The Most Influential People Across History
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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Psychology,
#2951
Chockalingam Viswesvaran
#138122
Overall Influence
#2952
Jillian Roberts
#56760
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Jillian Roberts is a Canadian child psychologist, author, speaker, and Professor at the University of Victoria. Born in British Columbia, Roberts obtained degrees from the University of Waterloo , Dalhousie University , the University of Toronto , and the University of Calgary . Her doctoral work was about children with HIV/AIDS. In 1999, she assumed a faculty position in educational psychology at the University of Victoria.Roberts' Just Enough series of children's books was released in 2016. She followed this with the series World Around Us.
Go to Profile#2953
Debra Titone
#130603
Overall Influence
Debra Titone is a cognitive psychologist known for her research on bilingualism and multilingualism. She is currently a Professor of Psychology and a chair holder of Canada Research in Language & Multilingualism at McGill University. Titone is a founding member and officer of the professional society, Women in Cognitive Science. She and her colleagues have written about gender disparities in opportunities, along with the advancement of women the field of cognitive science, with specific reference to Canada.
Go to Profile#2954
Clayton R. Neighbors
#138313
Overall Influence
#2955
Ruth Kanfer
#138373
Overall Influence
#2956
Klaas Sijtsma
#138392
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
#2957
Mona Weissmark
#103571
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Mona Sue Weissmark is an American clinical psychologist and social psychologist, whose work on the inter-generational impact of injustice has received international recognition. She is best known for her groundbreaking social experiment of bringing children of Holocaust survivors face-to-face with children of Nazis, and later, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of African American slaves with slave owners. She is also a professor of psychology at Northwestern University and author of numerous journal articles and three books: Doing Psychotherapy Effectively and Justice Matters: Legacies of...
Go to Profile#2958
Thomas Llewelyn Webb
#108057
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Thomas Llewelyn Webb is a professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield in the UK. He is a social psychologist whose interests include motivation, goal orientation, and emotional self-regulation. His research has shown that making backup plans can reduce the likelihood of risky behavior.
Go to Profile#2959
Marc O. Ernst
#138476
Overall Influence
#2960
Martin S. Fiebert
#110526
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Martin S. Fiebert , is an emeritus professor at California State University, Long Beach in the Department of Psychology. He has published more than 70 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Education Fiebert was born in the Bronx, New York in 1939. He graduated from Bronx High School of Science in 1956, and received his B.S. degree from Queens College, City University of New York in 1960. He was awarded his Ph.D. in Clinical psychology from the University of Rochester in 1965 and completed his thesis, Cognitive Styles in the Deaf under the direction of Professor Emory L. Cowen.
Go to Profile#2961
Sharon Oviatt
#118985
Overall Influence
Sharon Oviatt is an internationally recognized computer scientist, professor and researcher known for her work in the field of human–computer interaction on human-centered multimodal interface design and evaluation.
Go to Profile#2962
A. V. Apkarian
#51544
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Apkar Vania Apkarian is a professor of physiology, anesthesiology, and physical medicine and rehabilitation at Northwestern University in the Feinberg School of Medicine. He has been a pioneer in the use of Magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study the neurochemistry of the brain and the development of novel analytical approaches to studying consciousness, including the first demonstration of the brain's small-world network properties using fMRI. In 2008, Dr. Apkarian proposed the theory that chronic pain is a form of emotional learning, which popularized the study of reward learning within the pain research field.
Go to Profile#2963
Frederico Guilherme Ed Graeff
#138523
Overall Influence
#2964
Charles Hubert Lawshe
#138649
Overall Influence
#2965
David. De Cremer
#138706
Overall Influence
#2966
Edward O. Wiley
#90833
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Edward Orlando Wiley III is the curator emeritus of ichthyology at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and professor of systematics and evolution for the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas. His master's adviser was Darrell Hall, of Sam Houston State University , and his doctoral advisor was Donn E. Rosen, of the American Museum of Natural History . Wiley has published extensively in topics related to phylogenetic systematics, is a Past President of the Society of Systematic Biology and was involved in the founding of the Willi Hennig Society.
Go to Profile#2967
Urs Nater
#133151
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Urs Markus Nater is a Swiss-German psychologist. He is the head of the department of Clinical and Health Psychology of the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Vienna and also holds the professorship for Clinical Psychology of Adulthood.
Go to Profile#2968
Donald R. Atkinson
#110315
Overall Influence
1940 - 2008 (68 years)
Donald Ray Atkinson was an American counseling psychologist and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara . He was known for his extensive work in multicultural counseling psychology. He was the director of training for UCSB's Counseling Psychology Program for ten years , and previously as Assistant Dean of the Department of Education there for four years . Atkinson grew up in Baraboo, Wisconsin and graduated from Baraboo High School. He served in the United States Navy for two years. He wrote a book about Baraboo: "Baraboo: A Selective History." He also wrote other books and articles about counseling.
Go to Profile#2969
Henry Tosi
#138850
Overall Influence
#2970
Roi Cohen Kadosh
#115389
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Roi Cohen Kadosh is an Israeli-British cognitive neuroscientist notable for his work on numerical and mathematical cognition and learning and cognitive enhancement. He is a professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and the head of the School of Psychology at the University of Surrey.
Go to Profile#2971
Theodore Reich
#138896
Overall Influence
#2972
Carol Kulik
#110975
Overall Influence
Carol T. Kulik is an Australia-based researcher who focuses on line managers, human resources, and diversity & inclusion. She is a Research Professor of Human Resource Management and a senior researcher within the Centre for Workplace Excellence at the University of South Australia. She is co-author of Human Resources for the Non-HR Manager .
Go to Profile#2973
Gergely Csibra
#138964
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
#2974
Elizabeth Zelinski
#60400
Overall Influence
Elizabeth Zelinski is an American college professor known for her expertise in gerontechnology, neuroscience, and cognition. She is the Rita and Edward Polusky Chair in Education and Aging Professor of Gerontology and Psychology at the USC Davis School of Gerontology and she heads the Center for Digital Aging. Zelinski studies longitudinal changes in objective cognition and self-reported memory in healthy older adults, interventions to improve their cognition and health effects on cognition in aging.
Go to Profile#2975
Stephen E. Palmer
#139126
Overall Influence
#2976
Vladimir J. Konečni
#97678
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Vladimir J. Konečni is an American and Serbian psychologist, aesthetician, poet, dramatist, fiction writer, and art photographer, currently an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego.
Go to Profile#2977
Jutta Heckhausen
#139211
Overall Influence
#2978
Philip L. Roth
#139222
Overall Influence
#2979
Kurt I. Lewin
#139279
Overall Influence
#2980
Elizabeth M. Brannon
#83742
Overall Influence
Elizabeth M. Brannon is an American neuroscientist. She serves as Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Chair in the Natural Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Brannon's research, focused on comparative cognition, numerical cognition, and educational neuroscience, has earned an h-index of 68.
Go to Profile#2981
Sohee Park
#118356
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
#2982
Richard Allen Fabes
#139513
Overall Influence
#2983
Lewis Paeff Lipsitt
#139526
Overall Influence
#2984
Pat Michie
#93172
Overall Influence
Patricia Therese Michie is Emeritus Professor of Psychology, and co-director of the Schizophrenia Program of the Priority Research Centre in Translational Neuroscience and Mental Health at the University of Newcastle.
Go to Profile#2985
Koen Demyttenaere
#139613
Overall Influence
#2986
Arthur Brian Markman
#139648
Overall Influence
#2987
Antje Meyer
#110246
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Antje Susanne Meyer is a German-Dutch experimental psychologist, known for her work in language production. She is currently one of the scientific directors of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and also a professor of individual differences in language processing at Radboud University.
Go to Profile#2988
Robert R. Carkhuff
#139677
Overall Influence
#2989
Lee Roy Beach
#139689
Overall Influence
#2990
Klaus Willmes
#139690
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
#2991
Keith Owen Yeates
#139693
Overall Influence
#2992
Abraham H. Wandersman
#139744
Overall Influence
#2993
Douglas L. Hintzman
#139780
Overall Influence
#2994
Ronald E. Riggio
#139815
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
#2995
David Gaffan
#139827
Overall Influence
#2996
Miron Zuckerman
#139854
Overall Influence
#2997
David Wai‐ock Chan
#139896
Overall Influence
#2998
Lisa Aronson Fontes
#93521
Overall Influence
Lisa Aronson Fontes is an American psychologist, author, activist and academic associated with the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Biography Fontes was born in New York City. She graduated from the New Lincoln School and completed her undergraduate education in Romance Languages at Cornell University. In 2006 she was a Fulbright Scholar in Argentina. She also earned a master's degrees in journalism from Columbia University School of Journalism and a master's degree in psychology from New York University. She earned a PhD in counseling psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1992.
Go to Profile#2999
Shirley Feldman
#115620
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Sarah Shirley Feldman is an American developmental psychologist and senior research scientist in Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where she is also associate director in the Program in Human Biology. She was the director of Stanford's Center for the Study of Families, Children, and Youth from 1991 until the center closed in 1994. She collaborated with Paul R. Ehrlich on the 1977 book The Race Bomb: Skin Color, Prejudice, and Intelligence.
Go to Profile#3000
Robert D. Enright
#140014
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
