Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Education,

#651

Ernest L. Boyer

#126258

Overall Influence

#652

Stan Deno

#102676

Overall Influence

2000 - 2016 (16 years)

Stanley Lynn "Stan" Deno was an American educational psychologist and professor of educational psychology at the University of Minnesota, where he was also the director of the Special Education Program.

#653

Lola Aronovich

#77386

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Dolores Aronovich Aguero, better known as Lola Aronovich , is an Argentine-Brazilian feminist blogger and educator. She is a university professor at Federal University of Ceará Department of Foreign Letters; her research is focused on English literature, film and gender issues

#654

Michael R. Lane

Michael R. Lane

#86889

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Michael Robert Lane is an American education administrator, currently serving as the dean of Missouri Western State University's Steven L. Craig School of Business in Saint Joseph, Missouri. Before becoming the dean at Missouri Western, Lane was Emporia State University's fifteenth president and an accounting professor from 2006 to 2011, and provost/vice president at several institutions.

#655

Joanne Yatvin

#98525

Overall Influence

Joanne Yatvin is an American public school educator. Formerly a president of the National Council of Teachers of English, she was a member of the National Reading Panel , mandated by the US Congress to assess different methods of literacy education. She published a "minority report" separately, saying that panel members lacked integrity. She taught at Portland State University.

#656

Mari-Luci Jaramillo

#80145

Overall Influence

1928 - 2019 (91 years)

Mari-Luci Jaramillo was an American educator and diplomat who served as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1977 to 1980. Upon her confirmation, Jaramillo became the first Mexican-American woman to serve as an American ambassador.

#657

Donald Preziosi

#31176

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Donald Anthony Preziosi is an American art historian. He is Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles. In August 2007, he became the MacGeorge Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He is a past president of the Semiotic Society of America .

#658

Paul A. Miller

#75735

Overall Influence

1917 - 2015 (98 years)

Paul Ausborn Miller was an American academic administrator who served as the 6th president of the Rochester Institute of Technology from 1969–1979. He oversaw the completion of the move of the campus to Henrietta and the steady growth of RIT between 1969 and 1981.

#659

Bob Lingard

#126522

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

#660

Joe Anna Hibler

#89725

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Joe Anna Hibler is an American educator. Much of her career was spent teaching business at the university level. Retired from active teaching, she is the former president of Southwestern Oklahoma State University , an inductee into the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame, and currently a regent of the Regional University System of Oklahoma.

#661

Jeff Sigafoos

#107145

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Jeffrey Scott Sigafoos is a New Zealand professor of educational psychology. After a PhD from the University of Minnesota, Sigafoos has held roles at University of Queensland, University of Sydney, and the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently a professor at Victoria University of Wellington and an adjunct professor at James Madison University.

#662

Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar

#126760

Overall Influence

#663

Patrick McCaughey

#80730

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Patrick McCaughey is an Irish-born Australian art historian and academic. McCaughey was born in Belfast, his father being Davis McCaughey. He migrated with his family to Melbourne, Australia. when he was ten years old. His secondary education was at Scotch College, Melbourne. He resided at Ormond College, University of Melbourne, where he studied Fine Arts and English Literature. He became art critic for The Age newspaper in Melbourne in 1966. He was well known for his advocacy of abstract expressionism and of Australian artists, in particular Fred Williams.

#664

Ernest T. Pascarella

#127221

Overall Influence

#665

Edna Coll

#76924

Overall Influence

1906 - 2002 (96 years)

Edna Coll Pujals was a Puerto Rican educator and author. She was president of the Society of Puerto Rican Authors in San Juan. Coll was also the founder of the Academy of Fine Arts in Puerto Rico. Early life and education Edna Coll Pujals was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Her parents were Cayetano Coll y Cuchí, a former President of Puerto Rico House of Representatives and Carmen Pujol Toste. Coll received her primary and secondary education in San Juan. She earned a doctorate in literature and arts from the University of Puerto Rico.

#666

Margaret Buckner Young

#44246

Overall Influence

1921 - 2009 (88 years)

Margaret Buckner Young was an American educator and author. Biography The daughter of Eva Carter and Frank Buckner, she was born Margaret Buckner in Campbellsville, Kentucky and was educated in Aurora, Illinois and at Kentucky State Industrial College, receiving a bachelor's degree in English and French. In 1944, she married Whitney M. Young Jr. Young continued her education, receiving a master's degree in educational psychology from the University of Minnesota. In 1953, the couple moved to Atlanta where she taught educational psychology at Spelman College. In 1961, they moved to New Rochelle...

#667

Alvia Wardlaw

#59627

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Alvia J. Wardlaw is an American art scholar, and one of the country's top experts on African-American art. She is Curator and Director of the University Museum at Texas Southern University, an institution central to the development of art by African Americans in Houston. She also is a professor of Art History at Texas Southern University. Wardlaw is a member of the Scholarly Advisory Council of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and co-founded the National Alliance of African and African American Art Support groups in 1998. Wardlaw was University of Texas at Austin's...

#668

Linda Schele

#25606

Overall Influence

1942 - 1998 (56 years)

Linda Schele was an American Mesoamerican archaeologist who was an expert in the field of Maya epigraphy and iconography. She played an invaluable role in the decipherment of much of the Maya hieroglyphs. She produced a massive volume of drawings of stelae and inscriptions, which, following her wishes, are free for use to scholars. In 1978, she founded the annual Maya Meetings at The University of Texas at Austin.

#669

Alison Jones

#62283

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Barbara Alison Jones is a New Zealand academic who works in the field of sociology of education. She is the great-great-great granddaughter of Andrew Buchanan, New Zealand politician 1862–1874; great-great granddaughter of William Baldwin New Zealand politician 1863–1867; great granddaughter of Admiral William Oswald Story of the British Royal Navy. She has two sons, Finn McCahon Jones and Frey McCahon Jones

#670

Richard Edward Clark

#127507

Overall Influence

#671

Liz Byrski

#51084

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Elizabeth Ann Byrski is an Australian writer and journalist. Biography After graduating from Notre Dame Convent in Lingfield, Surrey, in 1960, Byrski furthered her education at the Crawley College of Further Education and the Wall Hall College of Education . Her first job was as a secretary at a pest control firm in Sussex. Her journalism career began when she started as a journalist in 1962 on the Horley Advertiser , in Horley, Surrey. She moved to Australia in 1981.

#672

Ronald G. Lewis

#64024

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Ronald Gene Lewis was the first American Indian to receive a PhD in the field of social work in 1974, was declared a NASW Social Work Pioneer, and has become known as the “Father of American Indian Social Work.”

#673

Michelle Fine

#71917

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Michelle Melody Fine is a distinguished professor at the City University of New York and has her training in Social and Personality Psychology, Environmental Psychology, American Studies, and Urban Education. Her research includes the topics of social injustice and resistance and urban education. Fine is also an author and has written several works, one of her most known being Muslim American Youth .

#674

Belinda Probert

#52069

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Belinda Probert is an educator and social scientist who has advised non-government organisations and state and national governments in Australia. Her academic research and writing has been in the areas of employment policy, gender equity, and work and welfare reform, including households and the domestic division of labour. She has held senior leadership roles in several universities as well as with the Australian Research Council, where she was a member and Deputy Chair of the Research Training and Careers Committee , and member of the Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences Expert Adviso...

#675

Ebba Koch

#47316

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Ebba Koch is an Austrian art and architectural historian, who defines and discusses cultural issues of interest to political, social and economic historians. Presently she is a professor at the Institute of Art History in Vienna, Austria and a senior researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She completed her doctorate in philosophy and her Habilitation at Vienna University.

#676

Dawn Adès

#52159

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Josephine Dawn Adès, , also known as Dawn Adès, is a British art historian and academic. She is professor emeritus of art history and theory at the University of Essex. Early life and education Adès was born on 6 May 1943 to A. E. Tylden-Pattenson. She studied at St Hilda's College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1965. She then studied art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art, graduating with a Master of Arts degree in 1968.

#677

Gloria Blackwell

#64425

Overall Influence

1927 - 2010 (83 years)

Gloria Blackwell, also known as Gloria Rackley , was an African-American civil rights activist and educator. She was at the center of the Civil Rights Movement in Orangeburg, South Carolina during the 1960s, attracting some national attention and a visit by Dr. Martin Luther King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Her activities were widely covered by the local press.

#678

Richard Longstreth

#59738

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Richard W. Longstreth is an architectural historian and a professor at George Washington University where he directs the program in historic preservation. Longstreth received an A.B. in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968, and a Ph.D. in architectural history from the University of California, Berkeley in 1977. He taught at Kansas State University before joining the George Washington University faculty in 1983.

#679

John Hughes

#28083

Overall Influence

1950 - 2009 (59 years)

John Wilden Hughes Jr. was an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He began his career in 1970 as an author of humorous essays and stories for the National Lampoon magazine. He went on to Hollywood to write, produce and sometimes direct some of the most successful live-action comedy films of the 1980s. He directed such films as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, She's Having a Baby, and Uncle Buck; and wrote the films National Lampoon's Vacation, Mr. Mom, Pretty in Pink, The Great Outdoors, Home Alone, Du...

#680

F. Javier Francisco Javier

#128071

Overall Influence

#681

Patience Agbabi

Patience Agbabi

#45644

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Patience Agbabi FRSL is a British poet and performer who emphasizes the spoken word. Although her poetry hits hard in addressing contemporary themes, it often makes use of formal constraints, including traditional poetic forms. She has described herself as "bicultural" and bisexual. Issues of racial and gender identity feature in her poetry. She is celebrated "for paying equal homage to literature and performance" and for work that "moves fluidly and nimbly between cultures, dialects, voices; between page and stage." In 2017, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

#682

Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway

#36170

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway is an Italian archaeologist and specialist in ancient Greek sculpture. Life The daughter of an Italian officer, she spent her childhood in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where her father was stationed. After World War II, she studied classics at the University of Messina, where she obtained her degree in classics in 1953. An archaeology scholarship and Fulbright Travel Grant allowed her to continue her studies at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she came under the tutelage of Rhys Carpenter. At the end of her MA, she wrote her thesis on Archaic sculpture at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

#683

Sam Hunter

#37090

Overall Influence

1923 - 2014 (91 years)

Sam Hunter was an American historian of modern art. He was emeritus professor of Art History at Princeton University and an Art Historian, Author, Museum Director, Professor and Curator. Life A native of Springfield, Massachusetts, Hunter graduated from Williams College in 1944. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1943–46, rising to the rank of lieutenant junior grade and receiving five battle stars.

#684

Colin Knight

#121188

Overall Influence

1934 - 2016 (82 years)

Colin Leslie Knight was a New Zealand educationalist. He served as principal of the Christchurch Teachers' College from 1986 to 1995. Early life and family Born at Rotherham, North Canterbury, on 2 September 1934, Knight was the son of James Percy Knight and Rosetta Knight . He studied at Canterbury University College, from where he graduated Master of Arts with second-class honours in 1958. The same year he married Noela Yvonne Harman; the couple went on to have two children.

#685

Eva L. Baker

#116305

Overall Influence

Eva L. Baker is a distinguished professor currently at the University of California, Los Angeles, the former acting dean of the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies and current director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing.

#686

Carel Blotkamp

#76208

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Carel Hendrik Blotkamp is a Dutch artist, art historian, writer and critic. He was a professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam between 1982 and 2007. Apart from his academic career Blotkamp is known for his work in art critique, writing for several newspapers and magazines. He also co-founded several art magazines. Blotkamp is considered an authority on De Stijl and magic realism, and wrote several books on modern artists.

#687

Alida Anderson

#51158

Overall Influence

Alida Anderson is a professor at the School of Education at American University in Washington, DC. Education Anderson attended Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC , and holds a BA, Art/Art History and Asian Studies, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, an MA, Learning Disabilities, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, and a PhD, Special Education, from the University of Maryland, College Park, MD.

#688

Ray Heffner

#34725

Overall Influence

1925 - 2012 (87 years)

Ray Lorenzo Heffner was an American educator and president of Brown University. He served in the United States Navy during World War II and graduated from Yale College in 1948, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the Elizabethan Club, and Scroll and Key. He earned his master's degree at Yale in 1950 and his Ph.D., also from Yale, in 1953 following the completion of a dissertation on the Elizabethan poet Michael Drayton.

#689

Camille Akeju

#70970

Overall Influence

Camille Giraud Akeju is American curator and educator. She is the former director of the Anacostia Community Museum in Washington, D.C. Biography Camille Akeju grew up in Mount Vernon, New York. She attended college in Jacksonville University, in 1968, and was one of six students to be integrated in the dorms. She ended up leaving Jacksonville and attended Howard University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in art education, a minor in printmaking, and her master's degree in art history. While at Howard, she would intern at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art.

#690

Celeste Ulrich

#65886

Overall Influence

1924 - 2011 (87 years)

Celeste Ulrich was an American educator and leader in the field of physical education. Education Ulrich was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1924, and attended Forest Park High School. She received a Bachelor of Science from Woman's College, now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, in 1946, and continued her education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, receiving a master's degree in 1947. She earned a PhD from the University of Southern California in 1956.

#691

Boris Groys

#7585

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Boris Efimovich Groys is an art critic, media theorist, and philosopher. He is currently a global distinguished professor of Russian and Slavic studies at New York University and senior research fellow at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe, Germany. He has been a professor of aesthetics, art history, and media theory at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design/Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe and an internationally acclaimed professor at a number of universities in the United States and Europe, including the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern ...

#692

Gabriel P. Weisberg

Gabriel P. Weisberg

#47517

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Gabriel Paul Weisberg OAL is an American art historian and educator. Weisberg is Professor of Art History Emeritus at the University of Minnesota. Career A native of New York City, Weisberg received a Bachelor of Arts from New York University in 1963. He then earned two degrees in Art History from Johns Hopkins University: a Master of Arts in 1966 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1967. His doctoral dissertation was on the art critic Philippe Burty.

#693

Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon

#40736

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, was a British photographer and filmmaker. He is best known for his portraits of world notables, many of them published in Vogue, Vanity Fair, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph Magazine, and other major venues; more than 280 of his photographs are in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery.

#694

Peggy Ann Ertmer

#129240

Overall Influence

#695

Vivian Maria Vasquez

#77696

Overall Influence

Vivian Maria Vasquez is a professor at American University's School of Education in Washington, DC. She is the author of eleven books and multiple chapters in other books, as well as many articles in professional journals.

#696

Nicholas J. Belkin

#39143

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Nicholas J. Belkin is a professor at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. Among the main themes of his research are digital libraries; information-seeking behaviors; and interaction between humans and information retrieval systems. Belkin is best known for his work on human-centered Information Retrieval and the hypothesis of Anomalous State of Knowledge . Belkin realized that in many cases, users of search systems are unable to precisely formulate what they need. They miss some vital knowledge to formulate their queries. In such cases it is more suitable to attem...

#697

Eileen Scanlon

#122046

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Eileen Scanlon is a British academic who is Regius Professor of Open Education at the Open University. Early life and education Scanlon was born in 1951. She is a graduate of the University of Glasgow and the Open University.

#698

Terence Copley

#97426

Overall Influence

1946 - 2011 (65 years)

Terence Copley was a British academic and author. Terence Copley was Professor of Educational Studies at the University of Oxford, England and also Emeritus Professor of Religious Education at the University of Exeter, England.

#699

David R. Krathwohl

#129623

Overall Influence

#700

Janetta Rebold Benton

#80971

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Janetta Rebold Benton is an American art historian. She is currently Distinguished Professor of Art History at Pace University in New York. Education Benton received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cornell University in 1967 and a Master of Arts degree from George Washington University in 1969. She received a PhD from Brown University in 1980. She also earned an MDP diploma from the Management Development Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

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