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
#31401
Matthias Kleiner
#31413
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Matthias Kleiner is a German engineer and professor for forming technology at Technical University Dortmund. He served as president of the Leibniz Association from 2014 to 2022 and as president of the German Research Foundation from 2007 to 2012, where he played an instrumental role in a number of international and interdisciplinary research projects. Kleiner currently serves as advisor to industrial companies such as on the board of advisors of Siepmann. He is the recipient of a Leibniz Prize.
Go to Profile#31402
D. S. Malik
#31414
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Davender S. Malik is an Indian American mathematician and professor of mathematics and computer science at Creighton University. Education Malik attended the University of Delhi in New Delhi, India, receiving his bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics, where he won the Prof. Ram Behari Gold Medal in 1980 for his high marks. Then at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, he received a master's degree in pure mathematics. In the United States, Malik went to Ohio University, earning an M.S. in computer science, and a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1985, writing his dissertation on "A S...
Go to Profile#31403
Danny Thomas
#31415
Overall Influence
1912 - 1991 (79 years)
Danny Thomas was an American actor, singer, nightclub comedian, producer, and philanthropist. He created and starred in the Danny Thomas Show. In addition to guest roles on many of the comedy, talk, and musical variety programs of his time, his legacy includes a lifelong dedication to fundraising for charity. Most notably, he was the founder of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, a leading center in pediatric medicine with a focus on pediatric cancer. St. Jude now has affiliate hospitals in eight other American cities as of early 2020.
Go to Profile#31404
Jean-Claude Falmagne
#31416
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Jean-Claude Falmagne is a mathematical psychologist whose scientific contributions deal with problems in reaction time theory, psychophysics, philosophy of science, measurement theory, decision theory, and educational technology. Together with Jean-Paul Doignon, he developed knowledge space theory, which is the mathematical foundation for the ALEKS software for the assessment of knowledge in various academic subjects, including K-12 mathematics, chemistry, and accounting.
Go to Profile#31405
Beatrice Beebe
#31417
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Beatrice Beebe is a clinical psychologist known for her research in attachment and early infant-parent communication. Her work helped established the importance of non-verbal communication in early child development. She is a Clinical Professor of Medical Psychology at the College of Physicians & Surgeons, Columbia University and the director of the Communications Science Lab at the New York State Psychiatric Institute .
Go to Profile#31406
Symeon C. Symeonides
#31418
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Symeon C. Symeonides , Alex L. Parks Distinguished Professor of Law, Dean Emeritus, is an international law scholar and professor at the Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Oregon, United States. The Cyprus-born legal scholar is also President of the American Society of Comparative Law and former dean at Willamette. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he previously taught at Louisiana State University's Paul M. Hebert Law Center.
Go to Profile#31407
Michael Stokes
#31419
Overall Influence
1933 - 2012 (79 years)
Michael Christopher Stokes was a British Professor of Greek. Childhood and education Michael Stokes was born in Clitheroe, Lancashire, England. The family moved to Oxford in 1939. Stokes was educated at the Dragon School , Eton College, and St John's College, Cambridge, where he gained a double first degree in classics.
Go to Profile#31408
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
#31420
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a French filmmaker. His films combine fantasy, realism, and science fiction to create idealized realities or to give relevance to mundane situations. Jeunet debuted as a director with the acclaimed 1991 black comedy Delicatessen, collaborating with Marc Caro. Jeunet then co-wrote and -directed with Caro again on The City of Lost Children . His work with science fiction and horror led him to direct Alien Resurrection , the fourth film in the Alien film series and his first and thus far only experience with an American film. In 2001, Jeunet achieved his biggest success wi...
Go to Profile#31409
Sankar Adhya
#31421
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Sankar Adhya is a molecular biologist and geneticist at the National Cancer Institute and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is best known for his work on bacterial transcription and the biology of bacteriophage lambda. He has made important contributions regarding the physical basis of transcriptional regulation in bacteria, the lysis/lysogeny switch in lambda phage, the organization of the bacterial nucleoid, and phage therapy.
Go to Profile#31410
John Barton
#31422
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
John Barton is a British Anglican priest and biblical scholar. From 1991 to 2014, he was the Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Oriel College. In addition to his academic career, he has been an ordained and serving priest in the Church of England since 1973.
Go to Profile#31411
Roger Farmer
#31423
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Roger Edward Alfred Farmer is a British/American economist. He is currently a professor at the University of Warwick and is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor and former Chair of the Economics department at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has also held positions at the University of Pennsylvania, the European University Institute and the University of Toronto. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and the former Research Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research .
Go to Profile#31412
Christine S. Chow
#31424
Overall Influence
Christine "Christy" Chow is a professor of chemistry and former associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wayne State University. She works on modified RNAs, RNA-ligand interactions and RNA therapeutics. She is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society .
Go to Profile#31413
Fred Silverman
#31425
Overall Influence
1937 - 2020 (83 years)
Fred Silverman was an American television executive and producer. He worked as an executive at all of the Big Three television networks, and was responsible for bringing to television such programs as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! , All in the Family , The Waltons , and Charlie's Angels , as well as the miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man , Roots , and Shōgun . For his success in programming such successful shows, Time magazine declared him "The Man with the Golden Gut" in 1977.
Go to Profile#31414
Trey Anastasio
#31426
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Ernest Joseph "Trey" Anastasio III is an American guitarist and singer-songwriter best known as the lead guitarist of the rock band Phish, which he co-founded in 1983. He is credited by name as composer of 152 Phish original songs, 141 of them as a solo credit, in addition to 41 credits attributed to the band as a whole.
Go to Profile#31415
Olga Avilova
#31427
Overall Influence
1918 - 2009 (91 years)
Olga Matveyevna Avilova was a Soviet Russian and Ukrainian surgeon, medical researcher in the area of cardiothoracic surgery and pulmonology, pedagogue, Doctor of Medical Sciences , professor , and the head of the department of cardiothoracic surgery and pulmonology at the Kiev Institute of Advanced Training for Physicians . She was a laureate of the State Prize of the USSR in the areas of science and technology , an Honored Scientist of the USSR , and an Honored Doctor of the USSR .
Go to Profile#31416
David A. Weitz
#31428
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
David A. Weitz is a Canadian/American physicist and Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics & Applied Physics at Harvard University. He is the former co-director of the BASF Advanced Research Initiative at Harvard, former co-director of the Harvard Kavli Institute for Bionano Science & Technology , and former director of the Harvard Materials Research Science & Engineering Center . He is known for his work in the areas of diffusing-wave spectroscopy, microrheology, microfluidics, rheology, fluid mechanics, interface and colloid science, colloid chemistry, biophysics, complex fluids, soft condensed ...
Go to Profile#31417
Horst Möller
#31429
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Horst Möller is a German contemporary historian. He is Professor of Modern History at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and, from 1992 to 2011, Director of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte.
Go to Profile#31418
Preston Manning
#31430
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Ernest Preston Manning is a Canadian retired politician. He was the founder and the only leader of the Reform Party of Canada, a Canadian federal political party that evolved into the Canadian Alliance in 2000 which in turn merged with the Progressive Conservative Party to form today's Conservative Party of Canada in 2003. Manning represented the federal constituency of Calgary Southwest in the Canadian House of Commons from 1993 until his retirement in 2002. He served as leader of the Official Opposition from 1997 to 2000.
Go to Profile#31419
Samuel V. Wilson
#31431
Overall Influence
1923 - 2017 (94 years)
Lieutenant General Samuel Vaughan Wilson , aka "General Sam," completed his active military career in the fall of 1977, having divided his service almost equally between special operations and intelligence assignments.
Go to Profile#31420
Santos Juliá
#31432
Overall Influence
1940 - 2019 (79 years)
Santos Juliá Díaz was a Spanish historian and sociologist. Biography Born in Ferrol in 1940, he spent some of his first years in Vigo, moving soon to Seville, where he studied at the Instituto San Isidoro. He took studies in Theology, but graduated in Sociology. He was a strong admirer of Manuel Azaña.
Go to Profile#31421
John Crump
#31433
Overall Influence
John Andrew Crump MB ChB, MD, DTM&H, FRACP, FRCPA, FRCP is a New Zealand-born infectious diseases physician, medical microbiologist, and epidemiologist. He is Professor of Medicine, Pathology, and Global Health at the University of Otago and an adjunct professor of medicine, Pathology, and Global Health at Duke University. He served as inaugural co-director of the Otago Global Health Institute, one of the university's research centres. His primary research interest is fever in the tropics, focusing on invasive bacterial diseases and bacterial zoonoses.
Go to Profile#31422
Mona Nemer
#31434
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Mona Nemer, is a Lebanese-Canadian scientist specializing in molecular genetics and cardiac regeneration. She was formerly a professor of pharmacology at the University of Montreal and the Director of the Cardiac Development Research Unit at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal where she held a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Cell Differentiation. She is a professor of biochemistry at the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Medicine, and also served as Vice-President, Research at the University of Ottawa from 2006 to 2017.
Go to Profile#31423
Robert I. Soare
#31435
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Robert Irving Soare is an American mathematician. He is the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Chicago, where he has been on the faculty since 1967. He proved, together with Carl Jockusch, the low basis theorem, and has done other work in mathematical logic, primarily in the area of computability theory.
Go to Profile#31424
Andrzej Wierciński
#31436
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Andrzej Wiercinski is a Hermeneutician, Philosopher, and Theologian. As the transdisciplinary thinker, he is Professor of Liberal Arts, Faculty of Artes Liberales at the University of Warsaw, President-Founder of the International Institute for Hermeneutics , and President of Agora Hermeneutica .
Go to Profile#31425
Stuart Rabinowitz
#31437
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Stuart Rabinowitz was the 8th president of Hofstra University. Before assuming the presidency, he was dean of Hofstra Law School for over a decade and before that was a distinguished professor of law.
Go to Profile#31426
Charles N. Serhan
#31438
Overall Influence
Charles Nicholas Serhan is the Simon Gelman Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and a Professor of Oral Medicine, Infection and Immunity at Harvard School of Dental Medicine. Serhan is the Director of the Center for Experimental Therapeutics and Reperfusion Injury at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Go to Profile#31427
Adam Schiff
#31439
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Adam Bennett Schiff is an American lawyer, author, and politician serving as a U.S. representative from California since 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, Schiff was a member of the California State Senate from 1996 to 2000.
Go to Profile#31428
Neil Weste
#31440
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Neil H. E. Weste , is an Australian inventor and engineer, noted for having designed a 2-chip wireless LAN implementation and for authoring the textbook Principles of CMOS VLSI Design. He has worked in many aspects of integrated-circuit design and was a co-founder of Radiata Communications.
Go to Profile#31429
Achim Müller
#31441
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Achim Müller is a German chemist. He is Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Chemistry, University of Bielefeld. His research involves mainly the chemistry of transition metals, especially with relation to nanochemistry.
Go to Profile#31430
Stanisław Gomułka
#31442
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Stanisław Gomułka is a Polish born economist, from 1970 up to 2005 a reader in Economics at the London School of Economics, a visiting professor or research fellow at several US universities , also at Aarhus university, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies and the Central European university, in the years 1989-2002 advisor to the Ministry of Finance and National Bank of Poland, from 2013 a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He received the Order of Polonia Restituta in 2014.
Go to Profile#31431
Brett Anderson
#31443
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Brett Lewis Anderson is an English singer best known as the lead singer and primary lyricist of the band Suede. After Suede disbanded in 2003, he fronted The Tears with former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler in 2004–2006, and released four solo albums on which he also played guitar and keyboards. Suede re-formed in 2010; they continue to record and tour.
Go to Profile#31432
Owen Toon
#31444
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Owen Brian Toon is a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences. He is a fellow at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. He received an A.B. in physics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1969 and a Ph.D. in physics at Cornell University in 1975 under Carl Sagan. His research interests are in cloud physics, atmospheric chemistry, and radiative transfer. He also works on comparing Earth and other planets such as Venus.
Go to Profile#31433
Robert M. Grant
#31445
Overall Influence
1917 - 2014 (97 years)
Robert McQueen Grant was an American academic theologian and the Carl Darling Buck Professor Emeritus of Humanities and of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Chicago . His scholarly work focused on the New Testament and Early Christianity.
Go to Profile#31434
Bill Verplank
#31446
Overall Influence
William "Bill" Lawrence Verplank is a designer and researcher who focuses on interactions between humans and computers. He is one of the pioneers of interaction design, a field of design that focuses on users and technology, and a term he helped coin in the 1980s. He was previously a visiting scholar at Stanford University's CCRMA and was involved in Stanford's d.school. He also teaches and lectures internationally on interaction design.
Go to Profile#31435
Tracey Meares
#31447
Overall Influence
Tracey L. Meares is an American legal scholar and author. She is the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Previous to joining the Yale Law School faculty, she was Max Pam Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Studies in Criminal Justice at the University of Chicago Law School. At both Chicago and Yale, she was the first African-American woman to be granted tenure.
Go to Profile#31436
Florent Pagny
#31448
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Florent Pagny is a French singer-songwriter, musician and actor. He records his work in French, as well as in Italian, Spanish and English. His greatest hits include "N'importe quoi", "Savoir aimer" and "Ma Liberté de penser"—all three were number one in France. As of 2018, he has sold more than 6 million singles and 10 million albums, becoming the 17th best-selling artist of all time in France.
Go to Profile#31437
Arnulf Baring
#31449
Overall Influence
1932 - 2019 (87 years)
Arnulf Martin Baring was a German lawyer, journalist, political scientist, contemporary historian and author. He was a member of the German-British Baring family of bankers. Life Arnulf Baring was born to jurist and politician Martin Eberhard Baring and Gertrud Stolze. He was the grandson of German jurist Adolf Baring .
Go to Profile#31438
Harrison Birtwistle
#31450
Overall Influence
1934 - 2022 (88 years)
Sir Harrison Birtwistle was an English composer of contemporary classical music best known for his operas, often based on mythological subjects. Among his many compositions, his better known works include The Triumph of Time and the operas The Mask of Orpheus , Gawain , and The Minotaur . The last of these was ranked by music critics at The Guardian in 2019 as the third-best piece of the 21st century. Even his compositions that were not written for the stage often showed a theatrical approach. A performance of his saxophone concerto Panic during the BBC's Last Night of the Proms caused "national notoriety".
Go to Profile#31439
Marvin Karlins
#31451
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Marvin Karlins is a Professor of Management at the University of South Florida. He was born on October 4, 1941, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Minnesota and his Ph.D. in Psychology from Princeton University. Karlins specialised in international consultation with a focus on aviation industry. He is currently Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of South Florida.
Go to Profile#31440
Jerzy Duszyński
#31452
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jerzy Duszyński is a Polish biochemist and professor of biological sciences. Since 2015 he has been President of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is a former Director of the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences , a former Polish deputy minister of science , and a former Dean of Division II—Biological Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences .
Go to Profile#31441
Nicholas Royle
#31453
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Nicholas Royle is an English novelist, editor, publisher, literary reviewer and creative writing lecturer. Literary career Author Royle has written seven novels: Counterparts, Saxophone Dreams, The Matter of the Heart, The Director’s Cut, Antwerp, Regicide and First Novel. He also claims to have written more than 100 short stories, which have appeared in a variety of anthologies and magazines, including Bad Idea, with his short story Confessions of a Serial Coat Snatcher appearing in the 2008 Bad Idea Anthology. He has written two short-story collections: Mortality and Ornithology.
Go to Profile#31442
John Gillingham
#31454
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
John Bennett Gillingham is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. On 19 July 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. Gillingham is renowned as an expert on the Angevin Empire.
Go to Profile#31443
Donny George Youkhanna
#31455
Overall Influence
1950 - 2011 (61 years)
Donny George Youkhanna was an Iraqi-Assyrian archaeologist, anthropologist, author, curator, and scholar, and a visiting professor at Stony Brook University in New York. Biography Youkhanna was born in Habbaniyah, Iraq in 1950 to Assyrian parents from northern Iraq. He moved with his family to Baghdad during his childhood, where he gained his education. He gained a BA, MA, and PhD in prehistoric archaeology at the University of Baghdad. He was fluent in Aramaic, Arabic, and English.
Go to Profile#31444
Kim Sawchuk
#31456
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Kim Sawchuk is a professor in the Department of Communication Studies, Research Chair in Mobile Media Studies, and Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies at Concordia University in Montreal Canada. A feminist media studies scholar, Sawchuk's research spans the fields of art, gender, and culture, examining the intersection of technology into peoples lives and how that changes as one ages.
Go to Profile#31445
Frank Edwin Egler
#31457
Overall Influence
1911 - 1996 (85 years)
Frank Edwin Egler was an American plant ecologist and pioneer in the study of vegetation science. In addition to his groundbreaking research, he assisted Rachel Carson in preparing Silent Spring. Early life and education Egler was born in New York City, growing up on Manhattan's West Side. Fifth-grade bird-watching trips to green spaces in the city instilled a love of nature in the frail boy. He went on to the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse, to pursue a career in landscape engineering, but switched to plant ecology and the University of Chicago, graduating in 1932. At Chicago, he was a student in the last course taught by Henry C.
Go to Profile#31446
Denis Evans
#31458
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Denis James Evans , is an Australian scientist who is an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University and Honorary Professor at The University of Queensland. He is widely recognised for his contributions to nonequilibrium thermodynamics and nonequilibrium statistical mechanics and the simulation of nonequilibrium fluids.
Go to Profile#31447
Ashley Young
#31459
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Ashley Simon Young is an English professional footballer who plays as a full-back or winger for Premier League club Everton. Young started his career as a winger at Watford and made his first senior appearance in 2003 under manager Ray Lewington. He became a first team regular in the 2004–05 season and was one of Watford's key players in their promotion-winning 2005–06 season. In January 2007, he transferred to Aston Villa for an initial fee of £8 million where he won the PFA Young Player of the Year award in 2009. In June 2011, Young signed with Manchester United for a fee of around £17 million.
Go to Profile#31448
Buck Henry
#31460
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
Buck Henry was an American actor, screenwriter, and director. Henry's contributions to film included his work as a co-writer for Mike Nichols's The Graduate for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He also appeared in Nichols' Catch-22 , Herbert Ross' The Owl and the Pussycat , and Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc? . In 1978, he co-directed Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director. He later appeared in Albert Brooks' Defending Your Life , and the Robert Altman films The Player and Short ...
Go to Profile#31449
Kenichi Honda
#31461
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Kenichi Honda was a Japanese chemist. He made a significant contribution to the discovery and characterization of photocatalytic properties of titanium dioxide , for which he shared the 2004 Japan Prize with his former student Akira Fujishima.
Go to Profile#31450
Herman Jay Cohen
#31462
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Herman Jay "Hank" Cohen is an American diplomat who served as United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1989 to 1993. Career Herman Jay Cohen, born in New York City on February 10, 1932, received a BA in political science from the City College of New York in 1953. He then joined the United States Army, serving until 1955. He received an MA in international relations from American University in 1962. He served in the Foreign Service as a consular officer, attaché, and political counselor until his appointment to the post of United States Ambassador to Gambia and Senegal in 1977, serving until 1980.
Go to Profile