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
Peter S. Fosl
#28788
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Peter Stanley Fosl is Professor of Philosophy at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and the winner of a 2006 Acorn Award for outstanding professor in Kentucky. Education and professional life Fosl graduated from Freedom High School in 1981 and then summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Bucknell University in 1985 with Bachelor of Arts degrees in both philosophy and economics; he spent the Lent Term of 1984 at the London School of Economics. In 1986, Fosl became a Woodruff Fellow at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, winning Emory's Award for Excellence in Graduate Research in 1989 and taking a Master of Arts in Philosophy the following year.
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Richard Berman
#28954
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Richard B. Berman is an American lawyer, public relations executive, and former lobbyist. Through his public affairs firm, Berman and Company, he ran several industry-funded, non-profit organizations such as the Center for Consumer Freedom, the Center for Union Facts, and the Employment Policies Institute.
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John E. Fryer
#33044
Overall Influence
1938 - 2003 (65 years)
John Ercel Fryer, M.D. was an American psychiatrist and gay rights activist best known for his anonymous speech at the 1972 American Psychiatric Association annual conference, where he appeared in disguise and under the name Dr. Henry Anonymous. That event has been cited as a key factor in the decision to remove homosexuality as a mental illness from the APA Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The APA "John E. Fryer, M.D., Award" is named in his honor.
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George Ella Lyon
#46016
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
George Ella Lyon is an American author from Kentucky, who has published in many genres, including picture books, poetry, juvenile novels, and articles. Biography George Ella Lyon was born April 25, 1949, in Harlan, Kentucky, a coal mining town in southeastern Kentucky, to Robert Vernon, Jr. and Gladys Hoskins. She married Stephen C. Lyon, a musician, on June 3, 1972, and has since had two children with him.
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Seamus Carey
#46054
Overall Influence
Seamus Carey, Ph.D., an American philosopher and academic, is the 9th President of Iona University in New Rochelle, New York. He previously served as the 26th President of Transylvania University, the first university in the state of Kentucky, from 2014 to 2019. While at Transylvania he was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa in 2015.
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Ned Beatty
#51673
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
Ned Thomas Beatty was an American actor. In a career that spanned five decades, he appeared in more than 160 films. Throughout his career, Beatty gained a reputation for being "the busiest actor in Hollywood". His film appearances included Deliverance , White Lightning , All the President's Men , Network , Superman , Superman II , Back to School , Rudy , Shooter , Toy Story 3 , and Rango . He also had the series regular role of Stanley Bolander in the first three seasons of the hit NBC TV drama Homicide: Life on the Street.
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R. Owen Williams
#56613
Overall Influence
Rick Owen Williams is a former president of the Associated Colleges of the South, a consortium of sixteen nationally recognized liberal arts colleges located throughout the South. Prior to becoming president at ACS, Williams served as the twenty-fifth president of Transylvania University, the sixteenth oldest college in America. He has served as vice-chair of the board at Gratz College and is currently on the board of Morehouse College, as well as the alumni advisory board of Cambridge University. Williams was formerly an investment banker for over two decades.
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Karen K. Caldwell
#68698
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Karen Kaye Caldwell is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. Education and prior career Caldwell earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977 from Transylvania University, and her Juris Doctor from University of Kentucky College of Law in 1980. She worked as a field claims representative for State Farm Insurance from 1980 until 1987, and also worked as an adjunct professor at Eastern Kentucky University during the years of 1984, 1985, and 1987. She then served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, from 1987 to 1990.
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Claria Horn Boom
#73729
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Claria Denise Horn Boom is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. She is a member of the United States Sentencing Commission.
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Tisa Mason
#74329
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Tisa A. Mason is an American educator and the current president of Fort Hays State University. Prior to her presidency at Fort Hays State, Mason served as Valley City State University's president from December 15, 2014 to December 15, 2017. Mason served as Fort Hays State's vice president of student affairs July 2008 to December 2014.
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Charles L. Shearer
#76400
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Charles L. Shearer is an American academic. He served as the 24th president of Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky ending his long tenure during the summer of 2010. Shearer is the longest-serving president in the university's 230-year history.
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C. M. Newton
#84884
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Charles Martin Newton was an American collegiate basketball player, coach, and athletics administrator. He served as the head men's basketball coach at Transylvania University from 1956 to 1968, the University of Alabama from 1968 to 1980, and Vanderbilt University from 1981 to 1989, compiling a career college basketball coaching record of 509–375. He was chairman of the NCAA Rules committee from 1979 to 1985 and was the president of USA Basketball from 1992 to 1996.
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Tracy Clayton
#104763
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Tracy Clayton is an American writer whose work has been recognized by Fast Company, Ebony, and The Root, who described her as "a superstar” who “writes big, funny things." She served as the co-host of the BuzzFeed podcast Another Round, which has been on hiatus since 2017. Clayton left BuzzFeed in September 2018 amid company-wide downsizing. She hosts the Netflix podcast Strong Black Legends, for which she interviews African Americans in the entertainment industry about their craft. Clayton and Josh Gwynn co-host Pineapple Street Studio podcast “Back Issue” which reminisces on how moments in ...
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Dewey Cornell
#128988
Overall Influence
Dewey G. Cornell is an American forensic and clinical psychologist known for his research on youth violence and school security. He is Professor of Education in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia, where he also holds the Bunker Chair in Education. He is the director of the University of Virginia's Virginia Youth Violence Project, as well as a faculty associate at the university's Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy. He is the principal author of the Virginia Student Threat Assessment Guidelines, which are widely used for threat assessment in schools in the United States and Canada.
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Daniel Mongiardo
#129982
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Frank Daniel Mongiardo is an American physician and politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Mongiardo is a Democrat and was the 54th lieutenant governor of Kentucky from 2007 until 2011. He was a member of the Kentucky State Senate from 2001 to 2007. He also ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004, narrowly losing in the general election to Jim Bunning and again in 2010, losing in the primary election to Jack Conway.
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Frank Rose
#140770
Overall Influence
1920 - 1991 (71 years)
Frank Anthony Rose was an American academic, formerly a president of the University of Alabama. Rose was a Meridian, Mississippi native. He earned a A.B. degree at Transylvania College, now Transylvania University, and a B.D. from Lexington Theological Seminary. Rose then attended the University of London for graduate school. In 1945, Transylvania College hired him as professor of philosophy, and in 1951, Rose became president of that institution. He was the youngest college president in the country. The United States Junior Chamber of Commerce elected Rose in 1955 as one of the "Ten Outstan...
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Sullivan Canaday White
#153748
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Sullivan Canaday White is an American theater director, producer and educator in Lexington, Kentucky. Personal life Sullivan Canaday White is a theater director, producer and educator in Lexington, Kentucky. Born on February 8, 1966, White attended primary and secondary schools in Estill County, Kentucky, and received a BA from the University of Kentucky , an MA from Northwestern University , and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University .
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Carolyn Reading Hammer
#178535
Overall Influence
1911 - 2001 (90 years)
Carolyn E. Hammer was curator of rare books at the University of Kentucky Libraries and the founder of multiple book arts presses in Lexington, Kentucky. These include the Bur Press, the Anvil Press, and the King Library Press. She was an influential figure in modern letterpress printing in the United States.
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Jane Grande-Allen
#182120
Overall Influence
Katie Jane Grande-Allen is an American bioengineer currently the Isabel C. Cameron Professor at Rice University. She is currently chair of the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University. Her research focuses on an engineering approach to heart disease.
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Matt Jones
#183883
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Matthew Harper Jones is an American attorney, businessman, radio host, author, and investor in Lexington, Kentucky. Early life and education Jones was born in Lexington and raised in Middlesboro, Kentucky; his mother practiced law in nearby Pineville, serving as the Commonwealth's Attorney for Bell County. Jones attended Transylvania University on a full scholarship before receiving a scholarship to Duke Law School, where he graduated second in his class.
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James R. Brown
#188667
Overall Influence
#22
Richard Mentor Johnson
1780 - 1850 (70 years)
Richard Mentor Johnson was an American slave owner, lawyer, military officer and politician who served as the ninth vice president of the United States, serving from 1837 to 1841 under President Martin Van Buren. He is the only vice president elected by the United States Senate under the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment. Johnson also represented Kentucky in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. He began and ended his political career in the Kentucky House of Representatives.
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Stephen F. Austin
1793 - 1836 (43 years)
Stephen Fuller Austin was an American-born empresario. Known as the "Father of Texas" and the founder of Anglo Texas, he led the second and, ultimately, the successful colonization of the region by bringing 300 families and their slaves from the United States to the Tejas region of Mexico in 1825.
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John Hunt Morgan
1825 - 1864 (39 years)
John Hunt Morgan was a Confederate general in the American Civil War. In April 1862, he raised the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry Regiment, fought at Shiloh, and then launched a costly raid in Kentucky, which encouraged Braxton Bragg's invasion of that state. He also attacked General William Rosecrans's supply lines. In July 1863, he set out on a 1,000-mile raid into Indiana and Ohio, taking hundreds of prisoners. But after most of his men had been intercepted by U.S. Army gunboats, Morgan surrendered at Salineville, Ohio, the northernmost point ever reached by uniformed Confederates. Morgan carried ou...
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Alva Woods
1794 - 1887 (93 years)
Alva Woods was an American minister, university professor and university president. He was interim President of Brown University, 1826–28 and President of Transylvania University, 1828-31. Of most historical significance, he served as the first President of the University of Alabama from 1831 to 1837.
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Constantine Samuel Rafinesque
1783 - 1840 (57 years)
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz was a French 19th-century polymath born near Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire and self-educated in France. He traveled as a young man in the United States, ultimately settling in Ohio in 1815, where he made notable contributions to botany, zoology, and the study of prehistoric earthworks in North America. He also contributed to the study of ancient Mesoamerican linguistics, in addition to work he had already completed in Europe.
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Jefferson Davis
1808 - 1889 (81 years)
Jefferson F. Davis was an American politician who served as the first and only president of the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party before the American Civil War. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1853 to 1857.
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Charles Wilkins Short
1794 - 1863 (69 years)
Charles Wilkins Short was an American botanist. He primarily worked in the state of Kentucky. Short discovered several species of plants and has six species of plants named after him. He attended Transylvania University and the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to being a botanist, he practiced medicine and taught materia medica. Short also owned a sizable herbarium. Short retired from teaching in 1849.
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Lewis W. Green
1806 - 1863 (57 years)
Lewis Warner Green was a Presbyterian minister, educator, and academic administrator who was the president of Hampden–Sydney College, Transylvania University, and Centre College for various periods from 1849 to 1863. Born in Danville, Kentucky, baptized in Versailles, and educated in Woodford County, Green enrolled at Transylvania University but transferred to Centre College to complete his education. He graduated in 1824 and in doing so became one of two members of the school's first graduating class. After short periods studying medicine and law, he enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1831 but returned to Kentucky in 1832 before graduating.
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James Lane Allen
1849 - 1925 (76 years)
James Lane Allen was an American novelist and short story writer whose work, including the novel A Kentucky Cardinal, often depicted the culture and dialects of his native Kentucky. His work is characteristic of the late 19th-century local color era, when writers sought to capture the vernacular in their fiction. Allen has been described as "Kentucky's first important novelist".
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Thomas Winthrop Coit
1803 - 1885 (82 years)
Thomas Winthrop Coit was an American Episcopal minister, author, and educator. He was the fifth President of Transylvania University. Coit, elder son of Thomas Coit, M.D., and Mary W. Coit, of New London, Connecticut, was born in that city, June 28, 1803.
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Anne Hazen McFarland
1867 - 1930 (63 years)
Anne Hazen McFarland was an American physician and medical journal editor who specialized in the treatment of mental illness in women. She criticized the contemporary idea that gynecological disorders caused insanity and nervousness in women.
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George W. Johnson
1811 - 1862 (51 years)
George Washington Johnson was the first Confederate governor of Kentucky. A lawyer-turned-farmer from Scott County, Kentucky, Johnson, a supporter of slavery who owned 26 slaves, favored secession as a means of preventing the Civil War, believing the Union and Confederacy would be forces of equal strength, each too wary to attack the other. As political sentiment in the Commonwealth took a decidedly Union turn following the elections of 1861, Johnson was instrumental in organizing a sovereignty convention in Russellville, Kentucky, with the intent of "severing forever our connection with the ...
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John Marshall Harlan
1833 - 1911 (78 years)
John Marshall Harlan was an American lawyer and politician who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1877 until his death in 1911. He is often called "The Great Dissenter" due to his many dissents in cases that restricted civil liberties, including the Civil Rights Cases, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Giles v. Harris. Many of Harlan's views expressed in his notable dissents would become the official view of the Supreme Court starting from the 1950s Warren Court and onward. His grandson John Marshall Harlan II was also a Supreme Court justice.
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John Finley Crowe
1787 - 1860 (73 years)
John Finley Crowe was a Presbyterian minister and the founder of Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana. His residence from 1824 to 1860, the Crowe-Garritt House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
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John C. Breckinridge
1821 - 1875 (54 years)
John Cabell Breckinridge was an American lawyer, politician, and soldier. He represented Kentucky in both houses of Congress and became the 14th and youngest-ever Vice President of the United States. Serving from 1857 to 1861, he took office at the age of 36. He was a member of the Democratic Party, and ran for president in 1860 as a Southern Democrat. He served in the U.S. Senate during the outbreak of the American Civil War, but was expelled after joining the Confederate Army. He was appointed Confederate Secretary of War in 1865.
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Jacob Ammen
1806 - 1894 (88 years)
Jacob Ammen was a college professor, civil engineer, and a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War. His younger brother, Daniel Ammen, was an admiral in the United States Navy. Early life and career Ammen was born in Fincastle, Virginia, but at a young age, his parents moved to Georgetown, Ohio, where Ammen attended school. He was an 1831 honors graduate of the United States Military Academy, where he was an assistant professor for two terms, in addition to his duties as a second lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Artillery. He also served as a drill instructor and captain in the Georgetown militia.
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Henry Shaler Williams
1847 - 1918 (71 years)
Henry Shaler Williams was an American geologist. He was the son of State Senator Josiah B. Williams . He graduated from Yale College and studied with Louis Agassiz at Cornell University. In 1871, he taught for a year at Transylvania University and then worked in business with his father in Ithaca, New York until joining the Cornell University faculty in 1879. From 1892 to 1904 he was Professor of Geology at Yale University and Professor of Geology at Cornell University from 1904 until 1912 when he was named Emeritus Professor.
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Thomas Satterwhite Noble
1835 - 1907 (72 years)
Thomas Satterwhite Noble was an American painter as well as the first head of the McMicken School of Design in Cincinnati, Ohio. Biography Noble was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and raised on a plantation where hemp and cotton were grown. He showed an interest and propensity for art at an early age. He first studied painting with Samuel Woodson Price in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1852 and then continued his studies with Price, Oliver Frazier and George P.A. Healey at Transylvania University in Lexington. In 1853 he moved to New York City before moving to Paris to study with Thomas Couture fro...
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Richard Montgomery Gano
1830 - 1913 (83 years)
Richard Montgomery Gano was a physician, Protestant minister, and brigadier general in the army of the Confederate States during the American Civil War. Early life Richard Gano was born June 17, 1830, near Springdale in Bourbon County, Kentucky, the son of John Allen Gano, who was the son of Gen. Richard M. Gano, veteran of the War of 1812. John Allen Gano was a minister in the Disciples of Christ and was active in the Restoration Movement with Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone. The first General Richard Gano was the son of Rev. John Gano and Sarah Stites. Gano was of Huguenot descen...
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Happy Chandler
1898 - 1991 (93 years)
Albert Benjamin "Happy" Chandler Sr. was an American politician from Kentucky. He represented Kentucky in the U.S. Senate and served as its 44th and 49th governor. Aside from his political positions, he also served as the second Commissioner of Baseball from 1945 to 1951 and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982. His grandson, Ben Chandler, later served as congressman for Kentucky's Sixth District.
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Thomas Holley Chivers
1809 - 1858 (49 years)
Thomas Holley Chivers was an American doctor-turned-poet from the state of Georgia. He is best known for his friendship with Edgar Allan Poe and his controversial defense of the poet after his death.
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Eugene C. Barker
1874 - 1956 (82 years)
Eugene Campbell Barker was an American historian at the University of Texas, the managing director of the Texas State Historical Association, and the editor of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly. He chaired the history department while soliciting gifts to the university, which he used to build a collection of archives and artifacts. In 1950, the university dedicated the Eugene C. Barker History Center as a repository for his collections. These collections are an important part of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas.
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Eger V. Murphree
1898 - 1962 (64 years)
Eger Vaughan Murphree was an American chemist, best known for his co-invention of the process of fluid catalytic cracking. Biography Murphree was born on November 3, 1898, in Bayonne, New Jersey, moving as a child to Kentucky. He graduated from Kentucky University with degrees in chemistry and mathematics in 1920, and a master's degree in chemistry in 1921. Murphree played college football as Kentucky as a tackle and was captain of the 1920 Kentucky Wildcats football team.
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Albert Sidney Johnston
1803 - 1862 (59 years)
Albert Sidney Johnston served as a general in three different armies: the Texian Army, the United States Army, and the Confederate States Army. He saw extensive combat during his 34-year military career, fighting actions in the Black Hawk War, the Texas-Indian Wars, the Mexican–American War, the Utah War, and the American Civil War.
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