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
Fred H. Wilt
#163324
Overall Influence
#3152
Stephen S. Gottlieb
#163460
Overall Influence
#3153
Eric Stewart Kasischke
#163468
Overall Influence
#3154
Karsten Meyer
#163527
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Karsten Meyer is a German inorganic chemist and Chair of Inorganic and General Chemistry at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg . His research involves the coordination chemistry of transition metals as well as uranium coordination chemistry, small molecule activation with these coordination complexes, and the synthesis of new chelating ligands. He is the 2017 recipient of the Elhuyar-Goldschmidt Award of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry, the Ludwig-Mond Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the L.A. Chugaev Commemorative Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences, among other awards.
Go to Profile#3155
Rainer Wieler
#163573
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
#3156
Athena Sefat
#163582
Overall Influence
Athena Safa Sefat, born 1977 in Iran is a Canadian/American physicist, with research focus on quantum materials and correlated phenomena. She was a senior scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and led the DOE Basic Energy Science on "Probing Competing Chemical, Electronic, and Spin Correlations for Quantum Materials Functionality". She is currently a Program Manager at U.S. Department of Energy , Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, with Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering.
Go to Profile#3157
Qifa Zhou
#163604
Overall Influence
#3158
Antony A. Stark
#163732
Overall Influence
#3159
J. Michael Cecka
#163830
Overall Influence
#3160
P. Read Montague
#163868
Overall Influence
#3161
Eugene Serabyn
#163960
Overall Influence
#3162
Danielle Goebel
#164020
Overall Influence
#3163
Amir Qaseem
#164069
Overall Influence
#3164
Paolo A. Mazzali
#164386
Overall Influence
#3165
Peter L. Read
#164480
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
#3166
Antal K. Bejczy
#164491
Overall Influence
#3167
Dayong Jin
#164555
Overall Influence
#3168
Sung Kyu Lim
#164655
Overall Influence
#3169
Noboru Oyama
#164705
Overall Influence
#3170
Robert Emerson Ireland
#164714
Overall Influence
#3171
Saverio Minucci
#164768
Overall Influence
#3172
Philip Coffino
#164874
Overall Influence
#3173
Diarmaid Hughes
#165085
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
#3174
Grant Jay Jensen
#165484
Overall Influence
#3175
Lindsay P. Keller
#165539
Overall Influence
#3176
Ian Douglass Hutcheon
#165610
Overall Influence
#3177
Balasubramanian Raman
#165677
Overall Influence
#3178
R. George Ratcliffe
#165709
Overall Influence
#3179
Simon Herngaung Yueh
#165735
Overall Influence
#3180
Andrew Steele
#165754
Overall Influence
Andrew Steele is an astrobiologist at the Geophysical Laboratory at Carnegie Institution for Science. He uses traditional and biotechnological approaches for the detection of microbial life in the field of astrobiology and Solar System exploration. His research has led to discoveries of new forms of carbon in meteorites, new mechanisms of organic synthesis on Earth and Mars, and the presence of water in lunar and Martian rocks. Steele has developed several instrument and mission concepts for future Mars missions and was involved in NASA’s 2011 Mars Science Laboratory mission, as a member of the Sample Analysis at Mars team.
Go to Profile#3181
Rajiv Dhand
#165837
Overall Influence
#3182
Stanley Froehner
#166076
Overall Influence
Stanley C. Froehner is an American physiologist and biophysicist currently the UW Medicine Distinguished Professor at University of Washington and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#3183
Thomas J. Maccarone
#166148
Overall Influence
#3184
Shalinee Kishore
#166164
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (51 years)
Shalinee Kishore is an American electrical engineer whose research includes wireless networks, network schedulers, and energy management for smart buildings and smart grids. She is Iacocca Chair Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Director of the Institute for Cyber Physical Infrastructure & Energy at the Lehigh University P. C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science.
Go to Profile#3185
Ajai K. Singh
#166188
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Ajai Kumar Singh is an Indian chemist and Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at IIT Delhi. Singh is known for his contribution to the development of new organochalcogen ligand family and their metal complexes for promoting carbon-carbon coupling and related transformations. Singh is an honorary member of Science Faculty of the University of Delhi.
Go to Profile#3186
Li Yang
#166323
Overall Influence
Li Yang is an American biologist researching how inflammation in the premetastatic environment modifies cancer cell colonization. She is a senior investigator and head of the tumor microenvironment section at the National Cancer Institute.
Go to Profile#3187
Steven M. Wolinsky
#166464
Overall Influence
#3188
Ilya N. Bindeman
#166498
Overall Influence
#3189
Markus Meister
#166656
Overall Influence
#3190
S.m.f. Dawson Sheppard
#166741
Overall Influence
#3191
Michelle O'Malley
#166757
Overall Influence
Michelle O'Malley is an American chemical engineer and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is known for her work studying the use of anaerobic microbes in developing inexpensive biofuels. In 2015 she was named as one of MIT Technology Review's 35 Innovators under 35, and in 2016 she received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
Go to Profile#3192
Giorgio Franceschetti
#166827
Overall Influence
#3193
K. Rustan M. Leino
#167049
Overall Influence
#3194
Michael Wolock Werner
#167215
Overall Influence
#3195
Jess F. Adkins
#167279
Overall Influence
#3196
Stephen Childress
#167286
Overall Influence
William Stephen Childress is an American applied mathematician, author and professor emeritus at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He works on classical fluid mechanics, asymptotic methods and singular perturbations, geophysical fluid dynamics, magnetohydrodynamics and dynamo theory, mathematical models in biology, and locomotion in fluids. He is also a co-founder of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences's Applied Mathematics Lab.
Go to Profile#3197
Bernd Weisshaar
#167291
Overall Influence
#3198
Bing Yu
#167298
Overall Influence
#3199
Koh Ono
#167301
Overall Influence
#3200
Doyle D. Knight
#167370
Overall Influence
