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
#31701
Ares J. Rosakis
#31713
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Ares J. Rosakis, Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He was also the fifth Director of the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, known as , and formerly known as Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, and was the Otis Booth Leadership Chair, of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science.
Go to Profile#31702
Régis Dericquebourg
#31714
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Régis Dericquebourg is a French sociologist of religions. He wrote his thesis on Jehovah's Witnesses under the direction of Jean Seguy. He holds a doctorate in psychosociology and a postgraduate degree in clinical psychology from the Institute of Paris 7. He is a member of the Group for the Study of Religions and Secularity at the National Center for the Scientific Studies in Paris, and a professor at the Charles de Gaulle University – Lille III. He published five books, many sociological articles in collective books, encyclopedias, and journals and regularly participated in conferences of sociology.
Go to Profile#31703
Oscar Kempthorne
#31715
Overall Influence
1919 - 2000 (81 years)
Oscar Kempthorne was a British statistician and geneticist known for his research on randomization-analysis and the design of experiments, which had wide influence on research in agriculture, genetics, and other areas of science.
Go to Profile#31704
Reiner Pommerin
#31716
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Reiner Pommerin is a German historian specializing in the political and military history of the 18th to 21st centuries. Pommerin was a visiting fellow at Harvard University's Center of European Studies in 1979–80 and is a professor emeritus at the University of Dresden.
Go to Profile#31705
Canelo Álvarez
#31717
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (36 years)
Santos Saúl Álvarez Barragán , known as Canelo Álvarez, is a Mexican professional boxer. He has won multiple world championships in four weight classes from light middleweight to light heavyweight, including unified titles in three of those weight classes and lineal titles in two. Álvarez is the first and only boxer in history to become undisputed champion at super middleweight, having held the WBA , WBC and Ring magazine titles since 2020, and the IBF and WBO titles since 2021.
Go to Profile#31706
Ming C. Lin
#31718
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Ming C. Lin is an American computer scientist and a former chair of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she also holds an endowed faculty position as the Elizabeth Stevinson Iribe Chair of Computer Science. Prior to moving to Maryland in 2018, Lin was the John R. & Louise S. Parker Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Go to Profile#31707
James T. Goodrich
#31719
Overall Influence
1946 - 2020 (74 years)
James Tait Goodrich was an American neurosurgeon. He was the director of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Montefiore Health System and Professor of Clinical Neurological Surgery, Pediatrics, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and gained worldwide recognition for performing multiple successful separations of conjoined twins. He assisted in two craniopagus separations with Dr. Alferayan A in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with the first one done May 5, 2014 and the second one done February 14, 2016 . Both pairs were successfully separated and are do...
Go to Profile#31708
Ray Rice
#31720
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Raymell Mourice Rice is an American former football running back who played for six seasons with the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League . He played college football for the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, receiving first-team All-American honors. He was selected by the Ravens in the second round of the 2008 NFL Draft. During his career, Rice was named to three Pro Bowls and was a member of the team that won Super Bowl XLVII. He is second in franchise rushing yards, rushing attempts, and rushing touchdowns, and is third in the franchise in combined touchdowns.
Go to Profile#31709
Eugene F. Stoermer
#31721
Overall Influence
1934 - 2012 (78 years)
Eugene F. Stoermer was a leading researcher in diatoms, with a special emphasis on freshwater species of the North American Great Lakes. He was a professor of biology at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment.
Go to Profile#31710
Ben Polak
#31722
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Benjamin "Ben" Polak is a British professor of economics and management and former Provost at Yale University. From 1999 to 2001 Polak was the Henry Kohn Associate Professor of Economics and is now the inaugural William C. Brainard Professor of Economics. In January 2013, he became the Provost of Yale University.
Go to Profile#31711
John David Lewis
#31723
Overall Influence
1955 - 2012 (57 years)
John David Lewis was a political scientist, historian and Objectivist scholar who held the post of visiting associate professor in the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Program at Duke University from 2008 to 2012, as well as Associate Professor of Business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lewis was also an Anthem Fellow for Objectivist Scholarship.
Go to Profile#31712
Orshi Drozdik
#31724
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Orshi Drozdik is a feminist visual artist based in New York City. Her work consists of drawings, paintings, photographs, etchings, performances, videos, sculptures, installations, academic writings and fiction, that explore connected themes, sometimes over an extended period. Through her work, organized into several topics, she explores themes that undermine the traditional and erotic representation of women: Individual Mythologies, Adventure in Tecnos Dystopium, and Manufacturing the Self. She is influenced by Valéria Dienes, János Zsilka, Susan Sontag, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Luce Irigaray, Walter Benjamin, and Michel Foucault, among others.
Go to Profile#31713
Bill Woodcock
#31725
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Bill Woodcock is the executive director of Packet Clearing House, the international organization responsible for providing operational support and security to critical Internet infrastructure, including Internet exchange points and the core of the domain name system; the chairman of the Foundation Council of Quad9; the president of WoodyNet; and the CEO of EcoTruc and EcoRace, companies developing electric vehicle technology for work and motorsport. Bill founded one of the earliest Internet service providers, and is best known for his 1989 development of the anycast routing technique that is ...
Go to Profile#31714
Cynthia McClintock
#31726
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Cynthia McClintock is a professor at George Washington University and an author. She serves on the Center for International Policy's board of directors. From 1994–1995 she was the president of the Latin American Studies Association. She is an expert on Peruvian relations with the U.S., Andean affairs, the drug trade, and the Tupac Amaru rebel group.
Go to Profile#31715
Michael N. Hall
#31727
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Michael Nip Hall is an American-Swiss molecular biologist and professor at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, Switzerland. He discovered TOR, a protein central for regulating cell growth. Early life and education Hall was born in Puerto Rico. His parents liked Latin American culture, so they moved to Peru when he was three years old, and then to Venezuela a few years later. When Hall was 13, he went to the United States for boarding school, at St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#31716
Manohar Vartak
#31728
Overall Influence
1926 - 1997 (71 years)
Manohar N. Vartak was a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Statistics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. Professor Vartak was one of founder members of the Department of Mathematics and the head of the department . He was superannuated in 1986. Vartak was specialized in balanced incomplete block designs, graph theory and operations research.
Go to Profile#31717
Nick Clements
#31729
Overall Influence
1940 - 2009 (69 years)
George Nickerson Clements was an American linguist specializing in phonology. Career Clements was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and educated in New Haven, Paris and London. He received his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 1973, defending a thesis on the Ewe language based on a year of field work in Ghana. He was a visiting scientist at M.I.T. and held appointments as professor at Harvard and Cornell before moving to the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris in 1992.
Go to Profile#31718
Dan Petrescu
#31730
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Daniel Vasile Petrescu is a Romanian football manager and former player, who is in charge of K League 1 club Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors. As a player, Petrescu was deployed as a full-back or a winger and represented Premier League teams Sheffield Wednesday, Chelsea, Bradford City and Southampton. He notably played in the 1989 European Cup final with Steaua București and won the 1998 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup with Chelsea. Petrescu also played in Serie A with Genoa, as well as having spells with Foggia and Olt Scornicești. He earned 95 caps for the Romania national team, being selected in two World Cu...
Go to Profile#31719
Don Siegel
#31731
Overall Influence
1912 - 1991 (79 years)
Donald Siegel was an American film and television director and producer. Siegel was described by The New York Times as "a director of tough, cynical and forthright action-adventure films whose taut plots centered on individualistic loners". He directed the science-fiction horror film Invasion of the Body Snatchers , as well as five films with Clint Eastwood, including the police thriller Dirty Harry and the prison drama Escape from Alcatraz . He also directed John Wayne's final film, the Western The Shootist .
Go to Profile#31720
Ansam Sawalha
#31732
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Ansam Sawalha , who is the Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy at An-Najah National University, is the first Palestinian woman named to the Women in Science Hall of Fame. Sawalha was honored for her achievement of establishing the first Poison Control and Drug Information Center in Palestine in 2006.
Go to Profile#31721
Antoine Walker
#31733
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Antoine Devon Walker is an American former professional basketball player. He was drafted with the sixth overall pick in the 1996 NBA draft out of the University of Kentucky and played in the NBA from 1996 to 2008. Walker played for the Boston Celtics, Dallas Mavericks, Atlanta Hawks, Miami Heat, Minnesota Timberwolves, the BSN's Mets de Guaynabo and the NBA D-League's Idaho Stampede before retiring from basketball in 2012. Walker, a three-time NBA All-Star, won an NCAA championship with Kentucky in 1996 and an NBA championship with the Heat in 2006.
Go to Profile#31722
Mafizuddin Ahmed
#31734
Overall Influence
1921 - 1997 (76 years)
Mafizuddin Ahmed was a Bangladeshi educationist and scientist. He served as the first vice-chancellor of Jahangirnagar University. He was a founding fellow of the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences. Early life and education Ahmed completed his bachelor's and master's in Chemistry from the University of Dhaka in 1942 and 1944 respectively. He earned his Ph.D. degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1948.
Go to Profile#31723
John Dobson
#31735
Overall Influence
1915 - 2014 (99 years)
John Lowry Dobson was an American amateur astronomer and is best known for the Dobsonian telescope, a portable, low-cost Newtonian reflector telescope. He was also known for his efforts to promote awareness of astronomy through public lectures including his performances of "sidewalk astronomy". Dobson was also the co-founder of the amateur astronomical group, the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers.
Go to Profile#31724
John M. Hull
#31736
Overall Influence
1935 - 2015 (80 years)
John Martin Hull was Emeritus Professor of Religious Education at the University of Birmingham. He was the author of a number of books and many articles in the fields of religious education, practical theology and disability. The latter interest arose from his experiences, and personal and theological reflections, on becoming blind in mid-career. He edited the British Journal of Religious Education for 25 years, and co-founded the International Seminar on Religious Education and Values, of which he was general secretary for 32 years, and president emeritus at the time of his death. After reti...
Go to Profile#31725
Helen Hunt
#31737
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Helen Elizabeth Hunt is an American actress and director. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, four Primetime Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. Hunt rose to fame in 1992, portraying Jamie Buchman in the sitcom Mad About You which earned her three Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress and four Primetime Emmy Awards for Lead Actress.
Go to Profile#31726
Torry Holt
#31738
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Torry Jabar Holt is an American former football wide receiver who played in the National Football League for eleven seasons. He was named to the Pro Bowl seven times and retired with the 10th most receiving yards, including a record six consecutive seasons with 1,300 yards. He played college football for the NC State Wolfpack, and earned consensus All-American honors. He was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in the first round of the 1999 NFL Draft, and spent the next ten years with the Rams and is remembered as one of the members of "The Greatest Show on Turf".
Go to Profile#31727
James Brander
#31739
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
James Alan Brander is a Canadian economist and a professor of Asia-Pacific International Trade, University of British Columbia. He is known as co-author of a seminal 1986 article in The American Economic Review, with Tracy R. Lewis, on "Oligopoly and Financial Structure: The Limited Liability Effect", as well as his work in international trade with Barbara Spencer, particularly the Brander–Spencer model, in which a government can enhance national welfare by subsidizing domestic firms to aid in their competition against foreign markets
Go to Profile#31728
Igor Stechkin
#31740
Overall Influence
1922 - 2001 (79 years)
Igor Yakovlevich Stechkin was a Russian small arms designer. Designs Stechkin automatic pistol, 9mm machine pistolTKB-506, prototype handgun designed to look like a cigarette lighterTKB-486, a prototype submachine gun in 9×18mmTKB-0116, prototype compact assault rifle, lost design competition to AKS74UTKB-0146, prototype assault rifle entered in Project Abakan, but lost to AN-94OC-01 Kobalt, double-action 9 mm revolverOC-23 Drotik, 5.45 mm machine pistolOC-27 Berdysh, 9 mm semi-automatic pistolOC-33 Pernach, 9 mm machine pistolOC-38 Stechkin silent revolver
Go to Profile#31729
Stanford J. Shaw
#31741
Overall Influence
1930 - 2006 (76 years)
Stanford Jay Shaw was an American historian, best known for his works on the late Ottoman Empire, Turkish Jews, and the early Turkish Republic. Shaw's works have been criticized for their lack of factual accuracy as well as denial of the Armenian genocide, and other pro-Turkish bias.
Go to Profile#31730
Meena Dhanda
#31742
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Dr. Meena Dhanda is an Indian philosopher and writer, based in the United Kingdom. She is a Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Politics at the University of Wolverhampton, and is internationally recognised as a leading academic in the development of diaspora dalit studies. She conducts philosophy with a 'practical intent', and her work has confirmed existence of caste discrimination in Britain in areas covered by the Equality Act 2010, and pushed for more legal protections against caste-based discrimination.
Go to Profile#31731
Sidney S. Alexander
#31743
Overall Influence
1916 - 2005 (89 years)
Sidney Stuart Alexander was an American economist who was associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alexander graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1936. Continuing at Harvard University, he received a master's degree in 1938 and a doctorate in 1946.
Go to Profile#31732
Benicio del Toro
#31744
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sánchez is a Puerto Rican actor. He has garnered critical acclaim and numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, and a Silver Bear for his portrayal of the jaded but morally upright police officer Javier Rodriguez in the film Traffic . Del Toro's performance as an ex-con turned zealot in despair Jack Jordan, in Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams , earned him a second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Go to Profile#31733
Harvey J. Graff
#31745
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
#31734
Fernando Novas
#31746
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Fernando Emilio Novas is an Argentine paleontologist working for the Comparative Anatomy Department of the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Novas holds a PhD in Natural sciences.
Go to Profile#31735
Kurmanbek Bakiyev
#31747
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Kurmanbek Saliyevich Bakiyev is a Kyrgyz politician who served as the second president of Kyrgyzstan, from 2005 to 2010. Large opposition protests in April 2010 led to the takeover of government offices, forcing Bakiyev to flee the country.
Go to Profile#31736
Michael Kamen
#31748
Overall Influence
1948 - 2003 (55 years)
Michael Arnold Kamen was an American composer , orchestral arranger, orchestral conductor, songwriter, record producer and musician. Biography Early life Michael Arnold Kamen was born in New York City, the second of four sons. His father, Saul Kamen, was a dentist, and his mother, Helen, was a teacher. He was of Jewish heritage.
Go to Profile#31737
Michael J. Bronson
#31749
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Michael J. Bronson, M.D., is an American orthopaedic surgeon, Chairman of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai Morningside, and Chief of Joint Replacement Surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, and the author of extensive advances in the development of minimally invasive surgical instruments to advance unicondylar partial knee replacement, including the Vision Total Hip System, a widely used hip replacement system that avoids the use of cement.
Go to Profile#31738
Barbara Jaruzelska
#31750
Overall Influence
1931 - 2017 (86 years)
Halina Barbara Jaruzelska was a Polish academic, philologist, and professor of German studies and language. Jaruzelska was the First Lady of Poland from 1985 to 1990 during the government of her husband, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the President of the Polish People's Republic and the President of the Republic of Poland . Professionally, Jaruzelska worked as a lecturer and German philology professor at the Institute of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warsaw.
Go to Profile#31739
Austin Woolrych
#31751
Overall Influence
1918 - 2004 (86 years)
Austin Herbert Woolrych was an English historian, a specialist in the period of the English Civil War. Early life and education Austin Woolrych was born in Marylebone, London, the son of Stanley Herbert Cunliffe Woolrych and May Gertrude Woolrych, née Wood. His father was a distinguished British Army intelligence officer during the First World War who became a businessman. Woolrych was descended from an old Shropshire gentry family, and was related to Sir Thomas Wolryche, 1st Baronet, Royalist governor of Bridgnorth during the English Civil War.
Go to Profile#31740
Charles Saumarez Smith
#31752
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Sir Charles Robert Saumarez Smith is a British cultural historian specialising in the history of art, design and architecture. He was the Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts in London from 2007 until he stepped down in 2018. He was replaced by Axel Rϋger, who took up the position in 2019.
Go to Profile#31741
Steve Hillage
#31753
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Stephen Simpson Hillage is an English musician, best known as a guitarist. He is associated with the Canterbury scene and has worked in experimental domains since the late 1960s. Besides his solo recordings he has been a member of Khan, Gong and System 7.
Go to Profile#31742
Jan Bondeson
#31754
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Jan Bondeson is a Swedish-British rheumatologist, scientist and author, working as a senior lecturer and consultant rheumatologist at the Cardiff University School of Medicine. He has also written non-fiction on topics such as medical anomalies and unsolved murders. In 2003 he told an interviewer, "I've always had a profound interest in history, especially the history of medicine, and a bit of a fancy for the macabre and odd." Bondeson is the biographer of a predecessor of Jack the Ripper, the London Monster, who stabbed 50 women in the buttocks, of Edward "the Boy" Jones, who stalked Queen V...
Go to Profile#31743
J. Paul Reddam
#31755
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
John Paul Reddam is a Canadian businessman, Thoroughbred racehorse owner and a former professor of philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles. Biography Career Known by his middle name, J. Paul Reddam was born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and graduated from the University of Windsor with a bachelor's degree in psychology. He then obtained a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Toronto. In 1979, he moved to California to earn his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California and made his home in the state. Reddam wrote his Ph.D. dissertation, entitled "Pragmatics ...
Go to Profile#31744
Tang Aoqing
#31756
Overall Influence
1915 - 2008 (93 years)
Tang Aoqing , or Au-Chin Tang, was a Chinese theoretical chemist and educator, known as the "Father of Quantum Chemistry" in China. He established the Department of Chemistry of Jilin University, and served as President of the university from 1978 to 1986. He was a founding member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science . He established the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 1986 and served as its first president.
Go to Profile#31745
Herbert G. Baker
#31757
Overall Influence
1920 - 2001 (81 years)
Herbert George Baker was a British-American botanist and evolutionary ecologist who was an authority on pollination biology and breeding systems of angiosperms. He described what became known as "Baker's rule," a theoretical proposal underpinning an empirical observation that the ability to self-fertilize improves colonization ability among plants by increasing the probability of successful establishment after long-distance dispersal. He collaborated with his wife, Irene Baker, studying the content and function of nectar, and undertaking research and publishing papers on its evolutionary and ...
Go to Profile#31746
Michael Keane
#31758
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Michael Patrick Keane is an American-born economist; he is the Wm. Polk Carey Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University. Keane was previously a professor at the University of New South Wales and the Nuffield Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford. He is considered one of the world's leading experts in the fields of Choice Modelling, structural modelling, simulation estimation, and panel data econometrics.
Go to Profile#31747
Emilio Pucci
#31759
Overall Influence
1914 - 1992 (78 years)
Don Emilio Pucci, Marchese di Barsento was an Italian aristocrat, fashion designer and politician. He and his eponymous company are synonymous with geometric prints in a kaleidoscope of colors. Early life Pucci was born in Naples in 1914 to one of Florence's oldest noble families, and he lived and worked in the Pucci Palace in Florence for much of his life. He was a keen sportsman who swam, skied, fenced, played tennis and raced cars.
Go to Profile#31748
Nick Enright
#31760
Overall Influence
1950 - 2003 (53 years)
Nicholas Paul Enright AM was an Australian dramatist, playwright and theatre director. Early life Enright was born on 22 December 1950 to a prosperous professional Catholic family in East Maitland, New South Wales. He was drama captain of St Ignatius' College, Riverview in Sydney in 1964, where, like Gerard Windsor and Justin Fleming, he was taught by Melvyn Morrow. At that school, he won the 1sts Debating Premiership in both 1966 and 1967.
Go to Profile#31749
Trevor Hoffman
#31761
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Trevor William Hoffman is an American former professional baseball relief pitcher who played 18 years in Major League Baseball from 1993 to 2010. A long-time closer, he pitched for the Florida Marlins, San Diego Padres, and Milwaukee Brewers, including more than 15 years for the Padres. Hoffman was the major leagues' first player to reach the 500- and 600-save milestones, and was the all-time saves leader from 2006 until 2011. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2018. Hoffman currently serves as senior advisor for baseball operations for the Padres.
Go to Profile#31750
Henry Ashby Turner
#31762
Overall Influence
1932 - 2008 (76 years)
Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. was an American historian of Germany who was a professor at Yale University for over forty years. He is best known for his book German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler in which he challenged the common theory that industrialists in Germany were the Nazi Party’s most influential supporters.
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