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
#4151
Richard N. Goodwin
#4158
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Richard Naradof Goodwin was an American writer and presidential advisor. He was an aide and speechwriter to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and to Senator Robert F. Kennedy. He was married to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin for 42 years until his death in 2018 after a short bout with cancer. He was 86.
Go to Profile#4152
Christopher Lasch
#4159
Overall Influence
1932 - 1994 (62 years)
Robert Christopher Lasch was an American historian, moralist and social critic who was a history professor at the University of Rochester. He sought to use history to demonstrate what he saw as the pervasiveness with which major institutions, public and private, were eroding the competence and independence of families and communities. Lasch strove to create a historically informed social criticism that could teach Americans how to deal with rampant consumerism, proletarianization, and what he famously labeled "the culture of narcissism".
Go to Profile#4153
Hans Mark
#4160
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Hans Michael Mark was a German-born American government official who served as Secretary of the Air Force and as a Deputy Administrator of NASA. He was an expert and consultant in aerospace design and national defense policy.
Go to Profile#4154
Justin Trudeau
#4161
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Justin Pierre James Trudeau is a Canadian politician who has served as the 23rd prime minister of Canada since 2015 and the leader of the Liberal Party since 2013. Trudeau was born in Ottawa and attended Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf. He graduated from McGill University in 1994 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in literature, then in 1998 acquired a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of British Columbia. After graduating he taught at the secondary school level in Vancouver, before relocating back to Montreal in 2002 to further his studies. He was chair for the youth charity Katimavik and director of the not-for-profit Canadian Avalanche Association.
Go to Profile#4155
Juan E. Méndez
#4162
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Juan E. Méndez is an Argentine lawyer, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and human rights activist known for his work on behalf of political prisoners.
Go to Profile#4156
Wael Ghonim
#4163
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Wael Ghonim is an Internet activist and computer engineer with an interest in social entrepreneurship. In 2011, he became an international figure and galvanized pro-democracy demonstrations in Egypt after his emotional interview following 11 days of secret incarceration by Egyptian police. During these 11 days, he was interrogated regarding his work as one of two administrators of the Facebook page, "We are all Khaled Said", which helped spark the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. Time magazine included him in its "Time 100" list of the 100 most influential people of 2011, and the World Economic F...
Go to Profile#4157
Henry Markram
#4164
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Henry John Markram is a South African-born Israeli neuroscientist, professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and director of the Blue Brain Project and founder of the Human Brain Project.
Go to Profile#4158
Don Lemon
#4165
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Don Lemon is an American television journalist best known for being a host on CNN from 2014 until 2023. He anchored weekend news programs on local television stations in Alabama and Pennsylvania during his early days as a journalist. Lemon worked as a news correspondent for NBC on its programming, such as Today and NBC Nightly News. Lemon is also a recipient of an Edward R. Murrow Award in 2002 for his coverage of the capture of the Washington, D.C. snipers. He also received three regional Emmy Awards for his special report on real estate in Chicago and a business feature on craigslist.
Go to Profile#4159
Alan Soble
#4166
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Alan Gerald Soble is an American philosopher and author of several books on the philosophy of sex. He taught at the University of New Orleans from 1986 to 2006. He is currently Adjunct Professor of philosophy at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
Go to Profile#4160
Zhao Lijian
#4167
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Zhao Lijian is a Chinese civil servant who has been serving as deputy director of the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China since January 2023. He joined the foreign service in 1996. Zhao became notable for his outspoken use of Twitter when he served as an envoy-level attaché at the Embassy of China in Pakistan from 2015 to 2019. From 2019 and 2023, he served as deputy director of the Information Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the 31st spokesperson of the Ministry. He has been described as a prominent wolf warrior diplomat during his tenure.
Go to Profile#4161
Bruno Buchberger
#4168
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Bruno Buchberger is Professor of Computer Mathematics at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. In his 1965 Ph.D. thesis, he created the theory of Gröbner bases, and has developed this theory throughout his career. He named these objects after his advisor Wolfgang Gröbner. Since 1995, he has been active in the Theorema project at the University of Linz.
Go to Profile#4162
Fredmund Malik
#4169
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Fredmund Malik is an Austrian economist with focus on management science and the founder and chairman of a management consultancy in St. Gallen. Malik applies systems theory and cybernetics to analyse and design management systems. From 1974 to 2004 he was teaching at the University of St. Gallen, where he is titular professor for general management, leadership and governance.
Go to Profile#4163
John Ioannidis
#4170
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
John P. A. Ioannidis is a Greek-American physician-scientist, writer and Stanford University professor who has made contributions to evidence-based medicine, epidemiology, and clinical research. Ioannidis studies scientific research itself, meta-research primarily in clinical medicine and the social sciences.
Go to Profile#4164
Ed Stasium
#4171
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Ed Stasium is an American record producer and audio engineer, who has worked on albums by the Ramones, Talking Heads, Motörhead, the Smithereens and Living Colour. History Stasium began his recording career in 1970 fronting the band Brandywine. He appeared on their sole LP, Aged. When he returned to the music industry three years later, it was as a recording engineer, working on a wide variety of projects ranging from The Chambers Brothers' Unbonded to Barry Miles' Magic Theater to Sha Na Na's Sha Na Now. He was the engineer on "Midnight Train to Georgia" by Gladys Knight & the Pips as well a...
Go to Profile#4165
Richard J. Bernstein
#4172
Overall Influence
1932 - 2022 (90 years)
Richard Jacob Bernstein was an American philosopher who taught for many years at Haverford College and then at The New School for Social Research, where he was Vera List Professor of Philosophy. Bernstein wrote extensively about a broad array of issues and philosophical traditions including American pragmatism, neopragmatism, critical theory, deconstruction, social philosophy, political philosophy, and hermeneutics.
Go to Profile#4166
Meyer Schapiro
#4173
Overall Influence
1904 - 1996 (92 years)
Meyer Schapiro was a Lithuanian-born American art historian known for developing new art historical methodologies that incorporated an interdisciplinary approach to the study of works of art. An expert on early Christian, Medieval, and Modern art, Schapiro explored art historical periods and movements with a keen eye towards the social, political, and the material construction of art works.
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Jancis Robinson
#4174
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jancis Mary Robinson OBE, ComMA, MW is a British wine critic, journalist and wine writer. She currently writes a weekly column for the Financial Times, and writes for her website JancisRobinson.com, updated daily. She provided advice for the wine cellar of Queen Elizabeth II.
Go to Profile#4168
Jonathan Z. Smith
#4175
Overall Influence
1938 - 2017 (79 years)
Jonathan Zittell Smith , also known as J. Z. Smith, was an American historian of religions. He was based at the University of Chicago for most of his career. His research included work on such diverse topics as Christian origins, the theory of ritual, Hellenistic religions, Māori cults in the 19th century, and the mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, as well as methodological studies on such common scholarly tools as description, comparison, and interpretation. An essayist, his works include Map Is Not Territory, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritu...
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Yuri Levada
#4176
Overall Influence
1930 - 2006 (76 years)
Yuri Alexandrovich Levada was a well known Russian sociologist, political scientist and the founder of the Levada Center. Scientific activity to 1988 In 1952 Levada graduated from the Philosophical faculty of the Moscow State University. He got a PhD in philosophy in 1966 with a dissertation on the sociological problems of religion.
Go to Profile#4170
Peter Max
#4177
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Peter Max is an American artist of German-Jewish origin, known for using bright colors in his work. Works by Max are associated with the visual arts and culture of the 1960s, particularly psychedelic art and pop art.
Go to Profile#4171
Paul Dundas
#4178
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Paul Dundas was a British Indologist, an honorary fellow in Sanskrit language and Head of Asian studies at the University of Edinburgh. His teachings and research focused extensively on understanding Jainism, Buddhism, Sanskrit literature and Middle Indo-Aryan philology. He was regarded as one of the leading scholars in Jaina and Prakrit studies. He was a member of the Council of the Pali Text Society.
Go to Profile#4172
John Morgan
#4179
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John Willard Morgan is an American mathematician known for his contributions to topology and geometry. He is a Professor Emeritus at Columbia University and a member of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University.
Go to Profile#4173
Paul L. Modrich
#4180
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Paul Lawrence Modrich is an American biochemist, James B. Duke Professor of Biochemistry at Duke University and Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is known for his research on DNA mismatch repair. Modrich received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015, jointly with Aziz Sancar and Tomas Lindahl.
Go to Profile#4174
Greg Bear
#4181
Overall Influence
1951 - 2022 (71 years)
Gregory Dale Bear was an American writer and illustrator best known for science fiction. His work covered themes of galactic conflict , parallel universes , consciousness and cultural practices , and accelerated evolution . His last work was the 2021 novel The Unfinished Land. Greg Bear wrote over 50 books in total.
Go to Profile#4175
John Sexton
#4182
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
John Edward Sexton is an American lawyer, academic, and author. He is the Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law at New York University where he teaches at the law school and NYU's undergraduate colleges. Sexton served as the fifteenth president of NYU, from 2002 to 2015. During his time as president, NYU's stature rose dramatically into the ranks of the world's top universities, and it became the world's first global network university. Sexton has been called a "transformational" figure in higher education and was named by Time Magazine as one of the United States' 10 best college presidents.
Go to Profile#4176
Torsten Hägerstrand
#4183
Overall Influence
1916 - 2004 (88 years)
Torsten Hägerstrand was a Swedish geographer. He is known for his work on migration, cultural diffusion and time geography. A native and resident of Sweden, Hägerstrand was a professor of geography at Lund University, where he received his doctorate in 1953. His doctoral research was on cultural diffusion. His research has helped to make Sweden, and particularly Lund, a major center of innovative work in cultural geography. He also influenced the practice of spatial planning in Sweden through his students.
Go to Profile#4177
David Premack
#4184
Overall Influence
1925 - 2015 (90 years)
David Premack was an American psychologist who was a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He was educated at the University of Minnesota when logical positivism was in full bloom. The departments of Psychology and Philosophy were closely allied. Herbert Feigl, Wilfred Sellars, and Paul Meehl led the philosophy seminars, while Group Dynamics was led by Leon Festinger and Stanley Schachter.
Go to Profile#4178
Mario Kopić
#4185
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Mario Kopić is a philosopher, author and translator. His main areas of interest include: the history of ideas, the philosophy of art, the philosophy of culture, phenomenology and the philosophy of religion.
Go to Profile#4179
Andrew McCallum
#4186
Overall Influence
Andrew McCallum is a professor in the computer science department at University of Massachusetts Amherst. His primary specialties are in machine learning, natural language processing, information extraction, information integration, and social network analysis.
Go to Profile#4180
Douglas Rushkoff
#4187
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Douglas Mark Rushkoff is an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist, and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture and his advocacy of open-source solutions to social problems.
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J. I. Packer
#4188
Overall Influence
1926 - 2020 (94 years)
James Innell Packer was an English-born Canadian evangelical theologian, cleric and writer in the low-church Anglican and Calvinist traditions. He was considered one of the most influential evangelicals in North America, known for his best-selling book Knowing God, written in 1973, as well as his work as an editor for the English Standard Version of the Bible. He was one of the high-profile signers on the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, a member on the advisory board of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and also was involved in the ecumenical book Evangelicals and Catholics Together in 1994.
Go to Profile#4182
Donald Markwell
#4189
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Donald John Markwell is an Australian social scientist, who has been described as a "renowned Australian educational reformer". He was appointed Head of St Mark's College, Adelaide, from November 2019. He was Senior Adviser to the Leader of the Government in the Australian Senate from October 2015 to December 2017, and was previously Senior Adviser on Higher Education to the Australian Minister for Education.
Go to Profile#4183
John H. Coates
#4190
Overall Influence
1945 - 2022 (77 years)
John Henry Coates was an Australian mathematician who was the Sadleirian Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom from 1986 to 2012. Early life and education Coates was born the son of J. H. Coates and B. L. Lee on 26 January 1945 and grew up in Possum Brush in New South Wales, Australia. Coates Road in Possum Brush is named after the family farm on which he grew up. Before university he spent a summer working for BHP in Newcastle, New South Wales, though he was not successful in gaining a university scholarship with the company. Coates attended Aus...
Go to Profile#4184
Karekin II
#4191
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Catholicos Garegin II is the Catholicos of All Armenians, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, since 1999. In 2013 he was unanimously elected the Oriental Orthodox head of the World Council of Churches for the next eight years.
Go to Profile#4185
Christopher Freeman
#4192
Overall Influence
1921 - 2010 (89 years)
Christopher Freeman a British economist, recognised as one of the founders of the post-war school of Innovation Studies. He played a lead role in the development of the neo-Schumpeterian tradition focusing on the crucial role of innovation for economic development and of scientific and technological activities for well-being.
Go to Profile#4186
Daniel Schacter
#4193
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
#4187
William MacAskill
#4194
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
William David MacAskill is a Scottish philosopher and author, as well as one of the originators of the effective altruism movement. He is an associate professor in Philosophy and Research Fellow at the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford and Director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research. He co-founded Giving What We Can, the Centre for Effective Altruism and 80,000 Hours, and is the author of Doing Good Better and What We Owe the Future and the co-author of Moral Uncertainty .
Go to Profile#4188
Geoffrey West
#4195
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Geoffrey Brian West is a British theoretical physicist and former president and distinguished professor of the Santa Fe Institute. He is one of the leading scientists working on a scientific model of cities. Among other things, his work states that with the doubling of a city's population, salaries per capita will generally increase by 15%.
Go to Profile#4189
Al Schmitt
#4196
Overall Influence
1930 - 2021 (91 years)
Albert Harry Schmitt was an American recording engineer and record producer. He won twenty Grammy Awards for his work with Henry Mancini, Steely Dan, George Benson, Toto, Natalie Cole, Quincy Jones, and others. He also won 2 Latin Grammys, and a Trustees Grammy for Lifetime Achievement.
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Barry Buzan
#4197
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Barry Gordon Buzan, FBA, FAcSS is a British political scientist. He is an Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and a honorary professor at the University of Copenhagen and Jilin University. Until 2012 he was Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the LSE. Buzan sketched the Regional Security Complex Theory and is therefore together with Ole Wæver a central figure of the Copenhagen School.
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Paolo Virno
#4198
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Paolo Virno is an Italian philosopher, semiologist and a figurehead for the Italian Marxist movement. Implicated in belonging to illegal social movements during the 1960s and 1970s, Virno was arrested and jailed in 1979, accused of belonging to the Red Brigades. He spent several years in prison before finally being acquitted, after which he organized the publication Luogo Comune in order to vocalize the political ideas he developed during his imprisonment. Virno currently teaches philosophy at the University of Rome.
Go to Profile#4192
Anthony James Leggett
#4199
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Sir Anthony James Leggett is a British–American theoretical physicist and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Leggett is widely recognised as a world leader in the theory of low-temperature physics, and his pioneering work on superfluidity was recognised by the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics. He has shaped the theoretical understanding of normal and superfluid helium liquids and strongly coupled superfluids. He set directions for research in the quantum physics of macroscopic dissipative systems and use of condensed systems to test the foundations of quantum mecha...
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Joan Baez
#4200
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Joan Chandos Baez is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more than 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish and English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages.
Go to Profile#4194
Newton da Costa
#4201
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Newton Carneiro Affonso da Costa is a Brazilian mathematician, logician, and philosopher. He studied engineering and mathematics at the Federal University of Paraná in Curitiba and the title of his 1961 Ph.D. dissertation was Topological spaces and continuous functions.
Go to Profile#4195
Roger Y. Tsien
#4202
Overall Influence
1952 - 2016 (64 years)
Roger Yonchien Tsien was an American biochemist. He was a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008 for his discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, in collaboration with organic chemist Osamu Shimomura and neurobiologist Martin Chalfie. Tsien was also a pioneer of calcium imaging.
Go to Profile#4196
Karel Reisz
#4203
Overall Influence
1926 - 2002 (76 years)
Karel Reisz was a Czech-born British filmmaker and film critic, one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in British cinema during the 1950s and 1960s. Two of the best-known films he directed are Saturday Night and Sunday Morning , a classic of kitchen sink realism, and the romantic period drama The French Lieutenant's Woman .
Go to Profile#4197
Herbert Benson
#4204
Overall Influence
1935 - 2022 (87 years)
Herbert Benson was an American medical doctor, cardiologist, and founder of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He was a professor of mind/body medicine at Harvard Medical School and director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute at MGH. He was a founding trustee of The American Institute of Stress. He contributed more than 190 scientific publications and 12 books. More than five million copies of his books have been printed in different languages.
Go to Profile#4198
Anthony Lake
#4205
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
William Anthony Kirsopp Lake is an American diplomat and political advisor who served as the 17th United States National Security Advisor from 1993 to 1997 and as the 6th Executive Director of UNICEF from 2010 to 2017.
Go to Profile#4199
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi
#4206
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Saif al-Islam Muammar al-Gaddafi is a Libyan political figure. He is the second son of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his second wife Safia Farkash. He was a part of his father's inner circle, performing public relations and diplomatic roles on his behalf. He publicly turned down his father's offer of the country's second highest post and held no official government position. According to United States Department of State officials in Tripoli, during his father's reign, he was the second most widely recognized person in Libya, being at times the de facto prime minister, and was mentioned as a possible successor, though he rejected this.
Go to Profile#4200
Andre Norton
#4207
Overall Influence
1912 - 2005 (93 years)
Andre Alice Norton was an American writer of science fiction and fantasy, who also wrote works of historical and contemporary fiction. She wrote primarily under the pen name Andre Norton, but also under Andrew North and Allen Weston. She was the first woman to be Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy, to be SFWA Grand Master, and to be inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
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