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
#41001
David W. Brady
#41014
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
David Brady is the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Professor of Political Science and Leadership Values at Stanford University. While at Stanford, he has received the Dinkelspiel Award for service to undergraduates, the Richard Lyman Prize for service to alumni, the Bob Davies award, the Jaedicke silver cup from the Graduate School of Business, and the first Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award given at Stanford. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#41002
Aram Harrow
#41015
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Aram Wettroth Harrow is a professor of physics in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Theoretical Physics. Harrow works in quantum information science and quantum computing. Together with Avinatan Hassidim and Seth Lloyd, he designed a quantum algorithm for linear systems of equations, which in some cases exhibits an exponential advantage over the best classical algorithms. The algorithm has wide application in quantum machine learning.
Go to Profile#41003
Mercia MacDermott
#41016
Overall Influence
1927 - 2023 (96 years)
Mercia MacDermott was an English writer and historian. She was known for her books on Bulgarian history. Early life Mercia was born on 7 April 1927 in Plymouth, Devon, United Kingdom. Her father was Geoffrey Palmer Adshead, a Royal Navy surgeon captain, and her mother was Olive May Adshead, a teacher. Due to her father's work in the navy, she spent some of her early years in Weihai, China, where Mercia learned Mandarin Chinese. She grew up in Ditchling and later was educated at Westonbirt School, Gloucestershire and St Anne's College, Oxford University where she read Russian Literature. In t...
Go to Profile#41004
Emajuddin Ahamed
#41017
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Emajuddin Ahamed was a Bangladeshi political scientist, author and educationist. He served as the 21st vice-chancellor of the University of Dhaka during 1992–1996. He was awarded Ekushey Padak in 1992 by the Government of Bangladesh in the education category.
Go to Profile#41005
Gareth Edwards
#41018
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Sir Gareth Owen Edwards CBE is a Welsh former rugby union player who played scrum-half and has been described by the BBC as "arguably the greatest player ever to don a Welsh jersey". In 2003, in a poll of international rugby players conducted by Rugby World magazine, Edwards was declared the greatest player of all time. In 2007, former England captain Will Carling published his list of the '50 Greatest Rugby players' in The Daily Telegraph, and ranked Edwards the greatest player ever, stating; "He was a supreme athlete with supreme skills, the complete package. He played in the 1970s, but, if he played now, he would still be the best.
Go to Profile#41006
Gene Shue
#41019
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Eugene William Shue was an American professional basketball player and coach in the National Basketball Association . Shue was one of the top guards of the early days of the NBA and an influential figure in the development of basketball. He is credited with having invented the "spin move" while being an early harbinger of other plays and strategies.
Go to Profile#41007
Robert Lamm
#41020
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Robert William Lamm is an American musician, songwriter and singer who is a founding member of the rock band Chicago. He is best known for his songwriting, vocals, and keyboard melodies, most significantly on the band's debut studio album, Chicago Transit Authority . Lamm wrote many of the band's biggest hits, including "Questions 67 & 68", "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?", "Beginnings", "25 or 6 to 4", "Saturday in the Park", "Dialogue " and "Harry Truman". Lamm is one of three founding members still performing with the group.
Go to Profile#41008
Raphaèle Herbin
#41021
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Raphaèle Herbin is a French applied mathematician; she is known for her work on the finite volume method. Herbin has been a professor at Aix-Marseille University since 1995, and directs the Institut de Mathématiques de Marseille. She earned her doctorate in 1986 at Claude Bernard University Lyon 1, with the dissertation Approximation numérique d'inéquations variationnelles non linéaires par des méthodes de continuation supervised by Francis Conrad.
Go to Profile#41009
Douglas Gairdner
#41022
Overall Influence
1910 - 1992 (82 years)
Douglas Montagu Temple Gairdner FRCP was a Scottish paediatrician, research scientist, academic and author. Gairdner was principally known for a number of research studies in neonatology at a time when that subject was being developed as perhaps the most rewarding application of basic physiology to patient care, and later his most important contributions as editor, firstly editing Recent Advances in Paediatrics, and then of Archives of Disease in Childhood for 15 years, turning the latter into an international journal of repute with its exemplary standards of content and presentation.
Go to Profile#41010
Mariano Barbacid
#41023
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Mariano Barbacid Montalbán is a Spanish molecular biochemist who discovered the first oncogene HRAS. Academic career He completed his higher education in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where he studied chemical sciences, and in the United States, where he started as an intern; years later he was appointed director of the National Cancer Institute. He then moved back to his native Spain to lead the newly created CNIO . He also served on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2011.
Go to Profile#41011
Paget Brewster
#41024
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Paget Valerie Brewster is an American actress. She was first recognized for her recurring role as Kathy on the fourth season of the NBC sitcom Friends. Her breakthrough role came as FBI Supervisory Special Agent Emily Prentiss on the CBS crime drama Criminal Minds. She was a regular cast member on the series from 2006 to 2012, then made two guest appearances before returning as a regular in 2016.
Go to Profile#41012
Stephen Darwall
#41025
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Stephen Darwall is a contemporary moral philosopher, best known for his work developing Kantian and deontological themes. He was named Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Philosophy at Yale University in 2008.
Go to Profile#41013
Subhasish Mitra
#41026
Overall Influence
Subhasish Mitra is an American Computer Science and Electrical Engineering professor at Stanford University. He directs the Stanford Robust Systems Group, leads the Computation Focus Area of the Stanford SystemX Alliance, and is a member of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. His research ranges across Robust Computing, NanoSystems, Electronic Design Automation , and Neurosciences.
Go to Profile#41014
Janne Blichert-Toft
#41027
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Janne Blichert-Toft is a geochemist, specializing in the use of isotopes with applications in understanding planetary mantle-crust evolution, as well as the chemical composition of matter in the universe. To further this research, Blichert-Toft has developed techniques for high-precision Isotope-ratio mass spectrometry measurements.
Go to Profile#41015
Marky Ramone
#41028
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Marc Steven Bell is an American drummer. He began playing in hard rock bands in the New York City area, notably Dust and Estus. He was asked to drum for punk rock band Richard Hell and the Voidoids. He replaced drummer Tommy Ramone in the Ramones in 1978, and went by the stage name Marky Ramone from then on. He has also played drums for other punk rock and heavy metal bands, including his own band Marky Ramone and the Intruders. He continues to keep the Ramones legacy alive around the world with his band Marky Ramone's Blitzkrieg.
Go to Profile#41016
Ibrahim Gashi
#41029
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Ibrahim Gashi is a Kosovar Albanian academic. He is a professor at the University of Pristina, and was a rector there between 2012 and 2014. Early life Ibrahim Gashi studied at the University of Pristina, and began working there as an assistant after his masters thesis defense between 1994 and 1998. He worked as a lecturer between 1998 and 2004 in the Department of History. In 2003 he earned a doctorate in political history of the Balkans in a three-year study program at the Institute for East European Studies of the University of Graz. In 2004 he was elected assistant professor in the Depart...
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Ghagh
#41030
Overall Influence
Ghagh was a 17th-century poet, philosopher and Brahmin astrologer from Northern India. He is known for writing poetry and proverbs on farmers and agriculture. His proverbs are popular among folks in the Hindi-speaking regions like Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh to the eastern boundaries of Bihar.
Go to Profile#41018
Stephen Ansolabehere
#41031
Overall Influence
Stephen Daniel Ansolabehere is a professor of government at Harvard University. He is the younger brother of animator Joe Ansolabehere. Education Ansolabehere received his B.A. in political science and B.S. in economics from the University of Minnesota in 1984, and his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard in 1989.
Go to Profile#41019
Elizabeth Fraser
#41032
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Elizabeth Davidson Fraser is a Scottish singer. She was the vocalist for the band Cocteau Twins who achieved international success primarily during the fifteen years from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s. Their studio albums Victorialand and Heaven or Las Vegas both reached the top ten of the UK Album Charts, as well as other albums including Blue Bell Knoll , Four-Calendar Café and Milk & Kisses charting on the Billboard 200 album charts in the United States as well as the top 20 in the UK. She also performed as part of the 4AD group This Mortal Coil, including the successful 1983 single ...
Go to Profile#41020
Anderson .Paak
#41033
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Brandon Paak Anderson , better known by his stage name Anderson .Paak , is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and drummer. He released his debut mixtape, O.B.E. Vol. 1 in 2012 and went on to release his debut album Venice in 2014. In 2016, he followed up with his second album, Malibu, which received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Urban Contemporary Album, followed by his third album, Oxnard . At the 61st Grammy Awards, Paak won his first Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance with his 2018 non-album single "Bubblin". In 2020, he won two additional Grammy Awards for Bes...
Go to Profile#41021
Andrew Tylecote
#41034
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Andrew Tylecote is a British economist based at The University of Sheffield School of Management. He is best known for his work on the economics of technological change, and for his contributions to long wave economic theory.
Go to Profile#41022
Gwen Verdon
#41035
Overall Influence
1925 - 2000 (75 years)
Gwyneth Evelyn "Gwen" Verdon was an American actress and dancer. She won four Tony Awards for her musical comedy performances, and she served as an uncredited choreographer's assistant and specialty dance coach for theater and film. Verdon was a critically acclaimed performer on Broadway in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, having originated many roles in musicals, including Lola in Damn Yankees, the title character in Sweet Charity and Roxie Hart in Chicago.
Go to Profile#41023
Grace Goodell
#41036
Overall Influence
Grace E. Goodell is a retired professor of International Development at The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. Goodell received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University, where she studied under Conrad Arensberg. She has been a visiting scholar at the Australian National University and at the Harvard Institute for International Development, a fellow in law and development at the Harvard Law School, and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Goodell was previously the Director of the Program on Social Change and Develop...
Go to Profile#41024
Kaisa Miettinen
#41037
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Kaisa Miettinen is a Finnish mathematician and the former vice rector of the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. She is a professor of industrial optimization with the Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. In addition, she heads the Multiobjective Optimization Group .
Go to Profile#41025
Heidi Sosik
#41038
Overall Influence
Heidi Sosik is an American biologist, oceanographer, and inventor based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Career She is a senior scientist in the Stanley W. Watson Chair for Excellence in Oceanography; Director of WHOI's Center for Ocean, Marine, and Seafloor Observing Systems; Chief Scientist of the Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory ; and lead scientist for the Northeast United States Shelf Long Term Ecological Research program. She is the co-creator of the Imaging FlowCytobot, an automated underwater microscope that has been used to study microscopic ocean life over time and to prevent shellfish poisoning.
Go to Profile#41026
Hélène Miard-Delacroix
#41039
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Hélène Miard-Delacroix is a French historian and Germanist, specializing in the history of Germany and Franco-German relations. She is a professor at Sorbonne University. Her expertise in research on Franco-German relations and her commitment to scholarly exchange between the two countries found international recognition in 2022 with the Reimar Lüst Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for leading international scholars.
Go to Profile#41027
Danny Manning
#41040
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Daniel Ricardo Manning is an American college basketball coach and former professional player who is the Associate Head Mens Basketball Coach at the University of Louisville. Manning played high school basketball at Walter Hines Page High School in Greensboro, North Carolina, as well as Lawrence High School in Lawrence, Kansas. He played college basketball for the Kansas Jayhawks, and played in the National Basketball Association for 14 years. After retiring from professional basketball Manning became an assistant coach at his alma mater, the University of Kansas. He won the national championship with the Jayhawks in 1988 as a player, and again as an assistant in 2008.
Go to Profile#41028
Faye Flam
#41041
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Faye Flam is an American journalist. She has written for Science Magazine and wrote two weekly columns for The Philadelphia Inquirer, including one on sex and one on evolution. Flam wrote a book on the influence of sex on human evolution and society. She teaches science writing and lectures on communication to scientific forums, and is a journalism critic for the MIT Knight Science Journalism Tracker.
Go to Profile#41029
Dénes Zsigmondy
#41042
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Dénes Zsigmondy was a Hungarian classical violinist and music educator. He was born Dénes Liedemann in Budapest, but changed his name to Zsigmondy, his paternal grandmother's surname, as it was more Hungarian than German. In 1944, whilst attending the Summer Academy in Salzburg, he was informed by his parents that he had been drafted into the Hungarian military—to avoid the draft he did not return to Hungary and hid out with a German family at Lake Starnberg. After World War II, Zsigmondy was rejected by several orchestras before joining the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra when he impressed...
Go to Profile#41030
R. D. Middlebrook
#41043
Overall Influence
1929 - 2010 (81 years)
Robert David Middlebrook was a professor of electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology . He is most well known in the field of power electronics and as a proponent of design-oriented circuit analysis.
Go to Profile#41031
Michael Williams, Baron Williams of Baglan
#41044
Overall Influence
1949 - 2017 (68 years)
Michael Charles Williams, Baron Williams of Baglan was a British diplomat and crossbench life peer. Education Williams attended Sandfields Comprehensive School, Baglan in Port Talbot. He was later to use the village name of 'Baglan' in his title on entering the House of Lords as a Labour peer in 2010.
Go to Profile#41032
Stephen J. Kopp
#41045
Overall Influence
1951 - 2014 (63 years)
Stephen James Kopp was an American educator. He was president of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia from 2005 until his death in 2014. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from the University of Notre Dame, and his Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Go to Profile#41033
Noshir Contractor
#41046
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Noshir S. Contractor is an Indian-American network scientist who is the Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences in the McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science, the School of Communication and the Kellogg School of Management and the director of the Science of Networks in Communities Research Group at Northwestern University. He is also the former President of the International Communication Association and a Trustee of the Web Science Trust.
Go to Profile#41034
Lukáš Rosol
#41047
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Lukáš Rosol is a Czech professional tennis player. He competes on the ATP Challenger Tour and the ATP Tour, both in singles and doubles. His career-high singles ranking is world No. 26, achieved on 22 September 2014.
Go to Profile#41035
Famke Janssen
#41048
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Famke Beumer Janssen is a Dutch actress. She played Xenia Onatopp in GoldenEye , Jean Grey / Phoenix in the X-Men film series , and Lenore Mills in the Taken film trilogy . In 2008, she was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for Integrity by the United Nations. She made her directorial debut with Bringing Up Bobby in 2011. She is also known for her roles in the Netflix original series Hemlock Grove , FX's Nip/Tuck , and ABC's How to Get Away with Murder . Janssen starred in the 2017 NBC crime thriller The Blacklist: Redemption.
Go to Profile#41036
Judith Shamian
#41049
Overall Influence
Judith Shamian is an Irish nurse. She served as president of the International Council of Nurses from 2013-2017 before being succeeded by Annette Kennedy. She was elected to the position at the ICN Quadrennial Congress at Melbourne, Australia in May 2013. Shamian has published and spoken on nursing-related topics internationally.
Go to Profile#41037
Cecil Fielder
#41050
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Cecil Grant Fielder is an American former professional baseball player in Major League Baseball . Fielder was a power hitter in the 1980s and 1990s. He attended college at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas . He played in MLB for the Toronto Blue Jays , in Japan's Central League for the Hanshin Tigers , and then in MLB for the Detroit Tigers , New York Yankees , Anaheim Angels in 1998, and Cleveland Indians in 1998. With the Yankees, he won the 1996 World Series over the Atlanta Braves. In 1990, he became the first player to reach the 50–home run mark since George Foster hit 52 for the Cinci...
Go to Profile#41038
Peer Steinbrück
#41051
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Peer Steinbrück is a German politician who was the Chancellor-candidate of the Social Democratic Party in the 2013 federal election. Steinbrück served as the eighth Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia from 2002 to 2005, a member of the Bundestag from 2009 to 2016, and as Federal Minister of Finance in the first Cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2005 to 2009.
Go to Profile#41039
Casper Ruud
#41052
Overall Influence
1998 - Present (28 years)
Casper Ruud is a Norwegian professional tennis player. Ruud has a career-high singles ranking of world No. 2, achieved on 12 September 2022, making him the highest-ranked Norwegian in history. He has won ten ATP Tour singles titles and finished runner-up at three Grand Slamss and at the 2022 ATP Finals.As a junior, Ruud was ranked world No. 1. In doubles, he has a career-high ranking of world No. 133, achieved after reaching the quarterfinals of the 2021 Wimbledon Championships with André Göransson. Revered for his professional on-court demeanour, he was awarded the Stefan Edberg Sportsmansh...
Go to Profile#41040
Wang Xiaoyun
#41053
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Wang Xiaoyun is a Chinese cryptographer, mathematician, and computer scientist. She is a professor in the Department of Mathematics and System Science of Shandong University and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#41041
Sister Jean
#41054
Overall Influence
1919 - Present (107 years)
Sister Jean, BVM , is an American religious sister of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and chaplain for the Loyola Ramblers men's basketball team of Loyola University Chicago. Early life Jean Dolores Schmidt was born on August 21, 1919, in San Francisco, California, and raised in the Eureka Valley neighborhood. She first considered becoming a nun while she was in third grade. As a student at St. Paul's High School, she played on the girls basketball team. After graduating from high school in 1937, she entered the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary convent in Iowa. In 1941, by then a sister, she returned to teach in California.
Go to Profile#41042
David Roselle
#41055
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
David Paul Roselle is an American mathematician and academic administrator who served as the ninth president of the University of Kentucky and the 25th president of the University of Delaware. Early life and family David Roselle was born in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. He married Louise Helen Dowling, a native of Manhasset, New York, in 1967. The couple has two children, Arthur and Cynthia .
Go to Profile#41043
Roberto de Mattei
#41056
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Roberto de Mattei is an Italian Roman Catholic historian and author. His studies mainly concern European history between the 16th and 20th centuries, with a focus on the history of religious and political ideas. As traditionalist Catholic, he is known for his anti-evolutionist positions, also publicised in institutional circles, for his critique of relativism and the lines of thought established in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council.
Go to Profile#41044
Jay Jasanoff
#41057
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jay Harold Jasanoff is an American linguist and Indo-Europeanist, best known for his h2e-conjugation theory of the Proto-Indo-European verbal system. He teaches Indo-European linguistics and historical linguistics at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#41045
David Akers
#41058
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
David Roy Akers is an American former professional football player who was a placekicker in the National Football League for 16 seasons, primarily with the Philadelphia Eagles. He began his career in 1998 with the Washington Redskins after not making the main roster of the Atlanta Falcons and Carolina Panthers. The following year, he signed with the Eagles, where he spent 12 seasons. Akers was also a member of the San Francisco 49ers and Detroit Lions before retiring in 2013.
Go to Profile#41046
Michael Hicks
#41059
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Michael A. Hicks is an English historian, specialising in the history of late medieval England, in particular the Wars of the Roses, the nature of late medieval society, and the kings and nobility of the period.
Go to Profile#41047
Nicholas Beale
#41060
Overall Influence
#41048
Mihaela van der Schaar
#41061
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Mihaela van der Schaar is the John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Machine Learning, AI, and Medicine at the University of Cambridge, where she is director of the Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine , and a Chancellor's Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Go to Profile#41049
Ray Mancini
#41062
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Ray Mancini , better known as "Boom Boom" Mancini, is an American former professional boxer who competed professionally from 1979 to 1992 and who has since worked as an actor and sports commentator. He held the WBA lightweight title from 1982 to 1984. Mancini inherited his nickname from his father, boxer Lenny Mancini. In 2015, Mancini was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#41050
Lothar Baumgarten
#41063
Overall Influence
1944 - 2018 (74 years)
Lothar Baumgarten was a German conceptual artist, based in New York and Berlin. His work includes installation and also film. Early life and education Born 1944 in Rheinsberg, Germany, Baumgarten attended the Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe , and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf , where he studied for a year under Joseph Beuys.
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