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
#33351
Judd Marmor
#33363
Overall Influence
1910 - 2003 (93 years)
Judd Marmor was an American psychoanalyst and psychiatrist known for his role in removing homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Go to Profile#33352
Janet Afary
#33364
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Janet Afary is an author, feminist activist and researcher of history, religious studies and women studies. She is a professor and the Mellichamp Chair in Global Religion and Modernity at the University of California, Santa Barbara .
Go to Profile#33353
Becky Smethurst
#33365
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (36 years)
Rebecca Smethurst, also known as Dr. Becky, is a British astrophysicist, author, and YouTuber who is a junior research fellow at the University of Oxford. She was the recipient of the 2020 Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship, awarded by the Royal Astronomical Society, as well as the 2020 Mary Somerville Medal and Prize, awarded by the Institute of Physics. In 2022, she won the Royal Astronomical Society's Winton Award "for research by a post-doctoral fellow in Astronomy whose career has shown the most promising development". As a researcher, Smethurst studies the role that supermassive black holes play in inhibiting different types of galaxies from forming stars.
Go to Profile#33354
Zha Blong Xiong
#33366
Overall Influence
Zha Blong Xiong is an associate professor in the Department of Family Social Science in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA. He specializes in adjustment of adolescents, parent/adolescent relationships in immigrant families, and parent education. In less than 20 years Xiong has gone from being a refugee who spoke no English to becoming the first Hmong tenured professor at the University of Minnesota and the first at a major research university in the United States.
Go to Profile#33355
Sidney Wade
#33367
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Sidney Wade is an American poet. She currently holds the position of Professor of creative writing at the University of Florida, where she has taught since 1993. Biography Wade was born in Englewood, New Jersey, in 1951. She attended the University of Vermont, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy in 1974 and an M.Ed. in counseling in 1978. She earned a Ph.D in English from the University of Houston in 1994.
Go to Profile#33356
Cristina Amon
#33368
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Cristina H. Amon is a mechanical engineer, academic administrator and was the 13th dean of the University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. She was the Faculty's first female dean. Prior to her appointment at the University of Toronto in 2006, she was the Raymond J. Lane Distinguished Professor and director of the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems at Carnegie Mellon University.
Go to Profile#33357
Will Campbell
#33369
Overall Influence
1924 - 2013 (89 years)
Will Davis Campbell was a Baptist minister, lecturer, and activist. He was a Southern white supporter of African-American civil rights. Campbell was also a lecturer and author, most notably for his autobiographical work Brother to a Dragonfly, a finalist for the National Book Award in 1978.
Go to Profile#33358
Ron Pinter
#33370
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Ron Yair Pinter is an Israeli computer scientist specializing in computational systems biology, integrated circuit layout and compiler optimization. He is professor of computer science and the Rappaport Medical School at the Technion in Haifa, Israel. He was a founding member of the Israeli Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, . In the past, he has been a program manager at the IBM Haifa Research Laboratory and a member of the IBM Academy of Technology, and Vice President for Research and Development at Compugen. He is an author and co-author of more than 90 books and peer-reviewed articles, all of which were cited more than 2500 times.
Go to Profile#33359
Andrzej Nowak
#33371
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Andrzej Nowak is a Polish psychologist, one of the founders of dynamical social psychology. He is a pioneer in applying computer simulations in social sciences. Nowak received his M.A. and his Ph.D. from the University of Warsaw. His scientific interests include complex systems in psychology and social sciences.
Go to Profile#33360
Robert E. Kraut
#33372
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Robert E. Kraut is an American social psychologist who studies human-computer interaction, online communities, internet use, group coordination, computers in organizations, and the role of visual elements in interpersonal communication. He is a Herbert Simon University Professor Emeritus of Human-computer Interaction at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
Go to Profile#33361
Deborah Modrak
#33373
Overall Influence
Deborah K. W. Modrak is a classicist who focuses on Aristotle and who is professor of philosophy at the University of Rochester. Biography Modrak earned her doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1974.
Go to Profile#33362
Axel Michaels
#33374
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Axel Michaels is a Professor of Classical Indology and Religious Studies at Heidelberg University, former Co-Director of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context" and since 2014 the Director of the research project Documents on the History of Religion and Law of Pre-modern Nepal. He also was the Speaker of the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 619 “Ritual Dynamics” from 2002 until 2013.
Go to Profile#33363
Asha Rangappa
#33375
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Renuka Asha Rangappa is an American lawyer, former FBI agent, senior lecturer at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, and a commentator on MSNBC and CNN. She was previously an associate dean at Yale Law School. She is serving as a senior lecturer at Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Rangappa is also a member of the board of editors of Just Security.
Go to Profile#33364
Pat Gillick
#33376
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Lawrence Patrick David Gillick is an American professional baseball executive. He previously served as the general manager of four MLB teams: the Toronto Blue Jays , Baltimore Orioles , Seattle Mariners , and Philadelphia Phillies . He guided the Blue Jays to World Series championships in 1992 and 1993, and later with the Phillies in 2008.
Go to Profile#33365
Brandi Chastain
#33377
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Brandi Denise Chastain is an American retired soccer player, two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champion, two-time Olympic gold-medalist, coach, and sports broadcaster. She played for the United States national team from 1988 to 2004. In her 192 caps on the team, she scored 30 goals playing primarily in the defender and midfielder positions. She scored a World Cup-winning penalty shootout goal against China in the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup final.
Go to Profile#33366
W. Steve Albrecht
#33378
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
W. Steve Albrecht is the Andersen Alumni Professor at the Marriott School of Management of Brigham Young University . He is a former president of the American Accounting Association and was previously president of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. He was also formerly an associate dean of the Marriott School of Management. Albrecht served as the mission president for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Tokyo, Japan.
Go to Profile#33367
Jennifer Lackey
#33379
Overall Influence
Jennifer Lackey is an American academic; she is the Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. Lackey is known for her research in epistemology, especially on testimony, disagreement, memory, the norms of assertion, and virtue epistemology. She is the author of Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge and of numerous articles and book chapters. She is also co-editor of The Epistemology of Testimony and The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays.
Go to Profile#33368
Laurence Zitvogel
#33380
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Laurence Zitvogel is a French physician specializing in oncology and immunology with a large research experience in exosomess and the biological impact of those structures in malignant neoplasms. Personal life Laurence Zitvogel was born in Suresnes, France on 25 December 1963. She has worked with her spouse, Guido Kroemer, since 2001.
Go to Profile#33369
Brad Richards
#33381
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Bradley Ray Richards is a Canadian former professional ice hockey centre. Richards was drafted in the third round, 64th overall, by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the 1998 NHL Entry Draft and played for the Lightning, New York Rangers, Dallas Stars, Chicago Blackhawks, and Detroit Red Wings during his National Hockey League career.
Go to Profile#33370
Lou Boudreau
#33382
Overall Influence
1917 - 2001 (84 years)
Louis Boudreau , nicknamed "Old Shufflefoot", "Handsome Lou", and "the Good Kid", was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played in Major League Baseball for 15 seasons, primarily as a shortstop on the Cleveland Indians, and managed four teams for 15 seasons including 10 seasons as a player-manager. He was also a radio announcer for the Chicago Cubs and in college was a dual sport athlete in both baseball and earning All-American honors in basketball for the University of Illinois.
Go to Profile#33371
Raymond J. DeMallie
#33383
Overall Influence
1946 - 2021 (75 years)
Raymond J. DeMallie was an American anthropologist whose work focuses on the cultural history of the peoples of the Northern Plains, particularly the Lakota. His work is informed by interrelated archival, museum-based, and ethnographic research in a manner characteristic of the ethnohistorical method. In 1985 he founded and became the director of the American Indian Studies Research Institute at Indiana University Bloomington, alongside Douglas Parks, whom he worked collaboratively throughout majority of his career to preserve and translate various Indigenous languages, after having first met in 1980.
Go to Profile#33372
Marcelo Ebrard
#33384
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Marcelo Luis Ebrard Casaubón is a Mexican politician who served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs until 2023. Affiliated with the National Regeneration Movement since 2018, he was appointed to lead the foreign ministry by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on 1 December 2018. In June 2023, he resigned from his post to compete for his party's presidential candidacy for the 2024 election.
Go to Profile#33373
Geoffrey C. Gurtner
#33385
Overall Influence
Geoffrey C. Gurtner is an American microsurgeon. As of January 2022, he is the Chair of Surgery, Professor of Surgery and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson. He was previously Professor of Surgery and Inaugural Vice Chairman of Surgery for Innovation at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#33374
Arnall Patz
#33386
Overall Influence
1920 - 2010 (90 years)
Arnall Patz was an American medical doctor and research professor at Johns Hopkins University. In the early 1950s, Patz discovered that oxygen therapy was the cause of an epidemic of blindness among some 10,000 premature babies. Following his discovery, there was a sixty percent reduction in childhood blindness in the United States. He also conducted pioneering research in the 1960s into the use of lasers in the treatment of retinal disorders. He received the Lasker Award in 1956 for his research into the causes and prevention of blindness and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 for...
Go to Profile#33375
Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan
#33387
Overall Influence
1948 - 2022 (74 years)
Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan was the second president of the United Arab Emirates and the ruler of Abu Dhabi, serving from November 2004 until his death in May 2022. Khalifa was the eldest son of Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the first president of the United Arab Emirates. As crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Khalifa carried out some aspects of the presidency in a de facto capacity from the late 1990s when his father experienced health problems. He succeeded his father as the ruler of Abu Dhabi on 2 November 2004, and the Federal Supreme Council elected him as president of the UAE the following day.
Go to Profile#33376
Lance E. Davis
#33388
Overall Influence
1928 - 2014 (86 years)
Lance Edwin Davis was the Mary Stillman Harkness Professor of Social Science at the California Institute of Technology. He researched the economic history of financial markets and institutional and technological change. His work has been recognised by The Cliometric Society via their awarding him a Clio Can in recognition his of exceptional support of cliometrics.
Go to Profile#33377
Donald Liebenberg
#33389
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Donald Liebenberg is an American astronomer and adjunct professor in the department of physics and astronomy at Clemson University. An avowed eclipse chaser, he best is known for having traveled around the world to see 27 total solar eclipses since 1954. He is also regarded as having spent more time in totality, the darkest area within the Moon's umbra during a total solar eclipse, than anyone else alive.
Go to Profile#33378
Harvey Fierstein
#33390
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Harvey Forbes Fierstein is an American actor, playwright, and screenwriter, known for his distinctive gravelly voice. He is best known for his theater work in Torch Song Trilogy and Hairspray and film roles in Mrs. Doubtfire, Independence Day, and as the voice of Yao in Mulan and Mulan II. Fierstein won two Tony Awards, Best Actor in a Play and Best Play, for Torch Song Trilogy. He received his third Tony Award, Best Book of a Musical, for the musical La Cage aux Folles and his fourth, the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, for playing Edna Turnblad in Hairspray, a role he revived in its...
Go to Profile#33379
Paul Davenport
#33391
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Paul Theodore Davenport, was the tenth president of the University of Alberta and ninth president of the University of Western Ontario. Born and raised in Summit, New Jersey, he graduated magna cum laude from Stanford University in 1969 with a BA in economics. He moved to Canada and earned an MA and Ph.D in economics from the University of Toronto.
Go to Profile#33380
Edi Rama
#33392
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Edi Rama is an Albanian politician, painter, writer, former university lecturer, publicist, and former basketball player, who has served as the 33rd and incumbent Prime Minister of Albania since 2013 and chairman of the Socialist Party of Albania since 2005. He was appointed Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports in 1998, an office he held until 2000. First elected mayor of Tirana in 2000, he was reelected in 2003 and 2007.
Go to Profile#33381
Daniel Sturridge
#33393
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (37 years)
Daniel Andre Sturridge is an English former professional footballer who played as a striker and is now a television pundit for Sky Sports. Sturridge was scouted by Aston Villa and played for a number of years in their younger academy sides before moving to Coventry City in 2002. He then signed for Manchester City in 2003. He continued his development at City and played in two FA Youth Cup finals. He made his first-team debut in the 2007–08 season, becoming the only player to score in the FA Youth Cup, FA Cup and Premier League in the same season. He left City in 2009 to sign for Chelsea, where he was loaned to Bolton Wanderers for the second half of the 2010–11 season.
Go to Profile#33382
Eli Jones
#33394
Overall Influence
Eli Jones III is an academic administrator, entrepreneur, professor, business leader, corporate board member, author, and professional speaker. He is a professor of Marketing and Lowry and Peggy Mays Eminent Scholar at his alma mater, Texas A&M University. He served as a business dean for three flagship business schools, including Dean of Mays Business School at Texas A&M University for six years . He is the former dean of the E. J. Ourso College of Business at Louisiana State University, followed by the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas.
Go to Profile#33383
Sarah Kendzior
#33395
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Sarah J. Kendzior is an American author, anthropologist, researcher, and scholar. Kendzior is the author of The View from Flyover Country – a collection of essays first published by Al Jazeera – and is a former co-host of the Gaslit Nation podcast. In 2020, she published her second book, Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America, which was a New York Times bestseller. In September 2022, she published her third book, They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent, which was a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Go to Profile#33384
Ekaterina Trendafilova
#33396
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Ekaterina Trendafilova is a Bulgarian lawyer and judge with international and domestic experience. She is currently serving as the first President of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers – a position to which she was appointed in December 2016 for a four-year term and took her office on 12 January 2017.
Go to Profile#33385
Alex Pentland
#33397
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Alex Paul "Sandy" Pentland is an American computer scientist, the Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, and serial entrepreneur. Education Pentland received his bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and obtained his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982.
Go to Profile#33386
Alice L. Pérez Sánchez
#33398
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Alice L. Pérez Sánchez was the Vice-dean of Research at the University of Costa Rica between 2012 and 2016. Pérez has a degree in chemistry from the University of Costa Rica, and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Simon Fraser University, Canada. She is a professor in the chemistry department at the University of Costa Rica, and researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones en Productos Naturales, CIPRONA. She was director of CIPRONA from 2002 to 2010, and of the doctoral science program at the same university from 2009 to 2012. Her scientific work focuses on the synthesis of organic anti-p...
Go to Profile#33387
Zoltán Pál Dienes
#33399
Overall Influence
1916 - 2014 (98 years)
Zoltán Pál Dienes was a Hungarian mathematician whose ideas on education have been popular in some countries. He was a world-famous theorist and tireless practitioner of the "new mathematics": an approach to mathematics learning that uses games, songs, and dance to make it more appealing to children. He is credited with the creation of Base ten blocks, popularly referred to as Dienes blocks.
Go to Profile#33388
Mark Gatiss
#33400
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Mark Gatiss is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, director, producer and novelist. His work includes writing for and acting in the television series Doctor Who, Sherlock, Game of Thrones and Dracula. Together with Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton and Jeremy Dyson, he is a member of the comedy team The League of Gentlemen.
Go to Profile#33389
Malcolm Macleod
#33401
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Malcolm Macleod is a Scottish neurologist and translational neuroscientist. Biography Macleod spent his early years in Achiltibuie and Inverness. He attended the Leachkin Primary School, Jedburgh Grammar School and Loretto School, Musselburgh, before studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh. As an undergraduate he was President of Edinburgh University Students' Association. After graduation, he held a number of junior medical posts in Edinburgh and Forth Valley. He was Rector of the University of Edinburgh from 1994 to 1997, Secretary of the Labour Campaign for a Scottish Parliament, ...
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Danny Amendola
#33402
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Daniel James Amendola is an American former professional football wide receiver who is a coaching assistant/returners coach for the Las Vegas Raiders of the National Football League . He played college football for the Texas Tech Red Raiders. He was signed by the Dallas Cowboys as an undrafted free agent in 2008.
Go to Profile#33391
Corey Burton
#33403
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Corey Burton is an American voice actor. He is the current voice of Captain Hook, Ludwig Von Drake and others for The Walt Disney Company, Shockwave on The Transformers, Brainiac in the DC Animated Universe, Count Dooku and Cad Bane in the Star Wars franchise, Zeus in the God of War series and Hugo Strange in Batman: Arkham City.
Go to Profile#33392
Henry Shue
#33404
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Henry Greyson Shue is an American philosopher and Professor Emeritus of Politics and International Relations at Merton College of Oxford University. Previously he was Wyn and William Y Hutchinson Professor of Ethics & Public Life at Cornell University. Shue is best known for his book, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy.
Go to Profile#33393
Laurie Ann Guerrero
#33405
Overall Influence
Laurie Ann Guerrero is a Chicana poet from San Antonio, Texas. She was the poet laureate of San Antonio from 2014 to 2016 and the Poet Laureate of Texas from 2016 to 2017. In the fall semester of 2017, she became the first writer-in-residence at Texas A&M University San Antonio and a "fully immersed faculty member. She will teach a contemporary American woman poets course, host numerous University writing workshops and mentor students while working on her next writing project."
Go to Profile#33394
Clifford S. Gardner
#33406
Overall Influence
1924 - 2013 (89 years)
Clifford Spear Gardner was an American mathematician specializing in applied mathematics. Career Gardner studied at Phillips Academy and Harvard, where he earned his baccalaureate in 1944. In 1953 he earned a PhD from New York University, under the supervision of Fritz John. Thereafter he worked at NASA in Langley Field, the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of NYU, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Texas at Austin from 1967 to 1990, when he retired as professor emeritus..
Go to Profile#33395
Gil Rémillard
#33407
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Gil Rémillard is a Canadian academic, university professor and politician. Biography Born in Hull, Quebec , Rémillard is the son of Carmel Rémillard and Jeannine Desjardins. He studied at the University of Ottawa, where he obtained a licence in law in 1968, and at the Université de Nice, where he obtained a State doctorate in constitutional law in 1972.
Go to Profile#33396
Sandra Bartky
#33408
Overall Influence
1935 - 2016 (81 years)
Sandra Lee Bartky was a professor of philosophy and gender studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her main research areas were feminism and phenomenology. Her notable contributions to the field of feminist philosophy include the article, "Toward a Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness". Sandra Lee Bartky died on October 17, 2016, at her home in Saugatuck, Michigan at age 81.
Go to Profile#33397
Jule Styne
#33409
Overall Influence
1905 - 1994 (89 years)
Jule Styne was an English-American songwriter and composer widely known for a series of Broadway musicals, including several famous frequently-revived shows that also became successful films: Gypsy, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Funny Girl.
Go to Profile#33398
Bill Drummond
#33410
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
William Ernest Drummond is a Scottish artist, musician, writer, and record producer. He was a co-founder of the late-1980s avant-garde pop group the KLF and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation, with which he famously burned £1 million in 1994. More recent art activities, carried out under Drummond's banner of Penkiln Burn, include making and distributing cakes, soup, flowers, beds, and shoe-shines. More recent music projects include No Music Day and the international tour of a choir called The17. Drummond is the author of several books about art and music.
Go to Profile#33399
Arman Manukyan
#33411
Overall Influence
1931 - 2012 (81 years)
Arman Manukyan was a Turkish lecturer, writer, and economist of Armenian descent. Biography Arman Manukyan was born in the Tahta Minare neighborhood of Istanbul. His father Artin fought in the Çanakkale War and was decorated with the İstiklal Medal of the emerging Turkish Republic. Artin was a shoe store owner and 30 years old when he married Eliz in 1930 and the couple had Arman, their first son in 1931. Manukyan started his early education in 1938 at the Mhitaryan Armenian school in the Şişli district of Istanbul. He graduated from his elementary studies and in 1945 he attended the prestigious Robert College.
Go to Profile#33400
Abena Busia
#33412
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Abena Pokua Adompim Busia is a Ghanaian writer, poet, feminist, lecturer and diplomat. She is a daughter of the former prime minister of Ghana, Kofi Abrefa Busia, and is the sister of actress Akosua Busia. Busia is an associate professor of Literature in English, and of women's and gender studies at Rutgers University. She is Ghana's ambassador to Brazil, appointed in 2017, with accreditation to the other 12 republics of South America.
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