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,

#1501

Leslie Cockburn

#95222

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Leslie Cockburn is an American investigative journalist, and filmmaker. Her investigative television segments have aired on CBS, NBC, PBS Frontline, and 60 Minutes. She has won an Emmy Award, The Hillman Prize, Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the George Polk Award.

#1502

Carla Rice

#107261

Overall Influence

Carla Rice is a Canadian educator, project director, consultant, speaker and author on women's body image issues. She is a Tier II Canadian Research Chair in care, gender and relationships in the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. This role includes the challenging of stereotypes through the investigation of ways that perceptions of women's bodies can be changed through images and stories.

#1503

James S. Ackerman

#24169

Overall Influence

1919 - 2016 (97 years)

James Sloss Ackerman was an American architectural historian, a major scholar of Michelangelo's architecture, of Palladio and of Italian Renaissance architectural theory. In 2017, Ackerman was awarded the Henry Hope Reed Award.

#1504

Jerome Silbergeld

#115228

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Jerome L. Silbergeld is an American scholar of Chinese art history. He has taught at Princeton University and the University of Washington. Education Silbergeld received his B.A. from Stanford University in 1966 and completed an M.A. in American history there in 1967. In 1966 and 1967, he served as a United States Senate intern for Stuart Symington. He received a second M.A. in art history from the University of Oregon in 1972 and completed his Ph.D. in Chinese art history from Stanford University in 1974.

#1505

Peg Campbell

#176913

Overall Influence

Peg Campbell is a Canadian filmmaker. She is most noted for her short films It's a Party!, which was a Genie Award nominee for Best Live Action Short Drama at the 8th Genie Awards, and In Search of the Last Good Man, which won the same award at the 11th Genie Awards.

#1506

Ferris Olin

#138245

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Ferris Olin is an American feminist scholar, curator, educator and librarian. Olin was born in Trenton, New Jersey, on June 27, 1948. She has been a Professor Art and Library Science in the Rutgers University School of Arts and Sciences since 1976. With Judith K. Brodsky, Olin co-founded, and co-directed several initiatives and institutions, including the Institute for Women and Art, the Women Artists Archive National Directory, the Miriam Schapiro Archives on Women Artists, and the Feminist Art Project. She was the founding director of the Margery Somers Foster Center: A Resource Center and Digital Archive on Women, Scholarship and Leadership at Rutgers University.

#1507

Festus E. Obiakor

#182068

Overall Influence

#1508

Chon Noriega

#95650

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Chon A. Noriega is an American art historian, media scholar, and curator. Noriega is professor of cinema and media studies at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. He was also the director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center from 2002 to 2021.

#1509

Jennie Stephens

#180413

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Jennie C. Stephens is an academic researcher, professor, author, and social justice advocate. She is Professor of Sustainability Science & Policy at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. She is also affiliated with the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, the department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and the department of Cultures, Societies & Global Studies.

#1510

Glory Van Scott

#165488

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Glory Van Scott is an educator, writer, actress and dancer. She is a former principal dancer with the Katherine Dunham, Agnes de Mille and Talley Beatty dance companies and has performed in the United States and around the world.

#1511

Terry Smith

#81357

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Terry Smith is an Australian art historian, art critic and artist who currently lives and works in Pittsburgh, New York and Sydney. Since 2001 he has been Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. He also serves as a board member of The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh.

#1512

Otfried Deubner

#112635

Overall Influence

1908 - 2001 (93 years)

Otfried Deubner was a German classical archaeologist and diplomat. During World War II, Otfried Deubner worked as a linguist in Pers Z S, the signals intelligence agency of the German Foreign Office .

#1513

Heshmat Moayyad

#98538

Overall Influence

1927 - 2018 (91 years)

Heshmat Moayyad was a Persian writer, translator and the founder of the University of Chicago's Persian program. Moayyad was a University of Chicago professor for more than 40 years. He translated modern Persian literature into English and German. Moayyad organized major conferences at the university on the Indo-Persian poet Amir Khosrow and on the poet Parvin Etesâmi , as well as the first academic conference about “The Baha'i Faith and Islam” in 1984 at McGill University in Montreal.

#1514

Brian Lukacher

#75397

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Brian Lukacher is an American art historian and educator. Lukacher is currently Professor of Art History at Vassar College. Career A native of York, Lukacher received three degrees in Art History: a Bachelor of Arts from the New College of Florida in 1977, a Master of Arts from Williams College, and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Delaware in 1987. His college thesis was titled "Human Experience and Visionary Landscapes in English Romantic Art," and his doctoral dissertation was on the architecture of Joseph Gandy, who Lukacher continued to study. The latter was completed under t...

#1515

Suzanne Blier

#70286

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Suzanne Preston Blier is an American art historian who currently serves as Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University with appointments in both the History of Art and Architecture department and the department of African and African American studies. She is also a member of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science and a faculty associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Her work focuses primarily on African art, architecture, and culture.

#1516

Ruth Phillips

#58894

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Ruth B. Phillips is a Canadian art historian and curator who specializes in North American aboriginal art. She is an author of numerous books and articles on the subjects of Indigenous studies, anthropology/archaeology, political science, international studies, public policy, Canadian studies, and cultural studies.

#1517

Whitney Davis

#82126

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Whitney Davis is an art historian, writer, and theorist. Davis has been teaching at the University of California, Berkeley in the art history department since 2001 as the George C. and Helen N. Pardee Professor of History and Theory of Ancient and Modern Art. In addition to an extensive list of publications in the field of Western art history, Davis has made major contributions to the field of queer theory and LGBTQ studies, such as the 1998 essay "'Homosexualism,' Gay and Lesbian Studies, and Queer Theory in Art History."

#1518

Howard McParlin Davis

#89231

Overall Influence

1918 - 1994 (76 years)

Howard McParlin Davis was a longtime professor of Art History at Columbia University. "His classes in Italian Renaissance painting and on Northern European painting were among the most popular undergraduate courses at Columbia," and thanks to him, "[g]enerations of Columbia College students graduated with an especially deep appreciation of the art of Giotto and of Jan van Eyck."

#1519

George Zarnecki

#45445

Overall Influence

1915 - 2008 (93 years)

George Zarnecki , CBE, FBA, FSA was a Polish Professor of the History of Art. He was a scholar of Medieval art and English Romanesque sculpture, an area of study in which he did pioneering research. From 1961 to 1974 he was a deputy director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

#1520

Hubert Davis

#127217

Overall Influence

Hubert Davis is a Canadian filmmaker who was nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Cultural and Artistic Programming for his directorial debut in Hardwood, a short documentary exploring the life of his father, former Harlem Globetrotter Mel Davis. Davis was the first Afro-Canadian to be nominated for an Oscar.

#1521

Margaretta M. Lovell

#154260

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Margaretta M. Lovell is an American art historian who serves as the Jay D. McEvoy, Jr. Professor of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research and teaching center on the art and history of the United States, including eighteenth- and nineteenth-century landscape painting, portraiture, decorative arts, furniture, architecture, food, and forests.

#1522

Mary Hardy

#167781

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Mary Rosalyn Hardy is a professor of actuarial science at the University of Waterloo . She pioneered, together with Julia Wirch, the development and application of the conditional tail expectation . Biography Hardy studied mathematics at the University of London and holds a PhD from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. She has served as editor of the North American Actuarial Journal and she was previously editor of Annals of Actuarial Science.

#1523

Silvia Eiblmayr

#149221

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Silvia Eiblmayr is an Austrian art historian and curator. Life and work Eiblmayr was born in Germany and grew up in Upper Austria and lives and works in Vienna. She holds a doctorate in art history from the University of Vienna and works as a curator in the field of contemporary art.

#1524

Gertrud Seidmann

#80535

Overall Influence

1919 - 2013 (94 years)

Gertrud Seidmann, was an Austrian-British linguist and jewellery historian, specialising in engraved gems. Her first career was as a linguist, teaching German and applied linguistics at Battersea County School, the University of Oxford, and the University of Southampton: she was awarded the Goethe Medal in 1968. She formally retired in 1979 and dedicated herself to researching jewellery and engraved gems, becoming a research associate of the Institute of Archaeology and of Oxford's Beazley Archive.

#1525

Carmen Twillie Ambar

#116906

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Carmen Twillie Ambar is an American attorney, academic, and the current president of Oberlin College in Ohio. She was appointed to the post in May 2017. In 2002, she became the ninth woman to lead Douglass College and the youngest dean in its history. She was dean of Douglass College until August 2008 when she became president of Cedar Crest College. Ambar was appointed by Governor Corzine to the New Jersey Economic Development Authority Board of Directors. In 2017, she was named 15th president of Oberlin College.

#1526

Irving Lavin

#26739

Overall Influence

1927 - 2019 (92 years)

Irving Lavin was an art historian of Late Antique, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Modern painting, sculpture, and architecture. His wide-ranging contributions centered primarily on the correlation between form and meaning in the visual arts.

#1527

Truman G. Madsen

Truman G. Madsen

#60299

Overall Influence

1926 - 2009 (83 years)

Truman Grant Madsen was a professor of religion and philosophy at Brigham Young University and director of the Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies. He was a prolific author, a recognized authority on Joseph Smith, and a popular lecturer among Latter-day Saints. At one point, Madsen was an instructor at the LDS Institute of Religion in Berkeley, California.

#1528

Marilyn Strutchens

#113632

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Marilyn E. Strutchens is an African-American mathematics educator focusing on the training of secondary-school mathematics teachers and on equity issues in mathematics education. She has served as president of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators, and is Emily R. and Gerald S. Leischuck Endowed Professor for Critical Needs and Mildred Cheshire Fraley Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Education, and Program Coordinator for Secondary Mathematics Education in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Auburn University.

#1529

Luisa Vertova

#103150

Overall Influence

1921 - 2021 (100 years)

Luisa Vertova was an Italian art historian. Her research work mostly focused on Renaissance Italian painters such as Piero della Francesca, Mantegna, Paolo Veronese, Titian, Botticelli and Caravaggio. In addition, she undertook numerous projects as editor of several editions of her mentor Bernard Berenson's and her husband Benedict Nicolson's writings.

#1530

Andrew Tsao

#176311

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Andrew Tsao is an American theater, film and television producer and director. Early life He earned his Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts. Career Tsao worked in regional theater and off-Broadway. He became resident director of the Indiana Repertory Theatre where he directed, served as the theater's literary manager and taught acting. He was invited to become artistic director of the New Harmony Project, a writer's lab in New Harmony, Indiana. There he oversaw development of plays, musicals, screenplays and TV pilots.

#1531

Benedict Read

#104049

Overall Influence

1945 - 2016 (71 years)

Benedict William Read, BA, FSA was an English art historian. Usually known as Ben Read, he was the author of numerous books, essays and articles on nineteenth and twentieth century art history, and was one of the most authoritative writers in the second half of the twentieth century on British Victorian sculpture.

#1532

Bates Lowry

#73609

Overall Influence

1923 - 2004 (81 years)

Bates Lowry was an art historian who was a director of the Museum of Modern Art and founding director of the National Building Museum. Early life He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio received an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago. He was in the United States Army during World War II. He returned to the University of Chicago after the war and earned a masters and Phd.

#1533

Deborah Nadoolman Landis

Deborah Nadoolman Landis

#36249

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Deborah Nadoolman Landis is an American costume designer, author, and professor. She has worked on notable films such as Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Three Amigos, all of which credited her as Deborah Nadoolman. Landis served two terms as president of the Costume Designers Guild of which she has been a member for more than thirty years. She is married to director John Landis; their son is screenwriter Max Landis.

#1534

Robert Bruegmann

#53391

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Robert Bruegmann is an historian of architecture, landscape and the built environment. He is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a specialist on the Chicago school of architecture. Bruegmann is best known for his research on the architectural firm of Holabird & Root, and is also a commentator on urban sprawl.

#1535

Robert Lewis Koehl

#127055

Overall Influence

1922 - 2015 (93 years)

Robert Lewis Koehl was an American US Army Intelligence surveyor in Nazi German-occupied Europe during World War II, author, and a Professor Emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

#1536

Margaret Horsburgh

Margaret Horsburgh

#178137

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Margaret Phyllis Elsie Horsburgh is a New Zealand academic who established the school of nursing at the University of Auckland and worked as a nurse educator for over 30 years. Biography Horsburgh was born in Auckland in 1943, and was educated at Diocesan School for Girls. She began training as a nurse in 1961. From a career as an intensive-care nurse, Horsburgh joined Auckland University of Technology in 1976. She completed a Doctor of Education degree through Charles Sturt University in 1998, with a thesis titled Quality monitoring in higher education: a case study of the impact on student learning.

#1537

David W. Pershing

#63303

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

David W. Pershing is an American educator and former president of the University of Utah. He received a bachelor's degree from Purdue University in 1970 and a PhD from University of Arizona. Career Pershing joined the faculty of the University of Utah in 1977 as a professor of chemical engineering. He was named a Presidential Young Investigator by the National Science Foundation in 1984 and became dean of the College of Engineering in 1987. He was named a Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering in 1995. In 1998, university President Bernie Machen named Pershing as senior vice president for Academic Affairs.

#1538

C. D. Narasimhaiah

#97923

Overall Influence

1921 - 2005 (84 years)

Closepet Dasappa Narasimhaiah was an Indian writer, literary critic and the principal of Maharaja's College, Mysore. Narasimhaiah was best known for his literary criticisms and for bringing out an abridged version of Discovery of India of Jawaharlal Nehru, under the title, Rediscovery of India. He was a recipient of the Rajyotsava Prashasti honor of the Government of Karnataka. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour, the Padma Bhushan, in 1990, for his contributions to literature.

#1539

Eric McCormack

#109421

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Eric Patrick McCormack was a Scottish-born Canadian author. He was known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction, gothic horror and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as Inspecting the Vaults , The Paradise Motel , The Mysterium , First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women and The Dutch Wife .

#1540

William E. Doll Jr.

#142444

Overall Influence

1931 - 2017 (86 years)

William "Bill" Elder Doll Jr. was an American educator, author and curriculum theorist. Doll's scholarly study started in progressivism, moved to Piaget, and gradually shifted to postmodernism, chaos theory and complexity and their implications for school curriculum. Doll is among the first group of scholars who introduced complexity thinking to education in the 1980s.

#1541

Catherine Emihovich

#107807

Overall Influence

Catherine Emihovich was the former dean and current faculty member of the University of Florida College of Education. In May 2002 she was selected as dean of the college. Prior to this position, she was the dean of the College of Education at California State University at Sacramento. She stepped down as dean on August 14, 2011, and took a year's sabbatical before resuming her faculty responsibilities. She was the first woman to be dean at the college.

#1542

Jane Gilbert

#178883

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Dr. Jane Gilbert is an educationalist in New Zealand. She was the Chief Researcher of New Zealand Council for Educational Research. From 2014, Jane was appointed as a professor of education at Auckland University of Technology.

#1543

Italo Zannier

#71654

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Italo Zannier is an Italian art historian, photographer, academic and historian of photography. Biography First in Italy to hold a chair of "history of photography" he taught at IUAV and at the Faculty of Letters of Ca 'Foscari University also in Venice, he also taught at Dams in Bologna and at the Faculty of Cultural Heritage of Ravenna and at the Catholic University of Milan. He is a member of the "Sociètè europeènne d'histoire de la photographie". He has published more than 500 books between historical and scientific catalogs and publications. He had an honorary degree in Conservation of cultural heritage from the University of Udine.

#1544

James H. Rubin

#91378

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

James Henry Rubin is an American art historian and a professor of history at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York. Early life and education James Rubin was born on May 4, 1944. He was educated at Phillips Andover, Yale , Harvard and the Institut d'Art et d'Archéologie of the Sorbonne in Paris .

#1545

Bastiaan Jacob Dirk Meeuse

#183004

Overall Influence

1916 - 1999 (83 years)

Bastiaan Jacob Dirk Meeuse was a botanist and naturalist.

#1546

James T. Sears

#162074

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

James T. Sears is an American educator, historian, and activist. He is a former professor at the University of South Carolina, Trinity University, Harvard University, and Penn State. The author of books about LGBT history and sexuality education, his archive of correspondence, research notes, interviews is located at the Rubenstein Library of Duke University with ancillary materials at the College of Charleston Special Collections.

#1547

Shiza Shahid

#166801

Overall Influence

Shiza Shahid is a Pakistani social entrepreneur, social activist, investor, and educator. She is the co-founder and former CEO of the non-profit Malala Fund, which promotes education for every girl. In 2013, she was included in Time "30 Under 30" list of world change-makers, and in 2014, she was listed in Forbes "30 Under 30" list of global social entrepreneurs. She is also well-known as the personal assistant of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai.

#1548

Galina Pugachenkova

Galina Pugachenkova

#84777

Overall Influence

1915 - 2007 (92 years)

Galina Anatolevna Pugachenkova was a Soviet archaeologist and art historian, regarded as a founder of Uzbek archaeology and central to the progression of archaeology and art history under Soviet regimes. Her work has contributed greatly to the register of surviving buildings in Central Asia and in many cases was the first register of traditional surviving buildings. G. A. Pugachenkova directed a branch of the archaeological expedition of southern Turkmenistan from 1946 to 1961, and of the Uzbek historical-artistic expedition from 1959 to 1984.

#1549

Kaur Alttoa

#89065

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Kaur Alttoa is an Estonian art historian and cultural historian. Biography Alttoa graduated from Hugo Treffner Gymnasium in 1966. His class teacher was Liidia Tanimäe, a legendary physics teacher during the days of the Estonian SSR. After graduating from secondary school, he attended the University of Tartu in the same year and graduated in 1972 with an art history degree, protecting his diploma paper "Vastseliina Fortress".

#1550

Annette Michelson

#105567

Overall Influence

1922 - 2018 (96 years)

Annette Michelson was an American art and film critic and writer. Her work contributed to the fields of cinema studies and the avant-garde in visual culture. Biography Born in 1922, Michelson graduated from Hunter College High School circa 1940 and Brooklyn College in 1948. Between 1956 and 1966, she was art editor and critic for the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune while also writing for Arts Magazine and Art International. She worked as a writer for Artforum, where she edited the influential issues on 'Eisenstein/Brakhage' in 1973 and the 'Special Film Issue' in 1973. Togethe...

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