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
#35101
Renate Mayntz
#35113
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Renate Mayntz is a German sociologist. She was director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, and is now director emerita. Biography Mayntz studied in the United States, and in 1957 received her doctorate from the Free University of Berlin. She taught at the Deutsche Hochschule für Verwaltungswissenschaften Speyer and the University of Cologne before founding, in 1984, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. In 1999, she won the Schader Award, Germany's highest accolade for a social scientist, and in 2004 she was awarded the Bielefelder Wissenschaftspreis.
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Aaron Ramsey
#35114
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (36 years)
Aaron James Ramsey is a Welsh professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for club Cardiff City and captains the Wales national team. Ramsey mainly plays as a box-to-box midfielder, but has also been deployed on the left and right wings.
Go to Profile#35103
Laurent Jalabert
#35115
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Laurent Jalabert is a French former professional road racing cyclist, from 1989 to 2002. Affectionately known as "Jaja" , he won many one-day and stage races and was ranked number 1 in the world in 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1999.
Go to Profile#35104
Peter M. Haas
#35116
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Peter M. Haas is a professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Karl Deutsch Visiting Professor at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin. His research concerns epistemic communities, global environmental politics, multilevel governance, and the role of science in global politics.
Go to Profile#35105
Lucy Jones
#35117
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Lucile M. Jones is a seismologist and public voice for earthquake science and earthquake safety in California. One of the foremost and trusted public authorities on earthquakes, Jones is viewed by many in Southern California as "the Beyoncé of earthquakes" who is frequently called up on to provide information on recent earthquakes.
Go to Profile#35106
Peter Angermann
#35118
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Peter Angermann is a German painter based in Nuremberg. Education and career Initially, from 1966 to 1968, Peter Angermann, who was born in 1945 in Rehau, a small town in Upper Franconia in Bavaria, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg, Then, in autumn 1968, he was drawn to the class run by Joseph Beuys at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Constantly showered with his teacher's praise, he nevertheless – or perhaps precisely for that reason – became co-founder of the legendary YIUP group, which from 1969 on attracted attention inside the academy, and above all in the Beuys class, through provocative actions that were directed even against Beuys himself.
Go to Profile#35107
Keyshia Cole
#35119
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Keyshia Myeshia Cole is an American singer, songwriter, television personality and actress. Born and raised in Oakland, California, she began her career as a backing vocalist for MC Hammer before ultimately signing with A&M Records, under whom she released her debut studio album, The Way It Is, in 2005. The record was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America and earned two nominations at the 2006 Soul Train Music Awards. Riding on the album's success, Cole would begin filming a reality television series for BET documenting her career, family and personal life calle...
Go to Profile#35108
R. Paul Butler
#35120
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Robert Paul Butler is an astronomer and staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., who searches for extrasolar planets. he and his team have discovered over half of the planets found orbiting nearby stars. He is noted for his pioneering work in Doppler spectroscopy, a method used to detect stars having orbiting planets by measuring the "wobble" induced by the gravitational forces between the star and its orbiting planet.
Go to Profile#35109
Kenneth Brown
#35121
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Kenneth Stephen Brown is a professor of mathematics at Cornell University, working in category theory and cohomology theory. Among other things, he is known for Ken Brown's lemma in the theory of model categories. He is also the author of the book Cohomology of Groups .
Go to Profile#35110
Leon Bibb
#35122
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Leon Bibb is an American news anchor and commentator for WKYC in Cleveland, Ohio, and was a member of the BGSU Board of Trustees. Leon Bibb was the first African American primetime news anchor in Ohio.
Go to Profile#35111
Mychal Thompson
#35123
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Mychal George Thompson is a Bahamian sports commentator and former professional basketball player. The top overall pick in the 1978 NBA draft, Thompson played the center position for the University of Minnesota and center and forward for the National Basketball Association's Portland Trail Blazers, San Antonio Spurs, and Los Angeles Lakers. Thompson won two NBA championships with the Lakers during their Showtime era in the 1980s. He is the father of basketball players Klay Thompson and Mychel Thompson, and baseball player Trayce Thompson.
Go to Profile#35112
S. P. Balasubrahmanyam
#35124
Overall Influence
1946 - 2020 (74 years)
Sripathi Panditaradhyula Balasubrahmanyam , also referred to as SPB or SP Balu or Balu, was an Indian playback singer, television presenter, actor, music composer, dubbing artist, and film producer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Indian singers of all time. He predominantly worked in Telugu, Tamil Kannada, Malayalam, and Hindi films and sang in a total of 16 languages.
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Maurice Halperin
#35125
Overall Influence
1906 - 1995 (89 years)
Maurice Hyman Halperin was an American writer, professor, diplomat, and accused Soviet spy . Biography Maurice Hyman Halperin was born on March 3, 1906, in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1927, he received an A.B. from Harvard College, in 1939 an MA from the University of Oklahoma, and in 1931 a doctorate from the Sorbonne.
Go to Profile#35114
Nick Raskulinecz
#35126
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Nick Raskulinecz is an American record producer. He resides in Nashville, Tennessee. Production career Raskulinecz is from the Bearden area of Knoxville, Tennessee. He first produced and recorded bands in Knoxville on a eight-track recorder that his grandfather bought for him. He played in a popular local thrash/funk band called Hypertribe. Three of their albums were produced at Underground Recording Studio in Seymour, Tennessee, with Matt Lincoln engineering and sharing producing duties. Soon Raskulinecz moved to Los Angeles with his band, now renamed Movement, in 1995, and took a job at Sound City Studios as an assistant, following a suggestion by Brian Bell from Weezer.
Go to Profile#35115
Amirhossein Sahebkar
#35127
Overall Influence
Amirhossein Sahebkar is an Iranian biotechnologist and Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at Mashhad University of Medical Sciences and Honorary Research Fellow at UWA Medical School. He is one of the top highly-cited researchers according to webometrics.
Go to Profile#35116
William McGinnis
#35128
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
William McGinnis, Ph.D. is a molecular biologist and professor of biology at the University of California San Diego. At UC San Diego he has also served as the Chairman of the Department of Biology from July 1998 - June 1999, as Associate Dean of the Division of Natural Sciences from July 1, 1999 - June 2000, and as Interim Dean of the newly established Division of Biological Sciences from July 1, 2000 - February 1, 2001. Dr. McGinnis was appointed Dean of the Divisional Biological Sciences on July 1, 2013.
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Ramazan Abdulatipov
#35129
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Ramazan Gadzhimuradovich Abdulatipov is a Russian politician and professor of Avar heritage. He served as Head of the Republic of Dagestan from 28 January 2013 until his resignation effective 3 October 2017.
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Patricia Kitcher
#35130
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Patricia W. Kitcher is the Roberta and William Campbell Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, widely known for her work on Immanuel Kant and on philosophy of psychology. She has held many positions at different universities, is a founding chair of a committee at the University of California, and has a lead role in multiple professional organizations. Kitcher's most notable interests throughout her career regard cognition and Kantian ethics. She is the author of multiple papers and two books.
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Nancy L. Zimpher
#35131
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Nancy L. Zimpher is an American educator, state university leader, and former Chancellor of the State University of New York . Prior to her service at SUNY, Zimpher was a dean and professor of education at Ohio State University ; then Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee between 1998 and 2003; and President of the University of Cincinnati from 2003 through May 2009. Zimpher was the first woman to serve as Chancellor of SUNY, UWM's first woman chancellor, and UC's first female president. Zimpher is a native of the village of Gallipolis in southern Ohio.
Go to Profile#35120
Dieter Fensel
#35132
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Dieter Fensel is a German researcher in the field of formal languages and the semantic web. He is University Professor at the University of Innsbruck, where he directs the Semantic Technologies Institute Innsbruck , a research center associated with the university.
Go to Profile#35121
Bernard H. Lavenda
#35133
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Bernard Howard Lavenda is a retired professor of chemical physics at the University of Camerino and expert on irreversible thermodynamics. He has contributed to many areas of physics, including that of Brownian motion, and in the establishment of the statistical basis of thermodynamics, and non-Euclidean geometrical theories of relativity. He was the scientific coordinator of the "European Thermodynamics Network" in the European Commission Program of Human Capital and Mobility. He was also a proponent for the establishment of, and scientific director of, a National Centre for Thermodynamics,...
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Joe Dante
#35134
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Joseph James Dante Jr. is an American film director, producer, editor and actor. His films—notably Gremlins alongside its sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch —often mix the 1950s-style B movie genre with 1960s radicalism and cartoon comedy.
Go to Profile#35123
Rob Portman
#35135
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Robert Jones Portman is an American attorney and politician who served as a United States senator from Ohio from 2011 to 2023. A member of the Republican Party, Portman was the 35th director of the Office of Management and Budget from 2006 to 2007, the 14th United States trade representative from 2005 to 2006, and a U.S. representative from 1993 to 2005, representing Ohio's 2nd district.
Go to Profile#35124
Letitia Obeng
#35136
Overall Influence
1925 - 2023 (98 years)
Letitia Eva Takyibea Obeng was the first Ghanaian woman to obtain a degree in zoology and the first to be awarded a doctorate. She is described as "the grandmother of female scientists in Ghana". Early life and education Letitia Obeng was born at Anum in the Eastern Region on 10 January 1925. She attended a primary school in Abetifi, Kwahu and a middle school in Kyebi. Between 1939 and 1946, she had her secondary school education at Achimota College. While at school she took the London University International Examination to continue her education, courtesy of a government scholarship at the University of Birmingham , where she was the only African female student on the Edgbaston campus.
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Frank L. Lewis
#35137
Overall Influence
Frank L. Lewis is an American electrical engineer, academic and researcher. He is a professor of electrical engineering, Moncrief-O’Donnell Endowed Chair, and head of Advanced Controls and Sensors Group at The University of Texas at Arlington . He is a member of UTA Academy of Distinguished Teachers and a charter member of UTA Academy of Distinguished Scholars.
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Charles Stuart Bowyer
#35138
Overall Influence
1934 - 2020 (86 years)
Charles Stuart Bowyer was an American astronomer and academic. He was a professor at the University of California. Early life and education Bowyer was born in Toledo, Ohio, to Howard and Elizabeth Bowyer. His father was a pilot. As a boy, he attended a one-room grade school near his father’s farm in Orland Park, Ill., before being valedictorian at Orland Park High School. He graduated from Miami University of Ohio with a degree in physics. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Catholic University in 1965.
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Pascaline Dupas
#35139
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Pascaline Dupas is a French economist whose research focuses on development economics and applied microeconomics, with a particular interest in health, education, and savings. She is a professor in economics and public affairs at Princeton University and is a co-chair of the Poverty Action Lab's health sector. She received the Best Young French Economist Prize in 2015.
Go to Profile#35128
Ronald D. Moore
#35140
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Ronald Dowl Moore is an American screenwriter and television producer. He is best known for his work on Star Trek, as well as on the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica television series, for which he won a Peabody Award, and on Outlander, based on the novels of the same name by Diana Gabaldon. In 2019, he created and wrote the series For All Mankind for Apple TV+.
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Peter Berg
#35141
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Peter Berg is an American director, producer, writer, and actor. His directorial film works include the black comedy Very Bad Things , the action comedy The Rundown , the sports drama Friday Night Lights , the action thriller The Kingdom , the superhero comedy-drama Hancock , the military science fiction war film Battleship , the war film Lone Survivor , the disaster drama Deepwater Horizon , the Boston Marathon bombing drama Patriots Day , the action thriller Mile 22 , and the action comedy Spenser Confidential , the latter five all starring Mark Wahlberg. In addition to cameo appearances in...
Go to Profile#35130
Joe Calzaghe
#35142
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Joseph William Calzaghe is a Welsh former professional boxer who competed from 1993 to 2008. He held multiple world championships in two weight classes, including unified and lineal titles at super-middleweight, and the Ring magazine light-heavyweight title.
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André Téchiné
#35143
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
André Téchiné is a French screenwriter and film director. He has a long and distinguished career that places him among the most accomplished post-New Wave French film directors. Téchiné belongs to a second generation of French film critics associated with Cahiers du cinéma who followed François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard and others from criticism into filmmaking. He is noted for his elegant and emotionally charged films that often delve into the complexities of emotions and the human condition. One of Téchiné's trademarks is the examination of human relations in a sensitive bu...
Go to Profile#35132
Jean-Pierre Hansen
#35144
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jean-Pierre Hansen FRS is a Luxembourgian chemist and an emeritus professor of the University of Cambridge. Education Hansen gained a PhD from Paris-Sud 11 University in 1969, the same year working as a staff scientist for the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
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David Starkey
#35145
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
David John Starkey is a specialist in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British maritime history. His research focuses on shipping, seafaring, privateering, fisheries and marine environmental history.
Go to Profile#35134
George Lazenby
#35146
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
George Robert Lazenby is an Australian actor. He was the second actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond in the Eon Productions film series, playing the character in On Her Majesty's Secret Service . Having appeared in only one film, Lazenby's tenure as Bond is the shortest among the actors in the series.
Go to Profile#35135
Clare Moriarty
#35147
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Dame Clare Moriarty DCB is the Chief Executive of Citizens Advice and former British civil servant, who served as Permanent Secretary of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs between 2015 and 2019 and as Permanent Secretary of the Department for Exiting the European Union from March 2019 until January 2020. In November 2017, she was appointed the first civil service “faith and belief” champion, to represent all faiths and beliefs and promote interfaith dialogue. After leaving the Civil Service when DExEU was closed, she took up a new role as chief executive of Citizens Advi...
Go to Profile#35136
Martin Cohen
#35148
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Martin Cohen is a British philosopher, an editor and reviewer who writes on philosophy, philosophy of science and political philosophy. Biography He studied philosophy and social science at Sussex University where his tutors included some of the early group of philosophers who launched the university's pioneering language and values programme, including Terry Diffey and Bernard Harrison. He obtained a teaching qualification at Keele University and his PhD in philosophy of education from the University of Exeter. After research posts at universities in Britain and Australia, Cohen moved to Fra...
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Billy Crudup
#35149
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
William Gaither Crudup is an American actor. He was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead for his performance in Jesus' Son . He went on to star in numerous high-profile films, including Almost Famous , Big Fish , Mission: Impossible III , Watchmen , Public Enemies , The Stanford Prison Experiment , Jackie , and Alien: Covenant , in both lead and supporting roles.
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Karl Mahlburg
#35150
Overall Influence
Karl Mahlburg is an American mathematician whose research interests lie in the areas of modular forms, partitions, combinatorics and number theory. He is the author of over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles. Mahlburg received his PhD in 2006 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Between 2011 and 2021 he was an assistant professor and an associate professor of mathematics at Louisiana State University.
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Noah Wyle
#35151
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Noah Strausser Speer Wyle is an American actor. He is best known for his role as John Carter in the television series ER , which earned him nominations for three Golden Globe Awards and five Primetime Emmy Awards. He is also known for his roles as Flynn Carsen in The Librarian franchise including three TV movies The Librarian: Quest for the Spear , The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mine , and The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice then returning for the television series and Tom Mason in the television series Falling Skies . He has appeared in films such as A Few Good Men , Pirates of Silicon Valley , Donnie Darko , and W.
Go to Profile#35140
Akio Suzuki
#35152
Overall Influence
1929 - 2010 (81 years)
Akio Suzuki was a Japanese doctor, medical scientist, educator and president of Tokyo Medical and Dental University . He was best known as an expert on heart surgery. Early life Suzuki earned his medical degree from TMDU in 1956. His training continued as a surgical intern in Tokyo at the U.S. Army Hospital. He was a surgical resident at Albany Medical School in New York.
Go to Profile#35141
Blythe Danner
#35153
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Blythe Katherine Danner is an American actress. Accolades she has received include two Primetime Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Izzy Huffstodt on Huff , and a Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance in Butterflies Are Free on Broadway . Danner was twice nominated for the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for portraying Marilyn Truman on Will & Grace , and the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for her roles in We Were the Mulvaneys and Back When We Were Grownups . For the latter...
Go to Profile#35142
Josephat Obi Oguejiofor
#35154
Overall Influence
Josephat Obi Oguejiofor is a professor of Philosophy and Director of the School of General Studies, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria. His areas of interest include African philosophy, medieval philosophy, modern philosophy, metaphysics, analytic philosophy, philosophy of time, and philosophy and governance in Africa. He is an ordained Catholic priest.
Go to Profile#35143
Chelsea Handler
#35155
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Chelsea Joy Handler is an American comedian, actress, writer, television host, and producer. She hosted the late-night talk show Chelsea Lately on the E! network from 2007 to 2014 and released a documentary series, Chelsea Does, on Netflix in January 2016. From 2016 to 2017, Handler hosted the talk show Chelsea on Netflix.
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Paul F. van der Heijden
#35156
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Paul F. van der Heijden is professor of international labour law at Leiden University, the Netherlands. From February 2007 up to 2013 he was rector magnificus and president of the same university. Van der Heijden is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2003.
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Caner Taslaman
#35157
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Caner Taslaman is a Turkish academic, professor of religious philosophy, Quran researcher and writer known for his works on the Big Bang theory and the structure of the Quran. He is a professor of philosophy at the Yıldız Technical University.
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Jennifer Anne Thomas
#35158
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jennifer Anne Thomas, , is a British experimental particle physicist and professor at University College London. She has been a pioneer in the development of particle detectors, and the recipient of the Michael Faraday medal and prize in 2018 for her "outstanding investigations into the physics of neutrino oscillations".
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Vladimir Batagelj
#35159
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Vladimir Batagelj is a Slovenian mathematician and an emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of Ljubljana. He is known for his work in discrete mathematics and combinatorial optimization, particularly analysis of social networks and other large networks .
Go to Profile#35148
Mark Considine
#35160
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Mark Considine is an Australian political scientist, who specialises in public sector reform, and reforms of social services. Since 2018, he has been Provost of the University of Melbourne. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Institute of Public Administration Australia.
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Yoshitaka Tanimura
#35161
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
is a Japanese mathematical physicist, best known for his invention with Ryogo Kubo of the Hierarchical equations of motion. In 1993, while working at University of Rochester with Shaul Mukamel, he published a theoretical paper laying the foundation for two-dimensional femtosecond spectroscopies.
Go to Profile#35150
Yuen Poovarawan
#35162
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Yuen Poovarawan is a Thai computer scientist. He worked at Kasetsart University in Bangkok, Thailand until his retirement, where his last positions were associate professor in the Department of Computer Engineering and Vice President for Information Technology. Among his noted contributions are the development of natural language processing for the Thai language, and the advancement of information technology services in Thailand, particularly the implementation of networking infrastructure at Kasetsart.
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