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
#40601
Jerry Stahl
#40614
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jerry Stahl is an American novelist and screenwriter. His works include the 1995 memoir of addiction Permanent Midnight. A 1998 film adaptation followed with Ben Stiller in the lead role. His works include memoirs, short stories, TV, films, and Novels. He wrote novels including Bad Sex On Speed , Happy Mutant Baby Pills: A Novel , and a short story Love Without: Stories .
Go to Profile#40602
Alessia Cara
#40615
Overall Influence
1996 - Present (30 years)
Alessia Caracciolo , known professionally as Alessia Cara , is a Canadian singer and songwriter. She began posting covers of songs on YouTube at age 13. After uploading acoustic covers of songs such as "Love Yourself" and "Sweater Weather" online, she signed with EP Entertainment and Def Jam Recordings in 2014 and released her debut single, "Here", the following year. It peaked at number 19 on the Canadian Hot 100 chart and was a sleeper hit in the US, peaking at number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Go to Profile#40603
Margaret Greig
#40616
Overall Influence
1922 - 1999 (77 years)
Dorothy Margaret Greig née Hannah was an English mathematician who worked upon the theory of worsted spinning, especially the superdraft system invented by Geoffrey Ambler. During WW2, she worked on the analysis of strategic bombing. She married in 1948 and started lecturing at Leeds University in the same year. She subsequently lectured at Constantine Technical College and Durham University.
Go to Profile#40604
Nicole-Claude Mathieu
#40617
Overall Influence
1937 - 2014 (77 years)
Nicole-Claude Mathieu was a French anthropologist, feminist, academic and writer, who is remembered for her contributions to gender studies, including women's rights, the institution of marriage, materialist feminism and women's oppression. An active contributor to feminist journals, from 1971 she served as Chef de travaux at the where she edited the journal L'Homme while contributing many articles of her own. From 1990, she was maîtresse de conférences at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. In June 1996, she received a doctorate honoris causa from the Université Laval.
Go to Profile#40605
Nassif Ghoussoub
#40618
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Nassif A. Ghoussoub is a Canadian mathematician working in the fields of non-linear analysis and partial differential equations. He is a Professor of Mathematics and a Distinguished University Scholar at the University of British Columbia.
Go to Profile#40606
Geoff Hoon
#40619
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Geoffrey William Hoon is a British Labour Party politician who served as the Member of Parliament for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire from 1992 to 2010. He is a former Defence Secretary, Transport Secretary, Leader of the House of Commons and Government Chief Whip.
Go to Profile#40607
Hellmut Diwald
#40620
Overall Influence
1924 - 1993 (69 years)
Hellmut Diwald was a German historian and Professor of Medieval and Modern History at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg from 1965 to 1985. He was originally from southern Moravia, the son of an Austrian engineer and a Czech mother, and went to school in Prague before the family relocated to Nuremberg in Bavaria in 1938. During World War II, he served in the German Army. After the war, he went on to study mechanical engineering in Nuremberg before he studied philosophy, German and history at the universities of Hamburg and Erlangen. He earned a doctorate in history in 1952 and completed his Habilitation in 1958.
Go to Profile#40608
Brent Weeks
#40621
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Brent Weeks is an American fantasy writer. His debut novel, The Way of Shadows, was a New York Times best seller in April 2009. Each of the five books in his Lightbringer Series made the NYT list as well, starting with The Black Prism in 2010. He lives and works near Portland, Oregon with his wife, Kristi, and their two daughters.
Go to Profile#40609
Georges Glaeser
#40622
Overall Influence
1918 - 2002 (84 years)
Georges Glaeser was a French mathematician who was director of the IREM of Strasbourg. He worked in analysis and mathematical education and introduced Glaeser's composition theorem and Glaeser's continuity theorem. Glaeser was a Ph.D. student of Laurent Schwartz.
Go to Profile#40610
Chris Toumazou
#40623
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
#40611
Kumaravel Somasundaram
#40624
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Kumaravel Somasundaram is an Indian cancer biologist and a professor at the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology of the Indian Institute of Science. Known for his studies on the therapeutics of Glioblastoma, Somasunderam is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies namely, the National Academy of Sciences, India, the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contri...
Go to Profile#40612
Anita Harding
#40625
Overall Influence
1952 - 1995 (43 years)
Anita Elizabeth Harding was an Irish-British neurologist, and Professor of Clinical Neurology at the Institute of Neurology of the University of London. She is known for the discovery with Ian Holt and John Morgan-Hughes of the "first identification of a mitochondrial DNA mutation in human disease and the concept of tissue heteroplasmy of mutant mitochondrial DNA", published in Nature in 1986. In 1985 she established the first neurogenetics research group in the United Kingdom at the UCL Institute of Neurology.
Go to Profile#40613
Zbyszek Darzynkiewicz
#40626
Overall Influence
1936 - 2021 (85 years)
Zbigniew Darzynkiewicz was a Polish-American cell biologist active in cancer research and in developing new methods in histochemistry for flow cytometry. Early life and education From 1945 to 1949, Darzynkiewicz attended a primary school in Dzierżoniów, Poland. He spent his high school years in Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland. His application to the University of Warsaw's Department of Physics was denied by the communist Social Justice Committee, who viewed him as a "enemy of the people." However, following the intervention of Regina Uszyńska, his high school principal, Darzynkiewicz was permit...
Go to Profile#40614
Isaac Stern
#40627
Overall Influence
1920 - 2001 (81 years)
Isaac Stern was an American violinist. Born in Poland, Stern moved to the US when he was 14 months old. Stern performed both nationally and internationally, notably touring the Soviet Union and China, and performing extensively in Israel, a country to which he had close ties since shortly after its founding.
Go to Profile#40615
K'naan
#40628
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Keinan Abdi Warsame , better known by his stage name K'naan , is a Somali-Canadian rapper. He rose to prominence with the success of his single "Wavin' Flag", which was chosen as Coca-Cola's promotional anthem for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Besides hip hop, K'naan's sound is influenced by elements of Somali music and world music. He is also involved in various philanthropic initiatives.
Go to Profile#40616
Kate Mulgrew
#40629
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Katherine Kiernan Maria Mulgrew is an American actress and author. She is best known for her roles as Captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager and Red in Orange Is the New Black. She first came to attention in the role of Mary Ryan in the daytime soap opera Ryan's Hope.
Go to Profile#40617
Will Forte
#40630
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Orville Willis Forte IV is an American comedian and actor. He was a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live for eight seasons between 2002 and 2010. During his time on the show, he played a recurring character that led to a feature film adaptation, MacGruber , and a streaming television series, MacGruber, which he has starred in since 2021. Forte also created and starred in the sitcom The Last Man on Earth . For the series, he received three Primetime Emmy Award nominations: two for acting and one for writing.
Go to Profile#40618
Marcel Odenbach
#40631
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Marcel Odenbach is a German video artist. In the 1970s, with Ulrike Rosenbach and Klaus vom Bruch, he formed the producer group ATV. Odenbach's works criticize the conditions of German society. Life and work Odenbach was born in 1953 in Cologne, Germany, where he studied architecture, art history and semiotics between 1974–79. In the late 1970s, he started using video work, tapes, installations, performances and drawings to probe the cultural identity of his native Germany. His ambivalence to cultural history shows in works such as "Make a Fist in the Pocket", a German expression for hiding on...
Go to Profile#40619
Herbert Walther
#40632
Overall Influence
1935 - 2006 (71 years)
Herbert Walther was a leader in the fields of quantum optics and laser physics. He was a founding director of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany. He also was Chair of Physics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He is primarily known for his experimental work on cavity quantum electrodynamics as well his groundbreaking work on the ion trap.
Go to Profile#40620
Donald J. Cohen
#40633
Overall Influence
1940 - 2001 (61 years)
Donald Jay Cohen was an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and director of the Yale Child Study Center and the Sterling Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Psychology at the Yale School of Medicine. According to the New York Times, he was "known for his scientific work, including fundamental contributions to the understanding of autism, Tourette's syndrome and other illnesses, and for his leadership in bringing together the biological and the psychological approaches to understanding psychiatric disorders in childhood"; his work "reshaped the field of child psychiatry". He was ...
Go to Profile#40621
Klaus Weber
#40634
Overall Influence
#40622
Ellen Arruda
#40635
Overall Influence
Ellen Marie Arruda is an American mechanical engineer known for her research on the mechanical properties of polymers and on tissue engineering, with applications including the design of improved football helmets, artificial tooth enamel that can withstand high-shock and high-vibration environments, and nanolayered composite materials that are lightweight, as strong as steel, and transparent. The Arruda–Boyce model for the behavior of rubber-like polymers is named for her and her doctoral advisor Mary Cunningham Boyce, with whom she published it in 1993. She is Maria Comninou Collegiate Profes...
Go to Profile#40623
Ulrich Rückriem
#40636
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Ulrich Rückriem is a German sculptor notable for his monumental stone sculptures. He lives and works in Cologne and London. His abstract works of art are often assigned to the style of minimalism and process art.
Go to Profile#40624
James Sayers
#40637
Overall Influence
1912 - 1993 (81 years)
James Sayers was a Northern Irish physicist who played a crucial role in developing centimetric radar, which is now used in microwave ovens. Early life He was born on a farm in Corkey, County Antrim, Ireland. He built a water wheel to provide the farm with electricity.
Go to Profile#40625
Mark Welland
#40638
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Sir Mark Edward Welland, is a British physicist who is a professor of nanotechnology at the University of Cambridge and head of the Nanoscience Centre. He has been a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, since 1986 and started his career in nanotechnology at IBM Research, where he was part of the team that developed one of the first scanning tunnelling microscopes. He was served as the Master of St Catharine's College, Cambridge and took up office from 2016 to 2023.
Go to Profile#40626
Nestor Courakis
#40639
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Nestor Courakis is Emeritus Professor of Criminology and Penology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Faculty of Law and a full-time Professor at the University of Nicosia. Born May 21, 1947 in Athens he attended the Law Faculty, University of Athens , Law Faculty, University of Freiburg/Germany , Law Faculty, Panthéon-Assas University , Paris Institute of Criminology ; research work at Max-Planck Institute of Foreign and International Criminal Law 1978-80.
Go to Profile#40627
Leonard A. Cole
#40640
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Leonard Aaron Cole , was an American dentist, political scientist and expert on bioterrorism and terror medicine. He was adjunct professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark, New Jersey and of emergency medicine at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. A pioneer in developing the field of terror medicine, he was founding director of the Program on Terror Medicine and Security at the medical school.
Go to Profile#40628
Marianne Githens
#40641
Overall Influence
1936 - 2018 (82 years)
Marianne Githens was an American political scientist, feminist, and author. She was an Elizabeth Conolly Todd Distinguished Professor and the co-founder of the Women's Study Program at Goucher College. In 1977, she co-authored the anthology A Portrait of Marginality.
Go to Profile#40629
Richard Bourke
#40642
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Richard Bourke is a UK-based Irish academic specialising in the history of political ideas. His work spans ancient and modern thought, and is associated with the application of the historical method to political theory. He is Professor of the History of Political Thought at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. He was formerly Professor of the History of Political Thought and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary, University of London. In July 2018 Bourke was elected a Fellow of the British Academy .
Go to Profile#40630
Rosalie E. Wahl
#40643
Overall Influence
1924 - 2013 (89 years)
Sara Rosalie Wahl was an American feminist, lawyer, public defender, clinical law professor, and judge and the first woman to serve on the Minnesota Supreme Court where she served for seventeen years. Governor Perpich nominated Wahl to the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1977 and Wahl won the election to the seat in a non-partisan election in 1978, defeating three male candidates. She chaired the state's Gender Bias Taskforce and Racial Bias Taskforce and led the American Bar Association's efforts to establish clinical legal education. She was a champion for the mentally ill and for displaced homemakers.
Go to Profile#40631
Larry Knechtel
#40644
Overall Influence
1940 - 2009 (69 years)
Lawrence William Knechtel was an American keyboard player and bassist who was a member of the Wrecking Crew, a collection of Los Angeles–based session musicians who worked with such renowned artists as Simon & Garfunkel, Duane Eddy, the Beach Boys, the Mamas & the Papas, the Monkees, the Partridge Family, Billy Joel, the Doors, the Byrds, the Grass Roots, Jerry Garcia, and Elvis Presley. He also was a member of the 1970s band Bread.
Go to Profile#40632
Ernst Engelberg
#40645
Overall Influence
1909 - 2010 (101 years)
Ernst Engelberg was a German university professor and Marxist historian. He made a particularly noteworthy contribution with his two-volume biography of Otto von Bismarck which in the view of at least one commentator represented a paradigm shift for historiography in the German Democratic Republic.
Go to Profile#40633
Friedrich L. Sell
#40646
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Friedrich Leopold Sell is a professor of Economics at Bundeswehr University Munich as well as chief of the scientific council of Halle Institute for Economic Research. Furthermore, he is vice chief of studies at the Academy for Business and Administration in Munich.
Go to Profile#40634
David Crook
#40647
Overall Influence
1910 - 2000 (90 years)
David Crook was a British communist who spent most of his life teaching in China. A committed Marxist from 1931, he joined the International Brigades to fight against the Spanish nationalists in the Spanish Civil War . After being wounded in combat, he was recruited by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, and was sent to China during the Second Sino-Japanese War . There he met and married his wife, Isabel, a teacher and social activist. Following the Second World War and the Chinese Civil War, the couple stayed in China and taught English.
Go to Profile#40635
Mary T. Clark
#40648
Overall Influence
1913 - 2014 (101 years)
Mary Twibill Clark was an American Roman Catholic nun, academic, and civil rights advocate. She was best known as a scholar of the history of philosophy, and was associated especially with Saint Augustine.
Go to Profile#40636
Melissa George
#40649
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Melissa Suzanne George is an Australian actress. A former national rollerskating champion and model, George began her acting career playing Angel Parrish in the Australian soap opera Home and Away . After moving to the United States, George made her feature debut with a supporting role in Dark City . She followed this with parts in The Limey , Mulholland Drive , Sugar & Spice , and Down with Love .
Go to Profile#40637
Mathias Dahlgren
#40650
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Mathias Dahlgren is a Swedish chef, who won the culinary championship Bocuse d'Or in 1997. Four times selected the Swedish Chef of the Year, Dahlgren ran the Stockholm restaurant Bon Lloc, which had one Michelin star, from 1996 to 2005. In 2007, he opened the restaurant Mathias Dahlgren in the Stockholm Grand Hôtel, which received a Michelin star in 2008. Since 2008, Mathias Dahlgren has also been connected to the Umeå University School of Restaurant and Culinary Arts as an adjunct professor. In 2009, it was upgraded to two Michelin stars, only the second Swedish restaurant ever to receive this recognition.
Go to Profile#40638
Alan White
#40651
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Alan White is an American philosopher and Mark Hopkins Professor of Philosophy at Williams College. He was a president of the Metaphysical Society of America . Education and career Alan White received his B.A. from Tulane University in 1972, followed by a M.A. and Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 1976 and 1980 respectively under the direction of Stanley H. Rosen and Thomas Seebohm. He then took up visiting professor positions at Davidson College and East Tennessee State University before joining the faculty of The New School for Social Research in 1982 as Assistant Professor of Philosophy.
Go to Profile#40639
Ronnie Lane
#40652
Overall Influence
1946 - 1997 (51 years)
Ronald Frederick Lane was an English musician and songwriter who was the bassist and co-founder of the rock bands Small Faces and Faces . Lane formed Small Faces in 1965 after meeting Steve Marriott, with whom he subsequently wrote many of their hit singles including "All or Nothing", "Itchycoo Park" and "Lazy Sunday". After Marriott left Small Faces in 1968, band members Lane, Ian McLagan and Kenny Jones were joined by Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood to form Faces. Like Small Faces, the band achieved critical and commercial success. Lane quit the Faces in 1973 and subsequently collaborated with other musicians, leading his own bands and pursuing a solo career.
Go to Profile#40640
Arpad Elo
#40653
Overall Influence
1903 - 1992 (89 years)
Arpad Emmerich Elo was an American physics professor who created the Elo rating system for two-player games such as chess. Born in Egyházaskesző, Kingdom of Hungary, he moved to the United States with his parents in 1913. He was a professor of physics at Marquette University in Milwaukee and a chess master. By the 1930s he was the strongest chess player in Milwaukee, then one of the nation's leading chess cities. He won the Wisconsin State Championship eight times, and was the 11th person inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#40641
Jackie Stedall
#40654
Overall Influence
1950 - 2014 (64 years)
Jacqueline Anne "Jackie" Stedall was a British mathematics historian. She wrote nine books, and appeared on radio on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time programme. Early life Stedall was born in Romford, Essex, and attended Queen Mary's High School in Walsall. Her academic achievements included a BA in mathematics from Girton College, Cambridge, an MSc in statistics from the University of Kent, a PGCE from Bristol Polytechnic , and a PhD in the history of mathematics from the Open University. Her PhD focused upon John Wallis' 1685 work Treatise of Algebra.
Go to Profile#40642
Don Orlich
#40655
Overall Influence
Don Orlich is professor emeritus of the Science Mathematics Engineering Education Center at Washington State University. He has published more than 100 professional papers, co-authored more than 30 monographs and books, and is the senior co-author of “Teaching Strategies: A guide to Effective Teaching,” published by Houghton Mifflin in 2004.
Go to Profile#40643
Barrows Dunham
#40656
Overall Influence
1905 - 1995 (90 years)
Barrows Dunham was an American author and professor of philosophy. Best known for popular works of philosophy such as Man against Myth and Heroes and Heretics , Dunham also gained notoriety as a martyr for academic freedom when he was fired from Temple University in 1953 after refusing to “name names” before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Go to Profile#40644
Nurit Bird-David
#40657
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Nurit Bird-David is a professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Haifa, Israel. She is best known for her study of the Nayaka hunter-gatherers in South India, upon which she based much of her writings on animism, relational epistemology, and indigenous small-scale communities, and which later inspired additional fieldwork and insights on home-making in contemporary industrial societies, and the theoretical concept of scale in anthropology and other social sciences.
Go to Profile#40645
Dara Torres
#40658
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Dara Grace Torres is an American former competitive swimmer, who is a 12-time Olympic medalist and former world record-holder in three events. Torres is the first swimmer to represent the United States in five Olympic Games , and at age 41, the oldest swimmer to earn a place on the U.S. Olympic team. At the 2008 Summer Olympics, she competed in the 50-meter freestyle, 4×100-meter medley relay, and 4×100-meter freestyle relay, and won silver medals in all three events.
Go to Profile#40646
Kliff Kingsbury
#40659
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Kliff Timothy Kingsbury is an American football coach and former quarterback, who is currently a senior offensive analyst and QB coach at USC. He previously served as the head coach of Texas Tech and the Arizona Cardinals . Kingsbury is known for developing quarterback prospects including Case Keenum, Johnny Manziel, Patrick Mahomes, Kyler Murray and Caleb Williams.
Go to Profile#40647
Wolf Dieter Prix
#40660
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Wolf Dieter Prix is an Austrian architect. In 1968 he co-founded the architects' cooperative Coop Himmelbau, which has an international reputation as an important representative of deconstructivism.
Go to Profile#40648
Mark Krasniqi
#40661
Overall Influence
1920 - 2015 (95 years)
Mark Krasniqi was an Kosovar Albanian ethnographist, publicist, writer and translator who did most of his work while residing in Yugoslavia. Biography He was born on 19 October 1920 in near Peć, in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. He finished elementary school in Peć in the Serbian language and due to his Catholic background attended the Catholic high school in Prizren, being one of few Albanians among mostly Croatians and Slovenes, finishing in 1941. After high school, he studied literature at the University of Padova, Italy and after World War II he studied geography and ethnography at the University of Belgrade.
Go to Profile#40649
Lol Tolhurst
#40662
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Laurence Andrew "Lol" Tolhurst is an English musician. A founding member and the former drummer and keyboardist of seminal English band The Cure, he left the group in 1989 and was later involved in the band Presence and his current project, Levinhurst. In 2011, he was temporarily reunited with the Cure for a number of shows playing the band's earlier work. Tolhurst published his memoir in 2016, Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys. The book related his childhood in Crawley and his journey within the Cure. In 2023, he recorded the album Los Angeles with Budgie and Jacknife Lee: the lead single and title track features James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem on vocals.
Go to Profile#40650
Deborah Rhode
#40663
Overall Influence
1952 - 2021 (69 years)
Deborah Lynn Rhode was an American jurist. She was the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the nation's most frequently cited scholar in legal ethics. From her early days at Yale Law School, her work revolved around questions of injustice in the practice of law and the challenges of identifying and redressing it. Rhode founded and led several research centers at Stanford devoted to these issues, including its Center on the Legal Profession, Center on Ethics and Program in Law and Social Entrepreneurship; she also led the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford.
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