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
#39251
David Wevill
#39263
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
David Anthony Wevill is a Japanese-born Canadian poet and translator. He became a dual citizen in 1994. Wevill is a professor emeritus in the Department of English at The University of Texas at Austin.
Go to Profile#39252
Pete Dye
#39264
Overall Influence
1925 - 2020 (95 years)
Paul Dye Jr. , known as Pete Dye, was an American golf course designer and a member of a family of course designers. He was married to fellow designer and amateur champion Alice Dye. Early life Dye was born on December 29, 1925, in Urbana, Ohio. He was the son of Paul F. "Pink" and Elizabeth Dye. A few years before Dye's birth, his father became involved with golf and built a nine-hole course on family land in Champaign County called the "Urbana Country Club." As a youngster, he worked and played that course. While attending Urbana High School, he won the Ohio state high school golf championship, and medaled in the state amateur golf championship, all before entering the U.S.
Go to Profile#39253
Theo Bemelmans
#39265
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Theodore Aloysius Maria Bemelmans is a Dutch computer scientist and Emeritus Professor of Administrative Information Systems and Automation at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Biography Born in Heerlen, Bemelmans in 1962 started to study Econometrics at the Tilburg University, where he received his MA in 1968. Later in 1976 there he also received his PhD with a thesis entitled "Researchplanning in de Onderneming" under supervision of Piet A. Verheyen and Wim van Hulst.
Go to Profile#39254
Itzhak Gilboa
#39266
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Itzhak Gilboa is an Israeli economist with contributions in decision theory. After obtaining his BA in Mathematics and Economics from Tel Aviv University, he earned his Ph.D. in 1987 under the supervision of David Schmeidler. He currently holds professorship positions at HEC Paris and Reichman University.
Go to Profile#39255
Autumn Kent
#39267
Overall Influence
Autumn Kent is an American mathematician specializing in topology and geometry. She is a professor of mathematics and Vilas Associate at the University of Wisconsin. She is a transgender woman and a promoter of trans rights.
Go to Profile#39256
Becca Levy
#39268
Overall Influence
Becca R. Levy is a professor of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and Professor of Psychology at Yale University. She is a leading researcher in the fields of social gerontology and psychology of aging. She is credited with creating the field of how age stereotypes, which are assimilated from the culture, impact the health of older individuals. The Dean of Columbia School of Public Health describes Levy as "a pioneer" in the "growing body of impressive research showing that our attitudes toward aging affect our health, our resilience in the face of adversity, and our very survival....
Go to Profile#39257
Hideroku Hara
#39269
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Hideroku Hara is a Japanese legal scholar and professor emeritus at Shiga University. He was granted the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Law for his study of The Legal Theory on the Distribution of the Synergistic Effects caused by Mergers from Waseda University. His research covers Commercial law, Corporate Law and Securities.
Go to Profile#39258
Sergei B. Chernyshev
#39270
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Sergei Chernyshev , born 4 August 1952, Bohodukhiv, Kharkiv Oblast, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic is a Russian philosopher, educator and expert in the field of organization and management science.
Go to Profile#39259
Richard Newbold Adams
#39271
Overall Influence
1924 - 2018 (94 years)
Richard Newbold Adams was an American anthropologist. His parents were Randolph Greenfield Adams and Helen Spiller Adams. He grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Adams served in the United States military during World War II, then pursued postsecondary education, obtaining a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in 1947, followed by a master's and doctoral degree at Yale University in 1949 and 1951, respectively. He worked in Peru and Guatemala before teaching at Michigan State University starting in 1956. Adams joined the University of Texas at Austin faculty in 1961. He received a Gu...
Go to Profile#39260
Ann Ellis Hanson
#39272
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Ann Ellis Hanson is an American papyrologist and historian who holds the position of senior research scholar and lecturer in the Department of Classics at Yale University. Professor Hanson received a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Michigan, and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#39261
Holly Hughes
#39273
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Holly Hughes is an American lesbian performance artist. She began as a feminist painter in New York City but is best known for her connection with the NEA Four, with whom she was denied funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, and for her work with the Women's One World Cafe. Her plays explore sexuality, body images and the female mind. She is the recipient of several awards including the Lambda Book Award and an Obie Award. She is a professor of art and design as well as theater and drama at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design.
Go to Profile#39262
Trymaine Lee
#39274
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Trymaine D. Lee is an American journalist. He shared a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of Hurricane Katrina as part of a team at The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. From 2006 to 2010, Lee wrote for The New York Times and from early 2011 to November 2012 he was a senior reporter at The Huffington Post. Since then Lee has been a national reporter for MSNBC, where he writes for the network's digital arm, and hosts the podcast Into America.
Go to Profile#39263
Nikky Finney
#39275
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Nikky Finney is an American poet. She was the Guy Davenport Endowed Professor of English at the University of Kentucky for twenty years. In 2013, she accepted a position at the University of South Carolina as the John H. Bennett, Jr. Chair in Southern Letters and Literature. An alumna of Talladega College, and author of four books of poetry and a short-story cycle, Finney is an advocate for social justice and cultural preservation. Her honors include the 2011 National Book Award for her collection Head Off & Split.
Go to Profile#39264
Phillip Fulmer
#39276
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Phillip Edward Fulmer Sr. is a former American football player, coach, and athletic director at the University of Tennessee. He served as head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers football team from 1992 to 2008, compiling a 152–52 record. He is best known for coaching the Volunteers in the first BCS National Championship Game in 1998, defeating the Florida State Seminoles. Fulmer was the Volunteers' 22nd head football coach.
Go to Profile#39265
Nouria Hernandez
#39277
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Nouria Hernandez is a Swiss biologist and the rector of the University of Lausanne . She was professor of molecular biology at the University of Lausanne from 2004 to 2016. Life and career Nouria Hernandez studied at the University of Geneva and received a doctorate from the University of Heidelberg . From 1983 to 1986, she then worked at the Yale University. In 1987, she was nominated group leader at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and, in 1988, became professor at the Watson School of Biological Sciences.
Go to Profile#39266
Maria Laurino
#39278
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Maria Laurino is an American journalist, essayist, memoirist, and former political speechwriter. Early life and education Maria Laurino, a third generation Italian-American, grew up in North Jersey. She graduated from Georgetown University and received her graduate degree in English literature from New York University. In 2018, Laurino was honored as a Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella d'Italia by the Italian Consul General Francesco Genuardi on behalf of Italian President Sergio Mattarella.
Go to Profile#39267
Marilyn Friedman
#39279
Overall Influence
1945 - 2015 (70 years)
Marilyn Ann Friedman is an American philosopher. She holds the W. Alton Jones Chair of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Education In 1967, she received an A.B. in political science from Washington University in St. Louis. In 1968, she moved to Canada for political reasons and resided there for a decade. By 1974 she received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. In 1964, while Friedman was taking a year off from college, she was persuaded by what she refers to as "a kind of political ignorance and apathy" by political chaos.
Go to Profile#39268
Joel Mark Noe
#39280
Overall Influence
1943 - 1991 (48 years)
Joel Noe , FACS, was a plastic surgeon at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, who founded one of the nation's first burn units and argon laser programs. He specialized in burn care and the laser removal of birthmarks.
Go to Profile#39269
Swae Lee
#39281
Overall Influence
1993 - Present (33 years)
Khalif Malik Ibn Shaman Brown , known professionally by his stage name Swae Lee, is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. Known for his wide vocal range and genre-bending, Lee is one half of the hip hop duo Rae Sremmurd with his brother Slim Jxmmi. As a member of Rae Sremmurd, he achieved success with the singles "No Flex Zone", "No Type", and "Black Beatles", the last of which topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In 2017, he was featured on French Montana's single "Unforgettable", which earned him his first top ten on the Billboard Hot 100 as a soloist, and was later certified Diamond b...
Go to Profile#39270
Alexander Cairncross
#39282
Overall Influence
1911 - 1998 (87 years)
Sir Alexander Kirkland Cairncross , known as Sir Alec Cairncross, was a British economist. He was the brother of the spy John Cairncross and father of journalist Frances Cairncross and public health engineer and epidemiologist Sandy Cairncross.
Go to Profile#39271
Claude Lanzmann
#39283
Overall Influence
1925 - 2018 (93 years)
Claude Lanzmann was a French filmmaker known for the Holocaust documentary film Shoah . Early life Lanzmann was born on 27 November 1925 in Paris, France, the son of Paulette and Armand Lanzmann. His family was Jewish, and had immigrated to France from The Russian Empire. He was the brother of writer Jacques Lanzmann. Lanzmann attended the in Clermont-Ferrand. While his family disguised their identity and went into hiding during World War II, he joined the French resistance at the age of 17, along with his father and brother, and fought in Auvergne. Lanzmann opposed the French war in Algeri...
Go to Profile#39272
R. J. Q. Adams
#39284
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Ralph James Quincy Adams is an author and historian. He is professor of European and British history at Texas A&M University. Bibliography Arms and the Wizard: Lloyd George and the Ministry of Munitions, 1915–1916 The Conscription Controversy in Great Britain, 1900-18 Edwardian Conservatism The Great War, 1914-18: Essays on the Military, Political and Social History of the First World War British Politics and Foreign Policy in the Age of Appeasement, 1935-39 British Appeasement and the Origins of World War II Bonar Law Europe, Crisis and Conflict: 1890–1945 Balfour: The Last Grandee "Britain ...
Go to Profile#39273
David Ferry
#39285
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (102 years)
David Russell Ferry was an American poet, translator, and educator. He published eight collections of his poetry and a volume of literary criticism. He won the National Book Award for Poetry for his 2012 collection Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations.
Go to Profile#39274
Andrew Garfield
#39286
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Andrew Russell Garfield is an English and American actor. He has received various accolades, including a Tony Award, a BAFTA TV Award and a Golden Globe, in addition to nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award, a Laurence Olivier Award and two Academy Awards. Time included Garfield on its list of 100 most influential people in the world in 2022.
Go to Profile#39275
H. Thomas Johnson
#39287
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
H. Thomas Johnson is an American accounting historian, and Professor of Business Administration at Portland State University, known for his work on the history of accounting and accounting thought Life and work Johnson obtained his BA in economics from Harvard University and his MBA in accounting from Rutgers University. He obtained a PhD in economic history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He went on to earn a Certified Public Accountant license.
Go to Profile#39276
William G. Perry
#39288
Overall Influence
1913 - 1998 (85 years)
William G. Perry Jr. was an educational psychologist who studied the cognitive development of students during their college years. Life and career William Graves Perry Jr. was born in Paris and graduated from Harvard University. He was the son of architect William G. Perry and Eleanor Gray Perry.
Go to Profile#39277
Ada Ferrer
#39289
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Ada Ferrer is a Cuban-American historian. She is Julius Silver Professor of History and Latin American Studies at New York University. She was awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book Cuba: An American History.
Go to Profile#39278
6ix9ine
#39290
Overall Influence
1996 - Present (30 years)
Daniel Hernandez , known professionally as 6ix9ine and also as Tekashi69, is an American rapper. His music has been marked by an aggressive style of rapping, while his controversial public persona is characterized by his distinctive rainbow-colored hair, extensive tattoos, legal issues, and publicized celebrity feuds.
Go to Profile#39279
Brendan Gleeson
#39291
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Brendan Gleeson is an Irish actor and film director. He is the recipient of three IFTA Awards, two BIFA's, and a Primetime Emmy Award and has been nominated twice for a BAFTA Award, five times for a Golden Globe Award and once for an Academy Award. In 2020, he was listed at number 18 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors. He is the father of actors Domhnall Gleeson and Brian Gleeson.
Go to Profile#39280
Pete Docter
#39292
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Peter Hans Docter is an American filmmaker and animator. He is the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios. He is best known for directing the animated feature films Monsters, Inc. , Up , Inside Out , and Soul , and being a key figure and collaborator at Pixar. He has been nominated for nine Oscars and has won three for Best Animated Feature—for Up, Inside Out and Soul—making him the first person in history to win the category three times. He has also been nominated for nine Annie Awards , a BAFTA Children's Film Award and a Hochi Film Award. He has described himself as a "geeky kid...
Go to Profile#39281
Jerzy Kolendo
#39293
Overall Influence
1933 - 2014 (81 years)
Jerzy Władysław Kolendo was an acknowledged Polish authority on the history and archaeology of Ancient Rome. He was an exponent of the French Annales school, an epigraphist and specialist in the relations between the Barbaricum and the early Roman Empire.
Go to Profile#39282
Edward Beiser
#39294
Overall Influence
1942 - 2009 (67 years)
Edward Beiser was an American political scientist, constitutional scholar, law professor and medical ethicist who taught at Brown University from 1968 to 2003. He also served as associate dean of Brown's medical school.
Go to Profile#39283
Martin Barre
#39295
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Martin Lancelot Barre is an English guitarist best known for his longtime role as lead guitarist of British rock band Jethro Tull, with whom he recorded and toured from 1968 until the band's initial dissolution in 2011. Barre played on all of Jethro Tull's studio albums from their 1969 album Stand Up to their 2003 album The Jethro Tull Christmas Album. In the early 1990s he began a solo career, and he has recorded several albums as well as touring with his own live band.
Go to Profile#39284
Ian Gatley
#39296
Overall Influence
Ian Gatley was the former Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs of New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey.He is also a Distinguished Professor of Physics in the department of Physics at the College of Science and Liberal Arts in NJIT. He is a prolific scholar well known in Astronomy and Imaging Science.
Go to Profile#39285
Dustin Rhodes
#39297
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Dustin Patrick Runnels is an American professional wrestler. He is currently signed with All Elite Wrestling , where he performs under the ring name Dustin Rhodes. He is best known for his multiple tenures with WWE from 1995 to 2018 under ring name Goldust. A second generation wrestler, he is the son of WWE Hall of Famer Dusty Rhodes and the half-brother of Cody Rhodes. He is also known for his appearances with World Championship Wrestling , Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and All Elite Wrestling.
Go to Profile#39286
Kate Jones
#39298
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Katherine Elizabeth Jones is a British biodiversity scientist, with a special interest in bats. She is Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity, and Director of the Biodiversity Modelling Research Group, at University College London. She is a past chair of the Bat Conservation Trust.
Go to Profile#39287
Sam Hunt
#39299
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Samuel Percival Maitland Hunt is a New Zealand poet, especially known for his public performances of poetry, not only his own poems, but also the poems of many other poets. He has been referred to as New Zealand's best-known poet.
Go to Profile#39288
Barbara Herrnstein Smith
#39300
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Barbara Herrnstein Smith is an American literary critic and theorist, best known for her work Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory. She is currently the Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory at Duke University, and also Distinguished Professor of English at Brown University.
Go to Profile#39289
Yu-chien Kuan
#39301
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Yu-chien Kuan or Guan Yuqian was a Chinese-born German sinologist, writer and translator. The son of a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party official, he was denounced as a "rightist" and persecuted during the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution. This drove him to escape from China using a Japanese passport stolen from his workplace. He landed in Egypt and spent a year and half in prison for illegal entry, before being admitted to West Germany in 1969 as a political refugee.
Go to Profile#39290
Deepak Kapur
#39302
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Deepak Kapur is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico. Biography Kapur was born in a lower-middle-class family based in Amritsar, where his father, Nawal Kishore Kapur, was a cloth broker; his mother, Bimla Vati, was a housewife.
Go to Profile#39291
Jürgen Renn
#39303
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Jürgen Renn is a German historian of science, and since 1994 Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Short biography Renn studied physics at the Free University of Berlin and at the Sapienza University of Rome. In 1987 he received his Ph.D in mathematical physics from the Technical University of Berlin.
Go to Profile#39292
Long John Baldry
#39304
Overall Influence
1941 - 2005 (64 years)
John William "Long John" Baldry was an English musician and actor. In the 1960s, he was one of the first British vocalists to sing the blues in clubs and shared the stage with many British musicians including the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Before achieving stardom, Rod Stewart and Elton John were members of bands led by Baldry. He enjoyed pop success in 1967 when "Let the Heartaches Begin" reached No. 1 in the UK, and in Australia where his duet with Kathi McDonald "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" reached No. 2 in 1980.
Go to Profile#39293
J. Richard Fisher
#39305
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
James Richard Fisher is an American astronomer. He received his Ph.D. in Astronomy in 1972 from the University of Maryland, College Park and his B.S. in Physics in 1965 from the Pennsylvania State University, University Park.
Go to Profile#39294
Adrian Bejan
#39306
Overall Influence
#39295
Bagher Larijani
#39307
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Bagher Ardeshir Larijani is an Iranian medical practitioner at Tehran University of Medical Sciences. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer and Director General of the Endocrinology and Metabolism Research Institute which has been selected as the highest-ranking research institute in Iran on numerous occasions. According to Google Scholar, in February 2020, his citations exceeded 28021 with an h-index equal to 73. Since 2011, Essential Sciences Indicators of ISI Web of Sciences has announced him to be amongst the world’s top 1% scientists. Professor Larijani’s main fields of interest in...
Go to Profile#39296
István Aranyosi
#39308
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
István Aranyosi is a Hungarian philosopher and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bilkent University. He is best known for his works on philosophy of mind and metaphysics. Books The Peripheral Mind: Philosophy of Mind and the Peripheral Nervous System, Oxford University Press, 2013God, Mind and Logical Space: A Revisionary Approach to Divinity, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013
Go to Profile#39297
Philip Tagg
#39309
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Philip Tagg is a British musicologist, writer and educator. He is co-founder of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and author of several influential books on popular music and music semiotics.
Go to Profile#39298
Sanjay Dutt
#39310
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Sanjay Balraj Dutt is an Indian actor who works in Hindi cinema in addition to a few Kannada, Tamil, Punjabi and Telugu films. In a career spanning over four decades, Dutt has won several accolades and acted in over 135 films, ranging from romance to comedy genres, though usually in action genres, thus proving himself one of the most popular Hindi film actors since the 1980s.
Go to Profile#39299
Haym Soloveitchik
#39311
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Haym Soloveitchik is an American Modern Orthodox rabbi and historian. He is the only son of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. He graduated from the Maimonides School which his father founded in Brookline, Massachusetts and then received his B.A. degree from Harvard College in 1958 with a major in History. After two years of post-graduate study at Harvard, he moved to Israel and began his studies toward an M.A. and PhD at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, under the historian Professor Jacob Katz. He wrote his Master's thesis on the Halakha of gentile wine in medieval Germany. His doctorate, which he received in 1972, concentrated on laws of pawnbroking and usury.
Go to Profile#39300
John R. Everett
#39312
Overall Influence
1918 - 1992 (74 years)
John Rutherford Everett was a college administrator. He was President of Hollins College, the first Chancellor of the Municipal College System of the City of New York, and the President of the New School for Social Research.
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