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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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#11401

Chow Chung-cheng

#52563

Overall Influence

1908 - 1996 (88 years)

Chow Chung-cheng was a Chinese artist known for her finger painting and autobiographical books. Early life and education Zhou was born the 4th child in a family of two girls and three boys . Her father, Zhou Xuehui, the youngest son of Zhou Fu, was a successful businessman who ran many of his brother Zhou Xuexi's enterprises. She was born Zhou Lianquan , but later changed her name to Zhongzheng.

#11402

Phyllis Richmond

#169838

Overall Influence

1921 - 1997 (76 years)

Phyllis Allen Richmond was a historian of science and librarian recognized for her work in classification and cataloging. Her dissertation "Americans and the Germ Theory of Disease" was a leading theory of history of medicine for nearly 40 years and she later published seminal work in classification theory.

#11403

Malek Shojaee

#175033

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Malek Shojaee Joshoghani is an Iranian philosopher and assistant professor of philosophy at Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies. He is known for his expertise on contemporary European philosophy. Shojaee is the editor-in-chief of Philosophy & Theology & Mysticism Quarterly Book Review.

#11404

John Ruckdeschel

#168174

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

John C. Ruckdeschel is an American oncologist who has written 160 peer reviewed articles. He obtained his bachelor's degree from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and later on got his medical degree from Albany Medical College. He received training at Johns Hopkins University and Beth Israel Hospital where he was a resident. He was a fellow of the National Cancer Institute and a decade later became faculty member of the second alma mater. In 1991 he became the director and CEO of Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa where he worked with Terrance Albrecht. and ten years later held the same position at the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, Michigan.

#11405

David A. Hamburg

#31841

Overall Influence

1925 - 2019 (94 years)

David Allen Hamburg was an American psychiatrist. He served as president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York from 1982 to 1997. He also served as the President of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He had also been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1998. He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He had previously been chair of the department of psychiatry at Stanford. His wife, Beatrix Hamburg, followed a similarly successful career path.

#11406

Antoni Comín

#102598

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Antoni Comín, born in Barcelona on March 7 1971, is a Catalan intellectual and politician from Spain. He is currently the executive vice-president of the Council for the Republic and has been an MEP since July 2019. He is the fourth child of the politician and intellectual Alfonso Carlos Comín i Ros and Maria Lluïsa Oliveres i Sanvicens, whose other children are Maria, Pere and Betona. He is the partner of the stage designer Sergi Corbera, and they have a daughter called Laia.

#11407

James Linder

#62113

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

James Linder is an American author, academic and businessperson, as well as an authority on university research commercialization. He serves as chief executive officer of Nebraska Medicine, and most recently was president of the University Technology Development Corporation and chief strategist for the University of Nebraska system. He is also a professor of pathology and microbiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

#11408

Luis N. Rivera-Pagán

#108442

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Luis Nicolás Rivera-Pagán is the Henry Winters Luce Professor Emeritus of Ecumenics at Princeton Theological Seminary. Biography Luis Nicolás Rivera-Pagán was born in San Juan de Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, on December 5, 1942.

#11409

Ginette Vincendeau

#128227

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Ginette Vincendeau is a French-born British-based academic who is a professor of film studies at King's College London. Early life and education Vincendeau was educated at the Lycée Lamartine and Lycée Sophie Germain in Paris, and the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle, gaining a degree in English language and literature. She taught French in schools in the UK and at the University of East Anglia, before completing a doctorate in film studies, supervised by Thomas Elsaesser.

#11410

René Laubies

#88946

Overall Influence

1924 - 2006 (82 years)

René Laubies was a Colonial French painter, translator, traveler and writer associated with the Lyrical Abstraction, Arte Informale and Tachism movements though particularly linked to the Nuagisme painters.

#11411

David Schaberg

#81298

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

David Schaberg is an American academic. He is the author of a book on the Zuo Zhuan and the Guoyu, for which he won the 2003 Joseph Levenson Book Prize. He is the dean of Humanities and the senior dean of the College at the University of California, Los Angeles .

#11412

John O'Halloran

#71873

Overall Influence

John O'Halloran is an Irish scientist, university lecturer, ornithologist and academic administrator. In August 2021, he was appointed as the sixteenth President of University College Cork. Biography O’Halloran was born in Cork, the second youngest of eight children. He is a past pupil of Douglas Community School. O’Halloran first studied in UCC as an undergraduate student of Zoology. He was awarded a doctorate of science by the National University of Ireland for his published works in 2009 and he previously held academic posts at Colby College in Maine in the United States and the University...

#11413

Zbigniew Herman

#109751

Overall Influence

1935 - 2010 (75 years)

Zbigniew Stanisław Herman was a Polish physician and pharmacologist, rector of Silesian Medical Academy in years 1980–1982. He was decorated with an Officer's Cross and with a Commander's Cross with Star of Polonia Restituta.

#11414

George James Allan

#119622

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

George James Allan, also known as George J Allan or just George Allan, is an American philosopher and former Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the College at Dickinson College. He is also a former president of the Metaphysical Society of America .

#11415

Maryna Tkachuk

#139605

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Maryna Tkachuk is a Ukrainian historian of philosophy, Dean of Faculty of Humanities of National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. She was awarded the state award "Honoured Figure of Science and Technology of Ukraine" in 2015.

#11416

John Edwin Smith

#123564

Overall Influence

1921 - 2009 (88 years)

John Edwin Smith was an American philosopher and Clark Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He served as president of the American Philosophical Society, Eastern Division, the American Theological Society, the Metaphysical Society of America, the Hegel Society of America and the C.S. Peirce Society.

#11417

Emily Dawson

#109932

Overall Influence

Emily Dawson is a teacher in the field of Science and Technology Studies. Career Dawson's research focuses on how people encounter and engage with science, with an emphasis on equity and social justice.

#11418

Claudia Maurer Zenck

#93534

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Claudia Maurer Zenck is a German musicologist. Early life, family and education She was born in Bremen. She earned her promotion in 1974 at the Technical University of Berlin and her habilitation in 2000 in Innsbruck.

#11419

Chad Engelland

#173224

Overall Influence

Chad Anthony Engelland is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas. He is known for his research on the ideas of German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Engelland is a former editor-in-chief of Xavier Newswire .

#11420

Luis Alberto Urrea

Luis Alberto Urrea

#49081

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Luis Alberto Urrea is a Mexican-American poet, novelist, and essayist. Life Luis Urrea is the son of Alberto Urrea Murray, of Rosario, Sinaloa, Mexico and Phyllis Dashiell, born in Staten Island, New York. He was born in Tijuana, Mexico, and listed as an American born abroad. Both his parents worked in San Diego. The family moved to Logan Heights in South San Diego, because he had tuberculosis and they felt he would recover in the US. The family moved again in 1965 to Clairemont, a newer subdivision in the city of San Diego. His mother encouraged him to write and encouraged him to attend college and to apply for grants that would help pay for his college education.

#11421

Jean Chevalier

#38768

Overall Influence

1906 - 1993 (87 years)

Jean Chevalier was a French writer, philosopher, and theologian, best known for his co-authorship of the Dictionnaire des symboles , first printed in 1969 by publisher Éditions Robert Laffont. Dictionary of Symbols is an encyclopedic work of cultural anthropology, co-written with the French poet and Amazonian explorer Alain Gheerbrant, devoted to the symbolism of myths, dreams, habits, gestures, shapes, figures, colors and numbers found in mythology and folklore. It contains over 1,600 articles and has seen nineteen reprints between 1982 and 1997. It has been republished on a worldwide basis ...

#11422

Tracie D. Hall

#78862

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Tracie D. Hall is an American librarian, author, curator, and advocate for the arts who served as the executive director of the American Library Association from 2020 to 2023. Hall is the first African American woman to lead the association since its founding in 1876.

#11423

Sheila Corrall

#111773

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Sheila Mary Corrall is Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests are in scholarly communication, collection development in the digital world, professional competence, and intellectual capital in library and information services.

#11424

Diana Ross

#49441

Overall Influence

1910 - 2000 (90 years)

Diana Patience Beverly Ross was an English children's author. A graduate of the Central School of Art in London, she also worked on sculpture and graphic arts and illustrated several of her own books under the name of her cat, Gri.

#11425

Sachin H. Jain

#21775

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Sachin H. Jain is an American physician who held leadership positions in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology . From 2015 to 2020, he served as president and chief executive officer of the CareMore Health System. In June 2020, it was announced that he would join the SCAN Group and Health Plan as its new president and CEO. He is also adjunct professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a Contributor at Forbes. In 2018, he was named one of American healthcare's most 100 most influ...

#11426

Christina Gurnett

#171651

Overall Influence

Christina A. Gurnett is the A. Ernest and Jane G. Stein Professor of Neurology, the director of the Division of Pediatric and Developmental Neurology at Washington University in St. Louis, and the chief of Neurology at St. Louis Children's Hospital.

#11427

David Ferriero

#17081

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

David Sean Ferriero is an American librarian and library administrator, who served as the 10th Archivist of the United States. He previously served as the Director of the New York Public Library and as the University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs at Duke University. Prior to his Duke position, he worked for 31 years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology library. Ferriero was the first librarian to serve as Archivist of the United States.

#11428

Patrick M. McCarthy

#85185

Overall Influence

Patrick M. McCarthy is a cardiac surgeon, executive director of the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute and vice president of the Northwestern Medical Group at Northwestern Medicine, the first Heller-Sacks Professor of Surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and professor of Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University McCormick School of Engineering.

#11429

Mary E. Klotman

#170992

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Mary Frances Earley Klotman is an American physician-scientist and academic administrator. She was elected as a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2014 and became the editor of the Annual Review of Medicine in 2020. She has been the dean of the Duke University School of Medicine since 2017.

#11430

Barry S. Levy

#72178

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Barry S. Levy is a physician and former president of the American Public Health Association. A graduate of Tufts University , he holds an M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health, and completed his M.D. at Weill Cornell Medicine. He completed his internal medicine residency at University Hospital and the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, and a preventive medicine residency at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

#11431

Aaron Valero

#49981

Overall Influence

1913 - 2000 (87 years)

Aaron Valero was an Israeli physician and educator who helped establish hospitals and medical schools, authored medical publications and contributed greatly to the advancement of medical education in Israel in the latter half of the 20th century.

#11432

Pieter Ballon

#175540

Overall Influence

Pieter Ballon is a Belgian historian and communications scholar specializing in smart cities. He is a Professor in Communication Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and holder of the university's academic Chair on Smart Cities.

#11433

Angela Warnick Buchdahl

Angela Warnick Buchdahl

#29162

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Angela Warnick Buchdahl is an American rabbi. She was the first East Asian-American to be ordained as a rabbi, and the first East Asian-American to be ordained as a hazzan . In 2011 she was named by Newsweek and The Daily Beast as one of America's "Most Influential Rabbis", and in 2012 by The Daily Beast as one of America's "Top 50 Rabbis". Buchdahl was recognized as one of the top five in The Forwards 2014 "Forward Fifty", a list of American Jews who had the most impact on the national scene in the previous year.

#11434

William C. Wantland

#70534

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

William Charles Wantland is an American Anglican Bishop. He is a former Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Eau Claire. Biography Wantland was born in Edmond, Oklahoma. He is of Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw descent. In 1973 Wantland, his, wife, and their children were declared citizens of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma by adoption.

#11435

Seamus Ross

#66577

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Seamus Ross is a digital humanities and digital curation academic and researcher based in Canada. He is the son of James Francis Ross, a philosopher, and Kathleen Fallon Ross, a nurse. After graduating from the William Penn Charter School, he earned his A.B. from Vassar College , his M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania , and his D.Phil. from the University of Oxford .

#11436

Peter Kyobe Waiswa

#176255

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Peter Kyobe Waiswa is a Ugandan researcher, medical doctor and academic administrator. He is an associate professor of Health Policy, Planning and Management at Makerere University. Waiswa is a health policy and health systems expert with a special interest in maternal, newborn and child health in low and middle-income countries.

#11437

Sophia Moreau

#142617

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Sophia Moreau is a Canadian philosopher and Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. She is known for her works on inequality and discrimination. Books Faces of Inequality: A Theory of Wrongful Discrimination, Oxford University Press 2020

#11438

Cornelis Johannes Marinkelle

Cornelis Johannes Marinkelle

#146514

Overall Influence

1925 - 2012 (87 years)

Cornelis Johannes Marinkelle was a Dutch physician and biologist, who contributed to the taxonomy of insects, parasites, yeasts and mammals. He described and reported several new living species; many species are named on his honour.

#11439

John Ellis

#85454

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

John Ellis is a British former TV producer and professor of media arts at Royal Holloway, University of London. Ellis studied English at the University of Cambridge 1970-3 and at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at University of Birmingham 1973-6. From 1978 to 1982 he taught Film Studies at University of Kent at Canterbury.

#11440

J. Michael Millis

#87610

Overall Influence

James Michael Millis is an American academic and surgeon specializing in pediatric and adult liver transplantation. He is Professor of Surgery and Vice Chair of Global Surgery at University of Chicago. He is also the director of Clinical Leadership Development Fellowship and Hepatobiliary Surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center. He is known for developing new techniques of liver surgery that improved outcomes following liver transplantation and non transplant liver and biliary tract surgery.

#11441

Anil Potti

#121765

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Anil Potti is a physician and former Duke University associate professor and cancer researcher, focusing on oncogenomics. He, along with Joseph Nevins, are at the center of a research fabrication scandal at Duke University. On 9 November 2015, the Office of Research Integrity found that Potti had engaged in research misconduct. According to Potti's voluntary settlement agreement with ORI, Potti can continue to perform research with the requirement of supervision until year 2020, while he "neither admits nor denies ORI's findings of research misconduct." As of 2020 Potti, who is employed at th...

#11442

Christian Metz

#123130

Overall Influence

1931 - 1993 (62 years)

Christian Metz was a French film theorist, best known for pioneering film semiotics, the application of theories of signification to the cinema. During the 1970s, his work had a major impact on film theory in France, Britain, Latin America, and the United States. As Constance Penley flatly stated in Camera Obscura, "Modern film theory begins with Metz."

#11443

Milo Aukerman

#42486

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Milo Jay Aukerman is an American singer, songwriter, and former research molecular biologist. Aukerman is most widely known for being the lead vocalist of the punk rock band the Descendents, a group widely considered to be pioneers of pop-punk. A caricature of Aukerman serves as the band's mascot.

#11444

Hazhir Rahmandad

#40198

Overall Influence

Hazhir Rahmandad is an Iranian American Scientist and Engineer. Dr. Rahmandad is a dynamic modeling expert. His research applies dynamic modeling to a broad range of problems in strategy, organizational learning, and public health.

#11445

Deborah E. Citrin

#154205

Overall Influence

Deborah E. Citrin is an American clinician-scientist researching pre-clinical and clinical testing of radiation modifiers and the mechanisms of normal tissue injury from radiation. She is a senior investigator and deputy director of the National Cancer Institute's Center for Cancer Research.

#11446

Ralph Northam

#42644

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Ralph Shearer Northam is an American physician and politician who served as the 73rd governor of Virginia from 2018 to 2022. A pediatric neurologist by occupation, he was an officer in the U.S. Army Medical Corps from 1984 to 1992. Northam, a member of the Democratic Party, served as the 40th lieutenant governor of Virginia from 2014 to 2018 prior to winning the governorship against Republican nominee Ed Gillespie in the 2017 election. Prohibited by the Virginia Constitution from running for a consecutive term, Northam left office in January 2022, succeeded by Republican Glenn Youngkin.

#11447

Renate Wieland

#175721

Overall Influence

1935 - 2017 (82 years)

Renate Wieland was a German philosopher, music pedagogue and musicologist. Life Wieland lived in Kronberg im Taunus and was a member of the Kronberg Academy. She studied music, German language and literature and philosophy with Ernst Bloch und Adorno. From 1970 to 1977 she was an assistant to Hermann Schweppenhäuser at the philosophical faculty of the Leuphana University of Lüneburg and received her doctorate in Frankfurt am Main in 1978. She also gave piano lessons in Kronberg.

#11448

Paul Welsh

#179780

Overall Influence

1911 - 2004 (93 years)

Paul Welsh was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at Duke University. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and is known for his works on logic. Books Introduction to logic, Romane Clark and Paul Welsh, D. Van Nostrana Company, Inc., Princeton, N.J., Toronto, New York, London, 1962Fact, Value, and Perception: Essays in Honor of Charles A. Baylis, Duke University Press 1975

#11449

Cathrin Brisken

#170844

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Cathrin Brisken is a German and Swiss medical doctor, researcher, and professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne . Her research focuses on the mechanisms of hormonal control in breast cancer development.

#11450

Peter Young

#123985

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Peter Ford Young is an American painter. He is primarily known for his abstract paintings that have been widely exhibited in the United States and in Europe since the 1960s. His work is associated with Minimal Art, Post-minimalism, and Lyrical Abstraction. Young has participated in more than a hundred group exhibitions and he has had more than forty solo exhibitions in important contemporary art galleries throughout his career. He currently lives in Bisbee, Arizona.

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