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
#31601
Randall Pinkston
#31613
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Randall Pinkston was a correspondent/anchor for Al Jazeera America. Previously he was with CBS News. After a stint as a White House Correspondent in CBS's Washington Bureau, Pinkston became a general assignment reporter, contributing to CBS broadcasts, including CBS Evening News, Morning News, Weekend News, CBS News Sunday Morning and 48 Hours. Pinkston also contributed to the CBS Reports documentary, Legacy of Shame with Correspondent Dan Rather. Pinkston has filled in as anchor on the CBS Evening News-Weekend Edition, Up to the Minute and CBS Morning News.
Go to Profile#31602
Peter Steinfels
#31614
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Peter F. Steinfels is an American journalist and educator best known for his writings on religious topics. A native of Chicago, Illinois, and a lifelong Roman Catholic, Steinfels earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University and joined the staff of the journal Commonweal in 1964. He served as a visiting professor at Notre Dame in 1994–95 and then as visiting professor at Georgetown University from 1997 to 2001. From 1990 to 2010, he wrote a column called "Beliefs" for the religion section of The New York Times.
Go to Profile#31603
Sam Bowie
#31615
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Samuel Paul Bowie is an American former professional basketball player. A national sensation in high school and outstanding collegian and Olympic team member, Bowie's professional promise was undermined by repeated injuries to his legs and feet. In spite of the setbacks, the and center played ten seasons in the National Basketball Association .
Go to Profile#31604
Jeff Halper
#31616
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Jeff Halper is an Israeli-American anthropologist, author, lecturer, and political activist who has lived in Israel since 1973. He is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and a co-founder of The One Democratic State Campaign . He is a Jewish Israeli.
Go to Profile#31605
Al Kaline
#31617
Overall Influence
1934 - 2020 (86 years)
Albert William Kaline , nicknamed "Mr. Tiger", was an American professional baseball right fielder who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball for the Detroit Tigers. For most of his career, Kaline played in the outfield, mainly as a right fielder where he won ten Gold Glove Awards and was known for his strong throwing arm. He was selected to 18 All-Star Games, including selections each year between 1955 and 1967. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1980, his first time on the ballot.
Go to Profile#31606
Jeffrey L. Fisher
#31618
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Jeffrey L. Fisher is an American law professor and U.S. Supreme Court litigator who has argued forty-one cases and worked on dozens of others before the Supreme Court. He is co-director of the Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.
Go to Profile#31607
Maurice Tweedie
#31619
Overall Influence
1919 - 1996 (77 years)
Maurice Charles Kenneth Tweedie was a British medical physicist and statistician from the University of Liverpool. He was known for research into the exponential family probability distributions. Education and career Tweedie read physics at the University of Reading and attained a BSc and BSc in physics in 1939 followed by a MSc in physics 1941. He found a career in radiation physics, but his primary interest was in mathematical statistics where his accomplishments far surpassed his academic postings.
Go to Profile#31608
Cliff Robertson
#31620
Overall Influence
1923 - 2011 (88 years)
Clifford Parker Robertson III was an American actor whose career in film and television spanned over six decades. Robertson portrayed a young John F. Kennedy in the 1963 film PT 109, and won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the film Charly.
Go to Profile#31609
Georg Johannesen
#31621
Overall Influence
1931 - 2005 (74 years)
Georg Johannesen was a Norwegian author and professor at the University of Bergen. Background He was born in Bergen, Norway. He was the son of Knut Johan Johannesen and Ingeborg Malene Olsdatter Skaalevik . Johannesen graduated artium at Bergen Cathedral School in 1949. He studied history, English and Norwegian at University of Oslo and took his master's degree in Literature History in 1960. He wrote his dissertation Vårmotivet hos Olaf Bull on the poetry of Olaf Bull .
Go to Profile#31610
Jean-Pierre Eckmann
#31622
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Jean-Pierre Eckmann is a Swiss mathematical physicist in the department of theoretical physics at the University of Geneva and a pioneer of chaos theory and social network analysis. Eckmann is the son of mathematician Beno Eckmann. He completed his PhD in 1970 under the supervision of Marcel Guenin at the University of Geneva. He has been a member of the Academia Europaea since 2001. In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. He is also a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Go to Profile#31611
Mitch Mitchell
#31623
Overall Influence
1947 - 2008 (61 years)
John Graham "Mitch" Mitchell was an English drummer and child actor, who was best known for his work in the Jimi Hendrix Experience for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2009.
Go to Profile#31612
Jack Coggins
#31624
Overall Influence
1911 - 2006 (95 years)
Jack Banham Coggins was an artist, author, and illustrator. He is known in the United States for his oil paintings, which focused predominantly on marine subjects. He is also known for his books on space travel, which were both authored and illustrated by Coggins. Besides his own works, Coggins also provided illustrations for advertisements and magazine covers and articles.
Go to Profile#31613
Jonathan Bagger
#31625
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Jonathan Anders Bagger is an American theoretical physicist, specializing in high energy physics and string theory. He is known for the Bagger–Lambert–Gustavsson action. Biography Bagger received his bachelor's degree in 1977 from Dartmouth College. He spent the academic year 1977–1978 at the University of Cambridge as a Churchill Scholar. In 1978 he became a graduate student in physics at Princeton University, where he received his PhD in 1983. His doctoral thesis Matter Couplings in Supergravity Theories was supervised by Edward Witten. Bagger was a postdoc from 1983 to 1986 at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
Go to Profile#31614
Yoichi Nishimaru
#31626
Overall Influence
1927 - 2020 (93 years)
Yoichi Nishimaru was a Japanese physician specializing in medical jurisprudence. His books were so popular that they became best-sellers in Japan. Biography Nishimaru was born in Yokohama. He studied medicine at Yokohama Medical College , and was appointed Professor of medical jurisprudence there in 1973. While working at Yokohama City University, he wrote some enlightening essays on forensic medicine, including Afternoon in the Forensic Medicine Classroom which was made into a TV program in Japan. After retiring from Yokohama City University and becoming Professor Emeritus, he became a ship's...
Go to Profile#31615
Donald C. Clarke
#31627
Overall Influence
Donald C. Clarke is a law professor specializing in Chinese law at The George Washington University Law School. His interests range from Chinese criminal law and procedure to corporate governance. His Chinese name is Guo Danqing .
Go to Profile#31616
Terrence Howard
#31628
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Terrence Dashon Howard is an American actor. Having his first major roles in the 1995 films Dead Presidents and Mr. Holland's Opus, Howard broke into the mainstream with a succession of television and cinema roles between 2004 and 2006. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Hustle & Flow.
Go to Profile#31617
Joern Meissner
#31629
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Joern Meissner is a German academic, business consultant, entrepreneur and Professor of Supply Chain Management & Pricing Strategy at Kühne Logistics University in Hamburg. Biography Meissner received MA in Business Management in 1997 at the University of Hamburg, and his Ph.D. in Management Science in 2005 from the Columbia Business School under the supervision of Professors Awi Federgruen and Costis Maglaras.
Go to Profile#31618
Gerald Jay Goldberg
#31630
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Gerald Jay Goldberg was an American author. He was a professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he taught English and American literature and Creative Writing. An acclaimed novelist, he was also a critic and the author of a nonfiction study of the network news and a biography of Ted Turner.
Go to Profile#31619
Michael W. Bevan
#31631
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Michael Webster Bevan is a professor at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK. Education Bevan was educated at the University of Auckland where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science in 1973 and a Master of Science in 1974. He went on to study at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a PhD in 1979 for work on differentiation in plant tissue cultures.
Go to Profile#31620
Olia Lialina
#31632
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Olia Lialina is an Internet artist and theorist, an experimental film and video critic and curator. Life Lialina graduated in 1993 after studying film criticism and journalism at Moscow State University, followed by art residencies at C3 and Villa Waldberta .
Go to Profile#31621
Q. David Bowers
#31633
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Quentin David Bowers is an American numismatist, author, and columnist. Beginning in 1952, Bowers’s contributions to numismatics have continued uninterrupted and unabated to the present day. He has been involved in the selling of rare coins since 1953 when he was a teenager.
Go to Profile#31622
Hugh Pennington
#31634
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Thomas Hugh Pennington, CBE, FRCPath, FRCP , FMedSci, FRSE is emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Outside academia, he is best known as the chair of the Pennington Group inquiry into the Scottish Escherichia coli outbreak of 1996 and as Chairman of the Public Inquiry into the 2005 Outbreak of E. coli O157 in South Wales.
Go to Profile#31623
Anthony G. Evans
#31635
Overall Influence
1942 - 2009 (67 years)
Anthony Glyn Evans was Alcoa Professor of Materials, professor of Mechanical Engineering, director of the Center for Multifunctional Materials and Structures and co-director for the Center for Collaborative Engineering Research and Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, United States.
Go to Profile#31624
James Brown
#31636
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
James Brown is a British former journalist, author, radio host and media entrepreneur. His first book, Above Head Height: A Five-a-Side Life, was published in 2017 by Quercus and received positive reviews in The Guardian, The Australian and The Daily Telegraph. A renowned Leeds United supporter, Brown also co-hosts The Late Tackle on Talksport with the comedy writer Andy Dawson, of Athletico Mince fame. In addition to his media profile, he is the owner of Sabotage Times – a music, football and culture website – and the Sabotage Agency, which has provided content for such brands as Scotts, Car...
Go to Profile#31625
Dennis Mueller
#31637
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Dennis Cary Mueller is emeritus professor of economics at the University of Vienna. His academic work focused on the principal–agent problem, corporate governance and political economy. Career He received a PhD in economics from Princeton University in 1966 under the supervision of Jesse W. Markham and Stephen Goldfeld for his dissertation "The Determinants of Industrial Research and Development". He held several academic positions in Canada, the US and in Germany and became professor at the University of Vienna in 1994. In 2008, he became professor emeritus.
Go to Profile#31626
Richard Vangermeersch
#31638
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Richard G.J. Vangermeersch is an American economist, and Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Rhode Island, particularly known for his History of Accounting: An International Encyclopedia, edited with Michael Chatfield.
Go to Profile#31627
Otto Huth
#31639
Overall Influence
1906 - 1998 (92 years)
Otto Huth was a German historian of religion and folklorist who was a member of the Ahnenerbe and held a professorial position at the Nazi Reichsuniversität Straßburg. Early life and education Huth was the son of a neurologist who was a friend of the völkisch publisher Eugen Diederichs. His sister later married , who headed the Ahnenerbe division of African studies. Born and educated in Bonn, he earned his PhD in 1932 from the University of Bonn under the supervision of Carl Clemen, with a dissertation on the Roman god Janus, and his habilitation in 1939 from the University of Tübingen after ...
Go to Profile#31628
David G. Lowe
#31640
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
David G. Lowe is a Canadian computer scientist working for Google as a senior research scientist. He was a former professor in the computer science department at the University of British Columbia and New York University.
Go to Profile#31629
Ernest Vinberg
#31641
Overall Influence
1937 - 2020 (83 years)
Ernest Borisovich Vinberg was a Soviet and Russian mathematician, who worked on Lie groups and algebraic groups, discrete subgroups of Lie groups, invariant theory, and representation theory. He introduced Vinberg's algorithm and the Koecher–Vinberg theorem.
Go to Profile#31630
Tony Esposito
#31642
Overall Influence
1943 - 2021 (78 years)
Anthony James "Tony O" Esposito was a Canadian-American professional ice hockey goaltender, who played 16 seasons in the National Hockey League , 15 of those for the Chicago Black Hawks. He was one of the pioneers of the now popular butterfly style. Tony was the younger brother of Phil Esposito, a centre. Both brothers had notable careers and are enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Esposito's jersey number 35 was retired by the Blackhawks in 1988.
Go to Profile#31631
Bernie Leadon
#31643
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Bernard Matthew Leadon III is an American singer, musician, songwriter, and founding member of the Eagles, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Prior to the Eagles, he was a member of three country rock bands: Hearts & Flowers, Dillard & Clark, and the Flying Burrito Brothers. He is a multi-instrumentalist coming from a bluegrass background. He introduced elements of this music to a mainstream audience during his tenure with the Eagles.
Go to Profile#31632
Robert Prosinečki
#31644
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Robert Prosinečki is a Croatian professional football manager and former player who played as a midfielder. Early in his career, he was part of the Red Star Belgrade team that won three Yugoslav First League titles and the European Cup in 1991. Prosinečki spent several years in Spain with rivals Real Madrid and Barcelona, as well as Oviedo and Sevilla. Later in his career, he won three Croatian league titles with Dinamo Zagreb, and also played in Belgium, England and Slovenia.
Go to Profile#31633
William B. Provine
#31645
Overall Influence
1942 - 2015 (73 years)
William Ball Provine was an American historian of science and of evolutionary biology and population genetics. He was the Andrew H. and James S. Tisch Distinguished University Professor at Cornell University and was a professor in the Departments of History, Science and Technology Studies, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Go to Profile#31634
Susan Roosevelt Weld
#31646
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Susan Roosevelt Weld is an American educator who is a former professor at Harvard specializing in ancient Chinese civilization and law. She also was General Counsel to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. She was the First Lady of Massachusetts from 1991 until 1997.
Go to Profile#31635
Dōmei Yakazu
#31647
Overall Influence
1905 - 2001 (96 years)
was a Japanese physician who contributed to the restoration of kampo medicine in Japan. In 1979, he was awarded the by the Japanese Medical Association for his contributions to oriental medicine. Life Yakazu was born in 1905 as Shirō, the fourth son of Tatsunosuke Yakazu and Sute Yakazu, in Omiya . He graduated from Mito Commercial School and entered Tokyo Medical University majoring in traditional Chinese medicine under Professor Mori Dohaku along with his elder brother Kaku. He graduated in 1930, and less than a year later, he adopted the art-name Dōmei Yakazu. In 1933, he started his own c...
Go to Profile#31636
Paul Warfield
#31648
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Paul Dryden Warfield is an American former professional football player who was a wide receiver in the National Football League from 1964 to 1977 for the Cleveland Browns and Miami Dolphins, except for a year in the World Football League with the Memphis Southmen. He was known for his speed, fluid moves, grace, and jumping ability. A consistent big-play threat throughout his career, his 20.1 average yards per reception is the highest in NFL history among players with at least 300 receptions.
Go to Profile#31637
Zoltán Szabó
#31649
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Zoltán Szabó is a professor of mathematics at Princeton University known for his work on Heegaard Floer homology. Education and career Szabó received his B.A. from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary in 1990, and he received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1994.
Go to Profile#31638
Rajkumar Hirani
#31650
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Rajkumar “Raju” Hirani is an Indian filmmaker, director, producer, and editor known for his works in Hindi films. He is the recipient of several accolades, including four National Film Awards and 11 Filmfare Awards. Hirani is referred as one of the greatest and most successful filmmakers of Indian cinema. His movies are often lighthearted but revolve around significant societal issues with humour and emotional intelligence.
Go to Profile#31639
Giancarlo Guizzardi
#31651
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Giancarlo Guizzardi is a Brazilian–Italian computer scientist specializing in conceptual modeling, enterprise modeling, applied ontology and ontology-driven information systems. He is a professor in the University of Twente in The Netherlands and a senior researcher and founding member of the Ontology & Conceptual Modeling Research Group in Vitoria, Brazil.
Go to Profile#31640
Jean-Jacques Moreau
#31652
Overall Influence
1923 - 2014 (91 years)
Jean Jacques Moreau was a French mathematician and mechanician. He normally published under the name J. J. Moreau. Moreau was born in Blaye. He received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Paris, then became a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He was appointed Professor of Mathematical Models in Physics at Poitiers University and later Professor of General Mechanics at University of Montpellier II. He was emeritus professor in the Laboratoire de Mécanique et Génie Civil, a joint research unit of the university and the CNRS.
Go to Profile#31641
Dietmar Feichtinger
#31653
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Dietmar Feichtinger is an Austrian architect established since 1989 in Paris. Biography After graduating in 1988 from the Technical University of Graz with honors, he moved to Paris in 1989 where he founded the studio Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes in 1994. Today, the firm has 35 employees. A wide range of buildings have been built by the company in Europe including schools, pools, office buildings and housing.
Go to Profile#31642
Junichiro Ito
#31654
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Junichiro Ito is a Japanese medical researcher and a psychiatrist. He is currently the director of the Department of Psychiatric Rehabilitation, National Institute of Mental Health, Japan. Ito's research interests include Assertive Community Treatment and assistance programs for socially withdrawn individuals, called hikikomori.
Go to Profile#31643
Paula Radcliffe
#31655
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Paula Jane Radcliffe MBE is a former British long-distance runner. She is a three-time winner of the London Marathon , three-time New York Marathon champion , the 2002 Chicago Marathon winner and the 2005 World Champion in the Marathon from Helsinki. She was previously the fastest female marathoner of all time, and held the Women's World Marathon Record with a time of 2:15:25 for 16 years from 2003 to 2019 when it was broken by Brigid Kosgei.
Go to Profile#31644
Gary Stormo
#31656
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Gary Stormo is an American geneticist and currently Joseph Erlanger Professor in the Department of Genetics and the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis. He is considered one of the pioneers of bioinformatics and genomics. His research combines experimental and computational approaches in order to identify and predict regulatory sequences in DNA and RNA, and their contributions to the regulatory networks that control gene expression.
Go to Profile#31645
Oliver Franks, Baron Franks
#31657
Overall Influence
1905 - 1992 (87 years)
Oliver Shewell Franks, Baron Franks, , was an English civil servant and philosopher who has been described as 'one of the founders of the postwar world'. Franks was involved in Britain's recovery after the Second World War. Knighted in 1946, he was the British Ambassador to the United States of America from 1948 to 1952, during which time he strengthened the relationship between the two countries. He was given a life peerage on 10 May 1962.
Go to Profile#31646
Michael Neumann
#31658
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Michael Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent University in Ontario, Canada. He is the author of What's Left? Radical Politics and the Radical Psyche , The Rule of Law: Politicizing Ethics and The Case Against Israel , and has published papers on utilitarianism and rationality.
Go to Profile#31647
Krzysztof Obłój
#31659
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Krzysztof Obłój is a Polish economist and university teacher, with a broad research area including world economy, institutional environment of business, competition and entrepreneurship. He specializes in organization culture, structure and process, internal organizational analysis and organizational strategy. Obłój is Chair of the Institute for Strategic Management and International Management at the University of Warsaw and Head of the Department of Business Strategy at the Kozminski University in Warsaw.
Go to Profile#31648
Tex Winter
#31660
Overall Influence
1922 - 2018 (96 years)
Morice Fredrick "Tex" Winter was an American basketball coach and innovator of the triangle offense. He was a head coach in college basketball for 30 years before becoming an assistant coach in the National Basketball Association . He was an assistant to Phil Jackson on nine NBA championship teams with the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers. Winter was inducted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011.
Go to Profile#31649
Claudia Neuhauser
#31661
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Claudia Maria Neuhauser is a mathematician whose research focuses on mathematical biology and spatial ecology. She also investigates computational biology and bioinformatics. Neuhauser is currently Interim Vice Chancellor/Vice President for Research at the University of Houston, where she has been employed since 2018.
Go to Profile#31650
Anthony Davis
#31662
Overall Influence
1993 - Present (33 years)
Anthony Marshon Davis Jr. , nicknamed "AD", is an American professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association . He previously played for the New Orleans Pelicans. He plays the power forward and center positions. Davis is an eight-time NBA All-Star and has been named to four All-NBA First Teams and four NBA All-Defensive Teams. In his first season with the Lakers, he won the 2020 NBA Finals. In 2021, he was named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team. Davis is widely regarded as one of the greatest power forwards of all time.
Go to Profile