Search People Result | Academic Influence

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

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

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

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

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

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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Education,

#151

Kent Syverud

#33502

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Kent D. Syverud is the 12th Chancellor and President of Syracuse University. He began his term of office on January 13, 2014. He was previously the dean at Washington University School of Law and Vanderbilt University Law School.

#152

Stephen Billett

#60050

Overall Influence

Stephen Richard Billett is an Australian educational researcher and Professor of Adult Vocational Education in the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University. His research centres on vocational learning, workplace learning, and learning for vocational purposes.

#153

Antonia Pantoja

Antonia Pantoja

#20806

Overall Influence

1922 - 2002 (80 years)

Antonia Pantoja , was a Puerto Rican educator, social worker, feminist, civil rights leader and the founder of ASPIRA, the Puerto Rican Forum, Boricua College and Producir. In 1996, she was the first Puerto Rican woman to receive the American Presidential Medal of Freedom.

#154

Michael Reiss

#21496

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Michael J. Reiss is a British bioethicist, educator, and journalist. He is also an Anglican priest. Reiss is professor of science education at the Institute of Education, University College London, where he is assistant director, research and development.

#155

Spike Lee

#4077

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. His work has continually explored race relations, issues within the black community, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and other political issues. Lee has won numerous accolades for his work, including an Academy Award, a Student Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a BAFTA Award, and two Peabody Awards. He has also been honored with an Honorary BAFTA Award in 2002, an Honorary César in 2003, the Academy Honorary Award in 2015, and a Gala Tribute from the Film Socie...

#156

Donald Markwell

#4189

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Donald John Markwell is an Australian social scientist, who has been described as a "renowned Australian educational reformer". He was appointed Head of St Mark's College, Adelaide, from November 2019. He was Senior Adviser to the Leader of the Government in the Australian Senate from October 2015 to December 2017, and was previously Senior Adviser on Higher Education to the Australian Minister for Education.

#157

Peter Scott

#29893

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Sir George Peter Scott FAcSS is a British educationalist and the former Vice-Chancellor of Kingston University in Kingston upon Thames in southwest London. Life and career Scott studied modern history as an undergraduate at Merton College, Oxford and was a visiting scholar and at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Public Policy under a Harkness Fellowship. He then worked as a leader writer for The Times, and began writing for the Times Higher Education Supplement in 1971. He went on to serve as its editor from 1976 until 1992 when he was appointed Professor of Education at the University of Leeds and Director the university's Centre for Policy Studies in Education.

#158

Pierre Restany

#5797

Overall Influence

1930 - 2003 (73 years)

Pierre Restany , was an internationally known French art critic and cultural philosopher. Restany was born in Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda, Pyrénées-Orientales, and spent his childhood in Casablanca. On returning to France in 1949 he attended the Lycée Henri-IV before studying at universities in France, Italy and Ireland. From their first meeting in 1955, Restany maintained a strong tie with Yves Klein .

#159

Robin Alexander

Robin Alexander

#49281

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Robin Alexander is a British educationist and academic known particularly for championing the cause of primary education, for his leadership of the Cambridge Primary Review, and for his research and writing on education policy, culture, curriculum, pedagogy, dialogic teaching and comparative and international education. He is currently Fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge and Professor of Education Emeritus at the University of Warwick. In 2011 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy , the UK's national academy for the humanities and social sciences and chaired its Edu...

#160

Griselda Pollock

Griselda Pollock

#776

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

#161

Irving Anker

#44013

Overall Influence

1911 - 2000 (89 years)

Irving Anker was an American educator and administrator who served from 1973 to 1978 as New York City Schools Chancellor, overseeing the largest school district in the United States at a time when control of schools was being transferred to local community school districts and when the fiscal crisis besetting the City of New York forced major staffing cuts. He had also served as Acting Chancellor in 1970 while the New York City Board of Education was searching for a permanent replacement.

#162

Barbara Sizemore

#54682

Overall Influence

1927 - 2004 (77 years)

Barbara Sizemore was an American teacher and researcher in the field of education. In 1973, she became the first African American woman to head the public school system in a major city, when she was elected superintendent of District of Columbia Public Schools.

#163

Tara J. Yosso

#36672

Overall Influence

Tara J. Yosso is a professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside. Yosso's research and teaching apply the frameworks of critical race theory and critical media literacy to examine educational access and opportunity. Yosso is specifically interested in understanding the ways Communities of Color have historically utilized an array of cultural knowledge, skills, abilities, and networks to breakthrough the structures racial discrimination built in pursuit of educational equality. She has authored numerous collaborative and interdisciplinary chapters and...

#164

Meyer Schapiro

#4173

Overall Influence

1904 - 1996 (92 years)

Meyer Schapiro was a Lithuanian-born American art historian known for developing new art historical methodologies that incorporated an interdisciplinary approach to the study of works of art. An expert on early Christian, Medieval, and Modern art, Schapiro explored art historical periods and movements with a keen eye towards the social, political, and the material construction of art works.

#165

Lewis Elton

#20600

Overall Influence

1923 - 2018 (95 years)

Lewis Richard Benjamin Elton was a German-born British physicist and researcher into education, specialising in higher education. Early life Born in Tübingen to the scholars Victor Ehrenberg and Eva Dorothea Sommer, Ehrenberg moved with his family to Prague in 1929, and from there to England in February 1939, to escape Nazi persecution of the Jews. Ehrenberg naturalised as a British subject and changed his name by deed poll in June 1947. He was educated at Rydal School in Colwyn Bay, and thereafter at Christ's College, Cambridge, the Regent Street Polytechnic, London, and University College London.

#166

Allyson Jule

#39081

Overall Influence

Allyson Mary Julé is a Canadian academic and Professor of Education at the University of the Fraser Valley, in British Columbia, Canada. She has lectured worldwide in her field, and written and edited many academic publications on feminist linguistics and pedagogy.

#167

Meena Alexander

Meena Alexander

#12303

Overall Influence

1951 - 2018 (67 years)

Meena Alexander was an Indian American poet, scholar, and writer. Born in Allahabad, India, and raised in India and Sudan, Alexander later lived and worked in New York City, where she was a Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

#168

Sri Chinmoy

#4306

Overall Influence

1931 - 2007 (76 years)

Chinmoy Kumar Ghose , better known as Sri Chinmoy, was an Indian spiritual leader who taught meditation in the United States after moving to New York City in 1964. Chinmoy established his first meditation center in Queens, New York, and eventually had 7,000 students in 60 countries. A prolific author, artist, poet, and musician, he also held public events such as concerts and meditations on the theme of inner peace. Chinmoy advocated a spiritual path to God through prayer and meditation. He advocated athleticism including distance running, swimming, and weightlifting. He organized marathons and other races, and was an active runner and, following a knee injury, weightlifter.

#169

Nancy Armstrong

#15092

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Nancy Armstrong is a scholar, critic and professor of English at Duke University. Overview Before moving to Duke, Armstrong was the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Comparative Literature, English, Modern Culture & Media, and Gender Studies at Brown University. She is currently the Gilbert, Louis & Edward Lehrman Professor of English at Duke. She is interested in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British and American fiction, empire and sexuality, narrative and critical theory, visual culture, and scientific discourses at work in literary forms. She is best known for her groundbreaking book o...

#170

Don Orlich

#40655

Overall Influence

Don Orlich is professor emeritus of the Science Mathematics Engineering Education Center at Washington State University. He has published more than 100 professional papers, co-authored more than 30 monographs and books, and is the senior co-author of “Teaching Strategies: A guide to Effective Teaching,” published by Houghton Mifflin in 2004.

#171

John Kneller

#14014

Overall Influence

1916 - 2009 (93 years)

John William Kneller, OAP was an English-American French language professor and scholar, and the fifth President of Brooklyn College. Biography Kneller was born in Oldham, England, to John W. Kneller and Margaret Ann Truslove. He had four older brothers. He immigrated to Worcester, Massachusetts, when he was five years old. He later became a U.S. citizen.

#172

Robert Bruininks

#31506

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Robert H. Bruininks is a former president of the University of Minnesota. He was named president on November 8, 2002, after briefly serving as the interim president. He has been employed by the University of Minnesota since 1968. He was the 15th full-time president in the history of the University of Minnesota. He is married and has three adult sons.

#173

Jim Cummins

#58139

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

James Cummins is a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto where he works on language development and literacy development of learners of English as an additional language. In 1979 Cummins coined the acronyms BICS and CALP to refer to processes that help a teacher to qualify a student's language ability.

#174

Stephen Shore

#69491

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Stephen Mark Shore is an American autistic professor of special education at Adelphi University. He has written several books on autism: College for Students with Disabilities, Understanding Autism for Dummies, Ask and Tell, and Beyond the Wall. Currently, he serves on the board of Autism Speaks, and is one of the first two autistic board members in its history, looking to improve the potential of those on the autism spectrum. He once headed the Asperger's Association of New England and was on the board of the Autism Society of America.

#175

Sally Clausen

#41517

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Sally Clausen is executive director of the Ingram Center for Public Trusteeship and Governance, an affiliate of the American Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. She earlier, in 2010, retired as Louisiana's commissioner of public higher education, a post she had held for one year relinquishing the presidency of the University of Louisiana System. Previously she served as the first female president of Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond.

#176

James Lipton

#3667

Overall Influence

1926 - 2020 (94 years)

Louis James Lipton was an American writer, lyricist, actor, and dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University in New York City. He was the executive producer, writer, and host of the Bravo cable television series Inside the Actors Studio, which debuted in 1994. He retired from the show in 2018.

#177

Gilly Salmon

#45283

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Gilly Salmon has been a digital learning innovator for more than 30 years. She is the founder and C.E.O of Education Alchemists Ltd - a company formed around her life's work including Carpe Diem learning design methodology, pedagogical transformation, online teaching, technology enhanced learning, the 5 stage model and e-tivities.

#178

Michael H. Schill

#9675

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Michael Harry Schill is an American legal scholar and academic administrator currently serving as the 17th president of Northwestern University since September 2022. Schill previously served as the 18th president of the University of Oregon from 2015 to 2022, dean of the University of Chicago Law School from 2009 to 2015, and dean of the UCLA School of Law from 2004 to 2009.

#179

Bel Kaufman

#7427

Overall Influence

1911 - 2014 (103 years)

Bella Kaufman was an American teacher and author, well known for writing the bestselling 1964 novel Up the Down Staircase. Early life Bella's father, Michael Kaufman and her mother, Lala Kaufman were both from Russia and married in 1909. Bella Kaufman was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1911, where her father was studying medicine. The family subsequently returned to Russia where her father completed his studies. Her father eventually became a physician, and her mother, the second-oldest daughter of famed Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem, later established herself as a writer under the name Lala...

#180

Nirmala Erevelles

#54790

Overall Influence

Nirmala Erevelles is a Professor in the Social Foundations of Education and Instructional Department of Education Leadership, Policy, and Technology Studies at the University of Alabama. She publishes about various topics related to disability, in particular the ways social oppression is pervasive due to differences in race, socioeconomic status, and bodies.

#181

Ryan S. Baker

#33837

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Ryan S. Baker is professor of education and computer science at the University of Pennsylvania, and also directs the Penn Center for Learning Analytics. He is known for his role in establishing the educational data mining scientific community, for the Baker Rodrigo Ocumpaugh Monitoring Protocol , and for establishing the first automated detector of student disengagement. He was awarded the Educational Research Award for 2018 by the Council of Scientific Society Presidents.

#182

Samuel B. Gould

#15578

Overall Influence

1910 - 1997 (87 years)

Samuel Brookner Gould was an American educator prominent for promoting access to education through non-traditional means such as educational television, college teacher-mentor systems, and universities without walls. Positions he held include: the presidency of the Educational Broadcasting System ; the Chancellorship of the State University of New York ; and the chairman of the Carnegie Commission on Non-Traditional Study .

#183

Marcel Danesi

#4658

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Marcel Danesi is Professor of Semiotics and Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Toronto. He is known for his work in language, communications and semiotics and is Director of the program in semiotics and communication theory. He has also held positions at Rutgers University , University of Rome "La Sapienza" , the Catholic University of Milan and the University of Lugano.

#184

Saryu Doshi

#27759

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Saryu Vinod Doshi is an Indian art scholar, art historian, academic and curator, known for her erudition in Indian miniature paintings and Jain art. She is the founder director of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai and a former pro-tem chairman of the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. She is the author of several books including Masterpieces of Jain Painting, a monograph on selected Jain art pieces. The Government of India awarded her the fourth highest civilian award of the Padma Shri, in 1999.

#185

Donna Alvermann

#17485

Overall Influence

Donna Alvermann is an American educator and researcher in the field of Language and Literacy Education whose work focuses on adolescent literacy in and out of school, inclusive of new media and digital literacies. Her most recent research interest involves developing historical-autobiographical methods for uncovering silences in scholarly writing that mask more than they disclose. She is the Omer Clyde and Elizabeth Parr Aderhold Professor in Education in the Mary Frances Early College of Education at the University of Georgia . She is also a UGA-appointed Distinguished Research Professor in t...

#186

Tomio Fukuoka

#34946

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

is a Japanese educator and Academian. He is the Founder/Chairman of Kobe Denshi and Graduate School of Information Technology . Early life Tomio Fukuoka was born in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. Professional career Tomio Fukuoka founded KIC in 1958 as a small Electronic school in the city of Kobe, Japan was called Kobe Electronic School, which received the recognition Institute of Advanced Vocational Education from the Japanese Ministry of Education in 1988 for its vital contribution to Japanese computing society. Now KIC is one of the major institutes for professional, vocational, practical orie...

#187

Herbert J. Walberg

#75107

Overall Influence

#188

John Bremer

#43939

Overall Influence

1927 - 2015 (88 years)

John Bremer was an educator and Socratic philosopher. In 2008 he retired as a senior scholar teaching at Cambridge College in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he was Professor of Humanities and Director of the college's Humanities and Freedom Institute. Professor Bremer founded Cambridge College in 1971 when it was then known as the "Institute of Open Education" at Newton College of the Sacred Heart. After retirement he lived full-time in Vermont, where he continued his research and writing. He died on November 30, 2015.

#189

Sam Wineburg

#21373

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Samuel S. Wineburg is an American educational and cognitive psychologist. He is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education and, by courtesy, of History & American Studies emeritus at Stanford University.

#190

Michael W. Allen

Michael W. Allen

#35760

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Michael W. Allen is an American software developer, educator, and author. He is known for his work on e-learning, and led the development of the Authorware software. Biography Allen received a BA in psychology from Cornell College, and MA and Ph.D. from the Ohio State University in educational psychology. From 1971 to 1984 Allen worked for Control Data Corporation on its PLATO computer-based education system . He rose to be director of advanced educational systems R&D. Allen founded Authorware in 1984, incorporating it in 1985. Authorware merged with MacroMind-Paracomp in 1992 to form Macrom...

#191

Henry Levin

#52636

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Henry M. Levin is an education economist and the William Heard Kilpatrick Professor of Economics and Education at Columbia University's Teachers College. Moreover, he is the co-director of the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education and the director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education . Levin has been elected to the National Academy of Education and has received the American Educational Research Association's Distinguished Contributions to Research in Education Award for his research on the impact of markets and competition on the effectiveness of schools a...

#192

Edmund White

#3053

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Edmund Valentine White III is an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and an essayist on literary and social topics. Since 1999 he has been a professor at Princeton University. France made him de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993.

#193

Mark Mostert

#18644

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Mark P. Mostert is co-director of the Institute for Disability and Bioethics and professor of Special Education at Regent University, Virginia Beach. He has written about and lectured on Eugenics and Euthanasia, Nazi Germany's state-sanctioned "useless eater" policy to exterminate people with disabilities and others considered less than human, and the fads and pseudoscientific practices found in special education.

#194

R. J. Rushdoony

R. J. Rushdoony

#10680

Overall Influence

1916 - 2001 (85 years)

Rousas John Rushdoony was an Armenian-American Calvinist philosopher, historian, and theologian. He is credited as being the father of Christian Reconstructionism and an inspiration for the modern Christian homeschool movement. His followers and critics have argued that his thought exerts considerable influence on the evangelical Christian right.

#195

David Buckingham

#48782

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

David Dennis Buckingham, is a media, communications and education scholar and retired academic. Career David Dennis Buckingham was born on 6 October 1954. He completed his undergraduate studies at Clare College, Cambridge, graduating in 1975. He worked at the Inner London Education Authority from 1978 to 1984, during which time he also completed film studies master's degree at the Polytechnic of Central London . In 1984, he joined the Institute of Education as a lecturer, and completed a doctorate there in 1993 . Three years later, he was promoted to a readership at the institute, and in 1999 was promoted again to Professor of Education.

#196

Nurit Peled-Elhanan

Nurit Peled-Elhanan

#19135

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Nurit Peled-Elhanan is an Israeli philologist, professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, translator, and activist. She is a 2001 co-laureate of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought awarded by the European Parliament. She is known for her research on the portrayal of Palestinians in Israeli textbooks, which she has criticized as being anti-Palestinian. Elhanan supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and has made highly controversial statements, including equivocating between Zionism and ISIS, as well as criticizing Israeli laureate and peace activist AB Yehoshua for being an obstacle to peace.

#197

Kathleen P. King

#72690

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Kathleen P. King is an American author and educator. As of 2006, she was a professor and director of Fordham University's Regional Educational Technology Center , Center for Professional Development and Program Director of the graduate program in Adult Education and Human Resource Development at the Graduate School of Education.

#198

Gervase Phinn

#38029

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Gervase Phinn is an English author and educator. After a career as a teacher he became a schools inspector and, latterly, Visiting Professor of Education at the University of Teesside. He graduated from Leeds Trinity University in 1970 with a degree in Education.

#199

Chris Packham

#7300

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Christopher Gary Packham CBE is an English naturalist, nature photographer, television presenter and author, best known for his television work including the CBBC children's nature series The Really Wild Show from 1986 to 1995. He has also presented the BBC nature series Springwatch, including Autumnwatch and Winterwatch, since 2009.

#200

Edna Ahgeak MacLean

#43431

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Edna Ahgeak MacLean or Paniattaaq is an Iñupiaq academic administrator, linguist, anthropologist and educator from Alaska, who has specialized in the preservation and revitalization of the Iñupiaq language.

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