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,

#3551

John R. Rosenberg

#72813

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

John R. Rosenberg is currently the Washington Irving Professor of Spanish and American Relations at Brigham Young University . Rosenberg holds bachelor's and master's degrees from BYU and master's and PhD degrees from Cornell University.

#3552

David Luff

#186221

Overall Influence

David Luff is a professor at Université Libre de Bruxelles, and visiting professor at the College of Europe, He is a partner in the international law firm Appleton Luff. He also teaches at the MGIMO University in Moscow and the University Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo. He has also held visiting appointments in Italy , India, China, Vietnam, and Switzerland.

#3553

Masao Ito

#18781

Overall Influence

1928 - 2018 (90 years)

was a Japanese neuroscientist, and director of the Riken Brain Science Institute. Overviews Masao Ito was the main force behind Japanese neuroscience and its international recognition for many years. He was very active in the International Brain Research Organisation and went on to establish the Federation of Asian-Oceanian Neuroscience Societies in an effort to join together East Asian neuroscientists and facilitate interactions without dependence on American/European influences. This organisation is still active and acts in concert with IBRO's own Asia-Pacific Regional Committee which was set up in 1999.

#3554

Charles Repole

#188283

Overall Influence

Charles Repole is an American actor, theater director, and college professor. Repole made his Broadway debut in Very Good Eddie in 1975, earning a Tony Award nomination and a Theatre World Award for his performance. Additional Broadway credits include the 1979 revival of Whoopee!, which garnered him a Drama Desk Award nomination, Doubles , and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , which he directed.

#3555

Oscar Holmes

#91556

Overall Influence

1916 - 2001 (85 years)

Oscar Wayman Holmes was an American naval aviator in World War II and civilian flight controller, the first African-American in each position. Biography Holmes graduated from Garnet High School in Charleston, West Virginia, in 1932, West Virginia State College in 1936 with a B.S. and Ohio State University the following year with a master's degree in chemistry. He taught chemistry for three years at Claflin College, a historically black school in Orangeburg, South Carolina. In 1940, he went to work for the Erie Lighting Company in Erie, Pennsylvania, as a chemical analyst.

#3556

Tucker Viemeister

#66968

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Tucker L. Viemeister is an American industrial designer, and founder of Viemeister Industries in New York. Tucker helped found many important design businesses: Smart Design, frog design's New York studio, Razorfish's physical design group, Springtime-USA, and was chief of the lab at the Rockwell Group.

#3557

Luz Bulnes

#184638

Overall Influence

1927 - 2019 (92 years)

Luz Bulnes Aldunate was a Chilean lawyer who was a member of the Constitutional Court.

#3558

Waldron Fox-Decent

#125739

Overall Influence

1937 - 2019 (82 years)

Rear-Admiral Norman Waldron "Wally" Fox-Decent was a Canadian professor, mediator and advisor on constitutional issues and labour relations. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, he received a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1959 and a Master of Arts in 1971 from the University of Manitoba. From 1962 to 1995, he was professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba.

#3559

Lynda Grose

#100002

Overall Influence

Lynda Grose is a designer in fashion and sustainability, educator, and consultant known for her pioneering work in sustainable fashion design. Career In 1990 Grose co-founded Esprit's e-collection division, a five-year research and development project marketed in 13 countries, which is cited "as the first ecologically responsible clothing line developed by a major corporation" and in doing so, Grose "set pioneering standards for the textile industry". Her Ecollection was founded in response to Esprit's company-wide focus on environmental awareness, begun by Esprit co-founder Doug Tompkins. G...

#3560

Christine Lee

#63609

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Christine Lee is an English medical researcher. She is Emerita Professor of Haemophilia at the University of London, and founding Editor of Haemophilia. She trained in medicine at Somerville College, Oxford, where she was awarded First Class Honours and was the first female scholar of the Oxford University Medical School. She was awarded a Doctorate of Science by the University of London in 1996.

#3561

Gregg Polsky

#191952

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Gregg Polsky is an American lawyer currently the Francis Schackelford Professor of Taxation Law at University of Georgia.

#3562

Joe Odom

#178771

Overall Influence

1948 - 1991 (43 years)

Joseph Algerine Odom was an American attorney who later became a musician. He came to prominence after his appearance as one of the main characters in John Berendt's true-crime book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, although he died three years before its publication.

#3563

Amy Landers

#191983

Overall Influence

Amy L. Landers is an American lawyer, currently at Drexel University and formerly a Distinguished Professor at University of the Pacific.

#3564

Lothar Binding

#109935

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Lothar Binding is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany who served as a member of the Bundestag from the 1998 until 2021. Early life Binding was born in Sandershausen. After his apprenticeship as a heavy- current electrician he graduated Hesse College in 1972. Following his national civil service as a nurse's helper he studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at the universities of Heidelberg and Tübingen. In 1981 he obtained a Diplom degree in mathematics and physics at Ruprecht Karl University Heidelberg.

#3565

Juanita Tamayo Lott

#142963

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Juanita Tamayo Lott is a Filipina-American author and activist. A chronicler of the Filipino experience in America, Lott has authored several popular and scholarly works on Asian Americans. She has also contributed to the establishment of several Asian American studies departments. As a college student in 1969, Lott co-founded the first U.S. Filipino American Studies Program at San Francisco State; in 2007, she developed the Filipino American Studies Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. Trained as a statistician and demographer, she spent her career as a policy analyst for the...

#3566

Bernard Edelman

#83921

Overall Influence

1938 - 2020 (82 years)

Bernard Edelman was a French jurist, philosopher, and lawyer. Biography Edelman worked as a lawyer and was a specialist in literary and artistic property as well as copyright. He also served as a lecturer at the École normale supérieure, the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, and Sciences Po. His expertise in philosophy caused him to focus on simplicity and humanity, enabling him to meet intellectuals from many different countries. He published his first novel, Verticon, in 2017.

#3567

William A. Beeton Jr.

#191916

Overall Influence

1943 - 2002 (59 years)

William Arthur Beeton, Jr. was an American attorney and Republican politician. In 1981, he was elected alongside Charles R. Hawkins and Kenneth E. Calvert to the Virginia House of Delegates, but a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found the state's multi-member districts to violated the equal protection clause and ordered that new elections take place the following year. Beeton was defeated in the 1982 22nd district Republican primary by Joseph P. Crouch. He moved to northern Virginia, practiced law, and served as chairman of the board of directors of Wakefield Country Day School.

#3568

Anne Ormisson

#180217

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Anne Ormisson is an Estonian medical researcher and pediatrician. Biography Anne Tampere was born on 19 November 1942 in Tartu, Estonia and is the second child of a four-child family of Vanemuine orchestra player Arnold and a music school teacher Helene. She graduated school in 1961 from Tartu 7th Secondary School. She graduated University of Tartu in 1967 and was sent to Võru hospital as a paediatrician. She later moved to Viljandi where she met and married Toivo Ormisson, and her daughter Liis and a son Niil were born. In 1971, she started working as a researcher at the Department of Pediat...

#3569

Mirza Hashem Eshkevari

#133270

Overall Influence

Mirza Hashem Eshkevari was a Shi'a philosopher, jurist and mystic. He is one of the most important pupils of Agha Muhammad reza Qomshehi and his mystical school. Early life He was born in Eshkevar at Gilan. Eshkevar had given rise to scientists such as Qutb Al Din Eshkevari and Sayyed Abul Qasem Eshkevari. He was born there in 1250 Hijra lunar. His family lineage goes back to the regress of Sadat.

#3570

Barbara A. Bintliff

#192130

Overall Influence

Barbara A. Bintliff was the Joseph C. Hutcheson Professor and Director of the Tarlton Law Library/Jamail Center for Legal Research at University of Texas School of Law, and was previously the Nicholas Rosenbaum Professor of Law and Director of the William A. Wise Law Library at University of Colorado.

#3571

Mary Berkheiser

#192145

Overall Influence

Mary E. Berkheiser is an American lawyer, currently the Joyce Mack Professor of Law at William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

#3572

Casey R. Luskin

#192163

Overall Influence

Casey Luskin (born February 9, 1978) is an American scientist and an attorney with graduate degrees in science and law. He holds a PhD in Geology from the University of Johannesburg where his thesis focused on paleomagnetism and the early plate tectonic history of South Africa (”Paleomagnetism of the Nsuze Group of the Pongola Supergroup and Related Igneous Units: Implications for Mesoarchean Paleogeography of the Kaapvaal Craton, Southern Africa“). His B.S. and M.S. degrees in Earth Sciences are from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He earned a law degree from the University of...

#3573

Jr. Attorney General Eric H. Holder

#192179

Overall Influence

#3574

María Leoba Castañeda Rivas

María Leoba Castañeda Rivas

#192184

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

María Leoba Castañeda Rivas, a tenured University Professor in the UNAM Faculty of Law, earned her Master's Degree studying Electoral Institutions and Procedures of the Federal Electoral Institute , now the National Electoral Institute , in Mexico. She also studied a Specialty at the University of Castilla-La Mancha . After this, She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree by the Autonomous University of the State of Morelos .

#3575

Steve Nickles

#167087

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Steve Nickles is an American lawyer and known figure in his field, currently the C. C. Hope Chair in Law and Management and previously the Bess and Walter Williams Distinguished Professor of Law, at Wake Forest University. He was also the Roger F. Noreen Chair in Law at University of Minnesota.

#3576

David Monacchi

#181687

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

David Monacchi is an Italian sound artist, researcher and eco-acoustic composer, best known for his multidisciplinary project Fragments of Extinction, patented periphonic device, the Eco-Acoustic Theatre, and award-winning music and sound-art installations.

#3577

Leo Fraser

#192102

Overall Influence

1926 - 2013 (87 years)

Leo W. Fraser, Jr. was an American lawyer, businessman, and politician. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Fraser served in the United States Marine Corps 1944–1946. He then received his degree from Northeastern University and his law degree from the New England School of Law. He was a claim adjuster in Boston. In 1970 he moved to Pittsfield, New Hampshire, serving as the New Hampshire Insurance Commissioner. In 1976 he established Fraser Financial Services in Pittsfield. A Republican, he served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives from 1985 to 1991 and then in the New Hampshire State Senate from 1991 to 2002.

#3578

Alexander Jun

#109355

Overall Influence

Alexander Jun is an American academic and Presbyterian official. He is a professor of Higher Education at Azusa Pacific University, and former moderator of the Presbyterian Church in America. He was also the first-place winner of the 2020 Korean American ROAR Story Slam in Los Angeles, CA.

#3579

Peter Klinken

#120195

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Svend Peter Klinken is an Australian medical researcher and academic. He is currently the Chief Scientist of Western Australia. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in the June 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours.

#3580

Samuel B. Kazman

#192276

Overall Influence

#3581

Kenneth Walsh

#117122

Overall Influence

Kenneth Walsh is an American medical researcher specializing in the study of cardiovascular medicine. He is a professor of medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He was formerly a professor at Tufts University. Along with Mark T. Nelson, he succeeded David Julius in 2021 as the co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal the Annual Review of Physiology.

#3582

G. I. Lieftinck

#174539

Overall Influence

1902 - 1994 (92 years)

Gerard Isaäc Lieftinck , known in print as G.I. Lieftinck, was a Dutch academic specialising in medieval European manuscripts. Personal life The eldest of two boys and three girls, Lieftinck was born in Amsterdam in 1902 to Gerard Lieftinck , an entrepreneur and director of the tobacco brokerage J.H. Lieftinck & Son, and his wife Elisabeth Esser . He married twice, had two sons, and died in Deventer in 1994.

#3583

Jens Edvin A. Skoghøy

#192331

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Jens Edvin A. Skoghøy is a Norwegian judge. He hails from Ringvassøya. He graduated as cand.jur. at the University of Oslo in 1976 and took the dr.juris degree at the University of Tromsø in 1990. He subsequently became a professor there, and has also worked as a lawyer. He was appointed Supreme Court Justice in 1998, as one of the youngest ever. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. In early 2017 he resigned from the Supreme Court—the third to do so before the retirement age, after Oscar Christian Gundersen and Nina Frisak—to resume his professorship at the Universi...

#3584

Gladys Triveño

#137547

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Gladys Mónica Triveño Chan Jan is a Peruvian lawyer. She was Minister of Production, from 14 May 2012 until 24 February 2014. Biography She graduated of lawyer in the Pontificia Catholic University of the Peru in 1994 with a master's in Administration of Companies by the School of Businesses in Madrid, Spain. She also has a degree in Strategic Direction of Finances by the University of the Pacific.

#3585

Jacqueline Samuda

Jacqueline Samuda

#165606

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Jacqueline Samuda is a Canadian actress, director and writer. Biography Samuda was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and grew up in both the United States and Canada. She received a B.F.A. Degree in Performance from York University in Toronto, and apprenticed at the prestigious Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the Lake, Ontario. An experienced film/TV/stage/voice actress, Jacqueline has appeared in recurring roles on TV's Spooksville, The L Word and the epic sci-fi series Stargate SG-1 and in many other feature film, TV episodic and animation projects. She is a busy voiceover performer who has voiced many i...

#3586

Anne Brenon

#100753

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Annie Brenon, known as Anne Brenon is a French writer and historian, specialising in Catharism. She is the founder of Heresis, a review on Catharism and other medieval heresies and from 1982 to 1998 was director of the Centre national d'études cathares René-Nelli in Carcassonne.

#3587

Edin Velez

#114949

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Edin Velez is a Puerto Rican video artist, director and professor. He is best known for his work on the documentary films State of Rest and Motion and Dance of Darkness. Life and career Edin was born and raised in Puerto Rico and is currently based in New York. He studied painting at the University of Puerto Rico and the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. He moved to the US in the early 1970s and became part of the first generation of video artists working in SoHo, Manhattan. His directorial debut documentary film on Japanese Butoh, Dance of Darkness, was broadcast nationally in the US by PBS....

#3588

Carl Schmitt

1888 - 1985 (97 years)

Carl Schmitt was a German jurist, political theorist, and prominent member of the Nazi Party. Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. An authoritarian conservative theorist, he is noted as a critic of parliamentary democracy, liberalism, and cosmopolitanism. His work has been a major influence on subsequent political theory, legal theory, continental philosophy, and political theology, but its value and significance are controversial, mainly due to his intellectual support for and active involvement with Nazism.

#3589

William Blackstone

William Blackstone

1723 - 1780 (57 years)

Sir William Blackstone was an English jurist, justice and Tory politician most noted for his Commentaries on the Laws of England, which became the best-known description of the doctrines of the English common law. Born into a middle-class family in London, Blackstone was educated at Charterhouse School before matriculating at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1738. After switching to and completing a Bachelor of Civil Law degree, he was made a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, on 2 November 1743, admitted to Middle Temple, and called to the Bar there in 1746. Following a slow start to his caree...

#3590

John Austin

1790 - 1859 (69 years)

John Austin was an English legal theorist who posthumously influenced British and American law with an analytical approach to jurisprudence and a theory of legal positivism. Austin opposed traditional approaches of "natural law", arguing against any need for connections between law and morality. Human legal systems, he claimed, can and should be studied in an empirical, value-free way.

#3591

Malik ibn Anas

711 - 795 (84 years)

Malik ibn Anas , whose full name is Mālik bin Anas bin Mālik bin Abī ʿĀmir bin ʿAmr bin Al-Ḥārith bin Ghaymān bin Khuthayn bin ʿAmr bin Al-Ḥārith al-Aṣbaḥī al-Ḥumyarī al-Madanī , reverently known as al-Imām Mālik by Sunni Muslims, was a Muslim jurist, theologian, and hadith traditionist. Born in the city of Medina, Malik rose to become the premier scholar of prophetic traditions in his day, which he sought to apply to "the whole legal life" in order to create a systematic method of Muslim jurisprudence which would only further expand with the passage of time. Referred to as the "Imam of Medi...

#3592

Abu Hanifa

699 - 767 (68 years)

Nuʿmān ibn Thābit ibn Zūṭā ibn Marzubān , commonly known by his kunya Abū Ḥanīfa , or reverently as Imam Abū Ḥanīfa by Sunni Muslims, was a Sunni Muslim theologian and jurist who became the eponymous founder of the Hanafi school of Sunni jurisprudence, which has remained the most widely practised school of law in the Sunni tradition. The school of thought predominates in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran , Turkey, the Balkans, Russia, Circassia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Muslims in India, and some parts of the Arab world. He is also widely called al-Imām al-Aʿẓam and Sirāj al-Aʾimma by Sunni Musl...

#3593

Thomas More

1478 - 1535 (57 years)

Sir Thomas More PC , venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lord High Chancellor of England from October 1529 to May 1532. He wrote Utopia, published in 1516, which describes the political system of an imaginary island state.

#3594

Henry Clay

1777 - 1852 (75 years)

Henry Clay Sr. was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Kentucky in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. He was the seventh House speaker as well as the ninth secretary of state. He unsuccessfully ran for president in the 1824, 1832, and 1844 elections. He helped found both the National Republican Party and the Whig Party. For his role in defusing sectional crises, he earned the appellation of the "Great Compromiser" and was part of the "Great Triumvirate" of Congressmen alongside fellow Whigs Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun.

#3595

Friedrich Carl von Savigny

Friedrich Carl von Savigny

1779 - 1861 (82 years)

Friedrich Carl von Savigny was a German jurist and historian. Early life and education Savigny was born at Frankfurt am Main, of a family recorded in the history of Lorraine, deriving its name from the castle of Savigny near Charmes in the valley of the Moselle. Left as orphan at the age of 13, Savigny was brought up by a guardian until, in 1795, he entered the University of Marburg, where, though in poor health, he studied under Professors Anton Bauer and Philipp Friedrich Weiss, the former a pioneer in the reform of the German criminal law, the latter distinguished for his knowledge of medieval jurisprudence.

#3596

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

1646 - 1716 (70 years)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. Leibniz has been called the "last universal genius" due to his knowledge and skills in different fields and because such people became less common during the Industrial Revolution and spread of specialized labor after his lifetime. He is a prominent figure in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. He wrote works on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history, philology, games, music, and other studies. Leibniz also made major contributions to physic...

#3597

Felix Frankfurter

Felix Frankfurter

1882 - 1965 (83 years)

Felix Frankfurter was an Austrian-born American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1939 until 1962, during which period he was a noted advocate of judicial restraint in its judgements.

#3598

B. R. Ambedkar

1891 - 1956 (65 years)

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was an Indian jurist, economist, social reformer and political leader who headed the committee drafting the Constitution of India from the Constituent Assembly debates, served as Law and Justice minister in the first cabinet of Jawaharlal Nehru, and inspired the Dalit Buddhist movement after renouncing Hinduism.

#3599

Roscoe Pound

1870 - 1964 (94 years)

Nathan Roscoe Pound was an American legal scholar and educator. He served as dean of the University of Nebraska College of Law from 1903 to 1911 and was dean of Harvard Law School from 1916 to 1936. He was a member of Northwestern University, the University of Chicago Law School and the faculty at UCLA School of Law in the school's early years, from 1949 to 1952. The Journal of Legal Studies has identified Pound as one of the most cited legal scholars of the 20th century.

#3600

Ahmad ibn Hanbal

Ahmad ibn Hanbal

780 - 855 (75 years)

Ahmad ibn Hanbal al-Dhuhli , was a Muslim jurist, theologian, ascetic, hadith traditionist, and founder of the Hanbali school of Sunni jurisprudence — one of the four major orthodox legal schools of Sunni Islam. The most highly influential and active scholar during his lifetime, Ibn Hanbal went on to become "one of the most venerated" intellectual figures in Islamic history, who has had a "profound influence affecting almost every area of" the traditionalist perspective within Sunni Islam. One of the foremost classical proponents of relying on scriptural sources as the basis for Sunni Islamic ...

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