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,

#1451

V. Parmeswaran Nair

#26939

Overall Influence

V. Parmeswaran Nair is a physicist, currently a Distinguished Professor at City University of New York, holding it since September 2011, and is also a published author.

#1452

John Greyson

#99996

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

John Greyson is a Canadian director, writer, video artist, producer, and political activist, whose work frequently deals with queer characters and themes. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in the 1980s from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave.

#1453

David Morgan

#107750

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

David Morgan is Professor of Religious Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina, with an additional appointment in Duke's Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies. Morgan served as the Chair in the Department of Religious Studies in Trinity College of Duke University from 2013 to 2016. He is the author of numerous books, including The Forge of Vision , The Embodied Eye , and The Sacred Gaze .

#1454

Fred Orton

#75502

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Fred Lionel Orton is an English art historian. His initial training was at Coventry College of Art in painting as a Dip.A,D student. He extended his experience in the History and Development of Art initially at the Courtauld Institute in London and then professionally as a scholar of art history and art theory at the University of Leeds.

#1455

Dennis Hayes

#180538

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Dennis Hayes is professor of education at the University of Derby in England. He is the founder and director of the campaign group Academics For Academic Freedom . AFAF was founded in late 2006, initially to promote its Statement of Academic Freedom but has subsequently undertaken the defence of many academics who have been threatened with disciplinary action or censored for their beliefs or ideas . Hayes is an author of the best-selling and controversial book The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education. A defender of knowledge-based education he is an advocate of the teaching of Latin and...

#1456

Audrey Niffenegger

Audrey Niffenegger

#28556

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Audrey Niffenegger is an American writer, artist and academic. Her debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, published in 2003, was a bestseller. Biography Audrey Niffenegger was born in 1963 in South Haven, Michigan. Then she moved to Evanston, Illinois and has since spent a majority of her life in Chicago. Niffenegger started writing books when she was six years old. Niffenegger completed her undergraduate degree at the Art Institute of Chicago where she worked on becoming a visual artist. After completing her undergraduate degree, she got her M.F.A at Northwestern University. Niffenegger is ...

#1457

James L. Oblinger

James L. Oblinger

#66081

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

James L. Oblinger is an American academic administrator who was the 13th Chancellor of North Carolina State University. He served in this position from 2005, after the resignation of Chancellor Marye Anne Fox, until his resignation on June 8, 2009, amid increased public and media scrutiny surrounding the hiring and compensation of Mary P. Easley, wife of former Governor Mike Easley and the severance package provided for former provost Larry Nielsen.

#1458

John Beldon Scott

#119753

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

John Beldon Scott is an American art historian, Elizabeth M. Stanley Professor of the Arts and Director of the School of Art & Art History at the University of Iowa. Education Scott received his B.A. from Indiana University and spent four years in the Air Force before receiving his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Rutgers University . He also spent a year pursuing graduate work in history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His field of teaching and research is the art and architecture of early modern Italy.

#1459

Jane Stallings

#178668

Overall Influence

1929 - 2016 (87 years)

Jane Ainel Smith Stallings was an American educational researcher and academic. She was the 1994–95 president of the American Educational Research Association and the first female to become a dean at Texas A&M University.

#1460

Nicole M. Joseph

#74172

Overall Influence

Nicole Michelle Joseph is an American mathematician and scholar of mathematics education whose research particularly focuses on the experiences of African-American girls and women in mathematics, on the effects of white supremacist reactions to their work in mathematics, and on the "intersectional nature of educational inequity". She is an associate professor of mathematics education, in the Department of Teaching and Learning of the Vanderbilt Peabody College of Education and Human Development.

#1461

Bárbara M. Brizuela

#72852

Overall Influence

Bárbara M. Brizuela is an American mathematics educator, and an associate professor education at Tufts University. Education and career Brizuela was born in the United States, though raised in Argentina and Venezuela. She has an Ed.D from Harvard University where she studied under Eleanor Duckworth. Prior to that, she received a Master of Arts, General Studies in Education from Tufts and a Licenciada en Ciencias Pedagógicas and Licenciada en Psicopedagogía degrees from the Universidad de Belgrano. She was a Spencer Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education from 1997 until 2000 and a Roy E.

#1462

Francesco Nardelli

#162401

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Francesco Romano Nardelli is an Italian naturalist who has dedicated his life to the protection and conservation of endangered species. He is also the co-founder, with John Aspinall, of the Sumatran Rhino Project, one of the most important coordinated efforts to save a critically endangered species.

#1463

Thomas F. Green

#105255

Overall Influence

1927 - 2006 (79 years)

Thomas Franklin Green was an American educational theorist and philosopher. Biography Born on 8 February 1927, Thomas Franklin Green was raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. His parents worked as civil engineers and writers. He studied political science and philosophy at the University of Nebraska, graduating in 1948. Green elected to pursue a master's degree in philosophy, which he finished in 1949 at Nebraska. He subsequently earned a doctorate from Cornell University. Green began teaching at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and furthered his career at Michigan State University prior to joining Syracuse University in 1964.

#1464

Arlene Mosel

#106419

Overall Influence

1921 - 1996 (75 years)

Arlene Tichy Mosel was an American children's librarian who wrote the text for two award-winning children's picture books illustrated by Blair Lent Tikki Tikki Tembo won the annual Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and Lent won the annual Caldecott Medal for The Funny Little Woman.

#1465

Mary Mackey

#37570

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Mary Lou Mackey is an American novelist, poet, and academic. She is the author of eight collections of poetry and fourteen novels, including the New York Times best-seller A Grand Passion and The Village of Bones, The Year The Horses Came, The Horses At The Gate, and The Fires of Spring, four sweeping historical novels that take as their subject the earth-centered, Goddess-worshiping cultures of Neolithic Europe. In 2012, her sixth collection of poetry, Sugar Zone, won a PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. Another collection, The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams: New and Selected Poems ...

#1466

Barbara G. Lane

#168633

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Barbara Greenhouse Lane was an art historian, and chair of the art department in the graduate studies and research program at Queens College, City University of New York. She was a scholar of the Northern Renaissance, early Netherlandish painting, and medieval art.

#1467

John Hayes

#83604

Overall Influence

1929 - 2005 (76 years)

John Trevor Hayes was a British art historian and museum director. He was an authority on the paintings of Thomas Gainsborough. Early life Hayes was educated at Ardingly College and read modern history at Keble College, Oxford after which he undertook a postgraduate diploma at The Courtauld Institute of Art.

#1468

Rainer Crone

#61687

Overall Influence

1942 - 2016 (74 years)

Rainer Crone was a German art historian. He was University Professor emeritus of Contemporary Art and History of Film at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and a specialist in the art of Andy Warhol. He previously taught at Yale University, the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, and New York University.

#1469

Barry Troyna

#178285

Overall Influence

1951 - 1996 (45 years)

Barry Stephen Troyna was a British sociologist of education and anti-racist activist who taught at the University of Warwick. He is known for his writings on racism and racial inequality in education.

#1470

Stephen M. Coan

#129856

Overall Influence

Stephen M. Coan is an American environmentalist and educator. He currently serves as CEO emeritus and served as president and chief executive officer of Sea Research Foundation between 2006 and 2022. He is chair of the Connecticut Tourism Advisory Council, appointed by Governor Ned Lamont to that position in 2021. Based in Mystic, Conn., Sea Research Foundation operates Mystic Aquarium, one of the nation's leading marine mammal research centers with a focus on conservation, education and research. With over 800,000 annual visitors, Mystic Aquarium is the largest cultural attraction in Connecticut and one of the largest in New England.

#1471

Jonathan Brown

#62243

Overall Influence

1939 - 2022 (83 years)

Jonathan Mayer Brown was an American art historian, known for his work on Spanish art, particularly Diego Velázquez. He was Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts at New York University. Early life and education Brown was born on July 15, 1939, in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Leonard M. Brown, an insurance agent and Jean Brown, a librarian and art collector who was particularly intrigued by the Fluxus movement. He studied Spanish literature at Dartmouth College and spent a year abroad in Madrid. While in Spain, he became fascinated with the painter Diego Velázquez, which inspired a lifelong interest in Spanish art.

#1472

Georges Romme

#40275

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Sjoerd Abel Georges Lodewijk Romme is a Dutch organizational theorist and professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Biography Georges Romme received a MSc in economics from Tilburg University and in 1992 a PhD degree in business administration from Maastricht University. Since 2005, he is professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at Eindhoven University of Technology , and since 2007 also dean of the Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences department.

#1473

Bobbie Hunter

#74805

Overall Influence

Roberta Kathleen Hunter is a New Zealand education academic of Cook Islands Māori descent and as of 2019 is a full professor at the Massey University. She specialises in mathematics education. Academic career After a 2002 MSc titled 'Constructing decimal concepts in an inquiry classroom' and a 2007 PhD titled 'Teachers developing communities of mathematical inquiry ' at the Massey University, Hunter joined the staff, rising to full professor.

#1474

Ovidiu Papadima

Ovidiu Papadima

#70451

Overall Influence

1909 - 1996 (87 years)

Ovidiu Papadima was a Romanian literary critic, folklorist, and essayist. He studied at the Alexandru Papiu Ilarian High School in Târgu Mureș, graduating at the top of his class in 1928. He then enrolled in the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy at the University of Bucharest, graduating in 1931.

#1475

Bryan Reynolds

#72634

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Bryan Reynolds , Claire Trevor Professor, Distinguished Professor, and Chancellor's Professor at the University of California-Irvine, is an American critical theorist, performance theorist, and Shakespeare scholar who developed the combined sociopolitical theory, performance aesthetics, and research methodology known as transversal poetics. He is also a playwright, director, performer, and cofounder of the Transversal Theater Company, an Amsterdam-based collective of American and European artists, which has produced a number of his works. Reynolds received his bachelor's degree in English Lite...

#1476

Milo C. Beach

#92800

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Milo Cleveland Beach is an American art historian and the former director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art. Beach is a historian of Indian art, specifically Indian painting. He graduated from Harvard College and credits the music of Ravi Shankar for garnering his interest in Indian culture. Before earning his Ph.D. at Harvard, he was already a curator at the Fogg Art Museum and Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He is an authority on Mughal painting of the Akbar to Shah Jahan periods and has published important catalogues on the subject including The Grand Mogul: Imperial...

#1477

Virginia Spate

#114036

Overall Influence

1937 - 2022 (85 years)

Virginia Margaret Spate was a British-born Australian art historian and academic. Spate was born in the United Kingdom in 1937. She lived in Burma as a child until her family was evacuated during the Pacific War. In 1951, she settled in Australia, where she studied a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and fine arts at the University of Melbourne, graduating in 1961. She studied and lectured in art history at the University of Cambridge, receiving a Master of Arts. She then received a PhD from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, United States.

#1478

Franklin Lewis Ford

#94847

Overall Influence

1920 - 2003 (83 years)

Franklin Lewis Ford was an American history professor and dean. Education and career Franklin Ford received in 1942 his A.B. from the University of Minnesota. From 1943 to 1946 he served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Office of Strategic Services. At Harvard University he graduated with M.A. in 1948 and Ph.D. in 1950. He specialized in modern German history and 17th-century French history. From 1949 to 1952 he taught at Bennington College. In Harvard University's history department, he was an assistant professor from 1953 to 1956, an associate professor 1956 to 1959, and a full professor from 1959 to 1991, when he retired as professor emeritus.

#1479

Gary Bitter

#173442

Overall Influence

Gary Bitter is an American researcher, teacher, and author focusing on educational technology. He is Professor of Educational Technology and past Executive Director of Technology Based Learning and Research at Arizona State University. He was a founding board member of the International Society for Technology in Education and served as its first elected president. He is the co-author of the National Technology Standards which have been used extensively as a model for National and International Technology Standards.

#1480

Jenny Harper

#103036

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Jenny Gwynndd Harper is a New Zealand academic and museum professional. She was most recently the director of Christchurch Art Gallery. Early life and education Born in Geraldine on 27 April 1950, Harper was educated at Villa Maria College, Christchurch. She completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Canterbury in 1972, a Diploma of Secondary Teaching at Christchurch Teachers' College in 1976, and a Master of Arts in religious studies at the University of Canterbury in 1977. Her master's thesis was titled The Relationship between Iconography and Mythology with Reference to the Hindu God, Siva.

#1481

Michael Jaffé

#53737

Overall Influence

1923 - 1997 (74 years)

Andrew Michael Jaffé was a British art historian and curator. He was Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England for 17 years, from 1973 to 1990. Life Born in London, he was educated at Wagner's and at Eton College. Jaffé's undergraduate studies were delayed for four years by World War II, during which time he served in the RNVR. He came up to King's College, Cambridge in 1945, studying History before changing to English, in which subject he got a First. He became President of the Marlowe Society, and was editor of Granta while a student. After Cambridge, he studied art history ...

#1482

Annabel Gallop

#80490

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Annabel Teh Gallop is a specialist in Southeast Asia, and is Head of the Southeast Asia Section at the British Library. Early life Gallop was born 5 August 1961 in Winchester, the daughter of Christopher Hugh Gallop and Teh Siok Lay. She attended Sufri Bolkiah English School in Tutong, Brunei, Wadhurst College, and Cranbrook School. She received her BSc from the University of Bristol in 1982. She then studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London where she received her MA in 1985 and PhD in 2002.

#1483

Hans-Georg Herrlitz

#142230

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Hans-Georg Herrlitz is a German educator. Life Born in Parlin, Herrlitz was educated in Grutschno, district Schwetz. After the escape he continued his school career at the Municipal Secondary School for Boys

#1484

Inger Mewburn

#157233

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Inger Mewburn is a Professor and Director of Research Training at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. She has published on academic identity, writing, and digital scholarship. She is known as "The Thesis Whisperer" on social media, and has been named as an "Australian social media influencer in higher education." Mewburn uses social media to provide commentary on researching student experiences , researching student supervision, and post-doctoral employment pathways.

#1485

Annette Schavan

#144439

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Annette Schavan is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union . She was the Federal Minister of Education and Research in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2005 to 2013, when she resigned following the revocation of her doctorate due to plagiarism. From 2014 until 2018 she served as the German Ambassador to the Holy See. From April 2018, she also briefly served as first German Ambassador to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

#1486

Judy Margaret Parr

#129705

Overall Influence

Judith Margaret Parr is a New Zealand educational psychology academic. She is a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career After a secondary education at Matamata College and an undergraduate at the University of Auckland, Parr did a 1989 PhD at Australian National University titled "Revision in writing: cognitive and linguistic aspects". She then returned to Auckland and became a full professor in 2011.

#1487

Kenneth S. Burnley

#171421

Overall Influence

1942 - 2011 (69 years)

Kenneth Stephen Burnley , was superintendent of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District in Palmer, Alaska, from July 2010 until his death in July 2011. He was a senior resident fellow at the University of Michigan School of Education. He also was the superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools from 2000 to 2005, Colorado Springs District 11 Schools, and Fairbanks North Star Borough School District in Fairbanks, Alaska.

#1488

Ken Jacobs

#69378

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Ken Jacobs is an American experimental filmmaker. His style often involves the use of found footage which he edits and manipulates. He has also directed films using his own footage. Ken Jacobs directed Blonde Cobra in 1963. This short film stars Jack Smith who directed his own Flaming Creatures the same year. In 1969 he directed Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son , in which he took the original 1905 short film and manipulated the footage to recontextualize it. This is considered an important first example of deconstruction in film. The film was admitted to the National Film Registry in 2007. His Star Spangled to Death is a nearly seven-hour film consisting largely of found footage.

#1489

Ann Sumner

#154662

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Ann Sumner is an art historian, exhibition curator, author and former museum director. She is currently Visiting Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University and Chair of the Methodist Modern Art Collection.

#1490

Tova Ascher

#144172

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Tova Ascher, also Tova Asher is an Israeli film director and film editor. She edited over 50 films. Biography Tova Ascher was born in Netanya. Her sister, , is also a film editor. After graduating from the Netanya High School, she moved to Tel Aviv, where she received a bachelor's degree in philosophy and sociology from Tel Aviv University. She is married to Yoni Ascher, a historian at the University of Haifa and they have two children, also involved in the film industry: a daughter and a son .

#1491

Carol Taylor Fitz-Gibbon

#181049

Overall Influence

1938 - 2017 (79 years)

Carol Taylor Fitz-Gibbon was a British educational researcher and analyst. Fitz-Gibbon wrote several books on evaluation, educational data and quantifying attainment. She served as the Director of the Centre for Evaluation & Monitoring from 1989 to 2003.

#1492

Judit Moschkovich

#98225

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Judit Nora Moschkovich is a professor in mathematics education and the learning sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Moschkovich's research uses sociocultural approaches to study mathematical thinking and learning, mathematical discourse, and language issues in mathematics education. Her research has focused on the transition from arithmetic to algebraic thinking, mathematical discourse, and learning/teaching mathematics in classrooms with students who are bilingual, Latino/a, and/or learning English.

#1493

John D. Liu

#123098

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

John Dennis Liu is a Chinese American film-maker and ecologist. He is also a researcher at several institutions. In January 2015 John was named Visiting Fellow at Netherlands Institute of Ecology of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. John is also Ecosystem Ambassador for the Commonland Foundation based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In 2017 John Liu founded Ecosystem Restoration Camps, a worldwide movement that aims to restore damaged ecosystems on a large scale.

#1494

Tarnya Cooper

#141423

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Tarnya Cooper is an art historian and author who is currently the National Trust's Curatorial & Collections Director. She has previously been the Chief Curator and Curatorial Director at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

#1495

Pamela M. Lee

#90872

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Pamela M. Lee is an art historian and Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at Yale University. Her research focuses on late modernism and contemporary art, particularly the relationship between aesthetics and politics.

#1496

Lisa Urkevich

#112048

Overall Influence

Dr. Lisa Urkevich is a specialist in music and heritage of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the greater Arabian Peninsula, and has undertaken extensive additional scholarship on Northern European Renaissance music. She has served as a strategist and senior advisor on international enterprises. She is former professor of musicology and ethnomusicology, and founding division head of the arts and humanities, and founding chair of the music and drama department at the American University of Kuwait . Previously, she was a full-time professor at Boston University. Since 2017 she has been the general edito...

#1497

Igor Golomstock

#66668

Overall Influence

1929 - 2017 (88 years)

Igor Golomstock was a London-based Russian art historian. He was the author of several books about Western artists like Pablo Picasso, Hieronymus Bosch, Paul Cézanne, Hans Holbein and Damien Hirst. In Totalitarian Art, he contended that totalitarian art looked the same regardless of the regime.

#1498

Peter Burman

#110997

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Peter Burman is a British architectural historian. Education He studied History of Art at King's College, Cambridge. In 1980 he participated in the Mural Paintings Conservation Course at ICCROM in Rome.

#1499

Joachim Pissarro

#59851

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Joachim Pissarro is an art historian, theoretician, curator, educator, and director of the Hunter College Galleries and Bershad Professor of Art History at Hunter College of the City University of New York. His latest book, authored with art critic David Carrier, is called Wild Art. Pissarro was curator at the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Painting and Sculpture from 2003 to 2007.

#1500

Lynda Wiest

#75279

Overall Influence

Lynda R. Wiest is an American mathematics education researcher and professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. Research Wiest investigates mathematics education, educational equity, and teacher education.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions