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 Psychology,
#951
Paul Kline
#45877
Overall Influence
1937 - 1999 (62 years)
Paul Kline was a British psychologist noted for his contribution to psychometrics. Career Kline was originally educated in classics, in education, and in statistics: he studied at the University of Reading, University College Swansea, the University of Aberdeen and the University of Manchester. When he first joined the University of Exeter, it was as a staff member in the university's then Institute of Education. However, in 1969 he joined the Department of Psychology as a Lecturer, rising eventually to become the university's first Professor of Psychometrics.
Go to Profile#952
Johnny Matson
#45964
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Johnny Lee Matson is a former professor in the Department of Psychology at Louisiana State University recognized for his work in the social sciences. Matson's research topics were development, assessment and treatment of co-morbid conditions in developmental intellectual disabilities, including autism spectrum disorders. Matson's high number of self publications, self citations, and peer review practices have been questioned by social scientists. In 2023 it was reported that Matson had 24 of his research papers retracted due to scientific misconduct.
Go to Profile#953
Beatrice Wright
#32880
Overall Influence
1917 - 2018 (101 years)
Beatrice Ann Wright was an American psychologist known for her work in Rehabilitation psychology. She was the author of a seminal work on disability and psychology, Physical Disability—A Psychological Approach and its second edition, retitled Physical Disability—A Psychosocial Approach .
Go to Profile#954
Dean Simonton
#47416
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Dean Keith Simonton is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. He is particularly interested in the study of human intelligence, creativity, greatness, and the psychology of science.
Go to Profile#955
Benedict Groeschel
#24396
Overall Influence
1933 - 2014 (81 years)
Benedict Joseph Groeschel, C.F.R. was an American Franciscan friar, Catholic priest, retreat master, author, psychologist, activist, and television host. He hosted the television talk program Sunday Night Prime on the Eternal Word Television Network, as well as several serial religious specials.
Go to Profile#956
Eugene Kennedy
#20632
Overall Influence
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Eugene Cullen Kennedy was a psychologist, writer, columnist, and professor emeritus of Loyola University Chicago. Kennedy was a laicized Catholic priest and a long-time observer of the Catholic Church, but his work spans many genres. He published over 50 books, including two biographies, three novels, and a play, as well as books on psychology, the Roman Catholic Church, and the relationship between psychology and religion. In the early 1970s, inspired by Vatican II, he emerged as a voice for reform and modernization of the Roman Catholic Church.
Go to Profile#957
Paul Tholey
#32682
Overall Influence
1937 - 1998 (61 years)
Paul Tholey was a German Gestalt psychologist, and a professor of psychology and sports science at the University of Frankfurt and the Technical University of Braunschweig. Tholey started the study of oneirology in an attempt to prove that dreams occur in color. Given the unreliability of dream memories and following the critical realism approach, he used lucid dreaming as an epistemological tool for investigating dreams, in a similar fashion to Stephen LaBerge. He devised the reflection technique for inducing lucid dreams, consisting in continuously suspecting waking life to be a dream, in t...
Go to Profile#958
Jon Driver
#41360
Overall Influence
1962 - 2011 (49 years)
Jonathon Stevens "Jon Driver" was a psychologist and neuroscientist. He was a leading figure in the study of perception, selective attention and multisensory integration in the normal and damaged human brain.
Go to Profile#959
Louis Sass
#31344
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Louis A. Sass is a professor of Clinical Psychology at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University who specializes in severe psychopathology, philosophy and psychology, and psychology and the arts. Sass has served on the faculty of Rutgers University since 1983 and has been a visiting professor at a wide range of institutions both in the United States and abroad. He has been published widely, and his book Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought has been called "a new landmark in the study of the modern era.". The ...
Go to Profile#960
Michael Lamb
#49511
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Michael E. Lamb is a professor and former Head of the then Department of Social and Developmental Psychology at the University of Cambridge, known for his influential work in developmental psychology, child and family policy, social welfare, and law. His work has focused on divorce, child custody, child maltreatment, child testimony, and the effects of childcare on children's social and emotional development. His work in family relationships has focused on the role of both mothers and fathers and the importance of their relationships with children. Lamb's expertise has influenced legal decisio...
Go to Profile#961
Ana Mari Cauce
#20180
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Ana Mari Cauce is an American psychologist and academic administrator, currently serving as the 33rd president of the University of Washington since October 2015. Joining the University of Washington in 1986, Cauce previously served as the university's provost and executive vice president from 2011 to 2015, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 2008 to 2011, executive vice provost from 2005 to 2008, chair of the department of psychology from 2002 to 2005, and director of the honor program from 2000 to 2002.
Go to Profile#962
Harald Walach
#32171
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Harald Walach is a German parapsychologist and advocate of alternative medicine. Background Walach was born in 1957. He received a degree in Psychology from the University of Freiburg in 1984, a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Basel in 1991, and a PhD in History of Science from the University of Vienna in 1995. In 1998 he received his habilitation in psychology from the University of Freiburg. He was affiliated for a time with the Samueli Institute before its closure in 2017.
Go to Profile#963
Mark Snyder
#53117
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Markus Snyder is an American social psychologist who is recognized as the founder of the personality scale called the 25-item self-monitoring scale . In 2013, Snyder works as the McKnight Presidential Chair of Psychology at the University of Minnesota.
Go to Profile#964
David E. Meyer
#41767
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
David E. Meyer is an American academic in the field of psychology. He is a professor at the University of Michigan and is Chair of the Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience area of the Psychology Department. He is director of the university's Brain, Cognition, and Action laboratory.
Go to Profile#965
Brian C J Moore
#59099
Overall Influence
#966
Jere Brophy
#33326
Overall Influence
1940 - 2009 (69 years)
Jere Edward Brophy was an American educational psychologist and University Distinguished Professor of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. He received the E. L. Thorndike Award in 2007. Life and career Brophy was born in Chicago, Illinois. After obtaining his Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of Chicago, he spent additional eight year at the University of Texas before joining Michigan State University faculty in 1976 as professor and senior researcher in the Institute of Research on Teaching. He then served as co-director of the Institute of Research on Teaching from 1981 to 1994 a...
Go to Profile#967
Steve Kozlowski
#48485
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Steve W.J. Kozlowski is an American Industrial-Organizational psychologist. His research mainly focuses on how individuals, teams and organizations learn, develop and adapt. He currently teaches at University of South Florida.
Go to Profile#968
Peter Hobson
#37027
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
R. P. Hobson, or Peter Hobson, is a Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at University College London known for his work on autism and experimental child psychology. His research leads him to conclusions concerning the origins of consciousness, summarized in a book for the general reader, The Cradle of Thought.
Go to Profile#969
Bryan Kolb
#33291
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Bryan Edward Kolb is a Canadian neuroscientist, neuropsychologist, researcher, author and educator. Kolb's research focuses on the organization and functions of the cerebral cortex. In 1976, Kolb's PhD thesis established the utility of employing rats for study of the prefrontal cortex in medical research. opening up a new venue for non-primate animal research in the prefrontal cortex and accelerating the development of new treatments that help victims of disease and cerebral injury. He was the first to demonstrate how the regrowth of brain cells accompanies restoration of brain function and...
Go to Profile#970
David Steindl-Rast
#10792
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (98 years)
David Steindl-Rast OSB is an Austrian-American Catholic Benedictine monk, author, and lecturer. He is committed to interfaith dialogue and has dealt with the interaction between spirituality and science.
Go to Profile#971
Janet Dean Fodor
#25525
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Janet Dean Fodor was distinguished professor emerita of linguistics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her primary field was psycholinguistics, and her research interests included human sentence processing, prosody, learnability theory and L1 acquisition.
Go to Profile#972
Marc Hauser
#12138
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Marc D. Hauser is an American evolutionary biologist and a researcher in primate behavior, animal cognition and human behavior and neuroscience. Hauser was a professor of psychology at Harvard University from 1998 to 2011. In 2010 Harvard found him guilty of research misconduct, specifically fabricating and falsifying data, after which he resigned. Because Hauser's research was financed by government grants, the Office of Research Integrity of the Health and Human Services Department also investigated, finding in 2012 that Hauser had fabricated data, manipulated experimental results, and pub...
Go to Profile#973
David A. Kolb
#59810
Overall Influence
#974
Eugene Aserinsky
#16662
Overall Influence
1921 - 1998 (77 years)
Eugene Aserinsky , a pioneer in sleep research, was a graduate student at the University of Chicago in 1953 when he discovered REM sleep. He was the son of a dentist of Russian–Jewish descent. He made the discovery after hours spent studying the eyelids of sleeping subjects. While the phenomenon was in the beginning more interesting for a fellow of PhD student Aserinsky, William Charles Dement, both Aserinsky and their PhD adviser, Nathaniel Kleitman, went on to demonstrate that this "rapid-eye movement" was correlated with dreaming and a general increase in brain activity. Aserinsky and Klei...
Go to Profile#975
Ian H. Gotlib
#59840
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Ian H. Gotlib is an American psychologist. He received his Ph.D. of Clinical Psychology at University of Waterloo in 1981. Now he is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Neurodevelopment, Affect, and Psychopathology Laboratory. His research mainly focuses on affective disorders and depression. He was awarded the APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology in 2013.
Go to Profile#976
John G. Watkins
#45594
Overall Influence
1913 - 2012 (99 years)
John Goodrich Watkins was a United States psychologist best known for his work in the areas of hypnosis, dissociation, and multiple personalities. With his wife, Helen Watkins, he developed ego-state therapy, which uses analysis of underlying personalities, rather than traditional talk therapy, to find the causes of psychological problems.
Go to Profile#977
Joseph G. Ponterotto
#40481
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
#978
Phyllis Chesler
#7798
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Phyllis Chesler is an American writer, psychotherapist, and professor emerita of psychology and women's studies at the College of Staten Island . She is a renowned second-wave feminist psychologist and the author of 18 books, including the best-sellers Women and Madness , With Child: A Diary of Motherhood , and An American Bride in Kabul: A Memoir . Chesler has written extensively about topics such as gender, mental illness, divorce and child custody, surrogacy, second-wave feminism, pornography, prostitution, incest, and violence against women.
Go to Profile#979
Jerome L. Singer
#55603
Overall Influence
1924 - 2019 (95 years)
Jerome L. Singer was an American clinical psychologist. He was a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the Yale School of Medicine. He was a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the New York Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#980
Joaquin Fuster
#12224
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Joaquin M. Fuster is a Spanish neuroscientist whose research has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of the neural structures underlying cognition and behavior. His several books and hundreds of papers, particularly on memory and the prefrontal cortex, are widely cited.
Go to Profile#981
Gordon Legge
#47899
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Gordon Ernest Legge is currently the Distinguished McKnight University Professor and former chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota. Legge is the director of the Minnesota Laboratory for Low-Vision Research.
Go to Profile#982
Tali Sharot
#17512
Overall Influence
Tali Sharot is an Israeli/British/American neuroscientist and professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London and MIT. Sharot began studying at Tel Aviv University, receiving a B.A. in economics in 1999, and an M.A. in psychology from New York University in 2002. She received her Ph.D in psychology and neuroscience from New York University. Sharot is known for her research on the neural basis of emotion, decision making and optimism. Sharot hopes to better understand these processes to enhance overall well-being.
Go to Profile#983
Usha Goswami
#34035
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Usha Claire Goswami is a researcher and professor of Cognitive Developmental Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and the director of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education, Downing Site. She obtained her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Oxford before becoming a professor of cognitive developmental psychology at the University College London. Goswami's work is primarily in educational neuroscience with major focuses on reading development and developmental dyslexia.
Go to Profile#984
Max Velmans
#23802
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Max Velmans is a British psychologist and Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, principally known for the theory of consciousness called "reflexive monism". Reflexive monism bridges the materialist/dualist divide by noting that, in terms of their phenomenology, experiences of the external world are none other than the physical world-as-experienced, thereby placing aspects of human consciousness in the external phenomenal world, rather than exclusively within the head or brain. A similar point of departure is adopted in much of European phenomenology. The theory...
Go to Profile#985
Bruce Ogilvie
#57659
Overall Influence
1920 - 2003 (83 years)
Bruce Ogilvie was an applied American sport psychologist. Ogilvie is often referred to as the "Father of North American Applied Sport Psychology." Clinical psychologists and applied sport psychologists Clinical sport psychologists have training in psychology so that they can detect and treat individuals with emotional disorders. These psychologists also have additional training in sport and exercise psychology and in the sport sciences. Whereas an applied sport psychologist uses their research and findings to help athletes improve their mental game. These psychologists work directly with athletes to help them perform better.
Go to Profile#986
Robert S. Wyer
#35710
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Robert S. Wyer Jr. is a visiting professor at the University of Cincinnati and professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Colorado. Wyer Jr.'s research interests cover various aspects of social information processing, including:knowledge accessibility,comprehension,memory,social inference,the impact of affect on judgment and decisions,attitude formation and change,and consumer judgment and decision-making.
Go to Profile#987
Elissa L. Newport
#17945
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Elissa Lee Newport is a professor of neurology and director of the Center for Brain Plasticity and Recovery at Georgetown University. She specializes in language acquisition and developmental psycholinguistics, focusing on the relationship between language development and language structure, and most recently on the effects of pediatric stroke on the organization and recovery of language.
Go to Profile#988
Mary Henle
#38875
Overall Influence
1913 - 2007 (94 years)
Mary Henle was an American psychologist who's known most notably for her contributions to Gestalt Psychology and for her involvement in the American Psychological Association. Henle also taught at the New School of Social Research in New York; she was involved in the writing of eight book publications and also helped develop the first psychology laboratory manual in 1948 based on the famous works of Kurt Lewin.
Go to Profile#989
Daniel T. Willingham
#31550
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Daniel T. Willingham is a psychologist at the University of Virginia, where he is a professor in the Department of Psychology. Willingham's research focuses on the application of findings from cognitive psychology and neuroscience to K–12 education.
Go to Profile#990
Susie Orbach
#11020
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Susie Orbach is a British psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, writer and social critic. Her first book, Fat is a Feminist Issue, analysed the psychology of dieting and over-eating in women, and she has campaigned against media pressure on girls to feel dissatisfied with their physical appearance. She was married to the author Jeanette Winterson. She is honoured in BBC'S 100 Women in 2013 and 2014. She was the therapist to Diana, Princess of Wales during the 1990s.
Go to Profile#991
Florence Denmark
#43057
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Florence Harriet Levin Denmark is an American psychologist and a past president of the American Psychological Association . She is a pioneering female psychologist who has influenced the psychological sciences through her scholarly and academic accomplishments in both psychology and feminist movements. She has contributed to psychology in several ways, specifically in the field of psychology of women and human rights, both nationally and internationally.
Go to Profile#992
Timothy A. Salthouse
#58618
Overall Influence
Timothy A. Salthouse is the Brown-Forman professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia where he leads the Cognitive Aging Laboratory. Education In 1974, Salthouse received his PhD from the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#993
M. Powell Lawton
#60916
Overall Influence
#994
Peter Gray
#17418
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Peter Otis Gray is an American psychology researcher and scholar. He is a research professor of psychology at Boston College, and the author of an introductory psychology textbook. He is known for his work on the interaction between education and play, and for his evolutionary perspective on psychology theory.
Go to Profile#995
Gavriel Salomon
#35856
Overall Influence
1938 - 2016 (78 years)
Gavriel Salomon was an Israeli educational psychologist who conducted research on cognition and instruction. He was a Professor Emeritus in the department of education at the University of Haifa. Early life and education
Go to Profile#996
Phillip R. Shaver
#60979
Overall Influence
#997
Michael Ungar
#40861
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Michael Ungar is a researcher in the field of social and psychological resilience and is Principal Investigator for the Resilience Research Centre at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Canada, where he is a professor at the School of Social Work, a post that he has held since 2001. He completed his MSW at McGill University in 1988 and his Ph.D. in Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University in 1995.
Go to Profile#998
Dana Amir
#32753
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Dana Amir is a full professor at Haifa University, clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, poet and literature researcher. Biography Dana Amir was born and raised in Haifa and attended the Hebrew Reali School. She has B.A. in psychology and philosophy, M.A. in clinical psychology and Ph.D in the philosophy of psychoanalysis. She wrote her PhD thesis on The Lyrical Dimension of Mental Space. All degrees were obtained from Haifa University.
Go to Profile#999
Tamara Dembo
#41719
Overall Influence
1902 - 1993 (91 years)
Tamara Dembo , was a Russian Empire-born American psychologist. She was one of the pioneers of psychological field theory and rehabilitation psychology. Life Tamara Dembo was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, Russian Empire on 28 May 1902 to Russian Jewish parents. She worked with Kurt Lewin where she earned her Ph.D at the University of Berlin in 1930. That same year she came to the United States to study with Kurt Koffka at Smith College as a research assistant in experimental psychology and decided to remain in the United States as the political situation in Germany deteriorated with the rise of the Nazi Party.
Go to Profile#1000
Ellis Batten Page
#23621
Overall Influence
1924 - 2005 (81 years)
Ellis Batten “Bo” Page Ed.D. is widely acknowledged as the father of automated essay scoring, a multi-disciplinary field exploring computer evaluation and scoring of student writing, particularly essays. Page's development of and pioneering work with Project Essay Grade software in the mid-1960s set the stage for the practical application of computer essay scoring technology following the microcomputer revolution of the 1990s.
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