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
#37501
James Mace
#37513
Overall Influence
1952 - 2004 (52 years)
James E. Mace was an American historian, professor, and researcher of the Holodomor. Biography Born in Muscogee, Oklahoma, Mace did his undergraduate studies at the Oklahoma State University, graduating with a B.A. in history in 1973. He pursued his graduate studies at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Roman Szporluk, receiving a Ph.D degree in 1981, with a thesis on national communism in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s.
Go to Profile#37502
Sarah Paulson
#37514
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Sarah Catharine Paulson is an American actress. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. In 2017, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Go to Profile#37503
Matt Bellamy
#37515
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Matthew James Bellamy is an English singer, songwriter and producer. He is the lead vocalist, guitarist, pianist, and songwriter for the English rock band Muse. He is recognised for his eccentric stage persona, wide tenor vocal range and musicianship.
Go to Profile#37504
Peter
#37516
Overall Influence
Peter was a Bulgarian nobleman who held the high title of sevastokrator around 1253. He married a daughter of Ivan Asen II of Bulgaria. He ruled significant territories in Bulgaria during the reign of his brother-in-law, Michael II Asen.
Go to Profile#37505
Mihai Drăgănescu
#37517
Overall Influence
1929 - 2010 (81 years)
Mihai Corneliu Drăgănescu was a Romanian engineer who served as President of the Romanian Academy from 1990 to 1994. Born in Făget, Prahova County, he received a B.Sc. in 1952 and a Ph.D. in 1957 from Politehnica University of Bucharest. He married in 1957. He joined the faculty of Politehnica University in 1951, becoming a professor in 1965. In 1974, he became a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy, rising to titular member in January 1990, following the Romanian Revolution. Later that year, he became the academy's president, serving until 1994 and initiating its transition into the post-communist environment.
Go to Profile#37506
Gina Gaston
#37518
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Gina Gaston is a television journalist and currently the lead anchor for KTRK-TV in Houston, Texas. Career She joined channel 13 in 1992 to anchor the morning newscast with Tom Koch. She then left in 1999 to co-anchor HomePage, an afternoon show on MSNBC, with Ashleigh Banfield and Mika Brzezinski. Entertainment Weekly described the trio as "the Powerpuff Girls of journalism". Gaston left MSNBC in 2000. In 2001, she returned to channel 13 to anchor and report the 6 and 10pm newscast, replacing long-time anchor Shara Fryer. Prior to joining KTRK-TV, she worked at WTSP in Tampa, Florida, WHTM-T...
Go to Profile#37507
Jason Belmonte
#37519
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Jason Belmonte is an Australian professional ten-pin bowler. He plays on the PBA Tour in the United States and in world events. He is known for being one of the first bowlers to gain media attention for using the two-handed approach style to deliver his shot. He has won 31 PBA titles , including a record 15 major championships; he is only one of eight bowlers in PBA tour history to achieve 30 wins, making him the only 30-time winner in PBA Tour history who is not currently a member of the PBA Hall of Fame . He is one of two bowlers in PBA history to have won the Super Slam, winning all five PBA major titles .
Go to Profile#37508
Jill Nelson
#37520
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jill Nelson is a prominent African-American journalist and novelist. She has written several books, including the autobiographical Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience, which won an American Book Award. She was Professor of Journalism at the City College of New York from 1998 to 2003.
Go to Profile#37509
David Wyman
#37521
Overall Influence
1929 - 2018 (89 years)
David Sword Wyman was the Josiah DuBois professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Early life and education Wyman was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, the son of Ruth and Hollis Judson Wyman, a teacher, of American descent. His grandparents were Protestant ministers; Wyman was a protestant himself. He earned an A.B. in history from Boston University and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University.
Go to Profile#37510
Deepak Pental
#37522
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Deepak Pental is a Professor of Genetics and the Ex Vice Chancellor at the University of Delhi. He is a noted researcher whose current research interests lie in development of transgenics and marker-assisted breeding of crops. He took charge of the post of Vice-chancellor of the University succeeding Professor Deepak Nayyar on 1 September 2005. As the VC, Pental has outlined his agenda to update the library system, work on teachers’ recruitment, increase student accommodation facilities and bring researchers working abroad to India. A new frog species, Minervarya Pentali, discovered in Wester...
Go to Profile#37511
Kit Bond
#37523
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Christopher Samuel Bond is an American attorney, politician and former United States Senator from Missouri and a member of the Republican Party. First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, he defeated Democrat Harriett Woods by a margin of 53–47%. He was re-elected in 1992, 1998, and 2004. On January 8, 2009, he announced that he would not seek re-election to a fifth term in 2010, and was succeeded by fellow Republican Roy Blunt on January 3, 2011. Following his retirement from the Senate, Bond became a partner at Thompson Coburn.
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Kim Cattrall
#37524
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Kim Victoria Cattrall is a British and Canadian actress. She is known for her portrayal of Samantha Jones on HBO's Sex and the City , for which she received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning the 2002 Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. She reprised the role in the feature films Sex and the City and Sex and the City 2 , as well as in a cameo on the spin-off series And Just Like That... .
Go to Profile#37513
Ralph Henstock
#37525
Overall Influence
1923 - 2007 (84 years)
Ralph Henstock was an English mathematician and author. As an Integration theorist, he is notable for Henstock–Kurzweil integral. Henstock brought the theory to a highly developed stage without ever having encountered Jaroslav Kurzweil's 1957 paper on the subject.
Go to Profile#37514
Winfield Hill
#37526
Overall Influence
Winfield Hill is the Director of the Electronics Engineering Laboratory at the Rowland Institute at Harvard University. A self-proclaimed "electronics circuit-design guru" and trained physicist and electronic engineer, he co-authored the popular text The Art of Electronics with Harvard Physicist Paul Horowitz.
Go to Profile#37515
Andrew Brimmer
#37527
Overall Influence
1926 - 2012 (86 years)
Andrew Felton Brimmer was an American economist and business leader who served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 1966 to 1974. A member of the Democratic Party, Brimmer was the first African American to sit on the Board.
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Raymond S. Bradley
#37528
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Raymond S. Bradley is a climatologist and University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is also research director of the Climate System Research Center. Bradley's work indicates that the warming of Earth's climate system in the twentieth century is inexplicable via natural mechanisms.
Go to Profile#37517
Ralph S. Greco
#37529
Overall Influence
1942 - 2019 (77 years)
Ralph Steven Greco was the Johnson and Johnson Distinguished Professor, Emeritus of Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine. He was a leader of the resident Well Being in surgery movement and surgical training program leader.
Go to Profile#37518
Phoebe C. Ellsworth
#37530
Overall Influence
Phoebe C. Ellsworth is an American social psychologist and professor at the University of Michigan, holding dual appointments at the Psychology Department and in the Law School. Biography Ellsworth received her B.A. from Radcliffe College in 1966 and her Ph.D. in social psychology from Stanford University in 1970.
Go to Profile#37519
Guy Quaden
#37531
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Guy, Baron Quaden is a Belgian economist. He was Governor of the National Bank of Belgium 2003–11, and as such a member of the Governing and General Councils of the European Central Bank. Since 2003 he has been the President of the King Baudouin Foundation.
Go to Profile#37520
Raymond Reiter
#37532
Overall Influence
1939 - 2002 (63 years)
Raymond Reiter was a Canadian computer scientist and logician. He was one of the founders of the field of non-monotonic reasoning with his work on default logic, model-based diagnosis, closed-world reasoning, and truth maintenance systems. He also contributed to the situation calculus.
Go to Profile#37521
Kirk Franklin
#37533
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Kirk Dewayne Franklin is an American songwriter, choir director, gospel singer, and rapper. He is best known for leading urban contemporary gospel and Christian R&B ensembles such as The Family, God's Property, and One Nation Crew among many others. He has won numerous awards, including 19 Grammy Awards. Variety dubbed Franklin as a "Reigning King of Urban Gospel", and is one of the inaugural inductees into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame.
Go to Profile#37522
Stormzy
#37534
Overall Influence
1993 - Present (33 years)
Michael Ebenezer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr. , known professionally as Stormzy, is a British rapper, singer and songwriter. In 2014, he gained attention on the UK underground music scene through his Wicked Skengman series of freestyles over classic grime beats. Stormzy's song "Shut Up", which was initially released as a freestyle on YouTube, became popular and peaked at number eight on the UK Singles Chart after he launched a campaign to reach Christmas number one.
Go to Profile#37523
Dirk Willem van Krevelen
#37535
Overall Influence
1914 - 2001 (87 years)
Dirk Willem van Krevelen was a prominent Dutch chemical engineer, coal and polymer scientist. He successfully combined an industrial career, managing a research division at DSM, and an academic career, as a professor of Delft Technical College. His contributions span a wide range of research fields, and his name is linked to the van Krevelen–Hoftyzer diagram for chemical gas absorption, the Mars–van Krevelen mechanism for catalytic oxidation reactions, the van Krevelen–Chermin method to estimate the free energy of organic compounds, the van Krevelen diagram that is used in coal and coal proce...
Go to Profile#37524
Todd Zywicki
#37536
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Todd Joseph Zywicki is an American lawyer, legal scholar and educator. He is a George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, teaching in the areas of bankruptcy and contracts.
Go to Profile#37525
Harvey M. Wagner
#37537
Overall Influence
1931 - 2017 (86 years)
Harvey Maurice Wagner was an American management scientist, consultant, and Professor of Operations Research and Innovation Management at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, known for his books on Operations Research and his seminal work on the dynamic lot-size model with Thomson M. Whitin.
Go to Profile#37526
Bengt Hägglund
#37538
Overall Influence
1920 - 2015 (95 years)
Bengt Vilhelm Hägglund was a Swedish theologian. Hägglund, who is professor emeritus of Christian intellectual history at Lund University, has written several books, of which Teologins historia is his most widely known work. The book, translated, inter alia, to English, German, Portuguese and Russian language, was first published in 1956.
Go to Profile#37527
Norman Levine
#37539
Overall Influence
1923 - 2005 (82 years)
Albert Norman Levine was a Canadian short story writer, novelist and poet. He is perhaps best remembered for his terse prose. Though he was part of the St. Ives artistic community in Cornwall, and friends with painters Patrick Heron and Francis Bacon, his written expression was not abstract, but concrete. "The leaner the language the more suggestive," he wrote in his 1993 essay, Sometimes It Works.
Go to Profile#37528
Villy Christensen
#37540
Overall Influence
Villy Christensen is an ecosystem modeller with a background in fisheries science. He is known for his work as a project leader and core developer of Ecopath, an ecosystem modelling software system widely used in fisheries management. Ecopath was initially an initiative of the NOAA, but since primarily developed at the UBC Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia. In 2007, it was named as one of the ten biggest scientific breakthroughs in NOAA's 200-year history. The citation states that Ecopath "revolutionized scientists' ability worldwide to understand complex marine ecosystems...
Go to Profile#37529
Earl Scruggs
#37541
Overall Influence
1924 - 2012 (88 years)
Earl Eugene Scruggs was an American musician noted for popularizing a three-finger banjo picking style, now called "Scruggs style", which is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. His three-finger style of playing was radically different from the traditional way the five-string banjo had previously been played. This new style of playing became popular and elevated the banjo from its previous role as a background rhythm instrument to featured solo status. He popularized the instrument across several genres of music.
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Frank A. Chervenak
#37542
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Frank A. Chervenak, MD currently serves as Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Lenox Hill Hospital; Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Associate Dean of International Medicine, Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell.
Go to Profile#37531
Moshe Zviran
#37543
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Moshe Zviran is professor at the Coller School of Management at Tel Aviv University. He currently serves as chief entrepreneurship and innovation officer of Tel Aviv university as well as the Head and Academic Director of the Bloomberg-Sagol Center for City Leadership at Tel Aviv University. He is also the founder of “The Zviran Index” for comparative compensation and benefits surveys in Israel.
Go to Profile#37532
Juan C. Parodi
#37544
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Juan Carlos Parodi is an Argentinian vascular surgeon who introduced the minimally invasive endovascular aneurysm repair to the world and performed the first successful endovascular repair of an abdominal aortic aneurysm on 7 September 1990 in Buenos Aires. In 1992 he was the first in the United States to perform minimally invasive aortic aneurysm surgery together with Drs. Frank Veith, Michael L. Marin and Claudio J. Schonholz. He continues to develop new techniques, including seat belt and air bag technique for cerebral protection during carotid stenting. He is recognized as a renowned ...
Go to Profile#37533
Max Müller
#37545
Overall Influence
1906 - 1994 (88 years)
Max Müller was a German philosopher and influential post–World War II Catholic intellectual. Müller was Professor at the University of Freiburg and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Life Max Müller was born as the son of a jurist and completed his Gymnasium-Abitur in Freiburg at the Friedrich-Gymnasium Freiburg. Müller graduated in 1930 along with the philosopher Martin Honecker. He established his academic reputation in 1937 with a work on Tomas Aquinas . At this time he was active in the Catholic Youth Movement who were influenced by their study with Martin Heidegger, generating their own thinking in engagement with his philosophy.
Go to Profile#37534
Del Thiessen
#37546
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Delbert Duane Thiessen is an American psychology professor emeritus whose research focused on evolutionary mechanisms of reproduction and social communication. Education Thiessen studied at University of Denver and San Jose State University, completing his Ph.D. in biopsychology at the University of California, Berkeley. He then did research at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla, California before taking a position at University of Texas at Austin. He is Professor of evolutionary psychology and member of the Institute of Neuroscience. He conducted research on the genetics of alcoholism at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla, California.
Go to Profile#37535
Thomas M. Achenbach
#37547
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Thomas M. Achenbach is Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology and President of the nonprofit Research Center for Children, Youth, and Families at the University of Vermont. His research on syndromes of psychopathology gave rise to the terms “Internalizing” and “Externalizing”. His book in 1974 about developmental psychopathology was important to the foundation of this research area.
Go to Profile#37536
Brian Hoyer
#37548
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Axel Edward Brian Hoyer is an American football quarterback for the Las Vegas Raiders of the National Football League . Since joining the NFL in 2009 as an undrafted free agent, he has started for eight different teams, the second-most in league history. Hoyer's longest stint has been with the New England Patriots for eight non-consecutive seasons, primarily as a backup, and he was a member of the team that won Super Bowl LIII. His most successful season was with the Houston Texans in 2015 when he helped lead them to a division title.
Go to Profile#37537
Wang Canfa
#37549
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Wang Canfa is a Chinese professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, and the founder and director of the Beijing-based Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims . Wang Canfa is an environmental law expert and he has participated in the drafting of many Chinese environmental regulations. Professor Wang has also provided environmental training to hundreds of lawyers and judges and established a network of environmental advocates in China.
Go to Profile#37538
Alex Haley
#37550
Overall Influence
1921 - 1992 (71 years)
Alexander Murray Palmer Haley was an American writer and the author of the 1976 book Roots: The Saga of an American Family. ABC adapted the book as a television miniseries of the same name and aired it in 1977 to a record-breaking audience of 130 million viewers. In the United States, the book and miniseries raised the public awareness of black American history and inspired a broad interest in genealogy and family history.
Go to Profile#37539
Andrew Goudie
#37551
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Andrew Shaw Goudie is a geographer at the University of Oxford specialising in desert geomorphology, dust storms, weathering, and climatic change in the tropics. He is also known for his teaching and best-selling textbooks on human impacts on the environment. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of forty-one books and more than two hundred papers published in learned journals. He combines research and some teaching with administrative roles.
Go to Profile#37540
Robert H. Singer
#37552
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Dr. Robert H. Singer received an undergraduate degree in physical chemistry from Oberlin College, and a PhD in developmental biology from Brandeis University. He did postdoctoral work in molecular biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Oberlin College granted Singer an Honorary Doctor of Science in 2016. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem granted Singer an Honorary Doctorate in 2018.
Go to Profile#37541
Emma Anderson
#37553
Overall Influence
Emma Anderson is a Canadian professor teaching since 2005, in the Faculty of Arts Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa located in Canada's capital Ottawa, Ontario. She is the author of two books. Her area of expertise focuses on relations between Indigenous and Catholic cultures from the early seventeenth century.
Go to Profile#37542
Corinne McLaughlin
#37554
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Corinne McLaughlin was an American author and educator. She was executive director of The Center for Visionary Leadership and a Fellow of The World Business Academy and the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland. McLaughlin and her partner Gordon Davidson founded Sirius, an ecological village in Massachusetts. She coordinated a national task force for President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development and has taught politics at American University. McLaughlin has lectured in the U.S., Europe and South America. She is co-author of The Practical Visionary: A New World Guide to Spiritual Growth and...
Go to Profile#37543
Ethan Kaplan
#37555
Overall Influence
Ethan Kaplan is an associate professor of economics at the University of Maryland. Career Prior to his work at the University of Maryland, he was an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, a visiting assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and an assistant professor of economics at the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University in Sweden.
Go to Profile#37544
Pierre Riché
#37556
Overall Influence
1921 - 2019 (98 years)
Pierre Riché was a French historian specializing in the early Middle Ages and the year 1000 . Biography After studying at the Faculté des lettres de Paris, he passed the aggregation of history in 1948, and taught at the high school of Constantine and at Le Mans. In 1953, he was appointed assistant at the Sorbonne.
Go to Profile#37545
Ivan Oseledets
#37557
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Ivan Oseledets is a Russian computer scientist and mathematician and professor at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology. He is best known for the tensor train decomposition, which is more commonly called a matrix product state in the area of tensor networks.
Go to Profile#37546
Gabriele Kotsis
#37558
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Gabriele Kotsis is an Austrian computer scientist. She is full professor in computer science at Johannes Kepler University , Linz, Austria, while leading the Department of Telecommunication and the division of Cooperative Information Systems. She was vice-rector for Research and the Advancement of Women, and longstanding chairwoman of Universities Austria's Policy Committee on Research. She is a distinguished member and elected president of the Association for Computing Machinery .
Go to Profile#37547
Luke Wilson
#37559
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Luke Cunningham Wilson is an American actor. He is known for his roles in films such as Bottle Rocket , Rushmore , My Dog Skip , Legally Blonde , The Royal Tenenbaums , Idiocracy , You Kill Me , The Skeleton Twins , Meadowland and Brad's Status . On television, he played Casey Kelso on That '70s Show , Levi Callow on Enlightened and Pat Dugan / S.T.R.I.P.E. on Stargirl . He is the younger brother of actors Andrew Wilson and Owen Wilson.
Go to Profile#37548
John Lennard
#37560
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
John Lennard is Professor of British and American Literature at the University of the West Indies , Mona, Jamaica, and a freelance academic writer and film music composer. Since 2009 he has been an independent scholar in Cambridge and a bye-Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#37549
George Cadle Price
#37561
Overall Influence
1919 - 2011 (92 years)
George Cadle Price was a Belizean statesman who served as the head of government of Belize from 1961 to 1984 and 1989 to 1993. He was the first minister and premier under British rule until independence in 1981 and was the nation's first prime minister after independence that year. He is considered one of the principal architects of Belizean independence. Today he is referred to by many as the "Father of the Nation". Price effectively dominated Belizean politics from the early 1960s until his 1996 retirement from party leadership, having been the nation's head of government under various tit...
Go to Profile#37550
Claudia von Werlhof
#37562
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Claudia von Werlhof is a German sociologist and political scientist. She held the first professorship for women's studies in Austria, based at the Institute for Political Science at the University of Innsbruck.
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