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
#33101
Elting E. Morison
#33113
Overall Influence
1909 - 1995 (86 years)
Elting Elmore Morison was an American historian of technology, military biographer, author of nonfiction books, and essayist. He was an MIT professor and the founder of MIT's Science, Technology, and Society program.
Go to Profile#33102
Suchi Saria
#33114
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Suchi Saria is an Associate Professor of Machine Learning and Healthcare at Johns Hopkins University, where she uses big data to improve patient outcomes. She is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. From 2022 to 2023, she was an investment partner at AIX Ventures. AIX Ventures is a venture capital fund that invests in artificial intelligence startups.
Go to Profile#33103
Solomiia Pavlychko
#33115
Overall Influence
1958 - 1999 (41 years)
Solomiia Dmytrivna Pavlychko was a Ukrainian literary critic, philosopher, feminist, and translator. She is considered as one of the pioneering scholars to introduce gender studies and feminist analysis to Ukraine.
Go to Profile#33104
Jacobus Boomsma
#33116
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Jacobus Jan "Koos" Boomsma is a Dutch evolutionary biologist who studies social evolution and the evolution of mating systems. Education Boomsma obtained an MSc and PhD degree in biology in 1976 and 1982 at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Go to Profile#33105
Stephen Ball
#33117
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Stephen John Ball, is a British sociologist and the Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education at the Institute of Education of University College London . He has been described as "one of the most eminent scholars in the field of education policy". In 2013, Michael W. Apple wrote that "...one of the things that set Stephen Ball apart from many others is his insistence that both structural and poststructural theories and analyses are necessary for ‘bearing witness’ and for an adequate critical understanding of educational realities". He is the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Educ...
Go to Profile#33106
Flora Botton
#33118
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Flora Botton Beja is a Mexican sinologist and gender studies scholar. She was born in Greece, but acquired Spanish nationality through her parents and naturalized as Mexican after her arrival in Mexico in 1949. She was a co-founder of the gender studies and a pioneer of Oriental studies programs at El Colegio de México. She was one of the first academics to focus on China in Mexico and Latin America. Her works have widely been influential in the region and she was one of the founders of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Estudios de Asia y África .
Go to Profile#33107
Mark Zuckerberg
#33119
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American business magnate, computer programmer, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms , of which he is executive chairman, chief executive officer and controlling shareholder.
Go to Profile#33108
Robert A. Hackett
#33120
Overall Influence
Robert A. Hackett is a Canadian university professor and researcher. He has been a professor and researcher at the School of Communication in Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada since 1984. His main areas of research include media activism, political communication and news analysis. Since 1993, he has co-directed NewsWatch Canada , a news media monitoring project based at Simon Fraser University.
Go to Profile#33109
Susan Hawthorne
#33121
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Susan Hawthorne is an Australian writer, poet, political commentator and publisher. Together with Renate Klein, she is co-founder and director of Spinifex Press, a leading independent feminist publisher that celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2016 in Melbourne with a festival of radical feminism. She and Klein were named winners of the George Robertson Award, which recognises publishers with 30 years or more service to publishing.
Go to Profile#33110
Anne Tyng
#33122
Overall Influence
1920 - 2011 (91 years)
Anne Griswold Tyng was an architect and professor. She is best known for having collaborated for 29 years with Louis Kahn at his practice in Philadelphia. She served as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania for 27 years, teaching classes in urban morphology. She was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and an academician of the National Academy of Design. She is the first woman licensed as an architect by the state of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#33111
Steve Morse
#33123
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Steve J. Morse is an American guitarist, best known as the founder of the Dixie Dregs and as the guitarist for Deep Purple from 1994 to 2022. Morse has also enjoyed a successful solo career and was briefly a member of the group Kansas in the mid-1980s. Most recently, Morse became a member of the supergroup Flying Colors.
Go to Profile#33112
Wayne Federman
#33124
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Wayne Federman is an American comedian, actor, author, writer, comedy historian, producer, and musician. He is noted for numerous stand-up comedy appearances in clubs, theaters, and on television; his book on The History of Stand-Up; and supporting comedic acting roles in The X-Files, The Larry Sanders Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Crashing, Silicon Valley, Legally Blonde, 50 First Dates, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Step Brothers. He was the head monologue writer for NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in its first season. He won a 2022 Primetime Emmy Award for producing the HBO documentary Geor...
Go to Profile#33113
George Glauberman
#33125
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
George Isaac Glauberman is a mathematician at the University of Chicago who works on finite simple groups. He proved the ZJ theorem and the Z* theorem. Born in New York City on March 3, 1941, Glauberman did his undergraduate studies at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, graduating in 1961, and earned a master's degree from Harvard University in 1962. He obtained his PhD degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1965, under the supervision of Richard Bruck. He has had 22 PhD students, including Ahmed Chalabi and Peter Landrock, the president and founder of Cryptomathic. He has co-authored with J. L.
Go to Profile#33114
Heather Watson
#33126
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
Heather Miriam Watson is a professional tennis player. A former British No. 1, Watson has won nine titles over her career, including the mixed-doubles title at the 2016 Wimbledon Championships, partnering Henri Kontinen, making her the first British woman to win a major title since Jo Durie in 1991, and the first to win a Wimbledon title since Durie in 1987. In October 2012, Watson won her first WTA Tour singles title at the Japan Women's Open, becoming the first British woman to win a WTA tournament singles title since Sara Gomer in 1988.
Go to Profile#33115
Martin Barner
#33127
Overall Influence
1921 - 2020 (99 years)
Martin Barner was a German mathematician working in the fields of differential geometry and analysis. Barner received his doctorate in 1950 at the Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg. From 1957, he was professor in Karlsruhe and from 1962 at his alma mater in Freiburg, where he retired in 1989. From 1963 to 1994, he was director of the Mathematical Research Institute of Oberwolfach and from 1968 to 1977 he was president of the German Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#33116
Marguerite Duras
#33128
Overall Influence
1914 - 1996 (82 years)
Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu , known as Marguerite Duras , was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film Hiroshima mon amour earned her a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards.
Go to Profile#33117
Donald Solitar
#33129
Overall Influence
1932 - 2008 (76 years)
Donald Solitar was an American and Canadian mathematician, known for his work in combinatorial group theory. The Baumslag–Solitar groups are named after him and Gilbert Baumslag, after their joint 1962 paper on these groups.
Go to Profile#33118
Diane Harper
#33130
Overall Influence
Diane Medved Harper is a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan. Her area of expertise is human papillomavirus and the diseases associated with it, as well as colposcopy, and she was one of the investigators in the clinical trials of Gardasil and Cervarix, vaccines against HPV.
Go to Profile#33119
Kazuya Kamiya
#33131
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
is a Japanese economist. He is a professor at Kobe University. Career Kamiya earned his B.A. from Kyoto University in 1981, his M.A. from Osaka University in 1983, and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1986. He received the Nakahara Prize in 2000.
Go to Profile#33120
Sébastien Bourdais
#33132
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Sébastien Olivier Bourdais is a French professional racing driver. He is one of the most successful drivers in the history of American open-wheel car racing, having won 37 races. He won four successive championships under Champ Car World Series sanction from 2004 to 2007. Later he competed at the IndyCar Series from 2011 to 2021. He also entered 27 races in Formula One for the Toro Rosso team during and the start of .
Go to Profile#33121
Ralph Kiner
#33133
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Ralph McPherran Kiner was an American Major League Baseball player and broadcaster. An outfielder, Kiner played for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs, and Cleveland Indians from 1946 through 1955.
Go to Profile#33122
Philip-Lorca diCorcia
#33134
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Philip-Lorca diCorcia is an American photographer, living in New York City. He teaches at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Early life and education DiCorcia was born in 1953 in Hartford, Connecticut. His father, Philip Joseph DiCorcia, a major architect in Hartford, operated Philip J. DiCorcia Associates. The DiCorcia family is of Italian descent, having moved to the United States from Abruzzo. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he earned a diploma in 1975 and a 5th year certificate in 1976. Afterwards diCorcia attended Yale University, where he receive...
Go to Profile#33123
Philip Payton
#33135
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Philip John Payton is a Cornish-Australian historian and Emeritus Professor of Cornish and Australian Studies at the University of Exeter and formerly Director of the Institute of Cornish Studies based at Tremough, just outside Penryn, Cornwall. An Australian citizen, he is Professor of History at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia.
Go to Profile#33124
Ina Hartwig
#33136
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Ina Hartwig is a German writer, literature critic and academic lecturer. From July 2016, she has been Kulturdezernentin in Frankfurt, the city councillor responsible for culture and science. Early life and education Hartwig was born in Hamburg, Germany, and went to school in Lüneburg. After the Abitur in 1983 at the , she studied romance studies and German studies at the University of Avignon and Free University of Berlin, graduating in 1990.
Go to Profile#33125
Hans T. Bakker
#33137
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Hans T. Bakker is a cultural historian and Indologist, who has served as the Professor of the History of Hinduism and Jan Gonda Chair at the University of Groningen. He worked in the British Museum as a researcher in the project "Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State".
Go to Profile#33126
John Nunn
#33138
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
John Denis Martin Nunn is an English chess grandmaster, a three-time world champion in chess problem solving, a chess writer and publisher, and a mathematician. He is one of England's strongest chess players and was formerly in the world's top ten.
Go to Profile#33127
Luis Aparicio
#33139
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Luis Ernesto Aparicio Montiel , nicknamed "Little Louie", is a Venezuelan former professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a shortstop from 1956 to 1973 for three American League teams, most prominently the Chicago White Sox. During his ten seasons with the team, he became known for his exceptional defensive and base stealing skills. A 13-time All-Star,, he made an immediate impact with the team, winning the Rookie of the Year Award in 1956 after leading the league in stolen bases and leading AL shortstops in putouts and assists; he was the first Latin American play...
Go to Profile#33128
Paul Terasaki
#33140
Overall Influence
1929 - 2016 (87 years)
Paul Ichiro Terasaki was an American scientist in the field of human organ transplant technology, and professor emeritus of surgery at UCLA School of Medicine. He spent three high school years during World War II interned with his family and other Japanese Americans in the Gila River War Relocation Center. Later he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctorate in zoology all from UCLA and was appointed to the medical school faculty.
Go to Profile#33129
William J. Kettinger
#33141
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
William J. Kettinger an American computer scientist and is the William S. Lee Distinguished Professor in Management Information Systems at Clemson University, known for his work in the field of business process modelling and business process reengineering.
Go to Profile#33130
Montgomery Slatkin
#33142
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Montgomery Wilson Slatkin is an American biologist, and professor at University of California, Berkeley. Education Slatkin received his undergraduate degree in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his PhD from Harvard University.
Go to Profile#33131
Samuel Freeman
#33143
Overall Influence
Samuel Freeman is an American philosopher, Avalon Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a leading authority on the philosophy of John Rawls and also writes in political and legal philosophy, from a Rawlsian perspective.
Go to Profile#33132
Cheryl Wall
#33144
Overall Influence
1948 - 2020 (72 years)
Cheryl A. Wall was a literary critic and professor of English at Rutgers University. One of the first black women to head an English department at a major research university, she worked for diversity in the literary canon as well as in the classroom. She specialized in black women's writing, particularly the Harlem Renaissance and Zora Neale Hurston. She edited several volumes of Hurston's writings for the Library of America. She was also a section editor for The Norton Anthology of African American Literature and was on the editorial boards of American Literature, African American Review and Signs.
Go to Profile#33133
John M. Keller
#33145
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
John M. Keller is an American educational psychologist. He is best known for his work on motivation in educational settings and in particular the ARCS model of instructional design. The four elements of the acronym stand for Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction .
Go to Profile#33134
Jim Leyland
#33146
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
James Richard Leyland is an American former professional baseball player, coach and manager. He serves as a special assistant to the Detroit Tigers of Major League Baseball . Leyland led the Florida Marlins to the 1997 World Series championship over the Cleveland Indians, and previously won three straight division titles with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He is one of eleven managers to lead three different teams to the postseason. With the Tigers' victory in the 2006 American League Championship Series, Leyland became the seventh manager in history to win pennants in both the National and American Leagues.
Go to Profile#33135
Francis Paul Prucha
#33147
Overall Influence
1921 - 2015 (94 years)
Francis Paul Prucha was an American historian, professor emeritus of history at Marquette University, and specialist in the relationship between the United States and Native Americans. His work, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, won the Ray Allen Billington Award and was one of the two finalists for the 1985 Pulitzer Prize in History. It is regarded as a classic among professional historians.
Go to Profile#33136
Chuck Leavell
#33148
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Charles Alfred Leavell is an American musician. A member of the Allman Brothers Band throughout their commercial zenith in the 1970s, he subsequently became a founding member of the band Sea Level. He has served as the principal touring keyboardist and musical director of the Rolling Stones since 1982. As a session musician, Leavell has performed on every Rolling Stones studio album released since 1983 with the exception of Bridges to Babylon . He has also toured and recorded with Eric Clapton, George Harrison, David Gilmour, Gov't Mule and John Mayer.
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David W. Barron
#33149
Overall Influence
1935 - 2012 (77 years)
David William Barron FBCS was a British academic in Physics and Computer Science who was described in the Times Higher Education magazine as one of the "founding fathers" of computer science. Family He married his wife, Valerie. They had two children: Nik and Jacky.
Go to Profile#33138
Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
#33150
Overall Influence
1909 - 2000 (91 years)
Douglas Elton Fairbanks Jr. was an American actor, producer, and decorated naval officer of World War II. He is best-known for starring in such films as The Prisoner of Zenda , Gunga Din , and The Corsican Brothers . The son of Douglas Fairbanks and stepson of Mary Pickford, his first marriage was to actress Joan Crawford.
Go to Profile#33139
William W. Tait
#33151
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
William Walker Tait is an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, where he served as a faculty member from 1972 to 1996, and as department chair from 1981 to 1987. Education and career Tait received his B.A. from Lehigh University in 1952, and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1958. Frederic Fitch served as his doctoral advisor.
Go to Profile#33140
Tran Van Tho
#33152
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Trần Văn Thọ is a Vietnamese former economic advisor to the Japanese government, head of a major Japanese bank’s ODA assessment committee, and a professor of economics at the faculty of Social Sciences of Waseda University in Japan.
Go to Profile#33141
Tom Sito
#33153
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Tom Sito is an American animator, animation historian and teacher. He is currently a Professor at USC's School of Cinematic Arts in the Animation Division. In 1998, Sito was included by Animation Magazine in their list of the One Hundred Most Important People in Animation.
Go to Profile#33142
Paul Auster
#33154
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Paul Benjamin Auster is an American writer and film director. His notable works include The New York Trilogy , Moon Palace , The Music of Chance , The Book of Illusions , The Brooklyn Follies , Invisible , Sunset Park , Winter Journal , and 4 3 2 1 . His books have been translated into more than forty languages.
Go to Profile#33143
David H. French
#33155
Overall Influence
1918 - 1994 (76 years)
David Heath French was an American anthropologist and linguist from Bend, Oregon. During his lifetime he was considered the foremost academic authority on the Chinookan people of the middle Columbia River, especially the Wasco-Wishram Chinooks of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Oregon. His research focused on ethnobotany and language.
Go to Profile#33144
Tsang Lap Chuen
#33156
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Tsang Lap Chuen is a Chinese philosopher in the analytic tradition. He is known for his theory of the sublime in which he presents the notion of limit-situations in life as being central to the human experience.
Go to Profile#33145
Jeremiah Bentham
#33157
Overall Influence
#33146
Walther Killy
#33158
Overall Influence
1917 - 1995 (78 years)
Walther Killy was a German literary scholar who specialised in poetry, especially that of Friedrich Hölderlin and Georg Trakl. He taught at the Free University of Berlin, the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, as founding rector of the University of Bremen, as visiting scholar at the University of California and Harvard University, and at the University of Bern. He became known as editor of literary encyclopedias, the Killy Literaturlexikon and the Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie.
Go to Profile#33147
Robert Melson
#33159
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Robert Melson is professor emeritus of political science and a member of the Jewish studies program at Purdue University. From 2003 to 2005, he was the President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars . In 2006 and 2007, he was the Cathy Cohen-Lasry Distinguished Professor in the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#33148
Peter B. Kronheimer
#33160
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Peter Benedict Kronheimer is a British mathematician, known for his work on gauge theory and its applications to 3- and 4-dimensional topology. He is William Caspar Graustein Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University and former chair of the mathematics department.
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Stéphane Grappelli
#33161
Overall Influence
1908 - 1997 (89 years)
Stéphane Grappelli was a French jazz violinist. He is best known as a founder of the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands. He has been called "the grandfather of jazz violinists" and continued playing concerts around the world well into his eighties.
Go to Profile#33150
Dick Dale
#33162
Overall Influence
1937 - 2019 (82 years)
Richard Anthony Monsour , known professionally as Dick Dale, was an American rock guitarist. He was a pioneer of surf music, drawing on Middle Eastern music scales and experimenting with reverb. Dale was known as "The King of the Surf Guitar", which was also the title of his second studio album.
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