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
#31351
Macklemore
#31363
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Benjamin Hammond Haggerty , better known by his stage name Macklemore , is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. A native of Seattle, Washington, he started his career in 2000 as an independent artist and released three works: Open Your Eyes , The Language of My World and The Unplanned Mixtape . He rose to international success when he collaborated with producer Ryan Lewis as the duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis .
Go to Profile#31352
Friedrich Ruttner
#31364
Overall Influence
1914 - 1998 (84 years)
Friedrich Ruttner was an Austrian SA-member, NSDAP member, SS-physician, neurologist, zoologist and bee expert. He became internationally known for his advances in honey bee breeding, instrumental insemination, classification of various subspecies and as a co-founder of Apidologie.
Go to Profile#31353
John Guckenheimer
#31365
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
John Mark Guckenheimer joined the Department of Mathematics at Cornell University in 1985. He was previously at the University of California, Santa Cruz . He was a Guggenheim fellow in 1984, and was elected president of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics , serving from 1997 to 1998. Guckenheimer received his A.B. in 1966 from Harvard and his Ph.D. in 1970 from Berkeley, where his Ph.D. thesis advisor was Stephen Smale.
Go to Profile#31354
Nada Sanders
#31366
Overall Influence
Nada R. Sanders is an American university professor specializing in forecasting and supply-chain management. She is the Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University. She is also a research scholar, academic editor, reference book author, keynote speaker, business consultant, and corporate board member. Her forecasts describing the impact of the economic crisis on supply disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic received media coverage. Her latest book The Humachine explores the influence of artificial intelligence...
Go to Profile#31355
Paul Carrack
#31367
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Paul Melvyn Carrack is an English singer, musician, songwriter and composer who has recorded as both a solo artist and as a member of several popular bands. The BBC dubbed Carrack "The Man with the Golden Voice", while Record Collector remarked: "If vocal talent equalled financial success, Paul Carrack would be a bigger name than legends such as Phil Collins or Elton John."
Go to Profile#31356
Mikhail Mishustin
#31368
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Mikhail Vladimirovich Mishustin is a Russian politician and economist serving as the prime minister of Russia since 16 January 2020. He previously served as the director of the Federal Taxation Service from 2010 to 2020.
Go to Profile#31357
Tanel Tammet
#31369
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Tanel Tammet is an Estonian computer scientist, professor, software engineer, and computer programmer. He was also one of the founding members of the Estonian Greens party, and helped found the IT College in Tallinn.
Go to Profile#31358
Pat Quinn
#31370
Overall Influence
1943 - 2014 (71 years)
John Brian Patrick Quinn, was a Canadian ice hockey player, head coach, and executive. Known by the nickname "The Big Irishman", he coached for the National Hockey League's Philadelphia Flyers, Los Angeles Kings, Vancouver Canucks, Toronto Maple Leafs, and Edmonton Oilers, reaching the Stanley Cup Finals twice, with the Flyers in 1980 and the Canucks in 1994. Internationally, Quinn coached Team Canada to gold medals at the 2002 Winter Olympics, 2008 IIHF World U18 Championships and 2009 World Junior Championship, as well as World Cup championship in 2004.
Go to Profile#31359
Chris Brand
#31371
Overall Influence
1943 - 2017 (74 years)
Christopher Richard Brand was a British psychological and psychometric researcher who gained media attention for his statements on race and intelligence and paedophilia. Brand was a proponent of IQ testing and the general intelligence factor, and was "a major influence in the spread of influence of inspection time as a theoretically interesting correlate of psychometric intelligence," according to Ian Deary and Pauline Smith.
Go to Profile#31360
Nitin Samarth
#31372
Overall Influence
Nitin Samarth is an American physicist, currently the George A. and Margaret M. Downsbrough Department Head and professor of physics in the Eberly College of Science, Pennsylvania State University. He obtained his undergraduate degree in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 1980 and his Ph.D. in physics from Purdue University in 1986. Samarth's research interests center on spintronic phenomena in thin films and nanostructures derived from semiconductors, magnetic materials and superconductors. He has pioneered the synthesis of a variety of materials in this context, resulting in key advances in semiconductor spintronics and, more recently, topological spintronics.
Go to Profile#31361
Christopher Chippindale
#31373
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Christopher Ralph Chippindale, FSA is a British archaeologist. He worked at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology from 1988 to his retirement in 2013, and was additionally Reader in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge from 2001 to 2013.
Go to Profile#31362
Micha Ullman
#31374
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Micha Ullman is an Israeli sculptor and professor of art. Biography Ullman was born in Tel Aviv to German Jews who immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1933. As a teenager, he attended the Kfar HaYarok agricultural school. In 1960-1964, he studied at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. In 1965, he attended the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, where he learned etching.
Go to Profile#31363
Maria Rita Saulle
#31375
Overall Influence
1935 - 2011 (76 years)
Maria Rita Saulle was a professor of law and a judge in the Italian Constitutional Court from November 2005 until her death on 7 July 2011. Career Saulle was Full Professor of International Law and Human Rights in the Faculty of Political Sciences at the Sapienza University of Rome. She was director of the master's course on International Protection of Human Rights and founded a PhD in International Order and Human Rights. She was appointed judge of the Constitutional Court by the President of Italy on 4 November 2005.
Go to Profile#31364
Terry Date
#31376
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Terry Date is an American record producer and audio engineer specializing in rock genres, especially heavy metal. He is well known for his work with Metal Church, Dream Theater, Soundgarden, Overkill, Pantera, Dark Angel, Fishbone, Prong, White Zombie, Deftones, Slipknot and Limp Bizkit.
Go to Profile#31365
Stanley Lebergott
#31377
Overall Influence
1918 - 2009 (91 years)
Stanley Lebergott was a prominent American government economist and professor emeritus of economics at Wesleyan University. Early life and family Lebergott was born in Detroit, Michigan, on July 22, 1918, and went to the University of Michigan, where he got both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in economics in the late 1930s. He married Ruth Wellington in 1941, and they had two children , Karen and Steven. Steven died in 1995 but Lebergott's wife and daughter Karen outlived him.
Go to Profile#31366
Jennifer Whiting
#31378
Overall Influence
Jennifer Elaine Whiting is an American philosopher who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. She has also taught at Harvard University and Cornell University, and was Chancellor Jackman Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.
Go to Profile#31367
Pepe Reina
#31379
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
José Manuel "Pepe" Reina Páez is a Spanish professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for La Liga club Villarreal. The son of famed Barcelona and Atlético Madrid goalkeeper Miguel Reina, Pepe Reina began his career with the Barcelona youth team and made his La Liga debut in the 2000–01 season. He signed for Villarreal in 2002, winning the UEFA Intertoto Cup twice. Reina moved on to Liverpool and made his debut in the 2005 UEFA Super Cup, which Liverpool won. He instantly became first-choice goalkeeper and went on to win both the FA Cup – where he saved three out of four West Ham United penalties in the final – and the FA Community Shield.
Go to Profile#31368
Mordecai Richler
#31380
Overall Influence
1931 - 2001 (70 years)
Mordecai Richler was a Canadian writer. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Barney's Version . His 1970 novel St. Urbain's Horseman and 1989 novel Solomon Gursky Was Here were nominated for the Booker Prize. He is also well known for the Jacob Two-Two fantasy series for children. In addition to his fiction, Richler wrote numerous essays about the Jewish community in Canada, and about Canadian and Quebec nationalism. Richler's Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! , a collection of essays about nationalism and anti-Semitism, generated considerable controversy.
Go to Profile#31369
John Petrucci
#31381
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
John Peter Petrucci is an American guitarist, best known as a founding member of the progressive metal band Dream Theater. He produced or co-produced all of Dream Theater's albums from Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory to A View from the Top of the World , and has been the sole producer of the band's albums released since A Dramatic Turn of Events . Petrucci has also released two solo albums: Suspended Animation and Terminal Velocity .
Go to Profile#31370
Guillaume Jacques
#31382
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Guillaume Jacques is a French linguist who specializes in the study of Sino-Tibetan languages: Old Chinese, Tangut, Tibetan, Gyalrongic and Kiranti languages. He also performs research on the Algonquian and Siouan language families and publishes about languages of other families such as Breton. His case studies in historical phonology are set in the framework of panchronic phonology, aiming to formulate generalizations about sound change that are independent of any particular language or language group.
Go to Profile#31371
Peter Shalen
#31383
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Peter B. Shalen is an American mathematician, working primarily in low-dimensional topology. He is the "S" in JSJ decomposition. Life He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1962, and went on to earn a B.A. from Harvard College in 1966 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1972. After posts at Columbia University, Rice University, and the Courant Institute, he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Go to Profile#31372
William Ian Beardmore Beveridge
#31384
Overall Influence
1908 - 2006 (98 years)
William Ian Beardmore Beveridge was an Australian animal pathologist and director of the Institute of Animal Pathology, University of Cambridge. He was born on 23 April 1908 in Junee, New South Wales, Australia, and died on 14 August 2006. He was the author of The Art of Scientific Investigation in 1957, and Influenza, the Last Great Plague, in 1977.
Go to Profile#31373
Steven Pemberton
#31385
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Steven Pemberton is a researcher affiliated with the Distributed and Interactive Systems group at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica , the national research institute for mathematics and computer science in the Netherlands.
Go to Profile#31374
Scott Graham
#31386
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Scott Graham is an American sportscaster best known for his broadcasts of the Philadelphia Phillies, his work with NFL Films, and his studio hosting of The NFL on Westwood One. He has lived and worked near Philadelphia for most of his professional life. He was born June 10, 1965, in Belleville, New Jersey, and now lives in Voorhees Township, New Jersey. Graham graduated from Pingry School in 1983. His sportscasting résumé covers several organizations in Philadelphia and around the United States. Graham is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in poli...
Go to Profile#31375
Norman Arnheim
#31387
Overall Influence
Norman Arnheim is an American biologist specializing in aging and development biology, biochemistry, and molecular biology. He is currently a Distinguished Professor and the Ester Dornsife Chair at the University of Southern California, and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#31376
Maria Zuber
#31388
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Maria T. Zuber is an American geophysicist who is the vice president for research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also holds the position of the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Zuber has been involved in more than half a dozen NASA planetary missions aimed at mapping the Moon, Mars, Mercury, and several asteroids. She was the principal investigator for the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory Mission, which was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Go to Profile#31377
Eric Ives
#31389
Overall Influence
1931 - 2012 (81 years)
Eric William Ives was a British historian who was an expert on the Tudor period, and a university administrator. He was Emeritus Professor of English History at the University of Birmingham. Early life Ives was born on 12 July 1931, Essex, England into a Plymouth Brethren family. He was educated at Brentwood School, then an all-boys public school in Brentwood, Essex. He studied history at Queen Mary College, London, graduating with Bachelor of Arts . He then went on to complete his Doctor of Philosophy from the same university.
Go to Profile#31378
Kim Ryholt
#31390
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Kim Steven Bardrum Ryholt is a professor of Egyptology at the University of Copenhagen and a specialist on Egyptian history and literature. He is director of the research center Canon and Identity Formation in the Earliest Literate Societies under the University of Copenhagen Programme of Excellence and director of The Papyrus Carlsberg Collection & Project .
Go to Profile#31379
Kevin Nadal
#31391
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Kevin Nadal is an author, activist, comedian, and Distinguished Professor of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is a researcher and expert on the effects of microaggressions on racial/ethnic minorities and LGBTQ people.
Go to Profile#31380
William Swann
#31392
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
William B. Swann is a professor of social and personality psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is primarily known for his work on identity, self and self-esteem, but has also done research on relationshipss, social cognition, group processes, accuracy in person perception and interpersonal expectancy effects. He received his Ph.D. in 1978 from the University of Minnesota and undergraduate degree from Gettysburg College.
Go to Profile#31381
David M. Kennedy
#31393
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
David M. Kennedy is a criminologist, professor, action researcher, and author specializing in crime prevention among inner city gangs, especially in the prevention of violent acts among street gangs. Kennedy developed the Operation Ceasefire group violence intervention in Boston in the 1990s and the High Point Model drug market intervention in High Point, North Carolina, in 2003, which have proven to reduce violence and eliminate overt drug markets in jurisdictions around the United States. He founded the National Network for Safe Communities in 2009 to support cities using these and related ...
Go to Profile#31382
Lalo Schifrin
#31394
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Boris Claudio "Lalo" Schifrin is an Argentine-American pianist, composer, arranger, and conductor. He is best known for his large body of film and TV scores since the 1950s, incorporating jazz and Latin American musical elements alongside traditional orchestrations. He is a five-time Grammy Award winner; he has been nominated for six Academy Awards and four Emmy Awards.
Go to Profile#31383
Bernt Øksendal
#31395
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Bernt Karsten Øksendal is a Norwegian mathematician. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Oslo, working under Otte Hustad. He obtained his PhD from University of California, Los Angeles in 1971; his thesis was titled Peak Sets and Interpolation Sets for Some Algebras of Analytic Functions and was supervised by Theodore Gamelin. In 1991, he was appointed as a professor at the University of Oslo. In 1992, he was appointed as an adjunct professor at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen, Norway.
Go to Profile#31384
John Hasted
#31396
Overall Influence
1921 - 2002 (81 years)
John Barrett Hasted was a British physicist and folk musician. He was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, on the 17th of February, 1921, the son of John Ord Cobbold Hasted and Phyllis Barrett. He was a pioneer of radar development and an atomic physicist, but he was also a pioneer and mainstay of the post-war English folk music revival, a founder and champion of the skiffle movement, and a passionate advocate for both traditional and political folksong.
Go to Profile#31385
Gene Strandness
#31397
Overall Influence
1928 - 2002 (74 years)
Donald Eugene Strandness was an American physician, university professor, and research scientist. Dr. Strandness, known as Gene, was influential in the development of Doppler ultrasound as a diagnostic tool in vascular medicine, and did research that established much of the clinical grading criteria in the field of vascular ultrasound.
Go to Profile#31386
John Lavine
#31398
Overall Influence
John Lavine is a United States journalist and educator and currently the chief executive officer of StrategicMediaGroup.com. Previously, he was a media company publisher and editor, and then professor and Dean of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, as well as a professor of media management and strategy at the Kellogg School of Management.
Go to Profile#31387
Alex Morgan
#31399
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (37 years)
Alexandra Morgan Carrasco is an American professional soccer player who plays as a striker. She is the captain of San Diego Wave FC of the National Women's Soccer League , the highest division of women's professional soccer in the United States, and the United States women's national soccer team. She co-captained the United States women's national soccer team with Carli Lloyd and Megan Rapinoe from 2018 to 2020.
Go to Profile#31388
Dacheng Tao
#31400
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Dacheng Tao is an engineer from the University of Sydney, Australia. He received a PhD in 2007 from the University of London under Stephen Maybank, with a thesis titled Discriminative linear and multilinear subspace methods. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for his contributions to pattern recognition and visual analytics. He was awarded an Australian Laureate Fellowship in 2017. In 2018, Tao was also elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science for his "ground-breaking contributions in artificial intelligence, computer vision image processing and machine learning.
Go to Profile#31389
John Lie
#31401
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
John Lie is professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. His principal academic interests are social theory, political economy, social identity, and East Asia. Early life and education Lie was born in Seoul, South Korea. He grew up in Tokyo, Japan, and Honolulu, Hawaii. After graduating from Punahou School, he attended Harvard University . He has held tenured appointments at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the University of Michigan, as well as holding visiting appointments at Yonsei University, Keio University, Harvard University, and other institutions.
Go to Profile#31390
Cam'ron
#31402
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Cameron Ezike Giles , better known by his stage name Cam'ron, is an American rapper. Beginning his career in the mid-1990s as Killa Cam, Giles signed to Lance "Un" Rivera's Untertainment, an imprint of Epic Records and released his first two studio albums Confessions of Fire and S.D.E. , the former earned gold certification by the RIAA. After leaving Epic, Giles signed to Roc-A-Fella Records in 2001 to release his third studio album Come Home with Me the following year. It received platinum certification by the RIAA and contained his highest-charting singles to date: "Oh Boy" and "Hey Ma" , which peaked at No.
Go to Profile#31391
Paul J. H. Schoemaker
#31403
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Paul J. H. Schoemaker is an academic, author, and an expert in the fields of strategic management and decision making. He is listed among the most highly cited scholars globally as measured by academic publications in leading journals of business and economics.
Go to Profile#31392
Max Dudler
#31404
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Max Dudler is a Swiss architect with international fame. The main characteristic of Max Dudler's architecture is a combination of strict Swiss minimalism and classical rationalism that is found both in the historical and contemporary architecture.
Go to Profile#31393
George Poinar Jr.
#31405
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
George O. Poinar Jr. is an American entomologist and writer. He is known for popularizing the idea of extracting DNA from insects fossilized in amber, an idea which received widespread attention when adapted by Michael Crichton for the book and movie Jurassic Park.
Go to Profile#31394
Sezen Aksu
#31406
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Sezen Aksu is a Turkish singer, songwriter and producer. She is one of the most successful Turkish singers, having sold over 40 million albums worldwide. Her nicknames include the "Queen of Turkish Pop" and "Minik Serçe" .
Go to Profile#31395
Harvey Wheeler
#31407
Overall Influence
1918 - 2004 (86 years)
John Harvey Wheeler was an American author, political scientist, and scholar. He was best known as co-author with Eugene Burdick of Fail-Safe , an early Cold War novel that depicted what could easily go wrong in an age on the verge of nuclear war. The novel was made into a movie, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Henry Fonda, in 1964. In later years, Wheeler was a founding editor of the Journal of Social and Biological Structures, 1982, and an early advocate of online education and the Internet as a democratizing tool. He taught a course in "OnLine Publishing" for Connected Education ...
Go to Profile#31396
Gyanendra Pandey
#31408
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Gyanendra Pandey is a historian and a founding member of the Subaltern Studies project. Early life and career Pandey did his schooling in Sherwood College, Nainital, and completed his B.A. in history at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, ranking first in the first class. He completed his D.Phil. in South Asian history under the supervision of Tapan Raychaudhuri as a Rhodes Scholar at Nuffield College, Oxford. He was a research fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford, and later at Wolfson College, Oxford, from 1974 to 1978.
Go to Profile#31397
Ien Ang
#31409
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
May Ien Ang is a Professor of Cultural Studies at the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney , Australia, where she was the founding director and is currently an ARC Professorial Fellow. She is also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Go to Profile#31398
Georg Solti
#31410
Overall Influence
1912 - 1997 (85 years)
Sir Georg Solti was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor, known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt, and London, and as a long-serving music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Born in Budapest, he studied there with Béla Bartók, Leó Weiner, and Ernő Dohnányi. In the 1930s, he was a répétiteur at the Hungarian State Opera and worked at the Salzburg Festival for Arturo Toscanini. His career was interrupted by the rise of the Nazis' influence on Hungarian politics, and being of Jewish background, he fled the increasingly harsh Hungarian anti-Jewish laws in 1938.
Go to Profile#31399
Ulrike Felt
#31411
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Ulrike Felt is an Austrian social scientist, active in the field of Science and Technology Studies. Currently, she holds the chair for Social Studies of Science and is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna. She also acted as the president of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology . From 2002 to 2007, she has been editor-in-chief of the journal "Science, Technology, & Human Values".
Go to Profile#31400
Ernest C. Pollard
#31412
Overall Influence
1906 - 1997 (91 years)
Ernest Charles "Ernie" Pollard was a British professor of physics and biophysics and an author, who worked on the development of radar systems in World War II, worked on the physics of living cells, and wrote textbooks and approximately 200 papers on nuclear physics and radiation biophysics.
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