Search People Result | Academic Influence

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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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Business,

#1001

Derek Leebaert

#96894

Overall Influence

Derek Leebaert is an American technology executive who writes books on history and politics, which evoke insights on leadership. He won the biennial 2020 Truman Book Award for Grand Improvisation, and he's a founder of the National Museum of the United States Army. Leebaert's latest book--Unlikely Heroes: Franklin Roosevelt, His Four Lieutenants, and the World They Made--was published in early 2023. Presidential historian Richard Norton Smith praises it as "having done the near impossible--craft[ing] a fresh and challenging portrait of the man and his inner circle. . . .A book to regard in the...

#1002

Arvind Krishnamurthy

#169350

Overall Influence

#1003

Colin Spedding

#87379

Overall Influence

1925 - 2012 (87 years)

Sir Colin Raymond William Spedding was a British biologist, agricultural scientist and animal welfare expert. Spedding founded or worked for numerous agricultural agencies, including the Farm Animal Welfare Council, Assured Food Standards and the UK Register of Organic Food Standards. He also held academic posts at the University of Reading and the Grassland Research Institute, and was a prolific author of books on wildlife and agriculture.

#1004

Nirmalya Kumar

#168347

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Nirmalya Kumar is Professor of Marketing of the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University. He has served on the Boards of ACC Limited, Ambuja Cements, Bata India, BP Ergo, Defaqto, Tata Capital, Tata Chemicals, Tata Industries, Tata Limited , Tata Unistore, Ultratech, and Zensar Technologies. He received the 2021 Mahajan Award for Lifetime Contributions to Marketing Strategy by the Marketing Strategy SIG of the American Marketing Association .

#1005

Philip Boroughs

#38035

Overall Influence

Philip L. Boroughs, S.J., is an American Jesuit, academic and university administrator. Boroughs was unanimously selected as the incoming 32nd President of the College of the Holy Cross on May 6, 2011. He took office on January 9, 2012, when Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J., who had served as President of Holy Cross since 2000, stepped down. He served in the role until the end of the 2020-21 academic year, when he was succeeded by Vincent Rougeau.

#1006

David Wilson

#80652

Overall Influence

David K. Wilson is an American university administrator who has been president of Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland since July 1, 2010. Early life and education Wilson grew up with 10 siblings on a sharecropper farm in McKinley, Alabama. His father farmed cotton and okra. His early years were spent in a shanty with no electricity or plumbing. He recalls that he learned to read from perusing the pages of Look and Life Magazines that his mom had plastered against the wall of the house to keep the cold wind out in the winter. As a sharecropper's child, Wilson rarely attended school ...

#1007

Safra Catz

#123936

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Safra Ada Catz is an American billionaire banker and technology executive. She is the CEO of Oracle Corporation. She has been an executive at Oracle since April 1999, and a board member since 2001. In April 2011, she was named co-president and chief financial officer , reporting to founder Larry Ellison. In September 2014, Oracle announced that Ellison would step down as CEO and that Mark Hurd and Catz had been named as joint CEOs. In September 2019, Catz became the sole CEO after Hurd resigned due to health issues.

#1008

Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou

#128688

Overall Influence

Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou is the tenth Dean of the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, a post she assumed on October 15, 2020. As Dean of the Tepper School, Bajeux-Besnainou aims to further develop experiential learning and interdisciplinary collaboration within the business school and Carnegie Mellon, and use the Tepper School's focus on technology and data science to guide business education and skill-based decision-making into the future.

#1009

Dean Neu

#160295

Overall Influence

Dean Neu is a professor of accounting at York University, Canada. He is a former editor of Critical Perspectives on Accounting, a former board member of the Parkland Institute and the Director of the Public Interest Accounting Group at York University.

#1010

Arch G. Woodside

#168123

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Arch G. Woodside is an American marketing author, consultant, and professor; member and Fellow of American Psychological Association, Royal Society of Canada, Association of Psychological Sciences, International Academy for the Study of Tourism, Society for Marketing Advances, and the Global Innovation and Knowledge Academy . He is the Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Culture, Tourism, and Hospitality Research book series and the Advances in Business Marketing and Purchasing annual book series and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Business Research.

#1011

John L. Flannery

John L. Flannery

#150180

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

John L. Flannery is an American business executive. He succeeded Jeff Immelt as the eleventh CEO and tenth Chairman of General Electric, serving as CEO from August 2017 until October 1, 2018. Prior to ascending to the CEO role, Flannery held leadership roles inside GE for nearly 30 years, heading GE Healthcare, GE India and other business units throughout his career.

#1012

Carroll Shelby

#135377

Overall Influence

1923 - 2012 (89 years)

Carroll Hall Shelby was an American automotive designer, racing driver, and entrepreneur. Shelby is best known for his involvement with the AC Cobra and Mustang for Ford Motor Company, which he modified during the late 1960s and early 2000s. He established Shelby American in 1962 to manufacture and market performance vehicles. His autobiography, The Carroll Shelby Story, was published in 1967. As a race car driver, his highlight was as a co-driver of the winning 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans entry.

#1013

Vanessa M. Hirsch

Vanessa M. Hirsch

#83581

Overall Influence

Vanessa M. Hirsch is a Canadian-American veterinary pathologist and scientist. She is a senior investigator and chief of the nonhuman primate virology section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Hirsch researches AIDS pathogenesis, the evolution and origins of primate lentiviruses, and HIV vaccine development.

#1014

Sharon Matusik

#156597

Overall Influence

Sharon F. Matusik is an American business strategy scholar, currently serving as dean of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. She is the Edward J. Frey Dean of Business and a professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the University of Michigan. Matusik's research focuses on understanding the knowledge-intensive firm and the contribution of firm knowledge to competitive advantage in strategic management entrepreneurship.

#1015

Katherine W. Phillips

#128724

Overall Influence

1972 - 2020 (48 years)

Katherine Williams Phillips was an American business theorist and the Reuben Mark Professor of Organizational Character at Columbia University's Business School. She headed the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Center for Leadership and Ethics at Columbia, and was Senior Vice Dean.

#1016

C.B. "Bud" Johnston

#121640

Overall Influence

1931 - 2003 (72 years)

C.B. "Bud" Johnston was born and raised in the community of Creighton Mine near Sudbury. He later attended the University of Western Ontario, where he joined the Delta Upsilon fraternity. He received an HBA degree in 1954 and an MBA in 1957. He was Associate Dean from 1975 to 1978 and Dean of the Western Business School from 1978 to 1989. He continued to teach until he retired in 1997.

#1017

Kazuhiko Nishi

#127102

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

is a Japanese businessman and personal computer pioneer. Nishi's father ran a private school. Nishi attended Waseda University but dropped out to help found the first Japanese computer magazine, I/O. Shortly thereafter he launched ASCII magazine and, in 1978, ASCII Corporation, which began by making a rough translation from English to Japanese of the game Wizardry. He wanted to lead the personal computer market, but ASCII Corporation didn't have enough capital to develop personal computers. He knew Microsoft BASIC was becoming the industry standard in North America, and conceived selling it to Japanese companies.

#1018

Erika H. James

#150459

Overall Influence

Erika H. James is an American academic and businesswoman. She is the dean of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She is both the first woman and the first Black person to lead the business school. James is known for her crisis leadership and workplace diversity research. James was named dean of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in February 2020. Her term began on July 1 of the same year.

#1019

Mary Luckhurst

#56581

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Mary Luckhurst is a writer, academic, and theatre director. She is Professor of Theatre and Performance and is the first female Head of the School of Arts at the University of Bristol. She is known for her academic and educational work in the arts in universities and the public realm and for her championing of women’s equality and human rights. She is currently working on projects about female performers who challenge the stigmas of ageing, disability and mental health.

#1020

Jan van den Ende

#164694

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Johannes Cornelis Maria van den Ende is a Dutch Professor of Management of Technology and Innovation at Rotterdam School of Management at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Professor of Management at the Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli in Rome, Italy. known for his work on product and service development and idea management.

#1021

Paul Mees

#87197

Overall Influence

1961 - 2013 (52 years)

Paul Mees was an Australian academic, specialising in urban planning and public transport. Mees died on 19 June 2013, 14 months after the diagnosis of kidney cancer. He was 52. At the time of his death he was an associate professor in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University.

#1022

Helge Stormorken

#126846

Overall Influence

1922 - 2019 (97 years)

Helge Stormorken was a Norwegian veterinarian and physician. Research and organisational activity He established the cause of a worldwide fatal bleeding disease in pigletss leading to its eradication. He described the multifaceted Stormorken syndrome, a mutations in f. VII, f. IX, Fibrinogen Oslo IV and V, all with clinical consequences. Nearly thirty theses on different aspects emanated from the institute together with a host of single papers from its own staff and the many US and European visitors. The most prominent of these was Holm Holmsen who made basic discoveries establishing platelets as secretory non-nucleated cells.

#1023

James P. Womack

#170986

Overall Influence

#1024

Phil Redmond

#82454

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Sir Philip Redmond is an English television producer and screenwriter from Huyton, England. He is known for creating the television series Grange Hill, Brookside and Hollyoaks. Early life Redmond took the 11-plus and passed, but attended St Kevin's RC School in Northwood, Kirkby . His mother was a cleaner and his father was a bus driver.

#1025

Edwina Pio

#136812

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Edwina Pio is a New Zealand academic. Pio is currently a full professor of Diversity at the Auckland University of Technology. Academic career Pio's work is frequently talked about in the New Zealand media and she is frequently sought for opinions on diversity-related topics, including gender issues and race relations.

#1026

Martin C. Schmalz

#138197

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (40 years)

Martin Schmalz is a German financial economist. He is the Head of the Finance, Accounting, Management, and Economics Area and Professor of Finance and Economics at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School. He is also the Chief Economist and Director of the Office of Economic and Risk Analysis of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

#1027

A. Thomas Kraabel

A. Thomas Kraabel

#88069

Overall Influence

1934 - 2016 (82 years)

Alf Thomas Kraabel was an American classics scholar and educator who worked extensively in Greek and Hellenistic Judaic studies. He served as a faculty member in the classics department at the University of Minnesota from 1963 to 1983, and served as the Dean of Luther College in Iowa before retiring in 2000.

#1028

Muriel A. Howard

Muriel A. Howard

#40559

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Muriel A. Howard is the former president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities in Washington, D.C., and served as the seventh president of Buffalo State College at the State University of New York system from 1996 to 2009. Prior to her presidency at Buffalo State College, she was the vice president for public services and urban affairs at the SUNY educational institution, the University at Buffalo, where she worked for 23 years. Howard was educated at public universities in New York State, as well as at Harvard University, where she graduated from the University's Institute of Management.

#1029

Roger Krone

#138854

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Roger A. Krone is the President and CEO of the Boy Scouts of America. Prior to his selection to lead the Boy Scouts of America, Krone, an aerospace engineer, was a former chief executive officer of Leidos. Krone worked for 45 years in the aerospace industry, where he also held senior program management and finance positions at Boeing, McDonnell Douglas Corp. and General Dynamics. Krone is also licensed airplane pilot and a marathon runner.

#1030

Charlie Nelms

#59857

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Charlie Nelms is an educator and administrator who served as the tenth chancellor of North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina. On July 26, 2012, after completing a five-year commitment to serve at the institution, Dr. Nelms announced his retirement, effective August 6, 2012. He currently is a contributing writer to The Huffington Post on educational issues and has founded Destination Graduation, a non-profit organization focused on increasing retention and graduation rates at the nation's historically black colleges and universities .

#1031

J. Chris Leach

#160590

Overall Influence

J. Chris Leach is an American finance scholar and the W.W. Reynolds Capital Markets Program Endowed Chair at the University of Colorado-Boulder Education and Career Leach graduated from Oral Roberts University in 1981 with a degree in Computer Science. He later graduated with an MBA from the University of New Mexico and a Master's of Science in Management - Economics from Cornell University.

#1032

Jonas Eliasson

#116762

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Jonas Eliasson is a Swedish professor, transportation specialist and former director of the transport administration in the city of Stockholm. Biography Jonas Eliasson was born on February 3, 1969, to Ingemar Eliasson, a former government minister and county governor.

#1033

Philip Gummett

#76519

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Philip John Gummett CBE is a British academic administrator. Philip Gummett graduated from Birmingham University with a B.Sc. in Chemistry in 1969. He graduated from Manchester University with the degrees of M.Sc. and Ph.D.

#1034

George Siedel

#136783

Overall Influence

George J. Siedel is an American author and professor on the faculty at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, where he is the Williamson Family Professor of Business Administration and the Thurnau Professor of Business Law. He is known for his research on proactive law, negotiation, and alternative dispute resolution, and for his work in the development of MOOCs .

#1035

Sylvie Chetty

#172535

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Kamala 'Sylvie' Chetty is a New Zealand marketing academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Otago. Academic career After a 1993 PhD titled 'International trade performance of New Zealand manufacturing: An industry and enterprise-level study' at the University of Canterbury, Chetty moved to Massey University, rising to full professor and then the University of Otago.

#1036

A.D. Amar

#130049

Overall Influence

A. D. Amar is an Indian-American scholar, researcher, author and educator of knowledge in organizations. Since 2001, he has been working to compile knowledge from academic, business, and millennia-year-old manuscripts for developing knowledge applications for managing organizations. To this end, he organized many scholarly and applications activities by bringing experts, thought leaders, and the learned from India and other parts of the world to cover wisdom as the goal of knowledge and how to adapt it for managing organizations. It includes knowledge of self, others, and societal entities. I...

#1037

Sachin Gupta

#171804

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Sachin Gupta is a marketing science academic, the Henrietta Louis Johnson Professor of Management and Professor of Marketing in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York State, and the editor-in-chief of the American Marketing Association's Journal of Marketing Research, He is known for his work on marketing strategy, international marketing and management communication.

#1038

Kjell G. Nyborg

#150644

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Kjell G. Nyborg is a financial economist. Since 2009, he has been a Chaired Professor of Finance at the University of Zurich, Department of Banking and Finance, where he is currently also Vice Director. In addition, he is a Senior Chair of the Swiss Finance Institute , a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research , and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Nyborg is the President of the European Finance Association for 2017 as well as a former Director and Vice President. He has worked on a broad range of topics. The focus in his more recent work is on the role of money, liquidity, and collateral in Financial markets.

#1039

Christian Homburg

#173111

Overall Influence

#1040

Alexis Davis

#95604

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (40 years)

Alexis Evelyn Chris Davis is a Canadian mixed martial artist who competed in the Ultimate Fighting Championship where she is a former Title challenger. She is a Canadian Open grappling champion. Early life Davis was a young girl when she first became interested in martial arts. She was big fan of Action movies starring the likes of Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Jean-Claude Van Damme and was a big fan of boxing and later MMA. She was a youngster when she decided to start practicing martial arts and was around the age of 16 when she started jujutsu and BJJ at age of 18.

#1041

Mary Lee Hu

#84935

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Mary Lee Hu is an American artist, goldsmith, and college level educator known for using textile techniques to create intricate woven wire jewelry. Career Hu first became fascinated with metalwork during high school introductory courses. She later explored more work with metals during a summer camp. She went on to attend Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, for two years and then went to Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan to complete her undergraduate degree. During her undergraduate education Hu developed her skills and continued to work with small scale metalwork and jewelry.

#1042

Bryan Coker

#75042

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Bryan F. Coker is an American academic administrator, and the 12th president of Maryville College. Coker was vice president and dean of students at Goucher College from 2013 to 2020, where he served as acting president during the summer of 2019. Coker was the dean of students at Jacksonville University from 2003 to 2013. He is an advocate for diversity, inclusion, and liberal arts education.

#1043

Kathleen Hagerty

#156461

Overall Influence

Kathleen M. Hagerty is an American academic and the Provost of Northwestern University, serving since September 2020. Prior to that, she was dean of the faculty in the Kellogg School of Management. She is the first female to be appointed provost of the university.

#1044

Kathryn Pavlovich

#166751

Overall Influence

Kathryn Pavlovich is a New Zealand business academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Waikato. Academic career After a 2000 PhD at the University of Waikato titled 'The organisation of supply in a tourism destination : an analysis of a networked community – the Waitomo Caves Village' , Pavlovich joined the staff, rising to full professor in 2015.

#1045

Gregory Koutmos

#169334

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Dr. Gregory Koutmos is Gerald M. Levin Professor of Finance and Chair of the Finance Department of the Charles F. Dolan School of Business at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut. He is an authority in the field of financial markets volatility, equilibrium asset pricing models, and fixed income securities and risk hedging.

#1046

Robert Spencer Long

#89380

Overall Influence

1927 - 2015 (88 years)

Robert Spencer Long , was a professor of physical science and the tenth president of Shimer College. Long was born on the north side of Chicago and graduated from Roger C. Sullivan High School in the Rogers Park neighborhood in 1945. After serving three years in the United States Navy, he studied at the University of Chicago, where he obtained a BA in 1951, a master of science in 1955, and a Ph.D. in geochemistry in 1964. He subsequently taught at Nasson College in Maine, New College of Florida, and at the University of Puerto Rico before becoming Dean at Roger Williams College.

#1047

Drummond Bone

#33426

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Sir James Drummond Bone, FRSE, FRSA , is a Byron scholar and was Master of Balliol College at the University of Oxford until April 2018. He previously served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool from 2002 to 2008, and Principal of Royal Holloway, University of London, from 2000 to 2002.Currently residing in Fife, Scotland.

#1048

Mike Ashley

#144482

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Michael James Wallace Ashley is a British retail entrepreneur and chief executive of Frasers Group Plc . He owned the Newcastle United football club between 2007 and 2021. According to The Sunday Times Rich List in 2021, Ashley is the 61st richest person in the UK with an estimated net worth of £2.718 billion. In August 2021, Ashley announced that he intended to step down as CEO of Frasers Group Plc in May 2022, but would remain a director of the main Board.

#1049

Charles Baden-Fuller

#171778

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Charles Baden-Fuller, a strategy scholar is the Centenary Professor of Strategy and leader of the Strategy Group at the Cass Business School. Baden-Fuller is also a fellow of the Strategic Management Society., and is Senior Fellow at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

#1050

John Gustafson

#171073

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

John Leroy Gustafson is an American computer scientist and businessman, chiefly known for his work in high-performance computing such as the invention of Gustafson's law, introducing the first commercial computer cluster, measuring with QUIPS, leading the reconstruction of the Atanasoff–Berry computer, inventing the unum number format and computation system, and several awards for computer speedup. Currently he is the Chief Technology Officer at Ceranovo, Inc. He was the Chief Graphics Product Architect and Senior Fellow at AMD from September 2012 until June 2013, and he previously held the positions of Architect of Intel Labs-SC, CEO of Massively Parallel Technologies, Inc.

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