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 Law,

#2551

Katherine Franke

#106964

Overall Influence

Katherine M. Franke is an American legal scholar who specializes in gender and sexuality law. She is the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. Biography Franke received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1981. She graduated from Northeastern University School of Law in 1986, before receiving a LL.M. from Yale Law School in 1993 and S.J.D. from Yale in 1999.

#2552

Robin Creyke

#135566

Overall Influence

Robin Creyke is an Emeritus Professor of law in Australia. She graduated from the University of Western Australia and earned her Master of Laws from Australian National University . Creyke joined the faculty of the College of Law at the Australian National University in 1985 and became a professor in 2002. During her tenure, she served as the Alumni Chair of Administrative Law. From 2009-2014, she was appointed to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and served as a Senior Member.

#2553

Dan Theodorescu

#122798

Overall Influence

Dan Theodorescu is an American physician and academic. He is the Director of the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and leader of Cedars-Sinai CANCER. From 2010 until 2018, Theodorescu was Director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center and a professor of Surgery-Urology. He has been appointed Paul Mellon Chair at the University of Virginia and Paul Bunn Chair and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Colorado.

#2554

Nino Gvenetadze

Nino Gvenetadze

#110590

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Nino Gvenetadze , is a Georgian magistrate, President of the Supreme Court between 20 March 2015 until her resignation on 2 August 2018, first female ever appointed to this office in country's history.

#2555

Stefan Sleijfer

#142135

Overall Influence

#2556

Carlos Sonnenschein

#142138

Overall Influence

#2557

George Haskins

#95414

Overall Influence

1915 - 1991 (76 years)

George Lee Haskins RHS was an American legal scholar and the Algernon Sydney Biddle Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Biography Haskins was the son of medievalist Charles Homer Haskins, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. He was born and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

#2558

Victor J. Gold

#119947

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Victor James Gold is an American law professor and former dean of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, California. Biography Gold was educated at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he received B.A. and J.D. degrees. He is the author of six books on the Federal Rules of Evidence and has written numerous articles on evidence and advocacy law. He is a member of the American Law Institute and the author of bar exam questions on contracts, remedies and evidence in California and Arizona.

#2559

Mary W. Gray

#15921

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Mary Lee Wheat Gray is an American mathematician, statistician, and lawyer. She is the author of books and papers in the fields of mathematics, mathematics education, computer science, applied statistics, economic equity, discrimination law, and academic freedom. She is currently on the Board of Advisers for POMED and is the chair of the Board of Directors of AMIDEAST .

#2560

Gualtiero Calboli

Gualtiero Calboli

#53568

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Gualtiero Calboli is an Italian classicist and linguist. He is Emeritus Chair of Latin Language and Literature at the University of Bologna, in Italy. He was appointed to a chair in 1973. From 1982 to 2000 he was head of the Department of Classical and Medieval Philology. He is the editor of the major series "Papers on Grammar" and has edited editions of Marco Porcius Cato and Cornificius.

#2561

Nancy Padian

#62114

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Nancy Padian is a medical researcher and former executive director of the Women's Global Health Imperative when it was at the University of California, San Francisco. She is senior director of prevention at the Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation. Padian has been described as among the "world's foremost experts on the heterosexual transmission of AIDS."

#2562

Gus Van Harten

#114458

Overall Influence

Gus Van Harten is a professor of Administrative Law at York University's Osgoode Hall. He is co-editor of the journal Administrative Law — Cases and Materials. He has particular focus on investor-state dispute settlement .

#2563

Mary Anne Bobinski

#110283

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Mary Anne Bobinski is dean of the Emory University School of Law and an American legal scholar and educator whose research focuses on health law in the United States and Canada. She was the dean of the Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia from 2003 to 2015 and is a past President of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics.

#2564

Wolfgang Brandstetter

#108941

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Wolfgang Brandstetter is an independent Austrian politician and legal scholar who served as a member of the Constitutional Court of Austria from 2018 to 2021. He previously served as the Minister of Justice of Austria, as well as the country's Vice Chancellor.

#2565

Michael Blakeney

#123535

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Michael L. Blakeney is a Winthrop Professor of Law at the University of Western Australia. Blakeney is also Visiting Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Queen Mary University of London, and has worked in the World Intellectual Property Organization's Asia Pacific Bureau. His main areas of research are traditional knowledge, access to genetic resourcess and geographical indications. He is a Fellow of Australia's Academy of the Social Sciences.

#2566

Bernadette McSherry

#103242

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Bernadette McSherry is a lawyer, writer and Emeritus Professor at the University of Melbourne. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law and a Commissioner with the Victorian Law Reform Commission.

#2567

Colleen M. Flood

#56971

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Colleen M. Flood is the Dean of Queen's University Faculty of Law. Prior to this, Dr. Flood was a Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa and University Research Chair in Health Law and Policy. She is also the Director for the University of Ottawa Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics. In addition, Flood served as a Professor at the University of Toronto and Scientific Director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

#2568

Nick Xenophon

#48476

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Nick Xenophon is an Australian politician and lawyer who was a Senator for South Australia from 2008 to 2017. He was the leader of two political parties: Nick Xenophon Team federally, and Nick Xenophon's SA-BEST in South Australia.

#2569

Richard Leo

#102500

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Richard A. Leo is the Hamill Family Professor of Law and Psychology at the University of San Francisco School of Law, and a Fellow in the Institute for Legal Research at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. He previously taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder from 1994 to 1997, and at the University of California, Irvine from 1997 to 2006. He is known for his research on police interrogation practices, false confessions, and wrongful convictions. He was elected as a Guggenheim fellow in 2011 and was a fellow of the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science...

#2570

John J. Cound

#129632

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

John "Jack" James Cound , is an American legal scholar, an expert in civil procedure. For 35 years he was a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he taught admiralty, civil procedure, complex litigation, conflict of laws, evidence, federal courts, and professional responsibility.

#2571

John Michael Finnis

#143280

Overall Influence

#2572

Diether Lambrechts

#80206

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Diether Lambrechts is a Belgian geneticist and professor at the KU Leuven and VIB. He is the director of the Vesalius Research Center. Lambrechts is known for his multidisciplinary approach to dissecting tumor biology. Major scientific contributions include identifying oxygen supply regulation as an anti-cancer treatment strategy.

#2573

Yaprak Baltacioğlu

#49330

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Yaprak Baltacioğlu is a retired Canadian public servant, lawyer, and professor. She has held senior leadership positions in the Canadian public service, serving as Secretary of the Treasury Board from 2012 to 2018. Baltacioğlu retired from the public service in 2018, and was appointed as the twelfth Chancellor of Carleton University in 2018. She is also on the faculty at the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto where she teaches graduate courses.

#2574

Lisa L. Barnes

#143497

Overall Influence

#2575

Sonia Katyal

#125680

Overall Influence

Sonia Katyal is an American legal scholar, professor, and Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Research at UC Berkeley School of Law. Before coming to Berkeley, Katyal was Joseph M. McLaughlin Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law. Among other topics, her scholarship has focused on racism in consumer branding, the intersection of technology, intellectual property, and civil rights, as well as gender and sexual orientation.

#2576

Jürgen Rüttgers

#58161

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Jürgen Rüttgers is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union who served as the 9th Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia from 2005 to 2010. Education Rüttgers was born in Cologne. He holds degrees in Law and History from the University of Cologne and a Dr. Jur. in Law . He became a member of K.D.St. V. Rappoltstein Köln, a Catholic student fraternity that is member of the Cartellverband.

#2577

Joseph Marko

#101184

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Joseph Marko is an Austrian legal scholar and political scientist. Education and career Marko completed his studies in law and English at the Karl-Franzens-University in Graz with a Dr. jur. and a MA in English translational sciences in 1977. After post-graduate studies in political sciences and sociology at the University of Munich, he returned to Graz, filling the position of an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law. In 1994, Marko earned a Doctorate of Science for Austrian and Comparative Public Law, the Theory of State and Law and Political Sciences and became Associate Professor.

#2578

Anthony Ogus

#107197

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Anthony Ian Ogus is an emeritus professor of law at the University of Manchester and the Erasmus University Rotterdam and a pre-eminent scholar in the field of regulation and economic analysis of law. He also writes and lectures on opera, and records English literature for LibriVox.

#2579

Caroline Humfress

#78085

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Caroline Humfress, FRHS, FSLS, is a legal historian who is professor at the University of St Andrews and a former Director of its Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research. In 2020 she was appointed L. Bates Lea Global Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School , where she teaches on the history of the Civil Law tradition.

#2580

Patrick Borchers

#70471

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Patrick J. Borchers is a lawyer, university administrator and politician from the state of Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. He is a member of the faculty of the Creighton University School of Law in the city of Omaha. In 2016, he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Nebraska legislature. Borchers is a member of the Democratic Party.

#2581

Kingsley Moghalu

#55578

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu OON is a Nigerian political economist. He served as Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, appointed by President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, from 2009 to 2014. He subsequently taught at Tufts University as Professor of Practice in International Business and Public Policy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy from 2015 to 2017. He was the presidential candidate of the Young Progressive Party in the country's general election in February 2019.

#2582

Robert Towne

#44220

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Robert Towne is an American screenwriter and director. He started with writing films for Roger Corman including The Tomb of Ligeia . Later, he was a part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking. He wrote the Academy Award-winning original screenplay for Roman Polanski's Chinatown , which is widely considered one of the greatest screenplays. Towne also wrote the sequel, The Two Jakes , and the Hal Ashby comedy-dramas The Last Detail and Shampoo . He has collaborated with Tom Cruise on the films Days of Thunder , The Firm and the first two installments of Mission: Impossible franchise .

#2583

Maxime Bernier

#44535

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Maxime Bernier is a Canadian politician who is the founder and leader of the People's Party of Canada . Formerly a member of the Conservative Party, Bernier left the caucus in 2018 to form the PPC. He was the member of Parliament for Beauce from 2006 to 2019 and served as a Cabinet minister in the Harper government.

#2584

Dale Carpenter

#115092

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Dale Carpenter is an American legal commentator and Professor of Law at the SMU Dedman School of Law. He formerly served as the Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law at the University of Minnesota Law School for sixteen years. As a professor, Carpenter specializes in constitutional law, the First Amendment, Due Process and Equal Protection clauses, sexual orientation and the law, and commercial law.

#2585

Leora Bilsky

#103526

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Leora Y. Bilsky is an Israeli full professor at the Faculty of Law, and the Director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights, both at Tel Aviv University. Education In 1991, she was a law clerk for Honorable Justice Aharon Barak of the Supreme Court of Israel. She passed the Israel Bar Association in 1992 and subsequently joined the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Association for Israeli Studies.

#2586

Charles Black

#118325

Overall Influence

1915 - 2001 (86 years)

Charles Lund Black Jr. was an American scholar of constitutional law, which he taught as professor of law from 1947 to 1999. He is best known for his role in the historic Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case, as well as for his Impeachment: A Handbook, which served for many Americans as a trustworthy analysis of the law of impeachment during the Watergate scandal.

#2587

Tom Chambers

#104718

Overall Influence

1943 - 2013 (70 years)

Tom Chambers was an American lawyer who served as an associate justice of the Washington Supreme Court from 2000 to 2012. Early life and education Chambers grew up in Yakima, where he worked at his father's automobile repair garage. He graduated from Wapato High School in 1962, and then attended Yakima Valley Community College. In 1966, he graduated with a B.A. degree from Washington State University, and in 1969 received a J.D. degree from the University of Washington School of Law. Father of Jolie, Jana and Tom Chambers. Grandfather of Zariya, Taliya, Siyana, Alanna, Spencer, and Rylee.

#2588

Phillip Areeda

#123519

Overall Influence

1930 - 1995 (65 years)

Phillip Elias Areeda was an American legal scholar known for his scholarship on U.S. antitrust law. Areeda was a law professor at Harvard University from 1961 until his death in 1995. Life and career Areeda was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1930. He was of Lebanese ancestry. He studied economics at Harvard University, graduating in 1951 with an A.B. summa cum laude. He then attended the Harvard Law School, becoming an editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduating in 1954 with an LL.B. summa cum laude.

#2589

Peter Capaldi

#28839

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Peter Dougan Capaldi is a Scottish actor and director. He portrayed the twelfth incarnation of the Doctor in the science fiction series Doctor Who and Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It , for which he received four British Academy Television Award nominations, winning Best Male Comedy Performance in 2010. When he reprised the role of Tucker in the feature film In the Loop, Capaldi was honoured with several film critic award nominations for Best Supporting Actor.

#2590

Henri Wassenbergh

#124646

Overall Influence

1924 - 2014 (90 years)

Henry Abraham Wassenbergh , known to his friends and colleagues as "Or" Wassenbergh, was a Dutch academic, professor of law, and writer. Wassenbergh earned a law degree from the University of Amsterdam in 1950. He studied international law at the Sorbonne and at the Institute of Higher International Studies in Paris, France; and continued his studies in the Netherlands, earning a doctorate from the University of Leiden in 1957.

#2591

Renée Sarojini Saklikar

#48525

Overall Influence

Renée Sarojini Saklikar is an Indian-born Canadian lawyer, poet and author. Raised in New Westminster in Greater Vancouver, she married Adrian Dix. Rob Taylor of Prism International wrote in 2013 that "If you've spent much time in Vancouver's literary community, you've probably heard of, or run into, Renée Saklikar."

#2592

Michael Meltsner

#103404

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Michael Meltsner is an American lawyer, the George J. and Kathleen Waters Matthews distinguished University Professor of law at Northeastern University School of Law and author. Meltsner was educated at Oberlin College and the Yale Law School.

#2593

Erika Feller

#69978

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Erika Elizabeth Feller is an Australian academic, diplomat and lawyer. From 2006 to 2013, she was Assistant High Commissioner for Protection with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. She is currently the Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Melbourne.

#2594

Partha Mitra

#60963

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Partha Pratim Mitra is an Indian-American neuroscientist and computer scientist. He is the Crick-Clay Professor of Bioinformatics at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Mitra currently holds the H.N. Mahabala Distinguished Chair in Computational Brain Research at IIT Madras and he is a Senior Visiting Researcher at RIKEN, Tokyo, Japan.

#2595

Simone Mocellin

#145263

Overall Influence

#2596

Dámaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer

#63003

Overall Influence

1949 - 2009 (60 years)

Dámaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer was a Spanish jurist, judge at the Consejo General del Poder Judicial and the head of the Private Office of the President of the Consejo General del Poder Judicial. He also served as an ad hoc judge to the European Court of Human Rights and a judge at the Tribunal Supremo from 1996. He was an Advocate General at the European Court of Justice from January 1995 until his death in November 2009.

#2597

Charles Dalfen

#75157

Overall Influence

1943 - 2009 (66 years)

Charles Marvin "Chuck" Dalfen was the chairperson of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission serving from January 1, 2002, to the end of his term on December 31, 2006. Born in Montreal, Quebec, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1964 from McGill University, a Bachelor of Philosophy degree from the University of Oxford in 1964, and a law degree from the University of Ottawa in 1969. He was called to the Quebec Bar in 1970.

#2598

Mariana Valverde

#60056

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Mariana Valverde is a Canadian criminologist and sociologist. She is currently a professor in the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research mainly focuses on the sociology of law. She is also an occasional contributor to Spacing magazine.

#2599

Rebecca Dresser

#84436

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Rebecca S. Dresser is an American legal scholar and medical ethicist. Dresser earned a bachelor of arts degree in psychology and sociology at Indiana University Bloomington in 1973, followed by a master's of science in education at the same institution in 1975. She then graduated from Harvard Law School in 1979. She began teaching at the Washington University in St. Louis in 1983, was appointed Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law, and granted emeritus status upon retirement. Between 1992 and 1993, Dresser returned to Harvard as faculty fellow of the Safra Center for Ethics.

#2600

Kathryn C. Davis

#66113

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Kathryn Celia Davis is an American lawyer who serves as a judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims. Education Davis earned a Bachelor of Science from Boston University and a Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the Temple University Beasley School of Law.

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