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).
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.
List of the most influential people in Psychology,
#601
John Dovidio
#30464
Overall Influence
John Francis Dovidio is the Carl Iver Hovland Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Public Health at Yale University, where he is also the former director of the Intergroup Relations Lab. He is known for his research on the concept of aversive racism and on reducing people's intergroup biases. He was the president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues from 1999 to 2000. He served as the editor-in-chief of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin from 1994 to 1997, of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychologys Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes section from 2002 to 2008, and the co-editor of Social Issues and Policy Review from 2006 to 2011.
Go to Profile#602
Anita Woolfolk Hoy
#29305
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Anita Woolfolk Hoy is an American psychologist who specializes in child education. Hoy was a professor in the college of educational psychology at Ohio State University from 1994 until her retirement in 2012. She is a professor emerita. She has been active in many areas of research and several other scientific works, in which she focuses on students perceptions of teachers, teacher's beliefs, students motivations and the effects of educational psychology when being applied In the classroom. Her text, Educational Psychology, which is in its 13th edition, was recognized as one of the most widel...
Go to Profile#603
Raymond Joseph Dolan
#35361
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Raymond Joseph Dolan is an Irish neuroscientist and the Mary Kinross Professor of Neuropsychiatry at University College London, where he was also the founding director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging.
Go to Profile#604
Valerie F. Reyna
#23909
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Valerie F. Reyna is an American psychologist and Professor of Human Development at Cornell University and an expert on false memory and risky decision making. In collaboration with her husband Charles Brainerd, Reyna developed fuzzy-trace theory, a dual-process model of mental representations underlying memory, judgement, and decision making. According to fuzzy-trace theory, there are two independent types of memory traces: a verbatim trace that records the exact details and a gist trace that extracts general features. Brainerd and Reyna used fuzzy-trace theory to provide a comprehensive acco...
Go to Profile#605
Jan Strelau
#14135
Overall Influence
1931 - 2020 (89 years)
Jan Strelau was a Polish psychologist best known for his studies on temperament. He was professor of psychology at Warsaw University from 1968 to 2001 and was since 2001 professor at Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, where he took the positions of Vice-rector for Research and International Affairs , Vice-rector for Research , and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees .
Go to Profile#606
Dolf Zillmann
#15614
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Dolf Zillmann is dean emeritus, and professor of information sciences, communication and psychology at the University of Alabama . Zillmann predominantly conducted research in media psychology, a branch of psychology focused on the effects of media consumption on human affect, developing and expanding a range of theories within media psychology and communication. His work centred on the relation between aggression, emotion, and arousal through media consumption, predominantly in pornography and violent genres of movie and television. His research also includes the effects of music consumption...
Go to Profile#607
Tom R. Tyler
#20924
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Tom R. Tyler is a professor of psychology and law at Yale Law School, known for his contributions to understanding why people obey the law. A 2012 review article on procedural justice by Anthony Bottoms and Justice Tankebe noted that, "Unquestionably the dominant theoretical approach to legitimacy within these disciplines is that of 'procedural justice,' based especially on the work of Tom Tyler.". Professor Tyler was at New York University, where he was a University Professor, from 1997 until he joined the faculty at Yale in January 2012. He earned his B.A. from Columbia University and Ph.D.
Go to Profile#608
Jamshed Bharucha
#7551
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Jamshed Bharucha is an Indian-American cognitive neuroscientist who has served in leadership roles in higher education. He is the founding vice chancellor of Sai University, Chennai, and is a member of the board of advisors of India's International Movement to Unite Nations .
Go to Profile#609
Annette Karmiloff-Smith
#16542
Overall Influence
1938 - 2016 (78 years)
Annette Karmiloff-Smith CBE FBA FMedSci was a professorial research fellow at the Developmental Neurocognition Lab at Birkbeck, University of London. Before moving to Birbeck, she was Head of the Neurocognitive Development Unit at Institute of Child Health, University College, London. She was an expert in developmental disorders, with a particular interest in Williams syndrome.
Go to Profile#610
Torsten Husén
#21468
Overall Influence
1916 - 2009 (93 years)
Torsten Husén was a Swedish educator. Husén became Master of Arts in 1938, was an assistant at the Department of Psychology at Lund University from 1938 to 1943, became Doctor of Philosophy in Lund in 1944, and Associate Professor of Education at Stockholm University in 1947. He was professor of education and educational psychology at Stockholm University 1953–1955, 1956–1971 in practical pedagogy at Stockholm Institute of Education and in education at Stockholm University from 1971 to 1981.
Go to Profile#611
John Hudson Bowlby
#38024
Overall Influence
#612
Jacquelynne Eccles
#21835
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Jacquelynne Sue Eccles is an American educational psychologist. She is the Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of California, Irvine and formerly the McKeachie/Pintrich Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#613
David Lester
#34884
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
David Lester is a British-American psychologist, suicidologist, and emeritus professor of psychology at Stockton University. Education Lester received his BA from Cambridge University in 1964, and his M.A. from Brandeis University in psychology in 1966. He went on to receive another M.A. from Cambridge University in 1968, and received his first PhD the same year at Brandeis. In 1991, he received his second PhD, this one in social & political science at Cambridge.
Go to Profile#614
Jonathan Kellerman
#7310
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Jonathan Seth Kellerman is an American novelist, psychologist, and Edgar- and Anthony Award–winning author best known for his popular mystery novels featuring the character Alex Delaware, a child psychologist who consults for the Los Angeles Police Department.
Go to Profile#615
George Gaskell
#28400
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
George Gaskell is a British Emeritus Professor of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science . Formerly Director of the Methodology Institute, which he established with Colm O’Muircheartaigh, he was Pro-director for Planning and Resources and a member of the LSE Council and Court of Governors.
Go to Profile#616
Donald D. Hoffman
#9139
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Donald David Hoffman is an American cognitive psychologist and popular science author. He is a professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, with joint appointments in the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, and the School of Computer Science.
Go to Profile#617
Paula Caplan
#4331
Overall Influence
1947 - 2021 (74 years)
Paula Joan Caplan was an American psychologist, activist, writer, and artist. Biography Caplan was an associate at Harvard University's DuBois Institute, director of the Voices of Diversity Project, and a past Fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Previously she had been full professor of psychology, assistant professor of psychiatry, and lecturer in Women's Studies at the University of Toronto, as well as head of the Centre for Women's Studies in Education there, and was chosen by the American Psychological Association as an "eminent woman psychologist".
Go to Profile#618
Robert Gifford
#18409
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Robert Gifford is professor of Psychology and Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria . His main research interests are environmental psychology, social psychology and personality psychology. He has worked on nonverbal behavior and on climate change behavior barriers. Gifford is the author of five editions of Environmental Psychology: Principles and Practice, which has also been translated into Japanese, and edited Research Methods for Environmental Psychology . From 2004 to 2016, he was the editor in chief of the Journal of Environmental Psychology. Gifford is also on the editorial boards of Architectural Science Review and Applied Psychology.
Go to Profile#619
Andrey Alexandrovich Verbitsky
#16945
Overall Influence
1941 - 2020 (79 years)
Andrey Alexandrovich Verbitsky , is a Russian educational psychologist. His areas of academic interest include the development of higher education in Russia, as well as developmental, educational, and social psychology. He has published more than 200 academic and instructional papers, including five monographs.
Go to Profile#620
Diane F. Halpern
#15151
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Diane F. Halpern is an American psychologist and former president of the American Psychological Association . She is Dean of Social Science at the Minerva Schools at KGI and also the McElwee Family Professor of Psychology at Claremont McKenna College. She is also past-president of the Western Psychological Association, The Society for the Teaching of Psychology, and the Division of General Psychology.
Go to Profile#621
Gerard Egan
#14110
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Gerard Egan is Professor Emeritus of Loyola University of Chicago. He was born in Chicago, Illinois on 17 June 1930, graduated from Loyola Academy, Chicago in June 1948, and from Loyola University, June 1953, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. He studied philosophy at West Baden College in Indiana, then a Jesuit seminary linked to Loyola University, and received a Licentiate in Philosophy in June 1955. From September 1966 to June 1967, he taught French and Spanish at St. Ignatius High School, Chicago, and began teaching philosophy at Loyola University in September 1968.
Go to Profile#622
James Jerome Gibson
#38454
Overall Influence
#623
Eleanor Saffran
#30135
Overall Influence
1938 - 2002 (64 years)
Eleanor M. Saffran , an American neuroscientist, was a researcher in the field of Cognitive Neuropsychology. Her interest in Neuropsychology began at the Baltimore City hospitals of Johns Hopkins University, where her research unit focused on neurological patients with language or cognitive impairments. In papers published between 1976 and 1982, Dr. Saffran spelled out the methodological tenets of “cognitive neuropsychology” exemplified in her studies of aphasia, alexia , auditory verbal agnosia, and short-term memory impairment.
Go to Profile#624
Laurie R. Santos
#16788
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Laurie Renee Santos is an American cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at Yale University. She is the director of Yale's Comparative Cognition Laboratory, Director of Yale's Canine Cognition Lab, and former Head of Yale's Silliman College. She has been a featured TED speaker and has been listed in Popular Science as one of their "Brilliant Ten" young scientists in 2007 as well as in Time magazine as a "Leading Campus Celebrity" in 2013.
Go to Profile#625
Murray Sidman
#12143
Overall Influence
1923 - 2019 (96 years)
Murray Sidman was an American behavioral scientist, best known for Sidman Avoidance, also called "free-operant avoidance", in which an individual learns to avoid an aversive stimulus by remembering to produce the response without any other stimulus. Sidman's explanation of free-operant avoidance is an alternative to the Miller-Mowrer two-process theory of avoidance.
Go to Profile#626
Cecil R. Reynolds
#28971
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Cecil Randy Reynolds is an American psychology professor best known for his work in psychological testing and assessment. Early life Reynolds was born on February 7, 1952, at the US Naval Hospital in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. His father, Cecil C. Reynolds, was a career marine, enlisting in 1929 and retiring in 1960. His mother, Daphne, owned and taught at a private preschool and kindergarten for 25 years, later becoming a published poet and author of children's books. Reynolds attended New Hanover High School, graduating in 1969, and turned down a Presidential appointment to the United States Naval Academy by Richard Nixon, after being drafted by the New York Mets.
Go to Profile#627
Robert Plutchik
#10581
Overall Influence
1927 - 2006 (79 years)
Robert Plutchik was a professor emeritus at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and adjunct professor at the University of South Florida. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and he was also a psychologist. He authored or coauthored more than 260 articles, 45 chapters and eight books and edited seven books. His research interests included the study of emotions, the study of suicide and violence, and the study of the psychotherapy process.
Go to Profile#628
Nick Chater
#24597
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Nick Chater is Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School, who works on rationality and language using a range of theoretical and experimental approaches. Education Chater read Psychology at Cambridge University. He first worked at Warwick University in 1996.
Go to Profile#629
Gordon Claridge
#31299
Overall Influence
Gordon Sidney Claridge was a British psychologist and author, best known for his theoretical and empirical work on the concept of schizotypy or psychosis-proneness. Biography Claridge took his first degree in Psychology at University College, London, in 1953. His PhD work was at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, jointly supervised by Hans Eysenck and Neil O’Connor. He qualified under in-service training as a clinical psychologist, and from 1957-61 worked as Eysenck’s Research Assistant, based in the Royal Victoria Military Hospital, Netley, Southampton.
Go to Profile#630
Arthur J. Bachrach
#21742
Overall Influence
1923 - 2011 (88 years)
Arthur J. Bachrach was an American psychologist and administrator, who was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University, and Director of the Environmental Stress Program and Chair of Psychophysiology at the Naval Medical Research Institute at the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.
Go to Profile#631
Bertram Raven
#13481
Overall Influence
1926 - 2020 (94 years)
Bertram Herbert Raven was an American academic. He was a member of the faculty of the psychology department at UCLA from 1956 until his death. He is perhaps best known for his early work in collaboration with John R. P. French, with whom he developed an analysis of the five bases of social power.
Go to Profile#632
Charles Spence
#20872
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Charles Spence is an experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford. He is the head of the Crossmodal Research group which specializes in the research about the integration of information across different sensory modalities. He also teaches Experimental Psychology to undergraduates at Somerville College. He is currently a consultant for a number of multinational companies advising on various aspects of multisensory design. He has also conducted research on human-computer interaction issues on the Crew Work Station on the European Space Shuttle, and currently works on problems associated...
Go to Profile#633
Miles Hewstone
#27693
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Miles Ronald Cole Hewstone is a British social psychologist who is well known for his work on social relations. Biography He graduated from the University of Bristol in 1978 and then moved to the University of Oxford from which he obtained a D.Phil. in social psychology in 1981. He pursued post-doctoral work at the University of Tübingen, Germany from which he obtained a Habilitation in 1986. He then undertook further work with Serge Moscovici and Wolfgang Stroebe .
Go to Profile#634
Lester Luborsky
#35455
Overall Influence
1920 - 2009 (89 years)
Lester B. Luborsky was one of the founders of scientific research in psychotherapy. Luborsky was born and raised in Philadelphia. He graduated from Philadelphia Central High School and then earned his bachelor's degree at Pennsylvania State University.
Go to Profile#635
Onur Güntürkün
#21237
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Onur Güntürkün is a Turkish-German neuroscientist. He is professor of behavioral neuroscience at Ruhr University Bochum. Güntürkün studied psychology at the Ruhr University Bochum from 1975 to 1980 and received his PhD in 1984.
Go to Profile#636
Todd K. Shackelford
#31904
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Todd Kennedy Shackelford is an American psychologist and professor at Oakland University. He is best known for his work in evolutionary psychology. He is the editor in chief of the academic journals Evolutionary Psychology and Evolutionary Psychological Science. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science.
Go to Profile#637
Farhang Holakouee
#23606
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Farhang Holakouee–Naeinee , simply known as Farhang Holakouee, is an Iranian-born American radio personality, psychologist, sociologist, and economist. His radio program—hosted in the past by 670 KIRN, and currently by "Radio Hamrah"—offers relationship advice to callers in Persian. Holakouee was born in Shiraz, Iran, and currently resides in Los Angeles, California.
Go to Profile#638
Howard Gruber
#17891
Overall Influence
1922 - 2005 (83 years)
Howard Ernest Gruber , was an American psychologist and pioneer of the psychological study of creativity. A native of Brooklyn, Gruber graduated from Brooklyn College with a degree in psychology, earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University, and went on to a distinguished academic career. He worked with Jean Piaget in Geneva and later co-founded the Institute for Cognitive Studies at Rutgers with Dorothy Dinnerstein. At Columbia University Teachers College, he continued to pursue his interests in the history of science, and particularly the work of Charles Darwin. Gruber's work led to several ...
Go to Profile#639
Jean Baker Miller
#10267
Overall Influence
1927 - 2006 (79 years)
Jean Baker Miller was a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, social activist, feminist, and author. She wrote Toward a New Psychology of Women, which brings psychological thought together with relational-cultural theory.
Go to Profile#640
Irene Pepperberg
#5437
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Irene Maxine Pepperberg is an American scientist noted for her studies in animal cognition, particularly in relation to parrots. She has been a professor, researcher and/or lecturer at multiple universities, and she is currently a research associate and lecturer at Harvard University. Pepperberg also serves on the Advisory Council of METI . She is well known for her comparative studies into the cognitive fundamentals of language and communication, and she was one of the first to work on language learning in animals other than human species , by extension to a bird species. Pepperberg is als...
Go to Profile#641
Beverly Daniel Tatum
#9969
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Beverly Christine Daniel Tatum is an American psychologist, administrator, and educator who has conducted research and written books on the topic of racism. Focusing specifically on race in education, racial identity development in teenagers, and assimilation of black families and youth in white neighborhoods. Tatum uses works from her students, personal experience, and psychology learning. Tatum served from 2002 to 2015 as the ninth president of Spelman College, the oldest historically black women's college in the United States.
Go to Profile#642
Jonathan Baron
#14416
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Jonathan Baron is an American psychologist. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in the science of decision-making. Early lif and eduction Baron was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1944, and received a B.A. in psychology from Harvard in 1966 and a Ph.D. from Michigan in 1970 for thesis titled The threshold for successiveness.
Go to Profile#643
Baruch Fischhoff
#14089
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Baruch Fischhoff is an American academic who is the Howard Heinz University Professor in the Institute for Strategy and Technology and the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. His research focuses on judgment and decision making, including risk perception and risk Analysis. He has numerous academic books and articles. Fischhoff completed his graduate education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.
Go to Profile#644
Kurt W. Fischer
#10939
Overall Influence
1943 - 2020 (77 years)
Kurt W. Fischer was an educator, author, and researcher in the field of neuroscience and education. Until his retirement in 2015, he was the Charles Bigelow Professor of Education and Director of the Mind, Brain, and Education Program at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Fischer studied cognitive and emotional development and learning. His work, called dynamic skill theory, is considered to be one of the Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development. It offers an explanation for both consistency and variability in developmental patterns.
Go to Profile#645
Robert A. Rescorla
#24572
Overall Influence
1940 - 2020 (80 years)
Robert A. Rescorla was an American psychologist who specialized in the involvement of cognitive processes in classical conditioning focusing on animal learning and behavior. One of Rescorla's significant contributions to psychology, with co-creator Allan Wagner, was the Rescorla-Wagner Model of conditioning. This model expanded knowledge on learning processes. Rescorla also continued to develop research on Pavlovian conditioning and instrumental training. Due to his achievements, Rescorla received the American Psychological Association Awards of the Distinguished Scientific Contributions in 1...
Go to Profile#646
Robert Abelson
#18150
Overall Influence
1928 - 2005 (77 years)
Robert Paul Abelson was a Yale University psychologist and political scientist with special interests in statistics and logic. Biography He was born in New York City and attended the Bronx High School of Science. He did his undergraduate work at MIT and his Ph.D. in psychology at Princeton University's Department of Psychology under John Tukey and Silvan Tomkins.
Go to Profile#647
Jan Hendrik van den Berg
#13611
Overall Influence
1914 - 2012 (98 years)
Jan Hendrik van den Berg was a Dutch psychiatrist notable for his work in phenomenological psychotherapy and metabletics, or "psychology of historical change." He is the author of numerous articles and books, including A different existence and The changing nature of man.
Go to Profile#648
Eldar Shafir
#7478
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Eldar Shafir is an American behavioral scientist, and the co-author of Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much . He is the Class of 1987 Professor in Behavioral Science and Public Policy; Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University Department of Psychology and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and Inaugural Director of Princeton’s Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science and Public Policy,.
Go to Profile#649
Hubert Hermans
#27321
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Hubert J.M. Hermans is a Dutch psychologist and Emeritus Professor at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, internationally known as the creator of dialogical self theory. Biography Hermans was born as son of a baker family in Maastricht, The Netherlands. He studied psychology at the Radboud University Nijmegen, where he became staff member at the psychological laboratory of the same university in 1965.
Go to Profile#650
Anthony Bogaert
#9949
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Anthony Francis "Tony" Bogaert is a Canadian psychologist. He is a professor in both the Departments of Psychology and of Community Health Sciences at Brock University. Research Bogaert is known for studying multiple subjects related to human sexuality, including asexuality. He has also published studies examining the relationship between the number of brothers a man has and his sexual orientation. These studies have concluded that the more older brothers a man has, the more likely he is to be gay, and that this effect is due to prenatal factors, not environmental ones. In his early career, Bogaert worked with J.
Go to Profile