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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

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School

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List of the most influential people in Psychology,

#3451

Robert J. Langs

#154858

Overall Influence

#3452

Robert Eric Wood

#154866

Overall Influence

#3453

Peter B. Warr

#154908

Overall Influence

#3454

Edward E. Sampson

#154939

Overall Influence

#3455

Penelope Peterson

#102623

Overall Influence

Penelope L. Peterson is an American educational psychologist and academic administrator. Peterson was named Dean of Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy in September 1997 and previously served as University Distinguished Professor of Education at Michigan State University and Sears-Bascom Professor of Education at University of Wisconsin–Madison. She also served as president of the American Education Research Association .

#3456

Kathy Sylva

#145276

Overall Influence

Kathy Sylva is an educational psychologist. She is Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology at the University of Oxford. Biography Sylva has a BA in Psychology and Social relations, and a master's degree and PHD in Developmental Psychology, all from Harvard University.

#3457

Vickie Mays

#38977

Overall Influence

Vickie M. Mays is an American psychologist known for her research on racial disparities in health. She is a professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Letters and Sciences and a professor in the Department of Health Services, both at the University of California, Los Angeles . She is also the director of the BRITE Center for Science, Research and Policy at UCLA. In 2007, she received the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy from the American Psychological Association, and in 2020, she received the Carl Taube Award for Lifetime Contributions to the Field of Mental Health from the American Public Health Association's Mental Health Section.

#3458

Anke Hinney

#155181

Overall Influence

#3459

Manos Tsakiris

#155191

Overall Influence

#3460

Michael E. Dawson

#155381

Overall Influence

#3461

Akira Miyake

#155384

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

#3462

Joel S. Warm

#155443

Overall Influence

#3463

Wolfgang Ahrens

#155444

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

#3464

Martial Van Der Linden

#155472

Overall Influence

#3465

Christiane Jungen

#155512

Overall Influence

#3466

James Douglas Sargent

#155513

Overall Influence

#3467

Paul W. Frankland

#155545

Overall Influence

#3468

Con Slobodchikoff

#34552

Overall Influence

Constantine "Con" Slobodchikoff is an animal behaviorist and conservation biologist. He is a professor at Northern Arizona University where he studies referential communication, using Gunnison's prairie dogs as a model species. Much of his recent research has shown a complex communicative ability of the Gunnison prairie dog alarm calls. In early 2008 he formed the Animal language Institute to create a place where people can find and share research in animal communication, including language.

#3469

Larissa A. Pohorecky

#155651

Overall Influence

#3470

Mary Boyle

#99048

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Mary Boyle is a clinical psychologist. She is a Professor Emeritus at University of East London. Books Schizophrenia: A Scientific Delusion?, 2nd ed., Routledge, 2002, -explores the concept of schizophrenia through the lens of the philosophy of science using concepts from Rudolf Carnap and Lewis White Beck considering the validity of the biological basis for schizophrenia including genetic research. It considers the validity of the DSM's definition of schizophrenia, and considers aspects of the sociology behind its diagnosis and the concept itself following Michel Foucault. It explores alterna...

#3471

Emily Falk

#50697

Overall Influence

Emily B. Falk is an American psychologist, neuroscientist, and professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, holding secondary appointments in psychology and marketing.

#3472

Madonna Constantine

#133803

Overall Influence

Madonna G. Constantine was an American psychology and education professor who formerly taught at Teachers College, Columbia University. She was fired in 2008 on grounds of plagiarism. Education and early career Constantine earned a B.S. in psychology from Xavier University of Louisiana in 1984, an M.S. from the same institution in counseling, and a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the University of Memphis. She worked at the University of Texas at Austin for five years at the Counseling and Mental Health Center before becoming the director of the Temple University vocational counseling cent...

#3473

Deborah Tolman

#85942

Overall Influence

Deborah L. Tolman is a developmental psychologist and the co-founder of SPARK: Sexualization Protest: Action, Resistance, Knowledge. She is the author of Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk about Sexuality, which was awarded the 2003 Distinguished Book Award from the Association for Women in Psychology.

#3474

Gaea Leinhardt

#155952

Overall Influence

#3475

Michael Cunningham

#113823

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Michael Robert Cunningham is an American social psychologist and professor in the Department of Communications at the University of Louisville. He is known for his research on perceived physical attractiveness of both men and women by members of the opposite sex. He has also researched the effects of emotions like trust and guilt on financial decision-making. He is also known for his pioneering work on hand transplantation.

#3476

Gary B. Melton

#155989

Overall Influence

#3477

Bernhard Sabel

#29197

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Bernhard Sabel is a German neuropsychologist and brain researcher. His more than 40 years of research are documented in over 200 publications, investigating treatment options for visual impairments through the activation and rehabilitation of residual vision capabilities.

#3478

K. Alison Clarke-Stewart

#133288

Overall Influence

1943 - 2014 (71 years)

K. Alison Clarke-Stewart was a developmental psychologist and expert on children's social development. She is well known for her work on the effects of child care on children's development, and for her research on children's suggestibility. She has written over 100 articles for scholarly journals and co-authored several leading textbooks in the field.

#3479

John M. Levine

#156197

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

#3480

Cornelius L. E. Katona

#156234

Overall Influence

#3481

Marco Perugini

#156244

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

#3482

Burt Klandermans

#156314

Overall Influence

#3483

Dorothy Munkenbeck Fragaszy

#156330

Overall Influence

#3484

Bertram Cohler

#133472

Overall Influence

1938 - 2012 (74 years)

Bertram Joseph Cohler was an American psychologist, psychoanalyst, and educator primarily associated with the University of Chicago, the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, and Harvard University. He advocated a life course approach to understanding human experience and subjectivity, drawing on insights from psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, personology, psychological anthropology, narrative studies, and the interdisciplinary field of human development. Cohler authored or co-authored over 200 articles and books. He contributed to numerous scholarly fields, including the study of adv...

#3485

Marnie E. Rice

#156350

Overall Influence

#3486

Ann Weatherall

#104868

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Ann Weatherall is a New Zealand psychology academic, currently professor of psychology at Victoria University of Wellington. Her research methodologies include discursive psychology and conversation analysis and interests include 'the relationships between gendered patterns of social disadvantage, language and discourse.' In 2014 she received a Marsden Grant to investigate rape culture. She has been an editor of the 'Women's Studies Journal'.

#3487

Alan J. Parkin

#156428

Overall Influence

#3488

Redouan Bshary

#156439

Overall Influence

#3489

Holly Branigan

#143912

Overall Influence

Holly Branigan FRSE is a Professor of Psychology of Language and Cognition and Head of the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Education Branigan has attended the University of York, the Université de Lille III and the University of Edinburgh. She completed her PhD in Cognitive Science at the University of Edinburgh in 1995.

#3490

John Lee Cox

#156497

Overall Influence

#3491

David C. Lane

#64784

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

David Christopher Lane is a professor of philosophy and sociology at Mt. San Antonio College, in Walnut, California. He is notable for his book The Making of a Spiritual Movement: The Untold Story of Paul Twitchell and Eckankar which exposed the origins of Eckankar and demonstrated the plagiarism of its founder, Paul Twitchell. He is also notable for introducing to a wider audience the teachings of Baba Faqir Chand, the Indian exponent of Surat Shabd Yoga from Hoshiapur in the book, The Unknowing Sage: The Life and Work of Baba Faqir Chand. Lane founded the journal, Understanding Cults and Sp...

#3492

Gail E. Wyatt

#150945

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Gail Elizabeth Wyatt is a clinical psychologist and board-certified sex therapist known for her research on consensual and abusive sexual relationships and their influence on psychological well-being. She is Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. Wyatt was the first African American woman in the state of California to receive a license to practice psychology and first African American woman to be named a Full Professor of the UCLA School of Medicine.

#3493

Linda Gallo

#156626

Overall Influence

Linda C. Gallo is a scientist known for behavioral medicine. Gallo is a professor at San Diego State University and serves as a part of the San Diego State / University of California, San Diego Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology. She serves as a co-director at the South Bay Latino Research Center.

#3494

Leonid Perlovsky

#72441

Overall Influence

Leonid Perlovsky is an Affiliated Research Professor at Northeastern University. His research involves cognitive algorithms and modeling of evolution of languages and cultures. He served as professor at Novosibirsk State University and New York University, and participated as a principal in commercial startups developing tools for text understanding, biotechnology, and financial predictions. He has published more than 320 papers and 10 book chapters and authored three books, including Neural Networks and Intellect, Oxford University Press, 2000 and two books with Springer in 2007. He serves ...

#3495

Robert Lee Barker

#73956

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Robert Lee Barker is a psychotherapist, author, editor, and professor of social work. He is most noted as the creator and author of The Social Work Dictionary through its first five editions and has written 20 other textbooks in the fields of family therapy, behavioral dysfunctions, and legal-social issues. He was an early advocate and systematizer for the case management approach to delivering social services, for private practice in social work, and for the emerging field of forensic social work.

#3496

Simona Ghetti

#134682

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Simona Ghetti is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis, where she is affiliated with the University of California Davis Center for Mind and Brain. She is known for her research on the development of episodic memory, reconstructive memory, and metamemory in youth, with a specific focus on individuals who have had traumatic experiences.

#3497

Howard I. Meltzer

#156848

Overall Influence

#3498

Albert Costa

#156874

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

#3499

Willem Kuyken

#156887

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

#3500

Nim Tottenham

#79972

Overall Influence

Nim Tottenham is a professor of psychology at Columbia University, where she leads the Developmental Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. Her research highlighted fundamental changes in amygdala-prefrontal cortex circuitry across childhood and adolescence and the influential role of early experiences on the developmental trajectories of these circuits.

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