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).

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List of the most influential people in Psychology,

#4001

Marcantonio M. Spada

Marcantonio M. Spada

#121619

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Marcantonio M. Spada is an Italian-British academic psychologist who has studied the role of metacognition in addictive behaviours and operationalised the constructs of "desire thinking" and the "COVID-19 anxiety syndrome". He is currently Professor of Addictive Behaviours and Mental Health and Dean of the School of Applied Sciences at London South Bank University. He is also editor-in-chief of Addictive Behaviors.

#4002

Johan Wagemans

#168986

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Johan Wagemans is a Belgian experimental psychologist. He is a full professor at the KU Leuven in Leuven . He directs a long-term Methusalem project that focuses upon the psychology and neuroscience of visual perception and most recently art perception.

#4003

Jaimie Veale

#99333

Overall Influence

Jaimie F Veale is a Canadian-New Zealand psychology academic, and as of 2021 is a senior lecturer at the University of Waikato. Academic career Veale has a master's degree from Massey University, completed in 2005. After a 2011 PhD titled Biological and psychosocial correlates of gender-variant and gender-typical identities also at Massey University, Veale moved to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada for three years, before returning to New Zealand and the University of Waikato.

#4004

Andrew Rutherford

#65917

Overall Influence

1929 - 1998 (69 years)

Andrew Rutherford was a Scottish scholar and university administrator. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of London from 1994-1997. Early life He was born in Helmsdale, Sutherland, Scotland and educated at the local school. He then attended George Watson's College in Edinburgh and then the University of Edinburgh where he read English, graduating in 1951 with first class honours.

#4005

Sean Young

#165143

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Sean D. Young is an American social and behavioral psychologist. He is a medical school and Computer and Information Sciences professor with the University of California, Irvine . He serves as the executive director of the University of California, Institute for Prediction Technology and the UCLA Center for Digital Behavior .

#4006

Brian Earp

#120776

Overall Influence

Brian David Earp is an American bioethicist, philosopher, and interdisciplinary researcher. He is best known for his writings on intersex medical interventions, circumcision, and drug use in the United States. He is currently associate director of the Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy at Yale University and The Hastings Center, and a Research Fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.

#4007

Richard E. Ripple

#131942

Overall Influence

1931 - 2010 (79 years)

Richard E. Ripple was an American educational psychologist. He was a professor at Cornell University for 49 years and editor-in-chief of the Educational Psychologist from 1969 to 1972.

#4008

Mary Fristad

#174595

Overall Influence

#4009

George Winokur

#89376

Overall Influence

1925 - 1996 (71 years)

George Winokur was an American psychiatrist known for seminal contributions to diagnostic criteria and to the classification and genetics of mood disorder. Education He obtained his M.D. degree from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1947. He moved to the Washington University School of Medicine in 1954, becoming professor in 1966. In 1971 he moved to head the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Iowa College of Medicine until 1990, remaining as emeritus professor until his death in 1996.

#4010

Michael Stoolmiller

#90700

Overall Influence

Michael Lawrence Stoolmiller is an American psychologist and research associate at the University of Oregon College of Education. He is also an affiliated scientist at the Oregon Social Learning Center. He is known for researching the effects of family and peer characteristics on the development of antisocial behavior in adolescents.

#4011

Alison Ritter

#171726

Overall Influence

Alison Joan Ritter is an Australian academic whose research focuses on illicit drug use and policy. As of 2021 she is a full professor and director of the Drug Policy Modelling Program at the University of New South Wales.

#4012

Marguerita Lightfoot

#37834

Overall Influence

Marguerita Lightfoot is a counseling psychologist known for her research in the field of preventive medicine, especially in regard to HIV prevention and advocacy for homeless youth. She is Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and the Chief of the Division of Prevention Science. She serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Development among Children and Youth.

#4013

Klaus Michael Beier

Klaus Michael Beier

#110785

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Klaus Michael Beier is a German physician, psychotherapist and sexologist. He is director of the Institute for sexology and sexual medicine at the Charité - Universitätsmedizin in Berlin. Life Klaus Michael Beier began studying medicine in 1979 and philosophy at the Free University of Berlin in 1980. He received his doctorate in medicine in 1986 and two years later in philosophy. In 1988 he became a scientific assistant at the Research and Counselling Centre for Sexual Medicine of the University Hospital in Kiel. There he habilitated in 1994 in sexual medicine and in 1995 was appointed to the...

#4014

Paula R. Pietromonaco

#170607

Overall Influence

Paula R. Pietromonaco is an American psychologist and principal investigator of the Growth in Early Marriage Project at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the editor-in-chief of the journal Emotion, as well as the associate editor of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes section.

#4015

Michel Imbert

#162081

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Michel Imbert is a neuropsychologist teacher-researcher in cognitive neurosciences, professor emeritus at Pierre-et-Marie-Curie University and honorary director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales .

#4016

Danielle Knafo

#170368

Overall Influence

Danielle Knafo is an American clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and author. Born in French Morocco and raised in Pennsylvania she is now a professor of psychology and psychoanalysis. She is a prolific author, and a popular speaker. She is also a professor at Long Island University-Post in its clinical psychology doctoral program. She writes and lectures on many subjects, including creativity, trauma, psychosis, sexuality and gender, and technology.

#4017

Albert Harrison

#100450

Overall Influence

1940 - 2015 (75 years)

Albert Harrison , was a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Davis whose research focused on how the discovery of extraterrestrial life would impact human society. Harrison argued that it would be “foolish and negligent” to fail to anticipate nativist and extremist reactions by humanity against extraterrestrial life in the formulation of post-detection policies and plans.

#4018

Gershon Ben-Shakhar

#96654

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Gershon Ben-Shakhar is an Israeli psychologist. He served as president of the Open University of Israel. Academic career Gershon Ben-Shakhar earned a B.A. in Psychology and Statistics , an M.A. in Psychology , and a Ph.D. in Psychology from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, from 1975 to 1976.

#4019

Victoria Leong

#165863

Overall Influence

Victoria Leong is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist whose research into the neural synchrony between mothers and infants has been widely reported. Leong's PhD thesis won the Robert J. Glushko Prize of the Cognitive Science Society in 2014 "in recognition of outstanding cross-disciplinary work integrating neuroscience, psychology, linguistics and computational modelling." She has a dual appointment at Nanyang Technological University and the University of Cambridge and is head of the Baby-LINC Lab at the Department of Psychology at Cambridge. She is a recipient of the 2020 Social Science...

#4020

Barbara M. Byrne

#168348

Overall Influence

1935 - 2020 (85 years)

Barbara M. Byrne was a Canadian quantitative psychologist known for her work in psychometrics, specifically regarding construct validity, structural equation modeling , and statistics. She held the position of Professor Emerita in the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa and was a fellow of the International Testing Committee , International Association for Applied Psychology , and American Psychological Association throughout her research career.

#4021

Samuel J. Meisels

#46125

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Samuel J. Meisels is an American academic whose scholarship focuses on early childhood assessment, child development and educational practices that support the developmental needs of young children. Meisels is the founding executive director of the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska, president emeritus of Erikson Institute, and a professor and research scientist emeritus at the University of Michigan. Meisels retired from the Buffett Institute on Feb. 28, 2023, concluding a career that spanned more than a half-century and established him as a leading voice in the f...

#4022

Ivan Eisler

#170028

Overall Influence

Ivan Eisler OBE is a British psychologist and Professor in the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London. Eisler is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and was a recipient of 2016 Birthday Honours for his services to family therapy.

#4023

Diane S. Littler

#102606

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Diane Scullion Littler is an American phycologist who has conducted research on marine algae for over 30 years, often in partnership with her husband Mark M. Littler. Her work has included taxonomic characterization of assemblages of tropical marine algae at sites across the globe, as well as her research on the physiological and ecological dynamics of algae. She has published over 120 scientific papers, as well as co-authored field guides for identifying coral reef algae.

#4024

Edward M. Hundert

Edward M. Hundert

#23359

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Edward M. Hundert is the Dean for Medical Education and the Daniel D. Federman, M.D. Professor in Residence of Global Health and Social Medicine and Medical Education at Harvard Medical School, where he is also Associate Director of the Center for Bioethics at HMS . Hundert is a member of the TIAA Board of Trustees of TIAA-CREF.

#4025

Shane O'Mara

#160579

Overall Influence

Shane O'Mara is a neuroscientist who currently is Professor of Experimental Brain Research at Trinity College Dublin. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Works O'Mara, Shane . Talking Heads: The New Science of How Conversation Shapes Our Worlds. Penguin. ISBN 978-1-8479-2648-7

#4026

Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill

#97176

Overall Influence

Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill is an American academic. She is a professor of psychology at Brigham Young University . From 1994 to 2010, she was the director of the BYU Women's Research Institute. Early life and education The daughter of Ariel S. Ballif and Artemesia Romney, Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill attended Brigham Young High School in Provo, Utah and has a bachelor's degree and a Ph.D. both from Brigham Young University.

#4027

William Ruud

#48707

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

William Nelson Ruud is an American academic and former university administrator. He was previously president of Marietta College, the University of Northern Iowa, and Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania.

#4028

David Sarwer

#133047

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

David B. Sarwer is an American clinical psychologist who serves as the Associate Dean for Research, Director of the Center for Obesity Research and Education, and Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the College of Public Health at Temple University.

#4029

Iris Berent

#167572

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Iris Berent is an Israeli-American cognitive psychologist. She is a Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University and the director of the Language and Mind Lab. She is among the founders of experimental phonology—a field that uses the methods of experimental psychology and neuroscience to study phonological competence. She has also explored the role of phonological competence in reading ability and dyslexia. Her recent work has examined how laypeople reason about innate knowledge, such as universal grammar.

#4030

Christine Hunter

#82438

Overall Influence

Christine M. Hunter is an American clinical psychologist and a uniformed service officer. She is the acting National Institutes of Health associate director for behavioral and social sciences research and acting director of the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research. Hunter was an active duty officer in the U.S. Air Force from 1996 to 2006. She is a captain in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.

#4031

John E. Hayes

#146084

Overall Influence

John Edward Hayes is an American Food Scientist who specializes in Sensory & Consumer Science and Eating Behavior. He is a Full Professor of Food Science at Pennsylvania State University and Director of their Sensory Evaluation Center. He has received multiple international awards for his work, and is best known for his research on chemesthesis, genetic variation in taste, and COVID-19 anosmia.

#4032

Kelly-Ann Allen

#173297

Overall Influence

Kelly-Ann Allen is a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Clayton campus, Melbourne, Australia, and an Educational and Developmental Psychologist. Allen gained her PhD in 2014 from the University of Melbourne on the subject of School Belonging which continues to be her main academic focus. Allen is a qualified school psychologist as well as an established academic. Allen has made significant contributions to the field of belonging and school psychology and has published over 170 outputs in these fields. She ha...

#4033

Heather Berlin

#149251

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Heather A. Berlin is an American neuroscientist and licensed clinical psychologist noted for her work in science communication and science outreach. Her research focuses on brain-behavior relationships affecting the prevention and treatment of impulsive and compulsive psychiatric disorders. She is also interested in the neural basis of consciousness, dynamic unconscious processes, and creativity. Berlin is host of the PBS Nova series Your Brain, the PBS series Science Goes to the Movies, the Discovery Channel series Superhuman Showdown, and StarTalk All-Stars with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

#4034

Brian L. Byrne

#105501

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Brian J. Byrne is an Australian social scientist specializing in applied and psycholinguistics, an emeritus professor at the University of New England in Australia, and lead author of publications and articles on research in his field. Byrne was a lead researcher in the 10-year-long, $5 million National Institutes of Health study by an international team of scientists into the development of reading ability in 1,000 pairs of twins. Beginning in 2000, the study found that genetics were more important influences on reading development than environmental factors. In 2012, Byrne was appointed a...

#4035

Angelica Ronald

#175489

Overall Influence

Angelica Ronald is a Professor of Psychology and Genetics at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development within the Department of Psychological Sciences at Birkbeck, University of London, where she is the director of the Genes Environment Lifespan laboratory. Angelica Ronald is also a visiting Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London. She has been awarded the Spearman Medal from the British Psychological Society and the Thompson award from the Behavior Genetics Association for her research.

#4036

Alison Calear

#174462

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Alison Calear is an Australian academic who is a Professor at the Centre for Mental Health Research at the Australian National University. She studies youth mental health and the prevention of anxiety, depression and suicide.

#4037

Thomas Kolditz

#105631

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Thomas A. Kolditz is an American retired Brigadier General, educator, author, and consultant. Military Kolditz led the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy West Point for 12 years, where he was responsible for teaching, research, and outreach activities in Management, Leader Development Science, Psychology, and Sociology. General Kolditz has more than 26 years in leadership roles and 34 years of military service. He was also the founding director of the West Point Leadership Center. General Kolditz has been a skydiving instructor since 1980 and served ...

#4038

Chee Soon Juan

#17097

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Chee Soon Juan is a Singaporean politician, activist and former lecturer who has been appointed as Secretary-General of the Singapore Democratic Party since 1993. Prior to entering politics in 1992, upon Chiam See Tong's invitation to join the Singapore Democratic Party , Chee was a lecturer at the National University of Singapore. Chee subsequently succeeded Chiam as the party's secretary-general after Chiam, whom Chee and the rest of the party's leadership have had a number of disagreements, left the party. The party had three Members of Parliament at the time Chee took over as secretary-g...

#4039

Pamela Y. Collins

#135040

Overall Influence

Pamela Y. Collins is an American psychiatrist. She is the Director of the International Training and Education Center for Health and the Global Mental Health Program at the University of Washington School of Medicine and School of Public Health. Collins is professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of global health. She previously worked as the director of the Office for Research on Disparities and Global Mental Health at the National Institute of Mental Health .

#4040

Marie Crowe

#71086

Overall Influence

Marie T. Crowe is a New Zealand psychotherapy academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Otago. Academic career After a 1998 PhD titled 'Doing what no normal woman would do' at the Griffith University, Crowe moved to the University of Otago, rising to full professor in 2012.

#4041

Barrie Frost

#161908

Overall Influence

1939 - 2018 (79 years)

Barrie James Frost was a New Zealand-born Canadian psychologist and neuroscientist. Born in Nelson, New Zealand, Frost was educated at Nelson College from 1953 to 1956. He initially trained as a primary school teacher, and then earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Canterbury, followed by a PhD from Dalhousie University in 1967. Frost then taught at Queen's University at Kingston. Over the course of his career, Frost was granted fellowship into the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Psychological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Royal Physiographic Society in Lund, and received a Humboldt Research Award.

#4042

Ja A. Jahannes

#137663

Overall Influence

1942 - 2015 (73 years)

Ja Arthur Jahannes was a professor at Savannah State University in Savannah, Georgia and the pastor of the Abyssinia Missionary Baptist Church in Savannah. He was a prolific playwright, music composer, essayist, and poet, a frequent theatre director and international lecturer, and a pioneer of Black psychology.

#4043

Nathan Adler

#96030

Overall Influence

1911 - 1994 (83 years)

Nathan Adler was an American psychoanalyst, a lecturer in Criminology and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and professor of clinical psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology at Berkeley/Alameda. Between 1965 and 1970 he conducted extensive clinical studies of drug users in the San Francisco Bay area. He authored the book The Underground Stream: New Lifestyles and the Antinomian Personality. In his youth, he wrote for several prominent leftist journals in New York and served on the editorial board of the New Masses.

#4044

Harriette Pipes McAdoo

#152117

Overall Influence

1940 - 2009 (69 years)

Harriette Pipes McAdoo was an American sociologist and a distinguished professor at Michigan State University. She and her husband, John Lewis McAdoo, engaged in research concerning African-American families. She was the author of a well-regarded anthology, Black Families.

#4045

Sang-Min Whang

#160391

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Sang Min Leo Whang is a South Korean psychologist, author, and popular political commentator. He has empirically investigated "the Korean Peoples' identity & their mass-psychology" by connecting it to a variety of issues such as self, online world identity, consumption behavior, love & relationships, power desire and political decision making. He has mainly researched the different psychological types of people and how the human mind works in on and offline settings. His most well-known projects are WPI , research on the identities of online game players, and research on politicians' public images.

#4046

Nicola Graham-Kevan

#139187

Overall Influence

Nicola Graham-Kevan is a psychologist and professor of criminal justice psychology at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, England. She is also a professor of clinical psychology at the Mid Sweden University in Östersund, Sweden. She conducts research on aggression, domestic violence, stalking, victimisation, psychological trauma and post-traumatic growth. Professor Graham-Kevan is the Director of TRAC Psychological Limited where she develops and delivers behaviour change programmes, training and evaluations. She also works clinically designing interventions for offenders with em...

#4047

Ronald Langevin

#168936

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Ronald Lindsay André "Ron" Langevin is a Canadian forensic psychologist at the University of Toronto. He is the founding editor of Annals of Sex Research, now titled Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment.

#4048

Oscar R. Gómez

#86882

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Oscar R. Gómez is an Argentine writer, psychoanalyst and academic researcher who became renown as an integrator of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism with Western formal sciences and who constituted the first religious organization in Argentina engaged in the Tantric Worship practice in children and adults.

#4049

Nuri Ja'far

#93066

Overall Influence

1914 - 1991 (77 years)

Nuri Ja'far Ali al-Chalabi , better known as Nuri Ja'far , was an Iraqi psychologist, philosopher of education, and author. He wrote more than fifty works on pedagogy, psychology, history, philosophy, thought and literature. After graduating from the Higher Teachers' House in Baghdad, he went to the United States, and received a master's degree from Ohio University in 1948 and a doctorate in philosophy from the same university in the following year. He was a student of John Dewey and majored in neuropsychology.

#4050

Louise Nadeau

#104552

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Louise Nadeau is a Canadian clinical psychologist. She is a professor in the department of psychology at the Université de Montréal in Quebec, Canada, recognized for her contributions to the field of addictions.

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