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
#37801
Gotthilf Hempel
#37813
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Gotthilf Hempel is a German marine biologist and oceanographer. Live Hempel studied biology and geology at the universities of Mainz and Heidelberg. In 1952 he gained his Ph.D. with a study on the energetics of grasshopper jumps from Heidelberg University. He then went on to work as a scientific assistant at various research institutes in Wilhelmshaven, Heligoland, and Hamburg, where he habilitated with a thesis on the ecology of fry in 1963.
Go to Profile#37802
Gianluca Violante
#37814
Overall Influence
Gianluca Violante is a professor of economics at Princeton University whose research interests span macroeconomics, labor economics, and public finance. He received the 2019 Central Banking Prize for Economics in Central Banking for his work on HANK models.
Go to Profile#37803
Pedro J. J. Alvarez
#37815
Overall Influence
Pedro J.J. Alvarez is the George R. Brown Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University, where he also serves as Director of the National Science Foundation-sponsored Engineering Research Center on Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment .
Go to Profile#37804
R. Orin Cornett
#37816
Overall Influence
1913 - 2002 (89 years)
R. Orin Cornett was an American physicist, university professor and administrator, and the inventor of a literacy system for the deaf, known as Cued Speech. Biography R. Orin Cornett was born in Driftwood, Oklahoma, a now unincorporated town near the Kansas border located in Alfalfa County, on November 14, 1913. He earned his BS degree in mathematics from Oklahoma Baptist University in 1934, followed by an MS from the University of Oklahoma in 1937. In 1940, Cornett was awarded a Ph.D. in physics and applied mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin, with his thesis entitled, “Acoustic Spectra of Edge Tones.” From 1935 to 1945, Dr.
Go to Profile#37805
Robert E. Michler
#37817
Overall Influence
Robert E. Michler is an American heart surgeon specializing in heart surgery, aortic and mitral valve repair, coronary artery bypass surgery, aneurysm surgery, and management of the failing heart. In 2017, Michler received the Vladimir Borakovsky Prize in Moscow from the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation for “his personal contributions to the development of cardiovascular surgery”.
Go to Profile#37806
Susanna Loeb
#37818
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Susanna Loeb is an American education economist and director of the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. She was previously the Barnett Family Professor of Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where she also served as founding director of the Center for Education Policy Analysis . Moreover, she directs Policy Analysis for California Education . Her research interests include the economics of education and the relationship between schools and educational policies, in particular school finance and teacher labor markets.
Go to Profile#37807
Luca Serianni
#37819
Overall Influence
1947 - 2022 (75 years)
Luca Serianni was an Italian linguist and philologist. Biography Serianni was professor of Italian language at Sapienza Università di Roma. A student of Arrigo Castellani’s, he conducted research about Italian linguistic history from the Middle Ages to the present day.
Go to Profile#37808
Mike Garson
#37820
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Michael David Garson is an American pianist, who has worked with David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, St. Vincent, Duran Duran, Free Flight, The Smashing Pumpkins, Melissa Auf der Maur and The Pretty Reckless.
Go to Profile#37809
Gary Lightbody
#37821
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Gareth John Lightbody is a Northern Irish musician. He is best known as the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of the alternative rock band Snow Patrol. He has also founded the musical supergroups The Reindeer Section and Tired Pony.
Go to Profile#37810
Ken Batcher
#37822
Overall Influence
1935 - 2019 (84 years)
Ken Batcher, full name Kenneth Edward Batcher was an emeritus professor of Computer Science at Kent State University. He also worked as a computer architect at Goodyear Aerospace in Akron, Ohio for 28 years.
Go to Profile#37811
Martin Dunwoody
#37823
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Martin John Dunwoody is an emeritus professor of Mathematics at the University of Southampton, England. He earned his PhD in 1964 from the Australian National University. He held positions at the University of Sussex before becoming a professor at the University of Southampton in 1992. He has been emeritus professor since 2003.
Go to Profile#37812
Lesley Rees
#37824
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Dame Lesley Howard Rees DBE Rees was educated at Pate's Grammar School for Girls, Cheltenham. Rees studied at Bart’s and qualified in 1965. She went on to specialise in clinical endocrinology and was appointed Professor of Chemical Endocrinology in 1980. She also became the University of London's public orator, the first science graduate to hold this post. She has published more than 300 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and in 1980 delivered the Goulstonian lecture of the Royal College of Physicians.
Go to Profile#37813
Doug Gilmour
#37825
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Douglas Robert Gilmour is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player. He played 20 seasons in the National Hockey League for seven different teams. Gilmour was a seventh round selection, 134th overall, of the St. Louis Blues at the 1982 NHL Entry Draft and recorded 1,414 points in 1,474 games in the NHL between 1983 and 2003. A two-time All-Star, he was a member of Calgary's 1989 Stanley Cup championship team and won the Frank J. Selke Trophy as the NHL's best defensive forward in 1992–93. Internationally, he represented Canada three times during his career and was a member of the nati...
Go to Profile#37814
Sharon Beder
#37826
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Sharon Beder is an environmentalist and former professor in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia. Her research has focused on how power relationships are maintained and challenged, particularly by corporations and professions. She has written 11 books, and many articles, book chapters and conference papers, as well as designing teaching resources and educational websites.
Go to Profile#37815
Christine Bell
#37827
Overall Influence
Christine Bell, FBA, FRSE, is a legal scholar, specialising in human rights law. As of 2018, she is Professor of Constitutional Law and Assistant Principal at the University of Edinburgh. Life Bell graduated from Selwyn College, Cambridge, with her undergraduate law degree in 1988, before completing a master of laws degree at Harvard University in 1990. She qualified as a Barrister in that year and, after passing the New York bar examination, she worked at Debevoise & Plimpton. She was then Director of the Centre for International and Comparative Human Rights Law at Queen's University Belfast...
Go to Profile#37816
Simone Buitendijk
#37828
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Simone Elisabeth Buitendijk is a Dutch academic and the vice-chancellor of the University of Leeds. In October 2023 it was announced that she would be stepping down from the post on 31st December 2023. Her research considers women's health and innovations in education.
Go to Profile#37817
Bodo Abel
#37829
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Bodo Abel is a German Professor at the University of Hamburg in Business Administration, focused on“International Marketing”. He was till 2013 the program director of the international master program „MiBA – Master of International Business Administration“ at the University of Hamburg and at the St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance , Russia. His teaching and research fields are „International Marketing“, „International Media-Management“, „International Business Ethics“, „International Corporate Social Responsibility“ and “Studies of Methods in Business Administration”.
Go to Profile#37818
Saul Zaentz
#37830
Overall Influence
1921 - 2014 (93 years)
Saul Zaentz was an American film producer and record company executive. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture three times and, in 1996, was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. Zaentz's film production career, primarily financed by the profits from Creedence Clearwater Revival, was marked by a dedication to the adaptation of novels. A prolific reader, Zaentz typically did not produce original screenplays. His final production, Goya's Ghosts, was an exception, being an original story by Jean-Claude Carrière and Miloš Forman.
Go to Profile#37819
John Hammond
#37831
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
John Michael Hammond is a meteorologist and an English weather forecaster for the BBC. For a long time he could be seen presenting weather forecasts on the BBC News channel, BBC Red Button and BBC World News. He was the main weather presenter on BBC News at One and on the BBC News at Ten, Countryfile and BBC News at Six. At the weekend he also presents the weather on BBC Radio 5 Live. He is currently presenting for the BBC in Birmingham, including the regional news programme Midlands Today.
Go to Profile#37820
Doris Löve
#37832
Overall Influence
1918 - 2000 (82 years)
Doris Benta Maria Löve, née Wahlén was a Swedish systematic botanist, particularly active in the Arctic. Biography Doris Löve was born in Kristianstad, Sweden. She studied botany at Lund University from 1937. She married her fellow student and colleague, the Icelander Áskell Löve. She received her PhD in botany in 1944. She focused her doctorate on the sexuality of Melandrium. After their studies, the couple moved to Iceland. They moved to Winnipeg in 1951, to Montreal in 1955, and to Boulder in 1965. At universities where Áskell Löve taught, Doris Löve could not hold a faculty position at the same time as her husband.
Go to Profile#37821
Heather Munroe-Blum
#37833
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Heather Anne Elyse Lilian Munroe-Blum is a Canadian academic and businesswoman. She is the former principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. She is also a member of the board of directors of the Royal Bank of Canada, and chairperson of the board of directors of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
Go to Profile#37822
Marguerita Lightfoot
#37834
Overall Influence
Marguerita Lightfoot is a counseling psychologist known for her research in the field of preventive medicine, especially in regard to HIV prevention and advocacy for homeless youth. She is Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and the Chief of the Division of Prevention Science. She serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Development among Children and Youth.
Go to Profile#37823
Michael Shannon
#37835
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Michael Corbett Shannon is an American actor. He is a frequent collaborator with director Jeff Nichols, having appeared in Nichols' films Shotgun Stories , Take Shelter , Mud , Midnight Special and Loving , and The Bikeriders . Shannon received two Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nominations, for Revolutionary Road , and Nocturnal Animals . He received Screen Actors Guild Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for his role in 99 Homes .
Go to Profile#37824
James Kurth
#37836
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
James Kurth is the Claude C. Smith Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Swarthmore College, where he taught defense policy, foreign policy, and international politics. In 2004 Kurth also became the editor of Orbis, a professional journal on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#37825
Eiichiro Oda
#37837
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Eiichiro Oda is a Japanese manga artist and the creator of the series One Piece. With more than 516.6 million tankōbon copies in circulation worldwide, One Piece is both the best-selling manga in history and the best-selling comic series printed in volume, in turn making Oda one of the best-selling fiction authors. The series' popularity resulted in Oda being named one of the manga artists that changed the history of manga.
Go to Profile#37826
Wojciech Szpankowski
#37838
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Wojciech Szpankowski is the Saul Rosen Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University. He is known for his work in analytic combinatorics, analysis of algorithms and analytic information theory. He is the director of the NSF Science and Technology Center for Science of Information.
Go to Profile#37827
Greg Wells
#37839
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
William Gregory Woodford-Wells is a Canadian record producer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and audio engineer. He has worked with Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ariana Grande, Michael Bublé, Ryan Tedder, John Legend, Adele, Kid Cudi, Taylor Swift, Panic at the Disco, Missy Elliot, Selena Gomez, Rufus Wainwright, Dua Lipa, Weezer, Jazmine Sullivan, Katy Perry, OneRepublic, Carrie Underwood, Deftones, Jamie Cullum, Pink, Theophilus London, Keith Urban, Crash Test Dummies, Celine Dion, MIKA, Twenty One Pilots, Aerosmith, Sir George Martin, Quincy Jones, Elton John, Burt Bacharach, Stephen Schwartz, A...
Go to Profile#37828
Brian E. Daley
#37840
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Brian Edward Daley, S.J. is an American Catholic priest, Jesuit, and theologian. He is currently the Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame and was the recipient of a Ratzinger Prize for Theology in 2012.
Go to Profile#37829
Lenny Castro
#37841
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Lenny Castro is an American studio percussionist from the Los Angeles area. Early life Castro was born and raised in New York City to parents of Puerto Rican descent. His father, Hector Castro, was a keyboardist for Latin artists such as Johnny Pacheco. Castro attended the High School of Music & Art where he studied classical percussion.
Go to Profile#37830
Edna Grossman
#37842
Overall Influence
Edna Grossman is an American mathematician. She was born in Germany, grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated with a B.S. in mathematics from Brooklyn College. She earned her M.S. in mathematics from New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, where she also received her Ph.D. in mathematics in 1972; her thesis, supervised by Wilhelm Magnus, concerned the symmetries of free groups. Grossman worked for IBM, where she was part of the team that designed and analyzed the Data Encryption Standard. She is known for her development, along with Bryant Tuckerman, of the first...
Go to Profile#37831
Edward J. Hoffman
#37843
Overall Influence
1942 - 2004 (62 years)
Edward Joseph Hoffman helped invent the first human PET scanner, a commonly used whole-body scanning procedure for detecting diseases like cancer. Hoffman, with Michel Ter-Pogossian and Michael E. Phelps, developed the Positron Emission Tomography scanner in 1973.
Go to Profile#37832
Hans Henrich Hock
#37844
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Hans Henrich Hock is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Sanskrit at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Hock holds a PhD in linguistics from Yale University. His research interests include general historical and comparative linguistics, as well as the linguistics of Sanskrit. He currently teaches general historical linguistics, Indo-European linguistics, Sanskrit, diachronic sociolinguistics, pidgins and creoles, and the history of linguistics. He has served on the Undergraduate Program Committee of the Department of Linguistics since 1993.
Go to Profile#37833
Rajeev Kumar Varshney
#37845
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Rajeev Kumar Varshney is an Indian agricultural scientist, specializing in genomics, genetics, molecular breeding and capacity building in developing countries. Varshney is currently serving as Director, Western Australian State Agricultural Biotechnology Center; Director, Centre for Crop & Food Innovation; and International Chair in Agriculture & Food Security with the Food Futures Institute at Murdoch University, Australia since Feb 2022. Before joining Murdoch University, Australia he served International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics , a global agriculture R&D instit...
Go to Profile#37834
Vincent Blasi
#37846
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Vincent Blasi, born January 28, 1943, is an American legal scholar. He is the Corliss Lamont Professor of Civil Liberties at Columbia Law School. Biography Blasi graduated from Northwestern University in 1964, received his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1967, and commenced his law teaching career the following year. He joined the faculty of Columbia Law School in 1983.
Go to Profile#37835
Charles E. Dibble
#37847
Overall Influence
1909 - 2002 (93 years)
Charles E. Dibble was an American academic, anthropologist, linguist, and scholar of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. A former Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Utah, Dibble retired in 1978 after an association with the university as lecturer and researcher spanning four decades. Post-retirement Dibble continued to conduct and publish research in his area of expertise, studies of Mesoamerican historical literature and the historiography of conquest-era Mesoamerican cultures, in particular those of the Aztec and others of the central Mexican altiplano. Among many...
Go to Profile#37836
Harry Mairson
#37848
Overall Influence
Harry George Mairson is a theoretical computer scientist and professor of computer science in the Volen National Center for Complex Systems at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. His research is in the fields of logic in computer science, lambda calculus and functional programming, type theory and constructive mathematics, computational complexity theory, and algorithmics.
Go to Profile#37837
Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz
#37849
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz is a former Mauritanian politician who was the 8th President of Mauritania, in office from 2009 to 2019. A career soldier and high-ranking officer, he was a leading figure in the August 2005 coup that deposed President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, and in August 2008 he led another coup, which toppled President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi. Following the 2008 coup, Abdel Aziz became President of the High Council of State as part of what was described as a political transition leading to a new election. He resigned from that post in April 2009 in order to stand as a candidate in the July 2009 presidential election, which he won.
Go to Profile#37838
Itamar Simonson
#37850
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Itamar Simonson is a professor of marketing, holding the Sebastian S. Kresge Chair of Marketing in the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is known for his work on the factors that determine the choices that buyers make. His academic career started at the University of California at Berkeley, where he taught for six years, before he moved to Stanford. Many of his former PhD students hold senior positions at some of the best universities in the world.
Go to Profile#37839
John Haldane
#37851
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
John Joseph Haldane is a British philosopher, commentator and broadcaster. He is a former papal adviser to the Vatican. He is credited with coining the term 'analytical Thomism' and is himself a Thomist in the analytic tradition. Haldane is associated with The Veritas Forum and is the current chair of the Royal Institute of Philosophy.
Go to Profile#37840
Tatiana Birshtein
#37852
Overall Influence
1928 - 2022 (94 years)
Tatiana Birshtein or Tat'yana Maksimovna Birshtein was a Russian molecular scientist. Birshtein specialised in the physics of polymers. In 2007 she was given the L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science.
Go to Profile#37841
Verena Madner
#37853
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Verena Madner is an Austrian legal scholar, university professor and constitutional judge. She has been Professor of Public Law at the Department of Socio-Economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business since 2011. In 2020, she was appointed Vice President of the Austrian Constitutional Court.
Go to Profile#37842
Chang Kee-ryo
#37854
Overall Influence
1911 - 1995 (84 years)
Chang Kee-ryo was a surgeon, educator, and philanthropist of South Korea. He established Gospel Hospital, in Busan, Korea, in 1951, during the Korean War. In 1979, he won the Ramon Magsaysay Award "for his practical, personal Christian charity and in founding the Blue Cross Health Cooperative in Pusan".
Go to Profile#37843
Ruth McVey
#37855
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Ruth Thomas McVey is an American scholar of Indonesia and Southeast Asia known especially for her writings on Communism and the Indonesian Communist Party. With Benedict Anderson, she co-wrote the Cornell Paper, a 1966 work which examined the failed September 30 Movement in Indonesia. She has written and edited a number of books about Indonesian and Southeast Asian politics, including The rise of Indonesian communism and The Soviet view of the Indonesian revolution .
Go to Profile#37844
Rooney Mara
#37856
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Patricia Rooney Mara is an American actress. She has received various accolades, including nominations for two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, and two Golden Globe Awards. Born into the Rooney and Mara families, Mara began her career acting in television and independent films, such as the coming-of-age drama Tanner Hall . She first gained recognition for her supporting role in David Fincher's drama film The Social Network .
Go to Profile#37845
Rachel Haurwitz
#37857
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Rachel Elizabeth Haurwitz is an American biochemist and structural biologist. She is the co-founder, chief executive officer, and president of Caribou Biosciences, a genome editing company. Early life and education Haurwitz was born on May 20, 1985. She grew up in Austin, Texas. Her mother is an elementary school teacher and her father, an environmental journalist.
Go to Profile#37846
Anacristina Rossi
#37858
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Anacristina Rossi is a Costa Rican writer. Biography After studying theatre and dance in her home country, she travelled to Europe and studied in England, France and the Netherlands. She has a diploma in translation from the University of Paris and a master's degree in women studies and development from the International Institute of Social Studies.
Go to Profile#37847
John E. Sanders
#37859
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
John E. Sanders is an American Christian theologian. He currently serves as professor of religious studies at Hendrix College. Sanders is best known for his promotion of open theism but he has also written on cognitive linguistics and religious pluralism .
Go to Profile#37848
Werner Hofmann
#37860
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Werner Hofmann is a German professor of physics. He is director of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg. Life and work Hofmann studied physics at the University of Karlsruhe, completing his studies with a doctorate in 1977. In 1980 he wrote his Habilitationsschrift at the University of Dortmund. In 1981 he received a Heisenberg Scholarship and from 1984 to 1987 he worked as assistant and associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was appointed full professor of physics in 1987. Since 1988 he is director at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg.
Go to Profile#37849
Tara O'Toole
#37861
Overall Influence
Tara O'Toole served as the Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Science and Technology from 2009 to 2013. She is currently a senior fellow and executive vice president at In-Q-Tel. Background Prior to her confirmation as Under Secretary , O'Toole founded, and served as chief executive officer and director of, the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Concurrently, she was a Professor of Medicine and of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. She stepped down from her position as Under Secretary on September 23, 2013
Go to Profile#37850
Jerry Sabloff
#37862
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Jeremy "Jerry" Arac Sabloff is an American anthropologist and past president of the Santa Fe Institute. Sabloff is an expert on ancient Maya civilization and pre-industrial urbanism. His academic interests have included settlement pattern studies, archaeological theory and method, the history of archaeology, the relevance of archaeology in the modern world, complexity theory, and trans-disciplinary science.
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