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
James Farmer
#2283
Overall Influence
1920 - 1999 (79 years)
James Leonard Farmer Jr. was an American civil rights activist and leader in the Civil Rights Movement "who pushed for nonviolent protest to dismantle segregation, and served alongside Martin Luther King Jr." He was the initiator and organizer of the first Freedom Ride in 1961, which eventually led to the desegregation of interstate transportation in the United States.
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Walter McAfee
#35528
Overall Influence
1914 - 1995 (81 years)
Walter Samuel McAfee was an American scientist and astronomer, notable for participating in the world's first lunar radar echo experiments with Project Diana. Personal life McAfee was born in Ore City, Texas to African-American parents Luther F. McAfee and Susie A. Johnson; he was the second of their nine children. At three months old, the family moved to Marshall, Texas, where McAfee would grow up and attend undergraduate school. He graduated high school in Marshall in 1930, and later noted that his high school physics and chemistry teacher, Freeman Prince Hodge, was a great influence of his.
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Johnnie Colemon
#48369
Overall Influence
1920 - 2014 (94 years)
Johnnie Colemon was an influential minister and teacher in the New Thought movement. She is often referred to as the “First Lady of New Thought”. Colemon founded several large organizations within the African-American New Thought movement, including Christ Universal Temple and the Universal Foundation for Better Living . The Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary is named in her honor.
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Henry Cecil McBay
#66767
Overall Influence
1914 - 1995 (81 years)
Henry Ransom Cecil McBay was an American chemist and teacher. McBay won numerous awards for his teaching and mentoring, including the American Chemical Society Award . McBay also co-founded the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers .
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Henrietta Bell Wells
#72512
Overall Influence
1912 - 2008 (96 years)
Henrietta Bell Wells was the first female member of the debate team at historically black Wiley College in Texas. She was born Henrietta Pauline Bell on the banks of Buffalo Bayou in Houston, Texas to a West Indian single mother.
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Al Jackson
#87755
Overall Influence
1935 - 2019 (84 years)
Alvin Neill Jackson , affectionately referred to as "Little" Al Jackson, was a left-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball who played from 1959 to 1969. His 43 wins with the New York Mets were the franchise record until Tom Seaver eased past the mark in 1969. In July 2021, he was posthumously honored with the New York Mets Hall of Fame Achievement Award for his 50 years of service to the franchise.
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William Astor Kirk
#91367
Overall Influence
1922 - 2011 (89 years)
William Astor Kirk was a professor, author, a church lay leader and a social activist who worked for racial equality, gay rights, and to end segregation in the United Methodist Church. He also served in the Office of Economic Opportunity, after being appointed by President Lyndon Baines Johnson. A contemporary of Heman Sweatt he sought equal access to higher education at the University of Texas and eventually was the first African-American to be awarded a political science doctorate by UT.
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C. O. Simpkins
#169115
Overall Influence
1925 - 2019 (94 years)
Cuthbert Ormond Simpkins was an American dentist, civil rights campaigner, and state legislator in Louisiana. He left the state under threat of violence before returning. He was born in Mansfield, Louisiana to Oscar Simpkins. He studied at Wiley College and graduated from Tennessee State University with an undergraduate degree. He received a Doctorate of Dental Surgery from Meharry Medical College School of Dentistry in Nashville, Tennessee.
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Frederick C. Tillis
#171221
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
Frederick Charles Tillis was an American composer, jazz saxophonist, poet, and music educator at the collegiate level. Early life Growing up Born in Galveston, Texas on January 5, 1930, Frederick Tillis was raised by his mother, Zelma Bernice Gardner, Tillis , his stepfather, General Gardner, and his maternal grandparents, Willie Tillis and Jessie Tillis-Hubbard .
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Maxine Horner
#178444
Overall Influence
1933 - 2021 (88 years)
Maxine Edwyna Cissel Horner was one of the first African American women to serve in the Oklahoma Senate, serving from 1986 to 2004, along with Vicki Miles-LaGrange. Horner held the position of Democratic Caucus Chair, as well as Chair of Business and Labor and Government Operations, and Vice-Chair of Adult Literacy.
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Lois Towles
1912 - 1983 (71 years)
Lois Towles was an American classical pianist, music educator, and community activist. Born in Texarkana, Arkansas, she grew up in the town straddling the Arkansas and Texas line. From an early age, she was interested in music and began piano lessons at age 9. After graduating as valedictorian of her high school class, she obtained a bachelor's degree from Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and worked as a high school teacher from 1936 to 1941. In 1942, Towles enrolled in the University of Iowa and earned two master's degrees in 1943. She went on to further her education at Juilliard, the Univ...
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Marjorie Lee Browne
1914 - 1979 (65 years)
Marjorie Lee Browne was a mathematics educator. She was one of the first African-American women to receive a PhD in mathematics. Early life and education Marjorie Lee Browne was a prominent mathematician and educator who, in 1949, became only the third African-American woman to earn a doctorate in her field. Browne was born on September 9, 1914, in Memphis, Tennessee, to Mary Taylor Lee and Lawrence Johnson Lee. Her father, a railway postal clerk remarried shortly after his wife's death, when Browne was almost two years old. He and his second wife, Lottie, a school teacher, encouraged their daughter to take her studies seriously as she was a gifted student.
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Richard Williams
1931 - 1985 (54 years)
Richard Gene Williams was an American jazz trumpeter. Biography Williams was born in Galveston, Texas, and played tenor saxophone early in his life before picking up trumpet as a teenager. He played in local Texas bands and attended Wiley College, where he majored in music. After serving in the Air Force from 1952 to 1956, he toured Europe with Lionel Hampton, and upon his return took a master's degree at the Manhattan School of Music.
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Heman Marion Sweatt
1912 - 1982 (70 years)
Heman Marion Sweatt was an African-American civil rights activist who confronted Jim Crow laws. He is best known for the Sweatt v. Painter lawsuit, which challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine and was one of the earliest of the events that led to the desegregation of American higher education.
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Zephyr Wright
1915 - 1988 (73 years)
Zephyr Wright was an African-American civil rights activist and personal chef for President Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson from 1942 until 1969. Wright was an influence of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because she had communicated her experiences living under Jim Crow laws to Johnson, which were later shared by Johnson with other influential lawmakers.
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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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