Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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List of the most influential people in Psychology,

#651

John A. Swets

#28242

Overall Influence

1928 - 2016 (88 years)

John A. Swets was a psychologist. He played a key role in the adaptation of signal detection theory first to the psychology of perception and later as a central tool in medical diagnostics. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

#652

Wolfgang Stroebe

#15315

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Ernst Joachim Wolfgang Stroebe is a German social psychologist and Emeritus Professor of Social Psychology at the Utrecht University and now visiting professor at the University of Groningen, particularly known for his work on social and health psychology.

#653

Paul Costa Jr.

#32040

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Paul Costa Jr. is an American psychologist associated with the Five Factor Model. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1970. Author of over 300 academic articles, several books, he is perhaps best known for the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, or NEO PI-R, a psychological personality inventory; a 240-item measure of the Five Factor Model: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. Additionally, the test measures six subordinate dimensions of each of the "FFM" personality factors, developed together with Robert McCrae. Work on t...

#654

Michal Kosinski

Michal Kosinski

#14166

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (42 years)

Michal Kosinski is an associate professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University, a computational psychologist, and a psychometrician. He studies the psychological processes in Large Language Models , as well as AI and Big Data to model and predict human behavior.

#655

Jean Berko Gleason

Jean Berko Gleason

#19237

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Jean Berko Gleason is an American psycholinguist and professor emerita in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University who has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of language acquisition in children, aphasia, gender differences in language development, and parent–child interactions.

#656

David J. Schneider

#17159

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

David J. Schneider is an American psychologist. He is a professor of psychology and the director of the cognitive sciences program at Rice University. Career and work Schneider's most important published work deals chiefly with cognitive psychology and organizational psychology, especially bias, prejudice, and discrimination.

#657

Morris Moscovitch

#23944

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Morris Moscovitch is Max and Gianna Glassman Chair in Neuropsychology and Aging and Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. He is also a Senior Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute of Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Moscovitch is a leading neuropsychologist, with over 150 research articles focusing mainly on the neural substrates of high-level cognitive processes such as memory, attention, and recognition of faces and objects. According to Google Scholar, he has an h-index of 121 and over 52000 citations . He has formulated a neuropsycholo...

#658

Steve Joordens

#31688

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Steve Joordens is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He teaches introductory psychology and a seminar course on the scientific study of conscious and unconscious influences. Joordens research areas include conscious and unconscious influences, memory, and the effective use of technology for education.

#659

Salman Akhtar

#6284

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Salman Akhtar is an Indian-American psychoanalyst practicing in the United States. He is an author and Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Biography Salman Akhtar was born in Khairabad, Uttar Pradesh to Jan Nisar Akhtar, a Bollywood film songwriter and Urdu poet, and Safia Akhtar, a teacher and writer. His grandfather, Muztar Khairabadi, was a poet while his great great grandfather, Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, was a scholar of Islamic studies and theology and played an important role in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. He is the brother of veteran poet and film lyricist Javed Akhtar and brother-in-law of actress and social activist Shabana Azmi.

#660

Tor Wager

#22548

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Tor D. Wager is the Diana L. Taylor Distinguished Professor in Neuroscience at Dartmouth College, as well as the director of the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at this university. He is known for his research into the placebo effect and into the way the brain processes pain.

#661

Edward Zigler

#18540

Overall Influence

1930 - 2019 (89 years)

Edward Frank Zigler was an American developmental psychologist and Sterling Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University. In addition to his academic research on child development, he was best known as one of the architects of the federal Head Start program.

#662

Hayao Kawai

#17302

Overall Influence

1928 - 2007 (79 years)

Hayao Kawai was a Japanese Jungian psychologist who has been described as "the founder of Japanese Analytical and Clinical Psychology". He introduced the sandplay therapy concept to Japanese psychology. He participated in Eranos from 1982. Kawai was the director of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies from 1995 to 2001. As chief of the Agency for Cultural Affairs from 2002 to 2007, he oversaw the popular Nihon no Uta Hyakusen song selection, as well as the "Kokoro no Note" ethics textbook now used in all Japanese primary schools. He died in Tenri Hospital following a stro...

#663

Nancy Segal

#20459

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Nancy L. Segal is an American evolutionary psychologist and behavioral geneticist, specializing in the study of twins. She is the Professor of Developmental Psychology and Director of the Twin Studies Center, at California State University, Fullerton. Segal was a recipient of the 2005 James Shields Award for Lifetime Contributions to Twin Research from the Behavior Genetics Association and International Society for Twin Studies.

#664

David O. Sears

#28446

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

David O’Keefe Sears is an American psychologist who specializes in political psychology. He is a distinguished professor of psychology and political science at the University of California, Los Angeles where he has been teaching since 1961. He served as dean of social sciences at UCLA between 1983 and 1992. Best known for his theory of symbolic racism, Sears has published many articles and books about the political and psychological origins of race relations in America, as well as on political socialization and life cycle effects on attitudes, the role of self-interest in attitudes, and multiculturalism.

#665

Gerald Zaltman

#5557

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Gerald Zaltman is the Joseph C. Wilson Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School and the author and editor of 20 books, most recently How Customers Think and Marketing Metaphoria . In 1997 he founded the market research consulting firm Olson Zaltman Associates in partnership with Jerry C. Olson, Professor of Marketing Emeritus, Smeal College of Business at Penn State. Zaltman patented, the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique, a method used to delve into the unconscious thinking that drives behavior.

#666

Ivana Markova

#15550

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Ivana Marková FBA is a Czech born social psychologist known for her work on language and the constructss of communication. Education and Academic career She was born in Czechoslovakia and studied philosophy and psychology at Charles University in Prague. In 1967 she moved to the United Kingdom. She initially worked as Research Fellow at Industrial Training Research Unit, University of London before moving to the University of Stirling, from which she retired in 2003 as an emeritus professor. She is the mother of Professor Ivana S. Marková, a distinguished psychiatrist in her own right.

#667

Roger Brown

#11852

Overall Influence

1925 - 1997 (72 years)

Roger William Brown was an American psychologist. He was known for his work in social psychology and in children's language development. Brown taught at Harvard University from 1952 until 1957 and from 1962 until 1994, and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1957 until 1962. His scholarly books include Words and Things: An Introduction to Language , Social Psychology , Psycholinguistics , A First Language: The Early Stages , and Social Psychology: The Second Edition . He authored numerous journal articles and book chapters.

#668

Irving Biederman

#18816

Overall Influence

1939 - 2022 (83 years)

Irving Biederman was an American vision scientist specializing in the study of brain processes underlying humans' ability to quickly recognize and interpret what they see. While best known for his Recognition by Components Theory that focuses on volumetric object recognition, his later work tended to examine the recognition of human faces. Biederman argued that face recognition is separate and distinct from the recognition of objects.

#669

Richard McNally

Richard McNally

#20368

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Richard McNally is an American psychologist and director of clinical training at Harvard University's department of psychology. As a clinical psychologist and experimental psycho-pathologist, McNally studies anxiety disorders and related syndromes, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive–compulsive disorder, and complicated grief.

#670

Gottfried Fischer

#23798

Overall Influence

1944 - 2013 (69 years)

Gottfried Fischer was a German psychologist, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. He is considered to be the founder of psychotraumatology in Germany and has been director of the Institute for Clinical Psychology and Psychological Diagnostics at the University of Cologne from 1995 to 2009.

#671

Dorothy V. M. Bishop

Dorothy V. M. Bishop

#35630

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Dorothy Vera Margaret Bishop is a British psychologist specialising in developmental disorders specifically, developmental language impairments. She is Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, where she has been since 1998. Bishop is Principal Investigator for the Oxford Study of Children's Communication Impairments . She is a supernumary fellow of St John's College, Oxford.

#672

Russell H. Fazio

#36019

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Russell Fazio is Harold E. Burtt Professor of Social Psychology at Ohio State University, where he heads Russ's Attitude and Social Cognition Lab . Fazio's work focuses on social psychological phenomena like attitude formation and change, the relationship between attitudes and behavior, and the automatic and controlled cognitive processes that guide social behavior.

#673

Thomas Gordon

#17563

Overall Influence

1918 - 2002 (84 years)

Thomas Gordon was an American clinical psychologist and colleague of Carl Rogers. He is widely recognized as a pioneer in teaching communication skills and conflict resolution methods to parents, teachers, leaders, women, youth and salespeople. The model he developed came to be known as the Gordon Model or the Gordon Method, a complete and integrated system for building and maintaining effective relationships.

#674

Michael Turvey

#18253

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Michael T. Turvey was the Board of Trustees' Distinguished Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Connecticut and a Senior Scientist at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut. He is best known for his pioneering work in ecological psychology and in applying the dynamical systems approach to the study of motor behavior. He was the founder of the Center for the Ecological Study of Perception and Action. His research spans a number of areas including: dynamic touch and haptics, interlimb coordination, visual perception and optic flow, postural stability, visual word recognition and speech perception.

#675

James Bieri

#20055

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (97 years)

James Bieri is a psychologist and biographer who introduced in 1955 the concept of cognitive complexity, derived from his doctoral study with George A. Kelly. Subsequently, integrating ideas from information theory and psychophysics, Bieri and his research team at Columbia University published a volume entitled Clinical and Social Judgment .

#676

Temple Grandin

#1732

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Mary Temple Grandin is an American academic and animal behaviorist. She is a prominent proponent for the humane treatment of livestock for slaughter and the author of more than 60 scientific papers on animal behavior. Grandin is a consultant to the livestock industry, where she offers advice on animal behavior, and is also an autism spokesperson.

#677

Edwin A. Fleishman

#23533

Overall Influence

1927 - 2021 (94 years)

Edwin A. Fleishman was an American psychologist best known for his work in the field of industrial and organizational psychology. Among his notable achievements was a taxonomy for describing individual differences in perceptual-motor performance. The Fleishman Job Analysis Survey that he developed under Management Research Institute has been cited 100 times since 1995. Additionally, Fleishman is the author of more than 250 research articles and journals.

#678

Wallace Lambert

#19775

Overall Influence

1922 - 2009 (87 years)

Wallace E. Lambert was a Canadian psychologist and a professor in the psychology department at McGill University . Among the founders of psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics, he is known for his contributions to social and cross-cultural psychology , language education , and bilingualism .

#679

Robert Slavin

#20024

Overall Influence

1950 - 2021 (71 years)

Robert Edward Slavin was an American psychologist who studied educational and academic issues. He was known for the Success for All educational model. Until his death, he was a distinguished professor and director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University.

#680

Daniel Katz

#25318

Overall Influence

1903 - 1998 (95 years)

Daniel Katz was an American psychologist, Emeritus Professor in Psychology at the University of Michigan and an expert on organizational psychology. Biography Born in Trenton, New Jersey, Katz received his MA from the University of Buffalo in 1925, and his PhD from the Syracuse University in 1928 under Floyd Henry Allport, founder of the American experimental social psychology.

#681

Robert Louis Kahn

#25334

Overall Influence

1918 - 2019 (101 years)

Robert Louis Kahn was an American psychologist and social scientist, specializing in organizational theory and survey research, having been considered a "founding father" of the modern approach to these disciplines. He has also been involved in developing studies on aging and his work is critically acclaimed by experts.

#682

Stephen Porges

#11993

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Stephen W. Porges is an American psychologist and neuroscientist. He is the Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Porges is also currently Director of the Kinsey Institute Traumatic Stress Research Consortium at Indiana University Bloomington, which studies trauma.

#683

Donald W. Fiske

#15903

Overall Influence

1917 - 2003 (86 years)

Donald Winslow Fiske was an American psychologist. Early life Fiske was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. He grew up in Medford, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University and, in 1948, earned a PhD from the University of Michigan.

#684

Milton J. Rosenberg

#12359

Overall Influence

1925 - 2018 (93 years)

Milton J. "Milt" Rosenberg was a prominent social psychologist who was professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and was the host of a long-running radio program in Chicago, Illinois. Rosenberg was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2008 by President George W. Bush, "for bringing the world of ideas to millions of listeners."

#685

K. Patricia Cross

#15008

Overall Influence

1926 - Present (98 years)

Kathryn Patricia Cross was an American scholar of educational research. Throughout her career, she explored adult education and higher learning, discussing methodology and pedagogy in terms of remediation and advancement in the university system.

#686

Robert Hogan

#22994

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Robert Hogan is an American personality psychologist and organizational psychologist known for developing socioanalytic theory, which fuses psychoanalytic theory, role theory, and evolutionary theory. Hogan is the president of Hogan Assessment Systems, which he cofounded with the late Joyce Hogan, PhD, in 1987. He is the author of three widely used personality inventories—the Hogan Personality Inventory; the Hogan Development Survey; and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory—along with more than 300 scholarly articles, chapters, and books.

#687

Terrie E. Moffitt

#29351

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

#688

Ian Parker

#27001

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Ian Parker is a British psychologist and psychoanalyst. He is Emeritus Professor of Management in the School of Business at the University of Leicester. Biography Parker went to Ravens Wood School in Keston, Bromley, UK, studied psychology at Plymouth Polytechnic and the University of Southampton, lectured at Manchester Polytechnic from 1985, was appointed Professor of Psychology at Bolton Institute in 1996, and returned to Manchester as Professor of Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2000. In 2012 he was suspended for questioning, in his capacity as departmental union representative for the University and College Union, work-load and appointment procedures.

#689

Donald R. Peterson

#30305

Overall Influence

1923 - 2007 (84 years)

Donald R. Peterson was professor emeritus of psychology at Rutgers University. Peterson was notable for advocating for a professional doctorate exclusive to professional psychologists, eventually leading to establishment of the Doctor of Psychology degree and programs. Establishing this degree as the standard doctorate for practicing psychologists was not embraced by most psychologists, who were concerned programs would abandon scientific principles in the name of greater clinical training.

#690

Jack Michael

#10432

Overall Influence

1926 - 2020 (94 years)

Jack Michael was an American psychologist and professor at Western Michigan University. He developed one of the first token economies, the concept of motivating operations , and is a pioneer of what is now referred to as applied behavior analysis .

#691

Marie de Hennezel

Marie de Hennezel

#23679

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Marie de Hennezel is a French psychologist, psychotherapist and writer. She is known for her commitment to improving conditions at the end of life. Her books, her two reports to the government, and her speeches on the subject have contributed to the evolution of the image of aging and old age in society.

#692

John R. P. French

#16652

Overall Influence

1913 - 1995 (82 years)

John Robert Putnam French Jr. was an American psychologist who served as professor emeritus at the University of Michigan. He may be best known for his collaboration with Bertram Raven on French and Raven's five bases of power in 1959.

#693

Richard C. Anderson

#20837

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Richard C. Anderson is an American educational psychologist who has published influential research on children's reading, vocabulary growth, and story discussions that promote thinking. He is the director of the Center for the Study of Reading and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Anderson is a past president of the American Educational Research Association.

#694

Melvyn A. Goodale

Melvyn A. Goodale

#34535

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Melvyn Alan Goodale FRSC, FRS is a Canadian neuroscientist. He was the founding Director of the Brain and Mind Institute at the University of Western Ontario where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Visual Neuroscience. He holds appointments in the Departments of Psychology, Physiology & Pharmacology, and Ophthalmology at Western. Goodale's research focuses on the neural substrates of visual perception and visuomotor control.

#695

Francesca Happé

Francesca Happé

#22626

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Francesca Gabrielle Elizabeth Happé is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Director of the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London. Her research concerns autism spectrum conditions, specifically the understanding social cognitive processes in these conditions.

#696

Jaan Valsiner

#36703

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Jaan Valsiner is an Estonian-American professor of developmental and cultural psychology, the recipient of Alexander von Humboldt Prize for his interdisciplinary work on human development and 2017 Hans-Kilian-Award winner, the Foreign Member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences and the former Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology , currently, a professor at Aalborg University, Denmark.

#697

Allan R. Wagner

Allan R. Wagner

#35395

Overall Influence

1934 - 2018 (84 years)

Allan R. Wagner was an American experimental psychologist and learning theorist, whose work focused upon the basic determinants of associative learning and habituation. He co-authored the influential Rescorla–Wagner model of Pavlovian conditioning as well as the Standard Operating Procedures or "Sometimes Opponent Process" theory of associative learning , the Affective Extension of SOP and the Replaced Elements Model of configural representation . His research involved extensive study of the conditioned eyeblink response of the rabbit, of which he was one of the initial investigators .

#698

Gerd Jüttemann

#37371

Overall Influence

1933 - 2023 (90 years)

Gerd Jüttemann was a German psychologist. He was the originator of the "Komparative Kasuistik" , a method widely applied in qualitative psychological research and in other social sciences within Europe.

#699

Nevzat Tarhan

#20135

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Kaşif Nevzat Tarhan is a Turkish psychiatrist and Psychological warfare expert and neuropsychology expert. Life He was born in Merzifon in 1952. He finished Kuleli Military High School in 1969 and graduated from Cerrahpaşa Medical School Istanbul University in 1975. Following his internship at GATA he worked in Cyprus and Bursa garrisons at different military medical institutions. In 1982 he became a specialist psychiatrist at GATA. After his clinical services as a specialist at Erzincan and Çorlu Hospitals, he became an assistant professor, an associate professor at GATA Haydarpaşa. He was promoted to colonel in 1993 and became a professor in 1996.

#700

Maria Kovacs

#22887

Overall Influence

Maria Kovacs is an American psychologist and academic. She is a Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She is the developer of the Children's Depression Inventory.

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