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.

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List of the most influential people in Psychology,

#1901

Odd Arne Tjersland

#88489

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Odd Arne Tjersland is a Norwegian psychologist. He is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Oslo and a Research Professor at the Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies. He is an expert on psychological treatment of children, youth and families, and has published many books and articles on child abuse and violence in close relationships.

#1902

Ernest Lawrence Abel

#101077

Overall Influence

#1903

Phebe Cramer

#101108

Overall Influence

1935 - 2021 (86 years)

Phebe Cramer was a clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychology, Emerita at Williams College. She was known for her research on defense mechanisms, body image, and narcissism, and for her creation of a manual for coding defense mechanisms for purposes of psychological testing and personality assessment. Cramer was the 2014 recipient of the Bruno Klopfer Award from the Society for Personality Assessment for lifetime achievement in Personality Psychology.

#1904

Gerald R. Weeks

#83448

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Gerald R. Weeks is an American author and lecturer. He has published 30 books on psychotherapy, which have been translated into multiple languages. He has published in the fields of individual, and family therapy, although he is best known for his work in sex and couple's therapy. Weeks is the founder of the Systems Approach to Sex Therapy as well as the founder of the Intersystem Approach to therapy which has been called one of the most ambitious efforts to develop an integrative approach to psychotherapy. He was a professor in the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas from 1999-2017.

#1905

Karl Halvor Teigen

#38298

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Karl Halvor Teigen is a Norwegian psychologist. He was born in Oslo and took the cand.psychol. degree in 1966. He was first a professor of psychology at the University of Tromsø from 1991, then at the University of Oslo from 2001. He is especially known for his book En psykologihistorie on the history of psychology. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

#1906

Paul H. Mussen

#86387

Overall Influence

1922 - 2000 (78 years)

Paul Henry Mussen was an American developmental psychologist who described stages of child psychological development. He was co-editor of the Annual Review of Psychology from 1969–1974. Early life and education Paul Henry Mussen was born on March 21, 1922, in Paterson, New Jersey, though grew up in Willimantic, Connecticut. His parents, Harry and Tauve Mussen, were Jewish immigrants from Russia. Harry Mussen worked in silk manufacturing but was also a published poet. He had a brother, Irwin. Paul Mussen initially attended Connecticut State College at the age of sixteen before getting a scholarship to Stanford University in 1939.

#1907

Rheta DeVries

#38800

Overall Influence

1936 - 2012 (76 years)

Rheta Goolsby DeVries was a professor at University of Northern Iowa's Regent's Center For Early Developmental Education, where she also served as director. She co-wrote many books along with Constance Kamii, concerning early childhood education curriculum that both influenced the field of early childhood mathematical instruction and accelerated the proliferation of constructivist-based teaching in the classroom.

#1908

Ward Edwards

#101293

Overall Influence

#1909

Rudolf Groner

#58261

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Rudolf Groner is a Swiss psychologist, specialized in cognitive psychology and media psychology. Professional life Groner received a PhD in psychology at the University of Vienna, Austria, in 1966. From 1968 to 1970 he was postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in Theoretical Psychology at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, and member of the Michigan Mathematical Psychology Program in 1969. In 1981 he became Professor of Psychology at the University of Bern. He was invited Visiting Professor at Humboldt University Berlin, at the University of Wollongong, Australia, at Kyoto University and Nagoya University, Japan.

#1910

Russell Spears

#101315

Overall Influence

#1911

Johannes Kornhuber

Johannes Kornhuber

#65937

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Johannes Kornhuber is a German psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Life Kornhuber worked in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Würzburg, Germany, as Postdoctoral Fellow, Resident and Supervising Physician. In 1996 he obtained an appointment to a full professorship in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Göttingen, Germany, where he was Chairman of the Gerontopsychiatric Section. Since 2000, Kornhuber has been a full professor and chairman in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.

#1912

Seymour J. Epstein

#101416

Overall Influence

#1913

Stephen Joseph Rossetti

Stephen Joseph Rossetti

#34792

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Stephen Joseph Rossetti is an American Catholic priest, author, educator, licensed psychologist and expert on psychological and spiritual wellness issues for Catholic priests. He has appeared on such television shows as Meet the Press and Larry King Live. He served as president and CEO of Saint Luke Institute in Silver Spring, Maryland from 1996 to 2009 and as president from 2013 to 2014. In October, 2009 Rossetti stepped down from this position and in January 2010, joined the faculty of The Catholic University of America to teach in the School of Theology and Religious Studies. Since 2009, h...

#1914

Philip Rubin

#101439

Overall Influence

#1915

M. Brent Donnellan

#79836

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

M. Brent Donnellan is a professor of psychology at Michigan State University. He is known for research on social psychology and personality psychology. Biography M. Brent Donnellan was born June 19, 1972, in Springfield, Ohio. Donnellan completed his undergraduate career at the University of California, Davis in 1994, receiving his bachelor's degree in psychology. In 2001, he received his Ph.D. in human development from Davis.

#1916

Kristine Beate Walhovd

#91259

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Kristine Beate Walhovd is a Norwegian psychologist, neuroscientist and Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Oslo. Together with fellow neuroscientist Anders Fjell, she established the Centre of Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition at the University of Oslo, which was given the status of "world leading research environment" by the Government of Norway in 2015. She and Anders Fjell shared the Fridtjof Nansen Prize in 2007. She was elected as a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 2011. In 2017 she received a European Research Council consolidator grant. Acco...

#1917

Keith Dobson

#93079

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Keith Stephen Dobson is a Canadian psychologist, academic and researcher. He is a professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Calgary in Canada and has also served as Head of Psychology Department and Director of the Clinical Psychology program at the university. He is President of the World Confederation of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies.

#1918

Jennifer Aaker

#64547

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Jennifer Aaker is an American behavioural scientist and General Atlantic Professor and Coulter Family Fellow at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is known for her research on time, money, and happiness. Aaker also focuses on the transmission of ideas through social networks, the power of story in decision making, and how to build global brands across cultures. She is the recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award from the Society for Consumer Psychology and the Stanford Distinguished Teaching Award.

#1919

Henk G Schmidt

#101622

Overall Influence

#1920

Ira Hirsh

#73065

Overall Influence

1922 - 2010 (88 years)

Ira Hirsh was an American psychologist who made early contributions to the field of audiology. He was the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Audiology at Washington University in St. Louis and served as president of the Acoustical Society of America.

#1921

Anders Fjell

#92015

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Anders Martin Fjell is a Norwegian psychologist, neuroscientist and Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Oslo. Together with his wife, fellow neuroscientist Kristine Beate Walhovd, he established the Centre of Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition at the University of Oslo, which was given the status of "world leading research environment" by the Government of Norway in 2015. He and his wife shared the Fridtjof Nansen Prize in 2007. He was elected as a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 2017. According to Google Scholar, he has been cited around 14,0...

#1922

Renee Rabinowitz

#28027

Overall Influence

1934 - 2020 (86 years)

Renee Ginsburg Rabinowitz Wagner was an American-Israeli psychologist and lawyer. She was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Antwerp, Belgium, but fled with her family to the United States in 1941, following the outbreak of World War II, and grew up in New York City. Her parents were Marcus "Max" Charles Ginsburg and Helena "Hella" Zimmet. She had one brother named Herbert "Herbie" Ginsburg. She earned a doctorate in educational psychology at the University of Chicago, and a law degree at Notre Dame University. She taught psychology at Indiana University, and later served as in-house legal counsel at Colorado College.

#1923

Carlfred Broderick

Carlfred Broderick

#67854

Overall Influence

1932 - 1999 (67 years)

Carlfred Bartholomew Broderick was an American psychologist, sociologist, and family therapist, a scholar of marriage and family relations at the University of Southern California, and an author of several books. He was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1932, and he died of cancer in 1999 in Cerritos, California, at the age of 67.

#1924

John Mollon

#67761

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Professor John Dixon Mollon DSc FRS. is a British scientist. He is a leading researcher in visual neuroscience. His work has been cited over 15,000 times. Early life Education Having graduated in Psychology and Philosophy from the University of Oxford, Mollon remained at the university for his DPhil. He later received a DSc, also from Oxford.

#1925

Bruce Franklin Pennington

#101821

Overall Influence

#1926

Michael J. A. Howe

#92899

Overall Influence

1940 - 2002 (62 years)

Michael John Anthony Howe was a British cognitive psychologist. He was well known as a defender of environmental influences on intelligence, and as an opponent of IQ, and he was regularly involved in the controversies surrounding that area of research . As a widely cited example of this work, with colleagues Davidson and Sloboda, he argued against the existence of innate talent, a position welcomed by some, but characterised as "absurd environmentalism" by researchers such as Douglas Detterman.

#1927

David Fulker

#57775

Overall Influence

1937 - 1998 (61 years)

David William Fulker was a British behavioural geneticist at the University of Colorado's Institute for Behavioral Genetics. Among positions of esteem, he was elected president of the Behavior Genetics Association , and was executive editor of the society's journal Behavior Genetics. In honour of this role, the society maintains an annual Fulker Award, for the best paper in the journal each year, and for which the award is "$1000 and a decent bottle of wine".

#1928

David Thompson

#93056

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

David Robert Thompson is a British academic nurse and psychologist. He is professor of nursing at Queen's University Belfast. He holds honorary and adjunct positions in the United Kingdom, China and Australia and is an editor of European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing. He served as a panel member of the 2001 UK Research Assessment Exercise and as a sub panel member of the 2008 UK Research Assessment Exercise. He was the first nurse to be elected a member of the British Cardiac Society.

#1929

Gunnar Johansson

#77065

Overall Influence

1911 - 1998 (87 years)

Gunnar Johansson was a Swedish psychophysicist. Biography He was interested in the Gestalt laws of motion perception in vision. He is best known for his investigations of biological motion. He helped develop the rigidity assumption which posits that proximal stimuli that can be perceived as rigid objects are generally perceived as such. Johansson received his Ph.D. from the Stockholm University College in 1950, on the thesis Configurations in event perception. He was professor of psychology at Uppsala University from 1957 to 1977. In 1970, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy ...

#1930

Grant L. Iverson

#101891

Overall Influence

#1931

F. Gregory Ashby

#97119

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

F. Gregory Ashby is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychological & Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara . He is known for his work in mathematical psychology, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.

#1932

Elizabeth Kuipers

#89919

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Alice Kuipers is a professor of psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, and was head of the Psychology Department from 2006- 2012. Kuipers is a consultant clinical psychologist and until 2012, had an honorary appointment at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, working as part of the psychosis community mental health team in Southwark. She is a founding director of the PICuP clinic and was the chair of the NICE Schizophrenia Guideline update 2007-9 and the Psychosis and Schizophrenia update 2011-2014

#1933

Rand Conger

#98262

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Rand Donald Conger is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Human Development & Family Studies at the University of California, Davis. He previously taught at Iowa State University, where he was the founding director of the Institute for Social and Behavioral Research. He is known for his research on risk factors for, and protective factors against, substance use and mental disorders. He has also researched the effects of stress on child development and academic achievement.

#1934

Jean-Charles Gille

Jean-Charles Gille

#49273

Overall Influence

1924 - 1995 (71 years)

Dr. Jean-Charles Gille-Maisani was a French, later Canadian, engineer, psychiatrist and professor of medicine. Gille was born in Trier , where his father, originally from Lorraine, was a superior officer in the French garrison. He learned German early in life and moved on to learn French, English, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Polish, as well as Latin and Ancient Greek.

#1935

Michael A. McDaniel

#75343

Overall Influence

Michael A. McDaniel is an American industrial and organizational psychologist and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Management at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he was concurrently a research professor in the Department of Psychology. He is known for his research on personnel selection and publication bias, as well as on the relationship between brain size and intelligence. His current research interests include personnel selection, publication bias, and research integrity. He is employed at Work Skills First, Inc., a human resource consulting firm specializing in personnel selection and expert witness services related to personnel selection.

#1936

Michael Studdert-Kennedy

#89436

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (97 years)

Michael Studdert-Kennedy was an American psychologist and speech scientist 1927–2017.https://haskinslabs. We org/news/michael-studdert-kennedy. He is well known for his contributions to studies of speech perception, the motor theory of speech perception, and the evolution of language, among other areas. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Connecticut and a professor emeritus of linguistics at Yale University. He is the former president of Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut. He was also a member of the Haskins Laboratories Board of Directors and was chairman of the board from 1988 until 2001.

#1937

Joseph Zubin

#102091

Overall Influence

#1938

Hal Pashler

#63857

Overall Influence

Hal Pashler is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at University of California, San Diego. An experimental psychologist and cognitive scientist, Pashler is best known for his studies of human attentional limitations . and for his work on visual attention He has also developed and tested new methods for enhancing learning and reducing forgetting, focusing on the temporal spacing of learning and retrieval practice.

#1939

Ilan Meyer

#81044

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Ilan H. Meyer is an American psychiatric epidemiologist, author, professor, and a senior scholar for public policy and sexual orientation law at the Williams Institute of UCLA. He has conducted extensive research on minority identities related to sexual orientation, gender, race and ethnicity, drawing conclusions on the impact of social stresses on their mental health. Meyer was an expert witness for the plaintiffs in Perry v. Schwarzenegger , the federal case that overturned California Proposition 8.

#1940

Stefan Priebe

#93353

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Stefan Priebe is a German-British psychologist and psychiatrist. Early life Priebe grew up in West-Berlin, completed school at the Canisius-Kolleg and studied psychology and medicine at the University of Hamburg. He later qualified as psychiatrist, neurologist and psychotherapist in Berlin, where he trained and worked at the Free University Berlin.

#1941

James Reason

#35099

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

James T. Reason CBE is a former professor of Psychology at the University of Manchester, from where he graduated in 1962 and where he tenured from 1977 until 2001. He wrote books on human error, including such aspects as absent-mindedness, aviation human factors, maintenance errors, and risk management for organizational accidents. In 2003, he was awarded an honorary DSc by the University of Aberdeen. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the British Psychological Society, the Royal Aeronautical Society, and the Royal College of General Practitioners. He received a CBE in 2003 for his services in the reduction of the risks in health care.

#1942

Richard Jessor

#102208

Overall Influence

#1943

Elda Grin

#96579

Overall Influence

1928 - 2016 (88 years)

Elda Ashoti Grigoryan , known also as Elda Grin was an Armenian writer, psychologist, professor, and legal expert. Biography Grin was born in 1928 in Tiflis . From 1943-47 she studied at Foreign Language Faculty of Yerevan Russian Pedagogical Institute. Grin was a Professor of psychology at Yerevan State University. She also published ten books of short stories, among them: “A Night Sketch” , “My Garden” , “We Want to Live Beautifully” , and “Space of Dreams” . In 2010 her short-story "The Hands" was published in Yerevan in a separate volume in 35 languages, including Icelandic, Luxembourgish, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Hebrew, etc.

#1944

Heinz Ansbacher

#84818

Overall Influence

1904 - 2006 (102 years)

Heinz Ludwig Ansbacher was a German-American psychologist specializing in the theories of Alfred Adler. Biography Ansbacher was born in Frankfurt am Main, German Empire. After completing high school he worked in a brokerage firm. He immigrated to the U.S. via steamer, working as a dishwasher. Upon arrival in New York City he resumed his career in the financial business and attended evening lectures by Alfred Adler. At one point he went to see Adler for a personal consultation concerning his unhappiness over his work and over the termination of a recent relationship. Adler encouraged him to en...

#1945

Noël Mailloux

#74161

Overall Influence

1909 - 1997 (88 years)

Noël Mailloux, OC was a Canadian psychologist, President of the Canadian Psychological Association. Career Noël Mailloux was born in Napierville, Quebec in 1913. He was ordained a Dominican priest in 1937. He began teaching psychology at the University of Ottawa in 1939. In 1942, he was asked to establish a Department of Psychology at the University of Montreal where he remained until 1975, including 19 years as head of department.

#1946

Suzanne Kessler

#33521

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Suzanne Kessler is an American social psychologist known for the application of ethnomethodology to gender. She and Wendy McKenna pioneered this application of ethnomethodology to the study of gender and sex with their groundbreaking work, Gender an Ethnomethodological Approach. Twenty years later, Kessler extended this work in a second book, Lessons from the Intersexed.

#1947

Becca Levy

#39268

Overall Influence

Becca R. Levy is a professor of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and Professor of Psychology at Yale University. She is a leading researcher in the fields of social gerontology and psychology of aging. She is credited with creating the field of how age stereotypes, which are assimilated from the culture, impact the health of older individuals. The Dean of Columbia School of Public Health describes Levy as "a pioneer" in the "growing body of impressive research showing that our attitudes toward aging affect our health, our resilience in the face of adversity, and our very survival....

#1948

Ruth Kanfer

#89549

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Ruth Kanfer is a psychologist and professor at Georgia Institute of Technology in the area of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. She is best known for her research in the fields of motivation, goal setting, self-regulation, job search, adult learning, and future of work. Kanfer has received numerous awards for her research contributions including the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution in Applied Research in 1989, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology William R. Owens Scholarly Achievement Award in 2006 and the SIOP Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award in 2007.

#1949

John A. Talbott

#102441

Overall Influence

#1950

Edward M. Stricker

#94628

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Edward M. Stricker is an American neuroscientist, now retired, formerly a University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and Dean at its Honors College. Professor Stricker earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1960, a master's degree in chemistry from that same institution in 1961, and a PhD in psychology from Yale University in 1965. He held faculty positions at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario from 1967 to 1971, and at the University of Pittsburgh from 1971 to 1986, before being named University Professor in 1986.

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