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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Ranking

List of the most influential people in Education,

#1551

Josine Ianco-Starrels

#86151

Overall Influence

1926 - 2019 (93 years)

Josine Ianco-Starrels was a Romanian-born American art curator who worked as a museum director in Los Angeles, California. Background Ianco-Starrels was born in Bucharest in 1926 and her family fled to Israel, then Palestine, during World War II. She was the daughter of Amélie Micheline "Lily" Ackermann and Marcel Janco, who was an artist, an architect and one of the founding members of Dadaism. She married Harold Manson in 1950 and moved to New York where she studied at the Art Students League of New York. Her second marriage was with Herbert Kline, a documentary filmmaker. She was married t...

#1552

Nancy C. Maryboy

#103461

Overall Influence

Nancy Cottrell Maryboy is a Cherokee and Navajo Indigenous science expert and educator. Maryboy is the president of the Indigenous Education Institute, an organization she founded in 1995 to apply traditional Indigenous knowledge to contemporary settings. Much of her work has focused on Indigenous astronomy and she has written several books on Navajo astronomy.

#1553

June Youatt

#137532

Overall Influence

June Youatt is an American university professor and former administrator, holding the posts of Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies as well as Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Michigan State University .

#1554

Michel Ragon

#17752

Overall Influence

1924 - 2020 (96 years)

Michel Ragon was a French art and literature critic and writer. His primary focus was on anarchic and libertarian literature. Biography Ragon was born into a poor family on 24 June 1924 in Marseille, but spent much of his childhood in Fontenay-le-Comte. After his father died when he was eight, Ragon moved to Nantes with his mother. Here, he discovered the works of Victor Hugo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jules Verne, Andre Gide, and others. He discovered a passion for arts at the Musée d'Arts de Nantes, as well as classical music at the Théâtre Graslin. In 1943, at age 19, Ragon met the poets of the École de Rochefort, such as Jean Bouhier and René-Guy Cadou, as well as painter James Guitet.

#1555

Norman E. Amundson

#111268

Overall Influence

Norman E. Amundson is a professor of counseling psychology at the University of British Columbia. Biography Amundson has undertaken research on career development and on Canadian immigration issues. One reviewer said he has "a well-established, international reputation as a scholar and leader in career counselling, but what makes his work singular is that he is a public intellectual whose scholarship can be taken up by diverse communities."

#1556

Luke Herrmann

#134959

Overall Influence

1932 - 2016 (84 years)

Luke John Herrmann was a British art historian who was an expert on the art of J. M. W. Turner. Early life Herrmann was born on 9 March 1932 in Berlin into a German Jewish family. He was educated in England at Westminster School and at the University of Oxford.

#1557

Evelyn Byrd Harrison

#72971

Overall Influence

1920 - 2012 (92 years)

Evelyn Byrd Harrison was an American classical scholar and archaeologist. She was Edith Kitzmiller Professor of the History of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University and was for more than 60 years associated with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Harrison specialized in 5th century B.C. Athenian Sculpture.

#1558

Ye Zhemin

#118958

Overall Influence

1924 - 2018 (94 years)

Ye Zhemin , also romanized as Yeh Che-min, was a Chinese art historian and authority on the history of Chinese ceramics and calligraphy. He is credited with making a discovery that led to the identification of Qingliangsi as the kiln site for the rare Ru ware of the Song dynasty. His published works include the extensive History of Chinese Pottery and Porcelain.

#1559

Andrew Hemingway

#125822

Overall Influence

#1560

Vanessa Williams

Vanessa Williams

#105222

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Vanessa Lynn Williams is an American singer, actress, model, producer, and dancer. She gained recognition as the first African-American woman to receive the Miss America title when she was crowned Miss America 1984, but resigned her title amid a media controversy surrounding nude photographs of her being published in Penthouse magazine. Thirty-two years later, Williams was offered a public apology during the Miss America 2016 pageant for the events.

#1561

Robin Middleton

#109086

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Robin D. Middleton is a British architectural historian, described as a leading authority on 18th-century French architecture and architectural theory by the University of Cambridge where he studied and worked. He is Professor Emeritus of Columbia University and was editor of Architectural Design and also head of general studies at the Architectural Association in London before he moved to New York City in 1987, where he still resides.

#1562

James W. Cleary

#119635

Overall Influence

1927 - 2007 (80 years)

James William Cleary was an American university administrator and editor. He was the co-editor of multiple editions of Robert's Rules of Order and served as the second president of California State University, Northridge from 1969 to 1992.

#1563

Mamie Locke

#143505

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Mamie Evelyn Locke is an American politician and educator. A Democrat, she was a member of the Hampton, Virginia city council 1996–2004, and mayor 2000–2004. Education Locke received a B.A. degree in history and political science from Tougaloo College in 1976. She then attended Atlanta University for advanced political science studies, receiving an M.A. in 1978 and a Ph.D. in 1984. She also completed a program in Middle Eastern studies at the American University in Cairo in 1986.

#1564

Patrick McNaughton

#73840

Overall Influence

Patrick R. McNaughton is an American art historian and educator. McNaughton is the Chancellor Professor of African Art History Emeritus at Indiana University. Career McNaughton graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Arts in Art History in 1966, and continued on to receive a Master of Arts in African Studies in 1971. He then earned another Master of Arts and a Doctor of Philosophy, both in Art History from Yale University, in 1972 and 1977 respectively. There, he wrote a doctoral dissertation on the art of the Bamana blacksmiths.

#1565

Todd Bullard

#158501

Overall Influence

1931 - 2009 (78 years)

Todd Hupp Bullard was a 20th-century American educator, most notable for having served as president of Potomac State College and Bethany College, and provost of Rochester Institute of Technology. Career Bullard was born in Wheeling, West Virginia to L. Todd Bullard and Katharine Virginia Netting Bullard. He earned a bachelor's degree in history from West Liberty University in 1953 where he served as student body president and founded the Chi Nu fraternity. He went on to earn degrees in political science: First a master's degree from West Virginia University in 1956 and then a doctorate fro...

#1566

Martin Eidelberg

#102595

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Martin P. Eidelberg is an American professor emeritus of art history at Rutgers University and an expert on ceramics and Tiffany glass. He is noted for discovering that many floral Tiffany lamp designs were not personally made by Louis Comfort Tiffany, but by an underpaid and unrecognized woman designer named Clara Driscoll.

#1567

Charmaine Nelson

#104473

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Charmaine Andrea Nelson is a Canadian art historian, educator, author, and independent curator. Nelson was a full professor of art history at McGill University until June 2020 when she joined NSCAD University to develop the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery. She is the first tenured Black professor of art history in Canada. Nelson's research interests include the visual culture of slavery, race and representation, Black Canadian studies and African Canadian history as well as critical theory, post-colonial studies, Black feminist scholarship, Transatlantic Slavery Studies, and Black Diaspora Studies.

#1568

Hubertus von Amelunxen

#53317

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Hubertus von Amelunxen is a philosopher, art historian, editor, curator, photography critic, and professor for philosophy of photography and cultural studies. Amelunxen has authored and published several books focusing on the history and theory of photography and has curated several international exhibitions. He served as president and provost at the European Graduate School, based in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and Valletta, Malta from October 2013 until June 2018.

#1569

Patrick Wolf

#183761

Overall Influence

#1570

Tamar Garb

#112214

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Tamar Garb is Durning Lawrence Professor in the Department of History of Art at University College London. A researcher of French art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Garb has published numerous catalogue essays and books that address feminism, the body, sexuality, and gender in cultural representations.

#1571

Anne Corn

#174238

Overall Influence

Anne Lesley Corn is an American educator, author, researcher, and advocate for those with low vision or blindness. Corn herself has low vision—she is legally blind—and her personal experience has informed and inspired her research and advocacy.

#1572

Norman Seeff

#59766

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Norman Seeff is a photographer and filmmaker. Since moving to the United States in 1969, his work has been focused on the exploration of human creativity and the inner dynamics of the creative process.

#1573

Candace Walkington

#149378

Overall Influence

Candace Walkington is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Southern Methodist University, and a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

#1574

Faith Osier

#102114

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Faith Hope Among’in Osier is a Kenyan immunologist, paediatrician and educator. Education Faith Osier was born in Kenya in 1972. trained the University of Nairobi, where she obtained her MBChB degree in 1996. She worked in the Coast General Provincial Hospital for two years, before joining Kilifi District Hospital. She completed a Masters in Human Immunity at the University of Liverpool, where she was awarded a prize for being the best student of the year. In 2008 she earned a PhD from the Open University. Her thesis was entitled Immune responses to polymorphic antigens and protection against severe malaria in Kenyan children and was supervised by Kevin Marsh.

#1575

Marusya Bociurkiw

#133579

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Marusya Bociurkiw is a Canadian born, Ukrainian film-maker, writer, scholar, and activist. She has published six books, including a novel, poetry collection, short story collection, and a memoir. Her narrative and critical writing have been published in a variety of journals and collections. Bociurkiw has also directed and co-directed ten films and videos which have been screened at film festivals on several continents. Her work appears in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the National Archives of Canada, and many university libraries. She founded or co-founded the media org...

#1576

Alessandra Comini

#107521

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Alessandra Comini is an American art historian and curator. She is University Distinguished Professor of Art History Emerita at Southern Methodist University in University Park, Texas. Proficient in music and languages as well as art history, Comini brought an interdisciplinary approach to her study of the arts in Austria and Germany at the turn of the 20th century, an approach particularly suited to the integrated art forms of fin-de-siècle Vienna.

#1577

John Cowan

#183925

Overall Influence

#1578

William Watson

#63037

Overall Influence

1917 - 2007 (90 years)

William Watson was a British art historian who was Professor of Chinese art and archaeology at the University of London. He was a leading member of the teams that organised the Genius of China exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1973 and the Great Japan Exhibition, held in 1981–82. He made a major contribution to Japanese art studies in the UK.

#1579

Thierry de Duve

#32596

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Thierry de Duve is a Belgian professor of modern art theory and contemporary art theory, and both teaches and publishes books in the field. He is an art critic and curates exhibitions. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Lille III , the Sorbonne , MIT, and Johns Hopkins University, and was the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Distinguished Visiting Professor in Contemporary Art in Penn's History of Art Department. He was the 2015 Theorist in Residence for the CalArts MA in Aesthetics and Politics Program during the fall semester. In 2016, he was appointed Evelyn Kranes Kossak Profess...

#1580

Cindy Gnadinger

#180473

Overall Influence

Cindy Gnadinger is an American educator and academic administrator, currently serving as the 15th President of Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Early life and education A native of Shepherdsville, Kentucky, Gnadinger earned a Bachelor of Science from Western Kentucky University and a Master of Education and Doctor of Education from the University of Louisville. Gnadinger was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in 2013, allowing her to study in France.

#1581

Diana Cavallo

#92449

Overall Influence

1931 - 2017 (86 years)

Diana Cavallo was an American novelist, educator, playwright, and performer. Biography Early life and education Cavallo was born in Philadelphia in 1931, the daughter of Genuino and Josephine Cavallo. She grew up in an Italian neighborhood of South Philadelphia, where she attended public schools. Her grandparents, who lived with the family, spoke the Abruzzese dialect; Cavallo learned Italian from them, and later based two characters in her first novel on them. As a teenager, she moved with her family to Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. She attended the University of Pennsylvania and spent time in Florence, Italy, as a Fulbright scholar.

#1582

Fernando Pérez

#137105

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Fernando Pérez Valdés is a prominent Cuban film director. Career Pérez graduated from the University of Havana with a degree in Language and Spanish Literature, and began working in the Cuban film industry in 1971 as an assistant director, before directing his first documentary in 1975.

#1583

James Runcie

#121392

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

James Robert Runcie is a British novelist, documentary filmmaker, television producer and playwright. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a visiting professor at Bath Spa University and was Commissioning Editor for Arts on BBC Radio 4 from 2016 - 2020.

#1584

Henk Schulte Nordholt

#152933

Overall Influence

1909 - 1998 (89 years)

Henk Schulte Nordholt was an art history professor and scholar from the Netherlands. He studied German language and literature, history, and art history at the University of Amsterdam from 1932 until 1939 and then taught German and history at the Rijnlands Lyceum in Wassenaar. He earned a doctorate under Jan Romein in 1948 from the University of Amsterdam and wrote a historiography of the Renaissance . He admired Jacob Burckhardt.

#1585

Keith Drury

#112472

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Keith Drury is an Associate Professor of Religion at Indiana Wesleyan University. Drury spent more than twenty years in denominational leadership for the Wesleyan Church. As a writer through 2010, he spoke to pastors and church leaders on a variety of popular and scholarly ministry topics and is perhaps best known for his Tuesday Column blog, a series of articles published weekly since 1995 targeted towards Wesleyan pastors and church leaders.

#1586

Nick Wilding

#65496

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Nick Wilding is a British-born American historian. He became internationally known after exposing as a forgery a copy of Galileo’s “Sidereus Nuncius” that purportedly included Galileo’s own watercolors of the moon.

#1587

Midori

#135943

Overall Influence

is a sexologist, educator, author, artist, speaker, and coach. Midori wrote the first English language book with instruction on Japanese rope bondage and continues to write on alternative sexual practices, including BDSM and sexual fetishism, bondage, erotic fiction, and more. She teaches classes, presents at conferences, coaches individuals and professionals, and facilitates in-depth weekend intensives. She is based in San Francisco, California.

#1588

E. Wayne Craven

#65212

Overall Influence

1930 - 2020 (90 years)

Ernest Wayne Craven, Jr. was an American art historian and educator. A scholar of nineteenth-century American art, particularly sculpture, he was Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Professor of Art History Emeritus at the University of Delaware.

#1589

Daria Nina Love

#94409

Overall Influence

1946 - 2001 (55 years)

Daria Nina Love was an Australian veterinary microbiologist and educator. She was the first woman to be awarded the University of Sydney Medal for Veterinary Science and the first woman in the Faculty of Veterinary Science to be awarded a PhD , for her thesis entitled ‘Studies on virus host-cell relationships of a feline calicivirus’. She was also the first woman to become an associate professor in the Faculty of Veterinary Science, although her bids to become a full professor were unsuccessful. In 1988, she became the first woman in Australia to be awarded a Doctor of Veterinary Science on ...

#1590

Stephen F. Eisenman

#105131

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Stephen F. Eisenman is an American art historian, and a professor emeritus of art history at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Career Eisenman is the author of nine books including Gauguin's Skirt , The Abu Ghraib Effect , and The Cry of Nature – Art and the Making of Animal Rights . He has curated major exhibitions in the United States and Europe and is the principal author and editor of the textbook Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History .

#1591

Ben Shedd

#150976

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Ben Shedd is an American director, producer, and writer of film and video. He shared the 1978 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film. Education He earned a BA from San Francisco State University in 1968 and an MA from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts in 1973.

#1592

Lillian B. Miller

#128969

Overall Influence

1923 - 1997 (74 years)

Lillian B. Miller was an American art historian who served as historian of American culture at the National Portrait Gallery. She was known for her work studying Charles Willson Peale and his family.

#1593

James F. O'Gorman

#63168

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Dr. James F. O'Gorman is a leading American architectural historian, author, lecturer, editor, and consultant who taught for many years at Wellesley College. O'Gorman received a B.Arch. degree from the School of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis in 1956 and an M.Arch. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1961. He earned a Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard University in 1966.

#1594

Larry M. Starr

#117929

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Larry M. Starr is a consultant, academic administrator, university professor, and research scientist. His primary academic affiliation has been at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia where he is Director of the Doctor of Management in Strategic Leadership program and Director of the Doctor of Philosophy program in Complex Systems Leadership program. He is also Managing Director of Systems Wisdom a global consultancy which provides translational consulting, executive education, and research specializing in complex and seemingly intractable problems; and he is Executive Director of the Institute of Systems Wisdom an innovative social-academic-practice community.

#1595

Kathryn M. Rudy

#156877

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Kathryn Margaret Rudy FBA FRSE is a manuscript historian at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. She is best known for her forensic approach to medieval books, and has pioneered the use of the densitometer to measure the grime that original readers deposited in their books. Her research focuses on the medieval reception of manuscripts, how they were manipulated and handled, and how book-making skills were lost with the advent of the printing industry.

#1596

John White

#65101

Overall Influence

1924 - 2021 (97 years)

John Edward Clement Twarowski White, CBE, FSA was a British art historian and was formerly the head of the Department of History of Art at the University College London . In 1992 he was made an Honorary Fellow of UCL. He was also the author of a number of books on Medieval and Renaissance art, as well as on the artist Duccio of Siena.

#1597

Attilio Celant

#68700

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Attilio Celant , 2nd Class / Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, is an Italian economist, geographer and academic. He is currently the President of the “Alumni Association of Graduates in Economics“ at Sapienza University of Rome, which includes some of the most illustrious members of the Italian economic intelligentsia.

#1598

Austin E. Quigley

#73487

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Austin Edmund Quigley is the former Dean of Columbia College of Columbia University, Lucy G. Moses Professor, and Brander Matthews Professor of Dramatic Literature at Columbia University, in New York City, and the recipient of the 2008 Alexander Hamilton Medal, Columbia College's highest honor. He is also a member of the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies and of the Columbia University Doctoral Program Subcommittee on Theatre, has served on the editorial boards of Modern Drama, New Literary History, The Pinter Review, and the University of Michigan Press book series Theater: Th...

#1599

Arthur Applebee

#143640

Overall Influence

1946 - 2015 (69 years)

Arthur Noble Applebee was a researcher and professional leader in United States secondary education. He obtained his doctorate at the University of London in 1973 and held professorships at Stanford University and the University at Albany, State University of New York . Active in national policy, he assisted in validating the Common Core State Standards and co-authored fourteen of the National Assessment of Educational Progress's "Reading Report Cards" documenting student achievement. He also documented the state of the teaching of writing in U.S. Secondary Schools in a number of studies. I...

#1600

Marilyn Stokstad

#39918

Overall Influence

1929 - 2016 (87 years)

Marilyn Jane Stokstad was an American art historian, educator, and curator. A scholar of medieval and Spanish art, Stokstad was Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor of Art History Emeritus at the University of Kansas, and also served as director of the Spencer Museum of Art.

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