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.

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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,

#1851

Mary Hegarty

#72067

Overall Influence

Mary Hegarty is an Irish–American psychologist who is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research considers spatial thinking in complex processes. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#1852

Logan Wright

#67210

Overall Influence

1933 - 1999 (66 years)

Logan Wright Jr. was an American pediatric psychologist and former president of the American Psychological Association . He coined the term pediatric psychology, co-founded the Society of Pediatric Psychology and made numerous advances within the field. He was involved in the founding of the American Psychological Society in the mid-1980s when many psychological scientists split off from the APA.

#1853

Peter G. Ossorio

#76973

Overall Influence

1926 - 2007 (81 years)

Peter G. Ossorio was an American psychologist best known for his development of descriptive psychology, a pragmatic and theory neutral pre-empirical approach to the study of behavior. Ossorio in his 2006 volume, The Behavior of Persons, explicated the concept of "Persons" by creating a conceptual map of the interdependent concepts of "Individual Person", "Language", "Action", and "Reality". He described persons as individuals whose history is, paradigmatically, a history of Deliberate Action in a dramaturgical pattern.

#1854

Jeffry A. Simpson

#99123

Overall Influence

#1855

Brad J Bushman

#99145

Overall Influence

#1856

Ellen Frank

#99173

Overall Influence

#1857

Samuel Sears

#61826

Overall Influence

Samuel F. Sears Jr. is a professor of health psychology at East Carolina University . Early life and clinical training Sears was born in Orlando, Florida and raised in its surrounding suburbs. He graduated from Lake Brantley High School in 1986 and enrolled at the University of Florida. He was a walk-on football player before incurring multiple injuries. These injuries prompted him to examine the psychological aspects of health and recovery as a psychology major. He further pursued these studies in the Department of Clinical and Health Psychology at the University of Florida, where he obtained his Ph.D.

#1858

Nicholas Tarrier

#98860

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Nicholas Tarrier, FBA, FBPsS is a psychologist and academic. He was Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Manchester from 1991 to 2011, and Professor of Clinical Psychology and eHealth Studies at King's College London from 2011 to 2014.

#1859

John Nesselroade

#97611

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

John Richard Nesselroade is an American psychologist known for his work in developmental and quantitative psychology. He is the Hugh Scott Hamilton Professor of Psychology emeritus at the University of Virginia and an adjunct professor of human development at Pennsylvania State University. He retired from the University of Virginia in June 2011 after serving as the Hugh Scott Hamilton Professor there for twenty years. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Gerontological Society of America, and the American Psychological Association , as well as a charter fellow of the American Psychological Society.

#1860

Patricia Bauer

#82615

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Patricia J. Bauer is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Psychology at Emory University. She is known for her research in the field of cognitive development, with a specific focus on how children develop their earliest memories and how their memory is influenced by parents, peers, and the environment around them. Her research has explored the phenomenon of childhood amnesia and how social, cognitive, and neural changes relate to the development of autobiographical memory.

#1861

James Drever

#45833

Overall Influence

1910 - 1991 (81 years)

James Drever FRSE was a Scottish academic who served as the first Principal of the University of Dundee. He has been described as 'one of the most pivotal figures in the university's history'. Early life and career James Drever was born to Orcadian parents in Edinburgh in 1910. His father was the academic James Drever , who had studied at the University of Edinburgh from 1889, from which he graduated with an MA before proceeding to study medicine. The elder Drever then worked at the university as assistant to the Professor of Education, before his appointment as Combe Lecturer and head of the Psychology Department at Edinburgh in 1918.

#1862

Thomas R. Kratochwill

#74195

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Thomas R. Kratochwill is the Sears-Bascom Professor of School Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he directs the School Psychology Program. He is also Director of the Educational and Psychological Training Center, an interdisciplinary unit for applied training for Counseling Psychology, Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education, and School Psychology. He co-directs the Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Education Resource Center and is a member of the Coordinating Committee of the Prevention Science Program.

#1863

Donald Watson Goodwin

#99319

Overall Influence

#1864

Hart Blanton

#90032

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Hart Blanton is an American social psychologist. He is a professor in the department of communication and journalism at Texas A&M University. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology from Princeton University in 1994.

#1865

Galen Bodenhausen

#93399

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Galen Von Bodenhausen is an American social psychologist. He is the Lawyer Taylor Professor of Psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences at Northwestern University, where he is also a professor of marketing in the Kellogg School of Management. He is known for his research on gender stereotypes, gender roles, and implicit biases.

#1866

Nora Newcombe

#47916

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Nora S. Newcombe is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology and the James H. Glackin Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Temple University. She is a Canadian-American researcher in cognitive development, cognitive psychology and cognitive science, and expert on the development of spatial thinking and reasoning and episodic memory. She was the principal investigator of the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center , one of six Science of Learning Centers funded by the National Science Foundation.

#1867

Charles Daniel Batson

#99449

Overall Influence

#1868

Jan W. De Leeuw

#99476

Overall Influence

#1869

Carl Pfaffmann

#94682

Overall Influence

1913 - 1994 (81 years)

Carl Pfaffmann was an American physiological psychologist, noted for his research of the senses of smell and taste. Pfaffman was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, Florence Pirce Grant University Professor of Psychology at Brown University, Vincent and Brooke Astor Professor at Rockefeller University. He was a recipient of the Warren Medal from Society of Experimental Psychologists and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from American Psychological Association. He was also president of the E...

#1870

John Suler

#49555

Overall Influence

John Suler is Professor of Psychology at Rider University who has written on the behavior of people online. Suler earned a B.A. in psychology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

#1871

Stephen J Ceci

#99608

Overall Influence

#1872

Robert M. Thorndike

#78422

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Robert M. Thorndike is an American psychology professor known for several definitive textbooks on research procedures and psychometrics. He earned his B.A. in psychology from Wesleyan University in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1970. He has taught at Western Washington University since 1970.

#1873

Owen Aldis

#52156

Overall Influence

1926 - 2001 (75 years)

Owen Aldis was a behavioural psychologist. He was born into a notable Chicago family. His father was one of the trustees of the University of Chicago and ran a real estate management firm, his mother a writer of children's poetry and his maternal grandfather on the editor of the Chicago Tribune. Aldis taught economics at Yale University and worked in investment in New York. But in the 1950s he moved west to San Francisco's Bay Area and began to develop his academic interest in behavioral psychology. He is most noted for his well received 1971 publication Play Fighting which is an ethological classic examining play in humans and animals.

#1874

Brent Roberts

#55745

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Brent Walter Roberts is an American social and personality psychologist who is professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is known for his research on personality traits, especially conscientiousness and narcissism. He is the president of the Association for Research in Personality, and was named an ISI Highly Cited Researcher in 2016 and 2017. In 2014 he presented the Paul B. Baltes Lecture at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. His daughter, Siena Roberts, is the American University Washington College of Law 2022 1L Section 2 Representative.

#1875

William W. Eaton

#99786

Overall Influence

#1876

W. Erich Dryden

#99833

Overall Influence

#1877

Fred Genesee

#66507

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Fred Genesee is a Professor of psychology at McGill University. He specializes in second language acquisition and bilingualism research. In particular, his research examines the early stages of the acquisition of two languages in order to better understand this form of language acquisition and ascertain the neurocognitive limits of the child's ability to acquire language. Specific topics Genesee has investigated in his research include language representation in early stages of bilingual acquisition, transfer in bilingual development, structural and functional characteristics of child bilingual code-mixing, and communication skills in young bilingual children.

#1878

R. Michael Bagby

#48861

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Robert Michael Bagby is a Canadian psychologist, senior clinician scientist and director of clinical research at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health . He is a full professor in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto. He became a full professor of psychology at the University of Toronto Scarborough campus in July 2011.

#1879

Antony Kidman

#46364

Overall Influence

1938 - 2014 (76 years)

Antony David Kidman was an Australian psychologist and academic. He was the father of actress Nicole Kidman and journalist Antonia Kidman. Early life and education Kidman was born in Randwick and grew up in North Sydney, the oldest of four children to Arthur David Kidman and Margaret Emily Mary Callachor. He was of Scottish descent.

#1880

Nora Sveaass

#63936

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Nora Sveaass is a Norwegian psychologist, and an expert on refugees, human rights violations, and psychological consequences of torture and violence as well as treatment and rehabilitation of victims of torture and violence. She is Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychology of the University of Oslo. She served two terms as one of the nine members of the United Nations Committee against Torture from 2005 to 2013, after being nominated as the joint candidate of the governments of the Nordic countries. She did not stand for reelection in 2013; however, in 2015 she was elected as a ...

#1881

Ingrid Johnsrude

#35942

Overall Influence

Ingrid Suzanne Johnsrude is a Canadian neuroscientist, a professor of psychology at University of Western Ontario, and was the holder of the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience. Her research involves brain imaging, the connections between brain structure and language ability, and the diagnosis of degenerative brain diseases in the elderly.

#1882

L. Alan Sroufe

#100461

Overall Influence

#1883

James Jaccard

#84596

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

James Jay Jaccard is an American psychologist and social work researcher. He is a Professor of Social Work at New York University's Silver School of Social Work. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1976. He helped to design the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health . In 2016, he was inducted into the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare.

#1884

Ian Robertson

#75433

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Ian Robertson is a Scottish neuroscientist and clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin. He is also known as a leading researcher as to how an individual may harness the attention system of one's mind to enhance autonomy over emotions and cognitive function.

#1885

Rebecca Treiman

#55817

Overall Influence

Rebecca Treiman is an American psychologist. She is the Burke and Elizabeth High Baker Professor of Child Developmental Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis and head of the Reading and Language Lab there. Treiman's research focuses on spelling and reading, and especially on the linguistic factors that affect these processes.

#1886

John Beebe

#35853

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

John Beebe is an American psychiatrist and Jungian analyst in practice in San Francisco. Beebe was born in Washington, D.C. He received degrees from Harvard College and the University of Chicago medical school. He is a past president of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, where he is currently on the teaching faculty. He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

#1887

Michael G. Pressley

#100655

Overall Influence

#1888

Estela V. Welldon

Estela V. Welldon

#67066

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Estela V. Welldon, MD DSc F.R.C.Psych Hon. Memb. A.Psa.A. BPC, is an honorary consultant psychiatrist in forensic psychotherapy at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. Biography Born in Mendoza, Argentina, she studied medicine at Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. She founded of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy in 1991.

#1889

Ivan Izquierdo

#25305

Overall Influence

1937 - 2021 (84 years)

Ivan Antonio Izquierdo was an Argentine Brazilian scientist and a pioneer in the study of the neurobiology of learning and memory. Born in 1937 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Izquierdo graduated in Medicine and completed his Ph.D. in Pharmacology , both in the University of Buenos Aires . For nearly a decade, Izquierdo taught at National University of Cordoba , in Argentina, but, due to a number of reasons, both political and personal , he moved to Brazil in the beginning of the 1970s, and lived in Porto Alegre since 1978. For more than 20 years, he worked in the "Center of Memory" of the Bioc...

#1890

Cynthia García Coll

#58908

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Cynthia García Coll is an American developmental psychologist, and the former editor-in-chief of Child Development. She is currently an adjunct professor in the Pediatrics Department at the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus. She has authored more than a hundred publications, including several books. In 2020, she received the Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to Developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society.

#1891

Peter Fenwick

#42461

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Peter Brooke Cadogan Fenwick is a neuropsychiatrist and neurophysiologist who is known for his studies of epilepsy and end-of-life phenomena. Education Fenwick is a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied Natural Science. He obtained his clinical experience at St Thomas' Hospital.

#1892

Joseph L. Price

#100912

Overall Influence

#1893

Melvin Seeman

#83286

Overall Influence

1918 - 2020 (102 years)

Melvin Seeman was an American social psychologist and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles . He is known for researching social isolation. Seeman turned 100 in February 2018.

#1894

William Shadish

#97070

Overall Influence

1949 - 2016 (67 years)

William Raymond Shadish Jr. was an American psychologist and statistician who was a distinguished professor and founding faculty member at the University of California, Merced. He was known for his work in the field of behavioral science, especially on the topics of program evaluation, causal inference, meta-analysis, and the study of methodology.

#1895

Richard Ivry

#60578

Overall Influence

Richard B. Ivry is an American cognitive neuroscientist. He is a currently Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and a founding member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. Ivry previously served as chair of the university's Department of Psychology and director of its Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences. According to the Association for Psychological Science, Ivry's "seminal research program has transformed how we understand perception and action."

#1896

John K. Hewitt

#74141

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

John Keith Hewitt is a British-American behavioral geneticist and professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics. He was the Director of the Institute for Behavioral Genetics from 2000 - 2021. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1996.

#1897

Jaime C. Bulatao

#58040

Overall Influence

1922 - 2015 (93 years)

Jaime C. Bulatao , called "Father Bu" by his students and coworkers, is a Filipino Jesuit priest and psychologist. He is one of the co-founders of the Ateneo de Manila University's Department of Psychology and the Psychological Association of the Philippines.

#1898

Erich Schröger

#88247

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Erich Schröger is a German psychologist and neuroscientist. Biography Erich Schröger studied philosophy and psychology at the Munich School of Philosophy and at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. In 1982, he earned a Baccalaureat in Philosophy, in 1986 he earned a Diploma in Psychology, and in 1991 he was awarded a PhD from the LMU for his work on loudness constancy. After research stays at the Cognitive Brain Research unit of the University of Helsinki and a stint of teaching at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt , Schröger achieved his Habilitation in psychology in ...

#1899

Philip W. Gold

#101018

Overall Influence

#1900

Randolph Blake

#78849

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Randolph Blake is an American psychologist, currently the Centennial Professor at Vanderbilt University and an Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and National Academy of Sciences.

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