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
#41651
Ineke Sluiter
#41664
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Ineke Sluiter is a Dutch classicist and professor of Greek Language and Literature at Leiden University since 1998. Her research focuses on language, literature, and public discourse in classical antiquity. She was a winner of the 2010 Spinoza Prize. Sluiter has been president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since June 2020, and previously served as vice president from 2018 to 2020.
Go to Profile#41652
Colin Moulding
#41665
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Colin Ivor Moulding is an English bassist, singer, and songwriter who was one of the core members of the rock band XTC. Though he was less prolific a songwriter than his bandmate Andy Partridge, Moulding wrote their first three charting UK singles: "Life Begins at the Hop" , "Making Plans for Nigel" and "Generals and Majors" .
Go to Profile#41653
Maria Ragland Davis
#41666
Overall Influence
1959 - 2010 (51 years)
Maria Ragland Davis was an American biologist and educator. She was associate professor of Biology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville where she studied molecular biology and plant genetics. Life and career A native of Detroit, she received her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan and a master's degree in the same discipline from North Carolina State University. Following the receipt of her master's degree, Davis completed her doctorate in biochemistry and plant biology. Davis studied strawberries, looking at the genetic makeup of strains that we...
Go to Profile#41654
Elena Braverman
#41667
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Elena Yanovna Braverman is a Russian, Israeli, and Canadian mathematician known for her research in delay differential equations, difference equations, and population dynamics. She is a professor of mathematics and applied mathematics at the University of Calgary, and one of the editors-in-chief of the journal Advances in Difference Equations.
Go to Profile#41655
Eustace Conway
#41668
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Eustace Robinson Conway IV is an American naturalist and the subject of the book The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert. He has also been the subject of Adventures in the Simple Life by Sarah Vowell on the weekly radio show This American Life with Ira Glass. He is the owner of the Turtle Island Preserve in Boone, North Carolina. He is one of the featured personalities on the History channel show Mountain Men.
Go to Profile#41656
Matt Hancock
#41669
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Matthew John David Hancock is a British politician who served as Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General from 2015 to 2016, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport from January to July 2018, and Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from 2018 to 2021. He has been Member of Parliament for West Suffolk since 2010. He is a member of the Conservative Party, but now sits in the House of Commons as an independent, having had the whip suspended since November 2022.
Go to Profile#41657
Chris Murphy
#41670
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Christopher Scott Murphy is an American lawyer, author, and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Connecticut since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served in the United States House of Representatives, representing from 2007 to 2013. Before being elected to Congress, Murphy was a member of both chambers of the Connecticut General Assembly, serving two terms each in the Connecticut House of Representatives and the Connecticut Senate .
Go to Profile#41658
Vitas Gerulaitis
#41671
Overall Influence
1954 - 1994 (40 years)
Vytautas Kevin Gerulaitis was an American professional tennis player, known as Vitas Gerulaitis. In 1975, he won the men's doubles title at Wimbledon, partnering with Sandy Mayer. He won the men's singles title at the latter of the two Australian Open tournaments held in 1977 . He won two Italian Openss , and the WCT Finals in Dallas in 1978.
Go to Profile#41659
Dennis Dieks
#41672
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Dennis Geert Bernardus Johan Dieks is a Dutch physicist and philosopher of physics. Work In 1982 he proved the no-cloning theorem . In 1989 he proposed a new interpretation of quantum mechanics, later known as a version of the modal interpretation of quantum mechanics. He also worked on the philosophy of space and time, the logic of probabilistic reasoning, and the theory of explanation. Dieks is a professor at Utrecht University and a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2008. He is co-editor of the journal Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, a...
Go to Profile#41660
James Skea
#41673
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
James "Jim" Ferguson Skea CBE FRSE is a British academic. He is currently Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for its seventh assessment cycle, and a Professor of Sustainable Energy at Imperial College London. Before being elected as Chair, Skea was Co-Chair of Working Group III of the IPCC. He was a founding member of the UK Government's Committee on Climate Change and currently chairs Scotland's Just Transition Commission. He was a co-author of the IPCC 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. In July 2023, Skea was elected as Chair the IPCC.
Go to Profile#41661
Subhasish Dey
#41674
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Subhasish Dey is a hydraulician and educator. He is known for his research on the hydrodynamics and acclaimed for his contributions in developing theories and solution methodologies of various problems on hydrodynamics, turbulence, boundary layer, sediment transport and open channel flow. He is currently a distinguished professor of Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur . Before, he worked as a professor of the department of civil engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur , where he served as the head of the department during 2013–15 and held the position of Brahmaputra Chair Professor during 2009–14 and 2015.
Go to Profile#41662
Ron Johnston
#41675
Overall Influence
1941 - 2020 (79 years)
Ronald John Johnston, OBE, FAcSS, FBA was a British geographer, known for elaborating his discipline's foundations, particularly its history and nature, and for his contributions to urban social geography and electoral geography. His broad scope is illustrated by the fact that he made extensive use of quantitative methods, while critically dealing with subjects of social and political relevance. Johnston authored or co-authored more than 50 books and 800 papers, and edited or co-edited a further more than 40 books . He edited The Dictionary of Human Geography and for the first four editions w...
Go to Profile#41663
Catherine Havasi
#41676
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Catherine Havasi is an American scientist who specialises in artificial intelligence at MIT Media Lab. She is co-founder and CEO of AI company Luminoso. Havasi was a member of the MIT group engaged in the Open Mind Common Sense AI project and that created the natural language AI program ConceptNet.
Go to Profile#41664
Thomas Naum James
#41677
Overall Influence
1925 - 2010 (85 years)
Thomas Naum James was a leading American cardiologist during the last half of the twentieth century. He was chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and then president of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He is best known for his research in the anatomy of the coronary arteries and the electrical conduction system of the heart. He served as president of the American Heart Association, the International Society and Federation of Cardiology, and the Tenth World Congress of Cardiology. He retired in 2004, and returned to Birmingham, Alabama, where he died in 2010.
Go to Profile#41665
Colin Phillips
#41678
Overall Influence
Colin Phillips is a British psycholinguist who is the director of the Maryland Language Science Center at the University of Maryland. He is an elected fellow of the Linguistic Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a co-editor of the Annual Review of Linguistics.
Go to Profile#41666
Aloysius Ambrozic
#41679
Overall Influence
1930 - 2011 (81 years)
Aloysius Matthew Ambrozic was a Roman Catholic cardinal and Archbishop of Toronto. He was made a cardinal on 21 February 1998. Biography Ambrozic was born near Gabrje in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as Alojzij Matej Ambrožič, one of seven children of Alojzij Ambrožič and Helena Pečar. In May 1945, he and his family fled to Austria, after which he completed high school in Ljubljana and various refugee camps . The family went to Canada in September 1948, where he studied at St. Augustine's Seminary and was ordained a priest in Toronto on 4 June 1955. He served first in Port Colborne, Ontario, and later taught at St.
Go to Profile#41667
Kevin V. Mulcahy
#41680
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Kevin Vincent Mulcahy was an American political scientist who was the Sheldon Beychok Distinguished Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Louisiana State University. He was on the faculty from 1980–2020.
Go to Profile#41668
Earl Taft
#41681
Overall Influence
1931 - 2021 (90 years)
Earl Jay Taft was an American mathematician specializing in abstract algebra. He is the namesake of the Taft Hopf algebra which he introduced in a 1971 publication, and he was the founding editor of the journal Communications in Algebra. He was Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Rutgers University.
Go to Profile#41669
Oliver D. Crisp
#41682
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Oliver D. Crisp is a British theologian who currently works as Professor of Analytic Theology at the University of St Andrews, and was formerly a professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.
Go to Profile#41670
Peter Banks
#41683
Overall Influence
1947 - 2013 (66 years)
Peter William Brockbanks , known professionally as Peter Banks, was a British guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and producer. He was the original guitarist in the rock band Yes, and also the Syn, Flash, and Empire. Banks has been described as "the architect of progressive music".
Go to Profile#41671
Jack Cottrell
#41684
Overall Influence
1938 - 2022 (84 years)
Jack Cottrell was a Christian theologian, philosopher and author in the Christian churches and churches of Christ. He was a professor of theology at Cincinnati Christian University from 1967 to 2015. He authored many books on Christian philosophy, doctrine and theology.
Go to Profile#41672
Jasmine Guillory
#41685
Overall Influence
Jasmine Guillory is an American romance novelist. Her works' protagonists are often African-American professionals. In February 2019, her book, The Proposal, was ranked on The New York Times Best Seller list for paperback trade fiction.
Go to Profile#41673
Angelo Badalamenti
#41686
Overall Influence
1937 - 2022 (85 years)
Angelo Daniel Badalamenti was an American composer and arranger best known for his work in composing for films. He is best known for his acclaimed collaborations with director David Lynch, notably the scores for Blue Velvet , the Twin Peaks television series, The Straight Story , and Mulholland Drive .
Go to Profile#41674
Alex Cox
#41687
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Alexander B. H. Cox is an English film director, screenwriter, actor, non-fiction author and broadcaster. Cox experienced success early in his career with Repo Man and Sid and Nancy, but since the release and commercial failure of Walker, his career has moved towards independent films. Cox received a co-writer credit for the screenplay of Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for previous work on the script before it was rewritten by Gilliam.
Go to Profile#41675
Austin Carr
#41688
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Austin George Carr is an American former professional basketball player who played for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Dallas Mavericks, and Washington Bullets of the National Basketball Association . He is known by Cleveland basketball fans as "Mr. Cavalier". He was part of the Notre Dame team which defeated the UCLA Bruins on January 19, 1971, which was UCLA's last defeat until being beaten by Notre Dame exactly three years later, breaking the Bruins' NCAA men's basketball record 88-game winning streak.
Go to Profile#41676
Hu Ning
#41689
Overall Influence
1916 - 1997 (81 years)
Hu Ning was a Chinese physicist and writer. Biography Hu was born in Suqian, Jiangsu, China on 11 February 1916. From 1928 to 1934, Hu studied at the Zhenjiang High School in Zhenjiang, and Suzhou High School in Suzhou. In 1935, Hu studied at the physical department of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. From 1935 to 1937, Hu studied in the department of physics at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he graduated in 1938.
Go to Profile#41677
Daniel Akaka
#41690
Overall Influence
1924 - 2018 (94 years)
Daniel Kahikina Akaka was an American educator and politician who served as a United States Senator from Hawaii from 1990 to 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, Akaka was the first U.S. Senator of Native Hawaiian ancestry.
Go to Profile#41678
Noël Riley Fitch
#41691
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Noël Riley Fitch is a biographer and historian of expatriate intellectuals in Paris in the first half of the 20th century. She is the author of several books on Paris as well as three biographies: Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation , translated into Japanese, Spanish, German, Italian and French; Anaïs: The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin , published in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish, and nominated for the Grand prix des lectrices de Elle; and she is the first authorized biographer of Julia Child, with Appetite for Life: the Biography of Julia Child . The Ernest Hemingway book, a b...
Go to Profile#41679
Cécile Fabre
#41692
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Cécile Fabre is a French philosopher, serving as professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford. Since 2014 she has been a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Her research focuses on political philosophy, the ethics of war, bioethics, and theories of justice.
Go to Profile#41680
James Butler
#41693
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
James Walter Butler MBE RA was a British sculptor most famous for his 1980 statue of Richard III in Leicester. Butler was educated at Maidstone Grammar School and studied art at Saint Martin's School of Art and the Royal College of Art. For ten years he was a professional stone carver. He taught sculpture and drawing at the City and Guilds of London Art School and was visiting professor to the Royal Academy Schools. He was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 1964 and was a member of the Royal West of England Academy and fellow of the Royal British Society of Sculptors.
Go to Profile#41681
Andrej Plenković
#41694
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Andrej Plenković is a Croatian politician who has been serving as the prime minister of Croatia since 19 October 2016. He was previously one of eleven Croatian members of the European Parliament, serving from Croatia's accession to the European Union in 2013 until his resignation as MEP when he took office as prime minister. Plenković has also been serving as the president of the Croatian Democratic Union since 2016.
Go to Profile#41682
Luciano Gallino
#41695
Overall Influence
1927 - 2015 (88 years)
Luciano Gallino was an Italian sociologist. Born in Turin, between 1956 and 1971 he worked in the Research Department of Social Relations of Olivetti. He was instrumental in introducing Sociology into Italian universities, at a time when both spiritualist and Communist scholars regarded the discipline as largely irrelevant.
Go to Profile#41683
Ulrich Lichtenthaler
#41696
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Ulrich Lichtenthaler is a German economist who is Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at the International School of Management in Cologne. He held the Chair of Management and Organization at the University of Mannheim until March 2015.
Go to Profile#41684
Thomaz Bellucci
#41697
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Thomaz Cocchiarali Bellucci is a Brazilian former professional tennis player. He achieved a career-high singles ranking of World No. 21 in July 2010. Bellucci used a string of ATP Challenger Tour victories early in 2008 to break into the top 100 rankings of the ATP World Tour as a 20-year-old. He has won 4 ATP Tour titles , reached the quarterfinals at the 2016 Olympics and reached the semi-finals of the 2011 Madrid Masters.
Go to Profile#41685
Helmut Sturm
#41698
Overall Influence
1932 - 2008 (76 years)
Helmut Sturm was a German painter. He was born in Furth im Wald. From 1952 to 1958, he studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich. After this he joined Heimrad Prem, Lothar Fischer and Hans-Peter Zimmer in founding Gruppe SPUR, which in 1959 entered the Situationist International. He had a six-month scholarship in Paris before returning to Munich for the SPUR exhibition in Galerie van de Loo. He collaborated with Hans Platschek, Asger Jorn, Jørgen Nash, Constant, Maurice Wyckaert, Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio and Guy Debord. In 1961 he stayed with Nash at Oerkelljunga, Sweden with Prem, ...
Go to Profile#41686
Jeffrey Douma
#41699
Overall Influence
Jeffrey Douma is the Director of the Yale Glee Club and the Marshall Bartholomew Professor in the Practice of Choral Music at the Yale School of Music. He is the founding Director of the Yale Choral Artists and serves as Artistic Director of the Yale International Choral Festival.
Go to Profile#41687
Nadav Na'aman
#41700
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Nadav Na'aman is an Israeli archaeologist and historian. He specializes in the study of Near East in the second and first millenniums BC. His research combines the history of the Ancient Near East, archaeology, Assyrology, and the study of the Bible. He possesses broad knowledge in all these four branches of research.
Go to Profile#41688
Patrick Flandrin
#41701
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Patrick Flandrin is a French physicist, research director at CNRS researcher at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, and member of the French Academy of Sciences. Biography After receiving the engineer degree from ICPI Lyon in 1978, Patrick Flandrin obtained the Doctor-Engineer degree in 1982 and “Doctorat d’État ès sciences physiques” in 1987, both from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble.
Go to Profile#41689
Jean Peters
#41702
Overall Influence
1926 - 2000 (74 years)
Elizabeth Jean Peters was an American film actress. She was known as a star of 20th Century Fox in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and as the second wife of Howard Hughes. Although possibly best remembered for her siren role in Pickup on South Street , Peters was known for her resistance to being turned into a sex symbol. She preferred to play unglamorous, down-to-earth women.
Go to Profile#41690
Jon Sudbø
#41703
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Jon Sudbø is a Norwegian dentist, physician, and former medical researcher, who was exposed as a scientific fraudster in 2006. Over a period of several years, he fabricated results in the field of oncology which he published in leading medical journals. The article that led to his downfall, which was published in The Lancet, was based on 900 patients Sudbø had fabricated entirely. The editor of The Lancet described this as the biggest scientific fraud conducted by a single researcher ever.
Go to Profile#41691
Otto Hermann Pesch
#41704
Overall Influence
1931 - 2014 (83 years)
Otto Hermann Pesch was a German Roman Catholic theologian. Pesch became member of the Dominican order 1952 and was ordained priest 1958, but 1972 left the order and was married. From 1975 to 1998 he was a professor of systematic theology in the University of Hamburg, as a Roman Catholic in a Protestant department of theology. As an ecumenical theologian Pesch was a disciple of Heinrich Fries. He made his doctoral thesis 1965 about doctrine of justification comparing Martin Luther and Thomas Aquinas.
Go to Profile#41692
David Brown
#41705
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
David Brown is former Australian retired meteorologist for Seven News. Brown was formerly the weather presenter on Seven News Sydney, as well as on the national Seven Morning News and Seven Afternoon News bulletins, on Sunrise and Seven News Melbourne.
Go to Profile#41693
Alan M. Wald
#41706
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Alan Maynard Wald is an American professor emeritus of English Literature and American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and writer of 20th-century American literature who focuses on Communist writers; he is an expert on the American 20th-Century "Literary Left."
Go to Profile#41694
Phillip Griffith
#41707
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Phillip Alan Griffith is a mathematician and professor emeritus at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who works on commutative algebra and ring theory. He received his PhD from the University of Houston in 1968. Griffith is the editor-in-chief of the Illinois Journal of Mathematics In 1971, Griffith received a Sloan Fellowship.
Go to Profile#41695
Thomas Mormann
#41708
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Thomas Mormann is Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country in Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain. He obtained his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Dortmund . He obtained his Habilitation from the University of Munich. He works in the philosophy of science, formal ontology, structuralism, Carnap studies, and neo-Kantianism.
Go to Profile#41696
Ellen Muehlberger
#41709
Overall Influence
Ellen Muehlberger is an American scholar of Christianity and late antiquity, Professor of History and Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor with appointments in Classical Studies and the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies.
Go to Profile#41697
Cornell Fleischer
#41710
Overall Influence
1950 - 2023 (73 years)
Cornell Fleischer was an American historian and the Kanuni Suleyman Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies at the University of Chicago. Education and career The son of an American diplomat, Fleischer grew up in Germany, Egypt, Iraq, and California. He also lived in Turkey for nine years. He began his studies at Brown University before transferring to Princeton as a “critical language” undergraduate student to study Arabic. He continued in the Department of Near Eastern Studies for his Ph.D., completing his dissertation, “Gelibolulu Mustafa Âli Efendi, 1541–1600: A Study in Ottoman Historical Consciousness,” in 1982.
Go to Profile#41698
Jo van Nunen
#41711
Overall Influence
1945 - 2010 (65 years)
Johannes Arnoldus Elizabeth Emmanuel van Nunen was a Dutch engineer, management consultant, and Professor of Logistics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and expert in the field of logistics, Supply Chain Management and Operations Research.
Go to Profile#41699
Mikko Hirvonen
#41712
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Mikko Hirvonen is a Finnish former rally driver, and a current Rally-Raid driver, who drove in the World Rally Championship. He placed third in the drivers' championship and helped Ford to the manufacturers' title in both 2006 and 2007. In 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012 he finished runner-up to Sébastien Loeb. Hirvonen's co-driver was Jarmo Lehtinen from the 2003 season until his retirement in 2014, Lehtinen had replaced Miikka Anttila who co-drove with Hirvonen in the 2002 season.
Go to Profile#41700
Ricardo Ainslie
#41713
Overall Influence
Ricardo Ainslie is a Mexican-American documentary filmmaker. A native of Mexico City, his work is highly interdisciplinary in character, which explains his formal affiliations with the Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies, the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, and the American Studies programs at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor in the department of Educational Psychology. He holds dual US and Mexican citizenship. He earned his bachelor's degree at the University of California at Berkeley, and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Michigan.
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