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
#3601
Gary Gerstle
#3608
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Gary Gerstle is an American historian and academic. He is the Paul Mellon Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. Early life Gary Gerstle received his BA from Brown University in 1976 and his PhD from Harvard University in 1982.
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Chuck Barris
#3609
Overall Influence
1929 - 2017 (88 years)
Charles Hirsch Barris was an American game show creator, producer, and host. Barris was known for hosting The Gong Show and creating The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game. He was also a songwriter who wrote "Palisades Park", recorded by Freddy Cannon and also recorded by Ramones. Barris wrote an autobiography titled Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which was made into the film of the same name and directed by George Clooney.
Go to Profile#3603
Sergei Khrushchev
#3610
Overall Influence
1935 - 2020 (85 years)
Sergei Nikitich Khrushchev was a Soviet-born American engineer and the second son of the Cold War-era Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev with his wife Nina Petrovna Khrushcheva. He moved to the United States in 1991 and became a naturalized American citizen.
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Wolfgang Haken
#3611
Overall Influence
1928 - 2022 (94 years)
Wolfgang Haken was a German American mathematician who specialized in topology, in particular 3-manifolds. Biography Haken was born on June 21, 1928, in Berlin, Germany. His father was Werner Haken, a physicist who had Max Planck as a doctoral thesis advisor. In 1953, Haken earned a Ph.D. degree in mathematics from Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel and married Anna-Irmgard von Bredow, who earned a Ph.D. degree in mathematics from the same university in 1959. In 1962, they left Germany so he could accept a position as visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign....
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Jean Ichbiah
#3612
Overall Influence
1940 - 2007 (67 years)
Jean David Ichbiah was a French computer scientist and the initial chief designer of Ada, a general-purpose, strongly typed programming language with certified validated compilers. Early life Ichbiah was a descendant of Greek and Turkish Jews from Thessaloniki who emigrated to France.
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Paul Postal
#3613
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Paul Martin Postal is an American linguist. Biography Postal received his PhD from Yale University in 1963 and taught at MIT until 1965. That year, he moved to the City University of New York. In 1967 he was appointed to a research position at IBM and he remained on their research staff until 1994.
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Shiu-Yuen Cheng
#3614
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Shiu-Yuen Cheng is a Hong Kong mathematician. He is currently the Chair Professor of Mathematics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Cheng received his Ph.D. in 1974, under the supervision of Shiing-Shen Chern, from University of California at Berkeley. Cheng then spent some years as a post-doctoral fellow and assistant professor at Princeton University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Then he became a full professor at University of California at Los Angeles. Cheng chaired the Mathematics departments of both the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in the 1990s.
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Arno Allan Penzias
#3615
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Arno Allan Penzias is an American physicist, radio astronomer and Nobel laureate in physics. Along with Robert Woodrow Wilson, he discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang theory of cosmology.
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David Marks
#3616
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
David Francis Marks is a psychologist, author and editor of numerous articles and books largely concerned with five areas of psychological research – judgement, health psychology, consciousness, parapsychology and intelligence. Marks is also the originator of the General Theory of Behaviour, and has curated exhibitions and books about artists and their works.
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Pete Sampras
#3617
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Petros "Pete" Sampras is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. Regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time, his professional career began in 1988 and ended at the 2002 US Open, which he won, defeating his longtime rival Andre Agassi in the final. Sampras won 14 major singles titles during his career, which was an all-time record at the time of his retirement: a then-record seven Wimbledon titles, two Australian Opens and a joint Open Era record five US Open titles. He won 64 ATP Tour-level singles titles in total. He first reached the world No. 1 ranking in 1993, and he...
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James Rosenquist
#3618
Overall Influence
1933 - 2017 (84 years)
James Albert Rosenquist was an American artist and one of the proponents of the pop art movement. Drawing from his background working in sign painting, Rosenquist's pieces often explored the role of advertising and consumer culture in art and society, utilizing techniques he learned making commercial art to depict popular cultural icons and mundane everyday objects. While his works have often been compared to those from other key figures of the pop art movement, such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, Rosenquist's pieces were unique in the way that they often employed elements of surrealism using fragments of advertisements and cultural imagery to emphasize the overwhelming nature of ads.
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David Bailey
#3619
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
David Royston Bailey is an English photographer and director, most widely known for his fashion photography and portraiture, and role in shaping the image of the Swinging Sixties. Early life David Bailey was born at Whipps Cross University Hospital, Leytonstone, to Herbert Bailey, a tailor's cutter, and his wife Gladys, a machinist. From the age of three he lived in East Ham.
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Eugene Gendlin
#3620
Overall Influence
1926 - 2017 (91 years)
Eugene Tovio Gendlin was an American philosopher who developed ways of thinking about and working with living process, the bodily felt sense and the "philosophy of the implicit". Though he had no degree in the field of psychology, his advanced study with Carl Rogers, his longtime practice of psychotherapy and his extensive writings in the field of psychology have made him perhaps better known in that field than in philosophy. He studied under Carl Rogers, the founder of client-centered therapy, at the University of Chicago and received his PhD in philosophy in 1958. Gendlin's theories impacted Rogers' own beliefs and played a role in Rogers' view of psychotherapy.
Go to Profile#3614
Robert Peston
#3621
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Robert James Kenneth Peston is an English journalist, presenter, and author. He is the political editor of ITV News and host of the weekly political discussion show Peston . From 2006 until 2014, he was the business editor of BBC News and its economics editor from 2014 to 2015. He became known to the wider public with his reporting on the late 2000s financial crisis, especially with his exclusive information on the Northern Rock crisis. He is the founder of the education charity Speakers for Schools.
Go to Profile#3615
Nicolás Maduro
#3622
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Nicolás Maduro Moros is a Venezuelan politician who has served as the president of Venezuela since 2013. Beginning his working life as a bus driver, Maduro rose to become a trade union leader before being elected to the National Assembly in 2000. He was appointed to a number of positions under President Hugo Chávez, serving as President of the National Assembly from 2005 to 2006, as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2006 to 2013 and as the vice president from 2012 to 2013 under Chávez. After Chávez's death was announced on 5 March 2013, Maduro assumed the presidency. A special presidential ele...
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Evelyn Fox Keller
#3623
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Evelyn Fox Keller was an American physicist, author, and feminist. She was Professor Emerita of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Keller's early work concentrated at the intersection of physics and biology. Her subsequent research focused on the history and philosophy of modern biology and on gender and science.
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Jacques Attali
#3624
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Jacques José Mardoché Attali is a French economic and social theorist, writer, political adviser and senior civil servant. A very prolific writer, Attali published 86 books in 54 years, between 1969 and 2023.
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Ian Smith
#3625
Overall Influence
1919 - 2007 (88 years)
Ian Douglas Smith was a Rhodesian politician, farmer, and fighter pilot who served as Prime Minister of Rhodesia from 1964 to 1979. He was the country's first leader to be born and raised in Rhodesia, and led the predominantly white government that unilaterally declared independence from the United Kingdom in November 1965 in opposition to the UK's demands for the implementation of majority rule as a condition for independence. His 15 years in power were defined by the country's international isolation and involvement in the Rhodesian Bush War, which pitted Rhodesia's armed forces against t...
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Mary Beard
#3626
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Dame Winifred Mary Beard, is an English scholar of Ancient Rome. She is a trustee of the British Museum and formerly held a personal professorship of Classics at the University of Cambridge. She is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature.
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Thomas W. Malone
#3627
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Thomas W. Malone is an American organizational theorist, management consultant, and the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Biography Malone received his BA in applied mathematics, graduating magna cum laude from Rice University. He earned his MS in engineering-economic systems, and his Ph.D. in cognitive and social psychology, both from Stanford University.
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Adolfo Bioy Casares
#3628
Overall Influence
1914 - 1999 (85 years)
Adolfo Bioy Casares was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, diarist, and translator. He was a friend and frequent collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges. He is the author of the Fantastique novel The Invention of Morel.
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Armin Falk
#3629
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Armin Falk is a German economist. He has held a chair at the University of Bonn since 2003. Biography Education and career Falk studied economics as well as philosophy and history at the University of Cologne. In 1998 he obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich under the supervision of Ernst Fehr.
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Zhores Medvedev
#3630
Overall Influence
1925 - 2018 (93 years)
Zhores Aleksandrovich Medvedev was a Russian agronomist, biologist, historian and dissident. His twin brother is the historian Roy Medvedev. Biography Early life and education Zhores Medvedev and his twin brother Roy were born on 14 November 1925 in Tbilisi, Transcaucasian SFSR, USSR. Their mother Yulia , was a cellist, and their father, Alexander Medvedev, was a philosopher in a military academy in Leningrad. Zhores, named after French socialist leader Jean Jaurès , was drafted into the Red Army in 1943, but was soon discharged after being seriously wounded in a battle on the Taman Peninsula.
Go to Profile#3624
Sandy Petersen
#3631
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Carl Sanford Joslyn "Sandy" Petersen is an American game designer. He worked at Chaosium, contributing to the development of RuneQuest and creating the acclaimed and influential horror role-playing game Call of Cthulhu. He later joined id Software where he worked on the development of the Doom franchise and Quake.
Go to Profile#3625
Juan José Linz
#3632
Overall Influence
1926 - 2013 (87 years)
Juan José Linz Storch de Gracia was a German-born Spanish sociologist and political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He was Sterling Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Political Science at Yale University and an honorary member of the Scientific Council at the Juan March Institute. He is best known for his work on authoritarian political regimes and democratization.
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Steven M. Bellovin
#3633
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Steven M. Bellovin is a researcher on computer networking and security who has been a professor in the computer science department at Columbia University since 2005. Previously, Bellovin was a fellow at AT&T Labs Research in Florham Park, New Jersey.
Go to Profile#3627
Jimmy Connors
#3634
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
James Scott Connors is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. He held the top Association of Tennis Professionals ranking for a then-record 160 consecutive weeks from 1974 to 1977 and a career total of 268 weeks. By virtue of his long and prolific career, Connors still holds three prominent Open Era men's singles records: 109 titles, 1,557 matches played, and 1,274 match wins. His titles include eight major singles titles and three year-end championships. In 1974, he became the second man in the Open Era to win three major titles in a calendar year, and was not permitted to participate in the fourth, the French Open.
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Fred Singer
#3635
Overall Influence
1924 - 2020 (96 years)
Siegfried Fred Singer was an Austrian-born American physicist and emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, trained as an atmospheric physicist. He was known for rejecting the scientific consensus on several issues, including climate change, the connection between UV-B exposure and melanoma rates, stratospheric ozone loss being caused by chlorofluoro compounds, often used as refrigerants, and the health risks of passive smoking.
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Michael Savage
#3636
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Michael Alan Weiner , known by his professional name Michael Savage, is an American right-wing author, political commentator, activist, and former radio host. Savage is best known as the host of The Savage Nation, a nationally syndicated talk show that aired on Talk Radio Network across the United States until 2021, and in 2009 was the second most listened-to radio talk show in the country with an audience of over 20 million listeners on 400 stations across the United States. From October 23, 2012, to January 1, 2021, Michael Savage had been syndicated by Cumulus Media and Westwood One. He hol...
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Joseph Tainter
#3637
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Joseph Anthony Tainter is an American anthropologist and historian. Biography Tainter studied anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and Northwestern University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1975. he holds a professorship in the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University. His previous positions include Project Leader of Cultural Heritage Research, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Albuquerque, New Mexico and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico.
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Fred Dretske
#3638
Overall Influence
1932 - 2013 (81 years)
Frederick Irwin "Fred" Dretske was an American philosopher noted for his contributions to epistemology and the philosophy of mind. Life and career Born to Frederick and Hattie Dretske, Dretske first planned to be an engineer, attending Purdue University. He changed his mind after taking the university's only philosophy course, deciding philosophy was the only thing he wanted to do in his life.
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Elias Khoury
#3639
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Elias Khoury is a Lebanese novelist and public intellectual. His novels and literary criticism have been translated into several languages. In 2000, he won the Prize of Palestine for his book Gate of the Sun, and he won the Al Owais Award for fiction writing in 2007. Khoury has also written three plays and two screenplays.
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Jason Thompson
#3640
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Jason Bradley Thompson is an American artist, author, comics creator, critic, and editor. He is best known for his Eisner-nominated book Manga: The Complete Guide, his graphic novel interpretation of H. P. Lovecraft's DreamQuest of Unknown Kadath and Other Stories, and his Dungeons and Dragons adventure walkthrough maps published by Wizards of the Coast on their website as well in books such as Waterdeep Dragon Heist.
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Phil Jackson
#3641
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Philip Douglas Jackson is an American former professional basketball player, coach, and executive. A power forward, Jackson played 12 seasons in the NBA, winning NBA championships with the New York Knicks in 1970 and 1973. Jackson was the head coach of the Chicago Bulls from 1989 to 1998, leading them to six NBA championships. He then coached the Los Angeles Lakers from 1999 to 2004 and again from 2005 to 2011; the team won five league titles under his leadership. Jackson's 11 NBA titles as a coach surpassed the previous record of nine set by Red Auerbach. He holds numerous other records as a...
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Herbert W. Franke
#3642
Overall Influence
1927 - 2022 (95 years)
Herbert W. Franke was an Austrian scientist and writer. Die Zeit calls him "the most prominent German writing Science Fiction author". He is also one of the important early computer artists , creating computer graphics and early digital art since the late 1950s. Franke was also active in the fields of future research as well as speleology. He used his pen name Sergius Both as this Avatar name in Active Worlds and Opensimulator grids. The Sergius Both Award is given for creative scripting in Immersionskunst by Stiftung Kunstinformatik, first time issued at Amerika Art 2022.
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Bernard Lown
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#3643
Overall Influence
1921 - 2021 (100 years)
Bernard Lown was a Lithuanian-American cardiologist and inventor. Lown was the original developer of the direct current defibrillator for cardiac resuscitation, and the cardioverter for correcting rapid disordered heart rhythms. He introduced a new use for the drug lidocaine to control heartbeat disturbances.
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Zeynep Tufekci
#3644
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Zeynep Tufekci is a sociologist, and the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. She is also a columnist for The New York Times. Her work focuses on social media, media ethics, the social implications of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and big data, as well as societal challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic using complex and systems-based thinking. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, she is one of the most prominent academic voices on social media and the new public sphere. In 2022, Tufekci was a Pulitzer Prize finalis...
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Ursula Burns
#3645
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Ursula M. Burns is an American businesswoman. Burns is renowned for her tenure as the CEO of Xerox, serving from 2009 to 2016, making her the first black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company. She also holds the distinction of being the first woman to follow another as the head of a Fortune 500 company. Burns remained the Chairman at Xerox from 2010 to 2017.
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Amitabh Bachchan
#3646
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Amitabh Bachchan is an Indian actor, film producer, television host, occasional playback singer and former politician, who works in Hindi cinema. In a film career spanning over five decades, he has starred in more than 200 films. Bachchan is widely regarded as one of the most successful and influential actors in the history of Indian cinema. He is referred to as the Shahenshah of Bollywood, Sadi Ke Mahanayak , Star of the Millennium, or Big B. His dominance in the Indian movie scenario during the 1970s80s made the French director François Truffaut call it a "one-man industry".
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Gary Chartier
#3647
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Gary Charier currently holds the title of Distinguished Professor of Law and Business Ethics at La Sierra University in Riverside, California; he is also the Associate Dean of the Zapara School of Business. Chartier received a bachelor’s degree in history and political science at La Sierra University in 1987 before earning his PhD with the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge in 1991. Chartier has also taught at universities including Loma Linda University, California Baptist University, and Brunel University. Chartier is best known for his libertarian and anarchist philosophy. I...
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Mark Lawson
#3648
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Mark Gerard Lawson is an English journalist, broadcaster and author. Specialising in culture and the arts, he is best known for presenting the flagship BBC Radio 4 arts programme Front Row between 1998 and 2014. He is also a Guardian columnist, and presented Mark Lawson Talks To... on BBC Four from 2006 to 2015.
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Richard J. Leon
#3649
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Richard J. Leon is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Early life and education Leon was born in South Natick, Massachusetts, in 1949. He is the son of Silvano B. Leon and Rita M. Leon, née O'Rorke. His paternal grandparents were immigrants from Portugal who settled in Framingham, Massachusetts. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from College of the Holy Cross in 1971, where he played varsity lacrosse and was a classmate of future Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. He received his Juris Doctor from Suffolk...
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Nevitt Sanford
#3650
Overall Influence
1909 - 1995 (86 years)
Nevitt Sanford was an American professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and later at Stanford University. A Harvard doctoral student of Gordon Allport, PhD in social psychology and Henry Murray, MD at the Harvard Clinic, as a young Cal professor Sanford studied ethnocentrism and antisemitism, and was the senior author along with Columbia University philosopher Theodor Adorno of The Authoritarian Personality, also known as "the Berkeley Study."
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Charles Fried
#3651
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Charles Anthony Fried is an American jurist and lawyer. He served as United States Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1989. He is a professor at Harvard Law School and has been a visiting professor at Columbia Law School. He also serves on the board of the nonpartisan group, the Campaign Legal Center.
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Paul Rabinow
#3652
Overall Influence
1944 - 2021 (77 years)
Areas of Specialization: Anthropology of Reason Paul Rabinow was Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Anthropology of the Contemporary Research Collaboratory (ARC). He earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago. He has also studied at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, France. He has held Fulbright fellowships at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro and the University of Iceland. A recognized scholar on the works of Michel Foucault, and his “anthropology of reason,” Rabinow became a famous ant...
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Paul James
#3653
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Paul James is Professor of Globalization and Cultural Diversity at Western Sydney University, and Director of the Institute for Culture and Society where he has been since 2014. He is a writer on global politics, globalization, sustainability, and social theory.
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Elizabeth David
#3654
Overall Influence
1913 - 1992 (79 years)
Elizabeth David CBE was a British cookery writer. In the mid-20th century she strongly influenced the revitalisation of home cookery in her native country and beyond with articles and books about European cuisines and traditional British dishes.
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Tom Hanks
#3655
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Thomas Jeffrey Hanks is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for both his comedic and dramatic roles, he is one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide, and is regarded as an American cultural icon. Hanks' films have grossed more than $4.9 billion in North America and more than $9.96 billion worldwide, making him the fourth-highest-grossing actor in North America. He has received numerous honors including the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2014, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the French Legion of Honor both in 2016, as well as the Golden Globe Cecil B.
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Paul Harvey
#3656
Overall Influence
1918 - 2009 (91 years)
Paul Harvey Aurandt was an American radio broadcaster for ABC News Radio. He broadcast News and Comment on mornings and mid-days on weekdays and at noon on Saturdays and also his famous The Rest of the Story segments. From 1951 to 2008, his programs reached as many as 24 million people per week. Paul Harvey News was carried on 1,200 radio stations, on 400 American Forces Network stations, and in 300 newspapers.
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Richard Ebeling
#3657
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Richard M. Ebeling is an American libertarian author who was the president of the Foundation for Economic Education from 2003 to 2008. Ebeling is currently the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.
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