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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people
#38051
Hrishikesh Mukherjee
#38063
Overall Influence
1922 - 2006 (84 years)
Hrishikesh Mukherjee was an Indian film director, editor and writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of Indian cinema. Popularly known as Hrishi-da, he directed 42 films during his career spanning over four decades, and is named the pioneer of the 'middle cinema' of India. Renowned for his social films that reflected the changing middle-class ethos, Mukherjee "carved a middle path between the extravagance of mainstream cinema and the stark realism of art cinema".
Go to Profile#38052
Elizabeth Cheney
#38064
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Elizabeth Lynne Cheney is an American attorney and politician. She represented in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2017 to 2023, and served as chair of the House Republican Conference—the third-highest position in the House Republican leadership—from 2019 to 2021. Cheney is known for her vocal opposition to former president Donald Trump. As of March 2023, she is a professor of practice at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
Go to Profile#38053
Eric D. Miller
#38065
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Eric David Miller is an American attorney and jurist serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Early life and education Miller was born in Oak Park, Illinois. He studied physics at Harvard University, graduating in 1996 with a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude. He then attended the University of Chicago Law School, where he served as a topics and comments editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and graduated in 1999 with a Juris Doctor with highest honors and Order of the Coif membership.
Go to Profile#38054
Michael Symmons Roberts
#38066
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Michael Symmons Roberts FRSL is a British poet. He has published eight collections of poetry, all with Cape , and has won the Forward Prize, the Costa Book Award and the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, as well as major prizes from the Arts Council and Society of Authors. He has been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Ondaatje Prize. He has also written novels, libretti and texts for oratorios and song cycles. He regularly writes and presents documentaries and dramas for broadcasting and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Go to Profile#38055
Denis Blackmore
#38067
Overall Influence
Denis Louis Blackmore was an American mathematician and a full professor of the Department of Mathematical Sciences at New Jersey Institute of Technology. He was also one of the founding members of the Center for Applied Mathematics and Statistics at NJIT. Dr. Blackmore was mainly known for his many contributions in the fields of dynamical systems and differential topology. In addition to this, he had many contributions in other fields of applied mathematics, physics, biology, and engineering.
Go to Profile#38056
Patricia N. Willoughby
#38068
Overall Influence
Patricia N. Willoughby is an American educator and former government appointee from North Carolina. She was appointed by Governor Mike Easley as the interim North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction in September 2004, following the resignation of Mike Ward, and served the remaining months of Ward's term.
Go to Profile#38057
Derek C. Jones
#38069
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Derek C. Jones is the Irma M. and Robert D. Morris Professor of Economics at Hamilton College who has contributed to the economics of participation, and pioneered the econometric analysis of productivity of worker cooperatives, employee ownership, and profit-sharing firms.
Go to Profile#38058
John B. Cosgrave
#38070
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Dr. John B. Cosgrave is an Irish mathematician specialising in number theory. Born in Bailieborough, County Cavan, he was educated at Royal Holloway College, London, he lectured in Carysfort College and St Patrick's College of Education .
Go to Profile#38059
Kent A. Jordan
#38071
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Kent Amos Jordan is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He was previously a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware from 2002 to 2006.
Go to Profile#38060
James E. Pringle
#38072
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
James Edward Pringle is a British astrophysicist. He is a professor of theoretical astronomy at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge part of the University of Cambridge. His research is focused mainly on astrophysical fluid dynamics and accretion discs, including, for example, the formation of stars and planets, accretion of matter onto black holes, and formation of jets by accretion flows. In a 1984 paper, he and John Papaloizou showed that accretion disks in anisotropic stellar systems with constant specific angular momentum are unstable to non-axisymmetric global modes. This phenomenon is...
Go to Profile#38061
David Johansen
#38073
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
David Roger Johansen is an American singer, songwriter and actor. He is best known as a member of the seminal proto-punk band the New York Dolls. He is also known for his work under the pseudonym Buster Poindexter, and for playing the Ghost of Christmas Past in Scrooged.
Go to Profile#38062
Robert H. Goetz
#38074
Overall Influence
1910 - 2000 (90 years)
Robert Hans Goetz was the surgeon who performed the first successful clinical coronary artery bypass graft surgery. The surgery was performed May 2, 1960 using the left internal thoracic artery. The graft remained patent, as demonstrated by angiography, and the patient remained free of angina for one year. While names such as Michael Debakey, Christiaan Barnard , and others are well known, Goetz gained little recognition.
Go to Profile#38063
Joseph Blenkinsopp
#38075
Overall Influence
1927 - 2022 (95 years)
Joseph Blenkinsopp was an academic theologian and Old Testament scholar. He was the John A. O'Brien Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. His research focused on the Old Testament Prophets and on the Pentateuch.
Go to Profile#38064
Mohja Kahf
#38076
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Mohja Kahf is a Syrian-American poet, novelist, and professor. She authored Hagar Poems which won honorable mention in the 2017 Book Awards of the Arab American National Museum. She is the recipient of Pushcart Prize for her creative nonfiction essay, "The Caul of Inshallah" and the Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship in 2002 for poetry. Her poetry has been featured in the installments of American neo-conceptual artist Jenny Holzer.
Go to Profile#38065
Daniel A. Livingstone
#38077
Overall Influence
1927 - 2016 (89 years)
Daniel Archibald Livingstone was the James B Duke Professor Emeritus and research professor, in the Department of Biology at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Livingstone studied at McGill and Dalhousie Universities before joining Ed Deevey's research group as a PhD student at Yale University.
Go to Profile#38066
Bruce Sutter
#38078
Overall Influence
1953 - 2022 (69 years)
Howard Bruce Sutter was an American professional baseball pitcher who played 12 seasons in Major League Baseball between 1976 and 1988. He was one of the sport's dominant relievers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, making effective use of the split-finger fastball. A six-time All-Star and 1982 World Series champion, Sutter recorded a 2.83 career earned run average and 300 saves, the third-most in MLB history at the time of his retirement. Sutter won the National League's Cy Young Award in 1979 as its top pitcher, and won the NL Rolaids Relief Man Award four times. He became the only pitche...
Go to Profile#38067
Christoph Cremer
#38079
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Christoph Cremer is a German physicist and emeritus at the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, former honorary professor at the University of Mainz and was a former group leader at Institute of Molecular Biology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany, who has successfully overcome the conventional limit of resolution that applies to light based investigations by a range of different methods . In the meantime, according to his own statement, Christoph Cremer is a member of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research.
Go to Profile#38068
Min Aung Hlaing
#38080
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Min Aung Hlaing is a Burmese army general who has ruled Myanmar as the chairman of the State Administration Council since seizing power in the February 2021 coup d'état. He additionally appointed himself Prime Minister in August 2021. He has led the Tatmadaw , an independent branch of government, as the commander-in-chief of Defence Services since March 2011, when he was handpicked to succeed longtime military ruler Than Shwe, who transferred leadership over the country to a civilian government upon retiring. Before assuming leadership over the Tatmadaw, Min Aung Hlaing served as Joint Chief...
Go to Profile#38069
Nan Marie Jokerst
#38081
Overall Influence
Nan Marie Jokerst is an American professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University known for her work integrating optoelectronics with semiconductor substrates in order to create portable environmental and medical sensors. She is a Fellow of the Optical Society and Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Go to Profile#38070
Mercouri Kanatzidis
#38082
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Mercouri Kanatzidis is a Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of chemistry and professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University and Senior Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory.
Go to Profile#38071
Wolfgang Lutz
#38083
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Wolfgang Lutz is an Austrian demographer specializing in demographic analysis, population projections, as well as population and sustainable development. He is the current Interim Deputy Director General for Science of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis , as well as the Founding Director of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital – a collaboration between IIASA, the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the University of Vienna. In the latter, he also established the new Department of Demography.
Go to Profile#38072
Daria Hazuda
#38084
Overall Influence
Daria J Hazuda is a biochemist known for discovering the first HIV Integrase Strand Transfer Inhibitors and leading the development of the first HIV integrase inhibitor to gain FDA approval, Isentress . Her lab also determined these inhibitors' mechanism of action and ways the virus could develop resistance to them. Hazuda has also performed extensive research and led the development of antivirals for Hepatitis C Virus including Elbasvir and Grazoprevir. She currently serves as Vice President for Infectious Diseases Discovery for Merck and Chief Scientific Officer of their MRL Cambridge Exp...
Go to Profile#38073
David Maxwell Walker
#38085
Overall Influence
1920 - 2014 (94 years)
David Maxwell Walker was a Scottish lawyer, academic, and Regius Professor of Law at the University of Glasgow. Early life Walker was educated at the High School of Glasgow, at the time the city's publicly funded grammar school, where he was Mackindlay Prizeman in Classics. He was the son of a bank agent who died when Walker was 14.
Go to Profile#38074
Cuba Gooding Jr.
#38086
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Cuba Mark Gooding Jr. is an American actor. He is the recipient of an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Emmy nomination. After his breakthrough role as Tre Styles in Boyz n the Hood , he appeared in The Tuskegee Airmen , Outbreak , and Jerry Maguire , for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Go to Profile#38075
Rodney A. Smolla
#38087
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Rodney A. Smolla, is an American author, First Amendment scholar and lawyer. He is currently the president of the Vermont Law School, and former dean of the Widener University Delaware Law School until spring 2022. He was the 11th president of Furman University. In 2015, it was announced that on 1 July of that year, Smolla would become the dean of the newly separate Delaware Law School of Widener University.
Go to Profile#38076
Robert Fico
#38088
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Robert Fico is a Slovak politician who has served as the Prime Minister of Slovakia since 2023, having served previously from 2006 to 2010 and from 2012 to 2018. He has founded and led the Direction – Social Democracy party since 1999. First elected to Parliament in 1992 , he was later appointed to the Council of Europe. Following his party's victory in the 2006 parliamentary election, he formed the first Fico Cabinet.
Go to Profile#38077
Denys Hay
#38089
Overall Influence
1915 - 1994 (79 years)
Denys Hay was a British historian specialising in medieval and Renaissance Europe, and notable for demonstrating the influence of Italy on events in the rest of the continent. Life He was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 29 August 1915 the son of Rev W. K. Hay and his wife, Janet Waugh. He was educated at the Newcastle Royal Grammar School then won a place at Oxford University.
Go to Profile#38078
Cato T. Laurencin
#38090
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Cato T. Laurencin FREng SLMH is an American engineer, physician, scientist, innovator and a University Professor of the University of Connecticut . He is currently the chief executive officer of The Cato T. Laurencin Institute for Regenerative Engineering.
Go to Profile#38079
Victor Oladipo
#38091
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
Kehinde Babatunde Victor Oladipo is an American professional basketball player for the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association . He played college basketball for the Indiana Hoosiers, where in the 2012-2013 season he was named the Sporting News Men's College Basketball Player of the Year, the Co-NABC Defensive Player of the Year, and a first-team All-American by the USBWA and Sporting News. That year he was also named the winner of the Adolph Rupp Trophy, given annually to the top player in men's NCAA Division I basketball.
Go to Profile#38080
Mrunalini Devi Puar
#38092
Overall Influence
1931 - 2015 (84 years)
Mrunalini Devi Puar was an Indian educator and Chancellor of a recognized Indian university with more than 35,000 students. Biography Puar was an educator and Maharani of Dhar State. She was a member of the Gaekwad dynasty, the former ruling clan of Baroda State and also a member of the Puar dynasty of Dhar, both former Maratha princely states. She was married to Maharaja Anand Rao IV Puar, the Maharaja of Dhar State. She was chancellor of the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. She succeeded her brother Fatehsinghrao Gaekwad, Maharaja of Baroda, as chancellor when he died in 1988.
Go to Profile#38081
Maxwell Rosenlicht
#38093
Overall Influence
1924 - 1999 (75 years)
Maxwell Alexander Rosenlicht was an American mathematician known for works in algebraic geometry, algebraic groups, and differential algebra. Rosenlicht went to school in Brooklyn and studied at Columbia University and at Harvard University, where he studied under Zariski. He became a Putnam fellow twice, in 1946 and 1947. He was awarded in his doctorate on an Algebraic Curve Equivalence Concepts in 1950. In 1952, he went to Northwestern University. From 1958 until his retirement in 1991, he was a professor at Berkeley. He was also a visiting professor in Mexico City, IHÉS, Rome, Leiden, an...
Go to Profile#38082
Marianne Ferber
#38094
Overall Influence
1923 - 2013 (90 years)
Marianne A. Ferber was an American feminist economist and the author of many books and articles on the subject of women's work, the family, and the construction of gender. She held a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#38083
Sheldon Krimsky
#38095
Overall Influence
1941 - 2022 (81 years)
Sheldon Krimsky was a professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University, and adjunct professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine. He was a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution.
Go to Profile#38084
Tanya Monro
#38096
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Tanya Mary Monro is an Australian physicist known for her work in photonics. She has been Australia's Chief Defence Scientist since 8 March 2019. Prior to that she was the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research and Innovation at the University of South Australia. She was awarded the ARC Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship in 2013. She was the inaugural chair of photonics, the inaugural director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale Biophotonics and the inaugural director of the Institute for Photonics & Advanced Sensing , and the inaugural director of the Centre of Expertise in Photonics within the School of Chemistry and Physics at the University of Adelaide .
Go to Profile#38085
Franz Guenthner
#38097
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Franz Guenthner is a German linguist who is a professor of Computational Linguistics at the Center for Information and Language Processing at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany. His background is in philosophy and linguistics.
Go to Profile#38086
Cristian Dumitru Popescu
#38098
Overall Influence
Cristian Dumitru Popescu is a Romanian-American mathematician at the University of California, San Diego. His research interests are in algebraic number theory, and in particular, in special values of L-functions.
Go to Profile#38087
Tom Hardy
#38099
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Tom Hardy is an American design strategist and Professor of Design Management at Savannah College of Art and Design . As corporate design advisor to Samsung Electronics Hardy was instrumental in transforming their brand image from follower to innovation leader by creating a new brand-design ethos: "Balance of Reason & Feeling", and building significant global brand equity through judicious use of design strategy and management. While at IBM , he was an award-winning industrial designer and later served as corporate head of the IBM Design Program responsible for worldwide identity. His lea...
Go to Profile#38088
Robert Wolke
#38100
Overall Influence
1928 - 2021 (93 years)
Robert L. Wolke was an American chemist, professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh. He was a food columnist for The Washington Post, and had written multiple books, which aim to explain everyday phenomena in non-technical terms:
Go to Profile#38089
Joaquim Chissano
#38101
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Joaquim Alberto Chissano is a politician who served as the second President of Mozambique, from 1986 to 2005. He is credited with transforming the war-torn country of Mozambique into a successful African democracy. After his presidency, Chissano became an elder statesman, envoy and diplomat for both his home country and the United Nations. Chissano also served as Chairperson of the African Union from 2003 to 2004.
Go to Profile#38090
Mark Pedowitz
#38102
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Mark Pedowitz is an American entertainment executive. From 2011 to 2022, he was the president, and then chairman and CEO of The CW, after replacing the former president of entertainment Dawn Ostroff. During his time at The CW, Pedowitz oversaw all aspects including programming, sales, marketing, distribution, finance, research and publicity.
Go to Profile#38091
Pierre Littbarski
#38103
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Pierre Michael Littbarski is a German professional football manager and former player of 1. FC Köln and the West Germany national team. Known for his dribbling abilities, he was mainly used as an attacking midfielder or winger. Littbarski was a FIFA World Cup winner with West Germany in 1990, and the runner-up in both 1982 and 1986. Littbarski was the caretaker manager of VfL Wolfsburg after taking over from Steve McClaren from 7 February to 17 March 2011.
Go to Profile#38092
Franco Battiato
#38104
Overall Influence
1945 - 2021 (76 years)
Francesco "Franco" Battiato was an Italian musician, singer, composer, filmmaker and, under the pseudonym Süphan Barzani, also a painter. Battiato's songs contain esoteric, philosophical and religious themes, and have spanned genres such as experimental pop, electronic music, progressive rock, opera, symphonic music, movie soundtrack, oratorio and new wave.
Go to Profile#38093
Dennis B. Funa
#38105
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Dennis B. Funa is a Filipino lawyer, businessman, public official, law book author, professor of law, constitutionalist, and the current Commissioner of the Philippines' Insurance Commission. As a Filipino lawyer, he is the managing partner of a Metro Manila based law firm. He has served the Philippine government from 1992 to 1998, and 2013 to the present in various capacities.
Go to Profile#38094
Bojan Mohar
#38106
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Bojan Mohar is a Slovenian and Canadian mathematician, working in graph theory. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of Ljubljana and the holder of a Canada Research Chair in graph theory at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Go to Profile#38095
Gina Dent
#38107
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Gina Dent is an associate professor of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz. She is associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion for the Humanities Division at UC Santa Cruz. She co authored the 2022 book Abolition. Feminism. Now. with her partner, Angela Davis; Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie.
Go to Profile#38096
Bobby Keys
#38108
Overall Influence
1943 - 2014 (71 years)
Robert Henry Keys was an American saxophonist who performed as a member of several horn sections of the 1970s. He appears on albums by the Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Harry Nilsson, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, George Harrison, John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker and other prominent musicians. Keys played on hundreds of recordings and was a touring musician from 1956 until his death in 2014.
Go to Profile#38097
Claude Longchamp
#38109
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Claude Longchamp is a Swiss historian and political scientist . He is a prominent political analyst for Swiss national television and radio, and he is the main figure behind the research institute gfs.berne, which conducts both the main pre- and post-vote polls and projections of national votes in Switzerland.
Go to Profile#38098
Sergei Tabachnikov
#38110
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Sergei Tabachnikov, also spelled Serge, is an American mathematician who works in geometry and dynamical systems. He is currently a Professor of Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University. Biography He earned his Ph.D. from Moscow State University in 1987 under the supervision of Dmitry Fuchs and Anatoly Fomenko. He has been living and working in the USA since 1990.
Go to Profile#38099
Carmel Schrire
#38111
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Carmel Schrire is a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University whose research focuses on historical archaeology, particularly in South Africa and Europe. Education and research Schrire was born in Cape Town, South Africa and completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Cape Town , going on to attend the University of Cambridge . Her early research interests were in prehistoric archaeology, and she did her doctoral research in Australia's Northern Territory on the way in which modern Aboriginal behaviour can help interpret prehistoric remains. She received her PhD in 1968 from...
Go to Profile#38100
Tim Hayward
#38112
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Timothy Matthew Hayward is a British food writer, broadcaster and restaurateur. Career Born in Bristol, Hayward was educated at Bristol Grammar School, New College School, and Bournemouth School. He later attended the Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design.
Go to Profile