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
#39501
Yuki Tanaka
#39513
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
is a History Professor at Hiroshima University. He has written extensively about forced prostitution under the Japanese Empire, as well as in Japan under US military rule. He also writes about the laws of warfare.
Go to Profile#39502
Phil Niekro
#39514
Overall Influence
1939 - 2020 (81 years)
Philip Henry Niekro , nicknamed "Knucksie", was an American baseball pitcher who played 24 seasons in Major League Baseball for the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians, New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays. Niekro is generally regarded as the greatest knuckleball pitcher of all time.
Go to Profile#39503
Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou
#39515
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou is a political historian and public intellectual. A Harvard University academic, Mohamedou is Professor of International History and Politics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. of which he is deputy director. His work focuses on political violence, state-building, racism, and the history of international relations. He is a member of the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, and is regarded as a leading international expert on the new forms of transnational terrorism.
Go to Profile#39504
Eva-Mari Aro
#39516
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Eva-Mari Aro is a Finnish biologist and professor of plant molecular biology at the University of Turku, Finland. Her research has focused on the function, regulation, damage, repair, and evolution of the machinery of photosynthesis, with applications in renewable energy. She was elected to the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in 2001 and was elected a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences in 2018.
Go to Profile#39505
Matthew Sweet
#39517
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Matthew Sweet is an English journalist, broadcaster, author, and cultural historian. A graduate of the University of Oxford, he has been interviewed on many documentaries about television for the BBC and Channel 4.
Go to Profile#39506
Eugenia Sacerdote de Lustig
#39518
Overall Influence
1910 - 2011 (101 years)
Eugenia Sacerdote de Lustig was an Italian-born Argentine physician. She was the first to test the polio vaccine in Argentina. She published more than 180 works. Early life and education Eugenia Sacerdote de Lustig was born in Turin on 9 November 1910.
Go to Profile#39507
Alon Chen
#39519
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Alon Chen is an Israeli neuroscientist and the 11th President of the Weizmann Institute of Science. Biography Chen was born in Israel. He is a neuroscientist. He attended Ben-Gurion University of the Negev , and the Weizmann Institute of Science . On a Rothschild scholarship and a Fulbright scholarship, Chen conducted postdoctoral research at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, California, from 2001–05.
Go to Profile#39508
Frank Skinner
#39520
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Christopher Graham Collins , professionally known as Frank Skinner, is an English comedian, actor, presenter and writer. At the 2001 British Comedy Awards, he was named Best Comedy Entertainment Personality. His television work includes Fantasy Football League from 1994 to 2004, The Frank Skinner Show from 1995 to 2005, Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned from 2000 to 2005, and Room 101 from 2012 to 2018. Since 2009 he has hosted The Frank Skinner Show on Absolute Radio, broadcast live on Saturdays and later released as a podcast.
Go to Profile#39509
U. Aswathanarayana
#39521
Overall Influence
1928 - 2016 (88 years)
Uppugunduri Aswathanarayana was the Honorary Director of the Mahadevan International Centre for Water Resources Management, India. He is counted among the doyens of geology in independent India and revered as a leading scientist from Andhra Pradesh. He studied and taught geology at Andhra University, India; California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California; Oxford University, United Kingdom, University of Western Ontario, Canada; University of Sagar, India; University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Mozambique. He has served as the Dean and Director of Cen...
Go to Profile#39510
Bruce Jakosky
#39522
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Bruce Martin Jakosky is a professor of Geological Sciences and associate director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has been involved with the Viking, Solar Mesosphere Explorer, Clementine, Mars Observer, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Mars Science Laboratory and MAVEN spacecraft missions, and is involved in planning future spacecraft missions.
Go to Profile#39511
Paulo Bento
#39523
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Paulo Jorge Gomes Bento is a Portuguese football manager and former player. He is the current manager of the United Arab Emirates national team. A defensive midfielder with tackling ability and workrate as his main assets, he played for two of the major three teams in his country, amassing Primeira Liga totals of 284 matches and 16 goals over 11 seasons, and also spent four years in Spain. He represented the Portugal national team in the 2002 World Cup and Euro 2000.
Go to Profile#39512
Nikki Turner
#39524
Overall Influence
Nikki Turner is an American author of urban fiction, dubbed by Trendsetter Magazine as the "Queen of Hip Hop Lit". Her first two books, A Hustler's Wife and A Project Chick have sold about 150,000 copies as of 2005.
Go to Profile#39513
Emmanuel Grenier
#39525
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Emmanuel Grenier is a French mathematician. His research interests include hydrodynamics and mathematical biology. Grenier attended École Normale Supérieure from 1990 to 1994, before attaining his doctorate at Pierre and Marie Curie University, under supervision of Yann Brenier. He won an EMS Prize in 2000.
Go to Profile#39514
Olympia Dukakis
#39526
Overall Influence
1931 - 2021 (90 years)
Olympia Dukakis was an American actress. She performed in more than 130 stage productions, more than 60 films and in 50 television series. Best known as a screen actress, she started her career in theater. Not long after her arrival in New York City, she won an Obie Award for Best Actress in 1963 for her off-Broadway performance in Bertolt Brecht's Man Equals Man.
Go to Profile#39515
Jonathan F. Earle
#39527
Overall Influence
Jonathan F.K. Earle completed his Ph.D. at the University of Florida in 1985, and joined the faculty in the Department of Agricultural & Biological Engineering in 1987. He was appointed Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at the University of Florida College of Engineering in 1992. This position was later upgraded to Associate Dean. He remained in this position until his retirement in December, 2007. He now holds the title "Associate Dean Emeritus".
Go to Profile#39516
André Paul
#39528
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
André Paul is a noted French scholar, educator and writer in the fields of theology, biblical studies and ancient Judaism. Paul's early research explored the relationship between the Dead Sea Scrolls and Karaite Judaism.
Go to Profile#39517
Mark Vishik
#39529
Overall Influence
1921 - 2012 (91 years)
Mark Vishik was a Soviet mathematician who worked in the field of partial differential equations. Life and work Lwów In Lwów, Mark Vishik visited the fifth gymnasium , which specialized in physics and mathematics. His mathematical talent was encouraged by a method of teaching, which left it up to the students to find mathematical proofs. He began studying mathematics at the University of Lviv in December 1939, at the time when the Lwów school mathematics was still active. Among his teachers were Juliusz Schauder, Stanisław Mazur, Bronislaw Knaster, and Edward Szpilrajn, who organized a stude...
Go to Profile#39518
Anamaría Font
#39530
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Anamaría Font Villarroel is a Venezuelan theoretical physicist and professor of the Central University of Venezuela . Her research has been focused on models about the primordial components of matter in the context of string theory.
Go to Profile#39519
Beji Caid Essebsi
#39531
Overall Influence
1926 - 2019 (93 years)
Beji Caid Essebsi was a Tunisian politician who served as the 6th president of Tunisia from 31 December 2014 until his death on 25 July 2019. Previously, he served as the minister of foreign affairs from 1981 to 1986 and as the prime minister from February 2011 to December 2011.
Go to Profile#39520
Mark van Loosdrecht
#39532
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Mark van Loosdrecht is a Dutch professor in environmental biotechnology at Delft University of Technology. He was the creator of Nereda, a wastewater treatment technology developed by a cooperation between the Delft University of Technology, the Dutch Foundation for Applied Water Research and Royal HaskoningDHV.
Go to Profile#39521
Redd Foxx
#39533
Overall Influence
1922 - 1991 (69 years)
John Elroy Sanford , better known by his stage name Redd Foxx, was an American stand-up comedian and actor. Foxx gained success with his raunchy nightclub act before and during the civil rights movement. Known as the "King of the Party Records", he performed on more than 50 records in his lifetime. He portrayed Fred G. Sanford on the television show Sanford and Son and starred in The Redd Foxx Show and The Royal Family. His film projects included All the Fine Young Cannibals , Cotton Comes to Harlem , Norman... Is That You? and Harlem Nights .
Go to Profile#39522
Eugene Ulrich
#39534
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Eugene Charles Ulrich is an American Dead Sea scrolls scholar and the John A. O'Brien Professor emeritus of Hebrew Scripture and Theology in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is chief editor of the biblical texts of the Dead Sea scrolls and one of the three general editors of the Scrolls International Publication Project. Ulrich has worked under two editors in chief on the scrolls project, namely John Strugnell and Emanuel Tov.
Go to Profile#39523
Sandra Black
#39535
Overall Influence
Sandra Elizabeth Black, is a Canadian physician and neurologist known for her work in "contributing to improved diagnosis and treatment of vascular dementia, Alzheimer's disease and stroke". She is currently a Senior scientist at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. She holds the Brill Chair in Neurology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto.
Go to Profile#39524
Moira von Wright
#39536
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Moira Johanna von Wright is a Finnish and Swedish academic, who has been the rector of first Södertörn University 2010-2016 and Åbo Akademi University between August 2019 and October 2021. She grew up in Turku, Finland.
Go to Profile#39525
Jack E. Davis
#39537
Overall Influence
Jack Emerson Davis is an author and professor of history in Florida. He holds the Rothman Family Endowed Chair in the Humanities and teaches environmental history and sustainability studies at the University of Florida. In 2002-2003, he taught on a Fulbright award at the University of Jordan in Amman, Jordan.
Go to Profile#39526
Míchel
#39538
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
José Miguel González Martín del Campo, known as Míchel , is a Spanish former professional footballer who played as a right midfielder, currently manager of Saudi First Division League club Al-Qadsiah.
Go to Profile#39527
A. F. K. Organski
#39539
Overall Influence
1923 - 1998 (75 years)
Abramo Fimo Kenneth Organski was Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, the founder of Power transition theory and a co-founder of Decision Insights, Inc. His pioneering work spanned several decades, and focused on specific aspects of world politics, including: political demography; political development; and grand strategy. He was the author of World Politics, The Stages of Political Development, The War Ledger, Birth, Death and Taxes, and The $36 Billion Bargain. Other publications are available in scholarly journals.
Go to Profile#39528
Stan Herman
#39540
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Stan M. Herman is an American fashion designer. He was President of the Council of Fashion Designers of America , a position he held until 2006 at which time Diane von Fürstenberg took over the position. He is also known worldwide for his leading edge corporate uniforms.
Go to Profile#39529
Bertrand Westphal
#39541
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Bertrand Westphal , is a French scholar and essayist. Career Westphal, a professor of comparative literature and literary theory, has been teaching at the University of Limoges since 1998. He has been directing the "Human Spaces and Cultural Interactions" research team since 2000.
Go to Profile#39530
David James
#39542
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
David Ernest James is a cell biologist who discovered the glucose transporter GLUT4. He has also been responsible for the molecular dissection of the intracellular trafficking pathways that regulate GLUT4 translocation to the cell surface, the topological mapping of the insulin signal transduction pathway, the creation of a method for studying in vivo metabolism in small animals, and the use of this method to gain insights into whole-animal fuel metabolism and homeostasis.
Go to Profile#39531
George Michael
#39543
Overall Influence
1939 - 2009 (70 years)
George Michael was an American broadcaster best known nationally for The George Michael Sports Machine, his long-running sports highlights television program. Originally named George Michael's Sports Final when it began as a local show in Washington, D.C., in 1980, it was nationally syndicated by NBC from 1984 until its final installment was aired on March 25, 2007. Michael won a Sports Emmy in 1985 for his work on The George Michael Sports Machine.
Go to Profile#39532
Stanley Lieberson
#39544
Overall Influence
1933 - 2018 (85 years)
Stanley Lieberson was an American sociologist. Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Lieberson was raised in Brooklyn and graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School before attending Brooklyn College. Lieberson completed graduate study at the University of Chicago. He taught at Harvard University as the Abbott Lawrence Lowell Research Professor of Sociology. Over the course of his career, Lieberson was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, named a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, granted fellowship to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and served the American Sociological Association as its president.
Go to Profile#39533
Erik S. Kristensen
#39545
Overall Influence
1972 - 2005 (33 years)
Erik Samsel Kristensen was a Lieutenant commander of the United States Navy SEALs who was killed in action during Operation Red Wings. He and several other SEALs set off as part of a search and rescue mission, hoping to assist a four-man SEAL team that was engaged in a firefight with Taliban fighters.
Go to Profile#39534
Tracey Gloster
#39546
Overall Influence
Tracey Maureen Gloster is a chemist at the University of St Andrews UK. Her research interests are in structural biology, chemical biology, glycobiology and carbohydrate processing enzymes. Education Gloster studied biochemistry at University of Warwick, graduating in 2002 and then moved to University of York where she was awarded a PhD in chemistry in 2005 for research supervised by Gideon Davies.
Go to Profile#39535
Levon Ter-Petrosyan
#39547
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Levon Hakobi Ter-Petrosyan , also known by his initials LTP, is an Armenian politician and historian who served as the first president of Armenia from 1991 until his resignation in 1998. A senior researcher at the Matenadaran, he led the Karabakh movement for the unification of the Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia which began in 1988. After Armenia's declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in September 1991, Ter-Petrosyan was elected president in October 1991 with overwhelming public support. He led the country through the First Nagorno-Karabakh War with neighboring A...
Go to Profile#39536
Nikolaos Kylafis
#39548
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Nikolaos Kylafis is a Greek Theoretical Astrophysicist, who is professor emeritus at the Department of Physics of the University of Crete, Greece. Kylafis contributed to the founding of the Astrophysics Group of the University of Crete and the Foundation for Research & Technology - Helas in 1985 and led, together with his colleague Ioannis Papamastorakis, the effort to create the Institute of Astrophysics at FORTH in 2018. He has been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in the Department of Physics since 1985. He has published research works in refereed journals.
Go to Profile#39537
Jerry Adams
#39549
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Jerry McKee Adams, FAA, FRS, FAHMS, FRSV is an Australian-American molecular biologist whose research into the genetics of haemopoietic differentiation and malignancy, led him and his wife, Professor Suzanne Cory, to be the first two scientists to pioneer gene cloning techniques in Australia, and to successfully clone mammalian genes.
Go to Profile#39538
Austen Angell
#39550
Overall Influence
1933 - 2021 (88 years)
Charles Austen Angell was a renowned Australian and American physical chemist known for his prolific and highly cited research on the chemistry and physics of glasses and glass-forming liquids. He was internationally recognized as a luminary in the fields of glasses, liquids, water and ionic liquids.
Go to Profile#39539
Tony Badger
#39551
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Anthony John "Tony" Badger is a British academic and historian. Until 2014 he was Paul Mellon Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge and Master of Clare College, Cambridge. He is a specialist in post-World War II Southern American political history.
Go to Profile#39540
Bertrand Blier
#39552
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Bertrand Blier is a French film director and writer. His 1978 film Get Out Your Handkerchiefs won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 51st Academy Awards. He is the son of famous French actor Bernard Blier. His 1996 film Mon Homme was entered into the 46th Berlin International Film Festival. His 2005 film How Much Do You Love Me? was entered into the 28th Moscow International Film Festival where he won the Silver George for Best Director.
Go to Profile#39541
Bryan Gaensler
#39553
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Bryan Malcolm Gaensler is an Australian astronomer based at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He studies magnetars, supernova remnants, and magnetic fields. In 2014, he was appointed as Director of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, after James R. Graham's departure. He was the co-chair of the Canadian 2020 Long Range Plan Committee with Pauline Barmby. In 2023, he was appointed as Dean of Physical and Biological Sciences at UC Santa Cruz.
Go to Profile#39542
Ray Edenton
#39554
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Ray Quarles Edenton was an American guitarist and country music session musician. Early life Ray Edenton was born into a musical family on November 3, 1926, and grew up near Mineral, Virginia. His first instrument was a banjo ukelele, and by the age of six he was performing with his two brothers and cousins at square dances in the area.
Go to Profile#39543
Michael G. Santos
#39555
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Michael Gerard Santos is an advocate for criminal justice reform and an author of several books and courses. He teaches strategies that justice-impacted people can use to prepare for success after prison.
Go to Profile#39544
Cyril Agodi Onwumechili
#39556
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Cyril Agodi Onwumechili was a Nigerian physicist, academic administrator, and professor of geophysics at the University of Ibadan and later University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He was the fourth Vice Chancellor of the University of Ife from January 1979 to December 1982 and the former President/Vice Chancellor of the Anambra State University of Technology, Enugu, Nigeria, from January 1983 to December 1986 . He delivered the Ahiajoku lecture on 20 November 2000. He was the first Nigerian geophysicist and the second president of the Nigerian Academy of Science. He was elected as president of the ...
Go to Profile#39545
Xiao-Li Meng
#39557
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Xiao-Li Meng is a Chinese American statistician and the Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Statistics at Harvard University. He received the COPSS Presidents' Award in 2001. He has written numerous research papers about Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms and other statistical methodology.
Go to Profile#39546
Katalin Vesztergombi
#39558
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Katalin L. Vesztergombi is a Hungarian mathematician known for her contributions to graph theory and discrete geometry. A student of Vera T. Sós and a co-author of Paul Erdős, she is an emeritus associate professor at Eötvös Loránd University and a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#39547
Hugh Pelham
#39559
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Sir Hugh Reginald Brentnall Pelham, is a cell biologist who has contributed to our understanding of the body's response to rises in temperature through the synthesis of heat shock proteins. He served as director of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology between 2006 and 2018.
Go to Profile#39548
Ada Karmi-Melamede
#39560
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Ada Karmi-Melamede is a noted Israeli architect. Biography Karmi-Melamede was born on December 24, 1936, in Tel Aviv, in Mandate Palestine . She studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London from 1956 to 1959 and at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology from 1961 to 1962, being awarded her degree in 1963. She has taught extensively in the United States, first at Columbia University and then at Yale University and University of Pennsylvania .
Go to Profile#39549
Judy Hirst
#39561
Overall Influence
Judy Hirst is a British scientist specialising in mitochondrial biology. She is Director of the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit at the University of Cambridge. Early life and education Hirst grew up in Lepton, a village near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, and attended King James's School and Greenhead College, Huddersfield. She studied for an M.A. in chemistry at St John's College, Oxford, and then was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1997, for research supervised by Fraser Armstrong on electron transport in redox enzymes.
Go to Profile#39550
Peter Baumann
#39562
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Peter Baumann is a German musician. He formed the core line-up of the pioneering German electronic group Tangerine Dream with Edgar Froese and Christopher Franke in 1971. Baumann composed his first solo album in 1976, while still touring with the band, and embarked on a solo career in 1977. He founded the record label Private Music. Since the early 2000s, Baumann has devoted his time to studying and promoting initiatives in science and philosophy that shed light on the human condition.
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