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
#39751
Matt Walsh
#39763
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Matt Walsh is an American right-wing political commentator and activist. He is the host of The Matt Walsh Show podcast and is a columnist for the American conservative website The Daily Wire. He has authored four books and starred in The Daily Wire online documentary film What Is a Woman?
Go to Profile#39752
Jacques Neveu
#39764
Overall Influence
1932 - 2016 (84 years)
Jacques Jean-Pierre Neveu was a Belgian mathematician, specializing in probability theory. He is one of the founders of the French school of probability and statistics. Education and career Jacques Neveu received in 1955 from the Sorbonne his doctorate in mathematics under Robert Fortet with dissertation Étude des semi-groupes de Markov.
Go to Profile#39753
Robert Crutchfield
#39765
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Robert D. Crutchfield is an American sociologist and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Washington. He is known for his book Get A Job: Labor Markets, Economic Opportunity, and Crime, which was published in 2014.
Go to Profile#39754
Naomichi Matsumoto
#39766
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
is a Japanese physician and medical geneticist who identified several causative genes for human diseases, including Sotos syndrome , Marfan syndrome type II , Ohtahara syndrome , West syndrome , Microphthalmia with limb anomalies , Autosomal-recessive cerebellar ataxias , Hypomyelination with cerebellar atrophy and hypoplasia of the corpus callosum , Porencephaly , and Coffin–Siris syndrome .
Go to Profile#39755
Kas Oosterhuis
#39767
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Kas Oosterhuis is a Dutch architect, professor and co-founder of the innovation studio ONL together with visual artist Ilona Lénárd. He was a professor at Delft University of Technology from 2000 to 2016 and has been a professor at Qatar University since 2017. His office, ONL, has realized a number of innovative, contemporary architecture projects including the Salt Water Pavilion at Neeltje Jans, the Web of North Holland at the 2002 World Expo in Haarlemmermeer, the A2 Cockpit in the Sounder Barrier at Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht and the Liwa Tower in Abu Dhabi.
Go to Profile#39756
Monique Frize
#39768
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Monique Frize, , née Aubry is a Canadian biomedical engineer and professor, knowledgeable in medical instruments and decision support systems. Notably, her scientific research and outreach efforts led her to receive the prestigious distinction of Officer of the Order of Canada.
Go to Profile#39757
Miron Livny
#39769
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Miron Livny is a senior researcher and professor specializing in distributed computing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Livny has been a professor of computer science at Wisconsin since 1983, where he leads the HTCondor high-throughput computing system project. Miron is also a principal investigator and currently the facility coordinator for the Open Science Grid project, Director of the Center for High Throughput computing, CTO of Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, and Director of Core Computational Technology of the Morgridge Institute for Research.
Go to Profile#39758
Pierre-Hugues Herbert
#39770
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
Pierre-Hugues Herbert is a French professional tennis player. In doubles, he has completed the Career Grand Slam with titles at the 2015 US Open, the 2016 Wimbledon Championships, the 2018 French Open, the 2021 French Open, and the 2019 Australian Open partnering Nicolas Mahut. His career-high doubles ranking is World No. 2 achieved on 11 July 2016. The pair have also claimed seven ATP Tour Masters 1000 titles and ATP Finals titles in 2019 and 2021. In singles, Herbert has reached four ATP career finals and achieved his career-high singles ranking of world No. 36 on 11 February 2019.
Go to Profile#39759
Joe Roman
#39771
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Joe Roman is a conservation biologist, academic, and author of the books Whale and Listed: Dispatches from America's Endangered Species Act. His conservation research includes studies of the historical population size of whales, the role of cetaceans in the nitrogen cycle, the relationship between biodiversity and disease, and the genetics of invasions. He is the founding editor of "Eat the Invaders", a website dedicated to controlling invasive species by eating them.
Go to Profile#39760
Marvin Miller
#39772
Overall Influence
1917 - 2012 (95 years)
Marvin Julian Miller was an American labor union leader and baseball executive who served as the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association from 1966 to 1982. Miller led the MLBPA during three strikes and two lockouts. Under Miller's direction, the players' union was transformed into one of the strongest unions in the United States.
Go to Profile#39761
Pearl Abraham
#39773
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Pearl Abraham is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. She was the third of nine children in a Hasidic family. Her father was a rabbi. At age five, the family moved to New York City and two years later returned to Israel. Following several moves back and forth between New York and Israel, the family settled in New York when she was 12. She studied first in Yiddish, then in English and then again in Yiddish.
Go to Profile#39762
The Iron Sheik
#39774
Overall Influence
1942 - 2023 (81 years)
Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri , better known by his ring name the Iron Sheik, was an Iranian-American professional wrestler, amateur wrestler, and actor. He was the first, and thus far only, Iranian champion in WWE history, having won the WWF World Heavyweight Championship in 1983.
Go to Profile#39763
Kyle Petty
#39775
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Kyle Eugene Petty is an American former stock car racing driver and current racing commentator. He is the son of racer Richard Petty, grandson of racer Lee Petty, and father of racer Adam Petty, who was killed in a crash during practice in May 2000. Petty last drove the No. 45 Dodge Charger for Petty Enterprises, where he formerly served as CEO; his last race was in 2008.
Go to Profile#39764
Hans Christian Korting
#39776
Overall Influence
1952 - 2012 (60 years)
Hans Christian Korting was a German dermatologist and medical researcher specializing in causes and treatment of infectious and non-infectious inflammatory skin diseases as well as non-melanoma skin cancer".
Go to Profile#39765
David Mitchell
#39777
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
David James Stuart Mitchell is an English comedian, actor, and writer. Mitchell rose to prominence alongside Robert Webb as part of the comedy duo Mitchell and Webb. The duo starred in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show, in which Mitchell plays Mark Corrigan. He won the British Academy Television Award for Best Comedy Performance in 2009 for his performance. They have written and starred in several sketch shows including Bruiser, The Mitchell and Webb Situation, That Mitchell and Webb Sound and That Mitchell and Webb Look. They also starred in the British version of Apple's "Get a Mac" ad campaign.
Go to Profile#39766
Sandra Lavorel
#39778
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Sandra Lavorel is a French ecologist specializing in functional ecology. She is a research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research where she works at the Alpine Ecology Laboratory in Grenoble, France. She has been a member of the French Academy of sciences since 2013 In 2020, she was honoured to be an international member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2023, she was the recipient of the CNRS Gold Medal.
Go to Profile#39767
Judith V. Jordan
#39779
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Judith V. Jordan is the co-director and a founding scholar of the Jean Baker Miller Institute and co-director of the institute's Working Connections Project. She is an attending psychologist at McLean Hospital and assistant professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical School. She works as a psychotherapist, supervisor, teacher and consultant. Jordan's development of relational-cultural therapy has served as a foundation for other scholars who have used this theory to explore the workplace, education. leadership and entrepreneurship.
Go to Profile#39768
Jason Segel
#39780
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Jason Jordan Segel is an American actor and screenwriter. He is best known for his role as Marshall Eriksen in the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother from 2005 to 2014. He began his career with director and producer Judd Apatow on the television series Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared before gaining prominence for his leading roles in various successful comedy films in which he has starred, written, and produced.
Go to Profile#39769
Ralph R. Erickson
#39781
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Ralph Robert Erickson is an American lawyer who serves as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Education and career Born in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, Erickson received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Jamestown College in 1980 and a Juris Doctor from the University of North Dakota School of Law in 1984. He was in private practice in West Fargo, North Dakota, from 1984 to 1994. He was a magistrate judge for the Cass County Court, North Dakota from 1993 to 1994. He was a county judge for the Traill, Steele, Nelson & Griggs Counties Court, North Dakota in 1994.
Go to Profile#39770
John Dunn
#39782
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
John M. Dunn was the eighth president of Western Michigan University. Dunn earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Northern Illinois University, and he earned an Ed.D. in physical education from Brigham Young University.
Go to Profile#39771
Quint Kessenich
#39783
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Quint Elroy Kessenich is an American sportscaster for ABC and ESPN television covering lacrosse, basketball, football, hockey, wrestling and horse racing since 1993. Career Kessenich is a former All-American lacrosse goalkeeper. He attended the Johns Hopkins University from 1987 to 1990, where he was a two-time winner of the Ensign C. Markland Kelly Jr. Award as the nation's best goalie. Kessenich played one year of professional lacrosse with the Baltimore Thunder in 1999, and played at the amateur level for the storied Mount Washington Lacrosse Club.
Go to Profile#39772
Dani Evans
#39784
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Danielle "Dani" Evans is an American model, crowned the winner of Cycle 6 of America's Next Top Model in the spring of 2006. She currently resides in New York City, where she founded Monrowe, a unisex line of ready-to-wear hats.
Go to Profile#39773
T. H. Breen
#39785
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Timothy H. Breen is currently the William Smith Mason Professor of American History Emeritus at Northwestern University and a James Marsh Professor at Large at the University of Vermont. He is the founding director of the Kaplan Humanities Center and the Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies at Northwestern. Breen is a specialist on the American Revolution. He studies the history of early America with a special interest in political thought, material culture, and cultural anthropology. Breen has published multiple books and over 60 articles. In 2010 he released his latest book, American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People.
Go to Profile#39774
Jonathan Levin
#39786
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Jonathan Levin is an American economist at Stanford University who succeeded Garth Saloner as the dean at Stanford Graduate School of Business on September 1, 2016. He also has an appointment as the Holbrook Working Professor of Price Theory in the Department of Economics at Stanford. He had been Chair of the Economics Department. He was awarded the 2011 John Bates Clark Medal. Since 2021, he has been a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology .
Go to Profile#39775
Geraldine Heng
#39787
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Geraldine Heng is Mildred Hajek Vacek and John Roman Vacek Chair in English and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin, where, as of November 2022, she was also affiliated with Middle Eastern studies, Women’s studies, Jewish Studies, and the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Social Justice. Heng's work focuses on literary, social and cultural encounters between societies in the period 500–1500 CE. She is noted as a key figure in the development of postcolonial approaches to the European Middle Ages, premodern critical race studies, and critical early global studies.
Go to Profile#39776
Troels Jørgensen
#39788
Overall Influence
Troels Jørgensen is a Danish mathematician at Columbia University working on hyperbolic geometry and complex analysis, who proved Jørgensen's inequality. He wrote his thesis in 1970 at the University of Copenhagen under the joint supervision of Werner Fenchel and Bent Fuglede.
Go to Profile#39777
Marva Dawn
#39789
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Marva J. Dawn was an American Christian theologian, author, musician, preacher, and educator. She was associated with the parachurch organization Christians Equipped for Ministry in Vancouver, Washington where she taught Christians around the globe. She also served as a Teaching Fellow in Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Dawn was generally perceived as a Lutheran evangelical. She often wrote in a paleo-orthodox style, stressing the importance of Christian tradition and the wisdom of the Church through the centuries.
Go to Profile#39778
Floyde E. Bloom
#39790
Overall Influence
#39779
Henry McHenry
#39791
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Henry Malcolm McHenry is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, specializing in studies of human evolution, the origins of bipedality, and paleoanthropology. McHenry has published on the comparative relationships among primate fossils. His findings have been featured in scholarly journals, and in publications including Science, The New York Times, Discover and National Geographic. McHenry earned bachelor's and master's degrees at UC Davis before earning his Ph.D. at Harvard.
Go to Profile#39780
Haruzo Hida
#39792
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Haruzo Hida is a Japanese mathematician, known for his research in number theory, algebraic geometry, and modular forms. Hida received from Kyoto University a B.A. in 1975, an M.A. in 1977, and a Ph.D. in 1980 with thesis On Abelian Varieties with Complex Multiplication as Factors of the Jacobians of Shimura Curves, although he left Kyoto University in 1977. He was from 1977 to 1984 an assistant professor and from 1984 to 1987 an associate professor at Hokkaidō University. Since 1987 he has been a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. From 1979 to 1981 he was a visiting scho...
Go to Profile#39781
Robert Skeris
#39793
Overall Influence
Robert A. Skeris is an American Roman Catholic priest. He has been based in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee since 1961. He earned a Master of Arts degree in Liturgical Studies from the University of Notre Dame and studied at the Universities of Cologne and Bonn in Germany. He earned his Doctor of Theology in 1975 from the University of Bonn.
Go to Profile#39782
Ludger Kühnhardt
#39794
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Ludger Kühnhardt is a German political scientist, born in Münster. Since 1997 he has been Director at the Center for European Integration Studies , which he helped to found, and Professor of Political Science at Bonn University.
Go to Profile#39783
George Büchi
#39795
Overall Influence
1921 - 1998 (77 years)
George Hermann Büchi was a Swiss organic chemist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Paternò's reaction", known since the early twentieth century, was renamed to the "Paternò–Büchi reaction" based on enhancements made to it by Büchi's research group.
Go to Profile#39784
Zachary Quinto
#39796
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Zachary John Quinto is an American actor and film producer. He is known for his roles as Sylar, the primary antagonist from the science fiction drama series Heroes ; Spock in the film Star Trek and its sequels Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond ; Charlie Manx in the AMC series NOS4A2, and Dr. Oliver Thredson in American Horror Story: Asylum, for which he received a nomination for an Emmy award. His other starring film roles include Margin Call , Hitman: Agent 47 , Snowden , and Hotel Artemis . He also appeared in smaller roles on television series, such as So Notorious, The Slap, ...
Go to Profile#39785
Penelope Spheeris
#39797
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Penelope Spheeris is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. She has directed both documentary and scripted films. Her best-known works include the trilogy titled The Decline of Western Civilization, each covering an aspect of Los Angeles underground culture, and Wayne's World, her highest-grossing film.
Go to Profile#39786
Klaus Hulek
#39798
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Klaus Hulek is a German mathematician, known for his work in algebraic geometry and in particular, his work on moduli spaces. Life Klaus Hulek studied Mathematics from 1971 at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich graduating in 1976 with his Diplom. In 1974/75 he studied at Brasenose College of the University of Oxford, where he obtained a master's degree.
Go to Profile#39787
Barry D. Adam
#39799
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Barry Douglas Adam is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Windsor and from 2008 to 2019, Senior Scientist at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network in Toronto. Educated at Simon Fraser University and the University of Toronto , he is the author of: The Survival of Domination, The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement , and with Alan Sears, Experiencing HIV. He later co-edited The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics . He has an extensive research record on the dynamics of domination and empowerment, LGBT studies, HIV prevention, and issues of living...
Go to Profile#39788
Brigitte Askonas
#39800
Overall Influence
1923 - 2013 (90 years)
Brigitte Alice Askonas was a British immunologist and a visiting professor at Imperial College London from 1995. Education Brigitte Askonas was born to Czechoslovak parents, Jewish converts to Catholicism, who fled Austria after the Nazi takeover. Vienna-born Askonas studied biochemistry at McGill University and carried out her postgraduate work in the school of biochemistry at the University of Cambridge where she was a student of Girton College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#39789
Eric Schneiderman
#39801
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Eric Tradd Schneiderman is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 65th Attorney General of New York from 2011 until his resignation in May 2018. Schneiderman, a member of the Democratic Party, spent ten years in the New York State Senate before being elected Attorney General. In May 2018, Schneiderman resigned from his position as Attorney General after The New Yorker reported that four women had accused him of physical abuse. In 2021, Schneiderman’s law license was suspended for a year after a disciplinary proceeding where he admitted to the abusive conduct.
Go to Profile#39790
Balázs Gulyás
#39802
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Balázs Gulyás is a Hungarian neurobiologist. Personalia Gulyás is a Hungarian born neurobiologist based, since 1988, in Stockholm, working at the Karolinska Institute. Since 2013, while keeping his professorship at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, he has been one of the founding professors of the Imperial College London-Nanyang Technological University's Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine in Singapore where he is responsible for Translational Neuroscience and is the Scientific Director of Neuroscience and Mental Health.
Go to Profile#39791
Pedro Lamy
#39803
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
José Pedro Mourão Lamy Viçoso, OIH, known as Pedro Lamy , is a Portuguese professional racing driver currently racing in endurance races teaming up with Mathias Lauda and gentleman driver Paul Dalla Lana. He was the first Portuguese driver to score a point in a Formula One World Championship event, in the 1995 Australian Grand Prix, for Minardi.
Go to Profile#39792
Antony Stretton
#39804
Overall Influence
Antony "Tony" Oliver Ward Stretton is a neuroscientist, faculty member of the Neuroscience Training Program, and the John Bascom Professor of Zoology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is married to fellow scientist, Philippa Claude, daughter of Albert Claude.
Go to Profile#39793
Shanley Allen
#39805
Overall Influence
Shanley E. M. Allen is a professor of linguistics working at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern. Her research is primarily in the area of psycholinguistics and language acquisition, studying both monolingual and multilingual speakers. She is also a specialist on the Inuktitut language.
Go to Profile#39794
Shankar–Ganesh
#39806
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Shankar–Ganesh is an Indian music director duo who has worked on Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu movies for around 50 years. Personal life Shankar was the younger brother of music director C. R. Subbaraman while Ganesh was the son-in-law of G. N. Velumani who produced films like Bhaagapirivinai and Paalum Pazhamum.
Go to Profile#39795
Benjamin Fain
#39807
Overall Influence
1930 - 2013 (83 years)
Benjamin Fain was an Israeli physicist, professor-emeritus, and former refusenik. Biography Fain was born to a Jewish family in Kyiv. His father was a mathematician. He instilled in the child a love for science as well as a strong national sentiment.
Go to Profile#39796
Paul Colinvaux
#39808
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Paul Colinvaux was an ecologist and professor emeritus at Ohio State University. Colinvaux was born in London, England. He attended University College School in London, where his activities included rowing in the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta. After graduating from UCS, Colinvaux earned a commission in the Royal Artillery. He was stationed in Germany as part of the British occupation after World War II. Colinvaux achieved the rank of second lieutenant.
Go to Profile#39797
Johnston Birchall
#39809
Overall Influence
1951 - 2021 (70 years)
Johnston Birchall was a leading British academic in the field of co-operative studies and at the time of his death Professor Emeritus at the Social Science Faculty of the University of Stirling. Biography Birchall studied theology at the University of Oxford, before working as a community worker and a housing association manager for five years. He then completed a masters degree in sociology at the University of York, followed by a PhD in 1985 on housing co-operatives, also at York. His doctoral thesis formed the basis for his 1988 book, Building Communities: The Co-operative Way.
Go to Profile#39798
John F. Hughes
#39810
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
John F. "Spike" Hughes is a Professor of Computer Science at Brown University. Contributions Hughes' research is in computer graphics, particularly those aspects of graphics involving substantial mathematics. He is perhaps best known as the co-author of many widely used textbooks in the field of computer graphics.
Go to Profile#39799
Emilio Elizalde
#39811
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Emilio Elizalde is a Spanish physicist working in the fields of gravitational physics and general relativity. Of Basque heritage, he was born in Balaguer, about 25 km northeast of Lleida, the province capital. He finished double undergraduate majors in Physics and Mathematics at the University of Barcelona in 1972 and 1973, followed by a masters and later a Ph.D. degree at the same institution. In 1977, he married Maria Carmen Torrent, who is currently Professor of Applied Physics at the Technical University of Catalonia. The years immediately after the death of Franco were chaotic, offering...
Go to Profile#39800
Thomas D. Griffith
#39812
Overall Influence
Thomas D. Griffith is an American academic, an expert on taxation and tax law, and John B. Milliken Professor of Taxation at the USC Gould School of Law. Career Griffith was a graduate of Brown University and Harvard Law School, before joining the law firm of Hill & Barlow in Boston, as an associate. Griffith became a professor at the USC Gould School of Law in 1984. He has also taught at NYU, and was a former editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Go to Profile