Search People Result | Academic Influence

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

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

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

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

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

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Education,

#1251

Alfred Oftedal Telhaug

#168164

Overall Influence

1934 - 2016 (82 years)

Alfred Oftedal Telhaug was a Norwegian educationalist. Early life Telhaug was born in Skudeneshavn to Vicar Andreas Telhaug and Randi Oftedal. He graduated from Stavanger Cathedral School in 1953, the teacher's school in Oslo in 1959, the University of Oslo in 1962, and study the Ph.D. degree at the University of Trondheim in 1990.

#1252

Saul Bass

#35164

Overall Influence

1920 - 1996 (76 years)

Saul Bass was an American graphic designer and Oscar-winning filmmaker, best known for his design of motion-picture title sequences, film posters, and corporate logos. During his 40-year career, Bass worked for some of Hollywood's most prominent filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese. Among his best known title sequences are the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict's arm for Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm, the credits racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of a skyscraper in Hitchcock's Nor...

#1253

Alison Ritter

#171726

Overall Influence

Alison Joan Ritter is an Australian academic whose research focuses on illicit drug use and policy. As of 2021 she is a full professor and director of the Drug Policy Modelling Program at the University of New South Wales.

#1254

Donna Campbell

#105250

Overall Influence

Donna Campbell is a New Zealand Māori university teacher, curator, weaver and textile artist. She affiliates with Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Ruanui iwi. Her works are held in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and in the British Museum. In 2019 Campbell completed a PhD at the University of Waikato with a thesis titled Ngā kura a Hineteiwaiwa: The embodiment of Mana Wahine in Māori fibre Arts.

#1255

Olivia Horsfall Turner

#113469

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Olivia Jane Horsfall Turner is a British architectural historian, author and broadcaster. In 2013, she was the writer and presenter of the television series Dreaming the Impossible: Unbuilt Britain for BBC Four.

#1256

Mary Ashun

#129207

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Mary A. Ashun is a Ghanaian-Canadian educator, author and researcher; she is principal of Ghana International School in Accra, Ghana. Education Mary Ashun was born in Accra, Ghana, in 1968 as Mary Asabea Apea to Emmanuel Apea, former diplomat with the Commonwealth Secretariat in London and UN Ambassador and Coordinator to Nigeria and ECOWAS, and Emma Elizabeth Apea a teacher.

#1257

Edith Porada

#78286

Overall Influence

1912 - 1994 (82 years)

Edith Porada was an Austrian-born art historian and archaeologist, a leading authority on ancient cylinder seals and a professor of art history and archaeology at Columbia University. About Porada was born in Vienna to a wealthy family. She graduated from the Realreform Gymnasium Luithlen in 1930 and received her Ph.D. from the University of Vienna in 1935 with a dissertation about glyptic art of the Old Akkadian period. Later she moved to Paris to study at the Louvre. In 1938 she emigrated to the United States where she worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the seals of Ashurnasirpal I...

#1258

Michael Podro

#61372

Overall Influence

1931 - 2008 (77 years)

Michael Podro was a British art historian. Podro, the son of Jewish refugees from central Europe, was born in and grew up in Hendon, Middlesex. He attended Berkhamsted school in Hertfordshire, served in the RAF, and read English at Jesus College, Cambridge and philosophy at University College London. After finishing his PhD in philosophy and art history, he taught at Camberwell College of Arts, the Warburg Institute and Essex University, where he became professor. His best known work are from his period here: The Manifold in Perception: Theories of Art from Kant to Hildebrand , and Critical Historians of Art .

#1259

George Hillocks Jr.

#146420

Overall Influence

1934 - 2014 (80 years)

George Hillocks Jr. was an emeritus professor in the Department of Education, with a joint appointment in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. He received in 2011 the James R. Squire Award of the National Council of Teachers of English for having "a transforming influence and [making] a lasting intellectual contribution to the profession." He also received many other major awards . His teaching career included the preparation of English teachers in the Master of Arts in Teaching program, and the mentoring of Ph.D. students in the doctoral program, at the University of Chicago.

#1260

Sharon Lamb

#136830

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Sharon Lamb , is an American professor in the Department of Counseling and School Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston's, College of Education and Human Development, and a fellow of the American Psychological Association . She also sits on the editorial board of the academic journals Feminism & Psychology, and Sexualization, Media, and Society.

#1261

Jill Adler

#150043

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Jillian Beryl Adler née Smidt is a South African Professor of Mathematics education at the University of the Witwatersrand and the President of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction . Adler's work has focused on the teaching and learning of mathematics particularly in multilingual classrooms.

#1262

Viviane Robinson

#148394

Overall Influence

Viviane Marcelle Joan Robinson is an emeritus distinguished professor at the University of Auckland, specialising in organisational and educational psychology. Academic career After a PhD titled The behavior of caregivers: the example of clinical teams at Harvard University, completed in 1976, Robinson moved to the University of Auckland. She was appointed a Distinguished Professor in 2012.

#1263

Bagele Chilisa

#152504

Overall Influence

Bagele Chilisa is a Botswanan post-colonial scholar who has written and spoken extensively about indigenous research and evaluation methodologies. She is a full professor at the University of Botswana, where she teaches courses on social science research methods and evaluation research to undergraduate and graduate students. Chilisa has served as an evaluator on multiple global projects, and is considered to be an important "African thought leader." Chilisa identifies as a member of the Bantu people of Africa.

#1264

Mirta Martin

#73669

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Mirta Maria Martin, is an American former educator who was the president of Fairmont State University from 2018 to 2022 and the president of Fort Hays State University from 2014 to 2016. Prior to Fort Hays State, Martin served as the Dean of Virginia State University's Reginald F. Lewis School of Business, a position she held from August 1, 2009 until June 30, 2014.

#1265

Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy

#111786

Overall Influence

Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy is Dean and Distinguished Professor of Education in the School of Education at American University in Washington, DC. Previously, she was Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at Johns Hopkins University , and a professor of Counseling and Human Development at the JHU School of Education. She was an affiliate faculty member in the Center for Africana Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Holcomb-McCoy is a graduate of Hampton High School.

#1266

Mignon Nixon

#90018

Overall Influence

Mignon Nixon is an American academic. She serves as the Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at University College London in London, United Kingdom. Early life Mignon Elizabeth Nixon is the daughter of John Trice Nixon, a United States federal judge, and Betty C. Nixon, a former city councillor in Nashville, Tennessee. Her paternal grandfather, Herman Clarence Nixon, was a political scientist at Vanderbilt University and a member of the Southern Agrarians.

#1267

Julian Stallabrass

#68244

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Julian Stallabrass is a British art historian, photographer and curator. He was educated at Leighton Park School and New College, Oxford University where he studied PPE . A Marxist, he has written extensively on contemporary art , photography and the history of twentieth-century British art.

#1268

Allan R. Odden

#155111

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Allan R. Odden is Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis, and Co-Director, Consortium for Policy Research in Education in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

#1269

Ahalya Chari

#98318

Overall Influence

1921 - 2013 (92 years)

Ahalya Chari was an Indian educationist and the first commissioner of the Kendriya Vidyalaya chain of schools, a system of education under the Ministry of Human Resource Development India. Her efforts are recognised towards the establishment of Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, an autonomous body under the MHRD, attending to the educational needs of the children of transferable central government employees. The Government of India awarded her the fourth highest Indian civilian honour of the Padma Shri in 1983.

#1270

Lynda Nead

#36208

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Lynda Nead is a British curator and art historian. She is currently the Pevsner Chair of the History of Art at Birkbeck, University of London. Nead's work studies British art, media, culture and often focuses on gender. Nead is a fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society and of the Academia Europaea.

#1271

Michael J. Feuer

#132772

Overall Influence

Michael J. Feuer is an American educator, professor and writer, who was president of the National Academy of Education from 2013 to 2017. Early life and education Feuer grew up in New York city, where after attending public schools, he studied at Queens College, City University of New York, receiving a Bachelor's degree with honours in English Literature and journalism. This was followed by a Master's degree in public management from the Wharton School, and the PhD in public policy analysis from the School of Public and Urban Policy, also at the University of Pennsylvania. Feuer also studied public administration at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and political theory at the Sorbonne.

#1272

Bill Holm

#60467

Overall Influence

1925 - 2020 (95 years)

Oscar William Holm Jr. was an American art historian and author, focused on Indigenous Northwest Coast art. He created artworks and taught Northwest Coast style, including formline design. He was Professor Emeritus of Art History, and Curator Emeritus of Northwest Coast Indian Art at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture and occasionally lectured at the University of Washington in Seattle.

#1273

Robert Ubell

#100852

Overall Influence

Robert Ubell is the former Vice Dean of Online Learning at New York University Tandon School of Engineering, where he headed the school's e-learning unit, NYU Tandon Online, formerly known as NYU-ePoly. He is currently Vice Dean Emeritus, Online Learning at NYU Tandon Online. Under his leadership, NYU Tandon Online has grown in size and stature, achieving more than 10,000 enrollments since it was first launched. Since 2013, US News & World Report has ranked the unit's online engineering graduate program in the top dozen in the nation and in 2015, ranked it as No. 8. In the same year, NYU Tandon Online was the recipient of the Ralph E.

#1274

Larry Clark

#56028

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Lawrence Donald Clark is an American film director, photographer, writer and film producer who is best known for his controversial teen film Kids and his photography book Tulsa . His work focuses primarily on youth who casually engage in illegal drug use, underage sex, and violence, and who are part of a specific subculture, such as surfing, punk rock, or skateboarding.

#1275

Lorene Cary

#93276

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Lorene Cary is an American author, educator and social activist. Biography Cary grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1972, she was invited to the elite St. Paul's boarding school in New Hampshire, on scholarship, entering in St. Paul's second year of co-education as one of the fewer than ten African-American female students. She spent two years at St. Paul's, graduating in 1974. She earned an undergraduate degree and her MA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978.

#1276

Shirley Clarke

#84051

Overall Influence

1919 - 1997 (78 years)

Shirley Clarke was an American filmmaker. Life Born Shirley Brimberg in New York City, she was the daughter of a Polish-immigrant father who made his fortune in manufacturing. Her mother was the daughter of a multimillionaire Jewish manufacturer and inventor. The eldest of three daughters, her sister was the writer Elaine Dundy. Her interest in dance began at an early age, but met with the disapproval of her father, a violent bully.

#1277

Beth Simone Noveck

Beth Simone Noveck

#64494

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Beth Simone Noveck is the 1st Chief Innovation Officer of New Jersey, Director of the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University, and Director of The Governance Lab. She is also affiliated faculty with the Institute for Experiential AI. She is the author of Solving Public Problems: How to Fix our Government and Change Our World , Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Government , Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful , and co-editor of the State of Play: Law and Virtua...

#1278

Ricardo Manapat

#47671

Overall Influence

1953 - 2008 (55 years)

Jose Ricardo de Leon Manapat was an activist, scholar, writer, researcher, and educator who was the Director of the Records Management and Archives Office of the Philippines from 1996 to 1998 and 2002 to 2008. He is best known as the author of the book, "Some Are Smarter Than Others: The History of Marcos' Crony Capitalism", a work on anti-cronyism exposing the wealth of the Marcos dynasty, and as Editor-in-Chief of the "Smart File", Smart File Magazine Animal Farm Series.

#1279

Christiane Joost-Gaugier

#111796

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier is a French-born American art history scholar whose research has included work on the art of the Italian Renaissance and on the influence of Pythagoras on art and philosophy into the Middle Ages and Renaissance. She is also known for bringing the first class action against an American university for its discriminatory treatment of women faculty.

#1280

Jon Thompson

#98171

Overall Influence

1936 - 2016 (80 years)

Jon Thompson was an artist, curator and academic known for his involvement in the development of the YBA artist generation. As the Head of Goldsmiths Department of Art in the 1980s, Thompson opened up specialisms and allowed students to move freely between the different modes of practice, such as painting, sculpture, photography and printing, etc. His own art moved from painting to a conceptual photography and sculpture, but after his retirement from teaching Thompson concentrated on a kind of abstract painting. This separated Goldsmiths from the dominance of art schools like St Martins. In 1...

#1281

David Musselwhite

#82509

Overall Influence

1940 - 2010 (70 years)

David Musselwhite was a British literary critic and academic. Life He was born in Bristol and studied first at Cambridge University, then later at the University of Essex, where he subsequently became a Senior Lecturer. He also taught in Argentina, at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, and at Curtin University in Western Australia.

#1282

Robert Jackson

#173756

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Robert Mason David "Bob" Jackson is a British educator and educational researcher working in the fields of religious and intercultural education in the UK and internationally, and in educational policy at the European level. He has authored several influential books on an inclusive form of religious education in which young people learn together about religious and world view diversity, and has contributed to policy development on the religious dimension of intercultural education for the Council of Europe. He has written and presented educational broadcasts for BBC Education, and has edited both professional and academic journals.

#1283

Mary Kennedy Carter

#133616

Overall Influence

1934 - 2010 (76 years)

Mary Kennedy Carter was a social studies teacher and civil rights activist in Ohio, United States. She took part in creating the award-winning curriculum "New York and Slavery: Complicity and Resistance". She was the wife of Donald W. Carter and mother of Keith B. Carter.

#1284

Sussan Babaie

#61913

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Sussan Babaie is an Iranian-born art historian and curator. She is best known for her work on Persian art and Islamic art of the early modern period. She has written extensively on the art and architecture of the Safavid dynasty. Her research takes a multidisciplinary approach and explores topics such as urbanism, empire studies, transcultural visuality and notions of exoticism. In her work as a curator, Babaie has worked on exhibitions at the Sackler Museum of Harvard University , the University of Michigan Museum of Art , and the Smith College Museum of Art .

#1285

Nasser Paydar

#113222

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Nasser Hamed Paydar is an American academic administrator who currently serves as the Assistant Secretary of Education for Postsecondary Education. He previously served as the chancellor of Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis from 2015 to 2022.

#1286

Martina Pippal

#57354

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Martina Pippal is an Austrian art historian and a painter and sculptor. Biography Martina Pippal was born 1957 in Vienna as the daughter of the painter Hans Robert Pippal and the architect Eugenie Pippal-Kottnig . Growing up in the studio of her parents she early acquired skills in several artistic techniques. In addition to her artistic inclination, she got interested in the socioeconomic and political backgrounds of the conditions of artistic production. She started university studies in art history, classical archeology, history and theology at the University of Vienna, and acquired her PhD in Art History 1981 there.

#1287

Abigail Solomon-Godeau

#80552

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Abigail Solomon-Godeau is an American art critic, exhibition curator, art historian, and Professor Emerita in art history, University of California, Santa Barbara. Education B.A., University of Massachusetts, magna cum laude

#1288

Norman Bryson

#47613

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

William Norman Bryson is an Anglo American art historian who authored several major works that were particularly influential in the 1980s and 1990s. He graduated with a Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1977, and subsequently worked as a professor at King's College until 1988, when he moved to Rochester, NY. There, he worked for two years at the University of Rochester before moving to Harvard University in 1990. In a shift from that earlier period, he now is faculty at University of California, San Diego, and primarily writes about contemporary art, such as Sharon Lockhart. His career is...

#1289

John Pollini

#54835

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

John Pollini is an American art historian, archeologist, and educator. A scholar of Ancient Rome, Pollini is the USC Associates Professor of Art History at the University of Southern California. Career Born in Boston to Isabell and Frederick, Pollini graduated magna cum laude from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Arts in Classics in 1968. He then continued on to the University of California, Berkeley, where he received a Master of Arts and a Doctor of Philosophy in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology, in 1973 and 1978 respectively.

#1290

Wendy Maruyama

#169641

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Wendy Maruyama is an artist, furniture maker, and educator from California. She was born in La Junta, Colorado. Maruyama was influential in the early period of post-modern artistic furniture. She challenges the masculine environments within the field of woodworking. Her work uses humor, social commentary, sculptural forms, and color to challenge the accepted notions of furniture. Conceptually her work deals with social practices such as her Japanese-American heritage, feminism, and wildlife endangerment in Africa. Maruyama served as the head of the Furniture Design department at San Diego Sta...

#1291

Ruth Etchells

#89207

Overall Influence

1931 - 2012 (81 years)

Dorothea Ruth Etchells was an English poet and college principal who spent most of her working life in the University of Durham. Early life She was born on 17 April 1931. She attended Merchant Taylors’ School and the University of Liverpool. After graduation, she became an English teacher at Aigburth Vale High School in Liverpool and then a lecturer at the Chester College of Higher Education.

#1292

Fabien Danesi

#68556

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Fabien Danesi, a Doctor of Philosophy in Art History, is a lecturer at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Picardie Jules Verne in Amiens. Former resident of the Villa Medici, French Academy in Rome in 2007–2008, he previously taught at the François Rabelais University of Tours, Paris 13 University, Pantheon-Sorbonne University and the Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University. Member of AICA-France , he regularly collaborates with the Pavilion Neuflize OBC, laboratory creation which annually hosts ten young artists and curators recruited after an international competition from over...

#1293

Philip Conisbee

#85946

Overall Influence

1946 - 2008 (62 years)

Philip Conisbee was a British-American curator for the American National Gallery of Art. Life Philip was born in Belfast, the son of Paul Conisbee, but raised in London, being educated at St Dunstan's College in Catford before earning a BA in European Art at the Courtauld Institute in 1968.

#1294

Achim Hofer

#142216

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Achim Hofer is a German musicologist, music educator and University professor. Life Born in Oberhausen, Hofer studied music, German studies and educational science at the University of Paderborn. After the first and second Staatsexamen, Hofer studied musicology at what is now the Hochschule für Musik Detmold and at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, where he received his doctorate in 1987 with a dissertation entitled Studien zur Geschichte des Militärmarsches.

#1295

Rina Zazkis

#101464

Overall Influence

Rina Zazkis is a Canadian scholar in education and mathematics. She is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University and a Canada Research Chair in STEM Teaching and Learning. Career Zazkis began her academic career at Simon Fraser University in 1991 as an Assistant Professor. She was eventually promoted to Full Professor in the Faculty of Education by 2000. In 2011, she was a recipient of the Dean of Graduate Studies Awards for Excellence.

#1296

David Rosand

#69203

Overall Influence

1938 - 2014 (76 years)

David Rosand was an American art historian, university professor and writer. He died on August 8, 2014, from cardiac amyloidosis. Rosand specialized in Italian Renaissance art, and was known for his scholarly work on Venice and Venetian artists, in particular Titian.

#1297

Ann Sutherland Harris

#65733

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Ann Birgitta Sutherland Harris is a British-American art historian specializing in Baroque art, Modern art, and in the history of women's art. Career Harris is an educator, having held her first position in 1965 as an assistant professor in the department of Art and Archeology, Columbia University. She was then appointed Assistant Professor of Art History at Hunter College, City University of New York . Harris was next hired as associate professor at the State University of New York, Albany. Following that she held the Arthur Kittridge Watson Chair for Academic Affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1977–1981.

#1298

Barbara Vanderlinden

Barbara Vanderlinden

#113029

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Barbara Vanderlinden is a Belgian art historian, curator, and director. Early life and education Vanderlinden graduated with a MA in Philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and an MA Art and art History at the Hoger Instituut voor Beeldende Kunsten, St Lukas Brussels.

#1299

Sue Knight

#112881

Overall Influence

Sue Knight is an Australian philosopher, educator and academic whose research focuses on teaching reasoning skills and embedding philosophy within school curricula. She is the author of the Primary Ethics curriculum, which has been offered as an alternative to Scripture in New South Wales public schools for students from Kindergarten to Year 6 since 2010.

#1300

James Green

#100245

Overall Influence

1944 - 2016 (72 years)

James Robert Green was an American historian, author, and labor activist. He was Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Early life and education Green was born in 1944, to Gerald and Mary Green in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions