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
#40201
Kevin Fox
#40214
Overall Influence
Kevin Fox is the user experience designer who created the interface for Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, and Friendfeed. He was a co-founder of the Internet of Things startup Electric Imp. Since 2015 he has been the chief experience officer at Evan Prodromou's fuzzy.io.
Go to Profile#40202
Geoff Bodine
#40215
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Geoffrey Eli Bodine is an American retired motorsport driver and bobsled builder. He is the oldest of the three Bodine brothers , and sister Denise. Bodine lives in West Melbourne, Florida. Bodine was born into a racing family as his father and grandfather, Eli Bodine Jr. and Sr. built Chemung Speedrome just a year after he was born. He began learning his racing skills at this track in the micro-midget division when he was only five years old. He had such an itch to race that he disguised himself as a lady and entered an event known as the Powder Puff Derby when he was 15.
Go to Profile#40203
Kumail Nanjiani
#40216
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Kumail Ali Nanjiani is a Pakistani-American actor and stand-up comedian. He is known for his role as Dinesh in the HBO comedy series Silicon Valley and for co-writing and starring in the romantic comedy film The Big Sick . For co-writing the latter with his wife, Emily V. Gordon, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In 2018, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his role in The Twilight Zone executive produced by Jordan Peele i...
Go to Profile#40204
Peter M. Shane
#40217
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Peter Milo Shane is a law professor and writer. His best-known scholarly work focuses mainly on two subjects. The first is separation of powers law, especially law and the presidency. His work often explores what he calls an institutional conception of the rule of law in a separation of powers regime. See, e.g., Peter M, Shane, When Inter-branch Norms Break Down: Of Arms-for-Hostages, 'Orderly Shutdowns,' Presidential Impeachments, and Judicial 'Coups,' 12 Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy 503 . Under Shane's antiformalist conception, the rule of law is sustained not only by formal ...
Go to Profile#40205
Tony Kanaan
#40218
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Antoine Rizkallah "Tony" Kanaan Filho , nicknamed TK, is a Brazilian racing driver. He is best known as an Indy car driver, racing in Championship Auto Racing Teams from 1998 to 2002, and the IndyCar Series from 2002 to 2023. He won the 2013 Indianapolis 500 and was the 2004 IndyCar Series champion. Kanaan competes in the Brazilian Stock Car Pro Series, driving the No. 6 Toyota Corolla E210 for Full Time Bassani.
Go to Profile#40206
Brett J. Gladman
#40219
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Brett James Gladman is a Canadian astronomer and a full professor at the University of British Columbia's Department of Physics and Astronomy in Vancouver, British Columbia. He holds the Canada Research Chair in planetary astronomy. He does both theoretical work and observational optical astronomy .
Go to Profile#40207
Patrick A. Baeuerle
#40220
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Patrick Baeuerle is a German-based molecular biologist, immunologist, professor and a biopharmaceutical entrepreneur. Baeuerle is known for his work on tyrosine sulfation of proteins, transcription factor NF-kappaB, and the development of bispecific T-cell engaging antibodies for therapy of cancer.
Go to Profile#40208
Hugh O'Brian
#40221
Overall Influence
1925 - 2016 (91 years)
Hugh O'Brian was an American actor and humanitarian, best known for his starring roles in the ABC Western television series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp and the NBC action television series Search . His notable films included the adaptation of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians ; he also had a notable supporting role in John Wayne's last film, The Shootist .
Go to Profile#40209
Matthew N. Levy
#40222
Overall Influence
1922 - 2012 (90 years)
Matthew Nathan Levy was an American physiologist best known for his research on cardiac physiology and co-writing several textbooks with Robert M. Berne. Levy carried out pioneering research on the relationship between the heart and the autonomic nervous system and was sometimes referred to as "the father of neurocardiology".
Go to Profile#40210
David Soudry
#40223
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
David Soudry is a professor of mathematics at Tel Aviv University working in number theory and automorphic forms. Career Soudry was born in 1956. He received his PhD in mathematics from Tel Aviv University in 1983 under the supervision of Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro. From 1983 to 1984, he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. He is a professor of mathematics at Tel Aviv University.
Go to Profile#40211
Barney G. Glaser
#40224
Overall Influence
#40212
Thomas Lux
#40225
Overall Influence
1946 - 2017 (71 years)
Thomas Lux was an American poet who held the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne, Jr. Chair in Poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology and ran Georgia Tech's "Poetry @ Tech" program. He wrote fourteen books of poetry.
Go to Profile#40213
Fernando Carrillo Flórez
#40226
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Fernando Carrillo Flórez is a Pontifical Xavierian University educated lawyer and economist, with postgraduate studies from Harvard University. He served as Colombia's 11th Minister of the Interior from 2012 to 2013, and 55th Minister of Justice from 1991 to 1992.
Go to Profile#40214
Yael Karshon
#40227
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Yael Karshon is an Israeli and Canadian mathematician who has been described as "one of Canada's leading experts in symplectic geometry". She works as a professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga and Tel Aviv University .
Go to Profile#40215
Ray Parker Jr.
#40228
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Ray Erskine Parker Jr. is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. As a solo performer, he wrote and performed the theme song for the 1984 film Ghostbusters. Previously, Parker achieved a US top-10 hit in 1982 with "The Other Woman". He also performed with his band, Raydio, and with Barry White.
Go to Profile#40216
Frank Parkin
#40229
Overall Influence
1931 - 2011 (80 years)
Dr. Frank Parkin was a British sociologist and novelist. He was a professor emeritus at the University of Kent and editor of the Concepts in the Social Sciences series published by Open University Press.
Go to Profile#40217
Thomas Palfrey
#40230
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Thomas Rossman Palfrey is the Flintridge Professor of Economics and Political Science at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and Fellow of the Econometric Society. He received his Ph.D. in Social Science from Caltech in 1981.
Go to Profile#40218
Panayotis Katsoyannis
#40231
Overall Influence
1924 - 2019 (95 years)
Panayotis G. Katsoyannis was an American biochemist who is often credited with being the first to synthesize insulin while leading a team at the University of Pittsburgh in the early 1960s. His results synthesizing insulin were achieved almost simultaneously with that of Helmut Zahn at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. In his early years, while doing his PhD at the University of Athens Katsoyannis had been under the mentorship of Leonidas Zervas, who previously developed new synthetic methods for asymmetric cysteine-containing peptides as those in insulin.
Go to Profile#40219
Adolfo Azcuna
#40232
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Adolfo Sevilla Azcuna is a Filipino jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines from 2002 to 2009. He was appointed to the Court by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on October 24, 2002. he was the Chancellor of the Philippine Judicial Academy , having been appointed to that position by the Supreme Court of the Philippines on June 1, 2009. The Court granted the title of “Chancellor Emeritus” upon Ascuna who served until May 31, 2021. He was succeeded by Arturo Brion who served for 2 years and was replaced by Rosmari Carandang as the fourth Chancellor ...
Go to Profile#40220
Michael Tilson Thomas
#40233
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Michael Tilson Thomas is an American conductor, pianist and composer. He is Artistic Director Laureate of the New World Symphony, an American orchestral academy based in Miami Beach, Florida, Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra.
Go to Profile#40221
Bruce Sacerdote
#40234
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Bruce Sacerdote is an American economist and the Richard S. Braddock 1963 Professor in Economics at Dartmouth College, where he "enjoy[s] working with detailed data to enhance our understanding of why children and youth turn out the way they do. [He is] also involved in a series of studies to examine how students make choices about college going and how policy makers might influence that decision-making process."
Go to Profile#40222
John Cooper Clarke
#40235
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
John Cooper Clarke is an English performance poet and comedian who styled himself as a "punk poet" in the late 1970s. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he released several albums. Around this time, he performed on stage with several punk and post-punk bands and continues to perform regularly.
Go to Profile#40223
Mannque Rho
#40236
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Mannque Rho is a South Korean-frenchtheoretical physicist. He has contributed to theoretical nuclear/hadron physics and suggested Brown-Rho Scaling with Gerald E. Brown which predicts how the masses of the hadrons disappear in hot and dense environments.
Go to Profile#40224
Dick Giordano
#40237
Overall Influence
1932 - 2010 (78 years)
Richard Joseph Giordano was an American comics artist and editor whose career included introducing Charlton Comics' "Action Heroes" stable of superheroes and serving as executive editor of DC Comics.
Go to Profile#40225
Larry Bowa
#40238
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Lawrence Robert Bowa is an American former professional baseball shortstop, manager, and coach in Major League Baseball , who played for the Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs, and New York Mets. Bowa went on to manage the San Diego Padres and Phillies, and is currently a senior advisor to the general manager of the Phillies.
Go to Profile#40226
Darren Ferguson
#40239
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Darren Ferguson is a Scottish professional football manager and former player, who is currently the manager of League One club Peterborough United, his fourth stint as manager of the club. In between his stints with Peterborough, he also managed Preston North End and Doncaster Rovers.
Go to Profile#40227
J. H. Kwabena Nketia
#40240
Overall Influence
1921 - 2019 (98 years)
Joseph Hanson Kwabena Nketia was a Ghanaian ethnomusicologist and composer. Considered Africa's premier musicologist, during his lifetime, he was called a "living legend" and "easily the most published and best known authority on African music and aesthetics in the world", with more than 200 publications and 80 musical compositions to his credit.
Go to Profile#40228
DeSean Jackson
#40241
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
DeSean William Jackson is an American former football wide receiver who played in the National Football League . He played college football for the California Golden Bears, where he was recognized as a consensus All-American in 2006 and 2007. He was selected by the Philadelphia Eagles in the second round of the 2008 NFL Draft, and also played for the Washington Redskins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Los Angeles Rams. Jackson was selected to the Pro Bowl three times, and was the first player selected to the Pro Bowl at two different positions in the same year when he was named to the 2010 Pro Bo...
Go to Profile#40229
Paula Harper
#40242
Overall Influence
1930 - 2012 (82 years)
Paula Hays Harper was an American art historian, credited as "one of the first art historians to bring a feminist perspective to the study of painting and sculpture". She co-authored a biography on the French impressionist Camille Pissarro and was a well-known contemporary art critic.
Go to Profile#40230
Rita Ng
#40243
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Rita Ng from Tracy, California is an American beauty pageant titleholder who was crowned Miss California 2000 and is currently a practicing cardiologist. Ng was the first person of Asian descent to be crowned Miss California.
Go to Profile#40231
Eric Helland
#40244
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Eric Helland is the William F. Podlich Professor of Economics in Robert Day School of Economics and Finance at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University, George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College, and Senior Economist, Institute for Civil Justice, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA.
Go to Profile#40232
Alison Brysk
#40245
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Alison Brysk is an American political scientist who holds the Mellichamp Chair in Global Governance, Global and International Studies, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in international Human Rights.
Go to Profile#40233
Victor Flynn
#40246
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Eugene Victor Flynn is an American-born mathematician. He is currently a professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford. Biography Flynn was born in Washington, D.C., the son of academic James Flynn who took up a position at the University of Otago. He first studied at the University of Otago, before taking a PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge, supervised by J. W. S. Cassels. He then spent a year as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, returning to Cambridge as a research fellow at Robinson College. He then moved to the University of Liverpool, including four years as head of the pure mathematics department there.
Go to Profile#40234
Choon-Leong Seow
#40247
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Choon-Leong Seow , known as C. L. Seow, is a distinguished biblical scholar, semitist, epigrapher, and historian of Near Eastern religion, currently as Vanderbilt, Buffington, Cupples Chair in Divinity and Distinguished Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University. An expert in wisdom literature, Seow has written widely in the field of biblical studies.
Go to Profile#40235
Zoe Lofgren
#40248
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Susan Ellen "Zoe" Lofgren is an American lawyer and politician serving as a U.S. representative from California. A member of the Democratic Party, Lofgren is in her 14th term in Congress, having been first elected in 1994. Lofgren has long served on the House Judiciary Committee, and chaired the House Administration Committee in the 116th & 117th Congresses.
Go to Profile#40236
Charles Bouman
#40249
Overall Influence
Charles Addison Bouman Jr. is the Showalter Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University, where he has taught since 1989. His research focuses on applications of image processing in various contexts, including medicine, materials science, and consumer imaging. His work led to the development of the first commercial CT scan technology to use model-based iterative reconstruction. He is a co-inventor on over fifty patents in the field of consumer imaging. He is a member of the National Academy of Inventors, as well as a fellow of the Institute ...
Go to Profile#40237
Alice Roberts
#40250
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Alice May Roberts is an English academic, TV presenter and author. Since 2012 she has been Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham. She was president of the charity Humanists UK between January 2019 and May 2022. She is now a vice president of the organisation.
Go to Profile#40238
Ram Rajasekharan
#40251
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Ram Rajasekharan is an Indian plant biologist, food technologist and a former director of the Central Food Technological Research Institute , a constituent laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Known for his studies on plant lipid metabolism, Rajasekharan is a former professor of eminence at the Indian Institute of Science and an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies namely Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India and Indian National Science Academy as well as the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The Departme...
Go to Profile#40239
Lee Sharpe
#40252
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Lee Stuart Sharpe is an English former professional footballer, sports television pundit, reality television personality and golfer. As a player, Sharpe was predominantly a left winger from 1988 to 2004. He notably played in the Premier League for Manchester United, Leeds United and Bradford City and in Serie A for Sampdoria. He also had spells in the Football League with Torquay United, Portsmouth and Exeter City before wrapping his career up in Iceland with Grindavík and in non-league football with Garforth Town. Sharpe's spell at Manchester United lasted from 1988 until 1996 where he won several league titles, the FA Cup and the League Cup.
Go to Profile#40240
Victor Polterovich
#40253
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Victor Meerovich Polterovich is a Russian economist. He was one of the leading figures in mathematical economics in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia, and made several important contributions to general equilibrium theory.
Go to Profile#40241
Winfried Brugger
#40254
Overall Influence
1950 - 2010 (60 years)
Winfried Brugger was Professor of Public Law, Philosophy of Law and Theory of State at Heidelberg University. Brugger studied law, philosophy and sociology at the Universities in Munich and Tuebingen. After completing his Ph.D. at Tuebingen University with the prize-winning book Menschenrechtsethos und Verantwortungspolitik. Max Webers Beitrag zur Analyse und Begruendung der Menschenrechte , he then studied at the University of California in Berkeley, obtaining the degree of LL.M. in 1981. Thereafter, he published comparative articles and books on German and American constitutional law and t...
Go to Profile#40242
Daniel Eisenstein
#40255
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Daniel Eisenstein is an American cosmologist and academic. Eisenstein's Ph.D. is from Harvard University under the supervision of Abraham Loeb. He held postdoctoral positions at the Institute for Advanced Study and the University of Chicago before moving to the University of Arizona as a professor in 2001. He moved to his current position as a professor of astronomy at Harvard University in 2010. He was joint-winner of the 2014 Shaw Prize. An Asteroid was named in his honor. He graduated from Harvard University.
Go to Profile#40243
Gonzalo Correal Urrego
#40256
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Gonzalo Correal Urrego is a Colombian anthropologist, palaeontologist and archaeologist. He has been contributing to the knowledge of prehistoric Colombia for over forty years and has published in Spanish and English. Correal Urrego is considered one of the most important anthropologists of Colombia. He has collaborated with many other anthropologists and archaeologists, among others Thomas van der Hammen and Ana María Groot.
Go to Profile#40244
Pat Summitt
#40257
Overall Influence
1952 - 2016 (64 years)
Patricia Susan Summitt was an American women's college basketball head coach who accrued 1,098 career wins, the most in college basketball history at the time of her retirement. She served as the head coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Vols basketball team from 1974 to 2012.
Go to Profile#40245
Ralph Maud
#40258
Overall Influence
1928 - 2014 (86 years)
Ralph Maud was a Canadian literary scholar. He was a professor at English at Simon Fraser University and was regarded as an expert on the work of poets Dylan Thomas and Charles Olson. Bibliography Maud served as editor for several anthologies published by Talonbooks in Vancouver, Canada:1978; The Salish People: The Local Contribution of Charles Hill-Tout1982: A Guide to B.C. Indian Myth and Legend 1987: The Chilliwacks and Their Neighbors1993: The Porcupine Hunter and Other Stories2000: Transmission Difficulties: Franz Boas and Tsimshian Mythology2004: Poet to Publisher: Charles Olson’s Corr...
Go to Profile#40246
Marshall Hatch
#40259
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Marshall Davidson Hatch AM was an Australian biochemist and plant physiologist. He was the chief research scientist at the CSIRO Division of Plant Industry in Canberra. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences and was awarded Honorary Doctorates from the University of Göttingen and the University of Queensland. In Australia, in 1966, he elucidated, jointly with Charles Roger Slack, the C4 pathway for the fixation of carbon, which is also sometimes known as the Hatch-Slack pathway. He is now ...
Go to Profile#40247
William Poole
#40260
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
William Poole was the eleventh chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He took office on March 23, 1998, and began serving his full term on March 1, 2001. In 2007, he served as a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, bringing his District's perspective to policy discussions in Washington. Poole stepped down from the Fed on March 31, 2008.
Go to Profile#40248
Eugène Ehrhart
#40261
Overall Influence
1906 - 2000 (94 years)
Eugène Ehrhart was a French mathematician who introduced Ehrhart polynomials in the 1960s. Ehrhart received his high school diploma at the age of 22. He was a mathematics teacher in several high schools, and did mathematics research on his own time. He started publishing in mathematics in his 40s, and finished his PhD thesis at the age of 60.
Go to Profile#40249
Per Olof Berg
#40262
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Per Olof Berg is a Swedish organizational theorist and professor in business administration, known for his work on "Corporate culture and organizational symbolism." Biography Born in Strängnäs, Sweden, Berg took an exam as engineer in industrial electronics at Västerås Technical Gymnasium. Sequentially he did his military service in Uppsala, and afterwards graduated with an MSc in business administration from Lund University in 1970. He defended his PhD thesis in business administration at Lund University in 1979.
Go to Profile#40250
Sreenivasan
#40263
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Sreenivasan is an Indian actor, screenwriter, director, dubbing artist and producer who predominantly works in Malayalam cinema. Sreenivasan has starred in over 225 films. Sreenivasan wrote the screenplays of films such as Odaruthammava Aalariyam , Sanmanassullavarkku Samadhanam , Gandhinagar 2nd Street , Nadodikkattu , Pattanapravesham , Varavelpu , Thalayana Manthram , Sandesam , Midhunam , Mazhayethum Munpe , Azhakiya Ravanan , Oru Maravathoor Kanavu , Udayananu Tharam , Katha Parayumpol , and Njan Prakashan among which the latter is one of the highest-grossing Malayalam films of all time.
Go to Profile