiriusXM NBA Radio.
Go to Profile#30765
Diane Wakoski
#30777
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Diane Wakoski is an American poet. Wakoski is primarily associated with the deep image poets, as well as the confessional and Beat poets of the 1960s. She received considerable attention in the 1980s for controversial comments linking New Formalism with Reaganism.
Go to Profile#30766
Petr Mitrichev
#30778
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Petr Mitrichev is a Russian competitive programmer who has won multiple major international competitions. His accomplishments include gold and silver medals in the IOI, gold medals in the ACM ICPC World Finals as part of the team of Moscow State University and winning Google Code Jam , the Topcoder Open , the Topcoder Collegiate Challenge , Facebook Hacker Cup as well as numerous national and online contests. He has achieved the highest rating ever among the Algorithm competitors of Topcoder and consistently ranks in the top two of the world. He is the second highest rated Algorithm coder on Topcoder ratings as of February 2021.
Go to Profile#30767
Anthony C. Yu
#30779
Overall Influence
1938 - 2015 (77 years)
Anthony Christopher Yu was an American literary theorist, sinologist, and theologian. He was a scholar of literature and religion, both East Asian and Western; and was the Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and Professor Emeritus of Religion and Literature in the Chicago Divinity School; as well as a member of the Departments of Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and English Language and Literature, and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Yu has published widely in the fields of religion and compa...
Go to Profile#30768
Shane Battier
#30780
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Shane Courtney Battier is an American former professional basketball player. He also worked for ESPN and recently joined the board of Yext. Battier is best known for his four years playing basketball at Duke, his 13 years playing in the National Basketball Association , and his participation on the U.S. national team. His teams won championships at the college, professional, and international levels.
Go to Profile#30769
David Relman
#30781
Overall Influence
David Arnold Relman is an American microbiologist and the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in Medicine, and in Microbiology & Immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. His research focuses on the human microbiome and microbial ecosystem—for which he was a pioneer in the use of modern molecular methods, as well as on pathogen discovery and the genomics of host response.
Go to Profile#30770
Nikol Pashinyan
#30782
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Nikol Vovayi Pashinyan is an Armenian politician serving as the prime minister of Armenia since 8 May 2018. A journalist by profession, Pashinyan founded his own newspaper in 1998, which was shut down a year later for libel. He was sentenced for one year for defamation against then Minister of National Security Serzh Sargsyan. He edited the newspaper Haykakan Zhamanak from 1999 to 2012. A supporter of Armenia's first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan, he was highly critical of second president Robert Kocharyan, Defense Minister Serzh Sargsyan, and their allies. Pashinyan was also critical of Armenia's close relations with Russia, and promoted establishing closer relations with Turkey instead.
Go to Profile#30771
Grant Duwe
#30783
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Grant Duwe is an American criminologist and research director at the Minnesota Department of Corrections, as well as a non-visiting scholar at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion. Duwe holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas and a Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Florida State University.
Go to Profile#30772
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
#30784
Overall Influence
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff holds the Unidel H. Rodney Sharp Chair in the School of Education at the University of Delaware and is also a member of the Departments of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Linguistics and Cognitive Science.
Go to Profile#30773
Mary Helen Washington
#30785
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Mary Helen Washington is an African-American literary scholar who is the author of numerous books on the African-American female experience. She is best known for her influence on increasing representation of Black authors in education and in literary schools of thought. Washington is a past president of the American Studies Association, and an experienced English professor.
Go to Profile#30774
Alexander Victorovich Fedorov
#30786
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Alexander Victorovich Fedorov is a Russian scientist, teacher, media education specialist, film critic. He completed his Ph.D. dissertation about media education at the Russian Academy of Education .
Go to Profile#30775
Bridget Ogilvie
#30787
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Dame Bridget Margaret Ogilvie, is an Australian and British scientist. Education Ogilvie was born in 1938 at Glen Innes, New South Wales, Australia, to John Mylne and Margaret Beryl Ogilvie. During her primary school years, she had a single teacher, and three other students in her class.
Go to Profile#30776
Jeffrey Yi-Lin Forrest
#30788
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Yi Lin , also known as Jeffrey Forrest and Jeffrey Yi-Lin Forrest, is a professor of mathematics, systems science, economics, and finance at Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and at several major universities in China. Lin has been an active researcher in the field of systems science since mid-1980s and serves as the founder and president of the International Institute for General Systems Studies .
Go to Profile#30777
John C. Reilly
#30789
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
John Christopher Reilly is an American actor. He is known as a character actor taking leading and supporting roles in independent drama films and studio comedies. He gained exposure through his supporting roles in Paul Thomas Anderson's films Hard Eight , Boogie Nights and Magnolia , and Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York and The Aviator . Reilly was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the corresponding Golden Globe Award for his role in the musical film Chicago . Reilly's other notable films include The River Wild , The Thin Red Line , and The Hours .
Go to Profile#30778
Bijibal
#30790
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Bijibal Maniyil is an Indian music composer and playback singer who works predominantly in Malayalam films. In a career spanning more than fifteen years, he has composed for more than 150 feature films, several television commercials and a few documentaries.
Go to Profile#30779
Aydın Boysan
#30791
Overall Influence
1921 - 2018 (97 years)
Aydın Boysan was a Turkish architect, academic, author and essayist. Life and profession Boysan was born in Istanbul; his father Esat was an accountant and his mother Nevreste was a teacher. After Pertevniyal High School he studied architecture in Academy of Fine Arts . For 54 years he served as an architect. During this period he won many architectural design competitions both at home and abroad. The total area of his building designs was about In 1954, he became the charter member of the Chamber of Architects. He also became the first secretary general of the chamber. Later he served as the representative of the chamber in Istanbul.
Go to Profile#30780
Günther Zuntz
#30792
Overall Influence
1902 - 1992 (90 years)
Günther Zuntz , German-English classical philologist, professor of Hellenistic Greek and Bible scholar. He obtained a D.Phil. from the University of Marburg in 1928 and was later a professor at the University of Manchester.
Go to Profile#30781
Alfre Woodard
#30793
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Alfre Woodard is an American actress. Known for portraying strong-willed and dignified roles on stage and screen, she has received various accolades, including four Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Canadian Screen Awards, as well as nominations for an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and two Grammy Awards. In 2020, The New York Times ranked her as one of "The 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century". She is a board member of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#30782
Peter Minkowski
#30794
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Peter Minkowski is a Swiss theoretical physicist. He is primarily known for his proposal, with Harald Fritzsch, of SO as the group of a grand unified theory and for his independent proposal, more-or-less simultaneously with a number of other theorists, of the seesaw mechanism for the generation of neutrino masses.
Go to Profile#30783
Francine D. Blau
#30795
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Francine Dee Blau is an American economist and professor of economics as well as Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. In 2010, Blau was the first woman to receive the IZA Prize in Labor Economics for her "seminal contributions to the economic analysis of labor market inequality." She was awarded the 2017 Jacob Mincer Award by the Society of Labor Economists in recognition of lifetime of contributions to the field of labor economics.
Go to Profile#30784
Rollie Fingers
#30796
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Roland Glen Fingers is an American former right-handed relief pitcher in Major League Baseball who played for three teams between 1968 and 1985. His effectiveness helped to redefine the value of relievers within baseball and to usher in the modern closer role. A seven-time All-Star, he led the major leagues in saves three times, and was named Rolaids Relief Man of the Year four times. He first gained prominence as a member of the Oakland Athletics championship teams of the early 1970s, when his flamboyant handlebar mustache made him perhaps the most identifiable member of The Mustache Gang wh...
Go to Profile#30785
Gal Gadot
#30797
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Gal Gadot-Varsano is an Israeli actress and model. She was crowned Miss Israel 2004 and represented her country at the Miss Universe 2004 pageant. She then served in the Israel Defense Forces for two years as a combat fitness instructor, whereafter she began studying at IDC Herzliya while building her modeling and acting careers.
Go to Profile#30786
Vera Lynn
#30798
Overall Influence
1917 - 2020 (103 years)
Dame Vera Margaret Lynn was an English singer and entertainer whose musical recordings and performances were very popular during World War II. She is honorifically known as the "Forces' Sweetheart", having given outdoor concerts for the troops in Egypt, India and Burma during the war as part of the Entertainments National Service Association . The songs most associated with her include "We'll Meet Again", " The White Cliffs of Dover", "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" and "There'll Always Be an England".
Go to Profile#30787
Arvid Pardo
#30799
Overall Influence
1914 - 1999 (85 years)
Arvid Pardo was a Maltese and Swedish diplomat of Jewish origin, scholar and university professor. He is known as the Father of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea". Pardo was born in Rome. His father, Guido Pardo, was born in Malta in 1874 to Enrico Pardo of Sephardic Jewish origin from Livorno. Guido Pardo worked for the International Labour Organization and died of typhus while on a relief mission in the Soviet Union in 1922. His Swedish mother died a year later during an appendectomy and his brother was killed in an automobile accident. He became the ward of a friend ...
Go to Profile#30788
Guy Berryman
#30800
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Guy Rupert Berryman is a Scottish musician, songwriter and designer, best known as the bassist of the rock band Coldplay and electronic supergroup Apparatjik. Raised in Kirkcaldy, he started to play bass at an early age, drawing influence from the likes of James Brown, Kool & the Gang and the Funk Brothers. Beyond music, he is the founder of The Road Rat magazine and fashion brand Applied Art Forms, which take cues from utilitarian and military clothing.
Go to Profile#30789
Thomas Donaldson
#30801
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Thomas Donaldson is The Mark O. Winkelman Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an expert in the areas of business ethics, corporate compliance, corporate governance, and leadership. He is Associate Editor for the Business Ethics Quarterly
Go to Profile#30790
David Mervyn Blow
#30802
Overall Influence
1931 - 2004 (73 years)
David Mervyn Blow was an influential British biophysicist. He was best known for the development of X-ray crystallography, a technique used to determine the molecular structuress of tens of thousands of biological molecules. This has been extremely important to the pharmaceutical industry.
Go to Profile#30791
Theodore Jennings
#30803
Overall Influence
1942 - 2020 (78 years)
Theodore Wesley Jennings Jr. , also known as Ted Jennings, was an American theologian and Methodist minister. He was Professor of Biblical and Constructive Theology at the United Church of Christ's Chicago Theological Seminary, where he had previously served as Acting Academic Dean. Jennings gained a notoriety for his work on ritual studies, the Messianic politics of Pauline discourse, and theological engagement with the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Jacques Derrida.
Go to Profile#30792
Albert Blumberg
#30804
Overall Influence
1906 - 1997 (91 years)
Albert E. Blumberg was an American philosopher and political activist. He was an official of the Communist Party for several years before joining the Democratic Party as a district leader. Early life Albert was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to a middle-class Litvak family. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University and then furthered his education by acquiring a master's degree from Yale, studying at the Sorbonne, and receiving a doctorate from the University of Vienna. While studying in Vienna he became attracted to the Vienna circle of Logical Positivists, founded by the German philosopher M...
Go to Profile#30793
Bobby Caldwell
#30805
Overall Influence
Bobby Caldwell is an American drummer, songwriter, producer and arranger who co-founded the rock bands Captain Beyond and Armageddon during the early 1970s. Prior to these projects he played on seminal Johnny Winter albums such as Live Johnny Winter And and Saints and Sinners. Caldwell was also the drummer on Rick Derringer's All American Boy, which produced the classic-rock radio staple "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo", a song originally written by Derringer and recorded by the band, Johnny Winter And, with Derringer's brother, Randy Z on drums. He also played with John Lennon, Ringo Starr, The Allman Brothers Band, and Eric Clapton.
Go to Profile#30794
Joan Plowright
#30806
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Joan Ann Plowright, Baroness Olivier, , professionally known as Dame Joan Plowright, is an English retired actress whose career spanned over six decades. She has won two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award and has been nominated for an Academy Award, an Emmy and two BAFTA Awards. She was the second of only four actresses to have won two Golden Globes in the same year. She won the Laurence Olivier Award for Actress of the Year in a New Play in 1978 for Filumena.
Go to Profile#30795
Eddie Money
#30807
Overall Influence
1949 - 2019 (70 years)
Edward Joseph Mahoney , known professionally as Eddie Money, was an American singer and songwriter who, in the 1970s and 1980s, had eleven Top 40 songs, including "Baby Hold On", "Two Tickets to Paradise", "Think I'm in Love", "Shakin'", "Take Me Home Tonight", "I Wanna Go Back", "Endless Nights", "Walk on Water", and "The Love in Your Eyes". Critic Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times called him a working-class rocker. In 1987, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "Take Me Home Tonight".
Go to Profile#30796
Ofer Zeitouni
#30808
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Ofer Zeitouni is an Israeli mathematician, specializing in probability theory. Biography Zeitouni received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1980 from the Technion. He obtained in 1986 his doctorate in electrical engineering under the supervision of Moshe Zakai with the thesis Bounds on the Conditional Density and Maximum a posteriori Estimators for the Nonlinear Filtering Problem. As a postdoc he was a visiting assistant professor at Brown University and at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at MIT. He joined the Technion in 1989 as senior lecturer, and w...
Go to Profile#30797
Mike Hulme
#30809
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Michael Hulme is Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge, and also a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was formerly professor of Climate and Culture at King's College London and of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia .
Go to Profile#30798
Abba Gumel
#30810
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Abba Gumel is a Professor & The Michael and Eugenia Brin Endowed E-Nnovate Chair in Mathematics at the Department of Mathematics, University of Maryland, College Park. His research, which spans three main areas of applied mathematics , is focused on the use of mathematical modeling and rigorous approaches, together with statistical analysis, to gain insight into the dynamics of real-life phenomena arising in the natural and engineering sciences. The main emphasis of Gumel's work is on the mathematical theory of epidemics – specifically, he uses mathematical theories and methodologies to gain ...
Go to Profile#30799
Peter Kollock
#30811
Overall Influence
1959 - 2009 (50 years)
Peter Enrique Kollock was an American sociologist and an associate professor and vice chair in the department of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Background Kollock was born on November 1, 1959, in Zaragoza, Spain but came to the United States when he was a year old. He grew up in Seattle, Washington and attended Blanchet High School. Later, he received his B.A. in 1982, M.A in 1984, and Ph.D. in 1990 from the department of sociology at the University of Washington. He joined the department of sociology at UCLA in 1989 and stayed there throughout his entire career.
Go to Profile#30800
Michael Shur
#30812
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Michael Shur is a Russian and American physicist and a professor of solid state electronics and electrical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Background Shur was born on November 13, 1942, in Kamensk-Uralsky, Sverdlovsk, USSR. He received his master's degree in Electrical Engineering from St. Petersburg Electrotechnical Institute. In 1967 he received his Ph.D. in physics from the A.F. Ioffe Institute in Petersburg, Russia. In 1993, he received Dr. Sc. degree from A.F. Ioffe Institute.
Go to Profile