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,

#1551

Ariel Merari

#23227

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Ariel Merari is a retired Israeli professor and terrorism expert. Biography He received a B.A. degree in psychology and in economics from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and a Ph.D. in psychology from University of California, Berkeley. He taught at Tel Aviv University from 1975 to 2006.

#1552

Nicole Shelton

#82991

Overall Influence

J. Nicole Shelton is an American psychologist and Stuart Professor of Psychology at Princeton University. Her research focuses on racial prejudice and interactions between whites and ethnic minorities.

#1553

Elliot Saltzman

#66348

Overall Influence

Elliot Saltzman is an American psychologist and speech scientist. He is a professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at Boston University and a Senior Scientist at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut. He is best known for his development, with J. A. Scott Kelso of "task dynamics ." He is also known for his contributions to the development of a gestural-computational model at Haskins Laboratories that combines task dynamics with articulatory phonology and articulatory synthesis. His research interests include application of theories and methods of nonlinear dynamics and comp...

#1554

Donald Templer

#37726

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Donald I. Templer was a retired American psychologist best known for ideas on race and intelligence, and his association with the white nationalist group American Renaissance. He was formerly a professor of psychology at Alliant International University in Fresno, California.

#1555

Jee Hyun Kim

#50810

Overall Influence

Jee Hyun Kim is an Australian behavioral neuroscientist whose work focuses on emotional learning and memory during childhood and adolescence. She is an associate professor, principal research fellow, and head of the Molecular Psychiatry Laboratory at the Deakin University School of Medicine, Australia

#1556

John R. Weisz

#87903

Overall Influence

#1557

Julie Dachez

#52130

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (39 years)

Julie Dachez is a French social psychologist, lecturer and autism rights activist. She's the author of Invisible Differences and Dans ta bulle! . In 2016, she became the first openly autistic person to defend a thesis on the subject in France.

#1558

Paul Broks

#53791

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Paul Broks is an English neuropsychologist and science writer. Career Broks trained as a clinical psychologist at Oxford University and went on to specialize in neuropsychology. He followed a career combining both clinical practice with the National Health Service , and basic research, with academic posts at the universities of Sheffield, Birmingham and Plymouth. He turned to freelance writing after entering a popular science writing competition organised by New Scientist magazine, which resulted in a book deal. The resulting book, Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology , published b...

#1559

David Abrahamsen

#25599

Overall Influence

1903 - 2002 (99 years)

David Abrahamsen was a Norwegian forensic psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and author who wrote analyses of Richard M. Nixon and David Berkowitz. He was the father of Inger McCabe Elliott. Early life and education Abrahamsen was born in Trondheim, Norway in 1903. He studied medical science at the Royal Frederick University in Oslo and graduated in 1929. He eventually relocated to England, taking positions at the Tavistock Clinic and the London School of Economics.

#1560

Robert C. Pianta

#88033

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

#1561

Herman Aguinis

#32353

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Herman Aguinis is a researcher, business professor, and author. He is the Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Management at the George Washington University School of Business in Washington, D.C. He has been ranked among the world's top 100 most influential economics and business researchers in the world every year since 2018. He served as President of the Academy of Management , and has been inducted into The PhD Project Hall of Fame. Prior to moving to Washington D.C. in 2016, he was the John F. Mee Chair of Management and the Founding Director of the Institute for Global Or...

#1562

Janellen Huttenlocher

#61713

Overall Influence

1932 - 2016 (84 years)

Janellen Huttenlocher was a psychologist and professor known for her research in the field of the child's environment in the development of cognitive skills. She was the William S. Gray Professor Emeritus in Psychology at the University of Chicago at the time of her death.

#1563

Andrew C. Porter

#52374

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Andrew Calvin Porter is the former Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and also serves as Penn GSE's George and Diane Weiss Professor of Education. Porter is an educational psychologist and psychometrician who has made significant contributions to education policy and has published widely on educational assessment and accountability, teacher decisions on content and how curriculum policy effects those decisions, opportunities for students to learn and achievement indicators, measuring content and standards alignment, teacher professional development, educational research methodology, and leadership assessment.

#1564

William Iacono

#74833

Overall Influence

William George Iacono is an American psychologist known for his research using behavior genetic methodologies, such as twin and adoption studies, to study the development of common mental disorders and substance abuse. He has also researched the relationship between substance use and cognitive impairment among adolescents. He is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, where he is also the co-director, with Matt McGue, of the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research. Before joining the faculty of the University of Minnes...

#1565

Eliot Stellar

#47860

Overall Influence

1919 - 1993 (74 years)

Eliot Stellar was an American a physiological psychologist noted for his research of the physiological processes of the brain and how they affect motivation and behavior. The National Academy of Sciences called him "one of the founders of ... behavioral neuroscience". Stellar was a provost at the University of Pennsylvania, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the president of the Academy's the Human Rights Committee, president of the Eastern Psychological Association, president of the American Philosophical Society, a recipient of the Warren Medal of the Society of Experimenta...

#1566

Eric Stice

#88133

Overall Influence

#1567

Betsy Levy Paluck

#16058

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Levy Paluck is a professor in the department of psychology and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where she also serves as deputy director of the Center for Behavioral Science & Policy. She is known for her work on prejudice, social norms and conflict reduction. She is best known for creating large-scale field experiments utilizing theoretical social psychology strategies and tools to formulate effective and practical methods for reducing conflict and discrimination. Due to her extensive work investigating the influences of the Rwandan ...

#1568

Ian P. Howard

#21221

Overall Influence

1927 - 2013 (86 years)

Ian Porteus Howard was a Canadian psychologist and researcher in visual perception at York University in Toronto. Life and career Ian Howard was born in Lancashire, England, close to the Yorkshire border. He studied for a BSc at Manchester University, graduating in 1952. Howard held academic positions in Departments of Psychology at Durham University , at New York University , and at York University in Toronto . At York University, he contributed to the development of the Department of Psychology and, in 1992 founded the Centre for Vision Research .

#1569

Robert Goldstone

#84571

Overall Influence

Robert Goldstone is a Distinguished Professor of psychology and cognitive science at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. His research interests include concept learning and representation, perceptual learning, collective behavior, and computational modeling of human cognition. He has developed and empirically tested neural network models that simultaneously learn new perceptual and conceptual representations, with the learned concepts both affecting and being affected by perception. He has also developed computational models of how groups of people compete for resources, cooperate to ...

#1570

Janet Shibley Hyde

#59215

Overall Influence

Janet Shibley Hyde is the Helen Thompson Woolley Professor of Psychology and Gender & Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is known for her research on human sexuality, sex differences, gender development, gender and science, and feminist theory, and is considered one of the leading academics in the field of gender studies.

#1571

Deborah H. Gruenfeld

#54627

Overall Influence

Deborah H. Gruenfeld is an American social psychologist whose work examines the way people are transformed by the organizations and social structures in which they work. She is the author of numerous papers on the psychology of power and group behavior. She is the Joseph McDonald Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and is also a co-director of the Executive Program for Women Leaders at the same institution, and is a board member of Stanford’s Center for the Advancement of Women’s Leadership. She was the inaugural chairholder of the Moghadam Family Professorship in 2008.

#1572

Herta Flor

#88452

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

#1573

Giuseppe Riva

#88495

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

#1574

Emanuel Hammer

#81227

Overall Influence

1926 - 2005 (79 years)

Emanuel Frederick Hammer was an American psychologist and author who studied connections between creativity and criminality via projective tests and art therapy. He founded the Institute for Projective Drawings and served as director of Lincoln Institute of Psychotherapy in New York City. He published 15 books and was a Fellow of the American Psychological Association.

#1575

Gert Jan Hofstede

#88522

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

#1576

Elizabeth Midlarsky

#45360

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Midlarsky was an American professor of psychology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Education Elizabeth Midlarsky completed a Bachelor of Arts at Brooklyn College. She earned a Master of Arts and doctor of philosophy from Northwestern University.

#1577

Douwe Draaisma

#52232

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Douwe Draaisma is a Dutch psychologist and university professor who specializes in the basis and mechanisms of the human memory. He studied psychology and philosophy at the University of Groningen, where he is now a professor by special appointment in the history of psychology. He holds the Heymans Chair. Draaisma was appointed Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau for his achievements in the academic world in April 2014.

#1578

Carl Porter Duncan

#73903

Overall Influence

1921 - 1999 (78 years)

Carl Porter Duncan was a professor of experimental psychology at Northwestern University. Carl P. Duncan was born on December 27, 1921, in Presque Isle, Maine. His father, Henry Beecher Duncan, was a farmer and his mother Vivian Howlett Duncan, a schoolteacher.

#1579

Richard Bootzin

#72666

Overall Influence

1940 - 2014 (74 years)

Richard Ronald Bootzin was an American clinical and research psychologist. Bootzin served as a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He was also the Director of the Insomnia Clinic of at the University Medical Center and the director of the Sleep Research Laboratory in the Psychology Department.

#1580

Seth Kalichman

#66095

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Seth C. Kalichman is an American clinical community psychologist and professor of social psychology at the University of Connecticut, known for his research into HIV/AIDS treatment and HIV/AIDS denialism. Kalichman is also the director of the Southeast HIV/AIDS Research & Education Project in Atlanta, Georgia, and Cape Town, South Africa, and the editor of the journal AIDS and Behavior. He is the developer of the Sexual Compulsivity Scale.

#1581

Benjamin M. Ogles

Benjamin M. Ogles

#77110

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Benjamin M. Ogles was the dean of Arts and Sciences at Ohio University and became dean of the Brigham Young University College of Family, Home and Social Sciences in July 2011. Ogles was born in Whittier, California but raised in Brigham City, Utah from the age of five. He graduated from Box Elder High School and then attended Brigham Young University receiving his bachelor's degree in accounting. While at BYU Ogles took two years off to serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Norway.

#1582

Joseph E. Steinmetz

Joseph E. Steinmetz

#60226

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Joseph E. Steinmetz was the sixth chancellor of the University of Arkansas. He succeeded G. David Gearhart on Jan. 1, 2016, following academic and administrative positions at Stanford University, Indiana University Bloomington, University of Kansas, and Ohio State University.

#1583

Robert Weimar

#46893

Overall Influence

1932 - 2013 (81 years)

Robert Weimar was a German professor of law and psychologist. Weimar was particularly concerned with German and European commercial law, and dealt with the psychological and neuro-scientific fundamentals of thinking and decision-making . His basic scientific position is set out in his work “Psychological Structures of Judicial Decision , which is considered to be a legal psychology classic.

#1584

Lesley Fallowfield

#41229

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Professor Dame Lesley Jean Fallowfield DBE is a British cancer psychologist and a professor of psycho-oncology at the University of Sussex. The main outcomes of her research have been the establishment of assessment tools to measure quality of life in clinical trials of cancer patients and the design of educational programmes to improve oncologists' communication with their patients.

#1585

Susan Clancy

#44075

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Susan A. Clancy is a cognitive psychologist and associate professor in Consumer behaviour at INCAE as well as a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University. She is best known for her controversial work on repressed and recovered memories in her books Abducted and The Trauma Myth.

#1586

Kelly McGonigal

#58100

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University who is known for her work in the field of "science help" which focuses on translating insights from psychology and neuroscience into practical strategies that support health and well-being. Mainstream media articles about inner-conflict-related aspects of modern lifestyles regularly quote her. A longtime advocate of self-compassion and mindfulness as stress-coping strategies, McGonigal has altered her focus on the problematic aspects of stress; in a talk at the TEDGlobalGlobal 2013, she emphasized the importance of a...

#1587

Eugene Sokolov

#62089

Overall Influence

1920 - 2008 (88 years)

Eugene Nikolayevich Sokolov , also known as Evgeny Nikolaevich Sokolow, Evgeny Nikolaevich Sokolov, Evgeni Sokolov, Ye. N. Sokolov, Evgeniĭ Sokolov, Yevgeny Nikolaevich Sokolov, and Yevgeniy Nikolaevich Sokolov, was a Russian researcher specialized in the field of neuroscience who worked at Moscow State University and founded the Soviet psychophysiology research. He is best known for his work on the orienting reflex and habituation. He authored Orienting Response Information on this subject.

#1588

Carsten de Dreu

Carsten de Dreu

#58026

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Carsten Karel Willem de Dreu is a Professor of Psychology at Leiden University and previously Behavioral Economics at the University of Amsterdam. He is member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. De Dreu received his PhD in social and organizational psychology from the University of Groningen and was president of the European Association of Social Psychology and the International Association for Conflict Management . In 2016 he was named Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Oxford.

#1589

Stuart A. A. Montgomery

#89295

Overall Influence

#1590

Constantine Sedikides

#89312

Overall Influence

#1591

Paula M. Niedenthal

#80800

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Paula M. Niedenthal is a social psychologist currently working as a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She also completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison where she received a Bachelor's in Psychology. She then received her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan before becoming a faculty member of the departments of Psychology at Johns Hopkins University and Indiana University. Until recently, she served as the Director of Research in the National Centre for Scientific Research at the Université Blaise Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand France.

#1592

Stephen Grosz

#86494

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Stephen Grosz is a British psychoanalyst and author. Born in Indiana, United States, and educated at the University of California, Berkeley and Balliol College, Oxford, Grosz teaches clinical technique at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory at University College London. He has been Consultant Adult Psychotherapist at the Portman Clinic in London. His writings have appeared in the Financial Times and Granta.

#1593

Gunnar A. V. Borg

#89349

Overall Influence

#1594

Michael Foster Green

#89452

Overall Influence

#1595

Peter Pirolli

#57001

Overall Influence

Peter Pirolli is a senior research scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition . His research involves a mix of cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction, with applications in digital health, sensemaking, and information foraging, among other things. Previously he was at the Palo Alto Research Center and he was a tenured professor in the school of education at the University of California Berkeley in the Education, Math, Science and Technology Department .

#1596

Sergio Benvenuto

Sergio Benvenuto

#43061

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Sergio Benvenuto is an Italian psychoanalyst, philosopher and author. He is researcher for the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National Research Council in Rome. He is Professor Emeritus in Psychoanalysis at the International Institute of Depth Psychology in Kiev. He founded and edited the European Journal of Psychoanalysis .

#1597

Gerald Roy Patterson

#89509

Overall Influence

#1598

Gordon J. G. Asmundson

Gordon J. G. Asmundson

#75853

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Gordon John Glenn Asmundson is a Canadian psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Regina. Asmundson is recognized for his research on anxiety, chronic pain, and posttraumatic stress, as well as for his recent work on the psychology of pandemics.

#1599

Carolyn Kagan

#32362

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Carolyn Kagan is a British community psychologist and social activist. Life and work Carolyn Morag Kagan grew up in Meopham, Kent. After working as a residential social worker in Scotland she went to North East London Polytechnic graduating with a degree in Psychology in 1974. She then obtained a DPhil in Social Psychology from Wolfson College, University of Oxford.

#1600

Robert J. Vallerand

#89668

Overall Influence

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