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).
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List of the most influential people
#35951
Leslie McCall
#35963
Overall Influence
Leslie McCall is an American sociologist and political scientist. She is a Presidential Professor of political science and sociology at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and the Associate Director of the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality there. She studies wealth and social inequality in American society, as well as opinions about inequality, from an intersectional perspective.
Go to Profile#35952
Paul Webley
#35964
Overall Influence
1953 - 2016 (63 years)
Paul Webley CBE was director and principal of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London from 2006 to 2015. From 2010 until his death in 2016, he was Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of London. He was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Psychology and a former president of the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology.
Go to Profile#35953
Bruce Allen
#35965
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Bruce Allen is an American physicist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover Germany and leader of the Einstein@Home project for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. He is also a physics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and the initiator / project leader of smartmontools hard disk utility.
Go to Profile#35954
Susanna Roxman
#35966
Overall Influence
1946 - 2015 (69 years)
Susanna Roxman was an Anglophone writer, poet and critic born in Stockholm; her father’s family is Scottish. She was considered a gifted child. Her first few books were written in Swedish, but she switched over to English as her professional language. After having worked for some years as a secretary, a ballet teacher, and a fashion model, Roxman studied at Stockholm University, King’s College at London University, Lund University, and Gothenburg University, where she earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. From 1996 to 2005 she headed the Centre of Classical Mythology at Lund University. She had several collections of poetry published, as well as literary criticism.
Go to Profile#35955
Julian Fellowes
#35967
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford, , known professionally as Julian Fellowes, is an English actor, novelist, film director, screenwriter, and Conservative peer. He is primarily known as the author of several Sunday Times bestseller novels; for the screenplay for the film Gosford Park, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2002; and as the creator, writer and executive producer of the multiple award-winning ITV series Downton Abbey .
Go to Profile#35956
David Thomson
#35968
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
David Thomson is a British film critic and historian based in the United States, and the author of more than 20 books. His reference works in particular — Have You Seen...?: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films and The New Biographical Dictionary of Film — have been praised as works of high literary merit and eccentricity despite some criticism for self-indulgence. Benjamin Schwarz, writing in The Atlantic Monthly, called him "probably the greatest living film critic and historian" who "writes the most fun and enthralling prose about the movies since Pauline Kael". John Banville called hi...
Go to Profile#35957
H. L. Hix
#35969
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Harvey Lee Hix , is an American poet and academic. Hix is an author of books of poetry, criticism and essays and has been awarded a fellowship from the NEA. He has also won the KCAI Teaching Excellence Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, which was a publication award from Truman State University Press for his volume Rational Numbers . In 2006 he was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry.
Go to Profile#35958
Jean-Louis Le Moigne
#35970
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Jean-Louis Le Moigne is a French specialist in systems theory and constructivist epistemology. He is an alumnus from École Centrale Paris. Biography Jean-Louis Le Moigne was born on 22 March 1931 in Casablanca, French Morocco. He is married to Maguy Le Moigne, and they have 3 children.ECP Engineer . Diplomas from ITP Harvard Business School and the MIT Sloan School of Management .Industrial Career 1959–1971: Shell Group France: lubricant development; operational research; Informational Organization; Central Planning; Director of South-West Region, Logistics.Professor , later Emeritus Profess...
Go to Profile#35959
H. Naylor Fitzhugh
#35971
Overall Influence
1909 - 1992 (83 years)
Howard Naylor Fitzhugh was an American academic and one of the first African-American graduates of Harvard Business School. Fitzhugh is credited with creating the concept of target marketing. Early life Fitzhugh was born on October 31, 1909, in Washington, D.C. He earned a full scholarship to Harvard at the age of sixteen while still a student at Dunbar High School. Fitzhugh, intent on becoming a doctor, studied science and graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 1930. Three years later, he earned his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1933.
Go to Profile#35960
Ozzie Guillén
#35972
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Oswaldo José Guillén Barrios is a Venezuelan former professional baseball player and manager. He played in Major League Baseball as a shortstop for 16 seasons, primarily with the Chicago White Sox, from 1985 to 2000. During that time, he won the American Rookie of the Year Award and also a Gold Glove. He was considered one of the best defensive shortstops of his era. Guillen later managed the Chicago White Sox from 2004 to 2011, winning the World Series in 2005 and then moving to the Miami Marlins in 2012.
Go to Profile#35961
Lloyd Demetrius
#35973
Overall Influence
Lloyd A. Demetrius is an American mathematician and theoretical biologist at the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary biology, Harvard University. He is best known for the discovery of the concept evolutionary entropy, a statistical parameter that characterizes Darwinian fitness in models of evolutionary processes at various levels of biological organization – molecular, organismic and social. Evolutionary entropy, a generalization of the Gibbs-Boltzmann entropy in statistical thermodynamics, is the cornerstone of directionality theory, an analytical study of evolution by variation and selection.
Go to Profile#35962
Bernard Wolfman
#35974
Overall Influence
1924 - 2011 (87 years)
Bernard Wolfman was the Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School as well as its Gemmill Professor of Tax Law and Tax Policy, and the Fessenden Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Biography Wolfman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Nathan and Elizabeth Wolfman, and was Jewish. In the Second World War, in December 1944 he fought in Germany. He earned an A.B. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1946, and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1948.
Go to Profile#35963
Cheryl Benard
#35975
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Cheryl Benard is an academic scholar, writer, political scientist and novelist. She is the wife of Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Afghanistan and Iraq. She and Khalilzad have two sons, Alexander Benard and Maximilian Benard.
Go to Profile#35964
Margaret Clunies Ross
#35976
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Margaret Beryl Clunies Ross is a medievalist who was until her retirement in 2009 the McCaughey Professor of English Language and Early English Literature and Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Sydney. Her main research areas are Old Norse-Icelandic Studies and the history of their study. Since 1997 she has led the project of editing a new edition of the corpus of skaldic poetry. She has also written articles on Australian Aboriginal rituals and contributed to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Go to Profile#35965
Mark Bolland
#35977
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Mark William Bolland is a British public relations executive. Bolland worked for the Advertising Standards Authority and the Press Complaints Commission before serving as Deputy Private Secretary to Charles, Prince of Wales, from 1997 to 2002. During his time with Charles, Bolland was credited with rehabilitating the prince's public image and enhancing the public image of the relationship between Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, who would become the prince's second wife. After leaving the Prince, Bolland established a public relations and communications firm, Mark Bolland & Associates, and ...
Go to Profile#35966
Steven A. Cohen
#35978
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Steven A. Cohen is an American academic who has taught public management and environmental policy at Columbia University since 1981. He is the former executive director of Columbia University's Earth Institute and now serves as a senior advisor for the institute. He is a professor in the practice of public affairs at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He is also the director of the Master of Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy in the School of International and Public Affairs and the director of the Master of Science in Sustainability Management in the School of Professional Studies.
Go to Profile#35967
Peter Schrijver
#35979
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Peter Schrijver is a Dutch linguist. He is a professor of Celtic languages at Utrecht University and a researcher of ancient Indo-European linguistics. He worked previously at Leiden University and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Go to Profile#35968
Richard Blackwood
#35980
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Richard Clifford Blackwood is a British actor, presenter, and rapper. Between 2015 and 2018, he played Vincent Hubbard in the BBC soap opera EastEnders. In 2020, he began portraying the role of Felix Westwood in the Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks. For his role as Felix, he has been nominated for a TRIC Award and a National Television Award.
Go to Profile#35969
Thomas Zink
#35981
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Thomas Zink is a German mathematician. He currently holds a chair for arithmetic algebraic geometry at the University of Bielefeld. He has been doing research at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, at the University of Toronto and at the University of Bonn among others.
Go to Profile#35970
Willard L. Boyd
#35982
Overall Influence
1927 - 2022 (95 years)
Willard Lee Boyd was an American legal scholar, academic administrator and president of the University of Iowa and Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois. He was latterly part of the faculty of the University of Iowa College of Law as the Rawlings/Miller Professor of Law and President Emeritus.
Go to Profile#35971
Alan B. Gold
#35983
Overall Influence
1917 - 2005 (88 years)
Alan Bernard Gold was the chief justice of the Quebec Superior Court from 1983 to 1992. Born in Montreal, Gold received a B.A. from Queen's University in 1938 and a bachelor's degree in civil law from the University of Montreal in 1941. He was called to the Bar of Quebec in 1942, but first served with the Royal Canadian Artillery during World War II. As an arbitrator, he helped avoid a strike by the longshoremen at the Port of Montreal in 1968. In 1970, he was named chief judge of the Provincial Court of Quebec, now known as the Court of Quebec.
Go to Profile#35972
Donald Shaw
#35984
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Donald Leslie Shaw was a writer, literary critic, and the Brown-Forman Professor of Latin American Literature at the University of Virginia. He graduated from the University of Manchester and Trinity College Dublin . Shaw resided in Italy and would spend each academic semester in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Go to Profile#35973
Steven Lubet
#35985
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Steven Lubet is a legal scholar and author. Lubet is the Edna B. and Ednyfed H. Williams Memorial Professor of Law at Northwestern University. Lubet has been noted for his commentary on controversial issues such as the appointment of scholar Steven Salaita at the University of Illinois, the controversy over the legal status of Alice Goffman's research methods in her widely acclaimed book, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City and support of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch's speaking at a President Donald J. Trumps hotel while cases about the Administration's travel ban and "challenging the constitutionality of payments to Mr.
Go to Profile#35974
George Kennedy
#35986
Overall Influence
1925 - 2016 (91 years)
George Harris Kennedy Jr. was an American actor who appeared in more than 100 film and television productions. He played "Dragline" opposite Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke , winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role and being nominated for the corresponding Golden Globe. He received a second Golden Globe nomination for portraying Joe Patroni in Airport .
Go to Profile#35975
Karen Russell
#35987
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Karen Russell is an American novelist and short story writer. Her debut novel, Swamplandia!, was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 2009 the National Book Foundation named Russell a 5 under 35 honoree. She was also the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" in 2013.
Go to Profile#35976
Hamid Etemad
#35988
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Hamid Etemad is a Canadian organizational theorist, and Professor at the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University. He is best known for his work on international entrepreneurship and business, specifically the "internationalization of small and medium‐sized enterprises."
Go to Profile#35977
Don Coryell
#35989
Overall Influence
1924 - 2010 (86 years)
Donald David Coryell was an American football coach. He coached in high school, college, and the professional ranks; his most notable NCAA post was with the San Diego State Aztecs, then he moved on to the National Football League , first with the St. Louis Cardinals from 1973 to 1977 and then the San Diego Chargers from 1978 to 1986. Well known for his innovations in football's passing game, in particular the Air Coryell offense he created with the Chargers, Coryell was the first head coach to win more than 100 games at both the collegiate and professional levels. He was inducted into the Cha...
Go to Profile#35978
Benedetta Barzini
#35990
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Benedetta Barzini is an Italian photomodel, journalist, writer, educator, feminist. In the 1960s she made a brilliant career as a model in the United States, shooting for Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Ugo Mulas, Henry Clarke , Andy Warhol, became the first Italian on the cover of American Vogue and in 1965 Barzini's photograph graced the cover of the first issue of Italian Vogue, but by the end of the decade was disillusioned with the fashion world. Upon returning to Milan, she became a member of the Italian Communist Party and a radical feminist. Author of over 5 books, she lectured at three ...
Go to Profile#35979
Mario Dal Pra
#35991
Overall Influence
1914 - 1992 (78 years)
Mario Dal Pra was an Italian philosopher, academic, and historian. During World War II, he was also a partisan. Dal Pra was noted for developing his concept of praxis into an original philosophical approach called "transcedentalism of praxis". His works also included his investigations of Thomas Hobbes' view on logic.
Go to Profile#35980
Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin
#35992
Overall Influence
1910 - 2012 (102 years)
Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin was a Belgian linguist, philologist, and orientalist who was professor at the University of Liège and specialized in ancient Iran. Duchesne-Guillemin began his teaching career with the untimely death of his collaborator and mentor at the University of Liège, Auguste Bricteux, in 1937, becoming a professor in 1943 and a full professor in 1964.
Go to Profile#35981
Stefan H. E. Kaufmann
#35993
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Stefan Hugo Ernst Kaufmann is a German immunologist and microbiologist and is one of the highly cited immunologists worldwide for the decade 1990 to 2000. He is amongst the 0.01% most cited scientists of ca. 7 million scientists in 22 major scientific fields globally.
Go to Profile#35982
Michael Kass
#35994
Overall Influence
Michael Kass is an American computer scientist best known for his work in computer graphics and computer vision. He has won an Academy Award and the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award and is an ACM Fellow.
Go to Profile#35983
Cynthia Larive
#35995
Overall Influence
Cynthia Larive is an American scientist and academic administrator serving as the chancellor of University of California, Santa Cruz. Larive's research focuses on nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. She was previously a professor of chemistry and provost and executive vice chancellor at the University of California, Riverside. She is a fellow of AAAS, IUPAC and ACS, associate editor for the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry and editor of the Analytical Sciences Digital Library.
Go to Profile#35984
Thomas Rid
#35996
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Thomas Rid is a political scientist best known for his work on the history and risks of information technology in conflict. He is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Previously he was a professor of security studies at the Department of War Studies, King's College London.
Go to Profile#35985
Karen Yeats
#35997
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Karen Amanda Yeats is a Canadian mathematician and mathematical physicist whose research connects combinatorics to quantum field theory. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Combinatorics in Quantum Field Theory at the University of Waterloo.
Go to Profile#35986
Maureen Warner-Lewis
#35998
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Maureen Warner-Lewis is a Trinidadian and Tobagonian academic whose career focused on the linguistic heritage and unique cultural traditions of the African diaspora of the Caribbean. Her area of focus has been to recover the links between African cultures and Caribbean cultures. She has been awarded multiple prizes for her works, including two Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Awards, the Gold Musgrave Medal of the Institute of Jamaica, and was inducted into the Literary Hall of Fame of Tobago.
Go to Profile#35987
Michael H. Moskow
#35999
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Michael H. Moskow is currently vice chairman and distinguished fellow on the global economy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. From 1994 to 2007, he served as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. In that capacity, he was a member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve System's most important monetary policy-making body.
Go to Profile#35988
Kenneth M. Pollack
#36000
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Kenneth Michael Pollack is an American former CIA intelligence analyst and expert on Middle East politics and military affairs. He has served on the National Security Council staff and has written several articles and books on international relations. Currently, he is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, "where he works on Middle Eastern political-military affairs, focusing in particular on Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf countries. Before that he was Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and a senior advisor at Albri...
Go to Profile#35989
Barbara Mellers
#36001
Overall Influence
Barbara Ann Mellers is I. George Heyman University Professor in the psychology department at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on decision processes. Education Mellers earned her undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. She went on to do graduate work in psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, earning an M.A. in 1978 and a Ph.D. in 1981.
Go to Profile#35990
Lil Yachty
#36002
Overall Influence
1997 - Present (29 years)
Miles Parks McCollum , known professionally as Lil Yachty, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor. He first gained recognition in August 2015 for his viral hit "One Night" from his debut EP Summer Songs. He then released his debut mixtape Lil Boat in March 2016, and signed a joint venture record deal with Motown, Capitol Records, and Quality Control Music in June of that year.
Go to Profile#35991
J. Calvin Giddings
#36003
Overall Influence
1930 - 1996 (66 years)
John Calvin Giddings was a Distinguished Professor of chemistry at the University of Utah. Giddings received a B.S. degree from Brigham Young University in 1952 and a PhD from the University of Utah in 1954. Following postdoctoral work at the University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin, he joined the faculty of the University of Utah as assistant professor of chemistry in 1957. He became associate professor in 1959, research professor in 1962, and professor in 1966. Giddings authored or co-authored more than 400 publications and edited 32 books in the field of chemistry. He was execu...
Go to Profile#35992
Jeffrey Tambor
#36004
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Jeffrey Michael Tambor is an American actor. He is known for his television roles such as Jeffrey Brookes, the uptight neighbor of Stanley and Helen Roper in the television sitcom The Ropers , as Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show , George Bluth Sr. and Oscar Bluth on Arrested Development and Maura Pfefferman on Transparent . For his role in the latter, Tambor earned two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series out of three nominations. In 2015, he was also awarded a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Pfefferman.
Go to Profile#35993
Toby Jones
#36005
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Toby Edward Heslewood Jones is an English actor. He is known for his extensive character actor roles on stage and screen. From 1989 to 1991, Jones trained at L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. He made his stage debut in 2001 in the comedy play The Play What I Wrote, which played in the West End and on Broadway, earning him a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. In 2020, he was nominated for his second Olivier Award, for Best Actor for his performance in a revival of Anton Chekov's Uncle Vanya.
Go to Profile#35994
José María Bermúdez de Castro
#36006
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
José María Bermúdez de Castro Risueño is a Spanish paleoanthropologist. He is known as the first author of the species description of Homo antecessor from the Gran Dolina at the Archaeological site of Atapuerca. On 16 December 2021 he was elected as member of the Real Academia Española, taking the seat K on 9 October 2022.
Go to Profile#35995
Nina Holden
#36007
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Nina Holden is a Norwegian mathematician interested in probability theory and stochastic processes, including graphons, random planar maps, the Schramm–Loewner evolution, and their applications to quantum gravity. She is a Junior Fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Studies at ETH Zurich, and has accepted a position as an associate professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University beginning in 2021.
Go to Profile#35996
Oscar Ratnoff
#36008
Overall Influence
1916 - 2008 (92 years)
Oscar Davis Ratnoff was an American physician who conducted research on the process of coagulation and blood-related disorders. Ratnoff discovered the substance later known as Factor XII and was one of the primary contributors to the delineation of the exact sequence that makes up the clotting cascade. He also made notable research contributions to the understanding of the complement system and to the detection and treatment of hemophilia.
Go to Profile#35997
Sid Eudy
#36009
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Sidney Raymond Eudy is a retired American professional wrestler, better known by his ring names Sid Justice, Sid Vicious, and Sycho Sid in World Championship Wrestling and the World Wrestling Federation .
Go to Profile#35998
Kieron O'Hara
#36010
Overall Influence
Kieron O'Hara is a philosopher, computer scientist and political writer. He is an associate professor and principal research fellow within the department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton where he specialises in the politics, philosophy and epistemology of technology. He is also a research fellow at the Web Science Trust and the conservative think-tank, the Centre for Policy Studies.
Go to Profile#35999
Fran Drescher
#36011
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Francine Joy Drescher is an American actress, comedian, writer, activist, and trade union leader, currently serving as the national president of the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists . She is known for her role as Fran Fine in the television sitcom The Nanny , which she created and produced with her then-husband Peter Marc Jacobson.
Go to Profile#36000
Gilberto Perez
#36012
Overall Influence
1943 - 2015 (72 years)
Gilberto Perez was an American Professor of Film Studies. Perez grew up in Havana, Cuba, where he was exposed to an eclectic international mix of films. He is the son of Federico Gilberto Pérez y Castillo and Edenia Mercedes Guillermo y Marrero . He came to the United States in the early 1960s to study engineering. As an undergraduate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he became interested in theoretical physics. For Gil, theoretical physics was appealing because of its ability to explain the world around him: why a moving bicycle doesn't tip over. During the summer, he worked at American Science and Engineering in Cambridge, Massachusetts, analyzing rocket trajectories.
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