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,
#3351
Mirta González Suárez
#38238
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Mirta González Suárez is a Costa Rican social psychologist and novelist. She is an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Costa Rica, where she has conducted research in women's studies and political psychology. Her first novel, Crimen con sonrisa , won a national literary award, the in 2013. In 2016 she won the award "UNA palabra" by the National University of Costa Rica for her novel "La gobernadora" and in 2021 the "Juegos Florales Hispanoamericanos de Quetzaltenango 2021" for the novel "La Independencia".
Go to Profile#3352
Kevin S. Labar
#151711
Overall Influence
#3353
Rosemary Gordon
#140819
Overall Influence
1918 - 2012 (94 years)
Rosemary Gordon was a naturalised British academic, clinical psychologist and leading analytical psychologist and writer. She was a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Psychological Society and an honorary fellow of the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Kent.
Go to Profile#3354
Mark Price Davies
#151741
Overall Influence
#3355
Richard M. Suinn
#151751
Overall Influence
#3356
Walter Vandereycken
#151753
Overall Influence
#3357
Toby D. Wall
#151766
Overall Influence
#3358
John Paul Campbell
#151775
Overall Influence
#3359
Pier Vincenzo Vincenzo Piazza
#151838
Overall Influence
#3360
William Robert Harlan
#151864
Overall Influence
#3361
Simone Kühn
#151895
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
#3362
Edwin C. Nevis
#97529
Overall Influence
1926 - 2011 (85 years)
Edwin C. Nevis was a gestalt therapist who identified Maslow's hierarchy of needs as culturally relative and formulated a hierarchy of needs for Chinese culture and a mode of classifying hierarchies of needs in different cultures. He co-founded the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland and founded the Gestalt International Study Center, and was a faculty member in management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Go to Profile#3363
Sandra L. Calvert
#103024
Overall Influence
Sandra L. Calvert is a developmental and child psychologist, whose scholarship illuminates the children's media area, including policy implications. Calvert is currently professor of psychology, and an affiliated faculty member at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. Calvert is also the co-founder and Director of the Children's Digital Media Center, a multi-university research initiative funded primarily by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, as well as by private foundations. Calvert served as chair of the department of psychology at Georgetown Unive...
Go to Profile#3364
Vincent Di Lollo
#151940
Overall Influence
#3365
Truett Allison
#151959
Overall Influence
#3366
Leslie Zebrowitz
#103214
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Dr. Leslie A. Zebrowitz is a social psychologist who studies the effects of the way people look on others' attitudes towards them. Her research has shown conclusively that babyfaced and angularly faced individuals are viewed differently. Among the effects, babyfaced individuals are seen as physically weaker, more submissive and less competent and, as Zebrowitz argued in a 2005 paper in Science, this may explain why politicians with more mature faces are more likely to win elections. She is the author of Reading Faces as well as many scholarly articles.
Go to Profile#3367
Larry E. Humes
#151987
Overall Influence
#3368
Judith A. Feeney
#152064
Overall Influence
#3369
Merton Max Gill
#152098
Overall Influence
#3370
Ronald Preston Rohner
#152110
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
#3371
Jeffrey Lee Derevensky
#152115
Overall Influence
#3372
Jürgen Kurt Rockstroh
#152143
Overall Influence
#3373
Duane T. Wegener
#152202
Overall Influence
#3374
G. Barrie Wetherill
#152203
Overall Influence
#3375
Stephan Hamann
#102295
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Stephan Hamann is an American psychologist and professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he has worked since 1996. His research focuses on understanding the neural basis of emotion, memory, and their interaction, using a combination of neuroimaging and neuropsychological approaches. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neuropsychologia.
Go to Profile#3376
Dinesh Sharma
#25486
Overall Influence
Dinesh J. Sharma is an American social scientist, psychologist, academic and entrepreneur in the fields of human development and rights, leadership and globalization; his recent publications include, “The Global Obama: Crossroads of Leadership in the 21st Century” and most recently “The Global Hillary: Women's Political Leadership in Cultural Context."
Go to Profile#3377
Antonia Lyons
#141638
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Antonia Catherine Lyons is a New Zealand health psychology academic. Career Lyons completed her PhD at Massey University in 1996. Her first academic post was as lecturer in health psychology at the University of Birmingham, UK, from 1996 to 2002. She returned to Massey University and rose to professor at this institution. Lyons took up the role of Professor of Health Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington in 2018, where she is also Head of School, School of Health.
Go to Profile#3378
David L. Hopkins
#152343
Overall Influence
#3379
Jamie Ward
#152404
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
#3380
Michael Joseph Goldstein
#152415
Overall Influence
#3381
G. J. Huston
#152430
Overall Influence
#3382
J. Bruce Overmier
#152439
Overall Influence
#3383
David Leiser
#124373
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
David Leiser is an Israeli professor of psychology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, specializing in Economic psychology and Social psychology. Leiser has served as President of the Economic Psychology division of the International Association of Applied Psychology since 2014.
Go to Profile#3384
Abraham Carmeli
#152528
Overall Influence
#3385
Charles Musselwhite
#68172
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Charles Brian Alexander Musselwhite is Professor of Psychology at Aberystwyth University. He was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, United Kingdom and educated at Bay House School, Gosport, Hampshire, followed by St Vincent Sixth Form College, Gosport, Hampshire. He went on to read Psychology at University of Southampton before completing a PhD in the Transportation Research Group, University of Southampton examining attitudes to car driver behaviour.
Go to Profile#3386
Panos Vostanis
#152585
Overall Influence
#3387
Tobias Egner
#152596
Overall Influence
#3388
Kibeom Lee
#152605
Overall Influence
#3389
Herbert Matschinger
#152629
Overall Influence
#3390
Paul Henry Lysaker
#152673
Overall Influence
#3391
Abigail J. Stewart
#152793
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
#3392
Sílvia Helena Koller
#152808
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
#3393
Simon C. Garrod
#152835
Overall Influence
#3394
Umberto Castiello
#152846
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
#3395
Alan M. Saks
#152895
Overall Influence
#3396
Seiji Takaku
#152913
Overall Influence
Seiji Takaku is professor of psychology and institutional research and assessment coordinator at Soka University of America . He was previously assistant professor of psychology at Minnesota State University, Mankato, from 2000 to 2002. He received his B.A. from University of California, Los Angeles, his M.A. from California State University, Long Beach, and his Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University.
Go to Profile#3397
Grant T. Harris
#152922
Overall Influence
#3398
Neil Boothby
#82525
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Dr. Neil Boothby is a psychologist and former US Government special advisor and senior coordinator to the USAID administrator on Children in Adversity, and former director of the Program on Forced Migration and Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Currently, he is the founding Director of the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child at the University of Notre Dame . His research focuses on the psychosocial consequences of organized violence on children. As a senior representative of UNICEF, UNHCR, and Save the Children, he has worked for more than 25 ...
Go to Profile#3399
Jean‐louis Laplanche
#153043
Overall Influence
#3400
Simone Pettigrew
#153054
Overall Influence
