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
#39401
Peter Gourevitch
#39413
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Peter Gourevitch is a political scientist who is known for his research in international relations and comparative politics. He is professor emeritus of political science at the University of California, San Diego.
Go to Profile#39402
Celso Arango
#39414
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Celso Arango is a psychiatrist who has worked as a clinician, researcher, and educator in psychiatry and mental health, notably in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry, psychosis, and mental health promotion.
Go to Profile#39403
Jan N. Bremmer
#39415
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Jan N. Bremmer is a Dutch academic and historian. He served as a professor of Religious Studies and Theology at the University of Groningen. He specializes in history of ancient religion, especially ancient Greek religion and early Christianity.
Go to Profile#39404
John Chowning
#39416
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
John M. Chowning is an American composer, musician, discoverer, and professor best known for his work at Stanford University, the founding of CCRMA - Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in 1975 and his development of the digital implementation of FM synthesis and the digital sound spatialization while there.
Go to Profile#39405
Robin Fleming
#39417
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Robin Fleming is a medieval historian and a professor of history at Boston College. She is the president of the Medieval Academy of America and a 2013 MacArthur Fellow. She has written several books focusing on the people of Roman Britain and early medieval Britain, using both archaeological evidence and written records.
Go to Profile#39406
Bruce Gilchrist
#39418
Overall Influence
1930 - 2015 (85 years)
Bruce Gilchrist is considered one of the notable figures in modern computing history. Early life and education Gilchrist was born 4 August 1930 in Pontefract, Yorkshire, England and attended King Edward VII School in Kings Lynn. He harbored a keen interest in computing and computing devices from an early age.
Go to Profile#39407
Etienne Pays
#39419
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Etienne Pays is a Belgian molecular biologist and professor at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. His research interest is on trypanosomes. He obtained a PhD in Zoology from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles in 1974, and an Aggregation for Higher Education in 1984. Since January 1998, he is Professor at the ULB and since October 1992, Director of the Laboratory of Molecular Parasitology. From 1993 until 1996, he was President of the Belgian Society of Protozoology.
Go to Profile#39408
June Barrow-Green
#39420
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
June Barrow-Green is a professor of History of Mathematics at the Open University and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics. Education Barrow-Green obtained a BSc Hons in Mathematics in 1986 and an MSc in Mathematical Physics in 1989, both from King's College London. In 1993 she gained a PhD in mathematics from the Open University, under supervision of Jeremy Gray, on Poincaré and the Three Body Problem.
Go to Profile#39409
Jess Benhabib
#39421
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Jess Benhabib is a professor at New York University, and known for his contributions to growth theory and sunspot equilibria. Benhabib earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1976. He started his teaching career as an assistant professor at University of Southern California. In 1980, he became an associate professor at New York University and remained there ever since. Between 1984 and 1987 he served as Chairman of the Economics Department at NYU.
Go to Profile#39410
Madlib
#39422
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Otis Jackson Jr. , known professionally as Madlib, is an American DJ, music producer, multi-instrumentalist, and rapper. He is widely known for his collaborations with MF Doom , J Dilla , and Freddie Gibbs . Madlib has described himself as a "DJ first, producer second, and MC last." His stage name is an acronym for "Mind Altering Demented Lessons In Beats".
Go to Profile#39411
Roel Wieringa
#39423
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Roelf Johannes Wieringa is a Dutch computer scientist who was a Professor of Information Systems at the University of Twente, specialized in the "integration of formal and informal specification and design techniques".
Go to Profile#39412
Michael Gribskov
#39424
Overall Influence
Michael Gribskov is a professor of Biological Sciences and Computer Science at Purdue University. In 1979, Gribskov graduated from Oregon State University, with a Bachelor in Science Honors degree in Biochemistry and Biophysics. Later in 1985, he finished his PhD degree in Molecular Biology from University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Go to Profile#39413
Dany-Robert Dufour
#39425
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Dany-Robert Dufour is a French philosopher, professor of educational sciences at the university Paris-VIII. He teaches regularly abroad, particularly in Latin America. His main focus is symbolic processes with relevance to language philosophy, political philosophy and psychoanalysis. He is a frequent participant in cooperative artistic activities with music, literature or theatre.
Go to Profile#39414
David Rothman
#39426
Overall Influence
1937 - 2020 (83 years)
David Jay Rothman was professor of Social Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He also served as the president of the Institute on Medicine as a Profession . Rothman's work focused on the social history of American medicine and current health care practices. His research also explored human rights in medicine, including organ trafficking, AIDS, and the ethics of research in developing countries.
Go to Profile#39415
David R. Williams
#39427
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
David Rudyard Williams is the Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, as well as a professor of African and African American Studies and of Sociology at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#39416
Dan Diner
#39428
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Dan Diner is an Israeli-German historian and political writer. He is emeritus professor of modern history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Diner is Chair of the Alfred Landecker Foundation and its Governing Council. Formerly he served as Director of the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish history and Jewish culture, and professor at the historical seminary of the University of Leipzig. He is also a full member of the philological-historical class of the Saxon Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#39417
Lewis Lockwood
#39429
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Lewis H. Lockwood is an American musicologist whose main fields are the music of the Italian Renaissance and the life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven. Joseph Kerman described him as "a leading musical scholar of the postwar generation, and the leading American authority on Beethoven".
Go to Profile#39418
Alice Coleman
#39430
Overall Influence
1923 - 2023 (100 years)
Alice Mary Coleman was a British geographer. A professor at King's College London, she was noted for directing the 1960s Second Land Use Survey of Britain, as well as for analyses of land use planning and urban design which have influenced the design of residential developments since the 1980s. She was a member of the Freedom Association.
Go to Profile#39419
Tao Ho
#39431
Overall Influence
1936 - 2019 (83 years)
Tao Ho was a Hong Kong architect best known for designing the Bauhinia emblem on the flag of Hong Kong. Background Born in Shanghai in 1936 to Ping Yin Ho and Chin Hwa, Ho grew up with elder brother Chien and younger sister Diana. He graduated from Pui Ching Middle School and went on to receive a BA in art history with a minor in music and theology at Williams College in Massachusetts. Then, he studied for his MArch at Harvard's Graduate School of Design under the tutelage of Josep Lluís Sert, Sigfried Giedion, and Walter Gropius, the latter of whom hired Ho upon graduation as his personal a...
Go to Profile#39420
Soumitra Chatterjee
#39432
Overall Influence
1935 - 2020 (85 years)
Soumitra Chatterjee was an Indian film actor, play-director, playwright, writer, thespian and poet. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential actors in the history of Indian cinema. He is best known for his collaborations with director Satyajit Ray, with whom he worked in fourteen films.
Go to Profile#39421
Kazuo Tanaka
#39433
Overall Influence
Kazuo Tanaka from the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2014 for contributions to fuzzy control system design and analysis.
Go to Profile#39422
Bogdan Suceavă
#39434
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Bogdan Suceavă is a Romanian-American mathematician and writer, working as professor of mathematics at California State University Fullerton. He is also a honorary research professor with the STAR-UBB Institute, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
Go to Profile#39423
Linda S. Wilson
#39435
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Linda S. Wilson is an American academic administrator who served as president of Radcliffe College from 1989 to 1999. Early life Wilson was born in Washington, D.C. in 1936. Education Wilson received an A.B. with honors from H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College at Tulane University , and went on to receive a Ph.D in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison . She, also, received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Newcomb College at Tulane University and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Maryland.
Go to Profile#39424
Wilhelm Solheim
#39436
Overall Influence
1924 - 2014 (90 years)
Wilhelm G. Solheim II was an American anthropologist recognized as the most senior practitioner of archaeology in Southeast Asia, and as a pioneer in the study of Philippine and Southeast Asian prehistoric archaeology. He is perhaps best known, however, for hypothesizing the existence of the Nusantao Maritime Trading and Communication Network , one of two dominant hypotheses regarding the peopling of the Asia-Pacific region during the Neolithic age.
Go to Profile#39425
Margarethe von Trotta
#39437
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Margarethe von Trotta is a German film director, screenwriter, and actress. She has been referred to as a "leading force" of the New German Cinema movement. Von Trotta's extensive body of work has won awards internationally. She was married to and collaborated with director Volker Schlöndorff. Although they made a successful team, von Trotta felt she was seen as secondary to Schlöndorff. Subsequently, she established a solo career for herself and became "Germany's foremost female film director, who has offered the most sustained and successful female variant of Autorenkino in postwar German film history".
Go to Profile#39426
Michael C. Rea
#39438
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Michael Cannon Rea is an American analytic philosopher and, since 2017, John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He delivered the 2017 Gifford Lecture on divine hiddenness.
Go to Profile#39427
Isidore Okpewho
#39439
Overall Influence
1941 - 2016 (75 years)
Isidore Okpewho, NNOM , was a Nigerian novelist and critic. He won the 1976 African Arts Prize for Literature, and the 1993 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best Book Africa. Also a classicist and scholar, he has been described as one of the most brilliant men of his generation and one of Nigeria's most iconic literary figures. His academic career took him to the US, where he lived with his wife and four children since 1991 until his death, in Binghamton, New York. According to Professor G. G. Darah of the Nigerian Oral Literature Association , Okpewho "will be best remembered for his original contribution to the discourse of oral literature and epics.
Go to Profile#39428
Martha Brill Olcott
#39440
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Martha Brill Olcott is an American expert on Central Asia and the Caspian. She was a senior associate with the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, co-directing the Carnegie Moscow Center's Project on Ethnicity and Politics in the former Soviet Union from 1995 to 2014. Dr. Olcott taught political science at Colgate University from 1975 until 1998. She previously served as a special consultant to Acting United States Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and as director of the Central Asian American Enterprise Fund. Dr. Olcott is currently a visitin...
Go to Profile#39429
Kevin Schwantz
#39441
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Kevin Schwantz is an American former professional motorcycle road racer. He was the world champion of the 1993 FIM Road Racing World Championship. Early life Schwantz, whose parents owned a motorcycle shop, learned to ride at the age of four. He began his competitive career as a trials rider, following his father and Uncle, Darryl Hurst , in that sport. From trials, he progressed to motocross in his teens, becoming a top regional MX racer. After a serious crash in qualifying for the Houston Supercross in 1983, he decided to quit motocross.
Go to Profile#39430
Carlos Peña González
#39442
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Carlos Hernán Peña González is a lawyer and university professor who is since 2005 rector of the Diego Portales University and Sunday columnist of El Mercurio. Peña is also vicepresident of CIPER Chile; member of the directory of Fundación Nicanor Parra; Counsellor of Teatro Municipal de Santiago; member of the directory of Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos and member of the Comisión de Verdad Histórica y Nuevo Trato con los Pueblos Indígenas . He was also a government advisor in the Reforma Procesal Penal and family law .
Go to Profile#39431
John Sutton
#39443
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
John Sutton is the Sir John Hicks Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. Education Sutton received his undergraduate education at University College Dublin, a graduate degree from Trinity College Dublin, and earned his Ph.D. at University of Sheffield.
Go to Profile#39432
Noemí Goytia
#39444
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Noemí Goytia is an Argentine architect and professor specialized in history, criticism, heritage and project processes. She has received the CICOP Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Center for Heritage Conservation in 2014. She is the author of numerous books and magazine articles on her specialty.
Go to Profile#39433
Rennae Stubbs
#39445
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Rennae Stubbs is an Australian tennis coach, television commentator, and former professional player. She is the host of The Power Hour on Amazon Prime Video Sports Talk. She worked at the Seven Network between 2011 and 2018 as an analyst and is now a full time commentator for ESPN tennis and the host of her own podcast, The Rennae Stubbs Tennis Podcast. She was an Australian Institute of Sport scholarship holder.
Go to Profile#39434
David Siegmund
#39446
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
David Oliver Siegmund is an American statistician who has worked extensively on sequential analysis. Biography Siegmund grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri. He received his baccalaureate degree, in mathematics, from Southern Methodist University in 1963, and a doctorate in statistics from Columbia University in 1966. His Ph.D. advisor was Herbert Robbins. After being an assistant and then a full professor at Columbia, he went to Stanford University in 1976, where he is currently a professor of statistics. He has served twice as the chair of Stanford's statistics department. He has also h...
Go to Profile#39435
Helen Zille
#39447
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Otta Helene Maree , known as Helen Zille, is a South African politician. She has served as the Chairperson of the Federal Council of the Democratic Alliance since 20 October 2019. From 2009 until 2019, she was the Premier of the Western Cape province for two five-year terms, and a member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament. She served as Federal Leader of the Democratic Alliance from 2007 to 2015 and as Mayor of Cape Town from 2006 to 2009.
Go to Profile#39436
Ken Jeong
#39448
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Kendrick Kang-Joh Jeong is an American stand-up comedian, actor, producer, writer and former physician. He rose to prominence for playing Leslie Chow in The Hangover film series and Ben Chang in the NBC sitcom Community . He created, wrote and produced the ABC sitcom Dr. Ken , in which he portrays the titular character, and he has appeared in the films Knocked Up , Role Models , Furry Vengeance , The Duff , Ride Along 2 , Crazy Rich Asians , Scoob! and Tom & Jerry . College Gameday
Go to Profile#39437
Geoffrey Hull
#39449
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Geoffrey Stephen Hull is an Australian linguist, ethnologist and historian who has made contributions to the study of Romance, Celtic, Slavonic, Semitic, Austronesian and Papuan languages, in particular to the relationship between language and culture.
Go to Profile#39438
Anand Menon
#39450
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Anand Menon is Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at King's College London in the United Kingdom and was appointed in January 2014 as director of the UK in a Changing Europe initiative. He was a special adviser to the House of Lords EU committee.
Go to Profile#39439
Dorte Hammershøi
#39451
Overall Influence
Dorte Hammershøi is a Danish professor at the Department of Electronic Systems at Aalborg University. She works in the field of human sound perception, with special reference to electro-acoustic applications, including audiometric calibration, oto-acoustic emissions, hearing damage, spatial hearing, and measurement of noise sources close to the ear.
Go to Profile#39440
Lamar Dodd
#39452
Overall Influence
1909 - 1996 (87 years)
Lamar Dodd was an American painter whose work reflected a love of the American South. Early life and education Born in Fairburn, Georgia, to Rev. Francis Jefferson Dodd and Etta Cleveland and reared in LaGrange, Georgia, Dodd trained in the South, including a short stay at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
Go to Profile#39441
Pheme Perkins
#39453
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Pheme Perkins is a Professor of Theology at Boston College, where she has been teaching since 1972. She is a nationally recognized expert on the Greco-Roman cultural setting of early Christianity, as well as the Pauline Epistles and Gnosticism.
Go to Profile#39442
Armin Pfahl-Traughber
#39454
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Armin Pfahl-Traughber is a German political scientist, sociologist and government official. He is professor of political science at the Federal University of Applied Administrative Sciences in Germany and is a former director of the office for far-right extremism in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. He is an expert on far-right and far-left political extremism, terrorism, antisemitism and the history of ideas. He is editor of the Jahrbuch für Extremismus- und Terrorismusforschung .
Go to Profile#39443
Ricardo Quaresma
#39455
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Ricardo Andrade Quaresma Bernardo is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays as a winger. He began his career at Sporting CP and went on to play for Barcelona, Inter Milan, Porto , Chelsea, Beşiktaş , Al-Ahli Dubai, Kasımpaşa and Vitória de Guimarães. Regarded as a mercurial talent, his tricks, including the rabona and trivela made him a popular figure among fans around the world.
Go to Profile#39444
Carlos Peña
#39456
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Carlos Felipe Peña is a Dominican former professional baseball first baseman and current broadcaster. He played in Major League Baseball for the Texas Rangers, Oakland Athletics, Detroit Tigers, Boston Red Sox, Tampa Bay Devil Rays/Rays, Chicago Cubs, Houston Astros, and Kansas City Royals.
Go to Profile#39445
Malcolm Richardson
#39457
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Malcolm D. Richardson is Director of the Mycology Reference Centre, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust at Wythenshawe Hospital and an honorary Professor of Medical Mycology at the University of Manchester.
Go to Profile#39446
Rainier III, Prince of Monaco
#39458
Overall Influence
1923 - 2005 (82 years)
Rainier III was Prince of Monaco from 1949 to his death in 2005. Rainier ruled the Principality of Monaco for almost 56 years. Rainier was born at the Prince's Palace of Monaco, the only son of Hereditary Princess Charlotte and Prince Pierre. During his reign, he was responsible for the transformation of Monaco's economy, shifting from its traditional casino gambling base to its current status as a tax haven and cultural destination. The Prince also coordinated the substantial reforms of Monaco's constitution, which limited the powers of sovereign rule.
Go to Profile#39447
Bertrand Lemennicier
#39459
Overall Influence
1943 - 2019 (76 years)
Bertrand Lemennicier was a French economist, expert in public choice economics and economic analysis of law. He was a member of the American Economic Association as well as of the Mont Pelerin Society. Charismatic and iconoclastic, he taught generations of future finance and law professionals to reason as economists.
Go to Profile#39448
Larry Hughes
#39460
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Larry Darnell Hughes Sr. is an American former professional basketball player. Hughes played for eight different teams during his 14-year career in the National Basketball Association . Hughes attended Saint Louis University before being selected with the eighth overall pick in the 1998 NBA draft. Hughes is the founder of the Larry Hughes Basketball Academy.
Go to Profile#39449
James Blake
#39461
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
James Blake Litherland is an English musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He first received recognition for a series of 2010 EPs including CMYK and Klavierwerke, and he released his self-titled debut album in 2011 to critical praise. His second album Overgrown was released in 2013, bringing him to international attention, and later was awarded the Mercury Prize. He released his third album The Colour in Anything in 2016, his fourth Assume Form in 2019, his fifth Friends That Break Your Heart in 2021, and his sixth Playing Robots Into Heaven in 2023.
Go to Profile#39450
Dwight A. McBride
#39462
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Dwight A. McBride is an American academic administrator and scholar of race and literary studies. From April 16, 2020 to August 2023, he served as the ninth president of The New School. McBride previously served as provost, executive vice president for academic affairs, and Asa Griggs Candler Professor of African American studies at Emory University.
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