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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Ranking

List of the most influential people in Computer Science,

#13051

John Torreano

#106908

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

John Torreano is an American artist from Michigan. He is currently clinical professor of studio art at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. Torreano is known for utilizing faceted gems in a variety of mediums in order to create "movement oriented perception" in his works. Artist Richard Artschwager described Torreano's works as "paintings that stand still and make you move."

#13052

Csongor István Nagy

#117979

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Csongor István Nagy Ph.D., LL.M., S.J.D, dr. juris is a professor of law in Hungary, the head of the Department of Private International Law at the University of Szeged, Faculty of Law, in Szeged, Hungary, research chair and head of the Federal Markets “Momentum” Research Group at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and an attorney-at-law admitted to the Budapest Bar. Furthermore, he is visiting professor at the Central European University, the Sapientia University of Transylvania and the Riga Graduate School of Law. He is associate member at the Centre for Private International Law at the University of Aberdeen.

#13053

J. L. Simkin

#161403

Overall Influence

1920 - 1991 (71 years)

Dr Julius Leonard Simkin FRSE was a 20th century British biochemist. In authorship he was known as J. L. Simkin. Life He was born in England in the 1920s. He studied Science at Liverpool University graduating BSc around 1950.

#13054

Michele Grimm

#184674

Overall Influence

Michele J. Grimm is a British-American biomechanical engineer. She took on the role of Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University at Albany in 2022. She was previously the Wielenga Creative Engineering Endowed Professor of mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering at Michigan State University. Her research concerns the biomechanics of injury, particularly injuries in newborn children to the brachial plexus, a part of the nervous system connecting it to the upper body.

#13055

Ivan Kulakov

#184860

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Ivan Yuryevich Kulakov is a Russian geophysicist and artist. Kulakov was born in Novosibirsk in Siberia. During his childhood Ivan visited the lectures his father Professor Yury Kulakov conducted on both classical and contemporary art. The museums of the former Soviet Union, along with the paintings and photographs his father showed him, have had a significant influence on Kulakov's art. Today he says that these lectures were much more important to his development as an artist than any school of arts or university could have been. The symbiosis of his scientific career and art career has allo...

#13056

David Lonie

#190950

Overall Influence

#13057

Robin Winters

#86091

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Robin Winters is an American conceptual artist and teacher based in New York. Winters is known for creating solo exhibitions containing an interactive durational performance component to his installations, sometimes lasting up to two months. As an early practitioner of Relational Aesthetics Winters has incorporated such devices as blind dates, double dates, dinners, fortune telling, and free consultation in his performances. Throughout his career he has engaged in a wide variety of media, such as performance art, film, video, writing prose and poetry, photography, installation art, printmaking, drawing, painting, ceramic sculpture, bronze sculpture, and glassblowing.

#13058

Laura Waters

#124077

Overall Influence

Laura Jane Waters is a British physician, genitourinary consultant at the National Health Service Mortimer Market Centre in London. She is chair of the British HIV Association and advises the NHS on HIV treatment. Waters is a regular contributor to Boyz magazine, and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic provided regular advice to HIV-positive people.

#13059

Nikolai Izmerov

Nikolai Izmerov

#132690

Overall Influence

1927 - 2016 (89 years)

Nikolai Fedotovich Izmerov was a Soviet and Russian occupational hygienist and public figure, who made significant contributions to occupational hygiene. Early life Nikolai Izmerov was born in Frunze , Kyrgyzstan in 1927, to Izmerov Fedot Fedotovich and Izmerova Evdokia Filatovna .

#13060

Stephen Rea

#190955

Overall Influence

#13061

Labode Popoola

#144407

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Labode Popoola is a Nigerian academic. He is a professor of forest economics and was the 3rd substantive Vice-Chancellor of the Osun State University. Early life Poopola was born in Inisa, a local government area of Osun State. He obtained a Bachelor of Science, Honours in 1984 from the University of Ibadan. Following the completion of the compulsory one-year youth service program in 1985, he earned a master's degree in Forest Economics and Management and later received the doctor of philosophy in Forest Economics in 1990 all at the University of Ibadan.

#13062

Manfred Hutter

#44202

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Manfred Hutter is a professor at Bonn University. He is usually interested in writing about minority religions, comparative religions and pre-Islamic Arabia. Manfred Hutter understands scientific studies of religions decidedly as a human-scientific and empirically working discipline of cultural studies, because it understands religion as a partial aspect of culture and examines the interactions between man, culture and society. Therefore, he pleads for a formal and substantive demarcation of the subject from theology and philosophy of religion. For him, religious studies consists of both hist...

#13063

Unil Perera

#183660

Overall Influence

A. G. Unil Perera is a Sri Lankan-born American physicist with an assortment of research interests in experimental condensed matter physics, especially semiconductor infrared detectors and applications. He has authored over 200 publications covering a variety of disciplines inside. He is a Regents’ Professor of Physics at Georgia State University, in Atlanta, Georgia. After his basic Education in Sri Lanka, he obtained his doctoral degree in physics from the University of Pittsburgh under the supervision of Darry D. Coon. During his graduate research, he developed a detector, which can detect...

#13064

Alexandra Grant

#20405

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Alexandra Grant is an American visual artist who examines language and written texts through painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and other media. She uses language and exchanges with writers as a source for much of that work. Grant examines the process of writing and ideas based in linguistic theory as it connects to art and creates visual images inspired by text and collaborative group installations based on that process. She is based in Los Angeles.

#13065

Rosario González-Férez

#182334

Overall Influence

Rosario González-Férez is a professor in the Department of Atomic, Molecular and Nuclear Physics at the University of Granada. In 2013 she was awarded the Mildred Dresselhaus Award, and in 2018 she as appointed to the IUPAP commission on Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics.

#13066

Rachel Potter

#190965

Overall Influence

Director of Applied Behavior Analysis & Autism Studies, Associate Professor of Education

#13067

Eileen Mayo

#74709

Overall Influence

1906 - 1994 (88 years)

Dame Eileen Rosemary Mayo was an English artist and designer who worked in England, Australia and New Zealand in almost every available medium – drawings, woodcuts, lithographs on stone and tempera, tapestry and silk screening. In addition to being a printmaker, illustrator, calligrapher and muralist, she designed coins, stamps, tapestry and posters, and wrote and illustrated eight books on natural science.

#13068

Bronwyn Wake

#173741

Overall Influence

Bronwyn Wake is an Australian scientist and the editor in chief of Nature Climate Change. Education Wake has a first class honors degree in Antarctic studies and a PhD in trace element biogeochemistry. She undertook postgraduate research at the University of Tasmania.

#13069

Robert Cumming

#117852

Overall Influence

1943 - 2021 (78 years)

Robert Hugh Cumming was an American painter, sculptor, photographer, and printmaker best known for his photographs of conceptual drawings and constructions, which layer meanings within meanings, and reference both science and art history.

#13070

Kevin Long

#125377

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Kevin Long is a graphic artist best known for his airbrush paintings and black-and-white illustrations in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. He was a principal artist at Palladium Books from 1986 until 1995 and served as one of the original contributors to the Rifts role-playing game series.

#13071

Guðfinna Aðalgeirsdóttir

Guðfinna Aðalgeirsdóttir

#180502

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Guðfinna 'Tollý' Aðalgeirsdóttir is professor in Geophysics at the Faculty of Earth Sciences, University of Iceland. Professional career Guðfinna was born in Akureyri, on the north coast of Iceland, 20 March 1972. She completed grammar school with a matriculation exam from the physics line of Menntaskólinn á Akureyri in spring 1991. She then studied geophysics at the University of Iceland and graduated with a B.Sc. degree in spring 1994. During the summers of 1993 and 1994 and winter 1994–1995, she worked at the Science Institute, University of Iceland, with Helgi Björnsson and the glaciology...

#13072

Franco Mondini-Ruiz

#178721

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Franco Mondini-Ruiz is an American artist who lives and works in San Antonio, Texas and New York, New York. He is of Mexican and Italian descent. According to art critic Roberta Smith, his work "questions notions of preciousness and art-market exclusivity while delivering a fizzy visual pleasure". Mondini-Ruiz takes a variety of approaches to creating art, working in installation, performance, painting, sculpture, and short stories.

#13073

Patricia J. Garcia

Patricia J. Garcia

#144049

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Patricia Jannet García Funegra is a Peruvian professor of public and global health at Cayetano Heredia University. She originally trained as a clinician before focusing on research and public health. Her work also focuses on reproductive health, sexually transmitted diseases, and medical informatics. In 2016-17 García was the Minister of Health of Peru. She was the first Peruvian to be elected to the US National Academy of Medicine in 2016.

#13074

Ali Mohammad Ranjbar

#29950

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Ali Mohammad Ranjbar was an Iranian professor of electrical engineering and former chancellor of Sharif University of Technology. Ranjbar received the MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of Tehran in 1967 and Imperial College London in 1975, respectively with a thesis titled "Computer protection of high voltage transmission lines.". Since then, he was at Sharif University of Technology Department of Electrical Engineering, where he was a full professor. Ranjbar was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Electrical Science and Technology since 1989 and the Director of Niroo Research Institute since 1996 too.

#13075

Abdullah Sahin

#89261

Overall Influence

Abdullah Sahin is a reader in Islamic education at the University of Warwick. His academic work is focused on establishing Islamic education as "an interdisciplinary field of scholarly study, empirical inquiry and professional development." His major scholarly work in this regard is New Directions in Islamic Education: Pedagogy and Identity Formation published in 2013 by Kube Publishing.

#13076

Samantha Womack

Samantha Womack

#170836

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Samantha Zoe Womack is an English actress, singer, model and director who has worked in film, television and stage. Womack initially planned a career in singing and she represented the United Kingdom in the 1991 Eurovision Song Contest. Her song for the contest, "A Message to Your Heart", was released as her first single in April 1991 and reached number 30 in the UK Singles Chart.

#13077

Millie Chen

#168865

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Millie Chen is Taiwanese-born Canadian artist, educator, and writer. Based in Buffalo, New York, Chen is a professor in the Department of Art at the University at Buffalo. Early life and education She was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and raised in Toronto, Ontario. Chen received an MFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University in 1994 and her BFA Honours from York University in 1986. She studied piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music.

#13078

Mariana Castillo Deball

#111714

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Mariana Castillo Deball is a Mexican visual artist currently based in Berlin. She works primarily in installation, sculpture, photography and drawing. Early life and education Castillo Deball studied in the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City and the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht.

#13079

Joan Backes

#176817

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Joan Backes is an American artist. Backes is known for her paintings which record different species of tree bark and for her installations, most recently her house series. Her work addresses issues of nature in contemporary society.

#13080

Leo Higdon

#86409

Overall Influence

Leo Ignatius Higdon Jr. is an academic administrator and former Wall Street executive. He was previously president of Connecticut College , the College of Charleston and Babson College. From 1968 until 1970, he and his wife served for two years as Peace Corps volunteers in Malawi. In 1972, he received an M.B.A. in finance from the University of Chicago.

#13081

David Buchbinder

#73029

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

David Buchbinder is professor of Masculinities Studies at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia, and adjunct professor of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia.

#13082

Concha Jerez

#138034

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Concha Jerez is a Spanish multidisciplinary artist known as a pioneer in conceptual art. One of the central axes of her work is the critical analysis of the media. Artistic career Concha Jerez studied piano at the Madrid Royal Conservatory, and in 1958–1959 she obtained a scholarship to Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia, where she became interested in political and social affairs. This led her to study for her licentiate in political science at the Complutense University of Madrid.

#13083

Vatsala Thirumalai

#171492

Overall Influence

Vatsala Thirumalai is a scientist at Neural Circuits and Development Laboratory, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bengaluru. She secured B Tech degree in biotechnology from Anna University, Chennai and PhD degree in neuroscience from Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. She was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY and the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.

#13084

Navneet Kaur

#191048

Overall Influence

#13085

Rajnish Khanna

#57986

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Rajnish Khanna is an Indian-American photobiologist and entrepreneur, with a focus on nutrition, health, and globally sustainable practices. Khanna is a research scientist at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University. He is the founder of i-Cultiver, Inc. He also serves as a scientific advisor for author Deblina Bhattacharya The Chopra Foundation by Deepak Chopra.

#13086

Jaafar Aksikas

#97856

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Jaafar Aksikas is a Moroccan-born American academic, activist, media personality and cultural critic. He is currently Professor of Cultural Studies and Media Studies at Columbia College Chicago, United States, where he teaches at the intersection of politics, media and culture. He is also President and CEO of the Institute for Global Media, Democracy and Culture. He was also President of the Cultural Studies Association . Jaafar Aksikas was educated both in Morocco and the USA and holds a Ph.D in Cultural Studies from George Mason University, USA and an MA in the Humanities from the prestigious Royal Al Akhawayn University, Morocco.

#13087

John Conomos

#137437

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

John Conomos is an artist, critic and writer, and Associate Professor and Principal Fellow at Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, the University of Melbourne. His books, essays and artworks are framed within four traditions of contemporary art: Anglo–American and Australian cultural studies, critical theory and post-structuralism.

#13088

Edward A. Lee

#191063

Overall Influence

#13089

Eftyhia Vardas

#169435

Overall Influence

Eftyhia Vardas FC Path is an honorary extraordinary professor in medical virology at the Department of Medical Virology, University of Stellenbosch, and head of virology at Lancet Laboratories in Johannesburg. She is a member of the COVID-19 Ministerial Advisory Committee to the South African minister of health.

#13090

Ali Gohar

#59613

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Ali Gohar is a Pakistani noted scholar and restorative justice expert and the founder and executive director of Just Peace Initiatives . Early life and education Ali Gohar was born in the village of "Kaala", district Swabi in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Ali Gohar has an MSc degree in international relations from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He also holds a M.A. in conflict transformation from Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

#13091

Robert Sikoryak

Robert Sikoryak

#172916

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Robert Sikoryak is an American artist whose work is usually signed R. Sikoryak. He specializes in making comic adaptations of literature classics. Under the series title Masterpiece Comics, these include Crime and Punishment rendered in Bob Kane–era Batman style, becoming Dostoyevsky Comics, starring Raskol; and Waiting for Godot mixed with Beavis and Butt-Head, becoming Waiting to Go.

#13092

Sreenath Subrahmanyam

#191070

Overall Influence

Sreenath Subrahmanyam is a biologist and the director for the Institute of Bioecosciences, Virginia, United States of America. Education Sreenath received his bachelor's degree in biological sciences from Loyola College, Madras, and a PhD diploma in biological sciences from Cranfield University, UK. Sreenath is a Beahrs Fellow on the Natural Resources Management Program, University of California, Berkeley.

#13093

Ashley Hunt

#183943

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Ashley Hunt is an American artist, activist, writer and educator, primarily known for his photographic and video works on the American prison system, mass incarceration and the prison abolition movement. He is currently a faculty member of the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts.

#13094

David Lee

#59728

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

David Lee is an outspoken English contemporary art critic—condemning conceptual art in general and the Turner Prize in particular. He publishes and edits The Jackdaw magazine, critical of the contemporary art world.

#13095

Chuck Backus

#150308

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Charles Edward Backus was vice president and provost of Arizona State University's east campus until his retirement in 2004. He currently is president of the Arizona State University Research Park, a business and recreational park that is operated by Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona . He has endowed a scholarship, at Arizona State University Polytechnic.

#13096

Tony Pinkney

#92223

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

#13097

Tom Sherman

#116821

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Tom Sherman is an American-Canadian artist working in video, audio, radio, performance, sculpture and text/image. He is also a writer of nonfiction and fiction. He is a recipient of Canada's Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts. He is a professor of video art at Syracuse University.

#13098

Alexandra Silber

#186927

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Alexandra Silber is an American actress, singer, writer and educator. She has performed roles on Broadway, in London's West End, on television and film, and concert stages. Among other stage roles, in London, she created the role of Laura Fairlie in The Woman in White , played Hodel in Fiddler on the Roof and Julie Jordan in Carousel . In New York, she appeared in Hello Again , Master Class , created the role of Sara Jane in Arlington and as Tzeitel in the Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof .

#13099

Tori Foster

#189095

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Tori Foster is a Canadian artist and filmmaker, known for her new media works. She is most noted for her documentary film 533 Statements, which was cowinner with Denis Langlois' film Amnesia: The James Brighton Enigma of the award for Best Canadian Feature Film at the 2006 Inside Out Film and Video Festival.

#13100

Lia Cook

#118392

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Lia Cook is an American fiber artist noted for her work combining weaving with photography, painting, and digital technology. She lives and works in Berkeley, California, and is known for her weavings which expanded the traditional boundaries of textile arts. She has been a professor at California College of the Arts since 1976.

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