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
#31451
Jan Yanehiro
#31463
Overall Influence
Jan Yanehiro is a Japanese-American broadcast journalist. Personal life Yanehiro earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from California State University, Fresno in 1970. She first worked as a flight attendant before getting a job on radio station KFRC in San Francisco. Yanehiro is among the first native-born Asian-American female journalists.
Go to Profile#31452
Richard J. Samuels
#31464
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Richard J. Samuels is an American academic, political scientist, author, Japanologist, Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#31453
Sid Gilman
#31465
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Sidney Gilman is a retired physician, neurologist, and educator. He is an expert on Alzheimer's disease and spent the majority of his career at the University of Michigan, its medical school, and its Health System.
Go to Profile#31454
Damon Lindelof
#31466
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Damon Laurence Lindelof is an American screenwriter, comic book writer, and producer. Among his accolades, he received three Primetime Emmy Awards, from twelve nominations. In 2010, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Go to Profile#31455
Gary Olson
#31467
Overall Influence
Gary L. Olson is professor emeritus of political science at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States. He is the author of: Empathy Imperiled: Capitalism, Culture, and the Brain; How the World Works; U.S. Foreign Policy and the Third World Peasant; and The Other Europe. He has written over 75 published articles and op-eds, many for ZNet. His research areas include international political economy, identity politics and global labor issues. During the 1980s, he sponsored several trips to the Soviet Union with his students from Moravian College.
Go to Profile#31456
David McKeague
#31468
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
David William McKeague is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Education and career McKeague received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan in 1968, and his Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School in 1971. He served in private practice in Lansing, Michigan until 1992. He was also an adjunct professor at Michigan State University College of Law from 1998 to 2013.
Go to Profile#31457
Daniel I.C. Wang
#31469
Overall Influence
1936 - 2020 (84 years)
Daniel I-Chyau Wang was a Chinese-American chemical engineer. He was an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was known for founding the MIT Biotechnology Process Engineering Center and the expansion of the field of biochemical engineering.
Go to Profile#31458
Wolfgang Kroll
#31470
Overall Influence
1906 - 1992 (86 years)
Wolfgang Kroll was a physicist, born in Greifswald, northern Germany, who received his doctorate in physics from the University of Breslau in 1930. He spent the next few years in Leipzig conducting postdoctoral research with Werner Heisenberg.
Go to Profile#31459
Gianluca Bocchi
#31471
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Gianluca Bocchi is an Italian philosopher. Life Gianluca Bocchi studied Philosophy at the University of Milan where he graduated in Philosophy of Science in 1978, discussing a dissertation entitled "Conditions and rules in the context of contemporary scientific epistemology" . From 1983 to 1988, he taught Philosophy and worked as a researcher at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Geneva, carrying on his research within the scientific team coordinated by Alberto Munari, one of the main exponents of the Piagetian school of genetic epistemology; and has worke...
Go to Profile#31460
Eric Bodden
#31472
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Eric Bodden is a German computer scientist. He holds the Chair of Secure Software Engineering at the Heinz Nixdorf Institute of the Paderborn University and is Director of Software Engineering and IT Security at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechatronic Design . He is also head of the engineering department in the Collaborative Research Centre 1119 CROSSING at the Technical University of Darmstadt.
Go to Profile#31461
Michael Buback
#31473
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Michael Buback is a chemist and professor at Göttingen University. He is the son of Siegfried Buback, the former chief federal prosecutor of Germany who was assassinated by Red Army Fraction militant group in the German Autumn 1977.
Go to Profile#31462
Satoshi Hiyamizu
#31474
Overall Influence
1943 - 2019 (76 years)
was a Japanese professor of electrical engineering. Dr. Hiyamizu won the 1982 Japanese Journal of Applied Physics Paper Award as lead author of a paper on mobility in two-dimensional electron gases while at Fujitsu Laboratories Limited, received the 1990 IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award with Takashi Mimura "for outstanding contributions to the epitaxial growth of compound semiconductor materials and devices," and in 2001 was named an IEEE Fellow "for contributions to the realization of the first high electron mobility transistor ". He served as dean of the Osaka University Graduate School of Engineering from 2000 to 2002.
Go to Profile#31463
Susan Straight
#31475
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Susan Straight is an American writer. She was a National Book Award finalist for the novel Highwire Moon in 2001. Biography Susan Straight attended John W. North High School in Riverside, California and took classes at Riverside Community College while in high school. She went on to earn a scholarship to the University of Southern California and, in 1984, earned her M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers. She co-founded the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts program at University of California, Riverside, ...
Go to Profile#31464
Jean-Hervé Lorenzi
#31476
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Jean-Hervé Lorenzi is a French economist. Jean-Hervé Lorenzi is President and Chairman of the French think-tank Le Cercle des économistes which annually organizes the economic forum Les Rencontres Economiques d'Aix-en-Provence. He holds the chair "Transition Démographique, Transition Economique" at the Fondation du Risque in partnership with University Paris X. He is president of "Pôle de Compétitivité, Finance et Innovation". He is a member of the executive board of Edmond de Rothschild Group France. As an independent administrator, Jean-hervé Lorenzi is also a member of the supervisory boar...
Go to Profile#31465
Thomas Uebel
#31477
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Thomas Ernst Uebel is a philosopher of science, and professor of philosophy at the University of Manchester. Uebel has held academic posts at Northwestern University, University of Pittsburgh, Technical University of Berlin, University of Vienna and London School of Economics.
Go to Profile#31466
Maya Rudolph
#31478
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Maya Rudolph is an American actress and comedian. Born in Gainesville, Florida and raised in Los Angeles, she is the daughter of singer Minnie Riperton and composer Richard Rudolph. In 2000, Rudolph became a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live . During her tenure on the show, she played supporting roles in the films 50 First Dates , A Prairie Home Companion , and Idiocracy .
Go to Profile#31467
Radwa Ashour
#31479
Overall Influence
1946 - 2014 (68 years)
Radwa Ashour was an Egyptian novelist. Life Ashour was born in El-Manial to Mustafa Ashour, a lawyer and literature enthusiast, and Mai Azzam, a poet and an artist. She graduated from Cairo University with a BA degree in 1967. In 1972, she received her MA in Comparative Literature from the same university. In 1975, Ashour graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a PhD in African American Literature. Her dissertation was entitled The search for a Black poetics: a study of Afro-American critical writings. While preparing for her PhD, Ashour was remarked as the first doctoral candidate in English who studied the literature of the African-American.
Go to Profile#31468
Jean-Yves Tadié
#31480
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Jean-Yves Tadié is a French writer, biographer, and academic, noted particularly for his work on Marcel Proust. Biography Tadié studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, graduating in 1956. He began to publish his studies on Proust in 1959. He edited the 1987-1989 four-volume Pléiade edition of In Search of Lost Time, which includes sketches and variants. He published his biography of Proust in 1996 .
Go to Profile#31469
Vincent Cassel
#31481
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Vincent Cassel is a French actor. He has earned a César Award and a Canadian Screen Award as well as nominations for a European Film Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Cassel first achieved recognition for his performance as a troubled Jewish youth in Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 film La Haine for which he received two César Award nominations. He also garnered attention for Gasper Noe's film Irréversible which he acted in and co-produced. He received the César Award for Best Actor for his role as the criminal Jacques Mesrine in Mesrine . His other César-nominated roles include Read My Lips ...
Go to Profile#31470
Andreas Maercker
#31482
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Andreas Maercker is a German clinical psychologist and international expert in traumatic stress-related mental disorders who works in Switzerland. He also contributed to lifespan and sociocultural aspects of trauma sequelae, e.g. the Janus-Face model of posttraumatic growth. Recently, he has been increasingly engaged in cultural clinical psychology.
Go to Profile#31471
Apolline de Malherbe
#31483
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Apolline de Malherbe is a French broadcast journalist who is a presenter on the 24-hour rolling news and weather channel BFM TV. Biography Education After studying the humanities, de Malherbe completed a MAS in social politics at Sciences Po, along with a master's degree in public service. She put her MAS degree to use by analysing politicians who appeared in the television programmes of Marc-Olivier Fogiel and Thierry Ardisson. A politically left-wing woman, she supported the presidential candidacy of Jean-Pierre Chevènement in 2002. During this campaign, Apolline de Malherbe was a member o...
Go to Profile#31472
John Bessler
#31484
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
John David Bessler is an American attorney and academic. He is a professor of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. He is the husband of U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar.
Go to Profile#31473
Raphael Saadiq
#31485
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Raphael Saadiq is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer. He rose to fame as a member of the multiplatinum group Tony! Toni! Toné! In addition to his solo and group career, he has also produced songs for such artists as Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Stevie Wonder, Beyoncé, Total, Joss Stone, D'Angelo, TLC, En Vogue, Kelis, Mary J. Blige, Ledisi, Whitney Houston, Solange Knowles and John Legend. Music critic Robert Christgau has called Saadiq the "preeminent R&B artist of the '90s".
Go to Profile#31474
Steven Kuhn
#31486
Overall Influence
Steven Kuhn is a philosophy professor at Georgetown University whose research focuses on logic, ethics and the philosophy of language. Early life, family and education Kuhn earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics from Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. from Stanford University.
Go to Profile#31475
Ajoy Roy
#31487
Overall Influence
1935 - 2019 (84 years)
Ajoy Roy was a Bangladeshi professor of physics at the University of Dhaka, but was best known for his prominent role in Bangladesh's human rights activism and freethinking. He was one of the eminent educationists promoting secular humanism in Bangladesh.
Go to Profile#31476
Donald Gotterbarn
#31488
Overall Influence
Donald William Gotterbarn is a computer ethics researcher. Gotterbarn received his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1971 from the University of Rochester. He also earned his M. Div. from the Colgate Rochester Divinity School.
Go to Profile#31477
Aditi Lahiri
#31489
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Aditi Lahiri is an Indian-born British linguist and Professor emerita of Linguistics at the University of Oxford. She held the Chair of Linguistics at the University of Oxford from 2007 until her retirement in 2022; she was a Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford. Her main research interests are in phonology, phonetics, historical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics.
Go to Profile#31478
William Dichtel
#31490
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
William Dichtel is the Robert L. Letsinger Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University and a 2015 MacArthur Fellow who has helped pioneer the development of porous polymers known as covalent organic frameworks. Dichtel was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018. In 2020, Dichtel was selected as the 2020 Laureate in Chemistry of the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists. He also founded Cylopure, a university spin-off that seeks to bring to market water filtration with cyclodextrin polymers.
Go to Profile#31479
Eva Marie Saint
#31491
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (102 years)
Eva Marie Saint is an American retired actress of film, theatre, radio and television. In a career spanning 75 years, she has won an Academy Award and a Primetime Emmy Award, alongside nominations for a Golden Globe Award and two British Academy Film Awards. Saint is both the oldest living and earliest surviving Academy Award-winner, and one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.
Go to Profile#31480
Kevin Vanhoozer
#31492
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Kevin Jon Vanhoozer is an American theologian and current research professor of Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. Much of Vanhoozer's work focuses on systematic theology, hermeneutics, and postmodernism.
Go to Profile#31481
Alan C. Newell
#31493
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Alan C. Newell is an Irish/American mathematician and Regents Professor at the University of Arizona. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976 and in 2004 the John von Neumann Lecture for the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He was a Senior Scientist Humboldt Fellow in 1988–1989 and was elected a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics in 2009.
Go to Profile#31482
Carlos Bustamante
#31494
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Carlos José Bustamante is a Peruvian-American scientist. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Biography Carlos Bustamante is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, professor of molecular and cell biology, physics, and chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and Biophysicist Faculty Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Bustamante studied medicine at National University of San Marcos before discovering his true interest in biochemistry. He received his BSc from Cayetano Heredia University in Lima, his MSc in biochemistry from National Uni...
Go to Profile#31483
Diogenes Allen
#31495
Overall Influence
1932 - 2013 (81 years)
Diogenes Allen was an American philosopher and theologian who served as the Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton Theological Seminary. He was an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, which he served from 1958. He died in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#31484
Ciarán O'Keeffe
#31496
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Ciarán James O'Keeffe is an English psychologist specialising in parapsychology and forensic psychology. Ciarán attended John Hampden Grammar school in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire and had a brief spell at High Wycombe Music Centre. He is currently employed at Bucks New University. He has held a research associate position at the University of Toulouse II - Le Mirail and also an online tutor position at Derby University. Previously employed at Liverpool Hope University, lecturing in psychology with a parapsychology component, O'Keeffe is a member of the Society for Psychical Research and an advisor to The Ghost Club.
Go to Profile#31485
Kate Beckinsale
#31497
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Kathrin Romany Beckinsale is an English actress. Beckinsale has gained acclaim for her roles in both action films, romance films, and period dramas. She made her film debut in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing while a student at the University of Oxford. She gained prominence taking leading roles in numerous British costume dramas such as Prince of Jutland , Cold Comfort Farm , Emma , and The Golden Bowl . She challenged herself taking roles in films such as The Last Days of Disco , Brokedown Palace , Pearl Harbor , Serendipity , Tiptoes , The Aviator and Click .
Go to Profile#31486
Jean-Marie Pesez
#31498
Overall Influence
1929 - 1998 (69 years)
Jean-Marie Pesez was a French archaeologist and historian who studied rural civilization and medieval and preindustrial material culture. Pesez became an aggregated professor in 1958. He served as the Director of Studies at the École pratique des hautes études. He served in the same position at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences starting in 1975. He was one of the pioneers of the comeback of medieval archeology in France in the 1960s and 1970s. His work helped popularize the study of material civilization and country life in the Middle Ages. Notably, he was the co-director...
Go to Profile#31487
Carlos Saura
#31499
Overall Influence
1932 - 2023 (91 years)
Carlos Saura Atarés was a Spanish film director, photographer and writer. With Luis Buñuel and Pedro Almodóvar, he is considered to be among Spain's great filmmakers. He had a long and prolific career that spanned over half a century, and his films won many international awards.
Go to Profile#31488
Kuruvilla Pandikattu
#31500
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Kuruvilla Pandikattu Joseph, SJ, is an Indian Jesuit priest. He is Chair Professor of JRD Tata Foundation on Business Ethics at XLRI, Jamshedpur and Professor of Philosophy, Science and Religion at Jnana Deepa, Institute of Philosophy and Theology, Pune, Maharashtra, India. He is also Director of JDV Centre for Science-Religion Studies and Association of Science, Society and Religion , Pune.
Go to Profile#31489
Yoon Bo-hyun
#31501
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Yoon Bo-hyun is a South Korean physician and scientist in the medical area of obstetrics and gynecology. He researches in the area of preterm births, intra-amniotic infection or inflammation and fetal damage. For his theoretical and clinical academic achievements he received the Top Scientist and Technologist Award of Korea in 2012.
Go to Profile#31490
Mehrdad Izady
#31502
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Michael Mehrdad R.S.C. Izady or Michael Izady , is a contemporary writer on ethnic and cultural topics, particularly the Greater Middle East, and Kurds. Early life and education Izady was born to a Kurdish father and a Belgian mother, and spent much of his youth in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Korea, as his diplomat parents moved from one assignment to another. He received his BA degree in history, political science and geography from the University of Kansas, and then attended Syracuse University, where he received two master's degrees in remote sensing-cartography and in international relations.
Go to Profile#31491
Mohammed Abed al-Jabri
#31503
Overall Influence
1935 - 2010 (75 years)
Mohammed Abed Al Jabri was one of the most known Moroccan and Arab philosophers; he taught philosophy, Arab philosophy, and Islamic thought in Mohammed V University in Rabat from the late 1960s until his retirement. He is considered one of the major philosophers and intellectual figures in the modern and contemporary Arab world. He is known for his academic project "Critique of Arab Reason", published in four volumes between the 1980s and 2000s. He published several influential books on the Arab philosophical tradition.
Go to Profile#31492
Jay Kay
#31504
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Jason "Jay" Kay is a British singer and songwriter. He co-founded the acid jazz and funk band Jamiroquai, which was formed in 1992, and serves as its lead vocalist. Early life Jay Kay was born Jason Luís Cheetham in Stretford on 30 December 1969, to English cabaret singer Karen Kay and Portuguese guitarist Luís Saraiva. His parents split up and he did not meet his biological father until he was about 28. Kay's identical twin, David, died of brain damage a few weeks after the two were born. Kay said in a 2010 interview that his mother raised him largely alone, which gave him "an itinerant childhood", half of which he spent "living in rural Suffolk and rural Devon".
Go to Profile#31493
John M. Walker Jr.
#31505
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
John Mercer Walker Jr. is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He served as chief judge from September 30, 2000, to September 30, 2006, when he assumed senior status. He was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, appointed in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan before being elevated to the Second Circuit in 1989.
Go to Profile#31494
Robert Bruininks
#31506
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Robert H. Bruininks is a former president of the University of Minnesota. He was named president on November 8, 2002, after briefly serving as the interim president. He has been employed by the University of Minnesota since 1968. He was the 15th full-time president in the history of the University of Minnesota. He is married and has three adult sons.
Go to Profile#31495
Debapriya Bhattacharya
#31507
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Debapriya Bhattacharya is an economist and public policy analyst from Bangladesh. He was the first executive director of Centre for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka. He also worked as a senior research fellow at Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies .
Go to Profile#31496
Erez Petrank
#31508
Overall Influence
Erez Petrank is a computer scientist whose notable research contributions are in the fields of programming languages and computer systems , cryptography , computational complexity, and parallel computing. Petrank is currently a professor at the computer science department at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#31497
Vadim Komkov
#31509
Overall Influence
1919 - 2008 (89 years)
Vadim Komkov was born in Moscow, Russia, and raised in Poland after his parents died in the Bolshevik Revolution. He was a member of the Polish RAF during WWII. He was stationed at Hucknall Aerodrome, and was sent to RAF Wrexham to practice flying the Avro Lancaster and the Supermarine Spitfire. He later became a mechanical engineer in London, where he met and married his first wife Joyce Radford, of Long Eaton, England, in 1946. He received his Diplom Ingenieur from Warsaw Polytechnic in 1948. He and Joyce had their first child after the war and the family moved to emigrated to Zambia where he worked for the Rhokana Mining Company.
Go to Profile#31498
Barbara Bergmann
#31510
Overall Influence
1927 - 2015 (88 years)
Barbara Rose Bergmann was a feminist economist. Her work covers many topics from childcare and gender issues to poverty and Social Security. Bergmann was a co-founder and president of the International Association for Feminist Economics, a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security, and Professor Emerita of Economics at the University of Maryland and American University.
Go to Profile#31499
Peter H. Rossi
#31511
Overall Influence
1921 - 2006 (85 years)
Peter Henry Rossi was a prominent sociologist best known for his research on the origin of homelessness, and documenting the changing face of American homelessness in the 1980s. Rossi was also known for his work devising ways to evaluate federally funded initiatives in education, health services, crime control, and housing. He influentially applied his sociological expertise to affect related policy-making and funding agencies. At his death, he was the Stuart A. Rice professor emeritus of Sociology and the director emeritus of the Social and Demographic Research Institute at the University o...
Go to Profile#31500
Eric M. Bost
#31512
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Eric Michael Bost is the former United States Ambassador to South Africa. He was sworn in as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of South Africa by President George W. Bush on July 20, 2006, after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate on June 29. Bost presented his credentials to South African President Thabo Mbeki on August 15, 2006. He completed his tour as ambassador on January 20, 2009.
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