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
#1
Wasfia Nazreen
#23482
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Wasfia Nazreen is a Bangladeshi mountaineer, activist, environmentalist, social worker and writer. Nazreen is the first Bengali and Bangladeshi to scale K2, the world's second highest and most dangerous peak becoming one of the 40 women in history since 1954 to have successfully scaled K2.
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Susan M. Phillips
#34262
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Susan Meredith Phillips is an American economist who served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 1991 to 1998. She was the third woman to sit on the Board. After leaving the Fed, Phillips served as dean of the George Washington University School of Business from 1998 to 2010.
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Elizabeth Kiss
#41787
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Elizabeth Kiss is an American philosopher and academic administrator, specialising in moral and political philosophy. Since 2018, she has been the Warden of Rhodes House, Oxford University, and CEO of the Rhodes Trust. She is responsible for administering the Rhodes Scholarship, providing pastoral support to existing Rhodes Scholars and coordinating the Rhodes Trust. She is the first woman to hold this role. Previously she served as president of Agnes Scott College.
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Loretta Ross
#44619
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Loretta J. Ross is an American academic, feminist, and activist who advocates for reproductive justice, especially among women of color. As an activist, Ross has written on reproductive justice activism and the history of African American women.
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Katherine Harris
#48253
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Katherine Harris is an American politician from Florida. A Republican, she served in the Florida Senate from 1994 to 1998, as Secretary of State of Florida from 1999 to 2002, and as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Florida's 13th congressional district from 2003 to 2007. Harris lost her 2006 campaign for a United States Senate seat from Florida, after a significant loss of party support.
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Jennifer Nettles
#51367
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Jennifer Odessa Nettles is an American singer, songwriter, actress and record producer. Nettles is the lead vocalist of the duo Sugarland alongside Kristian Bush, and prior to this she fronted the Atlanta-based bands Soul Miner's Daughter and Jennifer Nettles Band. She charted as a duet partner on the country version of rock band Bon Jovi's 2006 single "Who Says You Can't Go Home", a number-one hit on the Billboard country chart. Throughout her career, she has acquired numerous accolades, including three Grammy Awards, four Country Music Association Awards, and an American Music Award for her...
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Anne Firor Scott
#52632
Overall Influence
1921 - 2019 (98 years)
Anne Firor Scott was an American historian, specializing in the history of women and of the South. Early life and education Scott was born April 24, 1921, in Montezuma, Georgia. In 1941 she graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Georgia. She then worked for the National League of Women Voters in Washington, D.C. She earned a master's degree in political science from Northwestern University in 1944. She married Andrew MacKay Scott in 1947. She then began her doctoral studies at Radcliffe College, Harvard University, while raising their children, a daughter and two ...
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Beverly Roberts Gaventa
#53429
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Beverly Roberts Gaventa is Distinguished Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Baylor University and Helen H.P. Manson Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis Emerita at Princeton Theological Seminary.
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Marsha Norman
#62090
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Marsha Norman is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play 'night, Mother. She wrote the book and lyrics for such Broadway musicals as The Secret Garden, for which she won a Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and The Red Shoes, as well as the libretto for the musical The Color Purple and the book for the musical The Bridges of Madison County. She is co-chair of the playwriting department at The Juilliard School.
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Sue Jinks-Robertson
#65874
Overall Influence
Sue Jinks-Robertson is an American professor of genetics and microbiology. She is currently a professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at the Duke University School of Medicine. In May 2019, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She has published over 100 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals.
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Jordan Casteel
#73229
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (35 years)
Jordan Casteel is an American figurative painter. Casteel typically paints intimate portraits of friends and family members as well as neighbors and strangers in Harlem and New York. Casteel lives and works in New York City.
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Carolyn Yackel
#75122
Overall Influence
Carolyn Yackel is an American mathematician who has been Professor of Mathematics at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia since 2001. From 1998 to 2001 she was Max Zorn Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Indiana University.
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Thomas W. Whitaker
#83009
Overall Influence
1904 - 1993 (89 years)
Thomas Wallace Whitaker was an American botanist and horticulturist who spent most of his career working as a geneticist for the United States Department of Agriculture . He specialized in the study of economically important plants such as squashes, investigating their systematics and resistance to disease.
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Kimberly Belle
#91526
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Kimberly Belle is an international bestselling American novelist. Life and career The daughter of a chemist and a speech pathologist, Belle grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. She earned a BA from Agnes Scott College. Before she turned to writing fiction, Belle worked in marketing and fundraising for Habitat for Humanity, the YWCA, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the United Way.
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Marilyn Breen
#98612
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Marilyn Janet Breen is a professor of mathematics at the University of Oklahoma. Her research involves geometry, including visibility and orthogonal polygons. Life and work Breen graduated in 1966 from Agnes Scott College, and received her Ph.D. from Clemson University in 1970 under the supervision of William Ray Hare Jr. She joined the Oklahoma faculty in 1971 and was promoted to full professor in 1982.
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Virginia Warfield
#104401
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Virginia "Ginger" Patricia McShane Warfield is an American mathematician and mathematical educator. She received the Louise Hay Award from the Association for Women in Mathematics in 2007. Education Warfield's father was mathematician Edward J. McShane. She received her Ph.D. in mathematics from Brown University in 1971. Her doctoral advisor was Wendell Fleming and the title of her dissertation was A Stochastic Maximum Principle.
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Anita Barbee
#114904
Overall Influence
Anita P. Barbee is an American psychologist and social worker. She is a Professor & Distinguished University Scholar at the University of Louisville's Kent School of Social Work. Education Barbee received her B.A. in English and psychology from Agnes Scott College in 1982. She then enrolled at the University of Georgia, where she received her M.A. and Ph.D. in 1985 and 1988, respectively. Her Ph.D. thesis, entitled The Effects of Positive and Negative Moods on the Cheering Up Process in Close Relationships, received the Dissertation Award from the International Association for Relationship Research .
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Andrea Abrams
#160229
Overall Influence
Dr. Andrea Abrams is an American anthropologist, Associate Professor, President of the Association of Black Anthropologists and Author of God and Blackness: Race, Gender and Identity in a Middle Class Afrocentric Church. Andrea is currently an associate professor of Anthropology, Gender Studies and African American Studies at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, as well as the Chair of the Gender Studies Program. In 2018, she was named associate vice president for diversity affairs & special assistant to the president, and in 2021 was named vice president for diversity, inclusion, and equity.
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Tommie Dora Barker
1888 - 1978 (90 years)
Tommie Dora Barker was an American librarian and founding dean of Emory Library School in Atlanta, Georgia. She also served as a regional field agent, representing southern libraries, for the American Library Association.
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Anna Irwin Young
1873 - 1920 (47 years)
Anna Irwin Young was an American professor of mathematics, physics and astronomy and in 1916 was a charter member of the Mathematical Association of America. Biography Young was born in what is now Chicago Heights, Illinois on November 25, 1873. Her father was Rev. Samuel Young of Ireland, and her mother was Eliza Caskey Young.
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