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
Brian Sherwin
#23503
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Brian Sherwin is an American art critic, writer, and blogger with a degree from Illinois College in 2003. Sherwin is a founding Management Team member of the artist social networking site myartspace, where he also served as Senior Editor for six years. As Senior Editor for myartspace.com Sherwin established an extensive interview series with emerging and established visual artists. Sherwin currently writes for FineArtViews and is the editor of The Art Edge. Sherwin is also an advocate for youth art education.
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Paul Findley
#60593
Overall Influence
1921 - 2019 (98 years)
Paul Augustus Findley was an American writer and politician. He served as United States Representative from Illinois, representing its 20th District. A Republican, he was first elected in 1960. A moderate Republican for most of his long political career, Findley was a supporter of civil rights and an early opponent of the U.S. war in Vietnam. He co-authored the War Powers Act in 1973, which is supposed to limit the ability of the president to go to war without Congressional authorization. Findley lost his seat in 1982 to current United States Senator Dick Durbin. He was a cofounder of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington, D.C.
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Richard Henry Mills
#79153
Overall Influence
1929 - 2023 (94 years)
Richard Henry Mills was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. Education and career Born in Beardstown, Illinois, Mills received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Illinois College in 1951, and a Juris Doctor from Mercer University School of Law in 1957. He was in the United States Army Reserve, JAG Corps from 1952 to 1954, achieving the rank of colonel. He was in private practice in Virginia, Illinois from 1957 to 1966, and was a state's attorney of Cass County, Illinois from 1960 to 1964. He was a circuit judge of the Eighth Judi...
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Bob Schillerstrom
#109872
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Robert Schillerstrom is an American politician and the former DuPage County, Illinois board chairman. He currently resides in Naperville, Illinois, and has been a resident of DuPage County for over 40 years. Schillerstrom is a suburban leader and lifelong Illinois resident. Schillerstrom was elected as County Board Chairman in 1998 with two-thirds of the vote.
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Steve Hochstadt
#152018
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Steven Lawrence Hochstadt is a professor emeritus of history at Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois. He has done extensive research on Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai. Influenced by his grandparents, Viennese Jews who fled the Holocaust and immigrated to Shanghai, Hochstadt conducted 100 interviews with former refugees living in the United States and Europe. Based on his studies he wrote several books about the Holocaust and especially about Jewish refugees in Asia.
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Maurice West
#168793
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (39 years)
Maurice A. West II is a Democratic member of the Illinois House of Representatives for the 67th district. West took office on January 9, 2019. The 67th district includes portions of the City of Rockford.
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Nancy Farmer
#175584
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Nancy Farmer was the 43rd State Treasurer of Missouri, serving from 2001 to 2005. Farmer was raised in Jacksonville, Illinois and graduated from Illinois College there in 1979. From 1993 to 1997, she served in the Missouri House of Representatives. During her tenure in the state legislature, she served as chairwoman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee.
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Marina Verenikina
#188612
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Marina Gennadievna Verenikina , known as Marina V, is a Russian singer and musician. She has released 12 albums and toured internationally, performing over 1,200 concerts. Early life and education Verenikina was born to Gennadiy and Irina Verenikina in Moscow, Russia. Gennadiy works as a nuclear physicist Irina as a child psychologist Marina started singing before she could talk, and writing songs at 4 years of age.
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Cheri Bustos
#189202
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Cheryl Lea Bustos is an American journalist, healthcare executive, and politician who served as the U.S. representative from Illinois's 17th congressional district from 2013 to 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, she is the first woman elected to Congress from her district in the northwestern part of the state, anchored by the Illinois side of the Quad Cities and partially including Peoria and Rockford. In 2019, Bustos became chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee .
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Edward E. Johnston
#191784
Overall Influence
1918 - 2011 (93 years)
Edward Elliott Johnston was an American businessman and politician. Raised in Jacksonville, Illinois, Johnston graduated from Illinois College and was a radio broadcaster. He served in the United States Air Force during World War II and the Korean War. He moved to Hawaii Territory and was in the insurance and tourism business. He was also involved with the Republican Party in Hawaii. President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Johnston secretary of the Hawaii Territory. In 1969, President Richard Nixon appointed Johnston High Commissioner of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands and served until 1976.
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Edward Beecher
1803 - 1895 (92 years)
Edward Beecher was an American theologian, the son of Lyman Beecher and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. Biography Beecher was born August 27, 1803, in East Hampton, New York. He graduated from Yale College in 1822. After this, he studied theology at Andover Theological School.
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Harold Whetstone Johnston
1859 - 1912 (53 years)
Harold Whetstone Johnston was a classical historian and Professor of Latin at Indiana University, best known for writing The Private Life of the Romans. Personal life Johnston was the son of DeWitt Clinton Johnston and Margretta Hay . In 1882, he married Eugenia Hinrichsen.
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John Wesley Powell
1834 - 1902 (68 years)
John Wesley Powell was an American geologist, U.S. Army soldier, explorer of the American West, professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, and director of major scientific and cultural institutions. He is famous for his 1869 geographic expedition, a three-month river trip down the Green and Colorado rivers, including the first official U.S. government-sponsored passage through the Grand Canyon.
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William Mather Lewis
1878 - 1945 (67 years)
William Mather Lewis was an American teacher, university president, local politician, and a state and national government official. He was mayor of Lake Forest, Illinois from 1915 to 1917, President of George Washington University from 1923 to 1927 and the President of Lafayette College from 1927 to 1945.
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Edgar Howard Sturtevant
1875 - 1952 (77 years)
Edgar Howard Sturtevant was an American linguist. Biography Sturtevant was born in Jacksonville, Illinois, the older brother of Alfred Sturtevant and grandson of educator Julian Monson Sturtevant. He studied at Illinois College, where his grandfather was president, and obtained an A.B. from Indiana University, then the University of Chicago receiving there in 1901 a Ph.D. with a dissertation on Latin case forms. He became an assistant professor of classical philology at Columbia University before joining the linguistics faculty at Yale University in 1923. In 1924, he was a member of the organizing committee for the founding, with Leonard Bloomfield and George M.
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William Jennings Bryan
1860 - 1925 (65 years)
William Jennings Bryan was an American lawyer, orator, and politician. Beginning in 1896, he emerged as a dominant force in the Democratic Party, running three times as the party's nominee for President of the United States in the 1896, 1900, and 1908 elections. He served in the House of Representatives from 1891 to 1895 and as the Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1915. Because of his faith in the wisdom of the common people, Bryan was often called "the Great Commoner", and because of his rhetorical power and early fame as the youngest presidential candidate, "the Boy Orat...
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Julian Monson Sturtevant
1805 - 1886 (81 years)
Julian Monson Sturtevant was an American author and educator. He was a founding professor and second president of Illinois College. Sturtevant, son of Warren and Lucy Sturtevant, was born in Warren, Connecticut on July 26, 1805. In 1816, the family removed to the Western Reserve, and settled in Tallmadge , Ohio, whence two sons came to Yale College in 1822. Julian, the younger son, graduated in 1826. After teaching school in New Canaan, Connecticut, he entered the Yale Theological Seminary in 1828, and was ordained at Woodbury, Connecticut on August 27, 1829, as an evangelist. Four days later, he married Elizabeth M.
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Edward Capps
1866 - 1950 (84 years)
Edward Capps Sr. was an American diplomat, professor of Philology, and colonel. Biography Capps was born in Jacksonville, Illinois on December 21, 1866. He would go on to graduate from Illinois College in 1887 and later receive a PhD from Yale in 1891. In July of the following year, he would get married.
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