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.

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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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List of the most influential people in Psychology,

#3851

John W. Berry

#69069

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

John Widdup Berry is a psychologist known for his work in two areas: ecological and cultural influences on behavior; and the adaptation of immigrants and indigenous peoples following intercultural contact. The first is broadly in the domain of cross-cultural psychology; the second is in the domain of intercultural psychology.

#3852

Elwood Holton

#137463

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Elwood F. "Ed" Holton III is the Jones S. Davis Distinguished Professor of Human Resource, Leadership, and Organization Development in the School of Human Resource Education and Workforce Development at Louisiana State University where he coordinates their B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degree programs in Human Resource and Leadership Development.

#3853

Matthew C. Keller

#169758

Overall Influence

Matthew C. Keller is an American behavioral and psychiatric geneticist. He is the Director of the Institute for Behavioral Genetics and a professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is known for his criticism of the candidate gene approach and for development of approaches in quantitative genetics.

#3854

Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus

#158740

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus is a licensed clinical psychologist and professor with the University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. Rotheram is the professor-in-residence in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. She is the Director of the Global Center for Children and Families at UCLA and the former director of the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services.

#3855

Brendan McGonigle

#150056

Overall Influence

1939 - 2007 (68 years)

Brendan O. McGonigle was a British/Irish experimental psychologist noted for his research on the learning activities of monkeys. Career He received a BA and a PhD from Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 1964 he did his postdoc at Durham University, moving in 1965 to lecture in experimental psychology at Oxford University. Following a stint as an assistant professor and NIH Research Associate at the Animal Behaviour Lab, Pennsylvania State University, he moved to the University of Edinburgh in 1969 where he was promoted through the ranks to Reader in Psychology. He died on ...

#3856

Tuomas Eerola

#169765

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Tuomas Eerola is professor in music cognition at Durham University. He studied at the University of Jyväskylä from where he received his MA in music in 1997, and his PhD in musicology in 2003. His research focuses on music and emotion. He has over 100 publications that can be accessed from Google Scholar. He has been awarded major research grants from Academy of Finland to study the appeal of sad music, from Economic and Social Research Council to explore the tagging of emotions in music, and Arts and Humanities Research Council to study the interpersonal entrainment in music performance

#3857

Frühling Rijsdijk

#169154

Overall Influence

Frühling Vesta Rijsdijk is a Dutch behavior geneticist who is professor in Statistical and Behavioral Genetics at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre in the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, a school of King's College London. She received her PhD in behavior genetics from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She has developed structural equation modeling for use in behavioral genetic studies of twins and families. She received an HEA Senior Fellowship from King's in January 2019.

#3858

Seth Pollak

#108940

Overall Influence

Seth Pollak is College of Letters and Science Distinguished Professor of Psychology and an Investigator in the Social and Affective Processes Unit of the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He specializes in developmental psychopathology, focusing on the neuropsychology of emotion, particularly the role that early experience plays in the development of brain structure and psychological functioning. Pollak received a B.A. from Franklin and Marshall College, an M.A. from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. He is married to fellow psychologist J...

#3859

Charles Winick

#74542

Overall Influence

1922 - 2015 (93 years)

Charles Winick was an American author, psychologist, professor of anthropology and sociology, and academician, noted for his work in the fields of gender, drug addiction, and prostitution. After serving in Military Intelligence during World War II, he was a professor of sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the City College of New York, taught at Columbia University, and was the author of more than 40 books, including a book which lamented the decline in the difference between the genders, studies about prostitution in American society, and several books on drug addiction.

#3860

Mubarak Awad

#45136

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Mubarak Awad is a Palestinian-American psychologist and an advocate of nonviolent resistance. Early life and move to the United States Awad, a Palestinian Christian , was born in 1943 in Jerusalem when it was under the British Mandate. When Awad was five years old, his father was killed during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and he became a refugee in the Old City of Jerusalem. His mother was a pacifist and argued against revenge. He was given the right to Israeli citizenship in 1967 when East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel after the Six-Day War but refused and kept his Jordanian citizenship.

#3861

Ted Nettelbeck

#168075

Overall Influence

Theodore John Nettelbeck is an Australian psychologist and jazz pianist, for some time emeritus professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Adelaide, known for researching human intelligence and inspection time.

#3862

Zoltan Torey

#152462

Overall Influence

1929 - 2014 (85 years)

Zoltan Torey who was born in Hungary on 21 November 1929 and died in 2014 is a Hungarian-Australian psychologist, writer and philosopher. He is known for his theories on consciousness. He left Hungary when he was 18 years old and came to Australia in 1949. Later he became blind in an industrial accident and forced to leave his studies to become a dentist. Next phase of his life started after earning a degree in Clinical Psychology. He not only worked as a practitioner in Clinical Psychology but also wrote three books; one of them more autobiographical and the others on what is known as hard ...

#3863

Tracie O. Afifi

#89797

Overall Influence

Tracie O. Afifi is a Canadian research scientist. She is a Full professor in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair at the University of Manitoba. Early life and education Afifi completed her Bachelor of Science degree in 1999 at the University of Manitoba and remained at the institution for her Master of Science and PhD.

#3864

Boaz Kahana

#142392

Overall Influence

Boaz Kahana is an American psychologist. Education Kahana completed a doctor of philosophy in human development at University of Chicago in 1967. Career In 1958, Kahana worked as a summer research psychologist at the Kings County Hospital Center before working there as an intern in clinical psychology through 1959. He was a part-time consulting school psychologist for the Jewish Education Committee in New York City. He was a part-time clinical psychologist for the Brooklyn Association for Rehabilitation of Offenders from 1959 to 1960. From 1959 to 1963, Kahana was a clinical and supervising psychologist at the Kings County Hospital, working under chief psychologist Solomon Machover.

#3865

Lou Van Beirendonck

Lou Van Beirendonck

#86739

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Lodewijk Constant Van Beirendonck is a Belgian organizational psychologist, management consultant, and Associate Professor of Human resource management at the Antwerp Management School, known for his work on competence management.

#3866

Eamon McCrory

#129646

Overall Influence

Eamon Joseph McCrory is a London-based scientist and clinical psychologist. He is Professor of Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology at University College London, where he Co-Directs the Developmental Risk and Resilience Unit. He is a Programme Director and member of the Executive team at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, Director of UKRI’s programme on Adolescent Mental Health and Wellbeing, and Co-Director of the UK Trauma Council.

#3867

Susan Rossell

#148423

Overall Influence

Professor Susan Rossell is a British researcher based at Swinburne University of Technology specialising in Neuropsychology and Neuroimaging. Originally from Nottingham, UK; she now resides in Melbourne, Australia. Her research on the neuropsychology of schizophrenia and body dysmorphic disorder is internationally recognised.

#3868

Terezinha Nunes

#99134

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Terezinha Nunes is a British-Brazilian clinical psychologist and academic, specialising in children's literacy and numeracy, and deaf children's learning. Since 2005, she has been Professor of Educational Studies at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford.

#3869

Paul Enck

#103337

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Paul Enck is Professor of Medical Psychology and was Head of Research at the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Tübingen, Germany until 2014; since then, he holds a part-time research and consultant position at the department. His research interests were and still are psychophysiology and neurogastroenterology . Since his semi-retirement in 2014, he added popular science writing in medicine and history to his activities.

#3870

Valerie Purdie Greenaway

#66509

Overall Influence

Valerie Purdie Greenaway, who has also published under the surnames Purdie-Vaughns and Purdie, is an American social psychologist and associate professor of psychology at Columbia University. Her research interests include diversity, stereotypes and intergroup relations. She is one of the first African Americans to receive tenure in the academic sciences at Columbia University, and is credited with coining the term "intersectional invisibility".

#3871

James M. Dabbs Jr.

#144861

Overall Influence

1937 - 2004 (67 years)

James McBride Dabbs Jr. was a social psychologist and professor of psychology at Georgia State University. Born in 1937 in Sumter, South Carolina, he obtained his doctorate from Yale in 1962. In 2004, he died from cancer.

#3872

Marian Radke-Yarrow

#101347

Overall Influence

1918 - 2007 (89 years)

Marian Radke-Yarrow was an American child psychologist known for studying topics such as prejudice, altruism, and depression in children. She worked in academia in the early years after completing graduate school, and then she became a National Institute of Mental Health researcher who observed child behavior and parent-child interactions.

#3873

Walter Fisher

#55721

Overall Influence

1931 - 2018 (87 years)

Walter Fisher was an American academic credited with formalizing Kenneth Burke's Dramatism and introducing the narrative paradigm to communication theory. Fisher was Professor Emeritus at the Annenberg School for Communication.

#3874

Suzanne Lyn Barker-Collo

#170406

Overall Influence

Suzanne Lyn Barker-Collo is a New Zealand neuropsychology academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career After a 1997 PhD titled A Model of Posttraumatic Stress Reactions to Sexual Abuse in Females at Lakehead University in Canada, Barker-Collo moved to the University of Auckland, rising to full professor.

#3875

Belinda Borrelli

#133805

Overall Influence

Belinda Borrelli is an American clinical psychologist specializing in smoking cessation. She is a Full Professor in the Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine's Department of Health Policy and Health Services Research and director of Boston University's Behavioral Science Research.

#3876

Kathleen McCartney

Kathleen McCartney

#168035

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Kathleen McCartney is an American academic administrator, who served as the 11th president of Smith College. She took office as Smith's president on June 2013. Smith College, located in Northampton, Massachusetts, is a liberal arts college and one of the Seven Sisters colleges. In February 2023, McCartney announced that she plans to retire at end of June 2023.

#3877

Elizabeth Campbell

#158009

Overall Influence

1954 - 2010 (56 years)

Elizabeth Campbell was a clinical psychologist from Scotland, head of both the British Psychological Society, and also the European Federation of Psychology Associations. She was a specialist in developing training in clinical psychology.

#3878

Han F. de Wit

#77529

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Han Frederik de Wit is a research psychologist at the University of Amsterdam in 1974. He moved to expanded outside the formal psychology field in search for guidance in his spirituality. De Wit became internationally acknowledged as one of the founders of Contemplative Psychology. Today he teaches meditation at the Shambhala centers in the Netherlands and instructs seminars in the psychology of Buddhism.

#3879

Maressa Orzack

#130432

Overall Influence

1924 - 2010 (86 years)

Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack was an American psychologist who was clinical associate in psychology at McLean Hospital; Coordinator of Behavior Therapy Affective Disease Program, also at McLean Hospital and assistant clinical professor of psychology, Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She also held private practice at Newton Centre.

#3880

Duane Watson

#158448

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Duane Girard Watson is an American neuroscientist and professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University. He holds the Frank W. Mayborn Chair in Cognitive Science and leads the Vanderbilt University Communication and Language Laboratory.

#3881

Anthony Jorm

#114654

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Anthony Jorm is an Australian researcher who has made contributions in the areas of psychology, psychiatry and gerontology. He also co-founded mental health first aid training with mental health educator Betty Kitchener.

#3882

Martin Braine

#57206

Overall Influence

1926 - 1996 (70 years)

Martin Dimond Stewart Braine was a cognitive psychologist known for his research on the development of language and reasoning. He was Professor of Psychology at New York University at the time of his death.

#3883

Krista R. Muis

#147193

Overall Influence

Krista Renee Muis is a Canadian professor and Canada Research Chair in epistemic cognition and self-regulated learning at McGill University. Muis was elected a member of the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada in 2018.

#3884

Anne Christophe

#151024

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Anne Christophe is a French researcher working in the field of cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Ecole Normale Supérieure and of the Scientific Committee of National Education. She is also a former director of the Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique at the Département d'études cognitives.

#3885

Holger Mitterer

#148155

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Holger Mitterer is a German cognitive scientist and linguist and associate professor at the University of Malta. He is known for his works on applied psycholinguistics. Mitterer is co-editor-in-chief with Cynthia Clopper of Language and Speech. He is a former associate editor of Laboratory Phonology and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Phonetics.

#3886

Peter J. Rentfrow

#170452

Overall Influence

Peter Jason Rentfrow is professor of personality and individual differences in the Psychology Department at Cambridge University, where he directs the Social Dynamics Research Center. He is an elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Alan Turing Institute.

#3887

Raymond F. Palmer

#73137

Overall Influence

Raymond F. Palmer is an associate professor of family and community medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio , a post he has held since 2003. His area of expertise is biostatistics.

#3888

Jerome Sarris

#137859

Overall Influence

Jerome Sarris is co-director of Psychae Institute, Professor of Integrative Mental Health at Western Sydney University, Australia, and a visiting scientist at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

#3889

Michelle Dawson

#27682

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Michelle Dawson is a Canadian autism researcher who was diagnosed with autism in 1993–1994. Since 2004, she has worked as an autism researcher affiliated with the Autism Specialized Clinic of Hôpital Rivière-des-Prairies in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

#3890

James Fadiman

#158276

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

James Fadiman is an American writer known for his research on microdosing psychedelics. He co-founded the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, which later became Sofia University. Early years Fadiman was born in New York City to a Jewish family and grew up in Bel Air. His father, William Fadiman, was a producer, story editor, and book reviewer in Hollywood, one of his credits being The Last Frontier. His mother, Vera Racolin, was a socialite, former model, and philanthropist known for her charitable support of numerous causes, including the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Rescue League, and the Boys & Girls Club.

#3891

Lisa Aspinwall

#168033

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Lisa G. Aspinwall is an American researcher and professor of Social Psychology and Health Psychology at the University of Utah. In 2000, she was honored as 2nd place recipient of the John Marks Templeton Positive Psychology Prize for her work on optimism and psychological resilience.

#3892

Ruma Falk

#60511

Overall Influence

1932 - 2020 (88 years)

Ruma Falk was an Israeli psychologist and philosopher of mathematics known for her work on probability theory and human understanding of probability and statistics. Falk was born in Jerusalem, and educated at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She completed her PhD on the perception of chance at the Hebrew University in 1975 under the supervision of Amos Tversky, and became a professor there. She was married to Raphael Falk, a geneticist and historian of science.

#3893

Marjorie Pyles Honzik

#144490

Overall Influence

1908 - 2003 (95 years)

Marjorie Knickerbocker Pyles Honzik was a developmental psychologist known for her longitudinal research on children's mental abilities, behavioral problems, and health outcomes. Honzik received the American Psychological Association G. Stanley Hall Award for Distinguished Contributions to Developmental Psychology in 1983. She was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1984.

#3894

Alvin Dueck

#170860

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Alvin Dueck is an American psychologist and theologian, currently Distinguished Professor of Cultural Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary.

#3895

Lucia Albino Gilbert

#162683

Overall Influence

Lucia Albino Gilbert is a psychologist known for her research on gender equality and feminist psychology, with a specific focus on women's career development and families with dual careers. She is Professor Emerita of Educational Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin and Professor Emerita of Psychology at Santa Clara University.

#3896

Simone Vigod

#157320

Overall Influence

Simone Natalie Vigod is a Canadian scientist, Head of the Department of Psychiatry at Women's College Hospital and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She focuses her research on perinatal mood disorders and has conducted some of the largest studies worldwide on maternal mental illness around the time of pregnancy.

#3897

Gail Eskes

#131210

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Gail Eskes is a Canadian-American academic psychiatrist, and a professor of psychiatry at Dalhousie University. Career Eskes received her Bachelor of Arts in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1975. She earned a Doctor of Philosophy at the same university in 1981. She began her clinical training between 1993 and 2002 at Victoria General Hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

#3898

Steven Heine

#21197

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Steven Heine , is a scholar in the field of Zen Buddhist history and thought, particularly the life and teachings of Zen Master Dōgen . He has also taught and published extensively on Japanese religion and society in worldwide perspectives.

#3899

John Piacentini

#118843

Overall Influence

John Piacentini, PhD, ABPP, is an American clinical child and adolescent psychologist, and professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in Los Angeles, California. He is the director of the Center for Child Anxiety, Resilience, Education and Support , and the Child OCD, Anxiety and Tic Disorders Program at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.

#3900

Barbara Stanley

#103808

Overall Influence

1949 - 2023 (74 years)

Barbara H. Stanley was an American psychologist, researcher, and suicidologist who served as Professor of Psychology at Columbia University and the Director of Suicide Prevention Training at New York State Office of Mental Health. She also served as Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

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