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
#36501
Martti Nissinen
#36513
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Martti Heikki Nissinen is a Finnish theologian, serving since 2007 as Professor of Old Testament studies in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki. He is known as an expert of the prophetic phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East, but his research interests include also gender issues in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean. He has written and edited several books and a significant number of articles on topics related to prophecy, gender, and history of ancient Near Eastern religion.
Go to Profile#36502
Massimo Faggioli
#36514
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Massimo Faggioli is an Italian academic, Church historian, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, columnist for La Croix International, and contributing writer to Commonweal.
Go to Profile#36503
Ardele Lister
#36515
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Ardele Lister is an artist working in time-based media. From 1991 to the present, Lister has taught media production and critical studies at Rutgers University, where she is currently Graduate Director of Visual Arts. She has also taught at Montclair State University in New Jersey, School of the Visual Arts, and Center for Media Arts, both in New York City.
Go to Profile#36504
Maria Spiropulu
#36516
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Maria Spiropulu is a Greek particle physicist. She is the Shang-Yi Ch'en Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. Biography Maria Spiropulu received her bachelor's degree in physics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1993, and obtained her PhD with the CDF experiment from Harvard University in 2000. For her doctoral thesis, she applied for the first time in hadron colliders a novel double blind analysis method to search for evidence of supersymmetry. She excluded a large part of the parameter space where SUSY particles were expected to emerge.
Go to Profile#36505
Marta Weinstock-Rosin
#36517
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Marta Weinstock-Rosin is an Austrian-born Israeli neuropharmacologist, best known as the developer of rivastigmine . Early life and education Weinstock-Rosin was born in Vienna. After her father was arrested for being Jewish, the family fled Austria for England in 1939, shortly before the war. Her early days in England were difficult. Her father was arrested as a citizen of an enemy state, and her mother had no skills and didn't speak English. Food was a challenge to find and much of her time was spent in air raid shelters. At age 12 she looked up the word "pharmacologist" in an encyclopedia and decided that research, drug development and chemistry would be her career.
Go to Profile#36506
Rohit Sharma
#36518
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Rohit Gurunath Sharma is an Indian international cricketer and the current captain of India national cricket team in all formats. Considered one of the best batsmen of his generation and one of greatest opening batters of all time, Sharma is known for his timing, elegance, six-hitting abilities and leadership skills. He plays as a right-handed batsman for India national cricket team in international cricket, Mumbai Indians in IPL and for Mumbai in domestic cricket. Sharma also captains Mumbai Indians and the team has won 5 titles under his leadership.
Go to Profile#36507
Claudia Koonz
#36519
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Claudia Ann Koonz is an American historian of Nazi Germany. Koonz's critique of the role of women during the Nazi era, from a feminist perspective, has become a subject of much debate and research in itself. She is a recipient of the PEN New England Award, and a National Book Award finalist. Koonz has appeared on the podcasts Holocaust, hosted by University of California Television, and Real Dictators, hosted by Paul McGann. In the months before the 2020 United States presidential election, Koonz wrote about the risks of autocracy in the United States for History News Network and the New Schoo...
Go to Profile#36508
Richard J. Ablin
#36520
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Richard J. Ablin is an American scientist, most notable for research on prostate cancer. According to the Wall Street Journal: Early years Ablin received a bachelor's degree from Lake Forest College in 1962 and a doctorate in microbiology from the University at Buffalo in 1967, where he received the distinguished alumni award in 2010.
Go to Profile#36509
Steve Reeves
#36521
Overall Influence
1926 - 2000 (74 years)
Stephen Lester Reeves was an American professional bodybuilder and actor. He was famous in the mid-1950s as a movie star in Italian-made sword-and-sandal films, playing the protagonist as muscular characters such as Hercules, Goliath, and Sandokan. At the peak of his career, he was the highest-paid actor in Europe. Though best known for his portrayal of Hercules, he played the character only twice: in Hercules , and in its 1959 sequel Hercules Unchained. By 1960, Reeves was ranked as the number-one box-office draw in 25 countries around the world.
Go to Profile#36510
Jules Davids
#36522
Overall Influence
1920 - 1996 (76 years)
Jules Davids was a professor of diplomatic history at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University until his retirement in 1986. A prolific author, his most famous work was undoubtedly his editorial assistance on Profiles in Courage, a surprise bestseller that won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for biography for its author, Senator John F Kennedy. He graduated from Brooklyn College. Davids received $700 for his labors and acknowledgement in the foreword that he "materially assisted in the preparation of several chapters," but extensive revelations from many sources, includi...
Go to Profile#36511
Ron Scollon
#36523
Overall Influence
1939 - 2009 (70 years)
Ron Scollon , was a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and the author of 16 books and over 80 articles on intercultural communication and discourse analysis. He was perhaps best known for his work in the area of interethnic communication.
Go to Profile#36512
Francisco Bolívar Zapata
#36524
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Francisco Gonzalo Bolívar Zapata is a Mexican biochemist and professor. After getting his PhD in biochemistry by the National Autonomous University of Mexico , he joined the Research Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in the same university, undertaking studies on Molecular Biology and Biotechnology and becoming one of the most important researchers working in the development of techniques for the use and characterization of the cell genetic material.
Go to Profile#36513
Shaun White
#36525
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Shaun Roger White is an American former professional snowboarder and skateboarder. He is a five-time Olympian and a three-time Olympic gold medalist in half-pipe snowboarding. He holds the world record for the most X Games gold medals and most Olympic gold medals by a snowboarder. He has also won 10 ESPY Awards throughout his career in various categories.
Go to Profile#36514
Richard Kurin
#36526
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Richard Kurin , an American cultural anthropologist, museum official and author, is the Acting Provost and Under Secretary for Museums and Research at the Smithsonian Institution. He is a key member of the senior team managing the world's largest museum and research complex with 6,500 employees and a $1.4 billion annual budget, caring for more than 139 million specimens, artifacts and artworks, working in 145 countries around the globe, hosting some 30 million visitors a year, and reaching hundreds of millions online and through the Smithsonian's educational programs and media outreach. Kurin ...
Go to Profile#36515
Karin Barber
#36527
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Dame Karin Judith Barber, is a British cultural anthropologist and academic, who specialises in the Yoruba-speaking area of Nigeria. From 1999 to 2017, she was Professor of African Cultural Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. Before joining the Centre of West African Studies of the University of Birmingham, she was a lecturer at the University of Ife in Nigeria. Since 2018, she has been Centennial Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.
Go to Profile#36516
Gina Lollobrigida
#36528
Overall Influence
1927 - 2023 (96 years)
Luigia "Gina" Lollobrigida was an Italian actress, model, photojournalist, artist and politician. She was one of the highest-profile European actresses of the 1950s and 1960s, a period in which she was an international sex symbol. Dubbed "the most beautiful woman in the world", at the time of her death she was among the last surviving high-profile international actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.
Go to Profile#36517
Gro Steinsland
#36529
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Gro Steinsland is a Norwegian scholar of medieval studies and history of religion and since August 2009 has been the Scientific Director of the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Go to Profile#36518
John Brodie
#36530
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
John Riley Brodie is an American former professional football player who was a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League for 17 seasons. He had a second career as a Senior PGA Tour professional golfer and was a television broadcaster for both sports.
Go to Profile#36519
Hugh Cornwell
#36531
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Hugh Alan Cornwell is an English musician, singer-songwriter and writer, best known for being the lead vocalist and lead guitarist for the punk rock and new wave band the Stranglers from 1974 to 1990. Since leaving the Stranglers, Cornwell has recorded a further ten solo studio albums and continues to record and perform live.
Go to Profile#36520
Andrea Sironi
#36532
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Andrea Sironi is an Italian academic. He is a Professor of Banking and Finance at Bocconi University, where he was the Rector from 2012 to 2016, and has been the President since 2022. He also serves as chairman of Assicurazioni Generali and Fondazione AIRC per la Ricerca sul Cancro.
Go to Profile#36521
Pedro José Greer
#36533
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Pedro José Greer Jr. is an American physician of Cuban descent. He is Founding Dean for the Roseman University Health Sciences College of Medicine. He was awarded a MacArthur "genius grant" in 1993, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, and the Great Floridian Award in 2013. He has been a board member of the American charity for the homeless, Comic Relief.
Go to Profile#36522
Stephen Porter
#36534
Overall Influence
1925 - 2013 (88 years)
Stephen Winthrop Porter was an American stage and television director, producer, set designer and writer best known for directing the classics, especially George Bernard Shaw, Molière and Shakespeare. Porter directed more than thirty Broadway plays and many regional, Off-Broadway and other productions over his long career. He was nominated for two Tony Awards and two Drama Desk Awards for his work as a director.
Go to Profile#36523
David Ibarra Muñoz
#36535
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
David Ibarra Muñoz is a Mexican economist who served as Secretary of Finance during most of José López Portillo's administration. He currently works as an independent advisor and serves in the board of directors of Grupo Carso and América Móvil.
Go to Profile#36524
Jeffrey Milyo
#36536
Overall Influence
Jeffrey Dennis Milyo is an American economist and professor of economics at the University of Missouri. He is also a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. One of his best-known studies is a 2005 one that he co-authored with Timothy Groseclose examining media bias. The study concluded that most major media outlets in the United States have a liberal bias, although its methodology has been criticized. He has also researched the political effects of campaign finance laws in the United States.
Go to Profile#36525
Rüdiger Wittig
#36537
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Rüdiger Wittig is a professor of geobotany and ecology at the Goethe University Frankfurt in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Career From 1968 to 1973, Wittig studied biology and chemistry at the Wilhelms-University of Westphalia in Münster and passed the state examination, followed by doctoral studies from 1973 to 1976 . Until the completion of his postdoctoral lecture qualification in 1980, he was a research associate at the Wilhelms-University in Münster. From 1980 until 1988, Wittig was professor for botany at the Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf and chair of the department for geobotany at the Institute for Plant Physiology.
Go to Profile#36526
Michael D. Swords
#36538
Overall Influence
Michael D. Swords is a retired professor of Natural Science at Western Michigan University, who writes about general sciences and anomalous phenomena, particularly parapsychology, cryptozoology, and ufology, editing the academic publication The Journal of UFO Studies. He is a board member of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies.
Go to Profile#36527
Juliet Gardiner
#36539
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Juliet Gardiner is a British historian and a commentator on British social history from Victorian times through to the 1950s. She is a former editor of History Today magazine, a research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research of the School of Advanced Study at the University of London, and an honorary fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and at the University of Edinburgh. She has taught at Middlesex University and Oxford Brookes University. Gardiner has also worked as a publisher for Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Since 2001 she has been a full-time writer.
Go to Profile#36528
Jason Sudeikis
#36540
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Daniel Jason Sudeikis is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer. In the 1990s, he began his career in improv comedy and performed with ComedySportz, iO Chicago , and The Second City. In 2003, Sudeikis was hired as a writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live, and later spent nine seasons as a cast member from 2005 to 2013, playing Joe Biden and Mitt Romney, among others.
Go to Profile#36529
Aaron Clauset
#36541
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Aaron Clauset is an American computer scientist who works in the areas of Network Science, Machine Learning, and Complex Systems. He is currently a professor of computer science at the University of Colorado Boulder and is external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.
Go to Profile#36530
Michael Posner
#36542
Overall Influence
1931 - 2006 (75 years)
Michael Vivian Posner was a University of Cambridge economics lecturer turned government adviser, who later worked to safeguard social science research in the United Kingdom. Biography Posner was born to Jack and Lena Posner. His father, originally a cabinet-maker, had immigrated from Russia to escape pogroms against the Jewish community. Posner’s maternal grandparents had also fled European persecution. He grew up in Ilford. After World War II the family settled in Croydon, where Posner attended Whitgift School. He then went to Balliol College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#36531
Adolfo Natalini
#36543
Overall Influence
1941 - 2020 (79 years)
Adolfo Natalini was an Italian architect. Biography Natalini founded the architectural company Superstudio in 1966 along with Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, Gian Piero Frassinelli, Alessandro and Roberto Magris, and Alessandro Poli.
Go to Profile#36532
Eva Badura-Skoda
#36544
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Eva Badura-Skoda was a German-born Austrian musicologist. Biography Born in Munich, Eva Halfar studied at the Vienna Conservatory and took courses in musicology, philosophy, and art history at the universities of Heidelberg, Vienna , and Innsbruck .
Go to Profile#36533
András Prékopa
#36545
Overall Influence
1929 - 2016 (87 years)
András Prékopa was a Hungarian mathematician, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was one of the pioneers of stochastic programming and has been a major contributor to its literature. He amended one of the three basic model types of the discipline, chance-constrained programming, by taking into account stochastic dependence among the random variables involved. One of his main results in the area concerns the convexity theory of probabilistically constrained stochastic optimization problems. He introduced the concept of logarithmic concave measures and provided several fundamenta...
Go to Profile#36534
Philip Russell
#36546
Overall Influence
1919 - 2013 (94 years)
Philip Welsford Richmond Russell, was a South African Anglican bishop. Personal life Russell was born 21 October 1919 in Cowies Hill, South Africa and died 25 July 2013 in Adelaide, Australia. He was educated in Durban at Clifton Preparatory School and Durban High School. Having trained as a quantity surveyor, he served in World War II as part of a bomb disposal unit in the South African Engineering Corps. He was awarded the MBE in 1943 for his service. It was during this time he felt called to the priesthood. He studied at Rhodes University and St Paul's Theological College in Grahamstown....
Go to Profile#36535
Joe Kapp
#36547
Overall Influence
1938 - 2023 (85 years)
Joseph Robert Garcia Kapp was an American football player, coach, and executive. He played college football as a quarterback for the California Golden Bears. Kapp played professionally in the Canadian Football League with the Calgary Stampeders and the BC Lions and then in the National Football League with the Minnesota Vikings and the Boston Patriots; with the Vikings, he led them to victory in the 1969 NFL Championship Game, the only league championship in team history. Kapp returned to his alma mater as head coach of the Golden Bears from 1982 to 1986. He was the general manager and pr...
Go to Profile#36536
Goran Bregović
#36548
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Goran Bregović is a recording artist from Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is one of the most internationally known modern musicians and composers of the Slavic-speaking countries in the Balkans, and is one of the few former Yugoslav musicians who has performed at major international venues such as Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall and L'Olympia.
Go to Profile#36537
Max Weinberg
#36549
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Max Weinberg is an American drummer and television personality, most widely known as the longtime drummer for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and as the bandleader for Conan O'Brien on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. He is the father of former Slipknot drummer Jay Weinberg.
Go to Profile#36538
Edward Anders
#36550
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Edward Anders is a Latvian-born American chemist and emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago. His major areas of research have included the origin and ages of meteorites, the existence of presolar grains in meteorites, the solar-system abundance of chemical elements, and mass extinctions in earth history. In the 1970s, he was one of the 142 principal investigators who studied lunar samples brought back to Earth by the Apollo program. After retiring from scientific research in 1991, he became a prominent researcher, speaker and writer on issues related to the Holocaust in ...
Go to Profile#36539
Frank Zöllner
#36551
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Frank Zöllner is a German art historian. He is among the leading authorities on the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci, about whom he has written numerous publications on. These include book-length studies on the Mona Lisa and one of the two modern catalogue raisonné of Leonardo's works, the other being by Pietro C. Marani.
Go to Profile#36540
Case Keenum
#36552
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Case Austin Keenum is an American football quarterback for the Houston Texans of the National Football League . He played college football for the Houston Cougars, where he became the NCAA's all-time leader in total passing yards, touchdowns, and completions. In the 2008 college football season, Keenum ranked first nationally in total offense and second in total passing yards.
Go to Profile#36541
Corinna Ulcigrai
#36553
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Corinna Ulcigrai is an Italian mathematician working on dynamical systems. With Krzysztof Frączek in 2013, Ulcigrai is known for proving that in the Ehrenfest model most trajectories are not ergodic.
Go to Profile#36542
Kaija Saariaho
#36554
Overall Influence
1952 - 2023 (71 years)
Kaija Anneli Saariaho was a Finnish composer based in Paris, France. During the course of her career, Saariaho received commissions from the Lincoln Center for the Kronos Quartet and from IRCAM for the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the BBC, the New York Philharmonic, the Salzburg Music Festival, the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, and the Finnish National Opera, among others. In a 2019 composers' poll by BBC Music Magazine, Saariaho was ranked the greatest living composer.
Go to Profile#36543
Matthew K. Franklin
#36555
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Matthew Keith "Matt" Franklin is an American cryptographer, and a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis. Education and employment Franklin did his undergraduate studies at Pomona College, graduating in 1983 with a degree in mathematics, and was awarded a master's degree in mathematics in 1985 by the University of California, Berkeley. He earned his Ph.D. in computer science from Columbia University in 1994, under the joint supervision of Zvi Galil and Moti Yung. Prior to joining the UC Davis faculty in 2000, he worked at Xerox PARC, Bell Labs, and AT&T Labs.
Go to Profile#36544
Marielle Chartier
#36556
Overall Influence
Marielle Chartier is a Professor of Particle Physics at the University of Liverpool in England. Her research investigates the phase diagram of nuclear matter using the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN Her past work includes nuclear structure at the frontiers of the valley of stability.
Go to Profile#36545
Eric Rofes
#36557
Overall Influence
1954 - 2006 (52 years)
Eric Rofes was a gay activist, educator, and author. He was a director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center in the 1980s. In 1989, he became executive director of the Shanti Project, a nonprofit AIDS service organization. He was a professor of Education at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, and served on the board of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. He wrote or edited twelve books. One of his last projects was co-creating "Gay Men's Health Leadership Academies" to combat what he saw as a "pathology-focused understanding of gay men" in safe-sex education.
Go to Profile#36546
Andrey Kapitsa
#36558
Overall Influence
1931 - 2011 (80 years)
Andrey Petrovich Kapitsa was a Soviet and Russian geographer and Antarctic explorer, discoverer of Lake Vostok, the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica. He was a member of the Kapitsa family, a scientific dynasty in Russia.
Go to Profile#36547
Charles Basch
#36559
Overall Influence
Charles Basch is the Richard March Hoe Professor of Health and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City, New York. He teaches courses related to epidemiology, planning and evaluation. Before coming to Teachers College, he was Assistant Professor of Community Health Education at Russell Sage College in Troy, New York.
Go to Profile#36548
Timothy Light
#36560
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Timothy Light is an American sinologist who took a Chinese name "黎天睦" . He was the fourteenth president of Middlebury College, 1990–1991. A native of Kalamazoo, Michigan, Light is a scholar in East Asian languages and literature. He served as provost of Kalamazoo College prior to his time at Middlebury, and later became a professor of religion and provost at Western Michigan University.
Go to Profile#36549
Hartmut Jürgens
#36561
Overall Influence
1955 - 2017 (62 years)
Hartmut Jürgens was a German mathematician, born in Bremen, Germany. He received his doctorate in 1983 from the University of Bremen. He has worked in the computer industry, and was the Director of the Dynamical Systems Graphics Laboratory at the University of Bremen. He is the co-author of both Fractals: An Animated Discussion and Chaos and Fractals: New Frontiers of Science
Go to Profile#36550
Paola Arlotta
#36562
Overall Influence
Paola Arlotta is the Golub Family Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University and chair of the Harvard Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology . Her research focuses on the development of neuron types in the cerebral cortex. She is best known for her work using 3D cerebral organoids derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells to study cortical development in neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders.
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