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
Eudora Welty
#4329
Overall Influence
1909 - 2001 (92 years)
Eudora Alice Welty was an American short story writer, novelist and photographer who wrote about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Order of the South. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America. Her house in Jackson, Mississippi has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public as a house museum.
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David Herbert Donald
#7568
Overall Influence
1920 - 2009 (89 years)
David Herbert Donald was an American historian, best known for his 1995 biography of Abraham Lincoln. He twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for earlier works; he published more than 30 books on United States political and literary figures and the history of the American South.
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Miller Williams
#17688
Overall Influence
1930 - 2015 (85 years)
Stanley Miller Williams was an American contemporary poet, as well as a university professor, translator and editor. He produced over 25 books and won several awards for his poetry. His accomplishments were chronicled in Arkansas Biography. Williams was chosen to read a poem at the second inauguration of Bill Clinton. One of his best-known poems is "The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina." He was the father of American singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams.
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Kiese Laymon
#19216
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. He is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. He is the author of three full-length books: a novel, Long Division , and two memoirs, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America and the award-winning Heavy: An American Memoir . Laymon was awarded a "Genius Grant" from the MacArthur Fellows Program in 2022.
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Ellen Gilchrist
#19643
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Ellen Gilchrist is an American novelist, short story writer, and poet. She won a National Book Award for her 1984 collection of short stories, Victory Over Japan. Life Gilchrist was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and spent part of her childhood on a plantation owned by her maternal grandparents. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy and studied creative writing under renowned writer Eudora Welty at Millsaps College. Later in life, Gilchrist enrolled in the creative writing program at the University of Arkansas, but she never completed her MFA. Gilchrist has been married and divorced four times and has three children, fourteen grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
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Thomas Naylor
#20081
Overall Influence
1936 - 2012 (76 years)
Thomas Herbert Naylor was an American economist and professor. From Jackson, Mississippi, he was a Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University, the author of thirty books, and a founder of the Second Vermont Republic . Naylor authored ten academic books and three books advocating secession.
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Robert C. Robbins
#24313
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Robert Clayton Robbins , known professionally as Robert C. Robbins or R.C. Robbins, is an American cardiothoracic surgeon and the 22nd and current president of The University of Arizona. In the spring of 2023, the Faculty Senate at the University of Arizona gave R.C. Robbins a vote of “no confidence” due, in part, to the university leadership’s inaction regarding a violent student who would go on to fatally shoot a professor in October of 2022. He received a pay raise in October of 2023 from the Arizona Board of Regents. Previously, he was the president and CEO of the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas, from 2012 to 2017.
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Alan Hunter
#25982
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Alan Caldwell Hunter is one of the original five video jockeys on MTV from 1981 to 1987 . He is a host on SiriusXM Radio's The 80s on 8 channel and on the Classic Rewind channel. He co-owns the production company Hunter Films with his brother Hugh. He, Hugh and two other brothers also founded WorkPlay, a multipurpose office, studio and entertainment facility in Birmingham, Alabama. He also hosted the reality show Looking for Stars on the Starz cable television channel as well as the Encore series Big 80s Weekend.
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Randall Pinkston
#31613
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Randall Pinkston was a correspondent/anchor for Al Jazeera America. Previously he was with CBS News. After a stint as a White House Correspondent in CBS's Washington Bureau, Pinkston became a general assignment reporter, contributing to CBS broadcasts, including CBS Evening News, Morning News, Weekend News, CBS News Sunday Morning and 48 Hours. Pinkston also contributed to the CBS Reports documentary, Legacy of Shame with Correspondent Dan Rather. Pinkston has filled in as anchor on the CBS Evening News-Weekend Edition, Up to the Minute and CBS Morning News.
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Donald Triplett
#39028
Overall Influence
1933 - 2023 (90 years)
Donald Gray Triplett was an American banker known for being the first person diagnosed as autistic. He was first diagnosed by Leo Kanner in 1943, and was labeled as "Case 1". Triplett was noted for his savant abilities, particularly the ability to name musical notes played on a piano and the ability to perform rapid mental multiplication.
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James E. Graves Jr.
#51789
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
James Earl Graves Jr. is an American lawyer who serves as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Early years The son of a Baptist minister, Graves was born and raised in Clinton, Mississippi. He attended Sumner High School in Clinton and graduated as valedictorian with the highest grade point average and ACT score in his class. Graves then attended Millsaps College and graduated in 1975 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology. After working at the Mississippi Department of Public Welfare for almost two years, he enrolled at Syracuse University College of Law, where he received his Juris Doctor in 1980.
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Cassandra Wilson
#56831
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Cassandra Wilson is an American jazz singer, songwriter, and producer from Jackson, Mississippi. She is one of the most successful female Jazz singers and has been described by critic Gary Giddins as "a singer blessed with an unmistakable timbre and attack [who has] expanded the playing field" by incorporating blues, country, and folk music into her work. She has won numerous awards, including two Grammys, and was named "America's Best Singer" by Time magazine in 2001.
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Lisa D'Amour
#66448
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Lisa D'Amour is a playwright, performer, and former Carnival Queen from New Orleans. D'Amour is an alumna of New Dramatists. Her play Detroit was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Biography
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Roy Clyde Clark
#73275
Overall Influence
1920 - 2014 (94 years)
Roy Clyde Clark was an American bishop of the United Methodist Church, elected in 1980. Early life Clark was born on July 24, 1920, in Mobile, Alabama. His father, C. C. Clark, was a Methodist minister in Gulfport, Mississippi.
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Kenneth Andrews
#86177
Overall Influence
Kenneth Andrews is professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his doctorate in sociology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1997. In 1993, Andrews earned his Master's degree in sociology from the same institution. His bachelor's degree is from Millsaps College. Prior to his position at the University of North Carolina, Andrews was a member of the department of sociology at Harvard University and served as a visiting scholar for the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City.
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William K. Scarborough
#93614
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
William Kauffman Scarborough was a professor emeritus of history at the University of Southern Mississippi. He was the Charles W. Moorman Distinguished Alumni Professor in the Humanities from 1996 to 1998.
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George L. Maddox
#141571
Overall Influence
#18
Jim Barnett
#143653
Overall Influence
1926 - 2013 (87 years)
Jim C. Barnett was an American physician and politician who served from 1992 to 2008 in the Mississippi House of Representatives. Born in Edinburg in Leake County in central Mississippi, Barnett served in the United States Navy during World War II and as a naval flight surgeon during the Korean War. He went to Millsaps College in the capital city of Jackson, Mississippi, Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the University of Mississippi Medical School. He graduated from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Engaged in family practice and surgery in Lincoln County, he resided in Brookhaven.
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Richard Douglas Miller
#146215
Overall Influence
#20
Jianghai Xia
#165583
Overall Influence
#21
Samuel Jones
#167047
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Samuel Jones is an American composer and conductor. Biography Samuel Jones, a native of Mississippi , graduated from the Central High School in Jackson and received his undergraduate degree with highest honors at Millsaps College. He acquired his professional training at the Eastman School of Music, where he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in composition under Howard Hanson, Bernard Rogers, and Wayne Barlow. His mentors in conducting include Richard Lert and William Steinberg.
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Ivenue Love-Stanley
#191528
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Ivenue Love-Stanley, , , is an American architect. She co-founded Stanley, Love-Stanley P.C., an Atlanta-based architecture and design firm. She was the first African-American woman to graduate from Georgia Institute of Technology's College of Architecture, and in 1983 she became the first African-American woman licensed architect in the Southeast. Love-Stanley's projects include the Aquatic Center for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games, the Lyke House Catholic Student Center at the Atlanta University Center, the Southwest YMCA and St. Paul's Episcopal Church , the Auburn Market in Sweet Aubur...
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Paul Ramsey
1913 - 1988 (75 years)
Robert Paul Ramsey was an American Christian ethicist of the 20th century. He was a Methodist and his primary focus in ethics was medical ethics. The major portion of his academic career was spent as a tenured professor at Princeton University until the end of his life in 1988. His most notable contributions to ethics were in the fields of Christian ethics, bioethics, just war theory and common law.
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David Davis
1815 - 1886 (71 years)
David Davis was an American politician and jurist who was a U.S. senator from Illinois and associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. He also served as Abraham Lincoln's campaign manager at the 1860 Republican National Convention, engineering Lincoln's successful nomination for president by that party.
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