The Most Influential People Across History

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 Physics,

#9401

Carsten Niemitz

#55262
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Carsten Niemitz is a German anatomist, ethologist, and human evolutionary biologist. Life and work Niemitz studied biology, mathematics, medicine and art history at the Universities of Giessen, Freiburg, Göttingen and at the Free University of Berlin. He graduated in Biology in 1970. From 1968 to 1971 he was employed at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt. He spent the years 1971 to 1973 in the jungle of Sarawak on Borneo. After returning to Germany he was awarded his doctorate in biology in 1974. In 1975 he qualified to teach anatomy and until 1978 was lecturer at the Anatomical Institute of the University of Göttingen.
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#9402

Alberto Romão Dias

#54534
Overall Influence
1941 - 2007 (66 years)
Alberto Romão Dias was a full professor of the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at the Instituto Superior Técnico of the Technical University of Lisbon in Portugal. Education His alma mater includes graduating from industrial-chemical engineering at the Instituto Superior Técnico in 1964, a Ph.D. in chemistry from Oxford University in 1970, and Aggregation at the Instituto Superior Técnico in 1979.
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#9403

Marie-Claire Schanne-Klein

#111954
Overall Influence
Marie-Claire Schanne-Klein is a French physicist who is a professor at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. She is based in the Laboratory for Optics and Biosciences, where she studies the nonlinear optics of chiral molecules.
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#9404

Gregory Stock

#138269
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Gregory Stock is an American biophysicist, best-selling author, biotech entrepreneur, and the former director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at UCLA’s School of Medicine. His interests lie in the scientific and evolutionary as well as ethical, social and political implications of today's revolutions in the life sciences and in information technology and computers.
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#9405

Christopher Keane

#190732
Overall Influence
Christopher J. Keane is an American physicist and astronomer currently at Washington State University and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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#9406

Joshua Melko

#181946
Overall Influence
Joshua Melko is an American scientist and chemistry professor. Melko is an associate professor of physical chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at University of North Florida. His research focuses on studying gas phase chemical reactions that are relevant to the atmospheres of Earth and Mars which provides insights into reactions critical in global warming, ground-to-space communication, and habitability of other planets. Melko is best known for his innovative online teaching methods on the popular streaming platform Twitch.
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#9407

René Thomas

René Thomas
#112956
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
René Thomas Biography René Thomas was born on 14 May 1928, in Brussels, Belgium. His parents were the poet Lucien-Paul Thomas and Marieke Vandenbergh. He was the youngest of three siblings further including Anny and André Thomas. René Thomas was the father of three children: Isabelle, Pierre and Anne. He spent his childhood in La Hulpe, Belgium. Very young, he was already fascinated by biology and published his first scientific article at the age of 13 years old. He continued his studies at the Royal Athenaeum of Ixelles , and at the Université Libre de Bruxelles , where he studied chemistry.
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#9408

Matthias Meyer

#190768
Overall Influence
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#9409

John Allen

#136889
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
John Edward Allen DEng, DSc, FIEE, FIEEE, FInstP is a British engineer and plasma physicist. In particular, he has directly contributed to international dusty plasma experiments in space under microgravity conditions.
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#9410

Maritza Lara-López

#72837
Overall Influence
Maritza Arlene Lara-López is a Mexican astronomer whose research interests include metallicity in galaxy formation and evolution and extragalactic astronomy. She is a participant in the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey, and a researcher and Ramón y Cajal Fellow in the faculty of physical sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid.
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#9411

Ronald Silverman

#133653
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Ronald H. Silverman is an American ophthalmologist. He is currently Professor of Ophthalmic Science at Columbia University Medical Center. He is currently the director of the CUMC Basic Science Course in Ophthalmology, which takes place every January at the Harkness Eye Institute. He departed Weill Cornell Medical College in 2010, where he was Professor of Ophthalmology as well as a Dyson Scholar and the Research Director of the Bioacoustic Research Facility, Margaret M. Dyson Vision Research Institute at Weill Cornell.
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#9412

Peter Goddard

#151978
Overall Influence
1931 - 2012 (81 years)
Peter Robert Goddard was a New Zealand educationalist. Biography He spent his childhood in Auckland and received his secondary education at St Peter's College and his tertiary education at Auckland University where he studied English Literature and Classics. He later obtained the degrees of ED MA , DipEd , DipTch AIE.
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#9413

Lia Athanassoula

#189633
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Evangelia Athanassoula is a retired Greek astrophysicist known for her numerical simulations of the dynamics and structure of disc galaxies, and her studies of the fit between theory and observation for these galaxies.
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#9414

Liu Huixian

#108263
Overall Influence
1912 - 1992 (80 years)
Liu Huixian was a Chinese structural engineer and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is famous for his contribution to earthquake engineering and is seen as "the father of earthquake engineering".
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#9415

Boris Berenfeld

#189153
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Boris Berenfeld is a research scientist with a Ph.D. in biophysics and an educational theorist focused on the application of advanced technologies in inquiry-based education. He linked Soviet students to the US National Geographic KidsNetwork, marking the beginning of uncensored student communications between the countries. In 1990, he developed the Global Lab Curriculum.
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#9416

Jonathan David Farley

#190863
Overall Influence
Dr. Jonathan Farley is Associate Professor of Mathematics at Morgan State University. He holds a bachelor’s in mathematics from Harvard University and a PhD in mathematics from University of Oxford. Farley interest are in Combinatorics, Lattice Theory, and the Theory of Ordered Sets, which he has applied to homeland security and counterterrorism efforts. A prize-winning mathematician earning Oxford’s highest mathemtics awards, Farley has interesting side projects as well. He’s written for a number of popular magazines on a variety of topics, and he runs a company that consults with television ...
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#9417

Andreas Roloff

#94108
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Andreas Roloff is a German forest scientist. He specializes in the fields of forest botany and dendrology. He held a professorship for these two fields from 1990 to 1993 at the Georg-August University of Göttingen and since 1994 the chair for forest botany at the Tharandt Forestry University, specializing in forest sciences at the Technical University of Dresden.
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#9418

Ivars Knēts

#98469
Overall Influence
1938 - 2019 (81 years)
Ivars Knēts, was a rector and professor at Riga Technical University, as the Director of the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomechanics. External links www.1mie.lv
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#9419

Anatoly Alexandrov

#174552
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Anatoly Alexandrovich Alexandrov , , is a Russian applied physicist and a design engineer who is the rector of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University. since April 7, 2010. Biography Anatoly Alexandrov graduated from Bauman Moscow State Technical University in 1975. Several years after graduation he worked at MSTU as an engineer. In 1982 was promoted to Design Engineer, then Head of Logistics, then to the position of deputy director of Development and Studies, and later the Chief Engineer of the MSTU Experimental Plant.
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#9420

Sarah K. Noble

Sarah K. Noble
#168073
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Sarah K. Noble is a planetary geologist and a program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Her area of expertise is space weathering processes. She was the Program Scientist for NASA's LADEE spacecraft, and is the Program Scientist for the Psyche mission.
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#9421

Tetsunari Iida

#26466
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Tetsunari Iida is director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies in Japan. Following the Fukushima nuclear disaster, he is calling for a decrease in Japan's reliance on nuclear power and an increase in renewable energy use.
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#9422

Amiran Khuskivadze

#185106
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Amiran Pimenovich Khuskivadze is a physicist, cyberneticist, philosopher, creator of the Theory of Integrity, author of two laws of nature's harmony: The Law of the Integral System Existence and The Law of Intrasystem Harmony.
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#9423

Mario Garavaglia

#129703
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Mario Garavaglia is an Argentine physicist. Biography He was born in Junín in 1937. In 1999 the International Commission for Optics awarded him the Galileo Galilei Award by unanimous vote for his work on lasers and their applications in industry, medicine and biology and for promoting optics in Latin America.
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#9424

Wolfgang Haber

Wolfgang Haber
#30610
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (101 years)
Wolfgang Haber is a biologist who helped establish the field of landscape ecology. Life Haber studied Botany, Zoology, Chemistry, and Geography at the University of Münster, University of Munich, University of Basel, University of Stuttgart, and University of Hohenheim. From 1957 to 1962 he was a research assistant for Heinrich Walter in Hohenheim, then from 1962 to 1966 a curator and deputy director of the Museum of Natural History, Münster. From 1966 he was head of the newly founded Institute for Landscape Management at TU Munich in Weihenstephan , which he later renamed the Chair for Landscape Ecology.
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#9425

Rachel Scherr

#190927
Overall Influence
Rachel E. Scherr is an American physics educator, currently an assistant professor of physics at the University of Washington Bothell. Her research includes studies of responsive teaching and active learning, video and gestural analysis of classroom behavior, and student understanding of energy and special relativity.
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#9426

Sergei Tretyakov

#182876
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Sergei Anatolyevich Tretyakov is a Russian-Finnish scientist, focused in electromagnetic field theory, complex media electromagnetics and microwave engineering. He is currently a professor at Department of Electronics and Nanoengineering, Aalto University , Finland. His main research area in recent years is metamaterials and metasurfaces from fundamentals to applications. He was the president of the European Virtual Institute for Artificial Electromagnetic Materials and Metamaterials and general chair of the Metamaterials Congresses from 2007 to 2013. He is a fellow/member of many scientific associations such as IEEE, URSI, the Electromagnetics Academy, and OSA.
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#9427

François Bouchet

#191096
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
François R. Bouchet is a French astronomer specializing in physical cosmology, including formation of large scale structures and cosmic background radiation. He serves as the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris liaison for the Planck Mission Project.
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#9428

Lawrence Olson

#69877
Overall Influence
1918 - 1992 (74 years)
Lawrence Olson was an American historian specializing in Japan who served as the professor of history at Wesleyan University. In 1987, the Government of Japan honored him with the Order of the Sacred Treasure, the highest honor available to a foreigner, in recognition of his efforts in raising awareness of Japan in the United States. He was a professor of history at Wesleyan University.
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#9429

Yogesh Kumar Tyagi

#109022
Overall Influence
Yogesh Kumar Tyagi is an Indian academic. He is the 22nd Vice Chancellor of University of Delhi. He was former Dean of Faculty of legal studies, South Asian University and is credited with the establishment of an excellent department for International Law. He has published a famous work on UN Human Rights Committee. He has published extensively in International journals.
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#9430

Dorota Skowron

#191120
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Dorota Maria Skowron is a scientist at the University of Warsaw. In 2019 she was part of the team that confirmed that the Milky Way galaxy was not flat. She is a member of the International Astronomical Union.
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#9431

Mohamed Hag Ali Hassan

Mohamed Hag Ali Hassan
#190489
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Mohamed Hag Ali Hag el Hassan OMRI GCONMC FAAS FIAS FTWAS is a Sudanese-Italian mathematician and physicist who co-founded numerous scientific councils. He is the President of The World Academy of Sciences and Sudanese National Academy of Sciences.
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#9432

Tripti Bhattacharya

#187478
Overall Influence
Tripti Bhattacharya is the Thonis Family Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Syracuse University. Education Bhattacharya graduated from Georgetown University in 2010 with a B.S. in Environmental Science. She earned her PhD in Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a NSF-GRFP fellow. Her thesis was titled "Causes and Impacts of Rainfall Variability In Central Mexico on Multiple Timescales". Her research won the Denise Gaudreau Award for Excellence in Quaternary Studies, from the American Quaternary Association in 2014.
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#9433

Song Li

#169132
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Song Li is a Chancellor Professor and Department Chair of Bioengineering at University of California, Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D. in bioengineering from University of California, San Diego. Dr. Li was a Bioengineering faculty at University of California, Berkeley , and he moved to UCLA in 2016. His research is focused on cell engineering, mechanobiology, biomaterials, and regenerative medicine. He is well recognized bioengineer, and has been elected as a Fellow of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering Society and American Institute for ...
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#9434

Tarek Hassan

#191205
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
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#9435

Helen Maynard-Casely

#190398
Overall Influence
Helen Maynard-Casely is an instrument scientist at the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation in Sydney, Australia. She has won numerous prizes and is an advocate for the participation of women in STEM.
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#9436

Ken Goodwin

#97676
Overall Influence
1934 - 2014 (80 years)
Ken Leslie Goodwin MA Dip.Ed. , DPhil. , Hon D.Litt. , was an Australian academic and author. Ken Goodwin was the first of his family to attend university. After obtaining a BA Hons. and a Dip. Ed. from the University of Sydney he taught at a New South Wales high school and Wagga Wagga Teachers' College. In 1959 he accepted a position as a lecturer in English in the Department of External Studies at The University of Queensland.
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#9437

Frank Fahy

#190597
Overall Influence
1922 - 2005 (83 years)
Edward Francis Fahy was an Irish physicist, academic and administrator whose long career was spent mostly at University College Cork . There he was head of the department of physics and college Vice President . He also served as chair of the School of Cosmic Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies .
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#9438

Dora Musielak

#84072
Overall Influence
Dora Elia Musielak is an aerospace engineer, historian of mathematics, and book author. She is an expert on high-speed airbreathing jet engines, and an adjunct professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington.
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#9439

Tanya Harrison

#79582
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
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#9440

Robert Ecke

#190832
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Robert Everett Ecke is an American experimental physicist who is a laboratory fellow and director emeritus of the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Affiliate Professor of Physics at the University of Washington. His research has included chaotic nonlinear dynamics, pattern formation, rotating Rayleigh-Bénard convection, two-dimensional turbulence, granular materials, and stratified flows. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , was chair of the APS Topical Group on Statistical and Nonlin...
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#9441

Hans Økland

#169885
Overall Influence
1918 - 2010 (92 years)
Hans Økland was a Norwegian meteorologist and geophysicist. He was born in Trondenes, finished his secondary education in Harstad in 1937 and graduated from the University of Oslo with the cand.real. degree in 1942. He worked as a secondary school teacher in Svolvær and Tromsø, as a meteorologist in the Forecasting Division of Northern Norway from 1946 to 1954 and the Norwegian Meteorological Institute from 1954 to 1970. After two years as a researcher at the Meteorological Institute he took his doctorate at the University of Oslo in 1972. In 1977 he was hired as a university lecturer in geophysics, being promoted to professor later.
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#9442

Cindy Shannon

#103575
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Cindy Anne-Maree Shannon is an Australian academic best known for her work in the field of Indigenous health. Education Cindy Shannon attended Lourdes Hill College in Brisbane, Queensland before taking her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Queensland, graduating in 1986. She studied a Graduate Diploma in Education at the University of Southern Queensland in 1987. She took a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Southern Queensland in 1993 and a Doctor of Social Science, Political Science and Government from the University of Queensland in 2004.
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#9443

Egbert Jahn

#90988
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Egbert Kurt Jahn is a German political scientist, contemporary historian and peace researcher and is emeritus professor at the University of Mannheim. Life After his Abitur in Wiesbaden, Jahn studied history – specialising in East European history – political science, geography and educational theory between 1961 and 1969 in Marburg and briefly also in Berlin and Bratislava. After his state examination in 1968 he graduated in East European history in 1969 under Peter Scheibert in Marburg.
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#9444

Vladimir Dubrovskii

Vladimir Dubrovskii
#190032
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Vladimir G. Dubrovskii is the head of Laboratory of physics of nanostructures at St. Petersburg Academic University, a leading research scientist at Ioffe Institute, and a professor at St. Petersburg State University and ITMO University.
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#9445

Walter E. Massey

Walter E. Massey
#186748
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Walter Eugene Massey is an American educator, physicist, and executive. President emeritus of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and of Morehouse College, he is chairman of the board overseeing construction of the Giant Magellan Telescope, and serves as trustee chair of the City Colleges of Chicago. During his career, Massey has served as head of the National Science Foundation, director of Argonne National Laboratory, and chairman of Bank of America. He has also served in professorial and administrative posts at the University of California, University of Chicago, Brown University, ...
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#9446

Gilles Brassard

#191455
Overall Influence
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#9447

Javier G. Fernandez

#189619
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Javier G. Fernandez is a Spanish physicist and bioengineer. He is associate professor at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. He is known for his work in biomimetic materials and sustainable biomanufacturing, particularly for pioneering chitin's use for general and sustainable manufacturing.
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#9448

Benedetto Vigna

#61778
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Benedetto Vigna is an Italian physicist and businessman. He is currently the chief executive officer of Ferrari. Career Born in Potenza, Basilicata, he grew up in the neighboring municipality of Pietrapertosa.
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#9449

Katharine Michie

#184387
Overall Influence
Katharine Arwen Michie is an Australian structural biologist, biochemist and physicist. In 2005 she was named a Fellow of the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science and was also awarded a Marie Curie International Research Fellowship in January, 2006. Michie is currently in charge of the Structural Biology X-ray Facility, a part of the Mark Wainwright Analytical Centre, at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.
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#9450

Andrei Richter

#50413
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Andrei Richter is Professor Researcher at the Comenius University in Bratislava, former senior adviser and director of the Office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media in Vienna. Born in 1959 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, he has university degrees in law, foreign languages, and a doctorate degree in journalism. In 2015 he became a habilitated professor of mass media studies in Slovakia. Richter was a Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists in 2000-2013 and co-chair of the Law Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research in 1996-2010.
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