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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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Psychology,

#2051

Nelson M. Butters

#106216

Overall Influence

#2052

Michael Norton

#34818

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Michael Irwin Norton is the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is also known for identifying and naming the IKEA effect. Education Norton received his B.A. from Williams College in 1997 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2002.

#2053

Krystyna Skarżyńska

#96114

Overall Influence

Professor dr. hab. Krystyna Skarżyńska is Polish psychologist, professor of humanities, holding the positions of full professor at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities and the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, expert in political psychology and social psychology.

#2054

Richard C. Mohs

#106242

Overall Influence

#2055

Danielle S. Mcnamara

#106243

Overall Influence

#2056

Patricia Cheng

#36916

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Patricia Wenjie Cheng is a Chinese American psychologist. She is a leading researcher in cognitive psychology who works on human reasoning. She is best known for her psychological work on human understanding of causality. Her "power theory of the probabilistic contrast model," or power PC theory posits that people filter observations of events through a basic belief that causes have the power to generate their effects, thereby inferring specific cause-effect relations.

#2057

Joy Osofsky

#82658

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Joy D. Osofsky is a clinical and developmental psychologist, known for her research on infant mental health, how parents nurture their infants and children, and the repercussions that follow exposure to traumatic events and violence. Some of her notable work has examined the aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina, experiences of children raised in broken households, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on communities. Osofsky is employed as a Professor of Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Public Health at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, and she is Head of the Division of Pediatric Mental Health at the Louisiana State University School of Medicine.

#2058

Maryanne Garry

#79750

Overall Influence

Maryanne Connell-Covello Garry is a New Zealand educational psychology academic. As of mid-2018, she is a full professor at the University of Waikato. Garry is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

#2059

Richard Reading

#106312

Overall Influence

#2060

Jane Wardle

#79794

Overall Influence

1950 - 2015 (65 years)

Jane Wardle FBA FMedSci was a professor of clinical psychology and director of the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre at University College London. She was one of the pioneers of health psychology in the UK and internationally, known for her seminal work on the contribution of psychology to public health, particularly the role of psychological research in cancer prevention and work on the behavioural and genetic determinants of eating behaviour and obesity.

#2061

Elliot Tucker-Drob

#75977

Overall Influence

Elliot Max Tucker-Drob is Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a Professor of Psychiatry, a faculty research associate at the Population Research Center, a faculty research associate at the Center for Aging and Population Studies, and director of the Lifespan Development Lab. He is the co-founder and co-director of the Texas Twin Project. He is known for his research in the fields of developmental psychology, cognitive aging, behavioral genetics, and statistical genetics. This has included research on the effects of education and socioeconomic status o...

#2062

Ursula Staudinger

Ursula Staudinger

#73362

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Ursula M. Staudinger is a German psychologist and researcher of aging. She is the rector of the Technical University of Dresden . She was Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and Professor of Psychology at the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University. Between 2013 and 2017 Staudinger was the founding director of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center and president of the affiliated International Longevity Center.

#2063

Wei Ji Ma

#28724

Overall Influence

Wei Ji Ma is a professor at New York University in the Department of Psychology and the Center for Neural Science. Ma focuses on the areas of perception, decision-making, and memory. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics from University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Ma is the 2021 recipient of the Jeffrey L. Elman Prize for Scientific Achievement and Community Building from the Cognitive Science Society.

#2064

Jonathan o. Dostrovsky

#106484

Overall Influence

#2065

Jo-Ida Hansen

#85232

Overall Influence

Jo-Ida C. Hansen is a counseling psychologist known for her research on career and work planning and measurement of vocational interests. She is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Minnesota. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the American Counseling Association, and the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology

#2066

Lars Chittka

#83740

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Lars Chittka, FLS, FRES, FRSB is a German zoologist, ethologist and ecologist distinguished for his work on the evolution of sensory systems and cognition, using insect-flower interactions as a model.

#2067

Ronald E Dahl

#106565

Overall Influence

#2068

Lonnie Carton

#31073

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Lonnie Carton is a family therapist and an educational consultant best known for "The Learning Center", a long-running daily feature on CBS Radio which provided strategies for successful parenting. Biography Carton was born in Baltimore on August 25, 1930. She grew up in Baltimore and attended Johns Hopkins University, getting her bachelor's degree in 1950. She later received a PhD from Pennsylvania State University in 1959.

#2069

Margaret Beale Spencer

#63482

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Margaret Beale Spencer is an American psychologist whose work centers on the effects of ethnicity, gender, and race on youth and adolescent development. She currently serves as the Marshall Field IV Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. Dr. Spencer's career spans more than 30 years and consists of over 115 published articles and chapters, stemming from work funded by over two-dozen foundations and federal agencies.

#2070

James Jackson

#61104

Overall Influence

1944 - 2020 (76 years)

James S. Jackson was an American social psychologist and the Daniel Katz Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. Jackson was also a member of the National Science Board and a past president of the Association of Black Psychologists. He studied the psychology of race and culture and the impact of racial disparities on minority health.

#2071

Margaret M. Bradley

#106670

Overall Influence

#2072

Zakiah Daradjat

#86993

Overall Influence

1926 - 2013 (87 years)

Zakiah Daradjat was an Indonesian Islamic psychologist, educator, and professor of psychology at the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University Jakarta. Early life Zakiah Daradjat was born in Koto Marapak, Agam, Dutch East Indies, on 6 November 1926. Her father, Daradjat Husain was known as an activist in the Muslim organization Muhammadiyah and her mother, Rafi'ah was active in Sarekat Islam. Husain had two wives; there were six children he got from his first wife, and from his second wife, Rasunah, he got five children, Zakiah being the oldest. Even though her parents did not come from an...

#2073

Stephen J. Ceci

#76570

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Stephen J. Ceci is an American psychologist at Cornell University. He studies the accuracy of children's courtroom testimony , and he is an expert in the development of intelligence and memory. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious Lifetime Contribution Awards from the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science as well as many divisional and smaller society awards.

#2074

David Kirsh

#72622

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

David Kirsh is a Canadian cognitive scientist, and Professor / Past Dept. Chair of Cognitive Science at University of California, San Diego , where he heads the Interactive Cognition Lab. Biography He received his BA from the University of Toronto in 1976 and his D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in 1983 with the thesis Representation and rationality: foundations of cognitive science. At Oxford he studied under A.J. Ayer and Gareth Evans.

#2075

David W. Green

#86569

Overall Influence

David Green is a professorial research fellow in the Department of Cognitive, Perceptual & Brain Sciences, an honorary senior research associate, an emeritus professor of psychology in the Division of Psychology & Language Sciences, and on the faculty of Brain Sciences at University College London. He has researched widely on subjects such as mental models, both construction and manipulation, the lexical organisation, and modelling control processes in speech production, language control particularly biliginual and the imaging of language and object recognition in the neurologically damaged. H...

#2076

Sam Tsemberis

#64879

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Sam J. Tsemberis is a Greek Canadian clinical and community psychology practitioner, and the founder and executive director of Pathways to Housing, a Housing First program for individuals with serious mental illnesses, long histories of homelessness, and often co-occurring substance abuse. He is also an Associate Clinical Professor in Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of Los Angeles California.

#2077

Delroy L. Paulhus

#106898

Overall Influence

#2078

Rada Granovskaya

Rada Granovskaya

#96910

Overall Influence

1929 - 2022 (93 years)

Rada Mikhailovna Granovskaya was a well-known psychologist, professor of the Saint Petersburg State University; academician of the Baltic Academy of Pedagogical Sciences and the International Academy of Acmeology. Her basic works are on practical psychology and psychological protection. She is an author of conceptual model of interaction of thinking of the person with system of the subconscious and realized psychological barriers, and also mechanisms and ways of their overcoming.

#2079

Matthew Rushworth

#99884

Overall Influence

Matthew F. S. Rushworth is Watts Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford where his laboratory is funded by the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council. Education Rushworth studied Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford where he worked with Richard Passingham. He was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1994 for research on the parietal cortex and apraxia.

#2080

Jeff Sigafoos

#107145

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Jeffrey Scott Sigafoos is a New Zealand professor of educational psychology. After a PhD from the University of Minnesota, Sigafoos has held roles at University of Queensland, University of Sydney, and the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently a professor at Victoria University of Wellington and an adjunct professor at James Madison University.

#2081

Trudie Chalder

#59931

Overall Influence

Trudie Chalder is Professor of Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy at the Institute of Psychiatry in King's College London. Life Chalder was president of the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies and Director of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust’s Persistent Physical Symptoms Service.

#2082

John Carlyle Raven

#107235

Overall Influence

#2083

Frank C. Keil

#107315

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

#2084

Robert R. Blake

#30711

Overall Influence

1918 - 2004 (86 years)

Robert Rogers Blake was an American management theoretician. He did pioneer work in the field of organizational dynamics. Together with Jane S. Mouton, he developed the Managerial Grid Model , which attempts to conceptualize management in terms of relations and leadership style.

#2085

Jeffrey A. Sloan

#107397

Overall Influence

#2086

Ernst Wagner

#107413

Overall Influence

#2087

Michael J. Lambert

#64034

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Michael J. Lambert is an American psychologist, professor, researcher, and author whose work in psychotherapy led to the development of Routine Outcome Monitoring, which involves regularly measuring and monitoring client progress with standardized self-report scales throughout the course of treatment. Lambert and colleague Gary Burlingame are recognized as experts in psychotherapy outcome measurement research.

#2088

Jolanta Rabe‐jabłońska

#107561

Overall Influence

#2089

Peter D. Eimas

#103552

Overall Influence

1934 - 2005 (71 years)

Peter D. Eimas was an expert in psychology and cognitive sciences and a professor at Brown University. His seminal paper showed that infants have greater linguistic and cognitive abilities than previously thought. Eimas was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He died in Providence, Rhode Island. The "Peter D. Eimas Graduate Fund" was established in his honor at Brown University to help graduate students studying psychological or the cognitive sciences. In one of his studies he observed that infants at the age of one month recognise change in language and can distinguish between "bah" and "pah".

#2090

Stephen J. Suomi

#107578

Overall Influence

#2091

Ralph Melvin Stogdill

#107604

Overall Influence

#2092

Kaarin Anstey

#103297

Overall Influence

Kaarin Anstey is an Australian Laureate Fellow and one of Australia's top dementia scientists. She is Co-Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research at the University of New South Wales, Australia, where she is Scientia Professor of Psychology. Kaarin Anstey is an Honorary Professor at the Australian National University and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. She is a Director of the NHMRC Dementia Centre for Research Collaboration, Senior Principal Research Scientist at NeuRA and leads the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Cogn...

#2093

Alexandru Roșca

Alexandru Roșca

#28046

Overall Influence

1906 - 1996 (90 years)

Alexandru Roṣca was a Romanian psychologist and professor. In 1991, he was elected a titular member of the Romanian Academy. Works Psihopatologia deviaților morali Adaptarea socială Motivele acțiunii umane Tehnica psihologiei experimentale și practice Tratat de psihologie experimentală Psihologia muncii industriale Metodologie și tehnici experimentale în psihologie Psihologie generală Sinteze de psihologie contemporană

#2094

Takao Umemoto

#77741

Overall Influence

1921 - 2002 (81 years)

Takao Umemoto was a Japanese psychologist whose specific interest was music psychology; he was also an academic, and pianist. Early life Umemoto was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan . Umemoto's father was a professor in psychology and a practicing Buddhist monk at Higashi-Honganji temple. He valued music and pressed Umemoto to dedicate his youth to music and playing piano. This would later influence his career, inspiring the topics of his research and lectures. He would continue to play piano till his death .

#2095

Elizabeth A Phelps

#107651

Overall Influence

#2096

C. Keith Auteur Conners

#107659

Overall Influence

#2097

Daniel J. Bauer

#91959

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Daniel John Bauer is an American statistician, professor, and director of the quantitative psychology program at the University of North Carolina, where he is also on the faculty at the Center for Developmental Science. He is known for rigorous methodological work on latent variable models and is a proponent of integrative data analysis, a meta-analytic technique that pools raw data across multiple independent studies.

#2098

Karestan Koenen

#104221

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Karestan Chase Koenen is an American epidemiologist and Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is also the head of the Global Neuropsychiatric Genomics Initiative of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute. She is a fellow of the American Psychopathological Association and a former president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. In 2015, she received the Robert S. Laufer, PhD, Memorial Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

#2099

Martin Eimer

#107734

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

#2100

Todd Risley

#43323

Overall Influence

1937 - 2007 (70 years)

Todd Robert Risley was an American psychologist. He is credited with helping to create the field of applied behavior analysis, and has been described as a "pioneer" in this field. He is known for the study he conducted with Betty Hart, who was his graduate student at the University of Kansas at the time, on the word gap between rich and poor children. He was also a co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis.

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