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
#36601
Eric Rignot
#36613
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Eric J. Rignot is the Donald Bren, Distinguished and Chancellor Professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, and a Senior Research Scientist for the Radar Science and Engineering Section at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He studies the interaction of the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica with global climate using a combination of satellite remote sensing , airborne remote sensing , understanding of physical processes controlling glacier flow and ice melt in the ocean, field methods , and climate modeling . He was elected at the National_Academy_of_Sc...
Go to Profile#36602
Tukufu Zuberi
#36614
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Tukufu Zuberi is an American sociologist, filmmaker, social critic, educator, and writer. Zuberi has appeared in several documentaries on Africa and the African diaspora, including Liberia: America's Stepchild , and 500 Years Later . He is one of the hosts of the long-running PBS program History Detectives. As founder of his own production company, he produced the film African Independence, which premiered at the San Diego Black Film Festival in January 2013. He is the Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations, professor and chair of the sociology department, and professor of Africana studies...
Go to Profile#36603
Jean-Luc Ponty
#36615
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jean-Luc Ponty is a French jazz and jazz fusion violinist and composer. Early life Ponty was born into a family of classical musicians in Avranches, France. His father taught violin, his mother taught piano. At sixteen, he was admitted to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, graduating two years later with the institution's highest honor, Premier Prix . He was hired by the Orchestre Lamoureux in which he played for three years.
Go to Profile#36604
Nassir Ghaemi
#36616
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Nassir Ghaemi is an academic psychiatrist, author, and Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and Lecturer on Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He has written several books on mental illness and mood disorders, and has contributed to many scientific journals and other published works. Among his other views, Ghaemi is a proponent of the concept of manic depressive illness in the original Kraepelinian sense, an advocate for lithium therapy, and a critic of the DSM diagnostic system, which he views as largely unscientific and invalid.
Go to Profile#36605
Carl-Gunne Fälthammar
#36617
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Carl-Gunne Fälthammar is Professor Emeritus at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, specialising in space and plasma physics in the School of Electrical Engineering. He succeeded Hannes Alfvén as Professor of Plasma Physics in 1975.
Go to Profile#36606
Lucius Walker
#36618
Overall Influence
1930 - 2010 (80 years)
Lucius Walker was an American Baptist minister who served as executive director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization in the 1960s and was a persistent advocate for ending the United States embargo against Cuba. He made multiple trips to Cuba with supplies provided in violation of the embargo.
Go to Profile#36607
Ashley Mears
#36619
Overall Influence
Ashley Mears is an American writer, sociologist, and former fashion model. She is currently a professor of sociology at Boston University. Mears is the author of Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model and Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit, and is regularly quoted in media as an academic expert in the culture and economics of fashion.
Go to Profile#36608
David W. Garland
#36620
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
David Garland is Arthur T. Vanderbilt Professor of Law and professor of sociology at New York University, and an honorary professor in Criminology at Edinburgh Law School. He is well known for his historical and sociological studies of penal institutions, for his work on the welfare state, and for his contributions to criminology, social theory, and the study of social control.
Go to Profile#36609
John Dickson
#36621
Overall Influence
John Dickson is an Australian author, clergyman and historian of the ancient world, largely focusing on early Christianity and Judaism. He currently teaches at the graduate school of Wheaton College .
Go to Profile#36610
Chris Roebuck
#36622
Overall Influence
Chris Roebuck is a British economist, focusing on leadership and organisational performance. He is an honorary visiting professor of transformational leadership at Cass Business School in London, a position he has held since 2009. He advises organisations on maximising performance through effective leadership, in particular developing entrepreneurial leadership.
Go to Profile#36611
Nicholas Barr
#36623
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Nicholas Barr FRSA is a British economist, currently serving as professor of public economics at the London School of Economics . He received his Ph.D. in economics as a Fulbright Scholar from the University of California, Berkeley and his MSc in economics from LSE. According to his LSE biography, he has worked for the World Bank, "from 1990 to 1992 working on the design of income transfers and health finance in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia, and in 1995–96 as a principal author of the World Bank's World Development Report 1996: From Plan to Market." He also served as an advisor to the...
Go to Profile#36612
Andreas Plückthun
#36624
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Andreas Plückthun is a scientist whose research is focused on the field of protein engineering. Andreas Plückthun is the director of the department of biochemistry at the University of Zurich. Plückthun was appointed to the faculty of the University of Zurich as a Full professor of biochemistry in 1993. Plückthun was group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry , Germany . He was elected to the European Molecular Biology Organization in 1992, and named a member of the German National Academy of Science in 2003. He is cofounder of the biotechnology companies Morphosys Molecular Partners AG and G7 Therapeutics.
Go to Profile#36613
Maggie Aderin-Pocock
#36625
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Margaret Ebunoluwa Aderin-Pocock is a British space scientist and science educator. She is an honorary research associate of University College London's Department of Physics and Astronomy, and has been the chancellor of the University of Leicester since February 2023. Since February 2014, she has co-presented the long-running astronomy television programme The Sky at Night with Chris Lintott. In 2020 she was awarded the Institute of Physics William Thomson, Lord Kelvin Medal and Prize for her public engagement in physics. She is the first black woman to win a gold medal in the Physics News ...
Go to Profile#36614
Robert D. Goldman
#36626
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Robert D. Goldman is an American cell and molecular biologist. He was the Chair of the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He held the Stephen Walter Ranson Professor of Cell Biology at the institution. He is currently a Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at Feinberg.
Go to Profile#36615
Yoram Koren
#36627
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Yoram Koren is an Israeli-American academic. He is the James J. Duderstadt Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Manufacturing and the Paul G. Goebel Professor Emeritus of Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Since 2014 he is a distinguished visiting professor at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#36616
Leonie Sandercock
#36628
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Leonie Sandercock is an urban planner and academic focusing on community planning and multiculturalism. Her work spans the interdisciplinary fields of urban studies, urban policy and planning and elucidates issues of difference, social justice and possibility. She has been teaching at the School of Community & Regional Planning at University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, since 2001.
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Andrzej Trybulec
#36629
Overall Influence
1941 - 2013 (72 years)
Andrzej Wojciech Trybulec was a Polish mathematician and computer scientist noted for work on the Mizar system. Early years His parents Jan W. Trybulec and Barbara H. Kurlus both were professional pharmacists who owned a chemists shop in a small town Szczucin near the city of Tarnów in the south-eastern Poland where they dispensed medicines. He went to high school in Ruda Śląska and then, on his own initiative, he transferred to a prestigious high school in Kraków, where he matriculated. He studied mathematics at the University of Warsaw, from 1964 to 1966 he lectured at the Chair of Geometry, in 1966 he graduated to the magister degree.
Go to Profile#36618
Donald Byrd
#36630
Overall Influence
1932 - 2013 (81 years)
Donald Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II was an American jazz and rhythm & blues trumpeter and vocalist. A sideman for many other jazz musicians of his generation, Byrd was one of the few hard bop musicians who successfully explored funk and soul while remaining a jazz artist. As a bandleader, Byrd was an influence on the early career of Herbie Hancock and many others.
Go to Profile#36619
Kwame Brown
#36631
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Kwame Hasani Brown is an American former professional basketball player who spent 12 seasons in the National Basketball Association . Selected by the Washington Wizards in the 2001 NBA draft, Brown was the first No. 1 overall pick to be chosen straight out of high school and the 16th player from high school to be drafted into the NBA. He also played for the Los Angeles Lakers, Memphis Grizzlies, Detroit Pistons, Charlotte Bobcats, Golden State Warriors, and Philadelphia 76ers. His performance as a first overall draft pick has led many analysts to label him as one of the biggest busts in NBA h...
Go to Profile#36620
Jeffrey Sconce
#36632
Overall Influence
Jeffrey Sconce is a professor and cultural historian of media and film. He is a professor in the Screen Cultures program at Northwestern University. Early life and education Sconce has a B.A., B.S., and M.A. from the University of Texas, Austin, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Go to Profile#36621
Peter A. Singer
#36633
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Peter Alexander Singer, OC, FRSC, is special advisor to the director general of the World Health Organization, and also adjunct professor of medicine at University of Toronto. From 2008-2018 Singer was chief executive officer of Grand Challenges Canada and Director of the Sandra Rotman Centre, University Health Network. From 1996-2006 Singer was director of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics.
Go to Profile#36622
Yazdan Yazdanpanah
#36634
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Yazdan Yazdanpanah is an Iranian born infectiologist who is head of the Infectious Disease department at Bichat–Claude Bernard Hospital. He was Professor of Medicine at Paris Diderot University. He became an MD from the Lille School of Medicine in 1996, obtained a Master of Science in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2000, and completed a PhD in public health from the Bordeaux School of Public Health in 2002.
Go to Profile#36623
Carl Edwards
#36635
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Carl Michael Edwards Jr. is an American former professional stock car racing driver. He last competed in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, driving the No. 19 Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing. Prior to that, he drove the No. 99 Ford Fusion for Roush Fenway Racing. He won the 2007 NASCAR Busch Series championship and nearly won the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series title, but lost by a tiebreaker to Tony Stewart. Edwards is known for doing a backflip off his car to celebrate his victories. In 2023, he was named one of NASCAR's 75 Greatest Drivers.
Go to Profile#36624
Kathy Wilkes
#36636
Overall Influence
1946 - 2003 (57 years)
Kathleen Vaughan Wilkes was an English philosopher and academic who played an important part in rebuilding the education systems of former Communist countries after 1990. She established her reputation as an academic with her contributions to the philosophy of mind in two major works and many articles in professional journals. As a conscientious college tutor, she won the respect and affection of her students and academic colleagues. Her most notable contribution lay in her clandestine activities behind the Iron Curtain, which led to the establishment of underground universities and academic networks in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe.
Go to Profile#36625
Francisco Dall'Anese
#36637
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Francisco Dall' have been Attorney-Gen of the Rica. Biography Dall'Anese attended the University of Costa Rica, where he studied law. He later taught criminal law at the University, and is co-author of five books and over 20 academic papers on topics of criminal, judicial and procedural law. In 2004, he was presented with an honorary doctorate by the Universidad Escuela Libre de Derecho of Costa Rica.
Go to Profile#36626
Jason Bateman
#36638
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Jason Kent Bateman is an American actor, director, and producer. He is known for his starring roles in numerous comedy films and for portraying Michael Bluth in the Fox / Netflix sitcom Arrested Development and Marty Byrde in the Netflix crime drama series Ozark . He has received several awards including a Golden Globe Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2017 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Go to Profile#36627
Reuben Olembo
#36639
Overall Influence
1937 - 2005 (68 years)
Professor Reuben James Olembo was a prominent Kenyan academic, scientist and environmentalist. He was a deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme , which he played a pivotal role in helping found, and United Nations Assistant Secretary General from 1994 to 1998. He became the Acting Secretary General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora , after his retirement from UNEP.
Go to Profile#36628
Debra Winger
#36640
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Debra Lynn Winger is an American actress. She starred in the films An Officer and a Gentleman , Terms of Endearment , and Shadowlands , each of which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Winger won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress for Terms of Endearment, and the Tokyo International Film Festival Award for Best Actress for A Dangerous Woman .
Go to Profile#36629
Hiroyuki Suzuki
#36641
Overall Influence
1945 - 2014 (69 years)
was a prominent Japanese architectural historian who also established a reputation abroad. For most of his career Suzuki was Professor of the History of Architecture at the University of Tokyo , and for a period was also Chairman of Tokyo University's Graduate School of Architecture. Later in life he joined the faculty of the School of Cultural and Creative Studies at Aoyama University. He was the author of over a dozen books and countless articles in Japanese, but was best known to English readers as the co-author of Contemporary Architecture of Japan, 1958-1984 and Shuhei Endo: Paramoder...
Go to Profile#36630
Shanhui Fan
#36642
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Shanhui Fan is a Chinese-born American electrical engineer and physicist, with a focus on theoretical, computational and numerical aspects of photonics and electromagnetism. He is a professor of electrical engineering, and a professor of applied physics at Stanford University. He is the director of the Edward L. Ginzton Lab and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy.
Go to Profile#36631
Michael Overton
#36643
Overall Influence
Michael L. Overton is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is the Silver Professor of Computer Science and former Chair of the Computer Science department at Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University. His research interests are in Numerical Analysis, Optimization, and Scientific Computing.
Go to Profile#36632
Paul Zindel
#36644
Overall Influence
1936 - 2003 (67 years)
Paul Zindel Jr. was an American playwright, young adult novelist, and educator. Early life Zindel was born in Tottenville, Staten Island, New York, to Paul Zindel Sr., a policeman, and Betty Zindel, a nurse; his sister, Betty Hagen, was a year and a half older than him. Paul Zindel Sr. ran away with his mistress when Zindel was two, leaving the trio to move around Staten Island, living in various houses and apartments.
Go to Profile#36633
Janet Fish
#36645
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Janet Fish is a contemporary American realist artist. Through oil painting, lithography, and screenprinting, she explores the interaction of light with everyday objects in the still life genre. Many of her paintings include elements of transparency , reflected light, and multiple overlapping patterns depicted in bold, high color values. She has been credited with revitalizing the still life genre.
Go to Profile#36634
Sharon Grace
#36646
Overall Influence
Sharon Grace is an American artist, currently a Professor Emeritus at the San Francisco Art Institute, who is known for initiating the use of many forms of electronic media based in audiovisual technology. Since 1970, Grace has worked with telecommunications as art, embedding interactive video and speech recognition in her work including video installation, electronic synthesis, interactive digital systems, and sculpture in stone and steel.
Go to Profile#36635
Mira Mezini
#36647
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Mira Mezini is a German computer scientist and Professor of Computer Science at the Department of Computer Science of the Technische Universität Darmstadt. She heads the software engineering group.
Go to Profile#36636
Johannes Masing
#36648
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Johannes Masing is a German jurisprudent, public law and former judge of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. Career Between 1979 and 1986, Masing studied law and philosophy at the University of Freiburg as well as Piano at the Freiburg Conservatory of Music and the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart .
Go to Profile#36637
Christian Gross
#36649
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Christian Jürgen Gross is a Swiss football manager and former player who most recently coached Schalke 04. He played as a sweeper and central midfielder. Gross was manager of Basel from 1999 to 2009, winning four Swiss Super Leagues and four Swiss Cups.
Go to Profile#36638
Takao Kondo
#36650
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
was a Japanese biologist and professor of biological science at Nagoya University in Nagoya, Japan. He is best known for reconstituting the circadian clock in vitro. Biography Kondo was born in 1948 in Kariya, Aichi, Japan, and received his B.S. in 1970 and his Ph.D. in Biology in 1977 from Nagoya University. He was appointed an assistant professor at the National Institute for Basic Biology in Okazaki, Aichi, Japan in 1978. Kondo began work as a visiting scholar at Harvard University in 1985, then continued his work abroad at Vanderbilt University between 1990 and 1991. It was at Vanderbilt University that Kondo began his research on the circadian clock of cyanobacteria.
Go to Profile#36639
Lech Gardocki
#36651
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Lech Gardocki is a Polish lawyer, judge and former First President of the Supreme Court of Poland, a position he held from 1998 to 2010. Career He graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Warsaw in 1966. In 1969 he passed the judicial exam. In 1971 he obtained a doctoral degree in legal sciences, he defended a thesis entitled Service crimes in the legislation of socialist countries. In 1979 he became a habilitated doctor in the field of criminal law based on the work entitled Issues of internationalization of criminal liability for offenses committed abroad.
Go to Profile#36640
Walter Sisulu
#36652
Overall Influence
1912 - 2003 (91 years)
Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu was a South African anti-apartheid activist and member of the African National Congress . Between terms as ANC Secretary-General and ANC Deputy President , he was Accused No.2 in the Rivonia Trial and was incarcerated on Robben Island where he served more than 25 years' imprisonment for his anti-Apartheid revolutionary activism. He had a close partnership with Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela, with whom he played a key role in organising the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the establishment of the ANC Youth League and Umkhonto we Sizwe. He was also on the Central Committee...
Go to Profile#36641
Ruth Baker
#36653
Overall Influence
Ruth Elizabeth Baker is a British applied mathematician and mathematical biologist at the University of Oxford whose research interests include pattern formation, morphogenesis, and the mathematical modeling of cell biology and developmental biology.
Go to Profile#36642
Lee Bowyer
#36654
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Lee David Bowyer is an English football manager and former professional player. He is currently the head coach of Montserrat. As a player, he was a midfielder who featured for Charlton Athletic, Leeds United, West Ham United , Newcastle United, Birmingham City and Ipswich Town in over 18 years as a professional. He made 397 appearances in the Premier League, took part in semi-finals of the UEFA Cup and UEFA Champions League with Leeds and won the Football League Cup with Birmingham in 2011. Bowyer was capped once by the England national team. His career was punctuated by various incidents bot...
Go to Profile#36643
John Irving
#36655
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
John Winslow Irving is an American-Canadian novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978. Many of Irving's novels, including The Hotel New Hampshire , The Cider House Rules , A Prayer for Owen Meany , and A Widow for One Year , have been bestsellers. He won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in the 72nd Academy Awards for his script of The Cider House Rules.
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Hiroaki Suga
#36656
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Hiroaki Suga is a Japanese biochemist and businessman. He is best known for his work on artificial ribozymes and their application in mRNA display . Suga was awarded the 2023 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, jointly with Chuan He and Jeffery W. Kelly, "for pioneering discoveries that illuminate the functions and pathological dysfunctions of RNA and proteins and for creating strategies to harness the capabilities of these biopolymers in new ways to ameliorate human diseases."
Go to Profile#36645
Nathan Fillion
#36657
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Nathan Fillion is a Canadian-American actor. He played the leading roles of Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds on Firefly and its film continuation Serenity, and Richard Castle on Castle. , he stars as John Nolan on The Rookie and is an executive producer on the show as well as its spin-off series, The Rookie: Feds.
Go to Profile#36646
Neil Chalmers
#36658
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Sir Neil Robert Chalmers is a British zoologist and academic. He is a former Director of the Natural History Museum in London, and former warden of Wadham College, Oxford. Early life Chalmers was educated at King's College School, Magdalen College, Oxford , and St John's College, Cambridge .
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Mir Masoom Ali
#36659
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Mir Masoom Ali is a Bangladeshi American statistician, Distinguished Professor, educator, researcher and author. He migrated to the United States in 1969 and became a naturalized citizen in 1981. Ali founded the graduate and undergraduate programs in statistics at Ball State University. He co-founded the Midwest Biopharmaceutical Statistics Workshop , held at Ball State University annually since 1978, and co-sponsored by the American Statistical Association. He served as editor and associate editor of several international statistical journals. He is the founding president of the North Am...
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Sanford Meisner
#36660
Overall Influence
1905 - 1997 (92 years)
Sanford Meisner was an American actor and acting teacher who developed an approach to acting instruction that is now known as the Meisner technique. While Meisner was exposed to method acting at the Group Theatre, his approach differed markedly in that he completely abandoned the use of affective memory, a distinct characteristic of method acting. Meisner maintained an emphasis on "the reality of doing", which was the foundation of his approach.
Go to Profile#36649
Hege Skjeie
#36661
Overall Influence
1955 - 2018 (63 years)
Hege Skjeie was a Norwegian political scientist and feminist. Biography She became a Dr. Polit. in political science in 1992 and was hired as associate professor of political science at the University of Oslo in 1997. She was promoted to professor in 2000, and thus became Norway's first female Professor of Political Science. In 2010, she was appointed chairperson of the Equality Commission by the Government of Norway, established by a royal decree of 12 February 2010 in order to report on Norway’s equality policies.
Go to Profile#36650
Nils Brunsson
#36662
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Nils Gustav Magnus Brunsson is a Swedish organizational theorist and Professor in Management at Uppsala University. He is most known for his works in the field of new institutionalism, such as "The organization of hypocrisy" , "The reforming organization" , and "A world of standards" .
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