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
#31551
Isobel Armstrong
#31563
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Isobel Armstrong, is a British academic. She is professor emerita of English at Birkbeck, University of London and a senior research fellow of the Institute of English Studies at the University of London. She is a fellow of the British Academy. She has been a visiting scholar at many institutions, including at Princeton University in 2016-2017. She is also a published poet. Armstrong is the younger sister of writer Diana Wynne Jones.
Go to Profile#31552
Jacqui Smith
#31564
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Jacqueline Jill Smith is a British broadcaster, political commentator and former Labour Party politician. She was Member of Parliament for Redditch from 1997 to 2010. She served as Home Secretary under Gordon Brown from 2007 to 2009 and was the first woman to hold the position.
Go to Profile#31553
Carsten Peter Thiede
#31565
Overall Influence
1952 - 2004 (52 years)
Carsten Peter Thiede OCF KStJ was a German archaeologist and New Testament scholar. He was also a member of PEN and appointed a Knight of Justice of the Order of St John. He taught as professor of New Testament times and history at the Staatsunabhängige Theologische Hochschule in Basel and at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, Israel. He often advanced theories that conflicted with the consensus of academic and theological scholarship.
Go to Profile#31554
Wilfried Loth
#31566
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Wilfried Loth is a German historian and political scientist. Life Wilfried Loth was born 29 August 1948 in Wadern. From 1966 to 1972, he studied German studies, History, Philosophy and Education at Saarland University. He obtained his doctorate in 1974. From 1974 to 1984 he worked there as an assistant lecturer and in 1983 he obtained his habilitation in Modern history with a dissertation on Catholics in the German Empire: Political Catholicism in the Crisis of Wilhelminian Germany. From 1984 to 1985 he was Professor of Political Science at the Free University of Berlin, then Professor of Political Science at the University of Münster from 1985 to 1986.
Go to Profile#31555
Lawrence Dallaglio
#31567
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Lorenzo Bruno Nero Dallaglio , known as Lawrence Dallaglio, is an English retired rugby union player, former captain of England, and 2016 inductee of the World Rugby Hall of Fame. Dallaglio played as a flanker or number eight for London Wasps and never played for another club, having arrived at Sudbury as a teenager. Playing in all three positions in the back row, he won 85 caps for England, and was part of the team that won the 2003 World Cup. He is one of a very small number of players to have won both the Rugby World Cup and Sevens World Cup. He went on three tours with the British & Irish...
Go to Profile#31556
Jacques Villeneuve
#31568
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Jacques Villeneuve is a Canadian professional racing driver and amateur musician who won the 1997 Formula One World Championship with Williams. In addition to Formula One he has competed in various other forms of motor racing, winning the 1995 Indianapolis 500 and the 1995 PPG Indy Car World Series. He is the son of former Ferrari racing driver Gilles Villeneuve.
Go to Profile#31557
Lasse Hallström
#31569
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Lars Sven "Lasse" Hallström is a Swedish film director. He first became known for directing almost all the music videos by the pop group ABBA, and subsequently became a feature film director. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for My Life as a Dog and later for The Cider House Rules . His other celebrated directorial works include What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Chocolat .
Go to Profile#31558
Tony Roche
#31570
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Anthony Dalton Roche AO MBE is an Australian former professional tennis player. A native of Tarcutta, Roche played junior tennis in the New South Wales regional city of Wagga Wagga. He won one Grand Slam singles title, the 1966 French Open at Roland Garros, and 15 Grand Slam doubles titles.
Go to Profile#31559
Achim Freyer
#31571
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Achim Freyer is a German stage director, set designer and painter. A protégé of Bertolt Brecht, Freyer has become one of the world's leading opera directors, working throughout Europe and, since 2002, in the United States, principally with the Los Angeles Opera. Since 1992, Freyer has developed a number of productions featuring his own troupe of performers, known as the Freyer Ensemble.
Go to Profile#31560
David Aberle
#31572
Overall Influence
1918 - 2004 (86 years)
David Friend Aberle was an American anthropologist. He was well renowned for his work with the American Southwestern culture of the Navaho. Early life and education Aberle was born on November 23, 1918, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude and had attended three field schools in the summer at the University of New Mexico. These field schools consisted of two archaeological expeditions, and one ethnographic expedition. In the fall of 1940, Aberle began graduate work in anthropology at Columbia University. Like many others, Aberle's graduate work was interrupted by the Second World War.
Go to Profile#31561
Robert H. Crabtree
#31573
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Robert Howard Crabtree is a British-American chemist. He is serving as Conkey P. Whitehead Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Yale University in the United States. He is a naturalized citizen of the United States. Crabtree is particularly known for his work on "Crabtree's catalyst" for hydrogenations, and his textbook on organometallic chemistry.
Go to Profile#31562
Linda Preiss Rothschild
#31574
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Linda Preiss Rothschild is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of California, San Diego. Her thesis research concerned Lie groups, but subsequently her interests broadened to include also polynomial factorization, partial differential equations, harmonic analysis, and the theory of several complex variables.
Go to Profile#31563
Peter Phillips
#31575
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Peter Charles Bonest Phillips is an econometrician. Since 1979 he has been Professor of Economics and Statistics at Yale University. He also holds positions at the University of Auckland, Singapore Management University and the University of Southampton. He is currently the co-director of Center for Financial Econometrics of Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics at Singapore Management University and is an adjunct professor of econometrics at the University of Southampton.
Go to Profile#31564
Ron Hextall
#31576
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Ronald Jeffrey Hextall is a Canadian former professional ice hockey goaltender and executive. He was most recently the general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League . Hextall played 13 seasons for the Philadelphia Flyers, Quebec Nordiques, and New York Islanders. He served as assistant general manager for the Flyers for one season, and was promoted to general manager of the Philadelphia Flyers, replacing Paul Holmgren on May 7, 2014. He held this position for four and a half seasons. Before this he served as assistant general manager for the Los Angeles Kings, who ...
Go to Profile#31565
Pablo Rudomín Zevnovaty
#31577
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Pablo Rudomin Zevnovaty is a Mexican-Russian biologist, physiologist, and neuroscientist. He is regarded as one of the most prestigious neurophysiologists in the international community. His studies have been fundamentally directed to the analysis of mechanisms of the central control of the information transmitted by the sensory fibers in the spinal cord, and of how these are modified during central and peripheral injuries, as well as during processes of acute inflammation.
Go to Profile#31566
Robert Ladislav Parker
#31578
Overall Influence
Robert L. Parker is an American geophysicist and mathematician, currently holding a Professor Emeritus of Geophysics position at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla, California.
Go to Profile#31567
Al Stewart
#31579
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Alastair Ian Stewart is a Scottish-born singer-songwriter and folk-rock musician who rose to prominence as part of the British folk revival in the 1960s and 1970s. He developed a unique style of combining folk-rock songs with tales of characters and events from history.
Go to Profile#31568
Eddie Howe
#31580
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Edward John Frank Howe is an English professional football manager and former player. He is the manager of Premier League club Newcastle United. A defender during his playing career, Howe spent most of his playing career with AFC Bournemouth, coming up through the youth system and spending eight years with the club, before returning for a second three-year spell to end his career, and retiring from the professional game in 2007. He entered management the following year, taking charge of a Bournemouth side facing relegation to the Conference National in January 2009 as the youngest manager in the Football League.
Go to Profile#31569
Helmut Sies
#31581
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Helmut Sies is a German physician, biochemist and university professor. He was the first to demonstrate the existence of hydrogen peroxide as a normal attribute of aerobic life in 1970, and he introduced the concept of Oxidative stress in 1985. He also worked on the biological strategies of antioxidant defense and the biochemistry of nutritional antioxidants .
Go to Profile#31570
Bernard Mills
#31582
Overall Influence
1920 - 2011 (91 years)
Bernard Yarnton Mills AC, FRS, FAA, DSc was an Australian engineer and a pioneer of radio astronomy in Australia, responsible for the design and implementation of the Mills Cross Telescope and the Molonglo Cross Telescope.
Go to Profile#31571
Barry Chiswick
#31583
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Barry Raymond Chiswick, born in 1942, is an American economist and professor of economics at the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, George Washington University. He has done extensive research on labor economics, human resources and income distribution. His "fundamental contributions to the economic analysis of migration" were rewarded with the IZA Prize in Labor Economics in 2011, with George J. Borjas as co-recipient.
Go to Profile#31572
Jade Jagger
#31584
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Jade Sheena Jezebel Jagger is a British jewellery designer, home designer, and former model. She is the daughter of Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger, and 1970s fashion model and human rights advocate Bianca Jagger.
Go to Profile#31573
Stuart Loory
#31585
Overall Influence
1932 - 2015 (83 years)
Stuart Hugh Loory was an American journalist and educator. Early and education Loory was born in Wilson, Pennsylvania. He grew up in Dover, New Jersey, where his parents, Harry and Eve Loory, owned a large furniture store. Along with his younger brother, Melvyn, he attended prep school at Blair Academy. In 1954, Loory graduated from Cornell University, where he was a member of the Quill and Dagger society and editor-in-chief of The Cornell Daily Sun. After three years at the Newark News, he received a Master's degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1958, and did postgraduate work in...
Go to Profile#31574
Sigbritt Karlsson
#31586
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Sigbritt Karlsson was a Swedish chemical engineer and president of KTH Royal Institute of Technology between November 2016 and November 2022. Karlsson earned a master of science in chemical engineering with a specialization in biotechnology from KTH. She subsequently completed a PhD in polymer technology.
Go to Profile#31575
Melanie Griffith
#31587
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress. She began her career in the 1970s, appearing in several independent thriller films before achieving mainstream success in the mid-1980s. Born in Manhattan, New York City, to actress Tippi Hedren and advertising executive Peter Griffith, she was raised mainly in Los Angeles, where she graduated from the Hollywood Professional School at age 16. In 1975, 17-year-old Griffith appeared opposite Gene Hackman in Arthur Penn's neo-noir film Night Moves. She later rose to prominence as an actor in films such as Brian De Palma's thriller Body Double , which earned her a National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Go to Profile#31576
Donald Berwick
#31588
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Donald M. Berwick is a former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services . Prior to his work in the administration, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement a not-for-profit organization.
Go to Profile#31577
François Baccelli
#31589
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
François Louis Baccelli is senior researcher at INRIA Paris, in charge of the ERC project NEMO on network mathematics. Education and career Baccelli obtained his PhD at the University of Paris-Sud in 1983 under the supervision of Erol Gelenbe. Between 1991 and 2003, he was a faculty member at the applied mathematics department at École polytechnique. He was Simons Chair in mathematics and electrical and computer engineering at University of Texas at Austin between 2012 and 2021. Between 2012 and 2019, he was the head of the Simons Center on Communication, Information and Network Mathematics.
Go to Profile#31578
Gary Miller
#31590
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Gary Lee Miller is a professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, United States. In 2003 he won the ACM Paris Kanellakis Award for the Miller–Rabin primality test. He was made an ACM Fellow in 2002 and won the Knuth Prize in 2013.
Go to Profile#31579
Valerii Zaluzhnyi
#31591
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Valerii Fedorovych Zaluzhnyi is a Ukrainian four-star general who has served as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine since 27 July 2021. He is also concurrently a member of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.
Go to Profile#31580
Rani Mukerji
#31592
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Rani Mukerji is an Indian actress who works in Hindi films. Noted for her versatility, she is the recipient of multiple accolades, including seven Filmfare Awards. Mukerji has featured in listings of the highest-paid actresses of the 2000s.
Go to Profile#31581
Eduard Arzt
#31593
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Eduard Arzt is an Austrian physicist and materials scientist. He is the recipient of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, the highest research award of the German Research Foundation , the Acta Metallurgica Award, and the Heyn-Award, the highest award of the German Materials Society . He is a member of the German Leopoldina Academy of Sciences in Halle, and a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. In 2020, Arzt was elected an international member of the US National Academy of Engineering
Go to Profile#31582
Boris Bittker
#31594
Overall Influence
1916 - 2005 (89 years)
Boris Irving Bittker was an American legal scholar. A professor at Yale Law School, Bittker was a prolific author, writing many textbooks and over one hundred articles on tax law. Born in Rochester, New York, Bittker attended Cornell University and Yale Law School . After law school, Bittker clerkeded for Judge Jerome Frank of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. From 1942 to 43 Bittker worked as an attorney for the Lend-Lease Administration in Washington, D.C.
Go to Profile#31583
Ilya Kovalchuk
#31595
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Ilya Valeryevich Kovalchuk is a Russian professional ice hockey winger who is currently playing with the Moscow Spartak of the KHL . He played for the Atlanta Thrashers, New Jersey Devils, Los Angeles Kings, Montreal Canadiens, and Washington Capitals in the National Hockey League , as well as Ak Bars Kazan, Khimik Moscow Oblast, SKA Saint Petersburg, and Avangard Omsk in the Russian Superleague and Kontinental Hockey League .
Go to Profile#31584
Stephanie Paulsell
#31596
Overall Influence
Stephanie Paulsell is an American theologian, currently the Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies at Harvard Divinity School. Works Lamentations and the Song of Songs: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Honoring the Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice The Scope of Our Art: The Vocation of the Theological Teacher
Go to Profile#31585
Francesco Rosi
#31597
Overall Influence
1922 - 2015 (93 years)
Francesco Rosi was an Italian film director. His film The Mattei Affair won the Palme d'Or at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. Rosi's films, especially those of the 1960s and 1970s, often appeared to have political messages. While the topics of his later films became less politically oriented and more angled toward literature, he continued to direct until 1997, his last film being the adaptation of Primo Levi's book, The Truce.
Go to Profile#31586
C. Robin Ganellin
#31598
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Charon Robin Ganellin FRS is a British medicinal chemist, and Emeritus Smith Kline and French Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, at University College London. He has contributed much to the field of drug discovery and development. His most outstanding achievement was the discovery of cimetidine, a drug used to combat stomach ulcers, when he was working at Smith Kline and French. He has received many awards and much recognition for his scientific pursuits over the years. He now lives near London and is a professor at University College London.
Go to Profile#31587
Bob Marley
#31599
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Bob Marley is an American comedian. He has appeared on The David Letterman Show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and Comedy Central. He can be seen in the film The Boondock Saints. Personal life Marley grew up in Bangor, Maine before moving to Portland, Maine. Marley said his "dad had no idea there was a singer named Bob Marley." He attended the University of Maine at Farmington, where he realized wanted to pursue comedy as his career.
Go to Profile#31588
Selman Akbulut
#31600
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Selman Akbulut is a Turkish mathematician, specializing in research in topology, and geometry. He was a professor at Michigan State University until February 2020. Career In 1975 he earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley as a student of Robion Kirby. In topology, he has worked on handlebody theory, low-dimensional manifolds, symplectic topology, G2 manifolds. In the topology of real-algebraic setss, he and Henry C. King proved that every compact piecewise-linear manifold is a real-algebraic set; they discovered new topological invariants of real-algebraic sets.
Go to Profile#31589
Lawrence Finsen
#31601
Overall Influence
Lawrence Finsen is a professor of philosophy at University of Redlands in California, specializing in animal ethics. With his wife Susan Finsen, he is the author of The Animal Rights Movement in America: From Compassion to Respect .
Go to Profile#31590
Prudence Murdoch
#31602
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Prudence "Prue" Murdoch MacLeod is an Australian-British non-executive director in the media industry. Murdoch is the eldest child and daughter of Australian-born American billionaire media proprietor Rupert Murdoch. She has held several directorial roles in her father's News Corporation, and is currently a board member of Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News Corporation.
Go to Profile#31591
Sytse Douma
#31603
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Sytse Wybren Douma is a Dutch organizational theorist, consultant and Emeritus Professor at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management of the Tilburg University, known for his work with Hein Schreuder on "Economic approaches to organizations".
Go to Profile#31592
Bryant Tuckerman
#31604
Overall Influence
1915 - 2002 (87 years)
Louis Bryant Tuckerman, III was an American mathematician, born in Lincoln, Nebraska. He was a member of the team that developed the Data Encryption Standard . He studied topology at Princeton, where he invented the Tuckerman traverse method for revealing all the faces of a flexagon.
Go to Profile#31593
Torben Larsen
#31605
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Torben Larsen is a noted Danish scientist working in the field of hydrology and water pollution. Biography Torben Larsen was born in Copenhagen on 1 May 1942. He graduated with a degree in hydraulic engineering from the Polyteknisk Læreanstalt in 1966.
Go to Profile#31594
Gunther O. Hofmann
#31606
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Gunther O. Hofmann is a German surgeon, biophysicist, and professor. Early life and education Gunther O. Hofmann was born in 1957 in Landshut, Bavaria. Hofmann attended medical school and earned a Staatsexamen and a doctorate from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Thereafter, he moved to the Technical University Munich, wherefrom he graduated in 1984 with a Dr. rer. nat. in physics.
Go to Profile#31595
Roland Speicher
#31607
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Roland Speicher is a German mathematician, known for his work on free probability theory. He is a professor at the Saarland University. After winning the 1979 German national competition Jugend forscht in the field of mathematics and computer science, Speicher studied physics and mathematics at the Universities of Saarbrücken, Freiburg and Heidelberg. He received in 1989 his doctorate from Heidelberg University under the supervision of Wilhelm Freiherr von Waldenfels with thesis Quantenstochastische Prozesse auf der Cuntz-Algebra . From 2000 to 2010 Speicher was a professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.
Go to Profile#31596
Robert Redeker
#31608
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Robert Redeker is a French writer and philosophy teacher. He was teaching at the Pierre-Paul-Riquet high school, in Saint-Orens-de-Gameville, and at the École Nationale de l'Aviation Civile. He is currently in hiding under police protection.
Go to Profile#31597
John K. Kruschke
#31609
Overall Influence
John Kendall Kruschke is an American psychologist and statistician known for his work in connectionist models of human learning, and in Bayesian statistical analysis. He is Provost Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington. He won the Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences in 2002.
Go to Profile#31598
David de Wied
#31610
Overall Influence
1925 - 2004 (79 years)
David de Wied was a Dutch professor of pharmacology at the University of Utrecht. Due to the necessity of hiding as a Jew during the Second World War, De Wied only started in 1947 studying medicine at the University of Groningen. In 1952 he received his PhD with his thesis "Vitamin C, Adrenal gland and Adaptation" and in 1955 he graduated as physician. In 1961 he was appointed professor of experimental endocrinology and from 1963 he served as director of the Rudolf Magnus Institute and professor of pharmacology in Utrecht.
Go to Profile#31599
Mark J. Roe
#31611
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Mark J. Roe is the David Berg Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, appointed in 2001. Roe is the author of Strong Managers, Weak Owners and Political Determinants of Corporate Governance , in which he shows underlying connections between business structures and national political configurations. He explores the political economy of American corporate lawmaking in a series of articles, two of which are published in the Harvard Law Review and Stanford Law Review. He also comments on business and finance legal issues in such publications as the Financial Times, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.
Go to Profile#31600
Talithia Williams
#31612
Overall Influence
Talithia D. Williams is an American statistician and mathematician at Harvey Mudd College who researches the spatiotemporal structure of data. She was the first black woman to achieve tenure at Harvey Mudd College. Williams is an advocate for engaging more African Americans in engineering and science.
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