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
#40551
Kehlani
#40564
Overall Influence
1995 - Present (31 years)
Kehlani Ashley Parrish is an American singer and songwriter. Kehlani is originally from Oakland, California, and achieved initial fame as a member of the teen group Poplyfe in 2011. In 2014, Kehlani released their first commercial mixtape, Cloud 19. The mixtape was listed as one of the Complexs "50 Best Albums of 2014." Their second commercial mixtape, You Should Be Here , debuted at number 5 on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart. In 2016, they were nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album for You Should Be Here. Kehlani released their debut studio album, SweetSexySavage, in 2017. They released their second studio album It Was Good Until It Wasn't in 2020.
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Geoffrey Serle
#40565
Overall Influence
1922 - 1998 (76 years)
Alan Geoffrey Serle , known as Geoff, was an Australian historian, who is best known for his books on the colony of Victoria; The Golden Age and The Rush to be Rich and his biographies of John Monash, John Curtin and Robin Boyd.
Go to Profile#40553
Todd Pletcher
#40566
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Todd Pletcher is an American thoroughbred horse trainer. He won the Eclipse Award eight times as Trainer of the Year, four of these in consecutive years. His horses Super Saver and Always Dreaming won the Kentucky Derby. He also won the Belmont Stakes with Rags to Riches , Palace Malice , Tapwrit and Mo Donegal . He also trained Malathaat who won the 2021 Kentucky Oaks.
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David F. Bjorklund
#40567
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
David Fredrick Bjorklund is an American professor of psychology at Florida Atlantic University. His areas of research interest include cognitive development and evolutionary developmental psychology. His works include authoring several books and over 130 scientific papers. He is editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Go to Profile#40555
Roger Stern
#40568
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Roger Stern is an American comic book author and novelist. Biography Early career In the early 1970s, Stern and Bob Layton published the fanzine CPL , one of the first platforms for the work of John Byrne. CPL rapidly became a popular fan publication, and led to the two forming an alliance with Charlton Comics to produce and publish "the now-famous Charlton Bullseye magazine". During the mid-1970s, both Marvel and DC were publishing in-house "fan" publications , and Charlton wished to make inroads into the superhero market, as well as "establish a fan presence," leading to the alliance with CPL to produce the Charlton Bullseye.
Go to Profile#40556
Joshua Tybur
#40569
Overall Influence
Joshua M. Tybur is a Dutch psychologist who serves as Professor of Psychology and Infectious Disease in the Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology at VU Amsterdam. Much of his research focuses on the evolutionary psychology of disgust.
Go to Profile#40557
Joachim Hagenauer
#40570
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Joachim Hagenauer is an information theorist and professor emeritus at Technical University of Munich. He pioneered the use of soft bits , a coding theory technique that contributes to the high performance of the turbo codes.
Go to Profile#40558
Gabriel Horenczyk
#40571
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Gabriel Horenczyk is a social psychologist who has conducted various studies on acculturation and cultural identity. He is currently employed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. Main publications Horenczyk . Immigrants' perceptions of host attitudes and their reconstruction of cultural groups. Applied Psychology, 46, 34–38.Phinney, Horenczyk, Liebkind & Vedder . Ethnic identity, immigration, and well-being: An interactional perspective. Journal of Social Issues, 57, 493–510.Roccas, Horenczyk & Schwartz . Acculturation discrepancies and well-being: the moderating role of conformity.
Go to Profile#40559
Bill Price
#40572
Overall Influence
1909 - 1993 (84 years)
Professor William Charles Price FRS was a British physicist . Brought up in Swansea, he spent his career at the universities of Cambridge and London. His work was important for identifying the hydrogen bond structure of DNA base pairs.
Go to Profile#40560
Heikki Mannila
#40573
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Heikki Olavi Mannila is a Finnish computer scientist, the president of the Academy of Finland. Mannila earned his Ph.D. in 1985 from the University of Helsinki under the supervision of Esko Ukkonen and for many years he was a professor at the University of Helsinki himself. From 2004 to 2008 he was Academy Professor at the Academy of Finland. He became Vice President for Academic Affairs at Aalto University in 2009, and was appointed by the Finnish government as president of the Academy of Finland for a term lasting from 2012 to 2017. The appointment was renewed for the period 2017–2022.
Go to Profile#40561
Colin Blunstone
#40574
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Colin Edward Michael Blunstone is an English singer and songwriter. In a career spanning more than 60 years, Blunstone came to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the rock band the Zombies, which released four singles that entered the Top 75 charts in the United States during the 1960s: "She's Not There", "Tell Her No", "She's Coming Home" and "Time of the Season". Blunstone began his solo career in 1969, releasing three singles under a pseudonym of Neil MacArthur. Since then, he has released ten studio albums under his real name. He appears on several albums with the Alan Parso...
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Tatiana Toro
#40575
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Tatiana Toro is a Colombian-American mathematician at the University of Washington. Her research is "at the interface of geometric measure theory, harmonic analysis and partial differential equations". Toro was appointed director of the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute for 2022–2027.
Go to Profile#40563
Siddalingaiah
#40576
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Siddalingaiah , was an Indian poet, playwright, and Dalit activist, writing in the Kannada language. He is credited with starting the Dalit-Bandaya movement in Kannada and with starting the genre of Dalit writing. He is one of the founders of the Dalita Sangharsh Samiti along with B. Krishnappa.
Go to Profile#40564
Amy Sedaris
#40577
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Amy Louise Sedaris is an American actress, comedian, and writer. Most recently, she has appeared in both The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett as Peli Motto. She played Jerri Blank in the Comedy Central comedy series Strangers with Candy and the prequel film Strangers with Candy , which she also wrote.
Go to Profile#40565
Nataša Pavlović
#40578
Overall Influence
Nataša Pavlović is a Serbian mathematician who works as a professor of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research concerns fluid dynamics and nonlinear dispersive partial differential equations. She is known for her work with Nets Katz pioneering an approach to constructing singularities in equations resembling the Navier–Stokes equations, by transferring a finite amount of energy through an infinitely decreasing sequence of time and length scales.
Go to Profile#40566
Fatima Seedat
#40579
Overall Influence
Fatima Seedat is a South African feminist, Islamic scholar and women's rights activist. She is known for her scholarly work on gender and Islamic law, and Islam and feminism. Career Seedat researches gender and Islamic law, Islam and feminism, and Muslim masculinity. She completed her PhD at McGill University, and her dissertation focused on gender and legal theory.
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Paul King Jewett
#40580
Overall Influence
1919 - 1991 (72 years)
Paul King Jewett was a Christian theologian, author and prominent advocate of the ordination of women and of believer's baptism. He taught systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He is credited with helping develop Fuller into one of the largest seminaries in the country.
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Jennifer Gardy
#40581
Overall Influence
Jennifer Gardy is a Canadian scientist, educator and broadcaster, with expertise in the fields of molecular biology, biochemistry, and bioinformatics. Since February 2019 she has been the Deputy Director, Surveillance, Data, and Epidemiology on the Global Health: Malaria team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She was previously an associate professor at the University of British Columbia's School of Population and Public Health, a Canada Research Chair in Public Health Genomics, and a Senior Scientist at the BC Centre for Disease Control. She is an occasional host of CBC's The Nature of Things, a science communicator, and a children's book author.
Go to Profile#40569
Elmore Leonard
#40582
Overall Influence
1925 - 2013 (88 years)
Elmore John Leonard Jr. was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. His earliest novels, published in the 1950s, were Westerns, but he went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillerss, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures. Among his best-known works are Hombre, Swag, City Primeval, LaBrava, Glitz, Freaky Deaky, Get Shorty, Rum Punch, Out of Sight and Tishomingo Blues.
Go to Profile#40570
Randel Helms
#40583
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Randel McCraw Helms, also known as Loyce Helms is an American professor of English literature, a writer on J. R. R. Tolkien and critical writer on the Bible. Biography Helms studied at University of California, Riverside, B.A. 1964, University of Washington, Ph.D. 1968, then taught from 1968 at the University of California as assistant professor of English, before becoming professor at the Department of English, Arizona State University. In 2007 he established the Randel and Susan McCraw Helms Homecoming Writing Contest for undergraduate students.
Go to Profile#40571
Ágnes Gergely
#40584
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Ágnes Gergely is a Hungarian writer, educator, journalist and translator. Biography She was born Ágnes Guttmann in family of Fenákel Rózsika and György Guttmann in Endrőd, a village on the Great Hungarian Plain. She took her pen name "Gergely" from the novel Eclipse of the Crescent Moon by the Hungarian writer Géza Gárdonyi because Agnes Gergely wished to be courageous like the hero from the story, Gergely Bornemissza.
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Juha Pentikäinen
#40585
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Juha Pentikäinen is a professor emeritus of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Helsinki and a professor of northern ethnography at the University of Lapland and the Institute for Northern Culture in Helsinki. With a field-work oriented approach to the study of religious traditions he is especially interested in the oral history of languages, religions and cultures.
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Olli Lounasmaa
#40586
Overall Influence
1930 - 2002 (72 years)
Olli Viktor Lounasmaa was a Finnish academician, experimental physicist and neuroscientist. He was known for his research in low temperature physics, especially for experimental proof of the superfluidity of helium-3 and also for his work in the field of magnetoencephalography.
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Suki Kim
#40587
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Suki Kim is a Korean American journalist and writer. She is the author of two books: the award-winning novel The Interpreter and a book of investigative journalism, Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea's Elite. Kim is the only writer ever to have lived undercover in North Korea to conduct immersive journalism. Kim is currently a contributing editor at The New Republic.
Go to Profile#40575
John L. Sorenson
#40588
Overall Influence
1924 - 2021 (97 years)
John Leon Sorenson was an American anthropologist, scholar and author. He was a professor of anthropology at Brigham Young University, and the author of An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, as well as many other books and articles on the Book of Mormon and archaeology.
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Richard L. Doty
#40589
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Richard L. Doty is a professor of psychology and otorhinolaryngology at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also been the director of the University of Pennsylvania's Smell and Taste Center since 1980.
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Peter Boyle
#40590
Overall Influence
1935 - 2006 (71 years)
Peter Lawrence Boyle was an American actor. Known as a character actor, he played Frank Barone on the CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond and the comical monster in Mel Brooks' film spoof Young Frankenstein . He also starred in The Candidate . Boyle, who won an Emmy Award in 1996 for a guest-starring role on the Fox science-fiction drama The X-Files, won praise in both comedic and dramatic parts following his breakthrough performance in the 1970 film Joe, and as Wizard in Taxi Driver .
Go to Profile#40578
Stephanie Mitelman
#40591
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Stephanie Mitelman Bercovitch is a Canadian sex education and family life education professor, public speaker, entrepreneur, sex educator, and author specializing in special education, particularly for youth with autism spectrum disorders. She is the owner and creator of Senseez Pillows, a company making vibrating pillows for people with sensory needs, and Sex Ed Mart, a sex education publishing and distribution company specializing in sex education for youth with special needs. Bercovitch also runs a private sex education practice for youth on the autism spectrum, their parents, and couples...
Go to Profile#40579
Francis Albarède
#40592
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Francis Albarède is a French geochemist. He is Professor at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon and a member of the Academia Europaea. In January 2011, he became the first director of the Laboratory of Geology Lyon .
Go to Profile#40580
Zubair Ali Zai
#40593
Overall Influence
1957 - 2013 (56 years)
Zubair Ali Zai was a preacher, theologian, Islamic scholar of ahadith and former merchant marine from Pakistan.His origins was from Pashtun subtribe of Daudzai i.e. Alizai. Life Zubair Alizai was from the Pashtun tribe of Alizai, itself a branch of the larger Durrani confederation tracing their descent back to Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the Durrani Empire.
Go to Profile#40581
Andrés Gómez
#40594
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Andrés Gómez Santos is an Ecuadorian former professional tennis player. He won the men's singles title at the French Open in 1990. His son, Emilio Gómez, is a professional tennis player. His nephew Nicolás Lapentti was also a professional tennis player who reached a world ranking of No. 6, and another nephew, Roberto Quiroz, is currently pursuing a career in professional tennis.
Go to Profile#40582
Ron Larson
#40595
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Roland "Ron" Edwin Larson is a professor of mathematics at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, Pennsylvania. He is best known for being the author of a series of widely used mathematics textbooks ranging from middle school through the second year of college.
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Alain Johannes
#40596
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Alain Johannes Mociulski is a Chilean-American multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, whose primary instruments are guitar and bass. He is a founding member of several bands, including the alternative rock group Eleven, and has been involved with acts such as hard rock band Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures, PJ Harvey, Chris Cornell, Arctic Monkeys, Mark Lanegan and The Desert Sessions, both as a musician and as a producer.
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Kenneth Alwyn
#40597
Overall Influence
1925 - 2020 (95 years)
Kenneth Alwyn Wetherell was a British conductor, composer, and writer. Described by BBC Radio 3 as "one of the great British musical directors", Alwyn was known for his many recordings, including with the London Symphony Orchestra on Decca's first stereophonic recording of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. He was also known for his long association with BBC Radio 2's orchestral live music programme Friday Night is Music Night, appearing for thirty years as a conductor and presenter, and for his contribution to British musical theatre as a prolific musical director in the 1950s and 1960s. He was a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and married the actress Mary Law in 1960.
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Elsie Effah Kaufmann
#40598
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Elsie Akosua Biraa Effah Kaufmann is a Ghanaian academic, academic administrator, biomedical engineer, and current host of the National Science and Maths Quiz. In December 2020, Elsie Kaufmann was appointed an associate professor at the University of Ghana, and was appointed the Dean of the School of Engineering Sciences on 1 August 2022.
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Stephen Hague
#40599
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Stephen Hague is an American record producer most active with various British acts since the 1980s. Early life Hague was born in Portland, Maine in 1960. Early career Hague started his musical career in the mid-1970s as a session keyboardist. He soon became a member of the band Jules and the Polar Bears and produced the two albums and one EP, released between 1978 and 1980, by that band. He then branched out into producing work by other artists, including 1980s Sparks offshoot band Gleaming Spires, their first album being recorded on Hague's home 4-track tape recorder. This 1981 album spawne...
Go to Profile#40587
Ellis Cashmore
#40600
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Ellis Cashmore is a British sociologist and cultural critic. He is currently a visiting professor of sociology at Aston University. Before teaching at Aston, he used to teach culture, media and sport at Staffordshire University, starting in 1993. Before 1993, he taught sociology at the University of Tampa, Florida; and, before this, he was a lecturer in sociology at the University of Hong Kong. He is a regular contributor at Fair Observer.
Go to Profile#40588
Jane Hamilton
#40601
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Jane Hamilton is an American novelist. Early life Jane Hamilton was born and grew up in Oak Park, Illinois , the youngest of five children. She won prizes for poetry and short stories throughout high school and college but was always told that being a writer would not be a viable career. Because she was not a good speller, she did not believe she could be a copy editor or editor either. She graduated from Oak Park and River Forest High School in 1975.
Go to Profile#40589
Delonte West
#40602
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Delonte Maurice West is an American former professional basketball player. He played in the National Basketball Association for the Boston Celtics, Seattle SuperSonics, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Dallas Mavericks. He also played professionally for the Fujian Xunxing and Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association and the Texas Legends of the NBA G League. Prior to playing professionally, West played college basketball at Saint Joseph's University.
Go to Profile#40590
Nahid Toubia
#40603
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Nahid Toubia is a Sudanese surgeon and women's health rights activist, specializing in research into female genital mutilation. Toubia is the co-founder and director of RAINBO, the Research, Action and Information Network for Bodily Integrity of Women. She is an associate professor at Columbia University School of Public Health. She sits on scientific and advisory committees for the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and UNDP. She is also vice-chair of the advisory committee of the Women's Rights Watch Project of Human Rights Watch.
Go to Profile#40591
Josh Duhamel
#40604
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Joshua David Duhamel is an American actor. After various modeling work, he made his acting debut as Leo du Pres on the ABC daytime soap opera All My Children and later starred as Danny McCoy on NBC's Las Vegas.
Go to Profile#40592
Daniela Stock
#40605
Overall Influence
Daniela Stock is an Australian scientist at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute with a conjoint position at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. She is a structural biologist whose research has provided insight into the molecular picture of rotary ATPases.
Go to Profile#40593
Frances Ferguson
#40606
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Frances Ferguson is a literary and cultural theorist who has taught courses in eighteenth and nineteenth century materials and twentieth century literary theory at a variety of universities, including Johns Hopkins University until July, 2012, where she was Mary Elizabeth Garrett Chair in Arts and Sciences at the university. She now teaches in the English department at the University of Chicago, where she is Ann L. and Lawrence B. Buttenwieser Professor.
Go to Profile#40594
Lara Alcock
#40607
Overall Influence
Lara Alcock is a British mathematics educator. She is a reader in mathematics education at Loughborough University, head of the Mathematics Education Centre at Loughborough, and the author of several books on mathematics. Alcock won the Selden Prize for her research in mathematics education and the inaugural John Blake University Teaching Medal in 2021. Alcock is a National Teaching Fellow.
Go to Profile#40595
Mischa Zverev
#40608
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Mikhail "Mischa" Alexandrovich Zverev is a German inactive professional tennis player. He achieved a career-high singles ranking of world No. 25 on 24 July 2017. At the 2017 Australian Open, Zverev defeated world No. 1 Andy Murray in four sets before losing in the quarterfinals to eventual champion Roger Federer. As a qualifier, he has also reached the quarterfinals of both the 2009 Italian Open and the 2016 Shanghai Masters. He is the brother of former world No. 2 and two-time ATP Finals champion Alexander Zverev.
Go to Profile#40596
Kenji Ueno
#40609
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Kenji Ueno is a Japanese mathematician, specializing in algebraic geometry. He was in the 1970s at the University of Tokyo and was from 1987 to 2009 a professor at the University of Kyoto and is now the director of Yokkaichi University's Seki Kōwa Institute for Mathematics. In 1978 he was an Invited Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Helsinki.
Go to Profile#40597
Etheridge Knight
#40610
Overall Influence
1931 - 1991 (60 years)
Etheridge Knight was an African-American poet who made his name in 1968 with his debut volume, Poems from Prison. The book recalls in verse his eight-year-long sentence after his arrest for robbery in 1960. By the time he left prison, Knight had prepared a second volume featuring his own writings and works of his fellow inmates. This second book, first published in Italy under the title Voce negre dal carcere, appeared in English in 1970 as Black Voices from Prison. These works established Knight as one of the major poets of the Black Arts Movement, which flourished from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s.
Go to Profile#40598
Jordan Rudess
#40611
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Jordan Rudess is an American keyboardist, composer, and software developer best known as a member of the progressive metal band Dream Theater and the progressive metal supergroup Liquid Tension Experiment.
Go to Profile#40599
Jenny Odell
#40612
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Jenny Odell is an American multidisciplinary artist, writer, and educator based in Oakland, California. She taught Internet art and digital/physical design at Stanford University from 2013 to 2021. She wrote The New York Times best-selling book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy .
Go to Profile#40600
Richard Rapson
#40613
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Richard L. Rapson is professor emeritus of American history at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Background Rapson earned his B.A. magna cum laude at Amherst College in June 1958, and served briefly there as an instructor in American Studies. He then taught history at Stanford University from 1961 to 1965 while pursuing his Ph.D. at Columbia University, granted in 1966. His dissertation was on The British Traveler in America, 1860–1935; his doctoral advisor was Richard Hofstadter.
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