The Most Influential People Across History
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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List of the most influential people in Education,
#51
Linda Harasim
#16750
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Linda Marie Harasim, is a "leading teacher, scholar and speaker on the theories and practices of online education, contributing knowledge, technologies, and practices to the field of technology-enabled learning," is a pioneer leading theorist of online education. She is a professor emerita in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her six books and hundreds of articles about Computer-supported collaborative learning have been acknowledged as seminal works in the field.
Go to Profile#52
Cecilia Braslavsky
#26713
Overall Influence
1952 - 2005 (53 years)
Cecilia Braslavsky was an Argentine educator, pedagogue, and author. She served as Director-General of Educational Research in the Argentine Ministry of Education and Director of UNESCO's International Bureau of Education.
Go to Profile#53
Pierre Rosenberg
#12184
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Pierre Max Rosenberg is a French art historian, curator, and professor. Rosenberg is the honorary president and director of the Musée du Louvre in Paris, and since 1995, he has held the 23rd seat of the Académie Française. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge in 1987.
Go to Profile#54
Gene V. Glass
#11737
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Gene V Glass is an American statistician and researcher working in educational psychology and the social sciences. According to the science writer Morton Hunt, he coined the term "meta-analysis" and illustrated its first use in his presidential address to the American Educational Research Association in San Francisco in April, 1976. The most extensive illustration of the technique was to the literature on psychotherapy outcome studies, published in 1980 by Johns Hopkins University Press under the title Benefits of Psychotherapy by Mary Lee Smith, Gene V Glass, and Thomas I. Miller. Gene V Gl...
Go to Profile#55
James D. Kirylo
#27843
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
James David Kirylo is professor of education at the University of South Carolina who teaches courses that examine concepts associated with critical pedagogy, curriculum theorizing, teacher leadership, diversity and literacy. Among other books, he is author of Teaching with Purpose: An Inquiry into the Who, Why, and How We Teach, A Turning Point in Teacher Education: A Time for Resistance, Reflection and Change , and Paulo Freire: The Man from Recife, which is one of the most comprehensive texts in English on the life and thought of Paulo Freire, significantly contributing to Freirean scholars...
Go to Profile#56
Alexander Astin
#20195
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Alexander W. Astin was the Allan M. Cartter Distinguished Professor of Higher Education and Organizational Change, at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was founding director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. He has served as Director of Research for both the American Council on Education and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. He was also the founding director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, an ongoing national study of some fifteen million students, 300,000 faculty and staff, and 1,800 higher education institutions.
Go to Profile#57
Philip Altbach
#25371
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Philip G. Altbach is an American author, researcher and former professor at Boston College, and the founding director of the Boston College Center for International Higher Education. Early life Philip Altbach was born in Chicago in 1941 and was educated at the University of Chicago . In 1960 as a college freshman, he imported peace symbol buttons into the United States from Britain in 1960. Later, Altbach traveled to England to meet with British peace groups as a delegate from the Student Peace Union and on his return he persuaded the SPU to adopt the symbol.
Go to Profile#58
Jane Fernandes
#11094
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Jane Fernandes is a Deaf American educator and social justice advocate. As of August 2021, Fernandes is the President of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She previously served as president of Guilford College from 2014 to 2021.
Go to Profile#59
John G. Kemeny
#1870
Overall Influence
1926 - 1992 (66 years)
John George Kemeny was a Hungarian-born American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator best known for co-developing the BASIC programming language in 1964 with Thomas E. Kurtz. Kemeny served as the 13th President of Dartmouth College from 1970 to 1981 and pioneered the use of computers in college education. Kemeny chaired the presidential commission that investigated the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. According to György Marx he was one of The Martians.
Go to Profile#60
Patty Hearst
#928
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Patricia Campbell Hearst is the granddaughter of American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. She first became known for the events following her 1974 kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army. She was found and arrested 19 months after being abducted, by which time she was a fugitive wanted for serious crimes committed with members of the group. She was held in custody, and there was speculation before trial that her family's resources would enable her to avoid time in prison.
Go to Profile#61
K. Patricia Cross
#15008
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (98 years)
Kathryn Patricia Cross was an American scholar of educational research. Throughout her career, she explored adult education and higher learning, discussing methodology and pedagogy in terms of remediation and advancement in the university system.
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Stephen Brookfield
#27380
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Stephen Brookfield is a scholar in adult education who has held positions at the University of British Columbia, Columbia University, Harvard University and the University of Saint Thomas. He is currently Distinguished Scholar at Antioch University, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, and Emeritus Professor at the University of St. Thomas.
Go to Profile#63
Richard Allington
#49015
Overall Influence
Richard L. Allington is an American scholar who was a professor of education at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville from 2005 until his retirement in 2017. Allington served as the president of the International Reading Association , as president of the National Reading Conference, and as a member of the International Reading Association board of directors.
Go to Profile#64
Andy Hargreaves
#26060
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Andrew Hargreaves is Visiting Professor at the University of Ottawa and Research Professor at Boston College. Hargreaves grew up in the small Lancashire textile and engineering town of Accrington in England, home to football club Accrington Stanley. In 2002, he laid the foundation stone for the new building at his old primary school, Spring Hill Community Primary School, with his former teacher, Mary Hindle. The youngest of three brothers, he was the first in his extended family history to enter higher education, studying sociology at Sheffield University.
Go to Profile#65
John Hattie
#23940
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
John Allan Clinton Hattie is a New Zealand education academic. He has been a professor of education and director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia, since March 2011. He was previously professor of education at the University of Auckland, the University of North Carolina Greensboro, and the University of Western Australia. In addition to being lauded as a leading educational expert, previously John Hattie taught both middle school and high school as a classroom teacher for two years before entering graduate studies.
Go to Profile#66
John Perry Barlow
#925
Overall Influence
1947 - 2018 (71 years)
John Perry Barlow was an American poet, essayist, cattle rancher, and cyberlibertarian political activist who had been associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties. He was also a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, a founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and an early fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
Go to Profile#67
Ernest L. Boyer
#19054
Overall Influence
1928 - 1995 (67 years)
Ernest LeRoy Boyer was an American educator who most notably served as Chancellor of the State University of New York, United States Commissioner of Education, and President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Boyer was recipient of numerous awards, including over 140 honorary doctorates.
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W. J. T. Mitchell
#4891
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
William John Thomas Mitchell is an American academic. Mitchell is the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago. He was the editor of Critical Inquiry for 42 years, from 1978 to 2020, and also contributes to the journal October.
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Frederick Mayer
#20191
Overall Influence
1921 - 2006 (85 years)
Frederick Mayer was an educational scientist and philosopher of the University of Redlands, California and one of the leading creativity experts. One of his most important aims was a global humanism. Until the very last days of his life he was active as an author. More than sixty books deal with creativity, education and humanism. Internationally recognized creativity researcher Frederick Mayer in Vienna died. Mayer was particularly affected by the quote "Pride is not for him who loves his country, but for him who loves the whole world."
Go to Profile#70
Mitchel Resnick
#6203
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Mitchel Resnick is LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research, Director of the Okawa Center, and Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. , Resnick serves as head of the Media Arts and Sciences academic program, which grants master's degrees and Ph.D.s at the MIT Media Lab.
Go to Profile#71
Gita Steiner-Khamsi
#26709
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Gita Steiner-Khamsi is a Professor of Comparative and International Education at Teachers College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Harriman Institute, Columbia University in New York.
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James Tooley
#9939
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
James Nicholas Tooley is a professor of educational entrepreneurship and of education policy at the University of Buckingham. In July 2020 Tooley was appointed as the new Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, succeeding Sir Anthony Seldon from 1 October 2020.
Go to Profile#73
Stephen Greenblatt
#1847
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Stephen Jay Greenblatt is an American Shakespearean, literary historian, and author. He has served as the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University since 2000. Greenblatt is the general editor of The Norton Shakespeare and the general editor and a contributor to The Norton Anthology of English Literature.
Go to Profile#74
Simon Schama
#1136
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
#75
Andrey Alexandrovich Verbitsky
#16945
Overall Influence
1941 - 2020 (79 years)
Andrey Alexandrovich Verbitsky , is a Russian educational psychologist. His areas of academic interest include the development of higher education in Russia, as well as developmental, educational, and social psychology. He has published more than 200 academic and instructional papers, including five monographs.
Go to Profile#76
Babs Fafunwa
#27077
Overall Influence
1923 - 2010 (87 years)
Aliu Babatunde Fafunwa . He was the first Nigerian Professor of Education. He was a Nigerian Educationist, Scholar and Former Minister for Education. As Minister, he was in charge of the biggest school system in Africa. He is known for his early writings on the need to re-appraise the inherited colonial epistemological system in Nigeria and to introduce relevant cultural goals, subjects and local languages into the system, in order to accommodate the developmental and cultural pattern of the country. He is also a notable authority on the History of Educational Planning in Nigeria.
Go to Profile#77
Mildred García
#15015
Overall Influence
Mildred García is the Chancellor of the California State University system. She is also current president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities in Washington, D.C. Early life García was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is a first-generation college student.
Go to Profile#78
Ednan Aslan
#20722
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Ednan Aslan is an Austrian-Turkish scholar of Islam and professor of Islamic religious education at the University of Vienna. Biography Aslan was born on November 7, 1959, in Bayburt, Turkey. Aslan graduated from the University of Applied Sciences in Esslingen in 1988. He studied pedagogy and political science at the Universities of Tübingen and Stuttgart from 1990 to 1992. In 1996, he received his doctorate for his research on the religious education of Muslim children in Austria and Germany. Aslan has been a professor of Islamic religious education at the University of Vienna's Institute of...
Go to Profile#79
Thomas S. Popkewitz
#9561
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Thomas S. Popkewitz is an professor in the department of curriculum and instruction, University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education, US. His studies explore historically and contemporary education as practices of making different kinds of people that distribute differences . He has written or edited approximately 40 books and 300 articles in journals and book chapters translated into 17 languages. Recent studies focus on the comparative reason of educational research as cartographies and architectures that produce phantasmagrams of societies, population and differences. The studies e...
Go to Profile#80
Ruth Simmons
#4059
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Ruth Simmons is an American professor and academic administrator. Simmons served as the eighth president of Prairie View A&M University, a HBCU, from 2017 until 2023. From 2001 to 2012, she served as the 18th president of Brown University, where she was the first African American president of an Ivy League institution. Before Brown University, she headed Smith College, one of the Seven Sisters and the largest women's college in the United States, beginning in 1995.
Go to Profile#81
Arfa Sayeda Zehra
#4436
Overall Influence
Arfa Sayeda Zehra is a Pakistani expert. She is current serving as the Special Advisor to the Prime Minister for Education and National Harmony Affairs. She studied first at Lahore College for Women University, then Government College University, with further degrees from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Zehra is a professor emeritus of history at Forman Christian College and is a former principal of the Lahore College for Women University. She was a chairperson on the National Commission on the Status of Women. Zehra is a former caretaker provincial minister of Punjab. She is recognized fo...
Go to Profile#82
Alan Smithers
#16767
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Alan George Smithers is an English academic psychologist and public policy advisor best known for his research and publications in the field of education. Early life Smithers was born in the East End of London, the son of a Billingsgate fish porter. His mother worked in a sweet factory, and he claims he lived on fish and Turkish delight during the war. He was educated at Barking Abbey Grammar School then King's College London, gaining a first class honours degree BSc and a PhD in plant physiology in 1966. He later gained an MSc in the psychology and sociology of education and a PhD in education in 1974 from the University of Bradford.
Go to Profile#83
Beverly Daniel Tatum
#9969
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Beverly Christine Daniel Tatum is an American psychologist, administrator, and educator who has conducted research and written books on the topic of racism. Focusing specifically on race in education, racial identity development in teenagers, and assimilation of black families and youth in white neighborhoods. Tatum uses works from her students, personal experience, and psychology learning. Tatum served from 2002 to 2015 as the ninth president of Spelman College, the oldest historically black women's college in the United States.
Go to Profile#84
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#2469
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates is an American author, journalist, and activist. He gained a wide readership during his time as national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he wrote about cultural, social, and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans and white supremacy.
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Kersten Reich
#28064
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Kersten Reich is a German educator and cultural theorist. He was Professor of General Pedagogy from 1979 to 2006 and Professor of International Learning Research at the University of Cologne from 2007 to 2017.
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Steve Wheeler
#22171
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Steve Wheeler is a British academic, author, speaker and learning technologist. Early life Wheeler was born in Devonport, a suburb of Plymouth, England. His father was in the Royal Air Force, and due to constant travelling, Wheeler attended a number of schools across Europe, including St George's School in Gibraltar; Sandwick School in the Shetland Isles, Scotland; Wellington Grammar School in Telford, England; and the AFCENT International School in Brunssum, the Netherlands. He also attended Hereford College of Art and Design, where he studied fine arts, graphic design and photography.
Go to Profile#87
Ken Goodman
#12661
Overall Influence
1927 - 2020 (93 years)
Kenneth Goodman was Professor Emeritus, Language Reading and Culture, at the University of Arizona. He is best known for developing the theory underlying the literacy philosophy of whole language. Biography Goodman began teaching at Wayne State University in 1962. His research focused on reading in public schools. While at Wayne State University, Goodman developed miscue analysis, a process of assessing students' reading comprehension based on samples of oral reading. One of his research assistants in miscue analysis was Rudine Sims Bishop. Goodman taught at Wayne State University for 15 ye...
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James A. Banks
#26973
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
James Albert Banks is an American educator and the Kerry and Linda Killinger Endowed Chair in Diversity Studies Emeritus and founding director of the University of Washington's Center for Multicultural Education, which is now the Banks Center for Educational Justice. He focuses on the discipline of multicultural education.
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Gunther Kress
#10251
Overall Influence
1940 - 2019 (79 years)
Gunther Rolf Kress MBE was a linguist and semiotician. He is considered one of the leading theorists in critical discourse analysis, social semiotics and multimodality, particularly in relation to their educational implications. Kress has been described as "one of the leading academics of the early 21st century".
Go to Profile#90
Allan Luke
#25836
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Allan Luke is an educator, researcher, and theorist studying literacy, multiliteracies, applied linguistics, and educational sociology and policy. Luke has written or edited 17 books and more than 250 articles and book chapters. Luke, with Peter Freebody, originated the Four Resources Model of literacy in the 1990s. Part of the New London Group, he was coauthor of the "Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures" published in the Harvard Educational Review . He is Emeritus Professor at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia and adjunct professor at Werklund Scho...
Go to Profile#91
David Watson
#25500
Overall Influence
1949 - 2015 (66 years)
Sir David John Watson was a British academic and educationalist. He was Director of Brighton Polytechnic from 1990 to 1992 and Vice-Chancellor of its successor the University of Brighton from 1992 to 2005. In 2005 he was appointed Professor of Higher Education Management at the Institute of Education and was Course Director of the Institute's MBA in Higher Education Management. Between 2010 and 2015 he was Principal of Green Templeton College, Oxford and Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#92
Robert Zemsky
#25702
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Robert M. Zemsky is a Professor of Education, the Chair of the Learning Alliance for Higher Education, and the founding director of the Institute for Research on Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. He pioneered the use of prospective student market analyses in higher education.
Go to Profile#93
Kenneth Leithwood
#32062
Overall Influence
Kenneth "Ken" Leithwood is an educational researcher and professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto, Canada. His research has focused on school leadership, processes of school reform, and assessment of educational policy.
Go to Profile#94
Bienvenido Nebres
#12913
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Bienvenido F. Nebres is a Filipino scientist, mathematician, and a Jesuit priest who was the longest-serving university president of the Ateneo de Manila University. He succeeded Joaquin G. Bernas in 1993, and served as University President until 1 June 2011. He currently sits as a member of the board of trustees of Georgetown University, Regis University, St. Edward School Foundation, Inc., the Asian Institute of Management , and other colleges and universities in the Philippines. He is also a member of the board of directors of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company, and is currently chairman of the Synergeia Foundation.
Go to Profile#95
Aaron Doering
#31712
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Aaron Doering is an American explorer, author, public speaker, and adventure learning pioneer. He was a full professor at the University of Minnesota until 2019, and the director and co-founder of the Learning Technologies Media Lab. Doering is a laureate of the humanitarian Tech Awards, and was a fellow for the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment. He is also a fellow for the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
Go to Profile#96
Lee Bollinger
#3182
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
#97
Rheta DeVries
#38800
Overall Influence
1936 - 2012 (76 years)
Rheta Goolsby DeVries was a professor at University of Northern Iowa's Regent's Center For Early Developmental Education, where she also served as director. She co-wrote many books along with Constance Kamii, concerning early childhood education curriculum that both influenced the field of early childhood mathematical instruction and accelerated the proliferation of constructivist-based teaching in the classroom.
Go to Profile#98
Sharan Merriam
#42490
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Sharan B. Merriam is professor of adult education at the University of Georgia. Her focus has been researching and writing about adult learning and the foundations of adult education. She has won the Cyril O. Houle Award for Outstanding Literature in Adult Education for three of her books. In 1998 she was a senior Fulbright scholar to Malaysia.
Go to Profile#99
Marijuana Pepsi Vandyck
#42081
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Marijuana Pepsi Vandyck is an American educational professional. Vandyck earned her Ph.D. from Cardinal Stritch University in 2019 with a dissertation on uncommon black names in the classroom. Early life and name Marijuana Pepsi Jackson was born in 1972 to Aaron and Maggie Jackson, who chose her name. She lived in Chicago, Illinois until she was nine years old; then she moved to Beloit, Wisconsin to live with her mother after her parents separated. She has two sisters, Kimberly and Robin. She first realized her name was unusual at age nine.
Go to Profile#100
Ernst Gombrich
#965
Overall Influence
1909 - 2001 (92 years)
Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich was an Austrian-born art historian who, after settling in England in 1936, became a naturalised British citizen in 1947 and spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom.
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