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
#36701
Jeremy Sanders
#36713
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Jeremy Keith Morris Sanders is a British chemist and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Royal Society Open Science. He is known for his contributions to many fields including NMR spectroscopy and supramolecular chemistry. He served as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Institutional Affairs at the University of Cambridge, 2011–2015.
Go to Profile#36702
David Evans
#36714
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
David V. Evans is a British applied mathematician noted for his contributions to water waves and acoustics. He is the father of British actress Alice Evans. Together with John Nicholas Newman, he initiated the International Workshop on Water Waves and Floating Bodies. He is also known for the Bristol cylinder, a wave energy converter. He is currently an emeritus professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Bristol.
Go to Profile#36703
Ghassan Hage
#36715
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Ghassan J. Hage is a Lebanese-Australian academic serving as Future Generation Professor of Anthropology at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He has held a number of visiting professorships including at the American University of Beirut, University of Nanterre – Paris X, the University of Copenhagen and Harvard. He is currently a visiting professor at the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology in Halle .
Go to Profile#36704
Elaine Sisman
#36716
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Elaine Rochelle Sisman is an American musicologist. The Anne Parsons Bender Professor of Music at Columbia University, Sisman specializes in music, rhetoric, and aesthetics of the 18th and 19th centuries, and has written on such topics as memory and invention in late Beethoven, ideas of pathétique and fantasia around 1800, Haydn's theater symphonies, the sublime in Mozart's music, and Brahms's slow movements. She is the author of Haydn and the Classical Variation and Mozart: The 'Jupiter' Symphony and editor of Haydn and His World. Her monograph-length article on "variations" appears in the r...
Go to Profile#36705
Charles A. Jr Janeway
#36717
Overall Influence
#36706
Louis Black
#36718
Overall Influence
Louis Black is an American journalist and businessman who is the co-founder of The Austin Chronicle, an alternative weekly newspaper published in Austin, Texas, and was the newspaper's editor from its inception until his retirement on August 8, 2017. He has written over 600 articles in his column in that newspaper. Black is also the co-founder of the South by Southwest Festival, also located in Austin, although the festival operates separately from the Chronicle. He also is a founding partner in Toronto's North by Northeast music and film festival.
Go to Profile#36707
Stephen G. Davies
#36719
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Stephen Graham Davies is a British chemist and was, until his retirement, the Waynflete Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford. Education Davies obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1973 from New College, Oxford, and his Doctor of Philosophy in 1975 under the supervision of Gordon H. Whitham.
Go to Profile#36708
Robert L. Belknap
#36720
Overall Influence
1929 - 2014 (85 years)
Robert Lamont Belknap was an American scholar of Russian literature. He was a professor at Columbia University, where he served as interim dean of Columbia College, and director of the Harriman Institute. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994.
Go to Profile#36709
J. Lee Thompson
#36721
Overall Influence
1914 - 2002 (88 years)
John Lee Thompson was a British film director, active in London and Hollywood, best known for award-winning films such as Woman in a Dressing Gown, Ice Cold in Alex and The Guns of Navarone along with cult classics like Cape Fear, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Battle for the Planet of the Apes and The White Buffalo.
Go to Profile#36710
Tom Switzer
#36722
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Tom Switzer is the executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies, a Sydney-based libertarian public-policy research think tank that focuses on classical liberal issues. He is also the host of Between the Lines on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National and a columnist at the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review.
Go to Profile#36711
Robert Nason Beck
#36723
Overall Influence
1928 - 2008 (80 years)
Robert Nason Beck was an American scientist and a pioneer in the field of nuclear medicine. Part of a University of Chicago team, he was the first to propose, in 1961, the use of the radioisotope technetium-99m to detect disease using Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography, a technique that is used an estimated 20 million times a year throughout the world. Beck also helped develop collimators for sharpening the images produced by gamma-ray scanners, and was referred to as 'Mr. Collimator' by colleagues.
Go to Profile#36712
Daniel Allcock
#36724
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Daniel Allcock is a mathematician specializing in group theory, Lie theory and algebraic geometry. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin. Career Allcock graduated from the University of Texas in 1991 with a double major in mathematics and physics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996 under the supervision of Richard Borcherds and Andrew Casson. After temporary positions at the University of Utah and Harvard University, he returned to the University of Texas as a faculty member in 2002.
Go to Profile#36713
Rolf Zetterström
#36725
Overall Influence
1920 - 2011 (91 years)
Rolf Zetterström was a Swedish pediatrician. He was Professor of Pediatrics at the Karolinska Institute fra 1962 until his retirement in 1986. Zetterström also had a central role in the institutions awarding the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Go to Profile#36714
Dan Abramovich
#36726
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Dan Abramovich is an Israeli-American mathematician working in the fields of algebraic geometry and arithmetic geometry. As of 2019, he holds the title of L. Herbert Ballou University Professor at Brown University, and he is an Elected Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#36715
Spiros Simitis
#36727
Overall Influence
1934 - 2023 (89 years)
Spiros Simitis was a Greek-German jurist and a pioneer in the field of data protection. In recognition of his role, admirers sometimes describe him as "the man who invented data protection". He was appointed Chief Data Protection Commissioner for the state of Hessen in 1975, and remained in post till 1991. When the West German government prepared for the 1978 launch of a national equivalent, he was seen by commentators as the obvious choice for the post of Federal Commissioner for Data Protection. He was indeed offered the job, but he rejected it in protest against the government decision, taken shortly before launch, to cut the resources allocated to the new department.
Go to Profile#36716
H. Keith H. Brodie
#36728
Overall Influence
1939 - 2016 (77 years)
Harlow Keith Hammond Brodie was an American psychiatrist, educator, and former president of Duke University. Life and education Born in New Canaan, Connecticut, Brodie attended the New Canaan Country School before studying chemistry at Princeton University and medicine at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He and classmate Davida Coady tutored nurses in pharmacology and other subjects and assisted with basic medical care at the Firestone Hospital in Harbel, Liberia.
Go to Profile#36717
Lee Jussim
#36729
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Lee J. Jussim is an American social psychologist. He leads the Social Perception Laboratory at Rutgers University. Early life and education When Jussim was 5 years old, his family moved into a Brooklyn-area public housing where they lived until he was 12. When he was 13, his family moved to Levittown, Long Island, and his mother died of cancer shortly after.
Go to Profile#36718
Judee K. Burgoon
#36730
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Judee K. Burgoon is a professor of communication, family studies and human development at the University of Arizona, where she serves as director of research for the Center for the Management of Information and site director for the NSF-sponsored Center for Identification Technology Research. She is also involved with different aspects of interpersonal and nonverbal communication, deception, and new communication technologies. She is also director of human communication research for the Center for the Management of Information and site director for Center for Identification Technology Research...
Go to Profile#36719
Zainab Bahrani
#36731
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Zainab Bahrani is an Iraqi Assyriologist and professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology at Columbia University. Career A native of Baghdad, Iraq, she was educated in Europe and the United States. She received her Master of Arts and doctoral degrees in art history and archeology from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts.
Go to Profile#36720
Dennis A. Ahlburg
#36732
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Dennis Allan Ahlburg is an Australian American economist who is Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritis at Trinity University where he served as the university's 18th president. Career Before his role with Trinity, he was the Dean of the Leeds Business Faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder, with a previous professorship at the University of Minnesota. On May 15, 2014, Ahlburg announced that he would step down as Trinity University president effective January 1, 2015. He is a Distinguished Professor of Economics at Trinity.
Go to Profile#36721
Jo Ann M. Gora
#36733
Overall Influence
Jo Ann M. Gora is an American academic and college administrator. She was the 14th President of Ball State University. Before coming to Ball State she was a chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Boston, and, prior to that, the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Old Dominion University in Virginia.
Go to Profile#36722
Mikhail Meltyukhov
#36734
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Mikhail Ivanovich Meltyukhov is a Russian military historian. Works Meltyukhov was born in Moscow. In 1995, he defended the dissertation “Contemporary Historiography on Pre-history of the German-Soviet War” on historiography concerning the beginning of World War II. Since then, he has published several studies, many of which are notable for the critical review of the official Soviet conceptions of World War II. Some important works in this direction are On the Verge of the Great Patriotic War: the Debate Goes on and Stalin's Missed Chance and "Soviet-Polish Wars: Military and Political Stand...
Go to Profile#36723
Guy Alitto
#36735
Overall Influence
Guy Salvatore Alitto is an American academic in the History and East Asian Languages and Civilization Departments at the University of Chicago. He is known in China for revitalizing the scholarship on Chinese Confucian scholar Liang Shuming. He is also often quoted in popular Chinese media sources. He is best known in America for his scholarship and for his role as translator for the first official Chinese delegations to the United States after Richard Nixon's first visits to China.
Go to Profile#36724
David E. Keyes
#36736
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
David E. Keyes is a Senior Associate to the President of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and the Director of the Extreme Computing Center at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology . He was the inaugural Dean of the Division of Computer, Electrical, and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering at KAUST and remains an adjunct professor in Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia University and an affiliate of several laboratories of the U.S. Department of Energy. With backgrounds in engineering, applied mathematics, and computer science, he works at the ...
Go to Profile#36725
Sergi Jordà
#36737
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Sergi Jordà is a Catalan innovator, installation artist, digital musician and Associate Professor at the Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. He is best known for directing the team that invented the Reactable. He is also a trained Physicist.
Go to Profile#36726
Eva Nogales
#36738
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Eva Nogales is a Spanish-American biophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as head of the Division of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology of the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology . She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
Go to Profile#36727
Alex Comfort
#36739
Overall Influence
1920 - 2000 (80 years)
Alexander Comfort was a British scientist and physician known best for his nonfiction sex manual, The Joy of Sex . He was an author of both fiction and nonfiction, as well as a gerontologist, anarchist, pacifist, and conscientious objector.
Go to Profile#36728
Thamarai
#36740
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Thamarai is a Tamil poet and lyricist. She is a prominent figure in the Tamil literary world. She made her debut in the Tamil film industry through the 1998 film Iniyavale, which was directed by Seeman and music composed by Deva.
Go to Profile#36729
Christophe Neff
#36741
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Christophe Neff is a Franco-German geographer, working on Mediterranean ecosystemss, the geography of the Mediterranean Basin and fire ecology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He is considered as one of the rare German experts on the Mediterranean ecosystem and fire ecology. Furthermore, he is an expert on the geography of Francophone Africa and Lusophone Africa and the Azores. Since 2009, Neff regularly contributes to a blog called 'Paysages' at le Monde.fr, which is mostly written in French, sometimes in German, and very occasionally in English. On the 23 of April 2019 Neff ann...
Go to Profile#36730
Alan H. Goodman
#36742
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Alan H. Goodman is a biological anthropologist and author. He served as president of the American Anthropological Association from 2005 to 2007. With Yolanda Moses, he co-directs the American Anthropological Association's Public Education Project on Race. His teaching, research and writing focuses on understanding how poverty, inequality and racism “get under the skin.” He received his PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Goodman was a pre-doctoral research fellow in stress physiology at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm and a postdoctoral fellow in international nutrition at th...
Go to Profile#36731
Wayne Fontes
#36743
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Wayne Fontes is a former American football coach and college and professional football player who was the head coach of the National Football League 's Detroit Lions from 1988 to 1996. His 67 wins and 71 losses are each the most for a head coach in team history.
Go to Profile#36732
Gore Verbinski
#36744
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Gregor Justin "Gore" Verbinski is an American filmmaker and musician. He is best known for directing Mouse Hunt , The Ring , the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films , and the animated film Rango . For his work on Rango, Verbinski won the Academy Award for Best Animated Film, the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film, and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film.
Go to Profile#36733
Joseph H. Sampson
#36745
Overall Influence
1926 - 2003 (77 years)
Joseph Harold Sampson Jr. was an American mathematician known for his work in mathematical analysis, geometry and topology, especially his work about harmonic maps in collaboration with James Eells. He obtained his Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1951 under the supervision of Salomon Bochner.
Go to Profile#36734
Ken Coates
#36746
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Ken Coates is a Canadian historian focused on the history of the Canadian North and Aboriginal rights and indigenous claims. His other areas of specialization include Arctic sovereignty; science, technology and society, with an emphasis on Japan; world and comparative history; and post-secondary education. Coates is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Regional Innovation, Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, and Director, International Centre for Northern Governance and Development at the University of Saskatchewan. In 2015, Coates was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Societ...
Go to Profile#36735
Héctor Croxatto
#36747
Overall Influence
1908 - 2010 (102 years)
Héctor Croxatto Rezzio was a Chilean physiologist. He won the Chilean National Prize for Sciences in 1979. He was a Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Raised in Temuco, he studied medicine at the University of Chile in Santiago, where he received his medical degree in 1930. Physiology, biology and biochemistry were the bulk of his research interests. For two decades he taught physiology at the Instituto de Educación Física y Técnica of Casa de Bello. Later, he was dean of the medical faculty of the University of Chile. In 1969 he joined the Academy of Science of Chile. Seven years later he became a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican.
Go to Profile#36736
Eliana La Ferrara
#36748
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Eliana La Ferrara is an Italian economist and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Before receiving tenure at Harvard in 2022, she held the Fondazione Romeo ed Enrica Invernizzi Chair in Development Economics at Bocconi University, where she also acted as Scientific Director of the Laboratory for Effective Anti-poverty Programs . Previously, she was also the president of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development as well as the president of the European Economic Association. In terms of research, her fields of interest include deve...
Go to Profile#36737
Zinka Zorko
#36749
Overall Influence
1936 - 2019 (83 years)
Zinka Zorko was a Slovenian linguist and academic. Her research focused on phonetic, theological, syntactic, and vocabulary phenomena of Carinthian, Styrian, and Pannonian dialect groups. In 2003, she was elected a full member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and a decade later, she received the Zois Lifetime Achievement Award.
Go to Profile#36738
Davut Kavranoğlu
#36750
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Davut Kavranoğlu is a Turkish scientific adviser to the President of Turkey, academic, scientist, politician, and the first deputy minister of Turkey. Kavranoğlu served as the Deputy Minister of Industry, Science and Technology of Turkey from 2011 to 2015.
Go to Profile#36739
Harry Harootunian
#36751
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Harry D. Harootunian is an Armenian-American historian of early modern and modern Japan with an interest in historical theory. He is Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, New York University, and Max Palevsky Professor of History and Civilizations, Emeritus, University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#36740
John S. Mayo
#36752
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
John Sullivan Mayo is an American engineer, AT&T executive and seventh president of Bell Labs, known for contributions to the computer and telecommunications industry. In 1979, Mayo was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions and leadership in the realization of digital facilities for the telecommunications network.
Go to Profile#36741
Richard M. Linnehan
#36753
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Richard Michael Linnehan is a United States Army veterinarian and a NASA astronaut. Personal Linnehan was born September 19, 1957, in Lowell, Massachusetts, and was raised by his paternal grandparents, Henry and Mae Linnehan. He grew up in the state of New Hampshire. He is single and enjoys various sports, outdoor activities and natural history.
Go to Profile#36742
Brock Osweiler
#36754
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (36 years)
Brock Alan Osweiler is an American former professional football player who was a quarterback for seven seasons in the National Football League . He played college football for the Arizona State Sun Devils and was selected by the Denver Broncos in the second round of the 2012 NFL Draft. Osweiler first served as the Broncos' starter during their Super Bowl-winning season in 2015 when he relieved an injured Peyton Manning, although Manning resumed his starting duties for the playoffs and eventual Super Bowl 50 victory. After the Super Bowl, Osweiler became the starting quarterback for the Houston Texans, but an unsuccessful 2016 campaign resulted in his tenure lasting only one season.
Go to Profile#36743
Thomas Anton Kochan
#36755
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Thomas A. Kochan is a professor of industrial relations, work and employment. He is the George Maverick Bunker Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he has been a faculty member since 1980.
Go to Profile#36744
Robert Edmund O'Malley
#36756
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Robert Edmund O'Malley Jr. is an American mathematician. O'Malley studied electrical engineering and mathematics at the University of New Hampshire, where he received his baccalaureate degree in 1960 and his master's in 1961. He then studied differential equations and singular perturbations at Stanford University, where he received his doctorate in mathematics in 1966. After brief appointments at the University of North Carolina , Bell Telephone Laboratories, the Courant Institute , and the Mathematics Research Center , O'Malley returned to New York University in 1968. He remained there, do...
Go to Profile#36745
Gabriel Epstein
#36757
Overall Influence
1918 - 2017 (99 years)
Gabriel Epstein , often known as Gabi Epstein, was a British architect and urban planner, particularly noted for his master plan of the University of Lancaster, as well as several other major development plans and social housing plans.
Go to Profile#36746
Paco Vidarte
#36758
Overall Influence
1970 - 2008 (38 years)
Francisco "Paco" Javier Vidarte Fernández was a Spanish philosopher, writer and LGBT activist. Biography After studying philosophy at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid/Spain, as well as psychoanalysis at the Universidad Complutense MadridUNED
Go to Profile#36747
Dennis Conner
#36759
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Dennis Walter Conner is an American yachtsman. He is noted for winning a bronze medal at the 1976 Olympics, two Star World Championships, and three wins in the America's Cup. Sailing career Conner was born September 16, 1942, in San Diego. He competed in the 1976 Olympics together with Conn Findlay and took the bronze medal in the Tempest class. Conner also took part in the 1979 Admiral's Cup, as helmsman on the Peterson 45 named Williwaw.
Go to Profile#36748
Jakaya Kikwete
#36760
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete is a Tanzanian politician who was the fourth president of Tanzania, in office from 2005 to 2015. Prior to his election as president, he was the Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1995 to 2005 under his predecessor, Benjamin Mkapa. He also served as the chairperson of the African Union in 2008–2009 and the chairman of the Southern African Development Community Troika on Peace, Defence and Security in 2012–2013.
Go to Profile#36749
Bennett Foddy
#36761
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Bennett Foddy is an Australian video game designer based in New York. Raised in Australia and trained as a moral philosopher on topics of drug addiction, Foddy was a bassist in the electronic music group Cut Copy and a hobbyist game designer while he finished his dissertation. During his postdoctoral research at Princeton University and time on staff at Oxford University, Foddy developed games of very high difficulty, including QWOP , which became an Internet sensation at the end of 2010 with the rise of new online social sharing tools. He later became an instructor at the NYU Game Center. His...
Go to Profile#36750
Christina Kramer
#36762
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Christina Elizabeth Kramer is Professor of Slavic and Balkan languages and linguistics at the University of Toronto and Chair of the university's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures which is part of the Faculty of Arts and Science.
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