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).
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List of the most influential people
#1
Donald Kraybill
#18323
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Donald B. Kraybill is an American author, lecturer, and educator on Anabaptist faiths and culture. Kraybill is widely recognized for his studies on Anabaptist groups and in particular the Amish. He has researched and written extensively on Anabaptist culture. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Elizabethtown College and Senior Fellow Emeritus at Elizabethtown's Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies.
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Howard Zehr
#19754
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Howard J. Zehr is an American criminologist. Zehr is considered to be a pioneer of the modern concept of restorative justice. He is Distinguished Professor of Restorative Justice at Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and Co-director Emeritus of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice.
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Emmanuel Bombande
#42658
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Emmanuel Bombande is a conflict resolution, peacebuilding, and development professional from Accra, Ghana, and is the Chair of the Board of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict.
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Hassan Sheikh Mohamud
#43530
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is a Somali politician who has served as the president of Somalia since May 2022. He is the founder and current chairman of the Union for Peace and Development Party. He was indirectly elected as President of the Federal Republic of Somalia on 15 May 2022, defeating the incumbent president Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed. He previously served in the same position as the 8th president of Somalia from 2012 to 2017. A civil and political rights activist, Hassan was previously a university professor and dean at SIMAD University, which he co-founded.
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Myron Augsburger
#55730
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Myron Augsburger is an American Mennonite pastor, professor, theologian, and author. He is the former president of both Eastern Mennonite College and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.
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Ali Gohar
#59613
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Ali Gohar is a Pakistani noted scholar and restorative justice expert and the founder and executive director of Just Peace Initiatives . Early life and education Ali Gohar was born in the village of "Kaala", district Swabi in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Ali Gohar has an MSc degree in international relations from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He also holds a M.A. in conflict transformation from Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
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Mohamud Siad Togane
#67080
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Mohamud Siad Togane is a Somali-Canadian poet and peace activist. Biography Born in Somalia, Togane was educated in Mennonite schools in Mahaddei and Jowhar in his home country. He subsequently moved to the United States, where he attended Hartnell Junior College. He graduated from Eastern Mennonite College with a BA in English literature in 1969,He returned to Somalia and taught at the Lafole College of Education from 1970 to 1973. Like many other intellectuals, he left Somalia to escape Mohammed Siad Barre's military regime. He settled in Canada in 1973 and acquired Canadian citizenship in 1978.
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David Augsburger
#73872
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
David W. Augsburger is an American Anabaptist author with a Ph.D. from Claremont School of Theology and a BA and BD from Eastern Mennonite College and Eastern Mennonite Seminary respectively. He is one of six children, Fred, Donald, Anna Mary, Daniel and Myron, born to Clarence and Estella Augsburger. His brother Myron is a prominent Mennonite Church author, evangelist, and theologian.
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Jeremy Yoder
#90470
Overall Influence
Jeremy B. Yoder is an American evolutionary biologist, science communicator and LGBTQIA+ advocate. He is an assistant professor of biology at California State University, Northridge. Education Yoder completed a B.S. at Eastern Mennonite University in 2004. He earned a Ph.D. from University of Idaho in 2011. His doctoral advisor was Olle Pellmyr. Yoder's dissertation was titled Species interactions and the origins of biological diversity. He completed a postdoc at University of Minnesota with Peter Tiffin. Yoder conducted further postdoctoral studies at University of British Columbia under Sall...
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Leymah Gbowee
#117208
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Leymah Roberta Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist responsible for leading a women's nonviolent peace movement, Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace that helped bring an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. Her efforts to end the war, along with her collaborator Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, helped usher in a period of peace and enabled a free election in 2005 that Sirleaf won. Gbowee and Sirleaf, along with Tawakkul Karman, were awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work."
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Deirdre Smeltzer
#127565
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Deirdre Longacher Smeltzer is an American mathematician, mathematics educator, textbook author, and academic administrator. A former professor, dean, and vice president at Eastern Mennonite University, she is Senior Director for Programs at the Mathematical Association of America.
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Thomas E. Finger
#141427
Overall Influence
#13
John Christian Wenger
#175547
Overall Influence
1910 - 1995 (85 years)
John C. Wenger was an American Mennonite theologian and professor. Life He was the eldest of five children born to A. Martin Wenger and his wife, Martha A. Rock . He was born at the Reese H. White farm in Honey Brook, Pennsylvania, which his parents rented. His family moved in 1923 to Telford, where his father had gotten the job of janitor at the Rockhill Mennonite Church. Wenger was baptized on May 11, 1924, at the age of 13. He reported that he was disappointed when he did not feel a sense of "joy" and "Christian assurance" following the practice.
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