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).

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Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Education,

#501

Éric de Chassey

#45451

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Éric de Buretel de Chassey is a French historian of French art, art critic, and professor of contemporary art history at François Rabelais University in Tours, France. He has had students from many different countries, one of whom is the Iranian artist Bahram Ahmadi.

#502

Jean-Marie De Ketele

#87280

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Jean-Marie De Ketele is a Belgian academic and writer specialising in education. In addition to academia, he has held positions for United Nations agencies. Education and teaching career De Ketele studied general, technical and professional education from 1964 to 1967 and earned degrees in psychology in 1972 and in education in 1973, both from the University of Louvain . In 1977 he received a doctoral degree with a speciality in observation and evaluation. In 1991 he became an ordinary professor at UCLouvain, where he is now professor emeritus. In 1994, he was appointed to the UNESCO chair in...

#503

Bénédicte Savoy

Bénédicte Savoy

#22969

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Bénédicte Savoy is a French art historian, specialising in the critical enquiry of the provenance of works of art, including looted art and other forms of illegally acquired cultural objects. Savoy is professor of modern art history at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. From 2016 to 2021, she was professor for cultural history of European Artistic Heritage from the 18th to 20th centuries at the Collège de France in Paris. Commissioned by the French president in 2018, she and economist and writer Felwine Sarr from Senegal are the authors of a report on the restitution of African cult...

#504

Mary M. Frasier

#62400

Overall Influence

1938 - 2005 (67 years)

Mary M. Frasier was a famous African American educator who specialized in the area of gifted education at the University of Georgia. Frasier was born May 17, 1938, in South Carolina. Frasier worked to elevate the educational standing of African Americans as well as other minority groups who pass through the educational system, and transformed how people viewed gifted children. She developed the Frasier Traits, Aptitudes, and Behaviors , which is an instrument used by many school systems to identify children for gifted educational services.

#505

Deborah Swallow

#47408

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Deborah Anne Swallow is a British educator, museum curator and academic. From 2004 to 2023, she was Märit Rausing Director of The Courtauld Institute of Art and its Gallery; she was its first female Director. She previously worked at the University of Cambridge and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Alongside education and curation, she is a proponent of the broadest possible appreciation of art and its histories, and a specialist in Indian art and anthropology.

#506

Jerry Pattengale

#56293

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Jerry A. Pattengale is a faculty member and administrator at Indiana Wesleyan University. He coined and founded the approach of “purpose-guided education” in 1997 while leading the implementation of student success programs at Indiana Wesleyan University. His approach includes calling for a humanities approach to student success, and the need for faculty involvement in the development of strategies.

#507

Hans de Wit

#104744

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Johannes Wilhelmus Maria "Hans" de Wit is a Dutch international educator and higher education administrator, known for his leading scholarly work on the field of Internationalization of Higher Education.

#508

Lieven Verschaffel

#113950

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

#509

Douglas Kahn

#25189

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Douglas Kahn is known for his historical and theoretical writings on the use of sound in the avant-garde and experimental arts and music, energies in the arts, and history and theory of the media arts. His writings have been influential in the scholarly area of sound studies and the practical area of sound art; as well as in the studies of energies in the arts. He is Honorary Professor at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, Professor Emeritus at University of New South Wales, Australia, and Professor Emeritus at University of California, Davis, where he was the Founding Director of Technocultural Studies.

#510

Suzanne Carrell

#76023

Overall Influence

1923 - 2019 (96 years)

Suzanne Carrell was an American educator and recipient of the awards of the Order of Academic Palms, the Legion of Honor, and the National Order of Merit in honor for her service to France. She was the co-founder of the Jacksonville, Florida chapter of the Alliance Française and was a key member of the Congress of French Culture in Florida, based in Orlando.

#511

Catherine McDermott

#38558

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Catherine McDermott is a Professor of Design at Kingston University in London, England. In 2001, McDermott set up a masters programme titled "Curating Contemporary Design" with Paul Thompson, then director of the Design Museum in London and now director of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York. Much of McDermott's personal research has focused on curating British design identity. She is the author of books and articles on design history.

#512

Gil Noam

#47333

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Gil Gabriel Noam, Ed.D., Dr. Habil is the founder and director of The PEAR Institute: Partnerships in Education and Resilience. and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital. Trained as a clinical and developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst in both Europe and the United States, Noam has a strong interest in supporting resilience in youth, especially in educational settings. He served as the director of the Risk and Prevention program, and is the founder of the RALLY Prevention Program, a Boston-based intervention that bridges social and academic support in school, afterschool, and community settings.

#513

James O. Freedman

#26421

Overall Influence

1935 - 2006 (71 years)

James Oliver Freedman was an American educator and academic administrator. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, he served as Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School from 1979 to 1982, before becoming the 16th president of the University of Iowa from 1982 to 1987, and then the 15th president of Dartmouth College, from 1987 to 1998. At both Iowa and Dartmouth, Freedman sought to create as The New York Times described it, "a haven for intellectuals," with mixed results. Freedman was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical...

#514

Roy H. Campbell

#74335

Overall Influence

Roy H. Campbell is a computer scientist and the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Professor emeritus at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and director of the Assured Cloud Computing University Center of Excellence. Campbell is best known for his work in operating systems, parallel computing, and multimedia on the internet.

#515

Todd Whitaker

#76824

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Todd Whitaker is an American educator, writer, motivational speaker, educational consultant, and professor. A leading presenter in the field of education, Dr. Whitaker has published over 60 books on staff motivation, teacher leadership, technology, middle level practices, instructional improvement, and principal effectiveness, including the national best-seller, What Great Teachers Do Differently. Before leaving in 2016, he was a professor of educational leadership at Indiana State University. In 2013, Dr. Whitaker received the President's Medal from Indiana State University, the university's ...

#516

Peter Lasko

#44577

Overall Influence

1924 - 2003 (79 years)

Peter Erik Lasko was a British art historian, Professor of Visual Art at the University of East Anglia, from 1965 to 1974, Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, from 1974–85 and a Fellow of the British Academy.

#517

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn

#30664

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn is an editor, essayist, poet, and novelist. She is considered to be outspoken in her views about Native American politics, particularly in regards to tribal sovereignty. She has criticized those who make tenuous claims to Native/Indigenous ancestry with the purpose of advancing their own careers, and described such claimants with no community connections as "tribeless". She believes they damage the development of economic and social life of Native nations.

#518

Elias G. Carayannis

#111465

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Elias G. Carayannis is a Greek-American economist who is presently a full Professor of Science, Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the George Washington University School of Business in Washington, D.C.

#519

Katherine Schlick Noe

#99228

Overall Influence

Dr. Katherine L. Schlick Noe is Professor of Education and Director of Literacy in the College of Education at Seattle University. Education A former high school English and reading teacher, Schlick Noe received her Ph.D. in Reading/Language Arts from the University of Washington.

#520

Christine Rubie-Davies

#78223

Overall Influence

Christine Margaret Rubie-Davies is a New Zealand education academic, and as of 2014 is a full professor and head of school at the University of Auckland. Academic career After more than two decades working in primary education and a 2003 PhD titled 'Expecting the best : instructional practices, teacher beliefs and student outcomes' at the University of Auckland, Rubie-Davies joined the staff, rising to full professor.

#521

Samuel Braden

#72398

Overall Influence

1914 - 2003 (89 years)

Samuel Edward Braden served as the tenth president of Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. He was recognized for his work during an incredibly tumultuous time in United States history, as life proved difficult amidst the Vietnam War. While controversial, his presidency was among several fleeting terms held by other university presidents during this time. He served at Illinois State University between 1967 and 1970, a mere three years. The average term of presidency at the university during this time was only five years, as many presidents sought to develop their professional achieve...

#522

Jemma Field

#35949

Overall Influence

Jemma Field is a historian and art historian from New Zealand. She studied for her PhD with Erin Griffey at the University of Auckland. She was subsequently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at Brunel University, London. She is currently Associate Director of Research at the Yale Center for British Art.

#523

James Elkins

#28114

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

James Elkins is an American art historian and art critic. He is E.C. Chadbourne Chair of art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He also coordinates the Stone Summer Theory Institute, a short term school on contemporary art history based at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

#524

Elizabeth Rata

#48009

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Elizabeth Mary Rata is a New Zealand academic who is a sociologist of education and a professor in the School of Critical Studies in Education at the University of Auckland. Her views and research on Māori education and the place of indigenous knowledge in the New Zealand education system have received criticism from other academics, as per the academic process.

#525

Patrick Lennox Tierney

#36894

Overall Influence

1914 - 2015 (101 years)

Patrick Lennox Tierney was an American Japanologist academic in the field of art history, an emeritus professor of the University of Utah, a former Curator of Japanese Art at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, a former Director of the Pacific Asia Museum, and a former Commissioner of Art and Monuments during the Allied occupation of Japan .

#526

Mary Lee Settle

#22669

Overall Influence

1918 - 2005 (87 years)

Mary Lee Settle was an American writer. She won the 1978 National Book Award for her novel Blood Tie. She was a founder of the annual PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. "Settle has gone so unnoticed by the academic community that the most recurrent subject among those few who have written about her is the fact that she has gone so unnoticed." Hurting Settle's reputation is that she does not fit clearly into any type of writer, and wrote on a wide variety of fields; this detracts from a writer's authority.

#527

Keith Lewin

#76016

Overall Influence

Keith M Lewin is a British Professor of International education and Development at the University of Sussex and Director of the Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equity . He is known for his work in educational planning, economics and finance of education, teacher education, assessment, science and technology education policy in developing countries, educational aid and program evaluation. He has been adviser to various governmental, multilateral and non-profit organisations on education planning and policy, including the World Bank, DFID, UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning, UNICEF, UNDP, AusAID and others.

#528

Sandra Stotsky

#78945

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Sandra Stotsky is Professor emerita in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, and held the 21st Century Chair in Teacher Quality. Her research ranges from teacher licensure tests, e.g., , coherence in the literature and reading curriculum, e.g., , and academic achievement in single-sex classrooms, e.g., to critiques of Common Core’s standards in English language arts, e.g., mathematics., and US History and civic education , and other aspects of the Common Core project, e.g., , and to reviews of books in education, e.g., She is an advocate of standards-based re...

#529

Barbara Maria Stafford

#42391

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Barbara Maria Stafford is an art historian whose research focuses on the developments in imaging arts, optical sciences, and performance technologies since the Enlightenment. Early life and education Stafford is of European parentage and was born in Vienna, Austria. Her family immigrated to the United States when she was seven, first living in Ft. Monroe, Virginia. However, her American stepfather's job as a military attaché caused the family to move every few years to postings in cities including Leghorn and Rome, Italy; Yokohama, Japan; Kilene, Texas; and Ft. Knox, Kentucky.

#530

Gary Russell Libby

Gary Russell Libby

#58521

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Gary Russell Libby is an American art historian, author, educator and former museum director known for his books and scholarly exhibitions in the visual arts and his work on the history and development of the Florida School of Art.

#531

Hugh Belsey

#49801

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Hugh Graham Belsey, MBE, is a British art historian who is an authority on the art of Thomas Gainsborough. For 23 years he was the curator of Gainsborough's House in Sudbury. His most recent contribution to Gainsborough scholarship is his catalogue raisonné of Gainsborough's portraits published in February 2019 by the Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

#532

Ekwueme Michael Thelwell

#66844

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Ekwueme Michael Thelwell is a Jamaican novelist, essayist, professor and civil rights activist. He was in 1970 founding chairman of the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

#533

Katherine Weare

Katherine Weare

#85415

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Katherine Weare is a Professor of Education at the University of Southampton, England. She was educated at the Grey Coat Hospital, Westminster, the University of Kent at Canterbury, Goldsmiths College, University of London and the Institute of Education, University of London. She began her career as a teacher of English and Drama in secondary schools, and moved into higher education at the age of 25. She has researched and written extensively on mental health, emotional wellbeing, emotional and social learning.

#534

Mary Garrard

#20690

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Mary DuBose Garrard is an American art historian and emerita professor at American University. She is recognized as "one of the founders of feminist art theory" and is particularly known for her work on the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi.

#535

Jill Biden

#44974

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Jill Tracy Jacobs Biden is an American educator who has been the first lady of the United States since 2021 as the wife of President Joe Biden. She was the second lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017 when her husband was vice president. Since 2009, Biden has been a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College, and is believed to be the first wife of a vice president or president to hold a salaried position during her husband's tenure.

#536

Frank Rusch

#98109

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Frank R. Rusch is an American educational psychologist. He researches self-instructional strategies, coworker and natural supports, benefit-cost analysis, and model program evaluation as well as his contributions to the conceptualization and implementation of supported employment and secondary transition services. His contributions to supported employment include the establishment of the first "supported work" model in the fall of 1975 at the University of Washington while a doctoral student.

#537

Norma Broude

#19251

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Norma Broude is an American art historian and scholar of feminism and 19th-century French and Italian painting. She is also a Professor Emerita of art history from American University. Broude, with Mary Garrard, is an early leader of the American feminist movement and both have redefined feminist art theory.

#538

Douglas Clements

#112148

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Douglas H. Clements is an American scholar in the field of early mathematics education. Previously a preschool and kindergarten teacher, his research centers on the learning and teaching of early mathematics, computer applications for mathematics teaching, and scaling up successful educational interventions. Clements has contributed to the writing of educational standards including the Common Core State Standards, the NCTM's Principles and Standards for School Mathematics and the NCTM's 2006 Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten through Grade 8 Mathematics.

#539

Jeffrey P. Gold

#54271

Overall Influence

Jeffrey Philip Gold is an American surgeon, medical educator, and academic administrator who has been the chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center since February 1, 2014. In May 2017, he also was named interim chancellor of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and will serve as chancellor for both institutions concurrently.

#540

Vanaja Iyengar

#62384

Overall Influence

1901 - 2001 (100 years)

Vanaja Iyengar was an Indian mathematician, educationist and the founder vice-chancellor of Sri Padmavati Mahila Visvavidyalayam, Tirupati, in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. She was one of the founders of the Andhra Mahila Sabha School of Informatics. The Government of India awarded her the fourth highest civilian honour of Padma Shri in 1987.

#541

Gary T. Marx

#21716

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Gary T. Marx is Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and retired from the University of Colorado in 1996. He has worked in the areas of race and ethnicity, collective behavior and social movements, law and society and surveillance studies.

#542

Maurice Howard

#46675

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Maurice Howard is a British art historian, and was Professor of History of Art at the University of Sussex until his retirement in 2016. Howard has a bachelor's degree in history from Christ's College, Cambridge, followed by MA and PhD degrees in history of art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

#543

Vera King Farris

Vera King Farris

#45108

Overall Influence

1938 - 2009 (71 years)

Vera King Farris was the third president of the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey from May 25, 1983, to June 3, 2003. She was the first female African-American president of a New Jersey public college and one of the first in the nation.

#544

Marc Depaepe

#86205

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Marc Depaepe is a professor of pedagogy science at the KU Leuven and was from 2013 until 2017 vice- and campus rector of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Life He followed the lower secondary education at Sint-Amandschool in Kortrijk and higher secondary education at the Sint-Jozefsinstituut in Torhout. At the University of Leuven, he graduated from the Master of Science and Doctor in Educational Sciences, with a special doctorate in this field. He became a researcher at the National Research Fund.

#545

Philip W. Jackson

#117479

Overall Influence

#546

Joseph Murphy

#117480

Overall Influence

#547

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud

#43530

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is a Somali politician who has served as the president of Somalia since May 2022. He is the founder and current chairman of the Union for Peace and Development Party. He was indirectly elected as President of the Federal Republic of Somalia on 15 May 2022, defeating the incumbent president Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed. He previously served in the same position as the 8th president of Somalia from 2012 to 2017. A civil and political rights activist, Hassan was previously a university professor and dean at SIMAD University, which he co-founded.

#548

Jean-Marie Klinkenberg

Jean-Marie Klinkenberg

#11131

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Jean-Marie Klinkenberg is a Belgian linguist and semiotician, professor at the State University of Liège, born in Verviers in 1944. Member of the interdisciplinary Groupe µ. President of the International Association for visual Semiotics.

#549

Antonio García Padilla

#53312

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Antonio García Padilla is a Puerto Rican scholar. He served as the president of University of Puerto Rico from 2001 to 2009. Early life and education Antonio Garcia Padilla was born in Ponce and raised in the nearby town of Coamo. He has five brothers, among them Alejandro, former senator and Governor of Puerto Rico, and Juan Carlos, current mayor of Coamo, Puerto Rico.

#550

Margaret Carr

#107636

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Margaret Ann Carr is a New Zealand education academic. She is currently emeritus professor at the University of Waikato. Academic career After an undergraduate at the University of Waikato and Victoria University of Wellington, Carr completed a 1997 PhD titled Technological practice in early childhood as a dispositional milieu at Waikato.

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