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
#3151
Steve de Shazer
#3156
Overall Influence
1940 - 2005 (65 years)
Steve de Shazer was a psychotherapist, author, and developer and pioneer of solution focused brief therapy. In 1978, he founded the Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with his wife Insoo Kim Berg.
Go to Profile#3152
Derek Barton
#3157
Overall Influence
1918 - 1998 (80 years)
Sir Derek Harold Richard Barton was an English organic chemist and Nobel Prize laureate for 1969. Education and early life Barton was born in Gravesend, Kent, to William Thomas and Maude Henrietta Barton .
Go to Profile#3153
Mary Whitehouse
#3158
Overall Influence
1910 - 2001 (91 years)
Constance Mary Whitehouse was a British teacher and conservative activist. She campaigned against social liberalism and the mainstream British media, both of which she accused of encouraging a more permissive society. She was the founder and first president of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, through which she led a longstanding campaign against the BBC. A hard-line social conservative, she was termed a reactionary by her socially liberal opponents. Her motivation derived from her Christian beliefs, her aversion to the rapid social and political changes in British society of...
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Christopher Andrew
#3159
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Christopher Maurice Andrew, is an Emeritus Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cambridge with an interest in international relations and in particular the history of intelligence services.
Go to Profile#3155
Donald Michie
#3160
Overall Influence
1923 - 2007 (84 years)
Donald Michie was a British researcher in artificial intelligence. During World War II, Michie worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, contributing to the effort to solve "Tunny", a German teleprinter cipher.
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Tim Russert
#3161
Overall Influence
1950 - 2008 (58 years)
Timothy John Russert was an American television journalist and lawyer who appeared for more than 16 years as the longest-serving moderator of NBC's Meet the Press. He was a senior vice president at NBC News, Washington bureau chief and also hosted an eponymous CNBC/MSNBC weekend interview program. He was a frequent correspondent and guest on NBC's The Today Show and Hardball. Russert covered several presidential elections, and he presented the NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey on the NBC Nightly News during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Time magazine included Russert in its list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2008.
Go to Profile#3157
Clark Moustakas
#3162
Overall Influence
1923 - 2012 (89 years)
Clark E. Moustakas was an American psychologist and one of the leading experts on humanistic and clinical psychology. He helped establish the Association for Humanistic Psychology and the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. He is the author of numerous books and articles on humanistic psychology, education and human science research. His most recent books: Phenomenological Research Methods; Heuristic Research; Existential Psychotherapy and the Interpretation of Dreams; Being-In, Being-For, Being-With; and Relationship Play Therapy are valuable additions to research and clinical literature. His ...
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Edward Frenkel
#3163
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Edward Vladimirovich Frenkel is a Russian-American mathematician working in representation theory, algebraic geometry, and mathematical physics. He is a professor of mathematics at University of California Berkeley, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and author of the bestselling book Love and Math.
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Peter Zumthor
#3164
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Peter Zumthor is a Swiss architect whose work is frequently described as uncompromising and minimalist. Though managing a relatively small firm, he is the winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize and 2013 RIBA Royal Gold Medal.
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Ellen Willis
#3165
Overall Influence
1941 - 2006 (65 years)
Ellen Jane Willis was an American left-wing political essayist, journalist, activist, feminist, and pop music critic. A 2014 collection of her essays, The Essential Ellen Willis, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
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Jogesh Pati
#3166
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Jogesh C. Pati is an Indian-American theoretical physicist at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Biography Jogesh Pati started his schooling at Guru Training School, Baripada and then admitted to M.K.C High School where he passed the Matriculation. He was admitted in MPC College and passed I Sc.
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Ronaldo
#3167
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima , known as Ronaldo or Ronaldo Nazário, is a Brazilian former professional footballer who played as a striker. He is the owner of Brasileiro Série A club Cruzeiro and owner and president of Segunda Division club Real Valladolid. Nicknamed and R9, he is considered one of the greatest players of all time. As a multi-functional striker who brought a new dimension to the position, Ronaldo has been an influence for a generation of strikers that have followed. His individual accolades include being named FIFA World Player of the Year three times and winning two Ballon d...
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Fritz John
#3168
Overall Influence
1910 - 1994 (84 years)
Fritz John was a German-born mathematician specialising in partial differential equations and ill-posed problems. His early work was on the Radon transform and he is remembered for John's equation. He was a 1984 MacArthur Fellow.
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Ron Paul
#3169
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Ronald Ernest Paul is an American author, activist, physician and retired politician who served as the U.S. representative for Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1976 to 1977 and again from 1979 to 1985, as well as for Texas's 14th congressional district from 1997 to 2013. On three occasions, he sought the presidency of the United States: as the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988 and as a candidate for the Republican Party in 2008 and 2012.
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J. G. A. Pocock
#3170
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (102 years)
John Greville Agard Pocock is a New Zealand historian of political thought. He is especially known for his studies of republicanism in the early modern period , his work on the history of English common law, his treatment of Edward Gibbon and other Enlightenment historians, and, in historical method, for his contributions to the history of political discourse.
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Mark Skousen
#3171
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Mark Andrew Skousen is an American economist and writer. He currently teaches at Chapman University, where he is since 2022 a Doti-Spogli Chair in Free Enterprise at The George L. Argyros School of Business and Economics. He has previously taught at Columbia Business School, Mercy College, Barnard College, and Rollins College.
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Gerhard Ludwig Müller
#3172
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Gerhard Ludwig Müller is a German cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as the Cardinal-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from his appointment by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 until 2017. Pope Francis elevated him to the rank of cardinal in 2014.
Go to Profile#3168
Alexandra Elbakyan
#3173
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Alexandra Asanovna Elbakyan is a Kazakhstani computer programmer and creator of the website Sci-Hub, which provides free access to research papers without regard for copyright. According to a study published in 2018, Sci-Hub provides access to nearly all scholarly literature.
Go to Profile#3169
Sidney Coleman
#3174
Overall Influence
1937 - 2007 (70 years)
Sidney Richard Coleman was an American theoretical physicist noted for his research in high-energy theoretical physics. Life and work Sidney Coleman grew up on the Far North Side of Chicago. In 1957, he received his undergraduate degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology physics department.
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Yuji Naka
#3175
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Yuji Naka, credited in some games as YU2, is a Japanese video game programmer, designer and producer. He is the co-creator of the Sonic the Hedgehog series and was the president of Sonic Team at Sega until his departure in 2006.
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Tony Blackburn
#3176
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Antony Kenneth Blackburn is an English disc jockey, singer and TV presenter. Blackburn first achieved fame broadcasting on the pirate stations Radio Caroline and Radio London in the 1960s, before joining the BBC, on the BBC Light Programme.
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Roger D. Kornberg
#3177
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Roger David Kornberg is an American biochemist and professor of structural biology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Kornberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2006 for his studies of the process by which genetic information from DNA is copied to RNA, "the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription."
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Frithjof Schuon
#3178
Overall Influence
1907 - 1998 (91 years)
Frithjof Schuon was a Swiss metaphysician of German descent, belonging to the Perennialist or Traditionalist School of thought. He was the author of more than twenty works in French on metaphysics, spirituality, religion, anthropology and art, which have been translated into English and many other languages. He was also a painter and a poet.
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Jerome H. Friedman
#3179
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Jerome Harold Friedman is an American statistician, consultant and Professor of Statistics at Stanford University, known for his contributions in the field of statistics and data mining. Biography Friedman studied at Chico State College for two years before transferring to the University of California, Berkeley in 1959, where he received his AB in Physics in 1962, and his PhD in High Energy Particle Physics in 1967.
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Ralph Abraham
#3180
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Ralph Herman Abraham is an American mathematician. He has been a member of the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz since 1968. Life and work Abraham earned his BSE , MS and PhD from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Santa Cruz, he held positions at the University of California, Berkeley , Columbia University and Princeton University . He has also held visiting positions in Amsterdam, Paris, Warwick, Barcelona, Basel, and Florence.
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Thomas A. Steitz
#3181
Overall Influence
1940 - 2018 (78 years)
Thomas Arthur Steitz was an American biochemist, a Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University, and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, best known for his pioneering work on the ribosome.
Go to Profile#3177
Lee Bollinger
#3182
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
#3178
Rachel Notley
#3183
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Rachel Anne Notley is a Canadian politician who was the 17th premier of Alberta from 2015 to 2019, and has been the leader of the Opposition since 2019. She sits as the member of the Legislative Assembly for Edmonton-Strathcona, She is the longest serving member of the legislature by consecutive time in office and is the leader of the Alberta New Democratic Party . The daughter of former Alberta NDP leader Grant Notley, she was a lawyer before entering politics; she focused on labour law, with a specialty in workers' compensation advocacy and workplace health and safety issues.
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William Manchester
#3184
Overall Influence
1922 - 2004 (82 years)
William Raymond Manchester was an American author, biographer, and historian. He was the author of 18 books which have been translated into over 20 languages. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal and the Abraham Lincoln Literary Award.
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William Sims Bainbridge
#3185
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
William Sims Bainbridge is an American sociologist who currently resides in Virginia. He is co-director of Cyber-Human Systems at the National Science Foundation . He is the first Senior Fellow to be appointed by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Bainbridge is most well known for his work on the sociology of religion. Recently he has published work studying the sociology of video gaming.
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Philippe Couillard
#3186
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Philippe Couillard is a Canadian business advisor and former neurosurgeon, university professor and politician who served as 31st premier of Quebec from 2014 to 2018. Between 2003 and 2008, he was Quebec's Minister of Health and Social Services in Jean Charest's Liberal government and was MNA for Mont-Royal until he resigned in 2008. In the 2014 election, Couillard moved to the riding of Roberval, where he resides. He was the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party from 2013 to 2018. He resigned as Liberal leader and MNA on October 4, 2018.
Go to Profile#3182
Justin Roiland
#3187
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Mark Justin Roiland is an American voice actor, comedian, animator, writer, producer, and director. He is best known as the co-creator of Adult Swim's animated sitcom Rick and Morty, for which he formerly voiced the protagonists Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith, and as the co-creator of Hulu's Solar Opposites, in which he formerly voiced the main character, Korvo, until both networks severed ties with him in 2023. He had also played Earl of Lemongrab on Adventure Time, Blendin Blandin on Gravity Falls, and Oscar on Fish Hooks. He founded the animation studio Justin Roiland's Solo Vanity Card Prod...
Go to Profile#3183
Philip Kitcher
#3188
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
#3184
Joe Roth
#3189
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Joseph Emanuel Roth is an American film executive, producer and director. He co-founded Morgan Creek Productions in 1988 and was chairman of 20th Century Fox , Caravan Pictures , and Walt Disney Studios before founding Revolution Studios in 2000, then Roth Films.
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Paul Veyne
#3190
Overall Influence
1930 - 2022 (92 years)
Paul Veyne was a French historian, and a specialist of Ancient Rome. A student of the École Normale Supérieure and member of the École française de Rome, he was honorary professor at the Collège de France.
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Bruce Cumings
#3191
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Bruce Cumings is an American historian of East Asia, professor, lecturer and author. He is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History, and the former chair of the history department at the University of Chicago. He formerly taught at Northwestern University and the University of Washington. He specializes in modern Korean history and contemporary international relations.
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Brad Cox
#3192
Overall Influence
1944 - 2021 (77 years)
Brad J. Cox was an American computer scientist who was known mostly for creating the Objective-C programming language with his business partner Tom Love and for his work in software engineering and software componentry.
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John Banville
#3193
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
William John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W. B. Yeats and Henry James are the two real influences on his work.
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Lee Cronbach
#3194
Overall Influence
1916 - 2001 (85 years)
Lee Joseph Cronbach was an American educational psychologist who made contributions to psychological testing and measurement. At the University of Illinois, Urbana, Cronbach produced many of his works: the "Alpha" paper , as well as an essay titled "The Two Disciplines of Scientific Psychology", in the American Psychologist magazine in 1957, where he discussed his thoughts on the increasing divergence between the fields of experimental psychology and correlational psychology .
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Robert Marshak
#3195
Overall Influence
1916 - 1992 (76 years)
Robert Eugene Marshak was an American physicist, educator, and eighth president of the City College of New York. Biography Marshak was born in the Bronx, New York City. His parents, Harry and Rose Marshak, were immigrants from Minsk. He went to the City College of New York for one semester and then "received a Pulitzer Scholarship which provided full tuition and a stipend which allowed him to continue his education at Columbia University." In 1939, Marshak received his Ph.D. from Cornell University. Along with his thesis advisor, Hans Bethe, he discovered many of the fusion aspects involved in star formation.
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Franklin Drilon
#3196
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Franklin Magtunao Drilon is a Filipino lawyer and former politician. He had the longest tenure in the Senate of the Philippines , having served four non-consecutive terms overall: from 1995 to 2007 and 2010 to 2022. He has served thrice as president of the Senate: in 2000, from 2001 to 2006, and from 2013 to 2016.
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Edmond Malinvaud
#3197
Overall Influence
1923 - 2015 (92 years)
Edmond Malinvaud was a French economist. He was the first president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Trained at the École Polytechnique and at the École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique in Paris, Malinvaud was a student of Maurice Allais. In 1950, Malinvaud left Allais to join the Cowles Commission in the United States. At Cowles, Malinvaud produced work in many directions. His famous article, "Capital Accumulation and the Efficient Allocation of Resources" , provided an intertemporal theory of capital for general equilibrium theory and introduced the concept of dynamic efficiency.
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Dinesh D'Souza
#3198
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Dinesh Joseph D'Souza is an Indian-American right-wing political commentator, author, filmmaker, and conspiracy theorist. He has written over a dozen books, several of them New York Times best-sellers.
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John Gray
#3199
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
John Nicholas Gray is an English political philosopher and author with interests in analytic philosophy, the history of ideas, and philosophical pessimism. He retired in 2008 as School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Gray contributes regularly to The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, where he is the lead book reviewer. He is an atheist.
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Paul Davidson
#3200
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Paul Davidson is an American macroeconomist who has been one of the leading spokesmen of the American branch of the post-Keynesian school in economics. He is a prolific writer and has actively intervened in important debates on economic policy from a position critical of mainstream economics.
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Story Musgrave
#3201
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Franklin Story Musgrave is an American physician and a retired NASA astronaut. He is a public speaker and consultant to both Disney's Imagineering group and Applied Minds in California. In 1996, he became only the second astronaut to fly on six spaceflights, and he is the most formally educated astronaut with six academic degrees. Musgrave is the only astronaut to have flown aboard all five Space Shuttles.
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Paul Simon
#3202
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Paul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter. One of the most celebrated artists of the twentieth century, Simon's career spans six decades. Born in New Jersey, Simon grew up in Queens, New York City, and developed an interest in rock music in his teens.
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Gabriel Kolko
#3203
Overall Influence
1932 - 2014 (82 years)
Gabriel Morris Kolko was an American historian. His research interests included American capitalism and political history, the Progressive Era, and U.S. foreign policy in the 20th century. One of the best-known revisionist historians to write about the Cold War, he had also been credited as "an incisive critic of the Progressive Era and its relationship to the American empire." U.S. historian Paul Buhle summarized Kolko's career when he described him as "a major theorist of what came to be called Corporate Liberalism...[and] a very major historian of the Vietnam War and its assorted war crime...
Go to Profile#3199
John Alan Robinson
#3204
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
John Alan Robinson was a philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist. He was a professor emeritus at Syracuse University. Alan Robinson's major contribution is to the foundations of automated theorem proving. His unification algorithm eliminated one source of combinatorial explosion in resolution provers; it also prepared the ground for the logic programming paradigm, in particular for the Prolog language. Robinson received the 1996 Herbrand Award for Distinguished Contributions to Automated Reasoning.
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Gilles Brassard
#3205
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Gilles Brassard, is a faculty member of the Université de Montréal, where he has been a Full Professor since 1988 and Canada Research Chair since 2001. Education and early life Brassard received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University in 1979, working in the field of cryptography with John Hopcroft as his advisor.
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