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
Stanley G. Payne
#1725
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Stanley George Payne is an American historian of modern Spain and European Fascism at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He retired from full-time teaching in 2004 and is currently Professor Emeritus at its Department of History.
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Desmond Ford
#11717
Overall Influence
1929 - 2019 (90 years)
Desmond Ford was an Australian theologian who studied evangelicalism. Within the Seventh-day Adventist Church he was a controversial figure. He was dismissed from ministry in the Adventist church in 1980, following his critique of the church's investigative judgment teaching. He had since worked through the non-denominational evangelical ministry Good News Unlimited. Ford disagreed with some aspects of traditional Adventist end-time beliefs. However, he still defended a conservative view of scripture, the Seventh-day Sabbath, and a vegetarian lifestyle. He viewed the writings of Ellen G. Whit...
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Terrence Roberts
#14681
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Terrence James Roberts is one of the Little Rock Nine, a group of African-American students who, in 1957, were the first black students ever to attend classes at Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1999, he and the other people of the Little Rock Nine were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President Bill Clinton.
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George R. Knight
#24301
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
George Raymond Knight is a leading Seventh-day Adventist historian, author, and educator. He is emeritus professor of church history at Andrews University. As of 2014 he is considered to be the best-selling and influential voice for the past three decades within the denomination.
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Jon Dybdahl
#24695
Overall Influence
Jon L. Dybdahl is a professor of theology and a college administrator. Inaugurated in 2002, he is the immediate past president of Walla Walla University in College Place, Washington. In 2006, he announced his retirement from that position, effective the end of the 2005–2006 academic year.
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Alden Thompson
#35268
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Alden Lloyd Thompson is a Seventh-day Adventist Christian theologian, author, and seminar presenter. He is also a professor of biblical studies at Walla Walla University in Washington, United States.
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J. Russell Nelson
#39952
Overall Influence
1929 - 2016 (87 years)
Jack Russell Nelson was an American educator who served as a chancellor/president of the University of Colorado Boulder and Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. Life Nelson earned his bachelor's degree in business and economics from Pacific Union College in Napa Valley, California, and a Master of Business Administration and Ph.D in finance from the University of California Los Angeles.
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Richard Rice
#46146
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
T. Richard Rice is an American Seventh-day Adventist theologian and author. He is a leading proponent of "open theism". As of 2007 he is professor of theology and philosophy of religion at Loma Linda University in California.
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Vincent W. Patton III
#49219
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Vincent W. Patton III is a retired Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard in the United States. Education A 1972 graduate of Cass Technical High School, Patton was a member of the U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps during his high school years. Patton received his Doctor of Education degree in 1984 from the American University, Washington, DC. He has a master's degree in Counseling Psychology from Loyola University Chicago; a Bachelor of Science degree in Social Work from Shaw College at Detroit, Michigan; and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications from Pacific Union College, Angwin, Cal...
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Herbert E. Douglass
#57499
Overall Influence
1927 - 2014 (87 years)
Herbert Edgar Douglass Jr. was a Seventh-day Adventist theologian. He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, US, the oldest of five children to Herbert Edgar Douglass Sr and Mildred Jennie Munson . He earned his Doctorate in Theology at Pacific School of Religion in 1964.
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Philip Guthrie Hoffman
#60018
Overall Influence
1915 - 2008 (93 years)
Philip Guthrie Hoffman was the fifth president of the University of Houston, and the first chancellor of the University of Houston System. While at the university, he was instrumental in obtaining state affiliation, transitioning to a racially integrated status, and expanding enrollment in multiple locations. Hoffman also served as president of the Texas Medical Center. Prior to his appointment as president of UH, he was a professor and administrator for several universities.
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Loree Sutton
#73894
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Loree K. Sutton is an American psychiatrist and retired military officer who served as a brigadier general in the United States Army. Sutton served for over 20 years and was awarded a Bronze Star. From 2007 to 2010, She was the Army's highest-ranking psychiatrist. In 2014, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed Sutton as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Veterans' Services. Sutton was a candidate in the 2021 New York City Democratic mayoral primary.
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Jon Paulien
#76638
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Jonathan K. Paulien is a Seventh-day Adventist theologian. Biography Paulien has a BA from Atlantic Union College, and an M.Div. and Ph.D. from Andrews University. His doctoral thesis, Decoding Revelation’s Trumpets: Literary Allusions and Interpretation of was completed in 1987. Prior to his Ph.D., he worked as a Seventh-day Adventist church pastor for several years in New York City.
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Hans Karl LaRondelle
#80914
Overall Influence
1929 - 2011 (82 years)
Hans Karl LaRondelle was a respected Seventh-day Adventist theologian; a strong proponent of the gospel and salvation by faith alone. In a 1985 questionnaire of North American Adventist Theology lecturers, LaRondelle tied for fourth place among the Adventist authors who had most influenced them, and was number one amongst the under 39 age group. He died March 7, 2011.
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Lisa Breckenridge
#91548
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Lisa Breckenridge is a former American television personality and news anchor. She currently runs a blog called Happily Lisa Biography Breckenridge dropped out from Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley in 1987 and struggled with issues relating to hair loss in the late 1980s.
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Larry Geraty
#98652
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Lawrence "Larry" T. Geraty is an American academic who served as the second President of La Sierra University in Riverside, California. He completed his undergraduate education in theology at Pacific Union College, his bachelor of divinity and master of arts in religion from Andrews University, and received a doctorate in biblical studies from Harvard University.
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Peter Monge
#104679
Overall Influence
Peter Monge is professor of communication in the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism and professor of management and organization in the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. Monge studies communication and knowledge networks, ecological theories, and organizational change processes.
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Jack Provonsha
#139384
Overall Influence
1919 - 2004 (85 years)
Jack Wendell Provonsha was a Seventh-day Adventist Physician and ethicist. Biography He was born on May 30, 1919. He was an emeritus professor of Christian ethics and philosophy of religion at Loma Linda University. He was also the founding director of the Center for Christian Bioethics at the university. He died on August 11, 2004.
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Denton E. Rebok
1897 - 1983 (86 years)
Denton Edward Rebok was a Seventh-day Adventist educator and administrator. Born in Pennsylvania, he served the denomination for 44 years. He spent 23 years as a missionary in China. While there he founded the China Training Institute, a junior college located in the town of Qiaotou in northern Jiangsu province, about 160 miles from Shanghai and 30 miles from Nanjing, in 1925. He taught at Washington Missionary College, La Sierra College, was president of Southern Missionary College also Dean of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary. He served briefly as chair of the Ellen G. White Estate board of trustees in 1952, and gave two presentations about Ellen G.
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Arna Bontemps
1902 - 1973 (71 years)
Arna Wendell Bontemps was an American poet, novelist and librarian, and a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance. Early life Bontemps was born in Alexandria, Louisiana, into a Louisiana Creole family. His ancestors included free people of color and French colonists. His father was a contractor and sometimes would take his son to construction sites. As the boy got older, his father would take him along to speak-easies at night that featured jazz. His mother, Maria Carolina Pembroke, was a schoolteacher. The family was Catholic, and Bontemps was baptized at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral. They w...
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