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,
#1001
Alan Lesgold
#48397
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Alan M. Lesgold, an educational psychologist, is professor of psychology and Dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Education. He received a PhD in psychology from Stanford University, where his doctoral advisor was Gordon Bower and holds an honorary doctorate from the Open University of the Netherlands. The psychologist has made notable contributions to the cognitive science of learning and its application to instructional technology.
Go to Profile#1002
Judith V. Jordan
#39779
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Judith V. Jordan is the co-director and a founding scholar of the Jean Baker Miller Institute and co-director of the institute's Working Connections Project. She is an attending psychologist at McLean Hospital and assistant professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical School. She works as a psychotherapist, supervisor, teacher and consultant. Jordan's development of relational-cultural therapy has served as a foundation for other scholars who have used this theory to explore the workplace, education. leadership and entrepreneurship.
Go to Profile#1003
Louis Cozolino
#23311
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Louis John Cozolino is an American psychologist and professor of psychology at Pepperdine University. He holds degrees in philosophy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, theology from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UCLA. He has conducted empirical research in schizophrenia, the long-term impact of stress, and child abuse. Cozolino has published numerous articles, several books, and maintains a clinical and consulting practice in Los Angeles.
Go to Profile#1004
James Garbarino
#17516
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
James Garbarino is an author and professor at Loyola University Chicago. He has specialized in studying what causes violence in children, how they cope with it and how to rehabilitate them. Garbarino has served as consultant or adviser to a wide range of organizations, including the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, the National Institute for Mental Health, the American Medical Association, the National Black Child Development Institute, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, and the FBI. In addition, Garbarino's work is associated with th...
Go to Profile#1005
Dorwin Cartwright
#15082
Overall Influence
1915 - 2008 (93 years)
Dorwin Philip Cartwright was an American social psychologist, and considered one of the founders of the field of group dynamics. Cartwright's research and writing topics included the mathematical foundations of group dynamics, the sources of social power, the nature of group structure and the causes of risk taking in groups. He was a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan for 31 years.
Go to Profile#1006
Jean-Claude Abric
#39718
Overall Influence
1941 - 2012 (71 years)
Jean-Claude Abric was a French psychologist, professor in social psychology and the former head of the Social Psychology Laboratory at the University of Aix-Marseille. He had a major contribution to the theory of social representation identifying the structural elements of a social representation and distinguishing the core elements from the peripheral ones. His first study on social representations was based on craftsmen and the craft industry. In his book published in 1994, he gives a broader vision of his Central Nucleus Theory.
Go to Profile#1007
Kristina Olson
#28846
Overall Influence
Kristina Reiss Olson is a psychologist and a professor at Princeton University. She is known for her research on the development of social categories, transgender youth, and variation in human gender development. Olson was recipient of the 2016 Janet Taylor Spence Award from the Association for Psychological Science for transformative early career contributions, and the 2014 SAGE Young Scholars Award. Olson received the Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation in 2018, and was the first psychological scientist to receive this prestigious award honoring early-career scientists.
Go to Profile#1008
Akiyoshi Kitaoka
#40078
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Akiyoshi Kitaoka is a Professor of Psychology at the College of Letters, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan. In 1984, he received a BSc from the Department of Biology, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan, where he studied animal psychology and neuronal activity of the inferotemporal cortex in macaque monkeys.
Go to Profile#1009
Robert T. Knight
#28924
Overall Influence
Robert Thomas Knight is an American neurologist and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience as well as Neurology and Neurosurgery . His work is focused on attention and memory, neuropsychology, physiology, and cognitive neuroscience. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Go to Profile#1010
Anthony Francis Jorm
#61762
Overall Influence
#1011
Hans Herrman Strupp
#55551
Overall Influence
1921 - 2006 (85 years)
Hans Hermann Strupp was born in Frankfurt, Germany and died in the U.S. He moved from Nazi Germany to the U.S. and he pursued a PhD in Psychology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. where the Department of Psychiatry granted him with a Certificate in Applied Psychiatry for Psychologists. One of the founders of this school was Harry Stack Sullivan whose work had a large impact on Strupp's academic career and thinking. Hans became a Full Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Department of Psychology in 1966 and was named Distinguished Professor in 1976.
Go to Profile#1012
Gerard Hendrik Hofstede
#61892
Overall Influence
#1013
Anne Cutler
#29824
Overall Influence
1945 - 2022 (77 years)
Elizabeth Anne Cutler FRS FBA FASSA was an Australian psycholinguist, who served as director emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. A pioneer in her field, Cutler's work focused on human listeners' recognition and decoding of spoken language. Following her retirement from the Max Planck Institute in 2012, she took a professorship at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University.
Go to Profile#1014
Amélie Mummendey
#57955
Overall Influence
1944 - 2018 (74 years)
Amélie Mummendey was a German social psychologist. From 2007 until her death, she was a Vice-Rector for the Graduate Academy at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Biography Amélie Mummendey completed her M.Sc. in Psychology at the University of Bonn, followed by her PhD at the University of Mainz in 1970, and her Habilitation at the University of Münster in 1974. She held a chair in social psychology at the University of Münster before taking up a chair in social psychology at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena in 1997. In 2007, Mummendey was elected as the first Vice-Rector for th...
Go to Profile#1015
Robert Koegel
#25578
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Robert Koegel is a senior research scientist at Stanford University School of Medicine. He was formerly a distinguished professor and the director of the Koegel Autism Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He moved to Stanford in 2017.
Go to Profile#1016
Lawrence W. Barsalou
#54556
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Lawrence W. Barsalou is an American psychologist and a cognitive scientist, currently working at the University of Glasgow. Career At the University of Glasgow, Barsalou is a professor of psychology, performing research in the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology. He received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of California, San Diego in 1977 , and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Stanford University in 1981 . Since then, Barsalou has held faculty positions at Emory University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Chicago, joining the Universit...
Go to Profile#1017
Albert Bregman
#30685
Overall Influence
1936 - 2023 (87 years)
Albert Stanley Bregman was a Canadian academic and researcher in experimental psychology, cognitive science, and Gestalt psychology, primarily in the perceptual organization of sound. Bregman was known for having defined and conceptually organized the field of auditory scene analysis in his 1990 book, Auditory Scene Analysis: the perceptual Organization of Sound . His ideas about ASA have provided a new framework for research in the auditory systems of both humans and non-human animals, for behavioral and neurological studies of speech perception, for music theory, hearing aids, audio technology, and the separation of speech from other sounds by computers .
Go to Profile#1018
Donald B. Lindsley
#25950
Overall Influence
1907 - 2003 (96 years)
Donald Benjamin Lindsley was a physiological psychologist most known as a pioneer in the field of brain function study. Considered by his colleagues to have been worthy of winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology for discovering the reticular activating system along with Horace Winchell Magoun and Giuseppe Moruzzi, Lindsley was instrumental in demonstrating the use of electroencephalography in the study of brain function.
Go to Profile#1019
Michael Friendly
#27314
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Michael Louis Friendly is an American-Canadian psychologist, Professor of Psychology at York University in Ontario, Canada, and director of its Statistical Consulting Service, especially known for his contributions to graphical methods for categorical and multivariate data, and on the history of data and information visualisation.
Go to Profile#1020
E. Scott Geller
#49413
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
E. Scott Geller is a behavioral psychologist, and currently an Alumni Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Virginia Tech and Director of the Center for Applied Behavior Systems. He is the founder of the idea of "Actively Caring". He is co-founder of GellerAC4P, a training/consulting firm dedicated to teaching and spreading the Actively Caring for People Movement worldwide. He is co-founder and Senior Partner of Safety Performance Solutions, Inc., a training and consulting organization specializing in behavior-based safety since 1995.
Go to Profile#1021
Susan M. Ervin-Tripp
#26528
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Susan Moore Ervin-Tripp was an American linguist whose psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic research focused on the relation between language use and the development of linguistic forms, especially the developmental changes and structure of interpersonal talk among children.
Go to Profile#1022
Ann Masten
#31897
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Ann S. Masten is a professor at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota known for her research on the development of resilience and for advancing theory on the positive outcomes of children and families facing adversity. Masten received the American Psychological Association Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contributions to the Service of Science and Society in 2014. She has served as president of the Society for Research in Child Development and of Division 7 of the American Psychological Association.
Go to Profile#1023
Wendy Berry Mendes
#52622
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Wendy Berry Mendes is the Sarlo/Ekman Professor of Emotion at University of California, San Francisco, United States. She was previously the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard University. Her expertise is in the area of emotion, intergroup relationships, stigma and psychophysiology. At UCSF she is the founder and director of the Emotion, Health, and Psychophysiology Lab in the Department of Psychiatry.
Go to Profile#1024
John Roosevelt Boettiger
#35205
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
John Roosevelt Boettiger is a retired professor of developmental and clinical psychology, and the son of Anna Roosevelt Boettiger and her second husband, Clarence John Boettiger. He is a grandson of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. He lives in northern California.
Go to Profile#1025
Robert F. Krueger
#57568
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Robert Frank Krueger is Hathaway Distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology and Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota. Robert attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison and completed his clinical internship at Brown University. He is known for his research on personality psychology, clinical psychology, quantitative psychology, developmental psychology, personality disorders, behavioral genetics, and psychopathology. According to Krueger, the goal of his work is to "reduce the burden these problems place on society by w...
Go to Profile#1026
Denise Rousseau
#28798
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Denise Rousseau is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She holds an H.J. Heinz III Chair in Organizational Behavior and Public Policy, Heinz College and jointly Tepper School of Business. In 2007, she founded the Evidence-Based Management Collaborative to promote the development and dissemination of Evidence-based Management teaching and practice. Operating as the Center for Evidence-Based Management , this Collaborative helps educators and practitioners make better use of evidence from science, data, stakeholders and experience in organizational decisions. Rousseau serves as CEBMa's Academic Chair.
Go to Profile#1027
Dorothy Rowe
#25104
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
Dorothy Rowe was an Australian-British psychologist and author, whose area of interest was depression. Biography Dorothy Conn was born on 17 December 1930 in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. Rowe came to England in her forties, working at Sheffield University and was the head of Lincolnshire Department of Clinical Psychology. In addition to her published works on depression, she was a regular columnist in the UK.
Go to Profile#1028
Andrzej Eliasz
#41606
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Andrzej Eliasz is a Polish psychologist, professor, and former rector of the SWPS University of Humanities and Social Sciences . Chairman of the board of trustees. Eliasz was born in 1941. He earned his first undergraduate degree from Warsaw University. In 1972 he obtained a doctoral degree. In 1990 he was awarded the title of professor of humanities. Eliasz worked at the Central Institute for Labor Protection and the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#1029
Mark Zanna
#48432
Overall Influence
1944 - 2020 (76 years)
Mark Zanna, FRSC was a social psychologist at the University of Waterloo. He was well known for his work on attitudes and intergroup relations. He earned his Ph.D. from Yale University. Research A major debate among attitude researchers in the 1970s concerned whether cognitive dissonance theory or self-perception theory best accounted for how people's attitudes change. While at Princeton University, Zanna and Joel Cooper conducted a landmark experiment that resolved the discrepancy in favor of cognitive dissonance. They demonstrated that arousal is necessary for some instances of attitude cha...
Go to Profile#1030
Herbert S. Terrace
#12279
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Herbert S. Terrace is a professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Columbia University. His work covers a broad set of research interests that include behaviorism, animal cognition, ape language and the evolution of language. He is the author of Nim: A Chimpanzee Who Learned Sign Language and Why Chimpanzees Can't Learn Language and Only Humans Can . Terrace has made important contributions to comparative psychology, many of which have important implications for human psychology. These include discrimination learning, ape language, the evolution of language, and animal cognition.
Go to Profile#1031
David A. Wolfe
#37599
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
David Allen Wolfe is an academic, psychologist and author specializing in issues of child abuse, domestic violence, children and youth. His work includes the promotion of healthy relationships through school programs, with a major focus on the prevention of child abuse and neglect, bullying, dating violence, unsafe sex, substance abuse and other consequences of unhealthy relationships.
Go to Profile#1032
Bengt O. Muthén
#55809
Overall Influence
Bengt Olov Muthén is a psychometrician and Professor Emeritus at the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. He is a former president of the Psychometric Society.
Go to Profile#1033
Yuliya Gippenreyter
#55438
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Julia Gippenreiter is a modern Russian psychologist, a specialist in experimental psychology, psychophysiology, family therapy and neuro-linguistic programming. Gippenreiter is one of the founders of psychotherapy in Russia. Her doctoral thesis studied psychophysiology of eye movement in the context of various performances.
Go to Profile#1034
Gerald Davison
#40288
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Gerald C. Davison is an American psychologist and professor. He is currently Professor of Psychology and Gerontology and former dean of the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California.
Go to Profile#1035
John Ernest Overall
#63164
Overall Influence
#1036
Roman Cieślak
#56485
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Roman Sławomir Cieślak is a Polish psychologist who is the Rector of SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities. Cieślak earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the Warsaw University. Subsequently, he obtained his doctoral degree from the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences , an extended Ph.D. form the Warsaw School of Social Psychology , and in 2018, he was awarded a title of Professor by the President of the Republic of Poland.
Go to Profile#1037
Arnulf Kolstad
#29209
Overall Influence
1942 - 2020 (78 years)
Arnulf Kolstad was a Norwegian social psychologist. He was professor emeritus of Social Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology . He was appointed by the King-in-Council at the then-University of Trondheim in 1986 and was head of department for the Department of Psychology from 1990 to 1992. He became professor emeritus in 2012.
Go to Profile#1038
William H. Tucker
#22436
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
William H. Tucker , also known as Bill Tucker, was an American psychologist. He was an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University and the author of several books critical of race science. He retired from Rutgers in 2009. Tucker died in 2022.
Go to Profile#1039
Ami Klin
#35783
Overall Influence
Ami Klin is an American psychologist who studies autism. He is the first chief of autism and related disorders at the Marcus Autism Center, a wholly owned subsidiary of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Klin will also be a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar at Emory University and director of the Division of Autism and Related Developmental Disabilities in the Department of Pediatrics at the Emory University School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#1040
Dana H. Ballard
#29125
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Dana Harry Ballard was a professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin and formerly with the University of Rochester. Ballard attended MIT and graduated in 1967 with his bachelor's degree in aeronautics and astronautics. He then attended the University of Michigan for his masters in information and control engineering in 1970. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine in information engineering in 1974. He did research in artificial intelligence and human cognition and perception with a focus on the human visual system. In 1982, with Christopher M.
Go to Profile#1041
Dave Snowden
#3889
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
David John Snowden is a Welsh management consultant and researcher in the field of knowledge management and the application of complexity science. Known for the development of the Cynefin framework, Snowden is the founder and chief scientific officer of The Cynefin Company, a Singapore-based management-consulting firm specializing in complexity and sensemaking.
Go to Profile#1042
Denis Pelli
#50169
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Denis Pelli is a professor of psychology and neural science at New York University studying object recognition and reading. Pelli studied applied math at Harvard, and completed his PhD in physiology at Cambridge with Campbell and Robson in 1981. Since 1995, he is Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University. Pelli is known for his contributions to the fields of visual sensitivity, letter identification, object recognition, the Psychtoolbox, equivalent input noise, QUEST, the Pelli–Zhang video attenuator, and the Pelli–Robson Contrast Sensitivity Chart, which allows for clinical measurement of contrast sensitivity.
Go to Profile#1043
René V. Dawis
#46368
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
René V. Dawis is an American psychology professor. He taught at University of Minnesota and is currently an emeritus professor. His work focused on individual differences, work adjustment, and human potential. He received the American Psychological Associations's Leona Tyler Award in 1999.
Go to Profile#1044
Elliot Valenstein
#21843
Overall Influence
1923 - 2023 (100 years)
Elliot Spiro Valenstein was an American psychologist who was professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan. He is a noted authority on brain stimulation and psychosurgery. Biography Valenstein was born in New York City on December 9, 1923, to Louis and Helen Valenstein . He fought in World War II. After returning from the war he attended City College of New York for his B.S. and University of Kansas for his M.A and PhD.
Go to Profile#1045
Susan Saegert
#33793
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Susan Camille Saegert , Guadalupe, Texas is Professor of Environmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. She was previously Professor of Human and Organizational Development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.
Go to Profile#1046
Aaron Sloman
#6207
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Aaron Sloman is a philosopher and researcher on artificial intelligence and cognitive science. He held the Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science at the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham, and before that a chair with the same title at the University of Sussex. Since retiring he is Honorary Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science at Birmingham. He has published widely on philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence; he also collaborated widely, e.g. with biologist Jackie Chappell on the evolut...
Go to Profile#1047
Stanley Greenspan
#12726
Overall Influence
1941 - 2010 (69 years)
Stanley Greenspan was a clinical professor of Psychiatry, Behavioral Science, and Pediatrics at George Washington University Medical School and a practicing child psychiatrist. He was best known for developing the influential floortime approach for treating children with autistic spectrum disorders and developmental disabilities.
Go to Profile#1048
Terrence Roberts
#14681
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Terrence James Roberts is one of the Little Rock Nine, a group of African-American students who, in 1957, were the first black students ever to attend classes at Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1999, he and the other people of the Little Rock Nine were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President Bill Clinton.
Go to Profile#1049
Angela O'Donnell
#49799
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Angela M. O'Donnell is an educational psychologist at Rutgers University who has made substantial contributions to the understanding of collaborative learning , and is the co-author of a widely used introductory textbook . She is a member of the editorial review boards of Contemporary Educational Psychology, Educational Psychologist, Educational Psychology Review, the Journal of Experimental Education, and the Journal of Educational Psychology.
Go to Profile#1050
Gary Berntson
#36566
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Gary Berntson is an emeritus professor at Ohio State University with appointments in the departments of psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics. He is an expert in psychophysiology, neuroscience, biological psychology, and with his colleague John Cacioppo, a founding father of social neuroscience. His research attempts to elucidate the functional organization of brain mechanisms underlying behavioral and affective processes, with a special emphasis on social cognition.
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