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
#39051
Don Sutton
#39063
Overall Influence
1945 - 2021 (76 years)
Donald Howard Sutton was an American professional baseball pitcher. He played in Major League Baseball for 23 seasons as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Houston Astros, Milwaukee Brewers, Oakland Athletics, and California Angels. Sutton won a total of 324 games, pitched 58 shutouts including five one-hitters and ten two-hitters, and led the National League in walks plus hits per inning pitched four times. He is seventh on baseball's all-time strikeout list with 3,574.
Go to Profile#39052
Børge Jessen
#39064
Overall Influence
1907 - 1993 (86 years)
Børge Christian Jessen was a Danish mathematician best known for his work in analysis, specifically on the Riemann zeta function, and in geometry, specifically on Hilbert's third problem. Early years Jessen was born on 19 June 1907 in Copenhagen to Hans Jessen and Christine Jessen . He attended Skt. Jørgens Gymnasium, where he was taught by the Hungarian mathematician Julius Pal during his first year. In 1925, Jessen graduated from the gymnasium and enrolled at the University of Copenhagen. During his time at the university he got to know Harald Bohr, then a leading figure in Danish mathematics.
Go to Profile#39053
Rishikesh Narayanan
#39065
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Rishikesh Narayanan is an Indian neuroscientist, computer engineer and a professor at the Molecular Biophysics Unit of the Indian Institute of Science. He is the principal investigator at the Cellular Neurophysiology Laboratory of MBU where his team is engaged in researches on experimental and theoretical aspects of information processing in single neurons and their networks. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian ...
Go to Profile#39054
John Slattery
#39066
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
John M. Slattery Jr. is an American actor and director. He is known for his role as Roger Sterling Jr. in the AMC drama series Mad Men , for which he was nominated four times for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. For his role he won two Critics' Choice Television Awards and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Go to Profile#39055
Richard Frackowiak
#39067
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Richard Stanislaus Joseph Frackowiak, born 26 March 1950 in London, is a British and French neurologist and neuroscientist. He is best known for his role in the development of neuroimaging, as the founding director of the Functional Imaging Laboratory at University College London and as one of the initiators, in 2013, of the Human Brain Project , a ten-year European project coordinated by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne with the goal of advancing knowledge in the fields of neuroscience, computing and brain-related medicine.
Go to Profile#39056
Laurie Metcalf
#39068
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Laura Elizabeth Metcalf is an American actress. Metcalf is known for her complex and versatile roles across the stage and screen. She has received various accolades throughout her career spanning more than four decades, including two Tony Awards and four Primetime Emmy Awards, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and three Golden Globe Awards.
Go to Profile#39057
Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff
#39069
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff is an Israeli-American professor of rabbinic literature at Yeshiva University's Caroline & Joseph Gruss Institute in Jerusalem. Biography Rabbi Rakeffet attended Bnei Akiva as a youth. Meir Kahane was one of his madrichim . Rabbi Rakeffet met his future wife Malkah while giving a shiur at Bnei Akiva.
Go to Profile#39058
Graham Twelftree
#39070
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Graham H. Twelftree is an Australian biblical scholar who currently serves as the Academic Dean of London School of Theology in London, UK. Education Upon earning his master's degree from Mansfield College, Oxford, Twelftree went on to study under New Testament scholar James D. G. Dunn at the University of Nottingham where he completing his doctoral dissertation Jesus, the Exorcist: A Contribution to the Study of the Historical Jesus.
Go to Profile#39059
Gerrit Cole
#39071
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (36 years)
Gerrit Alan Cole is an American professional baseball pitcher for the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball . He previously played for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Houston Astros. Cole played for the baseball team at Orange Lutheran High School, and was selected by the New York Yankees in the first round of the 2008 MLB Draft. Cole opted not to sign, and instead attended the University of California, Los Angeles , where he played college baseball for the UCLA Bruins.
Go to Profile#39060
Robert E. Connick
#39072
Overall Influence
1917 - 2014 (97 years)
Robert E. Connick was a professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Life Connick studied chemistry at Berkeley, receiving his B.S. in 1939 and his Ph.D. in 1942. He was a research associate on the Manhattan Project from 1943 - 1946, and has been a professor, chair of the chemistry department, dean of the college of chemistry, vice chancellor, and chair of the academic senate at both Berkeley and the entire University of California system.
Go to Profile#39061
Dennis O'Connor
#39073
Overall Influence
Dennis R. O'Connor, was the Associate Chief Justice of Ontario from 2001–2012 and sat on the Court of Appeal for Ontario from 1998–2012. O'Connor attended De La Salle College and Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto. He practised law from 1973 until 1976. From 1976 to 1980 he became a teacher at the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law and from there went to practise litigation at Borden, Elliot in Toronto. He was a negotiator for the Government of Canada in the Yukon land claim debate.
Go to Profile#39062
Ellen Voorhees
#39074
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Ellen Marie Voorhees is an American computer scientist known for her work in document retrieval, information retrieval, and natural language processing. She works in the retrieval group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology .
Go to Profile#39063
Ramón A. Gutiérrez
#39075
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Ramón Arturo Gutiérrez is an American historian of race and ethnic relations. He studies "Mexican-American history, Indian-White relations in the Americas, social and economic history of the Southwest, colonial Latin American and Mexican immigration." He has authored or edited many books and journal articles on these subjects.
Go to Profile#39064
Bernard Arcand
#39076
Overall Influence
1945 - 2009 (64 years)
Bernard Arcand was a French-Canadian anthropologist, author and communicator. He was for several decades a professor of the anthropology department of Laval University. Born in Deschambault, Québec, he was film director Denys Arcand and actor Gabriel Arcand's brother. He studied social sciences at the Université de Montréal . He later studied at the University of Cambridge where he obtained a certificate and a doctorate , in social anthropology. He taught at Copenhagen University in 1971, and then as an assistant professor at McGill University between 1972 and 1976. He was assistant and the...
Go to Profile#39065
Auguste Dick
#39077
Overall Influence
1910 - 1993 (83 years)
Auguste Franziska Dick was an Austrian mathematician, historian of mathematics, and handwriting expert, known for her research on the history of mathematics under the Nazis, and for her biography of Emmy Noether.
Go to Profile#39066
Kevin Feige
#39078
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Kevin Feige is an American film and television producer, and the president of Marvel Studios and the primary producer of the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise since 2007. The films he has produced have a combined worldwide box office gross of over , making him the highest grossing producer of all time, with Avengers: Endgame becoming the highest-grossing film at the time of its release.
Go to Profile#39067
Tetsuya Chikushi
#39079
Overall Influence
1935 - 2008 (73 years)
was a Japanese journalist, TV presenter and news anchor. Career Chikushi was born in Hita, Ōita on 23 June 1935. He graduated from Waseda University's school of political science and economics, and joined the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in 1959 as a reporter.
Go to Profile#39068
Martha Lucía Ospina Martínez
#39080
Overall Influence
Martha Lucía Ospina Martínez is a Colombian epidemiologist and doctor who specializes in public health management who was the director of the National Institute of Health until Her last day on October 31, 2022 when she went to work for the Omic Sconces Laboratory. a native of Cali, she had previously served as the Ministry of Health’s National Director of Epidemiology and Demography and director of the High Cost Diseases Account.
Go to Profile#39069
Allyson Jule
#39081
Overall Influence
Allyson Mary Julé is a Canadian academic and Professor of Education at the University of the Fraser Valley, in British Columbia, Canada. She has lectured worldwide in her field, and written and edited many academic publications on feminist linguistics and pedagogy.
Go to Profile#39070
Bharathiraja
#39082
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Bharathiraja is an Indian film director and actor who works mainly in the Tamil film industry. Making his debut in 1977 with 16 Vayathinile, he is known for realistic and sensitive portrayals of rural life in his films. As of 2017, he has won six National Film Awards, four Filmfare Awards South, six Tamil Nadu State Film Awards and a Nandi Award. He has also directed films in Telugu and Hindi. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri award, India's fourth-highest civilian honour, in 2004 for his contribution to the film industry. In 2005, he was conferred with the Doctor of Le...
Go to Profile#39071
Larry Masinter
#39083
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Larry Melvin Masinter is an early internet pioneer and ACM Fellow. After attending Stanford University, he became a Principal Scientist of Xerox Artificial Intelligence Systems and author or coauthor of 26 of the Internet Engineering Task Force's Requests for Comments.
Go to Profile#39072
Darra Goldstein
#39084
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Darra Goldstein is an American author and food scholar who is the Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian, Emerita at Williams College. She is the founding editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, which won the 2012 James Beard award for Publication of the Year, and she served as its editor-in-chief from 2001 to 2012. She also served as editor-in-chief of the short-lived magazine CURED from Zero Point Zero Production. Goldstein is the author of six award-winning cookbooks, most recently Beyond the North Wind: Russia in Recipes and Lore, which topped the list of Be...
Go to Profile#39073
Bernard Tomic
#39085
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
Bernard Tomic is an Australian professional tennis player whose career-high ranking was world No. 17. As a junior, Tomic enjoyed a successful career in which he won an Orange Bowl title and two junior Grand Slam singles titles, the 2008 Australian Open and 2009 US Open. As a pro, he has won the 2013 Apia International Sydney, 2014 Claro Open Colombia, 2015 Claro Open Colombia and the 2018 Chengdu Open. He made a final appearance at the 2016 Acapulco Telcel and a quarterfinal appearance at the 2011 Wimbledon Championships, as well as at the 2015 BNP Paribas Open, the 2015 Shanghai Masters, and...
Go to Profile#39074
Mark Kilgard
#39086
Overall Influence
Mark J. Kilgard is a graphics software engineer working at Nvidia. Prior to joining Nvidia, Mark Kilgard worked at Compaq and Silicon Graphics. While at Silicon Graphics, he authored the OpenGL Utility Toolkit, better known as GLUT, to make it easy to write OpenGL-based 3D examples and demos. The primary reason for this was the lack of a windowing and input API with OpenGL using GLX.
Go to Profile#39075
Jo Jo White
#39087
Overall Influence
1946 - 2018 (72 years)
Joseph Henry White was an American basketball player. As an amateur, he played at the University of Kansas, where he was named a second-team All-American twice. White was part of the U.S. men's basketball team during the 1968 Summer Olympics, winning a gold medal with the team.
Go to Profile#39076
Nat Glover
#39088
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Nathaniel Glover Jr. , is an American former college administrator and former police officer and sheriff. Glover is considered a pioneer in leadership in Jacksonville, Florida. He was the first African American elected sheriff in Florida since the end of the Reconstruction. He was a mayoral candidate and served as the President of Edward Waters College, Florida's first institution established for the education of African-Americans. He served as President of Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida from 2010 to 2018. Previously he was the Sheriff of Jacksonville from 1995 to 2003, after serving in the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office since 1966.
Go to Profile#39077
Lester Salamon
#39089
Overall Influence
1943 - 2021 (78 years)
Lester M. Salamon was a professor at Johns Hopkins University. He was also the director of the Center for Civil Society Studies at The Johns Hopkins Institute for Health and Social Policy Studies. Salamon has written or edited over 20 books in addition to hundreds of articles, monographs and chapters that have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Voluntas, and numerous other publications. He was a pioneer in the empirical study of the nonprofit sector in the United States, and is considered by many experts in his field to have been a leading specialist on alternative tools of government action and on the nonprofit sector in the U.S.
Go to Profile#39078
Devlet Bahçeli
#39090
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Devlet Bahçeli is a Turkish politician, economist, former deputy prime minister, and current chairman of the far-right, ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party . An academic in economics from Gazi University, Bahçeli is a founder of the Grey Wolves, and was elected as the chairman of the MHP in the first congress held after the death of Alparslan Türkeş in 1997. He entered parliament for the first time in the 1999 general election as a deputy from Osmaniye, taking part as deputy prime minister in DSP-MHP-ANAP coalition between 1999 and 2002, and ultimately brought the government down. He ...
Go to Profile#39079
Alexander J. Wulf
#39091
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Alexander Johannes Wulf is a professor of business law at the SRH Hochschule Berlin, visiting researcher at the University of Kyōto, and lecturer at the Bucerius Law School. Academic development He was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley , West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences and the University of Oxford . From 2003 to 2008, he studied research methods, business and law at various universities, including the London School of Economics, the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, Bucerius Law School and the SRH Hochschule Berlin. In 2013, he obtained...
Go to Profile#39080
Evelyn Welch
#39092
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Evelyn Kathleen Welch is an American scholar of the Renaissance and Early Modern Period, and Vice Chancellor of the University of Bristol. Prior to her role as Vice Chancellor, Evelyn was the professor of Renaissance Studies, Provost, and Senior Vice President at King’s College London. She served as the Interim President and Principal of King's College London from February to June 2021.
Go to Profile#39081
Kathryn M. Dominguez
#39093
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Kathryn Mary Elizabeth Dominguez is a Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the University of Michigan and is a former nominee for the Governor of the U.S. Federal Reserve System. Early life and education Dominguez was born on November 26, 1960, in Los Angeles, California. She received her Artium Baccalaureus degree in 1982 from Vassar College. She received a Doctor of Philosophy in Economics in 1987 from Yale University. Prior to attaining her Ph.D., she served on the research staff of the Fiscal Analysis Division of the Congressional Budget Office during the summer of 1984 and as a ...
Go to Profile#39082
L. S. Stavrianos
#39094
Overall Influence
1913 - 2004 (91 years)
Leften Stavros Stavrianos was a Greek-Canadian historian. His most influential books are considered to be A Global History: From Prehistory to the 21st Century and The Balkans since 1453. He was one of the first historians to challenge Orientalist views of the Ottoman Empire.
Go to Profile#39083
John C. Williams
#39095
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
John Carroll Williams is the president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, having also served as president of Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2011 to 2018. He is currently serving as vice chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee.
Go to Profile#39084
Tharman Shanmugaratnam
#39096
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Tharman Shanmugaratnam , also known mononymously as Tharman, is a Singaporean politician and economist who has been serving as the ninth president of Singapore since 2023. Prior to his presidency, Tharman served as Senior Minister of Singapore between 2019 and 2023, Coordinating Minister for Social Policies between 2015 and 2023, and Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore between 2011 and 2023.
Go to Profile#39085
Karen Duff
#39097
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Karen Elizabeth Keitley Duff is a British scientist known for her work on Alzheimer's disease. Her most notable work focused on the development and characterization of mouse models of Alzheimer's disease amyloid deposition. She became Centre Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute's hub at University College London in spring 2020.
Go to Profile#39086
William Jordy
#39098
Overall Influence
1917 - 1997 (80 years)
William H. Jordy was a leading American architectural historian. At the time of his death, Jordy was Henry Ledyard Goddard Professor Emeritus of Art History at Brown University, where he taught for many years.
Go to Profile#39087
Göran Hägg
#39099
Overall Influence
1947 - 2015 (68 years)
Göran Olof Waldemar Hägg was a Swedish author, critic and docent in literature science. Hägg grew up in Tallkrogen, south of Stockholm. After graduating from studies in philosophy at Stockholm University in 1969, and also graduating from the Teachers high school in Uppsala, Hägg worked between 1971 and 1979 as a teacher at Arbetsmarknadsutbidlningen in Stockholm. His experiences there are the background to the satirical novel Det automatiska paradiset, which was published in 1979. His first book release happened before that, in 1972, with the poem collection called Ögon.
Go to Profile#39088
Robert Wuthnow
#39100
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Robert John Wuthnow is an American sociologist who is widely known for his work in the sociology of religion. He is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Princeton University, where he is also the former chair of the Department of Sociology and director of the Princeton University Center for the Study of Religion.
Go to Profile#39089
Theodore H. Von Laue
#39101
Overall Influence
1916 - 2000 (84 years)
Theodore H. Von Laue was an American historian and professor emeritus of history at Clark University. He was a winner of Guggenheim Fellowship . After having studied at the University of Freiburg, Germany, in 1937 Von Laue was sent to Princeton University by his father Max von Laue, who did not want him to grow up "in a country run by gangsters". He finished his studies with a PhD about the social legislation of Otto von Bismarck. He then taught at Swarthmore College, the University of California, Riverside, and the Washington University in St. Louis, when he finally became professor of European History at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#39090
Helen G. Grundman
#39102
Overall Influence
Helen Giessler Grundman is an American mathematician. She is the Director of Education and Diversity at the American Mathematical Society and Research Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Bryn Mawr College. Grundman is noted for her research in number theory and efforts to increase diversity in mathematics.
Go to Profile#39091
Suzanne Maman
#39103
Overall Influence
Suzanne Maman is a social scientist who is trained in public health and serving as a professor in the Department of Human Behavior at the University of North Carolina and an associate dean for global health at the University's Gillings School. Maman also serves as UNC faculty director at the Duke-UNC Rotary Peace Center. Her specific research interests concern HIV/AIDS among women.
Go to Profile#39092
Cairns Craig
#39104
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Robert Cairns Craig is a Scottish literary scholar, specialising in Scottish and modernist literature. He has been Glucksman Professor of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen since 2005. Before that, he taught at the University of Edinburgh, serving as head of the English literature department from 1997 to 2003. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2005.
Go to Profile#39093
Sigbert Prais
#39105
Overall Influence
1928 - 2014 (86 years)
Sigbert Jon Prais, FBA was an economist and had been the senior research fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research since 1970. Life On 19 December 1928, Sigbert Jon Prais was born in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany; he was the oldest of four children to orthodox Jewish parents. His family arrived in Britain in 1934 as Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi oppression in Germany. Prais' father established a manufacturing company that made metal frames and ornaments for women's handbags, in Birmingham. Prais was sent to school in London and later continued his studies at the King Edward's School, Birmingham.
Go to Profile#39094
Anne Condon
#39106
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Anne Elizabeth Condon, is an Irish-Canadian computer scientist, professor, and former head of the Computer Science Department of the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on computational complexity theory, DNA computing, and bioinformatics. She has also held the NSERC/General Motors Canada Chair for Women in Science and Engineering from 2004 to 2009, and has worked to improve the success of women in the sciences and engineering.
Go to Profile#39095
Tanja Lange
#39107
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Tanja Lange is a German cryptographer and number theorist at the Eindhoven University of Technology. She is known for her research on post-quantum cryptography. Education and career Lange earned a diploma in mathematics in 1998 from the Technical University of Braunschweig. She completed her Ph.D. in 2001 at the Universität Duisburg-Essen. Her dissertation, jointly supervised by Gerhard Frey and YoungJu Choie, concerned Efficient Arithmetic on Hyperelliptic Curves.
Go to Profile#39096
Gisbert Wüstholz
#39108
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Gisbert Wüstholz is a German mathematician internationally known for his fundamental contributions to number theory and arithmetic geometry. Early life and education Gisbert Wüstholz was born in 1948 in Tuttlingen and studied from 1967 to 1973 at the University of Freiburg where he finished his PhD under the supervision of Theodor Schneider in 1978.
Go to Profile#39097
Jógvan Isaksen
#39109
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jógvan Isaksen is a Faroese writer and literary historian. He is best known for his crime novels and for his book about Faroese literature . He is leader of the Faroese publication house which has its address in the Faroe Islands, though its committee is located in Copenhagen. It publishes Faroese books and is the oldest Faroese publishing house, having been founded in 1910.
Go to Profile#39098
Steven Clarke
#39110
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Steven G. Clarke, an American biochemist, is a director of the UCLA Molecular Biology Institute, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCLA biochemistry department. Clarke heads a laboratory at UCLA's department of chemistry and biochemistry. Clarke is famous for his work on molecular damage and discoveries of novel molecular repair mechanisms.
Go to Profile#39099
Zeng Xianyi
#39111
Overall Influence
1936 - 2011 (75 years)
Zeng Xianyi was a professor of legal history and was the dean of Renmin University of China Law School. Biography Zeng Xianyi received his Bachelor of Laws degree from Renmin University of China Department of Law in 1960. He became the head of the department from 1990 to 1994 and then dean of the law school until 2005. He was then given the title of Honorary Dean of the law school.
Go to Profile#39100
Heather Koldewey
#39112
Overall Influence
Heather Koldewey is the co-founder of Project Seahorse and head of marine and freshwater for the Zoological Society of London-London Zoo Aquarium. She additionally serves as an honorary professor for University of Exeter and a National Geographic explorer. Her research interests focus on marine and freshwater conservation, seahorse biology and genetics, and the impact of the aquarium trade on wild populations of fish and aquatic invertebrates.
Go to Profile