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,

#18301

Salvador Jara Guerrero

#76833

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Salvador Jara Guerrero is a Mexican philosopher, physicist and professor. He served as Substitute Governor of Michoacán Jara Guerrero was rector of the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo from 2011 until 2014.

#18302

John Perry

#191237

Overall Influence

#18303

Gilbert Girdwood

Gilbert Girdwood

1832 - 1917 (85 years)

Gilbert Prout Girdwood was an English army and civilian physician and surgeon, academic and author, noted for his service in the Canadian Army. He was a pioneer in medical education and radiography in Canada.

#18304

Nikolai Zhilyayev

1881 - 1938 (57 years)

Nikolay Sergeyevich Zhilyayev , was a musicologist, and the teacher of several 20th-century composers. He was a victim of political repression in the Soviet Union. He was a pupil of Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov and Sergei Taneyev at the Moscow Conservatory in around 1904. He went on to teach there himself. His pupils included the composers Yevgeny Golubev, Aram Khachaturian, Lev Knipper, Alexei Fedorovich Kozlovsky, Alexei Vladimirovich Stanchinsky, Anatoly Nikolayevich Alexandrov and Samuil Evgenyevich Feinberg.

#18305

Norman Morris

#79342

Overall Influence

1920 - 2008 (88 years)

Norman Frederick Morris was a British pioneer of women's health. He was a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School and was also a university administrator. From 1971 to 1980, he was dean of medicine, and then deputy vice-chancellor at the University of London. However his greatest contribution was to question current standards of prenatal care. He was critical of the way that midwives and obstetricians treated women, and his work was summarized in a paper in the Lancet in 1960. This paper was based on interviews with 500 women, included no references and at the time was extremely controversial.

#18306

Jorge Erdely Graham

#187769

Overall Influence

Jorge Erdely Graham is a Mexican theologian, religious studies scholar, and author. He is associate editor of Revista Académica para el Estudio de las Religiones, a member of the American Academy of Religion and former director of Centro de Investigaciones del Instituto Cristiano de Mexico.

#18307

Jeff Balser

#48060

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Jeffrey R. Balser is the president and CEO of Vanderbilt University Medical Center and dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine . Balser is a 1990 graduate of the Vanderbilt M.D./Ph.D. program in pharmacology and subsequently completed residency training in anesthesiology and fellowship training in critical care medicine at Johns Hopkins. He continued to work at Johns Hopkins as a cardiac anesthesiologist and ICU physician before returning to Vanderbilt University and joining VUMC in 1998. Balser was appointed dean of the VUSM in 2008 and, the following year, was appointed the vice chancellor for health affairs at Vanderbilt, in charge of the medical center.

#18308

Catarina Resende de Oliveira

#122296

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Catarina Resende de Oliveira is a Portuguese neurologist, researcher, university professor, and doctor. A full professor of biochemistry at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra, she studies the processes that cause neurological degeneration responsible for illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.

#18309

Andrew K. Pace

#91831

Overall Influence

Andrew K. Pace is an American librarian and author. He has served as executive director of the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions Library Consortium since March 2022, after fifteen years working in various leadership positions at OCLC.

#18310

Rosemary Haughton

#65740

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Rosemary Elena Konradin Haughton is a British-born Catholic lay theologian, who also resided in the United States over a period of 30 years. The daughter of Peter Luling and Sylvia Thompson Luling, she had two sisters, Dr. Virginia Luling , and Elizabeth Dooley . She attended the Farnham Girls' Grammar School, Queen's College, London, and the Slade School of Art. She married Algernon Haughton in 1948; the couple had 12 children including 2 foster children.[2] Algy Haughton died in Edinburgh in 2008.

#18311

Althea Warren

1866 - 1958 (92 years)

Althea Hester Warren was the director of the Los Angeles Public Library from 1933 to 1947 and president of the American Library Association in 1943-1944. She was inducted into the California Library Association's Library Hall of Fame in 2013.

#18312

Alfred Lublin

1895 - 1956 (61 years)

Alfred Lublin was a German physician, a professor at the University of Greifswald specialised in diabetes. In 1939 Lublin emigrated to Bolivia where he died in 1956, Biography Lublin was born in Bischofsburg, East Prussia, German Empire , his father was a judge. Lublin attended the gymnasium in Königsberg where he passed his Abitur in 1913 and began to study medicine at the University of Geneva. With the outbreak of World War I he volunteered the German Army . He was first employed as a medical sergeant, then as a junior doctor, on the eastern front, later in the Königsberg hospital, on the Balkans and finally on the Western Front.

#18313

Charles H. Fernald

Charles H. Fernald

1838 - 1921 (83 years)

Charles Henry Fernald was an American entomologist, geologist, and zoologist, who is credited as the first college professor of economic entomology. Fernald grew up at Fernald Point in Mount Desert, Maine, and went on to prepare for college at Maine Wesleyan Seminary before joining the navy in 1862. After receiving a master's degree from Bowdoin College he went on to serve as principal of several academies in Maine. Throughout his career he would document and describe several species of microlepidoptera and in 1886 became the first full-time professor and chair of the natural sciences at what is now the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

#18314

Karen Redrobe

#169747

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Karen Redrobe is Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Endowed Professor in Film Studies and chair of the department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research has dealt with film theory, animation, and feminism, among other topics.

#18315

John Wickham Legg

1843 - 1921 (78 years)

John Wickham Legg was an English physician and published on medical subjects, and later almost exclusively on liturgy and ecclesiology. Life and career He was the third son of the printer and bookseller George Legg, and was born at Alverstoke near Portsmouth in Hampshire, England, on 28 December 1843. He was educated at Winchester College and from there he went to New College, Oxford and subsequently opted to read Medicine at University College, London, where he studied under Sir William Jenner. Having qualified as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, he was recommended by Jenner for th...

#18316

Sam Charles

1887 - 1949 (62 years)

Sam Charles was an American artist, pianist and professor. He was born in Agawam, Massachusetts, and was a life-long New Englander, living primarily in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He served on the music faculty of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and at Groton School. He admired and performed the music of modern French composers, particularly Claude Debussy. He was a well-known New England artist, painting primarily landscapes in watercolor, with a unique, free-flowing style, making skilled use of unpainted space.

#18317

Dag Østerberg

#67941

Overall Influence

1938 - 2017 (79 years)

Dag Østerberg was a Norwegian sociologist, philosopher and musicologist. He was born in Trondheim to police officer Erling Østerberg and Jørgine Sofie Kleven. He was a central contributor to the so-called positivism debate in the 1960s and 1970s. From 1981 to 1991 he was appointed professor in sociology at the University of Oslo. Among his works are Metasosiologisk Essay from 1963, Makt og materiell from 1971, and a biography of Jean-Paul Sartre from 1993. His 1966 work Forståelsesformer. Et filosofisk bidrag was selected for the Norwegian Sociology Canon in 2009–2011.

#18318

Wendy Baltzer

#128241

Overall Influence

Wendy Irene Baltzer is an American veterinarian, small animal surgeon and academic. Academic career Baltzer was educated at the University of California, Davis where she completed a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine in 1994. Following a PhD at Texas A&M University in 2003, she was employed as associate professor at Oregon State University where she specialised in small animal surgery from 2005 to 2016. She then moved to New Zealand to take up a position at Massey University where she was appointed full professor in November 2019, with effect from 1 January 2020. She practised at Massey's Working D...

#18319

Francis Darby Boyd

1866 - Present (160 years)

Francis Darby Boyd CB CMG FRCPEd was a Scottish physician, and Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Life Boyd was born on 19 October 1866, at 27 Melville Street, Edinburgh. His aunt Mary was married to Francis Darby Syme, who is Boyd’s namesake.

#18320

Robert Molimard

Robert Molimard

#126518

Overall Influence

1927 - 2020 (93 years)

Robert Molimard was a French doctor and professor at Paris-Sud University. He was a pioneer in tobacco research in France. Publications Tabac : comprendre la dépendance pour agirLa fume : Smoking Petit manuel de Défume : se reconstruire sans tabac, Éditions De Borée L’Homme, avatar de Dieu

#18321

Carl Feit

#120006

Overall Influence

Carl Feit is a noted cancer research scientist and occupant of the Dr. Joseph and Rachel Ades Chair in Health Sciences at Yeshiva University. He has served as Chairman of the Science Division of Yeshiva College since 1985. Prior to that he was a research scientist at The Laboratory of Immunodiagnosis at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research. Feit also serves on the editorial board of Cancer Investigation.

#18322

Max Bygraves

#141712

Overall Influence

1922 - 2012 (90 years)

Walter William Bygraves , best known by the stage name Max Bygraves , was an English comedian, singer, actor and variety performer. He appeared on his own television shows, sometimes performing comedy sketches between songs. He made twenty Royal Variety Performance appearances and presented numerous programmes, including Family Fortunes between 1983 and 1985. His catchphrase "I wanna tell you a story" became an integral part of his act, although it had originated with comedian Mike Yarwood impersonating Bygraves.

#18323

Alex Jadad

#172897

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Alejandro R. Jadad Bechara is a Canadian-Colombian physician whose work focuses on the creation of a pandemic of health through digital technologies and collaboration across traditional boundaries. He is also known as the researcher responsible for the development of the Jadad Scale, the first validated tool to assess the methodological quality of clinical trials.

#18324

Joyce Ackroyd

#79445

Overall Influence

1918 - 1991 (73 years)

Joyce Irene Ackroyd, was an Australian academic, translator, author and editor. She was a scholar of Japanese language and literature. Early life Ackroyd apparently acquired an interest Japan during her childhood, but she was not permitted to study Japanese at the University of Sydney on a teacher’s scholarship in 1936 because there was insufficient demand for Japanese in secondary schools. She graduated with honours in English and history and a major in mathematics . Ackroyd studied Japanese part-time at the University of Sydney while teaching mathematics at a Sydney boys’ school. In 1944 she began teaching Japanese at the Royal Australian Air Force language school in Sydney.

#18325

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar

#47269

Overall Influence

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar is a teacher, left wing politician and columnist based in Pakistan. Akhtar is associate professor of political economy at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He served as the president of the Awami Workers Party's Punjab executive committee from March 16, 2014 to January 17, 2020. He is deputy general secretary of Awami Workers Party.

#18326

Johannes Walaeus

Johannes Walaeus

1607 - 1649 (42 years)

Johannes Walaeus was a Dutch physician and illustrious professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Leiden University. He was graduated Doctor of Medicine in 1631, when he defended his dissertation, entitled Disputiatio medica de febribus at Leiden University. Two years after that, he was nominated Professor extraordinarius. In 1648, he was offered full professorship at Leiden University. Johannes Walaeus was a son of the theologian Antonius Walaeus.

#18327

Per Hjalmar Nakstad

#138505

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Per Hjalmar Nakstad is a Norwegian professor of medicine. He was born in Kongsvinger and grew up in Kongsvinger, Målselv and Stjørdal. He finished his secondary education at Trondheim Cathedral School in 1965, and graduated in medicine in Freiburg in 1971. From 1979 he got the specialist title in radiology, and in 1985 he took the dr.med. degree at the University of Oslo.

#18328

Christian Graugaard

#126068

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Christian Lykke Graugaard is a Danish medical doctor, author, poet, and professor of sexology at the Aalborg University. He has published widely about sexology, both in popular and scientific contexts, and has published a number of collections of his own poetry as well as translations of works by Nordic poets. He has also been a regular contributor to the debate section in the newspaper Politiken. Furthermore, in his role as director of the organization Sex & Samfund , he is a frequent commentator on issues related to human sexuality in the Danish public debate. He is a critic of the practice...

#18329

Sebastian Wille

Sebastian Wille

#93220

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Sebastian Wille is a German medical specialist, university professor and assistant medical director at the Clinic and Polyclinic of Urology at the University Hospital Cologne. Wille covers the whole diagnostic and therapeutic spectrum of urological disorders. His scientific focus is the reconstructive urology and the urological dysfunction of the lower urinary tract, including male and female incontinence. Wille was significantly involved in the invention of the Wille capsule.

#18330

Kurt Mueller-Vollmer

#189524

Overall Influence

1928 - 2019 (91 years)

Kurt Mueller-Vollmer , born in Hamburg, Germany, was an American philosopher and professor of German Studies and Humanities at Stanford University. Mueller-Vollmer studied in Germany, France, Spain and the United States. He held a master's degree in American Studies from Brown University, and a doctorate in German Studies and Humanities from Stanford University, where he taught for over 40 years. His major publications concentrate in the areas of Literary Criticism, Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, Romantic and Comparative Literature, language theory, cultural transfer and translation studies. Mue...

#18331

William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong

William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong

1810 - 1900 (90 years)

William George Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong, was an English engineer and industrialist who founded the Armstrong Whitworth manufacturing concern on Tyneside. He was also an eminent scientist, inventor and philanthropist. In collaboration with the architect Richard Norman Shaw, he built Cragside in Northumberland, the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity. He is regarded as the inventor of modern artillery.

#18332

William Henry Hadow

1859 - 1937 (78 years)

Sir William Henry Hadow was a leading educational reformer in Great Britain, a musicologist and a composer. Life Born at Ebrington in Gloucestershire and baptised there on 29 January 1860 by his father, he was the eldest child of the Reverend William Elliot Hadow and his wife Mary Lang Cornish . His grandfather, the Reverend William Thomas Hadow, had married Eleanor Ann Bethune, daughter of Colonel John Drinkwater Bethune.

#18333

J. Ph. Vogel

1871 - 1958 (87 years)

Jean Philippe Vogel , popularly known by his initials J. Ph. Vogel, was a Dutch Sanskritist and epigraphist who worked with the Archaeological Survey of India from 1901 to 1914 and later, as Professor in the University of Leiden.

#18334

Isabelle Rapin

#28025

Overall Influence

1927 - 2017 (90 years)

Isabelle Juliette Martha Rapin, M.D. , was a Professor of both Neurology and Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. She was a leading authority on autism for decades, and a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology.

#18335

Sir Robert Jones, 1st Baronet

Sir Robert Jones, 1st Baronet

1857 - 1933 (76 years)

Sir Robert Jones, 1st Baronet, was a Welsh orthopaedic surgeon who helped to establish the modern specialty of orthopaedic surgery in Britain. He was an early proponent of the use of radiography in orthopaedics, and in 1902 described the eponymous Jones fracture.

#18336

Josephine Myers-Wapp

Josephine Myers-Wapp

#121230

Overall Influence

1912 - 2014 (102 years)

Josephine Myers-Wapp was a Comanche weaver and educator. After completing her education at the Haskell Institute, she attended Santa Fe Indian School, studying weaving, dancing, and cultural arts. After her training, she taught arts and crafts at Chilocco Indian School before joining the faculty of the newly opened Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. She taught weaving, design, and dance at the institute, and in 1968 was one of the coordinators for a dance exhibit at the Mexican Summer Olympic Games. In 1973, she retired from teaching to focus on her own work, exhibiting throughout the Americas and in Europe and the Middle East.

#18337

Joy H. Calico

#169509

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Joy Haslam Calico is an American musicologist, and Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Musicology, at Vanderbilt University. Life She graduated from Baylor University, University of Illinois, and Duke University. She was a Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellow at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

#18338

Leslie Walton

1895 - 1960 (65 years)

Leslie Bannister Walton was an academic in Hispanic Studies at the University of Edinburgh and a Hispanist. Life Walton was educated at University College, London and Jesus College, Oxford, where he was awarded a first-class degree in medieval and modern languages. His association with the University of Edinburgh began in 1920, and he rose to become Forbes Reader in Spanish and head of the Department of Hispanic Studies. His writings included a critical study of the Spanish novelist Perez Galdos and editions of classical Spanish works. He also lectured for the Ministry of Information and the British Council in Spain and South America.

#18339

Albert Ziegler

#70662

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Albert Ziegler is a German psychologist and the Chair Professor of Educational Psychology and Research on Excellence at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen Nürnberg. Ziegler is the Secretary-General of the International Research Association for Talent Development and Excellence ; the Vice President of the European Council for High Ability .; and Chairman of the European Talent Support Network . As of August 2017, he serves as Director of the Sound Research Branch at the World Giftedness Center. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of ECHA’s scholarly journal, High Ability Studies.

#18340

Michael Hicks

#116856

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Michael Dustin Hicks is an American professor of music, poet and artist, who has studied a broad array of topics, although his work on music and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been groundbreaking in that field.

#18341

Pura Belpré

1899 - 1982 (83 years)

Pura Teresa Belpré y Nogueras was an Afro-Puerto Rican educator who served as the first Puerto Rican librarian in New York City. She was also a writer, collector of folktales, and puppeteer. Life Belpré was born in Cidra, Puerto Rico. There is some dispute as to the date of her birth which has been given as February 2, 1899, December 2, 1901 and February 2, 1903. Belpré graduated from Central High School in Santurce, Puerto Rico in 1919 and enrolled at the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras, where she originally planned on becoming a teacher. But, in 1920, Belpré interrupted her studies...

#18342

A. N. Murthy Rao

A. N. Murthy Rao

1900 - 2003 (103 years)

Akkihebbalu Narasimha Murthy Rao was an Indian writer. He wrote in Kannada. Biography Kannadiga scholar and critic A. N. Murthy Rao, popularly known for his book "Devaru", was born on June 18, 1900, in Akkihebbal, Mandya district. He was born to M. Subbarao and Puttamma. He spent his childhood in Melukote and Nagamangala. After completing his early education at Wesley Mission School in Mysore in 1913, he joined Mysore Maharaja's College. He completed his B.A. in 1922 and M.A. in 1924.

#18343

Rebecca Herissone

#176490

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Rebecca Louise Herissone is Professor of Musicology at the University of Manchester. Biography Herissone has a Master of Arts degree from the University of Cambridge, a Master of Music degree from the University of London and a PhD from Cambridge. She held a research fellowship at Emmanuel College, Cambridge from 1995 until 1999 and a lectureship at Lancaster University before joining the University of Manchester as a Senior Lecturer in 2006. She was appointed as a fellow of the British Academy in 2019.

#18344

Colin L. Masters

#84381

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Colin Louis Masters is an Australian neuropathologist who researches Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. He is laureate professor of pathology at the University of Melbourne.

#18345

Julian Aleksandrowicz

Julian Aleksandrowicz

1908 - 1988 (80 years)

Julian Aleksandrowicz was a Polish medical professional, professor of medicine, and a notable specialist on leukemia. He is known for having developed concepts of comprehensive psychotherapy of persons suffering from somatic diseases, as well as of the ecological prevention of cancer and leukaemia.

#18346

Osmund Reynolds

Osmund Reynolds

#180456

Overall Influence

1933 - 2017 (84 years)

Edward Osmund Royle Reynolds, CBE, FRCP, FRCOG, FRCPCH, FMedSci, FRS , was a British paediatrician and Neonatologist who was most notable for the introduction of new techniques intended to improve the survival of newborns, especially those with respiratory failure, and for a series of papers regarding the value of techniques such as ultrasound imaging, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and near infrared spectroscopy in determining the development and response to injury of the infant brain after birth.

#18347

Mary J. Safford

Mary J. Safford

1834 - 1891 (57 years)

Mary Jane Safford-Blake was a nurse, physician, educator, and humanitarian. As a nurse in the Union army she worked closely with Mary Ann Bickerdyke treating the sick and injured near Fort Donelson, and was nicknamed the "Cairo Angel" for her service in Cairo, Illinois. After the war she became one of the first female gynecologists in the United States and was the first woman to perform an ovariotomy. She later taught at Boston University, and was one of the first women elected to the Boston School Committee.

#18348

Marcus Whitman

1802 - 1847 (45 years)

Marcus Whitman was an American physician and missionary. In 1836, Marcus Whitman led an overland party by wagon to the West. He and his wife, Narcissa, along with Reverend Henry Spalding and his wife, Eliza, and William Gray, founded a mission at present-day Walla Walla, Washington in an effort to convert local Indians to Christianity. In the winter of 1842, Whitman went back east, returning the following summer with the first large wagon train of settlers across the Oregon Trail. These new settlers encroached on the Cayuse Indians living near the Whitman Mission and were unsuccessful in their efforts to Christianize the tribe.

#18349

Irene Neverla

#126694

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Irene Neverla is an Austrian professor of communication. Neverla chairs the Austrian state broadcaster's advisory board. Life Neverla was born in Graz in 1952. She first studied journalism at the Vienna International Press Centre, before she studied Irene Neverla studied communication science, sociology and psychology at the Universities of Vienna and Salzburg.

#18350

Leiv Amundsen

1898 - 1987 (89 years)

Leiv Amundsen was a Norwegian librarian and philologist. He was born in Tjøme as a son of sailmaker Carl Amundsen and Henrikke Elise Andersen . He attended upper secondary school in Drammen, and worked at the University Library of Oslo at the same time as studying classical philology at the Royal Frederick University. He never actually graduated from the university, but was instead promoted manager of the manuscript collection at the University Library in 1923. He specialized in papyrology, first as the assistant of Samson Eitrem. He was a research fellow with Rockefeller grants from 1926 to 1929, and studied abroad.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions