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).
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List of the most influential people
#39801
Andries de Grip
#39813
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Andries de Grip is a Dutch economist, academic, and author. He is a Professor of Economics at the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market , School of Business and Economics , Maastricht University and has been Director of ROA from 2013 to 2020.
Go to Profile#39802
Stephen Hilbert
#39814
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Stephen R. Hilbert is an American mathematician best known as co-author of the Bramble–Hilbert lemma, which he published with James H. Bramble in 1970. Hilbert's area of specialty is numerical analysis. He has been a professor of mathematics at Ithaca College since 1968. Additionally, he taught mathematics at Cornell University as a visiting program professor during the 2003–2004 academic year.
Go to Profile#39803
David Rose
#39815
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
David Rose is a British author and investigative journalist. He is a contributing editor with Vanity Fair and a special investigations writer for The Mail on Sunday. His interests include human rights, miscarriages of justice, the death penalty, racism, the war on terror, politics, and climate change denial. He is the author of six non-fiction books and a novel, Taking Morgan, a thriller set in Washington, Oxford, Tel Aviv and Gaza, published by Quartet in 2014. He was named News Reporter of the Year in the Society of Editors British Press Awards for 2015.
Go to Profile#39804
Christian Eriksen
#39816
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
Christian Dannemann Eriksen is a Danish professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for Premier League club Manchester United and the Denmark national team. He is renowned for his vision, technique, passing, and free kick ability.
Go to Profile#39805
Deborah Doniach
#39817
Overall Influence
1912 - 2004 (92 years)
Deborah Doniach MD FRCP was a British clinical immunologist and pioneer in the field of autoimmune diseases. Early and personal life Deborah Abileah was born in Geneva, Switzerland, on 6 April 1912 to Russian parents. Her father, Arieh Abileah , of Jewish descent, was a concert pianist and music teacher; her mother, Fée Héllès, of Russian-German descent , ran a novel dance school in Paris. The family moved frequently during Deborah's childhood, living at various times in Paris, Vienna and Italy.
Go to Profile#39806
Peter Hargitai
#39818
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Peter Hargitai is a poet, novelist, and translator of Hungarian literature. Personal life and education Hargitai was born in Budapest, Hungary. At the age of nine he wrote his first poem “Rebels” meant as a tribute to the failed 1956 Hungarian Revolution. After a daring escape, he arrived in America with his father, a royal judge before the Soviet occupation, his mother, and two brothers. Poems in his adopted language did not come until his university studies in Cleveland between 1965 and 1975 when he contributed occasional poems to the Frigate and the Dark Tower, two literary magazines connected with Cleveland State University.
Go to Profile#39807
Jacob A. Marinsky
#39819
Overall Influence
1918 - 2005 (87 years)
Jacob Akiba Marinsky was a chemist who was the co-discoverer of the element promethium. Biography Marinsky was born in Buffalo, New York on April 11, 1918. He attended the State University of New York at Buffalo, beginning at age 16 and receiving a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1939.
Go to Profile#39808
Zheng Min
#39820
Overall Influence
1920 - 2022 (102 years)
Zheng Min was a Chinese scholar and modernist poet. Early life and career Zheng Min was born on 18 July 1920 in Minhou County, China. She attended the Southwestern University of Kunming, where she graduated with a Bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1943. She first began publishing work during The War of Resistance, one of few female modernist poets doing so at the time. Zheng attended Brown University in the United States and earned her Master's in literature in 1951, before returning to China in 1955. She is one of nine prolific modernist poets considered to be in the "Nine Leaves" school of poetry.
Go to Profile#39809
Paul Brehm
#39821
Overall Influence
Paul Brehm is a researcher at the Vollum Institute at Oregon Health and Science University. It was during a seminar by Brehm that Martin Chalfie became inspired to work on Green fluorescent protein for which Chalfie shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008.
Go to Profile#39810
Robert Engman
#39822
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Robert Engman was an American sculptor with works in the permanent collection of the Hirshhorn Museum, MOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, numerous college museums, and private collections. Early life Engman was born in 1927 to parents who had emigrated from Sweden. He joined the Navy at the age of 15, serving in World War II in the Pacific. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA, and from Yale University with an MFA in Painting and in Sculpture , where he studied with sculptor José de Rivera and Josef Albers. Albers wrote of him: “Only a few independent ones wer...
Go to Profile#39811
Wolfgang Rautenberg
#39823
Overall Influence
1936 - 2011 (75 years)
Wolfgang Rautenberg was a German mathematician and logician whose areas of research were model theory, non-classical logic, modal logic, temporal logic and self reference. Life Rautenberg was born in Potsdam. He graduated with an abitur from the gymnasium in Ludwigslust. He studied mathematics and physics at the Humboldt University in East Berlin , and there in 1963 Rautenberg received a doctorate and worked as a logician. In 1968 Rautenberg graduated from the Humboldt University as an academic lecturer. From 1969 to 1973 Rautenberg was docent at the Humboldt University. Because the Stasi con...
Go to Profile#39812
Ted Trainer
#39824
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Ted Trainer is an Australian academic, author, and an advocate of economic degrowth, eco-anarchism, simple living, and 'conserver' lifestyles. He is a retired lecturer from the School of Social Work, University of New South Wales. He has written numerous books and articles on sustainability and is developing Pigface Point, an alternative lifestyle educational site near Sydney.
Go to Profile#39813
Aritha Van Herk
#39825
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Aritha van Herk, , is a Canadian writer, critic, editor, public intellectual, and university professor. Her work often includes feminist themes, and depicts and analyzes the culture of western Canada.
Go to Profile#39814
Aleksandar Đorđević
#39826
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Aleksandar "Saša" Đorđević or Sale Đorđević is a Serbian professional basketball coach and former player. He currently serves as a head coach for the senior China. During his playing career, he was listed as a 1.88 m 90 kg point guard.
Go to Profile#39815
Jacques Tardi
#39827
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Jacques Tardi is a French comic artist. He is often credited solely as Tardi. Biography Tardi was born on 30 August 1946 in Valence, Drôme. After graduating from the École nationale des beaux-arts de Lyon and the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris, he started drawing comics in 1969, at the age of 23, in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Pilote, initially illustrating short stories written by Jean Giraud and Serge de Beketch, before creating the political fiction story Rumeur sur le Rouergue from a scenario by Pierre Christin in 1972.
Go to Profile#39816
Sheridan Scott
#39828
Overall Influence
Sheridan Scott is the former Commissioner of Competition of the Competition Bureau of Canada. She joined the Ottawa office of law firm Bennett Jones in March 2009 after leaving the Bureau. A 1981 graduate in law from the University of Victoria, Scott is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada. She worked for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission , the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and Bell Canada before being appointed to the Competition Bureau.
Go to Profile#39817
Holger Braunschweig
#39829
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Holger Braunschweig is Head and Chair of Inorganic Chemistry at the Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg in Würzburg, Germany. He is best known for founding the field of transition metal-boron multiple bonding , the synthesis of the first stable compounds containing boron-boron and boron-oxygen triple bonds, the isolation of the first non-carbon/nitrogen main-group dicarbonyl, and the first fixation of dinitrogen at an element of the p-block of the periodic table. By modifying a strategy pioneered by Prof. Gregory Robinson of the University of Georgia, Braunschweig also discovered the first rational and high-yield synthesis of neutral compounds containing boron-boron double bonds .
Go to Profile#39818
Steven Fein
#39830
Overall Influence
Steven Fein is a professor of psychology in the Department of Psychology at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Fein has two daughters named Alina and Hannah. He attended Princeton and the University of Michigan, where he received his Ph.D. in social psychology. His primary research interests are stereotypes and prejudice, suspicion and attribution theory, and how the media affects both men and women’s views of women.
Go to Profile#39819
Hugh Christian Watkins
#39831
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Hugh Christian Watkins is a British cardiologist. He is a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, an associate editor of Circulation Research, and was Field Marshal Alexander Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine in the University of Oxford between 1996 and 2013.
Go to Profile#39820
James Crabtree
#39832
Overall Influence
James Crabtree is a British author and policy analyst living in Singapore. He is currently executive director of the Asia branch of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Crabtree writes columns for Nikkei Asian Review, Foreign Policy, and The Straits Times. Previously, he was an associate professor of practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and a senior fellow at the school’s Centre on Asia and Globalisation. He was also a non-resident fellow at Chatham House, the London-based think tank. His first book, The Billionaire Raj: A J...
Go to Profile#39821
Dawn Prince-Hughes
#39833
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Dawn Prince-Hughes is an American anthropologist, primatologist, and ethologist. She is the author of several books, including Gorillas Among Us: A Primate Ethnographer's Book of Days and her memoir Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism, and she is the editor of the essay collection Aquamarine Blue 5: Personal Stories of College Students with Autism.
Go to Profile#39822
Karen Nakamura
#39834
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Karen Nakamura is an American academic, author, filmmaker, photographer and the Robert and Colleen Haas Distinguished Chair of Disability Studies and Professor of Anthropology at University of California, Berkeley. Previously she was Associate Professor of Anthropology and East Asian Studies and Chair of LGBT Studies at Yale University.
Go to Profile#39823
Harald Tveit Alvestrand
#39835
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Harald Tveit Alvestrand is a Norwegian computer scientist. He was chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force from 2001 until 2005, succeeding Fred Baker. Within the IETF, Alvestrand was earlier the chair of the Areas for Applications from 1995 until 1997, and of Operations and Management in 1998.
Go to Profile#39824
Otto Rössler
#39836
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Otto Eberhard Rössler is a German biochemist known for his work on chaos theory and the theoretical equation known as the Rössler attractor. He is best known to the general public for his involvement in a failed lawsuit to halt the Large Hadron Collider due to fears that it would generate mini black holes.
Go to Profile#39825
Suhas Pandurang Sukhatme
#39837
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Suhas Pandurang Sukhatme is an Indian scientist, teacher, author and a former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board of the Government of India, known for his expertise in heat transfer and energy technologies. He was honoured by the Government of India, in 2001, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri.
Go to Profile#39826
Mikhail Atallah
#39838
Overall Influence
Mikhail Jibrayil Atallah is a Lebanese American computer scientist, a distinguished professor of computer science at Purdue University. Biography Atallah received his bachelor's degree from the American University of Beirut in 1975. He then moved to Johns Hopkins University for his graduate studies, earning a master's degree in 1980 and a Ph.D. in 1982 under the supervision of S. Rao Kosaraju. Since that time he has been a member of the Purdue University faculty.
Go to Profile#39827
Delia Smith
#39839
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Delia Ann Smith is an English cook and television presenter, known for teaching basic cookery skills in a no-nonsense style. One of the best known celebrity chefs in British popular culture, Smith has influenced viewers to become more culinarily adventurous. She is also famous for her role as joint majority shareholder at Norwich City F.C.
Go to Profile#39828
Phil Gold
#39840
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Phil Gold is a Canadian physician, scientist, professor and author. Born in Montreal, Quebec, he received a BSc degree in 1957, a MSc degree in 1961, a MD degree in 1961, and a PhD in 1965 from McGill University. He obtained his Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada fellowship certification in Internal Medicine in November 1966.
Go to Profile#39829
Jelte Wicherts
#39841
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Jelte Michiel "J.M." Wicherts is a Dutch psychologist and professor in the Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Tilburg University. His research interests include biases in decision making, as well as scientific misconduct and reproducibility. He has also researched group differences in IQ scores and the Flynn effect.
Go to Profile#39830
Kelvin Davies
#39842
Overall Influence
Kelvin J. A. Davies is the James E. Birren Chair of Gerontology at the USC Davis School of Gerontology with a joint appointment in Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in biology. He is involved in researching free radical biology, oxidative stress, and aging; and was an early member of the study of protein oxidation, proteolysis, and altered gene expression during stress-adaptation; he also found the role of free radicals in mitochondrial adaptation to exercise, and demonstrated the role of diminished oxidative stress-adaptive gene expression in aging.
Go to Profile#39831
Anita Roberts
#39843
Overall Influence
1942 - 2006 (64 years)
Anita Bauer Roberts was an American molecular biologist who made pioneering observations of a protein, TGF-β, that is critical in healing wounds and bone fractures and that has a dual role in blocking or stimulating cancers.
Go to Profile#39832
Ashutosh Varshney
#39844
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Ashutosh Varshney is an Indian-born political scientist and academic. He is currently the Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Brown University, where he also directs the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Varshney previously taught at Harvard University and the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#39833
William Alington
#39845
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
William Hildebrand Alington is a New Zealand modernist architect, whose work has been awarded nationally, and recognised internationally. He was the husband of New Zealand historian Margaret Alington.
Go to Profile#39834
John Quackenbush
#39846
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
John Quackenbush is an American computational biologist and genome scientist. He is a professor of biostatistics and computational biology and a professor of cancer biology at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute , as well as the director of its Center for Cancer Computational Biology . Quackenbush also holds an appointment as a professor of computational biology and bioinformatics in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Go to Profile#39835
Pat Mills
#39847
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Patrick Eamon Mills is an English comics writer and editor who, along with John Wagner, revitalised British boys comics in the 1970s, and has remained a leading light in British comics ever since. He has been called "the godfather of British comics".
Go to Profile#39836
Morris Edward Opler
#39848
Overall Influence
1907 - 1996 (89 years)
Morris Edward Opler , American anthropologist and advocate of Japanese American civil rights, was born in Buffalo, New York. He was the brother of Marvin Opler, an anthropologist and social psychiatrist.
Go to Profile#39837
Sadeq Kia
#39849
Overall Influence
1920 - 2002 (82 years)
Sadeq Kia was an Iranian man of letters, distinguished professor of Iranian languages and the president of the second Academy of Persian Language and Literature. Biography Sadeq Kia was born in Tehran, Iran, on 15 May 1920 into one of the oldest families of Mazandaran, which traced its roots to the pre-Islamic dynasties that ruled that province. The family produced a number of prominent government officials, intellectuals, and religious leaders during the nineteenth and twentieth century. Kia studied at Adab and Servat schools before attending Dar ol-Funun. After completing his secondary education, he attended the University of Tehran, where he completed his Ph.D.
Go to Profile#39838
Scarface
#39850
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Brad Terrence Jordan , better known by his stage name Scarface, is an American rapper and record producer best known as a member of the Geto Boys, a hip-hop group from Houston, Texas. He grew up in Houston and is originally from the city's South Acres neighborhood. In 2012, The Source ranked him #16 on their list of the Top 50 Lyricists of All Time, while About.com ranked him #6 on its list of the 50 Greatest MCs of Our Time .
Go to Profile#39839
Tobe Hooper
#39851
Overall Influence
1943 - 2017 (74 years)
Willard Tobe Hooper was an American filmmaker, best known for his work in the horror genre. The British Film Institute cited Hooper as one of the most influential horror filmmakers of all time. Born in Austin, Texas, Hooper's feature film debut was the independent Eggshells , which he co-wrote with Kim Henkel. The two reunited to co-write The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , which Hooper also directed. The film went on to become a classic of the genre, and was described in 2010 by The Guardian as "one of the most influential films ever made." Hooper subsequently directed the horror film Eaten Alive , followed by the 1979 miniseries Salem's Lot, an adaptation of the novel by Stephen King.
Go to Profile#39840
Luciano Coutinho
#39852
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Luciano Galvão Coutinho is a Brazilian economist and from 2007 until 2016 was the President of the Brazilian Development Bank . Under his direction, BNDES holds over 500 billion dollars in assets. In 2009, Dr. Coutinho has been featured in Epoca's 100 Most Influential Brazilians and in 2010 considered the Financier of the Year by Latin Trade. He is also a guest lecturer at Unicamp University.
Go to Profile#39841
Erik Proper
#39853
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Henderik Alex Proper is a Dutch computer scientist, an FNR PEARL Laureate, and a senior research manager within the Computer Science department of the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology . He is also adjunct professor in data and knowledge engineering at the University of Luxembourg. He is known for work on conceptual modeling, enterprise architecture and enterprise engineering.
Go to Profile#39842
John R. Huizenga
#39854
Overall Influence
1921 - 2014 (93 years)
John Robert Huizenga was an American physicist who helped build the first atomic bomb and who also debunked University of Utah scientists' claim of achieving cold fusion. Early life and education John Robert Huizenga was born on a farm near Fulton, Illinois, the son of Henry and Josie Huizenga. He attended Erie High School and Morrison High School, graduating from the latter in 1940. He continued his education at Calvin College in Michigan, from which he received a bachelor's degree in 1944. He would maintain his ties to Calvin later in life, for example collaborating on fundamental nuclear research with his Calvin friend Roger Griffioen, who had gone on to become a professor there.
Go to Profile#39843
Weiqing Gu
#39855
Overall Influence
Weiqing Gu is a Chinese-American mathematician who works as the Avery Professor of Mathematics and director of the mathematics clinic at Harvey Mudd College. Her research concerns differential geometry and Grassmann manifolds. She has also worked with Harvey Mudd colleague Lisette de Pillis on the mathematical modeling of cancer.
Go to Profile#39844
Brad Delson
#39856
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Bradford Phillip Delson is an American musician best known as the lead guitarist and one of the founding members of the rock band Linkin Park. Early life Delson was born and raised in Agoura Hills, California. He attended Agoura High School with his friend, Mike Shinoda. Delson played the trumpet, and later began playing the guitar when he was about nine years old. He enjoyed listening to Guns N' Roses and Metallica. He played in the rock band Relative Degree in 1995 with drummer Rob Bourdon, but the group disbanded after their first live show in 1996.
Go to Profile#39845
Regina Bendix
#39857
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Dr. Regina Bendix is a professor of European Ethnology at the University of Göttingen, Germany. History Bendix began her academic studies in Volkskunde, cultural anthropology and German studies in her native Switzerland. She immigrated to the United States in 1980 when she moved to Berkeley, California. Here she completed a B.A. in Folklore at the University of California, Berkeley. She pursued graduate studies at Indiana University where she completed a M.A. in 1984 in Folklore, with minors in cultural anthropology and German studies. Ultimately she was awarded her PhD in these disciplines in 1987.
Go to Profile#39846
Eric Feron
#39858
Overall Influence
Eric Marie Feron is a computer scientist and aerospace engineer. He has been the Dutton/Ducoffe Professor of Aerospace Software Engineering at Georgia Tech since 2005. He taught at MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics from 1993 until his appointment at Georgia Tech. He obtained his BS from Ecole Polytechnique in 1989, his MS from Ecole Normale Suprieure in 1990, and PhD from Stanford University in 1994. His particular research foci are aerobatic control of unmanned aerial vehicles, multi-agent operations, including air traffic control systems and aerospace software system certification.
Go to Profile#39847
Dale Rogers Marshall
#39859
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Dale Rogers Marshall was an American political scientist and academic administrator, the sixth president of Wheaton College from 1992 to 2004. Biography Marshall, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, earned her bachelor’s degree, with high honors, in government from Cornell University and a master’s degree in political science from University of California, Berkeley, where she studied as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. She then obtained a Ph.D. in Political Science from UCLA in 1969, where she held a Regents Fellowship. She holds an Honorary Doctorate Degree in Law from Wheaton College .
Go to Profile#39848
Heather Harrington
#39860
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Heather A. Harrington is an applied mathematician interested in applied algebra and geometry, dynamical systems, chemical reaction network theory, topological data analysis, and systems biology. Since 2020, she is professor of mathematics and Royal Society University Research Fellow at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, where she heads the Algebraic Systems Biology group. In 2023, she became a director at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, where she is also leading the interinstitutional Center for Systems Biology Dresden together with partners fr...
Go to Profile#39849
Michael Stal
#39862
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Michael Stal is German computer scientist. He received a Ph.D. title from the University of Groningen which appointed him an honorary professorship for software engineering in 2010. Stal is currently working for the corporate technology department of Siemens AG and as a professor at University of Groningen. He is editor-in-chief of the Java programming language magazine JavaSPEKTRUM.
Go to Profile#39850
Robert F. Wagner Jr.
#39863
Overall Influence
1910 - 1991 (81 years)
Robert Ferdinand Wagner II was an American diplomat and politician who served three terms as the mayor of New York City from 1954 through 1965. When running for his third term, he broke with the Tammany Hall leadership, ending the clubhouse's reign in city politics. He also served as United States Ambassador to Spain and in a number of other offices.
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