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
#39901
Ofer Biham
#39914
Overall Influence
Ofer Biham is a faculty member at The Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. Biham received his Ph.D. for research on quasiperiodic systems at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1988, under the supervision of David Mukamel.
Go to Profile#39902
Dick Ebersol
#39915
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Duncan "Dick" Ebersol is an American television executive and a senior adviser for NBC Universal Sports & Olympics. He had previously been the chairman of NBC Sports, producing large-scale television events such as the Olympic Games and National Football League broadcasts.
Go to Profile#39903
José Maza Sancho
#39916
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
José María Maza Sancho is a Chilean astronomer and astrophysicist. His work has focused on the study of supernovas, the execution of a search for objects with emission lines, dark energy, and quasars with an objective prism, which led him to be awarded the National Prize for Exact Sciences in 1999. Since 2017 he gained popular following with books aimed to the general public and podcasts.
Go to Profile#39904
Thomas Forster
#39917
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Thomas Edward Forster is a British set theorist and philosopher. His work has focused on Quine's New Foundations, the theory of well-quasi-orders and better-quasi-orders, and various topics in philosophy.
Go to Profile#39905
Marilyn Stokstad
#39918
Overall Influence
1929 - 2016 (87 years)
Marilyn Jane Stokstad was an American art historian, educator, and curator. A scholar of medieval and Spanish art, Stokstad was Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor of Art History Emeritus at the University of Kansas, and also served as director of the Spencer Museum of Art.
Go to Profile#39906
Tathagat Avatar Tulsi
#39919
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Tathagat Avatar Tulsi is an Indian physicist and a former child prodigy. He completed high school at the age of 9 years, earned a BSc at the age of 11 years, and a MSc at the age of 12 years from Patna Science College . In August 2009, he got his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore at the age of 21 years. In July 2010, he was offered a position as Assistant Professor on contract at IIT Bombay. His employment was terminated in 2019,. As per his interview given to BBC, this was after a long leave related to his illness.
Go to Profile#39907
Gerald Gabrielse
#39920
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Gerald Gabrielse is an American physicist. He is the Board of Trustees Professor of Physics and director of the Center for Fundamental Physics at Northwestern University, and Emeritus George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics at Harvard University. He is primarily known for his experiments trapping and investigating antimatter, measuring the electron g-factor, and measuring the electron electric dipole moment. He has been described as "a leader in super-precise measurements of fundamental particles and the study of anti-matter."
Go to Profile#39908
Lyman W. Porter
#39921
Overall Influence
1930 - 2015 (85 years)
Lyman W. Porter was an American academic administrator. He was the dean of the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine from 1972 to 1983. He was the co-author of many books of management, and "one of the primary founders of the study of organizational behavior."
Go to Profile#39909
James Lewis Heft
#39922
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
James Lewis Heft is an American theologian currently the Alton M. Brooks Professor of Religion at University of Southern California.
Go to Profile#39910
Thomas Sieverts
#39923
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Thomas Sieverts is a German architect and urban planner. He is the author of Zwischenstadt , a book which addresses the decentralization of the compact historical European city and examines the new form of urbanity which has spread across the world describable as the urbanised landscape or the landscaped city. Sieverts calls this the Zwischenstadt, or "in-between city", as it exists between old historical city centres and open countrysides, between place as a living space and the non-places of movement, between small local economic cycles and the dependency on the world market. In 2008 a gr...
Go to Profile#39911
Clive Oppenheimer
#39924
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
#39912
Rauf Denktaş
#39925
Overall Influence
1924 - 2012 (88 years)
Rauf Raif Denktaş was a Turkish Cypriot politician, barrister and jurist who served as the founding president of Northern Cyprus. He occupied this position as the president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus between the declaration of the de facto state by Denktaş in 1983 and 2005, as the president of the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus between 1975 and 1983 and as the president of the Autonomous Turkish Cypriot Administration between 1974 and 1975. He was also elected in 1973 as the vice-president of the Republic of Cyprus.
Go to Profile#39913
Salvador Giner
#39926
Overall Influence
1934 - 2019 (85 years)
Salvador Giner i de San Julián was a Spanish sociologist, who was the president of the Institute of Catalan Studies between 2005 and 2013. Biography Salvador Giner got his PhD in the University of Chicago and has postgraduate courses in the University of Cologne. In 1989, he became professor of sociology in the University of Barcelona .
Go to Profile#39914
Dan Bahat
#39927
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Dan Bahat is an Israeli archaeologist especially known for his excavations in Jerusalem, particularly at the Western Wall tunnels. Biography Dan Bahat was born in Poland to parents who were citizens of Mandatory Palestine. The family moved to Tel Aviv in 1939 and became Israeli citizens in 1952. He served in the IDF from 1956 to 1958. In 1964 he gained a Bachelor's degree in archaeology and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He finished his master's degree in 1978. In 1990 he obtained the PhD degree from the Hebrew University on the topic "Topography and Toponymy of Crusad...
Go to Profile#39915
Stuart Altman
#39928
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Stuart H. Altman is an American economist whose research interests are primarily in the area of federal and state health policy. He is the Sol C. Chaikin Professor of National Health Policy at Brandeis University, in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Altman is considered one of the most influential people in American healthcare. He served as interim president of Brandeis from 1990 to 1991.
Go to Profile#39916
Mark Mizruchi
#39929
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Mark Sheldon Mizruchi is the Robert Cooley Angell Collegiate Professor of Sociology and Barger Family Professor of Organizational Studies at the University of Michigan. He also holds an appointment as Professor of Management and Organizations at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. His research has focused on the political activity of the U.S. corporate elite over the 20th and 21st centuries. He was influential in the development of social network analysis, and has published research in the fields of organizational theory, economic sociology, and political sociology.
Go to Profile#39917
Sébastien Ogier
#39930
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Sébastien Eugène Emile Ogier is a French rally driver, competing for the Toyota Gazoo Racing Team in the World Rally Championship , who is currently teamed with the co-driver Vincent Landais. He has won the World Rally Drivers' Championship 8 times, in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2021.
Go to Profile#39918
Bora Milutinović
#39931
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Velibor "Bora" Milutinović is a Serbian former professional footballer and manager. He has managed at five editions of the FIFA World Cup, tied for the record alongside Brazilian manager Carlos Alberto Parreira, but did so in five consecutive World Cups with different teams: Mexico , Costa Rica , the United States , Nigeria , and China . He is also the first manager to take four teams beyond the first round – all but China – earning the nickname of Miracle Worker, first given to him by Alan Rothenberg, then president of the United States Soccer Federation. In total Milutinović has managed eig...
Go to Profile#39919
Frederick Hartt
#39932
Overall Influence
1914 - 1991 (77 years)
Frederick Hartt was an Italian Renaissance scholar, author and professor of art history. His books include History of Italian Renaissance Art, Art: A History of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture , Michelangelo , The Sistine Chapel and The Renaissance in Italy and Spain . He was also involved with cataloging and repatriating art work looted and stolen by the Third Reich during World War II.
Go to Profile#39920
Rodica Baranescu
#39933
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Rodica A. Baranescu is a Romanian-American mechanical engineer known for her research in automotive diesel engines. Specifically she focuses on alternative fuels and optimization in emissions and performance of the engines.
Go to Profile#39921
Laura Mancinelli
#39934
Overall Influence
1933 - 2016 (83 years)
Laura Mancinelli was an Italian writer, germanist, medievalist and university professor. Mancinelli also wrote academic texts, children's books, essays , and historical novels. Life Laura Mancinelli was born in Udine in 1933, then, after a period of short stays between Rovereto and Mantua where she spent her early childhood, in 1937 the family moved permanently to Turin.
Go to Profile#39922
Peter Ordeshook
#39935
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Peter Carl Ordeshook is an American political scientist. He is the Mary Stillman Harkness Professor of Political Science at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. He held faculty positions at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Texas at Austin , where he served as the Frank C. Erwin Jr. Centennial Chair in Government. He was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University from 1975 to 1976, and he was the president of the Public Choice Society from 1986 to 1988. He has been a professor at Caltech since 1987. He...
Go to Profile#39923
Gillian Murphy
#39936
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Gillian Murphy is an American ballet dancer who is a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre. Early life and education Raised in Florence, South Carolina, Murphy was a member of Columbia City Ballet before attending high school at University of North Carolina School of the Arts. There, under the tutelage of Melissa Hayden, she danced principal roles in several of the school's productions, including The Nutcracker and George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, Western Symphony, Tarantella and Theme and Variations.
Go to Profile#39924
Gay Hendricks
#39937
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Gay Hendricks is a psychologist, writer, and teacher in the field of personal growth, relationships, and body intelligence. He is best known for his work in relationship enhancement and in the development of conscious breathing exercises. After receiving his Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University in 1974, Hendricks began teaching at the University of Colorado. He spent 21 years at the University of Colorado and became a full professor in the Counseling Psychology Department while founding The Hendricks Institute. He conducts workshops with his wife of nearly 40 years, Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks.
Go to Profile#39925
Liqun Luo
#39938
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Liqun Luo is a neuroscientist in the Department of Biology at Stanford University, where he is the Ann and Bill Swindells Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His laboratory studies the development and organization of neural circuits, and he is the author of the textbook Principles of Neurobiology.
Go to Profile#39926
Kobi Peleg
#39939
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Kobi Peleg is an Israeli professor of Emergency and Disaster Management at Tel-Aviv University, and formerly the director of the Israel National Center for Trauma & Emergency Medicine Research at the Gertner Institute for Epidemiology and Health Policy Research.
Go to Profile#39927
George W. Johnson
#39940
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
George William Johnson Jr. was an American academic and academic administrator who served as the President of George Mason University from 1978 to 1996. Johnson is credited with transforming George Mason University from largely a commuter college into a nationally recognized research university during his 18-year tenure as president. Under Johnson, total student enrollment doubled from 10,000 in 1979 to more than 24,000 students in 1996. Johnson also oversaw the addition of 34 new academic programs , the creation of GMU's first doctoral programs, and the establishment of the George Mason Uni...
Go to Profile#39928
Sune Carlson
#39941
Overall Influence
1909 - 1999 (90 years)
Sune Carlson was a Swedish economist. He was considered a pioneer in establishing international business as a research area. Life and work Carlson obtained his master's of arts degree in economics at the Stockholm School of Economics in 1932 and his PhD at the University of Chicago in 1936.
Go to Profile#39929
William J. Samarin
#39942
Overall Influence
1926 - 2020 (94 years)
William John Samarin was an American-born linguist and academic who was Professor at the Hartford Seminary and the University of Toronto. He is best known for his work on the language of religion, on the two central African languages Sango and Gbeya, on pidginization, and on ideophones in African languages.
Go to Profile#39930
Paul Franco
#39943
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Paul N. Franco is a professor of government at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and a leading authority on the British political philosopher Michael Oakeshott. Franco holds a B.A. from Colorado College, where he studied under Oakeshott scholar Timothy Fuller, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, where he studied under Oakeshott himself, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where his advisor was Joseph Cropsey, a friend and disciple of the political philosopher Leo Strauss. Before Bowdoin, he taught at the University of Chicago as a William Rainey Harper Fellow.
Go to Profile#39931
Simon Lee
#39944
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Simon Francis Lee is a Professor of Law at Aston University, Visiting Fellow, St Edmund's College, Cambridge, and Emeritus Professor of Jurisprudence at Queen's University Belfast. He was Rector of Liverpool Hope University from 1995 to 2003.
Go to Profile#39932
Oleg Kalugin
#39945
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Oleg Danilovich Kalugin is a former KGB general . He was during a time, head of KGB political operations in the United States and later a critic of the agency. After being convicted of spying for the West in absentia during a trial in Moscow, he remained in the US and was sworn in as a citizen on 4 August 2003.
Go to Profile#39933
Bjørn Wiik
#39946
Overall Influence
1937 - 1999 (62 years)
Bjørn Håvard Wiik was a Norwegian elementary particle physicist, noted for his role on the experiment that produced the first experimental evidence for gluons and for his influential role on later accelerator projects. Wiik was director of DESY, in Hamburg, Germany, from 1993 until his death.
Go to Profile#39934
Anatoly Grigoriev
#39947
Overall Influence
1943 - 2023 (80 years)
Anatoly Ivanovich Grigoriev was a Soviet and Russian physiologist. He was a Doctor of Sciences , Professor at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation . Laureate of the 1989 USSR State Prize and winner of the 2001 State Prize of the Russian Federation. Disciple of Oleg Gazenko, Grigoriev was one of the leading scientists in bioastronautics and space flight medicine.
Go to Profile#39935
James Jupp
#39948
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
James Jupp AM was a British-Australian political scientist and author. He was Director of the Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University and an Adjunct Professor of the RMIT University in Melbourne. He was an Australian citizen and resident of Canberra.
Go to Profile#39936
Roza Otunbayeva
#39949
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Roza Isakovna Otunbayeva is a Kyrgyz diplomat and politician who served as the President of Kyrgyzstan from 7 April 2010 until 1 December 2011, becoming the first female Central Asian head of state. She was sworn in on July 3, 2010, after acting as interim leader following the 2010 April Revolution, which led to the ousting of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. She previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and as head of the parliamentary caucus for the Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan.
Go to Profile#39937
Edward L. Shaughnessy
#39950
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Edward Louis Shaughnessy is an American Sinologist, scholar, and educator, known for his studies of early Chinese history, particularly the Zhou dynasty, and his studies of the Classic of Changes . Life and career Edward Shaughnessy was born on July 29, 1952. He attended the University of Notre Dame as an undergraduate student, graduating in 1974 with a B.A. in theology, after which he spent several years studying Chinese in Taiwan and Japanese in Kyoto, Japan. He then went to Stanford University for graduate study in Asian languages, earning his Ph.D. in 1983 with a dissertation entitled "The Composition of the Zhouyi".
Go to Profile#39938
William H. Bossert
#39951
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
William H. Bossert is an American mathematician. He is the David B. Arnold, Jr. Professor of Science, Emeritus at Harvard University. He was the housemaster of Lowell House for 23 years. He received his PhD from Harvard in 1963.
Go to Profile#39939
J. Russell Nelson
#39952
Overall Influence
1929 - 2016 (87 years)
Jack Russell Nelson was an American educator who served as a chancellor/president of the University of Colorado Boulder and Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. Life Nelson earned his bachelor's degree in business and economics from Pacific Union College in Napa Valley, California, and a Master of Business Administration and Ph.D in finance from the University of California Los Angeles.
Go to Profile#39940
Jirō Tsuji
#39953
Overall Influence
1927 - 2022 (95 years)
Jiro Tsuji was a Japanese chemist, notable for his discovery of organometallic reactions, including the Tsuji-Trost reaction, the Tsuji-Wilkinson decarbonylation, and the Tsuji-Wacker reaction. Early life and education Tsuji was born in Japan in 1927.
Go to Profile#39941
Hetan Shah
#39954
Overall Influence
Hetan Shah is the chief executive of the British Academy and the chair of Our World in Data. He is a visiting professor at King's College London and a Fellow of Birkbeck, University of London. He served as executive director of the Royal Statistical Society from 2011 to 2019.
Go to Profile#39942
Nigel Smart
#39955
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Nigel Smart is a professor at COSIC at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and Chief Academic Officer at Zama. He is a cryptographer with interests in the theory of cryptography and its application in practice.
Go to Profile#39943
Tony Wasserman
#39956
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Anthony "Tony" I. Wasserman, is an American computer scientist. He is a member of the board of directors of the Open Source Initiative, was a professor of the Practice in Software Management at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, and is executive director of the CMU Center for Open Source Investigation. He has been a SkyDeck accelerator program advisor at University of California, Berkeley since 2021.
Go to Profile#39944
Elsa Leo-Rhynie
#39957
Overall Influence
Elsa Ann Leo-Rhynie OJ is a retired Jamaican academic and university administrator who is a professor emerita of the University of West Indies . She is a former principal and pro-vice-chancellor of its Mona, Jamaica, campus.
Go to Profile#39945
Janet L. Holmgren
#39958
Overall Influence
Janet L. Holmgren is the president of Patten University. Previously, she was the president of Mills College in Oakland, California from 1991 to 2011. She was previously vice provost at Princeton University from 1988 to 1991. Before that, she was an administrator and professor at the University of Maryland. She holds a B.A. in English, summa cum laude, from Oakland University , 1968, a M.A. in Linguistics and a Ph.D. in Linguistics, Princeton University, 1974.
Go to Profile#39946
Yolarnie Amepou
#39959
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Yolarnie Amepou is a zoologist and conservationist from Papua New Guinea. She is known for her work to protect the Papuan softshell turtle in Kikori. In 2017 she was a Youth Champion for the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. She was also received a Pride of Papua New Guinea Award for Environment in 2015.
Go to Profile#39947
E. A. Markham
#39960
Overall Influence
1939 - 2008 (69 years)
Edward Archibald Markham FRSL , popularly known as Archie Markham, was a Montserratian poet, playwright, novelist and academic. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1956, where he remained for most of his life, writing as well as teaching at various academic institutions. He was known for writing subtle, witty and intelligent poetry, which refused to conform to the conventions, and stereotypes, of British and Caribbean poetry alike.
Go to Profile#39948
Topper Headon
#39961
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Nicholas Bowen "Topper" Headon is an English drummer and multi-instrumentalist, best known as the drummer of punk rock band the Clash. Known for his contributions to the drumming world, Headon was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the rest of The Clash in 2003.
Go to Profile#39949
Bill Medley
#39962
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
William Thomas Medley is an American singer best known as one-half of The Righteous Brothers. He is noted for his bass-baritone voice, exemplified in songs such as "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'". Medley produced a number of the duo's songs, including "Unchained Melody" and " Soul and Inspiration".
Go to Profile#39950
Valerie G. Hardcastle
#39963
Overall Influence
Valerie G. Hardcastle is a professor of Philosophy and Psychology at The University of Cincinnati who grew up in Houston, Texas. Education She was a double major at the University of California, Berkeley, earning bachelor's degrees in Political Science and Philosophy in 1986, and then a master's degree in Philosophy from The University of Houston, and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Cognitive Science and Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego. Her coursework has been affiliated with areas such as; Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and has most recently been focusing her time and research on the study of the neuroscience of violence.
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