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
#35701
Mehli Mehta
#35713
Overall Influence
1908 - 2002 (94 years)
Mehli Mehta was an Indian conductor and violinist. Early life Mehta was born in Bombay, India to a Parsi family. His involvement in music stemmed from his birth. As a young violinist his main musical influence and inspiration was Jascha Heifetz. A pioneering figure in the Indian musical world, he founded the Bombay Symphony Orchestra in 1935, and was its Concertmaster and conductor . He was married to Tehmina.
Go to Profile#35702
Chris Ulmer
#35714
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (37 years)
Christopher Ulmer is an American disability-rights advocate, former special education teacher, YouTuber, and founder of the non-profit Special Books by Special Kids. Early life and education Ulmer was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended Upper Moreland High School. He attended Pennsylvania State University, where he majored in media effects. He received a master's degree in special education from the University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky, where he was a student teacher.
Go to Profile#35703
Yueh-Lin Loo
#35715
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Yueh-Lin Loo is a Malaysian-born chemical engineer and the Theodora D. '78 and William H. Walton III '74 Professor in Engineering at Princeton University, where she is also the Director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. She is known for inventing nanotransfer printing. Loo was elected a Fellow of the Materials Research Society in 2020.
Go to Profile#35704
Martin I. Reiman
#35716
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Martin I. Reiman is an American engineer and Professor in the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department at Columbia University. Biography Reiman received his A.B. from Cornell University and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. He began his career at Bell Labs in 1977 after graduating from Stanford. He was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs from 1998 until 2015. His research has focused on teletraffic theory and stochastic networks.
Go to Profile#35705
Franklin S. Cooper
#35717
Overall Influence
1908 - 1999 (91 years)
Franklin Seaney Cooper was an American physicist and inventor who was a pioneer in speech research. Biography He attended the University of Illinois where he received his undergraduate degree in physics in 1931, and received his Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1936. In 1935, with Caryl Haskins, he founded Haskins Laboratories, a nonprofit research laboratory that is located in New Haven, Connecticut, and studied speech and language. His primary interest was in speech synthesis and perception, which led him to invent the pattern playback, an early electromechanical device for synthesizing speech.
Go to Profile#35706
Nagarur Gopinath
#35718
Overall Influence
1922 - 2007 (85 years)
Nagarur Gopinath was an Indian surgeon and one of the pioneers of cardiothoracic surgery in India. He is credited with the first successful performance of open heart surgery in India which he performed in 1962. He served as the honorary surgeon to two Presidents of India and was a recipient of the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri in 1974 and Dr. B. C. Roy Award, the highest Indian medical award in 1978 from the Government of India.
Go to Profile#35707
Peter Laviolette
#35719
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Peter Philip Laviolette Jr. is an American professional ice hockey coach and former player who is the current head coach for the New York Rangers of the National Hockey League . He was previously the head coach of the New York Islanders, Carolina Hurricanes, Nashville Predators, Philadelphia Flyers, and Washington Capitals. He is known as Peter Metro because he's coached nearly every team in the Metropolitan division. He led the Hurricanes to a Stanley Cup win in 2006, and later coached the Flyers to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2010, and the Predators in 2017. Laviolette is the fourth coach in NHL history to lead three teams to the Stanley Cup Finals.
Go to Profile#35708
Naji Abumrad
#35720
Overall Influence
Naji N. Abumrad is a Lebanese-American surgeon, currently the John L. Sawyers Professor of Surgery, and formerly the Paul W. Sanger Professor from 1984 to 1992, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Abumrad graduated with a B.S. in Biology and an M.D. in Medicine at the American University of Beirut in 1971. In 2014, he was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#35709
Stevie Davies
#35721
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Stevie Davies is a Welsh novelist, essayist and short story writer. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1998, and is also a fellow of the Welsh Academy. Her novel The Element of Water was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001, and won the Wales Book of the Year in 2002.
Go to Profile#35710
Per Krusell
#35722
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Per Lennart Krusell, born 1959, is a Swedish macroeconomic theorist who is currently the Torsten and Ragnar Soderberg Chair in Economics and the Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University, as well as Centennial Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics.
Go to Profile#35711
Manuel Herz
#35723
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Manuel Herz is an architect with his own practice in Basel, Switzerland and Cologne, Germany. He was educated at the RWTH Aachen in Germany and at the Architectural Association in London. He has received numerous prizes and awards, published widely on Jewish architecture in Germany and has taught at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London and KTH Stockholm.
Go to Profile#35712
David Rudovsky
#35724
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
David Rudovsky is a civil rights lawyer in Philadelphia. He is a founding partner, in 1971, of the law firm of Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg and Lin , and a Senior Fellow at University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he teaches evidence and constitutional criminal procedure. In 1996, Rudovsky won Penn's Lindback Award for Teaching Excellence. In 1986 he was named a MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for creative and ground-breaking work in jail reform and police misconduct litigation.
Go to Profile#35713
Mike Berridge
#35725
Overall Influence
Michael Vivian Berridge is a New Zealand cell biologist. Since 1976, he has led the cancer cell and molecular biology research group at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research. He is also a professor at Victoria University of Wellington and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research. He is best known for elucidating cellular mechanisms of reduction of tetrazolium dyes that are widely used in biology, and for the discovery of mitochondrial genome transfer from healthy cells to mitochondrial DNA-deficient cancer cells.
Go to Profile#35714
Ted Marchibroda
#35726
Overall Influence
1931 - 2016 (85 years)
Theodore Joseph Marchibroda was an American professional football player and head coach in the National Football League . He played four years in the NFL as a quarterback with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Chicago Cardinals . He was later head coach of the Colts in two different cities and decades, first in Baltimore during the 1970s and then Indianapolis during the 1990s. Upon joining the Baltimore Ravens in a similar capacity in 1996, he became the only individual to serve as head coach with both of Baltimore's NFL teams and gained the unusual distinction of having three stints as an NFL hea...
Go to Profile#35715
Shigeru Oda
#35727
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (102 years)
Shigeru Oda is a Japanese jurist and was a judge on the International Court of Justice from 1976 until 2003, when he retired. He served as vice-president from 1991 to 1994. His main area of expertise was law of the sea. He was born in Sapporo.
Go to Profile#35716
Kazuyoshi Kino
#35728
Overall Influence
1922 - 2013 (91 years)
Kazuyoshi Kino was a Japanese Buddhist scholar. Together with Hajime Nakamura and others, he translated the Heart Sutra, the Prajnaparamita sutras, and the three main sutras of the Jodo sect. Life Born the son of the head priest of Kempon Hokke Myorenji Temple in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Kino moved at the age of four to Hiroshima Prefecture, to Honshoji , when his father became head priest there.
Go to Profile#35717
Tedy Bruschi
#35729
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Tedy Lacap Bruschi is an American former professional football player who was a linebacker in the National Football League for 13 seasons, who currently serves as the senior advisor to the head coach at University of Arizona. He played college football for the University of Arizona, and was a two-time consensus All-American. He was drafted by the New England Patriots in the third round of the 1996 NFL Draft, and played his entire professional career with the Patriots. Bruschi won three Super Bowls and was a two-time second-team All-Pro selection.
Go to Profile#35718
Vincent Watts
#35730
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Vincent Challacombe Watts OBE is a British academic and businessman. He was educated at Sidcot School, Peterhouse, Cambridge , and at the University of Birmingham . He served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia from 1997 to 2002, leaving to focus full-time on his role as Chairman of the East of England Development Agency. Prior to joining the University of East Anglia he was at Andersen Consulting.
Go to Profile#35719
Michael Harris
#35731
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Michael Harris is an Israeli-American public policy scholar and university administrator. He is currently the Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs of Tennessee State University and a Professor of Public Administration and Policy.
Go to Profile#35720
Alan Kadish
#35732
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Alan H. Kadish , is the second president of the Touro College System. Kadish succeeded Touro's founder, Rabbi Dr. Bernard Lander, who died February 8, 2010. Dr. Kadish came to Touro in 2009 as senior provost and chief operating officer. At the time of his appointment, Touro's Board of Trustees stated that Kadish eventually would succeed Lander as president.
Go to Profile#35721
David C. Rowe
#35733
Overall Influence
1949 - 2003 (54 years)
David C. Rowe was an American psychologist known for his work studying genetic and environmental influences on adolescent onset behaviors such as delinquency and smoking. His research into interaction between genetics and environment led to the discovery of the Scarr–Rowe effect.
Go to Profile#35722
Cecilia Menjívar
#35734
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Cecilia Menjívar, born and raised in El Salvador, is an American sociologist who has made significant contributions to the study of international migration, the structural roots of inequalities, state power, gender-based violence against women, and legal regimes. Menjívar is currently a Professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles where she is the Dorothy L. Meier Social Equities Chair.
Go to Profile#35723
Kenneth A. Dodge
#35735
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Kenneth Dodge is the William McDougall Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. He is also the founding and past director of the Duke University Center for Child and Family Policy and founder of Family Connects International.
Go to Profile#35724
Kerry Vahala
#35736
Overall Influence
Kerry J. Vahala is an American professor of Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology . He holds the Ted and Ginger Jenkins chair of Information Science and Technology and also serves as the Executive Officer of the Department of Applied Physics and Materials Science. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Physics and an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering, all from Caltech.
Go to Profile#35725
Danny White
#35737
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Wilford Daniel White is an American former football quarterback who played for 13 seasons with the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League . He was the third major franchise quarterback in Cowboys history, following Roger Staubach and Don Meredith. White was also among the last Cowboys quarterbacks in the Tom Landry era, alongside 1988 starter Steve Pelluer.
Go to Profile#35726
Christopher McKee
#35738
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Christopher Fulton McKee is an astrophysicist. McKee attended Phillips Academy and Harvard University, and obtained a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1970 under advisor George B. Field. In 1974, he was appointed Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of California at Berkeley. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has been chair of the UCB Physics Department. He is a former member and chairman of the NASA Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee and former Director of the Space Sciences Laboratory at UCB.
Go to Profile#35727
Conrad Hyers
#35739
Overall Influence
1933 - 2013 (80 years)
Merritt Conrad Hyers was an American historian of religion and ordained Presbyterian minister. He taught for many years at Gustavus Adolphus College, and wrote multiple books on humor in religion and on Zen Buddhism.
Go to Profile#35728
Barbara J. Spencer
#35740
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Barbara J. Spencer is an Australian-Canadian economist. Spencer received her Bachelor of Economics in 1967 at Australian National University, her Masters of Economics in 1970 at Monash University, and her Ph.D. in 1979 at Carnegie Mellon University. Since 1985 she has been a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and, since 1988, she has been the Asia Pacific Professor in Trade Policy at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests include international trade theory and policy, industrial organization, international business, business and government, as we...
Go to Profile#35729
Tanya Huff
#35741
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Tanya Sue Huff is a Canadian fantasy author. Her stories have been published since the late 1980s, including five fantasy series and one science fiction series. One of these, her Blood Books series, featuring detective Vicki Nelson, was adapted for television under the title Blood Ties.
Go to Profile#35730
Lech Garlicki
#35742
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Lech Garlicki is a Polish jurist and constitutional law specialist. Since 1988 he has been a professor at the Warsaw University, in the years 1993–2001 judge of the Constitutional Tribunal of the Republic of Poland and in the years 2001–2002 president of the Polish Society of Constitutional Law. Since 2002 he has been a judge of European Court of Human Rights.
Go to Profile#35731
Don Young
#35743
Overall Influence
1933 - 2022 (89 years)
Donald Edwin Young was an American politician in Alaska. He was the longest-serving Republican in congressional history, having been the U.S. representative for for 49 years, from 1973 until his death in 2022.
Go to Profile#35732
Hendrik C. van de Hulst
#35744
Overall Influence
1918 - 2000 (82 years)
Hendrik Christoffel "Henk" van de Hulst was a Dutch astronomer. In 1944, while a student in Utrecht, he predicted the existence of the 21 cm hyperfine line of neutral interstellar hydrogen. After this line was discovered, he participated, with Jan Oort and C.A. Muller, in the effort to use radio astronomy to map out the neutral hydrogen in our galaxy, which first revealed its spiral structure. Motivated by the scattering in cosmic dust, he studied light scattering by spherical particles and wrote his doctoral thesis on the topic, subsequently formulating the anomalous diffraction theory.
Go to Profile#35733
Ann-Kristin Achleitner
#35745
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Ann-Kristin Achleitner is a German economist, currently a professor at Technical University of Munich. Career Before taking on her current position, Achleitner held an Endowed Chair for Banking and Finance at EBS University of Business and Law from 1995 to 2001 and Honorary Professor at EBS from 2002 to 2013. She is a member of acatech.
Go to Profile#35734
Frances K. Conley
#35746
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Frances "Fran" Krauskopf Conley is a professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University. She is the author of Walking Out on the Boys , the story of her protest of misogyny at the university hospital. She is a crucial figure in the advancement of women in American medicine.
Go to Profile#35735
Danilo Pejović
#35747
Overall Influence
1928 - 2007 (79 years)
Danilo Pejović was a Croatian philosopher. Pejović was born in Ludbreg. During the World War II, in 1943, Pejović joined the National Liberation Army in its fight against the occupying forces of Yugoslavia. He continued his education after the war, graduating with a degree in philosophy at the University in Zagreb in 1953. He earned his PhD degree at the same university in 1958 with a dissertation about the ontology of Nicolai Hartmann. Until 1966 Pejović was president of the Croatian Philosophy Society.
Go to Profile#35736
David Kopf
#35748
Overall Influence
1930 - 2023 (93 years)
David Kopf is professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota. A research scholar on South Asian history, he has produced several books on the region. He has won the Guggenheim Fellowship at the University.
Go to Profile#35737
Catherine Samary
#35749
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Catherine Samary born in 1945, is a French researcher in political economy, specialized on the former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe. She received her Phd in economics in 1986 : her thesis on the contradictory logics of the reforms in the Yugoslav self-management system was published in 1988 under the title « Le Marché contre l’autogestion - l’expérience yougoslave » with a preface from Ernest Mandel .
Go to Profile#35738
Kim Vicente
#35750
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Kim Vicente is an inactive professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. He was previously a researcher, teacher, and author in the field of human factors. He is best known for his two books: The Human Factor and Cognitive Work Analysis.
Go to Profile#35739
Rod Markin
#35751
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Rodney Smith Markin , is an American pathologist and authority in the field of laboratory automation. In 1993, he designed and created one of the world's first automated clinical laboratory specimen, device and analyzer management systems. In the mid-1990s, he chaired a standards group called the Clinical Testing Automation Standards Steering Committee of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, which later evolved into an area committee of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute.
Go to Profile#35740
Kathleen Blanco
#35752
Overall Influence
1942 - 2019 (77 years)
Kathleen Marie Blanco was an American politician who served as the 54th governor of Louisiana from 2004 to 2008. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the first and, to date, only woman elected as the state's governor.
Go to Profile#35741
Henry Phelps Brown
#35753
Overall Influence
1906 - 1994 (88 years)
Sir Ernest Henry Phelps Brown MBE, FBA was a prominent British economist. Early years Phelps Brown was born in Calne, Wiltshire. He won a scholarship to The Taunton Academy before winning an open scholarship to Wadham College at Oxford University to study first history, and then philosophy, politics & economics. He combined academic achievement with sporting prowess and enjoyment of the social life of the Oxford Union, attaining a First in History in 1927, a First in Politics, Philosophy and Economics in 1929, winning a half-blue for cross country running in 1926, and the Secretaryship of the Oxford Union in 1928.
Go to Profile#35742
Bruce Frohnen
#35754
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Bruce P. Frohnen is a Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University College of Law, where he teaches courses in Public and Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence, and Legal Profession. Early life He holds a J.D. from Emory University School of Law, where he worked under the late Harold J. Berman, a noted legal historian involved in renewing understanding of the role of religion in the development of the western legal tradition. He also holds a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University and taught political philosophy for several years before entering law school.
Go to Profile#35743
Arnold Whittall
#35755
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Arnold Whittall is a British musicologist and writer. He is Professor Emeritus at King's College London. Between 1975 and 1996 he was Professor at King's. Previously he lectured at Cambridge, Nottingham and Cardiff , where one of his students was Australian composer Norma Tyer.
Go to Profile#35744
Joris van der Hoeven
#35756
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Joris van der Hoeven is a Dutch mathematician and computer scientist, specializing in algebraic analysis and computer algebra. He is the primary developer of GNU TeXmacs. Education and career Joris van der Hoeven received in 1997 his doctorate from Paris Diderot University with thesis Asymptotique automatique. He is a Directeur de recherche at the CNRS and head of the team Max Modélisation algébrique at the Laboratoire d'informatique of the École Polytechnique.
Go to Profile#35745
Igor Andreev
#35757
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Igor Valeryevich Andreev is a Russian former professional tennis player. He won three ATP Tour singles titles, reached the quarterfinals of the 2007 French Open and achieved a career-high singles ranking of world No. 18 in November 2008.
Go to Profile#35746
Jao Tsung-I
#35758
Overall Influence
1917 - 2018 (101 years)
Jao Tsung-I or Rao Zongyi was a Hong Kong sinologist, calligrapher, historian and painter. A versatile and prolific scholar, he contributed to many fields of humanities, including history, archaeology, epigraphy, folklores, religion, art history, musicology, literature, and Near Eastern Studies. He published more than 100 books and about 1,000 academic articles over a career spanning more than 80 years.
Go to Profile#35747
John Nichols
#35759
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
John Harrison Nichols is a liberal and progressive American journalist and author. He is the National Affairs correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times. Books authored or co-authored by Nichols include The Genius of Impeachment and The Death and Life of American Journalism.
Go to Profile#35748
Michael W. Allen
#35760
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Michael W. Allen is an American software developer, educator, and author. He is known for his work on e-learning, and led the development of the Authorware software. Biography Allen received a BA in psychology from Cornell College, and MA and Ph.D. from the Ohio State University in educational psychology. From 1971 to 1984 Allen worked for Control Data Corporation on its PLATO computer-based education system . He rose to be director of advanced educational systems R&D. Allen founded Authorware in 1984, incorporating it in 1985. Authorware merged with MacroMind-Paracomp in 1992 to form Macrom...
Go to Profile#35749
Raja Mohan
#35761
Overall Influence
Chilamkuri Raja Mohan is an Indian academic, journalist and foreign policy analyst. He is the Director of the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. Previously, he was the founding Director of Carnegie India. He has also been a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, and prior to that, a professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Professor of Centre for South, Central, Southeast Asian and Southwest Pacific Studies, School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
Go to Profile#35750
Sebastiano Maffettone
#35762
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Sebastiano Maffettone is a political philosopher and University Professor at LUISS Guido Carli University of Rome, where he teaches Political Philosophy and Theories of Globalization. He has taught in several Italian universities as well as International universities . Maffettone graduated summa cum laude from the University of Naples in 1970, and he completed his graduate studies in social philosophy LSE in 1976, under the supervision of philosophers such as Karl Popper and Amartya K. Sen.
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