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,

#17101

Kurt Julius Isselbacher

Kurt Julius Isselbacher

#71742

Overall Influence

1925 - 2019 (94 years)

Kurt Julius Isselbacher was a German-born American physician and held the position of Mallinckrodt Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and director emeritus of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center.

#17102

Jochen Reiser

#93738

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Jochen Reiser is a physician-scientist and a healthcare leader. He is the President of the University of Texas Medical Branch and CEO of the UTMB Health System, which includes the oldest Medical School and Nursing School in the state of Texas. As Chief Executive Officer, he oversees the enterprise which includes multiple campuses, five health science colleges, the Galveston National Laboratory and the Correctional Health Care Services for most of Texas. Before UTMB, he served as the Ralph C Brown MD Professor and the Chairman of Medicine at Rush University Medical Center. Dr. Reiser's research has provided important mechanistic insights into the molecular pathogenesis of kidney diseases.

#17103

Nahid Toubia

#40603

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Nahid Toubia is a Sudanese surgeon and women's health rights activist, specializing in research into female genital mutilation. Toubia is the co-founder and director of RAINBO, the Research, Action and Information Network for Bodily Integrity of Women. She is an associate professor at Columbia University School of Public Health. She sits on scientific and advisory committees for the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and UNDP. She is also vice-chair of the advisory committee of the Women's Rights Watch Project of Human Rights Watch.

#17104

George Him

1900 - 1982 (82 years)

George Him was a Polish born British designer responsible for a number of notable posters, book illustrations and advertising campaigns for a wide range of clients. Biography Him was born Jerzy Himmelfarb in 1900 to a Polish-Jewish family in Lodz, Poland which was then occupied by the Russian Empire After schooling and further education in Warsaw Him studied Roman Law in Moscow but left in 1917 when the Russian Revolution forced the closure of the university he was attending. He moved to Bonn and by 1924 had completed a PhD at the University of Bonn on the comparative history of religions before deciding to study graphic art in Leipzig.

#17105

Sam Sofer

#84561

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Sam Sofer is an Iranian-born American scientist who specializes in biological processes and bioreactor design, with applications in medicine, energy, and the environment. He is the creator of biological air and water cleaners that use immobilized cell technology, and of various biomedical instruments and test protocols related to boosting the immune system to fight disease.

#17106

William Lyons

#135085

Overall Influence

William Edward Lyons is a philosopher who specializes in philosophy of mind. Lyons was the head of the Department of Philosophy and Professor of Moral Philosophy in the School of Mental and Moral Science, Trinity College, Dublin. He is now an Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and a member of the Royal Irish Academy." He is also the author of a number of "theatre of thought" dramas. His play about Wittgenstein, The Crooked Roads of Genius had its world premiere on 19 April 2011 at the Riverside Studios. He received his PhD at the University of Dundee.

#17107

Thomas Chesney

#103501

Overall Influence

Thomas Chesney is a British–Irish Professor of computational social science at Nottingham University Business School. Born in Northern Ireland, Chesney uses simulation to study economic behaviour such as the problem of modern slavery. He is also the coauthor of a widely used textbook, Principles of Business Information Systems.

#17108

Olival Freire Jr.

#174475

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Olival Freire Jr. is a physicist and historian of physics. He is Full Professor of Physics and History of Physics at the Universidade Federal da Bahia, former president of the Brazilian Society for the History of Science and president of the Commission for the History of Modern Physics, International Union of History and Philosophy of Science.

#17109

Kathy Svoboda

#141144

Overall Influence

Kathy Kay Hartford Svoboda is an American biologist. Early life and career Svoboda was raised in Hershey, Nebraska. After graduating from Hershey High School in 1969, Svoboda attended the University of Nebraska Omaha, where she successively earned a bachelor's degree in biology, a master's degree in human genetics, and a doctorate in anatomy. Svoboda completed postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School, and began her teaching career as an instructor there. In 1987, Svoboda accepted an assistant professorship at the Boston University School of Medicine, where she was elevated to associate professor in 1994.

#17110

Abraham Cornelius Benjamin

1897 - 1968 (71 years)

Abraham Cornelius Benjamin was an American philosopher of science who taught at University of Chicago and University of Missouri. A. C. Benjamin was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan, graduating with a B.A. in 1920. Continuing there, he studied "the logical atomism of Bertrand Russell", submitted his thesis on the topic, graduating Ph.D. in 1924.

#17111

Mark Windham

#187984

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Mark Windham is an American pathologist, currently a Distinguished Professor in Ornamental Pathology at University of Tennessee.

#17112

Blair Grubb

#78154

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Blair P. Grubb is an American physician, surgeon, researcher and scientist, currently a distinguished university professor of medicine and pediatrics at the University of Toledo. He is well known for his contributions to the study of syncope and disorders of the autonomic nervous system .

#17113

Arno Karlen

#56514

Overall Influence

1937 - 2010 (73 years)

Arno Chanoch Karlen was an American poet, psychoanalyst, and popular science writer. He won the 1996 Rhone-Poulenc Prize for science books with Plague's Progress. Biography Early life Arno Karlen was born on May 7, 1937, in Philadelphia. His parents were Jewish immigrants from modern-day Belarus and Ukraine who immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. He was a talented child who was promoted two grades and finished high school at 15. As a teenager, he was interested in literature, science, and classical music. He studied music, and graduated from Antioch College with majors in Eng...

#17114

Euthymius the Athonite

Euthymius the Athonite

955 - 1028 (73 years)

Euthymius the Athonite was a Georgian monk, philosopher and scholar, who is venerated as a saint. His feast day in the Orthodox Church is May 13. Euthymius was a Georgian, the ethnonym used by the Byzantines as Iberian, that came from the Kingdom of the Iberians. The son of John the Iberian and nephew of the Tornike Eristavi, Euthymius was taken as a political hostage to Constantinople but was later released and became a monk joining the Great Lavra of Athanasios on Mount Athos. He subsequently became the leader of the Georgian Iviron monastery, which had been founded by his father, and emerged as one of the finest Eastern Christian theologians and scholars of his age.

#17115

Dani Shapiro

#38303

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Dani Shapiro is an American writer, the author of six novels including Family History , Black & White and most recently Signal Fires and the best-selling memoirs Slow Motion , Devotion , Hourglass , and Inheritance . She has also written for magazines such as The New Yorker, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, and Elle. In February 2019, she created an original podcast on iHeart Radio called Family Secrets.

#17116

Dzodzi Tsikata

#134899

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Dzodzi Tsikata is a Ghanaian feminist, academic, professor of Development Sociology and Director of Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana. Biography Dzodzi Tsikata is a professor at the Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research at the University of Ghana. Her academic interests include gender and development Issues, gender equity policies and practices. She was elected in June 2015 as the president of Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa at their 14th general assembly meeting in Senegal.

#17117

Richard M. Levitan

#76378

Overall Influence

Richard Mark Levitan is an American emergency medicine physician and businessperson. He is a clinical professor of medicine at Dartmouth College and a practicing physician at the Littleton Regional Hospital. He also runs a company that creates materials and runs events to teach emergency airway management.

#17118

Sarah Martins Da Silva

#81005

Overall Influence

Sarah Martins da Silva is a British gynaecologist and researcher specialising in male infertility. Martins da Silva is a Clinical Reader in reproductive medicine at the University of Dundee. She also works as an honorary consultant gynaecologist at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, specialising in fertility problems and assisted conception. She was named one of the BBC's "100 Women of 2019" for her contribution to fertility science.

#17119

Hermann Schweppenhäuser

#178120

Overall Influence

1928 - 2015 (87 years)

Hermann Schweppenhäuser was a German philosopher and publisher. He was a professor at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He publisher over 100 books about world peace and socialism. He was born in Frankfurt am Main.

#17120

Arno Mohr

#98029

Overall Influence

1910 - 2001 (91 years)

Arno Mohr was a German Painter and Graphic artist, primarily associated with the German Democratic Republic and, more particularly, with Berlin. Almost unknown in the west, his work was popular in East Germany, notably for his reductionist observational drawings of everyday life.

#17121

Buffie Johnson

#180962

Overall Influence

1912 - 2006 (94 years)

Buffie Johnson was an American painter, associated with the Abstract Imagists. Biography Born in New York City, Johnson studied in her youth at the Académie Julian in Paris and at the Art Students League of New York. She had lessons with Francis Picabia and Stanley William Hayter, and she earned a Master of Arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1943, Johnson was included in Peggy Guggenheim's show Exhibition by 31 Women at the Art of This Century gallery in New York. From 1946 to 1950 she taught at the Parsons School of Design. She received many awards, including fell...

#17122

Kurt Roesch

1905 - 1984 (79 years)

Kurt Ferdinand Roesch was a German born American painter. Biography Roesch was born on December 12, 1905 in Berlin and studied painting with the expressionist Karl Hofer. Roesch immigrated to the United States in 1933, living first in Katonah, New York, and then in New Canaan, Connecticut. He taught at Sarah Lawrence College from 1934 to 1972, and died October 8, 1984, at his home in New Canaan.

#17123

Ferdinand Keller

Ferdinand Keller

1842 - 1922 (80 years)

Ferdinand Keller, or von Keller was a German genre and history painter. Life He was born in Karlsruhe to the family of a civil engineer. In 1857, when he was fifteen, his father was awarded a contract to design bridges, roads and dams in Brazil. Ferdinand and his brother Franz were able to accompany him. Over the course of a four-year stay, he was able to teach himself drawing by sketching the tropical landscape. Shortly after their return, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe, where he studied with Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, the former Director of the Academy. After Schirmer's de...

#17124

Blasius Merrem

1761 - 1824 (63 years)

Blasius Merrem was a German naturalist, zoologist, ornithologist, mathematician, and herpetologist. In 1804, he became the professor of political economy and botany at the University of Marburg. Early life Merrem was born at Bremen, and studied at the University of Göttingen under Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. He developed an interest in zoology, particularly ornithology.

#17125

Felix Pollak

1909 - 1987 (78 years)

Felix Pollak was an American librarian, translator, and poet. Pollak was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1909 to Geza Pollak and Helene Schneider Pollak. A Jew and liberal anti-fascist, he studied law and theater at the University of Vienna before emigrating to the United States in 1938 following the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich. He briefly worked as a door-to-door salesman in New York City before enrolling at the University of Buffalo, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in library science in 1941.

#17126

Boris Sobolev

#110628

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Boris Sobolev is a Russian-born Canadian health services researcher. He is an author of Analysis of Waiting-Time Data in Health Services Research and Health Care Evaluation Using Computer Simulation: Concepts, Methods and Applications, and is Editor-in-Chief of the Health Services Research series published by Springer Science+Business Media.

#17127

Roger Nichols

#63786

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Roger David Edward Nichols is an English musicologist, critic, translator and author. After an early career as a university lecturer he became a full-time freelance writer in 1980. He is particularly known for his works on French music, including books about Claude Debussy, Olivier Messiaen, Maurice Ravel, Francis Poulenc and the Parisian musical scene of the years after the First World War. Among his translations are the English versions of the standard biography of Gabriel Fauré by Jean-Michel Nectoux and of Harry Halbreich's study of Arthur Honegger.

#17128

Howard Dodson

#50629

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Howard Dodson, Jr is an American scholar who was the Director of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center and Howard University Libraries, and was formerly the long-time director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, which post he occupied for over a quarter of a century .

#17129

Brian L. Byrne

#105501

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Brian J. Byrne is an Australian social scientist specializing in applied and psycholinguistics, an emeritus professor at the University of New England in Australia, and lead author of publications and articles on research in his field. Byrne was a lead researcher in the 10-year-long, $5 million National Institutes of Health study by an international team of scientists into the development of reading ability in 1,000 pairs of twins. Beginning in 2000, the study found that genetics were more important influences on reading development than environmental factors. In 2012, Byrne was appointed a...

#17130

Rajani Kannepalli Kanth

Rajani Kannepalli Kanth

#105477

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Rajani Kannepalli Kanth is a professor, economist, philosopher, and social thinker. Though born in India, he is a US citizen and has resided overseas for most of his life. His major research interests lie in the fields of Economics, Social Theory and Policy, and Women's Issues. His works have received positive endorsements from iconic intellectuals such as Ravi Batra, Roy Bhaskar, Noam Chomsky, Geoff Harcourt, Robert Heilbroner, John M. Hobson, Jonathan Joseph, Tony Lawson, Ali Mazrui, John McMurtry, Roger Owen, Warren Samuels, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Paul Sweezy, and Immanuel Wallerstein.

#17131

Lambertus de Monte

1430 - 1499 (69 years)

Lambertus de Monte, also Lambertus de Monte Domini or Lambert of Cologne , was a medieval scholastic and Thomist. Originally from 's-Heerenberg , he went to the University of Cologne in 1450, where he was taught by his uncle Gerhardus de Monte, and received his Master of Arts in 1454, holding an arts professorship there from 1455 until 1473, when he became a doctor of theology. He then taught in the faculty of theology until his death.

#17132

Hollis Taylor

#174683

Overall Influence

Hollis Taylor is an American-born Australian zoomusicologist and composer and a violinist and fiddler. She has argued that birdsong should be approached as music. Early life and education Taylor was born in the United States. She graduated from West Linn High School in West Linn, Oregon. She graduated from Webster University in St. Louis with a bachelor's degree in violin performance. In 2009 she received a PhD from the University of Western Sydney School of Communication Arts with a concentration in musicology, ornithology, and composition.

#17133

John Brunero

#188069

Overall Influence

John Brunero is an American philosopher and academic. He is currently the Robert R. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He is known for his works on reasons.

#17134

William Howard Brett

William Howard Brett

1846 - 1918 (72 years)

William Howard Brett was head librarian for the Cleveland Public Library from 1884 to 1918. American Libraries described him as one of the "100 most important leaders had in the 20th century" His efforts to provide lifelong learning was the basis for the Cleveland Public Library to be recognized as the "People's University."

#17135

Carlos Jiménez Díaz

Carlos Jiménez Díaz

1898 - 1967 (69 years)

Carlos Jiménez Díaz was an important Spanish physician and clinical researcher.

#17136

Stephen Dolgin

#97108

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Stephen E. Dolgin is an American pediatric surgeon, and professor of Surgery at Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. He is a consultant at Cohen Children’s Medical Center, the pediatric hub of Northwell Health.

#17137

Jonathan Dymond

1796 - 1828 (32 years)

Jonathan Dymond was an English Quaker and an ethical philosopher who is known for his monograph An Enquiry into the Accordancy of War with the Principles of Christianity. Life Jonathan Dymond was the son of a Quaker linen-draper of Exeter, County Devon in England. Both his parents were 'Recorded Ministers' of the Society of Friends. He had little formal education but used his time off from working in his father's shop to read and to write essays on religious and moral problems, as well as composing poetry. He determined that he should devote his energies to 'the honour of advocating peace'. In his view war was "an evil before which, in my estimation, slavery sinks into insignificance".

#17138

Georg Richard Lewin

Georg Richard Lewin

1820 - 1896 (76 years)

Georg Richard Lewin was a German dermatologist. Biography He was born in Sondershausen and died in Berlin. He was educated at the universities of Halle and Berlin, graduating as doctor of medicine in 1845. After a postgraduate course at the universities of Vienna, Würzburg, and Paris he settled in Berlin, where he practised as a specialist first in otology, and later in dermatology and syphilis. In 1862 Lewin was admitted to the medical faculty of his alma mater as privat-docent in otology. In 1865 he became chief physician in the department of dermatology and syphilis at the Charité Hospital...

#17139

Linda Holloway

#148857

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Dame Linda Jane Holloway is a Scottish-born New Zealand anatomical pathologist academic, and was a full professor at the University of Otago. Early life Holloway was born in Loanhead, Midlothian, Scotland, on 10 June 1940. She was raised in that country, and met her husband, New Zealand forester John Stevenson Holloway, the son of John Thorpe Holloway, while he was a student at the University of Aberdeen. She moved to New Zealand in 1970, becoming a naturalised New Zealander in 1978.

#17140

Alfonso Giacomo Gaspare Corti

Alfonso Giacomo Gaspare Corti

1822 - 1876 (54 years)

Alfonso Giacomo Gaspare Corti was an Italian anatomist. He born at Gambarana, near Pavia in 1822. Education A famous friend of Corti's father, Antonio Scarpa, may have kindled his boyhood interest in anatomy and medicine. As a medical student he enrolled first at the University of Pavia. Corti's favorite study there was microanatomy with Bartolomeo Panizza and Mario Rusconi. In 1845, against paternal wishes, Corti moved to Vienna to complete his medical studies and to work in the anatomical institute of Joseph Hirtl. There he received the degree in medicine in 1847 under the supervision of pr...

#17141

Chris Sherwin

#142446

Overall Influence

1962 - 2017 (55 years)

Christopher M. Sherwin was an English veterinary scientist and senior research fellow at the University of Bristol Veterinary School in Lower Langford, Somerset. He specialised in applied ethology, the study of the behaviour of animals in the context of their interactions with humans, and of how to balance the animals' needs with the demands placed on them by humans.

#17142

Keyes Metcalf

1889 - 1983 (94 years)

Keyes DeWitt Metcalf was an American librarian. He has been identified as one of the 100 most important leaders in librarianship by the journal American Libraries. In a career spanning over 75 years, he worked in various roles at the New York Public Library and served as the director of the Harvard University library system. He was known for his expertise in planning and designing research libraries.

#17143

Johann Nestroy

1801 - 1862 (61 years)

Johann Nepomuk Eduard Ambrosius Nestroy was a singer, actor and playwright in the popular Austrian tradition of the Biedermeier period and its immediate aftermath. He participated in the 1848 revolutions and his work reflects the new liberal spirit then spreading throughout Europe.

#17144

Max Ratschow

1904 - 1963 (59 years)

Max Ratschow was a German physician who helped establish the specialist discipline of angiology. Education Ratschow studied medicine at Rostock, Freiburg, Vienna, Munich, Berlin, and Breslau between 1924 and 1929. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1930 at the University of Breslau, before being awarded his post-doctoral lecturing qualification in 1936 at the Kiel University Institute of Physiology.

#17145

Johann Jakob Bernhardi

1774 - 1850 (76 years)

Johann Jakob Bernhardi was a German doctor and botanist. Biography Johann J. Bernhardi studied Medicine and Botany at the University of Erfurt, and after graduation practiced medicine for a time in his native city. In 1799 he was named director of the botanical garden at Gartenstraße, and in 1809 was appointed professor of botany, zoology, mineralogy and materia medica at the university. He served as director of the botanical garden until his death in 1850, being buried in the central avenue of this botanical garden.

#17146

Judith C. Russell

Judith C. Russell

#111995

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Judith C. Russell is the current dean of University Libraries at the University of Florida. She is the first dean of the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries, with the position elevated to the dean rank from a directorship to reflect the increased importance of the libraries and information for the University of Florida. She has held this position since May 2007.

#17147

M. Amin Arnaout

#47130

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

M. Amin Arnaout is a Lebanese physician-scientist and nephrologist best known for seminal discoveries in the biology and structure of integrin receptors. He is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Physician, former Chief of Nephrology, and Director of the Leukocyte Biology and Inflammation Laboratory at the Massachusetts General Hospital .

#17148

Ahamed Muhyudheen Noorishah Jeelani

1915 - 1990 (75 years)

Sheikh Noor Ul Mashaikh Sayyid Ahmed Muhiyuddin Jeelani NooriShah Arabic: , known more commonly as NooriShah Jeelani, was a renowned 20th-century muslim, sufi, wali, mystic, orator, faqeeh, theologian, mujaddid and highly acclaimed Islamic scholar of the Qadri, Chisti order from the Indian sub continent. He was the 21st grand son of the famous Sufi saint Ghous-e-Azam Sheikh Mohiyudheen Abdul Qadir Jilani of Baghdad. He was also widely known by his title Noor-ul-Mashaikh. He was the Eponymous founder of the Silsila-e-Nooriya tariqa which is a sub-branch of Qadiriyya and Chistiyya in India.

#17149

Muhammad Amkanagi

#17150

Darwish Muhammad

Khwaja Darwish Muhammad famous Sufi of Naqshbandī Sufi order . He was the nephew of Khwaja Muhammad Zahid Wakhshi.Khwaja Darwish Muhammad died on 1562 AD in Kitab, Uzbekistan, 100 km from Samarkand in the Shakhrisabz region of Uzbekistan. He passed his spiritual order to his son, Khwaja Muhammad Amkanagi. His shrine is in Kitab, Uzbekistan.

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