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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Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Sociology,

#601

Charles A. Small

#37952

Overall Influence

Charles Asher Small is a Canadian intellectual, the founder and director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy the first international interdisciplinary research center dedicated to studying antisemitism with a contemporary focus.

#602

David Gauntlett

#21684

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

David Gauntlett is a British sociologist and media theorist, and the author of several books including Making is Connecting. His earlier work concerned contemporary media audiences, and has moved towards a focus on the everyday making and sharing of digital media and social media and the role of these activities in self-identity and building creative cultures.

#603

Lee Ellis

#30239

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Altis Lee Ellis is an American sociologist who was a professor of sociology at Minot State University from 1976 to 2007. He was also an assistant and associate professor there from 1976 to 2009, after which he served as a visiting professor at the University of Malaya from 2010 to 2012.

#604

Les Back

#26311

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Les Back is a professor of sociology at the University of Glasgow and former Director of the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a researcher and author of numerous books and academic studies on a wide range of topics, including racism, music and urban cultures.

#605

Helmut Willke

#24024

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Helmut Willke is a German sociologist who studies the effect of globalization on modern society. He coined the term Atopia to denote a society that exists without borders, with no national identity. He is currently professor at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, Germany. Helmut Willke has been teaching planning and decision theory since 1983 in the University of Bielefeld’s department of sociology, and state theory and global governance since 2002. He also holds visiting professorships in Washington, D.C., Geneva and Vienna. His main areas of interest and praxis are in systems theory, st...

#606

Morris Zelditch

#42161

Overall Influence

1928 - 2017 (89 years)

Morris "Buzz" Zelditch was an American sociologist. He was Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1961. He was known for his work on the effects of status characteristics embedded in the stratification of the larger society, legitimacy of structures of authority, and generalizability of the results of sociological experiments.

#607

Lucie Cheng

#37667

Overall Influence

1939 - 2010 (71 years)

Lucie Cheng was a sociologist known for her work in Asian American studies, as well as being the first permanent director of the Asian American Studies Center, UCLA. She was also one of the first American academics to forge links with mainland Chinese academic institutions after the formalisation of Sino-US relations.

#608

Dora Barrancos

#27398

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Dora Beatriz Barrancos is an Argentine researcher, sociologist, historian, feminist, and politician. She was part of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council board of directors until May 2019, when she resigned in protest over a budget reduction that severely affected the institution.

#609

Alain Caillé

#24038

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Allain Caillé is a French sociologist and economist. He is Professor of sociology at the University of Paris X Nanterre. He is a founding member of the Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences and editor of the movement's monthly journal "Revue du Mauss".

#610

George Steinmetz

#51151

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

George Steinmetz is the Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Sociology and Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. He has taught at the New School for Social Research, the University of Chicago, and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences . He is a historical sociologist of empires, states, and cities, with a focus on modern Germany, France, and Britain and their colonies. His other main areas of research are social theory and the history and philosophy of the social sciences.

#611

Gregory Cajete

#19693

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Gregory Cajete is a Tewa author and professor from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. Cajete earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology and sociology from New Mexico Highlands University, with a minor in secondary education. His Masters of Arts degree is from the University of New Mexico, and his doctorate is from the International College, Los Angeles’s New Philosophy Program. His Doctorate of Philosophy is in social science Education with an emphasis in Native American Studies. Currently he is director of the Native American Studies program and associate professor of education at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

#612

Yu Xie

#38302

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Yu Xie is a Chinese-American sociologist and a sociology professor at Princeton University. He joined the University of Michigan as an assistant professor in 1989 and served as a professor from 1996 to 2015.

#613

Nigel Gilbert

#19951

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Geoffrey Nigel Gilbert is a British sociologist and a pioneer in the use of agent-based models in the social sciences. He is the founder and director of the Centre for Research in Social Simulation , author of several books on computational social science, social simulation and social research and past editor of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation , the leading journal in the field.

#614

Alessandro Pizzorno

#32032

Overall Influence

1924 - 2019 (95 years)

Alessandro Pizzorno was an Italian sociologist, political scientist and philosopher. Career He completed his philosophy studies at the University of Turin, and in social sciences in Vienna and Paris.

#615

Philippe Corcuff

Philippe Corcuff

#31554

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Philippe Corcuff is a French academic, full professor in political science at the Institut d'études politiques de Lyon since October 1992 and member of the CERLIS laboratory since October 2003. Politically committed to the left, with a trajectory that took him from social democracy to pragmatic anarchism, via the ecologists and the New Anti-Capitalist Party, he defines himself as an “anti-globalization and libertarian activist”. He was a columnist for the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo from 2001 to 2004.

#616

Yiorgos Veltsos

#17815

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Yiorgos Veltsos is a Greek philosopher, author, poet, and former academic professor. Biography Veltsos was born in Athens, Greece. He studied Law at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and received his doctoral degree in Political Sociology from the University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis. From 1975 onward, Veltsos taught communication theory at the Panteion University in Athens, where he became associate professor in 1980, and professor of Sociology in 1985.

#617

Alfred Schutz

#78435

Overall Influence

#618

David Apter

#12962

Overall Influence

1924 - 2010 (86 years)

David Ernest Apter was an American political scientist and sociologist. He was Henry J. Heinz Professor of Comparative Political and Social Development and senior research scientist at Yale University.

#619

Russell E Glasgow

#78591

Overall Influence

#620

Nathan Keyfitz

#24937

Overall Influence

1913 - 2010 (97 years)

Nathan Keyfitz FRSC FRSS was a Canadian demographer, a pioneer of mathematical demography. Professional career Keyfitz studied at McGill University, graduating with a B.S. in mathematics in 1934. He worked for the Dominion Bureau of Statistics in Canada from 1936 to 1959, meanwhile earning a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1952. In 1959, he took a professorship at the University of Toronto; he moved from there to the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley before joining the faculty of Harvard University as Andelot Professor of Sociology in 1972. ...

#621

Fred Pestello

#20462

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Fred P. Pestello is an American sociologist and administrator in higher education. He currently serves as the 33rd President of Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri. Prior to this, he was the 13th President of Le Moyne College, a post he had held since July 1, 2008.

#622

Nancy Ammerman

#36399

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Nancy Tatom Ammerman is an American professor of sociology of religion at Boston University School of Theology. Life In 1984, Ammerman joined the faculty of Emory University. Her book, Baptist Battles, won the 1992 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. In 1995, Ammerman left Emory University to teach at Hartford Seminary. Since 2003, she has been at Boston University. In 2020 she became an honorary doctor at Uppsala University.

#623

Gerald F. Davis

#26978

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Gerald Fredrick Davis is an American sociologist and the Gilbert and Ruth Whitaker Professor of Business Administration at the University of Michigan, known for his work on corporate networks, social movements and organization theory.

#624

Toril Moi

#1601

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Toril Moi is James B. Duke Professor of Literature and Romance Studies and Professor of English, Philosophy and Theatre Studies at Duke University. Moi is also the Director of the Center for Philosophy, Arts, and Literature at Duke. As an undergraduate, she attended University of Bergen, where she studied in the Literature Department. Previously she held positions as a lecturer in French at the University of Oxford and as Director of the Center for Feminist Research at the University of Bergen, Norway. She lived in Oxford, United Kingdom from 1979 to 1989. Moi lives in North Carolina. She wor...

#625

Patricia A. Adler

#50339

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Patricia A. Adler is an American educator and sociologist who is currently a professor emerita at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Education Patricia A. Adler earned an A.B. in Sociology in 1973 from the Washington University in St. Louis. Adler continued her studies at the University of Chicago where she received a M.A. in Social Science in 1974. Additionally, Adler received a M.A. in Sociology in 1975, and a Ph.D. in 1984 from the University of California, San Diego.

#626

Jens Beckert

#27145

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Jens Beckert is a German sociologist with a strong interest in economic sociology. The author of books on inherited wealth and the social foundations of economic efficiency, he focuses on the role of the economy in society – especially based on studies of markets – as well as organizational sociology, the sociology of inheritance, and sociological theory. He is director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany, and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

#627

Ronald C. Kessler

#6016

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Ronald C. Kessler is an American professor at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on the precision treatment of mental illness to determine the appropriate intervention for specific patients. He ranks among the most highly cited researchers in the world, with an h-index of 329 as of September 2023.

#628

Sarah Thornton

#16244

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Sarah L. Thornton is a writer, ethnographer and sociologist of culture. Thornton has authored three books and many articles about artists, the art market, technology and design, the history of music technology, dance clubs, raves, cultural hierarchies, subcultures, and ethnographic research methods.

#629

Maxine Molyneux

#44017

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Maxine Deirdre Molyneux is a British sociologist whose work focuses on the women's movement. That women's interests and gender interests are different categories is the discovery for which Maxine Molyneux is most frequently cited. Her focus is women's movements, and her central question is how they and the state influence each other. Interests and law are the categories under which she examines the changeable and shapeable relationship of the gender order and the state. She wants to bring back the state and the political subject into the thinking on modernisation, democratisation and develop...

#630

Évelyne Sullerot

#38118

Overall Influence

1924 - 2017 (93 years)

Évelyne Sullerot was a French feminist. She was the author of many feminist books. Early life Évelyne Sullerot was born on 10 October 1924 in Montrouge, France. She was raised in a Protestant family. She was the daughter of André Hammel and Georgette Roustain. Her father, a doctor, made one of the first psychiatric clinics in France. He was Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur. Her mother died of hunger and cold at Valence station in 1943. Both, very religiously committed to Protestantism socially and politically, were given the posthumous title of Righteous among the nations, for having saved eleven Jews during the German occupation.

#631

Nicholas Lemann

Nicholas Lemann

#2928

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Nicholas Berthelot Lemann is an American writer and academic, and is the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism and Dean Emeritus of the Faculty of Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1999. Lemann was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022.

#632

Arne L. Kalleberg

#35049

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Arne Lindeman Kalleberg is a Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center. He is also an adjunct professor in the Kenan-Flagler Business School, the Department of Public Policy, and the Curriculum in Global Studies. Kalleberg served as the secretary of the American Sociological Association from 2001 to 2004 and as its president from 2007 to 2008. He has been the editor-in-chief of Social Forces, an international journal of social research for over ten years.

#633

Tamar El Or

#33558

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Tamar El-Or is an Israeli sociologist and author holding the Sarah Allen Shaine chair of sociology and anthropology at the Hebrew University. Research El-Or's Ph.D. dissertation was a study of ultra-Orthodox women in Israel that was published as a book, Educated and Ignorant, in both Hebrew and English. Therein, El-Or discusses the possibility of educating for ignorance, or teaching certain groups to expect and respect intellectual restrictions. This research in gender and religion debated feminist questions of choice, empowerment, and resistance via the life of Orthodox women.

#634

Phil Zuckerman

#19443

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Philip Joseph Zuckerman is a sociologist and professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He specializes in the sociology of substantial secularity and is the author of several books, including What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life .

#635

Gerald Marwell

#47156

Overall Influence

1947 - 2013 (66 years)

Gerald Marwell was an American sociologist, social psychologist and behavioral economist. He was most recently Professor of Sociology at New York University. He is best known for his innovative work on problems of collective action, cooperation, social movements, compliance-gaining behavior, adolescence and religion.

#636

Martijn Katan

#18736

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Martijn Bernard Katan is a Dutch nutritionist, an emeritus professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and author of two popular science books on nutrition. Career Katan was born in Arnhem in 1946. He studied chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Amsterdam. He obtained his PhD in molecular biology in 1977 under Piet Borst from the same university. Katan started working at Wageningen University in 1976 where he researched "Nutrition and risk factors for cardiovascular disease". In 1998, he was appointed professor of human nutrition at the university. He was also the "Nutrition Foundation Professor" at the University of Nijmegen from 1985 to 1998.

#637

Bernice A. Pescosolido

#41002

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Bernice A. Pescosolido is an American sociologist, currently a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of the Indiana Consortium for Mental Health Services Research at Indiana University, and also a published author. From 1998 to 2006, she was also the Chancellor's Professor of Indiana University. She has also served as Vice-President of the American Sociological Association and its Chair of Sociology of Mental Health and Medical Sociology.

#638

Dirk Kaesler

#46561

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Dirk Kaesler is a German sociologist and Max Weber expert. Now retired, he was formerly Professor of Sociology at the University of Marburg. He is the author of Max Weber: An Introduction to his Life and Work, first published by the University of Chicago Press in 1988.

#639

Shoshana Zuboff

#1340

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Shoshana Zuboff is an American author, professor, social psychologist, philosopher, and scholar. Zuboff is the author of the books In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power and The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism, co-authored with James Maxmin. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, integrates core themes of her research: the Digital Revolution, the evolution of capitalism, the historical emergence of psychological individuality, and the conditions for human...

#640

Kathleen Barry

#20014

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Kathleen Barry is an American sociologist and feminist. After researching and publishing books on international human sex trafficking, she cofounded the United Nations NGO, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women . In 1985 she received the Wonder Woman Foundation Award for her strides towards the empowerment of women. She has taught at Brandeis University and Penn State University.

#641

George L. Kelling

#2718

Overall Influence

1935 - 2019 (84 years)

George Lee Kelling was an American criminologist, a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University–Newark, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He previously taught at Northeastern University.

#642

Cynthia Enloe

#6681

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Cynthia Holden Enloe is an American political theorist, feminist writer, and professor. She is best known for her work on gender and militarism and for her contributions to the field of feminist international relations. She has also influenced the field of feminist political geography, with feminist geopolitics in particular.

#643

Robin Cohen

#30053

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Robin Cohen is a social scientist working in the fields of globalisation, migration and diaspora studies. He is Emeritus Professor of Development Studies and former Director of the International Migration Institute, University of Oxford.

#644

Eve Ensler

#1614

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

V, formerly Eve Ensler , is an American playwright, author, performer, feminist, and activist. V is best known for her play The Vagina Monologues. In 2006 Charles Isherwood of The New York Times called The Vagina Monologues "probably the most important piece of political theater of the last decade."

#645

Paul D. Allison

#61310

Overall Influence

Paul D. Allison is an American statistician and sociologist. He is the President of Statistical Horizons and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Education Allison received an A.B. degree in sociology from St. Louis University in 1970, graduating magna cum laude. He completed his M.S. degree and his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1973 and 1976 respectively. Following completion of his doctorate, Allison did postdoctoral study in statistics at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania.

#646

Joel M. Podolny

#11567

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Joel Marc Podolny is an American sociologist. Formerly the dean of the Yale School of Management, he is currently an executive at Apple Inc., where he is the dean of Apple University and a vice president of the firm. Previously, he was vice president for human resources.

#647

Bob Torres

#25975

Overall Influence

Robert "Bob" Torres was an assistant professor of sociology at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. He is the co-author, with his wife Jenna Torres, of Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World , and the author of Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights .

#648

Alfred R. Lindesmith

#19648

Overall Influence

1905 - 1991 (86 years)

Alfred Ray Lindesmith was an Indiana University professor of sociology. He was among the early scholars providing a rigorous and thoughtful account of the nature of addiction. He was a critic of legal prohibitions against addictive drugs, arguing that such prohibitions had adverse societal effects. Lindesmith's work in drug policy and addiction at Indiana U. was an element of progressivism, along with the landmark work of Alfred Kinsey and his associates at The Kinsey Institute, under the supervision of IU President Herman Wells .

#649

M. Rainer Lepsius

M. Rainer Lepsius

#33629

Overall Influence

1928 - 2014 (86 years)

M. Rainer Lepsius was a German sociologist. A particular interest was in the work of Max Weber: he was prominent among the co-compilers of the 47 volume edition of the Complete Works of Weber. Life Mario Rainer Lepsius was born in Rio de Janeiro, at that time the capital of Brazil. His Portuguese first name reflected the country where the family lived when he was born, while his second name reflected the German provenance of the family. After moving to Germany he would stop using the name "Mario", substituting the initial "M", which is why most sources identify him as "M. Rainer Lepsius...

#650

William H. Friedland

#37901

Overall Influence

1923 - 2018 (95 years)

William Herbert Friedland was an American sociologist. Friedland was of Russian Jewish descent and grew up in Staten Island. After attending Wagner College, he moved to Detroit and worked at automobile factories for a decade, namely for the Hudson Motor Car Company and Ford Motor Company. Allied with Max Shachtman's third camp, Friedland was also active as a labor organizer for the United Auto Workers and Congress of Industrial Organizations. He was introduced to Joe Glazer by Bill Kemsley. Friedland and Glazer recorded songs of the labor movement, releasing two albums together. Friedland le...

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