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
Clinton LeSueur
#49483
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Clinton Bernard LeSueur is an American journalist and political aide. He has worked in Mississippi and Washington, D.C., and was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Mississippi's 2nd congressional district in 2002 and 2004.
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Willie Mitchell
#86509
Overall Influence
1928 - 2010 (82 years)
William Lawrence Mitchell was an American trumpeter, bandleader, soul, R&B, rock and roll, pop and funk record producer and arranger who ran Royal Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. He was best known for his Hi Records label of the 1970s, which released albums by a large stable of popular Memphis soul artists, including Mitchell himself, Al Green, O. V. Wright, Syl Johnson, Ann Peebles and Quiet Elegance.
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Anita Ward
#89053
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Anita Ward is an American singer and musician from Memphis, Tennessee. Beginning her professional music career in the late 1970s, Ward is best known for her 1979 million-selling chart-topper R&B/Disco hit "Ring My Bell" which was #1 on the United States Hot 100, R&B, Dance and United Kingdom charts.
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Dagmar Schultz
#93836
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Dagmar Schultz is a German sociologist, filmmaker, publisher and professor. Biography Schultz grew up in a female household; her father committed suicide in World War II. After a few semesters studying journalism, North American studies and Romance studies at the Free University of Berlin. In 1965, she graduated from the University of Michigan inbroadcasting, television and film, with a master's thesis on "The Role of Broadcasting in Africa with Special Emphasis on West Africa". However, her dream of working as a documentary filmmaker on television proved to be unrealizable: "My job interview...
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Larry Anderson
#109196
Overall Influence
Larry Anderson is an American basketball coach for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Anderson was born in Macon, Mississippi, one of fourteen full brothers and sisters, in addition to six half brothers and sisters. He attended Noxubee County High School, then East Mississippi Community College in Scooba, Mississippi and Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi. After graduating from Rust, he stayed for seven years, initially serving as director of student activities and assistant basketball coach, and later as associate athletic director. In 1995, he became the head coach of the MIT Engineers.
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Gwendolyn Wilson Fowler
#115513
Overall Influence
1907 - 1997 (90 years)
Gwendolyn Wilson Fowler was an African-American pharmacist, the first black woman licensed in Iowa. She also became the first African-American woman from Iowa to serve in the United States Foreign Service, when she was posted to Vietnam in the 1950s. She was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame in 1987.
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Leslie B. McLemore
#157735
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Leslie-Burl McLemore is an American civil rights activist and political leader from Jackson, Mississippi. He served as interim mayor of Jackson following the death of Frank Melton on May 7, 2009 until the inauguration of re-elected mayor Harvey Johnson, Jr. on July 3, 2009.
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Dembo M. Badjie
#168640
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Dembo M. Badjie is a retired Gambiann civil servant and diplomat. He entered the Gambian Government in 1970, taking a break to study Political Science and Economics at Rust College, followed by postgraduate studies at Glasgow Caledonian University. He reentered the civil service in 1978, serving in several ministries, including local government and education. In 1983, he had a daughter, Fatim Badjie, who is also a Gambian politician.
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F.C. Richardson
#173067
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
F.C. Richardson served as a president of Buffalo State College, a higher education institution that is part of the State University of New York system, from July 1, 1989, to January 1, 1996; and, following that, as chancellor of Indiana University Southeast from 1996 to 2002. Richardson was the first college president of African American heritage at Buffalo State.
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Jim Thomas
#178625
Overall Influence
1939 - 2015 (76 years)
Jim "Long Gone" Thomas was an American gridiron football player and coach. He played professionally as a running back for nine seasons in the Canadian Football League CFLNFL Thomas holds the record for the three longest rushing touchdowns in Eskimos history—a 104-yard run on October 9, 1965, against the BC Lions, a 100-yard run on August 2, 1966, against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, and a 97-yard run on September 4, 1964, against the Ottawa Rough Riders.
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Jerry J. Watson
#191713
Overall Influence
#12
Ida B. Wells
1862 - 1931 (69 years)
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People . Wells dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence, and advocating for African-American equality—especially that of women.
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James L. Farmer Sr.
1886 - 1961 (75 years)
James Leonard Farmer Sr. , known as J. Leonard Farmer, was an American author, theologian, and educator. He was a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and an academic in early religious history as well as theology.
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