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,

#2951

Scott Brady

#118031

Overall Influence

Scott W. Brady is an American attorney who was the United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania from 2017 to 2021. Before becoming the U.S. Attorney, he was the head of litigation for Federated Investors. Brady was previously an Assistant United States Attorney in Pittsburgh, from 2004 to 2010, where he prosecuted white collar crime, violent crime and drug trafficking offenses. He was also an associate at Jones Day and at Reed Smith, where his practice focused on multi-district litigation, white collar criminal matters and internal investigations. Brady is an adjunct faculty...

#2952

Martha Ertman

#152360

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Martha Ertman is an American US law professor. She is the Carole & Hanan Sibel Research Professor of Law at the University of Maryland's Francis King Carey School of Law. She is an expert in family law and writes about contracts within relationships using her own family of three parents and a child as an example.

#2953

David Tan

#143242

Overall Influence

David Tan is a Singaporean law professor at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. He was the Vice Dean of Academic Affairs from January 2015 to June 2021. His legal scholarship covers intellectual and intangible property law. He is also a fine art and fashion photographer, with exhibitions presented by Cartier and Versace.

#2954

William Hawkland

#121184

Overall Influence

1920 - 2004 (84 years)

William Dennis Hawkland was Chancellor of Louisiana State University from 1979 to 1989. Hawkland was also the holder of a Boyd Professorship at LSU. A noted scholar of commercial transaction law and banking law, Hawkland graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1947, and subsequently received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Minnesota in 2005. He additionally taught law at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and was given the Homer Kripke Achievement Award by the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers in 1997. He served as Dean ...

#2955

Nasser Katouzian

Nasser Katouzian

#100546

Overall Influence

1927 - 2014 (87 years)

Nasser Katouzian was an Iranian jurist, lawyer and emeritus at the University of Tehran. Katouzian was regarded a prominent national figure and was a member of the committee in charge of writing a draft for the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, along with Hassan Habibi, Ja'fari-Langeroudi, Nasser Minachi and Ahmad Sayyed Javadi. He then ran for an Assembly of Experts for Constitution seat from Tehran constituency, however he was not elected. Katouzian was purged during Iranian Cultural Revolution and removed from his professorship position. Later, he was invited to assume his own...

#2956

Stuart S. Malawer

Stuart S. Malawer

#150313

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Stuart Malawer is an international trade lawyer, and distinguished service professor of law at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government. He was a founding faculty member of both the Antonin Scalia Law School and Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

#2957

David Dyzenhaus

#149120

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Professor David Dyzenhaus is a South African-born, Canadian jurist who is currently Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Toronto, holding the Albert Abel Chair of Law. Early life Born in Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa, Dyzenhaus was educated at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he studied for his Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degrees. He attained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Oxford.

#2958

Michael Bakalis

#91598

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Michael J. Bakalis is an American academic and politician. He was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Illinois in 1978, losing to incumbent Republican Governor James R. Thompson. Bakalis received his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from Northwestern University in 1959, 1962, and 1966, respectively. His academic career includes service as assistant dean at Northern Illinois University, dean of the School of Education at Loyola University Chicago, and as the President of Triton College. He has also been a member of the faculty at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at North...

#2959

Joseph Peter Kinneary

#137402

Overall Influence

1905 - 2003 (98 years)

Joseph Peter Kinneary was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. The Joseph P. Kinneary U.S. Courthouse in Downtown Columbus is named for him.

#2960

Whiquitta Tobar

#104817

Overall Influence

Whiquitta "Kee" Tobar is an American lawyer, podcaster, and a former college basketball player at Alabama A&M University. In 2012, Tobar was named the Southwestern Athletic Conference Player of the Year.

#2961

Charles Colson

#79006

Overall Influence

1931 - 2012 (81 years)

Charles Wendell Colson , generally referred to as Chuck Colson, was an American attorney and political advisor who served as Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1970. Once known as President Nixon's "hatchet man", Colson gained notoriety at the height of the Watergate scandal, for being named as one of the Watergate Seven, and also for pleading guilty to obstruction of justice for attempting to defame Pentagon Papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg. In 1974, he served seven months in the federal Maxwell Prison in Alabama, as the first member of the Nixon administration to be inca...

#2962

D. John Sauer

#100160

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Dean John Sauer is an American lawyer who previously served as Solicitor General of Missouri and Deputy Attorney General for Special Litigation in the U.S. state of Missouri. Education Sauer graduated from Saint Louis Priory School, a Catholic secondary day school for boys in Creve Coeur, suburban St. Louis, Missouri, run by the Benedictine monks of Saint Louis Abbey. Sauer received his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and his Bachelor of Science in Engineering in electrical engineering from Duke University. He earned a Master of Arts in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and was a Rhodes Scholar at University of Oxford, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in theology.

#2963

Julia Tolmie

#172342

Overall Influence

Julia Rowena Tolmie is a New Zealand legal academic, and as of 2018 is a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career After a Bachelor of Laws degree at the University of Auckland and a Master of Laws at Harvard University, Tolmie returned to the University of Auckland, rising to full professor. Registered with the bar in New Zealand and New South Wales, Australia, Tolmie has served on a number of domestic violence-related bodies. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2022.

#2964

Christopher Green

#59742

Overall Influence

Christopher R. Green is an American legal scholar who is a professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law also holding the James L. Whitten Chair of Law and Government. Prior to joining the law school he practiced law with Phelps Dunbar in Jackson, Mississippi, specializing in appellate litigation, and clerked for Judge Rhesa Barksdale of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Green teaches Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Federal Jurisdiction, Constitutional Law Seminar, Real Estate Transactions, and Commercial Paper.

#2965

Sudhir Srivastava

#49428

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Sudhir Srivastava is chief of the Cancer Biomarkers Research Group of the Division of Cancer Prevention at the United States NCI. Srivastava has held this position since 2000. He is a co-author of the Bethesda Guidelines for the diagnosis of Hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer .

#2966

George Siedel

#136783

Overall Influence

George J. Siedel is an American author and professor on the faculty at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, where he is the Williamson Family Professor of Business Administration and the Thurnau Professor of Business Law. He is known for his research on proactive law, negotiation, and alternative dispute resolution, and for his work in the development of MOOCs .

#2967

Ross Garber

#145569

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Ross H. Garber is an American lawyer, professor, and legal analyst. He provides on-air commentary for CNN and teaches Political Investigations and Impeachment at Tulane Law School. He is considered a legal expert in the field of political investigations and impeachment. He is a former partner in the law firm Shipman & Goodwin and a contributing author to Ethical Standards in the Public Sector.

#2968

John Young

#83306

Overall Influence

1919 - 2008 (89 years)

Sir John McIntosh Young , was an Australian jurist. He was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria , the Lieutenant-Governor of Victoria , and the Chief Scout of Australia . John Young was born in Melbourne to Scottish immigrant parents, George David Young shipping agent and his wife Kathleen Mildred. He went to Geelong Grammar School, and then to Oxford. On the day after the Second World War broke out in September 1939 he joined the Horse Cavalry, then after officer training at Royal Military College, Sandhurst he asked to be transferred to the Scots Guards . He was mentioned in despatches after heavy fighting in Germany.

#2969

Stephen Sugarman

#113872

Overall Influence

Stephen D. Sugarman was the Roger J. Traynor Professor of Law at the UC Berkeley School of Law, where he taught since 1972. He was the associate dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law from 1980 to 1982, and then again from 2004 to 2009. At UC Berkeley, he taught multiple classes in the social justice curriculum, including classes on torts and sports law.

#2970

Ian C. Ballon

#79790

Overall Influence

Ian Ballon is an American Internet and intellectual property litigator, author of books on Internet law and Executive Director of Stanford University Law School's Center for E-Commerce. He is the author of the 4-volume legal treatise, E-Commerce and Internet Law: Treatise with Forms 2d edition, the leading legal reference book on Internet law, which was first published in 2000. A second edition was published in 2008 and is updated annually. He is also an intellectual property litigator with Greenberg Traurig LLP, a firm of approximately 1800 lawyers.

#2971

Jennifer J. Johnson

#117138

Overall Influence

Jennifer J. Johnson is an American legal scholar and academic administrator who has worked as the dean of the Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, since 2014. Johnson specializes in business and securities law.

#2972

Bradley J. Bondi

#123454

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Bradley J. Bondi is an American lawyer, law professor, and partner at Paul Hastings LLP, where he is the Global Co-Chair of the firm's Investigations and White Collar Defense practice. He has also served on the executive staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission and was appointed to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis to investigate its causes.

#2973

Anders Levermann

Anders Levermann

#50095

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Anders Levermann is a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Columbia University. He is a Professor of the Dynamics of the Climate System at Institute for Physics and Astrophysics of the Potsdam University, Germany. He has been involved in the assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 2004 . Levermann advises political and economic stakeholders on the issue of climate change.

#2974

Elizabeth Weeks Leonard

#97787

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Weeks Leonard is an American lawyer, who is currently the J. Alton Hosch Professor at University of Georgia.

#2975

Josef Aschbacher

#39244

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Josef Aschbacher is Director General of the European Space Agency , a position he has held since 1 March 2021. His international career in space combines more than 35 years' of experience at ESA, the European Commission, the Austrian Space Agency, the Asian Institute of Technology and the University of Innsbruck.

#2976

Elizabeth F. Emens

#166099

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Elizabeth F. Emens is an American legal scholar and an Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia University. She specializes in anti-discrimination law, disability law, law and sexuality, family law, and contract law. She is the author of Life Admin: How I Learned to Do Less, Do Better, and Live More , published in the UK as The Art of Life Admin: How to Do Less, Do It Better, and Live More .

#2977

Andrew Mead

#150838

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Andrew M. Mead is a justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court since 2007. His current term expires in 2021. Mead attended the University of Maine and New York Law School. He has been a member of the Bangor law firms of Paine, Lynch & Weatherbee and Mitchell & Stearns. He is a past President of the Maine State Bar Association. He was appointed to the Maine District Court in 1990 and the Maine Superior Court in 1992. He served as chief justice of the Maine Superior Court from 1999 to 2001. He was appointed to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in 2007. He has served as judicial liaison to the Maine Rules of Evidence Advisory Committee and chaired the Task Force on Electronic Court Records.

#2978

Julie Underwood

#55829

Overall Influence

Julie K. Underwood is a former dean of the University of Wisconsin School of Education and is the first woman to lead UW's School of Education as dean. She served in her role as dean of UW's School of Education from August 2005 to July 2015.

#2979

Liliana Ortega

#92864

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Liliana Ortega is a Venezuelan professor, and human rights lawyer and advocate. Her work as a human rights defender has earned her several awards, including the Ordre national du Mérite. Biography Liliana Ortega Mendoza was born in Caracas in 1965. She is the founder and executive director of the Comité de Familiares de Víctimas del Caracazo . Cofavic is a non-governmental organization that works for the protection and promotion of human rights, independent of any partisan and religious doctrine or institution; it is a non-profit civil association. Her work focuses on the victims associated with Caracazo.

#2980

Bruno Ninaber van Eyben

#151942

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Bruno Ninaber van Eyben is a Dutch jewellery and industrial designer. He designed the last series of Dutch guilder coins and the obverse side of all circulating Dutch euro coins. Personal life Bruno Ninaber van Eyben is born on 3 November 1950 in Boxtel in the Netherlands. He currently lives in Delft.

#2981

Jun Won-tchack

#121778

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Jun Won-tchack is a South Korean lawyer, writer and broadcaster. He is well known for holding right-wing political views. He was born in Ulsan, South Korea. He served in the military as a lawyer and was discharged as a colonel.

#2982

Keith Bowman

#108489

Overall Influence

Keith John Bowman is a materials scientist and dean of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County College of Engineering and Information Technology, working to advance research benefiting society and elevating student educational success. He is a Fellow of The American Ceramic Society. Bowman has worked extensively to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion across engineering disciplines and the science, technology, engineering, and math pipeline. He is a member of 500 Queer Scientists. He is internationally recognized for his research on the property anisotropy and preferred orientation i...

#2983

Lawrence C. Bank

#80266

Overall Influence

Lawrence C. Bank is the associate provost for research at The City College of New York and a professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the Grove School of Engineering. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Wisconsin and the District of Columbia. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, as well as a Fellow and currently President of the International Institute for FRP Composites in Construction. Prior to joining CCNY, Bank was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Catholic University of America and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

#2984

Gerald Blidstein

#107279

Overall Influence

1938 - 2020 (82 years)

Gerald Blidstein was professor emeritus of Jewish philosophy at Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He was the Israel Prize laureate in Jewish philosophy and had been a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences since 2007.

#2985

Beatrice Crona

#140335

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Beatrice Crona is an ecologist, a professor at Stockholm University, and the Executive Director of the Program on Global Economic Dynamics and the Biosphere at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 2023 she became a Science Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

#2986

Loretta Kelly

#149924

Overall Influence

Loretta Kelly is an Australian Aboriginal law academic, specialising in Aboriginal dispute resolution. She is of Gumbaynggirr and Dungutti descent and has traditional land at Corindi. She is currently a senior lecturer at Southern Cross University.

#2987

Judit Sándor

#113359

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Judit Sándor is a Hungarian lawyer, bioethicist, and author, as well as full professor at the Department of Political Science, Department of Legal Studies and the Department of Gender Studies of the Central European University , Budapest. She had a bar exam in Hungary before she conducted legal practice at Simmons & Simmons in London. In 1996 she received Ph.D. in law and political science at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

#2988

Katherine A. Hoadley

#144986

Overall Influence

Katherine A. Hoadley is an American breast cancer researcher. , she has served as the Associate Director of Cancer Genomics for the High-Throughput Sequencing Facility at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her research is focused on understanding the biology of cancer through gene expression analyses and integrative genomic approaches.

#2989

Thomas K. Clancy

#146547

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Thomas Kevin Clancy is an American legal educator and lawyer. He is a professor emeritus at the University of Mississippi School of Law and lectures nationally on cyber crime and the Fourth Amendment, which regulates governmental searches and seizures. He previously served as the director of the National Center for Justice and the Rule of Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law, where he was a research professor. He took emeritus status on July 1, 2014. Clancy received his B.A. from the University of Notre Dame, and is a graduate of Vermont Law School.

#2990

Arthur Taylor von Mehren

#159145

Overall Influence

1922 - 2006 (84 years)

Arthur Taylor von Mehren was an American professor at Harvard Law School and a scholar of international law. Early life and education Von Mehren was born in 1922 in Albert Lea, Minnesota. He was the identical twin brother of Robert von Mehren.

#2991

Moya Bowler

#38058

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Moya Bowler is an English shoe designer who rose to prominence in the 1960s. She had considerable success in both the UK and US fashion markets, designing both high-end and high-street shoes. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, she was among a crop of designers subsequently described by fashion writer and editor Brenda Polan as the "annus mirabilis", since so many of them went on to carve highly successful careers in fashion. Although she was among the stars of the 1960s avant-garde boutique scene, Bowler was also highly commercial – producing designs for high-street chains such as Lilley & Skinner while she was still a student.

#2992

Larry Kwak

#44224

Overall Influence

Larry Kwak is an American cancer researcher who works at City of Hope in Duarte, California and is the Director of the Toni Stephenson Lymphoma Center at City of Hope. Dr. Kwak formerly worked at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He was included on Time's list of 2010's most influential people.

#2993

Paul K. Ryu

#164646

Overall Influence

1915 - 1998 (83 years)

Paul K. Ryu is a South Korean-American legal scholar. Ryu served as the ninth president of Seoul National University and the sixth dean of Seoul National University School of Law. Education Ryu graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1943 and received his P.h.D. from Yale Law School in 1958.

#2994

Agnieszka Klonowiecka-Milart

#163843

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Agnieszka Klonowiecka-Milart is a Polish judge and member of the United Nations Dispute Tribunal. She was formerly a judge of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and Supreme Court of Kosovo. Klonowiecka-Milart graduated from law at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University . Between 1982 and 1991 she worked there as a lecturer, specializing in criminal law, criminal procedure and human rights law. Following her work as an associate judge at the District Court in Opole Lubelskie since 1991, in 1994 she became judge of the District Court in Lublin. Two years later, she was promoted to the Provincial Court in Lublin.

#2995

Clare McGlynn

#163343

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Clare Mary Smith McGlynn is a Professor of Law at Durham University in the UK. She specialises in the legal regulation of pornography, image-based sexual abuse , cyberflashing, online abuse, violence against women, and gender equality in the legal profession. In 2020, she was appointed an Honorary KC in recognition of her work on women's equality in the legal profession and shaping new criminal laws on extreme pornography and image-based sexual abuse. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Lund University, Sweden, in 2018 in recognition of the international impact of her research on sexual violence and she is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

#2996

René Barents

#115013

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

René Barents is a Dutch European Union law scholar. He has been a judge at the General Court since 19 September 2016. He previously served as a judge on the European Union Civil Service Tribunal from 2011 until 2016

#2997

Thór Vilhjálmsson

#141349

Overall Influence

1930 - 2015 (85 years)

Thór Vilhjálmsson was an Icelandic jurist who served as judge and president of the Court of Justice of the European Free Trade Association States. Prior to his tenure on the EFTA Court, he served as a judge of the European Court of Human Rights, as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Iceland, and as president of the Association of Icelandic Lawyers.

#2998

Arturo Hernández

#158340

Overall Influence

Arturo Luis Hernández González is a Puerto Rican attorney who was a gubernatorial candidate in the 2012 Puerto Rican election for the Movimiento Unión Soberanista. Hernández also presided the Bar Association of Puerto Rico from 2008 to 2012.

#2999

James Harris

#96612

Overall Influence

1940 - 2004 (64 years)

James W. Harris FBA was a British solicitor, academic and professor of law at Keble College, University of Oxford. He was born in Southwark, England and he became blind at the age of four. Harris attended the Linton Lodge School and Royal Worcester College until 1959 when he began studying at Wadham College at Oxford. He was a brilliant student, and gifted in athletics including rowing and riding.

#3000

Jocelyn Downie

#122638

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Jocelyn Grant Downie is the James S. Palmer Chair in Public Policy and Law at Schulich School of Law. She was the first Dalhousie scholar to be named a Pierre Trudeau Foundation Fellow. Early life and education While studying at Queen's University, Downie volunteered at Kingston General Hospital as a candy striper. While there, she saw an advertisement for palliative care volunteers and trained to become one. After earning her Bachelor of Arts and Master's degree, Downie earned her M.Litt at the University of Cambridge. Upon her return to Canada, Downie accepted a position as a research asso...

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