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
#39701
Joseph Bruno Slowinski
#39713
Overall Influence
1962 - 2001 (39 years)
Joseph Bruno Slowinski was an American herpetologist who worked extensively with elapid snakes. Research and career Slowinski was born on November 15, 1962, in New York City, New York. He attained his bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Kansas in 1984 and went on to receive his Ph.D. at the University of Miami in 1991, studying under herpetologist Jay M. Savage. He performed postdoctoral work at the National Museum of Natural History and Louisiana State University, eventually taking a position as a professor of biology at Southeastern Louisiana University.
Go to Profile#39702
David Gillborn
#39714
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
David Gillborn is a British educational researcher known for his work in critical race theory as it relates to education. He is Professor of Critical Race Studies at the University of Birmingham, where he is also director of research in the School of Education and the director of the Centre for Research in Race and Education. He serves as the editor-in-chief of Race Ethnicity and Education.
Go to Profile#39703
Yelena Malysheva
#39715
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Yelena Vasilyevna Malysheva is a Russian physician, internist, cardiologist, teacher, and television host. She has been educating Russians on healthy lifestyles for two decades. She hosts the TV programs Zdorovye and Zhit zdorovo! , which air on Channel One. She is currently a professor at the Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry.
Go to Profile#39704
Vinay Prasad
#39716
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Vinayak K. Prasad is an American hematologist-oncologist and health researcher. He is a professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco . He is the author of the books Ending Medical Reversal and Malignant .
Go to Profile#39705
William Ragsdale Cannon
#39717
Overall Influence
1916 - 1997 (81 years)
William Ragsdale Cannon was the dean of Candler School of Theology and an American bishop of the United Methodist Church, elected in 1968. Birth and family William was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the son of William Ragsdale and Emma McAfee Cannon. Bishop Cannon was raised in Dalton, Georgia. He never married.
Go to Profile#39706
Jean-Claude Abric
#39718
Overall Influence
1941 - 2012 (71 years)
Jean-Claude Abric was a French psychologist, professor in social psychology and the former head of the Social Psychology Laboratory at the University of Aix-Marseille. He had a major contribution to the theory of social representation identifying the structural elements of a social representation and distinguishing the core elements from the peripheral ones. His first study on social representations was based on craftsmen and the craft industry. In his book published in 1994, he gives a broader vision of his Central Nucleus Theory.
Go to Profile#39707
Rajkumar Chellaraj
#39719
Overall Influence
Rajkumar Chellaraj is the CFO and administrative dean at the Stanford Business School, Stanford University. Concurrently, he was also the chief operating officer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business Stanford Seed program with primary focus in Africa and India from 2015 to 2017. He is the former Assistant Secretary of State for Administration at the US State Department from 2006 to 2009 under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Currently, he serves as chairman of the board of Wellbore Integrity Solutions, a global oilfield services provider, a portfolio company of private equity firm Rhône Group.
Go to Profile#39708
Luc Plamondon
#39720
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Luc Plamondon is a French-Canadian lyricist and music executive. He is best known for his work on the musicals Starmania and Notre-Dame de Paris. He is the brother of Louis Plamondon, a long-serving member of the House of Commons of Canada.
Go to Profile#39709
Johan Schot
#39721
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Johannes Willem "Johan" Schot is a Dutch historian working in the field of science and technology policy. A historian of technology and an expert in sustainability transitions, Johan Schot is Professor of Global Comparative History at the Centre for Global Challenges, Utrecht University. He is the Academic Director of the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium and former Director of the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex. He was elected to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. He is the Principal Investigator of the Deep Transitions Lab.
Go to Profile#39710
Derek Jarman
#39722
Overall Influence
1942 - 1994 (52 years)
Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English artist, film maker, costume designer, stage designer, writer, gardener, and gay rights activist. Biography Jarman was born at the Royal Victoria Nursing Home in Northwood, Middlesex, England, the son of Elizabeth Evelyn and Lancelot Elworthy Jarman. His father was a Royal Air Force officer, born in New Zealand.
Go to Profile#39711
Ferenc Barnás
#39723
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Ferenc Barnás is a Hungarian novelist. Biography Ferenc Barnás was born in 1959 in Debrecen, Hungary. From 1982 until 1988 he attended universities in Debrecen, Budapest, and Munich, graduated from Eötvös Loránd University in 1988 with MA degrees in Hungarian language and literature and Aesthetics. In 1991 he earned his doctoral degree at ELTE with a dissertation titled Hermann Hesse világképe . From 1988 until 1994, he taught literature, philosophy and aesthetics in secondary schools for the arts in Budapest. From 1990 until 1992 he worked as an instructor of music aesthetics at the Department of Cultural History, ELTE.
Go to Profile#39712
Fabrizio De André
#39724
Overall Influence
1940 - 1999 (59 years)
Fabrizio Cristiano De André was an Italian singer-songwriter and the most-prominent cantautore of his time. His 40-year career reflects his interests in concept albums, literature, poetry, political protest, and French music. He is considered a prominent member of the Genoese School. Because of the success of his music in Italy and its impact on the Italian collective memory, many public places such as roads, squares, and schools in Italy are named after De André.
Go to Profile#39713
Eleanor Dodson
#39725
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Eleanor Joy Dodson FRS is an Australian-born biologist who specialises in the computational modelling of protein crystallography. She holds a chair in the Department of Chemistry at the University of York. She is the widow of the scientist Guy Dodson.
Go to Profile#39714
Hage Geingob
#39726
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Hage Gottfried Geingob is a Namibian politician, serving as the third president of Namibia since 21 March 2015. Geingob was the first Prime Minister of Namibia from 1990 to 2002, and served as prime minister again from 2012 to 2015. Between 2008 and 2012 Geingob served as Minister of Trade and Industry. He is also the current president of the ruling SWAPO Party since his election to the position in November 2017.
Go to Profile#39715
Hans Strikwerda
#39727
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Johannes Strikwerda is a Dutch organizational theorist, management consultant, and Professor of Business Administration at the University of Amsterdam, known for his work on implementation of shared services centers in the public sector, and on the concept of multidimensional organizations.
Go to Profile#39716
John Kappler
#39728
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
John Wayne Kappler is a professor in the Department of Integrated Immunology at National Jewish Health. His principal research is in T cell biology, a subject he collaborates on with his wife Philippa Marrack. In 1983 they discovered the T cell receptor, together with Ellis Reinherz and James Allison.
Go to Profile#39717
Liu Jingnan
#39729
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Liu Jingnan is a Chinese geodesist and educator. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the Wuhan Institute of Surveying and Mapping , and worked at Hunan Provincial Coalfield Physical Test Team, Xiangtan Mining Institute and Wuhan University. In 1999, he was elected a member of Chinese Academy of Engineering. He served as the President of Wuhan University from 2003 to 2008, and the inaugural Chancellor of Duke Kunshan University from 2012.
Go to Profile#39718
Juan Ignacio Chela
#39730
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Juan Ignacio Chela , nicknamed as "El Flaco" or "Liliano," is a former professional tennis player from Argentina. Chela was given a three-month ban from the professional tour in 2001 for failing a drugs test. Post-doping ban, Chela went on to reach the quarterfinals of the 2004 and 2011 French Open, and the 2007 US Open, attaining a career-high singles ranking of world No. 15 in August 2004.
Go to Profile#39719
Robert Day. Shannon
#39731
Overall Influence
#39720
Kathryn Davis
#39732
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Kathryn Davis is an American novelist. She is a recipient of a Lannan Literary Award. Life Davis has taught at Skidmore College, and is now senior fiction writer in the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
Go to Profile#39721
Nicolas Warembourg
#39733
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Nicolas Warembourg is a French jurist, professor of Law at the Sorbonne. He specializes in historic, public and constitutional law. He is regularly interviewed. He is the most highly specialized regarding Guy Coquille.
Go to Profile#39722
Sam Potolicchio
#39734
Overall Influence
Sam Potolicchio is a professor specializing in government, leadership and political communications. He serves as Director of Global and Custom Education at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy Executive Education program and Distinguished Professor and Department Chair of Political Communications at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration . Potolicchio is founder and President of the Preparing Global Leaders Forum , an international leadership training program with campuses in Russia, Croatia and Jordan.
Go to Profile#39723
Tom DeFalco
#39735
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Tom DeFalco is an American comic book writer and editor well known for his association with Marvel Comics, with long runs on Amazing Spider-Man, Thor, and Fantastic Four. Career While in college, DeFalco "wrote for a few local newspapers, a weekly comic strip and did a few short stories", and after graduation "got in touch with the various comic book companies", which led to him beginning his comics career as an editorial assistant with Archie Comics in mid-1972. During his tenure with Archie Comics, he "initiated and developed the Archie Comics Digest Series, which is still being produced today and remains the company's most profitable publishing series".
Go to Profile#39724
Royall T. Moore
#39736
Overall Influence
1930 - 2014 (84 years)
Royall Tyler Moore was an American-born mycologist and mycology professor. Education and work He received his doctorate from the Harvard University in 1959, writing his dissertation on the fungal genus Sporidesmium. Later, he worked at Cornell University, the University of California, Berkeley, and North Carolina State University on the classification and development of fungi before joining the faculty at Ulster University at Coleraine. Moore bequeathed almost $500,000 to Cornell University to promote the study of mycology.
Go to Profile#39725
Billy Eckstine
#39737
Overall Influence
1914 - 1993 (79 years)
William Clarence Eckstine was an American jazz and pop singer and a bandleader during the swing and bebop eras. He was noted for his rich, almost operatic bass-baritone voice. In 2019, Eckstine was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award "for performers who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording." His recording of "I Apologize" was given the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999. The New York Times described him as an "influential band leader" whose "suave bass-baritone" and "full-throated, sugar...
Go to Profile#39726
Loren A. Smith
#39738
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Loren A. Smith is a senior judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims. He served as the court's Chief Judge from 1986 to 2000. Early life, education, and career Smith was born on December 22, 1944, in Chicago and earned his Bachelor of Arts and Juris Doctor from Northwestern University and Northwestern University School of Law, respectively.
Go to Profile#39727
Bob McDonnell
#39739
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Robert Francis McDonnell is an American politician, attorney, businessman, academic administrator, and former military officer who served as the 71st governor of Virginia from 2010 to 2014. Born in Philadelphia, McDonnell was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army Reserve. He later served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1992 to 2006, and was attorney general of Virginia from 2006 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, McDonnell was elected governor of Virginia after using the campaign slogan "Bob's for Jobs." He defeated Democratic state Senator Creigh Deeds by a 17-point margin in the 2009 general election, which was marked by the severe recession of the late 2000s.
Go to Profile#39728
Natalie Ahn
#39740
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Natalie G. Ahn is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research is focused on understanding the mechanisms of cell signaling, with a speciality in phosphorylation and cancers. Ahn's work uses the tools of "classical chemistry" to work on understanding the genetic code and how genetics affects life processes. She has been a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder since 2003, where she is a distinguished professor. She was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator between 1994 and 2014. In 2018, she was elected to the National Ac...
Go to Profile#39729
Rianne Letschert
#39741
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Rianne Monique Letschert is a Dutch law scholar. Since November 2021 she has been president of Maastricht University. Previously Letschert was professor of victimology and international law at Tilburg University between March 2011 and September 2016. From September 2016 until 1 February 2022 she was rector of Maastricht University.
Go to Profile#39730
Marie Anaut
#39742
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Marie Anaut is a professor of clinical psychology and educational sciences at the Lumière University Lyon 2. She is a specialist in psychological resilience. Life and work In 1990, Marie Anaut defended her doctoral thesis entitled Child placement behaviors: analysis of intergenerational repetition at the University of Lyon 2 under the direction of Robert Martin. She was named a lecturer there and became director of the Institute of Psychology at that university from 1999 to 2004. She was a university vice-president from 2008 to 2012. After completing her post-doctoral habilitation in clinical...
Go to Profile#39731
Bernard F. Morrey
#39743
Overall Influence
#39732
Clinton Jencks
#39744
Overall Influence
1918 - 2005 (87 years)
Clinton Jencks was an American lifelong activist in labor and social justice causes, most famous for union organizing among New Mexico's miners, acting in the 1954 film Salt of the Earth , and enduring years of government prosecution for allegedly falsifying a Taft-Hartley non-communist affidavit.
Go to Profile#39733
David G. Hebert
#39745
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
David G. Hebert is a musicologist and comparative educationist, employed as Professor of Music at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences , where he leads the Grieg Academy Music Education research group. He has contributed to the fields of music education, ethnomusicology, sociomusicology, comparative education, and East Asian Studies. Since 2018, he has been manager of the Nordic Network for Music Education, a multinational state-funded organization that sponsors intensive Master courses and exchange of university music lecturers and students across Northern Europe. He is also a visi...
Go to Profile#39734
Luca Badoer
#39746
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Luca Badoer is an Italian former racing driver. Badoer has raced for the Scuderia Italia, Minardi, Forti and most recently, Ferrari teams. In addition to his racing duties, Badoer was one of the active test and reserve drivers for Ferrari from 1998 to 2010 and in 2009 stood in for Ferrari's regular race driver Felipe Massa at the European Grand Prix and the Belgian Grand Prix after the Brazilian was injured during qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix and his original replacement, Michael Schumacher, pulled out due to injury.
Go to Profile#39735
José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado
#39747
Overall Influence
1915 - 2011 (96 years)
José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado was a Spanish professor of neurophysiology at Yale University, famed for his research on mind control through electrical stimulation of the brain. Biography Rodríguez Delgado was born in Ronda, in the province of Málaga, Spain in 1915. He received a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Madrid just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. During the Spanish Civil War he joined the Republican side and served as a medical corpsman while he was a medical student. Rodríguez Delgado was held in a concentration camp for five months after the war ended.
Go to Profile#39736
Elena Panfilova
#39748
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Elena A. Panfilova is chairperson of the Center for Anti-corruption Research and Initiative Transparency International, the Russian chapter of Transparency International, and a director of Transparency International. She founded the chapter in 1999.
Go to Profile#39737
Eudald Carbonell
#39749
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Eudald Carbonell i Roura is a Spanish archaeologist, anthropologist and paleontologist. Educated in Girona, Barcelona and Paris, he holds a PhD in geology of the Quaternary from Pierre and Marie Curie University , and one in history from the University of Barcelona .
Go to Profile#39738
Les Standiford
#39750
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Les Standiford is an author and, since 1985, the Founding Director of the Florida International University Creative Writing Program in Miami, Florida. He also holds the Peter Meinke Chair in Creative Writing at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Go to Profile#39739
Amadou Toumani Touré
#39751
Overall Influence
1948 - 2020 (72 years)
Amadou Toumani Touré was a Malian politician. He supervised Mali's first multiparty elections as chairman of the transitional government , and later became the second democratically elected President of Mali .
Go to Profile#39740
Ali Larijani
#39752
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Ali Ardeshir Larijani is an Iranian conservative politician, philosopher and former military officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who served as the Speaker of the Parliament of Iran from 2008 to 2020. He is currently member of the Expediency Discernment Council.
Go to Profile#39741
Jeffery Keedy
#39753
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Jeffery Keedy, born 1957, is an American graphic designer, type designer, writer and educator. He is notable as an essayist and contributor to books and periodicals on graphic design. He is also notable for the design of Keedy Sans, a typeface acquired in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in 2011.
Go to Profile#39742
Norman Uphoff
#39754
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Norman Uphoff is an American social scientist now involved with agroecology serving as a Professor of Government and International Agriculture at Cornell University. He is the acting director of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs and former director of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development 1990–2005.
Go to Profile#39743
Wolfgang Peukert
#39755
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Wolfgang Peukert is a German process engineer. He won the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2005. Life Wolfgang Peukert studied chemical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe and received his doctorate in 1990 at the Institute of Mechanical Process Engineering with the topic "The combined separation of particles and gases in packed bed filters". After seven years in the development department of the Japanese Hosokawa Group, he became a full professor at the Institute of Particle Technology, Technical University of Munich in 1998. He moved to the Institute of Particle Technology at the ...
Go to Profile#39744
Pat Conroy
#39756
Overall Influence
1945 - 2016 (71 years)
Donald Patrick Conroy was an American author who wrote several acclaimed novels and memoirs; his books The Water is Wide, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini were made into films, the last two being nominated for Oscars. He is recognized as a leading figure of late-20th-century Southern literature.
Go to Profile#39745
Maggie Gyllenhaal
#39757
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Margalit Ruth Gyllenhaal is an American actress and filmmaker. Part of the Gyllenhaal family, she is the daughter of filmmakers Stephen Gyllenhaal and Naomi Achs, and the older sister of actor Jake Gyllenhaal.
Go to Profile#39746
Maria Corti
#39758
Overall Influence
1915 - 2002 (87 years)
Maria Corti was an Italian philologist, literary critic, and novelist. Considered one of the leading literary scholars of post-World War II Italy, she was awarded numerous prizes including the Premio Campiello for the entire body of her work. Her works of fiction were informed by her literary scholarship but also had a distinctly autobiographical vein, particularly her Voci del nord-est and II canto delle sirene . For most of her career she was based at the University of Pavia where she established the Fondo Manoscritti di Autori Moderni e Contemporanei, an extensive curated archive of mater...
Go to Profile#39747
Joel Rosenbaum
#39759
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Joel Rosenbaum is a professor of cell biology at Yale University. Rosenbaum received his bachelor's degree from Syracuse University in 1955, and later his M.Sc. Ed. from St. Lawrence University in 1957. He returned later to Syracuse for his master's degree in 1959 and Ph.D. in 1963.
Go to Profile#39748
Stephen R. Anderson
#39760
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Stephen Robert Anderson is an American linguist. He is the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics Emeritus at Yale University and was the 2007 president of the Linguistic Society of America. He received a B.S. in linguistics from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1966 and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969. Anderson taught at Harvard University from 1969 until 1975. He joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles in 1975. In 1988, he became a professor of cognitive science at Johns Hopkins University. Since 1994, he has been at Yale University; he retired from teaching in 2017.
Go to Profile#39749
Andrei Lupaș
#39761
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Andrei N. Lupaș is a German-Romanian biochemist, molecular biologist, and bioinformatician. Education and career Lupaș was born in Bucharest, Romania, he began his studies in biology at the Technical University of Munich in 1982 before continuing his studies in molecular biology at Princeton University, where he received his PhD in 1991 with Jeffry Stock on the mechanism of signal transduction in bacterial chemotaxis. He then worked at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried in the Wolfgang Baumeister's department until 1997. From 1997 to 2001, he worked at SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals in Collegeville.
Go to Profile#39750
Nikil Dutt
#39762
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Nikil Dutt is a Chancellor's Professor of Computer Science at University of California, Irvine, United States. Professor Dutt's research interests are in embedded systems, electronic design automation, computer architecture, optimizing compilers, system specification techniques, distributed systems, and formal methods.
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