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 …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Psychology,

#4501

David Wood

#191160

Overall Influence

#4502

Robert Kennedy

#119147

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Robert Edward Kennedy is an American Jesuit priest, professor of theology, psychoanalyst and Zen rōshi in the White Plum lineage. Life and career Kennedy joined the Jesuits on August 8, 1951. At the end of a long spiritual and academic training he was ordained a priest in Japan in 1965. He studied with Yamada Koun in Japan in the 1970s. He was installed as a Zen teacher of the White Plum Asanga lineage in 1991 and was given the title Roshi in 1997. Kennedy studied Zen with Yamada Roshi in Kamakura, Japan, Maezumi Roshi in Los Angeles and Bernard Glassman Roshi in New York City. Glassman Roshi installed Kennedy as a sensei in 1991 and conferred inka in 1997, making him a roshi .

#4503

J. Mark G. Williams

#191212

Overall Influence

#4504

Jean Harvey

#143492

Overall Influence

Jean Harvey, PhD, RDN, is currently the Robert L. Bickford, Jr. Endowed Professor, the Associate Dean for Research, and the Chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Vermont. Her specialty is behavioral weight management with a specific focus on technology-based programs.

#4505

David McDowell

#72376

Overall Influence

1963 - 2014 (51 years)

David M. McDowell was an American psychiatrist, author and creative consultant. He co-founded the Substance Treatment and Research Service at Columbia University and served as its medical director. He also founded Columbia's Buprenorphine Program, the first such treatment program for opiate addiction in the United States, which according to The New York Times had an 88% success rate. His scholarly work has focused on co-occurring psychiatric disorders and substance abuse problems, particularly club drugs and marijuana. McDowell's book Substance Abuse: From Principles to Practice, is one o...

#4506

Ranald Roderick Macdonald

#179636

Overall Influence

1945 - 2007 (62 years)

Ranald Roderick Macdonald was a British mathematician and psychologist. He was known for his contribution to the foundations of significance testing.

#4507

Roger Fillingim

#171023

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Roger B. Fillingim is an American psychologist and distinguished professor at the University of Florida who won its Research Foundation Professorship.

#4508

Pyo Chang-won

#46342

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Pyo Chang-won is a South Korean politician, with professional expertise in police studies and politics. He is a known expert on criminal profiling. He stated he wanted "to realize justice through politics", and announced his candidacy for the 2016 parliamentary election. He was elected to the National Assembly as a member of the Democratic Party.

#4509

Christopher Brewin

#45014

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Christopher Brewin was a British academic and expert on Cyprus. He was a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Keele University, Staffordshire, England from 1972 until his retirement in 2008. He died in July 2018.

#4510

Susan Geertshuis

#172520

Overall Influence

Susan A. Geertshuis is an English-New Zealand academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career After a PhD at the University of Nottingham, she worked at the University of Wales Bangor and the University of Northampton, before moving to the University of Auckland, rising to full professor.

#4511

Chantell Evans

#180077

Overall Influence

Chantell Skye Evans is an American cell biologist who is a professor at Duke University. Her research looks to understand the dynamical processes of mitochondria and their role in neurodegenerative disease. In 2022, Popular Science named her as one of their "Brilliant 10" U.S. scientists and engineers.

#4512

Robin Corley

#191386

Overall Influence

Robin Paul Corley is an American behavior geneticist and senior research associate at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado Boulder. External links Faculty page

#4513

Darryl S. Inaba

Darryl S. Inaba

#46876

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Darryl S. Inaba, PharmD., was born June 16, 1946, in Denver, Colorado. He is the remaining owner and President of CNS Productions, Inc. in Medford, OR. He is an associate professor of Pharmacology at the UCSF Medical Center in San Francisco, California, and the Director of Clinical and Behavioral Health Services at ARC in Medford, Oregon. He is also special consultant and instructor for the University of Utah School of Alcoholism and Other Drug Dependencies, as well as the Director of Education and Research at CNS Productions. Dr. Inaba is also on the editorial board of the Journal of Psych...

#4514

Ernest L. Boyer

#19054

Overall Influence

1928 - 1995 (67 years)

Ernest LeRoy Boyer was an American educator who most notably served as Chancellor of the State University of New York, United States Commissioner of Education, and President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Boyer was recipient of numerous awards, including over 140 honorary doctorates.

#4515

Catheleen Jordan

#104866

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Catheleen Jordan has been a Professor of Social Work at the University of Texas at Arlington School of Social Work since 1994. Achievements 2017 National Association of Social Workers, Pioneer Award.2013, National Association of Social Workers-Texas, Lifetime Achievement Award.2011-2016 Cheryl Milkes Moore Professorship in Mental Health.2007-2009, President of the Texas chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.1991-1996 Director, Community Service Clinic, University of Texas Arlington.

#4516

Earl Rogers Sayers

#172348

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Earl Rogers Sayers was an American professor of biology and college administrator. He was educated at University of Illinois with a bachelor's degree in 1958. He later received a master's degree in 1961 and a Ph.D. in 1964 from Cornell University. He served as president of the University of Alabama from 1988 to 1996.

#4517

Jay Earley

#10342

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Jay Earley is an American computer scientist and psychologist. He invented the Earley parser in his early career in computer science. Later he became a clinical psychologist specializing in group therapy and Internal Family Systems Therapy , including working with the inner critic. He has created the Pattern System, a personality system, and Self-Therapy Journey, a web application for psychological healing and behavior change.

#4518

Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart

#191512

Overall Influence

#4519

Nirmala Rao

#52919

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Nirmala Rao is a British academic and the current vice chancellor of Krea University. She also served as vice chancellor of the Asian University for Women, Chittagong, Bangladesh from 1 February 2017 to January 2022. and as Pro-Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London from 2008 to 2016.

#4520

Te Kani Kingi

#93332

Overall Influence

Te Kani R. Kingi is a New Zealand mental health academic, are Māori, of Ngāti Pūkeko and Ngāti Awa descent and as of 2019 is a full professor at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi. Academic career After a 2002 PhD titled "Hua oranga": best health outcomes for Māori at Massey University, Kingi moved to the Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi, rising to full professor.

#4521

James B. Adams

#92262

Overall Influence

James B. Adams is a President's Professor at Arizona State University, where he directs the autism/Asperger's research program, though he originally taught chemical and materials engineering there. Adams also holds a post at the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine. He is also the president of the Autism Society of Greater Phoenix, the co-chair of the Autism Research Institute's scientific advisory committee, and has received the Autism Service Award from the Greater Phoenix chapter of the Autism Society of America. He has been featured on Dateline NBC, and received a National Science Fo...

#4522

Pea Fröhlich

#176891

Overall Influence

1943 - 2022 (79 years)

Pea Fröhlich is a German screenwriter and psychologist, best known for co-writing all three films of the BRD Trilogy: The Marriage of Maria Braun, Veronika Voss and Lola. She also wrote for Bloch. Filmography 1979: The Marriage of Maria Braun 1981: 1981: Lola 1982: Veronika Voss 1985: 1987: The Cry of the Owl , TV film1989: Radiofieber , TV miniseries1991: The Indecent Woman 1992: Haus am See , TV series1994: , TV film1995: Deutschlandlied , TV miniseries1996: Tatort: Das Mädchen mit der Puppe , TV2002: , TV film2002–2005: Bloch, TV series, 7 episodes2006:

#4523

Christian Lundahl

Christian Lundahl

#169241

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Christian Lundahl is a Swedish professor of education at Örebro University. Lundahl specializes in the assessment for learning, evaluation and Swedish educational research. Lundahl has worked as a consultant to the National agency of education and the National agency for school inspection on several occasions.

#4524

Roger Burton

#189468

Overall Influence

1928 - 2018 (90 years)

Roger V. Burton was an American jazz musician, psychology professor and actor, known for his work on Baskets. He appeared in films and television shows created by his daughters' Five Sisters Productions company, most notably, Old Guy.

#4525

Candice DeLong

#53694

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Candice DeLong is an American former FBI criminal profiler and bestselling author. DeLong was the lead profiler in San Francisco, California, and worked on the Unabomber case. Currently, she hosts the Investigation Discovery programs Deadly Women and Facing Evil with Candice DeLong, the Wondery podcast Killer Psyche, and the Discovery+ program The Deadly Type with Candice DeLong.

#4526

Sander Griffioen

#51148

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Sander Griffioen is a Dutch philosopher, and Emeritus Professor for intercultural philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Biography Born in Loenen aan de Vecht, Griffioen studied at the Vrije Universiteit, where in 1971 he received his MA cum laude in Political economy, in 1975 another MA in Philosophy, and in 1976 his PhD cum laude with a thesis entitled "De roos en het kruis: De waardering van de eindigheid in het latere denken van Hegel" .

#4527

Selina Kuruleca

#170496

Overall Influence

Selina Kuruleca is a Fijian psychotherapist and commentator. She has been regularly quoted by media outlets in Fiji on a wide variety of issues, such as the controversial Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill promoted by the government of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase . She expressed serious misgivings about the bill, especially with respect to its provisions for amnesty to be granted to persons convicted of offences related to the Fiji coup of 2000.

#4528

Deboleena Roy

#173518

Overall Influence

Deboleena Roy is professor and chair of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University, former resident research fellow at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford University , and a member of The NeuroGenderings Network. Previously, she was an assistant professor at San Diego State University. Starting in August 2020, she will be serving as the Senior Associate Dean of Faculty for Emory College of Arts and Sciences.

#4529

Peggy Fairbairn-Dunlop

#93188

Overall Influence

Margaret Ellen Fairbairn-Dunlop is a Samoan-New Zealand academic. She is the first person in New Zealand to hold a chair in Pacific studies. Education Fairbairn-Dunlop studied at Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with a Master of Arts degree. She completed <big>a PhD at Macquarie University in Australia.</big>

#4530

Sallie Foley

#177811

Overall Influence

Sallie Foley is a social worker and social work academic specialising in sex therapy, sexual health and the consequences of genital surgery on children. Biography Foley is the director of the University of Michigan Sexual Health Certificate Program for the center for sexual health/University of Michigan Health System/Department of Social Work and the Graduate School of Social Work. She is also the former director of the center for sexual health at University of Michigan Health System/Department of Social Work. She is an AASECT certified sex therapist, educator, supervisor and diplomate of sex therapy.

#4531

Robert Baratz

#69541

Overall Influence

Robert Sears Baratz is an American dentist and skeptic who practices in Braintree, Massachusetts. Baratz has practiced dentistry since 1972 and emergency medicine since 1991. He was formerly the executive director of the National Council Against Health Fraud .

#4532

Charley Ferrer

#190121

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Charley Ferrer became the first Latina Doctor of Human Sexuality in the United States in 2000 after receiving her doctoral degree from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. She is a clinical sexologist and award-winning author of several books on sexual health, self-empowerment, and breast cancer. A pioneer in the field of sexual health and empowerment, Dr. Ferrer began her journey providing workshops on sexual health and empowerment to women in Evergreen State College and across the Pacific Northwest. Her first book, The W.I.S.E. Journal for the Sensual Woman became an interna...

#4533

Judy Fenster

#191845

Overall Influence

#4534

Anne Rasa

#74412

Overall Influence

1940 - 2020 (80 years)

Olwen Anne Elisabeth Rasa was a British ethologist, known for her long-duration study of the social behaviour of the dwarf mongoose in Kenya. She had studied aggression among coral reef fish under the pioneering ethologist Konrad Lorenz. Her fieldwork in Kenya's Taru Desert led to a book, Mongoose Watch: A Family Observed, and to a popular German television series, Expedition ins Tierreich. She later studied social behaviour in the yellow mongoose and the sub-social tenebrionid beetle Parastizopus armaticeps.

#4535

Mari Fitzduff

#191878

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Mari Christine Fitzduff is an Irish policy maker, writer and academic. She began her work in peacebuilding and mediation working with universities during the Northern Ireland conflict before setting up a mediation organisation in 1989. In 1990 she was a founding director of the Community Relations Council, set up to help develop and fund peace initiatives in Northern Ireland.

#4536

Jean-Léon Beauvois

#108223

Overall Influence

1943 - 2020 (77 years)

Jean-Léon Beauvois was a French psychologist and university professor. Alongside Robert-Vincent Joule, he wrote the book Petit traité de manipulation à l'usage des honnêtes gens, which became a bestseller in France.

#4537

Sven Hessle

#175141

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Sven Hessle, born 1941, is a Swedish Authorized Psychologist, and Professor of Social work at Stockholm University. His research concerns the study of poverty and children and their families in an international perspective as well as International social work in general. He has published alone, co-edited or contributed in some 35 books, most of them in Swedish. Some of them translated to other languages: Danish, English, Finnish, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Vietnamese. He is founder of and the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Social Welfare. He was giv...

#4538

Arnold Farr

#191918

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

#4539

Paul Dolan

#152112

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Paul Dolan is Professor of Behavioural Science in the Department in Psychological and Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is Director of the Executive MSc in Behavioural Science which began in September 2014. Dolan conducts research on the measurement of happiness, its causes and consequences, and the implications for public policy, publishing in both scholarly and popular outlets. He has previously held academic posts at York, Newcastle, Sheffield and Imperial College London and he has been a visiting scholar at Princeton University. He is the auth...

#4540

Roman Kotov

#189743

Overall Influence

Roman I. Kotov is a clinical psychologist and professor in the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. His research focuses on the classification of mental disorders. External links Faculty page

#4541

Celia B. Fisher

#189426

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Celia B. Fisher is an American psychologist. She is the Marie Ward Doty professor of ethics at Fordham University in New York City, and director of its Center for Ethics Education. Fisher is also the director of the HIV and Drug Abuse Prevention Research Ethics Training Institute . Fisher is the founding editor of the journal Applied Developmental Science and serves on the IOM Committee on Clinical Research Involving Children Dr. Fisher has over 300 publications and 8 edited volumes on children’s health research and services among diverse racial/ethnic, sexual and gender minority groups in the U.S.

#4542

Daniel K Judd

#147795

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

#4543

Martin Cole

#94577

Overall Influence

1931 - 2015 (84 years)

Martin John Cole was a British sexologist, sex education advocate and campaigner for abortion law reform, dubbed "Sex King Cole" by The Sun newspaper for his work in this field. Life Cole was born in London in 1931. He read Botany at Southampton University for a BSc and gained a PhD in Plant Genetics. After a period in Africa, in 1964 he took up the post of lecturer in Genetics at the College of Advanced Technology which became Aston University. In 1984 he left the university, to work full-time at the Institute for Sex Education and Research which he had established. He was married and divor...

#4544

Sjeng Kerbusch

#113543

Overall Influence

1947 - 1991 (44 years)

Sjeng Kerbusch was a Dutch behavior geneticist. A native of Maastricht, he obtained his Ph.D. from the Catholic University Nijmegen in 1974 as the third Dutchman in this field. Kerbusch' specialism was the application of quantitative-genetic methods, especially diallel crosses and Mendelian crosses, to the analysis of behavior. From 1984 to 1987, he was President of the Dutch Behavior Genetics Contact Group and in 1988 he was local host for the 18th Annual Meeting of the Behavior Genetics Association held in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Kerbusch died at Nijmegen from complications after a lung ...

#4545

Alison Winter

#131801

Overall Influence

1965 - 2016 (51 years)

Alison Winter was an American academic. Biography Born on 19 November 1965 in New Haven, Connecticut, Winter spent her early childhood in Bonn, Germany, and attended high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her father taught mathematics at the University of Michigan. His influence led her to study the history of science at the University of Chicago beginning in 1983. Winter moved to the United Kingdom for graduate study, where she met Adrian Johns in 1987. The two married in 1992. Winter completed her M. Phil at the University of Cambridge in 1991, followed by a PhD in 1993. She began teachi...

#4546

Jan Mokkenstorm

#179516

Overall Influence

1962 - 2019 (57 years)

Jan Mokkenstorm was a Dutch psychiatrist. In 2009 he created 113, a Dutch telephone suicide prevention service. The service is used about 200 times every day. He studied medicine in Maastricht and later got his education in psychiatry and psychotherapy at Amsterdam. He was director of 113 and acting physician-director of GGZingeest where he also dealt with suicide prevention and patient safety. He was an honorary member of the Dutch Association for Psychiatry . He tried to lift the taboo around talking about suicide and suicidal thoughts. Vrij Nederland declared his contribution to suicide pre...

#4547

Martha Manning

#192000

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

#4548

Christophe Moulherat

#98784

Overall Influence

Christophe Moulherat is a French scholar, anthropologist, scientific analyst. He is a textile expert. Academics Christophe Moulherat holds a Doctoral degree in archaeology, prehistory, and anthropology from the Sorbonne University Paris.

#4549

Ann Katharine Mitchell

#73682

Overall Influence

1922 - 2020 (98 years)

Ann Katharine Mitchell was a British cryptanalyst and psychologist who worked on decrypting messages encoded in the German Enigma cypher at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. After the war she became a marriage guidance counsellor, then studied for a Master of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. She worked at the university's Department of Social Administration and wrote several academic books about the psychological effects of divorce on children, including Someone to Turn to: Experiences of Help Before Divorce and Children in the Middle: Living Through Divorce .

#4550

Peter Ramsay

#86516

Overall Influence

1939 - 2019 (80 years)

Peter Douglas Kenneth Ramsay was a New Zealand academic. He was a professor of education at the University of Waikato, and was a member of the Picot task force in 1987–1988. Ramsay was also noted for his contributions to daffodil breeding.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions