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
#40001
Donald A. S. Fraser
#40014
Overall Influence
1925 - 2020 (95 years)
Donald Alexander Stuart Fraser was a Canadian statistician, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. In 2012 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada for his influence in the advancement of the statistical sciences in Canada. In 1961 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. In 1985, he was awarded the first Gold Medal of the Statistical Society of Canada. In 2014 he was chosen as a fellow of the American Mathematical Society "for contributions to the theory and foundations of statistics, as well as for leadership and influence on the advanceme...
Go to Profile#40002
Agnes Mongan
#40015
Overall Influence
1905 - 1996 (91 years)
Agnes Mongan was an American art historian, who served as a curator and director for the Harvard Art Museums. Career Mongan received her B.A. in 1927 from Bryn Mawr College with a degree art history and English literature. She subsequently attended Smith College, where she studied Italian art and received her A.M. in 1929. Following a short internship at the Fogg Art Museum in 1928, she was hired as a research assistant for associate director Paul J. Sachs, where she remained until 1937. From 1937 to 1947, she was promoted to new a position titled "Keeper of Drawings," since women were not allowed to be named curators.
Go to Profile#40003
E.G.D. Cohen
#40016
Overall Influence
1923 - 2017 (94 years)
#40004
Mitchell Joachim
#40017
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Mitchell Joachim is an architect and urban designer. He is the Co-Founder of Terreform ONE, and an Associate Professor of Practice at NYU. Previously he was the Frank Gehry Chair at University of Toronto and a faculty member at Pratt, Columbia, Syracuse, Washington, The New School, and the European Graduate School.
Go to Profile#40005
Johnny Isakson
#40018
Overall Influence
1944 - 2021 (77 years)
John Hardy Isakson was an American businessman and politician who served as a United States senator from Georgia from 2005 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served in the Georgia legislature and the United States House of Representatives.
Go to Profile#40006
Todd Woodbridge
#40019
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Todd Andrew Woodbridge, OAM is an Australian former professional tennis player and current sports broadcaster with the Nine Network. Woodbridge is best known for his successful Doubles partnerships with Mark Woodforde and later Jonas Björkman. His nickname was “a little bit wet”. He is among the most successful doubles players of all time, having won 16 Grand Slam men's doubles titles , and a further six Grand Slam mixed doubles titles . Additionally, he was a gold medalist with Woodforde at the 1996 Summer Olympics to complete a career Golden Slam. In total he has won 83 ATP doubles titles. Woodbridge reached the World No.
Go to Profile#40007
Joe Burrow
#40020
Overall Influence
1996 - Present (30 years)
Joseph Lee Burrow is an American football quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals of the National Football League . Following a stint at Ohio State, Burrow played college football at LSU, winning the Heisman Trophy and the 2020 College Football Playoff National Championship as a senior. He was selected by the Bengals first overall in the 2020 NFL Draft.
Go to Profile#40008
Ross Prentice
#40021
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Ross L. Prentice is a Canadian statistician known particularly for his contributions to survival analysis and statistical methods for epidemiology. He has worked at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in 1974 and is also a professor of biostatistics at the University of Washington School of Public Health.
Go to Profile#40009
Daniel Q. Posin
#40022
Overall Influence
1909 - 2003 (94 years)
Daniel Q. Posin was an American physicist. He was born in 1909 in Russian Turkestan, close to the Caspian Sea. When he was six years old his family fled the Russian revolution, and in a journey that took three years he made it to Mongolia and finally to the United States, the final leg of the journey on a cattle boat to San Francisco. He attended the University of California at Berkeley, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and earning a Ph.D. in physics.
Go to Profile#40010
Raoul Van Caenegem
#40023
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Raoul Charles, Baron Van Caenegem , was a Belgian historian and noted expert in the field of European legal history. Biography Raoul Van Caenegem was born in Ghent on 14 July 1927. He became a professor at the University of Ghent. In 1974, he was awarded the Francqui Prize in human sciences for his work on medieval history.
Go to Profile#40011
Trygve Helgaker
#40024
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Trygve Helgaker is professor of chemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo, Norway. He is a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, 2005. He has written more than 200 scientific papers, and the book, Molecular Electronic-Structure Theory . He is one of the main authors of the DALTON program.
Go to Profile#40012
Mandyam Veerambudi Srinivasan
#40025
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Mandyam Veerambudi Srinivasan AM FRS, also known as "Srini", is an Australian bioengineer and neuroscientist who studies visual systems, particularly those of bees and birds. A faculty member at the University of Queensland, he is a recipient of the Prime Minister's Prize for Science and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Royal Society .
Go to Profile#40013
Jim Rice
#40026
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
James Edward Rice is an American former professional baseball left fielder and designated hitter who played in Major League Baseball . Rice played his entire 16-year MLB career for the Boston Red Sox. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2009.
Go to Profile#40014
Hans Wilhelm Alt
#40027
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Hans Wilhelm Alt is a German mathematician, specializing in partial differential equations and their applications. Alt received his Abitur in 1965 from the prestigious secondary school Helmholtz-Gymnasium Hilden. In 1971 he received his PhD from the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen under Erhard Heinz with thesis Verzweigungspunkte von H-Flächen Alt became a professor at the Institute for Applied Mathematics at the University of Bonn, where he retired as professor emeritus in 2010. In 2011 he was made an honorary professor at the Technical University of Munich.
Go to Profile#40015
L. W. Beineke
#40028
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Lowell Wayne Beineke is a professor of graph theory at Purdue University Fort Wayne. Beineke is known for his elegant characterization of line graphs in terms of the nine Forbidden graph characterization.
Go to Profile#40016
Andrew Card
#40029
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Andrew Hill Card Jr. is an American politician and academic administrator who was White House Chief of Staff under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2006, as well as head of Bush's White House Iraq Group. Card served as United States Secretary of Transportation under President George H. W. Bush from 1992 to 1993.
Go to Profile#40017
Timothy S. Healy
#40030
Overall Influence
1923 - 1992 (69 years)
Timothy Stafford Healy was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who straddled the religious and secular life, serving as the vice chancellor of the City University of New York, the president of Georgetown University, and the president of the New York Public Library.
Go to Profile#40018
Marco Antonio Barrera
#40031
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Marco Antonio Barrera Tapia is a Mexican former professional boxer who competed from 1989 to 2011. He held multiple world championships in three weight classes between 1995 and 2007, from super bantamweight to super featherweight.
Go to Profile#40019
Robert F. Orr
#40032
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Robert F. "Bob" Orr is an American attorney, jurist, and politician who served as an associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court from 1995 to 2004. Orr was a Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina in 2008 North Carolina gubernatorial election.
Go to Profile#40020
Lisa Stansfield
#40033
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Lisa Jane Stansfield is a British singer, songwriter, and actress. Her career began in 1980 when she won the singing competition Search for a Star. After appearances in various television shows and releasing her first singles, Stansfield, along with Ian Devaney and Andy Morris, formed Blue Zone in 1983. The band released several singles and one album, but after the success of Coldcut's "People Hold On" in 1989, on which Stansfield was featured, the focus was placed on her solo career.
Go to Profile#40021
Tim Pierce
#40034
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Tim Pierce is an American session guitarist. He has worked for artists such as Joe Cocker, Crowded House, Goo Goo Dolls, Michael Jackson, Beth Hart, Roger Waters, Alice Cooper, Johnny Hallyday, Phil Collins, the Cheetah Girls and Bon Jovi.
Go to Profile#40022
Courtenay Bartholomew
#40035
Overall Influence
1931 - 2021 (90 years)
Courtenay Felix Bartholomew was a Trinidad and Tobago physician, scientist, and author. He was the founder and director of the Medical Research Foundation of Trinidad and Tobago. He was active in HIV/AIDS research, and was notable for diagnosing the first case of AIDS in the English-speaking Caribbean. He also led HIV vaccine trials and research on retroviruses with US institutions.
Go to Profile#40023
Jindřich Zelený
#40036
Overall Influence
1922 - 1997 (75 years)
Jindřich Zelený was a Czech philosopher and the author of several books. Early years He was born in Bítovany in 1922 and attended school in Chrudim and Hradec Králové. In 1948, Zeleny received a Ph.D. in philosophy and sociology from Charles University in Prague.
Go to Profile#40024
Richard Barbieri
#40037
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Richard Barbieri is an English musician, composer and sound designer. Originally a member of new wave band Japan , more recently he is known as the keyboard player in the progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, which he joined in 1993. Aside from the founder Steven Wilson, he is the longest tenured member of Porcupine Tree.
Go to Profile#40025
Guido Caldarelli
#40038
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Guido Caldarelli is an Italian physicist and full professor in Theoretical Physics at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. Biography Caldarelli received his Ph.D. from SISSA, after which he was a postdoc in the Department of Physics and School of Biology, University of Manchester. He then worked at the Theory of Condensed Matter Group, University of Cambridge, where he worked with Robin Ball. He returned to Italy as a lecturer at National Institute for Condensed Matter and later as Primo Ricercatore in the Institute of Complex Systems of the National Research Council of Italy. In this period...
Go to Profile#40026
Frank Dukes
#40039
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Adam King Feeney , better known as Ging and by his former stage name Frank Dukes, is a Canadian musician, record producer, and songwriter. A prolific producer, he has worked with artists including Lorde for Melodrama , Camila Cabello , Post Malone and The Weeknd . Following a two decade production career, he retired as Frank Dukes in 2021 to pursue his own music and art as Ging; he released his debut solo album We're Here, My Dear in 2022.
Go to Profile#40027
Brian Littrell
#40040
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Brian Thomas Littrell is an American singer and a member of the Backstreet Boys. He is also a contemporary Christian music artist, and released the solo album Welcome Home in 2006. He is the father of country singer Baylee Littrell.
Go to Profile#40028
Alfred H. Clifford
#40041
Overall Influence
1908 - 1992 (84 years)
Alfred Hoblitzelle Clifford was an American mathematician born in St. Louis, Missouri who is known for Clifford theory and for his work on semigroups. He did his undergraduate studies at Yale and his PhD at Caltech, and worked at MIT, Johns Hopkins , and later, in 1955, Tulane University .
Go to Profile#40029
David Indermaur
#40042
Overall Influence
David Indermaur is an Australian clinical psychologist, criminologist, writer, and academic. He is a research associate professor at the University of Western Australia's Crime Research Centre. Education and career Indermaur graduated from the University of Western Australia, obtaining a masters in clinical psychology in 1979 and a Doctor of Law in 1997. In 1976 he worked as a psychologist for prisoners in Western Australia, researching public views on punishment for crimes and court sentencing. In the 1980s and 1990s Indermaur worked on criminal investigations involving drugs and violent crime.
Go to Profile#40030
Eduardo D. Rodriguez
#40043
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Eduardo De Jesus Rodriguez MD, DDS is a Cuban American plastic and reconstructive surgeon, and reconstructive transplant surgeon, who is known for his contribution to the field of facial transplantation and vascularized composite allotransplantation. Rodriguez practiced in Baltimore until 2013 when he was appointed the Helen L. Kimmel Professor of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Chair of the Hansjörg Wyss Department of Plastic Surgery at NYU Langone Health, where he serves as the director of the Face Transplant Program. Most recently, he led the team that performed the first simultaneous f...
Go to Profile#40031
Gregory D. Scholes
#40044
Overall Influence
Gregory D. Scholes is William S. Tod Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University. Career and research Scholes research interests are in photosynthesis and quantum biology. Awards and honours He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2019 for "substantial contributions to the improvement of natural knowledge".
Go to Profile#40032
Michael B. Bracken
#40045
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Michael B. Bracken is an American perinatal epidemiologist. He is the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, and Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, and Professor of Neurology at the Yale School of Medicine. He is co-director of the Yale Center for Perinatal, Pediatric and Environmental Epidemiology.
Go to Profile#40033
Jackie Speier
#40046
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Karen Lorraine Jacqueline Speier is an American lawyer and politician who served as the U.S. representative for , serving in Congress from 2008 to 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, Speier represented much of the territory that her political mentor, Leo Ryan, represented.
Go to Profile#40034
Dick de Jongh
#40047
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Dick Herman Jacobus de Jongh is a Dutch logician and mathematician and a retired professor at the University of Amsterdam. He received his PhD degree in 1968 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison under supervision of Stephen Kleene with a dissertation titled Investigations on the Intuitionistic Propositional Calculus. De Jongh is mostly known for his work on proof theory, provability logic and intuitionistic logic. De Jongh is a member of the group collectively publishing under the pseudonym L. T. F. Gamut. In 2004, on the occasion of his retirement, the Institute for Logic, Language and C...
Go to Profile#40035
Morris Goodman
#40048
Overall Influence
1925 - 2010 (85 years)
Morris Goodman was an American scientist known for his work in molecular evolution and molecular systematics. Goodman was a distinguished professor at the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics at Wayne State University School of Medicine, editor-in-chief of the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, and a member of the anthropology section of the United States National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#40036
Arif Salimov
#40049
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Arif Salimov is an Azerbaijani/Soviet mathematician, Honored Scientist of Azerbaijan, known for his research in differential geometry. He earned his B.Sc. degree from Baku State University, Azerbaijan, in 1978, a PhD and Doctor of Sciences degrees in geometry from Kazan State University, Russia, in 1984 and 1998, respectively. His advisor was Vladimir Vishnevskii. Salimov is Full Professor and Head of the Department Algebra and Geometry, Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, Baku State University. He is an author and co-author of more than 100 articles. He is also an author of 2 monographs....
Go to Profile#40037
Anne van Aaken
#40050
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Anne Sophia-Marie van Aaken is a German lawyer and economist, who is a full professor of law and economics, legal theory, public international law and European law at the University of Hamburg. Life Van Aaken completed her Abitur in Bonn. From 1987 to 1992 she studied economics with the degree of Lic. pole. and communication sciences with the degree dipl. journ. at the University of Friborg and then from 1992 to 1997 law at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. There she graduated in 1997 with a first state examination First Juristische Staatsexamen. Van Aaken was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and Yale University in 1997 and 1998.
Go to Profile#40038
Oliver Padel
#40051
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Oliver James Padel is an English medievalist and toponymist specializing in Welsh and Cornish studies. He is currently Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic in the University of Cambridge. and visiting professor of Celtic at the University of the West of England
Go to Profile#40039
Juan Carlos Portantiero
#40052
Overall Influence
1934 - 2007 (73 years)
Juan Carlos Portantiero was an Argentine sociologist. He specialized in the study of the works of Antonio Gramsci. With José Aricó and other intellectuals, he was in charge of the magazine Pasado y Presente, which holds a critical view of Marxism.
Go to Profile#40040
Aníbal Pinto Santa Cruz
#40053
Overall Influence
1919 - 1996 (77 years)
Aníbal Pinto Santa Cruz was a Chilean economist known for his work on dependency theory and structuralist economics. From 1960 to 1965 he was director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean office in Río de Janeiro.
Go to Profile#40041
Darren Fletcher
#40054
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Darren Barr Fletcher is a Scottish football coach and former professional player who is currently the technical director of Manchester United, where he spent the majority of his playing career. He mostly played as a central midfielder, but began his career as a right winger and also featured occasionally in defence.
Go to Profile#40042
Dan Baer
#40055
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Daniel Brooks Baer is an American politician and former diplomat from Colorado currently serving as Senior Vice President for Policy Research at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Baer served in the Obama administration's State Department, first as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from 2009 to 2013, and then as United States Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe from 2013 to 2017. In 2018, Governor John Hickenlooper appointed Baer as the executive director of the Colorado Department of High...
Go to Profile#40043
Hitoshi Nagai
#40056
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
is one of the most influential Japanese philosophers, who taught philosophy at Chiba University and later at Nihon University. His main research fields are metaphysics and metaethics. His books include "Philosophy for Kids!" and "A Transfer Student and Black Jack: A Seminar on Solipsity," which interpret solipsism from a unique metaphysical point of view. Nagai's philosophy has been heavily influenced by Wittgenstein, however, his philosophy successfully elucidates an important aspect of solipsism which Wittgenstein could not fully express in his philosophical works. Nagai stresses that the so...
Go to Profile#40044
Athanasios Moulakis
#40057
Overall Influence
1945 - 2015 (70 years)
Athanasios Moulakis was President Emeritus of the American University of Iraq - Sulaimani and a former Acting President and Chief Academic Officer, Professor of Government at the American University of Afghanistan.
Go to Profile#40045
Margaret Farley
#40058
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Margaret A. Farley is an American religious sister and a member of the Catholic Sisters of Mercy. She was Gilbert L. Stark Professor Emerita of Christian Ethics at Yale University Divinity School, where she taught Christian ethics from 1971 to 2007. Farley is the first woman appointed to serve full-time on the Yale School board, along with Henri Nouwen as its first Catholic faculty members. She is a past president of Catholic Theological Society of America.
Go to Profile#40046
Philip Treisman
#40059
Overall Influence
Philip Uri Treisman is an American mathematician and mathematics educator. He is the Director of the Charles A. Dana Center, and is a Professor of Mathematics at The University of Texas at Austin. He is credited with pioneering the Emerging Scholars Program , aimed at helping students from underprivileged backgrounds excel in calculus and other courses in science. The program was first implemented at the University of California, Berkeley and has now disseminated throughout college campuses across the United States. His efforts to improve American education have been recognized by Newsweek...
Go to Profile#40047
Inna
#40060
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Elena Alexandra Apostoleanu , known professionally as Inna , is a Romanian singer. Born in Mangalia and raised in Neptun, she studied political science at Ovidius University before meeting the Romanian trio Play & Win and pursuing a music career. She adopted the stage name "Alessandra" and a pop-rock style in 2008; later that year, she changed her stage name to "Inna" and began releasing house music. "Hot" , her debut single, was a commercial success worldwide and topped the Romanian and Billboard Hot Dance Airplay chart, among others. Her debut studio album of the same name followed in August 2009 and was certified Gold and Platinum.
Go to Profile#40048
Paul Moon
#40061
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Evan Paul Moon is a New Zealand historian and a professor at the Auckland University of Technology. He is a writer of New Zealand history and biography, specialising in Māori history, the Treaty of Waitangi and the early period of Crown rule.
Go to Profile#40049
Jane Hill
#40062
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Jane Amanda Hill is an English newsreader working for the BBC. She is one of the main presenters for BBC News, and is the main presenter on the BBC News at One and the BBC News at Five, as well as regularly presenting the BBC Weekend News, BBC News at Ten and BBC News at Six. She also occasionally presents The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4.
Go to Profile#40050
Keith Uncapher
#40063
Overall Influence
1922 - 2002 (80 years)
Keith Uncapher was an American computer engineer and manager. At the RAND Corporation Uncapher worked on several pioneering computer projects. He founded the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California, Viterbi School of Engineering. There, he assembled teams of engineers who helped to grow the early Internet.
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