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
#38601
Robin Wright
#38613
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Robin Gayle Wright is an American actress and director. She has received various accolades, including a Golden Globe Award, and nominations for eight Primetime Emmy Awards. Wright first gained attention for her role as Kelly Capwell in the NBC Daytime soap opera Santa Barbara from 1984 to 1988. She transitioned to film with a starring role in the fantasy film The Princess Bride , and she gained a nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the top-grossing drama Forrest Gump . She had further starring roles in the romantic drama Message in a Bottle and th...
Go to Profile#38602
Rifkat Bogdanov
#38614
Overall Influence
1950 - 2013 (63 years)
Rifkat Ibragimovich Bogdanov was a Soviet and Russian mathematician known for contributions to nonlinear dynamical systems, bifurcation theory, and differential geometry. He was an ethnic Tatar. In his work on bifurcations of limit cycles and versal deformations of singular points of vector fields , he described a bifurcation of co-dimension 2, which has become known in the literature as the Bogdanov–Takens bifurcation.
Go to Profile#38603
Raphael Warnock
#38615
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Raphael Gamaliel Warnock is an American Baptist pastor and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Georgia since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Warnock has been the senior pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church since 2005.
Go to Profile#38604
Jean-Pierre Demailly
#38616
Overall Influence
1957 - 2022 (65 years)
Jean-Pierre Demailly was a French mathematician who worked in complex geometry. He was a professor at Université Grenoble Alpes and a permanent member of the French Academy of Sciences. Early life and education Demailly was born on 25 September 1957 in Péronne, France. He attended the Lycée de Péronne from 1966 to 1973 and the Lycée Faidherbe from 1973 to 1975. He entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1975, where he received his agrégation in 1977 and graduated in 1979. During this time, he received an undergraduate licence degree from Paris Diderot University in 1976 and a diplôme d'études approfondies under Henri Skoda at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in 1979.
Go to Profile#38605
Ben Shephard
#38617
Overall Influence
1948 - 2017 (69 years)
Ben Shephard was an English historian, author, and television producer. He was educated at Diocesan College, Cape Town, and Westminster School. He graduated in history from Oxford University and made many historical documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4, including producer of The World at War and The Nuclear Age. He died on 25 October 2017 at the age of 69.
Go to Profile#38606
Edward J. Steele
#38618
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Edward J. "Ted" Steele is an Australian molecular immunologist with interests in virology and evolution. He is an honorary research associate at the C.Y.O'Connor ERADE Village Foundation in Piara Waters, WA, Australia.
Go to Profile#38607
William Levy
#38619
Overall Influence
1939 - 2019 (80 years)
William Levy , also known as the Talmudic Wizard of Amsterdam, was an American writer, editor, and former radio personality, plus the author of such works as The Virgin Sperm Dancer, Wet Dreams, Certain Radio Speeches of Ezra Pound and Natural Jewboy.
Go to Profile#38608
Mark D. Naison
#38620
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Mark Naison is a professor of history at Fordham University, the Jesuit University of New York. Naison, a former political activist, was a member of Congress of Racial Equality and Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s. He is a graduate of Columbia University and holds a Ph.D. in American history.
Go to Profile#38609
Robert H. Williams
#38621
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Robert H. Williams is a senior research scientist at the Princeton Environmental Institute , Princeton University. He graduated from Yale University with a BS in physics in 1962, and from University of California, Berkeley with a PhD, in theoretical plasma physics, in 1967. He taught at University of Michigan, Physics Department, in 1970. In 1972, he became Chief Scientist with the Ford Foundation's Energy Policy Project.
Go to Profile#38610
Barbara Kruger
#38622
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they", addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality. Kruger's artistic mediums include photography, sculpture, graphic design, architecture, as well as video and audio insta...
Go to Profile#38611
Leonard John Lewis
#38623
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Leonard John Lewis was a British academic. He worked as an educationalist in Nigeria and was a lecturer at the Institute of Education of the University of London. He served as Principal of the University of Zimbabwe for the transition to Zimbabwe's independence, despite his somewhat controversial views on education and politics. He has published a number of books on education policy.
Go to Profile#38612
Shubert Spero
#38624
Overall Influence
1923 - Present (103 years)
Rabbi Shubert Spero is an American rabbi and author; he was Professor of Jewish Thought at Bar Ilan University. Biography Spero was born in New York City. He studied at Yeshiva Torah Vodaas in Brooklyn, New York. He received his B.S degree at City College of New York and attained an M.A and a PhD in philosophy at Western Reserve University. In 1947 he received smicha , and in 1950 became rabbi of Young Israel of Cleveland, Ohio.
Go to Profile#38613
Robert Moyers
#38625
Overall Influence
1919 - 1996 (77 years)
Robert Edison Moyers was an American orthodontist who was the founder of the Center of Human Growth and Development at University of Michigan and chair of its orthodontic program for 28 years. He made significant contributions towards orthodontics through the development of CHGD and interdisciplinary research involving craniofacial biology. He is credited for developing the Moyer's Mixed Dentition Analysis.
Go to Profile#38614
Michel Ter-Pogossian
#38626
Overall Influence
1925 - 1996 (71 years)
Michel Matthew Ter-Pogossian was an American medical physicist. He was professor of radiology at the Washington University School of Medicine for over 30 years. A pioneer in nuclear medicine, he is best known for his research on the positron emission tomography . He is considered one of its creators and often referred to as the "father of PET."
Go to Profile#38615
Peter Bialobrzeski
#38627
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Peter Bialobrzeski is a photographer and a professor of photography at the University of the Arts Bremen in Germany. Bialobrzeski originally studied politics and sociology in Germany before he studied photography at University of Essen and at the London College of Printing .
Go to Profile#38616
Jah Wobble
#38628
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
John Joseph Wardle , known by the stage name Jah Wobble, is an English bass guitarist and singer. He became known to a wider audience as the original bass player in Public Image Ltd in the late 1970s and early 1980s; he left the band after two albums.
Go to Profile#38617
Frederick W. Mote
#38629
Overall Influence
1922 - 2005 (83 years)
Frederick Wade "Fritz" Mote was an American sinologist and a professor of History at Princeton University for nearly 50 years. His research and teaching interests focused on China during the Yuan and Ming dynasties. In collaboration with Denis C. Twitchett and John K. Fairbank he helped create The Cambridge History of China, a monumental history of China.
Go to Profile#38618
Thomas C. Reeves
#38630
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Thomas C. Reeves is a U.S historian who specializes in late 19th and 20th century America. Born into a blue collar family in Tacoma, Washington, Reeves received his B.A. at Pacific Lutheran University, his M.A. at the University of Washington, and his Ph.D. in history at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1966. After four years at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, he went on to become a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Parkside.
Go to Profile#38619
Salam Fayyad
#38631
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Salam Fayyad is a Jordanian-Palestinian politician, who served as the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority and the finance minister. He was Finance Minister from June 2002 to November 2005 and from March 2007 to May 2012. Fayyad was Prime Minister between June 2007 and June 2013.
Go to Profile#38620
Jörg Vogel
#38632
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Jörg Vogel is a German scientist in the field of RNA biology and microbiology. He holds a position as full professor, chairs the Institute for Molecular Infection Biology at the University of Würzburg, Germany, and is a founding Helmholtz-Institute director. Vogel studied biochemistry at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Imperial College London. After his PhD work he performed postdoctoral research at the Uppsala University, Sweden and was an EMBO fellow at the Hebrew University Jerusalem, Israel. From 2004 to 2009 he was a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology.
Go to Profile#38621
Ethan Stiefel
#38633
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Ethan Stiefel is an American dancer, choreographer, and director. He was a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre from 1997 until July 2012. He was the artistic director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet from 2011 to 2014. His wife is Gillian Murphy, also a principal dancer with ABT.
Go to Profile#38622
Gail Fine
#38634
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Gail Fine is a professor of philosophy emerita at Cornell University. She was also a visiting professor of ancient philosophy at Oxford University, and a senior research fellow at Merton College, Oxford University.
Go to Profile#38623
Manisha Sinha
#38635
Overall Influence
Manisha Sinha is an Indian-born American historian, and the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition , which won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize.
Go to Profile#38624
Gorilla Monsoon
#38636
Overall Influence
1937 - 1999 (62 years)
Robert James Marella , better known by his ring name of Gorilla Monsoon, was an American professional wrestler, play-by-play commentator, and booker. Monsoon is famous for his run as a villainous super-heavyweight main eventer, and later as the voice of the World Wrestling Federation , as commentator and backstage manager during the 1980s and 1990s. He also portrayed the on-screen role of WWF President from 1995 to 1997.
Go to Profile#38625
Bernadette Brooten
#38637
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Bernadette J. Brooten is an American religious scholar and Kraft-Hiatt Professor of Christian Studies at Brandeis University. Biography Brooten graduated from University of Portland with a B.A., and Harvard University with a Ph.D. in 1982. She studied theology at the University of Tübingen and at Hebrew University. She taught at the Claremont Graduate School, the University of Tübingen, Harvard Divinity School, and the University of Oslo with a 1998 Fulbright Fellowship. She served on the Advisory Committee for the Women's Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School from 1997 to 200...
Go to Profile#38626
Michael Shadlen
#38638
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Michael Neil Shadlen is an American neuroscientist and neurologist, whose research concerns the neural mechanisms of decision-making. He has been Professor of Neuroscience at Columbia University since 2012 and a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator since 2000. He is a member of the Kavli Institute for Brain Science, a Principal Investigator at the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#38627
William F. Tate IV
#38639
Overall Influence
William F. Tate IV is an African-American social scientist and higher education administrator. In May 2021, he was selected as president of the Louisiana State University system, and chancellor of the flagship school in Baton Rouge. He is the first Black person to hold the position, and the first to head any school in the Southeastern athletics conference.
Go to Profile#38628
Marley Marl
#38640
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Marlon Lu'Ree Williams , better known by his stage name Marley Marl, is an American DJ, record producer, rapper and record label founder, primarily operating in hip hop music. Marlon grew up in Queensbridge housing projects located in Queens, New York. He performed in local talent shows during the early days of rap music, further fueling his interest.
Go to Profile#38629
Wolfgang Michel-Zaitsu
#38641
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Wolfgang Michel/Michel-Zaitsu is a professor emeritus of Kyushu University in Fukuoka . He is a specialist in medicine and allied sciences in the history of east–west cultural exchange. In 1984 he was granted tenure as the first foreigner in a Japanese national university.
Go to Profile#38630
Meerjady Sabrina Flora
#38642
Overall Influence
Meerjady Sabrina Flora is a Bangladeshi physician, professor of epidemiology and public health specialist. She is the additional director general of Directorate General of Health Services . Previously, she headed the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research , the apex center for conducting disease surveillance, outbreak investigation, disease control, epidemic prevention and research in Bangladesh.
Go to Profile#38631
Beatriz Rico
#38643
Overall Influence
Beatriz Rico is a professor of developmental neurobiology at King's College London. Her research focuses on neural circuit development. Early life and education Beatriz was born in Madrid, Spain, where she completed her public primary and secondary education. She then attended Complutense University of Madrid to study biology, and earned her Ph.D. at the Autónoma University in Madrid under her supervisor Carmen Cavada.
Go to Profile#38632
Cynthia M. Bulik
#38644
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Cynthia Marie Bulik is an American psychologist and author. Bulik is perhaps best known for her clinical work and research on eating disorders in the United States. She is the Founding Director of the University of North Carolina Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders, the founder and director of the Centre for Eating Disorders Innovation at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, a Distinguished Professor of Eating Disorders in the Department of Psychiatry of the School of Medicine at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a professor of Nutrition in the Gillings School of Global Public Health.
Go to Profile#38633
Igor Torkar
#38645
Overall Influence
1913 - 2004 (91 years)
Igor Torkar was the pen name of Boris Fakin , a Slovenian writer, playwright, and poet best known for his literary descriptions of Communist repression in Yugoslavia after World War II. Life Torkar was born in a Slovene family in the village of Kostanjevica na Krasu, then part of the Austro-Hungarian County of Gorizia and Gradisca, now in Slovenia. He attended the Poljane Grammar School in Ljubljana. His teachers included the literary historian France Koblar, the writer Juš Kozak, and the painter Božidar Jakac.
Go to Profile#38634
Eldar Mahmudov
#38646
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Eldar Mahmudov Ahmad oglu is an Azerbaijani politician formerly serving as the Minister of National Security of Azerbaijan Republic. Early life Mahmudov was born in Baku in 1956 to the family of a scientist. His father's family is originally from the village of Shahtakhti in the Sharur region of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. He graduated from the Bunyadzadeh Institute of Economy in 1978 and Baku State University in 1993 . He holds the military rank of Lieutenant General as of March 16, 2005 and formerly served in the USSR Armed Forces.
Go to Profile#38635
St. Vincent
#38647
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Anne Erin Clark , known professionally as St. Vincent, is an American musician and singer. Her music is noted for its complex arrangements utilizing a wide array of instruments. St. Vincent is the recipient of various accolades, including three Grammy Awards. Her guitar playing has been praised for its melodic style and use of distortion, and she has been listed among the best guitarists of the 21st century by multiple publications. Rolling Stone named Clark as the 26th greatest guitarist of all time in 2023.
Go to Profile#38636
Theoren Fleury
#38648
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Theoren Wallace "Theo" Fleury is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player, author and motivational speaker. Fleury played for the Calgary Flames, Colorado Avalanche, New York Rangers, and Chicago Blackhawks of the National Hockey League , Tappara of Finland's SM-liiga, and the Belfast Giants of the UK's Elite Ice Hockey League. He was drafted by the Flames in the 8th round, 166th overall, at the 1987 NHL Entry Draft, and played over 1,000 games in the NHL between 1989 and 2003.
Go to Profile#38637
Michele Knobel
#38649
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Michele Knobel was a Professor of Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Montclair State University and an internationally recognized researcher and scholar in the area of literacy education, new literacies and digital technologies.
Go to Profile#38638
Rogers Albritton
#38650
Overall Influence
1923 - 2002 (79 years)
Rogers Garland Albritton was an American philosopher who served as chair of the Harvard and UCLA philosophy departments. He published little and inspired the entry "albritton" - a contraction of "all but written" - in the Philosophical Lexicon begun by Daniel Dennett . Albritton's specialties included ancient philosophy, philosophy of mind, free will, skepticism, metaphysics and the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Go to Profile#38639
Kristin Luker
#38651
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Kristin Luker is Elizabeth Josselyn Boalt Professor of Law in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program and Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Earlier she was the Doris Stevens Chair of Women's Studies at Princeton University and professor at the University of California, San Diego.
Go to Profile#38640
C. Sidney Burrus
#38652
Overall Influence
1934 - 2021 (87 years)
Charles Sidney Burrus was an American electrical engineer and the Maxfield and Oshman Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is widely known for his contributions to digital signal processing, especially FFT algorithms, IIR filter design, and wavelets.
Go to Profile#38641
Cam Neely
#38653
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Cameron Michael Neely is a Canadian professional ice hockey executive and former player. Neely played right wing for the Vancouver Canucks and Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League from 1983 to 1996, where he was one of the most dominant power forwardss of all-time. Neely was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2005. He currently serves as the president of the Bruins.
Go to Profile#38642
Anna J. Brown
#38654
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Anna Jaeger Brown is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Oregon. Early life Brown was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1952, and attended high school there at St. Mary's Academy where she graduated in 1970. She received a Bachelor of Science degree from Portland State University in 1975. Brown continued her education at Northwestern School of Law where she received a Juris Doctor in 1980. While in law school she worked as a law clerk for Judge John C. Beatty of the Multnomah County Circuit Court in Portland from 1978 to 1980. Following la...
Go to Profile#38643
Johannes Hürter
#38655
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Johannes Hürter is a German historian. He is the director of the Munich research division of the Institute of Contemporary History. His research interests focus mainly on the history of Nazi Germany and on post-war anti-terrorism policy.
Go to Profile#38644
Tamás Erdélyi
#38656
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Tamás Erdélyi is a Hungarian-born mathematician working at Texas A&M University. His main areas of research are related to polynomials and their approximations, although he also works in other areas of applied mathematics.
Go to Profile#38645
Marc Emery
#38657
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Marc Scott Emery is a Canadian cannabis rights activist, entrepreneur and politician. Often described as the "Prince of Pot", Emery has been a notable advocate of international cannabis policy reform, and has been active in multiple Canadian political parties at the provincial and federal levels. Emery has been jailed several times for his cannabis activism.
Go to Profile#38646
Robin Trower
#38658
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Robin Leonard Trower is an English rock guitarist who achieved success with Procol Harum throughout 1967–1971, and then again as the bandleader of his own power trio known as the Robin Trower Band.
Go to Profile#38647
David Croft
#38659
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
David Michael Croft , commonly referred to as Crofty, is a British television broadcaster for Sky Sports. He is the lead commentator for Sky's Formula One coverage, a role he has held since 2012. He was born and raised in Stevenage, England.
Go to Profile#38648
Alfredo Ardila
#38660
Overall Influence
1946 - 2021 (75 years)
Alfredo Ardila was a Colombian neuropsychologist. He graduated as a psychologist from the National University of Colombia and received a doctoral degree in neuropsychology from the Moscow State University where he worked with Alexander R. Luria. He published in cognitive and behavioral neurosciences, especially in neuropsychology. His research interests included brain organization of cognition, the historical origin of human cognition, aphasia, and bilingualism.
Go to Profile#38649
Glenn Dynner
#38661
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Glenn Davis Dynner is an American author and historian specializing in religion and history of East European Jewry. He is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies and a Professor and Chair of Religion at Sarah Lawrence College .
Go to Profile#38650
Hrund Ólöf Andradóttir
#38662
Overall Influence
Hrund Ólöf Andradóttir is the first woman to hold the position of professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering in Iceland. Professional experience Hrund completed her matriculation examination from Hamrahlid College in 1990 from the physics track. She graduated in 1994 from the University of Iceland with a B.Sc. in Civil Engineering with emphasis on water engineering. She then entered graduate studies at Ralph M. Parsons Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, USA. In 2000, Hrund became the first Icelandic woman to complete a doctorate in Civil and Environmental Engineering and the 10th Icelandic woman to complete a doctorate in engineering.
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