There have been many people in history, who have changed the world with their thoughts, inventions, political contribution, and even by their thoughts. There are some influential people in history who have made some major impact on the lives of the human race.
Certain people have shaped the world with their contributions to the various spheres of life. The article below presents a list of some of the most influential people in history. This following list of the most important people in history that will help you learn about those who shaped the world.
List of Top Influential People
Sir Isaac Newton
A physicist who put forth the theory of universal gravitation and laws of motion.
Jesus Christ
The founder of Christianity.
Buddha
The prince who went in search of enlightenment and become the founder of Buddhism.
Christopher Columbus
Italian navigator, colonizer and explorer who introduced the lands of America to the Europeans.
Albert Einstein
German theoretical physicist, who gave the general and special relativity. More specifically mass-energy equivalence, expressed by the equation E = mc2.
Galileo Galilei
The founder of modern science who accurately described heliocentric solar system.
Nelson Mandela
The first South African president who was elected in fully representative democratic election. He spent 24 years in jail, as he led the movement against apartheid.
George Washington
The first president of United States.
Genghis Khan
The Mongol conqueror.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
The pioneer of ‘satyagraha’ or the non-violence movement who led India to achieve independence from the British rule. He is known as the ‘Great Soul’ and is known as the Father of the Nation in India. Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday on 2nd October is celebrated as the International Day of Non-Violence.
Thomas Edison
The inventor of light bulb, phonograph.
Alexander Graham Bell
The inventor of telephone.
Indira Gandhi
The first woman Prime Minister of India, also known as the Iron Lady of India.
Julius Caesar
Roman emperor.
John F. Kennedy
The U.S. President who led first successful effort by humans to travel to the moon.
Muhammad
Prophet of Islam and conqueror of Arabia.
Confucius
The Chinese philosopher who is known as the founder of Confucianism.
St. Paul
The proselytizer of Christianity.
Cai Lun
The inventor of paper.
Johann Gutenberg
German printer who invented the mechanical printing press.
Euclid Platonism
A Greek mathematician who is known for Euclidian geometry.
Moses
The Prophet of Judaism.
Charles Darwin
The biologist who described Darwinian theory of evolution.
Shih Huang Ti
A Chinese emperor who took power in 221 B.C.E and molded the China of today.
Augustus Caesar
He was the adopted son of Julius Caesar. He became the first ruler of the Roman Empire. He ruled the Roman Empire single-handedly from January 27 BC until his death in AD 14.
Nicolaus Copernicus
An astronomer who put forth the theory of heliocentricity.
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
The father of modern chemistry who was also a philosopher and economist.
Constantine
The great Roman emperor who completely legalized Christianity, leading to its status as state religion.
James Watt
The man who developed steam engine.
Michael Faraday
A chemist who discovery of magneto-electricity.
James Clerk Maxwell
The man who gave electromagnetic spectrum.
Martin Luther King Jr.
An American clergyman, and the leader of the African-American civil rights movement. He is a human rights icon and recognized as a martyr by two Christian churches.
Karl Marx
The founder of Marxism.
Orville and Wilbur Wright
The brothers who invented the airplane.
Adam Smith
The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
John Dalton Quaker
A chemist who gave the atomic theory, law of partial pressures called Dalton’s law.
Alexander the Great
The Greek conqueror of the world, who invaded and defeated Persia, Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India.
Napoleon Bonaparte
The Emperor of the French, a military and political leader of France who shaped the early 19th century European politics.
Antony van Leeuwenhoek
The father of microbiology and the first microbiologist ever.
William T. G. Morton
The pioneer of anesthesiology.
Guglielmo Marconi
The inventor of radio.
Adolf Hitler
The totalitarian leader of Germany who is known for the genocide of Jewish, Romani and other people for what is known as the Holocaust.
Plato
The Greek philosopher who is founder of Platonism.
Oliver Cromwell
The British political and military leader.
Alexander Fleming
The inventor of penicillin.
John Locke
The father of Liberalism.
Kaoru Ishikawa
The Japanese professor who influenced quality management in North America and is known for the Ishikawa or cause and effect diagram or the fish bone diagram for industrial process.
Werner Heisenberg
The founder of quantum mechanics and known for asserting the uncertainty principle of quantum theory.
Louis Daguerre
The inventor and pioneer of photography.
Simon Bolivar
He is the Atheist National hero of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.
Rene Descartes
A philosopher and mathematician.
Michelangelo
The most famous Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect.
Pope Urban II
He called for First Crusade.
James Watson and Francis Crick
They were the first to propose the double helix structure of DNA molecule in 1953.
Asoka
The king of India who converted to and spread Buddhism after witnessing the mass deaths at the war of Kalinga.
William Harvey
The man who described the circulation of blood, wrote essays on the Generation of Animals and the basis for modern embryology.
Ernest Rutherford
A physicist and pioneer of subatomic physics who gave the Rutherford model of an atom.
John Calvin
The founder of Calvinism.
Gregor Mendel
He is known for Mendel’s laws of genetics.
Max Planck
A physicist who is considered the founder of quantum theory and most important physicists of the 20th century.
Joseph Lister Quaker
The principal discoverer of antiseptics, which greatly reduced surgical mortality.
Nikolaus August Otto
He built the first four-stroke internal combustion engine.
Francisco Pizarro
The Spanish conqueror in South America who defeated the Incas.
Hernando Cortes
He conquered Mexico for Spain through war and introduced smallpox from European that largely destroyed Aztec civilization.
Thomas Jefferson
The 3rd president of United States.
Queen Isabella I
The Queen of Castile and Leon who along with her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon bought stability to both kingdoms that lead to the unification of Spain as a nation.
Joseph Stalin
Marxism revolutionary and ruler of USSR.
William the Conqueror
The man who laid foundation of modern England.
Sigmund Freud
He put forth the Freudian psychology/ psychoanalysis and founded Freudian school of psychology/ psychoanalysis.
Edward Jenner
The man who discoverer of the vaccination for smallpox.
Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen
He discovered X-rays.
Margret Thatcher
The only woman who became the Prime Minister of United Kingdom and the Leader of the Conservative Party.
Lao Tzu
Founder of Taoism.
Voltaire
A French Enlightenment writer, essayist and philosopher.
Johannes Kepler
An astronomer who gave eponymous laws of planetary motions.
Enrico Fermi
Father of atom bomb.
Leonhard Euler
The greatest mathematician of the 18th century.
Aung San Suu Kyi
She is a Burmese opposition politician and General Secretary of the National League for Democracy. She has been under house arrest in Myanmar for almost 14 years in the past 20 years.
Nicoli Machiavelli
The writer of the influential political treatise ‘The Prince’.
Benazir Butto
She became the first woman Prime Minister of Pakistan, a Muslim state.
Gregory Pincus
An endocrinologist who developed birth-control pill.
Mani Manicheanism
The founder of Manicheanism that was once a world religion, which rivaled Christianity in strength.
Lenin
A Communist Russian ruler.
Sui Wen Ti
The founder and first emperor of the Sui Dynasty.
Vasco da Gama
He discovered the route from Europe to India around Cape Hood.
Cyrus the Great
The Zoroastrianism founder of Persian empire.
Peter the Great
The man who forged Russia into a great European nation.
Mao Zedong
The founder of Maoism, a form of Communism.
Francis Bacon
He delineated inductive scientific method.
Henry Ford
The man who became American founder of Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in mass production.
President Barack Obama
He is the current and the first African-American to who became the President of the United States of America.
Zoroaster Zoroastrianism
The founder of Zoroastrianism.
Queen Elizabeth I
She restored Church of England to power after Queen Mary.
Mikhail Gorbachev
The Orthodox Russian premier who helped end Communism in USSR.
Menes
He unified Upper and Lower Egypt.
Charlemagne
He is today known as the founding father of French and German empire and as the Father of Europe.
Homer
The Greek epic poet.
Justinian I
The Roman emperor who reconquered Mediterranean empire and accelerated the Catholic-Monophysite schism.
Mahavira
The founder of Jainism.
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