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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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#11051

Ottó Károlyi

#80728

Overall Influence

1934 - 2016 (82 years)

Ottó Károlyi , having studied in Budapest, Vienna, and London, was a musicologist and the Senior Lecturer of Music at the University of Stirling, Scotland, where he founded the Music department and remained employed even after the department's closure. He died in October 2016.

#11052

Pierre Debray-Ritzen

#91515

Overall Influence

1922 - 1993 (71 years)

Pierre Debray-Ritzen was a French psychiatrist. He was a member of the Club de l'horloge. Publications L'Odeur du temps, roman, Casterman, 1963Le Défi aux étoiles, Plon, 1964Les Nervures de l'être : éléments d'une psychologie de la littérature, Rencontre, 1967La Dyslexie de l'enfant : origine, dépistage, mesure, rééducation, Casterman, 1970Un final vénitien, Fayard, 1971Génétique et Psychiatrie, Fayard, 1972Les Troubles du comportement de l'enfant, Fayard, 1973 La Scolastique freudienne, Fayard, 1973Psychologie de la littérature et de la création littéraire, Retz, 1977Lettre ouverte aux paren...

#11053

Courtney Young

#95532

Overall Influence

Courtney Young is an American librarian and scholar, who served as the president of the American Library Association for the 2014–2015 year. On June 30, 2015, her term as ALA President ended, and she passed the title on to Sari Feldman.

#11054

Helen Nicholson

#60609

Overall Influence

Helen Nicholson is a New Zealand medical academic specialising in male reproductive health. She is a full professor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Otago. Since March 2023, Nicholson has served as the university's acting vice-chancellor after Vice Chancellor David Murdoch took sick leave and subsequently resigned.

#11055

Eli Bartra

#117077

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Eli Bartra is a feminist philosopher and a pioneer in researching women and folk art in different places of the world, but particularly, in Mexico. She is the daughter of the writers Anna Murià and Agustí Bartra, two Catalan refugees in Mexico.

#11056

George R. Harker

#144128

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

George R. Harker , was an author and self-styled "cyberspace philosopher". He held bachelor's and master's degrees in Philosophy from Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University, and had taught for 21 years at Western Illinois University before being terminated. He had written many articles concerning the naturist movement, and contributed to the book Recreational Nudity and the Law by Gordon Gill. He was founder of the Church and School of International Détente, a lecturer and a book publisher. He died in 2020 in Hawaii.

#11057

Gerald Buckberg

#81341

Overall Influence

1935 - 2018 (83 years)

Gerald Buckberg was an American surgeon. His research initially centered in the area of myocardial protection and led to the introduction of blood cardioplegia, which is currently used by over 85% of surgeons in the United States and 75% of surgeons worldwide for adult and pediatric heart operations. He was a member of multiple surgical societies, including the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, American Surgical Association, and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. He was Professor of Surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

#11058

Cornelis Erik Hack

#178454

Overall Influence

#11059

Lawrence M. Hinman

#178463

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Lawrence Michael Hinman is an American philosopher and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of San Diego. He is known for his expertise on moral philosophy. Books Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory. Fifth Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2013Contemporary Moral Issues: Diversity and Consensus .Fourth Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2012

#11060

Eric Sorscher

#94243

Overall Influence

Eric Sorscher is an American medical researcher whose primary focus is cystic fibrosis. Some of his research interests include understanding the function of cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator and its associated gene, as well as understanding mutations in the CFTR gene.

#11061

Robert Osborne

#48142

Overall Influence

1932 - 2017 (85 years)

Robert Jolin Osborne was an American film historian, television presenter, author, actor and the primary host for more than 20 years of the cable channel Turner Classic Movies . Prior to hosting at TCM, Osborne had been a host on The Movie Channel, and earlier, a columnist for The Hollywood Reporter. Osborne wrote the official history of the Academy Awards, published in 1988.

#11062

Joan Cribb

#70362

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Joan Winifred Cribb was an Australian botanist and mycologist. Life and career Joan Winifred Herbert was born in Brisbane, Queensland, the daughter of botanists Vera and Desmond Herbert. She graduated from the University of Queensland with a Bachelor of Science with Honours and a Master of Science. She married fellow botanist Alan Cribb in 1954, and several years later joined him at the University of Queensland as a part-time lecturer and tutor.

#11063

Frank Hölzle

#86948

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Frank Hölzle is a German surgeon. He is a professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery at the RWTH Aachen University. He is chairman and head of the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. Hölzle is known for his work in the fields of plastic facial reconstruction with a focus on micro surgery. He is also specialised for the treatment of tumor diseases in the head and neck region, and of malformations like cleft lip and palate.

#11064

Bahram H. Arjmandi

Bahram H. Arjmandi

#173663

Overall Influence

Bahram H. Arjmandi is an American nutritionist. He is the Margaret A. Sitton Professor at Florida State University and is the founder and Director of the Center for Advancing Exercise and Nutrition Research on Aging . He is a researcher in the fields of functional foods and human health. He was among the first to detect the presence of estrogen receptors in the gut linking the importance of estrogen and estrogen receptors in calcium regulation independent of vitamin D.

#11065

Jerilynn Prior

#98250

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Jerilynn C. Prior is a Canadian endocrinologist and medical doctor specializing in menstrual cycles and the effects of hormones on women's health. She has been called a leader in understanding and treating perimenopause and menopause. She was born in the USA and moved to Canada in 1976, and has taken citizenship there.

#11066

Paul M. Ellwood Jr.

#47681

Overall Influence

1926 - Present (100 years)

Paul Murdock Ellwood Jr. was an American physician and a controversial figure in American health care. Often referred to as the "father of the health maintenance organization", he not only coined the term, he also played a role in bringing about structural changes to the American health care system to simultaneously control cost and promote health by replacing fee-for-service with prepaid, comprehensive care. The term "HMO" was coined by Ellwood in a January 1970 Fortune magazine article. More recently, he had advanced an agenda for monitoring health outcomes, so that patients, providers, and...

#11067

Lauro Zavala

#72321

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Lauro Zavala is a scholarly researcher, known for his work on literary theory, semiotics and film, especially in relation to irony, metafiction and micro-narratives. Faculty professor since 1984 at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Xochimilco, in Mexico City, where he is head of the area on Intertextual Semiotics.

#11068

Simon Shaw-Miller

#150585

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Simon Shaw-Miller is emeritus professor of history of art at the University of Bristol. He is a specialist in the relationships between art and music in the modern period. Early life and education Simon Shaw-Miller was born Simon Miller in 1960 in Pembury, on the outskirts of Royal Tunbridge Wells. He was brought up in the village of Hollingbourne and the council estates of Park Wood and Senacre on the outskirts of Maidstone, in Kent. He attended Oldborough Manor High School, and then went to Brighton Polytechnic to study for a joint degree in art with music, graduating in 1982. He did post ...

#11069

Godfrey Fowler

#163566

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Godfrey Heath Fowler, OBE, FRCP, FRCGP, FFPH was a British academic, general practitioner and medical scientist. He was Professor of General Practice at the University of Oxford between 1996 and 1997.

#11070

Denis Pereira Gray

#109538

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Sir Denis John Pereira Gray is a retired British general practitioner. He worked for 38 years in the St Leonard's Medical Practice, Exeter, and continued as a research consultant until 2018, following his father and grandfather.

#11071

Ian Phillips

#121016

Overall Influence

Ian B. Phillips is a British philosopher and Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Psychological and Brain Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University, where he has taught since 2019. He has appointments in the William H. Miller III Department of Philosophy and the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. He is known for his works on the intersection of philosophy and brain science.

#11072

Tamara Tarasenko

Tamara Tarasenko

#162811

Overall Influence

1939 - 1992 (53 years)

Tamara Tarasenko professor, philosopher, the first Chairman of the Board of Dr. Haass Social Assistance Fund . Graduated with honors from the philological faculty of the Odesa State I. I. Mechnykov University in 1961. PhD thesis - "Regulatory Aspects of Social Functioning of the Language” .

#11073

David A. Wohl

#165721

Overall Influence

David Alain Wohl is an American infectious disease physician. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he was among those leading UNC's response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Wohl was appointed the Medical Director of the COVID Vaccination Clinic at UNC Hospitals Hillsborough Campus and led COVID-19 treatment clinical trials at UNC School of Medicine.

#11074

Maryam Lustberg

#116941

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Maryam Beheshti Lustberg is an American breast oncologist. She is the Director of The Breast Center at Smilow Cancer Hospital and Chief of Breast Medical Oncology at Yale Cancer Center. Lustberg previously served as the Medical Director of Supportive Care at Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer Center and President-Elect of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer. She is also an associate editor for the peer-reviewed medical journal covering oncology nursing with respect to cancer survivors called Journal of Cancer Survivorship. Lustberg was also recognized as one of the 100 I...

#11075

Arnold Maran

#89640

Overall Influence

1937 - 2017 (80 years)

Arnold George Dominic Maran MD, FRCSEd, FRCSEng, FACS, FRCPE was a Scottish head and neck surgeon and otolaryngologist. Having trained in ear, nose and throat surgery in Edinburgh, Scotland he then had further training as a head and neck surgeon in the United States and returned to a consultant post in Dundee, Scotland. Moving to Edinburgh he was awarded a personal chair in otorhinolaryngology by the University of Edinburgh. In collaboration with Professor Philip Stell of Liverpool he devised training courses in head and neck surgery and together they wrote Stell and Maran’s Textbook of Head and Neck Surgery and Oncology which became a popular textbook for the subspeciality.

#11076

Hui-Kuan Lin

#158719

Overall Influence

Hui-Kuan Lin is a Taiwanese physician specializing in cancer biology. Lin completed bachelor's and master's degrees in medicine at National Taiwan University, in 1993 and 1995, respectively. He completed a doctoral degree in cancer biology at the University of Rochester in 2002, and pursued postdoctoral research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. From 2007, Lin taught at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, a part of the University of Texas System, as an assistant professor. In 2011, he became an associate professor. Lin moved to the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in 2015, as Anderson...

#11077

David W. Horohov

#178587

Overall Influence

David W. Horohov is an American veterinary scientist and the current William Robert Mills Chair in Equine Infectious Diseases at University of Kentucky.

#11078

Seth C. Hawkins

Seth C. Hawkins

#52114

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Seth Christopher Collings Hawkins is an American emergency physician, writer, anthropologist, and organizational innovator. He has made notable contributions to the fields of wilderness medicine, Emergency Medical Services , and medical humanities. His work has particularly specialized in EMS and wilderness medicine in the southeastern United States, where he is the founder of the Appalachian Center for Wilderness Medicine, the Appalachian Mountain Rescue Team, and the Carolina Wilderness EMS Externship.

#11079

Sam Hall

#67486

Overall Influence

1921 - 2014 (93 years)

Allison Samuel Hall , known as Sam Hall, was a screenwriter known for his work in daytime soap operas, particularly Dark Shadows and One Life to Live . Hall also co-wrote the 1976 PBS miniseries The Adams Chronicles.

#11080

Estelle Ramey

#86117

Overall Influence

1917 - 2006 (89 years)

Estelle Rosemary Ramey was an American endocrinologist, physiologist and feminist who became internationally known for refuting surgeon and Democratic Party leader Edgar Berman, who stated that women were unfit to hold high public office because of "raging hormonal imbalances." Ramey's balanced approach to life was embodied in a later quote, "I have loved. And been loved. And all the rest is background music."

#11081

Stephen E. Straus

#178623

Overall Influence

#11082

David Zweig

#42741

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

David Zweig is a Canadian social scientist, academic, and author. He is a Distinguished Visiting professor in the Taipei School of Economics and Political Science at National Tsing Hua University, Professor Emeritus at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and for 10 years was an adjunct professor at the National University of Defense Technology. He also serves as a Vice President of the Center for China and Globalization.

#11083

Alan E. H. Emery

#178635

Overall Influence

#11084

John Anderson Strong

#59827

Overall Influence

1915 - 2012 (97 years)

John Anderson Strong was a Scottish physician/internist and academic, who served as Professor of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and the President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

#11085

John Barrasso

#60738

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

John Anthony Barrasso III is an American physician and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Wyoming, a seat he has held since 2007. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the Wyoming State Senate from 2003 to 2007. As Chair of the Senate Republican Conference since 2019, he is the third-ranking Senate Republican.

#11086

Dena Dubal

#85099

Overall Influence

Dena Dubal is the David A. Coulter Endowed Chair in Ageing and Neurodegenerative Disease at University of California, San Francisco. Dubal has demonstrated that the hormone Klotho can enhance cognition and protect the brain from neurodegenerative decline.

#11087

Lisa Schwarzbaum

#55452

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Lisa Schwarzbaum is an American film critic. She joined Entertainment Weekly as a senior writer in 1991, working as a film critic for the magazine alongside Owen Gleiberman from 1995 to 2013. Early life Lisa Schwarzbaum was born on July 5, 1952 to Leon Schwarzbaum, a combat engineer during the Pacific War. The oldest child of a Jewish family raised in the Bronx, she has two brothers.

#11088

Gloria Johnson-Powell

#59908

Overall Influence

1936 - 2017 (81 years)

Gloria Johnson-Powell was a child psychiatrist who was also an important figure in the Civil Rights Movement and was one of the first African-American women to attain tenure at Harvard Medical School.

#11089

David Agus

#27432

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

David B. Agus is an American physician, cancer researcher and author who serves as a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and Viterbi School of Engineering and the Founding Director and CEO of the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine. He is also the cofounder of several personalized medicine companies and a contributor to CBS News on health topics. He is also the author of four books.

#11090

Paul Ricœur

#178719

Overall Influence

#11091

Henlee Hulix Barnette

#127261

Overall Influence

1911 - 2004 (93 years)

Henlee Hulix Barnette was an American social activist, professor of Christian ethics, minister, and author. His first book, Introducing Christian Ethics , became a standard text in his field. He marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and met with Nikita Khrushchev to set up a college student exchange program with the Soviet Union.

#11092

Giuseppe Maria Sciacca

#174408

Overall Influence

1912 - 1995 (83 years)

Giuseppe Maria Sciacca was an Italian philosopher and academic. A student and assistant of Antonio Renda, Sciacca's work focused on Kantianism. Professor Emeritus of History of Philosophy of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Palermo, he was president of the Italian Philosophical Society. He expressed and exposed his philosophical thought through a number of written works.

#11093

Christina Stojanova

Christina Stojanova

#64986

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Christina Stojanova is a Canadian media historian and faculty member at the University of Regina. Her work focuses on cultural semiotics in Canadian multicultural cinema, Central and Eastern European media and cinema, inter-war German cinema, and on the works of Jean-Luc Godard.

#11094

Erik Enger

#157484

Overall Influence

1927 - 2016 (89 years)

Erik Enger was a Norwegian physician. Enger was born in Oslo. He was professor of internal medicine at the University of Oslo, and worked as a physician at Ullevål Hospital from 1973 to 1995. He chaired the ethical council of the Norwegian Medical Association from 1974 to 1985, and contributed to the public debate on medical ethics and jurisprudence.

#11095

Jeff Lemire

#66582

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Jeff Lemire is a Canadian comic book writer, artist, and television producer. He is the author of critically acclaimed titles including the Essex County Trilogy, Sweet Tooth, and The Nobody. His written work includes All-New Hawkeye, Extraordinary X-Men, Moon Knight and Old Man Logan for Marvel; Superboy, Animal Man, Justice League Dark, and Green Arrow for DC; Black Hammer and Mazebook for Dark Horse; Descender and Gideon Falls for Image Comics; and Bloodshot Reborn for Valiant.

#11096

Christopher H. Sterling

#60318

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Christopher H. Sterling was an American media historian. Sterling was professor of media and public affairs at The George Washington University where he taught from 1982. Author of numerous books on electronic media and telecommunications plus a host of research and bibliographic articles, his primary research interests centered upon the history and policy development of electronic media and telecommunications. He regularly taught courses in media law and federal regulation and society. He was an acting chair in the early 1990s and served as associate dean for graduate studies in arts and s...

#11097

Hugh LaFollette

#172739

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Hugh LaFollette is an American philosopher who holds the Marie E. and Leslie Cole Emeritus Chair in Ethics at the University of South Florida. He primarily works on moral philosophy. He is author of four books and numerous philosophical essays; he also edited six volumes; several have seen multiple editions. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Ethics—currently in its 2nd print edition . The IEE is updated annually online.

#11098

Nicole Saphier

#22133

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Nicole Saphier is an American medical journalist, radiologist, and writer. She is the director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth, New Jersey. She is well known for providing her opinions as a contributor on Fox News, Fox Business, and MSNBC.

#11099

Christina Hicks

#107023

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Christina Chemtai Hicks is a British Kenyan environmental social scientist who is a Professor in the Political Ecology group at Lancaster University. She is interested in the relationships between individuals, societies and nature. She was awarded the 2019 Philip Leverhulme Prize for Geography.

#11100

Joshua Sonett

#71814

Overall Influence

Joshua R. Sonett is the Chief of General Thoracic Surgery, Surgical Director of Price Family Center for Comprehensive Chest Care, and an Attending Surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. He is also a Professor of Clinical Surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

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