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
#4601
Steven E. Jones
#4608
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Steven Earl Jones is an American physicist. Among scientists, Jones became known for his research into muon-catalyzed fusion and geo-fusion. Jones is also known for his association with 9/11 conspiracy theories. Jones has claimed that mere airplane crashes and fires could not have resulted in so rapid and complete a fall of the World Trade Center Towers and 7 World Trade Center, suggesting controlled demolition instead. In late 2006, some time after Brigham Young University officials placed him on paid leave, he elected to retire in an agreement with BYU. Jones continued research and writin...
Go to Profile#4602
Adam Roberts
#4609
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Sir Adam Roberts is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford, a senior research fellow in Oxford University's Department of Politics and International Relations, and an emeritus fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#4603
Yevgeny Yasin
#4610
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Yevgeny Grigoryevich Yasin was a Russian economist. He served as the economy minister of Russia from 1994 to 1997. Until July 2021, he was an academic supervisor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. He was a regular contributor to the Echo of Moscow radio station.
Go to Profile#4604
Kevin Granata
#4611
Overall Influence
1961 - 2007 (46 years)
Kevin P. Granata was an American professor in multiple departments including the Departments of Engineering, Science and Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University , in Blacksburg, Virginia. Granata held an additional academic appointment as a professor in the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and was an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery. During the Virginia Tech shooting, he shepherded students into his office in order to safeguard them. He was then killed by Seung...
Go to Profile#4605
Susan Estrich
#4612
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Susan Estrich is an American lawyer, professor, author, political operative, and political commentator. She is known for serving as the campaign manager for Michael Dukakis in 1988 and for serving in 2016 as legal counsel to the former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes.
Go to Profile#4606
George C. Wolfe
#4613
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
George Costello Wolfe is an American playwright and director of theater and film. He won a Tony Award in 1993 for directing Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and another Tony Award in 1996 for his direction of the musical Bring in 'da Noise/Bring in 'da Funk. He served as Artistic Director of The Public Theater from 1993 until 2004.
Go to Profile#4607
Zaki Naguib Mahmoud
#4614
Overall Influence
1905 - 1993 (88 years)
Zaki Naguib Mahmoud was an Egyptian intellectual and thinker, and is considered a pioneer in modern Arabic philosophical thought. He was described by Abbas Mahmoud al-Akkad as "the philosopher of authors and author of philosophers". Mahmoud adhered to logical positivism and adopted science interpretation with social motivations to reconcile the Arab tradition with modernism. Mahmoud defines the "Arab tradition" as the configuration of techniques by which our ancestors lived, and he viewed logical positivism as the spirit of "Modernism".
Go to Profile#4608
Walter Willett
#4615
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Walter C. Willett is an American physician and nutrition researcher. He is the Fredrick John Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and was the chair of its department of nutrition from 1991 to 2017. He is also a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Go to Profile#4609
Frank Sulloway
#4616
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Frank Jones Sulloway is an American psychologist. He is a visiting scholar at the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley and a visiting professor in the Department of Psychology. After finishing secondary school at Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island, Sulloway studied at Harvard College and later earned a PhD in the history of science at Harvard. He was a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#4610
Katharine Hepburn
#4617
Overall Influence
1907 - 2003 (96 years)
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress whose career as a Hollywood leading lady spanned six decades. She was known for her headstrong independence, spirited personality, and outspokenness, cultivating a screen persona that matched this public image, and regularly playing strong-willed, sophisticated women. Her work was in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and earned her various accolades, including four Academy Awards for Best Actress—a record for any performer. In 1999, Hepburn was named the greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the America...
Go to Profile#4611
Harvey Itano
#4618
Overall Influence
1920 - 2010 (90 years)
Harvey Akio Itano was an American biochemist best known for his work on the molecular basis of sickle cell anemia and other diseases. In collaboration with Linus Pauling, Itano used electrophoresis to demonstrate the difference between normal hemoglobin and sickle cell hemoglobin; their 1949 paper "Sickle Cell Anemia, a Molecular Disease" was a landmark in both molecular medicine and protein electrophoresis, though the use of electrophoresis to separate hemoglobin variants had been pioneered by Maud Menten and collaborators some years earlier.
Go to Profile#4612
Chris Burden
#4619
Overall Influence
1946 - 2015 (69 years)
Christopher Lee Burden was an American artist working in performance art, sculpture and installation art. Burden became known in the 1970s for his performance art works, including Shoot , where he arranged for a friend to shoot him in the arm with a small-caliber rifle. A prolific artist, Burden created many well-known installations, public artworks and sculptures before his death in 2015.
Go to Profile#4613
Alfred E. Kahn
#4620
Overall Influence
1917 - 2010 (93 years)
Alfred Edward Kahn was an American economist and political advisor who specialized in regulation and deregulation. He was an important influence in the deregulation of the airline and energy industries. Commonly known as the "Father of Airline Deregulation," he chaired the Civil Aeronautics Board during the period when it ended its regulation of the airline industry, paving the way for low-cost airlines, from People Express to Southwest Airlines.
Go to Profile#4614
Bill Sienkiewicz
#4621
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Boleslav William Felix Robert Sienkiewicz is an American artist known for his work in comic books—particularly for Marvel Comics' New Mutants, Moon Knight, and Elektra: Assassin. He is the co-creator of the character David Haller / Legion, the basis for the FX television series Legion.
Go to Profile#4615
Carl Shapiro
#4622
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Carl Shapiro is an American economist and academic who serves as the Transamerica Professor of Business Strategy at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business. He is the co-author, along with Hal Varian of Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy, published by the Harvard Business School Press. On February 23, 2011, The Wall Street Journal reported that President Barack Obama intended to nominate Shapiro to his Council of Economic Advisers.
Go to Profile#4616
Calvin Quate
#4623
Overall Influence
1923 - 2019 (96 years)
Calvin Forrest Quate was one of the inventors of the atomic force microscope. He was a professor emeritus of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Education He earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Utah College of Engineering in 1944, and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1950.
Go to Profile#4617
Stephen Sondheim
#4624
Overall Influence
1930 - 2021 (91 years)
Stephen Joshua Sondheim was an American composer and lyricist. Regarded as one of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, he is credited for reinventing the American musical. With his frequent collaborations with Harold Prince and James Lapine, Sondheim's Broadway musicals tackled unexpected themes that ranged beyond the genre's traditional subjects, while addressing darker elements of the human experience. His music and lyrics were tinged with complexity, sophistication, and ambivalence about various aspects of life.
Go to Profile#4618
Sylvia Earle
#4625
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Sylvia Alice Earle is an American marine biologist, oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer. She has been a National Geographic Explorer at Large since 1998. Earle was the first female chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and was named by Time Magazine as its first Hero for the Planet in 1998.
Go to Profile#4619
Tony F. Chan
#4626
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Tony Fan-Cheong Chan is a Chinese American mathematician who has been serving as President of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology since 2018. Prior that, he was President of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology from 2009 to 2018.
Go to Profile#4620
Robert S. P. Beekes
#4627
Overall Influence
1937 - 2017 (80 years)
Robert Stephen Paul Beekes was a Dutch linguist who was emeritus professor of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics at Leiden University and an author of many monographs on the Proto-Indo-European language.
Go to Profile#4621
I. Bernard Cohen
#4628
Overall Influence
1914 - 2003 (89 years)
I. Bernard Cohen was the Victor S. Thomas Professor of the history of science at Harvard University and the author of many books on the history of science and, in particular, Isaac Newton and Benjamin Franklin.
Go to Profile#4622
Latanya Sweeney
#4629
Overall Influence
Latanya Arvette Sweeney is an American computer scientist. She is the Daniel Paul Professor of the Practice of Government and Technology at the Harvard Kennedy School and in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. She is the founder and director of the Public Interest Tech Lab, founded in 2021 with a $3 million grant from the Ford Foundation as well as the Data Privacy Lab. She is the current Faculty Dean in Currier House at Harvard.
Go to Profile#4623
Emanuel Schegloff
#4630
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Emanuel Abraham Schegloff is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles. Along with his collaborators Harvey Sacks and Gail Jefferson, Schegloff is regarded as the creator of the field of Conversation Analysis.
Go to Profile#4624
Mattias Gardell
#4631
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Hans Bertil Mattias Gardell is a Swedish historian and scholar of comparative religion. He is the current holder of the Nathan Söderblom Chair of Comparative Religion at Uppsala University, Sweden. He was the first Lenin Award laureate in 2009, and received The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities Award for Distinguished Research in the Humanities, the Royal Gold Medal, in 2003.
Go to Profile#4625
Andrei Lankov
#4632
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Andrei Nikolaevich Lankov is a Russian scholar of Asia and a specialist in Korean studies and Director of Korea Risk Group, the parent company of NK News and NK Pro. Early life and education Lankov was born on 26 July 1963, in Leningrad, Soviet Union . He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at Leningrad State University in 1986 and 1989, respectively. He also attended Pyongyang's Kim Il-sung University in 1985.
Go to Profile#4626
Anne Osborn Krueger
#4633
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Anne Osborn Krueger is an American economist. She was the World Bank Chief Economist from 1982 to 1986, and the first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2006. She is currently the senior research professor of international economics at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. She also is a senior fellow of Center for International Development and the Herald L. and Caroline Ritch Emeritus Professor of Sciences and Humanities' Economics Department at Stanford University.
Go to Profile#4627
Richard Taylor
#4634
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Richard Lawrence Taylor is a British mathematician working in the field of number theory. He is currently the Barbara Kimball Browning Professor in Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. Taylor received the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics "for numerous breakthrough results in the theory of automorphic forms, including the Taniyama–Weil conjecture, the local Langlands conjecture for general linear groups, and the Sato–Tate conjecture." He also received the 2007 Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences for his work on the Langlands program with Robert Langlands. He also served on th...
Go to Profile#4628
David Pogue
#4635
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
David Welch Pogue is an American technology and science writer and TV presenter, and correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning. He has hosted 18 Nova specials on PBS, including Nova ScienceNow, the Making Stuff series in 2011 and 2013, and Hunting the Elements in 2012. Pogue has written or co-written seven books in the For Dummies series, and in 1999, he launched his own series of computer how-to books called the Missing Manual series, which now includes more than 100 titles. He also wrote The World According to Twitter and Pogue's Basics , a New York Times bestseller.
Go to Profile#4629
Lillian Faderman
#4636
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Lillian Faderman is an American historian whose books on lesbian history and LGBT history have earned critical praise and awards. The New York Times named three of her books on its "Notable Books of the Year" list. In addition, The Guardian named her book, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, one of the Top 10 Books of Radical History. She was a professor of English at California State University, Fresno , which bestowed her emeritus status, and a visiting professor at University of California, Los Angeles . She retired from academe in 2007. Faderman has been referred to as "the mother of lesbian h...
Go to Profile#4630
Alan Moore
#4637
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Alan Moore is an English author known primarily for his work in comic books including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Ballad of Halo Jones, Swamp Thing, Batman: The Killing Joke, and From Hell. He is widely recognised among his peers and critics as one of the best comic book writers in the English language. Moore has occasionally used such pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, Brilburn Logue, and Translucia Baboon; also, reprints of some of his work have been credited to The Original Writer when Moore requested that his name be removed.
Go to Profile#4631
Mark D. Shriver
#4638
Overall Influence
Mark D. Shriver is an American population geneticist. He leads genetic research at the Pennsylvania State University. Education Shriver studied Biology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, earning a B.S in 1987. He furthered his studies and earned a Ph.D. in Genetics at the University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston in 1993.
Go to Profile#4632
Neeraj Kayal
#4639
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Neeraj Kayal is an Indian computer scientist and mathematician noted for development of the AKS primality test, along with Manindra Agrawal and Nitin Saxena. Kayal was born and raised in Guwahati, India.
Go to Profile#4633
Richard Davidson
#4640
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
#4634
Alberto Granado
#4641
Overall Influence
1922 - 2011 (89 years)
Alberto Granado Jiménez was an Argentine–Cuban biochemist, doctor, writer, and scientist. He was also the youthful friend and traveling companion of Che Guevara during their 1952 motorcycle tour in Latin America. Granado later founded the University of Santiago de Cuba School of Medicine. He authored the memoir Traveling with Che Guevara: The Making of a Revolutionary, which served as a reference for the 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries, in which he was played by Rodrigo de la Serna. An elderly Alberto Granado makes a short appearance at the end of the film.
Go to Profile#4635
Henry Manne
#4642
Overall Influence
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Henry G. Manne was an American writer and academic, considered a founder of the law and economics discipline. He was Dean Emeritus of the George Mason University School of Law. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Manne held a B.A. in economics from Vanderbilt University , J.D. from the University of Chicago , LLM from Yale University , J.S.D. from Yale University , LL.D. from Seattle University , LL.D. from the Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala and LLD from George Mason University .
Go to Profile#4636
Ziauddin Sardar
#4643
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Ziauddin Sardar is a British-Pakistani scholar, award-winning writer, cultural critic and public intellectual who specialises in Muslim thought, the future of Islam, futurology and science and cultural relations. The author and editor of more than 50 books, Prospect magazine has named him as one of Britain's top 100 public intellectuals and The Independent newspaper calls him: 'Britain's own Muslim polymath'.
Go to Profile#4637
Claude Berge
#4644
Overall Influence
1926 - 2002 (76 years)
Claude Jacques Berge was a French mathematician, recognized as one of the modern founders of combinatorics and graph theory. Biography and professional history Claude Berge's parents were André Berge and Geneviève Fourcade. André Berge was a physician and psychoanalyst who, in addition to his professional work, had published several novels. He was the son of the René Berge, a mining engineer, and Antoinette Faure. Félix François Faure was Antoinette Faure's father; he was President of France from 1895 to 1899. André Berge married Geneviève in 1924, and Claude was the second of their six children.
Go to Profile#4638
Robert B. Laughlin
#4645
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Robert Betts Laughlin is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University. Along with Horst L. Störmer of Columbia University and Daniel C. Tsui of Princeton University, he was awarded a share of the 1998 Nobel Prize in physics for their explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect.
Go to Profile#4639
Gene Robinson
#4646
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Vicky Gene Robinson is a retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. Robinson was elected bishop coadjutor in 2003 and succeeded as bishop diocesan in March 2004. Before becoming bishop, he served as Canon to the Ordinary for the Diocese of New Hampshire.
Go to Profile#4640
Keith Stanovich
#4647
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Keith E. Stanovich is a Canadian psychologist. He is an Emeritus Professor of Applied Psychology and Human Development at the University of Toronto and former Canada Research Chair of Applied Cognitive Science. His research areas are the psychology of reasoning and the psychology of reading. His research in the field of reading was fundamental to the emergence of today's scientific consensus about what reading is, how it works, and what it does for the mind. His research on the cognitive basis of rationality has been featured in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences and in recent books by Yale University Press and University of Chicago Press.
Go to Profile#4641
Leo Sternbach
#4648
Overall Influence
1908 - 2005 (97 years)
Leo Sternbach was a Polish American chemist who is credited with first synthesizing benzodiazepines, the main class of tranquilizers. Background and family Sternbach was born on May 7, 1908, in Opatija, Kingdom of Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire, to an upper middle class Jewish family. He had a younger brother, Giusi. His father Michael Abracham Sternbach was from the Polish city of Przemyśl in Galicia , and his mother Piroska Sternbach was from Orosháza, Hungary. Sternbach's parents met and married in Opatija where they both lived. The family lived in modest conditions, in a rented four-r...
Go to Profile#4642
George MacDonald Fraser
#4649
Overall Influence
1925 - 2008 (83 years)
George MacDonald Fraser was a Scottish author and screenwriter. He is best known for a series of works that featured the character Flashman. Over the course of his career he wrote eleven novels and one short-story collection in the Flashman series of novels, as well as non-fiction, short stories, novels and screenplays—including those for the James Bond film Octopussy and an adaptation of his own novel Royal Flash.
Go to Profile#4643
Chih-Tang Sah
#4650
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Chih-Tang "Tom" Sah is a Chinese-American electronics engineer and condensed matter physicist. He is best known for inventing CMOS logic with Frank Wanlass at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1963. CMOS is now used in nearly all modern very large-scale integration semiconductor devices.
Go to Profile#4644
Edward Shils
#4651
Overall Influence
1910 - 1995 (85 years)
Edward Albert Shils was a Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and in Sociology at the University of Chicago and an influential sociologist. He was known for his research on the role of intellectuals and their relations to power and public policy. His work was honored in 1983 when he was awarded the Balzan Prize. In 1979, he was selected by the National Council on the Humanities to give the Jefferson Lecture, the highest award given by the U.S. federal government for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.
Go to Profile#4645
Mario Benedetti
#4652
Overall Influence
1920 - 2009 (89 years)
Mario Benedetti Farrugia , was a Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet and an integral member of the Generación del 45. Despite publishing more than 80 books and being published in twenty languages, he was not well known in the English-speaking world. In the Spanish-speaking world he is considered one of Latin America's most important writers of the latter half of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#4646
Jill Lepore
#4653
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Jill Lepore is an American historian and journalist. She is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she has contributed since 2005. She writes about American history, law, literature, and politics.
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Jorge Amado
#4654
Overall Influence
1912 - 2001 (89 years)
Jorge Leal Amado de Faria was a Brazilian writer of the modernist school. He remains the best known of modern Brazilian writers, with his work having been translated into some 49 languages and popularized in film, including Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands in 1976. His work reflects the image of a Mestiço Brazil and is marked by religious syncretism. He depicted a cheerful and optimistic country that was beset, at the same time, with deep social and economic differences.
Go to Profile#4648
George L. Engel
#4655
Overall Influence
1913 - 1999 (86 years)
George Libman Engel was an American internist and psychiatrist. He spent most of his career at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, New York. He is best known for his formulation of the biopsychosocial model, a general theory of illness and healing.
Go to Profile#4649
Franz Beckenbauer
#4656
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Franz Anton Beckenbauer is a German former professional football player and manager. Nicknamed "" , he is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the sport. A versatile player who started out as a midfielder, Beckenbauer made his name as a central defender. He is often credited as having invented the role of the modern sweeper . With success at club and international level, he is one of nine players to have won the FIFA World Cup, the European Champions Cup and the Ballon d'Or.
Go to Profile#4650
Donald Spoto
#4657
Overall Influence
1941 - 2023 (82 years)
Donald Spoto was an American biographer and theologian. He was known for his bestselling biographies of people in the worlds of film and theater, and for his books on theology and spirituality. Spoto has written 29 books, including biographies of Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, Ingrid Bergman, James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and Alan Bates. The BBC/HBO television film The Girl , about Tippi Hedren's experience during the filming of The Birds , was based in part on Spoto's work on Hitchcock.
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