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
#41101
Lambros Couloubaritsis
#41114
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Lambros Couloubaritsis is a Greek-born Belgian philosopher. Life Lambros Couloubaritsis received his PhD in philosophy from the Free University of Brussels after studying chemistry at the University of Liège. He teaches philosophy at the Free University of Brussels, where he is also the director of Ancient Philosophy Center. He is internationally recognized as a specialist of Aristotle. He has received honorary doctorates from the universities of Oradea, Crete, Athens, Liège and Charles de Gaulle University – Lille III.
Go to Profile#41102
Mia Bloom
#41115
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Mia M. Bloom is a Canadian academic, author, and Professor of Communication at Georgia State University. She was formerly an associate Professor of International Studies at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park and a fellow at the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Penn State.
Go to Profile#41103
Nina Karin Monsen
#41116
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Nina Karin Monsen is a Norwegian moral philosopher and author. She has written several books, both non-fiction and fiction, and has been active in Norwegian public debate since the early 1970s. Life Monsen has a Magister's degree in Philosophy and was one of the founders of the Norwegian new feminist movement in 1970. Her early work was on the logician Quine and she later studied feminist philosophy. She has become the most visible proponent of Personalism in Norway, with Det elskende menneske as her most central work.
Go to Profile#41104
Grace Davie
#41117
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Grace Riestra Claire Davie is a British sociologist who serves as professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Exeter. She is the author of the book Religion in Britain Since 1945: Believing Without Belonging.
Go to Profile#41105
Fernand Dumont
#41118
Overall Influence
1927 - 1997 (70 years)
Fernand Dumont was a Canadian sociologist, philosopher, theologian, and poet from Quebec. A longtime professor at Université Laval, he won the Governor General's Award for French-language non-fiction at the 1968 Governor General's Awards for Le lieu de l'homme.
Go to Profile#41106
Andrea Nye
#41119
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Andrea Nye is a feminist philosopher and writer. Nye is a Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater for the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department and an active member of the Women's Studies Department. In 1992, Nye received the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater Award for Outstanding Research.
Go to Profile#41107
Haruko Wakita
#41120
Overall Influence
1934 - 2016 (82 years)
was a Japanese academic, editor and expert in medieval Japanese women's history. Early life Since the age of six, Wakita was interested in Noh drama; and she regularly performs on stage. The insight gained from her lifelong study and practice of this medieval theatrical art informs her historical research.
Go to Profile#41108
Margo Chase
#41121
Overall Influence
1958 - 2017 (59 years)
Margo Chase was an American graphic designer known for her eclectic and experimental design style. Chase was prolific – with a career bridging the graphic design field's transition from the analog to the digital era, working with clients ranging from Selena and Prince to Mattel and Procter & Gamble.
Go to Profile#41109
Holger Czukay
#41122
Overall Influence
1938 - 2017 (79 years)
Holger Schüring , known professionally as Holger Czukay , was a German musician best known as a co-founder of the krautrock group Can. Described as "successfully bridg[ing] the gap between pop and the avant-garde", Czukay was also notable for having created early important examples of ambient music, for having explored "world music" well before the term was coined, and for having been a pioneer of sampling.
Go to Profile#41110
Nagasuma Chandra
#41123
Overall Influence
Nagasuma Chandra is an Indian structural biologist, biochemist and a professor at the department of biochemistry of the Indian Institute of Science. She is known for her studies on Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded her the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for her contributions to biosciences in 2008.
Go to Profile#41111
Joseph C. Miller
#41124
Overall Influence
1939 - 2019 (80 years)
Joseph Calder Miller was an American historian and academic. He served at the University of Virginia from 1972 to 2014 as T. Cary Johnson Jr. professor of history, and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. As a historian, Joseph wrote extensively on the early history of Africa, especially Angola, the Atlantic slave trade, women and slavery, child slavery, Atlantic history, and world history.
Go to Profile#41112
Stephanie Seymour
#41125
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Stephanie Michelle Seymour is an American model and actress. During the 1980s and 1990s, she was one of the most popular supermodels, being featured in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and the cover of Vogue, as well as being a former Victoria's Secret Angel. She had a book published about beauty tips and has participated in advertising campaigns for clothing and cosmetic products. In 2017, Seymour launched her own line of lingerie. She has ventured into acting with one appearance in each medium of film, television, and video games.
Go to Profile#41113
Andrew Blowers
#41126
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Andrew Thomas Blowers is a British geographer and environmentalist and Emeritus Professor of the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences at the Open University. Biography Blowers attended Colchester Royal Grammar School and won an Open Exhibition to read Geography at Durham University. After periods teaching at Newcastle Polytechnic and Kingston Polytechnic he joined the Open University, where he eventually became Dean of Social Sciences.
Go to Profile#41114
Jonathan Toews
#41127
Overall Influence
1988 - Present (38 years)
Jonathan Bryan Toews is a Canadian professional ice hockey centre who is an unrestricted free agent. Toews most recently played for the Chicago Blackhawks of the National Hockey League , where he served as the team's captain between 2008 and 2023. Nicknamed "Captain Serious", Toews was selected by the Blackhawks with the third overall pick in the 2006 NHL Entry Draft. He joined the team in 2007–08 and was nominated for the Calder Memorial Trophy as NHL Rookie of the Year. The following season he was named team captain, becoming the second-youngest captain in NHL history at the time. Toews w...
Go to Profile#41115
Kokichi Sugihara
#41128
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Kōkichi Sugihara is a Japanese mathematician and artist known for his three-dimensional optical illusions that appear to make marbles roll uphill, pull objects to the highest point of a building's roof, and make circular pipes look rectangular. His illusions, which often involve videos of three-dimensional objects shown from carefully chosen perspectives, won first place at the Best Illusion of the Year Contest in 2010, 2013, 2018,and 2020 and second place in 2015 and 2016.
Go to Profile#41116
Jesualdo Ferreira
#41129
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Manuel Jesualdo Ferreira is a Portuguese football manager who last managed Zamalek in the Egyptian Premier League. In a managerial career of over forty years, he was in charge of all of his country's Big Three and had his greatest successes at Porto, where he became the first manager to win three consecutive Primeira Liga titles and also lifted the Taça de Portugal twice. He won two Egyptian Premier League titles and as many national cups at Zamalek, as well as a Qatar Stars League title and three domestic cups at Al Sadd. Additionally, he managed Angola and teams in Morocco, Spain, Greece an...
Go to Profile#41117
Carl Elliott
#41130
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Carl Elliott is an American academic working as a professor in department of philosophy at the University of Minnesota. Early life and education A native of South Carolina, Elliott was educated at Davidson College in North Carolina and at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, where he received his PhD in philosophy. He received his MD from the Medical University of South Carolina.
Go to Profile#41118
Dragan Marušič
#41131
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Dragan Marušič is a Slovene mathematician. Marušič obtained his BSc in technical mathematics from the University of Ljubljana in 1976, and his PhD from the University of Reading in 1981 under the supervision of Crispin Nash-Williams.
Go to Profile#41119
Johan Redström
#41132
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Johan Gunnar Redström is a professor at the Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University, Sweden since 2012. Previously, he has been Studio Director of the Design Research Unit, Interactive Institute, adjunct professor at the School of Textiles, University of Borås, Associate Research Professor at the Center for Design Research at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, in Copenhagen, Denmark, and a lecturer and program manager of the Masters Program in Interaction Design at the IT University in Gothenburg. His background is in philosophy, music and interaction design. He receive...
Go to Profile#41120
Motohiko Izawa
#41133
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Motohiko Izawa is a Japanese writer of mystery novels and historical fiction as well as a historical researcher. He was formerly a news reporter for TBS and since April 2012 has worked as a visiting professor at Shuchiin University.
Go to Profile#41121
Anwaar Ahmad
#41134
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Anwaar Ahmad is an Urdu short story writer, scholar and academician from Pakistan. Presently, he is serving as the Director General at University of Gujrat's Sialkot Campus.He has been associated with Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, and Government College University, Faisalabad as a teacher, researcher, and departmental head for over 35 years. He has also served as a visiting professor at Ankara University in Ankara, Turkey and the Urdu department at Osaka University of Foreign Studies in Osaka, Japan.
Go to Profile#41122
Aubrey Plaza
#41135
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Aubrey Christina Plaza is an American actress, comedian, and producer. She starred as April Ludgate on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation , played Julie Powers in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Scott Pilgrim Takes Off , and featured as the Shadow King and Lenny Busker in the FX superhero series Legion . In 2022, she starred in the second season of the HBO anthology series The White Lotus, for which she received nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2023.
Go to Profile#41123
Claudia R. Binder
#41136
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Claudia R. Binder is a Swiss, Canadian and Colombian environmental scientist working in the field of human-environment systems and sustainability s. Since March 2016 she has been a full professor the La Mobilière Chair on Urban Ecology and Sustainable Living at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and founding director of the Laboratory for Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems at School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering of EPFL. Since January 2020 she has been serving as dean of ENAC at EPFL.
Go to Profile#41124
Margretta Styles
#41137
Overall Influence
1930 - 2005 (75 years)
Margretta Madden Styles, EdD, RN, FAAN was an American nurse, author, educator and nursing school dean who conceived and helped establish national standards for certifying nurses in pediatrics, cardiology and other medical specialties. Dr. Styles was the president of the American Nurses Association from 1986 to 1988, and wrote five books and many articles published in medical journals.
Go to Profile#41125
Bruce Fairbairn
#41138
Overall Influence
1949 - 1999 (50 years)
Bruce Earl Fairbairn was a Canadian record producer. He was active as a producer from 1976 to 1999, and is considered one of the best of his era. His most successful productions are Slippery When Wet and New Jersey by Bon Jovi, Permanent Vacation, Pump, and Get a Grip by Aerosmith, The Razors Edge by AC/DC, and Balance by Van Halen, each of which sold at least three million copies. He was originally a trumpet player, then started a career as a record producer for Canadian rock band Prism. Fairbairn won the Canadian music industry Producer of the Year Juno Award three times. He produced albums...
Go to Profile#41126
David Stanley Evans
#41139
Overall Influence
1916 - 2004 (88 years)
David Stanley Evans was a British astronomer, noted for his use of lunar occultations to measure stellar angular diameters during the 1950s. Early life and education Evans was born in Cardiff, Wales on 28 January 1916. He was first educated at the Cardiff High School for Boys. He obtained a First Class in the Mathematics Tripos Part II in 1936 and a Distinction in Part III in 1937 from King's College, Cambridge and became a Ph.D. student at Cambridge Observatory in 1937, where he was a student of Sir Arthur Eddington. His Ph.D. degree was awarded in 1941 for a dissertation on “The Formation o...
Go to Profile#41127
Mookie Blaylock
#41140
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Daron Oshay "Mookie" Blaylock is an American former professional basketball player. He spent 13 years in the National Basketball Association with the New Jersey Nets, Atlanta Hawks, and the Golden State Warriors.
Go to Profile#41128
Włodzimierz Julian Korab-Karpowicz
#41141
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Włodzimierz Julian Korab-Karpowicz is a Polish philosopher and political theorist. Biography W. J. Korab-Karpowicz was born in Gliwice, Poland in 1953. He comes from a noble Polish family. Korab, included in his family name, refers to the Korab coat of arms. His grandfather Jan Korab-Karpowicz was a distinguished lawyer and cavalry officer in the pre-war Poland. In his early youth he lived in Gdańsk and then in Sopot, where he completed high school. He studied engineering at the Gdańsk University of Technology, where, in 1977, he completed a master's degree in Electronic Engineering.
Go to Profile#41129
Stanley Lombardo
#41142
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Stanley F. "Stan" Lombardo is an American Classicist, and former professor of Classics at the University of Kansas. He is best known for his translations of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid . The style of his translations is a more vernacular one, emphasizing conversational English rather than the formal tone of some older American English translations of classical verse. Lombardo designs his translations to be performed orally, as they were in ancient Greece. He also performs the poems, and has recorded them as audio books. In performance he also likes to play the drums, much like Ezra...
Go to Profile#41130
Edwin D. Kilbourne
#41143
Overall Influence
1920 - 2011 (91 years)
Edwin Dennis Kilbourne was an American research scientist. Born in Buffalo, New York, he received his AB and MD degrees from Cornell University. After completion of service in the Medical Corps of the Army of the United States at the end of World War II, he trained in virus research at The Rockefeller Institute. Subsequently, he has taught successively on the faculties of four medical schools: Tulane, Cornell, Mount Sinai , and New York Medical College. .
Go to Profile#41131
Clem Burke
#41144
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Clement Burke is an American musician who is best known as the drummer for the band Blondie from 1975, shortly after the band formed, throughout the band's entire career. He also played drums for the Ramones for a brief time in 1987, under the name Elvis Ramone.
Go to Profile#41132
Per Kværne
#41145
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Per Kværne is a Norwegian tibetologist and historian of religion. Biography Per Kværne was born in Oslo, Norway. In 1970 he received the mag.art. degree in Sanskrit at the University of Oslo. From 1970 to 1975 he worked as a lecturer in the history of religion at the University of Bergen. In 1973 he received the dr.philos. degree from the University of Oslo with his thesis An Anthology of Buddhist Tantric Songs. From 1975 to 2007 he was professor of the history of religion at the University of Oslo, and he is now a professor emeritus.
Go to Profile#41133
Coramae Richey Mann
#41146
Overall Influence
1931 - 2004 (73 years)
Coramae Richey Mann was a professor emeritus of criminal justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She argued vehemently that the United States criminal justice system was racist. Mann criticized the argumentss of William Wilbanks , countering in her 1989 book Unequal Justice that Wilbanks' reliance on quantitative and statistical data hides the reality of racism.
Go to Profile#41134
Henrik Lund
#41147
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Henrik Lund is a Danish engineer and professor at Aalborg University. Life and research activity Lund studied engineering at Aalborg university and other universities and obtained a Master's degree in 1985. In 1990 he finished his PhD and in 2009 he became Dr.Techn. In 1990 he was named assistant professor at Aalborg University, got associate professor in 1993 and became full professor in 2006.
Go to Profile#41135
Andrew S. Park
#41148
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Andrew Sung Park is a Korean American Methodist theologian. Park teaches at United Theological Seminary in Trotwood, Ohio. He specializes in systematic theology, global theology, cross-cultural theology, Asian American liberation theology, Christian mysticism, and the relationship between religion and science. He has expanded the theology of emotional pain by exploring the Korean concept of han.
Go to Profile#41136
Erich Barke
#41149
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Erich Barke is a German emeritus professor of microelectronics. From 2005 to 2014, he was president of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover. Until December 2014, he was also president of the Niedersächsische Technische Hochschule .
Go to Profile#41137
Elisabeth Moss
#41150
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Elisabeth Singleton Moss is an American actor and producer. She is known for her work in several television dramas, garnering many accolades, including two Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards, which led Vulture to name her the "Queen of Peak TV".
Go to Profile#41138
David Stoddart
#41151
Overall Influence
1937 - 2014 (77 years)
David Ross Stoddart, was a British physical geographer known for the study of coral reefs and atolls. He was also known for key works on the history and philosophy of geography as an academic discipline. He was a lecturer at the University of Cambridge, and then professor and later emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#41139
Michael Rustad
#41152
Overall Influence
Michael Rustad is a law professor at Suffolk University Law School, and an author and television commentator. Education and career He received a BA from University of North Dakota, an MA from the University of Maryland, College Park, a Ph.D. from Boston College, a Juris Doctor from Suffolk University Law School, and an LL.M from Harvard University.
Go to Profile#41140
Britt Ekland
#41153
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Britt Ekland is a Swedish actress, model and singer. She appeared in numerous films in her heyday throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including roles in The Double Man , The Night They Raided Minsky's , Machine Gun McCain , Stiletto and the British crime film Get Carter , which established her as a sex symbol. She also starred in several horror films, including The Wicker Man , and appeared as a Bond girl in The Man with the Golden Gun .
Go to Profile#41141
Tad Murty
#41154
Overall Influence
1938 - 2018 (80 years)
Tad S. Murty is an Indian-Canadian oceanographer and expert on tsunamis. He is the former president of the Tsunami Society. He is an adjunct professor in the departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Ottawa. Murty has a PhD degree in oceanography and meteorology from the University of Chicago. He is co-editor of the journal Natural Hazards with Tom Beer of CSIRO and Vladimir Schenk of the Czech Republic.
Go to Profile#41142
Matthew Watson
#41155
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Matthew Watson is a professor of political economy and international political economy in University of Warwick's Department of Politics and International Studies. His work in the area of IPE has been published widely; he has solely authored three books, and had around thirty articles published in peer reviewed academic journals on a wide range of issues in political economy and IPE. His three books are Foundations of International Political Economy , Political Economy of International Capital Mobility , and Uneconomic Economics and the Crisis of the Model World . Between 2001 and 2007, Wats...
Go to Profile#41143
David Hulme
#41156
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
David Hulme is Professor of Development Studies at The University of Manchester where he is Executive Director of the Global Development Institute and CEO of the Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre. Currently, he is the president of the Development Studies Association. He has worked on rural development, poverty and poverty reduction, microfinance, the role of non-government organisations in development, environmental management, social protection and the political economy of global poverty for more than 30 years. His main focus has been on Bangladesh but he has worked extensively across South Asia, East Africa and the Pacific.
Go to Profile#41144
Kurt Lambeck
#41157
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
#41145
Chantal Kreviazuk
#41158
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Chantal Jennifer Kreviazuk is a Canadian singer, songwriter, composer, and pianist. Born in Winnipeg, she played music from a young age before signing with Columbia Records in the 1990s. Her debut studio album, Under These Rocks and Stones, was first released in Canada in 1996 and saw commercial success before being issued in the United States the following year to critical praise.
Go to Profile#41146
Ellen F. Davis
#41159
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Ellen F. Davis is an American theologian and Old Testament scholar. She is the Amos Ragan Kearns Distinguished Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke Divinity School. Biography Davis has degrees from University of California, Berkeley , the Church Divinity School of the Pacific and Yale University . She previously taught at Union Theological Seminary , Yale Divinity School, and Virginia Theological Seminary.
Go to Profile#41147
Jan Terlouw
#41160
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Jan Cornelis Terlouw is a retired Dutch politician, physicist and author. A member of the Democrats 66 party, he served as Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1981 to 1982 under Prime Minister Dries van Agt.
Go to Profile#41148
Michael Madsen
#41161
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Michael Madsen is an American actor. He is known for his collaborations with Quentin Tarantino in the films Reservoir Dogs , Kill Bill: Volume 2 , The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood .
Go to Profile#41149
Ryan Dempster
#41162
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Ryan Scott Dempster is a Canadian former professional baseball pitcher, who played in Major League Baseball for the Florida Marlins, Cincinnati Reds, Chicago Cubs, Texas Rangers, and Boston Red Sox. Dempster batted and threw right-handed. He was both a starter and a reliever in his career.
Go to Profile#41150
Joaquín Almunia
#41163
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Joaquín Almunia Amann is a Spanish politician and formerly, prominent member of the European Commission. During his tenure in the two Barroso Commissions, he was European commissioner responsible for economic and monetary affairs and, subsequently, vice-president and the European Commissioner for Competition . Previously, he had been Spanish Minister for Employment and Public Administrations . From 1997 to 2000, he was the leader of the opposition as secretary general of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, standing in and losing the 2000 Spanish general election against the then incumbent...
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