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
Wyatt Tee Walker
#5857
Overall Influence
1929 - 2018 (89 years)
Wyatt Tee Walker was an African-American pastor, national civil rights leader, theologian, and cultural historian. He was a chief of staff for Martin Luther King Jr., and in 1958 became an early board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference . He helped found a Congress for Racial Equality chapter in 1958. As executive director of the SCLC from 1960 to 1964, Walker helped to bring the group to national prominence. Walker sat at the feet of his mentor, BG Crawley, who was a Baptist Minister in Brooklyn, NY and New York State Judge.
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Herman Branson
#10799
Overall Influence
1914 - 1995 (81 years)
Herman Russell Branson was an American physicist, chemist, best known for his research on the alpha helix protein structure, and was also the president of two colleges. He received a fellowship from the Rosenwald Foundation.
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Ben Wallace
#21942
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Ben Camey Wallace is an American basketball executive and former professional player who played most of his career in the National Basketball Association with the Detroit Pistons. He is regarded by many to be the greatest undrafted player in NBA history, and was known for his shot-blocking, rebounding, and overall defensive play. A native of Alabama, Wallace attended Cuyahoga Community College and Virginia Union University. In his NBA career, he also played with the Washington Bullets/Wizards, Orlando Magic, Chicago Bulls, and Cleveland Cavaliers.
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Charles Oakley
#24328
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Charles Oakley is an American former professional basketball player. Oakley played most of 19 seasons in the National Basketball Association with the New York Knicks. As a power forward, he consistently ranked as one of the best rebounders and defensive players in the NBA. He also played for the Chicago Bulls, Toronto Raptors, Washington Wizards, and Houston Rockets. Since 2017, he has been the coach of the Killer 3's of the BIG3.
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Donda West
#30671
Overall Influence
1949 - 2007 (58 years)
Donda C. West was an American educator and chair of Chicago State University's Department of English, Communications, Media, and Theater. She was best known for being the mother of the American rapper Kanye West.
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Leontine T. Kelly
#32681
Overall Influence
1920 - 2012 (92 years)
Leontine Turpeau Current Kelly was an American bishop of the United Methodist Church. She was the second woman elevated to the position of bishop within the United Methodist Church, and the first African American woman.
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Douglas Wilder
#36228
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Lawrence Douglas Wilder is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 66th governor of Virginia from 1990 to 1994. He was the first African American to serve as governor of a U.S. state since the Reconstruction era, and the first African American ever elected as governor. He is currently a professor at the eponymous Wilder School at Virginia Commonwealth University.
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Henry L. Marsh
#39696
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Henry Leander Marsh III is an American civil rights lawyer and politician. A Democrat, Marsh was elected by the city council as the first African-American mayor of Richmond, Virginia in 1977. He was elected to the Senate of Virginia in 1991, and resigned from his seat in 2014. Marsh represented the 16th district, consisting of the city of Petersburg, Dinwiddie County, and parts of the city of Richmond, and Chesterfield and Prince George counties. Marsh is now a commissioner on the Virginia Department of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, a position to which he received appointment from Gov...
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Zulu Sofola
#44122
Overall Influence
1935 - 1995 (60 years)
Nwazuluwa Onuekwuke "Zulu" Sofola was the first published female Nigerian playwright and dramatist. Sofola was also a university teacher and became the first female Professor of Theater Arts in Africa.
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Randall Robinson
#47843
Overall Influence
1941 - 2023 (82 years)
Randall Robinson was an American lawyer, author and activist, noted as the founder of TransAfrica. He was known particularly for his impassioned opposition to apartheid, and for his advocacy on behalf of Haitian immigrants and Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Due to his frustration with American society, Robinson emigrated to Saint Kitts in 2001.
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Yvonne Maddox
#68002
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Yvonne T. Maddox is an American academic who currently works as vice president for research at the Uniformed Services University. She was previously the acting director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Her career at the National Institutes of Health also includes previous leadership roles as acting deputy director of the National Institutes of Health and deputy director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
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Daryl Cumber Dance
#71722
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Daryl Cumber Dance is an American academic best known for her work on black folklore. Biography Daryl Veronica Cumber was born in Richmond, Virginia, to Allen and Veronica Bell Cumber. She attended Ruthville High School in Ruthville, Virginia, and earned a bachelor's degree in English from Virginia State College in 1957. She then taught at Armstrong High School in Richmond until 1962, when she returned to Virginia State College as an instructor. The next year, she completed a master's degree from Virginia State. In 1971, she graduated from the University of Virginia with a doctorate in English, and was named an assistant professor at Virginia State.
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Iyanla Vanzant
#84414
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Iyanla Vanzant is an American inspirational speaker, lawyer, New Thought spiritual teacher, author, life coach, and television personality. She is known primarily for her books, her eponymous talk show, and her appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show. From 2012 to 2021, she served as host of OWN's Iyanla: Fix My Life.
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Corey D. B. Walker
#86661
Overall Influence
Corey D. B. Walker is a professor who specializes in African American social, political, and religious thought. He is the author of A Noble Fight: African American Freemasonry and the Struggle for Democracy in America, published by the University of Illinois Press. Walker also acted as editor of a special issue on "Theology and Democratic Futures" of the journal Political Theology and was the Associate Editor of SAGE's Encyclopedia of Identity. He is a Wake Forest Professor of the Humanities in the English department at Wake Forest University, where he is the director of the African American S...
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Will Downing
#87572
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Wilfred "Will" Downing is an American singer and songwriter. He is married to singer Audrey Wheeler, who was a member of the R&B group Unlimited Touch. Biography Downing enrolled in Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, New York. Alumni of the school include record label executives Clive Davis , Kedar Massenburg , Stephanie Mills and singer Barbra Streisand. Downing, who eventually recorded for Motown, graduated with Massenburg in the class of 1981. Downing then attended college at Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia. In the mid-1980s, he moved back to New York City, and worked on...
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Virgil
#90626
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Michael Jones , better known by his ring names Virgil and Soultrain Jones, is an American professional wrestler and actor who is best known as portraying Ted DiBiase's body guard in the World Wrestling Federation . Jones debuted in the WWF as Virgil in 1987 and later became a singles wrestler in 1991, wrestling for the WWF until 1995. His highest achievement was becoming the second WWF Million Dollar Champion after defeating Ted DiBiase at WWF Summerslam 1991.
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Cora Bagley Marrett
#95745
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Cora Bagley Marrett is an American sociologist. From May 2011 until August 2014, Marrett served as the deputy director of the National Science Foundation. Biography Early life Cora Bagley Marrett was born in 1942 in Kenbridge, Virginia. Her parents only had a sixth grade education and Marrett was the youngest of 12 children.
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Roslyn Brock
#175333
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Roslyn McCallister Brock is an African-American civil rights leader, healthcare executive, and health activist. She was selected to succeed Julian Bond as chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on February 20, 2010, becoming the fourth woman and the youngest person to serve in the position.
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Edith J. Patterson
#189759
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Edith Jerry Patterson is a Democratic member of the Maryland House of Delegates who represents district 28, which is based in Charles County. She previously served as a county commissioner from 2002 to 2010 and a member of the Board of Education for Charles County from 1983 to 1995.
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Eboni Edmonson Haynes
#192299
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
#21
Abram Lincoln Harris
1899 - 1963 (64 years)
Abram Lincoln Harris, Jr. was an American economist, academic, anthropologist and a social critic of the condition of blacks in the United States. Considered by many as the first African American to achieve prominence in the field of economics, Harris was also known for his heavy influence on black radical and neo-conservative thought in the United States. As an economist, Harris is most famous for his 1931 collaboration with political scientist Sterling Spero to produce a study on African-American labor history titled The Black Worker and his 1936 work The Negro as Capitalist, in which he criticized black businessmen for not promoting interracial trade.
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Benjamin Mays
1894 - 1984 (90 years)
Benjamin Elijah Mays was an American Baptist minister and American rights leader who is credited with laying the intellectual foundations of the American civil rights movement. Mays taught and mentored many influential activists, including Martin Luther King Jr, Julian Bond, Maynard Jackson, and Donn Clendenon, among others. His rhetoric and intellectual pursuits focused on Black self-determination. Mays' commitment to social justice through nonviolence and civil resistance were cultivated from his youth through the lessons imbibed from his parents and eldest sister. The peak of his public i...
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Gordon B. Hancock
1884 - 1970 (86 years)
Gordon Blaine Hancock was a professor at Virginia Union University and a leading spokesman for African American equality in the generation before the civil rights movement. Hancock was a nationally syndicated columnist for the Norfolk Journal and Guide whose columns were published in 114 black newspapers. He was one of the organizers of the 1942 Southern Conference on Race Relations and gave the opening keynote address. This conference led to the publication of "A Basis for Inter-Racial Cooperation and Development in the South: A Statement by Southern Negroes," known as the Durham Manifesto, ...
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Wallace Van Jackson
1900 - 1982 (82 years)
Wallace Van Jackson was an American librarian and civil rights activist. He was the director of several academic libraries over his career and was respected for developing collections that promoted the history of African Americans; he was also instrumental in creating reference services and building library collections for multiple libraries in Africa. Van Jackson was part of a group that successfully challenged voter discrimination against African Americans in 1944 in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Abram W. Harris
1858 - 1935 (77 years)
Abram Winegardner Harris was the 8th president of Northwestern University, serving from 1906 to 1916. He was also the first President of the University of Maine from 1896 to 1906. Biography Abram W. Harris was born in Philadelphia on November 7, 1858. A graduate of Wesleyan University , he came to Northwestern after a time as President of Maine State College , where he oversaw the transformation of the school into the University of Maine in 1896. At Northwestern, he helped develop the School of Commerce in 1908. He retired from Northwestern after 10 years to take a position with the Methodis...
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Max Robinson
1939 - 1988 (49 years)
Maxie Cleveland Robinson Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, most notably serving as co-anchor on ABC World News Tonight alongside Frank Reynolds and Peter Jennings from 1978 until 1983. Robinson is noted as the first African-American broadcast network news anchor in the United States. Robinson was a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists.
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James H. Dillard
1865 - 1940 (75 years)
James Hardy Dillard , also known as J. H. Dillard, was an educator from Virginia. The son of slaveholders, Dillard was educated at Washington and Lee University and held a variety of teaching positions. In 1891, Dillard was named a professor at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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Charles Henry Thompson
1895 - 1980 (85 years)
Charles Henry Thompson was an American educational psychologist and the first African-American to earn a doctorate degree in educational psychology. He obtained a Master's degree and Ph.D at the University of Chicago. Born in Jackson, Mississippi, he became an educator at Howard University. During his time at Howard, he was the dean of the liberal art college and later became the dean of Howard's graduate school, where he made several administrative and scholarship changes. Additionally, he founded The Journal of Negro Education, an academic journal pertaining to the education of African-American students.
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