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
#32301
Masaru Kaneko
#32313
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Masaru Kaneko is a Japanese Marxian economist specializing in Institutional economics, public finance and local government finance. He is best known for appearance in TV shows such as Sunday Morning or Asamade nama terebi and authoring several books and newspaper articles. Since 2000, he has been a professor at Keio University.
Go to Profile#32302
Maqbool Dada
#32314
Overall Influence
Maqbool Dada is a professor at Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University, with expertise in the areas of operations management, healthcare, and marketing. He is also a core faculty member at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine’s Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality.
Go to Profile#32303
Walter Veltroni
#32315
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Walter Veltroni is an Italian writer, film director, journalist, and politician, who served as the first leader of the Democratic Party within the centre-left opposition, until his resignation on 17 February 2009. He served as Mayor of Rome from June 2001 to February 2008.
Go to Profile#32304
Henry Sherwood Lawrence
#32316
Overall Influence
1916 - 2004 (88 years)
Henry Sherwood Lawrence was an American immunologist best known for his discovery of transfer factors in 1949. He is also known for being one of founders of the new branch of biology that explores the function of lymphocytes. Lawrence was the head of the department of infectious diseases and immunology at New York University, co-director of medical services at Bellevue and New York University Hospitals, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, director of New York University's cancer center, the founding editor of the journal Cellular Immunology, director of New York University's AIDS research center.
Go to Profile#32305
Colin Gunton
#32317
Overall Influence
1941 - 2003 (62 years)
Colin Ewart Gunton was an English Reformed systematic theologian. He made contributions to the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of the Trinity. He was Professor of Christian Doctrine at King's College, London, from 1984 and co-founder with Christoph Schwoebel of the Research Institute for Systematic Theology in 1988. Gunton was actively involved in the United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom where he had been a minister since 1972.
Go to Profile#32306
George Bermann
#32318
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
George Bermann is an American lawyer and scholar of international law. He is the Walter Gelhorn Professor of Law, the Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Law, the Director of the Center for International Commercial and Investment Arbitration Law, and the Co-Director of the European Legal Studies Center at Columbia Law School, as well as a permanent faculty member of the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris, France, and the Collège d'Europe in Bruges, Belgium. Previously, he held the Tocqueville-Fulbright Distinguished Professorship at the University of Paris I .
Go to Profile#32307
Pierre Pansu
#32319
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Pierre Pansu is a French mathematician and a member of the Arthur Besse group and a close collaborator of Mikhail Gromov. He is a professor at the Université Paris-Sud 11 and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. His main research field is geometry. His contribution to mathematics was celebrated by a double event co-organized for his 60th birthday by the Clay Mathematics Institute.
Go to Profile#32308
Ettore Paratore
#32320
Overall Influence
1907 - 2000 (93 years)
Ettore Paratore was an Italian Latinist and academic. Paratore was born in Chieti, Italy; his father was a doctor and science teacher, while his mother was a professor. He completed his studies in literatures at the University of Palermo in 1927. He later became a professor of Latin literature at the University of Catania. After moving to Rome, he started teaching Greek and Latin grammar at the Sapienza University of Rome.
Go to Profile#32309
Lily Eskelsen García
#32321
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Lily Eskelsen García is an American teacher and labor union leader. She served as president of the National Education Association from 2014 to 2020. Early life and education Lily Eskelsen García was born Lilia Laura Pace on May 1, 1955, in Fort Hood, Texas. Her father was in the United States Army. Her mother is from Panama.
Go to Profile#32310
Salvatore Lupo
#32322
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Salvatore Lupo is an Italian historian and author from Siena, specializing in the Sicilian Mafia. Lupo is a professor of contemporary history at the University of Palermo, previously professor of contemporary history at the University of Catania. He is the president of the Southern Institute of History and Social Sciences of Catania and deputy director of the quarterly magazine of the institute, Meridiana, of which he was one of the founders. He is a member of the editorial board of "Storica".
Go to Profile#32311
Peggy Sullivan
#32323
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Peggy Sullivan was an American librarian and educator. She was elected president of the American Library Association and was a scholar of the history of librarianship. Biography Throughout her career, Sullivan served as:Dean, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Dominican University , River Forest, Illinois Executive director, American Library Association, Chicago, Illinois Director and professor, University Libraries, Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, Illinois Dean and professor, College of Professional Studies, Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, Illinois Assistant...
Go to Profile#32312
Francis F. Chen
#32324
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Francis F. Chen is a Chinese-born American plasma physicist. Early life and education On November 18, 1929, Chen was born in Guangdong province, China. Chen studied at Harvard University, where he received his bachelor's degree in astronomy in 1950, a master's degree in physics in 1953, and his doctorate in 1954. At that time he worked on high-energy physics .
Go to Profile#32313
Tom Lord-Alge
#32325
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Tom Lord-Alge is an American music engineer and mixer. He began his career at Unique Recording in New York. Subsequently, he was the resident mixer at what used to be known as "South Beach Studios", located on the ground floor of the Marlin Hotel.
Go to Profile#32314
Jacky Ickx
#32326
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Jacques Bernard Edmon Martin Henry "Jacky" Ickx is a Belgian former racing driver who won the 24 Hours of Le Mans six times and achieved eight wins and 25 podium finishes in Formula One. He greatly contributed to several World Championships for Makes and World Sports Car championships: Ford , Ferrari , Porsche and by his 37 major World Sports Car wins. He also won the Can-Am Championship in 1979 and the 1983 Paris–Dakar Rally.
Go to Profile#32315
Paul Chien
#32327
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Paul Kwan Chien is a Chinese-American biologist known for his research on the physiology and ecology of intertidal organisms and his support for intelligent design. Biography Chien was born on 1 January 1947 in Hong Kong and earned bachelor's degrees in Biology and Chemistry from Chung Chi College of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1966 and his Ph.D. in 1971 from the University of California at Irvine in the laboratory of marine invertebrate physiologist, Grover C. Stephens. After a brief postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Wheeler J. North at the Kerckhoff marine laboratory ...
Go to Profile#32316
Ugo Panizza
#32328
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Ugo Panizza is an Italian economist. He is a professor of International Economics and Pictet Chair in Finance and Development at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. He is a vice-president of the Centre for Economic Policy Research , the director of the International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies, the editor in Chief of Oxford Open Economics and International Development Policy, and the deputy director of the Centre for Finance and Development.
Go to Profile#32317
Rachel Blau DuPlessis
#32329
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Rachel Blau DuPlessis is an American poet and essayist, known as a feminist critic and scholar with a special interest in modernist and contemporary poetry. Her work has been widely anthologized. Early life DuPlessis was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1941 to Joseph L. and Eleanor Blau; her father was a professor, and her mother was a librarian. She received her BA from Barnard College in 1963, and her MA and PhD from Columbia University in 1964 and 1970 respectively. Her dissertation project was titled The Endless Poem: Paterson of William Carlos Williams and The Pisan Cantos of Ezra Pound.
Go to Profile#32318
James B. Allen
#32330
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
James Brown "Jim" Allen is an American historian of Mormonism and was an official Assistant Church Historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1972 to 1979. While working as Assistant Church Historian, he co-authored The Story of the Latter-day Saints with Glen Leonard. After Ezra Taft Benson dismissed the book as secular new history, other events led to the dissolution of the LDS Church History department in 1982. Allen resigned as Assistant Church Historian in 1979, returning to work at Brigham Young University full-time.
Go to Profile#32319
Telauges
#32331
Overall Influence
Telauges was a Samian Pythagorean philosopher and, according to tradition, the son of Pythagoras and Theano. Little is known about his life and works other than a scattering of remarks from much later writers.
Go to Profile#32320
Monique Jeanblanc
#32332
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Monique Jeanblanc-Picqué is a French mathematician known for her work in mathematical finance; other topics in her research have included control theory and probability theory. She is a professor emerita at the University of Évry Val d'Essonne.
Go to Profile#32321
Jochen Mannhart
#32333
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Jochen Mannhart is a German physicist. Biography Jochen Mannhart studied physics at the University of Tübingen, Germany, from 1980 to 1986, where he also received his PhD in 1987 and his habilitation in 1994.
Go to Profile#32322
Joseph A. Smith
#32334
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Joseph Anthony Smith , also known as Jos. A. Smith, is an American artist who is best known for illustrating children's books. He has been a professional artist since 1961 and served as Professor of Fine Arts at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, since 1962.
Go to Profile#32323
Jeffrey Mandula
#32335
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Jeffrey Ellis Mandula is a physicist well known for the Coleman–Mandula theorem from 1967. He got his Ph.D. 1966 under Sidney Coleman at Harvard University. Thereafter he was a professor of applied mathematics at MIT and then of physics at Washington University in St. Louis. Today, he is responsible for the funding of science in the U.S. Department of Energy.
Go to Profile#32324
Ted Lindsay
#32336
Overall Influence
1925 - 2019 (94 years)
Ted Lindsay was a Canadian professional ice hockey player who played as a forward for the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Black Hawks of the National Hockey League . Lindsay scored over 800 points in his Hockey Hall of Fame career, won the Art Ross Trophy in 1950, and won the Stanley Cup four times. Often referred to as "Terrible Ted", Lindsay helped to organize the first attempt at a Players' Association in the late 1950s, an action which led to his trade to Chicago. In 2017, Lindsay was named one of the 100 Greatest NHL Players in history.
Go to Profile#32325
Georgios B. Giannakis
#32337
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Georgios B. Giannakis is a Greek-American Computer Scientist, engineer and inventor. He has been an Endowed Chair Professor of Wireless Telecommunications, he was Director of the Digital Technology Center, and at present he is a McKnight Presidential Chair with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota.
Go to Profile#32326
Mark S. Humayun
#32338
Overall Influence
Mark S. Humayun is a Pakistani-American ophthalmologist, engineer, scientist, inventor and academic – the only ophthalmologist elected a member of both U.S. National Academies of Medicine and Engineering. He is a university professor with joint appointments at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.
Go to Profile#32327
James Gunn
#32339
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
James Edward Gunn is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Astronomy at Princeton University. Gunn's early theoretical work in astronomy has helped establish the current understanding of how galaxies form, and the properties of the space between galaxies. He also suggested important observational tests to confirm the presence of dark matter in galaxies, and predicted the existence of a Gunn–Peterson trough in the spectra of distant quasars.
Go to Profile#32328
Allen Wikgren
#32340
Overall Influence
1906 - 1998 (92 years)
Allen Paul Wikgren was an American New Testament scholar and professor at the University of Chicago. His work centered on the text of the New Testament and New Testament manuscripts, but also included Hellenistic and biblical Greek, the deuterocanonical books , early Jewish literature , and work on the Revised Standard Version English translation of the Bible.
Go to Profile#32329
Frances Hellman
#32341
Overall Influence
Frances Hellman is a physicist who was dean of the division of mathematical and physical sciences at the University of California, Berkeley from 2015 until 2021. Her primary academic focus has been the study of the thermodynamic properties of novel solid materials, especially thin film semiconducting, superconducting, and magnetic materials. She has served as chair of the physics department and holds a dual appointment in the materials science and engineering department.
Go to Profile#32330
Gerbrand Ceder
#32342
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Gerbrand Ceder is a Belgian–American scientist who is the Daniel M. Tellep Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at University of California, Berkeley. He is notable for his pioneering research in high-throughput computational materials design, and in the development of novel lithium-ion battery technologies. He is co-founder of the Materials Project, an open-source online database of ab initio calculated material properties, which inspired the Materials Genome Initiative by the Obama administration in 2011. He is also the Founder and CTO of Pellion Technologies , which aims to commercialize magnesium-ion batteries.
Go to Profile#32331
Antonio Villaraigosa
#32343
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Antonio Ramón Villaraigosa is an American politician who served as the 41st Mayor of Los Angeles from 2005 to 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, Villaraigosa was a national co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, a member of President Barack Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board, and chair of the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
Go to Profile#32332
Paul N. Stockton
#32344
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Dr. Paul N. Stockton is the President of Paul N Stockton LLC, a strategic advisory firm in Santa Fe, NM. From 2009 to 2013, Dr. Stockton served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas' Security Affairs, where he helped lead the department's response to Hurricane Sandy. He was responsible for Defense Critical Infrastructure Protection, Western Hemisphere security policy, domestic crisis management, continuity of operations planning, and a range of other responsibilities. While Assistant Secretary, Dr. Stockton also served as executive director of the Council of Governors.
Go to Profile#32333
Uday Shankar
#32345
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Uday Shankar is an Indian media executive and former journalist. As of 2021, he was the President of The Walt Disney Company Asia Pacific, and chairman of Star India and The Walt Disney Company India.
Go to Profile#32334
Ephraim R. McLean
#32346
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Ephraim R. McLean is an American organizational theorist, and Professor of Information Systems at the J. Mack Robinson College of Business, known as one of the founders of the MIS discipline in the 1960s and for his work with William H. DeLone on the information systems success model.
Go to Profile#32335
Khalil Qureshi
#32347
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Khalil Ahmad Qureshi , is a Pakistani physical chemist and the professor of physical chemistry at the Punjab University. He has published notable papers in nuclear physical chemistry in international scientific journals as well contributing in the advancement of the scientific applications of the civilian usage of the fuel cycle.
Go to Profile#32336
Bernard Derrida
#32348
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Bernard Derrida is a French theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work in statistical mechanics, and is the eponym of Derrida plots, an analytical technique for characterising differences between Boolean networks.
Go to Profile#32337
Phoebe Gloeckner
#32349
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Phoebe Louise Adams Gloeckner , is an American cartoonist, illustrator, painter, and novelist. Early life Gloeckner was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her mother was a librarian and her father, David Gloeckner, was a commercial illustrator. Her father's family was Quaker and she attended Quaker schools when she was young. She has a younger sister.
Go to Profile#32338
Edward Stringham
#32350
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Edward Peter Stringham is an Austrian School American economist, former President of the American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts , and the Davis Professor of Economic Innovation at Trinity College .
Go to Profile#32339
Wei Chen And Kewei Liu
#32351
Overall Influence
#32340
Michel Laurin
#32352
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Michel Laurin is a Canadian-born French vertebrate paleontologist whose specialities include the emergence of a land-based lifestyle among vertebrates, the evolution of body size and the origin and phylogeny of lissamphibians. He has also made important contributions to the literature on phylogenetic nomenclature.
Go to Profile#32341
Herman Aguinis
#32353
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Herman Aguinis is a researcher, business professor, and author. He is the Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Management at the George Washington University School of Business in Washington, D.C. He has been ranked among the world's top 100 most influential economics and business researchers in the world every year since 2018. He served as President of the Academy of Management , and has been inducted into The PhD Project Hall of Fame. Prior to moving to Washington D.C. in 2016, he was the John F. Mee Chair of Management and the Founding Director of the Institute for Global Or...
Go to Profile#32342
Gregory H. Williams
#32354
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Gregory Howard Williams is a scholar, attorney, law school professor, author, and formerly the 27th President of the University of Cincinnati and the 11th President of the City College of New York .
Go to Profile#32343
Rabee al-Madkhali
#32355
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Rabīʿ bin Hādī ʿUmayr al Madkhalī is a Saudi professor who is a former head of the Sunnah Studies Department at the Islamic University of Madinah. He is a Salafi Muslim scholar who is considered to be one of Salafism's prominent thinkers. Even though Muhammad Arsalan has disagreed with him due to his personal views, He was most active in the 90’s and early 2000s where he received heaps of praise from the great scholars of Islam Like Shaykh Salih Ibn Uthaymeen and Shaykh Abdul Aziz Bin Baz . Another prominent Salafi scholar named Imam Albani labelled him the Imam of Jarh Wa Tad’il
Go to Profile#32344
Christina Ricci
#32356
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Christina Ricci is an American actress. Known for playing unusual characters with a dark edge, Ricci works mostly in independent productions, but has also appeared in numerous box-office hits. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, and Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
Go to Profile#32345
C. V. Subramanian
#32357
Overall Influence
1924 - 2016 (92 years)
Chirayathumadom Venkatachalier Subramanian , popularly known as CVS, was an Indian mycologist, taxonomist and plant pathologist, known for his work on the classification of Fungi imperfecti, a group of fungi classified separately due to lack of specific taxonomic characteristics. He authored one monograph, Hyphomycetes: An Account of Indian Species, Except Cercosporae and three books, Hyphomycetes, taxonomy and biology, Moulds, Mushrooms and Men and Soil microfungi of Israel, besides several articles published in peer-reviewed journals. He was a recipient of many honours including the Rafi Ahm...
Go to Profile#32346
Olivier Toubia
#32358
Overall Influence
Olivier Toubia is the Glaubinger Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, Columbia University. He is known for his work on innovation, idea generation and conjoint analysis.
Go to Profile#32347
Daphne Marlatt
#32359
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Daphne Marlatt, born Buckle, CM , is a Canadian poet and novelist who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. At a young age, her family moved to Malaysia and at age nine, they moved to British Columbia, where she later attended the University of British Columbia. There she developed her poetry style and her strong feminist views. In 1968, she received an MA in comparative literature from Indiana University.
Go to Profile#32348
Mark Urban
#32360
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Mark Lee Urban is a British journalist, historian, and broadcaster, and is currently the Diplomatic Editor and occasional presenter for BBC Two's Newsnight. His older brother is the film-maker Stuart Urban.
Go to Profile#32349
Jim Smith
#32361
Overall Influence
1940 - 2019 (79 years)
James Michael Smith was an English footballer and manager. As a player, he made 249 appearances in the Fourth Division of the Football League, representing Aldershot, Halifax Town, Lincoln City and Colchester United, and played for three-and-a-half years for Boston United of the Northern Premier League. He began a long managerial career with Boston United, and went on to take charge of top division clubs such as Birmingham City, Newcastle United and Derby County. Smith served as a member of the board of directors of Oxford United for three years from 2006 to 2009. He served as the League Mana...
Go to Profile#32350
Carolyn Kagan
#32362
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Carolyn Kagan is a British community psychologist and social activist. Life and work Carolyn Morag Kagan grew up in Meopham, Kent. After working as a residential social worker in Scotland she went to North East London Polytechnic graduating with a degree in Psychology in 1974. She then obtained a DPhil in Social Psychology from Wolfson College, University of Oxford.
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