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
#30901
Don W. Cleveland
#30913
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Don W. Cleveland is an American cancer biologist and neurobiologist. Cleveland is currently the Department Chair of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Neurosciences at the University of California at San Diego, and Head, Laboratory for Cell Biology at the San Diego branch of Ludwig Cancer Research.
Go to Profile#30902
J. R. Smith
#30914
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Earl Joseph "J.R." Smith III is an American former professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association . Smith played high school basketball at New Jersey basketball powerhouse Saint Benedict's Preparatory School in Newark. He entered the NBA out of high school after being selected in the first round of the 2004 NBA draft with the 18th overall pick by the New Orleans Hornets. He has also played for the Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks, as well as for the Zhejiang Golden Bulls of the Chinese Basketball Association . Smith won two NBA championships, with the Cleveland Cavali...
Go to Profile#30903
William A. Fletcher
#30915
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
William Alan Fletcher is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Appointed by President Bill Clinton, Fletcher was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 1998. Fletcher taught at the UC Berkeley School of Law from 1977 to 1998.
Go to Profile#30904
Colin McRae
#30916
Overall Influence
1968 - 2007 (39 years)
Colin Steele McRae, was a British rally driver. He was the 1991 and 1992 British Rally Champion, and in 1995 became the first British driver to win the World Rally Championship Drivers' title. McRae's performances with the Subaru World Rally Team enabled the team to win the World Rally Championship Manufacturers' title three times in succession in 1995, 1996 and 1997. After four years with the Ford Motor Co. team, where McRae won nine events, he moved to Citroën World Rally Team in 2003 where, despite not winning an event, he helped them win their first manufacturers' title. He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to motorsport in 1996.
Go to Profile#30905
Michael Lewis
#30917
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Michael Lewis is University Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry, and director of the Institute for the Study of Child Development at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He is also professor of psychology, education, and biomedical engineering and serves on the Executive Committee of the Cognitive Science Center at Rutgers. He is also founding director of the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Autism Center. He received his PhD in 1962 from the University of Pennsylvania in both clinical and experimental psychology.
Go to Profile#30906
Richard A. Falkenrath
#30918
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Richard A. Falkenrath Jr. served as deputy commissioner of counter-terrorism of the New York City Police Department from 2006 to 2010. He was the third person to hold this position. His predecessors were Frank Libutti and Michael A. Sheehan.
Go to Profile#30907
Mark Kleiman
#30919
Overall Influence
1951 - 2019 (68 years)
Mark Albert Robert Kleiman was an American professor, author, and blogger who dealt with issues of drug and criminal justice policy. A professor of public policy for many years at UCLA, Kleiman in 2015 became the director of the Crime and Justice Program at New York University's Marron Institute of Urban Management. Kleiman was an expert in the field of crime and drug policy and authored several books in the field.
Go to Profile#30908
Twista
#30920
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Carl Terrell Mitchell , better known by his stage name Twista , is an American rapper. He is best known for his chopper style of rapping and for once holding the title of fastest English-speaking rapper in the world according to Guinness World Records in 1992, being able to pronounce 598 syllables in 55 seconds.
Go to Profile#30909
Hans-Helmuth Knütter
#30921
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Hans-Helmuth Knütter is a German political scientist and politician . He habilitated with the work “Die Juden und die deutsche Linke in der Weimarer Republik 1918-1933”. Knütter was one of the many doctoral students of Karl Dietrich Bracher. From 1972 on, Knütter worked as professor at the University of Bonn und until 1996 managed the Seminar of Political Science there. Knütter was given the emeritus status in 1997. From 1985 to 1989, Knütter was a member of the Advisory Council of the Federal Agency for Civic Education . From 1989 to 1994, he acted as a rapporteur for the Interior Ministry o...
Go to Profile#30910
Bennett Reimer
#30922
Overall Influence
1932 - 2013 (81 years)
Bennett Reimer was an American music educator. He held the John W. Beattie Endowed Chair in Music at Northwestern University from 1978 until retirement in 1997, where he was chair of the Music Education Department, director of the Ph.D. program in Music Education, and founder and director of the Center for the Study of Education and the Musical Experience, a research group of Ph.D. students and faculty. A native of New York City, where he was born in 1932, he was on the faculties of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio where he held the Kulas Endowed Chair in Music and was chair ...
Go to Profile#30911
Hank Nelson
#30923
Overall Influence
1937 - 2012 (75 years)
Hyland Neil "Hank" Nelson was one of Australia's foremost historians of the Pacific, particularly Papua New Guinea. His interest in the region began in 1966 when he took a teaching position at the Administrative College of Papua New Guinea and later the University. He lived in Papua New Guinea for seven years and studied the period of Japanese occupation, which led to several publications.
Go to Profile#30912
Richard Burkhauser
#30924
Overall Influence
Richard Valentine Burkhauser is a Professor Emeritus of Policy Analysis at Cornell University and was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Trump. Burkhauser's research often focuses on how public policies affect the economic well-being of vulnerable populations, such as the elderly, the disabled, and those living in low-income households. As a member of the CEA, Burkhauser was working alongside fellow economists Tomas Philipson and Kevin Hassett.
Go to Profile#30913
Martin Stopford
#30925
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Martin Stopford is a British economist and has had careers as a teacher, writer, information provider and business manager. Stopford is regularly quoted by The Economist, the Financial Times, Bloomberg and Lloyds List. He received a Lloyd's List Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. He is a director of Clarksons plc, the world's largest shipbroker.
Go to Profile#30914
Mark E. Davis
#30926
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Mark E. Davis is the Warren and Katherine Schlinger Professor of Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He is a member of the City of Hope National Medical Center. He earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in chemical engineering all from the University of Kentucky. His lab focuses on the synthesis of materials for catalysis and biocompatible materials for drug delivery.
Go to Profile#30915
Richard Bolt
#30927
Overall Influence
1911 - 2002 (91 years)
Richard Henry Bolt was an American physics professor at MIT with an interest in acoustics. He was one of the founders of the company Bolt, Beranek and Newman, which built the ARPANET, a forerunner of the Internet.
Go to Profile#30916
Ted C. Lewellen
#30928
Overall Influence
1940 - 2006 (66 years)
Ted Lewelllen was Professor of Anthropology at the University of Richmond. He received his B.A. from Alaska Methodist University, his M.A. from New York University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in 1977, with a thesis on "The Aymara in transition : economy and religion in a Peruvian peasant community".
Go to Profile#30917
Allan Gurganus
#30929
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Allan Gurganus is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist whose work, which includes Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All and Local Souls, is often influenced by and set in his native North Carolina.
Go to Profile#30918
Samuele Bacchiocchi
#30930
Overall Influence
1938 - 2008 (70 years)
Samuele R. Bacchiocchi was a Seventh-day Adventist author and theologian, best known for his work on the Sabbath in Christianity, particularly in the historical work From Sabbath to Sunday, based on his doctoral thesis from the Pontifical Gregorian University. Bacchiocchi defended the validity of the Feasts of the Lord, situated in Leviticus 23, he wrote two books on the subject. He was also known within the Seventh-day Adventist church for his opposition to rock and contemporary Christian music, jewelry, the celebration of Christmas and Easter, certain dress standards and alcohol.
Go to Profile#30919
James Greeno
#30931
Overall Influence
1935 - 2020 (85 years)
James G. Greeno was an American experimental psychologist and learning scientist whose research focused on learning and problem solving with conceptual understanding, using scientific concepts and methods of association theory, computational cognitive modeling, and discourse analysis.
Go to Profile#30920
Tan Chorh Chuan
#30932
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Tan Chorh Chuan is a Singaporean college administrator and professor who served as the second president of the National University of Singapore between 2008 and 2017. He is currently a professor at the National University of Singapore.
Go to Profile#30921
Charles Earl Rickart
#30933
Overall Influence
1913 - 2002 (89 years)
Charles Earl Rickart was an American mathematician, known for Rickart spaces. Rickart was born in Osage City, Kansas, and earned his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Kansas. In 1941, he received his PhD from the University of Michigan under Theophil Henry Hildebrandt with the thesis Integration in a Convex Linear Topological Space. Rickart was for two years the Benjamin Pierce Instructor at Harvard University. He joined the Yale mathematics faculty in 1943, served as chair of the department from 1959 to 1965, became the first Percey F. Smith Professor of Mathematics in 1963, and retired i...
Go to Profile#30922
Danah boyd
#30934
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
danah boyd is a technology and social media scholar. She is a partner researcher at Microsoft Research, the founder of Data & Society Research Institute, and a distinguished visiting professor at Georgetown University.
Go to Profile#30923
Susanne Teschl
#30935
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Susanne Teschl is an Austrian biomathematician and professor of mathematics at the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien in Vienna. She is known for her research on the mathematical modeling of breath analysis.
Go to Profile#30924
Cameron Gordon
#30936
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Cameron Gordon is a Professor and Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, known for his work in knot theory. Among his notable results is his work with Marc Culler, John Luecke, and Peter Shalen on the cyclic surgery theorem. This was an important ingredient in his work with Luecke showing that knotss were determined by their complement. Gordon was also involved in the resolution of the Smith conjecture.
Go to Profile#30925
Paul Kuroda
#30937
Overall Influence
1917 - 2001 (84 years)
Paul Kazuo Kuroda was a Japanese-American chemist and nuclear scientist. He held the esteemed title of honorary professor at the University of Arkansas and is widely recognized as the pioneering scientist who achieved the distinction of becoming the first individual from Japan to naturalize in the United States.
Go to Profile#30926
Katrina Kaif
#30938
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Katrina Kaif is a British actress who works in Hindi-language films. One of the highest-paid actresses in India, she has received accolades, including four Screen Awards and four Zee Cine Awards, in addition to three Filmfare nominations. Though reception to her acting has varied, she is noted for her action film roles and for her dancing ability in various successful item numbers.
Go to Profile#30927
Helen M. Chan
#30939
Overall Influence
Helen M. Chan is the New Jersey Zinc Professor at Lehigh University. Her work considers the development of ceramic-metal nanocomposites. She is on the board of directors of the American Ceramic Society.
Go to Profile#30928
Ishmael Reed
#30940
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, composer, playwright, editor and publisher known for his satirical works challenging American political culture. Perhaps his best-known work is Mumbo Jumbo , a sprawling and unorthodox novel set in 1920s New York.
Go to Profile#30929
Carlos Beltrán
#30941
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Carlos Iván Beltrán is a Puerto Rican former professional baseball outfielder. He played in Major League Baseball as an outfielder from 1998 to 2017 for the Kansas City Royals, Houston Astros, New York Mets, San Francisco Giants, St. Louis Cardinals, New York Yankees, and Texas Rangers. A right-handed thrower and switch hitter, Beltrán stands tall and weighs .
Go to Profile#30930
Harald Niederreiter
#30942
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Harald G. Niederreiter is an Austrian mathematician known for his work in discrepancy theory, algebraic geometry, quasi-Monte Carlo methods, and cryptography. Education and career Niederreiter was born on June 7, 1944, in Vienna, and grew up in Salzburg. He began studying mathematics at the University of Vienna in 1963, and finished his doctorate there in 1969, with a thesis on discrepancy in compact abelian groups supervised by Edmund Hlawka. He began his academic career as an assistant professor at the University of Vienna, but soon moved to Southern Illinois University. During this period ...
Go to Profile#30931
Nicole Eisenman
#30943
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Nicole Eisenman is a French-born American artist known for her oil paintings and sculptures. She has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship , the Carnegie Prize , and has thrice been included in the Whitney Biennial . On September 29, 2015, she won a MacArthur Fellowship award for "restoring the representation of the human form a cultural significance that had waned during the ascendancy of abstraction in the 20th century."
Go to Profile#30932
Maximilian Schell
#30944
Overall Influence
1930 - 2014 (84 years)
Maximilian Schell was an Austrian-born Swiss actor, who also wrote, directed and produced some of his own films. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1961 American film Judgment at Nuremberg, his second acting role in Hollywood. Born in Austria, his parents were involved in the arts and he grew up surrounded by performance and literature. While he was still a child, his family fled to Switzerland in 1938 when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, and they settled in Zurich. After World War II ended, Schell took up acting and directing full-time. He appeared in numerous German films,...
Go to Profile#30933
James Gandolfini
#30945
Overall Influence
1961 - 2013 (52 years)
James Joseph Gandolfini Jr. was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of Tony Soprano, the Italian-American Mafia crime boss in HBO's television series The Sopranos . For this role, he won three Emmy Awards, five Screen Actors Guild Awards, and one Golden Globe Award. His role as Tony Soprano has been described as one of the greatest and most influential performances in television history.
Go to Profile#30934
David A. Adler
#30946
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
David Abraham Adler is an American writer of 265 books for children and young adults, most notably the Cam Jansen mystery series, the "Picture Book of..." series, and several acclaimed works about the Holocaust for young readers.
Go to Profile#30935
Giacomo Luciani
#30947
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Giacomo Luciani is a leading Italian expert on the geopolitics of energy often cited in the media. He is primarily known for his seminal contributions to the theory of the rentier state with Egyptian economist Hazem Al Beblawi.
Go to Profile#30936
Trent Green
#30948
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Trent Jason Green is a former American football quarterback who played in the National Football League for fifteen seasons. He played college football for Indiana University. He was drafted by the San Diego Chargers in the eighth round of the 1993 NFL Draft, and also played for the BC Lions, Washington Redskins, St. Louis Rams, Kansas City Chiefs, and Miami Dolphins. He earned a Super Bowl ring with the Rams in Super Bowl XXXIV over the Tennessee Titans and was selected to two Pro Bowls with the Chiefs.
Go to Profile#30937
David A. Savitz
#30949
Overall Influence
David A. Savitz is a professor of Community Health in the Epidemiology Section of the Program in Public Health, Vice President for Research, and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, at The Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and Associate Director for Perinatal Research in The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Women & Infants Hospital, both in Providence, Rhode Island. Savitz is the author of Interpreting epidemiologic evidence: strategies for study design and analysis and more than 275 peer-reviewed articles. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2007.
Go to Profile#30938
Nechama Leibowitz
#30950
Overall Influence
1905 - 1997 (92 years)
Nechama Leibowitz was an Israeli Bible scholar and commentator who rekindled interest in Bible study. Biography Nechama Leibowitz was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Riga two years after her elder brother, the philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz. The family moved to Berlin in 1919. In 1930, Leibowitz received a doctorate from the University of Marburg for her thesis, Techniques in the Translations of German-Jewish Biblical Translations. That same year 1930, she immigrated to Mandate Palestine with her husband Yedidya Lipman Lebowitz. She taught at a religious Zionist teachers' seminar for the next twenty-five years.
Go to Profile#30939
Earl Morrall
#30951
Overall Influence
1934 - 2014 (80 years)
Earl Edwin Morrall was an American professional football player who was a quarterback and one-time Most Valuable Player in the National Football League for 21 seasons, both a starter and reserve. In the latter capacity, he became known as one of the greatest backup quarterbacks in NFL history, having served in the capacity for two Hall of Fame quarterbacks in Johnny Unitas and Bob Griese. He is most known for helping the Baltimore Colts win Super Bowl V and the Miami Dolphins complete the only perfect season in NFL history, having come off the bench when Griese became injured early in the ye...
Go to Profile#30940
Oriol Amat
#30952
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Oriol Amat is a Catalan economist. He has served as Rector of Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona from 2021 to 2023. He is also Full Professor of Financial Economics and Accounting at the same university since 2001.
Go to Profile#30941
Isaac Marks
#30953
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Isaac Meyer Marks was born in Cape Town, South Africa. He trained in medicine there, qualifying in 1956. His training as a psychiatrist began in 1960 at the University of London and was completed in 1963. In 1971 he was a founder Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and in 1976 he was elected a Fellow.
Go to Profile#30942
Karine Chemla
#30954
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Karine Chemla is a French historian of mathematics and sinologist who works as a director of research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique . She is also a senior fellow at the New York University Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. She was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.
Go to Profile#30943
Valentine Telegdi
#30955
Overall Influence
1922 - 2006 (84 years)
Valentine Louis Telegdi was a Hungarian-born American physicist. He was the Enrico Fermi Distinguished Service Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago before he moved to ETH Zürich. After retiring from ETH he divided his time between CERN and the California Institute of Technology. Telegdi chaired CERN's scientific policy committee from 1981 to 1983.
Go to Profile#30944
Wade MacLauchlan
#30956
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
H. Wade MacLauchlan , is a Canadian legal academic, university administrator, politician and community leader. He served as the fifth president of the University of Prince Edward Island from 1999 to 2011, becoming president emeritus in 2012. He served as the 32nd premier of Prince Edward Island from 2015 to 2019. His government was defeated in the April 23, 2019 general election. MacLauchlan announced his intention to step down as Liberal leader on 26 April 2019, and completed his term as Premier on 9 May 2019.
Go to Profile#30945
Robert Kocharyan
#30957
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Robert Sedraki Kocharyan is an Armenian politician. He served as the President of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic from 1994 to 1997 and Prime Minister of Nagorno-Karabakh from 1992 to 1994. He served as the second President of Armenia between 1998 and 2008 and as Prime Minister of Armenia from 1997 to 1998.
Go to Profile#30946
Ashk Dahlén
#30958
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Ashk Peter Dahlén is a Swedish scholar, linguist, Iranologist, translator, and associate professor in Persian language at Uppsala University. He is quadrilingual in Swedish, Persian, English, and French. He has published extensively in journals, and has written several books.
Go to Profile#30947
Metin Yurdanur
#30959
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Metin Yurdanur is a sculptor based in Turkey, who was awarded the title State Artist of Turkey. Early years Yurdanur was born in 1951 in Sivrihisar town of Eskişehir Province in Turkey. He spent his childhood until high school in his hometown. He was impressed by antique works of art, especially by the three-millennium old Phrygian reliefs, that inspired him for plastic arts.
Go to Profile#30948
William H. Schlesinger
#30960
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
William H. Schlesinger is a biogeochemist and the retired president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, an independent not-for-profit environmental research organization in Millbrook, New York. He assumed that position after 27 years on the faculty of Duke University, where he served as the Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences and James B. Duke Professor of Biogeochemistry.
Go to Profile#30949
Haim Be'er
#30961
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Haim Be'er , born on 9 February 1945, is an Israeli novelist. Biography Haim Rachlevsky was born in Jerusalem to an Orthodox Jewish family. He grew up in the Geula neighborhood, and attended Ma'aleh, a state religious high school. In 1963–1965 he served in the Israel Defense Forces in the army rabbinate, writing for the army newspaper Mahanayim. Concurrently he worked nights as a copy editor at the daily newspaper Davar.
Go to Profile#30950
R. John Collier
#30962
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
R. John Collier is an American microbiologist and biochemist. He is the Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Microbiology and Immunobiology, Emeritus at Harvard Medical School. Early life and education Collier was born in Wichita Falls, Texas on August 6, 1938. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Rice University in 1959. He completed a Master of Science in 1961 and a Doctor of Philosophy in biology at Harvard University in 1964.
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