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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List of the most influential people in Education,

#1

Paulo Freire

#83

Overall Influence

1921 - 1997 (76 years)

Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and marxist philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. His influential work Pedagogy of the Oppressed is generally considered one of the foundational texts of the critical pedagogy movement, and was the third most cited book in the social sciences according to Google Scholar.

#2

Malcolm Knowles

#1578

Overall Influence

1913 - 1997 (84 years)

Malcolm Shepherd Knowles was an American adult educator, famous for the adoption of the theory of andragogy—initially a term coined by the German teacher Alexander Kapp. Knowles is credited with being a fundamental influence in the development of the Humanist Learning Theory and the use of learner constructed contracts or plans to guide learning experiences.

#3

Henry Giroux

#740

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Henry Armand Giroux is an American-Canadian scholar and cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth studies, higher education, media studies, and critical theory. In 2002 Routledge named Giroux as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period.

#4

Peter McLaren

#1490

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Peter McLaren is a Canadian scholar who serves as a Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies at Attallah College of Educational Studies, Chapman University, where he is Co-Director of the Paulo Freire Democratic Project and International Ambassador for Global Ethics and Social Justice. He is also Emeritus Professor of Urban Education, University of California, Los Angeles, and Emeritus Professor of Educational Leadership, Miami University of Ohio. He is also the Honorary Director of the Center for Critical Studies in Education at Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China. According to ...

#5

John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto

#1754

Overall Influence

1935 - 2018 (83 years)

John Taylor Gatto was an American author and school teacher. After teaching for nearly 30 years he authored several books on modern education, criticizing its ideology, history, and consequences. He is best known for his books Dumbing Us Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, and The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling.

#6

Seymour Papert

#82

Overall Influence

1928 - 2016 (88 years)

Seymour Aubrey Papert was a South African-born American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator, who spent most of his career teaching and researching at MIT. He was one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, and of the constructionist movement in education. He was co-inventor, with Wally Feurzeig and Cynthia Solomon, of the Logo programming language.

#7

Nel Noddings

#656

Overall Influence

1929 - 2022 (93 years)

Nel Noddings was an American feminist, educator, and philosopher best known for her work in philosophy of education, educational theory, and ethics of care. Biography Noddings received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physical science from Montclair State University in New Jersey, a master's degree in mathematics from Rutgers University, and a PhD in education from the Stanford University Graduate School of Education.

#8

Joe L. Kincheloe

#1961

Overall Influence

1950 - 2008 (58 years)

Joe Lyons Kincheloe was a professor and Canada Research Chair at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Montreal and founder of The Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy. He wrote more than 45 books, numerous book chapters, and hundreds of journal articles on issues including critical pedagogy, educational research, urban studies, cognition, curriculum, and cultural studies. Kincheloe received three graduate degrees from the University of Tennessee. The father of four children, he worked closely for the last 19 years of his life with his partner, Shirley R....

#9

Clark Kerr

#554

Overall Influence

1911 - 2003 (92 years)

Clark Kerr was an American economist and academic administrator. He was the first chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, and twelfth president of the University of California. Early life and education Kerr was born in Stony Creek, Pennsylvania, to Samuel William and Caroline Kerr. He was raised on rural farms outside of Reading, Pennsylvania, first in the Stony Creek area and then in the Oley Valley after age 10. Even after Kerr became one of the most prominent academic administrators of his generation, he always regarded himself as a "Pennsylvania farm boy" and expressed fru...

#10

Jonathan Kozol

#2708

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Jonathan Kozol is an American writer, progressive activist, and educator, best known for his books on public education in the United States. Education and experience Born to Harry Kozol and Ruth Kozol, Jonathan graduated from Noble and Greenough School in 1954, and Harvard University summa cum laude in 1958 with an A.B. in English literature. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford. He did not, however, complete his scholarship, deciding instead to go to Paris to learn to write fiction and nonfiction from experienced authors such as William Styron, Richard Wright, and others who were living in Paris at the time.

#11

Arthur Miller

#79

Overall Influence

1915 - 2005 (90 years)

Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge . He wrote several screenplays, including The Misfits . The drama Death of a Salesman is considered one of the best American plays of the 20th century.

#12

Michael Apple

#5457

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Michael W. Apple is an educational theorist specialized on education and power, cultural politics, curriculum theory and research, critical teaching, and the development of democratic schools. Apple is John Bascom Professor Emeritus of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education, where he taught from 1970-2018. Prior to completing his Ed.D. at Teachers College, Columbia University in 1970, Apple taught in elementary and secondary schools in New Jersey, where he grew up, as well as served as the president of his teachers' union.

#13

Alfie Kohn

#3713

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Alfie Kohn is an American author and lecturer in the areas of education, parenting, and human behavior. He is a proponent of progressive education and has offered critiques of many traditional aspects of parenting, managing, and American society more generally, drawing in each case from social science research.

#14

Eric Hanushek

#3659

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Eric Alan Hanushek is an economist who has written prolifically on public policy with a special emphasis on the economics of education. Since 2000, he has been a Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, an American public policy think tank located at Stanford University in California. He was awarded the Yidan Prize for Education Research in 2021.

#15

David Attenborough

David Attenborough

#171

Overall Influence

1926 - Present (98 years)

Sir David Frederick Attenborough is a British broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series forming the Life collection, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.

#16

Lilian Katz

#11838

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Lilian Gonshaw Katz is a professor emerita of early childhood education at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where she is also principal investigator for the Illinois Early Learning Project, and a contributor to the Early Childhood and Parenting Collaborative. She founded two journals: Early Childhood Research Quarterly for which she served as editor-in-chief during its first six years, and Early Childhood Research & Practice the first on-line peer-reviewed early-childhood journal for which she remains editor-in-chief. Her scholarly work focused on the developmental stages of a...

#17

Wolfgang Brezinka

Wolfgang Brezinka

#8586

Overall Influence

1928 - 2020 (92 years)

Wolfgang Brezinka was a German-Austrian educational scientist. He served as Professor of Pedagogy at the School of education of the University of Würzburg, as well as at the Universities of Innsbruck and Konstanz.

#18

Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai

#778

Overall Influence

1997 - Present (27 years)

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani female education activist and the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate at the age of 17. She is the world's youngest Nobel Prize laureate, the second Pakistani and the first Pashtun to receive a Nobel Prize. Yousafzai is a human rights advocate for the education of women and children in her native homeland, Swat, where the Pakistani Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement, and according to former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become Pakistan's "most prominent citizen."

#19

Elliot Eisner

#9841

Overall Influence

1933 - 2014 (81 years)

Elliot Wayne Eisner was a professor of Art and Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, and was one of the United States' leading academic minds. He was active in several fields including arts education, curriculum reform, qualitative research, and was the recipient of a University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in 2005 for his work in education as well as the Brock International Prize in 2004. In 1992, he became the recipient of the José Vasconcelos World Award of Education in recognition to his 30 years of scholarly and professional work, particularly his contribution in th...

#20

Deborah Meier

#7460

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Deborah Meier is an American educator often considered the founder of the modern small schools movement. After spending several years as a kindergarten teacher in Chicago, Philadelphia and then New York City, in 1974, Meier became the founder and director of the alternative Central Park East school, which embraced progressive ideals in the tradition of John Dewey in an effort to provide better education for children in East Harlem, within the New York City public school system.

#21

David Tyack

#8404

Overall Influence

1930 - 2016 (86 years)

David B. Tyack was the Vida Jacks Professor of Education and Professor of History, Emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Tyack is known for his wide-ranging studies and interpretations of the history of American education.

#22

M. David Merrill

M. David Merrill

#8273

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

M. David Merrill is an education researcher specializing in instructional design and technology. Personal life Merrill was born on March 27, 1937. After completing high school, he was involved in missionary work for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. He is married to Kathleen Merrill and together they have nine children and 39 grandchildren. He currently lives in Utah. </ref>

#23

George Siemens

#6581

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

George Siemens is a Canadian expatriate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Arlington and professor and director of the Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning at the University of South Australia. He is known for his theory of connectivism, which seeks to understand learning in the digital age. He played a role in the early development of massive online open courses .

#24

Diane Ravitch

#5449

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Diane Silvers Ravitch is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education. In 2010, she became "an activist on behalf of public schools". Her blog at DianeRavitch.net has received more than 36 million page views since she began blogging in 2012. Ravitch writes for the New York Review of Books.

#25

Harry Broudy

#9354

Overall Influence

1905 - 1998 (93 years)

Harry Samuel Broudy was a Polish-born American professor of the philosophy of education. Early life and education Broudy was born in Filipów, Grodno Governorate in the Russian Empire on July 27, 1905, but his family emigrated, and moved to Milford, Massachusetts in 1912. Broudy attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a year, but then transferred to Boston University, where he received his bachelor's degree in German literature and philosophy in 1929. From there, he went to Harvard University and earned his master's degree and Ph.D. there , completing the doctorate in 1935. Hi...

#26

Lee Shulman

#10428

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Lee S. Shulman is an American educational psychologist and reformer. He has made notable contributions to the study of teaching, assessment of teaching, and the fields of medicine, science, and mathematics.

#27

David A. Wiley

#6389

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

David A. Wiley is an American academic, writer who is the chief academic officer of Lumen Learning, education fellow at Creative Commons, and former adjunct faculty of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University, where he was previously an associate professor. Wiley's work on open content, open educational resources, and informal online learning communities has been reported in many international outlets, including The New York Times, The Hindu, MIT Technology Review, and Wired.

#28

Timothy Shanahan

#8925

Overall Influence

Timothy Shanahan is an educator, researcher, and education policy-maker focused on literacy education. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Education, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, and he has held a visiting research appointment at Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was elected president of the International Literacy Association in 2004. He operates the popular informational website, Shanahan on Literacy. He was recently recognized as one of the top 2% of scientists in the world, according to a recent ...

#29

Gloria Ladson-Billings

#8198

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Gloria Jean Ladson-Billings is an American pedagogical theorist and teacher educator known for her work in the fields of culturally relevant pedagogy and critical race theory, and the pernicious effects of systemic racism and economic inequality on educational opportunities. Her book The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African-American Children is a significant text in the field of education. Ladson-Billings is Professor Emerita and formerly the Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin–Madison...

#30

Mortimer J. Adler

Mortimer J. Adler

#412

Overall Influence

1902 - 2001 (99 years)

Mortimer Jerome Adler was an American philosopher, educator, encyclopedist, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He taught at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, served as chairman of the Encyclopædia Britannica board of editors, and founded the Institute for Philosophical Research.

#31

Robin DiAngelo

#7113

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Robin Jeanne DiAngelo is an American author working in the fields of critical discourse analysis and whiteness studies. She formerly served as a tenured professor of multicultural education at Westfield State University and is currently an affiliate associate professor of education at the University of Washington. She is known for her work pertaining to "white fragility", an expression she coined in 2011 and explored further in a 2018 book entitled White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.

#32

Donaldo Macedo

#11716

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Donaldo Pereira Macedo is a Cape Verdean-American critical theorist, linguist, and expert on literacy, critical pedagogy and multicultural education studies. Until 2019 he was Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He was also the founder of the Master of Arts Program in Applied Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and chaired the program until approximately 2012.

#33

Michael Fullan

#17048

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Michael Fullan is the Global Leadership Director, New Pedagogies for Deep Learning. Deep Learning, as described by NPDL, is mobilized by four elements that combine to form the new pedagogies. They are: Learning Partnerships, Learning Environments, Pedagogical Practices, and Leveraging Digital.

#34

Juan Carlos Tedesco

Juan Carlos Tedesco

#17412

Overall Influence

1944 - 2017 (73 years)

Juan Carlos Tedesco was an Argentine academic and policy maker who was the President's Education Minister, from December 2007 to July 2009. Life and career Tedesco was born in Buenos Aires in 1944. Enrolling at the University of Buenos Aires, he graduated with a degree in Philosophy and Letters in 1968. He taught as Professor of Educational History in the Universities of La Plata, El Comahue and La Pampa and authored his first book, Education and Society in Argentina, 1800-1945, in 1972.

#35

Marlene Scardamalia

#15032

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Marlene Scardamalia is an education researcher, professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Contributions She is considered one of the pioneers in computer-supported collaborative learning. Other areas of research where Scardamalia made contributions are:Cognitive developmentEducational uses of computersIntentional learningThe nature of expertisePsychology of writingResearch-based innovation in learning and knowledge workKnowledge innovation.Since the 1980s she supervised the design, development and research of Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environments .

#36

Donald Schön

#6645

Overall Influence

1930 - 1997 (67 years)

Donald Alan Schön was an American philosopher and professor in urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He developed the concept of reflective practice and contributed to the theory of organizational learning.

#37

Siegfried Engelmann

#13544

Overall Influence

1931 - 2019 (88 years)

Siegfried "Zig" Engelmann was an American educationalist who co-developed the approach to instruction termed "Direct Instruction" . Engelmann was Professor Emeritus of Education at the University of Oregon and Director of the National Institute for Direct Instruction. He wrote more than 100 curricula using DI principles and numerous other books and articles.

#38

Sylvia Schmelkes

Sylvia Schmelkes

#18683

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Sylvia Schmelkes is a Mexican sociologist and education researcher, and current director of the Mexican National Institute of Educational Evaluation. She is best known for her work in intercultural education, and her book 'Toward better quality of our schools'. Schmelkes has also written over 100 academic texts and essays. She is a former General Coordinator of Intercultural and Bilingual Education at the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico, and is currently heading the Research Institute for the Development of Education at the Iberoamerican University.

#39

Ziauddin Yousafzai

Ziauddin Yousafzai

#7902

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Ziauddin Yousafzai is a Pakistani education activist best known as the father of Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, who protested against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan opposition to the education rights of girls, especially for Pakistani girls.

#40

Mark Warschauer

#9467

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Mark Warschauer is a professor in the Department of Education and the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, where is also the director of the Ph.D. in Education program and founding director of the Digital Learning Lab. He is the author or editor of eight books and more than 100 scholarly papers on topics related to technology use for language and literacy development, education, and social inclusion.

#41

Regina Peruggi

#9563

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Regina Peruggi was born in 1947, and is a renowned educator, fundraiser, and activist. Peruggi is originally from The Bronx and earned a Bachelor of Arts in sociology from the College of New Rochelle. She then obtained a Master of Business Administration from New York University and a Doctor of Education from Columbia University. Peruggi has been responsible for growth and expansion at several universities including (where she was able to double enrollment in 11 years) and Kingsborough Community College (which was named one of the top four community colleges in the US during her tenure). Per...

#42

Arthur W. Chickering

#13585

Overall Influence

2000 - 2020 (20 years)

Arthur Wright Chickering was an American educational researcher in the field of student affairs. He was known for his contribution to student development theories. In 1990 he was appointed Dean of the Graduate School of Education at George Mason University. He was succeeded in 1992 by Dr. Gustavo A. Mellander. Chickering also taught at George Mason University and Goddard College. He worked at Goddard College as a Special Assistant to Presidents Schulman and Vacarr from 2002 to 2012. Chickering died on August 15, 2020, in East Montpelier, VT.

#43

Jean-Pol Martin

Jean-Pol Martin

#13475

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Jean-Pol Martin studied teacher education for foreign language teachers in Germany, and developed a teaching method called learning by teaching. He spent most of his career at Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and was a Professor there when he retired in 2008.

#44

Yaacov Hecht

#15419

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Yaacov Hecht , is an Israeli educator and worldwide pioneer of democratic education. In 1987, he founded the first school in the world called a democratic school. Following that, he helped founding around 30 democratic schools in Israel. In 1993 he convened 'in Hadera the first IDEC- International Democratic Education Conference, an annual conference that continues to connect educators, schools, and organizations. That led to the emergence of hundreds of democratic schools all over the world.

#45

Frank McCourt

#3428

Overall Influence

1930 - 2009 (79 years)

Francis McCourt was an Irish-American teacher and writer. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Angela's Ashes, a tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood. Early life and education Frank McCourt was born in New York City's Brooklyn borough, on August 19, 1930, the eldest child of Irish Catholic immigrants Malachy Gerald McCourt, Sr. , of Toome, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, who was aligned with the IRA during the Irish War of Independence, and Angela Sheehan from Limerick. Frank McCourt lived in New York with his parents and four younger siblings: Malachy, born in 1931;...

#46

Georgi Lozanov

#26833

Overall Influence

1926 - 2012 (86 years)

Georgi Lozanov , known as 'the father of accelerated learning', was a Bulgarian scientist, neurologist, psychiatrist, psychologist and educator, creator of suggestology, suggestopedia , and integrated psychotherapy.

#47

Linda Darling-Hammond

#13706

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Linda Darling-Hammond is an American academic who is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. She was also the President and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute. She is author or editor of more than 25 books and more than 500 articles on education policy and practice. Her work focuses on school restructuring, teacher education, and educational equity. She was education advisor to Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and was reportedly among candidates for United States Secretary of Education in the Obama administration.

#48

Kurt W. Fischer

#10939

Overall Influence

1943 - 2020 (77 years)

Kurt W. Fischer was an educator, author, and researcher in the field of neuroscience and education. Until his retirement in 2015, he was the Charles Bigelow Professor of Education and Director of the Mind, Brain, and Education Program at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Fischer studied cognitive and emotional development and learning. His work, called dynamic skill theory, is considered to be one of the Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development. It offers an explanation for both consistency and variability in developmental patterns.

#49

Lisa Delpit

#15975

Overall Influence

Lisa D. Delpit is an American educationalist, researcher, and author. She is the former executive director and Eminent Scholar at the Center for Urban Educational Excellence at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, Benjamin E. Mays Chair of Urban Educational Leadership at Georgia State University, and the first Felton G. Clark Distinguished Professor of Education at Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She earned the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship for her research on school-community relations and cross-cultural communication.

#50

Michelle Rhee

#8696

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Michelle Ann Rhee is an American educator and advocate for education reform. She was Chancellor of District of Columbia Public Schools from 2007 to 2010. In late 2010, she founded StudentsFirst, a non-profit organization that works on education reform.

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