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
#35201
Giovanni van Bronckhorst
#35213
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Giovanni Christiaan van Bronckhorst is a Dutch football manager and former player who was most recently the manager of Scottish Premiership club Rangers. Formerly a midfielder, he moved to left-back later in his career.
Go to Profile#35202
Mark Peattie
#35214
Overall Influence
1930 - 2014 (84 years)
Mark R. Peattie was an American academic and Japanologist. Peattie was a specialist in modern Japanese military, naval, and imperial history. Career Peattie was a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He was a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii in 1995.
Go to Profile#35203
Shanta Devarajan
#35215
Overall Influence
Shanta Devarajan is Senior Director for Development Economics and a former Acting Chief Economist of the World Bank Group. He previously served as Chief Economist of the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa Region, Principal Economist and Research Manager for Public Economics in the Development Research Group, and the Chief Economist of the Human Development Network, the South Asia Region and Africa Region. He co-directed the World Development Report 2004.
Go to Profile#35204
Nikola Milošević
#35216
Overall Influence
1929 - 2007 (78 years)
Nikola Milošević, PhD was a Serbian writer, political philosopher, literary critic, and politician. He graduated from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy. He was professor of Literary Theory at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philology since 1969. He became a correspondent member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1983 and a full member in 1994. He was president of the Miloš Crnjanski Endowment in Belgrade.
Go to Profile#35205
Virgil van Dijk
#35217
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
Virgil van Dijk is a Dutch professional footballer who plays as a centre back for and captains both Premier League club Liverpool and the Netherlands national team. Widely regarded as one of the best defenders of his generation, he is known for his strength, leadership, speed and aerial ability.
Go to Profile#35206
Michel Davier
#35218
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Michel Davier is a French physicist. Graduate of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud , he was Director of the Laboratory of Linear Accelerator in Orsay from 1985 to 1994. Winner of the Gentner-Kastler Prize in 1994, he was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1996. He was appointed senior member of the Institut universitaire de France in 1991 for a five-year term, renewed in 1996.
Go to Profile#35207
Kevin Dettmar
#35219
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Kevin J. H. Dettmar is an American cultural critic who specializes in British and Irish modern literature and contemporary popular music. He is the W.M. Keck Professor of English at Pomona College and the director of the college's humanities studio.
Go to Profile#35208
Arthur van Hoff
#35220
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Arthur van Hoff is a Dutch computer scientist and businessman. Biography After studying computer science at the University of Strathclyde and Hogere Informatica Opleiding, Van Hoff joined Sun Microsystems as an engineer with the Distributed Objects Everywhere team. In 1993, he joined the Java development team, writing the language's compiler and taking responsibility for its first release to Netscape in August 1995. In 1996, he left Sun, feeling that the options to develop Java outside of the organization were "too tempting", and established the startup Marimba, serving as its Chief Technology Officer.
Go to Profile#35209
Sergio Aguayo
#35221
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Sergio Aguayo Quezada is a Mexican academic and human rights activist. He has been a professor and researcher for El Colegio de México since 1977, visiting professor at Harvard University since 2015 and a member of the Mexican Researchers National System
Go to Profile#35210
Naomi Miyake
#35222
Overall Influence
1949 - 2015 (66 years)
was a Japanese cognitive psychologist. She was a professor at Chukyo University and the University of Tokyo. She is best known for her research on learning and collaboration, in the field of cognitive science.
Go to Profile#35211
Sue Bird
#35223
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Suzanne Brigit Bird is an American former professional basketball player who played her entire career with the Seattle Storm of the Women's National Basketball Association Bird was drafted by the Storm first overall in the 2002 WNBA draft and is considered to be one of the greatest players in WNBA history. As of 2021, Bird is the only WNBA player to win titles in three different decades. She held a front office position for the NBA's Denver Nuggets as their Basketball Operations Associate. She has also played for three teams in Russia. She holds both U.S. and Israeli citizenship.
Go to Profile#35212
Elwood V. Jensen
#35224
Overall Influence
1920 - 2012 (92 years)
Elwood Vernon Jensen was the Distinguished University Professor, George and Elizabeth Wile Chair in Cancer Research at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine's Vontz Center for Molecular Studies. In 2004 he received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research for his research on estrogen receptors. He is considered the father of the field of hormone action.
Go to Profile#35213
James Gill
#35225
Overall Influence
James Gill is a writer and a columnist from the United Kingdom. Gill emigrated to the United States from Great Britain in 1977. Gill worked for the Times-Picayune, in New Orleans, Louisiana, before joining the staff of The Advocate. He has written books about the Mardi Gras celebration.
Go to Profile#35214
Gabby Douglas
#35226
Overall Influence
1995 - Present (31 years)
Gabrielle Christina Victoria Douglas is an American artistic gymnast. She is the 2012 Olympic all-around champion and the 2015 World all-around silver medalist. She was a member of the gold-winning teams at both the 2012 and the 2016 Summer Olympics, dubbed the "Fierce Five" and the "Final Five" by the media, respectively. She was also a member of the gold-winning American teams at the 2011 and the 2015 World Championships.
Go to Profile#35215
Gunnar Skirbekk
#35227
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Gunnar Skirbekk is a Norwegian philosopher. He is professor emeritus at the Department of Philosophy and the Center for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.
Go to Profile#35216
Conor Cruise O'Brien
#35228
Overall Influence
1917 - 2008 (91 years)
Donal Conor David Dermot Donat Cruise O'Brien , often nicknamed "The Cruiser", was an Irish diplomat, politician, writer, historian and academic, who served as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs from 1973 to 1977, a Senator for Dublin University from 1977 to 1979, a Teachta Dála for the Dublin North-East constituency from 1969 to 1977, and a Member of the European Parliament from January 1973 to March 1973.
Go to Profile#35217
Marek Belka
#35229
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Marek Marian Belka is a Polish professor of economics and politician who has served as Prime Minister of Poland and Finance Minister of Poland in two governments. He is a former Director of the International Monetary Fund's European Department and former Head of Narodowy Bank Polski . He has served as a Member of the European Parliament since July 2019.
Go to Profile#35218
David Weisburd
#35230
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
David L. Weisburd , is an Israeli/American criminologist who is well known for his research on crime and place, policing and white collar crime. Weisburd was the 2010 recipient of the prestigious Stockholm Prize in Criminology, and was recently awarded the Israel Prize in Social Work and Criminological Research, considered the state's highest honor. Weisburd holds joint tenured appointments as Distinguished Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University. and Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law and Criminal Justice in the Institute of Criminology of the Hebrew University Fa...
Go to Profile#35219
Gerd Spittler
#35231
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Gerd Spittler is a German ethnologist. Spittler became known through his participation in developing the Africa focus at the University of Bayreuth and through his research on Hausa peasants and Tuareg nomads. While in his early years as a sociologist he concentrated on the area of "power and domination", as part of his professorship in Bayreuth, as an ethnologist he later focused on other main topics: the ethnology of work, the ethnology of material needs, local action in a global context and research methodology. He has written and published many essays and books on these topics.
Go to Profile#35220
Stephen Powis
#35232
Overall Influence
Sir Stephen Huw Powis is national medical director for England, in the National Health Service , appointed at the start of 2018 to succeed Sir Bruce Keogh. He is also a professor of renal medicine at University College London.
Go to Profile#35221
Joy Williams
#35233
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Joy Williams is an American novelist, short-story writer, and essayist. Her notable works of fiction include State of Grace, The Changeling, and Harrow. Williams has received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, a Rea Award for the Short Story, a Kirkus Award for Fiction, and a Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.
Go to Profile#35222
George Constantinides
#35234
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
George M. Constantinides is a financial economist, known for his work on portfolio management, asset pricing, derivatives pricing, and capital markets behavior. He is the Leo Melamed Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a board member of Dimensional Fund Advisors.
Go to Profile#35223
Beverly Guy-Sheftall
#35235
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Beverly Guy-Sheftall is an American Black feminist scholar, writer and editor, who is the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies and English at Spelman College, in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the founding director of the Spelman College Women's Research and Resource Center, the first at a historically Black college or university.
Go to Profile#35224
William Kaufmann
#35236
Overall Influence
1918 - 2008 (90 years)
William Weed Kaufmann was an American nuclear strategist and adviser to seven defense secretaries, who advocated for a shift from the strategy of massive retaliation against the Soviet Union in the event of a nuclear strike.
Go to Profile#35225
Xu-Jia Wang
#35237
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Xu-Jia Wang is a Chinese-Australian mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the Australian National University and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. Biography Wang was born in Chun'an County, Zhejiang province, China. Wang obtained his B.S. in 1983 and his Ph.D. in 1990 from the Department of Mathematics of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou.
Go to Profile#35226
Jewell Parker Rhodes
#35238
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Jewell Parker Rhodes is an American bestselling novelist and educator. She is the author of several books for children including the New York Times bestsellers Black Brother, Black Brother and Ghost Boys, which has garnered over 50 awards and honors including The Walter Award, the Indies Choice/EB White Read-Aloud Award, and the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award for Older Readers. Rhodes is also the author of Paradise on Fire , Towers Falling and the celebrated Louisiana Girls Trilogy, which includes Ninth Ward, winner of a Coretta Scott King Honor Award, Sugar, and Bayou Magic. Her novel Bayou Magic is featured in the third season of Apple TV+'s Emmy award-winning series Ghostwriter.
Go to Profile#35227
Ann Kiessling
#35239
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Ann Kiessling is an American reproductive biologist and a researcher in human parthenogenic stem cell research at The Bedford Research Foundation. She was an associate professor in teaching hospitals of Harvard Medical School from 1985 until 2012.
Go to Profile#35228
Lenny Dykstra
#35240
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Leonard Kyle Dykstra is an American former professional baseball center fielder who played in Major League Baseball for the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies . Dykstra was a three-time All-Star and won a World Series championship as a member of the 1986 Mets. Since retirement, Dykstra has been mired in financial and legal troubles. In 2009, he filed for bankruptcy. In 2011, he was arrested and charged with bankruptcy fraud, followed by grand theft auto and drug possession charges on an unrelated case, as well as indecent exposure. He served months in federal prison.
Go to Profile#35229
Leonid Sazanov
#35241
Overall Influence
Leonid A. Sazanov is a professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria . Sazanov research explores the structure and function of large membrane protein complexes from the domain of bioenergetics. These molecular machines interconvert redox energy and proton motive force across biological membranes using a variety of mechanisms.
Go to Profile#35230
Halford Fairchild
#35242
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Halford Hosoi Fairchild is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Black Studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He was the editor of Psych Discourse: The Monthly Newsjournal of The Association of Black Psychologists from 1991 until 2014. He is a former president of the Association of Black Psychologists and Chairman of the Intercollegiate Department of Africana Studies at the Claremont Colleges. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Michigan in 1977. Professor Fairchild published a series of papers that challenged the practice of scientific racism within psych...
Go to Profile#35231
Nadeen L. Kaufman
#35243
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Nadeen L. Kaufman is an American psychology professor known for her work on learning disability. Biography Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, she earned a Bachelor of Science in Education from Hofstra University in 1965; master's degree in Educational Psychology from Columbia University in 1972; Ed.M. in Learning and Reading Disabilities from Columbia University in 1975; and Ed.D. in Special Education—Neurosciences from Columbia University in 1978 . She completed a predoctoral internship and a postdoctoral fellowship in Psychology at Yale University.
Go to Profile#35232
Marc Snir
#35244
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Marc Snir is an Israeli-American computer scientist. He holds a Michael Faiman and Saburo Muroga Professorship in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He currently pursues research in parallel computing. He was the principal investigator for the software of the petascale Blue Waters system and co-director of the Intel and Microsoft-funded Universal Parallel Computing Research Center .
Go to Profile#35233
Liz Rosenberg
#35245
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Lizbeth Meg Rosenberg is an American poet, novelist, children's book author and book reviewer. She is currently a professor of English at Binghamton University, and in previous years has taught at Colgate University, Sarah Lawrence College, Hamilton College, Bennington College, and Hollins College. Her children's book reviews appear monthly in The Boston Globe.
Go to Profile#35234
Mark D. Steinberg
#35246
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Mark D. Steinberg is a historian, writer, and professor. He taught at Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, from which he retired in 2021. He is the author of many books and articles on Russian history.
Go to Profile#35235
Zail Singh
#35247
Overall Influence
1916 - 1994 (78 years)
Giani Zail Singh was an Indian politician from Punjab who served as the seventh president of India from 1982 to 1987 and 9th Chief Minister of Punjab. He was the first Sikh to become president. Born in Sandhwan in the princely state of Faridkot, Singh trained to be a granthi and was given the title of giani, meaning a learned man, while training at the Sikh Missionary School in Amritsar. Singh was associated with peasant agitations and the movement seeking a representative government in Faridkot. His political activism in the Praja Mandal, an organisation allied with the Indian National Congress, saw him sentenced to solitary confinement between 1938 and 1943.
Go to Profile#35236
Chung Hyun Kyung
#35248
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Chung Hyun Kyung is a South Korean Christian theologian. She is a lay theologian of the Presbyterian Church of Korea, and is also an Associate Professor of Ecumenical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in the United States.
Go to Profile#35237
Faure Gnassingbé
#35249
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé Eyadéma is a Togolese politician who has been the president of Togo since 2005. Before assuming the presidency, he was appointed by his father, President Gnassingbé Eyadéma, as Minister of Equipment, Mines, Posts, and Telecommunications, serving from 2003 to 2005.
Go to Profile#35238
Pierre George
#35250
Overall Influence
1909 - 2006 (97 years)
Pierre George was a French geographer. Further reading Hugh Clout: Pierre George , in Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies 29, 2010, pp. 35–56.
Go to Profile#35239
Paul Schneider-Esleben
#35251
Overall Influence
1915 - 2005 (90 years)
Paul Maximilian Heinrich Schneider von Esleben , known as Paul Schneider-Esleben, was a German architect who worked in the modernist movement, mostly on airports, throughout the 1960s. Early life Paul Schneider was born in 1915 in Düsseldorf to Maria Anna Elisabeth and , an architect, as the second of seven siblings and was raised Catholic.
Go to Profile#35240
Paolo Fabbri
#35252
Overall Influence
1939 - 2020 (81 years)
Paolo Fabbri was an Italian semiotician and professor. Biography Fabbri taught at the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris from 1992 to 1996. He also taught at the University of Florence, the University of Urbino, the University of Palermo, the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, and the Collège international de philosophie.
Go to Profile#35241
Ahmed Djebbar
#35253
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Ahmed Djebbar is an academic and the Algerian minister for education in the 1992 government of Belaid Abdessalam.
Go to Profile#35242
Paul Torgersen
#35254
Overall Influence
1931 - 2015 (84 years)
Paul Ernest Torgersen was the 14th President of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Background Torgersen was born in Staten Island, New York. He earned a B.S. degree in industrial engineering from Lehigh University in 1953. Subsequently, he went to Ohio State University, where he received an M.S. degree in industrial engineering in 1956 and a Ph.D. degree in 1959.
Go to Profile#35243
S. R. Nathan
#35255
Overall Influence
1924 - 2016 (92 years)
Sellapan Ramanathan , often known as S. R. Nathan, was a Singaporean politician and civil servant who served as the sixth president of Singapore between 1999 and 2011. He was the longest-serving president in Singapore's history.
Go to Profile#35244
Lindsey A. Criswell
#35256
Overall Influence
Lindsey A. Criswell is an American rheumatologist and physician-scientist. She is director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. Criswell was vice chancellor of research at University of California, San Francisco where she held the Jean S. Engleman Distinguished Professorship in Rheumatology.
Go to Profile#35245
Ralph Lorenz
#35257
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Ralph D. Lorenz is a planetary scientist and engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. whose research focuses on understanding surfaces, atmospheres, and their interactions on planetary bodies, especially Titan, Venus, Mars, and Earth. He currently serves as Mission Architect of Dragonfly, NASA's fourth selected New Frontiers mission, and as participating scientist on Akatsuki and InSight. He is a Co-Investigator on the SuperCam instrument on the Perseverance rover, responsible for interpreting data from its microphone. He leads the Venus Atmospheric Structure Investigation on the DAVINCI Discovery mission to Venus.
Go to Profile#35246
Arthur E. Martell
#35258
Overall Influence
1916 - 2003 (87 years)
Arthur E. Martell was a distinguished professor of chemistry at Texas A&M University and award-winning researcher in the field of inorganic chemistry. His research centered on metal chelate compounds, macrocyclic complexes and cryptates.
Go to Profile#35247
Peter Bruce
#35259
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Sir Peter George Bruce, is a British chemist, and Wolfson Professor of Materials in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford. In 2018, he was appointed as Physical Secretary and Vice President of the Royal Society. Bruce is a founder and Chief Scientist of the Faraday Institution.
Go to Profile#35248
Norman Dorsen
#35260
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Norman Dorsen was the Frederick I. and Grace A. Stokes Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program at the New York University School of Law, where he specialized in Constitutional Law, Civil Liberties, and Comparative Constitutional Law. Previously, he was president of the American Civil Liberties Union, 1976–1991. He was also president of the Society of American Law Teachers, 1972–1973, and president of the U.S. Association of Constitutional Law in 2000.
Go to Profile#35249
Karl Inderfurth
#35261
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Karl Frederick Inderfurth is an American diplomat. He was the Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs from August 1997 to January 2001. In his capacity as Assistant Secretary, Inderfurth was responsible for US policy regarding Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Prior to his appointment as Assistant Secretary, Inderfurth served as the U.S. Representative for Special Political Affairs to the United Nations, with the rank of Ambassador. In this capacity, Ambassador Inderfurth dealt with issues such as UN peacekeeping, disarmament, nuclear proliferation and security affairs.
Go to Profile#35250
Amanda Palmer
#35262
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Amanda MacKinnon Gaiman Palmer is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and performance artist who is the lead vocalist, pianist, and lyricist of the duo the Dresden Dolls. She performs as a solo artist and was also a member of the duo Evelyn Evelyn and the lead singer and songwriter of Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra. She has gained a cult fanbase throughout her career, and was one of the first musical artists to popularize the use of crowdfunding websites.
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