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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#13551

Luis Castro Leiva

#167974

Overall Influence

1943 - 1999 (56 years)

Luis Hernan Castro Leiva was a Venezuelan political philosopher, historian, writer and columnist. He is known for his televised speech on 23 January 1998 for the National Congress in which he warns against bolivarianism, cronyism and atavistic absolutism. He was one of the country's foremost advocates for democracy and an outspoken critic of Hugo Chávez, which he considered a populist. Castro is also credited with introducing rugby to Venezuela.

#13552

Brian Williams

#140109

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Brian H. Williams is an American surgeon and Professor of Trauma Surgery at the University of Chicago. He specialises in acute surgery and critical care. Alongside his work as a clinician, Williams looks to end racial inequities in healthcare and end the American epidemic of gun violence.

#13553

Wolfgang Plath

#88697

Overall Influence

1930 - 1995 (65 years)

Wolfgang Plath was a German musicologist specialising in research on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Life Born in Riga, Plath studied musicology under Walter Gerstenberg, first at the Free University of Berlin, then at University of Tübingen. His PhD thesis in 1958 dealt with the Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.

#13554

Tadeusz Lubelski

Tadeusz Lubelski

#62396

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Tadeusz Lubelski is a Polish film historian, theorist and critic specializing in Polish and French cinema, translator, professor of the humanities, member of the European Film Academy. A film academic, he was associated with the University of Silesia and with the Jagiellonian University respectively. He was the director of the Institute of the Audio-Visual Arts of the Jagiellonian University . He also taught Polish language at Sorbonne . He authored and edited a number of books, including the first Polish thematic Encyklopedia kina and the comprehensive series Historia kina . Since 1994, he has been the deputy editor-in-chief of the Kino monthly.

#13555

Giovanni Scognamillo

#121539

Overall Influence

1929 - 2016 (87 years)

Giovanni Scognamillo was a Turkish Levantine film critic. Scognamillo was born to a family of Italian Levantines; his father was the son of an immigrant from Naples and his mother was descended from Genoese settlers of Tinos. As his father, Leone, was the manager of the prestigious movie theatre Elhamra Sineması of Beyoğlu, Scognamillo became acquainted with cinema in early years of his life. After graduation from Liceo Italiano, he started to write cinema articles for various Italian-language media. By 1961, he began his career in Turkish language press.

#13556

Ana Vásquez-Bronfman

#179152

Overall Influence

1931 - 2009 (78 years)

Ana Vásquez-Bronfman was a Chilean Jewish sociologist and writer. Exiled from the country during the dictatorship in 1973, she relocated to Paris, where she worked as a professor and researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research. Much of her literary work centered on the cultural heritage of Jews in predominantly Catholic Latin America, the effects of military dictatorship on human rights and racial prejudices and exile. Her research evaluated the psycho-sociology of children and women's sexuality. She won a National Book prize in Chile for her fiction and a bronze medal from the ...

#13557

Fausto J Pinto

#171622

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Fausto J. Pinto is a Portuguese academic. He is Professor of Cardiology at Hospital de Santa Maria. Former dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Lisbon. Career From 2002 to 2004, Pinto served as president and founder of the European Association of Echocardiography. From 2008 to 2010, he was Chairman of the ESC's Congress Program Committee, followed by President from 2014 to 2016 and chair of the European Heart Agency from 2016 to 2018.

#13558

Tetyana Yablonska

#56615

Overall Influence

1917 - 2005 (88 years)

Tetyana Nylivna Yablonska was a Ukrainian painter. Her early vital pictures were devoted to the work and life of Ukrainian people . She moved to general images of nature, delivering a subtlety of plastic and color rhythms .

#13559

Christobel Saunders

#110348

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Christobel Mary Saunders is a British-Australian oncologist and breast cancer specialist, who holds the position of Winthrop Professor of Surgical Oncology at the University of Western Australia. Education and career Saunders completed her medical training at the University of London, taking her Bachelor of Science with Distinction in 1986. In 1987, she won a Royal Society of Medicine Travelling Scholarship, before becoming a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1991. Her early career was spent at hospitals in London and south east England, including Newham and Whipps Cross Hospitals....

#13560

Peter J. Haas

#184665

Overall Influence

Peter J. Haas is an American Reform Judaism rabbi who was the Abba Hillel Silver Professor of Jewish Studies at Case Western Reserve University. Education and Career Haas earned a bachelor's degree in Ancient Near Eastern History from the University of Michigan in 1970. After studying for a M.A.H.L. at Hebrew Union College, he was ordained in 1974. He completed a Ph.D. in Religious Studies and History of Religions from Brown University in 1980.

#13561

Asım Akin

#187440

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Asım Akin is a Turkish physician. He attended the St. Joseph High School in Istanbul and studied at the University of Istanbul at the Medicical School of Çapa. He earned his P.h.D. at the University of Ankara. There he was made a lecturer in 1975 and in 1982 a professor. From 1976 until 1977 he worked interim at the University of Paris. In 1978, he founded the scientific division for nuclear medicine at the University of Ankara.

#13562

Willem Anton van Vloten

#115341

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Willem Anton van Vloten is a Dutch dermatologist. Van Vloten studied medicine at the University of Leiden where he graduated on 19 June 1974. He was appointed as a professor of dermatology and venereology in 1980. Later he was appointed as a dermatology professor at the University of Utrecht on 8 November 1984 and worked there till 1 June 2001.

#13563

Albert Ronsin

#110956

Overall Influence

1928 - 2007 (79 years)

Albert Ronsin was a 20th-century French scholar, historian, librarian, and curator in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges. Historian He undertook historical research, especially about the Age of Discovery. He was particularly interested in the history of the name America given by Martin Waldseemüller to the continent that Amerigo Vespucci passed through and described. He studied globes and World maps of the early sixteenth, including Johannes Schöner globe created by Johann Schoener and Waldseemüller's maps.

#13564

Riccardo Polosa

#104774

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Riccardo Polosa is an Italian respiratory physician. According to a paper published in BMC Public Health, he is the most prolific author in the field of electronic cigarettes, as of 2014. "Full Professor of Internal Medicine and specialist of Respiratory Diseases and Clinical Immunology at the University of Catania as well as the Founder and Clinical Director of the Center for Tobacco Research and Scientific Director of the Center of Excellence for the acceleration of Harm Reduction at the same University." His research interests center on asthma, COPD, respiratory diseases, smoking-related diseases, smoking prevention and cessation, tobacco harm reduction, and new tobacco products.

#13565

Anahera Morehu

#189305

Overall Influence

Anahera Morehu is a New Zealand public servant. As at 2023, she is the Chief Archivist of New Zealand and general manager of Archives New Zealand. She was appointed on 14 June 2023. She had previously been appointed as acting Chief Archivist from November 2022.

#13566

Kanji Nishio

#26416

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

is a Japanese intellectual and professor emeritus of literature at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo, Japan. He was awarded a degree in German literature and a PhD in literature from the University of Tokyo. He has translated the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer into Japanese and has written over seventy published works and over thirty translations.

#13567

Bernd Baselt

#88994

Overall Influence

1934 - 1993 (59 years)

Bernd Baselt was a German musicologist noted for his works on the Baroque composer George Frideric Handel. He was born in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt and died in Hanover. From 1953 to 1955 Baselt studied at the Academy for Music and Theater, and at the Martin Luther University in Halle from 1953 to 1958. He gained professorial rank in music at the university in 1975.

#13568

Suzanne Baker

#177783

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Suzanne Dale Baker is an Australian film producer, print and television journalist, writer, historian and feminist. In 1977, she became the first Australian woman to win an Academy Award, winning for the animated short film Leisure in the category Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

#13569

Thomas Porter

#131817

Overall Influence

Thomas R. Porter is an American cardiologist. He holds the Theodore F. Hubbard Distinguished Chair of Cardiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Porter obtained his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 1984 and was a resident and fellow at the Medical College of Virginia. The Web of Science lists more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed medical journals, which have been cited over 4000 times, giving him an h-index of 34.

#13570

Zoran Radojičić

#120229

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Zoran Radojičić is a Serbian pediatric surgeon and politician who served as the mayor of Belgrade from 2018 to 2022. Biography Early life and education He was born on 24 October 1963 in Lazarevac, Serbia, at the time part of Yugoslavia. In 1989, he graduated from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Medicine, and later obtained magisterial and doctoral thesis in 1998 and 2006, respectively.

#13571

Raoul Gregory Vitale

Raoul Gregory Vitale

#42983

Overall Influence

1928 - 2003 (75 years)

Raoul Gregory Vitale was a Syrian musicologist who introduced the total description of the ancient Babylonian musical scales used in Music of Mesopotamia and Near East, and also a complete interpretation of the musical notation of the Hurrian Hymn 6 discovered in Ugarit which is considered to be the first known complete musical notation.

#13572

Judy Dlamini

#192101

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Judy Dlamini is a South African businesswoman and author who is the Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand and the founding chairman of Mbekani Group. She served as chairperson of the board of Aspen Pharmacare Holdings from November 2007 until December 2015 while concurrently serving as non-executive director from July 2005 until December 2015. In 2020 the magazine Forbes called her one of Africas 50 most powerful women. In 2022, she was mentioned by Forbes as one of the 50 over 50 women leading the way throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

#13573

Orlando Mejía Rivera

#155993

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Orlando Mejía Rivera is a Colombian internist and graduated M.Phil., writer and thanatologist. He was born in Bogotá. Currently he lives in Manizales and is titular professor at the Universidad de Caldas faculty of medicine.

#13574

Eugene Lazowski

Eugene Lazowski

#27894

Overall Influence

1913 - 2006 (93 years)

Eugene Lazowski born Eugeniusz Sławomir Łazowski was a Polish medical doctor who saved thousands of people during World War II by creating a fake epidemic which played on German phobias about hygiene. He also used his position as a doctor treating people travelling through a nearby train station to conceal his supply of medicine to Jews in the local ghetto, which backed on to his home. By doing this, he risked the death penalty, which was applied to Poles who helped Jews in the Holocaust.

#13575

Sándor J. Kovács

Sándor J. Kovács

#75779

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Sándor J. Kovács is a Hungarian-American academic cardiologist and cardiovascular physiologist, best known for his work on the physiological dynamics of the human heart. He is a professor of medicine, physics, physiology, and biomedical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.

#13576

Olexander Chyrkov

Olexander Chyrkov

#96333

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Olexander Chyrkov, the head of the department of Germanic Philology and Foreign Literature, the head of Scientific and Artistic Complex "Dramaturgy" of the Institute of Foreign Languages Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University, member of the Academy of Sciences of Higher Education of Ukraine, Doctor of Philology, Professor.

#13577

Nuri Saryal

#88541

Overall Influence

1929 - 2020 (91 years)

Nuri Saryal was a Turkish educator of the Azerbaijani origin. He served as rector of Middle East Technical University from 1977 to 1979. Early life He was born in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR as the son of Ismail and Helena Seyitzade. He became a Turkish citizen in 1931, when the family name changed to Saryal. In 1947 he graduated from Atatürk Gymnasium in Ankara. From 1947–1948 he attended English medium prep school. In 1952 he graduated from Robert College Engineering School B.Sc. Mechanical Engineering. He attended Purdue University, earning a MSc. Mechanical Engineering. In 1956 he graduated from the Technical University of Berlin with a PhD in Mechanical Engineering.

#13578

Harriet Louise Hardy

Harriet Louise Hardy

#83051

Overall Influence

1906 - 1993 (87 years)

Harriet Louise Hardy was an American pioneer in occupational medicine and the first woman professor at Harvard Medical School. Her main points of study were toxicology and environmental related illness. She died on October 13, 1993, of cancer of the immune system at Massachusetts General Hospital.

#13579

Willem Wilmink

#108685

Overall Influence

1936 - 2003 (67 years)

Willem Wilmink was a Dutch poet and writer. He was best known for the large number of songs he wrote for popular children programs and his accessible, straightforward poetry. Life and career Wilmink was born in Enschede and studied Dutch and history at the University of Amsterdam. From 1960 to 1978, he taught modern literature at the same university. He wrote many songs for musicals and wrote a number of novels for young adults. At first he mainly wrote for adults, but later mainly for children.

#13580

Tamara Minko

#109729

Overall Influence

Tamara Minko is a distinguished professor and chair of the department of pharmaceutics at Rutgers University, Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy. She has an H-index of 43 since 2016 and over 17,800 citations of her work.

#13581

John McMichael

#173115

Overall Influence

1904 - 1993 (89 years)

Sir John McMichael FRSE LLD was a 20th-century Scottish cardiologist. He developed the Royal Post Graduate Medical School at Hammersmith. Life He was born on 25 July 1904 in Gatehouse of Fleet in Kirkcudbrightshire, the son of a butcher and farmer of a smallholding. He was educated at Girthon School by William Learmonth, father of James Learmonth who encouraged him to enter Kirkcudbright Academy where he became school dux. He then studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh graduating MB ChB in 1927 and then became an Ettles Scholar and assistant to Sir Stanley Davidson.

#13582

Bergis Jules

#189370

Overall Influence

Bergis Jules is an American archivist and scholar. He is known for digital humanities projects that aim to diversify and democratize the historical record, and for his scholarly research on community-based archives.

#13583

Fazale Rana

#192346

Overall Influence

#13584

Nassar Mansour

#180028

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Nassar Mansour , , is an artist, calligrapher, academic and designer in the field of Islamic Arts, specializing in Islamic Calligraphy. He is considered to be one of the most accomplished contemporary Arab calligraphers today.

#13585

Hugo Sabatino

#96500

Overall Influence

Hugo Sabatino is an Argentine-Brazilian physician, scientist and university professor affiliated to the Medical School of the State University of Campinas, in Campinas, State of São Paulo. Sabatino's main specialty is obstetrics. He has contributed to a new form of natural childbirth delivery method using a squatting position.

#13586

Arnulf Krause

#90014

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Arnulf Krause is a German philologist who specializes in Germanic studies. Biography Arnulf Krause was born in Zell im Wiesental, Germany. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Bonn in 1989. He is a professor of Old Norse language and literature at the University of Bonn, where he also lectures in Germanic studies. Krause specializes in early Germanic literature and religion. He is the author of numerous books about Germanic peoples, Celts and Vikings.

#13587

Maria Mayerchyk

#104524

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Maria Mayerchyk is a Ukrainian feminist academic and the editor in chief of Feminist Critique: East European Journal of Feminist and Queer Studies. She is noted for her analysis of feminism at the Euromaidan protests.

#13588

Gloria Werner

#135572

Overall Influence

1940 - 2021 (81 years)

Gloria Stolzoff Werner was an American librarian. She worked for forty years, from 1962 to 2002, as a librarian at the University of California, Los Angeles , including twelve years as University Librarian. She served a term as president of the Association of Research Libraries in 1997.

#13589

Cordelia Gundolf

#167912

Overall Influence

1917 - 2008 (91 years)

Cordelia Gundolf was an Italian Language educator in Australia, and an expert in Italian Literature, publishing a number of works on the topic. Background Born in Munich, Germany on 31 November 1917, Gundolf came from a famous literary family, being the daughter of Friedrich Gundolf and godchild of Melchior Lechter, a noted graphic artist. She originally worked in Rome as a translator. Gundolf's grandfather was Jewish; her mother was concerned this would make problems for the family following Adolf Hitler's accession to power in Germany, so she asked Albert Einstein, a family friend for advice.

#13590

Ana Amado

#190098

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Ana Amado was an Argentine journalist, filmmaker, academic and feminist. In Mexico while in exile, she produced films under the name Cristina Benítez. Amado grew up in rural Argentina and, after training to be a teacher, earned a degree in political science from the Catholic University of Santiago del Estero. During her schooling, she began to work as a television news producer and print journalist. Orphaned when she was young, she moved to Buenos Aires after her graduation and worked for several different television news stations. Traveling abroad with her job, she interviewed subjects like Fidel Castro and Muammar Gaddafi.

#13591

André-François Bourbeau

#103978

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Andre-Francois Bourbeau is a noted Canadian survival expert and professor emeritus at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. Bourbeau co-founded the survival skills Outdoor Adventure Program at that university and taught there for more than 30 years. The students at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi have affectionately given Bourbeau the nickname "Doc Survival" due to his skills.

#13592

Yocasta Brugal

#173994

Overall Influence

Yocasta Clara Brugal Mena is a Puerto Rican forensic pathologist and academic administrator. She is the president and dean of San Juan Bautista School of Medicine. Brugal leads the department of clinical pathology.

#13593

Sarah Rowland-Jones

#120675

Overall Influence

Sarah Rowland-Jones is a British physician who is a Professor of Immunology at the University of Oxford. She works on immune responses to HIV infection. She has focussed her research on problems caused by HIV in Africa, with a hope to create a successful HIV vaccine. She is the former president of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

#13594

Siobhan Leachman

Siobhan Leachman

#123769

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Siobhan Leachman is a New Zealand citizen scientist, open knowledge advocate, and Wikimedian whose work focuses on natural history. Life and career Leachman is a lawyer by background and a self-described "stay-at-home mother of two". Bored after her children began attending kindergarten, she began her volunteer work at the instigation of her twin sister Victoria Leachman with the Smithsonian Transcription Center, transcribing diaries and field journals such as those of Vernon and Florence Bailey and categorising bumblebee collections of Arthur Wilson Stelfox. She moved on to volunteer project...

#13595

Rita Reed

#171777

Overall Influence

Rita Reed is an American photojournalist and professor. She is currently a University of Missouri journalism professor, where has held the O.O. McIntyre Professorship in 2014. She is also known as the author of Growing Up Gay: The Sorrows and Joys of Gay and Lesbian Adolescence.

#13596

Willy A. Flegel

Willy A. Flegel

#108897

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Willy Albert Flegel is a German-American medical researcher, geneticist, and physician who is best known for his work in the field of the Rh blood group. Flegel is the chief of the laboratory services section of the Department of Transfusion Medicine at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center .

#13597

Guan Bee Ong

#152312

Overall Influence

1921 - 2004 (83 years)

Guan Bee Ong OBE, PSM, DSc was a Hong Kong academic surgeon who was professor of surgery at the University of Hong Kong. Born in Raj of Sarawak, he acquired a reputation as a skilled and innovative surgeon in British Hong Kong, who encouraged original research among surgical trainees. Originally a general surgeon whose practice included cardiac and neurosurgery, under his leadership surgical specialities and subspecialties were developed in Hong Kong.

#13598

Krzysztof Dębnicki

Krzysztof Dębnicki

#172458

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Krzysztof Dębnicki is a Polish scientist and diplomat serving as a Poland ambassador to Malaysia , Pakistan and Mongolia . Education Krzysztof Dębnicki studied at the University of Ghana . He earned his Master's of Arts degree in history from the University of Warsaw. In 1984, he defended his Ph.D. thesis on political transitions in Nepal between 1950 and 1980. In 2008, he gained post-doctoral degree – habilitation – on political system of India.

#13599

Ståle Wikshåland

#159240

Overall Influence

1953 - 2017 (64 years)

Ståle Wikshåland was a Norwegian musicologist. He was born in Stavanger. Wikshåland was a co-editor for the music magazine Ballade, and worked for Henie Onstad Kunstsenter from 1981 to 1984. From 1988 to 2017 he was appointed professor in musicology at the University of Oslo. He was also a music critic for Dagbladet for thirty years, and contributed to the contemporary debate on music and art in society. Wikshåland died in 2017 of thrombosis, aged 63.

#13600

Øivind Larsen

#112765

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Øivind Larsen is a Norwegian physician and Professor Emeritus of history of medicine at the University of Oslo. He became a docent in medical history in 1971 and was promoted to Professor in 1985. He is currently chairman of the Norwegian Medical Society .

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions