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
#39651
Erich E. Kunhardt
#39663
Overall Influence
1949 - 2014 (65 years)
Erich E. Kunhardt Grullon was a Dominican American physicist who was Professor of applied physics at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University and a special advisor to the institute's president.
Go to Profile#39652
Karen O'Brien
#39664
Overall Influence
Karen Elisabeth O'Brien is a British academic administrator and scholar of English literature, specialising in the Enlightenment and eighteenth-century literature. Since 2022, she has been Vice-Chancellor and Warden of Durham University , having previously been Professor of English Literature and Head of the Humanities Division, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of University College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#39653
James DiCarlo
#39665
Overall Influence
James Joseph DiCarlo is an American neuroscientist currently serving as the Peter de Florez Professor of Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Biography DiCarlo received his BS in biomedical engineering at Northwestern University in 1990. He then attended the MD PhD program at Johns Hopkins University and graduated in 1998. After spending two years as a postdoctoral researcher in primate visual neurophysiology at Baylor College of Medicine, he joined the faculty at MIT in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department.
Go to Profile#39654
William Feindel
#39666
Overall Influence
1918 - 2014 (96 years)
William Howard Feindel was a Canadian neurosurgeon, scientist and professor. Born in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, he received a B.A. in Biology from Acadia University in 1939, a M.Sc. from Dalhousie University in 1942, and an M.D., C.M. from McGill University in 1945. Attending Merton College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar he received his D. Phil in 1949.
Go to Profile#39655
Randolph Bresnik
#39667
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Randolph James "Komrade" Bresnik is a retired officer in the United States Marine Corps and an active NASA astronaut. A Marine Aviator by trade, Bresnik was selected as a member of NASA Astronaut Group 19 in May 2004. He first launched to space on STS-129, then served as flight engineer for Expedition 52, and as ISS commander for Expedition 53.
Go to Profile#39656
Mary Jane Phillips-Matz
#39668
Overall Influence
1926 - 2013 (87 years)
Mary Jane Phillips-Matz was an American biographer and writer on opera. She is mainly known for her biography of Giuseppe Verdi, a result of 30 years' research and published in 1992 by Oxford University Press. Born in Lebanon, Ohio and educated at Smith College and Columbia University, she lived for many years in Italy, and even after her return to the United States in the early 1970s spent her summers in Verdi's hometown of Busseto where she continued her exhaustive research into his life. She died in New York City at the age of 86, survived by three of her five children.
Go to Profile#39657
Roger Ekirch
#39669
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Arthur Roger Ekirch is University Distinguished Professor of history at Virginia Tech in the United States. He was a Guggenheim fellow in 1998. The son of intellectual historian Arthur A. Ekirch Jr. and Dorothy Gustafson, Roger Ekirch is internationally known for his pioneering research into pre-industrial sleeping patterns that was first published in "Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-Industrial Slumber in the British Isles" and later in his award-winning 2005 book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past.
Go to Profile#39658
Don Hutson
#39670
Overall Influence
1913 - 1997 (84 years)
Donald Montgomery Hutson , nicknamed "the Alabama Antelope", was an American football player and coach in the National Football League . In the era of the one-platoon football, he played as an end and spent his entire 11-year career with the Green Bay Packers. Under head coach Curly Lambeau, Hutson led the Packers to four NFL Championship Games, winning three in 1936, 1939, and 1944.
Go to Profile#39659
Tessaleno Devezas
#39671
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Tessaleno Campos Devezas is a Brazilian-born Portuguese physicist, systems theorist, and materials scientist. He is best known for his contributions to the long waves theory in socioeconomic development, technological evolution, energy systems as well as world system analysis.
Go to Profile#39660
Graham Farquhar
#39672
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Graham Douglas Farquhar, is an Australian biophysicist, Distinguished Professor at Australian National University, and leader of the Farquhar Lab. In 2018 Farquhar was named Senior Australian of the Year.
Go to Profile#39661
Roger Whittaker
#39673
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Roger Henry Brough Whittaker was a British singer-songwriter and musician. His music is an eclectic mix of folk music and popular songs, the latter variously in a crooning or in a schlager style. He is best known for his baritone singing voice and trademark whistling ability as well as his guitar skills.
Go to Profile#39662
Monica Kristensen Solås
#39674
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Monica Kristensen Solås , is a Norwegian glaciologist, meteorologist, polar explorer and crime novelist. She was awarded a Founders Gold Medal by the Royal Geographical Society in 1989. Life She was born in Torsby, Sweden, of Swedish/Norwegian parents, and moved as a child to Kongsvinger in Norway.
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Sheena Radford
#39675
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Sheena Elizabeth Radford FRS FMedSci is a British biophysicist, and Astbury Professor of Biophysics in the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology, School of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Leeds. Radford is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Molecular Biology.
Go to Profile#39664
Donnie Walsh
#39676
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Joseph Donald Walsh Jr. is a front office adviser of the Indiana Pacers and a former professional basketball coach. He is also the former President of Basketball Operations for the New York Knicks and Indiana Pacers.
Go to Profile#39665
Noriko Mizuta
#39677
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
is a scholar of comparative literature and a poet. She is the trustee of Jōsai University Educational Corporation in Japan. She was awarded the Pro Cultura Hungarica prize in 2011 and the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Hungary in 2013.
Go to Profile#39666
Aaron Judge
#39678
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
Aaron James Judge is an American professional baseball outfielder for the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball . A five-time MLB All-Star, Judge was unanimously selected as the American League Rookie of the Year in 2017, and finished second in voting for the AL Most Valuable Player Award that year. In 2022, he set the AL record for most home runs in a season with 62, breaking the 61-year-old record held by Roger Maris, and winning the AL Most Valuable Player Award. Judge stands tall and weighs , making him one of the largest and tallest players in MLB.
Go to Profile#39667
Marisa von Bülow
#39679
Overall Influence
Marisa von Bülow is a Brazilian political scientist and sociologist. She is a professor in the Political Science Institute at the University of Brasilia. She studies networks in international trade, the theory of social movements, and the collective action problems that confront international organizations.
Go to Profile#39668
Zaheer Khan
#39680
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Zaheer Khan is an Indian former professional cricketer who played all forms of the game for the Indian national team from 2000 till 2014. He is a fast-medium left-arm bowler. He was the second-most successful Indian pace bowler in Test cricket, behind Kapil Dev. Zaheer Khan started his domestic career by playing for Baroda. In the early years of his career, Zaheer Khan was known for his hostile seam and pace bowling, especially fast inch-perfect yorkers. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest bowlers to have represented India.
Go to Profile#39669
Lawrence B. Slobodkin
#39681
Overall Influence
1928 - 2009 (81 years)
Lawrence Basil Slobodkin was an American ecologist and Professor Emeritus at the Department of Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University, State University of New York. He was one of the leading pioneers of modern ecology. His innovative thinking and research, provocative teaching, and visionary leadership helped transform ecology into a modern science, with deep links to evolution.
Go to Profile#39670
Fred Willard
#39682
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Frederic Charles Willard was an American actor and comedian. He was best known for his work with Christopher Guest in This Is Spinal Tap , Waiting for Guffman , Best in Show , A Mighty Wind , For Your Consideration , and Mascots , and for playing Ed Harken in the Anchorman films. He also appeared in films like Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me , American Wedding and WALL-E . He received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for playing Frank Dunphy on the sitcom Modern Family.
Go to Profile#39671
Elio Lo Cascio
#39683
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Elio Lo Cascio is an Italian historian and teacher of Roman history at the Sapienza University of Rome. Lo Cascio's main research interests are the institutional, administrative, social and economic history of Ancient Rome from the Republic to the Late Empire, and Roman population history.
Go to Profile#39672
Josh Hartnett
#39684
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Joshua Daniel Hartnett is an American actor and producer. He first came to attention in 1997 for his role as Michael Fitzgerald in the crime drama television series Cracker. He made his feature film debut in the 1998 slasher film Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, followed by roles in films such as the sci-fi horror film The Faculty and the drama The Virgin Suicides . Hartnett had starring roles in the war film Pearl Harbor, the drama O, the war film Black Hawk Down , and the romantic comedy 40 Days and 40 Nights .
Go to Profile#39673
Arvind Mohan Kayastha
#39685
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Arvind Mohan Kayastha is an Indian Biologist in the field of plant biochemistry and enzyme technology. He is a Professor at School of Biotechnology, Banaras Hindu University and was coordinator of School of Biotechnology. He is a fellow of National Academy of Sciences, India, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and National Academy of Medical Sciences.
Go to Profile#39674
Lucas Hnath
#39686
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Lucas Hnath is an American playwright. He won the 2016 Obie Award for excellence in playwriting for his plays Red Speedo and The Christians. He also won a Whiting Award. Biography Hnath grew up in Orlando, Florida. He moved to New York City in 1997 to study pre-med, and then changed to dramatic writing at the Tisch School of the Arts, at New York University, earning a BFA in 2001, and an MFA in 2002. He teaches at New York University.
Go to Profile#39675
Arthur Laurents
#39687
Overall Influence
1917 - 2011 (94 years)
Arthur Laurents was an American playwright, theatre director, film producer and screenwriter. With a career spanning seven decades he received numerous accolades including two Tony Awards, and a Drama Desk Award as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, and a Golden Globe Award.
Go to Profile#39676
Shi Shuqing
#39688
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Shi Shuqing is a Taiwan-Chinese writer and educator. She was born in Lukang, Changhua and is the sister of writer Li Ang. Shi was educated at Tamkang University and City University of New York. She taught at Taipei's National Chengchi University. In 1978, Shi moved to Hong Kong where she became director of Asian programs at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, later working as a consultant there. She returned to Taiwan in 1997.
Go to Profile#39677
Michael Confino
#39689
Overall Influence
1926 - 2010 (84 years)
Michael Confino was a historian of 18th and 19th century Russia. Biography Confino was born in Sofia, Kingdom of Bulgaria. He began his academic studies at the University of Sofia. He moved to Israel in 1948 and continued his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at École pratique des hautes études in Paris. Confino earned his PhD at the Sorbonne.
Go to Profile#39678
Blaže Ristovski
#39690
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Blaže Ristovski was a Macedonian linguist, folklorist and historian. He graduated from Faculty of Philology in Skopje with a PhD in Philology. He was the director of the Institute of Folklore "Marko Cepenkov" in Skopje and a member of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts and honorary member of the Writers' Association of Macedonia. He died on November 28, 2018, at the age of 87.
Go to Profile#39679
John Atta Mills
#39691
Overall Influence
1944 - 2012 (68 years)
John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills was a Ghanaian politician and legal scholar who served as President of Ghana from 2009 until his death in 2012. He was inaugurated on 7 January 2009, having defeated the governing party candidate Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2008 Ghanaian presidential election. He was previously the Vice-President from 1997 to 2001 under President Jerry Rawlings, and he contested unsuccessfully in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections as the candidate of the National Democratic Congress . He was the first Ghanaian head of state to die in office.
Go to Profile#39680
Edward Heppenstall
#39692
Overall Influence
1901 - 1994 (93 years)
Edward E. Heppenstall was a leading Bible scholar and theologian of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. A 1985 questionnaire of North American Adventist lecturers revealed Heppenstall was the Adventist writer who had most influenced them.
Go to Profile#39681
Soupy Sales
#39693
Overall Influence
1926 - 2009 (83 years)
Milton Supman , known professionally as Soupy Sales, was an American comedian, actor, radio-television personality, and jazz aficionado. He was best known for his local and network children's television series, Lunch with Soupy Sales , a series of comedy sketches frequently ending with Sales receiving a pie in the face, which became his trademark. From 1968 to 1975, he was a regular panelist on the syndicated revival of What's My Line? and appeared on several other TV game shows. During the 1980s, he hosted his own show on WNBC in New York City.
Go to Profile#39682
Sylvie Cloutier
#39694
Overall Influence
Sylvie Cloutier is a Canadian scientist. She is a specialist in molecular genetics at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Ottawa Research and Development Centre and an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa. She has co-led two Genome Canada Large Scale Applied Research projects of $11M each and has been involved in over 110 published research papers and made contributions to many books.
Go to Profile#39683
Ryan Miller
#39695
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Ryan Dean Miller is an American former ice hockey goaltender who played 18 seasons in the National Hockey League mostly for the Buffalo Sabres. Miller was drafted 138th overall by the Buffalo Sabres in the 1999 NHL Entry Draft. In 2010, he won the Vezina Trophy as the league's best goaltender. In February 2019, Miller became the winningest American-born goaltender in NHL history, surpassing John Vanbiesbrouck.
Go to Profile#39684
Henry L. Marsh
#39696
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Henry Leander Marsh III is an American civil rights lawyer and politician. A Democrat, Marsh was elected by the city council as the first African-American mayor of Richmond, Virginia in 1977. He was elected to the Senate of Virginia in 1991, and resigned from his seat in 2014. Marsh represented the 16th district, consisting of the city of Petersburg, Dinwiddie County, and parts of the city of Richmond, and Chesterfield and Prince George counties. Marsh is now a commissioner on the Virginia Department of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, a position to which he received appointment from Gov...
Go to Profile#39685
Takeshi Mizubayashi
#39697
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Takeshi Mizubayashi is a professor in the Graduate School of Law at Hitotsubashi University, and professor emeritus of Tokyo Metropolitan University. His field of specialty is the history of law in Japan, though he is perhaps most well known for his arguments regarding the political organization of Tokugawa Japan.
Go to Profile#39686
Robert Gomer
#39698
Overall Influence
1924 - 2016 (92 years)
Robert Gomer was an Austrian scientist known for his research on field electron emission and field ionization, and his role as an adviser to the United States government. He was educated at Pomona College and the University of Rochester, where he received his doctorate in 1949. From 1949 to 1950, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and worked with G. B. Kistiakowsky. He subsequently moved to the University of Chicago, where he was a professor of chemistry in the James Franck Institute and the department of chemistry.
Go to Profile#39687
Valery Leibin
#39699
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Valery Moiseevich Leibin is a Russian psychoanalyst, Ph.D., head of the department of history and theory of psychoanalysis in Institute of Psychoanalysis, Professor of Moscow State Medical Stomatological University, an honorary Doctor of East European Institute of Psychoanalysis, an honorary member of the interregional public organization Russian Psychoanalytical Society, a member of the Academy of Pedagogical and Social Sciences, a chief scientist of Institute for Systems Analysis of Russian Academy of Sciences, a member of the editorial boards of the "Russian Psychoanalytic Bulletin" , the ...
Go to Profile#39688
Leslie Melville
#39700
Overall Influence
1902 - 2002 (100 years)
Sir Leslie Galfreid Melville was a renowned Australian economist, academic and public servant. He helped form Australia's central banking system and gave his voice in international economic forums in the years following World War II. He also played an important role in the early years of the Australian National University, serving as its Vice-Chancellor between 1953 and 1960.
Go to Profile#39689
Kenneth Karlin
#39701
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Kenneth Karlin or just Karlin is a Danish songwriter and producer who is best known for his work with Carsten Schack, better known as Soulshock, forming the Los Angeles-based producer duo Soulshock & Karlin. They have worked with artists including Whitney Houston, Backstreet Boys, 2Pac, Mary J. Blige, and JoJo.
Go to Profile#39690
Alexander van Oudenaarden
#39702
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Alexander van Oudenaarden is a Dutch biophysicist and systems biologist. He is a leading researcher in stem cell biology, specialising in single cell techniques. In 2012 he started as director of the Hubrecht Institute and was awarded three times an ERC Advanced Grant, in 2012, 2017, and 2022. He was awarded the Spinoza Prize in 2017.
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Alison Sheridan
#39703
Overall Influence
Alison Sheridan is a British archaeologist and was Principal Curator of Early Prehistory at National Museums Scotland, where she worked from 1987 to 2019. She specialises in the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age of Britain and Ireland, and particularly in ceramics and stone axeheads.
Go to Profile#39692
David T. Zabecki
#39704
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
David T. Zabecki is an American military historian, author and editor. Zabecki served in the U.S. Army both in the Vietnam War and in United States Army Europe in Germany attaining the rank of major general. Zabecki holds PhDs in engineering and in military science. He is the author, editor and translator of several books on the military history of Germany, including World War I and World War II.
Go to Profile#39693
Sudipta Kaviraj
#39705
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Sudipta Kaviraj is a scholar of South Asian Politics and Intellectual History, often associated with Postcolonial and Subaltern Studies. He is currently teaching at Columbia University in the department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies.
Go to Profile#39694
Ignazio Licata
#39706
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Ignazio Licata, born 1958, is an Italian theoretical physicist, professor and scientific director of the Institute for Scientific Methodology, Italy. Education and work Licata has studied with David Bohm, Jean-Pierre Vigier, Abdus Salam and Giuseppe Arcidiacono.
Go to Profile#39695
Damien Fair
#39707
Overall Influence
Damien Fair is a behavioral neuroscientist, professor at the University of Minnesota, and director of the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain. In 2020, he was selected for the MacArthur Fellows Program. In 2013, he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
Go to Profile#39696
Gus Dudgeon
#39708
Overall Influence
1942 - 2002 (60 years)
Angus Boyd "Gus" Dudgeon was an English record producer, who oversaw many of Elton John's most acclaimed recordings, including his commercial breakthrough, "Your Song". Their collaboration led to seven US No. 1 albums, and established John as one of the most successful singles artists of the 1970s.
Go to Profile#39697
Candido Amantini
#39709
Overall Influence
1914 - 1992 (78 years)
Candido Amantini, CP, , was an Italian Passionist priest. For 36 years Amantini was the exorcist of the Diocese of Rome, stationed at the Pontifical Sanctuary of the Holy Stairs. He also taught Sacred Scripture and Moral Theology and wrote a book entitled Il Mistero di Maria, about the Virgin Mary.
Go to Profile#39698
Michael Heller
#39710
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Michael A. Heller is a Professor of Real Estate Law at Columbia Law School. He concentrates on property law. Heller coined the term "tragedy of the anticommons" while working as a law professor at University of Michigan Law School in a 1998 Harvard Law Review article, "The Tragedy of the Anticommons: Property in the Transition from Marx to Markets."
Go to Profile#39699
Shai Halevi
#39711
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Shai Halevi is a computer scientist who works on cryptography research at Amazon Web Services. Born in Israel in 1966, Halevi received a B.A. and M.Sc. in computer science from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology in 1991 and 1993. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1997, and then joined IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, where he was a principal research staff member until 2019. Between 2019 and 2023, he has been a research fellow at Algorand Foundation, a blockchain startup founded by Silvio Micali.
Go to Profile#39700
John Amaechi
#39712
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
John Uzoma Ekwugha Amaechi , OBE is an English-American psychologist, consultant and former professional basketball player. He played college basketball at Vanderbilt and Penn State, and professional basketball in the National Basketball Association . Amaechi also played in France, Greece, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Since retiring from basketball, Amaechi has worked as a psychologist and consultant, establishing his company Amaechi Performance Systems.
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