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.

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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 Psychology,

#551

Gail Carpenter

#14979

Overall Influence

Gail Alexandra Carpenter is an American cognitive scientist, neuroscientist and mathematician. She is now a "Professor Emerita of Mathematics and Statistics, Boston University." She had also been a Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems at Boston University, and the director of the Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems Technology Lab at Boston University.

#552

Klaus Grawe

#31782

Overall Influence

1943 - 2005 (62 years)

Klaus Grawe was a German psychotherapeutic researcher. Grawe grew up in Hamburg and graduated there in psychology in 1968. He worked at the psychiatric clinic in Hamburg-Eppendorf between 1969 and 1979 and was awarded a PhD in 1976 from the University of Hamburg. He received his habilitation in Hamburg in 1979 and was offered a Professorship at the University of Bern, Switzerland. He later moved to Zurich. In 1995/1996 he was President of the Society for Psychotherapy Research.

#553

Ralph Reitan

#28882

Overall Influence

1922 - 2014 (92 years)

Ralph M. Reitan was an American neuropsychologist and one of the founding fathers of American clinical neuropsychology having brought the notion of brain-behavior relationships to the forefront of the field. He is best known for his role in developing the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery and his strong belief in empiricism and evidence-based practice. He was a strong advocate of use of a fixed battery in neuropsychological assessment, published prolifically, and mentored many students who also became prominent in the field. As an author, he has been collected by libraries.

#554

Rochel Gelman

#18434

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Rochel Gelman is an emeritus psychology professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Science. Gelman is married to fellow psychologist C. Randy Gallistel. Prior to joining the Rutgers faculty she taught at the University of California, Los Angeles.

#555

David Fontana

#20786

Overall Influence

1934 - 2010 (76 years)

David G. J. Fontana FBPsS was a British psychologist, parapsychologist and author. He was a Professor of Psychology at Cardiff University. He was also a visiting professor at Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Algarve.

#556

Bob Altemeyer

#14504

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Robert Anthony Altemeyer is a retired Professor of Psychology at the University of Manitoba. Altemeyer also produced the right-wing authoritarianism scale, or RWA Scale, as well as the related left-wing authoritarianism scale, or LWA Scale.

#557

Margaret Donaldson

#31101

Overall Influence

1926 - 2020 (94 years)

Margaret Caldwell Donaldson was a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Edinburgh. Donaldson was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where she gained a Ph.D. in 1956, and continued as a teacher after graduating. She traveled to Memphis Tennessee to guest-lecture and teach at Rhodes College during the 1962–1963 school year. In 1980, she was appointed professor of developmental psychology. Her main research interest has always been in the study of human thought and language. At Edinburgh, Professor Donaldson oversaw the development of research in developmental psychol...

#558

Larry Squire

#16219

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Larry Ryan Squire is a professor of psychiatry, neurosciences, and psychology at the University of California, San Diego, and a Senior Research Career Scientist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego. He is a leading investigator of the neurological bases of memory, which he studies using animal models and human patients with memory impairment.

#559

Robert V. Levine

#25911

Overall Influence

1945 - 2019 (74 years)

Robert Victor Levine, Ph.D. was an American psychologist. Levine was Professor of Psychology at California State University, Fresno, a social psychology writer, speaker, and consultant. He was also the former Associate Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics at Fresno.

#560

Patricia Devine

#14478

Overall Influence

Patricia Grace Devine is a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she was the psychology department chair from 2009 to 2014. She was also the 2012 president of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

#561

Diana Baumrind

#6227

Overall Influence

1927 - 2018 (91 years)

Diana Blumberg Baumrind was a clinical and developmental psychologist known for her research on parenting styles and for her critique of the use of deception in psychological research. Early life and education Baumrind was born into a Jewish community in New York City, the first of two daughters of Hyman and Mollie Blumberg. She completed her B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy at Hunter College in 1948, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her doctoral dissertation was entitled "Some personality and situational determinants of behavior in a discussio...

#562

Garnett S. Stokes

#21117

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Garnett Sue Stokes is an American academic administrator serving as the 23rd president of the University of New Mexico. She assumed office on March 1, 2018. Early life and education Stokes was born in Washington, D.C. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Carson–Newman University, followed by a Master of Science and PhD in industrial and organizational psychology from the University of Georgia.

#563

Nathan Brody

#15919

Overall Influence

Nathan Brody is an American psychology professor Emeritus known for his work on intelligence and personality. Brody received his BA from University of New Hampshire and his MA and PhD from University of Michigan. He taught at Wesleyan University and is currently an emeritus professor there.

#564

Norman Cliff

#14595

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Norman Cliff is an American psychologist. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton in psychometrics in 1957. After research positions in the US Public Health Service and at Educational Testing Service he joined the University of Southern California in 1962. He has had a number of research interests, including quantification of cognitive processes, scaling and measurement theory, computer-interactive psychological measurement, multivariate statistics, and ordinal methods. One of his major contributions to psychometrics was the method for rotation of canonical components. Asserting that much of psy...

#565

Tiffany Field

#15677

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Tiffany Martini Field is professor in the departments of pediatrics, psychology, and psychiatry at the University of Miami School of Medicine and director of the Touch Research Institute. She specializes in infant development, especially with regard to the impact of maternal postpartum depression on mother-infant interaction and the efficacy of massage and touch therapy in promoting growth and emotional well-being in premature and low birth weight infants.

#566

Drew Westen

#13543

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Drew Westen is professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia; the founder of Westen Strategies, LLC, a strategic messaging consulting firm to nonprofits and political organizations; and a writer. He is also co-founder, with Joel Weinberger, of Implicit Strategies, a market research firm that measures consumers' unconscious responses to advertising and brands.

#567

David C. Geary

#15099

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

David Cyril Geary is an American cognitive developmental and evolutionary psychologist with interests in mathematical learning and sex differences. He is currently a Curators’ Professor and Thomas Jefferson Fellow in the Department of Psychological Sciences and Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri.

#568

Andrew J. Elliot

#32459

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Andrew J. Elliot is a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. His research on the hierarchical model of approach and avoidance motivation focuses on combining classic and contemporary methods to test various theories. Elliot's work in social psychology is cited frequently by those in the field, causing him to be named one of Thomson Reuters' ISI Highly Cited for the Social Sciences in 2010.

#569

Brené Brown

#6476

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Casandra Brené Brown is an American professor, author, and podcast host. Brown is known for her work on shame, vulnerability, and leadership, and for her widely viewed TEDx talk in 2010. She has written six number-one New York Times bestselling books and hosted two podcasts on Spotify.

#570

Ellen Winner

#21461

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Ellen Winner is a psychologist and a professor at Boston College. She specializes in psychology of art. Winner graduated from the Putney School in 1965 and received a PhD in developmental psychology from Harvard University in 1978. She collaborated on Project Zero to conduct studies about the way people experience and perceive art. Winner noted how psychological explorations beginning in the realm of philosophy pertained to art.

#571

Max Lüscher

#13573

Overall Influence

1923 - 2017 (94 years)

Max Lüscher was a Swiss psychotherapist known for inventing the Lüscher color test, a tool for measuring an individual's psychophysical state based on their color preferences. Besides research, teaching and practicing psychotherapy in Basel, Lüscher worked for international companies, amongst other things giving color advice. His book The Lüscher Test has been translated into more than 30 languages.

#572

John Jost

#18391

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

John Thomas Jost is a social psychologist best known for his work on system justification theory and the psychology of political ideology. Jost received his AB degree in Psychology and Human Development from Duke University , where he studied with Irving E. Alexander, Philip R. Costanzo, David Goldstein, and Lynn Hasher, and his PhD in Social and Political Psychology from Yale University , where he was the last doctoral student of Leonard Doob and William J. McGuire. He was also a doctoral student of Mahzarin R. Banaji and a postdoctoral trainee of Arie W. Kruglanski.

#573

Daniel David

#20259

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Daniel David is a Romanian academic. He is "Aaron T. Beck" professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at the Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. He was the head of the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy of the Babeş-Bolyai University between 2007 and 2012. Daniel David is also an adjunct professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and is the head of the Research Program at Albert Ellis Institute in New York.

#574

Walter Kintsch

#20519

Overall Influence

1932 - 2023 (91 years)

Walter Kintsch was an American Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder . He is renowned for his groundbreaking theories in cognitive psychology, especially in relation to text comprehension.

#575

Janet Taylor Spence

#16508

Overall Influence

1923 - 2015 (92 years)

Janet Allison Taylor Spence was an American psychologist who worked in the field of the psychology of anxiety and in gender studies. Early life Spence was born on August 29, 1923, in Toledo, Ohio. She was the older of two daughters. Her sister was born in 1927. Her father, John Chrichton, and her mother, Helen Taylor, were both active members of their community. Janet Taylor Spence's parents met in New York where John was working as a reporter and Helen was studying for a master's degree in economics at Columbia University. John joined the school board after running for governor, and Helen w...

#576

Ziva Kunda

#27306

Overall Influence

1955 - 2004 (49 years)

Ziva Kunda was an Israeli social psychologist and professor at the University of Waterloo known for her work in social cognition and motivated reasoning. Her seminal paper "The Case for Motivated Reasoning", published in Psychological Bulletin in 1990, posthumously received the Scientific Impact Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. Kunda authored the book Social Cognition: Making Sense of People.

#577

Arnold Bakker

#23408

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Arnoldus Bastiaan Bakker is a Dutch industrial and organizational psychologist and Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Bakker is also a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the secretary general of the Alliance for Organizational Psychology, and the former president of the European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology.

#578

Gary A. Klein

#7206

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Gary Klein is a research psychologist famous for pioneering in the field of naturalistic decision making. By studying experts such as firefighters in their natural environment, he discovered that laboratory models of decision making could not describe it under uncertainty. His recognition-primed decision model has influenced changes in the ways the Marines and Army train their officers to make decisions.

#579

Alex Inkeles

#8354

Overall Influence

1920 - 2010 (90 years)

Alex Inkeles was an American sociologist and social psychologist. One of his main areas of research was the culture and society of the Soviet Union. His career was mostly spent at Harvard University and Stanford University. In addition to being the founding editor of the Annual Review of Sociology, some of his recognitions included membership in the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and American Philosophical Society.

#580

Philip E. Tetlock

Philip E. Tetlock

#7907

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Philip E. Tetlock is a Canadian-American political science writer, and is currently the Annenberg University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is cross-appointed at the Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences. He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.

#581

Herbert Ginsburg

#14102

Overall Influence

Herbert P. Ginsburg is Jacob H. Schiff Foundation Professor of Psychology & Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is a leading interpreter of children's understanding of mathematics, with research and teaching interests in intellectual development, mathematics education, and testing and assessment. He is a co-author of the Big Math for Little Kids curriculum for prekindergarten and kindergarten.

#582

Kristin Neff

#22605

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Kristin Neff is an associate professor in the University of Texas at Austin's department of educational psychology. Dr. Neff received her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, studying moral development. She did two years of postdoctoral study at the University of Denver studying self-concept development. She created the Self-compassion Scales. The long scale consists of 26 items and the short scale consists of 12 items. She has been credited with conducting the first academic studies into self-compassion.

#583

Thomas Bever

#19923

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Thomas G. Bever is a Regent's Professor of Psychology, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience at the University of Arizona. He has been a leading figure in psycholinguistics, focusing on the cognitive and neurological bases of linguistic universals, among other pursuits. Bever received a B.A. in linguistics and psychology from Harvard University in 1961, and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967; he studied with Noam Chomsky, George A. Miller, and Jean Piaget. He taught at Rockefeller University from 1967 to 1969, Columbia University from 1...

#584

David McNeill

#15454

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Glenn David McNeill is an American psychologist and writer specializing in scientific research into psycholinguistics and especially the relationship of language to thought, and the gestures that accompany discourse.

#585

Fritz Strack

#20136

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Fritz Strack is a German social psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Würzburg. Strack is a member of Germany's National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for psychology in 2019.

#586

Paul Verhaeghe

#6566

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Paul Verhaeghe is a Belgian professor of clinical psychology and psychoanalysis. Studies In 1978, Verhaeghe graduated with a master's degree in psychology from the University of Ghent . In 1985, he obtained his PhD in clinical psychology and in 1992 a special doctorate in psychodiagnostics . He received his initial psychoanalytical training at the Belgian School for Psychoanalysis and then at the École de la Cause Freudienne .

#587

Gordon Moskowitz

#28786

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Gordon Blaine Moskowitz is a social psychologist working in the field of social cognition. He is currently a professor in the Department of Psychology at Lehigh University. His primary research interests are in examining: 1i.e., the extent to which social inferences, especially stereotypes, are spontaneous

#588

John B. Biggs

#22757

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

John Burville Biggs is an Australian educational psychologist and novelist who developed the SOLO taxonomy for assessing the quality of learning outcomes, and the model of constructive alignment for designing teaching and assessment.

#589

Ruth Westheimer

Ruth Westheimer

#2108

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

Karola Ruth Westheimer , better known as Dr. Ruth, is a German-American who is a sex–therapist, talk show host, author, professor, and Holocaust survivor. Westheimer was born in Germany to a Jewish family. As the Nazis came to power, her parents sent the ten-year-old girl to a school in Switzerland for safety, remaining behind themselves because of her elderly grandmother. They were both subsequently sent to concentration camps by the Gestapo, where they were killed. After World War II ended, she immigrated to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine. Despite being only 4 feet 7 inches tall and 17 years of age, she joined the Haganah, and was trained as a sniper, but never saw combat.

#590

Henry Gleitman

#29597

Overall Influence

1925 - 2015 (90 years)

Henry Gleitman was a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Personal life Gleitman obtained both his bachelor's and master's degrees in psychology: the bachelor's degree from the City College of New York, and his master's from the University of California. Henry Gleitman was wed to another psychologist, Lila R. Gleitman. Together, they penned a book together called Phrase and Paraphrase. The book was released in 1970. He fathered two daughters. Their names are Ellen Luchette and Claire Gleitman. Gleitman was born in Leipzig, Germany. He received his PhD in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.

#591

Jim Coan

#21359

Overall Influence

James Arthur Coan, Jr. is an American affective neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, writer, podcast host, human rights activist, and psychology professor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he serves as director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory.

#592

Kipling Williams

#30483

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Kipling D. Williams is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Ohio State University. He is most noted for his research on ostracism and has developed unique methods to study the processes and consequences.

#593

Adrian Wells

#15302

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Adrian Wells, CPsychol, is a British clinical psychologist who is the creator of metacognitive therapy. He is Professor of Clinical and Experimental Psychopathology at the University of Manchester, U.K. and is also Professor II of Clinical Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

#594

David A. Kenny

#32277

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

David Anthony Kenny is an American social psychologist and Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among the subjects he has researched are the interpersonal perception, the statistical analysis of data from dyads and groups, as well as mediation analysis. He co-authored a 1986 paper with Reuben M. Baron on mediation analysis that has been highly influential in the years since, with 114,891 citations . He received the American Psychological...

#595

John Beloff

#27800

Overall Influence

1920 - 2006 (86 years)

John Beloff was an English psychology professor at Edinburgh University and parapsychologist. Biography Beloff was born and brought up in London, and was from a Russian Jewish family. His parents were Semion Beloff and Maria Katzin. His paternal great-grandmother was Leah Horowitz-Winograd, the sister of Eliyahu Shlomo Horowitz-Winograd and a descendant of the Hasidic master Shmelke Horowitz of Nikolsburg . He was the brother of the historian Max Beloff, the politician and educationalist Renee Soskin, the biochemist Anne Beloff-Chain, and the journalist Nora Beloff. He served in the British Army in the Second World War.

#596

Fergus I. M. Craik

#26215

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Fergus Ian Muirden Craik FRS is a cognitive psychologist known for his research on levels of processing in memory. This work was done in collaboration with Robert Lockhart at the University of Toronto in 1972 and continued with another collaborative effort with Endel Tulving in 1975. Craik has received numerous awards and is considered a leader in the area of memory, attention and cognitive aging. Moreover, his work over the years can be seen in developmental psychology, aging and memory, and the neuropsychology of memory.

#597

Alice Eagly

#31325

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Alice H. Eagly is the James Padilla Chair of Arts and Sciences Emerita and emerita professor of psychology at Northwestern University. She is also a fellow at the Institute of Policy Research at Northwestern University. Her primary research focus is social psychology, as well as personality psychology and Industrial Organizational Psychology. She was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.

#598

William C. Dement

#9095

Overall Influence

1928 - 2020 (92 years)

William Charles Dement was an American sleep researcher and founder of the Sleep Research Center at Stanford University. He was a leading authority on sleep, sleep deprivation and the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders such as sleep apnea and narcolepsy. For this pioneering work in a previously uncharted field in the United States, he is sometimes referred to as the American father of sleep medicine.

#599

Charles Brainerd

#25941

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Charles Jon Brainerd is an American psychologist and professor in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University. He is known for developing fuzzy-trace theory with his wife and colleague, Valerie F. Reyna. He serves as editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Developmental Review.

#600

Kelly D. Brownell

Kelly D. Brownell

#9130

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Kelly David Brownell is a clinical psychologist and scholar of public health and public policy at Duke University whose work focuses on obesity and food policy. He is a former dean of Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy. Noted for his research dealing primarily with obesity prevention, as well as the intersection of behavior, environment, and health with public policy, Brownell advised former First Lady Michelle Obama's initiatives to address childhood obesity and has testified before Congress. He is credited with coining the term "yo-yo dieting", and was named as one of "The World's 100 M...

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