Search People Result | Academic Influence

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

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

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

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

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

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Engineering,

#8651

Erwin Hochmair

#176737

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Erwin Hochmair is an Austrian electrical engineer whose research focuses in the fields of biomedical engineering and cochlear implant design. He has been a professor at the Institute of Experimental Physics, University of Innsbruck since 1986. He has authored and co-authored over 100 technical articles and holds about 50 patents. He is the co-founder and owner of the medical device company MED-EL.

#8652

Ralph Lerner

#177072

Overall Influence

1949 - 2011 (62 years)

Ralph Lerner was an American architect, born in New York in 1949. He studied under John Hejduk at Cooper Union. Lerner then worked for Ulrich Franzen and Richard Meier. Lerner obtained a master's degree in architecture at Harvard University in 1975, and joined the University of Virginia faculty.

#8653

Jack Hannah

#17784

Overall Influence

1913 - 1994 (81 years)

John Frederick Hannah was an American animator, writer and director of animated shorts. Biography Hannah was born on January 5, 1913, in Nogales, Arizona. He moved to Los Angeles in 1931 to study at the Art Guild Academy. One of his first jobs was designing movie posters for Hollywood theaters. In 1933, during the Great Depression, Hannah dropped off his portfolio at Walt Disney Studios, and soon afterward was hired as an in-between and clean-up artist, working on Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Silly Symphony cartoons.

#8654

Joycelyn Harrison

#139309

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Joycelyn Harrison is an African-American engineer who is Associate Dean of the College of Aeronautics and Engineering at Kent State University. In 2006 she was awarded the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal. Her research considers the development of novel piezoelectric materials.

#8655

Huang Jie

#175861

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Huang Jie is a Choh-Ming Li Professor of Mechanical and Automation Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Education and career Huang attended Fuzhou University from 1977 to 1979 where he studied power engineering and then studied circuits and systems at Nanjing University of Science and Technology from 1979 to 1982. After obtaining a master's degree from NUST, he joined its faculty. In 1986, Huang moved to the United States where he completed his Ph.D. in automatic control at Johns Hopkins University in 1990 and soon after became a postdoc there for one year. From August 1991 to July 1995, Huang worked in American industry.

#8656

Hannah Lewi

#178737

Overall Influence

Hannah Lewi is an architectural historian and educator based in the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne. Education and career Lewi was educated at the University of Western Australia, and worked at Curtin University before relocating to Melbourne. She has been a registered architect with the Australian Institute of Architects.

#8657

Walter A. Hill

#118381

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Walter A. Hill is an American scientist who is Professor and Dean of the College of Agriculture, Environment and Nutrition Sciences at Tuskegee University. In 2016 he was inducted into the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hall of Fame.

#8658

William Karl

#177875

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

William Clem Karl is an ECE Department Chair and Professor at Boston University who was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2014 for contributions to statistical signal processing and image reconstruction and in 2018 was inducted into the Medical and Biological Engineering Elite of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Karl is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology from which he got his Ph.D. in 1991.

#8659

Aleksandra Filipovska

#113167

Overall Influence

Aleksandra Filipovska is a Professor, Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology and NHMRC Senior Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, heading a research group at the Telethon Kids Institute. Specializing in biochemistry and molecular biology, she has made contributions to the understanding of human mitochondrial genetics in health and disease.

#8660

Beverly Grier

#82259

Overall Influence

Beverly Grier is an Americann academic in the study of child labor Sub-Saharan Africa, and former professor of government at Clark University. She is also the former president of the African Studies Association. She currently serves as Interim Associate Dean for Curriculum & Student Affairs at North Carolina A&T State University.

#8661

Marta Civil

#50665

Overall Influence

Marta Civil is an American mathematics educator. Her research involves understanding the cultural background of minority schoolchildren, particularly Hispanic and Latina/o students in the Southwestern United States, and using that understanding to promote parent engagement and focus mathematics teaching on students' individual strengths. She is the Roy F. Graesser Endowed Professor at the University of Arizona, where she holds appointments in the department of mathematics, the department of mathematics education, and the department of teaching, learning, and sociocultural studies.

#8662

Giulio Maria Pasinetti

Giulio Maria Pasinetti

#41495

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Giulio Maria Pasinetti is the Program Director of the Center on Molecular Integrative Neuroresilience and is the Saunders Family Chair in Neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Pasinetti is a Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry, Neuroscience, and Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at ISMMS.

#8663

Gérard Oury

#43120

Overall Influence

1919 - 2006 (87 years)

Gérard Oury was a French film director, actor and writer. Life and career Max-Gérard Houry-Tannenbaum was the only son of Serge Tannenbaum, a violinist of Russian-Jewish origin, and French Jewish Marcelle Houry, a journalist and art critic. Tannenbaum was absent from the life of Oury and he was raised in an unobservant house of his mother and maternal grandmother Berthe Goldner. Oury studied at the Lycée Janson de Sailly and then at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art. He became a member of the Comédie-Française before World War II, but fled with all his family to Switzerland to escape the anti-Jewish persecutions by the Vichy government.

#8664

Xiang Jinwu

#183273

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Xiang Jinwu is a Chinese engineer and professor at Beihang University. Biography Xiang was born in Pingjiang County, Hunan, in February 1964. He secondary studied at Xiangyin No.1 High School. After graduating from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1984, he became a designer at China Helicopter Design and Research Institute. He received his master's degree in mechanics from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 1990 and doctor's degree from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1993, respectively. he was a postdoctoral fellow at Nanjing University of Aer...

#8665

Sandra Vivanco

#180523

Overall Influence

Sandra Vivanco was a Peruvian-born architect, educator, writer, and professor at the California College of the Arts. She practiced architecture in Japan, Portugal, Peru, Italy, Mexico and Brazil. Education Vivanco was born in Lima, Peru, and received her undergraduate education from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1985 and her Master of Architectures from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in 1991. She taught at Barnard College and Columbia University in New York, UC Berkeley, Escola da Cidade in São Paulo and Universidad Ricardo Palma ...

#8666

David Hilberman

#34779

Overall Influence

1911 - 2007 (96 years)

David Hilberman was an American animator and one of the founders of classic 1940s animation. An innovator in the animation industry, he co-founded United Productions of America . The studio gave its artists great freedom and pioneered the modern style of animation. As Animator and Professor Tom Sito noted: "Arguably, no studio since Walt Disney exerted such a great influence on world animation." He and Zack Schwartz went on to start Tempo Productions which became an early leader in television animated commercial production. In short, he played an important role in the new directions the ar...

#8667

Claudio Donoso

#61951

Overall Influence

Claudio Donoso Zegers was a Chilean forester, teacher and professor emeritus at the Austral University of Chile in Valdivia. Donoso was among the first to define the different forest types of Chile when he released the book Tipos forestales de los bosques nativos de Chile in cooperation with CONAF in 1981. This typology became later official by its use in Chilean law. From 1980 to 1981 he was co-editor of Bosque, a forestry scientific journal published by the Austral University of Chile. He retired in 2000 becoming a professor emeritus.

#8668

Jiang Hongde

#161597

Overall Influence

1942 - 2020 (78 years)

Jiang Hongde was a Chinese engineer and professor at Tsinghua University. Early life and education Jiang was born in Hengyang, Hunan, Republic of China , on July 4, 1942, while his ancestral home was in Changsha. He attended Changsha No.1 High School. He received his bachelor's degree from Tsinghua University in 1968 and his master's degree from University of Science and Technology of China in 1981, respectively.

#8669

James F. Howard Jr.

#119172

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

James Francis Howard Jr. is a Professor of Neurology and Medicine at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Career Howard was born on May 3, 1948, in Bellows Falls, Vermont. He received a BA in 1970 and a M.D. in 1974, both from the University of Vermont.

#8670

John Kenrick

#36355

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

John Kenrick is an American author, teacher and theatre and film historian. Kenrick is an adjunct teacher of musical theatre history at New York University, Brind School – University of the Arts and The New School, and lectures frequently on the subject elsewhere. His 2008 book Musical Theatre: A History is a comprehensive history of musical theatre from ancient times to the present. Kenrick is the curator of the extensive musical theatre and film website Musicals101.com: The Cyber Encyclopedia of Musical Theatre, TV and Film

#8671

Weihua Zhang

#183887

Overall Influence

Weihua Zhang is a Canadian electrical engineer, currently a Canada Research Chair at University of Waterloo and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Canadian Academy of Engineering and Engineering Institute of Canada. From 2007 to 2013, she was the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

#8672

Diane Brand

#181015

Overall Influence

Diane Joy Brand is a New Zealand architecture academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career After a BArch at Auckland in 1979 and practising professionally, Brand did a post-professional master's of architecture in urban design at Harvard. Returning to Auckland for a PhD, her 2001 doctoral thesis was titled Southern crossings: colonial urban design in Australia and New Zealand. She subsequently entered academia, working at both Victoria University of Wellington and then back to the University of Auckland.

#8673

Alan Reece

#179692

Overall Influence

1927 - 2012 (85 years)

Alan Richard Reece was the owner director of Pearson Engineering Ltd, Newcastle upon Tyne. In 2012 his company won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation. Pearson Engineering developed a range of counter-mine rollers that attach to the front of wheeled and tracked military vehicles to trigger an explosion as they drive over improvised explosive devices. The rollers get blown up and the main vehicle and its occupants stay safe.

#8674

Alan Finkel

#168426

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

#8675

John Kim

#183933

Overall Influence

#8676

Ashok Swain

#51887

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Ashok Swain is an Indian-born Swedish academic and writer. He is a professor of peace and conflict research at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden. In 2017, he was appointed as the UNESCO Chair on International Water Cooperation and became the first UNESCO Chair of Uppsala University.

#8677

Joe Bob Briggs

#60210

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

John Irving Bloom , known by the stage name Joe Bob Briggs, is an American syndicated film critic, writer, actor, comic performer, and horror host. He is known for having hosted Joe Bob's Drive-in Theater on The Movie Channel from 1986 to 1996, the TNT television series MonsterVision from 1996 to 2000, and The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder beginning in 2018. In 2019, he was named the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards' Monster Kid of the Year, and in 2023 was inducted into the Rondo Hatton Awards' Monster Kid Hall of Fame.

#8678

Robert L. Brown

#183962

Overall Influence

#8679

Lou Scheimer

#61264

Overall Influence

1928 - 2013 (85 years)

Louis Scheimer was an American producer and voice actor who was one of the original founders of Filmation. He was also credited as an executive producer of many of its cartoons. Early life and education Scheimer was the son of a German Jew who, according to family legend, had to leave Germany in the early 1920s after punching a young Adolf Hitler in 1921 or 1922, "well before" the Beer Hall Putsch.

#8680

Edwin Wilson

#41587

Overall Influence

1923 - Present (103 years)

Edwin Graves Wilson is an American retired professor of English literature at Wake Forest University. His professional academic and administrative tenure at Wake Forest spanned from 1951 until his retirement in 1993.

#8681

Gordon Mitchell

#184001

Overall Influence

#8682

Ehsan H. Feroz

#117304

Overall Influence

Ehsan H. Feroz is a Bangladeshi-born Muslim American professor, researcher, and an author. He is a tenured full professor of accounting at the University of Washington Tacoma’s Milgard School of Business and served as the Director of the Master of Accounting Program.

#8683

Xiang Changle

#183545

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Xiang Changle is a Chinese engineer currently serving as party secretary of Dalian University of Technology, Previously he served as vice-president and executive deputy secretary of Beijing Institute of Technology.

#8684

Bernard C. Meyers

#150985

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Bernard C. Meyers is an American abstract contemporary artist, photographer, and educator. He is most known for his abstract art and for his focus on the art of printmaking – traditional printmaking, etching and lithography, mono-prints, montage and photography – as well as commercial photography specializing in architecture, environmental portraits and art reproduction. Meyer's work has been collected by the Portland Museum of Art and the High Museum of Art's Bunnen Collection, and was highlighted in Amy Jorgensen's A Survey of Contemporary Photography in Utah. He was on the faculty at the U...

#8685

Sabrina Raaf

#162181

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Sabrina Raaf is an American, Chicago-based, mechanized sculpture artist, and photographer. Career Sabrina Raaf attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. receiving her Bachelors in the School of Foreign Service. After graduating in 1994, she attended Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington D.C.. At Corcoran she befriended David Adamson while attending his computer-art class, and in 1995, Raaf became gallery intern at the David Adamson Gallery. As a photographer and aspiring curator, Raaf organized a show of women photographers including herself.

#8686

Samantha Shapiro

#81349

Overall Influence

1993 - Present (33 years)

Samantha "Sami" Shapiro is an American gymnast. She is a five-time member of the US Women's National Gymnastics Team. She was the 2007 U.S. junior uneven bars champion, 2008 U.S. junior uneven bars and balance beam champion, 2008 Pan American Champion in both women's uneven bars and balance beam, and 2014 NCAA uneven bars silver medalist.

#8687

Vijay Kumar Gupta

#184163

Overall Influence

#8688

Elsa Leviseur

#119764

Overall Influence

1932 - 2023 (91 years)

Elsa Leviseur was a South African architect specializing in landscape and ecology. She practiced in South Africa and later in England and the US. She was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1931. Her mother was Beryl Iris Basson and her father was doctor Ernest Alfred Leviseur . She married conductor Ernest Fleischmann in 1953 at the age of 22. Motivated by her friends and her keen interest in forestry, she joined architecture and earned a B.Arch. degree at the University of Cape Town School of Architecture in 1954. She started a small office in South Africa and worked on designing hospitals, h...

#8689

John Conklin

#106113

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

John Conklin is an international theater designer, dramaturg and teaches in the Department of Design for Stage and Film at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Life and career John Conklin was born in Hartford Connecticut, and educated at the Kingswood-Oxford School and Yale University.

#8690

David J Elliott

#184219

Overall Influence

#8691

William Robinson

#91397

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

William Francis Robinson AO is an Australian painter and lithographer. Early life William Robinson was born in Brisbane in 1936. He attended Brisbane State High School and Ballarat High School. After graduating from secondary education, he began working as an art instructor.

#8692

Thomas Martin

#184222

Overall Influence

#8693

Manu Platt

#178042

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Manu Omar Platt is an American biomedical engineer who is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. He serves as Diversity Director of the Center on Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems.

#8694

Malcolm Macdonald

#172606

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Malcolm Macdonald is a Scottish space technology engineer, academic, and director. He is a Professor and the Chair of Applied Space Technology at the University of Strathclyde, and a visiting professor at University College Dublin. He was Director of the Scottish Centre of Excellence in Satellite Applications, SoXSA, from 2014 - 2020, and a non-executive member of the UK Space Agency Steering Board from 2017 - 2020. He is an acknowledged expert in space research, and in 2021 was referred to in the media as "Scotland's leading space expert".

#8695

Rajendra Prasad

#184257

Overall Influence

#8696

Jane Grande-Allen

#182120

Overall Influence

Katie Jane Grande-Allen is an American bioengineer currently the Isabel C. Cameron Professor at Rice University. She is currently chair of the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University. Her research focuses on an engineering approach to heart disease.

#8697

Erwin Steinberg

#102363

Overall Influence

1920 - 2012 (92 years)

Erwin Ray Steinberg was an American scholar and professor. He began teaching at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now known as Carnegie Mellon University, in 1946, fresh from the U.S. Army Air Force. He was the dean of Carnegie Tech's Margaret Morrison Carnegie College from 1960 until it closed in 1973, and he was the first dean of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. He also held the Thomas S. Baker Professorship of English and Interdisciplinary Studies from 1981 to 1993, and in 1991 he was named Carnegie Mellon's first vice provost for education. In October 2006, at ...

#8698

Hiroshi Saito

#184273

Overall Influence

#8699

Lin Jun

#182025

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Lin Jun is a Chinese engineer who is a professor, doctoral supervisor and dean of the College of Instrumentation and Electrical Engineering at Jilin University. He is a member of the China Instrument and Control Society , Chinese Geophysical Society , Chinese Institute of Electronics , Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers , and Society of Exploration Geophysicists .

#8700

Shaggy 2 Dope

#122619

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Joseph William Utsler , known by his stage name Shaggy 2 Dope, is an American rapper, record producer, DJ, podcast host of Shaggy and The Creep Show, and professional wrestler. He is part of the hip hop duo Insane Clown Posse. He is the co-founder of the record label Psychopathic Records, with fellow Insane Clown Posse rapper Violent J and their former manager, Alex Abbiss. Along with Bruce, Utsler is the co-founder of the professional wrestling promotion Juggalo Championship Wrestling, where he currently acts as color commentator.

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