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
#31151
Randall Ray Rader
#31163
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Randall Ray Rader is a former United States Circuit Judge and former Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Early life, education, and career Born in Hastings, Nebraska, Rader received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Brigham Young University in 1974 and a Juris Doctor from the George Washington University Law School in 1978. Rader served in staff positions on the United States House of Representatives from 1975 to 1980, first as a legislative assistant to United States Representative Virginia D. Smith from 1975 to 1978, then as counsel to United S...
Go to Profile#31152
John Roskam
#31164
Overall Influence
John Roskam is the executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs , a libertarian think tank based in Melbourne, Australia. Career According to Roskam's byline on an opinion column in the Australian Financial Review, "during the 2001 federal election he worked on the Liberals' federal campaign".
Go to Profile#31153
R. James Milgram
#31165
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Richard James Milgram is an American mathematician, specializing in algebraic topology. He is the son of mathematician Arthur Milgram. Biography Milgram graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in 1961. He received his doctorate in 1964 from the University of Minnesota with thesis The homology ring of symmetric products of Moore spaces under the supervision of Alfred Aeppli . Milgram taught from 1970 as a professor at Stanford University, where he is now emeritus. He was a visiting professor at the University of Lille , the Chinese Academy of Sc...
Go to Profile#31154
Suh Sung
#31166
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Suh Sung is a Zainichi Korean academic and writer. He was previously a Professor of International Studies at Ritsumeikan University and a research advisor at the Ritsumeikan Center for Korean Studies. His specializations include contemporary Korean law and politics, human rights law in East Asia, and comparative human rights law.
Go to Profile#31155
Yuna Kim
#31167
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (36 years)
Yuna Kim , also credited in eastern name order as Kim Yuna or Kim Yeon-a, is a retired South Korean competitive figure skater. She is the 2010 Olympic champion, the 2014 Olympic silver medalist, a two-time World champion the 2009 Four Continents champion, a three-time Grand Prix Final champion, the 2006 World Junior champion, the 2005 Junior Grand Prix Final champion, and a six-time South Korean national champion.
Go to Profile#31156
Daniel Aaron
#31168
Overall Influence
1912 - 2016 (104 years)
Daniel Aaron was an American writer and academic who helped found the Library of America. Education Daniel Baruch Aaron, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, was born in 1912. Aaron received a BA from the University of Michigan, and later went on to do graduate studies at Harvard University. In 1937, Aaron became the first to graduate with a degree in "American Civilization" from Harvard University.
Go to Profile#31157
Daniel I. Linzer
#31169
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Daniel I. H. Linzer is an American molecular biologist and academic administrator. Linzer was named provost of Northwestern University on September 1, 2007, until 2017 having previously served as Dean and Associate Dean of Northwestern's largest constituent school, the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#31158
Loris Capirossi
#31170
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Loris Capirossi is an Italian former Grand Prix motorcycle road racer, currently serving as Safety Advisor to Dorna Sports, the commercial rights holder of Grand Prix motorcycle racing. He is a 9-time Premier Class race winner, competing between and . He was the first Grand Prix rider to start at least 300 races, having made his 300th start at the 2010 season-opener Qatar Grand Prix. Capirossi is the and 125cc World Champion, the 250cc World Champion, while also holding the honor of Youngest World Champion in motorcycle racing, winning the 1990 125cc title at 17 years and 165 days old.
Go to Profile#31159
Jonathan Harr
#31171
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Jonathan Harr is an American writer, best known for the nonfiction work A Civil Action. Early life and education Jonathan Ensor Harr was born 13 September 1948, in Beloit, Wisconsin, the son of John Ensor Harr , a U.S. diplomat. Harr lived in France, Germany, Israel, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Harr attended the College of William and Mary, but left in 1968 to serve as a VISTA volunteer in Appalachia. He later attended Marshall University.
Go to Profile#31160
Mirjana Marković
#31172
Overall Influence
1942 - 2019 (77 years)
Mirjana "Mira" Marković was a Serbian politician, academic and the wife of Yugoslav and Serbian president Slobodan Milošević. She was the leader of the far-left Yugoslav United Left which governed in coalition with Milošević's Socialist Party of Serbia in the aftermath of the Bosnian War. She was reported to have huge influence over her husband and was increasingly seen as the power behind the throne. Among her opponents, she was known as The Red Witch and the Lady Macbeth of Belgrade.
Go to Profile#31161
Charles Thurstan Shaw
#31173
Overall Influence
1914 - 2013 (99 years)
Chief Charles Thurstan Shaw CBE FBA FSA was an English archaeologist, the first trained specialist to work in what was then British West Africa. He specialized in the ancient cultures of present-day Ghana and Nigeria. He helped establish academic institutions, including the Ghana National Museum and the archaeology department at the University of Ghana. He began working with the University of Ibadan in 1960, where he later founded and developed its archaeology department. He led this for more than 10 years before his retirement in 1974.
Go to Profile#31162
Sabeth Verpoorte
#31174
Overall Influence
Elisabeth MJ Verpoorte is a professor of microfluidics and miniaturized "lab-on-a-chip" systems in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Groningen, Netherlands. Education From 1990–1996, Verpoorte trained as an automation systems postdoctoral researcher in the Manz group at CIBA in Basel, Switzerland. She was then a Group Leader with Nico F. de Rooij at the Institute for Microtechnology in Neuchatel. Professor Verpoorte assumed her position in Groningen in 2003.
Go to Profile#31163
John Nye
#31175
Overall Influence
1923 - 2019 (96 years)
John Frederick Nye was a British physicist and glaciologist. He was the first to apply plasticity to understand glacier flow. Career His early work was on the physics of plasticity, spanning ice rheology, ice flow mechanics, laboratory ice flow measurements, glacier surges, meltwater penetration in ice, and response of glaciers and ice sheets to seasonal and climatic changes. Later in his long career, he worked extensively in optics, publishing his last paper on electromagnetic wave polarization only a few days before his death.
Go to Profile#31164
Donald Preziosi
#31176
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Donald Anthony Preziosi is an American art historian. He is Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles. In August 2007, he became the MacGeorge Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He is a past president of the Semiotic Society of America .
Go to Profile#31165
Madeleine Atkins
#31177
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Dame Madeleine Julia Atkins, is a British academic administrator, scholar of education, and former teacher. Since 2018, she has served as the 9th President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. She was formerly vice-chancellor of Coventry University, and the Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England .
Go to Profile#31166
Emma Previato
#31178
Overall Influence
1952 - 2022 (70 years)
Emma Previato was a professor of mathematics at Boston University. Her research concerned algebraic geometry and partial differential equations. Career Previato received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1983 under David Mumford. She was a faculty member at Boston University. She was the author or co-author of nearly 100 research articles. She served as editor or co-editor of 6 books, including Dictionary of Applied Math for Engineers and Scientists .
Go to Profile#31167
Colin Eaborn
#31179
Overall Influence
1923 - 2004 (81 years)
Colin Eaborn FRS was a British scientist and academic noted for his work in establishing the Sussex University School of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences. Born to a joiner, he gained first-class honours from Bangor University and, after research during the Second World War, accepted a position as an assistant researcher at University College, Leicester in 1947. In 1951 he won a Rotary Foundation Fellowship, which allowed him to spend a year working at the University of California, Los Angeles with Saul Winstein and his research group, and in 1960 published the seminal Organosilicon Compounds.
Go to Profile#31168
F. James Rutherford
#31180
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (102 years)
Floyd James Ervin Rutherford was an American science professor, and the founder of AAAS's Project 2061, a long-term effort to reform science education in the United States. He has been involved in Harvard Project Physics and Project City Science, and he also was an assistant director at the National Science Foundation with President Jimmy Carter, an assistant director of the United States Department of Education and educational director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science .
Go to Profile#31169
Charles Kimberlin Brain
#31181
Overall Influence
1931 - 2023 (92 years)
Charles Kimberlin Brain , also known as C. K. "Bob" Brain, was a South African paleontologist who studied and taught African cave taphonomy for more than fifty years. Biography Brain was born in Salisbury, Northern Rhodesia on 7 May 1931.
Go to Profile#31170
Don E. Detmer
#31182
Overall Influence
Don E. Detmer is professor emeritus and professor of medical education at the University of Virginia. Biography and career Detmer chaired the 1991 study, The Computer-based Patient Record. He was a member of the committee that developed the IOM Reports, To Err is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm. From 1999 to 2003 he was the Dennis Gillings Professor of Health Management at Cambridge University and is a lifetime member of Clare Hall College, Cambridge. From 2005 to 2015 he was visiting professor, Centre for Health Informatics and Multi-professional Education, University College London.
Go to Profile#31171
Jaime Imitola
#31183
Overall Influence
Jaime Imitola is an American neuroscientist, neurologist and immunologist. Imitola's clinical and research program focuses on Progressive Multiple Sclerosis and the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegeneration and repair in humans. His research includes the translational neuroscience of neural stem cells into patients. Imitola is known for his discoveries on the intrinsic immunology of neural stem cells, the impact of inflammation in the endogenous neural stem cell in multiple sclerosis, and the ethical implications of stem cell tourism in neurological diseases.
Go to Profile#31172
Adam Oates
#31184
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Adam Robert Oates is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player, former co-head coach for the New Jersey Devils and former head coach for the Washington Capitals. He played 19 seasons in the National Hockey League for the Detroit Red Wings, St. Louis Blues, Boston Bruins, Washington Capitals, Philadelphia Flyers, Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and Edmonton Oilers. Known as an elite playmaker, Oates' career total of 1,079 assists was the fifth-highest total in NHL history at the time of his 2004 retirement. He has the highest amount of games played and points scored among undrafted NHL players...
Go to Profile#31173
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu
#31185
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is a Turkish politician and former leader of the Republican People's Party . He was Leader of the Main Opposition in Turkey between 2010 and 2023. He served as a member of parliament for Istanbul's second electoral district from 2002 to 2015, and as an MP for İzmir's second electoral district from 2015 to 2023.
Go to Profile#31174
Hilde Lindemann
#31186
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Hilde Lindemann is an American philosophy professor and bioethicist and emerita professor at Michigan State University. Lindemann earned her B.A. in German language and literature in 1969 at the University of Georgia. Lindemann also earned her M.A. in theatre history and dramatic literature, in 1972, at the University of Georgia. Lindemann began her career as a copyeditor for several universities. She then moved on to a job at the Hastings Center in New York City, an institute focused on bioethics research, and co-authored book The Patient in the Family, with James Lindemann Nelson, before deciding to earn a Ph.D.
Go to Profile#31175
David Martill
#31187
Overall Influence
#31176
Nathan Mendelsohn
#31188
Overall Influence
1917 - 2006 (89 years)
Nathan Saul Mendelsohn, was an American-born mathematician who lived and worked in Canada. Mendelsohn was a researcher in several areas of discrete mathematics, including group theory and combinatorics.
Go to Profile#31177
James H. Anderson
#31189
Overall Influence
James Hampton Anderson is a Kenan Professor in the computer science department of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2012 "for contributions to the implementation of soft-real-time systems on multiprocessor and multicore platforms", and a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery in 2013.
Go to Profile#31178
Christopher Gillberg
#31190
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Lars Christopher Gillberg , who has sometimes published as Gillberg and Gillberg with his wife Carina Gillberg, is a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Gothenburg University in Gothenburg, Sweden. He has also been a visiting professor at the universities of Bergen, New York, Odense, St George's , San Francisco, and Glasgow and Strathclyde.
Go to Profile#31179
AB de Villiers
#31191
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Abraham Benjamin de Villiers is a South African former international cricketer, and a current commentator. AB de Villiers was named as the ICC ODI Player of the Year three times during his 15-year international career and was one of the five Wisden cricketers of the decade at the end of 2019. He is regarded as one of the greatest cricketers in the history of the sport and as the best batsman of his era. de Villiers began his international career as a wicket-keeper-batsman, but he has played most often solely as a batsman. He batted at various positions in the batting order, but predominantly in the middle-order.
Go to Profile#31180
James R. Russell
#31192
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
James Robert Russell is a scholar and professor in Ancient Near Eastern, Iranian and Armenian Studies. He has published extensively in journals, and has written several books. Russell served as Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University, and sat on the executive committee of Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
Go to Profile#31181
Emma Chapman
#31193
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Emma Olivia Chapman is a British physicist and Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow at Imperial College London. Her research investigates the epoch of reionization. She won the 2018 Royal Society Athena Prize. In November 2020 Chapman published her first book, First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time.
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Olga Chupris
#31194
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Olga Chupris is a Belarusian lawyer, deputy head of the Presidential Administration of Belarus . She is also a Doctor of Law, and a professor. Chupris is the first female vice rector of the Belarusian State University, which is the oldest and largest university in Belarus.
Go to Profile#31183
Frank W. Putnam
#31195
Overall Influence
1917 - 2006 (89 years)
Frank W. Putnam was an American biochemist and university professor. Early life and education Frank W. Putnam was born August 3, 1917, in New Britain, Connecticut. He attended Wesleyan University, where he received his B.A. in Chemistry in 1939 and an M.A. in Chemistry in 1940. In 1942, he received his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Minnesota.
Go to Profile#31184
Jay Walder
#31196
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Jay Walder was the CEO of Hyperloop One, an American transportation technology company. He has been the CEO of Motivate, a bike sharing company, and of the Hong Kong transit company MTR Corporation , before resigning from that position in July 2014.
Go to Profile#31185
Cynthia Moss
#31197
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Cynthia Jane Moss is an American ethologist and conservationist, wildlife researcher, and writer. Her studies have concentrated on the demography, behavior, social organization, and population dynamics of the African elephants of Amboseli. She is the director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project, and is the program director and trustee for the Amboseli Trust for Elephants .
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Pietro Balestra
#31198
Overall Influence
1935 - 2005 (70 years)
Pietro Balestra was a Swiss economist specializing in econometrics. He was born in Lugano and earned a B.A. in economics from the University of Fribourg. Balestra moved for graduate work to the University of Kansas and Stanford University. He was awarded the Ph.D. in Economics by Stanford University in 1965.
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Jean Aitchison
#31199
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Jean Margaret Aitchison is a Professor Emerita of Language and Communication in the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. Her main areas of interest include socio-historical linguistics; language and the mind; and language and the media.
Go to Profile#31188
Giancarlo Esposito
#31200
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito is an American actor. He is best known for portraying Gus Fring in the AMC crime drama series Breaking Bad, from 2009 to 2011, as well as in its prequel series Better Call Saul, from 2017 to 2022. For this role, he won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series and earned five nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series .
Go to Profile#31189
Alexander Nekrich
#31201
Overall Influence
1920 - 1993 (73 years)
Aleksandr Moiseyevich Nekrich, was a Soviet Russian historian. He emigrated to the United States in 1976. He is known for his works on the history of the Soviet Union, especially under Joseph Stalin’s rule.
Go to Profile#31190
Greg Koukl
#31202
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Gregory Koukl is a Christian apologist and radio talk show host. He is the founder of the Christian apologetics organization Stand to Reason. He is married to Steese Koukl and lives near Hermosa Beach, California.
Go to Profile#31191
Raphael Douady
#31203
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Raphael Douady is a French mathematician and economist. He holds the Robert Frey Endowed Chair for Quantitative Finance at Stony Brook, New York. He is a fellow of the Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne , Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne University, and academic director of the Laboratory of Excellence on Financial Regulation .
Go to Profile#31192
Grant Fuhr
#31204
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Grant Scott Fuhr is a Canadian former professional ice hockey goaltender in the National Hockey League and former goaltending coach for the Arizona Coyotes, who played for the Edmonton Oilers in the 1980s during which he won the Stanley Cup five times.
Go to Profile#31193
Anna Gruetzner Robins
#31205
Overall Influence
Anna Gruetzner Robins is a Canadian art historian who is a professor at the University of Reading. She is a specialist in the art of Walter Sickert about which she has written three books. She completed her BA at the University of Toronto and her MA and PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Go to Profile#31194
Jesse L. Greenstein
#31206
Overall Influence
1909 - 2002 (93 years)
Jesse Leonard Greenstein was an American astronomer. His parents were Maurice G. and Leah Feingold. He earned a Ph.D, with thesis advisor Donald H. Menzel, from Harvard University in 1937, having started there at age 16. Before leaving Harvard, Greenstein was involved in a project with Fred Lawrence Whipple to explain Karl Jansky's discovery of radio waves from the Milky Way and to propose a source. He began his professional career at Yerkes Observatory under Otto Struve and later went to Caltech. With Louis G. Henyey he invented a new spectrograph and a wide-field camera. He directed th...
Go to Profile#31195
Benjamin Abeles
#31207
Overall Influence
1925 - 2020 (95 years)
Benjamin Abeles was an Austrian-Czech physicist whose research in the 1960s in the US on germanium–silicon alloys led to the technology used to power space probes such as the Voyager spacecraft. He grew up in Austria and Czechoslovakia and arrived in the UK in 1939 on one of the Kindertransport missions. He completed his education after the war in Czechoslovakia and Israel , obtaining a doctorate in physics. He then lived and worked as a research physicist in the US and retired in 1995. His honours include the 1979 Stuart Ballantine Medal and his induction into the New Jersey Inventors Hall o...
Go to Profile#31196
Andrew Walls
#31208
Overall Influence
1928 - 2021 (93 years)
Andrew Finlay Walls was a British historian of missions, best known for his pioneering studies of the history of the African church and a pioneer in the academic field of World Christianity. Biography Walls was born in 1928 in New Milton, England. He studied theology at Exeter College, Oxford, receiving a first-class degree in 1948, and completed his graduate studies in the early Church in 1956 under the patristics scholar Frank Leslie Cross.
Go to Profile#31197
Robert O'Neill
#31209
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Robert John O'Neill, was an Australian historian and academic. He served as the chair of the International Academic Advisory Committee at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, was director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based in London, from 1982 to 1987, and was Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford from 1987 to 2000.
Go to Profile#31198
Wen Tiejun
#31210
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Wen Tiejun is a Chinese agricultural economist who is a professor at the Renmin University of China. Biography Wen was born in Beijing, in May 1951, while his ancestral home in Changli County, Hebei. After graduating from the Journalism Department of the Renmin University of China in 1983, he was sent by the Chinese government to study in the Institute of Social Investigation of the University of Michigan and the World Bank, and then studied at Columbia University, Cornell University and the University of Southern California.
Go to Profile#31199
Kenneth Abraham
#31211
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Kenneth S. Abraham is the Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. Biography In 1967, Abraham graduated with a bachelor's degree from Indiana University, magna cum laude, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Abraham then attended Yale Law School, where he studied under famed torts scholar and future judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Guido Calabresi, graduating with a J.D. in 1971.
Go to Profile#31200
Françoise Gaillard
#31212
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Françoise Gaillard is a French literary critic, philosopher and professor at University of Paris VII specializing in fin-de-siècle French literature, aesthetics and art and is a regular visiting professor at New York University.
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