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.

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Person Name

School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Sociology,

#551

Adam Drewnowski

#73554

Overall Influence

#552

Andrew Scull

#36676

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Andrew T. Scull is a British-born sociologist who researches the social history of medicine and the history of psychiatry. He is a distinguished professor of sociology and science studies at University of California, San Diego, and recipient of the Roy Porter Medal for lifetime contributions to the history of medicine. His books include Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine, Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, and Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry's Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness.

#553

Stanley Lieberson

#39544

Overall Influence

1933 - 2018 (85 years)

Stanley Lieberson was an American sociologist. Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Lieberson was raised in Brooklyn and graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School before attending Brooklyn College. Lieberson completed graduate study at the University of Chicago. He taught at Harvard University as the Abbott Lawrence Lowell Research Professor of Sociology. Over the course of his career, Lieberson was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, named a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, granted fellowship to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and served the American Sociological Association as its president.

#554

Rose Laub Coser

#19819

Overall Influence

1916 - 1994 (78 years)

Rose Laub Coser was a German-American sociologist, educator, and social justice activist. She taught sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1968 until her retirement in 1987. She was interested in the effect of social structures on individuals, and much her work fell within medical sociology, role theory, and sociology of the family.

#555

Pierre L. van den Berghe

#36239

Overall Influence

1933 - 2019 (86 years)

Pierre L. van den Berghe was a Congolese-born American professor emeritus of sociology and anthropology at the University of Washington, where he had worked since 1965. Born in the Belgian Congo to Belgian parents, and spending World War II in occupied Belgium, he was an early witness to ethnic conflict and racism, which eventually led him to become a leading authority on ethnic relations. He conducted field work in South Africa, Mexico, Guatemala, Iran, Lebanon, Nigeria, Peru, and Israel. Early in his career, he lectured at the University of Natal alongside Leo Kuper and Fatima Meer. A stude...

#556

Da-Wen Sun

#43832

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Sun Dawen , known as Da-Wen Sun, is a Chinese-born professor who studies food engineering at University College Dublin. Professor Sun is an Academician of six academies including Royal Irish Academy, Academia Europaea , Polish Academy of Sciences, International Academy of Food Science and Technology, International Academy of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering and International Academy of Refrigeration. He is also President of International Commission of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering .

#557

Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim

Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim

#44315

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim , is a German sociologist. She holds a professorship at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. After studying sociology, psychology, and philosophy in Munich, she obtained her PhD in 1973. After several fellowships, she graduated from Munich University in 1987.

#558

Eldridge Cleaver

Eldridge Cleaver

#739

Overall Influence

1935 - 1998 (63 years)

Leroy Eldridge Cleaver was an American writer, political activist who became an early leader of the Black Panther Party. In 1968, Cleaver wrote Soul on Ice, a collection of essays that, at the time of its publication, was praised by The New York Times Book Review as "brilliant and revealing". Cleaver stated in Soul on Ice: "If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America."

#559

Władysław Markiewicz

#37764

Overall Influence

1920 - 2017 (97 years)

Władysław Markiewicz was a Polish sociologist; professor of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań since 1966, and Warsaw University since 1972, director of the Western Institute in Poznań in years 1966–1973, member of Polish Academy of Sciences since 1972. He was the Polish-side Chairman of German-Polish Textbook Commission from 1972 to 1984.

#560

Helmut Reichelt

#11891

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Helmut Reichelt is a German Marxian critic of political economy, sociologist and philosopher. Reichelt is one of the main authors of the “Neue Marx-Lektüre” and considered to be one of the most important theorists in the field of Marx's theory of value.

#561

Ramón Grosfoguel

#35184

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Ramón Grosfoguel is a Puerto Rican sociologist who belongs to the Modernity / Coloniality Group who is a full Professor of Chicano/Latino Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at University of California, Berkeley.

#562

Linda Woodhead

#11782

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Linda Jane Pauline Woodhead is a British sociologist of religion and scholar of religious studies at King's College London Faculty of Arts and Humanities. She is best known for her work on religious change since the 1980s, and for initiating public debates about faith. She has been described by Matthew Taylor, head of the Royal Society of Arts, as "one of the world's leading experts on religion".

#563

Helene Raskin White

#48946

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Helene Raskin White is an American sociologist. She is a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the Center of Alcohol Studies at Rutgers University. White's areas of specialization include alcohol and drug studies, delinquency and crime, violence, longitudinal and survey methodology, and prevention and evaluation research. White has also been involved in the development, implementation and evaluation of numerous alcohol and drug prevention programs.

#564

Mimi Thi Nguyen

Mimi Thi Nguyen

#47327

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Mimi Thi Nguyen is a Vietnamese-born American scholar, punk and zine author. Biography Born in 1974 in Ho Chi Minh City to Hiep and Lien Nguyen, Nguyen earned a bachelor's degree in Women's Studies and a doctorate in Ethnic Studies from University of California, Berkeley. Her master's degree was in American Studies from New York University. She grew up in Minnesota and relocated to San Diego, California, where she was drawn to the D.I.Y. punk scene.

#565

Urs Jaeggi

#25873

Overall Influence

1931 - 2021 (90 years)

Urs Jaeggi was a Swiss sociologist, painter, and author from Solothurn, Switzerland. From 1964 to 1993, he was a Professor of Sociology and Social Philosophy in Bern, Bochum, New York, and Berlin. He published numerous novels, short stories, essays as well as scientific books. He won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 1981.

#566

Robert Crutchfield

#39765

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Robert D. Crutchfield is an American sociologist and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Washington. He is known for his book Get A Job: Labor Markets, Economic Opportunity, and Crime, which was published in 2014.

#567

Bruce Kogut

#27022

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Bruce Mitchel Kogut is an American organizational theorist, and Professor of Leadership and Ethics Director of the Columbia Business School. He is particularly known for his work with Udo Zander on knowledge-based theory of the firm.

#568

Frigga Haug

#20110

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Frigga Haug is a German socialist-feminist sociologist and philosopher. Life Frigga Langenberger was born in Mülheim. She studied sociology and philosophy at the Free University of Berlin. In 1963, she interrupted her studies to move to Cologne and give birth to a daughter. In 1965 she married a second time to the philosopher Wolfgang Fritz Haug. She graduated in sociology in 1971, and gained a PhD in sociology and social psychology in 1976.

#569

Azouz Begag

#5972

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Azouz Begag is a French writer, politician and researcher in economics and sociology at the CNRS. He was the delegate minister for equal opportunities of France in the government of French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin till 5 April 2007. He resigned to support the moderate centrist candidate François Bayrou, one of the two UMP ministers to do so.

#570

Dieter Rucht

#31942

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Dieter Rucht is a German sociologist. He is known for his contributions to the protest and social movement literature. Until his retirement in June 2011, he was co-director of the research group Civil Society, Citizenship, and Political Mobilization in Europe at the Social Science Research Center Berlin and honorary professor at the institute of sociology of the Free University of Berlin .

#571

Bernard Friot

#26315

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Bernard Friot is a French sociologist and economist. He is an emeritus professor of Sociology, and previously taught at Paris West University Nanterre La Défense. He's been a member of the French Communist Party since 1970.

#572

Emir Sader

#9452

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Emir Simão Sader is a Brazilian sociologist and political scientist of Lebanese origin. Biography Sader received all his higher education credentials from the University of São Paulo. He did his bachelor's degree in philosophy, his master's degree in political philosophy and his doctoral degree in political science. He also worked at the University of São Paulo as a professor of philosophy and later of political science. He also worked as a professor of political science at University of Campinas in Brazil and as a researcher at the Center for Socioeconomic Studies at the University of Chile....

#573

Grace Davie

#41117

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Grace Riestra Claire Davie is a British sociologist who serves as professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Exeter. She is the author of the book Religion in Britain Since 1945: Believing Without Belonging.

#574

Jeffrey K. Hadden

#23913

Overall Influence

1936 - 2003 (67 years)

Jeffrey K. Hadden was an American professor of sociology. He began his teaching career at Western Reserve University and then at the University of Virginia commencing in 1972. Hadden earned his Ph.D. in 1963 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was trained as a demographer and human ecologist.

#575

Benton Johnson

#34571

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

Guy Benton Johnson Jr. is an American sociologist and professor emeritus of the University of Oregon's Department of Sociology. Biography Guy Benton Johnson Jr. was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on August 19, 1928, the son of Guy Benton Johnson and Guion Griffis Johnson. He was named after his father, but was called "Benny" and continued to use "Benton" in adulthood.

#576

Ronald Enroth

#19106

Overall Influence

1938 - 2023 (85 years)

Ronald M. Enroth was an American professor of sociology at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, and an evangelical Christian author of books concerning what he defined as "cults" and "new religious movements" and important figure in the Christian countercult movement.

#577

Juan Carlos Portantiero

#40052

Overall Influence

1934 - 2007 (73 years)

Juan Carlos Portantiero was an Argentine sociologist. He specialized in the study of the works of Antonio Gramsci. With José Aricó and other intellectuals, he was in charge of the magazine Pasado y Presente, which holds a critical view of Marxism.

#578

Manuel Antonio Garretón

Manuel Antonio Garretón

#38554

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Manuel Antonio Garretón is a Chilean sociologist, political scientist and essayist. He received the National Prize for Humanities and Social Sciences in 2007 for his lifetime contribution to the field.

#579

Philip Rieff

#9558

Overall Influence

1922 - 2006 (84 years)

Philip Rieff was an American sociologist and cultural critic, who taught sociology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1961 until 1992, and also, during the 1950s, at the University of Chicago, where he met Susan Sontag. He was the author of a number of books on Sigmund Freud and his legacy, including Freud: The Mind of the Moralist and The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud . He married his 17-year-old student Susan Sontag after 10 days of courtship in the 1950s. The marriage lasted eight years during which their son, David Rieff—a writer and editor of his mother's personal journals—was born.

#580

Stephen L. Morgan

#46835

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Stephen Lawrence Morgan is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Education at the Johns Hopkins University School of Arts and Sciences and Johns Hopkins School of Education. A quantitative methodologist, he is known for his contributions to quantitative methods in sociology as applied to research on schools, particularly in models for educational attainment, improving the study of causal relationships, and his empirical research focusing on social inequality and education in the United States.

#581

Sabino Acquaviva

#47835

Overall Influence

1927 - 2015 (88 years)

Sabino Acquaviva was an Italian sociologist. He was chair of the Department of Sociology between 1985 and 1988 and president of the School of Political Science of University of Padua between 1977 and 1978. He was also visiting professor at All Souls College, Oxford and at the University of Nice, scriptwriter, and novelist. He is mostly well-known for his studies about secularization and the decline of religion in Western Europe.

#582

Christian Fuchs

Christian Fuchs

#12396

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Christian Fuchs is an Austrian social scientist. From 2013 until 2022 he was Professor of Social Media and Professor of Media, Communication & Society at the University of Westminster, where he also was the Director of the Communication and Media Research Institute . Since 2022, he is Professor of Media Systems and Media Organisation at Paderborn University in Germany. He also known for being the editor of the open access journal tripleC: Communications, Capitalism & Critique. The journal's website offers a wide range of critical studies within the debate of capitalism and communication. This ...

#583

Moisés Espírito Santo Bagagem

#74326

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

'Bold text''''Moisés Espírito Santo is a Portuguese ethnologist and sociologist well known for his work on Ethnology of Religion, summarized in the books The Portuguese Popular Religion and Oriental Origins of the Portuguese Popular Religion . From 1973, Moisés Espírito Santo studied rural sociology and sociology of religion at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in Paris, where he obtained M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in 1976 and 1979, respectively. Moisés Espírito Santo is, now, retired professor at the New University of Lisbon and guest professor at the Universidade Lusófona, i...

#584

Paul Schnabel

#17040

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Paul Schnabel is a Dutch politician and sociologist who served on the Social and Economic Council from 2013 to 2015 and in the Senate on behalf of Democrats 66 from 2015 until 2019. Schnabel, a professor at Utrecht University, previously served as director of The Netherlands Institute for Social Research, an agency within the Government of the Netherlands, from 1998 to 2013, when he was appointed to the SER by the Crown.

#585

Gary Kleck

#5576

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Gary Kleck is a criminologist and the David J. Bordua Professor Emeritus of Criminology at Florida State University. Early life and education Kleck was born in Lombard, Illinois, to William and Joyce Kleck. He attended Glenbard East High School before enrolling in the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he received his BA , MA , and PhD , all in Sociology.

#586

Eiko Ikegami

#55630

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Eiko Ikegami is a Japanese academic, author and the Walter A. Eberstadt Professor of Sociology and History at the New School of Social Research in New York. In 2006, she won the Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book in Cultural Sociology and the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award in Political Sociology both from the American Sociological Association.

#587

Jean Fox O'Barr

#42108

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Jean Fox O'Barr is an American feminist teacher, scholar, and administrator whose pioneering work helped establish women’s studies as a program of academic study and support for women in higher education.

#588

Yiannis Gabriel

#28662

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Yiannis Gabriel is a Greek-British sociologist, best known for his contributions to the academic field of organisational storytelling. Gabriel earned his Ph.D. in sociology in 1981 from UC Berkeley on a dissertation titled Freud and Society. Since 1989, he is affiliated with the University of Bath School of Management, where he since 2009 holds a chair in organisational theory. He has previously held professorships in organisational theory at Imperial College London and Royal Holloway, University of London.

#589

Troy Duster

#13817

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Troy Smith Duster is an American sociologist with research interests in the sociology of science, public policy, race and ethnicity and deviance. He is a Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology at University of California, Berkeley, and professor of sociology and director of the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge at New York University.

#590

Tom Burns

#28923

Overall Influence

1913 - 2001 (88 years)

Tom Burns FBA was an English sociologist, author and founder of the Sociology department at Edinburgh University. Early life Burns was born on 16 January 1913 in Bethnal Green, East London. He attended Hague Street LCC elementary school and Parmiter's foundation school before reading English Literature at Bristol University.

#591

Ralph Larkin

#16353

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Ralph Wild Larkin is an American sociologist and research consultant. He is the author of Suburban Youth in Cultural Crisis , Beyond Revolution: A New Theory of Social Movements , and Comprehending Columbine . He obtained his bachelor's degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara and received a master's degree in education from California State University at Northridge.

#592

John A. Hostetler

#24363

Overall Influence

1918 - 2001 (83 years)

John A. Hostetler was an American author, educator, and scholar of Amish and Hutterite societies. Some of his works are still in print. Life John Andrew Hostetler was born to an Old Order Amish family in the Kishacoquillas Valley region of Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, the fifth of seven children of Joseph and Nancy Hostetler. At the age of eleven, his parents moved to Iowa. As a youth he supervised his father's turkey operation, took courses on poultry raising, and received a poultry-judging license from the American Poultry Association. He discovered that he enjoyed reading more than raising turkeys and feeding hogs.

#593

Julia Adams

#43019

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Julia Potter Adams is an American sociologist who works in the area of comparative and historical sociology. Julia Adams is a professor of Sociology. She conducts research in the areas of state building, gender and family, social theory and knowledge, early modern European politics, and Colonialism and empire. Her current research focuses on the historical sociology of agency relations and modernity, gender, race, and the representation of academic knowledge on Wikipedia and on other digital platforms. Adams is Professor of Sociology and International & Area Studies and Head of Grace Hopper College, Yale.

#594

Rastko Močnik

#13476

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Rastko Močnik is a Slovenian sociologist, psychoanalyst, literary theorist, translator and political activist. Together with Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar, he is considered one of the co-founders of the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis.

#595

Ronald Max Andersen

#76974

Overall Influence

#596

Rubén G. Rumbaut

#30533

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Rubén G. Rumbaut is a prominent Cuban-American sociologist and a leading expert on immigration and refugee resettlement in the United States. He is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine.

#597

Dennis Gilbert

#22648

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Dennis L. Gilbert is a professor emeritus and former chair of sociology at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Cornell University and has taught at the Universidad Católica in Lima, Peru, Cornell University, and joined Hamilton college in 1976. He has published a variety of sociology books, mainly dealing with socio-economic stratification.

#598

Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe

#36812

Overall Influence

1913 - 1998 (85 years)

Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe , was a noted French urban sociologist. He was strongly influenced by the Chicago school and was an early advocate of participatory planning. Biography In the 1930s, Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe studied sculpture and philosophy at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he also became interested in ethnology and sociology. After graduating in philosophy, he first worked in Cameroun, but in 1937 returned to France to absolve the compulsory military service. After the defeat of the French army in 1940, he first fled to North Africa but returned to France after the armistice, where he cooperated with the Resistance.

#599

Sylvia Schmelkes

Sylvia Schmelkes

#18683

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Sylvia Schmelkes is a Mexican sociologist and education researcher, and current director of the Mexican National Institute of Educational Evaluation. She is best known for her work in intercultural education, and her book 'Toward better quality of our schools'. Schmelkes has also written over 100 academic texts and essays. She is a former General Coordinator of Intercultural and Bilingual Education at the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico, and is currently heading the Research Institute for the Development of Education at the Iberoamerican University.

#600

Wolfgang Schluchter

#26207

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Wolfgang Schluchter is a German sociologist and, as of 2006, professor emeritus at Heidelberg University. Schluchter is recognized as a leading sociologist of religion and an authority on the history of sociological theory, in particular on the work of Max Weber. He was one of the editors of the , alongside Wolfgang J. Mommsen and . succeeded Mommsen after he died in 2004. The project was completed in June 2020, with forty-seven volumes. Schluchter was visiting professor at several universities worldwide, including the University of Pittsburgh, The New School for Social Research, and the Uni...

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