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
#35601
Paul Williams
#35613
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Paul Williams is Emeritus Professor of Indian and Tibetan Philosophy at the University of Bristol, England. Until his retirement in 2011 he was also director for the University's Centre for Buddhist Studies, and is a former president of the UK Association for Buddhist Studies.
Go to Profile#35602
Jack Twyman
#35614
Overall Influence
1929 - 2012 (83 years)
John Kennedy Twyman was an American professional basketball player and sports broadcaster. Twyman is a namesake of the NBA's Twyman–Stokes Teammate of the Year Award. Twyman was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983.
Go to Profile#35603
James F. Holderman
#35615
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
James F. Holderman is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Early life, education, and career Born in Joliet, Illinois on May 30, 1946, Holderman received a Bachelor of Science degree in agricultural science from the University of Illinois in 1968, and a Juris Doctor from the University of Illinois College of Law in 1971. He then worked as a law clerk to Judge Edward Joseph McManus of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa from 1971 to 1972. He was an Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago, Illinois from 1972 to 1978.
Go to Profile#35604
Xu Zhangrun
#35616
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Xu Zhangrun is a Chinese jurist. He was a professor of Jurisprudence and Constitutional Law at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and a research fellow with the Unirule Institute of Economics. His dissident writing having previously caused retributions by the authorities, in July 2020 he was detained for a week and subsequently barred from leaving Beijing. Observers believed this to be the result of an essay in which Xu sharply criticized the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in China under Paramount leader Xi Jinping.
Go to Profile#35605
Alok Mukherjee
#35617
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Alok Mukherjee is a Canadian academic, human rights advocate, and public servant. He served as chair of the Toronto Police Services Board from 2005 until his July 2015 retirement. He is currently appointed "distinguished visiting professor" at Toronto Metropolitan University. On March 24, 2018, Mukherjee, co-authored with Tim Harper, published Excessive Force, a book about the present and future of policing in Canada. On September 8, 2019 he was selected as the NDP candidate for the riding Toronto – St. Paul's in the 2019 Canadian federal election.
Go to Profile#35606
Sandra Mitchell
#35618
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Sandra D. Mitchell is an American philosopher of science and historian of ideas. She holds the position of distinguished professor in the department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, the top rated school in the world for the subject according to the 2011 Philosophical Gourmet Report. Her research focuses on the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of social science, and connections between the two.
Go to Profile#35607
Ellen Spolsky
#35619
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Ellen Spolsky is Professor Emerita of English at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. She is a literary scholar and theorist who has published several monographs that deal with topics such as early English literary history, Shakespeare, history of literary theory, word and image relations, cognitive cultural theory, iconotropism, performance theory, and some aspects of evolutionary literary theory . Her books and essays discuss both the universal and historically local aspects of Renaissance art, poetry and drama.
Go to Profile#35608
Hakim Adi
#35620
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Hakim Adi is a British historian and scholar who specializes in African affairs. He is the first African-British historian to become a professor of history in the UK. He has written widely on Pan-Africanism and the modern political history of Africa and the African diaspora, including the 2018 book Pan-Africanism: A History. Currently a professor at the University of Chichester, Adi is an advocate of the education curriculum including the history of Africa and its diaspora.
Go to Profile#35609
Clarence Barber
#35621
Overall Influence
1917 - 2004 (87 years)
Clarence Lyle Barber was a Canadian economist and academic. Born in Wolseley, Saskatchewan, he received a B.A. in economics from the University of Saskatchewan in 1939. He won a scholarship to Clark University where he obtained his M.A. in 1941 and he received a Ph.D. in 1952 from the University of Minnesota.
Go to Profile#35610
Alain-Sol Sznitman
#35622
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Alain-Sol Sznitman is a French and Swiss mathematician who works as a professor of mathematics at ETH Zurich. His research concerns probability theory and mathematical physics. Within the field of percolation theory, Sznitman introduced the study of random interlacements.
Go to Profile#35611
La Toya Jackson
#35623
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
La Toya Yvonne Jackson is an American singer and television personality. The fifth child and middle daughter of the Jackson family, Jackson first gained recognition on the family's variety television series, The Jacksons, on CBS between 1976 and 1977. Thereafter, she saw success as a solo recording artist under multiple record labels in the 1980s and 1990s, including Polydor, Sony Music and RCA, where she released nine studio albums over the course of 15 years. Her most successful releases in the United States were her self-titled debut album and the 1984 single "Heart Don't Lie". Jackson's ...
Go to Profile#35612
James Edward Young
#35624
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
James Edward Young is an American physicist who was the first black tenured faculty member in the Department of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a founding member of the National Society of Black Physicists and a mentor for Shirley Ann Jackson.
Go to Profile#35613
David Richardson
#35625
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
David John Richardson is a British academic who was formerly the Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia. As a result of the financial crisis that engulfed the university in early 2023, under his management, he resigned from the position on 27 February 2023, effective immediately, with Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost Christine Bovis-Cnossen taking over as acting Vice-Chancellor.
Go to Profile#35614
Mike Vrabel
#35626
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Michael George Vrabel is an American football coach and former linebacker who is the head coach of the Tennessee Titans of the National Football League . He played college football at Ohio State, where he was a consensus All-American, and was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the third round of the 1997 NFL Draft. In a four-year stint with the Steelers, he was mainly a reserve player before joining the New England Patriots as a free agent in 2001, where he gained a larger role as an eventual starter and was key member of their early 2000s defenses. With the Patriots, he became a three-time Super Bowl champion and a First-team All-Pro during his eight-year tenure.
Go to Profile#35615
Paul Fearnhead
#35627
Overall Influence
Paul Fearnhead is Professor of Statistics at Lancaster University. He is a researcher in computational statistics, in particular Sequential Monte Carlo methods. His interests include sampling theory and genetics – he has published several papers working on the epidemiology of campylobacter by looking at recombination events in a large sample of genomes. Since January 2018 he has been the editor of Biometrika.
Go to Profile#35616
Frank Quinn
#35628
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Frank Stringfellow Quinn, III is an American mathematician and professor of mathematics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, specializing in geometric topology. Contributions He contributed to the mathematical field of 4-manifolds, including a proof of the 4-dimensional annulus theorem. In surgery theory, he made several important contributions: the invention of the assembly map, that enables a functorial description of surgery in the topological category, with his thesis advisor, William Browder, the development of an early surgery theory for stratified spaces, and perhaps most importantly, he pioneered the use of controlled methods in geometric topology and in algebra.
Go to Profile#35617
Cláudia Costin
#35629
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Cláudia Maria Costin is a Brazilian academic and civil servant. The daughter of Maurício and Lídia Costin, she was born in São Paulo. She is of Romanian descent. Costin studied public administration at the Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo and, in 1986, received a master's degree in economics from the same institution. While a student, she was active in the Partido Comunista do Brasil and was arrested twice. She was a co-founder of the .
Go to Profile#35618
Dorothy V. M. Bishop
#35630
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Dorothy Vera Margaret Bishop is a British psychologist specialising in developmental disorders specifically, developmental language impairments. She is Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, where she has been since 1998. Bishop is Principal Investigator for the Oxford Study of Children's Communication Impairments . She is a supernumary fellow of St John's College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#35619
Rangaswamy Narasimhan
#35631
Overall Influence
1926 - 2007 (81 years)
Rangaswamy Narasimhan was an Indian computer and cognitive scientist, regarded by many as the father of computer science research in India. He led the team which developed the TIFRAC, the first Indian indigenous computer and was instrumental in the establishment of CMC Limited in 1975, a Government of India company, later bought by Tata Consultancy Services. He was a recipient of the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri from the Government of India in 1977.
Go to Profile#35620
Régis Boyer
#35632
Overall Influence
1932 - 2017 (85 years)
Régis Boyer was a French literary scholar, historian and translator, specialised on Nordic literature and the Viking Age. Biography Régis Boyer was born in Reims on 25 June 1932. At age 20 he earned a degree in literature from the Nancy University, where he became interested in Scandinavian culture during a course held by Maurice Gravier. He served in the Algerian War for 15 months before resuming his studies. He took an agrégation in modern literature in 1959, after which he left France to teach French literature at the University of Łódź , Reykjavík University , Lund University and Uppsala University .
Go to Profile#35621
Chuck Kinder
#35633
Overall Influence
1946 - 2019 (73 years)
Charles Alfonso Kinder II was an American novelist. Biography Kinder was born October 8 in Montgomery, West Virginia to Charles Alfonso and Eileen Reba Kinder. He was educated at West Virginia University and Stanford University . After teaching at Stanford and Waynesburg College, Kinder was a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught from 1980 until his retirement in 2014.
Go to Profile#35622
Elisabeth André
#35634
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Elisabeth André is a German Computer Scientist from Saarlouis, Saarland who specializes in Intelligent User Interfaces, Virtual Agents, and Social Computing. Education 1988—Computer Science diploma at the University of Saarland1995—Computer Science PhD at the University of SaarlandAndré's research interests include Affective Computing, Embodied Conversational Agents, Multimodal Human-Machine Interaction, and Social Signal Processing.
Go to Profile#35623
Todd Dufresne
#35635
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Todd Dufresne is a Canadian social and cultural theorist best known for his work on Sigmund Freud and the history of psychoanalysis. He is Professor of Philosophy at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Go to Profile#35624
Daniel R. Anderson
#35636
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Daniel R. Anderson is an American psychologist and a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Anderson specializes in developmental psychology and was involved in the creation of children's television series including Allegra's Window, Gullah Gullah Island, Bear in the Big Blue House, Blue's Clues, and Dora the Explorer. He has also acted as an advisor to Captain Kangaroo, The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, Sesame Street, Fimbles, Go, Diego, Go!, It's a Big Big World, Peep and the Big Wide World and The WotWots.
Go to Profile#35625
Joseph Owens
#35637
Overall Influence
1908 - 2005 (97 years)
Joseph Owens was a Canadian Roman Catholic priest and a philosopher specializing in the thought of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and medieval philosophy. Life and career Owens received his PhD in 1951 from the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, an affiliate of the University of Toronto, and remained at the institute as a teacher and distinguished researcher for the rest of his career. He authored nine books and almost 150 academic papers.
Go to Profile#35626
Haruhiko Kindaichi
#35638
Overall Influence
1913 - 2004 (91 years)
Haruhiko Kindaichi was a Japanese linguist and a scholar of Japanese linguistics . He was well known as an editor of Japanese dictionaries and his research in Japanese dialects. He was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun for his efforts. He was awarded a Doctor of Literature degree at Tokyo University in 1962. He was given official commendation as someone who has performed special service in the field of culture and an honorary citizen of the Tokyo Metropolitan District.
Go to Profile#35627
Daniel Pearl
#35639
Overall Influence
1963 - 2002 (39 years)
Daniel Pearl was an American journalist who worked for The Wall Street Journal. On January 23, 2002, he was kidnapped near a restaurant in downtown Karachi and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan. Pearl's kidnapping was carried out by Islamist militants after Pearl had gone to Pakistan as part of an investigation into the alleged links between British citizen Richard Reid and al-Qaeda. Pearl was beheaded by his captors, who later released a video of his murder.
Go to Profile#35628
Pauline Johnson
#35640
Overall Influence
Pauline Johnson is an English immunologist and microbiologist at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on innate and adaptive immune mechanisms — in particular, the mobility of proteins in membranes, lymphocyte cell surface molecules, T cell signalling, leukocyte adhesion, and macrophages in lung inflammation.
Go to Profile#35629
Ronnie Corbett
#35641
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Ronald Balfour Corbett was a Scottish actor, broadcaster, comedian and writer. He had a long association with Ronnie Barker in the BBC television comedy sketch show The Two Ronnies. He achieved prominence in David Frost's 1960s satirical comedy programme The Frost Report and subsequently starred in sitcoms such as No – That's Me Over Here!, Now Look Here, and Sorry!.
Go to Profile#35630
Don Brothwell
#35642
Overall Influence
1933 - 2016 (83 years)
Donald Reginald Brothwell, was a British archaeologist, anthropologist and academic, who specialised in human palaeoecology and environmental archaeology. He had worked at the University of Cambridge, the British Museum, and the Institute of Archaeology of University of London, before ending his career as Professor of Human Palaeoecology at the University of York. He has been described as "one of the pioneers in the field of archaeological science".
Go to Profile#35631
Mary K. Vernon
#35643
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Mary Katherine Vernon is an American computer scientist who works as a professor of computer science and industrial engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research concerns high-performance computer architecture and streaming media.
Go to Profile#35632
Eric Jager
#35644
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Eric Jager is an American literary critic and a specialist in medieval literature. He is a professor in the department of English at University of California, Los Angeles, received his B.A. from Calvin College in 1979, and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1987. He has also taught at Columbia University as an associate professor.
Go to Profile#35633
Peter Doggett
#35645
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Peter Doggett is an English music journalist, author and magazine editor. He began his career in music journalism in 1980, when he joined the London-based magazine Record Collector. He subsequently served as the editor there from 1982 to 1999, after which he continued in the role of managing editor. He has also contributed regularly to magazines such as Mojo, Q and GQ.
Go to Profile#35634
Michael Calvin McGee
#35646
Overall Influence
1943 - 2002 (59 years)
Michael Calvin McGee was an American rhetorical theorist, writer, and social critic. Personal life The son of John Vester and Dorothy Eloise McGee, he spent his early years in Knoxville, Tennessee. He graduated with a B.A. in Speech from Butler University, where he was a champion debater. In 1967 he graduated with an M.A. in Rhetoric from Cornell University. In 1973 he married Lyda Eugenia Twitty. In 1974 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, writing his dissertation "Edmund Burke's Beautiful Lie: An Exploration of the Relationship between Rhetoric and Social Theory" under Donald C.
Go to Profile#35635
Veronika Megler
#35647
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Veronika Margaret Megler is an Australian computer scientist. Megler is currently principal data scientist at Amazon Web Services, and is well known as the co-developer of The Hobbit, a 1982 text adventure game adapted from the novel by J. R. R. Tolkien.
Go to Profile#35636
Richard Gambino
#35648
Overall Influence
Richard Gambino is an American author and educator. A professor emeritus at Queens College, City University of New York, Gambino pioneered the field of Italian-American studies in the 1970s. He is the author of Blood of My Blood: The Dilemma of the Italian Americans and co-founder of Italian Americana, a peer-reviewed cultural/historical journal devoted to the Italian-American experience.
Go to Profile#35637
Rebecca Posner
#35649
Overall Influence
1929 - 2018 (89 years)
Rebecca Posner was a British philologist, linguist and academic, who specialized in Romance languages. Having taught at Girton College, Cambridge, the University of Ghana, and the University of York, she was Professor of the Romance Languages at the University of Oxford from 1978 to 1996.
Go to Profile#35638
Ari Helenius
#35650
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Ari Helenius is a Finnish emeritus professor of biochemistry who is known for his research in virology. Personal life Helenius was born 3 September 1944 in Oulu, Finland. Career He did his PhD with Kai Simons at the University of Helsinki in 1973. From 1975 until 1981 he worked as a staff scientist at the newly-created European Molecular Biology Laboratory. From 1981 to 1997, he was a professor at Yale University, where he was chair of the department of cell biology from 1992 to 1997. In 1997, he joined the ETH Zurich as a founding member of the Institute of Biochemistry.
Go to Profile#35639
Crystal Gayle
#35651
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Crystal Gayle is an American country music singer widely known for her 1977 hit "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue". Initially, Gayle's management and record label were the same as that of her oldest sister, Loretta Lynn. Not finding success with the arrangement after several years, and with Lynn's encouragement, Gayle decided to try a different approach. She signed a new record contract and began recording with Nashville producer Allen Reynolds. Gayle's new sound was sometimes referred to as middle-of-the-road or country pop, and was part of a bigger musical trend by many country artists of the 1970s to appeal to a wider audience.
Go to Profile#35640
Rudolf Hausner
#35652
Overall Influence
1914 - 1995 (81 years)
Rudolf Hausner was an Austrian painter, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. Hausner has been described as a "psychic realist" and "the first psychoanalytical painter" . Early life Of Jewish origins, Hausner's father was a commercial employee, and he worked as a Sunday painter, which made his son enthusiastic about art since early on. From 1923 to 1925 he attended the Schubert Realschule , then the Realgymnasium Schottenbastei in Vienna, until 1931. Hausner studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna from 1931 until 1936, with Carl Fahringer and Karl Sterrer.
Go to Profile#35641
Abraham S. Fischler
#35653
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
Abraham S. Fischler was an American academic, and was the second president of Nova Southeastern University. Fischler graduated from Columbia University in 1959 with his Ed.D. He went on to serve as assistant professor of Science Education at Harvard University and Professor of Education at the University of California, Berkeley before joining the fledgling Nova University in 1966. Fischler served as Dean of Graduate Studies and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Center from 1966 to 1969. He became the President of Nova Southeastern University in 1970 and was president until 1992.
Go to Profile#35642
Roy Fisher
#35654
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Roy Fisher was an English poet and jazz pianist. His poetry shows an openness to both European and American modernist influences, while remaining grounded in the experience of living in the English Midlands. Fisher has experimented with a wide range of styles throughout his career, largely working outside of the mainstream of post-war British poetry. He has been admired by poets and critics as diverse as Donald Davie, Eric Mottram, Marjorie Perloff, and Sean O’Brien.
Go to Profile#35643
Victor Ivrii
#35655
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Victor Ivrii , is a Russian, Canadian mathematician who specializes in analysis, microlocal analysis, spectral theory and partial differential equations. He is a professor at the University of Toronto Department of Mathematics.
Go to Profile#35644
Stanley A. Deetz
#35656
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Stanley A. Deetz is President of Interaction Design for Innovation and Professor Emeritus and a President's Teaching Scholar at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He was the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Conflict, Collaboration and Creative Governance and long term Director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program when he taught at the University of Colorado.
Go to Profile#35645
Dušan T. Bataković
#35657
Overall Influence
1957 - 2017 (60 years)
Dušan T. Bataković was a Serbian historian and diplomat. His specialty was modern and contemporary Serbian and Balkan history as well as French-Serbian relations. The last post he held was that of Director of the Institute for Balkan Studies at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Go to Profile#35646
John Weeks
#35658
Overall Influence
1941 - 2020 (79 years)
John Weeks was an American economist, critic of neoliberal economics and a policy advisor to the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn. Life Weeks was born in Austin, Texas in a middle class family. He received a degree in economics from the University of Texas in 1963 and subsequently enrolled in PhD-studies. Weeks was also active in the US-anti war efforts during the late sixties. Weeks completed his doctorate in 1969 and went on to teach at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria before becoming a lecturer at the University of Sussex in 1971. Weeks later became an advisor for the Nicaraguan government's planning ministry.
Go to Profile#35647
Peter Gallagher
#35659
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Peter Killian Gallagher is an American actor. Since 1980, he has played roles in numerous Hollywood films. He is best known for starring as Sandy Cohen in the television drama series The O.C. from 2003 to 2007, recurring roles such as Deputy Chief William Dodds on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Stacey Koons on the Showtime comedy-drama Californication, Nick on the Netflix series Grace & Frankie, and Chuck Cedar in Mr. Deeds. He also played CIA Director of Clandestine Services Arthur Campbell on Covert Affairs. He also is known for his roles in musical theatre, his most well known role b...
Go to Profile#35648
Johan Vandewalle
#35660
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Johan Vandewalle is a Belgian linguist. He teaches at Ghent University and specializes in Turkic languages. Life Vandewalle first became interested in Turkish at the age of thirteen, during a family holiday to Turkey.
Go to Profile#35649
Chiara Bottici
#35661
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Chiara Bottici is an Italian philosopher, critical theorist and historian of philosophy. Biography Bottici is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of Gender Studies at The New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College, New York. Bottici studied philosophy at the University of Florence, then obtained a PhD from the European University Institute in 2004. After a post-doctorate at the SUM under the guidance of Roberto Esposito, she taught at the University of Frankfurt, subsequently joining the faculty of The New School for Social Research, where she has been teaching since 2...
Go to Profile#35650
Safdar Kiyani
#35662
Overall Influence
1948 - 2008 (60 years)
Safdar Ali Kiyani was a Pakistani ecologist, botanist, professor and the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Balochistan, which is located in Quetta, Pakistan. Murder Kiyani was shot and killed by a gunman riding a motorbike on 22 April 2008, while he was walking near his home in Quetta. He was 60 years old at the time of his murder. The Baloch Liberation Army, a Baloch separatist organisation, claimed responsibility for Kiyani's killing.
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