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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Person Name

School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Psychology,

#2401

Robyn Fivush

#118594

Overall Influence

#2402

Cathy Creswell

#99921

Overall Influence

Catharine Sarah Creswell is a British psychologist and Professor of Developmental Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford. She specialises in anxiety disorders in children and young people. Education Creswell was educated at University of Oxford, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree. She later qualified as a Clinical Psychologist at University College London followed by a PhD in 2004.

#2403

Israel Liberzon

#118635

Overall Influence

#2404

Stephen Zaccaro

#87243

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Stephen J. Zaccaro is an American professor of psychology from Fairfax, Virginia where he teaches at the George Mason University. He has one book and 100 other works in print, which, according to Google Scholar were cited more than 8934 times bringing the h-index of his to 36.

#2405

Andrew Colman

#101543

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Andrew Michael Colman is a British psychologist known for his research on decision making and game theory. Career Colman grew up in South Africa where he attended the University of Cape Town from which he was awarded a BA in Psychology in 1965 followed by an MA in 1968. In that year he participated in the sit-in during the Mafeje affair. He then worked for periods at both the University of Cape Town and Rhodes University before moving in 1970 to a post at the University of Leicester where he remained for the rest of his career. He was awarded a PhD by Rhodes University in 1979.

#2406

Maureen Black

#117269

Overall Influence

Maureen McEvoy Black is an American pediatric psychologist and expert in early childhood development. She specializes in growth and nutrition. Black was the John A. Scholl MD and Mary Louise Scholl MD Endowed Professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine from 2003 to 2021.

#2407

Janel Gauthier

#80398

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Janel Gauthier is a Canadian psychologist with expertise in clinical psychology, human rights and ethics. Career He received his doctorate in psychology from Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada, in 1975. He spent most of his academic career at Laval University, Quebec City from which he retired as Professor Emeritus in 2012.

#2408

Judith Kestenberg

#75681

Overall Influence

1910 - 1999 (89 years)

Judith Ida Kestenberg was a child psychiatrist who worked with Holocaust survivors. She founded the International Study of Organized Persecution of Children an organization that coordinated the psychologically informed interviews of over 1500 child survivors throughout much of the world. She was also the lead creator of the Kestenberg Movement Profile , used to create a psychological profile based exclusively on movement patterns.

#2409

Joseph Lee Rodgers

#86926

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Joseph Lee Rodgers III is an American psychologist who specializes in quantitative psychology and topics in developmental psychology and social biology. He is the Lois Autrey Betts Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Vanderbilt University, and he is also the George Lynn Cross Research Professor Emeritus at the University of Oklahoma, where he taught from 1981 to 2012.

#2410

Donald J. Cohen

#40633

Overall Influence

1940 - 2001 (61 years)

Donald Jay Cohen was an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and director of the Yale Child Study Center and the Sterling Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Psychology at the Yale School of Medicine. According to the New York Times, he was "known for his scientific work, including fundamental contributions to the understanding of autism, Tourette's syndrome and other illnesses, and for his leadership in bringing together the biological and the psychological approaches to understanding psychiatric disorders in childhood"; his work "reshaped the field of child psychiatry". He was ...

#2411

Jeffrey Mogil

#91130

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Jeffrey S. Mogil, FCAHS, FRSC is a Canadian neuroscientist and the E.P. Taylor Professor of Pain Studies and Canada Research Chair in the Genetics of Pain at McGill University. He is known for his work in the genetics of pain, for being among the first scientists to demonstrate sex differences in pain perception, and for identifying previously unknown factors and confounds that affect the integrity of contemporary pain research. He has an h-index of 90.

#2412

Ethel Tobach

#102630

Overall Influence

1921 - 2015 (94 years)

Ethel Tobach was an American psychologist known for her work in comparative and peace psychology. Early life and education Tobach was born on November 7, 1921, in Miaskovka, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was then part of the Soviet Union. Both of Tobach's parents were Jewish, which led to them and their daughter having to flee the country to avoid pogroms soon after Tobach was born. They initially fled to Palestine, but after Tobach's father died when she was nine months old, she and her mother moved to Philadelphia in the United States. Tobach and her mother lived in Philadelphia until they moved to Brooklyn, New York when Tobach was ten years old.

#2413

Joel Pokorny

#118966

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

#2414

James M. Swanson

#118991

Overall Influence

#2415

Terry A. Beehr

#119033

Overall Influence

#2416

Frank X. Barron

#119036

Overall Influence

#2417

Monika Bullinger

#119050

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

#2418

Curt A. Sandman

#119096

Overall Influence

#2419

Tony Buon

#18311

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Tony Buon , is a British workplace psychologist, speaker, mediator and author. He is the Managing Partner of Buon Consultancy based in Edinburgh, Scotland Buon has been a Lecturer at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen Scotland, a Senior lecturer at Macquarie University Australia and at the University of Western Sydney, Australia and a Visiting professor at a number of international universities including Harvard , Shanghai Normal University and Trinity College Dublin. His areas of expertise include: Workplace psychology; learning & development, alcohol & other drugs in the workplace; employ...

#2420

Faraneh Vargha-Khadem

#73688

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Faraneh Vargha-Khadem is a British cognitive neuroscientist specializing in developmental amnesia among children. Faraneh was a part of the team that identified the FOXP2 gene, the so-called 'speech gene', that may explain why humans talk and chimps do not.

#2421

Matthew D. Lieberman

#119166

Overall Influence

#2422

Julianne Holt-Lunstad

#54206

Overall Influence

Julianne Holt-Lunstad is a psychologist at Brigham Young University. She is a fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and Association for Psychological Science. Research Holt-Lunstad specializes in psychology and neuroscience. Her research focuses on the long-term health effects of social connections and includes a meta-analysis on the effects of loneliness and social isolation on mortality. That research has linked loneliness to deteriorating health.

#2423

Katharina Scheiter

#115981

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Katharina Scheiter is a German psychologist. She is head of the Multiple Representations Lab at the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien and full professor for Empirical Research on Learning and Instruction at the University of Tübingen, Germany. In 2016, she was awarded honorary professor of the School of Education at the University of Nottingham.

#2424

Roderick P. Mcdonald

#119261

Overall Influence

#2425

Suzanne Craft

#119278

Overall Influence

#2426

Clare Cooper Marcus

#67262

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Clare Cooper Marcus is a prominent educator in landscape architecture and architecture and a pioneer in the field of social issues in housing, open space design, and healing landscapes. Clare Cooper Marcus was born in 1934 and raised in a north London suburb. She received her undergraduate degree in historical geography from University College, London and a Masters in urban and cultural Geography from University of Nebraska at Lincoln. She returned to England to teach cartography at the University of Sheffield, and worked as urban planner at the Ministry of Housing and London County Council. S...

#2427

Shane R. Jimerson

Shane R. Jimerson

#97310

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Shane R. Jimerson is a professor of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Education and academic career Jimerson earned a B.A. in psychology with a minor in education from the University of California, Berkeley in 1992. He earned an M.A. in Child Development in 1994 and doctoral degrees in school psychology and child development in 1997 from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

#2428

James Jones

#60334

Overall Influence

James McCoy Jones is an African-American social psychologist and cultural diversity scholar. He is Trustees' Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Black American Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Diversity at the University of Delaware. He is a past president of both the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.He previously taught at Harvard University and Howard University before joining the University of Delaware. In 2011, he received the Outstanding Lifetime Contributions to Psychology Award from the American Psychological Association.

#2429

Carlos Perris

#119528

Overall Influence

#2430

Margaret Gatz

#117589

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Margaret Gatz is a professor of psychology, gerontology and preventive medicine at the University of Southern California's Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. She was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012.

#2431

Toni Antonucci

#108886

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Toni Claudette Antonucci is an American psychologist, currently the Elizabeth R. Douvan Collegiate Professor at University of Michigan and formerly President of Gerontological Society of America Her husband was James S. Jackson.

#2432

John G.h. Gruzelier

#119694

Overall Influence

#2433

John E. Lochman

#119792

Overall Influence

#2434

Öget Öktem Tanör

#87339

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Öget Öktem Tanör is the first neuropsychologist from Turkey. In 2017, she was charged with "terrorism propaganda" by the Turkish government for signing a petition calling on the government to halt its military operations in the Kurdish-populated areas of the country.

#2435

David Lisak

#45559

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

David Lisak is an American clinical psychologist. He received his PhD from Duke University, and is a retired associate professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Lisak's research focuses on "the causes and consequences of interpersonal violence...motives and behaviors of rapists and murderers, the impact of childhood abuse on adult men, and relationship between child abuse and later violence".

#2436

Adam S. Radomsky

#67567

Overall Influence

Adam Scott Radomsky is a Canadian psychologist who studies obsessive-compulsive disorder and related anxiety disorders. He is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, and was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.

#2437

Jari Tiihonen

#120023

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

#2438

George A. Marcoulides

#120052

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

#2439

Robert MacCoun

#92545

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Robert J. MacCoun is the James and Patricia Kowal Professor of Law at Stanford Law School., a Professor by courtesy in Stanford's Psychology Department, and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute. Trained as a social psychologist, he has published numerous studies on psychoactive drug use and policy, individual and group decision-making, distributive and procedural justice, social influence processes, and bias in the use and interpretation of research evidence by scientists, journalists and citizens.

#2440

Nigel R. Franks

#39211

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Nigel R. Franks is an English emeritus professor of Animal Behaviour and Ecology at the University of Bristol. He obtained a BSc and PhD in biology at the University of Leeds. After receiving his BSc in 1977 he began his PhD, during which he spent two years doing field work in Panama on army ants with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. He was awarded the Thomas Henry Huxley Award in 1980 from the Zoological Society of London for the best British PhD in Zoology. He then received a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Great Exhibition of 1851 allowing him to undertake postdoctoral work under Edward O.

#2441

Michelle K. Ryan

#94982

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Michelle K. Ryan is a Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology at the University of Exeter and Professor of Diversity at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Education She completed her undergraduate and a Ph.D. study in psychology from Australian National University in 2004 for her thesis ‘A gendered self or a gendered context? A self-categorization appraisal of gender differences’.

#2442

Robert Lickliter

#100742

Overall Influence

Robert Earl Lickliter is an American developmental psychologist and professor at Florida International University. He is known for researching the development of intersensory perception and selective attention in humans and other animals. He is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology.

#2443

A. Charles Catania

#80584

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Anthony Charles Catania is an American researcher in behavior analysis known for his theoretical, experimental, and applied work. He is an Emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County , where he taught and conducted research for 35 years prior to his retirement in 2008. He received a B.A. and M.A. at Columbia University in Psychology. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology at Harvard University in 1961. He remained at Harvard to conduct research as a postdoctoral researcher in B. F. Skinner's laboratory. Prior to his career at UMBC, he held a faculty positio...

#2444

W. Andrew Collins

#120400

Overall Influence

#2445

Gian‐vittorio Caprara

#120408

Overall Influence

#2446

Alexander Cools

Alexander Cools

#102450

Overall Influence

1941 - 2013 (72 years)

Alexander Rudolf Cools was a Dutch behavioral pharmacologist. He obtained his Ph.D. under the supervision of Jacques van Rossum and Jo Vossen in 1973 at the Radboud University Nijmegen, where he was a professor from 1985 until his retirement in 2006. In 2014, a special issue of the scientific journal Behavioural Pharmacology was dedicated to his memory. Cools was one of the founders of the European Behavioural Pharmacology Society and its second president. In 2003 he received that society's Distinguished Achievement Award.

#2447

Kathryn Paige Harden

#36206

Overall Influence

1989 - Present (35 years)

Kathryn Paige Harden is an American psychologist and behavior geneticist. She is Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is also the leader of the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab and the co-director of the Texas Twin Project. She is also a Faculty Research Associate at the University of Texas at Austin's Population Research Center and a Jacobs Foundation research fellow.

#2448

Kenneth R. Hammond

#120441

Overall Influence

#2449

Essi Viding

#77903

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Essi Maria Viding FBA FMedSci is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at University College London in the Faculty of Brain Sciences, where she co-directs the Developmental Risk and Resilience Unit, and an associate of King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. Viding's research focuses on development of disruptive behaviour disorders, as well as children and young people's mental health problems more broadly. She uses cognitive experimental measures, brain imaging and genetically informative study designs in her work.

#2450

Laurie Helgoe

#91680

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Laurie Anne Helgoe is an American psychologist with an interest in the relationship between personality development and culture. In 2008, her writing revealed that scholarly and popular accounts regarding humans who display the personality traits of introversion and extraversion were flawed, and that instead of representing 25-30% of the population, introverts make up 57% of the population. The identified flaw was a dated reliance on the early work of Isabel Briggs Myers, and the failure to note results of the latest nationally representative surveys using the Myers Briggs Type Indicator , a questionnaire used by psychologists to classify human personality traits.

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