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
#35301
Robert Ammann
#35313
Overall Influence
1946 - 1994 (48 years)
Robert Ammann was an amateur mathematician who made several significant and groundbreaking contributions to the theory of quasicrystals and aperiodic tilings. Ammann attended Brandeis University, but generally did not go to classes, and left after three years. He worked as a programmer for Honeywell. After twelve years, his position was eliminated as part of a routine cutback, and Ammann ended up working as a mail sorter for a post office.
Go to Profile#35302
Stephen Lee
#35314
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Stephen Bernard Lee is a South African former political prisoner best known for his 1979 escape from Pretoria Local Prison with friend and fellow activist Tim Jenkin and a third inmate, Alex Moumbaris.
Go to Profile#35303
Eberhard Knobloch
#35315
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Eberhard Knobloch is a German historian of science and mathematics. Career From 1962 to 1967 Knobloch studied classics and mathematics at the University of Berlin and the Technical University of Berlin, after which he passed his state examination as a high school teacher and even as a high school teacher in ancient languages at Goethe began high school in Berlin before 1970 as a research assistant in the history of science back to the TU Berlin was, where he in 1972 with a thesis on Leibniz's combinatorial in Scriba, Christoph received his doctorate.
Go to Profile#35304
Shlomo Argamon
#35316
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Shlomo Argamon is an American/Israeli computer scientist and forensic linguist. He is currently the chair of the computer science department as well as a tenured professor of computer science and interim director of the Active Computational Thinking Center at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, IL. He founded their Master of Data Science program in 2013.
Go to Profile#35305
Horst Steinmann
#35317
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Horst Steinmann is a German economist and professor emeritus of management economics and business administration at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. His scholarly papers have been featured in the Social Science Research Network, and he has contributed to many books and journals, such as Working Across Cultures, the theme of the Ninth Annual Conference of the European Business Ethics Network, and Corporate Governance and Directors' Liabilities with his essay "The Enterprise as a Political System".
Go to Profile#35306
Sylvester McCoy
#35318
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith , known professionally as Sylvester McCoy, is a Scottish actor. Gaining prominence as a physical comedian, he became best known for playing the seventh incarnation of the Doctor in the long-running science fiction television series Doctor Who from 1987 to 1989—the final Doctor of the original run—and briefly returning in a television film in 1996. He is also known for his work as Radagast in The Hobbit film series .
Go to Profile#35307
Tito Puente
#35319
Overall Influence
1923 - 2000 (77 years)
Ernest Anthony Puente Jr. , commonly known as Tito Puente, was an American musician, songwriter, bandleader, timbalero, and record producer. He composed dance-oriented mambo and Latin jazz music. Puente and his music have appeared in films including The Mambo Kings and Fernando Trueba's Calle 54. He guest-starred on television shows, including Sesame Street and The Simpsons two-part episode "Who Shot Mr. Burns?".
Go to Profile#35308
Dominick Salvatore
#35320
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Dominick Salvatore is an American economist, currently Distinguished Professor at Fordham University, an Honorary Professor at Shanghai Finance University, Hunan University, and University of Pretoria, Director of the Global Economic Policy Center and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and New York Academy of Sciences. He is the author of "International Economics".
Go to Profile#35309
Piero Schlesinger
#35321
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
Piero Schlesinger was an Italian jurist, banker, lawyer and academic who served as president of the Banca Popolare di Milano from 1971 to 1993. Career Piero Schlesinger graduated in jurisprudence in Turin. In 1956 he began his academic career at the University of Urbino and, two years later, personally chosen by its dean and founder Father Agostino Gemelli, moved to the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, where he held the chair of private law for over three decades.
Go to Profile#35310
Wander Lowie
#35322
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Wander Marius Lowie is a Dutch linguist. He is currently a professor of applied linguistics at the Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Groningen, Netherlands. He is known for his work on Complex Dynamic Systems Theory.
Go to Profile#35311
Yaron Matras
#35323
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Yaron Matras is a linguist at the University of Manchester specializing in Romani and other languages, including Middle Eastern languages. He is one of the most prominent English-language Romani linguists and the author of several pioneering studies, including a book on Romani: A Linguistic Introduction and on Romani in Britain: The afterlife of a language , and A Grammar of Domari . Matras organized the First International Conference on Romani Linguistics in 1993, and has served as Editor of the cross-disciplinary journal Romani Studies since 1999. He has coordinated the Romani Project at ...
Go to Profile#35312
Asifa Majid
#35324
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Asifa Majid is a psychologist, linguist and cognitive scientist who is professor of language, communication and cultural cognition at the University of Oxford, UK. Biography Majid's academic career began at the University of Glasgow, where she took first an undergraduate degree and then a PhD in psychology; she also worked there as a lecturer in 2000-2001. From 2001 to 2012 she was based at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, initially as a Marie Curie fellow and later as a scientific staff member and senior researcher. In 2012 she took up a position as professor of lan...
Go to Profile#35313
Kasey Keller
#35325
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Kasey C. Keller is an American former professional soccer player who played in Europe and the United States, as well as being the starting goalkeeper for the U.S. national team. He is a four-time FIFA World Cup participant and was the first American goalkeeper to become a regular in the German Bundesliga, the English Premier League, and the Spanish La Liga.
Go to Profile#35314
Arnon Avron
#35326
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Arnon Avron is an Israeli mathematician and Professor at the School of Computer Science at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on applications of mathematical logic to computer science and artificial intelligence.
Go to Profile#35315
Thomas B. Coburn
#35327
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Thomas B. Coburn is a Religious scholar and a former president of Naropa University, serving 2003–09. Coburn also served as a faculty member in the Graduate Religious Studies program, although he did not teach for the program during his tenure. He is currently a visiting scholar at Brown University. Coburn served from 1996 to 2002 as the vice president of the university and dean of academic affairs at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. He was also the Charles A. Dana Professor of Religious Studies and had served on the faculty since 1974.
Go to Profile#35316
Mike Scioscia
#35328
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Michael Lorri Scioscia , nicknamed "Sosh" and "El Jefe", is an American former Major League Baseball catcher and manager in Major League Baseball . He managed the Anaheim / Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim / Los Angeles Angels from the 2000 season through the 2018 season, and was the longest-tenured manager in Major League Baseball and second-longest-tenured coach/manager in the "Big Four" , behind only Gregg Popovich at the time of his retirement. As a player, Scioscia made his major league debut with the Los Angeles Dodgers in . He was selected to two All-Star Games and won two World Series ove...
Go to Profile#35317
Ge Jun
#35329
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Ge Jun , is the associate professor and master instructor of College of Mathematics and Computer Science of Nanjing Normal University. Ge took part in the composing and designing process of the mathematics paper of the National College Entrance Examination for several times. The papers of the year 2003, 2010 and 2012 were regarded as “extremely difficult” by examinees. As a result, he is called "the Emperor of Mathematics" by netizens in China. Some media also use this nickname.
Go to Profile#35318
Manuel Orantes
#35330
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Manuel Orantes Corral is a Spanish former professional tennis player. He won the US Open men's singles title in 1975, beating the defending champion Jimmy Connors in the final. Orantes reached a career-high singles ranking of world No. 2.
Go to Profile#35319
Michael Tinkham
#35331
Overall Influence
1928 - 2010 (82 years)
Michael Tinkham was an American physicist. He was Rumford Professor of Physics and Gordon McKay Research Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard University. He is best known for his work on superconductivity.
Go to Profile#35320
Kenneth Price
#35332
Overall Influence
1935 - 2012 (77 years)
Kenneth Price was an American artist who predominantly created ceramic sculpture. He studied at the Chouinard Art Institute and Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, before receiving his BFA degree from the University of Southern California in 1956. He continued his studies at Chouinard Art Institute in 1957 and received an MFA degree from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1959. Kenneth Price studied ceramics with Peter Voulkos at Otis and was awarded a Tamarind Fellowship.
Go to Profile#35321
Kent Nagano
#35333
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Kent George Nagano GOQ, MSM is an American conductor and opera administrator. Since 2015, he has been Generalmusikdirektor of the Hamburg State Opera . Early life and education Nagano was born in Berkeley, California, while his parents were in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a sansei Japanese-American.
Go to Profile#35322
Jan Born
#35334
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Jan Born is a neuroscientist who researches the role of sleep in memory consolidation, problem solving, and brain plasticity. He is Head of the Institute of Medical Psychology and the Behavioral Neurobiology department at the University of Tübingen.
Go to Profile#35323
William Ditto
#35335
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
William L. Ditto is an American biomedical engineer. Ditto was raised in Anchorage, Alaska. He studied physics at the University of California, Los Angeles and completed a doctorate in the subject at Clemson University. Ditto then worked for the United States Department of the Navy before teaching at the College of Wooster for two years. During his subsequent six-year tenure at Georgia Tech, Ditto was a founding member of the department of biomedical engineering, jointly established in 1999 by Georgia Tech and Emory University. Between 2002 and 2009, Ditto served as chair of the department of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida.
Go to Profile#35324
Abdulaziz Al-Maqaleh
#35336
Overall Influence
1937 - 2022 (85 years)
Abdul Aziz Al-Maqaleh was a Yemeni poet and writer. Primarily writing in free verse, Al-Maqaleh has been described as Yemen's "best-known and most-laureled twentieth-century poet." Life and career Al-Maqaleh was born in 1937 in the village of Maqaleh in Ibb Governorate.
Go to Profile#35325
Boris Braun
#35337
Overall Influence
1920 - 2018 (98 years)
Boris Braun was a Croatian University professor, Holocaust survivor, and member of the Jewish community in Zagreb. Early life Braun was born to Šandor and Elizabeta Braun, members of a notable and wealthy Jewish family of Đurđevac. He had a sister called Štefica. The Braun family were reputable and respected in Đurđevac, where they owned the sawmill, vineyard, mill and ice factory. His father brought electricity to the Đurđevac region and maintained the local substation. Braun's father was a close friend of Ivan Šubašić and Mate Starčević, mayor of Zagreb, both of whom participated in the hu...
Go to Profile#35326
Stephen Parke
#35338
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Stephen Parke is a New Zealand physicist. He is a distinguished scientist and former head of the Theoretical Physics Department at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory . Born in Gisborne, New Zealand, Parke attended Edmund Campion College, Gisborne and St Peter's College, Auckland and the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He was a graduate student of Sidney Coleman at Harvard University, obtaining a PhD in theoretical particle physics in 1980. He held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center before moving to the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
Go to Profile#35327
Lou Rawls
#35339
Overall Influence
1933 - 2006 (73 years)
Louis Allen Rawls was an American bass-baritone singer, record producer, composer and actor. Rawls released 61 albums, sold more than 40 million records, and had numerous charting singles, most notably the song "You'll Never Find Another Love like Mine". He also worked as a film, television and voice actor. He was a three-time winner of the Best Male R&B Vocal Performance Grammy Award.
Go to Profile#35328
Kyung-Chik Han
#35340
Overall Influence
1902 - 2000 (98 years)
Kyung-Chik Han was a Korean pastor and church planter and the recipient of the 1992 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. Biography Han was born in Kan-ri, P'yŏngwŏn County, Korean Empire. He graduated from Soongsil University , the College of Emporia , and Princeton Theological Seminary . Ordained in 1933 by the Presbyterian Church of Korea, Han later founded Youngnak Presbyterian Church in 1945, which he pastored until 1973 and served as a Pastor Emeritus for until his death. At the time that he received the Templeton Prize, membership of Youngnak Presbyterian Church had grown to 60,000...
Go to Profile#35329
Wayne Koestenbaum
#35341
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Wayne Koestenbaum is an American artist, poet, and cultural critic. He received a B.A. from Harvard University, an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University and is a 1994 Whiting Award recipient. He received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature in 2020. He has published over 20 books to date.
Go to Profile#35330
Peter Nolan
#35342
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Peter Hugh Nolan CBE is the Chong Hua Chair in Chinese Development and is Director of the University’s Centre of Development Studies, University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. He previously held the Sinyi Professor of Chinese Management, at the Cambridge Judge Business School also at the University of Cambridge. Nolan is a member of the Advisory Board of Cambridge Journal of Eurasian Studies.
Go to Profile#35331
Eddie Kendricks
#35343
Overall Influence
1939 - 1992 (53 years)
Edward James Kendrick , better known as Eddie Kendricks, was an American tenor singer and songwriter. Noted for his distinctive falsetto singing style, Kendricks co-founded the Motown singing group the Temptations, and was one of their lead singers from 1960 until 1971. He was the lead voice on such famous songs as "The Way You Do the Things You Do", "Get Ready", and "Just My Imagination ". As a solo artist, Kendricks recorded several hits of his own during the 1970s, including the number-one single "Keep On Truckin'".
Go to Profile#35332
Randolph Cohen
#35344
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Randolph Baer Cohen is an American financial economist and MBA Class of 1975 Senior Lecturer of Entrepreneurial Management at Harvard Business School. Career At Harvard, Cohen teaches Field X and Field Y, entrepreneurship classes designed to enable students to develop and grow their businesses.
Go to Profile#35333
Harry Lehmann
#35345
Overall Influence
1924 - 1998 (74 years)
Harry Lehmann was a German physicist. Biography Lehmann studied physics at Rostock and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In 1952 he worked at the Max-Planck-Institut in Göttingen, and spent a year in Copenhagen and from 1956 worked in Hamburg.
Go to Profile#35334
Eric Stoltz
#35346
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Eric Stoltz is an American actor, director and producer. He played Rocky Dennis in the biographical drama film Mask, which earned him the nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture, and has appeared in a wide variety of films, from mainstream ones including Some Kind of Wonderful to independent films such as Pulp Fiction, Killing Zoe and Kicking and Screaming. He was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male for his performance in Pulp Fiction. In 2010, he portrayed Daniel Graystone in the science fiction television series Ca...
Go to Profile#35335
Cole Hamels
#35347
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Colbert Michael Hamels , nicknamed "Hollywood", is an American former professional baseball pitcher. He played in Major League Baseball for the Philadelphia Phillies , Texas Rangers , Chicago Cubs , and Atlanta Braves .
Go to Profile#35336
Amos Kloner
#35348
Overall Influence
1940 - 2019 (79 years)
Amos Kloner was an Israeli archaeologist and professor emeritus. Academic career Amos Kloner taught in the Martin Szusz Department of the Land of Israel Studies at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan. His fields were Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine archaeology.
Go to Profile#35337
Dan Reneau
#35349
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Daniel Dugan Reneau, Jr. is the former president of Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana, a position which he filled from July 1, 1987, until his retirement effective June 30, 2013. He was succeeded by Dr. Les Guice.
Go to Profile#35338
Martin J. Eppler
#35350
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Martin J. Eppler is a Swiss communication and management scholar, Professor of Media and Communication Management at the University of St. Gallen, and director of its Institute for Media and Communication Management, known for his contributions in the field of knowledge management, specifically information overload and Information Quality Management, Collaboration, and Knowledge Visualization.
Go to Profile#35339
Lawrence Raphael
#35351
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Lawrence J. Raphael is a professor in the Communications Sciences and Disorders department at Adelphi University in New York City, New York. Recently, he has become known for his cluttering research, although he has a more extensive publication record in speech production and perception. He was a research associate at Haskins Laboratories from 1970 to 1999.
Go to Profile#35340
Alexei Yurchak
#35352
Overall Influence
Alexei Vladimirovich Yurchak is a Russian-born American anthropologist and professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. His research concerns the history of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet transformations in Russia and the post-Soviet states.
Go to Profile#35341
Janet Burroway
#35353
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Janet Burroway is an American author. Burroway's published oeuvre includes eight novels, memoirs, short stories, poems, translations, plays, two children's books, and two how-to books about the craft of writing. Her novel The Buzzards was nominated for the 1970 Pulitzer Prize. Raw Silk is her most acclaimed novel thus far. While Burroway's literary fame is due to her novels, the book that has won her the widest readership is Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, first published in 1982. Now in its 10th edition, the book is used as a textbook in writing programs throughout the United ...
Go to Profile#35342
Ravindra Gupta
#35354
Overall Influence
Professor Ravindra "Ravi" Kumar Gupta is a professor of clinical microbiology at the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease at the University of Cambridge. He is also a member of the faculty of the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa.
Go to Profile#35343
Kathleen Dean Moore
#35355
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Kathleen Dean Moore is a philosopher, writer, and environmental activist from Oregon State University. Her early creative nonfiction writing focused on the cultural and spiritual values of the natural world, especially shorelines and islands. Her more recent work is about the moral issues of climate change.
Go to Profile#35344
Lutz Jäncke
#35356
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Lutz Jäncke is a neuropsychologist and a cognitive neuroscientist. Life Lutz Jäncke studied psychology, neurophysiology and neuroscience at the Ruhr University Bochum, at the Brunswick University of Technology and at the University of Düsseldorf in Düsseldorf. In 1984, he completed his degree in psychology in Düsseldorf. In 1995, he received his PhD from the Mathematics and Natural Sciences faculty of the University of Düsseldorf for his thesis on the importance of audiophonatoric coupling for speech control. In 1995, he habilitated at the same faculty with a paper on "Anatomical and Functional Hemisphere Asymmetry".
Go to Profile#35345
J. Torkel Wallmark
#35357
Overall Influence
1919 - 2007 (88 years)
John Torkel Wallmark was a Swedish electrical engineer and researcher in semiconductor electronics and innovation technology. Torkel Wallmark was born in Stockholm. He graduated from the Royal Institute of Technology in 1944, became technology licentiate in 1947 and technology doctor in 1953. He was then a researcher at Radio Corporation of America in Princeton, US 1953–1964.
Go to Profile#35346
Mayer Zald
#35358
Overall Influence
1931 - 2012 (81 years)
Mayer Nathan Zald was an American sociologist. He was a professor of sociology, social work and business administration at the University of Michigan, noted for contributions to the sociology of organizations and social movements.
Go to Profile#35347
Joseph A. Amato
#35359
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Joseph A. Amato is an American author and scholar. Amato was a history professor and university dean of local and regional history. He has written extensively on European intellectual and cultural history, and the history of Southwestern Minnesota. Since retiring, he has continued publishing history books, as well as five poetry collections and his first novel.
Go to Profile#35348
Humayun Ahmed
#35360
Overall Influence
1948 - 2012 (64 years)
Humayun Ahmed was a Bangladeshi novelist, dramatist, screenwriter, filmmaker, songwriter, scholar, and academic. His breakthrough was his debut novel Nondito Noroke published in 1972. He wrote over 200 fiction and non-fiction books. He was one of the most popular authors and filmmakers in post-independence Bangladesh. Dawn referred to him as the cultural legend of Bangladesh.
Go to Profile#35349
Raymond Joseph Dolan
#35361
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Raymond Joseph Dolan is an Irish neuroscientist and the Mary Kinross Professor of Neuropsychiatry at University College London, where he was also the founding director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging.
Go to Profile#35350
Lee Stiff
#35362
Overall Influence
1941 - 2021 (80 years)
Lee Vernon Stiff was an American mathematics education researcher; a professor in the Department of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education and the Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs in the College of Education at North Carolina State University ; and the author of several mathematics textbooks. In his 72 years of living he wrote many books.
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