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
#35001
Natalie Merchant
#35013
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Natalie Anne Merchant is an American alternative rock singer-songwriter. She joined the band 10,000 Maniacs in 1981 and was lead vocalist and primary lyricist for the group. She remained with the group for their first seven albums before leaving to begin her solo career in 1993. She has since released nine studio albums as a solo artist.
Go to Profile#35002
Ned Markosian
#35014
Overall Influence
Ned Markosian is an American philosopher. He is currently professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Markosian is of Armenian descent and has four brothers. He received his BA from Oberlin College and his PhD in Philosophy from UMass Amherst in 1990. His doctoral advisor was Gareth Matthews. Markosian has previously taught at Lawrence University, University of New Hampshire, West Virginia University, Bay Path College, University of Hartford, and Western Washington University. He has been at UMass Amherst since Fall 2015.
Go to Profile#35003
Jimmy White
#35015
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
James Warren White is an English professional snooker player who has won four seniors World titles. Nicknamed "The Whirlwind" because of his fluid, swift and attacking style of play, White is the 1980 World Amateur Champion, 2009 Six-red World champion, a record four-time World Seniors Champion , 2019 Seniors 6-Red World Champion and 1984 World Doubles champion with Alex Higgins.
Go to Profile#35004
Frederick Rowbottom
#35016
Overall Influence
1938 - 2009 (71 years)
Frederick Rowbottom was a British logician and mathematician. The large cardinal notion of Rowbottom cardinals is named after him. Biography After graduating from Cambridge University, Rowbottom studied under Howard Jerome Keisler at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, earning his Ph.D. degree in 1964, with a thesis entitled Large Cardinals and Small Constructible Sets, under the supervision of Jerome Keisler. With a recommendation from Georg Kreisel, he took a position at the University of Bristol in 1965, where he spent the rest of his professional career.
Go to Profile#35005
Sally Price
#35017
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Sarah Lois Price is Professor of Physical Chemistry at University College London. Education Price was educated at the University of Cambridge, where she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977 followed by a PhD in 1980. Her doctoral research modelled the intermolecular forces between diatomic molecules and was supervised by Anthony Stone.
Go to Profile#35006
William Marciano
#35018
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
William Joseph Marciano is an American theoretical physicist, specializing in elementary particle physics. Education and career Marciano graduated with a B.S. and an M.S. in physics at New York University. There he received in 1974 his doctorate with Alberto Sirlin as doctoral advisor. Marciano worked from 1974 to 1980 at Rockefeller University, where he started as a research associate and was then promoted to assistant professor. From 1980 to 1981 he was an associate professor at Northwestern University. At Brookhaven National Laboratory he was in 1978 a research collaborator in 1978 and in 1981 joined the physics department and was granted tenure.
Go to Profile#35007
Tony Sheridan
#35019
Overall Influence
1940 - 2013 (73 years)
Anthony Esmond Sheridan McGinnity , known professionally as Tony Sheridan, was an English rock and roll guitarist who spent much of his adult life in Germany. He was best known as an early collaborator of the Beatles , one of two non-Beatles to receive label performance credit on a record with the group, and the only non-Beatle to appear as lead singer on a Beatles recording which charted as a single.
Go to Profile#35008
Aleksei Sveshnikov
#35020
Overall Influence
1924 - 2022 (98 years)
Aleksei Georgievich Sveshnikov was a Russian mathematical physicist. Biography Born in Saratov as the son of Georgy Nikolaevich Sveshnikov and Vera Konstantinovna Sveshnikova , A. G. Sveshnikov graduated from a Moscow high school in 1941. As an artillery soldier and platoon commander in WWII, he was in April 1945 seriously wounded on the 4th Ukrainian Front. He was awarded the Order of the Red Star , the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st Degree , the Medal for Victory over Germany and many jubilee medals.
Go to Profile#35009
Marcel Bessis
#35021
Overall Influence
1917 - 1994 (77 years)
Marcel Claude Bessis was a French physician known for research on blood cells. Bessis was born in Tunis on 15 November 1917. He was educated at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly in Paris, France. He developed an interest in microscopy in his teenage years and went on to study medicine at the University of Paris. During the Second World War, he served as a military physician and pioneered the technique of exchange transfusion to treat war injuries. He graduated with a medical degree in 1944. Later he studied exchange transfusion as a treatment for hemolytic disease of the newborn, uremia and acute leukemia.
Go to Profile#35010
Joseph V. Brady
#35022
Overall Influence
1922 - 2011 (89 years)
Joseph Vincent Brady was an American psychologist, neuroscientist, and pioneer of behavioral pharmacology. In addition to his status as a founder of behavioral pharmacology, he made significant contributions in the areas of drug abuse and treatment, space exploration, and human research ethics.
Go to Profile#35011
Paula Hyman
#35023
Overall Influence
1946 - 2011 (65 years)
Paula Hyman was an American social historian who served as the Lucy Moses Professor of Modern Jewish History at Yale University. She served as the president of the American Academy for Jewish Research from 2004 to 2008. She also was the first female dean of the Seminary College of Jewish Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary from 1981 to 1986. Hyman was a pioneer for gender equality in Jewish religious practice, helping push for women's ordination as Conservative rabbis. Jewish historian Hasia Diner credits Hyman as the originator of the study of Jewish women’s history.
Go to Profile#35012
Bev Bevan
#35024
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Beverley Bevan is an English rock musician who was the drummer and one of the original members of the Move and Electric Light Orchestra . After the end of ELO in 1986, he founded ELO Part II. Bevan also was drummer for Black Sabbath during the Born Again Tour, and later played percussion on The Eternal Idol album in 1987. Bevan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017 as a member of Electric Light Orchestra.
Go to Profile#35013
Lee A. Piché
#35025
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Lee Anthony Piché is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in Minnesota beginning in 2009, retired from public ministry in 2015, and returned to public ministry in 2023 as vicar for retired priests.
Go to Profile#35014
Stephen Mitchell
#35026
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Stephen Mitchell is a poet, translator, scholar, and anthologist. He is best known for his translations and adaptions of works including the Tao Te Ching, the Epic of Gilgamesh, works of Rainer Maria Rilke, and Christian texts.
Go to Profile#35015
Anna Karlin
#35027
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Anna R. Karlin is an American computer scientist, the Microsoft Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. Biography Karlin was born into an academic family. Her father, Samuel Karlin, was a mathematician at Stanford University, and her brother, Kenneth Karlin, is a professor of chemistry at Johns Hopkins University.
Go to Profile#35016
James L. McMichael
#35028
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
James L. McMichael is an American poet and educator. Life The Pasadena, California native, McMichael received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. In 1970, following the breakup of his first marriage, he married his second wife, Phylinda Wallace, a translator. They later divorced and he remarried. He has three children, Robert, Geoffrey and Owen.
Go to Profile#35017
Elio Di Rupo
#35029
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Elio Di Rupo is a Belgian politician who has served as the minister-president of Wallonia since 2019. He is affiliated with the Socialist Party. Di Rupo previously served as the prime minister of Belgium from 6 December 2011 to 11 October 2014, heading the Di Rupo Government. He was the first francophone to hold the office since Paul Vanden Boeynants in 1979, and the country's first socialist prime minister since Edmond Leburton left office in 1974. Di Rupo was also Belgium's first prime minister of non-Belgian descent, and the world's second openly gay person and first openly gay man to be h...
Go to Profile#35018
Gísli Pálsson
#35030
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Gísli Pálsson is an Icelandic anthropologist and academic. He is a Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Iceland, formerly a professor at the University of Oslo. Pálsson is most known for his work in areas of environmental anthropology, fishing communities, extinction studies, and arctic cultures. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction , The Human Age: How We Created the Anthropocene Epoch and Caused the Climate Crisis , Anthropology and The New Genetic , and Nature, Culture, and Society: Anthropological Perspectives on Life .
Go to Profile#35019
Imelda Staunton
#35031
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Imelda Mary Philomena Bernadette Staunton is an English actress. After training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Staunton began her career in repertory theatre in 1976 and appeared in various theatre productions in the United Kingdom.
Go to Profile#35020
Taylor Fritz
#35032
Overall Influence
1997 - Present (29 years)
Taylor Harry Fritz is an American professional tennis player. He has a career-high singles ranking of world No. 5 by the Association of Tennis Professionals , achieved on February 27, 2023, and a doubles ranking of world No. 104, achieved on July 26, 2021. Fritz has won six ATP Tour singles titles, including a Masters 1000 title at the 2022 Indian Wells Masters. His best results at the majors are reaching the quarterfinals of the 2022 Wimbledon Championships and the 2023 US Open. He is currently the No. 1 American in men's singles.
Go to Profile#35021
Eric Jacobsen
#35033
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Eric N. Jacobsen is the Sheldon Emery Professor of Chemistry and former chair of the department of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University. He is a prominent figure in the field of organic chemistry and is best known for the development of the Jacobsen epoxidation and other work in selective catalysis.
Go to Profile#35022
Raymond D. Fogelson
#35034
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Raymond David Fogelson was an American anthropologist known for his research on American Indians of the southeastern United States, especially the Cherokee. He is considered a founder of the subdiscipline of ethnohistory.
Go to Profile#35023
Justin Rose
#35035
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Justin Peter Rose, is an English professional golfer. Rose first achieved significant media attention when he finished fourth place at the 1998 Open Championship as an amateur. He turned pro the next day but struggled during his first couple of years as a professional, making few cuts. In the early 2000s, however, he had success, winning his first European Tour event in 2002 and ultimately leading the tour's Order of Merit in 2007. In the ensuing years, Rose focused primarily on the United States, winning a number of notable tournaments, culminating with a victory at the 2013 U.S. Open. Rose...
Go to Profile#35024
Beth Nolan
#35036
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Beth Nolan was vice president and general counsel of the George Washington University. She was also Bill Clinton's final White House Counsel, as well as the first woman to hold the office. Prior to serving as White House Counsel, Nolan worked in other White House and Department of Justice positions, taught law, and worked in private practice.
Go to Profile#35025
Douglas Hurd
#35037
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Douglas Richard Hurd, Baron Hurd of Westwell, is a British Conservative Party politician who served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major from 1979 to 1995. A career diplomat and political secretary to Prime Minister Edward Heath, Hurd first entered Parliament in February 1974 as MP for the Mid Oxfordshire constituency . His first government post was as Minister for Europe from 1979 to 1983 and he served in several Cabinet roles from 1984 onwards, including Secretary of State for Northern Ireland , Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary . He stood unsuccessfully for the Con...
Go to Profile#35026
Qian Lingxi
#35038
Overall Influence
1916 - 2009 (93 years)
Qian Lingxi , also known as Tsien Ling-hi, was a Chinese civil engineer and physicist. An authority on engineering structural mechanics and computational mechanics, he served as president of the Dalian University of Technology and was a founding member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences . DUT's Lingxi Library, opened in 2009, is named after him.
Go to Profile#35027
Vincent Timmerman
#35039
Overall Influence
Vincent Timmerman is a Belgian scientist working at the VIB Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Antwerp of Christine Van Broeckhoven. His research is focused on inherited disorders of the peripheral nervous system, classified as hereditary motor and/or sensory neuropathies and the most common inherited peripheral neuropathy is Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease or Hereditary Motor and Sensory Neuropathy .
Go to Profile#35028
Remko Van Hoek
#35040
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Remko I. Van Hoek is a professor of Supply Chain Management in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. He has held several executive roles including positions at Disney and PwC. He is also a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply and the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport.
Go to Profile#35029
Leonid Polterovich
#35041
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Leonid Polterovich is a Russian-Israeli mathematician at Tel Aviv University. His research field includes symplectic geometry and dynamical systems. A native of Moscow, Polterovich earned his undergraduate degree at Moscow State University in 1984. He moved to Israel after the collapse of communism, earning his doctorate from Tel Aviv University in 1990. In 1996, he was awarded the EMS Prize, and in 1998 the Erdős Prize. In 1998, he was an Invited Speaker of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin. He was a member of the faculty of the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#35030
Rod Thorn
#35042
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Rodney King Thorn is an American basketball executive and a former professional player and coach, Olympic Committee Chairman, with a career spanning over 50 years. In 2018, Thorn was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#35031
Jim Boeheim
#35043
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
James Arthur Boeheim Jr. is an American former college basketball coach and current Special Assistant to the Athletic Director at Syracuse University. From 1976 until 2023, he was the head coach of the Syracuse Orange men's team of the Atlantic Coast Conference . Boeheim guided the Orange to ten Big East Conference regular season championships, five Big East tournament championships, and 34 NCAA tournament appearances, including five Final Four appearances and three appearances in the national title game. In those games, the Orangemen lost to Indiana in 1987, and to Kentucky in 1996, before d...
Go to Profile#35032
Mary Snell-Hornby
#35044
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Mary Snell-Hornby is a British-Austrian translator and scholar. Career Mary Snell was awarded a State Scholarship to study at Saint Felix School, Southwold, Suffolk, where she attained G.C.E. Advanced and Scholarship Level in English, French and German in 1958. She studied English, French, German, and Moral Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, where she obtained her MA with First Class Honours in German Language and Literature in 1962.
Go to Profile#35033
Tom Griffiths
#35045
Overall Influence
Thomas L. Griffiths is an Australian academic who is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Information Technology, Consciousness, and Culture at Princeton University. He studies human decision-making and its connection to problem-solving methods in computation. His book with Brian Christian, Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions, was named one of the "Best Books of 2016" by MIT Technology Review.
Go to Profile#35034
Muhammad Abdul Bari
#35046
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Muhammad Abdul Bari , is a Bangladeshi-born British physicist, writer, teacher, and community leader. He is a former secretary of Muslim Aid, a former chairman of the East London Mosque, and a former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain. He also served as the president of the Islamic Forum of Europe in its early years when it was formed to organize Bangladeshi diaspora professionals in Europe. In addition to consultancy work, he has written for publications including The Huffington Post and Al Jazeera, and has authored numerous books.
Go to Profile#35035
Barbara Hershey
#35047
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Barbara Lynn Herzstein, better known as Barbara Hershey , is an American actress. In a career spanning more than 50 years, she has played a variety of roles on television and in cinema in several genres, including westerns and comedies. She began acting at age 17 in 1965 but did not achieve widespread critical acclaim until the 1980s. By that time, the Chicago Tribune referred to her as "one of America's finest actresses".
Go to Profile#35036
George Winterton
#35048
Overall Influence
1946 - 2008 (62 years)
George Graham Winterton was an Australian academic specialising in Australian constitutional law. Winterton taught for 28 years at the University of New South Wales before taking up an appointment of Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Sydney in 2004.
Go to Profile#35037
Arne L. Kalleberg
#35049
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Arne Lindeman Kalleberg is a Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center. He is also an adjunct professor in the Kenan-Flagler Business School, the Department of Public Policy, and the Curriculum in Global Studies. Kalleberg served as the secretary of the American Sociological Association from 2001 to 2004 and as its president from 2007 to 2008. He has been the editor-in-chief of Social Forces, an international journal of social research for over ten years.
Go to Profile#35038
Hank Snow
#35050
Overall Influence
1914 - 1999 (85 years)
Clarence Eugene "Hank" Snow was a Canadian-American country music guitarist, singer and songwriter. Most popular in the 1950s, his career spanned more than 50 years. He recorded 140 albums and charted more than 85 singles on the Billboard country charts from 1950 until 1980. His number-one hits include the self-penned songs "I'm Moving On", "The Golden Rocket", and "The Rhumba Boogie"; and famous versionss of "I Don't Hurt Anymore", "Let Me Go, Lover!", "I've Been Everywhere", "Hello Love", as well as other top 10 hits.
Go to Profile#35039
Amanda Vickery
#35051
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Amanda Jane Vickery is an English historian, writer, radio and television presenter, and professor of early modern history at Queen Mary, University of London. Education and career Vickery was born in Preston, Lancashire, England, and attended Penwortham Girls' Grammar School. She graduated from the former Bedford College, London , where she completed her PhD in Modern History.
Go to Profile#35040
Carole Hodgson
#35052
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Carole Hodgson is an English sculptor. Biography Hodgson studied at the Wimbledon School of Art from 1957 to 1962 and at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1962 to 1964. She is an Emeritus Professor of Fine Art and Sculpture Kingston University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors.
Go to Profile#35041
Smadar Lavie
#35053
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Smadar Lavie is a Mizrahi U.S.-Israeli anthropologist, author, and activist. She specializes in the anthropology of Egypt, Israel and Palestine, emphasizing issues of race, gender and religion. Lavie is a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, and a visiting scholar at the Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Lavie received her doctorate in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley and spent nine years as assistant and associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis. She authored The P...
Go to Profile#35042
Suzanne Batra
#35054
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Suzanne Wellington Tubby Batra is an American entomologist best known for her work on the classification of insect societies and for coining the term eusociality. Batra was born in New York City where her father Roger W. Tubby was a journalist and secretary to President Truman, later serving in the United Nations as US Ambassador during the Kennedy period. At a young age, she was exposed to outdoor life, natural history, fishing and hunting especially after the family moved to the Adirondacks. She graduated from Saranac Lake High School in 1956 and received a Bachelor of Arts in zoology from Swarthmore College in 1960.
Go to Profile#35043
Jean Gallier
#35055
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jean Henri Gallier is a researcher in computational logic at the University of Pennsylvania, where he holds appointments in the Computer and Information Science Department and the Department of Mathematics.
Go to Profile#35044
Roger W. Mills
#35056
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Roger W. Mills is a British economist working in the area of corporate finance. Emeritus professor at Henley Business School University of Reading, the group chairman at Value Focus Group, a group of consulting firms, chief instructor and chairman of the British Shito Ryu Karate Association , 8th Dan .
Go to Profile#35045
Alfred Hrdlicka
#35057
Overall Influence
1928 - 2009 (81 years)
Alfred Hrdlicka was an Austrian sculptor, painter, and professor. His surname is sometimes written Hrdlička. He was born in Vienna. After learning to be a dental technician from 1943 to 1945, Hrdlicka studied painting until 1952 at the Akademie der bildenden Künste under Albert Paris Gütersloh and Josef Dobrowsky. Afterwards he studied sculpture until 1957 under Fritz Wotruba. In 1960 he had his first exhibition in Vienna; in 1964 he attained international attention as a representative of Austria at the Venice Biennale, Italy.
Go to Profile#35046
Kenneth Kwong
#35058
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Kenneth Kin Man Kwong is a Hong Kong-born American nuclear physicist. He is a pioneer in human brain imaging. He received his bachelor's degree in Political Science in 1972 from the University of California, Berkeley. He went on to receive his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Riverside studying photon-photon collision interactions.
Go to Profile#35047
Wolfgang Petersen
#35059
Overall Influence
1941 - 2022 (81 years)
Wolfgang Petersen was a German filmmaker. He was nominated for two Academy Awards for the World War II submarine warfare film . His other films include The NeverEnding Story , Enemy Mine , In the Line of Fire , Outbreak , Air Force One , The Perfect Storm , Troy , and Poseidon .
Go to Profile#35048
Ellen Segal Huvelle
#35060
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Ellen Judith Huvelle is an inactive Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. She has overseen several significant cases. In a case decided in May 2001, Huvelle "upheld federal regulations that restrict the sale of consumers' names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses and phone numbers." Later that year, Huvelle heard requests by family members of Vince Foster seeking access to pictures of his body taken after his death. In November 2005, she accepted the guilty plea in the high-profile prosecution of lobbyist Michael Scanlon.
Go to Profile#35049
Gilles de Kerchove
#35061
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Gilles de Kerchove d'Ousselghem is a Belgian senior European Union official. He was director in the general directorate of Justice and Home Affairs in the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union from 1995 – 2007, he has since been appointed as EU Counter-terrorism Coordinator, succeeding Gijs de Vries.
Go to Profile#35050
Karl Grossman
#35062
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Karl Grossman is an author, TV program host and full professor of journalism at the State University of New York at Old Westbury. For 32 years, he has hosted the TV interview program Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman. He is the author of six books.
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