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,
#601
Dejan Medaković
#37188
Overall Influence
1922 - 2008 (86 years)
Dejan Medaković was a Serbian art historian, writer and academician. Medaković had served as President of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts from 1998 to 2003, as Dean of the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy , and was a member of the Matica srpska as well as other scholarly associations.
Go to Profile#602
Viktoria Schmidt-Linsenhoff
#36379
Overall Influence
1944 - 2013 (69 years)
Viktoria Schmidt-Linsenhoff was a German art historian and professor with particular research interest in the fields of gender studies and postcolonial studies. Early life and education Viktoria Schmidt-Linsenhoff was born on 21 August 1944 in Cottbus.
Go to Profile#603
Susan C. Aldridge
#75443
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Susan C. Aldridge is an American academic administrator. She is interim president of Thomas Jefferson University. Aldridge previously served as president of Drexel University Online. She was the president of University of Maryland University College, vice chancellor of the global campus at Troy University, and a professor of management, organizational behavior, and policy analysis at National University of Singapore.
Go to Profile#604
John Richardson
#11024
Overall Influence
1924 - 2019 (95 years)
Sir John Patrick Richardson, was a British art historian and biographer of Pablo Picasso. Richardson also worked as an industrial designer and as a reviewer for The New Observer. In 1952, he moved to Provence, where he became friends with Picasso, Fernand Léger and Nicolas de Staël. In 1960, he moved to New York and organized a nine-gallery Picasso retrospective. Christie's then appointed him to open their U.S. office, which he ran for the next nine years. In 1973 he joined New York gallery M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., as vice president in charge of 19th- and 20th-century painting, and later bec...
Go to Profile#605
Guohong Cao
#121889
Overall Influence
#606
Frank Conroy
#39238
Overall Influence
1936 - 2005 (69 years)
Frank Conroy was an American author. He published five books, including the highly acclaimed memoir Stop-Time. Published in 1967, this ultimately made Conroy a noted figure in the literary world. The book was nominated for the National Book Award.
Go to Profile#607
Kirk Varnedoe
#25512
Overall Influence
1946 - 2003 (57 years)
John Kirk Train Varnedoe was an American art historian, the chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art from 1988 to 2001, Professor of the History of Art at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and Professor of Fine Arts at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts.
Go to Profile#608
Joseph R. Jones
#93750
Overall Influence
Joseph R. Jones is an American author and academic who is known for his research on bullying in educational environments. Currently, he is the Dean of the School of Education at Gordon State College in Barnesville, Georgia.
Go to Profile#609
Kellie Jones
#37633
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Kellie Jones is an American art historian and curator. She is a Professor in Art History and Archaeology in African American Studies at Columbia University. She won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2016. In 2023, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Go to Profile#610
Charles Edquist
#101539
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Charles Edquist is a Swedish researcher in Innovation, one of the founders and the first Director of CIRCLE at Lund University, Sweden, and the holder of the Ruben Rausing Chair in Innovation Research at CIRCLE. Some of his most noted research contributions have been on the ‘Systems of Innovation approach’, the ‘Swedish Paradox’ and ‘Innovation Policy’. His early contributions to the ‘public procurement for innovation’ literature are among his most cited works to date.
Go to Profile#611
Antoinette Pirie
#73550
Overall Influence
1905 - 1991 (86 years)
Antoinette Pirie was a British biochemist, ophthalmologist, and educator. Biography Antoinette Patey was born in Bond Street, London. Her father was a botanist and pharmacist. She was educated at Wycombe Abbey School, and then achieved a first-class honours in natural sciences from Newnham College, Cambridge in 1932. She completed her PhD at the biochemical laboratory in Cambridge under the professorship of Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins. She married fellow biochemist Norman Pirie in 1931. They had a son and a daughter.
Go to Profile#612
Michele Perkins
#96160
Overall Influence
Michele D. Perkins is an American university administrator, who served as the 15th president of New England College. Education She completed a bachelor's degree in theatre and performance studies from Northwestern University. She then earned a master's degree in communication from Emerson College. Perkins completed a doctorate in education in higher education management from University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#613
Bruce R. Joyce
#122635
Overall Influence
#614
Geofferey N. Masters
#122670
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
#615
Mary Anne Raywid
#117023
Overall Influence
1928 - 2010 (82 years)
Mary Anne Raywid was an education scholar, author, and activist. She is well known for her founding of the School Within a School movement and her advocacy for public education. Life and work Mary Anne Raywid married Raymond Lewis Scheele and raised their son Scott in Long Island, NY. She spent 30 years here as a tenured professor at Hofstra University, teaching Educational Administration and Policy Studies, beginning in 1959. During this time she began to publish her written work on education, releasing over 300 works in her lifetime. Notably, her book The Ax Grinder addressed the criticis...
Go to Profile#616
James M. Utterback
#122764
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
#617
Jacques Fontanille
#15463
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Jacques Fontanille is a French semiotician who is one of the main exponents of the Paris School of Semiotics. He has authored or co-authored ten books and a number of articles or book chapters whose topics span theoretical semiotics, literary semiotics, and semiotics of the visual. A former student and collaborator of the founder of the Paris School of Semiotics, Algirdas Julien Greimas, Fontanille is one of the main continuators of Greimas' research program as he collaborated with him in his last published works, and assisted him in the administering and organizing of the Inter-Semiotic seminar at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
Go to Profile#618
Marita Sturken
#32750
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Marita Sturken is an American scholar, author, professor, and critic. Life and work Marita Sturken is Professor and former Chair of the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, where she teaches courses on cultural studies, visual culture, popular culture, cultural memory, and consumerism. She focuses primarily on visual culture and the politics of cultural memory in American culture. Before coming to NYU she was an associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.
Go to Profile#619
Dickran Kouymjian
#60174
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Dickran Kouymjian is an Armenian-American writer, publisher, editor, historian and professor. Life Kouymjian was born to Armenian parents in Romania on June 6, 1934. At the time of his birth, his parents already had U.S. citizenship. Kouymjian went on to study European cultural history from the University of Wisconsin. He attained his master's degree in Arabic studies at the American University of Beirut. He gained his PhD in Armenian Studies from Columbia University in 1969 becoming the first person to ever do so. In 1977 he was invited to Fresno to establish an Armenian Studies program at the Cal State University of Fresno.
Go to Profile#620
John Baugh
#46307
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
John Gordon Baugh V is an American academic and linguist. His main areas of study are sociolinguistics, forensic linguistics, education, and African American language studies. He is currently the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, and President of the Linguistic Society of America. In 2020 Baugh was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the section on Linguistics and Language Sciences, and in 2021 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Scie...
Go to Profile#621
Lyllye Reynolds-Parker
#61219
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Lyllye Reynolds-Parker is an American civil rights activist and educator. Born into one of the founding Black families of Eugene, Oregon, she is a leader in the city's movement for racial justice. She worked as a counselor at the University of Oregon’s Multicultural Center. The University honored her by opening the Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center in 2019.
Go to Profile#622
Caroline Bruzelius
#39056
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Caroline Astrid Bruzelius is an American art historian and expert in medieval architecture. She is the Anne M. Cogan Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University. In 2020 she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Go to Profile#623
Gordon S. Wells
#123307
Overall Influence
#624
Rolf Schulmeister
#66433
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Rolf Schulmeister , German educator and professor of education at the University of Hamburg. From 1963 to 1969 Rolf Schulmeister studied German and English philology and philosophy. In 1969, he obtained a PhD. In 1969 he headed the conference of education in Marburg, and in 1970 founded the Interdisciplinary Centre for didactic methodology of high school education , today is known as the Learning Center of High School and Further Education. In 1976 he became a professor at the Hamburg University. Later, while Professor of didactics at the University, he initially specialized in teaching techno...
Go to Profile#625
Katie Salen
#22950
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Katie Salen Tekinbas is an American game designer, animator, and educator. She is a professor at the University of California, Irvine. Previously, she taught at DePaul University College of Computing and Digital Media, Parsons The New School for Design the University of Texas at Austin, New York University, and the Rhode Island School of Design. She has an MFA in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Go to Profile#626
Larry Lezotte
#86457
Overall Influence
Lawrence W. "Larry" Lezotte is an American educational researcher, consultant, and speaker, notable for his expertise on creating effective K-12 schools. Education and career Lezotte earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at Western Michigan University, and his doctorate at Michigan State University in 1969. He joined the MSU faculty and taught there for 18 years.
Go to Profile#627
Milbrey Wallin Mclaughlin
#123524
Overall Influence
#628
Robert L. Payton
#62570
Overall Influence
1926 - 2011 (85 years)
Robert Louis Payton was a jazz musician, writer and editor, president of two universities; , a State Department official, and ambassador to the African republic of Cameroon. He also served as a founding trustee of Editorial Projects in Education, the organization that helped start The Chronicle of Higher Education. He was the first full-time director of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.
Go to Profile#629
Onofre R. Pagsanghan
#79274
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (97 years)
Onofre R. Pagsanghan is a teacher and screenplay writer from the Ateneo de Manila High School, Philippines. An Ateneo alumnus himself, Mr. Pagsi, as he is fondly called by students and colleagues, began his teaching career in his alma mater in 1951. He teaches English and Filipino to high school students. In addition, he is also the moderator of the theater group Dulaang Sibol, which he founded in 1956. Now on his 63rd year of teaching, he has received numerous awards in the fields of teaching and theater.
Go to Profile#630
Chang Chun-yen
#119652
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Chang Chun-yen , is a science education scholar in Taiwan. Currently, Chang serves as National Taiwan Normal University Chair Professor, director of Science Education Center , as well as a professor of the Graduate Institute of Science Education and the Department of Earth Sciences. From August 2013 to February 2014, Chang has been to Paris 8 University for 6-month research, funded by National Science Council Short-term Abroad Research Program. This research attempts to explore the usability and feasibility of how innovative e—technologies can be implemented in science classrooms. In the past two years, Dr.
Go to Profile#631
Denise Bradley
#115920
Overall Influence
1942 - 2020 (78 years)
Denise Irene Bradley was an Australian higher education administrator with specialist interests in educational equity and excellence and equity. She was known for the Bradley Review of Higher Education .
Go to Profile#632
Shirley Caesar
#47614
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Shirley Ann Caesar-Williams , known professionally as Shirley Caesar, is an American gospel singer. Her career began in 1951, when she signed to Federal Records at the age of 12. Throughout her seven decade career, Caesar has often been referred to as the "First Lady of Gospel Music", and "The Queen of Gospel Music". Additionally, she has won eleven Grammy Awards, fifteen Dove Awards, and fourteen Stellar Awards.
Go to Profile#633
Daisy Cocco De Filippis
#67053
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Daisy Cocco DeFilippis is a Dominican-American academic administrator and author. She is the current president at Hostos Community College in The Bronx, making her the first person born in the Dominican Republic to serve as President of a college of the City University of New York. From 2008 to 1 August 2020 she was president of Naugatuck Valley Community College in Waterbury, Connecticut. She is the author of works of fiction and non-fiction dealing with Dominican and Dominican-American women.
Go to Profile#634
Yuri Rozhdestvensky
#45087
Overall Influence
1926 - 1999 (73 years)
Yuri Rozhdestvensky - Russian rhetorician, educator, linguist and philosopher. Rozhdestvensky started his scholarly career from writing on Chinese grammar; his second Ph.D. involved the study and comparison of 2,000 grammars and established several language universals; he then moved on to comparative study of Chinese, Indian, Arabic and European rhetorical traditions, and then to the study of general laws of culture. Rozhdestvensky's influence continues to be powerful. In his lifetime, he directed 112 dissertations. His students now teach culture, media ecology, linguistics and communicat...
Go to Profile#635
Sandra Abell
#124625
Overall Influence
#636
Teresa del Conde
#37099
Overall Influence
1938 - 2017 (79 years)
Teresa del Conde Pontones was a Mexican art critic and art historian. Early life and education Born in Mexico City in 1938, Conde earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1958. With a grant she furthered her studies in Rome, earning a degree in psychopathology at the University of Milan. In 1974, she was granted a degree in art history; in 1979, a master's degree; and in 1986, she obtained a doctorate.
Go to Profile#637
Beatrice von Bismarck
#90343
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Beatrice von Bismarck is a German art historian, curator, author and professor for art history and Bildwissenschaft. Life Bismarck studied art history in Freiburg, Munich, London and Berlin. From 1989 to 1993, she worked at the Städel in Frankfurt and was responsible for solo exhibitions of internationally renowned artists such as Richard Long, Bruce Nauman , Dan Flavin and Jürgen Partenheimer . She then took over as head of the 20th century department of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut for three years.
Go to Profile#638
Lotika Sarkar
#26607
Overall Influence
1923 - 2013 (90 years)
Lotika Sarkar was a noted Indian feminist, social worker, educator and lawyer, who was a pioneer in the field of women's studies and women's rights in India. She was a founding member of Centre for Women's Development Studies , Delhi, established in 1980, and also Indian Association for Women Studies, established in 1982. Starting in 1951, she taught law at Faculty of Law, University of Delhi till 1983, and also remained the head of the law faculty; thereafter she taught at Indian Law Institute. She was the first Indian woman to graduate from Cambridge University, and later in 1951 she also b...
Go to Profile#639
Carollee Howes
#125034
Overall Influence
#640
Edward Chaney
#17295
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Edward Chaney is a British cultural historian. He is Professor Emeritus at Solent University and Honorary Professor at University College London . He is an authority on the evolution of the Grand Tour, Anglo-Italian cultural relations, the history of collecting, Inigo Jones and the legacy of ancient Egypt. He also publishes on aspects of 20th-century British art. In 2003, he was made a Commendatore of the Italian Republic. He is the biographer of Gerald Basil Edwards, author of The Book of Ebenezer Le Page which he succeeded in publishing following the author's death in 1976. This has since ...
Go to Profile#641
Johnmarshall Reeve
#94117
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Johnmarshall Reeve is an American psychologist whose research focuses on educational psychology and human motivation. He is a professor in the Institute of Positive Psychology and Education at Australian Catholic University and a former editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Motivation and Emotion.
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John Harvey
#97116
Overall Influence
1911 - 1997 (86 years)
John Hooper Harvey was an English architectural historian, who specialised in writing on English Gothic architecture and architects. He was a member of the Imperial Fascist League and a regular contributor to their newspaper, The Fascist. Art historian Paul Crossley described him as "the most prolific and arguably the most influential writer on Gothic architecture in the post-war years".
Go to Profile#643
Eugene F. Provenzo
#64039
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Eugene Francis Provenzo Jr. is an emeritus professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Miami. He became a full professor in 1985. Career Provenzo. was born in Buffalo, New York in 1949. He took his BA degree at the University of Rochester in 1972, where he studied History and Education . He received a Ph.D. from Washington University’s Graduate Institute of Education in the Philosophy and History of Education in 1976. In 1976, he joined the faculty of th School of Education at the University of Miami, becoming a full professor in 1985. He served as Associate De...
Go to Profile#644
Irina Antonova
#12761
Overall Influence
1922 - 2020 (98 years)
Irina Aleksandrovna Antonova was a Soviet and Russian art historian who served as a Director of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow for 52 years, from 1961 to 2013, making her the oldest and the longest serving director of a major art museum in the world. Among her many awards and decorations are the State Prize of the Russian Federation and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She was the President of the Pushkin Museum, a ceremonial post.
Go to Profile#645
Michael Levey
#23990
Overall Influence
1927 - 2008 (81 years)
Sir Michael Vincent Levey, LVO, FBA, FRSL was a British art historian and was the director of the National Gallery from 1973 to 1986. Biography Levey was born in Wimbledon, London, and grew up in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. He attended The Oratory School, a Catholic boarding school near Reading. He was called up for National Service in 1945 and served it largely in Egypt. After demobilisation in 1948 Levey went to Exeter College, Oxford to read English; he graduated with first class honours after only two years' study.
Go to Profile#646
Ken Bain
#85591
Overall Influence
Kenneth Bain is an American professor and author, currently the President of the Best Teachers Institute, a research and educational organization in New Jersey and Washington, D.C., and he was previously the Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs at University of the District of Columbia. Having served at these, he also founded several schools, the Center for Teaching Excellence at New York University, Searle Center for Teaching Excellence at Northwestern University, Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University and also the Research Academy for University Learning at Montclair University.
Go to Profile#647
Ernest Morrell
#85308
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Ernest Morrell is an American university professor, currently the Coyle Professor in Literacy Education at Notre Dame. In July 2021, he will also become the Associate Dean for the Humanities and Equity in the College of Arts and Letters.
Go to Profile#648
Ted Yamamori
#91572
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Tetsunao "Ted" Yamamori , is a Japanese scholar of social studies, author of over 20 books, and president emeritus of Food for the Hungry International, He was an international director for the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, a senior fellow at the Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of Southern California, and an associate professor of "holistic mission" at Asbury Theological Seminary.
Go to Profile#649
Anke Grotlüschen
#106657
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Anke Grotlüschen is an educational researcher and professor at the University of Hamburg. Life Anke Grotlüschen studied at the Wirtschaftsakademie Hamburg from 1988 – 1991 and finished as Betriebswirtin . She continued studying educational sciences from 1991 – 1997 with the main topics being Adult Education as well as psychology, sociology and politics as minors at the University of Hamburg. She finished this study program with a thesis about political education in the perspective of critical psychology.
Go to Profile#650
Paul Connolly
#105503
Overall Influence
Paul Connolly is Professor of Education at Queen's University Belfast and also holds the Donald Dewar Visiting Chair in Social Justice and Public Policy at the University of Glasgow. He is Director of the Centre for Effective Education and is also the founding editor of the international peer-reviewed academic journal, Effective Education.
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