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
#37551
Pham Huu Tiep
#37563
Overall Influence
Pham Huu Tiep is a Vietnamese American mathematician specializing in group theory and representation theory. He is currently a Joshua Barlaz Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Rutgers University.
Go to Profile#37552
Nick Broomfield
#37564
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Nicholas Broomfield is an English documentary film director. His self-reflective style has been regarded as influential to many later filmmakers. In the early 21st century, he began to use non-actors in scripted works, which he calls "Direct Cinema". His output ranges from studies of entertainers to political works such as examinations of South Africa before and after the end of apartheid and the rise of the black-majority government of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress party.
Go to Profile#37553
Shahid Kapoor
#37565
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Shahid Kapoor is an Indian actor who appears in Hindi films. Initially recognised for portraying romantic roles, he has since taken on parts in action films and thrillers, and is the recipient of several awards, including three Filmfare Awards.
Go to Profile#37554
Rudolf Mellinghoff
#37566
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Rudolf Mellinghoff is a German judge, jurisprudent and tax law expert who served as President of the Federal Fiscal Court from 2011 to 2020. He was also a justice of the Federal Constitutional Court serving in the court's second senate .
Go to Profile#37555
Billy Steinberg
#37567
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
William Endfield Steinberg is an American songwriter. He achieved his greatest success in the 1980s with songwriting partner Tom Kelly; together they wrote or co-wrote the No. 1 hits "Like a Virgin" by Madonna , "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper , "Eternal Flame" by the Bangles , "So Emotional" by Whitney Houston and "Alone" . They also wrote or co-wrote the hit songs "I Drove All Night" , "I Touch Myself" by Divinyls , and "I'll Stand by You" by The Pretenders .
Go to Profile#37556
Geno Auriemma
#37568
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Luigi "Geno" Auriemma is an Italian-born American college basketball coach and, since 1985, the head coach of the University of Connecticut Huskies women's basketball team. , he has led UConn to 17 undefeated conference seasons , of which six were undefeated overall seasons, with 11 NCAA Division I national championships, the most in women's college basketball history, and has won eight national Naismith College Coach of the Year awards. Auriemma was the head coach of the United States women's national basketball team from 2009 through 2016, during which time his teams won the 2010 and 2014 W...
Go to Profile#37557
Linda Hamilton
#37569
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Linda Carroll Hamilton is an American actress. Known for portraying tough, resilient characters, she made her film debut in 1979 before coming to prominence with her starring role as Sarah Connor in The Terminator and two of its sequels, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator: Dark Fate . Hamilton is the recipient of various accolades, including two Saturn Awards, two MTV Movie Awards, one Satellite Award and one Romy Award, as well as nominations for three Golden Globes and a Primetime Emmy.
Go to Profile#37558
Mary Mackey
#37570
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Mary Lou Mackey is an American novelist, poet, and academic. She is the author of eight collections of poetry and fourteen novels, including the New York Times best-seller A Grand Passion and The Village of Bones, The Year The Horses Came, The Horses At The Gate, and The Fires of Spring, four sweeping historical novels that take as their subject the earth-centered, Goddess-worshiping cultures of Neolithic Europe. In 2012, her sixth collection of poetry, Sugar Zone, won a PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. Another collection, The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams: New and Selected Poems ...
Go to Profile#37559
William Minicozzi
#37571
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
William Philip Minicozzi II is an American mathematician. He was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in 1967. Career Minicozzi graduated from Princeton University in 1990 and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1994 under the direction of Richard Schoen. After graduating he spent a year at the Courant Institute of New York University as a visiting member where he began working with Tobias Colding on harmonic functions on Riemannian manifolds, work he was later invited to present at the Geometry Festival. In 1995, he went to the Johns Hopkins University, with a National Science Foundati...
Go to Profile#37561
Daniel Zwerdling
#37573
Overall Influence
Daniel Zwerdling is an American investigative journalist who has written for major magazines and newspapers. From 1980 to 2018 he served as an investigative reporter for NPR News, with stints as foreign correspondent and host of Weekend All Things Considered from 1993 to 1999. Zwerdling retired from NPR in 2018.
Go to Profile#37562
Kalman J. Cohen
#37574
Overall Influence
1932 - 2010 (78 years)
Kalman J. Cohen was an American economist and among the pioneers of studying market microstructure. Cohen was the Distinguished Bank Research Professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. He served at Duke since 1974. Prior to joining the Duke faculty, he was a tenured professor at Carnegie Mellon University and New York University. He also taught as a visiting professor in Sweden, Denmark, China, and Singapore.
Go to Profile#37563
Ed Helms
#37575
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Edward Parker Helms is an American actor and comedian. From 2002 to 2006, he was a correspondent on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He played paper salesman Andy Bernard in the NBC sitcom The Office , and starred as Stuart Price in The Hangover trilogy. He later starred in the comedy series Rutherford Falls , which he co-wrote.
Go to Profile#37564
Marzyeh Ghassemi
#37576
Overall Influence
Marzyeh Ghassemi is a Canada-based researcher in the field of computational medicine, where her research focuses on developing machine-learning algorithms to inform health-care decisions. She is currently an assistant professor at the University of Toronto's Department of Computer Science and Faculty of Medicine, and is a Canada CIFAR Artificial Intelligence chair and Canada Research Chair in machine learning for health.
Go to Profile#37565
N'Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba
#37577
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
N'Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba is Ivorian researcher who studies the African diaspora and education. She is a Professor of Africana Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University. She also serves as President of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies and Chair of UNESCO's Management of Social Transformations Scientific Advisory Committee.
Go to Profile#37566
Serge Galam
#37578
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Serge Galam is a French physicist and Scientist Emeritus at CNRS. Biography In 1975, Serge Galam obtained a PhD in physics at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris. In 1981, he received a Ph.D. in physics at Tel Aviv University. From 1981 to 1983, he taught at City University of New York and from 1983 to 1985 at New York University.
Go to Profile#37567
Armand Mauss
#37579
Overall Influence
1928 - 2020 (92 years)
Armand Lind Mauss was an American sociologist specializing in the sociology of religion. He was Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Religious Studies at Washington State University and was the most frequently published author of Sociology works on Mormons during his long career. A special conference on his work in Mormon studies was held in 2013 at California's Claremont Graduate University , the papers from which were subsequently published by the University of Utah Press in the format of a Festschrift, where he was honored as "one of the most prominent Mormon intellectuals of the late twent...
Go to Profile#37568
Eberhard Bodenschatz
#37580
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Eberhard Bodenschatz is a German physicist. He was born on April 22, 1959, in Rehau, Bavaria. He received his doctorate in theoretical physics from the University of Bayreuth in 1989. In 1991, during his postdoctoral research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he received a faculty position in experimental physics at Cornell University. From 1992 until 2005, during his tenure at Cornell he was a visiting professor at the University of California, San Diego . In 2003 he became a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and an Adjunct Director / Director at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization.
Go to Profile#37569
Abram de Swaan
#37581
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Abram de Swaan is a Dutch essayist, sociologist and professor emeritus from the University of Amsterdam. In 1996, he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected a member of the Academia Europaea in 2000.
Go to Profile#37570
Steve Simpson
#37582
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Stephen George Simpson is an American mathematician whose research concerns the foundations of mathematics, including work in mathematical logic, recursion theory, and Ramsey theory. He is known for his extensive development of the field of reverse mathematics founded by Harvey Friedman, in which the goal is to determine which axioms are needed to prove certain mathematical theorems. He has also argued for the benefits of finitistic mathematical systems, such as primitive recursive arithmetic, which do not include actual infinity.
Go to Profile#37571
Dalia Grybauskaitė
#37583
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Dalia Grybauskaitė is a Lithuanian politician who served as the eighth president of Lithuania from 2009 to 2019. She is the first woman to hold the position and in 2014 she became the first President of Lithuania to be reelected for a second consecutive term.
Go to Profile#37572
Emmett Chappelle
#37584
Overall Influence
1925 - 2019 (94 years)
Emmett W. Chappelle was an American scientist who made valuable contributions in the fields of medicine, philanthropy, food science, and astrochemistry. His achievements led to his induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his work on bioluminescence, in 2007. Being honored as one of the 100 most distinguished African American scientists of the 20th Century, he was also one of the members of the American Chemical Society, the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the American Society of Photobiology, the American Society of Microbiology, and the American Society...
Go to Profile#37573
Wendy Max
#37585
Overall Influence
Wendy B. Max is a professor of Health Economics and the director of the Institute for Health & Aging in the School of Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco. Her focus is on the cost of illness and she has done important work on the cost of smoking-related illness.
Go to Profile#37574
Ovide F. Pomerleau
#37586
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Ovide F. Pomerleau is an American psychologist who pioneered the development of behavioral medicine. He is best known for his work on self-management problems and addiction, focusing on the behavioral, biological, and genetic bases of tobacco smoking and nicotine dependence.
Go to Profile#37575
Matt Stover
#37587
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
John Matthew Stover is an American former professional football player who was a placekicker for 20 seasons in the National Football League , primarily with the Baltimore Ravens. After five seasons for the Cleveland Browns, he was among the Browns players transferred to the newly-created Ravens franchise in 1996, with whom he played 13 seasons. Additionally, Stover was a member of the New York Giants during his first season and Indianapolis Colts during his last. His most successful season was in 2000 when he earned Pro Bowl and first-team All-Pro honors en route to the Ravens winning their first Super Bowl title in Super Bowl XXXV.
Go to Profile#37576
Ethylin Wang Jabs
#37588
Overall Influence
Ethylin Wang Jabs is an American physician and scientist with expertise in medical genetics, pediatrics, and craniofacial biology. She is currently vice chair of the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center. Jabs is also a professor in the departments of developmental and regenerative biology and pediatrics at Mount Sinai and an adjunct professor in pediatrics, medicine, and surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Her research and clinical practice have focused on development genetics and patients with birth defects.
Go to Profile#37577
Enzo Mari
#37589
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
Enzo Mari was an Italian modernist artist and furniture designer who is known to have influenced many generations of industrial designers. Early life and education Mari was born in Novara, Italy, and he studied at the Brera Academy in Milan, Italy from 1952 to 1956.
Go to Profile#37578
Edward A. Lee
#37590
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Edward Ashford Lee is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer, and author. He is Professor of the Graduate School and Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at UC Berkeley. Lee works in the areas of cyber-physical systems, embedded systems, and the semantics of programming languages. He is particularly known for his advocacy of deterministic models for the engineering of cyber-physical systems.
Go to Profile#37579
Louis-Vincent Thomas
#37591
Overall Influence
1922 - 1994 (72 years)
Louis-Vincent Thomas was a French sociologist, anthropologist, ethnologist, and scholar whose specialty was Africa. He was the founder of thanatology. After having taught at Cheikh Anta Diop University, he became a sociology professor at Paris Descartes University.
Go to Profile#37580
Janet Woodcock
#37592
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Janet Woodcock is an American physician serving as Principal Deputy Commissioner of Food and Drugs, having previously served as Acting Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration . She joined the FDA in 1986, and has held a number of senior leadership positions there, including terms as the Director of Center for Drug Evaluation and Research from 1994 to 2004 and 2007 to 2021.
Go to Profile#37581
Curtis Granderson
#37593
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Curtis Granderson Jr. , nicknamed "the Grandyman", is an American former professional baseball outfielder. He played 16 seasons in Major League Baseball for the Detroit Tigers, New York Yankees, New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers, Toronto Blue Jays, Milwaukee Brewers, and Miami Marlins.
Go to Profile#37582
Joan Bybee
#37594
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Joan Lea Bybee is an American linguist and professor emerita at the University of New Mexico. Much of her work concerns grammaticalization, stochastics, modality, morphology, and phonology. Bybee is best known for proposing the theory of usage-based phonology and for her contributions to cognitive and historical linguistics.
Go to Profile#37583
Rainer Blatt
#37595
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Rainer Blatt is a German-Austrian experimental physicist. His research centres on the areas of quantum optics and quantum information. He and his team performed one of the first experiments to teleport atoms, the other was done at NIST in Boulder Colorado. The reports of both groups appeared back-to-back in Nature.
Go to Profile#37584
Jonathan Schooler
#37596
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Jonathan Schooler, is an American psychologist and Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who researches various topics that intersect aspects of both cognitive psychology and philosophy such as: Belief in free will, Meta-awareness, Mindfulness, Mind-Wandering, Memory, Creativity, and Emotion. Schooler is also known for his sometimes controversial research on topics such as Anomalous Cognition and the decline effect.
Go to Profile#37585
Xavier Becerra
#37597
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Xavier Becerra is an American lawyer and politician serving as the 25th United States Secretary of Health and Human Services since March 2021. Becerra previously served as the Attorney General of California from January 2017 until March 2021. He was a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Downtown Los Angeles in Congress from 1993 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Becerra was Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus from 2013 to 2017.
Go to Profile#37586
Andreas Reuter
#37598
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Andreas Reuter is a German computer science professor and research manager. His research focuses on databases, transaction systems, and parallel and distributed computer systems. Reuter has been scientific and executive director of EML European Media Laboratory GmbH and gGmbH since 1998 and Managing Director of the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies from 2010 until 2016. In October 2015, he was appointed Senior Professor at the University of Heidelberg.
Go to Profile#37587
David A. Wolfe
#37599
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
David Allen Wolfe is an academic, psychologist and author specializing in issues of child abuse, domestic violence, children and youth. His work includes the promotion of healthy relationships through school programs, with a major focus on the prevention of child abuse and neglect, bullying, dating violence, unsafe sex, substance abuse and other consequences of unhealthy relationships.
Go to Profile#37588
Lan Cao
#37600
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Lan Cao is the author of the novels Monkey Bridge and The Lotus and the Storm . She is also a professor of law at the Chapman University School of Law, specializing in international business and trade, international law, and development. She received her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School. She has taught at Brooklyn Law School, Duke Law School, Michigan Law School and William & Mary Law School.
Go to Profile#37589
Dori Laub
#37601
Overall Influence
1937 - 2018 (81 years)
Dori Laub was an Israeli-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, a clinical professor in Yale University’s Department of Psychiatry, an expert in the area of testimony methodology, and a trauma researcher. A Holocaust survivor himself, Laub co-founded the Holocaust Survivorss Film Project with Laurel Vlock.
Go to Profile#37590
Hans L. Trefousse
#37602
Overall Influence
1921 - 2010 (89 years)
Hans Louis Trefousse Early and military life Trefousse was born in Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1935 as his parents fled the increasingly totalitarian Nazi regime. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from New York City College in 1942. He then enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he served as an intelligence officer in World War II, using his fluent German to interrogate German soldiers. He also participated in the Liberation of Paris, and in Leipzig saved hundreds of lives by arguing for 11 hours with a Nazi commander holed with many troops, convincing him to surrender to Allied force...
Go to Profile#37591
Adrian Curaj
#37603
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Adrian Curaj is a Romanian electrical engineer who was named Education Minister in the new government of Dacian Cioloș in November 2015. He was removed during a cabinet reshuffle the following July.
Go to Profile#37592
Krzysztof Kieślowski
#37604
Overall Influence
1941 - 1996 (55 years)
Krzysztof Kieślowski was a Polish film director and screenwriter. He is known internationally for Dekalog , The Double Life of Veronique , and the Three Colours trilogy . Kieślowski received numerous awards during his career, including the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize , FIPRESCI Prize , and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury ; the Venice Film Festival FIPRESCI Prize , Golden Lion , and OCIC Award ; and the Berlin International Film Festival Silver Bear . In 1995, he received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
Go to Profile#37593
Óscar Pastor
#37605
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Óscar Pastor is a Spanish computer scientist, Professor of software production methods at the Department of Information Systems and Computing of Universitat Politècnica de València, and the director of the Research Centre in Software Production Methods .
Go to Profile#37594
Hounkpati B Christophe Capo
#37606
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Hounkpati B Christophe Capo is a Beninese linguist, and professor of linguistics at the Université d'Abomey-Calavi in the Republic of Benin. Biography Hounkpati B Christophe Capo has a humanities degree and a master's degree in linguistics from the National University of Benin , a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Ghana . He taught and collaborated at several universities in West Africa, notably the universities of Benin City and Ilorin in Nigeria in 1978.
Go to Profile#37595
Aron Simis
#37607
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Aron Simis is a mathematician born in Recife, Brazil in 1942. He is a full professor at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil, and Class A research scholarship recipient from the Brazilian Research Council. He earned his PhD from Queen's University, Canada.
Go to Profile#37596
Michael Gelfond
#37608
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Michael Gelfond is a Professor in Computer Sciences at Texas Tech University in the United States. He received a degree in mathematics from the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in Russia in 1974 and emigrated to the United States in 1978. Gelfond's research interests are in the areas of computational logic and knowledge representation. He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and an Area Editor of the journal Theory and Practice of Logic Programming.
Go to Profile#37597
John Morton Blum
#37609
Overall Influence
1921 - 2011 (90 years)
John Morton Blum was an American historian, active from 1948 to 1991. He was a specialist in 20th-century American political history, and was a senior advisor to Yale officials. Life and career Blum was born in New York City, the son of Edna and Morton Gustave Blum, a businessman and inventor. His family was Jewish. He was raised in a household with limited means, and attended Phillips Academy and Harvard University on scholarships and campus jobs. Upon graduation in 1943, he was commissioned as an ensign in the United States Navy, serving in the Caribbean, the South West Pacific theatre of World War II, and Iwo Jima.
Go to Profile#37598
Jens Martin Knudsen
#37610
Overall Influence
1930 - 2005 (75 years)
Jens Martin Knudsen was a Danish astrophysicist. During his scientific career Knudsen authored or co-authored more than 100 scientific articles, and was a longtime advisor to NASA. Early years Knudsen was born in Haurum near Aarhus, Denmark. Knudsen was son of Haurum's grocers and grew up at the grocer's house together with his three brothers of whom Knudsen was the oldest. All of the brothers ended up becoming physicists.
Go to Profile#37599
Sergei Makarov
#37611
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Sergei Mikhailovich Makarov is a Russian former ice hockey right wing. Makarov played on the gold-winning Soviet Union men's national ice hockey team at eight World Championships, and in the 1981 Canada Cup. At the Winter Olympics, he won the gold medal in 1984 and 1988 and a silver in 1980 . In the Soviet Union, Makarov played 11 championship seasons with CSKA Moscow , winning the Soviet Player of the Year award three times. Together with Igor Larionov and Vladimir Krutov, they formed the KLM Line, one of the most talented and feared lines ever to play hockey. He was awarded Order of the Red Banner of Labour .
Go to Profile#37600
Rajeev Ram
#37612
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Rajeev Ram is an American professional tennis player who is a former world no. 1 in doubles. Ram is a six-time major champion, having won the 2020 Australian Open, the 2021 US Open, the 2022 US Open, and the 2023 US Open in men's doubles with Joe Salisbury, as well as Australian Open mixed doubles titles in 2019 and 2021 alongside Barbora Krejčíková. Ram also won a mixed doubles silver medal with Venus Williams at the 2016 Summer Olympics, and finished runner-up in men's doubles at the 2021 Australian Open, and in mixed doubles at the 2016 US Open. He became world No. 1 for the first time in October 2022, and has won 28 doubles titles on the ATP Tour, including five at Masters 1000 level.
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