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
#30851
Joseph Takahashi
#30863
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Joseph S. Takahashi is a Japanese American neurobiologist and geneticist. Takahashi is a professor at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center as well as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Takahashi's research group discovered the genetic basis for the mammalian circadian clock in 1994 and identified the Clock gene in 1997. Takahashi was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003.
Go to Profile#30852
Steve Cram
#30864
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Stephen Cram, is a British retired track and field athlete. Along with fellow Britons Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett, he was one of the world's dominant middle distance runners during the 1980s. Nicknamed "The Jarrow Arrow", after his home town, Cram set world records in the 1,500 m, 2,000 m, and the mile during a 19-day period in the summer of 1985. He was the first man to run 1,500 m under 3 minutes and 30 seconds. He won the 1,500 m gold medal at the 1983 World Championships and the 1,500 m silver medal at the 1984 Olympic Games.
Go to Profile#30853
Arun Mitra
#30865
Overall Influence
1909 - 2000 (91 years)
Arun Mitra was an Indian poet of Bengali, who also translated French literature. Selected bibliography English translations of titles are literal in most instances. Transcription of Bengali titles try to represent, as much as possible, the Bengali vernacular and not Sanskrit pronunciation of words.
Go to Profile#30854
Jason Giambi
#30866
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Jason Gilbert Giambi is an American former professional baseball first baseman and designated hitter. In his Major League Baseball career, which began in 1995, Giambi played for the Oakland Athletics, New York Yankees, Colorado Rockies, and Cleveland Indians. He is the older brother of the late MLB player Jeremy Giambi.
Go to Profile#30855
Tomislav Nikolić
#30867
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Tomislav Nikolić is a Serbian former politician who served as the president of Serbia from 2012 to 2017. A former member of the far-right Serbian Radical Party , he disassociated himself from the party in 2008 and formed the Serbian Progressive Party which he led until 2012.
Go to Profile#30856
Rajdeep Grewal
#30868
Overall Influence
Rajdeep 'Raj' Grewal is the Townsend Family Distinguished Professor of Marketing at Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the editor-in-chief of Journal of Marketing Research. He is known for his work on marketing research, marketing strategy and business to business marketing.
Go to Profile#30857
Nirmala Sitharaman
#30869
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Nirmala Sitharaman is an Indian economist, politician and a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party serving as the Minister of Finance and Minister of Corporate Affairs of the Government of India since 2019. She is a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament, representing Karnataka since 2016 and previously represented Andhra Pradesh from 2014 to 2016. Sitharaman previously served as the 28th Defence Minister from 2017 to 2019, thereby becoming India's second female defence minister and the second female finance minister after Indira Gandhi, and the first full-time female minister to hold each of those portfolios.
Go to Profile#30858
Otto Rehhagel
#30870
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Otto Rehhagel is a German former football coach and player. Rehhagel is one of only two people who, as player and manager combined, has participated in over 1,000 Bundesliga matches . In the Bundesliga, he holds the records for the most victories , most draws , most losses , and his teams have scored the most goals and conceded more than any other. He served as the trainer of Werder Bremen between 1981 and 1995 and won twice the Bundesliga and in 1992 the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup with them. After a rather unsuccessful intermezzo at Bayern Munich, he won the Bundesliga sensationally with the promoted team 1.
Go to Profile#30859
Evert Gummesson
#30871
Overall Influence
1936 - 2023 (87 years)
Evert Gummesson was Professor Emeritus of Service Marketing and Management at the Stockholm Business School, where he was formerly the Director of Research. He received his Ph.D. from Stockholm University, Stockholm School of Economics. He was a Fellow and Honorary Doctor of Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland, and a Fellow of the University of Tampere, Finland.
Go to Profile#30860
José Antonio González Anaya
#30872
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
José Antonio González Anaya is a Mexican economist who served as the minister of finance and public credit of Mexico until November 30, 2018. Previously he served as CEO of PEMEX and general director at the Mexican Social Security Institute . Also at the Ministry of Finance in Mexico he was: Undersecretary of Revenue; Chief of Staff of the Minister and head of the Unit of Coordination with States; head of the Unit of Pensions, Insurance and Securities; and chief of staff of the undersecretary. He was a lecturer and senior researcher at Stanford University; senior economist for Bolivia, Parag...
Go to Profile#30861
Jessica Biel
#30873
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Jessica Claire Timberlake is an American actress and producer. She has received various accolades, including a Young Artist Award, and nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards.
Go to Profile#30862
Marie-Françoise Roy
#30874
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Marie-Françoise Roy is a French mathematician noted for her work in real algebraic geometry. She has been Professor of Mathematics at the University of Rennes 1 since 1985 and in 2009 was made a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour. In 2004, she received an Irène Joliot-Curie Prize.
Go to Profile#30863
Frank Schmalleger
#30875
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
#30864
André Petermann
#30876
Overall Influence
1922 - 2011 (89 years)
Andreas Emil Petermann , known as André Petermann, was a Swiss theoretical physicist known for introducing the renormalization group, suggesting a quark-like model, and work related to the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the muon.
Go to Profile#30865
Kim Carnes
#30877
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Kim Carnes is an American singer and songwriter born and raised in Los Angeles. She began her career as a songwriter in the 1960s, writing for other artists while performing in local clubs and working as a session background singer with the famed Water Sisters . After she signed her first publishing deal with Jimmy Bowen, she released her debut album Rest on Me in 1971. Carnes' self-titled second album primarily contained self-penned songs, including her first charting single "You're a Part of Me", which reached No. 35 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart in 1975. In the following year, Carnes released Sailin', which featured "Love Comes from Unexpected Places".
Go to Profile#30866
Raymond Ibrahim
#30878
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Raymond Ibrahim is an American author, translator, columnist, critic of Islam, and a former librarian. His focus is Arabic history and language, and current events. Early life and education Ibrahim was born in the United States to Coptic immigrants from Egypt. He is fluent in Arabic and English. Ibrahim studied at California State University, Fresno, where he wrote a master's thesis under Victor Davis Hanson on an early military encounter between Islam and Byzantium based on medieval Arabic and Greek texts. Ibrahim also took graduate courses at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary ...
Go to Profile#30867
Florence Thomas
#30879
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Florence Thomas is a French-Colombian social psychologist and feminist academic. She was a co-founder of the Programa de Estudios de Género, Mujer y Desarrollo at the National University of Colombia. She is also a journalist for the newspaper El Tiempo. Thomas was honored with the in 2005. In 2017, Thomas was decorated as a Knight in France's Legion of Honour.
Go to Profile#30868
Elisabeth Bronfen
#30880
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Elisabeth Bronfen is a Swiss/German/American literary and cultural critic and academic. She is a professor and chairholder for English literature at the University of Zurich as well as a global distinguished professor at New York University. Her research interests include 19th- and 20th-century American and British literature, gender studies, psychoanalysis as well as the intersection and interaction between different cultural media.
Go to Profile#30869
Bruce Baum
#30881
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Bruce Baum is an American comedian. His live act consists of prop comedy as well as more traditional stand-up material. One of his best-known stand-up routines is his diaper-wearing Babyman character. Baum is recognized for his large mustache, long hair and remarkable resemblance to musician David Crosby. Baum and comedian Barry Marder co-authored the first three Letters From a Nut books, written under the pseudonym Ted L. Nancy.
Go to Profile#30870
Jan Faye
#30882
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Jan Faye is a Danish philosopher of science and metaphysics. He is currently associate professor in philosophy at the University of Copenhagen. Faye has contributed to a number of areas in philosophy including explanation, interpretation, philosophy of the humanities and the natural sciences, evolutionary naturalism, philosophy of Niels Bohr, and topics concerning time, causation, and backward causation .
Go to Profile#30871
Kathleen Taylor
#30883
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Kathleen E. Taylor is a popular science author and a research scientist in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford. In July 2012 she was appointed as a Science Fellow of the Institute for Food, Brain and Behaviour.
Go to Profile#30872
Safet Sušić
#30884
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Safet "Pape" Sušić is a Bosnian professional football manager and former player. He was a gifted midfielder known for his dribbling skills and technical ability, and is strongly reputed to have been one of the finest European players of his generation. Sušić played for Yugoslavia in two FIFA World Cups, 1982 and 1990, and at UEFA Euro 1984. As a manager, he qualified the Bosnia and Herzegovina national team to the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
Go to Profile#30873
John Mortimer
#30885
Overall Influence
1923 - 2009 (86 years)
Sir John Clifford Mortimer was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author. He is best known for novels about a barrister named Horace Rumpole. Early life Mortimer was born in Hampstead, London, the only child of Kathleen May and Clifford Mortimer , a divorce and probate barrister who became blind in 1936 when he hit his head on the door frame of a London taxi but still pursued his career. Clifford's loss of sight was not acknowledged openly by the family.
Go to Profile#30874
John E. Hare
#30886
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
John Edmund Hare is a British classicist, philosopher, ethicist, and currently the Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. Biography He received a Bachelor of Arts honours in Literae Humaniores in 1971 from Balliol College, Oxford, and a PhD in classical philosophy from Princeton University in 1975. He was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Michigan in 1975, a professor of philosophy at Lehigh University from 1975 to 1989, and Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College from 1989 to 2003. Hare served on the staff of the United States House Committee ...
Go to Profile#30875
Wendell L. Roelofs
#30887
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Wendell L. Roelofs was the first researcher to characterize insect sex pheromone structures, developing microchemical techniques for the isolation and identification of pheromone components. Education and career Roelofs obtained his BS in chemistry in 1960 from Central College in Pella, Iowa and his PhD in organic chemistry from Indiana University in 1964. He is the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Insect Biochemistry in the Department of Entomology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
Go to Profile#30876
James Pinkerton
#30888
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
James "Jim" P. Pinkerton is an American columnist, author, and political analyst. Career A graduate of Evanston Township High School and Stanford University , he served on the White House staff under both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and on each of their presidential campaigns from 1980 to 1992. In January 2008, he became a senior adviser to the Mike Huckabee 2008 presidential campaign.
Go to Profile#30877
Carol Lee Flinders
#30889
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Carol Lee Flinders is a writer, independent scholar, educator, speaker, and former syndicated columnist. She is best known as one of the three authors of Laurel's Kitchen along with Laurel Robertson and Bronwen Godfrey. She is also the co- author of The Making of a Teacher with Tim Flinders.
Go to Profile#30878
Margaret Mahy
#30890
Overall Influence
1936 - 2012 (76 years)
Margaret Mahy was a New Zealand author of children's and young adult books. Many of her story plots have strong supernatural elements but her writing concentrates on the themes of human relationships and growing up. She wrote more than 100 picture books, 40 novels and 20 collections of short stories. At her death she was one of thirty writers to win the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Medal for her "lasting contribution to children's literature".
Go to Profile#30879
Mohamed Abd-el-Kader Salem
#30891
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Mohamed Abdel Kader Salem is an Egyptian academic and politician, He is the Former Cabinet Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Egypt. Early life and education Mohamed Salem holds Ph.D. and M.Sc. in electrical engineering-computers and systems engineering, from Faculty of Engineering Ain Shams University, and B.Sc. in electrical engineering from the Military Technical College.
Go to Profile#30880
Hans Peter Duerr
#30892
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Hans Peter Duerr is a German anthropologist and author of ten books on anthropology. Duerr studied at both the University of Vienna and the University of Heidelberg, eventually gaining his doctorate in 1971 with a dissertation on consciousness theory in philosophy. From 1975 through to 1980 he worked as a lecturer and visiting professor of ethnology and cultural history at the University of Zurich, University of Kassel and University of Bern, before settling down permanently at Kassel. From 1992 to 1999 he taught as a professor of anthropology and cultural history at the University of Bremen,...
Go to Profile#30881
Nick Offerman
#30893
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Nicholas David Offerman is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer and woodworker. He became widely known for his role as Ron Swanson in the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation , for which he received the Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Comedy and was twice nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.
Go to Profile#30882
Janine P. Geske
#30894
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Janine P. Geske is an American jurist and law professor who served as a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1993 to 1998 and as interim Milwaukee County Executive in 2002. Life and career Born in Port Washington, Wisconsin, Geske was raised in the nearby community of Cedarburg. She graduated from Cedarburg High School in 1967 and received her bachelor's and master's degrees from Beloit College in 1971 and 1972, respectively. Geske earned her J.D. degree from the Marquette University Law School in 1975.
Go to Profile#30883
Somnath Bharadwaj
#30895
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Somnath Bharadwaj is an Indian theoretical physicist who works on Theoretical Astrophysics and Cosmology. Bharadwaj was born in India, studied at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, and later received his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science. After having worked at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, he is now a professor at IIT Kharagpur. He has made significant contributions to the dynamics of large-scale structure formation.
Go to Profile#30884
Jehuda Reinharz
#30896
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Jehuda Reinharz served as President of Brandeis University from 1994–2010. He is currently the Richard Koret Professor of Modern Jewish History and Director of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry at Brandeis. He is also the president and CEO of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation. On September 25, 2009, Reinharz announced his retirement as President of Brandeis, but at the request of the Board of Trustees, he stayed on until a replacement could be hired. On January 1, 2011, Reinharz became president and CEO of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Foundation.
Go to Profile#30885
Nehemia Levtzion
#30897
Overall Influence
1935 - 2003 (68 years)
Nehemia Levtzion was an Israeli scholar of African history, Near East, Islamic, and African studies, and the President of the Open University of Israel from 1987 to 1992 and the Executive Director of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute from 1994 to 1997.
Go to Profile#30886
Barbara Czarniawska
#30898
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Barbara Czarniawska is an organization scholar. At present, she is a Senior Professor of Management Studies at Gothenburg Research Institute, Gothenburg School of Business, Economics and Law, Sweden. Her research takes a constructionist perspective on organizing, most recently exploring the management of overflows, and integration processes. She is interested in complex organizations, institutionalism, action nets, organizational change, as well as methodology, especially in fieldwork techniques and in the application of narratology to organization studies.
Go to Profile#30887
Jñānagarbha
#30899
Overall Influence
Jñānagarbha was an 8th-century Buddhist philosopher from Nalanda who wrote on Madhyamaka and Yogacara and is considered part of Bhāviveka's Svatantrika tradition. He was a student of Shrigupta and the teacher and ordaining master of Śāntarakṣita. Tibetan sources refer to him, Santaraksita and Kamalaśīla as rang rgyud shar gsum meaning the "three eastern Svātantrikas" indicating their origins from Eastern India.
Go to Profile#30888
Eleanor Antin
#30900
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Eleanor Antin is an American performance artist, film-maker, installation artist, conceptual artist, feminist artist, and university professor. Early life and education Eleanor Fineman was born in the Bronx on February 27, 1935. Her parents, Sol Fineman and Jeanette Efron, were Polish Jews who had recently immigrated to the United States. She had one sister, Marcia, born 1940.
Go to Profile#30889
Letitia James
#30901
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Letitia Ann James is an American lawyer and politician. She is a member of the Democratic Party and the current Attorney General of New York , having won the 2018 election to succeed Barbara Underwood. James is the first African American and first woman to be elected to the position.
Go to Profile#30890
David Throsby
#30902
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
David Throsby AO is an Australian economist. He is especially well known as a cultural economist. His book Economics and Culture has become a standard reference work in the field. In addition to the performing arts, Throsby's research and writing has covered the economic role of artists, the economics of public intervention in arts markets, cultural development, cultural policy, heritage issues, and sustainability of cultural processes. He has also written extensively on the theory of public goods and the economics of higher education.
Go to Profile#30891
Eric Stach
#30903
Overall Influence
Eric Andrew Stach is an American materials scientist who is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an elected fellow of both the American Physical Society and the Microscopy Society of America. He was also awarded the Eli F. Burton Award in 2009. He was named a "Highly Cited Researcher" in the newly established Cross-Field category in 2018.
Go to Profile#30892
Angela Tilby
#30904
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Angela Clare Wyatt Tilby is British Anglican priest, author and former producer. She began her career working as a producer within the BBC's Religious Department. She was then ordained in the Church of England, and was a parish priest in the Diocese of Ely alongside working at Westcott House, a theological college in Cambridge, and as a lecturer with the Cambridge Theological Federation. She moved to Oxford where she was a Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford . In retirement, she is canon emeritus of Christ Church Cathedral, and a chaplain and honorary canon at Portsmouth Cathedral.
Go to Profile#30893
Bill Paxton
#30905
Overall Influence
1955 - 2017 (62 years)
William Paxton was an American actor and filmmaker. He is known for starring in films such as Aliens , Near Dark , Tombstone , True Lies , Apollo 13 , Twister , Titanic , Mighty Joe Young , and A Simple Plan . He had supporting roles in Weird Science , Edge of Tomorrow , and Nightcrawler .
Go to Profile#30894
Phil Anselmo
#30906
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Philip Hansen Anselmo is an American heavy metal musician best known as the lead singer for Pantera, Down, and Superjoint, amongst other musical projects. He is the owner of Housecore Records. Anselmo is regarded as one of the greatest frontmen in metal history, known for being particularly animated and donning a machismo attitude that became emblematic of the general theme of Pantera. Earlier in his career with the band, Anselmo took considerable inspiration from heavy metal vocalists such as Rob Halford, singing in full head voice. However, he later became recognized for a more abrasive sty...
Go to Profile#30895
Akinori Noma
#30907
Overall Influence
is a Japanese electrophysiologist and Former Chair in Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. He is currently also a member of F1000. Prof. Akinori Noma has made many significant contributions to physiology including the discovery of the KATP ion channel.
Go to Profile#30896
Karlis Kaufmanis
#30908
Overall Influence
1910 - 2003 (93 years)
Kārlis Kaufmanis was a Latvian-American astronomer. He is noted for his theory, on which he delivered a public lecture more than a thousand times, that the Star of Bethlehem was a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn that took place in 7 BC. He was also the author of several textbooks on astronomy, mathematics, and cosmology.
Go to Profile#30897
Rosario Dawson
#30909
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Rosario Isabel Dawson is an American actress. She made her feature-film debut in the 1995 independent drama Kids. Her subsequent film roles include He Got Game , Josie and the Pussycats , Men in Black II , The Rundown , Rent , Sin City , Clerks II , Death Proof , Seven Pounds , Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief , Unstoppable , Zookeeper , Trance , Top Five , Zombieland: Double Tap , and Clerks 3 . Dawson has provided voice-over work for Disney/Marvel, Warner Bros./DC Comics, and ViacomCBS's Nickelodeon unit.
Go to Profile#30898
Shehbaz Sharif
#30910
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Shehbaz Sharif is a Pakistani politician and businessman who served as the 23rd prime minister of Pakistan, in office from April 2022 to August 2023. He is the current president of the Pakistan Muslim League . Previously in his political career, he served as the Chief Minister of Punjab three times, making him the longest-serving Chief Minister of Punjab.
Go to Profile#30899
John Paul Lederach
#30911
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
John Paul Lederach is an American Professor of International Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, and concurrently Distinguished Scholar at Eastern Mennonite University. He has written widely on conflict resolution and mediation. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Colorado. In 1994 he became the founding director for the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University where he was a professor. He currently works for the foundation Humanity United.
Go to Profile#30900
Kieren Fallon
#30912
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Kieren Francis Fallon is a retired Irish professional flat racing jockey and was British Champion Jockey six times. Career Stable jockey to Henry Cecil In 1997, Fallon became the stable jockey for Henry Cecil, one of Britain's leading trainers. In May 1997 he recorded his first Classic win when taking the 1000 Guineas on the Cecil-trained filly Sleepytime. Cecil called him "a very hard worker" and a "Group One Jockey" while Richard Edmondson, writing in The Independent, praised Fallon's riding ability while pointing out his poor disciplinary record. Both sides of Fallon's character were soon...
Go to Profile