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 …

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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Business,

#301

Utpal Dholakia

#33796

Overall Influence

Utpal Dholakia is an Indian American researcher and professor. He is the George R. Brown Professor of Marketing at the Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University, and the founder of marketing insights consultancy, Empyrean Insights.

#302

Kalle Lyytinen

#36581

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Kalle Lyytinen is the Iris S. Wolstein Professor of Management Design at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management, where he is also director of their Doctor of Management program. His research focuses on how organizations design and manage digital innovations. Lyytinen is notable for his breadth of scholarship and leadership in the field of Information Systems. In 2013, he received the Association for Information Systems Leo Award, which is the association's top honor.

#303

Martin J. Eppler

#35350

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Martin J. Eppler is a Swiss communication and management scholar, Professor of Media and Communication Management at the University of St. Gallen, and director of its Institute for Media and Communication Management, known for his contributions in the field of knowledge management, specifically information overload and Information Quality Management, Collaboration, and Knowledge Visualization.

#304

Rebecca Piekkari

#61899

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Rebecca Marschan-Piekkari is a Finnish organizational theorist and Professor of International Business at the Aalto University, and Vice Dean of its Department of Management Studies, known for her work on "international business research." and on multinational corporations.

#305

Robert L. Phillips

Robert L. Phillips

#33441

Overall Influence

Robert Phillips is an American entrepreneur, academic and author. He was previously director of marketplace optimization sciences at Uber. He is also founder of Nomis Solutions, a Silicon Valley company specializing in pricing science and practice for financial institutions. Previously, he was professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Business School and director of Columbia University’s Center for Pricing and Revenue Management. Phillips is author of the book Pricing and Revenue Optimization, a textbook on revenue management and pricing optimization tactics. He was also co-editor of ...

#306

Sydney Finkelstein

#61714

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Sydney Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management and faculty director of the Tuck Executive Program at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He is also the faculty director of the Center for Leadership at Tuck. His specialty is business leadership and strategy.

#307

Marianne W. Lewis

#40708

Overall Influence

Marianne W. Lewis is an American academic and since 2019 the dean for Carl H. Lindner College of Business at the University of Cincinnati. She was previously the dean of the Cass Business School in London, England.

#308

Lawton Burns

#47988

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Lawton R. Burns is an American business theorist, Professor of Management and the Chairperson of the Health Care Management Department of The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania, and a Faculty Co-director for the Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management.

#309

Edward T. Foote II

#20181

Overall Influence

1937 - 2016 (79 years)

Edward Thaddeus "Tad" Foote II was an American academic administrator, attorney, and journalist who served as the fourth president of the University of Miami from 1981 through 2001. Early life and education Foote was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on December 15, 1937. He graduated from John Burroughs School in Ladue, Missouri. He earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University and a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.

#310

Herman Aguinis

#32353

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Herman Aguinis is a researcher, business professor, and author. He is the Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Management at the George Washington University School of Business in Washington, D.C. He has been ranked among the world's top 100 most influential economics and business researchers in the world every year since 2018. He served as President of the Academy of Management , and has been inducted into The PhD Project Hall of Fame. Prior to moving to Washington D.C. in 2016, he was the John F. Mee Chair of Management and the Founding Director of the Institute for Global Or...

#311

Peter Ricchiuti

#66082

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Peter Ricchiuti is a business professor at Tulane University's Freeman School of Business. Ricchiuti, a graduate of Babson College, started his career at the investment firm of Kidder Peabody & Co. and later served as the chief investment officer for the State of Louisiana. There he successfully managed a $3 billion portfolio.

#312

Michael Alford Hitt

#75056

Overall Influence

#313

Robert J. Swieringa

#61120

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Robert Jay Swieringa was the ninth Dean and is a professor emeritus of the S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He also served as an elected member to General Electric Company board of directors.

#314

Karen Holbrook

#19344

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Karen Ann Holbrook is the regional chancellor of University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee since January 2, 2018. Career Holbrook earned her B.S. and M.S. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, in zoology. After teaching biology at Ripon College, she earned a Ph.D. in biological structure from the University of Washington School of Medicine in 1972, where she served as a postdoctoral fellow in dermatology, faculty member and research administrator. She then pursued further training in dermatology. She is an alumna of Gamma Phi Beta sorority.

#315

Richard W. Roll

#75675

Overall Influence

#316

David Ford

#64903

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

David Ford is a British organizational theorist, Professor Emeritus at the University of Bath School of Management, and co-founder of the International Marketing and Purchasing Group in the mid 1970s. He is known for his work with Håkan Håkansson on business networks.

#317

David Solomons

#73773

Overall Influence

1912 - 1995 (83 years)

David Solomons was a British/American accounting scholar, known from his work on accounting and business management, its concepts, standards, history and politicization. Biography Born in London, Solomons obtained his BCom from the London School of Economics in 1932. In 1936 he obtained his Chartered Accountant licence for England and Wales, and became Associate of the Chartered Accountants.

#318

Itamar Simonson

#37850

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Itamar Simonson is a professor of marketing, holding the Sebastian S. Kresge Chair of Marketing in the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is known for his work on the factors that determine the choices that buyers make. His academic career started at the University of California at Berkeley, where he taught for six years, before he moved to Stanford. Many of his former PhD students hold senior positions at some of the best universities in the world.

#319

Frank Magid

#24815

Overall Influence

1931 - 2010 (79 years)

Frank Magid was an American marketing consultant, widely known for introducing the "Action News" format of evening local TV news, and was an original developer of Good Morning America. Time magazine named Magid "the nation's leading television news doctor" in 1977, and he became the namesake of the term "Magidized".

#320

Scott Wittman

#26559

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Scott Wittman is an American director, lyricist, composer and writer for Broadway, concerts, and television. Life and career Wittman was raised in Nanuet, New York, graduated from Nanuet Senior High School in 1972 and attended Emerson College in Boston for two years before leaving to pursue a career in musical theatre in New York City. While directing a show for a Greenwich Village club he met songwriter and composer Marc Shaiman, and the two became collaborators and professional partners. While Shaiman wrote for television shows, including Saturday Night Live, Wittman directed concerts for su...

#321

Grant Guilford

#18538

Overall Influence

William Grant Guilford is a retired New Zealand academic, specialising in veterinary nutrition. He is currently Chair of the New Zealand Veterinary Association. He was previously Head of the Institute of Veterinary, Animal Sciences at Massey University, Dean of Science at the University of Auckland and Vice-Chancellor of Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington.

#322

John Hussman

#24121

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

John Peter Hussman , is an American philanthropist, economist, and hedge fund manager. Early life Hussman holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University, as well as a master's degree in education and social policy and a bachelor's degree in economics from Northwestern University.

#323

Mark Nigrini

#47019

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Mark J. Nigrini, born in Cape Town, South Africa, is an Associate Professor of Accounting at the College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. Nigrini is best known for his work on using Benford's Law as an auditing and accounting tool to detect anomalies in company data. He is the author of Forensic Analytics which describes data analytics tests designed to detect fraud, errors, estimates, and biases in financial data. He is also the author of Benford's Law. Benford's Law gives the expected patterns of the digits in tabulated data and it has been ...

#324

Robert Mehrabian

#10092

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Robert Mehrabian is an Armenian-American materials scientist and the executive chairman of Teledyne Technologies Incorporated. He assumed this position on January 1, 2019. He was chairman, president, and chief executive officer of the company from 2000 to December 31, 2018, and president and a chief executive officer from 1999 to 2000. Mehrabian held various senior executive positions at Allegheny Teledyne Incorporated starting in July 1997 before the spin-off of Teledyne Technologies Incorporated in November 1999. Previously he was president of Carnegie Mellon University from 1990 to 1997....

#325

Prem Sikka, Baron Sikka

#66284

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Prem Nath Sikka, Baron Sikka is a British-Indian accountant and academic. He holds the position of Professor of Accounting at the University of Sheffield, and is Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex.

#326

Kevin Keasey

#55649

Overall Influence

Kevin Keasey is Professor of Accounting and Finance, Director of the International Banking Institute and Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Finance at Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds.

#327

Anne S. Tsui

#53604

Overall Influence

Anne S. Tsui is a professor of International management, who holds the positions of Motorola Professor Emerita of International Management at Arizona State University, distinguished adjunct professor at the University of Notre Dame, and distinguished visiting professor at Peking University and Fudan University, China.

#328

Albert Carnesale

#14193

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Albert Carnesale is an American academic and a specialist in arms control and national security. He is a former chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles, provost of Harvard University, and dean of the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University. He was also acting president of Harvard while President Neil L. Rudenstine was on leave for three months. He has also been active in international diplomacy on nuclear arms control and nuclear non-proliferation. From 1970-72, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Soviet Union—a major step towards controlling nuclear weapons.

#329

Vadnal Nagendrappa Venkatesh

#77697

Overall Influence

#330

Jennifer Wilby

#24894

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Jennifer M. Wilby is an American and UK management scientist, and past director of the Centre for Systems Studies, and a senior lecturer and researcher in management systems and sciences in The Business School, University of Hull. She served as president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences for the term 2010–2011.

#331

Donald Carroll Hambrick

#77706

Overall Influence

#332

J. Patrick Gallagher Jr

#44145

Overall Influence

J. Patrick Gallagher Jr is president, chief executive and chairman of the board of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., the US-based global insurance brokerage and risk management services firm headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, Chicago, Illinois. The company was founded by his grandfather, Arthur James Gallagher, in 1927, who later brought his three sons, Robert, John and James, into the business at the end of World War II. The Gallagher family owns approximately 1% of the company, but continues to hold numerous leadership positions.

#333

Ale Smidts

#51012

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Ale Smidts is a Dutch organizational theorist, and Professor of Marketing Research at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University . known for his work on organizational identification, and neuromarketing.

#334

Soottawat Benjakul

#77857

Overall Influence

#335

Marko Sarstedt

#69832

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Marko Sarstedt is a German academic and a marketing researcher. He is a Full Professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Adjunct Research Professor at Babeș-Bolyai-University. Sarstedt is the recipient of five Emerald Citations of Excellence awards and three Emerald Literati Outstanding Paper awards for his papers. He is a member of the Clarivate Analytics’ Highly Cited Researcher List. In 2019, he was listed among the most cited researchers across all scientific disciplines and is ranked by The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as the second most influential business researcher in Germany in the research category.

#336

Charles A. O'Reilly III

#56984

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Charles A. O'Reilly III is an American academic. He is the Frank E. Buck Professor of Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is the co-author of three books and a number of case studies as well as the co-editor of a fourth book.

#337

Thomas Kinsella

#10214

Overall Influence

1928 - 2021 (93 years)

Thomas Kinsella was an Irish poet, translator, editor, and publisher. Born outside Dublin, Kinsella attended University College Dublin before entering the civil service. He began publishing poetry in the early 1950s and, around the same time, translated early Irish poetry into English. In the 1960s, he moved to the United States to teach English at universities including Temple University. Kinsella continued to publish steadily until the 2010s.

#338

Robert Cervero

#46536

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Robert Cervero is an author, consultant, and educator in sustainable transportation policy and planning. During his years as a faculty member in city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, he gained recognition for his work in the sphere of urban transportation and land-use planning. His research has spanned the topics of induced demand, transit-oriented development , transit villages, paratransit, car sharing, and suburban growth.

#339

Nicholas Dopuch

#74606

Overall Influence

1929 - 2018 (89 years)

Nicholas Dopuch was an American accounting researcher and educator. He was a professor at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. In 2006, Dopuch was named to the Accounting Hall of Fame. His 1993 article, "A Perspective on Cost Drivers" , is an example of why Dopuch was named to the Accounting Hall of Fame. All serious management accounting researchers should read and embrace this concise classic.

#340

Shane Dikolli

#45582

Overall Influence

Shane S. Dikolli is an Australian accountant who is an Associate Professor of Accounting at University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. He was ranked 4th overall and 1st in accounting in Bloomberg Businessweek Most Popular Business School Professors Among Top 30 Business Schools Rankings. Dikolli was also named Professor of the Week by the Financial Times in August 2011.

#341

Gerald R. Ferris

#69453

Overall Influence

Gerald R. Ferris is the Francis Eppes Professor of Management and professor of psychology at Florida State University. He has published extensive research in the areas of social influence in organizations, performance evaluation, relationships at work and reputation in organizational contexts. Ferris served as editor of the annual series Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management from 1981–2003, and has authored or edited a number of books including: Political Skill at Work: Impact on Work Effectiveness, Handbook of Human Resource Management, Strategy and Human Resources Management, ...

#342

Jordi Canals

#69682

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Jordi Canals is a former Dean of IESE Business School – University of Navarra, where he is also Professor of Economics and General Management. Biography He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Barcelona, awarded as Best PhD Thesis. He is a scholar in the areas of strategic management, corporate governance and globalization.

#343

Adrian Sargeant

#58623

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Adrian Sargeant is a British academic who is co-founder and co-director of the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy. He is an adjunct professor of Philanthropy at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University where he was the first Visiting Robert F. Hartsook Chair in Fundraising. Sargeant is also an Adjunct Professor of Fundraising at the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.

#344

Roni Michaely

#62369

Overall Influence

Roni Michaely is an Israeli academic specializing in Economics and Finance. Michaely is Professor of Finance at the University of Hong Kong, School of Business and Economics. He was also appointed to a director of the Israel Securities Authority in January 1998 and also serves as an associate editor for the Review of Financial Studies.

#345

David L. Hawk

#59514

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

David L. Hawk is an American management theorist, architect, and systems scientist, specializing in climate change as environmental deterioration. From 1981 to 2010 he was professor of management in the School of Management at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and professor of architecture at the College of Architecture and Design at NJIT.

#346

Vincent Mangematin

#53537

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Vincent Mangematin is a French researcher and professor in management, specialized in Strategy, Strategic management of Innovation and Technology Management. He is currently professor and scientific director at Grenoble Ecole de Management.

#347

Rudy Martens

#52955

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Rudy Martens is a Belgian organizational theorist, Professor of Strategic Management and Dean of the Faculty of Applied Economics at the University of Antwerp and at Antwerp Management School, particularly known for his process approach of strategic management.

#348

Heather Munroe-Blum

#37833

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Heather Anne Elyse Lilian Munroe-Blum is a Canadian academic and businesswoman. She is the former principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. She is also a member of the board of directors of the Royal Bank of Canada, and chairperson of the board of directors of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

#349

Michael D. Johnson

#59850

Overall Influence

Michael D. Johnson is a former President of John Carroll University. Before that he was the Dean of the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. He also is an E.M. Statler Professor of Hotel Administration.

#350

Robert R. Locke

#65465

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Robert R. Locke is an American educator, historian and economist and emeritus professor of history, business, and management at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He received his PhD from University of California at Los Angeles in 1965 and was a Fulbright fellow in Germany and England.

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