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
#40801
Winnie Wong-Ng
#40814
Overall Influence
Winnie Kwai-Wah Wong-Ng is a Chinese-American physical chemist. She is a research chemist at the ceramics division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her research includes energy applications, crystallography, thermoelectric standards, metrology, and data, sorbent materials for sustainability, and high throughput combinatorial approach for novel materials discovery and property optimization for energy conversion applications. She is a fellow of the International Centre for Diffraction Data, American Ceramic Society, American Crystallographic Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#40802
Alice Rogers
#40815
Overall Influence
Frances Alice Rogers is a British mathematician and mathematical physicist. She is an emeritus professor of mathematics at King's College London. Research Rogers' research concerns mathematical physics and more particularly supermanifolds, generalizations of the manifold concept based on ideas coming from supersymmetry. She is the author of the book Supermanifolds: Theory and Applications .
Go to Profile#40803
Hashim Thaçi
#40816
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Hashim Thaçi is a Kosovar Albanian politician who was the president of Kosovo from April 2016 until his resignation on 5 November 2020 to face a war crimes tribunal. He was the first prime minister of Kosovo and the Foreign minister and deputy prime minister in the new cabinet led by Isa Mustafa, which assumed office on 12 December 2014.
Go to Profile#40804
Adriano Panatta
#40817
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Adriano Panatta is an Italian former professional tennis player. He is a major champion, winning the French Open in 1976, and is the only Italian man in the Open Era to win a Grand Slam singles title. Panatta was also the only player ever to defeat Björn Borg at Roland Garros, doing so twice.
Go to Profile#40805
Robert Blendon
#40818
Overall Influence
Robert J. Blendon is an American academic who is the Richard L. Menschel Professor of Public Health and Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis, Emeritus and Acting Director for the Division of Policy Translation and Leadership Development at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He previousy held appointments as a Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Hhe directs the Harvard Opinion Research Program and co-directs the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health project on understanding Americans’ Health Agenda.
Go to Profile#40806
Daniel Halberstam
#40819
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Daniel H. Halberstam is a legal scholar focusing on comparative constitutional law, transnational law and European law. Halberstam is the Eric Stein Collegiate Professor of Law and Director of the European Legal Studies Program at the University of Michigan Law School. He is also professor at College of Europe.
Go to Profile#40807
Stephan Haggard
#40820
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Stephan Haggard is the Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor of Korea-Pacific Studies at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and distinguished professor of political scientist specializing in comparative politics at the University of California San Diego. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley and taught in the Government Department at Harvard before joining the faculty at UC San Diego. He teaches courses on international political economy, the international relations of the Asia-Pacific and qualitative methods. He is currently the editor of the Journal of East ...
Go to Profile#40808
John Shipley Rowlinson
#40821
Overall Influence
1926 - 2018 (92 years)
Sir John Shipley Rowlinson was a British chemist. He attended Oxford University, where he completed his undergraduate studies in 1948 and doctoral in 1950. He then became research associate at University of Wisconsin , lecturer at University of Manchester , Professor at Imperial College London and back at Oxford from 1974 to his retirement in 1993.
Go to Profile#40809
Matthew Sweet
#40822
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Sidney Matthew Sweet is an American alternative rock/power pop singer-songwriter and musician who was part of the burgeoning music scene in Athens, Georgia, during the 1980s before gaining commercial success in the 1990s as a solo artist. His companion albums, Tomorrow Forever and Tomorrow's Daughter, were followed by 2018's Wicked System of Things and 2021's Catspaw, his 15th studio effort.
Go to Profile#40810
Itala D'Ottaviano
#40823
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Itala Maria Loffredo D'Ottaviano is a Brazilian mathematical logician who was president of the Brazilian Logic Society. Topics in her work have included non-classical logic, paraconsistent logic, many-valued logic, and the history of logic.
Go to Profile#40811
William Daniels
#40824
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
William David Daniels is an American actor who is best known for his television roles, notably as Mark Craig on the drama series St. Elsewhere, for which he won two Primetime Emmy Awards; the voice of KITT on the television series Knight Rider; and George Feeny on the sitcom Boy Meets World, which earned him four People's Choice Award nominations. He reprised his Knight Rider role in the sequel TV movie Knight Rider 2000 and his Boy Meets World role in the sequel series Girl Meets World. He also portrayed Carter Nash in Captain Nice.
Go to Profile#40812
Don Callender
#40825
Overall Influence
1927 - 2009 (82 years)
#40813
Gerry McCormac
#40826
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Sir Francis Gerard McCormac, FRSE, FSA, FRSA, FHEA is the Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Stirling. He is a physicist whose specialist fields are Space physics and Carbon Dating. He is a member of the advisory board of the International College for Liberal Arts at Yamanashi Gakuin University in Japan. Previous roles include Professor and Pro Vice-Chancellor at Queen's University Belfast and Vice-Chairman of Invest Northern Ireland. He chaired a review of teacher employment for the Scottish Government in 2011.
Go to Profile#40814
Khalil Gibran Muhammad
#40827
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Khalil Gibran Muhammad is an American academic. He is a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and the Radcliffe Institute. He is the former director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a Harlem-based branch of the New York Public Library system, a research facility dedicated to the history of the African diaspora. Prior to joining the Schomburg Center in 2010, Muhammad was an associate professor of history at Indiana University Bloomington.
Go to Profile#40815
Ihor R. Lemischka
#40828
Overall Influence
Ihor R. Lemischka was an American stem cell biologist and stem cell research advocate and was both the Lillian and Henry M. Stratton Professor of Gene and Cell Medicine and Director of the Black Family Stem Cell Institute at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.
Go to Profile#40816
Navi Radjou
#40829
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Navi Radjou is an Indian born scholar and an innovation and leadership advisor based in Silicon Valley. He is a Fellow of Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge and has spoken and written widely on the theme of frugal innovation.
Go to Profile#40817
Allison Macfarlane
#40830
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Allison M. Macfarlane directs the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. She is the former director of the Institute for International Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University, where she was Professor of Science Policy and International Affairs. She was the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission from July 9, 2012, to December 31, 2014.
Go to Profile#40818
Margit Osterloh
#40831
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Margit Osterloh is a German and Swiss economist. Research Osterloh’s research areas include: Organizational Theory, Theory of the Firm, Innovation and Technology Management, Process Management, Knowledge Management, Trust Management, Philosophy of Science, Gender Economics, Corporate Governance, Research Governance, Migration Policy and Aleatoric Democracy. In the media she expresses her opinion on the following research topics:
Go to Profile#40819
Jean Valentine
#40832
Overall Influence
1934 - 2020 (86 years)
Jean Valentine was an American poet and the New York State Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010. Her poetry collection, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965–2003, was awarded the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry.
Go to Profile#40820
Amin Zaoui
#40833
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Amin Zaoui is an Algerian novelist. He was born in Bab el Assa in Tlemcen province and studied at the University of Oran, obtaining a PhD in comparative literature. He moved to France during the Algerian civil war, but returned home in 1999. He has served as the Director General of the National Library of Algeria, and currently teaches comparative literature at the Central Algerian University.
Go to Profile#40821
Christian M. M. Brady
#40834
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Christian M. M. Brady is an American scholar who specializes in biblical literature, rabbinic literature, and the targumim, especially Targum Lamentations and Targum Ruth. He is the inaugural Dean of the Lewis Honors College and Professor of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Kentucky . He was interim dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Kentucky from 2020 to 2022. He was Dean of the Schreyer Honors College from 2006 to 2016. He was formerly associate professor of Classical Studies and Jewish Studies at Tulane University. His...
Go to Profile#40822
Samuel L. Kaplan
#40835
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Samuel Louis Kaplan is an American diplomat who served as United States Ambassador to Morocco. He was appointed ambassador in 2009 by President Barack Obama, replacing the previous ambassador Thomas T. Riley. He is one of only a few American Jews to represent the United States in a Muslim nation.
Go to Profile#40823
John Rothwell
#40836
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
John C. Rothwell is a Professor of neurophysiology at the UCL Institute of Neurology. His main area of interest is transcranial magnetic stimulation and motor control. Education Rothwell was educated at the University of Cambridge. He completed his PhD at King's College London in 1980 which supervised by David Marsden.
Go to Profile#40824
Frans Timmermans
#40837
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Franciscus Cornelis Gerardus Maria "Frans" Timmermans is a Dutch politician who most recently served as Executive Vice President of the European Commission for the European Green Deal and European Commissioner for Climate Action in the von der Leyen Commission from 2019 until his resignation in 2023. He is a member of the Dutch Labour Party .
Go to Profile#40825
Inga Clendinnen
#40838
Overall Influence
1934 - 2016 (82 years)
Inga Clendinnen, was an Australian author, historian, anthropologist, and academic. Her work focused on social history, and the history of cultural encounters. She was an authority on Aztec civilisation and pre-Columbian ritual human sacrifice. She also wrote about the Holocaust and on first contacts between Indigenous Australians and white explorers. At her death, she was an Emeritus Scholar at La Trobe University, Melbourne.
Go to Profile#40826
Laleh Khalili
#40839
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Laleh Khalili is an Iranian American and Professor of Gulf Studies at University of Exeter. She was formerly a Professor of Middle Eastern Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and a Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London.
Go to Profile#40827
Metin Feyzioğlu
#40840
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Metin Feyzioğlu is a Turkish lawyer and a professor of criminal law who served as the 8th president of the Turkish Bars Association between May 2013 and December 2021. He is the grandson of Turhan Feyzioğlu, a former CHP politician and deputy prime minister.
Go to Profile#40828
Georg Zundel
#40841
Overall Influence
1931 - 2007 (76 years)
Georg Zundel was a German physicist, entrepreneur, and peace politics committed philanthropist. Georg Zundel was born in 1931 as the only son of Georg Friedrich Zundel and Paula Zundel. He became a physicist and gained an international reputation especially in hydrogen bonding research. He founded companies and was always committed to agriculture and forestry. Peace politics, Georg Zundel was particularly involved through the establishment of the Berghof Foundation, Foundation for Conflict Research, for which he was awarded the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2003. Zundel was married and had three children.
Go to Profile#40829
Alan Newell
#40842
Overall Influence
Alan Newell is an emeritus professor at Dundee University who has a long history of human-computer interaction research, with a focus on supporting the elderly and people with disabilities. He is also the founder of the School of computing at Dundee University, where he established one of the world's largest academic groups dedicated to researching and improving digital systems for the elderly and people with disabilities, the Queen Mother Research Centre.
Go to Profile#40830
Stephen Revere
#40843
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Stephen Revere is an American author, media personality, and entrepreneur based in Seoul, South Korea. Revere's social media marketing company Intercultural Communications is the first social media marketing company to service bilingual websites and social media advertising in Korea. He has frequently appeared on Korean TV and has published three books in the Survival Korean series.
Go to Profile#40831
Beenie Man
#40844
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Moses Anthony Davis , better known by his stage name as Beenie Man, is a Jamaican dancehall deejay. Biography Davis was born in the Waterhouse district of Kingston in 1973. He was involved in the music industry from a young age, started toasting at the age of five, and was encouraged by his uncle Sydney Knowles, who played drums for Jimmy Cliff. He won the Tastee Talent contest in 1981, and Radio DJ Barry G introduced him to local sound system operators, who helped to establish the popularity of the young deejay, who became known as Beenie Man. He recorded his debut single, "Too Fancy", with r...
Go to Profile#40832
Grover C. Stephens
#40845
Overall Influence
1925 - 2003 (78 years)
Grover Cleveland Stephens, Jr. , was an American marine biologist and comparative physiologist at the University of Minnesota and the University of California, Irvine. Early life, military service, and education Stephens was born 12 Jan 1925 in Oak Park, Illinois to Grover C. and Celene Madeleine Stephens, and grew up in Cicero, Illinois, attending J. Sterling Morton High School East. He entered military service on 13 Nov 1943 and trained at the Great Lakes Naval Station. After one year of engineering training at Purdue University and Princeton University, he was commissioned as an ensign in the U.S.
Go to Profile#40833
Miloš Jovanović
#40846
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Miloš Jovanović is a Serbian politician, lawyer, and a political scientist. He has been the president of the New Democratic Party of Serbia, formerly known as the Democratic Party of Serbia, since 2017, previously serving that role in acting capacity from late 2016 until his election as president in 2017. He is a docent at the Faculty of Law, University of Belgrade. Jovanović was a presidential candidate in the 2022 election, in which he placed third with 6% of popular vote.
Go to Profile#40834
Judith Krug
#40847
Overall Influence
1940 - 2009 (69 years)
Judith Fingeret Krug was an American librarian, freedom of speech proponent, and critic of censorship. Krug became director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association in 1967. In 1969, she joined the Freedom to Read Foundation as its executive director. Krug co-founded Banned Books Week in 1982.
Go to Profile#40835
Nadim Shehadi
#40848
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Nadim Shehadi is the current Executive Director of Lebanese American University's New York Headquarters & Academic Center and an Associate Fellow at Chatham House where he was formerly head of the Middle East program. He was previously director of The Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
Go to Profile#40836
Takuzo Aida
#40849
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Takuzo Aida is a polymer chemist known for his work in the fields of supramolecular chemistry, materials chemistry and polymer chemistry. Aida, who is the Deputy Director for the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Tokyo, has made pioneering contributions to the initiation, fundamental progress, and conceptual expansion of supramolecular polymerization. Aida has also been a leader and advocate for addressing critical environmental issues caused by plastic waste and microplastics in the oceans, soil, and food supply, through th...
Go to Profile#40837
Audrey Tautou
#40850
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Audrey Justine Tautou is a French actress. She made her acting debut at age 18 on television, and her feature film debut in Venus Beauty Institute , for which she received critical acclaim and won the César Award for Most Promising Actress.
Go to Profile#40838
Alberto Taquini
#40851
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Alberto Carlos Taquini is an Argentine biochemist and academic whose "Taquini Plan" resulted in the decentralization of Argentina's public university system. Life and work Taquini was born in Buenos Aires to Haydée Azumendi and Alberto Carlos Taquini, a renowned cardiologist. He married María Martha Bosch, and the couple had one daughter.
Go to Profile#40839
Steve Carell
#40852
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Steven John Carell is an American actor and comedian. He played Michael Scott in the sitcom The Office , in which he also worked as an occasional producer, writer and director. Carell has received numerous accolades, including a Golden Globe Award for The Office. He was recognized as "America's Funniest Man" by Life magazine.
Go to Profile#40840
Gal Costa
#40853
Overall Influence
1945 - 2022 (77 years)
Gal Maria da Graça Costa Penna Burgos , known professionally as Gal Costa , was a Brazilian singer of popular music. She was one of the main figures of the tropicalia music scene in Brazil in the late 1960s and appeared on the acclaimed compilation Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis . She was described by The New York Times as "one of Brazil's greatest singers."
Go to Profile#40841
Darren McGavin
#40854
Overall Influence
1922 - 2006 (84 years)
Darren McGavin was an American actor. McGavin began his career working as a set painter for Columbia Pictures. In 1954, he originated roles in Broadway productions of My Three Angels and The Rainmaker, followed by roles in David Lean's Summertime and Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm .
Go to Profile#40842
Mark Dayton
#40855
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Mark Brandt Dayton is an American politician who served as the 40th governor of Minnesota from 2011 to 2019. He served as a United States Senator representing Minnesota from 2001 to 2007 and as Minnesota State Auditor from 1991 to 1995. He is a member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party , which affiliates with the national Democratic Party.
Go to Profile#40843
Albert G. Hill
#40856
Overall Influence
1910 - 1996 (86 years)
Albert Gordon Hill was a physicist. He was a key leader in the development of radar in World War II, director of the MIT Lincoln Laboratory development of the electronic Distant Early Warning and SAGE continental air defense systems, and first chairman of The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. He died in 1996.
Go to Profile#40844
Adrian Năstase
#40857
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Adrian Năstase is a Romanian jurist, academic/professor, blogger, and former politician who served as the prime minister of Romania from December 2000 to December 2004. He competed in the 2004 presidential election as the Social Democratic Party candidate, but was defeated by the centre-right Justice and Truth Alliance candidate Traian Băsescu who pertained at that time to the Democratic Party .
Go to Profile#40845
George Williams
#40858
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
George John Williams is an Australian academic specialising in Australian constitutional law and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Planning and Assurance at the University of New South Wales. He was formerly the Dean of the Law Faculty.
Go to Profile#40846
Masayuki Yamato
#40859
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
is a professor at Tokyo Women's Medical University. He instructed Haruko Obokata there and wrote a paper on STAP cell with her, Charles Vacanti and Yoshiki Sasai. He was interested in tacit knowing, a concept which Michael Polanyi and Shinichiro Kurimoto also developed.
Go to Profile#40847
Fernando Alegría
#40860
Overall Influence
1918 - 2005 (87 years)
Fernando Alegría was a Chilean poet, writer, literary critic and scholar. Biography He grew up in the Independencia barrio of the city. Poets from this barrio include Pablo Neruda, Violeta Parra and Volodia Teitelboim.
Go to Profile#40848
Michael Ungar
#40861
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Michael Ungar is a researcher in the field of social and psychological resilience and is Principal Investigator for the Resilience Research Centre at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Canada, where he is a professor at the School of Social Work, a post that he has held since 2001. He completed his MSW at McGill University in 1988 and his Ph.D. in Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University in 1995.
Go to Profile#40849
Sergiy Stakhovsky
#40862
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Sergiy Eduardovych Stakhovsky is a Ukrainian former professional tennis player. Stakhovsky turned professional in 2003 and played mostly at the Challenger level from 2005 to 2008. His career-high rankings were World No. 31 in singles and No. 33 in doubles .
Go to Profile#40850
Catfish Hunter
#40863
Overall Influence
1946 - 1999 (53 years)
James Augustus Hunter , nicknamed "Catfish", was an American professional baseball player in Major League Baseball . From to , he was a pitcher for the Kansas City/Oakland Athletics and New York Yankees. Hunter was the first pitcher since to win 200 games by age 31. He is often referred to as baseball's first big-money free agent, and was a member of five World Series championship teams.
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