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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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#12001

Jo-Anne H. Young

#110624

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Jo-Anne H. Young is an American physician, scientist, and Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Microbiology Reviews, published by the American Society for Microbiology. Her expertise is in the areas of transplantation, infectious diseases, infections of the immune compromised host, and clinical mycology and virology.

#12002

Kate Cavanagh

#157236

Overall Influence

1951 - 2008 (57 years)

For those of a similar name, see Kate Kavanagh Catherine Cavanagh was a social worker, social science researcher and activist. She worked in the fields of domestic violence, child abuse and rape, with the aim of understanding extreme forms of violence in order to develop prevention strategies.

#12003

Lena Horne

#83313

Overall Influence

1917 - 2010 (93 years)

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, dancer, and civil rights activist. Horne's career spanned more than seventy years, appearing in film, television, and theatre. Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood.

#12004

James Petrie

#162034

Overall Influence

1941 - 2001 (60 years)

Prof James Colquhoun Petrie was a Scottish medical doctor, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology, from 1985, and Head of the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, from 1994 at the University of Aberdeen.

#12005

Tawanna Dillahunt

#99205

Overall Influence

Tawanna Dillahunt is an American computer scientist and information scientist based at the University of Michigan School of Information. She runs the Social Innovations Group, a research group that designs, builds, and enhances technologies to solve real-world problems. Her research has been cited over 2,700 times according to Google Scholar.

#12006

Ingeborg Rapoport

Ingeborg Rapoport

#26357

Overall Influence

1912 - 2017 (105 years)

Ingeborg Rapoport was a German pediatrician who was a prominent figure in East German medicine and, at age 102, the oldest person to receive a Doctorate degree. Rapoport studied medicine in Hamburg in Nazi Germany, but was denied a medical degree because her mother was of Jewish ancestry. She fled Nazi persecution and emigrated to the United States in 1938, where she completed her education in medicine. In the early 1950s, as a result of an investigation of her and her husband for un-American activities, she left the United States and eventually, after staying in Vienna for a year, moved to the German Democratic Republic .

#12007

Sabrina Kitaka

#142925

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Sabrina Bakeera Kitaka , commonly known as Sabrina Kitaka, is a Ugandan physician, pediatrician, pediatric infectious diseases specialist and academic, who serves as a senior lecturer in the Department of Pediatrics at Makerere University School of Medicine.

#12008

Neera K. Badhwar

#186043

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Neera K. Badhwar is an Indian philosopher and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma. She is known for her works on ethics and political philosophy. Books Friendship: A Philosophical Reader .Is Virtue Only A Means to Happiness? , 2nd edition .Well-Being: Happiness in a Worthwhile Life .

#12009

Edward W. Crosby

Edward W. Crosby

#85292

Overall Influence

1932 - 2021 (89 years)

Edward Warren Crosby , was an African-American professor/administrator emeritus, in the Department of Pan-African Studies at Kent State University . As a pioneer in the field of Black education his most notable accomplishments include the establishment of Black History Month and the Department of Pan-African Studies at KSU. The Institute for African American Affairs and the Center of Pan-African Culture were two of the first institutions of their kind to be established at institutions of higher education.

#12010

Claire McLintock

#148805

Overall Influence

1965 - 2022 (57 years)

Marie Claire McLintock was a New Zealand haematologist and obstetric physician. She was an expert in medical conditions and disorders related to bleeding and blood clotting, and medical problems associated with pregnancy.

#12011

Neal Zaslaw

#56728

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Neal Zaslaw is an American musicologist. Life and career Born in New York, Zaslaw graduated from Harvard in 1961 with a BA and obtained his master's from Juilliard in 1963. He played flute in the American Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski from 1962 to 1965. In 1970 he received his Ph.D from Columbia University; he also taught at CUNY, 1968-70. Since 1970 he has taught at Cornell University.

#12012

Ray Bush

#102032

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Raymond Carey Bush is a professor of African studies at the school of politics and international studies at the University of Leeds. He is a member of the Leeds University Centre for African Studies advisory board and deputy chair of the Review of African Political Economy . Bush is married to Dr. Mette Wiggen, a fellow academic at POLIS.

#12013

Bruce Mann

#90437

Overall Influence

Gregory Bruce Mann is an Australian surgical oncologist. He is the Director of Breast Cancer Services at the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, the largest specialist women's care hospital in Australia.

#12014

Kevin P. Clements

#39258

Overall Influence

Kevin Clements is an Emeritus Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He was formerly Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and Foundation Director of the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland. He has also been Secretary General of the International Peace Research Association since January 2009. Since 2016 he was appointed Director of the Toda Peace Institute , Tokyo, Japan.

#12015

Peter Petersen

#88493

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Peter Petersen is a German musicologist, professor emeritus of the University of Hamburg. He focus on 20th-century music, rhythm, and was instrumental in the university's Exile Music Working Group and the online Lexikon verfolgter Musiker und Musikerinnen der NS-Zeit.

#12016

Levi Watkins

#22770

Overall Influence

1944 - 2015 (71 years)

Levi Watkins Jr. was an American heart surgeon and civil rights activist. On February 4, 1980, he and Vivien Thomas were the first to successfully implant an automatic defibrillator in a human patient at Johns Hopkins University. This took place only a mere seven months after Watkins completed his surgical education at Johns Hopkins. Today, millions of patients everywhere use this device, which detects irregular heart beats and corrects them.

#12017

Emanuel Levy

#57833

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Emanuel Levy is an American film critic and professor emeritus of sociology and film of Arizona State University. For the past four decades, he has taught a wide variety of courses in the areas of sociology and politics of film, and popular culture at Columbia University, New School for Social Research, Wellesley College, UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television, and Arizona State University.

#12018

David Regan

#155635

Overall Influence

1939 - 1994 (55 years)

David Regan was a British academic who was a head of the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. Regan was a Francis Hill Professor of Local Government at the University of Nottingham and a member of the Bruges Group that rejected the idea of a 'federal' European Union.

#12019

Kurt Schwaen

#95587

Overall Influence

1909 - 2007 (98 years)

Kurt Schwaen was a German composer. Professional career Schwaen studied piano, organ and composition under Fritz Lubrich. From 1929 to 1933 he studied at the universities of Berlin and Breslau, where his teachers included Curt Sachs and Arnold Schering. In 1930 he met Hanns Eisler who had a profound impact on his compositional style. After becoming active in an anti-fascist student group, he joined the Communist Party of Germany; from 1935 to 1938 he was imprisoned because of his political views.

#12020

Mandan Mishra

#61080

Overall Influence

1929 - 2001 (72 years)

Dr. Mandan Mishra was a noted Sanskrit scholar from India and founder of Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha. In 2000 he was awarded Padma Shri by Government of India for his excellent and devoted work in the field of Sanskrit.

#12021

Antonios Zavaliangos

#186083

Overall Influence

Antonios Zavaliangos is an American material scientist and engineer, and currently the A. W. Grosvenor professor at Drexel University. He is also a published author. Zavaliangos is also the Director of the CMSE Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need, Director of GAANN-Pharma, and Co-Director of the Drexel Research Experiences in Advanced Materials NSF REU Site.

#12022

Suzanne M. De La Monte

#186085

Overall Influence

#12023

Roger Field

#57031

Overall Influence

Roger John Field is a retired New Zealand plant scientist and university administrator. He served as the vice-chancellor of Lincoln University from 2004 to 2012. Career Born in Birmingham, England, on 5 July 1946, Field completed a joint honours degree in botany and zoology at the University of Hull, and a PhD in plant science, also at Hull. The title of his doctoral thesis was The movement of plant growth regulators and herbicides.

#12024

Joy Wolfram

#125070

Overall Influence

1989 - Present (37 years)

Joy Wolfram is a Finnish nanoscientist. She is known for her pioneering work in nanomedicine concerning the treatment of cancer, cardiovascular diseases and other life-threatening illnesses. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, in the school of Chemical Engineering and the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. She was the forefront of the Extracellular Vesicles and Nanomedicine laboratory at Mayo Clinic. She is also an affiliate faculty member at Houston Methodist Hospital's Department of Nanomedecine. Wolfram sits as a scientific advisor and a...

#12025

Gerhard Jorch

#108326

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Gerhard Jorch is a German pediatrician. He is Professor for general pediatrics and neonatology at the Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg and director of the University children's hospital. Curriculum vitae Gerhard Jorch was born as the eldest of seven siblings in Neuhaus. He got highschool education at Gymnasium Theodorianum Paderborn and thereafter performed his medical study at the Philipps-University of Marburg from 1970-1977 supported by a national grant . He finished his doctoral thesis work in 1976. From 1977 – 1982 he performed pediatric training at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Univ...

#12026

Isabella Akyinbah Quakyi

#138362

Overall Influence

Isabella Akyinbah Quakyi is a Ghanaian academic. She is a professor of Immunology and Parasitology at the University of Ghana and the Foundation Dean of the University of Ghana School of Public Health. She is also a researcher in the field of medicine and a health practitioner. She is a fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the African Academy of Sciences. Professor Quakyi was recognized by Newsweek magazine as one of “seven women scientists who defied the odds and changed science forever”.

#12027

Francisco Moreno Capdevila

#92670

Overall Influence

1926 - 1995 (69 years)

Francisco Moreno Capdevila was a Mexican artist of Spanish origin, best noted for his engraving and other graphic work. He came to Mexico as a political refugee after the fall of the Republicans in 1939. Unlike other Spanish artists of his generation, he was young when he arrived and did not begin studying or working in art until he was in Mexico. His work generally had cultural and political themes, but also included a portable mural about the fall of Tenochtitlan. This work was at the Museo de la Ciudad de México for thirty years, but today it is at the law school of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

#12028

Richard Abel

#142720

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Richard Owen Abel is a professor of Comparative Literature in the University of Michigan, United States. He has presented several anthologies of French texts translated in English including Colette's first review about The Cheat, Louis Delluc's critics, and Marcel L'Herbier's manifesto. He won the Theatre Library Association Award in 1985, 1995 and 2006.

#12029

Edward G. Holley

#72102

Overall Influence

1927 - 2010 (83 years)

Edward G. Holley was an American librarian, library historian and educator. Holley graduated from David Lipscomb College in Nashville, Tennessee in 1949 with a bachelor's degree in English. In 1951 he graduated from George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tennessee with a master's in library science. Holley went on to receive his Ph.D. in library science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1961. He wrote, Charles Evans : American Bibliographer.

#12030

Joan Straumanis

#125550

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Joan Straumanis is an academic administrator, philosopher, second-wave feminist, mathematician, civil libertarian, public speaker, and American pioneer in women's studies. She co-created the first women's studies program outside a public university, and served as president of both Antioch College and the Metropolitan College of New York and as academic dean at other institutions.

#12031

Mao Xinyu

#129162

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Mao Xinyu is a grandson of Mao Zedong and a major general in the People's Liberation Army of the People's Republic of China. Early life and education Mao was born in 17 January 1970 at People's Liberation Army General Hospital in Beijing. He is the only child of Mao Anqing and Shao Hua and one of Mao Zedong's twelve grandchildren. He spent the first 11 years of his life away from his parents, who were based in Russia. He graduated from the History Department of Renmin University of China in 1992. He works as a researcher at the People's Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences, where he c...

#12032

Þorsteinn Gylfason

#148081

Overall Influence

1942 - 2005 (63 years)

Þorsteinn Gylfason was an Icelandic philosopher, translator, musician and poet. Þorsteinn distinguished himself in Icelandic public life with his writings in newspapers, journals and publications.

#12033

Joan Kaderavek

#131204

Overall Influence

Joan Nybell Kaderavek is an American Speech-Language Pathologist, currently a retired Distinguished Professor at University of Toledo. She has published the book "Language Disorders in Children: Fundamental Concepts of Assessment and Intervention."

#12034

Christine Kreuder Johnson

#177839

Overall Influence

Christine Kreuder Johnson is an American epidemiologist and veterinary scientist who is Professor and Director of the EpiCenter for Disease Dynamics at the One Health Institute. She serves as Professor of Epidemiology and Ecosystem Health at the University of California, Davis. She was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Medicine in 2021.

#12035

Wolfgang Martin Stroh

#122682

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Wolfgang Martin Stroh is a German musicologist and Emeritus professor at the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg. Life Born in Stuttgart, Stroh studied mathematics, physics, musicology and modern German literature at the Universities of Erlangen, Munich, Freiburg and at the Eastman School of Music . In 1973 he obtained his doctorate with Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht . In 2006 he acquired the HAF diploma for multimedia design. He was a teacher at several Gymnasiumss, from 1973 to 1978 he was research fellow at the Oberstufen-Kolleg Bielefeld, since 1978 Professor for systematic musicology at the University of Oldenburg.

#12036

Albert Patron

#182582

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Alberto Patron , known in America also as Albert Patron, is an Italian composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, aporetic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Patron is one of the leading figures of the contemporary trent aporetic music as well as aporetic philosophy. Critics have lauded him as one of the most innovative Italian composers since 1990. He was also instrumental in the development of philosophy.

#12037

Eva Steiness

#185323

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Eva Steiness née Uhl is a Danish physician, former university professor and businessperson who has been active in Scandinavia's pharmaceutical industry since the late 1990s. She is currently CEO of Serodus ASA, a biomedical company based in Oslo which develops drugs for the treatment of diabetes. In 1982, Steiness became the first women to be appointed dean of Copenhagen University's faculty of medicine and in 1985, she became the first women in Denmark to become a full professor in the medical field with her appointment at Aarhus University.

#12038

Gwendolyn Audrey Foster

Gwendolyn Audrey Foster

#133359

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Gwendolyn Audrey Foster is an experimental filmmaker, artist and author. She is Willa Cather Professor Emerita in Film Studies. Her work has focused on gender, race, ecofeminism, queer sexuality, eco-theory, and class studies. From 1999 through the end of 2014, she was co-editor along with Wheeler Winston Dixon of the Quarterly Review of Film and Video. In 2016, she was named Willa Cather Endowed Professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and took early retirement in 2020.

#12039

Edward D. Thalmann

Edward D. Thalmann

#51614

Overall Influence

1945 - 2004 (59 years)

Capt. Edward Deforest Thalmann, USN was an American hyperbaric medicine specialist who was principally responsible for developing the current United States Navy dive tables for mixed-gas diving, which are based on his eponymous Thalmann Algorithm . At the time of his death, Thalmann was serving as assistant medical director of the Divers Alert Network and an assistant clinical professor in anesthesiology at Duke University's Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Environmental Physiology.

#12040

Salem Mekuria

#107029

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Salem Mekuria is an Ethiopian-born independent filmmaker, video artist and educator living in the United States. Life and work Mekuria was born in Addis Ababa. She was educated there and in Axum, and moved to the United States in 1967 where she studied political science and journalism at Macalester College. Mekuria earned a MA in education technology and media production from San Francisco State University in 1978. She later worked at the WGBH TV station in Boston, starting as a secretary but eventually becoming a producer for the Nova series. Mekuria is the Luella LaMer Professor of Women's...

#12041

Jocelyne Bloch

#91293

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Jocelyne Bloch is a Swiss neuroscientist and a neurosurgeon at Lausanne University Hospital and at EPFL . Life Bloch graduated in the Faculty of Medicine of Lausanne University in December 1994 and she obtained her neurosurgical degree in 2002. Her area of expertise is deep brain stimulation and brain repair in relation to movement disorders. In collaboration with EPFL, she is currently leading a clinical feasibility study that evaluates the therapeutic potential of this spinal cord stimulation technology, without a brain implant, to improve the walking ability in people with partial spinal c...

#12042

Shubhra Gupta

#87189

Overall Influence

Shubhra Gupta is an Indian film critic, writer and columnist for The Indian Express from New Delhi, India. She received the Ramnath Goenka Award for Best Writing on Cinema in 2012. She was a member of the Central Board of Film Certification from 2012 to 2015. She is the author of 50 Films That Changed Bollywood, 1995-2015.

#12043

Joshua Brickman

#179808

Overall Influence

Joshua Mark Brickman is an American/British biologist. He is a professor of stem cell and developmental biology at the University of Copenhagen. Brickman received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry and Philosophy from the University of Vermont in 1985 and a PhD in Molecular Cellular Biology from Harvard University in 1996

#12044

Jay Telotte

#99348

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Jay P. Telotte, published as J. P. Telotte, is a professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. With over 150 published scholarly articles and 10 published books, his area of expertise lies in film studies. His primary field of study is film history and genres, and he is particularly involved in the studies of science fiction. In his book Animating the Science Fiction Imagination, Telotte combines his interest in the science fiction genre and animation to explore the intersection between the two.

#12045

Mony J. De Leon

#186229

Overall Influence

#12046

Kirk R. Smith

#56768

Overall Influence

1947 - 2020 (73 years)

Kirk R. Smith was an American expert on the health and climate effects of household energy use in developing nations. He held a professorship in Global Environmental Health at the University of California, Berkeley, where his research focused on the relationships among environmental quality, health, resource use, climate, development, and policy in developing countries. Smith contributed a great deal to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , and the work of the IPCC was recognized by the joint award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Smith was a recipient of the 2012 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement for his work with cookstoves, health, and climate.

#12047

Sherry Flint-Garcia

#186264

Overall Influence

#12048

Wade Clark Mackey

#91439

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

W. C. Mackey is an American author and social scientist who has researched in topics of anthropology, criminal justice, criminology, psychology and sociology in his academic and professional career .He has authored Fathering Behaviours ,The American Father and co-authored the 2000 book Gender Roles, Traditions and Generations to Come: The Collision of Competing Interests and the Feminist Paradox with Nancy S. Coney for Nova Science Publishing. He has written on the relationship of gender on parental interaction.

#12049

Daniel Fung

#43654

Overall Influence

Daniel Fung Shuen Sheng is a Singaporean psychiatrist and researcher who is the current chief executive officer of the Institute of Mental Health . Fung is also the president of the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions and of the College of Psychiatrists in Singapore.

#12050

Daniel Mongiardo

#129982

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Frank Daniel Mongiardo is an American physician and politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Mongiardo is a Democrat and was the 54th lieutenant governor of Kentucky from 2007 until 2011. He was a member of the Kentucky State Senate from 2001 to 2007. He also ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004, narrowly losing in the general election to Jim Bunning and again in 2010, losing in the primary election to Jack Conway.

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