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,
#3701
Michael Timothy Kane
#164325
Overall Influence
#3702
Nady A. El-guebaly
#164330
Overall Influence
#3703
Irwin P. Levin
#164346
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
#3704
Ricardo Felipe Munoz
#107116
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Ricardo Felipe Muñoz is an academic, psychologist, and author. He is Distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology at Palo Alto University, and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco . He serves as Adjunct Clinical Professor at Stanford University, and Affiliated Faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#3705
Anja Mehnert
#164387
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
#3706
Brian M. Barraclough
#164398
Overall Influence
#3707
Gene Paul Sackett
#164434
Overall Influence
#3708
Chris Hatcher
#91178
Overall Influence
1946 - 1999 (53 years)
Chris Hatcher, Ph.D., was a clinical psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who was an expert in police and forensic psychology. He dedicated his professional life to the study of violence and its prevention. He died unexpectedly at the age of 52.
Go to Profile#3709
Robert F. Boruch
#114621
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Robert Francis Boruch is an American psychologist. Boruch studied metallurgical engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology, graduating in 1964, and completed a doctorate in psychology alongside a minor in statistics in 1968 at Iowa State University. He was a fellow at Stanford University between 1986 and 1987. Dr. Boruch taught at Northwestern University until 1989, when he joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty. Dr. Boruch was later appointed University Trustee Professor of Education and Statistics within the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Over the course of his career Dr.
Go to Profile#3710
Pauline M. Maki
#164513
Overall Influence
#3711
Thomas H. Carr
#164558
Overall Influence
#3712
Rachel Sarah Herz
#126034
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Rachel Sarah Herz is a Canadian and American psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist, recognized for her research on the psychology of smell. Background Rachel Herz completed her undergraduate degree in psychology and biology at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and an MA and PhD in the Psychology Department at the University of Toronto. After completing her PhD in 1992, she won a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Post-Doctoral Award and took her research to the University of British Columbia. In 1994, she received the Ajinomoto USA Inaugural Award for Promising Young...
Go to Profile#3713
Markus Heinrichs
#164659
Overall Influence
#3714
Filippo Aureli
#164667
Overall Influence
#3715
Lawrence Welch
#42050
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Lawrence S. Welch is an Australian organisational theorist, Professor of International Business at the Melbourne Business School, known for his work on internationalization and international business operations.
Go to Profile#3716
Henny P. A. Boshuizen
#164744
Overall Influence
#3717
Fred A. Rogosch
#164805
Overall Influence
#3718
Angela Fagerlin
#164815
Overall Influence
#3719
Catrin Finkenauer
#164902
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
#3720
Frederick S. Keller
#164927
Overall Influence
#3721
Alicia Ann Grandey
#164938
Overall Influence
#3722
Isaac Prilleltensky
#164943
Overall Influence
#3723
Erich Weede
#164961
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
#3724
Joseph J. Ryan
#164982
Overall Influence
#3725
Marc Marschark
#165025
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#3726
Shea Zellweger
#93222
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (101 years)
Shea Zellweger was an American semiotician who served as Chair of the Psychology Department at the University of Mount Union from 1969 to 1992. Zellweger’s lifetime achievements and academic contributions to education continue to be significant. Zellweger was probably best known for his creation of a simpler and more mentally intuitive system of logic notation called the Logic Alphabet. The Logic Alphabet, also known as the X-stem Logic Alphabet , is a notation system that contains a unique and visually iconographic approach to learning and performing logic operations. Patents have been issue...
Go to Profile#3727
George Alexander Kelly
#165126
Overall Influence
#3728
Brigitte Röder
#165130
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
#3729
David Scott. Tulsky
#165149
Overall Influence
#3730
Andrea Mechelli
#165168
Overall Influence
#3731
Guy Bodenmann
#165265
Overall Influence
#3732
Samuel Sommers
#106619
Overall Influence
Samuel R. Sommers is an American social psychologist and professor of psychology at Tufts University. He is known for his research on implicit racial stereotyping and color-blind racism. For example, he has published multiple studies on the effects of increased racial diversity in mock juries. With Michael Norton, he also published a study in 2011 showing that, on average, white people think more racism against them exists than exists against black people. L. Jon Wertheim and Sommers wrote the book "This Is Your Brain on Sports: The Science of Underdogs, the Value of Rivalry, and What We Can ...
Go to Profile#3733
Brett M. Smith
#165302
Overall Influence
#3734
Neil J. Salkind
#165315
Overall Influence
#3735
Ina Weiner
#165398
Overall Influence
#3736
John M. Gaito
#165403
Overall Influence
#3737
Gail S. Hackett
#165405
Overall Influence
#3738
Rolf Verleger
#165425
Overall Influence
#3739
Brett A. Clementz
#165429
Overall Influence
#3740
Timothy P. Mcnamara
#165460
Overall Influence
#3741
Richard A. W. Sherman
#165464
Overall Influence
#3742
Kinh Luan Phan
#165617
Overall Influence
#3743
Alexandra M. Freund
#165670
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
#3744
Catherine Steiner-Adair
#94818
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Catherine Steiner-Adair is a clinical psychologist, school consultant, author, and teacher whose professional life is devoted to working with children, parents, and schools. Education Catherine Steiner-Adair graduated from Scarsdale High School, then went on to earn her Bachelor of Arts from Bowdoin College in 1976. She was also an exchange student at Williams College from 1974 to 1975. After Bowdoin, she went on to earn her doctorate in Clinical and Consulting Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1984. During her time at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she stu...
Go to Profile#3745
Chester A. Insko
#165795
Overall Influence
#3746
Reuven Gal
#97057
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Reuven Gal is an Israeli social and clinical psychologist, a social activist and entrepreneur, researcher, author and consultant in the field of behavioural, communal and social sciences. Gal currently holds an academic position as a Senior Research Fellow at the Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where he is leading and conducting several research projects related to Israeli society.
Go to Profile#3747
Walter Schumm
#96207
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Walter R. Schumm is a professor in the Department of Family Studies and Human Services at Kansas State University. He is also the editor-in-chief of the academic journal Marriage & Family Review. Much of Schumm's research purports to find negative effects of same-sex parenting, although his work has been criticized for its methodology. In 2010, he gave "expert evidence" in a Florida court against a gay man who challenged the state's ban on LGBT adoption.
Go to Profile#3748
Ozlem Ayduk
#54117
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Ozlem Nefise Ayduk is an American social psychologist at U.C. Berkeley researching close relationships, emotion regulation, and the development of self-regulation in children. She is a fellow at the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. She has contributed content to several psychology handbooks, dictionaries, and encyclopedias.
Go to Profile#3749
Ilene C. Siegler
#166016
Overall Influence
#3750
Boris B. Gorzalka
#166031
Overall Influence
