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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List of the most influential people in Business,

#1351

Judy Dlamini

#192101

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Judy Dlamini is a South African businesswoman and author who is the Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand and the founding chairman of Mbekani Group. She served as chairperson of the board of Aspen Pharmacare Holdings from November 2007 until December 2015 while concurrently serving as non-executive director from July 2005 until December 2015. In 2020 the magazine Forbes called her one of Africas 50 most powerful women. In 2022, she was mentioned by Forbes as one of the 50 over 50 women leading the way throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

#1352

William Russell

#191998

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Sir William Anthony Bowater Russell is a British financier who served as the 692nd Lord Mayor of the City of London from 2019 to 2021. Biography Educated at Eton and Durham University, graduating B.A., Russell started his career in financial services at First Boston in 1987, and joined Merrill Lynch in 1992, working in Hong Kong, New York and London, before leaving in 2006 for public service.

#1353

Françoise Soussaline

#191817

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Françoise Soussaline is a French biophysicist and businesswoman, a specialist in cell imaging. She studied physics at the Pierre and Marie Curie University and completed a PhD in molecular spectroscopy in 1973. She began her career as a researcher at Inserm, where she was involved in the development of the first digital scanner in nuclear medicine. She then joined the Frédéric-Joliot hospital department of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission where she developed Positron emission tomography locally as part of a second thesis in biophysics completed in 1984 at the University of Paris-Sud under the direction of Nobel Prize winner Georges Charpak.

#1354

James Webster

#191828

Overall Influence

1925 - 2022 (97 years)

James Joseph Webster was an Australian politician. He was a Senator for Victoria from 1964 to 1980, representing the National Country Party . He served as Minister for Science and Science and the Environment in the Fraser government. He left politics to become High Commissioner to New Zealand, serving from 1980 to 1983.

#1355

Justin Picard

#191687

Overall Influence

Justin Picard is a Swiss-Canadian engineer and entrepreneur who currently serves as the chief technology officer of Scantrust, a company he co-founded in 2013. He is the inventor of the copy detection pattern , a digital authentication technology for detecting product and document counterfeiting.

#1356

O. Richard Bundy

O. Richard Bundy

#89592

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Orrin Richard Bundy is an American music academic. Bundy was the director of the Penn State Athletic Bands, most notably the Penn State Blue Band. He originally joined the University Park faculty of The Pennsylvania State University in 1982 as a graduate assistant, then became Assistant Director of the Blue Band in 1988 before becoming Director in 1996. In addition to his role as director, he teaches courses in conducting, marching band techniques, instrumental music education, and band literature. He retired as director in 2015.

#1357

Helene Maimann

#174560

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Helene Maimann is an Austrian historian, writer, filmmaker and exhibition organizer. She won an Axel Corti Prize, and Käthe Leichter Prize. Life After studying history, German studies and philosophy in Vienna she did her doctorate in 1973 about the Austrian Exile. Between 1980 and 1994 she worked as a lecturer at the universities of Vienna and Salzburg. In the 1980s Maimann managed various exhibitions about Austria’s contemporary history. From 1995 on – after many years of work for the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft - she started working as an editor for the ORF. In addition she published numerous articles and books.

#1358

Michael Azzopardi

Michael Azzopardi

#191654

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (39 years)

Michael Azzopardi is a Maltese songwriter and designer. He released his first 4-song EP "Pistola" on February 12, 2021, with Ultralow Records. Biography Michael Azzopardi is a singer-songwriter from Malta. Having debuted his first EP, PISTOLA in February 2021, Michael's songs present an intimate and varied song arrangement with emotionally rich and often vulnerable lyrics.

#1359

Leo Fraser

#192102

Overall Influence

1926 - 2013 (87 years)

Leo W. Fraser, Jr. was an American lawyer, businessman, and politician. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Fraser served in the United States Marine Corps 1944–1946. He then received his degree from Northeastern University and his law degree from the New England School of Law. He was a claim adjuster in Boston. In 1970 he moved to Pittsfield, New Hampshire, serving as the New Hampshire Insurance Commissioner. In 1976 he established Fraser Financial Services in Pittsfield. A Republican, he served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives from 1985 to 1991 and then in the New Hampshire State Senate from 1991 to 2002.

#1360

William Williams

1832 - 1900 (68 years)

William Williams FRSE PRCVS was a Welsh veterinary surgeon who served as principal of the Dick Veterinary College in Edinburgh and as president of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons . He was the founder and principal of the rival New Veterinary College , originally housed in Gayfield House, Edinburgh.

#1361

Frank L. McVey

1869 - 1953 (84 years)

Frank LeRond McVey was an American economist, educator and academic administrator. He served as the fourth president of the University of North Dakota from 1909 to 1917 and the third president of the University of Kentucky from 1917 to 1940.

#1362

John Ross

1818 - 1871 (53 years)

John Ross was a Canadian lawyer, politician, and businessman. Born in County Antrim, Ireland, he was brought to Canada as an infant. Ross married twice, first to Margaret Crawford who died in 1847, secondly to Augusta Elizabeth Baldwin February 4, 1851, the daughter of Robert Baldwin. Ross was president of the Grand Trunk Railway from 1853 to 1862 when he was succeeded by Sir Edward William Watkin. In 1867, he was appointed to the Senate representing the senatorial division of Ontario. A Conservative, the Honourable John Ross served until his death in 1871 in Toronto, Ontario.

#1363

Dudley Hooper

1911 - 1968 (57 years)

Dudley W. Hooper MA FCA was a British businessman in the UK National Coal Board and an early President of the British Computer Society . He was an accountant and an early promoter of electronic data processing .

#1364

George Smith

1800 - 1868 (68 years)

George Smith was an English businessman, historian and theologian. He is now best known for historical work relating to the Methodist conference. Life Born at Condurrow, near Camborne, Cornwall, on 31 August 1800, he was the son of William Smith, a carpenter and small farmer at Condurrow , by his wife, Philippa Moneypenny . He was educated at the British and Foreign schools in Falmouth, and in Plymouth where his father retired in 1808, when the lease of his farm expired. In 1812 he returned with his parents to Cornwall, and was employed for several years in farm work and carpentering. Having ...

#1365

William Oliver

1885 - 1962 (77 years)

Sir William Oliver FRSE was a 20th-century Scottish business advisor and the first Professor of Organisation of Industry and Commerce. Life Oliver was born in Edinburgh in 1885. He was educated at George Watson's College. He then studied engineering at the University of Edinburgh before joining Parsons Peebles Ltd. working on power plant design and creation.

#1366

Jesse E. Moorland

1863 - 1940 (77 years)

Jesse Edward Moorland was an American minister, community executive, civic leader and book collector. Born in Coldwater, Ohio, he was the only child of a farming family. Moorland attended Northwestern Normal University in Ada, Ohio. Then he moved to Washington D. C., where he attended the Theological department of Howard University and earned his master's degree in 1891. He was ordained a Congressional minister. That same year he was hired as secretary of the Washington D.C. branch of the YMCA.

#1367

Owen Roberts

1912 - 1953 (41 years)

Owen Roberts was a British Royal Air Force officer, aviator and founder of Caribbean International Airways. Early life George Marshall Endicott Roberts was born on 17 September 1912 in London. He was a son of the former Irene Helene Murray and Marshall Owen Roberts , an American who became a British subject.

#1368

William Robinson

William Robinson

1840 - 1921 (81 years)

William Robinson was an American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer and businessman. He invented the first track circuit used in railway signaling, a major development that improved railroad safety and efficiency.

#1369

Timothy Brown

1743 - 1820 (77 years)

Timothy Brown was an English banker, merchant and radical, known for his association with other radicals of the time, such as John Horne Tooke, Robert Waithman, William Frend, William Cobbett, John Cartwright and George Cannon; his political views gave him the nickname "Equality Brown". He was also one of the early partners of Whitbread, and became the master of the Worshipful Company of Brewers.

#1370

William Parker

1793 - 1873 (80 years)

William Parker was an American businessman and politician, who served as acting mayor of Boston, Massachusetts in early 1845. He was an unsuccessful candidate in the 1844–45 and 1847 Boston mayoral elections.

#1371

James Law

1838 - 1921 (83 years)

James Law was a Scottish veterinary surgeon who became the first veterinary professor at an American university, teaching biology, agriculture and veterinary medicine at Cornell University from 1868.

#1372

Li Zhaohuan

1898 - 1969 (71 years)

Li Zhaohuan , also known as Juwan Usang Ly, was a Chinese educator, politician and banker. He served as President of National Chiao Tung University and the last President of Hangchow University. Biography Li was born in Nanhai County, Guangdong Province in 1898. Li's courtesy name was Yaosheng .

#1373

Horace Mann Bond

Horace Mann Bond

1904 - 1972 (68 years)

Horace Mann Bond was an American historian, college administrator, social science researcher and the father of civil-rights leader Julian Bond. He earned graduate and doctoral degrees from University of Chicago at a time when only a small percentage of any young adults attended any college. He was an influential leader at several historically black colleges and was appointed the first president of Fort Valley State University in Georgia in 1939, where he managed its growth in programs and revenue. In 1945, he became the first African-American president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

#1374

Ferdinand Victor Alphons Prosch

1820 - 1885 (65 years)

Ferdinand Victor Alphons Prosch was a Danish doctor, veterinarian and biologist. Prosch's father, Johannes Henrik William Prosch was a secretary in the Danish War Chancery and his mother, Caroline Sophie was French. In 1837 Prosch was a student at the Metropolitan School in Copenhagen and by 1843 he had taken his medical exams. Between 1843 and 1846 Prosch was employed by the university as a prosector, i.e. a preparer of specimens for dissection in the university's Zoological museum.

#1375

Harold Koontz

1909 - 1984 (75 years)

Harold D. Koontz was an American organizational theorist, professor of business management at the University of California, Los Angeles and a consultant for many of America's largest business organizations. Koontz co-authored the book Principles of Management with Cyril J. O'Donnell; the book has sold around two million copies and has been translated into 15 languages.

#1376

Ira Baldwin

1895 - 1999 (104 years)

Ira Lawrence Baldwin was the founder and director emeritus of the Wisconsin Academy Foundation. He began teaching bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin in 1927 and a few years later moved into what became a career in administration. He held positions as chair of the Department of Bacteriology, dean of the Graduate School, dean and director of the College of Agriculture, university vice president for academic affairs, and special assistant to the president. He was also involved in programs for agricultural development both in the United States and abroad. Ira Baldwin wrote a hostile revi...

#1377

Marie Stopes

1880 - 1958 (78 years)

Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes was a British author, palaeobotanist and campaigner for eugenics and women's rights. She made significant contributions to plant paleontology and coal classification, and was the first female academic on the faculty of the University of Manchester. With her second husband, Humphrey Verdon Roe, Stopes founded the first birth control clinic in Britain. Stopes edited the newsletter Birth Control News, which gave explicit practical advice. Her sex manual Married Love was controversial and influential, and brought the subject of birth control into wide public discourse.

#1378

Mac McMeekan

1908 - 1972 (64 years)

Campbell Percy "Mac" McMeekan was a New Zealand university professor, agricultural scientist and administrator. McMeekan was born in Otaki, New Zealand, in 1908. He received his secondary education at Midhirst School and then at New Plymouth Boys' High School. He had further training at Stratford Technical High School before starting at Victoria University College in agriculture in 1927. After a merger, he continued at the newly-formed Massey Agricultural College in Palmerston North from the following year, from where he graduated in 1932. He remained as a lecturer at Massey and then did further study at the University of Cambridge where he gained his PhD.

#1379

Sydney Harland

1891 - 1982 (91 years)

Sydney Cross Harland was a British agricultural botanist with considerable international experience. His area of expertise was especially in the growing of cotton. Early life and education Sydney Cross Harland was born in Snainton in Yorkshire on 19 June 1891, the son of Erasmus Harland and his wife Eliza. He was educated at the municipal secondary school in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.

#1380

Benn Konsynski

Benn Konsynski has been the George S. Craft Distinguished University Professor of Information Systems and Operations Management at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University since 1994. Previously, he spent six years on the faculty at the Harvard Business School, where he taught in the MBA program and several executive programs. He also served as professor at the University of Arizona, where he was a co-founder of the university's multimillion-dollar group decision support laboratory. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Purdue University. He did a dissertation on "Computer Aided Logical Applications Software Design" under advisors Jay Frank Nunamaker, Jr.

#1381

Vallabh Sambamurthy

Vallabh Sambamurthy is the Albert O. Nicholas Dean of the Wisconsin School of Business of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Education Vallabh Sambamurthy received his Bachelor of Engineering with honors in mechanical engineering from National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli in 1981. He received his Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta in 1983 and Doctorate of Philosophy degree from Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.

#1382

E. John Russell

E. John Russell

1872 - 1965 (93 years)

Sir Edward John Russell was a British soil chemist, agriculture scientist, and director of Rothamsted Experimental Station from 1912 to 1943. He was responsible for hiring R A Fisher for statistical research at Rothamsted and driven by concerns over a lack of international information exchange about agriculture, he initiated the Imperial Agricultural Bureaux, which later became the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux.

#1383

Fritz Roethlisberger

1898 - 1974 (76 years)

Fritz Jules Roethlisberger was a social scientist and management theorist at the Harvard Business School. Biography Fritz J. Roethlisberger was born in 1898 in New York City. He earned a BA in engineering at Columbia University in 1921, supplementing this degree with a BS in engineering administration from MIT in 1923. Soon after, he shifted to philosophy studies at Harvard, where he earned an M.A. in 1925.

#1384

Harold W. Dodds

Harold W. Dodds

1889 - 1980 (91 years)

Harold Willis Dodds was the fifteenth president of Princeton University from 1933 to 1957. Early life and education Dodds was born on June 28, 1889, in Utica, Pennsylvania, the son of a professor of Bible studies at Grove City College. After receiving his bachelor's degree at Grove City College in 1909 and teaching public school for two years, he received his MA at Princeton in 1914 and his PhD, in political science, at the University of Pennsylvania in 1917. After receiving his PhD, he married Margaret Murray.

#1385

Henry C. Metcalf

1867 - 1942 (75 years)

Henry Clayton Metcalf was an early American organizational theorist, Professor of Political Science at Tufts College in Massachusetts, and Chairman of Tufts College. He is best known from his publications on management with Ordway Tead and Lyndall Urwick.

#1386

William J. Vatter

1905 - 1990 (85 years)

William Joseph Vatter was an American accounting scholar and professor of accounting at the University of Chicago and at the University of California-Berkeley known for his "new approach to teaching managerial accounting."

#1387

Harlan Hatcher

1898 - 1998 (100 years)

Harlan Henthorne Hatcher served as the eighth President of the University of Michigan from 1951 to 1967. Biography Harlan Henthorne Hatcher was born on September 9, 1898, in Ironton, Ohio. He received a B.A., an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Ohio State University. He also attended the University of Chicago as a graduate student.

#1388

Kaoru Ishikawa

1915 - 1989 (74 years)

was a Japanese organizational theorist and a professor in the engineering faculty at the University of Tokyo who was noted for his quality management innovations. He is considered a key figure in the development of quality initiatives in Japan, particularly the quality circle. He is best known outside Japan for the Ishikawa or cause and effect diagram , often used in the analysis of industrial processes.

#1389

John Percival

1863 - 1949 (86 years)

John Percival FLS was an English botanist and professor of agricultural botany, known for his research on the genera Triticum and Aegilops, as well as the taxonomy of wheat. Biography After education from 1868 to 1877 at the National school in Aysgarth, John Percival, a Quaker, was employed at the York Glass Works, owned at that time by a Quaker family named Spence. Percival worked there from 1877 to 1884. Mrs T. A. Cotton, a member of the Spence family, endowed him with a scholarship. He matriculated on 13 October 1884 at St John's College, Cambridge. He graduated there with B.A. in 1887, M.A.

#1390

William O. Hotchkiss

1878 - 1954 (76 years)

William Otis Hotchkiss was the third president of Michigan Technological University and the tenth president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Biography He was born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin on September 17, 1878. He earned a geology degree in 1903, a civil engineering degree in 1908 and a Ph.D. in 1916, all from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

#1391

Kenyon L. Butterfield

Kenyon L. Butterfield

1868 - 1935 (67 years)

Kenyon Leech Butterfield was an American agricultural scientist and college administrator known for developing the Cooperative Extension Service at the Land Grant Universities. He was president of the Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts ; the Massachusetts Agricultural College , and the Michigan Agricultural College, from 1924 to 1928.

#1392

Edward Conradi

1869 - 1944 (75 years)

Edward Conradi served as President of Florida State College for Women from 1909 to 1941, and as President Emeritus from 1941 until his death in 1944. He was born on 20 February 1869 in New Bremen, Ohio. Conradi received bachelor's and master's degrees from Indiana University Bloomington, and completed a Ph.D. in Psychology from Clark University in 1904.

#1393

James Graaskamp

1933 - 1988 (55 years)

James A. "Jim" Graaskamp was a professor and department chairman of real estate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is credited with developing a multi-faceted ethics-based curriculum now widely used in teaching real estate.

#1394

William Weipers

1904 - 1990 (86 years)

Sir William Lee Weipers, FRCVS FRSE was a Scottish veterinary surgeon and educator. Glasgow University's Weiper Memorial Lecture is named in his honour as is the Weipers Centre for Equine Welfare. He was President of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons for the period 1963/64.

#1395

Michiyo Tsujimura

Michiyo Tsujimura

1888 - 1969 (81 years)

Michiyo Tsujimura was a Japanese agricultural scientist and biochemist whose research focused on the components of green tea. She was the first woman in Japan to receive a doctoral degree in agriculture.

#1396

Arthur F. Whittem

1879 - 1958 (79 years)

Arthur Fisher Whittem was the Chairman of Commission on Extension Courses and Director of the University Extension at Harvard University from 1922 to 1946. He was the second person to hold the position.

#1397

Adolph Matz

1905 - 1986 (81 years)

Adolph Matz was a German/American organizational theorist, and Professor of Accounting at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, known for his work on cost accounting. Life and work Matz was born in Karlsruhe or Heidelberg, Germany and started his studies in Weimar Republic. In the early 1930s he came to the United States, and obtained the American citizenship in 1933. He obtained his BA in 1932 at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he also obtained his MA in 1933 and his PhD in 1937. He started his academic career at the Wharton School of the Universit...

#1398

George Colby Chase

George Colby Chase

1844 - 1919 (75 years)

George Colby Chase was an American intellectual and professor of English who served as the second President of Bates College succeeding its founder, Oren Burbank Cheney, from March 1894 to November 1919.

#1399

John A. Gilruth

John A. Gilruth

1871 - 1937 (66 years)

John Anderson Gilruth was a Scottish-Australian veterinary scientist and administrator. He is particularly noted for being Administrator of the Northern Territory from 1912 to 1918, when he was recalled after an angry mob demanded that he resign. This incident is known as the Darwin Rebellion.

#1400

Louis-Joseph Alcide Railliet

Louis-Joseph Alcide Railliet

1852 - 1930 (78 years)

Louis-Joseph Alcide Railliet was a French veterinarian and helminthologist. Professor at the Veterinary School of Alfort, he is considered one of the founders of modern parasitology and wrote several books of veterinary parasitology. He chaired the Société zoologique de France in 1891. He was a member of the French Académie Nationale de Médecine, from 29 December 1896 to his death. He received the Legion of Honor.

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