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
#42251
Michael Benedikt
#42264
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Michael Benedikt is an architect, urbanist, and academic. He is noted for formalizing and promoting the geographical concept called isovist. Benedikt is also an advocate of the interior design concept called "interiorist" practice.
Go to Profile#42252
Paulette Libermann
#42265
Overall Influence
1919 - 2007 (88 years)
Paulette Libermann was a French mathematician, specializing in differential geometry. Early life and education Libermann was one of three sisters born to a family of Russian-Ukrainian Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants to Paris.
Go to Profile#42253
Ben Nelson
#42266
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Earl Benjamin Nelson is an American attorney, businessman, and politician who served as the 37th governor of Nebraska from 1991 to 1999 and as a United States Senator from Nebraska from 2001 to 2013. He is a member of the Democratic Party, and as of , the last Democrat to hold any statewide elected office in Nebraska.
Go to Profile#42254
Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya
#42267
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya is a Mauritanian military officer who served as the president of Mauritania from 1984 to 2005. During his presidency, he pursued policies of Arab nationalism while deepening ties with the United States.
Go to Profile#42255
Alwyn Van der Merwe
#42268
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Alwyn van der Merwe is an American theoretical physicist. He is Emeritus Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Denver. Life and career As a young man, Alwyn van der Merwe graduated at the top of his class every year throughout his high school and university studies.
Go to Profile#42256
Nicholas Shepherd-Barron
#42269
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Nicholas Ian Shepherd-Barron, FRS , is a British mathematician working in algebraic geometry. He is a professor of mathematics at King's College London. Education and career Shepherd-Barron was a scholar of Winchester College. He obtained his B.A. at Jesus College, Cambridge in 1976, and received his Ph.D. at the University of Warwick under the supervision of Miles Reid in 1981.
Go to Profile#42257
David Welch
#42270
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Charles David Welch is an American diplomat who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs in the United States Department of State from 2005 through 2008. On August 14, 2008, in Tripoli, Welch signed the U.S.-Libya Comprehensive Claims Settlement Agreement paving the way for the restoration of full diplomatic and commercial relations between the two countries after a 25-year break. Welch is currently the president of the Europe, Africa & Middle East division of Bechtel.
Go to Profile#42258
Larry Rivers
#42271
Overall Influence
1923 - 2002 (79 years)
Larry Rivers was an American artist, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor. Considered by many scholars to be the "Godfather" and "Grandfather" of Pop art, he was one of the first artists to merge non-objective, non-narrative art with narrative and objective abstraction.
Go to Profile#42259
John F. Richards
#42272
Overall Influence
1938 - 2007 (69 years)
John F. Richards was a historian of South Asia and in particular of the Mughal Empire. He was Professor of History at Duke University, North Carolina, and a recipient in 2007 of the Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies Award. He participated in and encouraged a multi-disciplinary, multi-regional approach to studies.
Go to Profile#42260
Rina Foygel Barber
#42273
Overall Influence
Rina Foygel Barber is an American statistician whose research includes works on the Bayesian statistics of graphical models, false discovery rates, and regularization. She is the Louis Block Professor of statistics at the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#42261
Mollie Katzen
#42274
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Mollie Katzen is an American cookbook author and artist. The author of twelve cookbooks , she is best known for the hand-lettered, illustrated Moosewood Cookbook and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest . She has written and illustrated three children's cookbooks, Pretend Soup , Honest Pretzels , and Salad People . In 2007 the Moosewood Cookbook was inducted into the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame. In 2017, her papers were collected by the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution. This includes all the hand-lettered originals, plus illustrations, from the Moosewood Coo...
Go to Profile#42262
Alan Gallay
#42275
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Alan Gallay is an American historian. He specializes in the Atlantic World and Early American history, including issues of slavery. He won the Bancroft Prize in 2003 for his The Indian Slave Trade: the Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717.
Go to Profile#42263
Wolfgang Heinrich Johannes Fuchs
#42276
Overall Influence
1915 - 1997 (82 years)
Wolfgang Heinrich Johannes Fuchs was a British mathematician specializing in complex analysis. His main area of research was Nevanlinna theory. Fuchs received his Ph.D. in 1941 from the University of Cambridge, under the direction of Albert Ingham. He joined the faculty of Cornell University in 1950 and spent the rest of his career there.
Go to Profile#42264
Robert Misrahi
#42277
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Robert Misrahi was a French philosopher who specialised in the work of 17th Century Dutch thinker Baruch Spinoza. Biography Born in Paris to Turkish-Jewish immigrants, Misrahi studied at the University of Paris , where he became a protege of Jean-Paul Sartre. He was the emeritus professor of ethical philosophy at the Université de Paris I , he has published a number of works on Spinoza and published the essentials of his work on the question of happiness. He has published a number of works in publications including Les Temps modernes, Encyclopædia Universalis, Le Dictionnaire des philosophies...
Go to Profile#42265
Mohammad Jafar Yahaghi
#42278
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Mohammad-Jafar Yahaghi is a celebrated Persian writer, literary critic, editor and translator and distinguished professor of literature at Ferdowsi University of Mashad. He is currently the head of Center of Excellence in Researches about Ferdowsi and Khorasan literature.
Go to Profile#42266
Christian Krattenthaler
#42279
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Christian Friedrich Krattenthaler is an Austrian mathematician. He is a professor of discrete mathematics . From 2016 to 2020 he has been the Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Vienna.
Go to Profile#42267
Rod Edmond
#42280
Overall Influence
Rod Edmond is a New Zealand writer and academic, specialising in cultural history and British Empire studies. Edmond was born in Hamilton, New Zealand, and studied at Victoria University and Merton College, Oxford. He was Professor of Modern Literature and Cultural History at the University of Kent until his retirement in 2009. His books include Affairs of the Hearth: Victorian Poetry and Domestic Narrative , Representing the South Pacific: Colonial Discourse from Cook to Gauguin , Leprosy and Empire: A Medical and Cultural History , and Migrations: Journeys in Time and Place .
Go to Profile#42268
Lewis Gilbert
#42281
Overall Influence
1920 - 2018 (98 years)
Lewis Gilbert was an English film director, producer and screenwriter who directed more than 40 films during six decades; among them such varied titles as Reach for the Sky , Sink the Bismarck! , Alfie , Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine , as well as three James Bond films: You Only Live Twice , The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker .
Go to Profile#42269
Nanci Griffith
#42282
Overall Influence
1953 - 2021 (68 years)
Nanci Caroline Griffith was an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She appeared many times on the PBS music program Austin City Limits starting in 1985 . In 1994 she won a Grammy Award for the album Other Voices, Other Rooms.
Go to Profile#42270
Hermann Weber
#42283
Overall Influence
1928 - 2014 (86 years)
Hermann Weber was a German historian and political scientist. He has been described as "the man who knew everything about the German Democratic Republic". Life Early years Hermann Weber was born into a working-class family in the closing years of what would later become known as the Weimar Republic period. His father was a metal worker. When Weber was 4 years old, membership in the Communist Party of Germany was banned by the Nazi Party. This impacted his family greatly – Weber's father was a Communist who found himself harassed and at one stage thrown into prison for a year and a half by t...
Go to Profile#42271
Vonnie McLoyd
#42284
Overall Influence
Vonnie Cile McLoyd is an American developmental psychologist known for her research on how poverty, parental job loss, unemployment, and work characteristics affect children's social emotional development. She is the Ewart A. C. Thomas Collegiate Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#42272
Rachel Wilson
#42285
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Rachel Wilson is a professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Wilson's work integrates electrophysiology, neuropharmacology, molecular genetics, functional anatomy, and behavior to explore how neural circuits are organized to react and sense a complex environment.
Go to Profile#42273
Diane M. Mackie
#42286
Overall Influence
Diane M. Mackie is a social psychologist known for her research in the fields of intergroup relations and social influence. She is Professor Emerita of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Go to Profile#42274
Annie Zaleski
#42287
Overall Influence
Annie Zaleski is an American music journalist and writer. Career Zaleski is a regular writer for mainstream media outlets such as The A.V. Club and NPR Music, and a columnist at Salon. She is based in Cleveland, Ohio where she has won first place awards from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists, including Best Arts Review and Best Feature Writing .
Go to Profile#42275
Roger Lawrence Schwietz
#42288
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Roger Lawrence Schwietz, O.M.I. is an American prelate of the Catholic Church. Schwietz served as archbishop of the Archdiocese of Anchorage in Alaska from 2001 to 2016. He previously served as bishop of the Diocese of Duluth in Minnesota from 1989 to 2000.
Go to Profile#42276
Peter V. Hobbs
#42289
Overall Influence
1936 - 2005 (69 years)
Peter Victor Hobbs was a British-born professor of atmospheric sciences and director of the Cloud and Aerosol Research Group at the University of Washington. His research interests were in the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere, focusing on the roles played by aerosols, clouds, and precipitation. He authored over 250 peer-reviewed papers, authored four books, and edited three books. He was the coauthor with John Michael Wallace of what is generally considered the standard introductory textbook in the field: Atmospheric Science: An Introductory Survey.
Go to Profile#42277
Jim Sidanius
#42290
Overall Influence
1945 - 2021 (76 years)
James H. Sidanius, known as Jim Sidanius was an American psychologist and academic. He served as John Lindsley Professor of Psychology in memory of William James and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He won the 2006 Harold Lasswell Award for "Distinguished Scientific Contribution in the Field of Political Psychology" from the International Society of Political Psychology and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology 2013 Career Contribution Award. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007. The Society of Experimental Social Psy...
Go to Profile#42278
Charlie Persip
#42291
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Charles Lawrence Persip , known as Charli Persip and formerly as Charlie Persip , was an American jazz drummer. Biography Born in Morristown, New Jersey, United States, and raised in Newark, New Jersey, Persip attended West Side High School, preferring it over Newark Arts High School because he wanted to join the former's football team. He later studied drums with Al Germansky in Newark. After playing with Tadd Dameron in 1953, he gained recognition as a jazz drummer as he toured and recorded with Dizzy Gillespie's big and small bands between 1953 and 1958. He then joined Harry "Sweets" Edison...
Go to Profile#42279
Edward Parkes
#42292
Overall Influence
1926 - 2019 (93 years)
Sir Edward Walter Parkes DL FREng was Vice-Chancellor of City University London from 1974 to 1978 and of the University of Leeds from 1983 to 1991. Life Parkes was born in 1926. Parkes attended King Edward's School, Birmingham, and St John's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a first class degree in mechanical engineering.
Go to Profile#42280
Shmuel Shtrikman
#42293
Overall Influence
1930 - 2003 (73 years)
Shmuel Shtrikman was an Israeli physicist, and a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Winner of the Israel Prize for Research in Physics in 2003. Biography Born in Brest, Belarus to Abraham and Esther Shtrikman, sister of Sapir and brother of biochemist Nathan Sharon. Shtrikman immigrated to Israel with his family in 1934. In the first year the family lived in Kfar Saba; a year later they moved to Tel Aviv. In the 1948 Arab–Israeli War he served in the Air Force.
Go to Profile#42281
Adrian Parr
#42294
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Adrian Parr is an Australian-born philosopher and cultural critic. She specializes in environmental philosophy and activism. In addition, she published on the sustainability movement, climate change politics, activist culture, and creative practice.
Go to Profile#42282
Jennings Bryant
#42295
Overall Influence
1944 - 2020 (76 years)
Jennings Bryant was Distinguished Professor Emeritus at The University of Alabama . Prior to his retirement in 2010, he was Communication and Information Sciences Distinguished Research Professor, holder of the Reagan Endowed Chair of Broadcasting, and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research at UA. Jennings Bryant was married to Sara Poteat Bryant for 43 years. He and Sara were the parents of three children. The Bryants lived on a family farm in the Mountain Valley Rural Agricultural Historical District in Glenwood, North Carolina.
Go to Profile#42283
Wang Pinxian
#42296
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Wang Pinxian is a Chinese marine geologist. He is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Science. Biography Wang obtained his degree in geology from Moscow State University of the Soviet Union in 1960, and taught at East China Normal University in Shanghai afterwards. In 1972, when the Marine Geology department of East China Normal University merged into Tongji University, Wang was transferred to Tongji.
Go to Profile#42284
Jeffrey Lewis
#42297
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Jeffrey Lewis is an American expert in nuclear nonproliferation and geopolitics, currently a professor at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and director of the CNS East Asia Nonproliferation Program. He has written two books on China's nuclear weapons, and numerous journal and magazine articles, blog posts, and podcasts on nonproliferation and related topics.
Go to Profile#42285
Gilbert O'Sullivan
#42298
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Gilbert O'Sullivan is an Irish singer-songwriter. O'Sullivan experienced success during the early 1970s with songs including "Alone Again ", "Clair" and "Get Down". O'Sullivan's songs are often marked by his distinctive percussive piano playing style and observational lyrics using wordplay.
Go to Profile#42286
Ivor Davidson
#42299
Overall Influence
Ivor J. Davidson is a British theologian and academic administrator. Davidson held chairs in Systematic and Historical Theology at the University of Otago, New Zealand, where he was based from 1997 until 2009, and the University of St Andrews, 2009–16. He is an Honorary Professor in Theology at the University of Aberdeen.
Go to Profile#42287
Mary Miller
#42300
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Mary Ellen Miller is an American art historian and academician specializing in Mesoamerica and the Maya. Academic career A native of New York State, Miller earned her A.B. degree from Princeton University and her Ph.D. from Yale in 1981 with a thesis titled The Murals of Bonampak, Chiapas Mexico. Miller joined the Yale faculty in 1981, and in 1998 was appointed as the Vincent Scully, Jr. Professor of the History of Art.
Go to Profile#42288
Jim Waldo
#42301
Overall Influence
Jim Waldo is an American computer scientist and the Chief Technology Officer of Harvard University. He is the Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Computer Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Technology and Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Previously he was a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems Laboratories, where he was lead architect for Jini, a distributed programming system based on Java, and helped develop Project Darkstar. He was also involved in some of the early design and development of the Java programming language and e...
Go to Profile#42289
Rick Martel
#42302
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Richard Vigneault is a Canadian retired professional wrestler, trainer, and television presenter, better known by his ring name, Rick Martel. He is best known for his appearances with the American Wrestling Association, the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling. Championships held by Martel over the course of his career include the AWA World Heavyweight Championship, WCW World Television Championship, and WWF World Tag Team Championship.
Go to Profile#42290
John Ratey
#42303
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
John Joseph Ratey is an American physician who is associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is the coauthor, with Edward Hallowell of the books Driven to Distraction, Answers to Distraction, and Delivered from Distraction. Like Hallowell, Ratey believes that he has ADHD but has never been clinically diagnosed.
Go to Profile#42291
Muneer Ahmad Rashid
#42304
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Muneer Ahmad Rashid, FPAS , also spelled as Munir Ahmad Rashid, is a Pakistani mathematical physicist and emeritus professor of applied and mathematical physics at the Centre for Advanced Mathematics and Physics of the National University of Sciences and Technology.
Go to Profile#42292
D'Lo Brown
#42305
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Accie Julius Connor , better known by his ring name D'Lo Brown , is an American professional wrestler. He is best known for his time in Impact Wrestling and WWE. Brown is also known for his appearances in Ring of Honor, All Japan Pro Wrestling, and Pro Wrestling Noah.
Go to Profile#42293
Salahaddin Khalilov
#42306
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Salahaddin Khalilov is an Azerbaijani philosopher. Scientific-pedagogical activity He defended his PhD thesis titled “Systematic Structural Analysis of Scientific and Technological Progress in the USSR” in 1976. After completing his postdoctoral research he defended a thesis titled “Logico-gnoseological issues of Scientific and Technological Progress” in 1989. In the same year, he became a professor and the head of the Philosophy Department at Azerbaijan State Pedagogical University. He founded the University “Azerbaijan” , a private university in Azerbaijan, in 1991 and was its rector until 2006.
Go to Profile#42294
John Keene
#42307
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
John R. Keene Jr. is a writer, translator, professor, and artist who was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2018. His 2022 poetry collection, Punks: New and Selected Poems, received the National Book Award for Poetry.
Go to Profile#42295
Yonina Eldar
#42308
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Yonina C. Eldar is an Israeli professor of electrical engineering at the Weizmann Institute of Science, known for her pioneering work on sub-Nyquist sampling. Early life and education Eldar was born in Toronto, Canada. She is the third daughter of Rabbi Meyer and Vicky Berglas. She moved with her family to Israel in 1979. She received her B.Sc. degrees in physics and electrical engineering both from Tel Aviv University , Israel, in 1995 and 1996, respectively.
Go to Profile#42296
Mark White
#42309
Overall Influence
1940 - 2017 (77 years)
Mark Wells White Jr. was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 43rd governor of Texas from 1983 to 1987. He also held office as Secretary of State of Texas , and as Texas Attorney General .
Go to Profile#42297
Pamela J. Bjorkman
#42310
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Pamela Jane Bjorkman NAS, AAAS is an American biochemist. She is the David Baltimore Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology , Her research centers on the study of the three-dimensional structures of proteins related to Class I MHC, or Major Histocompatibility Complex, proteins of the immune system and proteins involved in the immune responses to viruses . Bjorkman is most well known as a pioneer in the field of structural biology.
Go to Profile#42298
Paul Lewis
#42311
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Paul Lewis is a British freelance financial journalist and broadcaster on BBC television and radio, including as presenter of Money Box on BBC Radio 4. Education Lewis was educated at Maidstone Grammar School, a state grammar school in the town of Maidstone in Kent, followed by the University of Stirling, from which he graduated in Psychology in the 1970s.
Go to Profile#42299
James Pickens Jr.
#42312
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
James Pickens Jr. is an American actor. He is best known for his starring role as Dr. Richard Webber on the ABC medical drama television series Grey's Anatomy, and for his supporting role as Deputy Director Alvin Kersh on later seasons of the Fox Network science fiction series The X-Files, and Chuck Mitchell on Roseanne , and The Conners .
Go to Profile#42300
Govinda
#42313
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Govind Arun Ahuja is an Indian actor, comedian, dancer, and former politician, who has appeared in more than 165 Hindi-language film and established himself one of most popular actors in India. Govinda is known for his slapstick performances and dancing skills. He has received 12 Filmfare Award nominations and won two Filmfare Special Awards and one Filmfare Award for Best Comedian. In June 1999, he was voted the tenth-greatest star of stage or screen in last thousand years by BBC News Online poll.
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