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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people
#41851
Silvana Sciarra
#41864
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Silvana Sciarra is an Italian jurist and academic. She served as a judge of the Constitutional Court of Italy from November 2014 to November 2023 and served as its president from 20 September 2022 to 11 November 2023.
Go to Profile#41852
Richard Larkins
#41865
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Richard Graeme Larkins is the former Chancellor of La Trobe University. He was the Vice-Chancellor and President of Monash University from 2003 to June 2009. Prior to this, he had a distinguished career in medicine, scientific research and academic management.
Go to Profile#41853
David H. Frisch
#41866
Overall Influence
1918 - 1991 (73 years)
David Henry Frisch was an American physicist who helped develop the atom bomb in World War II and later became active in the disarmament movement. He was also the husband of Rose Epstein Frisch. Biography Born in New York, Frisch grew up in San Antonio and graduated from Princeton in 1940. He was a graduate assistant at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1940 to 1942, and then worked at Los Alamos from 1943 to 1945. After the war he moved to MIT, beginning as a research associate in 1946, obtained his PhD in 1947 and was appointed an assistant professor in 1948, associate professor in 1952 and full professor in 1958.
Go to Profile#41854
Agnar Helgason
#41867
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Agnar Helgason is an Icelandic scientist working with genetic anthropology. PhD in Biological Anthropology, University of Oxford, 2001. He is best known for his research on the origin of Icelandic population. He is a brother of Ásgeir Helgason, the son of Helgi Valdimarsson and a brother-in-law of Tim Moore .
Go to Profile#41855
Richard D. Cummings
#41868
Overall Influence
Richard D. Cummings is an American biochemist who is the S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He also the chief of the division of surgical sciences within the department of surgery. He is the director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Glycoscience, director of the National Center for Functional Glycomics, and also founder of the Glycomics Core at BIDMC. As of 2018 Cummings is also the scientific director of the Feihi Nutrition Laboratory at BIDMC. Before moving to BIDMC/HMS, Cummings was ...
Go to Profile#41856
Carol Ann Mooney
#41869
Overall Influence
Carol Ann Mooney is the 11th president of Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana . She is the first lay alumna president of the college. Life Mooney grew up in Norwich, New York. She graduated from Saint Mary's College in 1972 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. She went on to earn her J.D. degree from the University of Notre Dame Law School in 1977, where she graduated first in her class and received the Colonel William J. Hoynes award. She practiced law from 1977-78 as an associate attorney in the Washington, D.C., firm of Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue.
Go to Profile#41857
Mary Beth Rosson
#41870
Overall Influence
Mary Beth Rosson is the director of graduate programs and professor at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology. Rosson also co-directs the collaboration and innovation lab. Most of her research concentrates on End User Programming, Computer Supported Cooperative Work , and Human-Computer Interaction . Prior to teaching at Penn State, Rosson taught at the Virginia Tech Computer Science department for 10 years and worked as a research staff manager at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center for 11 years. Rosson also served as the Dean for the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology from 2014 to 2016.
Go to Profile#41858
Kathryn Graddy
#41871
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Kathryn Graddy is a professor of economics and the dean of Brandeis International Business School at Brandeis University. She is the Fred and Rita Richman Distinguished Professor in Economics at Brandeis University. Her research interests include the economics of art, culture, and industrial organization.
Go to Profile#41859
Carl-Henrik Heldin
#41872
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Carl-Henrik Heldin is Chairman of the Board for the Nobel Foundation, and a molecular biologist and medical researcher. He has been director of the Uppsala branch of Ludwig Cancer Research since 1986 and professor in molecular cell biology at the medical faculty of Uppsala University since 1992. He is vice-president of the European Research Council since 2011 and was appointed chairman of the Nobel Foundation in 2013.
Go to Profile#41860
Karthi
#41873
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Karthik Sivakumar , known as Karthi, is an Indian actor who works predominantly in Tamil cinema. He has won three Filmfare Awards South, an Edison Award, a SIIMA Award and a Tamil Nadu State Film Award.
Go to Profile#41861
Billy Cundiff
#41874
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
William Ambrose Cundiff is a former American football placekicker. He played college football for Drake University, and was signed by the Dallas Cowboys as an undrafted free agent in 2002. College career Cundiff played for the Drake Bulldogs football team of Drake University, where he broke five Pioneer Football League career records including most points , field goalss and points after touchdown . He made eight field goals over 50 yards during his career with the Bulldogs, including a PFL-record 62-yarder as a junior in 2000 against San Diego. He also was part of the Drake University Men's Basketball team.
Go to Profile#41862
Jin Li
#41875
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Jin Li is a Chinese geneticist and academic administrator, currently serving as president of Fudan University since 2021. Jin joined Fudan University from the University of Cincinnati in 2003 to serve as dean of the Fudan University School of Life Sciences. He previously served as the university's executive vice president from 2019 to 2021, vice president from 2007 to 2019, and dean of the Graduate School from 2007 to 2011.
Go to Profile#41863
Guozhen Lu
#41876
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Guozhen Lu is a professor of mathematics at the University of Connecticut. He is known for his contributions to harmonic analysis, geometric analysis, and partial differential equations. Education and career Lu graduated from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China in 1983 and earned his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1991. He was a Bateman Research Instructor in the Department of Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology from 1991 to 1993, an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Wright State University from 1993 to 1997, and an associate professor of the same department from 1997 to 2000 before he moved to Wayne State University.
Go to Profile#41864
Stephan Harbarth
#41877
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Stephan Harbarth is the President of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany , former German lawyer and politician of the Christian Democratic Union . From 2009 until 2018 he served as member of the Bundestag. On 22 November 2018 he was elected to the Federal Constitutional Court by the Bundestag. He succeeded Ferdinand Kirchhof and serves in the court's first senate. On 23 November 2018, one day after his election to the court, he was elected Vice President of the Federal Constitutional Court by the Bundesrat. In this capacity, he is chairman of the first senate.
Go to Profile#41865
Takao Hayashi
#41878
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Takao Hayashi is a Japanese mathematics educator, historian of mathematics specializing in Indian mathematics. Hayashi was born in Niigata, Japan. He obtained Bachelor of Science degree form Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan in 1974, Master of Arts degree from Tohuku University, Sendai, Japan in 1976 and a postgraduate degree from Kyoto University, Japan in 1979. He secured the Doctor of Philosophy degree from Brown University, USA in 1985 under the guidance of David Pingree. He was a researcher at Mehta Research Institute for Mathematics and Mathematical Physics, Allahabad, India during 1982–1983, a lecturer at Kyoto Women's College during 1985–1987.
Go to Profile#41866
Justin Morneau
#41879
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Justin Ernest George Morneau is a Canadian former professional baseball first baseman. He played in Major League Baseball for the Minnesota Twins, Pittsburgh Pirates, Colorado Rockies, and Chicago White Sox. At and , Morneau was drafted as a catcher by the Twins in 1999. He converted to first base in the minor leagues and made his MLB debut in 2003. Morneau held that position throughout his career and in 2007 became the first Twin since Gary Gaetti in 1987–1988 to hit 30 home runs in consecutive seasons.
Go to Profile#41867
John Oates
#41880
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
John William Oates is an American musician, best known as half of the rock and soul duo Hall & Oates with Daryl Hall. He has played rock, R&B, and soul music, acting as a guitarist, singer, songwriter, and record producer.
Go to Profile#41868
Victoria Orphan
#41881
Overall Influence
Victoria J. Orphan is a geobiologist at the California Institute of Technology who studies the interactions between marine microorganisms and their environment. As of 2020, she is the Chair for the Center of Environmental Microbial Interactions.
Go to Profile#41869
George Parshall
#41882
Overall Influence
1929 - 2019 (90 years)
George W. Parshall was an American organometallic chemist who made notable contributions to homogeneous catalysis. He was a senior scientist at E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company for many years.
Go to Profile#41870
Marlo Thomas
#41883
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Margaret Julia "Marlo" Thomas is an American actress, producer, author, and social activist. She is best known for starring on the sitcom That Girl and her children's franchise Free to Be... You and Me. She has received three Primetime Emmy Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Peabody Award for her work in television and has been inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#41871
Anne E. Pusey
#41884
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Anne Elizabeth Pusey is director of the Jane Goodall Institute Research Center and a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University. Since the early 1990s, Pusey has been archiving the data collected from the Gombe chimpanzee project. The collection housed at Duke University consists of a computerized database that Pusey oversees. In addition to archiving Jane Goodall’s research from Gombe, she is involved in field study and advising students at Gombe . She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Go to Profile#41872
M Innas Ali
#41885
Overall Influence
1916 - 2010 (94 years)
M Innas Ali was a Bangladeshi physicist. He was the founding chairman of Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission. He was selected National Professor of Bangladesh in 1994. Education Ali completed his M.Sc. in Physics from University of Dhaka in 1940. Later he earned M.E.E. from New York University and Ph.D. in nuclear physics from London University in 1948 and 1955 respectively.
Go to Profile#41873
John Haffenden
#41886
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
John Haffenden is emeritus professor of English literature at the University of Sheffield. Education and positions held A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin , where he edited Icarus, he was supervised for his doctorate at St Peter's College, Oxford by Richard Ellmann. He was for two years a lecturer in English and Liberal Studies, Oxford College of Further Education, before teaching at the University of Exeter, 1973–74.
Go to Profile#41874
Mark de Bretton Platts
#41887
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Mark de Bretton Platts is a philosopher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México . He is well known for criticizing the Humean theory of motivation, especially in his book Ways of Meaning .
Go to Profile#41875
Johan Santana
#41888
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Johan Alexander Santana Araque is a Venezuelan former professional baseball starting pitcher. Santana pitched in Major League Baseball for the Minnesota Twins from 2000 to 2007 and for the New York Mets from 2008 to 2012. A two-time Cy Young Award winner with the Twins, Santana is a four-time All-Star and earned a pitching triple crown in 2006. On June 1, 2012, Santana pitched the first no-hitter in New York Mets history against the St. Louis Cardinals.
Go to Profile#41876
Melvin J. Hinich
#41889
Overall Influence
1939 - 2010 (71 years)
Melvin Jay "Mel" Hinich was a professor of government and economics at the University of Texas at Austin. Hinich was also a research professor at UT's Applied Research Laboratories. Known as an expert in political science with a long record of distinction in a number of fields, he wrote seven books and published more than 200 papers in statistics/statistical theory, signal processing, economics, political science, biomedical engineering, pharmacy, and library science.
Go to Profile#41877
Bernie Marsden
#41890
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Bernard John Marsden was an English rock and blues guitarist. He is primarily known for his work with Whitesnake, having written or co-written with David Coverdale many of the group's hit songs, such as "Fool for Your Loving", "Walking in the Shadow of the Blues", "Ready an' Willing", "Lovehunter", "Trouble", and "Here I Go Again".
Go to Profile#41878
Eric Lionel Mascall
#41891
Overall Influence
1905 - 1993 (88 years)
Eric Lionel Mascall was a leading theologian and priest in the Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Church of England. He was a philosophical exponent of the Thomist tradition and was Professor of Historical Theology at King's College London . His name was styled as E. L. Mascall in most of his writings.
Go to Profile#41879
Semmy Schilt
#41892
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Sem "Semmy" Schilt is a Dutch actor and former kickboxer, Ashihara karateka and mixed martial artist. He stands 212 cm and weighs 116 kg. Schilt holds the distinction of being the only kickboxer to have won 5 major heavyweight tournaments, being a four-time K-1 World Grand Prix Champion and one time Glory Heavyweight Grand Slam Champion. He also held the K-1 Super Heavyweight Championship and the Glory Heavyweight Championship titles. He is the only fighter in K-1 history to win the world championship three times in a row, and also shares the record with Ernesto Hoost for most Grands Prix won...
Go to Profile#41880
Rabab Abdulhadi
#41893
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi is a Palestinian-born American scholar, activist, educator, editor, and an academic director. She is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, Race and Resistance Studies, and the founding Director of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies at San Francisco State University . She is a controversial political figure, which is in part due to larger political issues around her field of study.
Go to Profile#41881
Kenny Burrell
#41894
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Kenneth Earl Burrell is an American jazz guitarist known for his work on numerous top jazz labels: Prestige, Blue Note, Verve, CTI, Muse, and Concord. His collaborations with Jimmy Smith were notable, and produced the 1965 Billboard Top Twenty hit Verve album Organ Grinder Swing. He has cited jazz guitarists Charlie Christian, Oscar Moore, and Django Reinhardt as influences, along with blues guitarists T-Bone Walker and Muddy Waters.
Go to Profile#41882
Brock Blomberg
#41895
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Stephen Brock Blomberg is the 8th president of California Institute of Integral Studies. An internationally known scholar and former President of Ursinus College, Blomberg is best known in academia for his work on the economics of terrorism.
Go to Profile#41883
Piotr Wróbel
#41896
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Piotr Jan Wróbel is a Polish-Canadian historian and expert specializing in Polish history and Central and Eastern European history. His academic research revolves around the national minorities of Central and Eastern Europe with special focus on Polish-Jewish relations and the history of Polish Jewry since the Partitions of Poland.
Go to Profile#41884
Jack Wilshere
#41897
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
Jack Andrew Garry Wilshere is an English football coach and former professional player who played as a midfielder. He is the head coach of the Arsenal under-18 team. Wilshere came up through Arsenal's youth academy and made his first-team debut in 2008, becoming Arsenal's youngest league debutant at the age of 16 years, 256 days. He earned a number of accolades including the PFA Young Player of the Year award, selection to the 2010–11 PFA Team of the Year, and Arsenal's Player of the Season award,. After leaving Arsenal in 2018, Wilshere joined West Ham United where he remained for two years before departing by mutual consent.
Go to Profile#41885
Egon Bittner
#41898
Overall Influence
1921 - 2011 (90 years)
Egon Bittner was born in Czechoslovakia and emigrated to the United States after World War II. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Los Angeles. He held the Harry Coplan Professorship in the Social Sciences and was chair of the sociology department at Brandeis University, where he supervised the dissertation of Nancy J. Chodorow. He is known for his ground breaking studies of the relationships between police and society.
Go to Profile#41886
Kate Shepherd
#41899
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Kate Shepherd is an American artist based in New York City. Education Shepherd completed her B.A. from Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, in 1982. She studied briefly at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, New York in 1982, before dropping out to pursue individual artistic work. During this time, Shepherd earned a living painting portraits and making drawings for The New Yorker. She later completed her master's degree with a Master's Certificate, from New York Academy of Art, New York, in 1986. She later attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1990 and obtained an M.F.A.
Go to Profile#41887
Flávio Carneiro
#41900
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Flávio Carneiro is a Brazilian writer. Born in Goiânia in 1962, he moved to Rio de Janeiro in the early 1980s and relocated to the mountain city of Teresópolis, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, in 2003. A novelist, essayist, scriptwriter, literary critic, and university lecturer, he has written twelve books and two screenplays, and teaches Brazilian and Comparative Literature at Rio de Janeiro State University .
Go to Profile#41888
Suga
#41901
Overall Influence
1993 - Present (33 years)
Min Yoon-gi , known professionally by his stage names Suga and Agust D, is a South Korean rapper, songwriter and record producer. Under Big Hit Entertainment, he debuted as a member of the South Korean boy band BTS in 2013. His first solo mixtape, Agust D, was released in 2016 and re-released in 2018 to digital download and streaming platforms, reaching number three on Billboards World Albums Chart. In 2020, he released his second solo mixtape, D-2; it peaked at number 11 on the US Billboard 200, number seven on the UK Albums Chart, and number two on Australia's ARIA Album Chart.
Go to Profile#41889
Lars Walløe
#41902
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Lars Walløe is a Norwegian academic, chemist, physiologist, and scientific adviser to the Norwegian government. He was Head of Norwegian Delegation to the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission ; and he was honored by the government of Japan for having "Contributed to the promotion of Japan’s policy in the field of fisheries." From 2002 to 2008 Walløe served as the president of Academia Europaea.
Go to Profile#41890
Brian K. Hall
#41903
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Brian Keith Hall is the George S. Campbell Professor of Biology and University Research Professor Emeritus at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Hall has researched and extensively written on bone and cartilage formation in developing vertebrate embryos. He is an active participant in the evolutionary developmental biology debate on the nature and mechanisms of animal body plan formation. Hall has proposed that the neural crest tissue of vertebrates may be viewed as a fourth embryonic germ layer. As such, the neural crest - in Hall's view - plays a role equivalent to that of t...
Go to Profile#41891
Modesto Carone
#41904
Overall Influence
1937 - 2019 (82 years)
Modesto Carone was a Brazilian writer and translator. He was born in Sorocaba, and completed his bachelor's degree at the Faculty of Law of Largo São Francisco in the early 1960s. He moved to Austria in 1965, where he taught Brazilian language and culture at the University of Vienna. On his return to Brazil, a few years later, he obtained a doctorate in Germanic letters from the University of São Paulo, and eventually became a professor there.
Go to Profile#41892
Dennis Babbage
#41905
Overall Influence
1909 - 1991 (82 years)
Dennis William Babbage OBE was an English mathematician associated with Magdalene College, Cambridge, and with codebreaking at Bletchley Park during World War II. In 1980 Babbage was President of Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#41893
Franco Brezzi
#41906
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Franco Brezzi is an Italian mathematician. Education Brezzi graduated in 1967 at the Università di Pavia under the supervision of Enrico Magenes. He was full professor of Mathematical Analysis at the Politecnico di Torino from 1976 to 1977 and then from 1977 to 2006 at the Università di Pavia. He was a professor of Numerical Analysis at the Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori in Pavia from 2006 until his retirement in 2015. Presently he is Emeritus Professor at IUSS and Associate Researcher at IUSS of Italian CNR
Go to Profile#41894
Paul C. Rosenbloom
#41907
Overall Influence
1920 - 2005 (85 years)
Paul Charles Rosenbloom was an American mathematician. Life Rosenbloom studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where as an undergraduate he became a Putnam Fellow in 1941. In 1944 he earned his PhD from Stanford University under Gábor Szegő with thesis On sequences of polynomials, especially sections of power series. He was a professor of mathematics at Brown University, Syracuse University , the University of Minnesota , and the Teacher's College of Columbia University . His doctoral students include Henry Gordon Rice.
Go to Profile#41895
Katrin Wehrheim
#41908
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Katrin Wehrheim is an associate professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. Wehrheim's research centers around symplectic topology and gauge theory, and they are known for work on pseudoholomorphic quilts. With Dusa McDuff, they have challenged the foundational rigor of a classic proof in symplectic geometry.
Go to Profile#41896
Janet Ecker
#41909
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Janet Ecker is a former politician in Ontario, Canada. She was a member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1995 to 2003, and was a senior cabinet minister in the governments of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves.
Go to Profile#41897
Peter Wothers
#41910
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Peter David Wothers, , is a British chemist and author of several popular textbooks aimed at university students. He is a teaching fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and is a fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#41898
Frank Keating
#41911
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Francis Anthony Keating II is an American attorney and politician who served as the 25th governor of Oklahoma from 1995 to 2003. , Keating is one of only five governors in Oklahoma history, in addition to George Nigh, Brad Henry, Mary Fallin, and Kevin Stitt to hold consecutive terms and the first Republican to accomplish that feat. As governor, he oversaw the state's response to the Oklahoma City bombing. His term was also marked by the enactment of welfare reform and tax cuts.
Go to Profile#41899
Ozzie Newsome
#41912
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Ozzie Newsome Jr. is an American professional football executive and former player who is the executive vice president of player personnel of the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League . Newsome was a tight end for the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League . He was inducted into both the College Football Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame . He is also the former general manager of the Baltimore Ravens and now serves as a behind-the-scenes executive with the team. Newsome is widely regarded as one of the greatest tight ends of all time.
Go to Profile#41900
Alok Bhattacharya
#41913
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Alok Bhattacharya is an Indian parasitologist, academic and a professor at the School of Life Sciences of the Jawaharlal Nehru University. He chairs the Biotechnology Information System Network as well as the Life Sciences Expert Committee of FIST program of the Department of Science and Technology . He is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy and is known for his studies on Entamoeba histolytica and species-specific calcium binding protein and its gene.
Go to Profile