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
#34251
Alton. Meister
#34263
Overall Influence
#34252
Andy Mackay
#34264
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Andrew Mackay is an English musician, best known as a founding member of the art rock group Roxy Music. In addition, he has taught music and provided scores for television, while his CV as a session musician encompasses some of the most noteworthy and recognisable names in the music business.
Go to Profile#34253
Walter Haeussermann
#34265
Overall Influence
1914 - 2010 (96 years)
Walter Haeussermann was a German-American aerospace engineer and member of the "von Braun rocket group", both at Peenemünde and later at Marshall Space Flight Center, where he was the director of the guidance and control laboratory. He was awarded the Department of the Army Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service in 1959 for his contributions to the US rocket program.
Go to Profile#34254
Wolfgang Wiegard
#34266
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Wolfgang Wiegard is a German economist and member of the German Council of Economic Experts. He served as chairman of the council from April 2002 to March 2005. Born in Berlin, Wiegard studied at the University of Heidelberg, receiving his doctoral degree in economics in 1981. Since 1999 Wiegard holds a tenured professorship in economics at the University of Regensburg.
Go to Profile#34255
Charles Van Doren
#34267
Overall Influence
1926 - 2019 (93 years)
Charles Lincoln Van Doren was an American writer and editor who was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s. In 1959 he testified before the U.S. Congress that he had been given the correct answers by the producers of the NBC quiz show Twenty-One. Terminated by NBC, he joined Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. in 1959, becoming a vice-president and writing and editing many books before retiring in 1982.
Go to Profile#34256
Joseph Yahalom
#34268
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Joseph Yahalom is a professor of Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Since 1983, he has been a member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. Biography Joseph Yahalom was born in Haifa. In 1960, he graduated from Lifshitz College of Education in Jerusalem. In 1962, he completed his B.A. in Hebrew Language and Literature at the Hebrew University. In 1967, he was awarded an M.A. in Hebrew Language from the Hebrew University. In 1973, he completed his Ph.D. at the Hebrew University.
Go to Profile#34257
John R. Rickford
#34269
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
John Russell Rickford is a Guyanese–American academic and author. Rickford is the J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Linguistics and the Humanities at Stanford University's Department of Linguistics and the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where he has taught since 1980. His book Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English, which he wrote together with his son, Russell J. Rickford, won the American Book Award in 2000.
Go to Profile#34258
Marco Pannella
#34270
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Marco Pannella was an Italian politician, journalist and activist. He was well known in his country for his nonviolence and civil rights' campaigns, like the right to divorce, the right to abortion, the legalization of cannabis and the abolition of nuclear power. Internationally, he supported human rights and self-determination causes, like the Tibetan independence and persecution of Christians in Vietnam.
Go to Profile#34259
Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin
#34271
Overall Influence
1936 - 2006 (70 years)
Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin was an Ethiopian poet and novelist. His novels and poems evoke retrospective narratives, fanciful epics, and nationalistic connotations. Gabre-Medhin is considered to be one of the most important Ethiopian novelists, along with Baalu Girma and Haddis Alemayehu. His books have been successful in commercial sales and in even academic theses. His works are solely based in Amharic and English.
Go to Profile#34260
James K. Hoffmeier
#34272
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
James K. Hoffmeier is an American Old Testament scholar, an archaeologist and an egyptologist. He was Professor of Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern History and Archaeology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
Go to Profile#34261
Hossein Abdoh Tabrizi
#34273
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Hossein Abdoh Tabrizi is an Iranian professor of Finance and a financial practitioner. Since 2013, he is an Honorary Adviser to Minister of Roads and Urban Development and a member of Iranian Securities and Exchange Commission. He was the founder of Eghtesad Novin Bank, the first Iranian non-governmental bank, and a member of editorial board of various financial journals and the founder and owner of Sarmayeh newspaper. He also had several positions including the Secretary General of Tehran Stock Exchange , adviser to the Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance and many different posts in...
Go to Profile#34262
Roddy McDowall
#34274
Overall Influence
1928 - 1998 (70 years)
Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall was a British and American actor. He began his acting career as a child in England, and then in the United States, in How Green Was My Valley , My Friend Flicka , and Lassie Come Home .
Go to Profile#34263
John Kitsuse
#34275
Overall Influence
1923 - 2003 (80 years)
John Itsuro Kitsuse was an American professor of sociology who contributed to the sociology of social problemss, criminology and deviance. Kitsuse is famous for his pioneer work in studying social problems as social constructionss. From 1977 until his death, Kitsuse and his colleague Malcolm Spector published some of their research in this field in their book Constructing Social Problems. As a second generation Japanese American, Kitsuse was imprisoned in an American internment camp from 1942–1943, due to the ongoing war between the United States and Japan.
Go to Profile#34264
Rudy Gobert
#34276
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
Rudy Gobert-Bourgarel is a French professional basketball player for the Minnesota Timberwolves of the National Basketball Association . He previously played for the Utah Jazz who acquired him during the 2013 NBA draft. Gobert also represents the French national team in their international competitions. Standing at tall with a wingspan of long, he plays the center position. He is considered one of the NBA's best rim protectors.
Go to Profile#34265
Yuan Hongbing
#34277
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Yuan Hongbing is a Chinese-Australian jurist, novelist, and Chinese dissident. Biography Born in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, Yuan's parents worked at the Inner Mongolia Daily. During the Cultural Revolution, Yuan was sent to the countryside to work as a "sent-down youth". In 1972, he became a factory worker in a local chemical factory. During that time, he organized his colleagues to engage in political campaigns. Following the reinstatement of university entrance exams, he enrolled at Peking University to study law. He graduated from Peking University with a master's degree in criminal procedure...
Go to Profile#34266
Bill Ward
#34278
Overall Influence
1919 - 1998 (79 years)
William Hess Ward , was an American cartoonist notable as a good girl artist and creator of the risqué comics character Torchy. Biography Early life and career Born in Brooklyn, New York, Ward grew up in Ridgewood, New Jersey, where his father was an executive with the United Fruit Company.
Go to Profile#34267
Ann Ferguson
#34279
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Ann Ferguson , is an American philosopher, and Professor Emerita of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She served as Amherst's director of women's studies from 1995 to 2001. She is known for her work on feminist theory.
Go to Profile#34268
Mohammed Sabila
#34280
Overall Influence
1942 - 2021 (79 years)
Mohammed Sabila was a Moroccan writer and philosopher. He was the author of several articles and books on politics and culture, and was known for translating some of the works of Martin Heidegger into Arabic.
Go to Profile#34269
Alberto Carlos Taquini
#34281
Overall Influence
1905 - 1998 (93 years)
Alberto Carlos Taquini was an Argentine cardiologist, clinical researcher and academic. Early life and education Taquini was born in Buenos Aires to Carlota Castiglioni and Alberto Taquini. He enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires, and graduated with a Medical Degree in 1929. His work on the University of Buenoes Aires School of Medicine research team earned Taquini a 1939 scholarship from the Argentine Society for the Advancement of Science, with which he completed further studies at the Harvard School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#34270
Thomas R. Tritton
#34282
Overall Influence
Thomas R. Tritton was the twelfth president of Haverford College, serving from 1997 to 2007. After his presidency, he served as president in residence at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. From 2008 to 2013, he served as president and CEO of the Chemical Heritage Foundation.
Go to Profile#34271
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore
#34283
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and co-director of the Wellcome Trust PhD Programme Neuroscience at University College London.
Go to Profile#34272
Chris Stapleton
#34284
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Christopher Alvin Stapleton is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. He was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and grew up in Staffordsville, Kentucky. In 2001, Stapleton moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue an engineering degree from Vanderbilt University but dropped out to pursue his career in music. Subsequently, Stapleton signed a contract with Sea Gayle Music to write and publish his music.
Go to Profile#34273
Jean Leymarie
#34285
Overall Influence
1919 - 2006 (87 years)
Jean Leymarie was a French art historian. Biography Born into a peasant family, he pursued his studies in Toulouse then Paris. After the Second World War, he began his museum career. He was curator at Museum of Grenoble from 1950 to 1955, director of the Musée national d'Art moderne from 1968 to 1973 and director of the French Academy in Rome from 1979 to 1985. He taught for a long time at the Swiss universities of Lausanne and Geneva and published several works on the history of art. He remains one of those who imposed 20th-century painting on French national museums.
Go to Profile#34274
Juninho Pernambucano
#34286
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Antônio Augusto Ribeiro Reis Júnior , commonly known as Juninho Pernambucano or simply Juninho, is a Brazilian former professional footballer who was most recently the sporting director of French club Lyon. A dead-ball specialist noted for his bending free kickss, in particular the knuckleball technique which he developed, Juninho holds the record for the highest number of goals scored through free kicks and he is considered by many to be the greatest free kick-taker of all time.
Go to Profile#34275
Peter Wallensteen
#34287
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Peter Wallensteen, born 29 July 1945 in Stockholm, is a peace and conflict researcher in Sweden, now Senior Professor in Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University. He was the first holder of the Dag Hammarskjöld Chair in Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, 1985-2012. He was the Richard G. Starmann Sr. Research Professor of Peace Studies, at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at University of Notre Dame , 2006-2018. From 1972 to 1999 he directed the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University.
Go to Profile#34276
Craig Bellamy
#34288
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Craig Douglas Bellamy is a Welsh former professional footballer who played as a forward and is current assistant manager at Premier League side Burnley. Born in Cardiff, Bellamy began his senior playing career with Norwich City, where he made his professional debut in 1996. He signed for Premier League side Coventry City in 2000, breaking the club's record transfer fee, but suffered relegation in his only season. He joined Newcastle United the following year where he helped the club achieve two top-four finishes during a four year spell. Bellamy fell out with manager Graeme Souness in 2005 an...
Go to Profile#34277
Jenni Barclay
#34289
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Jenni Barclay is a professor of volcanology at the University of East Anglia. She works on ways to mitigate volcanic risks, the interactions between rainfall and volcanic activity and the communication of volcanic hazards in the Caribbean. Barclay leads the NERC-ESRC funded Strengthening Resilience to Volcanic Hazards research project as well as a Leverhulme Trust programme looking at the volcanic history of the Ascension Islands.
Go to Profile#34278
Roy Bittan
#34290
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Roy J. Bittan is an American musician best known as a long-time member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. Nicknamed "The Professor", Bittan joined the E Street Band in 1974. He plays the piano, organ, accordion and synthesizers. Bittan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 as a member of the E Street Band.
Go to Profile#34279
Gordon Dougan
#34291
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Gordon Dougan is a Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge and head of pathogen research and a member of the board of management at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, United Kingdom. He is also a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. During his career, Dougan has pioneered work on enteric diseases and been heavily involved in the movement to improve vaccine usage in developing countries. In this regard he was recently voted as one of the top ten most influential people in the vaccine world by people working in the area.
Go to Profile#34280
Louis Hyman
#34292
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Louis Roland Hyman is an American writer and economic historian. He is the Maurice and Hinda Neufeld Founders Professor in Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University's School of Industrial & Labor Relations.
Go to Profile#34281
Rafael van der Vaart
#34293
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Rafael Ferdinand van der Vaart is a Dutch former professional footballer who played as an attacking midfielder. Van der Vaart began his career at Ajax's youth academy and worked his way into the first team, debuting as a 17-year-old. Known for his playmaking skills, he drew comparisons to Johan Cruyff. He was named Dutch Football Talent of the Year and became the first recipient of the Golden Boy Award while at the club. He moved to Bundesliga club Hamburger SV, then to Real Madrid, then on to Tottenham Hotspur before returning to Hamburger SV in 2012. In the latter stages of his career, Van ...
Go to Profile#34282
Mike Brown
#34294
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Michael Burton Brown is an American basketball coach who is the head coach for the Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Association . Brown was previously the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Los Angeles Lakers, and most recently an assistant coach for the Golden State Warriors. He is also the head coach of the Nigerian national team.
Go to Profile#34283
Demas Nwoko
#34295
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Demas Nwoko is a Nigerian artist, protean designer, architect and master builder. As an artist, he strives to incorporate modern techniques in architecture and stage design to enunciate African subject matter in most of his works. In the 1960s, he was a member of the Mbari club of Ibadan, a committee of burgeoning Nigerian and foreign artists. He was also a lecturer at the University of Ibadan. In the 1970s, he was the publisher of the now defunct New Culture magazine.
Go to Profile#34284
Danielle Macbeth
#34296
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Danielle Monique Macbeth is a Canadian philosopher whose work focuses on the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and the philosophy of logic. She is T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College in Pennsylvania where she has taught since 1989. Macbeth also taught at the University of Hawaii from 1986–1989.
Go to Profile#34285
Moriba Jah
#34297
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Moriba Kemessia Jah is an American space scientist and aerospace engineer who describes himself as a "space environmentalist", specializing in orbit determination and prediction, especially as related to space situational awareness and space traffic monitoring. He is currently an associate professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin. Jah previously worked as a spacecraft navigator at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he was a navigator for the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, Mars Exploration Rover, and his last mission was the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Go to Profile#34286
Pamela Silver
#34298
Overall Influence
Pamela Ann Silver is an American cell and systems biologist and a bioengineer. She holds the Elliot T. and Onie H. Adams Professorship of Biochemistry and Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Systems Biology. Silver is one of the founding Core Faculty Members of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#34287
Thomas J. Kelly
#34299
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Thomas J. Kelly is an American cancer researcher whose work focuses on the molecular mechanisms of DNA replication. Kelly is director of the Sloan-Kettering Institute, the basic research arm of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He holds the Center's Benno C. Schmidt Chair of Cancer Research.
Go to Profile#34288
Alf Adams
#34300
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Alfred Rodney Adams is a British physicist who invented the strained-layer quantum-well laser. Most modern homes will have several of these devices in their homes in all types of electronic equipment.
Go to Profile#34289
Victoria Chibuogu Nneji
#34301
Overall Influence
Victoria Chibuogu Nneji is a Nigerian-born American computer scientist, design and innovation strategist, and a lecturing fellow, known for her research on robotics, automation, human-centered design, and autonomous transportation.
Go to Profile#34290
Ari Laptev
#34302
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Ari Laptev is a mathematician working on the spectral theory of partial differential equations. His PhD was obtained in 1978 at Leningrad State University under the supervision of Michael Solomyak. He is currently Professor at both the KTH in Stockholm and Imperial College London. From 2001 to 2003 Laptev served as the President of the Swedish Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#34291
Mykola Azarov
#34303
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Mykola Yanovych Azarov is a Ukrainian politician who was the Prime Minister of Ukraine from 11 March 2010 to 27 January 2014. He was the First Vice Prime Minister and Finance Minister from 2002 to 2005 and again from 2006 to 2007. Azarov also served ex officio as an acting Prime Minister in the First Yanukovych Government when Viktor Yanukovych ran for president at first and then upon the resignation of his government.
Go to Profile#34292
Habib Malik
#34304
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Habib Malik is a retired associate professor of history and cultural studies at the Lebanese American University . His father Charles Malik was a leading figure in the drafting and adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Go to Profile#34293
Maxim Suraykin
#34305
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Maxim Alexandrovich Suraykin is a Russian politician who has been the leader of the political party Communists of Russia and member of the Legislative Assembly of Ulyanovsk Oblast . Suraykin was Communists of Russia's candidate for the 2018 presidential election.
Go to Profile#34294
Jean-Jacques Annaud
#34306
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Jean-Jacques Annaud is a French film director, screenwriter and producer. He directed Quest for Fire , The Name of the Rose , The Bear , The Lover , Seven Years in Tibet , Enemy at the Gates , Black Gold , and Wolf Totem .
Go to Profile#34295
Larry Miller
#34307
Overall Influence
Larry G. Miller is an American business executive for Nike, Inc. He spent five years as the team president of the Portland Trail Blazers in the National Basketball Association . In his memoir, Jump: My Secret Journey From the Streets to the Boardroom, Miller writes that he was involved in a gang when he was 16, committing the murder of another teenager.
Go to Profile#34296
Robert D. Schreiber
#34308
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Robert D. Schreiber is an immunologist and currently is the Alumni Endowed Professor of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine. Schreiber has led a major revision in our understanding of how the immune system interacts with cancer. His work on the cancer immunoediting hypothesis has helped reveal that the immune system is not only capable of destroying cancers, but can also drive them into a dormant state that, in some cases, results in an improved state of malignancy.
Go to Profile#34297
Angèle Bassolé-Ouédraogo
#34309
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Angèle Bassolé-Ouédraogo is an Ivoirian-born Canadian poet and journalist. She has won the Trillium Book Award and been nominated for the Ottawa Book Award. Biography She was born in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, and raised in Upper Volta. She was an avid reader as a child, and was encouraged by her local librarian who eventually taught her as his assistant, which allowed her access to more books than she would normally be allowed. She wrote her first poem around the age of 11 to 12, after being influenced by her brother Francis, who would go on to be a well known poet in Côte d'Ivoire. Her first p...
Go to Profile#34298
Shigeaki Sugeta
#34310
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Shigeaki Sugeta is a Japanese linguist. Emeritus professor of General, Romance and Italian Linguistics at the University of Waseda, and now advisor to the Institute of Italian Studies of the same university, is the author of the first ever Sardinian-Japanese vocabulary.
Go to Profile#34299
Lefty Driesell
#34311
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Charles Grice "Lefty" Driesell is a retired American college basketball coach. He was the first coach to win more than 100 games at four different NCAA Division I schools, Driesell led the programs of Davidson College, the University of Maryland, James Madison University, and Georgia State University. He earned a reputation as "the greatest program builder in the history of basketball." At the time of his retirement in 2003, he was the fourth-winningest NCAA Division I men's basketball college coach, with 21 seasons of 20 or more wins, and 21 conference or conference tournament titles. Dri...
Go to Profile#34300
Amal Saad-Ghorayeb
#34312
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Amal Abdo Saad-Ghorayeb is a Lebanese writer and political analyst known for her writings on the Israeli–Lebanese conflict and Hezbollah. Life Saad-Ghorayeb was an assistant professor of political science at the Lebanese American University until 2008. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham, England. She was a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center .
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