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,

#12851

Lenrie Olatokunbo Aina

#132363

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Lenrie Olatokunbo Aina is a professor of Library and Information Science, and former National Librarian/Chief Executive Officer of the National Library of Nigeria Abuja. Education Professor Aina obtained a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Lagos, in 1974; a Postgraduate Diploma in Librarianship, from the University of Ibadan, in 1976 and an M.Phil. Information Science, City University, London,1980. In 1986, he bagged PhD in Library Studies, from the University of Ibadan, Ibadan.

#12852

John Kirkpatrick

#190570

Overall Influence

#12853

Juan José Segura-Sampedro

#116589

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (41 years)

Juan José Segura-Sampedro MBE is a Spanish surgeon and researcher at in Mallorca, Spain, and adjunct professor of surgery at University of the Balearic Islands. He is best known for his research in major trauma, focused on the balconing phenomenon and a preventive campaign in collaboration with the British Foreign Office.

#12854

Yael Bar-Zeev

#189225

Overall Influence

Yael Bar-Zeev is an Israeli Public Health Physician, behavioral scientist, epidemiologist, and a tobacco treatment specialist. She has been a faculty member at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine since 2019. She is also the Chair of the Israel Medical Association for Smoking Cessation and Prevention.

#12855

Candy Dawson Boyd

#79420

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Candy Dawson Boyd is an American writer, activist, and educator. She is an author of more than six children's books focused on African-American youth. Early life and education Boyd was born in 1946 in Chicago, Illinois. Her birth name is Marguerite Cecille Dawson. Her parents were Mary Ruth Ridley and Julian Dawson. Boyd had two siblings and she was the oldest of the three. Her mother and father divorced. Boyd was raised by her mother. They lived in South Chicago. Boyd attended racially segregated elementary and middle schools. The library she used was also segregated. The library books were used from white schools that no longer wanted them.

#12856

Arthur Getz

#161771

Overall Influence

1913 - 1996 (83 years)

Arthur Kimmig Getz was an American illustrator best known for his fifty-year career as a cover artist for The New Yorker magazine. Between 1938 and 1988, two hundred and thirteen Getz covers appeared on The New Yorker, making Getz the most prolific New Yorker cover artist of the twentieth century. Getz was also a fine artist, painted murals for the Works Progress Administration Program, wrote and illustrated children's books, and taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the University of Connecticut, and the Washington Art Association in Washington, Connecticut. In addition to hi...

#12857

Martin Staehelin

#105510

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Martin Staehelin is a Swiss musicologist and university lecturer. Life Born in Basel, Staehelin first studied ancient languages, history, school music and flute. In 1967 he received his doctorate in musicology and ancient languages as minor subjects.

#12858

Feng Chuanhan

#169228

Overall Influence

1914 - 2019 (105 years)

Feng Chuanhan was a Chinese orthopaedic surgeon and professor. He served as Vice President of Beijing Medical College and President of Peking University People's Hospital. A pioneer in the research of bone cancer in China, he was awarded the Ho Leung Ho Lee Prize and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Chinese Medical Association.

#12859

Jeannette Bastian

#178930

Overall Influence

Jeannette Bastian is an archival scholar, academic, author, and a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists. From 1987 to 1998, she was the Territorial Librarian of the U.S. Virgin Islands and has published widely on topics related to colonial archives and decolonial archival practices.

#12860

Kjell Noreik

#170428

Overall Influence

1929 - 2015 (86 years)

Kjell Noreik was a Norwegian physician. He was born in Oslo. He was appointed professor of social medicine at the University of Oslo from 1986 to 1999. He was frequently used as an expert forensic psychiatrist, and was a member of the Norwegian Board of Forensic Medicine. He resided at Slependen.

#12861

Temitayo Shokunbi

#190603

Overall Influence

Matthew Temitayo Shokunbi is a Nigerian Neurosurgeon and Professor of Anatomy. He got his MBBS degree at the University of Ibadan shortly after completing his A levels after which he started a residency program in Neurosurgery in Ontario, Canada. He is a lecturer in Anatomy at the University of Ibadan, and in Neurological surgery at the University College Hospital, Ibadan where he also doubles as a Honorary Consultant Neurosurgeon.

#12862

Jo Ivey Boufford

#95015

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Jo Ivey Boufford is an American physician and Dean of the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, as well as a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the NYU Medical School.

#12863

Jan A. Aertsen

#190196

Overall Influence

1938 - 2016 (78 years)

Jan Adrianus Aertsen was a Dutch philosopher and theologian. Born in Amsterdam, Aertsen received his PhD title at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and taught there from 1984 up to his death. From 1993 to 2004, he served as a professor at the University of Cologne, and was the founding director of Thomas Instituut te Utrecht. He wrote several works on Thomism, starting from his doctoral thesis, Nature and Creature. Thomas Aquinas’s Way of Thought , published in Dutch four years later.

#12864

Andrew Jaszi

#144577

Overall Influence

1917 - 1998 (81 years)

Andrew Oscar Jászi was a Hungarian-born philosopher and literary scholar. He taught as professor of German at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1948 to 1984. Biography Jászi was born in Budapest into a distinguished family of assimilated Jews. His father, Oszkár Jászi, was a sociologist, historian, and politician who served as Minister of Nationalities in Mihály Károlyi's cabinet during the Hungarian Democratic Republic of 1918–19 before moving to the United States in 1925 to join the faculty of Oberlin College as Professor of Political Science. Andrew Jászi’s mother, Anna Lesznai,...

#12865

Emit Snake-Beings

#186498

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Emit Snake-Beings also known as Snakebeings is a British/New Zealand writer multi-media visual artist and sound artist who has also worked in kinetic art, DIY ethos, DIY technology, sculpture, Cinematography, and Video Editing. He has a master's degree from the University of Waikato, and in 2016 was awarded a PhD, entitled The DiY ['Do it yourself'] Ethos: A participatory culture of material engagement for his work linking the DIY ethic and Maker culture with contemporary theory of material agency and Material culture. Recent publications have focused on developing an idea of techno-animism an...

#12866

Richard Koszarski

#175122

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Richard Koszarski is a film historian. He was the founder of , and served as editor-in-chief from 1987 to 2012. He is a professor emeritus of English and film at Rutgers University in New Jersey. His collection of material on the early history of the Universal Pictures is held in the Library of Congress.

#12867

Wieslaw Woszczyk

#127528

Overall Influence

Wieslaw Woszczyk is the James McGill Professor Research Chair of Music Technology at McGill University's School of Music. He finished his PhD at the University of Victoria. Between 1978 and 1998, he was director of the graduate program in sound recording, and between 1998 and 2001 he was chair of the Department of Theory. Additionally, Woszcyk is director of McGill Recording Studios and of the Laboratory of Virtual Acoustics Technology at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University. He is also the founding director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music, Media and Technology.

#12868

Newton Garver

#182417

Overall Influence

1928 - 2014 (86 years)

Newton Garver was an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at University at Buffalo. He is known for his works on Wittgenstein. Books Derrida & WittgensteinThis Complicated Form of LifeLimits to Power: Some Friendly RemindersNonviolence and community: Reflections on the Alternatives to Violence ProjectJesus, Jefferson, and the Task of FriendsWittgenstein and approaches to clarity

#12869

Ko Wen-je

#74031

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Ko Wen-je is a Taiwanese politician and physician who served as the mayor of Taipei from 2014 to 2022. He has been the chairman of the Taiwan People's Party since 2019. Before becoming mayor, he was a doctor at National Taiwan University Hospital. He was also a professor at National Taiwan University College of Medicine, and specialized in fields including trauma, intensive care, organ transplant, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation , and artificial organs. Due to his profession, he has been nicknamed Ko P or KP . Ko was responsible for standardising organ transplant procedures in Taiwan, and was the first physician to bring ECMO to Taiwan.

#12870

Henry Feffer

#111269

Overall Influence

1918 - 2011 (93 years)

Henry Leon Feffer of Bethesda, Maryland, was an American neurosurgeon. In the mid-1950s, he was one of the first medical doctors to systematically test whether low-back pain could be relieved with epidural injections of hydrocortisone. Today, physicians routinely give such injections before resorting to more invasive surgery. He was a Washington, D.C. spinal surgeon for more than four decades whose patients included Saddam Hussein.

#12871

Nicola Curtin

#137789

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Nicola Curtin is an English academic. She is Professor of Experimental Cancer Therapeutics at Newcastle University. She is best known for being part of the Newcastle University team that developed Rubraca, a PARP inhibitor used as an anti-cancer agent addressing BRCA mutation, and for donating her share of the royalties to charity.

#12872

Grace Y. Kao

#184122

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Grace Yia-Hei Kao is an Asian American professor of ethics, who specializes in animal and human rights, ecofeminism, and Asian American Christianity. Kao earned her Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Arts degrees from Stanford University, and her PhD. at Harvard University. She is Professor of Ethics at Claremont School of Theology, and was the first Asian American woman to receive tenure there. She has been appointed as the interim Bishop Roy I. Sano and Kathleen A. Thomas-Sano Endowed Chair in Pacific and Asian Theology. Kao is also the co-director of the Center for Sexuality, Gender, and ...

#12873

Gertrude Hunter

#115831

Overall Influence

1926 - 2006 (80 years)

Gertrude Teixeira Hunter was an American doctor and professor of medicine. She served as the national director of health services for Head Start, and later became health administrator for the New England region of the United States Public Health Service. Over her career, she worked in several roles at Howard University College of Medicine. She was also an activist for AIDS healthcare in minority communities.

#12874

John Richardson

John Richardson

#124915

Overall Influence

1934 - 2021 (87 years)

John Richardson was an English actor who appeared in films from the late 1950s until the early 1990s. He was a male lead in Italian genre filmss, most notably Mario Bava's Black Sunday with Barbara Steele, but he was best known for playing the love interest of Ursula Andress in She and then of Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. .

#12875

Ellen Umansky

#99053

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Dr. Ellen M. Umansky is the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Professor of Judaic Studies and Director of the Bennett Center for Judaic Studies at Fairfield University located in Fairfield, Connecticut, positions that she has held since 1994.

#12876

Marci Bowers

#8729

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Marci Lee Bowers is an American gynecologist and surgeon who specializes in gender-affirming surgeries. Bowers is viewed as an innovator in gender confirmation/affirmation surgery, and is the first transgender woman to perform such surgeries.

#12877

Peter Herrmann

#177331

Overall Influence

Peter Herrmann is a social philosopher, sociologist and academic of German origin. Between 1995 and 2013 he worked in Ireland where he occupied at the end the position of a senior research fellow at University College Cork, School of Applied Social Studies. 2013 he moved to Rome, Italy, where he worked independently, but in close connection with the Italian research institute EURISPES. From 2015 to 2017 he worked as Professor for Economics at Bangor College of Central South University of Forestry & Technology, Changsha, PRC, and as Senior Foreign Expert. School of Public Affairs, Dept. of Social Security and Risk Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, P.R.China.

#12878

Bill Wringe

#190644

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

#12879

Gwen W. Collman

#157270

Overall Influence

Gwen W. Collman is an American environmental epidemiologist. Collman is acting deputy director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and works as director of the division of extramural research and training.

#12880

Sara Harris

#107749

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Sara E Harris is a Canadian scientist, and professor in the department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, and the associate dean academic in the Faculty of Science at the University of British Columbia. In 2015, she was named a 3M National Teaching Fellow for her MOOC on climate change.

#12881

Judith A. Cooper

#146627

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Judith Ann Cooper is an American speech pathologist serving as the deputy director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders . She was the acting director of the NIDCD from June 2018 to August 2019. Cooper is an elected fellow of the American Speech–Language–Hearing Association.

#12882

Park Seung-cheol

#123885

Overall Influence

1940 - 2014 (74 years)

Park Seung-cheol was a South Korean physician and specialist in infectious diseases. Early life Park was the first son of Korean independence activist and Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea official Park Myeong-ryeol, who lived in exile in China during Japanese colonial rule. After World War II, the family returned to Korea, where the young Park was raised. When the Korean War broke out, he fled with his family to his father's hometown of Gwangcheon-eup, in Hongseong-gun, Chungcheongnam-do near the city of Gongju. He attended Gwangcheon Elementary School before returning to Seoul, where he studied at Kyungbock High School.

#12883

Steven L. Small

#160053

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Steven L. Small is the Aage and Margareta Møller Distinguished Professor in Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas, and dean of its School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Small is a specialist in the neurobiology of language.

#12884

Lauren Ackerman

Lauren Ackerman

#25756

Overall Influence

1905 - 1993 (88 years)

Lauren Vedder Ackerman was an American physician and pathologist, who championed the subspecialty of surgical pathology in the mid-20th century. Early life Ackerman was born in March 1905 in Auburn, New York, to Bertha and John Ackerman. Both of his parents were college graduates. His father was a civil and mechanical engineer, who later became city manager of Watertown, New York. Despite growing up in a learned family environment, Lauren was an indifferent student with mediocre grades. After high school graduation in 1923 Ackerman began his college studies at St. Lawrence University , later transferring to, and graduating from, Hamilton College in 1927 with a B.S.

#12885

Jean Emily Henley

#126591

Overall Influence

1910 - 1994 (84 years)

Jean Emily Henley from was an anesthesiologist. She was the only child of Eugene Henry and Helen Esther Heller , who emigrated from Hungary and Germany respectively into the United States. She was fluent in German, due to that being her parents native language. The father changed the family surname to Henley while she was still a child. Both parents practiced lay psychotherapy and later obtained PhDs. As both a sculptor and linguist, she had many accomplishments.

#12886

Marek Harat

#62693

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Marek Harat is a Polish neurosurgeon, professor of medical sciences , colonel of the reserve. In 1993, he completed an internship in Canada, including at Toronto Western Hospital. Author of a number of publications and innovative neurosurgical procedures , including those related to deep brain stimulation. Promoter and reviewer of doctoral theses. Clinical Consultant in Neurosurgery at the 10th Military Clinical Hospital with Polyclinic in Bydgoszcz, he also works at the Medical College in Bydgoszcz of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. He was awarded the Bronze Cross of Merit .

#12887

Nicole Hassoun

#189782

Overall Influence

Nicole Hassoun is a professor of philosophy at Binghamton University and head of the Global Health Impact project, a research organization focused on promoting access to essential medicines. She is the author of Globalization and Global Justice: Shrinking Distance, Expanding Obligations and Global Health Impact: Extending Access on Essential Medicines for the Poor.

#12888

Frank R. Wallace

#188110

Overall Influence

1932 - 2006 (74 years)

Frank R. Wallace , born Wallace Ward, was an American author, publisher and mail-order magnate. Previously a professional poker player, he is originator of the philosophy of Neo-Tech an offshoot of Ayn Rand's Objectivism. He was convicted of various federal tax crimes in the 1990s. During his trials, he challenged the oath he was required to take before testifying which became the case United States v. Ward in which the Appeals Court upheld his right to recite an alternate oath.

#12889

Robert G. Gard Jr.

Robert G. Gard Jr.

#62830

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (98 years)

Robert Gibbins Gard Jr. is a retired United States Army lieutenant general and former chairman of the board of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation where his work focuses on nuclear nonproliferation, missile defense, Iraq, Iran, military policy, nuclear terrorism, and other national security issues.

#12890

Helen Haines

#104224

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Helen Mary Haines is an Australian politician who has served as the independent MP for the Victorian seat of Indi since the 2019 federal election. Early life and education Haines grew up on a dairy farm in Colac in southwestern Victoria with four brothers, and attended a public school in Eurack. She trained as a registered nurse at St Vincent's Hospital and later as a midwife at Mercy Hospital for Women in Melbourne. In 1986, she moved to northeastern Victoria and began working as a midwife at Wangaratta Base Hospital before being appointed matron and Director of Nursing at the Chiltern Bush Nursing Hospital.

#12891

H. Bricmore

#151950

Overall Influence

H. Bricmore, Brichemore, or Brydgemoore , surnamed Sophista, was a Scottish scholastic philosopher. Bricmore is stated by John Leland to have lived at Oxford, and to have written commentaries on some of the works of Aristotle. He is probably the same person as Brichemon, of whom Leland gives a very similar description. The only account of his life comes from Thomas Dempster who states that Bricmore was one of a number of Scots sent to the University of Oxford by decree of the council of Vienne, and that he was a canon of Holy Rood, Edinburgh. Dempster adds, implausibly, that he died in England...

#12892

Mary Ann Smart

#74323

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Mary Ann Smart is a Canadian-born musicologist. Smart earned a doctorate from Cornell University and is the Terrill Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in the study of nineteenth century opera.

#12893

John Grant

#88362

Overall Influence

1930 - 2014 (84 years)

John Grant was a Scottish author and illustrator, possibly best known as the author of the Littlenose series of children's stories, which he read on the BBC's Jackanory in 55 programmes from 1968 to 1986.

#12894

Bluma Tischler

#181650

Overall Influence

1924 - 2015 (91 years)

Bluma Gorfinkel Tischler was a Canadian pediatrician known for her work in treating phenylketonuria, including her role in the widespread implementation of the Guthrie test for detecting that illness.

#12895

Trevanian

#32775

Overall Influence

1931 - 2005 (74 years)

Rodney William Whitaker was an American film scholar and writer who wrote several novels under the pen name Trevanian. Whitaker wrote in a wide variety of genres, achieved bestseller status, and published under several other names, as well, including Nicholas Seare, Beñat Le Cagot, and Edoard Moran. He published the nonfiction book The Language of Film under his own name.

#12896

Giorgio Bertellini

#190148

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Giorgio Bertellini an Italian-American media historian who specializes in the ways national and racial diversity informed American cinema's representation of citizenship, stardom, and leadership during the era of migrations, fascism, and World War II. He is currently Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan.

#12897

Anita Coleman

#44928

Overall Influence

Anita Coleman is an Indian American academic librarian, faculty and researcher in digital libraries. Anita Coleman is also the founder of an interdisciplinary open access repository, dLIST - Digital Library of Information Science and Technology.

#12898

Peter Williams

#118570

Overall Influence

1914 - 1995 (81 years)

Peter Lancelot Williams was an English designer and dance critic. He founded and edited the monthly magazine Dance and Dancers for thirty years, wrote columns for national newspapers and was an influential chairman of various committees and trusts.

#12899

Judith Lodge

#129449

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Judith Lodge is an American Canadian painter and photographer who often explores how the two mediums play off of and inform one another. Her abstract portraits of memories, situations, events, and people are inspired by the unconscious, dreams, journals, and nature. She has worked in Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, Banff, Minnesota, and New York, where she has lived for more than thirty years.

#12900

Michael Brown

#128079

Overall Influence

1920 - 2014 (94 years)

Michael Brown was an American composer, lyricist, writer, director, producer, and performer. He was born in Mexia, Texas. His musical career began in New York cabaret, performing first at Le Ruban Bleu. In the 1960s, he was a producer of industrial musicals for major American corporations such as J.C. Penney and DuPont. For the DuPont pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair, Brown wrote and produced a musical revue, The Wonderful World of Chemistry staged 48 times a day by two simultaneous casts in adjacent theaters. For years, he maintained a reunion directory of the cast and crew, which included Robert Downey, Sr.

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