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
#38701
Raphael E. Freundlich
#38713
Overall Influence
1928 - 2012 (84 years)
Raphael E. Freundlich was a classical scholar, humanist and Latinist trained in structural linguistics. He was a professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University in Israel. His fields of study and teaching included: ancient Greek, Biblical studies and classical Latin.
Go to Profile#38702
Sam Lipsyte
#38714
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Sam Lipsyte is an American novelist and short story writer. Life The son of the sports journalist Robert Lipsyte, Sam Lipsyte was born in New York City and raised in Closter, New Jersey, where he attended Northern Valley Regional High School at Demarest. He attended Brown University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1990. At Brown, Lipsyte lived with Steven Johnson.
Go to Profile#38703
David B. Dusenbery
#38715
Overall Influence
David B. Dusenbery is a biophysicist with a central interest in how information influences the behavior of organisms. In later years, he also considered the physical constraints hydrodynamics imposes on microorganisms and gametes.
Go to Profile#38704
Mikhail Shaposhnikov
#38716
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Mikhail Yevgenyevich Shaposhnikov is a Soviet-born Swiss theoretical physicist and a professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne . He is active in the fields of cosmology and particle physics.
Go to Profile#38705
Peter Karp
#38717
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Peter D. Karp is director of the Bioinformatics Research Group at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Karp leads the development of the BioCyc database collection . BioCyc databases combine genome, metabolic pathway, and regulatory information for thousands of organisms.
Go to Profile#38706
Cheng Li
#38718
Overall Influence
Cheng Li is a Chinese-American scholar specializing in Chinese elite politics and contemporary Chinese society; he has served as the director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution from 2014 to 2023, replacing Kenneth Lieberthal in the role. He is currently professor of political science and founding director of the Centre on Contemporary China and the World at the University of Hong Kong. Li is a prominent authority on Chinese politics, specifically leadership dynamics and the changes in leaders over generations.
Go to Profile#38707
Jón Atli Benediktsson
#38719
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Jón Atli Benediktsson is the rector and president of the University of Iceland and professor in electrical and computer engineering at the university. His research fields are remote sensing, image analysis, pattern recognition, machine learning, data fusion, analysis of biomedical signals and signal processing. He has published over 400 scientific articles in these fields and is one of the most influential scientists in the world according to Publons’ lists in 2018 and 2019.
Go to Profile#38708
Miriam Cooke
#38720
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Miriam Cooke is an American academic in Middle Eastern and Arab world studies. She focuses on modern Arabic literature and critical reassessment of women's roles in the public sphere. She was educated in the United Kingdom, and is co-editor of the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies. She has published over 100 articles and 130 book reviews.
Go to Profile#38709
Stanley Awramik
#38721
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Stanley Awramik is an American biogeologist and paleontologist. He is best known for his work related to the Precambrian. In 2013, he was inducted as a fellow of the Geological Society of America. Career Born in New England, he first studied stromatolites as a graduate student under famed paleobotanist Elso Sterrenberg Barghoorn at Harvard University. In 1979, he became a faculty member at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was a contemporary of Preston Cloud.
Go to Profile#38710
Thorbjørn Jagland
#38722
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Thorbjørn Jagland is a Norwegian politician from the Labour Party. He served as the Secretary General of the Council of Europe from 2009 to 2019. He served as the 32nd Prime Minister of Norway from 1996 to 1997, as the minister of Foreign Affairs from 2000 to 2001 and as the president of the Storting from 2005 to 2009.
Go to Profile#38711
Michael G. Morony
#38723
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Michael Gregory Morony has been a professor of history at UCLA since 1974, with interests in the history of Ancient and Islamic Near East. Morony was born in 1939 in Sacramento and was raised in Alaska. He holds a BA in Near Eastern Languages from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MA in Islamic Studies and a PhD in History from the University of California, Los Angeles. His dissertation, originally advised by Gustave von Grunebaum, was concerned with the history of Mesopotamia after the Islamic Conquests. The edited dissertation was later published as Iraq After the Muslim Conquest.
Go to Profile#38712
Chris Weinke
#38724
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Christopher Jon Weinke is an American football coach, former professional football player, and former professional baseball player. After spending six years in the Toronto Blue Jays minor league baseball system, he enrolled at Florida State University at the age of 25, and played quarterback for the Florida State Seminoles. He thereafter played professionally in the NFL, where he spent most of his career with the Carolina Panthers.
Go to Profile#38713
Jane Curtin
#38725
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Jane Therese Curtin is an American actress and comedian. First coming to prominence as an original cast member on the hit TV comedy series Saturday Night Live in 1975, she went on to win back-to-back Emmy Awards for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series on the 1980s sitcom Kate & Allie portraying the role of Allison "Allie" Lowell. Curtin later starred in the hit series 3rd Rock from the Sun , playing the role of Dr. Mary Albright.
Go to Profile#38714
Ruth Lister, Baroness Lister of Burtersett
#38726
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Margot Ruth Aline Lister, Baroness Lister of Burtersett, , is currently Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University. She has written or contributed to a number of books, pamphlets and articles on poverty, social security and women's citizenship.
Go to Profile#38715
Werner Baer
#38727
Overall Influence
1931 - 2016 (85 years)
Werner Baer was an American economist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Jorge Lemann Professor of Economics. He received his bachelor's degree from CUNY Queens College in 1953, and a Master's and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1955 and 1958 respectively. His research centered on Latin America's industrialization and economic development, especially of Import Substitution Industrialization and Brazil.
Go to Profile#38716
Mads Mikkelsen
#38728
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Mads Dittmann Mikkelsen is a Danish actor and former gymnast and dancer. He rose to fame in Denmark as an actor for his roles such as Tonny in the first two films of the Pusher film trilogy , Detective Sergeant Allan Fischer in the television series Rejseholdet , Niels in Open Hearts , Svend in The Green Butchers , Ivan in Adam's Apples and Jacob Petersen in After the Wedding .
Go to Profile#38717
Tim Smith
#38729
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Tim Smith is an English broadcaster and radio personality in the UK. He is best known as being part of the team for Steve Wright in the Afternoon on BBC Radio 2. On 1 July 2022 Wright announced that his afternoon show would end in Autumn 2022, after 23 years. It was also announced that Smith would be leaving BBC Radio 2, together with Janey Lee Grace.
Go to Profile#38718
David Engel
#38730
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
David Engel is an American historian and Professor of Holocaust and Judaic Studies at New York University. Engel received his Ph.D. from the University of California in Los Angeles in 1979, and completed postdoctoral study at Hebrew University's Division of Holocaust Studies, Institute for Contemporary Jewry in Jerusalem.
Go to Profile#38719
Maurice L'Abbé
#38731
Overall Influence
1920 - 2006 (86 years)
Maurice L'Abbé was a Canadian academic and mathematician. Born in Ottawa, Ontario, L'Abbé obtained his license in mathematics in 1945 from the Université de Montréal, and a doctorate in mathematics from the Princeton University in 1951. He joined the faculty of science in the Université de Montréal becoming an associate professor in 1950 and full professor in 1956. He was director of the Université de Montréal's Department of Mathematics from 1957 to 1968. He was dean of the Faculty of Science from 1964 to 1968 and Vice-Rector for Research from 1968 to 1978.
Go to Profile#38720
T. A. Sarasvati Amma
#38732
Overall Influence
1918 - 2000 (82 years)
T. A. Sarasvati Amma was a scholar born in Cherpulassery, Palakkad District, Kerala, India. She has contributed to the fields of history of Mathematics and Sanskrit, through her work on Geometry of ancient and medieval India.
Go to Profile#38721
Leonid Berlyand
#38733
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Leonid Berlyand is a Soviet and American mathematician, a professor of Penn State University. He is known for his works on homogenization, Ginzburg–Landau theory, mathematical modeling of active matter and mathematical foundations of deep learning.
Go to Profile#38722
Dustin Lance Black
#38734
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Dustin Lance Black is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and LGBT rights activist. He is known for writing the film Milk, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2009. He has also subsequently written the screenplays for the film J. Edgar and the 2022 crime miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven.
Go to Profile#38723
Lynn Redgrave
#38735
Overall Influence
1943 - 2010 (67 years)
Lynn Rachel Redgrave was an English actress. She won two Golden Globe Awards during her career. A member of the Redgrave family of actors, Lynn trained in London before making her theatrical debut in 1962. By the mid-1960s, she had appeared in several films, including Tom Jones and Georgy Girl , which won her a New York Film Critics Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy, as well as earning her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Go to Profile#38724
Musa Najafi
#38736
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Musa Najafi is an Iranian professor, historian, and author. He is the director of the Department of Political Thought and Philosophy at Islamic Azad University and directs the Ph.D. group in political science at Imam Khomeini Educational Research Institute, with a focus on issues in Iran. Najafi also heads the Research Institute of Culture and Islamic Civilization and Revolution, where he is head of the Department of Islamic Revolution Theory. Najafi is a former faculty member of the Department of the Political science at Tehran University.
Go to Profile#38725
Terry Rudolph
#38737
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Terry Rudolph is a professor of quantum physics at Imperial College London. He co-founded quantum computing firm PsiQuantum. Research Terry Rudolph's research focuses on quantum information and the foundations of quantum mechanics. Notably, he is one of the discoverers of the PBR theorem, which allows for a formal and rigorous test on the ontology of quantum states. This discovery has been hailed as one of the most important in the foundations of quantum theory since Bell's theorem.
Go to Profile#38726
Remy Ma
#38738
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Reminisce Kioni Mackie , known professionally as Remy Ma, is an American rapper. Discovered by Big Pun, she came to prominence for her work as a member of Fat Joe's group, Terror Squad. In 2006, she released her debut studio album There's Something About Remy: Based on a True Story, which became a modest success, peaking at number 33 on the Billboard 200 chart. Ma's most commercially successful songs include "Whuteva", "Ante Up ", "Lean Back", "Conceited", and "All the Way Up".
Go to Profile#38727
Susan Weintraub
#38739
Overall Influence
Susan Weintraub is an American scientist. She is a professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio . She received a BS in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967, MS in chemistry from Trinity University in 1970 and a PhD in biochemistry from UTHSCSA in 1979. She was the president of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry for the period of 2012-2014. In 2017 she was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . She is an associate editor of the Journal of Proteome Research.
Go to Profile#38728
Arno Villringer
#38740
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Arno Villringer is a Director at the Department of Neurology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany; Director of the Department of Cognitive Neurology at University of Leipzig Medical Center; and Academic Director of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and the Mind&Brain Institute, Berlin. He holds a full professorship at University of Leipzig and an honorary professorship at Charité, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. From July 2022 to June 2025 he is the Chairperson of the Human Sciences Section of the Max Planck Society.
Go to Profile#38729
James Morone
#38741
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
James Morone is an American political scientist and author, noted for his work on health politics and policy and on popular participation and morality in American politics and political development.
Go to Profile#38730
Anders Franzén
#38742
Overall Influence
1918 - 1993 (75 years)
Carl Gustaf Anders Franzén was a Swedish marine technician and an amateur naval archaeologist. He is most famous for having located the 1628 wreck of the Swedish galleon Vasa in 1956 and participated in her salvage 1959–1961. He also participated in the exploration for the wrecks of Swedish warships Kronan, Riksäpplet and Resande Man as well as Gustav Vasa's flagship Lybska Svan.
Go to Profile#38731
Alex Tizon
#38743
Overall Influence
1959 - 2017 (58 years)
Tomas Alexander Asuncion Tizon was a Filipino-American author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His book Big Little Man, a memoir and cultural history, explores themes related to race, masculinity, and personal identity. Tizon taught at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. His final story, titled "My Family's Slave", was published as the cover story of the June 2017 issue of The Atlantic after his death, sparking significant debate.
Go to Profile#38732
Maurice Keen
#38744
Overall Influence
1933 - 2012 (79 years)
Maurice Hugh Keen was a British historian specializing in the Middle Ages. Life Keen's father had been the Oxford University head of finance and a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and after schooling at Winchester College, Maurice became an undergraduate there in 1954. He was a contemporary and lifelong friend of Tom Bingham, later the Senior Law Lord, as well as of the military historian, Sir John Keegan, whose sister Mary he married.
Go to Profile#38733
Jessica Borger
#38745
Overall Influence
Jessica Geraldine Borger is an Australian T Cell immunologist, lecturer and graduate course coordinator at the Central Clinical School, Monash University. Her research has added to the understanding of the molecular mechanisms of T cell function. Additionally, Borger is a news and commentary editor for Immunology & Cell Biology and a guest associate editor for Frontiers in Immunology, and a reviewer for several academic journals. Jessica also advocates for gender equality in science, technology, engineering and mathematics in her position a member of the Gender Equity, Diversity and Inclusion...
Go to Profile#38734
James Allsop
#38746
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
James Leslie Bain Allsop was the Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia, in office from 1 March 2013 to 6 April 2023. He was previously President of the New South Wales Court of Appeal, where he presided from 2 June 2008 to 28 February 2013.
Go to Profile#38735
Gideon Greif
#38747
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Gideon Greif is an Israeli historian who specializes in the history of the Holocaust, especially the history of the Auschwitz concentration camp and particularly the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz. He served as a visiting lecturer for Jewish and Israeli History at the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Texas at Austin during the academic year 2011–2012. He headed a commission that issued a controversial report in July 2021 that denied that the killing of Bosnian Muslims at and around Srebrenica in July 1995 constituted genocide.
Go to Profile#38736
Roland Bénabou
#38748
Overall Influence
Roland Bénabou is a French economist, who is currently the Theodore A. Wells '29 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He is also a research associate at the Collège de France.
Go to Profile#38737
Sarafina Nance
#38749
Overall Influence
Sarafina El-Badry Nance is an Egyptian-American science communicator, astrophysicist and Ph.D. student in the Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on supernovae and their applications to cosmology. Nance is known for her use of social media, in particular Twitter, where she discusses astrophysics and activism. She is also an advocate for women's health and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Go to Profile#38738
Paul Wennberg
#38750
Overall Influence
Paul O. Wennberg is the R. Stanton Avery Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Science and Engineering at the California Institute of Technology . He is the director of the Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science. He is chair of the Total Carbon Column Observing Network and a founding member of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory project, which created NASA's first spacecraft for analysis of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. He is also the principal investigator for the Mars Atmospheric Trace Molecule Occultation Spectrometer to investigate trace gases in Ma...
Go to Profile#38739
Avraham Diskin
#38751
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Abraham Diskin is an Israeli political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a professor at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. Diskin was the Chair of the Political Science Department of the Hebrew University and the Chair of the Israel Political Science Association. He also served as a visiting professor at several universities in the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan. Diskin has published over twenty books and monographs, mostly about Israeli politics.
Go to Profile#38740
Josh Hawley
#38752
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Joshua David Hawley is an American politician and lawyer serving as the senior United States senator from Missouri, a seat he has held since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, Hawley served as the 42nd attorney general of Missouri from 2017 to 2019, before defeating two-term incumbent Democratic senator Claire McCaskill in the 2018 election.
Go to Profile#38741
Amar Gupta
#38753
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Amar Gupta is an Indian computer scientist based in the United States. Gupta has worked in academics, private companies, and international organizations in positions that involved analysis and leveraging of opportunities at the intersection of technology and business, as well as the design, development, and implementation of prototype systems that led to widespread adoption of new techniques and technologies. He has surmounted several strategic, business, technical, economic, legal, and public policy barriers related to several innovative products and services.
Go to Profile#38742
Dinesh Thakur
#38754
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Dinesh S. Thakur is an Indian mathematician and a professor of mathematics at University of Rochester. Before moving to Rochester, Thakur was a professor at University of Arizona. His main research interest is number theory.
Go to Profile#38743
Patricia Easteal
#38755
Overall Influence
Prof Patricia Lynn Easteal PhD AM is an academic, author, activist and advocate, best known for her research, publications and teaching in the area of women and the law. In 2010 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia 'For service to the community, education and the law through promoting awareness and understanding of violence against women, discrimination and access to justice for minority groups'.
Go to Profile#38744
Nicole Berline
#38756
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Nicole Berline is a French mathematician. Life and work Berline studied from 1963 to 1966 at the and she was as an exchange student at the Moscow State University in Moscow in 1966/67. In 1967, she taught at the ENS de Jeunes filles and in 1971, she worked for the CNRS . In 1974 she received her doctorate at the University of Paris under the supervision of Jacques Dixmier . In 1976/77 she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1977 she became a professor at the University of Rennes 1 and she has taught at the Ecole Polytechnique since 1984.
Go to Profile#38745
William Berenberg
#38757
Overall Influence
1915 - 2005 (90 years)
William Berenberg, M.D. was an American physician, Harvard professor, and pioneer in the treatment and rehabilitation of cerebral palsy. Early life Berenberg was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, to immigrant parents. Growing up in Chelsea, Massachusetts, he proved a bright and studious young man and earned admission to Harvard University on scholarship. However, his father was reportedly too proud to allow his son to take the "hand-out" and Berenberg worked his own way through the Ivy League institution, commuting from home and cleaning dishes for extra income. He graduated from Harvard cum laude in 1936 and entered Boston University Medical School later that year, earning his M.D.
Go to Profile#38746
Genesis P-Orridge
#38758
Overall Influence
1950 - 2020 (70 years)
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge was an English singer-songwriter, musician, poet, performance artist, visual artist, and occultist who rose to notoriety as the founder of the COUM Transmissions artistic collective and lead vocalist of seminal industrial band Throbbing Gristle. P-Orridge was also a founding member of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth occult group, and fronted the experimental pop rock band Psychic TV.
Go to Profile#38747
Ivor Robinson
#38759
Overall Influence
1923 - 2016 (93 years)
Ivor Robinson was a British-American mathematical physicist, born and educated in England, noted for his important contributions to the theory of relativity. He was a principal organizer of the Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics.
Go to Profile#38748
Robert Somol
#38760
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Robert E. Somol Jr. is an architectural theorist and was director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 2007 to 2022. His writing has been centrally-linked to "post-critical" architectural theory at the turn of the 21st century; the concept is similar to that of postcritique found in literary criticism.
Go to Profile#38749
Jan Pieter Krahnen
#38761
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Jan Pieter Krahnen is Professor for corporate finance at the Goethe-University Frankfurt and director of the Center for Financial Studies and the Research Center SAFE. Life After completing an apprenticeship at the BHF-Bank, Krahnen studied business administration at the Goethe University Frankfurt where he earned a PhD in 1984. Four years later he received his postdoctoral lecture qualification from the Freie Universität Berlin. After staying at the University of Cologne and the Justus Liebig University Giessen, Krahnen returned to the Goethe University Frankfurt in 1995. At the same time h...
Go to Profile#38750
Paul Sutcliffe
#38762
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Paul Michael Sutcliffe is British mathematical physicist and mathematician, currently Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Durham. He specialises in the study of topological solitons.
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