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
#41601
Hani Hagras
#41614
Overall Influence
Hani Hagras is a computer scientist and professor from the University of Essex, Colchester, UK was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2013 for contributions to fuzzy systems in particular for his work on Type-2 fuzzy sets and systems. He is also a Fellow of the IET and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy , an award issued by Advance HE. Prof. Hagras is Chair of the Centre for Computational Intelligence , and co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence Research Group at the University of Essex. He is also Chief Scientific Officer at Temenos AG.
Go to Profile#41602
Beshara Doumani
#41615
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Beshara Doumani is a Palestinian-American academic currently serving as the president of Birzeit University. Prior to that, he was the Mahmoud Darwish Professor of Palestinian Studies at Brown University. His research focuses on groups, places, and time periods marginalized by mainstream scholarship on the early modern and modern Middle East. He is also a public intellectual who writes on the topics of displacement, academic freedom, politics of knowledge production, and the Palestinian condition.
Go to Profile#41603
Ken Pugh
#41616
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Kenneth R. Pugh is president, director of research, and a senior scientist at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut and professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Connecticut. He is also an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics at Yale University, an associate professor in the Department of Diagnostic Radiology at the Yale School of Medicine, and director of the Yale Reading Center. Pugh is a cognitive neuroscientist and experimental psychologist who is best known for his work on the neural, behavioral and cognitive underpinnings of reading and other co...
Go to Profile#41604
Hiroshi Mizuta
#41617
Overall Influence
1919 - 2023 (104 years)
Hiroshi Mizuta was a Japanese economist, historian of social thought and activist. An emeritus professor of Nagoya University and a member of the Japan Academy, he is best known as a leading scholar of Adam Smith.
Go to Profile#41605
Robert Carlyle
#41618
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Robert Carlyle is a Scottish character actor. His film work includes Trainspotting , The Full Monty , The World Is Not Enough , Angela's Ashes , The Beach , 28 Weeks Later , and Yesterday . He has been in the television shows Hamish Macbeth, Stargate Universe, Once Upon a Time and COBRA. He won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for The Full Monty and a Gemini Award for Stargate Universe, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work in Human Trafficking .
Go to Profile#41606
Jinder Mahal
#41619
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Yuvraj Singh Dhesi is a Canadian professional wrestler. He is currently signed to WWE, where he performs on the Raw brand, under the ring name Jinder Mahal as the leader of the Indus Sher stable. Having started his career on the independent circuit, Mahal joined WWE in 2010 and made his debut on the company's main roster the following year. After a short-lived alliance with his kayfabe brother-in-law The Great Khali, he formed the stable 3MB with fellow wrestlers Heath Slater and Drew McIntyre, before he and McIntyre were released from the company in 2014. Mahal returned to WWE in 2016 with ...
Go to Profile#41607
Joe Brown
#41620
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Joseph Blakeney Brown Jr. , known professionally as Judge Joe Brown, is an American former lawyer and television personality. He is a former Shelby County, Tennessee Criminal Court judge and a former arbiter of the arbitration-based reality court show Judge Joe Brown.
Go to Profile#41608
Stewart Purvis
#41621
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Stewart Peter Purvis CBE is a British broadcaster, broadcasting executive, author and academic. Purvis is married with three children. Education Purvis was educated at Southville School, a state primary in Feltham, West London then Dulwich College, an independent school for boys in Dulwich in South London. He graduated with a BA in Politics from the University of Exeter.
Go to Profile#41609
Johnnie To
#41622
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
John To Kei-fung is a Hong Kong film director, screenwriter and film producer. Popular in his native Hong Kong, To has also found acclaim overseas. Intensely prolific, To has made films in a variety of genres, though in the West he is best known for his action and crime movies, which have earned him critical respect and a cult following, which includes American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.
Go to Profile#41610
Mohammed Ayoob
#41623
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Mohammed Ayoob is a Distinguished Professor of International Relations at Michigan State University's James Madison College and the Department of Political Science. He is also Coordinator of the Muslim Studies Program at Michigan State University. Within international relations theory he is known for this theory of subaltern realism.
Go to Profile#41611
Ken Paulson
#41624
Overall Influence
Kenneth A. Paulson is the director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, former dean of MTSU's College of Media and Entertainment, and former editor-in-chief of USA Today. Paulson is the founder and director of the "1 for All" campaign for the First Amendment He formerly hosted "The Songwriters," a television show MTSU created in partnership with the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#41612
Herbert Fleischner
#41625
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Herbert Fleischner is an Austrian mathematician. Education and career Fleischner moved to Vienna with his parents in 1946. He attended primary and secondary school in Vienna, graduating in 1962. After that he studied mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna; his main teachers were Nikolaus Hofreiter and Edmund Hlawka. He obtained his PhD degree in 1968; his official PhD supervisor was Edmund Hlawka, and his PhD thesis was entitled Sätze über Eulersche Graphen mit speziellen Eigenschaften, Sätze über die Existenz von Hamiltonschen Linien. However, Herbert Izbicki was the actual supervisor since he was a graph theorist.
Go to Profile#41613
Henri Dutilleux
#41626
Overall Influence
1916 - 2013 (97 years)
Henri Paul Julien Dutilleux was a French composer of late 20th-century classical music. Among the leading French composers of his time, his work was rooted in the Impressionistic style of Debussy and Ravel, but in an idiosyncratic, individual style. Among his best known works are his early Flute Sonatine and Piano Sonata; concertos for cello, Tout un monde lointain... and violin, L'arbre des songes ; a string quartet known as Ainsi la nuit ; and two symphonies: No. 1 and No. 2, Le Double .
Go to Profile#41614
Shaul Mofaz
#41627
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Shaul Mofaz is a retired Israeli military officer and politician. He joined the Israel Defense Forces in 1966 and served in the Paratroopers Brigade. He fought in the Six-Day War, Yom Kippur War, 1982 Lebanon War, and Operation Entebbe with the paratroopers and Sayeret Matkal, an elite special forces unit. In 1998 he became the IDF's sixteenth Chief of staff, serving until 2002. He is of Iranian Jewish ancestry.
Go to Profile#41615
Lily McNair
#41628
Overall Influence
Lily McNair is an American academic administrator who served as the president of Tuskegee University, a historically black university in Tuskegee, Alabama, from 2018 to 2020. Biography Early life and education McNair is from New Jersey. She earned a bachelor's degree in psychology at Princeton University, graduating in 1979. She then earned her Master's and doctoral degrees from Stony Brook University. Her thesis examined alcohol consumption among female college students.
Go to Profile#41616
Md Aminul Haque Bhuyan
#41629
Overall Influence
Md Aminul Haque Bhuyan is a Bangladeshi academic and the current Vice-chancellor of Bangladesh Islami University since April 2022. He was the 9th Vice-chancellor of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology and of Z.H. Sikder University of Science & Technology, Shariatpur, Bangladesh.
Go to Profile#41617
Isabel Capeloa Gil
#41630
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Isabel Capeloa Gil is the 6th Rector of the Catholic University of Portugal and President of the International Federation of Catholic Universities. She is a Full Professor of Culture Studies at the School of Human Sciences. She studied in Lisbon , Munich and University of Chicago and holds a PhD in German Studies from UCP. Previously, she was Vice-Rector for Research and Internationalization and the Dean of the School of Human Sciences , of the Catholic University of Portugal.
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Donald Dewey
#41631
Overall Influence
1922 - 2002 (80 years)
Donald Jefferson Dewey was a professor of economics at Duke University and Columbia University. Dewey was best known for his antitrust studies and his work on industrial organization. His books included Monopoly in Economics and Law, Modern Capital Theory, The Theory of Imperfect Competition, Microeconomics, and The Antitrust Experiment 1890-1990. He also published thirty articles and about seventy-five book reviews.
Go to Profile#41619
Donald J. Savoie
#41632
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Donald Joseph Savoie is a Canadian public administration and regional economic development scholar. He serves as a professor at l'Université de Moncton. In 2015, he was awarded the Killam Prize for his contribution to the field of social sciences.
Go to Profile#41620
Clint Black
#41633
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Clint Patrick Black is an American country music singer, songwriter, musician, actor, and record producer. Signed to RCA Nashville in 1989, Black's debut album Killin' Time produced four straight number one singles on the US Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks charts. Although his momentum gradually slowed throughout the 1990s, Black consistently charted hit songs into the 2000s. He has had more than 30 singles on the US Billboard country charts, twenty-two of which have reached number one, in addition to having released twelve studio albums and several compilation albums. In 2003, Black founded his own record label, Equity Music Group.
Go to Profile#41621
Ted Shepherd
#41634
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Theodore Gordon Shepherd is the Grantham Professor of Climate Science at the University of Reading. Education and career Shepherd was educated at the University of Toronto where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Physics in 1979. He completed his postgraduate education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was awarded a PhD in 1982 for research supervised by Jule Gregory Charney and Peter B. Rhines on turbulence in Rossby waves.
Go to Profile#41622
Hubert Hurkacz
#41635
Overall Influence
1997 - Present (29 years)
Hubert Hurkacz is a Polish professional tennis player. He has been ranked as high as world No. 9 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals , which he first achieved in November 2021, making him the highest-ranked Polish man in singles history. He has won seven ATP Tour singles titles, including two Masters 1000 titles at the 2021 Miami Open and the 2023 Shanghai Masters, becoming the first Pole to win an ATP Masters 1000 title. Hurkacz also has a career-high ranking of world No. 30 in doubles, which he attained in June 2022.
Go to Profile#41623
Casey Close
#41636
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Casey Richard Close is a former American baseball player and sports agent. University of Michigan Close was born in Columbus, Ohio and graduated from Worthington High School before attending the University of Michigan on a baseball scholarship. He played for the Michigan Wolverines baseball team from 1983 to 1986. As a freshman, he hit a grand slam to help Michigan defeat Stanford and advance to the final four in the College World Series.
Go to Profile#41624
Randy Borum
#41637
Overall Influence
Randy Borum is a professor and coordinator of strategy and intelligence studies in the school of information at the University of South Florida and has taught at USF since 1999. He is author/coauthor of approximately 160 professional publications, has worked with three Directors of National Intelligence on the Intelligence Science Board , served on the Defense Science Board Task Force on Understanding Human Dynamics, and is an instructor with the Bureau of Justice Assistance State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training Programs for Investigations and Intelligence.
Go to Profile#41625
João Lourenço
#41638
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço is an Angolan politician who has served as the 3rd president of Angola since 26 September 2017. Previously, he was Minister of Defence from 2014 to 2017. In September 2018, he became the Chairman of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola , the ruling party. He was the party's Secretary-General from 1998 to 2003.
Go to Profile#41626
Hans Medick
#41639
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Hans Medick is a German historian. Life Born in Wuppertal, Medick studied history, philosophy, English and political science at the universities of Cologne, Heidelberg and Erlangen from 1959 to 1966. After graduating with a master's degree, he was a research assistant at the University of Erlangen from 1967 to 1973, where he also received his doctorate under Kurt Kluxen in 1971. In July 1972, he received the faculty prize for his dissertation. From 1973 to 2004, he worked as a research assistant at the Göttingen Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. After vario...
Go to Profile#41627
Gene Hoglan
#41640
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Eugene Victor Hoglan II is an American drummer, acclaimed for his creativity in drum arrangements, including use of abstract devices for percussion effects and his trademark lengthy double-kick drum rhythms. Though his playing style is very technically demanding, he retains high accuracy at extreme tempos, earning him the nicknames "The Atomic Clock" and "Human Drum Machine".
Go to Profile#41628
Antoinette Burton
#41641
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Antoinette M. Burton is an American historian, and Professor of History and Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. On November 23, 2015, Burton was named Chair of the University of Illinois' search for a permanent Chancellor after the resignation of Phyllis Wise.
Go to Profile#41629
Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga
#41642
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga is a Latvian politician who served as the sixth President of Latvia from 1999 to 2007. She is the first and to date only woman to hold the post. She was elected President of Latvia in 1999 and re-elected for the second term in 2003.
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Tomas Albrektsson
#41643
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Tomas Albrektsson is a Swedish physician who trained under Per-Ingvar Brånemark and is noteworthy for having contributed significantly to the field of implant dentistry. Education Albrektsson received his medical degree in 1973 and his doctorate in 1979, publishing his thesis on the healing of bone graft, having worked under Brånemark.
Go to Profile#41631
Andrew B. Lippman
#41644
Overall Influence
Andrew Benjamin Lippman is a senior research scientist at the MIT Media Lab as well as a Co-Director of various chairs at the institute. He has a more than thirty-year history at MIT. His work at the Media Lab has ranged from wearable computers to global digital television. Currently, he heads the Lab's Viral Communications group, which examines scalable, real-time networks whose capacity increases with the number of members.
Go to Profile#41632
Dom Capers
#41645
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Ernest Dominic Capers is an American football coach who is a senior defensive assistant for the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League . He was previously the inaugural head coach of the Carolina Panthers and the Houston Texans for four seasons each. Capers is the only head coach to lead two different NFL expansion teams during their first seasons.
Go to Profile#41633
Bo Utas
#41646
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Bo Utas, born May 26, 1938, in Höglunda, a village in Jämtland, Sweden, is a Swedish linguist, Iranologist and chess historian. He is professor emeritus in Iranian languages at Uppsala University, and a scholar on Persian historical linguistics and classical Persian literature.
Go to Profile#41634
Valentin Parmon
#41647
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Valentin Nikolayevich Parmon is a Russian scientist who is credited with inventing new and improved catalytic processes in the field of energy technology. Career Parmon graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1972 and received a postgraduate physical and mathematical sciences degree from the same institution in 1975. He went on to work as a researcher, first at the Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics in Moscow, and then from 1977, at the Boreskov Institute of Catalysis in Novosibirsk. From 1995 to 2015, he served as the director of the institute, and he is currently...
Go to Profile#41635
Ken Hammond
#41648
Overall Influence
Kenneth J. Hammond is Professor of History at New Mexico State University. Hammond was a student and Students for a Democratic Society leader at Kent State University from 1967 to 1970. He later completed his degree in Political Science, then studied Modern Chinese language at the Beijing Foreign Languages Normal School in Beijing. Hammond received an M.A. in Regional Studies - East Asia , and a Ph.D in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University. In 2007, Hammond was appointed director of the Confucius Institute, a cultural initiative funded in part by Hanban on the NMSU campus that is dedicated to studying and publicizing China and Chinese culture.
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John Delury
#41649
Overall Influence
John Delury is an American East Asia scholar, with special interests in the history of China, U.S.-China relations and Korean peninsula affairs. He is professor of history at Yonsei University in Seoul.
Go to Profile#41637
Wolfgang Männel
#41650
Overall Influence
1937 - 2006 (69 years)
Wolfgang Männel was an influential German professor of Business Administration. Academic contributions Männel was born as the son of the German entrepreneur Max Rudolf Männel and his wife Liska. He graduated at the University of Mannheim. In 1972 Männel became professor of Business Administration at the University of Frankfurt, in 1973 at the University of Dortmund and in 1982 at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
Go to Profile#41638
Elma González
#41651
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Elma L. González is a Mexican-born American plant cell biologist. She is Professor Emerita of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1974, she was appointed professor of cell and molecular biology at the University of California, Los Angeles. At the time, she was the only Mexican American woman scientist in the University of California system faculty. Professor Martha Zúñiga at the University of California, Santa Cruz, appointed in 1990, was the second. In 2004, the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science rec...
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Ann Hood
#41652
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Ann Hood is an American novelist and short story writer; she has also written nonfiction. The author of fourteen novels, four memoirs, a short story collection, a ten book series for middle readers and one young adult novel. Her essays and short stories have appeared in many journals, magazines, and anthologies, including The Paris Review, Ploughshares,, and Tin House. Hood is a regular contributor to The New York Times' Op-Ed page, Home Economics column. Her most recent work is "Fly Girl: A Memoir," published with W.W. Norton and Company in 2022.
Go to Profile#41640
Matjaž Perc
#41653
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Matjaž Perc is Professor of Physics at the University of Maribor in Slovenia, and director of the Complex Systems Center Maribor. He is member of Academia Europaea and among top 1% most cited physicists according to Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers. He is Outstanding Referee of the Physical Review and Physical Review Letters journals, and Distinguished Referee of EPL. He received the Young Scientist Award for Socio-and Econophysics in 2015. His research has been widely reported in the media and professional literature.
Go to Profile#41641
Minoru Suzuki
#41654
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Minoru Suzuki is a Japanese professional wrestler and former mixed martial artist, currently working for New Japan Pro-Wrestling as a freelancer. In NJPW, he has also held the IWGP Intercontinental Championship as well as twice holding the NEVER Openweight Championship.
Go to Profile#41642
Joe Hisaishi
#41655
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
, known professionally as , is a Japanese composer, musical director, conductor and pianist, known for over 100 film scores and solo albums dating back to 1981. Hisaishi's music has been known to explore and incorporate different genres, including minimalist, experimental electronic, Western classical, and Japanese classical. He has also worked as a music engraver and arranger.
Go to Profile#41643
Ana Diez-Roux
#41656
Overall Influence
Ana Victoria Diez-Roux is the dean of the Dornsife School of Public Health and Distinguished University Professor of epidemiology at Drexel University. Her research focuses on the social determinants of health, and the impacts of neighborhoods on health.
Go to Profile#41644
Stanisław Urbańczyk
#41657
Overall Influence
1909 - 2001 (92 years)
Stanisław Urbańczyk was a Polish linguist and academic, a professor at the universities of Toruń, Poznań and Kraków. He was the head of the Institute of the Polish Language at the Polish Academy of Sciences in 1973–79.
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Chadwick Boseman
#41658
Overall Influence
1976 - 2020 (44 years)
Chadwick Aaron Boseman was an American actor. He was known for his leading roles including portrayals of numerous real life figures. During his two-decade career, Boseman received multiple accolades, including two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award as well as a nomination for an Academy Award.
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Jo Whiley
#41659
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Johanne Whiley-Morton , better known by her professional name Jo Whiley, is an English radio DJ and television presenter. She was the host of the long-running weekday later weekend Jo Whiley Show on BBC Radio 1. She currently presents her weekday evening Radio 2 show. She is also the main presenter for the BBC's Glastonbury Festival coverage. Despite playing a variety of music styles Whiley is most associated with the indie and alternative scene, as well as the 1990s Britpop craze.
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J. Michelle Childs
#41660
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Julianna Michelle Childs , known professionally as J. Michelle Childs, is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a U.S. circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She was a U.S. district judge of the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina from 2010 to 2022, as well as previously a state court judge of the South Carolina Circuit Court from 2006 to 2010.
Go to Profile#41648
Sylvia Kierkegaard
#41661
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Sylvia Mercado Kierkegaard was a Philippine jurist who specialized in computer law. Her research covered a wide range of topics, including comparative contract law, alternative dispute resolution, intellectual property rights, European Union law, privacy, electronic commerce, cybersecurity, computer law, and data protection. She wrote and edited books and journal articles.
Go to Profile#41649
Martin Bobrow
#41662
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Martin Bobrow is a British geneticist, and Emeritus Fellow, Wolfson College, Cambridge. Bobrow graduated in South Africa and then migrated to the United Kingdom. He held chairs of medical genetics at the University of Amsterdam and at Guy's Hospital, and from 1995 to 2005 was professor of medical genetics at Cambridge University.
Go to Profile#41650
Hywel Lewis
#41663
Overall Influence
1910 - 1992 (82 years)
Hywel David Lewis was a Welsh theologian and philosopher. He was best known for his defence of dualism and personal survival. Life Lewis was born in Llandudno, Wales, and educated at Caernarfon grammar school, the University College of North Wales, Bangor , and Jesus College, Oxford .
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