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
#35851
Mammadali Huseynov
#35863
Overall Influence
1922 - 1994 (72 years)
Mammadali Murad Oglu Huseynov was an Azerbaijani and Soviet archaeologist. In 1960, Huseynov carried out excavations in the valleys of the Quruchay and Kondalanchay Rivers, in Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast of the Azerbaijan SSR. There, he discovered a fragment of the lower jaw of Homo erectus or Azykhantrop in multi-layer sites of the Paleolithic epoch in Azykh and Tağlar Cave.
Go to Profile#35852
Klyne Snodgrass
#35864
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Klyne Ryland Snodgrass is an American theologian and author, who served as professor of New Testament Studies at the North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois from 1974 to 2015. His publication Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus garnered a 2009 Christianity Today Book Award.
Go to Profile#35853
Shuguang Zhang
#35865
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Shuguang Zhang is an American biochemist. He is at the MIT Media Lab's Laboratory for Molecular Architecture. Shuguang Zhang's research focuses on designs of biological molecules, particularly proteins and peptides. He has published over 170 scientific papers, which have cumulatively been cited over 35,000 times with an h-index of 88. On the “Updated science-wide author databases of standardizes citation indicators”, he is ranked 18th worldwide in the field of Biomedical Engineering. Zhang is also a co-founder and board member of Molecular Frontiers Foundation, which organizes annual Molecular Frontiers Symposia in Sweden and around the world.
Go to Profile#35854
Richard E. Rubenstein
#35866
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Richard E. Rubenstein is an author and University Professor of Conflict Resolution and Public Affairs at George Mason University, holding degrees from Harvard University, Oxford University , and Harvard Law School. Rubenstein is from Woodmere, New York. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Go to Profile#35855
Bill Cunningham
#35867
Overall Influence
1929 - 2016 (87 years)
William John Cunningham Jr. was an American fashion photographer for The New York Times, known for his candid and street photography. A Harvard University dropout, he first became known as a designer of women's hats before moving on to writing about fashion for Women's Wear Daily and the Chicago Tribune. He began taking candid photographs on the streets of New York City, and his work came to the attention of The New York Times with a 1978 capture of Greta Garbo in an unguarded moment. Cunningham reported for the paper from 1978 to 2016.
Go to Profile#35856
Boris Mironov
#35868
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Boris Nikolaevich Mironov is a Soviet and Russian historian, cliometrist, specialist in the field of historical sociology, social, economic and demographic history of Russia, anthropometric history and research methodology.
Go to Profile#35857
Nadia Heninger
#35869
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Nadia Heninger is an American cryptographer, computer security expert, and computational number theorist at the University of California, San Diego. Contributions Heninger is known for her work on freezing powered-down security devices to slow their fading memories and allow their secrets to be recovered via a cold boot attack, for her discovery that weak keys for the RSA cryptosystem are in widespread use by internet routerss and other embedded devices, for her research on how failures of forward secrecy in bad implementations of the Diffie–Hellman key exchange may have allowed the National ...
Go to Profile#35858
Heiko Maas
#35870
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Heiko Josef Maas is a German lawyer and former politician of the Social Democratic Party who served as the Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs and as the Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection in the cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Since 2022, he has been practicing as a lawyer.
Go to Profile#35859
Elwyn L. Simons
#35871
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Elwyn LaVerne Simons was an American paleontologist, paleozoologist, and a wildlife conservationist for primates. He was known as the father of modern primate paleontology for his discovery of some of humankind's earliest antecedents.
Go to Profile#35860
Sunil Mukhi
#35872
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Sunil Mukhi is an Indian theoretical physicist working in the areas of string theory, quantum field theory and particle physics. Currently he is Adjunct Professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and Honorary Professor Emeritus at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune.
Go to Profile#35861
Jonathan Dordick
#35873
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Jonathan S. Dordick is an institute professor of chemical and biological engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and holds joint appointments in the departments of biomedical engineering and biological sciences. In 2008 he became director of the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies. In 2012 Dordick became the vice president for research at RPI. He became Special Advisor to the RPI President for Strategic Initiatives in 2018,
Go to Profile#35862
Ricky Rudd
#35874
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Richard Lee Rudd , nicknamed "the Rooster", is an American former racing driver and racing team owner. He is the uncle of actor Skeet Ulrich and former NASCAR Busch Series driver Jason Rudd. He retired in 2007 with 23 career wins. He was named the 2006 Virginian of the Year and was inducted into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in 2007. In October 2010, he was selected to the Hampton Roads Sports Hall of Fame, which honors those who have contributed to sports in southeastern Virginia.
Go to Profile#35863
Robert E. Lerner
#35875
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Robert E. Lerner is an American medieval historian and professor of history emeritus at Northwestern University. Lerner gained his B.A. at the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. at Princeton in 1964, where he studied with Joseph R. Strayer.
Go to Profile#35864
Eleanor Wilner
#35876
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Eleanor Rand Wilner is an American poet and editor. Life Wilner obtained her bachelor's from Goucher College and her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Her graduate dissertation concerned the topic of imagination and was later published as Gathering the Winds: Visionary Imagination and Radical Transformation of Self and Society .
Go to Profile#35865
Paul Glimcher
#35877
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Paul W. Glimcher is an American neuroeconomist, neuroscientist, psychologist, economist, scholar, and entrepreneur. He is one of the foremost researchers focused on the study of human behavior and decision-making, and is known for his central role in founding and developing the field of neuroeconomics which takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding how humans make decisions. Glimcher also founded the Institute for the Study of Decision Making at New York University . Today he serves as Chair of the Department of Neuroscience and Director of the Neurosciences Institute at NYU's Gros...
Go to Profile#35866
Pulickel Ajayan
#35878
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Pulickel Madhavapanicker Ajayan, known as P. M. Ajayan, is the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Engineering at Rice University. He is the founding chair of Rice University's Materials Science and NanoEngineering department and also holds joint appointments with the Department of Chemistry and Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Prior to joining Rice, he was the Henry Burlage Professor of Material Sciences and Engineering and the director of the NYSTAR interconnect focus center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute until 2007. Known for his pioneering work of ...
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Hafeez Malik
#35879
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
Hafeez Malik was a Pakistan-American political scientist and the professor of political science at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. Early life and education Hafeez Malik was born in 1930 in Lahore, Punjab, British India. After a high school education at Mission High School, Lahore, he graduated from Government College, Lahore with a BA degree in 1949. After a year in law college, he came to the US as a student at Syracuse University, where he completed a double master's degree in journalism and international relations, and then a PhD in political science in 1960.
Go to Profile#35868
E. Ann Kaplan
#35880
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
E. Ann Kaplan is an American professor, author, and director. She currently teaches English at the Stony Brook State University of New York, and is the founder and director of The Humanities Institute at Stony Brook University. She coined the term "“Future-Tense Trauma Cinema” for a select group of films, a sub-set of the Science Fiction film, that focus on human and natural causes of complete social collapse instead of, as in standard Sci-Fi, displacing cultural anxieties into allegories of aliens invading planet Earth from elsewhere."" She is also one of the precursors of the Madonna studies...
Go to Profile#35869
Johannes Møllehave
#35881
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
Johannes Volf Møllehave was a Danish Lutheran priest, author, and lecturer. Education and career Møllehave was born in Frederiksberg. He graduated in theology in 1963. His wide range of interests extended to some 40 different topics but he was particularly well known for his interest in Søren Kierkegaard, H. C. Andersen and Storm P.
Go to Profile#35870
Margherita Guidacci
#35882
Overall Influence
1921 - 1992 (71 years)
Margherita Guidacci , was an Italian poet born in Florence, Italy. She graduated from the University of Florence in 1943 and traveled to England and Ireland in 1947. Guidacci married the sociologist Lucca Pinna in 1949, and they moved to Rome in 1957. The poet taught English language and literature at the Liceo Scientifico Cavour for ten years, from 1965 to 1975.
Go to Profile#35871
Ivo Sanader
#35883
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Ivo Sanader is a Croatian former politician who served as Prime Minister of Croatia from 2003 to 2009. He is currently serving a prison sentence for corruption in Remetinec prison. Sanader is to date the second longest-serving prime minister since independence, holding the office for over five and a half years before resigning in July 2009. He is one of only two Croatian prime ministers who have served more than one term, winning general elections in 2003 and 2007. He is also, along with Ivica Račan and Plenković, one of the three prime ministers who have been at the head of more than one go...
Go to Profile#35872
Leonard J. Cerullo
#35884
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Leonard J. Cerullo is a board-certified neurosurgeon and founder/medical director. Early life and education Cerullo was born in Hazleton, Pennsylvania in June 1944. He was the middle child of the large family of Leornard Frank Cerullo, an electrical contractor, and Marion , a nurse; his parents met at Hazleton General Hospital.
Go to Profile#35873
Bernard D. Meltzer
#35885
Overall Influence
1914 - 2007 (93 years)
Bernard David Meltzer was an American legal scholar who was a professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School and a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. He was a leading scholar on labor law and a drafter of the U.N. Charter.
Go to Profile#35874
Joe Lynn Turner
#35886
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Joe Lynn Turner is an American singer known for his work in the hard rock bands Rainbow, Yngwie Malmsteen and Deep Purple. During his career, Turner fronted and played guitar with pop rock band Fandango in the late 1970s; and in the early 1980s, he became a member of Rainbow, fronting the band and writing songs with guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and bassist Roger Glover. After Rainbow had disbanded in March 1984, he pursued a solo career, released one album, Rescue You, and sang backing vocals for Billy Joel, Cher, and Michael Bolton along with radio and television jingles. He also collaborated with songwriters Desmond Child and Jack Ponti.
Go to Profile#35875
Barbara MacCluer
#35887
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Barbara Diane MacCluer is an American mathematician, formerly a professor of mathematics at the University of Virginia and now a professor emeritus there. Her research specialty is in operator theory and composition operators; she is known for the books she has written on this subject and related areas of functional analysis.
Go to Profile#35876
Arthur David Hall III
#35888
Overall Influence
1925 - 2006 (81 years)
Arthur David Hall III was an American electrical engineer and a pioneer in the field of systems engineering. He was the author of a widely used engineering textbook A Methodology for Systems Engineering from 1962.
Go to Profile#35877
Stephany Griffith-Jones
#35889
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Stephany Griffith-Jones is an economist specializing in international finance and development. Her expertise lies in the reform of the international financial system, particularly in financial regulation, global governance, and international capital flows. Currently, she serves as a member of the Governor Board at the Central Bank of Chile. She has held various positions throughout her career, including financial markets director at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue based at Columbia University, associate fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, and professorial fellow at the Institute ...
Go to Profile#35878
Arnold Ross
#35890
Overall Influence
1906 - 2002 (96 years)
Arnold Ephraim Ross was a mathematician and educator who founded the Ross Mathematics Program, a number theory summer program for gifted high school students. He was born in Chicago, but spent his youth in Odesa, Ukraine, where he studied with Samuil Shatunovsky. Ross returned to Chicago and enrolled in University of Chicago graduate coursework under E. H. Moore, despite his lack of formal academic training. He received his Ph.D. and married his wife, Bee, in 1931.
Go to Profile#35879
Cary Coglianese
#35891
Overall Influence
Cary Coglianese is an American legal scholar who is the Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he is also director of the Penn Program on Regulation.
Go to Profile#35880
Sy Friedman
#35892
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Sy-David Friedman is an American and Austrian mathematician and a professor of mathematics at the University of Vienna and the former director of the Kurt Gödel Research Center for Mathematical Logic. His main research interest lies in mathematical logic, in particular in set theory and recursion theory.
Go to Profile#35881
Isaac Herzog
#35893
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Isaac "Bougie" Herzog is an Israeli politician who has been serving as the 11th president of Israel since 2021. He is the first president to be born in Israel after its Declaration of Independence. Son of former Israeli president Chaim Herzog, he is a lawyer by profession and had served as Government Secretary from 1999 to 2001. He was a member of the Knesset from 2003 to 2018. He has held several ministerial posts between 2005 and 2011, including serving as Minister of Welfare and Social Services from 2007 to 2011 under prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Go to Profile#35882
Lisette de Pillis
#35894
Overall Influence
Lisette G. de Pillis is an American mathematician at Harvey Mudd College and holds the Norman F. Sprague, Jr. Professorship of Life Sciences at Harvey Mudd. She chaired the Department of Mathematics in 2008-2009 and again from 2014 to 2019. She directed the Harvey Mudd College Global Clinic program from 2009 to 2014. She is also the co-director of the Harvey Mudd College Center for Quantitative Life Sciences.
Go to Profile#35883
Zhou Zhenhe
#35895
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Zhou Zhenhe is a Chinese historical geographer and a distinguished senior professor at the Institute of Historical Geography of Fudan University in Shanghai. His main research interests are cultural and administrative geography and history of Sino-foreign cultural relations. He is the chief editor of the 13-volume General History of Chinese Administrative Divisions, published between 2007 and 2016.
Go to Profile#35884
Jacques Brault
#35896
Overall Influence
1933 - 2022 (89 years)
Jacques Brault was a French Canadian poet and translator who lived in Cowansville, Quebec, Canada. He was born to a poor family, but received an excellent education at the Université de Montréal and at the Sorbonne in Paris. He became a professor at the Université de Montréal, in the Département d'études françaises and the Institut des sciences médiévales, and made frequent appearances as a cultural commentator on Radio-Canada.
Go to Profile#35885
David Draiman
#35897
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
David Michael Draiman is an American singer and songwriter. Noted for his distorted, operatic, baritone voice and percussive singing style, he has been the lead vocalist of heavy metal band Disturbed since 1996. He has written some of the band's most successful singles, such as "Stupify", "Down with the Sickness", "Indestructible", and "Inside the Fire". In 2006, he was ranked at No. 42 on the Hit Parader list of "Top 100 Metal Vocalists of All Time". During Disturbed's hiatus from 2011 to 2015, he worked on an industrial metal project with Geno Lenardo, which was later named Device. They released one self-titled album in 2013.
Go to Profile#35886
Nobukazu Teranishi
#35898
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
#35887
Miguel Herrera
#35899
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Miguel Ernesto Herrera Aguirre , popularly referred to by his nickname "Piojo" , is a Mexican former professional footballer and current manager. He is the head coach of Liga MX club Tijuana. A former defender, Herrera began his career playing with second division side Deportivo Neza in 1985, then transferring to Tecos UAG in 1987, and making his debut in the Primera División in 1988. After a brief period with Santos Laguna, in 1989 Herrera transferred to Atlante and went on to play for the club on three occasions, winning his only league championship as a player during the 1992–93 season. He ...
Go to Profile#35888
Rosalind P. Petchesky
#35900
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Rosalind Pollack Petchesky is an American political scientist, and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the founder of the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group .
Go to Profile#35889
Joshua N. Goldberg
#35901
Overall Influence
1925 - 2020 (95 years)
Joshua N. Goldberg was an American physicist and educator who was particularly noted for his research on general relativity. Early life and education Goldberg was born in Rochester, New York, and received a bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester in 1947. He received a doctorate in physics from Syracuse University in 1952. His thesis advisor was Peter Bergmann.
Go to Profile#35890
Josh Beckett
#35902
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Joshua Patrick Beckett is an American former professional baseball pitcher in Major League Baseball . A three-time MLB All-Star, he played for the Florida Marlins, the Boston Red Sox, and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
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Randall J. Stephens
#35903
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Randall J. Stephens is an editor and historian of American religion. Career Stephens is a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo. From 2004 to 2012 he was an Assistant and Associate Professor of History at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, and from 2012 to 2018 he was a Reader and Associate Professor of History and American Studies at Northumbria University, in Newcastle, England. He served as editor of the Journal of Southern Religion from 2006 to 2010, and from 2005 to 2013 he was an editor of Historically Speaking published by Johns Hopkins University Press, based out of Boston University.
Go to Profile#35892
Philip Bonner
#35904
Overall Influence
1945 - 2017 (72 years)
Philip Lewis Bonner was a historian of South Africa. He was an Emeritus Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand with a focus on labour and urban history. Academic career Bonner was hired in 1971 in the history department of the University of the Witwatersrand to establish African history as a scholarly field. His early work was concerned with the Swazi Kingdom in the nineteenth century, and resulted in his first monograph, based on his doctoral thesis, published in 1983. In 1977, following the Soweto uprising, Bonner was involved in the founding of the History Workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand, and was its chair from 1987–2012.
Go to Profile#35893
Jamie Hewlett
#35905
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Jamie Christopher Hewlett is an English comic book creator, illustrator, music video director, and songwriter. He is the co-creator of the comic book Tank Girl with Alan Martin and co-creator of the virtual band Gorillaz, alongside Blur frontman Damon Albarn.
Go to Profile#35894
John W. Reed
#35906
Overall Influence
1918 - 2018 (100 years)
John W. Reed was an American law professor and Thomas M. Cooley Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Michigan Law School. Biography Reed received law degrees from Cornell Law School and Columbia Law School . Reed joined the Michigan Law faculty in 1949. Reed taught civil procedure, evidence, trial advocacy, and other courses at Michigan Law, and won many teaching awards.
Go to Profile#35895
Ping King Tien
#35907
Overall Influence
1919 - 2017 (98 years)
Ping King Tien was a Chinese-American electrical engineer and scientist, noted for his contributions to microwave amplifiers and integrated optical circuits. Biography Tien was born in Shangyu, Shaoxing, Chekiang province, China. He did his undergraduate studies in the National Central University in Nanjing and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He received his B.S. in electrical engineering in 1942. Tien continued his study in the United States, and received his master's degree in 1948 and PhD in 1951 both from the Stanford University.
Go to Profile#35896
Shaan Rahman
#35908
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Shaan Rahman is an Indian composer and singer, best known for his compositions in the Malayalam cinema. Shaan made his debut as a music director in the 2009 film Ee Pattanathil Bhootham directed by Johny Antony. He got the chance to work in the film after the wide acceptance and popularity of his 2008 music album "Coffee at MG Road" which he did along with his friend, singer, and director Vineeth Sreenivasan.
Go to Profile#35897
Subhash Ghai
#35909
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Subhash Ghai is an Indian film director, producer, actor, lyricist, music director and screenwriter, known for his works predominantly in Hindi cinema. He was one of the most prominent and successful filmmakers of Hindi cinema throughout 80s and 90s. His most notable works include Kalicharan , Vishwanath , Karz , Hero , Vidhaata , Meri Jung , Karma , Ram Lakhan , Saudagar , Khalnayak , Pardes and Taal .
Go to Profile#35898
Andrei Polyanin
#35910
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Andrei Dmitrievich Polyanin is a Russian mathematician. He is a creator and Editor-in-Chief of EqWorld. Education Polyanin graduated with honors from the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Lomonosov Moscow State University in 1974 . He received his Ph.D. in 1981 and D.Sc. in 1986 at the Institute for Problems in Mechanics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#35899
Brian Hartley
#35911
Overall Influence
1939 - 1994 (55 years)
Brian Hartley was a British mathematician specialising in group theory. Education Hartley's PhD thesis was completed in 1964 at the University of Cambridge under Philip Hall's supervision. Career and research Hartley spent a year at the University of Chicago, and another at MIT before being appointed as a lecturer at the newly established University of Warwick in 1966, and was promoted to reader in 1973. He moved to a chair at the School of Mathematics at the University of Manchester in 1977 where he served as head of the Mathematics department between 1982 and 1984.
Go to Profile#35900
Dion DiMucci
#35912
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Dion Francis DiMucci , better known mononymously as Dion, is an American singer and songwriter. His music incorporates elements of doo-wop, pop, rock, R&B, folk and blues. Initially the lead singer of the vocal group Dion and the Belmonts, Dion embarked on a solo career, and was one of the most prominent rock and roll performers of the pre-British Invasion era. He had 39 Top 40 hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a solo performer, or with the Belmonts and the Del-Satins. He is best remembered for his signature hit songs "Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer", "Ruby Baby" and "Lovers Who Wander"...
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