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,

#11501

Spalding Gray

#54166

Overall Influence

1941 - 2004 (63 years)

Spalding Gray was an American actor, novelist, playwright, screenwriter and performance artist. He is best known for the autobiographical monologues that he wrote and performed for the theater in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as for his film adaptations of these works, beginning in 1987. He wrote and starred in several, working with different directors.

#11502

John Ryder

#147292

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

John Ryder is a professor and former president of Khazar University in Baku, Azerbaijan. He is the former Provost at the American University of Malta. Education He finished his bachelor's degree in May 1973 at the State University of New York College at Cortland, then continued his education at Stony Brook University , receiving a master's degree in philosophy in May 1977. He became a Ph.D. candidate at the same university, and was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in August 1982.

#11503

Hans John

#126163

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Hans Karl Ferdinand John is a German musicologist and former university professor. Life John was born in Bad Freienwalde. His father was cantor and organist and enabled him to attend the Dresdner Kreuzschule. He was a member of the Dresdner Kreuzchores from 1946 until his Abitur in 1954. He studied music education and science and classical philology at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg and at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1961 he was awarded his doctorate under Fritz Reuter at the Faculty of Philosophy in Berlin with the dissertation Music education in ancient Greece an...

#11504

Konrad Fiałkowski

#96395

Overall Influence

1939 - 2020 (81 years)

Konrad R. Fiałkowski was a Polish engineer, information technology scientist and hard science fiction writer. Life Born in Lublin, Fiałkowski held the titles of Professor at American Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Warsaw University.

#11505

Bruce McLean

#50769

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Bruce McLean is a Scottish sculptor, performance artist and painter. McLean was born in Glasgow and studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1961 to 1963, and at Saint Martin's School of Art, London, from 1963 to 1966. At Saint Martin's, McLean studied with Anthony Caro and Phillip King. In reaction to what he regarded as the academicism of his teachers he began making sculpture from rubbish.

#11506

Richard Smith

#182277

Overall Influence

#11507

Otto Sibum

#161288

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Heinz Otto Sibum is a German historian of science, Hans Rausing Professor and Director of the Office for History of Science at the University of Uppsala. Biography H. Otto Sibum holds a doctoral degree in physics from Oldenburg University and his habilitation in history from the TU Braunschweig . He has been Director of Research at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin as well as Research Associate at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University . He was awarded best teacher at British Universities for his teaching of history of science at...

#11508

Neel Shah

#74838

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Neel Shah is an American physician, Harvard University assistant professor, Chief Medical Officer of Maven Clinic, and founder of the nonprofit organizations Costs of Care and March for Moms. Shah is married to MIT Professor Julie Shah.

#11509

Robert G. Evans

#182345

Overall Influence

#11510

Judith Olszowy-Schlanger

#115273

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Judith Olszowy-Schlanger is a French academic palaeographer who specialises in medieval Jewish manuscripts. Since September 2018, she has been President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Oxford.

#11511

Charles Musser

#42328

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Charles John Musser is a film historian, documentary filmmaker, and a film editor. Since 1992, he has taught at Yale University, where he is currently a professor of Film and Media Studies as well as American Studies and Theater Studies. His research has primarily focused on early cinema, and topics such as Edwin S. Porter, Oscar Micheaux, race cinema of the silent era, Paul Robeson, film performance, as well as a variety of issues and individuals in documentary. His films include An American Potter , Before the Nickelodeon: The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter and Errol Morris: A Lightning...

#11512

Moon Shin

#108780

Overall Influence

1923 - 1995 (72 years)

Moon Shin was a South Korean painter and sculptor whose childhood name was Moon Ahn-shin. His date of birth was reported late and is erroneously stated as 1923 in most publications. When an international exhibition was held in France in 1989 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, Moon was one of 24 artists who were invited. One of his pieces can be found in SOMA sculptor park celebrating the 1988 Summer Olympics Seoul.

#11513

Wendy Brewster

#100254

Overall Influence

Wendy Rosamund Brewster was a British-born American gynaecologist who was Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Director of the Center for Women's Health Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

#11514

Stewart Duncan

#87105

Overall Influence

Stewart Duncan is an American philosopher and associate professor of philosophy at University of Florida. He is known for his expertise on early modern philosophy, especially the materialist philosophy of Thomas Hobbes.

#11515

Bulcsú Hoppál

#172130

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Bulcsú Kál Hoppál is a Hungarian theologian and philosopher. Biography In 1999 he received a Bachelor's degree in Sacred Theology at Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem in Budapest. In 2002 he received a Licentiate there in the same subject—the equivalent of a Ph.D. In 2003, he received the degree of Magister der Philosophie from the International Academy for Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein. He is one of the vice-presidents of the Hungarian Association for the Academic Study of Religion.

#11516

Othmar Wessely

#105677

Overall Influence

1922 - 1998 (76 years)

Othmar Wessely was an Austrian musicologist. Career Born in Linz, Wessely studied musicology at the University of Vienna with Erich Schenk. From 1963 to 1971 he was a university professor at the Karl-Franzens-University of Graz, and from 1972 to 1992 he succeeded his teacher Schenk at the University of Vienna.

#11517

Masachi Osawa

#32090

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Masachi Osawa is a Japanese sociologist and philosopher. Outside Japan, he is best known as a social scientist, often mentioned in reference to sociological and philosophical research on otaku culture and popular Japanese animation series such as Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

#11518

Ellie Highwood

#98264

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Ellie Highwood is a diversity and inclusion consultant and coach to academics, researchers and scientists. She was formerly Professor of Climate Physics at the University of Reading and was head of that department from 2012 until 2015. She was previously a member of the RMetS Council and Education Committee. On 1 October 2016 she became the 81st President of the Royal Meteorological Society , serving until 2018.

#11519

Jackson Orem

#105023

Overall Influence

Jackson Orem is a physician, medical oncologist and researcher in Uganda. He has served as the director of the Uganda Cancer Institute, since 2004. Background and education Orem was born in Uganda and he attended local primary and secondary schools. His father was a driver and salesman. His mother was a housewife. After high school, he was admitted to Makerere University School of Medicine, the oldest in East Africa. He graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degree. After internship, he was re-admitted to Makerere University to pursue a Master of Medicine degree , in In...

#11520

Cyril Höschl

#32422

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Cyril Höschl is a Czech psychiatrist and university lecturer. After the Velvet Revolution he was the first freely elected Dean of the third Medical Faculty of Charles University and from 1997-2003 he served as Vice-Dean for Reform Studies and International Relations at the same faculty. He was the director of the Prague Psychiatric Center and head of the Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology of the Third Faculty of Medicine of the Charles University in Prague. On 1 January 2015 the Prague Psychiatric Center was transformed into the National Institute of Mental Health in Klecany, T...

#11521

J. M. Hinton

#70982

Overall Influence

1923 - 2000 (77 years)

John Michael Elliott Hinton was a British philosopher. He was a lecturer at the University of Oxford from 1958 and a fellow of Worcester College, Oxford, from 1960. He was Cowling Visiting Professor at Carleton College in 1978-79. He was previously a lecturer at Victoria University College.

#11522

Tony Waldron

#142922

Overall Influence

1948 - 2021 (73 years)

Tony Waldron was a British physician and bioarchaeologist specialising in occupational medicine, palaeopathology, and palaeoepidemiology. He was an honorary professor at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, a lecturer in occupational medicine at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and a consultant physician at University College Hospital and St Mary's Hospital. He wrote a number of books on bioarchaeology, including the widely used textbooks Palaeoepidemiology and Palaeopathology .

#11523

Joseph Moylan

#72839

Overall Influence

1938 - 2013 (75 years)

Joseph Anthony Moylan was founder and president of Durham Nativity School in Durham, North Carolina. He was a former clinical professor of surgery at the Duke University School of Medicine and medical director of the International Patient Center at the Duke University Medical Center. Moylan played a seminal role in development modern day trauma centers. He also served at the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research or Army Burn Center at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, during the Vietnam War.

#11524

Esther Geller

#86532

Overall Influence

1921 - 2015 (94 years)

Esther Geller was an American painter mainly associated with the abstract expressionist movement in Boston in the 1940s and 1950s. She was one of the foremost authorities on encaustic painting techniques.

#11525

David Rynin

#180080

Overall Influence

1905 - 2000 (95 years)

David Rynin was an American philosopher. He is known mostly as an exponent of logical positivism. He served as president of the Pacific division of the American Philosophical Association in the years 1956–7. Until his death, he was professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.

#11526

Vijay P. Parashar

#68430

Overall Influence

Vijay P. Parashar, BDS, MDS, DDS, is an oral and maxillofacial radiologist working as faculty at Midwestern University in Glendale, Arizona. Prior to joining Midwestern University as Associate Professor, Parashar was the Assistant Professor of Biomedical and Diagnostic Sciences at University of Detroit Mercy in Detroit, Michigan. Parashar won the 2006 Howard R. Raper and 2012 William H Rollins Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology Awards given by American Academy of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology. Parashar received Doctor of Dental Surgery from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Dentistry...

#11527

Peter Havard-Williams

#122681

Overall Influence

1922 - 1995 (73 years)

Peter Havard-Williams was a Welsh librarian and library educator. In the mid 1980s, he served as Chief Librarian to the Council of Europe. Early years Havard-Williams received degrees from universities in Wales and Oxford. In 1949, he wrote Thought and Sense in the Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas as his Master's thesis at the University College of Swansea.

#11528

Sérgio Pena

#104786

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Sérgio Danilo Junho Pena is a Brazilian human geneticist and professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Immunology at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He began researching the population genetics of the Brazilian population in the late 1980s. His research on this subject has highlighted the ways that physical characteristics of Brazilians are often discordant with their genetic ancestry. On the basis of his research showing extensive genetic diversity in the Brazilian population, he has vocally advocated for the view that race is a social construct rather than a biological reality.

#11529

Timothy Shary

#144477

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Timothy Shary is an American film scholar, and a leading authority on the representation of youth in movies. He has been a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Clark University, and the University of Oklahoma. He is now a professor at Eastern Florida State College.

#11530

Gian Piero Brunetta

#137026

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Gian Piero Brunetta is an Italian film critic, film historian, and academic. He is a Full Professor of Cinema History and Criticism at the University of Padua, he is known for being the author of an important four-volume work dedicated to the history of Italian cinema .

#11531

Elizabeth Van Volkenburgh

Elizabeth Van Volkenburgh

#103844

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Elizabeth Van Volkenburgh is a Professor of Plant Science at the University of Washington. She has served as the President of the society for Plant Signaling and Behavior. Early life and education Van Volkenburgh was born to Robert Heber and Jean Brown in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Van Volkenburgh became interested in biology during high school. She studied botany at Duke University, and earned her Bachelor's degree in 1973. She was most interested in plant physiology and biochemical function. She nearly majored in economics because her mother recommended education that might lead to a paying job like being a lawyer or economist, but found that she learned better the life sciences.

#11532

Sigrid Veasey

#150500

Overall Influence

Sigrid Veasey is a physician and scientist affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania. She specializes in medicine. Veasey is a professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology where she conducts research on sleep disorders and sleep disruption.

#11533

Jawad Fares

#82563

Overall Influence

1991 - Present (35 years)

Jawad Youssef Fares is a Lebanese medical doctor, researcher and scientist. He was selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in science and healthcare for his contribution to solving healthcare problems in the developing world. He also featured twice in the Forbes Middle East 30 Under 30, and was selected as one of the top 10 young scientists in the world by Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News. In 2019, Fares was elected as a Fellow of The World Academy of Medical Sciences, and in 2021 was one of the Young Physician Leaders selected by the InterAcademy Partnership .

#11534

Janice Rymer

#92029

Overall Influence

Janice Rymer is professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at King's College London and consultant gynecologist at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. She is a vice president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

#11535

Eric Borgstein

#91344

Overall Influence

Eric S. Borgstein is a Dutch pediatric surgeon and professor of surgery at the University of Malawi College of Medicine. Early life Borgstein was born in Malawi to two Dutch physicians. He attended medical school and trained as a surgeon in Scotland and underwent specialized pediatric surgery training in the Netherlands. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

#11536

Moussa B. H. Youdim

#81242

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Moussa B. H. Youdim is an internationally renowned Israeli neuroscientist specializing in neurochemistry and neuropharmacology. He is the discoverer of both monoamine oxidase B inhibitors l-deprenyl and rasagiline as anti-Parkinson drugs which possess neuroprotective activities. He is currently Professor Emeritus at Technion - Faculty of Medicine and President of Youdim Pharmaceuticals.

#11537

Constantine Cavarnos

#143270

Overall Influence

1918 - 2011 (93 years)

Schemamonk Constantine Cavarnos was an American philosopher, Byzantinist, and Eastern Orthodox monk. Early life and education Cavarnos was born in Boston in 1918. He graduated from Harvard University in 1948 with a doctorate in philosophy.

#11538

Jacques Rousseau

Jacques Rousseau

#50982

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Jacques André Rousseau is a South African academic, secular activist and social commentator. Early life Rousseau was born in Cape Town in 1971. He attended Stellenberg High School and the University of Cape Town , where he obtained a BA in Philosophy and a MA in English.

#11539

Donald Wood-Smith

#62709

Overall Influence

Donald Wood-Smith was a professor of Clinical Surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and an attending surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. He was also chairman of the department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.

#11540

Malcolm Turvey

#53767

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Malcolm Turvey is a British Professor of Film Studies at Tufts University and an editor of the journal October. He formerly taught at Sarah Lawrence College. Books The Filming of Modern Life: European Avant-Garde Film of the 1920s, MIT Press Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida: Essays in Honor of Annette Michelson, Amsterdam University Press Doubting Vision: Film and the Revelationist Tradition, Oxford University Press

#11541

Rod Smallwood

#114062

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Professor Rodney Harris Smallwood FREng, HonFRCP, FIET, FInstP, FIPEM , known as Rod, is a British medical engineer and computer scientist. Smallwood graduated in Physics from University College London, then studied solid-state physics at Lancaster University, before working for the National Health Service in Sheffield and gaining a PhD from the University of Sheffield.

#11542

Janusz Bardach

#44757

Overall Influence

1919 - 2002 (83 years)

Janusz Bardach was a gulag inmate, author, and noted plastic surgeon. He was the younger brother of Polish legal scholar Juliusz Bardach. Survivors include: his wife, Phyllis Harper- Bardach of Iowa City, Iowa; his daughter, Ewa Bardach and her husband Hani Elkadi of Iowa City; his granddaughter, Nina Elkadi of Iowa City.

#11543

Emmy Okello

#128759

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Emmy Okello, is a Ugandan consultant physician who has specialized as an interventional cardiologist and researcher. He serves as the Head of the Cardiac Catheterization Department at Uganda Heart Institute, the government institution in Kampala that specializes in the treatment of congenital and acquired cardiac disorders.

#11544

David J. Buch

#71821

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

David Joseph Buch is an American musicologist. Life and career Buch was born in Detroit and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy. He received his PhD in Music History from Northwestern University.

#11545

Russell Strong

#129165

Overall Influence

Russell Walker Strong, is an Australian transplant surgeon. He pioneered several techniques for liver transplantation, including reduced-size liver transplantation, split-liver transplantation, and living donor liver transplantation.

#11546

Hilary Critchley

#60700

Overall Influence

Hilary Octavia Dawn Critchley FRSE FRSB FMedSci FFSRH FRCOG FRANZCOG is a Scottish obstetrician and gynaecologist. , she is the Professor of Reproductive Medicine and an Honorary Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Edinburgh.

#11547

Georges-Elia Sarfati

Georges-Elia Sarfati

#53794

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Georges-Elia Sarfati is a philosopher, linguist, poet, and an existentialist psychoanalyst, author of written works in the domains of ethics, Jewish thought, social criticism, and discourse analysis. He has translated Viktor E. Frankl. He is the grand-nephew of the sociologist Gaston Bouthoul.

#11548

Mark Seidenfeld

#44262

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Mark B. Seidenfeld is an American legal academic who is known for his contributions to American administrative law. He is the Patricia A. Dore Professor of Administrative Law at the Florida State University College of Law.

#11549

Kiyoshi Kurokawa

#182677

Overall Influence

#11550

Tomi Mäkelä

#61482

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Tomi Matti Mäkelä is a Finnish musicologist and pianist, professor at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in Germany. He studied music and musicology in Lahti, Vienna, Berlin and Helsinki. As a pianist he studied with Rauno Jussila and Noel Flores. He got his doctoral degree 1988 in Berlin under the guidance of Carl Dahlhaus. He has published widely on the music of the nineteenth and twentieth century. His German book on Sibelius Poesie in der Luft got the award Geisteswissenschaft international 2008 and was published in English translation by Steven Lindberg as Jean Sibelius .

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