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 Philosophy,

#11201

Marc Jean-Bernard

#172267

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Marc Jean-Bernard is a French philosopher, academic, writer, classical guitarist and musicologist. Among the main academic interests reflected in his research and publications are Philosophy, Aesthetics, Musicology, Cultural Diplomacy, Austrian culture, Latin American culture, Italian culture, Diplomacy, and generally the hermeneutics of culture. He is currently based at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan.

#11202

Leonard Erickson

#70490

Overall Influence

1946 - 2013 (67 years)

Leonard C. Erickson was the Robert Wallace Miller Professor of Oncology at the Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Cancer Center, and he also served as Deputy Director of the Indiana University Cancer Center.

#11203

G. Aldo Antonelli

#179609

Overall Influence

1962 - 2015 (53 years)

G. Aldo Antonelli was an Italian-born philosopher and academic. He taught at the University of California, Irvine before joining the philosophy department at the University of California, Davis in 2008. Professor Antonelli was known largely for his work in logic.

#11204

Michael Frass

#103618

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Michael Frass is an Austrian medicine specialist for internal medicine and professor at the Medical University of Vienna . He is known for his work on homeopathy and his inventions in the field of airway management.

#11205

Hans-Peter Zimmer

#103651

Overall Influence

1936 - 1992 (56 years)

Hans-Peter Zimmer was a German painter and sculptor. He was born in Berlin and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He formed Gruppe SPUR in 1957 with the painters Heimrad Prem, Helmut Sturm and the sculptor Lothar Fischer. After a joint exhibition at the Pavillon im Alten Botanischen Garten in Munich, they met the Danish artist and philosopher Asger Jorn, who linked them up with the Galerie Van de Loo which exhibited them.

#11206

Tofail Ahmed

#30003

Overall Influence

1919 - 2002 (83 years)

Tofail Ahmed was a well-known Bangladeshi researcher of Folk Art. He was also a collector of Folk artifacts and has authored several books on Bangladeshi Folk arts and Crafts. He was awarded the Shilu Abed Karushilpa Award for his contribution to Folk Arts and Craft in 1998. He was also elected as an honorary fellow of the Bangla Academy in 2001.

#11207

Oswaldo Frota-Pessoa

#88588

Overall Influence

1917 - 2010 (93 years)

Oswaldo Frota-Pessoa was a noted Brazilian physician, biologist and geneticist. Oswaldo Frota-Pessoa was born in Rio de Janeiro, where he did all his studies, first in natural history at the Federal District University , graduating in 1938; and subsequently medicine at the National School of Medicine of University of Brazil, graduating in 1941. He got his doctoral degree at the same school, in 1953 and soon afterwards went abroad on a scholarship for post-doctoral studies at Columbia University, in New York City, from 1953 to 1955. His teaching and research professional career began in 1942, ...

#11208

Ron Mallon

#159106

Overall Influence

Ronald Mallon is an American Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program at Washington University in St. Louis. Work Mallon's work is in philosophy of psychology, experimental philosophy, moral psychology, and critical race theory. He is an expert on human kinds, especially race, and how small inequalities can lead to big ones.

#11209

Orly Shenker

#168052

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Orly Ruth Shenker is an Israeli philosopher of physics and philosopher of mind whose research topics have included Maxwell's demon, entropy and fractal geometry, viewed through a form of physicalism that she calls "flat physicalism". She is a professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where she holds the Eleanor Roosevelt Chair in History and Philosophy of Science. Until 2021 she was director of the Sidney M. Edelstein Centre for History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine. She is also founding president of The Pond: Network of Philosophy of Science around th...

#11210

Hubert Schwyzer

#133709

Overall Influence

1935 - 2006 (71 years)

Hubert R. G. Schwyzer was an American philosopher and a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was known for his research on Kantian philosophy. Life He was born in Vienna, Austria, on March 16, 1935, to Georg Clemens Schwyzer, a physician, and Elisabeth Schuh Schwyzer. The family was forced to leave Austria nine months after the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. Hubert grew up in England and attended a Jesuit boarding school before joining the Royal Air Force, where he served from 1953 to 1955. He received a degree in philosophy from Reading University in 1958.

#11211

Geoff Dench

#67120

Overall Influence

1940 - 2018 (78 years)

Professor Geoff Dench was a British social scientist whose work related particularly to the lives of working class men. He did extensive research using opinion surveys and arrived at conclusions relating to immigration, meritocracy and feminism that were out of keeping with prevailing attitudes in British academia in the later twentieth century.

#11212

Didier Julia

#113374

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Didier Julia is a French politician. He was in 2007 representing the Union for a Popular Movement from Seine-et-Marne in the French National Assembly, a post he has held from 1967. He is mainly known for his interference in liberation operations of French hostages detained in Iraq following the US invasion in 2003.

#11213

Amy Skubitz

#173763

Overall Influence

Amy Patrice Norden Skubitz is an American immunologist. At the University of Minnesota, Skubitz and her research team at the Ovarian Cancer Early Detection Program used new technology to test patients blood, leading to numerous findings.

#11214

Armond White

#54411

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Armond Allen White is an American film and music critic who writes for National Review and Out. He was previously the editor of CityArts , the lead film critic for the alternative weekly New York Press , and the arts editor and critic for The City Sun . Other publications that have carried his work include Film Comment, Variety, The Nation, The New York Times, Slate, Columbia Journalism Review, and First Things.

#11215

Janice Douglas

#109796

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Janice Green Douglas is an American physician, the first woman professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She is a fellow of the American Heart Association and known for her research on cellular control of blood pressure and hypertension.

#11216

Ricardo Dominguez

#47965

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Ricardo Dominguez is an American artist and associate professor of visual arts at UC San Diego. He has been the subject of controversy over a number of acts of electronic civil disobedience on his own and with the Electronic Disturbance Theater, which he co-founded.

#11217

Noureddin Zarrinkelk

Noureddin Zarrinkelk

#42985

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Noureddin Zarrinkelk , also spelled Zarrin-Kelk, also known as Noori or Nouri, is an Iranian animator, concept artist, editor, graphic designer, illustrator, layout artist, photographer, script writer, educator, and sculptor.

#11218

Fabian Udekwu

#21231

Overall Influence

1928 - 2006 (78 years)

Fabian Anene Ositadimma Udekwu born in Enugwu Agidi, Anambra State was a Medical Doctor, Cardiac surgeon. He was a distinguished Professor of Surgery at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, and a pioneer of open heart surgery in Africa.

#11219

Irwin Weil

#39036

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (98 years)

Irwin Weil is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature at Northwestern University. He is noted for his work in promoting cultural exchange and mutual understanding between the USA and the USSR/Russia, and for attracting large numbers of students to his courses. He recorded a popular series of lectures of Russian Literature for The Teaching Company in 2005.

#11220

Sandi Lam

#132738

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Sandi Lam is a Canadian pediatric neurosurgeon and is known for her research in minimally invasive endoscopic hemispherectomy for patients with epilepsy. Lam is the Vice Chair for Pediatric Neurological Surgery at Northwestern University and the Division Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Lurie Children's Hospital. She has spent her career advancing pediatric brain surgery capabilities globally through her work in Kenya performing surgeries as well as training and mentoring local residents and fellows.

#11221

Barry Cooper

#40334

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Barry Cooper is an English musicologist, composer, organistist, Beethoven scholar, and editor of the Beethoven Compendium. Life Born in Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex, Cooper studied piano and composition in his childhood, leading to scholarships to Gordonstoun School and later to University College, Oxford, where he studied organ with John Webster and earned an MA in 1973 and a DPhil in 1974. His musical compositions include an oratorio, The Ascension.

#11222

Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen

#96981

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen has been holding the chair for musicology at the University of Zurich since 1999. Career Born in Westerland on Sylt, Hinrichsen studied Germanistic and History at the Free University of Berlin. The completion of the Staatsexamen was followed by a teaching phase at Gymnasium. Subsequently, he studied musicology at the FU Berlin, which he completed with a PhD in 1992.

#11223

Myron Weiner

#23302

Overall Influence

1931 - 1999 (68 years)

Myron Weiner was an American political scientist and renowned scholar of India, South Asia, internal and international migration, ethnic conflict, child labor, democratization, political demography, and the politics and policies of developing countries.

#11224

Peter Jeffery

#56845

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Peter Jeffery is an American musicologist. Life Jeffery graduated from the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, and the Performing Arts, in New York City, and from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, and from Princeton University with a Ph.D. in Music History in 1980.

#11225

Claudio Canaparo

Claudio Canaparo

#171968

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Claudio Canaparo is currently a visiting professor at Universidad de Quilmes, in Argentina. He has written as a literary critic, epistemologist, sociology of culture analyst and philosopher. Education and career Canaparo was born in the city port of Campana, Buenos Aires, Argentina, to a mother of Hebrew origins and an Italian rooted father; he was a traveller, manual worker and scientific researcher before entering academia. He studied at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Rosario, at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales in Buenos Aires, at the DAMS at the Università degli Studi di Bologna, and received his Ph.D.

#11226

F. John Clendinnen

#129310

Overall Influence

1924 - 2013 (89 years)

F. John Clendinnen was an Australian philosopher of science interested in induction and empiricism. Early life and education His father, Leslie John Clendinnen and grandfather, Frederick John Clendinnen were radiologists at several hospitals in Melbourne, Australia, where Clendinnen lived. After the Second World War he commenced an undergraduate degree at the University of Melbourne.

#11227

Bruce Bennett

#179874

Overall Influence

#11228

Aminata Diaw

#114002

Overall Influence

1959 - 2017 (58 years)

Aminata Diaw Cissé was a Senegalese lecturer and political philosopher who taught at the Cheikh Anta Diop University . Influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and her academia background, she wrote about citizenship, civil society, democracy, development, ethnicity, gender, globalisation, human rights, identity, nationality and the state in an African and Senegalese context by using a political insight. Diaw worked for the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa , Bellagio Study and Conference Center of the Rockfeller Foundation, National UNESCO Sub-Commission on Social S...

#11229

Chris W. Allen

#73734

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Chris Allen is a professor in the College of Communication, Fine Arts and Media at the University of Nebraska at Omaha . A Fulbright scholar, he has lectured on investigative journalism and freedom of the press in Afghanistan and Oman.

#11230

Frederick Fox Cartwright

#157674

Overall Influence

1909 - 2001 (92 years)

Frederick Fox Cartwright was an English anaesthetist and president of the History of Medicine Society of the Royal Society of Medicine from 1975–77. Life Cartwright was born in Woolland, Dorset, to Anglican priest George Frederick Cartwright and Constance Margaret Clark. He had a special interest in Otolaryngology. Cartwright published on history of medicine, became Head of the Department of History of Medicine at King's College Medical School, London and was active at the Faculty of History of Medicine and Philosophy of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.

#11231

Jacob M. Held

#178466

Overall Influence

Jacob M. Held is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy and Assistant Provost for Academic Assessment and General Education at the University of Central Arkansas. He is known for his work at the intersection of philosophy and popular culture.

#11232

David M. Gunn

#73220

Overall Influence

David Miller Gunn is an academic and religious scholar. He is the A. A. Bradford Professor of Religion at Texas Christian University. Education Gunn studied at the University of Melbourne, the University of Otago, and Newcastle University.

#11233

Rulan S. Parekh

#90587

Overall Influence

Rulan S. Parekh is an American-Canadian clinician-scientist and nephrologist. She is the vice president of research, education and innovation at Women's College Hospital and former senior scientist in Child Health Evaluative Sciences and Associate Chief of Clinical Research at SickKids.

#11234

Audrey Niffenegger

Audrey Niffenegger

#28556

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Audrey Niffenegger is an American writer, artist and academic. Her debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, published in 2003, was a bestseller. Biography Audrey Niffenegger was born in 1963 in South Haven, Michigan. Then she moved to Evanston, Illinois and has since spent a majority of her life in Chicago. Niffenegger started writing books when she was six years old. Niffenegger completed her undergraduate degree at the Art Institute of Chicago where she worked on becoming a visual artist. After completing her undergraduate degree, she got her M.F.A at Northwestern University. Niffenegger is ...

#11235

Catherine Coleman

#179947

Overall Influence

#11236

Nisreen Alwan

#111468

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Nisreen Ala-Din A. S. Alwan MBE is a British–Iraqi public health researcher who is a professor of Public Health at the University of Southampton. Her research considers maternal and child health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Alwan used social media to communicate public health messages and to call for long covid to be counted and measured. In 2020, Alwan was selected as one of the BBC's top 100 Women.

#11237

Jane C. Wright

#30514

Overall Influence

1919 - 2013 (94 years)

Jane Cooke Wright was a pioneering cancer researcher and surgeon noted for her contributions to chemotherapy. In particular, Wright is credited with developing the technique of using human tissue culture rather than laboratory mice to test the effects of potential drugs on cancer cells. She also pioneered the use of the drug methotrexate to treat breast cancer and skin cancer .

#11238

Pride Chigwedere

Pride Chigwedere

#66151

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Pride Chigwedere , a Zimbabwean national, is a Harvard trained physician-scientist working in global health. He is most notable for leading a team of Harvard researchers who demonstrated that South African President Thabo Mbeki's AIDS policies led to more than 300 000 deaths. While South Africa's policies were condemned by many, Chigwedere's contribution was in developing and applying methods to quantify the impact of the policies thus demonstrating the calamitous consequences of AIDS denialism. Generalized, he developed an approach for evaluating public health practice and highlighted the need to develop a framework for accountability in public health.

#11239

Larry N. Vanderhoef

Larry N. Vanderhoef

#45542

Overall Influence

1941 - 2015 (74 years)

Larry Neil Vanderhoef was an American biochemist and academic. He was the 5th chancellor of University of California, Davis. Biography Vanderhoef was born in Perham, Minnesota to Wilmar James Vanderhoef and Ida Lucille Wothe. He received his B.A. and M.S. in biology from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and a Ph.D. in plant biochemistry from Purdue University.

#11240

Robert M. Yost

#179599

Overall Influence

1917 - Present (109 years)

Robert Morris Yost was a philosopher at the University of California in Los Angeles . UCLA offers the Robert M. Yost Prize in philosophy in honor of his notable achievements in the field.

#11241

Ulana Suprun

#4887

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Ulana Nadia Suprun is a Ukrainian-American physician, activist, and philanthropist who served as the acting Minister of Healthcare from 2016 to 2019. Prior to her government career, Suprun served as Director of Humanitarian Initiatives for the Ukrainian World Congress.

#11242

Bernadette Wegenstein

Bernadette Wegenstein

#141695

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Bernadette Wegenstein is a Research Professor and director of the Center for Advanced Media Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She has written books on media theory including Getting Under the Skin: Body and Media Theory, The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction of Beauty.

#11243

Ljiljana Filipović

Ljiljana Filipović

#156893

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Ljiljana Filipović is a Croatian author and philosopher. Filipović received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Zagreb. Her first published work in literature was a radio play produced by Radio Zagreb in 1973. Besides writing radio plays . For innovation in the radio program she received annual prize in 2002 from Croatian radio. She taught Philosophical and psychoanalytic critique of drama text at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb from 1998 until 2013 when she acquired position of the associate professor.

#11244

David H.H. Metcalfe

#62574

Overall Influence

David Henry Harold Metcalfe, OBE, MB, B.CHIR, FRCGP, Professor of General Practice the University of Manchester. Metcalfe attended Leys School, Cambridge and the Cambridge University. He held a commission in the Royal Tank regiment and later became a general practitioner in 1958. He was Assistant Professor in Family Medicine at the University of Rochester, New York from 1970 to 1972. He was appointed Senior Lecturer in General Practice in the Department of Community Health at the University of Nottingham Medical School later moving to University of Manchester as Professor of General Practice.

#11245

Christian Onof

#180021

Overall Influence

Christian Onof is a British philosopher and engineering mathematician. He is Reader in Stochastic Environmental Systems at Imperial College London and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Birkbeck College London. He is known for his works on Kantian philosophy. Onof is a co-founder of the journal Episteme.

#11246

Jane Feuer

#72186

Overall Influence

Jane Feuer was a Professor of film studies in the English and Communication Departments at the University of Pittsburgh, United States. She was a film and television studies scholar and one of the founders of Console-ing Passions, a biennial conference in feminism, television, video and new media.

#11247

Richard Goldbloom

Richard Goldbloom

#79336

Overall Influence

1924 - 2021 (97 years)

Richard Ballon Goldbloom, was a Canadian pediatrician, university professor, and the fifth chancellor of Dalhousie University. Born in Montreal, Quebec, he was educated at Selwyn House School and Lower Canada College. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1945 and a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1949 from McGill University. He did his post-graduate medical education at the Royal Victoria Hospital, the Montreal Children's Hospital and the Children's Hospital Boston. From 1964 to 1967, he was an associate professor at McGill University and a physician at the Montreal Children's Hospital. From 1967 to 1985, he was the head of Dalhousie University's Department of Pediatrics.

#11248

Ting Yu

#180123

Overall Influence

#11249

Helmut Bertalanffy

#62017

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Helmut Bertalanffy is the director of the Department of Vascular Neurosurgery, at the International Neuroscience Institute in Hanover. Career Bertalanffy completed his studies of human medicine at the Albert Ludwig's University of Freiburg/Breisgau in 1983. He received his doctorate in 1986 and has been a specialist of neurosurgery since 1990. From 1990-1992, he was scientifically active as a scholarship holder of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in Tokyo at Keio University. In 1992 he returned to Germany and took over the position of senior physician of the Department of the Neurosurgical Clinic at the RWTH Aachen University.

#11250

Mary Ann Doane

#180154

Overall Influence

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