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
#33551
William T. Trotter
#33563
Overall Influence
William Thomas Trotter Jr. is an American mathematician, who is on the faculty of the Department of Mathematics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His main expertise is partially ordered sets, but he has also done significant work in other areas of combinatorics, such as the Szemerédi–Trotter theorem and Chvátal-Rödl-Szemerédi-Trotter theorem.
Go to Profile#33552
Donna Shalala
#33564
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Donna Edna Shalala is an American politician and academic who served in the Carter and Clinton administrations, as well as in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2019 to 2021. Shalala is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which she was awarded in 2008, and, on August 16, 2023, assumed the role of Interim President of The New School, a university in New York City.
Go to Profile#33553
Sam Perkins
#33565
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Samuel Bruce Perkins is an American former professional basketball player and executive. Perkins was a three-time college All-American, was a member of the 1982 national champion North Carolina Tar Heels, and won a gold medal with the 1984 United States men's Olympic basketball team. Perkins played professionally in the National Basketball Association for 17 seasons.
Go to Profile#33554
Kjell Magne Bondevik
#33566
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Kjell Magne Bondevik is a Norwegian Lutheran minister and politician. As leader of the Christian Democratic Party, he served as the 33rd prime minister of Norway from 1997 to 2000, and from 2001 to 2005, making him, after Erna Solberg, Norway's second longest serving non-Labour Party prime minister since World War II. Currently, Bondevik is president of the Oslo Centre for Peace and Human Rights.
Go to Profile#33555
Edward John Wherry III
#33567
Overall Influence
Edward John Wherry III is an American immunologist. He is the Richard and Barbara Schiffrin President's Distinguished Professor and department chair of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the director of the Penn Institute for Immunology.
Go to Profile#33556
Frank Barlow
#33568
Overall Influence
1911 - 2009 (98 years)
Frank Barlow was an English historian, known particularly for biographies of medieval figures. His subjects included Edward the Confessor, Thomas Becket and William Rufus. Academic life Barlow studied at St John's College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#33557
Artemis Alexiadou
#33569
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Artemis Alexiadou is a Greek linguist active in syntax research working in Germany. She is professor of English linguistics at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Education Alexiadou began her studies in Linguistics at the age of 17 at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. After graduating in 1990, Alexiadou undertook a master's degree at the University of Reading and then continued on to the Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft in Berlin. In 1994 Alexiadou gained a PhD from the University of Potsdam and also passed her Habilitation there in 1999.
Go to Profile#33558
Jean-Pierre Bourguignon
#33570
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Jean-Pierre Bourguignon is a French mathematician, working in the field of differential geometry. Biography Born in Lyon, he studied at École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, graduating in 1969. For his graduate studies he went to Paris Diderot University, where he obtained his PhD in 1974 under the direction of Marcel Berger.
Go to Profile#33559
Gertrude Lübbe-Wolff
#33571
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Gertrude Lübbe-Wolff is a German academic and senior judge. She sits on the second senate of the Bundesverfassungsgericht , having succeeded Jutta Limbach in this position in April 2002. Biography After studying law at the University of Bielefeld, the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg and Harvard Law School, Lübbe-Wolff received her doctorate in law at Freiburg im Breisgau. From 1979 to 1987 she was a research assistant at Bielefeld, focusing on public law, the constitutional history of the modern age, and philosophy of law. From 1988 to 1992 she was director of the Wasserschutzamt in Bielefeld.
Go to Profile#33560
Wu Shuqing
#33572
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
Wu Shuqing was a Chinese economist and educator. He was president of Peking University from August 1989 to August 1996 and vice-president of Renmin University of China. Biography Wu was born in Jiangyin, Jiangsu, Republic of China on 3 January 1932. He attended Changshu Middle School and Shanghai High School. In August 1948, after the liberation of Tongxiang County, he was a staff member at the County Party Committee. In July 1952, he studied, then taught, at Renmin University of China, he served in several posts there, including instructor, professor, doctoral supervisor, and vice-president.
Go to Profile#33561
Andrew Gordon
#33573
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon is a British academic maritime war historian, who wrote the First World War history The Rules of the Game . Early life Gordon received his early formal education at Glenalmond College, in Perthshire, Scotland. He received a BSc in Economics from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and a PhD in War Studies from King's College London, University of London.
Go to Profile#33562
Amy Brown
#33574
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Amy Brown is a Welsh psychologist. She is a Professor of Child Public Health at Swansea University who specialises in maternal and child health, particularly nutrition. She campaigns to bring about better support for women who want to breastfeed and to improve the UK public's attitude towards breastfeeding in public.
Go to Profile#33563
William Eldridge Odom
#33575
Overall Influence
1932 - 2008 (76 years)
William Eldridge Odom was a United States Army lieutenant general who served as Director of the National Security Agency under President Ronald Reagan, which culminated a 31-year career in military intelligence, mainly specializing in matters relating to the Soviet Union. After his retirement from the military, he became a think tank policy expert and a university professor and became known for his outspoken criticism of the Iraq War and warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. He died of an apparent heart attack at his vacation home in Lincoln, Vermont.
Go to Profile#33564
Lydia Goehr
#33576
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Lydia Goehr is Fred and Fannie Mack Professor of Humanities, Department of Philosophy, at Columbia University. Her research specialties include the philosophy of music, aesthetics, critical theory, the philosophy of history, and 19th- and 20th-century philosophy.
Go to Profile#33565
Terry Nardin
#33577
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Terry W. Nardin is Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Common Curriculum at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. Formerly, he served as the head of the Political Science Department at the National University of Singapore. He specialises in political theory, history of ideas and international political theory.
Go to Profile#33566
Mel Immergut
#33578
Overall Influence
Mel M. Immergut is an American lawyer who has been a partner with Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy since 1980. From 1995 to 2013, he was the firm's chairman. In 2013, soon after he retired as its chairman, he received Milbank's John J. McCloy Memorial Award. His other positions include one as a lecturer at Columbia Law School, his alma mater, and the former president of the American College of Investment Counsel and The Billfish Foundation. He was interviewed on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee in 2016 regarding his considerable donations to Super PACs for losing Republican U.S. presidential candidates, including Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.
Go to Profile#33567
Richard Buchanan
#33579
Overall Influence
Richard Buchanan is a professor of design, management, and information systems. Currently he teaches at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. Previously he was the head of the Carnegie Mellon School of Design. He serves as an editor of Design Issues and is a past President of the Design Research Society.
Go to Profile#33568
Peter C. Phan
#33580
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Peter C. Phan is a Vietnamese-born American Catholic theologian and the inaugural holder of the Ellacuria Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University. Biography Phan has earned three doctorates: Doctor of Theology from Salesian University in Rome , Doctor of Philosophy from the University of London , and Doctor of Divinity from the University of London . Phan has also been awarded three honorary Doctorates: Doctor of Theology honoris causa, Catholic Theological Union , Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa, Elms College , and Doctor of Divinity, Virginia Theological Seminary .
Go to Profile#33569
Mohammad Shaheen
#33581
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Mohammad Shaheen has been a professor of English literature at the University of Jordan in Amman, Jordan since 1985. Shaheen holds a PhD degree in English literature from Cambridge University. He is the author of many books, including E.M. Forster and the Politics of Imperialism.
Go to Profile#33570
Bobby Baldock
#33582
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Bobby Ray Baldock is an American attorney and jurist serving as a Senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was previously a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico.
Go to Profile#33571
Fernando Ocáriz Braña
#33583
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Fernando Ocáriz Braña is a priest of the Catholic Church who has been the prelate of Opus Dei since 2017. Ocáriz is the fourth person to head Opus Dei since its founding in 1928. He is widely published in philosophy and has been a consultor of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 1986.
Go to Profile#33572
Piero Gleijeses
#33584
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Piero Gleijeses is a professor of United States foreign policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is best known for his scholarly studies of Cuban foreign policy under Fidel Castro, which earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005, and has also published several works on US intervention in Latin America. He is the only foreign scholar to have been allowed access to the Cuba's Castro-era government archives.
Go to Profile#33573
Garfield Sobers
#33585
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Sir Garfield St Aubrun Sobers, , also known as Sir Gary or Sir Garry Sobers, is a former cricketer who played for the West Indies between 1954 and 1974. A highly skilled bowler, an aggressive batsman and an excellent fielder, he is widely considered to be cricket's greatest ever all-rounder and one of the greatest cricketers of all time.
Go to Profile#33574
Georg von Dadelsen
#33586
Overall Influence
1918 - 2007 (89 years)
Georg von Dadelsen was a German musicologist, who taught at the University of Hamburg and the University of Tübingen. He focused on Johann Sebastian Bach, his family and his environment, and the chronology of his works. As director of the Johann Sebastian Bach Institute in Göttingen, he influenced the Neue Bach-Ausgabe , the second complete edition of Bach's works.
Go to Profile#33575
Ron Kimmel
#33587
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Ron Kimmel is a professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. He holds a D.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Technion, and was a post-doc at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Labs, and a visiting professor at Stanford University. He has worked in various areas of image and shape analysis in computer vision, image processing, and computer graphics. Kimmel's interest in recent years has been non-rigid shape processing and analysis, medical imaging, computational biometry, deep learning, numerical optimization of problems with a geometric flavor, and applications of metric and differential geometry.
Go to Profile#33576
Mary Hinkson
#33588
Overall Influence
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
Mary De Haven Hinkson was an African American dancer and choreographer known for breaking racial boundaries throughout her dance career in both modern and ballet techniques. She is best known for her work as a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company.
Go to Profile#33577
Keren Yarhi-Milo
#33589
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Keren Yarhi-Milo is an American political scientist specializing in the study of interstate communication, crisis bargaining, reputation and credibility, and the psychology of leaders and decision makers. She is the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University and the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Relations at Columbia University. She is also a former director of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia.
Go to Profile#33578
Suzanne Simard
#33590
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Suzanne Simard is a Canadian scientist who is a professor in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia. After growing up in the Monashee Mountains, British Columbia, she received her PhD in Forest Sciences at Oregon State University. Prior to teaching at the University of British Columbia, Simard worked as a research scientist at the British Columbia Ministry of Forests.
Go to Profile#33579
Michael A. Bilandic
#33591
Overall Influence
1923 - 2002 (79 years)
Michael Anthony Bilandic was an American Democratic politician and attorney who served as the 49th mayor of Chicago from 1976 to 1979, after the death of his predecessor, Richard J. Daley. Bilandic practiced law in Chicago for several years, having graduated from the DePaul University College of Law. Bilandic served as an alderman in the Chicago City Council, representing the eleventh ward on the south-west side from June 1969 until he began his tenure as mayor in December 1976. After his mayoralty, Bilandic served as chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court from 1994 to 1997.
Go to Profile#33580
Mario Jeckle
#33592
Overall Influence
1974 - 2004 (30 years)
Mario Jeckle was a German computer scientist. From 1997 to 2003, Jeckle attended the University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg. In 1998, he received his computer science degree for his thesis "Prozeßkettenmodellierung am Beispiel der Gießwerkzeugentwicklung und prototypische Implementierung auf Basis des EDM/PDM – Systems Metaphase" . At Augsburg, he taught Java, Java Threads, XML and software engineering.
Go to Profile#33581
Lupita Nyong'o
#33593
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Lupita Amondi Nyong'o is a Mexican-Kenyan actress. She is the recipient of several accolades, including an Academy Award, and a Daytime Emmy Award with nominations for a Tony Award and a Golden Globe Award.
Go to Profile#33582
Valentin Vydrin
#33594
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Valentin Feodosyevich Vydrin is a Russian Africanist. Until 2011, he was the head of the Department of Ethnography of African Peoples of the Kunstkamera, Professor, Doctor of Philology. He is a Graduate of the Department of African Studies of the Faculty of Eastern Studies of the Saint Petersburg State University, where he was later a lecturer. He is an author of numerous scientific works, published in Russian, French, and English, on the topic of Mande languages, including dictionaries and treatises on grammatical features.
Go to Profile#33583
George Boyer
#33595
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
George R. Boyer is Professor of Labor Economics in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. He is best known for his work in the field of economic history, and in particular his research on the English poor laws of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Go to Profile#33584
Jeffery Paul Chan
#33596
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jeffery Paul Chan was an American author and scholar. He was a professor of Asian American studies and English at San Francisco State University for 38 years until his retirement in 2005. Biography Chan was a co-founder of the Asian American studies department at San Francisco State University, and has twice served as first chair of the department. With fellow authors Frank Chin, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong, Chan edited two editions of the groundbreaking anthology of Asian American literature, Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers, which helped introduce Asian American authors as worthy of serious study.
Go to Profile#33585
Nishan Canagarajah
#33597
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Cedric Nishan Canagarajah is a British Tamil academic and the current president and vice-chancellor of the University of Leicester. He was previously one of the pro-vice-chancellors of the University of Bristol.
Go to Profile#33586
Barbara D. Metcalf
#33598
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Barbara Daly Metcalf is a professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Davis. She is a specialist in the history of South Asia, especially the colonial period, and the history of the Muslim population of India and Pakistan. She previously served as the dean of the College of Letters and Science at the University of California, Davis, and as the Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History at the University of Michigan . She was the president of the Association for Asian Studies in 1994 and the president of the American Historical Association in 2010–11.
Go to Profile#33587
Massimo Montanari
#33599
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Massimo Montanari, currently Professor of Medieval History at Bologna University, is a scholar in Food studies. His interest in the subject stems from his researches and studies in Medieval Agrarian History. He has been invited as visiting professor to a number of leading universities in Europe, Japan, the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Go to Profile#33588
Ian Brown
#33600
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Ian George Brown is an English singer and multi-instrumentalist. He was the lead singer and the only continuous member of the alternative rock band The Stone Roses from their formation in 1983. Following the band's initial split in 1996, he began a solo career, releasing seven studio albums, a greatest hits compilation, a remix album, an 11-disc box set titled Collection, and 19 singles. He returned to singing for the Stone Roses in 2011, although this did not spell the end of his solo endeavours, releasing First World Problems through Virgin/EMI Records on 25 October 2018.
Go to Profile#33589
Robert Seiringer
#33601
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Robert Seiringer is an Austrian mathematical physicist. Life and work Seiringer studied physics at the University of Vienna, where in 1999 he acquired his diploma and in 2000 with Jakob Yngvason as thesis advisor attained a doctorate. In 2005 he attained his habilitation qualification at the University of Vienna. With a Schrödinger scholarship, he went in 2001 to Princeton University. There he became in 2003 assistant professor. Starting from 2010 he is an associate professor at McGill University. In addition he is extraordinarius professor at the University of Vienna. Seiringer made subst...
Go to Profile#33590
Oscar Isaac
#33602
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada is an American actor. Recognized for his versatility, he has been credited with breaking stereotypes about Latino characters in Hollywood. He was named the best actor of his generation by Vanity Fair in 2017 and one of the 25 greatest actors of the 21st century by The New York Times in 2020. His accolades include a Golden Globe Award and a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award. In 2016, he featured on Time list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Go to Profile#33591
Ted Hopf
#33603
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Theodore Hopf is an American academic and a leading figure in constructivism in international relations theory. He was a Provost Chair Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore . He was also jointly appointed as Research Cluster Leader on Identities at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore .
Go to Profile#33592
Takuo Aoyagi
#33604
Overall Influence
1936 - 2020 (84 years)
Takuo Aoyagi was a Japanese engineer, known for his work leading to the modern pulse oximeter. Early life, education and career Aoyagi was born February 14, 1936, in Niigata Prefecture, Japan. His parents were Monshichi and Tatsu Aoyagi. His father was a mathematics teacher and his mother was a homemaker.
Go to Profile#33593
Michelle Khine
#33605
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Michelle Khine is an American bioengineer who is a distinguished scientist and innovator at the University of California, Irvine, co-founder of Fluxion Biosciences Inc., the scientific founder of the Shrink nano-technology platform, as well as the Assistant and Founding Professor of the School of Engineering at UC Merced. Khine, an associate biomedical engineering professor in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering, is responsible for experimenting with childhood toys Shrinky Dinks to build microfluidic channels. Her research has enabled technological advances in industries including biologic...
Go to Profile#33594
Mathukumalli V. Subbarao
#33606
Overall Influence
1921 - 2006 (85 years)
Mathukumalli Venkata Subbarao was an Indo-Canadian mathematician, specialising in number theory. He was a long-time resident of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Subbarao was born in the small village of Yazali, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India. He received his master's degree from Presidency College, Madras in 1941. He went on to complete a doctorate in functional analysis, advised by Ramaswamy S. Vaidyanathaswamy. He worked at Presidency College, Madras, Sri Venkateswara University, and the University of Missouri, before moving in 1963 to the University of Alberta, where he spent the rest of his pr...
Go to Profile#33595
Olegario González de Cardedal
#33607
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Olegario González de Cardedal is a Spanish Catholic theologian and author. He was born in Lastra del Cano , Spain, in 1934. He studied in Ávila, where he was ordained a priest in 1959, and at the University of Munich, Germany, where he graduated in theology in 1964. He also continued his studies in Oxford and Washington. As Chair of Theology at the Pontifical University of Salamanca, Spain, a position he still holds, he took part in the third session of the Second Vatican Council and in the International Theological Conference. He is also an ordinary member of the Spanish Real Academia de Cie...
Go to Profile#33596
Sarah Williams Goldhagen
#33608
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Sarah Williams Goldhagen is an American author and architecture critic. She sits on the board of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture and the Advisory Committee for the Intentional Spaces summit convened by the International Arts+ Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins Medical School . Her advocacy for science-informed, human-centered design, her scholarship on modern architecture, her criticism for the New Republic and Architectural Record, and her writings on the perceptual and social psychology of built environmental experience call for improved architectural and urban design practices and recognition of their profound social impact.
Go to Profile#33597
Peter Irons
#33609
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Peter H. Irons is an American political activist, civil rights attorney, legal scholar, and professor emeritus of political science. He has written many books on the U.S. Supreme Court and constitutional litigation.
Go to Profile#33598
Eugen Gomringer
#33610
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (101 years)
Eugen Gomringer is a Bolivian-born German concrete poet. He is head of the Institut für Konstruktive Kunst und Konkrete Poesie in Rehau, Germany. Between 1977 and 1990, he was a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the Arts Academy of the city of Düsseldorf. Gomringer writes in German, Spanish, French and English.
Go to Profile#33599
Steven H. Simon
#33611
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Steven H. Simon is an American theoretical physics professor at Oxford University and professorial fellow of Somerville College, Oxford . From 2000 to 2008 he was the director of theoretical physics research at Bell Laboratories. He has served on the UK EPSRC Physical Sciences Strategic Advisory Board. He is known for his work on topological phases of matter, topological quantum computing, and fractional quantum Hall effect. He is a co-author of a highly cited review on these subjects. He has also written many papers in the field of information theory. He is the author of a popular i...
Go to Profile#33600
Rodney Crowell
#33612
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Rodney Crowell is an American musician, known primarily for his work as a singer and songwriter in country music. Crowell has had five number one singles on Hot Country Songs, all from his 1988 album Diamonds & Dirt. He has also written songs and produced for other artists.
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