In The Britannica Guide to the World's Most Influential People, readers will get to know the foremost minds within technology, medicine, military, religion, and entertainment. Each figure's life and accomplishments are put into context, showing how their contributions changed the world we live in.

Table of Contents

• The 100 Most Influential Religious Leaders of All Time
• Introduction
• Moses
• Akhenaton
• Isaiah
• Jeremiah
• Zoroaster
• Laozi
• Mahavira
• Confucius
• Buddha
• Zhuangzi
• Ashoka
• Judas Maccabeus
• Mary
• Jesus
• Zhang Daoling
• Akiba ben Joseph
• Nagarjuna
• Mani
• Eusebius of Caesarea
• Augustine
• Bodhidharma
• Muhammad
• Xuanzang
• Shankara
• Ramanuja
• Rashi
• Saint Hildegard
• Ibn Abī ʿAṣrūn
• Zhu Xi
• Moses Maimonides
• Saint Francis of Assisi
• Dōgen
• Rūmī
• Nichiren
• Saint Thomas Aquinas
• John Wycliffe
• Jan Hus
• Saint Joan of Arc
• Nanak
• Sir Thomas More
• Martin Luther
• Huldrych Zwingli
• Saint Ignatius of Loyola
• Menno Simons
• John Calvin
• John Knox
• Saint Teresa of Ávila
• Isaac ben Solomon Luria
• Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal et duc de Richelieu
• Cornelius Otto Jansen
• George Fox
• Shabbetai Tzevi
• John Bunyan
• William Penn
• Baʿal Shem Ṭov
• John Wesley
• Jonathan Edwards
• Motoori Norinaga
• Ann Lee
• Richard Allen
• Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton
• William Miller
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Bahāʾ Allāh
• Isaac Mayer Wise
• Mary Baker Eddy
• Dayananda Sarasvati
• William Booth
• Helena Blavatsky
• Ramakrishna
• Joseph Smith
• Charles Taze Russell
• Wovoka
• Vivekananda
• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
• Saint John XXIII
• Simon Kimbangu
• Reinhold Niebuhr
• Blessed Paul VI
• Elijah Muhammad
• Dorothy Day
• Ruhollah Khomeini
• Ḥasan al-Bannāʾ
• Blessed Mother Teresa
• L. Ron Hubbard
• Billy Graham
• Sun Myung Moon
• Saint John Paul II
• Malcolm X
• Ian Paisley
• Thomas Spencer Monson
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Desmond Tutu
• Louis Farrakhan
• Jerry Falwell
• Dalai Lama XIV
• Francis I
• Rowan Williams
• Rick Warren
• Joel Osteen
• Glossary
• For Further Reading
• The 100 Most Influential Entertainers of All Time
• Introduction
• Lillie Langtry
• Albert Chevalier
• Cecil B. DeMille
• Sophie Tucker
• Charlie Chaplin
• Fritz Lang
• Mary Pickford
• Harold Lloyd
• Rudolph Valentino
• The Gershwins
• Fred Astaire
• Sir Alfred Hitchcock
• Humphrey Bogart
• Clark Gable
• Bing Crosby
• Cary Grant
• Katharine Hepburn
• John Wayne
• Kurosawa Akira
• Lucille Ball
• Gene Kelly
• Orson Welles
• Ingrid Bergman
• Ingmar Bergman
• Federico Fellini
• Satyajit Ray
• Judy Garland
• Marlon Brando
• Paul Newman
• Johnny Carson
• Sammy Davis, Jr.
• Marilyn Monroe
• Mel Brooks
• Sidney Poitier
• Stanley Kubrick
• Alejandro Jodorowsky
• Audrey Hepburn
• John Cassavetes
• Clint Eastwood
• Sir Sean Connery
• Jean-Luc Godard
• James Dean
• Dame Elizabeth Taylor
• Carol Burnett
• Joan Rivers
• Jack Nicholson
• George Carlin
• Morgan Freeman
• Dustin Hoffman
• Sir Anthony Hopkins
• Francis Ford Coppola
• Al Pacino
• Bruce Lee
• Richard Pryor
• Nora Ephron
• Barbra Streisand
• Martin Scorsese
• Robert De Niro
• George Lucas
• Steve Martin
• David Lynch
• Steven Spielberg
• David Letterman
• Larry David
• Andrew Lloyd Webber
• Meryl Streep
• Pedro Almodóvar
• Bill Murray
• Robin Williams
• Kathryn Bigelow
• Roseanne Barr
• Jerry Seinfeld
• James Cameron
• Denzel Washington
• Nathan Lane
• Tom Hanks
• Spike Lee
• Daniel Day-Lewis
• Ellen DeGeneres
• Madonna
• Tim Burton
• Michael Jackson
• Eddie Murphy
• George Clooney
• Jim Carrey
• Jon Stewart
• Quentin Tarantino
• Brad Pitt
• Stephen Colbert
• Chris Rock
• Will Ferrell
• Louis C.K.
• Tina Fey
• Christopher Nolan
• Dave Chappelle
• Jimmy Fallon
• Angelina Jolie
• Justin Timberlake
• Beyoncé
• Lena Dunham
• Glossary
• For Further Reading
• The 100 Most Influential Military Leaders of All Time
• Introduction
• Cyrus II, the Great
• Leonidas
• Sunzi (Sun Tzu)
• Alexander the Great
• Hannibal
• Scipio Africanus
• Julius Caesar
• Augustus
• Marcus Agrippa
• Trajan
• Hadrian
• Constantine I
• Alaric I
• Attila
• Belisarius
• Charlemagne
• Alfred
• William I
• The Cid
• Saladin
• Richard I
• Genghis Khan
• Edward I
• Robert Bruce
• Edward III
• Edward the Black Prince
• Henry V
• Joan of Arc
• William I, Prince of Orange
• Toyotomi Hideyoshi
• Sir Francis Drake
• Yi Sun-shin
• Gustav II Adolf
• Oliver Cromwell
• Sir Thomas Fairfax
• Prince Rupert
• John Churchill
• Nādir Shāh
• Frederick II
• William Augustus
• James Wolfe
• George Washington
• Horatio Nelson
• Andrew Jackson
• Tecumseh
• Arthur Wellesley
• Napoleon I
• Carl von Clausewitz
• Simón Bolívar
• Winfield Scott
• Shaka
• Helmuth von Moltke
• Robert E. Lee
• Cochise
• Otto von Bismarck
• William T. Sherman
• Ulysses S. Grant
• Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson
• Philip H. Sheridan
• Charles George Gordon
• George Dewey
• Crazy Horse
• Paul von Hindenburg
• Alfred von Tirpitz
• Ferdinand Foch
• John J. Pershing
• Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby
• Erich Ludendorff
• Carl Gustaf Mannerheim
• Winston Churchill
• William “Billy” Mitchell
• Douglas MacArthur
• George Catlett Marshall
• Kemal Atatürk
• William F. Halsey, Jr.
• Alan Francis Brooke
• Yamamoto Isoroku
• Tōjō Hideki
• Chester W. Nimitz
• George Patton
• Henry Harley Arnold
• Bernard Law Montgomery
• Erich von Manstein
• Heinz Guderian
• Adolf Hitler
• Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Charles de Gaulle
• Erwin Rommel
• Harold Alexander
• Omar Nelson Bradley
• Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov
• Ivan Konev
• Vo Nguyen Giap
• Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.
• William Westmoreland
• Moshe Dayan
• Norman Schwarzkopf
• Colin Powell
• Tommy Franks
• David Petraeus
• Glossary
• For Further Reading
• The 100 Most Influential Technology Leaders of All Time
• Introduction
• Johannes Gutenberg
• Galileo
• Johannes Kepler
• Robert Boyle
• John Harrison
• James Watt
• Alessandro Volta
• Robert Fulton
• Eli Whitney
• Louis Daguerre
• Samuel F.B. Morse
• Charles Babbage
• Thomas Davenport
• John Deere
• Elisha Graves Otis
• Henry Bessemer
• Samuel Colt
• Ada Lovelace
• Richard J. Gatling
• Christopher Latham Sholes
• Elias Howe
• Joseph Swan
• Alfred Nobel
• Gottlieb Daimler
• Margaret E. Knight
• Ferdinand von Zeppelin
• Karl Benz
• Thomas Edison
• Alexander Graham Bell
• Emil Berliner
• Charles Algernon Parsons
• George Eastman
• William Seward Burroughs
• Nikola Tesla
• Nettie Maria Stevens
• Auguste and Louis Lumière
• Henry Ford
• Reginald Fessenden
• Wilbur and Orville Wright
• Marie Curie
• Henrietta Swan Leavitt
• Fritz Haber
• Guglielmo Marconi
• Robert Goddard
• Niels Bohr
• Clarence Birdseye
• Igor Sikorsky
• Vladimir Kosma Zworykin
• Edwin Powell Hubble
• Edwin H. Armstrong
• R. Buckminster Fuller
• László József Bíró
• Enrico Fermi
• Walt Disney
• John von Neumann
• J. Robert Oppenheimer
• Maria Goeppert Mayer
• Grace Murray Hopper
• Frank Whittle
• John Mauchly
• Edward Teller
• Willard Frank Libby
• Edwin Herbert Land
• Leo Fender
• Wernher von Braun
• Alan M. Turing
• Hedy Lamarr
• Les Paul
• Charles Townes
• J. Presper Eckert
• Tom Kilburn
• Stephanie Kwolek
• Seymour R. Cray
• Robert Noyce
• Martin Cooper
• Ron Toomer
• Robert Kahn
• Vinton Gray Cerf
• Ian Wilmut
• Larry Ellison
• Temple Grandin
• Steve Wozniak
• Shuji Nakamura
• Rodney Brooks
• Steve Jobs
• Tim Berners-Lee
• Bill Gates
• Meg Whitman
• Tim Cook
• Jeff Bezos
• Sheryl Sandberg
• Linus Torvalds
• Marc Andreessen
• Larry Page and Sergey Brin
• Marissa Mayer
• Jack Dorsey
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Glossary
• For Further Reading
• The 100 Most Influential Medical Pioneers of All Time
• Introduction
• Imhotep
• Hippocrates
• Pedanius Dioscorides
• Galen of Pergamum
• Hua Tuo
• al-Rāzī
• Avicenna
• Moses Maimonides
• Paracelsus
• Ambroise Paré
• Andreas Vesalius
• Gabriel Fallopius
• William Harvey
• Thomas Sydenham
• Marcello Malpighi
• Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
• William Cheselden
• Sir Percivall Pott
• James Lind
• John Hunter
• William Withering
• Benjamin Rush
• Edward Jenner
• René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laënnec
• François Magendie
• John Snow
• Ann Preston
• Horace Wells
• Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis
• Mayo Family
• William Thomas Green Morton
• Florence Nightingale
• Elizabeth Blackwell
• Rudolf Virchow
• Clara Barton
• Louis Pasteur
• Joseph Lister, Baron Lister of Lyme Regis
• Emeline Horton Cleveland
• Rebecca Lee Crumpler
• Mary Jane Safford
• Mary Putnam Jacobi
• Robert Koch
• Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen
• Alphonse Laveran
• William Osler
• Walter Reed
• Santiago Ramón y Cajal
• Kitasato Shibasaburo
• Paul Ehrlich
• Emil von Behring
• Sigmund Freud
• Daniel Hale Williams
• Rebecca Lee Dorsey
• William Bateson
• Abraham Flexner
• Karl Landsteiner
• Florence Rena Sabin
• Sara Josephine Baker
• Carl Jung
• Oswald Avery
• Margaret Sanger
• Marie Stopes
• Alexander Fleming
• Selman Abraham Waksman
• Frederick Grant Banting
• Helen Brooke Taussig
• Howard Walter Florey
• Charles Best
• Alfred Blalock
• Percy Julian
• Barbara McClintock
• Charles Richard Drew
• Ernst Boris Chain
• Albert Sabin
• Rita Levi-Montalcini
• Virginia Apgar
• Paul Maurice Zoll
• Jonas Salk
• Francis Harry Compton Crick
• Adrian Kantrowitz
• Joseph E. Murray
• Rosalind Franklin
• Denton A. Cooley
• Rosalyn S. Yalow
• Christiaan Barnard
• Stanley Cohen
• Alexander Gordon Bearn
• Roger Charles Louis Guillemin
• Baruch S. Blumberg
• Andrew V. Schally
• James Dewey Watson
• Luc Montagnier
• Oliver Sacks
• J. Michael Bishop
• Harald zur Hausen
• Harold Varmus
• Francoise Barré-Sinoussi
• Francis Collins
• James Thomson
• Shinya Yamanaka
• Glossary
• For Further Reading