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 female people in Education,

#301

Margarita Zhukova

#26697

Overall Influence

1929 - 2010 (81 years)

Margarita Georgievna Zhukova was a Soviet and Russian educator and scientist. She was also a member of the Russian Union of Journalists and wrote many publications about her father, Marshal Georgy Zhukov.

#302

Louise Archer

#139444

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Louise Archer is Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education at the University College London Institute of Education. On 12 October 2017 she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of the British Academy in 2023.

#303

Mary Miller

#42300

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Mary Ellen Miller is an American art historian and academician specializing in Mesoamerica and the Maya. Academic career A native of New York State, Miller earned her A.B. degree from Princeton University and her Ph.D. from Yale in 1981 with a thesis titled The Murals of Bonampak, Chiapas Mexico. Miller joined the Yale faculty in 1981, and in 1998 was appointed as the Vincent Scully, Jr. Professor of the History of Art.

#304

Betty Gibson

#109757

Overall Influence

1911 - 2001 (90 years)

Betty Gibson was a Canadian educator considered by the community to be instrumental in developing and implementing the Mathematics and Language Arts Curriculum in Manitoba. Celebrated as "an exemplary educator", the Betty Gibson School in Brandon, Manitoba was named in her honour.

#305

Geraldine McDonald

#129424

Overall Influence

1926 - 2018 (92 years)

Geraldine McDonald was a New Zealand academic and teacher. She was a pioneer of research into women's education and early childhood education, and advocated for women and girls throughout her life. After an early teaching career, she completed her doctoral thesis on the development of preschool-aged Māori children, and began working for the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. Throughout her later career she ran and chaired various organisations including the New Zealand Mental Health Foundation and the New Zealand Association for Research in Education, and was influential in govern...

#306

Janet Catherine Berlo

#48877

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Janet Catherine Berlo is an American art historian and academic, noted for her publications and research into the visual arts heritage of Native American and pre-Columbian cultures. She has also published and lectured on gender studies, the representation and participation of women in indigenous and visual arts, the history of graphic arts since the mid-19th century, indigenous textile arts, and American quilting history and traditions. In the early portion of her academic career Berlo made notable contributions towards the understanding of the art and iconography of Mesoamerica, in particular that of the Classic-period Teotihuacan civilization.

#307

Charol Shakeshaft

#122168

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Charol Shakeshaft is an educational researcher noted for her studies on sexual abuse of students by school staff. She co-authored a four-year study on sexual abuse at school, which first appeared in March 1995, in the educational journal Phi Delta Kappan. Shakeshaft was chair of the Educational Leadership Department at Virginia Commonwealth University until 2017.

#308

Claudia Märtl

#81505

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Claudia Märtl is a German historian. She is a professor of Medieval history at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Her research focuses on English and Romance languages. In March 2011 she was elected to succeed Rudolf Schieffer as President of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. She took office on April 1, 2012 for a limited period of two years. On March 31, 2014, she resigned as president after a very vehement protest against the savings measures of the Free State of Bavaria and reform demands from the State Ministry for Education, Culture, Science and Art, which was taken over by Ludwig Spaenle .

#309

Luciana Duranti

#41539

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Luciana Duranti is an archival theorist and professor of archival science and diplomatics at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She is a noted expert on diplomatics and electronic records. Since 1998, she has been the director of the electronic records research project, InterPARES . She has disclosed the concept of the archival bond originally initiated by Italian archivist Giorgio Cencetti in 1937.

#310

Ellen Goldring

#113966

Overall Influence

Ellen Goldring is a professor of Educational Policy and Leadership at Vanderbilt University. Biography Ellen Goldring received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1985. Her research interests reside in two main areas. One strand centers on understanding and shaping school reform efforts that connect families, communities, and schools. She is co-author of Magnet Schools in Urban Districts: What's Our Choice , with Claire Smrekar, that focuses on questions of equity and community in urban school districts with extensive magnet school plans, and Principals of Dynamic Schools with Sharon Ra...

#311

Anastasia de Waal

#97905

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Anastasia de Waal is a British social policy analyst and broadcaster, specialising in family and education. Director of charity I Can Be, de Waal was previously deputy director at think tank Civitas. De Waal is chair of national parenting charity Family Lives.

#312

Margaret Reynolds

#88709

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Margaret Reynolds served as an Australian Labor Party Senator for Queensland from 1983 to 1999. Reynolds had two ministerial appointments during her time in the Senate, serving as Minister for Local Government from September 1987 to April 1990 and as Minister assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women from January 1988 to April 1990.

#313

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

#65612

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir is an Icelandic professor of art history, a novelist, playwright and poet. She received the Nordic Council Literature Prize for Hotel Silence in 2018 and the Médicis Foreign Award for Miss Iceland in 2019.

#314

Susan Peterson

#124822

Overall Influence

1925 - 2009 (84 years)

Susan Harnly Peterson was an American artist, ceramics teacher, author and professor. Biography Susan Annette Harnly was born in McPherson, Kansas on July 21, 1925. In 1946 she earned her bachelor's degree at Mills College in Oakland, California. In 1950 she earned a master of fine arts in ceramics at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University.

#315

Carmen Dalli

#142247

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Carmen Dalli is a New Zealand education academic specialising in early childhood education. Dalli has a BA from the University of Malta, a MEd from the University of Bristol and a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington She is currently a professor in the School of Education at Victoria University of Wellington.

#316

Lalage Bown

#70865

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (97 years)

Lalage Jean Bown was an English educator, feminist and women's literacy advocate. Biography The daughter, eldest of four children, of Dorothy Ethel Watson and Arthur Mervyn Bown, an Indian Civil Servant who worked in Burma , she was born in Croydon, south London, on 23 May 1927, and later grew up in Shropshire at Woolstaston. She was educated at Wycombe Abbey School and at Cheltenham Ladies' College, and went on to earn a bachelor's degree in modern history and a MA from the University of Oxford where she studied at Somerville College. Bown also took post-graduate studies in adult education ...

#317

Jacqueline Moss

Jacqueline Moss

#96902

Overall Influence

1927 - 2005 (78 years)

Jacqueline Moss was an American art historian, lecturer, writer and art critic. She was the curator of education at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art and lectured widely on modern and 20th-century art. Her articles and seminars often had a focus on women artists. In the 1980s, she had a travel business touring art and architecture in Europe, Asia and South America.

#318

Leah Dickerman

#72691

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Leah Dickerman is the director of research programs at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She was formerly director of editorial & content strategy at MoMA. Serving previously as the museum’s first Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture, a post endowed in 2015, Dickerman previously held the positions of curator of painting and sculpture at MoMA , acting head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Art , Washington, D.C. , and associate curator in modern and contemporary art at the NGA . Over the course of her career, Dickerman has organized o...

#319

Rebecca Miller

#65185

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Rebecca Augusta Miller, Lady Day-Lewis is an American filmmaker and novelist. She is known for her films Angela , Personal Velocity: Three Portraits , The Ballad of Jack and Rose , The Private Lives of Pippa Lee , and Maggie's Plan , all of which she wrote and directed, as well as her novels The Private Lives of Pippa Lee and Jacob's Folly. Miller received the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for Personal Velocity and the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Director for Angela.

#320

Briony Fer

#42643

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Briony Fer, FBA is a British art historian, critic, and curator; professor of history of art at University College London. She has written extensively on diverse topics of 20th century and contemporary art. She has written essays on numerous contemporary artists, such as Gabriel Orozco, Vija Celmins, Jean-Luc Moulène, Roni Horn, Ed Ruscha, and Rachel Whiteread. A focus of her research is on the art of American sculptor Eva Hesse, as when she wrote for the catalogue for the artist's 2002 retrospective curated by Elisabeth Sussman at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art in 2002.

#321

Adriana Umaña-Taylor

#76487

Overall Influence

Dr. Adriana Janette Umaña-Taylor is a professor of education in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Prior to this, she was a faculty member in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University, where she worked from 2004 until 2017, starting as an assistant professor and advancing through the ranks of associate professor and full professor, eventually being named a Foundation Professor. Dr. Umaña-Taylor's first position after graduate school was at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in the Human and Community Development Department.

#322

Hannah Higgins

#50200

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Hannah B. Higgins is an American writer and academic living in Chicago, Illinois. Higgins's research examines various post-conceptual art historical subjects in terms of two philosophically and practically entwined terms: information and sensation. She is a Professor in the Department of Art History and a founding Director of IDEAS, an interdisciplinary arts major, at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

#323

Janette Gray

#121728

Overall Influence

1952 - 2016 (64 years)

Janette Patricia Gray was an Australian Sister of Mercy who was the first non-Jesuit academic Principal of Jesuit Theological College, Parkville, Melbourne. A fund established in Gray's honour promotes the education and leadership of women in theology and is called the Janette Gray RSM Fund.

#324

Carey Jewitt

#156554

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

#325

Laurence Bertrand Dorléac

Laurence Bertrand Dorléac

#60245

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Laurence Bertrand Dorléac is a French art historian specializing in contemporary art, a professor and an author. She was elected president of the Fondation nationale des sciences politiques in May 2021. She is located in Boulogne-Billancourt, France.

#326

Crystal Williams

#110902

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Crystal Ann Williams is an American university president, educator, and poet. Williams is the current President of Rhode Island School of Design. She was raised in both Detroit, and in Madrid, Spain. She has earned degrees at New York University , and Cornell University .

#327

Mary F. Eastman

Mary F. Eastman

#42248

Overall Influence

Mary F. Eastman was an American educator, lecturer, writer, and suffragist of the long nineteenth century. A native of Lowell, Massachusetts, she resided in Tewksbury for many years. She taught in the high and normal school for girls in Boston, and was among the first to be thought competent to teach and control the students of a winter school in Lowell. Her later teaching was in Boston's Charlestown and also Somerville, Massachusetts. At the request of Horace Mann, she went to Ohio to aid in the work of education which he had undertaken at Antioch College. Eastman thought that suffrage was the highway to all other reforms.

#328

Freda Briggs

#95836

Overall Influence

1930 - 2016 (86 years)

Freda Briggs was an Australian academic, author and child protection advocate. In 2000, she was named Senior Australian of the Year for her pioneering work in child protection. Early life and education Briggs was born Freda Akeroyd on 1 December 1930 in Huddersfield, England. She has one brother, nine years her junior. She attended Deighton Council School and Royds Hall School.

#329

Elena Sliepcevich

#127492

Overall Influence

1919 - 2008 (89 years)

Elena M. Sliepcevich was one of the leading figures in the development of health education as an academic discipline and profession. Biography A 1939 graduate of the University of Idaho, Sliepcevich received her master's degree from the University of Michigan in 1949 and her doctorate in physical education from Springfield College in 1955. She was a professor of health education at the Ohio State University in 1961, when she was selected to direct the School Health Education Study . Most health education curricula developed since have been based on the 10 conceptual areas identified by the Sc...

#330

Joanna Woodall

#71933

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Joanna Woodall is an art historian at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, where she is a specialist in portraiture and Netherlandish art. Education Woodall has a BA degree in history from the University of York and an MA and PhD from the Courtauld Institute.

#331

Ellen Swepson Jackson

Ellen Swepson Jackson

#114055

Overall Influence

1935 - 2005 (70 years)

Ellen Swepson Jackson was an American educator and activist. She is best known for founding Operation Exodus, a program that bused students from overcrowded, predominantly black Boston schools to less crowded, predominantly white schools in the 1960s. The program paved the way for the desegregation of Boston's public schools.

#332

Brenda Almond

#61789

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Brenda Margaret Almond was a British philosopher, known for her work on philosophy of education and applied ethics. She was an elected member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Biography Almond co-founded the Society for Applied Philosophy in 1982 with her then colleague at Surrey University Anthony O'Hear and co-founded the International Journal of Applied Philosophy in 1983 part of a conscious strategy of moving philosophy away from abstract and abstruse debates towards issues that affect people in their everyday lives. Almond’s writing highlights issues like health and family and social relations.

#333

Elizabeth Prettejohn

#50543

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Elizabeth Francesca Prettejohn is an art historian and author of several books about art history. Her books have included Rossetti and his Circle , The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites and Art for Art's Sake . She has also co-edited and co-authored several publications. She has written exhibition catalogues and papers for journals such as The Burlington Magazine, Journal of Victorian Culture and Art Bulletin.

#334

Jahana Hayes

#110482

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Jahana Hayes is an American educator and politician serving as the U.S. representative for since 2019. The district, once represented by U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, comprises much of the state's northwestern portion, including New Britain, Danbury, and Waterbury. A member of the Democratic Party, Hayes is the first Black woman and Black Democrat to represent Connecticut in Congress. She was recognized as the National Teacher of the Year in 2016.

#335

Susan Nalugwa Kiguli

#74376

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Susan Nalugwa Kiguli is a Ugandan poet and literary scholar. She is an associate professor of literature at Makerere University. Kiguli has been an advocate for creative writing in Africa, including service as a founding member of FEMRITE, a judge for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize , and an advisory board member for the African Writers Trust. As a poet, Kiguli is best known for her 1998 collection The African Saga, as a scholar, and for her work on oral poetry and performance.

#336

Elaine Unterhalter

#136346

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Elaine Unterhalter is a South African educational researcher. She is Professor of Education and International Development at University College London. Unterhalter was elected as Fellow of the British Academy in 2020. She is a Fellow of the Human Development and Capability Association.

#337

Natalia Kucirkova

#121170

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (39 years)

Natalia Kucirkova is an academic in the field of children's literacies. She is a professor of reading and children's development at The Open University, UK and professor of early childhood and development at the University of Stavanger, Norway.

#338

Tamsyn Imison

#104072

Overall Influence

1937 - 2017 (80 years)

Dame Tamsyn Imison, DBE was a prominent British educator and "educational strategist" whose first career was as a scientific illustrator. Imison was educated at Somerville College, Oxford. After having a family of three, she went into teaching science in 1972 and taught for nearly 30 years. Between 1984 and 2000, she was Headteacher of the Hampstead School in north London. Imison wrote, researched and lectured on numerous topics related to academia, including Leadership, ICT, Comprehensive Schooling, Creativity, Learning, Schools of the Future, Post 16 and Women Leaders.

#339

Noeline Alcorn

#86004

Overall Influence

Noeline Elizabeth Alcorn is a New Zealand education-research academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Waikato. Academic career After attending Samuel Marsden Collegiate School in Wellington, New Zealand and a 1971 PhD titled Vision and nightmare : a study of Doris Lessing's novels at the University of California, Irvine, Alcorn moved to the University of Waikato, rising to full professor.

#340

Ruth Dial Woods

#146764

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Ruth Dial Woods is an American educator and activist. A member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, she was the first woman to serve as the associate superintendent of the Robeson County Public Schools and to receive an at-large appointment to the University of North Carolina Board of Governors. After teaching in the public school system of Robeson County for 27 years, she joined the faculty at Fayetteville State University. In addition to her work as an educator, Woods was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, the Women's liberation movement, and the American Indian Movement. She has serv...

#341

Ellen Junn

#104518

Overall Influence

Ellen Nan Junn is an American academic administrator. In July 2016, she became the 11th president of California State University, Stanislaus. She is the first Korean-American woman president appointed in the U.S. to a four-year public institution.

#342

Margaret Walshaw

#128173

Overall Influence

Margaret Anne Walshaw is a New Zealand education academic. She is currently a full professor at the Massey University. Academic career Walshaw completed a 1999 PhD titled Paradox, partiality and promise : a politics for girls in school mathematics at Massey University and is on the editorial board of Springer journal, Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education.

#343

Hinematau McNeill

#65700

Overall Influence

Hinematau Naomi McNeill is a New Zealand academic and treaty negotiator. She is of Tapuika Māori descent. As of 2019, she is a full professor at the Auckland University of Technology. Early life and education McNeill was born in Rotorua. She studied her B.A. and M.A. in social anthropology at Auckland University and Waikato University. She is currently principal lecturer in Māori Studies at Auckland Institute of Technology.

#344

Karen R. Lawrence

#69555

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Karen R. Lawrence is an American academic administrator serving as the ninth president of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. She previously served as the 10th president of Sarah Lawrence College.

#345

Shuchi Grover

#67056

Overall Influence

Shuchi Grover is an American learning scientist and computer science education researcher. Her research investigates computational thinking and how to design effective educational courses for children.

#346

Katy Deepwell

#41575

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Katy Deepwell is a feminist art critic and academic, based in London. She is the founder and editor of n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal, published 1998-2017, in 40 volumes by KT press. She founded KT press as a feminist not-for-profit publishing company to publish the journal and books on feminist art. KT press has published 8 e-books, supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. In Feb 2017, Katy Deepwell wrote and published a MOOC on feminism and contemporary art at. In May 2020, a second advanced course on feminist art manifestos was added to the site. The mod...

#347

Margherita Marchione

#34776

Overall Influence

1922 - 2021 (99 years)

Sister Margherita Marchione was an American Roman Catholic sister, writer, teacher and apologeticist, who dedicated herself in her later years to the defense of Pope Pius XII. Early life Marchione was born in February 1922 in Little Ferry, New Jersey, one of eight children of Crescenzo and Felicia Marchione, immigrants from Campania, Italy. She attended St. Mary's School in nearby Hackensack, and in 1935 she joined the Religious Teachers Filippini. She became a nun in 1938 at the age of 16.

#348

Judy K. Sakaki

#76095

Overall Influence

Judy K. Sakaki is a former American academic administrator, who previously served as the seventh president of Sonoma State University . She spent most of her previous academic career as a student affairs administrator in the University of California system. She is the first Japanese-American woman to head a four-year college or university in the United States, as well as the first Asian American woman hired as a university president in California and the second woman to serve as president of SSU.

#349

Marta Weinstock-Rosin

#36517

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Marta Weinstock-Rosin is an Austrian-born Israeli neuropharmacologist, best known as the developer of rivastigmine . Early life and education Weinstock-Rosin was born in Vienna. After her father was arrested for being Jewish, the family fled Austria for England in 1939, shortly before the war. Her early days in England were difficult. Her father was arrested as a citizen of an enemy state, and her mother had no skills and didn't speak English. Food was a challenge to find and much of her time was spent in air raid shelters. At age 12 she looked up the word "pharmacologist" in an encyclopedia and decided that research, drug development and chemistry would be her career.

#350

Hanne Bergius

#32526

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Hanne Bergius is a German art historian and Professor for Art History with emphases on art, photography, modern design and architecture. Life Bergius studied art history, classical archaeology, and psychology at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her doctoral dissertation on the history and concept of Berlin Dadaism at the FU Berlin was accepted in 1984. In 1990, she received a German Research Foundation grant to investigate the relationship between tradition and modernism in the example of the New Objectivity movement. Then, in 1992, she presented her habilitation project on the concept of montag...

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions