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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Business,

#1401

Louis L. Madsen

1907 - 1986 (79 years)

Louis Linden Madsen was an American agricultural scientist who served as president of Utah State University from 1950 to 1953 and later as a member of the Washington State University faculty. Biography Madsen was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He received his bachelor's degree at Utah State Agricultural College . He then received a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1934.

#1402

Calvin B. T. Lee

1934 - 1983 (49 years)

Calvin Bow Tong Lee was an American educator and businessman who served as acting President of Boston University from 1970 to 1971 and Chancellor of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County from 1971 to 1976.

#1403

George Smith

Sir George Smith of Madworthy-juxta-Exeter and Madford House, Exeter, Devon, was a merchant who served as MP for Exeter in 1604, was three times Mayor of Exeter and was Exeter's richest citizen, possessing 25 manorss. He was the grandfather of George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle KG and of John Grenville, 1st Earl of Bath .

#1404

Thomas Brattle

1657 - 1713 (56 years)

Thomas Brattle was an American merchant who served as treasurer of Harvard College and member of the Royal Society. He is known for his involvement in the Salem Witch Trials and the formation of the Brattle Street Church.

#1405

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.

#1406

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.

#1407

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.

#1408

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 .

#1409

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 ...

#1410

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.

#1411

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.

#1412

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.

#1413

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.

#1414

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.

#1415

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.

#1416

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.

#1417

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 .

#1418

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.

#1419

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.

#1420

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.

#1421

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.

#1422

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."

#1423

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.

#1424

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.

#1425

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.

#1426

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.

#1427

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.

#1428

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...

#1429

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.

#1430

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.

#1431

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.

#1432

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.

#1433

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.

#1434

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.

#1435

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.

#1436

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...

#1437

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.

#1438

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.

#1439

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.

#1440

Margarete von Wrangell

Margarete von Wrangell

1877 - 1932 (55 years)

Margarethe Mathilde von Wrangell, after 1928 Princess Andronikow, née Baroness von Wrangell was a Baltic German agricultural chemist and the first female full professor at a German university. Studies and early professional years Margarete von Wrangell originated from the old Baltic German noble house of Wrangel. She spent her childhood in Moscow, Ufa and Reval . She attended a German girls’ school in Tallinn. After passing the teachers' qualifying examination with honours in 1894, she gave private lessons in science for several years. She also occupied herself in painting and writing short stories.

#1441

Frederick Hilgendorf

Frederick Hilgendorf

1874 - 1942 (68 years)

Frederick William Hilgendorf was a New Zealand teacher, lecturer and agricultural scientist. He was born in Waihola, South Otago, New Zealand on 23 January 1874. In 1935, he was awarded the King George V Silver Jubilee Medal. The Hilgendorf Wing at Lincoln University was named after him.

#1442

Sydney Dodd

1874 - 1926 (52 years)

Sydney Dodd, FRCVS , was a British veterinary surgeon and scientist. He contributed to the development of bacteriology and protozoology in England, South Africa and Australia. Dodd established a research station in Queensland that was to become the Animal Research Institute, and he was the first lecturer in veterinary bacteriology at the University of Sydney. He became one of the foremost bacteriologists in Australia.

#1443

Ravi J. Matthai

1927 - 1984 (57 years)

Ravi John Matthai was an educationist and a professor and the first full-time Director of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He is also the co-founder, along with Dr. K. Varghese, of Institute of Rural Management, Anand.

#1444

Feliks Młynarski

Feliks Młynarski

1884 - 1972 (88 years)

Feliks Młynarski was a Polish banker, philosopher and economist. Biography Feliks Młynarski was born to Jan Młynarski, a school teacher, and Honorate née Dziurzyńska. He attended a gymnasium in Jarosław, but because of his involvement in organizing meetings in favor of Polish independence, he was expelled by the Austrian authorities, and had to finish his secondary education at a school in Sanok, in 1903.

#1445

William Tecumseh Sherman

William Tecumseh Sherman

1820 - 1891 (71 years)

William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War , achieving recognition for his command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the scorched-earth policies that he implemented against the Confederate States. British military theorist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart declared that Sherman was "the most original genius of the American Civil War" and "the first modern general".

#1446

Vannevar Bush

1890 - 1974 (84 years)

Vannevar Bush was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development , through which almost all wartime military R&D was carried out, including important developments in radar and the initiation and early administration of the Manhattan Project. He emphasized the importance of scientific research to national security and economic well-being, and was chiefly responsible for the movement that led to the creation of the National Science Foundation.

#1447

Henry Villard

1835 - 1900 (65 years)

Henry Villard was an American journalist and financier who was an early president of the Northern Pacific Railway. Born and raised by Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard in the Rhenish Palatinate of the Kingdom of Bavaria, Villard clashed with his more conservative father over politics, and was sent to a semi-military academy in northeastern France. As a teenager, he emigrated to the United States without his parents' knowledge. He changed his name to avoid being sent back to Europe, and began making his way west, briefly studying law as he developed a career in journalism. He supported John C....

#1448

Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger

1879 - 1966 (87 years)

Margaret Higgins Sanger , also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

#1449

Douglas McGregor

1906 - 1964 (58 years)

Douglas Murray McGregor was an American management professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and president of Antioch College from 1948 to 1954. He also taught at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. His 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise had a profound influence on education practices.

#1450

Luther Burbank

1849 - 1926 (77 years)

Luther Burbank was an American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science. He developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55-year career. Burbank's developments included those of fruits, flowers, grains, grasses, and vegetables. He developed a spineless cactus and the plumcot.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions