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,

#1451

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.

#1452

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.

#1453

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.

#1454

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.

#1455

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.

#1456

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 .

#1457

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.

#1458

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.

#1459

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.

#1460

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.

#1461

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.

#1462

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.

#1463

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...

#1464

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.

#1465

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.

#1466

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.

#1467

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.

#1468

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.

#1469

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.

#1470

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.

#1471

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.

#1472

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...

#1473

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.

#1474

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.

#1475

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.

#1476

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.

#1477

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.

#1478

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.

#1479

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.

#1480

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.

#1481

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".

#1482

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.

#1483

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....

#1484

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.

#1485

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.

#1486

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.

#1487

Robert Morris

1734 - 1806 (72 years)

Robert Morris Jr. was an English-American merchant and a Founding Father of the United States. He served as a member of the Pennsylvania legislature, the Second Continental Congress, and the United States Senate, and he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. From 1781 to 1784, he served as the Superintendent of Finance of the United States, becoming known as the "Financier of the Revolution." Along with Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin, he is widely regarded as one of the founders of the financial system of the...

#1488

Moses Montefiore

Moses Montefiore

1784 - 1885 (101 years)

Sir Moses Haim Montefiore, 1st Baronet, was a British financier and banker, activist, philanthropist and Sheriff of London. Born to an Italian Sephardic Jewish family based in London, after he achieved success, he donated large sums of money to promote industry, business, economic development, education and health among the Jewish community in the Levant. He founded Mishkenot Sha'ananim in 1860, the first Jewish settlement outside the Old City of Jerusalem.

#1489

Luca Pacioli

1445 - 1517 (72 years)

Fra. Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli was an Italian mathematician, Franciscan friar, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci, and an early contributor to the field now known as accounting. He is referred to as the father of accounting and bookkeeping and he was the first person to publish a work on the double-entry system of book-keeping on the continent. He was also called Luca di Borgo after his birthplace, Borgo Sansepolcro, Tuscany.

#1490

Joseph Breen

1890 - 1965 (75 years)

Joseph Ignatius Breen was an American film censor with the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America who applied the Hays Code to film production. Early life and career Breen was the youngest of three sons born to Mary and Hugh A. Breen in Philadelphia. His father had emigrated from Ireland and met his mother Mary in New Jersey. Breen was raised in a strict Roman Catholic home and attended Gesu Parish School until the eighth grade. He then attended Boys Catholic High School. He attended Saint Joseph's College but dropped out after two years, after which he worked as a newspaper reporter for fourteen years in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

#1491

Eric Kohler

1892 - 1976 (84 years)

Eric Louis Kohler was an American accountant, the author of a widely used dictionary of accounting. Life and work Kohler was born on July 9, 1892, in Owosso, Michigan. He did his undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, graduating in 1914, and went on to earn a master's degree from Northwestern University. He then worked at Arthur Andersen from 1915 to 1920 . From 1922 to 1928 he held a faculty position at Northwestern, while also working with Paul W. Pettengill for their own accounting firm, Kohler, Pettengill & Co. From 1935 to 1937 he worked again for Arthur Andersen.

#1492

William Rainey Harper

William Rainey Harper

1856 - 1906 (50 years)

William Rainey Harper was an American academic leader, an accomplished semiticist, and Baptist clergyman. Harper helped to establish both the University of Chicago and Bradley University and served as the first president of both institutions.

#1493

John Whitmore

1875 - Present (151 years)

John Whitmore was an American accountant, lecturer, and disciple of Alexander Hamilton Church, known for presenting "the first detailed description of a standard cost system." Biography Whitmore had obtained his licence as Certified Public Accountant in the State of New York. He joined the firm of Patterson, Teele & Dennis where he eventually became, and worked as certified public accountant in New York.

#1494

John D. Rockefeller Jr.

John D. Rockefeller Jr.

1874 - 1960 (86 years)

John Davison Rockefeller Jr. was an American financier and philanthropist. Rockefeller was the fifth child and only son of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller. He was involved in the development of the vast office complex in Midtown Manhattan known as Rockefeller Center, making him one of the largest real estate holders in the city. Towards the end of his life, he was famous for his philanthropy, donating over $500 million to a wide variety of different causes, including educational establishments. Among his projects was the reconstruction of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. He was ...

#1495

Jacob van Ruisdael

Jacob van Ruisdael

1628 - 1682 (54 years)

Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael was a Dutch painter, draughtsman, and etcher. He is generally considered the pre-eminent landscape painter of the Dutch Golden Age, a period of great wealth and cultural achievement when Dutch painting became highly popular.

#1496

Edmund Ezra Day

Edmund Ezra Day

1883 - 1951 (68 years)

Edmund Ezra Day was an American educator. Biography Day received his undergraduate and master's degrees from Dartmouth College and his doctorate in economics from Harvard. While at Dartmouth, he became a brother of Theta Delta Chi. In 1921 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. In 1923 he went to the University of Michigan, where he served as professor of economics, organizer and first dean of the School of Business Administration, and Dean of the University. He went on to serve as the fifth president of Cornell University from 1937 to 1949. While in office, he ...

#1497

Russell Conwell

Russell Conwell

1843 - 1925 (82 years)

Russell Herman Conwell was an American Baptist minister, orator, philanthropist, author, lawyer, and writer. He is best remembered as the founder and first president of Temple University in Philadelphia, as the Pastor of The Baptist Temple, and for his inspirational lecture, "Acres of Diamonds". He was born in South Worthington, Massachusetts.

#1498

Harry Anson Finney

1886 - 1966 (80 years)

Harry Anson Finney was an American accountant, and Professor of accounting at the Northwestern University. He is known as prolific author in the field of accounting. who had written a leading textbook in accounting, entitled "Principles of accounting" .

#1499

Martti Saario

1906 - 1988 (82 years)

Martti Saario was a Finnish organizational theorist and Professor of Accounting at the Helsinki School of Economics, known for his development of the Finnish expenditure-revenue theory. Saario obtained his PhD at the Helsinki School of Economics in 1945 with a thesis on the "Realisointiperiaate ja käyttöomaisuuden poistot tuloslaskennassa" . He served as Professor of Accounting at the Helsinki School from 1948 until his retirement in 1971. While he focussed on financial accounting , a second Professor of accounting Henrik Virkkunen focussed on management accounting.

#1500

Leland Lawrence Briggs

1893 - 1975 (82 years)

Leland Lawrence Briggs was an American accounting scholar, and Professor at the University of Vermont, known as founder of The Accountants Digest, which he edited and published until 1973. Biography Briggs was born in Byron, Minnesota to Edward Wellington, a farmer, and Alice Briggs. After primary education in Byron and Rochester, Minnesota, he obtained his BA in 1923 and his MA in 1924 both at the University of South Dakota. Subsequently, he obtained MBA at Northwestern University in 1927 with the thesis, entitled "Some Legal Aspects of Goodwill." and his PhD from Harvard University in 1930...

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions