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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Person Name

School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#18051

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.

#18052

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.

#18053

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.

#18054

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.

#18055

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.

#18056

Sunitha Wickramasinghe

#123592

Overall Influence

1941 - 2009 (68 years)

Sunitha Wickramasinghe, FRCP FRCPath was a Sri Lankan born British academic and haematologist. A Professor of Haematology, he was the former Deputy Dean of the Imperial College School of Medicine and one of the world's leading authorities on congenital dyserythropoietic anaemias

#18057

Franz Födermayr

#178982

Overall Influence

1933 - 2020 (87 years)

Franz Födermayr was an Austrian musicologist. Life Born in Grieskirchen, Upper Austria, Födermayr studied musicology from 1954 at the University of Vienna with Erich Schenk . From 1964 to 1974 he worked as a university assistant at the musicological institute of the university, and in 1972 he received his habilitation.

#18058

Joan Reede

#115912

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Joan Y. Reede is an American physician. She is Harvard Medical School's inaugural dean for diversity and community partnership in the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Partnership. She is also a member of the National Academy of Medicine. She is known for creating programs that mentor and support minority physicians and female physicians. Alumni of her programs have created a 501 organization called The Reede Scholars in her honor.

#18059

Tatiana Prowell

Tatiana Prowell

#163266

Overall Influence

Tatiana Michelle Prowell is an American medical oncologist specializing in breast cancer. She is an Associate Professor of Oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Breast Cancer Scientific Liaison at the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.

#18060

Guillaume de La Perrière

1503 - 1565 (62 years)

Guillaume de La Perrière was one of the earliest French writers of emblem books. His work is often associated with the French Renaissance. La Perrière chronicled events in his home city of Toulouse. His best known work is Le Théâtre des bons engins, published in Paris in 1539, and was edited in later editions, published in 1540 and 1585. More recently, La Perrière's Le miroir politique has received attention, thanks to the work of Michel Foucault. Foucault identifies the work of La Perriere as belonging to Early Modern France and foreshadowing discourses of governmentality.

#18061

Shiy De-jinn

1923 - 1981 (58 years)

Shiy De-jinn 席德進 was a Chinese modernist artist who became prominent in Taiwan. Born in Sichuan, he was a student of Lin Fengmian and Pang Xunqin. Fleeing the CCP to Taiwan, he lived there until his death. He has attracted interested as a nativist and, especially posthumosuly, as a queer artist.

#18062

Joshua Chamberlain

Joshua Chamberlain

1828 - 1914 (86 years)

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was an American college professor from Maine who volunteered during the American Civil War to join the Union Army. He became a highly respected and decorated Union officer, reaching the rank of brigadier general . He is best known for his gallantry at the Battle of Gettysburg, for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

#18063

Janet Niven

1902 - 1974 (72 years)

Janet Simpson Ferguson Niven FCPath, was a British histologist and pathologist. Janet Niven graduated from the University of Glasgow with a first class Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery degree in 1925. She was the first woman to win the Brunton Memorial Prize, awarded to the most distinguished medical graduate each year. During her time working at the University of Glasgow, she was awarded the Faulds Research Fellowship , the McCunn Scholarship , and the Carnegie Research Fellowship . In 1932, she was awarded an MD for her research on tissue culture and became a lecturer in the Pathology Department , as well as working as an assistant pathologist at the Western Infirmary.

#18064

Adrienne Evans

#171138

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Adrienne Evans is a British senior lecturer in Media and Communication for the Department of Media at Coventry University, and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Gender Studies. Education Adrienne Evans gained her Ph.D. from the University of Bath.

#18065

Susan T. Sommer

#179510

Overall Influence

1935 - 2008 (73 years)

Susan Thiemann Sommer was a music librarian with a 40-year career at the New York Public Library, teacher, editor, and noted music critic for the magazine High Fidelity. Life and career Thiemann was born in New York City and grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. After graduating with a magna Cum laude from Smith College in 1956, she attended Columbia University. Assisted by a grant from the Fulbright Program she spent time studying in Florence, receiving her Master's degree in musicology in 1958. Also from Columbia, she later received a Master of Library Science and an MPhil .

#18066

Choe Chung

984 - 1068 (84 years)

#18067

Viking Björk

#71280

Overall Influence

1918 - 2009 (91 years)

Viking Olov Björk was a Swedish cardiac surgeon. Early life and education Björk wrote his dissertation in 1948, titled "Brain perfusion in dogs with artificially oxygenated blood". Björk–Shiley valve In 1968, he collaborated with American engineer Donald Shiley to develop the Björk–Shiley valve, a mechanical prosthetic heart valve. It was the first "tilting disc valve", used to replace the aortic or mitral valve. Many modifications followed, including the convexo-concave valve. The convexo-concave valve had defects in form of strut fractures. Therefore, the monostrut valve was introduced to ...

#18068

Joia Mukherjee

#20836

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Joia Stapleton Mukherjee is an associate professor with the Division of Global Health Equity at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Since 2000, she has served as the Chief Medical Officer of Partners In Health, an international medical non-profit founded by Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, and Jim Kim. She trained in Infectious Disease, Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics at the Massachusetts General Hospital and has an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Mukherjee has been involved in health care access and ...

#18069

Neal W. Pollock

Neal W. Pollock

#119910

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Neal Pollock is a Canadian academic and diver. Born in Edmonton, Canada he completed a bachelor's degree in zoology; the first three years at University of Alberta and the final year at the University of British Columbia. After completing a master's degree he then served as diving officer at University of British Columbia for almost five years. He then moved to Florida and completed a doctorate in exercise physiology/environmental physiology at Florida State University.

#18070

Theophil Mitchell Prudden

Theophil Mitchell Prudden

1849 - 1924 (75 years)

Theophil Mitchell Prudden was an American pathologist, born in Middlebury, Connecticut. He graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School, Yale, in 1872 and received his M. D. from Yale School of Medicine in 1875. He became an assistant and was professor of pathology in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. In 1901 he was made a director of the Rockefeller Institute for medical research.

#18071

Vera Gedroits

1876 - 1932 (56 years)

Vera Gedroits was born in 1870 in Slobodische, Russia. She was not allowed to study in Russia after her involvement in a controversial student movement. In order to secure her education, she married Nikolai Belozerov (despite being open about her lesbianism) to secure a passport under her married name to immigrate to Switzerland and study at the University of Lausanne. Gedroits studied to become a surgeon and received her degree as a Doctor of Medicine and Surgery in 1898. After completing her studies, her family asked her to return to Russia as her sister had recently died and her mother was in poor health.

#18072

Harry L. Fisher

1885 - 1961 (76 years)

Harry Linn Fisher was the 69th national president of the American Chemical Society, and an authority on the chemistry of vulcanization. Fisher was the author of four popular books on the chemistry and technology of rubber, and the holder of 50 patents.

#18073

Percy Moreau Ashburn

1872 - 1940 (68 years)

Percy Moreau Ashburn was a colonel and medical officer in the United States Army. With then Lieutenant Charles Franklin Craig, Ashburn made the link that mosquitoes were involved in the transmission of Dengue fever. As a major, he served as the sixth commanding officer of the Walter Reed General Hospital, and as a colonel, he served as the first commandant of the Medical Field Service School at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

#18074

Marcel Junod

1904 - 1961 (57 years)

Marcel Junod was a Swiss medical doctor and one of the most accomplished field delegates in the history of the International Committee of the Red Cross . After medical school and a short position as a surgeon in Mulhouse, France, he became an ICRC delegate and was deployed in Ethiopia during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and in Europe as well as in Japan during World War II. In 1947, he wrote a book with the title Warrior without Weapons about his experiences. After the war, he worked for the United Nations Children's Fund as chief representative in China, and settled back in Europe in 1950.

#18075

Jalid Sehouli

#46867

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Jalid Sehouli is a German gynaecologist and oncologist who specializes in peritoneal and ovarian cancer. He is a professor at Berlin's Charité hospital and a writer of scientific as well as fiction works.

#18076

Carl Posner

1854 - 1928 (74 years)

Carl Posner was a German urologist. Posner was born in Berlin. He studied natural sciences and medicine at several German universities, receiving his PhD at Leipzig in 1875 and his medical doctorate at Giessen in 1880. Afterwards, he settled into a medical practice in Berlin, and in the meantime, received training in urology as a private assistant to Ernst Fürstenheim . In 1889 he obtained his habilitation, and shortly afterwards worked as a lecturer at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin, where in 1903 he became an associate professor of internal medicine. He died in Berlin, aged 74.

#18077

Aaron Gerow

#70399

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Aaron Gerow is an American historian of Japanese cinema, and a member of the faculty of Yale University where he holds a joint position between the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Film Studies Programs.

#18078

Lynne M. Thomas

Lynne M. Thomas

#132518

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Lynne M. Thomas is an American librarian, podcaster and editor. She has won eleven Hugo Awards for editing and podcasting in the science fiction genre. She is perhaps best known as the co-publisher and co-editor-in-chief of the Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine with her husband, Michael Damian Thomas. With her eleven Hugo Award wins , Thomas is tied with Connie Willis for most wins among women, and sixth all time for most wins amongst all Hugo Award winners.

#18079

Paul Zweifel

1848 - 1927 (79 years)

Paul Zweifel was a German gynecologist and physiologist. In 1876 he proved that the fetus was metabolically active. Biography Zweifel was born in Switzerland; his father was a physician. He was educated at the University of Zürich , studying under Adolf Gusserow . In 1871, he received the venia legendi at the University of Strassburg, where he had already become an assistant in the gynecological institute. At Strassburg, he conducted studies on the physiology of the fetus and placenta in Felix Hoppe-Seyler's institute. In 1876 he was appointed professor of gynecology at the University of Erlangen.

#18080

Winfried Schrammek

#120045

Overall Influence

1929 - 2017 (88 years)

Winfried Schrammek was a German musicologist and organist. Life Education Born in Breslau, Schrammek, son of a surveying engineer, received his first organ lessons as a pupil of the Herzog-Friedland-Gymnasium in Żagań by his music teacher Gustav Mikeleitis. At the age of 15 he was called up for military service. After the end of the war he and his parents were expelled from the Silesian homeland. In Jena he passed his high school diploma in 1948 and began a two-year study of church music at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar, which he completed with the Mittlere Staatliche Prüfung für Kirchenmusiker.

#18081

Eric Schaefer

#145715

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Eric Schaefer is a professor and film historian. He is an associate professor at Emerson College and interim chair of the visual and media arts department. He has a B.A. from Webster University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Austin.

#18082

Friedrich Trautwein

1888 - 1956 (68 years)

Friedrich Trautwein was a German engineer. Trautwein developed the Trautonium and is considered a pioneer of electronic music in Germany. Life As a child, Friedrich Trautwein learned to play the organ in church. He studied electrical engineering at the Technical University of Karlsruhe, followed by law and physics in Berlin and Heidelberg. In 1906, he joined the Teutonia fraternity in Karlsruhe.

#18083

Józef Warszawski

#119859

Overall Influence

1903 - 1997 (94 years)

Józef Warszawski was a Polish philosopher.

#18084

Margaret Pomeranz

Margaret Pomeranz

#84186

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Margaret Pomeranz is an Australian film critic, writer, producer and television personality. Early life Pomeranz was born Margeret Anne Jones-Owen on 14 July 1944 in Waverley, a suburb of Sydney. She was educated at the Presbyterian Ladies' College, Sydney in Croydon, the then newly-opened Macquarie University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in German and social psychology, and the Playwright's Studio at the National Institute of Dramatic Art . In her early twenties, she left Sydney to escape the "banality" and travelled around Europe, before returning to Australia and se...

#18085

Thomas Benton Cooley

Thomas Benton Cooley

1871 - 1945 (74 years)

Thomas Benton Cooley was an American pediatrician and hematologist and professor of hygiene and medicine at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. He was the director of the Pasteur Institute at the University of Michigan from 1903 to 1904. He worked in private practice in Detroit as the city's first pediatrician starting in 1905. He worked with the Babies' Milk Fund and helped to reduce Detroit's high infant mortality rate in the 1900s and 1910s. During World War I, Cooley went to France as the assistant chief of the Children's Bureau of the American Red Cross. He was decorated in 1924 with the cross of the Legion of Honor for his work in France.

#18086

Paul M. Ellison

#185417

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Paul M. Ellison is a British choral conductor, organist, and Beethoven scholar currently working in the United States. He is a lecturer in musicology at San Francisco State University and San Jose State University His area of specialty is tonal affect and meaning in Classical and Romantic period music.

#18087

William Parks

1868 - 1936 (68 years)

William Arthur Parks was a Canadian geologist and paleontologist, following in the tradition of Lawrence Lambe. Parks was born in Hamilton, Ontario. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1892, Parks joined the University of Toronto's staff, where he taught geology, paleontology, and mineralogy. He went on to earn a PhD in 1900. He wrote 80 scientific papers in his lifetime. Parks died in Toronto, Ontario, in 1936.

#18088

George Edward Post

1838 - 1909 (71 years)

George Edward Post was an American surgeon, academic and botanist. Biography George Edward Post was born in New York City on December 17, 1838, the son of Alfred Charles Post. He was a Professor of Surgery at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut, which became the American University of Beirut . He had originally graduated from University College of New York.

#18089

Anthony Dawson

#81047

Overall Influence

1928 - 1997 (69 years)

Sir Anthony Michael 'Tony' Dawson was a British gastroenterologist. He was consultant physician at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. He studied at King’s College London in the Strand for his pre-clinical training, then for clinical work went to the old Charing Cross Hospital, qualifying in 1951.

#18090

Debra Haffner

#110300

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Debra W. Haffner is co-founder and president emerita of the Religious Institute, Inc. A sexologist and ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, she was the endorsed community minister with the Unitarian Church in Westport, Connecticut. Haffner retired from the Religious Institute on April 30, 2016. She has been the settled minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston, Virginia since August 2016.

#18091

Kirsten Shepherd-Barr

#181505

Overall Influence

Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr is an academic specialising in Victorian and modern English literature, the interaction between science and literature, and theatre studies, especially science in theatre. In 2015, she was appointed a Professor of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Oxford.

#18092

Arthur Schwartz

Arthur Schwartz

1900 - 1984 (84 years)

Arthur Schwartz was an American composer and film producer, widely noted for his songwriting collaborations with Howard Dietz. Biography Early life Schwartz was born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York City, on November 25, 1900. He taught himself to play the harmonica and piano as a child, and began playing for silent films at age 14. He earned a B.A. in English at New York University and an M.A. in Architecture at Columbia. Forced by his father, an attorney, to study law, Schwartz graduated from NYU Law School with a Juris Doctor and was admitted to the bar in 1924.

#18093

Matshidiso Moeti

Matshidiso Moeti

#56063

Overall Influence

Matshidiso Rebecca Natalie Moeti is a physician, public health specialist and medical administrator from Botswana who has been serving as Regional Director of the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa , headquartered in Brazzaville, the Republic of the Congo, since 2015.

#18094

Miriam Adhikari

#163568

Overall Influence

Miriam Adhikari is a physician and scientist specializing in paediatrics with a focus on neonatology. She is Emeritus Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a neonatologist at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine. She also has a focus on paediatric nephrology and is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa.

#18095

Samira Farouk

#135121

Overall Influence

Samira Farouk, MD, MS, FASN is a board-certified transplant nephrologist and Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical Education at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai . She teaches medical students, residents, and fellows, and also develops and studies innovations in medical education. Her clinical research interests include the pathogenesis of kidney fibrosis in regards to transplant survival and chronic kidney diseases. Farouk is also cofounder of the free mobile-friendly nephrology teaching tool NephSIM, Associate Program Director of the Nephrology Fellowship at ISMMS, and Director o...

#18096

Hannah Arendt

#190808

Overall Influence

#18097

Joel E. Siegel

#178108

Overall Influence

1940 - 2004 (64 years)

Joel E. Siegel was a professor of English and film studies at Georgetown University, a film and music critic, a music producer, and a lyricist. He won the 1993 Grammy Award for Best Album Notes together with Buck Clayton and Phil Schaap for their work on the notes for the Billie Holiday box set, The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve .

#18098

Habib Davanloo

#65027

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Habib Davanloo is a psychoanalyst and psychiatric researcher and working in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, who developed Intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy. He was Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University and founding editor of the International Journal of Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy.

#18099

Irina Lozovaya

#186173

Overall Influence

1950 - 2017 (67 years)

Irina Yevgenyevna Lozovaya Soviet and Russian musicologist, teacher, Professor at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Her main sphere of academic research was Early Russian and Byzantine chant.

#18100

Karl-Fredrik Norrback

#185376

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Karl-Fredrik Norrback is a Swedish medical doctor and researcher. He is an associate Professor of Experimental Psychiatry and researcher at the department of Clinical Sciences, Unit of Psychiatry, Umeå University, Sweden.

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