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
#39551
Evelyne Huber
#39563
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Evelyne Huber is an American and Swiss political scientist specializing in comparative politics and a scholar of Latin America, currently the Morehead Alumni Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she was the Department Chair for more than a decade. Her work has focused on democracy and redistribution, particularly in Latin America.
Go to Profile#39552
Mark Howe
#39564
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Mark Steven Howe is an American former professional ice hockey defenseman and left winger who played sixteen seasons in the National Hockey League following six seasons in the World Hockey Association . He is currently serving as the director of pro scouting for the Detroit Red Wings.
Go to Profile#39553
Joel D. Heck
#39565
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Joel D. Heck is a retired pastor and professor, formerly Executive Editor of Concordia University Press. He is the author or editor of sixteen books, most recently publishing No Ordinary People: Twenty-One Friendships of C. S. Lewis. He currently serves as Interim President of Concordia Lutheran Seminary in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Go to Profile#39554
Peter Corrigan
#39566
Overall Influence
1941 - 2016 (75 years)
Peter Russell Corrigan was an Australian architect and was involved in the completion of works in stage and set design. Early life and achievements Corrigan was educated at Christian Brothers College, St Kilda and then completed his degree in architecture, in 1966 at Melbourne University. He further pursued his studies at Yale University in 1969 under Robert Venturi, completing a master's degree in Environmental Design. Having worked for Philip Johnson, Paul Rudolf, César Pelli and Kevin Roche in New Haven, he returned to Australia in 1974 where he formed his practice, Edmond and Corrigan, a partnership with his wife, Maggie Edmond, initiated in 1975.
Go to Profile#39555
Prabhu Deva
#39567
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Prabhu Deva is an Indian dance choreographer, film director, producer and actor who has worked predominantly in Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, and Kannada language films. In a career spanning 32 years, he has performed and designed dancing styles and has garnered two National Film Awards for Best Choreography. In 2019, he was awarded the Padma Shri for his contributions to dance.
Go to Profile#39556
Willie Horton
#39568
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
William R. Horton , commonly referred to as "Willie Horton", is an American convicted murderer who was the subject of a major issue in the 1988 presidential election. Horton had committed violent crimes while on furlough from prison, where he was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for murder. Released for a weekend as the beneficiary of a Massachusetts furlough program, he failed to return, and was later recaptured and convicted of committing assault, armed robbery, and rape in Maryland, where he remains incarcerated.
Go to Profile#39557
Linda J. S. Allen
#39569
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Linda Joy Svoboda Allen is an American mathematician and mathematical biologist, the Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Texas Tech University. Education and career Allen earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1975 from the College of St. Scholastica, and a master's degree in 1978 and doctorate in 1978 from the University of Tennessee. Her dissertation, Applications of Differential Inequalities to Persistence and Extinction Problems for Reaction-Diffusion Systems, was supervised by Thomas G. Hallam.
Go to Profile#39558
Barry Ferguson
#39570
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Barry Ferguson is a Scottish football coach, former player and pundit who was most recently the manager of Alloa Athletic. Ferguson spent most of his playing career at Rangers, in two spells either side of a £7.5 million transfer to English club Blackburn Rovers. He totalled 431 games and 60 goals for Rangers, whom he captained between 2000 and 2003 and again between 2005 and 2009. Ferguson won the Scottish Premier League, Scottish Cup and Scottish League Cup five times apiece for Rangers, including a treble in 2003, which earned him the honour of SFWA Footballer of the Year. He also helped ...
Go to Profile#39559
David R. Olson
#39571
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
David Richard Olson is a Canadian cognitive developmental psychologist who has studied the development of language, literacy, and cognition, particularly the mental lives of children, their understanding of language and mind and the psychology of teaching. Olson is University Professor Emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, where he has taught since 1966.
Go to Profile#39560
Walter Kaiser Jr.
#39572
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Walter C. Kaiser Jr. is an American Evangelical Old Testament scholar, writer, public speaker, and educator. Kaiser is the Colman M. Mockler distinguished Professor of Old Testament and former President of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, retired June 30, 2006. He was succeeded by James Emery White.
Go to Profile#39561
Eric Adams
#39573
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Eric Leroy Adams is an American politician and former police officer, serving since 2022 as the 110th mayor of New York City. Adams was an officer in the New York City Transit Police and then the New York City Police Department for more than 20 years, retiring at the rank of captain. He served in the New York State Senate from 2006 to 2013, representing the 20th Senate district in Brooklyn. In November 2013, Adams was elected Brooklyn Borough President, the first African-American to hold the position, and reelected in November 2017.
Go to Profile#39562
Philippe Mongin
#39574
Overall Influence
1950 - 2020 (70 years)
Philippe Mongin was a French economic philosopher. He served as Director of the French National Centre for Scientific Research and was a professor at the HEC Paris. From 2006 to 2012, he was a member of the Economic Analysis Council under the Prime Minister of France.
Go to Profile#39563
Irving Gottesman
#39575
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Irving Isadore Gottesman was an American professor of psychology who devoted most of his career to the study of the genetics of schizophrenia. He wrote 17 books and more than 290 other publications, mostly on schizophrenia and behavioral genetics, and created the first academic program on behavioral genetics in the United States. He won awards such as the Hofheimer Prize for Research, the highest award from the American Psychiatric Association for psychiatric research. Lastly, Gottesman was a professor in the psychology department at the University of Minnesota, where he received his Ph.D.
Go to Profile#39564
Juan Carlos I
#39576
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Juan Carlos I is a member of the Spanish royal family who reigned as King of Spain from 22 November 1975 until his abdication on 19 June 2014. In Spain, since his abdication, Juan Carlos has usually been referred to as the .
Go to Profile#39565
Christopher Chyba
#39577
Overall Influence
Christopher F. Chyba is an American astrobiologist and Professor of Astrophysical Sciences and International Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. He graduated from Swarthmore College in 1982, and studied mathematical physics at the University of Cambridge as a Marshall Scholar. He then received his Ph.D. in astronomy, with an emphasis in planetary science, from Cornell University in 1991. He was a White House Fellow on the National Security Council staff, and then serving in the Office of Science and Technology Policy from 1993 to 1995. He was a member of the S...
Go to Profile#39566
Kgalema Motlanthe
#39578
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Kgalema Petrus Motlanthe is a South African politician who served as the third president of South Africa from 25 September 2008 to 9 May 2009, following the resignation of Thabo Mbeki. Thereafter, he was deputy president under Jacob Zuma from 9 May 2009 to 26 May 2014.
Go to Profile#39567
Emilio Gagliardo
#39579
Overall Influence
1930 - 2008 (78 years)
Emilio Gagliardo was an Italian mathematician working in the field of Analysis. Life He did his PhD in Algebraic Geometry at the University of Genoa with Eugenio Togliatti and graduated in 1953.He then became an assistant of Guido Stampacchia and started to study partial differential equations. In 1959 he got his Habilitation and spend some time abroad with Nachman Aronszajn at the University of Kansas and with Jacques-Louis Lions in Nancy. In 1961 he became Professor in Genoa. From 1968 to 1975 he was at the University of Oregon and since 1975 at the University of Padua.
Go to Profile#39568
John M. Dawson
#39580
Overall Influence
1930 - 2001 (71 years)
John Myrick Dawson was an American computational physicist and the father of plasma-based acceleration techniques. Dawson earned his degrees in physics from the University of Maryland, College Park: a B.S. in 1952 and Ph.D. in 1957. His thesis "Distortion of Atoms and Molecules in Dense Media" was prepared under the guidance of Zaka Slawsky.
Go to Profile#39569
Paloma Faith
#39581
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Paloma Faith Blomfield is an English singer and actress. Her debut studio album, Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful?, was released in 2009 and was certified double platinum in the UK. The album spawned the singles "Stone Cold Sober", "New York", and "Upside Down", and earned Faith her first BRIT Award nomination in 2010.
Go to Profile#39570
Aleksandra Radenovic
#39582
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Aleksandra Radenovic is a Swiss and Croatian biophysicist. Her research focuses on the development of experimental tools to study single-molecule biophysics. She is a professor of biological engineering at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and head of the Laboratory of Nanoscale Biology.
Go to Profile#39571
Edwin Mills
#39583
Overall Influence
1928 - 2021 (93 years)
Edwin Smith Mills III was an American economist known for his contributions to urban economics. Mills was a long-time faculty member at Johns Hopkins University , Princeton University , and Northwestern University . He was the founding editor of the Journal of Urban Economics.
Go to Profile#39572
Erling Haaland
#39584
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Erling Braut Haaland is a Norwegian professional footballer who plays as a striker for club Manchester City and the Norway national team. Considered one of the best players in the world, he is known for his speed, strength, positioning, and finishing inside the box. In his debut Premier League season, Haaland broke the record for the most goals scored by a player in a single season, with 36.
Go to Profile#39573
Mohamed Farrah Aidid
#39585
Overall Influence
1934 - 1996 (62 years)
Mohamed Farrah Hassan Garad, known as General Aidid or Aideed was a Somali general and diplomat. Educated in both Rome and Moscow, he served as a chief in the Italian colonial police force and later as a brigadier general in the Somali National Army. He would eventually become chairman of the United Somali Congress , and soon after the Somali National Alliance . Along with other armed opposition groups, he succeeded in toppling President Siad Barre's 22 year old regime following the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991.
Go to Profile#39574
Farid Uddin Ahmed
#39586
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Farid Uddin Ahmed is a Bangladeshi academic and vice-chancellor of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology. Education and career Ahmed completed his master's degree in economics degree from Monash University. He had served as a professor of the department of economics and the dean of faculty of social sciences at the University of Dhaka.
Go to Profile#39575
Bob Gaudio
#39587
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Robert John Gaudio is an American songwriter, singer, musician, and record producer, and the keyboardist and backing vocalist of the pop/rock band the Four Seasons. Gaudio wrote or co-wrote and produced the vast majority of the band's music, including hits like "Sherry" and "December, 1963 ", as well as "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" for Valli. Though he no longer performs with the group, Gaudio and lead singer Frankie Valli remain co-owners of the Four Seasons brand.
Go to Profile#39576
Noris Salazar Allen
#39588
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Noris Salazar Allen is a bryologist from Panama, who is Professor of Botany at the University of Panama and an associate researcher at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Salazar Allen was the first Panamanian to research bryophytes, and was instrumental in expanding the University of Panama's bryological collection to 10,000 specimens. In 2013 she received the Riclef Grolle Award for Excellence in Bryodiversity Research from the International Association of Bryologists.
Go to Profile#39577
Milind Tambe
#39589
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Milind Tambe is an Indian-American educator serving as a Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University. He also serves as the director of the Center for Research on Computation and Society at Harvard University and the director of "AI for Social Good" at Google Research India.
Go to Profile#39578
Yumi Hogan
#39590
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Yumi Hogan is a Korean–American artist. She served as the first lady of Maryland as wife of Governor Larry Hogan from 2015 to 2023, and is the first Korean American first lady of a U.S. state and the first Asian American first lady in the history of Maryland.
Go to Profile#39579
Walter Bitterlich
#39591
Overall Influence
1908 - 2008 (100 years)
Walter Bitterlich was an Austrian forestry scientist. He was the inventor of the relascope, a method for efficient forest inventory. Early career Bitterlich descended from several generations of foresters and did much of his early work in the Tyrolean Alps of Austria.
Go to Profile#39580
Joseph Huber
#39592
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Joseph Huber is a retired German professor of sociology. From 1992 to 2012, he was the chair of economic and environmental sociology at Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He has written influential papers on Monetary System Analysis and Sovereign Money Theory, for instance "Seigniorage Reform and Plain Money". Huber is known widely also as one of the founders of ecological modernization theory.
Go to Profile#39581
Hugh Willmott
#39593
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Hugh Christopher Willmott, FBA, FAcSS is a management and organization studies scholar and academic. Since 2005, he has been research professor of Organization Studies at Cardiff University, and has also been Professor of Management at Cass Business School at City, University of London since 2014.
Go to Profile#39582
Jonathan Arac
#39594
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Jonathan Arac is an American literary scholar. He is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English at University of Pittsburgh, visiting professor at Columbia University and Director of Pitt's Humanities Center. He is also an editor of the literary journal Boundary 2.
Go to Profile#39583
Peter Becker
#39595
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Peter Becker is a German molecular biologist. He studied biology at the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg until 1984 and finished his Ph.D at the German Cancer Research Center and the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg in 1987. After being employed at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory from 1991 until 1999 he became head of the Adolf Butenandt Institute for molecular biology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Go to Profile#39584
Newton Howard
#39596
Overall Influence
Newton Howard is a brain and cognitive scientist, the former founder and director of the MIT Mind Machine Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He is a professor of computational neurology and functional neurosurgery at Georgetown University. He was a professor of at the University of Oxford, where he directed the Oxford Computational Neuroscience Laboratory. He is also the director of MIT's Synthetic Intelligence Lab, the founder of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies and the chairman of the Brain Sciences Foundation. Professor Howard is also a senior fellow at the John Radcliffe Hospital at Oxford, a senior scientist at INSERM in Paris and a P.A.H.
Go to Profile#39585
Wei Jingsheng
#39597
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Wei Jingsheng is a Chinese human rights activist and dissident. He is best known for his involvement in the Chinese democracy movement. He is most prominent for having authored the essay "The Fifth Modernization", which was posted on the Democracy Wall in Beijing in 1978. As punishment for writing his manifesto, Wei was arrested and convicted of "counter-revolutionary" activities, and he was detained as a political prisoner from 1979 to 1993. Briefly released in 1993, Wei continued to engage in his dissident activities by speaking to visiting journalists, and as punishment, he was imprisoned again from 1994 to 1997, making it a total of 18 years he has spent in various prisons.
Go to Profile#39586
Donald B. Dingwell
#39598
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Donald Bruce Dingwell is a Canadian geoscientist who is the director of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Ordinarius for Mineralogy and Petrology of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He is also currently vice-president of the Academia Europaea. From September 2011 to December 2013 he was the third and last secretary general of the European Research Council where he embarked on a global participation campaign for the ERC. He is also a past-President of the European Geosciences Union and the current past-president of the International Association of Volcanology ...
Go to Profile#39587
Rada Iveković
#39599
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Rada Iveković is a Croatian professor, philosopher, Indologist and writer. Research Iveković's research interests include comparative philosophy , feminist theory and feminist philosophy as well as political philosophy.
Go to Profile#39588
Enrico Quarantelli
#39600
Overall Influence
1924 - 2017 (93 years)
Enrico L. Quarantelli was an American sociologist, pioneering the sociology of disaster. Education Quarantelli received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1959. From 1963 to 1984 he worked as professor of sociology at the Ohio State University, where he founded the Disaster Research Center . In 1985 he took the DRC to the University of Delaware, where he worked until 1998.
Go to Profile#39589
Farzana Islam
#39601
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Farzana Islam is a Bangladeshi academic. She is a former vice-chancellor of Jahangirnagar University during 2014-2022. In 2014, she became the first female vice-chancellor of a public university in Bangladesh. She allegedly accused of different irregularities and corruption by both Students and Teachers. They also published a book. The 224-page book features reports on different irregularities and corruptions published in different newspapers.
Go to Profile#39590
Hermann Gummel
#39602
Overall Influence
1923 - 2022 (99 years)
Hermann K. Gummel was a German physicist and pioneer in the semiconductor industry. The son of Hans and Charlotte Gummel, he was the middle of their three children, Bärbel and Achi being respectively his older sister and his younger brother. Grown up in very turbulent times in Nazi Germany, after graduating from high school, he was enlisted as a radio operator for the Germany Army in World War II. As a soldier, he was wounded by shrapnel and taken prisoner during the D Day. After being brought to Scotland as a war prisoner, the compassionate care of the doctors and medical staff avoided his l...
Go to Profile#39591
DJ Quik
#39603
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
David Marvin Blake , better known by his stage names DJ Quik or Da Quiksta, is an American rapper and producer, known for his production in the G-funk style of West Coast hip-hop. Blake has collaborated with Snoop Dogg, Kurupt, Tupac, Chingy, R. Kelly and Shaquille O'Neal, among others. Blake's stage name reflects his ability to produce songs in a short period of time. Some of his top songs include "Dollaz + Sense", "Tonite", "Born and Raised in Compton" and "Jus Lyke Compton".
Go to Profile#39592
Christina McHale
#39604
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
Christina Maria McHale is an American former professional tennis player. Her highest-ever WTA rankings were No. 24 in singles and 35 in doubles. Known for an aggressive baseline game, McHale was recognized by The New York Times for her "booming" groundstrokes and fast footwork. She reached the third round of all four Grand Slam tournaments and represented the United States in Fed Cup and Olympic competitions. In September 2016, McHale won her first and only career WTA singles title at the Japan Women's Open.
Go to Profile#39593
Mikhail Rabinovich
#39605
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Mikhail Izrailevich Rabinovich is a Russian influential physicist and neuroscientist working in the field of nonlinear dynamics and its applications. His work helped shape the understanding of dynamical systems.
Go to Profile#39594
Ian Roberts
#39606
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Ian G. Roberts is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. He also serves on the Advisory Council of METI . He received his PhD from the University of Southern California in 1985 and taught at the Universities of Geneva , Bangor and Stuttgart before taking up his present position at Cambridge in 2000. He is a fellow of Downing College.
Go to Profile#39595
Preston Estep
#39607
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Preston "Pete" Wayne Estep III is an American biologist and science and technology advocate. He is a graduate of Cornell University, where he did neuroscience research, and he earned a Ph.D. in Genetics from Harvard University. He did his doctoral research in the laboratory of genomics pioneer Professor George M. Church at Harvard Medical School.
Go to Profile#39596
Bernhard Langer
#39608
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Bernhard Langer is a German professional golfer. He is a two-time Masters champion and was one of the world's leading golfers throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 1986, he became the sport's first number one ranked player following the creation of the Sony Ranking .
Go to Profile#39597
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam
#39609
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, is a Norwegian-Iranian neuroscientist and human rights advocate. Early life Amiry-Moghaddam spent his first few years in the city of Kerman about 1000 kilometers south-east of Tehran in Iran. He arrived in Norway as a refugee of minor age, via Pakistan in 1985.
Go to Profile#39598
Nancy Lieberman
#39610
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Nancy Ilizabeth Lieberman , nicknamed "Lady Magic", is an American former professional basketball player and coach in the Women's National Basketball Association who is currently a broadcaster for the Oklahoma City Thunder of the National Basketball Association as well as the head coach of Power, a team in the BIG3 which she led to its 2018 Championship. Lieberman is regarded as one of the greatest figures in American women's basketball.
Go to Profile#39599
Jorge Glusberg
#39611
Overall Influence
1932 - 2012 (80 years)
Jorge Glusberg was an Argentine author, publisher, curator, professor, and conceptual artist. Early life and education Glusberg was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. When he was 12 years old Glusberg organized a "geology museum" on balcony of his house. In the space he exhibited rocks and other found objects from the Pampas for fellow neighborhood kids.
Go to Profile#39600
Frederic G. Cassidy
#39612
Overall Influence
1907 - 2000 (93 years)
Frederic Gomes Cassidy was a Jamaican-born linguist and lexicographer. He was a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and founder of the Dictionary of American Regional English where he was also the chief editor from 1962 until his death. He was an advocate for the Jamaican language and a pioneer of autonomous orthographies for creole languages.
Go to Profile