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
#42351
Tor Hagfors
#42364
Overall Influence
1930 - 2007 (77 years)
Tor Hagfors was a Norwegian scientist, radio astronomer, radar expert and a pioneer in the studies of the interactions between electromagnetic waves and plasma. In the early 1960s he was one of a handful of pioneering theorists that independently developed a theory that explained the scattering of radio waves by the free electrons in a plasma and applied the result to the ionosphere. He became founding director of the new EISCAT facilities that were then under construction in 1975, by which time he already been director at most of the other incoherent scatter radar facilities in the world. Th...
Go to Profile#42352
Eddie Sutton
#42365
Overall Influence
1936 - 2020 (84 years)
Edward Eugene Sutton was an American college basketball coach. A native of Bucklin, Kansas, Sutton played college basketball at Oklahoma A&M and was a head coach at the high school, junior college, and college levels spanning six decades.
Go to Profile#42353
Clint Mansell
#42366
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Clinton Darryl Mansell is an English musician, singer, and composer. He served as the lead vocalist of alt-rock band Pop Will Eat Itself. After the band's dissolution, Mansell moved to the United States and embarked on a career as a film score composer.
Go to Profile#42354
Thomas Groome
#42367
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Thomas H. Groome is an author and a professor in theology and religious education at Boston College. Groome has been critical of the Catholic Church's stance on clerical celibacy. Biography Professor Groome has a doctoral degree from Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University. He has taught at seminaries in several countries. Books have been published about his teaching in several languages. In 1998–99, Groome was president of the Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education . As of 2014, he is a professor of theology and religious education at Boston College. He chair...
Go to Profile#42355
Dave Douglas
#42368
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
David Alan Douglas is an American musician, most widely known for being the drummer of the American rock band Relient K. Douglas joined the band after their former drummer, Stephen Cushman, departed in late 2000. Douglas had initially played the drums and provided background vocals for the band for seven years. In 2014, he returned to playing in the band in a touring capacity, and became a full member again in 2022.
Go to Profile#42356
Sergei Bagapsh
#42369
Overall Influence
1949 - 2011 (62 years)
Sergei Uasyl-ipa Bagapsh was an Abkhaz politician who served as the second President of Abkhazia from 12 February 2005 until his death on 29 May 2011. He previously served as Prime Minister of Abkhazia from 1997 to 1999. He was re-elected in the 2009 presidential election. Bagapsh's term as Prime Minister included the 1998 war with Georgia, while he oversaw both the recognition of Abkhazia by Russia and the Russo-Georgian War during his presidency.
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Caroline Dean
#42370
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Dame Caroline Dean is a British plant scientist working at the John Innes Centre. She is focused on understanding the molecular controls used by plants to seasonally judge when to flower. She is specifically interested in vernalisation — the acceleration of flowering in plants by exposure to periods of prolonged cold. She has also been on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize from 2018.
Go to Profile#42358
Masamichi Takesaki
#42371
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Masamichi Takesaki is a Japanese mathematician working in the theory of operator algebras. Takesaki studied at Tohoku University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1956, a master's degree in 1958 and a doctorate in 1965. Beginning in 1958 he was a research assistant at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and from 1965 to 1968 he was an associate professor at Tohoku University. From 1968 to 1969 he was a visiting associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1970, he became a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was also a visiting professor at Aix-Marseille Univer...
Go to Profile#42359
Kelly McQueen
#42372
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Kathryn Ann Kelly "Kelly" McQueen is an American anesthesiologist and global health expert. She currently practices anesthesiology at the UW Health University Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin and serves as the chair for the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public health.
Go to Profile#42360
Stephen Goldfeld
#42373
Overall Influence
1940 - 1995 (55 years)
Stephen Michael Goldfeld was a Princeton University economics professor and provost who served on the Council of Economic Advisers during the Carter administration. Goldfeld received a bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1960 at the age of twenty and a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963 at the age of twenty three, when he joined the Princeton faculty. As an academic he specialized in financial institutions and in econometrics. He was an associate editor of the American Economic Review and other major economic journals. He died in 1995 at the...
Go to Profile#42361
Reijo Luostarinen
#42374
Overall Influence
1939 - 2017 (78 years)
Reijo Kalevi Luostarinen was a Finnish organisational theorist, Professor of International Business at the Aalto University School of Business, and chairman of Biohit. He is known for his work on internationalization and International business operations.
Go to Profile#42362
E. E. Et Al. Snell
#42375
Overall Influence
#42363
Hui-lin Li
#42376
Overall Influence
1911 - 2002 (91 years)
Hui-lin Li was a Chinese botanist, academic, and researcher who worked at the University of Pennsylvania, National Taiwan University, and Chinese Academy of Sciences. Biography Hui-lin Li was born in Soochow, a city close to Shanghai. Li earned Biology degrees from Soochow University and Yenching University . In 1940, he traveled to the United States, and earned a Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University in 1942. From 1943 to 1946 Li studied under Francis W. Pennell and Jacob R. Schramm at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Li was appointed to a professorship at Soochow University in 1946 and at National Taiwan University in Taipei in 1947.
Go to Profile#42364
Taddesse Tamrat
#42377
Overall Influence
1935 - 2013 (78 years)
Taddesse Tamrat was an Ethiopian historian and scholar of Ethiopian studies. He is best known as the author of Church and State in Ethiopia 1270–1520 , a book which has dominated the field of Ethiopian studies.
Go to Profile#42365
Jean Smart
#42378
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Jean Elizabeth Smart is an American actress. After beginning her career in regional theater in the Pacific Northwest, she appeared on Broadway in 1981 as Marlene Dietrich in the biographical play Piaf. Smart was later cast in a leading role as Charlene Frazier Stillfield on the CBS sitcom Designing Women, in which she starred from 1986 to 1991.
Go to Profile#42366
Michel Cullin
#42379
Overall Influence
1944 - 2020 (76 years)
Michel Cullin was "" at the University of Nice and director of French-Austrian relations at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. Life Cullin was born in Paris. After he earned his degrees in political science and German studies in Paris, Michel Cullin became "Assistant de français" at the "Theresianum-school" in Vienna . Between 1967 and 1969 he was "Lecteur de français" at the University of Vienna. After working at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich he became "Assistant d’allemand" , "Maître- assistant de civilisation autrichienne" and later "Maît...
Go to Profile#42367
Daniel B. Rodriguez
#42380
Overall Influence
Daniel B. Rodriguez is the former Dean of Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and holds the Harold Washington Professorship. He was the 2014 President of the Association of American Law Schools , and served on the American Bar Association's Commission on the Future of Legal Services. He currently acts as an advisor to the ABA's Center for Legal Innovation.
Go to Profile#42368
Jean Biès
#42381
Overall Influence
1933 - 2014 (81 years)
Jean Biès was a French philosopher and author. He is the recipient of the High Prize of the Society of French Poets , Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor , and a prolific modern proponent of the Traditionalist School. His works deal with the union of Eastern and Western philosophy.
Go to Profile#42369
Nira Chamberlain
#42382
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Nira Cyril Chamberlain is a British mathematician based in Birmingham, UK. He is a Principal Consultant at SNC-Lavalin. Early life and education Born in Birmingham, Chamberlain always enjoyed mathematics at school and, despite a lack of encouragement from his teachers, studied a BSc in Mathematics at Coventry Polytechnic, graduating in 1991. He then moved to Loughborough University, where he achieved an MSc in Industrial Mathematical Modelling in 1993. In 2014, he completed a PhD at Portsmouth University, under the supervision of Professor Andrew Osbaldestin entitled "Extension of the gamble...
Go to Profile#42370
Ehsan Naraghi
#42383
Overall Influence
1926 - 2012 (86 years)
Ehsān Narāghi was an Iranian sociologist, writer and Farah Pahlavi adviser Biography During his high school he went to Dar ol-Fonoon in Tehran. Then he studied sociology in the University of Geneva and received his PhD at Sorbonne University in Paris.
Go to Profile#42371
Kevin R. Cope
#42384
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Kevin R. Cope is the author of Seeing the Big Picture, a business self-improvement book. He is the co-founder and CEO of Acumen Learning, where he developed the Five Business Drivers model , which was designed to help companies to improve employee engagement and to increase their business acumen.
Go to Profile#42372
Nicky Jam
#42385
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Nick Rivera Caminero , known professionally as Nicky Jam, is an American singer and actor. He is best known for hits such as "X", "Travesuras", "En la Cama", "Te Busco", "El Perdón", "Hasta el Amanecer", and "El Amante"; the latter three are from his 2017 album Fénix. He has frequently collaborated with other Latin artists such as Daddy Yankee, J Balvin, Ozuna, Plan B and Anuel AA. While his early music exemplified traditional fast-paced reggaeton, his newer compositions place more emphasis on sung vocals and romantic lyrics.
Go to Profile#42373
Rudolf Stephan
#42386
Overall Influence
1925 - 2019 (94 years)
Rudolf Stephan was a German musicologist. Life Stephan was born in Bochum. After studying violin at the conservatory, he entered the Institute of Heidelberg, where he studied musicology at the University under the direction of Wolfgang Fortner. With Heinrich Besseler, Stephan went to the University of Göttingen, where he obtained his doctorate in 1950 with a work on Die Tenores der Motetten ältesten Stils by musicologist Rudolf Gerber . Carl Dahlhaus, Ludwig Finscher and Joachim Kaiser were among his classmates. He became known to the German-speaking public at large as the publisher of volume five of Das Fischer Lexikon's "Language", published in the Fischer Library in Frankfurt in 1957.
Go to Profile#42374
Robert F. Stambaugh
#42387
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Robert F. Stambaugh is an American economist, who specializes in econometrics and finance. Early life and education Stambaugh graduated from the University of Chicago in 1981. Career Stambaugh served as the editor of the Journal of Finance from July 2003 to June 2006 after which he returned to spending most of his time on research and teaching. His research focuses on empirical asset pricing, and he often uses Bayesian analysis in his papers. He was the president of American Finance Association.
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Manuel Ballester
#42388
Overall Influence
1919 - 2005 (86 years)
Manuel Ballester Boix was a Spanish chemist. Biography He received his degree at the University of Barcelona in 1944, his doctorate in Madrid, and finished his training at Harvard University in 1951. In 1944 he formed a team at the Spanish National Research Council. His work has largely been in kinetics and organic chemistry.
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Salvatore Settis
#42389
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Salvatore Settis is an Italian archaeologist and art historian. From 1994 to 1999 he was director of the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities in Los Angeles and from 1999 to 2010 of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa.
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Charles D. Aring
#42390
Overall Influence
#42378
Barbara Maria Stafford
#42391
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Barbara Maria Stafford is an art historian whose research focuses on the developments in imaging arts, optical sciences, and performance technologies since the Enlightenment. Early life and education Stafford is of European parentage and was born in Vienna, Austria. Her family immigrated to the United States when she was seven, first living in Ft. Monroe, Virginia. However, her American stepfather's job as a military attaché caused the family to move every few years to postings in cities including Leghorn and Rome, Italy; Yokohama, Japan; Kilene, Texas; and Ft. Knox, Kentucky.
Go to Profile#42379
Nicholas Christenfeld
#42392
Overall Influence
Nicholas Christenfeld is a former professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego until his dismissal in 2019. He first joined the department in 1991 and was a full professor from 2003 to 2019. Among other research, he has promulgated the Theory of Deadly Initials and the theory that infants resemble their fathers more closely than they do their mothers. More recently, he studied the tendency of people to choose purebred dogs which resembled them.
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Douglas H. Parker
#42393
Overall Influence
1926 - 2019 (93 years)
Douglas Hugh Parker was an American law school professor. He began his law teaching career as a Harry A. Bigelow Teaching Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School and later taught as a professor of law at the University of Colorado College of Law and the Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark Law School .
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Davina McCall
#42394
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Davina Lucy Pascale McCall is an English television presenter. She was the presenter of the reality show Big Brother during its run on Channel 4 between 2000 and 2010. She also hosted Channel 4's Streetmate , The Million Pound Drop , Five Minutes to a Fortune , and The Jump , as well as ITV's The Biggest Loser , Long Lost Family , and This Time Next Year . McCall was a regular co-presenter of the Comic Relief annual telethons from 2005 to 2015.
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Andy Roberts
#42395
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Sir Anderson Montgomery Everton Roberts, KCN is a former Antiguan first-class cricketer who is considered the father of modern West Indian fast bowling. Roberts played Test cricket for the West Indies, twice taking seven wickets in a Test innings, and was a member of the team that won both the 1975 Cricket World Cup and the 1979 Cricket World Cup respectively. Arriving in England in 1972, he played first-class cricket for Hampshire County Cricket Club and then later for Leicestershire County Cricket Club.
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Andrés Gimeno
#42396
Overall Influence
1937 - 2019 (82 years)
Andrés Gimeno Tolaguera was a Spanish tennis player. His greatest achievement came in 1972, when he won the French Open and became the oldest first-time Grand Slam champion in the Open era at 34 years of age.
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Sylvester Turner
#42397
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Sylvester Turner is an American attorney and politician who is the 62nd mayor of Houston, Texas. A member of the Democratic Party, Turner was a member of the Texas House of Representatives from 1989 until 2016. He attended the University of Houston and Harvard Law School. Turner ran for mayor of Houston in 1991, losing in the runoff election to Bob Lanier. He lost again in 2003, coming in third and thus missing the runoff.
Go to Profile#42385
Myres S. McDougal
#42398
Overall Influence
1906 - 1998 (92 years)
Myres Smith McDougal was a scholar of international law and Sterling Professor of International Law at the Yale Law School, where he taught for fifty years. He also taught at New York Law School. He was an influential proponent of a "policy-oriented" approach to international law that became associated with Yale Law School.
Go to Profile#42386
Deborah Black
#42399
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Deborah Black is a Canadian philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. She is known for her works on Islamic philosophy. Books Logic and Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990
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Marc Zvi Brettler
#42400
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Marc Brettler is an American biblical scholar, and the Bernice and Morton Lerner Professor in Judaic Studies at Duke University. He earned his B.A., M.A., and PhD from Brandeis University, where he previously served as Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies. He researches biblical metaphors, the Bible and gender, biblical historical texts, the book of Psalms, and the post-biblical reception of the Hebrew Bible, including in the New Testament. He is a co-founder of the website thetorah.com, which integrates critical and traditional methods of studying the Bible.
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Andrew Sawyer
#42401
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Andrew "Andy" Sawyer is a librarian, critic and editor, as well as an active part of science fiction fandom . He was educated at the Duke of York's Royal Military School, Dover and the University of East Anglia. He is married with two daughters.
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Ricardo Zonta
#42402
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Ricardo Luiz Zonta is a Brazilian professional racing driver. He currently competes full-time in the Brazilian Stock Car Pro Series, driving the No. 10 Toyota Corolla E210 for RCM Motorsport. Early career Born in Curitiba, Brazil, Zonta began karting in 1987, winning his first race shortly thereafter. The following year, he was runner-up for the Curitiba Karting Championship, and in 1991, he won the title. He continued karting until 1992, finishing fourth in the São Paulo Karting Championship before progressing to single-seaters for 1993. He finished 6th in the Brazilian Formula Chevrolet Championship, and then in 1994, came fifth in the Brazilian Formula Three Championship.
Go to Profile#42390
Paul Bradshaw
#42403
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Professor Paul Bradshaw is an online journalist and blogger, who leads the MA in Data Journalism at Birmingham City University. He manages his own blog, the Online Journalism Blog , and was the co-founder of Help Me Investigate, an investigative journalism website funded by Channel 4 and Screen WM. He has written for journalism.co.uk, Press Gazette, The Guardian's Data Blog, Nieman Reports and the Poynter Institute in the US. From 2010 to 2015 he was also a visiting professor at City University's School of Journalism in London. From 2015 to 2020 he worked with the BBC England data unit and sin...
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Paloma Gay y Blasco
#42404
Overall Influence
Paloma Gay y Blasco is a social anthropologist specialising in gender and Spanish Gitanos . She is a full-time lecturer at University of St Andrews and has published two books and several articles, including Gypsies in Madrid: Sex, Gender, and the Performance of Identity and with Huon Wardle "How to Read Ethnography" .
Go to Profile#42392
Richard Pillard
#42405
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Richard Colestock Pillard is a professor of psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine. He was the first openly gay psychiatrist in the United States. Early life and family Pillard was born in Springfield, Ohio. He briefly attended Swarthmore College before transferring to Antioch College, where his father Basil H. Pillard was an English Professor. Pillard received his B.A. from Antioch. He then earned his M.D. from University of Rochester, with his internship at Boston City Hospital.
Go to Profile#42393
David Neiman
#42406
Overall Influence
1921 - 2004 (83 years)
David Neiman was a renowned scholar in the fields of Biblical Studies, Jewish history, and the long and often complicated relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jews. Early life and education Born in Russia in 1921, he escaped from the Soviet Union to the United States with his family in 1923. Raised in Brooklyn, New York in a traditional, observant Jewish family, Neiman studied in a Yeshiva elementary school, attended public high school and enrolled in City College of New York in 1938
Go to Profile#42394
Lucien Hardy
#42407
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Lucien Hardy is a British-Canadian theoretical physicist currently based at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. Hardy is best known for his work on the foundation of quantum physics, including the Hardy's paradox thought experiment, and his influential work in quantum field theory, which seeks to reconcile quantum mechanics to general relativity.
Go to Profile#42395
Mohammad Rawas
#42408
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Mohammad Rawas or Mohammad El Rawas is a Lebanese painter and printmaker. He studied arts at the Lebanese University, then moved to London and studied Printmaking at the Slade School of Fine Art. He currently lives and works in Beirut, where he taught at the Lebanese University and the American University of Beirut.
Go to Profile#42396
Melvin Stephens Jr.
#42409
Overall Influence
Melvin "Mel" Stephens Jr. is an American economist and professor of economics and public policy in the economics department and the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Academic Research Council of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. His research is in the areas of displaced workers, household consumption, and retirement decisions. He has been nominated as an officer of the American Economic Association.
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Julius Malema
#42410
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Julius Sello Malema is a South African politician who is a Member of Parliament and the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters , a populist far-left party with a distinct military styling which he founded in 2013. He was formerly the President of the African National Congress Youth League from 2008 until his expulsion from the party in 2012.
Go to Profile#42398
Julius Getman
#42411
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Julius Gerson Getman is a professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law, and a noted labor and employment law scholar and labor historian. Education Getman received his bachelor's degree from the City College of New York in 1953. He then attended Harvard Law School, where he received his Bachelor of Laws in 1958 and his master of laws in 1963. He began consulting for various labor and management groups thereafter, and became a noted arbitrator in labor disputes.
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Siobhan Fahey
#42412
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Siobhan Maire Fahey is an Irish singer whose vocal range is a light contralto. She was a founding member of the British/Irish girl group Bananarama, who have had ten top-10 hits including the US number one hit single "Venus". She later formed the Brit Award- and Ivor Novello Award-winning musical act Shakespears Sister, who had a UK number one hit with the 1992 single "Stay". Fahey joined the other original members of Bananarama for a 2017 UK tour, and, in 2018, a North America and Europe tour.
Go to Profile#42400
Carl Erskine
#42413
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Carl Daniel Erskine , nicknamed "Oisk", is an American former baseball pitcher in Major League Baseball who played his entire career for the Brooklyn / Los Angeles Dodgers from 1948 through 1959. He was a pitching mainstay on Dodger teams which won five National League pennants and the 1955 World Series.
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