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
#31851
Mat Johnson
#31863
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Mat Johnson is an American fiction writer who works in both prose and the comics format. In 2007, he was named the first USA James Baldwin Fellow by United States Artists. Life and career Johnson was born and raised in the Germantown and Mount Airy communities in Philadelphia.
Go to Profile#31852
Eduardo Mendieta
#31864
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Eduardo Mendieta is a Colombian-born Professor of Philosophy at Penn State University, and former acting director of the Rock Ethics Institute. Mendieta's research focuses on Ethics, Political Philosophy, Latinx philosophy, Latin American Philosophy, Critical Theory , Philosophy of Race, and Feminist Philosophy.
Go to Profile#31853
Marc Kuchner
#31865
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Marc Kuchner is an American astrophysicist, a staff member at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center known for work on images and imaging of disks and exoplanets. Together with Wesley Traub, he invented the band-limited coronagraph, a design for the proposed Terrestrial Planet Finder telescope, also to be used on the James Webb Space Telescope . He is also known for his novel supercomputer models of planet-disk interactions and for developing the ideas of ocean planets, carbon planets, and helium planets. Kuchner appears as an expert commentator in the National Geographic television show "Alien Earths" and frequently answers the "Ask Astro" questions in Astronomy Magazine.
Go to Profile#31854
John Charmley
#31866
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
John Denis Charmley is a British academic and diplomatic historian. Since 2002 he has held various posts at the University of East Anglia: initially as Head of the School of History, then as the Head of the School of Music and most recently as the Head of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Humanities. Since 2016 he has been Pro-Vice Chancellor for Academic strategy at St Mary's University, Twickenham. In this role he has been responsible for initiating the University's Foundation Year Programme, reflecting Professor Charmley's commitment to widening educational access.
Go to Profile#31855
Redmond A. Simonsen
#31867
Overall Influence
1942 - 2005 (63 years)
Redmond Aksel Simonsen was an American graphic artist and game designer best known for his work at the board wargame company Simulations Publications, Inc. in the 1970s and early 1980s. Simonsen was considered an innovator in game information graphics, and is credited with creating the term "game designer".
Go to Profile#31856
David Walls
#31868
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
David Walls is an activist and academic who has made significant contributions to Appalachian studies and to the popular understanding of social movements. He is professor emeritus of sociology at Sonoma State University in California, where he was dean of extended education from 1984 to 2000.
Go to Profile#31857
Muhammad Farooq
#31869
Overall Influence
Muhammad Farooq is a journalist, Qari, Naat Khawan and newscaster from Pakistan. He also worked as Joint Executive Editor Daily Mashriq Quetta. Nowadays, he is working in Daily Pakistan Lahore as a News Editor. He also had worked for Pakistan Television Corporation and Radio Pakistan.
Go to Profile#31858
L. K. Doraiswamy
#31870
Overall Influence
1927 - 2012 (85 years)
Laxmangudi Krishnamurthy Doraiswamy was an Indian-American chemical engineer, author and academic, known for his contributions in developing Organic synthesis engineering as a modern science discipline. Chemical Engineering journal of McGraw Hill listed him among the 10 most distinguished chemical engineers in the world in 1988. He was the author of nine texts in chemical engineering, including Organic Synthesis Engineering, a 2001 publication which is known to have introduced the topic as a definitive scientific stream and Heterogeneous reactions: Analysis, Examples, and Reactor Design, repo...
Go to Profile#31859
Richard M. Friedberg
#31871
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Richard M. Friedberg is a theoretical physicist who has contributed to a wide variety of problems in mathematics and physics. These include mathematical logic, number theory, solid state physics, general relativity, particle physics, quantum optics, genome research, and the foundations of quantum physics.
Go to Profile#31860
Gennaro Chierchia
#31872
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Gennaro Chierchia is an Italian linguist and educator. Chierchia is currently the Haas Foundation Professor of Linguistics and Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. His work and study focus on areas including semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, and language pathology.
Go to Profile#31861
Satoko Shinohara
#31873
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Satoko Shinohara is a Japanese architect, architectural educator, and architectural researcher. She became the president of Japan Women's University in 2020. She presides over Spatial Design Studio and is a published author and editor. In a career that has addressed daily life, housing, and relationships, one of Shinohara's key design tenets is that housing is inherently a social space—one that can cultivate relationships among people, place, and the environment.
Go to Profile#31862
Ismail Poonawala
#31874
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Ismail Kurban Husein Poonawala is an Indian professor of Arabic at the University of California, Los Angeles , Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures of over 30 years. Poonawala was born in 1937 in Godhra, India. He is a specialist in Ismaili studies. Professor Poonawala's formal education includes M.A.s from University of Mumbai and Cairo along with a Ph.D. from UCLA.
Go to Profile#31863
Barbara Eden
#31875
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Barbara Eden is an American actress best known for her starring role as Jeannie in the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie . Her other notable roles include Roslyn Pierce opposite Elvis Presley in Flaming Star , Lieutenant jg Cathy Connors in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea , and a single widowed mother, Stella Johnson, in the film Harper Valley PTA . Due to the success of the film, Eden reprised her role as Stella Johnson in a two-season television series, Harper Valley PTA.
Go to Profile#31864
Basil Mitchell
#31876
Overall Influence
1917 - 2011 (94 years)
Basil George Mitchell was an English philosopher and at one time Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at the University of Oxford. Mitchell argued for the place of religious belief in public debate and criticized liberal humanism.
Go to Profile#31865
Jarome Iginla
#31877
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Jarome Arthur-Leigh Adekunle Tig Junior Elvis Iginla is a Canadian former professional ice hockey winger. He played over 1,500 games in the National Hockey League for the Calgary Flames, Pittsburgh Penguins, Boston Bruins, Colorado Avalanche, and Los Angeles Kings between 1996 and 2017. He is widely regarded as one of the best players of his generation.
Go to Profile#31866
David Carrier
#31878
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
David Carrier is an American philosopher of art and cultural critic. Education Carrier received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University, where he was a student of Arthur Danto, in 1972. He was a Getty Scholar , a Clark Fellow , a Senior Fellow, National Humanities Center, 2006–2007 and holder of the Fulbright-Luce Lectureship, Spring 2009.
Go to Profile#31867
John Skehel
#31879
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Sir John James Skehel, is a British virologist and Emeritus scientist at the Francis Crick Institute in London. From 1987 to 2006 he was director of the National Institute of Medical Research at Mill Hill which was incorporated into the Crick Institute in 2016.
Go to Profile#31868
Jackson Crawford
#31880
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Jackson W. Crawford is an American scholar, translator and poet who specializes in Old Norse. He previously taught at University of Colorado, Boulder , University of California, Berkeley and University of California, Los Angeles . Crawford has a YouTube channel focused on Old Norse language, literature and mythology.
Go to Profile#31869
Catherine Elgin
#31881
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Catherine Z. Elgin is a philosopher working in epistemology and the philosophies of art and science. She is currently a professor of philosophy of education at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#31870
Djairo Guedes de Figueiredo
#31882
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Djairo Guedes de Figueiredo is a Brazilian mathematician noted for his researches on differential equations, elliptic operators, and calculus of variations. He is considered the greatest analyst from Brazil. He was the president of the Brazilian Mathematical Society from 1977 to 1979.
Go to Profile#31871
Robin Burgess
#31883
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Robin Burgess , is a Professor of Economics, Co-founder and Director of the International Growth Centre, as well as Co-Founder and Director of the Economics of Energy and the Environment program at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Go to Profile#31872
Hussein Zedan
#31884
Overall Influence
1953 - 2019 (66 years)
Hussein S. M. Zedan was a computer scientist of Egyptian descent, mainly based in the United Kingdom. Hussein Zedan was born in 1953. He received his PhD degree in 1981 at the University of Bristol, studying under John Derwent Pryce and Hubert Schwetlick for a thesis entitled Modified Rosenbrock-Wanner methods for solving systems of stiff ordinary differential equations.
Go to Profile#31873
Robert J. Matthews
#31885
Overall Influence
1926 - 2009 (83 years)
Robert James Matthews was a Latter-day Saint religious educator and scholar, teaching in the departments of Ancient Scripture and Religious Education at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Beginning with personal contacts early in his career, Matthews was instrumental in conciliating relations between religious scholars affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints , which had separated in a schism in the 1840s. The two religious communities and their scholars had long been at odds over access to and interpretation of important early texts of the Latter Day Saint movement.
Go to Profile#31874
Manuel Pérez García
#31886
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Manuel Pérez García is associate professor at the Department of History of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He is also Distinguished Researcher at Pablo de Olavide University of Seville . From 2013 to 2017 he was associate professor at the School of International Studies, Renmin University of China.
Go to Profile#31875
Leo Villareal
#31887
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Leo Villareal is an American artist. His work combines LED lights and encoded computer programming to create illuminated displays. He is living and working in New York City. Early life and education Villareal was born in 1967 in Albuquerque, New Mexico and raised in El Paso on both sides of the border. He graduated from Portsmouth Abbey School in 1986. He received a BA degree in Sculpture from Yale University in 1990 and a graduate degree from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, in the Interactive Telecommunications Program .
Go to Profile#31876
Joseph L. Melnick
#31888
Overall Influence
1914 - 2001 (87 years)
Joseph Louis Melnick was an American epidemiologist who performed breakthrough research on the spread of polio. The New York Times called him "a founder of modern virology". Early life and education Melnick was born on October 9, 1914, in Boston and moved with his family to New Haven, Connecticut, when he was seven years old. He earned his undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University in 1936 and was awarded a Ph.D. in physiological chemistry from Yale University. He became a member of the Yale faculty under John R. Paul, and was named a professor of epidemiology in 1954.
Go to Profile#31877
Dario Gradi
#31889
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Dario Gradi is an Italian-English former amateur football player, coach and manager. He was associated for more than 36 years with Crewe Alexandra, where he was variously manager, director of football and director of the Academy, until October 2019.
Go to Profile#31878
Martin Carver
#31890
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Martin Oswald Hugh Carver, FSA, Hon FSA Scot, is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of York, England, director of the Sutton Hoo Research Project and a leading exponent of new methods in excavation and survey. He specialises in the archaeology of early Medieval Europe. He has an international reputation for his excavations at Sutton Hoo, on behalf of the British Museum and the Society of Antiquaries and at the Pictish monastery at Portmahomack Tarbat, Easter Ross, Scotland. He has undertaken archaeological research in England, Scotland, France, Italy and Algeria.
Go to Profile#31879
Bill Nelson
#31891
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Clarence William Nelson II is an American politician and attorney serving as the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration . Nelson previously served as a United States senator from Florida from 2001 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served in the Florida House of Representatives from 1972 to 1978 and in the United States House of Representatives from 1979 to 1991. In January 1986, Nelson became the second sitting member of U.S. Congress to fly in space, after Senator Jake Garn, when he served as a payload specialist on mission STS-61-C aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia.
Go to Profile#31880
Billy Cobham
#31892
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
William Emanuel Cobham Jr. is a Panamanian–American jazz drummer who came to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s with trumpeter Miles Davis and then with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Classic Drummer Hall of Fame in 2013. AllMusic biographer Steve Huey said, "Generally acclaimed as fusion's greatest drummer, Billy Cobham's explosive technique powered some of the genre's most important early recordings – including groundbreaking efforts by Miles Davis and the Mahavishnu Orchestra – before he became an accomplished bandleader in his own right.
Go to Profile#31881
Arthur Seale
#31893
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Arthur Seale , of Hillside, New Jersey, and his wife Irene were responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Sidney Reso, the Vice President of International Operations for Exxon on April 29, 1992, in Morris Township, New Jersey. The case garnered national notoriety.
Go to Profile#31882
Julie Theriot
#31894
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Julie A. Theriot is a microbiologist, professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and heads the Theriot Lab. She was a Predoctoral Fellow and Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She was a fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.
Go to Profile#31883
José Oubrerie
#31895
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
José R. Oubrerie is a French architect, educator, and author. He was a protégé of Le Corbusier. Education Oubrerie studied painting at the Ecole des Beux-Arts in Nantes, and architecture at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts , in Paris, France. Since 1970, Oubrerie is registered in the Ordre des Architect, Paris, France, and an American Institute of Architects honorary member.
Go to Profile#31884
Catia Faria
#31896
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Catia Faria is a Portuguese moral philosopher and activist for animal rights and feminism. She is assistant professor in Applied Ethics at the Complutense University of Madrid, and is a board member of the UPF-Centre for Animal Ethics. Faria specialises in normative and applied ethics, especially focusing on how they apply to the moral consideration of non-human animals. In 2022, she published her first book, Animal Ethics in the Wild: Wild Animal Suffering and Intervention in Nature.
Go to Profile#31885
Ann Masten
#31897
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Ann S. Masten is a professor at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota known for her research on the development of resilience and for advancing theory on the positive outcomes of children and families facing adversity. Masten received the American Psychological Association Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contributions to the Service of Science and Society in 2014. She has served as president of the Society for Research in Child Development and of Division 7 of the American Psychological Association.
Go to Profile#31886
James L. Fitzgerald
#31898
Overall Influence
James L. Fitzgerald is an Indologist at Brown University. He studied at the University of Chicago, receiving his B.A. in 1971, his M.A. in Sanskrit in 1974 and his Ph.D. in Sanskrit and South Asian Civilizations in 1980. At Chicago he studied primarily with J. A. B. van Buitenen. From 1978 Fitzgerald joined the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee. In 2007 he was appointed Purandara Das Distinguished Professor of Sanskrit in the Department of Classics, Brown University.
Go to Profile#31887
Alexander Kapp
#31899
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Alexander Kapp is a German dermatologist and allergist. He was chairman and medical director of the department of dermatology and allergy at the Hannover Medical School until his retirement in 2022. He is known for his work in the field of pathophysiology of inflammatory skin diseases , his research on neuro-immunological interactions in allergic inflammation and on the role of eosinophilic granulocytes in allergy and dermatology.
Go to Profile#31888
Alan Lindsay Mackay
#31900
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Alan Lindsay Mackay FRS is a British crystallographer, born in Wolverhampton. Mackay was educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School, Oundle School, Trinity College, Cambridge, and the University of London, where he received his doctorate. He spent his scientific career at Birkbeck College, founded by George Birkbeck, one of the Colleges of the University of London, where he was immersed in a liberal scientific atmosphere under the leadership of John Desmond Bernal.
Go to Profile#31889
Ana Lucia Araujo
#31901
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Ana Lucia Araujo is an American historian, art historian, author, and professor of history at Howard University. She is a member of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Slave Route Project. Her scholarship focuses on the transnational history, public memory, visual culture, and heritage of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade.
Go to Profile#31890
Peter Green
#31902
Overall Influence
1946 - 2020 (74 years)
Peter Allen Greenbaum , known professionally as Peter Green, was an English blues rock singer-songwriter and guitarist. As the founder of Fleetwood Mac, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Green founded Fleetwood Mac in 1967 after a stint in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and quickly established the new band as a popular live act in addition to a successful recording act, before departing in 1970. Green's songs, such as "Albatross", "Black Magic Woman", "Oh Well", "The Green Manalishi " and "Man of the World", appeared on singles charts, and several have been adapted by a...
Go to Profile#31891
Anantha P. Chandrakasan
#31903
Overall Influence
Anantha P. Chandrakasan is the dean of the School of Engineering and Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is chair of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium and MIT AI Hardware Program, and co-chair the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab, the MIT–Takeda Program, and the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology.
Go to Profile#31892
Todd K. Shackelford
#31904
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Todd Kennedy Shackelford is an American psychologist and professor at Oakland University. He is best known for his work in evolutionary psychology. He is the editor in chief of the academic journals Evolutionary Psychology and Evolutionary Psychological Science. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science.
Go to Profile#31893
Constantine A. Balanis
#31905
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Constantine A. Balanis is a Greek-born American scientist, educator, author, and Regents Professor at Arizona State University. Born in Trikala, Greece on October 29, 1938. He is best known for his books in the fields of engineering electromagnetics and antenna theory. He emigrated to the United States in 1955, where he studied electrical engineering. He received United States citizenship in 1960.
Go to Profile#31894
Oscar Lanford
#31906
Overall Influence
1940 - 2013 (73 years)
Oscar Erasmus Lanford III was an American mathematician working on mathematical physics and dynamical systems theory. Professional career Born in New York, Lanford was awarded his undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University and the Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1966 under the supervision of Arthur Wightman. He has served as a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a professor of physics at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in Bures-sur-Yvette, France . Since 1987, he was with the department of mathematics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich till his retirement.
Go to Profile#31895
Susan L. Feagin
#31907
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Susan L. Feagin is a philosopher of art, working in the analytic tradition. She is a Past President of the American Society for Aesthetics and Visiting Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Temple University. She is known primarily for her work on the role of emotions in art.
Go to Profile#31896
Rudolf Hoppe
#31908
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Rudolf Hoppe , a German chemist, discovered the first covalent noble gas compounds. Academic career Hoppe studied chemistry at the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel and was awarded his doctorate at the Westfälische Wilhelms-University of Münster in 1954. He also got his habilitation degree in Münster and gained a professorship for inorganic chemistry in 1958. In 1965, Hoppe accepted an offer for the chair of inorganic and analytic chemistry at the Justus-Liebig-University of Gießen, which he kept until his retirement in 1991.
Go to Profile#31897
Yu Darvish
#31909
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
, more commonly known as Yu Darvish , is a Japanese professional baseball pitcher for the San Diego Padres of Major League Baseball . Darvish has also played in MLB for the Texas Rangers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Chicago Cubs and in Nippon Professional Baseball for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters. In international play, Darvish pitched in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2009 World Baseball Classic as a member of the Japanese national team.
Go to Profile#31898
Andrei Bolibrukh
#31910
Overall Influence
1950 - 2003 (53 years)
Andrei Andreevich Bolibrukh was a Soviet and Russian mathematician. He was known for his work on ordinary differential equations especially Hilbert's twenty-first problem . Bolibrukh was the author of about a hundred research articles on theory of ordinary differential equations including Riemann–Hilbert problem and Fuchsian system.
Go to Profile#31899
A. C. Graham
#31911
Overall Influence
1919 - 1991 (72 years)
Angus Charles Graham, FBA was a Welsh scholar and sinologist who was professor of classical Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He was born in Penarth, Glamorgan, Wales to Charles Harold and Mabelle Graham, the elder of two children. His father was originally a coal merchant who moved to Malaya to start a rubber plantation, and died in 1928 of malaria. Graham attended Ellesmore College, Shropshire, 1932–1937, and went on to read Theology at Corpus Christi College, Oxford , and Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies , University of London .
Go to Profile#31900
Yonggang Huang
#31912
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Yonggang Huang is the Jan and Marcia Achenbach Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University. Huang was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2017, a member of National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020, and a foreign member of Royal Society, London in 2023 for pioneering work on mechanics of stretchable electronics and mechanically guided, deterministic 3-D assembly.
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