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
Peter Suber
#3813
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Peter Dain Suber is an American philosopher specializing in the philosophy of law and open access to knowledge. He is a Senior Researcher at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication, and Director of the Harvard Open Access Project . Suber is known as a leading voice in the open access movement, and as the creator of the game Nomic.
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Robert T. Pennock
#3863
Overall Influence
Robert T. Pennock is a philosopher working on the Avida digital organism project at Michigan State University where he has been full professor since 2000. Pennock was a witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, testifying on behalf of the plaintiffs, and described how intelligent design is an updated form of creationism and not science, pointing out that the arguments were essentially the same as traditional creationist arguments with adjustments to the message to eliminate explicit mention of God and the Bible as well as adopting a postmodern deconstructionist language. ...
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Robert Quine
#5717
Overall Influence
1942 - 2004 (62 years)
Robert Wolfe Quine was an American guitarist. A native of Akron, Ohio, Quine worked with a wide range of musicians, though he himself remained relatively unknown. Critic Mark Deming wrote that "Quine's eclectic style embraced influences from jazz, rock, and blues players of all stripes, and his thoughtful technique and uncompromising approach led to rewarding collaborations with a number of visionary musicians."
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Peter D. Klein
#6305
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Peter David Klein is an American philosopher specializing in issues in epistemology who spent most of his career at Rutgers University. Education and career He received a BA at Earlham College , and an MA and PhD from Yale University .
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Manning Marable
#6557
Overall Influence
1950 - 2011 (61 years)
William Manning Marable was an American professor of public affairs, history and African-American Studies at Columbia University. Marable founded and directed the Institute for Research in African-American Studies. He wrote several texts and was active in numerous progressive political causes.
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Frances Moore Lappé
#7180
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Frances Moore Lappé is an American researcher and author in the field of food and democracy policy. She is the author of 20 books including the 2.5-million-copy selling 1971 book Diet for a Small Planet, which the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History describes as "one of the most influential political tracts of the times." She has co-founded three organizations that explore the roots of hunger, poverty, and environmental crises, as well as solutions emerging worldwide through what she calls "living democracy". Her latest work is a report entitled Crisis of Trust: How Can Democracies Protect Against Dangerous Lies? with Max Boland and Rachel Madison.
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Mary Haas
#8861
Overall Influence
1910 - 1996 (86 years)
Mary Rosamond Haas was an American linguist who specialized in North American Indian languages, Thai, and historical linguistics. She served as president of the Linguistic Society of America. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
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William O. Stephens
#13440
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
William O. Stephens , is an American philosopher and scholar of Stoicism. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Creighton University after retiring from teaching at their Omaha Campus in 2020. Biography Stephens was born in Lafayette, Indiana and grew up in West Lafayette where he attended West Lafayette Senior High School and began his study of ancient civilizations and Latin. He studied Philosophy at the College of Wooster for two years before transferring to Earlham College, where he earned his undergraduate degree. Stephens completed his graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, studying under Charles H.
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Tracy Hall
#15654
Overall Influence
1919 - 2008 (89 years)
Howard Tracy Hall was an American physical chemist and one of the early pioneers in the research of synthetic diamonds, using a press of his own design. Early life Howard Tracy Hall was born in Ogden, Utah in 1919. He often used the name H. Tracy Hall or, simply, Tracy Hall. He was a descendant of Mormon pioneers and grew up on a farm in Marriott, Utah. When still in the fourth grade, he announced his intention to work for General Electric. Hall attended Weber College for two years, and married Ida-Rose Langford in 1941. He went to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he received his BSc in 1942 and his MSc in the following year.
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Michael Shellenberger
#16252
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Michael D. Shellenberger is an American author and former public relations professional who writes about politics, the environment, climate change, and nuclear power. In his book San Fransicko, Shellenberger makes the argument that progressivism is linked to homelessness, drug addiction, and mental illness. He is a co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute and the California Peace Coalition. Shellenberger founded the pro-nuclear non-profit Environmental Progress in 2016.
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Larry E. Overman
#17559
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
#12
Jim Fowler
#20394
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
James Mark Fowler was an American professional zoologist and host of the acclaimed wildlife documentary television show Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Early years Born in Albany, Georgia, Fowler spent his youth in the town of Falls Church, Virginia, exploring all things in nature in the stream valley of Four Mile Run near his family home. He graduated from Westtown School in 1947, a Quaker college preparatory school in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and Earlham College in 1952.
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Bruce Link
#25776
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Bruce George Link is an American epidemiologist and sociologist who is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside. He is also a Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology and Sociomedical Sciences in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, a research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and the current president of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science . Bruce Link is probably best known for developing fundamental cause theory of social inequalities in health together with Jo Phela...
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Eva Feldman
#27263
Overall Influence
Eva Lucille Feldman is an American physician-scientist who is a leading authority on neurodegenerative disease. She serves as the Russell N. DeJong Professor of Neurology at the University of Michigan, as well as Director of the NeuroNetwork for Emerging Therapies and ALS Center of Excellence at Michigan Medicine. She was also named the James W. Albers Distinguished University Professor of Neurology.
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Maurice Manning
#27951
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Maurice Manning is an American poet. His first collection of poems, Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions, was awarded the Yale Younger Poets Award, chosen by W.S. Merwin. Since then he has published four collections of poetry . He teaches English and Creative Writing at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he oversees the Judy Gaines Young Book Award, and is a member of the poetry faculty of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.
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Simone Leigh
#29501
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Simone Leigh is an American artist from Chicago who works in New York City in the United States. She works in various media including sculpture, installations, video, performance, and social practice. Leigh has described her work as auto-ethnographic, and her interests include African art and vernacular objects, performance, and feminism. Her work is concerned with the marginalization of women of color and reframes their experience as central to society. Leigh has often said that her work is focused on “Black female subjectivity,” with an interest in complex interplays between various strands of history.
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Mat Johnson
#31863
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Mat Johnson is an American fiction writer who works in both prose and the comics format. In 2007, he was named the first USA James Baldwin Fellow by United States Artists. Life and career Johnson was born and raised in the Germantown and Mount Airy communities in Philadelphia.
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George A. Lopez
#42720
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
George A. Lopez is a founding faculty of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame where he holds the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. Chair in Peace Studies. Lopez researches state violence and coercion, especially economic sanctions, human rights, ethics and the use of force.
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Christopher Benfey
#44098
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Christopher Benfey is an American literary critic and Emily Dickinson scholar. He is the Mellon Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College. Early life and education Benfey was born in Merion, Pennsylvania, but spent most of his childhood in Richmond, Indiana. and attended The Putney School. His father was a German immigrant and his mother was from North Carolina. He began his undergraduate studies at Earlham College, where his father, Otto Theodor Benfey, was a professor in the Chemistry department, and completed his B.A. at Guilford College. Benfey holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature ...
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Michael C. Hall
#50547
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Michael Carlyle Hall is an American actor and singer best known for his roles as Dexter Morgan, the titular character in the Showtime series Dexter, and David Fisher in the HBO drama series Six Feet Under. These two roles collectively earned Hall a Golden Globe Award and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. He has also acted in Broadway shows and narrated audiobooks.
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Andrea Seabrook
#55056
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Andrea Seabrook is an American journalist reporting in various formats: radio, print, podcast & digital. She is known for her coverage of politics, Congress and the White House, and for her work hosting NPR's signature news programs, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, Talk of the Nation, and others.
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John T. Guthrie
#55211
Overall Influence
John T. Guthrie is a researcher and scholar in the area of student motivation as it relates to literacy. Education Guthrie received his bachelor's degree in psychology from Earlham College in 1964. He earned both his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Illinois, where he majored in educational psychology, completing his Ph.D. in 1968. While attending the University of Illinois, Guthrie worked as a research assistant from 1964 to 1968.
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J. Peter Burkholder
#55506
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
J. Peter Burkholder is an American musicologist and author. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He has written numerous monographs, essays, and journal articles on twentieth-century music, Charles Ives, musical borrowing, American music, musical meaning, analysis, and music history pedagogy. He is the principal author of A History of Western Music, 10th Edition, published by W. W. Norton & Company.
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Landrum Bolling
#59152
Overall Influence
1913 - 2018 (105 years)
Landrum Rymer Bolling was an American journalist and diplomat and a noted pacifist who was a leading expert and activist for peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict. He first worked as a war correspondent during and after World War II. He taught at Beloit College and Brown University before serving as president of Earlham College from 1958 to 1973. He was actively involved in the foreign policies of several presidential administrations, serving as an unofficial communication channel between the U.S. and the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Jimmy Carter's administration. He ...
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Charlie Nelms
#59857
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Charlie Nelms is an educator and administrator who served as the tenth chancellor of North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina. On July 26, 2012, after completing a five-year commitment to serve at the institution, Dr. Nelms announced his retirement, effective August 6, 2012. He currently is a contributing writer to The Huffington Post on educational issues and has founded Destination Graduation, a non-profit organization focused on increasing retention and graduation rates at the nation's historically black colleges and universities .
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Don Wildman
#60986
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Don Wildman is a podcast and documentary host. He is the current host and narrator of Mysteries at the Museum, Beyond the Unknown, Dark Tales with Don Wildman, and Buried Worlds with Don Wildman on the Travel Channel.
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Peter Lasersohn
#63140
Overall Influence
Peter Lasersohn is a professor of linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Education Ph.D. in Linguistics: Ohio State University, 1988M.A. in Linguistics: Ohio State University, 1985B.A. in German, French: Earlham College, 1981
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Grace Ji-Sun Kim
#64045
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Grace Ji-Sun Kim is a Korean-American theologian and Professor of Theology at Earlham School of Religion, Richmond, Indiana. She is best known for books and articles on the social and religious experiences of Korean women immigrants to North America.
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James N. Green
#78112
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
James Naylor Green is the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Professor of Modern Latin American History and Professor of Brazilian History and Culture at Brown University. Early life and education Green was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He attended Earlham College from 1968–72, where he studied political science and German. In 1992, he received a Master's degree with honors in Latin American Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. In 1996 he received a doctorate in Latin American history from University of California, Los Angeles, with a focus on Brazil.
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David Vlahov
#79465
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
David Vlahov is an American epidemiologist and professor emeritus at the UCSF School of Nursing, of which he previously served as dean from April 2011 to August 2016. He is also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Urban Health, and has been a member of the National Academy of Medicine since 2011. He is known for researching issues related to social determinants of health, such as the effectiveness of needle exchange programs. With Sandro Galea, he has also researched psychological responses to the September 11 attacks among residents of New York City.
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Robert M. Hirsch
#82760
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
Robert M. Hirsch is a research hydrologist and a former Associate Director for Water of the U.S. Geological Survey. As Associate Director , he was responsible for the water science programs of the USGS. These include water-related research, the collection of data on rivers and ground water, assessments of water quantity and quality. He served as the leader of USGS water science from 1994 to 2008 when Dr. Hirsch transitioned to the USGS National Research Program to rededicate himself to advancing the science on critical issues of climate change and long-term trends in water resources.
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Michael Seadle
#87654
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Michael S. Seadle is an information scientist and historian. He is professor for digital libraries at the Berlin School of Library and Information Science at Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin. He was Chair of the iSchools from 2014 to 2016. In 2017 he became the Executive Director with a term until March 2020. In 2016 he became one of the founders of the Humboldt-Elsevier Advanced Data and Text Centre at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
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Gregory Mahler
#90157
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Gregory S. Mahler is an American political scientist with a general interest in comparative politics, and more specific interests in legislatures and constitutionalism. Education Mahler completed his undergraduate studies at Oberlin College and received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Duke University.
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William E. Simkin
#95784
Overall Influence
1907 - 1992 (85 years)
William Edward Simkin was an American labor mediator and private arbitrator who worked on resolving strikes in major nationwide industries as the longest-serving head of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the nation's top labor mediator.
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Margaret Hamilton
#112553
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Margaret Elaine Hamilton is an American computer scientist, systems engineer, and business owner. She was director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo program. She later founded two software companies—Higher Order Software in 1976 and Hamilton Technologies in 1986, both in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Robert B. Couch
#128818
Overall Influence
#37
Herman Brenner White
#135822
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Herman Brenner White is an American physicist who works at Fermilab. He won the 2010 American Physical Society Edward A Bouchet Award. Early life and education White was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. His mother, Susie Mae Fort White, worked at John Andrew Hospital and his father, Herman Brenner White Senior, served in the military. He studied at the Tuskegee Institute High School, where he became interested in nuclear engineering. He was raised in a segregated community. He saw his role in the civil rights movement as being an exceptional student who could prove that black people deserved equal access to education.
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Dan Archdeacon
#141827
Overall Influence
1954 - 2015 (61 years)
Dan Steven Archdeacon was an American graph theorist specializing in topological graph theory, who served for many years as a professor of mathematics and statistics at the University of Vermont. Archdeacon was born on May 11, 1954, in Dayton, Ohio, and grew up in Centerville, Ohio. He did his undergraduate studies at Earlham College, graduating in 1975. He completed his Ph.D. in 1980 from Ohio State University, under the supervision of Henry Hatfield Glover, with a dissertation proving an analogue of Kuratowski's theorem for the projective plane. He took a position at the University of Vermo...
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Robert F. Garrison
#142187
Overall Influence
1936 - 2017 (81 years)
Robert Frederick Garrison was an American astrophysicist and professor at the University of Toronto, and was well known for his work in the MK System, that was developed by Morgan and Keenan in 1943. He earned the Lifetime Teaching Achievement Award by the University of Toronto in 2001. Garrison attended Yerkes Observatory, University of Chicago in 1960, and accomplished a doctorate degree in astronomy and astrophysics six years later. It was during that era when Garrison was inspired by his director William, Morgan and started to have a strong passion in astronomy.
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Stephen D. Hursting
#159819
Overall Influence
Stephen D. Hursting is an American scientist and current professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the former Margaret McKean Love Chair in Nutrition, Cellular, and Molecular Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.
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Molly R. Morris
#178389
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Molly R. Morris is an American behavioral ecologist who has worked with treefrogs and swordtail fishes in the areas of alternative reproductive tactics and sexual selection. Morris received a Bachelor of Arts from Earlham College and a PhD from Indiana University. As a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, her work with Mike Ryan demonstrated equal fitnesses between alternative reproductive tactics in a species of swordtail fish. She joined the faculty at Ohio University in 1997, where she is now a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences.
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Sarah Schaack
#181955
Overall Influence
Sarah Schaack is an evolutionary geneticist and associate professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. In 2013–2014, Schaack did field work in east Africa as a Fulbright Scholar. In 2016 Schaack received the inaugural Lynwood W. Swanson Promise for Scientific Research Award from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust.
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Yacob Mulugetta
#186638
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Yacob Mulugetta is a British-African professor of Energy and Development Policy and the Director of MPA programme at the Department of Science, Technology, Engineering & Public Policy, University College London. He is a member of African Academy of Sciences He was the Lead Coordinating Author of the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by Energy Systems chapter and he is one of the founding members of the African Climate Policy Centre
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Mary Esther Trueblood
1879 - 1939 (60 years)
Mary Esther Trueblood Paine was an American mathematician and sociologist who taught mathematics at Mount Holyoke College and the University of California, Berkeley. Early life and education Mary Trueblood was born on May 6, 1872, near Richmond, Indiana, the daughter of Rev. Alpheus Trueblood of the Society of Friends, and the niece of pacifist Benjamin Franklin Trueblood. She did her undergraduate studies at Earlham College in Richmond, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1893, and became a mathematics and Latin teacher there. Her cousin, Thomas Trueblood, taught at the University of Mich...
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Martha Doan
1872 - 1960 (88 years)
Martha Doan was an American chemist whose contributions include research in compounds of thallium, three published work, and tenure as a professor and dean at various institutions in the US. Throughout her lifetime she received four degrees, a B.S. and master's from Purdue, a B.L. from Earlham College, and a Sc.D. from Cornell. She was a dean of women for two colleges, Earlham College and Iowa Wesleyan College. In addition to her involvement in higher education, she was involved with several national organizations that involved chemistry and science. She was awarded a certificate for Outstanding Service to Science in 1951.
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William W. Biddle
1900 - 1973 (73 years)
William Wishart Biddle was an American social scientist and a major contributor to the study of community development. Although details of his personal life are rare in written records, he made contributions to the field of psychology by developing frameworks in propaganda, education, and community development. Biddle outlined in his writings that propaganda was a form of persuasion for coercing people, illustrating examples from times of war. He established that education systems should develop each individual's intelligence and focus on critical thinking to avoid autistic thinking. Biddle ...
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Willard Uphaus
1890 - 1983 (93 years)
Willard Uphaus was an American theologian and pacifist. Uphaus was born on a farm in rural Delaware County, Indiana, and attended nearby Earlham College, a liberal arts college founded by the Religious Society of Friends , in Richmond, Indiana, graduating in 1913. Uphaus went on to earn his PhD in the psychology of religion at Yale University, and subsequently taught at Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee, and Hastings College in Hastings, Nebraska. In 1930, Uphaus was dismissed from Hastings for theological interpretations and his leftist viewpoints. Subsequently, s...
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D. Elton Trueblood
1900 - 1994 (94 years)
David Elton Trueblood , who was usually known as "Elton Trueblood" or "D. Elton Trueblood", was a noted 20th-century American Quaker author and theologian, former chaplain both to Harvard and Stanford universities.
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Wendell Meredith Stanley
1904 - 1971 (67 years)
Wendell Meredith Stanley was an American biochemist, virologist and Nobel laureate. Biography Stanley was born in Ridgeville, Indiana, and earned a BSc in chemistry at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. He then studied at the University of Illinois, gaining an MS in science in 1927 followed by a PhD in chemistry two years later. His later accomplishments include writing the book "Chemistry: A Beautiful Thing" and being a Pulitzer Prize nominee.
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Garfield V. Cox
1893 - 1970 (77 years)
Garfield Vestal Cox was a leading authority on business fluctuations and forecasting. He was one of the first people to study the performance of experts versus novices in forecasting stock prices. He was also the Dean of the University of Chicago School of Business.
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